Omni College Plus Up to October 2019

College Papers Plus 

Collected Works July 2018-December 2019 

Table of Contents 

The McFadden Act: Its Nature and Consequences 

Introduction 

Historical Backstory 

From McFadden to Riegle-Neal 

Analysis 

References 

Hahn and Tolstoy and Disillusionment and Maturation: A Comparison of Kimiko Hahn’s In Childhood and 

Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych 

Critical Viewing Form: SAS 

Critical Viewing Form: McWane Inc. 

Critical Viewing Form: Theranos 

Critical Viewing Form: Enron 

Bribery at the California DMVL The Case of Kari Scattaglia 

Genome Editing in Human Embryos 

My MBTI Results: What do they really mean? 

Analysis of Digital Product (Economics/Sociology/Cultural Studies) 

The So-called ‘Paradoxes of Validity’ of Elementary Symbolic Logic 

The Self-defeating Nature of Utilitarianism and Consequentialism Generally 

The Altman-Z Bankruptcy-Prediction Algorithm 

Application of Cobit-framework (July 24, 2019) 

Microsoft Financial Analysis 2016-2018 (June 23, 2019) 

Introduction 

Operating Cash Flow 

Common Equity 

Profitability 

Return on Equity 

Net Profit Margin 

Asset Turnover 

Leverage 

Return on Assets 

Liquidity Ratios 

Current Ratio 

Quick Ratio 

Ebit Interest Coverage 

Average Days to Collect Receivables 

Conclusion 

Works Cited 

Eco-friendly Dieting: A Bachelor’s Story 

Advanced Reading and Writing Semester Project Proposal: Designer Babies 

Microsoft Five Forces Analysis 

Introduction 

Industry Competition (Strong Force) 

Bargaining Power of Customers (Weak Force)

Bargaining Power of Suppliers (Moderate Force) 

Threat of Substitutes (Weak Force) 

Threat of New Entrants (Moderate Force) 

Conclusion 

Wittgenstein on Language and Thought (Philosophy) 

Camus and Schopenhauer on the Meaning of Life (Philosophy) 

Are Late-term Abortions Ethical? (Philosophy) 

Exploring Music 

Assignment 1 

Second Music Assignment JG 

Music Assignment (Assignment 1 Resubmission) for J.G. 

Schopenhauer on Human Suffering 

Bertrand Russell on the Value of Philosophy (Philosophy) 

The Philosophical Value of Uncertainty (Philosophy) 

Logic Homework: Theorems and Models (Philosophy/Logic) 

Searle vs. Turing on the Imitation Game (Philosophy) 

Hume, Frankfurt, and Holbach on Personal Freedom (Philosophy) 

Manifesto of the University of Wisconsin, Madison Secular Society (Publicly Delivered Speech) 

Michael’s Analysis of the Limits of Civil Protections (Philosophy) 

Bentham and Mill on Different Types of Pleasure 

Set Theory Homework (Formal Logic) 

Aristotle on Virtue: Final Exam (Philosophy) 

Nagel On the Hard Problem (Philosophy) 

Two Papers on Epistemology: Gettier and Bostrom 

Examination Questions for a Graduate Philosophy Course (Philosophy) 

Camus and Nagel on the Meaning (or Lack thereof) of Life (Philosophy) 

Camus’ Hero as Rebel without a Cause (Philosophy) 

Can we trust our senses? Yes we can (Philosophy) 

Descartes on What He Believes Himself to Be (Philosophy) 

The Role of Values in Science (Philosophy) 

Modern Science (Philosophy/History/General Science) 

Kant’s Moral Philosophy (Philosophy) 

Five Short Papers on Mind-body Dualism (Philosophy) 

Arguments Concerning God and Morality (Philosophy/Religion) 

Introduction 

Two preliminary points: 

The Standard Arguments for God’s Existence 

Paradoxes Relating to God 

Is God Necessary for Morality? 

Agnosticism vs. Catholicism (Public Address) 

God’s Foreknowledge and Moral Responsibility (Philosophy) 

The Paradox of Religions Institutions (Religion/Theology) 

What is The Good Life? (Philosophy) 

J.S Mill on Liberty and Personal Freedom (Philosophy) 



Aristotle’s Conception of the Good Life (Philosophy) 

Logic Lecture for Erika (Formal Logic)

Why Moore’s Proof of an External World Fails (Philosophy) 

Ethics Posting (Philosophy) 




Three Essays on Medical Ethics (Philosophy) 

Mill vs. Hobbes on Liberty (Politics/Philosophy) 

Exam-Essays on the Moral Systems of Mill, Bentham, and Kant (Philosophy) 

A Defense of Nagel’s Argument Against Materialism (Philosophy) 

Nietzsche and Schopenhauer on the Meaning, or Lack thereof, of Life (Philosophy) 

Notes on Nietzsche for Sandra (Philosophy) 

Nietzsche on Punishment (Philosophy/Politics) 

Tracy Latimer’s Father had the Right to Kill Her 

Towards a doctrine of generalized self-defense (Philosophy/Current Events) 

A Utilitarian Analysis of a Case of Theft (Philosophy/Applied Ethics) 

Van Cleve on Epistemic Circularity (Philosophy) 

Plato’s Theory of Forms (Philosophy) 

Early Modern Scientific Thought (Philosophy/General Science) 

An Ethical Quandary (Philosophy/Ethics) 

Superorganisms (Philosophy) 

Camus and Nagel on the Meaning (or Lack thereof) of Life: Long Version 

Clifford on Freedom (Philosophy) 

Different Perspectives on Religious Belief: O’Reilly v. Dawkins. v. James v. Clifford (Philosophy) 

Four Short Essays on Truth and Knowledge (Philosophy) 

The Ontological Argument: A Concise Explanation (Philosophy) 

The Tuskegee Experiment A Rawlsian Analysis (Philosophy/Current Events) 

Three Short Philosophy Papers on Human Freedom (Philosophy) 

Explain Stace’s ‘Compatibilism’. What is the major objection to that view and how would Stace deal with 

that objection? 

What is Galen Strawson’s ‘Basic Argument’ for our not being free? Does that argument go through? 

What evidence is there that the psychologically realm is causally deterministic? 

Kant’s Ethics (Philosophy) 

Blaise Pascal and the Paradox of the Self-aware Wretch (Philosophy) 

Three Short Papers on the Advent of Modern Science (Philosophy/General Science) 

Two Problems with the Hypothetico-deductive Method of Confirmation (Philosophy) 

Aristotle on Virtue (Philosophy) 

Absolute Truth: What it is and how we know it (Philosophy) 


Schopenhauer on Suicide (Philosophy) 

Schopenhauer’s Fractal Conception of Reality (Philosophy) 

Theodore Roszak’s Epistemology, Bicameral Consciousness, etc. (Anthropology) 

Locke, Aristotle and Kant on Virtue (Philosophy) 


Reflection Paper: Harvey on Commodity Fetishism (Politics/Economics) 

Reflection Paper: Defending Marxist Economist (Politics/Economics) 

Outline of Economics Paper on Contradictions in Free Market (Economics) 

Some Reflections on the Virtues of the Free Market (Economics/Politics/Current Events) 

When is wealth-redistribution legitimate? (Economics/Philosophy)

An Economic Argument for Drug-legalization (Economics) 

Hobbes, Marx, Rousseau, Nietzsche: Their Central Themes (Politics/Philosophy/Intellectual History) 

De Tocqueville on Egoism (Politics/History/Philosophy) 

Would the Founding Fathers Approve of Trump? (Politics/Current Events) 

The Most Basic Principles of Knowledge Management 

The ‘Free’ Market Isn’t Always So Free 

An Analysis of Barry Deutsch’s ‘Really Good Careers’ (Economics/Current Events) 

Knowledge Management and Information Economics in Relation 

to the Optimization of Instruction-markets (Economics/Business/Graduate Work) 

Chapter 1 Introduction to the Study 

Introduction 

Background to the Study 

Problem Statement 

Purpose of the Study 

Research Questions 

Advancing Scientific Knowledge and Significance of Study 

Rationale for Methodology 

Nature of the Research Design for the Study 


Definitions of Terms 

Assumptions, Limitations, Delimitations 

Summary and Organization of the Remainder of the Study 

References 

Goldman, Rousseau and von Hayek on the Ideal State (Politics) 

Take-home Exam on Russian History (Politics/History/Current Events) 

Did the founding fathers support or oppose democracy? Was the Constitution a democratic document 

or an anti-democratic document? (History/Politics) 

The Two Faces of China’s Negative Soft Power: 

China’s Belt and Road Initiative as a Case of Negative Soft Power (Politics) 

Interest Groups and Political Parties (Politics/Current Events) 

France 

Russia 

What led to the collapse of the Soviet Union? (Politics/History/Current Events) 

Plato’s Republic as Pol Potist Bureaucracy (Politics/Philosophy) 

Politics and Contemporary France and Russia (Politics/Current Events) 

Politics in the USA, Russia and France 

Harvard University Political Science Take-home Exam 

Political Parties in the United States: A Brief History 

France’s Political System 

Russia’s Geography in Relation to its Political Development 

The Collapse of the Soviet Union? 

Russia’s Current Political System 

Russia’s Dependence on Strong Leaders 

Summary of Politics of Economic Growth in the States (Economics) 

Should the US have entered WWI? (History) 

Mill and von Hayek on Free-market Economics (Economics/Philosophy) 

How is Colonialism different from Imperialism? Short Version (Politics) 

How is Colonialism different from Imperialism? Long Version (History/Politics/Economics)

Was the US a World Leader Between 1946-1991? Long Version (History/Politics) 

A Case for Environmental Regulation and against Carbon Taxes (Economics/Politics) 

Wollstonecraft vs. Marx on Religion (Intellectual History) 

Galileo and Wollstonecraft on Religion (Religion/Intellectual History) 

Carbon Taxes vs. Standing Regulations (Economics/Politics) 

Culture and Creativity (Sociology) 

The American Dream (Politics) 

Knowledge-capital (Politics/Economics/Philosophy) 

Four Essays on Modern History (History/Politics) 

Why is the United States so Energy-inefficient? (Sociology) 

Stalin’s Nationalism vs. Putin’s Nationalism (History/Politics) 

The Economic Consequences of Minimum Wage (Economics/Public Policy) 

Why Minimum Wage is Wrong 

Pot Legalization in California: Prop 64 (Current Events) 

Zara’s Supply-chain Efficiency (Business) 

Microsoft Financial analysis 2016-2018 (Business/Accounting) 

Introduction 


Common Equity 

Profitability 




Leverage 


Conclusion 

Sources 

Case Studies in Corporate Fraud (Accounting/Fraud Examination) 

The Fraud Triangle 

Forensic Accounting Post-Enron (Business/Accounting) 

Using the Fraud Triangle to Prevent Fraud 

Money Laundering: Basic Principles (Business/Accounting) 

The Valeant Fraud 

An Actual Case of ID Theft 

A Case of Financial Fraud at a University 

The Olympus Fraud 

The Dixon Fraud 

Multinationals in Relation to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in Relation 

The ARCP Fraud 

The Basia Skudrzyk Fraud 

The Liberty Bell Fraud 

A Hypothetical Skimming Case 

Fraud Risk Factors in a Hypothetical Multinational Company 

Cybercrime: How to Spot It and Stop It 

Fraud Interview Techniques 

Some Key Obstacles to Effective Fraud Risk Assessment 

Five Characteristics of Reliable Employees 

The “So What?” About your Industry Analysis (Business)

Analytical Assessment of Greg Toppo’s “Do Video Games Inspire Violence?” 

Why Barings Fell (Business/Economics) 

Internet Crime (Computer Security) 

Privatization in African Telecommunications 

Ethio Telecom Being Privatized (Business) 

The Economic Justification for America’s Involvement in WWI (Economics/History) 

The Economics of Higher Education in the 21st Century (Economics/Business) 

The Economics of Higher Education in the 21st Century 

Part I 

Introduction to Part I 

Retention-rates and Graduation-rates: Introductory Remarks 

Do Graduation- and Retention-rates Matter? 

Open-market Companies (OMC’s): How they Differ from Universities 

Colleges Sell Degrees, not Instruction 

Enrollment-rates Matter: Retention- and Graduation-rates Don’t 

Universities: Their Distinctive Business-model 

How Useful Do Students Really Want Their Educations To Be? 

The Paradox of Macroeconomic Efficiency 

When in Doubt, Drop Out: Dispelling the Myth that Only Losers Drop Out 

Knowledge-management: Introductory Remarks 

Why Knowledge-management Cannot be of Assistance to Universities 

Key Points 

Conclusion of Part 1: How to Maximize Revenue by Optimizing Education 

The Economics of Higher Education in the 21st Century Part II 

Introduction to Part II 

What is Knowledge-management (KM)? 

An Actual Company that Could Benefit from KM 

Who Exactly Sounds the KM-alarm? 

KM as Preventative Measure 

KM in Relation to Organizations that Sell Results 

KM in Relation to Organizations that Sell Services 

Service-organizations Depend on Poor KM 

KM Impossible Unless Employment and Pay are Performance-dependent 

No KM without Financial Transparency 

Expense-padding in Relation to KM 

A Corollary: Education Must be Digitized Whenever Possible 

DMO: A New and Better Kind of University 

All Accreditations Examination-based 

How DMO Turns Non-STEM Students into STEM Students 

Emphasis on Instruction as Opposed to Selection 

More Degree-levels at DMO 

Instructors Never to Function as Gatekeepers 

Payments to Go Straight from Student to Instructor 

The Inverted Payment Pyramid 

25 Desiderata that DMO Must Satisfy 

Conclusion of Part 2 

Conclusion of the Present Work 

United Airlines vs. Alaska Airlines (Business)

Air Koryo VS United Airlines (accompanied by photo of the smoldering wreckage of a crashed plane) 

Four Papers on Business-theory: Marketing Strategy, Joint Venture, Counter-trade, Ethnocentric Staffing 

What is strategy? How does strategy relate to a firm's profitability? 

What is a joint venture? What type of joint venture is most common? Provide an example of a joint 

venture. 

Explain countertrade and its purpose 

Why should a firm pursue an ethnocentric approach to staffing? What are the disadvantages of this 

approach? Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of a polycentric approach to staffing. 

The Secret of IKEA’s Success (Business) 

Strategy and Profitability (Business) 

Facebook: Why and How it Makes Money (Business) 

Gret Satell on Marketing (Business) 

An Exercise in Rational Decision-making (Business) 

Organizational Analysis of McDonals 

Including SWOT Analysis (Business) 

Analysis of Case 2: Why the Candidate Should Decline the Job Offer (Business/Ethics) 

Internal vs. External Stakeholders: An Analysis of Three Companies (Business/Finance) 

Variables in a Marketing-study (Business) 

Target: Corporate Case-study (Business) 

Prejudice as Psychological Resistance (Psychology) 

A Freudian Analysis of Prejudice (Psychology) 

Freud on Sublimation: Why His Analysis is Still Relevant (Psychology) 

Failure to Sublimate: A Freudian Analysis of the Peter Pan Syndrome (Psychology/Current Events) 

Psychology Assignment (Psychology) 

Attachment Theory and Mental Illness (Clinical Psychology) 

Why We Lie (Psychology/Evolutionary Theory) 

Unconditioned Stimuli (Psychology) 

Goring and Lombroso on Criminality (Psychology) 

The Chinese Mitten Crab: Portrait of an Invasive Species (Science: General) 

Meiosis and Mitosis (General Science) 

Confounding Variables (General Science) 


Evidence in Favor of Global Warming (General Science) 

Evolution Simply Explained (General Science) 


Legal Brief (Law School) 

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES 

STATEMENT OF JURISDICTION 

QUESTION PRESENTED 

STANDARD OF REVIEW 

STATEMENT OF THE CASE 

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT 

ARGUMENT 

CONCLUSION 

Motion to Quash 

Legal Negotiation Exercise Reflection Paper 2: The Negotiation – Clients (Law School) 

Adverse Possession

I am more than my LSAT Scores (Law School Application) 

Describe Your Background (College Application) 

Personal Statement (Law School) 

My Career as a Computer Security Expert (Job Application) 

Business School Application 

How I Benefited from this Course (Sociology) 

Personal Statement (Law School Application) 

Supplementary Essay (Law School Application) 

The American Dream (College Application) 

Geico Job Application (Application Essay) 


The Crypts Beneath Rome (College GenEd) 

Breaching Patriarchal Throwness with a Hatpin (Feminist Theory/Politics) 

A Feminist Breaching Experiment 

Cornell West on Malcolm X (Politics) 

Fork etiquette (Anthropology) 

McClatchey on Race and IQ (Current Events) 

Freedom of Speech: Its Scope and Limits (Politics) 

Defending Freedom of Speech (Ethics/Politics) 

Shutter Island: A Social Scientist’s Perspective (Social Science/Media Studies) 

The Sad Case of Richard Cory: Analysis of a Poem (Literary Analysis) 

Why College Admissions Should Continue to be Based at least in 

part on Standardized Test Scores (Public Policy) 

Being a Voter in Texas (Current Events) 

Three Takeaways from The Young Turks’ ‘Iceland does the Unimaginable’ (Current Events) 

The Works of Modern Art (Art History) 

Divan Japonais 

A Paradigm of the Art Nouveau Movement 

New Statendam 

Analysis of a piece of an Art Deco Work 

Lawn Tennis 


Student-passage and my revision thereof (Pedagogy) 

Summary and Analysis of Tomatoland (Politics/Current Events) 

A Demographic Analysis of Dropout-likelihood and Dropout-rationality 

List of Figures 

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Study 

Introduction 

Background of the Study 



Research Questions and/or Hypotheses 

Advancing Scientific Knowledge and Significance of the Study 


Nature of the Research Design of the Study 



Summary and Organization of the Remainder of the Study

Chapter 2: Literature Review 

Introduction to the Chapter 

Identification of the Gap 

Identification of the Gap (Continued): The Statistical Data 

Theoretical Foundations and/or Conceptual Framework 

Review of the Literature 

Literature Review: Vocational Careers 

Literature Review: Earnings on the Part of Non-vocationally trained Non-graduates 

Literature Review: Financial Costs and Benefits of Low IQ Degree 

Summary 

Chapter 3 Methodology 

Introduction 

Statement of the Problem 

Research Questions and Hypotheses 

Research Methodology 

Research Design 

Population and Sample Selection 

Instrumentation 

Validity 

Reliability 

Data Collection and Management 

Data Analysis Procedures 

Ethical Considerations 

Limitations and Delimitations 

Summary 

Is the Turing Test a good test of intelligence? (philosophy) 

Is the Turing Test a good test of intelligence? Second Version (philosophy) 

Should Caffeine be a Controlled Substance? 

Who started the Cold War? 

Who was a better President? Eisenhower or JFK? 

Who was a better President? Nixon or LBJ? 

Technology-caused Job-shortages and the Need for Universal Welfare 

My Reaction to Schoenberg’s A Survivor from 

Warsaw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFXkc9AGoeU 

Statistics: Basic Principles and Theorems (Math/Statistics) 

Poem and Song Compared: To His Coy Mistress Compared with Don’t Be Cruel (Literary Analysis) 

Random Variables, Discrete Variables, Continuous Variables (Math/Statistics) 

Statistics Exam Prep Sheet 

Concert Report (Music/Musicology) 

Statistics Final Exam Review Sheet (Math/Statistics) 

Music Journal (Music/Musicology) 

References 

Appendix A. 

Ideas as Networks: Reflecting on Steven Johnson’s 

“Where Good Ideas Come From” 

Are we born good? Response to: “Born Good?” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRvVFW85IcU) 

An Exercise in Legal Interpretation 

Posts for Business Ethics Class

Can you think of an example where someone has been honest but not ethical, as Carter (assigned 

reading) says? 

What was your decision in "Desperate Air?" Sell? Not sell? Why? 

How far would YOU have gone in the obedience experiment? 

Reactions to the Jones Day report on the rankings scandal at the Fox School 

Can you apply ideas from the Bazerman and Tenbrunsel article to McCoy's dilemma in the Parable of the 

Sadhu? 

Will it be possible for you to maintain your ethical values yet succeed in the business world? 

Have you ever been in the "Endgame" scenario? 

What is your "home base" ethical theory? (from the Deckop chapter) 

Is THE social responsibility of business to increase its profits? -- Who's right: Friedman or Mackey? 

Were WalMart to increase its pay and benefit level to those of Costco (Stone article) or TJ's (Wilke 

article), or LaColumbe (Carmichael article) would it be more or less financially successful? 

Have you ever had a "Sadhu" dropped at your feet (so to speak). If so, what did you do? 

Do you think corporations are living up to their original purpose in society? 

Identify an argument in an article, book etc. that does poorly on TWO or more of the 7 standards Paul & 

Elder say help assess critical thinking. Briefly discuss. 

Response to Posts about Descartes’ Evil Demon (my material in italics) 

Economics Quiz on Elasticity 

Summary of Video about Milgram Experiment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f97VYdkHZK8 

Racism and Sexism 

Answers to (somebody else’s) Questions about Orwell’s “Shooting and Elephant” (My content in italics) 

When is it a good for a company to decentralize? 

A Tough Business Decision 

An Ethical Quandry 

Legitimate Line Extensions as an Alternative to Front-businesses 

The Solution to the Pizza Puzzle 

Why is Sartre’s later work so bad? Response to “Human all too human: Sartre” 

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G4R_iAZWbQ) 

Summary and Analysis of The Yellow Wallpaper 

Summary and Analysis of James Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues 

Dialogue about Sonny’s Blues and The Yellow Wallpaper 

The Purpose of Fiction 

Summaries with Analysis of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Hawthorn’s Young Goodman Brown 

BCG Matrix Bulletin Points 

Accounting Cheat Sheet 

Dennett and Skinner on the Human Condition 

Response to “Reading Minds” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jc8URRxPIg) and 

“Neuroscience and Free Will” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnGDrc_s6KA) 

Do we have free will? Response to “Operant Conditioning” 

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_ctJqjlrHA) 

“Consciousness and Free Will” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyWfVyoz7BQ) 

The Sociology of Epistemology 

Cartesian Skepticism 

Response to (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE8dL1SweCw) 

What do I know with certainty? 

Response to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouk936EtkMc 

Internal vs. External Motivators

Reflections on Dan Pink’s Ted Talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y) 

Judith Ortiz Cofer’s “American History” and the Evils of Prejudice 

Why was Socrates put to death? Response to (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE7PKRjrid4) 

“The Trial of Socrates” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=380KSdkV6zY) 

The Problem of the One and the Many 

Response to : “The Pre-Socratics: Part 1” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83kUMEjaCUA) 

“The Pre-Socratics: Part 2” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IRy3E-BZhY) 

“The Pre-Socratics: Part 3” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVrwRHSIRIg) 

What do we have that chimps don’t? Response to : “Ape Genius” 

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg-mPjhCnc8) 

My Questions about “Dum Dum Boys”, by Cameron Joy, pp. 109-119 

The Meaning of Plato’s Cave Allegory 

Response to (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69F7GhASOdM) 

An Ethical Dilemma 

Answers to questions about documentary about how corporations are evil (Response to 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pin8fbdGV9Y) 

Answers to questions about documentary about the 

the Parable of the Sadhu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxXZEnR_JSM) 

Answers to Questions about Walmart-documentary (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf-Sr3SjBzk) 

Advertising Assignment 

Does good employee treatment (SAS movie) usually mean more profit? If not, why not? If so, why, and 

why don't more companies treat their employees well? 

Should corporate executives be held criminally liable for deaths or injuries in the workplace? Discussion 

Post 

Is Money a Drug? Discussion Post 

The “Heaven Help Her” Scenario: Utilitarian and Universalist Perspectives 

Classification of Retailers 

Lewin Change Model 

Factors that drive change 

The Strategic Planning Process 

Critical thinking traps 

Do we have free will? Responses to discussions posts (my content in bold-faced italics) 

Discussion Post #8 (worth 30 points; at least 200 words): Due by Saturday, Oct 26th, by 11:30 p.m. (my 

work in boldfaced italics) 



Discussion Post #8 

Legal vs. Substantive Freedom and the Paradox of the Free Market 

Reflections on works by Hall, Debord, and Morgan & Tierney 

QUANTITATIVE Dissertation Research Plan 

Discussion Post #8 (worth 30 points; at least 200 words): Due by Saturday, Oct 26th, by 11:30 p.m. 

Discussion Post on the Statement “‘Whatever happens is meant to be” (my content in boldfaced italics) 

Whatever happens 

Is Everything Meant to be? 

Literature Discussion Post 9 Discussion Post # 9

Introduction 

The McFadden Act: Its Nature and Consequences 

The McFadden Act of 1927 gave so-called ‘national banks’ more power than they 

previously had, while limiting the power of so-called ‘state banks’ (Rajan et al., 2015). We must 

define the terms ‘national bank’ and ‘state bank’ before we can say more precisely what the 

McFadden Act did or what its ramifications were, and we must also make a few points of a 

general nature about the Federal Reserve System. 

A ‘state bank’ is one that is chartered by a given state and is subject to that state’s 

banking laws. By contrast, a ‘national bank’ is one that is part of the Federal Reserve System 

(Dou et al., 2015). Consequently, a ‘national bank’ need not have branches in more than one 

state. In fact, as we will presently discuss, the McFadden Act expressly prohibited banks, 

whether national or not, from having branches in more than one state (West 2019). 

National banks function as an organized network—known as the Federal Reserve 

System---that ensures that any given one of its members always fulfills its fiduciary 

responsibilities to its customers. This means that a given national bank is always able to let its 

customers withdraw funds, even if there is a run on the bank (West 2019). This in turn means 

that members of the Federal Reserve System loan one another money and do so knowing that 

they will be repaid. Consequently, national banks have to comply with an extremely strict set of 

guidelines that guarantee that they are always in a position to honor their commitments both to 

their own customers and to other national banks (Flannery et al., 2017). 

National banks therefore have both individuals as well as other banks for their clients, 

and the likelihood that a given national bank will default on its obligations is virtually nil. By 

contrast, state banks do not service other banks; they only service individuals. Moreover, state

anks can and sometimes do fail, leaving their creditors and depositors in the lurch. This means 

that in some respects state banks have more discretion than national banks when it comes making 

loans or investments, and this means that national banks may be less able than state banks to 

capitalize on risky but potentially lucrative opportunities. The other side of the coin is that state 

banks can fail, since they have no guarantee of an emergency bailout, whereas national banks 

cannot fail, since they do have such a guarantee (West 2019). 

Historical Backstory 

The Federal Reserve System was created in 1913 for the express purpose of providing the 

public with banks that would never fail. During the first 14 years of its existence, it seemed to 

function very well and had a great deal of credibility, with both the financial sector and the 

general public (Bernanke 2017). At the same time, national banks began to resent being so much 

more strictly regulated than state banks, since it meant that national banks had to forego 

opportunities from which state banks could profit (Bernanke 2017). They consequently lobbied 

Congress to loosen some of these regulations; and they were successful, thanks largely to the 

public’s high level of trust in them, the result being the McFadden Act, the main provisions of 

which are as follows: 

(1) National banks had their charters renewed ahead of schedule. (They were not due for 

renewal until 1933.) 

(2) National banks were allowed to open branches in any state where state banks were 

allowed to have branches.

(3) National banks were allowed to engage in previously off-limits investing activities, 

including buying real estate and purchasing subsidiaries. 

(4) Both state and national banks were prohibited from having branches in more than one 

state. 

Provisions (1)-(3) gave national banks more power than they previously had, and 

provision (4) prevented state banks from becoming multi-state entities in an effort to regain their 

lost competitive advantage (Conti-Brown 2017). 

From McFadden to Riegle-Neal 

There were two sides to the McFadden Act, in that it gave national banks powers that 

they previously didn’t have, while subjecting all banks, including national banks, to severe 

restrictions, the most obvious one being the prohibition on having branches in multiple states. 

These two aspects of the McFadden Act reflect the public’s ambivalence at that time towards 

banks (Rajan et al., 2015). On the one hand, the public was distrustful of banks and wished to 

prevent the emergence of a banking monopoly or oligopoly: hence the fourth provision. On the 

other hand, the country was prospering, and the public believed the Federal Reserve System to 

be at least partly responsible for this: hence the first three provisions (Bernanke 2017). 

According to some experts, the extra powers now had by national banks led to reckless 

behavior on their part that helped bring about the Crash of 1929. Whether or not this is true, the 

bill that led to the McFadden Act almost certainly would not have passed had Congress voted on 

it right after the 1929 Crash, instead of right before it (West 2019).

In the ensuing decades, national banks circumvented the prohibition on interstate banking 

by buying controlling interests in banks in other states. This practice came to a halt in 1956 with 

the enactment of the Douglass Amendment of the Bank Holding Act. This amendment explicitly 

prohibited a bank in a given state from buying a controlling interest in an out-of-state bank 

except in cases where the laws of both states permitted it to be done. With this workaround shut 

down, national banks were simply unable to have multi-state markets, which in at least some 

cases obstructed the flow of investment capital to places where it was most needed (Epstein 

2019). 

In the mid-1970s banks from other countries started to become a major economic 

presence in the United States (Bernanke 2017). Such banks were not subject to the McFadden 

Act and were able to form branches in multiple states. This led to outrage on the part of 

American Banks, which led to legislation prohibiting foreign banks from forming branches in 

multiple states and, more importantly, led Congress to ask President Jimmy Carter to examine 

the banking system, the feeling being that McFadden and other similar regulations were 

preventing American banking from being able to compete in an increasingly global and dynamic 

financial environment. Carter did not himself do anything about this; nor did his successor 

Ronald Reagan. But legislators were now very conscious of the possibility that problems with 

the financial sector were causing problems for the American economy as a whole (Epstein 2019). 

In 1991 and 1992, laws were passed that gave national banks some latitude in the way of 

forming cooperative arrangements with banks in other states. But these various acts all left 

McFadden very much intact, and there was a growing consensus that, thanks to McFadden, 

American banking was a hyper-inefficient anachronism. In particular, Senator Donald Riegle 

(Michigan) and Congressmen Stephen Neal (North Carolina) urged the removal of McFadden’s

an on interstate banking, which they saw as responsible for the economic problems suffered by 

their respective constituencies. Finally, in 1994, the Riegle-Neal Act was passed, and banks were 

no longer prohibited from operating in multiple states (Epstein 2019). 

Analysis 

In this context, two questions arise: How did McFadden affect Banks? And how did it 

affect the economy as a whole? It may well be that McFadden made banking less profitable than 

it would otherwise be, but that by itself gives us no information as to how McFadden affected the 

economy as a whole? So what was that effect? And what about Riegle-Neal? What were the 

macroeconomic consequences of these acts? 

Judging by the USA’s GDP over the last 100 years, the answer seems to be---none. 

Figure 1 American GDP 1929-2011 

Fernald, J., & Li, H. (2019). Is slow still the new normal for GDP growth?. FRBSF Economic 

Letter, 17. 

During the last century, American macroeconomic growth has been steady. There have 

been a few dips and a few spikes---but nothing that can be correlated either with McFadden or 

with Riegle-Neal. Those who lobbied for the removal of McFadden put forth the usual

arguments about the deep macroeconomic significance of ‘readily available credit’—the idea 

being that economies grind to a halt when loans cannot be made sufficiently quickly or 

abundantly (Fernald et al., 2019). And there is no denying that borrowing and lending are 

necessary for macroeconomic health, simply because the people who recognize economic 

opportunities are unlikely to have the vast amounts of money needed to capitalize on them 

(Sowell 2017). 

That said, McFadden did not prevent individuals and companies from getting loans. What 

it did was to restrict what a given bank could do in the way of servicing a given person’s need for 

a loan. Under McFadden, a bank in Wyoming would not be able to loan money to someone in 

Utah; but that person could still get a loan—from a Utah bank (Bernanke 2017). 

It will be said that, under those circumstances, Utah banks won’t have to compete as hard 

for that person’s business and won’t do as good a job as they would if they had to compete with 

banks in other states (Sowell 2017). And maybe that is true. But if it is, there is no evidence of it. 

During the supposedly dark McFadden years, American companies were being founded, taken 

public, merged with, acquired, and sold at a rate unprecedented in human history (Angilella et 

al., 2019). 

Figure 2 Down Jones Industrial Average 1900-2012

Angilella, S., & Morelli, D. (2019). Are the stock prices influenced by the publication of 

the annual financial statements? Evidence from the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Operational 

Research, 1-10. 

To be sure, this growth did not stop with Riegle-Neal. There is in fact no clear evidence 

that Riegle-Neal has slowed down economic growth. McFadden put limits on bank profits, and 

Riegle-Neal removed those limits, but there is otherwise little evidence that either one was of any 

real consequence. This is subject only to the qualification that by deregulating the credit market, 

Riegle-Neal and other deregulatory measures might possibly have had a hand in the housing 

bubble responsible for the 2007-2010 recession (Conti-Brown 2017). 

Figure 3 

Figure 3 is identical with the curve in Figure 1. Is there anything about the shape of 

Figure 3 that indicates a change in banking regulations? The suggestive dimple near the end did 

not happen in the aftermath of any such changes, and no such changes happened in its aftermath. 

If we try to correlate GDP with specific banking regulations, we have little success. But 

when we compare altogether different financial systems, the results are striking:

Figure 3 USA GDP vs. USSR GDP 1917-1990 

Guriev, S. (2019). Gorbachev versus Deng: A Review of Chris Miller's The Struggle to 

Save the Soviet Economy. Journal of Economic Literature, 57(1), 120-46. 

What all of this suggests is that banking regulations appear to have more of an effect on 

banks than they do on the economy as a whole, with the possible qualification that a complete 

absence of regulation can lead to credit bubbles and brief subsequent dips. Advocates of Riegle- 

Neal would have us believe that McFadden was sapping the economy’s strength. But there is 

literally no evidence of this at all. Whatever effects McFadden and Riegle-Neal had, it is not 

clear what they are or what their significance is. 

References 

Angilella, S., & Morelli, D. (2019). Are the stock prices influenced by the publication of 

the annual financial statements? Evidence from the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Operational 

Research, 1-10. 

Bernanke, B. S. (2017). Federal reserve policy in an international context. IMF Economic 

Review, 65(1), 1-32.

Conti-Brown, P. (2017). The power and independence of the Federal Reserve. Princeton 

University Press. 

Dou, Y., Ryan, S. G., & Zou, Y. (2018). The Effect of Credit Competition on Banks’ 

Loan-Loss Provisions. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 53(3), 1195-1226. 

Epstein, G. (2019). Domestic stagflation and monetary policy: The Federal Reserve and 

the Hidden Election. Chapters, 2-56. 

Fernald, J., & Li, H. (2019). Is slow still the new normal for GDP growth?. FRBSF Economic 

Letter, 17. 

Flannery, M., Hirtle, B., & Kovner, A. (2017). Evaluating the information in the federal 

reserve stress tests. Journal of Financial Intermediation, 29, 1-18. 

Guriev, S. (2019). Gorbachev versus Deng: A Review of Chris Miller's The Struggle to 

Save the Soviet Economy. Journal of Economic Literature, 57(1), 120-46. 

Preston, H. H. (1927). The McFadden banking act. The American Economic 

Review, 17(2), 201-218.

Rajan, R. G., & Ramcharan, R. (2015). Constituencies and legislation: the fight over the 

McFadden Act of 1927. Management Science, 62(7), 1843-1859. 

Press. 

Sowell, T. (2017). Education: Assumptions versus history: Collected papers. Hoover 

West, R. C. (2019). Banking reform and the Federal Reserve, 1863-1923. Cornell 


Hahn and Tolstoy and Disillusionment and Maturation: A Comparison of Kimiko Hahn’s In 

Childhood and Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych 

Hahn’s poem In Childhood (2003) is about disillusionment. We grow up 

believing in fairy tales---the primary one being that there is no such thing as death--- 

and we come to realize that those fairy tales are just that. We grow up believing that 

our beloved dog ‘went to a better place’ and is residing happily in ‘dog heaven’, when, 

in actuality, he is simply gone. 

things don't die or remain damaged 

but return: stumps grow back hands, 

a head reconnects to a neck, 

a whole corpse rises blushing and newly elastic. 

Later this vision is not True:

the grandmother remains dead 

not hibernating in a wolf's belly. 

Or the blue parakeet does not return 

Lines 1-4 refer to the child’s belief that loved ones don’t die. Things don’t 

vanish; they merely go into hiding. Limbs may ‘go away’, but they grow back, with the 

qualification that ‘limbs’ refer to any valuable extension of oneself—a relative, a pet, 

or, indeed, an actual limb. Lines 5-8 are to the effect that this is indeed an infantile 

fallacy. The truth is---the parakeet did die, and so did grandma. They didn’t ‘move out’ 

or ‘go to a better place.’ They are gone, and that’s the cold hard truth of the matter, this 

being the whole point of the poem: 

Or the blue parakeet does not return 

from the little grave in the fern garden 

The point being that the bird is not ‘with grandmother.’ They were here; now 

they’re not; and that’s the end of the matter. 

But we can’t accept these cold, hard truths, so we rationalize: 

though one may wake in the morning 

thinking mother's call is the bird. 

Or maybe the bird is with grandmother

inside light. 

In other words, we tell more fairy tales to ourselves, rather than simply part with 

our delusions: 

Or grandmother was the bird 

and is now the dog 

gnawing on the chair leg. 

The point being that they are not all in ‘doggy heaven’ waiting for us, try as we 

might to believe otherwise. 

Of course, one’s belief that one’s loved ones don’t die is but one embodiment of 

an entire network of childish delusions. We grow up believing that the world is 

governed by moral laws—that justice is a force in much the same way as gravity. Most 

of us never part with this belief, at least not entirely. Even the most jaded criminal is 

surprised when one of his cohorts testifies against him or when the prosecuting 

attorney renegs on a plea deal. Even stone psychopaths are genuinely shocked when 

they are on the receiving end of psychopathic conduct, showing how deeply ingrained 

our presumptions are as to the supposed ‘moral structure’ of the universe. 

Relatedly, even the most clear-sighted people never cease to idealize others. A 

husband does not want to believe that his beloved wife is cut from the same cloth as

himself---that she has lusts and weaknesses much as he does. Even hatred of another 

involves a certain idealization of them: we see the object of our hatred as a villain who 

knows exactly what he is doing, when in truth he is a weak person who is acting out of 

fear and confusion. And our hatred of people is often borne of betrayal, this being why 

former friends are often the objects of the most 

If we saw people as they are, instead of seeing them through the lens of our 

idealizations, we would neither love nor hate them; and so long as we do have 

emotional attachments to them, we do not see them for what they are. More generally, 

so long as we relate to the world in an emotion- as opposed to reason-based manner, 

we understand it in terms of fairy tales and therefore do not see it as it is. As we age, 

the fairy tales in question change form: the five-year-old boy believes that he is 

Superman, whereas his 35-year-old counterpart believes that he will be the next Bill 

Gates, but neither is any less deluded than the other. 

These principles are not specific to any culture or era. They hold universally. 

They are hold neither more nor less of the United States today than they did of Sumer 

or Sparta---or, indeed, than they did of Russian in the late 19 th century, this being the 

setting of Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych, which, like Hahn’s In Childhood, is about 

parting with infantile illusions. The difference is that Ivan Ilych is about the 

rationalizations that adults use to cloak their continued acceptance of fairy tales, 

whereas Hahn’s poem is much less concerned with those rationalizations than with the 

child’s naïve and uncritical acceptance of those fairy tales themselves.

The fairy tale that Tolstoy work targets is the idea that we if we do what is 

‘expected’ of us, then our lives will be good—as though social acceptance had the 

power to contravene psychological and biological reality. ‘Others may like us and even 

give us awards,’ Tolstoy’s story tells us, ‘but what does it matter if one is physically ill 

and in pain?’ Ivan Ilych was in pain and his health was gone; what good did his 

distinctions do him then? This is the point of the passage where Tolstoy speaks 

admiringly of Gerasim, the simpleton who caretakes him in his dying days. “It’s God’s 

will”, Gerasim says: 

“We shall all come to it some day”, said Gerasim, displaying his teeth---the 

even white teeth of a healthy peasant---and, like a man in the thick of urgent work, he 

briskly opened the front door, called the coachman, helped [Ilych] into the sledge, and 

sprang back to the porch as if in readiness for what he had to do next. Peter Ivánovich 

found the fresh air particularly pleasant after the smell of incense, the dead body, and 

carbolic acid. 1 

Gerasim has health and vigor; these things are real. Ilych has wealth and titles; 

these things are not. And Ilych’s life was based on the fairy tale that these unrealities 

could function as surrogates for the realities they displaced—the point of Tolstoy’s 

1 

Abcarian, Richard; Klotz, Marvin; Cohen, Samuel. Literature: The Human 

Experience, Shorter Edition (p. 806). Bedford/St. Martin's. Kindle Edition.

novella being that they cannot. At the end of the day, life is life and death is death; a 

loveless marriage to a ‘respectable’ woman is still a loveless marriage, and a happy 

marriage to a woman of ill repute is still a happy marriage. What is real is real; and 

what isn’t, isn’t. 

Ivan Ilych is about the fairy tales that adults accept, long after they have parted 

with the fairy tales about deceased pets and the like. Another difference between these 

two works is that Ivan Ilych is about our losing souls by clinging to fairy tales about 

status and other unrealities, whereas In Childhood is simply about disillusionment. 

An even more striking difference is that whereas Hahn represents children as 

simply being deluded, Tolstoy represents children as being less delusive than adults. 

When Ilych is about to die, he realizes that he hasn’t been happy since childhood, and 

considerations of social status were conspicuously absent from those experiences. “the 

further back in life he looked,” Ilych recalls, “the more good there was in it”, his life 

having becoming more and more drained of meaning as he got caught in an absurd maze 

of titles and distinctions and poses. 2 

Of course, both authors are right. Children are capable of being ‘real’ in a way 

that is impossible for world-weary adults. At the same time, children do a very 

cartoonish conception of the world, believing it to be inhabited by the likes of Bugs 

Bunny and Elmer Fudd, whereas adults, for all their faults, including their many 

delusions, do not have comparably deep-seated misconceptions as to the nature of 

2 

Abcarian, Richard; Klotz, Marvin; Cohen, Samuel. Literature: The Human 

Experience, Shorter Edition (p. 838). Bedford/St. Martin's. Kindle Edition.

eality. At the same time, each author has articulated a way in which maturation involves 

the shedding of delusions, with the qualification that Hahn is concerned with transition 

–made by all human beings---from childhood to adolescence, whereas Tolstoy is 

concerned with the transition---not made in most cases—from garden-variety adulthood, 

with its excessive regard for hollow social norms, to a state of veritable enlightenment. 

Critical Viewing Form: SAS

Instructions: Please address each item below for each movie. The total length of your critical viewing 

form responses should be approximately one-half to one page, single spaced. This form will be graded 

on a pass/fail basis. To pass, you need to provide reasonably detailed and insightful answers to the 

items below. 

1. Briefly summarize the basic plot, or issue that the movie addresses. 

This documentary concerned SAS, a North Carolina based software company that treats its employees 

phenomenally well and is also profitable. (‘SAS’ is short for ‘statistical analysis software’, this being the 

company’s signature product.) 

2. What do you think is the most interesting point in the movie? 

The attention to details, relating to employee welfare, e.g. the massages and M&M’s. 

3. What is the most controversial statement you’ve heard? 

The statement, made by the reporter, that people would be ‘shocked’ by the company’s positive ethos. 

This struck me as controversial precisely because it’s true, which shows how thoroughly the public has 

internalized the misguided notion that workers should be brutalized. 

4. What is the most important ethical issue that the movie is addressing? Please explain. 

That decency to one’s employees and colleagues is confluent with economic self-interest—a 

lesson I know from my own case. I run a small firm and, although I am the boss, I never 

issue orders and always treat everyone—clients and colleagues---utterly decently, simply 

because an unhappy employee, I found, can cause trouble and a happy one will go above 

and beyond the call of duty. 

Critical Viewing Form: McWane Inc. 




items below. 


This is the follow-up to a 2003 exposé, conducted by Frontline, of McWane Inc., the upshot being that 

McWane’s ownership and management were criminally negligent, with conditions in their plants being 

totally inhumane, leading to routine worker-injuries, including burns and amputations, and death. In the 

intervening years, many senior staff went to jail, and the new management (or what was left of the old 

one) changed McWane for the better, seeing to it that the requisite safety guidelines were complied.


That McWane blamed worker-injuries on worker-incompetence, which I found to be utterly despicable. 


That even though nine workers died because of McWane’s criminal negligence, McWane was only tried 

for one of the deaths and, when found guilty, was given a misdemeanor conviction—less than what a 

drunk driver would receive. 


That heavy industry has to be monitored, since, left to its own devices, it will treat its labor as so much 

chattel, not only to their detriment but to that of the moral fiber of society as a whole. I was heartened 

that, owing to the prequel to this documentary, McWane had changed its ways and also that many 

regulatory and legal changes had been made; but I was dismayed that some of the principal laws 

relating to worker safety have not been changed, showing that, owing corporate lobbying, adequate 

oversight of industrial giants is not always forthcoming. 

Critical Viewing Form: Theranos 




items below. 


A young and seemingly brilliant woman, Elizabeth Holmes started Theranos, a bio-tech company, and 

raised billions from wide-eyed investors, having convinced the world that she was the next Steve Jobs. 

But the product (a medicine delivery system) turned out not to work, as Holmes knew all along, as it 

turned out, and she was just a con-woman all along. 


That Holmes was able to change the timbre and pitch of her voice to suit her immediate business needs. 


That Holmes was an unusually convincing con-woman. 

This statement is true by the obviously metrics, given that she lied her way to billions. 

But when I saw and listened to her, I was struck by how unoriginal she was as a con-artist, with her 

crocodile fake tears and well-worn sales pitch about ‘never having to say goodbye too soon.’


That the public, including investors, should be more wary of fraudsters and not expect someone not to 

be a fraudster simply because they are young and good looking. Investments, including investments of 

trust, should be based on results, not appearances. 

Critical Viewing Form: Enron 




items below. 


The movie documents the rise and extremely corrupt fall of Enron. Enron started out as a legitimate 

energy-company and then invested heavily in a number of concerns that went belly up. Instead of 

copping to its mistake, it cooked the books, with the assistance of accounting giant Arthur Anderson, 

and squeezed investors and shareholder for money. Days before it collapsed, the top brass liquidated 

their portfolios, knowing full well that everyone else who was invested would lose everything. The point 

of the movie is that corporate capitalism, especially when unregulated, can become psychopathized. 


The most striking part was around 69 minutes in, when the Enron employees were coolly discussing 

‘shutting down’ the California Power Grid, since this showed that it was not just about greed but a 

complete absence of morality. 


1:20 minutes in it was said that Ken Lay’s friendship with George W. Bush made is possible for Lay to 

keep on perpetrating fraud with impunity. This well have been true (I suspect that it is), but it is 

obviously debatable and, in any case, controversial. 


Profits without integrity lead to large-scale financial loss and, therefore, that regulation is necessary to 

prevent this. 

Bribery at the California DMVL The Case of Kari Scattaglia

Section I: The case I chose to discuss concerns a North Hollywood CA DMV 

employee, Kari Scattaglia, age 40, who used her position to sell commercial driver’s 

licenses (CDLs) to people who were not legally eligible to receive such licenses. In July 

2019, Scattaglia and a subordinate, Lisa Terraciano, age 52, pled guilty to issuing no less 

than 148 fraudulent CDLs in exchange for money. Scattaglia was sentenced to two years 

in prison. Terraciano has not yet been sentenced. Scattaglia and Terraciano were first 

arrested in November 2017. This paper will focus on Scattaglia. 

Scattaglia first joined the California DMV in 2007. During the subsequent 10 

years, she worked at several different California DMV locations and held several 

different positions. All of these positions were relating in some way or other to the 

issuing of licenses, and all of them involved Scattaglia having access to classified 

information, including the identities, addresses, phone numbers, and social securities of 

California residents who either had licenses or had lost their licenses or never had them 

to begin with. 

CDLs are enormously valuable. A CDL is needed to drive a vehicle that transports 

commercial inventory. All businesses that involve the transportation of goods need to 

retain the services of drivers who have CDLs. Moreover, CDLs, unlike ordinary driver’s 

licenses, are hard to obtain. It is necessary to know how to operate and maintain 

different kinds of large trucks. It is also necessary to be familiar with complex 

regulations that are specific to such trucks, including regulations concerning the

transporting of hazardous substances, including dangerous chemicals, since a CDL is a 

legal prerequisite for transporting such substances. 

It therefore takes months of rather expensive training to acquire a CDL, with 

many of those who do undergo that training still unable pass the requisite tests, and 

there are therefore many people who have compelling financial reasons to obtain CDLs 

illicitly. Scattaglia knew who wanted CDLs, and she was able to provide them with CDLs. 

Because of the various clearances involved, Scattaglia needed some help, and she found 

a willing partner in Terraciano. Investigators suspect that the two earned upwards of 

$200,000 from this scheme. 

CDLs are needed to operate buses, tractor-trailers, and any vehicle that is 

transporting freight or hazardous materials, and serious disasters are therefore likely to 

result from CDLs getting into the wrong hands. 

Section II. Up to a point, Scattaglia’s motivations were clear: she wanted more 

money than she could possibly earn legitimately. She was stuck at a boring, low-paying, 

dead-end job. She had to work 40 hours/week, and commute another ten, for the 

privilege of earning just enough to pay rent on a studio apartment. She wanted more, 

but had no legitimate way of getting more; so she committed fraud. 

Of course, Scattaglia is not the only person who wants CEO-money but is stuck at 

a dead-end low-paying, the question arises. In fact, every single one of Scattaglia’s co-

workers would certainly have liked to make an extra few hundred thousand dollars. So 

why did Scattaglia commit fraud, whereas the others didn’t? Of course, a few of them 

might simply have lacked the requisite ingenuity, but what about the rest? 

Here we must point out that this case involved a pattern of fraud. This was not a 

single incident: it was ongoing criminal enterprise. A person of integrity might take 

conceivably take a single bribe—but not a hundred bribes. A single slip-up can be 

chalked up to exigent circumstances (e.g. an expensive life-critical medical procedure); a 

thousand incidents cannot be attributed to circumstance and must be explained in 

terms of a corrupt character. And that is what we are dealing with here. There are good 

people who make mistakes, but that is not what we are dealing with here, since 147 

cases of fraud are a criminal enterprise, not a mistake. 

Somebody who slips up once will not rationalize in the same way as a career 

criminal. To be sure, both will rationalize—but the rationalizations will be very different. 

First of all somebody who slips up just once is likely to feel remorse: somebody who 

commits one murder is likely to feel terrible guilt. A professional hitman is unlikely to 

feel any guilt. Somebody who takes one bribe is likely to feel guilty about it, and they 

are likely to see their behavior as being due to exigent circumstances, coupled with 

weakness on their part. By contrast, somebody who commits theft or murder or fraud 

for a living is likely to rationalize by blaming ‘the system.’ ‘The whole system is corrupt,’

they may say. ‘I’m just getting my fair share.’ They may even self-identify as heroic 

Robin Hoods who are combatting an illegitimate system. 

Bazerman discusses cases of people ‘stumbling into bad behavior’, saying that: 

[M]uch unethical conduct that goes on, whether in social life or work life, 

happens because people are unconsciously fooling themselves. They overlook 

transgressions — bending a rule to help a colleague, overlooking information that might 

damage the reputation of a client — because it is in their interest to do so (Bazerman, 

1). 

And surely what Bazerman is saying is true of many cases of misconduct—but not 

of the sort of misconduct involved in organized crime. Organized crime is not about 

lacking clarity; it is having it abusing it. 

Anand et al. mention various rationalizations and ploys used by wrong-doers: 

denial of responsibility (‘I didn’t do it’), denial of injuries (‘nobody was hurt’), denial of 

victim (‘nobody was hurt’), social weighing (‘in the big scheme of things, what I did 

wasn’t wrong and may even have been good’), appeal to a higher morality (‘petty laws 

are less important than existential fulfillment/religious dictates/…’), and the metaphor

of the ledger (‘I have done a lot of good, so I’m entitled to some slack’). Although we 

can’t know exactly what was going in in Scattaglia’s head, we know from investigators 

that, first of all, she denied responsibility for as long as she could; and when that ceased 

to be an option, she did indeed tell them that she wasn’t hurting anybody and that, as 

she put when speaking to the lead investigator, ‘I don’t see why it’s such a big deal, I’m 

helping people, when you think about it.’ When she denied responsibility, she was 

obviously just lying; but she may well have believed, or half-believed, that she wasn’t 

really hurting anybody and that she was entitled to the bribe-money. But even though 

she may well have believed this, her ability to believe it was itself a consequence of a 

weak and corrupt character. 

Section III. The DMV, including the California DMV, does a creditable job of 

forestalling situations of this kind, this being why there have been extremely few such 

cases in the last forty years. In fact, the Scattaglia was in many ways unprecedented in 

DMV history: for although there had been many cases of minor misconduct, this was 

the first documented case of organized and monetized fraud. 

In any case, the California DMV made the necessary changes. It altered its 

protocols so as to flag any cases of employee’s making unauthorized searches of records 

and also so as to require special clearances for records searches, usually involving a 

supervisor’s express consent. The California DMV also instituted automated internal

audits of records of licenses issued to people who had previously been denied them. Of 

course, we cannot how effective these measures, given that it’s barely been two years 

since Scattaglia’s arrest. But for what it’s worth, there has not been a single such 

incident during that time. 

Anand, V., Ashforth, B. E., & Joshi, M. (2004). Business as usual: The acceptance and 

perpetuation of corruption in organizations. Academy of Management 

Perspectives, 18(2), 39-53. 

Bazerman, Max and Tensbrunsel, Anne, 2011. Stumbling Into Bad Behavior New York 

Times. April 20, 2011 

Two DMV Employees Plead Guilty To Conspiring To Commit Bribery And Identity Fraud 

As Part Of Ongoing Investigation Of Commercial Licenses Issued To Unqualified Drivers. 

US Department of Justice. U.S. Attorney’s Office 

Eastern District of California. Nov. 3, 2017. Retrieved from: https://www.justice.gov/usaoedca/pr/two-dmv-employees-plead-guilty-conspiring-commit-bribery-and-identity-fraud-part 

Stanton, Sam. California DMV workers issued hundreds of bogus truck driving licenses 

for bribes, feds say. Sacramento Bee. Nov. 2017. Retrieved from: 

https://www.sacbee.com/news/business/article180042781.html

Muller, Urs. The dirty dozen: how unethical behaviour creeps into your organization. 

ESMT Berlin. Aug. 3, 2017. Retrieved from: https://esmt.berlin/knowledge/dirty-dozen-howunethical-behaviour-creeps-your-organisation 

2 California DMV employees convicted of bribery, identity fraud, unauthorized 

computer usage. July 2019. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Retrieved from: 

https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/2-california-dmv-employees-convicted-bribery-identity-fraudunauthorized-computer 

By deliberately tinkering with some of the planet's most basic physical and biological operations, 

humans stand on the verge of turning a world that is found into a world that is made. 

Christopher J. Preston 

In this paper, it will be argued that we are indeed on the verge of a world that "that is 

made", as opposed to one "that is found", and that this does indeed matter. First, it will be argued 

that to be human, in the fullest sense of the word, is to be a creature who, instead of merely 

accepting the world as it is, restructures it to suit one's vision of how it should be. Then it will be 

argued that, by giving us the ability to manipulate the microphysical realm with surgical 

precision, nanotechnology will eliminate many of the remaining barriers to our living in a world

that we create, as opposed to merely discover. In support of this last claim, many of the key 

applications of nanotechnology will be identified and discussed. 

Human beings, in the strictly biological sense of the term, have been in existence for 

upwards of 50,000 years. But being a human being, in the fullest sense of the term, involves 

more than belong to a certain species. Other creatures conform to the world. We make the world 

conform to us. That is what makes us special. If we simply accepted the world as it is, we would 

simply be bipedal apes, albeit unusually intelligent ones. We would not be human beings, except 

in a narrowly biological sense. 

To be sure, all creatures change the world. Beavers build-dams; bees build hives; birds 

build nests. But these changes are all internal to a structure that these creatures don’t affect in the 

slightest. With us, the story is very different. Compare how New York City is now to how it was 

150 years ago, and then compare what it was 150 years with what the place that it occupies was 

like 500 years ago. There is no comparison. The differences go beyond appearance. In New York 

City—at this very instant in fact (2:20 pm, July 5, 2019), there are thousands of people trading 

stocks and bond; and in Silicon Valley, there are people designing software intended to make all 

of this activity more efficient and lucrative. But 500 years ago, it wasn’t anybody’s objective to 

find a buyer for a junk bond or for 10,000 shares of a tech company, and it certainly wasn’t 

anybody’s objective to design a ‘bot’ that scanned markets for undervalued stocks. In general, 

we are creatures who change the world to match our vision of it, and then change the world 

again to match the resulting changes in our goals. So Preston is right the world is increasingly 

one that is made, as opposed to found. 

There are many respects in which this matters. It matters to us, since we would simply be 

one more species among others if, like all other animals, we simply acquiesced to nature. And it

matters to life in general---to the “biosphere”, to use Preston’s term---since, in our attempts to 

conquer nature, we often damage it, by creating pollution, depleting resources, and disrupting 

ecosystems. And thanks to nanotechnology, this being the application of technology to 

dimensions less than 100 nanometers. the changes we make to the world will start to matter even 

more, both to ourselves and to nature. 

Nanotechnology gives us the ability to custom-design micromaterials and to interact in 

very specific ways with small particles. For this reason, nanotechnology opens up new vistas a 

number of areas, including medicine, environmental remediation, transportation, and civil 

engineering. For example, nanotechnology can be used to improve drug delivery systems and 

also to detect and treat illnesses, especially those caused by cellular damage, such as Parkinson's, 

is mediated by neuronal inflammation. Indeed, nanotechnology is poised to push medicine to a 

whole new level. With its ability to effectuate precision-microlevel changes to the world, 

nanotechnology is likely to join forces with gene-technology to prevent the very existence of 

genetically transmitted illnesses and also to minimize the effects of illness in general. Preston is 

not exaggerating when he writes that “the biosphere will become entirely subsumed under the 

technosphere” (Preston, Christopher J.. The Synthetic Age (The MIT Press) . The MIT Press. 

Kindle Edition). 

Nanotechnology matters not just to us, but also to the biosphere as a whole--but, unlike 

other technologies, it has the potential to matter in a restorative way. Nanotechnology makes it 

possible to target pollutants at the molecular level and to eliminate them without destroying 

fauna or flora in the process. For example, our current methods of cleaning up oil spills involve 

the use of extremely toxic chemical and biological agents, but nanotechnology can be used to 

create special nano-agents that break up oil molecules without harming marine life. In addition,

nanotechnology can also be used to ‘light-weight’ the metal in cars, trains, and boats, making 

them more fuel-efficient, while also making them more durable, making them safer. 

In the preface to The Synthetic Age, Preston writes that we are now living in the 

Anthopocene: the age in which the world is defined by humankind’s effects on it. He very much 

seems to be right about this, as we’ve seen, and it does matter—not just for us, but, thanks to the 

likely future benefits of nanotechnology, the world itself. That said, Preston mischaracterizes 

nanotechnology. He represents it as being nothing more than another technological advancement, 

albeit an unusually powerful one. But nanotechnology is not just more of the same; for whereas 

all pre-existing technologies have increased our environmental footprint, nanotechnology will 

give us the ability to shrink it. 

Totalitarianism by Proxy 

Big Tech as Government Proxy 

J.-M. Kuczynski 

WeChat is the Chinese equivalent of WhatsApp. But there is an important difference: 

unlike WhatsApp, WeChat censors its users. WeChat prevents the transmission of messages that 

it considers ‘politically sensitive.’ The results of this censorship are far-reaching---and almost 

entirely unknown outside of Mainland China. It behooves anyone attempting to do business in 

China or with Chinese nationals to understand WeChat, since the way this app works gives one 

an unusually clear perspective on the ways in which China’s economic and political systems

interact with each other and on the various different ways in which those systems are both free 

and unfree. More importantly, an understanding of WeChat makes it very clear how the Chinese 

government controls the thinking of the Chinese people. As a Chinese American and native 

speaker of both English and Chinese, I was unable to understand many various troubling facts 

about the Chinese-American community until I learned about WeChat’s history and current 

modus operandi. 

Founded in 2011, WeChat was created by Tencent, a Chinese multinational 

conglomerate specializing in AI and communications-technology, and WeChat remains a fully 

owned subsidiary of Tencent. Originally called Weixin, WeChat soon became China’s preferred 

messaging app and was soon given its currently Anglo-friendly name (Shen, 2019). WeChat is 

used both for personal and business purposes. Created as a way for Tencent to expand its 

multinational hegemony, WeChat owes its very existence to corporate expansionism and has 

itself always been aggressively expansionistic. Within one year of its founding, it had one 

hundred million users, and it immediately made aggressive inroads into Vietnam, Thailand, 

Indonesia, and India. It succeeded in dominating the first three of these markets, but Facebook 

beat it out in India (Shen, 2019). 

WeChat’s popularity is no mystery. It is easy to use and loaded with useful features, 

including video-messaging as well as integrations with online-retailers, making shopping quick 

and easy. WeChat has its own PayPal-like digital wallet, and there now exist entire WeChatinternal 

Amazon-like stores. In addition, WeChat has a Facebook-like social media app built into 

it, with many Chinese celebrities having their own dedicated fan-pages. Finally, there are 

WeChat video-games and video-rental services (Shen, 2019). All of which makes WeChat’s 

popularity easy to understand.

But there is a dark side to this popularity. Because so many people use WeChat in so 

many ways, WeChat is in a position to monitor and control the flow of vast quantities of 

information. And that is just what it does. This first became apparent in 2013, when it turned out 

that ‘politically sensitive’ messages sent by WeChat users outside of China were being 

censored—as in, they were prevented from reaching their intended recipients (Sonnad, 2019). It 

turned out that WeChat was using an algorithm that ‘zapped’ any and all messages that contained 

certain key words, with the result that huge volumes of messages, many of them non-political in 

nature, were simply being obliterated. Users inside China were slower to become aware of the 

scale of the censorship partly because they were already in the habit of self-censoring and also 

because, owing to pre-existing censorship within China, they had little access to politically 

incorrect information and correspondingly little inclination to send politically incorrect 

messages-or even politically correct ones that happened to contain politically incorrect phrases 

(Sonnad, 2019). 

Of course, WeChat was self-censoring only because, as a China-based company, it had to 

comply with China’s strict censorship-related guidelines (Fung, 2019). Nonetheless, the 

discovery that WeChat users couldn’t send messages that so much as hinted at politically 

incorrect lines of thought caused an international backlash and halted many of WeChat’s efforts 

to expand abroad. At the same time, WeChat’s user-base continued to grow---and still does, its 

current usership being over 500 million (Lotus, 2019). Also, WeChat continued to form ties with 

retailers, including non-digital ones, making it possible to order food and services, including 

medical services, with a few finger-strokes. Relatedly, major retailers, such as Dairy Queen, 

began to pay enormous sums to have banner-advertisements embedded in the WeChat app.

But there proved to be a dark side to all of this extra convenience. Thanks to cyberdominance 

within China, including its ability to shut off payments to merchants and to block 

advertising, WeChat was able to extinguish entire business—which it did, and still does, 

sometimes for its own reasons and sometimes at the behest of the Chinese government. The bestknown 

case of this involved Uber. The Chinese government did not want Uber to become a 

presence in China, but did not want to deal with the geopolitical ramifications of formally 

banning it; so it opted to have WeChat ban Uber advertising and block the use of the Uber app, 

which drove Uber revenues in China to zero and drove it out of the country. 

Thus far, we have spoken about WeChat from a macroscopic, impersonal perspective. 

Now I would like to talk about it from a microscopic, personal perspective. As a Chinese 

American, most of my friends and acquaintances are Chinese citizens who are studying or 

working in the United States. Most people in this group use WeChat to communicate with family 

and one another. To my surprise, even though these people are in the United States and have 

virtually unrestricted access to information, their views conform with incredible precision to the 

views that the WeChat app makes it clear that they are to accept—these, of course, being those 

officially endorsed by the Chinese government. I have also noticed that many of these supposed 

‘friends’ of mine will use politically heterodox statements that I made to them in private as a way 

to lower my social standing in the Chinese and Chinese American communities. I have also 

noticed that, when transmitted over WeChat, ordinary gossip assumes sinister forms. Rather than 

concerning so and so’s hairstyle or outfit-selection, WeChat gossip tends to concern so and so’s 

questionable political views. And these mutual denunciation-fests are woven into the kinds of 

exchanges that naturally occur between peers: one minute I will be WeChatting with a girlfriend 

about a date I went on, and then a day later I will find that many of my WeChat contacts deserted

me, because the person I had been chatting with had a crush on the man I went out with and then 

denounced me on WeChat. Many Chinese American business owners with whom I am 

acquainted have had similar experiences, having been ‘denounced’ on WeChat by rival business 

owners who wanted to eliminate their competition. 

What Americans do not, in my opinion, fully appreciate is that something very similar 

could happen here in the United States, and perhaps already has. Amazon is an amazing 

company, and it makes life easier for Americans. But it has such a total monopoly on online 

retail that, should it decide to endorse certain political views, it could easily do so—and do so 

without people even knowing it. It could simply refuse to publish certain kinds of books or let 

them be published but direct traffic away from them, and it could do much the same with video 

entertainment and music (Gaffari, 2019). Growing up in China, I came to learn that any 

entertainment medium can be politically weaponized: pop songs, cartoons, newspapers, blogs, 

children’s stories—anything. 

Also, a company such as WeChat or Amazon can be used as away for the government to 

carry out agendas ‘off the books.’ It is obviously not easy for a Senator to ram through a bill that 

prohibits certain kind of speech or that steers trade in a certain direction, since he is likely to 

meet with resistance from other lawmakers and also from the general public. But all of this 

pressure can side-stepped by making a deal with an executive at a big tech firm—and with 

extremely effective results (Wang, 2019). Amazon and Facebook are private companies and are 

therefore under no legal obligation to give equal ‘air time’ on their platforms to all political 

views; so there wouldn’t be much standing in the way of a CEO at such a company who wanted 

a certain bill to be quashed or a certain Presidential campaign to take a nose dive (Gaffari, 2019). 

In addition to having the ability to serve as proxies for political agendas, tech-giants such as

WeChat and Facebook can thwart rival companies and alter the direction of entire economic 

sectors—and they can do so without doing anything. They can simply refuse to allow certain 

kinds of purchases or to go through or they can refuse to allow certain firms to use their 

advertising services. It is a matter of public record that WeChat engages in such chicanery, and 

although I do know the same to be true of Facebook or any other American tech giant, I do know 

that there is little to prevent it, making its eventual occurrence an inevitability. 

Americans think that totalitarianism cannot happen to them; they think that China and 

Cambodia and Russia are inherently more accepting of authoritarian systems of government than 

they are. They are wrong. Americans are no different from others; and although American laws 

and cultural norms have done much to prevent the elimination of personal freedom, those are 

quickly being eroded, largely because e-platforms have made it possible for ‘free’ social 

exchanges to become vehicles for propaganda that people cease to even know what their own 

views are and not only accept but actively fight for forfeiture of their own freedoms. 

References 

Fung, Kent. (2019). 7 Years of WeChat. Retrieved from: https://www.techinasia.com/history-ofwechat 

Gaffari, Sonita. (2019) Censored on WeChat: A year of content removals on China's most 

powerful social media platform. Retrieved from: 

https://globalvoices.org/2019/02/11/censored-on-wechat-a-year-of-content-removals-onchinas-most-powerful-social-media-platform/

Lotus, Ruan. (2019) One App, Two Systems: How WeChat uses one censorship policy in China 

and another internationally. Retrieved from:https://citizenlab.ca/2016/11/wechat-chinacensorship-one-app-two-systems/ 

Shen, Xinmei. (2019). Microsoft’s Chinese chatbot banned by WeChat as China tightens 

censorship of online speech. Retrieved from: https://www.abacusnews.com/bigguns/microsofts-chinese-chatbot-banned-wechat-china-tightens-censorship-onlinespeech/article/3016928 

Sonnad, Nikhil. (2019). What happens when you try to send politically sensitive messages on 

WeChat. Retrieved from: https://qz.com/960948/what-happens-when-you-try-to-sendpolitically-sensitive-messages-on-wechat/ 

Wang, Xiaoying. (2019). How WeChat App Is Changing Restaurant Business in China. 

Retrieved from: https://sampi.co/wechat-app-restaurant-business/ 

Running head: GENOME EDITING IN HUMAN EMBRYOS


Pearl Emma Liang 

Northeastern University 

Author Note 

This paper was prepared for Advanced Reading and Writing, Summer 2019, taught by Loni 

Feinberg. 

GENOME EDITING IN HUMAN EMBRYOS 


Many people hold that gene editing should not be used or even scientifically 

studied, their position being that gene editing strips humanity of dignity, can have unintended, 

catastrophic consequences, and can also be used for nefarious commercial or political objectives. 

In “Human Dignity and Gene Editing”, published in 2018 in Science and Society, Iñigo de

Miguel Beriain, Professor of Law at University of the Basque Country, argues that, in engaging 

in gene editing, humanity is improving itself, not manipulating itself, and that gene editing 

therefore does embody respect for humanity. In “The moral imperative to continue gene editing 

research on human embryos”, published in Protein Cell in 2015, Julian Savulescu, Jonathan 

Pugh, Thomas Douglas, Christopher Gyngell, all of whom are professors of Ethics at Oxford 

University, argue that gene editing should be studied, even if engaging in it proves to be 

contraindicated. They also argue that, even though gene editing could be used for nefarious ends, 

that is not by itself a reason not to engage in it, given that any given technological advancement 

can be misused. Finally, they point out that existing cases of gene editing have had no negative 

consequences. Both of these articles argue that, contrary to what some have alleged, there are no 

moral grounds for categorically prohibiting either gene editing or research into gene editing and, 

moreover, that there are strong moral reasons to engage in gene editing and the study thereof. 

Both of these are articles are written by professional philosophers but area addressed to an 

audience consisting of scholars, scientists, and policy-makers. 

Gene editing enables humanity to alter its own genome and thereby ‘play God’ with 

respect to itself, raising the question whether humanity should be entrusted with this power. 

Beriain argues that gene editing should be seen not as a way of subverting nature or of ‘playing 

God’ but simply as a form of self-improvement and, consequently, as being appropriate for 

humanity to engage in. Humanity is showing more respect for itself by 


solving its own problems at their genetic root, argued Beriain, than by simply waiting and trying 

to solve after they have already materialized. Savulescu et al. begin by pointing out that out gene 

editing must be scientifically studied if we are to know whether or not it should be practiced.

They then defuse the two main objections to it, these being that it could be put to nefarious use 

and that, even if used with good intentions, it could have unintended negative consequences. 

There is no technological advancement that cannot be put to negative use, the authors observe. It 

would be absurd to prohibit the existence of the internet on the grounds that it can be used to 

facilitate terrorism, and it would be similarly absurd to prohibit the use of gene editing on the 

grounds that it too could be misused. It would be equally absurd to prohibit gene editing on the 

grounds that it could conceivably be put to the service of questionable political or commercial 

ends, given that the same is true of any given technological advancement. Savulescu et al. 

conclude by observing that gene editing has already been practiced and has had no negative 

consequences. The doomsday scenarios that people associate with it are, thus far, simply in their 

imaginations. 

Both articles do a respectable job of defusing some of the more general objections to 

gene editing. Beriain defuses the objection that gene editing turns humanity into a giant lab rat, 

to be studied and poked and prodded, and entirely without dignity. Gene editing is no less easily 

construed as a triumph of human autonomy, Beriain suggests. Savulescu et al. successfully show 

that, in the absence of hard evidence, little weight should be given to the alarmist scenarios 

envisioned by opponents of gene editing. On the face of it, they point out, gene editing is just a 

technology like any other, except that it has the ability to do good on an unprecedented scale. 

Both articles suggest that much of the negativism directed towards gene editing is rooted more in 

our hysterias than in objective fact. 

GENOME EDITING IN HUMAN EMBRYOS

There are differences between the articles. Beriain is not trying to prove that gene editing 

necessarily should be conducted. He is only trying to show that one objection to it - that it 

embodies a lack of respect for humanity - has no force. By contrast, Savulescu et al. are trying to 

show that resistance to gene therapy is nothing more than prejudice, the implication being that 

failure to engage in gene therapy would be a failure to embrace progress. Savulescu et al. have 

not proven their point. Contrary to what they suggest, opposition to gene editing is not simply a 

matter of prejudice, and gene editing is not simply a technology like any other. Automobiles and 

cars and other technological advancements change how we live, but they do not change us. This 

is what concerns opponents of gene editing, and Savulescu et al. do not adequately address this 

concern. 

There are three concerns that people have in connection with gene editing. The first is that it isn't 

yet known what kinds of havoc it might wreak. The second concern is that gene editing might be 

commercialized: companies might start selling and manufacturing ‘designer-human beings', with the 

result that human beings become one product among others. The third is that people might use gene 

editing for nefarious political ends—to create a ‘master race', or some such. Neither article does much in 

the way of addressing any of these issues. Both articles contain a few boilerplate references to the 

possible medical benefits of gene editing, but beyond that say little about the kinds of good or harm that 

might come of it. Savulescu et al. make the perfectly correct point that all technology can be abused and 

that gene editing therefore should not be prohibited solely on the grounds that it is no exception to this. 

But if a given bit of technology is overwhelmingly likely to be abused in particularly catastrophic ways— 

as opponents of gene editing seem to believe that it will be—then it probably should be prohibited, and 

neither article says enough about the specific probable consequences of gene editing to settle this matter. 

Savulescu et al. correctly say that the mere 

GENOME EDITING IN HUMAN EMBRYOS

possibility of commercial misuse is not enough to warrant on a ban on gene editing, given that anything 

can be bought and sold in inappropriate ways. But if a given product or service is overwhelmingly likely 

to be put to some particularly heinous form of commercial use, then it should perhaps be banned; and 

neither author says enough about the specific commercial uses or misuses of gene editing to warrant a 

judgement on this matter. 

Each of these articles was written by philosophers, and neither is going to be convincing 

or informative to non-philosophers. This would not be a problem were it not for the fact that both 

articles seem concerned to engage decision-makers. If that was in fact their concern, then they 

did not do a very good job. There is nothing of scientific substance in either article that anyone 

who has more than a cursory knowledge of gene editing would not already know, and although 

each had philosophical merit, policy-makers are not going to be moved by considerations of a 

strictly philosophical kind. As for the final concern - the possibility of using gene editing for 

nefarious political ends, including creating a ‘master race’- each article simply sidesteps this 

issue, even though, frankly, it is definitely one worth addressing. Would it really be wrong for 

human beings to use gene editing to live longer, have larger brains, or better looking? These 

philosophical questions are not easy to resolve and are worth weighing in on, but neither article 

touches them. 

In conclusion, each article had philosophical merit. But participants in the machinery of 

government and commerce are not likely to be interested in philosophical points, no matter how cogent, 

unless supplemented with precisely the kinds of specifics absent from these articles. Also, each article 

avoids engaging the really interesting, albeit purely philosophical issues involved in gene editing, such as 

those involved creating designer human beings and those involved in accelerating, and guiding, the 

human evolutionary process. Each offers a few generalities (‘given only that a product can be misused, it 

doesn't follow that it should be


banned') that ultimately don't speak to these issues. What I would like to do in my own research is weigh 

in on these very issues on the basis of scientific specifics. I am particularly interested in the ways that 

gene editing might be used, or abused, to create ‘perfect babies.’ I am also interested in the ways that this 

could lead to an intensification of existing class divisions. Right now, wealthy people have more 

resources than poor people, but are genetically cut from the same cloth and have much the same concerns 

in life. This could change, however, if people with the money to do started manipulating their genes, and 

their offspring’s genes, and I would like to investigate this. 


References

Beriain, I. (2018). Human dignity and gene editing. Science & Society: EMBO reports. 

Retrieved from 

http://embor.embopress.org/content/embor/early/2018/09/20/embr.201846789.full.pdf 

Douglas, T., Gyngell, C., Pugh, J., Savulescu, J. (2015). The moral imperative to continue 

gene 

editing research on human embryos. Protein and Cell. Retrieved from 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4491050/pdf/13238_2015_Article_ 

84.pdf 

My MBTI Results: What do they really mean? 

I have take MBTI tests before and I am generally categorized as an INTJ, and I have also been 

categorized that way by friends. On this occasion, the test-results indicated that I was only slightly more 

introverted than extroverted, which is consistent with my personal experience, in that I have become 

increasingly bold and assertive. Also, I’m not 100% sure that I am an ‘introvert’, whatever that means. I 

believe that in some contexts introversion is the best policy, and I also know that I am naturally 

extroverted in contexts where there is no downside to being extroverted. 

What struck when I was taking this test was how on-the-fence I was. I used to be sure that 

reading a book was my preferred form of weekend recreation, but this time I had my doubts, which, I 

believe, reflects the fact that I am become increasingly knowledgeable about and invested in a career 

that involves a great of ‘social’ interaction, for lack of a better word. 

All of which makes wonder whether people are inherently either introverted or extroverted. I 

believe that what these tests would have us believe are fixed character-traits are really responses to 

specific circumstances that, for whatever reason, our society has chosen to regard as benchmarks. Our 

society tends to judge people by how they are in school, for example, even though school is but one of 

many contexts. I myself was ‘introverted’ in high school, even though in other, less artificial and formal 

context I am decidedly extroverted. 

A final note: several questions asked whether I made judgments on the basis of ‘reason’ or 

‘emotion’—and I don’t entirely accept that distinction. I think quickly and intuitively, and my intuitions 

are often embedded in emotions. So yes—my actions are sometimes ‘emotion-driven’, but they are 

nonetheless rational. 

Analysis of Digital Product (Economics/Sociology/Cultural Studies) 

The product that I chose is an audiobook: The Economics of Higher Education in 

the 21st Century (henceforth ‘HE21’) by J.-M. Kuczynski and narrated by Gareth 

Thomson. This book is currently published on Audible, and the e-book version is 

published on Amazon. It is ‘Whispersync-enabled’, meaning that one can read the e-

ook version of the book while listening to the audiobook version. I myself am an avid 

reader, and I also listen to audiobooks. Also, I am extremely interested informationtechnology, 

especially in its manifold education-related applications. I therefore 

naturally came across this book while doing my daily tour of Amazon and Audible. The 

description immediately caught my interest: 

In the first part of this two-part work, the economics of higher education are 

explained. It is made clear how a university’s business model differs from that of a 

company that has to compete on the open market. 

On this basis, it is explained: 

• Why universities are in no way threatened by low retention-rates and graduation-rates 

• Why universities cannot significantly improve or otherwise alter the quality of their 

educational services without imperiling their very existences 

• Why universities do not have to improve the quality of their educational services 

• Why universities couldn’t improve the quality of their services even if they wanted to 

• Why the fact that many universities have low retention and graduation-rates does not a 

represent a business opportunity, or opportunity of any other kind, for anyone, whether 

inside or outside of academia 

• Why principles of knowledge management (KM) that are so useful when it comes to 

helping businesses that compete on the open market are completely useless, and indeed 

of negative utility, when it comes to helping universities solve their problems. 

In the second part of this work, it is explained how to construct an online university that 

is both lucrative and also provides instruction that is faster, better, cheaper, and more 

useful than the instruction provided by any existing (or possible) brick-and-mortar 

university. Finally, it is explained how the principles of KM can be used to optimize such a 

university, once it is up and running.

I noticed that this title’s sales-ranking fluctuated enormously in the month after I 

purchased it. I listened to this audiobook and found the ideas cogent. I looked into the 

author’s background and found that he had a doctorate in philosophy from the 

University of California, had authored several large-scale works, and had taught 

philosophy and mathematics at a number of different institutions, including Bard 

College. The author has a reasonably large web-footprint, and his credentials and 

curriculum vitae, along with summaries of many of his scholarly publications, can be 

found at his Philpapers.org site: https://philpeople.org/profiles/john-michael-kuczynski I 

also noticed that, although his earlier works were published by traditional authors, the 

author now only publishes via Amazon and Audible. I also noticed that, whereas his 

earlier works were technical and scholarly, his works over the last several years, though 

always analytical, became increasingly concerned with matters of general interest 

relating to society, education, culture, and personal development. 

In any case, I found HE21 to be riveting. The author discusses his plan for digitally 

streamlining education. His proposal is extremely detailed, and it was very humane, in 

that he was making a sincere effort to make education useful and affordable; and his 

ideas seemed cogent, at least so far as I could judge. I listened to a number of other 

audiobooks by the author, and each book had a fresh and unique take on a matter or 

substance. When I was given this assignment, I immediately knew that I wanted to write 

about this author--specifically about HE21. I therefore reached out to him through 

Quora, and we then engaged in a series of ‘interviews’, as it were, via email and Skype. 

The author was extremely professional and, to my pleasant surprise, was extremely 

happy to volunteer information about his work. 

A former professor, the author had left academia to start an online tutoring 

agency, his ultimate objective, so he told me, being to create an affordable online 

university. The primary purpose of this university, so Dr. Kuczynski told me, was to make

it easy, financially and otherwise, for liberal arts majors to get STEM degrees. The author 

had tried a number of different ways to promote his work and his business. He had 

found that so-called ‘marketing experts’ were expensive and useless, and he had also 

found advertising to be equally useless. At the same time, he noticed that his 

audiobooks not only sold well but brought him clients. So he continued to make 

audiobooks and generated a client-base that was large enough for him to pay down his 

debt and also pay his own bills. 

This particular work, so the author told me, played a unique role in the growth of 

his practice. He had helped a struggling graduate student get his EdD. The ex-student, 

now assistant professor, was trying to write a book on falling college retention rates, but 

he found that he kept on hitting conceptual walls, owing mainly to his lack of 

understanding of the ways in which the economy impacts the state of the educational 

system. He paid the author $4,000 provide him with this information in an organized 

form. The client was so pleased with the results that he insisted that the author publish 

them, which the author. The author decided to turn the eBook into an audiobook, 

knowing that this would increase his exposure. And he was right: the audiobook 

increased the size and also improved the quality of his client base. 

This particular book fit into the author’s overall vision for himself in a number of 

ways. The author’s business was about using new media to optimize the flow of 

information. And HE21 was an instance of this: fast-paced, brisk, witty, and easy to 

absorb, especially in its audiobook form. Also, the ideas described in the book shadowed 

the structure of the author’s own business, which, much like the type of college 

described in the audiobook, was small, lightweight, and efficient, consisting only of him 

and a few other extremely talented individuals. I was intrigued by the way that the book 

was itself an instance of the business-concept that the author was marketing. I also liked 

the way the author only marketed his business through products that were valuable in

and of themselves, as opposed to through advertisements, which, of course, are of no 

intrinsic value at all. 

I also found it interesting that the author was able to retain ownership of his own 

material while operating within the Amazon-Audible framework. Audible, a subsidiary of 

Amazon, retains 60% of the author’s royalties, which the author happily parts with, 

given how much the Amazon-Audible platform does to increase exposure. The weeks I 

spent dialoguing with the author gave me insight into the life of an actual entrepreneur: 

somebody whose business pays his bills, as opposed to somebody who has a ‘side’ 

business which generates little or no income or, worse yet, somebody with a ‘business 

idea’ that hasn’t been operationalized. I was struck by how fluid and unpredictable the 

entrepreneur’s life is, and I began to see how vast the difference is between actually 

creating and running a viable business, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, simply 

dreaming about ‘one day’ having one’s own business. 

I began to understand how large e-platforms, such as Amazon and Audible, make 

it possible for people to make a living as ‘micropreneurs.’ Such platforms provide preexisting 

frameworks and support-structures for aspiring entrepreneurs and therefore 

relieve them of the burden of having to hire secretaries, administrators, and other nonexecutives. 

I also came to appreciate how much such platforms do in the way of helping 

independent operators market their services. Finally, and relatedly, I began to 

understand this person’s vision. He knew firsthand how much proper use of digital 

technology could do in the way of making information available to those who needed 

and also in the way of eliminating the need to spend and time and money on businessinessential 

clerical and technical matters; and he wanted to find a way to transfer these 

developments into the sphere of education.

The So-called ‘Paradoxes of Validity’ of Elementary Symbolic Logic 

Consider the following five statements: 

S1: The moon has the shape of a cube. 

S2: The moon is made of non-dairy creamer. 

S3: The moon is a six-sided, three-dimensional figure. 

S4: The moon does not have the shape of a cube. 

S5: The moon is not made of non-dairy creamer. 

For right now, let us focus on S1, S2, and S3. We will discuss S4 and S5 in a 

moment. 

S2 obviously does not follow from S1, but S3 clearly does follow from S1. There is 

no way that S3 could be false if S1 were true, that being what it means to say that S3 

follows from S1 (or, equivalently, that S1 ‘entails’ S3). But if S1 were true, that would 

obviously be perfectly compatible with S3’s being false; and S1 therefore fails to entail 

S3 (or, equivalently, S3 does not follow from S1). 

And yet every modern textbook on elementary symbolic logic contains the 

following two claims (or close variants thereof):

K1: P→Q means “if P, then Q” 

K2: P→Q is true as long as it is not the case that P is true and Q is false. In other 

words, P→Q means “P and not-Q” is false. 

Ordinarily, of course, “if P, then Q” means that Q is a consequence of P. “If Jerry 

is in Paris, then Jerry is in France” is true, given, if indeed Jerry is in Paris, a consequence 

of that fact is that he is in France. 

But if K1 and K2 are both true, if P is false, it always entails Q, no matter Q is, and 

if Q is true, it always follows from P, no matter what P is. If K1 and K2 are both true, 

then “if the moon is the shape of a cube, the moon is made of non-dairy creamer” is 

true, simply because “the moon is the shape of a cube” is false. In other words, if K1 and 

K2 are both true, then S2 follows from S1. But this seems absurd, since, supposing that 

the moon had the shape of a cube, that wouldn’t require the moon to be made of nondairy 

creamer. 

And it is absurd---demonstrably so, as we will now see. S5 is the negation of S3. 

(The negation of P is not-P. The negation of ‘snow is white’ is ‘it is not the case that 

snow is white.’) If K1 and K2 are true, then S5 follows form S1. In other words, if K1 and 

K2 are both true, then the negation of S3 follows from S1. Why? Because if K1 and K2 

are true, then P→Q is true whenever P is false—and S1 is false.

What has gone wrong here? Very simple. K1 does not have the same meaning as 

“if P, then Q.” The meaning of “if P, then Q” is “Q follows from P” or, equivalently, “not- 

Q is incompatible with P.” But this is not the meaning of “P→Q”. The meaning of “P→Q” 

is simply that it is not the case that both P is true and Q is false. “P→Q” contains no 

content relating to incompatibility/entailment. “P→Q” is a strictly truth-conditional 

notion. In other words, whether or not “P→Q” is true is a function only of the truthvalues 

of P and Q (of whether they are true or false, in other words). By contrast “Q 

follows from P” is a non-truth-conditional notion; it is, in fact, a modal notion---meaning 

that it depends, not on the truth-values of P and Q, but rather on the possibility of the 

one’s being incompatible with the negation of the other. (“Modal” means “having to do 

with possibility and impossibility.”) 

So the solution to this ‘paradox’, if you wish to call it that, is simply that K1 is 

false. If we assume that K2 accurately states the meaning of “P→Q”, then we cannot 

hold that “P→Q” means “if P, then Q.” What we can do is hold that “P→Q” has some 

other meaning that, in some contexts, is sufficiently similar to the meaning of “if P, then 

Q” that in some contexts we may overlook the differences. 

The just-described ‘paradox of validity’---namely, that P, if false, entails any given 

Q (i.e. that nothing doesn’t follow from a false statement)---is no paradox at all, since 

the meaning of “P→Q” is not that Q follows from P, but is merely that “P and not-Q” is 

false.

Attempts have been made to construct formal logics in which “→” is replaced by 

some other symbol that really does capture the modal force of “if…then…” In most 

systems of so-called modal logic, there exists a symbol ●→ such that “P●→Q” means “it 

is impossible for Q to be false if P is true.” And some logicians, notably Belnap and 

Anderson, have attempted to replace “→” with a symbol ↄ→ such that “Pↄ→Q” means 

“given what P and Q mean, P it is incoherent to suppose that Q is false if P is true.” Such 

logics are known as “relevance logics”, since they attempt to formalize the concept of 

one statement’s being relevant to another. But what all of these efforts have in 

common is that, while admitting that “if P, then Q” is not a strictly truth-conditional 

notion, they all try to assign a meaning to it that is as close as possible to being strictly 

truth-conditional. In other words, though they do not take “if P, then Q” to mean “P and 

not-Q is false”, they attempt to model the meaning of “if P, then Q” as closely as 

possible on that of “P and not-Q is false”---which for many reasons, some technical, 

some philosophical, is misconceived. 

As for ‘classical logic’, this so-called ‘paradox’ has no bearing on it at all. A 

classical logic is any system of logic in which the following two principles hold: 

No statement is both true and false (Law of Non-contradiction) 

Any given statement is either true or false (Law of Excluded Middle)

Classical logic does not require that the concept expressed by “if” be understood 

in strictly truth-conditional terms. In fact, it implicitly requires the exact opposite. The 

motivation for the Law of Non-contradiction is that no statement can possibly be 

compatible with its own negation—in other words, any given statement entails 

(meaning that it necessarily warrants the truth of) the negation of its own negation. 

Therefore, the classical logic is committed, albeit implicitly, to an appropriately nontruth-conditional 

conception of conditionality (i.e. of the concept expressed by 

“if…then…”). And classical logic therefore demands a wholesale rejection of the 

(obviously false, as we have seen) strictly truth-conditional understanding of “if…then…” 

that generates the just-discussed ‘paradox of validity.’ 

The Self-defeating Nature of Utilitarianism and Consequentialism Generally 

Consider the following scenario by a contemporary philosopher: “Your good 

friend Erskin rests on his death bed---more accurately, the bed soon to be such. Alone 

with him, you have just promised that, when he passes on, you too will pass on, will pass 

on his stash of cash to Laetitia, a young lady friend of his. She knows nothing about the 

money. Erskin duly dies and in your search for Laetitia, you discover that she is a rich 

courtesan, as Erskin well knew. You 

also find---to your amazement---that Erskin 

has daughters and a former wife, who speak fondly of him, clearly distressed by his

death. They live in poverty. Indeed, you could do with some money yourself. What ought 

you to do?” Argue as a utilitarian or a Kantian, and don’t forget to consider possible 

objections to your view. 

On his death bed, my friend Erskin asked me to make sure that his fortune be 

passed on to a lady friend of his. I agreed to honor that wish, but it turns out that there 

are others who would be more deserving of that money. What am I to do? According to 

the utilitarian, I should do whatever maximizes human welfare; and if that includes 

lying, breaking promises, or otherwise ‘using’ people, then so be it. According to the 

Kantian, I have but one moral obligation, namely, to treat people as ends unto 

themselves, and I must therefore keep my promise; for if I break it, then, by virtue of 

making it, I was simply manipulating Erskin out of his money and therefore treating him 

as a means, as opposed to an end-unto-himself. 

In this paper, I will defend the Kantian position. The basic conceit underlying my 

argument is that the alternative view is self-undermining: if we regard people as having 

so little value that they can permissibly be defrauded for a ‘greater good’, then there is 

no ‘greater good’, since it cannot coherently be supposed that there can be a ‘greater 

good’ in a world in which people lack moral worth. I will start by showing that the

utilitarian position fails on its own terms, the reason being that it presupposes the 

existence of moral verities that it itself undermines. Then I will show that, precisely 

because it is thus self-undermining, utilitarianism lacks the one virtue that it is 

commonly thought to have and Kantianism lacks the one defect that that it is thought to 

have. Utilitarianism is assumed to make allowances for the welfare for the welfare of 

the many, and we will find this to be false; and Kantianism is thought to fail to make 

such allowances, and this too we will find to be false. 

Let us begin by identifying the incoherence internal to utilitarianism. When we’re 

told that Erskin has a wife and children who need the money, we are expected to regard 

their interests as having more moral weight than my promise. But there are many 

people on the planet who could benefit from that money: there are sick children on the 

other side of the planet who need money for life-saving medical procedures and brilliant 

entrepreneurs who need start-up capital to launch their projects. So why should be 

particularly concerned about Erskin’s wife and children? 

The reason is that marriage and parenthood are moral commitments. Married 

people have responsibilities that single people don’t, and marriage is a commitment to 

fulfill those responsibilities. Parents (meaning people who raise children, instead of 

merely having them) have responsibilities that non-parents don’t, and parenthood is a 

commitment to fulfill those responsibilities. Erskin did not have any such commitments 

to the aforementioned sick children and brilliant entrepreneurs, and that is why we

don’t feel that he has any obligation to help them. Erskin did have such commitments to 

his wife and children, and that is why we do tend to feel that he has some obligation to 

help them. 

Here is the rub. I have a similar commitment to Erskin. and if it is morally 

permissible for me to violate my bond with Erskin, then it is equally morally permissible 

for Erskin to violate his bonds with his wife and children. The bonds of trust and 

responsibility that made Erskin responsible for taking care of his wife and children are 

the same as those that obligate me to keep my promise to him. It is therefore selfdefeating 

to suppose that I should give the money to Erskin’s wife and children, instead 

of keeping my promise to him. For the very bonds of trust that obliged Erskin to take 

care of his wife and children, and that would have made it good for me to give them the 

money, also oblige me to keep my promise to Erskin, and therefore not to give them the 

money. 

The utilitarian’s position is that we should do the greatest good for the greatest 

number: and if this means lying, defrauding, manipulating, and the like, then so be it. 

But what do we mean by ‘the greatest good’? We mean a situation in which the greatest 

possible number of people can their exercise their autonomy, depend on parents, have 

truthful relations with friends and colleagues, and the like. In other words, we mean a 

situation in which people are not defrauding and undermining one another. But

whatever it is that makes such a situation worth fighting for also makes it morally to 

fight for by defrauding people. 

The utilitarian position is that the needs of the many outweigh those of the view, 

with the consequence that it is indeed morally permissible, if not obligatory, to treat the 

few as nothing more than means to serving the interests of the many. At first, this 

seems very reasonable. The problem is that the interests of the many cannot possibly be 

served in a world in which any given person’s interests can be undermined for the same 

of some other person’s interests. A world in which the interests of the many are 

protected is a world in which the many can rely on others not to defraud them, and a 

world in which it is permissible to defraud the few for the sake of the many is not such a 

world. 

In conclusion, even though Kantianism initially seems to deprive people of what 

they deserve, it actually does the opposite, since a Kantian conception of morality is 

inherent in the very concept of ‘what one deserves’; and even though utilitarianism 

seems to give people what they deserve, it actually does the opposite, since it is only if 

anti-utilitarian ethical system, such as Kantianism, is correct that anyone deserves 

anything. Erskin’s wife and children do seem to deserve the money---and maybe they 

really do. But so far as they deserve, it is only because we live in a world in which people 

are not to be manipulated or otherwise treated as mere means and in which, in 

particular, promises must be kept; and because we live in such a world, my moral

obligation is not to give the money to Erskin’s wife and children but is rather to keep my 

promise to him. 

The Altman-Z Bankruptcy-Prediction Algorithm 

Question 1 (15 Points) 

What are the benefits of utilizing a bankruptcy prediction model such as Altman’s 

Z score and how would you apply it to a company? (Use a specific company such as 

Microsoft to apply it). Read the appropriate portions of Module 4 of our Textbook for 

this Question. 

A company’s Altman Z-score provides a reasonably good indication of a 

company’s health and, in particular, of its likelihood of going bankrupt within the next 

two years. If X is a company, X’s Altman Z-score is the sum of the following numbers:

3.3x(EBIT/total assets) 

1.4x(retained earnings/total assets) 

1.2x(working capital/total assets) 

.99x(sales/total assets) 

0.6x(market value of equity/total liabilities) MVE/TL 

In each case, we have a financial ratio multiplied by a coefficient that, in effect, 

assigns a certain degree of importance to that ratio. For example, EBIT/total assets is 

the ratio of a company’s total earnings (before interest and taxes) to its assets and is 

therefore a measure of the amount of work that those assets are doing. (EBIT is ten 

times larger than total assets, then total assets are operating with 1000% efficiency; if 

ten times smaller, then operating with 10% efficiency.) Because this is obviously such an 

important ratio, it is given a high degree of weight in the form of a large (3.3) 

coefficient. 

The next three ratios are similar to EBIT/total assets, but not as important, since 

they take into account taxes and interest and other factors that, although relevant to a 

company’s health, do not reflect how much work its assets are doing. As for market 

value of equity/total liabilities (MVE/TL ), this represents total value of stock divided by 

company-debt---in other words, the real value of equity, after debt is taken into

account. This is obviously important, but it is not as important as the other ratios, since, 

unlike them, it says nothing about how much work company assets are doing---it speaks 

only to their current value. 

The higher a company’s Altman Z-score, the less likely is imminent bankruptcy, 

with a score of 3.0 considered the minimum score of a financially healthy company. 

Right now, Amazon’s Altman Z-score is 6.2---meaning very little chance of bankruptcy. 

BlackBerry’s current score is negative, meaning that bankruptcy is highly possible. In 

2012, Sears’ score was 2.3 which is low but almost acceptable. In 2017, it had a score of 

zero and declared bankruptcy that years. Historically, bankruptcy predictions based on 

Altman Z-scores have been accurate 90% of the time. 

Case Analysis (85 Points) 

Problems in bond ratings and the firms issuing them have led to both Standard 

and Poor’s as well as Moody’s modifying their ratings criteria. Included in these changes 

is an attempt to capture more risk elements in the rating process and to more 

comprehensively quantify potential areas of concern.

The 2015 document issued by Moody’s explains their ratings criteria and the 

ratings they have assigned to the software industry. It can be found in the Final Exam 

Module. This document can be combined with corporate reporting data to apply these 

ratings criteria to specific companies covered by Moody’s. For this examination please 

use the 2018 10K for Microsoft provided earlier in the Mid-term Exam Module to 

apply bond ratings criteria to that company. In other words, utilize the analytics 

Moody’s applies to the software industry including any metrics that help in identifying 

and applying both the qualitative and quantitative criteria noted in the Moody’s 

Report on Software Companies. Please answer the following questions pertaining to 

the report. 

1) Discuss the five key factors important to Moody’s in assessing credit 

ratings for the industry. (15) 

Those five factors are: 

Scale 

Business Profile 

Profitability 

Leverage and Coverage

Financial Policy 

Scale is cash flow, including free cash flow (cash flow minus expenditures). 

Obviously the bigger the cash flow, especially of free cash flow, the more robust the 

company. 

A company's business profile refers to its market-share and its range of goods 

and markets. A company that has a 100% market share is the only game in town, so to 

speak, and is therefore in a good position, and one that has a 0% market share is not 

doing any business at all. Obviously the larger a company's market share, the better. As 

for diversity of products/services (i.e. range of products/services), this is important 

because a company that offers only one product/service will go out of business if 

demand for that products/service dries up. That said, successful companies tend to 

specialize (consider A1, Goodyear, Microsoft, Coca Cola), and over-diversification of 

products/services can hurt a company. (This happened to A1 when it started selling 

seafood sauce, instead of just sticking to steak-sauce.) 

End-market diversity is the number of different markets where goods are sold. 

Obviously, the more such diversity, the better, other things equal, since a company 

whose eggs (products) are in one basket (market) is vulnerable to changes in that 

market. (The ‘other things equal’ rider is important, since the cost of doing business in a 

given market might exceed the benefits.)

Geographic diversity is the range of venues (economically distinct areas) where it 

creates its products/services. As a general rule, some diversity in this respect is desirable 

as a hedge against contingencies. For example, if a company has all its operations in one 

place, then a single change could ruin it. (A tornado could destroy its facilities; a new 

president might decide to nationalize the corresponding industry; a new mayor might 

raise taxes; etc.) 

Profitability is the ratio of income to expense (‘bang for buck’, essentially). The 

higher this number, the better, for obvious reasons. 

A company’s leverage is the extent to which it is debt-financed, as opposed to 

asset-financed; and a company’s coverage is the extent to which it is able to services, in 

most cases, its debt. Insufficient coverage is a sign of poor financial health, as is 

excessive leverage. 

A company’s financial policy is the manner in which it deals with its own assets 

and liabilities. It is a bad sign if management is overly bearish (risk-averse), and shies 

away from all investment-opportunities, but it is no less a bad sign if it is overly bullish 

(risk-affine) and invests indiscriminately. It is a very bad sign if a company is slow to pay 

off its debts, and a good sign if it pays them off ahead of schedule, especially if its 

timeliness has to do with its having invested the borrowed assets profitably. All of this 

falls under the rubric of ‘financial policy.’

2) Why is it necessary for Moody’s to apply different weights for these 

factors? How are these factors measured? (10) 

Moody’s weights for these five factors are as follows: 

Leverage and Coverage 30% 

Business Profile 25% 

Financial Policy 20% 

Scale 15% 

Profitability 10% 

If a company cannot service its debt, it will, for purely legal reasons, immediately 

go out of existence (absent a government-bailout or some other, similarly improbable 

event). Of the five factors, leverage/coverage is the only one that relates to a company's 

legal obligations; the others relate to its economic viability. There are no laws against

investing unwisely or selling mediocre products; there are laws against not repaying 

loans, and the penalty is typically liquidation. Consequently, leverage/coverage is 

weighted the most heavily (30%). 

A company’s business-profile includes its market-share and also includes its 

ability to survive changes in markets. Being so important, it is weighted the second most 

heavily (25%). 

A company’s financial policy includes the financial savviness of its management, 

along with the ability, or inability, to manage debt and to seize opportunities. Financial 

policy is therefore key to a company’s willingness and ability to grow. Financial policy is 

key to growth, but not as key to survival as the first two factors, and it is therefore 

weighted the third most heavily (20%). 

A company's scale is its total cash flow, which reflects the amount of business it is 

doing. Obviously, a company that is doing a lot of business is, other things equal, better 

off than one that is only doing a little business. The reason scale is so low on the list, 

with a weighting of only 15%, is that other things are not always equal. In particular, 

costs of materials, payroll, interest on debts, not to mention the abilities of key 

executives, may have critical positive or negative effects on a company’s feasibility. 

A company’s profitability is obviously important, since an unprofitable company 

is not worth investing in and won’t survive, this being why profitability is on the list. At 

the same time, it is long-term profits, not short-term profits, that matter. A company

can be a pump-and-dump scheme and therefore briefly be very profitable. 

Consequently, profitability is not to be weighted too heavily, this being why it is ranked 

last, with a weighting of 10%. 

3) What are some of the assumptions, limitations and other considerations 

noted by Moody’s in employing this methodology? Are accounting adjustments an 

issue for Moody’s in applying their criteria? Please note that if so you are not required 

to make them but please discuss briefly what they consist of. (10) 

The most important such assumptions relate to the discount rate that a company 

uses when evaluating its own assets. First of all, it cannot be know with certainty at the 

present time how the value of money will fluctuate in the future; so discount-rates are 

always assumed, as opposed to known. That said, some discount-rates are more 

reasonable than others; and when a given company’s financials are based on overly 

optimistic discount-rates, Moody’s looks into the matter and, if the numbers don’t pan 

out, asks the company in question to revise its financials accordingly. 

One limitation that Moody’s must adjust for is that accounting and 

reporting requirements vary from country to country. Another is that even the most 

conservative financial statements are based on assumptions about interest-rates and 

markets in general that may prove false.

There are two kinds of accounting adjustments, standard and nonstandard, 

each of which is relevant to how Moody’s evaluates company-financials. 

Standard-adjustments include securities, pension-plans, R&D costs, and non-recurring 

expenses. Non-standard adjustments include debts reported at ‘fair value’ (market 

value), as well as likely benefits-obligations to future former employees of the company. 

4) Utilizing the data in the 10K for Microsoft please discuss the individual 

factor mapping results using the company’s own data (financial statements, etc.) and 

state whether you agree with the individual ratings assigned by Moody’s for each 

factor. (50) 

For the 2018 fiscal year, Microsoft’s profitability was 15%. This is considered a 

respectable degree of profitability. 

Its current ratio was 2.9. This figure is high, meaning that, at that time, Microsoft 

had a high degree of ability to meet its short-term obligations. 

Its quick ratio was 2.86. This figure is high, suggesting that Microsoft was holding 

to too much cash and therefore was not using its resources as efficiently as possible.

Microsoft's cash flow was about $5 billion (extremely high), and its net income 

was about $16.5 billion (extremely high). 

Its total liabilities were just under $95 billion. 

Moody’s gave Microsoft AAA ratings (the highest possible) in every category, 

except for end-market diversity, geographic diversity, and free cash flow to debt, in 

which Microsoft received AA ratings. 

In every possible category, without exception, Microsoft was ranked higher than 

every single one of its competitors. 

In my judgments, these ratings are most part accurate, with some tentative 

qualifications. The first is that a AA FCF/debt ratio may be too high, given that 

Microsoft's total liabilities were $95 billion and its free cash flow in December 2018 was 

about $5 billion. Microsoft being the juggernaut that it is, this rating may well be 

justified; but if an assessment of Microsoft's FCF/debt were made strictly on the basis of 

its cash flow and debt, and not on the basis of anything else, an AA rating might be too 

high. 

As for end-market diversity and geographic diversity, an AA rating seems too low, 

given that Microsoft has a worldwide customer-base and also has operations on every 

continent, except for Africa. (This changed in May 2019, when it launched a $100 million 

facility in Kenya.)

Application of Cobit-framework (July 24, 2019) 

To whom it may concern: 

There are many components of the COBIT framework that could be improved 

upon at RutgersCo. I will discuss the three that I believe to the most important. To quote 

my professor: “There are various components that assist with IT-governance: Culture, 

Ethics, and Behavior; People, Skills, and Competencies; and Services, Infrastructure, and 

Applications” (19_06_23_22.19.06.mp4). In this report, I will show that, in the case of 

RutgersCo, each of these components needs to be improved. 

Processes: One major problem is a lack of well-defined processes and procedures 

for carrying out tasks, especially—ominously---accounting related tasks. When I first 

met with the Assistant Controller (in other words, the second-in-command when it 

comes to managing RutgersCo’s finance’s), the first words out of his mouth were: “Boy, 

am I glad to see you. We need to get these books closed. The previous controller made a

lot of entries himself. I have been trying to follow his work, but I just can’t quite figure 

out how he worked up some of the entries” (RiderCo’s Acquisition of RutgersCo). This 

means that procedures for keeping and sharing financial records are insufficiently 

defined, which is likely to lead both to loss of revenue, excessive or insufficient 

payments in taxes, and regulatory or even criminal sanctions. Also, the lack of such 

procedures in this respect leads to extra work for employees, as this quotation 

indicates, and also disorients employees and diminishes their respect for the company. 

This brings me to another component of the COBIT framework that could be 

improved at RutgersCo: People, Skills, and Competency. The accounting team at 

RutgersCo is feeling frustrated, because some of their best people were recently fired, 

making it hard for them to do their job (RiderCo’s Acquisition of RutgersCo). The purpose 

of the firings was to free up money for an ad campaign that totally failed, further 

angering RutgersCo employees. The firings diminished net competency as well as overall 

morale, and the ad campaign appears, at least to people in RutgersCo accounting 

department, to have been a callous attempt on the part of management to make quick 

money at the expensive of fundamentals. “People skills and competencies,” my 

professor observed, are integral to people “making good decisions” and thereby keeping 

the business going (19_06_23_22.19.06.mp4). 

Another Cobit-component that needs work here is Services, Infrastructure, and 

Applications. The accounting system is divided into a number of different modules, each

with its own data-base and unable to communicate with one another in simple userfriendly 

way (RiderCo’s Acquisition of RutgersCo). This necessitates the use of ad hoc 

methods of communication, which require effort and increase the chance of human 

effort. Because of the problems with the accounting system, reporting cannot be 

automated and has to be done by hand, which is labor-intensive and which increases 

the likelihood of human error—and also increases the likelihood of deliberate 

falsification on the part of employees, either to minimize effort on their part or in order 

to commit fraud. 

These problems relate largely to poor IT-control at RutgersCo. Good IT-control 

requires that all employees involved in either the keep or reporting of finances be using 

the same system. Right now, this is not the case. There appear to be independent 

systems, each with its own database. The fact that multiple databases are used is likely 

to lead to multiple sets of company books, resulting in management having to arbitrarily 

choose between different sets of financial records, leading to loss of revenue and 

possible legal problems. 

Another IT-related problem is that there are unclear protocols relating to the 

cashing of checks. There should be one person or group of persons who cash checks. But 

right now, this is not the case, and checks are cashed by employees who happen to be in 

possession of them. Since these employees are in many cases not formally required to 

do this, the result is likely to that checks from clients simply are not cashed. Another

possibility is that these employees embezzle by endorsing the checks to themselves 

instead of the company. There should be a well-defined company treasurer, which, at 

present, there is not. 

Another IT-related problem is that there are poor policies and poor 

communications relating to the commission-levels of sales personnel. According to one 

member of the accounting team, practically every single salesperson had a different 

agreement with management as to how much he was to receive in bonuses and as to 

what his commission-levels were (RiderCo’s Acquisition of RutgersCo). In fact, it 

appeared that different salespersons had simply gone rogue and were simply deciding 

for themselves what their commissions should be. This could lead to embezzlement on a 

large scale and, at the very least, could least to money-wastage. Also, if, as I likely under 

the current scenario, a given salesperson gave inconsistent reports concerning his 

commissions and bonuses to different members of the accounting, the result would be 

inconsistent records, wasted revenue, and possible regulatory and even criminal 

sanctions. “The culture, ethics, and behavior of individuals”, my professor said, has a 

significant effect on the “success of government and management activities” 

(19_06_23_22.19.06.mp4), and in the case of RutgersCo, the culture is one of low 

morale, there is a lack of internal possibly leading to loose ethics, and employeebehavior 

is correspondingly erratic, with an ‘every-man-for-himself’ mentality 

prevailing.

Microsoft Financial Analysis 2016-2018 (June 23, 2019) 

Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 83 

Operating Cash Flow ....................................................................................................................... 84 

Common Equity ................................................................................................................................ 85 

Profitability ....................................................................................................................................... 85 

Return on Equity .............................................................................................................................. 86 

Net Profit Margin ............................................................................................................................. 87 

Asset Turnover ................................................................................................................................. 88 

Leverage ............................................................................................................................................. 89 

Return on Assets .............................................................................................................................. 90 

Liquidity Ratios ................................................................................................................................. 90 

Current Ratio .................................................................................................................................... 90 

Quick Ratio ........................................................................................................................................ 91 

Ebit Interest Coverage .................................................................................................................... 92 

Average Days to Collect Receivables .......................................................................................... 92 

Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 93 

Works Cited ....................................................................................................................................... 93

Introduction 

This present work is a financial analysis of Microsoft during the years 2017-2018. 

2016 is included when the necessary data is available in course-documents. Other years 

are excluded. This analysis is not complete and it focuses only on the absolutely crucial 

financial indicators. Microsoft’s financials are compared to Oracle’s, so as to provide 

information as to Microsoft’s performance relative to its competitors. 

Our main source of information about Microsoft is Microsoft’s 2018 10-K form 

(specifically pages 50-53). Our main source of information about Oracle is Oracle’s 

income statement, accessed at http://financials.morningstar.com/incomestatement/is.html?t=ORCL&region=usa&culture=en-US. 

The financial data provided in 

those documents rounds figures to the nearest thousandth. All specific financial data 

relating to Microsoft and Oracle come from these sources unless there is an indication 

otherwise. 

Microsoft’s performance during this time-period is positive in absolute terms. 

Microsoft also marginally outperforms Oracle. That said, the one companies financials 

parallel each other to a striking degree: Microsoft has more total assets, but its 

performance relative to its total assets is similar to (though marginally better than) 

Oracle’s performance relative to its total assets. Between 2017 and 2018, there are dips

in Microsoft’s performance, but those are corresponding dips in Oracle’s performance, 

indicating that the issue is not with Microsoft itself but with the industry as a whole. 


When conducting a financial analysis of a company, the first step is to determine 

its cash flow from operating activities, or operating cash flow (OCF), this being the 

amount of money that it generates from its activities, excluding long-term investments. 3 

In 2016, Microsoft’s OCF was $33,325,000; in 2017, $35,507,000; and in 2018, 

$42,884,000. It is a good sign that Microsoft's OCF was positive during each of these 

years since this indicates that its products and services were generating income. A 

company whose OCF is zero or negative can still profit since it can make money from 

investments and assets, but its products and services are failing to generate income, and 

its position is therefore unstable. Also, Microsoft’s OCF grew over 30% during this 

period---also a positive sign. 

Microsoft’s net income (revenues minus expenses, i.e. profits) in 2016 was 

$20,539,000; in 2017, $25, 489,000; and in 2018, $16, 571,000. During each year, 

Microsoft’s net income was positive, but its net income fell by $8,918,000---a drop of 

over 34% (10K p. 52). 

3 

https://www.sapling.com/8370027/calculate-cash-flow-operating-activities

Oracle’s OCF in 2016 was $13, 561, 000; in 2017, $14,126,000; and in 2018, 

$15,386,000. Oracle’s net income in 2016 was $8,901,000; in 2017, $9,335,000; and in 

2018, $3,825,000. Oracle’s OCF was positive during each of these years, and also 

increased during this time period by around 13%. Between 2017 and 2018, Oracle’s net 

income plummeted, falling by over 50%. Since its OCF grew during this period, the fall 

does not indicate a decline in demand for Oracle products and services. 

Common Equity 

In 2016, Microsoft’s common equity (the amount invested by shareholders) was 

$68, 465, 000; in 2017, 68, 178,000; and in 2018, $69,315,000. There was therefore 

modest growth in Microsoft common equity during this period. In 2016, Oracle’s 

common equity was $164, 950, 000; in 2017, $209, 937, 000; and in 2018, 

$175,569,000. 4 Oracle’s performance here is more jagged than Microsoft’s but also 

better on the whole. 

Profitability 

4 Figures are taken from https://www.stock-analysis-on.net/NYSE/Company/Oracle-Corp/Valuation/Enterprise- 

Value

The next few sections focus on financials relating to Microsoft’s degree of 

profitability. We will see that Microsoft is ‘in the black’, so to speak, and also compares 

better than Oracle, a representative competitor. 


In 2015, Microsoft’s return on equity (net income divided by shareholder’s 

equity, this being the change in the value of the shareholder’s equity) was 15.3%; in 

2016, 26.9%; in 2017, 31.8%; and in 2018, 19.4% During each year, ROE is positive. At 

the same time, there was a decrease from 2017 to 2018. 

Oracle’s ROE in 2015 was 12.8%; in 2016, 10.3%and in 2017, 9.7%; and in 2018, 

3.4%. In each year, ROE is positive, but much smaller than with Microsoft. Also, with 

Oracle, as with Microsoft, we see a 2017-2018 drop. This parallel suggests that in both 

cases the drop is a consequence not of anything company-specific but rather of some 

larger economic phenomenon. 

2015 2016 2017 2018 

Microsoft 15.3% 26.9% 31.8% 19.4%

Oracle 12.8% 10.3% 9.7% 3.4% 


In 2015, Microsoft’s net profit margin (net income divided by total revenue, i.e. 

percentage of revenue that Microsoft retained after paying expenses) was 13.9%; in 

2016, 22.5%; in in 107, 26.3%; and in 2018, 15%. The profit margins are all positive, 

though there is a (now familiar) 2017-2018 drop. 

Oracle's net profit margin in 2015 was 27.9%; in 2016, 23.7%; in 2017, 25.3%; and 

in 2018, 10.2%. Again, profit margins are positive, with a 2017-2018 drop. Microsoft's 

profit margin appears to track Oracle's, suggesting that changes in them are due not to 

company-specific but rather to industry-wide factors. 

2015 2016 2017 2018 

Microsoft 15.3% 26.9% 31.8% 19.4% 

Oracle 27.9% 23.7% 25.3% 10.2%


Asset turnover is significant because it is a good measure of a company’s health. 

A company with low-asset turnover is not using its assets efficiently, and a company 

with high-asset turnover is using them efficiently. 

In 2015, Microsoft’s asset turnover (total revenue divided by total assets) was 

53%; in 2016, 44%; in 2017, 37%; and in 2018, 43%. In 2015, Oracle’s asset turnover 

was 34%; in 2016, 33%; in 2017, 28%; and in 2018, 29%. 5 We are seeing parallels— 

increases in both cases, albeit higher ones in Microsoft’s case. 

2015 2016 2017 2018 

Microsoft 53% 44% 37% 43% 

Oracle 34% 33% 28% 29% 

5 

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ORCL/oracle/total-assets

Leverage 

In 2015, Microsoft’s leverage (debt/equity) was 34.7% ; in 2016, 56.6%; in 2017, 

86.7%; and in 2018, 87.3%. In 2015, Oracle’s asset turnover was 81% ; in 2016, 84%; in 

2017, 110%; and in 2018, 230%. 6 Both companies are highly leveraged, but Microsoft’s 

debt/equity ratio is always less than one, meaning that it has more assets than debts, 

and Oracles debt/equity is greater than one, meaning that is liabilities exceed its assets. 

A high degree of leverage can be a bad sign, since it can indicate deficit financing, but 

here it is not a bad sign, as it seems to indicate aggressive and successful investments in 

a growing economic sector. 7 

2015 206 2017 2018 

Microsoft .347 .566 .867 .873 

Oracle .81 .84 1.1 2.3 

6 

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/ORCL/oracle/total-assets 

7 

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/leverageratio.asp


In 2015, Microsoft’s return on assets (ROA), i.e.net income divided by total 

assets, was 6.9% ; in 2016, it was 8.6%; in 2017, 8.8%; and in 2018. 6.4%. In 2015, 

Oracle’s asset turnover was 8.8% ; in 2016, 6.9%; in 2017, 7.1%; and in 2018, 3.1% 8 Both 

ROA’s are low but positive. 

2015 2016 2017 2018 

Microsoft 6.9% 8.6% 8.8% 6.4% 

Oracle 8.8% 6.9% 7.1% 3.1% 

Liquidity Ratios 

Current Ratio 

The current ratio measures a company’s ability to pay its short-term obligations. 

The higher the ratio, the lower the likelihood of defaulting on such debts. Ratios above 

8 


1:1 (100%) are considered good, and lower ratios are considered bad. Microsoft’s 

current ratio is low, whereas Oracle’s is high as of 2018, though low before then. 

2015 2016 2017 2018 

Microsoft 2.5 2.3 2.9 2.9 

Oracle 3.7 4.8 3.9 5.1 

Quick Ratio 

The quick ratio is like the current ratio except that non-liquid assets are excluded 

from this figure. As with current ratio, a ratio of 1:1 (100%) or higher is considered good, 

and anything lower is considered bad. Again, Oracle’s quick ratio is better than 

Microsoft’s. 

2015 2016 2017 2018 

Microsoft 2.3 2.3 2.2 2.7 

Oracle 3.5 4.4 3.6 5.5

Ebit Interest Coverage 

The Ebit Interest Coverage ratio determines how capable a company is paying the 

interest on its debt. Obviously should be a least one, since it will otherwise be unable to 

service its loan-debt. The higher the number, the better. We see here that Microsoft’s 

numbers compare favorably to Oracles and are also much higher than one. 

2015 2016 2017 2018 

Microsoft 24.7 16.8 11.4 14.4 

Oracle 7.4 7.4 8.9 12.3 

Average Days to Collect Receivables 

Average days to collect receivables is the average number of days that it takes a 

company to collect payment for services rendered. The number for Microsoft is 

conspicuously high, which is ambiguous but which could correspond to the fact that 

Microsoft’s customers are ‘captives’ who Microsoft knows will eventually pay up. 

2015 2016 2017 2018

Microsoft 73 72 77 80 

Oracle 14 17 11 13 

Conclusion 

Microsoft and Oracle are both vigorous companies with high operating cash flows 

and asset-turnovers. They are highly leveraged, but this seems to be because they have 

thus far profited from aggressive investments in their own growth. 

Works Cited 

Morningstar: Oracle Corp. Accessed at: http://financials.morningstar.com/incomestatement/is.html?t=ORCL&region=usa&culture=en-US 

Stock Analysis on Net: Oracle Corp. April 2019. Accessed at: https://www.stock-analysison.net/NYSE/Company/Oracle-Corp/Valuation/Enterprise-Value 

Calculating Cashflow from Operating Activities. March 2019. Accessed at: 

https://www.sapling.com/8370027/calculate-cash-flow-operating-activities 

Oracle Net Income 2016-2019. May 2019. Accessed at: 


Investopedia: Leverage Ratio Definition. May 2019. Accessed at: 

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/leverageratio.asp 

"Microsoft Form 10-K." SEC. June 2018. 

Eco-friendly Dieting: A Bachelor’s Story 

When I was in high school, my mother prepared most of my meals, and I ate 

healthy. Also, I was an athlete, and it simply wasn’t an option for me to eat junk. During 

college, sadly, that has changed, and I’ve gotten into the habit of eating highly 

processed food that comes in plastic packaging. This assignment required me to make 

pretty significant adjustments to my eating habits. I think I could sustain those habits, 

and it would actually be good for my health and possibly my mood if I did so, but it 

would involve my making some non-trivial life-changes. In any case, I did succeed in 

making my diet more eco-friendly for two days, but it wasn't easy and I had only limited 

success, mainly because my eating habits are currently eco-unfriendly in the extreme. 

For me, breakfast is usually a few microwaved breakfast burritos, which I wash 

down with Mountain Dew. I often grab a bite to eat on campus. I usually have a 

cheeseburger or a couple of slices of pizza, along with a soft drink. In between classes, I

often eat candy bars. Dinner is usually pizza, with pepperoni and extra cheese, and a 

soft drink. When I’m at home, I eat a lot of plastic-wrapped snacks in between meals, 

mainly potato chips. If I’m not at home, I tend to have fast-food for dinner---usually a 

couple of big macs and a side of fries, which I wash down with a coke. 

After doing some research, I put together a two-day plan for reducing the dietbased 

part of my ecological footprint. I would have to forego the snacks—no potato 

chips or candy bars or anything else that is processed or wrapped in plastic. Plus, I 

couldn’t eat anything cow-based so no beef or cheese, given how much methane cows 

produce and also given how much petroleum is involved in feeding them. During those 

two days, I could not eat anything that I am used to eating. I couldn’t even drink what 

I’m used to drinking, since I pretty much only drink soft-drinks that come in plastic 

bottles. During those days, I decided, breakfast would be eggs and toast—no sausage or 

bacon. I didn’t know what to do about lunch, so I just had egg-and-toast sandwiches. 

Dinner would be pasta with homemade sauce for dinner. There would be no meat in the 

sauce, but I would allow myself a little bit of parmesan cheese. I knew that I wouldn’t be 

able to resist eating snacks in between meals; so I decided that I would eat trail-mix 

instead. Also, I prepared the trail-mix myself (raisins, peanuts, chocolate chips, and 

cashews), so as to minimize the use of plastic. Instead of drinking soda, I would drink 

water. I already have a Britta filter and an ice-maker, so this was not too much of a 

problem.

I actually stuck with this plan for the whole two days. And I felt better. I noticed 

that I felt less fatigue after meals and had more energy in general, even though I was 

consuming fewer calories. I could not sustain that exact diet, since I need some kind of 

meat in my diet. The most eco-friendly—and also the healthiest—form of meat is fish. 

Unfortunately, I don’t know how to prepare fish (or anything else, really) in an 

appetizing way, and that has to change if I’m going to have an eco-friendly diet on a 

long-term basis. In fact, the main lesson of all this for me, at least on a practical level, is 

that eating healthy and eco-friendly involves knowing how to cook. If I did learn how to 

prepare a few healthy dishes, I could definitely sustain a relatively eco-friendly diet in 

perpetuity. I don’t know whether this would lower my the diet-based part of my 

ecological footprint to an acceptable level, but it would indeed reduce it. 

Advanced Reading and Writing Semester Project Proposal: Designer Babies 

Topic: Designer babies. 

Context: Thanks to gene editing technology, human beings will likely soon have the 

ability to ‘design' their own babies by altering their genetic make-up. Depending on how

it is used, this technology can do great good or great harm. It can help eliminate 

congenital illnesses and defects. At the same time, it can be used for questionable 

commercial, military, or political aims. Also, because it is likely to be expensive, unequal 

access to it would drive a wedge between rich and poor and it might even be used as a 

way for the rich to tyrannize the poor. 

Research question: What kinds of public policies would help ensure that this technology 

would benefit the greatest number of people. 

Preliminary thesis statement: While the use of gene editing technology to create 

‘designer babies’ could create problems, these problems can be controlled through 

appropriate policies, with the effect that this technology benefits everyone, and not just 

a select few. 

Organizational structure: Proposal (Problem-solution) 

Introduction style: Scientific and factual. 

Rough outline: 

1. The scientific facts relating to the history and probable future of 

gene editing technology and, in particular, to its likely use to create ‘designer babies.’

2. Gene editing technology, especially its use to create defect-free children, has the 

potential to do a great deal of good for society. At the same time, because it is likely to 

be expensive, it is likely to exacerbate disparities between rich and poor, and it must 

therefore be determined what kinds of laws and regulations allow society to enjoy the 

benefits of this technology while minimizing the injustices that could arise from it. 

3. Gene editing technology dates back to the early 2000s, but it wasn't until 2017 that a 

recently discovered technology known as CRISPR made it possible to edit genes reliably 

and precisely. Thanks to the invention of the CRISPR, gene editing can be now be used 

for medical purposes, and it will is likely that it will soon be possible to use CRISPR to 

create ‘designer babies.’ 

4. Because CRISPR is expensive, only the super-wealthy can afford to use it. So the 

immediate question that arises is what kinds of legal and regulatory changes will help 

provide those who are not wealthy with access to this technology. Other problems that 

are likely to arise soon concern the ethical limits of gene editing: Should the use of 

CRISPR be restricted to preventing instances of congenital illness? Or should it be used 

to create ‘beautiful' and ‘smart' and otherwise ‘perfect' babies? If so, what kind of 

health-care reforms are needed to prevent such uses from being used in a 

discriminatory manner?

5. It is likely that private corporations will do more than Congress to ensure equal access 

to CRISPR technology, given the political gridlock that prevents legislation, especially 

healthcare-related legislation, from going through. 

6. It is likely that CRISPR technology, and gene editing technology in general, will 

continue to develop. What cannot be predicted is whether people who need it will have 

access to it; nor can it be predicted whether it will be used for good as opposed to evil. 

Law-makers tend to lack unanimity when it comes to matters relating to healthcare, and 

a more promising avenue is to appeal to civic-minded tech-magnates. 

7. The bottom line is that gene editing can eliminate illness and improve human life. 

Also, although gene editing is now expensive, technology tends to become less 

expensive over time. In the 1980s, only the super-wealthy could afford computers; now 

everyone can afford them. This may happen with CRISPR. At the same time, 

policymakers should hedge by beginning to grapple with the problems discussed above. 

Conclusion style: Dispassionate and consensus-building. We must approach this issue 

in a non-divisive manner. Our objective is not to alienate the very people and 

corporations who have access to CRISPR with accusations but is rather to figure out how 

to make it in their interest to make this technology widely available.

References 

Mullin, E. (2017). Four amazing things gene editing did in 2017. Technologyreview.com 

Retrieved fromhttps://www.technologyreview.com/s/609632/four-amazingthings-gene-editing-did-in-2017/ 

Plummer, B. (2018). A simple guide to crisper. Vox.com Retrieved from: 

https://www.vox.com/2018/7/23/17594864/crispr-cas9-gene-editing 

Schwartz. A. (2019) Designer babies--everything you needed to know. 

Beingtheparent.com Retrieved from: https://www.beingtheparent.com/allabout-designer-babies/ 

Microsoft Five Forces Analysis 

Introduction

Microsoft is the world’s two leading supplier of software products, the other 

being Apple, with the two companies being nearly equal in terms of net worth. 9 

Microsoft is best known for the Windows Operating System, used on all PC’s, which has 

a 90% market-share in the digital operating system market. Microsoft is also known for, 

and derives enormous revenue from, a number of other products, including Microsoft 

Word, Excel, Skype, Bing, OneDrive, Minecraft, LinkedIn, Cortana, and PowerPoint. 10 

Microsoft’s annual revenue (as of 2018) is $110 billion, its annual profits are $16 billion, 

and its market capitalization (overall value) is $775 billion (10K 62). Apple’s annual 

revenue (as of 2018) is $230 billion, its profits are $10 billion, and its market 

capitalization is $700 billion. 11 The third largest player in the software is IBM, with 

annual revenue of $15 billion, net profits of $3 billion, and market capitalization of $110 

billion (IBIS 22). 

The present study is a Porter’s Five-forces analysis of Microsoft. A Porter’s Fiveforces 

analysis examines a company in terms of the following parameters: competition 

within its industry, potential of new entrants into that industry, power of suppliers, 

power of customers, and threat of substitutes. Each of these forces, whether favorable 

or unfavorable to the company being analyzed, is ranked as either ‘strong’, ‘moderate’, 

or ‘weak.’ 

9 

https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/other-communication-and-collaboration-software/microsoft-word 

10 

http://fernfortuniversity.com/term-papers/porter5/analysis/3735-microsoft-corporation.php 

11 

https://tradingeconomics.com/aapl:us:market-capitalization

Industry Competition (Strong Force) 

Competition within the software industry is fierce. There is intense rivalry on the 

part of Apple to switch to its operating system. Also, Apple, as well each of the many 

lesser players, are highly innovative and are rapidly developing products that could chip 

away at Microsoft’s position. Apple, for example, is known for its smart phone, iPods, 

and computer-tablets. 12 Microsoft’s versions of these products were not successful, 

although it did stave off the potential economic losses by establishing lucrative 

partnerships with successful players in these markets, notably Samsung, whose Android 

phone operating system is the leading smart-phone operating system and from the sales 

of which Microsoft is now the largest beneficiary. 

Switching costs for existing Microsoft customers are high. It is inconvenient and 

expensive for users of Windows and related applications to switch to non-Microsoft 

products. This is because such products are easy to use and tend to be bundled together 

in ways that are highly functional and that are difficult or impossible to replicate with 

non-Microsoft products. This force favors Microsoft. 

Other firms in this industry, including but not limited to Apple, are extremely 

innovative and are also aggressive in marketing their products. Microsoft is not as 

12 

https://bstrategyhub.com/swot-analysis-of-microsoft/

innovative as Apple or as many of its much smaller competitors. Microsoft counters this, 

with some success, by buying up patents and buying into companies that offer 

innovations that it is not itself providing. 13 

There is a high degree of product-diversity in the software industry, which is a 

strong force that works against Microsoft, since it could lead, and in some cases has led, 

to substitutes for Microsoft products and also to products that simply render them 

obsolete. 

Bargaining Power of Customers (Weak Force) 

Switching costs for Microsoft customers are high, as previously stated, mainly 

because Windows, Microsoft’s highest earning product, is easy to use and also bundled 

with a number of applications in a way that can be replicated only with difficulty using 

non-Microsoft softwares. Microsoft’s great strength is that it offers products (e.g. Excel, 

Microsoft Word, PowerPoint) at least one or two of which many simply have no choice 

but to use, and then links that product’s functionality with those of other products for 

which those same customers are likely to have at least some use. For example, all 

people who do anything involving writing for a living need to use a product functionally 

similar to Microsoft Word. If they choose an alternative to Microsoft Word, they find, 

13 

https://bstrategyhub.com/swot-analysis-of-microsoft/

first, that those products tend to be bug-infested and, second, that if they want to 

convert them into PDF format or embed photos in them, they are simply out of luck. 

Also, many businesses use Microsoft products and also rely on their high degree 

of co-functionality with one another with non-Microsoft products. This would make it 

difficult, and in many cases impossible, for Microsoft’s numerous existing business 

customers to switch brands. 

Bargaining Power of Suppliers (Moderate Force) 

Microsoft offers a range of different products, and it also relies on many different 

products and technologies for its own R&D. This makes it vulnerable to shifts in prices in 

the corresponding raw materials (IBIS 32). In particular, Microsoft is vulnerable to shifts 

in copper (for the copper wiring in the operating systems that it manufactures) and in 

petroleum (use for the plastic in the casing, which it also sells). These are both pricevolatile 

commodities, potentially posing a problem for Microsoft. 

Threat of Substitutes (Weak Force) 

It is often difficult and sometimes impossible for Microsoft customers to switch 

to other brands. Non-Microsoft versions of Word and Excel do not work very well and

have lower functionality than their Microsoft counterparts. Also, Microsoft makes its 

products easy to use with one another and with related Non-Microsoft products. For 

example, Microsoft Word documents are easily saved to OneDrive, which is Microsoft’s 

Cloud Storage service; and Microsoft Word documents can easily be saved as Adobe 

PDF files (and vice versa). 14 Also, Microsoft makes it easy to import numbers into Excel 

Files, and it has loaded Excel with extremely useful and easy to use accounting features. 

These products and integrated functionalities are not offered by other companies, 

making switching a non-option in most cases. 

Also, Microsoft aggressively litigates would-be rival purveyors of alternatives on 

patent-grounds, helping to perverse its position. At the same time, Microsoft products 

can be cloned and pirated. Because the technology involved in cloning Microsoft 

products is still rather unwieldy, people are better off simply buying them from 

Microsoft. But as those products get easier to use, this could potentially change. But this 

is not likely to happen any time soon, given that these pirated products, though 

functional on their own, cannot be used in conjunction with Microsoft products. So for 

example, while it not hard to clone Microsoft Word software, documents made with 

Word-clones cannot be converted into Adobe PDF’s; nor could numerical data on them 

imported into Microsoft Excel files. 15 Replicating cross-application functionalities would 

involve systematic pirating of Microsoft-technology, which would not be easy to do. 

14 

https://www.datanyze.com/market-share/other-communication-and-collaboration-software/microsoft-word 

15 

http://fernfortuniversity.com/term-papers/porter5/analysis/3735-microsoft-corporation.php

Threat of New Entrants (Moderate Force) 

Any given Microsoft product can be replicated, either legally or illegally, and any 

such product could, on its own, be mass-produced relatively inexpensively. The problem 

for would-be competitors is that Microsoft products are co-functional with many non- 

Microsoft products and these Microsoft has exclusivity agreements with these other 

companies, which limit the amount of functionality that non-Microsoft products can 

have. For example, Microsoft word documents have a feature whereby users can dictate 

words, instead of having to type them. This feature is easily replicated, but it couldn’t be 

used on PC’s made by any existing company, since they have contracted with Microsoft 

to block use of such application with any non-Microsoft product. 16 

At the same time, there are many small companies that already create analogues 

of Microsoft-products, and such a company would be a threat if it had the financing 

needed to market itself and to establish legally protected Microsoft-style productintegrations 

with related companies. The chances of this are small but not negligible. 

Conclusion 

16 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/big-brother-microsoft/

Microsoft’s position is relatively secure. It offers useful and easy to use products 

for low prices, and those products have useful integrations with one another and with 

non-Microsoft products. In addition, Microsoft protects itself against rivals either by 

contracting with them, as it did with Samsung, effectively buying them out, or entering 

into exclusivity agreements that limit the extent to which non-Microsoft products can 

have the range of uses as Microsoft products. Microsoft’s vulnerability is its current lack 

of innovativeness. But because Microsoft hedges against this problem by simply buying 

out would-be competitors, it is likely to retain its position as one of the top two 

software providers for the foreseeable future. 

Works Cited 

Hadad, Jonathan. "IBISWorld Industry Report 51121 Software Publishing in the US." IBIS 

World. September 2018. 

"Microsoft Form 10-K." SEC. June 2018. 

Wittgenstein on Language and Thought (Philosophy)

It is obvious that linguistic competence (the ability to use and understand 

language) enhances the ability to think. But does it constitute that ability? In other 

words, is it identical with that ability? 

Ludwig Wittgenstein says ‘yes’. And he supports his position with two famous 

arguments of his: the ‘Private Language” argument and the ‘Rule-following argument’. 

According to the ‘Private Language’, one cannot invent a ‘private language’, 

except by translating some pre-existing public language into private terms. 

Wittgenstein’s argument is that semantic rules (rules that assign meanings to 

expressions) are, like all rules, null and void—and therefore as good as non-existence— 

unless enforced. And, so Wittgenstein also holds, the semantic rules of a private 

language would be unenforced—and therefore null and void. Therefore, so Wittgenstein 

concludes, a private language (that isn’t just a re-boot of a pre-existing public language) 

is impossible. 

According to the Rule Following argument, there can be no such thing as a 

‘private rule’; in other words, one cannot impose a rule on oneself: all genuine rules are 

social rules, meaning that they involve pluralities of people. Wittgenstein’s argument for 

this is similar to the Private Language Argument: unenforced rules are non-rules and 

private rules are unenforced. 

Wittgenstein also holds that thinking involves following rules—his argument, so 

far as he has one, being that, unless mental activity is rule-governed, it isn’t principled

and, unless it is principled, it isn’t thought so much as it is mere free association or mere 

sensation, or some such. 

Wittgenstein thus holds that thinking involves the following rules. He also holds 

that rules are inherently public. So he is forced by these starting points to find some set 

of public rules the following of which can reasonably be identified with the act of 

thinking. And he understandably believes that linguistic rules are the only rules that 

meet this requirement. And it follows from these assumptions that, indeed, thought is 

inherently linguistic, i.e. that linguistic competence is constitutive of cognitive 

competence. 

But Wittgenstein is wrong and his argument is bad. First of all, thought is needed 

in order to understand or operate with semantic rules. Without thought, a creature can 

make noises, but it cannot speak. The difference between a coffee-maker that makes 

noise and a person that speaks is that the latter, but not the former, understands the 

rules that link meaning to sounds. So Wittgenstein is simply false. 

Plus, not all thought is linguistic. There is visual thought, musical thought, etc. 

And there is no plausible way to identify these with the manipulating of linguistic 

symbols. 

Given that Wittgenstein’s position is false, there must be a flaw in his reasoning. 

And indeed there is: Wittgenstein is wrong to assume that non-public rules can be 

violated with impunity. Suppose that I invent a private code in which I tell myself that X

means ‘poisonous berries’ and Y means ‘non-poisonous berries.’ If I misinterpret my 

own language, I won’t be penalized by other people—the ‘language police’ won’t get on 

my case—but I will indeed be penalized, as I will eat the poisonous berries and die. 

So the situation here is simply. Wittgenstein gave a bad argument for a wrong 

and implausible idea, and that’s the end of it. 

Camus and Schopenhauer on the Meaning of Life (Philosophy) 

Instructions: 

Please, answer the following essay question. Read the question closely and make 

sure to address all of its parts. The recommended length for your answer is: min. 500 

words – max. 600 words. 

Q. How does Schopenhauer arrive at the basic insight that life is suffering? Under 

these apparently frustrating conditions, what is the best (or “least bad”) way to live, 

according to him? Next, what does Camus mean by “the absurd” and how shall we cope 

with it? What do Schopenhauer’s take on life and Camus’s take on life have in common, 

and in what ways are they different? Whose view of life do you find more convincing, 

and why?

Schopenhauer believes that life is suffering. Camus believes that life is absurd. 

They thus both seem to have a fundamentally negative conception of life. To this extent, 

their conceptions of life are similar or at least seem to be. But scrutiny of their 

respective positions proves them to be very different. 

First of all, one can hold that life is fundamentally an exercise in suffering without 

holding that life is meaningless or ‘absurd’. Steve Jobs spent most of his life struggling to 

achieve success. And the amount of time that he spent struggling to achieve success 

may well have exceeded the amount of time that he actually enjoyed it. But was his life 

meaningless? No. 

Second, one can hold that life is fundamentally not about suffering without 

holding that it is absurd. In fact, people who have a hedonistic approach to life seem to 

be of the view that life is absurd. Also, if life is fundamentally an exercise in suffering, 

then it would seem that life does have meaning, its meaning being given to it by one’s 

need to minimize or eliminate suffering. And life is drained of meaning to the extent 

that it is free of adversity. 

This actually seems to be Schopenhauer’s own view. “Life without pain has no 

meaning”, Schopenhauer writes. Schopenhauer’s position is that pleasure and

happiness are low-probability conditions, since they are unstable and hard to achieve, 

and that pain and unhappiness are high-probability conditions, since they are stable and 

easy to achieve. From this, Schopenhauer deduces that life is more about pain than 

pleasure, more about unhappiness than happiness. 

But Schopenhauer does not hold that life is meaningless. As already indicated, he 

holds that at least some strife is necessary for meaning. Second, he holds that pain and 

unhappiness can be minimized. In Schopenhauer’s view, people tend to have a 

preconception to the effect that life is supposed to make them happy; and if one lets go 

of that preconception, one is allowing life to be happy in its own way. 

Camus does not hold that life is necessarily painful. At the same time, Camus 

does hold that life is ‘absurd.’ By this Camus means that only that life does not supply 

Man with a meaning: 17 But Camus also holds that, if life did have some pre-existing 

meaning, that fact would hem us in. And the fact that it doesn’t, so Camus holds, allows 

us to be free.” 18 

Although Camus’ views about the meaning(fulness) of life differ from 

17 

“Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for 

happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human 

need and the unreasonable silence of the world.” Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of 

Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.28, Vintage 

18 

“I draw from the Absurd three consequences: my revolt, my liberty, my passion Albert 

Camus, 1945 interview.”

Schopenhauer’s, both views coincide in one respect. According to both, it is by 

accepting that which is negative in life that one stands to gain what is positive in it. Says 

Camus: “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists 

of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.” 19 Says Schopenhauer: 

“If you accustom yourself to this view of life you will regulate your expectations 

accordingly, and cease to look upon all its disagreeable incidents … as anything unusual 

or irregular; nay, you will find everything is as it should be, in a world where each of us 

pays the penalty of existence in [their] own particular way.” 20 

Are Late-term Abortions Ethical? (Philosophy) 

A late-term abortion is one that is performed in the third trimester of pregnancy. 

Are such abortions ethical? In this paper, I consider the work of four reputable scholars, 

two of whom argue that late-term abortions are ethical and two of whom argue that 

they are unethical. I arrive at the position that late-term abortions are unethical. 

Before we consider what these scholars say, let us make some general points of a 

philosophical nature. 

19 

Albert Camus, in "Intuitions" (October 1932), published in Youthful Writings (1976) 

20 

Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Suffering of the World

When an abortion is performed, two parties are involved: the mother and the 

fetus. The mother clearly has ethical rights, since she is indisputably a person. But does 

the fetus have rights? This is not clear, because it is not clear whether the fetus is a 

person. If the fetus is a person, then the fetus has rights. If the fetus is not a person--if it 

is a subhuman or a pre-person--then it either has no rights or has fewer rights than a 

person. 

A newborn infant is considered a person. A newborn infant does not have 

particularly well-developed reasoning capabilities, but it has consciousness, it can 

experience sensations and perceptions, and it can experience emotion. A one day old 

fetus is probably not a person since it has none of these attributes. 

Should it turn out that a fetus in the third trimester has all of the psychological 

attributes of a one-day old infant, then it would have rights. In particular, it would have 

the right to live. In any case, the question whether the fetus is psychologically 

comparable to a newborn is a medical question and can be answered only on the basis 

of knowledge of its nervous system and the like. 

According to Kenneth E. Himma, a professor of philosophy, late term abortions 

are perfectly ethical. His argument is that fetuses are not conscious, do not feel pain, do 

not make moral judgments and for these reasons fail to be people. 

According to Sara Miller, a journalist, late-term fetuses don’t feel pain and, 

indeed, don’t feel anything and are not therefore not people.

According to Don Berkich, a professor of philosophy, fetuses will become people, 

even if they are not currently people, and in having an abortion, one is, as it were, killing 

the person that the fetus is going to be: one is robbing it of ‘a future like ours,’ as 

Berkich puts it. 

According to Maureen Condic, a professor of neurobiology, there is strong 

medical evidence to suggest that late-term fetuses can feel pain and have other 

psychological traits specific to human beings; and for this reason, Condic alleges, lateterm 

abortions are ethically wrong. 

The medical evidence strongly suggests that Condic is right. Late-term fetuses are 

neurologically sufficiently similar to newborn infants that the former may reasonably be 

presumed to have the same psychological characteristics as the latter, a corollary being 

that the former have whatever ethical rights the latter have. The arguments put forth by 

Himma and Miller are therefore null and void, as they are based on false medical claims 

concerning the biological condition of late-term fetuses. As for Berkich’s claim that 

abortion robs the fetus of its future, this claim is consistent with the fact that, judging by 

the relevant neurobiological benchmarks, the fetus is indeed a person.

Exploring Music 

Assignment 1 

This particular work---“Scared to be Lonely” by Martin Garrix and sung by Dua 

Lipa 21 --was probably more on the repetitive side than on the variable side, but it was, at 

the end of the day, a pretty healthy mix. Also, it has a nice balance of voice and 

instrumentation, including some Hybrid (electronic) instrumentation. 

The meter was 4:4. It was slow to medium-paced. 

The tonality was jazz/rock/blues---I’m not sure how exactly to categorize it, but 

it’s in the same category as Jamiroquai and Alanis Morrissette. 

There wasn’t too much dynamic contrast, but there was some crescendo. It 

started off ballade-like and then become a bit more frenetic around a minute into it. 

The focus was on Dua Lipa’s voice. But the most prominent instrument—apart 

from the jazzy drum accompaniment—was, I believe, an electric violin. 

It was very memorable—very easily memorized. I listened to it once, and it was 

stuck in my memory: every note. 

One thing that helped make it so easy to memorize was that it was divided into 

neat little stanzas, e.g.: 

21 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf7dJJiXFtk

Is it just our bodies? 

Are we both losing our minds? 

Is it the only reason you are holding me tonight? 

Because we’re scared to be lonely 

This helped define the structure of the music, I thought. 

It was mainly homophonic. There was harmony, but little or no polyphony 

(though there might have been a touch). It did actually sound like the sample of 

heterophonic music that we listened to in Module 1, but I cannot say for sure that it is in 

fact heterophonic. 

At first, I didn’t think this song would fit into the categories we are studying; I 

thought it was too ‘out there.’ But I now realize that it is pretty easy to categorize. The 

meter is 4:4; it’s homophonic; the tonality is that of most rock songs. It’s a great piece--- 

a bit sentimental (like me, I suppose)—and I think I understand it better having gone 

through Module 1. 

Second Music Assignment JG 

Name: Jason Glaubach

1. Briefly, describe your initial impressions of each of the four musical works we listened to 

in this unit. What did you think of them and what made you think that way? 

Musical Work 

Caro Mea 

Your Impressions 

It is very austere. It is entirely monophonic, sung either by just 

one person or by several people singing in perfect unison; and 

the tonality is restrained, not sensuous; all of which gives it a 

laconic quality. Also, the range is narrow—‘constricted’, like 

everything else about it. 

Ordo Virtutum 

Dark and sad, but self-restrained in the way that medieval 

music seems to be. It is more emotive than Caro Mea, 

however; and there is also more metrical variability—there 

are some flourishes that stand out. 

I Can All Too Well 

Compare My Lady 

It actually sounds very Scottish or Irish—very Celtic, I suppose, 

given that the Celts originated in France, like this work’s 

composer. It has the ‘jig’ rhythm that we have come to 

associate with Celtic music—sounds like the music from 

Scorsese’s ‘Gang’s of New York.’ 

A Chantar 

The rugged cello (or cello-like instrument), along with the 

open fifths (I think), give it a rugged, ‘wintry’ quality. The

drums give it a spontaneous quality that isn’t as present in 

other medieval music. 

2. Review your notes from the Dark Ages video. Imagine that you are a person living in 

Europe during those times. Briefly, describe your medieval alter-ego. Who are you? 

What do you do? What do you think about your life? Your response should reference at 

least one specific thing you learned from the Dark Ages video. 

I pretty much do the same thing every day. I work. I ply my trade, e.g. I might be a 

black-smith. I pay tithes to my guild-master (union representative, essentially). I do 

not work long hours; I am well rested. After working a restful day, I drink mead with 

my mates, and eventually report home. I might take the family to a play or musical 

performance put on by fellow villagers or, more likely, by an itinerant theatre troop. 

Life is not anxious, but also not deeply fulfilling (though I probably don’t think that to 

myself). 

3. Choose any one piece from this lesson and listen to it again. As you listen, try your best 

to imagine how it might sound if you were the medieval person described above. Where

might you hear this music, what might you think of this music, and why might you think 

that way? 

What piece did you 

choose? 

Caro Mea 

Type your response here. If I were an ordinary peasant—as opposed to an aristocrat 

or member of the clergy—I would associate this piece with obligatory Churchattendance. 

I would admire this piece, but I would not be moved by it, since it was not 

written for me. It embodies the asceticism of a monastic life, which is very different 

from my life, which has all of the drama of a life with a wife, children, taxes, and the 

like. This work’s austere quality is alienatingly high-brown to me. 

4. Respond to the following question: what is the relevance of medieval music in today's 

society? 

Type your response here. What struck me when listening to these works is that they 

have a rather modern quality. 18 th and 19 th century European music is emotionally 

unambiguous. Modern classical music, e.g. Bartok, is different and has an austere

quality. Medieval music, especially Gregorian chants, have a similar quality; and I feel 

that history is--in this respect, and probably therefore in others—is looping. So its 

relevance is that it prefigures modern music. 

Music Assignment (Assignment 1 Resubmission) for J.G. 

Assignment 1 

Resubmission 

Link to video of song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf7dJJiXFtk 

1. Consider the balance between predictability and variability in your chosen 

piece. How does the composer handle these elements? Give an example.

Initially, it’s pretty repetitive. The opening lyrics are as follow: 

It was great at the very start 

Hands on each other 

Couldn't stand to be far apart 

Closer the better 

Now we're picking fights and slamming doors 

Magnifying all our flaws 

And I wonder why, wonder what for 

Why we keep coming back for more 

And while these l lyrics are being, the music doesn’t change much—a simple motif, 

repeated over and over. 

It changes with the next stanza: 

Is it just our bodies? 

Are we both losing our minds? 

Is the only reason you're holding me tonight 

'Cause we're scared to be lonely? 

Do we need somebody just to feel like we're alright?

Is the only reason you're holding me tonight 

'Cause we're scared to be lonely? 

This is the refrain. It is led into with a crescendo, and it is much louder the more 

aggressive than the rest of the song, which has a melancholy and introspective quality. 

The main variation in in this song has to do with the difference 

2. What instruments are used in your chosen musical work, and to what 

instrument family do they belong? 

The two main instruments are an electronic violin and the singer’s voice. There is also 

light background percussion. The violin is a string instrument; the percussion belongs to 

the percussion family. As for the human voice, technically it is not an instrument and 

therefore does not belong to any of the four (percussion, string, brass, woodwind). 

3. Which musical layer is the melody? Is it a singer or an instrument? Do any other 

instruments or singers sometimes sound like they take over or share the melody 

at any point? If so, where? Provide time markers.

The electric violin introduces the song with a little melody of its own (for the first seven 

seconds of the song), which anticipates the main melody, which is carried by the singer’s 

voice. The main melody/singer’s voice beings in the seventh second. The violin reprises 

the opening motif around one minute into the song, but the violin does not take over 

the main melody at any point. 

4. Which layers are playing harmony or "background" music? 

The violin is providing some harmony. But for the most part, the song is monophonic. 

5. This song is largely monophonic. Some harmony is provided by the violin, but is 

mainly voice and percussion, making it monophonic. 

6. Listen for the steady beat pattern in your piece to determine the 

meter. Clap and count along with the beat. Do you think it is in quadruple or triple 

meter (or something else), and why do you think that? 

It is in 4:4 meter. When I count 1-2-3-4/1-2-3-4/1-2-3-4/…, it ‘fits.’ When I count 

1-2-3/1-2-3/.., or any other meter (other than 4:4), it does not fit.

7. How would you describe the overall dynamic level 

of the piece? Is it piano(soft), mezzo-piano (medium-soft), mezzo-forte 

(medium-loud) or forte (loud)? Are there any crescendos or decrescendos? Use time 

markers to indicate where these occur. 

There are several crescendos. These occur just before the refrain is sung. The first time 

this happens is seconds 58-64. 

8. How would you describe the overall dynamic level of the piece? Is it 

piano (soft), mezzo-piano (medium-soft), mezzo-forte, (medium-loud) or forte 

(loud)? Are there any crescendos or decrescendos. Use time-markers to indicate where 

these occur. Most of the song is, I would say, mezzo piano (medium soft), but the 

refrain is mezzo forte, with a fast-paced crescendo leading from the melody to the refrain. 

(The first time this happens is seconds 58-106.) 

9. Use three adjectives to describe the timbre of the main singer's voice. Is it 

scratchy? Smooth? Mellow? Husky? Full? Deep? Hollow? Shrill? etc. If there is no 

singer, describe the timbre of this main melody instrument.

The singer’s voice was smooth and clear and full—not smoky or husky. It was a 

conventionally ‘good’ female singing voice. Although her voice carried the main melody, 

the electronic violin added some melody of its own. The timbre of the electronic violin 

was a little bit like that of a Theremin—it sounded like a cross between a human voice, a 

violin, and a clarinet. 

Schopenhauer on Human Suffering 

Instructions: 

Please, answer the following essay question. Read the question closely and make 

sure to address all of its parts. The recommended length for your answer is: min. 500 

words – max. 600 words. 

Q. How does Schopenhauer arrive at the basic insight that life is suffering? Under 

these apparently frustrating conditions, what is the best (or “least bad”) way to live, 

according to him? Next, what does Camus mean by “the absurd” and how shall we cope 

with it? What do Schopenhauer’s take on life and Camus’s take on life have in common, 

and in what ways are they different? Whose view of life do you find more convincing, 

and why?

Schopenhauer believes that life is suffering. Camus believes that life is absurd. 

They thus both seem to have a fundamentally negative conception of life. To this extent, 

their conceptions of life are similar or at least seem to be. But scrutiny of their 

respective positions proves them to be very different. 

First of all, one can hold that life is fundamentally an exercise in suffering without 

holding that life is meaningless or ‘absurd’. Steve Jobs spent most of his life struggling to 

achieve success. And the amount of time that he spent struggling to achieve success 

may well have exceeded the amount of time that he actually enjoyed it. But was his life 

meaningless? No. 

Second, one can hold that life is fundamentally not about suffering without 

holding that it is absurd. In fact, people who have a hedonistic approach to life seem to 

be of the view that life is absurd. Also, if life is fundamentally an exercise in suffering, 

then it would seem that life does have meaning, its meaning being given to it by one’s 

need to minimize or eliminate suffering. And life is drained of meaning to the extent 

that it is free of adversity. 

This actually seems to be Schopenhauer’s own view. “Life without pain has no 

meaning”, Schopenhauer writes. Schopenhauer’s position is that pleasure and

happiness are low-probability conditions, since they are unstable and hard to achieve, 

and that pain and unhappiness are high-probability conditions, since they are stable and 

easy to achieve. From this, Schopenhauer deduces that life is more about pain than 

pleasure, more about unhappiness than happiness. 

But Schopenhauer does not hold that life is meaningless. As already indicated, he 

holds that at least some strife is necessary for meaning. Second, he holds that pain and 

unhappiness can be minimized. In Schopenhauer’s view, people tend to have a 

preconception to the effect that life is supposed to make them happy; and if one lets go 

of that preconception, one is allowing life to be happy in its own way. 

Camus does not hold that life is necessarily painful. At the same time, Camus 

does hold that life is ‘absurd.’ By this Camus means that only that life does not supply 

Man with a meaning: 22 But Camus also holds that, if life did have some pre-existing 

meaning, that fact would hem us in. And the fact that it doesn’t, so Camus holds, allows 

us to be free.” 23 

Although Camus’ views about the meaning(fulness) of life differ from 

22 

“Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for 

happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human 

need and the unreasonable silence of the world.” Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of 

Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.28, Vintage 

23 

“I draw from the Absurd three consequences: my revolt, my liberty, my passion Albert 

Camus, 1945 interview.”

Schopenhauer’s, both views coincide in one respect. According to both, it is by 

accepting that which is negative in life that one stands to gain what is positive in it. Says 

Camus: “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists 

of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.” 24 Says Schopenhauer: 

“If you accustom yourself to this view of life you will regulate your expectations 

accordingly, and cease to look upon all its disagreeable incidents … as anything unusual 

or irregular; nay, you will find everything is as it should be, in a world where each of us 

pays the penalty of existence in [their] own particular way.” 25 

Bertrand Russell on the Value of Philosophy (Philosophy) 

According to Bertrand Russell, the very value of philosophy lies in its uncertainty. 

At first this seems paradoxical. Surely the value of mathematics and physics and even of 

chemistry lie in the fact that they give us unassailable, certain knowledge of the world. 

Indeed, if a given branch of science fails to provide us with certainties, we tend for that 

reason to think ill of it. (Consider psychiatry, which, of all of the branches of medicine, is 

24 

Albert Camus, in "Intuitions" (October 1932), published in Youthful Writings (1976) 

25 

Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Suffering of the World

the most speculative and for that very reason the most contemned.) So why is 

philosophy different? 

The reason philosophy is different is that it is the study not of the world, but of 

the categories in terms of which we understand the world. The physicist wants to know 

what causes what; the philosopher wants to know what it causation is. The psychologist 

wants to know what causes a person to be psychologically unhealthy; the philosopher 

wants to know what a person is. 

We have certainty when we can put things into categories, and we lack it when 

we can’t. That is why we feel anxiety when we don’t know how to categorize something 

and feel less anxious when do know how to categorize it. So certainty represents 

agreement with the categories of human understanding, and uncertainty represents 

disagreement with them. 

Consequently, when we are studying those categories themselves---when we are 

philosophizing, in other words---we are questioning the source of all of our certainty 

and are therefore depriving ourselves of certainty. At the same time, what makes 

philosophical inquiry so profound is precisely that it questions these categories. So 

philosophy’s informativeness lies in its ability to disrupt our certainties, and therein lies 

the truth of Russell’s view. 

According to Douglas, our values affect which problems we choose to study and 

how choose to ‘model’ (interpret) those data sets. Moreover, says Douglas, our values

affect the to which we put the theories that arise out of our examination of those data 

sets. But our values do not, at lest not necessarily, affect the inferences that we make 

from those data sets. Our values affect which inferences we regard as worth making, but 

not which inferences we regard as legitimate. Our values would compromise our 

scientific objectivity only if they affected which inferences we regarded as legitimate. 

Since they don’t, they don’t. 

The Philosophical Value of Uncertainty (Philosophy) 

Bertrand Russell famously said that “the value of philosophy lies in its 

uncertainty.” At first glance, this is a very curious remark. Suppose that a medical doctor 

said that “the value of medicine lies in its uncertainty.” That is not a physician I would go 

to! Or suppose that a civil engineer said “the value of engineering lies in its uncertainty.” 

That is not someone we would hire to build a bridge. 

The value of most sciences lies in the certainties they give us—the certainty of a 

cure, the certainty of a stable bridge. And this holds not only of applied sciences, such as 

medicine and engineering, but of all sciences. We do not want physics to give us 

uncertainties. It may well be that it does give us uncertainties; but so far as it does, it is 

deficient. The same is true of biology: it obviously doesn’t always give us certainties; but 

so far as it doesn’t, it falls short.

So is Russell simply wrong? No. Philosophy is not a science. Nor is it a nonscience. 

It is more of a meta-science: a science that studies science itself; an 

investigation into the logical conditions that beliefs must meet if they are to pass 

scientific muster. The physicists identifies laws of physics; the philosopher wants to 

know what a law of nature is. (Is it a mere regularity? Is it a structure that guarantees 

the existence of regularities? Is it something that is inherent in the things that are 

subject to it? Or does it govern them from ‘outside’, the way the train-tracks guide the 

motion of the train?) 

This being what philosophy is, it is no wonder that it does not, even when done 

properly, always lead to certainties. We have certainties when we can fit experiences 

into our mental pigeonholes. We have certainties when we know how to categorize the 

things we experience. (As a physician, I have certainty when I know how to categorize a 

patient—when I know what diagnostic category he falls into.) But suppose that we are 

questioning those pigeonholes themselves; suppose, for example, that we are 

examining the concept of ‘personal identity’ and possibly even trying to replace it with a 

concept that we judge to be a more coherent one (much as Hume and Buddha both 

did). In that case, what litmus test do we have for determining whether our analysis is 

correct? Not by its degree of fit with our pre-existing categories. Not, therefore, by its 

‘clicking’, in a satisfyingly certainty-generating way, with our existing pre-conceptions.

For it is those very preconceptions that, in scrutinizing that concept, we have parted 

with. 

The very point of philosophy is to break down the certainties that we regard as 

knowledge but are merely deep-seated prejudices posing as knowledge. And when 

philosophical analyses are viable, that is known, not on the basis of some immediate 

sense of certainty that they create, but over the long term, on the basis of their doing a 

better job than the predecessors of coherently organizing our experiences and 

sharpening our vision. 

Logic Homework: Theorems and Models (Philosophy/Logic) 

1. (P→P)→ (P→P) 

This statement is true. 

It has the form w→w and is therefore true no matter what truth-value of the 

statement(s) flanking the arrow. 

2. (P→Q)→ (P→Q) 

This statement is true.

It has the form w→w and is therefore true no matter what truth-value of the 

statement(s) flanking the arrow. 

3. (A ˅X) → (X ˅Y) 

This statement is false. 

We know that A is true. 

Therefore A ˅X is true. 

We know that both X and Y are false. 

Therefore (X ˅Y) is false. 

Therefore, 3 has the form T→F and is therefore false. 

Searle vs. Turing on the Imitation Game (Philosophy) 

Turing’s Position: 

How do know what another person is thinking? Through their deeds—their 

statements and their behaviors. How do know we know whether another person is 

thinking at all? In the same way. If a given person’s body is producing speech or

otherwise behaving in ways suggestive of mental activity, then we assume that there is 

indeed mental activity in that body—that it is not a mere body, but an embodied person. 

So our test for determining the presence of mental activity is always behavior: If 

X behaves (speaks, moves, writes, sings..) like a thinker, then X is a thinker; otherwise, it 

isn’t. 

The question therefore arises: What if X is a machine? What if X is a machine 

that, when asked a question, givens a reasonable answer? More generally, what if X, in 

terms of its overt (detectable to others) movements and behaviors (including the 

production of noises, ink-deposits, images on a monitor, and the like) acts like a thinker? 

In that case, says Alan Turing, we have no reason to deny that X is a thinker. 

Searle’s Position 

John Searle disagrees with Turing. According to Searle, a non-thinker could act 

like a thinker without being a thinker. To this end, Searle puts forth his Chinese Room 

Argument. Imagine a machine that cannot think but inside of which there is a person 

that so directs the machine as to make it seem that it thinks. So if someone says to the 

‘machine’, ‘indicate by clapping your hands what the square of two is’, then the person 

inside the machine directs the machine to clap its hands four times.

Searle says that, since the machine does not think but acts as though it does, it 

follows that, indeed, X’s behaving like a thinker is not definitive proof that X is a thinker. 

Analysis 

First of all, ultimately, Searle is right. Anything can in principle behave in any way 

at all. A lifeless corpse could be electrically stimulated to produce any sounds all. A 

coffee machine could accidentally produce noises that sounded just like a poem—even 

though that machine, being inanimate, is not really producing poetry. 

Turing is failing to distinguish thought per se from mere evidence of thought. It is 

one thing to think; it is quite anther to produce behavioral evidence of thought. And 

while it is true that our basis for imputing thoughts to others consists in their overt 

behaviors, it obviously doesn’t follow, and is not the case, that their behaviors are their 

thoughts. 

But Searle’s argument for this position is pathetically weak. True—the machine 

per se doesn’t think. But the machine by itself isn’t behaving intelligently. What is 

behaving intelligently is the ensemble consisting of the machine and the man inside it. 

And that ensemble, consisting as it does of a machine plus a thinking person, is a 

thinker.

WE can turn Searle’s argument against itself. We ask machine X to answer 

questions. X always answered those questions intelligently. Then, we later find out that 

there was a little person inside X that was making it produce intelligent responses. We 

would not conclude that the behavior on X’s part that we previously regarded as 

intelligence-driven was not intelligence-driven. That is that exact opposite of what we 

would conclude. We would conclude that it was intelligence-driven—but that we were 

wrong about the nature of the mechanisms mediating that intelligence. 

So Searle is right that behavioral evidence of intelligence is not always definitive 

proof of intelligence. But his argument for that position does little to support that 

position, and it actually tends to support’s Turing’s position more than it supports his 

own. 

Hume, Frankfurt, and Holbach on Personal Freedom (Philosophy) 

D’Holbach is a determinist. Determinism is the doctrine that whatever happens 

has to happen. So D’Holbach believes that, the laws of nature being what they are and 

the state of the universe being what it is, there is only way the future of the universe 

could be. 

Moreover, believes determinism to be incompatible with human freedom. So 

D’Holbach is an incompatibilist or hard-determinist.

D’Holbach’s argument for determinism is straightforward. The universe is 

governed by deterministic laws; therefore, whatever happens has to happen---given the 

state of the universe a given time, the laws of nature determine what the state of the 

universe at any given later time will be. 

D’Holbach’s argument for incompatibilism is also straightforward. People are free 

to the extent that they do not have to do what they do. But given that human beings are 

material entities and that, since material entities are governed by deterministic laws, 

people are forced by the laws of nature to do whatever they do and therefore are no 

free. 

David Hume is a compatibilist, meaning that, in his view, freedom is compatible 

with determinism. According to Hume, a person is free to the extent that he is able to 

do what he wants to do. Since people are able to do what they want to do (to varying 

degrees) people are free (to varying degrees). Hume’s position is that one is free to the 

extent that one’s choices determine one’s situation. It is irrelevant, in Hume’s view, how 

those choices in their turn came about: what matters is the extent to which, once they 

exist, they determine one’s situation. And since, to varying degrees, people’s choices do 

have a hand in their life-situations, people are, to varying degrees, free. 

I agree with Hume. For someone to be free is for them to be able to choose how 

they live. This is just a definitional truth. For someone to be free is not for them to 

choose how their choices come into existence. The very idea of being able to make such

a choice is absurd. To be free is for one’s choices to make a difference; it is not for one’s 

choices not to be caused to come into existence. Obviously, choices are caused to come 

into existence. They didn’t, they wouldn’t come out of nowhere, which is absurd and, 

even if not absurd, wouldn’t exactly redound to human freedom: a being whose choices 

came out of nowhere would not be freer than one whose choices were rooted in its 

personality. 

In any case, freedom is not about being outside the web of causal law; it is about 

one’s choices making a difference within that causal law. I must therefore agree with 

Hume and disagree with D’Holbach. 

Manifesto of the University of Wisconsin, Madison Secular Society (Publicly 

Delivered Speech) 

Esteemed colleagues, 

Today you will hear a debate concerning God and morality between two groups 

of people, one religious, the other secular. I am with secular group.

I would like to start with a question. Can God’s non-existence be proven? No. But 

that doesn’t mean that God exists. I cannot prove the non-existence of a talking 

penguin, but that doesn’t mean that talking penguins exist. 

So I’m not going to try to prove that God doesn’t exist. So what will I do? 

First, I will prove that if a being that is great enough to be considered God exists, 

that being wouldn’t care about us. In fact, it wouldn’t have any of the attributes that 

believers in God want God to have. In other words, supposing that it can be proved 

some intelligence created the universe and currently governs the universe, then even 

though that being is a God, it is not our God. 

I will also prove that the existence of moral norms does not require God’s 

existence. Maybe God exists, maybe he doesn’t. But God’s existence is irrelevant to 

what the requirements of morality are. If rape is wrong, it is wrong if God exists and 

wrong if he doesn’t. 

Time permitting, I will also briefly discuss some of the standard arguments for 

God’s existence. Some of these arguments have merit, especially the so-called 

‘Argument from Design’, also known as the ‘Teleological Argument.’ But every plausible 

argument for God’s existence has one major flaw: the being whose existence it 

supposedly proves doesn’t correspond even remotely to what actual people of faith 

believe God to be.

Here I would like to make a quick point. Real religion is the religion of the 

ordinary man and woman. Here in our Ivory Tower, we speak ill of born-again Christians 

and Fundamentalist Muslims. But that is the face of religion. Such people truly believe. 

They believe so much, in fact, they are willing to die for their religious beliefs. Are those 

beliefs good ones or accurate ones? I don’t know. But that is religion is. 

There are intellectuals for whom religion can be adopted and cast away like a pair 

of socks, and when such people are asked to say what sort of being God is, they tend to 

give vague answers. ‘God is love’, they may say, or ‘God is truth.’ 

No. If God exists, God is not some principle or truth or theorem. If God exists, in 

the sense in which genuinely religious people believe God to exist, he must be at least 

somewhat person-like. He cannot be some intangible principle. 

That said, let’s discuss the coherence of the God-concept. God, by definition, is 

something that has the intelligence and power to create and govern the universe. Could 

something powerful enough to do that experience pain? Could it experience emotional 

loss? Would such a thing have emotions have any kind at all? 

Let me formalize this argument a bit. God, we are told, is omnipotent (allpowerful) 

and omniscience (all-knowing). Very well. But let me ask you: Can an 

omnipotent being be harmed? No. An omnipotent being is invincible. Nothing can 

damage it. So such cannot know what it is like to be vulnerable. Therefore, it cannot

have needs. Need is about imperfection; it is about dependence on something external 

for one’s welfare. God, being all-powerful, doesn’t need anything. Or anyone. 

A being that does not need, does not care. Need is the basis of the love that 

people have for one another, and also for the mutual hate that people have. God has 

insecurities, no vulnerabilities. He is just intelligence, pure power. So even if he exists, 

he does not care about us. 

You care about other people---your parents, your children, your friends. Why? 

Because you need them, and they need you. You care about your dog and your cat. 

Why? Because you need them. You don’t care about cockroaches and worms. Why not? 

Because you don’t need them. Where there is no need, there is no concern. God, if he 

exists, cares about us even less than a scientist cares about the worms he is dissecting. 

But let’s set that aside. If God is all-powerful, then he cannot know what it is like 

to not be powerful. In which case, he is not all-knowing. For being all-knowing involves 

knowing what it is like to damaged, vulnerable, fearful, and the like. And God won’t 

know that. In any case, he cannot have experiential knowledge of it. Maybe he can 

compute his way to some surrogate for that knowledge, the way you and I can deduce 

what it is like live on the South Pole. But he can’t truly know it, since he can’t have the 

corresponding experiences.

This brings us to the Argument from Design, according to which organized and 

seemingly purposive nature of existence, especially the biological part, indicates that 

God exists, in the way that a clock indicates the existence of clock-maker. 

This is a good argument, but it is not a good argument for a God that has feelings 

or is otherwise psychologically human. Suppose that some kind of intelligence is 

responsible for, and embodied in, the workings of our organs and motions of the 

planets, and so on. Does that higher being have emotions? Does it care about us? There 

is no particular reason to believe so. 

Much the same holds of the so-called ‘Cosmological Argument’, according to 

which nothing could be the cause of anything unless something was its own cause and, 

for that very reason, violates natural law and is therefore supernatural. Even if some 

being is its own cause, it doesn’t follow that it cares about us, or knows about us, or has 

feelings. The connection between ‘x is its own cause’ and ‘x wrote the 10 

commandments’ is unclear, to put it mildly. 

Let’s talk about God in relation to morality. Some people say that without God, 

there is no morality. But that’s not true. Why do I think it wrong to bludgeon infants? Is 

it because God told me? No it isn’t. And what makes it wrong to bludgeon infants? Is 

that it God doesn’t like it? No. Whatever it is that makes it wrong is something intrinsic 

to the situation. Suppose that God showed up and told us how much he liked it when

infants were bludgeoned. Would that make it right? No. It would mean that God had 

some very deranged moral views. 

Morality seems to be about biology. Putting a cigarette in somebody’s eye is 

wrong, because doing so damages that person. What is immoral is what weakens, and 

what is moral is what strengthens. There’s probably more to it than that, but that’s the 

gist of the matter. 

You’ll hear some interesting arguments from my esteemed Catholic colleagues. 

According to one of them, the fact that explanations are possible means that there 

exists something that is self-explanatory—self-justifying principle, or some such. I agree. 

But that proves that there exist unconditional or self-evident truths. It doesn’t prove 

that God exists. God, after all, is not a truth. If he exists, he is sentient being, like you 

and me, but better. 

Another argument you’ll here concerns morality. It will be said that whenever 

something has a purpose, it has that purpose in relation to a higher being. A hammer 

has a purpose in relation to the carpenter who uses it. It does not have a purpose on its 

own. Similarly, given that we have purposes and objectives, it follows, so we are told, 

that there is a higher being---a God, a carpenter in the sky, as it were, but for whose 

existence, you and I would be like hammers and nails and in an occupied workshop. 

Here’s the problem. A hammer’s purposiveness is indeed derivative; when we 

speak of a hammer’s purpose, we are really referring to the purposes of the carpenter

who uses it. But I have purposes all by myself. When we talk about what Amol is trying 

to do, we are not talking about what some other being who is using me as a tool is 

trying to do. So the existence of purposes on our part does not imply the existence of a 

great carpenter in the sky the way that a hammer’s purpose implies the existence of a 

carpenter. 

So no, I can’t disprove God’s existence. But as we’ve just seen, it’s not hard to 

show that anything that has the power to do God-like things, such as running the 

universe, is quite literally unable to have any emotional attachments to us. We’ve also 

seen that moral laws have to do with health and illness and the like, and don’t bear 

either way on God’s existence. 

Michael’s Analysis of the Limits of Civil Protections (Philosophy) 

I believe (with some heavy reservations to be stated below) that Michael is 

heading in the right direction, but he still has a ways to go. The main problem with 

Michael’s analysis is that it is incomplete, as in, he doesn’t discuss slides 5-10. And some 

of the material on these slides is particularly pregnant. This is especially true of slide 5, 

which concerns how the hiring manager should behave, which is an interesting question 

and Michael’s thoughts on which I look forward to hearing. 

Michael’s discussion of slides 2-4 are reasonably compelling. (That said, his 

analysis of slide 2 involves an undue amount of sheer repetition of the slide itself.) The

oad strokes of what he is saying are perfectly correct. The hiring manager’s behavior is 

discriminatory and inappropriate. 

That said, Michael does not clearly distinguish legal from ethical questions, and 

he does not distinguish either from questions of protocol or regulatory procedure. And 

this is probably related to the fact Michael does not cite any actual laws or codes. 

Indeed, Michael only has four references, which of course falls short of the required 10. 

Michael certainly implicitly addresses the relevant parameters of the 

ADDRESSING framework (age, developmental and acquired disabilities, religion and 

ethnicity, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, indigenous heritage, national origin 

and gender). 

There is an important fact that Michael does not address at all and that, I 

believe, is easily overlooked. Devin overhears the hiring manager saying that he does 

not ‘agree with the homosexual lifestyle.’ On this basis, Devin becomes irate and comes 

to the conclusion that it is because he is gay that the hiring manager passed him for the 

position. 

There are several holes in this reasoning. First of all, we don’t know if the hiring 

manager knew that Devin is gay. It nowhere says that Devin was openly gay. For all we 

know, Devin may act like a stereotypically straight person—Devin himself may even tell 

anti-gay jokes to appear more straight. So even if the hiring manager has a personal

policy of not hiring homosexuals, we have zero evidence to the effect that this is what is 

going on in this particular case. 

Second, the hiring manager is overheard talking about how he doesn’t like the 

‘homosexual lifestyle.’ This doesn’t mean that he doesn’t like homosexuals. The term 

‘homosexual lifestyle’ refers to a way of living in which some homosexuals engage but in 

which others don’t. There are gays who, in terms of their lifestyle, are extremely buttondown 

and conservative, and the hiring manager doesn’t disapprove of their lifestyle— 

even though (though we have no evidence of this) he may not approve of their being 

homosexual. 

Third, even if the boss has some general aversion to homosexuals or 

homosexuality, there is zero evidence that this actually played a role in his hiring 

decision. True—Devin seems to be qualified for the job. But for all we know, there were 

1,500 applicants. And for all we know, the person the hiring managed hired was himself 

(or herself) gay. In any case, people have their personal sentiments about other 

individuals and other groups, but if a given person is professional, he won’t let this 

impact his hiring decisions. Is it really true that everyone who has any feelings of a 

politically incorrect kind about a given group is ipso facto a bigot and makes 

discriminatory hiring decisions? No. Also, in private businesses, people have strong 

incentives to hire competent workers, regardless of their own prejudices, since doing so 

is profitable and failing to do is not profitable.

The truth is—we have scant information about what actually happened. We 

don’t know who actually got the job—it may have been an openly gay person, for all we 

know. We don’t know who else applied. We don’t know if Devin would have been the 

best fit for the job—it might have involved Devin’s working with someone with whom 

Devin had previously had a conflict. It may be that Devin’s prospective co-worker was a 

black person and that Devin had had a history of overt racism towards blacks, this being 

why the hiring manager did not hire Devin. 

We don’t really know much of anything about the hiring decision. All we have is 

one remarked, which Devin heard by eavesdropping, which, though might be probative 

if taken in conjunction with other data, is not accompanied by such data. And we are, to 

put it euphemistically, ‘jumping the gun’ (or, put non-euphemistically, being prejudicial) 

if we automatically brand the hiring manager a ‘bigot’ on the basis of the fact that he 

didn’t hire Devin. That may well be what the hiring manager is, and that may well be 

why he didn’t hire Devin. But we don’t know that, and Michael assumes otherwise, and 

this is an issue of which her should perhaps be mindful when preparing his final draft. 

Bentham and Mill on Different Types of Pleasure 

Explain the difference between Bentham and Mill regarding types of pleasures. 

Start by explaining the greatest happiness principle and principle of utility, then what

the hedonistic calculus is, then how Bentham and Mill value competing pleasures 

differently from each other (like the example in class of $20 - should it go to the 

transformers movie that makes someone really happy, or the museum which leads to a 

higher quality of pleasure?) Which (Bentham or Mill) do you agree with and why? Use 

quotes from the reading to help illustrate the theories. (minimum 400 words for this 

entire answer) 

Bentham’s utilitarianism is given by the principle that an act is good to the extent 

that it maximizes pleasure (or minimizes pain) and wrong to the extent that it 

diminishes pleasure (or maximizes pain). Mill’s utilitarianism is given by the principle 

than act is good to the extent that it maximizes happiness (or minimizes unhappiness) 

and bad to the extent that it minimizes unhappiness (or maximizes unhappiness). 

So for Bentham the central concepts are pleasure and pain: (“Nature has placed 

mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for 

them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. 

On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and 

effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we 

think…”) By contrast, for Mill, the central concepts are happiness and unhappiness. 

The distinction is important: pain and pleasure do not involve one’s agency; they 

are properties not of actions but of experiences or undergoings. One experiences

pleasure when having a massage or being intoxicated. By contrast, happiness does 

involve one’s agency; indeed, it seems to be a property of the way in which one engages 

the world. To be happy is to be fulfilled, and to be fulfilled is to act in such a way as to 

maximize one’s potential. And this is why one is happy to the extent that one acts in 

ways that express and develop one’s agency. One is happy when (and to the extent that) 

one is building a house, or improving one’s mind, or working on one’s tennis game, or 

solving a math problem, or writing a great philosophy paper. 

Consequently, Bentham’s utilitarianism is radically different from Mill’s 

utilitarianism. A related point is that, for reasons now to be stated, Bentham’s doctrine, 

though false, is not viciously circular, whereas Mill’s doctrine, though true, is viciously 

circular. 

Somebody who shoots heroin all day experiences a lot of pleasure but probably 

isn’t happy. And somebody who does difficulty but fulfilling work all day is probably 

happy but doesn’t necessary experience very much pleasure. So Bentham’s doctrine— 

that the moral goodness=pleasure-conduciveness is simply false. 

But Mill’s doctrine---that moral-goodness=happiness-conduciveness—though 

correct, is viciously circular, for the reason that the concept of happiness is to be 

understood in terms of the concept of moral value. More specifically, we are happy to 

the extent that our lives comply with our values. The reason the hardworking man is 

happy, despite not experiencing much pleasure, is that he is living up to his values. And

the reason the sluggard is unhappy, despite experiencing a lot of pleasure, is that his life 

is not living up to his values. So Mill’s utilitarianism, though correct (or seemingly so, at 

any rate), is viciously circular if taken as an analysis of morality, since it presupposes 

some independent conception of moral value and, therefore, of morality. 

Set Theory Homework (Formal Logic) 

1. 

a. N ∪ {n ∈ N |n is even}? 

Answer: N 

b. {a, b, {1, 2}}⋂ {a, 1, {2}} 

Answer: a 

c. {n∈ N|n>0} 

Answer: ∅ (empty set) 

2. 

a. Bijective, surjective, injective

. Not injective, not surjective, not bijective 

c. Injective, not surjective, not bijective 

3. Two sets are equinumerous iff there is a one-one correspondence 

between them. Let R be the relation that sets bear to each other when there is a oneone 

correspondence between them; in other words, let R be the relation of 

equinumerosity. R is reflexive, since any given set can be placed in a one-one 

correspondence with itself. R is symmetrical, since, whenever S1 can be placed in oneone 

correspondence with S2, S2 can be placed in one-one correspondence with S1. And 

R is transitive, since, whenever S1 can be placed in one-one correspondence with S2 and 

S2 can be placed in one-one correspondence with S3, S1 can be placed in one-one 

correspondence with S3. 

4. Proposition: (A⋂B)∪C=A⋂(B∪C), whenever C ⊆ A. Proof: Assume that C ⊆ 

A. In that case, (A⋂B)∪C= A⋂B, and A⋂(B∪C)= A⋂B. Therefore, if C ⊆ A, then 

(A⋂B)∪C=A⋂B=A⋂(B∪C). 

5. Let f: X→Y, with A∈X and B∈Y. Show that: 

a. If f is injective, f-1(f(A))=A. Proof: Assume that f is injective and f(A)=B. In that 

case, f-1(B)=A. Given that f(A)=B, it follows that f-1(f(A))=f-1(B) =A.

. If f is surjective, f (f-1(B))=B. Proof: Assume that f is surjective. In that case, for 

each element A of Y, there is an element B of X such that f(A)=B. Given that f(A)=B, it 

follows that f-1(B)=A and therefore follows that f(f-1(B))=B. 

c. If f is not injective, there exists A∈X such that (a) fails. Proof: Assume that f is 

not injective. In that case, there exist elements A and C of X such that f(A)=B and f(C)=B. 

It follows that for f-1 to exist, it would have to map B onto both A and C. Since a function 

cannot map a given element onto distinct elements, it follows that f-1 doesn’t exist. 

d. If f is not surjective, there exists B∈Y such that (b) fails. Proof: Assume that f is 

not surjective. In that case, there exists a B∈Y such that there exists no A∈X such that 

f(A)=B or therefore such that f-1(B)=A or therefore such that f (f-1(B))=B. 

6. Show that when A~B (i.e. when A and B are equinumerous/bijectable): 

a. AxB~BxA. Proof: Since A~B, it follows that AxA~AxB~BxB~BxA. Given that ~ is 

transitive, it follows that AxB~BxA. 

b. A-B~B-A, then A~B. 

Intuitive idea behind proof: When A=B, A~B and A-B~B-A. So when each of A-B 

and B-A is empty (has a cardinality of 0), then A-B~B-A and A~B. If A~B when each of A-B 

and B-A has exactly n-many members, then adding a single member x to A that doesn’t 

belong to B and a single member y to B that doesn’t belong A will increase the 

cardinality of each of A-B and B-A by one, so that A-B~B-A, and will increase the 

cardinality of each of A and B by one, so that A~B.

Formal Proof (by induction): First show that A~B when each of A-B and B-A has a 

cardinality of 0 (i.e. when each set is empty). Next show that that if A~B when each of A- 

B and B-A has a cardinality of n, then A~B when each of A-B and B-A has a cardinality of 

n+1. First step: When each of A-B and B-A has a cardinality of 0, A=B and therefore A~B. 

Next step: Assume that A~B when each of A-B and B-A has a cardinality of n. In that 

case, adding exactly one element to each set that doesn’t belong to the other will 

increase the cardinality of each of A-B and B-A to n+1 and will also increase the 

cardinality of each of A and B by one integer. Therefore, if A~B when each of A-B and B- 

A has a cardinality of n, then A~B when each of A-B and B-A has a cardinality of n+1. 

Aristotle on Virtue: Final Exam (Philosophy) 

1. On page 140, Aristotle describes how "moral virtue comes about as a 

result of habit." Explain this quote by using quotes from the rest of page 140. 

If act with self-discipline on only a single occasion, I am not a self-disciplined 

person and therefore do not have the virtue of being self-disciplined. If I am a generally

an indolent sluggard and act with discipline only one occasion, my acting in that way 

embodies desperation, not self-control: that act is about lacking the virtue of selfdiscipline, 

not having it. But if I am self-disciplined in general—if, on each and every 

occasion that it behooves me to act with discipline I do so—then, if I act with discipline 

on a given occasion, my act does embody genuine self-discipline. It is a desperationmotivated 

act that has the same external form as a discipline-motivated act; it is a bona 

fide act of self-discipline. And so it is that Aristotle says: “[O]ne swallow does not make a 

summer; nor does one day; and so too, one day, or a short time, does not make a man 

blessed [virtuous] and happy.” 

2. On page 144, Aristotle says, "virtue is therefore a kind of mean." What is Aristotle 

trying to say about morality here? 

For Aristotle, virtue is about rationality and self-control. A virtuous person is one 

who governs himself in a rational manner, a rational manner being one that allows for 

the greatest possible degree of flourishing and that therefore presupposes a condition 

of health. Extreme action is about a lack of self-control. People do not have self-control 

if they are ‘either-or’ people: people who either binge or starve themselves; people who 

either drink until they black-out or live like monks; people who either never exercise or 

do nothing but exercise. Any given such form of extremism embodies a lack of self-

control, which in turn embodies a failure to govern oneself in a rational manner; for 

which reason, each of these ‘extremisms’ involves failing to flourish in some important 

respect. The person who binge eats is unable to do the things that a healthy person can 

do, as is the person who starves himself. The person who never exercises cannot fulfill 

his athletic gifts, and the person who does nothing but exercise cannot develop his 

intellectual gifts. In general, extremism embodies a certain laziness and, therewith, a 

certain irrationality and smallness of character. Contrariwise, the middle-road—the path 

of moderation---embodies self-control, rationality, and largeness of character and, 

therewith, a high degree of virtue. 


I have to write a paper (250 word minimum). Here's the assignment post : 

Thomas Nagel's bat argument. How is it a problem for materialism? Do you think that 

this argument shows that materialism is false, or is there a good way for the materialist 

to respond to the argument? Explain and discuss, supporting your answer with reasons. 

Thomas Nagel puts for the following argument against materialism. (Materialism 

is the doctrine that the mental is physical—that mental events and structures are

identical with or at least mediated by physiological events and structures.) Suppose that 

Sam is a super-scientist who knows everything there is to know about bat-physiology 

and neurology. Will Sam for that reason know everything (or even anything) about batpsychology? 

More specifically, will Sam on that basis know what it is like to be a bat? No 

he won’t. (If he knows what it is like to be a bat, it is because he himself is a bat, or at 

least a bat-like creature, and therefore has, as it were, direct, first-hand knowledge of 

what it is like to be a bat. No such knowledge that he has will have for its sole or primary 

basis his knowledge of bat-physiology.) In general, no amount of knowledge of the 

physical by itself gives one knowledge of the psychological. 

The obvious response to this is to say: “That argument involves an intensional 

fallacy—the same sort of fallacy that is embodied in the argument from since I can know 

that x is water without knowing that x is H2O, it follows that water is not H2O.” But this 

counter-response is flawed. It is only if I don’t know everything there is to know about 

water—only if, in particular, I don’t know its chemical composition---that I can know 

that x is water without also knowing that x is H2O. But even if I know everything there is 

to know about a given bat’s physiology, I do not on that basis have the slightest idea 

what it is like to be that bat. 

“But you are begging the question”, it will be said. “For if that bat’s psychology is 

its physiology, or at least some aspect thereof, then you cannot know everything there 

is to know about that bat’s physiology without ipso facto knowing about its psychology.”

But this argument clearly over-extends the scope of what is included in the term 

“physiology” and therefore has no scope. 

In conclusion, Nagel’s argument does seem to show that materialism is false. 



Question 1 (Analysis of knowledge). Explain the claim that Gettier is arguing 

against in his paper. Explain his argument, using the Smith/Jones example. Make sure to 

explain the role of the second of his “two points” about justification. The example 

suggest a certain modification of the JTB theory of knowledge. Explain the modification. 

Then explain Goldman’s “fake barn” example, and how it causes trouble for the modified 

theory. Williamson says that knowledge can’t be analyzed. What does he mean by this, 

and why does he think this? How does Radford argue that, before being asked, Jean (i) 

Jean knew that James I died in 1625, but (ii) Jean did not believe that James died in 1625, 

and also (iii) Jean did not know that he knew that James I died in 1625? Williamson 

would disagree with Radford about (ii). Explain why, using his Kerry/Terry example. 

Edmund Gettier is arguing (cogently) against the claim that knowledge is justified 

true belief (JTB). In other words, he is arguing against the claim that x’s being justified

true belief is necessary and sufficient for x’s having knowledge. Gettier produces several 

counterexamples to the thesis that knowledge is JTB (henceforth just ‘JTB’), one of them 

being as follows. 

Smith believes, and is justified in believing, that Jones will get the promotion. 

Smith knows that Jones has ten coins in his pocket and on this basis (justifiably) believes 

that someone with ten coins in his pocked will get the promotion. Brown ends up 

getting the promotion, and as it happens Brown has ten coins in his pocket. So Smith 

had a justified true belief to the effect that someone with ten coins in his pocket would 

get the promotion, but it clearly isn’t a case of knowledge. 

The obvious amendment suggested by this example of Gettier’s is that if one’s 

justification for believing such and such involves acceptance of a false belief, then that 

justification is not knowledge-conducive. But Goldman showed this amendment to be 

false (or at least limited in scope) with his famous barn-façade example. Jerry is driving 

through a county in the USA in which there are a million barn facades but only one 

actual barn. He is looking at the one barn façade in that county that is attached to an 

actual barn and on that basis forms the belief that he is looking at a barn. That belief is 

justified and true but (arguably) not a case of knowledge. At the same time, there is no 

obvious sense in which it is based on a false belief (all of Jerry’s premises are true, after 

all).

Williamson argues that the concept of knowledge cannot be analyzed and is 

therefore a primitive concept. His argument is simply that attempts to analyze the 

concept of knowledge fail. Williamson also seems to assume (or at least must assume) 

that some concepts are indeed primitive. (This assumption is almost certainly false.) 

Radford holds that Jean knew but did not believe that James I died in 1625 and 

also did not know that he knew this. Radford’s argument derives heavily from analysis of 

ordinary language. A given person who does know the answer on a test may be unsure 

of the answer. (Oftentimes, people have to let go of their self-doubts to perform a task 

well or to know exactly what it is that they know. A good pianist or tennis player may 

have to deactivate his self-critical conscious self and just let his abilities take the helm, 

as it were, and the same may be true of someone taking a history test.) Radford’s 

argument seems quite spurious. Jean does both know and believe that James I died in 

1625, but he doesn’t know what it is that he knows/believes. Not all knowledge is 

matched by self-knowledge. One cannot know that such and such without knowing that 

such and such. The latter is meta-knowledge and involves having and deploying 

concepts not involved in having the corresponding bit of first-order knowledge. 

(Compare: My knowing that there is a bee over there does not involve my having the 

concept of knowledge, but my knowing that I know there to a bee over there does 

involve my having that concept.)

Whereas Radford holds that Jean knows but does not believe that James I died in 

1625, Williamson holds that Jean does in fact believe it, his argument being as follows. 

Suppose that Kerry is taking a history test and ‘guesses’ one of the answers correctly, his 

‘guess’ being based upon subconscious memory/knowledge. In that case, his guess 

embodies knowledge, and therefore belief, albeit of the subconscious variety. 

Question 2 (Simulation). Bostrom argues that: (∗) fsim = fpflNl (fpflNl)+1 where fp 

“Fraction of all human-level technological civilizations that survive to reach a posthuman 

stage” fl “[F]raction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running 

ancestorsimulations” Nl “the average number of ancestor-simulations run by such 

interested civilizations” fsim “The actual fraction of all observers with human-type 

experiences that live in simulations” Explain how his argument for (∗) relies on the 

assumption: (A) H = Hsim where H “Average number of individuals that have lived in a 

civilization before it reaches a posthuman stage” Hsim Average number of observers 

with human-type experiences that live in an ancestor simulation Explain the relevance to 

(A) of his claim: comp: “Provided a system implements the right sort of computational 

structures and processes, it can be associated with conscious experiences” Explain why 

comp, if true, marks an important difference between being an “observer with human-

type experiences” and being a hurricane. Bostom next argues from (∗) to the claim that 

one of the following is true (1) fp ≈ 0 (2) fl ≈ 0 1 (3) fsim ≈ 1 Explain the role in this 

argument of his claim: • “Posthuman civilizations would have enough computing power 

to run hugely many ancestor-simulations even while using only a tiny fraction of their 

resources for that purpose” Bostrom then puts forward the principle (#) Cr(SIM|fsim = x) 

= x where SIM is “the hypothesis that one is in a simulation”. Explain in your own words 

what (#) says. Bostrom claims: no info: “we don’t have any information that indicate 

that our own . . . experiences are any more or less likely than other human-type 

experiences to have been implemented [biologically] rather than [being simulated]” 

Explain, roughly, how Bostrom uses no info to argue for (#). Bostrom says that, in 

assuming no info, he is “assuming only that we have no information that enables us to 

predict any differences between the experiences of simulated minds and those of the 

original biological minds.” But that’s not true. Explain why he is also assuming 

something like premise P1 of Byrne’s argument for skepticism about external world. 

Then explain how someone like Byrne might argue against no info. Suppose Bostrom is 

right that (#) is true, and also right that “In the dark forest of our current ignorance, it 

seems sensible to apportion one’s credence roughly evenly between (1), (2), and (3).” 

What does this imply about how likely we should think it is that we are living in a 

computer simulation? Now explain Nozick’s “experience machine” thought experiment. 

What are two things that Nozick thinks are bad about being plugged into an experience

machine? Would Nozick think that living in a Bostromian ancestor-simulation is as bad 

as being plugged into an experience machine? 

Bostrom’s argument is as follows. If people make to the next evolutionary phase- 

--the ‘post-human’ phase---then these post-human superhumans will have both the 

technological wherewithal, as well as the inclination, to run simulations of their human 

ancestors, the characters in which will be conscious subjects. Moreover, these 

superhumans will run more than one such simulation—they will run them frequently, 

routinely, unendingly. Therefore, if human beings do survive long enough to evolve into 

these superhuman ‘post-humans’, then the number of simulation-internal human 

‘characters’, each of which has the same subjectivity as an actual person, will vastly 

number the number of actual human beings present during the pre-post-human era. So 

assuming (for illustrative reasons) that a trillion such simulations are run, then it is a 

trillion times more likely that I am a character in such a simulation than it is that I am an 

‘actual’ person living in the pre-post-human era. Therefore, we are more justified in 

believing that we are characters in a simulation than we are in believing that we are 

‘real people’, for lack of a better term. 

For this argument to go through, the numbers have to be chosen very carefully. 

If there are many simulations of the just-described kind, but the average number of 

human characters in those simulations is low, then (even if Bostrom’s other premises

are granted) it may not be unreasonable for us to believe that we are ‘real’ (as opposed 

to simulation-internal characters, albeit of the conscious variety). And one way of 

guaranteeing that the numbers support Bostrom’s argument is to suppose (i) that many 

such simulations are run and (ii) that the average number of human characters in such a 

simulation equals the actual pre-post-human population. Bostrom assumes (i) and also 

duly assumes (ii), (ii) being embodied in his assumption that H = Hsim. 

Bostrom’s argument only goes through if it is assumed that these post-humans 

are able to run simulations that contain actual conscious beings (in which case, these 

simulations, it would seem, are not really simulations so much as they are recreations— 

duplications---of the human era and therefore not merely simulations at all---a point 

that Bostrom overlooks). In other words, Bostrom assumes that, given sufficiently 

sophisticated technology (such as these post-humans will have, according to Bostrom), 

said technology can pack its own models with beings that are conscious. In other words, 

he assumes that: (COMP) “Provided a system implements the right sort of 

computational structures and processes, it can be associated with conscious 

experiences.” Be it noted that this even this assumption, strong as it is, is not strong 

enough, since it must be assumed not only that these simulation-internal creatures are 

conscious but conscious in extremely specific ways---conscious not in the ways that a 

giraffe is conscious but conscious in the exact ways that human beings have 

been/are/will be conscious. In any case, if COMP is false, then these simulations are

packed with inanimate beings, in which case, given that we are animate, we have 

absolutely no reason to regard ourselves as characters in a simulation. So if COMP is 

false, Bostrom’s argument immediately fails. 

At the same time, if COMP is true, Bostrom’s argument doesn’t necessarily go 

through, since, as just stated, it is necessary not just that these simulation-characters be 

conscious but also conscious in specific ways and also since, even if this alleged posthuman 

technology can run simulations that are loaded with characters that have the 

right kinds of mental activity, there is no guarantee that these post-humans would have 

either the inclination or the economic resources needed to run any of these simulations, 

let alone enough of them to validate Bostrom’s argument. 

To be sure, Bergstrom does acknowledge the need to assume that these posthumans 

would have both the means to easily run these simulations. Hence his making 

the following assumption: 

“Posthuman civilizations would have enough computing power to run hugely 

many ancestor-simulations even while using only a tiny fraction of their resources for 

that purpose.” 

Unless this assumption is granted, then, just stated, there is no guarantee that 

these post-humans would be economically capable (would have the resources) to run 

these simulations ever, let alone in large enough numbers to support Bergstrom’s claim 

that we are probably characters in such a simulation. But, of course, it is unclear what

the justification for this assumption is. Bostrom’s justification for it seems to be: Given 

how quickly computing technology is advancing, we will not only be able to run such 

simulations but run them for negligible costs. (It is also assumed that post-humans 

would desire to run them and, therefore, that they would spend the energy necessary to 

make it cost-effective to run them en masse.) 

Also, Bostrom’s argument goes through only if there is no specific reason why 

future technology would be unlikely or unable to pack simulations with characters 

having our specific psychological traits. In other words, Bostrom’s argument goes 

through only if: NO INFO “we don’t have any information that indicate that our own . . . 

experiences are any more or less likely than other human-type experiences to have 

been implemented [biologically] rather than [being simulated].” Be it noted, that the 

occurrence of “any more” should be purged from this quotation, since if future 

technology were in fact “any more” likely to produce simulation-characters with our 

psychologies, that would help Bostrom’s argument. 

In any case, there is no justification for NO INFO; nor could there be, relative to 

our current state of knowledge, which doesn’t allow us to make such precise predictions 

about technology with such a high degree of confidence. 

One problem with NO INFO, and with Bostrom’s argument generally, is that it 

assumes the irrefutability of skepticism. Bostrom is assuming that, given only what our 

senses tell us, we are no more likely to be perceiving reality as it is than we are to be

characters in a simulation (brains in a vat, dupes of an evil demon). In other words, 

Bostrom is assuming that we have no principled way of deciding between different 

hypotheses that all model our perceptual data, this being the content of Byrne’s 

principle that: 

basis of your 

P1: If you know that the sitting hypothesis is true, you know this solely on the 

evidence about your sensory experiences. 

To be sure, skeptics would hold that Bostrom is not making a mistake in making 

this assumption. But it is still worth noting, since, should it turn out that skepticism is 

contraindicated, Bostrom’s argument fails. And there are reasons to hold that it is in fact 

contraindicated. It is one thing to hold that, given only what our sensory experiences 

are, we ‘could’ be in a computer-simulation. But, as Daniel Dennett shows in 

Consciousness Explained, it is another matter altogether to produce a model of such a 

simulation that is even close to what is either computationally feasible or to what 

(post)humans or (post)human technology could generate. 

Nozick’s ‘Experience Machine’ thought-experiment is supposed to show (and 

does show) that, other things being equal, people prefer reality to illusion. People would 

rather have a good experience that is veridical than a good experience that is non-

veridical. (People probably do not categorically prefer veridical bad experiences to nonveridical 

good ones. Hence the “others things being equal” in the second to last 

sentence.) Nozick analyzes this preference of people’s by saying that (i) we value what is 

real, (ii) we want control (which, arguably, we don’t if we’re characters in a simulation) 

and (iii) since we believe that we live in the ‘real’ world, we are reluctant to devalue our 

existences by entering a fake one. (The third principle is more or less a repetition of the 

first.) 

For these three reasons, Nozick would hold that our lives would be less 

meaningful than (supposedly) they in fact are if in fact we were simulation-internal 

beings. 

Camus and Nagel on the Meaning (or Lack thereof) of Life (Philosophy) 

Camus and Nagel both claim that life is ‘absurd’, but they have very different 

reasons for claiming this. Also, it isn’t clear that what Nagel means when he describes 

life as ‘absurd’ is what Camus means when he so describes it. Strikingly, both seem to 

come to the conclusion (though they come to this conclusion in different ways) that it 

doesn’t matter that life is absurd; that we must accept this absurdity; or that it doesn’t 

matter if we accept it, since, whether we accept it or not, it continues to have whatever

meaning it had before we came to think of it as ‘absurd.’ Which strongly suggests that it 

is not life itself that is absurd, but the rather the belief that it is absurd. 

First of all, what is absurdity? Absurdity is incoherence. An absurd statement is 

one that lacks a coherent meaning and therefore ultimately lacks any meaning at all. If I 

say ‘x is a five-sided triangle’, my statement is absurd, since I am attributing 

incompatible properties to x and am therefore attributing nothing to x. In saying that x 

is both five-sided and a triangle, I am in effect saying that it is neither and am therefore 

saying nothing about it. 

What does it mean to say that life is absurd? Life is a not a statement; it is not 

argument or series of ideas; and it therefore cannot be said to be incoherent in the 

same way as ‘x is a five-sided triangle.’ So what does it mean to say that life is absurd? It 

makes sense to describe certain pursuits as absurd. (It may be absurd to become a 

travel agent, given that there no more jobs for travel agents.) And it may even be absurd 

to describe some specific person’s entire life as absurd. (If Smith’s life is a series of 

absurd of pursuits, then there seems to be a sense in which Smith’s life as a whole is 

absurd.) But what would it mean to describe life as categorically absurd? There is only 

one answer: if being alive entailed needing something that being alive itself made it 

impossible to have, then life would be absurd. For under that circumstance, life would 

be self-defeating in much the same that ‘x is a five-sided triangle’ is self-defeating and it 

would correspondingly ‘lack meaning.’

Both Camus and Nagel seem to be at least vaguely aware of this fact. Nagel’s 

view as to what makes life ‘absurd’ is as follows. We are capable of looking at life 

‘objectively’—from a bird’s eye, God-like ‘view from nowhere’ (to use an expression of 

his). And when we look at our lives from such a viewpoint, the various concerns that 

drive us seem meaningless. But they don’t for any reason lose their power to compel us. 

We can be objective about our subjectivity, but we remain trapped within our 

subjectivity and all of the desires and values included therein. 

Is this a good reason to regard life as absurd? No, it is not. Yes—I can be 

‘objective’ about my hunger; I can know that other people aren’t hungry; I can know 

that it has certain causes and so on. But that doesn’t make my hunger go away. Nor is 

there any reason to expect that it would do so. So there is nothing absurd about the fact 

that we can be objective about ourselves while continuing to have the concerns that we 

have during our non-reflective moments. So the ‘absurdity’ that Nagel describes isn’t an 

absurdity at all. 

Nagel correctly says that there is nothing absurd about a mouse’s life, the reason 

being that a mouse cannot take a bird’s eye view of itself while continuing to be 

dominated by the psychological forces that previously dominated it: 

Why is the life of a mouse not absurd? The orbit of the moon is not absurd either, 

but that involves no strivings or aims at all. A mouse, however, has to work to stay alive.

Yet he is not absurd, because he lacks the capacities for self-consciousness and selftranscendence 

that enable him to see that he is only a mouse. If that did happen 

[Nagel’s emphasis], his life would become absurd, since self-awareness would not make 

him cease to be a mouse and would not enable him to rise above his mousely strivings. 

(Nagle, The Absurd, p. 21) 

So if a mouse became self-aware, its life would become absurd? Really? Why? 

Because, says Nagel, despite being self-aware it would continue to be dominated by its 

‘mousely strivings.’ What are these ‘mousely strivings’? The desire for water and food 

and the like. Why is self-awareness supposed to make these needs go away? Because, 

Nagel tells us, from a God’s like perspective, such needs seem small and insignificant, 

and yet they would continue to dominate the mouse even after it had become aware of 

their insignificance. Yes—from the perspective of a being (including God) that isn’t the 

mouse, the mouse’s biological needs are not very important. Yes---if the mouse were to 

become self-conscious, as human beings are, it could be ‘objective’ about itself and 

therefore realize that its own needs were not important from the viewpoint of some 

other creature. And yes---despite that knowledge it would still have those needs. But 

there is nothing absurd there. Being self-aware, I know that my money troubles are not 

Warren Buffet’s money troubles; but there is no reason why that knowledge of mine 

should make money troubles go away. So contrary to what Nagel says, there is nothing

paradoxical about the fact that we can see ourselves from a second-party viewpoint 

while continuing to have the various needs and concerns that we previously had. So if 

human life is absurd, it isn’t for the reason Nagel puts forth. 

Nagel considers Camus’s analysis of the meaninglessness of life and rejects it, 

without providing clear reasons. But Camus’s analysis is similar to Nagel’s: 

If I were a tree among trees, a cat among animals this life would have a meaning, 

or rather this problem would not arise, for I should belong to this world. I should be this 

world to which I am now opposed by my whole consciousness and my whole insistence 

upon familiarity. This ridiculous reason is what sets me in opposition to all creation. I 

cannot cross it out with a stroke of the pen. (Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 51-52) 

Camus is saying about cats what Nagel says about mice: their reason their lives 

aren’t absurd is that they are self-aware. And what makes human life absurd is that we 

are self-aware. 

It isn’t clear exactly how self-awareness drains life of meaning, but in what 

appears to be an attempt to answer this question, Camus says that “this problem would 

not arise” if weren’t self-aware. It isn’t clear what “this problem” is, but the contents of 

the immediately preceding material give us a vague idea:

I hold certain facts from which I cannot separate. What I know, what is certain, 

what I cannot deny, what I cannot reject---this is what counts. I can negate everything of 

that part of me that lives on vague nostalgias, except this desire for unity, this longing to 

solve, this need for clarity and cohesion. I can refute everything in this world 

surrounding me that offends or enraptures me, except this chaos, this sovereign chance 

and this divine equivalence which springs from anarchy. I don’t know whether this world 

has a meaning that transcends it. But I do know that I don’t know that I do not know 

that meaning and that it impossible just now for me to know it. What can a meaning 

outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, 

what resists me---that is what I understand. And these two certainties---my appetite for 

the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and 

reasonable principle---I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other truth can I 

admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lack and which means nothing within 

the limits of my condition? (Camus, Absurd Freedom, p. 51). 

Camus seems to be three distinct ideas as to why life is ‘absurd.’ 

(i) 

The universe is inherently devoid of meaning, it being 

“chaos…chance…anarchy”, which for some reason drains our lives of meaning.

(ii) 

Even if the world does have a meaning, we know that we don’t know what 

that meaning is (“I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But 

I do know that I don’t know that I do not know that meaning and that it impossible just 

now for me to know it”), which for some reason further drains life of meaning. 

(iii) 

Despite knowing that we won’t find this meaning, we will still look for it 

(“And these two certainties---my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the 

impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle---I also know 

that I cannot reconcile them”), which for some reason still further drains life of meaning. 

Let us take these ideas in turn, starting with (i). Let’s grant that the non-sentient 

part of the universe is ‘meaningless’ (whatever that means). Why does it follow that our 

existences are meaningless? True—rocks don’t have feelings about us or anything else 

and neither, tautologously, do other inanimate objects. But that doesn’t show that our 

lives lack meaning. If anything, it shows that our lives are islands of meaning in a giant 

sea of meaningless. To invert this reasoning: What if rocks were aware of us? Would 

that make our lives more meaningful than they currently are? No, it wouldn’t. When 

new people are conceived and born, the ratio of animate to inanimate material in the 

universe increases, but our lives do not necessarily become more meaningful for it. 

As for (ii): Let’s grant that we know ourselves not to know what “the meaning” of 

the world is. Does that make our lives meaningless? No. Smith’s knowing that he cannot

identify the meaning of some ink-deposit doesn’t makes his life meaningless, nor does 

Smith’s knowing that he cannot identify the meaning of the inanimate part of the 

universe as a whole. 

As for (iii): Is it true that despite knowing ourselves to know the world to have no 

meaning, we still look for that meaning. No, it isn’t. It cannot possibly be. It is not 

possible to try to do something that one knows to be impossible to do. If I know with 

complete certainty that some ink-deposit has no meaning, I cannot even try to look for 

meaning it. I can try to look for meaning in it if I am almost certain that it has no 

meaning, and therefore don’t quite know it, but not if I am completely certain and do 

know it. So Camus is simply wrong to say that we know ourselves to be looking for a 

meaning that we not know to exist. 

Both Camus and Nagel believe themselves to be explaining why human life is 

absurd, as though this were some pre-existing datum, like a black spot on an x-ray. But it 

isn’t a datum, and they aren’t trying to explain it: they are trying to show it. And details 

aside, they put forth the same broken argument: our self-awareness is what makes our 

lives life meaningless, and it makes our lives meaningless by making us look for a 

meaning to our lives that doesn’t exist. Which is obviously absurd, since, whether or not 

our lives have a meaning, our looking for that meaning isn’t responsible for its nonexistence.

Both Nagel and Camus suggest ways of dealing with the supposed 

meaninglessness of life. Camus says that an attitude of defiant ‘scorn’ is indicated: 

Sisyphus, proletariat of the Gods, powerful and rebellious, knows the whole 

extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity 

that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate 

that cannot be surmounted by scorn. 

The idea seems to be that if we are aware of how ‘wretched’ and meaningless 

our lives are, then they are for that reason less meaningless. 

The problem with this solution is that it isn’t quite clear wherein the 

meaninglessness of our lives lies; so it isn’t clear what we are supposed to confront. And 

it isn’t much to help use Sisyphus as a proxy for humanity, since Sisyphus, if he existed, 

would be much more concerned with the fact that he had to spend his days rolling a 

rock up a mountain than with the supposed fact that his life lacked meaning. As for 

Camus’s suggestion that we bravely carry on apace, even in the face of self-doubt, that 

is excellent advice but isn’t exactly insightful. 

Nagel dismisses this advice as “romantic and slightly self-pitying”—which it isn’t, 

incidentally, since it seems to be exhortation that we not pity ourselves—but then 

himself gives much the same advice, though in a veiled form:

If a sense of the absurd is a way of perceiving our true situation (even though the 

situation is not absurd until the perception arises), then what reason have we to resent 

or escape it? Like the capacity for epistemological skepticism, it results from the ability 

to understand our human limitations. It need not be a matter for agony unless we make 

it so. Nor need it involve a defiant conception of fate that allows us to feel brave or 

proud. Such dramatics, even if carried on in private, betray a failure to appreciate the 

cosmic unimportance of the situation. If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to 

believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach 

our lives with irony instead of heroism or despair. (Nagel, The Absurd, p. 23.) 

So whereas Camus tells us to be courageous, Nagel tells us to be ironic, as though 

being ironic about our lives will make them meaningful or at least take away the sting of 

their supposed meaninglessness. 

But this is bad advice. If a psychiatrist tells us a depressed patient of his to be 

‘ironic’ about his life, he is telling him to regard his life as meaningless and not worth 

putting effort into, which is more likely to worsen the patient’s condition than to 

improve it. And this advice is bad because it’s incoherent: to regard something with 

irony is treat that thing as though it has no meaning. To be ironic about a job is to treat 

that job as a meaningless joke—which will make that job meaningless even if it had the

potential to be meaningful. Also, an attitude of irony towards a given thing presupposes 

that it could have meaning, and an attitude of irony towards life would therefore be 

appropriate only if life could have meaning, which, according to Nagel, it couldn’t. So 

whereas Camus’ advice, though pedestrian, is affirming, Nagel’s is undermining and is 

also logically inconsistent with his already incoherent views about the meaning of life. 

These two analyses are not worth considering on their own terms, as we have 

seen, and are to be understood in ad hominem psychoanalytic terms. When lightweights 

shoot blanks, they say that life has no meaning. But it does, even if the intellects 

of a few sheltered academics have erectile dysfunction. 

Camus’ Hero as Rebel without a Cause (Philosophy) 

For Camus, Sisyphus is the ultimate hero. Sisyphus pushes a boulder up a hill; the 

boulder falls down; and Sisyphus does it all over again---over and over again. Sisyphus is 

about striving for the sake of striving—living for the sake of living. He acts; he does not 

retreat into reflection. It might behoove him to reflect more on what he does; but in 

making such a concession to cool-headed rationality, Sisyphus would be draining himself 

of precisely that element of spontaneity and irrationality that gives him his distinctive 

vitality and heroism. For Camus, the hero is the same person as the rebel. And for 

Camus, the rebel is the rebel without a cause: he is not someone who fights to live; he is

someone who lives to fight. Unlike Shakespeare’s weak and indecisive Hamlet, Camus’ 

hero-rebel is not “sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought”; and being thus not 

“sicklied o’er”, he lives life in a red-blooded and, for that reason, destructive and, more 

often, self-destructive way. But self-destructive though he sometimes is, he is not 

deliberately so; he is not neurotically self-undermining. Quite the opposite: he is nonneurotic 

and bold and brave. He is just what Camus says he is: a hero. And what is a 

hero? Someone who doesn’t shrink from action. Someone who doesn’t hide behind 

rationalizations. Someone who doesn’t ask himself the proverbial ‘one question too 

many’ before doing what has to be done. He ‘just does it’, to paraphrase the Nike 

slogan. And even though waste and loss are a consequence of his non-cowardice and 

recklessness, he is, while he is alive, truly alive and so only dies once, unlike the coward 

“who dies a thousand times.” 

My Little Finger 

Camus’ Absurdism Illustrated 

I am an extremely talented pianist, and for many years I dedicated myself entirely 

to the cultivation of musical abilities. I was about to enter prestigious competition that I 

was likely to win. Then, one day, I was helping my nephew with a book report, and I got 

a paper cut on my pinky. It didn’t seem like a big deal, but it was actually a rather deep 

cut. I put alcohol on it, which I thought would prevent infection. Anyway, I had to

practice, and because the competition was imminent, I didn’t let the cut heal. As a 

result, it became infected. The doctor told me that unless I took a week-long break from 

piano, the infection would get worse and could possibly lead to nerve damage and even 

amputation. I did not take a week off, but I took days off. This enabled the wound to 

heal enough, but it had a marginal but distinctively negative affect on my performance 

on the competition. I did not even make it into the final round, let alone win. As a result, 

record-deals that were in the works dried up, and my fan-base turned its back on me. 

And I don’t even much like the nephew whose homework I was helping with, and didn’t 

much want to help him. I did so on a whim. And the result of that feeble whim was a 

complete skewing of my life-path. I tried pleading with God, asking Him why this had 

happened. Not that I was religious—I wasn’t and still am not---but I wanted answers, 

and I knew that other people would give me self-serving or otherwise deficient answers 

(‘well, that’s just the way the cookie crumbles’) and would probably be secretly glad of 

my misfortune. But what struck me about all of this was not that I lost the 

competition—that sort of things. It was that I lost it for such a meaningless reason, and 

in such a dramatically empty way. My losing it was so meaningless—and yet so 

impactful. And this, it seems, is precisely what Camus had in mind when he talked about 

how absurdity lay in the discrepancy between our (often very grand) expectations of the 

world and the (often deflationary and anti-climactic, but in a bad way) responses we get 

from it.

Does Camus believe that we are free only if life has no meaning? 

Why does Camus believe that a human being’s relationship to the world is 

fundamentally different from a cat’s relationship to it? 

for it? 

Does Camus believe that what gives life meaning is our attempt to find a meaning 

When Camus says (p. 51): “This ridiculous reason is what sets me in opposition to 

all creation”, what is Camus referring to? What is the “ridiculous reason” that Camus 

has in mind? 

Does Camus equate our freedom with meaninglessness? Does he believe that 

what makes us free is precisely that our lives lack meaning? 

In Camus’s view, is self-awareness the basis of freedom? 

cowardice? 

What are Camus’s thoughts on suicide? Does he believe that suicide is an act of

Does Camus believe that there is a right way to live? 

referring to? 

When Camus says (p. 55) “That revolt is what gives life value”, what revolt is he 

What does Camus mean when he says (p. 54) “living is keeping the absurd alive?” 

Camus writes (p. 52): “What constitutes the basis of that conflict, of that break 

between the world and my mind, but my awareness of it?” Is Camus saying that selfawareness 

separates one from the world? Is he saying that self-awareness is what gives 

us freedom and also drains our lives of meaning? 

Camus says (p. 51): “What I know, what is certain, what I cannot deny, what I 

cannot reject---this is what counts.” What is he referring to? What is it that, in Camus’s 

view, is certain and undeniable? 

Camus says (p. 51): “I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that 

transcends it. But I do know that I do not know this meaning and that it is impossible 

just now for me to know it.” Is Camus saying that we should stop looking for the

meaning of life since what gives our life meaning is precisely our ignorance of its 

meaning? 

Camus writes (p. 51): “If I were a tree among trees, a cat among animals, this life 

would have a meaning, or rather this problem would not arise, for I should belong to 

this world. I should be this world to which I am now opposed by whole consciousness…” 

Why does Camus regard human beings as not belonging to this world? 

Can we trust our senses? Yes we can (Philosophy) 

I think it is quite clear that we do have knowledge of the external world and that 

we can in general trust our senses. Our senses may deceive us, but those rare lapses are 

easily seen and dismissed as such, as they are internal to a coherent and predictively 

robust narrative. Suppose that the skeptic is right. In that case, each perception’s very 

existence is ex nihilo and therefore a miracle. Moreover, any given perception’s 

coherence with its predecessor is a double miracle; its coherence with tis successor is a 

triple miracle; and the coherence of the totality of those perceptions with additional 

perceptions is a quadruple miracle.

But if the non-skeptic is right, each perception is a reflection of its external cause; 

and neither that perception’s existence, nor the coherence of its content with those of 

other perceptions, is a miracle. 

So the skeptic is asking us to accept, absurdly, that his non-explanation of the 

data is as much of an explanation as the non-skeptic’s explanation of the data. By 

contrast, the non-skeptic is asking us only to accept the truism that, when given a 

choice, we should prefer explanations to non-explanations—we should prefer 

hypotheses that account for the data to ‘hypotheses’ that make a miracle out of that 

data. 

Berkeley tries to undermine our confidence in our senses by pointing out that 

how an object appears varies with change’s in the subject’s physical relation to that 

object. (If I am near the house, it looks one way; if I am far from it, it looks another way.) 

But that is precisely what we would expect to to be the case if our senses accurately 

represented the external world. Our senses don’t merely give us information about 

external objects; they give us information about our physical relations to those objects. 

If, as I drew further away from an object (e.g. a house), its appearance didn’t change, 

then my perception would be failing to give me a lot of information that, assuming that 

our senses are accurate, they do give us. 

Berkeley obscures this by saying that a big house ‘looks small’ when looked at 

from far away, and that square looks ‘like a diamond’ when looked at from an oblique

angle; and so on. But a big house that is looked at from far away does not look like a 

small house. It looks the same way that a small object would look if looked at from up 

close; and it looks the way that a large object looks if looked at from far away. Similarly, 

a square surface looked at from an oblique angle does not look like a diamond-shaped 

surface; it presents the same appearance that a diamond-shaped surface would give off 

if looked at from a non-oblique angle, which is the same appearance that a squareshaped 

surface gives off if looked at from a non-oblique angle. So Berkeley’s arguments 

are not exactly probative. 

Descartes’ analysis is more compelling. Descartes says that there is ‘nothing in 

the effect that isn’t the cause”, which, though obviously not strictly true, seems to 

embody the important truth that effects are reflections of their causes, this being a 

corollary of the more general principle (denied by Hume but still reasonable) that 

nothing comes from nothing. Does nothing come from nothing? In other words, does 

something always come from something? That is unclear. But what is clear is that, given 

two otherwise comparable hypotheses, the one that does not nothing but posit cases of 

something coming from nothing is less explanatorily potent than the one that does not 

posit cases of something from nothing. The skeptic is asking us to accept a ‘hypothesis’, 

for lack of a better word, that posits nothing but cases of something from nothing, 

whereas the non-skeptic is asking to accept a hypothesis that minimizes the cases of

something coming from nothing. And we have no choice, it seems, but to prefer the 

latter to the former. 

Descartes on What He Believes Himself to Be (Philosophy) 

Descartes previously thought that he was an embodied mind; in other words, 

that he was a mind that animated a body. This, of course, is the commonsense 

conception of what a human being is: people tend to regard themselves not as minds 

without bodies, nor as bodies without minds, but as embodied minds or, what may be 

different, as beings that have both physical and psychological dimensions. Descartes 

writes that: 

The first thought, of course, what that I had a face, hands, arms, and this entire 

mechanism of limbs, the kind one sees on a corpse, and this I designated by the name 

body. Then it occurred to me that I was nourished and that I walked, felt, and thought. 

These actions I assigned to the soul. But I did not reflect on what this soul might be, or 

else I imagined it as some kind of attenuated substance, like wind, or fire, or aether, 

spread all through my denser parts. However, I had no doubts at all about my body—I 

thought I had a clear knowledge of its nature. Perhaps if I had attempted to describe it 

using the mental conception I used to hold, I would have explained it as follows: By a 

body I understand everything that is appropriately bound together in a certain form and

confined to a place; it fills a certain space in such a way as to exclude from that space 

every other body; it can be perceived by touch, sight, hearing, taste, or smell, and can 

also be moved in various ways, not, indeed, by itself, but by something else which 

makes contact with it. For I judged that possessing the power of self-movement, like the 

ability to perceive things or to think, did not pertain at all to the nature of body. 

Here what Descartes is saying is that he previously believed himself to be an 

embodied mind. By virtue of being body, Descartes is saying that he used to believe, he 

was able to be affected by physical objects, and by virtue of mind, he had senseperceptions 

of external objects in consequence of some of those disturbances. (A rock is 

physical and can therefore be affected by other physical objects; but because a rock 

lacks a mental dimension, the resulting changes in its physical condition don’t lead to 

sense-perceptions.) Moreover, because he is an embodied mind, as opposed to pure 

body, he has the ‘power of self-movement’, i.e. he can move himself. (A rock is physical 

and can therefore move, in the sense that it can be moved; but because it lacks a mind, 

it cannot move itself.) 

Descartes then claims that, in his current view, he is just a mind. His reasoning is 

that, for all he knows, all of his ‘perceptions’ could really be hallucinations and he 

therefore might not sense-perceive the world as it is. In particular, he might not even 

have a body. All that he knows with certainty, Descartes says, is that he knows that

thinks; for he cannot even coherently doubt that he is a thinker, since such doubt is 

itself thought. Therefore, so he claims, he doesn’t know that he even has senseperceptions, 

since sense-perception is a psychological function that is precipitated by 

disturbances of one’s body (due to sound-waves, light-waves, and the like). Nor, so he 

claims, does Descartes know that he has the ‘power of self-movement’, since he doesn’t 

know that he has a body to move. 

Does Descartes know with certainty that he is not an embodied mind? No. Nor is 

he claiming that he knows this. What he is claiming that is he is not essentially an 

embodied mind. His position is that what belongs to him essentially is mind, since he 

cannot even coherently conceive of himself as existing without a mind, not body, which 

he can coherently (though not necessarily correctly) conceive of himself as existing 

without. 

The Role of Values in Science (Philosophy) 

In this paper, it will be established that moral values are integral to the scientific 

process. There is no such thing, even in principle, as science that is value-free. At the 

time—so it will also be established---this does not entail that science presupposes a 

pragmatic or otherwise non-objectivist conception of truth. In fact, it entails the

opposite. Nor does it entail that moral values corrupt the scientific process or warp our 

‘scientific objectivity.’ In fact, it entails the opposite. 

Let us start with preliminaries. 

A deductive argument is one in which the premises are supposed to give a 

probability of 100% to the conclusion. Here is an example of a good deductive 

argument: 

Socrates is a man 

All men are mortal 

Therefore, Socrates is mortal. 

There is no way that the conclusion of this argument can be false given that the 

premises are true. 

An inductive argument is one in which the premises are supposed to raise the 

probability of the conclusion. Here is an example: 

Jim showed up late and drunk to his job interview. 

Therefore, Jim, if hired, would not be a good employee.

In this case, the premise certainly raises the likelihood of the conclusion, and 

perhaps even gives the conclusion a probability of more than 50%. But the premise still 

does not entail the conclusion; in other words, the conclusion can be false even if the 

premise is true. 

An inductive argument is by definition one whose premises merely give weight 

to the conclusion, without definitively establishing it. Therefore, it is inherent in what 

induction is that it be risky---that even if the premises are true the reasoning legitimate, 

the conclusion may still be false: there is always inductive risk, this being the possibility 

of arriving at a false conclusion, even if one’s reasoning is good and one’s premises true. 

The empirical sciences are fundamentally inductive in nature. (An empirical 

science is one that is observation-based as opposed to strictly reason-based. Thus, 

physics, biology, and psychology are empirical, whereas mathematics, logic, and 

philosophy are not.) They certainly use deduction at certain junctures. (Physicists and 

economists certainly use mathematics.) But their attempt is to construe accurate 

theories on the basis of observational data, and theories are not analytically entailed by 

the data-sets of which they are interpretations. 

Consequently, hypothesis-formation is inherently risky; there is no guarantee 

that a hypothesis that one is putting forth is correct. 

Even though inductive inference is inherently risky, an extra dimension of risk is 

added to it when the inferences in question concern theories that bear on human

welfare. Suppose for example that the inference in question concerns some arthritis 

medication—that what is being inferred is that it will not cause stroke, heart-attack, 

brain-damage, and so on. Of course, that inference, being inductive, could be wrong: 

the medication in question might have all of these terrible side-effects. So in this 

context, the phenomenon of inductive risk is not a purely epistemic affair, as it is also a 

moral affair. 

The question thus arises: Where is the line to be drawn between science and 

morality? The traditionally, held by Hempel and McMullen, is that values (in the sense of 

moral values) have no place within scientific methodology. It is (tautologously) good if 

scientists comply with ethical norms in their scientific work. But, so Hempel and 

McMullen hold, it is not scientifically good. 

Consider the following hypothetical. Scientist Smith vivisects a number of 

innocent people in order to conduct his biological researches. (Moreover, although this 

was one way of obtaining the needed data, it is not the only way or even the easiest 

way. It just happened to be a way, and Smith, being evil, opted for it.) On the basis of 

these vivisection-based researches, Smith puts forth a number of hypotheses that turn 

out to be true and profound. 

Is Smith a bad person? Yes. Question: Is Smith a bad scientist? No. Conclusion 

(drawn by Hempel and McMullen): Moral goodness and scientific goodness do not 

coalesce (or do so only accidentally): moral values are not epistemic/scientific values.

Douglass contests this and, so I will now try to show, does so cogently. Douglass 

starts by making three very important points. 

First, our values affect what we choose to study. Why do we study cancer? 

Because we value human life and know that curing cancer will help save lives? 

Second, our values affect how we study what we study—not just in the trivial 

sense that, because of them, we try not needlessly torture people or otherwise violate 

their rights, but in the non-trivial sense that we modify standards of proof and evidence 

so as to compatibilize them with ethical norms. Suppose that, for some purely 

theoretical reason, Jones is studying the coefficient of expansion of some metal. Let H 

be Jones’ hypothesis as to what the coefficient is. If the data that Jones’ disposal is 85% 

consistent with H and 15% ambiguous with respect to H, we would probably say that H 

was not yet sufficiently confirmed to regard it, exception in the most provisional way, as 

a truth. Now suppose that Brown is trying to find a cure for a disease that spreading like 

wildfire and killing everyone in its path. Under those circumstances, an 85% degree of 

consistent with a given a hypothesis might be more than enough. 

Alternatively, in some purely theoretical context, a 52% degree of datafriendliness 

might be enough to warrant acceptance of a given hypothesis, while in 

some practical context—e.g. one that could affect the welfare of the whole human 

race—a 99% degree of data-friendliness might be insufficient.

In general, our values insinuate themselves into our standards of proof and, 

consequently, into our investigate methods. 

Third, our values affect what we do with the results of scientific work. If we 

discover a new power source, our values determine whether we use it to grow crops or 

to kill people. If we discover a way to custom-grow brains, our values determine 

whether we use it to grow saint-brains or psychopath-brains. 

There is a fourth point that Douglas doesn’t make but that immediately follows 

from the third point. What we do with the fruits of scientific labor affects what new 

data-sets there are to investigate. Suppose we come up with a new cure for some 

disease. It is likely that this cure will have side-effects, and we will probably study those 

side-effects. And those studies in their turn will likewise generate new data-sets of their 

own. 

So our values determine what we study, how we study it, what we do with the 

results of those investigations, and what there subsequently is to study. And this prima 

facie suggests that moral values are in at least some contexts internal to scientific 

methodology, rather than being extraneous to is, as Hempel and McMullen hold. 

This does not mean that moral values warp our scientific objectivity. They do not 

do so, at least not categorically. Moral values affect what inferences we regard as worth 

making, but they do not necessarily affect how we make those inferences. In other 

words, our values do not necessarily (or even probably) warp out judgements as to

whether a given inference goes through, even though they do influence our 

judgement—and indeed constitute the basis of on which we make judgements—as to 

whether the legitimacy of a given inference is worth investigating. Our values would 

‘warp our scientific objectivity’ only if they warped our judgements as to the legitimacy 

of inferences. Since they don’t (at least not categorically), they don’t (same 

qualification). 

Hempel and McMullen might respond by saying that, even though in practice our 

moral values may insinuate themselves into our scientific investigations, this is a kind of 

accident and doesn’t reflect anything inherent in what science is. The Hempel-McMullen 

view would seem to be that if science were purged of human shortcomings and 

sensitivities, then it would indeed be value-free. 

But it is inherent in what science is that it be practical. Science began with 

practical questions. (How to get to the other side of the river? How to cure this disease? 

How to keep warm during the winter?) And at the end of the day it is answerable to 

practical questions. To be sure, if a science is at all mature, it contains a massive 

theoretical component. But there is no limit to the number of possible theoretical 

questions that can be asked, and when we regard a given question as being 

‘theoretically interesting’, it is often because it seen as being of practical significance. 

Why did Lister study microbes? Because he wanted to prevent infection? Why did 

Freud posit conversion reactions? Because he was trying to justify a therapeutic method

that would alleviate psychological impairments? Why do we study electricity and heat 

and forces in general? Because we want to optimize our methods of managing energy. 

What it is worthwhile for a given person or species to know depends on its 

practical concerns. Given those practical concerns, it can do science rightly or wrongly; it 

can model data-sets properly or improperly. But absent those concerns, there are no 

data-sets for its to model and nothing for it to do. And the idea that values are 

incidental to the scientific process and could in principle be purged from it ignores the 

fundamentally pragmatic character of science. It also seems to embody the false view 

that if science is fundamentally pragmatic, then its pronouncements are to be judged as 

either practical or impractical, not as true or false (or, what is practically equivalent, that 

truth is practicality and falsity impracticality). But that isn’t the case: what it is worth 

studying, and how it is worth it to study it, are determined by values; but whether the 

positions arrived at thereby are true or false is determined by objective fact. Thus, a 

conceptoni of science that gives due weight to role therein of values does not 

presuppose the truth of a pragmatist or otherwise non-objectivist conception of truth. 

Douglass, Heather (2000) “Inductive Risk and Values in Science” Philosophy of 

Science, 67 (December 2000) pp. 559-579.

Explanation 

Hempel, Carl G. (1965), "Science and Human Values", in Aspects of Scientific 

and other Essays in the Philosophy of Science. New York: The Free Press, 81-96. 

McMullin, Ernan (1983), "Values in Science", in Peter D. Asquith and Thomas 

Nickles 

(ed.), Proceedings of the 1982 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science 

Association, Volume 1. East Lansing: Philosophy of Science Association, 3-28. 


We saw that in the 17th century, physical theories developed by Descartes, 

Newton, and others included universal principles: universal, exceptionless laws that 

govern motions and events everywhere. What is the significance of this difference from 

previous sciences of motion? Are discoveries of universal laws something we should 

expect from science? How did the cosmology associated with the unified theories of 

motion influence culture outside of science? (Notice that today in different sciences, 

physics and biology for example, there is disagreement about the importance of 

universal laws. Some would say that they are important in physics, less so in biology and 

in the social sciences.)

Pre-Galilean physics was Aristotelian physics. Aristotelian physics was basically 

animistic. In other words, it explained the behavior of bodies less in terms of laws, as we 

would currently understand the term, than in terms of ‘proclivities’ and ‘appetites’ and 

other, similarly ‘teleological’ (goal- or purpose-related) concepts that we now see to 

have literally no relevance to physics at all. 

For example, Aristotle’s ‘explanation’ of the fact that unsupported bodies near 

the Earth fall was that such bodies are ‘drawn’ towards the Earth, having as they do a 

‘natural proclivity’ for the Earth. 

This is a quintessential non-explanation—in the same as category as the infamous 

‘dormitive virtue’ pseudo-explanation (‘opium induces sleep because it has a dormitive 

virtue’). 

Aristotle put forth other explanations that, although not quite as vacuous, were 

still utterly false, as well as lacking in independent support, as well as failing to be 

suggestive of anything at all similar to the truth. For example, Aristotle’s ‘explanation’ of 

why projectiles move through the air is that the air ‘squeezes’ them along. This 

completely fails to explain why bodies move in a vacuum; it also fails to explain the 

relative rates of projectiles; and it is also discrepant with the fact that the more viscous 

the medium, the more slowly bodies tend to move in that medium (this being why a 

given impetus generates less motion in water than in air).

And even this last ‘explanation’ or Aristotle’s is ultimately anthropomorphic. For 

if considered as a purely mechanical explanation, it is, as we have just seen, totally 

lacking in support, it being only if it is understood as an explanation in terms of 

motivation—as an explanation in terms of the air actually ‘palpating’ bodies within it— 

that it has even a shred of integrity. 

Galileo and Newton replaced anthropomorphic pseudo-explanations with 

genuinely impersonal explanations. A by-product of this is that they put forth 

explanations in terms of laws. Where psychological explanations are possible, laws 

aren’t really necessary. To know why Jim ate the pudding, I just need to know that Jim 

had the means, motive, and opportunity. I don’t know need to know of some ‘law’ of 

which his behavior is an instance. (Of course, given an understanding of Jim’s behavior, I 

dummy up some corresponding ‘psychological law’---one to the effect that whenever 

somebody has the mean/motive/opportunity to do X, he does X. But such a ‘law’ is a 

reflection of an antecedent explanation, not vice versa, and it has no explanatory force 

of its own.) And since Aristotle’s explanations were really crypto-psychological 

explanations, they were not ‘nomothetic’ in nature, i.e. they were not explanations in 

terms of law. 

And this---that Galileo/Newton explained events in terms of covering laws, 

whereas Aristotle explained in terms of desires (thinly veiled as mechanical causes)---is

the real difference between pre-Galilean (Aristotelian) and Galilean (post-Aristotelian) 

explanations in physics. 

2 The theory of Newton’s Principia was seen by its advocates as a synthesis that 

both preserved and superseded past achievements in astronomy and studies of motion. 

Critics regarded it as a moderately interesting effort that avoided the most important 

concerns of physical science. Explain that disagreement. What did Newton owe to 

theories that preceded his, and how did his theory depart from Cartesian mechanical 

philosophy? Why was he reluctant to ‘frame hypotheses’ about the natures of things 

that appeared in his theory? Should he have been? 

Newtonian mechanics managed to give incredibly precise explanations of an 

extremely wide range of phenomena in terms of three very simple principles: 

A given body’s state of motion does not change unless it is acted upon. 

Force=mass x acceleration. In other words, the vector sum of the forces acting on 

a given object is equal to the mass of that object times its acceleration. 

For each action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Given only these principles, along with a few derived principles (notably, the 

inverse square law: the gravitational attraction between two bodies is directly 

proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance 

between them) Newton was able to explain the tides, the motions of the planets, and 

the behaviors of projectiles generally. 

Newton was loathe to ‘frame hypotheses’, for the simple reason that he didn’t 

really need to. He did not need to posit ‘occult forces’, since his laws, by themselves, 

without the addition of Aristotelian essences and other such extraneous nonsense, 

explained the behaviors these being changes in motion) that it was his concern to 

explain. It could be said that Newton ‘posited’ the force of gravity, this being an ‘occult’ 

force. But Newton didn’t really posit it. He mathematically described how the masses, 

states of motion and relative positions of bodies affect one on another’s states of 

motion. Everything he had to say about ‘gravity’ was absorbed into these formulations. 

Obviously people in Newton’s time, and perhaps in ours, feel that Newton’s 

analysis, by failing to identify ‘forces’ and the like, focusing instead on functional 

dependencies, ‘left something out.’ But this feeling merely represents a wish for an 

anthropomorphic, Aristotelian pseudo-explanations (in terms of ‘natural proclivities’ 

and other such irrelevancies).

As for Descartes’ system—the only virtue that it had is that it attempted to 

provide mechanical, as opposed to crypto-psychological, explanations of mechanical 

phenomena. But it contained no definite laws, its only content being that, for some 

reason or other and in some way or other, bodies that collide alter each other’s states of 

motion. Which, in addition to its total lack of specificity (not to mention its failure to rise 

above common sense), fails to account for the influences of remote physical bodies on 

each other, and also fails to account for the motions of bodies that are not impacted by 

other bodies. 

So while there is much that Newton’s system doesn’t explain, its failings have 

nothing to do with its not being sufficiently Aristotelian or Cartesian. 

R#3 4. Bacon advocated a new scientific method for drawing inductive 

conclusions from individual empirical investigations; what was it? Some 

philosophers/scientists during the scientific revolution followed Bacon’s methods closely, 

and some others were at least strongly influenced by his views. Yet still others preferred 

to rely on mathematical demonstrations, thought experiments, and deductions of 

universal laws from first principles. Choose two from among Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, 

Harvey, Boyle, and Newton and contrast their approaches to pursuing science and 

understanding the world.

Bacon advocated the strict use of induction---basically, extrapolating universal 

laws from a handful of specific cases. The idea would be that, if one sees 10 cats die 

immediately upon eating arsenic, then one can infer—not deductively, but inductively--- 

that, as a general rule, cats (or possibly some larger category of creatures) die if they 

consume arsenic (or possibly consume or otherwise ingest some arsenic-similar agent). 

There are several fatal problems with this ‘model’—if one can even call it that— 

of arriving at knowledge. The main problem is that, unless one is positing some 

mechanisms that explains the concomitance in question, one is guilty of the gambler’s 

fallacy. Suppose that I roll a dye 10 times in a row, and each time it comes up six. There 

are two ‘explanations.’ One is that it was just coincidence. The other is that the dye is 

weighted (or is otherwise physically disposed to come up six). If I go with the 

‘coincidence’ explanation (or non-explanation, rather), then I am not entitled to believe 

that the dye is disposed to come up six next time I roll. After all, if I believe that the dye 

is so disposed, then I am rejecting the ‘coincidence explanation’ and opting for the ‘noncoincidence 

explanation.’ But if I go with the non-coincidence explanation—if I hold that 

the dye was weighted, or some such---then my explanation is not really strictly inductive 

in nature. It is a case of hypothesis-formation, not of induction-proper. 

And there we see the problem with ‘induction’: cases of induction are only 

legitimate when they are parasitic on cases of inference to the best explanation. But so

far as inferences involve positing best explanations, they are not inductive in nature. So 

the operation of induction, at least in the narrow sense in which Bacon conceived it, 

doesn’t exist. 

And this answers the question: How did Bacon’s theory of scientific explanation 

affect Descartes, Harvey, etc.? The answer to which is: it didn’t—at least not to the 

extent that they ever succeeded in explaining anything. (Maybe they misread Bacon, 

imputing some legitimate insight to him, which insight did inform their work. But that 

fact, if it is a fact, is obviously irrelevant.) 

Enumerating specific cases goes nowhere, unless it suggests some kind of causal 

or otherwise explanatory hypothesis. But Bacon insisted that one must not go beyond 

the raw data. Which means that one cannot do science in a Bacon-friendly manner 

without simply failing to do it. 

Kant’s Moral Philosophy (Philosophy) 

1. Kant's moral philosophy is based on an idea he calls the "categorical 

imperative, and he offers three formulations of this principle (basically three ways to say 

the same thing). Below are questions about two of these three formulations. (200 words 

each question)

Using O'Neill's article, "A Simplified Account of Kant's Ethics," explain the Formula 

of the Ends in Itself. 

The Formula of the Ends in Itself is simply the idea that we should treat people as 

ends unto themselves, and not as means. We should treat people as subjects, not as 

objects. If I abduct someone and put him to work as a slave, I am not allowing him to 

decide for himself how to live. I am using him as an instrument—an object---and thus as 

a mere means for my own purposes. I am not treating him as a subject; for to treat him 

as a subject would be to let him decide for himself how to live, and this is precisely what 

I am not doing. 

Here is another example. using somebody as a means. There are subtler 

examples. Imagine the following. Jeff is a decent person and he is also extremely 

wealthy. Sally hates Jeff. But she wants his money. So she pretends to love him, so that 

she can marry him, kill him, and make off with his money. And this is just what Sally 

does. 

In this scenario, there are two respects in which Sally treats Jeff as an object, 

rather than as a subject. First, she manipulates Jeff, which puts Jeff in a position where, 

without his initially knowing it, his will is being misdeployed (he is being manipulated 

into marrying Sally and thus into using his will in a way that undermine him and also

itself). Second, she kills Jeff, which extinguishes his will and which therefore extinguishes 

his very subjecthood and turns him, in the most literal way, into an object. 

2. The Universal Formulation is offered, by Kant, on page 108: "Act only on that Maxim 

by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." Kant then 

gives four examples. Compare the first two examples (1. on page 108 and 2. on page 

109). How do these examples illustrate the Universal formulation? 

The first example concerns a man who, having suffered a series of misfortunes, is 

deeply unhappy and, as a result, seriously contemplates suicide. Supposing arguendo 

that he does commit suicide, what is the ‘maxim’—the principle—embodied in his act? 

It is: Out of self-regard, I will end my life if my life is likely to be excessively adverse. But 

the very purpose of self-regard is to preserve the existence of oneself. And in killing 

oneself out of self-regard, one is turning one’s self-regard against itself and is therefore 

rendering it self-contradictory and incoherent. So the maxim embodied in an act of 

suicide is self-contradictory and therefore could not coherently be willed to be a 

universal law of conduct. 

The second example concerns someone who, having gotten himself in serious 

debt, considers borrowing money without repaying it. Suppose that this person does 

just that. What is the maxim embodied in his act? It is: Claim that you will keep your

promises when you have no intention of doing so (for example, borrow money, 

promising—but not actually intending—to pay it back). Suppose that this maxim 

became a universal law. In that case, nobody would ever lend money, since they would 

know that they had no assurance of ever getting it back. So if the maxim embodied in 

this person’s act (of borrowing money without repaying it) were universalized, then that 

same act could not be carried out. Therefore, the maxim embodied in that act could not 

coherently be willed to be a universal law, and that is why that act violates the 

Categorical Imperative. 


1) What is Thomas Nagel’s Refutation of Materialism 

We know that the world is largely physical, and we also know that it has a 

psychological or mental component. There are rocks, trees, stars, and brains---and these 

are all physical entities. They are to be understood through the methods of physical 

science (through sensory-observation, experimentation) and they fall within the scope 

of physical law (of laws such as the inverse-square law and the Boyle-Charles law). And 

there are also mental or psychological entities---thoughts, feelings, perceptions, 

sensations, intentions, and the like.

When we say that an entity is ‘physical’, we are saying or at least suggesting that 

it exists objectively---that it in order to exist it does not have to be experienced or 

undergone, in the way that a thought or feeling must be experienced or undergone in 

order to exist. And when we say that an entity is ‘mental’, we are saying or suggesting 

that it does have to be undergone or experienced in order to exist—that it cannot exist 

without a subject to have it and that it is in that sense ‘subject.’ 

In any case, the question arises: what is the relationship between the mental and 

the physical? Are they distinct or is he mental itself physical? They seem to be 

responsive to each other: mental events have physical causes and vice versa. (I touch a 

hot stove; I feel pain as a result. I intent to turn on the water-faucet; my arm moves as a 

result.) The ‘scientific’ answer to this question is that minds are identical with brains (or 

components or aspects thereof) and that thoughts and feelings and other mental 

entities are identical with brain-events or brain-structures. 

Thomas Nagel exposes a problem with this view. No matter how thoroughly one 

studies a bat-brain, one cannot possibly know what it is like to be a bat. Even if one 

knows everything there is to know about the events and structures a bat’s body without 

having the slightest understanding of what it is like to be a bat. In other words, we can 

know everything there is to know about the objective (bodily) aspect of a bat’s being 

without knowing anything about the subjective (psychological, mental) aspect of a bat’s

eing. But if a bat’s mind just were a part or aspect of a bat’s body, then this would not 

be the case. 

And we cannot chalk this up to an ‘intensional’ fallacy: we are not committing the 

fallacy involved in concluding ‘water is not H2O’ from ‘I can know that x is water without 

knowing that x is H2O.’ The reason one can know that x is water without knowing that x 

is H2O is that one’s knowledge of the nature of water is limited. But even if one’s 

knowledge of a bat’s physiology is perfect, one will, at least not on the basis of that 

knowledge—not, indeed, unless is oneself a bat!---know what it is like to be a bat: one 

will not know anything about the bat’s subjectivity, it’s mind, in other words. And this 

proves that the subjective is not the objective—that the mental is not physical. 

2) Ryle describe an "official doctrine", that he says hails chiefly from Descartes. 

What is the official doctrine - what features does Ryle think it has? How is it related to 

the arguments from Descartes that we discussed? 

The ‘official’ doctrine is that mind and body are separate---that within a given 

body, there is, separate from it, a human mind, which directs the body in the way that a 

captain directs his ship: ‘inside it’, as it were, but separate from it. Ryle’s position is that

mind is inherently ‘embodied’—that it is necessarily incorporated and also that it not 

only shows itself through, but is inherent in, the bodily actions that are ordinarily 

thought to be mere expressions of it. 

3) Ryle argues that Descartes commits a a kind of mistake in arguing for substance 

dualism. What is this mistake? Explain and give an example (bonus if you can come up 

with your own example). In what way does Ryle argue that Descartes has committed 

this kind of mistake? Do you agree or disagree? Explain why. 

Ryle argues that Descartes’ argument for dualism is based on a ‘categorymistake’ 

(or plurality thereof) on Descartes’ part. Ryle holds that mentalistic statements 

(e.g. ‘Smith is in pain’) and physicalistic statements (e.g. ‘Smith’s body is making 

writhing-motions’) are just different ways of describing the same facts—that it is like 

describe a given stick as being either ‘one yard long’ or ‘three feet long.’ And, so Ryle 

also holds, Descartes is inferring from these allegedly strictly linguistic differences 

between statements about ‘mind’ and statements about ‘body’ that mind and body are 

actually different substances, when, in actuality, we are dealing, not with different 

ontological categories, in Ryle’s view, but only with different grammatical ones. 

Is Ryle right? No. There is nothing correct about what he is saying, which is facile 

and contrived. The differences between mentalistic and physicalistic statements

obviously are not strictly ‘grammatical’ or ‘linguistic in nature’. Statements about pain 

are not equivalent or meaning-identical or even meaning-relatable to statements about 

overt-bodily motions or even about neural firings. And that suggests that there are 

substantive differences between mind-facts and body-facts, contrary to what Ryle holds 

and in keeping with what Descartes holds. 

4) Explain the "Mary the Neuroscientist" thought experiment. What is this argument 

supposed to show? Discuss one objection to it. Do you think the argument is successful? 

Why or why not? 

Let X be some sentient creature. Mary the Neuroscientist is somebody who 

knows everything there is to know about X’s body—specifically its neurology. But surely 

Mary does not, at least not for that reason alone, have even the slightest knowledge of 

X’s psychology. And this, according to Frank Jackson, supposedly shows that X’s 

psychology is not identical with its physiology. 

The standard objection to this argument is that it involves an ‘intensional fallacy’, 

along the lines of ‘H20 isn’t water since I can know that X is water without knowing that 

X is H2O.’ But Jackson’s argument involves no such fallacy. Intensional fallacies involve 

ignorance: I can’t know that x is H2O without knowing that X is water if I know 

everything there is to know about X—including its microstructure. But Mary can know

everything there is to know about X’s nervous system (unless that term is artificially 

extended to include the mental events that it mediates) without knowing anything 

about the corresponding mental states. 

5) What is the problem of mental causation - why is it a big problem for logical 

behaviorism and substance dualism? How does type identity theory solve the problem? 

Explain and discuss. 

Mind affects body (e.g. intentions cause body-movements) and body affects mind 

(e.g. cuts cause pain). So the mental and the physical interact. What is unclear is how 

they can interact. If they are distinct, then mind cannot affect physical without creating 

exceptions to physical law---which laws are inviolable. Nor could body affect mind 

without the physical dissipating some of its energy on something non-physical—which 

would violate the Conservation of Energy principles, which principle is inviolable. So 

substance dualism is incompatible with the fact that mind and body interact. 

As for logical behaviorism—the doctrine that statements about mind are logically 

equivalent with statements about overt bodily motions—if this doctrine is correct, then 

mental states are bodily motions, in which case such motions don’t cause anything that 

is ‘mental’ in the ordinary sense.

Type-type materialism solves the problem by identifying mental types with 

physical types. Thus, a type of mental entity (e.g. pain) is identical with a type of physical 

entity (e.g. c-fiber stimulation). And so it is readily explained why the mental and 

physical interact: they interact for the same reason, and in the same, that the physical 

interacts with itself. It can be explained how brain-states interact with other brain-states 

and with other bodily states in general. So if mental states are brain-states, then all of 

the aforementioned problems with mind-body interaction vanish. 

Arguments Concerning God and Morality (Philosophy/Religion) 

Introduction 





Introduction 

In this short paper, I am going to discuss 

(a) 

(b) 

Whether God exists, 

What God’s nature is, supposing that He does exist,

(c) 

Whether God’s nature, if He exists, is consistent with the tenets of the 

Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), 

(d) 

(e) 

What relevance, if any, God’s existence has to morality, 

What the basis of morality is. 

By way of anticipation, here is what we will find. 

(a*) It cannot be definitively ruled out that some kind of intelligence is embodied 

in the structure of the universe and is possibly responsible for much, if not all, of its very 

existence, 

(b*) Supposing that some such intelligence does exist and had a hand in our 

creation, if not that of the entire universe, it is unclear what its nature is, the only 

qualification being, 

(c*) That it bears little resemblance to the God of most religious faiths and 

doesn’t do much to give them legitimacy, 

(d*) Morality doesn’t depend on God’s existence or nature: if moral laws are in 

any way binding, they are binding whether or not God exists, and 

(e*) Moral injunctions tend to have a pragmatic basis: people tend to regard as 

moral what conduces to health and happiness and to regard as immoral what conduces 

to their opposite. This is consistent with the fact that there individuals and cultures

sometimes disagree as to what is moral, since those disagreements tend to track 

disagreements as to what is conducive to health and happiness. (Democrats want 

happiness; Republicans want happiness; but they have different views about how to 

attain it: and they have correspondingly different views as to what is ‘moral.’) 

Note: When I refer to God, I personally happen to use the pronoun ‘He’, but this 

mainly out of habit. I personally think that if there exists a God, that being is genderless, 

this being one of the reasons that God, if such a being exists, fails to validate many 

existing religious systems. 


Point #1: It’s one thing to prove that there exists a God. It’s a very different thing 

to prove that there exists a God that validates the tenets of a given religion. Supposing 

for argument’s sake that an intelligent being created the universe and still governs it, 

that being is God. But what if that being is amoral? What if that being has no gender? 

What if that being isn’t aware of us or is aware of us but doesn’t care about us? What if 

that being is only intermittently aware of us and, on those rare occasions, is ill-willed 

towards us? In that case, God does exist, but not in a way that corresponds to the tenets 

of most religions.

Point #2: ‘God’ defined: Different people have different views as to what God is— 

supposing that such a being exists---but we can all agree that if God exists, God has the 

following two properties: (1) God is intelligent or, at the very least, animate, and (2) God 

is responsible for the existence of the Universe or, at the very least, of humankind. 

Explanation of (1): Suppose that inanimate forces were responsible for the 

creation of the universe and, in particular, of biological life, including human life: in that 

case, we would all agree that God does not exist. 

Explanation of (1) (continued): Spinoza famously argued that God does exist but 

cannot think and cannot act. But that’s really the same as saying that God doesn’t exist. 

If a being is as dumb as a rock, it isn’t God. Also, if a being created the universe, but did 

not do so knowingly, then it is not God. 

Explanation of (2): If a supernaturally powerful and intelligent being came into 

existence today, that being would be not God, however God-like that being might be. 

No matter how God-like a being is, it is not God unless it is responsible for the existence 

either of the universe or, at the very least, of our existence. 

Explanation of (2) (continued): Does a being have to be responsible for the 

existence of the entire universe in order to qualify as God? That is unclear, but I am 

inclined to think not. Suppose that a giant Dr. Frankenstein created us, and we are living 

a Petri dish in his laboratory, with him constantly examining us, and sometimes altering

our living conditions, without our knowing it. It seems to me that this Dr. Frankenstein 

character is a God relative to us, if not in absolute terms. Suppose that the stories about 

Moses and Abraham speaking to ‘God’ were true, with the qualification that the entity 

that was speaking to them was this super-scientist who created us and who was 

constantly monitoring us through a microscope. In that case, the appropriate response 

would be that God does exist, at least as far as we are concerned. Of course, that Dr. 

Frankenstein character would not be a God in an absolute sense. He would not be a God 

relative to other members of his own species, but he would a God to us, for all intents 

and purposes. And although this super-scientist would not be responsible for the 

existence of the entire universe, he would responsible for our existence, suggesting that 

for a being to be a God to us, it is necessary only that He be responsible for our 

existence, not for everything’s existence. 

Is the idea of a God that is responsible for everything’s existence a coherent one? 

No, it is not. See below. 


1. The Unmoved Mover Argument: The universe could not just have popped 

into existence. At the same time, it could not have been created by an event within the

universe, since the universe did not yet exist to host such an event. So the universe had 

to have been created by something outside of itself, and since anything that exists 

outside of the universe is for that very reason supernatural, it follows that the universe 

was brought into existence by a supernatural being and, therefore, by God. This 

argument was put forth by Aristotle and also by Aquinas. 

Analysis: There are two problems with this argument. First, it's not clear that the 

universe had to have been brought into existence. The ‘Law of Causality'---this being the 

principle that whatever happens has a cause---hold only of events within the universe. It 

does not hold of the universe itself. If the lights suddenly turn on in my room, I am 

entitled to hold that this event was caused, even though I do not yet know what that 

cause is. And it may be that the same is true of any given event within the universe. But 

even if this is true, it does not warrant the conclusion that the existence of the universe 

itself must have had a cause. In fact, it makes no sense to say that the universe as a 

whole had a cause, since events can be related as cause and effect only where is already 

a space-time manifold and only, consequently, where there is already a universe. 

Second, and more importantly, supposing that there was a first cause, what right 

have we to infer that it was an intelligent being, as opposed to an impersonal agent? If 

the Big Bang Theory is correct, then there was an ‘unmoved mover', but that unmoved 

mover wasn't God, since it consisted of impersonal forces and blind events.

2. The Ontological Argument (due to St. Anselm, also put forth by Descartes 

and Kurt Gödel): God is by definition a maximally perfect being. Failing to exist is an 

imperfection, and God therefore exists, His existence being entailed by the mere 

concept of what He is. 

Analysis: This argument only proves that if a perfect being exists, then it exists. In 

other words, it proves nothing. 

3. The Teleological Argument (or Argument from Design): Heaps of dirt come 

into existence by themselves, but not cars or computers, since the latter clearly 

represent the handiwork of intelligent designers. The same is true of the world, albeit in 

an incomparably more extreme way. The more we learn about the world, especially the 

biological part of it, the more perfectly adapted to one another its various parts prove to 

be and the less likely it is that the world assumed its current configuration without being 

guided in that direction by a higher intelligence (Plato, Aristotle, David Hume). 

Standard Response: Given enough time, anything can happen, and the universe 

has been around long enough that there is nothing in it that we cannot attribute to 

chance (Christopher Hitchens).

Counter-response: Does anyone really believe this? A certain purposiveness and 

intelligence seem to be embodied in the various biological structures that exist, and it’s 

a little hard to attribute their existence to mere chance. Also, it is suggestive, as Carl 

Sagan pointed out, that as life-forms evolve, they become increasingly self-aware. If the 

state of the universe were merely about where atoms were deposited, then the 

Standard Response might have some force, but chance does not such a good of job 

explaining the appearance of purposiveness that a creature’s organs and organelles 

have, and it does an even worse job of explaining the actuality of purposiveness that 

higher life forms actually do have. 

Exactly what is going on here is not known---maybe it is all chance. But in this 

particular context, unlike in others, the atheist is on the defensive. And when atheists 

say that it ‘could’ just be chance, they are making a point that is technically true but 

rings hollow. 

A stronger response to the teleological argument is to ask exactly what it entitles 

us to believe. Supposing for argument’s sake that some latent intelligence underlies 

biological processes, that intelligence doesn’t necessarily bear any resemblance to God, 

as members of Abrahamic faiths understand the term. 

When people think of God, they think of a being that is like a person. They think 

of a being that has thoughts, feelings, intentions, memories, and the like. They also think

of a being that is separate from what happens in the world. The intelligence that seems 

to be embodied in biological structures doesn’t seem to exist separately from those 

structures; it seems to be built into them and inseparable from them. 

A related fact that is that biological structures are constantly changing, and the 

intelligence that, according to our hypothesis, is embodied in them is also changing. But 

when we think of God, we think of something with a fixed nature; we don’t think of 

something that is evolving. 

Finally, whatever kind of intelligence is expressed in the various plants and 

animals that exist, there is no reason to believe that it has a gender or that it is 

otherwise particularly person-like. 

In conclusion, granting that the teleological argument cannot be dismissed out of 

hand, it doesn’t appear to prove the existence of a person-like God. 

4. The Argument from the Existence of Mind: Not only is the universe, 

especially the biological part of it, organized in a way that bespeaks intelligence; some 

parts of it actually are intelligent, and it’s a little hard to see how mind can arise out of 

matter. We can understand how particles can displace one another; it’s not quite as 

apparent how unthinking particles can give rise to thought. The existence of thought is 

therefore a ‘miracle’ of sorts and thus warrants belief in a supernatural being—a God, in 

other words (John Locke).

Response: This argument cannot be dismissed out of hand. But supposing for 

argument’s sake that some kind of intelligence is needed to extract mind from matter, it 

doesn’t follow that God exists. God is not ‘some kind of intelligence’; he is not some 

impersonal force. People don’t worship impersonal forces, but they do worship God. 


According to most faiths, God is supposed to be all-good, all-knowing, and allpowerful. 

This existence of illness, natural disasters, and the like is hard to reconcile 

with the existence of such a being, though many philosophers have indeed tried to 

effect such a reconciliation (with little success). But there are other, more substantial 

problems with the concept of an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good God. 

Could such a being think? Thinking is about figuring out what one does not yet 

know, and an all-knowing being wouldn’t ever have to do that. An all-knowing being 

would know that it knew everything and therefore would not waste its time trying to 

figure anything out. Therefore such a being would never engage in thought. So God, if 

He exists, does not think. 

Could such a being be altered by anything outside itself? Presumably not. 

Anything that can be changed by an external force is vulnerable and therefore not all

powerful. But receiving information involves being changed, and an all-powerful being 

therefore could not receive information; it would be sealed off from everything and 

therefore blind to everything, and therefore not all-knowing. 

Could an all-powerful being know what it is like to experience pain? Experiencing 

pain involves being vulnerable, and it is therefore hard to see how an all-powerful being 

could have such knowledge. So if there is an all-powerful being, it does not know what it 

is like to suffer and it therefore isn’t all-knowing. More importantly, such a being would 

be devoid of sympathy, since sympathy is about knowing what it is like to be vulnerable 

and not wanting others to be in that position. Also, an all-powerful being couldn’t really 

feel anything, since feelings, whether physical or emotional, are about being affected, 

and an all-powerful being couldn’t be affected by anything and therefore wouldn’t feel 

anything. Therefore, an all-powerful being couldn't have feelings for others and 

therefore wouldn't be good (or bad, for that matter); its psychological condition would 

be one of complete indifference. 

Would an all-powerful being ever know what it was like to be frustrated, sad, 

elated, pleasantly surprised? No. All of these conditions presuppose vulnerability. So if 

there is an all-powerful being, it has no emotions and no knowledge of emotions, and it 

therefore hasn’t a shred of concern for anything or anyone.

Arguments similar to these were put forth by Maimonides and Spinoza, and they 

show that the concept of an all-powerful, all-good, all-knowing being is incoherent many 

times over. 


Dostoevsky famously said that “if God doesn’t exist, everything is permitted.” In 

other words: No God, no morality. 

Is this really true? No. What makes it wrong to mutilate infants is that it causes 

needless suffering and thwarts human development. What makes it wrong to poison 

water-supplies is that it destroys health. Whenever we examine an act that is clearly 

moral, it improves health and happiness, and whenever we look at one that is clearly 

immoral, it does the opposite. When we look at acts and practices that are morally 

debatable----e.g. abortion, euthanasia, income redistribution, the death penalty---there 

is disagreement as to what the consequences for human welfare of those practices are. 

If it turns out that income redistribution makes human beings healthy and happy, then 

it’s right; if it turns out that it does the opposite, then it’s wrong—and that’s the end of 

it. We don’t know what God thinks about the matter, and God’s opinion, if He exists and 

has one, is at best a reflection of a pre-existing moral reality.




of people, one religious, the other secular. I am with the secular group. 



penguin, but that doesn’t mean that talking penguins exist. 










wrong if he doesn’t.






believe God to be. 



and Fundamentalist Muslims. But that is the face of religion. Such people truly believe. 


beliefs good ones or accurate ones? I don't know. But that is what religion is. 


of socks; and when such people are asked to say what sort of being God is, they tend to 

give vague answers. ‘God is love', they may say, or ‘God is truth.' 





something that has the intelligence and power to create and govern the universe. Could






damage it. So such a being cannot know what it is like to be vulnerable. Therefore, it 

cannot have needs. Need is about imperfection; it is about dependence on something 

external for one’s welfare. God, being all-powerful, doesn’t need anything. Or anyone. 


people have for one another, and also for the mutual hate that people have. God has 










knowing what it is like to damaged, vulnerable, fearful, and the like. And God won’t



what it is like to live on the South Pole. But he can't truly know it, since he can't have the 

corresponding experiences. 






responsible for, and embodied in, the workings of our organs and motions of the 










there is no morality. But that's not true. Why do I think it wrong to bludgeon infants? Is

it because God told me? No, it isn't. And what makes it wrong to bludgeon infants? Is 


to the situation. Suppose that God showed up and told us how much he liked it when 






gist of the matter. 





that God exists. God, after all, is not a truth. If he exists, he is a sentient being, like you 


Another argument you'll hear concerns morality. It will be said that whenever 



own. Similarly, given that we have purposes and objectives, it follows, so we are told,




speak of a hammer’s purpose, we are really referring to the purposes of the carpenter 





carpenter. 

So no, I can't disprove God's existence. But as we've just seen, it's not hard to 





God’s Foreknowledge and Moral Responsibility (Philosophy) 

If God (or some supercomputer) can predict my actions with complete certainty, 

am I morally responsible for my actions? The answer is a highly qualified ‘yes.’

First of all, if my actions can be predicted with complete certainty, it follows that 

my actions result from deterministic mechanisms. I can predict that when I flip the 

switch, the light will turn on. Why can I predict this? Because there is a deterministic 

mechanism that links the first event (the flipping of the switch) with the second (the 

turning of the light). If there were no such mechanism—if, for example, the wiring was 

faulty, so that my flipping the switch didn’t make it necessary that the light come on— 

then I could not predict that the first event would lead to the second. 

The very same principle holds in the sphere of human action. If indeed my actions 

can be predicted, that is because there are deterministic mechanisms that, given my 

condition at a given time, guarantee that I will behave in certain ways at later times. If 

there were no such mechanisms—if, for example, the mechanism that converted my 

intentions into actions were faulty or functioned only intermittently---then my actions 

could not be predicted. Contrariwise, so far as my actions can be predicted, it is only 

because the mechanisms in questions function perfectly, being deterministic in nature. 

If indeed my actions are the result of deterministic mechanisms, then it would 

seem I am not free. We don’t regard clocks as free, and the reason we regard them as 

lacking freedom would seem to be that they are deterministic mechanisms. 

But I submit that even if our actions do result from deterministic mechanisms, 

they are free as long as they are appropriately caused by mental states that 

appropriately rooted in our minds. If somebody has an epileptic fit, he is not acting

freely. Why not? Because his bodily spasms do not appropriately result from mental 

states that are appropriately rooted in his psychological structure. If anxiety causes a 

person’s heart to race, that person’s tachycardia does not constitute a free action on 

that person’s part, because, even though a mental state (anxiety) was responsible for it, 

it was not appropriately responsible for it: the mechanisms involved in voluntary action 

were not deployed in this context. By contrast, if I angrily honk my horn at another 

motorist, that action is free, because it resulted by way of the appropriate mechanisms 

from a mental state (anger) that was appropriately rooted in my personality. It may well 

be that the mental state in question was the inevitable result of the prior state of the 

universe; and it may well be, consequently, that God (or some other omniscient being) 

could have predicted the occurrence of that mental state, along with the acts to which it 

gave rise. But to say that an action is free is not to say that the mental state responsible 

for it was not inevitable; it is to say that, whatever that mental state was, it was rooted 

in a certain way in the agent’s psychological structure and gave rise to the act in 

question by way of certain mechanisms. This being what free action is, God’s being able 

to predict our actions is compatible with our being able to act freely and, therefore, with 

our being morally responsible for our choices.

The Paradox of Religions Institutions (Religion/Theology) 

Religious values can exist without an institutional host, but an actual religion 

cannot possibly do so, simply because a religion is itself a social institution. There may 

well have been people in the year 10,000 BC who had Christian values, even though 

Christianity did not yet exist. If a given set of values are to give rise to a religion, they 

must be embodied in shared norms of conduct and must therefore be institutionalized. 

Consequently, a certain minimum degree of institutionalization is implicit in a religion’s 

very existence. That said, I will argue in the present paper that more a given religion is 

institutionalized in excess of that bare minimum amount, the more it estranges its 

practitioners from the values that it supposedly represents. 

“Christian practices…communicate the meaning of faith”, write Stone and Duke 

(p. 15). “Children learn, for example, that being Christian involves going to Church and 

knowing how to behave there---when to stand, sit or kneel, and when to listen, pray, or 

sing. From words and actions together comes an entire set of meanings associated with 

the faith.” These points mutatis mutandis hold of any given religion. One cannot be a 

Muslim or Buddhist without participating in shared rituals. These practices, as Stone and 

Duke, are not incidental to one's involvement in a religion, but are vehicles for it. 

"Theological understandings", Stone and Duke continue (p. 15), "are embedded in these 

actions, no less than in the grammar and vocabulary of the language of faith." In other

words, religious faith is not merely about having certain beliefs or sentiments; it is an 

existential commitment that compliance with certain community practices. So while it is 

well and good to say that someone who has such and such values (e.g. generosity, 

kindness, fair-mindedness) but does not engage in Christian practices (e.g. going to 

Church) is ‘more of a Christian’ than someone who lacks those values but does engage 

in those practices, it distorts the nature of religion. A religion is not merely a set of 

values; it is a set of values that have been ‘embedded’, as Stone and Duke put it, in 

certain practices. Someone who has the values but skips the practices is not a Christian, 

and someone who engages in the practices but lacks the values is also not a Christian. 

Religion is often contrasted with institutionalized religion. It is often said that 

although religion X has such and such virtues, religion X may cease to have those virtues 

once it becomes institutionalized. The standard example—though by no means the only 

one---is Christianity. Obviously, Jesus had very definite values; and, equally obviously, 

the Catholic Church has sometimes advocated very different values. The values of the 

Catholic Church during the Inquisition probably not Jesus’s values, and the present-day 

Catholic Church’s values are also probably not Jesus’s values. (Jesus’s values were 

perhaps more ‘liberal’ than those of the Church during the Inquisition and perhaps more 

‘conservative’ than those of the Catholic Church today.) On the basis of such facts, it is 

said that institutionalized Christianity is not always identical with true Christianity, ‘true 

Christianity’ being a religion whose values are identical with Jesus’s values. And on this

asis, and on the basis of other similar claims, it is said that institutionalized religion is 

not ‘true’ religion. 

This line of reasoning involves a logical error. If someone says that the Catholic 

Church in 1500 was not ‘true’ Christianity, what is being said is not that in 1500 there 

was Catholicism and, alongside it, some other religion, namely true Christianity, but 

rather that Catholicism in 1500 did not represent truly Christian values. When people 

talk about ‘true Christianity’, they are referring not to an actual but to an idealized 

religion---a religion that doesn’t exist but that, if it did exist, would embody certain 

values. But could ‘true Christianity’ (whatever one believes that to be) actually exist 

without being to some degree institutionalized? 

It could not. “It is not Scriptures alone”, write Stone and Duke (p. 75), “but the 

whole life of the Church that is to preserve and communicate the Gospel. Worship, 

rituals, sacraments, activities in the outside world are the means by which the Gospel is 

communicated.” In other words, although an intellectual understanding of the Gospel 

may be possible while spurning all Christian traditions and practices, participation in 

religious rites and practices is necessary for a genuinely religious connection to the 

Gospel. Stone and Duke are speaking of Christianity specifically, but their points can be 

mapped onto any religion. I can read a work by the Buddha and comply with the 

principles therein, but that does not make me a Buddhist. It makes me a non-Buddhist 

who happens to agree with certain Buddhist values. Being a Buddhist involves being

embedded in Buddhist traditions and practices. Without engaging in a given religion's 

practices, one can have an intellectual understanding of its tenets but one cannot truly 

belong to it. The reason is simply that belong to a religion is a way of life; it is not just a 

set of beliefs. 

All religions demand compliance with at least some formalities, and all religions 

are therefore institutionalized to at least some degree. Alleged religions (e.g. ‘secular 

humanism’) that make absolutely no formal demands of their followers are, for that 

very reason, anti-religions, not religions proper—alternatives to religions, as it were, but 

not religions in any conventional sense. The relevant question, then, is not how to 

deinstitutionalize religion---for that is not an option—but rather how to separate the 

helpful from the hurtful institutional aspects of religion. “Christians cannot accept 

everything tradition has to offer”, Stone and Duke write (p. 52). “Some of the elements 

of religion do not deserve to be called resources for theological reflection. They are 

trivialities, liabilities, nasty habits---or even poisons, harmful to Christians and other 

living things.” The question arises where the useful aspects of tradition and ritual end 

and these “trivialities” and “liabilities” begin. 

Stone and Duke give us the elements of a cogent answer to this question. 

Although “matters of faith are not rightly in scientific terms”, they write (p. 53), 

“reasoning is part of theological reflection. It is involved in interpreting Scripture, 

tradition and experience.” In other words, one must use reason to find the best way to

connect with the meanings of hidden beneath the traditions. Reason “also plays a role 

in every effort to assess alternative accounts of the Christian faith in search of the most 

adequate one” (p. 53). To generalize this point, there are different versions of practically 

any given religion, and one must use reason to find the one that best suits one. 

“Experience plays a significant role in theological reflection,” write Stone and 

Duke (p. 54), and “[t]he life of faith embraces the totality of our experiences” (p. 55). 

Life experience is what makes us need religion, and it is what gives religion for us. For 

someone who has experienced nothing—neither loss nor conflict nor self-doubt--- 

religion can do little, its blessings being confined to those who have experiences that 

they need to understand and integrate into a larger moral understanding. Moreover, 

“[e]xperience often serves as a reality check against overblown and false theological 

assertions”, Stone and Duke write (p. 56). “A certain televangelist, for example, made a 

fortune for himself that if they would surrender their hearts and bank-accounts to 

God…they would assuredly prosper.” 

There we have it. When the institutional aspects of religion become a hindrance 

to the use of reason, including the insight given us by our experiences, they are to 

discarded or at least ‘flagged’ for further review, as it were. When the institutional 

aspects of religion are extensions of reason and experience, they are to be accepted. To 

me, this suggests that what libertarians say about government (rightly or wrongly, I do 

not know) is true of religious tradition. According to libertarians, governments should be

just large enough to prevent violent crime and enforce contracts; and if they get any 

larger, they undermine the people they are supposed to serve and therefore lose 

legitimacy. Similarly, I would contend, religious institutions and traditions should be 

sufficiently present in one’s life as to help one find meaning and connect with God; but 

if they become obtrusive, they drain life of meaning and therefore subvert their own 

function.” Religions, like governments, have a tendency to get bigger than they should. 

Jesus had a minimalist conception of religion: he urged people to temper religious 

dictates with conscience and common sense. “Let him who is without sin cast the first 

stone”, said Jesus, his point being that, when it comes to religion, it is the spirit, not the 

letter of the law that counts. 

We find a very similar message in Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham 

Jail. “How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust?”, King asks. “A just law is 

a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a 

code that is out of harmony with the moral law….Any law that degrades human 

personality is unjust.” King is referring to laws in the legal sense; he is not referring to 

religious traditions. But his point is easily mapped onto religion: just as governments 

exist to serve the public, and should be resisted when they do the opposite, a religion’s 

rites and rituals exist to connects its followers to God and Truth and should be discarded 

when they separate him from them.

“Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their 

‘thus saith the Lord’ far beyond the boundaries of their home towns,” King writes, “and 

just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to 

the far corners of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of 

freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the 

Macedonian call for aid.” King’s point is that true religion is driven by conscience and 

therefore by the experience and intellect embodied therein. 

I therefore conclude that, although religion cannot and should not be completed 

deinstitutionalized, it should only be as institutionalized only as much as it has to be to 

help its followers connect to God and find meaning in life. When that threshold is 

exceeded, religion becomes legalistic and undermining. For a religion to have vitality, 

traditions must be retained while being updated and in some cases pruned. "The 

dynamic process of passing on the Christian message", Stone and Duke write (p. 53), 

"involves an interplay of continuity and change. Whatever is handed over from one 

context to another is subject to reinterpretation." The institutional side of religion is 

therefore not to be rejected, but it is to be kept up-to-date and relevant, and this is not 

possible when religion becomes too institution-heavy.

What is The Good Life? (Philosophy) 

A life that nobody would want to have cannot possibly be considered a ‘good 

life.’ Nobody wants the life of somebody who is in constant torment, and that is surely 

because such a life is not worth having and—what may be equivalent—is not a good life. 

By the same token, a life of success, happiness, and sheer enjoyment is a life that people 

would want to have; and such a life would also qualify as a good life, at least by the 

standards that are salient in people’s minds. So there seems to be at least an 

‘operational equivalence’ between ‘that is the kind of life people would envy and want 

to have’ and ‘that is a good life.’ And there is also an ‘operational equivalence’ between 

‘that is the kind of life people would fear having’ and ‘that is a bad life.’ 

We will see later that these ‘equivalences’ are indeed only approximate---that 

there are kinds of lives that people would want to have that would in some respects be 

bad and that there are kinds of lives that people would not want to have that would in 

some respects be good. But these ‘equivalences’ certainly help point us in the general 

direction of an answer to the question ‘what kind of life is a good life, and what kind of 

life is a bad life?’ Let us now turn to this question. 

Is a life of constant pain a good life? Surely not. There is not much to say here: 

People who are in extreme pain do everything they can to stop being in extreme pain. 

Pain is not desired, and it seems axiomatic that there could not possibly be a coherent

eason to endure it, except as a means to achieving some condition that was not itself 

one of sheer pain. 

What about a life of constant pleasure? Would that be a good life? Here the 

answer is ambiguous. First of all, a life of constant pleasure would not be completely 

bad. And the reason is that pleasure is indeed a good thing. 

But a life that consisted of nothing but pleasure would not be completely good. 

And the reason is that, although pleasure is a good thing, it is not the only good thing. 

Intelligence is a good thing; alertness is a good thing; athletic prowess is a good thing; 

strength (whether of character or of body) is a good thing. In general, potency is a good 

thing. The ability to grasp truths and change the world to suit one’s vision of it is a 

supremely good thing. 

And the having of a given form of potency is surely not identical with the 

experiencing or pleasure. To be sure, any given form of potency certainly conduces to 

pleasure at certain junctures. Having intelligence has its distinctive pleasures, as does 

any other form of potency. But there is more to being intelligent or otherwise potent 

than experiencing pleasure or even being disposed to experience pleasure. In fact, any 

given form of potency seems to involve distinctive forms of pain or displeasure. There is 

much that displeases an intelligent person that an unintelligent person simply isn’t 

aware of and that consequently doesn’t displease such a person.

In fact, if one has a given form of potency, one for that reason experiences forms 

of adversity that one would not otherwise experience: the strong person knows the 

pleasure of bench-pressing 300 lbs., but he also knows the pain and strife involved in 

doing so; and his weak counterpart doesn’t know either. 

In fact, the very concept of adversity is to be understood in terms of the concept 

of potency: one experiences adversity when one has some potency but not an infinite 

amount. If one had infinite strength, one could lift a 300 lbs. barbell with infinite ease 

and would experience no adversity in doing so. If one had zero strength, one couldn’t 

even initiate the task of lifting a barbell and wouldn’t experience any adversity in doing 

so. (I cannot fly---in fact, I am so incapable of flying that I cannot even try to do so. So 

for me, flying, or even trying to fly, is a non-affair and therefore a zero-adversity affair.) 

Thus, in order for a life to be a good life, it is not enough that it be full of 

pleasure. In order for a life to be a good one, it has to involve the having, and possibly 

also the acquiring, of potency. And while this involves a certain amount of gratification, 

it also seems to involve a certain amount of adversity and therefore of displeasure. 

There is also a subtler reason why a life of sheer pleasure would not be a 

maximally good life. Many forms of pleasure presuppose some kind of potency. Unless I 

had an aptitude for composing, I could not experience the pleasure of composing. 

Unless I had an aptitude for philosophy, I could not experience the pleasure of engaging 

in philosophical discourse.

In fact, with few exceptions, if any, the ability to experience pleasure seems to 

involve at least some kind of ability. We have seen that ability, though conducive to 

pleasure, cannot be identified with the experiencing of pleasure or even with a 

predisposition to have such experiences. And we have also seen that exercising any 

given form of potency involves at least a certain amount of adversity. So the idea that a 

good life is just about experiencing pleasure and not experiencing displeasure is false. 

True—a life of sheer displeasure is bad. But a life of sheer pleasure is not possible; 

indeed, the very concept of such a life is not even coherent. 

This brings us to one last point about the nature of pleasure. It seems that a 

certain degree of displeasure is actually built into any given pleasure. Unless one 

experienced thirst, one could not experience the pleasure of drinking cool water. Unless 

one experienced sexual frustration, one could not experience sexual pleasure. So 

granting that a good life necessarily involves experiencing pleasure, the very nature of 

pleasure—specifically, its dependence on the existence of displeasure—shows that a 

good life is not merely about experiencing pleasure and avoiding pain. 

What about the idea that a good life is about gratifying one’s desires? The merits 

and demerits of thesis parallel the merits and demerits of the thesis that a good life is 

about experiencing pleasure.

First of all, a life in which one’s desires were never gratified would not be a good 

life. Second, a life in which one’s desires were always gratified would not be a bad life. 

So desire-gratification is clearly necessary for a good life. 

But it is not sufficient. First of all, without a certain amount of frustration—of 

desire-non-fulfillment, in other words—one won’t have desires in the first place. I can 

have a desire to gratify only if I have one that is not yet gratified. I can enjoy the 

gratification of drinking cool ice-water only if I first have a desire to drink that is not 

being sated. 

So it seems that built in to any case of desire-gratification is a certain degree of 

desire-non-gratification. And for this reason, the concept of a life of sheer desiregratification 

is not even a coherent one, and the having of a good life therefore cannot 

be identified with the having of a life of sheer desire-gratification. 

But there is another reason why the good life is not one of sheer desiregratification. 

Suppose that a given creature had just one desire, e.g. a desire to drink 

water, which it routinely sated in the most completely gratifying way possible. Such a 

creature’s life would be good in its way. But surely there are better lives that a creature 

could have. 

As previously stated, an essential component of a good life is potency. A life of 

desire-gratification that involved no potency—no intelligence, no strength, no creativity-

--would not be an optimal life. And no potency can be identified with desire-gratification 

or even with a predisposition to experience desire-gratification. 

To be sure, if one has a certain kind of potency, one is likely to experience certain 

forms of gratification. If one is a good tennis player, one will have certain desires that 

corresponding to that ability and one will also have a tendency to gratify them. But that 

ability is more basic than, as it is the root and cause of, those desires and also of the 

gratification thereof. And that ability is also surely a good thing, as is any given ability. 

Therefore, since the having of abilities is necessary for having a genuinely good life, such 

a life is not just about desire-gratification. 

Also, having desires tends to involve having some antecedent ability. Somebody 

who has no musical ability at all may wish to compose a symphony, and he may even be 

said to desire it. But he cannot desire it in the same that Mozart can desire it. Somebody 

who has no philosophical ability may wish, and possibly even desire, to write a 

philosophical dialogue. But he cannot desire it in the same way that Plato can desire it. 

Before proceeding, let us organize our findings. 

A life of sheer pain or displeasure is bad. But there is more to a good life than 

pleasure; moreover, a certain amount of displeasure is necessary for pleasure. Also, at 

least some forms of pleasure presuppose certain forms of potency; and potency, though 

conducive to pleasure, cannot be identified with the experiencing of pleasure or even

with a predisposition to experience pleasure. Given that potency is essential for a good 

life, it follows that there is more to life than experiencing pleasure. 

A life of sheer desire-frustration is bad. But there is more to life than desiregratification; 

and a certain amount of desire-frustration is inherent in the experiencing 

of desire-gratification. Moreover, at least some forms of desire-gratification presuppose 

some form of potency; and potency, though conducive to desire-gratification, is not 

identical with desire-gratification or even with a predisposition to experience desiregratification. 

Given that potency is essential for a good life, it follows that there is more 

to life than experiencing desire-gratification. 

What we are seeing is that a good life is about fulfillment. It is about having 

abilities and developing them and, on that basis, acquiring more abilities. The good life is 

about having, developing, and acquiring new forms of potency. The good life is about 

growth. 

Having potency, as well as acquiring it, involves experiencing certain pleasures; 

but it is not identical with having pleasures and even involves experiencing a certain 

amount of displeasure. At the same time, a life of sheer pain would be a life of 

impotence. And that—though surely not the only reason, or even the primary reason, 

why a life of sheer pain would be bad, is at least a reason for it. 

Similarly, having potency, as well as acquiring it, involves experiencing certain 

forms of desire-gratification; but it is not identical with desire-gratification or even with

a tendency to have desire-gratification and even involves the experiencing of a certain 

amount of desire-frustration. At the same time, a life of sheer desire-frustration would 

be a life of impotence. And that---though surely not the only reason, or even the 

primary reason, why a life of sheer desire-frustration would be bad, is at least a reason 

for it. 

What we are seeing is that the good life is about acquiring and developing ability. 

Having and developing ability necessarily involves pleasure and desire-gratification; and 

it also necessarily involves one’s tendency to experience pleasure and desiregratification 

having a certain dominance over one’s tendency to experience displeasure 

and desire-frustration. But ultimately the good is primarily about fulfillment—about 

ability-acquisition and -maximization—and only secondarily about either pleasure or 

desire-gratification. 

J.S Mill on Liberty and Personal Freedom (Philosophy) 

The question: Assess the validity of the following claim: “For J.S. Mill, the 

protection of liberty through the harm principle prioritizes the development of 

individuality over social progress.” 

This claim is false (and it is also false in J.S. Mill’s opinion). The development of 

the individual is consistent with the development of society. Indeed, it is by letting the

individuals within it develop that a given society is able to develop. According to the 

claim in question, this is not the case, and the claim in question is therefore false, for 

reasons now to be stated. 

Let us start by making it clear what this claim means, starting by making it clear 

what the ‘harm principle’ is. The ‘harm principles’ is the principle, advocated by Mill, 

that it is legitimate to limit a person’s freedom only when doing so is necessary to 

prevent someone else from being harmed. If (for reasons having nothing to do with selfdefense) 

Smith wants to punch Brown, it is morally right to prevent Smith from doing 

and to that extent it is therefore morally legitimate to limit Smith’s freedom. If Smith 

wants to exchange sexual services for money, it is not morally permissible to prevent 

him from doing so. We may object to Smith’s decision to prostitute himself. We may 

believe Smith’s behavior to be self-destructive (and we may be right). But that does not 

entitle us to restrain Smith. 

According to the harm principle, people are to have maximal liberty. They are to 

have as much liberty as it is possible for them to have without limiting the liberty of 

others. Obviously if people are given too much liberty, they will limit the liberty of 

others by attacking them, enslaving them, robbing them and the like. Too much liberty 

leads to loss of liberty, and the question arises: what is the maximal amount of liberty 

that people can have without their losing their liberty at each other’s hands? And a very 

plausible answer to this question is: ‘if they are prevented from physically hurting and

stealing from each other, but are not otherwise restrained, people will have the 

maximal possible amount of liberty’, this being the answer suggested by the harm 

principle. 

According to the claim in question (“the protection of liberty through the harm 

principle prioritizes the development of individuality over social progress”), the harm 

principle gives the individual’s development over society’s development. Here is the 

reasoning that is implicit in this claim (‘SP’ is short for social progress): 

(SP) There is more to living well than not abridging other people’s freedoms. A 

society of sluggards and wantons who do not limit each other’s freedoms is not by any 

reasonable standard a developed society, even though its members are in compliance 

with the harm principle, and in in order fix such a society, it would be necessary to force 

its members to do more than not actively harm one another. The harm principle denies 

that such coercion can ever be legitimate. The harm principle subordinates social 

progress to individual liberties. 

Considered in a vacuum, SP seems like good reasoning. But it breaks down in 

practice. There is no denying that people shouldn’t be allowed to attack each other, 

rape each other, etc. But beyond that who is to say what people should do? 

Government regulators and bureaucrats? Elected officials? Religious authorities? And

even if these people mean well, do they know enough about individuals and society to 

know exactly how to coerce people into behaving? Surely not. When SP is put into 

practice, the result tends to be a hyper-authoritarian state (e.g. Stalin’s Russia, Pol Pot’s 

Cambodia) in which neither the individual nor society develops much at all. To be sure, 

people who are allowed to do as they please (short of hurting others) often waste their 

lives, but often they don’t. And when society develops, it is usually because of the 

contributions to it made by those who don’t. SP tends to limit free enterprise. (It doesn’t 

necessarily do so, but it certainly tends to.) And when there are advances, they are 

typically the handiwork of people who are not being micromanaged by government 

policy. These are just empirical facts, and it is therefore an empirical fact that the claim 

in question is false. 




of people, one religious, the other secular. I am with the secular group. 



penguin, but that doesn’t mean that talking penguins exist.










wrong if he doesn’t. 






believe God to be. 



and Fundamentalist Muslims. But that is the face of religion. Such people truly believe.


beliefs good ones or accurate ones? I don't know. But that is what religion is. 


of socks; and when such people are asked to say what sort of being God is, they tend to 

give vague answers. ‘God is love', they may say, or ‘God is truth.' 





something that has the intelligence and power to create and govern the universe. Could 






damage it. So such a being cannot know what it is like to be vulnerable. Therefore, it 

cannot have needs. Need is about imperfection; it is about dependence on something 

external for one’s welfare. God, being all-powerful, doesn’t need anything. Or anyone. 


people have for one another, and also for the mutual hate that people have. God has










knowing what it is like to damaged, vulnerable, fearful, and the like. And God won’t 



what it is like to live on the South Pole. But he can't truly know it, since he can't have the 

corresponding experiences. 






responsible for, and embodied in, the workings of our organs and motions of the










there is no morality. But that's not true. Why do I think it wrong to bludgeon infants? Is 

it because God told me? No, it isn't. And what makes it wrong to bludgeon infants? Is 


to the situation. Suppose that God showed up and told us how much he liked it when 






gist of the matter.





that God exists. God, after all, is not a truth. If he exists, he is a sentient being, like you 


Another argument you'll hear concerns morality. It will be said that whenever 



own. Similarly, given that we have purposes and objectives, it follows, so we are told, 




speak of a hammer’s purpose, we are really referring to the purposes of the carpenter 





carpenter.

So no, I can't disprove God's existence. But as we've just seen, it's not hard to 






1) What is Thomas Nagel’s Refutation of Materialism 

We know that the world is largely physical, and we also know that it has a 

psychological or mental component. There are rocks, trees, stars, and brains---and these 

are all physical entities. They are to be understood through the methods of physical 

science (through sensory-observation, experimentation) and they fall within the scope 

of physical law (of laws such as the inverse-square law and the Boyle-Charles law). And 

there are also mental or psychological entities---thoughts, feelings, perceptions, 

sensations, intentions, and the like. 

When we say that an entity is ‘physical’, we are saying or at least suggesting that 

it exists objectively---that it in order to exist it does not have to be experienced or 

undergone, in the way that a thought or feeling must be experienced or undergone in

order to exist. And when we say that an entity is ‘mental’, we are saying or suggesting 

that it does have to be undergone or experienced in order to exist—that it cannot exist 

without a subject to have it and that it is in that sense ‘subject.’ 

In any case, the question arises: what is the relationship between the mental and 

the physical? Are they distinct or is he mental itself physical? They seem to be 

responsive to each other: mental events have physical causes and vice versa. (I touch a 

hot stove; I feel pain as a result. I intent to turn on the water-faucet; my arm moves as a 

result.) The ‘scientific’ answer to this question is that minds are identical with brains (or 

components or aspects thereof) and that thoughts and feelings and other mental 

entities are identical with brain-events or brain-structures. 

Thomas Nagel exposes a problem with this view. No matter how thoroughly one 

studies a bat-brain, one cannot possibly know what it is like to be a bat. Even if one 

knows everything there is to know about the events and structures a bat’s body without 

having the slightest understanding of what it is like to be a bat. In other words, we can 

know everything there is to know about the objective (bodily) aspect of a bat’s being 

without knowing anything about the subjective (psychological, mental) aspect of a bat’s 

being. But if a bat’s mind just were a part or aspect of a bat’s body, then this would not 

be the case. 

And we cannot chalk this up to an ‘intensional’ fallacy: we are not committing the 

fallacy involved in concluding ‘water is not H2O’ from ‘I can know that x is water without

knowing that x is H2O.’ The reason one can know that x is water without knowing that x 

is H2O is that one’s knowledge of the nature of water is limited. But even if one’s 

knowledge of a bat’s physiology is perfect, one will, at least not on the basis of that 

knowledge—not, indeed, unless is oneself a bat!---know what it is like to be a bat: one 

will not know anything about the bat’s subjectivity, it’s mind, in other words. And this 

proves that the subjective is not the objective—that the mental is not physical. 

2) Ryle describe an "official doctrine", that he says hails chiefly from Descartes. 

What is the official doctrine - what features does Ryle think it has? How is it related to 

the arguments from Descartes that we discussed? 

The ‘official’ doctrine is that mind and body are separate---that within a given 

body, there is, separate from it, a human mind, which directs the body in the way that a 

captain directs his ship: ‘inside it’, as it were, but separate from it. Ryle’s position is that 

mind is inherently ‘embodied’—that it is necessarily incorporated and also that it not 

only shows itself through, but is inherent in, the bodily actions that are ordinarily 

thought to be mere expressions of it.

3) Ryle argues that Descartes commits a a kind of mistake in arguing for substance 

dualism. What is this mistake? Explain and give an example (bonus if you can come up 

with your own example). In what way does Ryle argue that Descartes has committed 

this kind of mistake? Do you agree or disagree? Explain why. 

Ryle argues that Descartes’ argument for dualism is based on a ‘categorymistake’ 

(or plurality thereof) on Descartes’ part. Ryle holds that mentalistic statements 

(e.g. ‘Smith is in pain’) and physicalistic statements (e.g. ‘Smith’s body is making 

writhing-motions’) are just different ways of describing the same facts—that it is like 

describe a given stick as being either ‘one yard long’ or ‘three feet long.’ And, so Ryle 

also holds, Descartes is inferring from these allegedly strictly linguistic differences 

between statements about ‘mind’ and statements about ‘body’ that mind and body are 

actually different substances, when, in actuality, we are dealing, not with different 

ontological categories, in Ryle’s view, but only with different grammatical ones. 

Is Ryle right? No. There is nothing correct about what he is saying, which is facile 

and contrived. The differences between mentalistic and physicalistic statements 

obviously are not strictly ‘grammatical’ or ‘linguistic in nature’. Statements about pain 

are not equivalent or meaning-identical or even meaning-relatable to statements about 

overt-bodily motions or even about neural firings. And that suggests that there are 

substantive differences between mind-facts and body-facts, contrary to what Ryle holds

and in keeping with what Descartes holds. 

4) Explain the "Mary the Neuroscientist" thought experiment. What is this argument 

supposed to show? Discuss one objection to it. Do you think the argument is successful? 

Why or why not? 

Let X be some sentient creature. Mary the Neuroscientist is somebody who 

knows everything there is to know about X’s body—specifically its neurology. But surely 

Mary does not, at least not for that reason alone, have even the slightest knowledge of 

X’s psychology. And this, according to Frank Jackson, supposedly shows that X’s 

psychology is not identical with its physiology. 

The standard objection to this argument is that it involves an ‘intensional fallacy’, 

along the lines of ‘H20 isn’t water since I can know that X is water without knowing that 

X is H2O.’ But Jackson’s argument involves no such fallacy. Intensional fallacies involve 

ignorance: I can’t know that x is H2O without knowing that X is water if I know 

everything there is to know about X—including its microstructure. But Mary can know 

everything there is to know about X’s nervous system (unless that term is artificially 

extended to include the mental events that it mediates) without knowing anything 

about the corresponding mental states.

5) What is the problem of mental causation - why is it a big problem for logical 

behaviorism and substance dualism? How does type identity theory solve the problem? 

Explain and discuss. 

Mind affects body (e.g. intentions cause body-movements) and body affects mind 

(e.g. cuts cause pain). So the mental and the physical interact. What is unclear is how 

they can interact. If they are distinct, then mind cannot affect physical without creating 

exceptions to physical law---which laws are inviolable. Nor could body affect mind 

without the physical dissipating some of its energy on something non-physical—which 

would violate the Conservation of Energy principles, which principle is inviolable. So 

substance dualism is incompatible with the fact that mind and body interact. 

As for logical behaviorism—the doctrine that statements about mind are logically 

equivalent with statements about overt bodily motions—if this doctrine is correct, then 

mental states are bodily motions, in which case such motions don’t cause anything that 

is ‘mental’ in the ordinary sense. 

Type-type materialism solves the problem by identifying mental types with 

physical types. Thus, a type of mental entity (e.g. pain) is identical with a type of physical 

entity (e.g. c-fiber stimulation). And so it is readily explained why the mental and 

physical interact: they interact for the same reason, and in the same, that the physical 

interacts with itself. It can be explained how brain-states interact with other brain-states

and with other bodily states in general. So if mental states are brain-states, then all of 

the aforementioned problems with mind-body interaction vanish. 

Aristotle’s Conception of the Good Life (Philosophy) 

What is it flourish? It is to fulfill one’s potential; it is to be what one is capable of 

being. Thus, one is flourishing to the extent that one is actualizing one’s potential. And, 

so Aristotle plausibly holds, one is living well to the extent that one is flourishing. 

But Aristotle doesn’t just assert this: he deduces it from first principles. Let us 

articulate Aristotle’s reasoning. 

To the extent that somebody is a soccer player, he is fulfilling himself by being a 

good soccer player. There might be some abstract sense in which it would good if he 

were a medical doctor or a patron or the arts, instead of a mere soccer play. But to the 

extent that this person’s identity is that of a soccer player, and not that of a physician or 

patron of the arts, this form of goodness is not available to him, and any conception of 

goodness relative to which this person ought to be a physician or patron of the arts is 

without operational meaning to him.

When we ask of a given creature X how X ought to live, we must take into 

account what X is? Suppose that X has the potential to be a great composer but has no 

real potential in any other area. In that case, the answer to the question ‘how ought X to 

live?’ cannot possibly be: “X ought to be a patron or the arts” or “X ought to try to be a 

saint.” So far as those answers are correct, it is only in a purely formal and nonoperational 

sense---only in a sense that has no significance for X. 

In general, when we ask how a given creature X ought to be, we are really asking: 

How can X best maximize its potential? In other words, how can X most be the thing 

that its nature demands that it be? 

What is it about us that separates us from other creatures? What is that makes 

us human? What is that makes us us? Many non-human creatures can feel; many nonhuman 

creatures can perceive; many non-human creatures can act. But only we are 

capable of being rational. When a given creature is a human being, as opposed to a 

mere ‘brute’, it is in virtue of the fact that it can think. So in order for a person to 

maximize what he is—in order for him to actualize his potential to the fullest possible 

extent and thus maximally fulfill his nature---he must develop his ability to reason to the 

fullest possible extent. So far as he does that, he is actualizing his nature and thus 

flourishing, and so far as he isn’t, he isn’t. Thus, in order for a person to live as he ought 

to live---in the sense that if he doesn’t live that way, then he is failing to be all that he

can and is therefore not flourishing---he must to the greatest possible extent develop 

his intellect and live the life of the mind. 

Logic Lecture for Erika (Formal Logic) 

Please go to the following websites if you are in trouble: 

http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/courses/log/treeprop.htm 

https://tellerprimer.ucdavis.edu/pdf/1ch9.pdf 

PROBLEM 1: This problem is by far the hardest. The others are easy. 

Anyway…. 

An argument is valid if the conclusion is true whenever the premises are true. 

Here we are using tree diagrams to determine validity. This will involve some 

memorization on your part. 

Here is a problem from your homework: 

A→(B→C) 

A→B

A→C 

Here is how we use tree diagrams to determine validity. First of all, memorize the 

following rules. If you cannot see them, go the website: 

http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/courses/log/treeprop.htm 

NEXT STEP: Write out each line of the formula EXCEPT FOR THE CONCLUSION:

A→(B→C) 

A→B 

Next step: Write out the NEGATION of the conclusion. The conclusion is A→C. So 

the NEGATION of the conclusion is: 

~(A→C) 

So this is what you should now have: 

A→(B→C) 

A→B 

~(A→C) 

NEXT STEP: Refer to the rules in the picture above. Look up the rule for: ~(A→C)

NOTE: There are two kinds of rules: BRANCHING and NON-BRANCHING. The rule 

for ~(A→C) is NON-BRANCHING. Anyway, that rule is this: 

This means that underneath the ~(A→C), you put A and ~B in a column, like so: 

A 

~C 

is: 

NON-BRANCHING rules form columns. BRANCHING rules form branches. 

Anyway, you put that underneath what you have already. What you already have 

A→(B→C) 

A→B

~(A→C) 

So when you add the extra two lines, you get: 

A→B→C 

A→B 

~(A→C) 

A 

~C 

NEXT STEP: You are now going to deal with the premises, i.e. with A→(B→C) and 

A→B. So look up the rule for: A→B 

Here is that rule:

This is a BRANCHING rule. This means that you create two branches underneath 

what you already have, and you put ~A on the left branch and B on the right branch. So 

here is what you should have: 

A→(B→C) 

A→B 

~(A→C) 

A 

~C 

~A 

B

~A B 

NEXT STEP: We have to deal with the other premise. The other premise is: 

A→(B→C). Once again, the rule is going to be: 

The resulting entries are lines 6 and 7 (boldfaced, italicized): 

A→(B→C) 

A→B

~(A→C) 

A 

~C 

~A 

(B→C) 

~A 

B 

~A B 

NEXT STEP: We can only start drawing lines when we have simple statements (i.e. 

statements without ‘or’, ‘and’ or ‘arrow’). So we draw a line from our new ~A, leaving us 

with:

A→(B→C) 

A→B 

~(A→C) 

A 

~C 

~A 

(B→C) 

~A 

B 

~A B ~A 

NEXT STEP: Before we can do anything with (B→C), we have to break it up into its 

parts, using the same rule as the last two times, namely:

A→(B→C) 

A→B 

~(A→C) 

A 

~C 

~A 

(B→C) 

~B 

C 

~A 

B

~A B ~A ~B C 

NEXT STEP: Now it gets easy. Just take what we have so far. And in the ‘trunk’ 

(i.e. the column of letters and formulas at the top), get rid of the complex expressions. 

This leaves us with: 

A 

~B 

~A 

~B 

C 

~A 

B 

~A B ~A ~B C

NEXT STEP: Go through each of the guys at the end of the branches. The first one 

is ~A. Now what you do, is you look at the ‘trunk’, and you see if you can find its 

negation (i.e. you see if you can find A). As it happens, you can. So you put that A 

underneath that ~A, and you ‘close off’ the branch with an X. Then you repeat the same 

procedure for each of the other branches. This leaves you with the following: 

A 

~B 

~A 

~B 

C 

~A 

B 

~A B ~A ~B C 

A ~B A B ~C

X X X X X 

Since each branch closes off with an X, the original argument is valid. 

If there had been a branch that DID NOT close off with an X, the argument would 

have been INVALID. We will discuss this when we meet. We will also go over some 

simpler examples, so that you get the hang of it. 

Problem 2: Here we have to make alterations to some of the arguments in 

Problem 1 and then determine validity. Consider (e) in Problem 1: 

B→(A→C) 

A→(B→C) 

First of all, this is valid. (We can talk about how I know that.) Anyway, your 

professor is telling us to replace p→q or ~p˅q. This is because these two formulas are 

equivalent. So here is what this leaves us with. 

~B ˅ (~A ˅ C) 

~A ˅ (~B ˅ C)

Your professor then tells us to ‘use the laws of equivalence in chapter 3 to 

simplify’ these formulas, so as to determine validity. I don’t have the book, but 

presumably he is referring to the fact that disjunction is associative (meaning you can 

drop/move parentheses) and to the fact that it is commutative (meaning that order is 

irrelevant. In light of which, the above argument comes out as follows: 

~A ˅ ~B ˅ C 

~A ˅ ~B ˅ C 

This is obviously valid, since the two lines are the same. 

Problem 3 

Your prof tells us to use the tree method to determine whether the following 

statement is a tautology: 

A→(B→C) ≡ (A→B) →(A→C) 

It is a tautology, and we’ll go through it together when we meet.

Your prof also tells us to do this formula what we did in Problem 2, which we’ll do 

when we meet. 

Problem 4 

Here we have to translate and then determine validity. 

Let’s look at 4(a) 

First we abbreviate: 

H: Holmes bungled 

W: Watson’s abroad. 

M: Moriarty will escape. 

(H ˅W) → M 

~M →H 

We are supposed to use the tree method, which we can do when we meet. But 

there is a simpler way. 

~M →H is equivalent with M ˅ H

So the argument comes to: 

(H ˅W) → M 

M ˅H 

Let’s keep on getting rid of arrows. When we get rid of all of them, we have: 

(~H ˄ ~W) ˅ M 

M ˅H 

Is this valid? No. Suppose that ~H ˄~W is true. In that case the first line is true, 

but the second can be false. So---not valid. 

As for the other problems, we can go through those in person. See you in a few! 

Why Moore’s Proof of an External World Fails (Philosophy) 

G.E. Moore attempts to prove the existence of an external world. His ‘proof’ is 

extremely simple. He raises one hand says “here is one hand”; then he raises his other 

hand and says “here is another.” He then says that given the existence of his two hands, 

it follows that there exists an external world. Moore then tries to show that his

argument is cogent and is also neither question-begging nor viciously circular. To this 

end he puts forth the following three-part argument. 

First Moore says that the premises are ‘different’ from the conclusion. The 

proposition that there exist hands at such and such places and times is non-trivially 

different from the proposition there exists an external world. The implication here is 

that the argument does not beg the question. If his argument were: there exists an 

external world; therefore, there exists an external world (or here is a hand; therefore, 

here is a hand), then, even though the conclusion would follow from the premises, the 

argument would be question-begging and therefore have no force since the conclusion 

was identical with (one or more of) the premises. 

Second, Moore says that he does indeed know the premises to be true. He knows 

(at the relevant times) that his hands are in front of him. The idea here is that an 

argument whose premises are not known to be true does not establish its conclusion, 

even if the argument doesn’t beg the question and even if the conclusion follows from 

the premises. 

Third, Moore says that the conclusion follows from the premises. If Moore’s 

hands exist, then it follows that there exists an external world. 

Let us evaluate each component of Moore’s argument, starting with the first. 

Yes----the conclusion is ‘different’ from the premise. But contrary to what Moore seems 

to believe, the argument still begs the question. Someone who denies the existence of

the external world ipso facto denies (or is logic-bound to deny) the existence of objects, 

such as Moore’s hands, that are in the external world. Moore has a very narrow 

conception of what it is for an argument to beg the question. The most obvious way an 

argument can do so is if the conclusion is identical with one of the premises, but that is 

not the only way. When trying to determine whether an argument is question-begging, 

the relevant question is: Are the premises independently plausible? In other words, are 

there reasons besides acceptance of the conclusion of that argument for accepting the 

premises? And in this case the answer is ‘no.’ Even though the proposition that there 

exists a hand in a certain place and time is different from the proposition that there 

exists an external world, acceptance of the former is a way of accepting the latter. If 

someone denies the existence of an external world, he ipso facto denies that there is a 

cactus here and a car there, since these latter propositions are, as it were, specific ways 

of affirming the existence of an external world. 

Here is a comparison. The proposition that x is a right triangle is different from 

the proposition that is a planar closed figure. But imagine the following. Smith denies 

that x is a triangle, and Brown puts forth the following ‘refutation’ of Smith’s position: x 

is a right triangle; all right triangles are triangles; therefore, x is a triangle. Given that 

Smith is denying that x is triangle, he is in effect (though he may not be conscious of 

doing so) denying that it is a right triangle, and Brown’s argument therefore begs the

question against Smith. For similar reasons, Moore’s argument begs the question 

against the skeptic. 

‘But couldn’t the same be said of any valid argument?’, it might be asked. ‘A valid 

argument is one whose conclusion follows from the premises. So in affirming the 

premises, one is, as it were, ipso facto affirming the conclusion and so, by your logic, 

begging the question. But, of course, not all valid arguments are question-begging.’ 

There are two ways in which an argument can beg the question. On the one 

hand, the conclusion can be a bare repetition of the premises. On the other hand, the 

premises can be ones that are not ones that one’s opponent would grant. Moore’s 

argument fails in both respects. First of all, no skeptic (or denier of the external world) is 

going to grant that there is a hand here and a hand there. So Moore’s argument doesn’t 

start from premises that his opponent would accept. Second, the reason Moore’s 

opponent wouldn’t accept those premises is the existence of an external world is such 

an obvious consequence of the proposition that there exist hands, rocks, etc. that 

Moore’s opponent is unlikely to accept that proposition. 

Also, even though the conclusion of a valid argument is always a logical 

consequence of the premises, it isn’t necessarily a trivial consequence. x is a circle is a 

trivial consequences of x is a circle and y is square. By contrast, x is a closed planar figure 

is a relatively non-trivial consequence of x is a circle. The relationship between here is a

hand and there exists an external world is closer to the relationship between the pair of 

propositions than it is to the second. 

Let us now consider the second part of Moore’s argument: his assertion that he 

knows the premise to be true, the premise being that there exist hands at certain places 

and times. First of all, does Moore know this to be true? Yes he does---or so a nonskeptic 

will say. But the skeptic will deny that Moore knows this, since he will deny that 

it is true. So in saying that he knows the premise to be true, Moore is begging the 

question against the skeptic. 

Let us now consider the third part of Moore’s argument, this being his assertion 

that the conclusion follows from the premise. First of all, does it follow? Yes. If there 

exist objects, such as hands that can exist only in an external world, it follows there 

exists an external world. The skeptic will not deny that this follows, but for the reasons 

just discussed he also won’t grant the premise. 

How might Moore respond to these points? His best bet is to say that the 

premise (there exist hands at such and such places and times) is plausible independently 

of the conclusion. A three-year-old believes that he has hands, but does any three year 

old believe that there exists an external world? Could any three-year-old even grasp the 

proposition that there exists an external world? So, Moore might well argue, given that 

a three year old believes that he has hands but does not even grasp, let alone accept, 

that there exists an external, the proposition that there exist hands at such and such

places and times is plausible independently of the proposition that there exists an 

external world. In fact, even though Moore doesn’t explicitly say this, his argument 

clearly embodies acceptance of it. 

But is it a viable maneuver? No. The belief that there exists an external world, 

though different from the belief that there exist hands and rocks and so on, is a 

‘sophistication’ of the latter. The simpleton believes that there exist squares and circles 

and triangles, but he does not even grasp the proposition that there exist closed figures. 

Nonetheless, the belief that there exist closed planar figures is a distillation of these 

other lower-level beliefs. Similarly, the belief that there exists an external world is a 

distillation of one’s beliefs that there exists a rock here and a hand there, and so on. 

Notice that Moore is really putting forth two arguments: one for the existence of 

an external world and one for the legitimacy of that argument. The second argument 

involves Moore’s saying that the first goes through. But it doesn’t go through, since it 

begs the question against the skeptic (and it also begs the question against Kantian, who 

can be interpreted as denying the existence of the external world), and it is only 

because it so obviously does so that Moore even needs to supply his argument on 

behalf of that argument. (For expository reasons, we will refer to the Moore’s opponent 

as ‘the skeptic’, with the qualification that ‘skeptic’ is to be taken to include all those 

who either deny the existence of the external world or, without necessarily denying it, 

deny that we can know our perceptions of it to be veridical.) And whereas the former

argument fails because it has a true but question-begging premise (there exist hands at 

such and such places and times), the latter argument fails because it contains a false 

premise (the proposition that there exists an independent world is not just different, but 

relevantly different, from the proposition that there exist hands at such and such places 

and times). 

While referring to Berkeley’s doctrine that ‘external’ objects are mental states of 

ours, Dr. Johnson kicked a rock and said “I refute it thus.” Obviously. Johnson’s 

refutation begs the question against Berkeley, since Berkeley would simply say that the 

rock was identical with (or at least partly made up of) Johnson’s various perceptions. 

Moore’s argument is similarly question-begging. 

Are there arguments against the skeptic that don’t beg the question? Yes there 

are. (Whether they go through is another question.) The skeptic will usually grant that 

we have mental states. The skeptic might also grant that nothing ever comes from 

nothing. If a given skeptic grants both, he might also grant that, since our mental states 

seem in some cases not to have antecedents, and since they must have antecedents 

(assuming that indeed nothing comes from nothing), then he would be logic-bound to 

grant that our mental states have non-mental, and therefore, mind-external causes. This 

argument does not beg the question, at least not against every kind of skeptic. Moore’s 

argument does beg the question against every kind of skeptic and it therefore fails.

Ethics Posting (Philosophy) 

There are several issues of an ethical, professional and legal nature at work here. 

First of all, Jim gave proprietary information to a client. This is unprofessional and illegal. 

It is no excuse that he did so in order to alleviate her test-anxiety; his lack of 

professionalism will ultimately undermine her ability to benefit from him. Also, Jim does 

speak in a rather cavalier, and subtly bigoted manner, about a former client’s being both 

disabled and a cross-dresser. Significantly, in discussing these facts about his clients with 

his secretary, Jim is violating doctor-patient (or therapist-client) privilege, which is a 

serious breech of medical ethics. Also, the fact that Jim is a sexual relationship with his 

secretary—though not in and of itself necessarily wrong---is inappropriate in this 

context, given the sensitive nature of his work and given, more specifically, that his 

being in such a relationship will tempt him (as it clearly has) to violate his oath of 

confidentiality to his patients. The fact that Jim is married and is being unfaithful to his 

partner—though perhaps reprehensible---is his personal business. First of all, we don’t 

know what kind of relationship Jim has with his partner. Second, private life is indeed 

private life; and while there is some indication that Jim’s being romantically involved 

with his secretary has led to professional lapses in Jim’s part, there is no independent 

evidence that Jim’s not being faithful to his partner has led to such lapses. In any case, 

said infidelity does not fall within the scope of this particular discussion.


I have to write a paper (250 word minimum). Here's the assignment post : 

Thomas Nagel's bat argument. How is it a problem for materialism? Do you think that 

this argument shows that materialism is false, or is there a good way for the materialist 

to respond to the argument? Explain and discuss, supporting your answer with reasons. 


is the doctrine that the mental is physical—that mental events and structures are 



and neurology. Will Sam for that reason know everything (or even anything) about batpsychology? 

More specifically, will Sam on that basis know what it is like to be a bat? No 





physical by itself gives one knowledge of the psychological.











is to know about that bat’s physiology without ipso facto knowing about its psychology.” 



In conclusion, Nagel’s argument does seem to show that materialism is false. 



Question 1 (Analysis of knowledge). Explain the claim that Gettier is arguing 

against in his paper. Explain his argument, using the Smith/Jones example. Make sure to

explain the role of the second of his “two points” about justification. The example 

suggest a certain modification of the JTB theory of knowledge. Explain the modification. 

Then explain Goldman’s “fake barn” example, and how it causes trouble for the modified 

theory. Williamson says that knowledge can’t be analyzed. What does he mean by this, 

and why does he think this? How does Radford argue that, before being asked, Jean (i) 

Jean knew that James I died in 1625, but (ii) Jean did not believe that James died in 1625, 

and also (iii) Jean did not know that he knew that James I died in 1625? Williamson 

would disagree with Radford about (ii). Explain why, using his Kerry/Terry example. 

Edmund Gettier is arguing (cogently) against the claim that knowledge is justified 

true belief (JTB). In other words, he is arguing against the claim that x’s being justified 

true belief is necessary and sufficient for x’s having knowledge. Gettier produces several 

counterexamples to the thesis that knowledge is JTB (henceforth just ‘JTB’), one of them 

being as follows. 

Smith believes, and is justified in believing, that Jones will get the promotion. 

Smith knows that Jones has ten coins in his pocket and on this basis (justifiably) believes 

that someone with ten coins in his pocked will get the promotion. Brown ends up 

getting the promotion, and as it happens Brown has ten coins in his pocket. So Smith 

had a justified true belief to the effect that someone with ten coins in his pocket would 

get the promotion, but it clearly isn’t a case of knowledge.

The obvious amendment suggested by this example of Gettier’s is that if one’s 

justification for believing such and such involves acceptance of a false belief, then that 

justification is not knowledge-conducive. But Goldman showed this amendment to be 

false (or at least limited in scope) with his famous barn-façade example. Jerry is driving 

through a county in the USA in which there are a million barn facades but only one 

actual barn. He is looking at the one barn façade in that county that is attached to an 

actual barn and on that basis forms the belief that he is looking at a barn. That belief is 

justified and true but (arguably) not a case of knowledge. At the same time, there is no 

obvious sense in which it is based on a false belief (all of Jerry’s premises are true, after 

all). 

Williamson argues that the concept of knowledge cannot be analyzed and is 

therefore a primitive concept. His argument is simply that attempts to analyze the 

concept of knowledge fail. Williamson also seems to assume (or at least must assume) 

that some concepts are indeed primitive. (This assumption is almost certainly false.) 

Radford holds that Jean knew but did not believe that James I died in 1625 and 

also did not know that he knew this. Radford’s argument derives heavily from analysis of 

ordinary language. A given person who does know the answer on a test may be unsure 

of the answer. (Oftentimes, people have to let go of their self-doubts to perform a task 

well or to know exactly what it is that they know. A good pianist or tennis player may 

have to deactivate his self-critical conscious self and just let his abilities take the helm,

as it were, and the same may be true of someone taking a history test.) Radford’s 

argument seems quite spurious. Jean does both know and believe that James I died in 

1625, but he doesn’t know what it is that he knows/believes. Not all knowledge is 

matched by self-knowledge. One cannot know that such and such without knowing that 

such and such. The latter is meta-knowledge and involves having and deploying 

concepts not involved in having the corresponding bit of first-order knowledge. 

(Compare: My knowing that there is a bee over there does not involve my having the 

concept of knowledge, but my knowing that I know there to a bee over there does 

involve my having that concept.) 

Whereas Radford holds that Jean knows but does not believe that James I died in 

1625, Williamson holds that Jean does in fact believe it, his argument being as follows. 

Suppose that Kerry is taking a history test and ‘guesses’ one of the answers correctly, his 

‘guess’ being based upon subconscious memory/knowledge. In that case, his guess 

embodies knowledge, and therefore belief, albeit of the subconscious variety. 

Question 2 (Simulation). Bostrom argues that: (∗) fsim = fpflNl (fpflNl)+1 where fp 

“Fraction of all human-level technological civilizations that survive to reach a posthuman 

stage” fl “[F]raction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running

ancestorsimulations” Nl “the average number of ancestor-simulations run by such 

interested civilizations” fsim “The actual fraction of all observers with human-type 

experiences that live in simulations” Explain how his argument for (∗) relies on the 

assumption: (A) H = Hsim where H “Average number of individuals that have lived in a 

civilization before it reaches a posthuman stage” Hsim Average number of observers 

with human-type experiences that live in an ancestor simulation Explain the relevance to 

(A) of his claim: comp: “Provided a system implements the right sort of computational 

structures and processes, it can be associated with conscious experiences” Explain why 

comp, if true, marks an important difference between being an “observer with humantype 

experiences” and being a hurricane. Bostom next argues from (∗) to the claim that 

one of the following is true (1) fp ≈ 0 (2) fl ≈ 0 1 (3) fsim ≈ 1 Explain the role in this 

argument of his claim: • “Posthuman civilizations would have enough computing power 

to run hugely many ancestor-simulations even while using only a tiny fraction of their 

resources for that purpose” Bostrom then puts forward the principle (#) Cr(SIM|fsim = x) 

= x where SIM is “the hypothesis that one is in a simulation”. Explain in your own words 

what (#) says. Bostrom claims: no info: “we don’t have any information that indicate 

that our own . . . experiences are any more or less likely than other human-type 

experiences to have been implemented [biologically] rather than [being simulated]” 

Explain, roughly, how Bostrom uses no info to argue for (#). Bostrom says that, in 

assuming no info, he is “assuming only that we have no information that enables us to

predict any differences between the experiences of simulated minds and those of the 

original biological minds.” But that’s not true. Explain why he is also assuming 

something like premise P1 of Byrne’s argument for skepticism about external world. 

Then explain how someone like Byrne might argue against no info. Suppose Bostrom is 

right that (#) is true, and also right that “In the dark forest of our current ignorance, it 

seems sensible to apportion one’s credence roughly evenly between (1), (2), and (3).” 

What does this imply about how likely we should think it is that we are living in a 

computer simulation? Now explain Nozick’s “experience machine” thought experiment. 

What are two things that Nozick thinks are bad about being plugged into an experience 

machine? Would Nozick think that living in a Bostromian ancestor-simulation is as bad 

as being plugged into an experience machine? 

Bostrom’s argument is as follows. If people make to the next evolutionary phase- 

--the ‘post-human’ phase---then these post-human superhumans will have both the 

technological wherewithal, as well as the inclination, to run simulations of their human 

ancestors, the characters in which will be conscious subjects. Moreover, these 

superhumans will run more than one such simulation—they will run them frequently, 

routinely, unendingly. Therefore, if human beings do survive long enough to evolve into 

these superhuman ‘post-humans’, then the number of simulation-internal human 

‘characters’, each of which has the same subjectivity as an actual person, will vastly

number the number of actual human beings present during the pre-post-human era. So 

assuming (for illustrative reasons) that a trillion such simulations are run, then it is a 

trillion times more likely that I am a character in such a simulation than it is that I am an 

‘actual’ person living in the pre-post-human era. Therefore, we are more justified in 

believing that we are characters in a simulation than we are in believing that we are 

‘real people’, for lack of a better term. 

For this argument to go through, the numbers have to be chosen very carefully. 

If there are many simulations of the just-described kind, but the average number of 

human characters in those simulations is low, then (even if Bostrom’s other premises 

are granted) it may not be unreasonable for us to believe that we are ‘real’ (as opposed 

to simulation-internal characters, albeit of the conscious variety). And one way of 

guaranteeing that the numbers support Bostrom’s argument is to suppose (i) that many 

such simulations are run and (ii) that the average number of human characters in such a 

simulation equals the actual pre-post-human population. Bostrom assumes (i) and also 

duly assumes (ii), (ii) being embodied in his assumption that H = Hsim. 

Bostrom’s argument only goes through if it is assumed that these post-humans 

are able to run simulations that contain actual conscious beings (in which case, these 

simulations, it would seem, are not really simulations so much as they are recreations— 

duplications---of the human era and therefore not merely simulations at all---a point 

that Bostrom overlooks). In other words, Bostrom assumes that, given sufficiently

sophisticated technology (such as these post-humans will have, according to Bostrom), 

said technology can pack its own models with beings that are conscious. In other words, 

he assumes that: (COMP) “Provided a system implements the right sort of 

computational structures and processes, it can be associated with conscious 

experiences.” Be it noted that this even this assumption, strong as it is, is not strong 

enough, since it must be assumed not only that these simulation-internal creatures are 

conscious but conscious in extremely specific ways---conscious not in the ways that a 

giraffe is conscious but conscious in the exact ways that human beings have 

been/are/will be conscious. In any case, if COMP is false, then these simulations are 

packed with inanimate beings, in which case, given that we are animate, we have 

absolutely no reason to regard ourselves as characters in a simulation. So if COMP is 

false, Bostrom’s argument immediately fails. 

At the same time, if COMP is true, Bostrom’s argument doesn’t necessarily go 

through, since, as just stated, it is necessary not just that these simulation-characters be 

conscious but also conscious in specific ways and also since, even if this alleged posthuman 

technology can run simulations that are loaded with characters that have the 

right kinds of mental activity, there is no guarantee that these post-humans would have 

either the inclination or the economic resources needed to run any of these simulations, 

let alone enough of them to validate Bostrom’s argument.

To be sure, Bergstrom does acknowledge the need to assume that these posthumans 

would have both the means to easily run these simulations. Hence his making 

the following assumption: 

“Posthuman civilizations would have enough computing power to run hugely 

many ancestor-simulations even while using only a tiny fraction of their resources for 

that purpose.” 

Unless this assumption is granted, then, just stated, there is no guarantee that 

these post-humans would be economically capable (would have the resources) to run 

these simulations ever, let alone in large enough numbers to support Bergstrom’s claim 

that we are probably characters in such a simulation. But, of course, it is unclear what 

the justification for this assumption is. Bostrom’s justification for it seems to be: Given 

how quickly computing technology is advancing, we will not only be able to run such 

simulations but run them for negligible costs. (It is also assumed that post-humans 

would desire to run them and, therefore, that they would spend the energy necessary to 

make it cost-effective to run them en masse.) 

Also, Bostrom’s argument goes through only if there is no specific reason why 

future technology would be unlikely or unable to pack simulations with characters 

having our specific psychological traits. In other words, Bostrom’s argument goes 

through only if: NO INFO “we don’t have any information that indicate that our own . . . 

experiences are any more or less likely than other human-type experiences to have

een implemented [biologically] rather than [being simulated].” Be it noted, that the 

occurrence of “any more” should be purged from this quotation, since if future 

technology were in fact “any more” likely to produce simulation-characters with our 

psychologies, that would help Bostrom’s argument. 

In any case, there is no justification for NO INFO; nor could there be, relative to 

our current state of knowledge, which doesn’t allow us to make such precise predictions 

about technology with such a high degree of confidence. 

One problem with NO INFO, and with Bostrom’s argument generally, is that it 

assumes the irrefutability of skepticism. Bostrom is assuming that, given only what our 

senses tell us, we are no more likely to be perceiving reality as it is than we are to be 

characters in a simulation (brains in a vat, dupes of an evil demon). In other words, 

Bostrom is assuming that we have no principled way of deciding between different 

hypotheses that all model our perceptual data, this being the content of Byrne’s 

principle that: 

basis of your 

P1: If you know that the sitting hypothesis is true, you know this solely on the 

evidence about your sensory experiences.

To be sure, skeptics would hold that Bostrom is not making a mistake in making 

this assumption. But it is still worth noting, since, should it turn out that skepticism is 

contraindicated, Bostrom’s argument fails. And there are reasons to hold that it is in fact 

contraindicated. It is one thing to hold that, given only what our sensory experiences 

are, we ‘could’ be in a computer-simulation. But, as Daniel Dennett shows in 

Consciousness Explained, it is another matter altogether to produce a model of such a 

simulation that is even close to what is either computationally feasible or to what 

(post)humans or (post)human technology could generate. 

Nozick’s ‘Experience Machine’ thought-experiment is supposed to show (and 

does show) that, other things being equal, people prefer reality to illusion. People would 

rather have a good experience that is veridical than a good experience that is nonveridical. 

(People probably do not categorically prefer veridical bad experiences to nonveridical 

good ones. Hence the “others things being equal” in the second to last 

sentence.) Nozick analyzes this preference of people’s by saying that (i) we value what is 

real, (ii) we want control (which, arguably, we don’t if we’re characters in a simulation) 

and (iii) since we believe that we live in the ‘real’ world, we are reluctant to devalue our 

existences by entering a fake one. (The third principle is more or less a repetition of the 

first.)

For these three reasons, Nozick would hold that our lives would be less 

meaningful than (supposedly) they in fact are if in fact we were simulation-internal 

beings. 

Three Essays on Medical Ethics (Philosophy) 

1. Elective amputation and conscientious refusal. Briefly (in just 3 or so 

sentences) 

explain BIID and the reasons why some believe that elective amputation may in 

some 

cases be an appropriate intervention, drawing as needed on Bayne and Levy’s 

article. 

Imagine a surgeon who has a serious moral objection to performing an elective 

amputation on a person with BIID. What would the surgeon need to do to meet 

the 

conditions that Brock thinks are necessary (though not necessarily sufficient) for 

it to be

morally permissible for a medical professional to refuse to treat the patient? 

Explain the referring the patient to another professional, on the grounds that this would 

make her 

complicit in the amputation, would you find this persuasive? Offer 2-3 points in 

defense 

BIID (short for ‘Body Integrity Identity Disorder’) is a condition whereby want 

body parts of theirs to be amputated even though there is no medical reason for it. 

Oftentimes with BIID go so far as to ask physicians to perform such amputations, and 

when they cannot find physicians willing to do so they sometimes try to undertake them 

themselves. People with BIID who do manage to find physicians to perform the 

amputations often report feeling better and not regretting having the procedure done. 

People with BIID are not in generally otherwise mentally ill and they are therefore not 

on the face of it in the same category as schizophrenics who would be asking for an 

unnecessary medical procedure. 

If asked to perform an unnecessary amputation, most physicians would balk, 

since perform such an operation would be a heinous violation of a physician’s 

professional ethics. Some physicians might change their mind if they found out that the 

person requesting the procedure had BIID. The argument for performing the procedure 

under that circumstance would be that the patient was in the same category as

somebody requesting breast-enhancement (or some other medically unnecessary 

procedure) and that his autonomy therefore ought to be respected. 

According to Brock, physicians and other medical professionals have a “right of 

conscience” to refuse to provide certain medical services. Thus, a physician might for 

example refuse to provide a woman with a medically unnecessary abortion on the 

grounds that he believed abortion to be murder. At the same time Brock, argues that 

this ‘right of conscience’ is extremely restricted and can only be exercised when doing 

so doesn’t undermine the integrity of the medical profession. Thus, a physician cannot 

use his ‘right of conscience’ to deny medical services to people who belong to a 

different political party, but he could conceivably use his right of conscience to refuse to 

a administer a medically unnecessary abortion. 

Brock says that when a physician can legitimately refuse to perform some service 

that for reasons of conscience he doesn’t want to perform, he should (i) refuse to 

provide that service and (ii) point the patient in the direction of a physician who will 

provide it. The problem with this proposal, as Brock points out, is that if the patient goes 

to the second physician and has the procedure done, the first physician is arguably 

‘complicit.’ Suppose that Dr. X refuses for reasons of conscience to perform a medically 

unnecessary amputation on BIID-sufferer Y, and Dr. X therefore tells Y to go to Dr. Z, 

who ends up performing the amputation. Supposing that Dr. Z was wrong to perform

the amputation, Dr. X is indeed complicit in that wrong-doing, though he obviously isn’t 

as guilty as he would be if he performed it himself. 

Supposing that it was wrong of Dr. Z to perform the operation, Brock is right that 

Dr. X would to some degree be ‘complicit’ in that wrongdoing. There is a simple proof of 

this. Suppose it turns out that BIID is simply a form of mental illness—that people 

afflicted by it are psychotic in the extreme and that, if given antipsychotic medication, 

they deeply regret any amputations that they had done. In that case, if Dr. X sent Y to 

Dr. Z, then Dr. X would most certainly be a party to the wrongdoing that took place, this 

being why Y, after emerging from his psychosis, would almost certainly resent Dr. X for 

not saving Y from himself and for ‘aiding and abetting’ in Y’s act of self-harm. And if Dr. 

X did refuse both to perform the procedure and to pass the buck to another physician, 

then Dr. X would be in the clear and would most certainly not be the object of Y’s wrath. 

2. Vaccination and libertarianism Explain Navin and Largent’s “Inconvenience” 

model, and the points they offer in favor of it. Explain the points Guibilini and 

colleagues’ raise against Inconvenience, their own “Contribution” model, and the 

points

they offer in favor of Contribution. What do you think a libertarian, as described 

by 

Explain. 

Narveson and Buchanan, would say about Inconvenience and Contribution? 

Vaccinations are necessary for personal and public safety, but many people 

refuse to have their children vaccinated. One solution is for the state to force people to 

let their children be vaccinated, but it’s unclear whether the health-related gains (for 

the both the children and the public in general) would be worth the losses in civil 

liberties. At the same time, it is hard to deny that vaccinations should be at least semimandatory, 

as it were, since in addition to benefing the people vaccinated, they also 

protect the public from the threat of disease and also from the losses involved in dealing 

with public health crises. 

Navin and Largent propose a compromise: allow people to be exempt from 

having their children vaccinated but make it inconvenient for them to exercise this 

option, by forcing them to jump through a number of bureaucratic hoops, including 

attending time-consuming ‘educational’ programs. Giublini et al. argue that, although 

the ‘inconvenience’ model put forth by Navin and Largent does a decent job of 

balancing public and health and civil liberties, it is not a particularly fair solution, since it 

allows some people shirk obligations that others are forced to shoulder. Giublini et al.

argue that, instead of having to jump through bureaucratic hoops, parents seeking 

exemptions from mandatory vaccinations for their children should have to perform 

public services (e.g. cleaning up trash off the side of the road) in a quantity equal to the 

likely cost to the public of their refusal to have their children vaccinated. So if Mr. and 

Mrs. Smith refuse to have their son Jimmy vaccinated, then, assuming that Jimmy’s not 

being vaccinated is likely to cost the public $1,500, Mr. and Mrs. Smith should have to 

do $1,500 worth of public service. 

I prefer Giublini’s ‘Contribution Model’ to Navin and Largent’s ‘Inconvenience 

Model’, though not exactly for the reasons that Giubilini’s gives. It is never appropriate 

to waste somebody’s time by forcing them to attend seminars and the like that are 

meant to be meaningless. Although bureaucratic redundancy is inevitable, it should 

never be consciously promoted, and the Inconvenience Model wastes the public’s time 

(by spending it useless bureaucracy) and also wastes people’s time. By contrast, 

Giublini’s model doesn’t waste the public’s time and doesn’t even completely waste the 

time of the parents in question, since public service, though not always the best use of 

one’s time, is usually not a complete waste of time. Also, whereas the inconvenience 

model would waste public moneys necessary for dealing with the public health 

problems that might arise from people refusing to have their children vaccinated.

3. Moral relativism and positive thinking Take the following scenario as 

background 

for your essay. (You don’t need to describe it—you may just refer to Doctor A, 

Patient 

A, Doctor B, and Patient B in your essay.)Imagine two doctors, Doctor A and 

Doctor B, who has each discovered alarge cancerous mass in her patient (Patient A and 

Patient B, respectively). It is the medical opinion of each doctor that surgery should be 

attempted to remove the mass, but the surgery carries risks such as bleeding, infection, 

and damage to nearby tissues or other organs, and there is no guarantee that the 

cancer would be completely removed. The doctors are now considering whether, and 

how, to communicate to the patient her diagnosis and prognosis, her proposed 

intervention and its burdens, risks and expected benefits, and any alternative responses 

and their burdens, risks and expected benefits. Doctor A is practicing within the Navajo 

Nation, and Patient A is a Navajo (Diné) who, along with her close family members, 

believes it is important to avoid speaking and thinking in a negative way. Doctor B is 

practicing in a midwestern urban hospital, and Patient B does not believe it is important 

to avoid speaking and thinking in a negative way (or have any other beliefs that would 

potentially come in tension with an informed consent discussion). 

Explain moral relativism, illustrating with an example. Explain universalism and 

give an example or two of a universalist theory. Briefly explain the idea of avoiding

negative thinking and speaking, as described in Carrese and Rhodes’ paper, the idea of 

obtaining a patient’s informed consent, and how the two appear to be in tension. What 

would Moral relativism say that Doctor A and Doctor B, respectively, should do, and 

why? What could a universalist say that Doctor A and Doctor B, respectively, should do, 

and why? (You can choose any plausible universalist position you wish to apply.) Which 

position do you find most plausible? Give one or two reasons in support of the position 

you think is stronger (or against the position you think is weaker). 

According to ethical relativism, morality varies from cultures. So if gang rape is 

considered an acceptable way for people to ‘blow off steam’ in culture X, then gang 

rape is morally correct in X; and if gang rape is considered unconditionally unacceptable 

on Culture Y, then it is morally incorrect in Y. According to ethical universalism, there is 

some single moral code that holds of all cultures. So if gang rape is wrong, then it is 

wrong in both X and Y, even though people in X may feel otherwise; and if gang rape is 

morally correct, then it is correct in both X and Y, even though people in Y may feel 

otherwise. 

According the ethical relativism, Dr. A should do whatever he has to do to avoid 

violating the Navajo injunction against ‘negative’ thinking and speaking, and if this

involves not disclosing the medical facts to Patient A, then so be it. And according to 

ethical relativism, Dr. B should do whatever he has to do to comply with his culture’s 

injunction that medical professionals disclose all the relevant facts to their patients, and 

if this involves alarming or otherwise upsetting his patient, then so be it. 

The doctrine of informed consent requires medical professionals to have their 

patient’s consent before performing medical procedures on them and it also requires 

that their patients have all of the relevant information, so that their consent can be 

informed. Obviously it is difficult to make patients informed if one is prohibited from 

upsetting them, and it is therefore difficult to obtain informed consent from them 

without sometimes upsetting them. Given what we are told about the Navajo injunction 

against upsetting others, it would certainly seem to be more or less impossible not to 

violate the doctrine of informed consent in Navajo culture, and if it is possible, that is 

only because Carrese and Rhodes misdescribed or underdescribed this injunction. 

A universalist would say that the one doctor must do what the other doctor does, 

other things being equal. So if Dr. B has an actual obligation to make Patient B aware of 

the relevant medical facts, then Dr. A has that same obligation, Navajo injunctions 

notwithstanding; and if Dr. A has an actual obligation not to upset Patient A, then Dr. B 

has an obligation not upset patient B, Western injunctions to the contrary 

notwithstanding.

Whatever other obligations Dr. A may have to Patient A, his medical obligation 

to her is to maximize her health and minimize her suffering, and the way to do to is 

quite clearly to apprise her of the facts relating to her condition. It was mentioned in the 

article that Navajo injunction against negative thought and speech is rooted in the belief 

that positive thoughts can make negative situations go away or at least be tractable. 

And while this may be true within limits, Patient A’s situation falls far outside these 

limits, and the Navajo injunction against negative thought seems to be embody an 

empirically false belief as to how to actualize an even deeper value, common to both 

Navajo’s and non-Navajos, that life and health are deeply important. So by withholding 

relevant medical information from Patient A, Dr. A would be violating one Navajo value 

(protect life and health) by cleaving to another, less deeply held Navajo value (protect 

and life and health). This is not to mention that whatever Dr. A’s obligations as a Navajo 

are, his obligations as a medical doctor are to help patient A. (If Navajo culture imposes 

contrary obligations on Dr. A, that is not because Dr. A’s medical obligations are 

different from those of his Western counterpart, but is rather because Navajo culture 

imposes obligations on Dr. A as a person that contravene his obligations as a medical 

doctor.) 

Also, we can be fairly sure that Patient A would appreciate having her health 

back, even if Dr. A has to violate Navajo protocols to secure that objective, showing that 

although cultures may differ in values up to a point, some values are indeed universally

(though not necessarily universally complied with), the main one’s being to not to harm. 

The idea that, because of her culture, the Patient A is less entitled to proper medical 

care than Patient B is at odds with the fact that Patient is no less likely to want to live, or 

to deserve to live, than her Western Counterpart. 

A medical doctor in any culture who withholds health-critical information from 

his patient is not a good medical doctor. If Carrese has accurately describe the import 

and scope of this alleged Navajo injunction against full-disclosure to patients, then what 

follows is not that in Navajo culture being a good physician involves letting one’s patient 

suffer and die unnecessarily but is rather than in Navajo culture there are some 

injunctions that override the obligations that a physician’s trade imposes on him. 

Mill vs. Hobbes on Liberty (Politics/Philosophy) 

Exam question: Does Mill afford citizens a more expansive set of liberties than 

does Hobbes? Explain why a Hobbesian might be concerned that Mill’s scheme is 

potentially unstable. 

Yes---Mill affords a more expansive set of liberties than Hobbies. In fact, Mill 

affords a maximally expansive set of liberties and Hobbes affords a severely constricted 

set of liberties.

Hobbes believes that when people are given too much freedom, they abuse it 

and the result is anarchy. Hobbes sees people as little better than animals and has no 

confidence that left to their own devices they will behave decently. Hobbes lived during 

a blood Civil War and thus had occasion to see what people are like when not held in 

check by the iron hand of law. And for Hobbes, it was necessary not only that there be 

laws, but that there be an autocratic to enforce them and to make speedy decisions in 

times of crisis. 

Hobbes lived before Adam Smith. According to Adam Smith, if people are allowed 

to transact freely, then the economy flourishes. In Smith’s view, if people are left to 

their own devices and are allowed to transact freely, an ‘invisible hand’ guides activity 

the activity, with the result that those who need give (and pay) and those have give (and 

are paid). Obviously Adam Smith’s free market requires people to be subject to laws 

prohibiting assault and theft and enforcing contracts, but as Smith knew, when there 

are laws that do more than that, the result is a sluggish economy and a bloated 

government. 

Mill, having studied Smith closely, knew that when laws require people to do 

more than not harm one another, the resulting abridgements of freedom sap the 

strength of the economy. Further, Mill knew political freedom was necessary for 

economic freedom: business tends to grind to a halt when the people lack political 

rights. Finally, Mill knew that (relatively) minimal government does not lead to anarchy.

Obviously people do have to be restrained by laws---but not as much as Hobbes 

thought. And if they are restricted as much as Hobbes wanted them to be, the result is a 

weak economy and a depressed populace. 

Mill granted that people must be preventing from hurting and stealing from each 

other, but beyond that, he believed, the government was not entitled to restrict people 

in any way. So Mill believed that people must have: freedom of speech, freedom of 

assembly, freedom of religion, freedom to transact, and freedoms in matters relating to 

personal life. Hobbes, by contrast, believed that freedom of assembly would lead to 

riots; that freedom of speech would lead to sedition and factionalism; that freedom of 

religion would lead to civil war. So Hobbes believed that laws should not only prevent 

violence and theft but should also prevent the differences of viewpoint that could 

potentially lead to violence and theft. Mill said that the law should only prevent ‘clear 

and present dangers’ and should concern itself with mere anticipations thereof. Hobbes: 

Freedom is anarchy. Mill: Freedom is prosperity. 

Exam-Essays on the Moral Systems of Mill, Bentham, and Kant (Philosophy) 

List of Exam Questions Answered 

What is the Principle of Utility, according to Bentham? and what does he mean by the 

word 'utility'?

Mill argues for the "greatest happiness principle," that actions are morally right in 

proportion to the the way they promote happiness or pleasure. Does Mill make a 

distinction between types of pleasure? If so, what is that distinction? 

Explain the difference between Bentham and Mill regarding types of pleasures. Start 

by explaining the greatest happiness principle and principle of utility, then what the 

hedonistic calculus is, then how Bentham and Mill value competing pleasures 

differently from each other (like the example in class of $20 - should it go to the 

transformers movie that makes someone really happy, or the museum which leads to 

a higher quality of pleasure?) Which (Bentham or Mill) do you agree with and why? 

Use quotes from the reading to help illustrate the theories. (minimum 400 words for 

this entire answer) 

1.How does Kant define a "good will," and why is it so important to his moral 

philosophy? 2. Give an example from your own life, the news, movies/t.v. or simply 

create a fictional example, which illustrates a person acting "in conformity with duty 

but not [acting] from duty." Hint: First you will need to give an example of a duty, 

then explain how the subject is acting in conformity with that duty but not from that 

duty. Example: {Duty} Killing is wrong. {Example} I didn't kill that guy who cut me off 

on the freeway because I would go to jail, not because killing is wrong. 

Kant's moral philosophy is based on an idea he calls the "categorical imperative, and 

he offers three formulations of this principle (basically three ways to say the same 

thing). Below are questions about two of these three formulations. (200 words each 

question) 

Using O'Neill's article, "A Simplified Account of Kant's Ethics," explain the Formula of 

the Ends in Itself. 

On page 140, Aristotle describes how "moral virtue comes about as a result of habit." 

Explain this quote by using quotes from the rest of page 140. 

What is the Principle of Utility, according to Bentham? and what does he mean by 

the word 'utility'?

By “utility”, Bentham means the property of conducing to pleasure or happiness 

or of conducing to the avoidance of pain or unhappiness. The principle of utility is the 

principle that an act is morally right to the extent that it conduces to happiness/pleasure 

or to the avoidance of pain/unhappiness and that an act is morally wrong to the extent 

that it conduces to pain/unhappiness or to the avoidance of pleasure/happiness. 

The justification for this view is obvious: If break somebody’s legs, I cause them 

pain and suffering; and my action is wrong; and it is clearly for because it causes them 

pain and inconvenience. If I provide medicine and supplies to a village of people who are 

diseased-ravaged and starving, I am behaving rightly, since my action alleviates pain and 

suffering and since, in addition, it bring pleasure and joy. 

Is Bentham’s analysis correct? It is certainly correct up to a point. But there are 

counterexamples to it. Suppose that I make someone happy by lobotomizing them. In 

that case, surely, my act is thoroughly wrong, even though it conforms to the “Principle 

of Utility.” Why is my action wrong? Because I am thwarting someone’s autonomy; I am 

depriving them of the ability to decide for themselves how to live. 

So what we are seeing is that autonomy-enhancement is morally right and 

autonomy-diminution is morally wrong. And this suggests that the Principle of Utility is 

not the supreme moral principle---that the actual Supreme Moral Principle is that an act 

is morally right that it promotes autonomy. It also suggest that so far as the Principle of

Utility is correct, it is because, in those contexts where it is correct, it is a logical 

consequence of the actual Supreme Moral Principle. 

Mill argues for the "greatest happiness principle," that actions are morally right in 

proportion to the the way they promote happiness or pleasure. Does Mill make a 

distinction between types of pleasure? If so, what is that distinction? 

John Stuart Mill does in fact distinguish between “higher” and “lower” pleasure. 

By a “higher” pleasure, Mill means one that involves the use either of one’s cognitive 

faculties or one’s agency to a high degree. Thus, examples of Mill’s “higher pleasures” 

would be reading Darwin, composing a fugue, and listening (with understanding and 

appreciation) to fine music. By a “lower pleasure”, Mill means one that does not involve 

the use either of one’s cognitive faculties or of one’s agency to a high degree. Thus, 

examples of Mill’s “lower pleasures” are those involved in getting drunk, having sex, 

listening to pop music, or impulsively punching an annoying person. 

Mill seems entirely right to make this distinction. But is this distinction 

compatible with utilitarianism? It seems not. According to Utilitarianism, an act is right 

to the extent that it brings joy/happiness. But this principles seems wrong, given that 

base acts may bring a great deal of joy. So suppose that utilitarianism were duly 

amended, so that it became: An act is morally right to the extent that it became “an act

is morally right to the extent that it conduces to happiness/pleasure of a non-base kind.” 

So amended, utilitarianism presupposes some independent conception of rightness and 

is ipso facto either false or correct only so far as it as derivative of some other deeper 

moral principle. 

Explain the difference between Bentham and Mill regarding types of pleasures. 

Start by explaining the greatest happiness principle and principle of utility, then what the 

hedonistic calculus is, then how Bentham and Mill value competing pleasures differently 

from each other (like the example in class of $20 - should it go to the transformers movie 

that makes someone really happy, or the museum which leads to a higher quality of 

pleasure?) Which (Bentham or Mill) do you agree with and why? Use quotes from the 

reading to help illustrate the theories. (minimum 400 words for this entire answer) 

Bentham’s utilitarianism is given by the principle that an act is good to the extent 

that it maximizes pleasure (or minimizes pain) and wrong to the extent that it 

diminishes pleasure (or maximizes pain). Mill’s utilitarianism is given by the principle 

than act is good to the extent that it maximizes happiness (or minimizes unhappiness) 

and bad to the extent that it minimizes unhappiness (or maximizes unhappiness). 

So for Bentham the central concepts are pleasure and pain: (“Nature has placed 

mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for

them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. 

On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and 

effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we 

think…”) By contrast, for Mill, the central concepts are happiness and unhappiness. 

The distinction is important: pain and pleasure do not involve one’s agency; they 

are properties not of actions but of experiences or undergoings. One experiences 

pleasure when having a massage or being intoxicated. By contrast, happiness does 

involve one’s agency; indeed, it seems to be a property of the way in which one engages 

the world. To be happy is to be fulfilled, and to be fulfilled is to act in such a way as to 

maximize one’s potential. And this is why one is happy to the extent that one acts in 

ways that express and develop one’s agency. One is happy when (and to the extent that) 

one is building a house, or improving one’s mind, or working on one’s tennis game, or 

solving a math problem, or writing a great philosophy paper. 

Consequently, Bentham’s utilitarianism is radically different from Mill’s 

utilitarianism. A related point is that, for reasons now to be stated, Bentham’s doctrine, 

though false, is not viciously circular, whereas Mill’s doctrine, though true, is viciously 

circular. 

Somebody who shoots heroin all day experiences a lot of pleasure but probably 

isn’t happy. And somebody who does difficulty but fulfilling work all day is probably

happy but doesn’t necessary experience very much pleasure. So Bentham’s doctrine— 

that the moral goodness=pleasure-conduciveness is simply false. 

But Mill’s doctrine---that moral-goodness=happiness-conduciveness—though 

correct, is viciously circular, for the reason that the concept of happiness is to be 

understood in terms of the concept of moral value. More specifically, we are happy to 

the extent that our lives comply with our values. The reason the hardworking man is 

happy, despite not experiencing much pleasure, is that he is living up to his values. And 

the reason the sluggard is unhappy, despite experiencing a lot of pleasure, is that his life 

is not living up to his values. So Mill’s utilitarianism, though correct (or seemingly so, at 

any rate), is viciously circular if taken as an analysis of morality, since it presupposes 

some independent conception of moral value and, therefore, of morality. 

philosophy? 


2. Give an example from your own life, the news, movies/t.v. or simply create a fictional 

example, which illustrates a person acting "in conformity with duty but not [acting] from 

duty." Hint: First you will need to give an example of a duty, then explain how the subject 

is acting in conformity with that duty but not from that duty. Example: {Duty} Killing is

wrong. {Example} I didn't kill that guy who cut me off on the freeway because I would go 

to jail, not because killing is wrong. 

1. First of all, for Kant, there are two kinds of goodness: hypothetical and 

categorical. Something is hypothetically good if it is good as a means. Thus, a car as good 

as a means to an end, that end being driving, and a car is thus hypothetically good. 

Hypothetical goodness is the same thing as conditional goodness. A car is good on the 

condition that one needs to drive somewhere; otherwise not good. Thus, hypothetical 

goodness is the same thing as instrumental goodness. 

Something is categorically good if it is good in and of itself. Thus, something is 

categorically good if it is intrinsically good, i.e. if it is non-instrumentally or 

unconditionally good, as opposed to good as a means to some end. 

According to Kant, the only that is categorically (non-hypothetically, 

unconditionally) good is a good will. Kant’s argument is simply that anything besides a 

good will embody immorality. Thus, thus the happiness of a villain is not a good thing, 

says Kant, and neither is a villain’s intelligence, as each embodies viciousness, not virtue. 

Obviously, moral goodness is a kind of intrinsic goodness, not a kind of 

instrumental or conditional goodness. 

From these premises, Kant deduces that the only thing that is categorically 

(unconditionally) good is a good will. Kant’s argument is simply that any other ‘good’

thing is only conditionally good and for that reason fails to be good (except 

instrumentally) in at least some circumstances. So, for example, the happiness of a 

villain, though good for him, is not intrinsically good, since it embodied moral turpitude; 

and the intelligence of a villain, though good for him (vis-à-vis certain objectives of his), 

is not intrinsically good, since it can be used in furtherance of evil. 

2. There are many examples of this. Suppose that I save a drowning toddler, but 

that I do so to impress my boss, who is witnessing the situation. In that case, my act is 

“in conformity with” the requirements of morality, even though, being done for reasons 

of self-interest and personal gain, it does not itself embody any morality. To take 

another example: Suppose that a wealthy woman writes a book and asks me to tell her 

what I think of it. In actuality, the book is extremely good, and I therefore have an 

obligation to tell her as much. And that is what I do. But I do it solely to curry favor with 

me, so that she will marry me and bestow her riches upon me. I have absolutely no 

desire to do the right thing, being driven entirely by a desire for gain, for which I am 

totally willing to lie but which in this particular context involves me telling the truth. To 

give an example from my own life: My housemate is very clean and respectful; he never 

leaves a mess and never makes noise. I myself am the same way towards him, and 

indeed it is my moral obligation to be this way. But my reasons for so behaving are 

purely pragmatic, not ethical in nature: I simply don’t want to have to get another

housemate, since, if I did, that person would almost certainly be more difficult to live 

with than my current housemate. But if I could get away with it, I would leave my 

clothes all over the place, be noise, and so on. So my behavior in this context, though in 

conformity with my moral duties, do not embody any genuine morality. 

1. Kant's moral philosophy is based on an idea he calls the "categorical 

imperative, and he offers three formulations of this principle (basically three ways to say 

the same thing). Below are questions about two of these three formulations. (200 words 

each question) 

Using O'Neill's article, "A Simplified Account of Kant's Ethics," explain the Formula 

of the Ends in Itself. 

The Formula of the Ends in Itself is simply the idea that we should treat people as 

ends unto themselves, and not as means. We should treat people as subjects, not as 

objects. If I abduct someone and put him to work as a slave, I am not allowing him to 

decide for himself how to live. I am using him as an instrument—an object---and thus as 

a mere means for my own purposes. I am not treating him as a subject; for to treat him 

as a subject would be to let him decide for himself how to live, and this is precisely what 

I am not doing.

Here is another example. using somebody as a means. There are subtler 

examples. Imagine the following. Jeff is a decent person and he is also extremely 

wealthy. Sally hates Jeff. But she wants his money. So she pretends to love him, so that 

she can marry him, kill him, and make off with his money. And this is just what Sally 

does. 

In this scenario, there are two respects in which Sally treats Jeff as an object, 

rather than as a subject. First, she manipulates Jeff, which puts Jeff in a position where, 

without his initially knowing it, his will is being misdeployed (he is being manipulated 

into marrying Sally and thus into using his will in a way that undermine him and also 

itself). Second, she kills Jeff, which extinguishes his will and which therefore extinguishes 

his very subjecthood and turns him, in the most literal way, into an object. 

2. The Universal Formulation is offered, by Kant, on page 108: "Act only on that Maxim 

by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." Kant then 

gives four examples. Compare the first two examples (1. on page 108 and 2. on page 

109). How do these examples illustrate the Universal formulation? 

The first example concerns a man who, having suffered a series of misfortunes, is 

deeply unhappy and, as a result, seriously contemplates suicide. Supposing arguendo 

that he does commit suicide, what is the ‘maxim’—the principle—embodied in his act?

It is: Out of self-regard, I will end my life if my life is likely to be excessively adverse. But 

the very purpose of self-regard is to preserve the existence of oneself. And in killing 

oneself out of self-regard, one is turning one’s self-regard against itself and is therefore 

rendering it self-contradictory and incoherent. So the maxim embodied in an act of 

suicide is self-contradictory and therefore could not coherently be willed to be a 

universal law of conduct. 

The second example concerns someone who, having gotten himself in serious 

debt, considers borrowing money without repaying it. Suppose that this person does 

just that. What is the maxim embodied in his act? It is: Claim that you will keep your 

promises when you have no intention of doing so (for example, borrow money, 

promising—but not actually intending—to pay it back). Suppose that this maxim 

became a universal law. In that case, nobody would ever lend money, since they would 

know that they had no assurance of ever getting it back. So if the maxim embodied in 

this person’s act (of borrowing money without repaying it) were universalized, then that 

same act could not be carried out. Therefore, the maxim embodied in that act could not 

coherently be willed to be a universal law, and that is why that act violates the 

Categorical Imperative. 

On page 140, Aristotle describes how "moral virtue comes about as a result of 

habit." Explain this quote by using quotes from the rest of page 140.

If act with self-discipline on only a single occasion, I am not a self-disciplined 

person and therefore do not have the virtue of being self-disciplined. If I am a generally 

an indolent sluggard and act with discipline only one occasion, my acting in that way 

embodies desperation, not self-control: that act is about lacking the virtue of selfdiscipline, 

not having it. But if I am self-disciplined in general—if, on each and every 

occasion that it behooves me to act with discipline I do so—then, if I act with discipline 

on a given occasion, my act does embody genuine self-discipline. It is a desperationmotivated 

act that has the same external form as a discipline-motivated act; it is a bona 

fide act of self-discipline. And so it is that Aristotle says: “[O]ne swallow does not make a 

summer; nor does one day; and so too, one day, or a short time, does not make a man 

blessed [virtuous] and happy.” 

2. On page 144, Aristotle says, "virtue is therefore a kind of mean." What is Aristotle 

trying to say about morality here? 

For Aristotle, virtue is about rationality and self-control. A virtuous person is one 

who governs himself in a rational manner, a rational manner being one that allows for 

the greatest possible degree of flourishing and that therefore presupposes a condition 

of health. Extreme action is about a lack of self-control. People do not have self-control

if they are ‘either-or’ people: people who either binge or starve themselves; people who 

either drink until they black-out or live like monks; people who either never exercise or 

do nothing but exercise. Any given such form of extremism embodies a lack of selfcontrol, 

which in turn embodies a failure to govern oneself in a rational manner; for 

which reason, each of these ‘extremisms’ involves failing to flourish in some important 

respect. The person who binge eats is unable to do the things that a healthy person can 

do, as is the person who starves himself. The person who never exercises cannot fulfill 

his athletic gifts, and the person who does nothing but exercise cannot develop his 

intellectual gifts. In general, extremism embodies a certain laziness and, therewith, a 

certain irrationality and smallness of character. Contrariwise, the middle-road—the path 

of moderation---embodies self-control, rationality, and largeness of character and, 

therewith, a high degree of virtue. 

A Defense of Nagel’s Argument Against Materialism (Philosophy) 


is the doctrine that the mental is physical—that mental events and structures are 



and neurology. Will Sam for that reason know everything (or even anything) about bat-

psychology? More specifically, will Sam on that basis know what it is like to be a bat? No 





physical by itself gives one knowledge of the psychological. 











is to know about that bat’s physiology without ipso facto knowing about its psychology.” 



In conclusion, Nagel’s argument does seem to show that materialism is false.

Nietzsche and Schopenhauer on the Meaning, or Lack thereof, of Life 

(Philosophy) 

Schopenhauer’s answer to the question “what is the meaning of life?” is: None. 

His argument is as follows. Life is replete with suffering. 26 Therefore, life is in practice an 

attempt to escape suffering. 27 Therefore, life has meaning only to the extent that we 

escape suffering: 

This vanity [the vanity of existence] finds its expression in the whole form of 

existence…in constant desire without satisfaction; in the constant interruption of efforts 

and aspirations which constitutes the course of life…” 28 

26 

“[I]nfinite pain…everywhere abounds in the world and springs from the want 

and misery essential to life…” Doctrine of Vanity of Existence, Section 148. “The world is 

just a hell and in it human beings are the tortured souls…” Doctrine of the Suffering of 

the World, Section 156. 

27 

“[N]o one is happy, but everyone in his life strives for an alleged happiness that 

is rarely attained, and even then only to disappoint him.” Doctrine of the Suffering of 

the World, Section 144. 

28 

Doctrine of Vanity of Existence, Section 142.

Schopenhauer writes voluminously on the alleged “vanity of existence”, and his 

argument seems to be that happiness and enjoyment are low-probability situations and 

unhappiness and pain are high-probability situations. And his argument for this in its 

turn seems to be that human existence is inherently fleeting and is therefore less stable 

than unstable, stability being psychologically manifested as pleasure and happiness and 

instability being psychologically manifested as pain and unhappiness. Hence the 

following passage, from which the previous quotation was excerpted: 

This vanity [the vanity of existence] finds expression in the whole form of 

existence; in the infinite nature of time and space as opposed to the finite nature of the 

individual in both; in the transitory and passing present moment as reality’s sole mode 

of existence; in the dependence and relativity of all things; in constant becoming 

without being; in constant desire without satisfaction; in the constant interruption of 

efforts and aspirations which constitutes the course of life until such obstruction is 

overcome. 29 

Schopenhauer’s reasoning seems to be as follows. It inherent in the nature of 

existence itself that it is fleeting. When there is a psychological side to existence, the 

inherently transient and unstable nature of existence is expressed as pain and 

29 

Doctrine of Vanity of Existence, Section 142.

unhappiness. Contrariwise, it is only to the limited extent to which existence is stable 

and permanent that it is psychologically expressed as happiness and pleasure. In 

general, given that instability is psychologically manifested as unhappiness and stability 

as happiness, the very nature of existence disposes beings that have a psychological 

dimension to be more unhappy than happy. 

Even if we grant that, for the reason just given, creatures with minds are more 

disposed to be unhappy than happy, it doesn’t follow that life is meaningless. And this is 

a major objection to Schopenhauer’s argument. “Smith is unhappy” doesn’t entails 

“Smith’s life is meaningless.” But Schopenhauer seems not to be aware of this, as his 

pages’ worth of attempts to establish the ‘vanity of existence’ are all to the effect that 

life must be meaningless given that (alleged) living creatures are more disposed to be 

miserable than happy. 

Schopenhauer does hold that unhappiness drains meaning from life, and in 

keeping with this belief, he holds that happiness gives life meaning. But Schopenhauer 

holds that it is not our failure to gratify our desires that makes us unhappy but our 

desires themselves. Desire-gratification, says Schopenhauer, provides only temporary 

relief from frustration since, whenever a desire is gratified, others take its place. 30 So 

30 

“[T]here is the insatiability of the will by virtue whereof every satisfaction 

creates a fresh desire and its craving, eternally insatiable, goes on forever.” Doctrine of 

Vanity of Existence, Section 145.

desire-gratification leads only to more desires, more frustration and more suffering. 31 

But when we renounce our desires, we do achieve relatively lasting relief from pain. 32 

This is because whereas desire-gratification strengthens our desires and therefore 

strengthens the source of our suffering, desire-renunciation weakens our desires and 

therefore weakens the source of our suffering. Schopenhauer regards desire in general 

as similar to an addict’s desire for drugs and he regards desire-gratification as similar to 

addiction-driven drug-use: if the addict uses, he will gratify his cravings in in the shortterm 

but intensify them in the long-term. And the addict’s only hope is to forego 

gratification and thereby let his drug-cravings melt away: only then will he be free. 

Schopenhauer grants that people can be altruistic, but he does not believe that 

altruism leads to salvation. His argument is that in being altruistic, one is exchanging 

concern for oneself for concern for others and one is therefore simply exchanging the 

pain brought by concern for self for the pain brought by concern for others: 

If the veil of maya, the principium individuationis, is lifted from a human being’s 

eyes to such an extent that he no longer makes the egoistic distinction between his 

person and that of others, but rather takes as much interest in the sufferings of other 

31 

“The perpetual efforts to banish suffering do nothing more than alter its form.” 

The World as Will and Idea, Section 57. 

32 

“Thus satisfaction or happiness can never be anything other than liberation 

from a pain or need…” The World as Will and Idea, Section 58.

individuals as he does in his own, and is not only exceedingly charitable but is actually 

prepared to sacrifice his own individual as soon as several others can be saved by doing 

so, then it clearly follows that such a human being, who recognizes himself, his 

innermost and true self in all beings, must also regard the endless sufferings of all living 

beings as his own, and take upon the pain of the whole world. 33 

In other words: If Smith only cares about himself, then he feels pain when he is 

hurt. If Jones only cares about her children, then she feels pain when they are hurt. 

Depending on how many children she has and how much she cares about them, altruist- 

Jones is more exposed than egoist-Jones to the possibility of pain. 34 

So even though Schopenhauer grants, as he must, that altruism is a virtue, he 

denies that it provides any respite from the pain of life, and in fact holds that it may add 

to it, and therefore denies that salvation lies in altruism. 

33 

“No suffering is foreign to him [the altruist] anymore. All the misery of others 

that he sees and is so rarely in a position to alleviate, all the misery that he learns about 

indirectly or in fact only knows to be possible, all these affect his spirit as if they were his 

own.” The World as Will and Idea, Section 58. 

34 

“No suffering is foreign to him [the altruist] anymore. All the misery of others 

that he sees and is so rarely in a position to alleviate, all the misery that he learns about 

indirectly or in fact only knows to be possible, all these affect his spirit as if they were his 

own.” The World as Will and Idea, Section 58.

Schopenhauer’s conception of the good lies is similar to the Buddhist conception. 

According to Buddhism, life is a ‘veil of tears’, and it is not by gratifying our desires, but 

by extinguishing them, that we find relief from them. Buddhism is a form of asceticism, 

this being the doctrine that living properly is conquering desires rather than gratifying 

them, and for the Schopenhauer, the ideal to which human beings must strive if they 

are to be free of tyranny of their own desires is an ascetic ideal. 

There is a second reason why, in Schopenhauer’s view, human beings should 

conquer their desires, not gratify them. Schopenhauer points out that a major problem 

for human beings is boredom. Boredom, Schopenhauer points out, does not afflict 

thinkers or people of substance whose basic needs are taken care of, for the reason that 

Rather, boredom afflicts empty people who are concerned only with gratifying base 

desires and who, because of wealth of circumstance, succeed in conquering them: 

But as a counterweight to this on the side of suffering, boredom appears in man 

which is unknown to the animal, at any rate in the natural state, but which slightly 

attacks the most intelligent only if they are domesticated, whereas with man it becomes 

a real scourge. We see it in that host of miserable wretches who have always been 

concerned over filling their purses but never their heads, and for whom their very

wealth becomes a punishment by delivering them into the hands of a punishing 

boredom. 35 

The idea seems to be that if a person deals with his desires by gratifying them as 

opposed to conquering them, then when he does finally gratify them, he is simply an 

empty husk who for that reason needs more desires to rouse him back to life, whereas if 

a person deals with his desires by conquering them, then he is not an empty husk and 

doesn’t need to be jump-started by desires to be psychologically alive. 

Nietzsche rejects Schopenhauer’s answer to the question “what is the meaning of 

life?” Schopenhauer holds that pain drains life of meaning, and Nietzsche rejects this. 

Nietzsche points out that many people seem to embrace pain. 36 Many people give their 

lives meaning, or at least attempt to do so, by conquering adversity and therefore by 

exposing themselves to difficult and in many cases painful situations. Nietzsche argues 

that when pain does drain life of meaning, it does so only because we see it as having no 

meaning. To use Nietzsche’s own example, the Christian ascetic who willfully suffers 

sees his sufferings as giving his life meaning. But if that same Christian were to lose his 

faith, he would cease to see his suffering as simply detracting from the value of his life. 

35 

Doctrine of the Suffering of the World, Section 153 

36 

“Man, the bravest animal and the most prone to suffer, does not deny suffering as 

such: he wills it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose 

for suffering.” On the Genealogy of Morality, Section 8.

Or, to take another example, consider the political rebel who fights and suffers for his 

cause. As long as he continues to believe in his cause he regards his sufferings as adding 

meaning to his life, but he will regard them as doing nothing but detracting from his life 

if he stops believing in his cause. Thus, Nietzsche claims, it is not suffering per se that 

drains life of meaning but meaningless suffering that does so. 37 

According to Nietzsche, many metaphysical systems embody the just-described 

erroneous belief that pain drains away meaning. Nietzsche’s argument is as follows. 

Pain is caused by change. Philosophers identify what is real with what is unchanging, 

and they tend to regard what changes as being existentially subordinate to what 

doesn’t, changes, including appearances, being mere ‘accidents’ or modifications of 

some deeper and more real entity. 38 But in Nietzsche’s view, these underlying 

unalterables do not exist and are mere projections of a desire on the part of such 

philosophers to live in a world that does not cause pain. By the same token, if 

philosophers saw that pain per se did not necessarily detract from the value of life, they 

37 

“What actually arouses indignation is not the suffering itself, but the 

senselessness of suffering…neither for the Christian, who saw in suffering a whole, 

hidden machinery of salvation, nor for the naïve man in ancient times, who saw all 

suffering in relation to spectators or to instigators of suffering, was there any such 

senseless suffering.” On the Genealogy of Morality, Section 7. 

38 

“Man seeks ‘the truth’: a world that is not self-contradictory, not deceptive, does not 

change, a true world---a world in which one does not suffer; contradiction, deception, 

change—causes of suffering!” Will to Power, Section 585.

would not live to world that caused them no pain and would therefore not have this 

wish to embody into their metaphysical views. 39 

It is in these terms that we are to understand Nietzsche’s statement that “the 

total value of the world cannot be estimated” (Will to Power, Section 708). The actual 

world is a world of change. There is no fixed state that it is hiding or that it is trending 

towards. Therefore, there is no fixed standard with respect to which we can evaluate 

the world as it actually presents itself to us. Therefore, the “value” of the world cannot 

be “estimated.” 

According to Nietzsche, the belief that suffering is futile leads to passive 

resignation and therefore turns life into a mere prelude to death. 40 If one’s life is to be 

more than proto-death, one must reject pessimism and nihilism by being joyously 

engaged with the world. 

Nietzsche’s view of the world, though dark, is uplifting. He is right to say that 

pessimism is, to put it colloquially, a loser’s mindset, and he is right to say that, in reject 

reality in favor of their a priori constructions, philosophers (not all philosophers, but an 

39 

“Contempt, hatred for all that perishes, changes, varies---whence comes this valuation 

of that which remains constant? Obviously the will to truth is here merely a desire for a 

world of the constant.” Will to Power, Section 585. 

40 

“Obviously the will to truth is here merely a desire for a world of the 

constant….Happiness can be guaranteed only by being; happiness and change exclude 

each other…[T]he world as it ought to be exists: this world, in which we live, is in error--- 

this world of ours ought not to exist….What kind of man reflects in this way? An 

unproductive, suffering kind, a kind weary of life.” Will to Power, Section 585.

important subset, including Plato) are ultimately fleeing from reality instead of engaging 

it. 

Nietzsche’s position is sane and healthy, whereas Schopenhauer’s position is 

insane and unhealthy. In holding that the best we can do is to minimize pain, 

Schopenhauer is asking that people retreat from the world and turn their lives into mere 

anticipations of death. Someone whose attitude towards life is Nietzschean will 

courageously and fully and someone whose attitude is Schopenhauerian will hardly live 

at all, and for this reason I personally accept Nietzsche’s view and reject 

Schopenhauer’s. 

Notes on Nietzsche for Sandra (Philosophy) 

GM II Section 7 Modern man has low pain tolerance because he regards 

suffering as meaningless, and he regards suffering as meaningless because he regards 

life as meaningless. 

Does Nietzsche think that modern man is less able to endure pain than premodern 

man?

Does Nietzsche think that pre-modern people saw life as more meaningful than 

modern people do? 

Why does Nietzsche think that life is less meaningful today than it used to be? 

Why, according to Nietzsche, is life less meaningful for modern 'enlightened' 

people than it was for pre-modern unenlightened people? 

GM III Section 28 

Modern man gives meaning to suffering through religious asceticism, which 

makes a virtue out of suffering. 

Does Nietzsche think that suffering has meaning? 

Nietzsche talks a lot about 'ascetics', people who deprive themselves of earthly 

pleasures and even inflict pain on themselves. Why does Nietzsche explain the behavior 

of such people? 

How do religious ascetics (people who spurn earthly pleasures) justify their 

asceticism to themselves?

what do they tell themselves that they are doing? how do they convince 

themselves that their behavior gives meaning to their life 

ascetics - people refuse to live comfortably 

Will to Power Section 576 

Philosophers describe as 'real' that which does not cause suffering and describe 

as 'unreal' that which does cause suffering. Thus, Plato claimed that claimed that 

abstractions are real and everything else is but a shadow of these 'forms', since timeless 

forms are harmless and don't cause suffering, and for the same reason Zeno claimed 

that change doesn't really exist. 

the things that we see everyday is less real than the universals of which of 

everyday things are instances. 

Nietzsche often says that 'philosophers' believe in what is permanent and 

disbelieve in change. Which specific philosophers does Nietzsche have in mind? 

Why do philosophers claim that what doesn't cause suffering is 'real' and what 

does is 'unreal' when the truth is that it is the other way around? 

example : dog biting you--pretty real

example: God, abstract entities--not so real 

But philosophers seem to say that it's the other way around. 


When philosophers describe the world, they claim to be speaking from reason; 

they claim that it is reason that requires them to posit substance beneath appearance 

and permanence beneath change. But they are speaking not from reason but from 

desire; they want there to be substance and permanence. 

Nietzsche says that philosophers 'hate the irrational'. Who is an example of such 

a philosopher? 


Philosophers regard what is permanent as more real and 'good' than what is 

impermanent over there. They claim that that this view of theirs is driven by reason. But 

really it's just about their being tired and weak and therefore disdainful of what is 

dynamic and unpredictable.

Nietzsche says that philosophers 'fear change and transitoriness'? Who is an 

example of such a philosopher? 

Does Nietzsche think that philosophers are weak and tired people? 

outlook'? 

What does Nietzsche have in mind when he refers to the 'objective, philosophical 

Why did Nietzsche have such a low opinion of philosophers, given that he himself 

is a philosopher? 

"the philosophical objective outlook can therefore be a sign that will and strength 

are small..... " page 318 

Twilight of the Idols Sections IV-V 

When philosophers describe something as 'true' or 'good', it only means they 

don't feel threatened by it, and whey describe something as 'bad' or 'false' it means they 

do feel threatened by it. That is why to see the actual truth, one go 'beyond good and 

evil'; in other words, one must let of these notions.

Nietzsche says the following: "To live alone, you must either be a God or an 

animal, says Aristotle. But he left out a third case---you can be a philosopher." What 

does Nietzsche mean by this? Why does Nietzsche think that philosophers are both 

Gods and animals? 

Will to Power Sections 1-3 

Christianity has died and been replaced by nihilism. 

In Nietzsche's view, is nihilism good or bad? 

In Section 2, Nietzsche seems to say that Christian values led to the death of the 

Christian God. What does he mean by this? 


The world is pure energy; energy is will; will is will to power. 

Nietzsche says that the world "is not endlessly extended but set in a definite 

place as a definite force, and not as a space that might be "empty" here or there, but

ather as a force throughout." So does Nietzsche believe that there is no such thing as 

empty space? 


All will is will to power. There is no other kind of will. 

Why does Nietzsche say that "the will of psychology...does not exist at all"? 


The desire to understand is a desire to control 

Nietzsche says that "interpretation is a means of becoming a master of 

something." What does he mean by that? 


Will seems to have many different objects; but it really only has one object-- 

power--and this object assumes many different forms. 

Nietzsche seems to think that everyone wants power. So how does he explain 

why some people are submissive or masochistic? 

Nietzsche seems to think that people only want power. So does he deny that 

people ever care about other people?

Twilight of the Idols Preface 

Old values are dying and it is time to figure out what kinds of values must replace 

them. 

Nietzsche says that "the only proof of strength is an excess of strength." What 

does he mean by that? 


We learn about the world by organizing appearances, not by getting behind 

them. 

Nietzsche says that "the world is a world of relationships." What does he mean 

by this? 


Our love of truth and beauty are derived from our will to power; for awareness of 

truth and beauty help us acquire power.

Nietzsche refers to "our love of the beautiful"? How does Nietzsche explain this 

love of ours? In his opinion, why do we love beauty? 

Twilight of the Idols Section 5 

Tragedy is about joyously embracing even the darkest aspects of life. 

Nietzsche says that Aristotle misunderstood the nature of tragedy. In Nietzsche's 

view, how did Aristotle misunderstand tragedy? 

Nietzsche on Punishment (Philosophy/Politics) 

In his work The Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche argues that when we examine 

the genealogy (origins) of many practices of ours that we regard as having purely 

rational, non-emotional basis, we find that they are in fact replete with emotion of the 

most bestial kind. Drawing on Darwin and anticipating Freud, Nietzsche argues that 

when a practice first comes into existence, it appears as what it is and that, even though 

it comes to seem more wholesome over the years and also may have been put to

legitimate uses, it remains at its core what it originally was. In his attempt to establish 

this thesis, Nietzsche examines a number of social institutions, including religion, debt, 

and punishment. In this paper, we will focus on Nietzsche's analysis of punishment. 

Today, when it is asked why people are punished, the answer that is given is 

along the lines of: ‘because people who break the law must be punished, lest the 

continue to break the law and thereby undermine the integrity of society.’ In other 

words, the accepted conception of punishment is utilitarian in nature. Nietzsche 

disagrees: 

Yet a word on the origin and the purpose of punishment—two problems that are 

separate, or ought to be separate: unfortunately, they are usually confounded. How 

have previous genealogists of morals set about solving these problems? Naïvely, as has 

always been their way: they seek out some “purpose” in punishment, for example, 

revenge or deterrence, then guilelessly place this purpose at the beginning as causa 

fiendi of punishment, and—have done. The “purpose of law,” however, is absolutely the 

last thing to employ in the history of the origin of law: on the contrary, there is for 

historiography of any kind no more important proposition than the one it took such 

effort to establish but which really ought to be established now: the cause of the origin 

of a thing and its eventual utility, its actual employment and place in a system of 

purposes, lie worlds apart.

Here Nietzsche is saying that although punishment has acquired social utility, that 

is not what it was originally about and that is still not what it is at its core about. 

Nietzsche believes this to hold not just of punishment of social institutions in general: 

[W]hatever exists, having somehow come into being, is again and again 

reinterpreted to new ends, taken over, transformed, and redirected by some power 

superior to it; all events in the organic world are a subduing, a becoming master, and all 

subduing and becoming master involves a fresh interpretation, an adaptation through 

which any previous “meaning” and “purpose” are necessarily obscured or even 

obliterated. However well one has understood the utility of any physiological organ (or 

of a legal institution, a social custom, a political usage, a form in art or in a religious 

cult), this means nothing regarding its origin: however uncomfortable and disagreeable 

this may sound to older ears—for one had always believed that to understand the 

demonstrable purpose, the utility of a thing, a form, or an institution, was also to 

understand the reason why it originated—the eye being made for seeing, the hand 

being made for grasping. 

The idea here seems to be that social institutions, such as punishment, are initial 

about power, their current sheen of utility and rationality being alien to what they

originally were and merely incidental to what they now are. Nietzsche then maps this 

point about onto the topic of punishment specifically: 

Thus one also imagined that punishment was devised for punishing. But purposes 

and utilities are only signs that a will to power has become master of something less 

powerful and imposed upon it the character of a function; and the entire history of a 

“thing,” an organ, a custom can in this way be a continuous sign-chain of ever new 

interpretations and adaptations whose causes do not even have to be related to one 

another but, on the contrary, in some cases succeed and alternate with one another in a 

purely chance fashion. 

Nietzsche’s point is that punishment is primarily about power--about exercising it 

over others not for utilitarian reasons, for its own sake. To prove this, Nietzsche 

discusses the many different functions that punishment has served: 

To give at least an idea of how uncertain, how supplemental, how accidental “the 

meaning” of punishment is, and how one and the same procedure can be employed, 

interpreted, adapted to ends that differ fundamentally, I set down here the pattern that 

has emerged from consideration of relatively few chance instances I have noted. 

Punishment as a means of rendering harmless, of preventing further harm. Punishment

as recompense to the injured party for the harm done, rendered in any form (even in 

that of a compensating affect). Punishment as the isolation of a disturbance of 

equilibrium, so as to guard against any further spread of the disturbance. Punishment as 

a means of inspiring fear of those who determine and execute the punishment. 

Punishment as a kind of repayment for the advantages the criminal has enjoyed hitherto 

(for example, when he is employed as a slave in the mines). Punishment as the 

expulsion of a degenerate element (in some cases, of an entire branch, as in Chinese 

law: thus as a means of preserving the purity of a race or maintaining a social type). 

Punishment as a festival, namely as the rape and mockery of a finally defeated enemy. 

Punishment as the making of a memory, whether for him who suffers the punishment— 

so-called “improvement”—or for those who witness its execution. Punishment as 

payment of a fee stipulated by the power that protects the wrongdoer from the 

excesses of revenge. Punishment as a compromise with revenge in its natural state 

when the latter is still maintained and claimed as a privilege by powerful clans. 

Punishment as a declaration of war and a war measure against an enemy of peace, of 

the law, of order, of the authorities, whom, as a danger to the community, as one who 

has broken the contract that defines the conditions under which it exists, as a rebel, a 

traitor, and breaker of the peace, one opposes with the means of war.

Nietzsche’s point is that if punishment were simply or even primarily about 

preserving the social contract, it would not have such varied uses. Punishment is really 

about will to dominate others, and punishment assumes so many different forms 

because this will is, as it were, looking for any excuse to exert itself: 

Thus the essence of life, its will to power, is ignored; one overlooks the essential 

priority of the spontaneous, aggressive, expansive, form-giving forces that give new 

interpretations and directions, although “adaptation” follows only after this; the 

dominant role of the highest functionaries within the organism itself in which the will to 

life appears active and form-giving is denied. One should recall what Huxley reproached 

Spencer with—his “administrative nihilism”: but it is a question of rather more than 

mere “administration.” 

Nietzsche’s analysis of punishment is meant to illustrate a larger point of his: that 

if we look at social institutions without looking at their genealogies, we are likely to take 

transient and superficial facts about them as constituting their very essences. If we look 

at punishment as it is practiced and discussed today, we are apt to think that it exists to 

satisfy some rational need (the need to keep order or some such). And while it does 

serve that need, its doing so is only a form that it currently bears. And when we look at 

how many different forms punishment has assumed over the millennia, many of them

of little or no social utility, and also at how imperfectly it discharges its current 

utilitarian function, it makes more sense to see punishment as an expression of a will to 

dominate that may in certain contexts serve utilitarian ends. 

Tracy Latimer’s Father had the Right to Kill Her 

Towards a doctrine of generalized self-defense (Philosophy/Current Events) 

The facts of the case: Tracy Latimer, a 12-year-old victim of cerebral palsy, was 

killed by her father in 1993. Tracy lived with her family on a prairie farm in 

Saskatchewan, Canada. On a Sunday morning while his wife and other children were at 

church, Robert Latimer put Tracy in the cab of his pickup truck and piped in exhaust 

fumes until she died. At the time of her death, Tracy weighed less than 40 pounds; she 

was described as "functioning at the mental level of a three-month-old-baby." Mrs. 

Latimer said that she was relieved to find Tracy dead when she arrived home and added 

that she "didn't have the courage" to do it herself. 

Mr. Latimer was tried for murder; but the judge and the jury did not want to 

treat harshly. The jury found him guilty of only second-degree murder and 

recommended that the judge ignore the mandatory 25-year sentence. The judge agreed

and sentenced him to one year in prison, to be followed by a year of confinement to his 

farm. However, the Supreme Court of Canada stepped in and ruled that the mandatory 

sentence must be imposed. Robert Latimer is now in prison, serving the 25-year term. 

Analysis: We have to distinguish law from ethics. We must distinguish the 

question ‘what is it legal to do?’ from the question ‘what is it moral to do?’ In fact, we 

must distinguish the question ‘what should it be legal to do (as in, what should the law 

be)?’ from the question ‘what is it ethical to do?’ 

Ethically, I feel that Mr. Latimer was in the right. This may seem cold, but 

ultimately it is the most humane possible view of the situation. First of all, Tracy Latimer 

was a veritable vegetable—a human being in terms of her legal status, but not 

otherwise. And she was an inordinate drain on her father’s coffers (which, judging by 

the fact that he was self-employed farmer, were probably very limited). In fact, given 

how much of a financial (and personal) drain Tracy was on her father, coupled with the 

distinct possibility that Mr. Latimer’s only options were probably either ‘let Tracy live 

and lose my life’s savings’ or ‘kill Tracy and hold onto to what is left of my wealth and 

shattered life’, Mr. Latimer’s making the decision that he did was practically an act of 

self-defense.

As for the supposed immorality of killing his veritable vegetable of a daughter, 

the operative term here is ‘supposed.’ Suppose that the state had stepped in and 

decided to assume the financial burden of raising Tracy. In that case, this burden would 

have been distributed evenly over the tax-payers of Canada. This would create the 

illusion that no one was being indisposed by the burden of raising Tracy. But that is an 

illusion; for it wouldn’t just be Tracy Latimer that the tax-payers were paying for—it 

would be all of the various state-dependent Tracy Latimer’s in Canada. And that burden 

is very visible to each and every tax-payer in Canada, as it takes a decidedly visible chunk 

out of their income every year in the form of taxes. (Of course, the Canadian 

government doesn’t explicitly tell the tax-payers that they are paying for the clothing 

and feeding of people who are barely sentient and who, in any case, will never do 

anything positive for the welfare of Canada. So the Canadian tax-payers, being unaware 

of how much they are paying on behalf of such people, may not be as quick to 

sympathize with Tracy’s father as they would be if they were thus aware. But if they 

were clearly aware of the burden they were shouldering, they surely would have some 

sympathy for Mr. Latimer and they might even go so far as to support a change in the 

laws under which he was convicted. 

This brings us to the next question: Should those laws be changed? Should 

Canadian homicide law be rewritten so as to be: “It is wrong to kill, except in selfdefense 

and except when the alternative is paying enormous amounts of child-support

for a near-vegetable child?” It would be probably be inadvisable to change the law in 

that way. The laws relating to murder should be as well-defined and restrictive as 

possible. It is obviously unreasonable to prohibit people from killing people who are 

right then and there going to kill them. But it is at least arguably reasonable to prohibit 

people from killing people who are a threat in some possibly real but ill-defined way, 

such as being a drain on one’s coffers. If people were allowed to kill everyone who was a 

drain on their coffers, the homicide rate would be unacceptable. 

That said, the Canadian Supreme Court was, in my view, quite wrong to penalize 

Mr. Latimer so harshly. True—he broke the law. But he did not have a lot of options. He 

was in an untenable situation. And sometimes the best way to deal with imperfect laws 

is to tolerate verdicts that, although not strictly in keeping with the letter of the law, do 

uphold the interest of justice. And in this case, the initial verdict , was a reasonable and 

humane compromise between law and justice. And the Supreme Court’s reversal of that 

verdict comes off as cold and inhumane—and also as unwise, in that, by being so 

inhumane, it is likely to promote a certain contempt for the law. 

A Utilitarian Analysis of a Case of Theft (Philosophy/Applied Ethics) 

Utilitarianism is the doctrine that an act is morally right if it maximizes welfare. 

According to Jeremy Bentham’s version of utilitarianism, an act is morally right if it

maximizes pleasure, morally wrong if it maximizes pain; and one act x is more morally 

right than another act y if x causes more pleasure and causes less pain than y. The 

motivation for this theory is straightforward. Suppose that I have the power to make 

everyone either extremely happy or extremely miserable. If I choose to make everyone 

extremely happy, I am surely behaving rightly (or at least more rightly than I would be if 

I were to make everyone extremely miserable); and I make everyone extremely 

miserable, I am behaving wrongly (or at least more wrongly than I would be if I were to 

make everyone extremely happy). 

To quote Bentham: 

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain 

and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do… By the principle of 

utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever 

according to the tendency it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of 

the party whose interest is in question: or, what is the same thing in other words to 

promote or to oppose that happiness. I say of every action whatsoever, and therefore 

not only of every action of a private individual, but of every measure of government.

The idea here is simple. Pleasure and happiness are obviously desirable; they are 

sought and there is a clear sense in which they are to be sought. And pain and miserable 

are obviously the very opposite of desirable; and there is a clear sense in which they are 

avoided and are to be avoided. Therefore, it stands to reason that if one maximizes 

pleasure, not just for oneself but for everyone, then one is doing good, and if one 

maximizes pain (same qualification) then one is doing wrong. 

These considerations do not definitively establish the truth of utilitarianism, but 

they do make it clear at an intuitive level what the motivation for it is. 

Let us now turn to the case of Mr. Carcelleta. Mr. Carcelleta was an unemployed 

and mentally man who, at night, would take coins from a local fountain. In doing this, he 

did not disturb the peace. At the same time, he was indeed taking coins that were not 

his to donate to the needy. 

These being the facts, let us ask: From a utilitarian viewpoint, is Mr. Carcelleta 

behaving morally correctly? First of all, when the utilitarian asks ‘is action x morally 

correct?’, he is really just asking ‘does x maximize pleasure/happiness?’ So when the 

utilitarian asks ‘were Mr. Carcelleta’s actions morally correct?’, he is really just asking 

‘do Mr. Carcelleta’s actions maximize pleasure (not just his own, but everyone’s)?’ 

The answer to this question is: Mr. Carcelleta’s actions might maximize pleasure 

and, consequently, might from a utilitarian viewpoint be morally correct. Presumably 

the City of Rome regularly collects the coins that are tossed into the fountain. Suppose

that it then melts these coins down and turns them into guns, which it then uses to kill 

innocent people. In that case, by depriving the City of Rome of these coins, Mr. 

Carcelleta’s actions are saving innocent lives and preventing an enormous amount of 

pain; and from a utilitarian viewpoint, Mr. Carcelleta’s actions are therefore morally 

correct. (We must also remember that for the utilitarian, Mr. Carcelleta’s own happiness 

has moral weight. So if his taking the coins increases his level of happiness, as it 

presumably does, then from a utilitarian perspective that very fact adds to the moral 

rightness of his action.) 

At the same time, if the circumstances just described are not the actual 

circumstances (and, realistically speaking, they are probably not), then from a utilitarian 

viewpoint Mr. Carcelleta’s actions might be morally wrong. Suppose that the City of 

Rome uses the coins from the fountain to subsidize cancer-treatment for children. In 

that case, by taking those coins, Mr. Carcelleta is depriving those children of much 

needed cancer-treatment and is therefore depriving them of happiness and is also 

depriving their loved ones of happiness. And in that case, Mr. Carcelleta’s actions are 

wrong from a utilitarian viewpoint (and probably from many other viewpoints). Of 

course, Mr. Carcelleta’s probably make increase his level of happiness, but (under the 

just-described circumstance) they surely do not increase his level of happiness as much 

as they decrease the happiness of the various children and family members thereof in

question. For this reason, Mr. Carcelleta’s actions would cause more unhappiness than 

happiness and would therefore be wrong from a utilitarian viewpoint. 

In general, the answer to the question ‘is act x morally correct from a utilitarian 

viewpoint?’ is ‘it depends.’ If x causes more misery than happiness, then x is wrong 

(according to the utilitarian); and if x causes more happiness than misery, then x is right; 

if it causes happiness and misery in equal measure, it is morally neutral. And it does not 

matter what x is. If x is an act of murder that happens to cause more pleasure than pain, 

then x is right for the utilitarian. And if x is an act of saving a drowning infant that 

happens to cause more misery than happiness, then x is wrong from a utilitarian 

viewpoint. 

Realistically speaking, Mr. Carcelleta’s actions were probably morally wrong from 

a utilitarian viewpoint. The City of Rome probably put the money from the fountain to 

some kind of constructive use. It probably used it to fund some valuable civic project 

(fixing potholes, funding homeless shelters, or fountain the fountain itself). If this is the 

case, then Mr. Carcelleta’s actions forced the City of Rome either to forego those 

projects or to get the money needed from them from somewhere else, in either of 

which cases Mr. Carcelleta’s actions almost certainly caused more unhappiness than 

happiness. 

We must also bear in mind that, however paradoxical it might seem at first, Mr. 

Carcelleta might himself have been happier in the long run if he hadn’t taken that

money. Not having access to that easy money might have forced him or his loved ones 

to find him legitimate employment and to undergo much needed psychiatric treatment, 

in which case he might well have ended up far happier, having as he would a secure 

sense of income, along with mental health and self-respect. 

Van Cleve on Epistemic Circularity (Philosophy) 

Explain what van Cleve means by epistemic circularity, justified inference, and 

reliable inference. Now consider the rule of inference he writes "Most of the A’s I have 

examined were B’s. Hence, the majority of all A’s are B’s." How, according to van Cleve, 

can we come to know that this rule is reliable? How might we know that it is justified (he 

considers two ways)? Explain why the reliabilist way doesn’t involve epistemic circularity. 

Epistemic circularity is the use of a supposed source of knowledge to justify that 

same source of knowledge. If I used sense-perception to justify sense-perception, I am 

guilty of epistemic circularity. So if asked how I know that I am not dreaming, and I say ‘I 

just pinched myself and it hurt, which it wouldn’t if I were dreaming’, I am guilty of 

epistemic circularity. I am guilty of epistemic circularity if I try to justify induction on the 

basis of induction (as I would be doing if, when trying to justify inferences from the past 

to the future, I said ‘because in the past such inferences have always gone through’).

Van Cleve is concerned with how to non-circularly justify induction. His position is 

based on a ‘reliabilist’ theory of knowledge. Reliabilism is the view that a belief is 

justified if caused by a reliable (i.e. consistently truth-conducive) mechanism. Just as the 

height of the column of mercury in a thermometer must reliably correlate with the 

termperature if it is to tell them time, so our beliefs must reliably correlate with external 

realities if they are to be justified. 

Van Cleve’s position concerning induction is that, even if we don’t know what the 

mechanisms are that ensure that our inductively arrived at beliefs are on track, as long 

those mechanisms are in fact responsible for our beliefs, they are justified. So in Van 

Cleve’s view, we don’t have to justify induction (or know of any such justification) in 

order for our inductively arrived beliefs to be justified. 

Explain the lottery paradox. Make sure to explain the role of "epistemic closure". 

According to Hawthorne, what is distinctive of “lottery propositions”? Explain by 

comparing the proposition that you won’t win the lottery to the proposition that not all 

60 golfers will get a hole-in-one on Heartbreaker. Explain how Hawthorne thinks “Parity 

reasoning” can threaten even perceptual knowledge. Now think about the coin flipping 

cases from DGH. Is the proposition that the coin won't land tails every time a lottery 

proposition in Hawthorne's sense? 

Suppose that a million tickets for some lottery are sold. Before the winner is announced,

I don’t know that the ticket I bought will lose, even though it is highly probable that it 

will lose. This suggests that a belief is knowledge only if the evidence on which it is 

based makes that belief 100% likely to be true. The problem is that in most cases the 

evidence we have for our beliefs falls short of certainty. Intuitively, I ‘know’ that if I 

commit a murder in front of police officers, I will be arrested. But it is a theoretical 

possibility that they won’t arrest me for some reason. By parity of reasoning---or, as Van 

Cleve puts it, if we use ‘parity reasoning’---practically any case of empirical knowledge 

falls short of being 100% likely and therefore seems not to be actual knowledge. ‘ In 

other words, if we take a given case of what we regard as knowledge and show it to 

have a probability of less than 100%, we can show by ‘parity reasoning’ (by an argument 

from analogy, in other words), that we know little or nothing about the external world. 

Van Cleve’s position regarding the coin tosses (whether we can know that a given coin 

won’t land tails if flipped 10 times in a row) is unclear. Van Cleve seems to hold that if 

we know that the coin is fair, we don’t know this, for much the same reasons that one 

doesn’t know that one’s lottery ticket will lose. But he also seems to say that since it is 

always a possibility that the coin is weighted and since a streak of tails would suggest as 

much, the coin-situation is not analogous to the lottery situation. (Of course, lotteries 

can be rigged, just as coins can be weighted, but Van Cleve doesn’t mention this.) 

DGH (Dorr, Hawthorn, Goodman) argue that those who accept Fair Coins are 

under pressure to accept Possible Future Unlikelihood, and that doing so has worrying

skeptical implications. Explain their argument (the one involving Strong Autumn Leaf). 

What do they suggest this shows about the connection between knowledge and chance. 

According to FAIR COINS (FC) “If you know that a coin is fair, and for all you know 

it is going to be flipped, then for all you know it will land tails.” Technicalities aside, DGH 

say that FC is false, the argument being that, even though one may not of a given coin 

toss whether it end up heads or tails, one does know of a large enough aggregate of coin 

tosses that some will end up heads and some will end up tails. In general, one can know 

of aggregates of cases (of particle-displacements, fluctuations in the stock-market, etc.) 

that some will go one way and others some other way without knowing of any one case 

what the outcome will be. To use DGH’s own example, one can know that by winter a 

tree will be more or less bare of leaves, even though one cannot know of any given leaf 

whether it will be on the tree. DGH allege that if FC is true, we lack knowledge of the 

future, for the same reason that we cannot know of a given coin toss how it will land. 

The idea is that when a belief has a chance of being false (as with the belief that a given 

leaf will fall), it isn’t knowledge, but when it doesn’t have a chance of being false (as 

with my believe that most of the leafs will fall), it can be knowledge. 

What is supposed to be paradoxical about a teacher announcing that she will give 

a surprise exam in the next month? Explain why the paradox relies (i) on the `double-K' 

principle that, if you know something, then you know that you know it, and also (ii) on

the assumption that student won't lose knowledge. Now consider the surprise exam 

paradox in the case of a pop quiz -- the teacher says "I am going to give you an exam 

right now, and when I do it will be a surprise". Explain why this version is puzzling too. 

What might this suggest about the role of (i) and (ii) in solving the original puzzle? 

The short answer to this question is: A surprise that is expected isn’t a surprise. 

Long answer: if a student is told that next month he will be given a surprise test, he can 

reason as follows. It can’t be on the 31st since by the time the 31st comes, he’ll know 

that it must be happen; nor can be it be on the 30th day, since he knows that it can’t be 

on the 31st day and therefore knows to expected it on the 30th day; nor by parity of 

reasoning can it be on the nth day (for any n less than 30). Of course, if the student 

forgets what the teacher has told him, then it can be a surprise. So this paradox assumes 

that the student retains what he knows. Also, unless the student knows that he is aware 

of the teacher’s instructions, then he can’t use the previously described reasoning to 

make a case to himself that the teacher won’t give the test. So the ‘double k principle’ 

(one cannot know without knowing that one knows) is involved, at least to this extent. 

5) Explain what is going on in McKinsey's "Anti-individualism and privileged 

access". More specifically: What does he means by "anti-individualism", and what 

argument does he give for it? Explain the disagreement between Burge and McKinsey

egarding the compatibility of anti-individualism and privileged access (being sure to 

explain what McKinsey means by "privileged access"). Explain how someone might 

appeal to reliabilism to defend Burge's position against McKinsey's argument. 

According to ‘anti-individualism’, what our concepts are concepts of depends in 

part on their modes of origination. I (Erica) have a concept of my roommate Mary, not 

of Twin-Mary, and Twin-Erica has a concept of Twin-Mary, not of Mary, and the reason 

is that, even though my psychological states are (aside from their modes of origination) 

identical with Twin-Erica’s mental states, mine are caused by Mary and hers are caused 

by Twin-Mary. 

According to Van Cleve, if anti-individualism is correct, then we don’t have 

‘privileged access’ to the contents of many mental states of ours to which we believe 

ourselves to have privileged access. (In other words, we don’t have direct and infallible 

knowledge of those states.) Right now I am thinking about Mary. Surely, so I believe, I 

know with complete certainty that I am in fact thinking about Mary right now. But my 

mental state (so far as I am aware of it) is just like Twin-Erica’s mental state (same 

qualification), and Twin-Erica is thinking about Twin-Mary, not Mary. So antiindividualism 

seems to entail that I don’t know that I am not thinking about Mary, as 

opposed to Twin-Mary, or about water, as opposed to Twin-water, etc.

Tyler Burge believes that anti-individualism is incompatible with the 

presumption that I know myself (with the certainty that only privileged access can 

afford) to be thinking about Mary, as opposed to Twin-Mary. Burge’s argument is not 

easy to understand but seems to come to this. It can be doubted whether I am in fact 

thinking about Mary, Twin-Mary, or neither. But if I am in fact thinking about Mary, then 

I can know with complete certainty that I am thinking about her. The idea seems to be 

that the connection between the second-order thought (I think that I am thinking about 

Mary) and the first-order thought (I am thinking about Mary) is secure, even though the 

connection between the first-order thought and the world is not secure. To use an 

analogy: I may not know with certainty that Smith has two cars, but if I know that that 

Smith has two cars, I know (or can know) with certainty that he has an even number of 

cars. 

McKinsey rejects Burge’s reasoning, for the reason that, if anti-individualism is 

correct, I simply can’t tell on the basis of my own mental state whether I am Erica or 

Twin-Erica or, therefore, whether I am thinking about Mary or Twin-Mary. 

6) Why care about knowledge? Give four arguments, from at least three different 

readings from the semester.

Having knowledge obviously has practical advantages that having false beliefs 

lacks. (Success comes easier to people with knowledge than it does to people who 

don’t. The latter can get lucky, but luck of its very nature cannot be relied upon.) But 

practical benefits aside, having knowledge is valuable that delusion isn’t. Other things 

being equal, I would choose to live in the ‘real world’ than to live in a mere simulation. 

(Of course, if the real world is horribly unpleasant and the simulation thereof is highly 

pleasant, then I might opt for the latter. But other things equal, I will opt for the 

former.) This is what Nozick’s discussion of the ‘experience machine’ shows: given a 

choice, people prefer to knowledge to delusion. In fact, people often prefer to confront 

ugly realities even when they have the option of turning a blind eye to them. 

The readings for this class made it clear how hard knowledge can be to acquire. 

Smith knows that Jones has 10 coins in his pocket and is justified in believing that Jones 

will be promoted and therefore that someone with 10 coins in his pocket will get 

promoted. But if someone other than Jones get the promotion, Smith cannot be said to 

have known that someone with 10 coins in his pocket was going to get the promotion, 

showing that not all cases of justified true belief are knowledge. And it is unclear what x 

must be, besides being a justified true belief, if x is to be knowledge. 

In fact, our commonsense beliefs about the external world, including the belief 

that it even exists, are surprisingly hard to validate. Moore tries to do so in his ‘Proof of 

an External World’, his argument being that there must be an eternal world since he

knows himself to have hands. But of course the skeptic would deny that he knows 

himself to have hands, and Moore’s argument therefore does nothing to undermine 

skepticism. 

This would not be a problem if there were no basis for skepticism. But there is. I 

don’t know that my lottery ticket will lose, even though it has only a one in a million 

chance of winning. It would that seem that, by parity of reasoning, no belief is 

knowledge if there is any chance that it could be false, a consequence being that few if 

any of our empirical beliefs are false. This argument is not airtight, but it is not easy to 

refute. 

Skepticism sometimes assumes unexpected forms. For example, Bostrom makes 

a case that it is more likely that we are living in a simulation of reality than in reality, his 

argument being that if knowledge continues to grow at its current rate, along its current 

trajectory, our descendants will create innumerable simulations of human existence. (I 

don’t accept this argument, since virtual people don’t think. But Bostrom’s argument is 

ingenious nonetheless.) 

So knowledge is precious, for the simple reason that without it we are for all we 

know living in a dream world, and it is also hard to attain, or at least hard to prove that 

can be attained.

Plato’s Theory of Forms (Philosophy) 

The essence of Plato's Theory of Forms is this. Anything that exists in space-time 

is but an instance of something that does not itself so exist. Consider some spherical 

object---a ball of some kind. (For expository reasons, suppose that this object is 

perfectly spherical.) This object, being spherical, is an 'instance' of the property--or, as 

Plato would say, the 'form'--of roundness. Of course, this object is also an instance of 

innumerably many other properties (or 'forms'). Supposing that it's mass is n, it is an 

instance of the property of having that mass; supposing that it's molecular/atomic 

structure is xyz, it is an instance of the property of that having xyz. 

Plato's theory of forms is correct. The supposition that properties exist (not 

property-instances, but properties per se) is necessary to validate even the most 

rudimentary inferences. For example 'if John and Bill are both tall, then there is 

something they have in common'. This inference obviously goes through, and it 

presupposes the existence of a property (tallness), as its meaning is: 'If John and Bill are 

both tall, there is some property of which they are both instances.' 

Attempts have been made to replace statements about properties with 

statements about their instances, but such attempts inevitably fail. The statement 'one 

can have most of the properties of a great businessman without being a great

usinessman' cannot be 'translated' into a statement that does not presuppose the 

existence of properties. 

As for the idea that properties are identical with (or in some way or other 

constituted by) their instances, that too is a non-started. For example, some have tried 

to identify the property of being a rock with a 'scattered object' consisting of all rocks. 

But this move fails, since even though that 'scattered object' is always undergoing 

changes (in the locations of its various constituents as well the location of its outer 

boundary), the property of being a rock does not undergo any changes (or, in any case, 

does not undergo corresponding changes), which, given Leibniz's Law (x and y have the 

very same properties if x=y_ means that the property of being a rock is not identical 

with that 'scattered object.' Analogous reasoning refutes any attempt to identify any 

property with any spatiotemporal entity. 

Plato himself mischaracterized his own theory of forms, by assuming that forms 

(properties) must in some way or other 'resemble' their own instances. And, of course, if 

it is assumed that instances of forms must resemble forms (or otherwise be related to 

them in the way that spatiotemporal objects are related to other spatiotemporal 

objects)--in other words, if it is assumed that the instantiation-relation is similar to a 

relation that holds among form-instances---then, yes, various paradoxes will arise (of 

the kind discussed by Plato himself, notably in the Parmenides, and also of the kind 

discussed by Aristotle, the main such paradox being the 'third man' paradox, this

paradox that if instantiation involves resemblance, then there must be a third term to 

ground the resemblance, and a fourth term to ground the resemblance-relation 

involving the third term, and so on ad infinitum). But the very essence of Plato's Theory 

of Forms is that forms, being non-spatiotemporal, do not relate to their instances in the 

way in which spatiotemporal entities relate to other spatiotemporal entities: they do 

not resemble them, are not composed by them, and do not causally interact. 

To say that properties (or 'forms') exist is simply to say that there are 'ways' 

things can be: being round is a way that a thing can be, and so is being green or red or 

male or female. Ways things can be are not spatiotemporal, even thing instances of such 

ways are (in some cases) spatiotemporal. (Properties are themselves instances of other 

properties, e.g. the property of being green is an instance of the property of being a 

color-property--- hence the parenthetical hedge.) So Plato's Theory of Forms is not only 

a theory but a demonstrably correct one. 




govern motions and events everywhere. What is the significance of this difference from






in the social sciences.) 











virtue’). 


still utterly false, as well as lacking in independent support, as well as failing to be






given impetus generates less motion in water than in air). 














reflection of an antecedent explanation, not vice versa, and it has no explanatory force



terms of law. 


whereas Aristotle explained in terms of desires (thinly veiled as mechanical causes)---is 











extremely wide range of phenomena in terms of three very simple principles:




For each action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. 













motion. Everything he had to say about ‘gravity’ was absorbed into these formulations.





and other such irrelevancies). 








other bodies. 





philosophers/scientists during the scientific revolution followed Bacon’s methods closely,





understanding the world. 














is so disposed, then I am rejecting the ‘coincidence explanation’ and opting for the ‘non-

coincidence explanation.’ But if I go with the non-coincidence explanation—if I hold that 




legitimate when they are parasitic on cases of inference to the best explanation. But so 













An Ethical Quandary (Philosophy/Ethics)

7.04 Student Disclosure of Personal Information Psychologists do not require 

students or supervisees to disclose personal information in course- or program-related 

activities, either orally or in writing, regarding sexual history, history of abuse and 

neglect, psychological treatment, and relationships with parents, peers, and spouses or 

significant others except if (1) the program or training facility has clearly identified this 

requirement in its admissions and program materials or (2) the information is necessary 

to evaluate or obtain assistance for students whose personal problems could reasonably 

be judged to be preventing them from performing their training- or professionally 

related activities in a competent manner or posing a threat to the students or others. 

Section 7.04 answers the question “Does Karen have a responsibility to disclose 

the relevant facts about her situation to the faculty?” And that is the only question 

answered by 7.04. And this question is moot, since Karen has disclosed everything to 

them. The issue is not whether Karen should disclose the relevant facts—she already 

has. The issue is whether the psychology department can conditionalize her continued 

stay in the department on her receiving psychological help. 7.04 does not speak to that 

question. 7.04 does imply that the department may in some contexts “seek assistance” 

for students. But first of all, it does not make it clear what those circumstances are—in 

particular, it does not make it clear whether the student must grant them permission to

do so. Further, it does not make it clear what kind of assistance the department may 

seek. The assistance in question could consist solely of tutorial services, physical 

rehabilitation, alcohol rehabilitation---or any or none of the above: 7.04 does not 

specify. So given that 7.04 is not on point, I must respectfully disagree with Ms. 

Alexandra’s position. 

Response to James 

These are all good points, James. I would only add a couple of minor things. First 

of all, the primary reason for Jim not to violate therapist-patient confidentiality is not 

the prospect of lawsuits. The primary reason is simply that the bond between client and 

therapist is sacred. Also, the fact that Jim is cheating on his partner is, it seems to me, a 

red herring: For all we know, Jim and his partner have an open relationship. As for your 

point that Standard 4.07 prohibits Jim from disclosing patient-information with their 

express-consent, it seems to me that even if he got their consent, he would still be 

barred from discussing it exception professional contexts, which this context clearly is 

not. Also, Jim was in effect letting his secretary have a hand in the way in which Jim 

treated his patients. (Cf. her rather cavalierly saying to Jim: “From what you have told 

me about her, the test really should not be that big of a deal. But I could see where this 

anxiety piece would present a problem for her.”) And from what it sounds like, Jim is

actually giving credence to these unprofessional and (on many levels) inappropriate 

statements, which is likely to undermine his relationship to his patients. 

Superorganisms (Philosophy) 

following: 

Using one of Murchie’s examples of a super-organism, answer both of the 

[i] how do super-organisms exemplify transcendence? 

[ii] how is a super-organism like a Type-1 Entity [in McKenna's sense]? 

[iii] Explain the following passage from The Exegesis, connecting it to Dick’s 

broader theophany: 

The trouble is, sitting here for instance, I do know what each object is. I know its name. I 

know its purpose, what it does, etc. I can't unknow that this is a typewriter, this here my 

light, this over here the air conditioner.

[i] A superorganism is an organism consisting of other organisms. Usually, when 

the term “superorganism” is defined, it is said that within such an organism there is 

highly differentiated division of labor, with practically given one of the component 

organisms doing a highly specialized job. But in way, this qualification is redundant, 

since there is such division of labor and hyper-specialization within any given organism, 

whether “super” or not. Also, all multicellular organisms are superorganisms, in the 

sense that organisms consist of countless living cells, each of which is itself an organism. 

Thus, it is not just (to use Murchie’s example) an ant-colony that is a living organism; it is 

any multicellular organism. Any superorganism ‘exhibits transcendence’ in the sense 

that what the whole knows and can do transcends (goes beyond) what any given one of 

the parts can do. 

[ii] The conventional view (at least for people in the Eurosphere over the last few 

hundred years) is that individuals are what is ‘real’ and that collectives are artificial and 

second—that people are basically self-contained units who in some contexts form 

artificial collectives for reasons of convenience. McKenna’s view is that, in their 

aboriginal or ‘natural’ condition, people are connected both to each other and to 

nature. McKenna’s view is that there is really one giant ‘superorganisms’, this being 

nature, and that human beings are in some way reducing themselves or contradicting 

their true nature in breaking themselves off of that superorganism to become self-

contained units. What McKenna means a by Type-1 entity is one that is real and doesn’t 

involve any of the artificial separations by which modern alienated, hyper-individualist 

man came into existence. So in McKenna’s view a Type-1 organism is a kind of 

superorganism, and non-superorganisms, in McKenna’s view, are derivative of 

superorganisms and therefore artificial. 

[iii] the passage above, the narrator is bemoaning the superficiality of the various 

objects in his vicinity. Note that each of these objects is an artifact: typewriter, electric 

light, air-conditioner. And each is the product of a vast division of labor, and the 

narrator is merely registering the fact that, as a small part of this vast division of labor, 

his knowledge of the workings, or even the exact purpose, of any given one of these 

artifacts is limited. Thus, great, almost God-like intelligence is embodied in these 

seemingly pedestrian items. And there we have Dick’s theophany (a theophany being 

the appearance that a god has to a human being): God is making himself known to 

human beings through their own intelligence—but not their own individual intelligence, 

but their own collective intelligence. 

Camus and Nagel on the Meaning (or Lack thereof) of Life: Long Version

Camus and Nagel both claim that life is ‘absurd.’ But they have very different 

reasons for claiming that is ‘absurd.’ Also, it isn’t clear that what Nagel means when he 

describes life as ‘absurd’ is what Camus means when he so describes it. Strikingly, both 

seem to come to the conclusion (though they come to this conclusion in different ways) 

that it doesn’t matter that life is absurd; that we must accept this absurdity; or that it 

doesn’t matter if we accept it, since, whether we accept it or not, it continues to have 

whatever meaning it had before we came to think of it as ‘absurd.’ Which strongly 

suggests that it is not life itself that is absurd, but the rather the belief that it is absurd. 

First of all, what is absurdity? Absurdity is incoherence. An absurd statement is 

one that lacks a coherent meaning and therefore ultimately lacks any meaning at all. If I 

say ‘x is a five-sided triangle’, my statement is absurd, since I am attributing 

incompatible properties to x and am therefore attributing nothing to x. In saying that x 

is both five-sided and a triangle, I am in effect saying that it is neither and am therefore 

saying nothing about it. 

Of course, Camus and Nagel are not talking about statements. But the term 

‘absurd’ has a clear meaning when applied to statements, and it has no well-defined 

meaning when it comes to anything other than statements. In particular, the statement 

‘life is absurd’ has no clear meaning and it has little intuitive meaning. If because of 

some twist of fate, a mentally impaired janitor becomes the President, there is a clear 

sense in which that situation is ‘absurd’: what is happening is the opposite of what is

supposed to be happening. In general, ‘x is absurd’ means that x contradicts or 

undermines itself. But what would it mean to say that life is ‘absurd’? How does life 

contradict itself? 

It makes sense to describe certain pursuits as absurd. (It may be absurd to 

become a travel agent, given that there no more jobs for travel agents.) And it may even 

be absurd to describe some specific person’s entire life as absurd. (If Smith’s life is a 

series of absurd of pursuits, then there seems to be a sense in which Smith’s life as a 

whole is absurd.) But what would it mean to describe life as categorically absurd? There 

is only one answer: if being alive entailed needing something that being alive itself made 

it impossible to have, then life would be absurd. For under that circumstance, life would 

be self-defeating in much the same that ‘x is a five-sided triangle’ is self-defeating and it 

would therefore ‘lack meaning’ in much the same way. 

And if Camus and Nagel are focus ‘situational’ absurdity, as opposed to 

statement-related absurdity, it remains unclear what they mean in describing life as 

‘absurd.’ It was absurd of Nixon to make Elvis Presley into an honorary officer in the 

‘war on drugs’, since Presley was a huge drug user and was otherwise unfit for the post. 

But what is life ‘unfit’ for? In relation to what standard is life ‘absurd’? 

Also, intuitively speaking, it isn’t life that is absurd: it is death. Death shuts 

everything off; it makes our strivings for naught. It drains what we do of meaning. Life 

doesn’t drain anything of meaning; it is a precondition for meaning. If Camus and Nagel

were to describe death as absurd, what they were saying would have at least some 

identifiable meaning. But that isn’t what they are saying. They are saying that life is 

‘absurd.’ But life is the opposite of death and would therefore seem to be the opposite 

of absurd. And when we consider the specific reasons given by these philosophers for 

regarding life as ‘absurd’, their positions become even more counterintuitive. 

Nagel’s view as to what makes life ‘absurd’ is as follows. We are capable of 

looking at life ‘objectively’—from a bird’s eye, God-like ‘view from nowhere’ (to use an 

expression of his). And when we look at our lives from such a viewpoint, the various 

concerns that drive us seem meaningless. But they don’t for any reason lose their power 

to compel us. We can be objective about our subjectivity, but we remain trapped within 

our subjectivity and all of the desires and values included therein. 

Is this a good reason to regard life as absurd? No, it isn’t. Yes—I can be ‘objective’ 

about my hunger; I can know that other people aren’t hungry; I can know that it has 

certain causes and so on. But that doesn’t make my hunger go away. Nor is there any 

reason to expect that it would do so. So there is nothing absurd about the fact that we 

can be objective about ourselves while continuing to have the concerns that we have 

during our non-reflective moments. So the ‘absurdity’ that Nagel describes isn’t an 

absurdity at all.

Nagel correctly says that there is nothing absurd about a mouse’s life, the reason 

being that a mouse cannot take a bird’s eye view of itself while continuing to be 

dominated by the psychological forces that previously dominated it: 

Why is the life of a mouse not absurd? The orbit of the moon is not absurd either, 

but that involves no strivings or aims at all. A mouse, however, has to work to stay alive. 

Yet he is not absurd, because he lacks the capacities for self-consciousness and selftranscendence 

that enable him to see that he is only a mouse. If that did happen 

[Nagel’s emphasis], his life would become absurd, since self-awareness would not make 

him cease to be a mouse and would not enable him to rise above his mousely strivings. 

(Nagle, The Absurd, p. 21) 

So if a mouse became self-aware, its life would become absurd? Really? Why? 

Because, says Nagel, despite being self-aware it would continued to be dominated by its 

‘mousely strivings.’ What are these ‘mousely strivings’? The desire for water and food 

and the like. Why is self-awareness supposed to make these needs go away? Because, 

Nagel tells us, from a God’s like perspective, such needs seem small and insignificant--- 

but would continue to dominate the mouse even after it had become aware of their 

insignificance. Yes—from the perspective of a being (including God) that isn’t the 

mouse, the mouse’s biological needs are not very important. Yes---if the mouse were to

ecome self-conscious, as human beings are, it could be ‘objective’ about itself and 

therefore realize that its own needs were not important from the viewpoint of some 

other creature. And yes---despite that knowledge it would still have those needs. But 

there is nothing absurd there. Being self-aware, I know that my money troubles are not 

Warren Buffet’s money troubles; but there is no reason why that knowledge on my part 

should make money troubles go away. So contrary to what Nagel says, there is nothing 

paradoxical about the fact that we can see ourselves from a second-party viewpoint 

while continuing to have the various needs and concerns that we previously had. So if 

human life is absurd, it isn’t for the reason Nagel puts forth. 

Arguably, Nagel is saying that we perceive life as absurd, not that it is absurd, and 

what is trying to explain is not that life is absurd but is rather why we see it as absurd. 

The problem is—people don’t see life as absurd. People try to avoid death. They don’t 

try to avoid life, at least not in general. They see death as a threat to what they want. 

And if people do see life as absurd, it is an absurdity they have no trouble accepting and 

that they go to every length to hold onto. So If Nagel’s target is why we perceive life as 

absurd, then he is explaining a non-entity. 

But isn’t there some sense in which life is ‘absurd’, it will be asked? If there is, it is 

that life ends; it isn’t that life exists. And according to Nagel, what makes life absurd (or 

at least seem absurd) isn’t death; it is the fact that we can shift back and forth between 

objective and subjective perspectives, which we would do even if we were immortal.

Nagel considers Camus’s analysis of the meaninglessness of life and rejects it, 

without providing clear reasons. But Camus’s analysis is similar to Nagel’s: 

If I were a tree among trees, a cat among animals this life would have a meaning, 

or rather this problem would not arise, for I should belong to this world. I should be this 

world to which I am now opposed by my whole consciousness and my whole insistence 

upon familiarity. This ridiculous reason is what sets me in opposition to all creation. I 

cannot cross it out with a stroke of the pen. (Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, pp. 51-52) 

Camus is saying about cats what Nagel says about mice: their reason their lives 

aren’t absurd is that they are self-aware. And what makes human life absurd is that we 

are self-aware. 

It isn’t clear exactly how self-awareness drains life of meaning, but in what 

appears to be an attempt to answer this question, Camus says that “this problem would 

not arise.” It isn’t clear what “this problem” is, but the contents of the immediately 

preceding material give us a vague idea: 

I hold certain facts from which I cannot separate. What I know, what is certain, 

what I cannot deny, what I cannot reject---this is what counts. I can negate everything of

that part of me that lives on vague nostalgias, except this desire for unity, this longing to 

solve, this need for clarity and cohesion. I can refute everything in this world 

surrounding me that offends or enraptures me, except this chaos, this sovereign chance 

and this divine equivalence which springs from anarchy. I don’t know whether this world 

has a meaning that transcends it. But I do know that I don’t know that I do not know 

that meaning and that it impossible just now for me to know it. What can a meaning 

outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, 

what resists me---that is what I understand. And these two certainties---my appetite for 

the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and 

reasonable principle---I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other truth can I 

admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lack and which means nothing within 

the limits of my condition? (Camus, Absurd Freedom, p. 51). 

Camus seems to be three distinct ideas as to why life is ‘absurd.’ 

(i) 

Camus seems to be saying that the universe is inherently devoid of meaning, it being 

“chaos…chance…anarchy”, which for some reason drains our lives of meaning. 

(ii) 

Camus is saying that, even if the world does have a meaning, we know that 

we don’t know what that meaning is (“I don’t know whether this world has a meaning 

that transcends it. But I do know that I don’t know that I do not know that meaning and

that it impossible just now for me to know it”), which for some reason further drains life 

of meaning. 

(iii) 

Camus is saying that despite knowing that we won’t find this meaning, we 

will still look for it (“And these two certainties---my appetite for the absolute and for 

unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle-- 

-I also know that I cannot reconcile them”), which for some reason still further drains 

life of meaning. 

Let us take these ideas in turn, starting with (i). Let’s grant that the non-sentient 

part of the universe is ‘meaningless’ (whatever that means). Why does it follow that our 

existences are meaningless? True—rocks don’t have feelings about us or anything else 

and neither, tautologously, do other inanimate objects. But that doesn’t show that our 

lives lack meaning. If anything, it shows that our lives are islands of meaning in a giant 

sea of meaningless. To invert this reasoning: What if rocks were aware of us? Would 

that make our lives more meaningful than they currently are? When new people are 

conceived and born, the ratio of animate to inanimate material in the universe 

increases, but our lives do not necessarily become more meaningful for it. 

As for (ii): Let’s grant that we know ourselves not to know what “the meaning” of 

the world is. Does that make our lives meaningless? No. Smith’s knowing that he cannot 

identify the meaning of physical object (e.g. series of letters, discolorations on a piece of

paper, etchings in a piece of wood) doesn’t makes his life meaningless, nor does Smith’s 

knowing that he cannot identify the meaning of the inanimate part of the universe as a 

whole. 

As for (iii): Is it true that despite knowing ourselves to know the world to have no 

meaning, we still look for that meaning. No, it isn’t. It cannot possibly be. It is not 

possible to try to do something that one knows to be impossible to do. If I know with 

complete certainty that some ink-deposit has meaning, I cannot even try to look for 

meaning it. I can try to look for meaning in it if I am almost certain that it has no 

meaning, and therefore don’t quite know it, but not if I am completely certain and do 

know it. So Camus is simply wrong to say that we know ourselves to be looking for a 

meaning that we not know to exist. 

Is Camus in fact committed to (iii)? It certainly seems like it. Otherwise, it would 

be hard to see why he says: “And these two certainties---my appetite for the absolute 

and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable 

principle---I also know that I cannot reconcile them.” But even if he isn’t committed to 

(iii), the things he clearly does say about the ‘absurdity’ of life don’t hold up. He clearly 

says that if I lacked self-consciousness—if I were a ‘cat among cats, a rock among rocks’- 

--‘this problem’ (the problem of the meaning of life) wouldn’t arise. That’s true---the 

problem of the meaning of life doesn’t arise for rocks, and it probably doesn’t arise for 

cats, since they are not sufficiently reflective. But it isn’t our reflectiveness that creates

the problem; it is our reflectiveness that makes us aware of the problem, if there is one, 

which Camus hasn’t shown us that there is. 

Both Camus and Nagel agree that our reflectiveness makes our lives absurd (or 

at least arguably so). They both say that there is nothing even arguably absurd about a 

mouse’s life, the reason being that a mouse cannot reflect on its condition. But that is 

the exact opposite of the truth. Awareness doesn’t take meaning away. It adds it. 

Lobotomizing someone doesn’t make their life less meaningful, not more. Of course, the 

more aware one is, the more aware one is of meanings that can be added. We see 

problems with our existences that mice don’t see with theirs, but only because we see 

more than mice. The truth is—our reflectiveness makes us able to create meaning and it 

therefore enables us to see where it doesn’t exist. So it is lack of reflectiveness and of 

awareness generally that is responsible for the absence of meaning. Plus, it’s easy to get 

rid of awareness—just commit suicide. So awareness isn’t the problem, since the 

‘solution’ is readily available and few people are taking advantage of it. 

This brings us to Camus’ discussion of suicide. Having believed himself to have 

proved that life is ‘absurd’, Camus then asks why we shouldn’t just commit suicide. He 

goes so far as to say that the problem of suicide (as in, why we shouldn’t commit it) is 

one of the main problems of philosophy. 

Here is the solution. Life isn’t absurd; so ending it doesn’t end absurdity. People 

commit suicide because they have no money, have chronic health conditions, or are

imprisoned for life. They commit suicide because they have a problem that they don’t 

think they can solve, and that problem is never that life is inherently ‘absurd.’ 

Problems are internal to life. Life is not itself the problem. Ending life ends 

problems, but it doesn’t end ‘the problem’, since ‘the problem’ doesn’t exist. 

Both Camus and Nagel believe themselves to be explaining why human life is 

absurd, as though this were some pre-existing datum, like a black spot on an x-ray. But it 

isn’t a datum, and they aren’t trying to explain it: they are trying to show it. And details 

aside, they put forth the same broken argument: our self-awareness is what makes our 

lives life meaningless, and it makes our lives meaningless by making us look for a 

meaning to our lives that doesn’t. Which is obviously absurd, since, whether or not our 

lives have a meaning, our looking for that meaning isn’t responsible for its nonexistence. 

“Perhaps the search for meaning does make life less meaningful,” it might be 

suggested, “much as the search for happiness tends to make life less happy.” The search 

for happiness has a fairly well-defined goal. Most people have experienced some 

happiness and know what it is and can look for more of it. But if I ask somebody to 

search for ‘meaning’, there is nothing comparably well-defined that I’m asking of him. 

Asking a person to look for fulfillment is presumably similar to asking him to look for 

meaning and, unlike the latter, is well defined and can even be carried out. But the 

question for fulfillment is not self-defeating: people who aspire to live fulfilling lives

often succeed (and so because, not in spite of, their trying to do so). So the quest for 

‘meaning’ either doesn’t or does exist and is not self-undermining. 

Both Nagel and Camus suggest ways of dealing with the supposed 

meaninglessness of life. Camus says that an attitude of defiant ‘scorn’ is indicated: 

Sisyphus, proletariat of the Gods, powerful and rebellious, knows the whole 

extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity 

that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate 

that cannot be surmounted by scorn. 

The idea seems to be that if we are aware of how ‘wretched’ and meaningless 

our lives are, then they are for that reason less meaningless. 

Of course, Sisyphus is being used as a metaphor. Sisyphus represents humanity, 

and his having repeat the same task over and over represents our lot in life (or perhaps 

what might be or at least is sometimes our lot). But it isn’t a very good metaphor. There 

are people who wake up every day and have to work on assembly lines or bag rocks or 

enter data into spread sheets. Their lives are not very different from Sisyphus’s, and 

their lives are not good. And when people’s lives are good, it is because they don’t have 

to drudge all day. So Sisyphus’s situation is not a metaphor for the condition. It is a 

rather literal representation of what the human condition is like when it is bad, but it

doesn’t represent what it is like when it is good. And Camus is dead wrong to say that 

Sisyphus is (or should) be happy with his lot. There are people whose lives are very 

similar to Sisyphus’s, and they are not happy, and when people are happy, it is because 

their lives are very much not like Sisyphus’s—they do not involve endless, mindless 

drudgery. 

As for Camus’s point that Sisyphus’s awareness of the wretchedness of his 

condition makes his situation less wretched, even if that is true, it doesn’t tell us 

anything about how to add meaning to our lives. If somebody who works at McDonald’s 

becomes aware of the wretchedness of his situation, that doesn’t improve his situation; 

it makes him aware of the fact that it has to be improved. And when human lives are 

non-wretched, which they often are, it isn’t because the people in question are aware of 

the worthlessness of what they are doing (as assembly line workers or McDonald’s 

employees); it is because what they are doing isn’t worthless in the first place. 

As for Camus’s suggestion that we bravely carry on apace, even in the face of 

self-doubt, that is excellent advice but isn’t exactly insightful. Nor is it consistent with his 

point that our lives ‘wretched.’ When there is hope, there is a point to keeping one’s 

chin up. When there isn’t, there isn’t. But even though this advice is inconsistent with 

Camus’ point that life is meaningless, it is good advice if taken on its own.

Nagel dismisses this advice as “romantic and slightly self-pitying”—which it isn’t, 

incidentally, since it seems to be exhortation that we not pity ourselves—but then 

himself gives much the same advice, though in a veiled form: 

If a sense of the absurd is a way of perceiving our true situation (even though the 

situation is not absurd until the perception arises), then what reason have we to resent 

or escape it? Like the capacity for epistemological skepticism, it results from the ability 

to understand our human limitations. It need not be a matter for agony unless we make 

it so. Nor need it involve a defiant conception of fate that allows us to feel brave or 

proud. Such dramatics, even if carried on in private, betray a failure to appreciate the 

cosmic unimportance of the situation. If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to 

believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach 

our lives with irony instead of heroism or despair. (Nagel, The Absurd, p. 23.) 

So whereas Camus tells us to be courageous, Nagel tells us to be ironic, as though 

being ironic about our lives will make them meaningful or at least take away the sting of 

their supposed meaninglessness. 

But this is bad advice. If a psychiatrist tells us a depressed patient of his to be 

‘ironic’ about his life, he is telling him to regard his life as meaningless and not worth 

putting effort into, which is more likely to worsen the patient’s condition than to

improve. And this advice of Nagel’s is bad because it’s incoherent: to regard something 

with irony is treat that thing as though it has no meaning (or a bad meaning or multiple 

contradicting meanings). To be ironic about a job is to treat that job as a meaningless 

joke—which will make that job meaningless even if it had the potential to be 

meaningful. Also, an attitude of irony towards a given thing presupposes that it could 

have meaning, and an attitude of irony towards life would therefore be appropriate only 

if life could have meaning, which, according to Nagel, it couldn’t. So whereas Camus’ 

advice, though pedestrian, is affirming, Nagel’s is undermining and is logically 

inconsistent with his already incoherent views about the meaning of life. 

‘But to look at something is not to regard it as having no meaning’, it will be said. 

‘In any case, this isn’t the kind of irony that Nagel has in mind.’ Nagel’s ‘advice’ is that 

we accept the fact that our lives are incoherent and not be troubled by it. That is what 

he means (if he means anything) when he says that we should be ‘ironic’ about our own 

lives. And perhaps the idea is that if are light-hearted about our existences, we won’t be 

so troubled by their lack of meaning. 

Is this good advice? No. It is indeed a good idea in many contexts to be lighthearted. 

But light-heartedness is appropriate only because it enables us not to stuck in 

emotional traps that prevent us from living our lives. Mozart is perhaps right to be lighthearted 

about the fact that his wife is a nag, since an attitude of seriousness about it 

would turn this small problem into a big problem and prevent him from composing

music, which is what is really important to him. Light-heartedness is useful as a means, 

not an end. But Nagel is saying that we should be categorically light-hearted (or ‘ironic’ 

or detached, or some such), not contextually so. So according to Nagel, Mozart should 

be light-hearted about his wife’s nagging, light-hearted about his music (and the 

measures he must take to keep producing it), and so on---which, if Mozart actually takes 

Nagel up on this, will diminish the quality of his music and his life. Light-heartedness and 

irony and detachment, etc. have their place. But not everything is a joke, and not 

everything has to be. Oftentimes life is serious and good for that very reason; it is the 

things that we are non-ironic about and that we do properly that make our lives good. 

And even though there are in fact reasons to be ‘ironic’ in certain contexts, Nagel has 

not himself identified any reason of any kind to be ironic ever. The only reason Nagel 

has given us for being ‘ironic’ is that being objective about our situation does not by 

itself make our problems go away. But that is not a good reason to be ironic ever, since 

being aware of a problem is not supposed to make it go away. In fact, given that we can 

be objective about our situations, the right advice is to not be ‘ironic’, since an attitude 

of irony tends to lead to inaction, not to the action that our reflectiveness makes us 

aware that we should undertake. 

Clifford on Freedom (Philosophy)

Clifford claims that, at least within limits, people are responsible for their beliefs. 

In other words, when it is within one’s power to form correct beliefs on the basis of that 

data that one has, one has an obligation to do so. Therefore, so Clifford claims, one has 

an obligation not to rationalize away correct but troubling beliefs. 

Clifford illustrates these points with a powerful example. An old man sells a ship 

to some people who are planning on going on a voyage. The old man knows that the 

ship was not well built to begin with; he knows that it has sustained damage; and he 

knows that it has not been adequately maintained. The obvious conclusion to draw is 

that the ship is not seaworthy and, therefore, that he should not sell it to these people, 

at least not without disclosing that it is not seaworthy. 

And initially the old man does draw the conclusion that the ship is not seaworthy. 

But he shoves the unpleasant belief out of his mind, and convinces himself that the 

vessel is in fact seaworthy. He therefore proceeds to sell it to the prospective buyers. 

Clifford asks us to suppose, quite reasonably, that the buyers proceed to use the 

ship and lose their fortunes, and possibly even their lives, when that ship sinks. In that 

case, Clifford asks, is the old man ethically responsible for the disaster? Clifford’s answer 

is: Yes. It is irrelevant that he forced himself to turn a blind eye to the ship’s defects. He 

had the relevant information at his disposal; he had on obligation to make the obvious 

inferences from that data; and he had an obligation not to lie to himself about what

those inferences were. But he did lie to himself, and he is therefore, so Clifford plausibly 

holds, ethically responsible for any ensuing tragedies. 

Clifford is therefore right to say that “belief is no private matter.” One’s beliefs 

affect one’s actions, and one’s actions affect others. The old man had warped his 

beliefs, and those beliefs led him to commit a positively criminal act. That criminal act is 

obviously not a private matter, and neither consequently is the belief that led to it. It 

was quite as much the old man’s moral responsibility to duly exercise his ability to have 

correct beliefs as it was his responsibility to refrain from imperiling the lives of others. 

Different Perspectives on Religious Belief: O’Reilly v. Dawkins. v. James v. Clifford 

(Philosophy) 

There were two facets to the discussion between Richard Dawkins and Bill 

O’Reilly. The first concerned whether God exists and, what is obviously closely related, 

whether we have adequate reason to believe that He does. Bill O’Reilly starts off strong, 

putting forth a version of the Teleological Argument (otherwise known as the Argument 

from Design:) Basically, the world is organized, like a clock, and, just as we know clocks 

to be made by clock-makers, so must by analogy assume the world to be have been 

made by clock-maker. Richard Dawkins doesn’t address this argument directly, but ops 

out with the platitude that the scope of science is growing constantly---which, though

true, rather begs the question against the Teleological Argument, since science 

presupposes that the world is organized and therefore, at lest by the lights of the 

advocated of the Teleological Argument, presupposes that there is indeed a Great 

Clockmaker. 

O’Reilly then lamely says that, although cannot prove that his own (Christian) 

belief is ‘true’ simpliciter, he does know that it is true for him, though not necessarily for 

others. Which, as Dawkins seems to note, amounts to saying that it is not true. 

O’Reilly then says, less trivially, that his faith does him good. Dawkins rightly 

grants that, while this may be true, it doesn’t follow that O’Reilly’s faith is actually true. 

O’Reilly doesn’t quite understand the point that Dawkins is making. 

O’Reilly then says that the worst murderers of all time were atheists and, so 

O’Reilly claims it follow, that religion has a normalizing and morally salutary effect on 

people. Dawkins responds predictably, by citing counter-examples and then claiming on 

that basis that religion is not morally salutatory. 

Clifford’s position is: Believe if and only if the evidence warrants and would 

probably opt for an atheistic position. That said, the teleological argument is not exactly 

an anti-empirical argument. As for O’Reilly’s other claim, that religion has a centering 

and moralizing effect on people, Clifford would rightly respond that this is an empirical 

question, to be decided on the basis of the historical data.

William James would agree with this last point, but with a couple of pro-religious 

qualifications. First, James seems to hold that one of religion’s virtues is its 

irrationalism—its requirement that people believe on faith. James holds that if belief is 

too closely hewed to data, it becomes confining and inhibits growth and action. James 

also holds that the element of irrationality in religion puts those who are religious in 

touch with creative energies of theirs. Finally, James would have some sympathy for 

O’Reilly’s point that “Christianity is true for me though it may not be true for you.” 

James would say that, although Dawkins may well be right about the purely factual 

matters being debated, O’Reilly is in touch with religion’s ultimate function, which is not 

so much to describe the world as to give people purpose and life meaning. 

Four Short Essays on Truth and Knowledge (Philosophy) 

I had to answer the following four questions for a philosophy assignment: 

1. What is truth? How did you come up with this answer? 

2. Is there such a thing as objective/absolute truth? Explain your answer

3. How do you know if something is likely to be true or not? Explain your answer 

4. Presumably, you are currently in front of your computer or phone reading this 

question right now. How certain are you that you are indeed, conscious and reading 

this? Can you prove to me that you are not actually dreaming or in some sort of 

simulation machine (think of the "Matrix" if you have seen the movie)? 

Here are my answers: 


Truth is a property of beliefs and, more generally, of representations. A 

representation is true (or ‘accurate’) if the world is as it represents the world as being, 

and otherwise false (or ‘inaccurate’). Thus, truth is the property of ‘fitting’ the world. 

Truth is not exactly a characteristic of the world; it is a characteristic of the relation 

between representations and the world, and those relations have that property when 

the world is as those representations depict it as being. 

This analysis of truth seems pretty commonsensical to me. Let us say that I draw 

person X. If my drawing represents X as being fat, when he is in fact skinny, then my 

drawing is not ‘true to who X is’; and if my drawing represents X as being skinny, when

he in fact is skinny, then my drawing is true to who X is. In general, truth is fidelity to the 

facts. 

2. Is there such a thing as objective/absolute truth? Explain your answer 

As previously discussed, truth is not a property of the world; it is rather a 

relationship between representations and the world. It is a relation of conformity or 

correspondence. If there were no representations of the world—no thoughts, no 

statements, no pictures, no ideas of any kind—then there would be no truth. (There 

would be states of affairs in virtue of which if there were representations, some of them 

would be true or accurate while others would be false or inaccurate. 

So if the statement ‘truth is objective’ is taken to mean that truth exists ‘all by 

itself’, regardless of how any one’s ideas represent the world as being, then no, there is 

no such thing as ‘objective truth’; for truth, being a property of relations between 

representations and reality, wouldn’t even exist if there were no representations. 

But truth is ‘objective’ if the statement ‘truth is objective’ is taken to mean that, 

if there are representations of the world, then it is up to the world, not us, whether 

those representations are accurate. It is up to me to believe that tree X is taller than 

tree Y, but it is not up to me whether that thought it is true. It may well be that people 

have different opinions on the relative heights of those trees, but that is irrelevant to

their actual heights. X is either taller than Y, the same height as Y, or shorter than Y. It is 

up to human beings (or other sentient creatures) to have ideas on the matter, and thus 

to generate true or false representations of that state of affairs. And to that extent, 

truth is subject-dependent and thus ‘subjective.’ But once those representations have 

been generated, it is not up to those people, or any other people, whether those 

representations are accurate. 


When deciding whether a given representation (belief or statement) R is true, the 

relevant question is: Supposing that R is true, would the world be more anomalous than 

it would otherwise be? In other words, would the world contain more discontinuities, 

more sheer coincidences, more cases of things randomly popping into existence than it 

would otherwise contain? If the answer is yes: if R were true, then the world would 

contain more anomalies (or a great net level of anomalousness) than it would contain if 

R were false—then R is false. If the answer is—no: if R were false, then the world would 


R were true—then R is true. If the answer is—neither: if R is true, then the world is 

exactly as anomalous as it would be if R is false—then the answer is: We have no 

principled way of deciding the matter.

We can’t compare beliefs directly with the realities they are supposed to 

represent; for we only know reality through our beliefs. Our only litmus test for 

determining whether a belief is true or not is whether it does a good of explaining the 

data at our disposal. If it does a good of accounting for that data and its negation does a 

bad job, then that belief is probably true. If its negation does a better job of accounting 

for that data, then that belief is probably false. If that belief is neither better nor worse 

at accounting for that data than its negation, then there is no way of deciding between 

them. 





Right now, I believe that I am typing on a real computer (not a dream-computer 

or hallucination-internal computer) and, in general, that I am really engaging with the 

real world. How do I know this? First of all, I know that I am conscious (not awake, 

necessarily, but conscious). And I know how it is that my mental states represent the 

world as being. I also know that my mental states cohere with another. (When I am 

dreaming, they are disjointed and mutually incoherent.) Of course, given only these

pieces of information, I could be dreaming—or so a skeptic would say. So how do I know 

that I am not? 

Let’s suppose that I am dreaming. In that case, my mind is not merely organizing 

various disturbances of my body’s sensory surfaces. Rather, my mind is completely and 

totally responsible for everything that I am experiencing; it is writing fiction, as it were. 

And not just any fiction, but impeccably, utterly coherent fiction—fiction that omits no 

detail and is never inconsistent with itself. And where is my mind getting all of this 

information, all of the information needed to produce this complete and perfect work of 

multi-sensory art? If we say that it is getting it from the outside world, then we are 

conceding the mind at least sometimes represents the world as it is, in which case, I am 

not in general hallucinating and it would be arbitrary to suppose that in this particular 

case I was hallucinating. On the other hand, suppose that my mind is simply 

manufacturing all of these ideas, without the support of anything external. In that case, 

these ideas simply arise ex nihilo in mind and are therefore so many unexplained 

miracles. Obviously a hypothesis that posits fewer miracles is to be preferred, at least if 

such a hypothesis is available. And such a hypothesis is available, namely, my mind is 

not simply ‘making up’ all of these experiences. Rather, these experiences are the fallout 

of external realities of which they are representations and whose mutual relations 

the mutual relations of my experiences shadow, this being why my experiences are as a 

general rule both internally coherent as well as of practical use in guiding my conduct.

The Ontological Argument: A Concise Explanation (Philosophy) 

The Ontological Argument 

God is a maximally excellent being (a being such that nothing greater than it can 

be conceived). Premise 

A maximally excellent being exists in my mind. Premise 

Suppose that a maximally excellent being exists in my mind but not in reality. In 

that case, that being is not maximally excellent, since an otherwise identical being that 

existed in reality would be superior to that being. 

Therefore it is self-contradictory to suppose that a maximally great being exists in 

my mind but not in reality. 

Therefore, since such a being exists in my mind, it also exists in reality. 

Therefore, God exists. 

Gaunilo’s Lost Island Objection 

If the Ontological Argument goes through, then so does the following argument:

A maximally perfect island exists in my mind. 

Suppose that a maximally perfect island exists in my mind but not in reality. In 

that case, that island is not maximally perfect since an otherwise identical island that 

exists in reality is better than that island. 

Therefore, it is self-contradictory to suppose that a maximally excellent island 

exists in my mind but not in reality. 

Therefore, a maximally excellent island exists in reality. 

No maximally excellent island exists. But if the just-stated argument were cogent, 

it would exist. And if the just-stated argument went through, the Ontological Argument 

would also go through. So the Ontological Argument does not go through. 

Analysis of Gaunilo’s Lost Island Objection 

This objection establishes that the Ontological Argument Fails. But it does not 

establish how exactly it fails. As for how it fails, that is clear. To say that a house made of 

gold ‘exists in my mind’ is not to say that such a house actually exists, but only that I 

know conditions a being would have to meet to be a house made of gold. Therefore, the

Ontological Argument is based on an equivocal use of the term “exists”, this being why 

it fails. 

The Tuskegee Experiment A Rawlsian Analysis (Philosophy/Current Events) 

Let us start by describing the basic facts of the Tuskegee experiment. The 

purpose of this experiment was to observe the progression of untreated syphilis. 600 

African-American were told that they were going to receive free medical treatment. 399 

of these already had syphilis, and 201 did not. The 399 who had syphilis did not know it, 

though many were already symptomatic and knew they needed medical treatment of 

some kind. None of those infected were told that they had syphilis, and none were 

treated for it. All of the 600 were given general medical care, but none were given 

medical care that would inhibit the progress of syphilis. In fact, even after 1947, when 

penicillin was officially recognized as a cure for syphilis, none of those infected were told 

that they had syphilis; nor were they ever given treatment for it. Rather, they were 

simply allowed to get more and more sick. Be it noted that syphilis, if left untreated, 

tends to be fatal and also may cause brain-damage, blindness, mental illness, jointproblems, 

and liver problems. 

Morally speaking, the major problem with the Tuskegee Experiment was the

heavy-duty element of deception involved. The subjects were led to believe that they 

were receiving medical treatment, but they were in fact being deprived of it and, under 

the pretext of being helped, were being ushered into a condition of irreversible mental 

and physical disrepair and eventual death. Thus, the root of the immorality of this 

situation lay in the fact that one group of people had all of the information and simply 

withheld it, despite having a duty to disclose it. 

The philosopher whose work is most concerned with the ethics of situations 

involving such ‘information asymmetries’ is John Rawls. Rawls introduced the concept of 

“the veil of ignorance.” Here is the idea: suppose that you had no idea whether you 

were rich or poor, black or white, male or female, doctor or patient, healthy or sick, 

lawyer or defendant, etc. Under those circumstances, what kind of social structure 

would you choose for yourself? In other words, under those circumstances, how would 

you want knowledge, wealth, power, and other assets to be distributed in society? You 

would want them to be distributed as equitably as possible, since, if they were unevenly 

distributed, you would likely end up not being given enough of those assets. 

To relate this to the Tuskegee experiment: If you did not know whether you were 

going to be a doctor or a patient, whether you were going to have or not have syphilis, 

would you choose to live in a society in which anything like the Tuskegee experiment 

were possible? No, you would not. 

Rawls’ theory of justice is succinctly expressed by the slogan: “I cut; you choose.”

I decide 

what kind of society to live; you (meaning chance) decide what position I will 

have in that society. And it is clear that no one who did not have the power to choose 

their position in society would choose to live in a society in which the likes of the 

Tuskegee Experiment could occur. 

Therefore, in this context, Rawls’ analysis of morality is consistent with our 

intuitions. 

Three Short Philosophy Papers on Human Freedom (Philosophy) 

Explain Stace’s ‘Compatibilism’. What is the major objection to that view and how 

would Stace deal with that objection? 

What is Galen Strawson’s ‘Basic Argument’ for our not being free? Does that argument 

go through? 

What evidence is there that the psychologically realm is causally deterministic? 

Explain Stace’s ‘Compatibilism’. What is the major objection to that view and how 

would Stace deal with that objection? 

Stace is a ‘compatibilist’, meaning that he believes freedom to be compatible 

with causal determinism. His position is that for a behavior to be free is not for it to be 

uncaused but is rather for it to be caused in a certain way by one’s mental condition. If I

lack out and, while falling, hit my head on the light switch, thereby causing the lights to 

off, I did not freely turn off the light, for the reason that, even though I did turn off the 

light, my doing so did not appropriately result from my psychological condition. (It may 

well that it did result in some way or other from my psychological condition; it may be 

that my blacking out, and therefore my accidentally turning off the light, was a 

consequence of my choosing to drink alcohol. But it did not appropriately result from 

my psychological condition, being more in the nature of an accidental by-product of my 

condition.) By contrast, if, while in full possession of my faculties, I coolly and 

deliberately flip the switch, knowing that doing so will cause the lights to off, then I have 

freely turned off the light, since in this case the operative behavior did appropriately 

result from my psychological condition. 

The standard objection to this position is as follows. If the world is deterministic, 

then our are the inevitable result of forces that lie outside our control and we are 

therefore not responsible for those actions. But there is a flaw in this reasoning. True—if 

the world is deterministic, then our actions result from forces outside of our control. But 

sometimes those forces operate via our agency, this being our ability to decide how to 

act, and when this happens, the resulting actions are free.

What is Galen Strawson’s ‘Basic Argument’ for our not being free? Does that 

argument go through? 

Strawson’s ‘basic argument’ for the non-existence of personal freedom is as 

follows: What you do is determined by how you are. So you are responsible for what 

you do only if you are responsible for how you are. But you are not responsible for how 

you are, since how you are precedes any possible action of yours and in any case is a 

function of the condition of the universe before you even existed. So you are not in any 

way free and are therefore not morally responsible for anything. 

I do not believe that this argument goes through. For a behavior on x’s part to 

part to be ‘free’ is for that behavior to arise in a certain way out of x’s psychological 

structure. If x has an epileptic fit, his bodily spasms do not arise in the appropriate way 

out of x’s psychological structure, and such behaviors are therefore not free. If x robs a 

convenience store, x’s conduct does so arise and therefore is free. It may well be that x’s 

behavior is predetermined by forces outside x’s control, but because those forces 

operated through x’s own agency, x is responsible for them. 

What evidence is there that the psychologically realm is causally deterministic?

There are two kinds of evidence of causal determinism exists at the level of 

psychology. First, there is indirect evidence. Everything that happens in the mind is a 

function of what happens in the brain. The brain is physical. The physical world is 

deterministic (at least to a high degree of approximation). Therefore, the mind is 

deterministic. 

Second, there is direct evidence taken from our knowledge of psychology itself. 

When we know a person’s motives and beliefs, we can predict their behavior infallibly. 

People are predictable to the extent that they are known. Prediction is possible only 

where there is causal determinism. (If I push the elevator button, I can predict that the 

elevator will come if, and only if, the causal mechanisms linking the two events are 

intact.) Therefore, since people are predictable to the extent that they are known, they 

are causally determined to the extent that they are known. And given that they are 

causally determined to the extent that they known, it stands to reason (and would be 

very arbitrary to deny) that they are causally determined tout court. 

Kant’s Ethics (Philosophy)


philosophy? (200 words) 

2. Give an example from your own life, the news, movies/t.v. or simply create a fictional 

example, which illustrates a person acting "in conformity with duty but not [acting] from 

duty." Hint: First you will need to give an example of a duty, then explain how the 

subject is acting in conformity with that duty but not from that duty. Example: {Duty} 

Killing is wrong. {Example} I didn't kill that guy who cut me off on the freeway because I 

would go to jail, not because killing is wrong. (200 words) 

1. First of all, for Kant, there are two kinds of goodness: hypothetical and 

categorical. Something is hypothetically good if it is good as a means. Thus, a car as good 

as a means to an end, that end being driving, and a car is thus hypothetically good. 

Hypothetical goodness is the same thing as conditional goodness. A car is good on the 

condition that one needs to drive somewhere; otherwise not good. Thus, hypothetical 

goodness is the same thing as instrumental goodness. 

Something is categorically good if it is good in and of itself. Thus, something is 

categorically good if it is intrinsically good, i.e. if it is non-instrumentally or 

unconditionally good, as opposed to good as a means to some end.

According to Kant, the only that is categorically (non-hypothetically, 

unconditionally) good is a good will. Kant’s argument is simply that anything besides a 

good will embody immorality. Thus, thus the happiness of a villain is not a good thing, 

says Kant, and neither is a villain’s intelligence, as each embodies viciousness, not virtue. 

Obviously, moral goodness is a kind of intrinsic goodness, not a kind of 

instrumental or conditional goodness. 

From these premises, Kant deduces that the only thing that is categorically 

(unconditionally) good is a good will. Kant’s argument is simply that any other ‘good’ 

thing is only conditionally good and for that reason fails to be good (except 

instrumentally) in at least some circumstances. So, for example, the happiness of a 

villain, though good for him, is not intrinsically good, since it embodied moral turpitude; 

and the intelligence of a villain, though good for him (vis-à-vis certain objectives of his), 

is not intrinsically good, since it can be used in furtherance of evil. 

2. There are many examples of this. Suppose that I save a drowning toddler, but 

that I do so to impress my boss, who is witnessing the situation. In that case, my act is 

“in conformity with” the requirements of morality, even though, being done for reasons 

of self-interest and personal gain, it does not itself embody any morality. To take 

another example: Suppose that a wealthy woman writes a book and asks me to tell her

what I think of it. In actuality, the book is extremely good, and I therefore have an 

obligation to tell her as much. And that is what I do. But I do it solely to curry favor with 

me, so that she will marry me and bestow her riches upon me. I have absolutely no 

desire to do the right thing, being driven entirely by a desire for gain, for which I am 

totally willing to lie but which in this particular context involves me telling the truth. To 

give an example from my own life: My housemate is very clean and respectful; he never 

leaves a mess and never makes noise. I myself am the same way towards him, and 

indeed it is my moral obligation to be this way. But my reasons for so behaving are 

purely pragmatic, not ethical in nature: I simply don’t want to have to get another 

housemate, since, if I did, that person would almost certainly be more difficult to live 

with than my current housemate. But if I could get away with it, I would leave my 

clothes all over the place, be noise, and so on. So my behavior in this context, though in 

conformity with my moral duties, do not embody any genuine morality. 

Blaise Pascal and the Paradox of the Self-aware Wretch (Philosophy)

According to Blaise Pascal, "Man’s greatness lies in his capacity to recognize his 

wretchedness. . . . So it is wretched to know one is wretched, but there is greatness in 

the knowledge of one’s wretchedness." 

A wretched being that knows that it is wretched is not as wretched as it would if 

it lacked self-knowledge. But if a self-aware creature tries to turn a blind eye to its own 

self-knowledge, then it is doubly-wretched. 

What does this mean? Let us go about this indirectly. Consider some creature 

that we would naturally think of as 'wretched', a rat for instance. Suppose that this 

hypothetical rat became aware of its wretchedness. In other words, suppose that it 

became self-aware. In that case, it would be more than what it previously was. In other 

words, it would be greater than it was when it was not self-aware or, therefore, aware 

of its own wretchedness. A creature that is self-aware is obviously greater than an 

otherwise similar creature that is not self-aware. 

But this creature would pay a heavy price for this self-awareness. When this rat 

was just a rat, it did not see itself as wretched. To be sure, it was wretched, but t it 

didn't know that and it was therefore living in a state of 'ignorant bliss.' But when this 

rat becomes aware of itself, it sees itself for what it is, and it is no longer in a state of 

ignorant bliss. Once it is aware of itself and sees itself for the wretch that it is, its 

emotions follow suit, and it experiences self-loathing, insecurity, and self-doubt. In 

other words, it has the emotions that a human being has.

This by itself is suggestive. If we imagine a creature that lacks self-awareness, it is 

not psychologically human. But if we give self-awareness to that same creature, then it 

suddenly becomes psychologically human. No creature is perfect, a consequence being 

that if a given creature were endowed with self-awareness, it would have flaws of its 

own to be conscious of. And it therefore seems that a certain self-loathing is inherent in 

self-consciousness. 

In any case, once this rat becomes self-aware, and duly self-loathing, it is at an 

impasse. There is no doubt that objectively it is better off for being self-aware. First of 

all, its sphere of awareness is larger, and that by itself makes it better in some significant 

sense than it used to be. Also, because it is self-aware and sees itself for what it is, it can 

start to improve itself. Self-knowledge is the first step on the road to self-improvement. 

But even though, for the reasons just stated, this hypothetical rat is objectively 

better off now that it has self-awareness, it is not subjectively better off. In other words, 

its emotional condition is not better. In fact, its emotional condition is probably 

considerably worse. Creatures that lack self-awareness are not depressed or insecure. 

They do not think in terms of how they should be, since, lacking self-awareness, they do 

not think about themselves at all. So this rat's new-found self-awareness is both a 

blessing and a curse. Existentially, it is a blessing. Emotionally, it is a curse. 

This rat has a choice to make. On the one hand, it can 'own' its self-awareness 

and attempt to make the necessary changes to itself. On the other hand, it can go into

denial-mode: it can choose to turn a blind eye to the knowledge of itself that it now has. 

It can pretend that it doesn't know what it does know. 

If the rat makes the first choice, it will experience self-doubt and anxiety. But it's 

life will be real; it will not be a lie. If the rat makes the second choice, it will have at least 

some relief from the anxiety and self-doubt that would otherwise be hounding it. But if 

it takes the second path, its life will be a lie, and it will make itself more wretched than it 

was previously. 

In the above discussion, replace the term 'rat' with 'human.' The resulting 

statements describe the human condition. Human beings are wretched animals that 

have self-consciousness and therefore know how wretched they--and for that very 

reason that much less wretched. However wretched one is, self-knowledge makes one 

that much less wretched. 

And that is the meaning of Pascal's statement: "Man’s greatness lies in his 

capacity to recognize his wretchedness. . . . So it is wretched to know one is wretched, 

but there is greatness in the knowledge of one’s wretchedness." What makes us better 

than rats and monkeys? Our self-awareness. What makes us better than rats, monkeys 

and other 'wretches' is that we see ourselves for what we are and they don't. Socrates 

said that what made him knowledgeable was his knowledge that he had no knowledge. 

(He was knowledgeable because he knew that he was not knowledgeable.) According to

Pascal, what makes us non-wretched (for lack of a better term) is our knowledge that 

we are wretches. (We are non-wretched because we know that we are wretched.) 

This means that we are non-wretched only as long as we do not regress into a 

condition of delusion. If we try to tell ourselves that we are not wretched, we lose the 

margin knowledge that separates us from the rats, monkeys, and the like. But if we 

don't lie to ourselves, then we are in pain. 

But it isn't really an option to unlearn what one has learned. People can run from 

self-knowledge, but they cannot entirely escape it. And when they try to escape it, they 

don't live in a state of ignorant bliss, even though that is what they would like. The life 

of a rat or monkey may be 'wretched', but it is real: it isn't a sham. Similarly, even 

though the life of somebody who cops to his self-knowledge may be painful, it too is 

real. But the life of someone who has self-consciousness but turns a blind eye to what 

he knows is not real. That person's life is about anesthetizing himself with fairy tales and 

distractions. That person's life is about avoiding reality, and that person has to replace 

the reality he is fleeing from with narratives--with distractions and amusements and 

other ways of warding off his knowledge of his actual condition. But those distractions, 

precisely because they aren't rooted in reality, only work for so long. And when their 

magic wears off, one ends up bored and looking for a new thrill, a new way to pass the 

time.

And so it is that Pascal cryptically says: “man’s condition. Inconstancy, boredom, 

anxiety." In this quotation, "anxiety" refers to the anxiety of knowing that one is a 

wretched and not repressing that knowledge. "Boredom" refers to the boredom and 

emptiness resulting from the just-discussed escapism. Fantasy is fine for a while, but 

inevitably becomes boring, precisely because it isn't real and the illusion is inevitably 

seen through. "Inconstancy" refers to the tendency that human beings have to vacillate 

between 'owning' their knowledge of their own condition and fleeing from that 

knowledge. 

Similar points hold of the following fragment: “Man does not know on which 

level to put himself. He is obviously lost and has fallen from his true place without being 

able to find it again. He looks for it everywhere restlessly and unsuccessfully in 

impenetrable darkness." Man's condition is inherently ambiguous. When he looks in the 

mirror, he sees a wretch. But the very fact that he can look in the mirror (be self-aware) 

means that he is more than a wretch. He can't simply identify with the creature in the 

mirror. Nor can he completely dissociate himself from the wretch in the mirror. So he is 

both wretch and God and therefore "does not know on which level to put himself." 

Finally, these points help us understand what Pascal means when he says: “I 

blame equally those who decide to praise man, those who blame him, and those who 

want to be diverted. I can only approve of those who search in anguish." Those who 

praise men are in denial; they deny that man is a wretch (an animal). Those who blame

man are also in denial. When people are blamed, it is for their imperfections. But people 

are not responsible for their imperfections; they are not sufficiently God-like to be 

responsible for all of their own shortcomings. The only people who can be approved of 

are those who, while accepting their own shortcomings, strive to be better and don't 

flee from the 'anguish' of these self-induced growing pains. 

The following quotation (from Fragment 33) is to be understood along similar 

lines. “Wretchedness. The only thing that consoles us for our miseries is distraction, yet 

that is the greatest of our wretchedness.” Analysis: Knowledge of our wretchedness 

makes us miserable but it also makes us great, and we become doubly wretched if we 

try to sweep that knowledge under the rug. 

In light of these points, the meaning of the following quotation (from Fragment 

106) is fairly clear: "We must know ourselves. Even if that did not help in discovering 

truth, it would at least help in putting order into our life. Nothing is more proper.” In 

saying that we must ‘know’ ourselves, Pascal is saying that we must not bury our 

knowledge of what we are. (He is saying that we should continue to know ourselves and 

should not repress this knowledge.) And the reason is simply that if don’t ‘know’ 

ourselves (retain a certain level of self-awareness) ourselves, we are living a lie. 

Contrariwise, if we do retain the requisite level of self-awareness, we are not living a lie 

and our lives are therefore coherent and ‘in order.’ And it is not necessary our selfawareness 

“help in discovering truth”, i.e. it is not necessary that our self-awareness rise

to the level of psychoanalytic insight. It is necessary only that we see ourselves with 

enough clarity that our lives cannot becoming mere exercises in self-deception. 

Three Short Papers on the Advent of Modern Science (Philosophy/General 

Science) 


How did pre-Galilean Physics differ from Galilean Physics? 

What are the basic tenets of Newtonian physics? 

What is Bacon’s view as to how to acquire scientific knowledge? 




















virtue’). 

























terms of law. 











































other bodies. 










































Two Problems with the Hypothetico-deductive Method of Confirmation 

(Philosophy) 

The hypothetico-deductive model of confirmation (HD) can be broken down into 

the following steps:

Step 1: Start with a data-set. For example, every case known to me of x’s being 

metal that is being heated is a case of x’s expanding. 

Step 2: Identify a ‘covering law’ H that, if correct, accounts for the data. For 

example, for any x, if x is metal that is being heated, x is expanding. 

Step 3: Deduce some testable (verifiable/falsifiable) consequence C of H. (E.g. 

Given that copper is metal, it follows that, for any x, if x is copper that is being heated, 

then x is expanding.) 

Step 4: Test the truth of C, e.g. heat some piece of copper A and see whether or 

not it is expanding. 

Step 5: If H passes the just-mentioned test, then look for some other test of H. (If, 

when heated, A expands, then find some other piece of metal B and subject B to the 

same test.) If H fails the test, then move onto Step 6. 

Step 6: Make sure that the test was properly conducted. If it wasn’t, then run the 

appropriately de-bugged test once again. If it was properly conducted, then move onto 

Step 7. 

Step 7: Come up with a new covering law H* that is not subject to any known 

counter-examples and go back to Step 3. 

There are two problems with HD:

Problem #1: If HD were correct, science could not possibly move forward---there 

could not possibly be such a thing as a science. 

Problem #2: If HD is fixed up in such that Problem #1 is no longer a problem for it, 

then HD ends up being viciously circular. 

Let us start by discussing Problem #1: 

HD seems perfectly reasonable. But if considered as a general model of scientific 

explanation, it fails utterly. Let D be the following data-set: 

Piece of metal x expanded when heated 

Piece of metal y expanded when heated 

Piece of metal z expanded when heated 

There are going to be infinitely many properties P such that P is not the property 

of being made of metal and such that x, y, and z all have P and such that nothing besides 

has P. Let w1, w2, and w3 be the exact number of atoms in x, y and z, respectively, and 

let P be the property of being an object consisting of exactly w1-many atoms or exactly

w2-many or exactly w3-many atoms. And suppose that no object besides x, y, or z has P. 

Bearing this in mind, consider the following hypothesis: 

H1: Any object that has P expands when heated. 

It is obvious that H1 is not the right hypothesis. 

One response is to say: “H1 may indeed be the wrong hypothesis. But the only 

way to know that is to falsify it.” 

But there are infinitely (indeed, non-denumerably) many hypotheses similar to 

H1---hypotheses that are extensionally correct, at least relative to D----that are not 

serious contenders. For example, let P2 be the property of having location L1, L2, or L3 

at times t, where L1, L2, and L3 are the exact locations occupied by x, y, and z, 

respectively at t. And bearing this in mind consider the hypothesis that: 

H2: An object expands if it has P2. 

H2 is extensionally correct (relative to D). But it is obviously a ‘bent’ hypothesis 

that isn’t really worth investigating. 

If the way science progressed was by going through every conceivably 

extensionally correct hypothesis and testing it, science would simply grind to a halt: this

is because for each non-bent hypothesis (e.g. ‘x expands if x is heated metal’) there 

would be infinitely many bent hypotheses (‘if x expands if x has Pn’, for some n) that had 

to be ruled out. 

So how does science progress? First of all, by skipping bent hypotheses and 

considering only those that are non-bent. But what do we mean by a non-bent 

hypothesis? We mean one that explains by identifying causes. Once again, consider the 

following hypothesis: 

H: x expands if x is metal that is being heated. 

H amounts to: 

H*: x’s being heated metal causes it to expand when heated. 

So in order to frame a hypothesis, such as H, that is even worth testing, we have 

to be able to distinguish causal from non-causal properties. Why do we choose H as 

opposed to H1 or H2 or…Hi…? Because we know that whereas P1 and P2 and…Pi…are 

non-causal properties, being heated metal is a causal property.

Bearing this in mind, suppose we fix up HD so as to accommodate the 

desideratum that only causally pregnant hypotheses be admissible. In that case, we 

must replace Step 2 with: 

data-set. 

Step 2*: Identify a causally pregnant covering law H that models the existing 

But here is the problem. We cannot possibly know whether a given hypothesis is 

‘causally pregnant’ unless we already know, at least within limits, what causes what. We 

cannot know that being heated metal is causally pregnant, whereas P1 is not, unless we 

know that being heated metal has effects, whereas having P does not. So if we replace 

Step 2 with Step 2*, then we are presupposing knowledge of causal ties. And if we have 

knowledge of causal ties, then we ipso facto have knowledge of explanations. (To 

explain an event e is to know what caused e.) And this means that HD presupposes the 

truth of some other account of scientific explanation and is therefore not itself an 

adequate such account. 

Aristotle on Virtue (Philosophy)

In Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, Chapter 13, Aristotle introduces his conception of 

“virtue.” Explain the general relation between virtue and the soul (according to 

Aristotle). Next, explain Aristotle’s distinction between virtues of thought and virtues of 

character. 

Etymologically, the word “virtue” means “truth”, and this seems to be the sense 

in which Aristotle is using the word. Aristotle begins by saying that “happiness is a 

certain sort of activity of the soul in accord with perfect virtue.” Aristotle seems to be 

saying that one achieves happiness by being true to what one is. According to Aristotle, 

to be human is to be rational (or at least capable of being so). Therefore, holds Aristotle, 

a human being is true to what he is to the extent that is rational. And since, as Aristotle 

says in the above quotation, happiness is activity of the soul that embodies fidelity to 

one’s nature, it follows, if we accept Aristotle’s premises, that happiness is identical with 

rationality. 

It must be made clear that rationality is not identical with intelligence. To be 

rational is not to be intelligent; it is to be intelligent and to apply one’s intelligence in 

the management of one’s own affairs, including one’s internal (psychological) affairs. So 

rationality might be thought of as applied or integrated rationality. 

For Aristotle, rationality---not kindness, not altruism, not generosity---is the 

supreme virtue. At first, this may seem odd. But it ceases to be odd when it is clearly

explained. For Aristotle, there is no way to be rational without being temperate, honest 

with oneself, self-disciplined and generally centered. And, Aristotle also holds, one 

cannot be centered if one is manipulative, deceptive, or petty. So for Aristotle, 

rationality, this being experientially integrated intelligence, involves a certain decency 

towards others. In Aristotle’s view, having a balanced and therefore rationally 

structured soul cannot be distinguished from having fair-minded relations with others. 

Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of virtues of the soul, namely, virtues of thought 

and virtues of character. Virtues of thought include “wisdom, comprehension and 

prudence.” (By “prudence”, Aristotle seems to mean judgment.) A virtue of thought is 

an embodiment of intelligence, this being why “comprehension” (understanding, acuity) 

qualifies as a “virtue” of thought. 

Virtues of character include “generosity and temperance.” (Presumably kindness 

and mercifulness would also be virtues of character.) A “virtue of character” seems to 

be a character-trait that is not an embodiment so much of intelligent as of general 

psychological health and vitality. Whereas the spiteful person is, as it were, small and 

shriveled, this being why spite is a vice (the opposite of a virtue), the magnanimous 

person is large and psychologically, this being why magnanimity is a virtue. 

Absolute Truth: What it is and how we know it (Philosophy)









Truth is a property of beliefs and, more generally, of representations. A 

representation is true (or ‘accurate’) if the world is as it represents the world as being, 

and otherwise false (or ‘inaccurate’). Thus, truth is the property of ‘fitting’ the world. 

Truth is not exactly a characteristic of the world; it is a characteristic of the relation 

between representations and the world, and those relations have that property when 

the world is as those representations depict it as being. 

This analysis of truth seems pretty commonsensical to me. Let us say that I draw 

person X. If my drawing represents X as being fat, when he is in fact skinny, then my 

drawing is not ‘true to who X is’; and if my drawing represents X as being skinny, when

he in fact is skinny, then my drawing is true to who X is. In general, truth is fidelity to the 

facts. 


As previously discussed, truth is not a property of the world; it is rather a 

relationship between representations and the world. It is a relation of conformity or 

correspondence. If there were no representations of the world—no thoughts, no 

statements, no pictures, no ideas of any kind—then there would be no truth. (There 

would be states of affairs in virtue of which if there were representations, some of them 

would be true or accurate while others would be false or inaccurate. 

So if the statement ‘truth is objective’ is taken to mean that truth exists ‘all by 

itself’, regardless of how any one’s ideas represent the world as being, then no, there is 

no such thing as ‘objective truth’; for truth, being a property of relations between 

representations and reality, wouldn’t even exist if there were no representations. 

But truth is ‘objective’ if the statement ‘truth is objective’ is taken to mean that, 

if there are representations of the world, then it is up to the world, not us, whether 

those representations are accurate. It is up to me to believe that tree X is taller than 

tree Y, but it is not up to me whether that thought it is true. It may well be that people 

have different opinions on the relative heights of those trees, but that is irrelevant to

their actual heights. X is either taller than Y, the same height as Y, or shorter than Y. It is 

up to human beings (or other sentient creatures) to have ideas on the matter, and thus 

to generate true or false representations of that state of affairs. And to that extent, 

truth is subject-dependent and thus ‘subjective.’ But once those representations have 

been generated, it is not up to those people, or any other people, whether those 

representations are accurate. 


When deciding whether a given representation (belief or statement) R is true, the 

relevant question is: Supposing that R is true, would the world be more anomalous than 

it would otherwise be? In other words, would the world contain more discontinuities, 

more sheer coincidences, more cases of things randomly popping into existence than it 

would otherwise contain? If the answer is yes: if R were true, then the world would 


R were false—then R is false. If the answer is—no: if R were false, then the world would 


R were true—then R is true. If the answer is—neither: if R is true, then the world is 

exactly as anomalous as it would be if R is false—then the answer is: We have no 

principled way of deciding the matter.

We can’t compare beliefs directly with the realities they are supposed to 

represent; for we only know reality through our beliefs. Our only litmus test for 

determining whether a belief is true or not is whether it does a good of explaining the 

data at our disposal. If it does a good of accounting for that data and its negation does a 

bad job, then that belief is probably true. If its negation does a better job of accounting 

for that data, then that belief is probably false. If that belief is neither better nor worse 

at accounting for that data than its negation, then there is no way of deciding between 

them. 





Right now, I believe that I am typing on a real computer (not a dream-computer 

or hallucination-internal computer) and, in general, that I am really engaging with the 

real world. How do I know this? First of all, I know that I am conscious (not awake, 

necessarily, but conscious). And I know how it is that my mental states represent the 

world as being. I also know that my mental states cohere with another. (When I am 

dreaming, they are disjointed and mutually incoherent.) Of course, given only these

pieces of information, I could be dreaming—or so a skeptic would say. So how do I know 

that I am not? 

Let’s suppose that I am dreaming. In that case, my mind is not merely organizing 

various disturbances of my body’s sensory surfaces. Rather, my mind is completely and 

totally responsible for everything that I am experiencing; it is writing fiction, as it were. 

And not just any fiction, but impeccably, utterly coherent fiction—fiction that omits no 

detail and is never inconsistent with itself. And where is my mind getting all of this 

information, all of the information needed to produce this complete and perfect work of 

multi-sensory art? If we say that it is getting it from the outside world, then we are 

conceding the mind at least sometimes represents the world as it is, in which case, I am 

not in general hallucinating and it would be arbitrary to suppose that in this particular 

case I was hallucinating. On the other hand, suppose that my mind is simply 

manufacturing all of these ideas, without the support of anything external. In that case, 

these ideas simply arise ex nihilo in mind and are therefore so many unexplained 

miracles. Obviously a hypothesis that posits fewer miracles is to be preferred, at least if 

such a hypothesis is available. And such a hypothesis is available, namely, my mind is 

not simply ‘making up’ all of these experiences. Rather, these experiences are the fallout 

of external realities of which they are representations and whose mutual relations 

the mutual relations of my experiences shadow, this being why my experiences are as a 

general rule both internally coherent as well as of practical use in guiding my conduct.


(Philosophy) 







made by clock-maker. Richard Dawkins doesn’t address this argument directly, but ops 

out with the platitude that the scope of science is growing constantly---which, though 




Clockmaker. 



others. Which, as Dawkins seems to note, amounts to saying that it is not true.












question, to be decided on the basis of the historical data. 








James would say that, although Dawkins may well be right about the purely factual



Schopenhauer on Suicide (Philosophy) 

Ultimately, Schopenhauer does not recommend suicide. Schopenhauer’s attitude 

towards life—and death, including voluntary death (suicide)—is Buddhist in nature. He 

holds not that death per se is desirable, but that the extirpation of suffering (Nirvana) is 

desirable. Buddhists hold that suffering is inevitable and, paradoxically, that it is only by 

accepting its inevitability that one can escape it. Schopenhauer holds—more for reasons 

of a biological than a theological nature—that suffering is inevitable, or nearly so. And 

given that death brings an end to suffering, it would seem that Schopenhauer would 

favor suicide. 

But he doesn’t. His position, in fact, is that “suicide thwarts the attainment of the 

highest moral aim by the fact that, for a real release from this world of misery, it 

substitutes one that is merely apparent.” What Schopenhauer regards as the highest 

state is not exactly one of not suffering—a rock doesn’t suffer, after all, but there is 

nothing sublime about a rock’s condition---but is rather a state of having a living mind 

that is not suffering. When a person is dead, he is not there: he is no more there to not

suffer than he is to suffer. So the absence of pain associated with death is merely the 

absence of there being anything to experience pain. 

What Schopenhauer regards as the sublime condition for humans is, almost 

tautologously, that of existing (i.e. being conscious, not being dead) and not suffering. 

This condition is death-like in that it involves an absence of suffering, but non-death-like 

in that it presupposes the existence of the human subject. And so it is that through 

Schopenhauer’s writings, he speaks of momentary pleasures---e.g. the joy of a good 

laugh or of a gentle caress—as being supremely valuable. And so it is that Schopenhauer 

writes: 

Cheerfulness is a direct and immediate gain,—the very coin, as it were, of 

happiness, and not, like all else, merely a cheque upon the bank; for it alone makes us 

immediately happy in the present moment, and that is the highest blessing for beings 

like us, whose existence is but an infinitesimal moment between two eternities. To 

secure and promote this feeling of cheerfulness should be the supreme aim of all our 

endeavors after happiness (Schopenhauer, Arthur. The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer: 

the Wisdom of Life (p. 12). Kindle Edition._

So no—Schopenhauer is not pro-suicide. In fact, he regards suicide as a mistake— 

as a mistaken way of attempting to achieve the (in Schopenhauer’s view) very legitimate 

goal of not suffering. And because the goal of suicide (viz. the elimination of pain) is (in 

Schopenhauer’s view) legitimate, Schopenhauer regards suicide as a mistake that is not 

a crime: 

In my chief work I have explained the only valid reason existing against suicide on 

the score of mortality. It is this: that suicide thwarts the attainment of the highest moral 

aim by the fact that, for a real release from this world of misery, it substitutes one that is 

merely apparent. But from a mistake to a crime is a far cry; and it is as a crime that the 

clergy of Christendom wish us to regard suicide.1 

er3.html) 

1. (https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/pessimism/chapt 

Schopenhauer’s Fractal Conception of Reality (Philosophy)

Schopenhauer plausibly holds that the macrocosm and microcosm—the macro 

(external, objective) and the micro (internal, subject, psychological)—should be ‘of a 

piece’ and thus have the same sorts of properties and the same sort of structure. Some 

background will help make it clear what Schopenhauer has in mind. According to David 

Hume, there are no forces in reality: when one observes the world, says Hume, one 

witnesses events, but no forces connected events. Schopenhauer denies this, saying 

that one’s experience of one’s own states is replete with awareness of forces: of urges, 

compulsions, desires, action-inducing jolts and pricks, and the like. Schopenhauer then 

says that, since we are ourselves are a part of nature, and not outside, it follows that 

there are forces within nature, contrary to what Hume says. Schopenhauer also seems 

to hold that, since there are forces within us, it would be odd if reality in general were 

not permeated with forces. Schopenhauer’s implicit reasoning being that, if forces 

resided only in the human psyche, then each human being would be a kind of 

singularity—a pocket of non-subjection to natural law. And, so the rest of 

Schopenhauer’s implicit thought process seems to run, it would be methodologically 

contraindicated to supposed that each human being, rather than being a part of nature, 

were an exception to it. 

And so it is that Schopenhauer, on the basis of his holistic view of reality—his 

view that the micro (internal, psychological) mirrors the macro (external, physical)---

leads him to hold that reality as a whole contains forces and, more generally, mental 

activity, this being why he described the world as being “will and idea.” 

Schopenhauer thus holds that the world, including the psychological component 

of it, has a fractal structure: the micro replicates the macro. And this line of thinking— 

though not yet known to be correct—is a priori more reasonable than its opposite, 

according to which the existence of mind represents an inexplicable cleavage in world 

governed by laws that are fundamentally non-psychological in nature. Schopenhauer’s 

view is also a priori more reasonable than the pseudo-scientific denialism characteristic 

of modern materialism, according to which the mind either does not exist (which is an 

absurd and also self-undermining view) or does exist but only by virtue of being identical 

with something—namely, the physical: the world governed by physical and chemical 

laws---to which it appears to bear no resemblance. 

Theodore Roszak’s Epistemology, Bicameral Consciousness, etc. (Anthropology) 

1. Explain this quote by Theodore Roszak: “The epistemological systems that have 

been developed since the time of Descartes have often been ingenious . . . But all of

them are marked by the same curious fact. They leave out the Angel of Truth—as 

indeed Descartes himself did.” 

The great epistemological doctrines of the modern age all begin with doubt— 

oftentimes, as in Descartes case, involving a hypothetical ‘evil demon’ who fills people’s 

minds with hallucinations that they take them for veridical perceptions. So modern 

epistemology is informed by a kind of skepticism and cynicism. And this all-consuming 

doubt, in addition to being artificial, is also rather sterile, since if one takes that doubt as 

one’s starting point, it is very produce a theory of knowledge that does justice to our 

intuitions about what we know. It would be better if we started with belief—with an 

Angel of Truth—and then tried toe explain error in terms of knowledge, rather than 

starting with disbelief—with an Evil Demon—and then tried to explain knowledge in 

terms of error. 

Who was Faust and why, according to Sheldrake, is he a symbol of modern 

science? 

Faust was a kind of Dr. Frankenstein figure who tried to rise above nature. He 

sold his soul for infinite knowledge, in an effort to be Godlike. But human beings are a 

part of nature; we are not above it. And if we try to rise above it, we lose our way, like

Faust. In Sheldrake’s view, modern scientists are trying to rise above nature and 

separate themselves from it, in much the way that was Faust was trying to do. 

Summarize any one of the ten objections from 'Utopian Neuroscience'. then, 

summarize any one of Pearce's responses to that objection. how might the objector 

reply to Pearce? 

The technical objection: While it make sense to speak of becoming 10 times 

taller, does it really make sense to speak of becoming 10 times happier? It does not 

seem so. And if not, then how can modern science (e.g. gene splicing, neuro-rewiring) 

make us 10 times happier? 

Pearce's response: First of all, even if doesn't make sense to measure increments 

of happiness, it does make sense to speak of becoming happier (or less happy) than we 

currently are. And there is plenty of reason to believe that this can be done through 

changes to our biochemistry. Second, even though happiness, considered as a subjective 

phenomenon is not quantifiable, the neural underpinnings of it (e.g. the numbers of 

neurons firing when we eat chocolate vs. when we use heroin) are quantifiable.

What is bicameral consciousness, according to Julian Jaynes? Illustrate by either: 

i. his analysis of the Greek epics; or ii. his analysis of the Old Testament 

According to Jaynes, in contexts where we would have thoughts, primitive 

peoples would externalize those would-be thoughts in the form of hallucinations. So if a 

primitive person was dealing with stimuli that he couldn't automatically process, the 

'left' brain-hemisphere would transfer its thought-contents to the 'right' hemisphere, 

which in turn would generate auditory hallucinations of verbal representations of those 

thoughts. And those hallucinations were taken to be the voices of the gods or of God, 

this being why God/the gods were such a potent presence in the mind of early man. In 

Jayne's view, the Greek Myths and the Old Testament were not exactly made up, so 

much as they were hallucinated, viz. 'told' to the people who produced these myths in 

the form of auditory hallucinations. 

today? 

What is religion, according to Julian Jaynes: (i) during the bicameral era; and (ii)

According to Jayne, during the bicameral ear, religious doctrines were not so 

much accepted on faith or even 'believed' as they were experienced, in the form of 

auditory hallucinations. 

What modern man thinks, primitive man 'heard', through auditory hallucinations. 

So religion for primitive man was experienced. But for modern man it consists of 

doctrines that, not being experienced, have to be believed to be accepted. And since 

they are not very plausible, they tend to little or no hold on people. 

“But wherefore does my life say this to me?” what ancient work is this line from, 

and what is its significance, according to Julian Jaynes? 

This is from the Iliad. And according to Jaynes, it shows that we experience as 

thoughts, they experienced as voices. People doubt what they think, not what they 

experience. For this reason, says Jaynes, for the people of Homer's time, religion had a 

reality that it simply couldn't have for us. And this is why religions now consist of slightly 

comic fairy tales, whereas for the people who actually invented religion, these 'fairy 

tales' were simple truths.

how are UFOs 'hermetic', according to Davis / Vallee? 

In this context, "hermetic" means "relating to ancient traditions or modes of 

thought." According to David/Vallee, UFO-sightings are modern man's equivalent of 

what God-sightings to were to the ancients. UFO-sightings are glimpses (of the 

delusional variety, of course) of Gods that are dressed up modern (scientific) form. 

thesis? 

how does the phenomenon of blindsight help Jaynes advance his bicameral 

Blindsight is seeing without knowing that one is seeing. According to Jaynes, 

primitive man was conscious but not self-conscious. He believed without knowing that 

he believed, and therefore experienced his beliefs as outer realities. 

found there? 

how is god found in the figurants, in the trash stratum? why is god more likely

We no longer really believe in God, at least not in the way in which we believe in 

the existence of people with whom we are acquainted (or have seen on T.V. or even just 

heard of). We do not believe in God in the way in which the ancients believed. The 

ancients did not even have to 'believe' in God since they never doubted His existence in 

the first place. In any case, for us, God is a background figure--a proper, a supporting 

actor. He exists when we need Him--as when we are in A.A. or we are need a shoulder 

to cry on but don't have a human shoulder to cry on. He has a second-class existence 

and plays only a supporting role, like a figurant (dancer who dances only as part of a 

group) or no role (like a piece of discarded trash). 

What is a H.A.D.D? What are exopsychic decision procedures? 

An H.A.D.D. is a hyper-active agent detection device. Animals must obviously be 

able to detect motion. And it behooves animals to be able to distinguish between 

'inanimate' motion, e.g. leaves being blown in the wind, and 'animate' noise, e.g. the 

footsteps of a predator. A H.A.D.D. is an overactive tendency on a creature's part to 

interpret noises and other disturbances as evidence of animate motion. Many dogs bark

frantically whenever they hear the slightest noise, for the reason that they take 

practically all such noises as indications of another animal (and, indeed, as indications of 

a predatory). Such a dog has an agent detection-device of the hyper-active variety. 

An exopsychic decision procedure is a case of working through a problem by 

experiencing one's thoughts on the matter as external voices, in a literal sense, or in any 

case as visitations of some kind, some tangible and real kind, from the outside world. 

how does Dennett explain the origins of shamanic healing? 

According to Dennett, shamanism is a "biosocial paradigm of consciousness and 

healing." Basically, it is a kind of community-hypnosis that the community-members 

believe in and that therefore works. So it works through a placebo effect--but, for that 

very reason, does in fact work. 

Locke, Aristotle and Kant on Virtue (Philosophy)

The author tells us that philosophical ideas should be evaluated on their own 

terms, not in terms of who put them forth. In other words, when making a case for 

philosophical position X, it is not an argument to say “Kant said X” or “Locke said X.” 

What matters is not who supports X, but what the arguments for X are. “In a 

philosophical paper”, the author writes, “the argument matters most, and the essential 

questions are whether the conclusions follows from the premises and whether the 

premises are true.” 

Yes, I suppose. But there is another even important question, namely: Is the 

author saying anything that isn’t totally obvious? Does anyone stand to learn anything 

by reading the work the question? And in this case, the answer is a resounding “no.” As 

in the passage titled “Rule 3-2”, the author isn’t saying anything that isn’t obvious and 

therefore isn’t really saying anything. 

In Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, Chapter 13, Aristotle introduces his conception of 

“virtue.” Explain the general relation between virtue and the soul (according to 

Aristotle). Next, explain Aristotle’s distinction between virtues of thought and virtues of 

character. 

Etymologically, the word “virtue” means “truth”, and this seems to be the sense 

in which Aristotle is using the word. Aristotle begins by saying that “happiness is a 

certain sort of activity of the soul in accord with perfect virtue.” Aristotle seems to be

saying that one achieves happiness by being true to what one is. According to Aristotle, 

to be human is to be rational (or at least capable of being so). Therefore, holds Aristotle, 

a human being is true to what he is to the extent that is rational. And since, as Aristotle 

says in the above quotation, happiness is activity of the soul that embodies fidelity to 

one’s nature, it follows, if we accept Aristotle’s premises, that happiness is identical with 

rationality. 

It must be made clear that rationality is not identical with intelligence. To be 

rational is not to be intelligent; it is to be intelligent and to apply one’s intelligence in 

the management of one’s own affairs, including one’s internal (psychological) affairs. So 

rationality might be thought of as applied or integrated rationality. 

For Aristotle, rationality---not kindness, not altruism, not generosity---is the 

supreme virtue. At first, this may seem odd. But it ceases to be odd when it is clearly 

explained. For Aristotle, there is no way to be rational without being temperate, honest 

with oneself, self-disciplined and generally centered. And, Aristotle also holds, one 

cannot be centered if one is manipulative, deceptive, or petty. So for Aristotle, 

rationality, this being experientially integrated intelligence, involves a certain decency 

towards others. In Aristotle’s view, having a balanced and therefore rationally 

structured soul cannot be distinguished from having fair-minded relations with others. 

Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of virtues of the soul, namely, virtues of thought 

and virtues of character. Virtues of thought include “wisdom, comprehension and

prudence.” (By “prudence”, Aristotle seems to mean judgment.) A virtue of thought is 

an embodiment of intelligence, this being why “comprehension” (understanding, acuity) 

qualifies as a “virtue” of thought. 

Virtues of character include “generosity and temperance.” (Presumably kindness 

and mercifulness would also be virtues of character.) A “virtue of character” seems to 

be a character-trait that is not an embodiment so much of intelligent as of general 

psychological health and vitality. Whereas the spiteful person is, as it were, small and 

shriveled, this being why spite is a vice (the opposite of a virtue), the magnanimous 

person is large and psychologically, this being why magnanimity is a virtue. 


(Philosophy) 







made by clock-maker. Richard Dawkins doesn’t address this argument directly, but ops

out with the platitude that the scope of science is growing constantly---which, though 




Clockmaker. 



others. Which, as Dawkins seems to note, amounts to saying that it is not true. 












question, to be decided on the basis of the historical data.








James would say that, although Dawkins may well be right about the purely factual 



Reflection Paper: Harvey on Commodity Fetishism (Politics/Economics) 

Tech specs: 2-3 pages, double spaces, worth 20 points (does not need to be a 

classically structured essay i.e. no need for intro and conclusion). You must engage with 

Harvey’s discussion and concepts from chapter 1 of Seventeen Contradictions. 

computers) 

Commodity Reflection: Use-value vs. exchange-value 

Pick a commodity (suggestions: medication, education, food, housing,

Analyze it in terms of its use-value and its exchange-value 

Where does the contradiction arise? How are these in tension with one another? 

How might tension or contradiction create inequality? Here you need to connect 

it to what you have learned about inequality from Milanovic, Therborn, and the lectures 

from week 1. 

Evaluation: You must engage with Harvey’s concepts and discussion from the 

Introduction and Ch. 1 and you must use some ideas from Milanovic, Therborn, and 

week 1 lectures for part 1.4. You will lose points if you do not. You will be evaluated on 

accuracy of information and concepts, depth of your analysis and grammar and spelling. 

In a broad spectrum, user-value of a commodity is the material used such a 

commodity can be put into and the human needs it can satisfy while exchange-value of 

a commodity is the universal equivalence as well as the qualitative valuation usually 

monetary. As we examine the role a commodity plays in the capital market, these two 

facets of a commodity become more antagonistic. The antagonism, also known as the 

contradiction, breed inequality whether vital existential or material. The essay below 

evaluates how housing as a commodity portrays the user-value, exchange-value and

how the tensions or contradictions emanating from these two-sided values breed 

inequality. 

A decent house according to the US act is a basic right where each citizen is 

entitled to. The use-value of a house is determined by the ability to satisfy social needs. 

For instance, a father builds a house to shelter his family and offer them security and 

privacy from the unstable world. Another user-value of housing is for a symbol of status 

quo where the house is used as an example in architectural design size and other 

outstanding features of admiration. However, such famous houses which act as 

landmarks can be put into myriad uses like housing immigrants and conversion into 

workshops among others. The Frank Lloyd Wright’s falling water house had an elegance 

and beauty that attracted tourists. Nonetheless, the famous which was used as a 

workshop for innovation became the epicenter of what nowadays termed as the Silicon 

Valley. 

On the other hand, according to Marx’s theory of value, the exchange-value of a 

house as a commodity entails production for monetary valuation or exchange. The Logic 

of profit rather than the logic of usefulness tends to dominate in a society where 

exchange-value is prevalent. Moreover, any acquisition of a house must follow the 

required procurement process that demands giving out money. This occurs through 

renting, leasing or buying fully furnished apartments at a cost. In advanced capitalist 

societies, houses are built to be sold to whoever requires it or whoever can afford it.

The renowned Georgian terraces of Bath, Bristol, and London were built for the working 

class at the end of the eighteenth century. Furthermore, the ability of a house to 

appreciate in value with time makes individuals purchase house only to resell at a profit. 

The user-value and exchange-value of housing surface tensions which are also 

known as contradictions. According to (JOHNSTON, 2014), these contradictions can 

either be mitigated or spilled over to cause a crisis. Such tensions include for example 

according to the American charter, every citizen is entitled to a decent home and 

majority cannot afford which the government to chip in and subsidize the houses for 

them to acquire. However, some contradictions which spilled over include, the 

Scandinavian property market collapse, the fall of Loans and savings in the USA and the 

great recession where instead of appreciation of houses, there was falling of prices 

which led where owners sold at a loss of their buying price as illustrated in (JOHNSTON, 

2014). Apart from this, gentrification which is an improvement of the neighborhood can 

raise the mortgage fee of the house where the owner has not spent anything to improve 

it. Moreover, the eruption of a bad vice like theft which discourages developers will 

lower the price of the house despite any renovations to keep it at a cutting edge. Such 

market crashes like in America led to 4 million individuals to lose their homes. 

Elsewhere in New York, 60% of house owners are renters who during the great 

recession went bankrupt making tenants to live in foreclosed houses. Indeed, the 

ruthless pursuit aimed at maximizing housing exchange values has reduced access to

housing use values for a bigger portion of the population, a trend that is prevalent in the 

society nowadays. 

According to (Therborn, 2012) there are tangible inequalities emanating from 

the user-value housing and exchange-value housing. The vital inequality of health and 

death is prevalent where individuals who endeavor in exchange-value housing and end 

up being frustrated end up having a shorter lifespan than those who endeavor in uservalue 

housing. Moreover, existential inequality is also portrayed where the poor can 

neither access the exchange-value housing nor the user-value housing. This is due to the 

heavy capital intensity accompanied by such endeavor which their poverty outlaws 

them from accessing them. In addition, Material inequality is predominant where these 

housing values exclude the poor and favor the rich only. Material inequality is classified 

into the inequality of access, inequality of opportunities and the inequality of rewards 

where a particular caliber of people majorly the rich have an upper hand compared to 

the poor who can do nothing to reverse the situation. These inequalities are destructive 

to human lives and societies. In fact, there is none beneficial. 

In conclusion, housing is a commodity which manifests both user and exchange 

values. These values when examined deeply reveal tensions or contradictions where 

some can be managed by the government while others run out of control thus making 

them risky endeavors. Furthermore, the contradictions make lead to inequalities which 

are disastrous to human life and societies.

References 

Therborn, G. (2012). The Killing Fields of Inequality. International Journal Of 

Health Services, 42(4), 579-589. doi: 10.2190/hs.42.4.a 

JOHNSTON, R. (2014). David Harvey (2014), Seventeen Contradictions and the 

End of Capitalism. London: Profile Books. £14.99, pp. 336, hbk. Journal Of Social Policy, 

43(04), 850-852. doi: 10.1017/s0047279414000440 

Reflection Paper: Defending Marxist Economist (Politics/Economics) 

Tech specs: 2-3 pages, double spaces, worth 20 points (does not need to be a 

classically structured essay i.e. no need for intro and conclusion). You must engage with 

Harvey’s discussion and concepts from chapter 1 of Seventeen Contradictions. 

Commodity Reflection: Use-value vs. exchange-value 

Pick a commodity (suggestions: medication, education, food, housing, 

computers) 

Analyze it in terms of its use-value and its exchange-value 

Where does the contradiction arise? How are these in tension with one another?

How might tension or contradiction create inequality? Here you need to connect 

it to what you have learned about inequality from Milanovic, Therborn, and the lectures 

from week 1. 

Evaluation: You must engage with Harvey’s concepts and discussion from the 

Introduction and Ch. 1 and you must use some ideas from Milanovic, Therborn, and 

week 1 lectures for part 1.4. You will lose points if you do not. You will be evaluated on 

accuracy of information and concepts, depth of your analysis and grammar and spelling. 

The commodity that I will study is housing. We will see that the use-value of 

housing diverges enormously from its exchange value and that this divergence is 

illustrative of the central conceits of the readings and lectures. 

Let us begin by defining terms and clarifying foundational concepts. 

The use-value of X is X’s degree of utility. Thus, air and water have a maximally 

high degree of use-value, since they have a maximally high degree of utility. Diamonds 

have a very low degree of use-value, since they have a low degree of utility. 

The exchange-value of X is how much X sells for on the market. Thus, air and 

water usually have a low-degree of exchange value, and diamonds typically have a high 

degree of exchange value.

Why are exchange-value and use-value capable of diverging so much? There are 

several reasons. 

First, a given commodity’s use-value is not a function of how much of that thing 

there is, but its exchange-value is a function of how much it there is. The fact there is an 

unlimited amount of air means that air has no exchange value, but it does not affect 

air’s use-value. So to the extent that exchange-value reflects use—value, it reflects 

marginal use-value: it reflects the use-value of the next installment of that commodity— 

the next pair of sneakers, the next glass of water, the next parcel of air---which, in cases 

where that commodity is unlimited supply approaches zero. 

Second, exchange value is not hewed to marginal use-value per se; rather, it is 

hewed to its perceived use-value. If people think that a given car is useful, even though 

it useless, that will inflate its exchange its exchange-value; and if people think that a 

given car is useless, even though it is useful, that will deflate the car’s price. 

There is a tendency for perceived use-value to coalesce with actual use-value. (If 

a car doesn’t work, people will know it sooner or later.) But this tendency is indeed just 

a tendency. And beliefs about utility can diverge from actual utility by an arbitrarily wide 

margin for an arbitrarily long period of time. People spend enormous amounts of money 

college educations that appear not only to have no actual use-value (they don’t make 

people smarter or more competent and actually seem to detract from both intelligence

and competence). But people believe otherwise, and so it is that the exchange-value of 

a college degree may be, even if, as is often the case, its use-value is zero or negative. 

Also, a college degree has a kind of conventional value---a value that is 

determined not by its utility (or marginal utility), but is to some extent assigned to it by 

convention---in much the way that paper currency, which has no intrinsic value, has a 

kind of conventional value. Which brings us to the third reason why use-value and 

exchange-value can coalesce. 

Third, in some cases, objects can be assigned significances of a conventional or 

semi-conventional kind. Art-work—even when not particularly good—can become 

‘fashionable’ and can thus have enormous exchange-value. A lock of Justin Bieber’s hair, 

though useless in every way, might well have great exchange value. It isn’t that people 

wrongly believe it to have use-value—they don’t. But they do believe it to have value of 

some kind---and that fact by itself gives it exchange-value. 

Use-value is reality-based, not perception-based. Exchange-value is perceptionbased, 

not reality-based. For this reason, there is no limit to how much they can diverge. 

For reasons that we will soon discuss, this tends to inflate the value of the assets of the 

wealthy and to deflate the value of the assets of the poor, which in turn exacerbates 

pre-existing inequalities. 

Let us illustrate these points in connection with housing. Smith is a woodsman 

who lives in the Yukon. He has discovered a plot of land where there is oil, but has no

intention of telling anyone about it. He builds a sturdy and functional cabin on that plot 

land. The use-value of that cabin is extremely high. But its exchange-value is, at present, 

nil. And the reason is the perception of its use-value is horribly off. 

Now let us consider a different scenario. Jones lives in an area where there is no 

oil but where there is believed to be oil. He builds a flimsy house there. That house has 

almost no actual use-value, but it has tremendous perceived value and therefore has 

great exchange-value. 

But when there is a particularly large gulf between the exchange-value of housing 

and its use-value, it is not usually because of faulty perceptions about use-value; it is 

because the housing in question has been positively or negatively stigmatized. I myself 

had a very nice house that cost very little, simply because it was located in a ‘bad’ part 

of town. In actuality, that part of town was perfectly safe and it was also conveniently 

located. But it was ‘uncool’, causing housing-values to plummet. 

Similarly, there are houses in unsafe and inconveniently located neighborhoods 

that are ‘cool’, causing the exchange-values of those houses to soar. 

When people have large quantities of valuable assets, they are able, it seems, to 

inflate the values of those assets through a kind of fiat on their part. In fact, they don’t 

have to do much of anything. If certain kinds of paintings or clothing or personal 

accessories are common to the wealthy class, their exchange-values rise in relation to 

their use-values, which widens the already wide chasm between the wealthy and the

non-wealthy. (If Gucci handbags are seen as indicative of wealth, then their exchangevalue 

rises, even though their use-value is fixed and possibly quite low.) Similarly, if 

certain commodities are common to the poor, even if they have significant use-value, 

their exchange-values tend to fall in relation to their use-values, which also widens the 

already wide chasm between the wealth and the non-wealthy. (If clothes from K-mart 

are seen as indicative of poverty, then their exchange-value falls, even if their use-values 

are fixed and possibly quite high.) 

If wealth were hewed to the use-values of assets, this would have a levelling 

effect on wealth-distributions: the poor would not be so poor in relation to the rich, nor 

would the rich be so rich in relation to the poor. But because exchange value diverges 

from use-value, and because exchange-value is perception-based, the opposite 

happens: the rich are made richer by the mere fact of their wealth, and the poor are 

made poorer by the mere fact of their lack of it. 

Therborn points out that during the 2008 crisis, people who already had money 

(investment-bankers) were able to create wealth for themselves by creating securities 

that people believed to have value but in fact had none. This point is worth elaborating 

on. The crisis of 2008 wasn’t just preceded by securities’ being over-valued: that is what 

caused the crash. Second, the securities in question were not just any securities; they 

were housing-backed securities. So there were two distinct ways in which divergences 

between use-value and exchange-value caused the crash. First, worthless housing was

made to seem valuable (its exchange-value was inflated relative to its use-value). 

Second, worthless housing-backed securities created the false appearance of yet 

additional value, causing a further inflation of exchange-value in relation to use-value--- 

and creating a kind of purely ‘perception-based’ capital for those who owned those 

securities. 

Harvey points out that during this same period, fund-managers were routinely 

raking in hundreds and sometimes billions of dollars annually. Fund-managers make 

money by dumping over-valued assets and buying under-valued assets. So their income 

depends entirely on their detecting discrepancies between use-value and exchangevalue. 

And their activities may themselves enlarge those discrepancies: if Warren Buffet 

dumps the stock of Company X, the will deflate X’s stock and therefore the exchangevalue 

of X’s goods, even if those goods hold their use-value; and if he buys X’s stock, the 

will inflate X’s stock and therefore the exchange value of its goods, even if those goods 

hold their use-value. 

To sum up: Exchange-value is about the perception, not the actuality, of value, 

and those who already have wealth are in a uniquely good perception to skew such 

perceptions to their own advantage. 

Outline of Economics Paper on Contradictions in Free Market (Economics)

It is inherent in the free market that it lead to inequalities of wealth and income 

that cannot resolved within a free market framework. 

1. Three or more sentences... 

The average income for the top 1% in New York City was $3.6 million. 

The average income for everyone in the city was $30,000. 

The minimal per capita cost of living in New York City is $30,000. 

2. Three or more sentences... 

In the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, it was not uncommon 

for hedge fund managers to have annual salaries in the hundreds of millions and even 

billions of dollars. 

During that period, people in first-world countries were experiencing food- and 

housing shortages. 

The state rewarded the bankers responsible for the meltdown by bailing them 

out, thereby compounding the disparities. 

3. Three or more sentences...

The free-market cannot expected to diminish the wealth-disparities that it itself 

creates. 

Therefore, the government is responsible for diminishing these disparities. 

There are capitalist countries, such as Sweden, that, through heavy progressive 

income-tax schemes, enjoy the benefits of capitalism while being spared the unjust 

wealth-disparities. 

Questions and/or comments 

1. Question and/or comment 

Could Swedish-style super-heavy progressive taxation be implemented in the 

United States without destroying the entrepreneurial spirit needed for economic 

growth? 


What exactly is the author proposing? Heavier taxes? As a general rule those 

stifle economic activity?


What is something that the government could do to alleviate wealth- and 

income-inequality that (i) it is not doing, (ii) that neither of the two major political 

parties even claims that it should be doing and (iii) that would not simply turn the 

United States into a full-blown communist (and therefore economically non-functional) 

state? 

Some Reflections on the Virtues of the Free Market (Economics/Politics/Current 

Events) 

In California, in 2016, Proposition 64 passed, making recreational marijuana use 

legal in the state of California.41 This seems to have many upsides, and few downsides. 

The likely upsides include: 

*Revenue to the state of California from taxes on the sale of Marijuana, 

*An improved economy, owing to the new economic vistas opened up by the 

possibility of legally growing, marketing, and distributing marijuana, 

41 

http://time.com/4565438/california-marijuana-faq-rules-prop-64/

*Decreased contempt for the law, owing to the removal of unpopular and hardto-enforce 

(and impossible-enforce-in-an-equitable-manner) marijuana laws 

*Shrinkage of a criminal justice system bloated with so-called ‘drug-offenders’, 

many of whom have spent years in jail or on parole or probation for marijuana-related 

offenses, 

*Freeing up of funds now dedicated to zero-sum bureaucracies relating 

probation, parole, and incarceration of pot-offenders, and 

*Improved morale, owing to decreased contempt for the law, owing to all of 

these factors. 

A possible downside is that California will become a state of ‘dope-fiends.’ But 

this seems unlikely, given that even though anti-marijuana laws led to the incarceration 

of many, they did little or nothing in the way of preventing people from actually using 

marijuana. Indeed, there is some evidence that anti-drug laws increase drug use, or at 

least have done so in the United States.42 

But one rather serious problem does arise in connection with California’s 

Legalization of Pot: What is to happen to people in California who are currently 

incarcerated for marijuana-offenses or who, although not incarcerated, have criminal 

records because of such offenses? 

42 

https://www.drugrehab.org/are-anti-drug-laws-encouraging-drug-use/

One possible answer is: Reverse those convictions: free those incarceration for 

such offenses and clear the records of all those, whether incarcerated or not, who have 

been convicted of such offenses. 

And this is the solution that is currently being implemented, with little 

opposition. San Francisco43, Los Angeles44, and other municipalities have already gone 

this route , and it looks as the state of California as a whole will follow suit.45 

Within the state of California, there is relatively little opposition to pot’s (now) 

legal status, and there is also relatively little opposition to the reversal of pot-related 

convictions. The interesting issues here are ones that are not being debated because 

they are not even being discussed. Let me explain. 

In legalizing pot, the state of California has effectively admitted that the War on 

Drugs—at least the part of it that was concerned with pot—was a complete failure. This 

means that the millions of man-hours on the part of educators, parole and probation 

officers, lawyers and judges, and prison-personnel were all for naught: that they were 

nothing but a waste of time, resources and opportunity. 

43 

https://sfbay.ca/2018/01/31/sf-to-reverse-war-on-drugs-pot-convictions/ 

44 

http://lacannabisnews.com/la-county-moves-to-clear-pot-related-convictions/ 

45 http://www.thecannifornian.com/cannabis-news/northern-california/thousands-marijuana-convictions-reducedtossed-bay-area-das-plan/

That in its turn means that much the same is likely true of many other drug-laws. 

It means, in other words, that the vast state-apparatuses relating to the ‘education’ of 

(prospective and actual) ‘drug-offenders’ is so much brainwashing, done in furtherance 

of ruinous polices, and, therefore, that the juggernaut legal apparatus relating to the 

enforcement of such laws are equally misconceived. And this in turn would seem to 

constitute a very major victory for a libertarian conception of the rightful role of the 

State. The libertarian holds that the state should confine itself to preventing the 

commission of clear crimes (e.g. assault, rape, theft, fraud, and the like) and should 

refrain from criminalizing acts for reasons of a purely moral as opposed to pragmatic 

nature. The War on Drugs had—so it turns out, and so it was always suspected—very 

little practical justification, its only possible justification being that, for reasons of 

morality, people simply shouldn’t do drugs. (In the 19th century, there were no antidrug 

laws in the United States, and drug use was considerably lower than it was after 

the War on Drugs went into effect. In fact, with each attempt on the government to 

criminalize drug-use, drug use went up. The first great example of this was prohibition, 

which only increased drinking and also led to wide-spread organized crime.) 

A related point is that, now that pot is legal, the so-called ‘educators’ and other 

‘authority figures’ who were involved in the War on Drugs are now seen as so many 

bureaucrats who, in addition to being useless, are mere parasites, contributing nothing 

and being paid for it, at the expense of the very tax-payers penalized by their activities.

It should be pointed that, although right-wing politicians and political 

commentators have tended to be anti-drug-legalization46, right wing economists— 

hard-core free-marketeers, in other words—have always been pro-drug-legalization, 

their reasons being that anti-drug-laws paralyzed the free market, encouraged 

cartelism, and depleted the economy. To quote Milton Freedman: “See, if you look at 

the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to 

protect the drug cartel. That's literally true.” 

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/18583-see-if-you-look-at-the-drug-war-from-a 

And in this context, right-wing economists were completely vindicated. And left 

wing economists---who are all in favor of government-created jobs, of precisely the kind 

created by the invidious war on drugs---have been proven completely wrong. 

The real ‘elephant in the room’, therefore is: How can those who are (rightly, in 

my view) in favor of the legalization of drugs be (wrongly, in my view) opposed to the 

free-market? When will this cognitive dissonance be seen for and what it is, and once it 

is so seen, how will it affect people’s political thinking? 

46 

With some exceptions, e.g. George Will: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2009/10/28/AR2009102803801.html

When is wealth-redistribution legitimate? (Economics/Philosophy) 

Can wealth legitimately be spread equally among the people of a nation based on the 

philosophers (namely, Kant and W.D. Ross) that you have been introduced to? 

Ross and Kant are both deontologists. In their view, the ends do not as general 

rule justify the means. Acting morally, in their view, is not about being a vigilante who 

rights social wrongs; it is about treating people with respect and, in Kant’s case, allowing 

them to exercise their autonomy freely. In order for there to be any appreciable wealth, 

there must be free enterprise. (The state can take wealth, but cannot generate it.) So in 

order for there to be wealth to redistribute, there must be agents who in commercial 

contexts are freely exercising their autonomy. And supposing for argument’s sake that 

Kant and Ross believed that it would be good if wealth were distributed equally, they 

would regard it as morally wrong to try to attain that end by coercing people and they 

would regard it as doubly wrong to try to do so by preventing people from freely 

exercising their autonomy. And there would be no way without thwarting people’s 

autonomy to ensure that ever came to be evenly distributed. Moreover, there would be 

no way to keep wealth evenly distributed except through a coercive, and therefore 

rights- and autonomy-undermining, government-apparatus. So no—neither Kant nor 

Ross would regard there as being any ethical way of seeing to it that wealth came to be,

or continued to be, evenly distributed. Also, it is not clear that, even if there were some 

morally innocuous way of getting wealth to be, or to continue to be, evenly distributed, 

either philosopher would regard that as a particularly desirable state of affairs: they 

would regard it as desirable only to the extent that it was necessary for people to treat 

one another with respect—and it is not entirely clear that it would be particularly 

conducive to that end. 

An Economic Argument for Drug-legalization (Economics) 

My topic is the decriminalization of drugs (in other words, whether drugs should 

be made legal). My position is: Yes—they should be made legal: all of them, 

unconditionally. Usually when it is argued that drugs should be legalized, it is argued on 

the grounds that it is a violation of people’s personal and civil liberties to punish people 

for using drugs. And this may well be true. But in this paper, I will argue that for reasons 

of a strictly economic nature, it is necessary to make drugs legal. 

The war on drugs is extremely expensive in many ways. According to the Bureau 

of Labor Statistics, 90% of people who are in jail are there for drug offenses---because 

they had drugs on them or were selling drugs. 47 It is expensive to imprison people. 

Guards have to be paid, along with contractors, prison physicians, and so on. And 

47 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States

people who are in prison are not able to contribute to the economy (except in 

insignificant ways, e.g. by making license plates or picking up trash on the side of the 

road). Drug-offenders are non-violent offenders, and they are also not guilty of theft or 

fraud or of anything else that abridges other’s people’s freedoms. When society 

imprisons someone who is violent or who steals, it more than gains in security what it is 

losing in the way of that person’s potential economic output. But when society 

imprisons a so-called ‘drug-offender’, the resulting loss of economic output is in no way 

counterbalanced by a gain in security. 48 

Also, in order to service the ‘war on drugs’, the police force has to be expanded 

dramatically. This is expensive; these police officers had to paid, and so do the 

associated judges, prosecutors, lawyers, bailiffs, and social workers. These people would 

be out of a job if people were not locked up for ‘drug offences’. The more ‘drug 

offenders’ there are, the more work there is for these lawyers, social workers and so on. 

These people depend for their living on other people thrown in jail and denied the 

ability to contribute to society. The police officers, prison guards, social workers and 

public-sector lawyers are paid by the government and are therefore simply leaching off 

of the tax-payer. The private-sector lawyers are paid by the ‘drug-offenders’ themselves 

48 

See Ostrowski (1989).

and are therefore no less of an economic liability than their public-sector counterparts. 

49 

Laws are expensive. These expenses are justified when they prevent conduct that 

is even more expensive than they are. But drug dealing is not expensive. It is simply a 

form of commerce and actually contributes to the economy. 

In fact, if it were legal, it could do much more to contribute to society. First of all, 

it could be regulated. The government could make sure that the drugs being sold were 

non-toxic and of high quality, which would prevent drug-overdoses, the medical and 

personal costs of which are astronomical. It could also prevent drugs from being sold to 

children. Most importantly, the legalization of drugs would prevent the sale of drugs 

from involving actual criminals. It wouldn’t be violent street gangs selling drugs; it would 

be Walgreens. 

Also, most ‘drug-offenders’ are youthful, and they are locked up and denied 

education and opportunity precisely when they can most need them. So not only is 

society losing their economic output during the time they are in jail; by depriving of 

them education, it is diminishing their ability to be economically productive when they 

get out of jail. 

This is not to mention that the war on drugs has turned society into a police 

state. The war on drugs inflated the criminal justice by a factor of ten. These people 

49 

See Sowell (2014).

won’t be paid unless there is a corresponding increase in the number crimes, and they 

have an extremely strong incentive to ‘manufacture crime’, which they do by lobbying 

for extraneous laws that people are likely to run afoul of, and also by turning people into 

criminals, which they do by saddling people with criminal records, making it hard for 

them to get jobs or contribute to the economy in any non-criminal way. Also, because 

drugs are illegal, drug users who are not otherwise criminals are forced to transact with 

criminals; and the war on drugs therefore tends to cause non-criminals to be absorbed 

into the underworld---much to the delight of defense prosecutors and defense-lawyers. 

Write Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman: “Addicts are driven to associate 

with criminals to get the drugs, become criminals themselves to finance the habit, and 

risk constant danger of death and disease” (Friedman 1972). 50 This is not to mention the 

staggering health costs resulting from overdoses and other by-products of the illegality 

of drugs. 51 

When it is argued that drugs should be illegal, the argument is simply that if they 

were legal, we would be a nation of junkies. But is that true? Drugs used to be legal. 

Heroin was created by the same company that makes Bayer Aspirin and was sold over 

the counters. Were we a nation of junkies back then? Less so than now, going by the 

numbers. A possible explanation for this is given by Milton Friedman (1972): 

50 

See also Thornton (2002). 

51 

See Ostrowski (1989).

Consider first the addict. Legalizing drugs might increase the number of addicts, 

but it is not clear that it would. Forbidden fruit is attractive, particularly to the young. 

More important, many drug addicts are deliberately made by pushers, who give likely 

prospects their first few doses free. It pays the pusher to do so because, once hooked, 

the addict is a captive customer. If drugs were legally available, any possible profit from 

such inhumane activity would disappear, since the addict could buy from the cheapest 

source. 

The more aggressively the ‘war on drugs’ is fought, the more people use drugs. 

And the reason is that the ‘war on drugs’ isn’t meant to be won; it is meant to go on in 

perpetuity, so as to provide easy income for lawyers, probation officers, and others 

economic parasites. 

Friedman, Milton, “Prohibition and Drugs”, 1 May 1972, p. 104 

Sowell, Thomas. 2014 Why Prohibition Failed And Drugs Should Be Legalized Retrieved 

from https://debbieswindow.wordpress.com/2014/05/23/thomas-sowell-whyprohibition-failed-and-drugs-should-be-legalized/

Ostrowski, James. 1989. “Thinking about Drug Legalization.” Originally published in 

Policy Analysis. Retrieved from 

https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa121_1.pdf 

Thornton, Mark. (2002) “Milton Friedman, Drug Legalization, and Public Policy: 

Contributions to Economics and Public Policy.” Retrieved from 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/306303392_Milton_Friedman_Drug_Legaliz 

ation_and_Public_Policy_Contributions_to_Economics_and_Public_Policy 

Hobbes, Marx, Rousseau, Nietzsche: Their Central Themes 

(Politics/Philosophy/Intellectual History) 

Hobbes, Marx, Rousseau, Nietzsche: Each of these thinkers had very definite 

views as to how society actually functions and as to how it should function. Hobbes 

believed human beings to be inherently barbaric and therefore that the central purpose 

of society should be to prevent people from being barbaric towards one another. 

Nietzsche believed human beings to be driven exclusively by a lust for power and that a 

society’s purpose should to some extent be to provide people with outlets for this 

power-lust. Rousseau believed society to be inherently unjust and exploitative and that 

its purpose should be to provide people with the equality of opportunity that people

supposedly had prior to society’s existence while also giving them the protections that 

they lacked. Marx believed society to be a way of allocating resources and that its 

purpose should be to allocate them fairly. 

In the case of each of these thinkers, there are a number of secondary themes. 

For example, Hobbes is extremely concerned with language, since he believes it to be 

integral to the formation of the ‘social contract’ that creates society and thereby saves 

human beings from one another’s innate savagery. For this very reason, Hobbes is also 

concerned with use of deceptive or misleading language, since, given the significance 

that he ascribes to language in the formation of society, he believes deception and 

obfuscation to be threatening to the social contract. So even though Hobbes’ main point 

in Leviathan is that autocracy is needed to save people from themselves, a secondary 

point is that the use of language must be carefully regulated, lest language become a 

way for man’s savagery to insinuate itself into society. Similarly, even though Marx’s 

main theme is capitalist exploitation, a secondary theme is what he calls ‘alienation’, 

this being the condition of someone whose labor belongs to someone else and whose 

has therefore been drained of meaning. 

Each of the papers below will discuss a principal theme from the work of each of 

these thinkers, and in each case it will be shown on the basis of textual evidence what 

the thinker in question believes the political significance of that theme to be.

Nietzsche: According to Nietzsche: We forget because we want to forget; in other 

words, to forget is to repress: 

Forgetting is no mere vis inertiae as the superficial imagine; it is rather an 

active and in the strictest sense positive faculty of repression, that is responsible 

for the fact that what we experience and absorb enters our consciousness as 

little while we are digesting it (one might call the process “inpsychation”) as does 

the thousandfold process, involved in physical nourishment—so-called 

“incorporation.” To close the doors and windows of consciousness for a time; to 

remain undisturbed by the noise and struggle of our underworld of utility organs 

working with and against one another; a little quietness, a little tabula ras4 of the 

consciousness, to make room for new things, above all for the nobler functions 

and functionaries, for regulation, foresight, premeditation (for our organism is an 

oligarchy)—that is the purpose of active forgetfulness, which is like a doorkeeper, 

a preserver of psychic order, repose, and etiquette: so that it will be immediately 

obvious how there could be no happiness, no cheerfulness, no hope, no pride, no 

present, without forgetfulness. The 

Why do we want to forget? Because when we remember how we used to be, 

before we developed pretenses, we see how we still are, beneath all of our pretenses:

The worse man’s memory has been, the more fearful has been the 

appearance of his customs 

Nietzsche then goes to illustrate this point: 

[T]he severity of the penal code provides an especially significant measure 

of the degree of effort needed to overcome forgetfulness and to impose a few 

primitive demands of social existence as present realities upon these slaves of 

momentary affect and desire...one has only to look at our former codes of 

punishments to understand what effort it costs on this earth to breed a “nation 

of thinkers”...Consider the old German punishments; for example, stoning (the 

sagas already have millstones drop on the head of the guilty), breaking on the 

wheel (the most characteristic invention and speciality of the German genius in 

the realm of punishment!), piercing with stakes, tearing apart or trampling by 

horses (“quartering”)...Ah, reason, seriousness, mastery over the affects, the 

whole somber thing called reflection, all these prerogatives and showpieces of 

man: how dearly they have been bought! how much blood and cruelty lie at the 

bottom of all “good things”!

In a word, how we used to be is how we still are, beneath our pretenses, and the 

genealogy (origin) of a society makes it clear what the forces are that are still driving it. 

Instances of this theme pervade Nietzsche’s writing. For example, we now regard 

contractual relations as being ‘strictly business’, in other words, as being unemotional 

ways of serving strictly pragmatic objectives. But Nietzsche says that when we trace the 

genealogy of the such relations, we find them to be replete with emotions of the most 

savage kind, the implication being that this is what they continue to be: 

When we contemplate these contractual relationships, to be sure, we feel 

considerable suspicion and repugnance toward those men of the past who created or 

permitted them. This was to be expected from what we have previously noted. It was 

here that promises were made; it was here that a memory had to be made for those 

who promised; it is here, one suspects, that we shall find a great deal of severity, 

cruelty, and pain. To inspire trust in his promise to repay, to provide a guarantee of the 

seriousness and sanctity of his promise, to impress repayment as a duty, an obligation 

upon his own conscience, the debtor made a contract with the creditor and pledged 

that if he should fail to repay he would substitute something else that he “possessed,” 

something he had control over; for example, his body, his wife, his freedom, or even his 

life (or, given certain religious presuppositions, even his bliss after death, the salvation 

of his soul, ultimately his peace in the grave: thus it was in Egypt, where the debtor’s

corpse found no peace from the creditor even in the grave—and among the Egyptians 

such peace meant a great deal). Above all, however, the creditor could inflict every kind 

of indignity and torture upon the body of the debtor...Let us be clear as to the logic of 

this form of compensation: it is strange enough. An equivalence is provided by the 

creditor’s receiving, in place of a literal compensation for an injury (thus in place of 

money, land, possessions of any kind), a recompense in the form of a kind of pleasure— 

the pleasure of being allowed to vent his power freely upon one who is powerless, the 

voluptuous pleasure “de faire le mal pour le plaisir de le faire,”2 the enjoyment of 

violation. 

We now regard politics as having the purpose ensuring that people live 

cooperatively and rationally. But Nietzsche would say our contemporary ‘liberal’ and 

‘democratic’ political values are merely disguised forms of the lust for power brazenly 

exemplified by primitive, autocratic political systems. 

Marx: According to Marx, the bourgeoisie (this being the class that “owns the 

means of production” and engages in trade) “has resolved personal worth into exchange 

value”---in other words, it has stripped people any value that they have other than their 

economic value---with the result that he is “alienated” from his work (meaning that he 

no longer identifies with it and it has no meaning for him):

What, then, constitutes the alienation of labor? First, in the fact that labor 

is external to the worker, that is, that it does not belong to his essential being; 

that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does 

not feel well but unhappy, does not freely develop his physical and mental energy 

but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker, therefore, feels himself 

only outside his work, and feels beside himself in his work. He is at home when 

he is not working, and when he is working he is not at home. His work therefore 

is not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction 

of a need, but only a means for satisfying needs external to it. Its alien character 

emerges clearly in the fact that labor is shunned like the plague as soon as there 

is no physical or other compulsion. (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts) 

According to Marx, profiting from others involves getting them to do what you 

want them to do, not they want to do, and it therefore involves their engaging in work 

from which they are ‘alienated.’ Since capitalism is about profiting from others, 

alienated labor is the very foundation of capitalism. For this reason, Marx’s position is 

not that everybody deserves wealth; for one’s level of wealth, according to Marx, really 

only reflects how much one has benefited from the exploitation of others. Rather it is

that wealth (how much property one has) itself shouldn’t exist people should not 

alienated from their labor and that private property must be abolished. 

Marx regards capitalist society as doing overtly and systematically what previous 

societies did covertly and unsystematically. All societies thus far have been based on 

exploitation (“The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class 

struggles”). The difference is that capitalism doesn’t even try to hide the fact that it is 

exploitation-based and for this reason exploits that much more efficiently. 

Consequently, capitalism 

has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked selfinterest, 

than callous "cash payment." It has drowned the most heavenly 

ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine 

sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal 

worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless and indefeasible 

chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free 

Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, 

naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. 

Since all societies that have existed thus far are exploitation-based, Marx does 

not want a return to some older form of society. He wants an entirely new kind of

society, which, because it is so different from what has existed thus far, will be attained 

only through revolution, this being why Marx ends the Communist Manifesto by saying 

that “communists” (which, in this context, means those agree with Marx) “openly 

declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing 

social conditions.” 

Rousseau: According to Rousseau, people are “free, healthy, honest and happy” 

when each person has enough to satisfy his own needs but when nobody has enough 

for more than one person: 

So long as men remained content with their rustic huts, so long as they 

were satisfied with clothes made of the skins of animals and sewn together with 

thorns and fish-bones...in a word, so long as they undertook only what a single 

person could accomplish, and confined themselves to such arts as did not require 

the joint labour of several hands, they lived free, healthy, honest and happy lives. 

But when it became possible for the individual to have more than he needed, 

people began to coerce and enslave one another, and human existence came to be 

largely about either exploiting or being exploited:

But from the moment one man began to stand in need of the help of 

another; from the moment it appeared advantageous to any one man to have 

enough provisions for two, equality disappeared, property was introduced, work 

became indispensable, and vast forests became smiling fields, which man had to 

water with the sweat of his brow, and where slavery and misery were soon seen 

to germinate and grow up with the crops. 

On this basis, Rousseau makes the striking point that much of the mutual 

antagonism that political theorists regard civil society as being necessary to prevent is 

actually caused by the state, his argument being in civil society, the individual can have 

more than what he needs, leading to an inflated sense of self-importance and thus to 

hatred of those who do not defer to his inflated self-image: 

Thus, as every man punished the contempt shown him by others, in 

proportion to his opinion of himself, revenge became terrible, and men bloody 

and cruel. This is precisely the state reached by most of the savage nations 

known to us: and it is for want of having made a proper distinction in our ideas, 

and see how very far they already are from the state of nature, that so many 

writers have hastily concluded that man is naturally cruel, and requires civil 

institutions to make him more mild; whereas nothing is more gentle than man in

his primitive state, as he is placed by nature at an equal distance from the 

stupidity of brutes, and the fatal ingenuity of civilised man. 

So in Rousseau’s view, people are best off when nobody has too much more than 

anybody else, and people are worst off when some people have much more than 

others. Rousseau’s view is that they are best off when they are “placed by nature at an 

equal distance from the stupidity of brutes, and the fatal ingenuity of civilised man”, 

meaning that the optimal form of existence is tribal. For Rousseau, people are 

fundamentally decent to one one another until they become unequal, and the only 

purpose of civil society is not so much to protect people from one another as it is to 

liberate them from the stupidity of a completely animalistic, survival-oriented existence. 

Hobbes: According to Hobbes language has four purposes, these being: 

First, to Register, what by cogitation, wee find to be the cause of any thing, 

present or past; and what we find things present or past may produce, or effect: 

which in summe, is acquiring of Arts. Secondly, 

Secondly, to shew to others that knowledge which we have attained; 

which is, to Counsell, and Teach one another. Thirdly, to make known to others

our wills, and purposes, that we may have the mutuall help of one another. 

Fourthly, to please and delight our selves, and others, by playing with our words, 

for pleasure or ornament, innocently.” 

In other words, we use speech to record, communicate, instruct, and amuse. 

Hobbes then goes on to say that for each of these uses of language, there is a 

corresponding abuse of it, to wit: 

First, when men register their thoughts wrong, by the inconstancy of the 

signification of their words; by which they register for their conceptions, that 

which they never conceived; and so deceive themselves. Secondly, when they use 

words metaphorically; that is, in other sense than that they are ordained for; and 

thereby deceive others. Thirdly, when by words they declare that to be their will, 

which is not. Fourthly, when they use them to grieve one another: for seeing 

nature hath armed living creatures, some with teeth, some with horns, and some 

with hands, to grieve an enemy, it is but an abuse of Speech, to grieve him with 

the tongue, unlesse it be one whom wee are obliged to govern; and then it is not 

to grieve, but to correct and amend.

In other words, misuses of language involve people either using it inconsistently 

(e.g. using “billion” to refer to different numbers), using it to lie or mislead, using it to 

misrepresent their intentions, or using it to hurt. (Incidentally, the third misuse seems to 

be a special case of the second.) 

According to Hobbes, unless people are compelled to keep their word, they will 

fail to do so: 

If a Covenant be made, wherein neither of the parties performe presently, 

but trust one another; in the condition of meer Nature, (which is a condition of 

Warre of every man against every man,) upon any reasonable suspition, it is 

Voyd; But if there be a common Power set over them bothe, with right and force 

sufficient to compell performance; it is not Voyd. For he that performeth first, 

has no assurance the other will performe after. 

In other words, contracts are null and void unless there is government, and 

governments are therefore needed to enforce contracts. This helps make it clear why 

Hobbes discusses language in a treatise on political theory. People can be trust one 

another only if they are under the authority of a common government, one 

manifestation of this mutual trust being that they can make credible promises to each 

other, another being they will not harm each other.

Of course, even though governments can enforce contracts, they cannot 

miscommunication or deception (deliberate miscommunication). At the same time, 

miscommunication and deception have much the same effect as breach of contract: 

they undermine the mutual trust needed for civil society. And this is presumably why 

Hobbes focuses so much on language, and its abuses, in a treatise whose purpose is to 

argue that authoritarian system of the government is the right kind. 

De Tocqueville on Egoism (Politics/History/Philosophy) 

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of Americans that individualism is just egotism in a 

new form. How might the philosophers and architects of the Enlightenment’s famous 

political documents have responded to this charge? Does Tocqueville have a point? 

All enlightenment philosophers would agree with what de Tocqueville is saying, 

but they would disagree sharply as to whether egotism/individualism was a bad thing. 

According to and J.J. Rousseau it would be a bad thing. According to John Locke, Adam 

Smith, and David Hume, it would be a good thing 

The reason Smith, Locke, and Hume would disagree with de Tocqueville is that 

they are all free-marketeers. (Another term for ‘free-marketeer’ is ‘classical liberal.’) A 

free-marketeer is someone who believes that society benefits if people are free to

pursue their own economics interests. The idea is that if people who have medical skill 

are allowed to profit from their trade, and people who have engineering skill are 

allowed to profit from their trade, and so on, then naturally occurring market-pressures 

will tend to make the best products and services available at the lowest price. Freemarketeers 

regard ‘ego’ as the driving-force of a healthy economy, and they also regard 

a healthy economy as the backbone of a healthy culture. So while they might well agree 

with de Tocqueville that ‘individualism’ was just egoism, they would not have regarded 

that as being to the discredit of American society. 

For free-marketeers, freedom, including economic freedom, is the most natural 

condition possible; and provided that freedoms are reigned in just enough to allow 

everyone maximal economic freedom, there should, in the free-marketeer’s view, be no 

additional restrictions on freedom. 

So the classical liberal would agree with the factual component of de 

Tocqueville’s statement but disagree with the value-judgment implicit in it. 

The opponent of the free-market regards the free-market as being the basis of an 

unnatural social order. He regards it as being the basis of horrible inequalities of wealth 

and correspondingly intolerable deprivations. And the anti-free-marketeer regards the 

solution to these inequalities to be tight government controls on wealth and its 

acquisition. For Marxists and proto-Marxists, such as J.J. Rousseau, what Smith and 

Locke regard as healthy individualism is psychopathic egoism and greed. And what we

need to do, according to Rousseau and his successors, notably Marx, is return to the 

moral purity of the pre-capitalist person, this being Rousseau’s ‘noble savage’, who 

knows nothing of property or of the, in Rousseau’s eyes, immoral exclusiveness inherent 

in what property is. 

To sum up, those who are liberal in the classical sense would disagree with the 

value-judgment implicit in de Tocqueville’s statement; those who are classical in the 

contemporary sense would agree with that value-judgment; and all parties would agree 

with the non-valuative part of that remark. 

Would the Founding Fathers Approve of Trump? (Politics/Current Events) 

The politically correct thing to say is that the Founding Father’s would not 

approve of Trump. It is also politically correct to take the position that Trump’s behavior 

is not in line with the Founding Fathers’ conception as to how the President ought to 

behave. 

This is in fact the exact opposite of the truth. Consider Trump’s stance on 

immigration. This is one of the most criticized of Trump’s may positions, and it is 

perhaps the one that is most often singled out as evidence of his failure to behave or 

think in a duly ‘presidential manner.’

But exactly what is Trump’s stance on immigration? Basically this---that if people 

want to become American citizens, they must do so through the proper legal channels. 

In other words, if people wish to become American Citizens, their first act as American 

citizens (or would-be citizens) must not be to violate American law. Looked at this way, 

Trump’s position on immigration amounts to nothing more than a just and proper 

defense of American sovereignty, not to mention territorial integrity. 

Trump isn’t closing the borders; he is merely conditionalizing passage through 

those borders on non-violation of American law. 

This doesn’t mean that Trump is right to want to close the borders. Perhaps a lot 

of good comes from having highly porous borders. Undoubtedly, there are many fine 

people in this country who would not be here if the borders were more secured, just as 

there are many find people who are not in China because their borders are secured. 

But a President’s job is to uphold the integrity of the country in a manner that is 

consistent with its system of government. And having a policy of open-immigration, in 

violation of American law and in violation of the wishes of a majority of the electorate, 

would not be to thus uphold the integrity of the country. 

There is another component to Trump’s immigration policy: he is attempting to 

restrict the influx of immigrants from places that are brimming with anti-American 

sentiment. The idea is people coming the to USA form such places might come with the 

intention of harming the USA.

First of all, most people who come to the United States, no matter where they 

come from, come with the intention of making a live for themselves here. So obviously 

most, if not all, immigrants from war-torn hot-beds of anti-Americanism would not harm 

the country, and many would surely enrich it. 

But it is not out of the question that there might be a few bad actors among the 

ranks of such people, and it does not take too many bad actors to cause a massive 

amount of damage to a country. And Trump is surely not wrong to have a wait-and-see 

attitude on immigration from such places pending a cooling off of anti-Americanism in 

such regions. Indeed, were Trump not to take such an approach, he would be in 

violation of his most basic mandate as President, this being to keep the country safe. 

I rather doubt that the Founding Fathers, varied as they were in their political 

views, would regard Trump’s behavior as being inconsistent with their conception of 

what the President should do. Trump is simply upholding the law—and not doing so for 

invidious reasons. It seems that Trump’s opponents seem to be advocating a 

relationship to the law that is as elastic as their political views demand that it be, which 

is decidedly unconstitutional and unpresidential. 

The Most Basic Principles of Knowledge Management

What follows is a brief statement of the most basic principles of the discipline of 

Knowledge Management (KM). 

Without knowledge, nothing can be accomplished. But it is not enough to have 

knowledge: knowledge must also be organized. And there are two quite different ways 

in which knowledge must be organized. First, it must be organized within a given 

individual’s mind. If Smith is to accomplish what he wants to accomplish, or if he is to 

know what it is worth his while to try to accomplish, it is not enough that he have 

various bits of knowledge: he must also know how those bits of knowledge bear on one 

another. If his desire is to eat, it is not enough that Smith know there to be wild boar 

nearby: Smith must also know that, if he kills and then appropriately prepares the flesh 

of those boars, he can gratify his desire to eat. 

Second, bits of knowledge that are had by different people must be organized. 

Suppose that Smith and Jones are both hungry. Also suppose that Smith knows the 

location of some nearby boar but does not know how to hunt and kill them, and that 

Jones knows how to hunt but doesn’t know the whereabouts of any boars. In that case, 

each of Smith and Jones is powerless to gratify his desire for boar-meat; but if they 

share information with each other, they can both gratify their respective desires for 

boar-meat. In general, bits of information had by different people must often be shared 

if those various people are to achieve their respective objectives.

Knowledge Management (KM) is the discipline that studies how knowledge is to 

be acquired and then organized if individuals and pluralities thereof are to achieve their 

goals. KM is concerned with the acquisition of knowledge by individuals and with the 

subsequent organization of knowledge within the minds of individuals; and KM is also 

concerned with the acquisition of knowledge by organizations and with the subsequent 

organization of knowledge within organizations. KM is also concerned with exchanges of 

information between individuals, between individuals and organizations, and between 

organizations. 

Let us now state some of the basic principles of KM. We will begin by stating 

some obvious but important truths. 

Individuals have knowledge. (I know that 1+1=2. I know how to tie my shoes.) 

Individuals can share knowledge. (I can apprise you of the fact that 1+1=2; I can 

teach you how to tie your shoes.) 

An institution is an organized, goal-oriented plurality of individuals. 

In order for an institution to function, its members must share knowledge with 

one another. 

Let us state some important but non-obvious truths. 

There appears to be such a thing as collective knowledge. Here is an example. 

Consider the computer (or electronic reading device) on which you are reading this very 

document. There isn’t necessarily any one human being who knows how to build that

device. And even if there happens to be some one individual who does happen to know 

exactly how to assemble that device, he personally almost certainly was not responsible 

for building it, and his having that knowledge very possibly was not to any degree at all 

responsible for the construction of that device. What was responsible for the 

construction of that device was the fact that various different people at Microsoft, along 

with various other corporations, each had little bits of knowledge that, when 

appropriately integrated with one another through various channels of communication, 

guided various manufacturing processes and company-decisions in such a way that, in 

due course, a reading-tablet came into existence. 

There thus seems to be a sense in which the Microsoft Corporation knows more 

than any given one of the people composing it. Thus, Microsoft as an institution is more 

knowledgeable, in at least some respects, than any given person composing it, and 

there is thus such a thing as institutional knowledge. Moreover, institutional knowledge, 

though obviously in some way or other derivative of various instances of individually 

had knowledge, cannot in any straightforward way be identified with individual 

knowledge. 

Knowledge-sharing of the just-described sort is a form of Adam Smith’s division 

of labor. Indeed, wherever there is division of labor, there is institutional knowledge. 

(No single one of the workers on the Ford Assembly line necessarily knows how to build 

a Ford. But collectively they have the requisite knowledge, and that collective

knowledge, by virtue of being embodied in the appropriate institutional protocols, leads 

to the production of Ford cars.) And it also seems likely that institutional knowledge 

exists wherever there is a division of labor. 

But even though there is a sense in which an institution tends to know more 

than its members, there is also a sense in which an institution tends to know less than 

its members. Suppose that Smith is some brilliant medical researcher at Company X who 

has discovered a cure for cancer. Given only that Smith knows how to cure cancer, it 

doesn’t follow that anyone else at Company X knows how to do so. Smith may not have 

told anyone. Or he may have told some people, but they didn’t believe him or they 

didn’t understand what he was saying. But even if Smith did tell other people at X and 

those other people did both understand and believe Smith, it still doesn’t follow that X 

as an institution has knowledge of how to cure cancer. In order for there to be a 

significant sense in which X, as a corporation, knows how to cure cancer, it isn’t enough 

that some, or even all, of the people within X know how to cure cancer. Unless that 

knowledge has led to the appropriate manufacturing protocols and, more generally, to 

the appropriate organization-internal protocols, there is no significant sense in which X 

has institution-level of knowledge of how to cure cancer. 

By the same token, echoing what we said a moment ago, even if no one person 

at X knows how to cure cancer, it may still be that X-internal protocols organize the 

various bits of knowledge that the individuals at X do have in such a way that X is able to

manufacture a cancer-cure. So it may be that if X suitably organize the various bits of 

knowledge had by X-employees, then knowledge of how to cure cancer may be 

embodied in X-practices, even if no single person at X knows how to cure cancer. 

So in order for X to function properly, information needs to be exchange 

between X-members, on the one hand, and X-itself, on the other. X must be so 

organized that the various bits of knowledge had by individual X-associates conduce to 

X’s corporate objectives. 

In general, if an organization is to function properly, it must be possible for the 

individuals within that organization to exchange information with that organization as a 

whole. 

And in order for that to be possible, the members of the organization must 

exchange knowledge with one another. It is also necessary, however, that when 

information is exchanged between organization-members, it be exchanged in a way that 

allows it to be operationalized in a way that advances that organization’s objectives. 

The ‘Free’ Market Isn’t Always So Free 

An Analysis of Barry Deutsch’s ‘Really Good Careers’ (Economics/Current Events)

Of the various visuals and readings that we have done in connection with this 

particular assignment, the one that I found the most striking was Really Good Careers by 

Barry Deutsch. In this visual, there is a cut-out in a wall that has exactly the shape of an 

adult male businessman. Above the cut-out is a sign that says Really Good Careers, and 

to the left there is another that reads An Equal Opportunity Employer. A woman with a 

young child is standing outside the cut-out, clearly hoping to be able to pass through it 

and be on her way to the ‘really good careers’ in question. But she clearly cannot pass 

through. The cut-out is has a very specific shape: the shoulders, waist, height, and 

general posture are those of a normal sized adult male who has the proportions and the 

gait of a stereotypical accountant, lawyer, or doctor. So if one is a trim 6,2 male with a 

ramrod stiff posture, one can easily pass through the hole. But the job-seeking woman 

doesn't have that build: she is too short, too wide where she would have to be narrow, 

too narrow where she would have to be broad; and, most importantly, she has a young 

child in tow. 

The obvious way to read this visual is to see it as being an indictment of the 

‘patriarchy’ (the rule of white males). But I think it has a broader and less partisan 

significance. We are often told about the glories of ‘the free market’ and, in conjunction 

therewith, of ‘the American Dream.’ These two ideas are two sides of the same coin: the 

American Dream is the idea that anyone can live well in the United States, provided that 

he or she appropriately engages the economy. The supposed reason is that in the

United States, it is not government policy but rather the law of supply and demand 

determines what career-opportunities there are for people; in other words, it is Adam 

Smith's invisible hand—also known as ‘the free market'---that decides who does what. 

Within limits, this idea has merit. But as almost anyone who has gone job-hunting 

quickly finds out, the free market isn’t so free. Sure—there is great demand for 

computer-programmers and telemarketers. But is that isn’t necessarily who one is or 

what one wants to do. Also, if someone has responsibilities—a child, for example, a 

child on the way---the business world can be extremely cruel. For a single male, going to 

work in an office is a pretty simple proposition; but for a pregnant woman, the story is 

very different. She needs time off for medical needs, and many employers and 

companies are surprisingly inhumane about allowing this, often deducting pay and 

making the woman jump through innumerable bureaucratic hoops, just so that she can 

meet with a doctor. Much the same is true of a woman, especially a single woman, with 

a child, like the woman depicted in the cartoon, who, so it is strongly suggested, is 

indeed a single mother. 

Universities are important because within them there is a great amount of many 

different kinds of diversity: there are different viewpoints, different cultures, different 

aspirations---and all of these differences are not only permitted but allowed to flourish. 

The actual working world is very different: employers don’t care about what you think 

or who you are; they care only about what you can do for them---which, in most cases,

is rather soul-crushing. If you have medical concerns, such as pregnancy, or 

responsibilities to children, then you not only to do deal with a boring yet demanding 

job; you also have to coordinate your job responsibilities with your other 

responsibilities, which isn't easy to do with a meager paycheck, a long workday, an 

insensitive boss, and a long commute. 

What I have learned here at CU-Boulder is that the world would be a better place 

if the economy were a bit more like a university. CU-Boulder celebrates people’s 

differences and finds a place for them. The ‘free market’ does not: unless you can give it 

what it wants, you are invisible to it; and what it wants is usually labor of some variety 

or other. People are rarely paid to think; they are paid to work—to make phone calls, to 

fix machines, and the like. 

I have spent time within the academy, and I have also spent time working. And 

granting that I am far from being an expert on labor economics, my time in these two 

different universes has given me a rather more nuanced attitude towards ‘the free 

market’ and ‘the American Dream’ than I would otherwise have had. The ‘free market’ is 

indeed free in many ways: somebody who wants to start a trucking company and has 

the capital (or ability to raise capital) necessary to do so is indeed free to start his 

business. And that is important: we need people to provide vital services, such as 

shipping and transportation. But there is much that a person can offer in which the 

economy has little interest. And there are many kinds of justice that ‘free trade' and

‘free markets' fail to provide—and may even undermine. We are told time and again 

what a failure the Soviet Union was and how socialism is doomed to fail—and I 

personally am inclined to agree. But even having to work for a giant government 

bureaucracy may not always ideal, neither is having to work for McDonalds or Amazon. 

Moreover, whereas socialist bureaucracies tend to make some allowances for single and 

expectant mothers, the ‘free market' seems to care not a whit for people's lives outside 

of work. 

In conclusion, the free market, though free in many important ways, is rather 

forbidding and unfree in others; and participating in it usually involves a lot of drudgery, 

and a lot of sameness, that feels decidedly unfree. Two extremely different people, each 

with great ideas and a great spirit, may sit in neighboring cubicles for years, doing the 

same job—a job that a computer could probably do (and probably will)—without every 

learning about each other. Deutsch’s cartoon is a concise and accurate indictment of 

this lack of freedom and diversity within the ‘free’ market; and because I have 

experienced true diversity here at CU-Boulder, while also having spent some time in the 

‘real’ world of the ‘free’ market, I have some idea just how spot-on Deutsch’s point it. 

How might Freud’s ideas help explain the existence of prejudice (racism and/or 

other forms of bias)?

Knowledge Management and Information Economics in Relation 

to the Optimization of Instruction-markets (Economics/Business/Graduate Work) 

Abstract 

The discipline of Knowledge Management (KM) attempts to identify the ways 

that organizations can optimize the flow of information within themselves. The 

discipline of Information Economics (IE) studies the economics of knowledge-markets, 

these being markets in which knowledge is what is bought and sold. Each discipline is 

less than thirty years old. Given that schools and universities are purveyors of 

knowledge, one of IE’s responsibilities is to study the economics of education and on 

that basis to identify ways that they can do their job better, faster, and cheaper. Given 

that schools and universities are organizations, one of KM’s responsibilities is in 

principle to make it clear how they can optimize the flow of information within 

themselves. Indeed, schools and universities should be of special interest to KM, since, 

their very purpose being to organize and transmit information, poor internal 

communications on their part are not only a threat to their ability to their job, but 

themselves constitute a failure to do it. Strikingly, neither discipline has paid serious 

attention to educational institutions. During the twenty years or so of its existence, IE 

has focused financial institutions, such as banks and brokerage houses, and on the 

consequences for them of the internet. KM is even more remiss in this respect. So far as

it hasn’t concerned itself with purely theoretical questions, it has focused on ways for 

companies to improve internal communications without undergoing massive structural 

changes. Consequently, there is no evidence either that schools or universities have at 

any point tried to use results from either discipline to improve themselves or that they 

have benefited from any such attempts that they may have made. At the same time, 

each discipline has generated results that bear on education and can be used to improve 

it. In this study, those results will be identified and their implications for education will 

be delineated. We will examine several actual cases where organizations or industries 

self-optimized by using principles of KM, and we will consider several actual cases where 

entire markets self-optimized by using principles of IE. In each case, we will how similar 

changes can be used to eliminate education-related suboptimalities. 



Introduction 

Background to the Study 




Advancing Scientific Knowledge and Significance of Study 







References


Introduction 

Thanks to the internet, it is dramatically easier than it used to be for consumers 

to know what is supplied and for suppliers to know what is demanded. Prices have 

dropped; quality has increased; selection has grown exponentially; efficiency has 

increased exponentially. The internet makes information easy to acquire and easy to 

send, and that is why it has revolutionized commerce (Bauer & Latzer, 2016). 

One of the few economic sectors that the internet has not benefited is education 

(Slimp, 2019). Since the world went online in the late '90s, tuitions have increased, and 

quality of instruction has fallen. This is deeply paradoxical. Educators are informationproviders; 

so the internet should in principle be driving tuitions down and drive quality 

of instruction up. 

There are two different academic disciplines---Knowledge Management (KM) and 

Information Economics (IE)—that should both explain and solve this problem 

(Hawamdeh, 2007). KM is the study of how institutions can improve internal 

communications and, on that basis, self-optimize (Dalkir 2018). IE is the study of 

knowledge-markets (Stiglitz 1985), a knowledge market being a market in which

information is what is bought and sold. Each of these disciplines is young, with IE coming 

into existence in the '80s and KM coming into existence in the '90s. Neither discipline 

has said much of anything about the failure of the internet to improve education 

(Birchler & Butler, 2007). Further, neither has to any degree improved education or 

even tried to do so, there being no documented cases of any school self-optimizing or 

even trying to self-optimize on the basis of results from each discipline. 

At the same time, each discipline is rich in results that can be used to optimize 

education. The basic tenet of IE is that markets must be transparent in order to 

function; in other words, the values of assets must be known and those assets must be 

priced accordingly (Stiglitz 1985). The basic tenet of KM is that organizations must be 

transparent in order to function; in other words, the values of employees must be 

known and those employees must be positioned accordingly (Dalkir 2018). How these 

tenets are to be operationalized depends on the context. But each has been successfully 

operationalized in several different contexts, and prima facie there is nothing about the 

field of education that would make it especially difficult to figure how to operationalize 

them in that context (Friedman, 2012). The only reason it has not yet been figured out 

is, evidently, that nobody has tried (Law, 2020). 

Background to the Study

In traditional economic theory, it is assumed that all market participants have 

equal access to information. This is, of course, false, as Hayek (1945) observed. People 

differ radically in respect of what they know. According to Hayek, these differences will 

help society, rather than hurt it, so long as governments don’t manipulate prices. When 

prices are set by the market, Hayek reasoned, they correctly degrees of supply and 

demand, and anyone who knows what prices are, no matter how ignorant he might 

otherwise be, can service demand and profit. 

This model is known as Efficient Market Theory (Arrow, 1999). Efficient Market 

Theory (EMT) embodies two distinct contentions: first, that markets are efficient when 

assets are appropriately priced; second, that assets are appropriately priced when 

governments don’t alter prices. The first contention has proven to be unqualifiedly 

accurate (Friedman 2012, Sowell 2016). The second has proven to be true of some 

markets (Lo 2017) and false or only partly true of others (Arrow 1996, Sen 2006, Tirole 

2017). What matters in this context is that it is an attempt to figure out how markets 

must be arranged if assets, including information, are to be generated and distributed 

with maximal efficiency. According to Milton Friedman (1955), a corollary of EMT is that 

education cannot be efficient without being completely deregulated. 

In his (1963) paper “Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Medical Care”, 

Kenneth Arrow proved that it is impossible for knowledge to be equitably distributed in 

healthcare markets and that such markets therefore tend to be inefficient. George

Akerlof (1970), Michael Spence (1970) Joseph Stiglitz (1975) proved the same to be true 

of information-markets: in other words, information is not and cannot possibly be 

equitably distributed in markets in which information is itself what is bought and sold, a 

corollary being that such markets therefore naturally tend to be inefficient. It was with 

the work of these three authors that IE became an autonomous subdiscipline of 

economics. 

The discipline of information economics has had virtually nothing to say about 

education (Akinyemi, 2013). This is surprising for many reasons. First, the education 

industry is a textbook case of a knowledge-market. Also, given how large the US 

Education Industry is, the macroeconomic consequences of inefficiencies in it, especially 

of inefficiencies resulting from inequitably distributed information, are virtually 

incalculable. (According to Bryant and Sarakatsannis (2015) “US education is a $1.5 

trillion industry and growing at 5 percent annually.”) Finally, American education is both 

highly regulated and highly inefficient, making it an ideal testing ground for the very 

kinds of deregulation that economists so vehemently advocate in other industries. 

Like IE, KM has been curiously silent about education. KM came into existence in 

the earlyv90's, when companies began hiring Chief Knowledge Officers. A CKO’s job is to 

organize and optimally deploy a company’s ‘intangible assets.’ An intangible asset is 

simply one that is not physical, and knowledge itself is one of the most important kinds 

of intangible assets. Ikujiro Nonaka’s (1991) article “The Knowledge Creating Company”,

published in the Harvard Business Review, introduced the concept of Knowledge 

Management to the academic community. In 1998, Thomas Stewart, editor of the 

Harvard Business Review, published his book Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of 

Organizations. This helped give additional credibility to KM, both inside and outside of 

academia. Within a few years, it became customary for universities to offer courses in 

KM. 

The central tenet of KM is that companies gain by treating knowledge as a 

veritable asset, comparable to machinery or land, and lose when they treat it as a mere 

asset-precursor (Gupta 2004, Dalkir 2018). Exactly what is involved in treating 

knowledge as a veritable asset depends on the context. 

Within practically any large company outside of academia, there is at least one 

person whose job title is ‘knowledge manager.' But this position simply doesn't exist in 

schools and universities, and KM-theoreticians have said quite literally nothing about 

how schools and universities can improve internal communications (Yueh, 2018). 

In this work, we will map what KM and IE have already said and done onto 

universities and instruction-markets. But there is an important preliminary point. There 

are two very different kinds of Knowledge Management: Reactive and Proactive 

(Hunter, 2016). Reactive KM involves improving communications within an organization 

that is already mature and whose structure is therefore largely fixed. Proactive KM 

involves creating organizations whose structures guarantee good internal

communications. A consequence of this distinction is that there are two ways of 

measuring the efficacy of KM: first, by considering reactive cases of KM, i.e. by 

considering the consequences on the part of an already existing and mature 

organization to implement principles of KM; second, by considering cases of proactive 

KM, i.e. by studying the difference between companies that applied KM to themselves 

only after they were mature and companies that were so designed as to avoid having 

KM problems in the first place. Some examples will help clarify these points. 

The Lehman Brothers investment bank was founded in 1844 and by the early 

2000s had become so large that nobody within it, including management, had more 

than a fragmentary knowledge of its various operations. Management became 

concerned about its lack of knowledge of Lehman’s operations, fearing that it might be 

overexposed, and hired knowledge managers to help make its operations more 

internally transparent (Ball, 2018). This proved impossible, since Lehman’s various 

different departments enjoyed the autonomy that Lehman’s poor internal 

communications allowed them to have and actively fought attempts to expose their 

workings. As a result, Lehman invested more than it could afford to lose and collapsed 

when, in 2008, those investments proved to be bad ones. Lehman tried to use reactive 

KM to solve its problems, but by then its problems were intractable. 

Compare Lehman with E-trade. Founded in 1982, e-trade offers many of the 

same services offered by Lehman. But it was so designed to be lightweight, with

transactions being automated whenever possible and all digitally logged in a centralized 

database. Because it is well-organized and has minimal overhead, E-trade is easy to use 

and charges its clients a fraction of what its brick-and-mortar counterparts charge. By 

practicing proactive KM, E-trade avoided Lehman-type communications blockages, and 

its market share has grown steadily since its inception (Moschella, 2017). 

In general, reactive KM yields only modest results, while proactive KM often 

yields spectacular results (Buffet, 2015). E-trade, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Airbnb, and 

Uber are companies whose success derives from proactive KM, and these are the very 

companies that we will discuss when investigating how KM can benefit education. 

KM-based cases of optimization are organization-internal, whereas IE-based 

cases of optimization involve whole markets and are therefore company-external. But 

IE-based optimization often results from KM-based optimization, and we will discuss 

several cases of this. For example, Amazon, E-trade, and Airbnb are both models of good 

KM and, partly for that reason, also led to efficient exchanges of information within 

markets, thereby optimizing those markets. But it must be kept in mind that no case of 

KM-based optimization is ever actually identical with a case of IE-based optimization, 

even though both may involve a single organization. Having good internal 

communications is a cause of, but is not identical with, Amazon’s making it easier for 

people to exchange information and products within many different markets (Keiding, 

2017).


The problem here is how to use accepted principles of KM and IE to optimize 

education. Information economists have proposed ways to optimize finance and 

healthcare, and in some cases those proposals have been implemented with good 

results, but they have maintained a veritable wall of silence as to how their discipline 

can be used to optimize education (Stankov, 2019). 

This is deeply perplexing. The very purpose of economics is to study how 

variations in inputs affect outputs. When more is spent and less is produced, economists 

are quick to sound the alarm. In education, costs have steadily grown over the last fifty 

years and yet outputs have declined (Busch, 2017). And yet economists have said 

nothing. The situation is doubly perplexing, given how much the internet could have 

optimized education and given how little it has done so (Pratt & DeDionisio, 2019). 

Similar points hold of KM. 

At the same time, these disciplines have created the intellectual instruments 

necessary to solve this problem. IE has made it clear how to optimize informationmarkets, 

and KM has made it clear how to optimize organization-internal 

communications. Universities are organizations, and instructions-markets are 

knowledge-markets. The purpose of this study is to map what IE has said about

knowledge-markets in general onto instruction-markets specifically and to map what 

KM has said about organizations in general onto universities (Bootle, 2019). 


The purpose of this work is to show that IE and KM can be just as successful at 

optimizing instruction-markets and institutions of learning as they have been at 

optimizing knowledge-markets in general and organizations in general. 

We will discuss several cases of KM being used to optimize businesses and 

several cases of IE being used to optimize markets. It will be shown that each case 

involved the elimination of a suboptimality similar to one that vitiates American higher 

education, and it will then be shown how to implement the corresponding optimizations 

thereto. 

When discussing KM-based cases of optimization, we will focus on four 

companies: Amazon, E-trade, Uber, and Airbnb. Each of these KM-success stories 

corresponds to an IE-success story. This is because good internal communications 

allowed each of these companies to improve communications with its respective market 

and, on that basis, to improve those markets. We will describe the structure of each of 

these companies, making it clear how that structure conduces to good internal 

communications. We will then discuss how these companies were able to dominate and

optimize their respective markets. In each case, it will be made clear how these 

companies optimized communications within their respective markets and how their 

doing so was responsible for their both dominating and optimizing those markets. 

We will find that, as each of these companies came to dominate its respective 

market, the structure of that market and that company’s internal structure increasingly 

mirrored each other. Before these companies came into existence, those markets were 

opaque and inefficient. After they came into existence, they began to become 

transparent and efficient, like those companies themselves. 

We will find that these companies have several structural similarities, in 

particular: 

*Small staff in relation to their business-volumes, 

*Heavy reliance on contract labor, 

*High degree of automation, 

*High employee turnover, 

*High degree of willingness to employ and to fire, 

*Well-defined performance-benchmarks, 

*Minimal middle-management, 

*An emphasis reducing consumer-costs, rather than on justifying high consumercosts,

*An emphasis on minimizing the amount of time between purchase and receipt 

of products/services, 

*Minimal reliance on public funding, 

*Non-adversarial relationship to independent and small operators, 

*An emphasis on helping suppliers and consumers find one another, and 

*Each enables people to do for themselves what they previously had to pay 

others to do (Boyd, 2019). 

Each of these companies benefits from market-transparency and deregulation. 

Their predecessors benefited form market-opacity and protectionism. E-trade by makes 

money by allowing people to act as their own brokers. Its predecessors made money by 

forcing people to go through their brokers. Uber makes money by allowing anyone to 

give a ride to anyone. Its predecessors made money by contracting with local 

governments to restrict would-be competitors from operating. Airbnb makes money by 

allowing any given person to rent out his home for a night. Its predecessors made 

money by offering lodging to people who simply didn't know that they had alternatives. 

Amazon makes money by giving consumers and suppliers access to each other. Amazon 

is the first company of its kind, and the markets that it now services were opaque and 

inefficient prior to its existence. Each of these companies makes money because the

internet makes information available, and their predecessors made money because the 

absence of the internet made it unavailable (Rutherford, 2017). 

When examined, universities prove to be the very antithesis of the just-described 

companies, being characterized by high: 

*High degree of organizational opacity, 

*Minimal turnover, 

*Low degree of willingness to employ or to fire 

*Complete non-enforcement of economically meaningful performancebenchmarks, 

*Focus on justifying ever-increasing customer-expenses, instead of reducing 

them, 

*Minimal automation, 

*Heavy reliance on incumbent status, 

*Heavy reliance public funding, 

*High degree of exposure to costly labor regulations, 

*Adversarial relationship to independent operators, and 

*Fierce opposition to allowing customers to self-service (McDonald, 2010).

Despite these facts, universities are not struggling financially. On the contrary, 

they are flourishing. This is because universities, though often nominally private, are 

parastatal organizations that do not compete on the open market (Cubberly, 2017). This 

point will be elaborated in Chapter 3. 

It might be surmised that there are formidable legal and regulatory barriers to 

creating universities, or university-substitutes, that embody the transparency and 

efficiency of an Amazon or an E-trade. This is not the case. The government is 

remarkably willing to grant the requisite licenses and is remarkably slow to regulate 

licensees out of existence (Mazzucatto, 2017). We appear to be dealing with a true 

market vacuum: a case where would-be suppliers have been slow to notice demand, 

and the already-mentioned success-stories strongly suggest ways to service this 

demand. This will be discussed in detail in Chapter 4. 


An ‘instruction-provider’, as we will be using this term, is an organization whose 

purpose is to sell instruction. Thus, a university is an instruction-provider, as is an online 

tutoring agency. 

Our primary research question is:

RQ1: What kind of an internal structure must an instruction-provider if it is to 

benefit from a transparent instruction-market? 

We will find that companies cannot benefit from transparent markets without 

themselves helping to make them transparent. For this reason, the answer to RQ1 is 

identical with the answer to: 

RQ2: What kind of an internal structure must an instruction-provider if it is to 

help make instruction-markets more transparent? 

Other questions that we will address are: 

RQ3: In what ways are existing instruction-providers succeeding and in what ways 

are they failing? 

RQ4: To what extent can be they be so restructured as to stop failing in those 

ways, and to what extent does their continued financial well-being depend on their 

being so restructured?

RQ5: Are there markets that existing instruction-providers are systemically 

incapable of servicing, and if so, how could they be serviced? 

RQ1-RQ5 are all practical questions, but the answers to them will help us answer 

some important theoretical questions, the main one being 

RQ6: Granting that information is necessarily unevenly distributed in instructionmarkets, 

how can the resulting inefficiencies be minimized? 

RQ6 is a specialized form of an open question of Information Economics, namely: 

RQ7: How can information-markets be efficient? 

In an information-market, information is ipso facto unevenly distributed. In an 

efficient market, information is ipso facto evenly distributed. Hence the raison d’être for 

RQ7. 

Advancing Scientific Knowledge and Significance of Study

The primary significance of this study is that it will show how to make education 

better by making it profitable. A secondary significance is that it will show how to make 

knowledge-markets efficient. The first significance is practical; the second is theoretical. 

The idea that education is corrupted by being monetized is deeply entrenched in 

the popular psyche, despite there being no empirical evidence to that effect (Busch, 

2017). Also, educational institutions, unlike businesses, are often treated as cultural 

icons. If a business fails to perform, no one for a second believes that it should be 

allowed to hold onto its market share. There were cries of outrage when the big three 

automakers were bailed, even though they employ hundreds of thousands of Americans 

and are veritable cornerstones of Americana (Tilleman, 2016). But universities receive 

more and more public money as they charge their students more and more for 

educations that benefit them less and less; and yet it is seldom so much as hinted that 

universities should explain where that money goes. The underlying conceit seems to be 

that research and instruction are sacred and must therefore be insulated from market 

forces, lest they be ‘bought’ (Samuelson, 2011). 

This conceit is false and injurious. It is not selling out to provide non-defective 

products and services for an agreed upon price. It is selling out to take money for 

defective products and services. The open market doesn’t allow people to take money 

for defective or undesired products and services. If I try to sell paintings that nobody 

wants or I try to sell cars that don’t work, I will go out of business. But if my money

comes from someone other than the people who need my services, I can provide 

defective or useless services and continue to be funded (Sowell, 2016). 

In any case, it is a fact that monetized information-exchanges are more efficient 

non-monetized information-exchanges (Hazlitt, 1985). People who are financially 

motivated to avail others of information, they do more quickly and inexpensively than 

those who are not and also provide more accurate information. This insight has been 

used to optimize many different kinds of markets, including information-markets, and 

the present work will show how it can be used to optimize instruction-markets. 


The basic contention of this work is that information-markets, including 

instruction-markets, are transparent when to the extent that they are monetized and 

opaque to the extent that they are not, a corollary being that education is optimized by 

being monetized. 

This proposition can be established on strictly econometric grounds. Information, 

as well as information-quality, can be quantified. Therefore, it is possible to identify and 

measure the factors that conduce to information-flow. Entrepreneurs do this implicitly, 

and recently mathematicians and economists have done this explicitly (Roe, 2019). 

Further, monetary inputs and outputs can obviously be quantified and can therefore

correlated with other quantifiable inputs and outputs, such as labor, time, and 

information (Hayashi, 2011). 

Inevitably, there will be theoretical puzzles relating to the quantification of 

information, but they will not affect the contexts that we will be considering. 

Consequently, our methodology is quantitative; more specifically, econometricsbased, 

econometrics being the branch of economics that quantitative dependencies of 

economics outputs on economic inputs (Hayashi, 2011). 

The mathematics involved in econometrics can be very simple or very complex, 

depending on the context, and fortunately are simple in the contexts that concern us. 


We will start by comparing our target-companies---Amazon, E-trade, Uber, and 

Airbnb---with unsuccessful companies in similar markets. We will assign an informationefficiency 

quotient (IEQ) to each company, a given company’s IEQ being high if it is likely 

to capitalize on information and low if it is unlikely to do so. On this basis, we will then 

identify the structural characteristics of companies, including instruction-providers, with 

high IEQ’s. 

We will then compare information-efficient markets with information-inefficient 

markets. The efficient-markets will be those that were made efficient by our target

companies, and the inefficient ones will be those same markets prior to their being thus 

optimized. We will then assign IEQ’s to those various markets, on that basis identifying 

the structural properties of high-IEQ markets, including information-markets. 


What organizational structure must an instruction-provider have if it is to provide 

the best possible instruction at the lowest possible price? 

What organizational structure must an instruction-provider have it is to be 

sensitive to changes in the kinds of instruction that are demanded and is also to be able 

to service those changes? 

Is it possible for a profitable instruction-provider to sell results as opposed to 

services? If so how? 

When does research have to be insulated from market-forces in order to be 

good, and when does it have to be exposed to market-forces to be good? 

Does tenure lead to transparency or to opacity in instruction-markets?

investment? 

Why are universities increasingly expensive, despite being an increasingly bad 

Under what circumstances does the information-asymmetries inherent in 

information-markets, including instruction-markets, drive down the price of 

information? 

Are there certain kinds of information-providers that benefit from dataprotectionism 

and market-opacity? Does a company that sells information about bond 

markets benefit from a lack of public access to data about such markets? 

What kind of organizational structure must a company have if it is to benefit from 

selling instruction that enables people to self-instruct? 

Can governments help make instruction-markets more transparent, or does 

government-intervention tend to make such markets less transparent? 

well? 

Are information-providers necessarily put out of business if they do their job too

Is there a definition of the term ‘rational actor’ that accommodates the fact that 

what a person wants changes as he acquires more knowledge and more intelligence? 

We will put forth and defend answers to each of these questions. Here are some 

anticipations of what we will find. 

Properly structured instruction-providers benefit from transparency in their 

respective markets and are harmed by its absence. At the same time, a belief to the 

contrary is embodied in the very structures of most existing instruction-providers, a 

consequence being that instruction is more expensive, less available, and of lower 

quality than it need be (Friedman, 1993). 

Instruction-providers benefit from market-transparency to the extent that they 

provide good instruction and are harmed by it to the extent that they don’t. 

Information-providers that are not instruction-providers fall into two very 

different categories: information-hoarders (companies that make money by blocking the 

flow of information and then charging people for it) and information-seekers 

(companies that make money by finding information that would be hard to obtain even 

in transparent markets), with information-seekers benefiting from market-transparency 

and information-hoarders being harmed it (Seward, 2016). 

The concept of a ‘rational actor’ is a coherent one, and has operational economic 

significance, despite the fact that desires vary with changes in knowledge and

intelligence. The reason is that economically rational actor necessarily desires the 

information needed to acquire more resources, and this desire only grows as he 

acquires more such knowledge (Gawronski, 2016). 


Parity: A situation in which economic competitors are equally competent 

(Hazhimzade, 2017). 

Information-parity: A situation in which economic competitors are equally 

informed (Clapham, 2014). 

Market-transparency: Equal availability of market-relevant information to all 

market-participants (Hazhimzade, 2017). 

Market-opacity: Absence of market-transparency (Clapham, 2014). 

Structural market-opacity: Market-opacity due to deliberate attempts on the part 

of governments or market-actors to obstruct the flow of information (Blackburn, 2016).

Non-structural market-opacity: Market-opacity due to differences in luck, 

intelligence, and effort on the part of market participants, and not to deliberate 

attempts on anyone's part to obstruct access to information (Hazhimzade, 2017). 

Information-provider: Organization whose business is to sell information 

(Blackburn, 2016). 

Information-hoarder: Information-provider whose business involves its restricting 

access to information that would otherwise be available and then charging for access to 

said information (Ferguson, 2016). 

Information-seeker: Information-provider whose business is to obtain 

information that is unavailable only because of limitations on time, effort, and ability on 

the part of those want it (Rutherford, 2019). 

Data-protectionism: Policy adopted either by governments or private entities of 

sequestering otherwise publicly available information for the purpose of inflating its 

market-value and of protecting market-positions, not for the purpose of guaranteeing 

organizational or public security. Data-protectionist policies are often represented as 

serving the interests of national or organizational security, the distinction between

security-driven and protectionist-driven data-sequestration tends to be clear. Dataprotectionism 

undermines commerce; security-driven data-sequestration does not 

(Upton, 2014). 

2014). 

Instruction-provider: Organization whose business is to sell instruction (Upton, 

Parastatal organization: An organization that is nominally private but functions as 

a governmental organization. The main difference between parastatal and genuinely 

private organizations is not that the former are more powerful than the latter; 

sometimes parastatal organizations have very little power, and sometimes genuinely 

private organizations are very powerful. Rather, the difference is that parastatal 

organizations are insulated from market-forces and persist despite a failure to provide 

goods or services for which there is any obvious demand (Reddy, 2005). 

Equilibrium: A market in which prices equal values is said to be in equilibrium. 

Disequilibrium leads to inefficiency, since it involves somebody’s either paying too much 

or not being paid enough. When prices are above equilibrium, consumers pay too much; 

and when prices are below equilibrium, suppliers are not paid enough (Ferguson, 2017).

Rigid labor market: A labor market in which slow job turnover inflates labor-costs 

and diminishes labor-quality (Reddy, 2005). 

Efficient Market Theory (EMT): The principle that market-relevant information 

tends to be equitably distributed, leading to equilibrium, in the absence of government 

policies preventing the flow of information (Hazhimzade, 2017). 


People often have beliefs for which they do not have good evidence. Such a belief 

is a hypothesis when it is one’s objective to prove it true, and an assumption when one 

has no such objective (Kuczynski, 2009). This work will be rich in hypotheses but 

relatively free of assumptions. We will make relatively few assumptions as the 

truthfulness of descriptions of markets or of organizations, since our starting-point will 

be that opaque markets and organizations inherently lack credibility. As for transparent 

markets and organizations, statements about them are readily verified or falsified and 

therefore need not be assumed true or false. 

The discipline of economics is proverbially rich in assumptions, and those 

assumptions often prove to be false or irrelevant to real-world conditions, with the 

result that the theories based on them prove to be false or useless. An extreme but

otherwise quite standard example of this is EMT. The crash of 2008 was a consequence 

of market-opacities resulting from data-hoarding on the part of private institutions, 

coupled with credulity on the part of the public (Soros, 2009). 

In this work, economic principles will be used, but no economic models or 

theories will be assumed true. A guiding principle of the present work is that 

unregulated commerce tends to be more efficient than regulated commerce. But this is 

never simply assumed in the present work; in some cases, it is argued for, and in others, 

it is argued to be false. 

The main assumption that the present work makes is that what is true of noninformation 

markets, and also of information-markets that are not instruction-markets, 

will also hold of instruction-markets. That said, there are cases of instructions being 

made more efficient by being monetized, and no cases of them being made inefficient 

by being monetized. So this ‘assumption’ of ours is not a pure assumption (Clarey, 

2011). 

The most questionable assumption that we will make is that instruction-markets 

are not in any way ‘special’---that emotional and cultural resistances to monetizing 

instruction, though possible, are not inevitable. This assumption is questionable given 

the iconic status that the ‘Academy’ has in present-day culture, along with the obvious 

affection people have for their ‘alma maters’, despite exorbitant tuitions and minimal 

returns-on-investment (Clarey, 2009).


In Chapter 2, the histories and structures of our target-companies---Amazon, E- 

trade, Uber, and Airbnb---will be given. It will be said how their structures differ from 

those of their predecessors and few remaining competitors. It will be shown our targetcompanies 

are more aware of and able to capitalize on market-data than their 

predecessor-competitors, and it will also be explained why. It will also be explained how 

our target-companies affected markets. This will involve explaining what these markets 

were like before and after the inception of these companies, especially how 

information-flow within changed after their inception. In some cases, notably Amazon, 

these companies created new markets, the nature and effects of which we will discuss. 

In Chapter 3, the structures of existing instruction-providers will be compared 

with those of our target-companies, and the structures of existing instruction-markets 

will be compared with the markets optimized or created by those companies. Tentative 

conclusions as to how to optimize existing instruction-markets will be drawn. Finally, 

actual examples of efficient instruction-providers, along with the corresponding 

markets, will be discussed and shown to bear out these conclusions. 

In Chapter 4, we will delineate some of the theoretical implications of the 

previous chapters. We will develop the distinction between reactive and proactive KM.

We will also discuss the distinction between normative and descriptive IE, descriptive IE 

between the study of how information flows within existing markets and normative IE 

being the study of how it should flow. In relation to this, it will be discussed what both 

private actors and governments can do to improve transparency within informationmarkets. 

We will also discuss the threat of parastatal organizations to markettransparency, 

especially in relation to information- and instruction-markets, and will 

discuss how those can be managed. We will find reason to believe that, in the United 

States at the present time, the government is not much of a threat to transparency 

within such markets and that, so far as they are opaque, it is only because private 

organizations have not made it a priority to make them transparent. 

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Goldman, Rousseau and von Hayek on the Ideal State (Politics) 

What kind of state would exist in a free and just society, and why? Goldman and 

Rousseau give similar answers to this question; Hayek gives a very different answer. 

Goldman’s answer is---none. A free and just society is one in which there is no 

government and therefore no state. Goldman’s position is that government is inherently 

unjust--a bully that exploits and coerces and does no good: “Just as religion has fettered 

the human mind, and as property, or the monopoly of things, has subdued and stifled 

man’s needs, so has the State enslaved his spirit, dictating every phase of conduct.” 

(Anarchism: What it Really Stands For, p. 4) 

Of course, the question arises: If there is no government (no state), then what 

will keep order? Goldman’s answer is that the very crime that it is supposedly the state’s

purpose to prevent is itself a product of the state: “The most absurd apology for 

authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime...So long as every institution of 

today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into 

wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to 

do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable, and all the laws on the 

statutes can only increase, but never do away with, crime.” (Anarchism: What it Really 

Stands For, p. 4) 

The idea here seems to be that human beings are inherently cooperative and, left 

to their own devices, engage in constructive rather than mutually antagonistic activity. 

Rousseau’s views are similar to Goldman’s. According to Rousseau, people are 

not naturally antagonistic towards one another: “So long as men remained content with 

their rustic huts.....they lived free, healthy, honest and happy lives, so long as their 

nature allowed, and as they continued to enjoy the pleasures of mutual and 

independent intercourse.” (Discourse on Inequality, p. 9) 

People became antagonistic, according to Rousseau, with the advent of 

civilization. Civilization made it possible for people to have more than they needed. 

When this happened, people became wealth- and status-driven and, in order to 

maximize their wealth and status, took to mutual exploitation: “[F]rom the moment it 

appeared advantageous to any one man to have enough provisions for two, equality 

disappeared, property was introduced, work became indispensable, and vast forests

ecame smiling fields, which man had to water with the sweat of his brow, and where 

slavery and misery were soon seen to germinate and grow up with the crops.” 

(Discourse on Inequality, p. 8) In other words, human beings are best off living in tribes, 

tribalism being intermediate between anarchy and civilization. 

There is a serious problem with Rousseau’s position. While there may be some 

advantages to a tribal (or pre-civilizational) mode of existence, there are some serious 

disadvantages: lack of choices in regards to profession and lifestyle, lack of medical care, 

lack of education, confinement to a small geographical area, lack of technology, and the 

need to work for every single meal that one consumes. Also, it is unlikely that tribal life 

is as placid and carefree as Rousseau suggests. Tribes attacked one another and were 

certainly capable of behaving cruelly towards their own members. And if tribal life is so 

idyllic, why don’t people opt for it today? 

Goldman’s thinking is similarly flawed. Goldman may be right that the state is 

responsible for some of the crime that it claims to exist to prevent, and she is surely 

right that states often behave very unjustly. But without the state, contracts wouldn’t 

be enforced and there would be no economies of scale; and the state is therefore 

necessary for all of the improvements to life resulting from economies of scale. 

Rightly taking it for granted that the state is necessary for crime-prevention and 

contract enforcement, Hayek advocates what he refers to as ‘liberalism’, this being the 

view that the state should protect people but should otherwise not interfere with their

lives: “Liberalism is opposed, however, to supplanting competition by inferior methods 

of guiding economic activity. And it regards competition as superior not only because in 

most circumstances it is the most efficient method known but because it is the only 

method which does not require the coercive or arbitrary intervention of authority. It 

dispenses with the need for ‘conscious social control’ and gives individuals a chance to 

decide whether the prospects of a particular occupation are sufficient to compensate 

for the disadvantages connected with it.” (Road to Serfdom, pp. 45-46) 

Is Hayek right that good government is minimal government? There is certainly 

considerable evidence for that claim: over-regulated economies (e.g. the Soviet Union) 

tend to fail and minimally regulated ones (e.g. the US in its early days) tend to flourish. 

More importantly, people should within reason be allowed to live the way they want to 

live, and overly invasive governments make that impossible. This does not mean that 

Hayek is unqualifiedly correct, which he probably isn’t, but it suggests that his position is 

likely to be a respectable first approximation to the truth. 

By contrast, the views of Goldman and Rousseau are not realistic, since, as 

previously explained, anarchy and tribalism fail to avail people of the freedoms and 

amenities that they want. 

Take-home Exam on Russian History (Politics/History/Current Events)

Discuss the sources of the revolution initiated by the Bolsheviks in 1917. Address 

all relevant political, social, and economic causes. Was the revolution avoidable? Did the 

tsar's reforms after the 1905 Revolution have any chance at preventing the revolution? 

Explain. 

The Bolshevik Revolution per se had little popular support. But the Tsar’s 

government was weak, and towards the end of World War 1, and largely because of it, 

more or less just collapsed, at which point the Bolshevik’s simply ‘picked up’ power. The 

relevant question isn’t so much “what caused the Russian Revolution?” as it is “what 

caused the Tsarist system of government to lose power and credibility?” And the answer 

to the latter is as follows. Russia was largely poor; it was divided between a small group 

of very wealthy people and a vastly larger group of very poor people. Also, there was a 

growing urban intellectual class that (with some legitimacy) saw Tsarism as antiquated 

and unprogressive. The Tsarist system was proverbially bureaucratic and autocratic 

(though not, ironically, anywhere nearly as much as the Soviet system that would 

replace it). Tsar Nicolas’s reforms had a ‘too little, too late’ quality. WWI decapitalized 

Russia and made it defenseless against the numerically small but determined Bolshevik 

Party, which, as previously stated, was not at that point met by strong resistance to its 

(successful) 1917/1918 power-grab.

Describe and discuss Stalin's Five-Year Plans. What was the goal of these plans? 

Did Stalin achieve his goals? Were there any negative consequences? Explain and 

provide examples. 

Stalin, though in some ways a ‘strong leader’, was really just an inept bungler 

whose methods of statecraft were crude. And his infamous ‘Five Year Plans” were prime 

examples of this. The Five-Year Plans were attempts to modernize and industrialize 

Russia, by building damns, factories, and the like, and in this way supposedly 

modernizing Russia’s economy. It should be pointed out that much of the labor for the 

Five Year Plans was slave labor, supplied by Stalin’s burgeoning Gulag population, which, 

though initially created by Stalin’s attempting to hold onto power by incarcerating 

actual, possible and conceivable political opposition, soon became (to some extent) 

about providing the labor-force for Stalin’s expensive Industrialization efforts. In any 

case, the Five Year Plans were successful in some respects; they did turn the Soviet 

Union into an industrial and military power. But they were grand failures in other 

respects, in that, even though they made the Soviet Union militarily powerful, they 

made the Soviet people poor and they also decapitalized the country, which led its 

collapse 50 years later.

Describe the distribution of power under the Soviet model. What institutions were 

most powerful? How did this differ from the way power is supposed to be distributed? 

Make sure that you provide examples and address the concept of democratic centralism. 

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union would elect a Central Committee, this 

being a kind of ‘board of directors’ of the Soviet Union. The Central Committee would 

elect a Politburo, this being comparable, within limits, to the President’s ‘Cabinet.’ The 

politburo would elect a General Secretary, who was the Supreme Leader of the entire 

Soviet Union. The outcomes of these ‘elections’ were, at least during the Stalin years 

and to a lesser extent later, pre-determined by existing political alliances. But that is the 

way in which those alliances were given official force. The Central Committee and 

Politburo, under the direction of the General Secretary, would issue 

edicts/recommendations to local Party Central Committees, which, in their turn, would 

run their respective geographical territories. 

What is civil society? Do you agree that civil society is necessary for the formation 

of democracy? Explain. How did the Soviet Union deal with civil society? Has Russia 

under Putin's leadership been any different? Do you think Russia can become democratic 

based on its experiences with civil society?

Civil Society is the totality of institutions and practices and values in a given 

country that are not either political or strictly commercial in in nature. Thus, family, 

religion (except for state-imposed religion), private morality, and personal conduct (e.g. 

one’s conduct outside of political contexts or commercial exchanges) are aspects of civil 

society. Civil society is not technically necessary for democracy. In a society of economic 

actors---none of whom had any existence apart from their business interests—there 

would still be a need for, and a possibility of, democracy. In fact, democratic institutions 

are especially important when it comes to the protection of economic interests, mainly 

of one’s right to engage in trade. Under the Soviet Union, civil society was fiercely 

repressed. Under Putin, civil society is not particularly repressed, contrary to what it is 

chic to say. Russians under Putin can recreate as they wish and they are free to engage 

in commerce (even though they often have to deal with organized crime). 

How has Putin managed to consolidate power in Russia? Has he obtained the 

support of the population and the Duma? If so, how? Evaluate whether there is any 

chance at democracy developing under Putin.

Putin began in the KGB. After the Soviet Union fell, he became a protégé of Boris 

Yeltsin and was appointed Prime minister by Yeltsin in 1999. Putin later pardoned 

Yeltsin, thereby indebting the latter to him. Putin showed strength and decisiveness 

throughout his career. He began by imprisoning Oil Oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, 

which sent a message to the other Oligarchs—who threatened to dilute Putin’s power 

by having a share of it—to cease to vie for political power. Putin also handled a number 

of crises, including the Chechen War and also the seizure of a Moscow movie theatre by 

Chechen rebels—in a decisive manner, thus earning the respect, or at least the fear, of 

the Russian populace. Putin is in fact popular with the Russian people (even after 

allowances are made for likely fabrications on the part of a Putin-controlled media) 

because he is seen as having stabilized the country. And for similar reasons (and with 

similar qualifications), Putin is popular with the Duma, having recently won a ‘supermajority’ 

of support therein. 

What are the primary problems with the Russian economy? Provide explanations 

that engage economic and political factors. Based on this information, what changes 

need to occur for the Russian economy to improve and stabilize? Are these changes 

likely? Why or why not?

Russia has three major economic problems. First, it relies too much on energyexports. 

Technology is making many economic sectors less energy-dependent, and 

Russia’s reliance on a global energy-demand therefore does not bode well for it. 

Also, Russia suffers from political corruption, which negatively affects 

entrepreneurs and also discourages foreign investment in Russia. 

Finally, Russia, partly for the two reasons just mentioned, is suffering from a 

‘brain-drain’: many talented members of intelligence-heavy professions are leaving 

Russia for greener pastures. 

In order to hedge against these problems, Russia would need to diversify its 

economy, which will be difficult to do unless political corruption is reigned in. It should 

be pointed out that there have been relatively non-corrupt autocracies and there have 

been, and are, highly corrupt democracies. So it isn’t necessarily the case that the 

demise of Putin-style autocracy is a sine qua non for the improvement of Russia’s 

economy. (Putinites would argue that the opposite is the case.) In any case, it doesn’t 

seem particularly likely that the needed changes will happen, mainly because no one— 

not Putin, not his opponents—seems to have any clear ideas as to how to make it 

happen. Nor are there are any obvious ideas as to how to do this. Nor, indeed, does 

there seem to be the requisite political will. My personal feeling is that there were 

incentive-programs for small businesses in Russia—programs that incentivized the 

Russian equivalent of Facebook (which, incidentally, does exist)---this might lead to the

needed sort of economic diversification. But any views on these matters are necessarily 

speculative at this point. 

Did the founding fathers support or oppose democracy? Was the Constitution a 

democratic document or an anti-democratic document? (History/Politics) 

The US Constitution is at its core a democratic document, and since the US 

Constitution is the embodiment of the political views of its framers, these being the 

Founding Fathers, it follows that the Founding Fathers supported democracy. In this 

paper, it will be shown, largely on the basis of direct quotes from the original (1789) US 

Constitution, that the latter is a largely if not a completely democratic document. Then 

we will show that some apparently undemocratic provisions of the Constitution are in 

fact democratic. Finally, we will discuss the fact that during the early years of the 

republic, only propertied white males could vote, and we will show that this obviously 

undemocratic practice does not prove the Constitution or the Founding Fathers to be 

undemocratic. 

A democracy is a society in which the people elect their officials. In the system of 

government described in the 1789-Constitution, key government officials are elected 

and those that are not elected are appointed by those who are. First of all, provisions 

are made for the election of representatives, Senators and a chief executive (or 

President). In Article I, Section 2 of the 1789-Constitution says: “The House of

Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the 

People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications 

requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature….” 

This quote makes it that “the People”, this being some subset of the general 

population, choose who their governmental representatives will be, at least within 

limits. 

Later in Article I, Section 2 it is written that: “Representatives and direct Taxes 

shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, 

according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the 

whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years… 

When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority 

thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies.” 

The first sentence of this quotations indicates that the degree of representation 

given to a state is a function of the number of people in that state, and the second 

sentence indicates that it is the citizens of that state who decide who will represent 

them. 

The last sentence of Article I, Section 2 states that: “The House of 

Representatives…shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.” In other words, these 

representatives have the power to remove the President from Office (or at least to

initiate proceedings to the effect), this being a way of keeping the President under the 

control of elected officials. 

The 1789-Constitution intends for the House of Representatives to be 

unqualifiedly democratic, since it provides both that the people in a given state elect 

their representatives and also that the number of representatives per state is 

proportional to that state’s population. 

In Section III of the 1789-Constitution, it is written that: “The Senate of the 

United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the 

Legislature thereof, for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.” Thus, the 

1789-Constitution intends for the Senate to be a qualifiedly democratic institution, since 

although it provides that the people of a given state shall elect their own Senators, it 

does not provide that the number of Senators per state is proportional to that state’s 

population. 

In Article II, Section 1, it is written that: “The executive Power shall be vested in a 

President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of 

four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, 

as follows.” Each state has a number of ‘electors.’ The number of electors per state is 

proportional to the population of that state. The electors for a given state unanimously 

vote for the Presidential candidate voted for by a majority of the people in that state. So 

it is these electors who directly vote for President; the people only indirectly do so. But

these electors always vote in line with the votes cast by the majority of their 

constituents. 

Basically, a state’s citizens do not directly vote for President. Rather, their state 

directly votes for the President, and they vote for who their state will vote for. 

This system makes it possible for a Presidential candidate who loses the popular 

vote to win the election, and some might regard this system as undemocratic or only 

imperfectly democratic. But that is not the only possible view of the matter. The 

electoral system gives the vote to states, and it therefore preserves all of the democratic 

functions carried out by states. 

There is an important respect in which the United States in 1789 was not 

democratic. Only white, male land-owners could vote. Women could not. Native 

Americans could not. African-Americans could not. And, significantly, unpropertied 

while males could not. (Be it noted that the 1789-Constitution does not itself restrict the 

vote to propertied while males. The Constitutions was silent on the matter, it being the 

culture at large that limited suffrage in this way.) 

Why was this? Although an element of racism, sexism and snobbism may have 

played a role, this system was primarily about restricting suffrage to people who had an 

economic stake in the welfare of the country. Obviously, slaves did not want the country 

to be an economic success, since it was denying them their freedom, and if given the 

right to vote, they might well have voted for its destruction. As for Native Americans,

even though the United States did not enslave them and even though they had 

commercial ties to it, their welfare did not depend on its welfare, and for this reason 

they could not be counted to vote for its welfare. As for women in this time period, they 

were not engaged in commerce and, however positive their intentions towards the 

United States, might have been, they could not be counted upon to vote in an informed 

manner. The same is true of white males who had no property: however positive their 

intentions might have been, they could not be counted upon to vote in an informed 

manner. 

Finally, the 1789-Constitution did not prevent anyone from voting, and it has 

proved easy to amend so as to grant suffrage to people who did not previously have it. 

This was by design. The Founding Fathers designed a system that had a fundamentally 

democratic structure. That system has not always been implemented in a maximally 

democratic way, but that is only because it has not always been implemented as it was 

meant to be. 

In conclusion, the 1789 US-Constitution describes a highly democratic system of 

government. Although it contains some apparently undemocratic provisions, these 

provisions prove upon analysis not to be undemocratic or to be only qualifiedly so. As 

for the fact that only white propertied males could vote during the early years of this 

country’s existence, that had no basis in the Constitution, which did not prevent anyone

from voting, and was instead a consequence of the way in which the Constitution was 

implemented. 

The Two Faces of China’s Negative Soft Power: 

China’s Belt and Road Initiative as a Case of Negative Soft Power (Politics) 

There are two kinds of power that a nation can have: hard power and soft power. 

Hard power is the ability to coerce using military or economic means. Soft power is 

about influencing, as opposed to coercing. A nation’s soft power lies in the appeal of its 

culture, the sentiments that others have about its practices, and its general 

countenance. 

Just as there are two kinds of power, so there are two kinds of soft power: 

positive and negative. Positive soft power is the power to influence other nations to 

engage in a constructive or affirmative endeavor, e.g. to build a dam. Negative soft 

power is the power to influence other nations to engage in a negative or privative 

endeavor, e.g. to refuse to transact with some nation or to withdraw support from 

There are two kinds of negative soft power: the deliberate kind and the 

inadvertent kind. In other words, negative soft power can sometimes, be used 

deliberately, but it can also just ‘happen’, without its being intended by the nation in 

question. An example of deliberate negative soft power would be the U.S.’s boycotting

the Soviet Olympics in 1980: this was not a case of the US’s coercing anybody, militarily 

or otherwise. But it sent a message to other nations that the United States took a dim 

view of the Soviet Union, which message in turn reinforced those other nations’ existing 

misgiving about the Soviet Union. 

A case of inadvertent negative soft power would be the detestation for the US in 

the Islamic world that have resulted from the US’s attempts to grace the Islamic world 

with its pop culture, which attempts were seen in the Islamic world not as acts of 

kindness but as acts of cultural imperialism and of religious intolerance. 

In this study, I am going to show that China, through its Belts and Roads Initiate 

(BRI), is exercising a number of different forms of soft power: positive, deliberate 

negative, and inadvertent negative. On the one hand, as we will see, some see this 

initiative as a sincere attempt on China’s part to build economic (and literal) bridges 

between nations: so to this extent, it is a case of positive soft power. On the other hand, 

some see it as attempts on China’s part to infiltrate other nations: so to this extent it is 

inadvertent negative soft power. Finally, China has deliberately represented BRI as being 

a conscious attempt on China’s part to rally Asian and African nations against the US and 

other Western powers: so to this extent, it is deliberate negative soft power. 

Interest Groups and Political Parties (Politics/Current Events)

Describe the evolution of political parties in the United States. 

The United States is technically a multi-party system, but in practice, it is and 

always has been a two-party system. When the United States was founded, there were 

no political parties, in the United States or anywhere else. The Founding Fathers did not 

see American as being party-based, and the Constitution does not even refer to political 

parties. But political parties quickly came into existence, quickly stabilizing into the twoparty 

configuration that we still have today. The first two parties were the Federalist 

Party and the Democratic-Republican Party. The Federalist party concerned with the 

country’s macro-economic well-being, and the Democratic-Republican Party was 

concerned more with the individual’s welfare and quality of life. The Federalist party 

corresponded (with some qualifications) to today’s Republican Party, and the 

Democratic-Republican Party corresponded to today’s Democratic Party. (The 

qualifications relate to the fact that the Federalist Party was focused mainly on 

economic matters and, unlike today’s Republican Party, had little or no interest, or even 

negative interest, in ‘religious values’ and ‘family values’ and the like.) 

In fact, for the entirety of the USA’s existence, politics has been dominated by 

two parties, one corresponding to today’s Democratic Party, the other corresponding to 

today’s Republican Party. 

The actual Democratic Party came into existence in the 1830s and was founded 

by Andrew Jackson, as an attempt to transfer wealth away from plutocrats and into the

hands of the masses, and the actual Republican Party was founded in 1854, largely as an 

attempt to end slavery but also as an attempt centralize power and unify the country 

under sustainable macro-economic policies. 

As the just-stated facts make clear, there have been pronounced shifts within and 

between the parties. Someone with Andrew Jackson’s values would now being seen as 

the antithesis of a democratic; in fact, Jackson’s positions were strongly in line with 

those of current President Donald Trump. (Trump, though wealthy and though in some 

ways a supporter of the wealthy, is also an arch-populist, just as Jackson was.) And 

Lincoln, though a Republican, probably had values at least in some ways more in line 

with those of contemporary democrats. (That said, Lincoln was in other respects quite 

representative of modern Republicanism, mainly in that, despite his progressive views 

on race-relations, he represented the interests of the Corporatistic North over the more 

agrarian and in some ways pre-capitalist South.) 

But even more striking than what has changed the American Party Politics over 

the last 250 years is what hasn’t changed. During any given election cycle, there is one 

party that focuses on macro-economic policy, and another that focuses on ‘the little 

guy’; there is one party that wants to centralize power and another that wants to 

decentralize it; there is one party that wants to cleave to the Constitution, and another 

that regards the Constitution as being contraindicated. In some contexts, in some 

respects, the Republican Party represents, or is seen as representing, the interests of

small businesses; in other words, the Democratic Party has that role. At certain 

junctures, the Republican Party is relatively isolationist and relatively uninclined to go to 

war, and the Democratic party, being less isolationist, is relatively inclined to do so; and 

at the other junctures, the roles are reversed. 

Despite the differences between the two parties, there was a kind of equilibrium 

or stalemate between the Republicans and the Democrats. They agreed to disagree on 

certain issues and to agree on others, and their back-and-forth had a rather automated, 

kabuki-like quality to it. But with Donald Trump that changed (whether for better or 

worse is obviously a matter of debate). What is distinctive about Trump is that he came 

into politics from the outside. He is not a politician; he is a businessman who went into 

politics. And this is reflected in his views, which are in some ways more disruptive to 

Republican orthodoxies than to Democratic orthodoxies. (Trump actually conforms 

quite well to Democratic presumptions about the Republican Party, and for that same 

reason Trump does not conform well to Republican efforts to mollify the Democratic 

Party.) In any case, though, American party politics was quick to come into existence 

and assume a form barely distinguishable from its contemporary form. Be it noted that, 

in his book Propaganda, Edmund Bernays, the father of modern advertising, claimed 

that, for reasons of psychology, people need political parties and, at the same time, that 

they cannot have more than two. And it would seem that Bernays was right.

France 

France has a semipresidential system. What exactly does this mean? Specifically, 

address the roles of the executive and legislative branches in this system. Would you 

recommend the semipresidential system for other countries? Explain why or why not 

Much like Russia, France has a semi-presidential system of government, meaning 

that there is a prime-minister as well as President, both of whom are answerable to the 

nation’s legislature. A semi-presidential system differs from a parliamentary republic in 

that in the case of a parliamentary republic the president is a mere figure head, whereas 

in the case of a semi-presidential republic has real power. And semi-presidential system 

differs from a presidential system in that, whereas in a presidential system the cabinet is 

appointed by the president and can also be dismissed by him, in a semi-presidential 

system the cabinet is appointed by the legislature and cannot be unilaterally dismissed 

by the president. In France, the President names the Prime Minister. 

France’s government, like the USA’s, is divided into executive, legislative, and 

judicial branches. And the judicial branch, like the USA’s, is divided into a National 

Assembly, corresponding to the US House of Representative, and a Senate, 

corresponding to the US senate.

The legislative process in France, though basically similar to its American 

counterpart. In the United States, the Supreme court does not determine the 

constitutional of a prospective law; it merely determines the constitutionality of preexisting 

laws, and then only under when their constitutionality is made salient by 

criminal or civil litigation. But in France, in order for a bill to become law, its 

constitutionality must be determined in advance (by the Constitutional Adviser) and so 

must its consistency with existing National and European laws (by the Conseil d’état). 

But the largest difference between the American and the French system is that, whereas 

the American system is presidential, the French system is semi-presidential, so that the 

French system has a ‘dual executive’ branch. 

The advantage of a semi-presidential over a presidential system is that it tends 

to prevent political gridlock, mainly by making it impossible for the President to exercise 

power without the support of both the Prime Minister and the legislature. So the 

legislature and the executive have trouble drifting far enough apart from each other for 

there to be insuperable disagreements between them. At the same time, this is also, at 

least in some contexts, a disadvantage, since it prevents the President taking the bold 

initiatives that may be necessary to deal with crises. 

My personal view is that, while there should be checks and balances and that 

Presidential authority must be restricted, the presidential has more than enough checks 

and balances on the President’s power. By the same token, the semi-presidential

arraignment over-limits the President and (unless, as is the case in Russia, which is really 

an autocracy and only formally a semi-presidential system) and prevents him from 

taking bold and (in some contexts) necessary action. 

Russia 

How has geography influenced Russian political development over the centuries? 

The Russian Empire was physically extremely large. Also, much of it, being Arctic 

or Sub-arctic, is very cold. Further, even though it has the largest coastline of any 

country, that coastline is on the Arctic Ocean and is therefore of limited use for either 

commerce or for Russia’s self-management. Russia’s size, though in some respects a 

strength, left it exposed to invaders and made it difficult to protect, this being why, over 

the centuries, it sustained a series of nasty blows at the hands of numerous Central 

Asian and East Asian countries. 

Also, whereas the United States is replete with high-quality arable land, the land 

in Russia is relatively non-arable and the climate is inhospitable to many forms of 

agriculture. Russia’s geographical isolation, coupled with enormous size and the 

difficulties involved in Russia-internal (and therefore largely land-based) travel, had the 

result that Russia as a whole was in some ways more backwards than other European

nations, being slower than most other European nations (including some Eastern 

European nations) to receive the benefits of political enlightenment. Also, the 

difficulties involved in traveling from Russia’s urban centers (e.g. St. Petersburg and 

Moscow)—all of which are located in the far West of the country and in which Russia’s 

aristocracy as well as its intelligence tended to reside---created an unusually large 

cleavage in outlook and in standard of living between the elite and the non-elite of 

Russia, which helped make Russia vulnerable to the 1917 Revolution. 

Additionally, Russia, being large and being difficult to travel within, was (and is) 

difficult to govern and to control, which is probably part of what made Russia slow to 

adopt democratic rule and which, in turn, was part of what it made relatively easy for 

the Bolsheviks to take over. To this day, Russia is ruled in a semi-autocratic manner, and 

its lack of arable manner has resulted in an economy that over-relies in petrol exports. 

Further, its harsh climate and vast internal distances make it difficult (but not 

impossible) to develop medium sized business. 

What led to the collapse of the Soviet Union? (Politics/History/Current Events) 

The proximal cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union was the lowering of gas 

prices that occurred in the late 80s. Russia, being a defunct, bureaucratic communist 

nation had very little economy, and its revenue came almost entirely from petroleum

exports. So when petroleum prices fell in the late 80s, Russia was completely 

decapitalized, and its economy literally ground to a halt: trains containing food didn’t 

even leave the station, since worker’s weren’t being paid. 

The fall in prices was deliberate, being the workmanship of strongly anti-Soviet 

US President Ronald Reagan, who had already done much to deplete Soviet coffers by 

engaging in it a Nuclear Arms Race. (It was unclear whether it was Reagan’s intention in 

engaging in the Arms Race to decapitalize the Soviet Union. Some believe Reagan’s 

motivations were of a knee-jerk anti-Communist kind. Others believe that, indeed, 

Reagan was deliberately driving the Soviet Union to poverty and subsequent collapse.) 

Because Russia had no legitimate free market on the basis of which to generate 

funds, a return to Communism was not an option. At the same time, Russia had a vast 

grey-market economy and—as the next few years would make clear—no shortage of 

entrepreneurial talent. So (after a years of economic catastrophe, courtesy of Jeffrey 

Sachs and other Western Economic advisers) the Iron Hand of State-planning quickly 

made way for the Invisible Hand of the free market. 

Explain. 

What kind of political system does Russia have now? Is it effective? Legitimate?

Russia is a Constitutional (constitution-based) Federal, Semi-presidential 

Republic. It is Federal in that, like the United States, it consists of a plurality of states 

that have their own individual governments but that are in their managed by a single 

(Federal) government. It is semi-Presidential, as opposed to presidential, in that, 

although the President is the de jure head of government, he shares power with a Prime 

Minister. (In actuality, the Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, has more power than the 

President, Dmitry Medvedev.) 

In practice, Russia is a semi-autocratic state with democratic elements—but 

more of an autocracy than a democracy. This configuration is legitimate in the Russian 

people, though far from happy with every aspect of the job Putin is doing, seem to 

prefer strong, centralized governance, as opposed to decentralized, democratic 

governance. 

So relative to the awesome tasks faced by any possible government of Russia, the 

semi-autocratic, semi-democratic approach seems indicated, in that it combines the 

decisiveness and crisis-reading of a strong, autocratic government with the 

responsiveness to the people’s needs of a democratically elected government. 

Is it possible for Russia to break its dependence on strong leaders? If so, how will 

it get rid of Putin? And should it?

While it is an article of faith in the West that ‘democracies’ are good and 

‘autocracies’ are bad, autocracies can sometimes function better. An example is China: 

China’s massive economic growth and economic liberalization over the last 30 years 

were consequences of sapient, but strong centralized management. Russia’s economic 

growth during the last few decades, though not quite as good as China’s, has still been 

considerable. And this seems, at least in part, to have been made possible by the 

political stability created by Putin’s rather autocratic ruling style. 

Also, Russia, consisting as it does of a plurality of oftentimes mutually belligerent 

nationalities, might be better off, at least for the time being, having decisive strong 

rulers, instead of politically driven weak ones. Be it noted that, whereas only 1/5th of 

Russians express support for the democratic leaders they have had (basically Gorbachev 

and Yeltsin), ½ of Russians still have positive feelings about Brezhnev and Stalin! 52 

So while Putin’s future is unclear and while there is legitimate disagreement as to 

his merits, it seems unlikely that Western style democracy in Russia is particularly likely 

or desirable any time soon. 

Plato’s Republic as Pol Potist Bureaucracy (Politics/Philosophy) 

52 

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2014/10/21/why-russias-strong-state-politicalsystem-still-remains-a-better-option-for-the-country-than-western-style-democracy/

For Plato, justice is identical with people staying in their ‘rightful place.’ (“[T]o do 

one’s own business, in some shape or other, is justice.” [433 b] ) Plato has a very narrow 

and hierarchical conception of what a person’s ‘rightful place’ is. He believes that a 

person’s social position should be determined by his ‘nature.’ He further believes that 

one’s ‘nature’ cannot in any relevant respects change. (“You are, all of you in this 

community, brothers. But when god fashioned you, he added gold in the composition of 

those of you who are qualified to be Rulers (which is why your prestige is greatest); he 

put silver in the Auxiliaries, and iron and bronze in the farmers and other workers.” [412 

e] ) 

A corollary is that, for Plato, social strata should be rigidly defined, it being 

necessary that the barriers between them be virtually impenetrable. (““If they [the nonruling 

classes] follow these rules, they will be safe themselves and the saviors of the city; 

but whenever they come to possess lands, and houses, and money of their own, they 

will be householders and cultivators instead of guardians, and will become hostile 

masters of their fellow-citizens rather than their allies.” [416 b] ) 

Further, Plato doesn’t acknowledge the legitimacy of a person’s private life. For 

him, the entirety of a person’s life should be subordinate to the interests of the state. 

Marriages should be arranged. (“We must arrange for marriage, and make it as sacred 

an affair as we can. And a sacred marriage is one that produces the most beneficial 

results.” [458 e]) And people must never marry or reproduce with people outside of

their social classes. (“Guardians must ‘mate the best of our men with the best of our 

women as often as possible, and the inferior men with the inferior women as seldom as 

possible, and bring up only the offspring of the best.’” [459 e] ) 

In Plato’s ‘ideal republic’, life is so micromanaged by the state that there is 

practically no such thing as private life. Every aspect of each citizen’s life must be in 

alignment with the interests of the state, and existence is completely collectivized. (“Our 

men and women Guardians should be forbidden by law to live together in separate 

households, and all the women should be common to all the men; similarly, children 

should be held in common, and no parent should know its child, or child its parent.” See 

also: “They shall have no private property beyond the barest essentials. Second, none of 

them shall possess a dwelling-house or storehouse to which all have not the right of 

entry. Next, their food shall be provided by the other citizens as an agreed wage for the 

duties they perform…” [416 d] ) 

Plato correctly states that such a rigidly hierarchical social arrangement cannot 

be 

sustained unless the masses are kept ignorant and constantly lied to. (“And no 

one but the rulers must know what is happening, if we are to avoid dissension in our 

Guardian herd.” [459 a] ) 

So with respect to the question “To what extent does justice (for Plato) depend 

upon the state propagation of falsehoods?”, the answer is: Completely. For Plato, justice

depends on the state’s constantly lying to its own citizenry. Not only that. It depends on 

its keeping them ignorant and also in the resulting gaps in its citizens’ knowledge with 

carefully constructed propaganda. Plato himself says this. Plato clearly states that the 

state must constantly subject its own citizenry to propaganda (pro-state lies) if the state 

is to remain intact and unified, it being Plato’s contention that nothing is more 

important than unity and intactness of the state. (“Is there anything worse for a state to 

be split and fragmented, or anything better than cohesion and unity?” [462 b] ) 

As for the question “Insofar as deception is necessary to maintain justice, can 

Plato’s distinction between benign or beneficial lies and improper or dangerous ones be 

sustained?”, the answer is: No--not at all. Of course, the answer to this question is 

tautologously ‘yes’ if one accepts Plato’s conception of ‘justice.’ But according to Plato’s 

conception of justice, nobody is entitled to any freedoms of any kind. Since there is no 

independent reason to accept such a conception of justice, and every reason to reject, 

the actual answer to the above question is indeed: No. The lies that, in Plato’s view, the 

state should require its citizens to accept are ones that the state must tell if it is to 

continue to enforce Plato’s conception of justice, According to that conception of 

justice, people do not have the right to listen to the kind of music they enjoy or marry 

the people they love or indeed do much of anything that they personally would like to 

do. Since such a restrictive conception of justice is false and evil, any lies that are told to

uphold it are ipso facto evil, and there is therefore to principled distinction between 

good and evil lies in relation to such a conception. 

Politics and Contemporary France and Russia (Politics/Current Events) 

Interest Groups 

1. Describe the evolution of political parties in the United States. 

France 

1. France has a semipresidential system. What exactly does this 

mean? Specifically, address the roles of the executive and legislative branches 

in this system. Would you recommend the semipresidential system for other 

countries? Explain why or why not 

centuries? 

Russia 

1.How has geography influenced Russian political development over the 

2. What led to the collapse of the Soviet Union?

3. What kind of political system does Russia have now? Is it effective? 

Legitimate? Explain. 

4. Is it possible for Russia to break its dependence on strong leaders? 

If so, how will it get rid of Putin? And should it? 

Politics in the USA, Russia and France 

Harvard University Political Science Take-home Exam 




What led to the collapse of the Soviet Union? 




Describe the evolution of political parties in the United States.

The United States is technically a multi-party system, but in practice, it is and 

always has been a two-party system. When the United States was founded, there were 

no political parties, in the United States or anywhere else. The Founding Fathers did not 

see American as being party-based, and the Constitution does not even refer to political 

parties. But political parties quickly came into existence, quickly stabilizing into the twoparty 

configuration that we still have today. The first two parties were the Federalist 

Party and the Democratic-Republican Party. The Federalist party concerned with the 

country’s macro-economic well-being, and the Democratic-Republican Party was 

concerned more with the individual’s welfare and quality of life. The Federalist party 

corresponded (with some qualifications) to today’s Republican Party, and the 

Democratic-Republican Party corresponded to today’s Democratic Party. (The 

qualifications relate to the fact that the Federalist Party was focused mainly on 

economic matters and, unlike today’s Republican Party, had little or no interest, or even 

negative interest, in ‘religious values’ and ‘family values’ and the like.) 

In fact, for the entirety of the USA’s existence, politics has been dominated by 

two parties, one corresponding to today’s Democratic Party, the other corresponding to 

today’s Republican Party. 

The actual Democratic Party came into existence in the 1830s and was founded 

by Andrew Jackson, as an attempt to transfer wealth away from plutocrats and into the 

hands of the masses, and the actual Republican Party was founded in 1854, largely as an

attempt to end slavery but also as an attempt centralize power and unify the country 

under sustainable macro-economic policies. 

As the just-stated facts make clear, there have been pronounced shifts within and 

between the parties. Someone with Andrew Jackson’s values would now being seen as 

the antithesis of a democratic; in fact, Jackson’s positions were strongly in line with 

those of current President Donald Trump. (Trump, though wealthy and though in some 

ways a supporter of the wealthy, is also an arch-populist, just as Jackson was.) And 

Lincoln, though a Republican, probably had values at least in some ways more in line 

with those of contemporary democrats. (That said, Lincoln was in other respects quite 

representative of modern Republicanism, mainly in that, despite his progressive views 

on race-relations, he represented the interests of the Corporatistic North over the more 

agrarian and in some ways pre-capitalist South.) 

But even more striking than what has changed the American Party Politics over 

the last 250 years is what hasn’t changed. During any given election cycle, there is one 

party that focuses on macro-economic policy, and another that focuses on ‘the little 

guy’; there is one party that wants to centralize power and another that wants to 

decentralize it; there is one party that wants to cleave to the Constitution, and another 

that regards the Constitution as being contraindicated. In some contexts, in some 

respects, the Republican Party represents, or is seen as representing, the interests of 

small businesses; in other words, the Democratic Party has that role. At certain

junctures, the Republican Party is relatively isolationist and relatively uninclined to go to 

war, and the Democratic party, being less isolationist, is relatively inclined to do so; and 

at the other junctures, the roles are reversed. 

Despite the differences between the two parties, there was a kind of equilibrium 

or stalemate between the Republicans and the Democrats. They agreed to disagree on 

certain issues and to agree on others, and their back-and-forth had a rather automated, 

kabuki-like quality to it. But with Donald Trump that changed (whether for better or 

worse is obviously a matter of debate). What is distinctive about Trump is that he came 

into politics from the outside. He is not a politician; he is a businessman who went into 

politics. And this is reflected in his views, which are in some ways more disruptive to 

Republican orthodoxies than to Democratic orthodoxies. (Trump actually conforms 

quite well to Democratic presumptions about the Republican Party, and for that same 

reason Trump does not conform well to Republican efforts to mollify the Democratic 

Party.) In any case, though, American party politics was quick to come into existence 

and assume a form barely distinguishable from its contemporary form. Be it noted that, 

in his book Propaganda, Edmund Bernays, the father of modern advertising, claimed 

that, for reasons of psychology, people need political parties and, at the same time, that 

they cannot have more than two. And it would seem that Bernays was right.


France has a semipresidential system. What exactly does this mean? Specifically, 

address the roles of the executive and legislative branches in this system. Would you 

recommend the semipresidential system for other countries? Explain why or why not 

Much like Russia, France has a semi-presidential system of government, meaning 

that there is a prime-minister as well as President, both of whom are answerable to the 

nation’s legislature. A semi-presidential system differs from a parliamentary republic in 

that in the case of a parliamentary republic the president is a mere figure head, whereas 

in the case of a semi-presidential republic has real power. And semi-presidential system 

differs from a presidential system in that, whereas in a presidential system the cabinet is 

appointed by the president and can also be dismissed by him, in a semi-presidential 

system the cabinet is appointed by the legislature and cannot be unilaterally dismissed 

by the president. In France, the President names the Prime Minister. 

France’s government, like the USA’s, is divided into executive, legislative, and 

judicial branches. And the judicial branch, like the USA’s, is divided into a National 

Assembly, corresponding to the US House of Representative, and a Senate, 

corresponding to the US senate.

The legislative process in France, though basically similar to its American 

counterpart. In the United States, the Supreme court does not determine the 

constitutional of a prospective law; it merely determines the constitutionality of preexisting 

laws, and then only under when their constitutionality is made salient by 

criminal or civil litigation. But in France, in order for a bill to become law, its 

constitutionality must be determined in advance (by the Constitutional Adviser) and so 

must its consistency with existing National and European laws (by the Conseil d’état). 

But the largest difference between the American and the French system is that, whereas 

the American system is presidential, the French system is semi-presidential, so that the 

French system has a ‘dual executive’ branch. 

The advantage of a semi-presidential over a presidential system is that it tends to 

prevent political gridlock, mainly by making it impossible for the President to exercise 

power without the support of both the Prime Minister and the legislature. So the 

legislature and the executive have trouble drifting far enough apart from each other for 

there to be insuperable disagreements between them. At the same time, this is also, at 

least in some contexts, a disadvantage, since it prevents the President taking the bold 

initiatives that may be necessary to deal with crises. 

My personal view is that, while there should be checks and balances and that 

Presidential authority must be restricted, the presidential has more than enough checks 

and balances on the President’s power. By the same token, the semi-presidential

arraignment over-limits the President and (unless, as is the case in Russia, which is really 

an autocracy and only formally a semi-presidential system) and prevents him from 

taking bold and (in some contexts) necessary action. 


How has geography influenced Russian political development over the centuries? 

The Russian Empire was physically extremely large. Also, much of it, being Arctic 

or Sub-arctic, is very cold. Further, even though it has the largest coastline of any 

country, that coastline is on the Arctic Ocean and is therefore of limited use for either 

commerce or for Russia’s self-management. Russia’s size, though in some respects a 

strength, left it exposed to invaders and made it difficult to protect, this being why, over 

the centuries, it sustained a series of nasty blows at the hands of numerous Central 

Asian and East Asian countries. 

Also, whereas the United States is replete with high-quality arable land, the land 

in Russia is relatively non-arable and the climate is inhospitable to many forms of 

agriculture. Russia’s geographical isolation, coupled with enormous size and the 

difficulties involved in Russia-internal (and therefore largely land-based) travel, had the 

result that Russia as a whole was in some ways more backwards than other European 

nations, being slower than most other European nations (including some Eastern

European nations) to receive the benefits of political enlightenment. Also, the 

difficulties involved in traveling from Russia’s urban centers (e.g. St. Petersburg and 

Moscow)—all of which are located in the far West of the country and in which Russia’s 

aristocracy as well as its intelligence tended to reside---created an unusually large 

cleavage in outlook and in standard of living between the elite and the non-elite of 

Russia, which helped make Russia vulnerable to the 1917 Revolution. 

Additionally, Russia, being large and being difficult to travel within, was (and is) 

difficult to govern and to control, which is probably part of what made Russia slow to 

adopt democratic rule and which, in turn, was part of what it made relatively easy for 

the Bolsheviks to take over. To this day, Russia is ruled in a semi-autocratic manner, and 

its lack of arable manner has resulted in an economy that over-relies in petrol exports. 

Further, its harsh climate and vast internal distances make it difficult (but not 

impossible) to develop medium sized business. 

The Collapse of the Soviet Union? 

What led to the collapse of the USSR? 

The proximal cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union was the lowering of gas 

prices that occurred in the late 80s. Russia, being a defunct, bureaucratic communist

nation had very little economy, and its revenue came almost entirely from petroleum 

exports. So when petroleum prices fell in the late 80s, Russia was completely 

decapitalized, and its economy literally ground to a halt: trains containing food didn’t 

even leave the station, since worker’s weren’t being paid. 

The fall in prices was deliberate, being the workmanship of strongly anti-Soviet 

US President Ronald Reagan, who had already done much to deplete Soviet coffers by 

engaging in it a Nuclear Arms Race. (It was unclear whether it was Reagan’s intention in 

engaging in the Arms Race to decapitalize the Soviet Union. Some believe Reagan’s 

motivations were of a knee-jerk anti-Communist kind. Others believe that, indeed, 

Reagan was deliberately driving the Soviet Union to poverty and subsequent collapse.) 

Because Russia had no legitimate free market on the basis of which to generate 

funds, a return to Communism was not an option. At the same time, Russia had a vast 

grey-market economy and—as the next few years would make clear—no shortage of 

entrepreneurial talent. So (after a years of economic catastrophe, courtesy of Jeffrey 

Sachs and other Western Economic advisers) the Iron Hand of State-planning quickly 

made way for the Invisible Hand of the free market.


Explain. 

What kind of political system does Russia have now? Is it effective? Legitimate? 

Russia is a Constitutional (constitution-based) Federal, Semi-presidential 

Republic. It is Federal in that, like the United States, it consists of a plurality of states 

that have their own individual governments but that are in their managed by a single 

(Federal) government. It is semi-Presidential, as opposed to presidential, in that, 

although the President is the de jure head of government, he shares power with a Prime 

Minister. (In actuality, the Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, has more power than the 

President, Dmitry Medvedev.) 

In practice, Russia is a semi-autocratic state with democratic elements—but 

more of an autocracy than a democracy. This configuration is legitimate in the Russian 

people, though far from happy with every aspect of the job Putin is doing, seem to 

prefer strong, centralized governance, as opposed to decentralized, democratic 

governance. 

So relative to the awesome tasks faced by any possible government of Russia, the 

semi-autocratic, semi-democratic approach seems indicated, in that it combines the

decisiveness and crisis-reading of a strong, autocratic government with the 

responsiveness to the people’s needs of a democratically elected government. 


Is it possible for Russia to break its dependence on strong leaders? If so, how will 

it get rid of Putin? And should it? 

While it is an article of faith in the West that ‘democracies’ are good and 

‘autocracies’ are bad, autocracies can sometimes function better. An example is China: 

China’s massive economic growth and economic liberalization over the last 30 years 

were consequences of sapient, but strong centralized management. Russia’s economic 

growth during the last few decades, though not quite as good as China’s, has still been 

considerable. And this seems, at least in part, to have been made possible by the 

political stability created by Putin’s rather autocratic ruling style. 

Also, Russia, consisting as it does of a plurality of oftentimes mutually belligerent 

nationalities, might be better off, at least for the time being, having decisive strong 

rulers, instead of politically driven weak ones. Be it noted that, whereas only 1/5th of

Russians express support for the democratic leaders they have had (basically Gorbachev 

and Yeltsin), ½ of Russians still have positive feelings about Brezhnev and Stalin! 53 

So while Putin’s future is unclear and while there is legitimate disagreement as to 

his merits, it seems unlikely that Western style democracy in Russia is particularly likely 

or desirable any time soon. 

Summary of Politics of Economic Growth in the States (Economics) 

In the 1980s, rates of economic growth among the various different states of 

India were relatively uniform. But in the 1990s, this changes. Whereas some states (e.g. 

Bihar, Orissa, UP, Punjab, Rajasthan) stagnated economically or even declined, rates of 

economic growth increased in other states (e.g. Gujarat, Kerala, West Bengal). 

How are these growth differentials to be explained? Let us start by identifying 

two plausible but false answers to this question. 

First liberalization in the states in question attracted investment-capital, which 

led to growth. Though plausible, this analysis is false, as Table 1A shows there to be no 

correlation between growth-rates and state-income during the period in question. 

53 

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Second, the states that had high rates of growth during the 1990s were those 

that had rates of growth during 1980s, and the high-rates of growth in the states in 

question were therefore simply the result of economic inertia. But this is simply false, as 

Table 1D shows. 

The actual answer is this: In each case, economic growth was a combination both 

of investment-capital along with pre-existing infrastructure; in other words, if a given 

Indian state exhibited pronounced economic growth during the 1990s, it was because of 

a combination of a high-degree of infrastructure on its part and a large amount of 

outside investment. 

Thus, states that were given a large amount of capital but had poor 

infrastructure did not appreciably grown, and neither did states that had good 

infrastructure were given little investment capital. Only those states grew that satisfied 

both conditions. And not only is this a priori reasonable; it is the only explanation not 

ruled out by the data (see Tables 1A-1D). 

Should the US have entered WWI? (History) 

The U.S. had two prima facie reasons for entering WWI on behalf of the Allies. 

First, the American economy stood to gain much if America fought in the War, 

specifically if it fought on behalf of the Allies. Second, the U.S. had reason to regard

Germany as a military threat. In this context, it is necessary to distinguish reasons that 

the US had to go to war from the actual causes of its going to war, and it is necessary to 

distinguish each from what the US alleged to be the reasons for its going to war. We will 

see that although the US had legitimate economic and (to a lesser extent) military 

reasons for going to war, these probably were not the actual causes of its going to War. 

We will also see that what the US alleged to be its reasons for going to war were 

probably identical neither with the legitimate reasons it had for going to war nor with 

the actual causes of its doing so. 

WWI began in 1914 when a Serbian nationalist assassinated the Archduke 

Ferdinand. This led to a series of territory-disputes among the nations of Europe, which 

turned to into a full-blown international war. The two sides of this war were the Allies 

and the Central Powers. The Allies consisted of France, Britain, Russia, Japan and Italy. 

The Central Powers consisted Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria. 

For the first 3 years of the War, the US was not involved. President Wilson urged 

neutrality and issued a ‘neutrality-proclamation.’ (Wilson had been re-elected on an 

anti-war platform with the slogan ‘he kept us out of war.’) Most Americans supported 

him in this. 

Both sides wanted the US to join them. The British had cultural and linguistic ties 

to the United States and also controlled transatlantic cables, allowing them to drench 

the US with anti-German propaganda. At the same time, German Americans were one

of the largest minorities in the US, and Kaiser Wilhelm II, the leader of Germany, was 

hoping for their support. 

Most Americans opposed Germany, partly because of its attack on neutral 

Belgium and also because Kaiser Wilhelm seemed to personality authoritarianism of the 

worst kind. 

But it wasn’t until America’s economy came to be affected by the war that the 

US had any reason to choose sides. The US had been in a recession, and French-British 

purchases of American military supplies pulled it out of that recession, giving the US a 

reason to want to support the Allies. Germany also needed American military supplies 

and would have purchased them, but the Britain used her navy to cut off all commerce 

between Germany and the US. American. In any case, the upshot was that the US had a 

vibrant trade with Britain and France and had no trade with Germany, giving the US a 

practical reason to side with the former. Thanks to British propaganda, American 

citizens were unaware of Britain’s treachery in this context. 

Largely because the US was providing the Allies with military supplies, Germany 

began to attack American vessels. This stirred up anti-German sentiment among 

American citizens,. Thanks to propaganda, much of it British, American citizens did not 

know that Germany was merely trying to prevent the delivery of military supplies that 

would be used against it. Thanks also to largely British propaganda, they also didn’t 

know that had severed all commercial ties between the US and Germany, thereby

severing good will between those two nations. In any case, German attacks on American 

vessels, especially the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, fueled anti-German sentiment 

among the American public. 

Wilson continued to urge neutrality. But the American public began to turn 

against him and he was becoming increasingly unpopular. Also, public figures, most 

notably former President Theodore Roosevelt, ridiculed Wilson for being a ‘coward’ who 

was unwilling to stand up to German aggression. 

There were two key events that caused Wilson to finally change his position. 

First, there was the ‘Zimmerman Telegram.’ This was a telegram sent by German 

Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmerman to Mexico, in which, in exchange for Mexico’s help, 

he promised to help Mexico reclaim the territories that it had lost in the previous 

century to the United States. Second, Germany sunk a number of unarmed American 

passenger ships, killing hundreds of American civilians. 

At this point, Wilson could no longer remain neutral without losing all political 

credibility. So he sought a declaration of War from Congress, his pitch being that war 

with Germany was necessary to “make the world safe for democracy.” The justification 

for this pitch was that Germany was an autocracy whereas the Allies were for the most 

part democracies. Congress granted Wilson’s request for a declaration of War. 

The actual cause of the US’s going to war was Wilson’s realizing that to save 

political face he had to go to war with Germany. Nonetheless, there were good reasons

why it was in the US’s interest to go to War with Germany. As previously indicated, the 

US benefited from the War. More precisely, the sale of American munitions to the Allies 

gave strength and vitality to the previously stagnant American economy. Granting that 

the primary cause of the US’s going to war was Wilson’s need to salvage what was left 

of his political reputation, American economic dependence on the sale of munitions to 

the Allies may have made Americans as well as their elected officials more receptive to 

the prospect of going to war with Germany. 

Also, there was, as previously mentioned, at least some reason to regard 

Germany as a threat to national security. After all, Germany had attacked American 

vessels and it had also indicated that it might want to collude with Mexico to strip the 

US of much of her territory. But in actuality Germany was not a real threat to the United 

States, and most American decision-makers probably knew this. Germany is very far 

from the United States and at the time it did not have either the force structure or the 

technology necessary to mount a meaningful assault on the United States---all of which 

would have been known to American decision-makers. As for the Zimmerman Telegram, 

this did not constitute a prima facie threat to the United States. But it is extremely 

unlikely that Mexico would have taken Germany up on its offer (supposing that it even 

was a serious offer) and equally unlikely that Germany, already seriously overextended, 

could have been of any use to Mexico---all of which American decision-makers surely 

knew. Nonetheless, between the Zimmerman Telegram and the numerous German

attacks on American vessels, Germany was appropriately seen as an adversary, and the 

US did therefore have something to gain by this threat to itself. 

Just before the US entered the war, the allies were about to sign a peace treaty 

that was largely favorable to Germany. In effect, they were about to surrender. Thanks 

to American involvement in the War, the Allies ultimately won. In 1919, the Allies and 

the Central Powers signed the now infamous Treaty of Versailles, the terms of which 

were exceedingly punitive towards Germany. German delegates to the peace talks were 

shocked at how severe the terms of the treaty were towards Germany and also how 

different the terms of the treaty were from the term proposed by the Allies when the 

armistice that concluded the war was first being negotiated. But the Allies did not allow 

Germany to negotiate any of the terms, and the Treaty was signed by all parties present. 

The Treaty of Versailles demanded that Germany pay damages to the Allies in the 

amount of $33 billion, which it simply was not possible for Germany to do and which 

Germany could not even try to do without hobbling its own economy. The Treaty also 

included provisions preventing Germany from having a military of scale and therefore 

preventing it from defending itself against aggression. 

The Treaty also included a provision to the effect that all of the signatories would 

belong to a League of Nations that prohibited its members from encroaching on each 

other’s territorial integrity or independence and that would impose economic sanctions 

any member that resorted to belligerence. Not wanting the US to submit to such an

arrangement, the US Senate, led by a group of so-called ‘irreconcilables’, refused to sign 

the Treaty. 

Even though there were compelling reasons, mainly economic in nature, for the 

US to enter WWI, its decision to do so appears in hindsight to be misconceived. First of 

all, even though the US’s supposed reason for going to war was to ‘make the world safe 

for democracy’, it had the opposite effect. Freedom of speech was suppressed in the 

United States, so as to silence voices of opposition to the war. More importantly, the 

Treaty of Versailles destroyed the German economy and embittered the German 

people. This gave Germany an economic reason as well as an emotional incentive to 

remilitarize itself, which in turn disposed to Germany to support Hitler. Be it noted that 

in his book The Economic Consequences of Peace, John Maynard Keynes predicted that 

the Treaty of Versailles would cause Germany to remilitarize itself under the rule of a 

strongman. 

In conclusion, the US had legitimate reasons for entering the war on behalf of 

the Allies. But this statement is subject to several heavy qualifications. First, while the 

US arguably had two legitimate reasons for going to war---these being that its doing so 

stood to invigorate the economy and that its doing so would protect the US from 

Germany---only the first survives scrutiny. Germany was not much of a threat to the 

United States: it was too far away and lacked both the requisite force structure and 

technology. Second, to the extent that Germany was a threat to the US, it was a

completely self-generated threat. Germany wanted the US not to enter the war and was 

only a threat to the US because Britain went out of its way to make it impossible for the 

US and Germany to have either profitable or peaceful relations. Had the US found a way 

to restore its trade relations with Germany, Germany would not have been a threat to 

the US; and however difficult it might have been to restore trade relations with 

Germany, it would have been less difficult than going to war with Germany, which cost 

the US 116,000 soldiers. Also, it is expensive to go to war, and however much the US 

economy gained in vitality from war with Germany, it is a distinct possibility that the 

gains did not offset the expense, especially when the 200,000 US wounded are taken 

into account. Further, even if the US did have to use military force to protect itself from 

Germany--which it probably didn't--and even if the US economy stood to gain by 

entering the war--which it did up to a point---those were not the reasons the US actually 

went to war. The US actually went to war because Wilson wanted to protect his public 

image. Further, in his attempt to justify entering the War, Wilson claimed not that it 

would be good for the economy nor that it was necessary to neutralize an existential 

threat, but that it was necessary to 'make the world safe for democracy.' But this wasn't 

why the US was going to war. Just before the US entered the war, Germany had already 

ceased and desisted, and it was only because the US entered the war that it resumed its 

attempts to expand. Also, because the US involvement in the war so obviously had 

nothing to do with 'making the world safe for democracy', a number of Americans

protested US involvement in the war, to which Wilson responded with the decidedly 

anti-democratic measure of criminalizing free speech. So yes, the US had two arguably 

legitimate reasons for entering the war, but only one actually legitimate reason for 

doing so; and this reason, in addition to being a relatively weak one, was not the 

operative one. 

Should the US have entered WWI? In your response, consider the various reasons 

the U.S. gave for entering the war and the conclusion of the War with the Treaty of 

Versailles and the U.S. Senate’s refusal to sign it. 

The U.S. had multiple legitimate reasons for entering WWI on behalf of the Allies. 

First, the American economy stood to gain much if America fought in the War, specifically 

if it fought on behalf of the Allies. Second, the U.S. had reason to regard Germany as a 

military threat.. 

In this context, it is necessary to distinguish reasons that the US had to go to war 

from the actual causes of its going to war, and it is necessary to distinguish each from 

what the US alleged to be the reasons for its going to war. We will see that although the 

US had legitimate economic and (to a lesser extent) military reasons for going to war, 

these probably were not the actual causes of its going to War. We will also see that what

the US alleged to be its reasons for going to war were probably identical neither with the 

legitimate reasons it had for going to war nor with the actual causes of its doing so. 

WWI began in 1914 when a Serbian nationalist assassinated the Archduke 

Ferdinand. This led to a series of territory-disputes among the nations of Europe, which 

turned to into a full-blown international war. The two sides of this war were the Allies and 

the Central Powers. The Allies consisted of France, Britain, Russia, Japan and Italy. The 

Central Powers consisted Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria. 

For the first 3 years of the War, the US was not involved. President Wilson urged 

neutrality and issued a ‘neutrality-proclamation.’ (Wilson had been re-elected on an antiwar 

platform with the slogan ‘he kept us out of war.’) Most Americans supported him in 

this. 

Both sides wanted the US to join them. The British had cultural and linguistic ties 

to the United States and also controlled transatlantic cables, allowing them to drench the 

US with anti-German propaganda. At the same time, German Americans were one of the 

largest minorities in the US, and Kaiser Wilhelm II, the leader of Germany, was hoping for 

their support. 

Most Americans opposed Germany, partly because of its attack on neutral 

Belgium and also because Kaiser Wilhelm seemed to personality authoritarianism of the 

worst kind.

But it wasn’t until America’s economy came to be affected by the war that the US 

had any reason to choose sides. The US had been in a recession, and French-British 

purchases of American military supplies pulled it out of that recession, giving the US a 

reason to want to support the Allies. Germany also needed American military supplies 

and would have purchased them, but the Britain used her navy to cut off all commerce 

between Germany and the US. American. In any case, the upshot was that the US had a 

vibrant trade with Britain and France and had no trade with Germany, giving the US a 

practical reason to side with the former. Thanks to British propaganda, American citizens 

were unaware of Britain’s treachery in this context. 

Largely because the US was providing the Allies with military supplies, Germany 

began to attack American vessels. This stirred up anti-German sentiment among 

American citizens,. Thanks to propaganda, much of it British, American citizens did not 

know that Germany was merely trying to prevent the delivery of military supplies that 

would be used against it. Thanks also to largely British propaganda, they also didn’t know 

that had severed all commercial ties between the US and Germany, thereby severing good 

will between those two nations. In any case, German attacks on American vessels, 

especially the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, fueled anti-German sentiment among the 

American public. 

Wilson continued to urge neutrality. But the American public began to turn against 

him and he was becoming increasingly unpopular. Also, public figures, most notably

former President Theodore Roosevelt, ridiculed Wilson for being a ‘coward’ who was 

unwilling to stand up to German aggression. 

There were two key events that caused Wilson to finally change his position. First, 

there was the ‘Zimmerman Telegram.’ This was a telegram sent by German Foreign 

Minister Arthur Zimmerman to Mexico, in which, in exchange for Mexico’s help, he 

promised to help Mexico reclaim the territories that it had lost in the previous century to 

the United States. Second, Germany sunk a number of unarmed American passenger 

ships, killing hundreds of American civilians. 

At this point, Wilson could no longer remain neutral without losing all political 

credibility. So he sought a declaration of War from Congress, his pitch being that war with 

Germany was necessary to “make the world safe for democracy.” The justification for this 

pitch was that Germany was an autocracy whereas the Allies were for the most part 

democracies. Congress granted Wilson’s request for a declaration of War. 

The actual cause of the US’s going to war was Wilson’s realizing that to save 

political face he had to go to war with Germany. Nonetheless, there were good reasons 

why it was in the US’s interest to go to War with Germany. As previously indicated, the 

US benefited from the War. More precisely, the sale of American munitions to the Allies 

gave strength and vitality to the previously stagnant American economy. Granting that 

the primary cause of the US’s going to war was Wilson’s need to salvage what was left of 

his political reputation, American economic dependence on the sale of munitions to the

Allies may have made Americans as well as their elected officials more receptive to the 

prospect of going to war with Germany. 

Also, there was, as previously mentioned, at least some reason to regard Germany 

as a threat to national security. After all, Germany had attacked American vessels and it 

had also indicated that it might want to collude with Mexico to strip the US of much of 

her territory. But in actuality Germany was not a real threat to the United States, and 

most American decision-makers probably knew this. Germany is very far from the United 

States and at the time it did not have either the force structure or the technology 

necessary to mount a meaningful assault on the United States---all of which would have 

been known to American decision-makers. As for the Zimmerman Telegram, this did not 

constitute a prima facie threat to the United States. But it is extremely unlikely that 

Mexico would have taken Germany up on its offer (supposing that it even was a serious 

offer) and equally unlikely that Germany, already seriously overextended, could have 

been of any use to Mexico---all of which American decision-makers surely knew. 

Nonetheless, between the Zimmerman Telegram and the numerous German attacks on 

American vessels, Germany was appropriately seen as an adversary, and the US did 

therefore have something to gain by this threat to itself. 

Just before the US entered the war, the allies were about to sign a peace treaty 

that was largely favorable to Germany. In effect, they were about to surrender. Thanks to 

American involvement in the War, the Allies ultimately won. In 1919, the Allies and the

Central Powers signed the now infamous Treaty of Versailles, the terms of which were 

exceedingly punitive towards Germany. German delegates to the peace talks were 

shocked at how severe the terms of the treaty were towards Germany and also how 

different the terms of the treaty were from the term proposed by the Allies when the 

armistice that concluded the war was first being negotiated. But the Allies did not allow 

Germany to negotiate any of the terms, and the Treaty was signed by all parties present. 

The Treaty of Versailles demanded that Germany pay damages to the Allies in the 

amount of $33 billion, which it simply was not possible for Germany to do and which 

Germany could not even try to do without hobbling its own economy. The Treaty also 

included provisions preventing Germany from having a military of scale and therefore 

preventing it from defending itself against aggression. 

The Treaty also included a provision to the effect that all of the signatories would 

belong to a League of Nations that prohibited its members from encroaching on each 

other’s territorial integrity or independence and that would impose economic sanctions 

any member that resorted to belligerence. Not wanting the US to submit to such an 

arrangement, the US Senate, led by a group of so-called ‘irreconcilables’, refused to sign 

the Treaty. 

Even though there were compelling reasons, mainly economic in nature, for the 

US to enter WWI, its decision to do so appears in hindsight to be misconceived. First of 

all, even though the US’s supposed reason for going to war was to ‘make the world safe

for democracy’, it had the opposite effect. Freedom of speech was suppressed in the 

United States, so as to silence voices of opposition to the war. More importantly, the 

Treaty of Versailles destroyed the German economy and embittered the German people. 

This gave Germany an economic reason as well as an emotional incentive to remilitarize 

itself, which in turn disposed to Germany to support Hitler. Be it noted that in his book 

The Economic Consequences of Peace, John Maynard Keynes predicted that the Treaty of 

Versailles would cause Germany to remilitarize itself under the rule of a strongman. 

In conclusion, the US did have legitimate reasons to fight with the Allies in WWI. 

But, first of all, these reasons were not the US’s actual reasons for doing so, though they 

may have played a supporting role, and, second of all, the consequences of the US’s 

involvement in WWI, the main one being WWII, were so disastrous (and, arguably, so 

predictably so) that the US, whatever its reasons for entering the War, was probably not 

acting rationally in doing so. 

Mill and von Hayek on Free-market Economics (Economics/Philosophy) 

1. Power corrupts. How have authors read for the course aimed to ensure 

that government promotes the interests of the governed? In your answer, discuss 

three or more of the following authors: Plato, Locke, Madison, Rousseau, 

Thoreau, Hayek, and Mill

I will focus on Madison, Mill and von Hayek. All three have the more or less the 

same view (government should restrict as little as only possible, only curtailing freedom 

to prevent violence), but they have it for slightly different reasons and have different 

recommendations as to how to actualize this conception of gov’t. 

According to Madison, there are two threats to liberty: the government and 

other people (the majority ganging up up on the minority). Freedom from government 

tyranny is accomplished by dividing the government into mutually independent 

branches (e.g. executive/legislative/judiciary), allowing someone who is being 

oppressed by one such branch to seek relief from the others. As for protection from the 

majority, Madison’s solution is to divide the government into Federal and local/state, 

which divides the people up into a lot of little groups (different states, different 

counties, different cities), which makes it hard for them to form blocks that gang up on 

others. Madison says that pure democracy provides no protection to the minority 

against the majority, but that a ‘republic’ does do so, a ‘republic’ being indirect 

democracy (the people vote for representatives, and the representatives decide specific 

issues: the people themselves do not decide how to deal with specific issues). In this 

way, gov’t protects people from itself and others and does the people the maximum 

amount of good. 

According to Mill, people should be allowed as much freedom as possible (short 

of being violent to each other). A major threat to this is the tyranny of the majority. The

way to protect against this is to have ‘proportionate representation’, meaning that if n% 

of the people vote for party x, then n% of elected officials should belong to party x. So if 

3% of the people support the green party, 10% the black panther party, 23 % the 

libertarian party, etc., then 3% of the members of congress should be green party 

members, 10% black panther party members, etc. In this way, there is majority rule and 

minority rights. 

According to Hayek, the sole purpose of government should be to allow the 

economy to run its course, and government’s role should therefore be limited to 

enforcing contracts and preventing crimes and otherwise allowing the economy to 

flourish. If the government interferes with the economy, through planning or through 

the outright confiscation of property, then the economy will fail and the people will be 

the worse for it. 

Each of these authors wants the people to be protect from gov’t and from 

others, but have different views as to how to accomplish this. Hayek’s view is that the 

economy will give people what they need, the role of gov’t being just to keep the 

economy alive. Madison and Mill want to protect people from each other, but have 

different views as to how to do this, with Mill believing the solution to be proportional 

representation and Madison believing the solution to be a Republican form of gov’t.

3. How does private property either promote or inhibit liberty in the 

works of three or more of the following authors: Plato, Locke, Rousseau, Mill, 

Goldman, and Marx & Engels? 

According to Rousseau and Marx/Engels, the institution of private 

property leads people to exploit one another and to turn one another into 

commodities. According to Locke, property allows people to develop resources 

and provide for one another, thereby enhancing freedom. 

Rousseau: when people have just enough, there are no problems; they are 

nice to each other. When some people begin to have more than they need 

(surpluses), there are problems. When people start to want more than they 

personally need, they need to exploit others. And this means that they need strict 

laws in place to keep people compliant. So property (i.e. surplus property: 

enough property to exchange with others) leads to mutual exploitation, 

enslavement, injustice. 

Marx/Engels: Private property leads people to turn each other into 

property. Under capitalism, people have only as much worth as they have 

economic value. And under capitalism, people want to make production efficient, 

leading to division of labor, leading in turn to meaningless tasks for workers and 

‘alienated’ labor.

Locke: Labor is the basis of ownership. I come to own the land by tilling it. 

Without property, therefore, there would be no labor: nobody would work metal 

into machines or land into produce, etc. So property involves production and its 

absence involves its absence. As for the idea, that one is stealing from others by 

acquiring property, that is misconceived. In order to cultivate the land, somebody 

has to own it; but if he owns, he creates corns, etc. for everybody to consume 

that weren’t there previously. So property leads to economic growth, which leads 

to a greater bounty for everyone. And when people have excessive surpluses of 

property, they have an incentive to exchange it, so the property tends to keep 

itself relatively evenly distributed. Property leads to development of resources 

and all the advantages and freedoms resulting therefrom. Absence of property 

means lack of incentive to work. Property equals freedom to tend to one’s own 

needs and needs of others. 

How is Colonialism different from Imperialism? Short Version (Politics) 

Colonialism involves settling another territory or country and dominating it in 

that way. Imperialism involves dominating another country either by settling it or by 

using force or by commandeering its economy. All colonialism is imperialism but not 

vice versa.

European colonialism from 1492-1789 was about settling new territories and 

building new economies. 19th Century European imperialism was less about building 

new economies or settling territories than it was about using military force to take over 

pre-existing economies. This is what happened in China in the 19th Century, when 

Britain used her naval power to take over worldwide distribution of China-grown tea. To 

secure her stranglehold on the international tea-trade, Britain resorted to flooding 

China with opium so as to debilitate her inhabitants and make her submit to British 

domination of China’s economy. 

European colonialism during 1492-1789 led to the creation of nations that are to 

this occupied by descendants of the inhabitants of the colonial powers in question. 

European imperialism in the 19th century involved little European settlement of the 

territories being dominated, as is evidenced by the fact that the ethnic composition of 

those territories has hardly changed at all. (North America is now populated largely by 

people of European descent. Africa is only to a very small degree populated by such 

people.) 

19th Century European imperialism created a large demand for goods (e.g. tea, 

silk, rubber) from the territories being dominated, which created tremendous economic 

development in Europe. This spurred great technological innovations, leading to the 

industrial revolution, along with the far-reaching social changes entailed thereby.

How is Colonialism different from Imperialism? Long Version 

(History/Politics/Economics) 

First of all, colonialism is not the same thing as imperialism. Colonialism is when 

one country settles territory occupied by some other people. Imperialism is when one 

country dominates the people in another territory or country. Although imperialism may 

involve some of the dominant country’s citizens settling in the territory that is being 

dominated, it does not necessarily do so. Also, there are many different forms that 

imperialist domination can take: military, economic, political, religious. (Usually the 

domination is either military or economic or both.) 

Colonialism and imperialism, though different, are not mutually exclusive. All 

colonialism is imperialism but not all imperialism is colonialism. If country X dominates 

country Y, either economically or military or in some other way, but X’s people do not 

settle Y, the result is a case of imperialism without colonialism. 

The colonial expansion in 1492-1789 was just that. In colonizing North America 

and Australia the British were not so much leeching off of pre-existing economies as 

they were creating new economies, the same being true, though probably to a lesser 

extent, of Spanish and Portuguese colonialism in Central and South America. European 

colonialism during this period was less about dominating already exiting countries than

it was about creating new countries (which usually involved dominating peoples, albeit 

ones who were not organized into nations, at least not in the modern sense). 

By contrast, European Imperialism in the 19th Century was less about creating 

new countries than it was about economically taking advantage of pre-existing ones. 

(That said, it did involve nation-building up to a point: see below.) In the 19th Century, 

the British did not really colonize China, but they did dominate it. They did this by using 

British Naval power to give British merchants control over international sales of tea 

grown in China. In order to weaken the Chinese populace, so as to make submit to this 

arrangement, the British flooded China with opium, leading to mass opium addiction 

among Chinese. 

In the 19th century, the French and British colonized much of Africa. British 

colonialism, though exploitative, was less viciously so than French colonialism and also 

more constructive, in the sense that to a greater extent than French colonialism led to 

stable and relatively autonomous economies. In any case, both British and French 19th 

century colonialism were more about dominating pre-existing groups (not nations in the 

modern sense of the word, but nations of a kind) and less about settling new territories. 

This is why early European colonialism led to countries in the New World whose 

residents are to this day largely or European descent, whereas 19th Century British and 

French colonialism hardly affected the ethnic composition of Africa at all.

19th Century European imperialism greatly stimulated economic development in 

Europe, by creating a huge demand for goods imported from the countries being 

dominated (e.g. silk, tea, rubber), which in turn spurred technological development, 

thereby giving rise to the Industrial Revolution. 

Was the US a World Leader Between 1946-1991? Long Version (History/Politics) 

The U.S. has been the world leader since WW2. The Soviet Union was also a leader 

during the years 1946-1991, mainly because it had a powerful military and was extremely 

aggressive in its attempts to bring under countries under its political control. But the 

Soviet Union had an obsolete economy and it poured what few resources it had into its 

military, the result being that it collapsed in 1990 and now belongs to what Trotsky 

referred to as “the rubbish heap of history.” By contrast, the U.S. still has the most 

powerful economy in the world and, although other nations (mainly Russia, India, and 

China) are emerging as fellow world leaders, the U.S.’s absolute position remained 

relatively constant. This paper will substantiate the points just made and to this end will 

discuss the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Blockade, the Truman Doctrine, and the conflict 

between communism and capitalism to show that U.S. was the dominant leader over the 

Soviets. Be it noted that the conflict between communism and capitalism was both 

economic and military in nature: it was a conflict between opposing views as to the

ightful role of government and the legitimacy of private property and free enterprise. 

But this conflict, though primarily ideological, became militarized, leading to a 45 year 

‘cold war’ between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and also involving several wars by proxy, 

including the Korean War and the Vietnam War. 

After World War II, and to some extent because of it, two countries emerged as 

the world’s main powers: the United States and the Soviet Union. Not only were these 

two nations the most powerful ones in existence; they were also irreconcilable 

adversaries. This was largely because the United States was (and still is) a capitalist 

country whereas the Soviet Union was communist. A capitalist country is one in which 

private citizens are allowed to own property and to transact with each other. A 

communist country is one in which private citizens do not own private property, at least 

not on a significant scale, and are not allowed to transact with each other. In a communist 

country, the government owns everything, and what people have is determined by 

government policy, not by market-forces. In a capitalist country, what people is 

determined by market forces. Therefore communism and capitalism cannot coexist. 

As soon as World War II ended, the Soviet Union expanded aggressively. It did not 

directly take over other countries. Instead, it helped set up communist regimes in those 

countries, which would be loyal to the Soviet Union and through which the Soviet Union 

could control those countries. The Soviet Union immediately succeeded in setting up 

communist regimes, all of them loyal to the Soviet Union, in all of Eastern Europe,

including a large part of Germany, and after a few years, it helped establish communist 

rule in China. 

The Soviets had a large military and a well-educated and also well-indoctrinated 

population, but their economy was almost completely non-functional. By contrast, the 

United States not only had a powerful military but a booming economy and a 

correspondingly high standard of living. In fact, the United States had the world’s largest 

economy (and still does), while the Soviet Economy was small relative to its population 

and also in absolute terms. (The economies of Japan, Germany, and Great Britain were all 

larger than the Soviet Economy.) 

Also, even though the Soviet Union had a powerful military, it was only able to pay 

for its military by depleting the rest of its economy. This is why the Soviet Union simply 

collapsed in 1990, along with most of the other communist regimes in the world. This is 

also why the Soviet Union was so aggressively expansionist: it had no economy and 

therefore had to predate on other economies, which it did up to a point but which the 

USA resisted in allied countries and which it therefore was not able to do indefinitely. 

The Soviets’ aggressiveness led to the so-called Truman Doctrine, this being the 

US’s commitment to prevent the Soviet Union from absorbing additional countries into 

the Soviet Bloc. The Truman Doctrine officially came into existence in 1947 when Harry 

Truman announced to Congress in 1947 that he would block the attempt the Soviets were 

then making to install Communist puppet governments in Turkey and Greece. The US’s

subsequent attempts to check Soviet (and, more generally, communist) expansion were 

not always successful (though they were ultimately completely successful), but the very 

fact that the US made those efforts and thus made it so hard for the Soviets to expand 

made the U.S. a protector and therefore a leader of nations. 

The conflict between the US and USSR was in large measure a ‘cold war’, meaning 

that it did not involve overt, direct armed conflicts between those two powers. But the 

so-called ‘Cold’ War involved a number of ‘hot’ (actual) wars-by-proxy between the US 

and USSR. The first of these was the Korean War, which began when the Soviet-backed 

North Korean Communist army (henceforth PAK, short for ‘People’s Army of Korea’) 

crossed the 38th Parallel in an effort to assume control of all of Korea. The US intervened 

and deployed 550,000 troops in an effort to stop PAK. The US was aided in this effort by 

non-communist Korean forces. The US prevented PAK from taking over the southern half 

of Korea, but PAK retained control of the Northern part. 

Since 1953, Korea has been divided into a non-communist southern part (South 

Korea) and a communist northern part (North Korea). North Korea is currently run by Kim 

Jong Un, the grandson of Kim-il Sung, the leader of PAK, and the son of Kim Jong Il. The 

differences between the Koreas is illustrative of the nature of the Cold War. South Korea 

is extremely prosperous and modern. North Korea is desperately poor and its residents 

for the most part have little to eat and extremely few freedoms. North Korea is by every

measure a failed state. It survives largely thanks to handouts from (nominally Communist) 

China, but its economy is, for the same reasons as the Soviet economy, a complete failure. 

South Korea was one of the first beneficiaries of the World Bank, which, though 

not technically created by any one nation, was largely the handiwork of the US and Britain. 

The purpose of the World Bank is to help struggling economies, mainly by giving them 

loans but also by providing them with expertise. After the Korean War, South Korea 

needed money to rebuild its shattered infrastructure, and the World Bank loaned it the 

required amounts, helping South Korea’s economy become the powerhouse that it is 

today. Meanwhile, North Korea depended on Soviet and Chinese loans, still depending on 

the latter, and its economy is non-functional. 

Whereas Soviet power had only one side to it - a dark and aggressive side - US 

power had two sides to it: an anti-Soviet and sometimes belligerent side and a nonbelligerent, 

constructive side. The constructive side involved the US’s being an economic 

leader, which it did partly by simply having a booming economy and which it did partly by 

providing direct economic assistance to other countries, which it still does and which it 

first began doing with the advent of the Marshall Plan. 

The Marshall Plan was an initiative on the US’s part to rebuild Europe in the 

aftermath of WW2. The purpose of the Marshall was to repair the shattered economies 

of Europe by creating and modernizing industry, lowering trade-barriers between nations, 

encouraging commerce between and within the nations of Europe, and preventing the

spread of communism. To this end, the US invested billions of its own dollars in the 

economies of Europe. The US offered to extend the benefits of the Marshall Plan to the 

Soviet Union, but the latter declined and also blocked the US’s attempts to extend such 

benefits to Poland and Hungary. 

Europe’s economy, especially the economies of the countries covered by the 

Marshall Plan, boomed in the decades following WW2, and it is overwhelmingly likely that 

Marshall Plan had a hand in this. Also, the economies that were not covered the by 

Marshall Plan, mainly the countries in the Soviet Bloc, did not improve. So granting that 

the Soviet Union was a world power of a kind after WW2, it did not did not use its power 

in a way that benefited either its own citizens or those of other countries. By contrast, the 

United States did use its power benevolently, at least in many contexts (though obviously 

not all), and it did not have to deplete its own economy to either have or exercise that 

power. 

A stark example the contrast between American power and Soviet was the Berlin 

Blockade. After WW2, control over the city of Berlin was divided between four powers: 

France, Britain, US, and Soviet Union. In 1948, in an effort to gain complete control of 

Berlin, the Soviet Union blocked off railway, canal and road access to the parts of the city 

under non-Soviet control. The US responded by airdropping much needed supplies into 

those areas. For fear of starting an all-out war with the US, the Soviets did not try to 

prevent these air supplies from coming in and eventually backed off, opening the up the

land-ways that it had originally blocked off. The Berlin Blockade, along with the US’s 

response to it, made the Soviets look like malicious predators and made the US look like 

a hero. 

In 1948, the Soviets overthrew a democratically elected government in 

Czechoslovakia and installed a Communist puppet regimes. This was but one of many 

instances of Soviet aggression in the immediate aftermath of WW2, the crisis in Berlin 

being another, and American and other Western leaders were worried, leading to the 

creation in 1949 of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), this being a group of 

Western Nations that agreed to act as one if the Soviets acted aggressively towards given 

any one of them. The initial members of NATO were Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, 

France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and the United 

States. Although NATO was created largely in order to contain Soviet aggression, it had a 

larger purpose, this being to help different nations help one another through crises. And 

so it is that NATO still exists, even though the Soviet Union fell long ago, and as of 1999 

includes Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia, all former members of the Soviet Bloc. 

Was the US a world leader between 1946-1991? Yes. It led the world militarily, in 

that it had the world’s most powerful military and also used it to defend against Soviet 

and Soviet-backed expansionism. It led the world economically, in that it had the world’s 

largest and most vigorous economy. And because it it tried (sometimes successfully) to 

use its economic and military might for good, the US was in some ways a ‘moral’ world

leader during this time-period. The Soviets were world leaders only in the sense that they 

had a powerful military. Moreover, when the Soviets did harm, they did so deliberately: 

under Stalin they massacred 20,000,000 of their own citizens and imprisoned millions 

more in Gulags (political prisons); they helped install Mao-tse Tung in China, who himself 

killed (or led to the starvation of) millions of his own. Mao, in his turn, helped install Pol 

Pot in Cambodia who, during 1975-1979, killed 2 million Cambodians, out of a total 

population of 7,000,000. When the US did harm, which it often did (and probably still 

does), it was not out of a wish to undermine other countries but out of a failure to know 

how to help them properly. So yes--the US was not only a world leader during this period 

but the world leader, with the Soviets being a rather distant second. 

A Case for Environmental Regulation and against Carbon Taxes (Economics/Politics) 

I would not support replacing existing environmental regulations with a carbon tax. 

The reason is that life-and-death issues are not for the free market to decide. It is not for 

the free market to decide whether pollution-generating activity should be regulated, 

since the economic freedoms lost because of anti-pollution regulations are insignificant

compared to the environmental problems thereby averted. A company's right not to have 

to recycle motor oil is not as important as a community's right to have drinkable water. 54 

Those who advocate replacing environmental regulations with a carbon tax argue 

that giving people economic incentives not to pollute will do as much to prevent pollution 

as fining or jailing people who pollute. 55 This is misconceived. If people know they’ll be 

fined or go to jail if they pollute, they won’t pollute. If people know they stand to increase 

revenue by polluting less, they may pollute less---or they may not. The cost-benefit 

calculus here is extremely complex. 56 Perhaps what a given company stands to gain by 

polluting may exceed what it has to pay in carbon taxes. Or perhaps new tax loopholes 

might arise that allow companies to write off carbon taxes. If executives know that they 

will be jailed for polluting, they will not pollute. But if pollution simply generates more 

operating expenses and may even lead to backdoor revenue of some kind, they may 

pollute. 

Many will claim that the debate between different political ideologies---between 

advocates of ‘small government’ (represented by the pro-carbon taxers) and those who 

54 

Arrow 2014. 

55 

See A conservative case for climate action. 8 February 2017. Accessed at: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/opinion/a-conservative-case-for-climateaction.html?_r=0 

56 

See Republican tax proposal: Novel climate solution or regulatory giveaway? 9 

February 2017. Accessed at: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08022017/carbon-taxepa-clean-power-plan-climate-change-donald-trump

favor ‘big government’ (represented by the anti-carbon taxers). 57 This is a pernicious and 

false way of representing the matter. Even those who advocate minimal government 

grant that government should intervene when the very survival of the governed is at 

stake, as it is where matters relating to the integrity of the environment are concerned, 

and the big government/small government debate therefore only concerns matters that 

are genuinely optional. The legal status of prostitution and drug use affect a society’s 

moral character but not its very existence, this being why it is ‘big government’ to prohibit 

them and ‘small government’ to permit them. But massive amounts of pollution do 

threaten a society’s very existence. Consequently, a government that permits lifethreatening 

amounts of is not ‘small’ but simply inadequate, and one that prohibits it is 

not ‘big’ but simply adequate. In fact, a government that protects companies that despoil 

the environment is the very definition of a big government, since it deprives many people 

of health in order to spare a few people some regulatory inconvenience. 

Relatedly, many will claim that this is a debate different economic theories--- 

between ‘free-marketeers’ (represented by the carbon-taxers) and ‘Keynesians’ 

(represented by the anti-carbon-taxers). 58 Again, this is a very misleading characterization 

of the matter. Even the most hardcore free-marketeer favors government intervention 

when the market’s very existence is threatened; and the debate between free- 

57 

See Hazlitt 2017. 

58 

See Hazlitt 2017.

marketeers and their opponents therefore only concerns matters that are internal to a 

functioning market, such as welfare and taxation. High taxes and generous 

unemployment benefits affect an economy’s degree of vigor but not its very existence, 

this being why free-marketeers want minimal taxes and welfare and their opponents 

want non-minimal taxes and welfare. But massive amounts of pollution undermine the 

existence of a free market since they undermine the health economic actors, and the 

market therefore isn’t made less free by anti-pollution laws or made freer by their 

absence. 

Arrow, Kenneth. 2014. The Economics of Information. Cambridge: Harvard 


Hazlitt, Henry. 2017. The Failure of the “New Economics.” New Haven: Yale 


Controlling Pollution and Externalities. 14 August 2019. Accessed at: 

http://www.economicsdiscussion.net/environmental-economics/controlling-pollutionand-externalities-environmental-economics/21345

Externalities and the Answer to Climate Change. 12 February 2016. Accessed at: 

A conservative case for climate action. 8 February 2017. Accessed at: 

http://economicstudents.com/2016/08/arthur-cecil-pigou-externalities-answer-climatechange/ 


Republican tax proposal: Novel climate solution or regulatory giveaway? 9 

February 2017. Accessed at: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08022017/carbon-taxepa-clean-power-plan-climate-change-donald-trump 

Wollstonecraft vs. Marx on Religion (Intellectual History) 

Mary Wollstonecraft’s view on religion are very different from Karl Marx’s. Marx 

was unambiguously opposed to religion, believing it and all of the notions associated 

with, including the idea that there exists a God, to be nothing but propaganda, by 

means of which the poor are kept docile. Mary Wollstonecraft has a much more 

qualified view on the matter. Her position is that organized religion can reinforce 

society’s prejudices. But unlike Marx, she does not believe that the concepts associated

with religion are categorically false or harmful. In particular, she believes the concept of 

God to be one that, if properly understood, can help eliminate prejudice and improve 

the lot of the oppressed. I will now systematically describe and then compare the views 

of Wollstonecraft and Marx on religion. 

Marx famously describes religion as “the opium of the people”, his position 

being that religion is a mere soporific whose purpose is to key the masses sedated. 

More precisely, he believes that religion is a smokescreen for the exploitation of the 

poor by the rich: “Law, morality, religion”, writes Marx, “are to him so many bourgeois 

prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests”, (Marx and 

Engles 12) his point that religion (along with law and morality) are ways of both looting 

and subduing the poor. We are familiar with the proverbial televangelist (e.g. Jimmy 

Swaggart, Jim Bakker) who feigns piety and religious zeal to squeezes his congregation 

for money and to keep them in a state of perpetual infancy and psychological 

dependence. We are familiar with cult leader (e.g. Jim Jones, Charles Manson) who 

manipulates his followers into giving him their money, bodies and souls. Marx would not 

see such people as aberrations, but rather as embodying the very essence of religion. 

Wollstonecraft has a different conception of religion. Wollstonecraft is a deist, 

meaning that she believes the universe to have been created by al God who, after 

creating the universe, ceased to have any dealings with it. Wollstonecraft believes this 

God to be rational and benevolent and believes the structure of the universe, in

particular human nature, to embody these virtue: “The wise Being who created us and 

placed us here. . . .allowed it to be the case—and thus willed it to be the case—that our 

passions should help our reason to develop, because he could see that present evil 

would produce future good.” (Wollstonecraft 3) At the same time, as this same quote 

indicates, Wollstonecraft believes that God’s rationality and goodness are embodied not 

so much in what we are in what we could be: it is up to us to develop the rationality and 

goodness that, in Wollstonecraft’s view, God implanted in us. 

Though a believer in God and religious in that sense, Wollstonecraft thought ill of 

organized religion, describing it as “worse than a farce”, (169) her position being that 

the main consequence of organized religion to be a kind of psychological “Slavery 

to...ministers, whose deadly grasp stops the progress of the human mind, is not yet 

abolished and won’t be for a long time.”(38) Wollstonecraft seems to hold that ‘religion’ 

is legitimate when it is about the pursuit of enlightenment but not when it is about 

membership in an organization. 

Wollstonecraft seems to hold that religion (of the legitimate, non-institutional 

variety) will help end sexism, simply because it makes people more rational and less 

prejudiced: “Why would God lead us from love of ourselves to the sublime emotions 

aroused by the discovery of his wisdom and goodness, if these feelings weren’t 

launched so as to improve our nature (of which they are a part)2 and enable us to enjoy 

a more godlike portion of happiness? Firmly convinced that no evil exists in the world

that God didn’t intend to occur, I build my belief on the perfection of God.” (4) As this 

quote indicates, Wollstonecraft regards God as a paradigm by emulating whom we 

improve ourselves. 

When it comes to organized religion, Marx and Wollstonecraft are in partial 

agreement. Both regard organized religions as corrupt and exploitative and as doing the 

opposite of what they claim to be doing. But even here Marx and Wollstonecraft are not 

in perfect agreement. Wollstonecraft doesn’t regard organized religion as inherently 

bad. She seems to hold that if religions were better run, they would do what they 

claimed to do. By contrast, Marx regards organized religion as inherently bad, his 

position being that a ‘well-run’ religion simply does a better job than a poorly run 

religion of spreading propaganda. 

When it comes to religion in general, Marx and Wollstonecraft don’t agree at all. 

Wollstonecraft holds that religion is inherently good, while granting that it can be 

corrupted. Marx holds that a religion cannot possibly be good, since a religion is simply a 

way of pacifying the masses with fairy tales about Gods and other such chimera. For 

Marx, religion is simply to be eliminated, his view being that “communism”, which he 

believes to be the only path to a just social order, “abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes 

all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis.” For 

Wollstonecraft, religion is not to be eliminated disengaged from its corrupt institutional 

trappings. Thus purified, Wollstonecraft holds, it will exist as a private relationship

etween the individual and the Almighty and as such will liberate the former the 

bondage of prejudice. 

Galileo and Wollstonecraft on Religion (Religion/Intellectual History) 

This paper is concerned with the religions views of Mary Wollstonecraft and 

Galileo Galilei. Ultimately, Wollstonecraft and Galileo have very similar views on 

religion. Both also hold that religious belief can be a source of wisdom and strength. At 

the same time, both hold that religious institutions tend to do more harm than good. (In 

this paper, when we refer to “Galileo’s views on religion” we are referring to Galileo’s 

views so far as they are expressed in his letter to the Grand Duchess, and when we refer 

to “Wollstonecraft’s views on religion” we are referring to her views so far as they are 

expressed in her Vindication of the Rights of Woman.) 

First of all, Wollstonecraft believes in what she calls “rational religion”: “Rational 

religion...is a submission to the will of a being who is so perfectly wise that 

all he wills must be directed by the proper motive—must be reasonable” 

(Wollstonecraft, p. 101). As this quote makes clear, Wollstonecraft believes in God,

elieves God to be wise and good, and believes “submission [God’s] will” to be 

positively de rigueur. 

Accordingly, Wollstonecraft does not regard religion and rationality a 

incompatible. On the contrary, she holds that one must be rational in order to benefit 

from religion: “[R]eligion won’t have this condensing energy—giving firmness, 

establishing a rock—unless it is based on reason. If it is merely the refuge of weakness 

or wild fanaticism, and not a governing principle of conduct drawn from self-knowledge 

and a rational belief about the attributes of God, what can it be expected to 

produce? The ‘religion’ that consists in warming the affections and exalting the 

imagination is only the poetical part of religion; it may give pleasure to the individual, 

but it won’t make him or her a more moral being.It may be a substitute for worldly 

pursuits, but ·it is no 

good because it narrows the heart instead of enlarging it.” (Wollstonecraft, pp. 

70-71). 

Although Wollstonecraft holds that religion (or what she refers to as ‘religion’) is 

a source of strength and enlightenment, she holds that organized religion, along with all 

of the rituals and practices involved therein, tends to be useless and harmful: “Neither 

religion nor virtue, when they reside in the heart, require such a childish attention to 

mere ceremonies, because the behaviour must on the whole be proper when the 

motive is pure”

While holding that organized religion has little of value to contribute, 

Wollstonecraft holds it to be through the practice of ‘rational religion’ that many of 

society’s problems are to be solved, in particular the problem of male sexism towards 

women: “If it is granted that women were destined by Providence to acquire human 

virtues, and to use their understandings to achieve the stability of character 

that is the firmest ground to rest our future hopes on, then they must be 

permitted to look to the fountain of light (God) and not forced to steer by the twinkling 

of a mere satellite (man)” (Wollstonecraft, p. 13). God wants people to develop the 

abilities he has given them, and He therefore wants women to develop their intellects; 

and if they do so, they will come to be the social equals of men, bringing an end to 

sexism. 

Unlike Wollstonecraft, Galileo seems not any point say or even imply that 

religion of any kind is necessary for much of anything. But apart from that, Galileo’s 

views on religion are similar to Wollstonecraft’s in that, while holding that religious 

belief may often be a source of wisdom and strength, he also holds that organized 

religion does little good and much harm. 

One of the first points that Galileo makes is that religion can be used as a way to 

avoid thinking for oneself and to undermine people who do think for themselves: 

“Showing a greater fondness for their own opinions than for truth [opponents of 

Galileo’s doctrines] sought to deny and disprove the new things which, if they had cared

to look for themselves, their own senses would have demonstrated to them. To this end 

they hurled various charges and published numerous writings filled with vain 

arguments, and they made the grave mistake of sprinkling these with passages taken 

from places in the Bible which they had failed to understand properly, and which were 

ill-suited to their purposes” (Galileo, p. 1). In this same passage, Galileo is careful to 

distinguish between the Bible per se and the use to which it is put, his position that the 

former has value even though the latter often does not. 

Later Galileo writes: “Possibly because [opponents of my doctrines] are 

disturbed by the known truth of other propositions of mine which differ from those 

commonly held, and therefore mistrusting their defense so long as they confine 

themselves to the field of philosophy, these men have resolved to fabricate a shield for 

their fallacies out of the mantle of pretended religion and the authority of the Bible” 

(Galileo, p. 2). Here Galileo is saying that religion may be used to thwart intellectual 

progress, with the qualification that, when it is so used, it is merely ‘pretended religion’, 

the implication that true religion is compatible with such progress. 

In this particular work of his, Galileo goes to great lengths to make a case for the 

compatibility of religion (the Bible in particular) and science. The problem is that many 

passages in the Bible are simply factually inaccurate and are therefore incompatible 

with science. Galileo knows this and deals with it by saying that: “It is necessary for the 

Bible, in order to be accommodated to the understanding of every man, to speak many

things which appear to differ from the absolute truth so far as the bare meaning of the 

words is concerned” (Galileo, p. 4) In other words, the false statements in the people 

are not falsehoods proper but mere figures of speech. Though implausible, this position 

is the only plausible way to reconcile science and Scripture. Also, Galileo advocates this 

contention with the express purpose of giving a Scripture-friendly justification for this 

contention that “in discussions of physical problems we ought to begin not from the 

authority of scriptural passages but from sense experiences and necessary 

demonstrations” (Galileo, p. 4). 

Superficially, Galileo and Wollstonecraft have very similar views on religion. Both 

hold that religion is inherently good while also granting that wrongs are often 

perpetrated on religious grounds. Galileo’s point, when properly understood, Scripture 

is compatible with both truths of science and morality that can be arrived independently 

of Scripture. His position is that, although Scripture ultimately proves to be correct, it is 

not the best way to learn the truth and is more likely than not to lead to error. By 

contrast, Wollstonecraft holds that religion is not only compatible with truth and 

morality but is often the only road to them. In a word, whereas Galileo regards religion 

as being at best excusable, Wollstonecraft regards it as essential. 

Galilei, Galileo. 1615. Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany. Retrieved 

from http://www4.ncsu.edu/~kimler/hi322/Galileo-Letter.pdf

Wollstonecraft, Mary. 1792. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures 

on Political and Moral Subjects. Retrieved from 

http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/wollstonecraft1792.pdf 

Carbon Taxes vs. Standing Regulations (Economics/Politics) 

I would vote in favor of the carbon tax, and I would do so because it would help 

the environment. It would also help the economy; and for reasons that I will now explain, 

it would help the environment because it would help the economy, not despite its doing 

so. According to the conventional wisdom of both Democrats and Republicans, the 

environment can only protect at the expense of economic growth. Because Republicans 

accept this and also want the economy to grow, they deny the existence of climate change 

and, in general, downplay the negative consequences of pollution. 59 Because Democrats 

accept this and do not downplay the adverse effects of pollution, they downplay the 

adverse economic effects of environmental regulation. Both positions are misconceived. 

59 


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/opinion/a-conservative-case-for-climateaction.html?_r=0

Industrial waste obviously does damage the environment. (One can debate whether 

global warming is a reality, but not whether dumping chemicals into soil and water hurts 

and human beings alike.) Heavy-duty regulations obviously do dampen the economy’s 

performance, since they make it difficult for new companies to break into markets, force 

existing ones to increases prices to cover regulatory costs, and also lead to increased 

taxes. 

Carbon taxes are hewed to carbon use: the more people use carbon, the more they 

are taxed. This rewards energy-efficient conduct. When energy bills are too high, people 

learn how to conserve. They learn not to leave the lights on when they’re not home and 

not to blast heat or air-conditioning unnecessarily. John Cushman argues that a carbon 

tax would not increase energy-efficiency in those who cannot make structural changes to 

their homes. 60 But this argument fails for several reasons. First, they can develop less 

wasteful personal habits (e.g. they can choose not to leave the AC on when they leave for 

work). Second, the cost of living in an energy-inefficient apartment will be extremely high, 

especially with carbon taxes, forcing tenants to move and forcing landlords to make the 

needed improvements. Third, many people can make such changes. Of course, high 

60 

Republican tax proposal: Novel climate solution or regulatory giveaway? 9 February 

2017. Accessed at: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08022017/carbon-tax-epaclean-power-plan-climate-change-donald-trump

energy-bills currently incentivize energy-efficient behavior, but carbon-taxes would 

increase those incentives dramatically. 

Most pollution and resource-depletion result from practices that are legal but 

wasteful, e.g. using paper instead of e-readers, environmental regulations do nothing to 

discourage such wastefulness. 61 Unlike standing regulations, carbon-taxes would penalize 

legal but wasteful behavior and reward legal and efficient behavior. 62 As a result, carbontaxes 

encourage people and companies to look for ways to lessen their environmental 

footprint and therefore to produce enviro-friendly innovations. Regulations have this 

effect up to a point, but for the most part their effect is to wall out start-up companies 

that cannot afford to comply with them. 63 As a result, the entrenched companies that can 

afford to comply with them are ambivalent about producing technology that would make 

it easier and less expensive to comply with regulations, since such innovations would 

threaten their position. 

Some regulations are helpful and necessary. Regulations prevent companies from 

making air unbreathable and water undrinkable. But carbon-taxes will not displace 

environmental regulations, since carbon-taxes and regulations have different bailiwicks: 

61 Light Pollution Hurts Our Economy and Our Resources. 8 August 2018. Accessed at 

http://cescos.fau.edu/observatory/lightpol-econ.html 

62 



63 

See Sowell (2005).

whereas the purpose of regulations is to eliminate certain practices (e.g. dumping toxic 

waste in rivers), the purpose of carbon-taxes is not to criminalize existing practices but to 

give people an incentive to make them more efficient and environmentally sustainable. 

Sowell, Thomas. 2005. Basic Economics. New York: Basic Books. 

Light Pollution Hurts Our Economy and Our Resources. 8 August 2018. Accessed 

at http://cescos.fau.edu/observatory/lightpol-econ.html 



Republican tax proposal: Novel climate solution or regulatory giveaway? 9 

February 2017. Accessed at: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08022017/carbon-taxepa-clean-power-plan-climate-change-donald-trump 

Culture and Creativity (Sociology) 

Assignment: Find a relation between culture, innovation, development, and creativity.

Culture can be thought of as naturally occurring creativity. What we do mean 

when we refer to ‘culture'? What immediately comes to mind is great music, literature, 

art, architecture and the like. Of course, the word ‘culture' sometimes refers to the 

values and understandings that govern the interactions of a given group of people. This 

is what is meant when people say that in Japanese ‘culture', it is considered polite to 

decline a gift. But these two meanings of the word ‘culture' are related: Japanese art 

and music tend to embody the same values that govern relations among Japanese 

people, the same being true of German Culture and Bantu Culture. In general, the 

‘culture’ of a given people is the creative genius that gives rise to the various values, 

understandings, and artistic creations that guide them in their dealings with one 

another. The very essence of culture, consequently, is creativity, with the qualification 

that it occurs organically—not as a result of a conscious intention on somebody’s part to 

solve some problem, but as a natural by-product of interactions between people. 

Because the kind of creativity involved in culture ends up being embodied in 

long-standing understandings and traditions, it tends to limit what it is considered 

permissible for individuals to do on their own and it therefore tends to limit innovation. 

Whereas culture arises organically and unconsciously, innovation is the result of a 

conscious resolution on an individual’s part to use his creative powers to solve some 

problem. The phonograph was an innovation. Somebody invented it with the conscious

intention of solving a problem. The same is true of the polio vaccine. By contrast, 

beautiful medieval cathedrals were not innovations. They were original, and they were 

the products of creative and technical genius. But they did not come into existence 

because of some individual’s intention to solve some problem. Even though many 

conscious acts of problem-solving were involved in creating them, the intention to 

create them was not itself goal-oriented, and instead arose organically out of largely 

unconscious, collective understandings and mores. 

Development is growth. Individuals develop, and so do pluralities of people. A 

highly developed individual is one who has cultivated his native talents, and a highly 

developed economy or nation is one that has put its various resources, including the 

abilities of the individuals composing it, to good use. Development can be thought of as 

the creation of a mature being out of an immature one: an adult is being created, as it 

were, out of a child; an advanced nation is being created out of one that is backward. 

Although development can be the consequence of conscious intention, as when a 

person consciously works to develop his abilities as a pianist, it tends to happen 

organically: no conscious intention is involved in a caterpillar's developing into a 

butterfly. In any case, development, unlike other forms of creativity, is reflexive in 

nature. When an infant develops into an adult, the raw material, as it were, is the infant, 

and the finished product is the adult.

Culture, innovation, and development are always manifestations of creativity. 

Culture is creativity that is collective and largely unconscious in nature. Development is 

creativity that is reflexive in nature and tends not to have a conscious goal. Innovation is 

creativity that does have a conscious goal. So creativity is what is common to culture, 

innovation, and development, in that they are all different expressions of it. 

The American Dream (Politics) 

The American Dream can be summed up in one word: opportunity. The essence 

of Americanism is opportunity. Everybody has the opportunity to improve their lives. 

People are not locked into pre-existing social arrangements. Whatever circumstances 

they are born into, they are able to change and improve their lives. That is what the 

American Dream is. 

And it is not just a dream: it is to a considerable extent a reality. It isn’t simply 

that, in the United States, people are supposed to be able to change their lives for the 

better. They actually do so; it is practically a regular occurrence. In fact, although it may 

be not the norm, it is certainly a norm. 

In this country, people whose parents did not go to college themselves 

frequently go to college and make good lives for themselves, with the result that, 

although they themselves started out at one social tier, their own children are born into

a higher social tier, with correspondingly more opportunities and fewer obstacles to 

capitalizing on those opportunities. And there are similar opportunities for change and 

growth for those who are born into higher social tiers: they are not required, as they are 

in other cultures, to repeat what their parents did. They do not have to assume a 

position in the proverbial ‘family business.’ They can strike out on their own. I personally 

have known children of investment bankers who became writers and professors, and I 

have known children of professors and writer who became investment bankers—or who 

went onto start some entirely new business or even new kind of business. 

And this last fact brings us to an important fact about the American Dream. The 

American Dream isn’t simply about being able to move up within some pre-existing 

social structure. It is also about being able to change that structure. Bill Gates came 

from a well-to-do family. He could have just completed his degree at Harvard and more 

or less just coasted, working as a computer scientist or financier. But he didn’t just 

coast; he invented a new product—nay, a new kind of product: the personal computer. 

And he didn’t just invent that product: he made it available to literally billions of people 

for a modest price. 

I don’t know what Bill Gates’ personal motivations were in doing this, but the 

effect of his actions was to make life easier and better. Right now, in writing this very 

essay, I am using the operating system that he invented and also made available for a

modest price. And it is very likely that in reading this essay, you too are using these 

same inventions. 

Bill Gates is not alone in this. Think about todays’ IT and tech-giants: Mark 

Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sergei Brin, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos. All of these people are 

Americans, either by birth or by naturalization, and all of them chose to ‘set up shop’, as 

it were, in the United States. 

Why did they make this choice? Because this country is hospitable to big ideas 

and to big innovations. It is hospitable in a purely logistical, as in, the laws of this 

country do not discourage it even encourage it, there being, for example, tax-breaks for 

start-ups along with government-sponsored business-education programs. And there is 

also a special ‘place’, as it were, in the American psyche for somebody who strikes out 

on his own and tries to ‘make it big.’ People are people, no matter where you go; and 

people tend to respond two novelty with suspicion and they tend to respond to 

successful upstarts with envy and fear. And granting that Americans are by no means an 

exception to this, there is a value that all Americans seem to have internalized to the 

effect that ‘all bets are off’---that there is to be a suspension of all of the usual pettiness 

and resentment that is usually directed towards people who are trying to make 

something of themselves; that such people are to be ‘given a break’ and allowed to 

follow their dreams. So if somebody suddenly quits his job as phone-salesperson in 

order to start a company, he is not ridiculed or hassled for doing so. It is understood

that, business being what it is, may not succeed, at least not initially. But over and above 

the difficulties that are inherent in starting a business, he is not thwarted for doing so. 

A related point is that in this country, to a much greater degree than in other 

countries, people are given a second chance—and a third, and a fourth. In fact, the 

whole concept of the second chance is a distinctively American concept. This country is 

about giving people second chances, in business and in life in general. Think about the 

late Anthony Bourdain. At the age of 45, Bourdain was, in his own words, “basically a fry 

cook.” And then he boldly quit his fry cook job and started a career as a combination of 

explorers, chef, and cyber-preneur. Before ‘breaking out’, Bourdain had had a decidedly 

checkered and uneven career, having numerous battles with substance abuse and other 

personal demons. But despite it all, he had his intellect, his creativity, and his boldness; 

and he not only succeeded in making money, but succeeded in re-inventing a tired 

industry. 

This country’s history is replete with Anthony Bourdain’s---with people who were 

on the precipice of financial and emotional disaster but who, at the last minute, pulled 

themselves together. Let us not forget that Harlan (‘Colonel’) Sanders was 65 when he 

opened his first Kentucky Fried Chicken Restaurant. 

I would not go so far as to say that at the moment I embody the American Dream. 

But I aspire to embody it. I want to become a dentist. I have always wanted to become a 

dentist. People ask me ‘Why do you want to become a dentist, Jonathan?’ And I have no

eady response. I honestly believe that, just as certain people are cut out for finance and 

others for the military, so some people really want to help others by fixing their teeth. I 

believe that an interest dentistry is a specific evolutionary deviation---that such an 

interest pre-dates tens of thousands of years the existence of dentistry in anything like 

its modern form 

In any case, given my passion for dentistry, it is clear how I need the American 

Dream to come through for me: I need the opportunity to learn the craft of dentistry; I 

need to learn how to help people as a dentist; and I therefore need to attend the 

possible schools and programs. And the American Dream is coming through for me in 

that respect. Because I have worked so hard at my classes and been rewarded with 

correspondingly high grades, it is overwhelmingly likely that I will have the privilege of 

being accepted to one of the prestigious institutions to which, in pursuit of my own 

private American Dream of becoming a dentist, I am seeking admittance 

Knowledge-capital (Politics/Economics/Philosophy) 

In today’s world, property is important, but knowledge is more important than 

property. Suppose that Person A has unlimited knowledge/intelligence but no property, 

and suppose that Person B has property but little to no intelligence or knowledge. 

Person A can probably acquire property; in fact, there is little limit to how much

property he can acquire. And once Person A has property, there is little or no limit how 

much he can make it grow. By contrast, the best Person B can do is hold his position: he 

can hold onto the property that he has but (setting aside blind luck) cannot make it 

grow. In a market economy, anyone who can figure out a way to satisfy market 

demands is able to add to his holdings, and it is knowledge, and knowledge alone, that 

enables one to be able to satisfy market-demands. 

In a feudal economy or a command economy, property seldom passes from one 

person to another, tending to remain fixed. Such economies are not dynamic, and 

participants in such economies, having as they do little way to improve their lot, focus 

more on property-retention than on property-acquisition. In such an economy, it 

doesn’t pay to invest in one’s own education, since there is no guarantee that one will 

be in a position to market one’s education. But in a market-economy, there is such a 

guarantee, since in such an economy one can always find a way to trade knowledge or 

skill for property. 

This is why since the beginning of the Enlightenment, one’s stature in society has 

come to depend increasingly on one’s own abilities, including intellectual abilities, and 

decreasingly on the social position that one happened to be born into. A market 

economy is an Enlightenment (or, technically, post-Enlightenment economy), and in 

such an economy one’s ability to acquire property, and even sometimes just to retain, 

depends largely one’s abilities, especially one’s intellectual abilities.

Kant published his paper “What is Enlightenment?” in 1784. The Enlightenment 

was already three centuries old at that point. But it wasn’t until around this time that 

Enlightenment views caught up with economic practice. During the most of the period 

between around 1550 to 1750, the average citizen’s ability to transact was severely 

restricted; in order to play a given trade, or even engage on some specific venture 

within a trade that he was already practicing, he often needed special dispensations 

from government officials or from guilds. This was beginning to change in the mid- 

1700’s. As a result, the average citizen was increasingly able, and increasingly obligated, 

to stake his own claim in the market-place. 

Given that markets were beginning to be free when Kant wrote his essay, 

individuals had to start being self-reliant or, to use Kant’s term, ‘autonomous.’ In a truly 

free market, nothing is permanent. Institutions come and go, depending on what 

consumers want. Under such circumstances, the individual cannot rely on fixed 

institutions or indeed on anything other than his own ability. This means that people 

have to decide for themselves how their lives will be. And this is one of the main points 

of Kant’s essay, as its opening words make clear: 

“Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the 

inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is 

self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of

courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere 

aude.) ‘Have the courage to use your own understanding,’ is therefore the motto of the 

enlightenment.” 

In a non-market economy, the exhortation to ‘have the courage to use your own 

understanding’ is without operational meaning. It is well and good to urge an 

indentured servant to ‘think for himself’, but even if he does manage to think for 

himself, it won’t do him any good in a practical sense. But in a market-economy that 

exhortation is on point, since one ultimately has nothing to rely on in such an economy 

other than one’s own judgment. 

That in turn is why general education has replaced apprenticeships as the way of 

inducting people into the workforce. When the economy was less free, professions were 

not constantly being improved or replaced, and one could guarantee a living for oneself 

by deciding on a particular trade. Now that the economy is free and therefore volatile, 

this doesn’t necessarily work, and workers, even skilled workers, are constantly having 

to acquire new skills in order to earn a living. For this reason, they need the foundation 

of a broad education, as opposed to an apprenticeship. Hence Daniel Allen’s statement 

in his article “What is Education For?”:

“The dominant policy paradigm attends almost exclusively to education’s 

vocational purpose: the goal is to ensure that young people, and society generally, can 

compete in a global economy. This view is tightly connected to a technocratic economic 

policy that focuses on the dissemination of skills as a way to reduce inequality in a 

technology-dependent economy.” 

Implicit in this statement is the idea that one’s financial capital depends on one’s 

intellectual capital. A corollary of the latter is that intellectual capital (including access to 

knowledge) is at least as important as, and in some ways more important, possession of 

property. 

There is another relevant fact, namely, that in market economies, there is an 

extremely high degree of specialization and there is a correspondingly high degree of 

division of labor. The reason for this is that in market-economies efficiency is reward 

and, as Adam Smith points out, a high-degree of division of labor is efficient: 

“The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater 

part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is any where directed, or applied, 

seem to have been the effects of the division of labour…”

Being able to survive in a market-economy thus tends to involve being able to do 

highly specialized work. And because market economies are dynamic, it also tends to 

involve being able do a series of different specialized kinds of work. So from the 

standpoint of competing in a market-economy, what matters is not having this or that 

specific body of knowledge, but is rather having the ability to acquire knowledge-ondemand. 

In other words, what matters is access to knowledge, such access being the 

modern version of capital. 

Four Essays on Modern History (History/Politics) 

Answers to Graduate School Exam Questions about Colonialism, Imperialism, and 

Nationalism 

1) To what extent was nationalism responsible for the catastrophic wars of the 

twentieth century? How did Europeans attempt to curtail the dangers of nationalism 

in the wake of World War II? In what ways did European nationalism persist during 

the Cold War? 

WWI was a consequence of nationalism, in that it involved a number of nationstates 

trying to break free of the Austro-Hungarian empire and was sustained by a

conflict between the UK/USA and Germany, which, though it was largely economic in 

nature, had a nationalistic character and was certainly represented in British and 

American propaganda as being nationalistic in character. 

Germany lost WWI and was bankrupted by the subsequent peace accord (the 

Treaty of Versailles) Hitler convinced the German people that Germany had made too 

many concessions to foreign powers and advocated a policy of nationalism, meaning 

economic and political self-containment, which included anti-Semitism, since he saw the 

Jewish people as being international in character . Hitler’s nationalism involved his 

violating the sovereignty of other nations, notably Poland, which served as a 

precipitating cause of WW2. Other countries (UK, USA, USSR: the allies) sought to 

contain Germany. Germany joined forces with Japan, which, like Germany, had an 

intensely nationalistic ethos. The allies won, at which point the US and USSR entered 

into a 50 year cold war, which was more about capitalism vs. communism that it was 

about this nation vs. that nation. 

The conflicts following WW2, e.g. Korea and Vietnam, were largely about 

communism vs. capitalism but had nationalistic components, especially in the case of 

Vietnam, which was in part about Vietnamese self-determination. 

After the USSR fell, the ‘Soviet Empire’ immediately disbanded, with each of its 

member-states quickly reverting to its pre-Soviet condition, i.e. with Poland, Georgia, 

Hungary etc. all quickly reverting to being Sovereign states.

Although nationalism was a factor in the wars of the 20th century, it was not the 

only factor. For example, Japan’s involvement in WW2 was largely about its oil supply 

being cut off, and the Gulf War, though supposedly about protecting the Kurdish people, 

was at least arguably about providing the US with a continued supply of oil. 

2) Trace the ideological evolution of Europe during the century stretching from 

1890- 1989. Would it be correct to argue that the ideological center of gravity shifted 

leftward during this period? If so, why? If not, what would be a better description of 

the ideological changes that took place during World War I, World War II, and the 

inter-war period? What might account for the global rightward shift in the ideological 

center of gravity since 1989? 

Since WW2, there has been a massive shift away from nationalism to globalism. 

This is partly because of the odium that Hitler’s movement attached to nationalism, but 

it is also because as the world’s economy simply became more global, requiring relaxing 

of boarders and a generally less xenophobic attitude than might have been acceptable 

in earlier times. Relatedly, the British and French empires, mainly the former, disbanded 

during this time, partly because it ceased to be seen as acceptable for a country to

colonize other countries, this being a consequence of a leftward shift in political thinking 

following WW2. 

During the post WW2 period, there continued to be conflicts between ‘liberal’ 

and ‘conservative’ ideologies, but whereas these conflicts had previously been about 

social conservatism vs. social liberalism (e.g. opponents of women’s suffrage vs. 

proponents of it), they tended in the aftermath of WW2 to concern economic liberalism 

vs. economic conservatism, with ‘conservatives’ championing the free market and 

‘liberals’ championing the ‘welfare state.’ 

The ‘global rightward shift’ since 1989 is due to the utter failure of the Soviet 

Union and to the consequent loss of faith in a hyper-regulated economy. As a result of 

this failure, there came to be tremendous faith in the free market, and this faith 

continues to grow. So in this sense there has been a ‘rightward shift’ since 1989. But in 

other respects, the post-WW2 leftward shift has continued, with gay rights, transgender 

rights etc. now being seen as mainstream and normal. So in sum, since WW2, there has 

been a rightward shift in economic thought and a leftward shift in social and political 

thought, both of these being due to the success of the free market and the failure of the 

controlled.

3) Many scholars have argued that between 1492 and 1989, European culture 

became increasingly secularized. How valid is this thesis? If you agree that Europe 

became more secularized, how can you explain it? What key developments or events 

might account for the process? If you disagree with the thesis, then explain how and 

why certain forms of religious practice and sentiment have persisted. Has religion 

truly declined in Europe since 1492, or has it simply migrated to less recognizable 

domains of human activity, such as nationalistic politics and culture? 

Europe most definitely has become more secular since 1492. This is mainly 

because science and technology progress enormously during that period, making it clear 

that a number of ‘articles of faith’ (e.g. that the Earth is the center of the Universe, that 

people came into existence 6,000 years ago, etc.) are simply false. Also, as science and 

technology progressed, people came to turn to science/technology for answers, which it 

provided much of the time, and less to religion, which never had provided particularly 

cogent answers and which only offered emotional comforts, as opposed to actual 

solutions. 

Religion itself was responsible for its displacement in that Martin Luther, by 

breaking away from the Catholic Church, enormously weakened the power of the latter, 

thereby making religion more of a personal matter and less of an institutional matter.

In the mid-1700s, owing in large part to the works of Locke and Adam Smith, 

whose worldviews in their turn owed much to Newtonian scientific rationalism, 

European economies came to be increasingly less dominated by political authorities and 

increasingly driven by market forces. 

People have an impulse to be religious and religion certainly still exists in the 

West, much more so in the USA than in Europe, and arguably some of the fanaticism 

and dogmatism that used to be reserved for religious faith was channeled into 

nationalism. But for the most part religious faith in the West has been on the decline. 

The key developments leading to secularization, were the birth of physics and 

chemistry, the industrial revolution, European colonization of the New World (which 

gave European powers enormous incentives to liberalize trade with one another), the 

theory of Evolution and, arguably, the development of psychoanalytic thought. 

4) Since 1492, Europeans have increasingly encountered non-Europeans across 

the globe, yet the terms of those encounters have changed over time. Write an essay 

that traces the history of European colonization, imperialism, and decolonization from 

1492 to 1989. 

Europe began colonizing the New World as soon as it discovered it in 1492. The 

driving forces behind European colonization were largely economic in nature. Because

Europe needed cheap labor to service the colonies, it forced many non-Europeans into 

slavery. This gave the colonists economic incentives to have racist attitudes towards 

non-Europeans, since slavery is not justifiable except on the basis of a deeply racist 

attitudes towards those who are enslaved. 

At the same time, colonization assumed different forms in different places. In 

North America, colonization was less about exploiting the native populations than it was 

about constructing a new economy from scratch. As a result, the North American 

economy was based more on skilled labor and industry than on agriculture and 

therefore could not be based solely on the exploitation of one group of people by 

another. In Central and South America, however, there were (and still are) large native 

populations who could be pressed into slavery (or near slavery). Moreover, those 

economies, being largely based on mining (of precious metals) and agriculture (coffee, 

sugar, rubber) were based more on unskilled labor than on skilled labor and could to a 

greater extent than North American economies be serviced by slave labor. 

The economy in the United States was ultimately based on the free market, and 

for this reason, along with the obvious fact that slavery is immoral, slavery was 

abolished in the USA in 1865. This inaugurated a slow but steady process of eliminating 

racial attitudes in the New World among people of European descent. 

During the 19th Century, there was a fierce wave of French and British 

imperialist colonization of Africa and Asia, all of which was obviously facilitated by a

certain degree of racism on their part. After WW2, and because of it, these empires 

quickly disbanded, mainly because WW2 was in large part a war against racism, and 

although racism continues to this day, it doesn’t exist in the deeply entrenched, 

institutionally backed way that it used, this being people are not denied suffrage or 

other rights on the basis of race. In a word, WW2 shattered the ideological basis for 

imperialism, as well as racism, leading to independence of countries such as India 

(liberated from Britain in 1948), Algeria (liberated from France in 1962) and Vietnam 

(liberated from France in 1958). In some cases, decolonization involved armed revolt (as 

in Algeria), in other it didn’t. 

In short, free market economies are inherently non-racist. They can involve 

exploitation and exploitation can be racist in nature. But ultimately such economies 

require people to be able to transact with each other to be able to buy at the lowest 

price and sell at the highest price, which it tends to be hard to do if there are racist 

policies that restrict who can sell their labor and determine how much they can sell it 

for. 

Why is the United States so Energy-inefficient? (Sociology)

The United States is energy-inefficient in two ways. First, we use more energy per 

capita than does any other country. Second, we use energy less efficiently than other 

countries, in the sense that we get less work-output per energy-input. 

A number of specific reasons for this have been proposed. For example 64 : 

(i) 

There are number of old businesses in the United States that use 

antiquated an therefore energy-inefficient methods. 

(ii) 

There are disproportionately many start-ups in the United States, and, 

being managed by neophyte business-administrators, start-ups are energy-inefficient. 

(iii) 

US customers have a taste for luxury and they demand wastefulness: 

shoppers demand full-blas AC in the summers and full-blast heat in the winter. 

(iv) 

Many companies in the United States have wasteful business practices, 

e.g. their employees leave computers on all night, the reason being that the employees 

do not personally have a stake in their host-companies’ being energy-efficient. 

64 

These four reasons are taken from: 

http://www.stonemarmot.com/rantrave/usenergy.html

But whether taken individually or collectively, (i)-(iv) are not the real reason why 

the US is so energy-efficient. (In fact, it isn’t clear that any one of them is even a 

reason.) The reason is cultural in nature. 

The United States is all about the the American Dream. And what is the American 

Dream? It is about living in the suburbs and commuting 45 minutes by car into the city 

every day. It is about having not one, but two or even three cars in the garage. It is 

about having a large screen TV, and a pool in the backyard. 

The American Dream is not merely about living well. It is possible to live well 

without living wastefully. The American dream is about living well by living nonausterely. 

The American dream is also about independence. And obviously there is nothing 

with this and much that is good about it. But it has come to mean in practice is that one 

is seen as a failure in the United States if one takes the bus. Indeed, no one is more 

ridiculed and seen as a failure than somebody who ‘has to take the bus’, instead of 

driving his own car. And no one is seen as more of a success than somebody who drives 

an expensive car—not an economy car, which is almost seen as a sign of poverty, but a 

gas-guzzler, like the $85,000 Ford Raptor, which is one quarter as efficient as a Hyundai 

Elantra, but also—and perhaps partly for that reason---has around four times as much 

social cache.

American culture is about making it. And making it is equated with making more 

money. And the most visible indicators that one has made money tend involve wasteful 

practices---large air-conditioned penthouses, gas-guzzling cars and planes, long 

weekend commutes to the Hamptons, and so on. 

Whereas an ancient nation like China or Greece is about culture, the United 

States is about economics and economic success. And economic success, at least as 

interpreted by most people, is about “conspicuous consumption”, to use Thorstein 

Veblen’s expression. And it is the distinctively American identification of success with 

consumerism—with conspicuous consumption, in other words—that the roots of 

American energy-inefficiency lie. 

Stalin’s Nationalism vs. Putin’s Nationalism (History/Politics) 

Stalin did. 

Putin’s rule is similar in some key respects to Stalin’s. Let us begin by saying what 

Stalin

Stalin was the Marxist dictator of the Soviet Union form 1923-1953. Stalin had 

two objectives: He wanted to make Soviet Union be as communist as possible, and he 

also wanted to hold onto power. These two objectives of his were confluent. 

Communism is the doctrine that nobody is to have any private property (on a 

commercially significant scale). 

And so it was the Stalin divested people of all of their property. The State took 

everything. Farmers gave up their land, their livestock, even their lodging to the State. 

This was true not just of those in the agricultural sector, but of everybody. 

Nobody owned anything. The state owned everything, and everyone worked for the 

state. 

Given that the state owned everything, the State was everything. The nation was 

everything: it owned everything, decided what kind of work people were to do, decided 

who would work in the Gulag and who would be ‘free’, decided who would live and who 

would die, decided what people could read, what move is they could watch, and what 

radio programs they could listen to. Thus the Soviet Union was indeed completely 

totalitarian, in the sense that the state was governed the totality of each person’s 

existence. 

In the Soviet Union, all action, all commerce, and even all thought were state 

controlled (at least, to the extent that control of thought is a consequence of control of 

education and media).

In the Soviet Union, everything existed for the sake of the Soviet Nation, and the 

latter was therefore a maximally nationalist nation. 

A consequence of this hyper-nationalism is that different ethnicities and subnationalities 

were cruelly absorbed into this homogeneous Soviet behemoth. Subnational 

differences were suppressed; all official history was Soviet history; all education 

was Soviet education; all official culture was Soviet Culture. To the extent that Georgian 

or Ukrainian or Chechen culture different from Soviet Culture, it was not tolerated. They 

were not tolerated because the Soviet Union was to be a single communist nation, not a 

plurality of ideologically different nations and not, moreover, a plurality of ideologically 

different people. 

A consequence of agricultural collectivization was widespread feminine. To some 

extent this consequence was unintended, being a mere consequence of administrative 

incompetence on the part of the Soviet Leadership. But to a considerable extent, it was 

deliberate, being used as a way of defeating sub-nations and bullying them into 

submission to the Soviet Union. And so it was that Stalin’s regime actively encourage the 

collectivization-caused mass-famine in the Ukraine, which caused the death of 

10,000,000 Ukrainians. 

Vladimir Putin is not quite in the same category as Joseph Stalin. First of all, 

Russia under Putin is a capitalist/free-market society. (There are some restrictions on

commerce, but they are comparable to those in the United States.) But there are some 

similarities between Putin’s style of leadership and Stalin’s. 

Putin 

First of all, Putin, like Stalin, is an arch-nationalist. But whereas Stalin’s 

nationalism was a consequence largely of his communism, Putin’s nationalism is about 

preserving Russia’s historical identity (or what Putin perceives to be that identity). Putin 

wants Russia to retain the religious and moral traditions that it had before the Soviet 

Era; he wants Russia to be Christian, and he wants social and political relations between 

people to conform to a rather traditionalist paradigm, with traditional gender roles and 

traditional views about sexual orientation. (It should be pointed that Putin’s 

traditionalism in these respects is quite circumscribed: There are more female 

physicians and physicists per capita in Russia than in the United States. And people are 

not jailed for being gay in Russia, even though they may be jailed for being, as Putin sees 

it, for being gay in a disruptively political manner.) 

Also, under Putin, as under Stalin, there is only limited freedom of the Press. 

There are two facets to this. First, the media is not allowed to question the legitimacy of 

Putin’s power. Second, the Media is not to discourage the growth of Western liberalism 

and anti-traditionalism within Russia. Obviously, Putin’s nationalism is directly

esponsible only for the second of these two facts, the first being a consequence not so 

much of Putin’s nationalism as of his simple desire to retain power. 

But Putin’s nationalism is confluent with this desire to stay in power. As a 

nationalist, Putin’s intention is to subordinate diversity to a single national norm. And as 

somebody who wants to have power, it is in Putin’s interest to subordinate diversity to a 

single norm. Also, given that Putin, as supreme leader, is the state (up to a point), there 

is (to that extent) no difference between subordinating everyone in Russia to Russia, on 

the one hand, subordinating everybody in Russia to Putin, on the other hand. 

The same was true of Stalin. As a communist-nationalist, Stalin wanted to 

subordinate diversity to a single nationalist norm. And as somebody who wanted to hold 

onto power, it was in Stalin’s interest to subordinate diversity to a single nationalist 

norm. And given that Stalin was the supreme leader, there was to that extent no 

difference (to that extent) between subordinating everyone in the Soviet Union to the 

Soviet Union, on the one hand, and subordinating everyone in the soviet Union to Stalin, 

on the other. 

The Economic Consequences of Minimum Wage (Economics/Public Policy) 

• Read Miller's classic 1956 article on the Magical Number Seven and 

Kalbach’s (2002) critique of the application of Miller’s theory. You can find both articles

under Course Materials under Week 3. Then find an application, research article, video, 

or something else that uses and applies Miller’s theory. Provide an explanation of how 

Miller’s theory is used. Then provide a short critique, addressing elements similar to the 

ones used by Kalbach. Be sure to provide a full citation in 6th edition APA format where 

you found your information. 

It is very important that you put everything in your own words. Do not cut and paste 

blocks of information. You have been provided with a rubric under the Course 

Information tab of the class. Be sure to follow the guidelines in the rubric in order to 

receive all your points. Your first post is due on Wednesday night at 11:59 p.m. All other 

posts must be done by 11:59 p.m. on Sunday evening. You must respond to three 

classmates’ original posts. Any posts submitted after Sunday night at 11:59 p.m. will not 

be counted. 

74 

Top of Form 

Bottom of Form 

Why Minimum Wage is Wrong

My topic is minimum wage. The question I will answer is: Should minimum wage 

be increased? The answer I will defend is: No, it should not be increased. 

There are three reasons why it supposedly makes economic sense to increase 

minimum wage. 

First, there must be minimum wage (and minimum wage must periodically be 

increased) to ensure that workers make enough money for basic necessities (lodging, 

food, healthcare): an employee who is physically ill or malnourished is not a productive 

employee, and workers must be paid enough to ensure that they are adequately 

nourished and have healthcare and lodging. (Technically, a homeless person can be well 

nourished and healthy, but homelessness dramatically increases the likelihood of 

physical injury and illness, and workers must therefore be paid enough to have lodging.) 

In the short run, underpaying employees saves employers money and might therefore 

seem to help businesses grow. But in the long run, businesses that depend on underpaid 

workers tend to fail, since underpaid workers tend not to be physically healthy enough 

to be competent workers. 65 

Second, there must be minimum wage (and periodic increases thereof) if 

employees are to ensure that workers have a psychologically acceptable standard of 

living. If a worker has just enough for food, lodging and healthcare, he is likely to feel 

65 

See Marshall (1890) and Smith (1776), both of whom argue at length that it is more 

expensive, both to employers and the economy as a whole, than to pay them 

adequately.

demoralized and also to experience depression and other forms of mental illness, and 

mental illness, like physical illness, diminishes competence. A worker whose life is pure 

tedium simply won’t perform very well on the job, especially if his job involves any 

degree of cognitive acumen. So even though it may seem to make economic sense for 

employers to underpay their employees, the result of doing so is a workforce that 

underperforms and therefore fails to contribute both to the businesses that employ 

them and to the economy as a whole. 66 

Third, it is important that workers be paid enough not just to be physically and 

psychologically healthy but also to have some surplus capital. There are two reasons 

why workers need surplus capital. First, they need to raise their children properly, 

children being the next generation of workers. Second, economic growth is largely a 

consequence of new businesses coming into existence; people needed surpluses of 

wealth to start businesses (the bare minimum won’t suffice); and if workers don’t have 

such surpluses, then entire class of people who could start businesses won’t be able to 

do so. Be it noted that workers to a greater extent than others have industry-specific 

knowledge and may know what kinds of businesses to build and how to build them. So it 

66 

See Myerson (1997), who argues that for the reason just given minimum wage 

increases are necessary to prevent places of business from becoming soul-destroying 

‘sweatshops.’

is important that they be paid more than the bare minimum, so that they can at least 

have a chance to try to build such businesses. 67 

There are three reasons why, despite what was just said, minimum wage 

increases (and minimum wage in general) hurt the economy more than they help it. 

First, when minimum wage is increased above its natural (market) level, 

employers have to downsize and also stop hiring, making it hard for people to find jobs 

and to make a living. So even though raising minimum wage from $7.50/hour to 

$15/hour would seem to put more money in the pockets of workers, the reality is that 

this ‘wage-increase’ really amounts in most cases to a wage-decrease from $7.50/hour 

to $0/hour, since an unemployed worker makes nothing. 68 

Second, when minimum wage is increased, employers often lack the funds to 

compete even after they downsize. Businesses need employees: it is not an option for 

them to fire everybody. And minimum wage increases may make it impossible for them 

to compete while also paying their employees, even after they have downsized. 69 

Third, when minimum wage increases do not altogether destroy businesses, they 

do tend to eat up their profits, leaving them no surplus to capital to invest back into 

themselves or into the economy in general. If a pharmaceutical company has just 

67 

Adam Smith (1776) was one of the first economists to point out that surpluses are 

necessary for economic growth and also that there won’t be adequate surpluses unless 

workers are adequately compensated. 

68 

Milton Friedman (2009) makes this point, as does Jevons (1871). 

69 

Sowell (2017) makes this point, as do Friedman (2009) and Jevons (1871).

enough money to pay its staff, it won’t have enough to invest in research and 

development, which means it won’t be able to grow and won’t be able to contribute 

new medications to the economy. For this reason, minimum wage increase result in a 

lackluster economy and are to be avoided. 70 

Finally, even though workers should obviously be paid enough for them and their 

children to be healthy and educated, while also having some surplus capital of their 

own, market forces see to it that this is done naturally. It isn’t naturally that the 

government intervene by artificially inflating wages. And if the government does 

intervene, the result is that employers have to pay workers more than their actual 

market value; in other words, they must pay workers for work they are not actually 

doing. This makes it hard for businesses to stay in business, let alone grow and create 

new jobs, and this in turn results in loss of employment and a weak economy. 71 

Friedman, Milton. 2009. “Response to President Obama’s proposal to raise the 

minimum wage.” Retrieved from http://www.aei.org/publication/milton-friedmanresponds-to-president-obamas-proposal-to-raise-the-minimum-wage-the-most-antiblack-law-in-the-land/ 

70 

Sowell (2017), Friedman (2009) and Jevons (1871) makes this point. 

71 

Henry Hazlitt makes this point, as do Smith (1776), Jevons (1871), Friedman (2009) 

and Sowell (2017).

Hazlitt, Henry. Economics in One Lesson. Retrieved from: 

https://mises.org/wire/hazlitt-explains-minimum-wage-laws 

Jevons, William Stanley. 1871. A Treatise on Political Economy. Retried from 

https://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Jevons/jvnPE.html 

Marshall, Alfred. 1890. Principles of Economics. London: Oxford University Press. 

Myerson, Allen. In Principle, a Case For More 'Sweatshops.” Originally published 

in the New York Times (June 22, 1997). Retrieved from: 

https://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/22/weekinreview/in-principle-a-case-for-moresweatshops.html 

Sowell, Thomas. (2017) “Minimum Wage Madness. Retrieved from 

https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/09/13/minimum-wage-madness 

Nations. 

Smith, Adam, 1776. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of

Exposition 

Von Mises, Ludwig; Goddard, Arthur (1979). Liberalism: A Socio-Economic 

Pot Legalization in California: Prop 64 (Current Events) 

In California, in 2016, Proposition 64 passed, making recreational marijuana use 

legal in the state of California. 72 This seems to have many upsides, and few downsides. 

The likely upsides include: 

*Revenue to the state of California from taxes on the sale of Marijuana, 

*An improved economy, owing to the new economic vistas opened up by the 

possibility of legally growing, marketing, and distributing marijuana, 

*Decreased contempt for the law, owing to the removal of unpopular and hardto-enforce 

(and impossible-enforce-in-an-equitable-manner) marijuana laws 

*Shrinkage of a criminal justice system bloated with so-called ‘drug-offenders’, 

many of whom have spent years in jail or on parole or probation for marijuana-related 

offenses, 

*Freeing up of funds now dedicated to zero-sum 

72 

http://time.com/4565438/california-marijuana-faq-rules-prop-64/

*Improved morale, owing to decreased contempt 

Zara’s Supply-chain Efficiency (Business) 

To: CEO 

Re: Strategic Factors Impacting Wearable Wishes' Competitive Environment 

Our company, Wearable Wishes, has a number of strengths, but our competitor, 

Zara, has each of these strengths to a comparable or greater degree, and it also has 

several strengths that we lack. 

First of all, Zara is extremely effective at using data-analytics to determine what 

customers want and, on that basis, to design fashions that sell. 73 Wearable Wishes 

certainly does use data-analytics, but it does not use as effectively as Zara. This, I 

believe, is because Zara has a well-defined concept (it provides consumers with 

lightning-fast access to low-cost but respectable imitations of the very latest fashions), 

whereas Wearable Wishes has a more generic concept (we provide consumers with 

73 

https://digit.hbs.org/submission/zara-leverages-data-analytics-to-understandconsumer-tastes/

easonably fashionable clothes at moderate prices), with the result that Zara knows 

exactly what to look for in data-analytics, whereas we don’t. 

In any case, Zara’s focused use of analytics is a serious threat to us, since it 

enables Zara to pinpoint what customers want. This means that Zara can focus on 

products that it knows with reasonable certainty will sell. This in turn means that it does 

not waste resources create, shipping, and marketing products that nobody will buy. We, 

on the other hand, create, distribute, and market products that people don’t buy at the 

original price and that we are forced to heavily discount to offset costs. Also, because 

Zara’s products are so in line with consumer demand, Zara has a special place in the 

hearts of potential customers, whereas customers view us, with our relatively batting 

average, with a certain suspicion or, at least, without the same respect. Therefore, the 

effect on us of Zara’s precision analytics is negative, as it increases Zara’s market-share 

and decreases ours. 

Also, Zara’s use of analytics, like all cases of industry-efficiency, has a positive 

effect on the economy. 74 The economy slows down when people don’t buy. Because of 

Zara’s effective use of analytics, its products are, so to speak, flying off the shelves, and 

Zara therefore has to hire more people----more people to market, manufacture, design, 

distribute, and so on. Our failure to use analytics effectively has the opposite 

74 

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/bending-the-curve-on-industrialenergy-efficiency

consequence: products remain on shelves unsold. This means that we lose money and 

therefore have to let people go. This in turn means that those people are unemployed, 

at least for a while, and therefore spend less, which has a cooling effect on the 

economy. Of course, we are a single, medium-sized company, so that cooling effect is 

likely to be unnoticeable; but large-scale economic slow-downs are the result of many 

little economic slowdowns. 

Another important fact about Zara is that it has an unusually high degree of 

control over its own supply chain. It is able to create and distribute products with 

amazing speed. This benefits Zara in many ways. 75 First of all, it minimizes the lag time 

between requests for products and receipt of those products. If a given retailer wants 

10,000 units of a certain kind of handbag, Zara is able to oblige more or less right away, 

whereas Zara’s competitors, including us, take a bit longer. Zara is therefore better than 

its competitors at supplying the public with products while they are still fashionable and 

the public still wants them. 76 It also, I suspect, creates a willingness on the part of 

retailers to do some free marketing on Zara’s behalf. If the owner of retail-outlet X 

knows that Zara can fill orders within a matter of days, he will be on the lookout for hot 

new items and will let Zara know. 77 He will not be very interested in talking to someone 

75 

https://www.tradegecko.com/blog/zara-supply-chain-its-secret-to-retail-success 

76 

https://www.scmglobe.com/zara-clothing-company-supply-chain/ 

77 

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/bending-the-curve-on-industrialenergy-efficiency

who will take months and months to fill the order, since, by then, the product in 

question may be a loser. 78 

Zara’s fast and efficient supply chain bodes ill for us. We lose business to Zara, 

since Zara is able to get the product to customers before we can, not to mention that 

merchandise is more likely than ours to be fashionable when it hits the stores. 

Zara’s efficient supply-chain, like all cases of industrial efficiency, will have a 

positive effect on the economy. It will lead to increased sales and therefore to increased 

jobs and therefore to increased spending. Our relatively inefficient supply chain will 

have the opposite effect, since it leads to decreased sales, lay-offs, and decreased 

spending. To be sure, setting aside a few juggernauts, like Microsoft, the success or 

failure of any given company is not likely to have a noticeable effect on the economy. 

But, as previously stated, noticeable effects are compounded out of unnoticeable ones. 

All of this said, Zara’s primary strategic advantage, I believe, is not its use of 

analytics or its efficient supply-chain, but is rather its highly differentiated product. 

Fashion-driven clothes buyers would ideally like to have hyper-fashionable clothes; but 

those clothes are far too expensive for most buyers. Zara has targeted such people and 

has, in effect, made a deal with them. It has agreed to sell them inexpensive but 

creditable knock-offs of super-fashionable clothes. By contrast, we provide reasonably 

78 

https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/H-M-fast-fashion-zara-uniqlo-supply-chainlogistics/439410/

fashionable, moderately priced clothes. So we are ‘stuck in the middle’, servicing neither 

high-fashionistas nor penny-pinchers, whereas Zara services the former and, to a 

greater extent than us, the latter. 

Some might say that Zara and Wearable Fashions do not have the same target 

audience and therefore are in competition, with Zara servicing those who want high 

fashion and Wearable fashions serving those who want clothes of the ‘respectable’ 

variety. I do not agree with this view. Many people who end up settling for semifashionable 

clothes would like to have extremely fashionable clothes, and we have to 

assume that Zara is taking customers away from us. 79 As for the consequences for the 

economy of Zara’s highly differentiated, the obvious position is that it has no such 

consequence. Again, I disagree. Sales benefit the economy; the absence hurts. Because 

of its highly-differentiated line of goods, along with its large customer-base, Zara’s 

products sell and therefore stimulate the economy. Also, Zara’s aggressive use of 

analytics and its supply-chain efficiency encourages other companies to step up their 

game, which in turn leads to technological and organizational innovations, which in their 

turn often do have noticeably positive macroeconomic consequences. 

Microsoft Financial analysis 2016-2018 (Business/Accounting) 

Introduction 678 

79 

https://www.thecut.com/2016/03/please-make-high-fashion-women-will-want-towear.html

Operating Cash Flow 679 

Common Equity 680 

Profitability 681 

Return on Equity 681 

Net Profit Margin 682 

Asset Turnover 682 

Leverage 683 

Return on Assets 684 

Conclusion 684 

Sources 684 

Introduction 

This present work is a financial analysis of Microsoft during the years 2017-2018. 

2016 is included when the necessary data is available in course-documents. Other years 

are excluded. This analysis is not complete and it focuses only on the absolutely crucial 

financial indicators. Microsoft’s financials are compared to Oracle’s, so as to provide 

information as to Microsoft’s performance relative to its competitors. 

Our main source of information about Microsoft is Microsoft’s 2018 10-K form 

(specifically pages 50-53). Our main source of information about Oracle is Oracle’s 

income statement, accessed at http://financials.morningstar.com/incomestatement/is.html?t=ORCL&region=usa&culture=en-US. 

The financial data provided in 

those documents rounds figures to the nearest thousandth. All specific financial data 

relating to Microsoft and Oracle come from these sources unless there is an indication 

otherwise.

Microsoft’s performance during this time-period is positive in absolute terms. 

Microsoft also marginally outperforms Oracle. That said, the one companies financials 

parallel each other to a striking degree: Microsoft has more total assets, but its 

performance relative to its total assets is similar to (though marginally better than) 

Oracle’s performance relative to its total assets. Between 2017 and 2018, there are dips 

in Microsoft’s performance, but those are corresponding dips in Oracle’s performance, 

indicating that the issue is not with Microsoft itself but with the industry as a whole. 


When conducting a financial analysis of a company, the first step is to determine 

its cash flow from operating activities, or operating cash flow (OCF), this being the 

amount of money that it generates from its activities, excluding long-term 

investments. 80 In 2016, Microsoft’s OCF was $33,325,000; in 2017, $35,507,000; and in 

2018, $42,884,000. It is a good sign that Microsoft's OCF was positive during each of 

these years since this indicates that its products and services were generating income. A 

company whose OCF is zero or negative can still profit since it can make money from 

investments and assets, but its products and services are failing to generate income, and 

80 

https://www.sapling.com/8370027/calculate-cash-flow-operating-activities

its position is therefore unstable. Also, Microsoft’s OCF grew over 30% during this 

period---also a positive sign. 

Microsoft’s net income (revenues minus expenses, i.e. profits) in 2016 was 

$20,539,000; in 2017, $25, 489,000; and in 2018, $16, 571,000. During each year, 

Microsoft’s net income was positive, but its net income fell by $8,918,000---a drop of 

over 34%. 

Oracle’s OCF in 2016 was $13, 561, 000; in 2017, $14,126,000; and in 2018, 

$15,386,000. Oracle’s net income in 2016 was $8,901,000; in 2017, $9,335,000; and in 

2018, $3,825,000. Oracle’s OCF was positive during each of these years, and also 

increased during this time period by around 13%. Between 2017 and 2018, Oracle’s net 

income plummeted, falling by over 50%. Since its OCF grew during this period, the fall 

does not indicate a decline in demand for Oracle products and services. 

Common Equity 

In 2016, Microsoft’s common equity (the amount invested by shareholders) was 

$68, 465, 000; in 2017, 68, 178,000; and in 2018, $69,315,000. There was therefore 

modest growth in Microsoft common equity during this period. In 2016, Oracle’s 

common equity was $164, 950, 000; in 2017, $209, 937, 000; and in 2018,

$175,569,000. 81 Oracle’s performance here is more jagged than Microsoft’s but also 

better on the whole. 

Profitability 

The next few sections focus on financials relating to Microsoft’s degree of 

profitability. We will see that Microsoft is ‘in the black’, so to speak, and also compares 

better than Oracle, a representative competitor. 


In 2016, Microsoft’s return on equity (ROE)---in other words, its net income 

divided by shareholder’s equity, this being the change in the value of the shareholder’s 

equity--- was $20,539,000/$164, 950, 000≈30%; in 2017, $25, 489,000/68, 

178,000≈37%; and in 2018, $16, 571,000/69,315,000≈24%. During each year, ROE is 

positive. At the same time, there was a decrease from 2017 to 2018. 

Oracle’s ROE in 2016 was $8,901,000/$164, 950, 000≈5%; in 2017, 

$9,335,000/$209, 937, 000≈4%; and in 2018, $3,825,000/$175,569,000≈2%. In each 

year, ROE is positive, but much smaller than with Microsoft. Also, with Oracle, as with 

Microsoft, we see a 2017-2018 drop. This parallel suggests that in both cases the drop is 

81 

Figures are taken from https://www.stock-analysis-on.net/NYSE/Company/Oracle- 

Corp/Valuation/Enterprise-Value

a consequence not of anything company-specific but rather of some larger economic 

phenomenon. 


In 2016, Microsoft’s net profit margin (net income divided by total revenue, i.e. 

percentage of revenue that Microsoft retained after paying expenses) was 

$20,539,000/$91, 154,000≈23%; in 2017, $25, 489,000/96, 571,000≈26%; and in 2018, 

$16, 571,000/110,360,000≈15%. The profit margins are all positive, though there is a 

(now familiar) 2017-2018 drop. 

Oracle's ROE in 2016 was $8,901,000/$37,047,000≈24%; in 2017, 

$9,335,000/$37, 728,000≈25%; and in 2018, $3,825,000/$39,831,000≈10%. Again, profit 

margins are positive, with a 2017-2018 drop. Microsoft's profit margin appears to track 

Oracle's, suggesting that changes in them are due not to company-specific but rather to 

industry-wide factors. 


Asset turnover is significant because it is a good measure of a company’s health. 

A company with low-asset turnover is not using its assets efficiently, and a company 

with high-asset turnover is using them efficiently.

In 2017, Microsoft’s asset turnover (total revenue divided by total assets) was 

$96,571,000/250,312,000≈39% ; and in 2018, it was $110,360,000/$258,848,000≈43%. 

In 2017, Oracle’s asset turnover was $37, 728,000/$134,991,000≈28% 82 ; and in 2018, it 

was $39,831,000/$137,264,000≈29%. 83 We are seeing parallels—increases in both 

cases, albeit higher ones in Microsoft’s case. 

Leverage 

In 2017, Microsoft’s leverage (debt/equity) was $162,601,000/250,312,000≈65% ; 

and in 2018, it was $176,130,000/$258,848,000≈68%. In 2017, Oracle’s asset turnover 

was $80,745,000/$134,991,000≈60% ; and in 2018, it was 

$91,040,000/$137,264,000≈66%. 84 Both companies are highly leveraged. A high degree 

of leverage can be a bad sign, since it can indicate deficit financing, but here it is not a 

bad sign, as it seems to indicate aggressive and successful investments in a growing 

economic sector. 85 

82 


83 


84 


85 

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/leverageratio.asp


In 2017, Microsoft’s return on assets (ROA), i.e.net income divided by total 

assets, was $25,489,000/250,312,000≈10% ; and in 2018, it was 

$16,571,000/$258,848,000≈6%. In 2017, Oracle’s asset turnover was 

$9,335,000/$134,991,000≈7% ; and in 2018, it was $8,901,000/$137,264,000≈6%. 86 

Both ROA’s are low but positive. 

Conclusion 

Microsoft and Oracle are both vigorous companies with high operating cash flows 

and asset-turnovers. They are highly leveraged, but this seems to be because they have 

thus far profited from aggressive investments in their own growth. 

Sources 

Morningstar: Oracle Corp. Accessed at: 

http://financials.morningstar.com/incomestatement/is.html?t=ORCL&region=usa&culture=en-US 

Stock Analysis on Net: Oracle Corp. April 2019. Accessed at: https://www.stockanalysis-on.net/NYSE/Company/Oracle-Corp/Valuation/Enterprise-Value 

86 


Calculating Cashflow from Operating Activities. March 2019. Accessed at: 

https://www.sapling.com/8370027/calculate-cash-flow-operating-activities 

Oracle Net Income 2016-2019. May 2019. Accessed at: 


Investopedia: Leverage Ratio Definition. May 2019. Accessed at: 

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/leverageratio.asp 

Case Studies in Corporate Fraud (Accounting/Fraud Examination) 




An Actual Case of ID Theft 




MCPA 








Some Key Obstacles to Effective Fraud Risk Assessment


What is the fraud triangle, and how should you consider this when assessing a 

company's anti-fraud programs and controls? 

The Fraud Triangle is a hypothesis put forth by Donald Cressey as to why highlevel 

corporate fraud occurs. The Fraud Triangle is not concerned with low-level ‘street 

level’ scams. Nor is it concerned with ongoing high-level criminal enterprises, such as 

Bernie Madoff’s pyramid scheme. The Fraud Triangle is concerned to explain cases 

where people who are not career criminals and who typically have not committed major 

crimes embezzle large amounts of money from companies that employ them. The Fraud 

Triangle is meant to explain why somebody would use company funds to pay off 

personal debts. The Fraud Triangle is not meant to explain the case of somebody like 

Bernie Madoff, whose entire company was simply a front designed to abscond with 

people’s funds. The Fraud Triangle is intended to explain cases like that of Carlos Ghosn, 

an executive at Nissan who used company funds to cover massive personal investment 

losses, or like that of Nick Leeson, a trader for Barings Bank who used company funds to 

make a series of unauthorized trades to cover up his financial losses. In other words, the 

Fraud is meant to explain cases of high-level fraud committed by people who have

legitimate positions within legitimate organizations and who therefore do not otherwise 

profile as criminals. 

According to the Fraud Triangle, three conditions must met for such fraud to 

occur: 

1. There must be a high degree of financial pressure on the individual in 

question. In other words, he must need money desperately, perhaps because of 

gambling losses, a drug problem, or (as with Carlos Ghosn and Nick Leeson) poor 

investment choices. 

2. He must have a relatively senior position within the company in question, 

since he will not otherwise have access to the funds that intends to embezzle. (A janitor 

cannot commit large-scale embezzlement; a CEO or high-level bond-trader can do so.) 

3. He must be able to rationalize his act of fraud. In other words, he must be 

able to tell himself that he is justified in doing what he is doing, even though it is illegal 

and unethical. 

Consider the case of Nick Leeson. As a trader at Barings, he was entrusted with 

large amounts of company assets. Therefore, he was able to generate huge losses, 

placing him under great financial pressure, and he was also in a position to use company 

assets to try to cover those losses. Thus, conditions (1) and (2) were met in his case.

Finally, Leeson did not have any legal recourse: there was no one he could go to. He 

could not go to a bank, since no bank would be able to loan him the billions of dollars 

needed to bail him out; nor could he go to his own employer, since they would fire him 

and he would be banned from the industry for life. So he was able to rationalize his 

misconduct to himself on these grounds--and that is just what he did. 

There are several ways that a given company can minimize the likelihood that 

one of its employees will commit fraud of this kind. These include: 

1. Running thorough background checks. This lowers the likelihood of hiring 

somebody who is psychologically capable of committing fraud. 

2. Having clear guidelines relating to the handling of funds and sensitive 

information. This creates a climate of transparency, making it hard for people to commit 

fraud, and also makes it harder for people to rationalize committing fraud. 

3. Secure assets, including passwords and other sensitive information. This 

minimizes the opportunity to commit fraud. 

4. Separating employee-duties. This prevents any single employee from 

having access to too much information or to too many funds. 

5. Requiring authorization for employee-transactions involving more than a 

certain amount of money. This minimizes the likelihood of theft and also of Leeson-style 

losses that incentivize fraud.

6. Have an independent firm conduct audits, including surprise audits, of 

company accounts. This nips fraud in the bud and also scares employees into not 

committing it in the first place. 

7. Conduct annual internal audits. This gives the company advance-notice of 

shortfalls that should be made good before the IRS conducts an actual audit. 

8. Have an internal reporting mechanism. This helps nip fraud in the bud and 

also scares people into not committing it in the first place. 

9. Have a company-culture of honesty and transparency. This makes it hard 

for fraudsters to rationalize their conduct, which in turn lowers the likelihood of their 

committing fraud in the first place. 

Forensic Accounting Post-Enron (Business/Accounting) 

Accounting is the recording and evaluating of business transactions. Thus, an 

accountant working for a given business is supposed to keep records of what that 

business spent, what it spent it on, and what money it has coming in. If Smith is Brown’s 

accountant, then Smith’s job is to keep records of what Brown spends, what he spends 

it on, and what money Smith has coming in. Forensic accounting is the branch of 

accounting that is concerned with resolving accounting-related matters that have given 

rise to legal disputes or are likely to do so. If Green is a client of Smith and Green

elieves that the financial statements that Smith and Brown jointly issue are fraudulent, 

a forensic accountant may be called in to determine what the truth of the matter is. A 

forensic accountant may be employed privately, as would be the case if Green is himself 

an employee of Smith’s firm, or it may be done by the government, as would be the 

case if Green works for the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

Forensic accounting has existed as long as accounting has existed. But its 

importance grew in the immediate aftermath of Enron scandal in 2001. In order to 

understand how forensic accounting has changed since that time, we must understand 

what the Enron scandal involved. 

Enron was a Texas-based energy provider that, while under the leadership of CEO 

Kenneth Lay, began to expand aggressively and make a number of bold investments. At 

first, these moves were lucrative, causing the value of its stock to rise and enhancing 

Enron’s prestige. Forbes at one point ran an article claiming that Enron was “the most 

creative Energy Company in the United States.” As a result, Enron continued to make 

bold financial moves, buying up new companies and thereby pinning its financial success 

to that of these subsidiaries. Unfortunately, many of these ventures failed utterly, 

generating large losses for Enron. Enron’s attempts to dig itself out of this whole 

through additional ventures failed, with the result that Enron only dug itself in even 

deeper.

Enron was at a crossroads. On the one hand, it could be honest with shareholders 

and other stakeholders about its financial situation. On the other hand, it could attempt 

to cover up these losses. The first path would be legal, but would cause the value of the 

stock to plummet, possibly causing the company to collapse. The second path would at 

least temporarily fool stakeholders into believing that the company was still a good 

investments, allowing for a continuation of high-profits, but would be illegal. 

Enron chose the second path, and to this end it enlisted the help of Arthur 

Andersen, an accounting firm that Enron had already hired to serve as an external 

auditor. Andersen’s legal and ethical duty was to verify that Enron’s financial disclosures 

to the public and to stakeholders were accurate. But when Enron began to lose money, 

it asked Andersen to help cover up the losses, and Andersen complied. To this end, 

Anderson engaged in a number of deceptive accounting practices. In some cases, 

Anderson used legal loopholes that allowed them to over-report profits and underreport 

losses, and in other cases, Anderson simply destroyed incriminating documents. 

Eventually, Enron’s losses caught up with it, since it was never able to make good on the 

losses that it had sustained. As a result, Enron simply collapsed, and its financial 

malfeasance, including Andersen’s role in falsifying its financials, was exposed. 

The United States government responded with the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act of 

2002, the main provisions of which were:

(i) The creation of a Public Company Accountability Oversight Board (PCAOB): An 

independent company that scrutinizes the financial conduct of large companies; 

(ii) The enactment of heightened standards of corporate financial accountability 

and transparency, along with stricter penalties for executives of companies that fall 

short of these standards; and 

(iii) The creation of ‘conflict of interest’ laws that strictly prohibit accounting firms 

from conducting external audits of companies towards which they might be biased. 

When Enron collapsed, its financial statements lost all credibility, and so did 

Andersen’s financial statements about Enron’s financial condition. As a result, new 

investigators, including forensic accountants and fraud examiners, had to figure out 

what Enron’s actual financials were. This awaked the public to the need for forensic 

accountants, creating a surge in demand for their services. This demand has only grown, 

thanks to the post-Enron series of financial scandals, including the Madoff Scandal and 

the 2008 Housing Market Collapse. 

Being a good forensic accountant involves all of the skills involved in being an 

ordinary accountant (e.g. a high-concern for detail, a facility with numbers, and high 

degree of conscientiousness), but it also involves additional skills. Unlike ordinary 

accountants, forensic accountants are dealing with intentional cover-ups and therefore 

have to deal not just with complex financial data but also with deliberate deception. 

This means that in addition to being accountants, forensic accountants must also be

detectives. Therefore, they must good at detecting and investigating financial crimes, 

including interviewing possible witnesses, using new technologies, and being familiar 

with the laws governing such activities. In a word, a forensic accountant is two parts 

accountant and one part detective and must therefore have an accountant’s analytical 

abilities along with a detective’s intuitive faculties. 


The Fraud Triangle is a theory developed by Donald Cressey to explain the 

occurrence of high-level corporate fraud. The Fraud Triangle is meant to explain cases of 

fraud carried out by a trusted member of an organization against that same 

organization, e.g. a company executive embezzling funds or using company funds to 

make personal investments. According to the Fraud Triangle, instances of this sort of 

fraud are the result of a confluence of three factors, namely: 

1. Unusual and extraordinary financial pressure on the individual in question 

(e.g. Smith has just gambled away his life-savings);

2. The opportunity to commit fraud, meaning that the person in question is 

in a position where he is actually able to make fraudulent use of company money or 

resources (e.g., Smith is the Chief Financial Officer of the company in question); 

3. The ability to rationalize the fraud, meaning that the person in question 

can convince himself, and possibly others, that under the circumstances he was justified 

in perpetrating fraud (e.g., the company that employs Smith is itself constantly stealing 

money from clients, making it possible for Smith to tell himself that the company 

deserved to be defrauded). 

A good example of the kind of fraud that the Fraud Triangle can be used to 

explain, and also to prevent, is the case of Nicholas Leeson. Acting in his capacity as a 

trader in the Singapore branch of Barings Bank, Leeson made some legitimate but 

unsuccessful trades. Rather than admit to his superiors that he lost company money, he 

illicitly used additional company funds to make more investments, hoping to cover his 

losses. When these investments failed, the subsequent losses to Barings were so large 

that the bank simply collapses, taking much of the securities market along with it. 

The Fraud Triangle makes it clear how companies can prevent the occurrence of 

fraud. According to the Fraud Triangle, it tends to be people who under extreme 

financial pressure who commit fraud, a corollary being that companies should not hire 

such people or at least should give them positions of financial authority. If somebody

has an extremely low credit rating or has just suffered millions of dollars of losses on the 

stock market, that person has a strong incentive to commit fraud, and a company 

wishing to avoid the occurrence of fraud in its midst is well-advised not to hire him or at 

least not give him a position that would allow him to make inappropriate use of 

company money or resources. Of course, not all cases of fraud can be prevented in this 

way, since in many cases, including Nicholas Leeson's, the person in question isn't under 

extreme financial pressure until after they are hired. 

This brings us to the second part of the Fraud Triangle, according to which 

people don’t commit workplace fraud unless their positions within the company make it 

possible for them to do so, a corollary being that companies should limit such 

opportunities. Nicholas Leeson was able to commandeer such huge funds because his 

activities were not being adequately supervised and because his position made it 

possible for him to execute large trades without being given clearance by a supervisor. 

In general, fraud is likely to occur when people within a company operate without 

supervision and when they have the power to make important decisions without 

company-clearance. Consequently, fraud is unlikely to occur when there is adequate 

supervision and when there are adequate checks and balances. Companies wishing to 

reduce the risk of fraud in their midst should strictly oversee sensitive activities on the 

part of employees and should also limit the amount of power, especially power to use 

company assets, that any single employee has.

According to the third component of the Fraud Triangle, Fraud is more likely to 

occur when people are able to justify committing acts of fraud, a corollary being that the 

risk of fraud is reduced when they cannot do so. The ability to rationalize fraud has both 

internal and external determinants. If a person lacks integrity, he may be able to 

rationalize practically any case of misconduct on his part, even if that misconduct is not 

a response to strong external pressures. Consequently, a good way for a company to 

reduce the risk of workplace fraud is to hire people who have integrity and not to hire 

people who don’t. 

Also, if a given company treats its own employees well, it gives them that much 

less of a way to rationalize perpetrating fraud against that company. If the CFO of a 

given company hasn’t received the bonuses he was promised, he will be that much 

more tempted to help himself to those funds through fraudulent means. Further, if a 

company has unclear or excessively complex procedures, especially in regards to the 

financially impactful activities, then it is that much easier for employees to rationalize 

fraud; and the risk of fraud is therefore reduced by having well-defined and intelligible 

employee-guidelines in place. Finally, if a company is itself engaged in fraud (e.g., by 

providing poor service or by overbilling clients), employees within that company may 

feel that the company has lost any moral right not to be defrauded. A corollary is that 

companies reduce the risk of fraud in their midst by themselves being non-fraudulent.

Money Laundering: Basic Principles (Business/Accounting) 

Money laundering is the act of making illegally obtained money appear to have 

been legally obtained. 87 There are many reasons why terrorists, drug cartels, and 

criminals of all varieties need to launder the money they make. First of all, money that is 

clearly illegally obtained is evidence of a crime. Second, money that does not appear to 

have been legally obtained is difficult to invest. Third, such money is hard to use for 

large transactions. Fourth, such money is difficult to use for many kinds of small 

transactions, such as online purchases. 88 Some hypotheticals will help clarify these 

points: 

Hypothetical #1: Smith is a drug dealer who has $1,000,000 in illegally obtained 

cash. Smith’s ability to use that money is limited so long as it remains in cash form. 

Smith therefore sets up a fake business, and he pays a friend of his a $1,000 to make 

$1,000,000 in purchases from this fake business. The money then goes into a business 

checking account, and the money, having been duly ‘laundered’, is available for online 

purchases, securities purchases, and the like. 

Hypothetical #2: Jones robs a bank and makes off with $1,000,000 in cash. There 

is not much he can do with the cash, since the bills are likely to be traced. So he 

87 

Understanding Money Laundering. Course handout. 

88 

White, Chris. Utilization of Rules in Anti-Money Laundering Compliance 

Monitoring Programs. Metavante White Paper.

convinces Brown, an associate of his, to set up a phony charity. Jones ‘donates’ the 

$1,000,000 to this charity. In exchange for a fee, Brown deposits the money in the 

charity’s bank account, and he then makes Jones the trustee of that account. 

Hypothetical #3: Robins runs a large and successful prostitution ring, leaving him 

with large quantities of cash. He wants that money to grow, instead of simply sitting 

under his mattress. So he buys a large orange ranch in Florida for $10,000,000 but 

convinces the seller to record the official selling price as $10,000. This way, Robins can 

easily explain to officials how he came up with the money for his ranch, giving him legal 

insulation. At the same time, his money has now been converted into a constant source 

of legitimate revenue. 

Here are some actual cases of money laundering: 

Case #1: On February 12, 2019, seven Texas residents (Adrian Arciniega- 

Hernandez, Adriana Alejandra Galvan-Constantini, Luis Montes-Patino, Ravinder Reddy 

Gudipati, Harsh Jaggi and Neeru Jaggi) were convicted of drug trafficking and money 

laundering. These individuals worked for a Mexican Drug Cartel. They paid legitimate 

businesses to set up accounts in which the illegally obtained money was deposited. On 

record, these accounts belonged to these businesses and therefore appeared to be 

legitimate, but in actuality they were controlled by drug dealers. 89 

89 

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdtx/pr/six-convicted-roles-multi-million-dollar-blackmarket-peso-exchange-money-laundering

Case #2: December 14, 2018, 36 individuals were convicted of running a sextrafficking 

ring based in Thailand and then laundering the proceeds by depositing them 

in accounts belonging to fake charities that they had set up. 90 

Case #3: On June 18, 2014, Robert Boedigheimer, a Minnesota attorney, was 

convicted of laundering the proceeds of illegal narcotics sales. Boedigheimer purchased 

several properties in Minnesota, and a client of his, Brandon Lusk, used money obtained 

through drug deals to manage those properties, with both Lusk and Boedigheimer 

sharing the proceeds from the subsequent rentals. 91 

In each of these three cases, a criminal or criminal organization was in possession 

of illegally obtained that they could not use, and they either set up fake businesses or 

used real businesses to hold that money, thereby making it appear legitimate. Once that 

money had been thus ‘laundered’, it was available to be used to invest in legitimate 

enterprises, such as the apartment complexes owned by Robert Boedigheimer. Thus, 

laundering money allows it to grow, with the proceeds typically being reinvested in the 

criminal enterprise in question, while concealing the source of that money. 

Money laundering involves three stages: 

90 

https://www.hstoday.us/federal-pages/doj/36-members-of-international-sextrafficking-organization-found-guilty/ 

91 

http://tcbmag.com/news/articles/2014/st-paul-lawyer-convicted-of-laundering-drugmoney

*The Placement Stage: Money is placed in a seemingly legitimate company or 

organization. (For example, a drug dealer uses cash to purchase a lemon ranch.) 

*The Layering Stage: Money is then filtered through a network of different 

companies and organizations. (Said drug dealer deposits the proceeds from said ranch in 

numerous different accounts. 

*The integration phase: The money in those accounts is injected back into the 

legitimate economy. (Said drug dealer uses the money in said accounts to purchase 

stock in Amazon, McDonald's, and other Fortune 500 companies.) 92 

include: 

There are many different indications that money laundering is taking place. These 

*Cash purchases that are being made unusually frequently or in unusually large 

amounts. (Robert Boedigheimer paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash for 

contracting and renovating services.) 

92 

Understanding Money Laundering. Course handout. Also see 

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/moneylaundering.asp and White, Chris. 

Utilization of Rules in Anti-Money Laundering Compliance Monitoring Programs. 

Metavante White Paper.

*Large transactions involving recently created legal entities (e.g. companies or 

charities), where the values of the transactions are out of proportion to the likely value 

of the companies. This is what happened in the sex-trafficking case discussed above. 

*Large purchases of land or equipment that do not involve the buyer actually 

inspecting the land/equipment in question prior to the purchase. 

*A series of cases where property is purchased and then ‘flipped’, especially 

where the resale price is much higher or lower than the original price. 

*Somebody’s opening a large number of different accounts within a short period 

of time and depositing money in each of those accounts. 

*Heavy use of offshore accounts. 

*Money being shuttled between a plurality of different accounts. 

*Sales involving massive discrepancies between book values and market values, 

e.g. a case where the official sales price of a property actually worth $40,000,000 is 

$1,000. 

*Inflated invoices, e.g. a restaurant whose official invoices indicate that its 

income comes from $300 shrimp cocktails. 

*Obvious discrepancies between a person’s lifestyle and supposed income. For 

example, Al Capone’s ‘official’ occupation was furniture maker, but his lifestyle was 

obviously not that of a furniture maker.

*Attempts to sidestep regulatory requirements, such as filling out 8300 forms, as 

well as unusual or constantly shifting modes of transferring money. 93 

In most cases, investigators are tipped off by a suspicious individual, e.g. 

somebody who finds it suspicious that a low-earning junior associate at his law firm 

suddenly bought a $300,000 car or a bank official who finds it suspicious that a client 

tries to make deposits without filling out the requisite paperwork. 

Also, a number of legal controls have been instituted, violation of which 

automatically alerts the authorities to possible money laundering. These include laws 

that require banks and other financial institutions to file reports on all unusually large 

transactions and to scrutinize client-information in such cases. In addition, special 

investigative agencies have been created, most notably the Financial Action Task Force, 

an intergovernmental agency that enables investigators in different countries work 

together to investigate cases of money laundering. 94 

Once investigators have been alerted to a possible case of money laundering, 

their primary mode of investigating is to ‘follow the money.’ For example, in Case #1 

(discussed above) businesses were pressuring their bankers not to fill out the usual 

93 

https://www.inman.com/2015/05/21/19-red-flags-to-detect-money-laundering/ 

94 

See https://legaldictionary.net/money-laundering/ Also see Understanding Money 

Laundering, https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/moneylaundering.asp and White, 

Chris Utilization of Rules in Anti-Money Laundering Compliance. Monitoring Programs. 

Metavante White Paper

deposit-forms. The banks sounded the alarm, leading investigators to investigate the 

source of the money being deposited. Investigators in Case #2 (discussed above) were 

tipped off by private citizens who doubted the legitimacy of some the charities in 

question. Investigators then scrutinized those charities and immediately found them to 

be bogus. Investigators in Case #3 were tipped off by personal acquaintances of Robert 

Boedigheimer, who found it odd that an unsuccessful attorney was suddenly able to 

afford several multi-million dollar apartment buildings, leading investigators to discover 

the connection between Boedigheimer and Lusk. 

Even though money laundering investigations tend to be extremely complex, 

they all have the same two-part structure. Part 1: Somebody reports some kind of 

suggestive irregularity to the authorities, for example, a banker reports a client who 

pressures him not to fill out the requisite forms, a neighbor reports another neighbor 

who is suddenly living above his means. Part 2: Investigators follow the money: they try 

to find out where so and so got the money that is trying to deposit or that he already 

spent on a new car. 

In conclusion, money laundering makes it possible for illegal enterprises to 

conceal and compound their earnings, and it is combatted through a combination of 

strict financial regulations and careful subsequent examination of financial networks.


Valeant has been a major supplier of pharmaceuticals since its inception. In 1959. 

The standard strategy for drug companies is based on research and development (R&D): 

new medicines are discovered through research, then manufactured and sold. In 2007, 

Valeant revenue was a dangerously low level, and the company looked non-standard 

strategies for revenue growth. J. Michael (‘Mike') Pearson, a consultant hired by 

Valeant, proposed that Valeant simply stop doing R&D and instead buy patents to 

undervalued medications and, having acquired them, raise the prices. The logic behind 

this strategy is simple: R&D is extremely expensive and outcomes are not guaranteed, 

since scientific can never be guaranteed to happen. By contrast, Pearson's acquisitionsbased 

strategy involved buying products that were already known to work and whose 

price Valeant would be able to manipulate to its own advantage. 

At first, this strategy worked. In fact, it worked so well, that Valeant asked 

Pearson to be its CEO. He accepted and embarked on a campaign of aggressively buying 

out smaller pharmaceutical companies, along with the medicines they supplied, and 

then inflating the prices of those medications whenever possible. Valeant’s pricegouging 

sowed some early seeds of public distrust in Valeant, which later be harvested. 

After a few years, the strategy began to backfire. First of all, other 

pharmaceutical companies followed suit, replacing R&D with Pearson’s acquisitions-

ased model, making it more expensive to acquire pharmaceutical companies and 

therefore thinning its profit margins. Also, some of these acquisitions were losers; for 

example, Valeant spent millions to buy the rights for Potiga, an anti-seizure, believing 

that it would be a break-out success; but it failed, and Valeant had nothing to show for. 

Operating jointly, these factors were driving Valeant back into the red. This is 

where Pearson and Valeant took a fraudulent turn. Pearson chose not to let the public 

know that Valeant was losing money. Instead, he embarked on a two-prong plan, 

involving the use of anti-competitive practices to regain market-share as well as outright 

fraud to conceal existing losses. Valeant set up a secret arrangement with Philidor Rx 

Services, an online pharmacy-company, whereby Philidor would sell only Valeant 

products in exchange for lower prices while billing insurance companies according to the 

original prices and then splitting the ‘skim' with Valeant. Though fraudulent, this did 

generate real revenue for Valeant. But even with this extra revenue, Valeant's actual 

financials were poor, and Pearson used Philidor to carry out a second scam. This one 

involved Valeant booking sales to Philidor that were never made, thereby inflating 

Valeant's revenue on paper and attracting investment. In exchange for its role in this 

Philidor received a cut of the resulting investments in Valeant. Eventually, Valeant 

simply bought out Philidor while letting the previous Philidor owners remain as the 

owners of record, thereby turning Philidor into a full-service, off-the-books moneylaundering 

operation for Valeant.

Also, under Pearson’s direction, Valeant was bribing physicians nationwide to 

prescribe Valeant-owned medications. Finally, Valeant was relying increasingly on pricegouging 

to generate revenue, drawing public ire and regulatory scrutiny. 

Also, Valeant did not comply with GAAP. When the values of Valeant’s 

investments fell, as they increasingly often did, Valeant did not adjust its financials 

accordingly, this being a violation of the Full Disclosure Principle (financial statements 

must tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth) and also of the Matching 

Principle (no credits without debits, or vice versa). Further, it used several different 

accounting methods, also a violation of the Full Disclosure Principle. 

A number of factors operating simultaneously led to Valeant’s crash. Public 

outrage at Valeant’s price-gouging caused regulatory to scrutinize Valeant, in search of 

regulatory or criminal violations. Regulators discovered that Valeant used opaque and 

non-standard accounting practices, making them suspicious; and whey they finally 

deciphered Valeant’s financials, they discovered that many of the sales that it had 

booked with Philidor were fraudulent. This triggered further investigations, which 

unearthed Valeant’s other scams. 

Dimitry Khmelnitsky, a financial analyst and Valeant-employee since 2011, 

realized shortly after being hired that Valeant’s official numbers were off. He repeatedly 

tried to apprise Valeant executives of this fact, but they angrily rebuffed, suggesting that 

it was an ‘open secret’ that these figures were phonies. Though there is limited publicly

available information on this matter, the Khmelnitsky situation suggests that the 

problem with Valeant was not that Pearson was hiding what he was doing from other 

Valeant employees but rather they were in most colluding with him. This makes it 

unclear what kinds of internal controls could have been used. Pearson was not stealing 

from Valeant; rather, Valeant, under Pearson’s direction, was hiding losses from 

investors and manipulating markets. So this was a matter for external, not for internal 

controls. 

Even though financial statement fraud was only one of the many forms of fraud 

that Valeant committed under Pearson’s direction, it would have been hard for Valeant 

to run these scams without cooking the books. It should be pointed out that Valeant 

was guilty of three very different kinds of financial statement fraud. First, it intentionally 

used cryptic and inconsistent accounting methods. Second, it booked gains that did not 

exist; in other words, it simply made numbers up. Third, it went so far as to buy another 

company so as to make it easier to concoct fraudulent financials. 

What is most striking about this case to me personally is that Valeant was entirely 

speculation-based, whereas other Pharmaceutical companies are R&D-based, 

suggesting that when there is financing without product, fraud is just around the corner. 

An Actual Case of ID Theft

1. What could the victim’s bank have done differently that could have 

potentially stopped or limited the fraudulent activity? 

Whenever an attempt is made to withdraw a large amount of money from an 

account or to cash a check for a large amount, the identity of the person in question must 

be verified thoroughly. This did not happen in this case. This is particularly inexcusable, 

given that the withdrawal was for $5000 from an accounting containing only $5200. First 

of all, $5000 is a large amount. Second, it is a large amount relative to the total amount 

in the account, which is a red flag. Fraudsters will often try to make off with just less than 

what they know to be in the account that they are pillaging. Finally, the teller noted that 

the signature, though similar to Jim’s, was slightly off---another red flag that the bank 

ignored. 

2. After the fraudulent activity had been discovered, Jim met with a 

representative of the check printing company regarding policies/controls that the 

company should consider implementing in order to help identify fraud in the future. What 

changes would you recommend to the company? 

The bank’s response to Jim’s query was ambiguous. On the one hand, they did 

apprise him of the fact that they had a video of the person who cashed the check. On the

other hand, they were very slow to cooperate with after making that disclosure. My 

suspicion is that the bank’s management realized that they had ‘dropped the ball’, and 

were attempting to dodge liability for that mistake. I would recommend that the bank 

double-check the identification of anyone making withdrawals, triple check in cases when 

the withdrawals are large, and quadruple check when there are red flags such as possibly 

forged signatures. Also, there should be standardized protocols for verifying identify: only 

certain documents should be used (e.g. driver’s license, Government ID card), and bank 

staff should be trained how to know when such documents are valid. 

3. What could the furniture store have done differently that could have 


The fraudsters applied for financing at the furniture store, which means that they 

should have been required to present incontrovertible proof of identity. They were not 

asked to do this. The employee who approved the financing later disappeared and turned 

out to have been involved in other fraud cases, making it a distinct possibility that this 

was an ‘inside job.’ That company, like all companies, should always require proof of 

identity when dealing with non-cash purchases.

4. What could the credit card company have done differently that could have 


The fraudsters applied in person for a credit line in Jim's name, and they did this 

without having a valid ID. (And even though they may have had forged identify papers, 

most such documents are not very convincing.) The credit card company should obviously 

have verified their identity, which did they did not do. The fact that they were involved in 

other suspicious cases involving the same furniture company employee shows that they 

were systemically remiss in their responsibility to verify the legitimacy of credit 

applications. This in turn suggests that they may have been aware that they were getting 

phony applications, but turned a blind eye to since they wanted the business. 

5. What could have the victim have done differently that could have 

potentially helped in this case? 

When the victim first noticed a suspicious withdrawal from this account, he 

should have put a hold on his account and reported the incident to the bank as possible 

fraud. He did not do any of this, and this is opened the door to the fraud that ensued. 

Also, although he went to the police, he did not go to legal authorities. The police are 

not equipped to deal with cases of financial fraud. One should either go to the FBI or file

a motion in Federal Court under the False Claims Act. The latter is most easily done with 

the help of a lawyer, and Jim probably should have at least consulted an attorney (many 

of whom do free first-time consultations), which, so far this document indicates, he did 

not. (The reason he didn’t, presumably, is that his attorney-fees might have exceeded 

the amount he was trying to recover.) 

6. Is there anything the victim could have done prior to the fraudulent activity 

that could have helped? 

Jim should probably have made himself better known to the people at his bank, 

since, had he done so, they would have known who he was and would have stopped the 

fraudsters dead in their tracks. (That said, the article does mention that some of the tellers 

knew who he was, which makes the bank’s failure to prevent even more inexcusable.) 

More importantly, Jim obviously did something that gave the fraudsters access to his 

personal information. Whatever it was he did that led to this, he shouldn't have done it. 

It appears from the document that instead of using checks issued by his bank, he 

purchased less expensive checks online. This appears to have been the weakest link in his 

defenses. The fraudsters somehow knew that he bought checks online (perhaps by 

rooting through his garbage, looking for some such point of entry), and were able to

impersonate Jim by ordering checks in his name from the same company. Had Jim simply 

used bank-issued checks, this situation might have been avoided. 

7. Is there anything else the victim could have done after the fraudulent 

activity that could have minimized the fraud? 

Jim probably should have moved his money to a different bank, since his current 

bank obviously wasn’t reliable. Also, Jim should probably be careful about his online 

behavior, especially in connection with purchases of checks or other financial 

instruments. Finally, Jim should henceforth destroy checks, credit cards, and other such 

documents before throwing them away; and, more generally, he should make sure that 

his financial information is never physically or digitally made available to anyone who 

cannot be trusted. 


ABSTRACT: This nonfictional case of inventory fraud in a university setting 

exposes students to fraud detection and investigation. These skills are becoming 

increasingly important for auditors, as evidenced by the alarming rate of fraud. The 

accounting profession has acknowledged the seriousness of this issue with the issuance

of SAS No. 99, Consideration of Fraud in a Financial Statement Audit, developed in part 

to improve detection of frauds by auditors. 

The case raises many of the fraud-related issues faced by accountants: 

recognizing red flags indicative of fraud; the importance of a good system of internal 

controls; the profile of the typical fraud perpetrator; the fine line auditors walk when 

investigating a fraud; the need to develop an audit team with the appropriate level of 

expertise which may require members from a variety of disciplines (e.g., investigative, 

legal and forensic areas); and the difficulty of obtaining sufficient evidence to prosecute 

and convict perpetrators. 

Part 1: The Initial Audit 

The Internal Audit Department of “X State University”2 performs an unscheduled 

audit whenever a university department head desires assistance in determining the 

financial status of his department’s operation, and reports its audit results to the Vice 

President of Administration and Finance. In addition, unknown to most university 

employees, it is standard operating procedure for the Internal Audit Department to

perform an unscheduled audit prior to the departure of key employees (e.g., an 

employee responsible for handling large amounts of cash). In December 1988, the 

campus computing services director requested that the Internal Audit Department audit 

the campus Microcomputer Store (MCS) operations, prior to the imminent departure of 

the MCS manager. The manager had held the position for eight years. During the past 

year he purchased a new house in the community, he had been seen driving a new 

sports car to work, and he had just returned from his European honeymoon prior to the 

start of the audit. The internal auditors completed the engagement in six weeks. Their 

findings were as follows: 

1) All employees were on the payroll of the MCS and there were no additional or 

“ghost” employees on the payroll. The MCS manager earned approximately $18,000 a 

year in salary. 

2) For select samples, the university’s purchasing guidelines were adhered to by 

the MCS operation. However, the use of personal computers was becoming much more 

common during the 1980s. There was one personal computer on campus in 1981, but 

by 1988 there were approximately 1,500 units on campus. Consequently, the volume of 

computers purchased for campus use had risen close to 200 percent per year in each of 

the past five years.

3) There were no written position descriptions for any of the positions in the 

MCS, nor were there any written operations manuals or guidelines for any daily 

transactions. 

4) Despite their best efforts, the Internal Audit Department was able to compile 

only a few fully documented transactions, from requisition/ order, to receiving, to setup 

and delivery, to billing and finally to additions in the Capital Property Control records. 

The problems noted included: few of the forms were prenumbered; the files were 

widely dispersed in the center; documents were not attached to each other and were 

not in any particular order; and often a billing statement or a purchase order would be 

missing all related documentation— only a handwritten note by the MCS manager on 

the billing statement or purchase order would support the transaction. To compound 

these problems, there were no “checks and balances” built into the MCS accounting 

system as compensating controls. 

5) The direct supervisor for the MCS manager was aware of how the MCS 

operated in general, but knew nothing about the operating details of what was 

essentially a one-person operation (i.e., the MCS manager).

6) Purchases, as far as the internal auditors were able to ascertain, approached 

$1,200,000 in the most recent year. 

Required: 

1) What additional work could the Internal Audit Department perform prior 

to issuing the audit report? 

MCS was doing a large volume of business. This could be verified even without 

proper documentation. The university used a large number of computers, and MCS 

provided all of them. The auditors could have readily determined the approximate 

number of computers used on campus along with the approximate cost of each unit, 

and they may even have had this information from the start. Either way, it provided 

what should have been a benchmark, in comparison with which the MCS reported 

earnings would have obviously fallen suspiciously short. Also, surveillance of MCS during 

a period of a week or so, along with scrutiny of the receipts thereby generated, would 

have given auditors another similar benchmark. Before submitting their report, the 

auditors should have availed themselves of such information and considered its 

implications. It is not possible to conduct a meaningful audit of a business except on the 

basis of business-volume, and the auditors failed to take business-volume into account.

2) What recommendations to the campus computing services director and the 

university administration would be appropriate for the MCS? 

Both parties should have been required to keep careful and easily understood 

records of sales, of funds requisitioned from the university, of purchases made using 

said funds, and of any other financially impactful activity on their part. 

Part 2: The Plot Thickens 

Three weeks later, the Internal Audit Department received a telephone call from 

a local repair shop owner who was working on a personal computer brought in from the 

public library for warranty repair. However, the box in which the personal computer was 

delivered had a shipping address for the university. There was even a bill of lading in the 

shipping envelope showing the university as the ordering party and referencing a 

university purchase order number. After verifying the information as factual, one of the 

internal auditors contacted the library director, and they met later in the day to 

determine how the personal computer had come to be in a box destined for the 

university.

The library director told the internal auditor that the library had been working 

with a university employee who owned a consulting company called MCS (Microcomputing 

Consulting Services). In addition, the library director indicated that the 

library had ordered several personal computers and printers from MCS, as well as the 

associated software, and had paid the consultant for the products and his fine service. 

Required: 

1) At what point should the Internal Audit Department suspect a fraud? 

What actions should be considered to ensure that professional auditing standards are 

met? Whom does the Internal Audit Department need to inform? 

The first hint of fraud was that the MCS’s sales- and purchase-records were so 

poor. The first relatively definitive indication of fraud was that a computer that was 

supposedly the director’s ‘personal’ property was delivered to the library in official 

university packaging and with official university documentation. The fact that the 

‘consulting’ company in question had the same initials as the Microcomputer Store 

(MCS), though not proof of fraud, is consistent with it, since it suggests that a deliberate 

effort was being made to provide a pre-emptive explanation incriminating data.

2) What red flags might have initially tipped off the internal auditors that this 

employee might be involved in a fraud? 

The computer that was delivered to the library clearly belonged to the university, 

showing that the MCS director was guilty of at least one case of selling university 

property for personal profit, and the fact that the source of this computer had an 

ongoing business relationship with the university was a strong indication he was doing 

this on a consistent basis. 

perpetrator? 

2) In what ways does the MCS manager fit the profile of the typical fraud 

This was an ongoing pattern of fraud, not a single incident; and it is difficult to 

carry out large-scale fraud without having a professional position that makes it possible 

and without having the personality-traits involved in being willing to capitalize on such 

an opportunity. The MCS-director was obviously in a good position to perpetrate this 

fraud—especially so since, when he was doing so, the computer-business was still young 

and people, including auditors, were not yet alive to its financial implications. Also, he 

was indeed enterprising, as is evidenced by his creating a consulting company to serve

as a cover for the fraud; and he was cunning, as is evidenced by his giving his consulting 

company the same name as MCS. He was in a position to commit the fraud, he had the 

intelligence to recognize the opportunity to commit fraud, and he had the requisite 

streak of amorality. In these respects, he was indeed representative of the typical whitecollar 

fraudster. 

Part 3: The Fraud Audit 

The auditors then began to try to uncover the full extent of the suspected fraud. 

Department orders for computers, printers and software were traced to purchases, to 

sales records and to billing receipts. The Internal Audit Department even worked 

directly with computer manufacturers to identify the serial numbers of all personal 

computers and printers shipped to the university in the previous 18 months. The 

vendors provided all sales records to assist in the audit, but were unable to provide 

serial numbers for the computers shipped to the university. 

Tracking sales to campus departments proved to be worthwhile, as three 

employees stated that they had made personal purchases from the MCS manager acting 

in his “professional capacity.” The employees provided canceled checks for the 

purchases, made payable to MCS. The Internal Audit Department was able to trace

some equipment serial numbers back to the actual university purchase orders and bills 

of lading. After ten weeks of work, the Internal Audit Department’s report revealed that 

they could not account in full for purchases exceeding $140,000 that had been ordered 

by MCS, for which the university had paid the vendors. They also confirmed that 

equipment worth slightly more than $14,500 had been ordered and paid for by the 

university, but had never been recorded as sold, yet was in the personal custody of 

people and organizations who sincerely believed that they had bought the equipment 

from the university. The university did have a policy for MCS that stated there were to 

be no sales of hardware, software or peripheral devices to any private party for personal 

use; sales were to be made only to the campus departments for university-related work 

use. 

Required: 

1) What should have been the key points of the audit/fraud investigation 

report? What supportable audit conclusions could be drawn? 

There are three key facts. First, the MCS-director was generating huge sales but 

was unable to account for more than a small fraction of these sales, suggesting that he 

was simply pocketing the difference. Second, there were multiple verified cases of his

failing to record to sales that he personally made and therefore knew of. Third, the 

MCS-director created a ‘shell' company to facilitate off-the-books sales of universityowned 

computers. These three facts should have been the focus of the investigation 

report. 

2) What additional steps might have been taken by the Internal Audit 

Department or Fraud Examiner to uncover evidence regarding the existence and the 

extent of the suspected fraud? 

The auditors would have had an easier time proving their case if they had 

subpoenaed the financial records of the MCS-director's consulting business. Because he 

was stealing from the university, the records that he kept in his capacity as a university 

employee were poor. But it is a distinct possibility that his consulting business's records 

were good, given that he probably wanted to know how much ‘business' he was doing 

and given also that, as he likely knew, he would probably have good financial records to 

explain to the IRS, in the event of an audit, why he had made purchases far in excess of 

what his $18,000/year university permitted. Such records would have been a ‘smoking 

gun.’ That said, they already had several smoking guns: one for each proven case of his 

selling university-merchandise off the books.

3) What evidence is needed to prove a case of fraud? 

Fraud is simply the use of deception to acquire assets to which one has no legal 

claim. In this case, proving fraud involved proving that the MCS-director was using 

deception to sell university property. This was in fact proved. The MCS director 

deliberately created a company whose sole purpose was to facilitate, and give the 

appearance of legitimacy to, the transfer of university-owned computers and the 

proceeds from the sales thereof to his person. He also kept obviously fraudulent 

records. 

Part 4: Closure 

After extensive discussions with the administration, the university attorney, the 

state attorney general (because the university was a public institution), and the local 

county attorney, a decision was made not to criminally prosecute because the attorneys 

believed the evidence was not sufficient to obtain a conviction in court. Therefore, the 

university attempted to contact the former MCS manager, now living across the 

country, to see if a confession and partial restitution could be arranged. After weeks of 

telephone calls back and forth, and relentless pressure from the Internal Audit 

Department trying to determine the full extent of the fraud, the former MCS manager

hired a local attorney to work with the university to clear his name. After fully reviewing 

the Internal Audit Department’s working papers, the local attorney recommended to his 

client that restitution in the amount of $14,500 be provided to the university, with no 

admission of guilt. 

The university did insist on including a summary letter of the situation in the 

personnel file of the former employee. All parties agreed to these conditions, restitution 

was paid to the university, and the personnel file was appropriately documented. 

Shortly after the MCS manager had moved across the country, he applied for a job with 

the National Security Council. Three weeks after the summary letter had been included 

in his personnel file, a representative 

of the National Security Council telephoned the university to ensure that its new 

employee, the former MCS manager, could receive top-security clearance. As a result of 

the evidence contained in the documented personnel file, the Internal Audit 

Department was advised soon afterwards that the clearance was denied and the job 

offer to the former MCS manager was withdrawn. 

Required:

1) Do you think the university should have brought criminal charges against the 

MCS manager? Why or why not? Besides the reason of insufficient evidence, why might 

a company be unwilling to prosecute a suspected fraud perpetrator? 

The university should have pursued a criminal against the MCS-director. There 

are several possible reasons for their not doing this. First, the fact that this fraud 

happened makes the university's management look incompetent. A related point is that 

the university's prestige would have taken a hard, and well deserved, fall had this 

matter gone public. Also, universities, even public ones, charge their students hefty fees, 

and students and parents might have questioned the legitimacy of those fees if it turned 

out that university-assets were being looted by university employees. Finally, if charges 

had been filed, it might have created opened the door to intense financial scrutiny of 

the university, and it might not have been able to withstand such scrutiny. Suppose it 

turned out, as it might well have, that several university departments were unable to 

account for their large sums they had been by the university. In that case, the state 

might have investigated and might have concluded that, in giving state-money to 

financially irresponsible departments, the university’s management was criminally 

negligent. Unless an organization is certain that its financials are in order, it is likely to 

not to escalate scrutiny of its financials, this being why many organizations, including 

this one, decline to prosecutor fraudsters in their own midst.

3) What other work remains to be done by the internal auditors to bring this 

case to a close? 

The auditors have already done a decent job of determining how much the MCSdirector 

stole from the university. At this point, their job is preventative in nature. They 

and the university need to figure out how to prevent future frauds like this from 

occurring. This means that they have to come up with well-defined protocols relating to 

financials-records and funds-requisitions. It also means that they have to identify the 

various kinds of fraud that the university’s structure makes it possible to perpetrate; and 

having done this, they have to figure out how to close off these opportunities for fraud. 

Doing the latter is likely to involve subjecting requests for money on the part of 

university departments and employees to extra scrutiny and to require them to keep 

good financial records of activities on their part involving university-assets. It may also 

involve setting up a full-time internal ‘financial task force’, whose sole function is to 

police the financial behavior of university departments and employees. 

4) A confession by the MCS manager would have made this an “open-andshut” 

case. Should the internal auditors have tried harder to obtain a confession,

perhaps by relying more upon the university’s legal counsel and law enforcement 

officers in the investigation? 

Given that the university did not wish to pursue this as a criminal matter, they 

were not in a position to try much harder to elicit a confession. First of all, the employee 

had already ‘lawyered up', limiting what the auditors could do in the way of extracting 

information, including a confession, from him. Also, if the auditors had decided to 

pursue this matter more aggressively, they would have to have had to have involved the 

police, which, for the previously stated reasons, they could not have done without 

subjecting themselves to unwanted scrutiny. 

4) Fraud researchers have coined the phrase “fraud triangle” to describe why 

people commit fraud. The three elements that make up the fraud triangle are pressure, 

perceived opportunity and rationalization; all three must be present for a fraud to occur. 

The pressure provides the motive to commit the fraud, and usually involves financial 

need. The opportunity typically presents itself in the form of weak or nonexistent 

internal controls. Fraud perpetrators must believe that they will be able to commit the 

fraud and remain undetected. Finally, fraud perpetrators must be able to rationalize or 

justify their fraudulent actions as morally acceptable.

One of the most common rationalizations is that the fraud perpetrator will pay 

back the stolen funds, so that the perpetrator is only “borrowing” the money for the 

moment. Apply the fraud triangle to this case and describe the pressure, perceived 

opportunity and rationalization that were present and that allowed the MCS manager to 

commit his fraud. 

The MCS-director almost certainly had no intention whatsoever of paying back 

the university. This was not a case of somebody making a mistake and then using fraud 

to cover up his mistake. This is a case of somebody who set to steal from the university, 

did so, and then went to great lengths, including setting up a shell company, to expand 

his operation. So although the MCS-director almost certainly did have a rationalization, 

it was not almost certainly not that particular one. We can only guess what his 

rationalization, but I suspect that, as a university employee, he told himself that he was 

merely properly allocating funds that the university had misallocated. Universities spend 

enormous amounts of money on questionable endeavors, such as sports teams and 

dorm-room renovations, and the like; and they also hemorrhage money through 

bloated internal bureaucracies. The MCS-director was likely aware of this and told

himself that, in keeping a little off-the-books university money for himself, he was 

merely putting money that the university would otherwise have wasted to good use. 

The other two components of the fraud triangle are easily accounted for in his 

case. The employee in question was clearly under financial pressure, as his $18,000/year 

salary was probably not even sufficient to cover basic living expenses, let alone to 

subsidize luxury-expenses. As for opportunity, the employee’s position made it possible 

for him to sell university-assets and keep the proceeds, and he was assisted in this by 

the university’s slipshod attention to its own finances. 


This week is focused on financials statement fraud. You will review the fraud at 

Olympus. Please review the articles, fraud report, video, and conduct your own research 

to address the following questions: 

1. What fraud schemes were used by Olympus? 

The main fraud scheme was tobashi, this being the Japanese term for 

concealment of losses. Starting in the late '80s, Olympus invested heavily in other

companies, sometimes by buying them outright. At first, this worked well; but starting in 

the early '90s, these investments became losers. Rather than cutting its losses, Olympus 

doubled down by making additional, highly speculative investments. These investments 

became losers, and Olympus responded by tripling down---with this new round of 

investments also resulting in losses for the company. Instead of coming clean with the 

public and with regulators, Olympus decided to hide the losses. It did this by setting up 

shell companies to whom it pretended to sell these investments at values far higher 

than their actual value. To this end, Olympus set up arrangements with other parties to 

front them the money for these pseudo-sales, on the condition that it be returned, 

along with a convenience fee. Also, in its financial statements, Olympus recorded the 

values of its investments at their initial price, i.e. at the prices when first purchased, 

instead of at their current, much lower value. Moreover, in an attempt to put a benign 

face on the company, Olympus hired a ‘ringer’ CEO, Michael Wolford, whom they 

believed, incorrectly, would neither know about the fraud nor care. Finally, in its 

financial statements, Olympus over-represented their intangible assets, i.e. their 

goodwill-to-assets ratio. 

2. What is your opinion of Michael Wolford?

Michael Wolford clearly behaved honestly in this context. He knew that 

something was wrong and he blew the whistle on Olympus by going to the British 

authorities and also by going to the media. 

3. What role did the Japanese media/culture play/or not play in revealing this 

case? (would it be different in the US) 

When approached by Wolford, the Japanese media refused to cover the story. In 

effect, they ‘buried’ it. This allowed the fraud to continue for a while. More importantly, 

the fraud probably would not have been possible, at least not on such a large scale, 

except in a culture in which the media could be expected to ‘play ball’, as the Japanese 

media did. 

4. How was the fraud uncovered? 

As the CEO, albeit a strawman CEO, Michael Wolford did have access to financial 

data and to information about ongoing, in particular, the purchase, at a suspiciously 

high price, of a medical supplies firm. Wolford noticed that he was rebuffed when he 

sounded the alarm to other Olympus executives. When his inquiries did not cease, 

Wolford was fired and went to the British authorities.

5. What role did the auditors play? Should they be liable? 

The auditors, both internal and external, failed utterly to report the fraud. There 

was either collusion or extreme incompetence---probably the former. Although the 

auditors did not face criminal liability, the Olympus scandal prompted Japanese 

lawmakers to tighten regulations on auditors. 

6. What role did Olympus' corporate culture play in this fraud? 

Japanese corporate culture, like Japanese culture in general, greatly values 

stability and not rocking the boat. In American culture, there is a certain grudging 

respect for rebels and whistleblowers, who can often expect some degree of sympathy 

even they before they have fully proven their own legitimacy. Not so in Japanese 

culture, especially corporate culture, in which not ‘rocking the boat’ is seen almost as an 

end unto itself. This obviously allowed the fraud at Olympus to continue for longer it 

might otherwise have. All of this said, there is plenty of fraud in American firms; and 

much as Americans might like to perceive themselves as cowboys, they too tend to fall 

in light with malfeasance, at least in authoritarian settings, such as corporations.

7. What was the final outcome of the case? 

The Chairman of Olympus, Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, was given a three-year sentence, 

as was Hideo Yamada, another executive involved in the fraud. A third executive, Hisashi 

Mori, was given a two- and half-year sentence. In court, Kikukawa took full responsibility 

for the fraud. IN the immediate aftermath of the case, Olympus lost 80% of its value, but 

quickly rebounded to its pre-scandal value. 


Submit a 1-2 page paper that discusses what red flags were present in the Dixon fraud. 

How did the auditors miss the red flags? How did the Whistleblower uncover it? 

There were several red flags in this case. 95 First of all, while Crundwell was 

comptroller, the city of Dixon was constantly short of money. As a result, Dixon police 

95 

This paper is based on three sources: 

https://www.fraud-magazine.com/coverarticle.aspx?id=4295003585&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTlRrMlpURTNPR1UyTWpBNSIsInQiOiI1R 

mk1OVdlZDMxYlF2YUl1ZmpFZkdhK0szQUVEaGV6N0dJb2VKK1FvK1FpUmZoeDFaeWh0S 

XV5MFhGa2VLd2NSdVozWkttcEJ4dHZZVzMwTDVtVXFjcnplZTZqVDFNQm9vajNSSlZ2TnN 

qNmthallsb1ZYREdGbXdSOVdpRGxSczJxKzJcL0dUWmFNaVdYU0pJbVBYc3B3PT0ifQ%3D 

%3D (Assigned Reading)

were not able to upgrade their equipment; Dixon employees who were overdue for 

raises did not get them; Dixon employees were fired; and, most strikingly, streets in 

Dixon were not adequately maintained. Dixon was constantly running a deficit of 

millions of dollars---an excessive amount for a municipality of 15,000, especially given 

the hefty yearly pay-outs it received from the State of Illinois. 

Crundwell explained this by lying about these pay-outs, claiming that they were 

much smaller than they actually were. But suspicions should have been aroused. 

Another red flag was that Crundwell, a city employee with a low five-figure 

salary, was able to bankroll a huge horse-breeding operation, owned several properties 

and several luxury cars. 

A third red flag was that Crundwell did Dixon’s banking off-line, through paper 

statements. This should have been a red flag to anyone who knew of it. It was known to 

Swanson, who did put the pieces together, albeit rather belatedly. 

Also, the bank in question, Fifth Third Bank, was a local bank, and it should have 

known that there was something suspicious about a city comptroller depositing large 

sums in a personal account. 

https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/December-2012/Rita-Crundwell-andthe-Dixon-Embezzlement/ 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Crundwell

If Dixon City financials were audited during Crundwell’s time as comptrollers, 

those audits were far from thorough. The State of Illinois is presumably supposed to 

conduct such audits, and the fact that it didn’t is perhaps the most important fact here. 

The money that Crundwell embezzled was, after all, Illinois-state money, and the State 

of Illinois should have verified that the funds it was giving to Dixon were being 

appropriately used. It did not verify this. 

It is unclear whether anyone in Dixon complained to the State of Illinois about 

Dixon’s financial problems. If they didn’t, they should have. 

Rita Crundwell is a sociopath who was defrauding Dixon out of millions. Such 

people exist and may even be drawn to positions of financial responsibility, such as City 

Comptroller. It is incumbent on others, especially other officials, to alert the authorities, 

in this case the State of Illinois, of their concerns. In this case, those concerns were 

deep: questionable layoffs of city employees, overdue raises, and problems replacing 

police equipment and maintaining roads. Given only the information contained in the 

three articles that I read, it is unclear how all of this went on for so long. Presumably, it 

was because people in a small town like Dixon were slower than people from big cities 

to suspect criminal activity, and it was possible that people in Dixon, including police 

officers and other officials, were personal acquaintances with Crundwell, sometimes 

even having grown up with her, and were slow to believe that ‘one of their own’ could 

have committed such a crime.

One lesson that I derived from this case study is that subjective assessments of 

personality are to be given far less weight in matters relating to fraud and crime 

generally than are hard facts, especially hard financial facts. 

Multinationals in Relation to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in Relation 

Part 1 

Dear Mr. Marshall, 

The FCPA is the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The FCPA was enacted in 1977, and 

its purpose is to prevent Americans from engaging in corrupt businesses practices in 

foreign countries. The primary purpose of the FCPA is to prevent Americans doing 

business abroad from bribing public officials or using their situation to engage in 

practices, such as money-laundering, that would be prohibited in the United States. 

Under the FCPA, an American doing business in India, for example, breaking American 

law by bribing an Indian official, even if his act is tolerated or even encouraged in India. 

There are two components to the FCPA. The one component prohibits Americans 

doing business in a given foreign country from bribing officials in that country. The other

component requires Americans doing business in a given country to be extremely 

transparent about their financial dealings in that country. They must keep records of all 

transactions and must never falsify or obfuscate those transactions. Additionally, 

financial records must not only be accurate, but must also make it easy for auditors to 

understand the nature of the transactions recorded. The purpose of the second 

component of the second component is to prevent the concealment of bribery or other 

corrupt financial transactions. The insistence on easy-to-understand records is to 

prevent Americans from using aspects of their situation that would be unfamiliar to 

American auditors as a way of concealing acts of corruption. For example, it would 

prevent the use of locally but not generally accepted accounting principles, and it would 

also prevent the use of local argot to record transactions. 

India is a country of over 1 billion people. Its economy is rapidly growing, and 

there are many economic opportunities there, both for Indians and for non-Indians. 

However, there are two serious problems facing people attempting to business in India. 

One problem is that the Indian government’s behavior with respect to businesses in 

India tends to be extremely corrupt. It is very much the norm for Indian officials to 

extort bribes from businesses in exchange for the right to continuing doing business. 

The other problem is that the businesses in Indian are extremely regulated. Businesses 

must remain in compliance with a byzantine network of regulations, and this involves

time, energy, and money. Oftentimes, the simplest way for businesses to stay on the 

right side of this bureaucracy is to bribe government officials. 

That said, American businesses are prosecuted for violating FCPA, and it is not an 

option to attempt to circumvent it. This has several implications for Americans, such as 

yourself, who wish to do business in India. The first is that operating expenses are likely 

to be higher than initially estimated, because compliance expenses are going to be 

dramatically higher than they would be in the United States. Another implication is that 

you must operate on the assumption that people in your organization are likely to 

violate FCPA provisions, given how lucrative and convenient such violations can be, and 

you must be aware of the ways that FCPA-violators falsify records to conceal acts of 

bribery. It is less likely that numbers will be doctored than it is that acts of bribery will 

be recorded as legitimate business expenses, for example 96 : 

*Travel expenses 

*Consultant fees 

*Entertainment expenses 

*Sales and marketing costs 

*Vendor or supplier payments 

*Discounts or rebates 

96 

This list is taken from https://whitecollarattorney.net/fcpa/accounting-provisions/

*Post-sale service fees 

*Commissions, and 

*Write-offs. 

Thus, if a given official is bribed, it may be recorded that he was a consultant who 

was appropriately compensated. Or the official might have been bribed with a vacation 

or with entertainment services, instead of with cash. 

What these items have in common is that they tend to be vague. Consulting 

services, unlike purchases of machinery or land, do not lead to a verifiable product; and 

neither do any of the other items listed above. 

The list above is not complete, but it makes it relatively clear how financials are 

likely to be distorted to cloak FCPA-violations. 

If any of these items, or any other hard-to-verify items, are unusually prominent 

in financial records, FCPA-violations are likely and the matter should be investigated. 

Verifying that FCPA-violations have occurred tends to be difficult, but your objective is 

not so much to prove the existence of such violations as it is to pre-empt such 

violations, which you can do by treating suspicious financials as evidence of such 

violations and appropriately discharging suspected violators while also conducting 

vigorous internal audits and setting up a safe and easy way for people to blow the 

whistle on FCPA-violations.

Part II 

The case I will discuss involves Walmart’s Mexican subsidiary. Starting in 2005, 

Walmart-Mexico began paying large sums to Mexican officials for licenses to expand 

within Mexico. The total amount of these bribes is estimated to be $24 million. The 

bribes continued until 2011. They came to end because of an inside whistle-blower, not 

because of pressure from either Mexican or American officials. As soon as Walmart 

became aware of the situation, it sent in internal auditors to determine exactly what 

had happened, and it presented its findings to the US Department of Justice. 

Walmart-investors brought a class-action lawsuit against Walmart, and in 

October 2018, Walmart agreed to them $160 million dollars. The SEC approved the 

settlement. 

Thus far, the situation has cost Walmart over $900 million dollars. In addition to 

the just-mentioned $160 million, Walmart spent over $700 to ensure that its foreign 

subsidiaries be FCPA-compliant. 

In September 2016, US prosecutors agreed to drop the case against Walmart if 

Walmart paid a fine of $600 million. Walmart declined. Since then, the case has been in 

prosecutorial limbo, and there has been no prosecutorial outcome thus far.

According to some, this is because President Trump, who is strongly pro-business, 

does not want to discourage American business with what might be regarded as 

unnecessary prosecution of an extremely successful American retailer. During Trump’s 

presidency, the Justice department has sent mixed messages on the matter. On the one 

hand, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said (though not in connection with Walmart 

specifically) that he is reluctant to let law-breakers off the hook by granting them DPA’s 

(Deferred Prosecution Agreement) or NPA’s (Non-prosecution Agreements). At the 

same time, white collar prosecutions under Trump have plummeted, the reason being, 

as Trump himself explicitly states, that he does not want to discourage business and he 

wants to reserve prosecutorial resources for violent offenses, drug offenses, and 

immigration-related offenses. Also, Trump has expressed his contempt for the FCPA, 

saying that it hamstrings American businesses. 

It is a matter of speculation how the case will be resolved, but it is my opinion 

extremely unlikely that Walmart will be prosecuted. Walmart is a major American 

retailer and employs many Americans; and because of its low costs, wide selection, and 

high quality it is much beloved by American consumers. Trump knows that if he were to 

prosecute Walmart for FCPA violations, it would undermine his pro-business message. 

If this is in fact Trump’s reasoning, it is highly defensible reasoning. It is easy to 

reside in one country and sit in judgment of the practices in another country. It is in the 

United States to condemn somebody in India or Mexico who bribes an official. But

usinesses operate on thin margins, and obstreperous officials in a given country can 

easily drive a business into a oblivion with paperwork, fines, and the like. Oftentimes, 

FCPA-violations involve cases of somebody bribing an official to do something that he 

could automatically do in the United States. This appears to be what was happening 

with Walmart-Mexico. Walmart-Mexico wanted to open new stores. Mexican officials 

were blocking it, supposedly on regulatory grounds, but possibly because they were 

waiting for bribes. The American legal system works reasonably well, but the legal 

systems of other countries may not work as well, especially in connection with American 

business-interests in their countries. I would therefore suggest that American 

prosecutors use discretion when prosecuting FCPA-cases. 

Oftentimes, regulatory requirements are used as a way of extorting under the 

table payments. A regulatory in India or Mexico makes a fraction of what his US 

counterpart makes, and it is to be expected that he may make up the difference by 

extorting money from businesses under his thumb. It is easy to judge people who give 

or receive bribes, but in some contexts it is not realistic to expect strict compliance on 

anyone’s part with the law. FCPA seems to make good moral sense, but it make dubious 

economic sense. Given that American businesses are likely to violate it and given that 

unenforceable laws generate contempt for the law, I would personally suggest softening 

FCPA.


Pick a recent financial statement fraud that has been in the news. Post your 

chosen company to the discussion board, if someone has already chosen that company, 

then choose another. Write a 2 page paper detailing the fraud: how did it happen, how 

was it detected, what controls were lacking, how could it have been prevented or 

detected sooner. 

In June 2017, Brian Block, CFO (Chief Financial Officer) of ARCP (American Realty 

Capital properties) was convicted of using fraudulent financial statements to exaggerate 

the success of the company’s holdings. Block’s presumed reason for doing this was to 

inflate the price of ARCP’s shares and also to attract private investors. 

ARCP is a real estate investment trust (REIT), meaning that it makes money by 

owning or financing income-producing real estate (meaning rental or commercial 

properties). Block’s case involved his using a non-GAAP measure of performance to 

exaggerate the values of company holdings. More precisely, the earning-statements 

prepared by BLOCK were based on a what is called AFFO (Adjusted Funds From 

Operation), AFFO being the measure typically used to determine the performance of a 

REIT is known as AFFO. The formula for AFFO is:

AFFO = FFO (Funds from Operations) + rent increases - capital expenditures - 

routine maintenance amounts. 

The formula for FFO is: 

sales. 

FFO = net income + amortization + depreciation - capital gains from property 

The difference between FFO and AFFO is that AFFO, unlike FFO, makes 

allowances for rent increases and capital expenditures. Let ABC be a REIT. According to 

AFFO, if the rent on the properties ABC increases but ABC is otherwise unchanged, then 

ABC has increased according to AFFO but has remained the same according to FFO; and 

if maintenance costs or capital expenditures for those properties increase, but ABC is 

otherwise unchanged, then ABC has lost value according to AFFO but remained the 

same according to FFO. 

AFFO is considered by industry insiders to be a more exact measure than FFO of a 

REIT’s financial performance. At the same time, AFFO, unlike FFO, allows money that has 

not yet been received or spent be considered when evaluating a REIT. This means that 

AFFO can be used to inflate or deflate the value of a REIT, whereas FFO cannot be so 

used. AFFO therefore violates the Principle of Conservative Accounting (only count

income when cash has actually been received), this being one of the ten principles of 

GAAP, and for this reason is a non-GAAP measure. FFO is a GAAP financial measure, 

since it does not violate this or any other GAAP principle. 

Block had promised investors large returns. When those investments fell short of 

Block’s promises, he used AFFO to make it appear as though those investments had 

performed as promised. ARCP-accountants pointed out the discrepancy to Block, 

thinking that he had made an innocent accounting mistake. Block continued to use AFFO 

to inflate ARCP’s value. Moreover, when ARCP’s investments sank so much that Block 

could no longer use AFFO alone to cover up the losses, he simply plugged fake numbers 

into his mandatory SEC-filings. Block was assisted in these various cover-ups by Lista 

McAlister, ARCP’s Chief Accounting Officer. When investors in ARCP were unable to 

liquidate their holdings for prices consistent with the financials prepared by Block, the 

SEC was brought in and the gig was up. 

McAlister and Block claimed that they had been instructed by the company 

founder and CEO, Nick Schorsch, to perpetrate this fraud. These accusations have not 

been substantiated, and Schorsch has not been indicted. However, Schorsch was forced 

to resign as CEO; and because of the decline in ARCP’s value caused by this scandal, 

Schorsch personally lost millions of dollars. 

Internal auditors were quick to spot the inaccuracies in Block’s financial 

statements and cannot be blamed for the debacle. Also, Block had the support of

McAlister and other key personnel at ARCP, who worked together to mislead or silence 

internal auditors. Unlike other cases of fraud, this one was not so much about an 

absence of internal controls as it is about an excess of credulity on the part of holders of 

equity in ARCP. Equity-holders knew that they financials they were given were prepared 

using AFFO, not FFO, and they knew AFFO not to be a GAAP financial measure. The 

lesson from this case is less about how organizations should self-police and more about 

how consumers should do so. When non-standard metrics are used, including non-GAAP 

financial measures, one should know that fraud is a distinct possibility. 


Use the internet to research a fraud involving one of the schemes addressed in 

this week's reading materials. You can use the same scheme you discussed in the 

Discussion Board. 

1. Discuss how the fraud was committed. 

2. Discuss controls that could have been in place to deter and detect this fraud. 

3. How was the fraud detected and what was the outcome? 

4. What were the red flags associated with the scheme?

The case that I will discuss concerns one Barbara “Basia” Skudrzyk, who on March 

7, 2017, was convicted of several counts of fraud in relation to a lucrative and long-lived 

personal-purchase scheme that was running at Washington University, where she was 

business director for medical education. Starting in May 2010 continuing right up till her 

arrest on July 31, 2018, Ms. Skudrzyk used Washington University funds to pay for a 

wide of personal range of personal services. She did this by creating, submitting, and 

approving false invoices and W2-forms, thereby making it appear as though the various 

services purchased were for work done for and at Washington University. In actuality, 

each and every one of the services purchases was for her personally. Skudrzyk used the 

funds to pay for contractors and a construction company for services performed on her 

home, a moving company, a house cleaning service, housepainters, babysitters for her 

children, and a divorce lawyer. 

Skudrzyk also purchased Visa gift cards at the Campus Bookstore by forging 

another Washington University employee’s signature. She used the Visa cards for 

personal purchases. Finally, Skudrzyk got Washington University to pay for trips for 

herself and her family. She did this altering invoices from airlines and hotels, then 

submitting them to the Division of Medical Education and approving them. 

In all, Skudrzyk defrauded Washington University of over $400,000. She was 

caught not because internal auditors took note, but because the employee whose

signature she was forging received a routine financial statement saying that he had 

spent $35,000 of dollars on Visa gift cards. That employee complained, and auditors 

were then dispatched. 

There were many red flags. Every invoice submitted by Ms. Skudrzyk was a red 

flag. But the only red flag that wasn’t ignored was the routine financial statement given 

to the employee whose signature was forged. All the rest---the five-figure invoices for 

work that clearly was not being done—did not even raise an eyebrow. 

The reason for this lies in 

University departments and divisions are enormously wealthy. University 

employees do not typically earn as much as investment bankers or high-powered 

attorneys, but they have access to enormous amounts of money, owing to the 

extremely wide of range of educational, recreational, and research-related services 

provided by a university. Many universities, including Washington University, are 

technically private. But their modus operandi is nothing like that of a business. 

Businesses compete for businesses, each trying to better products and services for less 

money than its rivals. For this reason, margins are thin and businesses have to be 

extremely aware of what they are doing with their own money. Universities are not in a 

comparable position. They constantly receive extremely large government grants and 

subsidies, and they also benefit from the enormous prestige and status that universities

have, leading to a constant influx of tuition-money, most of which is financed by 

government loans. Consequently, universities can be financially inefficient with relative 

impunity. 

Skudrzyk knew how loosely money was spent at her institution and knew how 

large the sums were, and she saw an opportunity to cash in. As the head of the Medical 

Education Division, Skudrzyk knew how much funding her division could requisition 

from the university without arousing suspicion. She also knew what kinds of services 

universities pay for and was therefore able to dummy up convincing invoices. Finally, 

she knew how bureaucratic and inefficient her university was when it comes to verifying 

that work paid for was actually done. 

Washington University could have prevented this disaster by regularly, 

aggressively auditing its various departments. The problem with this proposal is that 

university expenses tend to be extremely opaque. Professors are given six-month leaves 

of absence to write five-page articles; speakers are paid tens of thousands of dollars to 

give lectures that virtually nobody attends; various studies and other forms of research 

are paid for, the legitimacy of which is not easy to verify since much of it concerns topics 

that are comprehensible only to discipline-insiders. Finally, universities are supposed to 

be bastions of culture and thought; they are supposed to be places where scholars and 

artists-in-residence and the like can live ‘the life of the mind’ without being subjected to 

close financial scrutiny. Goodyear and McDonalds are willing to have regular, aggressive

internal audits, because their very purpose is to provide well-defined products and 

services at minimal cost. Universities are about ‘exploring ideas’, and the like, and 

therefore inherently averse to the kind of internal auditing on which any ordinary 

business depends. 

We must also remember that when the government goes after a fraudster, it 

usually does so because of complaints from customers. The SEC goes after the likes of 

Bernie Madoff when people complain to it. In the case of universities, who would be 

doing the complaining? There are no shareholders; nor are there investors. So there is 

no obvious demand for accountability. Universities therefore don’t have nearly as much 

of an incentive as businesses to be mindful of their own financial conduct. And granting 

that Washington University could have avoided Skudrzyk-debacle had it had regular, 

meaningful internal audits, it did not have the same kind of incentive as a business to 

subject itself to such scrutiny. 

That said, if students were given university financial statements---if they were 

given documents making it clear exactly how much their university was spending and 

what it was spending it on—students would likely begin to put terrific pressure on 

universities to self-audit. But for whatever reason—it may be the mystique universities 

or it may be the government-backed student loans---neither students nor their parents 

demand such financial transparency of universities. If a given university wished to 

eliminated expense-padding and financial fraud in its midst, the way for it do so is to

make its own financials transparent to the people who care—the students and their 

parents. Until that happens, we cannot expect universities to scrutinize their own 

finances with the same vigor as a business. 


Read the Liberty Bell Hospital case and answer the discussion questions (on pages 

4 and 5 of the case). What factors contributed to this opportunity to commit fraud? 

Matt Harris was hired (albeit as a part-time independent contractor) without 

having to undergo a background investigation. A background investigation might well 

have revealed a history of fraud or malfeasance, given that he was fired from his last 

job. Also, Matt Harris probably shouldn’t have been hired in the first place, at least not 

with a thorough review of his employment record, given that he had just been fired 

from a similar position at another organization. Other candidates besides Matt Harris 

should have been interviewed for his first position. When Matt Harris was asked to 

apply for the full-time position, his record should have been scrutinized, especially since 

it involved more responsibility than the previous position.

What breakdowns in internal control could have been improved so that this fraud 

could have been prevented? 

Matt Harris’s vendor account should have been deleted as soon as he was given 

the full-time position. He no longer needed a vendor account, and his having such an 

account gave him access to sensitive information. 

The CFO should have listened to Alan Walters when Walters cautioned him about 

the fact that Harris was a nepotism-hire. Harris should not have been given access to the 

safe containing pre-signed checks. When Downs went on vacation, a more senior 

person, not a less senior person, should have been given responsibility for handling the 

disbursements usually handled by Downs. 

Other than Matt Harris, who bears some responsibility for this fraud? 

Tracy Downs, Accounts Payable Manager, bears responsibility since she violated 

LBH's policy on nepotism-based hires, did not do a background check on Matt Harris, did 

not interview other candidates for the position, and also did not delete Harris’s vendor 

account when he took the full-time position. 

Elinor Linz, Assistant Accounts Payable Manager, bears responsibility since she 

did not delete Harris’s vendor account.

Alan Smith, CFO, bears responsibility since he allowed Harris to continue to work 

at LBH, despite knowing that Harris was a nepotism-hire. 

Sharon Harris bears responsibility since she recommended her son, Matt Harris, 

for the contractor position, knowing that she was violating LHB’s nepotism-policy and 

also possibly knowing of fraud in her son’s background. 

Did the Alan Walters, Internal Audit Manager do the right thing? 

Yes. He alerted the CFO to the fact that hiring Harris was a violation of company 

policy, and he also successfully carried out the investigation of Harris’s fraud, with the 

end result being a confession on Harris’s part. 

Explain how general computer controls and application level controls could have 

helped prevent and detect this fraud? 

Harris’s vendor account should have been automatically deleted once it was no 

longer inactive. Also, if the company had made payments electronically, instead of 

through physical checks, this would not have happened, at least not in this way. By 

2003, electronic payments were already the norm. Additionally, the system should (and 

could) have been set up to automatically bar anyone with a vendor’s account from

having access to safes containing checks or other securities, given that anyone with a 

vendor’s account can, in effect, send such checks to himself. 


You have just been hired as a Fraud Examiner to investigate an employee of Ace 

Auto Supplies store suspected of skimming a percentage of cash payments made on a 

daily basis. The employee is a Parts Manager and is believed to be skimming a portion of 

all parts sales where cash is used as the method of payment. The parts are ordered by 

the customer and the invoice is generated, which is logged into the system. The parts 

inventory is adjusted based on sales entered into the system. The Parts Mgr is 

responsible for turning over all sales (cash, check, credit) to the cashier at the end of the 

day. The cashier reconciles the total sales for the day to the checks, cash and sales on 

credit. The cashier submits the paperwork to Ace's accountant who prepares a bank 

deposit slip and deposits the amount based on daily sales. There is also concern that the 

accountant is skimming cash before depositing the amount into the bank at the end of 

each day. 

Prepare a memo to the Owner of the Auto Dealership covering the following: 

1. Investigative steps needed

2. Evidence required to prove the fraud 

3. List of interviewees 

4. List some questions you would consider asking 

Re: Possible Fraud (Cash Skimming) 

To whom It May Concern: 

My understanding is that you suspect that two kinds of fraud—specifically, cash 

skimming---are being committed within your organization. As you have described the 

situation to me, it is possible that the two alleged fraudsters are colluding, but it is 

possible that they are not. It is also possible, and in fact likely, that if there is in fact 

fraud, three parties are involved in it. It is possible that these parties are operating 

independently of one another; it is also possible that they are colluding. 

I will now identify the steps you must take to verify that fraud is in fact occurring, 

along with the steps that you must take if it turns out that fraud is occurring. If fraud is 

occurring, these steps will enable you to determine whether there is collusion among 

the parties involved. 

I will begin by describing the two fraud schemes that you believe to be occurring, 

along with some relevant background facts. Your store sells auto parts, and you believe 

that a Parts Manager is skimming some of the money from cash-sales of those auto

parts. Whenever a sale is made, the parts inventory is duly adjusted. At the end of each 

workday, the Parts Manager has to turn over all sales (cash, checks, and credit) to the 

cashier, who reconciles said sales to total sales (sold goods multiplied by their prices). 

The cashier then submits the paperwork to an accountant, who deposits the amount of 

daily sales into the business's bank account. 

For each day falling within the time period during which you suspect that fraud 

was being committed, start with that day’s total sales (goods sold times their prices. 

Then subtract cash, check, and credit sales from that number. The amount should be 

zero. If it is greater than zero, the next step is to rule out simple accounting errors. To do 

this, make sure go over each credit card sale, and make sure that the appropriate 

amount was charged for the item in question, and do the same with check sales. If those 

amounts are correct, then some of the cash from sales is indeed missing, and cash is 

indeed being skimmed. 

That said, we don’t know who is skimming that cash. It could be the Parts 

Manager or the Cashier or both. Moreover, they could either be colluding or operating 

independently. Below we will discuss how to determine who is skimming how much. 

If cash has been skimmed thus far in the process, it is still possible that the 

accountant is skimming. At the same time, the accountant may be skimming if no cash 

has been skimmed. Either way, the same method is used to determine whether or not 

the accountant is skimming: simply compare the cashier’s daily statement to the

amount that the accountant deposits. If deposits fall short, then the accountant is 

skimming. 

The method just used deals with past cases of skimming. It is also recommended 

that you perform a ‘sting’, so as to prove the existence of an on-going act of fraud. Two 

separate stings would have to be conducted. The first would involve taking daily sales 

directly from the Parts Manager and comparing them against total sales. If cash sales fall 

short, then the Parts Manager is skimming. The second sting would involve taking sales 

directly from the Parts Manager, comparing them to total sales, then passing them 

along to the Cashier without letting the Cashier know that the sales have already been 

audited. If the Cashier’s daily report is off, then the Cashier is skimming. 

If properly conducted, these stings would make it clear exactly who was 

skimming how much, and this information would be very useful when interviewing 

fraud-suspects. Let us now turn to this topic. 

There are three possible suspects, as we have discussed. If the Parts Manager is 

skimming, the Cashier knows it, since the Cashier’s job is to check the Parts Manager’s 

receipts against Total Sales. At the same time, the Cashier could be skimming without 

the Parts Manager being aware of it. Further, if either the Parts Manager or the Cashier 

are skimming, the Accountant wouldn’t necessarily know it, since the cashier’s 

paperwork is the only source of information that he has about sales. Finally, if the

accountant is skimming, neither the Parts Manager nor the Cashier necessarily knows 

about it. 

When interviewing, it is best to have as much knowledge as possible. The ideal 

situation is to prove that fraud is being committed and to know who is responsible for 

what part of that fraud; and unless the accountant is the only person skimming, the only 

way to have this knowledge is to conduct the previously described stings. 

If it is known exactly who is skimming how much, then the questions the fraud 

examiner would ask might include: 

How long has this been going on? 

Does anyone else know about it? 

What led you to do this? Were you unhappy with your position or compensation? 

Are you willing or able to make reparations, so as to minimize civil and criminal 

liability? 

If you are interviewing one of the three parties, ask questions about the possible 

roles of the other two; for example, if interviewing the Parts Manager, you might ask: 

Does the Cashier know about what you are doing? 

Who came up with the idea, you or him? 

What about the accountant? What is his role in this?

Variations of these questions could be asked when interviewing the other two 

parts. 

If it is not known exactly who is doing what, questions have to be chosen more 

delicately. You might want to include general questions, along the lines of: 

Are you aware that cash from sales cannot be accounted for? 

Do you know who might be responsible? 

Do you feel that you might have opened the door to skimming on someone else’s 

part? 

Are you on good terms with that other person? 

If you could return the money in exchange for legal immunity, would you be able 

to do so? 

Is there any way that you can help us prove your innocence in this matter? 

Are there any loopholes in the system that you are aware of that might allow 

people to skim? 

Would you be willing to help us identify and close them? 

Would you mind if we went over the books with you? There are a couple of 

things we'd like you to clear up. Would that be ok?

Are you aware that if this goes to court, and you are only responsible for 10% of 

the fraud, you are still 100% guilty in the eyes of the law? 

You know that once this goes to the police, it’s out of our hands. Would you be 

willing to help us minimize your liability? It’s your best bet. 

As for evidence, you simply need: 

*Sales proceeds submitted by Parts Manager to Cashier 

*Paperwork proceeds submitted by Cashier to Accountant 

*Deposit Slips/Bank Statements 

Testimony from interviews may also be helpful, especially if there is proof of 

skimming without a clear indication of who is responsible for what part of it. 


Answers that exceed 600 words will be penalized. 

1. Answer the following questions based on the information provided below .

a. What are fraud risk factors? 

1. Define 5 fraud risk factors for this company. 

Risk factor #1: This business has multiple accounting systems, resulting in 

potential accounting ambiguities that open the door to fraud. 

Risk factor #2: This company has autocratic, centralized management, coupled 

with a geographically dispersed employee-pool. Consequently, employee behavior is 

unlikely to be adequately monitored. Also, because of the various different currencies 

involved, along with the multiplicity of different kinds of transactions being conducted, 

the door is open to a variety of schemes, involving improper asset valuations, offbalance 

sheet entities and liabilities, disclosure fraud, and cash-skimming. 

Risk factor #3: Bonus-driven salaries put great pressure on employees to do 

whatever they must to earn, including committing fraud. 

Risk factor #4: Autocratic management may cause employees to dislike 

management and to find them unapproachable, thereby giving employees an incentive 

to ‘rip off’ the company by committing fraud. 

Risk factor #5: Because of the geographically dispersed employee-pool, different 

banking procedures are involved, making money laundering easier than it would be if 

activities were confined to a single banking system. Also, given that the company has

never done business in Russia, its attempting to conduct operations there and to 

employ Russians makes it vulnerable to employees who can use their knowledge of local 

customs, along with their knowledge of company-vulnerabilities, to commit fraud. It 

also exposes the company to ‘shakedowns’ by local criminals, putting Russia-based 

employees under pressure to defraud the company. 

2. Identify one fraud scheme for each risk factor identified in part b. 

Fraud Scheme Corresponding to Risk Factor #1: Assets/inventory can be 

overvalued, with the differences between reported and actual values being skimmed. 

Fraud Scheme Corresponding to Risk Factor #2: Centralized, autocratic 

management makes it easy for employees to fail to report sales actually made and 

pocket the proceeds. 

Fraud Scheme Corresponding to Risk Factor #3: Bonus-driven salaries may 

encourage employees to concoct phony investment deals in an effort to inflate the 

revenues they are generating for the company. 

Fraud Scheme Corresponding to Risk Factor #4: Remote and autocratic 

management may encourage employees to sell company inventory and claim that it was 

robbed.

Fraud Scheme Corresponding to Risk Factor #5: Exposure to Russian criminal 

organizations, along with the potential profits from cooperating with them, may lead to 

money laundering schemes, along with bribery of local officials. 

b. Describe the benefits of including personnel from various departments within 

the company during your fraud risk assessment. 

Each department carries its own windows of opportunity for fraud; and since one 

won’t know about these unless one knows about each department, one’s investigation 

should draw on the knowledge and cooperation of people in as many departments as 

possible. 

Information for Question 1 

You have just been hired as the Fraud Deterrence Specialist for a small business. 

The company is expanding into an emerging market in Russia. See the following facts 

about the company: 

· They employee 2,000 people worldwide 

· Have very decentralized accounting and procurement processes 

· Managed by an autocratic CEO

· Executive management salary is paid through salary and bonus. The bonus 

potential is significant and driven by earnings per share. 

· Has never employed anyone in Russia before this expansion. 

2. Answer the three questions below: 

a. Describe the “Behavioral Elements of Fraud.” 

The behavioral elements of fraud are the personality traits that fraudsters are 

likely to have. These include: 

*A weak or flexible moral compass: The fraudster doesn’t have a strict moral 

code and can rationalize theft and fraud. 

*Unstable and toxic relations with others: The fraudster is likely to have 

associates of ill-repute and to not have long-term stable and healthy relations. 

*Deceitfulness: The fraudster is likely to be a liar. 

*Arrogance: The fraudster is to believe his needs to be more important than the 

law and to believe himself to be smarter than others and also smarter than ‘the system.’ 

*Creativity and cleverness: The fraudster tends to be intelligent and creative; and 

he must be both, given that he has to figure out both how to earn outside the system 

and to conceal the fact that he is doing so.

. How did the culture at Crazy Eddie promote fraud? 

The management at Crazy Eddie’s explicitly encouraged fraud. Employees were 

paid in cash, so that tax-liability could be minimized. Employees were encouraged to 

overstate losses to insurance companies. Finally, employees were explicitly encouraged 

to do what they could to conceal assets from the government. 

c. What elements of the fraud triangle were present at Crazy Eddie? 

Employees were paid in cash and therefore given the opportunity to skim and 

evade taxes. Employees were also told, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, that taxevasion 

and skimming were legitimate, making it easy for them to rationalize doing so. 

Finally, Crazy Eddie’s had a low tolerance for low performance, putting pressure 

on employees to satisfy performance-benchmarks however they could. 

fraud? 

d. What do you consider to be the most interesting part about the Crazy Eddie

To me, the most striking feature of this case was the company’s failure to try to 

conceal it. To be sure, Crazy Eddie’s did misreport assets and revenue. But its now 

infamous sales campaigns (available on YouTube: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml6S2yiuSWE) dripped with contempt for 

established business practices and strongly hinted at a kind of Mafia-like criminality on 

the part of its management. 

3. Read the following information and then answer questions a & b below : 

Assume you are an internal auditor for a large, multinational, manufacturing 

organization with a division in Mexico. One of your responsibilities is to investigate 

allegations made on the company’s fraud hotline. When you arrive at work one morning 

you learn an anonymous tip was left on the hotline that alleges fraud involving the 

division manager. “Pat’s significant other is a fraudulent vendor,” was the anonymous 

tip left on your company’s fraud hotline. Pat is a division manager at your company. 

“Wow. I can’t believe this guy is so blatant,” you are thinking as you review some 

accounts payable invoices while following up on this anonymous tip. The invoice that 

caught your attention is shown in Table 1. 

A quick search of the AP file reveals a total of three invoices like the one in Table 1 

(on the next page of this exam), all for identical amounts but on different dates. The 

division manager, Pat, has the authority to approve payment of invoices for less than

$10,000. It is obvious to you that the manager has a created a shell company. You 

happen to know that Pat’s significant other is named Kim, hence the name Kimco 

Marketing. There is no documentation to support these transactions other than the 

invoices, all of which are purportedly for marketing services. 

The manager’s office is not more than 30 feet away and Pat can be seen at the 

desk. You throw the invoices in a file, grab your buddy in the next office, and head for 

Pat’s office. After all, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to know what’s going on here. 

Requirements for Question 4: 

a. Should Pat be confronted and interviewed now? Why or why not? 

No. It is too soon to interview Pat. Fraud-interviews should not be fact-finding 

expeditions. But if Pat were interviewed right now, that is what that interview would be. 

It has not yet been established that Pat committed fraud. It may well be that you are not 

aware of evidence to support the legitimacy of these invoices, but you have only been 

just made aware of the situation, and you must verify your suspicions before 

confronting pat. 

Your job right now is to figure out what happened. If you verify your suspicions, 

your next job is to figure out what to ask Pat. Before interviewing Pat, you must know

exactly what happened, so that you can control the interview and maximize the 

likelihood of a confession. 

When you do interview, make sure not to go in ‘guns blazing.’ Keep an open 

mind, and start with non-confrontational questions (e.g. how long have you worked 

her?, what is a typical day for you like?). This will help establish trust. Once you have 

‘connected’ with the interviewee, move to tougher questions. 

b.) Compile a written list of the questions you would ask in the interview with Pat 

and the sequence in which they should be asked. Ultimately, your objective is to 

determine whether a fraud has been committed and, if so, obtain a confession from Pat. 

What is your current position? 

How long have you worked here? 

What is a typical day for you like? 

Does your job involve providing marketing services? What about consulting 

services? 

Can you tell me about that?

If you provide marketing services, what does that involve? 

Are the fees for marketing services simply for your expertise, or are they used to 

defray subcontractor expenses? 

Tell me about some recent marketing clients of yours? 

Do you happen to recall doing work for the E.Z. Pickens Conglomerate? 

Tell me about that? 

Do you recall how much you might have invoiced them? 

Was that a standard account or was it unusual? 

You say that you hired an advertising agency for that? You wouldn’t happen to 

remember which firm you used? Receipts would be great if you have them. 

When you service a marketing-account, do you bill through the company? 

Do you happen to contact information for E.Z. Pickens? Who was your contact 

over there? 

Were they pleased with the work? 

Who else worked with you on this? 

Do you think they might have receipts? 

Is the first time you’ve done work ‘off the books’? 

Could you tell me about the other times? 

I have some other invoices here. Could you help me clear up some questions I 

have about them?

Did somebody here pressure you into doing this? Would you like to talk about 

that? 

Were these the only times you did this, invoiced non-existent clients I mean? 

And what you estimate company losses to be for these ‘clients’? 

Do you like working here? What about the industry? 

Are you aware that complete transparency will help me help you? 


A cybercrime is any crime that is committed online. If Smith creates a business 

website and uses that website to charge people for non-existent services, he is 

committing a cyber-crime. If Jones lures young women into his sex trafficking ring by 

posting an online advertisement for ‘legitimate modeling jobs', he is committing a 

cybercrime. If Brown posts an advertisement on Craigslist for a car that he doesn't own 

and then takes money for it, he has committed a cybercrime. 

There are many different kinds of cybercrime, and there are many different ways 

of committing a given kind of cybercrime. Three particularly common forms of 

cybercrime are hacking, identity theft, and internet fraud. 

Hacking is simply entry into a cyber-venue, such as a bank account or student 

account, to which one does not have authorized access. Suppose I know Mary Jane's

Amazon password. I can use that information to log into her Amazon account, I am 

guilty of hacking. If I then make unauthorized purchases on Mary's account, I am guilty 

theft in addition to hacking. Hacking is the cyber-equivalent of breaking and entering; 

and just as physical breaking an entering is often a prelude to burglary, so hacking is 

often a prelude to theft. Hacking may also be a prelude to a number of other different 

internet crimes. Suppose that I log into Mary Jane’s Facebook account without her 

permission and then impersonate her by sending messages from her account. Here my 

act of hacking is a prelude not to property theft, but to identity theft, this being an 

extremely common form of cyber-crime. 

Identity theft is the use of the internet to impersonate another person. In many 

cases, the purpose of identity theft is property theft. For example, Smith may steal 

Brown's identity with the intention of draining Brown's bank account. But property theft 

is not always what identity theft is about. Smith may steal Brown's identity with the 

intention of destroying his livelihood (by sending inappropriate messages to his 

employer from his email account) or of humiliating him (by posting compromising 

photos on his social media accounts). 

Internet fraud is the use of the internet to commit fraud. Each of the cybercrimes 

discussed in the first paragraph is a case of internet fraud. The internet is a magnet for 

fraudsters since it allows practically anyone to assume practically any identity. A man

can pretend to be a woman; an adult can pretend to be a child; a lowlife can pretend to 

be a respected financier. 

One particularly widespread form of internet fraud is internet romance fraud. 

Someone will post a phony profile on a dating website, such as match.com. If the 

fraudster’s objective is to swindle young males, he or she may post a photo of an 

extremely good-looking young woman who is eager to find a ‘normal guy to have fun 

with.' If the target is elderly divorcees, the fraudster is likely to post a photo of a 

distinguished looking executive who wants to spend ‘a cultured woman who isn't simply 

after my money.' When somebody responds, an internet courtship ensues, during which 

the fraudster carefully gains the other person's trust. Eventually, the fraudster will try to 

capitalize on that trust by defrauding the other person in some way. 

Here is a real-life example. Ken Azeah and Akunna Ejiofor created a phony profile 

on an internet dating site, claiming to be a handsome and distinguished financier. 

Operating through this persona, Azeah and Ejiofor cultivated online romances with 

several different women, manipulating them into allowing this non-existent person to 

manage their money, thereby swindling tens of millions of dollars from them. These 

women alerted the authorities, who quickly traced the money. Azeah and Ejiofor were 

arrested and convicted of several counts of internet fraud and wire fraud. 

The victims in this case did not exercise due diligence. They gave their money to 

someone without first verifying his credentials or even his very existence. Azeah and

Ejiofor were manipulators, not hackers, and their victims voluntarily gave them every 

dollar that they took from them, and they would have avoided this disaster had they 

simply used their judgment. Internet fraud, like all fraud, involves taking advantage of 

wishful thinking, and as long as one thinks realistically, instead of wishfully, one won’t 

be the victim of internet fraud. 

Most people have been the victims of some kind of internet fraud. They may 

have given money to a company promising to give them lucrative stay-at-home jobs. 

They may have signed up given money to online ‘coaches’ who never provided them 

with meaningful services. They may have been paid an online ‘lawyer’ for legal advice 

that they never received. Or they may have signed up for phony get-rich-quick schemes 

promoted by slick YouTubers. The victims of these crimes are always wishful thinkers: 

they are people who want to believe that they can make $100,000 working four 

hours/day; that a real lawyer will give them counsel for $5; that the government will 

simply give them money; that, in short, they can have what they want without working 

for it. All internet fraud involves wishful thinking, and a healthy dose of realism makes 

one impervious to it. 

One virtually full-proof sign that an online ‘business opportunity’ is a scam is that 

one has to pay for it. Real employers pay you; you don’t pay them. If you are being 

asked to pay money to make money, you are being scammed out of your money and

also quite possibly being manipulated into disclosing information to someone who will 

try to use it to defraud you further. 

To be sure, internet fraud is only one kind of cybercrime, but internet fraud 

tends to be involved in carrying out other kinds of cybercrimes. If someone is able to 

steal your identity or hack into an account of yours, there is a good chance that he 

manipulated you into giving him personal data. He may have friended you on Facebook 

and carefully eased you into giving him personal data, or he may have sent you an email 

luring you with the promise of easy money into setting up an account on a website of 

his. It is likely that some element of wishful thinking on your part was involved in this 

person’s being in a position to obtain the information that needed to hack into your 

accounts and steal your identity. 

There are indeed cybercrimes that do not involve internet fraud and therefore do 

not involve wishful thinking on the victim’s part. In some cases, PayPal or Bank Accounts 

are raided, and the victim isn’t guilty of any obvious lapse in judgment. But scrutiny of 

such cases tends to show that the victim put too much faith in someone (it may have 

been a slick salesman or an unvetted app-designer on Fiverr) and tipped their hand to 

that person. It is very unlikely that one’s bank account will be raided or one’s identity 

stolen unless one has been too quick to give credence to big talkers without verifiable 

credentials.

To be sure, professionals often have access to personal information, and they 

may use that information to commit cybercrimes against those people. For example, 

physicians may have access to patient credit card information, and they could use that 

information to commit theft or fraud. But physicians value their careers too much to 

throw them away for a few unauthorized credit card purchases, the same being true of 

all professionals: lawyers, professors, accountants, and stockbrokers stand to lose much 

and gain little by misusing client information. If a given person does have an incentive to 

run up unauthorized charges on your credit card, he probably isn't a professional, and 

he probably is somebody who could not have acquired that information without 

manipulating. 

In conclusion, although there are internet crimes that do not involve fraud or 

manipulation, most such crimes do, and the best protection against internet crime is to 

use one’s judgment. Verify someone’s credentials before giving someone your personal 

information, let alone your money, and assume the worst if you are unable to verify 

their credentials. 


The purpose of any interview is to elicit information from the person being 

interviewed. This is especially difficult to do, when the purpose of the interview is to

elicit information about a crime that the interviewee is known or believed to have 

committed. Consequently, someone conducting a fraud investigation interview has to 

meet requirements that other interviews do not. 

First of all, the interviewer must know the facts. He must know what kind of fraud 

has committed and what it involved; and he must also know what the likely role is of the 

person is being interviewed. If the interviewer doesn’t have this information, he will be 

‘fishing’ for information and the interviewee will know it, making the latter even more 

disinclined than he would otherwise be to be open truthful. Also, the interviewee is 

likely to ‘pied pipe’ such interviewer with false or half-true narratives, which will prevent 

the interviewer from focusing on the right issues and asking the right questions. To be 

sure, the interviewer need not know all of the relevant facts. But he must know enough 

to know what to ask and to know whether a given statement on the interviewee’s part 

for truth and relevance. 

Second, the interviewer must be able to make it psychologically easy for the 

interviewee to talk. In a fraud interview, the interviewee is being asked to provide 

incriminating information about himself, and in this respect fraud interviews are very 

different from job interviews. If the interviewer comes on too strong, the interviewee is 

likely to feel threatened and to ‘clam up.’ The interviewer must therefore ‘build rapport’ 

before asks the questions that he is there to ask. He should come off as approachable 

and interested in what the interviewee has to say, and he should also start out with

non-threatening questions that the interviewee can answer truthfully without 

incriminating himself. Having established rapport in this way, the interviewer should 

gently move on to tougher questions, making sure to frame them in a way that makes 

the interviewee feel comfortable answering them. Having successfully taken this step, 

the interviewer should ‘turn up the volume’ once more, this time directly asking about 

the alleged offense, taking care not to break his rapport with the interviewee. During 

this phase of the interview, the interviewer wants to come off as a confessor, not an 

accuser: he wants the interviewee to see him as somebody to whom he can ‘unburden’ 

himself. 

Third, the interviewer must be prepared. He must choose the venue 

appropriately, making sure that there are as few or no distractions or possible 

interruptions. To this end, the interviewer must remember to ask the interviewee to 

turn off his cell-phone, since the interviewee is likely to dodge questions by checking his 

messages, taking incoming calls, and the like. Also, the interviewer should dress 

appropriately, since odd attire might make the interviewee suspicious and unwilling to 

talk. Most importantly, the interviewer must know exactly what it is that he wants to 

ask. He must not ‘wing it' during the interview. 

Fourth, the interviewer must be open-minded. He mustn’t have his mind made 

up about who is guilty of what, and he must be prepared for the possibility that the 

interviewee will give him legitimate information that conflicts with his preconceptions.

Consequently, the interviewer, while being prepared, shouldn’t rigidly stick to a script, 

since the questions he asks must reflect any new and relevant information that the 

interviewee has given him. 

Fifth, the interviewer must be quick to pick up on signs of deception, of which 

there are many. Deceptive people are reluctant to answer questions directly, and they 

are likely to stall and ask for unnecessary clarifications. They may also volunteer 

extraneous or excessive information. (For example, when asked ‘do you know anything 

about the phony accounts that we discovered last week?’, a liar may respond by saying: 

‘I have never committed fraud in my life.”) Such a person is likely to have selective 

amnesia.(“I don’t recall” is a go-to for many liars, as is “I haven’t heard that.”) Deceivers 

are likely to respond with emotional ‘performances’; when asked a straightforward 

question (e.g. ‘do you know how stole those treasury notes?’), a liar may respond being 

indignant (“how dare you ask such a question!”). Deceivers are likely to make 

extraneous movements (e.g. they are likely to fidget, adjust their ties, stroke their 

beards, play with rings, flick their hair). Their body language is also likely to indicate 

defensiveness; for example, they are likely to have an unusually stiff and upright posture 

or to cross their legs excessively. When asked questions, liars are not likely to respond 

with concise and plausibly answers, and they are likely to dodge the question in one way 

or another.

When conducting a fraud interview, one must be professional. This involves 

having the facts and knowing what to ask. But it also means not having an agenda: not 

regarding the interviewee either as enemy or a friend, but simply as a possible source of 

information who is to be treated accordingly. 

Some Key Obstacles to Effective Fraud Risk Assessment 

There are several obstacles to conducting an effective fraud risk assessment of a 

given organization. First of all, a thorough knowledge of the industry in question is a 

prerequisite for effective fraud risk assessment. Suppose that ACME is a company that 

provides extremely specialized and high-level financial services. It might be very difficult 

for an independent auditor (or any other outside agency) to know exactly what kinds of 

fraud ACME employees might be likely to commit. Suppose that ACME handles large 

volumes of foreign currency. Because of fluctuating exchange rates, it might be possible 

for account-managers to misrepresent earnings and, on this basis, to siphon off funds 

for themselves. In this context, effective fraud risk assessment would involve knowledge 

of how to interpret complex financial statements concerning foreign currencies, which 

would require knowledge that is more in-depth than most auditors are likely to have. 

Second, a thorough knowledge of the company in question is necessary for 

effective fraud risk management. Suppose once again that ACME provides specialized

financial services, often involving foreign currencies. Also suppose that there are 

multiple fund-managers servicing each of ACME’s different accounts. (So if Smith is one 

of ACME’s clients, then ten different fund-managers are involved in servicing Smith’s 

account.) It will be difficult to know exactly who is doing what for a given client, and it 

will therefore be hard to know who has access to what kind of information or, 

therefore, who is in a position to commit a given kind of fraud. If money goes missing 

from one of Smith’s accounts, there will be ten different ACME employees to 

investigate, making it hard to conduct a speedy and effective investigation. 

Third, even if a given auditor (or auditing agency) has the requisite degree of 

industry-specific and company-specific information, a prohibitively high degree of 

sophistication may be needed to process all of the raw data in question. Suppose that 

ACME is an extremely large company that provides many different kinds of services in 

many different countries. In a case like, it would be hard to conduct an ad hoc 

investigation of each individual branch of ACME, since the time and expense involved 

would be excessive, as would the difficulties in interpreting the resulting information; 

and it would probably be necessary to come up with a company-wide fraud risk 

assessment program. But coming up with such an assessment would be an intellectually 

extremely demanding task. 

Fourth, many companies, especially companies in the fields of finance and 

consulting, provide services that are poorly defined. Suppose that ACME provides

‘project management support’, ACME employees might send complex invoices that their 

clients are unlikely to scrutinize, making it possible to bill for services that were never 

rendered. Also, those services might involve creating new accounts or even new holding 

companies, which could then be used to create hide losses or gains or simply to hide 

funds. 

Fifth, while requiring industry-specific and company-specific knowledge, fraud 

risk assessment must also be conducted by disinterested parties, and this makes it 

inherently difficult to conduct effective fraud risk assessment. It is hard for any 

organization to be objective about itself and therefore to identify fraud in its own midst, 

but it is hard for outside agencies avail outside agencies of the information needed to do 

so. 

Finally, when conducting a fraud risk assessment, it is necessary to bear in mind 

what the company will actually be able and willing to do with the resulting information. 

Suppose that Smith is an external auditor who conducts a fraud risk assessment of 

ACME, and suppose that the ACME-services that Smith flags as likely to lead to fraud are 

the very ones that ACME depends on for most of its revenue. In that case, Smith’s 

findings may well fall on deaf ears. In order to avoid this, Smith would have to be very 

precise about how exactly the services in question might lead to fraud, and he would 

also have to be very precise about how to those services could be retained while also 

being so modified or monitored that they were no longer fraud-conducive. In a situation

like this, fraud risk assessment would involve a high-degree of knowledge, intelligence, 

and discretion. 

In conclusion, effective fraud risk assessment requires a combination of 

company-information, industry-information, objectivity, and discretion that may make it 

difficult to carry out effectively. 

Five Characteristics of Reliable Employees 

In her article Five Characteristics of a Good Work Ethic 97 , Erin Schreiner identifies 

what she believes to be some necessary ingredients for a good work ethic, these being: 

Reliability and dependability 

Dedication to the job 

Productivity that doesn’t quit 

Cooperation and teamwork 

Self-disciplined character 

97 

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/five-characteristics-good-work-ethic-10382.html

Let us briefly discuss each of these: 

Reliability and dependability: An employee is only as good as he is reliable. The 

most talented surgeon in the world is useless to the hospital that employs him if he 

doesn’t show up to work regularly. In fact, as this very example shows, if someone who 

has talent is unreliable, that can be a dangerous situation: given that the surgeon in 

question is talented, the hospital will expect him to do that much more than his 

colleagues; and if he doesn’t show to work, then that much more work isn’t being done. 

Dedication to the job: It isn’t enough that employs show up and do their job. It is 

necessary that they do their job with distinction. A talented surgeon who shows up to 

work but doesn’t apply himself is not only failing to help his organization but is actively 

hurting it. 

Productivity that doesn’t quit: A dedicated and reliable employee is a productive 

employee; an employee who isn’t dedicated or reliable is not a productive employee. So 

productivity, though not exactly a character-trait in and of itself, is a consequence of the 

first two character-traits.

Cooperation and teamwork: It isn’t enough that an employee be dedicate and 

reliable. If he doesn’t cooperate with the organization that employs him, then his 

successes won’t be its successes. Such a person may be a great entrepreneur; but if he is 

part of a team, then he function as such. And even if he is an entrepreneur, he still has 

to work with others—with suppliers, investors, customers, and employees of his own— 

and he must, in that sense, be a team-player. So cooperativeness with one’s team is 

essential for success in any enterprise that is not completely solitary. 

Self-disciplined character: In order for a person to have any of the previously 

mentioned traits, he must be self-disciplined. Someone who is not self-disciplined is a 

‘slacker’, and slackers are neither reliable, hard-working, dedicated, or productive; and 

they are not good team-members. So self-discipline is, in a way, the root-characteristic 

of all of the various characteristics of a good worker. 

The “So What?” About your Industry Analysis (Business)

Remember what we learned about the value of using structure to make your 

points more easily understood. There isn’t an obvious analytic framework to use here, 

but you might consider an introduction to set the context, then (up to) 5 

bullet/numbered points that are your key messages about the industry. 

*Owing to high start-up and fixed costs, there is a pronounced tendency towards 

industry-concentration, with the top three companies having an 80% market-share. 

*Global warming is eating into already thing profit-margins, intensifying this 

tendency towards market-concentration. 

*This industry is sensitive to changes in the economy and can be expected to 

grow as long as the economy does and to shrink when it doesn’t. 

*Existing ski resorts have an enormous advantage over prospective rivals, owing 

mainly to the fact that there are very places on Earth where skiing is possible and also 

owing to the high maintenance costs. 

*Because costs, though high, are fixed, profits outpace expenses given a 

minimum number of customers.

*The industry offers a valuable and ultimately non-fungible service and will 

therefore remain in existence for the foreseeable future, but market-concentration will 

grow, as will barriers-to-entry for non-established players. 

Industry Definition: 

The Ski and Snowboard Resorts industry is composed of establishments engaged 

in operating downhill, cross-country or similar skiing areas, or operating equipment, 

such as ski lifts and tows. These establishments often provide food and beverage 

services, equipment rental services and ski instruction services. Four-season resorts 

without accommodations are also included in this industry, but companies that own and 

do not operate ski resorts are excluded from the industry. 

Products/Services Provided by Industry 

industry are: 

The primary activities of this

Operating alpine skiing facilities 

without accommodations 

Operating cross-country skiing 

facilities without accommodations 

Operating downhill skiing facilities 


Operating four-season ski resorts 


Ski lift and tow operation 

Operating ski resorts without 

accommodations 

Operating cross-country skiing 

facilities without accommodations 

Operating downhill skiing facilities 


Example firms in industry 

Vail Resorts Inc 

Alterra Mountain Company

Boyne Resorts 

Peak Resorts Inc 

Examples/descriptions of buyer groups 

Skiers aged 18 to 34 make up the largest market for ski resorts, representing 

33.3% of industry revenue. Although this age group has a low level of disposable 

income, they direct a substantial and increasing percentage of income toward 

recreation. Studies have shown that millennials spend more of their income on 

experiences instead of on material items 

Consumers aged 35 to 54. In 2018 are estimated to account for 32.4% of industry 

market share. This is primarily driven by the aging snowboarder population. This trend is 

anticipated to continue, having driven falling snowboarding participation over the past 

two years. 

10.9%. 

Consumers aged 55 and older represent the smallest share of industry revenue at

Consumers under 18 represent the remaining 23.4% of industry revenue. 

Consumers in this age demographic often have to rely on their parents to afford, travel 

to and participate in skiing and snowboarding. For this reason, this age demographic is 

heavily reliant on the trends of consumer aged 35 to 54. However, skiing and 

snowboarding have historically been very popular among younger individuals, especially 

those that are local to areas that surround ski resorts. 

Examples/descriptions of key supplier groups 

Grocery Wholesaling: Supply grocery items to retailers on the mountain 

Heating & Air-Conditioning Contractors: Supply plumbing and heating services to 

accommodation units on the mountain. 

Oil & Gas Pipeline Construction: Supply pipelines used for converting water into 

snow. 

Plumbers: Supply plumbing and heating services to accommodation units on the 

mountain. 

Sporting Goods Wholesaling: Supply recreational equipment to the skiing 

facilities. 

Water & Sewer Line Construction: Supply pipelines used for converting water into 

snow.

Potential substitute products/services 

Golf Courses 

Golf courses and country clubs may offer similar amenities, such as lodging and 

restaurants, as ski resorts. 

Hotels/Motels 

These establishments primarily engage in providing accommodations in resorts 

with skiing facilities. 

Casinos/Casino Hotels 

These establishments primarily engage in operating resorts with both casinos and 

accommodations. 

Bed and Breakfast and Hostel Accommodations 

These establishments provide short-term lodging in private homes converted for 

this purpose. They are characterized by highly personalized service and include a full 

breakfast with accommodations. 

Groups 

Supplier Value Chains (dominant chains) – from your examples of Supplier

Water & 

Sewer Line 

Construction 

in the US 

Supply pipelines 

used for converting 

water into snow. 

Ski and 

Snowboard 

Resorts industry 

Oil & Gas Pipeline 

Construction in the 

US 

Supply 

pipelines used 

for converting 

water into 

snow. 

Ski and 

Snowboard 


Sporting Goods 

Wholesaling in 

the US 

Supply 

recreational 

equipment to the 

skiing facilities 

Ski and 

Snowboard 


Groups 

Channel/Buyer Value Chains (dominant chains) – from your examples of Buyer

Ski and 

Snowboard 

Resorts 

industry 

Skiing 

facilities 

Skiing 

facilities 

are the 

primary 

products 

offered 

by the 

Ski and 

Snowbo 

ard 

Resorts 

industry. 

Ski and 

Snowboard 

Resorts 

industry 

Ski schools 

Industry 

operators 

run ski and 

snowboard 

schools to 

provide 

instruction 

to 

customers.

Ski and 

Snowboard 

Resorts 

industry 

Equipment 

rental and 

merchandis 

e 

Many 

resort 

operators 

own retail 

and ski 

rental 

shops at 

or near 

their 

resorts. 

Consumer 

Force: Buyer Power 

Activity 

Factor or factors 

Discretionary 

Enables/Inhibits 

Ind. Profitability 

Inhibits profits 

Reasoning w/ details 

(may vary by buyer group) 

People don’t have to 

take vacations, let alone ski. Ski 

resorts are a luxury, not a 

necessity. 

Goods. 

Multiple Substitute 


If people wish to take 

vacations, they have

alternatives: they can go 

boating, they can go hiking, 

etc. 

Seasonal/Weatherdependent 


Skiing is possible only 

during certain months of the 

year and even then only if 

certain weather conditions 

obtain. 

Highly 

Enjoyable/Rewarding 

Activity 

Enables 

profitability 

There are few activities 

that are as exhilarating as 

skiing 

Costs 

Low Buyer Switching 


If a given person isn’t 

happy with a given ski resort, 

he can switch to another one 

without penalty or loss.

Summary of Force’s impact on industry profitability: 

This force does more to inhibit than to promote profitability. Skiing is a leisure 

activity, not a necessity; it is relatively expensive, and there are alternatives to it. That 

said, few activities are as thrilling or demanding as skiing, and this makes it impossible to 

replace, notwithstanding the abundance of substitute goods. It is probably because of 

this last factor that profits in the Ski and Ski Resort Industry remain stable, despite the 

largely adverse effect of this force on that industry. 

Force: Supplier Power 

Factor or factors 



Reasoning w/ details (may 

vary by supplier group) 

High Costs Inhibits profits High-energy bills, coupled 

with high wages for workers, force 

resorts to price their services high, 

alienating buyers. 

High Barriers to 

Enables 

It is extremely expensive to 

Entry 

profitability 

build a ski resort, and there are 

formidable legal and licensing-

elated barriers to doing so, giving 

already existing ski resorts a major 

competitive advantage. 

Geographyspecific 

Industry 

Enables 

profitability 

There are very few places in 

the world the with requisite 

physical geography for skiing, and 

this gives Ski Resorts a kind of 

natural monopoly, similar to that 

enjoyed by owners of diamond 

mines or oil fields. 

Relatively Fixed 

Costs 

Changes in 

Weather Patterns 

Enables 

profitability 

Inhibits Profits 

Even though costs are high, 

they tend to be fixed, meaning that 

they don’t increase with the 

number of additional customers. 

Global warming is limiting 

the already small amount of time 

that ski resorts can operate, eating

into already thing profit-margins 

and boding ill for the industry as a 

whole. 


The Ski and Ski Resort industry has high costs, but they are relatively fixed, 

meaning that profits from additional customers are not eaten up by additional 

expenses. Also, there are very few places on Earth where it is physically possible to ski, 

giving existing ski resorts an enormous competitive advantage. Relatedly, there are 

extremely high barriers to entry, owing to the high start-up costs, the singular 

geographical conditions, and the formidable regulatory issues. This gives existing ski 

resorts a massive advantage over possible rivals. 

Force: Rivalry 

Factor or 

factors 

High degree of 

competition 



Inhibits Profits 


Somebody wishing to ski in a 

given area can usually choose from

many different, equally good ski 

resorts. 

Increasing 

technological costs 


As technology advances, 

technology-related costs grow for 

ski resorts, making it hard for small 

players to stay afloat. 

Need for 

Economies of Scale 


The average cost per use for 

small resorts tends to be 

prohibitively high, making it hard for 

them to compete against companies 

that operate multiple ski runs. 

Competition 

Limited Foreign 

Enables profits 

Although there are some ski 

resorts in Canada and Europe,

American ski resorts of little to fear 

from non-American competition. 


Owing to high-overhead and already thin profit margins, it is hard for ‘mom-andpop' 

ski resorts to stay in business. As a result, the three largest ski resort operators (Vail 

Resorts, Alterra Mountain Company, and Boyne Resorts) jointly have an 80% market 

share. The competitive landscape is therefore grim in the extreme for small operators. 

At the same time, owing to the absence of foreign competition and high entry costs, 

coupled with a stable business volume, entrenched operators can expect steadily 

increasing profits for the foreseeable future. 

Force: Threat of New Entrants 





Reasoning w/ details

Minimal threat 

of new entrants. 

Enables 

profitability 

Heavy-duty financial and legal 

barriers have to be surmounted by 

prospective operators, giving 

incumbents a massive competitive 

advantage. 


Ski resorts can only be built in very specific parts of the world, most of them in 

the United States; they require enormous start-up capital, and there are heavy-duty 

licensing and regulatory issues to deal with. Therefore, existing ski resorts need only 

cover costs to stay afloat. Owing to high fixed costs, however, smaller operations tend 

to go under or be absorbed into large ones, resulting in the oligopolistic situation 

currently prevailing in the industry. 

Force: Threat of Substitutes



The services 

provided by ski 

resorts are leisureactivities 





People don’t need to engage in 

these activities, and business is 

therefore very sensitive to changes in 

the economy. 

There are 

substitute services. 


People who have disposable 

income and wish to recreate don’t 

have to ski; they can golf, boat, etc. 

There is a 

deeply entrenched 

base of people who 

like to ski. 

profits. 

Enhances 

Skiing is in many ways unique 

and for this reason has a large, 

dedicated customer base. 


The overall effect here is neutral, with the one positive (that skiing is unique in 

many ways and has a strong customer-base) balancing out the negatives.

Summary of Industry Structure - how the industry makes money and the overall 

contribution/balance of key forces & factors that enable or inhibit industry profitability. 

Many people enjoy skiing, and there are very few places on Earth where it is 

physically possible to do so. The Ski Resort Industry makes money by giving people an 

otherwise impossible-to-obtain opportunity to ski. Consumer demand for the 

opportunity to ski is sufficiently strong that this industry is unlikely to collapse, but many 

factors conspire to make it difficult for small operators to survive and for large ones to 

make more than modest profits. These include 

*Season-specificity (no skiing except during Winter) 

*High start-up and maintenance costs 

*Increasing technology-related costs 

*The existence of substitutes (e.g., golf, boating). 

Because of the entrenched and relatively widespread nature of the desire to ski, 

ski resorts will continue to profit, but those profits will shrink and be shared by 

increasingly few market-participants.

Analytical Assessment of Greg Toppo’s “Do Video Games Inspire Violence?” 

The main point of this article is supposedly that “decades of research have turned 

up no reliable causal link between playing violent video games and perpetrating 

actual violence.” The author repeatedly asserts that playing violent video games (e.g. 

Grand Theft Auto) does not cause (or, to put it more conservatively, encourage) children 

to carry out actual acts of violent. But the data that the author cites tends to support 

the opposite conclusion. To be sure, that data does not definitively warrant acceptance 

of the position that playing video games causes children to be violent; but it is more 

favorable to that position than to its negation. As a result, this article consists of a series 

of unargued assertions to the effect that playing such games doesn’t lead to violence, 

interposed between which is data that tends to undermine that conclusion along with 

some entertaining but irrelevant anecdotes. 

The author begins by discussing Adam Lanza. 20-year-old Lanza killed 20 children 

in a school yard in 2012. Toppo points out that, as investigators would come to discover, 

he spent much of the time leading up to the shooting by playing video games at a local 

arcade.

Of course, this doesn’t prove causality: many people play video games; most of 

them do not commit acts of violence thereafter; and, for all we know, many people of 

them perform positively saintly acts. But with regard to the fact that Lanza, by the 

author’s own admission, spent hours obsessively playing aggressively-tinged video 

games, this fact doesn’t exactly bolster Toppo’s assertion that there is “no… causal link 

between playing violent video games and perpetrating actual violence.” 

Bizarrely, Toppo also points out that Lanza’s home video game stash included a 

number of violent games, including: “Call of Duty, Dead or Alive [and] Grand Theft 

Auto.” Toppo also points out that, in having these games, Lanza was “like many teens.” 

But the fact that Lanza had these games, and almost certainly played them frequently in 

the years leading up to his shooting spree, doesn’t exactly support Toppo’s “no causal 

link” thesis. 

Also, even though Lanza’s crimes were unusually overt and unusually violent, he 

was not the only violent criminal in the country. There are many car-jackings, rapes, 

physical assaults, acts of vandalism, and even murders, all committed by males of 

approximately Lanza’s age, this being the prime demographic (suggestively) for violent 

video-game: and what if it turned out—a possibility that Toppo does not even 

consider—that a disproportionate number of these crimes were carried out, and 

perhaps even immediately preceded by, people playing such games? Again, that would

not definitely prove causality; it could be a mere correlation. But it wouldn’t help 

Toppo’s case, and neither does the limited data that Toppo does cite. 

Toppo mentions that there were many video games at the arcade Lanza 

frequented that were not violent, e.g. “Dance Dance Revolution.” One would presume 

that, in pointing this out, Toppo was making an attempt, however feeble, to cast doubt 

on the idea that Lanza’s video-gaming had a hand in his murderous rampage. But 

instead of saying this, Toppo says: “Yet no one knows how any of these games—Dance 

Dance Revolution included—might have affected a kid who was clearly struggling.” The 

point of which remark seems to be that, indeed, Lanza’s playing video games might have 

at least nudged him in the direction of committing mass murder. But instead of saying 

that, Toppo says—without having provided a shred of support or even of due expository 

build-up--- “The truth is that decades of research have turned up no reliable causal link 

between playing violent video games and perpetrating actual 

violence.” 

And that may be true: but Toppo doesn’t actually cite any of the data that 

disproves the existence of such a connection. Toppo mentions that, in addition to 

owning (and presumably using) several violent games, Lanza also had newspaper 

clippings relating to the infamous 1997 Columbine shooting. This does not prove that 

playing violent video games causes people to be violent, but it certainly doesn’t prove 

the opposite. And the fact that both these newspaper clippings and these violent video

games were evidently congenial to Lanza certainly makes it reasonable to suspect, 

however tentatively, that there is some kind of affirmative connection, however 

tenuous, between Lanza’s gaming and his killing. 

In the next two sections, Toppo discusses the views and research of different 

psychologists (e.g. Melzer, Bandura, Gentile), some of whom held, and provided 

evidence in favor to the view, that there is a connection between ‘virtual’ violence (e.g. 

reading violent comics, playing violent video games) and actual violence, and some of 

whom believed and otherwise (and provided some, albeit feeble, evidence to the 

contrary). But the totality of the research-data cited by Toppo is ambiguous at best and, 

if anything, tends to support the contention there is a causal link between virtual and 

actual violence. 

For example, Toppo cites a study that mentions how, after playing a violencethemed 

board-game, children would deal with frustration by punching a toy clown in 

the face. (Toppo then feebly asserts that this doesn’t prove there to be a connection 

between virtual violence and actual violence. But it doesn’t prove the opposite; and 

tends to support such a claim. If you knew someone who repeatedly punched dolls in 

the face, would you really not at some level suspect that person of being violent?) He 

also mentions a study according to which children who played violence-themed games 

become angry more easily than others and were more given to aggressive ideation.

Toppo then mentions, presumably in effort to offset these claims, that according 

to one study, there was a slight negative correlation in some populations between level 

of violence-themed gaming and levels of actual violence. But this was one study, which 

concerned one population, and the inverse correlation in question was marginal at best. 

In any case, this particular claim involves more of a failure to distinguish causation from 

correlation than do the claims of his adversaries. 

Toppo then mentions that the number youthful offenders fell even as the 

number of violent games grew. This is certainly suggestive, but it is far from probative, 

and to think otherwise would involve a rather brazen failure to distinguish correlation 

from causation. 

Toppo then mentions that a number of distinguished authors, e.g. Emily 

Dickenson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, liked to read violence-themed literature. Exactly 

what this proves is deeply unclear. But Toppo seems to be insinuating that, if there were 

an actual connection between reading about (or thinking about) violence and 

committing acts of violence, then these distinguished authors would have steered clear 

of such literature. But if that is what Toppo is saying—and it must be what he is saying, 

unless (what is possible) his inclusion of this material serves no argumentative 

purpose—then Toppo’s reasoning is weak, to put it mildly. 

Taken by itself, Toppo’s main claim—that decades of research have turned

up no reliable causal link between playing violent video games and perpetrating 

actual violence”---is perfectly plausible. And it may even be true. But the data that 

Toppo himself sites does not support the belief that there is no such connection. In fact, 

that data doesn’t even support the much more modest claim that “decades of research” 

have failed to produce such data. Given only what Toppo says—given only the data that 

he sites---it seems as though scientific research has generated data suggestive of a link 

between virtual and actual violence. In fact, given the totality of the data that Toppo 

himself sites, it would be epistemically more conservative to affirm than to deny the 

existence of such a link. In conclusion, while it may be there is no such link, Toppo’s 

article fails utterly to prove otherwise. 

Throughout the article, Toppo seems to be insinuating that people are guilty of 

some sort of prejudice---of some failure to look at their personal values in light of the 

actual facts—in holding there to be a causal connection between virtual and actual 

violence. Toppo’s ‘position’, if that isn’t too strong a word, seems to be that, although 

people attach a negative value to violent games, there is no reason for them to do so, 

the facts being what they are. 

There are several points to make here. First, the facts being what they are, there 

is reason to hold there to be such a connection. Are there definitive reasons? No. But is 

there more reason than not to posit such a link? Probably.

Second, to the extent that Grand Theft Auto and other such games are held in 

contempt, is it not necessarily solely or even primarily because those games are 

suspected of promoting violence. Another possibility—a very distinct possibility—is that 

people see it as a waste of time to spend all day playing video games. Indeed, people 

don’t have much respect for people who spend all day playing Grand Theft Auto. But 

they have equally little respect for people who spend all day playing Pac Man or Galaga. 

Video games have their place, but they tend to function as ways for people to 

procrastinate and avoid the real world. And so far as gaming is held in contempt, that is 

probably way. Going on a Lanza-style shooting spree is one way of being a loser. 

Spending all day playing video games is another of being a loser. 

Third, judging by video game sales, it doesn’t seem that there is any particular 

societal contempt for gaming. Who buys those games after all? Not the people who use 

them---they don’t have money. 15 year old rarely have enough money of their own buy 

much of anything. And when they purchase video games, it is with their parents’ money 

(and knowledge: the parents obviously see their children playing those games and know 

that they were purchased with allowance-money). So it is, in effect, their parents who 

are buying those games. So by all accounts, the contingent of anti-gamers that Toppo is 

inveigling against is rather small. Moreover, given only the data that Toppo sites, that 

contingent is not completely without good reasons for thinking ill of virtual recreational 

violence.

This raises a larger question, namely: Do the facts ever justify valuative 

attitudes? According to David Hume, the answer is “no.” “One cannot derive an ‘ought’ 

from an ‘is’”, says Hume. 

But is that really true? If know that Smith is duming large quantities of poison in 

the local reservoir—if I am aware of that fact---do I not have an obligation to alert the 

authorities and to make people aware of the fact that their water supply has been 

contaminated? It seems that, in this case, unless common sense is deeply wrong, I can 

derive an ‘ought’ (I ought to tell the police about Smith’s behavior) from an ‘is’ (Smith is 

dumping poison in the water supply). 

In general, it seems as though normative assertions are answerable to factual 

assertions. Let A be the statement: 

Jim hurts people for no good reason; it doesn’t even make him feel good; it just 

gives him mild sadistic pleasure. 

And let B be the statement: 

Jim is evil or, at the very least, lacking in moral fiber.

It seems that, given A, B cannot reasonably be denied—that there is a relation of 

entailment from A to B. If Hume believes otherwise, it is, at least on the face of it, 

Hume’s position that is to be rejected. 

In any case, Toppo’s reasoning is so weak that it doesn’t much matter what 

‘ought’ he is saying you should, or should not, derive from what ‘is.’ Toppo has cited 

some data, the totality of which is compatible with, and mildly probative of, a causal 

nexus between virtual and actual violence. (Personally, I don’t believe there to be such a 

connection. But Toppo, ironically, has actually done more to prove there to be such a 

connection than to disprove it.) So is Toppo saying that, the data being what it is, we 

should not derive “you ought not prohibit youngsters from playing Grand Theft Auto” 

from that data? Or is he saying that we should derive “you ought to let youngsters play 

Theft Auto” from that data? It doesn’t matter. Because Toppo’s argument is so weak, 

and the data he cites so ambiguous, that it is left open what, if anything, is to be derived 

from what. 

Why Barings Fell (Business/Economics) 

To: Audit Committee of a Commercial Bank 

Re: Risk Factors and Control Issues Contributing to the Downfall of Barings Bank

The basic facts of the Leeson case are simple. An unlicensed 25-year-old broker, 

Leeson was hired by Barings and placed in charge of its futures trading operation on the 

Singapore International Monetary Exchange (SIMEX). 98 Leeson was hard-working and 

bold, and he initially made enormous amounts of money for Barings by making large, 

highly successful trades. These trades were highly speculative, this being why they were 

so lucrative. They were also unauthorized. Leeson went to great lengths to make the 

trades seem legitimate. He created a dummy account (Account #88888) for a nonexistent 

client, through which he routed money from other Barings accounts to finance 

his unauthorized trades, and he created an elaborate phony paper trail to throw off 

auditors. After a few early successes, Leeson’s luck ran out. 99 He placed bad trade after 

bad trade, dummying up the books to hide the losses from Baring’s auditors and also 

from his supervisors. The auditors were increasingly alarmed by the holes they found in 

Leeson’s financials, but Leeson’s supervisors, still believing Leeson to be a successful 

earner, dismissed their concerns. In 1995, an earthquake in Japan caused the Nikkei to 

plummet, resulting in losses for Leeson that he could not hide and that exposed his 

operation for the house of cards that it was. He fled but was promptly captured, tried, 

convicted, and incarcerated. 

98 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Leeson#cite_note-4 

99 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Leeson#cite_note-4

Barings made several mistakes in connection with Leeson, the first of which was 

to hire him in the first place. Leeson was denied a broker’s license in the United 

Kingdom because he had lied on his application, claiming that he had educational 

credentials that he in fact lacked. 100 Given that Leeson was applying for a job at Barings 

that would involve him handling other people’s money, the people reviewing his 

application should have regarded this indiscretion on his part as disqualifying from that 

position. This was a violation of Principles 1 of Component 1 of COSO 2013: “Principle 1 - 

The organization adheres to the principles of integrity and ethics.” 101 A company is 

obviously failing to adhere to principles of integrity and ethics if it hires somebody who 

lies on official paperwork and then gives him person a position of fiduciary 

responsibility. 

Another big mistake Barings made in connection with Leeson was to put him in 

charge not only of making trades but also of settling them (i.e. of seeing to it that the 

money is transferred from account to account). 102 Ordinarily, these two jobs are kept 

separate, so as to prevent the making of unauthorized trades and also to prevent 

traders from being able to hide their trading activity. This is a violation of COSO 2017 

100 

https://books.google.com/books?id=EuLrXWaOdSIC&pg=PT31&lpg=PT31&dq=Nick+Le 

eson+denied+a+broker%27s+licence+in+the+United+Kingdom+because+of+fraud+on+hi 

s+application&hl=en#v=onepage&q=Nick%20Leeson%20denied%20a%20broker's%20lic 

ence%20in%20the%20United%20Kingdom%20because%20of%20fraud%20on%20his%2 

0application&f=false 

101 

http://tanya-nps.blogspot.com/2014/09/coso-2013.html 

102 

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/nick-leeson-barings-bank.asp

Principle #10, this being to identify possible risk-factors for fraud. 103 In addition, when 

Barings internal auditors began to sound the alarm about Leeson’s numbers not adding 

up, management always took Leeson’s word on the matter, this being a violation of 

COSO 2017 Principle #16, this being to review risky behavior and performance. 104 

A giant red flag in the Leeson case was when it turned out that Leeson would 

have needed approximately 70 million pounds (worth over one hundred million dollars) 

to finance his trades, this being an amount far in excess of what any trader could 

possibly have had access to. 105 Leeson gave a brief and vague explanation to his 

supervisor. The supervisor was puzzled by Leeson’s inadequate explanation but chose to 

look the other way. Indeed, there were several occasions when one of Leeson’s 

supervisors was contacted by an auditor asking for paperwork relating to Leeson’s 

trades; and in each case, the supervisor, being personally chummy with Leeson and also 

still under the spell of his charm and earlier successes, chose to look the other way. 

Leeson’s crooked behavior was ultimately not motivated by financial pressure. He 

made his first known unauthorized trade to cover up a minor loss; but after making 

good on that loss, he continued, while under absolutely no financial pressure, to make 

unauthorized trade after unauthorized trade, indicating that his behavior was not about 

103 

https://securityintelligence.com/understanding-the-coso-2017-enterprise-riskmanagement-framework-part-1-an-introduction/ 

104 

https://weaver.com/blog/coso-frameworks-17-principles-effective-internal-control 

105 

http://tradefutures.co.uk/Nick_Leeson_Barings_Bank.pdf

his circumstances but about his character. The question is not why he did it (he was 

crook, who had run afoul of regulators before working for Barings and was acting 

accordingly). Nor is it how he rationalized his behavior. (Criminals don’t always have to 

rationalize their conduct; and when they do, the rationalizations can be thin ones, along 

the lines of ‘Barings has more money than it knows what do with, so I’m entitled to my 

fair share’). As far as the Fraud Triangle goes, the relevant question here is how Leeson 

did what he did; and the answer is that he was in charge of settling the trades he was 

making, which gave him the power to generate a phony paper trail and thereby keep 

internal auditors off his track, at least until the scam collapsed. 

Internet Crime (Computer Security) 

‘Computer crime’ is a veritable synonym of ‘internet crime.’ Internet crime 

always involves the internet. But there are two very different kinds of crimes that 

involve the internet. In some cases, the internet is being used in an honest manner but 

with the intention of committing a crime. In other cases, the internet is being used in a 

dishonest manner, and that is the crime. 

Here is an example of the first kind of crime. I go to a drug website and purchase 

a controlled substance. The merchant in question sends me what I bought; the product

is good; and the quantity is what I asked for. In this case, I am not committing fraud and 

neither is the merchant. But a crime has been committed. 

Here is an example of the second kind of crime. I send out emails in which I claim 

to be a representative of Bank America. In those emails, I tell the recipient that their 

account has been compromised; so they must immediately provide me with their log-in 

credentials, so that I can personally enter their account and secure it. In actuality, I am 

not a representative of Bank of America, and I use the information that I receive from 

the people I have duped to log into their accounts and abscond with their funds. 

The first crime technically qualifies as an ‘internet crime’, since it involves the use 

of the internet. But in reality it is just a case of someone buying an illicit drug. The 

second crime seems to be in a different category. This is because the second case is one 

where my use of the internet is deceptive: I am taking advantage of relations of trust 

and interdependence that have grown up around the internet. Therefore, the sense in 

which the second crime is an internet crime is stronger than the sense in which the first 

crime is an internet crime. 

A list of the top 10 ‘internet crimes’ will help illustrate these points 106 : 

Phishing/Spoofing 

106 

http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/11/the-10-most-common-internetcrimes/

Accessing Stored 

Blackmail/Extortion 

Sports Betting 

Non-delivery of Merchandise 

Electronic Harassment 

Child Pornography 

Prostitution 

Drug Trafficking 

Criminal Copyright Infringement 

Each of these crimes raises important ethical and legal issues. Some of these 

‘crimes’ are arguably not of great ethical significance. But some of the items on this list 

are quite clearly very serious crimes; but, for reasons that we will discuss, they are 

extremely difficult to enforce, and the laws that must be created to enforce are often 

invasive and abridge people’s personal liberties, sometimes to what is arguably an 

inappropriate degree. Let us now discuss each of these crimes, along with its likely 

ethical and legal ramifications. Then we will discuss forms of conduct that might or 

might not be regarded as internet crimes, depending on one’s point of view.

Phishing/spoofing: Phishing/spoofing is pretending online to be someone who 

one isn’t in order to get privileged information, usually relating to bank-accounts, credit 

cards, and the like. We have already discussed an example of this: somebody emails 

Smith pretending to be a bank representative and thereby tricking Smith into giving up 

his account-information. 

There is no doubt that Phishing/spoofing is a serious crime, both legally and 

ethically. The problem is that much phishing/spoofing is done internationally. This 

means that the identification, apprehension, and prosecution of phishers/spoofers 

involves the coordination of different law-enforcement agencies and prosecutorial 

offices in different countries. Since such coordination is very hard to achieve, it is hard 

to successfully prosecute people for this crime; and the best defense against it is simply 

for computer-users to be wary and to be extremely careful with their personal 

information. 107 

Also, since phishing/spoofing involves stealth, the people who commit this crime 

are very good at covering their tracks. Plus, one can commit this crime from anywhere 

there is an internet connection, and phishing/spoofing is therefore very different from 

running a meth lab, for example, which involves standing facilities. 

Accessing-privileged information: If I use the internet in order to hack into your 

OneDrive Storage Account, I am guilty of accessing privileged information. But not all 

107 

https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber

cases of this crime involve the internet, and in this respect this particular crime is unique 

among the crimes being discussed in this paper. For example, if I use my roommate’s 

computer to access his personal records, which I then use for personal gain, I am guilty 

of accessing personal-information, even though I did not use the internet to do so. 

Obviously it is both ethically and legally wrong to access personal information. 

But the same problem arises here that arose in connection with phishing/spoofing: 

many cases of this crime are international in nature and therefore involve the 

cooperation of a number of different agencies. 108 Also, as with phishing/spoofing, this 

crime is of its very nature secretive. The prospect of being jailed for this crime is 

therefore only of limited deterrent value, and best protection against it is to be careful 

with one’s personal information. 

Blackmail/extortion: This is the use of the internet to blackmail or extort people, 

usually with the threat of publicizing private or compromising materials on YouTube, 

Facebook or other social media platforms. Here is a hypothetical example. I make 

consensual sex tapes of me and my wealthy girlfriend. After doing this, I threaten to 

send those tapes to her conservative parents unless she gives me $10,000. This is 

blackmail/extortion. 

108 

https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber

This sort of crime is common, but unlike the crimes mentioned above, it is 

relatively easy to prosecute. This is because both the black-mailer and the black-mailee 

tend to be in the same country---often the same city or even residence---and the blackmailer 

tends to over-estimate his leverage over the black-mailed. Thus, in cases like the 

one describe, the woman is likely to ‘bite the bullet’ and let her parents see the sex 

tape, in which case the black-mailer is vulnerable to prosecution. Many people are jailed 

for so-called ‘revenge porn’, and many such cases start out as unsuccessful attempts to 

extort/blackmail someone. 109 

There is little legal or ethical ambiguity in connection with this type of crime. It is 

obviously wrong to blackmail/extort people; moreover, it is illegal and easily 

prosecuted. 

Sports betting: People like to gamble, but in most places, including most places 

in the United States, it is illegal to gamble. And even when it is legal, it is heavily 

regulated. For this reason, online illegal betting parlors are very popular. If a betting 

parlor services people in the same country, it is easily shut-down and its owners are 

easily prosecuted. If it services clients in other countries, then the usual issues arise 

relating to the coordination of law-enforcement in different countries. 

109 

http://kellywarnerlaw.com/revenge-porn-laws-50-state-guide/

But there are cases of international betting parlors being shut down, one of 

which involved an American Citizen who was living abroad but whose clients were 

usually American. 

Online betting parlors handle large amounts of money. Therefore, they need to 

have stable relations to banks and are fairly easy to trace, unlike phishing and other 

internet-crimes. 

One question that arises is whether it is actually immoral to run an online betting 

parlor. If people want to gamble on a horse race and to this end they enlist the services 

of an online casino, is the casino-owner really guilty of wrong-doing? He is guilty of an 

illegal act, but the question is: should that act be illegal? And that is unclear. 

Non-delivery of merchandise: This is when person x orders something online 

from person y and person y doesn’t deliver the product or service in question. Obviously 

this sort of crime is extremely common. Moreover, it is not only illegal but extremely 

unethical. But it is also relatively easy to avoid being the victim of such a crime: when 

procuring a good or service, use reputable intermediaries, such as Amazon, eBay, and 

Fiverr. These platforms weed out suspicious actors, and they also refund money spent 

on bogus services. 

Electronic harassment: This is when somebody engages in trolling or other 

internet-based ways of making another person’s life uncomfortable. Here is a 

hypothetical example: Smith doesn’t like Jones. So Smith sends Jones hundreds of

hurtful emails, and Smith also blasts out messages on Facebook and Twitter in which he 

speaks ill of Jones. This is electronic harassment. In some cases, this is illegal; and even 

when it isn’t illegal, some of the platforms involved may put an end to it. I personally 

have known people who have been banned from Facebook for electronically harassing 

other people. 

Not all forms of electronic harassment are illegal or should be illegal. For 

example, it should not be illegal to post an ill-willed review of a book on Amazon, even if 

the review is without merit. Sometimes freedom of speech is more important than 

freedom from hurtful taunts. 

Electronic harassment is sometimes fairly easy to prosecute. The reason is that 

people usually harass people whom they know and who live or work near them. So this 

eliminates some of the issues, earlier discussed, relating to the coordination of lawenforcement 

agencies. ON the other hand, electronic harassment may involve different 

states or even different countries, and it is sometimes unlikely the F.B.I. or Interpol will 

take an interest in a case of mere harassment. 

Child pornography: Internet pornography accounts for around 25% of online 

activity and a comparably high percentage of internet transactions. Most of this activity 

is legal. But some of it is not. Child pornography is not, and yet, sadly, it is extremely 

popular.

The good news is that it is relatively easy to prosecute child pornographers. The 

reason is that child pornography is an extremely involved crime. Whereas phishing or 

accessing of privileged information merely involve a laptop and some expertise, child 

pornography involves actual children, who are often kidnapped; and those children have 

to be transported, housed, and fed, all of which leaves a clear forensic trail. As a result, 

child pornographers are likely to eventually be caught and prosecuted. Unfortunately, 

the child pornography business is booming. 

Prostitution: Prostitutes, like most other merchants in our time, advertise their 

services online. Sometimes they advertise their services in a ‘coded’ manner, saying that 

they offer ‘massage therapy’ or ‘sensual readjustment.’ But oftentimes they are 

extremely overt, saying openly that they will provide sex for money. As a result, it is not 

uncommon for people to be arrested and prosecuted for advertising prostitutionservices 

online. 

At the same, there are so many online prostitutes and law-enforcement 

resources are so sufficiently limited that law enforcement tends to focus more on the 

organizers of large-scale prosecution rings than it does on individual prostitutes. 

Also, given how popular such services are, along with the fact that it is unclear 

whether it is morally wrong to exchange sex for money, the public has only limited 

interest in seeing crimes of this kind prosecuted. And if prosecution of it were 

excessively aggressive, the result could be contempt for law, which might actually lead

to more crime. IN any case, given the high expected profits along with the low likelihood 

of a serious criminal sentence, online prostitution is alive and well and will continue to 

be so for the foreseeable future. 110 

Drug trafficking: this is when people use the internet to buy or sell illegal drugs. 

It should be pointed out that most of the drugs that are bought online are 

pharmaceuticals, as in, they are products manufactured by actual pharmaceutical 

companies and usually sold in the original packaging. Also, many of the drugs in 

question are Schedule III or IV, meaning that the sentences for buying them, or even 

selling them, are light. To be sure, the drugs bought online are opiates (Schedule II) and 

possession of them is a relatively serious offense and selling them is an extremely 

serious offense. But the people who sell them are usually located overseas. And law 

enforcement in the countries that host them have extremely little interest in 

prosecuting them, partly because, even though they are violating American laws, they 

are bringing a lot of money and business into their host countries. Plus, it is unclear 

whether there is anything ethically wrong with selling a tab of Xanax or Vicodin to 

someone overseas. In any case, it is unclear whether the acting of doing so is morally 

worse than the act of putting someone in possession of a Vicodin table in jail for three 

years. Finally, the online drug trade, unlike the ‘in-person’ drug-trade, involves little or 

no violence, and its existence may even take business away from violent non-internet- 

110 

Goodman (2015).

ased drug traffickers. For these reasons, the online drug-trade is seen as a more of a 

‘gray-market’ than a ‘black-market’ business, and law enforcement is correspondingly 

lax. 111 

In conclusion, there are many different kinds of internet crimes. In some cases, 

these crimes are of a morally reprehensible nature (e.g. child pornography), but in other 

cases (e.g. prostitution) they are morally ambiguous or even innocuous. And even when 

they are unambiguously wrong, they are often extremely hard to prosecute (cf. 

phishing/spoofing). Finally, the best defense against many internet crimes is an attitude 

of caution and suspicious. Where most such crimes are concerned, the police are of 

little use, but an attitude of wariness is of great help and can make it very unlikely that 

one will be the victim of such a crime. 

http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2012/11/the-10-most-common-internetcrimes/ 

Bibliography 

https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber 

https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber 

http://kellywarnerlaw.com/revenge-porn-laws-50-state-guide/ 

111 

Britz (2013).

Britz Marjle T. 2013 Computer Forensics and Cyber Crime: An Introduction New 

York: Pearson 

Goodman, Marc 2015 Future Crime: Insight the Digital Underground and the 

Battle for Our Connected World New York: Penguin Random House 

Privatization in African Telecommunications 

Ethio Telecom Being Privatized 112 (Business) 

Ethiopia announces that it will sell shares of Ethio Telecom, the nation’s 

telecommunications company. In effect, Ethiopia is privatizing its telecommunications 

company. As a result it is opening Ethio Telecom, and therefore Ethiopia itself, to foreign 

investment. 

This is likely to have far-reaching consequences for Ethiopia and for East Africa as 

a whole. Ethiopia is Africa’s fastest growing economy. This move is likely to galvanize 

Ethiopia’s already rapid growth. It will do this mainly by attracting foreign investment 

capital to Ethiopia. 

112 

http://www.africanews.com/2018/06/14/ethiopia-opens-telecoms-to-investorswhile-nigerian-entrepreneur-invent-smart/

It has already begun to do this, as major telecommunications companies, such as 

South Africa’s MTN, are already positioning themselves to purchase large positions in 

Ethio. 

Overall, this development signals that Ethiopia is moving away from a rigid, 

bureaucratically managed economy to a flexible private economy. 

Nigerian Invents New Kind of Smart Book 113 

Nigeria’s barely functional educational system represents a vast field of 

opportunity for edupreneurs, such as Chizaram Ucheage. Ucheaga, the co-founder of 

Mavis Computel, a computer company in Nigeria, just announced his invention of the 

“Mavis Pen.” 

The Mavis Pen is a pen with a built-in computer and translation-software that 

synchs with a special tablet, also manufactured by Computel. Working together, the 

pen-and-tablet translate sentences written on the tablet into any one of the many 

different languages used in Nigeria, and simultaneously produced high-quality and easy 

to understand vocalizations of those sentences. 

113 

http://www.africanews.com/2018/06/14/ethiopia-opens-telecoms-to-investorswhile-nigerian-entrepreneur-invent-smart/

This is enormously important in a country such as Nigeria, in which many 

different languages are spoken and in which people, including members of a given 

educational institution, have enormous difficulty making themselves understood to one 

another. 

This in turn could stimulate the development of Nigeria’s moribund educationsector, 

which in turn would likely stimulate Nigeria’s large but dysfunctional economy. 

Ethiopia Announces Privatization of its National Airline 114 

Ethiopia just announced that it will privatize its national airlines and open them 

up to foreign investment. Ethiopia has done this largely as a way of jump-starting its 

large but sluggish economy, which has been hit hard over the last few years by the 

failure to launch of several large-scale State projects, massive national debt, a shortage 

of high-grade foreign currency, and a high but under-serviced demand for foreign goods. 

This move will likely inject capital into Ethiopia’s economy, and hopefully it will 

trigger a larger waive of interest on the part of foreign-investors in Ethiopia. Also, the 

probable improvements in the quality of Ethiopia’s Airline will likely encourage travel to 

114 

http://www.africanews.com/2018/06/14/ethiopia-s-targets-foreign-investment-toease-currency-shortage/

and from Ethiopia, helping to establish Ethiopia’s position as a player on the world 

economic stage, and will also inspire investor-confidence in Ethiopia. 

This move is a part of a larger privatization initiative on Ethiopia’s part that also 

included the just-announced forthcoming privatizing of the state telecommunications 

company. This move towards privatization is likely to help actualize Ethiopia’s untapped 

economic potential. 

The Economic Justification for America’s Involvement in WWI 

(Economics/History) 

The US had good reasons to enter the war. These reasons were primarily economic 

in nature: the American economy stood to gain if the U.S. entered the war and stood to 

lose if it didn’t. Also, if the US didn’t enter the war, then at least arguably its safety and 

territorial integrity were at risk. 

World War 1 began in 1914 and it wasn’t until 1917 that the US got involved. 

Wilson initially didn’t want to enter the war. In fact, he was elected to office on an antiwar 

platform. But much happened to change Wilson’s feelings, as well as those of the 

American public, during those three years. 

First of all, the U.S. fell into a massive recession, but War lifted the US out of this 

recession by creating a large market for American military goods. So the American

economy came to depend on the war. Also, in order to make it possible for the Allies to 

pay for American goods, a number of American financiers, including J.P. Morgan, loaned 

them a large amount of money, which said financiers would probably not recover if the 

Allies lost. 

So the U.S. actually had a double economic incentive to enter the War. First, the 

American economy depended on it (or at least benefited from it). Second, large amounts 

of American capital would be lost if the Allies didn’t win---which, unless the Americans 

intervened, was not likely to happen. (In point of fact, Germany had more or less won the 

war when the U.S. finally intervened in 1917.) 

Also, the Allies, mainly Britain, were putting immense economic pressure on the 

US to enter the war on their behalf. Prior to the war, there was a large volume of trade 

between the United States and Germany. But Britain cut off this trade, using her navy to 

prevent vessels from sailing from the United States to Germany or vice versa. This was 

not exactly a positive incentive to enter the war, but it did remove an incentive that the 

US had previously had to enter the war on Germany’s behalf. 

Arguably, Germany was a threat to the United States, and the latter therefore had 

to go to war against Germany for reasons of self-preservation. In any case, the American 

government tried to convince its own citizens of this, flooding them with propaganda to 

this effect. But Germany was not actually a threat to the United States, and American

officials probably did not believe otherwise, any legitimate reasons they had for involving 

the US in the war being economic, not existential, in nature. 

That said, the canonical answer to the question “Why did the US enter WW1?” is: 

“Because of German attacks on American vessels, coupled with the Zimmerman letter.” 

But Germany was not a military threat to the US, as it simply did not have the ability, in 

terms of technology or manpower, to conduct war with a power of the US’s stature from 

such a great distance off. In fact, just prior to the US’s entry in the war, Germany had 

effectively ‘won’, in the sense that the allies, tired and depleted, were about to sign a 

peace accord that heavily favored Germany. Aware of this, Germany very much wanted 

the US not to enter the war. True---Germany did attack American vessels, but only 

because the US such vessels to supply the allies with military supplies. As for the 

Zimmerman letter---that was more of a strategic blunder on Germany’s part---an empty 

and self-destructive threat—and the US almost certainly saw it as such. 

German belligerence, including the Zimmerman letter, were used by American 

propagandists to rally the American public in favor of war with Germany. But beyond that, 

they were not legitimate reasons for the US to enter the war nor were they were among 

the causes of its doing so. of the US’s entry into the War. 

Be it noted that, even though the US did have good economic reasons for going to 

war with Germany, it doesn’t follow that these reasons were to any degree what caused 

the US to go to war with Germany. In all likelihood, they were not among the causes

(though they may have served as justifications after the fact). The real causes lay in 

Wilson’s psychology—specifically in his concern for his deteriorating public image. During 

his time in office, Wilson was ridiculed as a weakling and coward (by, among others, 

former President Theodore Roosevelt) for not responding to German belligerence with 

American aggression. The content of these accusations wasn’t that Wilson was failing to 

protect the US from danger; it was that Wilson was besmirching the dignity of the United 

States by making it look weak. Germany was not much more of a threat to the US in 1917 

than Iraq was a threat to the US in 2001; but if George W. Buch hadn’t attacked Iraq in 

2001, he would have opened himself to accusations, however ill-founded, of cowardice 

and weakness; and Wilson was in a similar situation vis-à-vis Germany. So to protect his 

public image, Wilson had to go to war with Germany. And that was the actual cause of 

America’s entry into WW1. 

Wilson did not openly admit that he was simply knuckling under to political 

pressure. He claimed that war with Germany was necessary to ‘make the world safe for 

democracy.’ Germany was an autocracy; the Allies were democracies; therefore, so 

Wilson claimed, war with Germany was necessary to protect democracy. This was 

Wilson’s pitch when seeking a declaration of war before Congress. 

But a pitch is all it was. Wilson himself obviously didn’t believe it, given that he had 

thus far kept the US out of the war, even being reelected on an anti-war platform. Wilson 

was simply capitulating. The purpose of pro-democracy rhetoric was to make it seem as

though his decision to go to war was standing by his principles, when in actuality it was 

about forfeiting them. 

Nonetheless, even though the causes of the US’s entry into WWI lay primarily in 

Woodrow Wilson’s frail ego, the US did, as previously discussed, have legitimate reasons 

for going to war. Whether either the US or the world in general benefited from the 

former’s involvement in WWI is a question for another time. 

The Economics of Higher Education in the 21st Century (Economics/Business) 


The Economics of Higher Education in the 21st Century: Part I 







Universities: Their Distinctive Business-model 

How Useful Do Students Really Want Their Educations To Be?





Key Points 



Introduction to Part II 


An Actual Company that Could Benefit from KM 



KM in Relation to Organizations that Sell Results 





Expense-padding in Relation to KM 


DMO: A New and Better Kind of University






Payments to Go Straight from Student to Instructor 

The Inverted Payment Pyramid 



Conclusion of the Present Work 

The Economics of Higher Education in the 21st Century 

Part I 


In the first part of this two-part work, the economics of higher education are 

explained. It is made clear how a university’s business model differs from that of a 

company that has to compete on the open market, and on this basis it is explained:

(i) Why universities are in no way threatened by low retention rates and 

graduation rates; 

(ii) Why universities cannot significantly improve or otherwise alter the quality of 

their educational services without imperiling their very existences; 

(iii) Why universities do not have to improve the quality of their educational 

services; 

(iv) Why universities couldn’t improve the quality of their services even if they 

wanted to; 

(v) Why the fact that many universities have low retention- and graduation-rates 

does not a represent a business opportunity, or opportunity of any other kind, for 

anyone, whether inside or outside of academia; and 

(vi) Why principles of Knowledge Management (KM) that are so useful when it 

comes to helping businesses that compete on the open market are completely useless, 

and indeed of negative utility, when it comes to helping universities solve their 

problems. 

In the second part of this work, it is explained how to construct an online 

university that is both lucrative and provides instruction that is faster, better, cheaper, 

and more useful than the instruction provided by any existing (or possible) brick-and-

mortar university. It is also explained how the principles of KM can be used to optimize 

such a university, once it is up and running. 


A university’s retention rate is the percentage of students who stay after the first 

year. A university’s graduation rate is the percentage of students who graduate within 

six years of enrollment. These numbers never coincide, but they track each other. 

Universities with high retention rates have high graduation rates, and universities with 

low retention rates have low graduation rates. 

Retention rates are necessarily at least as high as graduation rates and in practice 

are always higher. Also, even if a university has a graduation rate of 0%, as is the case 

with a number of institutions, it doesn't follow that nobody graduates from it, only that 

nobody does so within six years of enrollment. 


From a financial perspective, a university has relatively cogent reasons to want a 

high retention rate: when a student doesn’t enroll for a second year, that university 

loses business, and it doesn’t when he does. A university has less strong reasons to want

a high graduation rate. If a student comes back year after year and never graduates, the 

university makes more money than it does if he graduates. 

All of this said, universities with low graduation and retention rates almost 

always tend to stay in business. Great Basin College in Nevada has a retention rate of 4% 

and a graduation rate of 0%, but it is not in financial trouble. And Great Basic is not an 

exception. There are many institutions of higher learning with graduation rates of 0% 

and retention rates that are only marginally higher, and yet not a single one of them is 

going out of business. 

Would universities with low retention rates like to have higher retention rates? 

Of course. Do they need to have higher retention rates? Evidently not. Is there anything 

they can do to increase their retention rates? That is the question. The answer: No. If a 

university made the systemic changes to itself necessary to improve retention rates, it 

would lose most of its existing customer base. In the pages to come, it will be explained 

why this is so, but the main ideas are readily stated. 

Consider the case of Texas College, a private, religious college, only 10% of whose 

students major in STEM (Science, Math, Engineering, Technology). Texas College has a 

51% retention rate and a 6% graduation rate. 6% is an extremely low graduation rate: 

the national average is 53%. 51% is a relatively low retention rate: the national average 

is around 80%. Why does Texas College have such low retention and graduation rates? 

One very distinct possibility is that students question whether their earnings after

graduation will compensate for the expenses incurred in the course of getting a Texas 

College degree. 

In light of this, suppose that Texas College decided to improve its retention rates 

by making its programs of study more practical---by making them such that those who 

completed them were better able to compete in the workforce. Would student 

retention increase? Maybe. Graduation rates? Perhaps. But such changes would 

alienate 90% of their current customer base. 

Texas College is not a singularity; it is the rule, not the exception. Universities 

would as a rule lose far more customers than they would gain were they to change their 

courses of such in such a way as to make them financially more worth doing. It will now 

be explained why this is so. 


Let us refer to companies that compete in the open market as ‘open market 

companies' (or OMC's). Such companies include Nike, Oscar Meyer, Microsoft, and 

Hyundai. There is one very important difference between universities and OMC's. OMC's 

sell products and services. That is what people pay them for. That is all they pay them 

for. That is not what people pay universities for. Universities pay people for degrees.

That is what universities sell, and that is what people pay them for; and with relatively 

minor qualifications, that is all that people pay them for. 

Universities provide instruction, and they may also provide other services. But 

people pay them for degrees and for nothing besides. Consider the following 

hypothetical. William & Mary magically improves the quality of its instruction 100% and 

it cuts its tuition in half: but it stops issuing degrees. So whatever it is that one can 

currently learn at William & Mary about physics, psychology or any other subject, one 

can now learn twice as well for half as much money. But one cannot get a degree in that 

subject from William & Mary. Under these circumstances, William & Mary’s enrollment 

rate would plummet, possibly to zero. And its enrollment would plummet to zero if it 

ceased to give out degrees and it either failed to lower tuition or managed to improve 

instruction. 

William & Mary is a reputable institution, and the points just made are even 

more brazenly true of less reputable institutions. What would happen to Great Basin 

College in Nevada if it ceased to give out degrees? Or to Dalton State? Or to Oglala 

Lakota College? Their enrollments would instantly drop to zero. In actuality, each of 

these colleges does give out degrees and each is financially doing extremely well. 

Moreover, each of these colleges has a graduation rate of 0% (meaning that 0% of their 

students graduate within six years); each has a retention rate in the single digits, and

none of them does a good job of guaranteeing high ($60,000+) incomes for its 

graduates. But each is not only financially stable but positively flourishing. 


Imagine the following. Max is a mathematical genius who has completely 

mastered his discipline. (We won’t worry about how he did this.) He is as good a 

mathematician as any human being alive. But he doesn’t have a college degree, and he 

has never attended college. What can Max do professionally? He cannot be a professor. 

He cannot publish in academic journals. He cannot be a high-school teacher. He cannot 

work for an online tutoring agency. He could conceivably work as a freelancer, but he 

will lack credibility and will have trouble getting clients. 

If Max wants to ply his trade, he needs a degree, the same way a construction 

worker needs a union card. So he has to go to college. And if he does go to college, why 

does he do it? To learn? No. To get a degree. He probably will learn while at college 

(though he may learn a lot less than if he were not in college, since he may very well be 

better at teaching himself than his professors are at teaching him). 

To be sure, Max doesn’t have to go to college. He can become a plumber, a police 

officer, or an enlisted man in the military. He can also become a comedian, or an actor, 

or an entrepreneur. But he cannot be a mathematician and be paid for it. (He can do it

for free, with the qualification that nobody will read what he’s writing, let alone pay for 

it.) Nor can he have a white-collar job, unless he succeeds as an entrepreneur, which is 

not likely, given that his lack of a degree will diminish his credibility in the eyes of 

investors and will also make it unlikely that he will acquire the kind of professional 

experience that is typically a prerequisite for knowing what the market wants. In any 

case, if Max does get a degree---even if while getting it he learns nothing and indeed 

becomes less intelligent---it will make it possible for him to ply his trade and will open 

up an entire world of additional professional possibilities. 

Of course, even if Max doesn't get a college degree, he is not completely without 

hope, since, being a genius, he is relatively likely to pull off the financial equivalent of a 

hole-in-one. But most people are not geniuses; so let us now consider a hypothetical 

that makes it clear what happens to non-geniuses who don't have degrees. Jane is a 

person of average or marginally above intelligence who has a degree in psychology. 

Tammy is exactly as intelligent as Jane, both psychologically and otherwise, but does not 

have a college degree. For Jane, the possibilities are endless. She can become a social 

worker or a licensed therapist. She can go to law school. She can become a Federal 

Agent. She can get an MBA and become a corporate bureaucrat who is making 

$120,000/year by the age of 30. She is not guaranteed any of these outcomes, of 

course, but they are available to her.

But what about Tammy? What are her options? She cannot become a licensed 

therapist. She cannot work for a corporation, except in a menial capacity. She cannot be 

a social worker. She cannot go to law school. She is quite stuck. Can she become an 

entrepreneur? Technically, yes. But entrepreneurs have a success rate of 1%; and most 

of that 1% tend to be intellectually gifted and also have to have college degrees, as well 

as years of college-degree-based professional experience. 

Would it make a difference if, instead of being intellectually average, Tammy 

were in the top 10% of the population? Yes—but not much. Her lack of a degree would 

bar her from pretty much all white-collar employment, and if she tried her hand at 

entrepreneurship, she would still be even less likely than most entrepreneurs at 

succeeding. If Tammy wants white-collar employment, she can try her hand at selling 

insurance or real estate—and is unlikely to succeed at either, simply because, popular 

conceptions to the contrary, success-rates in such professions are extremely low. 95% of 

people who try to succeed as an insurance salesman quit within a year; more than quit 

within three years. Similar figures hold of real estate.[1] And those who ‘succeed’ are 

likely to be making $20,000/year, working 70 hours/week. 

Setting aside long-shot possibilities, Tammy only has two choices: work in a bluecollar 

capacity (as a police officer, plumber, secretary, or some such) or go to college. 

True—if she goes to college, she is likely to rack up debt. But, first of all, she will not 

even have to begin paying off that debt for many years; and during the intervening

years, she can live well, taking classes she enjoys and living a well-funded, leisurely 

lifestyle. Moreover, even after she has to start paying off her student loans, she will 

have the option of doing white collar work—of working as a teacher, executive, 

consultant, or stock-broker. To be sure, she may have some ‘down-time’ working at 

Starbucks. But as long as she has that degree, she has options: she has the option of 

going to business school, of working as a supervisor at a company, of getting her 

Master's in Social Work, or of being a teacher. And some such option is very likely to 

materialize. And even during her darkest hours as a ‘barista', she is in a very different 

position from her fellow baristas who don't have college degrees. She is passing 

through; they are not. 

One often hears about college graduates working at Starbucks and stuck with 

massive student loans. These horror stories are no doubt oftentimes true. What isn't 

true is that it's not worth it to go to college. In some ways, college is a lottery. If one 

majors in political science at an undistinguished institution, one is not guaranteed the 

ability to pay off one's student loans any time soon. Does that mean that one shouldn't 

go to college? No, it does not. And one should go to college-for several reasons. First of 

all, it is not always a lottery: someone with a degree in chemical engineering is not 

rolling the dice. Second, even when it is a lottery, it is a lottery worth playing: the 

proverbial political science graduate from a low-tier school is more than able to get a 

reasonably decent white-collar job sooner or later. Third, it is a lottery that one can

always pull out of: a first- or second-year political science major at a no-name can drop 

out and cut her losses. She can also switch majors, switch schools, or both. Also, she can 

hedge by taking a few semesters off, then resume studies, all the while considering 

other career options or educational tracks and testing the employment waters. 

People with degrees have options, and people without degrees don’t.[2] People 

with useful degrees from high-prestige institutions have many very good options; 

people with useless degrees from low prestige institutions have fewer options and they 

are not as good—but they are still good in absolute terms, and they are still plentiful. 

People without degrees do not have options. They can hustle or they can have blue 

collar jobs. It does not matter how intelligent or skillful they are: without that piece of 

paper, they are stuck. 

Colleges sell those degrees. That is what they do. Colleges also provide 

instruction. Sometimes that instruction is good, and sometimes it's useful; usually, it's 

neither. Either way, that isn't what students are paying for. They are paying for the 

degree. And since that is what they are paying for, they are willing to put up with very 

low-quality instruction. In fact, setting aside the 15% or so of students who major in 

engineering, nursing, and the like, students don't want particularly high-quality 

instruction: high-quality instruction is demanding, and since they are paying for degrees, 

they want to have to jump through as few hoops as possible to get those degrees.

To be sure, students are willing to jump through some hoops: students do want 

to believe that their degrees have meaning. And in some cases, those degrees actually 

do have to have meaning, since the student in question is planning on entering a field, 

such as dentistry or engineering, where he won't be able to function if he doesn't have 

the requisite knowledge. Also, there are some students who, though not intending to go 

into practical fields, actually do want to hone their intellects while in college. And if 

colleges improved instruction—if they made it more demanding and if they made those 

who received it more economically competitive---they would indeed attract more of a 

certain kind of student: they would attract more savants and truth-seekers, as well as 

aspiring doctors and engineers. But for each such student that they attracted, they 

would lose ten students in their existing customer base. 


It is assumed that retention-rates must stay above a certain level for a university 

to be financially stable. If that is true, the rate in question is extremely low. There are 

many universities with retention rates of in the single digits that are financially perfectly 

fine[3]. To name just a few: 

Great Basin College, Nevada

Oklahoma State University Inst. of Technology, Okmulgee 

Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX 

Texas A&M University, Commerce 

Texas A&M International University, Laredo 

Alabama State University, Montgomery 

Macon State College, Macon, GA 

Dalton State College, Dover, DE 

In fact, there is does not appear to be a single case of a university failing because 

of low retention rates, even though there are many that have retention rates that are 

close to zero. 

This is possible because it isn't retention rates that matter: it is enrollment rates. 

If enough people enroll, then the university is financially ok. It is assumed that if 

retention rates are low enough, then not enough people will enroll—the idea being that 

no one would want to enroll at a university that, for whatever reason, is failing to hold 

onto the vast majority its incoming freshmen. But this is neither a theoretical necessity 

nor, as it turns out, an empirical fact. If a university has an extremely low retention rate, 

one possibility is that it is alienating the students who don’t come back (by being 

incompetent, expensive, inhospitable, or otherwise deficient). But that is not the only 

possibility.

Suppose that a university’s target-customer is somebody who desperately wants 

a college degree but is financially or intellectually just on the cusp of being able to 

complete a college degree. It may well that for every hundred such people who enroll, 

only four are able to make it to the second year. When compared to Harvard, with its 

98% retention rate, such a university might seem to be doing badly. But from a businessviewpoint, 

a 1/25 batting average isn’t necessarily bad: many businesses operate on the 

assumption that most people are just ‘window-shopping.’ 

Also, the students who don’t come back are not exactly window-shopping, since 

they are paying handsomely for the time they are there. In fact, since most of them drop 

out before completing the first year, they are paying not only for the time they are there 

but also for a great deal of time they are not there, with the university simply pocketing 

the difference. Plus, soon-to-be drop-outs tend to make rather minimal financial 

demands on universities: they tend not to go to office-hours, not to submit homework, 

and in general not to use university-resources. 

Further, if a university has a 4% retention rate, it will scale down its services and 

set its prices accordingly. It will not pay for faculty, facilities, and so on for the students 

who aren’t going to stay. Moreover, it will set its prices so that those who do stay are 

paying to offset any losses generated by those who didn’t. 

Again, there is nothing unusual about this from a business viewpoint. A successful 

angel investor may invest a small amount in 100 companies, knowing that 99 of will

failing and also knowing that the one that succeeds will make up for the others. Many 

companies give out free samples, knowing that they will more than make for their losses 

as long as one person in a hundred eventually buys. 

Finally, universities with extremely low retention rates tend to have extremely 

high acceptance rates; and they also tend to have moderately high enrollment rates, 

since the students they accept have limited options. As a result, they do a lot of 

business, despite their low retention rates. 

Of course, when people that a given university has a 4% retention rate, they then 

to assume that it wants a higher retention rate. But, first of all, even if it wants a higher 

retention rate, it doesn't necessarily need it. Second, it may not want a higher retention 

rate, since it may only be able to accommodate 4% those who enroll and would actually 

incur losses if retention rates increased. Third, there may not be anything it can do to 

increase its retention rates that wouldn’t alienate most of its customer base. Fourth, 

even if there is something that such a university can do to increase its retention rate, it 

is very unlikely to be able to change itself in such a way as to be able to do it. Let us now 

clarify this last point. 

Universities: Their Distinctive Business-model

An OMC can turn on a dime. It can replace its entire labor force. It can start 

making new products. It can fire its CEO. Its CEO can fire every besides himself. An OMC 

has to be flexible, because it has to change its product to meet constantly changing 

consumer demands. But universities sell degrees—nothing else.[4] In order for people 

to buy those degrees, the instruction they provide must on average exceed certain 

standards. When averaged over time and when averaged over all of the courses being 

taught, instruction must rise above a certain threshold. If the quality of instruction in 

every subject at a given university were always execrable, then that university might 

well eventually come to grief (though it would not necessarily do so: see below). But a 

university won’t necessarily come to grief if it always provides execrable instruction in 

some subjects or if it sometimes provides execrable instructions in all subjects. The 

instruction has to be just good enough, in certain respects in certain subjects at certain 

junctures, for there to be a perception on the part of enough people that it is worth 

having a degree from that institution.[5] 

A corollary is that most of a university’s business depends on its providing 

instruction that is on average lackluster. Most students at a given university are just 

buying a degree; only a few are really working for that degree. And that degree has 

prestige, and is therefore worth buying, because of the efforts of those few. 

Consequently, the ideal situation for a university is when its degrees have prestige and 

as few people as possible are actually giving them that prestige. For so long as that

degree has prestige, the way to maximize enrollment is to have as few students giving it 

prestige and as many as possible merely benefiting from that prestige. The more 

students are expected to be responsible for the prestige of that degree, the more 

prospective students are likely to shy away from enrolling at that university in the first 

place. And the fewer students responsible for it giving it prestige---provided that 

somebody is giving it prestige—the larger the university’s customer-base. 

When people buy a lawn-mower or a pair of running shoes, what they are buying 

actually has to be good; there is no other reason to buy it. But a degree from Harvard 

doesn’t have to be backed by good instruction. Suppose that someone gets a degree 

from Harvard by cheating on all his papers and exams (without ever getting caught) and 

without learning anything. That degree is still an enormously powerful piece of social 

capital. And that person, even though he cheated his way through college, is far more 

likely than those without a Harvard degree (or equivalent, e.g. a Yale degree) to be 

accepted to business school, to get a job at an investment bank, etc. 

In light of these points, suppose that reasonably prestigious university X does the 

following. X eliminates tenure. It requires its faculty members to make sure that their 

students pass objective tests (tests that have objectively correct answers and that are 

not issued by those same faculty members). If a given faculty member fails to get 

enough of his students to pass, he is fired and replaced by someone who will hopefully 

do the job.

What would happen to X? Instruction would certainly improve, and that might 

well bring in more of a certain kind of student. But most of X's prospective students 

would be alienated by it. Most of X's students want the prestige of a degree from X 

without having to go through four years of intellectual boot camp. 

The changes just described would certainly benefit people who did end up 

attending X, and it might well make those people more employable than the X students 

who preceded them. But would those changes benefit X? No. X would lose most of its 

future students and many of its current students. Contrariwise, in its current condition, 

X, with its on average quite shoddy faculty and sup-par courses, is probably doing 

extremely well financially. 

Suppose that X took a middle-path. Suppose that, without turning itself into an 

intellectual boot camp, X improved the quality of its instruction to the point by a solid 

margin, so that it was no longer just doing enough to give prestige to its degrees. If X did 

this, it would not lose as many as it would if it became an intellectual boot camp, with 

uniformly good professors, but it would still lose a good chunk of those students, and it 

would be in a much worse situation, enrollment-wise, than it would be if it simply did 

the bare minimum. 

In general, colleges depend on their providing instruction that is on average just 

good enough and, consequently, in their demanding, on average, just enough of their 

students. If they turn themselves into genuinely efficiently educational entities, they will

alienate most of their present and future customers. If they even try to make 

themselves more than just good enough to preserve the prestige-level of their degrees, 

they will alienate enough of their customer-base to appreciably worsen their financial 

situation. They optimal path for universities is to issue degrees that are prestigious and 

to provide instruction that is just good enough to be compatible with that objective. A 

corollary is that universities will often have rather low retention rates. If a university is 

doing just enough, it will inevitably sometimes slip below that threshold, with the result 

that students bail. 

How Useful Do Students Really Want Their Educations To Be? 

‘But surely it would be better,’ it will be said, ‘if universities restructured 

themselves in such a way that, when their retentions got too low, they could make the 

necessary changes to themselves?' Better for whom? If a given university changed itself 

in this way, that means it would be able to letter the ax fall whenever times got tough: 

nobody would be safe; any given professor or administrator could lose his job. Also, if an 

organization becomes such that it can fire people during lean times, then it can also fire 

people during good times: if a given university made itself able to right-size itself when 

retention was too low, then anyone could lose their job at any time, and some people 

would lose their jobs during good times. And nobody at a university wants that. [6]

‘But there is another, less risky way that universities could guarantee higher 

retention rates for themselves,' it will be said. ‘If they simply made their graduates more 

employable—and managed to do so without making their undergraduate curricula 

alienatingly difficult--then everybody would be happy: universities would have high 

retention rates; professors and administrators would continue to have job-security, and 

students would have an assurance that their degrees would pay for themselves.' 

As we’ve already pointed out, it wouldn’t be easy, or even possible, for 

universities to do this. But there is an even deeper issue that we haven’t yet discussed. 

People want to be employed, obviously, but how employable do they really want to be? 

Suppose that Smith is employed because he is employable---because he is useful, in 

other words. That means that he employed only as long as he is useful. He might lose his 

job because of some slight change in technology or in company objectives. Before Wix 

came along, there were armies of people who made a decent living building websites. 

All but 1% of those people became useless when Wix and WordPress became available. 

They had to repurpose themselves, possibly completely retrain themselves. 

Also, if Smith is employed because he is useful, that means that, in order to keep 

his job, he actually has to be useful: he has to solve problems; he has to do whatever has 

to be done: he has to live by his wits. He has to figure out the left side of the building is 

sinking; he has to update the company's computer system by the start of the next 

business day; he has to reconstruct his patient's face; and so on. Is this what people

want to be doing when they are 50, 60, 70? Nurses are useful, and a 60-year-old 

registered nurse spends her day cleaning out infected wounds and mopping up 

biohazardous material. A life of usefulness is not easy. 

What most college students want, at least if their eventual careers are any 

indication, is to be relatively useless and employed. Explanation: If somebody who is 

useless has stable employment, their employment isn’t contingent on their being useful. 

Nobody expects redundant bureaucrats and middle managers to be useful; that is not 

why they are employed. And their jobs exceptionally safe precisely because those jobs 

are not about being useful. 

When jobs serve very well-defined practical functions, they are easily lost. If 

somebody’s living depends on his being able to produce great paintings or thought, or 

on his being able to hit a hole in one or to get acquittals in unwinnable cases, his career 

is over if he falls just slightly short once or twice. By contrast, if somebody’s career is 

about being a bureaucrat in some corporation or some government agency, and it isn’t 

quite clear what he does, he can fall short all he wants: his employment has nothing to 

do with his not falling short. If somebody is a mid-level lawyer who has an ill-defined 

role in some large corporate case, his job is relatively secure. If somebody is employed 

only as long as he gets acquittals, his job is not secure. 

Also, if one is employed only because he is useful, his earnings tend to wax and 

wane with his degree of usefulness. If somebody makes a living solving math problems,

and somebody comes along who can do the job just slightly faster, the first person’s 

earnings are driven down. A corollary is that people who make their living by being 

useful tend not to have inflated salaries. By contrast, if somebody is a small part of an 

organization, with an ill-defined function within that organization, his earnings tend not 

to be hewed to his usefulness (or lack thereof), and he may consequently have an 

enormously inflated salary.[7] 

Most college graduates tend to have well-paid jobs with poorly defined functions. 

They end up, to be blunt, being pencil pushers within corporations or government 

agencies, and are extremely well-paid for doing little more than showing up and not 

making waves. They are not paid to be useful in the way that a plumber or doctor is 

useful. 

And that is what most college students want. They don't want their future 

incomes to depend on their always being useful. They would like to know that when 

they are 55, they can have a comfortable income and a nice lifestyle without having to 

prove their usefulness every day. If they end up being plastic surgeons, they will have to 

prove their usefulness: nobody pays a plastic surgeon who botches the job. If they end 

up working as mid-level managers in corporate finance, they won't have to prove their 

usefulness. 

So if colleges made their students more ‘employable' by making them more 

‘useful', they would alienate most of those students. Political science majors know that

their major does not make them useful, and that is part of the reason they do it. A 

‘successful' political science major tends to end up with a well-paying job that does not 

have a well-defined function and that is for that very reason relatively secure. A political 

science major does run a heavy risk of having no employment for some time after 

graduation. But the truth is he probably will end up with pretty much just the kind of 

white-collar job that he expected to have---a good paying job that has no well-defined 

function or performance-benchmarks and is therefore secure. A computer science major 

is certainly better able to find work, and probably has a wider range of jobs to choose 

from; but those jobs have well-defined functions and performance-benchmarks and are 

correspondingly insecure. 


Many people assume that if most of the work-force consists of useless pencil 

pushers, that cannot last for long—that there is some kind of employment ‘bubble’ that 

will soon burst. Certainly, if a micro-economy—an economy of 100 people---consisted of 

people who were not pulling their own weight, it would not last long. In tiny selfcontained 

villages thousands of years, people tended to have to be useful in some very 

well-defined way.

But in a micro-economy, there is very little division of labor, and labor tends to be 

extremely inefficient, that being why nobody can ‘slack off.’ But in economies of scale, 

there is enormous division of labor, and only a small percent of the population actually 

has to produce. The more advanced an economy is, the greater the percentage of 

people in it who can be useless. In Cambodia under Pol Pot, there was 100% 

employment, because everybody had to be employed, and everybody had to be 

employed because production was so inefficient. In Britain in 1820, there very few 

useless jobs, but the jobs that people had tended to be difficult and unpleasant. In the 

United States in 2019, most jobs are useless. They are useless because they can be 

useless, because the small part of the population that is productive is so productive that 

the rest doesn’t have to be. 

So yes, if the percentage of the population that was actually useful dropped too 

close to zero, then the economy would fall apart. But that hasn’t happened yet and 

there is no reason to think that it will happen any time soon. And until it does happen, it 

is not irrational for people to do easy majors and bide their time after college until they 

land a well-paid sinecure. Contrariwise, if colleges got rid of easy majors and insisted on 

producing only useful undergraduates, they would alienate those students. 

But suppose that someone majors in political science at Macon State and finds 

himself unable to get a job after graduation. Such people often get vocational 

certifications; they become certified emergency medical technicians, accountants, or

computer-technicians. This is extremely common. When this happens, does it mean that 

the person in question was wrong to get a degree in political science (or religious 

studies…) at Macon College (or VCU…)? It obviously means that it didn’t pan out for 

them, but it was still very likely a risk worth taking. Had it worked out, they would have 

had an easy, stable $75,000/year job. Given that it didn’t work out, they have some 

student debt, but nothing irreparable. Plus, many people enjoy their time in college, 

however little that time contributed to their being able to make a living. In any case, 

although majoring in a non-practical subject at a low-tier (or even a high-tier) school 

may not immediately have a good outcome, it is often a risk that it is rational to take. 


Mention is often made of the ‘tragedy’ of high college dropout rates. But is this 

‘tragedy’ really a tragedy? No. To be sure, it certainly could be a mistake for someone to 

drop out. It is indeed a mistake for someone to drop out if he is just one term-paper 

away from a degree that will open vast professional vistas. But when people drop out, it 

is usually for good reasons, and it isn't a tragedy for anyone. 

Harvard has a drop-out rate of close to zero. Virginia Commonwealth University 

(VCU) has a 60% drop-out rate. Sul Rock State has a 95% drop-out rate. Explanation: A 

Harvard degree is worth the trouble 99% of the time, a VCU degree is worth the trouble

30% of the time, and a Sul Rock State degree is worth the trouble 5% of the time. It isn’t 

successful engineering majors who drop-out of VCU; nor is it successful nursing majors. 

It is people who are barely getting by in political science or criminal justice. Much the 

same is true of Sul Rock State. When people drop out, it is usually (not always) because 

it isn’t worth it for them to stay. When people drop out from such institutions, it may be 

to pounce on a job-opportunity that won’t last and is better than what will be available 

to them when they graduate. And even if they don’t have definite plans as to what they 

will do after they drop out, they generally do not become indigent. They may become 

police officers or they may go to trade school. When people drop out, it is usually 

because they believe that they stand to lose more by staying in school than by dropping 

out, and in most cases they are right. 

Also, dropping out is often part of a hedging strategy. People who drop out of 

college can usually go back. And when people drop out, it is often to ‘test the waters': 

they are not sure if their current college is worth the trouble; so, they drop out to see 

whether they can do without a degree. If they find that a degree is necessary, they are 

likely to return to college. 

It is not possible to become an investment banker or surgeon without a college 

degree. But the people who drop out of college are usually not destined for such 

positions. If they finish out their degrees in religious studies or political science from 

VCU or Sul Rock State, they may become probation officers, Community College

Administrators, or mid-level managers at a local firm. When they drop out, they may 

become plumbers, electricians, computer-technicians, or police officers. And they may 

find the latter careers more fulfilling than the former, and the latter may be also be as 

lucrative as the former. 

So in most cases, dropping out is not a tragedy for the drop-out. Nor is it a 

tragedy for the institution that was dropped out of. If a university has a drop-out rate of 

70%, it adjusts its service and prices accordingly. In any case, there has not been a single 

case in the United States of a college shutting down due to high drop-out rates. 


In recent years a new discipline has emerged called Knowledge Management 

(KM); and for reasons that will become clear, KM is believed to have the potential to 

help institutions become more efficient. It might therefore be surmised that KM could 

help colleges increase low retention-rates, the idea being that low retentions are a 

function of inefficiencies on the part of colleges. In the second part of this work that KM 

certainly has the ability to help construct alternatives to existing colleges. But when it 

comes to improving retention-rates at existing colleges, there is nothing for KM to do. 

First of all, what is KM? In order for institutions to capitalize on opportunities, 

they must be organized in such a way as to optimize the flow of relevant information

etween their members. If there are people in the Acme Bridge-building Company who 

know how to build bridges but don’t know where bridges are needed, and there are 

Acme-employees who know where bridges are needed but not how to build them, 

Acme will succeed if its employees can share their knowledge and will fail otherwise. KM 

explains how Acme must be organized to maximize the likelihood of such exchanges. In 

general, KM explains how institutions must be organized if knowledge-exchanges that 

must occur are to occur. 

KM can help when poor internal communications are preventing an institution 

from accomplishing what it wants to accomplish. KM cannot help when poor internal 

communications are not the issue or, of course, when there simply is no issue. 

Therefore, KM cannot help universities, since there is not much of an issue where they 

are concerned and since, so far as there is one, poor internal communications are not 

responsible for it. 


Unlike OMC’s, universities actually depend on poor internal communications. 

University departments are highly isolated from and fiercely independent of one 

another. On the rare occasions when different departments cooperate, they do so only 

at specific junctures, in very circumscribed ways, after months or years of meetings, and

then only with heavy reservations. By contrast, an OMC would simply fail if its different 

departments were comparably isolated. 

Explanation: OMC’s are about providing optimal products and services, whereas 

universities are about maintaining prestige, and prestige is harder to maintain when 

information is allowed to flow than then when it is sequestered. In any university, there 

are innumerable occasions when students would be well-served by a class that was 

taught jointly by the philosophy and psychology departments, or by the philosophy and 

economics departments, or by the economics and African studies departments, and so 

on. But such joint ventures almost never happen. 

Within their own departments, professors have virtually uncontested authority, 

and they have a kind cult status. They cannot be called out, because each student within 

that department depends on their good graces. But if a philosophy professor teamed up 

with an economics professor, that philosophy professor could (and probably would) be 

called out economics students who were not under his thumb, and the economics 

professor might be called out by philosophy students who were not under his thumb. 

Consequently, were departments not mutually isolated and were they in the habit of 

cooperating with one another whenever students stood to benefit, they would have to 

step up their game considerably to survive the consequent scrutiny. A professor's 

survival, as it were, would be that much less prestige-based and that much more 

competency-based. And the kind of professor would do well in this kind of environment

is the kind of professor would demand a lot of his students. Some students do like this 

kind of professor; most do not. And most of practically any given university's students 

would bolt if that university's professors were replaced with the professors of the kind 

who were always ready to take on new subjects and fresh challenges. Contrariwise, the 

kinds of professors who do well in actual universities, where they never have to teach 

students who are not strictly under their thumb and where they teach the same 

material year in and year out, demand relatively little of students. 

The kind of professor who is always looking for a new challenge is a high-energy 

professor: he demands a lot of himself and will tend to demand a lot of his students. The 

kind of professor who has his niche is happy to stay there does not demand much of 

himself or (apart from a certain degree of adulation in some cases) of his students. 

Students of a certain kind are drawn to professors of the first kind, but most of a 

university's business comes from students who are more comfortable with professors of 

the second kind. Consequently, universities thrive on a low degree of communication 

between departments and therefore, as it were, on a certain lack of knowledgemanagement. 

Key Points

Universities are extremely reluctant to change. Universities don't have to change. 

Universities would alienate their customers as well as most of their own employees if they 

did change, especially if those changes involved making them better at teaching their 

students and at making them employable. Universities are doing well financially and 

otherwise, despite low retention- and graduation rates. The fact that many universities 

have lower retention- and graduation-rates than they would like does not represent much 

of a business opportunity for anyone. Nor does it represent an opportunity to do any real 

good, since making universities better would lower their retention- and graduation-rates: 

making them better at teaching and at producing employable graduates would be the kiss 

of death for them. Nor does it represent an opportunity to try out principles of 

knowledge-management, since universities are positively dependent on poor internal 

communications and therefore on systemically rooted failures of knowledgemanagement. 


Now for some corollaries of these points. First, if one's desire is to have a 

successful business venture, the way to do it is not to try to improve the retention- and 

graduation-rates of existing universities. Second, and more significantly, if one's objective

is to improve education—to make it faster, cheaper, better, and more useful---the way to 

do it is not to try to ‘fix' existing universities: they are happy just the way are and are both 

unwilling and unable to be fixed. In fact, the idea that one could march into a university 

and fix it, and possibly even be paid to do so, is the very definition of absurdity. 

Universities are they are, and that's the end of it. Apart from a few religions, there are no 

institutions that are as unwilling to change and as resistant to being tinkered with as 

universities. Universities do change, but slowly and only to their own terms, which will 

make extremely little sense to people with a bottom-line mentality. Finally, and most 

significantly, if one wants to improve education and to make money doing so, there is at 

the current an enormous opportunity. Right now is the perfect time to make education 

affordable, fast, effective, and also (for the owner of the educational service in question) 

extremely lucrative. In the second part of the present work, it will be described exactly 

how to do this, and it will be made clear how the principles of knowledge management 

can integral to doing so. 


Introduction to Part II

In this part of the book, we will design a university that provides fast, reliable, 

and affordable service. For reasons that will be made clear, this university will be online. 

This will university will be distinctive in a number of other ways, all of which will be 

stated explicitly. 

We will refer to this hypothetical university as DMO (short for ‘digitize, 

mechanize, optimize’, the idea being that digitization and mechanization will help to 

optimize this institution). 

DMO's structure is to a large extent rooted in principles of knowledge 

management (KM). So we will begin by saying what KM and by stating the principles of 

KM that are relevant to our project. 


Any given person within any given institution needs to have information in order 

to do his job properly. KM is the discipline is that attempts to say how an institution 

must be organized if the people in it are to have the highest possible chance of having 

the information that they need to do their job. 

Here is an illustration. Smith, Jones, and Brown are the only members of a threemember 

firm. Smith is having lunch with Green, a billionaire oil tycoon and potential

client, and Green says that he desperately needs somebody who is an expert in 

petroleum engineering. As it happens, Jones is the world's greatest petroleum engineer, 

but Smith doesn't know this and therefore tells Green that he will ‘try to find a 

petroleum engineer' for him. Disappointed with this lackluster answer, Green doesn't 

retain the services of Smith's firm and they lose a billion-dollar account. 

This situation is the result of poor knowledge-management. The talent was there, 

and so was the demand, but the company didn't know that it was able to service that 

demand. 

What are some solutions? Smith-Jones-Brown (SJB) could have weekly board 

meetings. SJB could institute policies that require a given member to advise the others 

of any meetings with possible clients. SJB might make their policy to send daily memos 

to one another. 

Being an academic discipline, KM is more interested in producing true 

generalizations than it is solving particular problems had by specific organizations. But 

those generalizations are legitimate if, and only if, they can be used to solve such 

problems, and there is also no way to identify those generalizations except by dealing 

with many specific cases. 

An Actual Company that Could Benefit from KM

The example just given was obviously artificial. Here is an actual example of a 

case where KM is needed to solve a problem. There is a reasonably prominent online 

tutoring agency by the name of OneClass (https://oneclass.com/). It hires reasonably 

talented people and offers them what appear to be high rates of pay (e.g. $45 to help 

with an assignment that ordinarily should take around one hour to complete). But tutors 

find for one hour that they spend with a student, they have to spend around five 

justifying their answers to supervisors who can and will withhold pay indefinitely, 

usually under the pretext of ensuring that the tutor complies with OneClass’s rather 

extensive and vaguely defined procedures. As a result, instructors of merit don’t stay for 

long, and students are left with shoddy and (thanks to all of the bureaucratic bloat) 

expensive service. As a result, clients are leaving OneClass or simply avoiding it, and 

revenues are falling. Instructors cannot communicate directly with upper-management; 

only middle-management can do that. But the instructors are the ones who both know 

what the problems are and have an incentive to make upper management aware of 

them; so that information is not relayed to the right people, and the company is 

hemorrhaging money. 

KM is supposed to tell us whether this problem can be solved and, if so, how to 

solve it. KM is also supposed to tell us how to avoid having problems like this in the first 

place. Let us now discuss each of these points.


A KM-expert cannot be of service to OneClass unless OneClass asks for his help. 

For argument’s sake, let us suppose that this happens. A competent KM-expert would 

probably suggest downsizing middle-management, which would free up money, making 

it possible to charge students less and hire better tutors. He would also suggest 

eliminating bureaucratic hurdles that the instructors have to jump through that waste 

their time and drive them away from the company. 

Of course, there may not be any single person at a given company who can 

decide to enlist the help of a KM-expert, let alone implement the changes that a KMexpert 

would suggest making. And if the necessary executive power is shared by a 

number of different people, as is often the case, they may not agree to hire a KMexpert; 

and if they do hire one, they may not agree as to whether to implement his 

recommendations. After all, a KM-expert might recommend changing the structure of 

the company in a way that deprives many of these decision-makers of their power. He 

may even recommend firing many of them. They will know this and not hire him. And if 

a given self-described KM-expert can be trusted not to recommend downsizing or 

otherwise changing management-structure, then he probably isn’t very good at what he 

does, since knowledge-management within an organization cannot be appreciably 

improved without changing the very structure of that organization.


This brings us to the second scenario. Suppose that somebody wants to start an 

online tutoring service that avoids the problems that OneClass has. Such a person might 

conceivably hire a KM-expert (or, more likely, use his own KM-expertise) to design his 

company in such a way that those problems don't arise. In practice, this is what usually 

happens. Once a company already exists, especially if it is large, there may not be any 

way to change that company without the consent of the very people within that 

company who are causing the problems. If the ACME Corporation is run by a board of 

four equally powerful people, two of whom are ruining the company and two of whom 

are not, they are unlikely to agree to implement the changes suggest by a competent 

party who is brought in from the outside, assuming that they can even agree to enlist 

such a person's help in the first place. In general, KM problems are hard to fix but easy 

to avoid, and they are avoided by designing companies properly. The mistake made by 

the people who designed OneClass was to focus more on policing instructors than on 

hiring instructors who don't need to be policed. 

KM in Relation to Organizations that Sell Results

Our objective is to design a superior educational service. In this section, we will 

state some principles of KM, along with principles of economics and of simple common 

sense, that are relevant to that objective. 

Knowledge-management is possible when the organization in question has 

definite objectives, and when it does not have definite objectives, knowledgemanagement 

is as difficult as those objectives are vague. If a company’s objective is to 

help people to pass some assessment test, then it tends to be clear whether a given 

piece of information is worth communicating to other company members. If a 

company's objective is to ‘improve wellness' or ‘broaden minds,' then it tends not to be 

clear whether a given piece of information is worth relaying. 

When an organization is in the business of providing results, objectives are welldefined, 

with correspondingly positive consequences for knowledge-management 

within that organization. When an organization provides services, objectives tend to be 

vaguely defined, with correspondingly negative consequences for knowledgemanagement 

within that organization. 

When an organization sells results, prices tend to drop, and when it sells services, 

they tend to rise. The first computers were expensive. But once the first one was built, it 

was clear what had to be done and it was only a matter of time before the process was 

streamlined, the result being computers that are thousands of times more powerful 

than the first ones and thousands of times less expensive. By contrast, when you a hire

law firm to settle a contract dispute, you are not paying for results, since results cannot 

be guaranteed in such a situation, and you are therefore paying for services. Since the 

law firm therefore profits by selling services, it has every incentive to draw out the 

process as much as possible, resulting in soaring costs for you. In general, when results 

are sold, there is no money in services, and services have to be streamlined; and when 

services are sold, there is no money in results, and services have to be inflated. 


When you hire somebody to build a pool for you, there is a well-defined 

objective, and that is what you are paying for. Services are priced into the end-result, 

but you are paying for the end result, not the services: if no pool is built, you are likely to 

sue the contractor and he will end up paying you, not the other way around. 

But when services, as opposed to results, are provided, many different results are 

ipso facto possible: in a legal dispute, there are innumerably many possible results 

intermediate between complete success and complete failure. A criminal case can result 

in no time served and twenty years’ probation; five years served and three years of 

community service; two years served and $5,000,000 in fines; and so on. 

Vague benchmarks lead to vague communications, and knowledge management 

is only as good as benchmarks are clearly defined. But this is not necessarily a problem

for providers of services. Inefficiency and poor internal communications are lucrative 

when the client is paying for services, and they are expensive only when he is paying for 

results. If a lawyer is billing by the hour, then he has everything to gain and nothing to 

lose if he gets stuck in traffic or his secretary misplaces a file. 

It is only when results are being paid for that the costs of such inefficiencies 

cannot be passed onto the client. If a plumber says he’ll fix a pipe for $100, and it turns 

out to take him 10 hours to do the job, he can only charge $100, and he is likely to be 

lowballed by the competition if he hedges by quoting a higher price. 

Results-providers compete on efficiency, and their prices tend to be bid down. 

Service-providers compete on inefficiency, and their prices tend to be bid up. A lawyer 

cannot tell a client what he will get for him. He can only tell him what he will do for him. 

He cannot promise an acquittal. But he can promise to hire around-the-clock private 

detective; he can promise to subpoena 100 different witnesses; he can promise to hire a 

voice-expert; and so on. So if one lawyer tries to lowball another, it will tend to be not 

offering some of these services, which obviously diminishes the client’s faith in him. A 

better strategy is for him to offer more services than the first: he’ll get a team of private 

detectives, he’ll personally fly to Washington to speak with the attorney general, and so 

on. In general, whereas results-markets are inherently efficient, service-markets are 

inherently inefficient.


When people within a given organization have an incentive to block 

communications within it, information tends to be blocked, and people within service 

organizations tend to have such incentives. Such organizations make money by 

multiplying and drawing out services. Therefore, the management profits from the 

inefficiencies that good communication eliminates, and people within such an 

organization are paid to create such inefficiencies. Such an organization profits by 

having a middle-manager who withholds information from underlings in order to force 

tasks to be repeated and in order to justify various quality-controls. It is only to the 

extent that an organization profits from good internal communications that internal 

communications are good. 


When poor performance doesn’t lead to loss of employment, performance tends 

to be poor, and performance tends to be good when poor performance does lead to 

loss of employment. A corollary is that internal communications tend to be bad when 

employment is guaranteed and good when it isn’t.

When salaries depend on performance, performance tends to be good, and it 

tends to be bad when salaries do not depend on performance. A corollary is that 

internal communications tend to be good when salaries are performance-dependent 

and bad when they aren’t. 


It is hard to know who is pulling their weight in an organization, or exactly how 

much weight they are pulling, unless clients hire them directly. Imagine the following. 

Firm 1 and Firm 2 are both engineering firms, but there is an important difference 

between them. When clients go to Firm 1, they cannot hire engineers directly: they have 

to hire Firm 1 as a whole, and Firm 1 then assigns an engineer to them. 

But when clients go to Firm 2, they hire engineers directly. The engineers who are 

hired then give a percentage of their earnings to Firm 2, in exchange for equipment, 

permits, marketing, credibility, and other important resources. It’s going to be very for 

Firm 1 to know who they should promote and who they should hire. They can rely on 

reviews from clients, but those do very little in the way of making it clear how much a 

given worker is really doing. (A gruff engineer who single-handedly builds a skyscraper 

might get middling reviews, while an affable engineer who can barely build a birdhouse

gets stellar ones.) And if engineers in Firm 2 can set their own prices, it will even more 

clear who is doing how much. 

Also, given that clients cannot hire engineers directly from Firm 1, its engineers 

have to take the work that is given to them. That means that somebody else (a middle 

manager) will decide whether to award a given project to a given engineer. Projects will 

go the wrong people, and the talent will be misdeployed and underdeployed. Also, given 

that the customer-interface will be management, and not the talent itself, the latter will 

always be laboring under a glass ceiling, making it hard for them to develop larger 

projects and to maximize their contributions to the firm. 

Organization-internal communications are worthless unless they are based on 

solid information as to how the organization in question can engage the market. There 

is no better way for an organization to have such information than for its employees to 

be able to offer their services directly to clients. This isn’t always possible. No single 

engineer in an aircraft company is going to be able to service clients. But it is possible 

where organizations that provide instruction are concerned, for reasons that will soon 

be discussed. 

Expense-padding in Relation to KM

When a business is legitimate, it does not inflate costs. Microsoft has an 

enormous market-share because it gives people what they are paying for at a low cost, 

and it would lose its market-share were it to pad expenses or otherwise gouge its 

customers. When a business can provide what it says it provides, it stands to make more 

money by keeping quality high and costs low than by keeping costs high and quality low. 

Businesses are forced to pad and gouge when it isn't by providing the service 

that they say they are providing that they make their money. For example, most lifecoaches 

don't do much of anything. Since they don't provide a product, there is no way 

for them to provide that product more efficiently. For them, the best way to make 

money is to make what they are offering to seem important while being vague about it. 

Clients are lured in with impressive but vague claims. Once they are there, some actual 

services are dribbled out and mixed in with various unnecessary but expensive services. 

A business of this kind thrives on inefficiency. It cannot give the customer what 

he is paying for all at once, since the customer would then know how little he was really 

getting. Legitimate services have to be dragged out and interspersed with extraneous 

ones. A business of this kind is concerned with managing expectations. It is not 

concerned with increasing its own efficiency: in fact, it is concerned with decreasing it. If 

a business of this kind consists of a handful of people, they may all be consciously in on 

this fraud. It is certainly possible for Smith, Jones, and Brown to explicitly agree with 

each other that they are going to defraud clients. But if such a business is at all large,

most of its employees will have to at least partially accept the company’s own 

propaganda: otherwise, it will have trouble recruiting people and trouble keeping them 

motivated once they are there. Such a company’s internal communications therefore 

tend to be inefficient, since it isn’t clear what the company does or therefore what there 

is to say about how it could it do it better. 


A corollary is that when education can be digitized, it must be digitized. Of 

course, not every kind of instruction can be digitized, at least not at present. It is very 

difficult to teach somebody how to play the piano or perform surgery over the internet. 

But usually it can be digitized; and should be whenever possible, since doing so saves 

time and money and makes it easy for people to purchase custom-made education from 

the best instructors at the lowest possible price. If a university chooses not to digitize 

educational services that can be digitized, that is because it isn't primarily by providing 

instruction that it makes its money. 

DMO: A New and Better Kind of University

Thanks to the points thus far made, we are now in a position to draw up a 

blueprint for a new and better kind of institution of higher education. As previously 

stated, we will refer to this hypothetical institution as DMO. 

The most important fact about DMO is that students pay for results, not services. 

Therefore, a degree from DMO must be proof of competence. DMO does not sell 

prestige; it sells competence. 

DMO is not meant to meant to replace existing brick-and-mortar institutions. 

DMO is meant to provide maximally efficient and effective instruction in every area that 

can be taught digitally, with several heavy qualifications. 

The main qualification is that a degree from DMO is actual proof of competence. 

It follows that DMO will not teach people how to be pilots, surgeons or plumber. It also 

follows that DMO will not provide accreditations in areas, such as history or religious 

studies, where a degree cannot possibly constitute proof of competence. 

Another second qualification is that what DMO offers in the way of instruction 

covaries in real time with what the market needs people to know. 

Third, DMO will offer instruction (and accreditation) in a dramatically wider range 

of subjects than any existing (or possible) brick and mortar institutions. (This 

qualification is to some extent a corollary of the second.)

Fourth, DMO will offer many different levels of accreditation in practically any 

given of the areas in which it provides instruction. DMO will offer bachelor’s, master’s 

and doctoral degrees; but it will offer many other accreditations. 

Fifth, nobody who graduates from DMO is useless. DMO-graduates may want to 

get additional degrees, but they won’t have to: they will already be employable. 

Sixth, DMO’s objective is to produce people who are competent. It is not to 

exclude incompetent people so that it can then take undeserved credit for the merits of 

its graduates. Consequently, DMO will not exclude people. DMO will regard 

unintelligent people who want a DMO-education as being in the same category as sick 

people who go to a hospital: they are there to improve themselves and will thus receive 

service. 


At DMO, instructors do not issue grades. There are no grades. There are 

accreditations. Accreditations are attained by taking examinations. These examinations 

are graded anonymously (by computer, whenever possible). They are designed and 

administered by independent third parties. 

The questions on these examinations have determinate answers. There will be 

little or no disagreement among experts how a given question is to be answered.

The instructors have access to past accreditations exams. (In fact, DMO will make 

such exams available to all students, and possibly to the general public, free of charge.) 

But they do not have access to forthcoming exams. 

One consequence of this arrangement is that there are many subjects (e.g. 

history and religious studies) that DMO simply will not teach. Another consequence is 

that the instructors at DMO are indeed instructors, not gate-keepers. It does not matter 

whether your instructor likes you or what he thinks of your work. He does not pass you 

or fail you. You pass if you pass the accreditation exam and fail if you fail that exam. 

Your instructor's one job is to get you to pass that exam. These points will be developed 

below. 


DMO has two lines in the sand. First, whenever a degree is earned, it is definite 

proof of merit. Second, it is always completely clear (to everyone, including employers), 

what kind of merit a given degree is proof of. If somebody has an accreditation in 

discrete mathematics from DMO, then an employer who needs a discrete math 

specialist can hire that person with complete confidence that he will be competent. 

This means that when it comes to the kinds of people who are likely to major in 

the humanities and social sciences, DMO has its work cut out for itself. Its primary

solution will be to offer lite science degrees: lite-physics, lite-math; math for computer 

scientists; lite biology. In this way, DMO gets people out of the doldrums of the liberal 

arts and into STEM. 

In addition to being inherently legitimate, this objective is also highly attainable. 

Many people in the humanities, especially philosophy, are actually highly intelligent. But 

(for that reason, arguably) they find details rather annoying. Anyone who has studied 

physics knows that it’s largely about details; there are some ‘big ideas’, but it is mainly 

about grinding out solutions, oftentimes using rather thorny mathematics. The same is 

true of all of the sciences. Yes—there are ‘big ideas.’ But most of them are about 

grinding out facts/theorems. 

Because people in the humanities tend to be ‘big idea’ people, they resent doing 

the labor involved in STEM subjects. At the same time, they like and are adept at the 

‘big ideas’ part of those disciplines. College majors being what they are, big idea people 

tend to have little choice but to flee from STEM, including economics, into the likes of 

poly sci, history, etc. The result is that these people, despite their considerable 

intellectual gifts, end up being completely useless: no matter how advanced you are in 

political science, you are not employable (except in a bureaucratic way). Contrariwise, 

somebody whose college career consists in his learning the big ideas of science, along 

with just enough applications to nail down understanding, is extremely useful.

For this reason, DMO will offer a major in ‘general studies in the sciences.’ There 

will be variants of this degree, including general studies in the applied sciences, general 

studies in the biological sciences, general studies in information sciences, general 

studies in health sciences, and the like. 


Existing universities are discriminatory; they do not all service all comers. OMC's 

(open-market companies) are not like this. Nike doesn't ‘exclude' certain customers; nor 

does Amazon or Microsoft. Why this difference? Because OMC's sell products, whereas 

universities sell prestige. If universities really sold instruction—in other words, if they 

made their money by seeing to it that people left them more competent than they came 

to them---they would want as many customers as possible. If they were in the business 

of making people smarter, they would want as many people as possible paying them to 

make them smarter. But universities are very selective about who they choose to 

service, and the reason is that their product is weak: they are simply not that good at 

instructing people. (They are reasonably good at taking people who are already gifted 

and then pointing them in the right direction.) 

If I invent a pill that makes people smarter, and I want to make money by selling 

that pill, I will obviously want to sell to as many people as possible. I won’t want to

exclude anybody. In fact, the less desirable (the less intelligent) the customer, the 

better. By contrast, if invented a pill that doesn’t make people smarter, or does so only 

under certain circumstances, I may want to have a different business model: I may want 

to vet customers. DMO has the first business model. Other universities have the second. 


An A in a given class at a given university tends not to mean anything. And even in 

cases where an A definitely means something, its exact meaning is deeply unclear. True— 

an A in engineering 101 means something. But it means one thing at M.I.T. and something 

quite different at Virginia Commonwealth University. Because individual classes at 

universities have either no significances or no determinate significances, accreditations 

can be only awarded to people who have taken hulkingly large pluralities of classes. This 

is a hedging strategy. The idea is Smith must have at least at least some merit if he passes 

a hundred classes, even though many of those of them had no meaning and few if any 

had determinate meanings. 

The less guarantee there is that a given class has merit, the larger the number of 

classes a student must pass in order to be awarded a degree that is taken as proof of 

merit. This limits the number of levels of degrees that a university can issue. If someone 

takes six classes a given university, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything at all; and even

if it does mean something, it isn’t clear exactly what it means, since it isn’t clear what the 

student had to do to pass them. (He may have had to have passed some test or other in 

logic, but it is not clear what was on that test—or even if there was one. The situation will 

vary from school to school and, within a given school, from professor to professor.) 

But if individual courses had guaranteed meanings, and if it was always 

determinate what those meanings were, then passing so much as a single class would be 

definite proof of a definite kind of merit. In that case, a ‘two-year’ degree---in other 

words, a degree awarded for two-years’ worth of course-work---would have an enormous 

amount of meaning. In fact, a one year-degree would have meaning. Even a three-month 

degree---of the right kind—would have meaning. In general, the greater the guarantee 

that a given course has meaning, and the greater the degree of specificity as to what 

meaning is, the fewer courses a student will have to take in order for that student to be 

recognized as having merit. 

At DMO, there is no such thing as a grade that is not definitive proof of a welldefined 

kind of merit. For this reason, a student at DMO can prove himself to have a high 

degree of a very definite kind of merit by passing a relatively small number of classes. For 

this reason, DMO will, with credibility, be able to issue many different levels of degrees. 

(In fact, any given course at DMO will itself be a mini-degree, simply because successful 

completion of that class constitutes definite proof of a definite kind of merit.)

This means that students can earn credible degrees from DMO in a fraction of the 

time, and with a fraction of the expense, that would be involved in getting a degree from 

another institution. It also means that students would have many options intermediate 

between getting a degree at all and spending four to eight years, and wracking up debt, 

getting a degree that may have little inherent or practical significance. 


DMO always offers students the ability to ‘test out.’ In other words, a student can 

get a given accreditation just by passing the examination in question: no time need be 

spent ‘in class.’ 

This is necessary. As long as students have the option of testing out, it is 

guaranteed that students only pay instructors for actual instruction. When it isn’t 

possible to test out, instructors tend to function as gatekeepers: they are not there to 

instruct, but rather to open the gates, as they see fit. If instructors are paid to be 

gatekeepers, there is no guarantee that they are good instructors. 

Payments to Go Straight from Student to Instructor

At DMO, a hires a given instructor only if he believes that instructor to be able to 

help some accreditation exam that the professor himself does not grade. This means 

that students will not want to work with instructors who are failures at getting students 

to pass these exams and will want to work instructors who can get them to pass. It also 

means that students will be willing to pay more for instructors who are likely to get 

them to pass than for those who unlikely to do so. 

This means that students and instructors must be able to negotiate prices 

directly. If the student pays DMO, and DMO then supplies the student with an 

instructor, the student is no longer able to choose competent instructors and to not 

choose incompetent ones. This means that incompetent instructors will not pay the 

price for their incompetence and competent ones will not be rewarded for their 

competence. This in turn means that instruction will be poor. Therefore, students must 

negotiate prices directly with instructors, and payments must go straight to the 

instructor. The instructor will give a percentage of his earnings to DMO in exchange for 

use of the platform, business volume, credibility, instructional materials, and the like. 

An immediate corollary is that there is no permanent employment at DMO, let 

alone tenure, only contract-work. Another corollary is that instructor-revenue is 

determined entirely by instructor-competence. 

The Inverted Payment Pyramid

At a conventional university, the money flows down. Students pay the university; 

the university pays instructors. The result: expensive and bad education. At DMO, the 

money flows up. Instructors are directly sought by students based on their 

performance-statistics, with instructors keeping most of what the student pays and the 

rest, probably around 20%, going to defray overhead costs. 

This will make DMO lean and functional. Because the student knows where his 

money is going, there is not very much DMO can do to over-charge or mis-charge. Also, 

since management has to work within the limits set by that 20%, bureaucrat will be 

impossible, and management will have strong incentives to hire and retain instructors 

who are able to service large market-sectors. 


Let us now state all of these points as explicitly concisely as possible. 

Any given degree issued by DMO will be definite proof of a definite kind of merit; 

and to do this, as well as satisfy the objectives that we have seen to be involved therein, 

DMO satisfy the following twenty-five desiderata:

1. DMO must be accredited. Students must be able to receive recognized 

degrees. 

2. DMO must be online. 

3. Instruction must be largely (though not entirely) individualized. 

4. There must be clear, universally recognize performance-benchmarks for 

students in all academic areas. 

5. There must be similar benchmarks for instructors (this is a corollary of the last 

point). 

6. Students hire instructors directly. 

7. Instructor-rates are determined by the student and the instructor, not by 

DMO. The instructor gives a cut of his earnings to DMO, in exchange for DMO’s 

resources (these being the platform, educational resources, marketing, credibility, large 

business volume, and the like). 

8. Instructor-statistics are always available to prospective students. These 

statistics include number of accreditation-tests pasts by students and the exact 

identifies of such tests. Instructor-pay is therefore based on volume of work and 

satisfaction of such benchmarks. 

9. Satisfaction of such benchmarks is never to be decided by the professors. 

Consequently, there are no ‘grades’ per se, only accreditation exams. A corollary is that 

assignments, including papers, are always simply exercises; they do not result in grades

or accreditations. Those assignments can and will be responded to (read and 

commented on) by such people, but those responses will not constitute grades or 

formal actions of any kind, their sole purpose being to illuminate. 

10. The questions on these accreditation exams admit of clear, unambiguous and 

universally recognizable answers. A corollary is questions relating to course-specific 

topics will not occur on these tests. 

11. Instructors are minimally policed. They can teach what they want, how they 

want. 

12. Instructors are encouraged to take performance-tests of their own (similar to 

and sometimes identical with those taken by their own students) and to publicly display 

their scores on these. Initially, instructors will inevitably have the usual credentials 

(doctorates from brick-and-mortar institutions, along with publications). And they are 

allowed to showcase these, but with time these will become increasingly less important. 

13. There is no tenure. 

14. Termination is reserved for two kinds of circumstances: failure to take on 

students that are making themselves available at agreed-upon rates and gross 

misconduct (invoicing non-existent sessions, lying to students about qualifications, and 

the like). 

15. There must be a wider variety of disciplines and degrees than in current 

institutions of higher learning.

16. The student’s situation should not be binary—it should not be either ‘degree’ 

or ‘no degree.’ There should be a score that corresponds to objective and verifiable 

accomplishments on the student’s part, a degree being issued only when that score 

reaches a predetermined target. 

17. Disciplines that have no practical value should either be jettisoned or 

modified so to have practical value. (Realistically, they will usually be replaced with 

generalized versions of practical disciplines.) 

18. Disciplines that do not admit of objective assessments should either be 

jettisoned or modified so to admit of such assessments. 

19. Universally applicable tests of intelligence and critical reasoning should be 

administered, to prove that the student is not only acquiring subject-specific knowledge 

but is also becoming a better thinker. These will be administered and graded free of 

charge. The student does not have to take them, but if he does take them and his 

performance exceeds a certain threshold, they count as credentials. There will be 

instructors who specialize in helping students with these tests. 

20. DMO will always have past copies of these tests, and of all other 

accreditation-exams, but DMO instructors will not create them. DMO will contract with 

outside parties to generate the relevant tests, which will not be revealed to DMO 

instructors until after they have been taken.

21. The use of student evaluations should be minimized or eliminated. Student 

input should concern the professionalism of the instructor. The instructor's merit should 

be determined by student-performance, not by opinion or sentiment. 

22. Students should be able to switch between instructors easily, so as to prevent 

their education from being jammed up by personal conflicts with instructors 

23. The contents of curricula should be publicly accessible, so that students can 

start working on them prior to enrolling in DMO. This is to ensure that instructors 

actually instruct, instead of just being gate-keepers. 

24. Hirings are to be made exclusively on proven or probable success helping 

students pass accreditation exams. Therefore, publications are irrelevant to hiring 

decision, and so are letters of reference. 

25. Mini-majors should be offered: miniature degrees in economics, physics, and 

so on. 


Existing universities are failing in many respects. Most of the degrees they issue 

have literally no objective significance and utterly fail to provide definitive proof of 

merit. Moreover, universities are expensive and slow. Finally, they are discriminatory, in 

that they prevent the very people who need their services from receiving them. They do

this in two ways. First, they turn people away who want to study at them. (Though nonideal, 

this is forgivable, given their limited resources of space and manpower.) Second 

(and far less forgivably), they turn their own students away from courses of study that 

would actually benefit them: they offer very few practical courses of study, and they 

load those courses of study with so many stumbling blocks that people who could be 

creditable practitioners of the corresponding fields end up being exiled into useless, soft 

majors. Theoretically, universities are supposed to instruct; but they don’t instruct, so 

much as they wall out people who need instruction, choosing to open the gates only to 

people who can self-teach their way through their majors. 

There is little hope of reforming universities. They don't want to be reformed, 

and they don't stand to gain by being reformed. (See Part 1, as well the Conclusion of 

the Present Work.) Nor are they asking to be reformed. 

But this doesn’t matter, since there is no need to reform them. In the present 

work, we put forth a detailed plan for a university (DMO) that will do what existing 

universities are failing to do, and nothing is preventing anybody from implementing that 

plan. 

The essence of DMO is that it is results-based, not service-based. DMOinstructors 

are instructors, not gatekeepers. They are paid directly by students to help 

those students pass independently administered accreditation exams, successful 

completion of which is always definitive proof of a well-defined as well as useful form of

competence. Consequently, instructor-earnings depend only on the quality and volume 

of their work. 

Because each successfully completed examination has universally recognizable 

and well-defined significance, a DMO-student need only a small number of courses to 

provide definitive proof that he has a given skill or is employable in a given respect. It 

also allows DMO to offer a much wider range of courses of study than its conventional 

brick-and-mortar counterparts, giving it the ability to absorb people into STEM majors 

who at conventional universities would be exiled to the limbo of the liberal arts. 

A consequence of this model is that student-costs are always hewed to the actual 

value of the instruction they are receiving. Thanks to the resulting high-quality of 

instruction, DMO need not deny service to anyone, since its reputation is based on how 

much it improves its students, not on how smart they are to begin with. 

Once in existence, DMO will be the very embodiment of optimal knowledgemanagement. 

The instructors will have no choice but to charge exactly what their 

services are worth; and because the instructors pay the management, and not the other 

way around, the management will be forced to hire and retain the best instructors, and 

they will also have every reason not to bloat up their own ranks with redundant 

personnel, since the money for such a person would come out of their own end. 

Conclusion of the Present Work

Other things being equal, some universities would like to have higher retention 

rates than they currently have. But other things are not equal. If universities made the 

kinds of systemic changes to themselves needed to guarantee higher retention rates, 

they would alienate most of their current customers. 

Also, universities don’t need higher retention rates. There are many universities 

with retention rates that are well under 50% (and graduation rates that are in the single 

digits), and not a single one of them is even close to closing its doors. The only brickand-mortar 

university that has even come close to shutting down in the last twenty 

years is Sweet Briar, a private women's college, and it had (and continues to have) a 

71% retention rate. (The national average is just over 50%.) 

Finally, even if universities do need them, they are doing much, apart from some 

marketing, to increase them. They are not changing their prices, their services or their 

business-model; and they are certainly not asking outside experts to come in and houseclean. 

It has been suggested that universities might improve their retention rates 

through judicious use of knowledge management. Though prima facie reasonable, this 

suggestion is quite misconceived. The reason is that universities depend for their very 

existences on poor knowledge management. Some organizations survive by being 

efficient: they make their money by providing people with well-defined results. Such

organizations need good knowledge management. Microsoft is in this category, along 

with Nike, Walmart, and Hyundai. 

Other organizations survive by being inefficient: they make their money by 

providing services that don’t have definite results and by making those services as 

expensive as possible. Organizations that provide marketing, therapy, coaching and 

other similarly nebulous services tend to fall into this category. Most marketing firms 

would go out of business immediately if they were only paid for results, and it is 

therefore a marketing firm’s financial interest to keep the ratio of services to results as 

high as it can without entirely losing credibility. Such an organization wants to be able to 

justify high billings without producing corresponding results, and it does this by hiring 

useless ‘experts’, conducting various studies, having useless meetings, and the like. 

Consequently, many people within such an organization have strong incentives not to 

communicate efficiently, since efficient communications would tend to expose them a 

useless. It also means that it isn’t clear what is worth communicating, since the 

company’s objectives are vague and internally incoherent. 

Universities fall into this category. They do provide some legitimate services, but 

these only account for a fraction of their revenue, the rest coming from overpriced 

ancillary services. For this reason, universities do not have a well-defined bottom-line. In 

certain respects, they may want to improve instruction, but that is hardly their 

endgame. They need to provide enough instruction to maintain their prestige. But they

don’t want instruction to be too good, since that will alienate most of their customers. 

So they need some legitimate personnel and some illegitimate ones, and they need to 

provide some legitimate services and some illegitimate ones. Their objectives are 

therefore vague and incoherent, and it is correspondingly unclear what kind of 

information university-employees should make one another aware of. 

Universities don’t want to be better, and they are right not to want to be better, 

since their business would dry up if they were better. This does not mean that all is lost. 

It just means that the way to provide the public with better instruction is not to make 

universities better. The right way to provide the public with better instruction is to 

create a new kind of educational service that is results-based and whose revenue is 

hewed to its pedagogical efficacy. In this work, we have seen in detail exactly how to do 

this.

[1] Be it noted that there is an entire industry dedicated to swindling people who 

don't have college degrees by taking their money in exchange for the temporary illusion 

that they can have a white-collar profession. Primerica, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Herbalife, 

Equinox, Amway, Vector: These are all multi-level marketing schemes. Each has the 

same structure. People are recruited to be ‘sales representatives.' No college degree is 

needed (or had, in most cases). The ‘sales representative' pays for leads and products 

and training, all because he has been told that he will make this money back. He finds 

that it is virtually impossible to make a single sale, and he would have to make many 

sales to recover his losses. The only way he can make money is by recruiting more sales 

representatives, to whom he sells the same bill of goods that his own recruiter sold to 

him. And even if he is an extremely successful recruiter, he is still extremely unlikely to 

make more than a pittance or even just to break even.

Why do these people do it? Up to a point, it is because they are gullible. But 

ultimately it is because they want the prestige of a white-collar career. They want to be 

‘executives.' And each of these companies refers to its recruits as ‘executives.' At 

Primerica, the moment you become licensed, you are a ‘team leader' and an ‘executive', 

and you are allowed to claim that you have your own office. (You time-share an office 

with around thirty other ‘executives.') 

[2] This subject to the obvious counterexamples and qualifications, e.g. ‘Dog’ the 

Bounty Hunter is financially successful despite not having a college degree. But such 

counterexamples and qualifications are just that. And when scrutinized, they tend to 

confirm the proposition in question. Before having his own T.V. show, ‘Dog’ spent 18 

months in prison in Texas for drug dealing, which he wouldn’t have had to have done 

had he had a college degree. And most people who go to prison don’t turn their 

experiences into T.V. shows. In fact, the basis of that show’s success lay in the fact that 

he was seen as an ‘everyman’ who made good, despite the odds. 

[3] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/25-universities-with-the-worst-graduationrates/ 

[4] A high-prestige university, such as UCLA or Harvard, may make some money 

selling adult-learning classes and the like, but the revenue from such services is less than

one-tenth of one percent of the revenue from students who are enrolled in degree 

programs. 

[5] Also, universities provide far less instruction than people assume. Capable 

students tend to teach themselves. Students at Harvard and M.I.T. tend to be autodidacts. 

The professor may do a bit of explaining, but he is more in the nature of an 

enforcer: he is there to make sure that students do the assignments, and students who 

are not able to figure out on their own how to do the assignments, mainly on the basis 

of a textbook and only to a minimal extent on the basis of lectures, will not last. So a 

university could always provide terrible instruction in every discipline, so long as the 

students there were sufficiently able to teach themselves the materials. And this is not 

just a hypothetical possibility: it is a fairly good approximation to how colleges actually 

function. Students who do good work tend to be independently motivated and teach 

themselves. The courses help them learn, but not by teaching so much as by forcing 

them to do problem-sets, write essays, and the like. Professors are there not so much to 

instruct as to police. 

[6] That is why the fact that universities sometimes want to raise their retention 

rates doesn’t represent much of an opportunity for business consultants. If an OMC 

wants to right-size itself, it is more than willing to let people go: in fact, it will often hire

consultants precisely to tell who to let go of. But universities don’t want to right-size 

themselves by downsizing. They don’t even particularly want to right-size themselves, 

for the reasons already given. And although they may sometimes want higher retention 

rates, the changes they are willing to make themselves to have them are extremely 

marginal, and university officials will be deeply uneasy about the idea of someone from 

the private sector telling them where to let the ax fall, as it were. 

[7] We often hear about law school graduates can’t find work and are stuck with 

hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt, and we often hear about how lawyerjobs 

are becoming more scarce, not just relative to the number of applicants, but in 

absolute terms, owing in part to the automation of some legal services. His this slowed 

the rate of applications to law school? Not one bit. Application-rates are climbing. Is this 

because these applicants are ignorant or lazy or defective in some way? Not necessarily. 

First of all, when recent law school graduates complain about their lot, they are 

often comparing themselves to law school graduates who got six-figure jobs right out of 

law school. A law school graduate today may be more likely than in times past to have 

to wait before getting a job. But if a law-school graduate lands what would be 

considered a low-end lawyer-job—if he lands a position as a low-level counselor in an 

obscure government-agency or as in-house counsel at a small college or regional bank--- 

he will make far more money and have far more job security than the vast majority of

the population. And most people who go to law school do get jobs as lawyers, and those 

jobs are extremely lucrative and secure compared to most jobs. The lawyers who have 

those jobs may self-identify as failures; they may wish that they were star-lawyers at 

white-shoe law-firms making $500,000/year, instead of being undistinguished lawyers 

making $90,000/year. But in absolute terms they are doing well. 

There are law school graduates who simply fail to find jobs as lawyers. But 

according to the American Bar Association, approximately 87.5% end up having stable 

employment as lawyers, and the mean salary is $90,000. 

(http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/thanks_to_shrinking_class_size_a_greater_p 

ercentage_of_new_law_grads_find_e) 

So yes—some law-school graduates never work as lawyers, but most do, and 

they are prospering. 

Are these lawyers useful? No. Not in general. In fact, they tend to be negatively 

useful. They make money because, owing to their position, they can obstruct 

commerce, and people have to pay them in order to allow their trade. 

United Airlines vs. Alaska Airlines (Business) 

Summary of the Company

According to United Airlines’ company overview webpage, United Airlines 

operates approximately 4,600 flights a day to 354 airports across five continents. In 

2017, United operated more than 1.6 million flights carrying more than 148 million 

customers. United is proud to have the world's most comprehensive route network, 

including U.S. mainland hubs in Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San 

Francisco and Washington, D.C. 

Target Customer, Marketing Environment & Marketing Mix 

Without a clear understanding of the target audience, a company will not have a 

successful e-commerce presence, as stated in our textbook. There is a broad customer 

market for airline companies because transportation services are advantageous to both 

business and leisure travelers, which makes it difficult to pinpoint the typical customer. 

Weighing the criteria depends on the customer. For example, customers traveling 

for business prefer convenience, on time arrivals, and frequent flyer programs. 

However, customers traveling for leisure favor affordable airfare and bag fees, customer 

service and cabin comfort.

Targeting a market by choosing which group the airline would like to appeal to 

allows the company to strategically position themselves against the competition. 

Major Competitors 

Major competitors of United Airlines include Alaska, Virgin America, Southwest 

Airlines, Delta Airlines, American Airlines, and JetBlue. Each airline has different 

strengths and weaknesses that can be studied by United and used as an opportunity to 

learn from the competition. 

Alaska Airlines leads the competition because it appeals to all customers criteria 

including airfare, arrival times, baggage handling and customer satisfaction. Alaska 

Airlines has also recently merged with Virgin America. Southwest Airlines and Delta 

Airlines both lead the market in two specific areas; airfare prices and customer 

satisfaction. American Airlines attempts to meet all criteria but has mediocre results 

across the board. Recently, JetBlue has slipped to the competition because of its smaller 

network.

United Airlines has struggled in the past with customer satisfaction and 

complaints in the public eye. Because of the negative media attention, United has 

shown improvement in that area, and still holds strong as one of the top airline 

competitors. 

Best and Worst Airlines in the U.S. 

SWOT Analysis

Strengths 

Recognizable brand 

Worldwide service to 354 airports 

Hubs in 7 major U.S. cities 

Weaknesses 

Negative media attention regarding customer service 

E-commerce 

Opportunities 

Studying competitors’ marketing strategies 

MileagePlus frequent flyer program 

Stocks 

Member lounges 

Threats 

Fuel costs 

Competitors

E-COMMERCE RATIONALE 

United Airlines wants to stand out when it comes to customer experience and 

overall satisfaction. The rationale behind their e-commerce strategy is to bring together 

services and packages to their customers who visit the website. Nearly two decades ago 

they launched a subsidiary that was dedicated to its e-commerce and wireless business 

platforms. Just like most firms in the era of advancing mobile technology, United Airlines 

wanted to jump at the opportunity in the rapidly developing e-commerce arena. United 

Airlines launched a dashboard within their website that helps customers search for 

travel package deals, flight information, and an option to speak to a travel agent. 

United's new Web site lets customers research fares and schedules, check flight 

information, and access Mileage Plus account information directly from the home page. 

United is also focusing on reducing the amount of clicks a guest would have to conduct 

before navigating to their desired information or purchase. Customer satisfaction would 

increase if the website was easy to navigate. The guest would also be more likely to 

purchase services if they could quickly find what they are looking for. United Airlines 

focal point was to increase customer satisfaction and increase their return on 

investment.

United Airlines began ramping up their e-commerce model within the 

consolidation phase of the e-commerce historical time-line. This was the era when e- 

commerce changed to include complex services far beyond retail goods. Many travel 

companies began taking advantage of the web to strengthen sales and market to a 

broader audience. Airline companies also started e-commerce plans which included 

vacation packages. This era was very business driven and was carried by the lower prices 

of personal computers and mobile devices. According to an article in Computer World 

Magazine, “United announced plans to launch a 70-person e-commerce subsidiary 

dedicated to online and wireless strategies. In addition to its Web site, United has 

launched CollegeTravelNetwork.com, an online service created to address the travel 

requirements of college students. It's also developing an online travel store with Aliso 

Viejo, Calif.-based retailer Buy.com Inc. It is scheduled to debut this month (Colett).” 

This article was written January 24, 2000, a time when most Airlines were really starting 

to develop a strong e-commerce plan and broaden their web capabilities. A recent 

search reveals that United’s additional travel websites, such as 

CollegeTravelNetwork.com, have failed and cease to exist. United Airlines rationale was 

on target but they failed to execute in parallel endeavors. 

United Airlines rolled out a variety of online travel services to guests nearly two 

decades ago. According to the same article by Computer World Magazine, “the moves 

follow a steady stream of e-commerce activity by the Chicago- based airline as it looks

to capitalize on the $4.2 billion online travel market, which is projected to grow to $16.6 

billion by 2003, according to Jupiter Communication Inc. in New York (Colett).” United 

Airlines has been strategizing not only in the areas of marketing flight services but 

competing with the online travel market. A recent visit to one of their websites, 

vacations.united.com, presents a variety of vacation packages that complement their 

flights. This website presents a vacation planning website similar to that of competing 

travel planning websites. The website offers deal packages joined with their flight 

services to major vacation destinations. They also offer web services that can connect 

you to a company travel agent who can quickly help you find the best deals. Looking 

through these various online services, I feel that United Airlines is focusing on providing 

convenience and excellent customer service to their guests. 

This strategy was built roughly two decades ago and many other competing 

airlines have also launched the same services. Delta Airlines also offers travel packages 

to many top vacation destinations, connects customers to travel agents, rental cars, and 

flight with hotel packages. Alaska Airlines offers group travel arrangements for couples 

and guests planning wedding celebrations. They also offer very competitive travel 

packages to top destinations. Alaska Airlines also has a website feature titled “ask Jenn” 

which is an instant message system with an airline representative that can answer most 

questions about flight and travel arrangements. Looking through these websites I 

believe most of the companies in the airline industry all have the same strategy behind

their e-commerce platforms, to provide mobile and desktop customer service to their 

customers. 

Not much has changed since United Airlines created an e-commerce unit and 

rolled out web services. There has been more of a focus on Mobile e-commerce. The 

website is set up so that transactions can be made easily when on the go, using a mobile 

phone, tablet, or laptop. The webpage also has an android and iPhone hyperlink so 

guests can download the application on mobile devices. United Airlines, like other 

companies in the industry, understands that mobile transactions are increasing as those 

technologies keep advancing. The mobile platform paved way for people to access the 

internet from a wide variety of mobile devices and laptops. Individuals who are always 

traveling, such as businessmen, use mobile devices to plan travel arrangements. United 

Airlines recognizes that developing a fast and convenient mobile e-commerce strategy 

will help increase transactions. 

United Airlines also presently uses social marketing to strategically measure their 

market reach. United uses the steps in the social marketing process to generate 

engagement, encourage visitors to share their likes, create a foundation for community, 

and increase their brand strength. On the bottom of United Airlines’ webpage there are 

links to many of the most popular social networks. A visitor can click these links and be 

encouraged to join United Airlines’ social community. United uses LinkedIn, Facebook, 

Instagram, Twitter, Hub, and YouTube to measure market reach and build a community

of brand loyal customers. According to an article from the Chicago Tribune, “Experts are 

starting to link companies’ social media activities with their bottom lines. One report by 

J.D. Power & Associates found a correlation between overall satisfaction with a 

company’s social marketing efforts and consumer likelihood to buy something from that 

company. It also affected the overall perception of the company. Members of the social 

media team at United are sometimes dealing one-on-one with a customer on Facebook 

or Twitter about a missed flight connection, or blasting out messages to hundreds of 

thousands about the airline’s newest airfare promotion (Karp).” United Airlines believes 

that if it builds a strong social marketing presence then customers will more likely buy 

flights and travel services. 

I believe that United Airlines’ social marketing approach is sub-par and fails to 

stand out from their competitors. United Airlines developed their social marketing 

approach alongside competitors and only work on keeping their presence known. 

According to the Chicago Tribune article, “Chicago-based United Airlines, the world’s 

largest carrier, is not a leader in using social media, at least yet. It ranks below industry 

average on many of the newfangled social media metrics, such as interactions, response 

time and Twitter followers. Even after several years of prominence for social media, 

United and companies in many industries are still trying to figure it out — trying to 

decide just how seriously to take it and what to use it for; fruitlessly trying to calculate a 

return on investment. One thing is certain: Corporate America, until recently, could

mostly ignore Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, and 

LinkedIn. Now it does so at its peril. United, like others, is winging it and learning on the 

fly (Karp).” United Airlines social marketing attempts seem as only an act to stay in the 

game. A recent visit to their Instagram account mostly shows pictures of their planes in 

flight. I don’t feel any of the pictures are conveying a message of great service to their 

social community. United’s competitors, such as Alaska Airlines, are sharing videos of 

their teams as they help improve services and technology. 

United Airlines needs to take advantage of social media platforms and convey a 

message that peaks travel consumers interests. According to an Article in Forbes 

Magazine, “Every blog post, image, video, or comment you share is a chance for 

someone to react, and every reaction could lead to a site visit, and eventually a 

conversion. Not every interaction with your brand results in a conversion, but every 

positive interaction increases the likelihood of an eventual conversion. Even if your clickthrough 

rates are low, the sheer number of opportunities you have on social media is 

significant (Demers)”. United Airlines began their strategy in the consolidation era of e- 

commerce, when building a model and developing a strategy was new to most travel 

and airline companies. E-commerce is now in the reinvention period which depends on 

social marketing. The increasing growth of social media now transforms marketing. 

Many firms have created teams of marketers who solely focus on social networks, word-

of-mouth, viral marketing, and metrics that highlight marketing reach through these 

platforms. 

Despite the weak presence on some social networks, United Airlines does have a 

strong following on Facebook. With over 1 million followers who share United’s photos 

and articles. They encourage their subscribers to share personal travel photos and enter 

contests to win travel packages and flights. They also have quick responses to their 

social communities’ questions and concerns. United typically responds within an hour 

after receiving a Facebook message. United Airlines social marketing is primarily focused 

on their Facebook page. Focusing on Facebook is most likely due to the 2 billion active 

users on the social network. United Airlines might want to focus on other social 

networks as well; Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest all having hundreds of millions of 

subscribers. 

Since developing their online strategy, I believe that United Airlines needs to still 

focus on staying competitive if they want to stand out in their industry. According to a 

recent article by Time Magazine, United Airlines comes in 9th in customer satisfaction 

and affordability. The article from Time Magazine is titled “The 9 Biggest U.S. Airlines, 

Ranked from Best to Worst.” According to the article, “the pool of U.S. airlines 

considered included the nine largest domestic airlines. Criteria included average fair 

price, year-over-year ticket pricing changes, and the cost per kilometer for passengers; 

average departure and arrival delay time, number of on time arrivals, number of

cancelled flights, and amount of denied boardings; baggage and change fees (Renzulli 

and Leonhardt).” United Airlines most likely would like to improve the e-commerce 

strategy that they developed years ago and stay competitive within the industry. They 

began developing their e-commerce model during the early stages of consolidation. The 

plan was most likely to have the same services and offerings as other airlines and travel 

companies. United Airlines may be working on a new strategy that takes advantage of 

social communities and viral marketing. Most companies are now trying to find ways to 

offer packages based on personalization and tastes of their customers. 

E-COMMERCE RECOMMENDATIONS 

First of all, United Airlines has some enormous advantages over its current competitors. 

It offers more flights to more destinations than most, if not all, of its competitors. It’s 

fares are relatively affordable, being one of the less expensive airlines to fly. United 

Airlines is a household name, with a well-deserved reputation for high-quality 

affordable service.

What United does not have is a coherent web-presence. On YouTube, if one 

searches “United Airlines”, here (with only a few inconsequential omissions) are the 

very first listings that come up: 

Video shows a passenger forcibly dragged off a United Airlines plane 

United Airlines apologizes after reports of flight attendant's bizarre behavior 

Watch: United Airlines staffer fights with passenger over baggage 

United Airlines 737 900ER Economy Class Trip Report (accompanied by a picture 

of an empty Airplane) 

Shame On You United Airlines 

Everything Wrong With United Airlines 

United (United’s Official YouTube Channel) 

https://www.youtube.com/user/united 

Ellen on United Airlines' Latest Headlines (Accompanied by photo of grinning 

comedian presumably making fun of United) 

United Airlines 14 hour flight San Francisco to Hong Kong Flight report! 

United Airlines: Woman claims United gave away her first class seat to Texas 

lawmaker - TomoNews 

Air Koryo VS United Airlines (accompanied by photo of the smoldering wreckage 

of a crashed plane)

DISGUSTING! United Airlines' Dog "Accident" Sparks Outrage, Student Walkout 

Threats, and More... 

Puppy dies after being put in overhead bin on United Airlines flight 

United Airlines Isn't The Only One Dragging People Off Planes! 

FS2004 - Midway Disaster (United Airlines Flight 553) 

FS2004 - September 11 - The South Tower Attack (United Airlines Flight 175) 

Martin Short Takes Shots at Bill O'Reilly, United Airlines and Jimmy Fallon 

United Airlines...Fuck You 

United Airlines Commercial (Jimmy Kimmel Live) 

United Airlines passenger apparently dragged off flight after refusing to give up 

seat 

United Airlines jet apparently loses engine covering midflight 

Jim Cramer On United Airlines Dog Death Incident | CNBC 

United Airlines gives away toddler's seat, forces mom to carry him during flight 

Engine on United Airlines plane falls apart on flight to Hawaii 

Despite being a safe and affordable airline with excellent customer service, 

United Airlines has the become the butt of the nation’s jokes. And its own official 

YouTube channel does not meaningfully offset this. The Channel’s official promo video 

has to do with the Special Olympics—sporting events for physically and mentally

challenged individuals. This is obviously meant to make United look caring and noncorporate. 

But, first of all, it has no relevance to anything relating to air-travel. Second, 

it subliminally sends the message that United is associated with mentally deficient 

people, which message is reinforced by the search-adjacent videos making of United. 

Third, even though United’s Commitment to the special Olympics is admirable, it comes 

off as apologetic and therefore gives credence to the (largely spurious) negative 

statements being made about it. Finally, United has a number of outstanding strengths: 

it can get people to practically any place on Earth in quickly, efficiently, affordably, and 

enjoyable. And yet in its YouTube Channel, United is not showcasing these strengths. It 

is actually burying them. 

Also, when continues the YouTube search for United, one finds that many, if not 

most, of the videos are positive, reporting extremely good cuisine, a comfortable cabin, 

courteous attendants and good service. 

Further, there are no videos that discuss United’s true strength: its ability to get 

people to more destinations than practically any other airline, at a price equal to or 

lower than most of its competitors. 

So here is what United needs to do in terms of its YouTube-presence (and, by 

implication, in terms of its e-presence as a whole).

First, it needs to focus on its strengths. Its functional strengths, not some 

irrelevant and obviously PR-motivated strengths relating to its tenderness of heart. 

What are its functional strengths? 

Its ability to fly to people to more places for less money than other airlines. 

Its good food 

Its comfortable cabins 

Its courteous staff 

Its in-flight entertainment and amenities. 

It should project strength and focus, and confuse and mislead prospective 

customers with material that has no relevance to what United can offer its customers. 

United’s guiding principle in terms of its web-presence should be: Stick with the 

logo. United’s logo is excellent: it is an abstract image of a globe—very elegant and 

functional, and instantly recognizable. The fact that the logo is a globe indicates 

(correctly) that United has global reach—that it flies everywhere. The fact that globe is 

abstract and geometrical suggests (correctly) that United is functional and efficient. 

United’s current P.R. campaign (at least to the extent that its YouTube presence 

makes it clear what this campaign is) does not emphasize how functional United is. And 

this must change.

REFERENCES

Lauden, Kenneth C, and Carol Guericio Traver. E-Commerce 2016 Business, 

Technology, Society. Pearson College Div, 2016. 

“Company Overview.” – United Continental Holdings, Inc., 

ir.united.com/company-information/company-overview. 

Kheel, Julian Mark. “The Best and Worst US Airlines in 2018.” The Points Guy, The 

Points Guy, 6 MCollett. “United Airline’s E-Commerce Unit Takes Off” Computer World. 

24 Jan. 2000, https://www.computerworld.com/article/2594042/united-airline-s-ecommerce-unit-takes-off.html 

Accessed 21 May, 2018. 

Demers. “The Top 10 Benefits of Social Marketing”. Forbes. 11 Aug. 2014, 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/08/11/the-top-10-benefitsof-socialmedia-marketing/#739937771f80 

Accessed 20 May. 2018. 

Karp. “United Airlines Struggles to Understand How Social Media Works”. Skift. 

09 June, 2013, https://skift.com/2013/06/09/uniteds-social-media-efforts-getting-offthe-ground/ 

Accessed 16 May 2018. 

ar. 2018, thepointsguy.com/guide/best-and-worst-airlines-2018/.

Four Papers on Business-theory: Marketing Strategy, Joint Venture, Countertrade, 

Ethnocentric Staffing 


Strategy (in other words, marketing strategy) is the development on the part of a 

firm of a long-term plan of action for remaining competitive in a competitive and 

dynamic market. The default position for a firm is to react to changes in the market and 

hope for the best. This is obviously not the best approach---in fact, it isn’t really an 

approach at all. The best approach is a deliberate approach. Marketing strategy is simply 

about having a deliberate, pro-active attitude towards the market. 

Any viable marketing strategy answers three key questions: 

Where are we know? 

Where we want to go? 

How will we get there? 

Here is an example. Suppose that I am running an online tutoring service. Right 

now, I am the only person on staff; so I have to do all of the work. This involves me 

doing an inordinate amount of work: I have to spend all day writing papers, solving math

problems, and so on; which is excessively labor-intensive and which does not pay 

particularly well, since the people who need this knd of help tend to be students who 

have limited means. 

That is ‘where I am.’ 

What about ‘where do I want to go?’ I want to have an agency that employs 

hundreds of tutors, much like Chegg or Varsity. I also want to corner some part of the 

market that is still open. I know from personal experience that one part of the market 

that is wide open is the part consisting of relatively advanced students who need highlevel 

tutors who can help with dissertations and other advanced projects. If I can 

capture that market, then my firm will have a stable place in the market; and it might 

even be in a position to take over markets that the current online agencies (Chegg, 

Varsity, Wyzant) control. 

What about: ‘How do I get there?’ ‘Getting there’ involves several steps. First, I 

have to sharpen my vision for the agency: Do I want to compete on quality or on price? 

Let us suppose that I want to compete on quality---that I will let other agencies offer 

cheap tutorials and will myself focus on providing people with good tutorials. In that 

case, I will be able to hire top-people, since I will be able to offer them competitive 

wages. Then I have to figure out mechanics: Will a student needs a tutor, will tutors an 

alert through an app on their phone? Will they get an email? Or will they have to be 

logged into the site?

‘Getting there’ involves answering a myriad of questions, some technical, some 

conceptual. For example, what is my brand? In other words, what is my company 

concept? How can I have a public presence that is both compelling and accurate? 

Marketing strategy is simply an attempt to answer the totality of these questions 

in a way that helps the firm in question retain a competitive edge and also hedge 

against the inevitably surprises that come with being in a dynamic and competitive 

business environment. 

What is a joint venture? What type of joint venture is most common? Provide an 

example of a joint venture. 

A joint venture is an agreement between two firms to carry out some specific 

task. Consider the following. Smith develops technology that reads people’s intentions 

directly off of changes in their brain-waves. Jones manufactures cell phones. Smith and 

Jones decide to work together to create a line of cell phones that do not even need to 

be physically dialed, as they respond directly to changes in their owner’s brain-waves by 

dialing the correct number. Smith and Jones do not want to form a single company; 

each wants to retain his corporate autonomy. So they don’t want to merge. But for this

particular project, they need each other, since Jones needs Smith for the software and 

Smith needs Jones for the hardware. 

A joint venture is not the same thing as a partnership. A partnership is a single 

business venture that involves multiple parties. Profits are shared; taxes are shared; and 

there is common management. In a joint venture, on the other hand, there are two 

separate companies, two separate revenue-streams, two separate sets of liabilities, and 

separate management. 

A joint venture is also not the same thing as a consortium. A consortium is a loose 

arrangement of companies that agree to cooperate with one another but are otherwise 

not intertwined. Suppose that Publishing hoses X, Y, and Z jointly control the bookmarket. 

But they decide that, instead of competing with one another, they will divide up 

that market into three sub-markets, with X controlling one of those sub-market, Y 

controlling another, and Z controlling the third. Otherwise, X, Y, and Z are separate from 

each other. This is a consortium. 

An example of a joint venture is Caradigm. Microsoft specializes in computerrelated 

technology and software. General Electric specializes in appliances. The two 

teamed up to form Caradigm, a joint venture that manufactures ‘smart’ medical 

technology, such as machines that help make medical diagnoses more accurate. 

The most typical sort of joint venture is a 50/50 venture, in which each party has 

50% claim to the profits and to which each party contributes is own people.


Countertrade is the act of paying for goods/services with other goods/services, 

instead of with money. Imagine the following. Country X has wheat; country Y has oil; X 

needs oil; and Y needs wheat. Neither has money. So they agree to exchange oil for 

wheat. This is an example of counter-trade. 

The term ‘counter-trade’ tends to refer to exchanges made between countries 

(or whole economies). But it is easily illustrated in with examples of trade at the 

individual level. Imagine the following. Smith is a talented piano teacher who has no 

money for rent. Jones desperately wants piano instruction and he also has an extra 

room, but he has no money for piano lessons. So Smith and Jones agree that Smith will 

get ‘free’ lodging if he gives piano lessons to Jones, and Jones will get ‘free’ piano 

lessons if he gives lodging to Smith. 

Why would Smith and Jones agree to such an arrangement? Couldn’t Smith 

simply sell piano lessons on the open market and then pay for rent with the proceeds? 

And couldn’t Jones simply rent out his extra room on the open market and then pay for 

piano lessons with the proceeds? 

That would be the appropriate course of action in many contexts, but not all. 

First of all, there is no reason to this if the exact thing that Jones wants is piano lessons

from Smith and if, moreover, the exact thing that Smith wants is a room in Jones’ house. 

In other words, if the exact thing Smith would want to do with the proceeds from his 

lessons was rent a room in Jones’ house and the very thing that Jones would want to do 

the proceeds from renting out his room was buy lessons from Smith, then they might as 

well engage in a direct exchange, without using the intermediary of currency. 

Also, there might be reasons why a direct exchange would not only be feasible 

but necessary. First of all, even if the market-value of Smith’s lessons is $100/hour, it 

doesn’t follow that Smith will actually make that much from his lessons. He has to 

market himself, which is expensive. He has to drive from lesson to lesson, which is 

expensive. He has to have safeguards in place, which protect him in case a client’s check 

bounces. And so on. Also, his personality might be such that, whereas some people love, 

many others can’t stand him and aren’t willing to pay him anything for his services. So it 

might be a lot simpler for Smith, and also less expensive, if he is paid in lodging, rather 

than trying to get paid in currency. For similar reasons, it might be easier and less 

expensive for Jones to be paid for his room in piano lessons, rather than in currency. 

In general, ‘market-prices’ are really just averages of actual prices; and the price 

that a given person/organization might actually receive for its products/services might 

fall short of the market-prices. And when this happens, it might behoove that entity to 

engage in counter-trade.

Also, currency-based transactions presuppose a stable currency. If there is hyperinflation, 

the value of the rent-money that Jones charges for his room might evaporate 

overnight, as might the value of the lesson-money that Smith charges. 

Another possible reason for engaging in counter-trade is that the 

product/services involved might be so valuable that constitute a kind of de facto 

currency. What would you rather have? Oil or money? Probably oil, since it is 

guaranteed to hold its value, whereas money is not. 

It is for these reasons, or reasons similar to them, that whole nations engage in 

counter-trade. Iraq has always been oil-rich, even though it has often been cash-poor; 

and Iraq therefore has a strong incentive to pay for goods/services with oil, rather than 

with cash. And other countries may be in a similar situation. For example, India tends to 

be wheat-rich, even though it also tends to be cash-poor. Also, India cannot service its 

own oil-needs, and its currency isn’t very strong. Finally, Iraq doesn’t have wheat but 

needs and India has wheat. For this reason, Iraq and India have engaged wheat-for-oil 

exchanges, this being an example of counter-trade. 

Why should a firm pursue an ethnocentric approach to staffing? What are the 

disadvantages of this approach? Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of a 

polycentric approach to staffing.

Let X be a company that is headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin but does 

business in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, South America, as well as North 

America. X has an ethnocentric approach to staffing if hires people locally for its nonlocal 

positions. So if it hires people in Madison (or at least the United States) and then 

sends those people to manage its branches in Afraid, Asia, etc., then X has an 

ethnocentric approach to staffing. 

The idea behind ethnocentric staffing is that the people who are hired, being of 

the same culture as the parent company, will quickly adopt its methods and understand 

its ways, whereas (so the ethnocentric theory goes), people hired regionally may be 

slow to absorb the company’s methods and vision and may steer it in the wrong 

direction. 

There are a number of advantages to the ethnocentric approach. First, it will be 

easier for central management to coordinate with regional employees. Second, it will be 

easier to train people for regional positions. Third, it will be easier to instill the 

company’s vision in the minds of regional employees. Fourth, there may be greater 

loyalty on the part of the local employees, since the company will be their ‘lifeline’, as it 

were, whereas that is not likely to be the case for locally hired employees. 

Also, in many cases, there may not be a sufficiently developed or large labor 

market for it to be possible for companies to hire regionally. For example, let’s say a 

medical services company wants to set up shop in a backwards village in the middle of

the jungle. It cannot hire locally; in fact, the very reason there is a demand for its 

services may be the paucity of local people with the requisite abilities. 

A polycentric approach to staffing is one that is not ethnocentric. So under a 

polycentric approach, Company X hires people regionally. It does not ‘import’ its own 

people from headquarters into its different regional branches. Rather, it hires people 

from those regions to staff those branches. 

There are several possible advantages to this approach. First, labor might be 

considerably cheaper. Let Y be an American tech company that has branches in India. It 

will be much cheaper for Y to hire Indians to staff its Indian branches than it would be to 

hire Americans to do so. 

Also, local employees might have a better understanding of the local legal and 

regulatory environments, as well as of its general customs. 

Also, they are also more likely to gain the trust of the locals, which can help with 

finding clients and with avoiding legal and regulatory snares. 

Moreover, in some cases, the locals might actually have the required skills in 

greater abundance than in the locale of company-headquarters. For example, let Z be a 

medical-services company based in Fairbanks Alaska that has branches in India. Z will 

probably have an easier time staffing its Indian branches with Indian physicians than it 

would staffing them with ‘exports’ from Fairbanks Alaska.

Finally, in some cases, people hired ‘on-site’, instead of exported from companyheadquarters, 

may be more loyal to the company than would such exports. This is likely 

to be the case if the company in question pays better than its regional competitors. For 

example, let W be a medical services company based in Chicago, Illinois that has 

branches in Bangladesh. W is likely able to out-pay its regional Bangladeshi competitors 

several times over. And in this case, locally hired Bangladeshi physicians might be far 

more loyal to W than would American physicians, hired in Chicago, simply because the 

latter could always return to the United States and find jobs that paid as much if not 

more, whereas their Bangladeshi counterparts would not have this option. 

In conclusion, whether an ethnocentric approach to staffing is to be preferred to 

a polycentric approach or vice versa depends both on the nature of the company in 

question as well as the conditions that obtain in locations of that company’s regional 

branches. Depending on the values of these variables in a given context, it might be less 

expensive, and also more conductive to the company’s integrity, for that company to 

take an ethnocentric approach; or, contrariwise, 

The Secret of IKEA’s Success (Business) 

The opening case describes IKEA’s global strategy and the way the company tailors its 

offerings to meet customer demands. When IKEA first expanded to the United States in

the 1980s, it saw disappointing sales as U.S. consumers expected its products to be 

larger than was typical in Western Europe (where IKEA was founded). Once IKEA 

developed larger sizes to accommodate American tastes, sales improved. IKEA built on 

this experience when expanding into China in the early 2000s and found success by 

reshaping its stores and offerings to accommodate Chinese culture. 

What are the characteristics of IKEA’s global strategy? Who are its target customers? 

How does the design of its stores and offerings fit into this strategy and the market that 

IKEA is trying to reach? 

How well does IKEA’s strategy translate in other cultures outside of Western Europe? 

What are some advantages to maintaining a consistent global strategy? What are some 

disadvantages? 

IKEA targets customers who are budget-conscious but not ‘cheap’. Its strategy is 

one of efficiency and economy---of pleasing customers, and getting their business, by 

being functional. 

First of all, IKEA sells high-quality but affordable wooden furniture. It thus appeals 

to people who are thinking in functional terms—people who want to live tastefully but 

on a budget.

These same people are likely to have a streak of do-it-yourself-ism and selfreliance 

and are thus willing to do a little extra work if that’s what it takes to remain 

within budge. And so it is that most of IKEA’s furniture requires assembly: not laborintensive 

complex assembly—but enough assembly to keep the cost of said furniture 

low but not so much as to alienate IKEA’s customers. 

This understated adaptiveness to customer-needs is expressed in other aspects 

of IKEA’s business-model. For example, when IKEA first opened in the United States, 

sales were poor, owing to the fact that IKEA’s furniture was not large enough for 

American consumers. (IKEA had thus far done business in Europe, where apartments, 

and therefore furnishings, tend to be small.) IKEA dealt with this by adapting: it offered 

its American customers American-sized (large) products. And sales promptly went 

through the roof. 

When IKEA opened up in China, it made similar concessions to Chinese culture. 

The floor-plan of IKEA stores in China was made to mimic that of Chinese apartments. 

And because many Chinese apartments have balconies, IKEA’s China-stores had balconysections. 

IKEA provides its customers with a ‘total shopping experience.’ Going to an IKEA 

is more like going to a museum than it is like going to a normal store. The store itself is 

aesthetically pleasing, highlighting the aesthetics of the furniture inside. And the store 

has a labyrinthine floorplan which (literally and figuratively) draws in customers,

encouraging them to buy. Also, most IKEA stores are located in ex-urban areas, so that 

going to IKEA is a journey-unto-itself—an occasion---rather than a causal and 

insignificant experience. 

In conclusion, IKEA has a well-defined customer base (budget-minded, middle 

class consumers) and a well-defined line of goods. But it is willing to make targeted 

alterations to those goods to adapt to local needs, and it subtly but non-manipulatively 

insinuates itself into the minds of buyers, encouraging them to buy, which it does, 

ultimately, by making IKEA be a concept as much as it is an actual purveyor of goods. 

And there it is: it is because IKEA is a concept, as opposed to a mere retailer, that 

it does so well. 

Strategy and Profitability (Business) 


Strategy (in other words, marketing strategy) is the development on the part of a 

firm of a long-term plan of action for remaining competitive in a competitive and 

dynamic market. The default position for a firm is to react to changes in the market and 

hope for the best. This is obviously not the best approach---in fact, it isn’t really an

approach at all. The best approach is a deliberate approach. Marketing strategy is simply 

about having a deliberate, pro-active attitude towards the market. 

Any viable marketing strategy answers three key questions: 

Where are we know? 

Where we want to go? 

How will we get there? 

Here is an example. Suppose that I am running an online tutoring service. Right 

now, I am the only person on staff; so I have to do all of the work. This involves me 

doing an inordinate amount of work: I have to spend all day writing papers, solving math 

problems, and so on; which is excessively labor-intensive and which does not pay 

particularly well, since the people who need this knd of help tend to be students who 

have limited means. 

That is ‘where I am.’ 

What about ‘where do I want to go?’ I want to have an agency that employs 

hundreds of tutors, much like Chegg or Varsity. I also want to corner some part of the 

market that is still open. I know from personal experience that one part of the market 

that is wide open is the part consisting of relatively advanced students who need highlevel 

tutors who can help with dissertations and other advanced projects. If I can

capture that market, then my firm will have a stable place in the market; and it might 

even be in a position to take over markets that the current online agencies (Chegg, 

Varsity, Wyzant) control. 

What about: ‘How do I get there?’ ‘Getting there’ involves several steps. First, I 

have to sharpen my vision for the agency: Do I want to compete on quality or on price? 

Let us suppose that I want to compete on quality---that I will let other agencies offer 

cheap tutorials and will myself focus on providing people with good tutorials. In that 

case, I will be able to hire top-people, since I will be able to offer them competitive 

wages. Then I have to figure out mechanics: Will a student needs a tutor, will tutors an 

alert through an app on their phone? Will they get an email? Or will they have to be 

logged into the site? 

‘Getting there’ involves answering a myriad of questions, some technical, some 

conceptual. For example, what is my brand? In other words, what is my company 

concept? How can I have a public presence that is both compelling and accurate? 

Marketing strategy is simply an attempt to answer the totality of these questions 

in a way that helps the firm in question retain a competitive edge and also hedge 

against the inevitably surprises that come with being in a dynamic and competitive 

business environment.

What is a joint venture? What type of joint venture is most common? Provide an 

example of a joint venture. 

A joint venture is an agreement between two firms to carry out some specific 

task. Suppose that Consider the following. Smith develops technology that reads 

people’s intentions directly off of changes in their brain-waves. Jones manufactures cell 

phones. Smith and Jones decide to work together to create a line of cell phones that do 

not even need to be physically dialed, as they respond directly to changes in their 

owner’s brain-waves by dialing the correct number. Smith and Jones do not want to 

form a single company; each wants to retain his corporate autonomy. So they don’t 

want to merge. But for this particular project, they need each other, since Jones needs 

Smith for the software and Smith needs Jones for the hardware. 

A joint venture is not the same thing as a partnership. A partnership is a single 

business venture that involves multiple parties. Profits are shared; taxes are shared; and 

there is common management. In a joint venture, on the other hand, there are two 

separate companies, two separate revenue-streams, two separate sets of liabilities, and 

separate management. 

A joint venture is also not the same thing as a consortium. A consortium is a loose 

arrangement of companies that agree to cooperate with one another but are otherwise 

not intertwined. Suppose that Publishing hoses X, Y, and Z jointly control the book-

market. But they decide that, instead of competing with one another, they will divide up 

that market into three sub-markets, with X controlling one of those sub-market, Y 

controlling another, and Z controlling the third. Otherwise, X, Y, and Z are separate from 

each other. This is a consortium. 

An example of a joint venture is Caradigm. Microsoft specializes in computerrelated 

technology and software. General Electric specializes in appliances. The two 

teamed up to form Caradigm, a joint venture that manufactures ‘smart’ medical 

technology, such as machines that help make medical diagnoses more accurate. 

The most typical sort of joint venture is a 50/50 venture, in which each party has 

50% claim to the profits and to which each party contributes is own people. 


Countertrade is the act of paying for goods/services with other goods/services, 

instead of with money. Imagine the following. Country X has wheat; country Y has oil; X 

needs oil; and Y needs wheat. Neither has money. So they agree to exchange oil for 

wheat. This is an example of counter-trade. 

The term ‘counter-trade’ tends to refer to exchanges made between countries 

(or whole economies). But it is easily illustrated in with examples of trade at the 

individual level. Imagine the following. Smith is a talented piano teacher who has no

money for rent. Jones desperately wants piano instruction and he also has an extra 

room, but he has no money for piano lessons. So Smith and Jones agree that Smith will 

get ‘free’ lodging if he gives piano lessons to Jones, and Jones will get ‘free’ piano 

lessons if he gives lodging to Smith. 

Why would Smith and Jones agree to such an arrangement? Couldn’t Smith 

simply sell piano lessons on the open market and then pay for rent with the proceeds? 

And couldn’t Jones simply rent out his extra room on the open market and then pay for 

piano lessons with the proceeds? 

That would be the appropriate course of action in many contexts, but not all. 

First of all, there is no reason to this if the exact thing that Jones wants is piano lessons 

from Smith and if, moreover, the exact thing that Smith wants is a room in Jones’ house. 

In other words, if the exact thing Smith would want to do with the proceeds from his 

lessons was rent a room in Jones’ house and the very thing that Jones would want to do 

the proceeds from renting out his room was buy lessons from Smith, then they might as 

well engage in a direct exchange, without using the intermediary of currency. 

Also, there might be reasons why a direct exchange would not only be feasible 

but necessary. First of all, even if the market-value of Smith’s lessons is $100/hour, it 

doesn’t follow that Smith will actually make that much from his lessons. He has to 

market himself, which is expensive. He has to drive from lesson to lesson, which is 

expensive. He has to have safeguards in place, which protect him in case a client’s check

ounces. And so on. Also, his personality might be such that, whereas some people love, 

many others can’t stand him and aren’t willing to pay him anything for his services. So it 

might be a lot simpler for Smith, and also less expensive, if he is paid in lodging, rather 

than trying to get paid in currency. For similar reasons, it might be easier and less 

expensive for Jones to be paid for his room in piano lessons, rather than in currency. 

In general, ‘market-prices’ are really just averages of actual prices; and the price 

that a given person/organization might actually receive for its products/services might 

fall short of the market-prices. And when this happens, it might behoove that entity to 

engage in counter-trade. 

Also, currency-based transactions presuppose a stable currency. If there is hyperinflation, 

the value of the rent-money that Jones charges for his room might evaporate 

overnight, as might the value of the lesson-money that Smith charges. 

Another possible reason for engaging in counter-trade is that the 

product/services involved might be so valuable that constitute a kind of de facto 

currency. What would you rather have? Oil or money? Probably oil, since it is 

guaranteed to hold its value, whereas money is not. 

It is for these reasons, or reasons similar to them, that whole nations engage in 

counter-trade. Iraq has always been oil-rich, even though it has often been cash-poor; 

and Iraq therefore has a strong incentive to pay for goods/services with oil, rather than 

with cash. And other countries may be in a similar situation. For example, India tends to

e wheat-rich, even though it also tends to be cash-poor. Also, India cannot service its 

own oil-needs, and its currency isn’t very strong. Finally, Iraq doesn’t have wheat but 

needs and India has wheat. For this reason, Iraq and India have engaged wheat-for-oil 

exchanges, this being an example of counter-trade. 

Why should a firm pursue an ethnocentric approach to staffing? What are the 

disadvantages of this approach? Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of a 

polycentric approach to staffing. 

Let X be a company that is headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin but does 

business in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, South America, as well as North 

America. X has an ethnocentric approach to staffing if hires people locally for its nonlocal 

positions. So if it hires people in Madison (or at least the United States) and then 

sends those people to manage its branches in Afraid, Asia, etc., then X has an 

ethnocentric approach to staffing. 

The idea behind ethnocentric staffing is that the people who are hired, being of 

the same culture as the parent company, will quickly adopt its methods and understand 

its ways, whereas (so the ethnocentric theory goes), people hired regionally may be 

slow to absorb the company’s methods and vision and may steer it in the wrong 

direction.

There are a number of advantages to the ethnocentric approach. First, it will be 

easier for central management to coordinate with regional employees. Second, it will be 

easier to train people for regional positions. Third, it will be easier to instill the 

company’s vision in the minds of regional employees. Fourth, there may be greater 

loyalty on the part of the local employees, since the company will be their ‘lifeline’, as it 

were, whereas that is not likely to be the case for locally hired employees. 

Also, in many cases, there may not be a sufficiently developed or large labor 

market for it to be possible for companies to hire regionally. For example, let’s say a 

medical services company wants to set up shop in a backwards village in the middle of 

the jungle. It cannot hire locally; in fact, the very reason there is a demand for its 

services may be the paucity of local people with the requisite abilities. 

A polycentric approach to staffing is one that is not ethnocentric. So under a 

polycentric approach, Company X hires people regionally. It does not ‘import’ its own 

people from headquarters into its different regional branches. Rather, it hires people 

from those regions to staff those branches. 

There are several possible advantages to this approach. First, labor might be 

considerably cheaper. Let Y be an American tech company that has branches in India. It 

will be much cheaper for Y to hire Indians to staff its Indian branches than it would be to 

hire Americans to do so.

Also, local employees might have a better understanding of the local legal and 

regulatory environments, as well as of its general customs. 

Also, they are also more likely to gain the trust of the locals, which can help with 

finding clients and with avoiding legal and regulatory snares. 

Moreover, in some cases, the locals might actually have the required skills in 

greater abundance than in the locale of company-headquarters. For example, let Z be a 

medical-services company based in Fairbanks Alaska that has branches in India. Z will 

probably have an easier time staffing its Indian branches with Indian physicians than it 

would staffing them with ‘exports’ from Fairbanks Alaska. 

Finally, in some cases, people hired ‘on-site’, instead of exported from companyheadquarters, 

may be more loyal to the company than would such exports. This is likely 

to be the case if the company in question pays better than its regional competitors. For 

example, let W be a medical services company based in Chicago, Illinois that has 

branches in Bangladesh. W is likely able to out-pay its regional Bangladeshi competitors 

several times over. And in this case, locally hired Bangladeshi physicians might be far 

more loyal to W than would American physicians, hired in Chicago, simply because the 

latter could always return to the United States and find jobs that paid as much if not 

more, whereas their Bangladeshi counterparts would not have this option. 

In conclusion, whether an ethnocentric approach to staffing is to be preferred to 

a polycentric approach or vice versa depends both on the nature of the company in

question as well as the conditions that obtain in locations of that company’s regional 

branches. Depending on the values of these variables in a given context, it might be less 

expensive, and also more conductive to the company’s integrity, for that company to 

take an ethnocentric approach; or, contrariwise, 

Facebook: Why and How it Makes Money (Business) 

Today’s date is June 22, 2018. On May 12, I predicted that during the next month 

Facebook would grow. I was right. On May 12, FB sat at 187.71, and it is currently at 

202.24, which represents growth of 7.65%. FB’s low during this period was on May 18, 

when it hit 183.61; and its high was on June 20, when it 203.55. 

My reasons for predicting that Facebook would grow were simply that it has 

been growing. Apart from a hiccup in March 2018, when it fell from 185.09 to 152.22, 

Facebook’s growth during the previous year has been steady and rapid. On June 22, 

2017, it stood at 151.85; and on June 22, 2018, it stands at 202.24. That means that it is 

grown 33% over the last years. 

But it was not just Facebook’s performance over the previous year that led me to 

predict that it would grow. I personally use Facebook. All of my friends use Facebook. I 

don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a Facebook account (even though I do many 

people who don’t often use their accounts). Also, Facebook doesn’t really have any well-

defined competition. Facebook provides a cyber-venue where people can set up virtual 

identities for themselves. They can be whoever they want to be, and they can assemble 

vast networks of Facebook ‘friends’ around themselves who can counted on to support 

their cyber-identities. (If a Facebook ‘friend’ doesn’t toe one’s line, then one simply 

‘unfriends’ that person.) So Facebook allows people to create virtual neighborhoods for 

themselves, in which they are surrounded by adoring yes-men and in which their views 

and their very selves are flooded with constant validation. 

Facebook’s ‘rivals’ aren’t really rivals at all. Facebook’s main competitor is 

Twitter. But Twitter is indeed about ‘tweeting’---blasting out ‘tweets’, a tweet being a 

short message (120 words or less), usually about some news-development. When an 

author has a new book out on Amazon, he will ‘tweet’ about it. Or when a politician 

announces a new policy or position, he may tweet about it. Or if somebody posts to 

Quora.com (an online discussion-forum, where people exchange information), he can 

tweet about it. 

So Twitter is useful for receiving and getting updates. But that is pretty much all 

that it is useful for. It is not useful for people who don’t have independent followings. It 

is not useful for people who don’t have new messages that are of general interest to 

blast out. Twitter doesn’t allow people to feel special, at least not in the way that 

Facebook does. So Twitter doesn’t really offer the same service as Facebook.

But Facebook does offer the same services as Twitter. One can ‘blast out’ updates 

to one’s profile. For example, if someone publishes a book on Amazon, he can 

automatically create a Facebook post about. (On Amazon, and indeed on almost all 

websites, the Facebook-blast icon is right next to the Twitter-blast button.) 

Also, Facebook allows people to create business pages for themselves. So 

businesses have an interest in being present on Facebook. Facebook also allows 

people/businesses to create video advertisements for themselves. These are not free, 

and that is a major source of revenue for Facebook. 

But Facebook’s main source of revenue is from advertising purchased by large 

companies, e.g. McDonald’s, Coca Cola, Visa, Budweiser and Nike. It generates literally 

billions of dollars/year in advertising revenue from major corporations. 

Facebook recently introduced a mobile app, so that people can post and receive 

posts on their smart phones. The mobile app displays advertisements. The mobile app is 

extremely popular with users, and Facebook’s advertising revenue consequently sored 

with the introduction of its mobile. 

Also, Facebook owns Instagram—a popular photo and video-sharing site—which 

is itself a major source of advertising revenue, both from micropreneurs and from megacorporations.

In conclusion, given what Facebook provides (a virtual identity, complete with 

adoring ‘friends’) and given that nobody else provides it, its growth for the near future 

seems assured. 

Gret Satell on Marketing (Business) 

Marketing is defined as “the action or business of promoting and selling products 

or services, including market research and advertising.” In his article “ 4 Principles of 

Marketing Strategy In The Digital Age”, Gret Satell makes four suggestions to people 

who are trying to market a product or service: 

Clarify business objectives. (Are you trying to make immediate sales? Build brandawareness? 

Develop a loyal customer-base? Get a lot of customers? Or get a few very 

wealthy customers?) 

Identify emerging opportunities (If your service/product is threatened by a competitor, 

will you embrace that competition and perhaps turn it to your advantage? Or will you 

turn a blind eye to it and become a dinosaur?) 

Decouple strategy and innovation. (Be innovative when it comes to products and 

services. But when it comes to marketing, be effective, not necessarily innovative. If you 

are trying to cure a disease, be innovative. If you are trying to make people aware of 

your cure, being innovative isn’t necessarily the best idea.)

Build open assets in the market. (Merely aking people aware of your product is 

no longer enough to drive sales. In fact, it might simply make people aware of the kind 

of product you are offering, which will in turn cause people to google-search for a cheap 

alternative to your product. What you have to do is build an interface—something that 

gets money from the customer in exchange for product—right into your methods of 

making them aware of the product. So, to give a real life example, you make people 

aware of your business by building awareness of your business into your tutoring 

sessions, telling your customers that if they want psychoanalysis online for less, the 

should go to: www.freudinstitute.com) 

What this article makes clear is that marketing isn’t just about getting people to 

be aware of a pre-existing product; it is about creating a product that can be marketed 

in the first place and the marketing of which is to some extent self-funding. We have 

moved beyond the 1950’s model of ‘make people aware and they will buy’ to ‘make 

people’s being aware the same as their buying.’ 

An Exercise in Rational Decision-making (Business) 

Scenario 1: You have worked at your company for eleven (11) years. You have 

returned to college to earn a Bachelor’s degree in order to increase your chances for a 

promotion. You are nearly finished with your degree, when a supervisor’s position in a 

competing company becomes available in another state. The start date is in two (2)

weeks, during your final exam period for your courses. The position offers a $15,000 per 

year salary increase, a car allowance, and relocation expenses. Your former supervisor 

works for the company and is recommending you for the position based on your 

outstanding job performance; if you want the job, it’s yours. All of the other supervisors 

at this level in the company have Master’s degrees, so you know that you would be 

expected to earn your Bachelor’s degree and continue on to a Master’s degree. Your 

present company offers tuition reimbursement, but the new company does not. 

Step 1: Define the problem: The main problem here is new job starts during 

exams, successful completion of which is itself a precondition for getting the new job. 

The reason this is a problem—a dilemma, in other words—is that the new job pays 

better than the existing job and, for that reason, probably represents a career opening 

in other ways. 

Step 2: Analyze the problem: The situation is ambiguous in other, opposed ways. 

First of all, the existing job offers tuition reimbursement, whereas the new job does not. 

This to some extent offsets the meaningfulness of the new job offer. If tuition costs 

exceed $15,000, which is certainly possible, then the new job may not be that much of 

an improvement on the old one. Also, while the new company will cover relocation 

expenses, this is a zero-sum gain, given that there is no need to have those expenses 

covered unless the job-offer is accepted.

Step 3: Generate options: There are four possible options. 1: Keep one’s current 

job. 2. Take the second job and, moreover, do so within the new employer’s time-frame 

(meaning that one must find a way to take one’s final exams while also starting work at 

the new job in two weeks’ time). 3. Ask the new employer if he will allow you to start 

the new job late. 4. Try to reschedule final exams. 

Step 4: Options 3 and 4 may be non-starters: it is hard, if not impossible, to get 

exams rescheduled (and, even if they are rescheduled, the result could be a gradedestroying 

disruption of one’s routine). And the new employer may not grant the 

extension. (If they need somebody in two weeks, they are likely to pass you over if you 

cannot start in two weeks.) Option 2 is possibly only if the new job is located nearby, 

which may not be the case. Option 1 is the only option that is guaranteed to be a viable 

one. 

Step 5: The best option—and, arguably, the only real one—is to keep one’s 

current job and take one’s exams on schedule. And this is by no means a bad option. 

First of all, the person who gave you a glowing recommendation for the new job is your 

current boss; so he is likely to keep his eye out for future options for you, both inside 

and outside of your current positions, and some of those options may be even more 

lucrative than the job you were just offered. Also, given that your current employer will 

reimburse you for tuition, you will be free of a massive debt if you keep your current job 

and may even be able to get advanced degrees without incurring debt. Also, you have

no history with the new employer, and things might not work out there, in which case 

you would be left with a huge amount of debt and no prospects. So Option 1 is the best 

one. 

Step 6: How to implement the solution: Option 1, in addition to be the best 

option, is also the most conservative. And little has to be done to implement it. Indeed, 

it is self-implement. Simply tell your current employer that you like your current job 

(with him) so much that you want to stay, and take it from there. Also, you can simply 

tell him the truth—that the new job would be logistically hard for you to take and the 

expected pay-off doesn’t quite counter-balance the likely downside. 

Organizational Analysis of McDonals 

Including SWOT Analysis (Business) 

The company that I will analyze is McDonalds. 

First of all, 81% of McDonalds restaurants are franchises. In other words, they are 

not owned by McDonalds by itself. Rather, people buy the rights to use the McDonalds 

name and to use McDonalds products and methods. McDonalds itself owns only 19% of 

McDonalds restaurants. 

The McDonalds internal hierarchy is as follows:

Chairman and CEO 

President and COO 

Executive Vice President 

Zone Manager 

Regional Manager 

Operations Manager 

Area Supervisor, District Manager 

General Manager 

Department Manager 

Shift Manager, Swing Manager, Floor Supervisor 

Crew Trainer 

Crew member 

Three facts about McDonalds organizational structure deserve special attention. 

First, McDonalds has a global hierarchy. It has outlets in practically every country 

in the world. But the activities of each and every store, whether a franchise or 

McDonald’s owned, is under the control of McDonalds’ CEO. In this respect, McDonalds 

has a fairly standard corporate structure. 

A more distinctive feature of McDonalds’ organizational structure is that its main 

divisions are performance-based. Until 2015, McDonalds’ main divisions were

geographical, there being divisions for: (a) US, (b) Europe, (c) Asia/Pacific, (d) Middle- 

East/Africa, and (e) other countries, including Canada and Latin American countries. In 

2015, McDonalds replaced these divisions with performance-based divisions: (a) US, (b) 

international lead markets, (c) High Growth Markets, and (d) Foundational Markets. 

McDonalds is also divided into three functional groups: (i) Human Resources 

Group, (ii) Supply-chain and Franchising Group, and (c) a Legal Group. 

McDonalds has to provide food of uniformly high quality to literally hundreds of 

millions of customers every day. For this reason, the nature of work within McDonalds, 

whether at the level of a crewmember or of mid-level executive, is highly routinized and 

subject to automatic checks and controls. Because McDonalds has to provide extremely 

fast and virtually flawless service to so many people, there is practically zero tolerance 

of errors and virtually every aspect of daily-work, setting aside the very highest echelons 

of the company, are routinized. This can lead to a dull and demoralizing experience for 

most McDonalds workers, which is responsible for the fact that “you should work at 

McDonalds” is considered the highest insult to someone who has professional 

ambitions. Overall, the work-environment at McDonalds is humane but discouragingly 

dull. 

Let us now examine McDonalds’ strengths and weaknesses. Here are its main 

strengths:

*Consistently good food 

*Low prices 

*Extremely wide availability 

*Extremely fast service 

*Clean and aesthetic restaurants 

*Household name 

*Excellent name brand recognition 

*High consumer confidence in brand 

*42% market share 

*Universally beloved items, e.g. Big Mac, Fried, Chick McNuggets 

*The ability, because of its size, to order products and service at low rates, 

giving it an ‘unfair’ competitive advantage over rivals; for example, McDonalds’ 

has a special arrangement with Coca Cola whereby it can buy Coca Cola for less 

than any of its (McDonalds’) competitors. 

*High-level of food innovation 

*Menu that varies (within limits) depending on the region 

*Generally sanitary and aesthetic restaurants 

*Few or no health-related concerns, unlike other chain-restaurants, e.g. 

Denny’s.

*Is making vigorous and successful efforts to minimize its impact on the 

environment. 

*Consistently successful marketing campaigns, unlike its rivals, e.g. Burger 

King, which often resorted to somewhat ill-willed (and for that reason 

unsuccessful) marketing campaigns, such as the infamous ‘Herb’ commercial of 

the ‘80s. 

At the same time, McDonald’s has non-trivial and growing weaknesses: 

*Growing competition from fast-food rivals (KFC, Burger, Wendy’s, 

Starbucks) 

*Competition from chains outside of the fast food-category (e.g. 

Starbucks, which recently introduced breakfast meals to compete with 

McDonalds’ breakfast meals) 

*Competition from restaurant chains that provide food that is healthier 

and better and that, although not exactly ‘fast food’, is still made and served 

quickly, e.g. Chick-a-fillet, Chipotle, Veggie Grill and Native Foods. 

*The (probably correct) perception that McDonalds is responsible for a 

great deal of obesity and poor health.

*The widely held association between ‘person who eats at McDonalds’ 

and ‘loser who has no self-respect.’ 

Ultimately, however, McDonalds’ strengths exceed its weakness. First of 

all, McDonalds has many healthy options on its menu that are surprisingly 

delicious. So despite the efforts its detractors, McDonalds cannot be painted with 

the same dark brush as Marlborough or other unambiguously health-destructive 

companies. Also, McDonalds is the second most popular fast-food chain in China, 

which has a population of 1.3 billion. So over all, McDonalds’ corporate health is 

excellent, notwithstanding a mild slowing of its rate of growth over the last few 

years. 

Analysis of Case 2: Why the Candidate Should Decline the Job Offer 

(Business/Ethics) 

Under the circumstances described, I would have to decline the job offer. There 

are, at least arguably, some circumstances under which it is morally acceptable to take a 

job for which one has not yet received the requisite training. It would be acceptable so 

long as two conditions held. First, the candidate has a reasonable expectation that he 

can acquire the requisite skills in a sufficiently timely manner that he will be able to

fulfill his legal and professional obligations to his employer. Second, the stakes are low, 

in the sense that, should he fail to learn the requisite skills sufficiently quickly, there 

would be no adverse affects (for either the company or for society) of a serious nature. 

In the scenario in question, neither of these conditions is likely to be fulfilled. 

First of all, practically any job relating to the building or use of spacecrafts is going to be 

enormously complex and will likely require skills that are not easily or quickly acquired 

and that a given person, no matter how intellectually gifted, can predict with certainty 

that he will acquire within a tiny window of time. Second, if the candidate in question 

takes the job and--as is likely--is not able to do the job adequately, the consequences 

would likely be serious. First, there is a distinct chance that his incompetent will slow 

down or possibly even put an end to the project in question. This would have disastrous 

financial and logistical consequences for the company in question. Also, the purpose of 

the mission in question might be to help with scientific, possibly even medical, research, 

in which case the candidate's incompetence could slow down and or diminish the 

quality of that research. Moreover, the mission in question might even be a part of a 

larger international diplomatic or peace-keeping effort, in which case the candidate's 

incompetence could potentially have negative consequences on a geopolitical scale. 

To be sure, if the candidate in question is sufficiently talented at the subject in 

question, he may well be able to take the job without hurting anyone and without being 

remiss in his obligations to the company. But unless the candidate knows with certainty

that he will able to learn the requisite skills, he cannot legitimately take the job in 

question, for the reasons just stated. 

I would like to illustrate these points with some examples from my own life. 

I work for a tutoring agency. I am listed as a math and economics tutor. In order 

to get to be listed with the tutoring agency as a math tutor or an economics tutor, one 

has to pass assessment-tests in those disciplines. I pass those tests. But sometimes the 

agency wanted me to help clients who needed help with material far more advanced 

than anything covered by those assessment tests. Because I like a challenge, I initially 

always accepted these clients, confident as I was that, even though I did not at that 

instant have the requisite abilities, I could acquire them quickly enough. 

And around 75% of the time I was right: I was able to master the new material in 

question quickly enough that I could fulfill my responsibilities to both the client and to 

the agency. But around 25% of the time I was wrong. And the results were not good. 

First of all, the client was charged for my time, even though I wasn't able to help the 

client. (Sometimes the agency would refund the money. But in order for this to happen, 

the client had to go through a rather arduous process.) Second, even when the client 

was refunded his money, he could not be refunded the time that he lost working with 

me, which was sometimes more valuable than the lost money, since oftentimes the 

client's needs were time-sensitive.

Also, by taking on a client whose needs I couldn't adequately service, I was 

making the tutoring agency look bad, which, though probably not a breach of contract 

on my part, is a breech, it seems to me, of some kind of implicit, ethical understanding 

that an employee has with his employer. 

Be it noted that in the cases just described, the stakes were extremely low. In 

working with these clients, I was not helping launch a rocket into outer space; I was not 

involved in scientific or medical research; and the money and time that were lost were 

infinitesimal compared to what would be lost, in the way of both money and time, in 

the case of an incompetent employee of an aerospace company. 

There is one thing about my tutoring experience that I should point out. 

Sometimes, when I 'rolled the dice' by taking on a client who needed help with the 

material that I was not yet familiar with, I was not only able to help the client, but do a 

particularly good job with him. For it sometimes turned out that I had a knack with that 

material, which fact, combined with the freshness and enthusiasm that I could bring to 

this (to me) new material, enabled me to go 'above and beyond', as it were, in the way 

of helping the client. 

But even though this did sometimes happen, I could not, when taking on such a 

client, predict with reasonable certainty that it would happen. For all I knew, I was just 

as likely as not to fail the client. Which, in fact, often happened. And which, when it did 

happen, was a minor catastrophe---the proportions of which paled in comparison to

those of the catastrophe that would likely result in the situation where someone takes 

an aerospace-job for which he is not qualified. 

When one takes a job, one is entering into a contract. And according to the terms 

of that contract, one must be qualified to perform that job adequately. If one cannot 

perform that job adequately, then one cannot in good faith take that job. We must 

therefore conclude that, given only the information described in the scenario in 

question, the person who is offered the job should decline the job-offer. 

Internal vs. External Stakeholders: An Analysis of Three Companies 

(Business/Finance) 

In this paper, I will describe a what a corporate stakeholder is, paying special 

attention to the difference between internal and external corporate stakeholders; and I 

will do this by (i) describing two small companies and then using these examples to (ii) 

describe Amazon. 

A ‘stakeholder’ in a given corporation (or ‘corporate stakeholder’) is anyone 

whose fortunes depend on those of that company. An ‘internal stakeholder’ is anyone 

who has a financial or otherwise direct interest in the company, e.g. shareholders, sole 

proprietors, investors, employees. An ‘external stakeholder’ is anyone who depends on

the company, but does not have a direct financial interest in it, such as 

customers/clients or other beneficiaries (including labor-unions that might benefit from 

the company’s welfare). 

To give a trivial example, I run small corporation that provides people with online 

piano lessons. It is publicly traded. I own most but not all of the stock. I have also have 

10 employees. 

The internal stake holders in that company are myself and the other people who 

own equity in the company. I am the primary internal stakeholder of this company. 

My company’s chief external stakeholders are clients. This is because we provide 

a relatively unique service and our clients would have a very difficult finding another 

person or company to satisfy their demand for that service. Other external stakeholders 

in this company include the companies whose technology we use. For example, we use 

an app called ZOOM, which makes it very easy to conduct real-time online meetings 

(including music lessons). 

Here is another example. A friend of mine is a psychoanalyst and popular author 

who founded, runs, and is the primary shareholder in a company, called The Freud 

Institute (www.freudinstitute.com) that provides people with online psychoanalysis and 

psychotherapy, with a special focus on the treatment of OCD. The Freud Institute is 

publicly traded.

The internal stakeholders are my friend, the owner and CEO, as well as the 

various shareholders, including the angel investors, each of whom has equity in the 

company. The company’s employees (these being my friend and his small staff of 

psychologists, as well IT-personnel), are also among its internal stakeholders. The 

external stakeholders are the clients, all of whom depend on the company, since it 

provides a unique, as well as effective, service. 

When we are dealing with a company of scale, such as Amazon, the story is 

commensurately more complex. Amazon’s internal stakeholders include all those who 

are financially invested in the company. Jeff Bezos, as the CEO and primary shareholder, 

is the primary internal stakeholder. But all of Amazon’s millions of shareholders are 

internal stakeholders, as are all of its hundreds of thousands of employees. 

Among Amazon’s external stakeholders are all its various customers, including 

the schools and government-agencies that depend on their being to have ready access 

to the instructional and educational materials that Amazon makes available. Also, 

included among its external stakeholders are the various businesses, including soleproprietorships, 

that use Amazon’s platform to ply their trade. Thus, businesses such as 

Loreal, Levi’s, and Centrum are all external stakeholders, since, although they do not 

necessarily own shares in Amazon and aren’t employees of it or even contractors, profit 

by using Amazon to sell their products. Also, the millions of authors who self-publish on 

Amazon and sell their work through KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) are either internal or

external stakeholders of Amazon, depending on where exactly one draws the line 

between the two classes of stakeholders. 

Amazon has many other external stakeholders. Given how much the entire 

United States depends on Amazon for both commercial and entertainment purposes, 

the USA as a whole is an external stakeholder in Amazon. Also, many T.V. Shows (e.g. 

Sex and the City, the Sopranos, the Vikings, Six Feet Under) and Movies (e.g. Insomnia, 

the Boiler Room, Shutter Island, Casino, Goodfellas) are watched through Amazon Prime 

Video. If Amazon were to cease to exist or discontinue its video services, the owners and 

distributors of these shows and movies would suffer or would at least have to change 

their business-model. 

Also, Amazon employs large numbers of people overseas, especially in Asia. 

Many regional and even national economies in this area are external stakeholders in 

Amazon. Also, to promote good will between itself and communities in these areas, 

Amazon has many pro bono outreach programs, which provide food, medical assistance, 

and other forms of social assistance to these communities. And the beneficiaries of 

these programs are external stakeholders in Amazon. 

Why it is important to know about who represents you in the Texas Legislature. 

Be specific. 

Variables in a Marketing-study (Business)

The marketing variables that I want to study are: 

Men vs. Women 

Married vs. Single 

The study is conducted as follows: 

100 single men are randomly chosen. (They are known to be single men, but 

otherwise are randomly chosen.) 

100 single women are randomly chosen. (They are known to be single women, 

but otherwise are randomly chosen.) 

100 married men are randomly chosen. (They are known to be married men, but 

otherwise are randomly chosen.) 

100 married women are randomly chosen. (They are known to be married 

women, but otherwise are randomly chosen.) 

Each member of each of these four groups has to play a video game called ‘store 

credit.’ In that game, they are given one unit of store credit, which they can use towards 

the purchase of one item in a virtual store. Inside this store there are 10 items, one of 

which is the inflatable lounger, 2 of which are male-specific, 2 of which are femalespecific, 

and five of which (not including the lounger) are gender-neutral. Each item in

the store costs one virtual unit of currency. In real life, the items are all pricecomparable. 

Out of each group of 100, some whlle number of individuals will buy, 

corresponding to the percentage of buyers in the corresponding groups of people. So if 

there is a 37 in a given cell in the table, that means that 37/100 people in the 

corresponding group chose to buy the lounger, i.e. that people in that group are 37% 

likely to buy the lounger. 

Results: 

Men Women 

Single 88 45 

Married 62 21 

The dependent variable is the probability of buying

The dependent variable is the probability of a given person in a given group of 

buying. 

The two main effects are that men buy more than women and single people buy 

more than married ones. The main interaction effect is that gender and marital status 

blunt existing tendencies to purchase. 

Target: Corporate Case-study (Business) 

Target is a ‘discount-retailer’, similar to Sears or Walmart, a ‘discount-retailer’ 

being a store where goods are sold for a lower price than at most retailers. Discountretailers 

are generally able to charge less because they offer wider-variety than other 

stores and therefore have a larger customer-base, thus being able to stay afloat while 

charging less per product. This holds of Target. At the same time, Target distinguishes 

itself from other discount stores, especially Walmart, by providing a dramatically more 

aesthetic shopping experience thus creating a sense of elegance, while also providing 

reasonably competitive (though not hyper-competitive) prices. 

Target was originally founded in 1902 by George Dayton under the name The 

Goodfellow Dry Goods underwent several name-changes, finally settling on Target in 

1962. The first Target store opened in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1962.

After Walmart, Target is the second largest discount-retailer in the United States, 

generating $934 billion in revenue in 2017. There are some important differences 

between Target and Walmart, which help explain both why Target does less well than 

Walmart but at the same time does better than all but the one of its many competitors. 

First of all, why does Walmart outperform Target? Because Walmart is simply 

about low prices, so it spends little on aesthetics. A Walmart store is essentially a giant 

warehouse; it has no ‘style.’ By contrast, Target has a distinctive style and a warm feel to 

it, much more similar to that of an old-fashioned department store. At the same time, 

Target offers lower prices than most other retailers (though not nearly as low as 

Walmart, charging around 20% more on average than Walmart). 

So Target’s customer-base consists of budget-conscious professionals, whereas 

Walmart’s consists of people who simply want to minimize expenses. These differences 

are reflected in a number of different ways. Walmart takes food stamps; Target does 

not. Walmarts tend to be located in low-income neighborhoods; Targets tend to be 

located in more upscale venues. 

Since the 1970’s Target’s growth has been exponential: In 1962, there were 24 

Target Stores; now there are 1,916. Also, Target has always been opportunistic and 

quick to enter new markets. It was first retailer to stock Amazon Kindle Reading devices. 

When Circuit City fell in 2009, Target absorbed much of its business by offering a wider

ange of electronics. And as of 10 years ago, most Target stores contain entire grocerystories. 

Walmart does considerably more business than Target, for the simple reason 

that its prices are much lower. But Target has been much more aggressive than Walmart 

in moving into the realm of e-commerce. And this fact, coupled with the decidedly more 

welcoming shopping experience that Target offers, may enable Target to remain 

competitive in the years to come. 

Prejudice as Psychological Resistance (Psychology) 

Freud’s thought sheds great light on the resistance that many people to change 

and to ugly truths about themselves, and for this reason Freud’s thought is particularly 

helpful when it comes to understanding the phenomenon of prejudice. It will help if 

we first make some general remarks about prejudice and then map Freud’s thought 

onto these points. 

Prejudice is prejudgment: If somebody is prejudiced against women, he 

prejudges women, meaning that he forms a negative opinion of them before he has 

enough information to have an informed opinion. One of the very purposes of Freud’s 

theoretical system is to elucidate the nature prejudices of the second, emotionally-

driven. The reason is that such prejudices are nothing other than what Freud refers to 

as resistance: “When we undertake to cure a patient, writes Freud, “to free him from 

the symptoms of his malady, he confronts us with a vigorous, tenacious resistance that 

lasts during the whole time of the treatment.” (Freud, Sigmund. A General 

Introduction to Psychoanalysis (p. 130). Kindle Edition.) In other words, when the 

analyst tells the patient what is wrong with him, the patient fights the analyst, refusing 

to believe what he is being told, simply because he doesn’t want to believe it. Of 

course, there are cases where the analyst is wrong and the patient ‘resists’ him for that 

reason, but here are concerned with cases where the patient resists for the very 

reason that the analyst is right. And that is the basis of the patient’s resistance, it is 

because the patient benefits in some way from the delusion of which the analyst is 

trying to disabuse him. 

According to Freud, getting humanity to accept psychoanalytic thought 

involved getting it to overcome two prejudices. “One of these assertions offends an 

intellectual prejudice,” Freud writes, “the other an aesthetic-moral one.” (Freud, 

Sigmund. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (p. 10). Kindle Edition.) The 

intellectual prejudice is that mental activity must be conscious, this being the exact 

opposite of the psychoanalytic principle that “the psychic processes are in themselves 

unconscious, and that those which are conscious are merely isolated acts and parts of 

the total psychic life.” (Freud, Sigmund. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (p.

10). Kindle Edition.) The “aesthetic-moral” prejudice is that the psychological role of 

sexuality in humans is relatively restricted, being confined to activities that relate more 

or less directly to sex, whereas psychoanalysis alleges that the role of sexuality in the 

human mind extends far beyond the desire to have intercourse, as it is also involved in 

the development mental illness as well as in intellectual and artistic creation. “Those 

instinctive impulses which one can only call sexual in the narrower as well as in the 

wider sense,” Freud writes, “play an uncommonly large role in the causation of 

nervous and mental diseases, and…these same sexual impulses have made 

contributions whose value cannot be overestimated to the highest cultural, artistic and 

social achievements of the human mind.” (Freud, Sigmund. A General Introduction to 

Psychoanalysis (p. 10). Kindle Edition.) 

Freud’s explanation of these prejudices is that “it is a predisposition of human 

nature to consider an unpleasant idea untrue.” Human beings want to see themselves 

as pure, and therefore not as comprising unconscious depths that are teeming with 

bestial impulses. “Society thus brands what is unpleasant as untrue,” Freud writes, 

“denying the conclusions of psychoanalysis with logical and pertinent arguments.” In 

other words, people come up with arguments to legitimate their prejudices against 

psychoanalysis. But because these arguments “originate from affective sources,” Freud 

writes, “society holds to these prejudices against all attempts at refutation.” (Freud, 

Sigmund. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (p. 11). Kindle Edition.) In other

words, because these arguments are intended to safeguard prejudices, people refuse 

to see the errors in them and refuse to change their minds. 

“When we undertake to cure a patient,” Freud writes, “to free him from the 

symptoms of his malady, he confronts us with a vigorous, tenacious resistance that lasts 

during the whole time of the treatment.” (Freud, Sigmund. A General Introduction to 

Psychoanalysis (p. 130). Kindle Edition.) This resistance is rooted in fear: the patient 

fears what the analysis is going to reveal about him, this fear being manifested as 

resistance. At the same time, the patient does want to improve, this being why he 

entered into psychoanalysis in the first place, and to this extent he is willing to 

overcome his fear of the truth about himself. If the patient’s fear prevails, his prejudices 

against the truth remain and he won’t change. 

In general, prejudices represent fear of change; and when people stop feeling 

threatened by change, they stop being prejudiced. Before women had the right to 

vote, men felt threatened by the prospect of women having that right and were 

prejudiced against them acquiring that right. Now that it is taken for granted that 

women should be able to vote, men don’t feel threatened by their being able to do so 

and are no longer prejudiced against it. 

But we must bear in mind that people don’t see their prejudices as prejudices, 

since they always rationalize them. “The patient” writes Freud, “produces all the 

phenomena of this resistance without even recognizing it as such. (Freud, Sigmund. A

General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (p. 130). Kindle Edition.) When women were 

fighting for the right to vote, the men who were prejudiced against this did not 

believed their opposition to it be based in reason: their motivations were emotional in 

nature, but they rationalized those motivations, convincing themselves that they were 

legitimate. Though they are speaking falsely, prejudiced people are speaking sincerely 

when they say that they are not prejudiced, since people who are prejudiced don’t 

know it. It follows, sadly, that human beings will always have their prejudices; for as 

we know from Freud, people believe what they want to believe as long as they can find 

an excuse to believe it, and they will fiercely resist attempts to disabuse of them of 

their delusions. 

A Freudian Analysis of Prejudice (Psychology) 

Prejudice is prejudgment. If Smith refuses to hire Brown, without even 

considering her credentials, simply because Brown is a woman, then Smith is have a 

prejudiced response to Brown. But there are two very different kinds prejudice. There is 

the kind where somebody has drawn an overly broad on the basis of insufficient data, 

and there is the case where somebody is emotionally committed the falsehood in 

question. If Smith’s reason for not hiring women is that, owing to his not having the 

relevant information, he honestly but mistakenly believes that no woman is qualified for

the job in question, then Smith’s prejudice is of the first kind. If Smith’s reason is that, 

owing to a deep-seated resentment of women, he positively refuses to consider the idea 

that a woman might be qualified and goes out of his way to rationalize away 

information to the contrary, then Smith’s prejudice is of the second. 

One of the very purposes of Freud’s theoretical system is to elucidate the nature 

prejudices of the second, emotionally-driven. The reason is that such prejudices are 

nothing other than what Freud refers to as resistance: “When we undertake to cure a 

patient, writes Freud, “to free him from the symptoms of his malady, he confronts us 

with a vigorous, tenacious resistance that lasts during the whole time of the treatment.” 

(Freud, Sigmund. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (p. 130). Kindle Edition.) In 

other words, when the analyst tells the patient what is wrong with him, the patient 

fights the analyst, refusing to believe what he is being told, simply because he doesn’t 

want to believe it. Of course, there are cases where the analyst is wrong and the patient 

‘resists’ him for that reason, but here are concerned with cases where the patient resists 

for the very reason that the analyst is right. And that is the basis of the patient’s 

resistance, it is because the patient benefits in some way from the delusion of which the 

analyst is trying to disabuse him. 

In light of these points, suppose that Smith’s refusal to hire Brown embodies a 

deep-seated prejudice towards women. In that case, Smith’s decision represents a 

resistance on his part to admitting to some truth about women that he finds

threatening. That truth might be that women are intellectually equal to men and that he 

might therefore lose his job to a woman. Or might be a part of him self-identifies as a 

woman and he has developed a generalized scorn for women as a way of distancing 

himself from that side of himself. Whatever the case, Smith’s prejudice is a form of feardriven 

flight from some painful truth. This is true of prejudice in general. 

A related point is that prejudice always involves fear of change. Whatever it is 

that Smith is afraid of—it might be finding a new job or finding a new gender-identity--- 

Smith’s prejudice towards women involves his wanting the status quo to remain the 

same. This is true of true of prejudice in general, and it is a point that Freud often makes 

in connection with resistances to psychoanalysis. Discussing patients of his whose 

conditions spared them having to perform military service, Freud writes: “If they were 

treated as malingerers and if their illness was made highly uncomfortable, they 

recovered; if after being ostensibly restored they were sent back into service, they 

promptly took flight once more into illness. Nothing could be done with them.” (Freud, 

Sigmund. The Problem of Lay Analysis. Kindle Locations 101355-101358. ) These patients 

held onto their illnesses when they benefited from them and recovered from them 

when they didn’t. “And the same is true of neurotics in civil life”, Freud then says. “They 

complain of their illness but exploit it with all their strength; and if someone tries to take 

it away from them, they defend it like the proverbial lioness with her young.” (Freud, 

Sigmund. The Problem of Lay Analysis. Kindle Locations 101355-101358.)

And there we have it: people hold onto their prejudices as long as they stand to 

gain from them and drop them as soon as they don’t. Smith will be prejudiced towards 

women as long as Smith feels that he stands more to gain than to lose by having this 

prejudice, and as soon as he begins to feel otherwise, that prejudice will begin to melt 

away. In general, prejudices are defenses against change; and when people stop feeling 

threatened by change, they stop being prejudiced. Before women had the right to vote, 

men felt threatened by the prospect of women having that right and were prejudiced 

against them acquiring that right. Now that it is taken for granted that women should be 

able to vote, men don’t feel threatened by their being able to do so and are no longer 

prejudiced against it. 

But we must bear in mind that people don’t see their prejudices as prejudices, 

since they always rationalize them. This is a point that Freud makes when discussing 

resistance: 

The patient, moreover, produces all the phenomena of this resistance 

without even recognizing it as such; it is always a great advance to have brought 

him to the point of understanding this conception and reckoning with it. Just 

consider, this patient suffers from his symptoms and causes those about him to 

suffer with him. He is willing, moreover, to take upon himself so many sacrifices 

of time, money, effort and self-denial in order to be freed. And yet he struggles,

in the very interests of his malady, against one who would help him. How 

improbable this assertion must sound! (Freud, Sigmund. A General Introduction 

to Psychoanalysis (p. 130). Kindle Edition.) 

If Smith consciously knows that he has no good reason not to hire Brown but still 

decides not to hire her, his decision, though hateful and wrong, is not about prejudice. 

Prejudice always involves denial and rationalization. When women were fighting for the 

right to vote, the men who were prejudiced against this did not believed their 

opposition to it be based in reason: their motivations were emotional in nature, but 

they rationalized those motivations, convincing themselves that they were legitimate. 

Though they are speaking falsely, prejudiced people are speaking sincerely when they 

say that they are not prejudiced, since people who are prejudiced don’t know it. It 

follows, sadly, that human beings will always have their prejudices; for as we know from 

Freud, people believe what they want to believe as long as they can find an excuse to 

believe it, and they will fiercely resist attempts to disabuse of them of their delusions. 

Freud on Sublimation: Why His Analysis is Still Relevant (Psychology) 

Freud often discusses ‘sublimation’, this being the process of directing instincts 

away from their original aims towards aims of a non-instinctual and constructive kind:

We believe that civilization was forged by the driving force of vital 

necessity, at the cost of instinct-satisfaction, and that the process is to a 

large extent constantly repeated anew, since each individual who newly 

enters the human community repeats the sacrifices of his instinctsatisfaction 

for the sake of the common good. Among the instinctive 

forces thus utilized, the sexual impulses play a significant role. They are 

thereby sublimated, i.e., they are diverted from their sexual goals and 

directed to ends socially higher and no longer sexual. The sexual instincts 

are poorly tamed. Each individual who wishes to ally himself with the 

achievements of civilization is exposed to the danger of having his sexual 

instincts rebel against this sublimation. Society can conceive of no more 

serious menace to its civilization than would arise through the satisfying of 

the sexual instincts by their redirection toward their original goals. (A 

General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Chapter 1) 

To clarify: A person’s ability to be more than an animal depends on his being to 

‘sublimate’ his instinctual derives (i.e. to direct away them away from their original 

ends, e.g. the sexual act, and press them into the service of objectives that are nonanimalistic 

and ‘constructive’, e.g. scientific endeavor). But an instinct can never be

entirely sublimated, as there is always some portion of them that must be discharged 

directly. And instincts that are not discharged through sublimation tend to be a threat to 

the social order. 

To illustrate: Suppose that Jones has done some horrible injustice to Smith and 

that Smith is therefore homicidally angry towards Jones. If Smith simply bludgeons 

Jones, Smith will not in any way grow as a person. But suppose that Smith channels his 

rage into an attempt to improve the social conditions that led to the injustice in 

question: in that case, Smith will develop as a person and, in so doing, he will also 

contribute to society. This is what Freud is referring to when he discusses ‘sublimation.’ 

Sublimation of this kind very much seems to exist. People are not in general able 

to vent rage directly; the best they can do in most cases is to channel their rage into selfimprovement: 

they become writers, athletes, physicians, or some such. Much the same 

seems to be true of sexuality. Most people are not able to have sex whenever they want 

to with whomever they want to, and at least some of this undischarged sexual energy is 

expressed in artistic creation (for example): instead of ravaging attractive women, one 

paints them (or writes novels about them). 

How this ties into the 21st Century: In the past, men used to have to sublimate 

their libido by cultivating a long-term relationship with a single woman, and they had to 

sublimate much of the remainder of their libido by converting it into the platonic love 

involved in raising children properly. But in the 21st Century, it is common for single

men to stay single, opting for ‘flings’ rather than relationships and families; and it is also 

common for men in marriages to become single, oftentimes with the result that they 

revert to their previous ‘swingle’ status. 

This means that there are two respects in which men are no longer required to 

sublimate their sexuality. First, they don’t have to cultivate long-term monogamous 

relationships (which, though partly about the sexual act, are largely about love and 

moral responsibility). Second, they don’t have to sublimate their libido into (non-sexual) 

love and concern for children. 

It is obvious how children are negatively affected by this: children need a father. 

(If, as some maintain, mental illness is on the rise among children, the absence of 

‘present’ fathers is a likely factor.) Where women are concerned, the effects are more 

ambiguous. A woman may have a lot to gain by getting out of a long-term relationship 

with a woman, even if she has children, or by not getting into one in the first place. But 

women desire and benefit from the emotional and financial security that long-term 

relationships tend to bring; and this may be why, according to some sources, women are 

not happier now than they were fifty years ago: what their gains in power and freedom 

have added to their happiness their loss of security has taken away.

Failure to Sublimate: A Freudian Analysis of the Peter Pan Syndrome 

(Psychology/Current Events) 

A concept that is central to Freud’s thought is that of sublimation, this being the 

process of preventing an instinctual drive from discharging itself directly and forcing it to 

discharge itself in a way that is both non-instinctual and also conducive to the 

development of the individual. For example, for sexual impulses to be sublimated is for 

them to be “diverted from their sexual goals and directed to ends socially higher and no 

longer sexual.” (Freud, Sigmund. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (p. 10). Kindle 

Edition.) A person is sublimating his sexuality, if instead of discharging it in the act of 

sex, he expresses it by producing art or literature concerning sexuality or by studying the 

psychology of human sexuality. 

In this paper, it will be argued that there are some important respects in which 

men in the 21st century are no longer required to sublimate their sexuality. Whereas a 

man in earlier times was required to sublimate his sexuality by channeling it into stable 

long-term emotional and financial relationships with his wife and children, men today 

have the option of never ‘settling down’ and of opting instead for a never-ending series 

of casual relationships. Consequently, men are less likely than they were in times past to 

be dependable husbands and fathers and they are also less likely to marry or have

children in the first place. This perpetual infantilism on the part of men harms anyone 

who depends on them, including wives, girlfriends, children, and even themselves. 

In Chapter 1 of his General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Freud writes: “Society 

can conceive of no more serious menace to its civilization than would arise through the 

satisfying of the sexual instincts by their redirection toward their original goals.” (Freud, 

Sigmund. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (p. 10). Kindle Edition.) Here Freud is 

speaking specifically about sexuality, but what he is saying is true of all instinctual 

drives. Failure to sublimate instincts of any kind is a threat to civilization, since 

civilization obviously isn’t possible unless people control their urges. If sexuality and 

aggression were redirected “towards their original goals”, the result would be anarchy, 

not civilization. 

Freud holds that sublimation is not only necessary for civilization but sufficient 

for it: “[C]ivilization was forged by the driving force of vital necessity, at the cost of 

instinct-satisfaction, and that the process is to a large extent constantly repeated anew, 

since each individual who newly enters the human community repeats the sacrifices of 

his instinct-satisfaction for the sake of the common good.” (Freud, Sigmund. A General 

Introduction to Psychoanalysis (p. 10). Kindle Edition.) 

Sublimating an instinct is very different from simply not acting on it. Sublimating 

an instinct is a way of discharging it and is therefore a way of avoiding the instinctual 

frustration that results from simply abstaining from acting on it. When sexual abstinence

does not involve sublimation, Freud writes, its “pathological power is unimpaired” 

(Freud, Sigmund. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (p. 156). Kindle Edition). The 

“pathological effect of abstinence” (Freud, Sigmund. A General Introduction to 

Psychoanalysis (p. 155). Kindle Edition) is avoided only when “sexual desire relinquishes 

either its goal of partial gratification of desire, or the goal of desire toward reproduction, 

and adopts another aim, genetically related to the abandoned one, save that it is no 

longer sexual but must be termed social.” (Freud, Sigmund. A General Introduction to 

Psychoanalysis (p. 155). Kindle Edition.) In other words, sheer abstinence leads to 

psychopathology, and sexuality must therefore either be sublimated or directly gratified 

if psychopathology is to be avoided. 

There is one last preliminary point to make before we can map these points onto 

the topic of 21st century men. According to Freud, sublimation only works up to a point. 

It is not possible to sublimate an instinctual drive completely; some portion of that drive 

will remain unsublimated and will therefore lead to instinctual frustration unless acted 

on directly: “Sublimation”, writes Freud, “can never account for more than a certain 

small fraction of the libido, and finally most people possess the capacity for sublimation 

only to a very slight degree.” (Freud, Sigmund. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis 

(p. 156). Kindle Edition.) In other words, sublimation mitigates but does not eliminate 

the need to express instincts directly, and instincts must to some extent be directly 

gratified.

In Freud’s time, sex outside of marriage was heavily stigmatized. (For women, the 

stigma was extremely strong. For men it was much weaker but still non-trivial.) And 

although there were obviously ‘Casanovas’ in Freud’s time, it was as a general rule much 

harder for men, and exponentially harder for women, to gratify their sexual desires 

without getting and staying married. It was very difficult for a man to have a fulfilling sex 

life without getting married. Consequently, it was necessary for men to sublimate much 

of their raw sexuality into the non-sexual libido that is involved in building and 

maintaining a long-term relationship. 

All of this has changed. A man is not looked down for having sex outside of 

marriage or for not getting married or for getting married and then divorcing. So a 

man’s being sexually fulfilled no longer depends on his being in a committed 

relationship, and he is therefore able to express his sexuality in a relatively 

unsublimated way: he can simply have a series of sex-based ‘flings’, not having to 

bother with long-term relationships or the heavy responsibilities involved therein. 

In some ways, this is positive, not just for men but also for women. So long as 

marriage was considered a sacred and inviolable institution, men and women were 

locked into restrictive gender roles, with women having little choice but to be 

homemakers, making it virtually impossible for them to have careers. As for the man, he 

was locked into heavy financial responsibilities to his wife and children, forcing him to 

spend his days toiling on their behalf. Also, when marriages were sexually or otherwise

unfulfilling, the husband and the wife had little choice but endure the situation. 

Nowadays, people are not locked into unhappy marriages; and both men and women 

have many more personal and professional freedoms than they used to. 

At the same time, there are casualties. First of all, children need both a mother 

and a father, and the likelihood that a child will grow up without both parents is now 

incalculably higher than it used to be. Also, even though women need and deserve to 

have the ability to choose between different men, women do tend to be considerably 

more relationship-oriented than men, and because men now have such a casual 

attitude towards relationships, women have extremely little assurance that a man they 

are with is in it for the long-term. Also, men are extremely willing to lie about whether 

they intend to be in relationships for the long term, and although men have probably 

always had some inclination to deceive women about their intentions in this regard, 

they can now do so with little or no fear of censure from society. 

But there is a deeper problem with today’s ‘hook-up’ culture---that when sexual 

gratification is too available, life tends to become cheap and emotionally hollow, this 

being why, as Freud takes pains to explain, excessive sexual permissiveness tends to 

accompany civilizational decline: “In times in which there were no difficulties standing in 

the way of sexual satisfaction, such as perhaps during the decline of the ancient 

civilizations, love became worthless and life empty, and strong reaction-formations 

were required to restore indispensable affective values.” (Freud, Sigmund. On The

Universal Tendency To Debasement In The Sphere Of Love. Kindle Locations 56931- 

56933). In a word, when sex is overly available, the result is a certain loss of maturity 

and moral fiber, today’s hook-up culture being a case in point. 

Psychology Assignment (Psychology) 

This assignment should be pretty easy - just need to hear your thoughts on a few 

items. To complete this assignment you must do the following: 

1. Go to the discussion page and under the thread, "Research paper 

topics/questions/comments" go ahead and just give a sentence or two regarding what 

topic you had in mind for the final paper. If you have questions, are a bit confused (I'm 

sure many of you will have questions - don't worry!) then go ahead and post your 

questions. Feel free to view other students' comments as well and respond to them if 

you'd like. Please Make sure you have read ALL assignment sheets. 

I am going to answer the question “why do people lie/deceive?” There are, I 

believe, two different, but equally correct, answers to this question: a psychological 

answer and an evolutionary answer. The former answers the question ‘why do

individuals believe it to be in their interest to lie?’ The latter answers the question ‘why 

is it in the interest of the survival of our species for species-member to lie to/deceive 

one another?’ These answers will not conflict with each other, but will rather 

supplement each other. 

2. In the text entry box below or as an audio recording (I'm hoping you can record 

directly into this assignment) answer the following questions. This will not be open to 

other students. Only I will be able to listen/read your work. 

a. Ok so the first week is over. What are your general thoughts? What has worked for 

you, what hasn't? I like this class. I feel that it has given me a chance to address deep 

questions in a way that isn’t politically driven. And it has helped make it clear to me that 

socially acceptable positions are not always scientifically correct positions. 

b. Introduce yourself. Tell me a bit about yourself - you know the usual - what are you 

doing with your life? What meaning does your life have...jk. But yeah, tell me why you 

are taking this class. What are your academic and career goals? Why are these your 

goals? If you don't have anything specific - why don't you?

I am from Armenia. I moved to this country four years ago. I really love it here. 

There are lot of opportunities that are hard to find elsewhere. I am going to major in 

business, and I aspire to be a corporate lawyer. I am taking this class because I believe 

that it will help improve my writing and reasoning skills, which are very important in the 

legal profession. 

c. Tell me one thing you want me to know about yourself 

I am very ambitious, but family and friends are extremely important to me. 

d. Finally - if you have any questions - go ahead and ask! 

What other classes do teach and what classes would you like to teach? 

Attachment Theory and Mental Illness (Clinical Psychology) 

The basic tenet of Attachment Theory (AT) is that a person’s emotional 

attachments influence the way in which he deals with problematic situations and, 

moreover, that the way in which he deals with problematic situations influences his

elations to others. 115 AT is not a single theory. Rather it is a cluster of theories that are 

all based on the just-stated tenet. 116 

The first question that arises is whether that tenet is correct. The answer is 

clearly ‘yes.’ It is a matter of common knowledge that people who have healthy and 

secure attachments, particularly in early life, are psychologically healthier than people 

who do not. In fact, a knowledge of this fact seems to be embodied in parental instincts, 

given the fact that parents, especially mothers, are naturally inclined to bond with their 

children, especially when they are young and vulnerable. 117 

In any case, there is no denying that healthy early-life relationships, especially 

with caregivers, is conducive to psychological health, this being the basic tenet of AT. 

One of the main objectives of the various theories composing AT is to make it clear 

exactly how early-life attachments affect one’s personality, including one’s emotional 

attachments to others. 118 Another such objective is to make it clear how to treat people 

who did not have the benefit of unambiguously positive early-life attachments. 119 

Granting that the basis of AT lies in commonsense, its beginnings as a scientific 

discipline can be traced to Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), who explicitly stated on several 

occasions that a person's character-architecture as an adult is largely a consequence of 

his relations in early life to his parents and who, moreover, tried to work out in detail 

115 

Mooney (2010). 

116 


117 

Fields (2016). 

118 


119 

Mooney (2010).

exactly how early-life attachments to parents determine a person’s psychological 

profile. 120 Stated as simply as possible, Freud’s position was that a psychologically 

healthy adult is someone whose parents loved him but did not spoil him, it being the 

mother’s job is to provide love and the father’s job to provide discipline. A mother’s love 

leads to self-love, according to Freud, and a father’s discipline leads to self-discipline, 

with a person’s success as an adult depending on his having a healthy combination of 

self-love and self-discipline. 121 

Though foreshadowed by Freud’s work, AT came into existence in earnest with 

the work of John Bowlby (1907-1990). 122 Bowlby was a psychoanalyst who studied the 

effects of separating children from caregivers. Bowlby observed that the children who 

reacted the most violently to separation from caregivers were the first to be given 

substitute-caregivers and were therefore the most likely to survive. On this basis, 

Bowlby hypothesized that these extreme behaviors were survival mechanisms that were 

reinforced by natural selection. 

Bowlby coined the term “attachment behavioral system” (ABS) to refer to the 

behaviors and attitudes that determine how a given person forms relationships and also 

120 

Freud (2016). 

121 “If a man has been his mother's undisputed darling,” Freud wrote, “he retains throughout life the triumphant 

feeling, the confidence in success, which not seldom brings actual success along with it.” 

https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/sigmund_freud 

In other words, a surplus of maternal love gives the child the self-confidence necessary to succeed, it being the 

father’s job to temper that self-love with the necessary degree of self-discipline. 

122 

Mooney (2010), Holmes (1993).

deals with abandonment. 123 Bowlby held that a person’s ABS is largely determined by 

the nature of his early-life relationships with caregivers. Bowlby also held that in order 

to become a healthy adult, a child needed to have at least one stable attachment with a 

caregiver. 

Research based on Bowlby’s work led to the hypothesis that there are four basic 

attachment patterns in infants: Secure, Anxious-ambivalent, Anxious-avoidant, and 

Disorganized. 124 

Infants with secure attachments to their caregivers are happy and self-confident 

while in the presence of the caregiver; they boldly explore the room and initiate 

relations with others. When they caregiver leaves, they are distressed but functional, 

and they are unambiguously happy when she returns. Such infants have nurturing and 

dependable caregivers. 125 

Infants with anxious-ambivalent attachments are cautious and concerned; they 

do not boldly explore their surroundings. When the caregiver is present, they are 

worried that the caregiver will soon leave. They are distressed when the caregiver 

leaves, but do not greet the caregiver when she returns. Such infants have emotionally 

withdrawn and unreliable caregivers. 126 

123 

Bowlby (1969). 

124 

Prior & Glaser (2006), Cassidy & Shaver (2016) 

125 

Cassidy & Shaver (2016) 

126 

Cassidy & Shaver (2016)

Infants with anxious-avoidant attachments are not distressed when the caregiver 

leaves, and they avoid the caregiver when she returns. They tend to focus on toys and 

other purely physical aspects of their environment and have a diminished interest in 

other people. Such infants have abusive caregivers. 127 

Infants with disorganized attachments respond with fear to returning caregivers. 

They may actively avoid the caregiver; they may pretend to be unconscious; they may 

rise up defiantly; or they cycle through all of these behaviors. Such infants have 

extremely abusive or highly unreliable caregivers. 128 

Further research strongly indicates that these four attachment patterns are 

present not just in infants but also in children. 129 

Children with secure attachments have positive relations with others. They see 

others as helpful and that is how others regard them. They do not hesitate to ask others 

for help but are not clingy. 130 

Children with anxious-ambivalent attachments are insecure. They cling to their 

primary caregivers and avoid their peers. 131 

127 


128 


129 

Kennedy & Kennedy (2004) 

130 


131 

Kennedy & Kennedy (2004)

Children with anxious-avoidant attachments have trouble dealing with stress and 

are reluctant to enlist the help others. They tend to develop antisocial behavior 

patterns, such as lying and bullying, and they tend to self-isolate. 132 

Children with disorganized attachments may either bully others or isolate 

themselves from others. Such children are extremely reluctant to ask for others for help, 

and they tend to be disruptive and hard to manage. 133 

There is good evidence that a child’s attachment pattern tends to be identical 

with the one that he had as an infant, but it is an open question whether they are 

categorically identical. 134 

In the 1980s, it was discovered that these attachment patterns, or analogues 

thereof, are present in adults. 135 

Adults with secure attachments tend to be happy with their relationships. They 

enjoy the company of their friends and partners but are not clingy. They are not 

reluctant to ask for help but are not needy. 

Adults with anxious-ambivalent attachments are clingy and desperate. They feel 

incomplete unless in a relationship. But when in a relationship, they alienate their 

partners by being jealous and emotionally demanding. 

132 


133 


134 

Kernberg (1984). 

135 

Firestone (2013).

Adults with anxious-avoidant attachments are loners who regard interpersonal 

relationships as encumbrances. They deal with emotional conflicts with others by 

withdrawing. They value independence and focus their energy on developing 

themselves. 

Adults with disorganized attachments alternate between clinging to others and 

withdrawing from others. They tend to have unpredictable mood swings and have 

difficulty forming lasting relationships. 

There is some evidence that adults can have different attachment patterns from 

those they had earlier in life. 136 

There is extremely strong evidence that inadequate early-life attachments give 

rise not only to maladaptive personality traits but to full-blown psychopathology. 137 

According to Mikulincer and Shaver (2012), “attachment insecurities (of both the 

anxious and avoidant varieties) are associated with depression, clinically significant 

anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), suicidal 

tendencies, and eating disorders.” According to Kuczynski (2012), the explanation that 

OCD, PTSD, and eating disorders all involve fear- or trauma-driven self-isolation. The 

obsessive-compulsive is the quintessential loner, hiding not just from the world but 

from his own emotions, especially his own rage, by barricading himself behind irrational, 

and therefore fantasy-based, obsessions and compulsions. Compulsive eaters, as well as 

136 

Davila (1997). 

137 

Mikulincer & Shaver (2012).

compulsive non-eaters, are engaged in a similar form of escapism. Those afflicted by 

PTSD have suffered extreme trauma and have shut themselves off from the world as a 

way of coping. In any case, it is an empirical fact that people whose early-life 

attachments are of the anxious-ambivalent variety attachments are more likely than 

others to be afflicted by such disorders, and the most obvious explanation is that such 

people’s early-life attachments dispose them to deal with trauma not by connecting 

with others but by withdrawing. 

Later in the same article, Mikulincer and Shaver (2012) write that “Anxious 

attachment is associated with dependent, histrionic, and borderline disorders, whereas 

avoidant attachment is y associated with schizoid and avoidant disorders.” Assuming 

this true, what is the explanation? Kuczynski (2012) puts forward a plausible answer. 

Schizoid and other psychotic disorders involve a scrambling of the subject’s very grasp 

of reality: not only are his emotions out of alignment with reality; his grasp of reality 

itself has been undermined, and he is therefore alienated from reality in the most 

radical way possible. The reason, according to Kuczynski, is that the early-life 

attachments of those with such disorders were negative, as opposed to ambiguous, 

disposing them to flee from reality in the most radical way possible. By contrast, those 

with histrionic, borderline, and dependent disorders, have a fundamentally non-delusive 

grasp of reality, but their emotions are not appropriate to the information thereby 

made available to them. The reason, according to Kuczynski, is that early-life

attachments of those with such disorders were ambivalent, disposing them to keep 

their distance from external reality without altogether abandoning it. In any case, 

whatever the correct explanations are of these facts, it is an empirical fact that people 

who suffer from schizoid and other psychotic disorders tend to have avoidant early-life 

attachments and that people who suffer from borderline, histrionic, and dependent 

disorders, as well as anxiety-mediated disorders, tend to have ambivalent early-life 

attachments. 

Although people with the afflictions thus far discussed have more relationshipissues 

than others, they value relationships, and they within limits are able to form and 

maintain meaningful attachments to others. This is not true of everyone. In particular, 

psychopaths do not form meaningful attachments with others and have no desire to do 

so. In this context, a ‘psychopath’ is defined as someone who lacks conscience and 

whose behavior therefore consistently embodies a callous disregard for others, a high 

degree of manipulativeness and deceitfulness, and in some cases a high degree of 

impulsivity, often leading to reckless behavior, including drug addiction and 

promiscuity. 138 

138 Cleckley (1950), Kernberg (1984, 1984b, 1985), Hare (1993). Be it noted that there are different degrees of 

psychopathy: a given person might have a high degree of professional integrity, and to that extent by nonpsychopathic, 

but otherwise be highly psychopathic. This was the case with Jeffrey MacDonald, the Army doctor 

who slaughtered his whole family and had no remorse at all doing so. Jeffrey MacDonald's performance as a 

physician was consistently exemplary, there being no indication that it was in any way corrupted by psychopathy, 

even though there is no doubt that Dr. MacDonald was otherwise a textbook case of a psychopath. Dr. 

MacDonald's case is in no way a singularity, there being many cases of psychopaths who, like Dr. MacDonald, are 

non-psychopathic in specific contexts. See McGuiness (1983).

Psychopaths use others; they do not have relationships with them, except of a 

purely pragmatic kind. (More precisely, to the extent that a given person is a 

psychopath, he cannot have meaningful relations with others.) The question arises: 

What kind of early-life attachments are psychopaths likely to have had? This question 

has been researched and definitively answered: Psychopaths are likely to have had 

attachments of the disorganized variety to caregivers. Although there is some evidence 

that some people are ‘genetic’ psychopaths, most psychopaths were treated either 

coldly or cruelly by key caregivers in early life, their attachments to said caregivers 

strongly tending to be of the disorganized variety. 139 

Before moving forward, let us organize the points thus far made. Inadequate 

early-life relationships, especially with caregivers, adversely affect mental health and 

make it difficult to maintain healthy relationships. If a given adult has a mental illness, 

the kind of mental illness that he has is in part determined by the way in which his earlylife 

attachments to caregivers were inadequate. Anxious-ambivalent early-life 

attachments are dispositive of neurosis. Anxious-avoidant early-life attachments are 

dispositive of psychosis. Disorganized early-life attachments are dispositive of 

psychopathy. The neurotic tends to be distrustful of others and ambivalent towards 

actual and prospective partners, making it difficult for him to form and maintain healthy 

relationships. The psychotic’s grasp of external reality is damaged, making it hard for the 

139 

Schimmenti (2014).

psychotic to engage any aspect of the external world, with the result that attachments 

are disrupted, and sometimes leading to wholesale disengagement from it, with the 

result that attachments are undermined. The psychopath cannot have meaningful 

relations with others and does not wish to have such relations. 

Psychopaths do not benefit from psychotherapy and they cannot have 

meaningful relations with others. 140 But neurotics and psychotics can benefit from 

therapy, and they can have meaningful relations with others 141 , making it necessary to 

ask what therapists do to maximize the likelihood of their having and maintain such 

relations. Although we obviously cannot provide a definitive answer to this question in 

this context, we can provide some useful fragments of such an answer. 

First of all, good adult relationships are not the solution to the problems caused 

by bad early-life relationships. Good adult relationships are consequences of solutions to 

the problems caused by bad early life relationships. Suppose that Smith is an adult who 

has OCD in consequence of his having insecure early life attachments. It may well be 

that Smith does not have any healthy relationships. But if so, that is a consequence of 

his OCD; and the problem that Smith must solve—and that his therapist, if he has one, 

must solve---is that he has OCD. If by some stroke of good luck, Smith does manage to 

initiate and maintain a good relationship, that will indeed improve his life and is likely to 

make the problems caused by his OCD more tractable. But Smith will be impaired until 

140 

Kernberg (1984) 

141 

Kernberg (1984)

he has either eliminated his OCD or found a way to function despite it. Moreover, as 

long as Smith has OCD, it will dramatically decrease his ability to initiate positive 

relationships or, if does manage to do so, maintain them. 

In general, as long as a person is seriously mentally ill, his ability to establish or 

maintain healthy relationships is seriously compromised. Indeed, people with mental 

illnesses tend to form relationships that validate their symptoms, rather than alleviating 

them. People with borderline personality disorder, for example, are likely to seek 

romantic partners who are likely to abandon them and who are therefore likely to 

reinforce their fears of abandonment; and when a borderline finds a partner who will 

not abandon her, she often unconsciously manipulates him into doing so. 142 

To be sure, becoming psychologically healthy involves having healthy 

relationships. But unless mental issues are addressed on their own terms, unhealthy 

relationships are likely and healthy ones are unlikely. 

The very first healthy relationship that a therapist should help his patient have is 

with himself. The patient-therapist relationship must be secure if the therapist is to help 

the patient. No matter how insightful the therapist is, he cannot help the patient except 

by way of a secure relationship with him. Indeed, a secure patient-therapist relationship 

will by itself do more in the way of helping the patient have healthy relationships than 

any amount of intellectual insight on the therapist’s part possibly could. 143 

142 

Kernberg (1984b) 

143 

Kernberg (2004, 2004b) makes similar points.

I would like to end by noting two observations I have made from my own 

practice. First, when I have been able to help patients, it was not by helping them get 

what they wanted; it was by helping them use their judgment. Whenever I have had a 

patient who insisted that she needed a boyfriend having such and such characteristics, 

the patient never benefited from efforts on my part to help her find such a person. 

Sometimes she did, and sometimes I helped her do so; but the relationship would 

simply run its course, and the patient's problems persisted. When I have given patients 

what they wanted, I was enabling them and making their problems worse. When I have 

given patients what they needed, I was actually helping them. And what they needed 

was always to develop their ability to make informed decisions. It is not always within a 

therapist’s power to eliminate symptoms or to gratify desires, but it is always within a 

therapist’s power to help the patient make rational decisions. Patients who develop 

good judgment improve, and those who lack it don’t; and therapists are therefore under 

a categorical obligation to help their patients learn how to be rational and 

autonomous. 144 

Bibliography 

Bowlby, J. 1969. Attachment, Vol. 1 of Attachment and loss. London: Hogarth Press. 

144 

Rogers (1961) makes similar points.

Cassidy, Jude & Shaver, Phillip. 2016. Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and 

Clinical Applications. New York: The Guilford Press. 

Cleckley, Hervey. 1950. The Mask of Sanity: An Attempt To Clarify Some Issues About the 

So-Called Psychopathic New York: Martino Fine Books. 

Davila J, Burge D, Hammen C. Why does attachment style change? J Pers Soc Psychol. 

1997;73:826–838. 

Fields, Alan. 2016. Human Psychology 101: Understanding The Human Mind And What 

Makes People Tick. Make Profits Easy Press. Takoma, Washington. 

Freud, Sigmund. 2016. The Ego and the Id. New York: Simon & Schuster. 

Hare, Robert. 1993. Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths 

Among Us New York: The Guilford Press 

Kennedy, J. H., & Kennedy, C. E. 2004. Attachment theory: Implications for school 

psychology. Psychology in the Schools, 41, 247-259.

Kernberg, Otto. 1984. Object Relations in Clinical Psychoanalysis. London: Rowman & 

Littlefield. 

Kernberg, Otto. 1984b. Severe Personality Disorders. New Haven: Yale University Press. 

Kernberg, Otto. 1985. Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism London: 

Rowman & Littlefield. 

Kernberg, Otto. 2004. Aggressivity, Narcissism, and Self-Destructiveness in the 

Psychotherapeutic Relationship. New Haven: Yale University Press. 

Kernberg, Otto. 2004b. Contemporary Controversies in Psychoanalytic Theory, 

Technique, and Their Applications. New Haven: Yale University Press. 

Kuczynski, John-Michael. 2012. Empiricism and the Foundations of Psychology. Advances 

in Consciousness Research Volume 87. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 

McGuiness, Joe. 1983. Fatal Vision. New York: Penguin.

Mikulincer M, Shaver PR. Attachment in adulthood: structure, dynamics, and change. 

New York: Guilford; 2007. 

Mooney, Carol. 2010. Theories of Attachment: An Introduction to Bowlby, Ainsworth, 

Gerber, Brazelton, Kennell, and Klaus. Redleaf Press. St. Paul, MN. 

Prior, V. & Glaser, D. (2006). Understanding attachment and attachment disorders: 

Theory, Evidence and Practice. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. 

Holmes, J. (1993) John Bowlby and Attachment Theory. Routledge. 

Rogers, Carl. 1961. Becoming a Person. London: Houghton Mifflin Company. 

Schimmenti, Adriano. The Relationship Between Attachment and Psychopathy: 

A Study with a Sample of Violent Offenders Current Psychology September 2014, 

Volume 33, Issue 3, pp 256–270. 

Why We Lie (Psychology/Evolutionary Theory) 

Research Question

Clearly state your research question. Normally, this will take the form of: Why 

and how did ______ evolve in humans? 

How and why did deception evolve in human beings? That is my question. 

Please note that most of your will have to “operationalize” whatever word you 

put in that blank. So for example if my question was about religion - I would have to 

define what mean by religion. 

Make sure you do so in this section. 

Deception: The intentional misleading of a sapient being. This can be done 

through explicit verbal representations or in a purely ‘implicit’ manner (e.g. by leaving 

false but incriminating evidence). 

State your hypothesis. Tell me why you think this. 

Hypothesis: Deception evolved in human beings for two reasons. First, stealth is 

necessary to survive, for both carnivores and herbivores. Second, deception is necessary

to survive and to succeed in society. So there has been both natural and selection for 

deceivers among both pre-society as well as society-internal people. 

References 

Please list at least one peer reviewed journal article that you feel is related to 

your topic. You do not have to summarize it, just list it here. Please use AJPA formatting 

- https://laverne.libguides.com/citations/ajpa (Links to an external site.)Links to an 

external site. 

Ayala, Francisco. “The Biological Roots of Morality.” Biology and Philosophy (3): 

232-252 (1987). 

Unconditioned Stimuli (Psychology) 

After viewing the video available in this week's content, come up with your own 

example of classical conditioning. Identify the NS, UCS, UCR, CS and CR for your 

example. 

Come up with your own example for operant conditioning. What is the operant 

response? How can this behavior be increased with positive reinforcement? Negative 

reinforcement

Using a second example of operant conditioning, how can the behavior be decreased 

using positive punishment? Negative punishment? 

Neutral Stimulus 

Unconditioned stimulus 

Unconditioned response 

Conditioned Response 

Conditioned stimulus 

An example of a conditioned response: Smith lives at home. When the doorbell 

rings, it is usually for some insignificant reason (somebody asking for donations or some 

such), and he doesn’t have any particular response to it. But then Smith develops a 

raging drug habit. Since he doesn’t like to leave home, he has his drug dealer deliver his 

drugs to his home. As a result, when the doorbell rings, he is elated, since he associates 

the sound of the door bell with the euphoria of drugs. 

Here the neutral stimulus is the doorbell. The unconditioned stimulus is Smith’s 

experiencing pleasure in response to taking drugs. The conditioned stimulus is the 

sound of the door bell after Smith comes to respond positively to it in consequence of

his associating it with drug-induced euphoria. The conditioned response is the juststated 

positive response to the door bell. 

An example of operant conditioning: Tim works at a quarry. His job is to put rocks 

in a bag. In order to get paid his usual wage, Timmy has to put 10 rocks in a bag per 

hour. For every extra rock that he bags, he is given a $1 bonus. As a result, Timmy’s level 

productivity increases. Here the operant response is Timmy’s bagging more rocks than 

he usually would. And because Timmy is rewarded for each uptick in his level of 

productivity, his productivity increases with each additional reward: and so it is that that 

the target-behavior (Timmy’s bagging rocks) increases with positive reinforcement. 

Another example of operant conditioning: Jim also works at a quarry bagging 

rocks. Jim’s supervisor is sadistic. No matter how many rocks Jim bags, his supervisor 

whips him. But the more rocks he bags in a given unit of time, the fewer whippings he 

receives. As a result, Jim’s level of productivity (the number of rocks he bags in a given 

unit of time) increases. And because the extent to which Jim is penalized decreases with 

each uptick in his productivity, his productivity increases with each punishment: and so 

it is that the (Jimmy’s bagging rocks) increases with negative reinforcement.

Goring and Lombroso on Criminality (Psychology) 

1. Who was Charles Goring? (what was his occupation, what was he known 

for, etc.) (1 paragraph) 

Charles Goring (1870-1919) was a British medical doctor who is known today for 

his attempt to study criminality in a statistical and scientific manner (p. 517). 145 

Throughout the ages, there have been different views on what causes crime. Some have 

believed crime to be motivated by demonic possession. (Obviously this is now a fringe 

view, but it may well have been the default view back when religion had a tighter grip 

on thought.) Others hold that criminality is a consequence of environmental pressures: 

criminals are made, not born. This is the ‘liberal’ view, which became prominent during 

the enlightenment and was developed by social contract-theorists. Then there is the 

hereditarian view: criminals are born, not made. Views of this kind have probably 

existed in some form as long crime itself has, and they may even be the view that 

people are naturally inclined to take; but it is a fact that a great deal about a person’s 

psychology is genetically predetermined, and such views on criminality seem to have 

145 

References are to Edwin Driver’s article “Pioneers in Criminality: Charles Buckman 

Goring (1870-1919)”: Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science, Volume 

47, No. 5, 1957.

support in this fact Goring’s contribution to the study of crime lay not so much in his 

views about crime, as in his attempt to study in a non-prejudicial, thoroughly statistical 

manner (p. 516). He personally believed that criminality was a consequence of 

genetically determined mental and physical ‘feebleness’ of some kind (p. 518). This view 

is dubious and his own researches provided little support for it; but his careful methods 

of research are seen by many as inaugurating the ‘scientific’ study of criminality, this 

being why is still acclaimed. 

paragraph) 

2. Describe the study that Goring did and the purpose of that study. (1 

Goring tried to look for the basis of criminality in statistical correlations (p. 519). 

He conducted a study in which he tried to correlate criminality, or certain forms thereof, 

with certain mental and physical traits. There were 37 physical traits, which included 

hair-color, nose-shape, head-shape left-handedness, and six mental traits, which 

included ‘temper’, degree of egoism, and degree of intelligence (p. 517). Goring’s initial 

study failed to reveal robust correlations. He dealt with this by trying to correlate these 

physical and mental characteristics with different criminal subpopulations (e.g. violent 

offenders, non-violent swindlers, sex-offenders). Though this too yielded paltry results, 

it was in many ways a prototype for modern statistical studies.

3. What was Goring’s view on Lombroso’s work? Include in your 

response a discussion of Goring’s 3 critiques. (1-2 paragraphs) 

Cesare Lombroso was a thoroughgoing hereditarian about crime, meaning that 

he believed criminality to be a consequence of one’s inborn ‘nature’, not of 

environmental influences. In and of itself, this view is not without merit, but the 

particular version of it that Lombroso held was not very plausible. Lombroso seemed to 

hold that criminals looked like criminals, with bulbous eyes, heavy brows, and hunched 

backs. Criminals, in Lombroso’s views, are ghouls who are born that way, like the 

proverbial hunchbacked henchman of the mad scientist in the movies. Goring was 

opposed to this view, a version of which he himself, as to Lombroso’s unscientific way of 

arriving at this view. Goring held that there were three respects in which Lombroso’s 

work failed to be scientific. First, Lombroso’s research was based on impressions (‘so 

and so is disfigured’), not on measurements (‘so and so’s index finger has length n’). 

Second, Lombroso categorized traits as either being normal or deviant, instead of 

regarding them approximating to greater or lesser degrees to some statistical norm. 

(The second criticism seems to be a corollary of the first.) Third, because of the 

impressionistic, non-measurement-based nature of Lombroso’s work, his ‘results’ are 

hard to reproduce (p. 517).

In my view, Goring's critique of Lombroso is rather shallow. The reason 

Lombroso's ‘results' are hard to reproduce is that they are obviously false. People with 

hunchbacks and web-fingers are not particularly likely to commit crimes, and people 

with normal backs and fingers are not particularly likely not to commit crime. If 

Lombroso had been right that criminals had distinctive physiognomies, then it would 

have behooved him to correlate degrees of criminality with spinal deformities and the 

like. But since those correlations aren't there in the first place, there is nothing to 

measure, this being why Goring’s own researches yielded so little. ‘Criminal’ is not a 

biological category. A ‘criminal’ is somebody who breaks the law: and who it is that 

breaks the law, and why, varies from context to context. In some situations, e.g. 

Cambodia under Pol Pot, it was non-psychopathic not to break the law; in others, 

Denmark in 1970, it was the other way around. Goring went to great lengths to generate 

‘scientific' statistics, but those statistics all embodied the dubious supposition that 

‘criminal' is a biological or zoological category, like ‘raccoon' or ‘marigold', and can be 

studied as such. 

(1 paragraph) 

4. What did Goring see as the “real cure” for criminality? Explain fully.

Goring believed that the only real way to control crime was to prohibit criminals 

from reproducing (p. 523). Goring believed that criminality could be lessened by 

appropriately the criminally inclined. But he saw how high recidivism rates were among 

criminals, even those who in his view had been appropriately ‘educated’, and he 

therefore believed that the only real solution was to prevent them from reproducing. 

This reasoning is not entirely misconceived: if people who carry the gene for a certain 

disease are not allowed to reproduce, then there will be fewer occurrences of that 

disease; and if, as Goring seemed to believe, there is a criminal ‘gene’, then not allowing 

people with that gene to reproduce will lower the rate of crime. But the existence of a 

criminal ‘gene’ is doubtful. As for the high rate of recidivism among ‘appropriately 

educated’ criminals, that is likely a consequence of their limited economic 

opportunities. 

5. Explain how Goring’s cure for criminality and other Positivists 

translate into the views of the Nazis and their treatment of Jews during World 

War II. (1-2 paragraphs) 

The Nazis obviously believed in ethnonationalism, and they also had certain 

views about moral and biological ‘purity’ that they wished to uphold. While it is certainly 

possible, even likely, that certain Nazis read works by Lombroso, Goring, and other

positivists (genetic determinists), they probably had independent motivations for their 

political and racial platform. Frankly, the works of Lombroso and Goring are academic in 

nature and are not very compelling; so it’s unlikely that they did much to contribute to 

the rise of National Socialism, though they may on occasion have been cited by Nazis in 

defense of certain measures of theirs. Also, while the Nazis do seem to have targeted 

people with physical and mental disabilities for extermination, it is not 100% unclear 

that this was their bone of contention with Jews. Indeed, Nazi propaganda suggests that 

the Nazis regarded Jews as worthy adversaries, not as learning-disabled unfortunates. 

6. Describe your overall experience at the Jewish Museum. (What was your 

overall impression? What was most memorable to you?) (1 page) 

I believe that my experience of the Jewish Museum in Rome was colored by the 

fact that I am both Jewish and American. To the Jewish part of me, the museum felt 

familiar; and to the American part of me, it felt unfamiliar. I was struck by the elegant 

austerity of the museum and by the way its aesthetics contrasted with those of Rome 

itself. Italy is a great cultural capital and was the source of much great painting and 

sculpture. In some ways, the Jewish Museum of Rome is a part of this artistic tradition, 

and in other ways it is not. Its architecture is quintessentially Greco-Roman. From the 

outside, it looks like a cathedral. On the inside, however, it is very different. There are

no paintings or sculptures. There are elegant decorations and there is great attention to 

aesthetics, but no paintings or stained-glass depictions of cherubs or angels or anything 

of the sort. The reason for this is Orthodox Judaism strictly forbids the creation of iconic 

representations. My rabbi explained to me that this derives from the ancient Hebrew 

belief that sculpting and painting could be used to create monuments to false gods, 

along with the belief that attempts to depict G*d detracted from his greatness. The 

result is that the Jewish Museum of Rome, unlike a traditional Occidental museum, has 

a rather minimalist quality. 

I very much admired the elegant minimalism of the Jewish Museum, but a part of 

me was also relieved to rejoin the more visually oriented ‘outside’ world and all of its 

teeming imagery. I myself am an enthusiastic ‘gamer’ and need my daily dose of 

explosive, video-based imagery. The Jewish Museum’s tone was ascetic and 

disapproving of such indulgences. I have read about Amish villages; and from what I 

know, they are similarly austere. One has to admire the Amish, because of their selfdiscipline 

and self-reliance, but a part of me feels that life should be more than an 

exercise in moral purity. My reaction to the Jewish Museum of Rome was similarly 

ambivalent. 

The Chinese Mitten Crab: Portrait of an Invasive Species (Science: General)

The invasive species that I will be discussing is the Chinese Mitten Crab (Eriocheir 

sinensis), so called because it has furry, mitten-like claws and is native to China and 

Korea. 146 The Mitten Crab is a medium sized, with a shell averaging around 3 inches in 

width and with claws of 3-5 inches in length. The mitten crab is a burrowing crab, 

meaning that it burrows into the sand next to the water instead of living in the water. 

The Mitten Crab is catadromous, meaning that it lives in fresh water but has to 

reproduce in saltwater. The Mitten Crab instinctively makes its way back to fresh water 

as soon as it hatches; and after it matures, it instinctively returns to salt water, where it 

reproduces and then dies. The Mitten Crab is omnivorous, meaning that it consumes 

other animals as well as vegetative material. 147 

The Mitten Crab has been accidentally transported by way of shipping vessels 

from its native habitat to Europe and North America, and in both regions it functions as 

an extremely invasive species. In Europe and North American, the Mitten Crab burrows 

into dams, weakening their integrity and often destroying them. 148 The costs of the 

subsequent repairs are passed into local residents in the form of taxes, when the dams 

are publicly owned, and increased service-charges when the dams are privately owned. 

The Mitten Crab also eats away at water banks, which causes flooding and destroys 

146 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1142489/Invading-Chinese-delicacycrabs-eaten-stop-damaging-British-riverbanks.html 

147 

https://www.michigan.gov/invasives/0,5664,7-324-68002_73847-379648--,00.html 

148 

https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Invasives/Species/Mitten-Crab

waterside homes and businesses. 149 Also, the Mitten Crab is unusually mobile and 

manages to find its way into boat engines, clogging them up and causing massive 

damage; and it also eats through fishing nets, making it necessary to replace them 

constantly. In many areas, this has massively increased the operating costs of 

recreational and commercial boaters, as well as commercial fisheries, greatly increasing 

the cost of seafood from those areas. 150 

The Mitten Crab poses additional threats. It eats an extremely wide range of 

foods, including fish eggs, algae, and many forms of aquatic vegetation. As a result, it 

literally eats other species’ food, driving them to near extinction. These species include 

various kinds of shellfish and mussels that human beings eat, increasing our food costs. 

Also, the Mitten Crab eats the eggs of Salmon and Sturgeon, driving down their numbers 

and increasing their market-costs. 151 Finally, the Mitten Crab carries that microbes that, 

when ingested by humans, lead to paragonimiasis, better known as “Lung Fluke”, a 

condition that involves large worm living in one’s intestine and causing fever, severe 

diarrhea and other health problems. Transmission is usually occurs when people eat the 

Mitten Crab but do not thoroughly cook it. 152 

149 

https://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/profile/chinese-mitten-crab 

150 


151 



152 

https://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/profile/chinese-mitten-crab

Mitton Crabs are such a serious threat, in so many ways, that local authorities 

have set up Mitton Crab Hotlines. But there is a silver lining to this cloud. Mitton Crabs 

are delicious, safe to eat (when properly cooked) and easy to catch. For this reason, the 

most promising way to deal with this problem—and probably the only viable way—is 

simply to eat them. This is already being done in Britain with positive results. 153 

Michigan Invasive Species. 14 August, 2017. Accessed at: 


California’s Invaders: Chinese Mitten Crab. 3 January, 2019. Access at: Invatsion 

fo the Chinese Mitten Crab. 17 May, 2015. Accessed at: 

https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Invasives/Species/Mitten-Crab 

Chinese Mitten Crab 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_mitten_crab 

Mitten Crab Hotlines. 13 March, 2016. Accessed at: 

http://www.eeo.com.cn/ens/2012/0919/233773.shtml 

Chinese Crabs in Europe. 11 February, 2019. 

https://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/profile/chinese-mitten-crab 

The Chinese Mitton Crab. 5 July. 2016. Access at: https://mittencrab.nisbase.org/ 

153 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1142489/Invading-Chinese-delicacycrabs-eaten-stop-damaging-British-riverbanks.html

Invading Chinese Delicacy Crabs Should be Eaten. 9 September, 2018. Accessed 

at: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1142489/Invading-Chinesedelicacy-crabs-eaten-stop-damaging-British-riverbanks.html 

Meiosis and Mitosis (General Science) 

1. Summarize the main purpose of Meiosis 

The main purpose of meiosis is to produce male and female sex cells that 

combine to offspring that are genetically different from their parents. 

2. Why is this so important for reproduction? 

Meiosis guarantees that the organisms created by reduction have the right 

number o chromosomes. It also guarantees that those organisms will be genetically 

different from their parents. It does this by guaranteeing that when reproductive (sperm 

and egg) cells combine, there will be genetic variation as a result. 

3. How does Meiosis produce variation within the gametes?

Most cells contain two copies of each chromosome specific to the organism-type 

in question. Half of those chromosomes come from the organism’s mother and the 

other half come from its father. During meiosis, reproductive cells are split into 

reproductive haploid cells, each of which contains half of the usual number of 

chromosomes. Thus, when one of those reproductive cells fuses with a reproductive cell 

from the opposite sex, the resulting zygote has exactly the right number of 

chromosomes, and that chromosome, being half from the mother and half from the 

other, is different from the chromosome-set of either the mother or the father. In this 

way, meiosis guarantees that reproduction leads to genetic variation. 

4. What exactly is a gene? Where is it found? How many do we have? How many 

does a father give to his offspring and how many does a mother give to her offspring? 

(you might have to do some outside research on this). 

A gene is a string of DNA. DNA is the ‘chemical library’ that contains the 

complete set of instructions for creating the organism that hosts it. A gene is a snippet 

or segment of this chemical database. DNA is found in the nucleus of each cell (with the 

exception of cells, such as red blood cells, that do not have nuclei) within the organism 

in question. In the nucleus, strands of DNA are coiled together into chromosomes. So a

chromosome consists of strings of DNA, which in turn consists of genes. Each cell 

contains all of the chromosomes specific to the organism. 

Human beings have a total of 46 chromosomes. 23 come from the father and 23 

come from the mother. Humans are estimated to have between 20,000 and 25,000 

genes. Each human inherits exactly half of his/her chromosomes from the father and 

half from the mother, but inherits slightly more than 50% from the mother. 

Confounding Variables (General Science) 

Why is it important to control and eliminate confounding variables as much as 

possible with regard to scientific research whether we are talking about chemistry or 

psychology? 

Scientific research typically attempts to answer questions of the form “What is 

the cause of X?” (What causes cancer) and “Is X the cause of Y?” (Does smoking cause 

cancer?). In light of this suppose that for whatever reason Scientist Smith hypothesizes 

that eating large amounts of broccoli causes cancer. Wishing to determine whether this 

hypothesis is true or false, he conducts an experiment: his control group consists of 

people who do not eat broccoli, and his experimental group consists of people who eat 

large amounts of broccoli. Unbeknownst to Smith, all of the subjects in the experimental

group eat large amounts of broccoli because they live in areas where there are high 

amounts of radiation, and they have been led to believe by a popular T.V. physician that 

broccoli cures cancer. As a result, Smith's investigation ‘reveals' that there is a high 

correlation between broccoli-consumption and cancer. It was Smith's scientific duty to 

exercise due diligence and to eliminate all confounding variables, including factors (such 

as living in a high radiation area) that might yield false positives, thereby making it 

unclear what was causing what and thus ‘confounding’ the results. 





















virtue’). 

























terms of law. 











































other bodies. 









































without simply failing to do it.

Evidence in Favor of Global Warming (General Science) 

During the last thirty years, natural disasters have occurred with unusual 

frequency and severity. In particular, hurricanes have been far more violent; wildfires 

have been larger and more frequent; and heat waves have been more intense and more 

frequent. According to one point of view, these changes are consequences of man-made 

climate change. According to another point of view, the environment naturally goes 

through cycles, and unusual frequency and severity of hurricanes, wildfires, and heat 

waves over the last thirty years are part of that natural cycle. 154 

154 

https://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/articles/others/TakMar08.html

The evidence favors the second position. The planet’s average temperature has 

increased over the last hundred years by approximately one degree centigrade. This 

temperature increase, known as ‘global warming’, is a consequence of the large 

amounts of heat-trapping gases, known as ‘greenhouse gases’, that massindustrialization 

has been pumping into the atmosphere over the last hundred years. 

The main greenhouses gases are carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. 155 Carbon 

dioxide and nitrous oxide are by-products of the use of fossil fuels; methane is a byproduct 

of oil-drilling and coal-mining and is also released by cows and other farm 

animals. 156 

Increasingly frequent and intense heatwaves are a direct consequence of global 

warming. Global warming is not directly responsible for forest fires, which are caused by 

human beings, but it dries out soil, making forest fires more likely to being and more 

difficult to put out. 157 

Despite all the evidence, there is fierce opposition from some quarters to the 

idea that global warming is a reality, many going so far as to say that global warming is a 

‘hoax.’ Those who take this view site alleged facts such as the following 158 : 

155 

https://www.extension.iastate.edu/agdm/articles/others/TakMar08.html 

156 

https://skepticalscience.com/heatwaves-past-global-warming-climate-change.htm 

157 

https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/impacts/globalwarming-and-wildfire.html 

158 

http://www.globalclimatescam.com/opinion/top-ten-reasons-climate-change-is-ahoax/

*In recent years, there have been record colds in some regions. 

*Populations of polar bears, moose, and other arctic and sub-arctic creatures 

have actually been growing in recent years, reaching record highs. 

*Nature is the world’s leading producer of carbon-emissions, not people, and 

most of the CO2 that is produced comes not from industrial centers but rather from 

rainforests. 

*Ocean levels are rising less quickly than is consistent with the phenomenon of 

global warming. 

There is a mixture of truth and falsehood in these claims. True---in recent years 

there have been record lows. In February 2019, for example, temperatures in Madison 

Wisconsin plummeted to -33° (Fahrenheit), a record low, with many other places in the 

Northern Midwest setting similar records. True---populations of polar bears, moose, and 

other cold-weather creatures have risen. True—nature produce massive quantities of 

CO2. And true---ocean levels are not rising as quickly as quickly as it should be according 

to some of the models put forth by proponents of global warming. 

However, this information must be put into context. First of all, were it not for 

global warming, ocean levels would not be rising at all: and they are in fact rising—a fact 

nobody denies. Second of all, global warming is not, and could not possibly be, a

completely uniform process. The occurrence of global warming involves an increase in 

average temperatures, not an increase in all temperatures. Also, damage to the 

atmosphere, while leading ultimately to an increase in temperatures, leads in the short 

term to massive disruptions of normal weather patterns, with both extreme highs and 

extreme lows, both of which we have seen with unusual frequency in recent years. Yes, 

there has been an increase in populations of polar bears, moose, and other arctic 

creatures, but that is a consequence of anti-gaming laws that were enacted and 

vigorously enforced during the last 50 years. Finally, while it is true that rain-forests 

produce most of the world’s CO2, there is much CO2 production that they are not 

responsible for and can only be the result of industrial activity. This extra margin of 

‘non-ecological’ CO2 production, though indeed small relative to the total quantity 

produced by nature herself, is more than enough to throw off the natural balance on 

which atmospheric integrity depends. 

In a word, the facts cited by Global Warming ‘rejectionists’ must be placed in 

context: record lows, growing populations of arctic creatures, large quantities of natural 

CO2 emissions, and slowly rising ocean levels are all consistent with global warming, 

when it is taken into account that

(i) 

Global warming involves a destruction of atmospheric 

integrity, which will lead in the short term to extreme weather patterns, 

and will also lead in some cases to 

(ii) 

Rapid growth of populations of arctic creature, in 

conjunction with the fact that 

(iii) 

Marginal increases in CO2 production, however small in 

relation to the total CO2 production that naturally occurs, is more than 

sufficient to damage the atmosphere, and finally that 

(iv) 

Ocean levels should not be rising at all, it being of little 

relevance that they are rising more slowly than some models of global 

warming would predict. 

Global warming is responsible for the increasing severity of hurricanes over the 

last century. Hurricanes result when there are violent storms in warm climates. Global 

warming causes ice-caps to melt, leading to increased amounts of precipitation; and it 

has also increased the amount of the Earth's where temperatures are high enough for

storms to become hurricanes, resulting in increasingly frequent and violent 

hurricanes. 159 

Another major cause of global warming is deforestation. When trees are cut 

down, their stored carbon is released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. 

Deforestation is estimated to be responsible for 10% of global warming emissions. Also, 

most of the world’s breathable oxygen is produced by living trees, and deforestation 

therefore diminishes the amount of breathable air. 160 

Only a complete cessation of industrial activity would halt global warming, and 

that is not likely to happen. But there is much that human beings can do to slow down 

global warming, without undermining their quality of life. If human beings minimized 

their use of paper products, global warming would immediately slow down. This would 

not be hard. If people starting using e-readers instead of printed matter, deforestation 

would be cut in half, and that half would itself be cut in half if people recycled paper and 

cardboard. Obviously, people will not voluntarily stop using toilet paper; but if they 

started using cloth napkins, instead of paper napkins, deforestation would be further 

reduced by a sizeable margin. 161 

159 

https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/nasa-knows/what-arehurricanes-k4.html 

160 

http://www.climatechangechallenge.org/Resource%20Centre/Climate-Change/3- 

what_causes_climate_change.htm 

161 

http://www.climatechangechallenge.org/Resource%20Centre/Climate-Change/3- 

what_causes_climate_change.htm

Another cause of global warming is excessive car use. The average American 

drives 37 miles/day. 162 If he drove 20 miles/day, his quality of life would improve, since 

he wouldn't be wasting his life driving, and global warming would slow down 

appreciably. Finally, if people drove fuel-efficient cars, their monthly expenses would 

drop and global warming would be arrested. 

Many of the activities that are responsible for global warming are ones that could 

do without if we arranged our lives more intelligently. By using e-readers instead of 

printed matter, by avoiding unnecessary drive, and by avoiding unnecessary purchases, 

especially of plastics, we would actually improve our quality of life while protecting the 

environment. 

162 

https://itstillruns.com/far-americans-drive-work-average-7446397.html

Evolution Simply Explained (General Science) 

Questions and Easy-to-understand Answers about Evolution 

Question: Imagine your 10 year old child or younger sibling asked you to define 

evolution. How would you explain it to them. 

Answer: Evolution is the process by which a given species changes over time in 

such a way as to become better adapted to its environment, more functional, and more 

able to reproduce. 

The term ‘evolution’ generally changes in a species that involve the members of 

that species not simply become better able to survive and reproduce, but also becoming 

more complex and sophisticated. Thus, snails are extremely well adapted to their 

environments, whereas some human beings may be less well adapted to their 

environments (especially if the latter are taken to include economic or social 

environments). But there is still some significant sense in which human beings are more 

‘evolved’ than snails.

concepts: 

In any case, evolution is to be understood in terms of the following three 

Natural selection 

Sexual Selection, and 

Mutation 

In some environments, intelligent creatures are more likely to survive than 

unintelligent ones. Thus, in such an environment, intelligent creatures are able to 

survive and reproduce, thereby passing on their genes. And in these way, intelligence is 

selected for in such an environment; in other words, ‘natural selection’ favors the 

continued existence of such a characteristic. (Incidentally, intelligence is not always 

favored by natural selection. The brain of an intelligent creature uses an enormous 

amount of energy, and high intelligence is therefore maladaptive in conditions of 

scarcity.) 

Sexual selection is the process by which members of a species choose to mate 

with other members of that species that have desirable characteristics. Thus, for female 

human beings, wealth in a male is a desirable characteristic; for male human beings, a 

voluptuous figure is a desirable characteristic in a female. When a characteristic is 

desirable, that is because its presence correlates, or coincides, with some characteristic

that is favored by natural selection. Thus, a wealthy male is better able than a poor one 

to live long, and thus reproduce, and to provide for offspring, thus enabling them to 

reproduce. And a voluptuous figure correlates with fertility in a female, which obviously 

has value from the standpoint of natural selection. 

Natural and sexual selection explain why certain already existing characteristics 

continue to exist. But they don’t explain how those traits come into existence in the first 

place. The first organisms were not intelligent; in fact, they did not even have brains or 

nervous systems and therefore had minimal or no intelligence. Nor did they have limbs, 

let alone digits. So how did intelligence, and limbs, and fingers and toes come into 

existence? 

Through mutation. Every creature contains a instructions for replicating itself. 

That material is its genetic material or DNA. Sometimes these instructions 

spontaneously change. This sort of change is a mutation. A given mutation leads to the 

development of a new characteristic. Sometimes these new characteristics (e.g. 

intelligence) are favored by natural selection, and sometimes they are not (e.g. a 

cumbersome but useless appendage). 

Question: On average, there are physical differences between human males and 

females. For example, on average males are larger, stronger, and faster than females. 

Why do you think this is?

Answer: Males and females have different roles. Let us focus on human beings. In 

human pre-history, men tended to hunt and women tended to stay at home and raise 

children. This is probably why women tend to have better communciatino skills than 

men and men tend to have better visual skills. Visual ability is more necessary for 

hunting than communication skills, and communication skills are more necessary for 

raising a family than visual skills. 

selection? 

Question: Why is variation in traits/genes in a population important for natural 

Answer: For the same reason that diversification is important in investing. If you 

invest everything in one stock, you are likely to lose everything. If you spread out your 

investments over different investments, your investment is likely to grow. Similarly, if 

you have genetic diversity, you are able to survive in a variety of different environments, 

and are therefore likely to survive environmental change; and if you don’t have genetic 

diversity, you can only survive in a narrow range of environments and are therefore 

unlikely to survive environmental change.

Question: Summarize the process of sexual selection 

Answer: Members of a given species tend to mate with other species-members 

that have characteristics that tend to correlate with characteristics that are favored by 

natural selection. 

Question: After watching the following video 

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxHdzw7E0wU&feature=youtu.be), re-answer 

question #1: 

Answer: Because of sexual selection, members of a given species tend to mate 

with other species-members that have traits that are favored by natural selection, this 

being the process where by traits that allow individuals to survive and reproduce are 

passed onto subsequent generations and those that do not are not. Thus, natural 

selection ensures the continued existence of survival- and reproduction-conducive 

traits. And mutation, this being spontaneous changes in one’s DNA, lead to the creation 

of traits that are either favored or weeded out by natural selection. 

Early Modern Scientific Thought (Philosophy/General Science)









in the social sciences.) 








‘natural proclivity’ for the Earth.



virtue’). 








given impetus generates less motion in water than in air). 









aren’t really necessary. To know why Jim ate the pudding, I just need to know that Jim








terms of law. 


whereas Aristotle explained in terms of desires (thinly veiled as mechanical causes)---is 







theories that preceded his, and how did his theory depart from Cartesian mechanical








For each action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. 









explained the behaviors these being changes in motion) that it was his concern to









and other such irrelevancies). 








other bodies. 


nothing to do with its not being sufficiently Aristotelian or Cartesian.








understanding the world. 










are two ‘explanations.’ One is that it was just coincidence. The other is that the dye is









legitimate when they are parasitic on cases of inference to the best explanation. But so 










or otherwise explanatory hypothesis. But Bacon insisted that one must not go beyond



Legal Brief (Law School) 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES 1048 

STATEMENT OF JURISDICTION 1049 

QUESTION PRESENTED 1049 

STANDARD OF REVIEW 1051 

STATEMENT OF THE CASE 1053 

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT 1055 

ARGUMENT 1056 

CONCLUSION 1067 

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES 

Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 630 (1886), 

City of Los Angeles v. Patel, Supreme Court 2015 

Ferguson v. Charleston, 532 US 67 - Supreme Court 2001 

Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1, 12 (2005) 

Katz v. United States, 389 US 347 - Supreme Court 1967

Maryland v. King, 569 U.S. 435, 463 (2013) 

Michigan Dep't of State Police v. Sitz 496 U.S. 444, 455 (1990) 

New York v. Burger, 482 U.S. 691, 699 (1987) 

Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 740 (1979) 

United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435, 443 (1976) 

United States v. Montoya, 382 F.3d 911, 915 (13th Cir. 2007) 

STATEMENT OF JURISDICTION 

The United States District Court for the District of West Dakota had jurisdiction 

pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3231. In Case No. 18-CR-0909 (VGG), the District Court entered 

the judgment on December 12, 2018. On December 13, 2018, Ms. Collins filed a timely 

notice of appeal. See FED. R. APP. P. 4(b)(1). 

In Case No. 18-6028, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventeenth 

District entered the judgment on February 1, 2019, the same day Ms. Collins filed a 

timely petition for Writ of Certiorari, which was granted. 

QUESTION PRESENTED

The government’s case against. Donatella Collins rested entirely on information 

obtained through a warrantless and suspicionless search of a medical base containing 

medical records. Collins moved to exclude this information, and the District Court 

denied this motion, claiming that individuals have no expectation of privacy in medical 

records held in third-party databases and claiming also that the search was 

administrative and therefore exempt from 4th Amendment warrant requirements. The 

District Court denied Collins subsequent appeal on the same grounds, as well as on the 

grounds that enforcement of the Controlled Substance Act constitutes a public health 

imperative and therefore supersedes 4th Amendment protections. Accordingly, the 

parties are direct to address the following questions: 

Whether an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in medical records 

that are held by a third party, 

Whether a search that is conducted solely for the purpose of obtaining 

information on the basis of which to arrest and convict, and serves no strictly regulatory 

function, qualifies as an administrative search, and

Whether violations of laws regulating the sale and possession of narcotics are a 

sufficiently grave and imminent threat to public health and safety as to warrant 

suspension of 4th Amendment protections. 

STANDARD OF REVIEW 

The question at hand is whether the government’s search of the defendant’s 

medical records violated the defendant’s 4th Amendment protections against 

unreasonable search and seizure. This is a question of law, not of fact, and is therefore to 

be decided de novo. See United States v. Montoya, 382 F.3d 911, 915 (13th Cir. 2007): 

“When reviewing an appeal from the denial of a motion to suppress evidence, an 

appellate court reviews legal questions de novo and factual findings for clear error.” 

The government must show that the information obtained from the search of the 

database containing Collins’ medical records did not violate a reasonable expectation of 

privacy on her part and did not violate her rights of property, security, and personal 

liberty. Accordingly Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 630 (1886), sets a relevant 

standard, namely that “any forcible and compulsory extortion of a man's own testimony 

or of his private papers to be used as evidence to convict him of crime or to forfeit his 

goods, is within the condemnation.” In other words, convictions cannot be based on 

private effects, including “papers”, which obviously includes electronic records.

Katz v. United States, 389 US 347 - Supreme Court 1967 directly speaks to the 

question whether Collins’ medical records were in fact private, offering the following test, 

now adopted by U.S. Courts: “[T]here is a twofold requirement, first that a person have 

exhibited an actual (subjective) expectation of privacy and, second, that the expectation 

be one that society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable.’” 

Also relevant is City of Los Angeles v. Patel, 135 S. Ct. 2443, 2452 (2015), in which 

the Court ruled that a warrantless search is justified only if “the primary purpose of the 

search [is] distinguishable from the general interest in crime control.” If the government’s 

search in this case was for the purpose of investigating and prosecuting crime, then it was 

not an administrative search. 

Finally, in Ferguson v. Charleston, 532 US 67 - Supreme Court 2001, the Court 

Ruled that a warrantless and suspicionless search can be justified on public health and 

safety grounds only if the “hazard giving rise to the alleged special need must be a 

concrete danger, not merely a hypothetical one.” In other words, for the government to 

be justified in conducting a warrantless and suspicionless search of Collins’ medical 

records, the government would have had to have had to have known of a specific threat 

posed by Collins’ activities that they could only stop by searching her medical records. 

The mere possibility that Collins’ criminal activities might have harmed public health 

would not be enough to justify such a search.

STATEMENT OF THE CASE 

The Drug Enforcement Agency (“DEA”) arrested Donatella Collins for distributing 

and possessing with intent to distribute large quantities of Percocet and Oxycodone, 

both of which are controlled substances. The DEA arrested Collins on the basis of 

information contained in the West Dakota Controlled Substances Database (“Medical 

Database”). The Medical Database contains records of all physician prescriptions made 

in the corresponding geographical area. These records indicated that Collins had 

obtained prescriptions for quantities of Percocet and Oxycodone that exceeded what 

any possible medical condition could have required to use. These records also indicated 

that Collins had “doctor shopped”, in that she had gone to several different doctors and 

had made multiple appointments only with physicians who continually prescribed her 

the controlled substances in question. The DEA had no information besides that which it 

had obtained from the Database on the basis of which to arrest Collins. 

Collins was indicted on multiple counts of distributing and possessing with intent 

to distribute controlled substances. Collins’ attorney moved to suppress the information 

that the DEA had obtained from the Database on the grounds that Collins’ medical 

records were private and therefore that the 4th Amendment required the DEA to have 

probable cause before searching those records for information on the basis of which to

arrest or investigate Collins. Had this motion to suppress been granted, the case would 

have been thrown out, but the presiding judge, the Honorable Victoria Gelberg, denied 

the motion. Judge Gelberg provided three arguments for her position. First, no probable 

cause was needed to search Collins' medical records or to use them as the sole basis for 

arresting her, since those records were being held by a third party, namely the 

Database. Second, Collins had little or no reasonable expectation of privacy owing to the 

fact that the medical profession, specifically the issuing of prescriptions, is so highly 

regulated. Third, warrant requirements are waived when law enforcement has “special 

need” for “specified information” about individuals, especially when the information in 

question relates to activity involving a highly regulated industry, both factors being 

operative in Collins’ case. 

Collins then plead guilty to the charges. However, her attorney later filed a 

motion with the US Court of Appeals for the 17th District to vacate the plea on the 

grounds that the government’s case against her was based entirely on information 

obtained from an illegal search of private medical records of hers. The Court rejected 

this motion on the following grounds. First, information kept by third parties is not 

private and therefore do not fall within the scope of the 4th Amendment. Second, the 

highly regulated nature of the issuing of prescription drugs further weakens any 

expectation of privacy that Collins might otherwise have had and allows prescription 

drug records to be searched and used as evidence without probable cause. Third,

enforcement of drug laws is a public health imperative and therefore permits both 

warrantless and suspicionless searches. 

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT 

Patient records are quintessentially private and fall squarely within the scope of 

the 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure. Without 

doctor-patient confidentiality, many people who need medical attention either 

altogether avoid physicians and therefore won’t receive it or will withhold critical 

information physicians and therefore won’t receive the care they need. If medical 

records cease to be treated as private, then doctor-patient confidentiality is 

undermined, leading to a true public health crisis. Using the Controlled Substances Act, 

or any other law or “statutory regime”, as a justification for undermining doctor-patient 

privilege would cause a true public health hazard, and it is therefore very nearly the 

opposite of the truth to claim, as both of the aforementioned Courts do, that the need 

to enforce drug laws constitutes a public health imperative. For this very reason, it is 

also irrelevant that the prescription drug industry is highly regulated. Regulations justify 

waivers of Constitutional protections only when enforcement of those regulations is 

needed to avert a health or safety disaster; and in this case, the disaster would be 

caused, not prevented, by regulation-driven violations of Constitutional protections.

Acts performed under the threat of having medical care withheld are performed 

under duress. Therefore, if the patient signs over his medical records to a third party, 

knowing that his only option is to be denied medical care, he is acting duress. It is 

therefore irrelevant that records of medical prescriptions are held by third parties: 

patients consent to this only because their medical care depends on it, and their 

consent is therefore tendered under duress. The law requires patients to sign over their 

medical records to third parties, the alternative being non-receipt of medical care, and 

their doing so does not constitute a legitimately tendered waiver of Constitutional 

Protections. 

ARGUMENT 

Constitution: 

According to the 4th Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the United States 

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and 

effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated; and no 

warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation 

and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to 

be seized.

Medical records are textbook cases of “papers and effects.” Also, given the highly 

personal nature of medical records, one’s “person” is clearly violated by unreasonable 

searches of such records. Accordingly, in Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, 630 

(1886), the Supreme Court wrote that 4th Amendment Protections: 

[4th Amendment Protections] apply to all invasions on the part of the 

government and its employees of the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies 

of life. It is not the breaking of his doors, and the rummaging of his drawers, 

647*647 that constitutes the essence of the offense; but it is the invasion of his 

indefeasible right of personal security, personal liberty and private property . . . . 

[Emphasis added.] 

Donatella Collins' medical records were searched without cause and use to 

prosecute and incarcerate her. This constitutes an "invasion of [her] indefeasible right of 

personal security, personal liberty, and private property.” Importantly, the Court in 

Boyd. v. United States writes: 

Breaking into a house and opening boxes and drawers are circumstances 

of aggravation; but any forcible and compulsory extortion of a man's own

testimony or of his private papers to be used as evidence to convict him of crime 

or to forfeit his goods, is within the condemnation. 

In other words, the very essence of an unreasonable search and seizure is the 

warrantless obtaining and subsequent use as evidence to convict of personal 

information, this being exactly what happened to Collins. 

When explaining why she denied Collins’ first motion to suppress the information 

obtained from the Medical Database, Judge Gelberg writes that, according to the 

Supreme Court, “individuals do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in records 

held by third parties. Smith v. Maryland, 442 US 735 - Supreme Court 1979] at 743–44; 

United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435, 443 (1976).” But neither of these two cases is 

relevant. In Smith v. Maryland, the defendant had ‘mugged’ (assaulted and robbed) a 

woman, who then gave a description of the assailant to the police. The assailant then 

called the woman on the phone and left obscene and threatening message. On the basis 

of this information, the police wiretapped the defendant’s phone and thereby obtained 

proof of his guilt. The defendant moved to have this information suppressed on the 

grounds that his 4th Amendment rights had been violated by the wiretap. The Supreme 

Court ruled that they had not. 

In Smith v. Maryland, the police obtained a warrant for the wiretap, and the 

purpose of the wiretap was not to ‘fish’ for incriminating information but was rather to

corroborate independently obtained such information. Also, by continuing to use his 

phone to harass the victim, the defendant had turned his phone into the locus of an 

ongoing crime, voiding any expectation of privacy that he might have, much someone is 

voiding his expectation of privacy in his own home if he throws rocks at pedestrians 

from his window. The case of Donatella Collins is not comparable. When the DEA 

searched her medical records, they had no probable cause and had not obtained a 

warrant, and they had no independent evidence of a crime. 

In United States v. Miller, the defendant’s vehicle had been found to contain 

untaxed alcohol and illegal distillery equipment. On this basis, the police obtained 

warrants for the defendant’s bank records, which confirmed that he was running a 

bootlegging operation. He was convicted and appealed the conviction on the ground 

that his the search of his bank records violated his 4th Amendment rights. The Supreme 

Court upheld his conviction, saying that his 4th Amendment rights had not been 

violated. 

In Miller, there was probable cause for a search of the defendant’s bank records 

and a warrant had been obtained. The search and use of Collins’ medical records, by 

contrast, was both suspicionless and warrantless. 

Gelberg later writes that “prescription drug records are not in the possession of 

the patient, or even the hospital or physician with whom the patient may share an 

expectation of privacy. See Ferguson v. City of Charleston, 532 U.S. 67, 78 (2001). In

Ferguson, the Supreme Court overturned convictions of illegal drug use and drugrelated 

crimes on the grounds that the evidence of such crimes was derived from 

warrantless and suspicionless searches of patient medical records conducted for 

purposes of law enforcement, not for reasons of public safety or health. Delivering the 

opinion of the Court, Justice Stevens writes that because “the immediate objective of 

the searches was to generate evidence for law enforcement purposes in order to reach 

that goal”, those searches and the use of information derived from them to investigate 

and prosecute “is inconsistent with the Fourth Amendment.” Ferguson therefore 

supports Collins’ motion to suppress. 

Gelberg later writes that there are few or no 4th Amendment protections against 

“administrative searches”, meaning searches that are conducted by government 

agencies for regulatory purposes. In defense of this claim, Gelburg cites New York v. 

Burger, 482 U.S. 691, 699 (1987) and City of Los Angeles v. Patel, 135 S. Ct. 2443, 2454 

(2015). Neither case is on point. In Burger, the defendant operated a junkyard without a 

license, a violation of law, and also did not keep records, also a violation of law. The 

police came to conduct a routine inspection, which the defendant permitted, and 

arrested him when they discovered stolen vehicles, leading to a conviction for trafficking 

in stolen vehicles. The defendant appealed his conviction on the grounds that the search 

of his business violated his 4th Amendment rights. The Supreme Court upheld the

conviction on the grounds that the defendant knew that his business was subject to 

routine inspections and therefore had a diminished expectation of privacy. 

Burger is not on point. First of all, the defendant personally consented to the 

inspection. Second, and more importantly, the inspection was routine and was not 

conducted in order to search for incrimination information. Collins was not running a 

business that was subject to routine inspections; nor was she running a business, such 

as a junkyard, that must be regularly inspected to prevent behaviors (such as improperly 

disposing of toxic waste) that can immediately have massive consequences for public 

safety. In fact, Collins had a heightened expectation of privacy, given that the records of 

hers that were searched were medical records. Nor is Patel on point, since, in it, the 

Supreme Court ruled that hotel owners are not required to turn over guest records to 

police unless the latter have a warrant, such records being protected by the 4th 

Amendment. 

In stating its reasons for rejecting Collins’ motion to have her guilty plea vacated, 

17th District Court puts forth the same arguments as Gelburg, making the same claims 

as Gelberg as to their being supported by Miller, Burger, Patel, and Smith. Since we have 

already considered these arguments, we need not review them afresh. The 17th District 

Court also claims that Dep't of State Police v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444, 455 (1990) and 

Maryland v. King, 569 U.S. 435, 463 (2013) are on point. Neither case is in fact on point. 

Sitz concerns the legality of DUI checkpoints, the Supreme Court Ruling that they are in

fact Constitutional and do not violate 4th Amendment rights. A drunk driver is an 

immediate and extreme threat to public safety, since such a person is operating heavy 

machinery in a manner that is likely to result in loss of life and limb and is also likely to 

cause public roadways and other public utilities to be unusable. Consequently, the 4th 

Amendment does as little to protect drunk drivers from DUI checkpoints as it does to 

prevent police from detaining a drunkard who is brandishing a weapon in a crowded 

public square. Collins was not an immediate or extreme threat to public safety, there 

being no immediate or grave threat to public safety that the DEA was averting by 

searching through her records, and Sitz is therefore irrelevant. 

Maryland v. King is also irrelevant. In Maryland, the Supreme Court ruled that 

the police were within their rights to take DNA samples from people whom they had 

already arrested. The Court’s position in Maryland is that if the police already had 

strong enough evidence to arrest a given person for a given crime, then it could use DNA 

samples, obtained through cheek swabs, to corroborate said evidence, in much the way 

they can use fingerprints. Consequently, Maryland concerns cases where the police 

already have enough information for an arrested to be warranted and does not concern 

suspicionless or warrantless searches for information. Since the search of Collins 

medical records was suspicionless and warrantless, there being no evidence apartment 

from the information thereby obtained to investigate or arrest Collins, there is no 

parallel with Maryland.

Both of the courts involved in Collins case obliquely suggest that drug dealers are 

such a threat to public safety that their 4th Amendment protections are voided, and 

both courts seem to regard the highly regulated nature of the medical industry as being 

proof of this. Both contentions are false. If an industry is highly regulated, it follows that 

people involved in it have to comply with regulations and laws specific to their 

professions, and it therefore follows that they are more exposed than they would 

otherwise be to civil and criminal indictments following from regulatory activity. The 

DEA officers who conducted suspicionless and warrantless searches of her medical 

records were not regulators and were not functioning as regulators. Their sole purpose 

was to find evidence on which to make arrests. This was not regulatory activity that led 

to an arrest, as was the case in Burger, and as would be the case if a stockbroker were 

arrested for stock-fraud following a routine SEC-audit of his records. 

Katz v. United States, 389 US 347 - Supreme Court 1967 is on point. In Katz the 

Supreme Court overturned a conviction on the grounds that the information leading to 

that conviction was obtained through warrantless, suspicionless electronic surveillance 

of a public phone used by the defendant. Concurring with the Court’s opinion, Justice 

Harlan wrote: “[T]here is a twofold requirement, first that a person have exhibited an 

actual (subjective) expectation of privacy and, second, that the expectation be one that 

society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable.’” This two-prong litmus test has become 

the standard by which courts have come to adjudicate putative violations of 4th

Amendment protections, and there is no doubt that in Collins’ case, the government has 

failed both prongs of this test. It failed the first prong, since exchanges with one’s 

physician, including the records resulting therefrom, are, and for many centuries have 

been, the Common Law privacy gold standard. Hence the requirement that insurance 

companies handle patient medical records in accordance with guidelines that “assure 

that such information is provided and utilized in a manner that appropriately protects 

the confidentiality of the information and the privacy of individuals receiving health care 

services and items” (Health (Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 Pub. L. 

104-191, 110 Stat. 1936 (2012) SEC. 1128 (C) B (ii) CONFIDENTIALITY), and the related 

requirement that “Each person….who maintains or transmits health information shall 

maintain reasonable and appropriate administrative, technical, and physical 

safeguards… to ensure the integrity and confidentiality of the information…[and] to 

protect against any reasonably anticipated…threats or hazards to the security or 

integrity of the information; and…unauthorized uses or disclosures of the information; 

and …otherwise to ensure compliance with this part by the officers and employees of 

such person (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, Pub. L. 104- 

191, 110 Stat. 1936 (2012) SEC. 1173 (2) SAFEGUARDS). 

The government’s behavior fails the second prong since Collins own behavior, 

however criminal it may have been, was predicated on the very supposition that her 

exchanges with the physicians in question were her business and nobody else’s. Indeed,

the government tacitly admitted as much in its very method of investigating this case. It 

did not approach any of Collins’ doctors directly, knowing that they would have had 

deeply entrenched professional resistances to divulging patient information, and 

consciously used the Medical Database as a workaround. It is not a defense of the 

government's behavior that Collins was abusing her expectation of privacy, since rights 

don’t cease to exist when criminals take advantage of them. 

Moreover, rights don’t cease to exist when statutes are enacted that violate 

them, rendering null and void the 17th District Court’s claim that: “The very statutory 

regime permitting this investigation, the CSA, supports the finding that Congress does 

not view these records as inherently private and weakens the asserted expectation of 

privacy." If the CSA (Controlled Substance Act) warrants violations of Constitutional 

Rights, then it is the CSA that must be modified, not those rights. Moreover, while there 

may be cogent reasons for strictly regulating the buying and selling of certain 

substances, it cannot plausibly be held that public safety and health require the 

government to strip drug dealers and users of Constitutional protections. 

Finally, the arguments put forth by both courts, along with the Government’s 

suspicionless and warrantless search of the Medical Database, are inconsistent with the 

CSA itself. According to Title 21 United States Code (USC) Controlled Substances Act Part 

E (b), law enforcement is authorized to enter ‘controlled premises’ (meaning databases 

or physical locations containing records of transactions involving controlled substances,

such as prescriptions or pharmacy records) only “[f]or the purpose of inspecting, 

copying, and verifying the correctness of records, reports, or other documents”---in 

other words, to ensure compliance with regulations, not to conduct criminal 

investigations. Moreover, the officer conducting such an inspection must “upon stating 

his purpose and presenting to the owner, operator, or agent in charge of such premises 

(A) appropriate credentials and (B) a written notice of his inspection authority”--- 

advance notice must be given and the inspections must be done overtly, not with 

stealth. Finally, warrantless inspections are permissible only under the following five 

circumstances: 

(1) with the consent of the owner, operator, or agent in charge of the controlled 

premises; 

(2) in situations presenting imminent danger to health or safety; 

(3) in situations involving inspection of conveyances where there is reasonable 

cause to believe that the mobility of the conveyance makes it impracticable to obtain a 

warrant; 

(4) in any other exceptional or emergency circumstance where time or 

opportunity to apply for a warrant is lacking; or 

(5) in any other situations where a warrant is not constitutionally required.

We have already shown that (2) does not apply in this case, and it is self-evident 

that (3)-(5) also do not apply. Only (1) can credibly be argued to apply, and the 

government’s entire case therefore rests upon the government’s contention that, since 

Collins was not herself the proprietor of the Medical Database, (1) permitted the 

government to search said database. However, (1) grants no such authority to the 

government, given that, as previously established, Collins’ expectation of Doctor-patient 

confidentiality followed her into the Database. Consequently, the government’s case, 

resting as it does on information obtained through an illegal search, is without 

foundation. 

CONCLUSION

According to the two Courts that denied Collins’ two motions, Collins medical 

records were not protected by the 4th Amendment for the following three reasons. 

First, they were held by third parties. Second, the drug-prescription industry is highly 

regulated and therefore exposes those involved in it to lower expectations of privacy. 

Third, drug dealing is a threat to public safety, much like drunk driving, and therefore 

warrants a curtailing of 4th Amendment rights. 

Each of these arguments is misconceived. When patients agree to let third 

parties keep their records, they do so either because they expect their doctor-patient 

privilege to continue to be honored or because their need for medical care outweighs 

their concern over potential violations of privacy and confidentiality. Consequently, 

when patients sign over their records to third parties, they either don't relinquish their 

expectation of privacy or they do so under duress (and therefore, in effect, not at all). 

Second, if an industry is highly regulated, that does indeed expose those involved in it to 

legal obligations additional to those borne by all citizens, and it therefore exposes them 

to civil and criminal liability resulting from regulatory activity. But this is irrelevant in 

Collins’ case, since in searching through her records, the DEA were not functioning as 

regulators. 

It cannot plausibly be maintained that people who illegally sell oxycodone and 

Percocet constitute a sufficiently clear and present threat to public safety to warrant 

suspensions of their Constitutional rights. What would be a threat to public safety would

e the lack of medical care and inadequate medical care resulting from the erosion of 

doctor-patient privilege that would result if patient records were stripped of 4th 

Amendment protections, as they would be if the 17th District Court’s ruling were 

upheld. 

Finally, when statutes are enacted that are incompatible with Constitutional 

Protections, it is those statutes that must be modified, not those protections. According 

to the 17th District Court, the “statutory regime” constituted by the CSA demands an 

erosion of 4th Amendment Protections. If this is true, then it is the CSA that must be 

modified, not those protections. 

Motion to Quash 

IN THE DISTRICT COURT OF OKLAHOMA COUNTY 

STATE OF OKLAHOMA 

THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA, ) 

) 

Plaintiff, ) 

)

v. ) Case No. CF-2048-6728 

) 

Sandi Koufax ) 

) 

Defendant. ) 

MOTION TO QUASH AND DISMISS FOR INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE 

COMES NOW the defendant Sandi Koufax, by and through undersigned counsel, Petra 

Martinez, and moves that the charge against her be quashed and dismissed for 

insufficient evidence on the grounds that the State’s evidence is wholly insufficient to 

establish that Ms. Koufax committed assault and battery with a dangerous weapon on 

March 3, 2017. In support, Ms. Koufax shows the following: Ms. Koufax is charged with 

one Count of Assault and Battery with a Dangerous Weapon in violation of 21 O.S. 21- 

645. Randy Johnson, the alleged victim and the State’s only witness, states in his own 

testimony that he was not afraid for his own well-being and, moreover, that he did not 

have a reasonable apprehension of injury, this being an element of assault (Curry v. 

Streater, 213 P. 3d 550 - Okla: Supreme Court 2009). Moreover, Mr. Johnson explicitly 

states that Ms. Koufax lacked an apparent ability to execute the threat of any kind of 

violence, this too being a necessary element of assault (Curry v. Streater, supra).

Consequently, the necessary elements of assault are lacking here, and the indictment 

must therefore be quashed. 

BRIEF IN SUPPORT 

A. Statement of Facts 

Ms. Koufax was shopping at the Dollar Tree Store, where Mr. Johnson worked as a 

clerk. According to Mr. Johnson, Ms. Koufax left the store and the buzzer went off, 

indicating that Ms. Koufax was in possession of an item that had not been paid for. 

According to Mr. Johnson, he ran outside the store to confront Ms. Koufax, claiming that 

he asked her to give back a pair of pink pants that he saw her shove in her purse. (PH Tr. 

at 10) Ms. Koufax refused, and Mr. Johnson called the police (PH Tr. at 10) Mr. Johnson 

alleges that, while talking with the police, Ms. Koufax struck him several times in the face 

“using her fists.” (PH Tr. at 11) By his own admission, Mr. Johnson responded not by 

fleeing but by shoving Ms. Koufax to the ground, then forcibly taking her purse from her 

and running back into the store. (PH Tr. at 12) Mr. Johnson emphasizes that he was not 

at this point in any way afraid of Ms. Koufax. He emphasizes his ability to deal with any 

threat that she might have represented, point out that “I been in enough 

altercations…that I kinda know how to defend myself”. (PH Tr. at 11) Mr. Johnson makes 

it clear that, instead of fleeing from Ms. Koufax, he gently pushed her, which caused her 

to “go down”, owing to her “wobbly” and enfeebled condition. (PH Tr. at 12)

Mr. Johnson alleges that he then ran behind a counter, at which point Ms. Koufax 

allegedly threw M&M’s and other small items at Mr. Johnson (PH Tr. at 12). According to 

Mr. Johnson, Ms. Koufax then picked up a ceramic bowl, with the apparent intention of 

throwing it in his general direction. (PH Tr. at 12) He indicates that he was not afraid of 

being struck by said bowl, for the reason that “I was dodging everything she was throwing 

at me.” (PH Tr. at 15). Mr. Johnson indicates that there was a glass cigarette case behind 

him and that, had Ms. Koufax been able to throw the ceramic bowl, she would have 

shattered the cigarette case. (PH Tr. at 12) Mr. Johnson claims that he then charged at 

Ms. Koufax and tackled her. He explicitly states that his intention was to prevent Ms. 

Koufax from damaging the cigarette case: “And she grabs one of those [ceramic bowls] 

and she's fixing to throw it. And, you know, if I jumped out of the way then it woulda hit 

the cigarette case behind me and shattered the glass.” (PH Tr. at 12-13) Later in the 

proceedings, Mr. Johnson confirms that this was indeed his intention: “I was dodging 

everything she was throwing at me. And if I dodged the cigarette case was right behind 

me. So I didn't want it to hit the cigarette case or it would've broken the glass.” Mr. 

Johnson testifies that after he had charged at Ms. Koufax, with the intention of preventing 

her from shattering the cigarette case, and while he was in the process of forcibly 

subduing her, she struck him with the ceramic bowl: “So I run around the counter, you 

know, so she wouldn't throw it. And she hits me in the side of the head with it.” (PH Tr. 

at 13).

There is an ambiguity in Mr. Johnson’s testimony. At one point, he indicates that 

he and Mr. Koufax were on different sides of the counter and that he therefore had to 

run from out behind the counter in order to prevent her from throwing the ceramic bowl 

at the cigarette display: “When she rared -- when she picked it up and did like this 

(indicated) I came around the counter really quick to stop her, basically what I did.” (PH 

Tr. at 16). Immediately thereafter, however, Mr. Johnson says that when Ms. Koufax 

attempted to throw the ceramic bowl, he and she were on the same side of the counter. 

Defense counsel asked Mr. Johnson: “So when she went to throw it you guys were on, 

the same side of the counter?”, to which he replied: “Yeah. Yeah. I was standing right next 

to her.” (PH Tr. at 16). Notwithstanding this ambiguity in his testimony, Mr. Johnson is 

adamant that his objective was to prevent damage to the display case and was not 

concerned that Mr. Koufax was going to harm him. 

There are discrepancies between Mr. Johnson’s testimony and Ms. Koufax’s 

testimony. Ms. Koufax agrees that she left the store with a pair of pink pants that stole, 

and she agrees that Mr. Johnson followed her. But Ms. Koufax claims that Mr. Johnson 

simply grabbed her from behind (PH Tr. at 20), leading to a struggle between them, which 

eventuated in Mr. Johnson’s through Ms. Koufax on and the ground (PH Tr. at 20) and 

forcibly grabbing her purse from her and running into the store with it. (PH Tr. at 20) In 

agreement with Mr. Johnson’s testimony, Ms. Koufax alleges that Mr. Johnson came out 

from behind the counter, except that, according to Ms. Koufax, Mr. Johnson grabbed her

hand, then grabbed and forcibly pushed her backwards. Ms. Koufax claims that she does 

not recall striking Mr. Johnson with a ceramic bowl. (PH Tr. at 22) 

B. The testimony of the state’s sole witness, Mr. Randy Johnson, is 

unambiguously to the effect that he was not in imminent apprehension of 

harmful or offensive contact with Ms. Koufax, and one the elements of assault 

is therefore absent. 

Ms. Koufax did not put the alleged victim imminent apprehension of fear of 

harmful or offensive contact with her, and for this reason there are no grounds for an 

assault charge against Ms. Koufax: See Adams v. Garvin Cnty. Bd. of Cnty. Comm'rs, 

2016 U.S. Dist.: “The elements of assault are: (1) that the defendant acted intending to 

cause a harmful or offensive contact with the person, or an imminent apprehension of 

such a contact, and (2) the other person is put in such imminent apprehension. OUJI No. 

19.1” In particular, Mr. Johnson’s testimony makes it clear that when Ms. Koufax 

allegedly struck him with the ceramic bowl, it was in response to Mr. Johnson’s charging 

her and subduing her with the intention only of preventing her from damaging a 

cigarette case. On direct examination, Mr. Johnson testifies: “And she grabs one of 

those and she's fixing to throw it. And, you know, if I jumped out of the way then it 

woulda hit the cigarette case behind me and shattered the glass. So I run around the

counter, you know, so she wouldn't throw it. And she hits me in the side of the head 

with it.” (PH Tr. at 12-13) .” Mr. Johnson is effectively saying that because he was afraid 

for the cigarette case and was not afraid for his own safety, he charged Ms. Koufax and 

attempted to wrest the ceramic bowl from her, this being the immediate cause of the 

alleged battery. Simply put, the precipitating cause of the alleged battery was the 

absence on Mr. Johnson’s part of imminent apprehension of harmful or offensive 

contact. Mr. Johnson’s later testimony confirms this: “I came around the counter at that 

point in time so that she wouldn't throw it right there and destroy the cigarette cabinet. 

And when I came around the counter she hit me in the head with it.” 

Assuming it accurate, Mr. Johnson’s testimony establishes that Ms. Koufax was 

far too incapacitated to be such a threat. “[S]he rared back, tried to hit me again. And I 

blocked it and, like I said, she was pretty wobbly and she fell into… this huge display of 

Coke and chips…and just starts wallerin' around.” (PH Tr. At 13) In other words, Ms. 

Koufax wasn’t even able to pick herself up, her attempts to do so merely resulting in her 

‘wallering around.’ In other words, Ms. Koufax was unable to stand up and could only 

thrash about. 

An element of assault is “an apparent ability to execute the threat” of 

violence. (Curry v. Streater, supra.) Ms. Koufax lacked this ability, and there was 

therefore no assault. Consequently, there was no assault and battery with a dangerous 

weapon, since “The elements of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon are the

commission of an assault and battery upon another by means of any deadly weapon as 

is likely to produce death. 21 O.S. 1981, 652.” (Ashinsky v. State, 780 P. 2d 201 - Okla: 

Court of Criminal Appeals 1989.) Consequently, the elements requisite for a charge 

Assault and Battery with a Dangerous Weapon in violation of 21 O.S. 21-645 is absent. 

Accordingly, this case must be dismissed. 

WHEREFORE, based on the above and foregoing, Ms. Koufax respectfully requests 

that this Honorable Court grant his Motion to Quash and Dismiss for Insufficient Evidence. 

Respectfully submitted, 

_______________________________ 

Petra Martinez, OBA #16137 

Martinez & STOUT 

3033 NW 63 rd Street, Suite E-105 

Oklahoma City, OK 73116 

(Tele) 405/ 605-8639 

(Fax) 405/ 605-8640 

(Email) petramartinez@gmail.com 

ATTORNEY FOR Ms. Koufax

Certificate of Service 

This is to certify that on the date of filing, a true and correct copy of the foregoing 

instrument was hand-delivered to the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s Office, 320 

Robert S. Kerr, Okc, OK, 73102, Attn: Clayton Niemeyer. 

__________________________________ 

Petra Martinez 

Legal Negotiation Exercise Reflection Paper 2: The Negotiation – Clients (Law School) 

Please write a 2-4 page reflection paper on the following questions, as well as 

anything else you want to share about the experience.

1. Now that you have completed the negotiation, do you think your 

attorney prepared you adequately? If not, what did you think you should have 

been better prepared for? 

My sister and I were adequately prepared, but this was because we prepared 

ourselves; it was not, I am sorry to say, because our attorney prepared us. Before 

entering into negotiations, we should have had known the following: 

*How much money my brother was receiving from the V.A. 

*How much money he was receiving from other parties 

*What his assets were (stocks, bonds, properties, etc.) 

*Whether he was completely unable to work, partly unable to work, or able to 

work (but choosing not to). 

*Whether his alleged inability to work, which he claims to be the result of a hand 

injury, is to any degree a consequence of psychological or emotional impairment and, if 

so, whether he has violent or anti-social tendencies. 

*How much money (if any) he was spending on attorney fees

*What his emotional disposition towards us was and, in particular, what had 

been motivating him to behave so selfishly towards us (was it mere selfishness or was it 

active malice?) 

*Whether or not he is psychologically well and, if not, whether he is physically 

dangerous (relevant because we have children and will soon be his neighbor). 

Had we had this information, we could very possibly have negotiated a much 

better deal for ourselves. We entered negotiations assuming that Robert had no funds 

and that his behavior was motivated by financial desperation, not by ill will. But we did 

not know that to be the case, and we still don't. The house in question is large and 

Robert could have shared it with us at little inconvenience to himself. He did not do so, 

forcing us to pay high rents, even though, as Robert well knew, my sister and I (unlike 

Robert) have children, have grueling jobs, and pay high rents. In retrospect, Robert’s 

behavior embodied callous indifference towards the welfare of me, my sister, and our 

children; and he wouldn’t even talk to us until we forced him to do so by ceasing to pay 

the mortgage. In light of these facts, Robert’s behavior might have been driven by active 

ill will towards us, and not by financial desperation. Therefore, contrary to what we 

have been assuming, Robert might have had money. Also, given how poorly Robert 

treated us, I am not entirely comfortable with the idea that he will be our neighbor. 

Additionally, Robert’s lack of character throughout all of this casts doubt on his

credibility, making it unclear whether he is in fact disabled and unable to make a living. 

Had it turned out that Robert was simply malingering, my sister and I would have 

entered negotiations with a very different, and much less compromising mindset. 

It was probably not our attorney’s job to get us this information, but it was, I 

believe, his responsibility to at least make it clear that this information might be helpful 

to us. Our attorney did not do this; he simply took everything Robert said at face value 

and accepted his offer without question. It might turn out that Robert, who is now our 

new neighbor, is emotionally antagonistic towards us, or that Robert uses his new 

position as our neighbor to find a new way to sponge off of us, our attorney. If so, our 

attorney is to be blamed for not making us aware of these possible outcomes. 

2. Did you achieve your goals? Do you feel satisfied with the outcome 

of the negotiation? Why or why not? Did you attorney prepare you for achieving 

everything you wanted? 

For the most part, we did succeed in achieving our objectives. Our main objective 

was to reclaim our fair share of the property that our father had left us while not 

alienating or dispossessing our brother; and we did achieve that goal. 

That said, I am not entirely satisfied with the outcome of the negotiation. This is 

because I now question whether our objective was the right one. My brother did not

exhibit any empathy towards me, my sister, or our families. This makes me think that we 

made too many concessions to him, and it makes wonder whether he is someone I want 

to be living next door to my children or myself. Time will tell; he may turn out to be an 

excellent neighbor and uncle to my children. But I believe that, in light of his previous 

behavior, our attorney should have made some inquiries into his mental health and his 

attitudes towards me and my sister, which, judging by his past behavior, were not 

positive. 

3. Do you think your attorney did an effective job of representing your 

position? Why or why not? Do you think your attorney could have achieved a 

better outcome if s/he had done anything differently? 

I do not believe I was particularly well-prepared. My brother’s behavior had been 

callous and possibly a bit deranged. For that reason, I should have been less quick to 

assume that he had the same degree of familial warmth towards me and my sister that 

she and I have towards him, and I also should have done more to find out what his 

actual financial and professional situation was. That said, I believe that my attorney 

should at least have alerted us to the possibility that my brother was not well-disposed 

towards and therefore was not somebody we would want to have as a neighbor. I 

believe this to be a part of a pattern on my attorney’s part of taking the least

confrontational path. I am not saying that we necessarily should have been more 

confrontational; nor am I saying that the outcome was a bad one. What I am saying is 

that I don’t have enough information to know whether the outcome was a good one. 

My attorney should have provided me with the relevant information or at the very least 

with the need to have it. 

4. Do you think you and your attorney used your confidential 

information effectively in the negotiation? If not, why not? 

I did not disclose anything to my attorney that had to be kept confidential. 

done better? 

5. What did your attorney do well? What do you think s/he could have 

My attorney did show up to proceedings, and he had clearly read the relevant 

documents, filed the relevant paperwork, and so far as I could tell was familiar with the 

relevant points of law. Also, my attorney did not undermine me and my sister in our 

attempt to secure a decent outcome, which we succeeded in doing. I would therefore 

say that my attorney did technically fulfill his obligations.

I would not say that he fulfilled them distinction, however. My brother's behavior 

prior to these proceedings had been positively anti-social. He had taken over a fivebedroom 

house and refused to let either me or my sister or any mutual family members 

so much as stay there, let alone live there; and he did this knowing that my sister and I 

work full-time jobs, have families, and are under financial stress. And he did it without 

ever paying rent: he made me and my sister pay his way and gave us nothing in return. 

To me, this suggests a low degree of morality on my brother's part. This should have 

indicated to my attorney that we might not want to be living next door to Robert. It also 

suggests that should have looked more closely into Robert’s psychological condition 

before deciding to be neighbors with him. As my new neighbor, is Robert going to find a 

new way to sponge off of my resources? If we refuse to give him money, will he 

threaten me or my family? The answer to each of these questions may well be ‘no', but I 

don't know that; and I believe that, in light of these unknowns, my attorney probably 

should at the very least have me and my sister to reconsider whether we wanted Robert 

to have the cottage along with access to the driveway. I am not trying to be alarmist, but 

there is nothing in Robert's behavior in all of this that indicates any degree of goodwill 

towards me or my sister; and I’m a bit disappointed that I am having to worry about all 

this now, after an agreement has been reached.

6. What, if anything, surprised you about the negotiation experience? 

What surprised me was the extent to which the proceedings were influenced by 

the personalities involved. I had previously seen the law as dispassionate in nature and 

assumed that legal proceedings, including negotiations, were conducted in an 

unemotional, strictly law-driven way. This turned out not to be the case. Obviously the 

law was relevant, but I came to see that the law permits a number of different 

outcomes, it being up to the attorneys involved, and possibly also their clients, to decide 

which specific outcome is actualized. 

Another thing that I came to see is that, before retaining an attorney, one should 

do more to think about what one wants one’s attorney to do. As they are represented 

on TV and in the movies, lawyers are fearless and are always looking for new angles of 

attack. If this case is any indication, lawyers are rather passive and will do what they are 

professionally required to do but cannot be counted to do much more than that. 

7. Overall, do you think this exercise was a good learning experience? 

I do. Before I took part in this exercise, I thought that a given case was 

determined by the law along with the facts of the case. I now think that the law and the

facts of the case are a framework that excludes certain outcomes while permitting a 

wide range of other possible outcomes, it being up to the attorneys, their clients, and 

other human beings involved to determine which of those outcomes becomes the 

actual one. 

Adverse Possession 

Camero & Camero Law Associates 

305 NW 5th St 


7 February 2019 

Mr. Jason Williams 

313 NE 21st St 


Dear Mr. Williams,

I am writing you concerning the dispute with your neighbor Mr. George Smith. Mr. 

Smith is in effect claiming that he has come into possession of this land through what is 

known as adverse possession, this being the process of taking ownership of land to which 

one does not have title by occupying it. In order for Mr. Smith’s claim to hold up, five 

conditions have to be met. First, George Smith must have represented himself to others 

as the owner of the land. Second, he must not have concealed his occupancy of the land 

in question. Third, he must not have occupied the land with you. Fourth, he must not have 

been occupying the land with your consent. Fifth, he must have been occupying the land 

without interruption for at least fifteen years. 

If Mr. Smith does satisfy all five conditions, you have two years starting from the 

date of the beginning of your dispute with Mr. Smith to dispute Mr. Smith’s claim. Also, if 

Mr. Smith has been polluting or damaging the property in question, that might weight 

against him in a court of law. Additionally, if land that originally belonged to Mr. Smith is 

on your side of the fence, then you might have an adverse possession claim to that land. 

I would suggest hiring an Oklahoma real estate lawyer to determine whether or 

not all five of the above conditions have been met and also whether Mr. Smith has been 

polluting the land in question or otherwise weakening his claim to it. If it turns out that 

his claim still holds, I would suggest having your lawyer reach out to Mr. Smith and

propose a friendly compromise, to which, for many reasons, Mr. Smith may prove 

amenable. 

Sincerely, 

Joaquin Camero, Attorney at Law 

Camero & Camero Law Associates 

Tel. (210) 602-6109 

joaquincamero@hotmail.com 

I am more than my LSAT Scores (Law School Application) 

I am an extremely proud person, and I always try to avoid making excuses of 

myself. In this context, however, I believe I owe it to all parties to explain why my LSAT 

are not an accurate reflection of my abilities as a law student or lawyer. 

English is my second language. Not only is it my second language: Before I went 

to college I was completely immersed in a Spanish-speaking culture. All of my friends, 

family and professional acquaintances spoke Spanish and Spanish alone. When it 

became incumbent on me to learn to become professionally, and not just functionally,

fluent in English, I did so quickly, and with great joy. But it is very easy for native 

speakers of English to underestimate the degree to which sensitivity to linguistic 

nuances affect one’s ability to do well on standardized tests, especially on the LSAT. 

I am not making excuses. I want to provide my future clients with maximally good 

service, and to that end nothing less than complete and total fluency will suffice. My 

LSAT scores, which were average, were a wake-up call for me. Since then, I have spent 

every spare moment of every day immersing myself in the subtleties of English legalese. 

I have also much more conscious of the logical nuances that are buried within the 

linguistic nuances in legal documents. 

There are people who come to this country not speaking English and who ace the 

LSATS a few years thereafter. Such people are to be admired, but I don’t know that they 

are to be used as a reference-point. I have known many people who are functionally 

fluent in English and who, when working in their native language, are geniuses, but who 

can barely function at a professional level when speaking English. I believe that such 

people are more the norm than the exception. 

My objective, I would like to emphasize, is to be exception, not the rule: I want to 

be a superlative law student and lawyer---and I will be. I will be because I intend to be, 

and because I have the discipline, focus, and attention to detail necessary to do so. It is 

my responsibility, however, to avail you of all the relevant facts about myself, and

English being my second language (and one that I did not begin to learn until mid teens) 

is, I believe, not without relevance. 

I also believe that my performance on the LSAT was marred by the fact that I was 

working two jobs, completing an MBA, and working every day on behalf of a prisoner of 

the State of Texas whose rights had been violated and who, thanks in part to my efforts, 

was released less than one month ago. This is not an excuse. There are many people 

who work two jobs and are sleep-deprived on the day of the LSAT but who perform 

brilliantly nonetheless. Echoing what I said earlier, however, such superlative cases are 

not always the best yardsticks. They are not to be discarded as mere statistical outliers, 

but their significance, if I may wax philosophical, is that they raise the bar and is not that 

they are the bar. 

I would like to confess that I was reluctant to write this statement. I take great 

pride in being self-reliant. Looking back, this may have hurt me at some junctures, as 

there have been many times when I declined assistance from which I could have 

benefited. This happened during my first year of college. Having just suffered 

tremendous personal and financial loss, I refused any kind of help from anyone, and I 

certainly could have used it. But I turned my situation around, got A’s in classes that I 

had previously barely passed, and graduated with high honors. I was able to carry out 

this turn around because it became important to me to do well in college, and I will

excel in every aspect of my legal studies because it is a personal mission of mine to do 

so. 

As I would like to believe that my written work indicates, my command of the 

English language has now reached the point where I will have no difficulty dealing with 

the intricacies of legal English. I thank you for the giving me the opportunity to clear up 

this matter and thank you for your consideration. 

Describe Your Background (College Application) 

Tech specs: Minimum three full paragraphs (one paragraph for each question), 

maximum five paragraphs, worth 10 points (does not need to be a classically structured 

essay i.e. no need for intro and conclusion). 

Self-reflection on class 

1 How would you describe your class background? 

I was a solidly middle class. My father was the manager of a pharmacy, and my 

mother was a stay-at-home mom. We lived well but not opulently. One day my father 

sustained an injury while on the job. (Even though he was a manager, he sometimes had 

to stack boxes, either as part of his regular duties or because he had to fill in for an

absent employee.) After that, he was more or less bed-ridden. He had health and 

disability insurance, but they were inadequate. They simply didn’t pay what they had 

agreed to pay. My mother had to get a job as a waitress, and we had to move to a 

smaller house in a worse neighborhood. 

It wasn’t all bad, though. We were still together. And, even though my father, 

being incapacitated, was unhappy, we still had good times. Also, my father had played 

the market over the years (not, as it turns, with great success); and he tried to teach me 

the tricks of that trade. But it was very complicated, and I was never really able to 

identify trends in the market that would result in a windfall for me. Also, some of the 

concepts, e.g. price-to-earnings ratio, were hard to understand and even hard to apply 

in practice. 

Anyway, I am now in college and, so I believe, am on my way back to a 

respectable middle-class existence. But my experiences have made realize how fragile 

one’s economic condition is, and these movies are opening my eyes to the wealthdisparities 

that are responsible for the precariousness of what I used to believe to be a 

‘solidly middle- class’ mode of existence. 

2 What do you think about wealth and inequality in the US today? Engage with 

the films, readings, and lectures.

I have lived in the middle class and also in the lower class (albeit in the upper 

echelons of it---in the ‘upper lower class’, as it were). I did not find life in either category 

particularly unpleasant (even though life in each stratum had its share of problems). Life 

in the middle class was fairly ‘luxurious’. We had a large house, lived in a quiet and 

peaceful suburban neighborhood, and had a number of amenities. But my father 

seemed to be working all the time—he left home at 7:00 am and did not come back 

until around 7:00 pm. And I always secretly wondered if all that work was really worth 

it. 

When my father was laid off, we downshifted into the lower class. Our 

apartment and neighborhood were rather squalid and dingy and depressing. But we will 

had food, heat, internet and all of the other basic amenities. 

While in college, I have become friends with some people who come from the 

‘top 1%’ of this country—the so-called ‘super rich’, and I have been to their houses and 

vacationed with them. Here is what I noticed. They had very nice houses. Many of them 

had servants. And one or two had tennis courts in their back yards! 

But the ‘bread winner’ in one of these super rich households seemed to be 

working all the time and had little time for his/her children. The children were in some 

respects in a very good place. They did not have to work (at least not in a serious way) 

during college, which left them time to focus on their studies. (Which some of them did,

esulting in good grades and well-developed minds. Others squandered their money and 

time, partying and doing drugs.) And when they left college, they did not have any debt. 

But the parent or parents who were responsible for their money did not, it seemed, 

spend enough time with them. So their wealth was a mixed bag, I thought. 

It was clear to me from my personal experience that there are massive income 

disparities in this country, and the movies, especially Wealth Inequality in America, 

made the precise extent of those disparities very clear to me. But I didn’t really see all 

that many structural differences between my life, during the lower-class part of my 

upbringing, and those of my super-wealthy friends. I got the feeling that better health 

care was available to the latter. And I also saw with my own eyes that those who were 

born into super wealthy families seemed, in some cases (not all), to have the option of 

not working. But, strangely, a lot of them did have to work. (Apparently, their wealthy 

parents did not want them to be ‘on the dole’, to use an expression that my one of my 

super rich friend’s father would use.) 

So yes, there are massive income disparities. But the really important things--- 

food, lodging, leisure time—seem to be available to members of all classes. The one 

really important thing that does not seem to be available to poor people is good health 

care. 

Of course, these points do not hold universally. The Isle of Flowers, with its 

graphic footage of children rummaging through piles of garbage for food, made it clear

that, in some societies, being lower class means not having enough food (and certainly 

not enough clean food), possibly not having clean water, almost certainly not having 

adequate health care, probably not having a decent education, and very likely living a 

short (and in many ways unpleasant) life. But in the United States, even the poor (with 

the exception of the absolute poorest, such as homeless people) don’t seem to have it 

quite so bad. 

3 How do you think you are or are not affected by wealth inequality? 

There are a couple of ways. First, because of my straitened family circumstances, 

I have to work. This takes time away from my studies, which I feel limits me. It actually 

limits in a couple of ways. First, it makes it harder for me to get the kinds of grades that I 

probably need to get to pull myself up socioeconomically. Second, it makes it hard to 

absorb the information in question, which means that my mind is not being benefited as 

much from my education as it could be. Also, even though I work, which offsets 

expenses to some extent, I will still have a lot of debt after college. And while I don’t 

know exactly how it will impact my life, the impact probably won’t be positive.

So I think the main way that my socioeconomic status affects my life is that it 

takes away time—time that I sorely need, especially at this crucial juncture of my 

development. 

But quite frankly, that isn’t so much a consequence of ‘the injustices of 

capitalism’ as it is of the fact that education is very expensive. And I don’t know why it is 

so expensive, and the movies we watched didn’t really address that question. My father 

put himself through college on the basis of a part-time job. He lived without roommates 

in what he described as a pretty nice apartment. And he had no debt after college. All of 

which probably ties in in some way to the growing income disparities in this country. But 

I don’t immediately see the nature of the tie-in, and the movies, though informative, did 

not shed light on that particular topic. 

Personal Statement (Law School) 

Personal Statement: Please attach a document of no more than two (2) doublespaced, 

typed pages. One of the goals of the Admissions Committee, at Texas A&M 

University School of Law, when making decisions is to admit a diverse student body that 

will contribute to a collaborative and progressive learning environment. Academic 

background and strength of performance, though important, are not the only criteria 

evaluated in the application process. For this reason, a personal statement, written by

you, is required as part of the application. In this statement we seek information about 

you and your interest in transferring to Texas A&M University School of Law. 

I am a proud Latino-American who was raised bilingual and bi-cultural. Whereas 

others who are similarly bicultural tend to view their identities in political terms, I view 

my identity in economic terms. While I doubt that all Latino-Americans are in ideological 

lockstep, I do not doubt that all Latino-Americans wish to have meaningful and 

prosperous careers. And this is just what is happening: the Latino-American community 

is becoming increasingly significant as an economic force. For this reason, Latinos are 

increasingly likely to become doctors, lawyers, and entrepreneurs, with the result that 

Latinos are increasingly in need of business-related services, e.g. financial services, 

marketing services, IT-services, and, of course, legal services. 

My objective is to become a tax lawyer who services the burgeoning Latino- 

American business-sector. Given how complex the US Tax Code is, it is very hard for a 

business owner to prepare his own taxes without either overpaying dramatically, 

thereby cutting into his already thin margins, or exposing himself to civil or criminal 

liability, thereby jeopardizing his very freedom. Moreover, Latino entrepreneurs are 

likely to need legal representatives who are fluent in both Spanish and English and who 

are equally at home in both Latino-American society and mainstream American society.

The rapid proliferation of Latino-run American businesses therefore represents an 

opportunity for someone of my linguistic and cultural background. 

It also represents an opportunity that my skills and personal experience give me 

the ability to service. I have personally known many aspiring Latino-entrepreneurs. 

Those who succeeded were always realistic about the financial and legal dimensions of 

running a business, always making sure that, before any problems arose, they had 

adequate funding and competent legal representation. The ones who tried to keep 

start-up costs low by foregoing adequate legal representation ended up spending far 

more in taxes than they would have spent on a competent tax-attorney, and as a result, 

they did not have enough capital reserves left over to run the business. These were not 

incompetent people. They often had very good products and services to offer, and many 

of them organized their businesses intelligently and cost-effectively. But they didn’t 

realize, until after it was too late, that taxes are a business’s greatest operating expense, 

and they ended up having to close shop, often with nothing to show for their efforts 

besides massive back-taxes. 

At first, I found this discouraging. But I soon came to realize that I could help 

improve the situation. I have always been very comfortable with numbers and with 

complex procedures; and I have always had an affinity for business, having received a 

bachelor’s (from Texas A&M) in International Business Administration and an MBA (also 

from Texas A&M) with a specialization in finance. In addition, I have worked with or for

innumerable small to mid-sized businesses in Texas. Coupled with my cultural 

background, my training and experience in business make me unusually capable of 

servicing the complex needs of the exploding Latino-American business community. 

For this reason, it is very important to me that I practice law in Texas and also, 

consequently, that I receive my J.D. from an institution, such as the Texas A&M 

University School of Law, that commands the respect of the various different business 

communities in Texas, while also giving me the legal training needed to be of assistance 

to them. I need a top-notch legal education from an institution that will give me the 

skills and the backing needed to provide the best possible legal service to a very specific 

community within Texas. There are few law schools, if any, that can do as good a job of 

this as the Texas A&M University School of Law, and it is therefore my ardent desire to 

have the privilege to study there. 

Addendum: Please attach a document, no longer than one (1) double-spaced, 

typed page, pertaining to any area of the application for which you would like to 

provide clarification or additional explanation. 

I wish to provide legal services for businesses in Texas; and I want to ensure that 

when I begin my career, I am already able to provide all of my clients with the best 

possible legal representation. This will not be possible if I attend a law school where my

training is purely theoretical, since my initial clients will have to suffer from my lack of 

experience; but it will possible if I attend a law school, such as the Texas A&M University 

School of Law, that gives its students the opportunity to provide people with actual taxrelated 

and business-related legal services. The Entrepreneurship Law Clinic will give me 

just the kind of experience that I need to understand the basics of practicing businessrelated 

law, and the Low Income Tax Law Clinic will give me just the kind of experience 

that I will need to understand the basics of practicing tax law. 

I have known many people who went to law school and specialized in a given 

area, only to find out that they lacked the experience necessary to help their clients. I do 

not want to be in that position. Also, the very fact that Texas A&M offers these clinics to 

its students shows that it wants its students to be well-prepared and to be able to help 

people of limited means to overcome the legal hurdles that are holding them back in 

life. While I wish to prosper as an attorney, I wish to do so by making life easier for 

people, especially for aspiring entrepreneurs. My distinct impression is that the Texas 

A&M University School of Law makes it possible for its graduates to do both. For this 

reason, as well as those stated previously, no law school is as well-equipped as the 

Texas A&M University School of Law to give me what I need to launch my legal career. 

My Career as a Computer Security Expert (Job Application)

After graduating from college, I plan on working full-time as a computer-security 

specialist. A computer-security specialist prevents individual computers as well as 

computer-networks from being accessed by unauthorized users and from being 

corrupted by malware and viruses. 

The field of computer-security developed in the 1990’s, at more or less the same 

time that the internet developed. As the internet became more and more widely used, 

security-issues became increasingly severe: criminals quickly learned how to commit 

theft and to defraud computer-users in a variety of ways. And the field of computersecurity 

had to keep pace with these bad actors, who, as a rule, are extremely clever 

and determined. 

The first computer-security specialists were ‘computer nerds’ who enjoyed 

working with computers and who understood the security-issues to which individual 

users and networks were vulnerable. In some cases, these very people were themselves 

hackers or ex-hackers. 

The early computer specialists tended not have to have formal credentials, and 

even today many security-specialists have little or no formal training. But over the years, 

as the computer-security profession became more and more established and as 

companies came to depend on them more and more, it has increasingly become the 

norm for security-specialists to have undergraduate, and sometimes graduate, degrees 

in computer science.

In the computer-security field, there are no accreditation procedures comparable 

to the Medial Boards or the Bar Exam. Generally, entry into the field of computersecurity 

is based on competence, not on accreditations. 

The length of training varies depending on the level of ability of the person in 

question, but it usually corresponds to length of time that it takes to get an 

undergraduate degree, this being 4-6 years. 

There are few formal barriers to getting an internship, but demonstrable 

competence in the field, along with evident willingness to learn, are de facto 

requirements; and evidence of formal training, such as a degree, also helps. 

The potential employers are companies that have computer-networks. Included 

in this category are financial organizations, schools and universities, medical research 

organizations, hospitals, law enforcement agencies, all government (including military) 

organizations, and companies that develop proprietary technologies, including 

computer-related technologies. 

Potential employers can be located anywhere where there are computernetworks. 

The work environment depends on the institution in question. At financial 

institutions, they tend to be formal and conservative. At start-ups, the environment is 

more relaxed (but the amount of work done at start-ups might actually exceed what is 

done at a commercial bank). Oftentimes, computer-security experts work from home.

The income range varies enormously, depending mainly on the responsibilities of 

the specialists in question. If he is working in a subordinate capacity for a small start-up, 

he might make $30,000/year or less. If he is in charge of computer-security at Goldman 

Sachs, he might make upwards of $2,000,000/year. As a general rule, companies don’t 

employ security-specialists unless they have a strong need for them and are therefore 

willing to pay dearly for their services. The average is probably in the low six-figures 

range. 

The typical day of a cyber-security expert involves the following tasks: 

*Auditing code, to make sure that it is secure. 

*Looking for ways that a company’s computer network could be broken into. 

*Looking for ways that a company’s facilities could be physically broken into 

(prevention of physical theft of documents and other sensitive materials). 

*Writing reports. 

*Discussing said reports with the employer and with other security-experts. 

*Discussing possible ways to fix problems with the employer and other experts. 

The pros of this field are: 

*Stimulating work

*High salaries 

*Requires creativity 

*A changing and dynamic work environment 

*Low likelihood of one’s skills becoming economically irrelevant 

The cons include: 

*A great deal of intense and intellectual challenging training, including training in 

high-level mathematics that many are not able to understand 

*High-stress work environment 

*One’s employment depends on one’s skill-level and performance: there is no 

equivalent of a partnership or of tenure 

*Work is not limited to the work-day: it is expected that security-specialists will 

self-educate in their down-time: one cannot ‘leave work at the office.’ 

*Lack of predictability. 

This sort of work appeals to highly intelligent and creative people. It appeals to 

people who do not like routine and desire the intellectual equivalent of adventure. It 

does not appeal to ‘button down’ people who like security and routine. Ironically, the 

computer-security business is not for people who demand safety and security; it is for

people who are able to deal with uncertainty and whose desire to learn outweighs their 

desire for the comfort of routine. It also appeals to people who want to be relevant and 

to work in an area that won’t become part of the rubbish heap of obsolete professions 

(e.g. insurance salesman, travel agents, horse-shoe makers). 

The field of computer security is highly dynamic, and it is ideal for people, such as 

myself, who are interested in crime and its prevention. I have always been interested in 

true crime, this being my favorite book-genre, and this, along with my passion for 

computers, is what led me into this field. A list of the top 10 computer-related crimes 

(listed according to their suspected impact on society) will make it clear just how 

appealing the computer-security field is to someone who, like myself, is interested in 

crime: 

1. Phishing/spoofing: Use of fake-websites/misleading emails to lure 

people into giving up security-related information, such as bank-account 

numbers (e.g. the well-known ‘Nigerian Monarch’ Scam, whereby someone 

pretending to be a deposed Nigerian monarch asks for $10,000 in funds, with 

the promise of reciprocating with $10,000,000 in funds); 

2. Blackmail/extortion: Use of the internet to extort/blackmail people 

into doing one’s bidding (e.g. threatening to post compromising footage on 

Facebook/YouTube unless money is handed over);

3. Accessing stored communications: Availing oneself of computerstored 

information, such as social security numbers of bank-records, to which 

one does not have legal access (e.g. a bank-teller helping himself to customer 

credit-card information and then using said information to make purchases); 

4. Online gambling: Gambling at illegal online Casinos; 

5. Non-delivery of merchandise: Accepting money for a product or 

service posted online but then not delivering said product/service (e.g. 

someone who posts on ad for a car on Craigslist and takes money for it but 

does not deliver said vehicle to purchaser—which vehicle may not even exist); 

6. Electronic harassment: Using the internet to harass someone, e.g. 

making libelous or unflattering claims about a given person to all that 

person’s Facebook friends; 

7. Child pornography: Use of the internet to sell/publicize/disseminate 

sexually themed photographs of minors; 

8. Prostitution: Use of the internet to advertise/perpetrate acts of 

prostitution (e.g. having a website where one advertises one’s erotic services 

(cf. the following website https://pornstars4escort.com/daphne-rosen-escort/ 

)

9. Drug-trafficking: Use of the internet to purchase illegal narcotics (cf. 

the following website https://pornstars4escort.com/daphne-rosen-escort/ 

https://deluxepharmacy.net/no-rx/buy-vicodin-es-7-5mg-online/ 

10. Criminal copyright infringement: Use of the internet to copy and 

possibly sell materitl to which one does not own the copyright (cf. the 

following website, which sells illegal pdf’s of copyrighted books 

http://www.trickswant.com/analytic-philosophy.pdf ) 

As this list makes clear, computer-security is not a career for the faint-hearted, 

but rather for those with a sense of adventure and a desire to live on the edge. And 

there are therefore few careers that are as interesting, or as economically relevant, as 

computer-security. 

Business School Application 

Essays 

Essay 1 (500-750 words) 

What are your motivations for applying to TRIUM in relation to your current short 

and long term professional objectives?

As an owner of two night vision camera patents, I am fascinated with the 

process that an idea must endure in order to become a marketable and 

manufacturable product. Military technology and readiness has been and will 

continue to be on the forefront of industry, leading the world in technological 

breakthroughs and advancements. Not only is this an exciting industry to be in, but 

one that continues to grow in parallel with national security obligations and concerns. 

My short term goal is almost complete. Throughout a 20 year career within 

Naval Special Warfare as a Navy SEAL in a Tier One organization, I have learned how to 

follow exemplary leaders and learned how to lead exemplary men. My expertise is 

currently focused on requirements and acquisitions specifically within the United 

States Special Operations Command (SOCOM). Industry uses SOCOM as their test bed 

for research, innovation and evaluation. It is here that products are imagined, forged, 

redesigned and polished until they are either rejected or accepted as the next 

advancement in military readiness. I have gained access to an elite network next to 

none and been privileged to expand that network into the civilian industry by working 

numerous government Special Access Program of Records advancing next generation 

soldier systems and technologies. 

I have a strong network, and I want to acquire the skills necessary to put my 

network to the best possible use. An EMBA from Trium will give me precisely those

skills. In addition, it will expand my network in much needed ways. In particular, it will 

connect me to people who can mediate between my network, which is largely 

military-based, and the non-military organizations that I would be dealing with as an 

entrepreneur. Thus, TRIUM will supplement my existing skill-set and network in ways 

that will enable me to maximize the amount of good that I can do with them. 

During the first twenty years of my professional life, I acquired experience and 

proficiency as both a soldier and an engineer. I now want to acquire comparable 

proficiency and expertise in the world of business. To this end, I need to acquire a topnotch 

understanding of every aspect of business. And while I am instinctively drawn to 

business and naturally have strong entrepreneurial tendencies, I have much to learn 

about finance, public relations, and other aspects of business management that are 

critical to my future success. My short-term goal is therefore to acquire this 

knowledge-base. My long-term goal is to put this knowledge, once I have it, to the 

most productive and lucrative use. I aspire to attend TRIUM because I know that it will 

greatly help to accomplish both my short-term and long-term goals. 

I have been privileged to serve with the elite of the United States Military. Now 

I want to learn from the elite of both business and academia, and no institution can do 

as much as TRIUM to connect me to these communities. 

There is a more specific reason why an education from TRIUM would be 

singularly helpful to me. As a Navy SEAL, my job was to the do the jobs that members

of the other branches of the military could not do. My job was to solve problems that 

nobody else could solve. A Navy Seal has to think outside the box; he has to think 

quickly; he has to be willing to deal with uncertainty and with changing situations; and 

he has to have courage. These are the very attributes that business leaders have, and 

they are the very attributes that success in the business world demands. My goal is to 

optimize operations in the corporate world in the same way that, as a Navy Seal, I was 

optimizing operations in the military world. In order for me to transfer my strengths 

from a military to a business context, I need to learn from the best, and that means 

that I need to study at TRIUM. 

As I then run my own business and assist 

other companies in the decision making process of navigating the government 

processes, I will be able to utilize my experienced gained from the business leaders 

that TRIUM has to offer. 

My long term goal is to understand and be able to work on the international 

market. Companies which have global presence are ones that stay relevant and 

succeed through economic downturn. I understand how to navigate the requirements 

and acquisitions process within defined groups such as United States law enforcement 

and the Department of Defense Special Operations commands. Once a product 

exceeds the demands of these elite organizations, the next step is a national to 

theatre transition where military products are manufactured and fielded to larger

conventional forces. It is this insight and process companies must understand to 

expand their clientele. My hope is that TRIUM will give me a better understanding of 

the broader business landscape, not only to include the larger US market, but more 

importantly the international markets. Whether expanding my own consulting 

business or leading Revision Military Ltd, my goal includes helping companies succeed 

in untapped markets both domestically and worldwide. 

Even though I have a military background and (in some respects) a military 

outlook, I also have a deep respect for thinkers and scholars and for what they can do to 

improve the world. My father was a professor of philosophy, and I was always struck by 

his acuity and originality. I want to study from people who are similarly insightful about 

business. I need such insight in order to have the kind of impact on the business world 

that I aspire to have, and I know that will find the mentorship that I am looking for at 

TRIUM. 

Essay 2 (up to 500 words) 

As a senior executive, how will you use TRIUM’s unique approach to navigate the 

current business landscape to ensure success for your business?

TRIUM’s unique approach gives students a broad range of faculties and tools 

with which to promote success in their respective businesses. The reason I chose this 

program is three-fold; network, variety of business disciplines taught, and access to 

international academia and markets. 

Without a great network to draw upon, it is hard for any person or company to 

expand. I currently have an extensive high-powered network within the US 

government military at the highest level. TRIUM will broaden and round out my 

network within industry which is necessary for an executive working in the global 

market. TRIUM has unparalleled access to international markets and its distinguished 

faculty has equally unparalleled insight into the complex dynamics of such markets. 

TRIUM has unparalleled access to international markets and its distinguished faculty has 

equally unparalleled insight into the complex dynamics of such markets. 

I have travelled the world and been 

exposed to a variety of different cultures and have thus had occasion to acquire first 

hand knowledge of African, Asian, South American and European culture. I want to 

learn more about these cultures and to be able to put my knowledge of them to 

practical use. I can think of no institution that would better prepare me to do so than 

TRIUM, with its unsurpassed reputation in the area of international business. 

Of the many MBA programs that I have looked into, TRIUM is by far the most 

comprehensive and diverse in its offerings. LSE, NYU Stern, and HEC 

offer

unsurpassed instruction in economics, finance and marketing, respectively, and apart 

from TRIUM there is no MBA program that could possibly give me access to so many 

different faculties of such high quality. TRIUM’s excellence in the area of international 

business is particularly important in the present business era, given the pronounced 

trend towards economic globalization and international cooperation. 

I stand to gain an enormous amount by attending TRIUM. In particular, I stand 

to acquire instruction in the area of international business that I could not be given 

elsewhere. At the same time, I believe in due course I will be able to give back to 

TRIUM. I already have a large network of distinguished and high-ranking military 

colleagues, many of whom are themselves establishing themselves in the arena of 

business, and I believe that this network of mine will interact synergistically with the 

high-powered network that I generate through TRIUM. 

Essay 3 (up to 500 words) 

Share a work experience that changed your professional outlook. Describe any 

challenging aspects and outcomes. 

Collaboration rather than competition is the key to success. My strongest 

attributes are my ability to network and find value in every person or organization.

One of the greatest compliments I have ever received was from a fellow coworker 

describing me as “the glue in every situation.” There are two dimensions to this 

compliment 

Second, I 

. First, I am unusually able and willing to fix problems as they arise. 

know how to identify the people who have the skills needed 

to solve a given problem, and I am able to get those people to work do 

On my eighth deployment as a Navy SEAL at a Tier One command, I was called 

on for a unique project in a remote and dangerous location in Afghanistan. Due to 

political infighting within several specialized US Government agencies, all tactical 

operations had been shut down at this particular location. Because of my skills as a 

negotiator and collaborator, I was specifically selected to fly out to this austere 

location in order to de-escalate the situation. Upon arrival, I assessed the strengths 

and weakness of all assets. Instead of removing the problem assets, I reorganized, 

redelegated and changed how missions were executed. I then took charge of these 

teams and included members of the US Navy SEALs and local Afghan forces. Within 

one week, operations were back up and running and our teams launched on five 

targets capturing seven terrorists within a short five week period. 

The “new” 

organization was so successful that higher headquarters asked us to slow down. 

This experience changed my professional outlook in several positive ways. I 

learned that my own strengths go beyond skills as a Navy Seal: I learned that 

interpersonal skills and leadership. I learned that I have abilities that are valuable

outside the military and, more specifically, within the business world. I can unite 

people under a single vision, and I can get them to set aside their differences and work 

as a team in pursuit of a common objective, and one 

of my greatest strengths is 

my ability 

to bring people of varying backgrounds and cultures together and drive 

them towards a single vision. I also learned that success is rarely gained from the 

skills of the individual or even one team, but rather a compromise and collaboration 

of strategic vision towards a shared objective that benefits all parties involved. 

The United States 4x100 swimming relay team pulled off a miracle comeback 

from behind during the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. In a speech by one of the 

team members about the struggle in achieving goals, Garrett-Weber said, “when you 

share success, people will come out of the woodwork to be on your team.” I choose 

TRIUM because of its people and network of diverse expertise and cultures. With this 

network and collaboration I will be able to glue together any team for ultimate 

success beyond reproach. 

Essay 4 (optional – in any medium) 

Is there anything else you would like to add that would help the Admissions 

Committee with their decision? 

I live for challenges. I chose a military because I wanted to take the most 

challenging path possible. Within the military, I always took the most difficult path. I

chose the Navy Seals because of the challenges involves in joining and staying with 

them. I thrive on adversity, and I know how to turn adversity into victory. 

And that is why I want to go into business. I want to help entrepreneurs and 

companies do what I did in the military. I want to help companies grow, especially when 

they seem to be on the brink of collapse. I know that I have in within me to do this. But I 

cannot do it alone. I need wise and experienced mentors to elicit the ability from deep 

inside myself. More specifically, I need knowledge---knowledge of finance, of marketing, 

of economics, and indeed of every aspect of business. 

I have the vision and the will needed to succeed, and I need to supplement them 

with knowledge. TRIUM will give me that knowledge, and that is why it is my ardent 

wish to be a part of it. 

How I Benefited from this Course (Sociology) 

I benefited immeasurably from this course, both intellectually and personally. I 

never used to think of myself as a writer, but Professor Martin changed that, helping me 

learn how to express myself in writing and to appreciate the writing of others. 

The timing of this class was ideal. I moved here from another country just a few 

months ago. The experience was jarring, to say the least, and I often felt vulnerable and

disoriented. The process of drafting my personal narrative helped me clarify my 

thoughts and gave me a much-needed sense of control. In this last essay, I not only tried 

to express thoughts but to share a vision, to this end taking great pains to give an 

accurate and vivid description of a Chinese New Year Celebration. 

Although I have found every assignment to be challenging and rewarding, I 

found the play review to be especially so. The play was a true accomplishment, 

beautifully written and skillfully presented. Because I was so absorbed in the play, it was 

hard for me to analyze it as I was watching it, and it was psychologically difficult for me 

to do so. I also found myself inadvertently planning out my essay, which distracted me 

from the play, which distracted me and made the process of drafting the original play 

review harder than it would otherwise have been. There is also the fact that I read the 

wrong book before watching the play, which, though funny in retrospect, left me a tad 

confused while watching the play. Fortunately, I am suitemates with two theatre 

majors, who gave me the right book, which I immediately read, and who also arranged 

for me to interview one of the stage managers. The interview proved most enlightening, 

helping me understand the stage techniques that were used as well as complexities 

relating to the lighting and other aspects of the production process. 

This is my first e-portfolio, and I have greatly enjoyed the process and hope that 

my enjoyment of it came through in my work. I chose to use a light shade of blue sunkissed 

water for the background on each page, having always had a special love for the

ocean. I also included some videos of my home on the welcome page, hoping in this way 

to give my fellow students a better idea of who I am. I poured my heart into this 

portfolio, and I think that will give it lasting emotional value to me and I hope that it 

makes it valuable to others as well. 

Ten weeks ago, when my advisor suggested that I enroll in a WRD103 class, I was 

a little bit skeptical. I tend to be more comfortable in emotionally disengaged classes 

(such as Computer Science and Math) and have always felt out of my element in classes 

where I had to engage the emotional side of my nature. This class awaked some part of 

me and helped connect with a creative side of myself that my other classes did not 

speak to. I had trouble during the first few weeks, becoming flustered when I was called 

upon to speak, not always being to say what I was thinking. As the weeks passed, 

however, I became a little more collected and found myself thoroughly enjoying the 

class. It helped that Professor Martin always had time to talk and always made me feel 

very much at ease. Most importantly, this class made it much easier and also more 

pleasant for me to express myself in writing, and for that I am deeply appreciative. 


As a proud first-generation Latino-American, I have always had tremendous 

admiration for the American legal system. The legal system in Mexico, where I was born

and raised, is much more concerned with rights than it is with freedoms. On paper, that 

legal system is admirable. But in its attempt to protect individual rights, it has 

undermined commercial freedoms: because of tight regulations, it is difficult for the 

impecunious to start and run a business. This has held back the economy, leading to 

depressed wages and limited job opportunities. The American Legal system does a 

remarkably good job of balancing individual freedoms with commercial rights. Lawyers 

are necessary to maintain that delicate balance, and that is why I want to be a lawyer. 

It is also why I want to specialize in tax law. In order to function and to protect 

the rights of individuals, the government needs funds and it therefore needs to tax. At 

the same time, the American Tax Code, much like the American legal system as a whole, 

balances the need to fund civic institutions with the need to allow people to transact 

and generate wealth. It does this through a complex set of provisions, including 

allowances for business deductions, that ensure that the people and businesses in the 

highest tax-brackets can honor their tax-obligations while still providing the services 

that led to their prosperity. As Adam Smith wrote in 1776, when a tax-code is too rigid 

and punitive, revenues from taxes drop off and corruption displaces law. 

My desire to study at the University of Houston Law Center is in many ways a 

consequence of my admiration of the American Legal system. Renowned for many 

different strengths, the University of Houston Law Center is particularly well-known for 

its practical, no-nonsense approach to legal instruction. That is what I need. While I have

tremendous respect for theoretical jurisprudence, my objective is to help real people 

with real legal issues. I also want specialized, high-quality instruction in the area of tax 

law, since I want there to be as little delay as possible between my graduation-date and 

the time I can provide the best possible service for my clients. For this reason, there is 

no law school better suited to my needs or better able to help contribute to society than 

the University of Houston Law Center. 

I am always trying to improve myself. I spoke very little English before my arrival 

in this country at the age of 16, but I did not let that hold me back. Even though this has 

led me to underperform academically, especially on standardized tests, I am a lifelong 

learning and I see problems as opportunities. Instead of letting my English-language 

difficulties hold me back, I focused on quantitative disciplines, eventually receiving my 

MBA with a specialization in finance. My studies in business school helped me 

understand my native country’s economic difficulties and have helped me understand 

the deep importance that the American legal system has had in this nation’s continuing 

success. With the benefit of a University of Houston Law Center education, I can be a 

part of that success and can help others be a part of it as well. I thank you for 

considering my application. 

Supplementary Essay (Law School Application)

I live in Houston Texas (specially, in 77017), which is in many respects a diverse 

and dynamic city. In a city of this size, there are inevitably many pressing issues; and in a 

city as culturally rich and diverse as Houston—as blessed by a wealth of different 

cultures and as cursed by the manifold difficulties striking equitable balances between 

so many different viewpoints---state legislators have awesome responsibilities. It is their 

responsibility to make sure that the school board does its job, that city workers do their 

jobs, that hospitals, parks and basic public services are in working order. Further, state 

representatives must see to it that municipal workers do their job while also seeing to it 

that their district is hospitable to business. And it is proverbially difficult for 

representatives (or officials of any kind, for that matter) strike this balance. Our state 

representative in 77071 is Mary Ann Perez. Frankly, I myself have very little information 

about Representative Perez, so I cannot pass judgment. But her website 

(http://votemaryannperez.com/) provided next to no information about her views, 

which I found disconcerting, especially since one’s state representative is in many ways 

one’s go-to when one has problems within one’s own community. Obviously senators 

and congresspersons, having as they do both local and nation-level responsibilities, 

cannot be expected to respond promptly to strictly local problems. And precisely 

because state-representatives are there to step into that breech, it is especially helpful

to know who one’s state representative is and how well he/she represents your 

interest. 

The American Dream (College Application) 

The American Dream can be summed up in one word: opportunity. The essence 

of Americanism is opportunity. Everybody has the opportunity to improve their lives. 

People are not locked into pre-existing social arrangements. Whatever circumstances 

they are born into, they are able to change and improve their lives. That is what the 

American Dream is. 

And it is not just a dream: it is to a considerable extent a reality. It isn’t simply 

that, in the United States, people are supposed to be able to change their lives for the 

better. They actually do so; it is practically a regular occurrence. In fact, although it may 

not be the norm, it is certainly a norm.

In this country, people whose parents did not go to college themselves 

frequently go to college and make good lives for themselves, with the result that, 

although they themselves started out at one social tier, their own children are born into 

a higher social tier, with correspondingly more opportunities and fewer obstacles to 

capitalizing on those opportunities. And there are similar opportunities for change and 

growth for those who are born into higher social tiers: they are not required, as they are 

in other cultures, to repeat what their parents did. They do not have to assume a 

position in the proverbial ‘family business.’ They can strike out on their own. I personally 

have known children of investment bankers who became writers and professors, and I 

have known children of professors and writers who became investment bankers—or 

who went on to start some entirely new business or even new kind of business. 

The American Dream isn’t simply about being able to move up within some preexisting 

social structure. It is also about being able to change that structure. Bill Gates 

came from a well-to-do family. He could have just completed his degree at Harvard and 

more or less just coasted, working as a computer scientist or financier. But he didn’t just 

coast; he invented a new product—nay, a new kind of product: the personal computer. 

And he didn’t just invent that product: he made it available to literally billions of people 

for a modest price. 

Bill Gates is not alone in this. Think about todays’ IT and tech-giants: Mark 

Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sergei Brin, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos. All of these people are

Americans, either by birth or by naturalization, and all of them chose to ‘set up shop’ in 

the United States. 

Why did they make this choice? Because this country is hospitable to big ideas 

and to big innovations. It is hospitable in a purely logistical, as in, the laws of this 

country do not discourage it and even encourage it, there being tax-breaks for start-ups 

as well as government-sponsored business-education programs. 

I would not go so far as to say that at the moment I embody the American Dream. 

But I aspire to embody it. I want to become a dentist. I have always wanted to become a 

dentist. People ask me ‘Why do you want to become a dentist, Jonathan?’ And I have no 

ready response. I honestly believe that, just as certain people are cut out for finance and 

others for the military, so some people really want to help others by fixing their teeth. I 

believe that an interest dentistry is a specific evolutionary deviation---that such an 

interest pre-dates tens of thousands of years the existence of dentistry in anything like 

its modern form 

In any case, given my passion for dentistry, it is clear how I need the American 

Dream to come through for me: I need the opportunity to learn the craft of dentistry; I 

need to learn how to help people as a dentist; and I therefore need to attend the 

possible schools and programs. And the American Dream is coming through for me in 

that respect. Because I have worked so hard at my classes and been rewarded with 

correspondingly high grades, it is overwhelmingly likely that I will have the privilege of

eing accepted to one of the prestigious institutions to which, in pursuit of my own 

private American Dream of becoming a dentist, I am seeking admittance 

Geico Job Application (Application Essay) 

Describe how you exemplify 3 of GEICO’s core values: Integrity, Service, and 

Growth. (450-600 words) 

Geico is a household name, and it’s a household name because it provides people 

with a valuable service. It allows people to wake up in the morning knowing they are 

protected. That is why I personally get my car insurance from Geico: it provides a great 

product at a great price. 

Geico wouldn’t be the company that it is if it didn’t live up to its core values: 

Integrity, Service, and Growth. Geico could probably charge a little more or provide 

slightly less good service and still get away with it. But it doesn’t: and that’s integrity. 

Geico could probably just ‘coast’. But it doesn’t: it is always on the go, always 

expanding: and that’s growth. And Geico doesn’t have to give back to the community; it 

could just keep its earnings and look the other way. But it doesn’t, because it cares: and 

that’s service.

And that is how I try to be. I never take the easy way out. If I have a tough 

assignment, I do it. And if I can’t do it initially, I will just keep trying. When I was young, 

schoolwork didn’t come easy to me. I struggled. At first, I was so frustrated that I 

thought I’d never make it to high-school, let along through it. But I kept my nose to the 

grindstone. And I not only became a decent student: I became an outstanding one, 

achieving great prowess in science and math. That is why I am heading to the University 

of Georgia, where I will complete my degree in biology. 

I take pride in my integrity. I take pride in doing the right thing, even when the 

going gets tough. I take pride in it because it’s the right thing to do and also because 

down the line it is the prudent thing to do. I could have just slacked off. But I didn’t, and 

now I am reaping the rewards. And I’m proud of that. 

But I’m also humble. Nobody can go it alone. Everybody needs somebody. I had 

good people on my side: good parents and good friends. But not everybody is so lucky. 

Whenever I pass by a homeless person, I realize that. That is why I spend at least one 

day a week doing charity work with my Church. We provide food, medicine, and 

emergency shelter to the homeless. We really make a difference, and I’m part of that— 

and I’m proud of that. I am proud to serve my community. 

But the thing that I most proud is my ability to grow. When life gives me lemons, I 

make lemonade. If I have to do a tough assignment, I do it. I don’t wallow. Sometimes 

the first step is pretty hard; sometimes I have to conquer insecurities to get the ball

olling. But I always face my fears; I don’t let them stop me. I just what has to be done. If 

I’m out of shape, I start exercising. If I don’t know the material for a class, I study harder. 

If my work isn’t good enough, I work even harder than before. And I do this because 

that is how to grow: one grows by challenging oneself, by doing the things that one has 

trouble with—until they become the things that one is best at! That is why I am about, 

and that is what Geico is about. And I really respect that about Geico, and that is why I 

would be honored to work for you. 


When I was 15, my older brother Enrique was arrested for capital murder. I was 

stunned. Enrique was my hero. I had a tough childhood, and he was always there for 

me. I did not know how to emotionally process his arrest. There were too many 

ambiguities. In his way, Enrique was a fiercely moral person: tough, loyal, a ‘stand-up 

guy,' as they say. But he wasn't afraid to break the law. That was part of what made 

admire him. He did what he wanted to do. He wasn't a ‘square'; he was ‘cool.' Most of 

all, he never backed down from a fight. 

This time was no exception. He was insulted and he fought back, as he always 

did. But something went wrong. What was supposed to be a fist-fight turned into a gun-

fight, and the other man died. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know the specifics. But that’s the 

gist of it. Within a year of his arrest, Enrique pled guilty to capital murder. He never 

discussed the specifics of the incident, nor did he ever claim that he was innocent. I got 

the feeling that he realized that he had made a terrible mistake and wanted to salvage 

what was left of his life. 

What made this traumatic for me was not that my hero had taken a fall. It was 

that he stopped being my hero, because I now saw where his machismo and heroism 

led—nowhere. I had been following in Enrique’s footsteps—skipping school, being a 

‘tough guy’, having no well-defined goals beyond being ‘cool.’ The life ‘plan’ of mine 

imploded the night Enrique was arrested. But I didn’t have an alternative plan. And for a 

while, driven by rage at my brother, and maybe even at myself, I redoubled my efforts 

to be a ‘tough guy', like my brother. But it didn't quite work, and I didn't know what to 

do. People talk about their ‘mid-life crisis': I was having a mid-adolescence crisis. 

Meanwhile, Enrique was stoically silent. It was painful for me to visit him, but I 

did. He said little, just asked me how I was. I always got the feeling there was something 

he wanted to say to me but couldn’t. I think he sensed that I hadn’t changed enough to 

understand what he wanted to tell me. 

I went to college, but my performance was half-hearted and lack-luster. I left 

college and worked at some dead-end jobs to support myself. I would occasionally touch 

base with my old friends, but I no longer identified with them. They were on the exact

same path as Enrique, living in the same fantasy-world as him, and I knew how foolish it 

was. As time went by, I heard of arrests, followed by long sentences. I knew there was 

nothing there for me. But I also knew that there was no future for me stacking boxes, 

making Subway sandwiches, or whatever it was I was doing that month to pay the bills. 

I realized that I had to make a choice. I could wallow or I could have a future. 

Really, there was no choice. Enrique’s situation made that clear to me. I decided to reenroll 

in college. I visited my brother and told of my decision. “Me allegro,” he said, 

smiling for the first time in all the years I’d visited him. “Estas tomando la decision 

correcta.” (I’m glad. You’re making the right decisión.) He opened up to me for the first 

time in years, if not ever. He told me that he had struggled in school because of a 

learning disability—a fact I’d never known. He told me about his tough guy routine was 

really about cowardice---that, if he had actually been tough, he would have focused on 

preparing for a career, instead of being the neighborhood tough guy. 

This hit me like a ton of bricks, and it removed any last hint of doubt that I might 

have had about going back to college. I plunged back into my studies. There was only 

one problem. I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life! But I was suddenly 

seized with a desire to help my brother, and I decided to do just that while figuring out 

my own situation. I found out that my brother would serve the minimum amount of 

time if he got a college degree. I told him about it, and he was reluctant at first. But he

did it, passing the entrance exam with flying colors. He got his degree a few years later, 

and last month he was paroled and now getting his master’s in psychology. 

Meanwhile, I did respectably in college, though I still didn’t quite know what my 

end-game was. I knew I liked business and had a knack for numbers and finance. I had 

several lucrative jobs in banking and finance, and eventually got my MBA. But 

something was missing. I was happy, but I wasn’t fulfilled. I came to realize that, even 

though I enjoyed finance, it wasn’t what I valued. I wanted to make a difference, and 

because of the situation with Enrique, I had some idea where a difference could and 

should be made, and I knew that I had to become a lawyer to make that difference. 

Incarceration is mainly about punishment and deterrence, but to some extent it 

is about rehabilitation. My brother the genuinely rehabilitative thread that runs through 

the criminal justice system, and he latched onto it. And now he’s a better person. Before 

he went to prison, he had no intention of contributing to society, and now he does—and 

he’s doing so. He made a terrible mistake and had to be punished. But situations are 

multidimensional, and penal systems should make allowances for that fact. Time spent 

in prison, even for serious crimes, should not be completely wasted. Of course, prison 

should not be pleasant. But as I discovered from my brother’s case, when people go to 

prison, they usually do so mainly because they don’t know what else to do. They feel 

‘stuck’ and trapped and powerless, and they lash out. Most prisoners will eventually 

leave prison, and we owe it to society to make sure that they can function in society.

Prisoners don’t give back to society; ex-prisoners sometimes do. I would like prisons to 

have more of a ‘correctional’ component than they currently do. To do that I not only 

need to be a lawyer but need high-level guidance. Unlike other law programs, UNT 

Dallas is genuinely dedicated to instructing students in both the academic and practical 

aspects of the practice of law; and unlike other law programs, UNT Dallas is very 

genuinely concerned to improve the criminal justice system. For these reasons, no law 

school is better to help me in my ambitious and idealistic quest than UNT Dallas. Thank 

you for your consideration. 

The Crypts Beneath Rome (College GenEd) 

At first, I was put off by these crypts. It seemed ghoulish to put dead people on 

display and to construct elaborate monuments out of their bones. I initially felt as 

though I was walking into a serial killer's lair, the mummified monks being trophies and 

neatly stacked piles of bones being a kind of tribute to a kind of satanic anti-deity. But 

that impression after a few minutes. I came to see that whoever it was who did this was 

not mocking these monks; he was trying to give them the reverence that they deserved. 

It also occurred to me that the people who placed these monks on displace and who 

stacked the bones of the deceased had known for years, as colleagues and friends; and, 

so I came to feel, they kept them here, in this crypt, instead of burying them, because

they didn't want them to disappear. I recently experienced loss; that person was buried 

in the ground; and when I visit her grave, it is not very satisfying. At least here, we are 

seeing these people in familiar surroundings, in their ‘work' clothes (their habits), and in 

a setting that physically resembles the monasteries and churches where they spent their 

lives. 

So far as I can tell, the primary purpose of these displays was to display reverence 

for people who had dedicated their lives to a life of holiness. These people had spent 

their lives serving the Church, and in being entombing in these crypts, wearing their 

religious vestments, they were, as it were, being given permanent positions within the 

Church. Instead of being buried in the ground, like so much waste, they were allowed to 

continue to preside over a kind of church, albeit a subterranean one. To us, this seems a 

bit strange. But now that I have recovered from the initial shock of seeing this seemingly 

ghoulish display, I now regard it as decidedly ‘human’ and sentimental. We live in a 

post-industrial, economics-driven society, where people have little value over their 

stock-portfolio. When people in our society die, they are given a brief sendoff and 

promptly forgotten, with nothing to remember them by except some featureless 

tombstone. These monks did not discard their dead so cavalierly; they treated them as 

friends who had fought the good fight and who were not to be forgotten. At least part 

of the reason for this, I believe, is that they, unlike us, were convinced of the existence 

of an after-life; and for that reason, I suspect, they did not want to simply bury their

dead, like so much garbage, since they believed that they would meet up with them in 

the afterlife. 

In contemporary American society, this behavior would be regarded as deviant 

and is probably illegal, unless special permits are obtained, to dispose of the dead in this 

way. The purpose of such laws is presumably to prevent contagion, and they probably 

succeed in that respect. (It comes to mind that unsanitary burial practices probably 

helped spread the Great Plague.) But the price we pay for all of this law and order and 

public health is a rather antiseptic and corporate existence, in which our relations with 

others are either hostile or purely transactional. Another reason why such displays 

would not be accepted in contemporary American society is that all strong expressions 

of religious sentiment are discouraged. To be sure, people attend Church, Temple, and 

the like. But those are relics of a bygone time, and we live a world that is political, rather 

than religious. For us, the state is what matters. We follow its laws; religious 

organizations are tolerated only when they are in line with the state. This obviously has 

many advantages. But there is an important difference between Church and State. The 

state is not a source of meaning; it exists to make life convenient, not to make it 

meaningful. The church is a source of meaning, at least in principle. I believe that people 

are more religious than they know and have a need for religion, and I believe that 

political ideologies are beginning to assume some of the functions that religions use to 

have.

In terms of what I found most striking and memorable about my visit, it was, 

quite simply, the skulls---the hundreds upon hundreds of neatly piled skulls. The 

mummified monks, in their habits, had a certain dignity; but the skulls seemed so 

anonymous. I once saw a picture of a giant pyramid of skulls from the massacres in 

Cambodia under Pol Pot, and this is that this reminded me of. It made me think of my 

own mortality. I don’t know if that is the message that the creators of this display 

intended to convey, but in retrospect, I believe that it is. The displays sent an ambiguous 

message. On the one hand, they sent the message that the dead live on. On the other 

hand, they sent the message that this life is short and we mustn’t forget it. 

I also found the display intimidating. Each of those skulls was once a person, like 

me, but in their current condition they are so many paperweights. It made me feel small 

and disposable, and I suspect that the people who designed the crypt meant to have 

that effect on people. They wanted to instill a certain humility in crypt-visitors by 

sending the message life is a loaned to us, not given. Another message it sent is that 

they were so comfortable with death—so comfortable with the idea that we are all just 

skulls in the long run---that they wouldn't have had too many compunctions about 

killing someone who did not share their views. I do not know if that message was 

intentionally sent or if it is even accurate. For all I know, they may have been models of 

tolerance and benevolence. But that is indeed the message that was sent.

In conclusion, this display evoked mixed feelings. On the one hand, their lives, 

unlike ours, clearly embodied a deep concern for meaning and spirituality. On the other 

hand, the ghoulishness of the display, and the comfortableness with death expressed by 

it, made me uncomfortable and made long to my upbeat, secular existence. 

Breaching Patriarchal Throwness with a Hatpin (Feminist Theory/Politics) 

A Feminist Breaching Experiment 

A ‘breaching experiment’ involves a person’s deliberately behaving in an 

unconventional way so as to elicit overt manifestations of the psychological forces 

underlying that convention. To take a rather trivial example, someone might choose to 

greet people by hugging them instead of shaking hands. If some people responded with 

extreme enthusiasm, that would suggest that the purpose of handshake-greetings is 

indeed to suppress certain kinds of emotion that people would rather act on. If, on the 

other hand, other people reacted with horror or fear, that would suggest that the 

purpose of handshake-greetings was to provide people with a sense of safety and 

security, possibly from perceived external threats and also possibly from emotions of 

their own that they would rather keep tightly controlled. 

The concept of a breaching experiment was first articulated by Harold Garfinkel 

(1967), who described their purpose as being to disrupt the “background expectancies”

(1967, p. 36) that members of a given society use as “a scheme of interpretation (1967, 

p. 36)”, the objective being to bring to the surface the prejudices, presumptions and 

emotional commitments in which those expectancies are rooted: “Procedurally”, 

Garfinkel (1967, p. 37) writes: 

[I]t is my preference to start with familiar scenes; to produce and sustain 

bewilderment, consternation, and confusion; to produce the socially structured 

facts of anxiety, shame, guilt, and indignation; and to produce disorganized 

interaction should tell us something about how the structures of everyday 

activities are ordinarily and routinely produced and maintained (Garfinkel 1967, 

pp. 37-38). 

In other words, by acting counter-conventionally, one causes people to act in 

ways that expose the forces responsible for the conventions being violated. 

One problem with breaching experiments is that they may be too successful in 

the way of provoking emotional responses. For example, with the just-described 

hugging-experiment, some people, even men, might respond to unsolicited hugs as acts 

of aggression, and others, perceiving them as advances, might respond with 

inappropriate counter-advances. Such an experiment, unless designed and conducted 

judiciously, could alienate people and possibly even have legal consequences. This is

clearly true of breaching experiments that involve violations of law or of religious 

customs. However arbitrary a given convention might seem, it is likely to have deep 

emotional roots, and it may be unwise to violate it. 

It was with such considerations in mind that I designed my own breaching 

experiment. I wanted my experiment to involve my acting in a way that is natural to me 

and expresses who I am, while also involving unconventional and deliberately 

provocative behavior. At the same time, I wanted my experiment to be ‘safe’, in the 

sense that I would not myself or others in physical or legal harm and would not alienate 

family or professional associates. I thus decided on a rather simple but (so I believe) 

powerful experiment: During one of my biweekly online sessions with my ESL (English as 

a Second Language) Instructor, I would wear a giant, explosively bawdy Victorian Era 

women's hat that I have, and I would see how my rather straight-laced and, in every 

sense, stereotypically masculine instructor would respond. 

Some background information is necessary here. I am an artist, and as an artist, I 

focus on jewelry and other decorative clothing-relating. Of course, jewelry, though worn 

by both sexes, is primarily for female use, Jewelry, especially when worn by women, has 

multiple functions, including enhancing beauty and also expressing individuality. Much 

the same is true of decorative women's clothing, as the photo below illustrates:

When meeting with my ESL Instructor, I wore a very similar hat, complete with a 

gauzy vale that half hid my face. I had not told my instructor that I would wear this hat, 

and prior to this point, I had not behaved at all unconventionally. When my instructor 

saw the hat, he looked startled but quickly suppressed this reaction and quickly 

returned to a semblance of his usual, tightly controlled, highly professional demeanor. 

As was his wont, he did focus on the lesson, refraining from asking questions that fell 

outside its scope, including questions about my odd attire. 

However, I noticed throughout the lesson that he seemed troubled. Ordinarily, 

he never missed a beat, always being quick to understand and cogently respond to my 

queries. This time, however, he did a number of double-takes, obviously due to

distraction. Also, a certain levity that he usually had, a certain gaiety underlying his 

professionalism, seemed absent. He usually seemed to enjoy our lessons, but this time 

his performance, though adequate, seemed labored and stilted. 

Apart from a one or two oblique and cryptic remarks (along the lines of ‘that's 

quite a chapeau you're wearing today, Moneerah!'), my tutor (let's call him ‘John') did 

not explicitly mention my hat and didn't ask why I was wearing it, and therefore had to 

rely on non-verbal queues for information about his mental state. Nonetheless, it was 

clear from his stilted and uncharacteristically anxious behavior that he was put off, more 

so than could be explained by my wearing an out-of-date article of clothing. Also, female 

acquaintances of mine, even professional acquaintances, responded very differently 

when I ‘surprised’ them, as I occasionally did, by wearing similarly unconventional items 

of clothing or jewelry. They responded with laughter and merriment; they were not ill at 

ease. 

For this reason, I believe that John's reaction was largely gender-based and was 

rooted in extremely archaic views of his concerning gender-relations. Some background 

about this particular kind of hat will help put this in context. In 19th Century Britain, 

custom strictly forbade ‘proper' women from wearing clothing that was at all revealing, 

and women thus wore clothing that completely hid their bodies along with hats that 

shrouded their faces. At the same time, their clothing, though concealing their bodies, 

was also flamboyantly feminine. Whereas women today often dress much like men---

often wearing jeans. T-shirts, sneakers, and other gender-neutral, functional items of 

clothing---Victorian and Edwardian Era female attire was always expressively and, one 

might even say, outrageously feminine: Dresses were exaggerations of the female 

figure, tightly cinched in at the waist and exploding everywhere else; and women would 

seldom even leave the house without wearing highly decorative hats, like the one 

depicted above. Thus, women were expected to act with extreme self-restraint in 

matters relating to physical relations while also being expected to be hyper-feminine. 

At this time, women in Britain (and elsewhere) did not have the right to vote and 

had limited economic and legal rights. They relied largely on their husbands for 

protection, making them vulnerable to unwanted advances from men and even outright 

assault. As a result, some women took to stabbing male assailants with the oversized 

pins that kept their oversized hats affixed to their hair. (See the photos above.) Because 

of the resulting ‘hatpin peril,' hatpins came to be seen as weapons and it became illegal 

for women to wear oversized hats. So by a curious reversal, these exaggeratedly and 

oppressively feminine hats became instruments of a rather lethal feminine backlash 

against men, which happened to coincide with the beginnings of the women's suffrage 

movements in the United Kingdom and the United States. 

While the ‘hatpin peril' was still in progress, the spectacle of a young woman 

wearing an oversized hat, complete with a hatpin, must have aroused complex emotions 

in men. On the one hand, they were surely drawn in by the exaggeratedly feminine

clothing and intrigued by the suggestively half-hidden faces. On the other hand, they 

were threatened by the prominently displayed hatpins and very likely also saw these 

hatpins as acts of defiance against a patriarchal, arousing outrage. But these feelings of 

indignation were probably experienced only half-consciously, since the hat pins, being 

internal to clothing styles that represented submission to the patriarchy, were 

correspondingly ambiguous. 

The results of this breaching experiment are best understood in terms of 

Heidegger’s concept of throwness. Dasein has both active and passive modalities, and 

throwness is one of Dasein’s passive modalities. According to Heidegger, Dasein, though 

fundamentally free, has to exercise its freedom within the constraints set by physical 

health, emotional ties to others, and social conventions and rules. One is, as it were, 

‘thrown’ into a world that comes ready-made with various pre-existing facts, including 

facts relating to one’s physical condition as well as rules and preconceptions as to how 

people, oneself included, must act. 

There are both objective and subjective aspects to throwness. The objective 

aspects include out facts relating to society and also to one’s biological condition. The 

subjective aspects include the psychological mechanisms, including the prejudices and 

preconceptions, involved in one’s reactions to these objective facts. A person’s having a 

certain anatomical configuration is an objective fact and thus corresponds to the 

objective dimension of that person’s throwness into the world. That person’s

psychological reaction to his or her anatomical configuration---how that person ‘owns’ 

his or her biological condition---corresponds to the subjective aspect of his/her 

throwness. 

Heidegger refers to the subjective component of throwness as “fallness”: “ 

‘Fallenness’ into the 'world'”, Heidegger writes, “means an absorption in Being-withone-another, 

in so far as the latter is guided by idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity” (Being 

and Time, p. 220). The idea is that one is “fallen” in so far as one is simply ‘drifting’ with 

the flow of one’s whims and other people’s expectations. Thus, fallenness is not an 

inevitable consequence of throwness; rather, it is a consequence of throwness only to 

the extent that one is not taking charge of own existence. This is what Heidegger is 

referring to when he writes: 

Thrownness is neither a 'fact that is finished' nor a Fact that is settled.1 

Dasein's facticity is such that as long as it is what it is, Dasein remains in the 

throw, and is sucked into the turbulence of the "they's" inauthenticity. 

Thrownness, in which facticity lets itself be seen phenomenally, belongs to 

Dasein, for which, in its Being, that very Being is an issue. Dasein exists factically 

(Being and Time, p. 220).

My breaching experiment involved a disruption of an objective aspect of John’s 

‘fallenness’ by way of a disruption of his ‘throwness.’ In this context, John’s ‘throwness’ 

consists in his coming into existence in a world that is, at least historically, largely 

patriarchal; and his falleness in this context consists in his psychological acquiescence to 

any preconceptions associated with that state of affairs. By wearing this hat, complete 

with its simultaneously decorative and lethal hatpin, I was sending an ambiguous yet 

disruptive message to John, that message being to the effect that the patriarchy is 

crumbling. This message aroused feelings of fear and concern and, for that reason, so I 

suspect, caused John to rethink some of his preconceptions about women. 

I should point out that John’s reaction to the breaching experiment was complex; 

and though this was in part due to the ambiguous nature of the message I was sending, 

it was also due, I suspect, to the complex nature of John’s belief- and value-systems--- 

my point being that John may not quite be the paradigm of patriarchal conservatism 

that this discussion might lead one to believe. Indeed, if John's feelings had been 

uniformly patriarchal or chauvinistic, he might have dismissed the situation, regarding it 

as a joke or as a mere oddity, and not been troubled or ‘disrupted' by it. Somebody who 

is a dyed-in-the-wool male chauvinist doesn't feel threatened by female lawyers or 

doctors, as he simply dismisses them without further thought. This, I think, illustrates an 

important fact about breaching experiments, namely, that they operate on veritable

‘breaches' or faultlines---places of conflict--in a person's worldview, a corollary being 

that breaching experiments are ineffective where there are no such fault lines. 

Significantly, I believe that, even though it was my intention only to disrupt John's 

worldhood, my breaching experiment may also have disrupted my own. As a 21st 

Century female, I have internalized various post-patriarchal views as to how women 

ought to behave. Women in our time are expected to behave in much the same way as 

men, and in many contexts are even expected to dress in much the same way (e.g. the 

go-to outfit for both genders is sneakers, jeans, and a t-shirt, whereas in previous times 

the genders had very different go-to outfits). When I donned my Victorian Era Hat-andhatpin, 

I felt myself thrust back in history to a time when women were expected to 

dress, act, and think very differently from men. Most women today, myself included, are 

glad that we live in times that are so much more enlightened in terms of gender 

relations. However, I did find myself very much enjoying wearing this exaggeratedly 

feminine, Victorian Era chapeau, and the reason, I believe, is that it allowed me to 

express a side of myself and my womanhood that women are discouraged from 

expressing in our time. Women are now expected to be straightforward and 

businesslike; and this costume-hat was anything but straightforward and business-like, 

and almost demanded that I act and think with a degree of coquetry and subterfuge 

that would otherwise be impossible. The experience of psychologically time-traveling 

back into this other era, when women were forced to be so different from men, coupled

with the fact that I was able to make this psychological journey with far more ease than 

I would have thought possible, disrupted some of my own post-patriarchal views about 

womanhood and gender-relations, as it led me to think that, whereas in the past, 

women were forced to be different from men and thus forced to suppress an important 

side of themselves, women in our time are forced to be the same as men and thus 

forced to suppress a different equally important side of themselves. 

It is fitting that my breaching experiment ended up having such complex and 

ambiguous results, since the ambiguous nature of gender and gender-relations lies at 

the center of my breaching experiment. While representing women's submission to a 

patriarchal order, jewelry and other decorative attire, such as my chapeau, have also 

represented pride and self-individuation. Throughout history, large, proud displays of 

jewelry and fashion have been a way for all people to advertise their wealth and status. 

But for women, they have been especially important in this respect, as they have been 

historically been barred from owning property in many civilizations, and jewelry for ages 

functioned as a socially acceptable way to concentrate wealth while also adorning the 

body. But jewelry can sometimes have a hidden utility for women. Historically excluded 

from the owning and operating of weapons, women have often had to improvise their 

own means of defense against attackers (typically of the male variety), a prime example 

of this being the famous ladies’ hat pin that we have been discussing, which, as we have 

discussed, became a self-defense strategy against “mashers” (sexual predators) on the

emerging public transportation systems of the early twentieth century. The historical 

significance of the resulting “Hatpin Panic” is that it led to increased awareness of 

violence against women, empowerment of women to travel alone, and helped initiate 

the women’s Suffrage movement. This piece combines the proud plumage of the 

peacock with a flash of danger at the barely-concealed combination of adornment and 

weapon. 

So we see that, within this simple garment, there is a great deal of historical 

significance and a great deal of ambiguity. What I did not count on, when designing the 

experiment, was that my own worldview (and worldhood) would be breached. In 

retrospect, however, I should have expected as much, given that it is hard for one 

person to disrupt another’s worldhood without disrupting one’s own, since both parties 

are likely to have many preconceptions in common owing to their both being ‘thrown’, 

to use Heidegger’s term, into a common set of historical circumstances. 

Cornell West on Malcolm X (Politics) 

There are many perspectives to take on Malcolm X. Some see him as a hero, a 

champion of civil rights; others see him as excessively concerned with race and 

therefore unnecessarily divisive. Some see him as someone who wanted to build a new 

and better society; others see him as a hate-filled demagogue who wanted to destroy

more than the wanted to create. In his article Firebrand, Professor Cornell West takes 

the position that Malcolm X was a hero. Indeed, there is not a single critical word of the 

man in this article, the purpose of which, it would appear, is not to discuss specifics 

relating to Malcolm X’s vision for the United States or to his achievements, but simply 

rather to cast his decidedly complex legacy in an unambiguously positive light. 

Malcolm X (1925-1965) was an African Civil Rights Activist working at the same 

time as Dr. Martin Luther King. However, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King had very 

different views as to what the African American community should strive for and what 

methods they should use. Martin Luther King wanted integration and equality. Malcolm 

X wanted separation, famously saying “no white man wants integration, no sane black 

man wants integration.” Born Malcolm Little, he changed his last name to “X” as a way 

of casting off his ‘slave name’, as he called it, and also as a way of sending the message 

that African-Americans had been stripped of their identity by white Europeans and had 

to reclaim it. 

Also, whereas Martin Luther King believed civil disobedience to be the road to 

social reform, always urging his followers to refrain from violence, Malcolm X was 

skeptical about the effectiveness of peaceful methods, his famous rallying cry being “by 

any means necessary.” 

Finally, whereas Martin Luther King was a Christian minister, Malcolm X 

converted to Islam, becoming the head of the Nation of Islam. Malcolm X rejected

Christianity and embraced Islam because he saw the former as white and the latter as 

black or at least as compatible with the interests of blacks. 

Not even Malcolm X’s bitterest detractors deny the magnitude of his 

accomplishments. Thanks in large part to Malcolm X’s leadership, the Nation of Islam 

demands and receives integrity, self-respect, and respect for others from its millions of 

followers. Firebrand does not discuss Malcolm X’s specific accomplishments, however. 

Indeed, it does little in the way of stating facts as to who Malcolm X was, when he lived, 

or what he achieved. It consists rather of skillfully rendered characterizations of this 

great and controversial figure. 

We would expect no less of Cornell West. After receiving his Ph.D. in philosophy 

at Princeton, Cornell West held professorships in Religious Studies, Philosophy, and 

Africana at a number of prestigious institutions including Princeton and Harvard. Dr. 

West’s work focuses on race relations between whites and blacks in America, his 

position being that despite the appearance of racial progress, blacks are still 

discriminated against, albeit in subtler ways than in times past. Indeed Dr. West says as 

much in this article. He describes what he believes Malcolm X would say to Martin 

Luther King if the two met today: “Brother Martin,” says Malcolm X, “Marcus Garvey 

and others have told us the vast majority of black people will never be treated with 

dignity. They will always live lives of ruin tied to the prison system…Some [African

Americans] may go all the way to the White House, but even there’s still going to be 

crack houses, the prison-industrial complex, unemployment getting worse and worse.” 

Cornell West approves of these sentiments. Indeed these are his sentiments, 

expressed in his words, albeit through the character of Malcolm X. We don't know that 

Malcolm X would have agreed, especially given that Malcolm X did not have fixed views 

and towards the end of his life expressed guarded optimism about race relations. 

There are several places in the article where Cornell West ‘quotes’ Malcolm X, 

except that it is not the historical Malcolm X who is quoted, but rather a fictionalized 

version of Malcolm X created by Cornell West. “What do you think would happen after 

400 years of slavery and Jim Crow and lynching”, West ‘quotes’ Malcolm X as saying. 

“Do you think you would respond non-violently? What’s your history like? Let’s look at 

how you have responded when you were oppressed. George Washington—guerilla 

fighter!” These might have been Malcolm X’s sentiments, but they are West’s words, as 

is each of the other ‘quotations’ of Malcolm X that occurs in the article. 

It is an extremely effective technique, and West uses it very skillfully. It wasn’t 

until after I’d had some to process the article that I realized that it was less about what 

Malcolm X thought and more about what Cornell West thinks. 

And that’s what this article is really about. It's not a historical piece about 

Malcolm X. (Apart from the date of Malcolm X's death, the only biographical fact about 

Malcolm X that is referenced is that he was a Sunni Muslim leader.) Nor is it an

exposition of Malcolm X's thoughts. (Malcolm X is not actually quoted even once. Nor is 

it said what specifically he believed.) Malcolm X is eloquently characterized. “He was 

music in motion,” West writes. “He was jazz in motion…He could be lyrical and funny, 

and in the next moment, he’d shift and push you against the wall.” These are 

characterizations, not statements of historical fact. It is being said what kind of person 

Malcolm X was, not what he did. The same is true of each of the descriptions occurring 

in this article. 

This raises the question: Is this article really about Malcolm X? This article 

expresses very definite views, and although it attributes those views to Malcolm X, it 

doesn't site any quotations or other historical data, opting instead for evocative 

hypotheticals and broad characterizations. This suggests that Malcolm X is functioning 

as a foil for Cornell West's own views. This is not to denigrate Dr. West. Far from it—his 

literary powers are in full evidence here, as is the depth of his convictions. 

Fork etiquette (Anthropology) 

Dinner Fork 

When used in conjunction with a knife to cut and consume food in Western social 

settings, two forms of fork etiquette are common. In the European style, the diner keeps 

the fork in his or her left hand, while in the American style the fork is shifted between

the left and right hands. The American style is most common in the United States, but 

the European style is considered proper in other countries. 

Originally, the traditional European method, once the fork was adopted as a 

utensil, was to transfer the fork to the right hand after cutting food, as it had been 

considered proper for all utensils to be used with the right hand only. This tradition was 

brought to America by British colonists and is still in use in the United States. Europe 

adopted the more rapid style of eating in relatively modern times. 

European style 

The European style, also called the continental style, is to hold the fork in the left 

hand and the knife in the right. Once a bite-sized piece of food has been cut, it is 

conducted straight to the mouth by the left hand. For other food items, such as 

potatoes, vegetables or rice, the blade of the knife is used to assist or guide placement 

of the food on the back of the fork. The tines remain pointing down. 

The knife and fork are both held with the handle running along the palm and 

extending out to be held by thumb and forefinger. This style is sometimes called 

"hidden handle" because the palm conceals the handle. 

American style 

In the American style, also called the zig-zag method or fork switching, the knife 

is initially held in the right hand and the fork in the left. Holding food to the plate with 

the fork tines-down, a single bite-sized piece is cut with the knife. The knife is then set

down on the plate, the fork transferred from the left hand to the right hand, and the 

food is brought to the mouth for consumption. The fork is then transferred back to the 

left hand and the knife is picked up with the right. In contrast to the European hidden 

handle grip, in the American style the fork is held much like a spoon or pen once it is 

transferred to the right hand to convey food to the mouth. Though called "American 

style", this style originated in Europe. 

Hybrid style 

Etiquette experts have noted that the American style is in decline, being replaced 

in the United States by a hybrid of the American and European styles. In this style, the 

fork is not switched between hands between cutting and eating, and is also deployed 

"tines-up" as a scoop when convenient.

McClatchey on Race and IQ (Current Events) 

This assignment is a follow up to the McClatchey HS Race and IQ article and your 

first responses. My goal here is to make you question your initial reaction and challenge 

the way you approached the article and questions. At a minimum, I want to show you a 

different perspective to this - one that I argue is extremely important to understand. 

Questions - Please answer them in the text box below: 

1. Most people attack the student and his experiment as racist? Why? 

If you think it is actually racist - tell me what specifically about it makes it racist? 

Make sure you think about this before answering. If you do not think it is racist - 

why isn't it? 

I do not think it matters whether it is ‘racist’, whatever that means. What matters 

is whether it is a legitimate science project. A hypothesis is put forth (namely, race 

correlates with IQ). That hypothesis is either true or false. That is the only question that

matters. The psychology of the person who puts forth the hypothesis is irrelevant, 

unless it corrupts the way in which he attempts to answer the question at hand. 

Also, what exactly does it mean to say that this person is ‘racist’? If it means that 

he believes there to be non-trivial psychological differences between the races, then, 

yes, he is racist---but in that case, the charge that he is racist is trivial and questionbegging, 

since the very thing that he is trying to show that is ‘racism’, in this sense of the 

word, is empirically justified. 

Is he ‘racist’ in some other sense? Does he hate black or Hispanic? We don’t 

know. And for what it is worth, I rather suspect not. Somebody who hated them 

probably would probably simply accept some invidious stereotypical characterization of 

them, without bothering to look into the merits of that characterization. 

My guess, for what it is worth, is that he feels that his education has been 

compromised by people who have race-based agendas and whose primary agendas are 

not education-related in nature . 

But this point is entirely speculative, and the very fact that it is speculative 

confirms the emptiness of the allegation that this person is ‘racist.’ 

2. What if the actual results are true? What if there are actual IQ 

differences between populations of humans? Does this change how you view the

experiment and aftermath? In other words, do you still think it is racist? Or do 

you still agree that it should have been taken down? 

This person’s project concerns groups of people. But merit always has to be 

judged on person-by-person basis. Given only that I belong to some group of people 

whose members are unusually likely to be good physician, it does not follow that I 

personally am a good physician. And if I am applying for a position as a physician, my 

personal merits have to be assessed. It is irrelevant what the merits are of other 

members of some peer-group of mine. 

Also, it is never racist to look for answers to open empirical questions. The person 

who is doing this experiment is not prejudging anything. He is asking a question and 

citing relevant data. What is prejudicial is to denounce this person’s project as ‘racist’, 

without even seeing what the relevant facts. Obviously people who describe this person 

as ‘racist’ are assuming a priori that the results of the experiment will be unfavorable to 

people of color. If they were certain that the facts were on their side, they would 

welcome empirical inquiry into the matter. But they are so convinced that the data is 

unfavorable to their cause, that, before even examining that data, they denounce 

anyone, such as this student-scientist, who proposed to examine it. So the student is the 

least prejudicial of all of the parties involved, since his view is to at least wait and see 

what the data is before making assumptions as to what that data will show.

3. Most of you will have assumed that the student's conclusion is not 

true - meaning most of you think there are no IQ differences between human 

populations. How did you come to this conclusion? Do you have any evidence 

that points to this? Have you done any research on this? 

I myself did not come to that conclusion. There are obviously differences 

between individuals, and there are obviously differences between groups of people. 

Whether there are differences (relating to IQ) between different ethnic groups is 

another matter. But if one looks at the histories of different ethnicieis, and different 

sub-ethnicities, it is not so unreasonable to suppose that there are differences in IQ (and 

possibly in values) between different (sub)ethnicities. Consider the tiny nation of 

Scotland---it produced Hume, Smith, Maxwell, Reid, Scott, and many others who made 

massive intellectual contributions to civilization. Are we really so sure that Scots are 

configured in exactly the same way as members of each and every other ethnic group? 

To be sure, given only that the nation of Scotland produced great economists, 

whereas the nation of Samoa has not (to my knowledge), it doesn’t follow that Somoans 

are innately less talented at economics than Scots. But the supposition that there is 

some innate difference is one possible explanation, and it cannot be ruled out a priori.

4. Most of you agreed with the taking down of this experiment. Try to 

take the opposite position on it. Why is it a bad idea to shut down science and 

scientific experiments? It doesn't appear as if school officials had any evidence 

that points to his conclusion being incorrect - should they have shut it down 

without any research or discussion? 

The school officials are timid bureaucrats who are taking the path of least 

resistance. Today’s society being what it is, one will have less of an uphill battle on one’s 

hand if one shuts down ostensibly ‘racist’ projects than if one green-lights them. But I 

don’t agree with the decision. What about freedom of speech? What about freedom of 

thought? And suppose that this project, or some follow-up project, proved that blacks 

(some other group of color) had some intellectual aptitude that whites lack? Wouldn’t 

we want to know that? Couldn’t that fact possibly be of relevance to educational 

curricula? But if we pre-emptively prohibit such projects from being undertaken, we will 

never know. It is not possible to block off one avenue of inquiry without blocking off a 

number of intersecting avenues of inquiry. 

5. Whether or not you agreed with shutting down the experiment - 

answer this. If we disagree with something or perhaps have questions on

something - is there a better way to engage with it rather than shutting it down? 

Explain your answer. 

Yes there is. One can say: In protecting this student’s right to ask questions, we 

are protecting everybody’s right to do, including those whose viewpoints are opposed to 

this student’s. Also, the assumption embodied in not shutting down the project is that 

there will be mayhem of some kind—possibly even riots. But that, it seems to me, is a 

racist assumption. (In my personal experience, the people who responded the most 

adversely to supposed instances of ‘racism’ were whites who wanted to virtue-signal 

their non-racism.) 

Rubric 

10 points - Student demonstrates critical thinking; well thought out responses. All 

questions are answers in this manner. 

5 points - Student demonstrates critical thinking/well thought out responses in 4 

or less questions 

0 points - Student does not answer questions. Student answers questions with 

minimal effort. Critical thinking is not apparent in most answers.

Freedom of Speech: Its Scope and Limits (Politics) 

What are your initial reactions to what you read? 

My initial reaction was straightforward. A science project was done. It attempted 

to solve an anomaly (namely, why are people of certain ethnicities disproportionately 

well represented in an academic program designed for gifted students?). And that 

project put forth a prima facie reasonable (and data-consistent) hypothesis that, if 

correct, certainly would eliminate the anomaly. Is that hypothesis correct? I don’t know. 

But that is not the relevant question. The relevant question is: Is it sufficiently 

reasonable, and sufficiently explanatory of the data-set in question, that it ought to be 

considered? And the answer is ‘yes.’ 

Do you agree with the school taking down this science experiment? Why or why not? 

No, I don’t agree with what the school did. First of all, freedom of speech should 

always be protected. Freedom of speech does not protect speech that is intentionally 

taunting or aggressive or inflammatory. But this does not fall into that category; the 

results of sober, if politically incorrect, scientific investigations are ipso facto noninflammatory. 

It is only if people make them inflammatory—by politicizing them, usually

with inflammatory reactions of their own---that they become inflammatory. But in that 

case, it is the reaction to the original speech-act, not that speech-act itself, that is 

inflammatory and that therefore doesn’t deserve to be protected as free speech. 

In any case, if the schools’ policy is to encourage free thought and free 

discussion---which includes free scientific inquiry—then it should have suppressed this 

project. If the school’s policy is to suppress the truth in the interests of political or social 

stability, that is fine, but it must not then make a grand show—as this school almost 

certainly does—of being interested in ‘getting to the bottom of race relations in this 

country.’ Sometimes truth ahs to be suppressed, for reasons of civil peace and order. 

But, first of all, this is one of those times. Second, if that is what is being done, then the 

school has to be honest about it. Also, if the school is so afraid that members of the 

groups in questin will react violently, then that issue ought to be addressed. And if it 

doesn’t fear as much—which, in my view, it probably shouldn’t---then there is no need 

to suppress the project in the first place. 

Imagine you were this student's teacher. He comes up to you and poses this research 

question - he wants to know if there are differences in IQ between racial groups. How do 

you respond and why?

As a teacher, it is one’s duty to answer questions honestly, if not always 

accurately. (This assumes that the questions are relevant; if the question is irrelevant, I 

would not answer it, on the grounds that it is indeed irrelevant.) So that the question 

fell within the scope of the class I was teaching, I would answer the student by saying 

that reputable scholars, e.g. William Shockley and Francis Crick, have indeed generated 

data that is consistent with the hypothesis that there are disparities in intelligence 

between different groups. At the same time, I would point out that other reputable 

scholars have put forth other ways of modelling the data. Finally, I would say that IQtests 

are an extremely narrow and only limitedly reliable measure of intelligence, with 

the qualification that they do have some evidential value. 

Can you spot something potentially disingenuous with the newspaper article (Hint: It's 

something to do with the title)? 

Frankly, I thought that the article was fairly sincere and balanced. The title of the article- 

-- High school science fair project questioning African American intelligence sparks 

outrage---made the science fare project in question seem more tendentious and 

aggressive than it actually was. In and of itself, that project was fairly innocuous and 

embodied standard scientific practice. Imagine the following. Scientist X is studying a 

colony of ants and notices that the ants separate into different groups, with each group

specializing in some task that is of a different difficulty level from the tasks done by each 

of the other groups. In that case, if the scientist posited that those groups were 

populated by ants of different intellectual levels, he would just be using scientific sound 

judgment. In this case, the student-scientist is, arguably, behaving in much the same 

way. It is true that someone with a racist agenda could use that project to further his 

own aims, but the project itself was simply science. And science is often incompatible 

with our desires, as Darwin’s theory aptly illustrates. 

Defending Freedom of Speech (Ethics/Politics) 

What are your initial reactions to what you read? 

My initial reaction was straightforward. A science project was done. It attempted 

to solve an anomaly (namely, why are people of certain ethnicities disproportionately 

well represented in an academic program designed for gifted students?). And that 

project put forth a prima facie reasonable (and data-consistent) hypothesis that, if

correct, certainly would eliminate the anomaly. Is that hypothesis correct? I don’t know. 

But that is not the relevant question. The relevant question is: Is it sufficiently 

reasonable, and sufficiently explanatory of the data-set in question, that it ought to be 

considered? And the answer is ‘yes.’ 

Do you agree with the school taking down this science experiment? Why or why not? 

No, I don’t agree with what the school did. First of all, freedom of speech should 

always be protected. Freedom of speech does not protect speech that is intentionally 

taunting or aggressive or inflammatory. But this does not fall into that category; the 

results of sober, if politically incorrect, scientific investigations are ipso facto noninflammatory. 

It is only if people make them inflammatory—by politicizing them, usually 

with inflammatory reactions of their own---that they become inflammatory. But in that 

case, it is the reaction to the original speech-act, not that speech-act itself, that is 

inflammatory and that therefore doesn’t deserve to be protected as free speech. 

In any case, if the schools’ policy is to encourage free thought and free 

discussion---which includes free scientific inquiry—then it should have suppressed this 

project. If the school’s policy is to suppress the truth in the interests of political or social 

stability, that is fine, but it must not then make a grand show—as this school almost 

certainly does—of being interested in ‘getting to the bottom of race relations in this

country.’ Sometimes truth ahs to be suppressed, for reasons of civil peace and order. 

But, first of all, this is one of those times. Second, if that is what is being done, then the 

school has to be honest about it. Also, if the school is so afraid that members of the 

groups in questin will react violently, then that issue ought to be addressed. And if it 

doesn’t fear as much—which, in my view, it probably shouldn’t---then there is no need 

to suppress the project in the first place. 

Imagine you were this student's teacher. He comes up to you and poses this research 

question - he wants to know if there are differences in IQ between racial groups. How do 

you respond and why? 

As a teacher, it is one’s duty to answer questions honestly, if not always 

accurately. (This assumes that the questions are relevant; if the question is irrelevant, I 

would not answer it, on the grounds that it is indeed irrelevant.) So that the question 

fell within the scope of the class I was teaching, I would answer the student by saying 

that reputable scholars, e.g. William Shockley and Francis Crick, have indeed generated 

data that is consistent with the hypothesis that there are disparities in intelligence 

between different groups. At the same time, I would point out that other reputable 

scholars have put forth other ways of modelling the data. Finally, I would say that IQ-

tests are an extremely narrow and only limitedly reliable measure of intelligence, with 

the qualification that they do have some evidential value. 

Can you spot something potentially disingenuous with the newspaper article (Hint: It's 

something to do with the title)? 

Frankly, I thought that the article was fairly sincere and balanced. The title of the 

article--- High school science fair project questioning African American intelligence 

sparks outrage---made the science fare project in question seem more tendentious and 

aggressive than it actually was. In and of itself, that project was fairly innocuous and 

embodied standard scientific practice. Imagine the following. Scientist X is studying a 

colony of ants and notices that the ants separate into different groups, with each group 

specializing in some task that is of a different difficulty level from the tasks done by each 

of the other groups. In that case, if the scientist posited that those groups were 

populated by ants of different intellectual levels, he would just be using scientific sound 

judgment. In this case, the student-scientist is, arguably, behaving in much the same 

way. It is true that someone with a racist agenda could use that project to further his 

own aims, but the project itself was simply science. And science is often incompatible 

with our desires, as Darwin’s theory aptly illustrates.

1) Does contractualism deal with any of the above views? Yes. 

Contractualism obviously deals with the dying-promise situation. You entered 

into a contract with the person when you agreed to put flowers on that person’s 

beloved’s grave, and you are not contractually bound to carry out that promise. 

2) Would the contractualist approach undermine the QALY view? Yes. 

The QALY view is strictly utilitarian in nature and is therefore anti-deontological 

and therefore anti-contractualist. The QALY view is basically: if X’s death brings 

more net joy then X’s life, then don’t waste resources trying to save X. The 

contractualist position is: If you have a contract (whether explicit or implicit) with 

someone, then it must be honored, even if violating it increases overall welfare. 

And if somebody is alive, then others--- in particular, medical people from whom 

that person is seeking treatment---are likely to have contractual obligations to 

that person. 

3) Would contractualism ever answer specifically the ageism 

objection? The ageism objection to QALY is to the effect that it discriminates 

against people on the basis of their age. Contractualism would agree with the

ageism objection on this point. According to contractualism, a deal is a deal, 

whether the person has many good years ahead or few. And that is also, in effect, 

the import of the ageism objection. 

Shutter Island: A Social Scientist’s Perspective (Social Science/Media Studies) 

Ultimately, a social scientist (e.g. psychologist) would consider Shutter Island to 

be a good movie. But the operative word is “ultimately.” The movie is accurate if taken 

to represent people’s fears about the nature of psychiatry. The movie is inaccurate if 

taken to concern the specifics of the way in which psychiatry is currently practiced or 

indeed was practiced in 60 years ago. But embodied in these very factual inaccuracies is 

a certain truth, albeit an encrypted and distorted one, as to the ways in which psychiatry 

can go awry. 

Let us briefly discussed each of these points. First of all, it is very unlikely for 

psychiatrists to be in the practice of murdering or experimenting on their patients. In 

that respect, the movie is simply inaccurate. But it is very common for some people, 

especially those who are prone to disorders of a psychotic—specifically, paranoid--- 

bent, to believe that physicians, specifically, psychiatrists are ‘out to get’ them. A 

personal acquaintance of mine was schizoaffective and was horribly delusional; and one

of her most persistent and striking delusions was her belief that the psychiatric 

community was actively conspiring to destroy her life—specifically to lobotomize her 

and imprison her in a “dungeon”, to use her term. If taken as a kind of externalization of 

such fears, Shutter Island is accurate. 

Moreover, even though psychiatrists are exceedingly unlikely to engage in actual 

plots against their patients, psychiatrists can become vindictive and ill-willed towards 

their patients. I have known many people who, though sane, were depressed and 

sought help from psychiatrists, only to find that these supposed caregivers were 

incompetent and ill-willed. (And their ill-will, so these people told more than once, was 

a competence of their incompetence: these psychiatrists, it was alleged, felt foolish for 

not able to do their job of healing the patient and took out their consequent feelings of 

impotence on the patient. I don’t know whether this was the actual dynamic; but it rang 

true, frankly, given my own experiences with psychotherapists.) 

To sum up: if taken to concern people’s fears about psychiatry, Shutter Island is 

accurate; and to that extent, some social scientists, specifically those of a psychoanalytic 

bent, would probably think highly of the movie. If taken as a factual description of 

psychiatric practice, Shutter Island is inaccurate; and to that extent, social scientists, 

especially those of an empirical or descriptive bent, would not think highly of the movie. 

But if taken to concern the psychological dynamics sometimes embodied in the practice

of psychiatry, Shutter Island is, at least arguably, accurate; and to that extent, social 

scientists, especially those of a psychodynamic bent, would consider it a good movie. 

We have discussed what social scientists in general would think of this movie? 

But what about psychologists in particular? In effect, we have already answered this 

question. If taken as a strictly factual description of clinical practice, Shutter Island is 

inaccurate and that is how psychologists and psychiatrists would view it. If taken to 

concern people’s attitudes towards psychiatry, Shutter Island is accurate, within limits. 

And if taken to concern the ill-will that psychiatrists sometimes (though by no means 

categorically) have towards their patients, Shutter Island is at least arguably accurate u 

to a point. 

The Sad Case of Richard Cory: Analysis of a Poem (Literary Analysis) 

My reaction to the poem was one of shock, for the reason that the poem did 

such an effective job of describing a person who was utterly happy and well-adjusted on 

the inside but was suicidal and maladjusted on the inside. And this is what Robinson

wants readers to learn: no matter what a person is like on the outside, he can be totally 

different on the inside. More specifically, even if a person has all of the characteristics of 

a happy person---polite, well-adjusted, well-groom, chipper, light-hearted---he can still 

be unhappy. 

Richard Cory had everything going for him—and yet he committed suicide. 

Richard Cory was wealthy: “And he was rich, yes, richer than a king” (Stanza 3, line 1). 

He was educated: “And admirably schooled in every grace” (Stanza 3, line 2). He was 

good-looking and fit: “Clean favored, and imperially slim” (Stanza 1, line 4). In short, he 

seemed to be the very picture of success—and indeed may actually have been a 

success. If somebody has everything going for him, then he would seem to be the very 

opposite of someone who has any good reason to commit suicide. And yet Richard Cory 

did just that. 

In addition to having everything going for him, Richard Cory was by all accounts 

decent and polite. “And he was always human when he talked” (Stanza 2, line 2): in 

other words, he was the opposite of condescending and spiteful. He was the opposite of 

someone who was embroiled in his own pain. Also, people who seethe with hatred for 

others often do so because they seethe with hatred for themselves: but that is exactly 

how Richard Cory wasn’t. By all appearances, he was a large and good person. Also, “he 

was quietly arrayed” (Stanza 2, line 2)., showing that he had composure---another sign 

of a large and well-adjusted person.

In addition to having everything going for him and being decent and polite, 

Richard Cory also had an easy-going and chipper manner: “still he fluttered pulses when 

he said, ‘Good-morning,’ and he glittered when he walked” (Stanza 2, lines 3-4). Indeed, 

he positively radiated good-cheer and grandeur, this being why “Whenever Richard Cory 

went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him” (Stanza 1, lines 1-2). And 

yet---he killed himself. 

Richard Cory reminds me of Anthony Bourdain. Anthony Bourdain had 

everything going for him: He was a self-made success who was at the top of a profession 

that he thoroughly enjoyed being a part of. He was even a good athlete, having become 

a jiu-jitsu master. His shows were light-hearted and clever: there was nothing in them to 

suggest depression. The same is true of his books. And yet one day, out of the blue and 

without any warning, he killed himself. Not only did he kill himself: he hanged himself, 

which requires planning and which he therefore did carefully and premeditatedly. What 

I learned from the Anthony Bourdain’s suicide is that how people are on the outside can 

be the opposite of how they are on the inside—more specifically, that no matter how 

happy they seem on the outside, and no matter how many reasons they have to be 

happy, they can still be suicidally unhappy—and that is exactly what I learned from the 

sad tale of Richard Cory.

Why College Admissions Should Continue to be Based at least in 

part on Standardized Test Scores (Public Policy) 

In her article “Is it finally time to get rid of the SAT and ACT College Admissions 

Tests”, Valerie Strauss claims that by basing admissions-decisions on SAT and ACT 

scores, colleges and universities are somehow perpetuating some kind of systemic bias 

against those who are underprivileged. To this end, Strauss cites the fact that people 

from higher socioeconomic strata outperform those from the lower socioeconomic 

strata on SAT’s and ACT’s, the implication being that those tests ‘rig’ college admissions 

in favor of those who are already well-to-do. In this paper, a case will be made that 

Strauss’s suggestion, if implemented, would have disastrous consequences: instead of 

resulting a fair college admissions system, it would eliminate a metric that helps 

educators evaluate their own effectiveness and would consequently result in worse 

education for everybody, rich and poor alike. 

The first point is that if economically underprivileged people are 

underperforming on a test, the right response is to educate them better; it is not to get 

rid of the test. Consider the following hypothetical. In country X, each citizen must, upon 

turning 18, to two years of some kind of physical labor; and tests of physical ability are 

used to determine exactly who does what. If a given person cannot do a single push-up, 

then that person is not given a job that requires enormous amounts of physical

strength. If someone cannot run more than ten feet without passing out, that person is 

not assigned a job that involves great physical endurance. In country X, wealthy people 

are more healthy than poor people, simply because wealth people in X have better 

medical care than poor people, are better nourished, drink cleaner water, and so on. 

Consequently, wealthy people in X vastly outperform poor people on these tests of 

physical aptitude. How should the government respond? Should it declare these 

physical tests to be ‘unjust’? Should it get rid of all tests that expose the differences in 

fitness and health between rich and poor? No. That would be the worst possible course 

of action, as it would hide the injustices in question. The right response is to keep using 

those metrics and to improve the performance of those whose performance is currently 

substandard. 

Strauss’s reasoning, if relativized to this hypothetical, would require the 

government of X to get rid of these fitness tests. This would make it hard to know whose 

fitness-levels had to improved and would perpetuate the whatever it was that was 

lowering the fitness levels of poor people. It would also make it hard to know whether 

attempts improve health and fitness were effective. Similarly, if the SAT’s and ACT’s 

ceased to be used, the result would simply be to cloak—not to fix—whatever it was that 

was responsible for the differences between rich and poor in respect of their scores on 

these tests. Hiding inequalities does not eliminate them; it exacerbates them and makes 

them harder to correct.

Further, Strauss’s suggest that we scrap the SAT’s and ACT’s would deprive 

universities of an enormously valuable metric. On average, people who score high on 

these tests stay in college and do well in college, whereas people who score low do 

poorly and are highly likely to drop out. See Figures 1-3. 

Figure 1 First Year GPA by SAT Score 

Adapted from “The Use of Clustering Models and Constructive Methods to 

Explain Professional Trajectories and Other Economic Drivers,” by June Gerard, 2016, 

Proceedings of the Scottish Mathematical Society 119, p. 61. Reprinted with permission. 

Figure 2 Graduation Rates by SAT Score

Adapted from: “Regression Models in Educational Statistics,” by Barry Posner, 

2017, Modern Statistics and Statistical Methods 54, p. 66. Reprinted with permission. 

Figure 3 

Figure 1 Graduation Rates by First-Year GPA

Adapted from: Belnap, Noel. Towards Higher Graduation Rates. Community 

Scholar, 16(7), 13. 

Figures 1-3 show that those who do well on the SAT tend to well in college and 

also to graduate, and they also show that those who do poorly on the SAT tend to do 

poorly and not to graduate. For what it is worth, this is consistent with my personal 

experience. To my knowledge, the people I know from high school did well on the SAT’s 

and ACT’s are flourishing in college, and those who did poorly are struggling and some 

have even dropped out. 

Straus writes: “For years, questions have been raised about the validity and value 

of SAT and ACT scores in college admissions. The College Board has paid for research 

touting the “predictive value” of SAT scores in forecasting how students will do in 

college and beyond, but critics have questioned the research.” We have just seen 

statistical proof of the claim that they are predictive of academic success. To be sure, 

there are enormously gifted people who do poorly on standardized tests and there are 

people who lack substance who do well on them. These are not perfect tests by any 

stretch of the imagination. But given a thousand people who scored in the top 5% on 

the SAT’s and a thousand who scored in the bottom 5%, the former group is much more 

likely to yield college-ready students than the latter, and universities would be foolish to 

spurn the use of SAT’s and other such metrics.

Also, granting that standardized fail to measure creativity and insight and 

granting that their diagnostic value is indeed quite limited, they are one of the few 

meaningful data-points that college admissions have. Grades often reflect biases, either 

positive or negative, on the part of instructors, and ‘extra-curricular activities’, though 

laudable, are not little relevance to scholarly potential. 

I have a much older sister, and when she was growing up, my parents did not 

have enough money to send her to a good school. As a result, her education suffered 

and her SAT scores were mediocre. When I was growing up, my parents had the 

resources to send me to a good school, with the result that I did well on the SAT’s and 

am currently doing respectably in college. Part of what my motivated my father to earn 

more was his knowledge that he needed to do so to give me a good education, and my 

sister’s less than optimal test scores. 

Strauss tries to muddy the waters by linking the SAT’s to cheating on the part of 

people of means: “Is it finally time for colleges and universities to stop requiring 

applicants to take the SAT and ACT college admissions exams?” Strauss asks at the 

beginning of her article. “The question, long asked by testing critics, is being revived 

with new urgency amid the explosive college admissions bribery scandal rocking the 

world of higher education. As part of an investigation they called Operation Varsity 

Blues, federal prosecutors last week charged some 50 people, including famous 

Hollywood actresses and wealthy financiers. The alleged schemes included hiring

impostors to take SAT and ACT exams, or rigging the test by asking for additional time to 

take it even when that wasn’t necessary.” 

This is not good reasoning. Obviously, these people were wrong to cheat, but the 

right response is not to get rid of the SAT but simply to make sure that people don’t 

cheat on it. Suppose that people bribed officials to be given life-saving medication that 

was in short supply. By Strauss’s reasoning, we should get rid of the medication. By my 

reasoning, we should prevent fraudulent use of it. 

In the United States, College admissions are to a large extent determined by 

one’s performance on the SAT or ACT. To be sure, one’s scores on these tests are not 

the only relevant factor, but admissions-committees give them enormous weight. 

Someone with low board scores will have a tough time getting into a top school, let 

alone being scholarship money. Is this right? Should one’s performance on a four-hour 

multiple-choice test determine where one goes to college or even whether one does so? 

Author and education-writer Strauss answers with a resounding "no", and she brilliantly 

defends her answers in her Washington Post Article "Is it finally time to get rid of the 

SAT and ACT college admissions test?" According to Strauss, SAT and ACT scores are no 

less a reflection of socioeconomic privilege than of actual merit. In defense of this, she 

cites the statistical fact that people from impoverished backgrounds do worse on these 

tests than people from wealthy backgrounds. Lest it be thought that wealthy test-takers

might simply be more intelligent than poor ones, Strauss points out that the wealthy, 

unlike the poor, have the option of hiring private instructors to boost their performance 

on such tests. “[K]ids from poor families do worse than kids with money”, Strauss 

writes. “Wealthy parents can provide benefits that many poor families can’t, such as 

tutors [and] learning opportunities.” For good measure, Strauss reinforces this already 

weighty claim by quoting Bob Schaeffer, Director of Public Education at Fair Test. 

“How”, Schaeffer asks, “can any college admissions office tell whether the ACT/SAT 

score they receive reflects an applicant’s actual test-taking skills or whether it was 

inflated by test-coaching ‘steroids’?” (Strauss, 3) This is consistent with my personal 

experience. When raising my oldest sister, who is twelve years older than I am, my 

parents had little money and therefore little to invest in her education. When raising 

me, my parents did have resources and invested heavily in my education. As a result, I 

outperformed her on the SAT by a hefty margin, her Math score being 450 and mine 

being 750. My sister is actually mathematically gifted; but because of her straitened 

circumstances, she was forced to teach herself material that I had the privilege being 

taught by qualified instructors. My sister's low SAT scores closed off a lot of 

opportunities that would have been available to her had she had better instruction. She 

is obviously not an isolated case, and I am therefore inclined to agree with Strauss that 

SAT and ACT scores are quite as much a measure of wealth as they are of merit. Less 

than one month ago, Strauss points out, the FBI arrested over 50 wealthy financiers and

famous actors for either hiring impostors to take their SAT's for their children and for 

other forms of SAT-related fraud. This shows us that people with money have the option 

not only of inflating but of falsifying their children’s test-scores; and according to 

Strauss, it constitutes an additional reason to marginalize the relevance of SAT and ACT 

scores to college admissions. Once again, Strauss quotes Bob Schaeffer, according to 

whom the wealthy have used a wide variety of ruses to falsify their children’s scores: 

“Those…schemes”, writes Schaeffer, “have included hiring impersonators to take the 

exams; making phony “disability’ claims to gain extra test-taking time; paying to change 

wrong answers or fill in missing responses; and bribing proctors and test-site supervisors 

to ignore these illegal acts.”(Strauss). I attended an elite private school in Thailand, and 

many of my classmates were given unlimited amounts of time to take tests because 

their parents had bribed psychiatrists to claim that they had medical conditions, such as 

ADHD, that warranted such dispensations. It was disturbing to me to see friends of mine 

cheat their way into having high test scores. 

“In some cases,” Strauss writes, “test administration in an entire country has had 

to be canceled at the last minute because of credible cheating allegations.” (Strauss, 2). 

In 2017, the SAT's were canceled in Thailand, when it was discovered that a number of 

students had been using high-tech glasses to have the answers fed to them. I remember 

a friend of my sister’s sobbing when she found out that she would not able to take the 

test. In situations where cheating is rampant, those who choose not to engage in it are

penalized for their own integrity; and this, as Strauss points out, is yet another reason 

why SAT and ACT scores should be optional for college applicants. 

Strauss's arguments are compelling. Money can be used to inflate or even falsify 

SAT and ACT scores. So long as college admissions are based on such scores, people 

from wealthy families have an unfair advantage and those who have the integrity not to 

cheat are at an unfair disadvantage. The poor will continue to be unfairly deprived of 

the blessings of a college education so long as college admissions are based on SAT and 

ACT scores, and Strauss is therefore right that making these tests optional would do 

much to level the playing field. 

Being a Voter in Texas (Current Events) 

Be specific. 

Why it is important to know about who represents you in the Texas Legislature. 

I live in Houston Texas (specially, in 77017), which is in many respects a diverse 

and dynamic city. In a city of this size, there are inevitably many pressing issues; and in a 

city as culturally rich and diverse as Houston—as blessed by a wealth of different 

cultures and as cursed by the manifold difficulties striking equitable balances between

so many different viewpoints---state legislators have awesome responsibilities. It is their 

responsibility to make sure that the school board does its job, that city workers do their 

jobs, that hospitals, parks and basic public services are in working order. Further, state 

representatives must see to it that municipal workers do their job while also seeing to it 

that their district is hospitable to business. And it is proverbially difficult for 

representatives (or officials of any kind, for that matter) strike this balance. Our state 

representative in 77071 is Mary Ann Perez. Frankly, I myself have very little information 

about Representative Perez, so I cannot pass judgment. But her website 

(http://votemaryannperez.com/) provided next to no information about her views, 

which I found disconcerting, especially since one’s state representative is in many ways 

one’s go-to when one has problems within one’s own community. Obviously senators 

and congresspersons, having as they do both local and nation-level responsibilities, 

cannot be expected to respond promptly to strictly local problems. And precisely 

because state-representatives are there to step into that breech, it is especially helpful 

to know who one’s state representative is and how well he/she represents your 

interest. 

Three Takeaways from The Young Turks’ ‘Iceland does the Unimaginable’ 

(Current Events)

Takeaway 1: In the US, bankers seem to have an almost special status. This may 

be a consequence of our nation’s high regard for wealth. Or it may be a consequence of 

the fact that they use their immense wealth to influence legislation and lawenforcement. 

Takeaway 2: In the US, regulators rationalize their failure to prosecutor bankfraud 

on the grounds that, because banks are so big, doing so could disrupt the 

economy. But the real reason is likely that these regulators are ‘on the pad’, i.e. have 

been bought off. 

Takeaway 3: The spuriousness of this excuse on the part of regulator’s is 

evidenced by that fact that in Iceland, where they sent their top bankers to jail for fraud, 

the economy picked up as a result. 

Three Takeaways from WSJ Video about the European Union 

One reason that the Economic Union was created in order to bind nations 

together in such a way that it would not be in their interest go to war with each other. 

Thus, it was at least in part the traumatic experience of World Wars I and II that led 

Europe to see itself as needing to be economically unified. 

Another reason for establishing the EU was to consolidate the various European 

economies into a single super-economy that would be competitive no the world market.

Because the EU comprises so many different economies and because it requires 

various different governments to agree on monetary policy, it takes a very long time to 

make decisions, with the result) that it cannot act quickly enough in crisis situations. And 

this is what happened with Greece: Greece couldn’t pay its debts, and because the EU 

couldn’t act quickly enough to contain the situation, Greece’s economy dragged down 

the other economies of the EU with it. 

The Works of Modern Art (Art History) 


A Paradigm of the Art Nouveau Movement 

New Statendam 


Lawn Tennis 



A Paradigm of the Art Nouveau Movement

“Art Nouveau is an international style of art, architecture and applied art, 

especially the decorative arts, that was most popular between 1890 and 1910. A 

reaction to the academic art of the 19th century, it was inspired by natural forms and 

structures, particularly the curved lines of plants and flowers.” 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Nouveau 

There is much truth, but also much falsehood in this definition of ‘Art Nouveau’, 

as we will now see in our analysis of a classic case of that movement Divan Japonais. 

Created by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in 1892, Divan Japonais is a poster for a 

fashionable nightclub in Paris. Divan Japonais is an example of art nouveau. Like all 

artistic movements, art nouveau is better defined through examples than through 

words, but works belonging to this movement tend to be characterized by the use of 

“long, sinuous, organic lines” (https://www.britannica.com/art/Art-Nouveau). Here is an 

example of such a work: 

This work bears obvious similarities to Divan Japonais:

for example: 

And each work bears obvious similarities to other paradigms of this movement, 

Or, to take another example:

Interestingly, all of these works are similar have a decidedly ‘Japanese’ quality, as 

we can see when look at paradigms of classic Japanese paintings:

Or, to take another example:

What all these works have in common is a curious mixture of starkness, 

representational realism, two-dimensionalism, along with the fact that they depict 

people who are affecting very deliberate poses, much like actors in Kabuki theatre. 

Let us now focus on Divan Japonais: 

The iconic elements in this print are the graphic elements---the actual drawings. 

(Iconic representation is representation by virtue of resembling. A drawing of a hand 

resembles a hand and represents a hand for that reason. The express ‘Abo’s hand’ does 

not resemble Abod’s hand and represents said hand conventionally, or ‘symbolically’, 

and therefore non-iconically.) So the woman is an iconic representation (of a woman); 

her hat is an iconic representation; the blackness of her dress is an iconic representation 

(of the blackness of a dress); and so on. 

The words at the top of the poster are symbolic (conventional) representations 

(they denote a Parisian hotspot). There are no indexical representations (unless the

painting itself is considered to be an indexical representation of the artist’s activity of 

depositing paint/ink on a canvass). 

The tension in Divan Japonais is more in the narrative (the message) than in 

either the form (the structure of the message) or the coding (use of encrypted 

messaging techniques). The narrative involves a highly well dressed woman, who clearly 

sees herself as an elegant grand dame, sitting next to a rather defeated looking man, 

who does not quite self-conceptualize as a member of the upper class and who does not 

have the upper hand in this situation. In the background there is another woman, 

similar to the first, with a proudly and unnaturally upright posture. The tension, I 

therefore surmise, lies primarily in the narrative. The fact that the woman is in the 

foreground, with the defeated looking man in the background, is arguably a coded 

message to women that at this nightclub, they will be treated as VIP’s. The fact that the 

defeated looking man is sandwiched between two hyper-proud women reinforces this 

message. 

The color-schema is hyper-coded, in that the one woman is dressed in black and 

the other in white, with a beige man in between them, as though the women were tagteaming 

him or, alternately, as though the one woman’s seeming innocence 

(represented by the whiteness of her clothes) was a mask covering up manipulativeness 

(represented by the blackness of the other woman’s clothes). The shapes of the man 

and two women are literal and therefore under-coded; and the color of the clothes of

the background woman—the white of her dress and the contrasting blackness of her 

gauntlets—is moderately cooded, in that it is both literal and also symbolic (of her being 

both good and bad or, more likely, of her appearing good while being a kind of predator, 

whose prey is this man or men of his ilk). 

This work, with its clear lines and clear visual message, overlaid on a sinister 

undercurrent, is characteristic of much work in the Art Nouveau tradition, for example: 

and also, interestingly, of classical Japanese art, for example:

This last painting has clean lines and a forthright mode of exposition, but the 

figure depicted in it is cartoonish and contorted, almost a mockery of a person. much 

the same is true of the figures in Divan Japonais the same way, though in a more 

understated way. 

New Statendam 


Art Deco, sometimes referred to as Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture and 

design that first appeared in France just before World War I.[1] Art Deco influenced the 

design of buildings, furniture, jewelry, fashion, cars, movie theatres, trains, ocean liners, 

and everyday objects such as radios and vacuum cleaners.[2] It took its name, short for 

Arts Décoratifs, from the Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels 

modernes(International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts) held in 

Paris in 1925.[3] It combined modernist styles with fine craftsmanship and rich 

materials. During its heyday, Art Deco represented luxury, glamour, exuberance, and 

faith in social and technological progress. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Deco

This definition of ‘Art Deco’ is weak and vague, and we shall do much to improve 

it right now, by analyzing a classic example of Art Deco work, often referred to as “New 

Statendam.” 

Created in 1928 by Fernand Leger in 1928, this poster is an advertisement is for 

the New Statendam Holland-American shipping line. This work is an example of the art 

deco movement and also has heavy cubist influences. Art deco is a style of art that 

involves the use of clear lines, well-defined and often exaggerated geometric forms, 

crisp and starkly mutually contrasting colors, and an emphasis on functionality and 

purpose, as opposed to subtleties of meaning. In this respect, this posters (henceforth 

‘New Statendam’) is a paradigm of the Art Deco movement:

It becomes clear why this poster is so quintessentially Art Deco when we 

compare with other Art Deco paintings and illustrations, for example: 

And: 

And, finally:

In all four of these works, we see an emphasis on clearly defined concepts, heavy 

use of well-defined geometrical figures, and an unflinching emphasis on functionality. 

Each of these paintings omits nuances of color, as well as nuances of meaning, so as to 

focus on shapes and on shape-related functions. Note how well-defined the Empire 

State building is and how crisply it contrasts with the background. Notice in the 

illustration of the gentleman that his facing is missing, even though his body-shape and 

the cut of this clothes are done with geometrical precision: the message being sent 

there is that function is what matters, not subjectivity. Much the same is true of the 

other two works, including New Statendam: 

What is striking about New Statendam is that although it is an advertisement for 

a cruise ship, it emphasizes the functional aspects of the vessel in question: the pipes,

with smoke gushing out of them, and what appear to be fuel tanks---all represented in a 

proudly geometrical manner, as though it were a factory that were being sold, or a 

freight vessel, not a cruise-line. This seems to reflect a certain optimism of this age and a 

faith that it had in mechanization. 

The only symbolic (purely conventional and therefore non-iconic) representations 

in this poster are the words. There are no indexical elements, unless the work itself is 

regarded as an indexical representation (i.e. as a representation by way of being an 

effect) of the artist’s activity. There is of course plenty of iconic representation, the most 

conspicuous ones being the drawings of the pipes belching smoke, all uniformly jutting 

up, as though they were soldiers fighting for the cause of industrial progress. 

The narrative seems to be: Hop on board on the future by booking a cruise with 

us. The form is scarcely distinguishable from the narrative, in that the narrative concerns 

the industrial efficacy of this vessel and the form consists of well-defined, seemingly 

functional geometrical figures. The coded message seems to be that if one doesn’t book 

passage on this ship, the future will pass one by. 

The smoke bellowing out of the smokestacks seems to be heavily coded, in that it 

has multiple messages, including the future is with this ship and also the future is toxic 

and noxious. The smokestacks (if that is the right word) seem to be moderately coded, 

in that while they are serving largely as literal representation, they also have ‘ulterior’ 

meanings, the main one being the vessel in question is a kind of method of transport to

modernity. The color and shading on the smokestacks seem to be literal representations 

of actual color and shading and are therefore examples of undercoding. 

Art Deco is similar to cubism, in its heavy use of geometry and, more subtly, in its 

nihilistic undercurrents. But Art Deco, involving as it does clear illustrations of shapes 

and of other purpose-related aspects of objects, is ideal for advertisements, often being 

used to this end, with results that, despite their starkness, are logical and elegant, for 

example: 

As this last piece illustrates, Art Deco is ultimately less about nihilism than it is 

about progress and functionality. 

Lawn Tennis 


As I’ve said before, “the Mod generation”, contrary to popular belief, was not 

born in even 1958, but in the 1920s after a steady gestation from about 1917 or so. 

Now, Mod certainly came of age, fully sure of itself by 1958, completely misunderstood

y 1963, and in a perpetual cycle of reinvention and rediscovery of itself by 1967 and 

1975, respectively, but it was born in the 1920s, and I will maintain this. I don’t care who 

disagrees with me, and there are dozens of reasons that I do so —from the Art Deco 

aesthetic, to flapper fashions (complete with bobbed hair), to androgyny and subtle 

effeminacy, to jazz.” 

― Ruadhán J. McElroy 

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/art-deco 

According to this quotation, Art Deco is characterized by ‘subtle effeminacy’ and 

‘androgyny’ and, so it is suggested, lacks the dignity of a ‘serious’ artistic movement. In 

this paper, we will see how false this characterization is. Indeed, we need only so much 

as glance at some paradigms of Art Deco illustrations to see as much, for example: 

Created by A.M. Cassandre in 1932, this work (henceforth “LT”, short of “Lawn 

Tennis”) is a poster-advertisement for a tennis tournament:

Hence the wording on LT: “Grande Quinzaine Internationale de Lawn-Tennis” 

(“Grand Two week Lawn-tennis Tournament”), these words, along with the 

supplementary words in the header and footer positions, being the only symbolic 

(conventional, non-narrative, non-indexical) elements in LT. 

LT is quintessentially ‘Art Deco’, with its crisp, futuristic lines and proudly 

geometry-based, mathematical mode of representation. Notice that the centerpiece of 

this work is the tennis ball---appropriately represented by a perfect sphere---with the 

player, the only human being represented in this work, being reduced to a geometrical 

shape, stripped of a face and of a distinctive identity. This is typical of Art Deco work. 

(See Paper 2, specifically the representations of Bat Man and the well-dressed 

gentleman, neither of whom has a face but each of whom is otherwise represented with 

geometrical precision.) 

Note also the line of the tennis net---how it forms a perfectly uniform horizon 

that practically bisects the ball. 

The narrative here is that tennis, and by extension all human endeavor, is a 

mathematical game, not a vague spiritual endeavor. 

As previously stated, the symbolic (narrative) components of this work are 

confined to the words. And, as is the case with all art, there is no indexical component,

unless the work itself is taken to be an indexical representation of the activities of the 

artist. As for symbolic representation, there is plenty: the ball resembles and thereby 

represents a ball; the man resembles and thereby represents a man; and so on. 

In the case of this work, the tension seems to be concentrated in the form, with 

the ball sphere being almost perfectly bisected by the horizon formed by the top of the 

next, all juxtaposed with a blank-faced, automaton-like human being. The narrative is 

fairly innocuous, its message basically being that tennis is being played. The coding 

seems to be to the effect that the ‘game’ of tennis is not so much a game as it is a 

matter of utter seriousness, comparable in its purposiveness to rocket-building or 

mathematical discovery. There is a dark energy—a mixture of optimism about industry 

and economics, coupled with spirituality—that informs this work and that informs Art 

Deco work in general. Consider the following four Art Deco paradigms:

They all involve perfect symmetries, the absence (sometimes by way of omission, 

sometimes by way of deliberate effacement) of human subjectivity, clearly defined 

lines, an emphasis on functionality, sometimes to the exclusion of human welfare, an 

extreme confidence in science and industrialization, and an attitude of energetic,

mathematically tinged optimism towards the future. What is striking about LT is that it 

treats a leisurely pursuit, the playing of tennis, as though it were comparable to 

industrial construction or scientific research, and it does this by using starkly 

geometrical forms and by omitting or anonymizing any human beings who might be 

involved, these techniques being representative of Art Deco work in general, granting 

that not all such work is quite as rigidly geometrical or as correspondingly inhuman. 

Art Deco is very much a product of its time, this being the early 20th Century. 

During this time, there was great faith in industrial progress and in the power of science 

and technology to improve both the technology and human life. There was also a 

decreased faith in religious faith and in subjectivism generally. Also, Art Deco, with its 

clean lines and generally utilitarian orientation, is ideal for advertising and has therefore 

often been used to this end—and still is to this day, for example:

Art Deco is an enduring style, because it doesn’t flood the mind with extraneous 

information and appeals to a clean-burning aesthetic, similar to, and possibly also 

exemplified by, the work of architect Frank Lloyd Wright: 

Student-passage and my revision thereof (Pedagogy) 

hi i need editing this passage please and rewording things 

There are many times in life where we run into a problems trying to figure things 

out whether at work or at school.and psychologist have come up with many different 

ways as to how to get over the stumbleing block and address the problem. If I was the 

head of a problem solving team and my team members ran into a problem. The frist 

stragety I would try to use to help get my team around the block is the heuristic 

stragety. This stragety is reffered to as the thinking strategie . where we reduce the 

number of options to make solving the problem much faster and easier. Another type of

stragie I would try to use is an algorithm. An algorthem is stragety that uses step-by-step 

intructions to get to the answer. An algorthem would be useful in helping solve the 

problem because you are using step-by-step intruscutions and it can mostly likely get 

you the right answer. Trial and error can also be useful because it requires trying a 

number of different ways to get to the solution and helps rule out the soultions that 

don’t work. 

In life we have to do deal with many different kinds of problems. Some of these 

problems are external, meaning that they have to do with our circumstances, not with 

our personalities. But many of these problems are internal, meaning that they do have 

to do with our personalities and our ways of handling difficult situations. Psychologists 

help us with situations of the second kind. And even those of who are not psychologists 

often have occasion to put into practice the lessons that psychologists have to teach us. 

For example, psychologists have shown that seemingly unsolvable problems can be 

solved if, instead of being treated as indivisible units, they are broken down into small 

problems with known or easily identified solutions. This way of thinking is an example of 

a heuristic strategy—a strategy for dealing with complex or difficult situations. 

Psychologists have helped us identify many such strategies, and they have shown that 

our minds employ many such strategies, even without our consciously knowing it. A 

related concept is that of the algorithm. An algorithm is a well-defined step-by-step

procedure for generating the solution to a problem. (The rules that we learn in grade 

school for the division and multiplication of multi-digit numbers are examples of 

algorithms.) The concept of an algorithm has its origins in mathematical logic, 

specifically in the work of Turing and other logicians. But psychologists have discovered 

that we unconsciously use algorithms in order to learn and to problem-solve. 

Sometimes more creative or informal methods are needed to solve problems, one 

example being the proverbial method of trial and error. Trial and error obviously doesn’t 

always lead to success. But oftentimes it is the only road to success, and we often learn 

much from our failures. One of the benefits of this method is that, precisely because it is 

so uncertain to lead to success, it leads to valuable experiences that inform and enrich 

us. The discipline of psychology, like all scientific disciplines, develops largely (though 

not entirely) through the use of the trial-and-error method, and psychologists have 

done much to clarify its importance in our lives. 

In life we have to do deal with many different kinds of problems. Some of these 

problems have to do with our personalities and our ways of handling difficult situations. 

Psychologists have shown that seemingly unsolvable problems can be solved if, instead 

of being treated as indivisible units, they are broken down into small problems with 

known or easily identified solutions. This way of thinking is an example of a heuristic 

strategy—a strategy for dealing with complex or difficult situations. A related concept is

that of the algorithm. An algorithm is a well-defined step-by-step procedure for 

generating the solution to a problem. (The rules that we learn in grade school for the 

division and multiplication of multi-digit numbers are examples of algorithms.) 

Psychologists have discovered that we unconsciously use algorithms in order to learn 

and to problem-solve. Sometimes more creative or informal methods are needed to 

solve problems, one example being the proverbial method of trial and error. Trial and 

error obviously doesn’t always lead to success. But oftentimes it is the only road to 

success, and we often learn much from our failures. 

Summary and Analysis of Tomatoland (Politics/Current Events) 

Tomatoland, by Barry Estabrook, is about the tomato industry in Florida, where 

about 70% of American tomatoes are grown. The book carefully describes the inhuman 

conditions under which workers in this industry labor, and it also discusses the manifold 

health consequences for these workers (and to a lesser extent all tomato-consumers in 

the US) of the heavy-duty chemicals and pesticides involved in the growth of tomatoes 

in Florida. The author repeatedly points out that Florida tomatoes are extremely bland 

and unsavory, especially as compared with tomatoes grown without pesticides, the 

point being that all of this loss and suffering is for naught. The author also describes the 

failure of the legal system to improve any aspect of this situation: it ignores the fact that

slave labor is involved (and, indeed, heavily relied on); it ignores the abysmal working 

conditions of non-enslaved workers; and it ignores the adverse health effects of the 

industrial chemicals used in the process, which include sky-high cancer rates and 

limbless offspring. Finally, the author discusses some attempts that politicians and 

activists have made to remedy the situation, and he also discusses cases where people 

have produced quality-tomatoes without dehumanizing their workers and without using 

lethal chemicals. 

The book starts out by describing the origins of the American tomato industry. 

Tomatoes, like potatoes, were unknown to Europeans until the Spanish were introduced 

to them by the Aztecs and Incas. These tomatoes were small and did not have the 

smooth, near-spherical shape had by the tomatoes we currently use. The large, round 

tomatoes that we are familiar with are the handiwork of Alexander Livingston, an 

American entrepreneur and horticulturalist. Livingston first cultivated such tomatoes in 

the 1820s. Livingston’s distinctively round and succulent-looking tomatoes were a hit, 

and the American tomato-industry was born. 

In the 1870s, Florida became a tomato-producer, owing mainly to the fact that, 

thanks to recently built railroads, it was possible to quickly transport produce from 

Florida to the Northeast. Because of Florida’s climate, tomatoes can be grown there 

year-round. But with this qualification, so the author says, Florida is in many ways a 

terrible place to grow tomatoes. Because Florida is so hot, tomatoes have to be

drenched in chemicals to keep them from being eaten by vermin. (In cooler climates, by 

contrast, chemicals need not be used, at least not in such abundance, granting that 

year-round tomato-growth is not a possibility in such places.) 

The author then shifts his discussion to the various chemical used in the growth 

of Florida tomatoes, going into great detail about the staggering costs both to human 

life, especially (but not exclusively) those of the workers involved, and to Florida’s 

ecosystem. After discussing the damage done to various native species (e.g. alligators 

and herons unable to reproduce and dying in droves), the author carefully describes the 

plight of the workers involved. (In this context, the author is discussing people who 

‘choose’ to have these jobs.) If it rains, the workers cannot work and therefore aren’t 

paid. If there is moisture on the crops, they have to wait, without pay, until it dries 

before they can start working. On a good day, after working 12 hours, they are lucky to 

take home $70. Because they don’t have automobiles, they have no choice but to live 

near the tomato-fields, and landlords charge them outrageously high-rents, which eat 

up most of their salaries. They are often made ill by the chemicals they are handling and 

oftentimes cannot afford gloves or other basic protective gear. Because of these toxins, 

their children are unusually likely to be born with severe defects, including not having 

limbs or genitalia. But these workers don’t have insurance and therefore can’t pay for 

medical treatment for themselves or their children. And if a worker so much as 

complains of illness while on the job, he is likely to be fired and left without any source

of income. Because the workers are undocumented, they are not protected by unions 

and, indeed, have minimal legal protections of any kind. 

The workers’ lack of legal protections brings the author to what I found to be the 

most poignant and informative part of the book: the discussion of the huge role of slave 

labor involved in the Florida tomato-industry. Many of the people picking tomatoes in 

Florida are veritable slaves. The companies that own the fields have agreements with 

human-traffickers who supply them with these workers, the latter having been 

abducted and forced to work, with no benefits and minimal pay, under the most brutal 

conditions. If they try to escape, they are beaten or killed. 

In the last part of the book, the author describes attempts that people have 

made to improve the situation. He talks about various civil rights and legal activists who 

are trying to improve working conditions, as well as purge the entire industry of slave 

labor. He also discusses the case of a Princeton graduate who started a successful 

tomato-business in Pennsylvania that, although not as lucrative as its sinister Florida 

counterparts, is relatively successful financial and also produces higher-quality 

tomatoes. 

I found this book to be readable and engaging, mainly because it was so loaded 

with very specific and very striking (usually strikingly grim) information about a relatively 

large sector of the American economy. There are very few statistics and very little

analysis, but there is a wealth of carefully described, first-hand facts, and that this is this 

book’s greatest strength. 

It is also its greatest weakness. The author doesn’t explain why the Florida 

tomato-industry is so fraught with injustice. Why are conditions for workers so poor in 

this particular industry, and why is slave-labor used in this particular industry? Does this 

industry require the use of slave labor? Are its profit-margins so thin? If so, why? And 

why does the US government look the other way? Is the Florida tomato industry such an 

important part of the US economy that the government won't adequately police it? Is 

the United States actually without the financial resources to defray the costs of not 

dehumanizing workers in this industry? 

The author does mention one or two cases of reasonable successful companies 

that grew tomatoes without resorting unfair labor practices and without using ecocidal 

amounts of toxic chemicals. But each of these ‘companies’, as the author also points, 

though only in passing, was really just a single person, and that person did not have an 

operation of scale. The reader is thus left without an answer to the question: What is 

the alternative to the current state of affairs? 

At no point does the author explicitly put forth an economic explanation of the 

situation. So far as any such analysis is provided, it is confined to the usual mantra that 

‘corporations’ are to blame. Nor does the author say how the situation can be 

improved. He spends a great deal of time talking about the efforts of various activists,

along with the politicians (e.g. Bernie Sanders) who are sympathetic to them. But from 

what we can gather, these activists and politicians have done very little to improve the 

situation. 

This is not surprising. It isn’t activists and politicians who improve laborconditions. 

It is economic development. When the industrial revolution first began in 

Britain, working conditions were appalling and injury- and fatality-rates were sky-high. 

Thanks to industrialization itself, Britain eventually became wealthy enough that it no 

longer needed to rely on exploitative labor practices, at which point labor unions 

became powerful and labor laws were put in place. Regulation can only do so much. If 

companies don’t have the money to pay their workers, they will either go out of 

business or use slave-labor, and there is nothing that regulation by itself can do to 

change this. Regulators can shut down companies that have unfair labor practices—and 

they should do so. But regulators cannot magically give these companies the funds that 

they need to pay their employees an honest wage. And if an industry-sector is 

sufficiently large, the government may choose not to regulate, especially if regulation 

will cause that sector to implode. Therefore, it has to be figured out how this industrysector 

can be so modified that it doesn’t need to rely on unfair labor practices---and 

Estabrook says nothing about how to do this. Nor does Estabrook say anything as to 

how tomatoes can be mass-produced without using toxic chemicals.

In sum: I enjoyed this book enormously, because it was so rich in first-hand facts, 

as opposed to empty statistics and abstract analysis. The problem discussed by the 

author is malfeasance on the part of tomato-growers in Florida, specifically in 

connection with grossly exploitative labor practices and also in connection with their 

use of environment- and health-destroying chemicals. The author doesn’t put forth an 

argument at all: he states facts. These facts make it clear that there is a problem, and 

they make it clear what that problem is (slave labor, underpaid workers, illness among 

workers and to some extent among the general public, and destruction of wildlife). 

What the author doesn’t say that is that people responsible for these horrors are 

obviously aware of them, and they wouldn’t continue to perpetrate them unless they 

had extremely strong financial incentives for doing so. And the author also doesn’t say 

why they have these incentives or how they honorable conduct on their part can be 

incentivized. So yes—Tomatoland is replete with solid evidence for specific factual 

claims, e.g. claims relating to worker-illness and worker-exploitation. But explanations 

are proposed and a fortiori no evidence or reasoning is adduced in their favor. The 

author did do a creditable job of explaining the history of Florida’s tomato-industry, but 

he doesn’t even try to identify the financial pressures that are responsible for its 

continued existence or for its abhorrent practices. As earlier stated, what I found most 

striking about this book was the discussion of slave labor in this industry-sector: I do not 

believe that the author is exaggerating. This is not an acceptable situation, and we as a

nation must address it. But it seems to be entirely off of our national radar—a fact that I 

also find striking (and disturbing). 

A Demographic Analysis of Dropout-likelihood and Dropout-rationality 

Abstract 

In the fall of 2017, approximately 5 million people enrolled in college in the 

United States, and 56% of them had dropped out by the end of the school year (National 

Center for Education Statistics, 2019). In the present work, we will find that, contrary to 

what is generally assumed, people who drop out tend to be rational to do so. First, we 

will establish (1) that the greater the likely financial pay-off of a college degree, the less 

likely one is to drop out. Then we will establish (2) that the more likely a college degree 

is to lead to an emotionally satisfying career, the less likely one is to drop out. 

Claim (1) will be established on the basis of analysis of existing statistics. IQ is 

directly correlated with SAT-scores and SAT-scores are directly correlated with 

graduation-probability. The higher a given college-graduate’s SAT-scores, the greater

the probable financial benefits of a college degree and the smaller the probable costs. 

The costs of college to those who score in the top percentile on the SAT are negligible 

compared to the gains. It therefore tends to be irrational for such people to drop out, 

and their drop-out rate is less than 1%. Strikingly, the dropout rate for those who score 

in the top percentile on the SAT are invariant with respect to gender, ethnicity, and 

personal finances. For those who score in the 40 th percentile or below, the costs of a 

college degree a exceed the benefits. It therefore tends to be rational for such people to 

drop out of college, and over 60% of them do so. Dropout-rates within the class of low 

IQ dropouts are not invariant with respect to gender, ethnicity, and personal finances, 

minorities and males being marginally more likely Caucasians and females to drop out, 

and the socioeconomically underprivileged being non-marginally more likely than the 

socioeconomically privileged to do so. The higher the SAT, the more invariant dropoutrates 

become with respect to these variables. 

Within the class of low (

coincide for the most part with those that members of the other group are likely to 

have. 

Earnings therefore depend on IQ, vocational training, and college-degree. For 

those on the lower end of the IQ spectrum, vocational training is positively dispositive of 

high net earnings in those on the lower end of the IQ spectrum and a college degree is 

dispositive of low net earnings. In those on the upper end of the IQ spectrum, a college 

degree is dispositive of high net earnings and vocational training does not in general 

have an appreciable effect either way. More precisely, the aforementioned variables 

generate the following earnings hierarchy: 

(i) 

(ii) 

(iii) 

(iv) 

(v) 

(vi) 

(vii) 

Low IQ non-graduates without vocational training 

High non-graduates without vocational training 

Low IQ graduates without vocational training 

High IQ non-graduates without vocational training 

Low IQ non-graduates with vocational training 

High IQ non-graduates with vocational training 

High IQ graduates with vocational training 

(viii) High IQ graduates without vocational training 

Claim (2) cannot be established on the basis of existing statistics. This is not 

statistics are inherently incapable of settling the matter; it is simply because the existing

statistical data does not exist. Consequently, the present researcher had to generate 

that data on his own, by administering a carefully constructed questionnaire the justmentioned 

eight-groups of people, the defeasible presumption being that careersatisfaction 

levels will, to at least some degree, track, earnings levels. 

1. 

Keywords: College Retention, Economic Rationality, Vocational Training, Life-Satisfaction 

Table of Contents

List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ 1230 

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Study ...................................................................................... 1232 

Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 1232 

Background of the Study ........................................................................................................... 1235 

Problem Statement ..................................................................................................................... 1236 

Purpose of the Study .................................................................................................................. 1240 

Research Questions and/or Hypotheses................................................................................ 1241 

Advancing Scientific Knowledge and Significance of the Study ....................................... 1244 

Rationale for Methodology ....................................................................................................... 1246 

Nature of the Research Design of the Study ......................................................................... 1247 

Definitions of Terms.................................................................................................................... 1248 

Assumptions, Limitations, Delimitations ............................................................................... 1251 

Summary and Organization of the Remainder of the Study ............................................. 1252 

Chapter 2: Literature Review .................................................................................................... 1253 

Introduction to the Chapter ...................................................................................................... 1253 

Identification of the Gap ............................................................................................................ 1255 

Identification of the Gap (Continued): The Statistical Data .............................................. 1262 

Theoretical Foundations and/or Conceptual Framework ................................................. 1267 

Review of the Literature ............................................................................................................ 1270 

Literature Review: Vocational Careers ................................................................................... 1279 

Literature Review: Earnings on the Part of Non-vocationally trained Non-graduates 

.......................................................................................................................................................... 1286 

Literature Review: Financial Costs and Benefits of Low IQ Degree ................................. 1291 

Summary ........................................................................................................................................ 1294 

Chapter 3 Methodology ............................................................................................................. 1296 

Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 1296 

Statement of the Problem ......................................................................................................... 1298 

Research Questions and Hypotheses...................................................................................... 1298 

Research Methodology .............................................................................................................. 1305 

Research Design ........................................................................................................................... 1307 

Population and Sample Selection ............................................................................................ 1308 

Instrumentation ........................................................................................................................... 1311 

Validity ........................................................................................................................................... 1314 

Reliability ....................................................................................................................................... 1315 

Data Collection and Management ........................................................................................... 1316 

Data Analysis Procedures .......................................................................................................... 1317 

Ethical Considerations ................................................................................................................ 1319 

Limitations and Delimitations .................................................................................................. 1319 

Summary ........................................................................................................................................ 1320 

References ..................................................................................................................................... 1500

Appendix A. ................................................................................................................................... 1518 

List of Figures 

Figure 1 ACT vis-à-vis Likelihood of Having a 4.0 Average Freshman Year1260 

Figure 2 Graduation Rate by SAT Score Nation-wide ............................ 1263 

Figure 3 Colleges by Graduation Rates and Average SAT Scores .......... 1264 

Figure 4 Colleges at the Extremes Ranked by SAT Score Percentile and Graduation 

Rate ................................................................................................................ 1265 

Figure 5 IQ by SAT ................................................................................ 1266 

Figure 6 Income by SAT ........................................................................ 1269 

Figure 7 IQ by Major (Bar Graph) ......................................................... 1271 

Figure 8 Unadjusted Income by College Major ..................................... 1272 

Figure 9 Income by College Major Adjusted for Debt ........................... 1273 

Figure 10 Income by College Major Adjusted for Debt and Taxation .... 1274 

Figure 11 Unadjusted Average Pay for jobs/careers for Low IQ Graduates without 

Vocational Training ......................................................................................... 1276

Figure 12 Average Pay for jobs/careers for Low IQ Graduates without Vocational 

Training Adjusted for Debt.............................................................................. 1277 


Training Adjusted for Debt and Taxes ............................................................. 1278 

Figure 14 Non-debt-adjusted average pay for Vocationals ................... 1281 

Figure 15 Debt-adjusted average pay for Vocationals .......................... 1282 

Figure 16 Debt- and tax-adjusted average pay for Vocationals ............ 1283 

Figure 17 Comparison of Average Earnings, adjusted for debt and taxation, for 

vocationals, low IQ graduates, and low IQ non-graduates. ............................. 1285 

Figure 18 Comparison between average pay for vocationals and low IQ Graduates 

Adjusted for Debt and Taxation ...................................................................... 1285 

Figure 19 Unadjusted Salaries for Low IQ Non-graduate Non-vocationals1287 

Figure 20 Debt-adjusted Salaries for Low IQ Non-graduate Non-vocationals1288 

Figure 21 Debt- and Tax-adjusted Salaries for Low IQ Non-graduate Nonvocationals 

..................................................................................................... 1289 

Figure 22 Debt- and Tax-adjusted Salaries for Non-graduate Non-vocationals, Low 

IQ Graduates, and Vocationals ....................................................................... 1291 

Figure 23 G*Power Calculations ........................................................... 1304

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Study 

Introduction 

College dropout rates are currently over 50% and have been for over a decade 

(Pevin, 2015). This is often described as a ‘tragedy’ (Wolf, 2017) or a ‘scandal’ (Kirp, 

2019). On the face of it, this is understandable. Dropping out is a form of quitting, and 

quitting is in many contexts a form of failure. Also, a college degree has come to be 

associated in the popular psyche with ‘the good life’---two cars in the driveway, a house 

in the suburbs, and so on (Corn, 2017). Also, just as Hillary Clinton said, college 

graduates do on average earn approximately $1,000,000 during their lifetimes than nongraduates 

(Bartik, 2016). Finally, it is obvious to many people that if they hadn’t gone to 

college, they wouldn’t have the careers that they do have: they wouldn’t be investment 

bankers or physicians or attorneys (Altoni et al., 2016). 

The truth is, however, that the dropout rates are not high enough. There is 

relatively definitive evidence of this of a purely objective, statistical nature. We will 

discuss this evidence in detail in the present work, but the upshot of it is easily stated:

Those with high IQ’s economically benefit from college, and those with low IQ’s don’t. 

The reason for this, quite simply, is that people with low IQ’s derive little economic 

benefit from academic courses of study and are economically better off learning and 

practicing a trade. Not only is this the obvious, off-the-cuff explanation: it is, as we will 

go to great lengths to show, a matter of demonstrable statistical fact. These claims will 

be established on the basis of rigorous statistical analysis. 

Of course, money isn’t everything. Given only that someone with a low IQ stands 

to earn more money practicing a trade than he does using his college degree, it doesn’t 

follow that he is more fulfilled if he takes the first path. That said, we will show that he is 

in fact more fulfilled. We will show on the basis of survey-data that low IQ college 

graduates, not including those whose careers are based on vocational training received 

outside of college, are among the least fulfilled sub-populations in the country. The 

happiest sub-population, as those same surveys indicate, consists of high IQ college 

graduates, and the second happiest is vocationally trained college non-graduates. 

We will establish this by administering a carefully constructed questionnaire to 

eight groups of people. The groups in question are: 

(i) 

(ii) 

(iii) 

(iv) 




High IQ non-graduates without vocational training

(v) 

(vi) 

(vii) 





2. The survey uses a seven-point Likert-scale, making it possible to condense 

questionnaire-results into a single figure and therefore making it possible to establish 

quantitative comparisons between survey-results. 

3. Survey results will establish the following ‘fulfillment-hierarchy’: 

(ix) 

(x) 

(xi) 

(xii) 





(xiii) Low IQ non-graduates with vocational training 

(xiv) High IQ non-graduates with vocational training 

(xv) 


(xvi) High IQ graduates without vocational training 

The reasons for targeting these specific groups is that, as we will see, dropoutlikelihood 

and dropout-rationality depend on IQ and vocational-training.

Background of the Study 

There is plenty of statistical data concerning college-dropoutism, but this 

data has not been properly interpreted. Attempts have been made to correlate dropoutrates 

with ethnicity (Shapiro et al., 2017), distance from home (Patterson Silver Wolf et 

al., 2017), relationship-status (Adams et al., 2016), eating disorders (Lipson et al., 2017), 

mental health (Eisenberg, 2016), video game usage (Schmitt et al., 2015), and personal 

finances (Britt et al., 2017)---all to little or no avail. What the statistical data makes 

absolutely clear is that people with extremely high SAT/ACT scores (henceforth ‘testscores’) 

seldom drop out and that people with low test-scores usually drop out. The 

data also makes it clear that test-scores correlate with IQ (Armstrong et al., 2017), 

warranting the conclusion that dropout-likelihood correlates inversely with IQ. This is 

invariant across genders, ethnicities, relationship-statuses and the like. Further, the 

statistical data makes it clear towards the lower end of the IQ spectrum, the economic 

benefits of a college degree become marginal at best and also those benefits are directly 

dependent on IQ, with those in the gifted range economically benefitting enormously 

from college. 

Be it noted that the statistical data does not directly disclose any of this, even 

though, when scrutinized, it clearly does indicate as much. The correlation between 

dropout-likelihood and IQ is readily enough established. The correlation between 

dropout-rationality and IQ is not as easily established, granting that the difficulties in

establishing it are ultimately purely technical in nature. Neither correlation is 

particularly hard to establish given the available statistical data, making it hard (but also, 

given our purposes, unnecessary) to explain why these correlations have not yet been 

established. 

A consequence of the fact that it has not thus far been established exactly who 

drops out is that it also has not been established how economically rational it is for 

those who drop out to do so. A consequence of this latter fact, in its turn, is that 

economic dropout-rationality has not yet been correlated with emotional dropoutrationality. 

In other words, the degree to which it is economically rational for a given 

person to drop out of college has not been correlated with the degree to which his 

doing so conduces to his having an emotionally fulfilling career. 


Prior to this study it was not known exactly who dropped out or why; nor, 

therefore, was it known to what extent it was rational for those who dropped out to do 

so. The purpose of this study is to answer each of these questions, with special attention 

being paid to the relationship between dropoutism and career-satisfaction. An expected 

consequence of this study will be a need to reframe our thinking about college-dropouts 

and college-dropoutism. Thus far, we have regarded dropouts as being the failures 

(Hollander et al., 2017) and those trying to prevent them dropping out as the heroes 

(Moriña et al., 2017; Bullard, 2018).

This study will show that it is the other way around. Forcing people to go to 

college who are not inclined to do so deprives them of income and professional 

fulfillment and is also enormously expensive for society as a whole. There are many 

reasons for this. First of all, there are many people who are happy and financially 

successful as auto-mechanics---or electricians or plumbers or as practitioners of some 

other trade---who would be miserable if, instead of learning their trade, they had gone 

to college. Many such people are gifted at their trade, and many people need their 

services and pay handsomely for them. Those same people would in many cases not be 

faring as well had they opted for a college-based path. They would often struggle with 

the coursework and either drop out, in which case they are likely to self-identify as 

failures, or choose a major that gives them no marketable skills, in which case they are 

likely to be failures. 

Also, trades (e.g. auto-repair, plumbing, carpentry) are inherently useful. A 

person with an IQ can become a master plumber or auto-mechanic; and if they do, they 

will never have to worry about employment. Also, many people who learn trades launch 

successful businesses of their own based on those trades, and 70% of successful small to 

medium-sized business are started in this way. But liberal arts degrees, however much 

intrinsic value they may have, tend to provide those who have them with very little in 

the way of marketable skills. There is no obvious way for an intellectually average or 

even moderately intelligent person to monetize a degree in English or History or

Philosophy. If someone is intellectually gifted, he may be able to find a way to leverage 

into a successful career of some kind; he may become a journalist or professor or 

financier. But these are long-shots even those who are intellectually gifted, and for most 

they are simply out of the question. The result is that most people with liberal arts 

degrees find themselves in an extremely competitive job-market with little to offer to 

prospective employers and no skills on the basis of which to become self-employed. 

It is assumed that STEM degrees, unlike degrees humanities and social sciences 

degrees, are inherently useful. This position is misconceived. First of all, most STEM are 

intellectually out of reach for most of the population, including most of the college 

population. Second, most STEM degrees, including those that are within the intellectual 

reach of the average college student, are not inherently useful. A degree in biology does 

not by itself qualify anyone to do anything. In the case of someone who is intellectually 

gifted, a degree in biology may eventuate in that person’s being a physician or 

researcher, but usually only on the condition that the person in question spend years in 

graduate school or medical school. But these are low-probability outcomes for someone 

of average or even moderately high intelligence, and a degree in biology opens up very 

few professional avenues for such a person. To be sure, somebody with a bachelor’s 

degree in petroleum engineering or computer science is for that reason alone likely to 

have excellent professional prospects, the same being true, albeit to a lesser extent, of

someone with a bachelor’s in chemistry. But less than 20% of college students are able 

to complete even the first year of any given one of these majors. 

As for mathematics and physics, degrees in these fields, in and of themselves, do 

very little to make those who have them employable. To be sure, people with bachelor’s 

degrees in these fields are relatively likely to achieve professional success, but their 

becoming successful usually involves their spending years after college becoming 

proficient in areas (e.g. programming, architecture, finance) that are only tangentially 

related to their undergraduate degrees. But all of this is moot, given that less than 10% 

of all college students are able to complete even the first year of either of these majors. 

Today (July 3, 2019), the Washington Post reported that only 27% of people with 

college degree have jobs in areas relating to their college degrees (Plummer, 2019). By 

contrast, over 90% of those with vocational degrees have jobs in the areas of their 

degrees (Wladawsky-Berger, 2018). This is understandable. A credential in HVAC or 

plumbing or computer-maintenance makes one very useful; a degree in English or 

Religious Studies does not. A consequence is minor economic downturns greatly effect 

employment- and income levels of college graduates but have little effect on those of 

tradespersons (Alonso, 2015; Jahn et al., 2015; Friedman, 2018; Arnold, 2018; Levin- 

Waldman, 2018).


The purpose of this study is to determine how rational it is for those who drop 

out of college to do so. This will involve figuring how exactly who drops out of college, 

i.e. we must first identify the characteristics that dispose someone to drop out of 

college. Having done this, we must correlate dropout-likelihood with probably average 

future earnings and also with probably average degree of career-satisfaction. 

Ultimately, what we refer to as ‘rationality’ coincides not with economic 

rationality but with emotional rationality. Stated simply, for a person to be rational is for 

him to make decisions that conduce to his emotional well-being. This often involves 

making decisions that conduce to one’s financial well-being. But economic rationality 

cannot be identified with rationality since someone who makes decisions that make 

wealthy but suicidally depressed is ceteris paribus less rational than someone who 

makes decisions that make him fulfilled but only moderately wealthy (Bennett, 2016). 

This is not a purely theoretical point. Setting aside those who simply don’t earn 

enough to satisfy basic needs, there is surprisingly little correlation between happinesslevels 

and income (Easterlin, 2015). Happiness is more easily correlated less with how 

much they earn than with how they earn it (Oishi et al., 2015). Lawyers who earn under 

$100,000 have extremely low rates of career-satisfaction, and most entrepreneurs who 

earn more than $25,000/year have extremely high rates of career satisfaction (Hessels 

et al., 2018).

Because rationality clearly involves being able to make decisions that conduce to 

one’s own emotional well-being, we cannot go so far as to identify rationality with 

economic rationality (Christiansen, 2017). But there are important reasons not to 

disregard the concept of economic rationality. First of all, if people who are dropping 

out of college are rational to do so, that suggests that instead of wasting resources 

trying to keep them in college, we should use resources to identify and improve access 

to alternative professional paths. Second, economic rationality is completely objective: 

whereas people’s emotional self-assessments, though prima facie credible, may be 

replete with rationalizations, there is no denying how much a given person earns or 

what kind of work he does to earn it (Ervas, 2017). In this study, consequently, we will 

investigate both the economic and the emotional rationality of college-dropoutism. 

Research Questions and/or Hypotheses 

This study will investigate in what ways and to what degrees the consequences of 

dropping out of college depend on IQ and receipt of vocational training. Given the fact 

that many ‘high-IQ’ careers (e.g. physician, investment banker, professor) are simply out 

of the question for those who do not have college degrees, there exists a reasonable, if 

defeasible, presumption to the effect that it is in general more rational than not for 

those in the intellectually gifted range to graduate from college. What is less obvious is 

whether the same is true of those on the other end of the IQ spectrum. Day-to-day 

experience suggests that, where such people are concerned, a college degree tends to

lead to a tedious and low-level office job. Day-to-day experience also suggests that, 

when such people receive vocational training and careers based thereupon, their work, 

though arduous, tends to be both lucrative and fulfilling. To put it bluntly and informally, 

auto-mechanics, super-intendents, welders, Emergency Medical Technicians, and Webdesigners 

seem to enjoy their work, whereas secretaries, probation officers, intakecoordinators, 

low-level administrators, and office-workers do not seem to enjoy their 

work. Of course, these claims, being based only on personal experience, cannot be 

asserted with confidence, it being the purpose the present study to subject them to 

systematic scrutiny. 

Consequently, the following research question guides this qualitative study: 

RQ1: To what extent are those who drop out of college behaving rationally in 

doing so? 

There are two versions of RQ1, namely: 

RQ1 F : To what extent are those who drop out of college being financially rational 

in doing so? In other words, to what extent does their doing so lead to increased 

earnings? 

And: 

RQ1 E : To what extent are those who drop out of college being emotionally 

rational in doing so? In other words, to what extent does their doing so lead to 

increased career-satisfaction?

In order to answer RQ1, we must first answer some other questions, in particular: 

RQ2: Who drops out of college? In other words, what characteristics are 

dispositive of a person’s dropping out of college? (Is it poverty, mental illness, physical 

illness, unstable home life, low IQ, etc.?) 

RQ2 can be answered on the basis of existing statistical data, the answer being: 

HQ2: The higher a given person’s IQ, the less likely he is to drop out of college. 

RQ1 F is also to be answered on the basis of statistical analysis. The null-answer is: 

HQ1 F0 : A person’s IQ does not in general have any bearing, positive or negative, 

on whether it is financially for that person to drop out of college. 

The expected answer is: 

HQ1 F : The higher a given person’s IQ, the less financially rational it is for him to 

drop out of college. 

RQ1 E : is not to be answered on the basis of existing statistical data. We will 

attempt to answer it on the basis of survey data. The null answer is: 

HQ1 E : A given person’s dropping out of college may conduce to increased careersatisfaction 

or to decreased career-satisfaction; and whether it does the one as opposed 

to the other is completely random and of his major, his intelligence level, and indeed 

any other given fact about him.

The expected answer 

HQ1 E : Categorizing people by IQ and college degree status generates the 

following career-satisfaction hierarchy: 

(i) 

(ii) 

(iii) 

(iv) 

(v) 

(vi) 

(vii) 









HQ1 E is the ‘expected’ answer in three senses. First, it is consistent with 

statements made, but not adequately supported, in credible publications (Looseley et 

al., 2019). Second, it is consistent with my personal and professional experience. Third, 

it is consistent with small, informal studies that I have conducted in anticipation of the 

present study. 

Advancing Scientific Knowledge and Significance of the Study 

This study has manifold practical and theoretical significances. First of all, if the 

hypotheses stated above are correct, then the enormous resources that are being spent 

trying to prevent people from dropping out of college should instead be spent trying to

uild alternatives to college (Bok, 2017). Also, right now, k-12 education is essentially 

college-prep education (Harbour, 2015), and the current study is likely to show that this 

is misconceived: where many students are concerned, possibly most, the focus should 

not be on getting them into college, but on constructing alternatives to college. Also, as 

we will see, when low persons in the non-gifted IQ range have careers that they find 

fulfilling, those careers are based on vocational training, not on college degrees, and, 

what is more, those careers service vital and otherwise insufficiently serviced economic 

sectors. Right now, thanks to the exclusive focus on getting people, regardless of their 

talents, into and through college, many people are being steered away from careers 

that they would enjoy and be good at and that would benefit society. Governments and 

government-related bureaucracies being what they, might cannot necessarily expect the 

existing educational establishment to right-size itself, and the private sector may 

therefore have to step into this breech. 

This study also has significance of a purely theoretical kind for the fields of 

psychology and economics. According to the hypotheses stated above, entrepreneurs 

have higher levels of career satisfaction than ‘corporate wage-slaves’ who earn three 

times as much, and people who practice traces, such as plumbing and auto-repair, are 

happier than probation officers and administrators who earn twice as much. If correct, 

this tells us a great deal about human motivations, and it also tells us that what drives 

economic progress is not the desire for money so much as it is the desire for money that

is acquired in a way that is consistent with one’s values and personality (Pagenelli, 

2015). 


There are three different investigative methodologies: quantitative, 

qualitative, and mixed. Quantitative methodologies attempt to assign numerical values 

to relevant factors and to investigate relations of dependence and predictability holding 

among such values (Hempel, 1965; Curtis et al., 2016); Salmon, 2017). Suppose for 

example that violent crime in Small Town USA has increased 500% over the last decade. 

A quantitative analysis of this phenomenon would try to find some numerically 

determinate variable (or variable-set) x (e.g. consistently decreasing funding for lawenforcement) 

such that changes in x correlated with the rise in crime in Small Town. 

Qualitative methods investigate causal relations holding among forces that either have 

not yet been quantified or cannot be quantified in any principled way. A qualitative 

analysis of the rise in crime in Small Town might involve case-studies of specific 

criminals, or interviews with criminals or victims of crime or law-enforcement 

personnel, the purpose being to elicit relevant information (e.g. information about 

changes in cultural norms). A mixed methodology is one that involves elements of both 

qualitative and quantitative methodologies (Rudestam & Newton, 2015). When applied 

to the rise in crime in Small Town, such an approach might involve a combination of the 

methods must described.

There are two components to this project: a purely statistical component, in 

which the demographics of dropoutism are investigated, and a survey-based 

component, in which the psychology of dropoutism is investigated. In each case, the 

methodology used is quantitative. But there are important differences between the 

methodologies used, owing to the fact that, whereas the statistics needed to investigate 

the financial aspects of dropoutism already exist, the statistics needed to investigate its 

consequences for career-satisfaction do not yet exist, requiring us to generate those 

statistics ourselves. Consequently, the methodology used in the one case related only to 

the analysis of statistics, whereas the methodology used in the other case related both 

the analysis and to the generation of statistics. 

Nature of the Research Design of the Study 

Both parts of the inquiry were quantitative and causal-correlational in nature. 

The statistical part correlates dropout rates with IQ and subsequent earnings; the 

psychological part correlates earnings with levels of career-satisfaction. The statistical 

part involved nothing more than finding correlations so tight that they were obviously 

causal and then using commonsense to infer what the operative causal relations were. 

For example, there is an extremely tight connection between low SAT score and high 

freshman dropout-likelihood, but it is obvious that a low SAT score is not itself the cause 

of someone’s dropping out of college. An inability to do academic work is the cause, and 

this inability is manifested both in low SAT scores and also in poor performance in first-

year college classes, the latter often being the immediate precursor of (voluntary or 

involuntary) permanent departure from college (Mabel et al., 2018). 

The psychological part involved administering surveys whose results could be 

represented as a single variable. Our objective here is to compare earnings with levels of 

career-satisfaction. Earnings are given by a single figure (e.g. $170,000/year), and we 

therefore need career-satisfaction to be represented by a single quantity if we are to 

correlate it with earnings and, consequently, if we are to determine how emotionally 

rational those who drop out are in doing so, i.e. if we are to determine degrees of 

dropout E -rationality (Chen et al., 2016) 


Dropout. In this context, a ‘dropout’ is somebody who drops out of college and 

does not return. Somebody who takes a year off is not a dropout. 

Dropoutism. The phenomenon of people dropping out of college. 

Dropout-likelihood. The probability that a given person will drop out of college. 

Dropout-probability. Synonymous with “dropout-likelihood.” 

Dropout-rationality. The degree to which it is rational for a given person to drop 

out of college. 

Dropout E -rationality. The degree to which it is economically rational for a given 

person to drop out of college.

Dropout F -rationality. The degree to which it is emotionally rational (i.e. 

conducive to career-satisfaction) for a given person to drop out of college. 

Dropout-non-vocational. Somebody who drops out of college and then receives 

vocational training 

Dropout-vocational. Somebody who drops out of college and then receives 

vocational training. 

Dropoutism. A neologism used to denote the phenomenon of people dropping 

out of college. 

Economic Rationality. Ability to make decisions that maximize earnings. The 

concept of economic rationality is well defined, given that earnings can be quantified. 

Some scholars have attempted to broaden the concept of economic rationality to 

include other variables, such as quality of life, but these extensions of the concept of 

tend to strip it of operational significance. Importantly, economic rationality, narrowly 

construed, correlates with other quantifiable variables, such as health and longevity, 

which in their turn bear on quality of life. 

Graduate. In this context, a ‘graduate’ is someone who graduates from college. 

Graduation-likelihood: The probability that a given person will graduate from 

college. 

IQ. Short of ‘intelligence quotient.’ Existing ways of determining IQ are deeply 

flawed, as is evidenced by the quite routine occurrence of people who apparently do

poorly on IQ tests but whose professional accomplishments unambiguously indicate 

extremely intelligence. That said, however unreliable the standard IQ tests may be with 

respect to geniuses and other outliers, they have proven reliable and useful and reliable 

when dealing with large populations, and IQ scores generated by such tests are 

therefore useful in the context of this study. 

Graduation-probability: Synonym of “graduation-likelihood.” 

IQ-comparable (adjective). x and y are IQ-comparable if they are in the same IQ 

range. 

IQ-comparables (noun). x and y are IQ-comparables if they are IQ-comparable. 

Non-dropouts. A neologism used to denote someone who has either graduated 

or is currently in college and has not dropped out of college thus far. 

Non-attendant. A neologism used to denote someone who simply doesn’t attend 

college at all. 

Rationality. Ability to make decisions that maximize one’s welfare. The concept 

of rationality simpliciter is of limited utility, owing to the absence of clear benchmarks, 

and often gives way to the better-defined concept of economic rationality. 

RQ. Given a particular IQ, the corresponding RQ is the ratio of average lifetime 

earnings of college graduates with that IQ to average lifetime earnings of non-graduates 

with that IQ. So RQ corresponding to IQ 103 is the ratio of average lifetime earnings of

graduates with an IQ of 103 to average lifetime earnings of non-graduates with an IQ of 

103. 

Test-score. Refers only to SAT and ACT scores. Oftentimes, the terms “SAT score”, 

“ACT score” and “SAT/ACT score” will be used; but whenever “test-score” is used, it is 

used to refer only to SAT/ACT scores. 


It is assumed that the statistical data that we are not ourselves generating 

is reliable. This assumption is warranted, given that in each case that data was collected 

by a reliable agency, such as the National Center for Education Statistics. We are also 

assuming that is administering the survey that we are using will in fact administer it to 

populations of the appropriate types. For example, when we task the survey company 

with administering our survey to people who have vocational certifications, we are 

assuming that they are in fact doing so. This assumption is warranted given that we are 

using a reputable survey-service. 

There is one very serious delimitation, namely that it cannot be ruled out that 

survey-results express wishful-thinking and rationalization (Daviaux et al. 2016). This is 

inherent in all psychological surveys (Taswell, 2015). That said, there are three ways in 

which we are hedging against this possibility. First, we will always have information 

about the respondent’s economic-situation, simply the company that is directly 

administering the survey will target people according to their demographics, including

their earnings. Second, each population will be issued multiple different surveys; and if 

there is a tendency for a given population to respond disingenuously on a given survey, 

its answers on that survey are likely to conflict with its answers on the other surveys 

(Cosco et al., 2016). Finally, the surveys being used are already widely used and their 

efficacy has been established. 


Chapter 2 will review the existing literature relating to the topic of this 

study, along with the relevant statistics. The statistical data is abundant. The literature, 

however, tends to be inconsistent with or non-explanatory of the statistical data. In 

Chapter 2, we will state the relevant statistics in detail and provide creditable models of 

them. In Chapter 3, methodology will be discussed. We will identify the underpinnings 

of the statistical work done in Chapter 2 and will also explain exactly how we will be 

using surveys to elicit information relating to career-satisfaction. In Chapter 4, we will 

analyze the survey results, and we will also restate, this time in more detail, the results 

of our statistical analysis of dropoutism; and we will compare those two bodies of data. 

In Chapter 5, we will identify the changes in public policy and also in personal conduct 

that are indicated by the contents of Chapter 4. 

Chapters 1-3 are already complete. The survey has already been 

constructed; the survey-company has verified that it can send the requisite number of 

surveys to the relevant populations; and the researcher has already familiarized himself

with the survey software. Chapter 4 should be complete before October 2019, and 

Chapter 5 by January 1, 2010. 

Chapter 2: Literature Review 

Introduction to the Chapter 

It is easy to find out how many people don’t graduate from college (NCES, 

2019a). It is also easy, though not quite as easy, to find out how many people within a 

given demographic fail to graduate from college (NCES, 2019b). It is not possible to find 

information to the effect that a person's likelihood of dropping out is a function of his

having characteristic X, for some appropriate value of X. Blacks are less likely to 

graduate from college than whites (Shapiro et al., 2017), but 43% of blacks have college 

degrees and 43% of whites don't (Stout et al., 2018), and being as opposed to white, or 

vice versa, therefore cannot be the missing value of X in “X is why people drop out.” 

Similarly, males are more likely to drop out than females (Strumbos et al., 2016); but the 

differences are marginal, and “being male” is therefore not the missing value of X. 

Dropout-rates cannot even be explained in terms of poor financials. High-performing 

college students from impoverished backgrounds are less likely to drop out than poorperforming 

students from wealthy backgrounds (Korn et al., 2015; Yeager et al., 2016), 

and extremely high performing students from impoverished backgrounds have only 

marginally higher rates of dropoutism than comparably performing students from 

wealthy backgrounds (Hoxby et al., 2013). So poor financials, though obviously a 

contributing factor, are not the or even a principle factor. Religious people are less likely 

to graduate than non-religious people (Tentsho et al., 2019); and people who have 

formally diagnosed as having a serious mental illness are less likely to graduate than 

those who have not been so diagnosed (Naslund et al., 2015). Even if we form the 

intersection of each these ‘less-than' groups---even if we consider the class of 

socioeconomically disadvantaged, religious, mentally ill, minority males--the resulting 

group still has a graduation rate of around 25%, showing that none of the characteristics 

is more than marginally responsible for the phenomenon of dropoutism.

Given that we don’t know what causes people to drop out, we don’t know how 

economically rational it is for people who drop out to do so. We are given extremely 

broad statistical claims, e.g. ‘college graduates out-earn non-graduates by $1,000,000’ 

(Witteveen et al., 2017), that supposedly settle the issue—but clearly don’t. Does 

staying in college always conduce to higher earnings? If not, when does it do so? We do 

not have answers to these questions. 

Nor do we have an answer to the question: How emotionally rational is it for 

people who drop out of college to do so? In other words, to what extent does their 

doing so conduce to their fulfillment or career-satisfaction? The presumption is that 

dropouts tend to end up slaving away at menial, low-paying jobs, whereas graduates 

tend to end up having intellectual demanding, high-paying careers. But this presumption 

is indeed just that. In this chapter, we will review the literature, along with the 

statistics, bearing on these matters. The literature is of little use, we will find, but the 

statistical data is of use, if properly interpreted. 

Identification of the Gap 

Who drops out of college and why, and what are they gaining and foregoing by 

doing so? These questions have not been answered. There is an abundance of literature 

concerning the demographics of dropoutism, but the claims therein made, even if 

correct, have little or no explanatory force.

Within the last five years, it has been alleged, by scholars publishing in reputable 

journals, that dropoutism is ‘linked’ to: 

*Ethnicity (Boyraz, 2016) 

*Drug/alcohol abuse (Ho, 2016) 

*Mental illness (Mitchell, 2016) 

*Religious belief (Li, 2017) 

*Video game usage (Cochran, 2018) 

*Absence of easily accessed academic advisers and psychotherapists (Lovelace, 

2017) 

*Poor dormitory and living conditions (Li, 2019) 

*Level of parents’ education (Stewart, 2015) 

*Parents’ combined income (Stewart, 2015), and 

*Relationship status (DeLuca, 2016). 

Only 30% of African Americans graduate from college. Therefore, there is a ‘link’ 

between race and dropout-likelihood (Tate, 2017). 

Dropouts are more likely than non-dropouts to play video-games. Therefore, 

there is a ‘link’ between video-game usage and dropout-likelihood (Dunckley, 2016). 

Dropouts are more likely than non-dropouts to have experienced serious 

childhood trauma. Therefore, there is a ‘link’ between childhood-trauma and dropoutlikelihood 

(Dube, 2018).

Dropouts are more likely to be religious than non-dropouts. Therefore, there is a 

‘link’ between religious belief and dropout-likelihood. 

Dropouts often cite relationship issues when explaining why they dropped out. 

Therefore, there is a ‘link’ between relationship-status and dropout-likelihood (Legg, 

2017). 

Dropouts more likely than non-dropouts to self-describe or be formally described 

as depressed or otherwise mentally ill. Therefore, there is a ‘link’ between 

depression/mental illness and dropout-likelihood (Marsh, 2017). 

People from low-income homes are more likely than those from high-income 

homes to drop out. Therefore, there is a ‘link' between parents' income and dropoutlikelihood 

(Jaschik, 2015). 

People whose parents did not complete college are more likely to drop out than 

those whose parents did complete college. Therefore, there is a ‘link’ between parents’ 

education-level and dropout-likelihood (Casey, 2018). 

Dropouts are (in 2019) more likely than to be male than female. Therefore, there 

is a ‘link’ between gender and dropout-likelihood (Samuels, 2017). 

Let us scrutinize these claims. 30% of African Americans do graduate from 

college. So the ‘link’ between ethnicity is at best weak (Paul, 2018). 

Non-dropouts are as likely as dropouts to claim to be suffering from ‘serious 

relationship issues.’ (Greenburg, 2011).

Although may cases of dropping do appear to be precipitated by mental illness, 

depression and suicidal ideation are in fact markedly more common among nondropouts, 

being particularly high in those who enroll in doctoral programs (Wong, 

2018). 

Students from “low-income” homes are indeed 600% more likely high income 

students to drop out, if ‘low income’ and ‘high income’ are taken to mean, respectively, 

“annual income of less than $30,000” and “annual income of more than $250,000”—but 

only because the graduation rate in the second group is less than 3%. Therefore, the 

‘low parental income’ theory at most describes an ancillary factor. 

Religious students are only around 10% more likely than non-religious students to 

drop out. Also, this figure varies enormously depending on the religious denomination. 

Mormons have an exceedingly low drop-out rate, as do Orthodox Jews (Saxe et al. 

2013). 

Non-dropouts are as likely as dropouts to be dissatisfied with dormitoryconditions, 

with their social lives, and with the degree of access to student-advisers and 

psychotherapists (Beiter et al. 2015). 

Dropouts are at most only marginally more likely than non-dropouts to play 

video-games excessively or to abuse drugs/alcohol, and there is some indication that 

video-game usage helps prevent those with severe depression from dropping out of 

college (Parker, 2019).

There are deeper problems with these studies. Maybe people who drop out 

drink/do drugs/play video games because they don’t want to be in college. In other 

words, maybe their desire to drop out is the cause, and their engaging in these 

maladaptive behaviors is the effect. This is not a mere theoretical possibility, as we are 

about to say. 

Also, maybe soon-to-be dropouts are right not to want to be in college. Maybe 

they are depressed about being in college because they suspect that it is a waste of their 

time and money. Indeed, this is likely the case, we will find. 

African Americans with test-scores (SAT/ACT scores) in 90th percentile and above 

are minimally likely to drop out and are less likely to do so than their white 

counterparts. Students in the 95 th percentile above have less than a one percent change 

of dropping out, regardless of gender, ethnicity, religious denomination, drug/alcohol 

use, mental illness/depression, relationship-status, and indeed any other given variable. 

A related fact is that students who drop out are overwhelmingly likely to be 

struggling academically, which is consistent with what we have said about IQ vis-à-vis 

dropout-likelihood and also with the fact, noted by Allen et al. (2017), that ACT-scores 

are predictive of graduation-likelihood.

120 

Percentage with 3.5+ GPA Freshmen 

Year 

100 

80 

60 

40 

20 

0 

16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 

Figure 2 ACT vis-à-vis Likelihood of Having a 4.0 Average Freshman Year 

Adapted from: Jeff Allen and Justin Radunzel, “Relating ACT Composite Score to 

Different Levels of First Year College GPA.” ACT Table 4, May 2017.

Approximately 80% of students with test scores in the 40 th percentile or below 

drop out of college (Rothwell, 2017); and this figure is almost invariant with respect to 

gender, ethnicity, religious denomination, drug/alcohol use, mental illness/depression, 

relationship-status, and indeed any other given variable (Cooper, 2014). The totality of 

this data suggests that ethnicity, relationship status, etc. contribute to dropoutism only 

in those in the middle-range, suggesting that they function only as contributory causes. 

Also, there is a complete absence of data concerning the immediate aftermath of 

a person’s dropping out. It may be that their rates of depression, drug-use, etc. 

decrease. This is an open empirical question. If the answer is ‘yes’, then college was, to 

so speak, the disease, and dropping out the cure. 

More importantly, what are the economic prospects of those who drop out? Do 

they lose opportunities or gain them? We can’t answer that until we can identify some 

variable that correlates tightly with high dropout rates and then correlate that same 

variable with economic prospects. The literature has not identified this X-factor. 

Another deeply striking fact about the scholarly literature is that it always takes it 

as a given that dropping out is failure. It is not asked why students drop out. Nor is it 

asked what they gain by doing so. Sometimes it is asked what they would have lost by 

not dropping out; but the answers subsequently given are strictly financial in nature 

and, more importantly, don’t involve consideration of important sub-divisions within the

class of non-graduates, in particular, the distinction between those who receive 

vocational training and those who do not. 

Identification of the Gap (Continued): The Statistical Data 

The academic literature is disappointing. The statistics are more illuminating. 

There are two statistics that are especially important: those relating IQ to test-scores 

(SAT/ACTS scores) to graduation rates, and those relating test-scores to IQ. The higher 

the test-score, the higher the likelihood of graduation (See Figures 1-9); and the higher 

the IQ, the higher, the test-score (See Figures 10-11). In each case, we are dealing with 

strictly monotonic correlations; and these nearly monotonic correlations explain many 

of the weak correlations earlier discussed.

SAT-score Percentages and Associated 

Graduation Rates 

120 

100 

80 

60 

40 

20 

0 

700 800 900 1000 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500 1600 

% graduate % population 

Figure 3 Graduation Rate by SAT Score Nation-wide 

Retrieved from: http://blog.numbersbox.com/2015/05/pell-grants-test-scoresand-graduation.html 

and http://www.hamiltonproject.org

College Graduation Rates and Average SAT Scores 

120 

100 

80 

60 

40 

20 

0 

% graduate SAT Percentile 

Figure 4 Colleges by Graduation Rates and Average SAT Scores 

Adapted from: http://blog.numbersbox.com/2015/05/pell-grants-test-scoresand-graduation.html 

and https://oedb.org/rankings/graduation-rate/#table-rankings 

and https://www.cbsnews.com/news/25-universities-with-the-worst-graduation-rates/ 


Graduation Rates by SAT Score 

120 

100 

80 

60 

40 

20 

0 

Average SAT Percentile 

Graduation Rate 

Figure 5 Colleges at the Extremes Ranked by SAT Score Percentile and Graduation 

Rate 

(Descending) Adapted from: https://www.collegeraptor.com/collegerankings/details/MedianSAT 

and https://oedb.org/rankings/graduation-rate/ and 

https://blog.prepscholar.com/sat-percentiles-high-precision-2016

IQ by SAT Score 

1800 

1600 

1400 

1200 

1000 

800 

600 

400 

200 

0 

70 75 80 85 90 95 100 105 110 115 120 125 130 135 140 145 150 

Figure 6 IQ by SAT 

Adapted from: http://theunsilencedscience.blogspot.com/2012/04/racialamplitudes-of-scholastic.html 

The statistical data relating to ACT/SAT scores is independently corroborated by 

the fact that the graduation rate of a given college is a function of the average SAT

scores of its students: the higher the average SAT score, the higher the graduation rate. 

To be sure, we are not dealing with strictly monotonic correlations. First of all, schools 

falling into special categories, e.g. theological seminaries, may have different 

graduation-rates from test-score-comparable liberal arts colleges. Also, there are cases 

average test-scores at colleges differ marginally (i.e. by less than 15 percentiles) but 

where the one has a higher graduation-rate than the other. But within these limits, 

average SAT/ACT-score correlates strictly monotonically with higher graduation-rates. 

See Figure 9. 

Once it becomes clear who drops out and why, it becomes possible to answer 

important questions that have not yet been systematically investigated, let alone 

answered, namely: What are the prospects for dropouts? What do they stand to gain by 

dropping out and what do they stand to lose? What kinds of careers do they 

subsequently have? Are they satisfied with those careers? How do their levels of careersatisfaction 

compare with those of non-dropouts? Answering these questions involves 

dealing with important theoretical issues, which we will now discuss. 

Theoretical Foundations and/or Conceptual Framework 

The phenomenon of dropoutism has thus far been studied from cultural, 

political, and emotional perspectives. It has been taken for granted that high dropout 

rates are a ‘tragedy’, and scholarship has consisted, with few or no exceptions, to find 

someone or something to blame. In some cases, the blame is placed on

psychopathology: dropouts are alleged to be drug addicts, alcoholics, victims of 

childhood trauma, or simply mentally ill. In other cases, the blame is placed on classism 

or racism: dropouts do not have the right skin color or do not come from the right 

background. In other cases, blame is placed on inhospitable university environments: 

there are not enough student counselors or dormitories are too crowded. 

Universities have vigorously implemented policies based on these analyses. They 

have built new and better recreational facilities and dormitories (Taylor, C. G., 2017); 

they have hired additional academic advisers and, in many cases, have made round-theclock 

tutoring services available to students (Han et al., 2018); and they have hired extra 

psychologists and substance-abuse specialists (Uddin et al., 2019). Meanwhile, dropout 

rates are not only climbing but accelerating (Facchini et al., 2019). 

The reason is that dropoutism is not a political or psychological or cultural 

issue; it is an economic issue. The less a person stands to benefit from a college degree, 

the more likely he is to drop out. The dropout rate for those with SAT’s above the 85 th 

percentile is less than 25%, and the economic and professional benefits to such a person 

of a college degree are extremely high. The dropout rate for someone with the SAT’s 

below the 40 th percentile is almost 75%, and the benefits of a degree to such a person 

are minimal. See Figures 12-15. 

Strikingly, philosophy majors are the only humanities majors whose 

earnings are comparable to those of upper end STEM-majors, and economics majors are

the only social science majors to have such earnings. This is consistent with the high IQ 

of those with degrees in these disciplines. See Figures 15-20. 

Annual Income (x1000) by SAT Score 

400 

200 

0 

900 1000 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500 1600 

Figure 7 Income by SAT 

Adapted from: https://pumpkinperson.com/2016/02/11/the-incrediblecorrelation-between-iq-income/ 

High IQ students who graduate are overwhelmingly likely to be financially 

successful and to have rewarding careers. The outcomes for low IQ graduates are very 

different. If they do not get vocational training, they end up unemployed, intermittently 

employed at menial jobs, or continuously employed in low-level administrative 

positions. The less someone stands to gain by staying in college, the more likely he is to 

drop out. If they do get vocational training and have careers based thereupon, they have 

moderately high incomes and rewarding careers, but are worse off than IQ-comparable 

people who skipped college altogether and started their vocational careers earlier.

Outcomes for low IQ non-graduates are highly polarized. Those who do not get 

vocational training are much more likely than IQ-comparable graduates without 

vocational training to be unemployed or turn to crime. Those who do get vocational 

training are far less likely than IQ-comparable graduates without vocational training to 

be unemployed and under-employed, and they out-earn such graduates by a wide 

margin. Job-satisfaction for low-IQ graduates without vocational training is extremely 

low, and it is extremely high for vocationally trained low IQ graduates and nongraduates. 

Low IQ graduates vocationally trained graduates earn less than low-IQ 

vocationally trained non-attendants. Low IQ vocationally trained non-attendants are 

more likely than IQ-comparable vocationally trained dropouts to earn more $100,000+ 

annually, and the latter are more likely than IQ-comparable non-vocationally trained 

graduates to do so. 

In order to understand these results, we must know what low IQ graduates are 

likely to major in, since this affects how they are likely to be employed. Let us now turn 

to this matter and to the corresponding body of literature. 

Review of the Literature 

In order to understand the economic prospects of dropouts, we must know what 

people of a given intelligence-level are likely to major. Fortunately, this information is 

readily available and does not have to be inferred.

Figure 8 IQ by Major (Bar Graph) 

Adapted from http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/25/average-iq-of-studentsby-college-major-and-gender-ratio/ 


Figure 9 Unadjusted Income by College Major 

Adapted from http://www.hamiltonproject.org

Figure 10 Income by College Major Adjusted for Debt 


Figure 11 Income by College Major Adjusted for Debt and Taxation 


This information makes it possible to identify where low IQ college graduates are 

likely to be employed. Low IQ graduates are obviously likely to have had low IQ majors, 

these being Criminal Justice up to Psychology (inclusive). Choosing psychology as the 

cut-off was not arbitrary, since it is much more internally IQ-differentiated than 

psychology and since the career-outcomes of business-majors are correspondingly more 

diverse, economically and otherwise. 

Non-vocationally trained graduates with degrees in low IQ majors who find stable 

employment are overwhelmingly likely to end up in the following professional areas 

(Abel et al., 2014 and Nunley et al., 2016): 

*Probation and parole services 

*Corrections and prison administration 

*Social work 

*Elementary school teaching and administration 

*Flight-attendant and airport ground-attendant 

*Secretarial 

*Human resources 

*Drug-counseling 

*Convenience store management 

*Intake-coordination 

*Customer service

*Sales and telemarketing 

*Military and Coast Guard 

*Restaurant-management 

Low IQ College Graduate Earnings 

Not Adjusted for Debt and Taxes 

Telemarketing 

Customer service 

Elementary school teaching 

Drug counselor 

Secretarial 

Corrections and prison administration 

Probation and parole services 

Flight-attendant 

Pharmacy Assistant 

Convenience store management 

Social work 

Human resources 

0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 70000 

Figure 12 Unadjusted Average Pay for jobs/careers for Low IQ Graduates without 

Vocational Training

Adapted from: www.glassdoor.com 

Low IQ Graduate Earnings 

Adjusted for Debt 

Telemarketing 




Secretarial 






Social work 


0 5000 10000150002000025000300003500040000 


Training Adjusted for Debt


Low Graduate Earnings After Debt/Taxes 

Telemarketing 




Secretarial 






Social work 


0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000 


Training Adjusted for Debt and Taxes 


Averages annual salaries in these professions are approximately $38,000; 

adjusted for debt, $32,000; adjusted for debt and taxation $19,000. 

Most people with degrees in low IQ majors who do not have jobs falling into one 

of these categories do not have stable employment.

Many of the just-mentioned career-paths require credentialing, in some cases a 

master’s degree, additional to the bachelor’s degree. 

The presence of people from high IQ majors (religious studies and above) in these 

professions is less than 1%. 

Non-vocationally trained recipients of low-IQ degrees make up less than 1% of all 

successful (earning at least $20,000/annually) entrepreneurs. 

Literature Review: Vocational Careers 

IQ-comparable people with vocational training, be they graduates or nongraduates, 

tend to work in the following areas (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2019): 

*General automotive 

*Carpentry 

*Plumbing 

*Nursing 

*Respiratory therapist 

*Electrician 

*Civil Engineering Tech 

*Pharmacy Assistant 

*Dental Assistant 

*Machining 

*Pipe-fitting

*Phlebotomy. 

*Welding 

*Network administration 

27% of successful entrepreneurs worked in these areas and then became 

entrepreneurs by becoming self-employed in those same areas (Bureau of Labor 

Statistics, 2019). 

Average annual salaries in these areas, not adjusted for debt, are approximately 

$48,870.

Earnings for Vocationals 

Not Adjused for Debt/Taxation 

$100,000.00 

$90,000.00 

$80,000.00 

$70,000.00 

$60,000.00 

$50,000.00 

$40,000.00 

$30,000.00 

$20,000.00 

$10,000.00 

$- 

Figure 15 Non-debt-adjusted average pay for Vocationals 

Adapted from: www.glassdoor.com

$90,000.00 

Vocational Earnings 


$80,000.00 

$70,000.00 

$60,000.00 

$50,000.00 

$40,000.00 

$30,000.00 

$20,000.00 

$10,000.00 

$- 

Figure 16 Debt-adjusted average pay for Vocationals 


Vocational Earnings 

Adjusted for Debt and taxation 

$60000.0.00 

$50000.0.00 

$40000.0.00 

$30000.0.00 

$20000.0.00 

$10000.0.00 

$- 

Figure 17 Debt- and tax-adjusted average pay for Vocationals


Debt- and Tax-adjusted Incomes for Vocationals, Low IQ Nongraduates 

and Low IQ Graduates 

Telemarketing 


Secretarial 

Server 


Hotel Desk-worker/Bellhop 


Security Guard 

Warehouse/factory worker 

Secretarial 


Welding 

Corrections and prison… 



Plumbing 

General automotive 

Carpentry 

Police Officer/Sherriff’s Deputy 

Network administration 

Civil Engineering Tech 

0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000

Figure 18 Comparison of Average Earnings, adjusted for debt and taxation, for 

vocationals, low IQ graduates, and low IQ non-graduates. 


60000 

Vocational (Red) vs. Low IQ Grad (Blue) Earnings 

Adjusted for Debt and Taxation 

50000 

40000 

30000 

20000 

10000 

0 

Figure 19 Comparison between average pay for vocationals and low IQ 

Graduates Adjusted for Debt and Taxation 


Literature Review: Earnings on the Part of Non-vocationally trained Nongraduates 

The presumption is that those with neither college degrees nor vocational 

training are in the worst economic position possible. This statistic provide little support 

for this position. First of all, the probable careers of low IQ graduates overlap to a high 

degree with those of low IQ non-vocationally trained non-graduates. 70% of employed 

non-graduates with no vocational certifications, as well as 40% of low IQ graduates, 

have jobs falling into one of the following categories (Kroeger et al., 2016): 

*Server 

*Cashier 

*Warehouse/factory worker 

*Insurance-sales 

*Custodial 

*Agricultural worker 

*Police Officer/Sheriff’s deputy 

*Military (infantry/non-commissioned officer) 

*Security guard 

*Hotel desk-worker/bellhop 

The average for these positions is $40,877.

Approximately 15% of low IQ graduates go into education and social workers, 

and 15% go into various other professions (e.g. lab technician) that either formally or 

informally require college degrees (Howell et al., 2015). 

SAT/ACT-scores in these professions are on average slightly lower than those in 

low IQ majors (Hutchinson). 

Non-graduate Non-vocational Earnings 

Not Adjusted for Debt or Taxes 

law enforcement 

Telemarketing 




Secretarial 







0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 70000 

Figure 20 Unadjusted Salaries for Low IQ Non-graduate Non-vocationals 

Adapted from: https://www.glassdoor.com

Low IQ Non-graduate, Non-vocational Earnings 


Telemarketing 


Secretarial 




0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 

Figure 21 Debt-adjusted Salaries for Low IQ Non-graduate Non-vocationals 

Adapted from: https://www.glassdoor.com

vocationals 

Figure 22 Debt- and Tax-adjusted Salaries for Low IQ Non-graduate Non-

Adapted from: https://www.glassdoor.com 

Debt- and Tax-adjusted Incomes for Vocationals (Red), Low IQ Nongraduates 

(Blue) and Low IQ Graduades (Blue) 

Telemarketing 




Secretarial 

Cashier 

Server 

Telemarketing 



Hotel Desk-worker/Bellhop 



UPS Delivery/Handling 

Security Guard 


Warehouse/factory worker 


Secretarial 

Military (Infantry/non-commissioned) 


Social work 

Welding 

Insurance Sales 


Machining 


Sanitation Worker 



Plumbing 


General automotive 

Respiratory therapist 

Carpentry 

Electrician 

Police Officer/Sherriff’s Deputy 


Network administration 

Nursing 

Civil Engineering Tech 

0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000

Figure 23 Debt- and Tax-adjusted Salaries for Non-graduate Non-vocationals, 

Low IQ Graduates, and Vocationals 

Adapted from: https://www.glassdoor.com 

Literature Review: Financial Costs and Benefits of Low IQ Degree 

The lowest IQ majors are social work, education, psychology, criminal justice, and 

variants thereof. People graduating with degrees in these fields on average have around 

$25,000 in student-loan debt (Schmeiser et al., 2016). Since work in the corresponding 

fields often involves getting a master's degree or some other advanced degree, they 

usually have to take on more debt before they can be employed in those fields (Webber 

et al., 2017). Consequently, the average amount of student loan debt for licensed social 

workers is approximately $60,000; for licensed psychologists, $65,000; for 

schoolteachers, $45,000; probation and parole officers, $32,000 (Bowen, 2018). 

The median monthly amount of payments on student loan debts in these fields 

are $600, and it takes people employed in these fields an average of 25 years to pay off 

their student loan debts. This makes sense when it is taken into account that these are 

interesting bearing loans and also that median annual salaries in these fields just slightly 

$20,000 (Popescu, 2018). 

Student loan debt for non-attendants with vocational training is $8,000; for 

dropouts with vocational training, $13,450; and for graduates with vocational training, 

$31,000. The average amount of time needed to repay student loans for non-attendants

with vocational training is two years; for vocationally trained dropouts, four years; and 

for vocationally trained graduates, 11 years (Odinet, 2019). 

Literature Review: Career Satisfaction 

How fulfilling are careers based on low IQ majors in comparison with careers 

based on vocational training? There is very little literature, and very few statistics, 

bearing directly on this question. There is considerable literature and statistical data 

indirectly bearing on it. 

First of all, there is literature, as well as statistical data, concerning levels of 

career satisfaction among probation and parole officers, social workers, and the other 

careers that graduates with low IQ majors tend to end up with. 

This body of literature is sparse and internally contradictory, with some authors 

saying that career-satisfaction is very low and others saying that it is moderately high, 

with each school of thought having its own statistics. No definitive conclusions can be 

drawn from it. 

The higher the average SAT scores at a given college, the lower its dropout rate 

and the higher the earnings of its graduates. Harvard’s average board scores are in the 

top 1%; its dropout rate is less than 1%; and annual graduate earnings are in the top 1%. 

The average SAT scores at Fort Valley State are below the 45 th percentile for the nation; 

the dropout rate is over 70%; and annual graduate earnings are below the 45 th

percentile. Within these two extremes, dropout rates and graduate-earnings are strictly 

ordered according to average student test-score. 

Also, the higher the average test-scores at a given college, the smaller the 

percentage of students who earn degrees in low IQ majors. In fact, some high IQ majors, 

notably philosophy, are not even offered at the lower-end schools; and many low IQ 

majors are not offered at higher-end schools. 

When surveyed, dropouts seldom cite difficulty with coursework as their 

reason for dropping out. They are more likely to cite financial difficulties, trouble 

balancing schoolwork with family and personal relationships, homesickness, and 

inability to focus (Daley, 2010; McDermott et al., 2019). 

The statistics tell a different story. Less than one percent of students with test 

scores in the 85 th percentile and above drop out; more than 95 percent of students with 

test scores in the 40 th percentile and below drop out. Students in the first category take 

on 250% debt for every year spent in college than do students in the second category, 

but 80% of students in the first category pay back their student loans within 10 years, 

whereas only 20% of students in the second category do so (Webber, 2016). A student’s 

dropout-likelihood is therefore a function not of the size of his financial obligations but of 

his eventual ability to meet those obligations, and it is therefore a function of the 

financial benefit to him of a college degree. The greater than benefit, the lower the 

dropout-likelihood.

Summary 

The people who stand to lose money by dropping out almost never do, the 

dropout rate being next to zero for those with test-scores above 85 th percentile, these 

being the people who benefit the most from a college degree. For people in this 

category, the financial benefits of a college degree are unambiguous. 

For those who do drop out, those benefits are ambiguous. The lower a person’s 

IQ, the more likely he is to drop out of college, and the greater are the financial benefits 

to him of vocational work. 

This is not to say that those who drop out are always making the right choice. In 

many cases, they are not. Although unemployment among vocationally trained nongraduates 

is lower than that of college graduates, unemployment among nongraduates, 

on the whole, is more than twice as high. For those in the middle of the bell 

curve, the situation is objectively ambiguous: they stand to gain as much by staying in 

college as they do by opting for a vocational career. That said, the more economically 

rational it is for a given person to drop out, the more likely he is to do so. Dropoutlikelihood 

tracks dropout F -rationality. 

What is not clear is whether dropout-likelihood tracks dropout E -rationality. This is 

not easily deduced from information about the financial implications of dropping out. It 

is in principle deducible from other objective data, such as suicide rates, rates of drug 

abuse, and the like. But, firstly, supposing that low-IQ college graduates had the same

ates of suicide, drug use, etc. as vocationally trained IQ-comparables, it wouldn't 

necessarily follow that they were equally satisfied with their careers. Second, the 

relevant data simply isn't available. For these reasons, we will ascertain relative degrees 

of career satisfaction through the use of surveys.

Chapter 3 Methodology 

Introduction 

The purpose of this quantitative-correlational study was to determine the causes 

of dropoutism. This involved finding a principled way of determining the financial and 

emotional prospects for those dropping out, the reason being people considering 

dropping out likely make their decision on the basis of at least some kind of awareness 

of the advantages and disadvantages of doing so. When scrutinized, the statistical data 

clearly indicates that dropout-likelihood is a direct function of dropout F -rationality. 

This finding is at odds with the vast majority of scholarly and non-scholarly 

literature on the matter, the premise of which is that dropping out is a form of failure is 

therefore a consequence of intellectual, emotional, or financial deficits of some kind 

(Xiao et al., 2017; Welton et al., 2015; Vasquez et al., 2015; Lavine et al., 1029; Swidey, 

2016; Rivera-McCutchen, 2016). A strikingly high percentage of scholarly articles on this 

matter attribute dropoutism to mental illness (Bishop, 2016), even though the actual 

data is totally inconsistent with this (Kosyluk et al., 2016). In fact, those who are 

behaving the most rationally are those who are either maximally likely to drop out or 

maximally likely not to do so, since in those cases the financial consequences of 

dropping out are unambiguous; and people at those extremes categorically make the 

rational decision. The more remote a given student is from those extremes, the less the

consequences of dropping out differ from those of not doing so and, consequently, the 

less obviously rational that person’s decision must necessarily be. 

Researchers and journalists tend to focus on the middle-of-the-road cases and 

are quick to pounce on even the feeblest indication of pathology on the student’s part. 

They blame it on depression (Ho et al., 2016), alcoholism (Kiciman et al., 2018), general 

lack of self-restraint (Nevarez, 2017), and the like , even though there is literally no 

indication that these mid-range dropouts are more depressed or debauched than those 

who don’t drop out. 

Researchers and journalists are quick to seize upon ‘findings’ on the part of 

university psychologist to the effect that 40% of college students are “binge drinkers” 

and that upwards of a third of college students are “seriously depressed” (Sharma et al., 

2018). What isn’t reported is that if these figures were correct, then universities would 

have rates of depression comparable to those of most Federal prisons and alcoholism 

rates higher than among those who end up there (Holliday et al., 2016). Most 

importantly, if such a higher percentage of students are mentally ill drug addicts, the 

first question to ask is whether universities are the right place for them. Finally, we have 

found that college students are strikingly sane, at least when it comes to deciding 

whether or not to drop out. Also striking is that those at the lower end of the IQ 

spectrum are quite as rational in this regard as those at the upper end.

Prior research has not correctly explained why students drop out or whether they 

are behaving in a financially rational manner in doing so. Nor, therefore, has it been 

explained whether they are behaving in an emotionally rational manner. In the pages to 

come, we will address this issue. 

Statement of the Problem 

Prior to this study, it was not known to what extent people who drop out of 

college are in doing so behaving in either a financially or emotionally rational manner. 

We have found that they are behaving in a financially rational manner. This suggests 

that they are also behaving in an emotionally rational manner. In the pages to come, we 

will determine whether or not this is in fact the case. 

Enormous resources are expended trying to prevent people from dropping out of 

college. Given that students tend to be serving their own financial interests by dropping 

out, those resources should be invested in college-alternative educational and 

professional tracks, so as to maximize the pay-off for them of leaving college, instead of 

being used, as they are now, to delegitimate their doing so. Should it turn out that 

students who choose vocational training over college higher degrees of career 

satisfaction than IQ-comparable college graduates, then there is that much more reason 

to reallocate resources in this way. 

Research Questions and Hypotheses 

Our objective in this study is to answer the following question:

RQ1: To what extent are those who drop out of college behaving rationally in 

doing so? 

There are two versions of RQ1, namely: 

RQ1 F : To what extent are those who drop out of college being financially rational 

in doing so? In other words, to what extent does their doing so lead to increased 

earnings? 

And: 



increased career-satisfaction? 

We have already answered RQ1 F . the answer being: 

HQ1 F : On balance, those who drop out of college are to a statistically significant 

degree improving their levels of career satisfaction. 

Now must now answer RQ1 E . There are three answers to this question: 

HQ1 ER : Those who drop out of college are thereby doing more to increase their 

level of career-satisfaction than to diminish it. 

HQ1 EN : On balance, those who drop out of college are not thereby appreciably 

increasing or diminishing their levels of career-satisfaction. 

HQ1 EI : Those who drop out of college are thereby doing more to diminish their 

level of career-satisfaction than to increase it.

For reasons already discussed, we will answer this question on the basis of data 

generated by surveys that we administer. Whenever we administer a survey to a given 

group, we must also administer it to the appropriate complement-group. For example, if 

we were interested in levels of emotional satisfaction among people who drink tomato 

juice, we would want to survey consumers of tomato-juice as well as non-consumers. In 

the context of this study, there are several pairs of complement-groups. 

Given that we are comparing dropouts to graduates, we must administer surveys 

to members of both groups and compare the results. 

Given that a person’s dropout-likelihood is inversely proportional his IQ, the most 

important comparison to make is between low IQ dropouts and low IQ graduates, and 

we must administer surveys to both populations and compare the results. 

Given that dropouts with vocational training considerably out-earn dropouts 

without vocational training, and also out-earn IQ-comparable graduates without 

vocational training, we must administer surveys to dropout-vocationals and dropoutnon-vocationals 

and compare the results. 

Given that low IQ graduates often receive vocational training and then have 

careers based on that training, we must administer surveys to members of that group 

and compare the results with those from surveys administered to low IQ non-graduate 

vocationals.

The groups just mentioned are those on whose members a college degree 

confers relatively little benefit. In order to understand the results of the just-mentioned 

surveys, we must also administer surveys to high IQ college graduate and then compare 

the results with those of the above-mentioned surveys. We will also want to administer 

surveys to high IQ non-graduates. The results will directly help us understand how 

people with high IQ’s benefit from college, and it may shed indirect light on the benefits, 

or lack thereof, to other populations. 

The relevant independent variables are therefore (i) IQ, (ii) graduate or nongraduation, 

and (iii) vocationally trained or not. The independent variable in this case is 

degree of career-satisfaction. 

The researcher had no choice but to construct his own questionnaire, owing to 

the fact that no existing questionnaire sufficed for the purposes of this investigation. 

There exist many time-tested questionnaires that measure satisfaction with one's job, 

i.e. with one’s current position. But one’s level of satisfaction with one’s career is often 

very different from one’s level of satisfaction with one’s career. (A given physician can 

love being a physician but hate his current position.) Nor were any of the many existing 

life-satisfaction questionnaires usable, since career-satisfaction and life-satisfaction, 

though linked, are distinct. (A given person can have love his career but have 

relationship or family-difficulties that leave him unfulfilled.) There exist many 

questionnaires relating to satisfaction with certain specific career-paths, but these were

obviously too narrow for our purposes. Further, it was necessary that our questionnaire 

not assume that the respondent actually had a career, given that many of the 

respondents were likely to be unemployed, intermittently employed, or menially 

employed. So even if there did exist reputable career-satisfaction questionnaires, we 

might not have been able to use them. Finally, we needed a questionnaire that could be 

used effectively with each of the following populations: 

* Low IQ non-graduates without vocational training, 

* Low IQ non-graduates with vocational training 

* Low IQ graduates without vocational training 

* Low IQ graduates with vocational training, 

* High IQ non-graduates without vocational training 

* High IQ non-graduates with vocational training 

* High IQ graduates without vocational training 

*High IQ graduates with vocational training 

This fact imposed significant constraints on the structure of the questionnaire to 

be used. It had to be intelligible to people who varied widely in education-level, 

intelligence, and profession. It also had to elicit relatively specific information without 

leading the respondents towards a given answer. No existing questionnaire of the 

appropriate kind satisfied these constraints, leaving it to the researcher to construct 

one.

A professional service was used to administer the survey to people according to 

custom variables, College Degree Status, Vocational Training Status, SAT/ACT-score, and 

college-major. Therefore, respondents did not have to answer questions relating to their 

test-scores or college majors and only had to answer questions relating to careersatisfaction. 

All questions were required. 

The possible to answers to each question were: 

1=Strongly Disagree 

2=Disagree 

3=Slightly Disagree 

4=Neither Agree Nor Disagree 

5=Slightly Agree 

6=Agree 

7=Strongly Agree 

The answers generated seven-point Likert-scale representing career-satisfaction. 

The minimum sample size was 115 for each of the eight populations surveyed, 

with a total of 920.

Figure 24 G*Power Calculations 

For the purposes of our G*Power calculations, we operated on the assumption 

that we were generating a parametric two-tailed Pearson’s correlation. Technically, this 

is not the case. The variables in our case are, respectively, (a) membership in one of the 

eight populations in question and (b) survey-score. Neither of those variables is

continuous, the reason being that, as is the case with any survey-generated correlation, 

(DiNunno, 2011) both of the variables range over finite sets of integers. That said, this 

inaccuracy is innocuous when computing sample sizes for surveys, provided that, for 

computational purposes, the correlation in question is treated as two-tailed Pearson 

correlation (Nardi, 2019). 

Surveys will be professionally administered online.The survey-service estimated 

the completion rate to be 76%. Consequently, surveys have to be sent to at least 151 

people/target-population, making for a total of 1,208 surveys to be sent, with 

approximately 850 of them likely to be completed. 

Research Methodology 

The methodology used in this study is quantitative. When determining the 

economic rationality of dropoutism, we used a relatively strictly statistical method. We 

found a numerical variable, namely SAT/ACT score, this being a proxy for IQ, that 

statistically correlated to an extremely high degree (ρ

dropout F -rationality, it remained only to see whether dropout F -rationality correlated 

with dropout E -rationality. Given that dropout F -rationality is expressed as a dollar 

amount and therefore as a single number, it is necessary that dropout E -rationality also 

be expressed by a single number if it is to be compared with dropout F -rationality. Prior 

to this study, dropout E -rationality had never even been ascertained, let alone expressed 

as a single figure, and we ourselves had to figure out (i) how to assign dropout E - 

rationality quotients to people and (ii) whose dropout E -rationality was what. 

This was readily done. First of all, dropping out is emotionally rational to 

the extent that doing so makes one more fulfilled than similar people who graduated. 

Given that the benefits of a college degree reliably correlate with IQ and IQ alone, two 

people are to be regarded as ‘similar’ just in case they are IQ-comparable. Therefore, for 

people of a given intelligence level, dropout E -rationality is hewed to, and may therefore 

be identified with, the extent to which they are more fulfilled than IQ-comparable 

graduates. 

Having thus operationally defined ‘dropout-rationality’, we must find a way to 

correlate degrees of career-satisfaction with graduation-status. Given the veritable 

absence of career-satisfaction surveys, apart from ones that were extremely 

demographic-specific, we have no choice but to construct a survey of our own, which 

we will administer, using a professional survey service, to randomly chosen samples of 

each of the eight populations in question. (SAT/ACT-scores served as proxies for IQ.) The

esults are expected to enable us to rank the following the groups by average level of 

wellness and consequently to rank groups (1), (2), (5) and (6) according to dropout E - 

rationality. 

(i) 

(ii) 

(iii) 

(iv) 

(v) 

(vi) 

(vii) 









Research Design 

The methodology used in this phase of the study is both correlational and nonexperimental. 

The study is correlational because we were investigating the dependence 

of one set of variables (personal and financial fulfillment) on another. An experimental 

approach is neither possible (given that the variables, e.g. IQ and educational status, 

were ones that we could not alter) nor necessary (given how many people there are 

who differ in the relevant respects but are otherwise comparable). 

Eight different groups will be surveyed, and respondents therefore must be prescreened 

for test-scores (this being the best available proxy for IQ), college degree, and

vocational training. Since IQ, college degree, and vocational training are the 

independent variables in this study, they must be screened for. Apart from those 

variables, sampling must be random, so that results are in no way predetermined by 

selection-bias. 

The minimum sample size for each of the seven groups was 115. Since eight 

groups were surveyed, the total number surveyed (meaning that they complete a 

survey) will be 920. Given the predicted response-rate of 76, the number of people to 

whom surveys will have to be given is 1,208. 

The objective of the surveys is to rank populations in terms of career-satisfaction, 

where the populations are defined by (i) their average IQ’s, (ii) their either having or not 

having college degrees and (ii) their either being or not being vocationally trained. Our 

concern is not ‘absolute’ but rather relative levels of career of satisfaction. Should it turn 

out that low IQ graduates without vocational training have moderate degrees of careersatisfaction, 

that would not be as meaningful as it would be should it turn out out that 

low IQ dropouts with vocational training have high levels of career satisfaction. 

Since the survey uses a seven-point Likert scale, survey results for individuals will 

expressed in a single number. Results for populations will be averaged, and these 

averages will be used to generate rankings among the populations surveyed. 

Population and Sample Selection 

There are eight targeted populations:

(1) Low IQ non-graduates without vocational training, 

(2) Low IQ non-graduates with vocational training 

(3) Low IQ graduates without vocational training 

(4) Low IQ graduates with vocational training, 

(5) High IQ non-graduates without vocational training 

(6) High IQ non-graduates with vocational training 

(7) High IQ graduates without vocational training 

(8) High IQ graduates with vocational training 

Within the United States, each of these populations is in the millions. The general 

statistical rule of thumb is that given a population of over 1,000,000, if n% group of 115 

randomly chosen members of that population has a given characteristics, then n±5% of 

the population have that characteristics (Nardi, 2018). For example, given population of 

1,000,000, if 115 members of that population are randomly chosen and 75 (65%) of 

them like chocolate ice-cream, then 65±10% of the original population like chocolate 

ice-cream. In other words, between 60% and 70% of the original population like 

chocolate ice-cream. 

But these points only hold when the information that is sought about the 

population in question can be given with a simple “yes” or “no” (Becker et al., 2016). For 

example, if the question is "do you prefer to chocolate to vanilla?", then, if 115 

randomly chosen members from a population of 1,000,000 are surveyed, there is a 5%

error margin. But this error margin may shrink even if sample-size and population-size 

are held fixed. It shrinks if the answers to the survey questions involve rankings (e.g. 

“Strongly agree, Agree, Slightly Agree…”) and the answers are bunched around one of 

the extremes. Suppose the survey question is “how good a job do you feel Senator X is 

doing?”, and 115 people are randomly chosen, with all political affiliations, economic 

strata, ethnicities, etc. being evenly represented; and suppose that the respondent has 

to answer with a number between 1 and 10 (1=completely bad and 10=perfect). If 98% 

of the answers are 1’s, or if 99% are 10’s, then the error margin drops to under 5% 

(Hopkins et al., 2018). 

Also relevant is the case where a survey is asking for a ranking, as opposed to a 

simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and, moreover, the survey is attempting to elicit that information 

through multiple different versions of the same query. If answers on individual 

questionnaires tend to be bunched around one of the extremes and if, moreover, 

averages of survey-responses in their turn are bunched around extremes, then the 

error-margin is lowered considerably. Suppose, as before, that we are trying to find out 

how Senator X’s constituents feel about the job he is doing, except that this time, 

instead of just asking “is he doing a good job?”, we ask a number of different versions of 

this question, e.g. “has your financial situation improved since X took office?”, “has the 

quality of tap water improved?”, “is your neighborhood more safe?”, etc., with the 

possible answers, as before, being a ranking of 1 through 10, with 1 being maximally bad

and 10 being maximally good. Under this circumstance, if answers on a given survey 

tend to be bunched around one of the extremes and if, moreover, the overwhelming 

majority of survey-responses are bunched around the same extreme, then the errormargin 

is much lower than ceteris paribus it would otherwise be (Benjamin et al., 2018). 

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, a 5% error margin may be more than 

acceptable in some contexts. Here is an example of such a context. The objective of a 

given survey is to establish a ranking of some kind among different populations. The 

survey is administered and survey-results are in. It turns out that, even after taking the 

error-margin into account, those results generate unambiguous ranking. Under these 

circumstances, the error-margin is of no consequence, even if it is wide in absolute 

terms. Contrariwise, if the error-margin has to be extremely narrow to establish the 

ranking in question, then the ranking is that much less worth establishing, since its 

extremes are that much closer to each other. We have seen how dropout F -rationality 

depends on the variables in question; if dropout E -rationality depends on them in a 

similar way, then wide error-margins can be tolerated. 

Instrumentation 

Since there no pre-existing career-satisfaction questionnaires, we had to 

come up with our own. That said, we had two sources of support in the existing 

literature. First, there is an abundance of cogent literature as to what constitutes a 

‘dream job’, which is a tolerable synonym for ‘ideal career’ (Li et al., 2016). Second,

there were reputable job-satisfaction surveys with questions that, when answered 

affirmatively, are consistent with the respondent’s having a position that he regards as 

being a career and a fulfilling one at that (Khamisa et al., 2015). 

The best and most research suggests that a ‘dream job’ for a given person 

is one that satisfies three conditions: The job-holder is good at it; it is work that he 

regards as benefiting the world; conditions are supportive and conduce to a ‘state of 

flow’, including reasonable pay, schedule that fits one’s lifestyle, non-antagonistic coworkers, 

and the like. 

Importantly, although reasonable pay is necessary for a dream job, satisfactionreturns 

on pay over and above that amount quickly diminish (Türkoglu et al., 2017; 

Deeba et al., 2015). This entails that compensation is not what makes a job reasonable: 

if the person likes the job, he will do it for a reasonable amount; and he doesn’t like it, 

no amount of money will make it fulfilling for him, even though enough money induce 

to keep doing it. Another interesting fact is that a job's being a dream-job doesn't 

depend on its not being stressful. If X is John's dream job, it will continue to be his 

dream job even it becomes increasingly stressful, provided the stress-levels are not 

incapacitating; and if X is not John's dream job, decreasing job-related stress, even to 

the point of non-existence, won't turn X into a dream job. 

In terms of questionnaire-design, the basic desiderata for psychometric 

tests, such as this one, are as follows (Sijtsma et al., 2017; Nardi, 2018).

Questions must be clear. “Are you paid enough?” is clear. “Would it not 

necessarily be so bad if you were better remunerated than you currently are?” is not 

clear. 

Questions must not be tendentiously phrased. “Do you find your work 

engaging?” is non-tendentiously and non-judgmentally phrased. “Does your work, 

despite its menial and insignificant character, manage to interest you?” is tendentiously 

and judgmentally phrased. 

Questions should not be vague or overly theoretical. “Are your clients happy with 

your work?” is non-vague. “In the long-term, does the economy benefit from your 

work?” is vague and overly theoretical. 

Questions should not be circuitous. The respondent should not feel that games 

are being played. “Do you get along with your boss” is direct. “If your boss became a 

spokesperson for a fast-food chain, would that make you want to stop eating there?” is 

circuitous and manipulative. 

Also, the questionnaire should not be too long. Otherwise, response rates will 

decline and answer-quality will deteriorate in those who complete the questionnaire. 

Finally, when information about the respondent’s attitudes is being sought, it is 

necessary to ask questions relating to different ways in which that attitude might 

actually guide his thought and behavior. Simply asking “do you like your career?” will 

not elicit fine-grained information about the respondent’s attitude towards his career

and may even elicit a defensive response. Fine-grained and sincere responses are more 

likely to be elicited by questions such as the following: 

“Do you regard difficult assignments as inconveniences or as challenges?” 

“Do you find yourself thinking about how to improve your professional skills even 

when you are not on the job?” 

“Do you tend to throw yourself into your work when you have personal 

problems?” 

“Do you work even when don’t have to?” 

The researcher constructed a test satisfying these desiderata. Also, the 

test is sufficiently similar to proven and reputable job-satisfaction questionnaires as to 

minimize the risk of its failing of its purpose, while also, unlike existing questionnaires, 

eliciting information specific to the respondent’s level of career-satisfaction (as opposed 

to job-satisfaction). 

Validity 

Validity is being ensured in the following ways. 

First, a reputable professional survey-service has already been retained to 

administer the survey to the eight demographics in question. This service provides 

automated, reliable analytics and always complies with legal and professional protocols. 

Second, questions are clearly and modeled on those of reputable questionnaires, 

within the limits set by the differences in subject-matter. Also, the survey company has

a grading system whereby survey-efficacy is assessed before the survey is administered; 

and this surveyed a score of 100%. 

Third, questions will initially administered to small samples, and then scaled up 

when results from initial surveys show that error margins were unlikely to vitiate results. 

Tight, demographically-driven clusterings of responses diminish error-margins and 

warrant upscaling; and the absence of such clusterings warrant changing the survey, so 

as to increase confidence-intervals, before re-administering. 

Finally, we only need error-margins to be as narrow as was consistent with their 

establishing unambiguous rankings. The fact that one of the variables is discontinuous 

made any other standard of precision irrelevant. Therefore, once initial surveys 

established that error-margins are narrow enough to yield an unambiguous ranking, we 

will be free to administer the survey to a large population. 

Reliability 

The survey consists of 20 questions. Four of the questions are concerned with the 

respondent’s perception of his own abilities at his work. Four are concerned with his 

feelings as to his level of enthusiasm for his work. Four concern his beliefs as to how 

much good for the world he believes himself to do. Four concern his beliefs as to 

whether he is adequately compensated. Four concern his beliefs as to whether his 

clients, co-workers, and supervisors adequately appreciate his work. No two questions 

within any given one of these five question-groups are identical, but answers to

questions within a given group should elicit similar responses. Consequently, 

consistency of responses within groups indicates a high-degree of reliability and validity, 

and low consistency indicates low degree of reliability and validity. 

The survey-company software approved the survey for clarity and ease of use 

and probable high (76%) completion of rate. At the researcher’s request (and expense), 

a manual review of the questions was conducted, in light of information concerning the 

nature of the research being conducted. No changes were recommended. 

Data Collection and Management 

The survey-service will prescreen for the relevant variables (test-score, college 

graduation, vocationally trained). Respondents will not be prescreened for income, 

since surveys must be distributed randomly within each population group. Potential 

respondents will be sent an email with a link to the survey. 

The email contains a description of the survey, the number of questions, and the 

nature of those questions. It is stated that the questions were multiple choice. It is also 

stated that no information would ever be publicized concerning an individual 

respondent’s answers. It is made clear that the survey had no relation to their work or 

any aspect of their life and that their responses, or decision not to do or to complete the 

survey, will have no effect on any aspect of their lives. It is also stated that survey results 

would be kept for a minimum of three years. The purpose of the survey is also stated, 

along with the disclaimer that this is research being conducted by a doctoral candidate

and is not an official government action of any kind. The identity of the researcher is not 

disclosed, nor is any other identifying information. 

No ‘frill material’ is included. Itis not said that responses would ‘enrich 

scholarship’ or anything of the sort. It is not suggested or stated that negative 

consequences will follow from non-responses or certain kinds of responses or that good 

consequences will follow from completed surveys or from certain kinds of responses. 

The tone is neutral and no imagery or suggestive fonts, italicizations, capitalizations, 

colorings, or other iconographies are used. 

If email recipients click on the link, they are taken to page where this information 

is repeated and where they are presented with two boxes: I CONSENT and I DO NOT 

CONSENT. If they click on the first box, they are taken to the survey proper. 

Data Analysis Procedures 

Our research question is: 



increased career-satisfaction? 

In order to answer RQ1, we first had to answer: 

RQ2: Who drops out of college? In other words, what characteristics are 

dispositive of a person’s dropping out of college? (Is it poverty, mental illness, physical 

illness, unstable home life, low IQ, etc.?)

We found the answer to be: 

HQ2: The higher a given person’s IQ, the less likely he is to drop out of college. 

In the course of generating HQ2, we discovered that: 

HQ1 F : The higher a given person’s IQ, the less financially rational it is for him to 

drop out of college. 

This established the following earnings-ranking (from bottom to top): 

(1) Low IQ, non-vocationally trained non-graduates 

(2) High IQ non-vocationally trained non-graduates 

(3) Low IQ, non-vocationally trained graduates 

(4) Low IQ vocationally trained graduates 

(5) Low IQ vocationally trained non-graduates 

(6) High IQ vocationally trained non-graduates 

(7) High IQ vocationally trained graduates 

(8) High IQ non-vocationally trained graduates 

The need to discover whether career-satisfaction generated a similar hierarchy 

governed our data-analysis procedures. Questionnaires pre-screen for the dependence 

variables (test-scores, graduation-status, vocational-status). The survey-software will be 

set to do the following: 

(i) Provide data for each respondent 

(ii) Find average value for each question for each target-population

(iii) Average these averages by population, as to generate an overall careersatisfaction 

score for each population. 

We are operating on the assumption that answers are up to 10% inaccurate, even 

though that actual error-margin is less than 5%. 

Ethical Considerations 

We will administer surveys by way of a reputable company that will not spam 

anyone, invade their privacy, offer incentives, or otherwise violate the rights of 

respondents or skew responses. The questions are phrased in such a way that 

respondents will know that their responses, whatsoever they might be, are genuinely 

valued. 

Limitations and Delimitations 

The results generated will not have validity across any society at all times or 

across all societies at a given time. This study is not intended to establish universally 

applicable sociological principles. It would be important to know how existing economic 

conditions and government policies affected the realities discussed in this study. 

Another limitation is that this study does not examine the internal structure of 

any of the populations involved. For example, the population of high IQ non-vocationally 

trained college graduates is internally stratified, with some of its member loving their 

careers and others hating them, and it would be worth how it was stratified and why. 

The same is true of each of the sub-populations.

Finally, it would be worth seeing if the results we obtain, whatever they might be, 

hold up when larger populations are concerned. 

Summary 

In the first two chapters, we discovered extremely tight connections between IQ 

and both dropout-rate and dropout-rationality. With those in the upper IQ range, a 

college degree was more significant than vocational training. With those in all IQ ranges, 

dropout-behavior tracked dropout-rationality. It is unambiguously rational for those in 

the very low IQ range to drop out and that is they do. It is unambiguously rational for 

people in the upper IQ range to graduate from college, and that what they do. It is 

ambiguously rational for those in the lower-medium range to drop out, and that is what 

half of them do. 

Given this information, the question to ask is whether the degree to which is 

emotionally rational to drop out, in the sense of being conducive to career-satisfaction, 

tracks the degree to which it is financially rationally to do so. We figured out how to 

answer this question. Having already discovered that IQ, college-graduation status, and 

vocational status generated an earnings hierarchy, we simply had to find out whether 

they also generated a career-satisfaction hierarchy. 

Because there did not exist any statistics that explicitly or implicitly answered this 

question, we have to generate those statistics ourselves. Because there do not exist any 

questionnaires that we could use, we had to design our own questionnaire; and we did

so, taking care to model it, as closely as its distinctive subject-matter allowed, on 

existing questionnaires. Because we designed our own questionnaire, we had to make 

sure that it covered the relevant variables, and we also had to see to it that it generated 

credible information. This was labor intensive but well worth it. 


Representative Work July-August 2019 

Is the Turing Test a good test of intelligence? (philosophy) 










Poem and Song Compared: To His Coy Mistress Compared with Don’t Be Cruel (Literary 

Analysis) 






Is the Turing Test a good test of intelligence? (philosophy)

The statement ‘the Turing Test is a good test of intelligence’ is ambiguous. On the 

one hand, it can be taken to mean that a given entity’s acting like an intelligent being is 

evidence of its having intelligence, meaning that such behavior is good but not definitive 

reason to ascribe intelligence to the being in question. On the other hand, it can be 

taken to mean a given entity’s acting like an intelligent creature is constitutive of its 

having intelligence, meaning that there is no difference between its being intelligent and 

its behaving (or able to behave) like an intelligent creature. The first disambiguation, so I 

will argue, is correct only if subject to heavy qualifications, and the second 

disambiguation, so I will argue, is unqualifiedly incorrect. 

Turing introduced the concept of the Turing Test through the following 

hypothetical. A written but rapid exchange between two parties is occurring. One of 

those parties is a machine, and the other is a person. A second person is monitoring the 

exchange. This person knows that one of the parties involved is a person and that the 

other is a machine, and he also knows what each party writes and when it writes it, but 

he has no additional information as to either one’s identity. According to Turing, if this 

person is consistently able to figure out which of the two parties is the machine and 

which one is the person, then the machine does not have intelligence. On the other 

hand, if that person cannot consistently determine which of the parties is the machine, 

then that machine has intelligence.

We can use a variant of Turing’s own scenario to demonstrate the spuriousness 

of Turing’s own reasoning. Let X be the person involved in the exchange just described 

and let Y be the machine; and suppose that the exchange they are having concerns 

arithmetic. X is making arithmetical statements (e.g. “1+1=2”, “1+2=3”, “1+2≠3”), and Y 

is evaluating those statements. If X says “2 3 =8”, Y responds by saying “that is correct”; 

and if X says “2 3 =6”, Y responds by saying “that is incorrect.” As it happens, let us 

suppose, X, though an extremely gifted playwright and poet, has a blind spot for 

mathematics. He cannot for the life of him understand why “2 3 =6” is false or why “2 3 =8” 

is true. Consequently, when ‘conversing’ with Y, the statements that he makes are often 

false. But he never generates those statements mechanically. In some cases, he draws 

on poetic inspiration; in other cases, he considers the aesthetic properties of the 

inscriptions involved; sometimes he grasps the mathematical principles but misapplies 

them; and occasionally he grasps those principles and correctly applies them. In each 

case, a great of intelligence is involved, but it is usually either the wrong kind of 

intelligence or the right kind of intelligence but applied in the wrong way. 

Turing would have us believe that, in this exchange, Y is the intelligent one and X 

is the unintelligent one. But that is the exact opposite of the truth. The reason X is so 

often wrong is that he is thinking too much, albeit the wrong ways; and the reason Y is 

always right is that its behavior is completely reflexive, with the qualification that, 

thanks to the intelligence of Y’s creator, the reflexes in question track the relevant body

of truths. What makes a creature intelligent is not what it does, contrary to what Turing 

assumes, but why it does it. In some contexts, intelligence leads to the wrong behaviors 

and its absence leads to the right ones. To be sure, intelligence is more likely than its 

absence to generate the right behaviors (including the right statements). But given a 

sufficiently constricted context, an unintelligent or minimally intelligent being can 

outperform one that is hyper-intelligent: someone with little mathematical intelligence 

can be trained to produce sums and products faster than Gauss could and will therefore 

do a better job of passing the corresponding Turing Tests. In certain contexts, certain 

behaviors are relatively likely to be engaged in only by intelligent creatures, and certain 

behaviors may therefore be relatively good evidence of intelligence; but there is no 

single form of conduct engaged in by intelligent beings that cannot be mimicked by 

unintelligent ones, and for this reason intelligence is never identical with a tendency to 

engage in a certain kind of overt behavior in a certain kind of context. So yes—Turing 

Tests are sometimes good tests of intelligence, but only in the sense that they may 

provide reasonable strong evidence of intelligence, not in the sense they provide 

definitive proof of it. 

Like us, John Searle holds that overt behavior is nothing more than evidence of 

intelligence, and he therefore rejects Turing’s contention to the contrary. Unfortunately, 

Searle’s defense of his own position is a failure and actually gives undeserved credence 

to Turing’s position. Searle asks to suppose that, inside of a giant robot (or robot-like

carapace), there lives a man who speaks no Chinese but who has access to Chinese 

dictionaries and pronunciation manuals, and the like. Despite not speaking a word of 

Chinese himself, this man has become extremely adept at using these resources to 

generate decrypt Chinese statements and respond to them with content-appropriate 

Chinese utterances of his own, which are electronically broadcast in a metallic voice to 

the external world, making it seem to those in the external world that there exists a 

Chinese-speaking robot. According to Searle, a consequence of Turing’s position is that 

there really does exist a Chinese-speaking robot; and Searle takes it for granted that 

those who hold this are simply wrong. 

The problem is that the behavior of this ‘robot’ (i.e. the metallic husk with the 

man inside it) is intelligent. After all, the sounds that it produces are guided by an 

understanding of what linguistic symbols mean and of what those meanings make it 

appropriate to say, and those who believe the ‘robot’ to be intelligent are not entirely 

off the mark. True—those people are very wrong as to the mechanisms involved. They 

believe electrical circuity, as opposed to biological wetware, to be doing all the work. 

But they are right about intelligence being responsible for the robot’s behavior. What 

about their belief that the robot speaks Chinese? Searle takes it for granted that this 

belief is false. But is it? There is somebody inside the metallic husk who is intelligently 

mapping English statements onto Chinese statements and vice versa, and this person’s 

behavior is responsible for the noises leaving the robot-husk. The essence of a given

person’s supposedly mistaken belief that the ‘the robot’ speaks Chinese is the correct 

belief the sounds that come out of the robot are intelligent, as opposed to mechanical, 

responses to the sounds that are directed at it. 

In conclusion, although a tendency to engage in certain forms of behavior in 

certain contexts can obviously be evidence of intelligence, such a disposition cannot 

itself be identical with intelligence, the reason being that any behavior that an 

intelligent creature is likely to engage in can be replicated by an unintelligent creature. 

Consequently, if Turing’s position is taken to be that overt behavior can be evidence of 

intelligence, then it is correct but trivial, and if it is taken to be that overt behavior can 

itself be intelligence, then it is simply false. Though motivated by an awareness of these 

truths, John Searle’s miscarried attempt to refute Turing ends up giving the latter’s an 

undeserved sheen of legitimacy. 


To say that a given entity ‘passes the Turing Test’ is to say that, in some context 

or other, its behavior is indistinguishable from that of a being whose conduct is guided 

by intelligence. Turing believed, for reasons to be identified forthwith, that there is no 

difference between acting like an intelligent entity and being an intelligent being.

Turing’s answer to the question ‘is the Turing Test a good test of intelligence?’ is 

therefore ‘yes.’ 

In this paper, Turing’s position will be examined and refuted. I will start by 

examining the hypothetical scenario through Turing himself attempts to motivate what 

he believes the answer to this question to be, and I will use a variant of that same 

scenario to show that Turing’s reasoning is spurious and, moreover, that his position is 

false. Then I will examine John Searle’s attempt to refute Turing’s position. It will be 

shown that, although Searle is right to regard Turing’s position as false, Searle’s attempt 

to refute Turing’s position has little force. 

Turing introduced the concept of the Turing Test through the following 

hypothetical. A written but rapid exchange between two parties is occurring. One of 

those parties is a machine, and the other is a person. A second person is monitoring the 

exchange. This person knows that one of the parties involved is a person and that the 

other is a machine, and he also knows what each party writes and when it writes it, but 

he has no additional information as to either one’s identity. According to Turing, if this 

person is consistently able to figure out which of the two parties is the machine and 

which one is the person, then the machine does not have intelligence. On the other 

hand, if that person cannot consistently determine which of the parties is the machine, 

then that machine has intelligence.

We can use a variant of Turing’s own scenario to demonstrate the spuriousness 

of Turing’s own reasoning. Let X be the person involved in the exchange just described 

and let Y be the machine; and suppose that the exchange they are having concerns 

arithmetic. X is making arithmetical statements (e.g. “1+1=2”, “1+2=3”, “1+2≠3”), and Y 

is evaluating those statements. If X says “2 3 =8”, Y responds by saying “that is correct”; 

and if X says “2 3 =6”, Y responds by saying “that is incorrect.” As it happens, let us 

suppose, X, though an extremely gifted playwright and poet, tends to overthink trivial 

matters and therefore has trouble producing correct statements of arithmetic. 

Consequently, when ‘conversing’ with Y, the statements that he makes are often false. 

But he never generates those statements mechanically. 

Turing would have us believe that, in this exchange, Y is the intelligent one and X 

is the unintelligent one. But that is the exact opposite of the truth. The reason X is so 

often wrong is (so we may suppose) that he is thinking too much, albeit the wrong ways; 

and the reason Y is always right is that its behavior is completely reflexive, with the 

qualification that, thanks to the intelligence of Y’s creator, the reflexes in question track 

the relevant body of truths. What makes a creature intelligent is not what it does, 

contrary to what Turing assumes, but why it does it. In some contexts, intelligence leads 

to the wrong behaviors and its absence leads to the right ones. Given a sufficiently 

constricted context, an unintelligent or minimally intelligent being can outperform one 

that is hyper-intelligent: someone with little mathematical intelligence can be trained to

produce sums and products faster than Gauss could and will therefore do a better job of 

passing the corresponding Turing Tests. There is no single form of conduct engaged in 

by intelligent beings that cannot be mimicked by unintelligent ones, and for this reason 

intelligence is never identical with a tendency to engage in a certain kind of overt 

behavior in a certain kind of context. So a given Turing Test provides, at most, highly 

defeasible, context-internal evidence of intelligence, and under no circumstances can a 

given creature’s passing such a test be regarded as definitive proof of intelligence; and 

the Turing Test is therefore not in any significant sense a good test of intelligence. 

Like us, John Searle holds that overt behavior is nothing more than evidence of 

intelligence, and he therefore rejects Turing’s contention to the contrary. Unfortunately, 

Searle’s defense of his own position is a failure and actually gives undeserved credence 

to Turing’s position. Searle asks to suppose that, inside of a giant robot (or robot-like 

carapace), there lives a man who speaks no Chinese but who has access to Chinese 

dictionaries and pronunciation manuals, and the like. Despite not speaking a word of 

Chinese himself, this man has become extremely adept at using these resources to 

generate decrypt Chinese statements and respond to them with content-appropriate 

Chinese utterances of his own, which are electronically broadcast in a metallic voice to 

the external world, making it seem to those in the external world that there exists a 

Chinese-speaking robot. According to Searle, a consequence of Turing’s position is that

there really does exist a Chinese-speaking robot; and Searle takes it for granted that 

those who hold this are simply wrong. 

The problem is that the behavior of this ‘robot’ (i.e. the metallic husk with the 

man inside it) is intelligent. After all, the sounds that it produces are guided by an 

understanding of what linguistic symbols mean and of what those meanings make it 

appropriate to say, and those who believe the ‘robot’ to be intelligent are not entirely 

off the mark. Although these people are wrong about the specific mechanisms involved, 

they are right about intelligence being responsible for the robot’s behavior. What about 

their belief that the robot speaks Chinese? Searle takes it for granted that this belief is 

false. But is it? There is somebody inside the metallic husk who is intelligently mapping 

English statements onto Chinese statements and vice versa, and this person’s behavior 

is responsible for the noises leaving the robot-husk. The essence of a given person’s 

supposedly mistaken belief that the ‘the robot’ speaks Chinese is the correct belief the 

sounds that come out of the robot are intelligent, as opposed to mechanical, responses 

to the sounds that are directed at it. 

In conclusion, although a tendency to engage to engage in certain forms of 

behavior in certain contexts can obviously be evidence of intelligence, such a disposition 

cannot itself be identical with intelligence, the reason being that any behavior that an 

intelligent creature is likely to engage in can be replicated by an unintelligent creature. 

Consequently, if Turing’s position is taken to be that overt behavior can be evidence of

intelligence, then it is correct but trivial, and if it is taken to be that overt behavior can 

itself be intelligence, then it is simply false. Though motivated by an awareness of these 

truths, John Searle’s miscarried attempt to refute Turing ends up giving the latter’s an 

undeserved sheen of legitimacy. 


Abstract 

Average daily caffeine intake among pre-adults in the United States has increased 

more than 100% in the last twenty years, from 30 mg/day to 70 mg/day, almost entirely 

due to the popularity, especially among children, of candy-flavored, highly caffeinated 

energy-drinks, such as Rock Star and Monster. This development is a concern for many 

reasons. First, caffeine is a psychoactive substance, like alcohol or marijuana, and for 

that reason alone, so it is felt, is not appropriate for children. Second, there is 

reasonably compelling that caffeine use among children is linked to temporary episodes 

of ADHD-like behavior. Most ominously, there have been recent studies on rats showing 

that massive daily doses of caffeine can impair brain-development. For these reasons,

the question arises whether the selling of energy-drinks or other caffeinated substances 

should be criminalized or otherwise heavily regulated. The answer to that question, so it 

is argued in this paper, is “no.” There is no demonstrated evidence that, when 

consumed in moderate doses, caffeine has any effect on brain development in humans, 

and there is in fact evidence that, in low doses, it has neuro-regenerative and neuroprotective 

qualities. Second, although there is reasonably good evidence that caffeineintake 

in children can temporarily cause ADHD-like symptoms, such as distractedness 

and fidgeting, there is no evidence that it ever leads to antisocial or violent behavior. 

Third, granting that children should not in general be allowed to use psychoactive 

substances to recreate or self-medicate, there is no evidence that caffeine has become a 

gateway drug for children, or that caffeine use among children is dangerously high, or 

that such caffeine use as there is has to any degree impaired the psychological or 

physical development of children or adolescents. Also, because caffeine is the active 

ingredient in a number of over the counter medications, including all medications for 

PMS and Migraine headaches, and because caffeine naturally occurs in high doses in 

many comestibles, including chocolate, caffeine-related regulations would be unusually 

burdensome to businesses and expensive for the general public. Consequently, the 

benefits of caffeine-related regulations, including regulations relating to the sale of 

energy drinks, would be far too small to justify the considerable financial and societal 

costs.

Introduction 

Caffeine is the most widely used psychoactive substance in existence. For the 

most part, caffeine is harmless, and there is growing evidence of the health benefits of 

moderate caffeine consumption, especially on cognitive performance (Brice, 2016). At 

the same time, caffeine is not entirely innocuous. It is toxic when consumed in large 

doses. Also, studies have shown that proper brain development does not occur in rats 

that are fed astronomically high quantities of caffeine over a long period, suggesting, 

albeit weakly, that moderate consumption of caffeine could inhibit proper brain 

development in human children (Doepker et al., 2016). Additionally, although low 

quantities of caffeine actually have a calming effect in children, there is reasonably 

strong evidence that it can induce temporary ADHD-like symptoms when consumed in 

large quantities (França, A. P., 2018). This last fact is significant, owing to the fact that 

caffeine consumption among children and adolescents more than doubled over the last 

thirty years. The reason for this spike is the popularity among children and adolescents 

of highly caffeinated energy drinks, such as Rock Star and Monster. Loaded with sugar, 

these carbonated beverages are as easy to guzzle down as any soft-drink, making them 

popular with people of all ages, and they have a candy-like taste, making them 

especially popular with children (Chen et al., 2019).

What should the government’s response be? Should the government take a 

completely hand’s off approach and do nothing to restrict the sale of caffeine, even to 

minors? Or should it intervene and criminalize or at least penalize the sale of caffeinated 

products to minors and possibly other vulnerable groups? 

It is the purpose of this paper to answer this question. After considering all of the 

relevant facts, we will come to the conclusion that, although parents should be mindful 

of possible caffeine use on the part of their children, the sale and use of caffeine should 

not be any more regulated than they currently are. Although caffeine can be abused, 

the benefits of treating caffeine as a controlled substance, even in a highly 

circumscribed manner, would not be worth the costs. 

The structure of this paper is as follows. We will start by identifying the relevant 

statistical and economic data relating to caffeine-use. Then we will discuss the effects of 

caffeine on both children and adults. We will discuss its various benefits, including its 

medicinal uses, and we will also discuss the adverse effects that it can have, especially 

when consumed in large doses. We will then discuss the financial and logistical 

complexities involved in regulating the sale and use of caffeine, many of which derive 

from the fact that caffeine is present not just in coffee, but also in tea, soft-drinks, and 

chocolate, as well as in numerous over the counter medications, including Excedrin and 

Midol. We will conclude by synthesizing all of this data, our conclusion being that the 

sale and use of caffeine should be unregulated or minimally regulated.

Important Facts and Statistics Relating to Caffeine-use 

Caffeine is the most widely used psychoactive substance in existence. In the 

United States, for example, approximately 450 million cups of coffee are consumed 

every day (Baron, 2019). In other countries, coffee consumption is much higher. For 

every three cups of coffee consumed by the average American, the average German 

consumes five, the average Slovenian six, the average Norwegian seven, and the 

average Finn nine (Baron, 2019. 

Importantly, coffee-drinking, though the primary way of ingesting caffeine, is not 

the only way of doing so. High concentrations of caffeine are present in tea and 

moderate concentrations are present in soft-drinks and in chocolate. Caffeine can also 

be consumed ‘directly’, in the form of caffeine pills, such as Vivarin and NoDoz. Also, 

caffeine is the primary active ingredient in so-called ‘energy drinks’, such as Red Bull and 

Rock Star, which, non-coincidentally, are also loaded with sugar, giving them a candylike 

taste, and are increasingly popular with adolescents and, to a lesser extent, children. 

Coffee-drinking accounts for 70% of caffeine-consumption; tea, chocolate, and softdrinks, 

including energy drinks, for 28%; and caffeine pills, for 2% (Brice, 2016). 

Unlike opiates, tobacco, alcohol, and almost all other controlled substances, 

caffeine naturally occurs in many foods and beverages. Moderate to high levels of it are

present in chocolate, colas, sunflower seeds, and various other staples; and it is 

therefore present, sometimes in high quantities, in foods that contain these ingredients, 

including ice-cream, trail mixes, and health bars (Brice, 2016). 

Importantly, caffeine is the active ingredient in many different over the counter 

(OTC) medications. It is the active ingredient in Excedrin, Anacin, and every other OTC 

remedy for migraines, and it is the active ingredient in Midol, Pamprin and every other 

OTC remedy for premenstrual syndrome. Consequently, restricting the sale of caffeine 

to minors would involve restricting the sale of all such items to minors. Though 

theoretically possible, this would be expensive, with the costs being passed onto to 

consumers, taxpayers, and businesses; and it would also lead to irksome expansions of 

regulatory bureaucracies. In order to know whether these costs would be worth 

bearing, we must know how caffeine affects people, in both the short and long terms 

(França et al., 2018). Let us now turn to this topic. 

Health-benefits of Caffeine 

First of all, caffeine increases cognitive performance. Studies have shown that 

people do better on standardized tests when they are under the influence of caffeine 

(Grosso et al. 2017). Studies have also shown that caffeine boosts manual dexterity and, 

in particular, that physicians performing surgery, including microsurgery, perform better

when they are under the influence of caffeine (Spiller, 2019). This is obviously linked 

with the fact that almost all surgical operations are performed by physicians under the 

influence of caffeine. This is true even of physicians belonging to religious faiths, such as 

Mormonism, that prohibit the use of caffeine (Kelly et al., 2016). 

There also appear to be long-term health-benefits to caffeine use. Several studies 

have shown that caffeine use correlates with improved long-term memory. Studies also 

show an inverse correlation between heavy caffeine-consumption and likelihood of 

succumbing to Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. Strikingly, studies show much 

the same to be true of Parkinson’s Disease (PD): “26 studies found that the overall risk 

of developing PD fell by 24-32% per 300 mg increase in caffeine intake (i.e. with every 3 

cups of coffee, approximately)” (Spiller, 2019). There is also evidence that coffeeconsumption 

reduces the likelihood of developing certain kinds of cancer, including oral 

cancer and colon cancer (Endesfelder et al., 2017). This is likely a consequence not of 

caffeine but of the antioxidants in coffee. 

Adverse Health-effects of Caffeine 

Caffeine can also have adverse health-effects. Here it is important to note that 

the effects of caffeine on adults differ in some respects from its effects on children and 

adolescents. In adults, the adverse effects of caffeine tend to be short-term, the most

common ones being insomnia and irritability. Caffeine-intake also temporarily increases 

heartrate and blood pressure, but these effects subside within a few hours. Contrary to 

what used to be thought, caffeine does not cause arrhythmia or coronary heart disease; 

nor does it otherwise adversely affect cardiovascular health. In adults, the main reason 

not to consume caffeine is that it can cause insomnia, which in turn can have serious 

effects on quality of life. Also, people with mental illnesses, such as schizoaffective 

disorder and generalized anxiety disorder, often have adverse emotional responses to 

caffeine (Doepker et al., 2016). 

The effects of caffeine on children and adolescents are not entirely clear, but 

there is evidence that it can slow down brain development if consumed in large 

quantities on a consistent basis. Significantly, this conclusion is based on experiments 

involving rats; it is not based on direct evidence, such as the performance-metrics of 

children known to consume caffeine regularly. Moreover, the rats in question were 

given astronomically high quantities of caffeine (the equivalent, after adjusting for their 

body-mass, of 100 cups of coffee) every day of their pre-adult lives. Finally, because 

those rats experienced acute sleep deprivation, it is possible that their slow brain 

development was a consequence of their lack of sleep, not, except indirectly, of their 

caffeine intake (Kolahdouzan et al. 2017). Nonetheless, the study unambiguously 

showed that caffeine use in some way or other retarded brain development in rats, and 

the similarities between rat brains and human brains make it extremely likely that, if

consumed in large enough quantities over a long enough period of time, caffeine can 

slow down brain development in humans (Mohan et al., 2015). 

This last point is subject to some important qualifications. First of all, when 

administered to rats in moderate doses, caffeine actually offset the damage done by 

brain-injuries and, in cases when the brain-injured rats were still developing, permitted 

the resumption of normal brain-development. Something analogous seems to hold of 

human beings, in that persons who take caffeine pills during a stroke minimize the 

brain-damage subsequently done by that stroke. Finally, studies have shown that 

caffeine helps offset the damage done to neonatal rats by instances of hypoxia 

(Meeusen et al., 2018). 

Importantly, when taken in low to moderate doses, caffeine actually has a 

calming effect on children. This is why it is often prescribed by physicians to children 

who have ADHD, the standard daily dose being 200 mg to 400 mg. When children do not 

have ADHD, 300 mg or more of caffeine may temporarily cause ADHD-like symptoms, 

mainly fidgeting and increased anxiety. It is extremely unusual for pre-adolescents to 

consume this much caffeine and there are no reported cases of caffeine consumption in 

children leading to anti-social or self-destructive behavior or of their having any adverse 

health-consequences (Meeusen et al., 2018). 

For ethical reasons, there have been few studies of how caffeine affects the 

cognitive abilities of children or adolescents. The only studies that have been conducted

concern children with ADHD who have been prescribed caffeine by a licensed physician. 

Those studies show that caffeine improves test-scores in children with ADHD and also 

improves manual dexterity. It is not clear whether the same would be true of children 

who do not have ADHD; nor is it otherwise clear whether those results in any way 

generalize to other populations. That said, there have been studies of how caffeine 

affects cognitive performance in college students and other populations, and those 

studies all show that it enhances cognitive performance (Schmidt, 2017). 

As a general rule, caffeine temporarily increases blood-pressure and heartrate, 

granting that, when taken in low to moderate doses, it tends to have the opposite effect 

on children, especially children with ADHD. For this reason, people are inclined to 

suspect that caffeine-use increases the likelihood of stroke and heart-attack. This has 

been thoroughly studied and proven to be totally false. Setting aside people with heartconditions, 

even high doses of caffeine do not increase the likelihood of heart-attack or 

stroke. The effects of high doses of caffeine on those with coronary conditions have not 

been thoroughly studied. There have been no documented cases of caffeine 

consumption causing a cardiac incident, even in people with coronary conditions; but 

because caffeine is a stimulant whose effects on such people have not been studied, 

physicians recommend that they moderate or eliminate their use of caffeine (Spiller, 

2019).

Pros and Cons of Caffeine-regulation 

Granting that the long-term effects on children of heavy caffeine use are still 

unclear, their short-term effects are moderately well-known and are sometimes 

negative. Whereas adults respond to moderate amounts of caffeine by becoming 

focused, children sometimes respond by becoming confused and agitated. Caffeine 

makes it easy for an adult to get through a boring meeting, but it can make it hard for a 

child or even an adolescent to get through a boring class. (This is subject to the 

qualification that it helps children with ADHD to focus and behave properly.) 

This is significant because, over the last twenty years, caffeine use among preadults 

has risen from an average of 30 mg/day to 70 mg/day. Almost all of this extra 

caffeine comes from carbonated, candy-flavored, and highly caffeinated so-called 

‘energy drinks’, such as Red Bull, Monster, and Rock Star. A single ‘Red Bull’ or ‘Rock 

Star’ contains around 200 mg of caffeine—the same as a strong cup of coffee. But these 

beverages, unlike coffee, are palatable to children; and unlike coffee, they go down 

smooth and can easily be guzzled down. And this is just what is happening, especially 

with adolescents and pre-adolescents. Currently, there are no laws preventing children 

from purchasing energy drinks, and it must therefore be asked whether such laws 

should be introduced (Spiller, 2019).

In the present author’s judgment, the answer to this question is ‘no.’ First of all, 

we must distinguish the question ‘should children drink caffeinated beverages?’ from 

the question ‘should the sale of caffeinated beverages to children be criminalized?’ 

Children shouldn’t spend hours watching TV; but if they do, neither they nor their 

guardians should be fined or jailed for it. When asking whether such and such should be 

illegal, it is not enough to know whether X is morally good. It must also be taken into 

account whether the cure would be worse than the disease. Laws are expensive; people 

have to be paid to enforce them; and before we decide to criminalize such and such, we 

must be sure that the financial costs of doing so do not outweigh the benefits 

(Friedman, 1962). 

We must also know that, in criminalizing such and such, we are not thereby 

criminalizing things that shouldn’t be criminalized. It’s well and good to prohibit minors 

from purchasing energy drinks and caffeine pills. But what if the minor is a 17-year-old 

who is suffering an acute migraine and needs Excedrin? What if the minor is a 14-yearold 

female who is suffering from wrenching pains due to PMS and needs Midol? In 

terms of its caffeine-content, a single dose of Midol or Excedrin is comparable to the 

average energy drink. (A single Excedrin has 65 mg of caffeine; a single Midol has 60 

mg., the recommended dosage of each being two to four pills daily.) 

Of course, one option would be to be to allow minors to purchase caffeinated 

medications but prohibit them from purchasing energy drinks or other caffeinated non-

medicinal items. This seems reasonable at first, but it starts to seem less reasonable 

when financial realities are considered. This law cannot be enforced unless police 

officers and prosecutors are given special training and then dedicate at least some of 

their time to investigating and prosecuting allege offenders. Either the public defrays 

these costs, in which case it has that much less money to invest in education and 

business and the like, or it doesn’t, in which case police and prosecutors have one more 

law to enforce but no extra money with which to enforce it, the inevitable result being 

that they cease to enforce some other law. This does not mean that it would necessarily 

be wrong to enact the law in question, but it means that before deciding to do so, we 

must know what we are gaining and what we are losing (Friedman 1962). 

The gains would be modest. Fatal caffeine overdoses are extremely rare. In order 

to die from a caffeine overdose, it is necessary to ingest over 5 grams of caffeine within 

a few seconds. This can be done, but only by ingesting caffeine pills or powder; it cannot 

be done by drinking caffeinated liquid, since the caffeine being ingested is metabolized 

before it can reach fatal levels (Turnbull et al., 2017). 

What about the effects of caffeine on brain development? Do they not warrant 

banning the sale of energy drinks to youths? They do not. The rats in the studies in 

question were given 300 mg of caffeine every day of their lives until they reached 

adulthood. The average rat weighs under 10 oz; the average person weights around 175 

lbs. or 2800 oz. This means that these rats were given the equivalent of 84000 mg of

caffeine every single day of their pre-adult lives. The average American middle-schooler, 

by contrast, consumes 70 mg of caffeine, making it unclear whether that experiment has 

any bearing at all on the effects of caffeine on human brain development (Winerdal et 

al., 2017). 

What about the ADHD-like symptoms that caffeine elicits from pre-adolescents? 

Do they not demand that we criminalize the sale of energy drinks to minors? No. 

Children obviously shouldn’t consume energy drinks; but that doesn’t mean that we 

should criminalize their doing so. Children do not respond to caffeine by becoming 

violent or otherwise ‘acting out.’ Their responses are internal: anxiety, restlessness, 

irritability, and the like. These emotional changes may lead to expressions of discomfort, 

such as fidgeting and squirming, but there are no documented cases of their leading to 

violent or confrontational behavior (Brice, 2016). 

The most serious consequence for children of caffeine-consumption is difficulty 

sleeping. Sleep-deprivation, especially in children, is a serious matter. But, first of all, 

there are no documented cases of children suffering from chronic insomnia as a result 

of caffeine consumption, and even if there were, the right response would not be to 

criminalize their behavior. Setting aside cases of violent or excessively disruptive 

behavior, substandard behavior on the part of children can and should be dealt with by 

parents and teachers, through instruction and discipline. If we try to solve non-criminal 

problems by criminalizing them, we will only create worse problems (Friedman, 1962).

Conclusion 

There is no evidence that caffeine consumption among adults does them harm, 

and there is considerable evidence that it does good. There are studies that show that 

daily mega-doses of caffeine impair brain development in rats; but the doses given, 

when adjusted for weight, were over hundreds of times higher than any dose that any 

human being could possibly consume. Also, those studies do not make it clear whether 

the caffeine directly impaired brain-development in rats or whether it did so by causing 

sleep-deprivation. 

Children with ADHD who are given moderate to high doses of caffeine respond 

with improved test-performances and improved conduct. Children without ADHD who 

take comparable doses respond by temporarily having ADHD-like symptoms, such as 

fidgeting, but they do not act out or act violently, and the effects last only a few hours. 

Although there has been a large percentage-increase in caffeine consumption 

among children, due almost entirely to the popularity with that demographic of energy 

drinks, the absolute levels of caffeine consumption among pre-adults remains low. 

Moreover, there has been no evidence that caffeine consumption has adversely 

affected children’s health or psychological development, and there is definitive evidence 

that it is helpful in these respects to children with ADHD.

Government regulations are expensive. They are expensive to implement and 

expensive to enforce. Oftentimes, these expenses are justified. For example, the laws 

that prohibit minors from purchasing alcohol, tobacco, and firearms are justified, given 

the obvious health-problems that such regulations prevent. In the case of caffeinerelated 

regulations, such expenses would not be justified. Currently the sale of caffeine 

is almost completely unregulated, and there is no evidence of any kind that children or 

anyone else is being harmed as a result. Also, the introduction of such regulations would 

be especially thorny, given the fact that it is the active ingredient in many medications, 

including every single OTC medicine for migraine headaches and premenstrual 

syndrome. It is a distinct possibility that adolescents wanting a ‘caffeine fix’ might resort 

to buying Excedrin or Anacin, which, unlike straight caffeine, are far from harmless. Of 

course, the government could counter-respond by prohibiting the sale of Excedrin and 

other such medications, but nothing but suffering and inconvenience would come of any 

such prohibition, as anyone suffering from a migraine or from premenstrual syndrome 

knows all too well. 

Further problems arise from the fact that caffeine is available to consumers in a 

wide variety of forms, including snack-bars, teas, and health-drinks. Restrictions on the 

sale of caffeine, if enforced, would require a veritable army of regulators and would also 

debilitate a wide variety of businesses. The result of such restrictions would be an 

unwelcome and useless encroachment of government on the private sector, with no

foreseeable gain for any demographic. It must therefore be concluded that, at present, 

any dialing up of caffeine-related regulations are contraindicated. 

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The Soviet Union’s political ideology was inherently aggressive and 

expansionistic, and that—and that alone—is why the Cold War happened. It is obviously 

more politically correct to take the view that both of the two major parties involved in 

the Cold War were equally responsible for its genesis. But that isn’t at all true, for 

reasons to be discussed. Nor is it true that, once the Cold War had begun, the situation 

was morally symmetrical, with both parties behaving equally morally and equally 

immorally. The situation was fundamentally asymmetrical. This was because

communism—especially, the particularly invidious form of it on which the USSR was 

based—was not simply one political system among others. Bolshevik communism was 

not intended to bring peace or prosperity either to the Russian people or to the rest of 

the world; and the founders of the Soviet Union had every intention of bringing about a 

war, or some kind or other, with the ‘decadent West’, especially the United States. 

“It is better than half the world perish and the other half be communist”, said 

Lenin, founder the Soviet Union, “than the entire human race live and communism 

perish.” Before World War II, the Soviet Leadership, headed by Joseph Stalin, had 

already deliberately starved one third of the Ukrainian population to death, as a way of 

breaking Ukrainian resistance to Soviet rule. In additions, millions of people in all of the 

Soviet Republics had been shot, imprisoned in the Gulag, or forced to relocate en masse. 

Freedom of speech was non-existent; private property was equally non-existent; living 

conditions were wretched; there were virtually no personal, religious, or commercial 

freedoms of any kind. Although some people obviously had more power than others, 

nobody had any legal rights of any kind. Stalinist Russia was the purest example in 

human history of a state that was inimical to its own people. 

In popular culture, we are often told that Stalin corrupted the revolution. “The 

revolution began with noble ideals”, we are told. “Trotsky and Lenin wanted to create a 

just and egalitarian social order, but Stalin seized power and derailed the Revolution.” 

Lenin and Trotsky had deliberately created a hyper-authoritarian state, and they used it

to break the Russian the middle class, as well as most of the rest of Russian society. 

Lenin’s great ‘theoretical innovation’ as a Marxist was his belief that that, in order for a 

Marxist state to be created, it was necessary that a ‘revolutionary vanguard’, operating 

without any other party’s consent, autonomously take power and, once in power, 

forcibly impose communism on society. As for Trotsky, his great “innovation” as a 

Marxist was his belief in “permanent revolution” in all countries. In Trotsky’s view, the 

rightful objective of a Marxist “revolutionary vanguard” was to impose Marxist 

communism on all nations, not just on this or that specific nation. 

Lenin and Trotsky were in complete agreement on all of these points. In fact, 

their only significant points of disagreement concerned matters that were internal to 

Marxist theory and proved to be of no significance. For example, Trotsky, unlike Lenin 

and Marx, held that labor unions were not inimical to the long-term interests of the 

‘proletariat.’ But since there were no labor unions in Russia, this disagreement was not 

important. Also, Lenin and Trotsky made it their objective to strip all Russians, including 

peasants, of all of their assets and to kill those who resisted. They rationalized this by 

saying that anyone who had any assets and did not immediately relinquish them was for 

that very reason a ‘kulak’ (meaning an exploitative landowner, comparable to a feudal 

lord) who, as such, had to be ‘exterminated.’ During World War 1, when the Red Cross 

entered Russia to provide food and medicine to the sick and malnourished Russian 

peasants, Lenin and Trotsky organized troops to drive them out of Russia, which they

succeeded in doing and which they rationalized by saying that the Russian peasantry 

had to suffer as much as possible so that they would come to hate the Tsarist order and 

join them in overthrowing it. 

Stalin did indeed seize power; but he was only able to do so because the 

Communist Party had total power and he belonged to it. The Communist Party had total 

power because Lenin and Trotsky fought for decades to give it total power. Stalin and 

Trotsky were indeed foes, but not because they had important ideological 

disagreements. Quite the contrary, they were in perfect agreement as to what kind of 

government Russia was to have, their only disagreement concerning who was to be in 

charge of it. 

Stalin exiled Trotsky in 1928; and by the start of WWII, Stalin had long since had 

total power. Stalin used World War II to expand his power base to other countries, his 

first move in this direction being to absorb all of Eastern Europe into the Soviet Union. It 

is generally believed that this was the beginning of the Cold War. Not so. Before the 

Soviet Union had even been established, Lenin and Trotsky had agitated for Communist 

revolution in the United States and Britain and had already established a network of 

‘fellow travelers.’ After WWII ended, the Soviet Union had real power; and Stalin, and 

the many others who wanted to spread the gospel of Marxist communism, had soviet 

military power behind them and therefore no longer had to rely solely on agitation and 

other such grass-roots measures. But the so-called ‘Cold War’ was merely a militarized

continuation of a campaign to take control of the West that had been occurring since 

the first decade of the 20 th century. This led to the wholesale Marxist takeover of China, 

North Korea, Cuba, and Cambodia. 

The United States’ role in the Cold War was entirely defensive, in every sense. To 

be sure, it made many terrible mistakes. It fought communism where it wasn’t a 

significant threat (e.g. Vietnam, Angola) and didn’t fight it where it was a significant 

threat (e.g. Eastern Europe, right after the end of WWII). But the Soviet Union was the 

aggressor. Also, the Soviet Union’s economy was completely broken; so even though its 

post-Stalinist leaders lacked the Marxist ardor of their predecessors, they had no choice 

but to expand, since their economy wasn’t self-sufficient. (When the Soviet Union fell in 

1989, it was because it simply ran out of money.) The United States had a booming 

economy during the Cold War—and before it, except during the early 1930s—and stood 

to gain little, from its wars-by-proxy with the Soviet Union. It did not gain resources or 

land or trading partners; and it also lost good will and credibility, with its own citizens 

and with the rest of the world. But the Soviet Union had everything to gain from its 

engagements abroad; and those engagements where what kept it economically afloat 

during its short existence. 

In conclusion, the Cold War was a war of Soviet aggression, fueled by a 

commitment to aggressive expansionism that was built into its very system by its 

founders and catalyzed by its desperate need for resources. For the United States, the

Cold War was a losing proposition; the United States did not profit from its 

engagements in Vietnam or Korea or Cuba or Guyana or Angola. Moreover, those 

engagements were public relations disasters. The only reason the United States 

undertook them is that it was trying to keep Soviet aggression in check. 


Ultimately, Eisenhower was a better president than JFK. This is not because JFK 

failed to accomplish anything during his presidency: he accomplished a great deal; and 

his list of presidential accomplishments is longer and more illustrious than Eisenhower’s 

list. It isn’t because he did too little that JFK was less of a President than Eisenhower, but 

rather because he did too much. The American people take it for granted that their 

President is supposed to solve their problems. This is largely JFK’s doing: thanks to him, 

government is now expected to be, for lack of a better term, a ‘big brother’—a righter of 

wrongs, as opposed to a neutral administrator, with the result that government is now 

so large that nobody’s rights are secure. Eisenhower’s presidency, by contrast, was 

emotionally neutral and, unlike JFK’s, did not pave the way for the situation we have 

now, in which the government is omnipresent. 

Let us start by listing Eisenhower’s main presidential accomplishments 163 : 

163 

https://www.nps.gov/features/eise/jrranger/5accompx.htm

*He balanced the budget. 

*He created the highway system. 

*He kept America out of war. 

*He ended the Korean war and did so on terms that were at least reasonably 

consistent with American interests. 

*He signed the first Civil Rights Acts into law. 

Now let us state his main presidential failures (or what are taken to be such) 164 : 

*He failed to end the Cold War. 

*He failed to help the American farmer. 

*Economic growth, though steady, was slow. 

*He did not combat the hard-right, McCarthyite wing of the Republican Party. 

*He did not promote Civil Rights sufficiently aggressively. 

Notice that Eisenhower’s supposed ‘failures’ as a President were really about his 

not taking an interventionist, moralizing role in American affairs. When we say that 

Eisenhower ‘should’ have done more to combat McCarthyism, what is the justification? 

McCarthy had a position; other people had different positions. It may have been 

164 

https://www.nps.gov/features/eise/jrranger/5accomp2X.htm

Eisenhower’s responsibility to curb criminal misconduct on McCarthy’s part, but it was 

not his responsibility to extirpate all support for McCarthy’s political views. So this 

‘failure’ of Eisenhower’s was a failure only relative to an activist, Kennedyesque 

conception of government. 

Now let us look at Kennedy’s presidential achievements and failings, starting with 

his (alleged) achievements 165 : 

*He averted nuclear war. 

*He founded the peace corp. 

*He encouraged public service on the part of Americans. 

*He helped usher in affirmative action, equal pay, and civil rights. 

*He started the US space program. 

*He gave a temporary boost to the economy. 

Now let us look at his failures: 

actors. 

*He gave arms to many (then) US allies, many of which are now dangerous 

*He deepened our involvement in Viet Nam. 

165 

https://www.mic.com/articles/74045/jfk-s-top-5-political-accomplishments

*He failed to remove Castro from power, emboldening the Soviets to threaten us 

with Nuclear war. 

JFK’s achievements are impressive—but dubious. The theme we see running 

through his presidency is that it is the President’s job to be a hero: a righter of wrongs, 

as opposed to a mere administrator---which sometimes has positive effects (e.g. civil 

rights), sometimes has negative ones (e.g. Viet Nam), and sometimes has ambiguous 

effects (e.g. expansion of money supply and credit, leading to temporary economic 

spike), but has led to over-expansions of government in both domestic and foreign 

policy. 

Sadly, unless there is an actual crisis, it is the government’s job to govern—not to 

inspire, not to create a utopia, not even to eliminate all injustices. Eisenhower’s 

Presidency was a blank compare to Kennedy’s, his main accomplishment being the 

construction of the national highway system. Kennedy’s system was certainly not a 

blank, and he was obviously in many respects a singularly good president; but his legacy 

was that Presidents are supposed to be heroes, not mere civil servants, which has 

caused politics to become much more ideological and divisive than it has to be and 

which, consequently, has impaired the effectiveness of government.


Richard Nixon is now made out to be a bigoted right-wing extremist, and LBJ is 

made out to be the exact opposite, the conventional wisdom that Richard Nixon was an 

oppressor and LBJ a champion of the oppressed. But this position is not consistent with 

their actual political legacies. Under LBJ, and to a large extent because of him, the 

United States government engaged in aggressive campaigns to improve education and 

to fight poverty, unemployment, and racial discrimination. But the aftermath of these 

measures is increased unemployment among African Americans, a dysfunctional 

educational system for everybody, and a bloated and hyper-authoritarian Federal 

government. Richard Nixon, by contrast, did have at least some unambiguous successes 

as President and must therefore be regarded as better President than LBJ. 

Let us start by listing what many would regard as LBJ’s greatest accomplishments: 

*He created the welfare system, with its general financial provisions for those in 

dire economic straits. 

*He signed into law measures that aggressively racism towards ethnic minorities 

illegal in all but the most completely personal contexts. 

*He increased Federal funding, as well as oversight, of education by a factor of 

ten.

LBJ’s greatest mistake as President is generally believed to be his decision to 

deep American involvement in Viet Nam. 

President? 

What about Richard Nixon? What were his greatest accomplishments as 

*Nixon founded the EPA. 

*Nixon officially recognized Communist China, which, by his intention, hastened 

the demise of the Soviet Union. 

*Nixon ended the Viet Nam war 

What were Nixon’s greatest mistakes? 

*He used the instruments of government to cover up a crime that he committed. 

*He deepened American involvement in Viet Nam before ending the war. 

*He started the War on Drugs. 

*He took America off the gold standard.

With regard to the last item, I do not myself know that this was a mistake; but it 

is sufficiently often mentioned that I felt obliged to include it. As for the War on Drugs, 

for various reasons (the main being that penalizes lifestyles, as opposed to crimes, and 

therefore turns the police into thought police), I believe this to be one of the worst 

mistakes ever made in the history of public policy, and it is, in my judgment, the blackest 

spot on Nixon’s legacy. 

Given only what we’ve said thus far, LBJ appears to be the obvious front-runner. 

But not so fast! LBJ’s ‘War on Poverty’ created more poverty, especially among the very 

groups that it was intended to help. Prior to LBJ’s great reforms, 

*Unemployment among African Americans was lower than it is. 

*African Americans were considerably more likely to own their businesses than 

they are now 

*African Americans were more likely to be employed as engineers and to have 

trades. 

*Crime among African Americans was lower, as were incarceration rates. 

*Income-gaps between Caucasians and African Americans were smaller, as were 

education-gaps. 

*Public education was better and less expensive. 

*The Federal government was smaller.

*The cost of living was lower. 

*Rates of depression and mental illness were lower. 

*Rates of homeownership, including among African Americans, were higher. 

*Levels of well-being, including among African Americans, were higher. 

In a word, each of LBJ’s signature policies, though admirable in intent, seriously 

backfired. Also, LBJ’s decisions concerning Viet Nam cost lives on both sides, while 

failing to advance American interests. 

By contrast, Nixon’s good deeds as Presidents have stood the test of time. By 

recognizing China, Nixon created infighting within the Communist bloc and thereby 

paved the way for the demise of Soviet Communism. AS for the EPA, it does water it is 

supposed to do: it protects the environment, including wildlife, and helps keep water 

clean and water drinkable. As for Nixon’s behavior vis-à-vis Vietnam, this, like many 

other aspects of his presidency, was ambiguous. But he did end the war, despite being 

under pressure from his own base to continue it; and that is more than can be said for 

Johnson. 

In conclusion, LBJ clearly meant well, but his policies to a large extent did the 

opposite of what they were supposed to do. According to economists, this is because 

those policies replaced the invisible hand of supply-and-demand with the dead hand of 

government policy, leading to a weakened economy and a consequent loss of wealth

across the board, especially for those on the bottom economic rung. I suspect that there 

is more to the story. I personally do not believe that welfare is particularly destructive, 

economically or otherwise, and I don’t believe LBJ was wrong to implement generous 

welfare policies. But his expansion of government was too fast and too large, its 

aftermath being a government that is too large and is too involved in people’s lives. 


How, if at all, will artificial jobs affect employment in the future? Are you an optimist on 

this score, or a pessimist? 

Artificial intelligence eliminates several jobs for each job that it creates. This is 

what has been happening since AI’s very inception, and this is what will continue to 

happen. Some people claim that AI creates as many jobs as it eliminates. This is false, 

and it is the purpose of this essay to prove that it is false. I will start by showing that it is 

inherent in what technology is that technological advancement decreases the amount of 

work that there is for people to do. I will then explain why this is doubly true of AI. I will

end by discussing how government should deal with the job-shortage that AI will 

inevitably lead to. 

Technology reduces the need to work, and it makes the work that it doesn’t 

eliminate less difficult. Thanks to tractors, sewing-machines, and gas-powered drills, it 

takes little effort to do in an afternoon what it would take months of back-breaking 

labor to do by hand. What is true of cars, tractors, and sewing machines is true of AIbased 

technologies: thanks to smartphone-apps and computer-programs, it takes little 

effort, as well as little training, to do in a single afternoon what would otherwise be 

impossible or would require months of intense intellectual work on the part of a trained 

professional. 

Many people have either lost jobs to technology or fear that they soon will. 

Right-wing economists have argued that such people are wrong. According to such 

economists, technology creates a job for every job that it takes away. In their view, 

technology took jobs away from cobblers, but it created new jobs for the engineers 

needed to build and maintain the machines that made cobblers unnecessary. Similarly, 

so they argue, AI is taking jobs away from stockbrokers, but it has created new jobs for 

the programmers needed to service the e-platforms that eliminated the need for 

stockbrokers. In general, so it is argued, technology needs people to service it and 

therefore creates jobs that take the place of those that it eliminates.

This position is false and always has been. In societies that have little or no 

technology, the unemployment rate tends to be zero. There was no unemployment in 

Cambodia under Pol Pot; nor was there any in an Eskimo fishing community in the year 

1600. The reason is the same in each case: where there is no technology, labor is 

inefficient, and everybody must therefore work. To be sure, new technology does 

indeed create new kinds of work: before there were cars, there were no automechanics; 

and before there were smartphones, there were no app-developers. But the 

purpose of technology is to minimize how much work we have to do; it is not to alter 

the nature of what we have to do while keeping its quantity the same. If cars, tractors, 

and fork-lifts didn’t lighten workloads, we wouldn’t have much use for them. 

Consequently, there is no truth whatsoever to the idea that technological advancement 

creates as much work as it eliminates. 

Why was such an absurd position ever argued for? The main reason is that the 

economists who advocate this position want to minimize the amount of governmentinterference 

in the economy. Their position is that government regulation restricts 

commerce and thwarts economic development: and in most contexts, they are right, 

since a society cannot function for long unless its members are allowed to exchange 

goods and services. But even if unregulated societies economically outperform 

regulated ones, it doesn’t follow that the government should never regulate. Second, 

unemployment benefits are not a form of government regulation and don’t have the

same invidious economic effects as regulations. The law that prevents people from 

teaching unless they have a master’s degree in education is a regulation, since it 

prevents the market from deciding who works and gives that power to the government. 

The laws prevent people from killing and robbing are not regulations, since they don’t 

do this, and neither, for the same reason, are the laws that give people welfare benefits. 

To be sure, welfare benefits are not economically innocuous, since they have to be paid 

for out of people’s taxes; but granting that excessive taxation hurts an economy, 

moderate taxation is sometimes a necessity, this being a case in point. 

Technology has always eliminated jobs; but in times past, the contrary position, 

though false, was at least defensible. Pre-AI technology did not run itself, and its effect 

was not so much to eliminate employment as it was to make employment less about 

physical labor and more about knowing how to operate labor-saving machines. When 

the tractor came into existence, agricultural work became that much less about physical 

labor and that much more about knowing how to operate a tractor. But the story is very 

different when tractors are replaced by self-operating tractors and when, more 

generally, machines are replaced by robots. True—people will still be needed to 

maintain those robots, but there will be very few such jobs in relation to the number of 

labor jobs lost, and those jobs will also require unusually high levels of training and 

intellectual acumen. In general, a slight improvements in technology creates massive 

gains in efficiency and a corresponding drop in the demand for a given person’s labor.

This is cause for alarm if people are still required to work for food, lodging, and 

other necessities, since new technology, especially AI-based technology, makes most 

people economically redundant. But it is not a cause for alarm if people are not forced 

to work for basic necessities. And thanks to the surpluses of wealth created by the very 

technologies that make most people economically redundant, there is no reason for 

most people to work. 

The standard response to this is that, unless people are forced to work, they will 

become parasites and society will fall apart. But the truth is that most people right now 

are parasites: most jobs are not necessary and cost society more than they are worth. 

Somebody who receives $20,000 in welfare is quite harmless. But a redundant police 

officer or government bureaucrat is not harmless, since, unlike the welfare recipient, 

that person has power. This is not to say that all government employees and police 

officers are useless. But there is no way to create jobs for people without giving them at 

least some power. Even the lowliest and most unnecessary clerk can jam up legitimate 

business—and is likely to do so to make himself feel important. Creating jobs for 

unemployable people gives them the ability to prevent employable people from 

contributing, and it is therefore best simply to give them money for basic necessities. 

Ironically, the belief of right-wing economists that everyone should have to compete in 

the arena of commerce, with its consequent refusal on the part of government to give 

welfare to people who simply cannot do so, leads to the creation of vast numbers of

jobs that benefit nobody, including those who have them. I therefore suggest that a 

universal welfare policy be instituted. In this I am in agreement with many distinguished 

people, including economically informed right-wing figures, such as Richard Nixon, who 

was one of the first public figures to advocate such a policy, as well as technology-wise 

left-wing figures, such as Mark Zuckerberg. 



The ‘point’ of this work, so to speak, is that the events in question were not 

simply dark but fell outside of what human beings are able to process; and this work 

conveys that point by being atonal and, on that basis, deriding and caricaturing preexisting 

musical norms, rather than deploying them in any ordinary way. The first 

sounds that we hear are of an almost triumphant-sounding trumpet (01:-04). The motif 

is almost like that of a national anthem (e.g. the Chinese National Anthem, which is 

based on what sounds like a tonal version of this same trumpet-riff). But the modal is 

askew, being atonal, and is quickly met with a dark, semi-atonal orchestral background. 

Incidentally, the cello motif immediately heard thereafter sounds like Philip Glass, and I

suspect that he may even have consciously borrowed it. (Cf. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Stu7h7Qup8 32:09) 

The rest of this work followed suit, all of it being on the edges of tonal music and 

all of it being, as it were, derogatory of it and, so it seems, of the cultural norms thereby 

represented, the work’s overall point seemingly being that what was happening in the 

world could no longer be understood in the usual rationality-based ways. What was a 

little hard to understand—or at least to fit into this way of understanding this work--- 

was Chorale part, sung in Hebrew, as to the Jewish people’s future responsibilities to 

itself. The lyrics were straightforward and clearly non-ironic; but the accompanying 

music was atonal and, so it seemed, derisive, making it unclear whether the words being 

sung were to be taken literally, on the one hand, or, on the other hand, dismissed, in 

light of recent events, as naïve. I suspect that they were meant to be taken literally and 

were accompanied by atonal, ambiguous-sounding music only because that was the 

genre in which Schoenberg happened to composer. 

I chose to listen to the video that did not feature Holocaust pictures. This was 

because I wanted to listen to the music without being ‘told’, so to speak, how to react. 

(The singing, especially the solo singing in English, did, however, tell me, quite literally, 

what I was to be thinking and feeling; and I was a bit surprised at this brazen violation of 

the ‘show, don’t tell’ rule governing theatrical performances.) Frankly, I found this work 

easy to listen to, precisely because it doesn’t use conventional tonality. I was able to

listen to each bar on its own, without having to feel that I had to embed in a larger 

musical narrative. Also, even though this music is classified as ‘atonal’, it is not, literally 

speaking, atonal; it is only relatively atonal. Relatedly, I think that contemporary 

audiences would find this piece much less jarring than Schoenberg’s contemporaries, 

mainly because so much film music sounds like this, probably because, so I suspect, 

Schoenberg’s music itself influenced film-composers. 

And this last point, I think, is central to what is going with Schoenberg’s music. 

Bach’s music is not meant to represent anything; neither is Mozart’s or Beethoven’s. 

These composers did, of course, compose masses and operas and other storyaccompanying 

works; but their music is always, ultimately, to be listened to by itself. 

Schoenberg’s music, by contrast, sounds like a movie score and is easy to listen if 

listened to in that way. But if listened to on its own, in the way in which Mozart or 

Beethoven are listened to, it is a bit grating. I would conjecture that part of what 

allowed Schoenberg to compose atonal music was that his music was, at least by his 

intention, to be listened to as an accompaniment to a play or some such, and not on its 

own, so that the dissonances in it as comments on an independent story-line, and not as 

musical ends unto themselves. 


DEFINITIONS/IMPORTANT THEOREMS

RANGE: TOP VALUE MINUS BOTTOM VALUE 

MEAN: AVERAGE 

MEDIAN: VALUE THAT SPLITS DATA SET 

STANDARD DEVIATION: AVERAGE DIFFERENCE OF DATA POINT FROM MEAN 

VARIANCE: SQUARE OF STANDARD DEVIATION 

MODE: VALUE THAT OCCURS MOST OFTEN 

UNIMODAL: HAVING A SINGLE HIGHEST VALUE 

BIMODAL: HAVING TWO HIGHEST VALUES 

RIGHT-SKEWED: VALUES BUNCHED TOWARDS LEFT 

LEFT-SKEWED: VALUES BUNCHED TOWARDS RIGHT 

Z SCORE (TWO KINDS SEE INSERT) 

x with bar over it=sample mean 

mu=population mean 

sigma=population standard deviation

s=sample standard deviation 

P(A)=probability of A 

P(A C )=probability of NOT A 

P(A C )=1-P(A)) 

P(AUB)=probability of either A or B 

P(A∩B)=probability of both A and B 

P(A/B)=probability of A given B 

PROBABILITY THEOREMS (SEE BELOW FOR ILLUSTRATIONS) 

PROBABILITY OF EITHER A OR B (ADDITIVE RULE) 

P(XUY)=P(X)+P(Y)-P(X∩Y) 

PROBABILITY OF A AND B (MULTIPLICATIVE RULE) 

PROBABILITY OF A GIVEN B

BAYES RULE 

MULIPLICATIVE RULE (ALTERNATIVE VERSION)

SEE BELOW FOR EXPLANATIONS/EXAMPLES 

EMPIRICAL RULE 

68% OF DATA POINTS FALL WITHIN ONE STANDARD DEVIATION 

95% OF DATA POINTS FALL WITHIN TWO STANDARD DEVIATIONS 

97.5% OF DATA POINTS FALL WITHIN THREE STANDARD DEVIATIONS 

SO ANYTHING IN TOP 2.5% OR BOTTOM 2.5% IS OUTLIER. NOTHING ELSE IS OUTLIER 

USE TI 84 TO FIND MEAN/MEDIAN/STANDARD DEVIATION/QL/QU 

Let’s suppose you want to do statistics (find mean, median, standard deviation etc.) on 

the following numbers: 

1,5,22,999 

Ti-84 makes it easy. 

HIT STAT 

CHOOSE EDIT 

ENTER NUMBERS IN FIRST COLUMN (TITLED L1) 

(JUST TYPE NUMBER THEN HIT ENTER)

HIT STAT 

SCROLL TO RIGHT TO ‘CALC’ 

HIT ENTER TWICE 

The x with the bar over it is the mean. 

∑x=sum of all the values 

σx=POPULATION STANDARD DEVIATION 

Sx=SAMPLE STANDARD DEVIATION 

FIND MEDIAN WITH TI 84 

To find MEDIAN, scroll down some more

Q1=QUARTILE 1 

Q3=QUARTILE 3 

YOU NEED TO KNOW Q1/Q3 

Frequency=number 

Relative frequency=percentage 

Example: 

H=hockey play 

S=soccer player 

HHHSSSSSSSHHHSSSSSSS 

Frequency of H=6

Relative frequency of H=30% 

PARETO DIAGRAMS 

Pareto Diagram: bar diagram, with bars in descending order, where there is a line 

indicating cumulative (total) amount. 

STEM AND LEAF DISPLAY 

Stem and leaf display: two column chart where first column (‘stem’) gives first digit of 

statistic and second column (‘leaf) gives rest of statistics. 

Stem 

Leaf 

2 5 9 8

4 3 8 

3 7 7 9 

This means that the statistics are as follows: 

25 

29 

28 

43 

48 

37 

37 

39 

To get total number of observations/statistics in leaf diagram 

The original numbers for a stem and leaf display are the actual numbers. So in this case, 

they would be: 25, 29, 28 etc. 

When the stem column contains a ‘0’, the original numbers are identical with those in 

the leaf column. 

stem 

leaf 

Row 1 0 3 5 6 

Row 2 2 3 9

The original data for row 1 are: 3, 5, 6. The original data for row 2 are 23, 29. (when 

there is a single digit number, you put a zero in ‘stem’ column.) 

Histogram 

Each bar is an ‘interval.’ To count total ‘intervals’ just count bars. To count total number 

of measurements, add up the y-values of all the bars. 

FIND MEAN/MEDIAN/ETC. ON TI 84 

Mean=average 

1, 50, 100 

Mean=151/3 

ON TI 84, EASY TO FIND MEAN, MEDIAN. REPEAT STEPS DESCRIBED ABOVE 

STAT-EDIT-ENTER DATA-STAT-CALC 

Median=number that separates lower half from higher half. 

1, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 100 

Median=50

Mode=number that occurs most often 

1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 75, 100 

Mode=1 

∑-NOTATION 

n=number of numbers 

∑x=y means that when you add up those numbers, you get y 

So 

n=10, ∑x=84 

means that there are 10 numbers, and when you add them up, you get 84 

so to find the mean you divide 84 by 10, and you get 8.4 

MEAN AFFECTED BY EXTREME VALUES, MEDIAN NOT AFFECTED BY EXTREME VALUES 

The mean is affected by extreme values, while the median is not. If the data set is

skewed to the right, then the median is less than the mean. If the data set is 

symmetric, the mean equals the median. If the data set is skewed to the left, the 

mean is less than the median. 

Extreme values affect mean, not median. 

Skewed right means there are very high outliers, which raises mean, but not median. 

Skewed left means there are low outliers, which lowers mean, but not median. 

Salaries at a big company would be skewed left, because most people would earn little 

and there would only be a few millionaire executives. 

Scores on an easy test would be skewed left, since a disproportionate number of people 

would ace it. 

Scores on a hard test would be skewed right, since a disproportionate number of people 

would flunk it. 

MINIMUM/MAXIMUM/RANGE 

Minimum/maximum=lowest/highest 

Range: difference between lowest and highest value. 

1,2,9,112 

Range=111

Minimum=1 

Maximum=112 

VARIANCE/FINDING VARIANCE ON TI 84 

VARIANCE=SQUARE OF STANDARD DEVIATION 

POPULATION VARIANCE=SQUARE OF σx 

POPULATION STANDARD DEVIATION=SQUARE OF Sx 

TI 84 DOES NOT DIRECTLY OUTPUT VARIANCE 

EXAMPLE: 

1,2,9,112 

FIND VARIANCE ON TI 84 

REPEAT STEPS FROM ABOVE (STAT-EDIT-ENTER NUMBER-STAT-CALC-ENTER-ENTER) 

THIS GIVES YOU:

TO GET POPULATION VARIANCE, SQUARE 46.866… 

TO GET SAMPLE VARIANCE, SQUARE 54.117…. 

Z-SCORE 

z-score:

x with bar over it=sample mean 

mu=population mean 

sigma=population standard deviation 

s=sample standard deviation 

OUTLIERS 

NON-OUTLIER = BETWEEN -2.58 and +2.58 99.9% 

OUTLIER = NOT BETWEEN -2.58 and +2.58 99.9% 

FOR Z SCORE, JUST CRUNCH NUMBERS. DON’T USE TI 84 SPECIAL FUNCTION. 

QUARTILES 

Q L /Q U 

Q L =lower quartile XX

Q U = upper quartile 

THEY WILL GIVE YOU THIS. IF YOU NEED TO FIND IT, FOLLOW SAME STEPS AS YOU DO 

TO FIND MEAN 

75% ARE LESS THAN Q U 

25% ARE LESS THAN Q L 

IQR=INTERQUARTILE RANGE=Q U -Q L 

TWO ERRORS WITH DIAGRAMS THEY WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT 

WHEN THEY ASK TO IDENTIFY PROBLEMS WITH CHARTS, CHECK FOR TWO THINGS: 

DATA NOT MATCHING CHART

CHART NOT STARTING AT ZERO 

PERMUTAITONS/COMBINATIONS 

WHEN THEY ASK YOU TO CHOOSE R ELEMENTS FROM N objects (E.G. WHEN THEY ASK 

YOU HOW MANY WAYS 2 OBJECTS CAN BE SELECTED FROM A SAMPLE OF 10), YOU DO 

THE FOLLOWING: 

FIRST ENTER TOTAL SAMPLE SIZE (THE BIG NUMBER) 

THEN GO TO MATH MENU

THEN RIGHT ARROW OVER TO PROB 

THEN GO TO nCr (which stands for n choose r) 

THEN ENTER THE OTHER NUMBER (IN THIS CASE 2) 

SO IF THEY ASK YOU HOW MANY WAYS YOU CAN CHOOSE 2 JELLY BEANS FROM GROUP 

OF 10, YOU 

ENTER 10 

HIT ‘MATH’ 

GO TO ‘PROB’ 

SCROLL DOWN TO nCr 

ENTER 2 

HIT ENTER 

YOU GET 45 

PROBABILITY 

PROBABILITY = FAVORABLE CASES DIVIDED BY ALL CASES

100 JELLY BEANS IN BOWL 

33 RED ONES 

PROBABILITY OF CHOOSING RED ONE = 33/100 =.33 

P(R)=PROBABILTY OF RED JELLYBEAN 

P(R C )=PROBABILITY OF PICKING NON RED JELLYBEAN 

P(R)=.33 

P(R C )=.67 

PROBABILITES=DECIMALS LESS THAN/EQUAL TO ONE AND GREATER THAN/EQUAL TO 

ZERO 

P(XUY)=PROBABILITY OF EITHER AN X OR A Y 

P(X∩Y) =PROBABILITY OF X AND Y AT SAME TIME 

P(XUY)=P(X)+P(Y)-P(X∩Y) 

SUPPOSING YOU ARE ROLLING SINGLE DIE 

LP(E)=PROBABILITY OF EVEN ROLL 

P(O)=PROBABILITY OF ODD ROLL 

P(1)=1/6 

P(2)=1/6 

P(3)=1/6 

P(4)=1/6 

P(5)=1/6

P(6)=1/6 

P(E)=3/6=1/2 

P(O) =3/6=1/2 

P(E∩2)=1/6 

P(EU2)=P(E)+P(2)-P(E∩2)=3/6+1/6-1/6=1/2 

MULTIPLICATIVE RULE (FIRST VERSION) 

P(B/A)=PROBABILITY OF A, GIVEN B

4 JELLY BEANS IN JAR, TWO YELLOW, TWO GREENS 

P(Y 1 )=CHANCE OF PICKING YELLOW FIRST TIME=1/2 

P(G 1 )= CHANCE OF PICKING GREEN FIRST TIME=1/2 

P(Y 2 /G 1 )=CHANCE OF PICKING YELLOW IF FIRST TIME DREW GREEN=1/2-1/6=2/5 

P(Y 2 ∩G 1 )=CHANCE OF PICKING GREEN FIRST TIME AND YELLOW SECOND 

TIME=P(G 1 )P(Y 2 /G 1 )=1/2(2/5)=2/10=1/5 

MULTIPLICATIVE RULE (ALTERNATIVE VERSION) 

P(Y 2 /G 1 )= P(Y 2 ∩G 1 )/ P(G 1 )

2/5=(1/5)/(1/2) 

BAYES RULE 

Also need to know the product rules: 

NO WAY TO USE TI 84 TO DO THIS, EXCEPT JUST TO CRUNCH NUMBERS. 

For example:

Poem and Song Compared: To His Coy Mistress Compared with Don’t Be Cruel (Literary 

Analysis) 

The poem that I chose to discuss is To His Coy Mistress (1650), by Andrew Marvel, 

and the song I chose is Don’t Be Cruel (1956) by Elvis Presley. There are several striking 

similarities between these works, and several striking differences, the similarities 

ultimately being more significant than the differences. In both cases, the man is playing 

a defensive game: he is pleading with a woman who is withholding her affections from 

him and over whom the man appears to have little or no leverage. 

Let us start by quoting To His Coy Mistress in its entirety: 

Had we but world enough and time, 

This coyness, lady, were no crime. 

We would sit down, and think which way 

To walk, and pass our long love’s day. 

Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side 

Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide 

Of Humber would complain. I would 

Love you ten years before the flood, 

And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the conversion of the Jews. 

My vegetable love should grow 

Vaster than empires and more slow; 

An hundred years should go to praise 

Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; 

Two hundred to adore each breast, 

But thirty thousand to the rest; 

An age at least to every part, 

And the last age should show your heart. 

For, lady, you deserve this state, 

Nor would I love at lower rate. 

But at my back I always hear 

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; 

And yonder all before us lie 

Deserts of vast eternity. 

Thy beauty shall no more be found; 

Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound 

My echoing song; then worms shall try 

That long-preserved virginity, 

And your quaint honour turn to dust,

And into ashes all my lust; 

The grave’s a fine and private place, 

But none, I think, do there embrace. 

Now therefore, while the youthful hue 

Sits on thy skin like morning dew, 

And while thy willing soul transpires 

At every pore with instant fires, 

Now let us sport us while we may, 

And now, like amorous birds of prey, 

Rather at once our time devour 

Than languish in his slow-chapped power. 

Let us roll all our strength and all 

Our sweetness up into one ball, 

And tear our pleasures with rough strife 

Through the iron gates of life: 

Thus, though we cannot make our sun 

Stand still, yet we will make him run. 

This is obviously the work of an erudite and intelligent man, and it is also a 

sincere expression of passion. But it is ultimately not really about love, despite the

author’s own asseverations to the contrary. Every single reference to the woman is 

concerns physical beauty: 

An hundred years should go to praise 

Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; 

Two hundred to adore each breast, 

But thirty thousand to the rest; 

not love: 

And every single reference on the author’s part to his own feelings concerns lust, 

Now let us sport us while we may, 

And now, like amorous birds of prey, 

Rather at once our time devour 

Than languish in his slow-chapped power. 

Let us roll all our strength and all 

Our sweetness up into one ball, 

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

The author’s ‘pitch’ to the woman is that, in a few years, she will be a corpse and 

that she might as well submit to his wishes: 

Thy beauty shall no more be found; 

Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound 

My echoing song; then worms shall try 

That long-preserved virginity, 

And your quaint honour turn to dust, 

And into ashes all my lust; 

The grave’s a fine and private place, 

But none, I think, do there embrace. 

Consequently, even though it is meant to be tender and romantic, this poem 

comes across as desperate and angry, its subtext being: sex with me or die. And the 

author’s frequent references to his own ‘love’ are very clearly references to his own lust, 

given that he says nothing about the relationship he would like to have with the woman 

apart from his wanting it consist of “rough” sex (”And tear our pleasures with rough 

strife/Through the iron gates of life”). Finally, given the fact that he frequently mentions

the woman’s rotting corpse, the author’s feelings not only seem to be entirely sexual in 

nature but also aggressively so. 

Don’t be Cruel describes a very different situation, as the lyrics clearly indicate: 

You know I can be found 

Sitting home all alone 

If you can't come around 

At least please telephone 

Don't be cruel to a heart that's true 

Baby, if I made you mad 

For something I might have said 

Please, let's forget the past 

The future looks bright ahead 


I don't want no other love 

Baby it's just you I'm thinking of 

Don't stop thinking of me 

Don't make me feel this way

Come on over here and love me 

You know what I want you to say 


Why should we be apart? 

I really love you baby, cross my heart 

Let's walk up to the preacher 

And let us say I do 

Then you'll know you'll have me 

And I'll know that I'll have you 




This is not the work of an educated or sophisticated person, but it is a genuine 

express of love. The author never mentions the woman’s physical appearance; nor does 

he mention wanting to have sex with her. He only mentions missing and needing her: 

If you can't come around

At least please telephone. 

Also, the author is being self-effacing: the situation is his fault, not hers, and he 

will do whatever he must to make himself worthy of her, including dedicating his life to 

her: 

Baby, if I made you mad 

For something I might have said 

Please, let's forget the past 

The future looks bright ahead 




In all of these respects, Don’t be Cruel contrasts sharply with To His Coy Mistress. 

Marvel is angry blaming his ‘coy mistress’ for his situation; he explicitly claims that his 

inability to gratify his lusts with her is a consequence of her short-sightedness and 

stupidity: she is, in Marvel’s view, an attractive floozy who doesn’t realize how fleeting 

her looks are or how little she has to offer apart from being physically beautiful. By 

contrast, Elvis at no point denigrates the woman he is addressing, and he conceives of a

elationship with her as an opportunity for him, whereas Marvel conceived of a 

relationship with his ‘coy mistress’ as an obligation for her. 

Despite these differences, both works about a man’s emotional dependence the 

woman in question. In Marvel’s case, this dependence is filtered through lust, whereas 

in Elvis’s cases it is not thus distorted. But both works are about the man’s need for the 

woman: she is on the one calling the shots, and the man simply has to wait on her 

decision. Marvel’s attitude towards his addressee is predatory and narcissistic, whereas 

Elvis’s attitude is genuinely loving; but these differences seem to have to do with the 

differences in the personalities of the two men involved, it being the similarity between 

the two situations that reflect what is universal in the nature of man’s love for woman. 


Abbreviations 

μ =mean 

σ 2 =variance 

σ=standard deviation 

Formulas for these terms

Consider the following numbers: 1,3,5,9 

μ = average 

μ=(1+3+5+9)/4=4.5 

σ 2 =the average of the square of the distance of the points from the mean, i.e. σ 2 =(1- 

4.5)2+ (3-4.5)2+ (5-4.5)2+(9-4.5)2=11.6667 

σ=square root of variance=3.41565 

Mean, variance, standard deviation (μ,σ 2 ,σ): How to get them on TI 84 (review) 

Suppose your data-points are, 

1,5,22,999 

To find μ,σ 2 ,σ on TI 84, do the following (repeated from last handout). 

HIT STAT 

CHOOSE EDIT 

ENTER NUMBERS IN FIRST COLUMN (TITLED L1) 

(JUST TYPE NUMBER THEN HIT ENTER) 

HIT STAT 

SCROLL TO RIGHT TO ‘CALC’ 

HIT ENTER TWICE 

If you don’t find what you’re looking for, scroll down.

Square standard deviation to get variance 

The TI 84 gives you standard deviation. It does not directly give you variance. To get 

variance, just square standard deviation. 

In other words, TI 84 gives you σ. Variance= σ 2 . You have to manually square σ to get 

variance. 

Expected value 

Expected value=sum of each value multiplied by probability of that value 

There is a 40% the stock will be worth $2500, a 50% of it will be worth $100, and a 10% 

chance it will be worth $10. 

Expected value= μ=[.4(2500)+.5(100)+.1(10)]/3 

=1051/3 

≈350 

Example: 

You are thinking about buying one share of Amazon stock at a price of $2000. 

You have to sell that stock on August 30, 2019, no matter what. Y 

You cannot sell it before August 30, 2019, no matter what. 

A: There is a 40% chance that on August 20, 2019, the price will be exactly $2500. 

B: There is a 50% chance that on August 20, 2019, the price will be exactly $100. 

C: There is a 10% chance that on August 20, 2019, the price will be exactly $10.

Should you buy it? 

No. 

The expected value on August 30, 2019 will be $350. See above. 

So you can expect to lose $1650. 

Discrete variable 

One whose values are integers. 

Examples: population, number of heart-beats per minute, number of houses in a city. 

Tip: Whenever you can ask how many?, you are asking about a discrete variable, e.g. 

“how many people are in the house?” 

Continuous variable 

One whose values are real numbers. 

Example: temperature, mass, volume, length (spatial or temporal). 

Tip: Whenever you can ask how much? or to what degree?, you are asking about a 

continuous variable, e.g. “how much does Smith weigh?”, “how smart is that person? 

(i.e. to what degree is he intelligent)? 

Random variable

A variable whose values are unknown, either because they are the outcome of a 

statistical experiment (e.g. a series of coin-flips) or because they are not objectively 

fixed (e.g. people’s heartrates). 

Example: number of heads tosses, number of three-tosses (when throwing die), number 

of times Microsoft Stock rises above $3200 in a given year. 

Continuous 

Discrete 

Inflation-rate 

X 

Score on a scale of 

X 

1-10 (only whole 

numbers) 

Number of people 

X 

at a theatre 

Length in time 

X

Heartbeats/minute 

X 

temperature 

X 

Probabilities must add up to 1 

If there is a 30% chance that the stock will go up, and a 60% that the stock will go down, 

then there is a 10% that the stock will stay the same. (We are assuming that there is no 

fourth option.) 

Probabilities expressed as decimals 

When they ask for a probability, they usually want a decimal. If there is a 60% of raining, 

the chance that it will rain is .6. 

“Or” means “add” when the probabilities are mutually exclusive 

If there is a 10% that the stock will stay the same, then the chance that it will either go 

up or down is 90%. This is because going up and going down are mutually exclusive. 

“Or” means “add then subtract probability of simultaneous occurrence” when 

probabilities are not mutually exclusive

Suppose that there is a 50% chance that it rains and a 40% chance that it is over 87° and 

a 30% chance that it both rains and is over . In that case, the probability that it either 

rains or is over 87° is 50%+40%-30%=60%=.6 

AUB, A∩B, A C 

AUB means A or B 

A∩B means A and B 

A C means complement of A, i.e. everything that is not in A 

The probability of A =.5 

The probability of B =.4 

Probability AUB=.3 

Probability A∩B=.3 

Probability of A C =.5 

Probability of B C =.4 

Probability of (AUB) C =.4 

Probability of (A∩B) C =.7

p(A)=probability of A 

p(A)=probability of A 

p(AUB)=probability of A or B 

p(A∩B)=probability of A and B 

p(A C )=probability of not A 

Probability of not happening equals 1 minus probability of happening 

If p(A)=.3, then p(A C )=.7 

Probability Distributions IMPORTANT AND HARD 

You’re going to get a lot of questions like the following, and there is no way to get the TI 

84 to completely do them for you: 

x 

P(x) 

2 .5 

3 .1

4 .25 

You are going to be asked for the following information: 

The mean, i.e. μ 

The variance, i.e. σ 2 

The standard deviation, i.e. σ 

You get the mean by multiplying each x by p(x) and then adding up the results 

x P(x) x*p(x) μ=2.3 

2 .5 1 

3 .1 .3 

4 .25 1 

Once you have μ, you can get σ 2 . Here is how. 

1. You subtract μ from x, for each x SEE COLUMN E 

2. then you square the result SEE COLUMN F 

3. then you multiply the result of that by p(x) SEE COLUMN G 

4. then you add up the results. This gives you σ 2 , which is the variance SEE COLUMN 

H

5. If you want standard deviation, take the square root of σ 2 . SEE COLUMN I 

A B C D E F G H I 

x P(x) x*p(x) μ=2.3 x- μ (x- μ) 2 (x- μ) 2 *p(x) σ 2 =.8165 σ≈.667 

2 .5 1 -.3 .09 .09*.5=.045 

3 .1 .3 .7 .49 .49*.1=..049 

4 .25 1 1.7 2.89 2.89*.25=.7225 

A weird question that you will get (just memorize)

The answer will always be the one that says: SINCE THE OUTER TWO VALUES IN EACH 

DISTRIBUTION ARE THE SAME DISTANCE FROM THE MIDDLE AND THE PROBABILITY IS 

THE SAME FOR BOTH THE OUTER VALUES, THE MEAN SHOULD BE THE SAME. 

Notice the bottom part of the question in the picture:

The answer is: 

The answer is always the one where the end values are larger and closer the middle. It’s 

a trick question. Just memorize the answer. 


TWO IMPORTANT PRELIMINARIES 

FIRST, KNOW HOW TO CREATE EXPONENTS ON TI 84. NO AUTOMATIC WAY TO DO 

THIS. 

SECOND, HOW TO RESET/CLEAR TI 84

1. 2 ND KEY 

2. + KEY 

3. HIT 7 

4. ENTER 

5. SCROLL DOWN TO 2 (RESET) 

6. ENTER 

SEVEN MOST IMPORTANT FORMULAS RELATING TO DIFFERENTIATION 

(EXPLANATIONS BELOW) 

SO FIRST DERIVATIVE OF Y=X 2 IS 2X 

OF Y=7 IS 0 

OF Y=X 2 IS 2X 

OF Y=X 8 IS 8X 7

SO…. 

I.e. the first derivative of 5 x is 5 x ln(5) 

And the first derivative of e x is itself e x 

LOGARITHM DEFINED 

LOG X (Y)=Z MEANS X Z =Y 

EXAMPLES:

Intervals/brackets 

Square brackets mean endpoints included: [3,10] is the interval from 3 to 10, including 

both 3 and 10 

Round brackets mean endpoints not included: (3,10) is the interval between 3 and 10 

and not including either. (3,10] is the interval between 3 and 10 including 10 but not 3.

In the chart above, the first interval does not include a or b; the second one include 

both; the third includes b but not a; etc. 

Important notation 

{x│x

Limits and Discontinuous Functions 

If function discontinuous, then the limit is what the function would equal if it were 

continuous. 

Example: 

F(x)=x 2 if x≠5 and if x=5, F(x)=0 

The limit of F(x) as x approaches 5 is still 25 

Right limit/left left 

If a function is discontinuous, its limit from the right (denoted by plus) may be different 

from its limit from the left.

This functions limit, as it approaches 1 from the left is 4, but its limit as it approaches 1 

from the right is 2. 

I.e. the answer to 47 is 4 and the answer to 48 is 2 

Different example: 

The limit of this function as it approaches .4 from the left is 3.3 and its limit as it 

approaches .4 from the right is 3.7 

SCREENSHOTS OF RULES FOR DIFFERENTIATING (EXPLANATIONS BELOW)

RULES FOR DIFFERENTIATING 

To ‘differentiate’ a function at a given point is to find its slope at that point. 

‘First derivative’ is slope at given point. 

RULE 1: Linear function always has same slope. The first derivative of f(x)=7x is simply 7. 

This is because the slope is always 7. 

RULE 2: The first of derivative of x n is nx x-1 .

First derivative of f(x)=x 2 is 2x. So the slope of f(x)=x 2 at 7 is 14. 

First derivative of f(x)=x 4 is 4x 3 . So the slope of f(x)=x 4 at x=3 is 4(3) 3 =4(27)=108 

RULE 4: When finding derivatives, the only numbers you care about are exponents and 

coefficients. 

For example, the first derivative of f(x)=x 2 is identical with the first derivative of 

f(x)=x 2 +5. They are both 2x. This is because derivative is slope, and the +5 doesn’t affect 

slope. 

RULE 5: Derivative of constant function is 0. The derivative of F(x)=4 is 0, since that 

function is just a horizontal line. 

RULE 6: A function cannot be differentiated at a corner. 

The function below cannot be differentiated at (0,0). 

RULE 7: x -n is the same as 1/x n . So x -4 =1/x 4 . 

Rule 8: First derivative of x -n is -n -n-1 . So first derivative of x -2 is -2x -3 . 

-2x -3 = -1/ x -3 . (See Rule 7) 

RULE 8: Root of degree n = exponent of 1/n

For example: 

The cube root of x is x 1/3 . And so on. 

RULE 9: The first derivative of: 

Graphs 

No exponent=straight line 

Example: y=x+2

When exponent=2 or any other even number, graph is parabola 

Example: y=x 2 +5

When exponent=3 or any other odd number, graph has S-shape 

Example: y=x 3 -11

TIP: Always use TI 84 to graph. 

GRAPHING AND SOLVING GRAPH-RELATED PROBLEMS ON TI 84 

Suppose you want to graph y=x 2 on the TI 84.

1. Y= 

2. ENTER EQUATION, IN THIS CASE: X 2 BTW, THE ‘X’ KEY IS NEXT TO THE ‘ALPHA’ 

KEY 

3. HIT GRAPH 

4. DONE 

STEP 1

STEP 2

STEP 3 

STEP 4

FINDING INTERSECTIONS OF GRAPHS ON TI 84 

Suppose you are asked to plot a graph when taking the exam. For example, you are 

asked to graph:

y=3x-7 

You will need to have two distinct points. To do this on the TI 84, do the following: 

1. HIT Y= 

2. ENTER EQUATION 

3. HIT GRAPH 

4. THIS WILL GIVE YOU Y INTERCEPT 

5. TO GET X INTERCEPT, HIT LEFT OR RIGHT KEY UNTIL YOU GET TO TWO NUMBERS 

THAT DON’T GO ON FOREVER (AND THAT YOU CAN THEREFORE USE ON EXAM) 

SOLVING ALGEBRA PROBLEMS ON TI 84 

Suppose you want to solve the equation X+3=22 

Here is what you do 

1. GO TO MATH 

2. SCROLL DOWN TO C: NUMERIC SOLVER 

3. IN TOP SCREEN ENTER X+3 

4. HIT ENTER 

5. IN THE BOTTOM SCREEN ENTER 22 

6. HIT ENTER

7. LEAVE THE CURSOR WHERE IT IS. THEN HIT ALPHA 

8. THEN YOU HAVE YOUR ANSWER 

STEP 1

STEP 2 

STEP 3

STEP 4

STEP 5

STEP 6

STEP 7

Computing Interest on TI 84

SUPPOSE YOU NEED TO SOLVE THE FOLLOWING PROBLEM. 

SMITH PUTS $1000 IN SAVINGS ACCOUNT AT 5% COMPOUNDED ANNUALLY. HOW 

MUCH MONEY DOES SMITH HAVE AFTER 20 YEARS? 

TO COMPUTE INTEREST ON TI 84 DO FOLLOWING: 

1. HIT APPS 

2. HIT ENTER 

3. HIT ENTER 

4. YOU ARE NOW WHERE YOU WANT TO BE. HERE IS WHAT YOU SHOULD SEE:

5. PUT 20 AFTER N= (N IS THE NUMBER OF COMPOUNDING PERIODS, THIS BEING 

20) 

6. PUT 5 AFTER I%

7. PUT NEGATIVE 5000 (I.E. -5000) AFTER PV (STANDS FOR ‘PRINCIPLE VALUE)’ 

MAKE SURE YOU HIT THE (-) KEY, NOT THE OTHER MINUS. I.E. HIT KEY TO THE 

LEFT OF ENTER. OTHERWISE YOU GET SYNTAX ERROR. 

8. THE OTHER ONES CAN BE LEFT ALONE EXCEPT FOR FV. 

9. PUT CURSOR NEXT TO FV (FUTURE VALUE) 

10. HIT ALPHA KEY , I.E. GREEN KEY IN PICTURE 

11. THEN HIT ENTER 

12. HERE IS WHAT YOU GET:

SO AFTER 20 YEARS, YOUR $5000 HAS TURNED INTO $13266 AND CHANGE. 

A PROBLEM YOU ARE LIKELY TO GET CONCERNING COMPOUND INTEREST 

TO USE THE TI 84 TO DO THIS, READ INSTRUCTIONS AFTER PICTURE:

1. HIT Y= KEY 

2. ENTER EQUATION, I.E. 1000*1.06 X 

3. HIT ENTER 

4. MOVE CURSOR SO THAT = IS HIGHLIGHTED 

5. THEN HIT 2 ND KEY FOLLOWED BY WINDOW KEY 

6. ENTER THE NUMBER CORRESPONDING TO THE EQUATION (WHICH IS PROBABLY 

1) 

7. ENTER 

8. THEN HIT 2 ND KEY FOLLOWED BY GRAPH

9. TABLE WILL APPEAR 

10. SCROLL DOWN FOR DESIRED YEAR 


Part 1: Research on Composers and Musical Works 

The first piece of the concert was Concerto Grosso No. 12 Propitia Sydera (1701), 

by Georg Muffat (1653-1704). Of Scottish ancestry, Muffat was born and raised in 

France but considered himself German, presumably because he spent some of his most 

productive years in Germany (Wollenberg, 2001). Relatedly, Muffat is credited with 

doing much to introduce French and Italian musical styles into Germany (Brewer, 2016). 

Given that Muffat did this just prior to Bach’s birth and during the latter’s childhood, it is 

a distinct possibility that Muffat’s influence is partly responsible for the existence of a 

musical climate in Germany that made it possible for the young Bach to develop his gifts 

as fully as he did (Marckx, 2000). This conjecture is consistent with the nature of his 

music—especially of the Concerto Grosso No. 12—which, though definitely not in the

same league as Bach’s work, anticipates it in some respects, having, as it does, a 

similarly counterpoint-based, highly structured quality (with the qualification that the 

counterpoint is not nearly as developed as it is in Bach’s case). Muffat was a child 

prodigy and, as a child, studied under Jean-Baptiste Lully (Wollenberg, 2001). As an 

adult, he had a series of positions, mostly in Germany in Austria. His life was uneventful, 

consisting as it did of one of comfortable position after another, with the qualification 

that political turmoil sometimes forced him to switch posts abruptly. Much of his music 

is written for all-string ensembles, and his works often have a free-form, jazz-like 

quality, in that, as is the case with much jazz, a given instrument will take the lead for a 

while, to be followed by another instrument, with the remaining instruments forming a 

kind of chorus or backdrop (Jander, 1968). Muffat’s music is often playful and has a jiglike 

quality; and all of his music, even the slow movements, have a light-touch and are 

easy to listen to (Marckx, 2000). 

The last piece of the concert was the Serenade in C Major, Op. 48 (1880) by 

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, (1840-1893). Like Muffat’s Concerto Grosso, 

coincidentally, this work was written for an all-string ensemble. Able to read French and 

German by the age of six, Tchaikovsky came from a wealthy family and was raised and 

educated accordingly. It is known that received piano lessons starting the age of six, and 

also received lessons in composition from acclaimed instructor Rudolph Kündinger, an 

acclaimed instructor (Wiley, 2001). But Tchaikovsky’s parents expected him to become a

civil servant, not a musician, and it wasn’t until, at 23, he had already received his law 

degree that he enrolled at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, from which he graduated 

two years later, this being the only well-documented fact about his musical education 

(Schroeder, 2015). While at the University, he studied composition under Anton 

Rubinstein, the famous pianist and composer. Rubinstein is described as having been 

reasonably encouraging of the young Tchaikovsky but as being unwilling to admit to 

himself how inferior he was to his own pupil. In any case, Rubinstein’s brother, Nikolai, 

saw to it that Tchaikovsky had a position as a professor of music at the St. Petersburg 

Conservatory. (Ironically, Nikolai Rubinstein became a bitter critic of Tchaikovsky and, to 

his own discredit, wrote a scathing review of Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto.) Thanks 

to his professorships, Tchaikovsky had him time to composer, and his career was soon 

launched (Greenberg et al., 2000). Tchaikovsky had a turbulent marriage, which ended 

badly and was followed by several turbulent affairs (Schroeder, 2015). Tchaikovsky 

suffered from periodic bouts of intense depression (Schroeder, 2015); and he became 

increasingly temperamental as he aged, eventually quitting his professorship to travel 

around Europe. During this time, he was financially supported by Nadezhda von Meck, a 

wealthy girlfriend of his. There is evidence that Tchaikovsky was gay, it often being 

suggested, without much evidence, that this was a major factor in his emotional 

problems, a hypothesis that is contravened by the fact that his bouts of depression 

tended to follow turbulent break-ups with lady-friends. One of the greatest composers

of all time, Tchaikovsky is known for his first piano concerto, his violin concerto, Swan 

Lake, The Nutcracker, Romeo and Juliet, and the Sixth Symphony (Schroeder, 2015). His 

work is strikingly melodic, and movie goers are all familiar with much of his work, 

especially the famous love theme from Romeo and Juliet and the opening bars of the 

First Piano Concerto. 

Muffat completed his Concerto Grosso No. 12 in 1701. At this time, he was 

employed as the kapellmeister to the Bishop of Pasau. It is divided into five moments: 

1. Sonata: Grave—Allegro 

2. Aria: Largo 

3. Gavotta 

4. Grave—Ciaconna 

5. Borea: Allegro 

These are the composer’s own designations. Muffat explicitly stated that this 

work is intended to be ‘court music’ and that the different movements are meant to be 

able to fulfill court functions, more than one each in case. (Of course, Bishops do not 

have courts; but we may safely assume that not everything that Muffat composed while 

in the Bishop’s employ was for the Bishop.) In the case of the sprightly Gavotta, it is 

clear what this function is: it is meant to be a dance. The court-related functions of the

movements are not as obvious. Muffat stated that the title he gave to each movements 

is meant to indicate a range of different court-functions (Jander, 1968). 

This work is described as a ‘cross-pollination’ of Muffat’s French and Italian 

influences. It is also said to have influenced Bach, which is palpably accurate, especially 

since some of the slower sections sound eerily like some of the slow movements from 

the Violin Concertos and Brandenburg Concertos (Marckx, 2000). The total length of the 

piece tends to be just over seventeen minutes (Wollenberg, 2001). 

Tchaikovsky completed the Serenade in C Major in 1880. It first performance was 

for a private audience at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where Tchaikovsky had 

previously been a professor, and where, in 1881, it was first performed for a public 

audience (Greenberg et al., 2000. This work is best known for its magisterial 36 bar 

opening. This work is divided into four movements: 

1. Pezzo in forma di sonatina: Andante non troppo — Allegro moderato 

2. Valse: Moderato — Tempo di valse 

3. Élégie: Larghetto elegiaco 

4. Finale (Tema russo): Andante — Allegro con spirito

Each of the first two movements is a stand-alone work. Although Tchaikovsky is 

alleged said that it was intention that the first movement have the same form as a 

“Mozart Sonatina”, it does not, at least obviously, have that form. The main themes 

from the first two movements have been featured in a number of movies, and the main 

theme of the Waltz was the start-up for the British Channel Television Station 

(Greenberg et al., 2000). 

Part 2: Event Description 

The venue was an extremely upscale Manhattan synagogue, right next to Central 

Park. It was very elegant, in a minimalist way, and spacious. Although it took place in a 

Synagogue, there was nothing religious about the experience or about the people there, 

so far as I could tell. It appeared that the Synagogue was simply hosting the event, 

granting that it did give the performance a kind of dignity it might otherwise not have 

had. Most of the people there were old, or late middle-aged, which I found depressing. 

There was a rather long piece, titled “Conference of the Birds”, by one Lembit 

Beecher (born 1980), who was present and who gave a rather memorable and very nonscripted 

introduction to the piece, which was being premiered then and there. When I 

was listening to him talk, I was focused on externals: his clothes, his posture, and his 

evident nervousness; so I didn’t fully take in what he was saying, which was basically to

the effect that his work was basically program music for a 12 Century Persian poem 

about birds and, for that reason, included a number of effective instances of wordpainting, 

including realistic violin-create cawing sounds. (The word-painting was 

probably the most effective aspect of this work.) Had I absorbed Beecher’s prologue, I 

might have been enjoyed the piece more, since, unlike the other pieces performed, it 

wasn’t a stand-alone work. It was skillful in many ways, but decidedly ‘modern’, in that 

seemed like a series of atonal sound-effects, not a musical work in the conventional 

sense. The performers, however, were not bored. There was no doubt that they enjoyed 

performing each and every bar of this work and each of the others. 

Lembit’s piece was the third performed that night, the second being another 

modern (or post-modern) work, title Entr’acte, written by 2011 by Caroline Shaw (born 

1982). Entr’acte was a very intricate work, which showed obvious mastery, but was still 

a bit too unconventional for me. 

Part 3: Musical Analysis 

Muffat’s Concerto Grosso no. 12 is divided into several movements: 

1. Sonata: Grave—Allegro 

2. Aria: Largo 

3. Gavotta 

4. Grave—Ciaconna

5. Borea: Allegro 

These are the composer’s own designations. 

All of the movements are in G major. 

The first movement is slow and meditative and sounds like the middle movement 

of one of the Bach violin concertos. Despite its name, it is not in Sonata form. Nor is it an 

Allegro, making the composer’s designation inexplicable. 

The movement they next played was spirited and quick. It was not an Aria or a 

Largo. Either they simply skipped the Aria: Largo, which is not likely, or, more likely, the 

Aria: Largo was built into the first movement. In any case, whichever movement it was, 

it was obviously being meant to contrast with the first movement, with the violins and 

violas carrying the main melody and the cellos keeping the beat with a supporting 

melody of their own. 

The third movement that they performed, which I assume was the Grave, was 

extremely slow---and grave in that respect but not otherwise, what with it rather sunny, 

major-key-based tonality---and comes across as being more monophonic than the other 

movements. 

The next movement---which, I have to deduce, was the Grave-Ciaconna—was 

not, despite its name, at all grave. Indeed, it sounds as though it was meant to be 

danced to, with its crisp little melody and plucky beat.

The next movement---presumably, the Grave-Ciaconna—was extremely slow and 

was presumably meant to offset the previous movement. It sounded more like an 

interlude than a movement proper. 

The last movement (i.e. the last movement that was performed) was indeed an 

Allegro. It had a spirited, jig-like quality and ended the work on an upbeat note. 

My takeaway is that the first movement really was quite beautiful, and I did not, 

when listening to it (either when I was physically at the concert or when re-listened to 

the concert), feel that I was simply ‘enduring’ the experience. The other movements 

were not quite as good, and I listened to them as a detached observer, not as someone 

who was immersed in the experience. 

Tchaikovsky’s Serenade in C Major was strikingly different in this respect. I had 

heard this work behavior, though I did not know what it was called or wrote it. 

Like the Concerto Grosso, it is all for an all-string ensemble; and like the Concerto 

Grosso, it is divided into a mini movement: 

1. Pezzo in forma di sonatina: Andante non troppo — Allegro moderato 

2. Valse: Moderato — Tempo di valse 

3. Élégie: Larghetto elegiaco 

4. Finale (Tema russo): Andante — Allegro con spirito

The first movement gets ‘straight to the point’, as it were, locking the listener’s 

attention onto the piece. It starts with a bold and yet thoughtful theme, which, like 

many of Tchaikovsky’s themes, is familiar to, and beloved by, people who do not have 

any idea who wrote it and who do not, except accidentally, listen to classical music. The 

first movement is a ‘world unto itself’, as it goes through several sub-movements of its 

own, which it then weaves together into brilliant contrapuntal sections. 

Like that of the first movement, the main theme of the second (Waltz) movement 

is, I suspect, familiar to, and much loved by, people who do not self-identify as classical 

music listeners. As in the first movement, there are some brilliant contrapuntal 

moments. 

The third movement starts with a slow and serene all-strings section, then shifts 

into a lyrical section with a lovely melody and pizzicato accompaniment. The theme of 

this submovement is brilliantly developed by being reprised multiple times, each time 

with a twist and a new layer of complexity. 

The fourth movement begins with a short, quiet Andante, which introduces the 

central theme of the movement-property, which is a fast-paced but cerebral Allegro, 

which, the other three movements, is often heavily contrapuntal. 

Part 4: Interview

The intermission followed Lembit Beecher’s work, which, I am sorry to say, was 

probably deliberate, as in, the people who put the concert together knew audiencemembers 

would need a break after listening to that work. During that time, I 

interviewed James Fishkin, M.D., a 55 year-old Beverly Hills plastic surgeon who was 

there with his wife, and I also interviewed Nathan Nebeker, a 60 year old engineer was 

there with his girlfriend. Dr. Fishkin was friendly and made it clear he was there to 

humor his wife, who was friends with one of the performers. He was, he told me, 

visiting from out of town, and it was his wife’s idea to make sure that took in some New 

York’s culture. I asked him he liked the pieces; and he chuckled and set, ‘well, I’m not 

really the best person to ask, but let’s just say that it’s a bit high-brow for me!’, this 

being his way of saying that, although the works in question probably did have merit, he 

was not one to know quite what the merit was. He told several semi-funny jokes during 

the interview, most of which involved his flipping my questions back onto me. 

Mr. Nebeker gave more cerebral responses. Although he was quick to say that he 

was not a musician, he had, it seems, made it a point of memorizing what the pieces 

sounded like and then mentally categorizing them. Referring to the first piece, he said ‘I 

can see why people liked it back then’, his point being that what was innovative about 

that work in its time was done, and done better, by later composers, jading us to its 

merits. He seemed to like the Shaw piece, because of the intricacies in it. He maintained 

a dignified silence concerning the Beecher piece, not because he disliked it, but, so I

suspect, because he wished to keep an open mind. Which, when I listened to Beecher 

on YouTube, which I did several times, proved to be the right attitude. 

Part 5: Critical Reflection 

The concert I attended was posted on YouTube, and I watched it several times 

before doing this assignment. For me, there were dramatic differences between the 

listening to (and watching) the concert ‘in person’ and listening (and watching) a video 

of it. 

When I was at the actual concert, I was absorbed in the setting---in the behavior 

of the other people there, in the aesthetics of the synagogue---and also in the 

technicalities involved in my being there (e.g. whether I should stay in the city overnight 

or should simply try to make it hope, whether I would have enough money to stay 

overnight, and so on). 

When I watched it on YouTube, my focus was strictly on the music; and, as is my 

wont, I would replay passages that I liked over and over again—which I cannot do at live 

concerts and which I find annoying. I found all of the pieces more enjoyable when 

listening to them on YouTube, mainly because the music was the center of my attention, 

whereas, when I was at the concert, my attention was on the surroundings and the 

music was almost like an annoying add-on.

There can be no doubt that these works will continue to be valued and enjoyed 

for centuries to come. The Muffat’s Concerto Grosso is over three hundred years old, 

and we are listening to it today, albeit largely (though by no means entirely) as a way of 

a paying homage to our cultural forbears. As for the Tchaikovsky, we are still listening 

because it is---there is no way other way to put it—it is good. We are no under 

compulsion to listen to it; but we do listen to it, because we like it, and our descendants 

will listen to it for the same reason. 

Part 6: Works Cited 

Brewer, C. E. (2016). The instrumental music of Schmeltzer, Biber, Muffat and their 

contemporaries. Routledge. 

Greenberg, R., & Rodriguez, S. (2000). Great Masters: Tchaikovsky, His Life and Music. 

Teaching Company 

Jander, O. (1968). Concerto Grosso Instrumentation in Rome in the 1660's and 1670's. 

Journal of the American Musicological Society, 21(2), 168-180. 

Marckx, L. H. (2000). French Baroque influences on Johann Sebastian Bach's" Six suites 

for violoncello solo" with an emphasis on French court dance and Suite V (Germany). 

Schroeder, D. (2015). Experiencing Tchaikovsky: A Listener's Companion. Rowman & 

Littlefield.

Temple Emanu-El. (2019, July 29). Naumburg Orchestral Concerts - July 18, 2019 - A Far 

Cry. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZRsyM-oz_U&t=452s 

Wiley, Roland John. (2001, January 20). Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Il′yich. Retrieved from 

https://www-oxfordmusiconlinecom.libproxy.temple.edu/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/o 

mo-9781561592630-e-0000051766?rskey=Yl2NeK 

Wollenberg, Susan. (2001, January). Muffat, Georg. Retrieved from https://wwwoxfordmusiconlinecom.libproxy.temple.edu/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/o 

mo-9781561592630-e-0000019294?rskey=ujKGtx&result=1 


IMPORTANT PROBLEMS 

AVERAGE RATE OF CHANGE

RATE OF CHANGE = RISE OVER RUN 

RATE OF CHANGE BETWEEN 0 AND 1 = 80/1=80 

RATE OF CHANGE BETWEEN 1 AND 2 = (127-80)/(2-1)=57 



GROWTH RATE

FIND OUT HOW MUCH BABY GREW DURING FIRST TWELVE MONTHS. THEN DIVIDE BY 

12 TO GET MONTHLY GROWTH RATE. 

BABY GREW FROM 6 LB TO 20. SO 14 LB TOTAL. 

SO MONTHLY GROWTH = 14/12≈1.2 

SO ANSWER=B 

RULES ETC. BELOW 

EXPONENTIAL FUNCTION

APPLY RULES BELOW (POWER RULE AND EXPONENTIAL FUNCTION RULE) 

THIS GIVES US:

ELASTICITY OF DEMAND 

YOU NEED TO ELASTICITY OF DEMAND FORMULA: 

First we find D’(x)

This turns out to be: 

When we plug this back into elasticity formula, we get: 

AND THIS TURNS OUT TO BE 1. 

PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTION

TO GET THE EXPECTED DAMAGE FOR FIRM A, YOU MULTIPLY EACH POSSIBILTY (LEFT- 

MOST COLUMN) BY ITS PROBABILITY (MIDDLE COLUMN) AND THEN ADD UP THE 

NUMBERS (RIGHT-MOST COLUMN). THE EXPECTED DAMAGE IS $1250. YOU DO THE 

SAME WITH THE OTHER FIRM. 

400 .01 4 

900 .50 450 

1400 .30 420 

1900 .17 323 

2400 .01 24 

2900 .01 29 

IF THEY ASK YOU TO COMPUTE σσ, USE THE CALCULATOR. 

YOU NEED TO KNOW JUST TWO THINGS FOR THIS CLASS 

1. HOW TO GRAPH ON CALCULATOR (YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN HERE)

2. THE STUFF BELOW 

Two parts to this class: 

Calculus 

Statistics 

PART 1: CALCULUS 

Three kinds of functions: no exponent on x (straight line), even exponent on x (cup 

shape graph), odd exponent on x (s-shape graph) 

x has no exponent 

e.g. y=2x 

always straight line 

graph of y=2x

X has even exponent 

e.g. y=x 2 

cup shaped 

graph of y=x 2 

x had odd exponent 

e.g. y=x 3 

has S-shaped 

graph of y=x 3

Differentiation (i.e. finding slope of function) 

Rule 1: if constant function, then first derivative=0 

Rule 2: if no exponent on x, then first derivative equals coefficient of x 

Rule 3: if exponent on x, then use POWER RULE 

Example of power rule: 

Other example of power rule: 

Rule 4: With Exponential functions (functions where x is itself the exponent), you get 

first derivative by multiplying function by lnx.

Example: 

Rule 5: with logarithmic functions there is just one rule: 

Rule 6: square root = exponent of ½

Rule 7: negative square root is positive square root in denominator 

x -1 =1/x 

x -2 =1/x 2 

x -3 =1/x 3 

etc.

Interval notation (mickey mouse) 

(x,y) means ‘everything between x and y but not x or y’ 

[x,y] means ‘ ‘everything between x and y and also x and y’ 

(x,y] means ‘ ‘everything between x and y and also y but not x’ 

[x,y) means ‘ ‘everything between x and y and also x but not y’ 

e.g. (4,9) means ‘everything between 4 and 9 but not 4 or 9’ 

and so on

PART 2: STATISTICS 

RULE OF SUBTRACTION: 

EXAMPLE: IF THERE IS A 1/36 CHANCE THAT YOU WILL ROLL DOUBLE SIXES, THEN THERE 

IS 35/35 CHANCE THAT YOU WILL NOT ROLL DOUBLE SIXES. 

RULE OF ADDITION

EXAMPLE: IF THERE IS A 40% CHANCE THAT YOU WILL GO TO DELAWARE NEXT WEEK, A 

70% THAT YOU WILL GO FISHING NEXT WEEK, AND A 30% THAT YOU WILL DO BOTH, 

THEN THERE IS 40+70-30=80% CHANCE THAT YOU WILL DO BOTH. 

RULE OF MULTIPLICATION 

EXAMPLE: THERE ARE 10 JELLY BEANS IN A JAR, FIVE RED, FIVE GREEN. WHAT ARE THE 

CHANCES THAT THE FIRST TWO DRAWS YIELD RED JELLY BEANS. 

A=RED JELLY BEAN DRAWN ON FIRST PICK 

B=RED JELLY BEAN DRAWN ON SECOND PICK 

B/A=RED JELLY BEAN DRAWN ON SECOND PICK ASSUMING THAT RED JELLY BEAN WAS 

DRAWN ON FIRST PICK. 

P(A)=5/10 

P(B)=5/10 

P(B/A)=4/9 

P(A∩B)= P(A)* P(B/A)=5/10*4/9=2/9 

SO THE CHANCE THAT THE FIRST TWO DRAWS ARE RED JELLY BEANS IS 2/9

PROBABILITIES ADD UP TO 1 

ADD UP THE PROBABILITIES YOU HAVE AND SUBTRACT FROM 1 TO GET MISSING 

PROBABILITY 

E(X)=EXPECTED VALUE OF X1, X2,…XN= P(X1)+P(X2)+…P(XN) 

EXAMPLE: 

THERE IS A LOTTERY. 

IT COSTS $100/TICKET. 

THERE IS A 1/1000,000 CHANCE OF WINNING. 

COMPUTE EXPECTED VALUE OF PURCHASED LOTTERY TICKET. 

OK. 

TWO POSIBILITIES: YOU WIN OR YOU LOSE 

IF YOU WIN: YOU SPEND $100 AND YOU GAIN $1000000. So that’s: $999900 

THERE IS A 1/1000000 OF WINNING. SO P(999900)=999900/1000000=.9999 

IF YOU LOSE, YOU SPEND $100 AND GAIN $0. SO YOUR ‘GAIN’ WOULD BE -$100. THERE 

IS A 999999/1000000 CHANCE THAT THIS WILL BE THE OUTCOME. SO P(-100)= 

999999/1000000= NEGATIVE $99.9999. 

SO EXPECTED VALUE= PROBABLE GAINS FROM WINNING PLUS PROBABLE NEGATIVE 

GAINS FROM LOSING=NEGATIVE $99.9999.+$.9999=NEGATIVE $99 DOLLARS.


5. Briefly, describe your initial impressions of each of the four musical works we listened to 

in this unit. What did you think of them and what made you think that way? 

Musical Work 

Caro Mea 

Your Impressions 

It is very austere. It is entirely monophonic, sung either by just 

one person or by several people singing in perfect unison; and 

the tonality is restrained, not sensuous; all of which gives it a 

laconic quality. Also, the range is narrow—‘constricted’, like 

everything else about it. 

Ordo Virtutum 

Dark and sad, but self-restrained in the way that medieval 

music seems to be. It is more emotive than Caro Mea, 

however; and there is also more metrical variability—there 

are some flourishes that stand out. 

I Can All Too Well 

Compare My Lady 

It actually sounds very Scottish or Irish—very Celtic, I suppose, 

given that the Celts originated in France, like this work’s 

composer. It has the ‘jig’ rhythm that we have come to 

associate with Celtic music—sounds like the music from 

Scorsese’s ‘Gang’s of New York.’

A Chantar 

The rugged cello (or cello-like instrument), along with the 

open fifths (I think), give it a rugged, ‘wintry’ quality. The 

drums give it a spontaneous quality that isn’t as present in 

other medieval music. 

6. Review your notes from the Dark Ages video. Imagine that you are a person living in 

Europe during those times. Briefly, describe your medieval alter-ego. Who are you? 

What do you do? What do you think about your life? Your response should reference at 

least one specific thing you learned from the Dark Ages video. 

I pretty much do the same thing every day. I work. I ply my trade, e.g. I might be a 

black-smith. I pay tithes to my guild-master (union representative, essentially). I do 

not work long hours; I am well rested. After working a restful day, I drink mead with 

my mates, and eventually report home. I might take the family to a play or musical 

performance put on by fellow villagers or, more likely, by an itinerant theatre troop. 

Life is not anxious, but also not deeply fulfilling (though I probably don’t think that to 

myself).

7. Choose any one piece from this lesson and listen to it again. As you listen, try your best 

to imagine how it might sound if you were the medieval person described above. Where 

might you hear this music, what might you think of this music, and why might you think 

that way? 

What piece did you 

choose? 

Caro Mea 

Type your response here. If I were an ordinary peasant—as opposed to an aristocrat 

or member of the clergy—I would associate this piece with obligatory Churchattendance. 

I would admire this piece, but I would not be moved by it, since it was not 

written for me. It embodies the asceticism of a monastic life, which is very different 

from my life, which has all of the drama of a life with a wife, children, taxes, and the 

like. This work’s austere quality is alienatingly high-brown to me. 

8. Respond to the following question: what is the relevance of medieval music in today's 

society?

Type your response here. What struck me when listening to these works is that they 

have a rather modern quality. 18 th and 19 th century European music is emotionally 

unambiguous. Modern classical music, e.g. Bartok, is different and has an austere 

quality. Medieval music, especially Gregorian chants, have a similar quality; and I feel 

that history is--in this respect, and probably therefore in others—is looping. So its 

relevance is that it prefigures modern music. 

Word Painting Assignment 

This song is about a 'nowhere' man, this being a total cipher of a person: a blank, 

somebody who does what he is supposed to and doesn't have any kind of life. The first 

15 seconds are completely monophonic---just all four Beatles singing the same bit of 

melody in complete unison. This bit of monophonysounds like what it is supposed to 

represent: it sounds bleak and depressing, and it supposed to represent a bleak and 

depressing form of existence. Notice also that the monophone, a Capella into is divided 

into three parts, with the second being lower (tonally) than the first and the third being 

lower than the second: 

He's a real nowhere man (high) 

sitting in his nowhere land (medium)

making all his nowhere plans for nobody (low), 

creating a depressing effect. 

Then, the instrumental part begins (fifteen seconds into it) begins with a little 

guitar riff that consists of four descending notes--creating another 'heading downward' 

, depressing effect. 

The singing through main part of the song (the 'A' in the AABA structure that this 

Beatle's song, like most pop songs, has) is all monophonic, creating the song's signature 

'bleak', 'nowhere' sound. 

Also, in the 'B' part of the song ("nowhere man, please listen/you don't know 

what you're missin'/nowhere man, the world is at your command') is the only part of 

the song in the singing is homophonic. This gives that part of the song a brigher, less 

'nowhere-y' quality, which is obviously deliberate. Also, it is only part of the song where 

the drum beat (which marks the 4:4 meter) varies at all. This bit of rhythmic variation 

gives that one part of the song a bit of pep, making it contrast with the rest, of the 

song, which is depressing and, given that it is about what a loser the proverbial 

'nowhere man' is, is supposed to be depressing. 

Prompt 1 I chose Faure's famous (and deservedly so, as you'll see when you 

listen to it) so-called 'Pavane.' Most of you have probably heard it. A 'pavane' is a 

stately-court dance; and this work is indeed rhythmically conservative in much the same

way as the music for a court dance. But the theme is the exact opposite of conventional 

and stately. It is introspective and haunting. 

The key is F-sharp minor (three sharps, like A major). The meter is 4:4. It 

is homophonic, not polyphonic, with the melody being carried by a flute (or set of 

flutes, rather), and the accompaniment--the very distinctive and famous 

accompaniment---is carried along by pizzicato strings, for the most part repeating the 

same three notes (f#-a-c#-a). 

The 'cover' that I chose is a jazz piano rendering of the piece. There are many jazz 

covers of this piece. For some reason, this piece 'translates' well into jazz, for reasons 

that I invite to explicate. 

The first is the original; the second, the cover. 

I personally prefer the jazz version. I like the soft contours of the piano version, 

with its flashes of modern harmony and dynamic nuances. I especially like the 'totally 

jazz' part (2:04-2:20), and I like the strange additions to the composer's original 

harmonies (2:34-2:38). 

Prompt 2 There are many reasons why a given composer might want to adapt 

preexisting work, the main one being that the first composer sees that there are ways of 

developing the other composer's work. One extremely striking example of this involves 

Busoni's adaption for piano of Bach's famous Chaconne for violin. 

Original Chaconne

Busoni's Adaptation for piano 

A not-so-famous but, in its own way, striking example is this person's adaption 

for electric guitar of Bach's prelude in c-minor for harpsichord. 

Original prelude 

Adaptation 

I found what sounds like a semi-adaptation of this same work, though it may be 

more of an original piece (let me know): 

Edited by N/A on Jul 15 at 1:28am 

Prompt II 

There are many reasons a composer might want to base work on another 

composer's work. The main one is that composer A had a winning idea which composer 

B knows that he can further develop. This happens all the time. A striking example is 

Bach's Chaconne (1720), originally for solo violin, which Busoni adapted for piano. 

Original Chaconne 

Busoni 'cover' 

A lot of art is based on other art (e.g. Romeo and Juliet is based on a poet by 

Ovid), and a lot of thought is based on other thought. The difference between 

plagiarism and adaptation is that the latter involves development, whereas the former 

does not. 

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Name: 

9. The conductor describes 4 distinct parts of the exposition. What are these 4 parts? 

Type answer here. First theme. Transition. Second theme. Closing part. 

10. Based on the video, what is the difference between hearing music and listening to 

music? 

Type answer here. Hearing music means hearing the noise that bears the music. 

Listening to music means hearing the music in the noise, which is done by actively 

engaging that noise. 

11. What is meant by the tern unison, and what part of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is 

played in unison? 

Type answer here. Unison means playing (or singing) the same notes at the same 

time. The famous opening sequence (g-g-g-e flat) is in unison, giving it a stark and 

definitive quality that it would lack if it were harmonized.

12. In musical terms, what is meant by a sequence? 

Type answer here. It is the repetition of a musical conceit (sequence of notes) at 

different pitch levels. 

13. What is ternary form? 

Type answer here. A musical work is in ternary form if it consists of three sections. 

14. According to the conductor, what is different about sonata form as compared to 

ternary form? 

Type answer here. Two differences. Whereas ternary form is ABA, sonata form is 

ABA*, i.e. in sonata form, A is not simply repeated but developed. Second, in sonata 

form, each of the three sections is itself subdivided into four parts: theme, transition, 

second theme, closing part.

15. What is syncopation? 

Type answer here. When the emphasis is placed on the naturally weak beat. 

16. How is the opening of the recapitulation different from the opening of the 

exposition? 

Type answer here. In the opening of the recapitulation, there are key changes, 

crescendos and decrescendos absent from the exposition. 

17. According to the video, why did Beethoven decide to have the bassoons announce 

the second theme in the recapitulation instead of the horns?

Type answer here. Because in Beethoven’s day, horns could not easily play in 

different keys (since this required the valves inside them to be manually replaced), 

whereas bassoons do not have this issue. 

18. What emotional impact does Beethoven’s use of dissonance have on you? 

Type answer here. I like the starkness. It is bracing and makes me feel a sense of 

urgency on Beethoven’s part, a need to get across a message of angst. 

My first piece is Beethoven's Sonata #12 opus 26 in A flat major, completed in 

1792---before Beethoven began to go deaf or otherwise suffer from any of the health 

problems that would plague him, this perhaps being responsible for this work's serene 

quality. This piece is unusual among Beethoven Sonatas in that the first movement 

(0.20-1:46), rather than having sonata form, is a theme and variations (0.20-. All of the 

variations have the same meter (3:4) and same tempo (andante); and, setting aside the 

minor variation (4:02-5:53), can be simultaneously without in any way sounding 

dissonant. (I have verified this personally; as in, I myself have performed the piece while 

someone else played the opening theme.) Incidentally, the first movement of this

sonata is the only piece of Beethoven's that Chopin ever publicly performed. (Chopin 

disliked Beethoven's music, which he saw as overly disciplined.) I can personally attest 

that this piece is very enjoyable to play; the opening chords are soft and warm and 

induce a feeling of centered calm, in performer no less than in listener. Also, the 

mechanics are very intuitive for the performer. 

The second movement (9:13-11:52) is a brilliant scherzo, also in A flat major 

(though it starts out in F minor), which, because of the brilliant contrapuntal(9:42--9:56) 

section, sounds almost like Bach, suggesting, I believe, that although Beethoven was 

Mozart's immediate successor and composed in the same genre, Beethoven was in 

some ways closer to Bach. (Speaking personally, this is one of my favorite pieces to 

perform: the counterpoint is intellectually demanding and the fast-paced thirds in the 

right hand are satisfyingly aggressive.) 

The third movement (11:56--18:17) --the Funeral March in A flat minor (a very 

unusual key to compose in...usually g# minor is preferred)---is the part of the piece that 

qualifies as 'program music', since, of course, it is meant to depict the 'death of a hero' 

(its subtitle). The hero is usually taken to be Napoleon (also the subject of Beethoven's 

famous 'Eroica' (heroic) symphony). Napoleon was still alive when opus 26 was 

composed; so presumably the 'death' in question is figurative in nature, as in, Napoleon 

had, in Beethoven's mind, fallen short in some way and thus 'died', as it were.

The final movement (18:20-21:45) is a brisk allegro, again in A flat, which offsets 

the dark mood the previous movement. This movement is striking because the left hand 

replicates and inverts the main conceit. 

The second piece I chose, also by Beethoven, is his Sonata #17 in d minor (opus 

31), a.k.a 'the Tempest', completed in 1802. Of course, Shakespeare wrote a play of the 

same name. But Beethoven did not himself give this name to this work, and, even 

though there is commonly presumed to be a connection between this work and 

Shakespeare's play, there is not much of a connection. Shakespeare's play is lighthearted; 

this sonata is dark and turbulent---genuinely storm-like. 

An interesting feature of this work--one which makes it genuinely programmusic-like--is 

that, whereas most Beethoven sonatas 'get right into it' and dispense with 

any 'introductory' material, this one begins with a very calm and unassuming few bars 

(0:21-0:31), which are followed by toccata-like material that is as agitated as the first 

few bars were calm. The use of triplets in the right hand (1:05--1:27) gives the piece of a 

striking briskness, which sounds rather like the program-music from early movies 

(probably because that was music was directly modeled on it). The meter is 4:4. 

The second movement (9:07-18:00), in b flat major, is gorgeous and serene, 

contrasting with the dark, stark, and fast-pace first and third movements. The meter 

is 3:4.

The third movement (18:20-25:15) --which, I suspect, will sound familiar to most 

people, even those not familiar with classical music---has a very catchy, almost musicbox-like 

tune. The mood reprises that of the first movement. The meter is is 3:8. 

Beethoven composed this after his deafness was under way, granting that there 

is no real way to know if there is a causal connection at work. 

The third piece I chose is the Coriolan Overture (opus 62), also by Beethoven and 

completed in 1807. This piece was written as program-music for the play Coriolan by 

Heinrich Joseph von Collin, which is based on the play Coriolanus by Shakespeare. 

Beethoven's music was not meant to be a mere accompaniment or background, and this 

work, despite technically being 'scene' music, is no exception; and this overture 

probably absorbed the audience's attention far more than the play itself. Like 

Beethoven's 5th symphony, (completed two years earlier) it is composed in c minor; and 

also like the 5th symphony, it is very much based on a single, rather aggressive fournote 

(c-e flat-e flat-d) conceit (0:30-0:35). 

The story of Coriolanus is worth knowing (both in this context and in general). 

Coriolanus was a Roman general who, after a successful career in the military, tried his 

hand at politics. Unfortunately, he proves to be as bad at politicking as he was good at 

soldiering, and, after making one emotion-driven decision after another, he is eventually 

violently deposed. Attempts have been made to map the story onto Beethoven's 

overture, which is divided into a dark 'A'-part in c minor and a light 'B'-part, which is in e

flat. According to some scholars, the A-part represents Coriolanus's ambition-- 

specifically his desire to go on an ill-advised military campaign---and the B-part 

represents his mother's attempting to persuade him otherwise. Beethoven does seem 

to have identified with the figure of Coriolan and, indeed, seems to have identified with 

many a tragic figure--c.f. the points made above about Napoleon. 

Edited by N/A on Jul 25 at 11:57pm 

Reply Reply to Comment 

Name: 

1. The conductor describes 4 distinct parts of the exposition. What are these 4 

parts? 

Type answer here. First theme. Transition. Second theme. Closing part. 

2. Based on the video, what is the difference between hearing music and listening to 

music?

Type answer here. Hearing music means hearing the noise that bears the music. 

Listening to music means hearing the music in the noise, which is done by actively 

engaging that noise. 

3. What is meant by the tern unison, and what part of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is 

played in unison? 

Type answer here. Unison means playing (or singing) the same notes at the same 

time. The famous opening sequence (g-g-g-e flat) is in unison, giving it a stark and 

definitive quality that it would lack if it were harmonized. 

4. In musical terms, what is meant by a sequence? 

Type answer here. It is the repetition of a musical conceit (sequence of notes) at 

different pitch levels. 

5. What is ternary form?

Type answer here. A musical work is in ternary form if it consists of three sections. 

6. According to the conductor, what is different about sonata form as compared to 

ternary form? 

Type answer here. Two differences. Whereas ternary form is ABA, sonata form is 

ABA*, i.e. in sonata form, A is not simply repeated but developed. Second, in sonata 

form, each of the three sections is itself subdivided into four parts: theme, transition, 

second theme, closing part. 

7. What is syncopation? 

Type answer here. When the emphasis is placed on the naturally weak beat. 

8. How is the opening of the recapitulation different from the opening of the 

exposition?

Type answer here. In the opening of the recapitulation, there are key changes, 

crescendos and decrescendos absent from the exposition. 

9. According to the video, why did Beethoven decide to have the bassoons announce 

the second theme in the recapitulation instead of the horns? 

Type answer here. Because in Beethoven’s day, horns could not easily play in 

different keys (since this required the valves inside them to be manually replaced), 

whereas bassoons do not have this issue. 

10. What emotional impact does Beethoven’s use of dissonance have on you? 

Type answer here. I like the starkness. It is bracing and makes me feel a sense of 

urgency on Beethoven’s part, a need to get across a message of angst.

Name: N/A 

Respond to the following prompts. 

1. The author of your textbook makes the following claim: “Music can make us see 

things differently, even when we don’t realize it’s there.” Using one or more of 

the movie clips from the assignment page on Canvas, explain how this can be 

true. Be specific. 

Type answer here. The scene from Grease is a good illustration of this. When the 

scene is played without music, the behavior of the young men on the bleachers seems 

crude, totemic, and devoid of kindness. The obviously sexual gestures come off as 

aggressive. When it is played with the music in the background, it seems light-hearted 

and funny. The sexual gestures come off as playful.

2. Choose one of the scenes on the Canvas assignment page and describe the specific 

emotion conveyed by the music. For instance, "happy" is too generic because there 

are many kinds of happiness, ranging from exuberance to contentment. 

Type answer here. The music from Psycho is aggressive, stark (because monophonic 

or semi-phonic), repetitive, and dissonant, and it thereby conveys both the terror of 

the woman as well as the ruthlessness of her killer. Also, the lack of dynamic contrast, 

as well as the lack of a fade-in, turns the music itself into an assault on the moviegoer. 

The latter is surprised by the music in much the way that the woman is surprised 

by the assailant. 

3. Identify three specific musical elements the composer used to help convey the 

emotion. Clearly describe how these elements are heard while demonstrating that 

you fully understand their meaning. For example, a response like "the piece uses 

dynamics well" would earn 0 points because it does not specify the dynamic level 

(forte, piano, etc.) or show that the student understands what dynamics are. Use 

time markers when appropriate. 

Musical Element 

Description of How Each Element Is Heard

Type element 1 

here 

Type description here. Musical onomatopoeia: The music from 

the Psycho stabbing scene is an example, in more than one way, 

of musical onomatopoeia. The string sounds mirror the act of 

stabbing with their aggressive repetitiveness. Also, they they 

themselves sound like shrieks and thereby evoke the abject terror 

that the woman is experiencing; and they also externalize the 

psychological condition—one of pain and madness—of the 

assailant. The music in this scene has no dynamic contrast, being 

uniformly forte. This sends the message that the killer is totally 

inhuman and devoid of internal gradations---just a killing 

machine. Be it noted that in order to produce the sound in 

question, a string player must practically ‘strike’ his instrument 

with his bow, in much the way that the Norman Bates character is 

stabbing his victim. Finally, the music has a symbiotic relationship 

with events in film, in that the stabbing at one point (0:32-0:36) 

keeps the beat of the music. 


here 

Type description here. Lack of dynamic contrast: There is no 

fade-in. The music simply explodes out of nowhere, and it does so

onto what was previously a placid shower scene. There is no 

dynamic contrast: it is forte (or fortissimo) all the way, and is 

therefore itself surprising and unrelenting in much the same way 

as the killer. 


here 

Type description here. Zero rhythmic variation. This music seems 

to have a meter of 1:1—one beat/bar. There is no variation; there 

are no flourishes. Just the same stabbing, shrieking sound, 

repeated with almost military regularity, underscoring the killer’s 

total lack of remorse. 

4. Is the music in the scene you chose for prompt #2 diegetic or non-diegetic, and why? 

Type answer here. The music is non-diegetic, since its source is not what happens in 

the scene. By contrast, the shower-sounds are diegetic, since they are made events in 

the scene itself.

The ‘point’ of this work, so to speak, is that the events in question were not 

simply dark but fell outside of what human beings are able to process; and this work 

conveys that point by being atonal and, on that basis, deriding and caricaturing preexisting 

musical norms, rather than deploying them in any ordinary way. The first 

sounds that we hear are of an almost triumphant-sounding trumpet (01:-04). The motif 

is almost like that of a national anthem (e.g. the Chinese National Anthem, which is 

based on what sounds like a tonal version of this same trumpet-riff). But the modal is 

askew, being atonal, and is quickly met with a dark, semi-atonal orchestral background. 

Incidentally, the cello motif immediately heard thereafter sounds like Philip Glass, and I 

suspect that he may even have consciously borrowed it. (Cf.Philip Glass - Glassworks 

(complete) (Links to an external site.) 32:09) 

The rest of this work followed suit, all of it being on the edges of tonal music and 

all of it being, as it were, derogatory of it and, so it seems, of the cultural norms thereby 

represented, the work’s overall point seemingly being that what was happening in the 

world could no longer be understood in the usual rationality-based ways. What was a 

little hard to understand—or at least to fit into this way of understanding this work--- 

was Chorale part, sung in Hebrew, as to the Jewish people’s future responsibilities to 

itself. The lyrics were straightforward and clearly non-ironic; but the accompanying

music was atonal and, so it seemed, derisive, making it unclear whether the words being 

sung were to be taken literally, on the one hand, or, on the other hand, dismissed, in 

light of recent events, as naïve. I suspect that they were meant to be taken literally and 

were accompanied by atonal, ambiguous-sounding music only because that was the 

genre in which Schoenberg happened to composer. 

I chose to listen to the video that did not feature Holocaust pictures. This was 

because I wanted to listen to the music without being ‘told’, so to speak, how to react. 

(The singing, especially the solo singing in English, did, however, tell me, quite literally, 

what I was to be thinking and feeling; and I was a bit surprised at this brazen violation of 

the ‘show, don’t tell’ rule governing theatrical performances.) Frankly, I found this 

work easy to listen to, precisely because it doesn’t use conventional tonality. I was able 

to listen to each bar on its own, without having to feel that I had to embed in a larger 

musical narrative. Also, even though this music is classified as ‘atonal’, it is not, literally 

speaking, atonal; it is only relatively atonal. Relatedly, I think that contemporary 

audiences would find this piece much less jarring than Schoenberg’s contemporaries, 

mainly because so much film music sounds like this, probably because, so I suspect, 

Schoenberg’s music itself influenced film-composers. 

And this last point, I think, is central to what is going with Schoenberg’s music. 

Bach’s music is not meant to represent anything; neither is Mozart’s or Beethoven’s. 

These composers did, of course, compose masses and operas and other story-

accompanying works; but their music is always, ultimately, to be listened to by itself. 

Schoenberg’s music, by contrast, sounds like a movie score and is easy to listen if 

listened to in that way. But if listened to on its own, in the way in which Mozart or 

Beethoven are listened to, it is a bit grating. I would conjecture that part of what 

allowed Schoenberg to compose atonal music was that his music was, at least by his 

intention, to be listened to as an accompaniment to a play or some such, and not on its 

own, so that the dissonances in it as comments on an independent story-line, and not as 

musical ends unto themselves. 

The composer I chose is Martha Callison Horst. Dr. Horst received a PhD in music 

from the University of California, Davis in 1996. Her dissertation was itself a musical 

work, titled 'suite.' In preparation for this assignment, I listened to a number of her 

works. I was hoping that there would be a clear thread or concept running through all of 

her music that would enable me to put her music in a single category, such as 

'minimalist' or 'romantic' or 'neoclassical.' But she seems to compose in a number of 

different genres and does not have any clear musical agenda. My favorite piece of hers 

is a percussion work titled 'Bam!" (link at the end of this post), which was strikingly 'nonacademic.' 

But the piece I chose to write about is a work for three guitars, titled 'Sylvan 

Winds':

This is definitely a work of the 'minimalist' variety. It consists of a repetition of 

single motif, much like Philip Glass's music. This work sounds very--and I am tempted to 

say 'suspiciously'--like another minimalist work titled 'Phrygian Gates', by John Adams: 

Listen to 0:40-1:20 of Phrygian Gates and compare them to 0:00-1:20 of Sylvan 

Winds. Obviously they are not the same work, but the concept is very similar; and so, in 

fact, is the tonality, the rhythm, and general architecture. Notice also that both works 

have similar titles. 

Both works strike me as versions of, or attempts to emulate, Prokofiev's striking 

toccata in d minor: 

This work, like the other two, is minimalist; but unlike them, it has a definite 

'edge' and a definite focus. The other two, by contrast, are meant to be, and largely are, 

serene. 

Listen to 3:40-3:46 of Sylvan Winds, and note the similarities to 3:00-3:04 of the 

toccata in d minor. Both sections are 'climactic' and are meant to be antithetical to the 

rest of the piece in question, granting that the toccata's climax is a bit more striking--a 

bit more 'climactic', for lack of a better way to put it--than that of Sylvan Winds. 

Phrygian Gates is so called because it is based on the Phrygian Mode, meaning 

that it is based on the scale starting with E and consisting only of naturals (white notes 

on the piano). See 0:35-0:40 in the following video:

This modality, being an unusual one, turns off some of our standard tonal 

expectations of a piece and allow us to 'surrender to the experience' without any 

preconceptions (Powers, 278), making this tonality well-suited for soothingly repetitive 

'mood' music, (Carver, 84), Sylvan Woods and Phrygian Gates being cases in point. 

As for my feelings about Sylvan Winds, I found it easy to listen to and soothing, 

but some of the dissonances put me off. The main virtue of the piece was its serene 

quality, and the dissonances, so I felt, didn't quite belong there. What I did very much 

like about this piece was that it is a clear illustration of what I believe could be a good 

compositional template: a single, simple motif, repeated but with slight changes each 

time. I myself have used this template and I believe that, if nothing else, it is very good 

compositional exercise to compose a piece based on it. 

As previously stated, my favorite piece by Dr. Horst (of those that I could access) 

is "Bam!", which, I am inclined to believe, many people will agree with me in believing to 

be the most 'listenable' of her works on YouTube: 

Citations: 

1) Powers, H. S. (1998). From psalmody to tonality. Tonal structures in early music, 275- 

340. 

2) Carver, A. F. (2005). Bruckner and the Phrygian mode. Music and Letters, 86(1), 74-99.

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Appendix A. 

Career Satisfaction by IQ, College Degree, and Vocational Training 

1. In most ways my career is close to ideal. 

Strongly agree 

Agree 

Slightly Agree 

Neither agree nor disagree 

Slightly disagree 

Disagree 

Strongly disagree 

2. If I could do it all over again, I would choose the same career. 


Agree 




Disagree 

Strongly disagree

3. My career is one of the top three sources of satisfaction in my life. 


Agree 




Disagree 


4. My career is never boring. 


Agree 




Disagree 


5. My career enriches my life in ways that go beyond money. 

Strongly agree

Agree 




Disagree 


6. The world would be worse off if I didn't have the career that I have. 


Agree 




Disagree 


7. I think about how to do my job better even when I am not at work. 


Agree 

Slightly Agree



Disagree 


8. I see professional growth as identical with personal growth. 


Agree 




Disagree 


9. If I had a choice between (a) earning 50% more than I currently earn and 

continuing to do the work that I now do and (b) not having to work at all and simply 

being given the money that I now have to work for, I would choose (a). 


Agree 

Slightly Agree



Disagree 

a mask. 


10. When I am working, I am being my true self. I am not pretending or wearing 


Agree 




Disagree 


11. The problems that I have with my work relate to details, not to the 

substance of what I do. 


Agree 

Slightly Agree



Disagree 


12. When I am too sick to work, I am bothered by the fact that I cannot work. 


Agree 




Disagree 


13. I would be very proud of my children if they entered my line of work. 


Agree 


Neither agree nor disagree


Disagree 


14. My job is a source of strength, not just of money. 


Agree 




Disagree 


15. I am proud of what I do. 


Agree 




Disagree


16. I feel that I am adequately paid for my work. 


Agree 




Disagree 


17. I regard hard assignments as challenges, not as threats. 


Agree 




Disagree 

Strongly disagree

18. I feel that my clients and co-workers appreciate my work. 


Agree 




Disagree 


19. I feel that altogether ceasing to do what I do would undermine my 

emotional health. 


Agree 




Disagree 

Strongly disagree

20. I feel that I am in control of the nature of the work that I do. 


Agree 




Disagree 



September-October 2019 

J.-M. Kuczynski 


Ideas as Networks: Reflecting on Steven Johnson’s “Where Good Ideas Come From” 

Are we born good? Response to: “Born Good?” 

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRvVFW85IcU) 


Posts for Business Ethics Class 

Can you think of an example where someone has been honest but not ethical, as 

Carter (assigned reading) says? 



Reactions to the Jones Day report on the rankings scandal at the Fox School

Can you apply ideas from the Bazerman and Tenbrunsel article to McCoy's dilemma in 

the Parable of the Sadhu? 

Will it be possible for you to maintain your ethical values yet succeed in the business 

world? 



Is THE social responsibility of business to increase its profits? -- Who's right: Friedman 

or Mackey? 

Were WalMart to increase its pay and benefit level to those of Costco (Stone article) 

or TJ's (Wilke article), or LaColumbe (Carmichael article) would it be more or less 

financially successful? 

Have you ever had a "Sadhu" dropped at your feet (so to speak). If so, what did you 

do? 

Do you think corporations are living up to their original purpose in society? 

Identify an argument in an article, book etc. that does poorly on TWO or more of the 7 

standards Paul & Elder say help assess critical thinking. Briefly discuss. 



Summary of Video about Milgram Experiment 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f97VYdkHZK8 


Answers to (somebody else’s) Questions about Orwell’s “Shooting and Elephant” (My 

content in italics) 












Summaries with Analysis of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Hawthorn’s Young Goodman 

Brown 



Dennett and Skinner on the Human Condition

Response to “Reading Minds” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jc8URRxPIg) and . 

“Neuroscience and Free Will” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnGDrc_s6KA) 









Internal vs. External Motivators 

Reflections on Dan Pink’s Ted Talk 

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y) 


Why was Socrates put to death? Response to 

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE7PKRjrid4) 



Response to : “The Pre-Socratics: Part 1” 

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83kUMEjaCUA) ........ “The Pre-Socratics: Part 2” 

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IRy3E-BZhY) 








Answers to questions about documentary about how corporations are evil (Response 

to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pin8fbdGV9Y) 



Answers to Questions about Walmart-documentary 

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf-Sr3SjBzk)

Ideas as Networks: Reflecting on Steven Johnson’s 

“Where Good Ideas Come From” 

In his TED Talk “Where Good Ideas Come From”, Steven Johnson outlines a new 

(or what he believes to be a new 166 ) view as to the genesis of ideas. In his talk, Johnson 

focused mainly on ideas of significance, such as Evolutionary Theory (his own example) 

or psychoanalytic theory; but assuming that his model is correct, it may well hold of 

ideas in general. The traditional view, according to Johnson, is that great ideas represent 

existential leaps: the great thinker in question is just ‘sitting there’, as it were, and the 

great idea in question ‘happens upon him,’ like a visitation. The stock example is 

Newton sitting under a tree, when an apple falls on his head, whereupon the concept 

gravity force flashes into his mind. 

Before we even consider what Johnson says, we can already see some of the 

holes in this picture. A lot of objects fall on a lot of people’s heads, but very few of them 

respond by having scientific insights. This suggests that, when such an event leads to 

such a realization, it isn’t so much by creating a new idea as it is by jolting the thinker in 

question into finally seeing the significance of some constellation of ideas that is already 

at work within him. When the apple fell on Newton’s head—supposing for argument’s 

166 

Explanation of this parenthetical hedge: W.V.O. Quine and Joseph Ullian wrote a book called ‘The Web of 

Belief’, in which they argue for a form of the ‘network-conception’ of ideas. Also, this conception is also the basis 

of connectionist theories of ideas, and there are in all likelihood many other anticipations of what Johnson is 

saying here.

sake that the story is actually true--it gave him one last tidbit of information, delivered 

in the form of a rousing shock, that brought together a previously all-but-unified 

network of ideas that he had been working on. 

And this is basically what Johnson says. “We have this very rich vocabulary for 

describing moments of inspiration,” writes Johnson (3:17). “We have the flash of insight, 

the stroke of insight, we have epiphanies, we have eureka moments, we have the lightbulb 

moment.” Embodied in all of these metaphors, Johnson continues, is the idea that 

an idea is a self-contained “single thing,” when in actuality, Johnson says, “an idea is a 

network.” 

Johnson then points out that what we think of as an idea involves pluralities of 

neurons firing simultaneously, which, assuming that each neural firing carries its own 

quantum of information, suggests that ‘an’ idea is really a lot of little ideas coming 

together. (I find this reasoning persuasive, since the idea that individual neurons bear no 

information strikes me as a non-starter.) Having made clear what, speaking 

anatomically, ideas are, he then asks: What kinds of environments conduce to ideacreation? 

When he poses this question, it is not clear whether Johnson is referring to 

physical environments or social environments or both; but his answer suggests that he is 

referring to what might be called ‘socio-physical environments’, meaning environments 

that are defined both by their physical and their social properties. Johnson argues that 

great ideas surface in open spaces where people can move and also talk freely. It is not

in cubicles that people come up with ideas, Johnson says, nor is it in the laboratory. It is 

in an open space, such as the cafeteria or the boardroom, where people are not 

insulated and where they can be exposed to other people’s thoughts. 

Johnson begins his talk by pointing out that the beginning of the modern 

scientific era coincided with the invention of the coffee house; and he says that this is 

not a coincidence, partly because, when that happened, coffee replaced alcohol as the 

drink of choice, which obviously gave intellectual activity a boost, but also, so he argues, 

because the coffee houses of the day were physically spacious and encouraged free 

exchanges of ideas. (This idea of Johnson’s is consistent with the fact that a number of 

great writers and composers worked in coffee houses: Bach, Hemingway, Sartre, and 

countless others.) 

Later in the talk, Johnson discusses how many a supposed case of a great 

scientific ‘Eureka-moment’ was either a myth, sometimes put forth by the scientist in 

question himself, or was at most the culmination of a long period of gestation. Johnson 

references the case of Darwin specifically, who claimed to come up with evolutionary 

theory in just such a flash, but careful examination of whose scientific records shows 

that he had been working on the idea for decades. 

Johnson does not make it explicit how these two ideas—first, that open and 

movement-friendly spaces encourage idea-generation and, second, that ideas are 

networks, not self-contained units—are related. But the idea seems to be that, because

an individual idea is really a convergence of a lot of little ideas, they are most likely to be 

formed in places where a number of people, each with his own ‘little idea’, can 

exchange and amalgamate their little ideas into one big one. Just as idea-creation in an 

individual mind involves internal networks of neural-firings, so idea-creation in 

pluralities of individuals involves external networks of verbal exchanges, which 

exchanges, Johnson suggests, are most likely to happen where there is freedom of 

movement and a corresponding freedom of speech. 

My own experience is consistent with Johnson’s hypothesis. I myself have had 

ideas while sitting in a cubicle, but those were usually derivatives of ideas formed as a 

result of the kinds of free and open exchanges that Johnson discusses. Also, when 

people are physically shut up in cubicles or in other prison-cell-like spaces, their physical 

surroundings are, as it were, telling them not to be free or let their ideas roam. I myself 

know a number of talented writers, thinkers, and artists; and when looking for a new 

apartment or home, each and every one of them wants space, quiet, and natural light. 

None of them, if given an option, chooses to work in a cramped space. And I have 

noticed that, although some of them are slovenly, their work-spaces have an 

uncluttered and open quality: they may not make their beds and they may leave a sock 

or t-shirt on the floor; but they don’t obstruct their own physical movement with knickknacks 

or bulky furniture. In the living spaces of my less creative friends, so I have also 

noticed, there is likely to be extra physical ‘junk’, for lack of a better word (e.g. space-

hogging beanbags or sofas) as well as junk in the aesthetic sense (e.g. crass posters and 

cheap artwork)---all of which tends to be absent from the dwelling-places of my more 

creative acquaintances, suggesting that Johnson may well be right to link intellectual 

innovation to certain kinds of physical spaces. 

Are we born good? Response to: “Born Good?” 

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRvVFW85IcU) 

Two questions arise in connection with this video. First, are babies born with a 

sense of right and wrong? Second, what does this video have to say on this matter? 

Let us start with the first question. Unless people were predisposed to be moral, 

they would never develop morality. People can learn math because they naturally think 

in terms of quantities, and learning math is therefore a matter of correctly deploying 

aptitudes and tendencies. People can learn music because they instinctively respond to 

music (babies are soothed by classical music and sometimes rock to the beat of a song 

that they hear) and even instinctively produce it (babies rhythmically beats their hands 

on table tops and sometimes produce inchoate singing-like sounds). 

Similarly, babies can learn morality because they are already empathically 

connected with others and, for this reason, instinctively distinguish between kind and 

cruel behavior. To be sure, an infant’s moral code is not that it would be feasible for an

adult, or even a child, to have, since it doesn’t embody a sufficiently deep understanding 

of the accommodations that must be made to others if society and even personal 

relationships are to work. But, as anyone who has had a younger sibling knows, babies 

are quick to bond with others and are also quick to respond to kindness with kindness 

and to meanness with coldness or hostility---all of which bespeaks a certain innate 

morality. And a child’s moral education is about shaping its innate moral code, not 

creating it out of nothing. 

Some children turn into psychopaths or criminals. But when this happens, it is 

not, at least not categorically, because they were born without moral codes, but is 

rather because their innate senses of morality were decommissioned by adverse 

circumstances. 

So the answer to the question ‘are people innately moral?’ is: Yes—people are 

born with a certain morality, albeit one that, like the rest of one’s mind, has to be 

sculpted and honed before it can be society-ready. 

As for the video, it too answered this question in the affirmative, and it 

supported that answer with relevant experimental data (e.g. babies preferred the 

friendly looking teddy bears to the unfriendly looking ones). At the same time, as 

someone who has nephews and nieces and younger siblings, there was nothing in the 

video about infant-behavior or psychology that I did not already know, and the video 

also didn’t answer any of the relevant follow-up questions, including the question ‘why

do some people become bad if they are innately good?’, as well as the question ‘given 

that people are innately moral, what is moral instruction about?’, both of which we 

answered just now. 


It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise 

transfer any human organ for valuable consideration for use in human transplantation if 

the transfer affects interstate commerce. The preceding sentence does not apply with 

respect to human organ paired donation. 

42 U.S. Code § 274e. Prohibition of organ purchases 167 

Both programs violate Section 301 of FOTA (henceforth simply ‘FOTA’, since we 

are only concerned with Section 301). They unambiguously violate it relative to 

intentionalist, purposivist, and pragmatist conceptions of legal interpretation; and they 

ambiguously violate it relative to a textualist conception. It is only relative to a strictly 

167 

https://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-42-the-public-health-and-welfare/42-usc-sect-274e.html

textualist approach that either one of them could plausibly be construed as not being a 

violation of FOTA, but even this is doubtful. 

The upshot of FOTA is that organs may not be bought and sold for money or 

money-equivalents. In this context, the term “tangible consideration” obviously refers 

to money or money-equivalents, such as property or services. Significantly, FOTA, 

originally enacted in 1984, was amended in 2013 to use the term “valuable 

consideration” instead of “tangible consideration.” 168 “Tangible consideration” is an 

offer of a tangible asset, and in accounting a “tangible asset” is a physical asset, such as 

a piece of equipment. Cash is an intangible asset, as are stocks and bonds and all other 

securities. Since the purpose of FOTA is clearly to prevent the exchanging of organs for 

any relatively liquid asset, “tangible consideration” was therefore too narrow in scope, 

since it didn’t exclude any securities, including cash, and therefore had to replaced be 

“valuable consideration.” 

Health World’s Program 1 (henceforth ‘HP1’) is a proposal to the effect that, if a 

given person X elects to donate a kidney to Health World, then Health World will wire 

$50,000 to a charity of X’s choosing. Health World’s Program 2 (henceforth ‘HP2’) is to 

the effect that, if X elects to donate a kidney, Health World will wire $50,000 to some 

other person Y of X’s choosing, with the qualification that Y be classified as ‘poor’ 

according to World Bank standards. 

168 

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2013/10/02/2013-24094/change-to-the-definitionof-human-organ-under-section-301-of-the-national-organ-transplant-act-of

There are two preliminary points. First, the question here is not whether HP1 and 

HP2 are morally legitimate. There may well be good moral reasons for their existence, 

especially given the fact that there is a shortage of viable kidney’s despite the abundant 

potential supply; and they may even be well intentioned, in the sense that the objective 

of those behind them may indeed be to make kidneys available to those who need 

them. All of that is simply irrelevant, , however, and the question here is simply whether 

Health Programs 1 and 2 violate FOTA. The answer is that they do. 

Program 1, if put into effect, would simply allow for the creation of organ-money 

‘laundromats.’ Poor person X wants to sell his kidney to organ-trafficker Y. FOTA 

prohibits Y from directly giving X the money. HP1 creates a backdoor. Y can create a 

‘charity’ of his own (or, more likely, he has already done so), which, though it may 

discharge some legitimate charitable services, is basically just a front for Y’s organtrafficking 

business. Alternately, Y can bribe or otherwise corrupt an operative of some 

existing charitable agency to collude with Y in his organ-trafficking business. 

This is not an idle hypothetical, but a veritable inevitability. Charities, especially 

international ones, are proverbially difficult to oversee; and even the most reputable 

ones, such as UNICEF, keep the lion’s share of the money they receive in charitable 

donations, supposedly for the purpose of defraying overhead costs. It is reported that 

less than 17% of the money donated to UNICEF actually makes it to UNICEF’S supposed

eneficiaries, the rest being eaten up by UNICEF-related costs. 169 Given how desperate 

many people are for money and given how much money people are willing to pay for 

organs, the introduction of a backdoor involving charities would simply be an invitation 

to create front-charities or to turn existing charities into parties to the organ-trade. 

Also, given the costs involved in running a charity, such as World Health, and 

given also the dubious nature of World Health’s ambit, it would likely be forced to resort 

to de facto organ-trafficking simply to stay afloat financially. Charities are expensive to 

run, as the case of UNICEF shows, even when the services they provide are 

unambiguously legal and moral, and World Health would likely be insolvent if forced to 

rely on legal cashflow. 

Here is an analogy. In most parts of the United States, prostitution is illegal. 

Suppose that sex workers came up with an arrangement whereby, instead of receiving 

direct payment, they would provide sexual favors in exchange for large cash donations 

to charities. First of all, those sex workers will not even put forth such a proposal unless 

they already have an agreement with the charities to cut them in financially. This is not 

a slur on sex workers; it is simply to point out that, like all workers, they need to be paid 

and must know that they will be paid before entering into an arrangement of this kind. 

Further, if such a proposal were enacted, ‘charities’ would instantly spring up to take 

advantage of the situation. UNICEF and other conventional charities don’t create this 

169 

https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&orgid=4617

sort of ‘feeding frenzy’, since they don’t provide a work-around for people wishing to 

engage in extremely lucrative black-market activities. HP1 does create such a 

workaround. 

The purpose of FOTA is to prevent the exchanging of organs for anything having 

cash-value. So from a purposivist perspective, HP1 is unambiguously a violation of FOTA. 

Given that, supply and demand being what they are, HP1 would effectively nullify FOTA, 

or at the very least force violators of it to assume the appearance of being 

philanthropists, HP1 is a violation of FOTA—additionally so since, in addition to 

providing a workaround for such violators, it would also tarnish the reputations of 

charities in general. Given that the intentions of the framers of HP1 were clearly to 

prevent the exchanging of organs for cash or cash-equivalents, HP1, which simply 

reroutes cash-for-organs through ‘charities’, is unambiguously a violation of FOTA. 

It is only from a narrowly textualist perspective that HP1 can be construed as not 

being a violation of FOTA. Here is the original (1984) reading of the relevant part of the 

statute: 

It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise 

transfer any human organ for tangible consideration for use in human transplantation if

the transfer affects interstate commerce. The preceding sentence does not apply with 

respect to human organ paired donation. 170 

If Y offers to donate money to X in exchange for X’s kidney, Y is offering ‘valuable’ 

consideration, but not ‘tangible’ consideration. As previously stated, tangible 

consideration is offer of a tangible asset, and a tangible asset is a physical asset, such as 

a tractor. Even cash, as also previously stated, is not a ‘tangible asset.’ Nor are 

copyrights or even physical services. So yes---law-makers opened up a serious loophole 

by using the term ‘tangible consideration.’ Technically, the 1984 version makes it legal 

to sell organs for cash; it prohibits the sale of organs for physical assets but otherwise 

doesn’t criminalize it. 

But this only shows how little weight is to be placed on the term ‘tangible.’ The 

statute is obviously intended to prohibit the cash-sale of organs, this being why, in 

FOTA’s aftermath, organ-trafficking remained quite as underground as it had previously 

been. 171 So again—yes: Thanks to the term “tangible asset”, FOTA (1984) can, on a 

textualist reading, be construed to permit HP1---but only because, on such a reading, it 

can be construed to permit organ-sales in general. All of which shows that, in this 

context, a strictly textualist approach is not the right one. 

170 

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2013/10/02/2013-24094/change-to-the-definitionof-human-organ-under-section-301-of-the-national-organ-transplant-act-of 

171 

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/115/hr6413/text

All of this applies with to HP2, which proposes that, if Y wants to pay for X’s 

kidney, he can do so, provided that the money goes to some poor person Z of X’s 

choosing. HP2 is simply proposing that organ-sales be middled through intermediaries 

or agents—who, for legal reasons, will claim to be ‘friends’, or some such. Such a 

transaction is not legitimated by the ‘paired donation’ provision in FOTA, for the simple 

reason that paired donation does not involve anyone’s being paid, directly or indirectly, 

to give up their organs. HP2 violates FOTA from a purposivist perspective, given that the 

purpose of FOTA is to prevent organ-sales; from an intentionalist perspective, given that 

the intention of the law-makers in question is to prevent organ-sales; and from a 

pragmatist perspective, given that the intention of the law-makers in question is to 

prevent organ-sales along with the collateral damage that would result, including loss of 

credibility to legitimate charitable organizations, done by organ-sales. From a strictly 

textualist perspective, HP2 is in the clear, thanks to the term ‘tangible consideration’, in 

virtue of which even straight organ-for-cash transactions are technically legal. But this, 

echoing what we said earlier, only shows the irrelevance in this context of a strictly 

textualist construction.

Posts for Business Ethics Class 

Can you think of an example where someone has been honest but not ethical, as Carter 

(assigned reading) says? 

Yes! I have known many people who used honesty about little things to be dishonest 

about big things. Somebody would fail to repay a debt to me, and then, when I called 

them on it, they would quibble about my wording to cloak what was really happening. 

And their quibbles were technically accurate; I might have said that the money was 

loaned 28 days ago, and they would point out that it was 27 or 29, or whatnot, and then 

make the exchange be about my supposed looseness with words, or whatnot, when the 

truth is that they were failing to honor an agreement that they not only willingly 

entered into but positively inveigled me into entering into with them. So yes, honesty, 

when misdeployed, can be a way of distracting and deceiving. 


My decision was not to sell, at least not without first disclosing the problem to the 

prospective buyers. Even though I could effectuate the sale without being in violation of 

Florida law, I would still have deceived the other parties to the deal, and I would also 

have put many people's physical health in jeopardy. Not to mention that, when these

problems surfaced, which they inevitably would, my company and I would look like liars 

who cared not one straw for honesty in business or for human welfare. So no---no sale 

without first disclosing all material facts, the hazardous waste issues definitely being of 

the material variety. 


Speaking personally, whatever I would have done in that context, I would have done 

because I personally wanted to do it, not because I was 'under orders' to do it. In my 

experience, people who say 'I'm just doing my job' or 'my hands are tied' are either lying 

or, if they're telling the truth, then they should quit those jobs. If I had decided to shock 

the subjects (or do what I believed to be shocking them), I would have done so out of 

sadism, or some other purely personal motive, not out of some ethic of obedience, and I 

would have admitted as much to myself. This is not to say that I would have acted 

sadistically--I'm inclined to think that I would have been in the 10% who bailed. But 

whatever I ended up doing, I wouldn't have used the excuse that I was 'following 

orders'-especially since, in this context, there would be no real reason for me to follows 

those orders.

Reactions to the Jones Day report on the rankings scandal at the Fox School 

Perhaps I'm a tad jaded, but I think that this case of misconduct--and it was misconduct- 

-is a bit of a red herring. People lie; it isn't good, but there it is. I think that Fox's focus 

should be optimizing its operations---providing the best possible instruction at the 

lowest possible price--rather than on rankings and on acts of contrition relating thereto. 

It's not good that numbers were fudged; but it happened, and the focus now should not 

be to chastise and take pounds of flesh. It should be to ensure that Temple students, 

and other Temple-stakeholders, are given the maximal value for their considerable 

financial investment. I am much more interested in being the best possible education 

than I am seeing people be taken to the woodshed, and this frenzy of accusations and 

apologies seems to be more about public relations than about quality of instruction. 

Can you apply ideas from the Bazerman and Tenbrunsel article to McCoy's dilemma in 

the Parable of the Sadhu? 

Yes, there is a connection, in that people who behave questionably tend to rationalize, 

this being the point, or one of the points, of both the Bazerman article and the Parable 

of the Sadhu.

When people are selling, Bazerman points out, they overvalue assets; when they are 

buying, they undervalue them. When they are accused of misconduct, they deny and 

double-down; and when no accusations are pending, their defensive rationalizations 

miraculously vanish. 

As for Parable of the Sadhu, its main point is similar. A given person chooses not to help 

someone who needs his help, and he is left with a gnawing feeling of guilt that, unless 

he chooses to atone, he must rationalize away. Almost anyone in that position who 

chose not to save the man would rationalize his decision in some way or other. "I work 

hard, and I deserve a little me time." "I can't solve everyone's problems; as long as I'm 

not actively causing harm, I deserve no censure." "Why should I help him? Would he 

help me if the tables were turned?" 

Similarly, almost anyone whose livelihood depends on compliance with the corporate 

line will toe that line and then rationalize it. "I have mouths to feed." "This company 

does more good than harm, and it doesn't deserve to go down over some petty financial 

impropriety." "If I don't cover up this mess, someone else will." 

Will it be possible for you to maintain your ethical values yet succeed in the business 

world?

Yes, 100%. Succeeding in business is about providing agreed upon services for agreed 

upon prices. Who succeeds in business? Is it people who make bad cards and bad 

shoes? No. It's people who make good cars and good shoes and charge fair prices for 

them. People in business who gouge or deceive don't last long. Business is about 

providing people with services that they need and want and ask for and doing so for an 

agreed upon fee. Business, therefore, is about helping people and being compensated 

accordingly. So I think that a certain integrity is not only compatible with business 

success but positively necessary for it. As for the apparent exceptions to this--Bernie 

Madoff, Ken Lay, Ivan Boesky--these people are not really in business; they are merely 

pretending to be--they are crooks posing as businessmen and therefore are not 

counterexamples to my position. 


Yes, I have been in many such situations. I have had friends who broke rules, sometimes 

serious ones, and I had to decide what to do. And I chose personal loyalty over concern 

for the rules--even though the people I was covering for had made very real and very 

unambiguous mistakes. For example, when I was in the eighth grade, I found out that a 

friend of mine had deliberately made a series of unauthorized purchases with other

people's credit cards--which is a deeply wrong thing to do. But I didn't turn him in. He 

ended up being caught a week later, saving me the trouble of having to make a tough 

decision. But I was very reluctant to 'snitch' on him, even though he was doing wrong, 

and I don't know what I would have done had he not been caught. 

Frankly, there is nobody, even when truly good people are taken into account, who is as 

good as he holds himself out as being. One way to deal with this is to admit it and not 

hold oneself out as a paragon of morality. Another way is to live with the hypocrisy. I 

prefer the first path. I try to a good person, but I know I'm not perfect and I therefore 

choose not to judge others. For this reason, if I were to make a mistake, even a serious 

one, I would be given a certain leeway not accorded in such circumstances to more 

judgmental people. 


My home base is universalism (or 'deontology' as some seem to call it). And I think the 

same is true of all human beings. When deciding how to treat my mother or best friend, 

I don't run through a series of cost-benefit calculations regarding the maximization of 

utility; I decide on grounds of loyalty and empathy. In extreme cases, this would not 

hold: if, for example, my best friend turned out to be a mass-murderer, then I would

choose turning him over being loyal. But such a decision, it seems to me, would still not 

necessarily be made on strictly utilitarian grounds, as it would embody a certain 

instinctual regard for other members of society, towards whom I do feel a certain 

natural kinship and with regard to whom it would be very unnatural, almost counterbiological, 

for me to behave in a complete callous manner. I don't know that anyone, 

with the possible exception of a few policy-makers, ever makes decisions on strictly 

utilitarian grounds, as there always seems to be an implicit regard for other people's 

subjecthood and dignity. 

Is THE social responsibility of business to increase its profits? -- Who's right: Friedman or 

Mackey? 

Mackey is right, and Friedman is wrong.Considered as a member of society, a hit man 

has a responsibility to behave decently; but considered as a hit man, a hit man's only 

responsibility is to fulfill his contracts. Similarly, considered as a part of society, a 

business has a responsibility to be decent; but considered as a business, a business's 

only responsibility is to profit. Milton Friedman and others have held that economic 

pressures and moral ultimately coincide--that if business's focus on their bottom line, 

they will automatically have to right-size themselves with respect to people's rights. 

There is a certain truth in that position, but it is far from being categorically true. There

is money in misconduct. There are sex-traffickers, organ-hustlers, and other black 

marketeers who don't exactly do good but make a decent living. So I would submit that, 

precisely because businesses do not, in their capacity as businesses, have any 

responsibility to do good, they should be given external incentives in the form of 

regulations and laws. Consequently, Mackay is right, not Friedman. 

Were WalMart to increase its pay and benefit level to those of Costco (Stone article) or 

TJ's (Wilke article), or LaColumbe (Carmichael article) would it be more or less financially 

successful? 

It would obviously be less successful, and it would also be able to employ fewer people. 

Walmart has very low prices; and its fuel bill per unit of space is lower than that of its 

competitors, which means that it takes less of a toll on the environment, per unit 

product, than the much lauded 'mom-and-pop' store, which, despite its hallowed place 

in American iconography, is competing with a 19th century coal factory for the title of 

most ecocidally inefficient entity in the world. 

A friend of mine works at Walmart; he is paid reasonably well and finds the work 

tolerable--and he's glad to have it, since he doesn't have too many options. But if

Walmart started paying its employees executive salaries, then half of them would have 

to go, and its prices would soar. These are facts. 

The Walmart people do what they do not because they're evil, but because economic 

forces make it hard to be saints--and, as Milton Friedman and others have said, may 

even make it contraindicated. 

Have you ever had a "Sadhu" dropped at your feet (so to speak). If so, what did you do? 

Yes, on several occasions. Just last week, a friend of mine was injured and bleeding. His 

injuries were not life-threatening, but he definitely needed attention. I had a choice: 

help him and get blood all over my new car or spare my car and not help him. I helped 

him. The car looks terrible now, but I did the right thing. 

When I have chosen not to help a soul in need, it was generally because the cost to 

myself was greater than the cost to that other person. If my friend had had a highly 

contagious illness that was sure to kill me if I gave him a ride, then no, I would not have 

helped him; but short of that, I would have--and did. 

Do you think corporations are living up to their original purpose in society?

Yes, I do think that corporations are doing what they are supposed to be doing. They are 

supposed to be providing consumers with products that the latter are willing to pay for, 

and they do just that, since they would go out of business if they didn't. 

Are they bad actors? Probably, in some respects. But if we dislike them so much, whey 

are still around? Because we need them, and we like what they do. We want cars, 

shoes, etc., and that's what they give us--at very low prices to boot. 

If companies treated each and every employee like royalty, the cost of a pair of sneakers 

would be astronomical. So before we tell 'the corporations' to take a hike, we have to 

confront that very real economic fact. 

It is fashionable to bash corporations, and I myself bash them from time to time. And I 

know from personal experience that working at one is simply horrid. That said, when it 

comes time to buy shoes or Ipods or computers or cameras or shirts or just about 

anything else, setting aside a few very specialized items, where do I turn? The village 

cobbler? The corner fruitstand? No! I go to Walmart or Amazon, and I buy items made 

by Nike or Apple or Dell. And those items--you must grant--work really well. 

Companies exist only as long as people buy from them. If Microsoft made a bad product, 

it would go out of existence. So granting that corporations often behave badly, I cannot, 

without hypocrisy, weigh in against them. And before others do so, they have to ask 

themselves: what is the alternative?

Identify an argument in an article, book etc. that does poorly on TWO or more of the 7 

standards Paul & Elder say help assess critical thinking. Briefly discuss. 

The book I chose is 'Being and Time' by Martin Heidegger. I have been told that it is a 

great work; but I found scarcely a single intelligible sentence in it. Plus, I also found 

repeated use of the same undefined terms ("existential", "authenticity", "throwness"), 

often with confusing variations. So far as I could understand it, it seemed to be saying 

that human beings are being true to themselves when they work with their hands but 

not when they work for companies or bureaucracies, the idea being that the latter are 

soul-robbingly parasitical organizations. Which--if that is what Heidegger is saying-is 

fine, but could have been, and has been said, better and certainly more concisely. I'd 

have to give this work an F on clarity, logic, and organization. 

Here is a characteristic quotation: 

"inquiring or in choosing. This holds true-and by no means least-for that 

understanding which is rooted in Dasein's ownmost Being, and for the 

possibility of developing it-namely, for ontological understanding.

When tradition thus becomes master, it does so in such a way that what 

it 'transmits' is made so inaccessible, proximally and for the most part, 

that it rather becomes concealed. Tradition takes what has come down to 

us and delivers it over to self-evidence; it blocks our access to those 

primordial 'sources' from which the categories and concepts handed down 

to us have been in part quite genuinely drawn'! Indeed it makes us forget 

that they have had such an origin, and makes us suppose that the necessity of going 

back to these sources is something which we need not even 

understand. Dasein has had its historicality so thoroughly uprooted by 

tradition that it confines its interest to the multiformity of possible types, 

directions, and standpoints of philosophical activity in the most exotic 

and alien of cultures; and by this very interest it seeks to veil the fact that 

it has no ground of its Own to stand on. Consequently, despite all its 

iological interests and all its zeal for an Interpretation which is 

philologically 'objective' ["sachliche"], Dasein no longer understands the 

most elcmentary conditions which would alone enable it to go back to 

the past in a positive manner and make it productively its own. 

We have shown at the outset (Section I) not only that the question of 

the meaning of Being is one that has not been attended to and one that 

has been inadequately formulated, but that it has become quite forgotten

in spite of all our interest in 'metaphysics'. Greek ontology and its history 

-which, in their numerous filiations and distortions, determine the conceptual character 

of philosophy even today-prove that when Dasein 22 

understands either itself or Being in general, it does so in terms of the 

'world', and that the ontology which has thus arisen has deteriorated 

to a tradition in which it gets reduced to something self-evident 

-merely material for reworking, as it was for In the Middle Ages 

this uprooted Greek ontology became a fixed body of doctrine. Its systematics, 

however, is by no means a mere joining together of traditional 

pieces into a single edifice. Though its basic conceptions of Being have 

been taken over dogmatically from the Greeks, a great deal of unpretentious work has 

been carried on further within these limits. With the 

peculiar character which the Scholastics gave it, Greek ontology has, in 

its essentials, travelled the path that leads through the Disputationes metaphysicae of 

Suarez to the 'metaphysics' and transcendental philosophy of 

modern times, determining even the foundations and the aims of Hegel's..." 

http://users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/spliceoflife/BeingandTime.pdf


Erik Smallwood posted Oct 15, 2019 6:24 AM 

Descartes evil genius theory very compelling. I can relate this to a couple of 

different things. One way is how do actually know that you are awake or if you are 

dreaming. I think of the movie Inception. The only way they could know if they were 

out of the dream world was by checking their personal totems. The phrase Cogito 

Ergo Sum reminds me of the Matrix or conspiracy theories that involve our world 

being run by a computer simulation program (Sims, SimCity). I think, therefore I am 

would seem to be able to stand up to the challenge but when looking at it in the 

Inception or Matrix views the computer could be allowing you think. As for the topics 

we have discussed in previous posts, I think the only one that could come close to 

passing the challenge presented would be death. We now that we will all die 

eventually. I do find a problem with this in the fact that we have multiple instances of 

reincarnation through out the history of religion. You could view death as just the 

next step in fulfilling the ultimate purpose of said thing. Use a fish for example. The 

fish is caught and killed. It turns into food which gives energy when we eat it. We also 

use the guts and remains to help fertilize and grow our plants. If you look at death t

Great post! You made a profound point, namely, that the Evil Genius scenario is 

concerned not just with epistemology but also with political and even personal life. 

Ordinarily, the Evil Genius scenario is taken as a way of motivating skepticism, its 

purpose being to show that our sensory experiences could in principle be 

hallucinations. But if Descartes’ objective had been to make a strictly epistemological 

point, he wouldn’t have used such a pregnant metaphor; he would have attributed the 

hallucinations in question to impersonal forces, such as a chemical balance, not to a 

sentient being, let alone a malicious God-like one. 

During this time, science was proving the erroneousness of Scripture and the 

Catholic Church was being outed as a malicious deceiver. And as this was happening, 

the Church responded maliciously and defensively, sometimes simply killing the 

scientists in question. I believe that the ‘demon’ of which Descartes speaks was a 

metaphor for the Catholic Church. I do not believe that this was by Descartes’ 

conscious intention, but it was nonetheless intentional, albeit unconsciously so. 

Madisen Domayer posted Oct 14, 2019 4:48 PM

The argument of the evil genius is confusing. Trying to understand that we 

“live” in a world where everything is full of deceptions is hard to grasp. It hard to 

imagine everything I think or see as being false, or possibly false. I think this relates to 

his argument of conscious vs. consciousness. Conscious refers to what we believe 

while consciousness is what is true. According to the evil genius theory, our conscious 

and consciousness are not the same, for our conscious is full of deception. One way to 

disprove this theory is finding ideas that we can ensure exist without doubt, such as 

counting numbers and knowing the alphabet. This concept relates to the Cogito Ergo 

Sum argument. Since I think something is true, it has to exist, despite the evil genius 

theory. If I can think it, it is real. I think these two theories can become confusing, but 

if you think of them as two separate idea, even two that contract teach other, they 

seem to make more since. 

I don’t think the Evil Genius scenario is quite as opaque as you make it out 

to be. The idea is simply that our sense-perceptions could be hallucinations. I grant that 

Descartes muddies the waters a bit by attributing those hallucinations to an ‘evil 

demon’, which introduces potentially confusing political and emotional resonances into 

the scenario. But the point is clear enough: what we regard as accurate awarenesses 

could be delusions.

In response to which, Descartes rightly asks: What is it that I could not fail 

to be right about? What is my Archimedean point in my question for knowledge? 

Supposing that I am the victim of deliberate and systematic deception, what is that, for 

all that, I could not possibly be deceived about? Descartes’ answer is—I know that I 

doubt, and therefore think, and therefore exist. In a word—I think, therefore I am. The 

mere existence of doubt proves the existence of thought and, consequently, of one’s own 

existence. And Descartes is right about this: one’s own thought, even if that thought 

assumes the form of doubt, affirms one’s own existence. 

Descartes also believes that, on this slender basis, he can prove that we in 

fact know what we think we know—that, in particular, we can prove that, as a general 

rule, our sensory experiences are accurate, the same being true, with some 

qualifications, of the inferences we draw from them. Although I agree with Descartes 

that we do in fact have much of the knowledge that we attribute to ourselves, I don’t 

know that ‘I think, therefore I am’ is, or even could be, the basis of that knowledge. The 

actual basis of our knowledge of the external world is derived from considerations of 

continuity and coherence, as in, we must posit an external world answering to our 

‘perceptual narrative’ in order to render the gaps in that narrative non-anomalous. I 

listened to an interesting audiobook about this: https://www.audible.com/pd/Guide-to- 

Descartes-Meditations-Audiobook/B01J90RXN8?qid=1571172493&sr=1- 

1&pf_rd_p=e81b7c27-6880-467a-b5a7-

13cef5d729fe&pf_rd_r=48N225CQMEAJ59Z4XEK6&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1 I’d 

be interested in other people’s thoughts on this work. 


Elasticity of demand formula 

Elasticity = %change in demand/%change in price 

1. Elasticity = -1.2 price increase =.02 

Solve for x 

-1.2=x/.02 

X=-.024 

2. Elasticity = -1.2 

Wish to increase sales by 10% 

Solve for x 

-1.2=1.10/x 

X==11/12=-.917

3. Income elasticity = 3.6, income increases by 4%, what effect on demand? 

Solve for x, 3.6=x/.04 

X=.144 

4. Elasticity of supply=1.5, price increases 2%, what effect on quantity supplied? 

Solve for x, 1.5=x/.02 

X=.03 

5. Farmer’s yields up 30% 

Farm output elasticity=--.75 

What effect on revenue? 

Solve for x, -.75=.3/x 

X=-.4 

Therefore, yield increases by 30% but demand decreases by 40%. So percentage 

of output not demanded has increased, and net revenue (revenue minus 

expenses) has therefore decreased. 

6. Demand curve: p=200-.2q 

MPC=50+.1q 

MEC=.1q

Private equilibrium=intersection of p=200-.2q and 50+.1q->q=500 

Social equilibrium= =intersection of p=200-.2q and .1q->q=2000/3 

7. What level of tax will lead to social equilibrium? 

Tax = MEC at social equilibrium = .1(2000/3)=66.67 

8. Does tax create deadweight loss 

Deadweight loss=economic inefficiency 

Question ambiguous

Taxing negative externality eliminates deadweight loss. So this particular tax 

($66.67) does not create deadweight loss. 

Taxing non-externality does create deadweight loss, since the amount taxed is 

unpaid work, leading to inefficiency 

Professor seems to have had second disambiguation in mind, but your answer 

correct given the context. 

9. At private equilibrium, calculate elasticity of demand 

Private equilibrium -> 500->p/q=100/500 

Elasticity=125/-25=-5 

Elasticity of demand at private equilibrium=-5(1/5)=-1 

10. Calculate elasticity of demand between two equilibrium points using midpoint 

method: 

General formula: 

(q2-q1)/((q1+q2)/2) 

divided by 

(p2-p1)/((p1+p2)/2)

Q1=375 

Q2=500 

P1=125 

P2=100 

Q2-q1=125 

Q2+q1=875 

(q2+q1)/2=437.5 

(q2-q1)/((q1+q2)/2)=125/437.5=.256 

P2-p1=-25 

p2+p1=225 

(p2+p1)/2=112.5 

(p2-p1)/((p1+p2)/2)=-25/112.5=-.222

(q2-q1)/((q1+q2)/2) 

divided by 

(p2-p1)/((p1+p2)/2) 

= 

.256/-.222 

= 

-1.153

Summary of Video about Milgram Experiment 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f97VYdkHZK8 

Critical Viewing Form 

BA 3102 

Instructions: Please address each item below for each movie. The total length of your 

critical viewing form responses should be approximately one-half to one page, single 

spaced. This form will be graded on a pass/fail basis. To pass, you need to provide 

reasonably detailed and insightful answers to the items below. 


The video concerned the Milgram experiment, along with a recent recreation thereof. In 

these experiments, volunteers were ordered to commit acts that, so they were led to 

believe, caused intense pain to human beings. (In reality, the people being tortured 

were actors and were not experiencing pain, but the volunteers did not know this and 

had every reason to believe otherwise.) 90% of the volunteers followed orders to a tee, 

their ‘excuse’ (or ‘justification’, depending on how you look it) being ‘I had my orders;

the rest is not my responsibility.’ The point of these videos seems to be that people 

don’t take responsibility for their behavior unless they have to. 


I found it interesting that there was little or no difference between men and women in 

respect of how willing they were to follow orders even when those orders involved 

inflicting pain. Unlike the commentators, however, I did not find the result particularly 

surprising. Supposing for argument’s sake that women are more empathic, this empathy 

can either play out in the form of empathic connectedness to one’s supervisor or to 

one’s victim; and, as it turns out, it is more likely to play out in the former way. 


It may be that my own life-experiences have biased me, or it may be that I have already 

internalized and accepted the results of the Milgram experiment; but what I found most 

controversial was the assumption, made by all parties involved, that a human being’s 

go-to is just behavior and that unjust behavior requires that special rationalizations be 

operative. In my own experience, people tend to take the path of least resistance; they 

do what is expedient, not for the most part what is principled. To be sure, setting aside

the odd psychopath, people choose expediency within the limits set by social 

acceptability; but, in my own experience, people who act with integrity despite strong 

social incentives to act without it are more the exception than the rule; and I found the 

frequently made assertion to the contrary to be particularly controversial, at least 

relative to my own starting assumptions. 

4. What is the most important ethical issue that the movie is addressing? Please 

explain. 

Do people do what is right or what is expedient? If the movie is to be trusted, which it is, 

the answer is: they do what is expedient. It may not have been the intention of Stanley 

Milgram or of the movie-makers to make this point; perhaps it was their intention to 

make a case that people’s moral judgment is easily skewed, with the result that, despite 

having the best of intentions, they act wrongly. And maybe that is what it shows: but I 

think the reality uncovered here is simply that people are more self-interested than 

ethical.


BA 3102 Online 

Reflection Paper #2 Instructions 

Please take the Implicit Association Test and reflect on your results. The test is on the 

web, located at www.understandingprejudice.org/iat. Take the race and gender/career 

IAT tests. You need not report your scores. In your paper, please answer these questions: 

1. Do you think that the tests measure unconscious bias with respect to race and 

gender? Please be specific in discussing aspects of the test that you think are or 

are not valid for measuring unconscious bias. 

2. Either way, do you think unconscious bias exists in society (regarding race and/or 

gender)? If not, why not; if you think it does, how might it show itself in the 

organizational context?

If you have questions about how the test works, go to 

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/background/faqs.html; it may be able to 

answer them. 

Please note that research shows that the order in which the faces are presented to you 

does have an effect, but the effect is very small and usually does not have a significant 

effect on your results. Also, please note that there are other tests in addition to the race 

and gender/career tests. If you wish to take one or more of these, go to this site: 

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/takeatest.html. You need not log in. Just 

enter as a guest. 

Your paper should be one to two double spaced pages, using 1 inch margins and a 

normal sized font. Your reflection paper will be graded on a pass/fail basis. To pass, you 

need to make a reasonable case for your point of view and meet the page requirement. 

There were two tests: one concerning gender, the other concerning race. The 

test on gender definitely did a good job of measuring the degree to which the test-taker 

associates career with masculinity and family with femininity. According to the test, I 

myself do strongly associate masculinity with work and femininity with family. I do not 

regard this as a bias. I used to be an ardent feminist; but, ironically, it was female

acquaintances of mine who convinced to soften my pro-feminist attitudes. They told me 

that feminism forced them to have to work, which left them little time for family and 

children, which, so they told me, they deeply resented. 

When in public, I always defer to politically correct positions; and I also think that 

gender-roles are in fact easily overvalued. I know many men who are dismal 

professionals and many women who are highly competent ones; and the issue is not, 

frankly, one that greatly exercises me. In any case, the test did accurately gauge my 

feelings about traditional gender roles, with the qualification that I would not refer to 

those feelings as ‘biases’, since, when confronted with a woman who clearly feels at 

home in the workplace, or a man who clearly feels at home at home (pun intended), I 

strongly feel that the woman belongs in the workplace and the man belongs at home. 

As for the test on racism, it did a good job of measuring one’s feelings concerning 

one’s feelings about blacks (if one is white) or whites (if one is black). That said, even if 

one unconsciously regards whites as superior to blacks or vice versa, that is not, in and 

of itself, racism, since it is actions that are racist, not feelings. Somebody who has an 

anti-black bias but resists it when making decisions—when deciding who to hire, for 

example---is not racist, even though he may have the emotional underpinnings of 

racism. 

Humans should not be condemned if, at a given moment, they have a politically 

incorrect sentiment, since feelings are fluid and will tend to right-size themselves as the

occasion demands. I used to have preconceptions about Chinese culture; then I got 

involved with a Chinese woman and, as a result, developed a pro-Chinese bias, which in 

its turn led to an anti-Western bias. I do not think such reversals are unusual; and I also 

think that, although people inevitably have preferences, some of them not entirely wellinformed, 

they tend at the end of the day to be reasonably fair-minded when it comes 

to matters of race. 

Are their unconscious racial biases in our society? Of course there are. There are 

three hundred million people in this country, and practically any given American, 

including those who pose as completely politically correct, inevitably have ‘in-group’ 

biases. But, first of all, the people who go out of their way to show how politically 

correct they are often, in my experience, have politically driven and unnatural views 

about members of other groups. They treat a given black person as a black person, not 

as a black person. Individual blacks, like individual whites, want to move forward 

professionally; they fall in love; they fall out of love; and so on. The same being true of 

individual members of any other given group. And in my experience, people who are 

excessively concerned with political correctness seem to be focused, ironically, on 

group-affiliations, as opposed to individual characteristics. 

More importantly, what is important is not how individual members of a society 

feel but how they act. Behaviors can be managed, through laws and policies and the 

like, but emotions cannot be directly managed—and should not be directly managed.

And whatever the private sentiments of individual American may be—and those 

sentiments vary widely, even within a given demographic---I don’t see that there is 

systematic denial of opportunity or of justice to people based on gender or race. There 

are laws and institutions that are intended to protect would-be targets of discriminatory 

conduct—and, as far as I can tell, do a creditable job of doing so. Finally, I think that the 

personal sentiments of individual Americans tend to follow official policy in this regard, 

with the consequence that we are not on the whole a particularly racist or sexist or 

otherwise bigoted group. 

Answers to (somebody else’s) Questions about Orwell’s “Shooting and Elephant” (My 

content in italics) 

1. Who Orwell represents in the story? Does he represent the empire? How native 

people see him? 

2. What decision did Orwell make about the elephant? Why? To what extent was the 

correct decision? 

3. Why the elephant deserves to die? or live? Why Orwell shoot the elephant? What was 

his motivation?

4. What is the symbol of the elephant? Does the elephant symbolize the imperialistic 

British empire? 

5. Did Orwell feel peer pressure? Does Orwell was a powerful man? 

Beyond Questions 

1. Orwell said, there is a mask, and your face grows to fit it. In our life, How many times 

we decide to wear a mask to fit in? Are we looking to be accepted by others? 

2. Are we ever becoming ourselves? Are we always fulfilling the role that is expected of 

us? 

3. Is social media influencing our role of who we are? Are we in the puppet role? 

4. Do we have a responsibility in our homes, jobs, and community to do what is right? 

5. What am I going to do to become true to myself? Am I going to keep doing what 

others expected me to do? 

Hi Sahillys! I am a big Orwell fan, and I have read “Shooting an Elephant.” So I will try 

to answer your questions: 

1*. First of all, “Shooting an Elephant” (SAE) is not a story; it is non-fiction. Orwell was 

a civil servant in Burma, and this is a true story about one of his experiences there. 

And yes, Orwell represents the British Empire. Actually, both he and the elephant 

represent the British Empire, each of them being, its own way, wounded and faltering, 

like (so it is suggested) the British Empire.

2*. Orwell had a legal and moral duty to kill the elephant, given that it was on a 

rampage. So he did in fact behave correctly. 

3*. I don’t know that the elephant deserved to die, but it was killing people; so it had 

to be dispatched. 

4*. Yes, the elephant symbolizes the British Empire---or is meant to. Orwell was a 

liberal anti-colonialist; and the point of SAE is to depict the British Empire as 

bombastic and oppressive. 

5*. I believe that Orwell’s behavior in this context was not so much about personal 

pressure as it was about professional obligation. And no, Orwell was not a particularly 

powerful person. He never had much money or status and died in a poor house. 

1*. Some people wear masks; others don’t. Those who wear masks tend to so most of 

the time, if not all of the time. Those who don’t do so are rarely phony. 

2*. Some people are who they are and live honestly; others aren’t and don’t. We are 

not all in the same boat, as far being honest and living authentically are concerned. 

Some people embrace who they are and don’t buckle under peer pressure; others 

collapse like a house of cards. Anthropologists say that, given a group of twenty 

people, 19 do what the rest do and one decides for himself what to do. 

3*. People who are real in real life are real in social media; people who are fake in real 

life are fake in social media. The former are less drawn to social media than the latter

and are likely to use it primarily for reasons of a practical as opposed to emotional 

nature. 

4*. Yes, tautologously so. If it is right, then we have a responsibility to do it; and if it is 

wrong, we have a responsibility not to do it. These are definitional truths. 

5*. Nothing is preventing you from being you except you. People are what they choose 

to be. 


Given only the information provided, Derek should fight the holacracy initiative. 

Given additional information, the verdict might be different, but none of the 

information provided warrants decentralizing Contect; in fact, that information suggests 

that the opposite path is the appropriate one. Also, the changes involved in the 

holacracy initiative would be far-reaching and would have unpredictable consequences; 

and such an initiative would therefore be contraindicated in this context, since Contect’s 

growth has been steady and might well be jeopardized by such an initiative.

Contect is a global construction company with many regional offices. Given that 

Contect is global, it might seem to be a good idea to decentralize. After all, each of its 

branch offices knows better than central management what it has to do and what 

constraints it is operating within; and it might therefore seem reasonable to implement 

a Holacracy-style decentralization-initiative. Also, decentralization has been proven to 

be the way to go in many contexts. One way for a corporation to decentralize is for it to 

become a franchise, and sometimes this is extremely profitable, as the case of 

McDonald’s shows. 

This does not appear to be one of those times. “Without centralized oversight of 

projects,” it says in the Case Study, “any single subsidiary’s missteps risked taking down 

the entire company,” the reason being that Contect is a construction-company. 

Construction-projects are magnets for civil and criminal litigation. There is a high 

probability of deliberately or accidentally violating local laws. If a Contect regional 

manager decides to cut costs by flouting some regulation, the result could be large 

numbers of deaths and injuries, a likely result being that Contect as a whole is targeted 

for criminal and civil actions and either shut down because of a legal action or 

bankrupted out of existence. Also, we know about a case where poor decisions on the 

part of a Contect regional office led to losses of approximately $700,000,000 as well as 

loss of reputation.

It’s one thing to make Big Macs. It is quite another to make buildings. There is a 

single uniform recipe for all Big Macs. There cannot possibly be anything similar in the 

case of buildings. In addition, success in the construction-business is largely about not 

making mistakes. Suppose that Contect builds 100 buildings that don’t fall down and 

one building that does fall down. That one building is more than enough to shut off 

Contect’s lights and possibly put its leaders in prison. Of course, if there is a case of 

food-poisoning at a single McDonald’s, that too could cause major problems for the 

McDonald’s corporation. But McDonald’s can hedge against that by insisting that all 

franchises strictly follow a script; and this is not possible in the case of Contect, since no 

two buildings are the same. 

In some contexts, decentralization is appropriate. A personal acquaintance of 

mine runs an extremely successful online consulting business; and although he is the 

boss, each employee has almost complete autonomy. This person (let’s call him 

“Smith”) is himself very talented and he hired five or six very talented people; he finds 

them business and in exchange they ‘kick up’ a percentage, but nobody gives orders to 

anybody. His motto is “hire good people and leave them alone.” Smith’s overhead costs 

are minimal; there is no bureaucratic redundancy; and everyone who works for him is 

happy, since they have complete freedom. At Smith’s firm, there are no group meetings. 

When Smith meets with people, it is always one-on-one. And those occasions are rare. If

an employee is underperforming, he is given a brief warning or just let go; and if he is 

performing adequately, he is not likely to hear anything. 

I know another person (let’s call him “Brown”) who started a consulting business 

in a similar professional area. Brown’s business-model is very different from Smith’s. 

Brown wants rules and predictability; and he insists on regular group-meetings and 

group-outings, and the like. The problem is that Brown’s company is small, and its 

employees find it hard to bring clients in, or to service existing clients, without getting 

blowback of some kind from Brown. Brown managed to borrow millions of dollars to 

start his business, which is why his business is still up and running, but it has been losing 

money since day one, unlike Smith’s business, which began with a $20,000 loan and is 

making money since day one. 

The kind of anarchical approach to management that Brian Robertson is talking 

about makes a lot of sense when profits depend on creativity, as is the case with Smith’s 

firm; and it also makes a lot of sense when well-defined procedures can take the place 

of central management, as is the case with McDonald’s. It makes less sense with a 

company, such as Contect, whose product is buildings, as opposed to ideas, and whose 

production-process cannot in any way be predetermined by some McFormula. 

Implementing Holacracy might benefit Contect, but it would also be extremely risky; and 

the risk is not worth taking, since Contect is currently doing well.


Instructions: Please answer the questions below. The length of your written case 

assignment form responses should be approximately one to one and a half pages, single 


reasonably detailed and insightful answers to the questions below. 

You have a decision to make as Nash. To simplify things, assume that you can 

either (A.) sell the property to Fledgling (you won’t face legal repercussions), or (B.) not 

sell the property (delaying the sale while you investigate the toxic waste will likely kill the 

sale). 

1. What/who are the main stakeholders to your decision? List them with a brief 

explanation. 

The stakeholders are all of the parties who stand to be affected by my (Nash’s) decision. 

Nash. Therefore, 

*I myself am a major stakeholder, since I stand to lose my job and even my career if I 

make the wrong decision (and also, indeed, if I make the right one).

*DAC as a whole is another stakeholder---and probably the largest one, since its 

solvency is at stake, as well as its reputation. 

*All employees of DAC are stakeholders, with higher ranking employees having 

commensurately more at stake than lower ranking ones. 

*The people who are planning on purchasing the land are stakeholders. And finally 

*Anyone whose health might be adversely affected by the deal is a stakeholder, since, 

of course, one’s health is one’s most important asset. 

2. What would you do? Sell it or not sell it? Why? 

The question is not whether or not to sell, but whether or not to make all parties 

involved aware of the relevant facts. And the answer to that question is: yes. I know that 

there are threats to people’s health on that land, and I have a moral, if not a legal, 

obligation to apprise any people who might be either selling or buying that land of those 

facts. 

I have a moral obligation to the people who are buying it, because the deal will 

not be in good faith if I don’t do so and also because, if they aren’t given this 

information, their own health and those of their tenants will be jeopardized, not to 

mention that they may well be lost to criminal and civil liability.

Also, if I don’t make Williams, my boss, aware of the relevant facts, then, first of 

all, he won’t be in a position to make a morally informed decision and, what’s more, he 

could blame the entire situation on me if all goes awry, which is very likely. 

3. Please indicate whether your decision in 2. is more consistent with utilitarianism, 

profit maximization, or universalism, and explain why. 

I would make Williams aware of the facts. For practical reasons, I would tell him 

that I was doing this to protect the airline’s reputation and to protect him civil and 

criminal fallout. I would also point out to him that the airline’s current cashflow 

problems would be negligible compared to the problems to which not disclosing the 

situation might lead. Finally, we have no idea how the buyers will react: for all we know, 

they will still want the land, granting that they will probably be able to bargain down the 

price. 

We are dealing a potential case of serious criminal negligence. Further, I don’t 

even know that I would lose out financially by coming clean with Williams and also with 

the buyers. Finally, if Williams is smart, then he knows that, if he greenlights the deal 

without disclosing what he knows, I will be a witness to what he did. This does not mean 

that Williams let me keep my job. But if he fires me, I will still have my reputation and 

my integrity; and if I don’t tell him, I will very likely lose both. And the situation being 

what it is, the probability is that I will eventually lose both. Conclusion: Tell Williams and

give him the chance to come clean with the buyers; and if he doesn’t, play the hero and 

go them directly, which, as Williams knows, would make it hard for him to fire me 

without turning himself into a villain and which, in addition, is the right thing to do. 


Instructions: Please answer the questions below. The length of your video case 

assignment form responses should be approximately one page, single spaced. This form 

will be graded on a pass/fail basis. To pass, you need to provide reasonably detailed and 

insightful answers to the questions below. 

1. After part one if the video case, Julia is confronted with a decision: Should 

she turn left, into town, and report the accident to the police? Or should she turn right 

and go home? What do you think is the most ethical decision? 

Obviously, the ethical decision is to take responsibility. In a way, the fact 

that it was ‘accidental’---in the sense that it was caused by negligence—makes the 

situation less morally complicated, not more. Suppose that, for some reason or other, 

had targeted this person, perhaps because of a vendetta or perhaps simply because she

was just plain evil. In that case, of course, her act of killing the other person would have 

been unambiguously evil, but her subsequent act of not turning herself in, though itself 

evil in its right, would at least have not been hypocritical. 

Moreover, she would not 

under that circumstance have been guilty of negligence---that is, of simply not taking full 

responsibility for her own actions before committing them. It is not too much to 

demand of a person that they not drink and drive and also that they not, while driving, 

rummage around items that they drop. I myself constantly have occasion to drive while 

tired or under the influence of Ambien, and I myself also frequently have occasion to 

change the radio while driving or to pick up items that I drop. But I don’t---not because I 

morally perfect, but simply because I am not a complete degenerate. 

But Julia was negligent, and her behavior was hypocritical. She had spent 

the entire evening reveling in accolades given to her for her civic mindedness. But then 

when the very same social system that conferred those honors demanded that she take 

care to drive carefully, she failed to do so; and when it then required her to take 

responsibility for this lapse of hers, she again failed to take responsibility. 

Julia’s failure to turn herself, though understandable, bespoke a lack of 

integrity as well as a lack of regard for the very community-norms that she allowed 

herself to be so praised for upholding, and she therefore cannot be said to have 

behaved rightly in not turning herself in.

Of course, the de rigueur response is that such considerations are 

irrelevant, since we have to consider the hypothetical as it is presented to us, not as it 

might be were it real. But moral injunctions derive their force from their ability to hold 

up when the facts continue to pile on. It is easy to fabricate some context in which it 

would benefit one more to skip out on a debt than to pay it; but the moral injunction 

derives its practical forces from the hard-learned lessons about the consequences of not 

paying one’s debts, the same being true of the moral injunction to turn oneself in for 

crimes for which one simply ‘knows’ one would otherwise not be held responsible. 

2. After watching the second part of the video case (i.e., “part 3), do you think 

you made the right choice for Julia? That is, does part 3 change anything for you? 

It does not. If anything, the fact that the other driver was drunk means 

that, from a purely utilitarian perspective, Julia should have turned herself in. For had 

she done so, she would have been commended for her honesty and probably also 

legally exonerated. But as it stands, she is a liar and law-breaker, her decision puts on 

the wrong side not only of universalist but also quite possible of utilitarian conceptions 

of morality.

3. Please indicate whether your decision in 1. is more consistent with 

utilitarianism or universalism, and explain why. 

Assuming for argument’s sake that the various beneficiaries of Julia’s 

teaching and charitable deeds really did depend on her specifically for assistance, then 

her decision to skip out taking responsibility for her crime is justifiable from a utilitarian 

perspective, the reason being that the more would suffer than would benefit from her 

going to jail or otherwise losing her ability to continue her charitable work. From a 

Kantian or Universalist perspective, according to which moral laws are inviolable and are 

not mere means to desired ends, then, of course, her conduct was immoral. That said, if 

psychological and sociological realities are taken into account, it is less than clear that 

the utilitarian and universalist verdicts would differ. In all likelihood, the loss of selfrespect 

that Julia would like experience might well undermine her moral fiber and, for 

that reason, her ability and willingness to continue her work. Also, in all likelihood, there 

would be people who could step into the breech if she had to stop her work. People 

have great respect for people who take responsibility, and had Julia done so, she might 

well have been given a pass, and also retained her self-respect, none of which will 

happen if she continues the cover-up and is then found out.



Section I. There are two ways to implement this proposal: relative to one of them, there 

may be a moral dilemma; and relative to the other, there is no moral dilemma. Taken 

one way, Brittany is proposing that high-quality pizza be given to the guests at 

competitive prices through a ‘front’ of sorts, this front being a hotel-service that is 

posing as an independent business. Taken another way, Brittany is proposing that the 

hotel go into the Pizza business. In other words, she is proposing a line-extension: 

instead of simply providing lodging and other strictly hotel-related services, the hotel 

will also provide pizza, doing so not just for hotel-guests but for the general public. 

Regardless of how her proposal is interpreted, the primary stakeholders are the 

same, these being: the hotel-owners, including shareholders and creditors, the hotelemployees, 

the hotel guests, and the general pizza-consuming public. If the hotel 

launches an independent pizza business, which sells and delivers pizza to the general 

public, then the general public is more of a stakeholder than it would be if the pizzaservice 

is implemented in a purely in-house way; but it is a stakeholder either way, since 

it is either being given or denied a valuable service. Also, regardless of how the proposal

is carried out, competitor pizza-providers are also stakeholders, with the qualification 

that, unlike the other stakeholders, they are negatively affected if the venture in 

question is a success. 

Of course, Brittany’s proposal can simply be rejected, which means that there are 

three options, each with distinctive effects on the various stakeholders involved. 

Importantly, the ethical complexion of the case depends very much on the quality and 

prices of the pizza being provided. But in keeping with the terms of the hypothetical, we 

will operate on the assumption that the pizza continues to be reasonably priced and of 

high quality. 

Stakeholders 

Decision A: In-house 

Decision B: Hotel- 

Decision C: Reject 

Pizza Service Posing as 

based Pizza Service 

Brittany’s Proposal 

Independent Service 

that also Services 

altogether and make 

General Public 

no changes 

Hotel 

++ Explanation: The 

++ Explanation: The 

- Explanation: 

Management/Proprietors 

hotel gains 

hotel gains 

The hotel loses 

revenue/prestige. 

revenue/prestige. 

revenue and 

has to pay to 

deal with pizza

oxes and 

other wasteproducts 

generated by 

payments 

made to rival 

businesses. 

Hotel Guests 

+ Explanation: A high- 

++ Explanation: A 


quality, reasonably 

high-quality, 

The hotel 

priced product is made 

reasonably priced 

guests are 

available to them, albeit 

product is made 

deprived of a 

with an element of 

available to them. 

potentially 

deception (hence only 

good source of 

one plus). 

pizza. 

General Pizza-consuming 


++ Explanation: They 


Public 

They are not 

are not provided 

They are not 

provided with an 

with an extra source 

provided with 

extra source of 

of pizza. The pizza- 

an extra 

pizza. The pizza- 

market is enriched. 

source of 

pizza. The

market is not 

enriched. 

pizza-market is 

not enriched. 

Section II. There are three frameworks within which to evaluate the available 

options in this context: utilitarian, universalist, and profit-maximization. It will be argued 

that, in this particular case, all of these frameworks yield the same verdict, the reason 

being that in the long-term it is hard for a business to be profitable if it isn’t benefiting 

its consumers. 

Let us consider each of the three possible decisions, beginning with the decision 

to reject Brittany’s proposal. In that case, the hotel loses money. It probably has to raise 

costs in order to compensate for these losses. Customers end up being gouged, not to 

mention that they miss out on a nice dining experience, and the hotel loses business. 

Now let us suppose that the hotel has an inhouse pizza-service that poses as an 

independent business. First of all, a business’s obligation is to provide agreed upon 

services for agreed upon prices. If you pay me to build you a swimming pool, what 

matters is whether the job gets done at the agreed upon price. If I pretend to 

subcontract to my cousin Jerry, while in fact doing the job myself, that is irrelevant, so 

long as you are not being deceived as to the quality of the work being done. The only 

material considerations in this sort of context are (i) quality of work and (ii) paymentrelated 

agreements. (In some contexts—for example, with lawyers or financial-service

providers---there can be conflict-of-interest issues; but that is not an operative 

consideration in the pool-case or the pizza-case. Also, conflicts of interest are only 

material because they impact quality of service: a lawyer can’t effectively represent 

opposing parties, after all.) 

Also, in-house businesses of this kind are very common. I personally have never 

been to a hotel where there weren’t restaurants and sometimes other services that had 

their own names and branding but clearly had no existence outside of the hotel in 

question. Plus, if the hotel actually invests in special uniforms for the delivery-personnel 

and otherwise enhances branding, the effect is not so much to deceive customers as to 

enhance their experience. People will happily pay $200 for a $10 steak if they are also 

given nice service. The mark-up becomes unambiguously ethically problematic only 

when it is used to hide low-quality. If I charge you $200 for a steak and a show (possibly 

in the form of a well-attired delivery-person) and I only give you a steak, then I am in 

breech; but if I give you both, I am not in breech. 

From a utilitarian standpoint, this would be a respectable option; from a 

universalist perspective, this would be questionable, given the element of dishonesty 

involved; and from a profit-maximization perspective, it would be questionable, since it 

is not clear whether the expenses incurred would be offset by the hotel’s own pizzaconsuming 

base.

Consequently, the ideal path here would be to create a pizza service that also 

services the general public. This would eliminate any hint of dishonesty and would also 

broaden the service’s customer-base, which would help defray the various sunk costs 

involved in purchasing the uniforms, doing in-house promotion, and the like. Also, there 

would be little reason not to go this route, since most of the work, including the 

branding as well as product-creation, would already have been done. This approach, 

assuming that it was properly carried out, would therefore be optimal from all three of 

the perspectives in question, granting, of course, that no business venture can be known 

with certainty to succeed. 

As for the null path, that of simply rejecting Brittany’s offer, that would be safe in 

the short-term but would eat into the hotel’s bottom line and would also cut the hotel 

out of a potentially lucrative market, while also depriving the public of a great pizza. 

This case helps us weigh in on the debate between John Mackay and Milton 

Friedman, Friedman’s position being that a business’s sole concern is to profit, since the 

‘invisible hand’ of the market will take care of any ethical problems involved, and 

Mackay’s position being that a business has to meet the market half-way when it comes 

to holding itself to ethical norms. Ultimately, Mackay’s position is the right one. 

Businesses do not profit by being ethical; they profit by giving their customers what they 

want. If the general public wants toxic waste and assassins-for-hire, businesses can 

profit by providing these unethical services.

Friedman seems to hold that transactional ethics are identical with ethics in 

general, which they often are but sometimes are not. Economists, including Kenneth 

Arrow and Amartya Sen, have focused a great deal in the last few decades on negative 

‘externalities’ which the market’s invisible hand does not do a very good job of 

mitigating, an externality being an unintended by-product of an economic transaction. 

Heavy industry generates pollution; for-profit prisons incentivize the manufacturing of 

crime; and unregulated agriculture incentivizes the creation of cheap but unhealthy 

foods. These are all examples of externalities, and the free market has not been proven 

to do as good a job of mitigating them as Friedman and other free-marketeers hold. This 

means that it is incumbent either on government regulation or the moral integrity of 

business-owners to do damage control. 

Another problem that Friedman overlooks is that, when not restrained either by 

ethics or law, businesses tend to collude with government. The government is staffed by 

human beings who need to eat and pay rent, the same being true of businesses; and it is 

only to be expected that, given the opportunity, businesses will do their best to use the 

government to shut out competitors and also to insulate themselves from the law. 

Realistically speaking, if someone is running a $20,000,000,000 business, they are likely 

to make donations to politicians, who in their turn will be expected to curb regulatory 

and law-enforcement agencies. Without either government regulation or personal

integrity on the part of executives, it is likely that such collusion will rise to unacceptable 

levels. 

All of this said, Friedman’s position is still more true than false and isn’t as 

opposed to Mackay’s position as it initially seems to be. A business that is focused only 

on the bottom line is likely in the long run to do shoddy work and therefore to fail 

financially. If the public detests you and your product, which they will if you are illserving 

them and also squeezing out competitors, it will be hard to stay afloat, even 

with government cooperation. The reason is simply that the economy is much too large 

even for the government to control, this being why Enron and Bernie Madoff and 

Lehman Brothers, came to a screeching and disastrous halt. Each was ‘chummy’ with 

regulators, but there is only so much regulators can do to pacify shareholders who have 

lost everything. So yes—Friedman is probably right that economic rationality probably 

does eliminate many negative externalities, but he also probably overestimates the 

extent to which economic actors are long-term rational. 

Section III. I would choose to create the pizza service, complete with new branding, and 

would at least offer it to the general public, so as to offset the possible element of 

dishonesty and also to test market-demand for what might prove to be a lucrative 

product. The hotel has already gone to the trouble of creating a pizza that is as good as

that of its competitors. If it takes no action, it will continue to lose money, which 

decision would be a loser relative to each of the moral frameworks in question. 

At the same time, if it goes to the trouble of buying special outfits for delivery 

personnel, giving them the requisite training, and so on, then it might as offer the pizza 

to the general public, since it would at that point have created the product and 

branding; and if it wanted to offer the product to the public, it would be all but ready to 

do so, give or take some non-trivial but manageable concerns relating to delivery and 

production-capacity. 

This would be 100% honest and, if successful, would maximize the benefit to all 

of the stakeholders. Further, there is already proof-of-product, meaning that the hotel’s 

pizza is already known to be good; and, of course, all of the investment in machinery 

and personnel is already at this point sunk, making a maximum-value approach 

advisable. Of course, the do-nothing approach is an option, but businesses that shirk 

from opportunities to grow tend to die, and it also isn’t clear that it is an option for the 

hotel, given how much it is already losing in pizza-based revenue. In conclusion, the lineextension 

option, involving a real pizza business servicing both hotel guests and nonguests, 

is from all the relevant perspectives the indicated path.



The video-series (“Human all too human: Sartre”) made a number of striking facts 

about Sartre’s life clear. First, he initially very much seemed to try to live in accordance 

with his own existentialism. He very much tried to live freely and not to surrender his 

identity to cultural norms or to other people’s expectations of him. I have read Being 

and Nothingness many times, and the purity and simplicity of its message is striking: Be 

free or be fake. That is its message. And it’s not just asserting it; it is providing a credible 

metaphysical defense of it. 

The idea is that mind, being representational, must be a kind of cavity---or 

‘nothingness’—into which the rest of the world is able to reflect itself. Were the mind as 

much a ‘fullness’ as other beings, so it is argued, then it wouldn’t have the reflectiveness 

(or ‘intentionality’, to use Brentano’s term, which Sartre also uses) characteristic of 

mind. Being a kind of non-being, so to speak, mind is not subject to the usual 

determinisms that govern the rest of reality and is therefore inherently free, attempts 

on our part to believe otherwise being so much ‘bad faith’, as Sartre puts it.

This reasoning, though obviously questionable, is impressive; and even if it does 

not itself go through, the proposition that Sartre is attempting to establish—namely, 

that if we don’t live freely, then we aren’t really living at all—can and should be 

accepted. 

The video seemed to suggest that, for a while, Sartre himself did accept this, his 

acceptance of it being manifested in the creativity and originality of his brilliant early 

works, such as Nausea (1938) and Being and Nothingness (1943). But then, it seems to 

me, he ceased to accept it. This happened in two phases. First, his acceptance of it 

assumed degraded forms: instead of continuing to be an iconoclastic thinker, he 

became a rather garden-variety debauched party-boy, drinking to excess and carrying 

on with, and therefore presumably manipulating, multiple women at the same time. 

Many philosophers, including very ancient ones such as Confucius, have been quick to 

distinguish between genuine freedom, on the one hand, and mere self-indulgence, on 

the other. At some point, Sartre’s behavior down-shifted from the one to the other. The 

cause, I suspect, was the extreme success of his early work, which turned him into an 

icon, which in turn made him self-important and soft. Note that all of the works of his 

that are still read were published at the very beginning of his career: Nausea (1938), The 

Imagination (1940), Being and Nothingness (1943), and No Exit (1940). In addition to 

being his best works and to being the ones for which he is still famous, they are also the 

ones that catapulted him to fame.

But after he became famous, his work deteriorated. Although he published quite 

a lot during the 50s, the only work of his from that period that is at all widely read is 

Existentialism is a Humanism, which, though it makes some good points, is just a 20 

page, watered down version of Being and Nothingness. To its credit, it does contain the 

famous phrase: existence precedes essence, which, as Star Trek fans know, was 

paraphrased as “existence precedes programming” by a robot that became self-aware 

and consequently became free. In any case, Sartre’s 1950s work simply didn’t have the 

same ‘zip’ as his earlier work. 

The second phase of Sartre’s degeneration was his descent into Marxism. First of 

all, Marxism seems to be the opposite of Sartre’s existentialism. The basic precept of 

existentialism is: you are free to choose your own fate—indeed, you have no choice but 

to do so. The basic precept of Marxism is: You are not free to choose your own fate, 

since your socioeconomic status has already decided it for you. (Later versions of 

Marxism would say that your gender, sexual orientation, and ethnicity, as well as your 

socioeconomic status, co-determine your life-situation.) So it is deeply unclear how an 

existentialist can also be a Marxist. 

Sartre spent the 1960s and 1970s trying to reconcile existentialism and Marxism, 

his main effort in this direction being a giant work called Critique of Dialectical 

Reasoning. I personally don’t know whether this work has merit. I have made several

attempts to read it, but simply found it boring and unintelligible; and I was struck by the 

contrast with his fast-paced and highly readable early works. 

The video does a good job of discussing this part of Sartre’s career. The one 

interviewee really nailed it when he said that Sartre’s Marxism was really about his 

ceasing to be the upstart that he once was and becoming a member of a tired old 

establishment. In other words, Sartre’s Marxism, though superficially about him being a 

rebel, was about him selling out. And it was this loss of his old existentialism-based 

identity that made his later work so boring. His early work had one focus: existentialism. 

His later work had two foci: existentialism and Marxism—which meant it had no focus, 

which made it incoherent and therefore boring. 


This story is told from the viewpoint of a highly emotionally sensitive woman, 

who in times past would have been classified as ‘neurasthenic’, meaning, in effect, that 

she had a persistent case of ‘raw nerves.’ The woman lives in a room by herself. She 

never seems to leave the room, even though it is a part of a large house, which is also 

occupied by her husband. Her husband is a medical doctor and is also functioning, 

ominously, as her personal medical doctor—more specifically, as her psychiatrist. (And, 

like many psychiatrists, he is not, it turns out, a particularly good one.) It is clear from

the beginning of the story that the woman is emotionally troubled and, at the very least, 

extremely neurotic. 

But there is a great deal about her condition that is not clear. It is not clear 

whether she is basically a normal, if highly sensitive woman, who has experienced a bit 

of emotional throttling or, on the contrary, whether she has a had full-on psychotic 

break with reality. At the beginning of the story, we are led to believe that she is more 

on the neurotic side of the spectrum, but at the end it is revealed by that she is very 

much at the psychotic extreme. 

The story consists for the most part of the woman’s pondering her husband’s 

alleged failure to have a genuinely emotional, as opposed to narrowly clinical, 

understanding of her condition. Her husband has very clearly written her off as a 

demented woman, who, for reasons of protocol, must be tolerated and treated with a 

certain degree of civility but not sympathized with or respected. The woman’s 

grievances about her husband prove to be justified, and as the story progresses, it 

begins to emerge that her complaints about him are seriously understated, as he is 

driven not by cold professionalism but by ill-will and hatred towards his wife. 

At the same time, the woman’s mental condition is increasingly clearly that of 

somebody who is completely psychotic, as is evidenced by her fixation with, and 

delusions concerning, the peeling yellow wallpaper in her room, which represents her 

unravelling soul.

At the end of the story, it is revealed that, contrary to what the woman herself 

has believed all along and also to what the reader has assumed, the woman is a prisoner 

and is simply trapped in that room—much as, so it is suggested, she is trapped in her 

own madness. 


This is a story about a schoolteacher, who is the narrator, and his younger heroinaddicted 

brother Sonny. The story starts with the narrator reading in the newspaper 

that Sonny had been arrested in a drug-sting. The narrator later finds out from mutual 

acquaintances that Sonny will be released from jail after he ‘detoxes.’ 

It is clear from the very beginning of the story that the narrator’s relationship 

with Sonny is weak and ambiguous, with occasional spasms of concern and interest. 

With the passage of time, the narrator’s heart has softened, partly because his own 

daughter died and left him with an emotional need for family, and he writes a letter to 

Sonny, asking to reunite. They do so, but constantly fight, mainly because the brother 

wants to be allowed to continue to live his bohemian life, heroin-addiction included, and 

the narrator, being a by-the-book schoolteacher, sees little legitimacy in such a lifestyle. 

The narrator eventually finds out that Sonny is a talented pianist who has made a name

for himself in the local jazz scene. This greatly increases his respect for Sonny and makes 

him more willing to accept Sonny into his life. 


Smith: Brown! How are you, my friend? How did you like those two stories? 

Brown: I very much liked The Yellow Wallpaper (YP). I’m not sure how I felt about 

Sonny’s Blues (SB). 

Smith: When you say “not sure…”, do you actually mean you’re not sure? Or are 

you politely saying that it didn’t work for you? 

Brown: It didn’t work for me. 

Smith: That’s surprising, because I know you like non-fiction, or non-fiction-like, 

stories about wayward lifestyles and the gritty realities they involve. 

Brown: I do. But SB didn’t work for me. 

Smith: Why not? 

Brown: First of all, the main character---the narrator—was boring. He had a 

boring outlook, and I got the feeling that his job was just a kind of prop. And I didn’t 

really know what he was supposed to represent. 

Smith: I can kind of see that.

Brown: On the one hand, he was supposed to be this square schoolteacher, 

which I can certainly understand. But then there were these weird flashes of bitterness 

about racial injustice, among other things, that, although morally justified, had no real 

foundation in the character. They just came out of the blue. 

Smith: I got that feeling myself. The main character was supposed to be a blank— 

a mirror that reflected reality---but sometimes he would stop being a blank and would 

go into an angry political mode, which, however justified historically, didn’t cohere with 

the rest of the character’s personality. 

Brown: Yes, frankly, I felt that way too. I didn’t really know what the story was 

about. I mean, there were really only two characters: the main one, who was just kind of 

a run-of-the-mill narrator, and Sonny, who, apart from his piano-talent, had no 

particularly good or interesting qualities. 

Smith: Yes, and there seemed to be an understanding to the effect that all of this 

was a consequence of racism, or some such, and maybe it was. But if the story is just 

considered on its own terms—if it’s just read as a story about a man and his brother, 

rather than as a political diatribe—it doesn’t really work very well. 

Brown: No, it doesn’t. Not in my view, anyway. And there was undischarged 

premise there, something to the effect that Sonny was a lost soul who would not have 

been lost in a non-racist society. Which may or may not be true and which, in any case, 

didn’t really make for very engaging reading, I’m sorry to say.

Smith: What about YP? What did you think of that? 

Brown: That one I very much liked. 

Smith: Which is ironic, given that you’re a male and the main character isn’t. 

Brown: Yes, that’s an irony, I suppose. But I still liked it. 

Smith: Because..? 

Brown: Because it was realistic. Especially the way the woman’s delusions were 

intertwined with accurate emotional perceptions. 

Smith: Explain please. 

Brown: Ok. So obviously the woman’s belief that she lived in the wallpaper, or 

whatever her delusion was, was indeed a delusion. But her beliefs about her husband’s 

emotional disposition towards her was accurate. 

Smith: That makes sense. 

Brown: And I think what drove her insane was her awareness, her unconscious 

awareness, of her husband’s actual feelings. 

Smith: So was it the fact that she was aware of her husband’s feelings that drove 

her mad, or was it the fact that she was unconsciously aware of her husband’s feeling? 

Brown: The latter. If she had known, consciously and lucidly, what her husband 

was really about, it would not have driven her mad, since frank acceptances of ugly 

realities, though unpleasant, don’t undermine mental health.

Smith: So it was the fact that she was aware of her husband’s actual disposition 

towards her but couldn’t admit it. 

Brown: Right, she couldn’t admit it---except by going into a kind of perpetual 

dream-like state. 

Smith: You’re referring to her psychosis. 

Brown: Yes, psychosis being, as Freud said, a prolonged waking dream. 

Smith: Hoo boy! 

Brown: Yes, it’s heavy. That’s why I liked the story. 

Smith: You liked it because it was heavy, or because it was accurate? 

Brown: It wouldn’t have been heavy if it had not been psychologically accurate. 

Smith: Good point, Brown. Good point. 


Albert Camus is reported to have said that “fiction is a lie through which we tell 

the truth.” 172 Before taking this class, my position on fiction was that it was just a lie, 

albeit a harmless and entertaining one. I have always enjoyed reading science fiction, for 

example; and I have always been an avid movie buff, albeit of the unsophisticated type 

172 

https://www.azquotes.com/author/2398-Albert_Camus/tag/lying

who prefers Spielberg to Fellini. And had it not been for this class, this would still be my 

position. 

But it isn’t. To be honest, I took this class because I had to. But after I read the 

first few stories, I experienced a major shift. I remember the very moment when it 

happened. It was when I was reading “Young Goodman Brown” that it occurred to me: 

fiction isn’t fiction! Fiction is a way that we confront that which we could not otherwise 

confront. What is “Young Goodman Brown” about? There is a young man who has 

absurdly simplistic views about his wife and, indeed, the rest of humanity. He assumes 

that they are all magically free of the impulses that he knows himself to have. Goodman 

Brown is, by all accounts, a decent person; but he is indeed a person—a biological 

organism, with aggressive and libidinal urges—and he is surely guilty of a certain degree 

of self-deception in assuming his wife and other community members to be the 

paragons of purity that they make themselves out to be. 

And that is the whole point of the story. He sets out on a journey and discovers 

that his wife and fellow villagers are all ‘Satanists.’ Then he wakes up! It was all a dream! 

But, of course, it wasn’t. What does it mean, after all, to say that his (appropriately 

named) beloved wife Faith is a ‘Satanist’? What does it mean, really, to say that anybody 

is a ‘Satanist’? It means that they are a human being. People have religions that force 

them to be pure because they are not pure; and they are not pure not because they are 

categorically evil, but because human beings are four parts animal and one part human

(if that makes any sense); and the human side of us knows that, if we are to live in 

harmony, we must suppress our animalistic side, this being one of the functions of 

religion and also of law. A ‘Satanist’ is somebody who makes a point of publicly 

acknowledging that we are more animal than we care to admit; and since each of us has 

no choice but to admit this, if only to ourselves, we are all, after a fashion, Satanists. 

So the point of “Young Goodman Brown” is really that human beings are indeed 

more ‘human’---or sub-human, depending on how you look at it—then people care to 

admit. It was when I was finishing reading this story that I realized---that the point of 

fiction is to disclose, not to hide. Playing Devil’s Advocate, I asked myself: ‘But if that is 

true, why didn’t Hawthorne just come out and say what I just said?’ 

‘Suppose he had done so,’ I answered. ‘If he had done that, he would have just 

produced a boring treatise that wouldn’t resonate with people.’ People don’t respond 

to theories particularly well, sometimes because they are emotionally resistant to them 

but usually because they are too abstract and don’t connect with people in the same 

experiential way as stories. 

But then I realized there was another objection to my theory: ‘If writing is about 

baring the depths of the human psyche,’ I asked myself, ‘why don’t writers just stick to 

true crime and other non-fiction genres?’ This one stumped me for a while, partly 

because I myself used to be an avid true crime reader. But then it hit me: true crime 

describes what only a few people do, but fiction describes how everybody feels. The

people described in true crime books are mentally ill, and usually quite devoid of 

morality, and their acts are not merely about garden-variety impulses coming to the 

surface; they are also about a lack of morality specific to such people. So when we read 

about criminals and serial killers, we aren’t really getting the whole story: we are 

certainly witnessing the deprave side of humanity, but we aren’t seeing the conflicts to 

which it gives rise in most people. 

But that is what we are seeing in “Young Goodman Brown.” Faith is not Ted 

Bundy; she is not a monster. She is a normal person, with an animalistic side and a 

moral side, the same being true, to varying degrees, of Goodman Brown’s townsfolk and 

of Goodman Brown himself. And if we just focus on non-fiction—on history, on what 

people have done—we don’t see the conflicts; we don’t see the really important part of 

the story. It is only through fiction that we see the inner story. 

Many years ago, when I was in high school, I read “Bartleby the Scrivener.” I had 

not the slightest idea what it was about, the reason being that, back then, the whole 

idea that fiction was about exposing psychological realities was alien to me. But this 

time, I understood it. In the years since high school, I have known people on the autism 

spectrum; and I have known people who, though not autistic, retreated into Bartlebylike 

cocoons of isolation. The people I am thinking of actually ended up having Bartlebylike 

jobs, one as a paralegal, the other as a statistician in the bowels of an investment 

bank. Both acted like Bartleby; they were rigid and unbelievably stubborn. When I read

“Bartleby”, I realized that they were deeply angry; and since they were so powerless, all 

they could do was refuse to do as told. 

If I had been told this before re-reading Bartleby in the context of this class, I 

would simply have laughed. But I now see it as a simple truth—one that I had to be told 

through fiction to grasp. 

The story that struck me the most in this class was Kafka’s “The Hunger Artist.” 

Like the other two stories just discussed, this one is realistic enough that we can relate it 

to personal experience while being just so skewed that we see the emotional realities 

beneath the familiar surfaces. We are all familiar with the term ‘starving artist’ and also 

with the corresponding concept. And in many ways, what is being described in Kafka’s 

story is very normal: there is an artist—or ‘freak’, depending on how you look at it--- 

being jeered at by an unappreciative public. So far, so good; and at first, I thought the 

point of this story was just that artists are not understood by their peers. But then when 

I read it a second time, and then a third, I realized that Kafka, though himself an artist, 

was not on the side of the artist in his story. Kafka seemed to have contempt for him. 

Kafka’s attitude towards the Starving Artist is similar to his attitude towards Gregor 

Samsa: he sees the latter as a cockroach, and that is how he sees the former. He sees 

both as fussy and small, and his story exposes a streak of narcissism and grandiosity in 

the so-called ‘starving artist’---none of which he could have done, at least not so

poignantly, had he expressed himself through theories or through non-fictional 

descriptions of actual human beings. 

What I have learned in this class, therefore, is that, whereas non-fiction tells the 

truth about the outer, fiction tells the truth about the inner. Fiction is not, I now realize, 

mere entertainment. It is the most transparent window we have into the soul, and that 

is why all civilizations hold their myths and fables in such high regard. 

Summaries with Analysis of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Hawthorn’s Young Goodman 

Brown 

Summary of A Doll’s House: Nora Helmer, wife of banker Torvald Helmer, is living 

grandly, spending lavishly on Christmas presents and other non-necessaries. Her 

husband takes note and is put off by this, but on the surface continues to seem loving. 

Ms. Linde, a friend of Nora’s, comes by the house and asks Nora to persuade 

Torvald to get her (Ms. Linde) a job at his bank. She needs the money, she explains, 

because her recently deceased husband left her penniless. Nora discloses to Ms. Linde 

that, with the collusion of a bank employee named Krogstad, she (Nora) had 

fraudulently obtained a loan, which she used to help Torvald, who was ill at the time, go 

on a medically necessary vacation.

Krogstad drops by and reveals that he knows that Torvald, who is his boss, is 

going to fire him; and he says that unless Nora convinces him not to do so, he will reveal 

her crime to Torvald. Despite Nora’s best efforts, Norvald fires Krogstad and he sends a 

letter outing Nora to Torvald. 

It turns out that Krogstad was previously in a serious relationship with Ms. Linde 

and is still in love with her, despite being angry that she dumped him for a (now 

deceased) wealthier man. Ms. Linde nonetheless manages to reactivate her relationship 

with Krogstad. It is not entirely clear why she does so, but the supposed reason is to 

convince Krogstad not to bring the law down on Nora. 

Nora succeeds in softening Krogstad’s heart, and he drops the whole matter. But 

the damage is done, since Torvald has read the letter and, without formally divorcing 

Nora, emotionally disowns her. 

Nora then realizes that her marriage with Torvald was a fraud, as he never had 

any real emotional connection to her and kept her on only as a trophy-doll for his 

perfect dollhouse-life. She then realizes that she must be the master of her own life if 

she is to be happy. 

Summary of Young Goodman Brown: Recently married Goodman Brown, an earnest 

young man, announces to his wife, Faith, that he must go on a long journey on foot in 

the forest. She begs him not to go, telling him how dangerous such an expedition might

e; but he goes anyway. In the woods, he crosses paths with Satan. While walking and 

talking, Goodman Brown and the Devil cross paths with many friends of Goodman’s 

from back in his home village, all of whom, it turns out, are Satanists who are en route 

to a Luciferian gathering of some kind. When it turns out that Faith is one of these 

Satanists, Goodman wakes up: It was all a dream! 

Analysis of both stories: Both stories are about growing up and parting with childish 

fictions about other people’s motivations. More specifically, each story is about a 

member of the one gender finding out about the motivations of members of the other 

gender. Torvald cares about status and he wants a trophy wife. Nora idiotically thought 

that he loved her, but he was actually just using her. For Torvald, Nora was simply a kind 

of animate ‘doll.’ 

Goodman Brown thought that his wife was pure and innocent. But she wasn’t-- 

not because she is a bad person, but because she is indeed a person, and a ‘pure’ 

person is a biological impossibility. Some people are more ethical than others, but 

people are people---not ‘dolls’ that do and think what we want them to. 

Goodman Brown, being a male, wants a woman who burns with passion for him 

but is otherwise pure. But this is not possible, not because Faith is a bad person, but 

because passion of its very nature follows its own dark ways. Nora Helmer wants a 

husband who, in addition to being a money- and status-obsessed banker, also loves and

cherishes Nora. But this is not possible, not because he has no love to give, but because 

love, being an emotion, necessarily brings many other emotions in its wake and 

therefore has no place in the Kabuki-theatre, dollhouse-life that Nora wanted. 


Stars 

*Grow rapidly in high-growth markets and are therefore by far the best possible 

investment, if you are lucky enough to identify one. 

*Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, and E-trade used to be stars, but are now cash cows 

(see below), owing to maturation of their respective markets.

*Tend to be monopolies or semi-monopolies. Consider Amazon/Microsoft. 

*Because they are on the bleeding edge of growth, they tend to have aggressive and 

original marketing schemes, unlike cash cows, which tend to stick with the tried and 

true. 

Cash Cows 

*Grow predictably and slowly. 

*Good place to park assets, since they have reliable rates of return that exceed the 

usual savings account rates. 

*They focus on retention more than acquisition, since they are already in mature, lowgrowth 

markets. 

*Examples: Kellogg’s, Coca Cola, Disney. 

Question Marks 

*Rapid growth companies with small market shares: hence their ambiguous status. 

*Examples might be Coinbase, Express VPN, and TuneCore. 

*Smart investors scrutinize these, since they are likely to be overlooked but are 

promising. Likely to be miscategorized as dogs by mediocre investors.

*A question mark is best advised to find a way to carve out a niche for itself, since there 

is no way that it can compete on size. 

Dogs 

*Low growth companies in low growth markets. 

*Examples: Sears, Kodak, any local cab business, any mom and pop that tries to 

compete with Jiffy Lube. 

*Often on the wrong side of technological change; for example, Sears is on the wrong 

side of the e-commerce revolution. 

*Investors are advised to stay away. 


DCADELER DEBITS CREDITS ASSETS DIVIDENDS EXPENSES LIABIILITIES EQUITY REVENUE 

T DEBIT TCRECRCREDITS 

T ASSETS LITY;LI LIABILITIES 

END DIVIDENDS EQUITIES 

NSE EXPENSES NUE REVENUE

INCOME=REVENUE MINUS EXPENSES E.G. ACME REVENUE=$100. ACME EXPENSES=$75. ACME 

INCOME=$25 

ASSETS=EQUITY+LIABILITIES LIABILITIES=NEGATIVE QUANTITIES. 

ASSETS: CASH, EQUIPMENT, LAND, SUPPLIES. 

LIABILITIES: ANYTHING ‘PAYABLE’, E.G. NOTES PAYABLE (LOANS), SALARIES PAYABLE, UTILITIES 

PAYABLE 

INCOME STATEMENT REFLECTS REVENUE AND EXPENSES. EXPENSES SHOW UP INCOME STATEMENT. 

4 KINDS OF STATEMENTS BALANCE/INCOME/CASH FLOW/EQUITY 

INCOME STATEMENT=REVENUES MINUS EXPENSES 

BALANCE SHEETS=COMMON STOCK + RETAINED EARNINGS=STOCKHOLDER’S EQUITY

STATEMENT OF CASH FLOW: REFLECTS OPERATING/INVESTING/FINANCING INFLOWS/OUTFLOWS 

STOCKHOLDERS EQUITY=COMMON STOCK + RETAINED EARNINGS 

RETAINED EARNINGS=INCOME MINUS EXPENSES MINUS DIVIDENDS 

OPERATING EXPENSE (SALARIES, UTILITIES); INVESTING (LAND, EQUIPMENT); FINANCING (LOANDS, 

DIVIDENDS) 

ALWAYS USE ACCRUAL METHOD. NEVER USE CASH METHOD 

ACCRUAL EXPENSE: RECORD EXPENSE AFTER RESOURCE USED (RECORD PURCHASE OF PIZZA AFTER 

EATING PIZZA) 

ACCURAL REVENUE: RECORD REVENUE WHEN SERVICE PROVIDED (RECORD SALE OF PIZZA WHEN 

GIVE PIZZA, NOT WHEN GET $ FOR PIZZA) 

ACME SELLS COMMON STOCK FOR CASH: DEBIT CASH AND CREDIT STOCK 

PAYMENT OF DIVIDENDS=ASSETS DECREASE AND EQUITY DECREASES 

ACME BORROWS $10000 FROM BANK:

ACME BUYS EQUIPMENT FOR $24000: 

ACME PREPAYS RENT FOR WHOLE YEAR FOR $6000: 

PURCHASE SUPPLIES $2300 ON ACCOUNT (IE. GET SUPPLES NOW AND PAY LATER) 

PROVIDE SERVICE TO CUSTOMERS FOR CASH 

PROVIDE SERVICE TO CUSTOMERS ON ACCOUNT (THEY PAY LATER, YOU PROVIDE SERVICE NOW) 

DEFERRED REVENUE=MONEY FROM CUSTOMERS FOR SERVICES NOT YET RENDERED 

RECEIVE CASH IN ADVANCE ($600) FROM CUSTOMERS 

PAY SALARIES $2800 CASH: 

PAY DIVIDENDS CASH 

JOURNAL PROVIDES CHRONOLOGICAL RECORD OF ALL TRANSACTIONS AFFECTING FIRM 

WHEN YOU PREPAY RENT, YOU DEBIT ‘PREPAID RENT’ 

TRIAL BALANCE SHOWS THAT TOTAL DEBITS = TOTAL CREDITS. FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY 

COMMON STOCK APPEARS IN CREDIT COLUMN OF TRIAL BALANCE

ACCRUAL BASED ACCOUNTING: YOU RECORD EXPENSE WHEN YOU USE PAINT, NOT WHEN YOU BUY 

PAINT 

CASH BASED ACCOUNTING: YOU RECORD EXPENSE WHEN YOU BUY PAINT, NOT WHEN YOU USE IT 

ACCURAL BASED ACCOUNTING: RECORD REVENUE WHEN PROVIDE SERVICE, NOT WHEN RECEIVE 

CASH 

CASH BASED ACCOUNTING: RECORD REVENUE WHEN RECEIVE CASH, NOT WHEN PROVIDE SERVICE 

PREPAYS ARE INITIALLY RECORDED AS ASSETS AND THEN ‘ADJUSTED FOR’ LATER 

EG IF YOU PREPAY RENT, YOU INITIALLY DEBIT PREPAID RENT AND CREDIT CASH. 

YOU LATER ADJUST BY DEBITING RENT AND CREDITING PREPAID RENT. 

BOOK VALUE OF ASSET = COST LESS DEPRECIATION 

WHEN PURCHASE ASSET, YOU DEBIT ‘APPRECIATION EXPENSE’ AND CREDIT ‘ACCUMULATED 

DEPRECIATION’ 

DEFERRED REVENUE: FIRST YOU DEBIT CASH ACCOUNT AND CREDIT LIABILITY ACCOUNT; THEN YOU 

‘ADJUST’ BY DEBITING LIABILITY ACCOUNT AND CREDITING REVENUE ACCOUNT 

WAGES EARNED BUT NOT YET PAID: 

ADJUSTING ENTRIES NEEDED FOR UNPAID WAGES, INTEREST EARNED, SERVICES PROVIDED BUT NOT 

BILLED 

RETAINED EARNINGS NOT CLOSED DURING CLOSING PROCESS 

SERVICES ON ACCOUNT (SERVICE PROVIDED, MONEY PAID LATER):

‘TRADE RECEIVABLES’=’ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE’ 

SALES RETURN: CUSTOMERS GIVES PRODUCT BACK, YOU REFUND $ 

ALLOWANCE RETURN: PRODUCT BAD, BUT CUSTOMER DOES NOT RETURN PRODUCT, SO YOU GIVE 

HIM STORE CREDIT 

SALES RETURNS GO IN CONTRA REVENUE ACCOUNT 

ALLOWANCE METHOD: COMPANIES HAVE TO ESTIMATE FUTURE UNCOLLECTED PAYMENTS AND 

REDUCE CURRENT ASSETS 

UNCOLLECTED REVENUE ESTIMATED IN TWO WAYS: AS PERCENTAGE OF CREDIT SALES (‘PERCENTAGE 

METHOD’) OR AS PERCENTAGE OF BALANCE/BOTTOM LINE (‘BALANCE SHEET METHOD’) 

‘ALLOWANCE FOR UNCOLLECTIBLE ACCOUNTS’ IS NOT LIABILITY. IT IS CONTRA ASSET. 

‘WRITE OFF’ (WHEN YOU GIVE UP TRYING TO COLLECT) HAS NO EFFECT ON NET ASSETS, SINCE 

ALLOWANCE FOR UNCOLLECTIBLE ACCOUNTS IS DECREASED BY SAME AMOUNT AS ACCOUNTS 

RECEIVABLE. 

WHEN DELINQUENT CUSTOMER DOES END UP PAYING, YOU ADJUST AS FOLLOWS: 

FINISHED GOODS: ITEMS FOR WHICH MANUFACTURING PROCESS IS COMPLETE 

COST OF GOODS SOLD (COGS) IS AN EXPENSE AND IS REPORTED IN INCOME STATEMENT

GROSS PROFIT (REVENUE MINUS COGS); OPERATING INCOME (GROSS PROFIT PLUS/MINUS 

INVESTMENT INCOME, INTEREST EXPENSE AND OTHER NON-OPERATING REVENUES/COSTS); NET 

INCOME (OPERATING INCOME MINUS INCOME TAX) 

OPERATING INCOME=PROFIT FROM NORMAL OPERATIONS 

FIFO/LIFO: ACME SELLS ONE TABLE AFTER MAKING THREE, ONE ON MONDAY ($10), ONE ON 

TUESDAY ($20), ONE ON WEDNESDAY ($30): FIFO->COGS=$10. LIFO->COGS=$30. WEIGHTED 

AVERAGE->COGS=$20 

FIFO MATCHES FLOW. LIFO MATCHES REAL WORLD CURRENT COSTS. 

IF COSTS RISE, THEN FIFO->LOW COGS AND LIFO->HIGH COGS. IF COSTS SINK, THEN FIFO->HIGH COGS 

AND LIFO->LOW COGS 

PERPETUAL INVENTORY=TAKE INVENTORY EVERY DAY. PERIODIC=TAKE IT PERIODICALLY. 

INVENTORY RECORDED LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE: DEBIT INVENTORY, CREDIT ACCOUNTS PAYABLE OR 

CASH 

WHEN SELLING INVENTORY, DEBIT COGS AND CREDIT INVENTORY 

COMPANIES USUALLY USE FIFO, BUT SOMETIMES MAKE LIFO ADJUSTMENT. LIFE 

ADJUSTMENT=DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FIFO AND LIFO 

INVENTORY TURNOVER RATIO=COGS/AVERAGE INVENTORY 

AVERAGE DAYS IN INVENTORY = 365/INVENTORY TURNOVER RATIO

GROSS PROFIT RATIO = GROSS PROFIT/NET SALES 

WITH PERIODIC INVENTORY SYSTEM, FIFO=LIFO 

WHEN OVERSTATE COGS ONE YEAR, MUST UNDERSTATE NEXT YEAR; UNDERSTATE COGS ONE YEAR, 

OVERSTATE NEXT

Dennett and Skinner on the Human Condition 

Response to “Reading Minds” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jc8URRxPIg) 

and 

“Neuroscience and Free Will” 

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnGDrc_s6KA) 

For me, the take-home from the B.F. Skinner video (“Operant Condition”) was 

how shallow a thinker Skinner was. True: gambling is compulsive, addiction-mediated 

behavior, and such behavior is indeed reflexive. That is why we regard it as animalistic, 

and that is also why B.F. Skinner was discussing it. Skinner’s theory is that all behavior is 

reflexive: no intelligence or rationality is involved. And compulsive, addiction-driven 

behavior is certainly more consistent with that theory than is non-addiction-driven, noncompulsive 

behavior. But the very fact that Skinner had to use a degenerate and 

reflexive form of behavior, such as gambling, in order to substantiate his theory shows 

how bankrupt that theory is. 

As for the other video---“Consciousness and Free Will”---I was underwhelmed. 

Dennett goes on and on about how ‘people’ think that ‘consciousness is just so 

wonderful’, and he repeatedly says how stunted and misguided such people are. And 

maybe he’s right. But he doesn’t ever explain how to explain consciousness—at least

not in that video and also not in his book consciousness Explained—which, though an 

extremely intelligent and informative book, does not so much explain consciousness as 

attempt to deny it. Which, of course, is implausible as well as self-refuting, given that, 

without consciousness, there are no denials or hallucinations or mistakes. 

Dennett made one point that struck me as totally false. He says that it is because 

people believe in free will that they believe consciousness to be unexplainable. That is 

not accurate, at least categorically. If decisions are the result of causal mechanisms, 

then either we don’t have free will, whatever that means, or we have it only in some 

attenuated sense. And if decisions are not the result of causal mechanisms, then those 

decisions have no roots in who we are and would therefore seem to be disruptions of 

freedom, like an epileptic, rather than expressions of it. One can believe all of that, as I 

do, while also believing that it is difficult if not impossible to explain psychological truths 

in terms of strictly physical truths. It may be that a desire to believe that we are free 

contributes a certain degree of emotional resistance to attempts a-la-Dennett to explain 

away consciousness. But I think the real resistance has to do with the fact that Dennett 

hasn’t yet actually given us an explanation of consciousness—he has just berated people 

who hold onto the idea that it is unexplainable. 

And contrary to what Dennett says, consciousness does seem to be uniquely 

unexplainable. If one considers a living brain, or any other biological system, there are 

obviously many unusually hard to explain problems of a purely biological kind. But so

long as we are dealing with purely biological mechanisms, e.g. respiration, we are just 

dealing with garden-variety cause and effect. We are not having to deal with awareness 

or any other form of subjectivity, and explanation can therefore ultimately assume the 

form of identifying the relevant pushes and pulls, so to speak. But not when it comes to 

consciousness or any other aspect of the mental: I can understand exactly what is going 

on a given person’s brain without, for that very reason, having even the slightest idea 

what, if anything, is going on in his mind. It may be that consciousness and, more 

generally, mind are explainable; but if so, Dennett hasn’t said why. 




The obvious response to have to the first video (“Reading Your Mind”) is to ask 

alarmist questions about the police using this technology to read our minds and destroy 

any last vestiges of freedom and privacy that we have. But in my view, the really 

relevant questions concern the educational (and, to a lesser extent, diagnostic) 

possibilities of this technology. If we knew exactly what kinds of thoughts people had in 

response to a given quantum of information, we could streamline education, and also

customize it to fit a given person’s cognitive profile; and it looks as though this 

technology, when developed, will make this possible. 

As for the concerns about the state using this technology to raid our psyches— 

that’s certainly possible, but it’s also extremely unlikely. The reasons for this have 

nothing to do with human nature: human beings obviously can and will do whatever 

they can to control people and would gladly use this technology. The reasons have to do 

entirely with the enormous costs involved in doing so, coupled with the latest 

projections about the world’s oil supply. The relevant question, I stress, is: how can we 

use this technology to optimize teaching? 

As for the video about free will (“Neuroscience and Free Will”), that too was 

illuminating, with the qualification that it wasn’t the topic of free will that was 

illuminated. The question ‘do we have free will?’ is very vague, and the short answer 

seems to be ‘no.’ The long answer seems to be something along the lines of: ‘no…but if 

your various psychological faculties are working with one another, instead of grinding up 

against one another, then you can have something that, although not quite what we 

mean when we talk about “free will”, has many of the same virtues.’ All of that said, the 

video made it clear just how much of our mental activity is unconscious or semiconscious, 

and that is the respect in which it was illuminating.


In this course, I have acquired two very different, but equally valuable kinds of 

knowledge. I have acquired knowledge of the epistemological (and, to a lesser extent, 

metaphysical) views of various great philosophers, including Plato and Descartes. I have 

also acquired an understanding of the kinds of social conditions that are likely to give 

rise to a desire to understand the nature of knowledge. Plato was not writing in a 

vacuum; he was writing in a society that was torn apart by civil war; and I believe this 

fact to be partly responsible for the need he clearly felt to understand knowledge, as 

well as the specific epistemological beliefs to which this need gave rise. I also believe 

much the same to be true of Descartes. Both philosophers were writing in contexts were 

old social institutions were falling apart, stripping them of comforting certainties, and 

both philosophers responded by turning to epistemology, hoping that it would restore 

those certainties, or at least replace them. 

When Plato was writing, Athens was being wrenched apart by Civil War. I know 

very little about the specifics of that conflict, but the feeling that I strongly get from 

reading The Republic is that Plato was profoundly worried. In that book, Plato, speaking 

through Socrates, makes it very clear that he self-identifies as an aristocrat and also that 

he very much wants to prevent existing class-distinctions from being disrupted. The 

Republic is supposedly an attempt to answer the question ‘what is justice?’, but it’s

eally an attempt to design an utterly stable, hierarchy-based society, in which 

aristocrats are given their due and will not be ejected from power by the rabble. What is 

striking about the Republic is the degree of detail relating to class-distinctions, 

specifically to the designing and justifying of rules that severely limit interactions among 

classes: all done under the pretext of trying to design a ‘just’ society, the actual 

objective being to curb the dogs of revolution. 

This is reflected in the particularly extreme form of rationalism embodied in 

Plato’s epistemological views. According to Plato, what our senses disclose to us is not 

real. What we see, touch, feel, etc. consists of ‘shadows’, as he puts it; and, so Plato 

seems to say, the realities that cast those shadows can be known only through pure 

thought. 

All of which is totally absurd, of course. What could be more real than the rock 

that I hold in my hand, or the bird that I see, or the music that I hear, or the cool water 

than I drink? To be sure, all of these realities are ephemeral and are governed by 

unchanging laws that can be known only through inference, as opposed to direct 

observation. So it can and should be maintained that some aspects of reality are to be 

known through thought. But that is not what Plato is saying: he is saying that nothing 

ephemeral is real and, therefore, that nothing that can be observed (seen, touch, tasted, 

etc.) is real. Plato is not saying that the changeable and the observable are only part of 

the story; he is saying that they are none of the story. Which is obviously false.

What is this about? Why did such an otherwise reasonable philosopher have 

such extreme and implausible views? The reason is that Plato is presenting political 

beliefs as epistemological beliefs. Plato is deeply afraid of political change. He wants 

Athens to stay the way it is. He does not to want to lose his own power or status. Nor, of 

course, does he want to lose life or limb. Plato rightly believes social and political 

change to be a threat. So he spurns it, claiming that it is all ‘unreal’—mere ‘shadows.’ In 

the Republic, Plato also links ‘the Good’ with ‘the real’: which makes no sense if taken 

literally, given that bedbugs and termites are as real as swans and elks, but which does 

make sense once it is seen that what Plato is talking about is not reality per se, but 

society. Obviously, reality comprises many bad things; rotten food is just as much a 

reality as fresh food; pain is just as real as pleasure. So the idea that bad things are 

‘unreal’ is a non-starter. 

But Plato is really speaking in code, and what he is saying makes perfect sense 

when decoded. The ‘good’--i.e. the ‘real’, as Plato puts it--is what conduces to social 

stability; and ‘the bad’---i.e. the ‘mere shadows’, in Plato’s cave-allegory—are what 

threaten social stability. And a ‘just’ society is one in which the galley slaves labor away 

in their dungeon, where they belong, and the aristocrats sit on the deck of the ship and 

enjoy the view. Plato’s epistemological views make little sense if taken as 

epistemological views, but they make plenty of sense if taken as attempts to rationalize 

his social position.

Descartes’ epistemological views, unlike Plato’s, are defensible on their own 

terms; but, like Plato’s views, they are attempts to cope with social unrest. When 

Descartes was writing, advances in knowledge were quickly stripping the Catholic 

Church of all credibility. Science as we know it was just coming into existence at that 

time, and with every step that it took, some cornerstone of Church doctrine was turning 

out to be totally wrong. This had to have been an enormous source of anxiety for 

Europeans, Descartes included, given how thoroughly the Catholic Church had 

dominated every aspect of Church of European life for the last thousand years. The 

Church had provided certainties. Those certainties proved false. So Descartes took it 

upon himself to find new certainties. Just like Plato, he did epistemology to cope with 

threatening changes. 

There is a difference, however. Plato was a reactionary. He dealt with threatening 

changes by trying to thwart them, and his epistemology is correspondingly conservative. 

For Plato, it isn’t enough to see it or feel it or touch it. In order to be real, says Plato, the 

high priest of ‘the intellect’ has to give it his personal seal of approval. (Translation: 

before a social change can be allowed to occur, the aristocrats have to decide amongst 

themselves whether to let it occur.) Descartes, by contrast, is anti-reactionary. 

Descartes accepts the changes that are occurring, and he is looking for certainties within 

that new set of verities. Interestingly, however, both Philosophers advocate particularly 

extreme forms of rationalism—meaning, in effect, that they overplay the role of thought

in the acquisition of knowledge and underplay the role of observation. The reason for 

this, I would conjecture, is that both philosophers were uneasy about the changes in 

question—Descartes ambivalently so, and Plato unambivalently so--and responded with 

rationalism-driven skepticism about the reality of the observed. Notice that Plato 

celebrated the supposed unreality of the observable, in keeping with complete towards 

the social changes in question, whereas Descartes attempted to overcome it, 

corresponding to his mixed feelings about those changes. 

These analyses are, of course, highly speculative. But what is less speculative-and 

I owe it to this class for making me so aware of this fact---is that philosophical doctrines, 

though partly about logic and pure reason, are also about emotion: in at least some 

cases, they are attempts, on the part of very rational and intelligent people, to deal with 

social and cultural disruptions. This does not mean they are all to be psychoanalyzed 

away; but it does mean that a psychoanalytic perspective can often fill in otherwise 

inexplicable gaps in their logical structure.



Skeptics, Descartes included, often motivate their skepticism by pointing out that 

we have inaccurate perceptions. Sometimes our perceptions are blurry (as when I’m not 

wearing glasses); sometimes they are simply inaccurate (as when a color-blind person 

sees green as blue and vice versa); and sometimes they are outright hallucinations. 

Skeptics, Descartes included, then go on to say that all of our so-called perceptions 

might be hallucinations. The idea seems to be that if this or that specific perception is 

inaccurate or simply hallucinatory, then it is possible that all of them are. 

The first thing to point out is that this argument is invalid, as it is a case of 

inferring ‘everything can have phi’ from ‘something has phi’, this being the so-called 

“Fallacy of Compositionality.” Given only that some cells of a living creature can be 

cancerous, it doesn’t follow—for it is not the case--that all the cells of a living creature 

can be cancerous. Similarly, given only that some of our perceptions are inaccurate or 

hallucinatory, it doesn’t follow that the same can be true of all of them. 

Suppose that you have a working car. Every now and then, a given part will 

malfunction, and the engine will make a strange noise or you’ll have trouble breaking, or

some such. So it is obviously possible that one of the parts of a working car can 

malfunction. But can all of the parts of a working car malfunction? No. 

Our perceptions are part of a coherent narrative. This is a datum, and we 

therefore cannot deny it, even if we assume for argument’s sake that our perceptions 

might all be inaccurate. But if all our perceptions are inaccurate, then where do they 

come from? What is responsible for their existence? 

We could say that they come from nothing. But even if that is a logical possibility, 

it is not an explanation; and if we take this position, we are really just saying that reality 

happens to be fragmented and lawless in a way that gives rise to coherent internal 

narratives---which is the very height of absurdity. 

We could also take the position, or so we are told, that some ‘evil demon’ or 

‘mad scientist’ is tinkering with our nerve endings and inducing coherent hallucinations. 

But if that is so, then these supposed hallucinations of ours would not really be 

hallucinations, since they would track an external reality, albeit not quite the one we 

thought. So the skeptic’s position is, I think, more fragile than is generally admitted, 

since it either collapses into the position of the non-skeptic or amounts to saying that 

something can from nothing. And this very point seems to be the essence of Descartes’ 

attempt to refute skepticism, granting that he took a long and not very helpful detour 

through the concept of God—which, I supposed, we can chalk up to his living when he 

did.



What do I know with certainty? I know much about my conscious states. I know 

that I am having perceptions that, if accurate, represent a computer-screen, and a pair 

of hands typing on a keyboard. Of course, as Descartes and other skeptics point out, it is 

a theoretical possibility that these ‘perceptions’ of mine are hallucinations; so I cannot 

know that they are accurate, at least not with complete certainty. But I can know with 

complete certainty that I am having those perceptions, and I can also know with such 

certainty what must be true of the world if those perceptual states of mine are to be 

accurate. The general rule seems to be that I cannot be wrong as to what my conscious 

states are telling me, even though I can be wrong as to the truth of what they are telling 

me. 

Also, I believe that, within limits, I can know what it is that I believe. For example, 

I believe that I know with complete certainty that 1+1=2. At the same time, I don’t think 

I can know exactly what I believe; I think that each of us has many unconscious beliefs, 

and I think that even a given conscious belief is likely to have an unconscious side to it. 

For example, although I know with complete certainty that I believe that 1+1=2, I do not 

know with the same degree of certainty, or even with any certainty, what other beliefs

are embodied in that belief. For example, I know that my having that belief involves my 

having various beliefs about addition and number and the like, but I’m not quite sure 

what those beliefs are. Nonetheless, I cannot coherently deny that I believe myself to 

believe that 1+1=2 or that I sometimes daydream about going sailing. 

Internal vs. External Motivators 

Reflections on Dan Pink’s Ted Talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y) 

Dan Pink’s talk was striking, and his main point was consistent with my own 

experience, his main point being that whereas the ‘stick’ works better than the ‘carrot’ 

when it comes to motivating people to perform rote tasks, it is the other way around 

when it comes to motivating people to do creative tasks. When it comes to creative 

tasks, Pink said, motivation comes from within---from one’s sense of purpose and one’s 

desire to live meaningfully. And external incentives, such as money, work better with 

tasks that are not expressions of creativity and autonomy. 

If one thinks about it, this actually makes sense. Mozart died penniless. Why? 

Because he loved what he was doing and therefore didn’t have to be paid much to do it.

Same with Socrates. Same with many other thinkers and artists. Of course, this 

proposition cannot be inverted: not everyone who is penniless is a great thinker or 

artist. Less trivially, not all great thinkers and artists are penniless. But it is proof of 

Pink’s point that so many greats in those areas have so totally spurned wealth. 

Of course, Pink was talking about business, not about music or philosophy or art. 

But I know from my own experience, limited though it is, that what he is saying is true. 

The successful entrepreneurs I have known made very little money when they were 

setting up their businesses; and, so they have told me, they usually spent years before 

the set-up process looking for feasible ideas and not living well during that time. 

I also know from my own experience in business that, just as Pink said, monetary 

incentives are great motivators when it comes to well-defined tasks, but they are not 

good ones when it comes to creative tasks. I tried to start a business a little while ago. I 

noticed that, if I paid somebody to wash a car or buy food, they would work quickly and 

effectively. But when I paid people to come up with ideas or find ways to improve 

business—in other words, when I gave them open-ended assignments---the money that 

I gave them might as well have been thrown away. 

Part of this has to do with the fact that anyone can wash a car, whereas not 

anyone can come up with a great new idea. But the people in question were reasonably 

creative people; they were not robots. And I was a little surprised that they responded 

so poorly to the money I gave them, which was a lot, at least relative to what I had and

elative also to what they had. (I gave each of them several hundred dollars, and neither 

generated any results at all.) Another thing is that they ended up resenting me horribly; 

they felt ashamed that they couldn’t do the creative work that I paid them to do and 

then took it out on me. But I do think the two people in question could probably do 

reasonably creative work when working for themselves—this being one of the points of 

Pink’s talk. 

Pink made another point that resonated with me, namely, that in the 21 st 

century, work is going to be less about rote tasks and more about creativity, the reason 

being that, just as Pink said, robots can do most of the rote work, and the work left for 

people to do is therefore creative work. But judging by my own experience, I don’t think 

that most people will be up to the task; I think that most people simply aren’t cut out for 

creative work, which makes me wonder about the future of the economy. 


This story is ultimately quite straightforward. A young girl develops a strong crush 

on a boy, and she has every reason to believe that it will lead to full-blown love; but ugly 

realities intervene, and she is left confused and broken-hearted. There is nothing

opaque or confusing about any of this, since it is normal and natural for young women 

to want love and to be hurt when it is taken away from them. 

Consequently, there is nothing here to deconstruct or psychoanalyze, since 

psychoanalytic and deconstructionist methods are appropriate only when meanings are 

distorted or cloaked. Nor would a formalist approach be appropriate, given the highly 

personal and emotionally charged nature of the subject-matter. 

In this context, an ethical critical approach is the appropriate one. The narrator 

was in love with Eugene, and Eugene seemed to be developing feelings for her; but 

Eugene’s mother killed their relationship before it could develop, and she did so entirely 

out of racism: the narrator is Puerto Rican, and Eugene’s mother was prejudiced 

towards Puerto Ricans and also, presumably, towards members of other non-white 

ethnicities. 

The point of the story is that prejudice is evil: the fact that it led to heartbreak is 

merely being used to illustrate this point. For suppose that Eugene’s mother had 

wholeheartedly approved of the relationship, but it turned out that Eugene was a 

womanizer who had multiple girlfriends. In that case, the story would have been about 

male deceptiveness. Or suppose that Eugene turned out to be a perfect boyfriend but 

ended up being drafted and dying in battle. In that case, the story would have been 

about the evils of war. So this particular story is not about heartbreak but about 

prejudice; and in discussing her heartbreak, the narrator’s purpose is to illustrate the

evils of prejudice. Consequently, this story makes a very clear moral statement---indeed, 

it is such a statement—and it is therefore best understood from an ethical critical 

perspective. 

Why was Socrates put to death? Response to 

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE7PKRjrid4) 


The clip from the Matrix (“Red Pill or Blue Pill?”) obviously had to do with 

people’s reluctance to face the truth. There also seemed to be some implication that, in 

actuality, human beings are systematically being lied to by political authorities and 

consequently live fiction-based, inauthentic lives. Another theme of this clip is that most 

people prefer pleasant lies to unpleasant truths. 

These themes were also present in “The Trial of Socrates”; and many would go so 

far as to say that it was precisely because Socrates tried to ‘Red Pill’ his fellow citizens 

that he was executed. Indeed, it may well have been the intention of the author to 

convey that Socrates was executed for being truthful and demanding the same of 

others. It is this contention that I would like to address. 

Supposing for argument’s sake that the video/text is accurate, the reason that 

Socrates was executed was not exactly that he was truthful, but was rather that he used

truthfulness to disrupt and confuse. From what I gathered, Athens had been at war and, 

during that period, Socrates caused Athenians to question their pre-existing moral 

beliefs, which undermined their patriotism at a time when Athens most needed it. It 

may well be that Socrates’ criticisms of those beliefs were valid. But Socrates, so it 

appears, was not on trial for speaking falsely but for being disruptive; and the contents 

of that video do indeed suggest that Socrates was guilty of that charge, with the 

consequence that he weakened Athenian resolve at a time when it needed it the most. 

Obviously, truth is in general to be preferred to fiction. But truths taken out of 

context, or made available to people who don’t know how to put them into context, can 

be as damaging as falsehoods and, though they are not themselves falsehoods, are likely 

to lead to confusion, which in turn is likely to lead to acceptance of falsehoods. 

As a philosopher, Socrates was obviously head and shoulders above his peers, but 

the day-to-day functioning of a society requires that some positions be uncritically 

accepted; and Socrates appears to have targeted those acceptances, with disastrous 

consequences for Athens, this being the real reason that he was executed.


Response to : “The Pre-Socratics: Part 1” 

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83kUMEjaCUA) 

“The Pre-Socratics: Part 2” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IRy3E-BZhY) 


It seems to me that there are many different versions of the so-called “problem 

of the one and the many.” From what I can gather, the original version of this problem is 

given by the question: “What is it that unifies the various different parts of the 

universe? In other words, in virtue of what fact are the various different objects in the 

universe—the various animals and particles and planets and so on—components of a 

single universe, as opposed to multiple different universes?” 

Physics has already answered this question. Any two events are causally 

connected. (Any two events either have common causal origins or one is part of a causal 

chain that is responsible for the other.) If there is absolutely no conceivable causal 

connection between two events---if there is no possible causal process either directly 

linking them or linking them by way of some third event---then it simply makes no sense 

to say that they belong to the same universe.

Relativity Theory made this position popular, at least among physicists, the 

reason being that, in Relativity Theory, chronological relations are defined in terms of 

causal relations. (e1 is said to pre-date e2 if and only if e1 can have a causal influence on 

e2; and e1 and e2 are said to be simultaneous if neither can have a causal influence on 

the other.) But it seems to me that, at some level, all people must accept it, since it 

seems incoherent to suppose that two events could be totally causally divorced from 

each other but belong to the same universe. 

In any case, when I was watching the videos about Parmenides and Thales, it 

occurred to me that, when people refer to “the problem of the one and may” there is a 

second problem that they sometimes have in mind. Thales said that everything is water, 

and Parmenides said that, despite appearances, nothing changes. The first view is false, 

and the second is not only false but absurd. But it seems to me that both of these 

hypotheses embody the insight that a few immutable natural laws are responsible for 

the various changes that occur in the universe; and when people refer to “the problem 

of the one and the many”, they are sometimes referring to the question: What are these 

laws? In other words, what are the unchanging principles underneath and responsible 

for the various changes that occur?” Once again, this question, though presented in this 

context as a philosophical question, is one that can only be answered on scientific 

grounds, through observation and experimentation and the like, and that has been 

answered to a considerable extent.



The purpose of the video was supposedly to explain exactly how human beings 

were superior to chimpanzees. As it itself put it, it was to answer the question: Why do 

human study chimps, not the other way around? 

The video didn’t really answer this question, though it did hazard a guess, albeit 

45 minutes into it. The mike-dropper of an answer that it gave was: 

(TA) “Humans teach each other, but chimps don’t, and chimps therefore have to 

learn everything they know on their own.” 

“TA” is short for ‘their answer.’ 

TA is not plausible. Chimps don’t teach each other because they can’t. Human 

beings do we because we can. So TA takes a mere consequence of the relevant 

difference between people and chimps to be the very the essence of that difference. 

If TA were correct then, if chimps started teaching one another, they would come 

to be human-like in their intellectual proportions and configuration---even if everything 

else about them were held constant. But, of course, such a counterfactual is either 

trivial or absurd, depending on how it is looked at. It’s trivial if it is supposed that chimps

magically acquired the ability to teach one another, and it is absurd if it is supposed that 

they could have this ability without acquiring the various abilities—had by us and lacked 

by them--underlying it. 

So yes—chimps are smarter than most people are inclined to believe. The video 

proved this much. But no---it isn’t because people do, whereas chimps don’t, teach one 

another that we are able to study them but they are not able to study us. It’s the other 

away around: it is because we are able to study them, whereas they cannot study us, 

that we can teach one another, whereas chimps cannot. 

So what is the difference between us and them? One point the video made that 

was important is that the difference is not strictly quantitative. It isn’t just that we have 

more brain-cells. There is some kind of existential divide that we are on one side of and 

that chimps are on the other side of. 

That divide, I would suggest, is the ability to interact with reality through 

symbolism. Consider what we are doing in this very class and indeed in the context of 

this very assignment. We are exchanging symbols with one another. Most of us don’t 

even know what most of the rest of us even look like. But that doesn’t matter, because, 

unlike chimps, we don’t need to look at one another’s facial expressions and bodily 

behavior to communicate, since we, unlike chimps, have language at our disposal. And 

not just language, but a plurality of representational media: different kinds of visual art,

different kinds of non-visual art, specialized mathematical and technical notations, not 

to mention ad hoc codes---none of which chimps have. 

The video obscured this point when it showed the chimp supposedly ‘adding 

one’, which, supposing that it did in fact do so, it did by tapping on a now blank part of 

the screen that previously had a numeral one. The problem with this supposed proof is 

that the ability to ‘add one’ is one of the only forms of mathematical competence that 

can be mimicked by pretty much any creature. Could the chimp have multiplied by 

three? Or divided by four? What about exponentiation? No. Of course, not. Unless a 

creature can interact through symbols, as opposed to mere gestures, it doesn’t even 

make sense to suppose that it is computing square roots or multiplying by fractions. 

Contrariwise, if one wants to prove that one’s St. Bernard is a mathematician, the best 

one can do is prove that it can ‘add one.’ 

Chimps have plenty of intelligence, as do cats and dogs and squirrels. Anyone 

who has had a cat knows how incredibly intuitive they are, not to mention how 

surgically precise their movements are. And the same can be said of chimps and terriers 

and pretty much all mammals, as well as many non-mammals. But there is some line 

that separates us from them, and that line is not the ability to teach one another; it is 

the ability to grasp meanings, as opposed to objects, which is a conconmitant of the 

ability to understand symbols. A consequence of this ability is the ability to engage in

certain forms of mutual instructions, but it is not mutual instruction that separates us 

from them. 

Also, chimps do teach one another, at least so far as they non-symbolic relation 

to reality allows them to. In the following article, published in 2014 and therefore after 

the video, it is shown that chimps do teach one another: 

https://www.livescience.com/48078-chimpanzees-learn-behaviors-socially.html 

“Humanity's closest living relatives”, it says. “can pass on culture and customs just as 

humans do, shedding light on the possible capabilities of the last common ancestor of 

both humans and chimps, the researchers say.” 

In conclusion, the video, though informative, did not answer the question that it 

set out to answer, and, despite its attempt to show-case the intellectual abilities of 

chimpanzees, failed to give them credit for one of their most astonishing intellectual 

powers. 


I read “Dum Dum Boys”, by Cameron Joy, a very sad story about a young man who has a 

good heart but also has psychological problems, which he deals with by taking drugs, 

causing him to overdose and die as a teenager.

About Questions 

What was the point of this story? (Was it to illustrate the evils of drug use? Or was it 

rather to illustrate the fragility of human beings? Or am I wrong to try to find a moral 

agenda in it?) 

Was this story about adolescence or was it about 1980s-style decadence? 

What was Cameron’s medical condition? Was he depressed? Psychotic? 

What did Cameron’s death teach the narrator about life? 

What were the narrator’s feelings about Cameron’s death? 


Does mental illness lead to drug use or is it the other way around? 

What was happening in American society when this was written that caused the sort of 

personal disintegration described in this story? 

Would this story still have as much of an impact on readers today? 

This story seems to be in the same genre as Less than Zero, meaning that it is a story 

about 1980s-style lack of moral fiber, which makes me wonder: Will people today 

understand this story or find it relevant?



There are two ways to understand the Allegory of the Cave. On the one hand, it 

can be seen as putting forth a hypothesis concerning the structure of reality. On the 

other hand, it can be interpreted as an attempt to ‘red pill’ people about the structure 

of society. 

Taken the first way, the Allegory of the Cave is saying that, although our senses 

give us raw data, intellect is needed to model this data appropriately and therefore to 

see the true structure of reality. Thus taken, this allegory has no political or social 

overtones and is merely a point about how the world is structured (it consist of visible 

phenomena governed by underlying and therefore invisible laws), along with an 

epistemological corollary (in order to understand the world, it is not enough to observe 

it: we must also interpret those observations, and the intellect is therefore at least as 

much a source of knowledge as our senses). 

Taken the second way, this allegory seems to be saying that members of society 

live propaganda-based lies. In this particular context, Plato does not tell us much about 

the nature of those lies. Indeed, it is not entirely clear that he is in fact discussing 

society. But his repeated use of terms like ‘prisoner’, ‘shackles’, and ‘blinded’ suggests

as much. Also, having read the rest of The Republic as well as large parts of his dialogue 

The Laws, I do know that Plato was deeply distrustful of every stratum of society. He 

distrusted non-rulers, thinking them little more than animals; and he also distrusted 

rulers, mainly because, it seems, he himself wanted to be one (or was one) and 

therefore knew firsthand how untrustworthy they could be. 

The second interpretation is, I admit, highly speculative, and there is little direct 

textual evidence for it in the video (which was taken from The Republic, which, of 

course, contains a number of passages that are overtly political, as well as overtly 

cynical, both about politics and human nature). The first interpretation is less 

speculative, since, in the passage in question, Plato is explicitly saying that how reality 

seems is not how it is and, consequently, that it is only by analyzing appearances that 

one acquires actual understanding. 

The one interpretation puts this passage in line with the readings we have done 

from Heraclitus and Thales, the other with the excerpt that we watched from the 

Matrix. 


Every summer, starting when I was 11, a friend of mine and I worked at a local 

tennis club. (I will refer to this friend as “Jacob”, even though that is not his real name.)

We both performed low-level jobs: cleaning up after club-members, sometimes picking 

up balls, working in the kitchen, etc. As we got older, our club-related duties began to 

pull apart. Being an out-doorsy, athletic sort of person, I usually preferred activities 

relating to golf and tennis. I’m a passable tennis player and golfer and have taught both. 

But mostly my work at the club has been pretty menial and usually involved me working 

as a caddy and the like—which I don’t mind, since I like being outdoors. 

Jacob’s work was very different. He always had a knack for numbers and was 

(and, I suppose, still is) a whiz at math and computers. Starting when we were fifteen, 

the summer after the 9 th grade, Jacob started doing office-work at the club. They had 

tried to hire people to help with Quicken and other softwares, but nobody could do the 

job, even the ones with college degrees. As for the management, they were hopeless 

with anything relating to computers, as they were decidedly ‘old school’---as in, they 

were very old and not computer-literate. (It is a small club, which services a small, closeknit 

community in upstate New York.) And they didn’t even know where to begin. 

But Jacob had no problem doing this sort of thing. Plus, Jacob was the son of a 

well-liked club-member; so the management trusted him. And so it happened that a 15- 

year-old, without any formal training or licenses, was doing the financials for a country 

club most of whose members were millionaires. It worked out well---for a time. 

Jacob had always lived life ‘fast and loose.’ He had once been caught cheating, 

and there were suspicions that he occasionally sold drugs. It was common knowledge

that he did drugs, but that was brushed aside on the grounds that it was only pot and 

that it was only occasional. In point of fact, it was very non-occasional, and although it 

began with pot, it quickly escalated to cocaine and heroin. Oddly, I was the only one at 

the club who seemed to notice. (I think the other people there were more focused on 

Jacob’s job-performance, which was always impeccable.) 

One day, Jacob let me in on a little ‘secret.’ He had started using club-member 

credit card numbers to make purchases on Amazon, sometimes for himself, sometimes 

for others, usually drug dealers to whom he owed money. He always only made small 

purchases, he told me, $10 here, $15 there. Because he had access to every clubmember’s 

card-information, he was able to spend thousands of dollars of club-member 

money without any of them being the wiser, since he spread the purchases out over so 

many different credit cards. 

I was absolutely stunned. I was also conflicted. Jacob and I went way back. I knew 

what he was doing was wrong, but he had always been a loyal friend to me. At the same 

time, my father was a member of that club, and I thought I might have a duty to tell him 

that somebody else was using his credit card. I told Jacob this, but he immediately 

replied that he would never use my father’s card information. That later turned out to 

be a lie, and deep down I think I knew that it was a lie; but it did give me pause. So I 

bided my time, telling myself that I was trying to figure out what to do: be loyal to Jacob 

or prevent Jacob from continuing with this fraud. Frankly, I was not strongly inclined to

turn Jacob in. The club members had money, and it didn’t seem quite worth it to ruin 

Jacob’s life over this theft. If it had continued for longer, I might have changed my mind, 

but I’m not sure. 

Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it—Jacob was 

found out. No criminal charges were filed—probably to avoid stigmatizing the club. But 

his parents were kicked out of the club and had to pay around $45,000 in restitution. 

Jacob then went to another school. I haven’t kept in touch with him, but the rumor is 

that his life has gone downhill in a huge way. 

This was, in my opinion, a real moral dilemma. It’s easy to say that I simply should 

have turned Jacob in—and that’s probably what I would have done if it had gone on 

much longer—but there is more to it than that. He had never wronged me, and 

although he was technically stealing, the people at the club certainly wouldn’t miss the 

few dollars Jacob was stealing from them. This was a tough one—which, fortunately, 

circumstance resolved for me, sparing me a tough ethical decision. 

Answers to questions about documentary about how corporations are evil (Response to 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pin8fbdGV9Y)


The basic point of this documentary is that corporations, while operating under the 

banner of providing people with necessary goods and services, are the very 

embodiment of amoral greed. The basic conceit is that, although evil has always existed, 

corporations managed to turn it into a science, using the free-market, along with the 

corresponding ready-made slogans, as a cover. 


For me, the most interesting point made by the movie was that corporations had had 

such a profound influence on the making and executing of laws in the United States. The 

fact that corporations are legally classified as persons is indeed striking. 


That IBM was responsible to some extent for the Holocaust, which, speaking on 

historical grounds (including testimony of relatives who spent time in Auschwitz), is 

extremely questionable, given that the WW2 was more about Germany’s straitened

economic circumstances coupled with centuries-old ethnic conflicts, with none of which 

IBM or indeed any other company had anything to do. 

explain. 

4. What is the most important ethical issue that the movie is addressing? Please 

The most important ethical issue is how to control corporate greed without crippling the 

market’s ability to function. 



Instructions: Please answer the questions below. The length of your video case 

assignment form responses should be approximately one page, single spaced. This form 

will be graded on a pass/fail basis. To pass, you need to provide reasonably detailed and 

insightful answers to the questions below.

1. What do you think you would have done were you Buzz McCoy, the narrator of the 

film (the Morgan Stanley executive), and the Sadhu was dropped at your feet? Would 

you have left the Sadhu for the next group, as Buzz did? Would you have taken the 

Sadhu to safety, and likely sacrificed your trip? 

I obviously like to think that I would have rescued the Sadhu. But the reality is that it 

depends on the circumstances. If the trip were mere recreation for me, then yes, I 

would have helped. If the trip were the equivalent of my one shot at an Olympic Gold 

Medal, then no, I would not have helped. I have been in situations that were similar, 

albeit much smaller, and I did help. But those situations required little sacrifice on my 

part, so I don’t know how much can be read into them. 

2. No matter how you answer in 1. above, why do you think Buzz did what he did? Why 

didn’t Buzz take the Sadhu to safety? In other words, if the situation was different, 

might Buzz have taken the Sadhu to safety? If so, how would the situation have to 

change? And what about Buzz himself? What things about him or his personality do 

you think affected his decision? 

I think it’s important to know that we simply don’t know what Buzz specifically would 

have done under different circumstances. Obviously, we are led to believe that it was

only with great reluctance that he did not help that Sadhu. But actions speak louder 

than words, and he didn’t help. For all we know, if he had been in a situation where the 

sacrifice to himself was minimal, he still would have come up with an excuse not to help. 

Nothing can be assumed here. 

3. What do you think is the “moral” of the parable (case)? 

That people always pass the buck and, therefore, that true morality is about doing the 

right thing, instead of just having an excuse for not doing it. 

Answers to Questions about Walmart-documentary 

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf-Sr3SjBzk) 

Instructions: Please address each item below for each movie. The total length of your 

critical viewing form responses should be approximately one-half to one page, single 


reasonably detailed and insightful answers to the items below. 

1. Briefly summarize the basic plot, or issue that the movie addresses.

The point of the movie is that Walmart is an exploitative as well as deceptive 

corporation. The larger point is that exploitativeness and deceptiveness are inherent in 

what corporations are. 


The material about the overseas sweatshops was striking and did show a lack of 

conscience on the part of Walmart’s management. 


The most debatable contention in the movie is that Walmart economically devastates 

communities. That may be true, but it’s hard to square with my personal experience. I 

myself shop at Walmart and the prices and selection are very good. And I’m friends with 

Walmart employees, and although it is not stimulating work, they seem happy to have 

any kind of employment at all, which Walmart, unlike other employers, was more than 

happy to offer. 

explain. 

4. What is the most important ethical issue that the movie is addressing? Please

The issue was how to curb corporate amorality. As a believer in economic 

freedom, I would like to think that the movie was concerned with how to keep markets 

free while preventing malfeasance on the part of juggernauts such as Walmart. But 

there wasn’t really any direct evidence that the writer-director was concerned with that 

issue, his focus being, as far as I could tell, to indict Walmart with misconduct, without 

worrying too much about how to do that without over-regulating the economy. 



Step 1: Identify the Problem 

Step 2: Establish Decision Criteria 

Step 3: Weigh Decision Criteria 

Step 4: Generate Alternatives 

Step 5: Evaluate Alternatives 

Step 6: Select the Best Alternative 



1. Getting Ready/Determine the Strategic Intent: 

2. Define Organisational Mission

3. Assessing the Situation/Analysing Environment 

4. Developing Strategies, Goals and Objectives/Strategy Formulation: 

5. Implement Plans/Strategy Implementation: 

6. Strategy Evaluation/Monitoring Outcomes: 


The Anchoring Trap: Over-Relying on First Thoughts 

The Status Quo Trap: Keeping on Keeping On 

The Sunk Cost Trap: Protecting Earlier Choices 

The Confirmation Trap: Seeing What You Want to See 

The Incomplete Information Trap: Review Your Assumptions 

Responses to posts on free will (my work in boldfaced italics) 

Free Will - C.vdW 

Do We Have Free Will? 

Discussion Post #8 (worth 30 points; at least 200 words): Due by Saturday, Oct 26th, 

by 11:30 p.m. (my work in boldfaced italics) 







Discussion Post #8 (worth 30 points; at least 200 words): Due by Saturday, Oct 26th, 

by 11:30 p.m. 


Advertising Assignment 

1. Identify any advertisement and provide a copy or link to your submission on Canvas

https://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/10-natural-ways-have-beautiful-andyouthful-skin.html 

2. Clearly state the objectives and target audience of the ad 

The immediate objective of the ad is to sell literature published by LifeHack, a company 

specializing in personal growth. The long term objective is to hook the prospect into 

becoming a serial customer of LIfeHack goods (mainly books) and services (mainly 

information and some personal consulting). The target audience is anyone who believes 

that his professional future is tied less to his to his doing the intellectual equivalent of 

going to the gym three times/week. 

3. How does this ad fit into the company’s/organization’s marketing communication 

strategy?

It fits well. It’s a pop-up ad that appears in an ad on anti-aging skin cream (which, 

though I am in my early 20s, I sometimes use), and the two products (the cream and the 

book) do fit with each other psychologically and also fit with the fact that the company 

is online-centered and has an amicably aggressive style. 

4. Explain the tone, appeal and format of the ad 

Friendly but ‘in-your-face’: you can be a slacker or you can buy our products---your call. 

5. Assess the ad’s level of effectiveness 

Pretty effective, largely because LifeHack has independent credibility, but it the 

positioning works: I think I’m going to buy the product right now 

6. How would you make improvements to the ad?

I would ad an image that draws the person in: I like pictures, and the ad in its 

current form has none and is too abstract. I want to see an image of a smart person or a 

good-looking person. As it stands, I have only the text to tell what I’m buying, which isn’t 

quite enough to seal the deal. 

Does good employee treatment (SAS movie) usually mean more profit? If not, why not? 

If so, why, and why don't more companies treat their employees well? 

Yes, there is no doubt about it. Happy employees work hard and work intelligently. 

Unhappy employees cost the firm more than they are worth. The use of force in 

business contexts is expensive, since it results in mediocre work. Adam Smith said it 

well: 

The experience of all ages and nations, I believe, demonstrates that the work done by 

slaves, though it appears to cost only their maintenance, is in the end the dearest of any. 

A person who can acquire no property can have no other interest but to eat as much and 

to labour as little as possible. Whatever work he does beyond what is sufficient to 

purchase his own maintenance, can be squeezed out of him by violence only, and not by 

any interest of his own. 

Smith, Adam. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Kindle 

Locations 5871-5874). University Of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.

In other words, people do the bare minimum when it's all stick and no carrot. 

I myself make money by doing very labor-intensive, highly skilled labor, and the minute 

a client tries to low-ball me, I immediately put them on a blacklist on my mind. I will 

fulfill existing contracts, but then they are on their own. If you want results, you have to 

treat workers well and pay them enough to be happy, since without happiness the 

emotional basis for good work is absent. 

Should corporate executives be held criminally liable for deaths or injuries in the 

workplace? Discussion Post 

It really depends on the nature and circumstances of the injury. Suppose that an idiotic 

employee pours hot coffee on another employee: Should the owner of the company be 

held criminally responsible? Obviously not. What about if the CEO insists on observance 

of safety-protocols, which are then ignored, resulting in an accident? Again--no. Of 

course, you could say that these injuries resulted not from work proper but from 

workplace goofery. Very well, But what if the stress of being a young lawyer causes 

Smith to have a heart-attack? In that case, the heart attack is the result of Smith's work: 

so are the partners of law firm guilty of criminal negligence? Or should they be? Doesn't 

seem like it. If safety-hazards are not disclosed and the accident is demonstrably a result 

of such non-disclosure, then yes, there is criminal and civil liability. But it wont' do to say

that the owner/CEO should categorically be held responsible for any and all injuries 

incurred while at work or even as a result of work: the economy would grind to a halt. 

Is Money a Drug? Discussion Post 

I don't agree with Bevilaqua and Singh, and Polk. What is being described is not the 

effect of money itself, but of money obtained too easily and in questionable ways. I 

have received some money from parents, and worked for some of money, and I cannot 

say that any of it was drug-like, especially not the money that I worked for. It may well 

be that what investment bankers do is on the meaningless side, and it may also be that 

when large amounts of money are given in exchange for meaningless work, a certain 

moral vertigo ensues. There are definitely some dodgy ways to make a living, but I'm not 

sold on the 'money-is-the-root-of-evil' idea just yet. And frankly, I don't think it's a 

concern my generation will have. The economy is shrinking in some ways (not all), and I 

don't think there is any 'easy money' out there anymore. For better or for worse, my 

generation probably won't have the luxury of wrestling with moral perplexities of 

excessive wealth. Tell somebody who works 12 hours a day for $200 that the feeling of 

satisfaction is a drug-induced illusion---won't fly. Maybe if he fails to work and gets 

$20,000, the story will be different. But frankly given only what I know, I can't quite 

throw my weight the idea that money in and of itself is to be treated with the same 

contempt as crack or PCP.

The “Heaven Help Her” Scenario: Utilitarian and Universalist Perspectives 

Section I. 

In this context, my (Jiu’s) two basic options are (i) lie to the person selling 

the manufacturing plant (henceforth ‘the seller’) and (ii) do not lie to that person. In this 

context, a number of assumptions are being made that must be made explicit if it is to 

be possible to put forth an analysis of the moral complexion of this situation. These are 

assumptions are: 

(1) If I take option (i), Rev. Smith will get a better price and better financing terms 

than he would get were I to take option (ii). 

(2) If I take option (i), my boss will be happier with the outcome than he would be 

were I to contravene his instructions and take option (ii). 

(3) If I cannot find a way to convince Tyler, my boss, to be happy about letting me be 

truthful with the seller. 

(4) Rev. Smith simply cannot or will not raise more than $150,000. 

(5) There is no way for me to get the seller to lower the price to within Rev. Smith’s 

reach except by lying to him about Smith’s caring about wanting to fix the 

machines.

If any one of (1)-(5) is rejected, then there is a ‘moral workaround’ for me, in 

which case the dilemma is ‘solved’ only by fundamentally changing the ethical structure 

of the situation. For example, if Rev. Smith wins the lottery, then there is indeed no 

dilemma---but only because the situation in question has been replaced with a morally 

very different one. We will therefore not reject any one of (1)-(5). 

The stakeholders in this situation are myself (Jiu), Rev. Smith, Tyler, and the 

seller. Since we are not introducing additional assumptions, there are no other 

stakeholders. These being the facts, a stakeholder analysis is readily generated: 

Lie to Seller 

Do Not Lie to Seller 

Jiu (myself) + Keep job, make money. -Lose job, lose money. 

Rev. Smith 

+Able to purchase 

manufacturing plant. 

-Not able to purchase 

manufacturing plant.

Tyler 

+Effectuates sale, makes 

money from deal, pleases 

his client. 

-Does not effectuate sale, 

does not make money 

deal, loses client. 

The Seller 

-Sells manufacturing plant 

for less desired price. 

+Sells manufacturing plant 

for desired price. 

Section II. 

Utilitarianism: According to utilitarianism, a given act is the right one if, out of the 

various possible acts, it does the best job of maximizing utility. So according to 

utilitarianism, I am right to lie if the utility thereby generated exceeds the utility gained 

if I tell the truth. It is the other way around if telling the truth generates more utility 

than lying, and neither course of option is morally superior to the other if neither would 

generate more utility than the other. 

In order to state a utilitarian analysis of this situation, we have to make the 

following assumptions:

(1) If I lie, the utility lost to the seller does not outweigh the utility gained by the 

other three parties. 

(2) If I tell the truth, the utility gained by the seller does not outweigh the utility 

If we are not granted these assumptions, then it is simply known what the net 

utility of my decision is, which makes a utilitarian impossible, since utilitarian says ‘it is 

right if and only if it maximizes net utility.’ 

Given (1) and (2), the utilitarian says: Lie. The reason: if I lie, three people benefit 

and only one is hurt, whereas three people are hurt and only person benefits if I tell the 

truth. 

Universalism: The universalist says that one must only act in such a way that, were 

others to act similarly, that act would not be self-defeating. So I should not, since lies 

wouldn’t be credible in a world in which everybody lied and my act of lying would 

therefore fail of its purpose in such a world. 

The universalist also holds that one should treat people as subjects, not as 

objects. In other words, people should not be ‘used’ or manipulated, since, as subjects, 

they should be treated as ends unto themselves, rather than as mere means to ends. 

These principles seem not to be equivalent. If I teach someone how to play the 

piano, I am not ‘using’ that person; but in a world in which everybody wanted to teach

piano, nobody could do so, since nobody would make those pianos—not to mention 

build houses or enforce laws. That said, they happen to have the same result in this 

particular context. 

If I lie to the seller, I am treating him as a means, not as an end unto himself; and 

the universalist (i.e. the advocate of the principle that one should treat others as 

subjects, not objects) would say that I am acting wrongly. 

If I lie to the seller, then, for the reason given a moment, I am acting in a way in 

which I could not coherently want everyone else to act; and the universalist (i.e. the 

advocate of the principle that one should only act in such a way that one’s act would not 

be self-defeating if everyone else acted similarly) would say that I am acting wrongly. 

Profit maximization: According to this view, I should act in a way that maximizes profit 

provided that I am not (i) breaking the law, (ii) preventing free and open competition, or 

(iii) lying or committing fraud. The idea is that, if I act in a way that maximizes profit 

while complying with these constraints, then the economy and society benefit. If I 

maximize profit but fail to abide by these constraints, then, so the theory goes, society is 

a whole is not benefited, even though my firm may benefit. 

Since, according to this theory, lying is categorically verboten, I am wrong to lie 

and right to tell the truth to the seller, notwithstanding that lying may maximize my 

firm’s profits. Although Friedman and Mackey disagree as to whether a company should

have any obligations other than to maximize profits, Friedman’s position being that it 

should and Mackey’s being that it shouldn’t, they both agree that companies should lie, 

restrain trade, or break the law, and they would both hold that I would be wrong to lie. 

Section III. I would not lie. I would not lie because, in this context, to lie would be to 

commit fraud. That raises the question: Why is fraud wrong? According to universalism 

(people are to be treated as subjects, not objects, and therefore not manipulated, 

swindled, coerced or otherwise objectified), fraud is inherently wrong. 

As for the utilitarian, his position would be that a given act of fraud is wrong only 

if it does more than good and, therefore, that fraud is not inherently wrong; and the 

utilitarian’s position would be that, given the previously stated assumptions, I should lie 

and therefore should not tell the truth. 

That said, my grounds for choosing to tell the truth would not be strictly nonutilitarian. 

In my personal experience, fraud always does more harm than good. In other 

words, setting aside issues relating to guilt and other intangibles, fraud is a losing 

proposition even from a strictly pragmatic viewpoint. I’ve known many fraudsters, and 

their victories were always small and short-lived; and the people I’ve known who 

succeeded in life were honest. In my experience, in a situation like the one in question, 

there would be a practical downside to lying. First of all, an employer who asks

employees to lie is, in my experience, likely to lie—and otherwise abuse—his 

employees. Second, if Rev. Smith were willing to play along with this lie, then he is a 

fraudster and his charity is also likely to be fraudulent. 

To be sure, given the previously stated assumptions, the utilitarian would say 

that I should lie. But if I were actually in this situation, my decision to tell the truth 

would be influenced by such considerations—however irrelevant they might be to the 

exact version of the hypothetical we are describing—as well as by universalist 

considerations; and their respective influences on my decision would not be easily 

separated. 


Please submit the name of a known retailer for each of the categories noted below … 

1. Category Killer: AMAZON 

2. Convenience store: 7-11 

3. Department store: MACY’S 

4. Off-price retailer: TJ MAXX

5. Specialty store: VICTORIA’S SECRET 

6. Supermarket: RALPH’S 

The Lewin & Kotter change models 


• Unfreeze. This first stage of change involves preparing the organization to accept... 

• Change. After the uncertainty created in the unfreeze stage, the change stage is 

where people begin... 

• Refreeze. When the changes are taking shape and people have embraced the new 

ways of working,... 

Kotter’s 8 Step Change Model 

• Step 1: Establish a Sense of Urgency. 

• Step 2: Create a Coalition. 

• Step 3: Develop a Vision. 

• Step 4: Share the vision. 

• Step 5: Empower people to clear obstacles.

• Step 6: Create and secure short-term wins. 

• Step 7: Consolidate and keep moving. 

• Step 8: Anchor the change. 

The rational decision-making process 

Step 1: Identify the Problem 

Step 2: Establish Decision Criteria 

Step 3: Weigh Decision Criteria 

Step 4: Generate Alternatives 

Step 5: Evaluate Alternatives 

Step 6: Select the Best Alternative 


The factors that can drive organizational change include technological developments, 

the economic environment, social cultural changes, and political and legal 

developments. Factors That Drive Organizational Change. Technological developments 

are a factor that drives for organizational change.


1. Getting Ready/Determine the Strategic Intent: 

2. Define Organisational Mission 

3. Assessing the Situation/Analysing Environment 

4. Developing Strategies, Goals and Objectives/Strategy Formulation: 

5. Implement Plans/Strategy Implementation: 

6. Strategy Evaluation/Monitoring Outcomes: 


The Anchoring Trap: Over-Relying on First Thoughts 

The Status Quo Trap: Keeping on Keeping On 

The Sunk Cost Trap: Protecting Earlier Choices 

The Confirmation Trap: Seeing What You Want to See 

The Incomplete Information Trap: Review Your Assumptions

Do we have free will? Responses to discussions posts (my content in bold-faced italics) 

Colleen Sparkman-van der Werf posted Oct 21, 2019 12:32 PM 

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I would say that without a doubt yes, we have free will. I believe that although we 

condition our bodies and brains to do what is natural and what is the norm for us, we, 

as human beings still have the ability to choose. I feel that what we are getting 

caught up in is that we tend to choose what is comfortable and safe. And our brains 

have been programed to remember what we would typically choose. In the video clip 

“Neuroscience and Free will” although some brains knew the button was going to be 

pushed beforehand, it is not enough to prove that they did not have free will. This 

experiment is subjective. This only proves that the brain knew they wold be hitting 

the button. It is difficult to positively know whether the subjects really did not think 

about it before their finger actually went to touch it. This also could prove that it is a 

conditioning of our brain. I suppose this goes against the position of new 

materialism. I also think that humans condition their brains for self preservation. And 

the least resistance for that would be to do what is safe and known. Which, in reality, 

would not be considered free will because you are then choosing something based on 

what your brain and body is telling you that you need; whereas if you chose to do

something just because you wanted to do it and not worry about the consequences, 

then that would be free will. 

Hello CW! I greatly enjoyed your post. I’m not 100% clear what our position. First, 

you say that we clearly have free will. But you immediately thereafter say that our 

behavior is governed by ‘programming’ and ‘conditioning’, which, if true, suggests 

that very much lack free will. 

Is your position that, when we aren’t being brainwashed or manipulated or 

otherwise ‘conditioned’ or ‘programmed’, our natural state is one of being free? If 

so, that is a position worth developing, with the caveat that you would have to 

make it clear what you mean by ‘free will.’ At one point, you correctly that we make 

our own choices. But are all choices made freely? Setting aside cases of duress or 

external compulsion, are choices always made freely? 

The video suggested that our choices ‘make themselves’, as it were, and that 

our conscious minds are simply to take not of our decisions after the fact. This was 

argued compelling by Freud over hundred years ago, though not on quite the same 

grounds; and although I personally agree with you that, under certain 

circumstances, it is an option to make decisions that are in some respects ‘free’, it

would have to said which decisions are made freely, and in exactly what respect 

they are made freely, before it can be said that are categorically ‘free.’ 

Erik Smallwood posted Oct 21, 2019 7:06 AM 

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I had a hard time following interpreting the first video we watched. I feel like the 

researchers did not give us enough information about how they are conducting their 

experiments. I was thinking during the beginning and middle of the video that they 

also need to have their subjects think about hitting a button and then decided not to. 

This way they can compare the brain usage/ramping of both decisions. The researcher 

at the end of the video said there are multiple impulses running at the same time and 

certain ones win out. 

I think that what they are finding is more about how our decision making process 

works. We starting thinking about something/action before we do it which I think is 

what they are reading. I don’t feel like they even believe that we do not have free will 

but that we just don’t know when we start thinking about something. I can relate that 

to conditioning. We are so used to our brains work the way they do that we don’t 

think about how they take part in our actions or decisions.

I do think that it can be a little bit of both. We do have free will to make a decision 

but some of those are decisions could already be predetermined for whatever reason. 

I do not think my views are threatened by any of these new findings. I think that it 

could be some combination of everything that makes the whole thing work. I think 

this quote from the movie Forrest Gump can sum up this topic well. “I don't know if 

we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, 

but I, I think maybe it's both. Maybe both is happening at the same time.” 

Hi Erik! I agree that the people who made the video could have been more clear about 

the structure of the experiment. Nonetheless, the basic idea was ultimately pretty 

clear. When a given person makes a given decision, his body gives off a number of 

signals, in much the way that a bad poker player gives off ‘tells’ (meaning that he 

inadvertently discloses his hand); and this experiment seemed to show pretty 

conclusively that a number of involuntary signals that a given decision has been made 

are given off before the person actually ‘pushes the button’ on the matter. In other 

words, the subject knows only when the clicks the mouse; but his body, so this 

experiment showed, has already given off a lot of involuntary signals that show that 

he was already locked into a certain path. Cheers, Monzer

Discussion Post #8 (worth 30 points; at least 200 words): Due by Saturday, Oct 26th, by 

11:30 p.m. (my work in boldfaced italics) 

Read the introduction to the theme of “Culture and Identity” on pp. 428-430. Then 

read Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” on pp. 442-454 (I've also 

put an audio reading of the story above, so you can listen to it as well.) Then read 

any ONE other piece of fiction or poetry or drama or nonfiction from the “Culture 

and Identity” theme from pp. 428-575. Again, though, you may NOT use the same 

piece for post #8 as you did for post #7 

For discussion post #8, there are two parts: 

First for part A (worth 15 points). SUMMARIZE “The Yellow Wallpaper” and the other 

piece you read with one FULL paragraph of 6-8 sentences (at least 50 words) given to 

each piece for a total of at least 100 words for this part (remember, your summaries 

should be detailed enough to SHOW you read well . . .). Make sure when you do your 

post that you give the title of the piece you are responding to, as well as the pages 

it is on in our text.


This story is told from the viewpoint of a highly emotionally sensitive woman, 

who in times past would have been classified as ‘neurasthenic’, meaning, in effect, 

that she had a persistent case of ‘raw nerves.’ The woman lives in a room by herself. 

She never seems to leave the room, even though it is a part of a large house, which is 

also occupied by her husband. Her husband is a medical doctor and is also functioning, 

ominously, as her personal medical doctor—more specifically, as her psychiatrist. 

(And, like many psychiatrists, he is not, it turns out, a particularly good one.) It is clear 

from the beginning of the story that the woman is emotionally troubled and, at the 

very least, extremely neurotic. 

But there is a great deal about her condition that is not clear. It is not clear 

whether she is basically a normal, if highly sensitive woman, who has experienced a 

bit of emotional throttling or, on the contrary, whether she has a had full-on psychotic 

break with reality. At the beginning of the story, we are led to believe that she is more 

on the neurotic side of the spectrum, but at the end it is revealed by that she is very 

much at the psychotic extreme. 

The story consists for the most part of the woman’s pondering her husband’s 

alleged failure to have a genuinely emotional, as opposed to narrowly clinical, 

understanding of her condition. Her husband has very clearly written her off as a

demented woman, who, for reasons of protocol, must be tolerated and treated with a 

certain degree of civility but not sympathized with or respected. The woman’s 

grievances about her husband prove to be justified, and as the story progresses, it 

begins to emerge that her complaints about him are seriously understated, as he is 

driven not by cold professionalism but by ill-will and hatred towards his wife. 

At the same time, the woman’s mental condition is increasingly clearly that of 

somebody who is completely psychotic, as is evidenced by her fixation with, and 

delusions concerning, the peeling yellow wallpaper in her room, which represents her 

unravelling soul. 

At the end of the story, it is revealed that, contrary to what the woman herself 

has believed all along and also to what the reader has assumed, the woman is a 

prisoner and is simply trapped in that room—much as, so it is suggested, she is 

trapped in her own madness. 

For part B (worth 15 points). Then RESPOND to the story and other piece and/or the 

ideas in them in some way--either creatively or critically (for critical, for example, see 

the handout called "An Inductive/Inquiry Approach to Studying Texts" in week two’s

module or the “Glossary of Critical Approaches” on pp. 946-954). You might write 

several questions (as outlined in the Inquiry Approach) or you might choose one of 

the critical approaches and analyze the story or stories from that perspective. Or you 

could compare/contrast the story and the other piece in terms of what they say about 

the theme of “Culture and Identity.” Or you could write about how you interpreted 

these pieces. These are just some suggestions for ways you can respond to literature 

you have read. 

If you want to do a creative response, then write your own "mini-story"or poem 

about this theme or in the style/vein/voice of one of the pieces you read. 

Or you can answer/address this question: Charlotte Perkins Gilman said that she 

wrote this piece as a feminist protest against the way women were treated during her 

time. Do you see this character as protesting or not? Is she trying to create a 

different kind of identity for herself than the one that was acceptable for women at 

that time—or is she just mentally unstable? Write about her and this story and 

compare it to the other piece you read somehow. 

For the response part, I am looking for at least 100 words for this part also. The 

more detail the better; the more thoughtful/thought-provoking, the better!


Smith: Brown! How are you, my friend? How did you like those two stories? 

Brown: I very much liked The Yellow Wallpaper (YP). I’m not sure how I felt 

about Sonny’s Blues (SB). 

Smith: When you say “not sure…”, do you actually mean you’re not sure? Or are 

you politely saying that it didn’t work for you? 

Brown: It didn’t work for me. 

Smith: That’s surprising, because I know you like non-fiction, or non-fiction-like, 

stories about wayward lifestyles and the gritty realities they involve. 

Brown: I do. But SB didn’t work for me. 

Smith: Why not? 

Brown: First of all, the main character---the narrator—was boring. He had a 

boring outlook, and I got the feeling that his job was just a kind of prop. And I didn’t 

really know what he was supposed to represent. 

Smith: I can kind of see that. 

Brown: On the one hand, he was supposed to be this square schoolteacher, 

which I can certainly understand. But then there were these weird flashes of bitterness

about racial injustice, among other things, that, although morally justified, had no real 

foundation in the character. They just came out of the blue. 

Smith: I got that feeling myself. The main character was supposed to be a 

blank—a mirror that reflected reality---but sometimes he would stop being a blank 

and would go into an angry political mode, which, however justified historically, didn’t 

cohere with the rest of the character’s personality. 

Brown: Yes, frankly, I felt that way too. I didn’t really know what the story was 

about. I mean, there were really only two characters: the main one, who was just kind 

of a run-of-the-mill narrator, and Sonny, who, apart from his piano-talent, had no 

particularly good or interesting qualities. 

Smith: Yes, and there seemed to be an understanding to the effect that all of 

this was a consequence of racism, or some such, and maybe it was. But if the story is 

just considered on its own terms—if it’s just read as a story about a man and his 

brother, rather than as a political diatribe—it doesn’t really work very well. 

Brown: No, it doesn’t. Not in my view, anyway. And there was undischarged 

premise there, something to the effect that Sonny was a lost soul who would not have 

been lost in a non-racist society. Which may or may not be true and which, in any case, 

didn’t really make for very engaging reading, I’m sorry to say. 

Smith: What about YP? What did you think of that? 

Brown: That one I very much liked.

Smith: Which is ironic, given that you’re a male and the main character isn’t. 

Brown: Yes, that’s an irony, I suppose. But I still liked it. 

Smith: Because..? 

Brown: Because it was realistic. Especially the way the woman’s delusions were 

intertwined with accurate emotional perceptions. 

Smith: Explain please. 

Brown: Ok. So obviously the woman’s belief that she lived in the wallpaper, or 

whatever her delusion was, was indeed a delusion. But her beliefs about her husband’s 

emotional disposition towards her was accurate. 

Smith: That makes sense. 

Brown: And I think what drove her insane was her awareness, her unconscious 

awareness, of her husband’s actual feelings. 

Smith: So was it the fact that she was aware of her husband’s feelings that 

drove her mad, or was it the fact that she was unconsciously aware of her husband’s 

feeling? 

Brown: The latter. If she had known, consciously and lucidly, what her husband 

was really about, it would not have driven her mad, since frank acceptances of ugly 

realities, though unpleasant, don’t undermine mental health. 

Smith: So it was the fact that she was aware of her husband’s actual disposition 

towards her but couldn’t admit it.

Brown: Right, she couldn’t admit it---except by going into a kind of perpetual 

dream-like state. 

Smith: You’re referring to her psychosis. 

Brown: Yes, psychosis being, as Freud said, a prolonged waking dream. 

Smith: Hoo boy! 

Brown: Yes, it’s heavy. That’s why I liked the story. 

Smith: You liked it because it was heavy, or because it was accurate? 

Brown: It wouldn’t have been heavy if it had not been psychologically accurate. 

Smith: Good point, Brown. Good point. 


Jennifer Johnson posted Oct 19, 2019 

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (page 442-454) 

From the beginning this story will open the doors to a psychological thriller that will 

leave you wanting more all the way to the end. It begins by detailing the daily struggles 

of a Physician named John and his wife who seem to operate strangely in their personal 

relationship. John is his wife’s physician and that will hinder her ability to cope with her 

mental illness throughout the story. John seems to be in true denial of his wife’s mental

condition. This story will lead you to believe that John’s wife is going through 

postpartum depression in many ways. He has taken her away to a beautiful yet older 

rental home to heal, and ultimately this home will begin to unravel her mental 

illness. She becomes obsessed with things she sees and begins to write about them in 

her journals. The story will explain how John’s wife is hiding a lot of her fears and 

feelings. She begins to write a secretive journal detailing the things she is experiencing 

and seeing in the rental house. The yellow wallpaper in the house will have a major 

significance to the story and will add to the wife’s perception of reality. She begins to 

see an imprisoned woman within the yellow wallpaper which will leave the reader 

wondering. At times this story will go from documenting the first person struggles of 

anxiety and depression to something that is a bit evil and full of suspense. 

Hi Jennifer! I very much enjoyed your post. But I feel that you simply stated the ‘cold 

facts’ of the case, as it were. Yes, this woman is obviously cycling into psychosis, 

possibly caused by post-partum depression, and yes she does start to project onto the 

wall-papers. But what, in your opinion, does all of this mean? In other words, what is 

it that isn’t said but lies beneath the surface of these events? For example, is the 

husband deliberately torturing her? If so, why? Is there a larger conceit at work

concerning gender relations? If so, what? I would be very interested on your thoughts 

on these matters! -Monzer 

A Poet To His Baby Son by James Weldon Johnson (page 504-505) 

This poem is about a father who wants his son to grow up to be something great. As his 

son lays in front of him as a baby, he begins to think of the future and what his son will 

grow up to be. His son is described as being blessed with his mother’s face and cursed 

with his father’s mind. He wants his son to grow up to be a banker, a politician, leader 

or a type of go getter. The father seems to have strong opinions on what he does not 

want is son to be. He states, “Take the advice of a father who knows.” He clearly does 

not want his son to become a poet. He defines in the poem that it is no time or place 

for poets today. He views the language of poets as an unknown tongue today. 

Great post! What are your thoughts on the father’s values? Is the father right to have 

such specific views as to what constitutes success? And why does he have them? Is it 

because he is himself unfulfilled? Or is it just that he is ‘old school’ and has rather 

retrograde beliefs about how life is to be lived? Finally, what are your own views on 

these matters? Are you a poet who others tried to force into some pre-existing 

professional template? Cheers, Monzer

Questions about the Yellow Wallpaper 

What type of physician is John? Does he have any experience with mental illness or 

postpartum depression? Is a psychiatrist? What type of physician is her brother? 

Probably a general practitioner who, if given the choice, would specialize in psychiatry. 

How did she really feel about the yellow wallpaper? She used words like flamboyant, 

repellent, revolting and unclean. Did she really hate the yellow wallpaper? 

She does not like it. It is clinical and fake, and it represents her tattered psyche. 

The story mentioned that Mary is good with the baby. Is this their first baby? Has Mary 

been there as the caregiver for more than one child for John and his wife? Does Mary 

know she has postpartum and that’s why they are at the rental house? 

I don’t know that she thinks in quite such logical, transactional terms.

In the story she states she is angry enough to do something desperate. She also 

mentions she has a hidden rope. Does John take her suicide signs seriously? Does John 

know that his wife could be suicidal? 

He is probably deliberately causing her to be suicidal, or so the subtext suggests. 

John takes it as far as to take his wife to a rental house to recover from postpartum 

depression. Has John seen signs that would make him think his wife would harm their 

child? 

Great suggestion, but his objective seems to be to hurt, not to protect. 

Questions A Poet To His Baby Son 

Why does the author think becoming a poet is such a bad choice? Is the author a poet 

himself? 

He thinks it’s a bad choice, because, financially speaking, it is a bad choice. Panhandlers 

make more money than poets.

Why does the author think that poets are unfortunate fellows? Why doesn’t he want 

his son to grow up to be like one? Is that because you cannot earn a living being a 

poet? The poem says that poetry is unknown tongue? Does he think that no one reads 

or respects poetry anymore? 

He thinks this, because they have no earning power and are therefore defenseless. 

Plus, there are great poets who have day-jobs, such as Wallace Stevens, who was an 

investment banker. Even Shakespeare made his living as an actor, not as a poet or 

playwright. 

It seems the author wants the best for his son. Why would he be critical of what he 

does not want his son to be when he grows up? 

Asked and answered. See above. 

Why would the author think that poetry is not a good way of communicating love for his 

son if he is writing his own son a poem like this? 

Poetry is a great way to communicate love, but it isn’t a good way to pay the bills. A 

friend of mine is a poet, and he always had to ask other people for money, including

me. One day I lent him my car, and he just drove away. With my dog and birthcertificate. 

How would the author feel if his son grew up to become a poet and read this poem that 

was written for him as a baby? Would be feel regretful that he has such harsh feeling 

on poets knowing his own son became one? 

less 

That really depends. It depends on the father and also depends on the son’s situation. 

Is he writing the poem from his mansion or from his jail cell? 



This paper is a critical response to three articles: “The Commodity as Spectacle”, by Guy 

Debord; “The Spectacle of the Other”, by Stuart Hall; and “An Illustrated Guide to Guy 

Debord’s ‘The Society of the Spectacle’”, by Tiernan Morgan and Lauren Purje. Each one 

of these articles had most, if not all, of the following five characteristics:

(a) It correctly points out that a society that is market-based, as opposed to culturebased, 

inevitably turns people into objects; 

(b) Despite making this important point, not a single one of these articles discusses 

pornography, which is the best conceivable illustration of the fact that marketbased 

societies turn people into objects or, to use Debord’s term, ‘mere 

spectacles’; 

(c) Up to a point, each of these articles is itself an example of the very commodityfetishism 

that it is its very purpose to expose and heap scorn on; 

(d) Although each of these papers does expose a deep problem with all economybased 

societies--namely, that human beings are turned into objects it does so 

much as attempt to identify a constructive way of responding to this fact; and 

finally, 

(e) Although, as just stated, each of these papers identified this important problem 

with market-based societies, there is an important corollary that each of them 

hints at but not a single one of them clearly states, namely, that the various 

freedoms that people necessarily have in a given market-economy---in particular, 

the freedoms to own and exchange goods and services---inevitably lead to 

complete mutual enslavement on the part of that society’s members, albeit 

under the pretexts of ‘universal legal protection of individual rights’ and 

‘economic and individual freedom.’

Let us now clarify and substantiate each of these points, and relate it to the 

articles in question. First of all, what better example of “the Commodity as Spectacle”, 

to use Guy Debord’s term, could there be than a stripper or pornographic actress? 

Debord himself does not mention these professions, and yet they are the best 

conceivable examples of his point that the free-market turns people into mere 

‘spectacles.’ For here we have a human being who has been turned into a commodity 

that is in the most literal possible way a spectacle. This woman is paid to be ‘stripped’ of 

her clothing—and dignity—and turned into a pure spectacle—something that exists only 

to be consumed and that is consumed by being looked at. 

This is not to say that strippers and pornographic actresses are forced into their 

professions: in most cases they are not. But in a way, the fact that they enter these 

professions ‘freely’ only shows how insidiously and deceptively destroying of freedom 

the so-called ‘free market’ really is. First of all, if a woman is abducted and forced to 

become a pornographic actress, that does not redound to the discredit of capitalism. 

Capitalism is about people transacting with one another. In other words, it is about 

people having and using the legal right to dispose of their own assets in a manner of 

their own choosing. Since the woman was forced into prostitution, her being a 

prostitute is not the result of a transaction (being kidnapped and forced into a certain

line of work is not a way of transacting, after all), and it therefore falls outside the scope 

of what a capitalist system permits. 

So let us consider the case where the woman ‘freely’ becomes a stripper or 

pornographic actress. Why has this woman chosen this path? Very simple. She needs 

money; in a market-economy, she has no value over and above what people are willing 

to give her in the form of money; and unless she has the wherewithal to become a highlevel 

professional, such as a medical doctor or computer-programmer, her options are 

either (i) earn a paltry income doing time-consuming, soul-destroying menial work (e.g. 

work as a waitress or telemarketer) or (ii) make real money by literally turning herself 

into a spectacle. 

Pornographers and consumers of pornography will say that this woman ‘did this 

to herself’—that she ‘did it freely.’ And after a fashion, they are right. Like all members 

of a market-economy, this woman started off with certain legal ‘freedoms’; and in order 

to eat and pay rent, she disposed of those freedoms in a manner that, given the options 

available to her, was the most ‘rational’ and that she consequently ‘freely’ chose. And 

yet all of this ‘freedom’ and ‘rationality’ has been turned against itself and made its 

possessor into a slave: this woman may be legally free, but how much more freedom 

than an actual slave does she actually have? If a slave tries to escape, he may be hunted 

down and beaten, maybe even killed. If this woman refuses to either work ten hours a 

day in a cubicle or spend those same ten hours dancing naked under neon lights, she

will be out on the streets and either die of exposure or be jailed for vagrancy. 

Incidentally, supposing for argument’s sake that she does choose to live on the streets, 

the various petty convictions that she will wrack up as a result will make it impossible 

for her to get any kind of job that pays enough money to live on. So no—her situation is 

not, at least not unambiguously, different from that of an actual slave, even though her 

every move is carried out ‘freely.’ 

Debord writes: 

The spectacle subjugates living men to itself to the extent that the economy has 

totally subjugated them. It is no more than the economy developing for itself. It is the 

true reflection of the production of things, and the false objectification of the producers 

(Debord, 142). 

How much more impactful this statement would have been had it been followed 

by a specific example! And what better illustration of it could there be than the justdiscussed 

completely literal one! 

Debord’s article is the work of someone with a powerful intellect. It reads much 

like Marx’s “Theses on Feuerbach” and seems to have been modeled on them, both 

consisting of deep but obscure epigrams that would be a lot less obscure if concretely

illustrated. And not a single one of the forty epigrams composing this work involves a 

concrete illustration-even though illustrations abound, as we have seen. 

Presumably, it was presumably for this very reason that Morgan and Purje wrote 

their article “An Illustrated Guide to Guy Debord’s ‘The Society of the Spectacle’”. 

Though brilliant, this article suffers from one major flaw: it doesn’t contain any 

illustrations. Yes—it contains ‘illustrations’ in the sense that it there is art-work in it; but 

it is quite as devoid of specific examples of the phenomenon in question (that the ‘free 

market’ turns people into two-dimensional spectacle-commodities) as Debord’s work 

itself. And its attempt to clarify Debord’s meaning do not in my view do Debord’s work 

justice: 

As spectators, we regularly experience advertisements for rival products — 

Pepsi and Coca-Cola, Delta and US Airways, The X-Factor and The Voice. Often we’re 

presented with conflicting desires or messages. For instance, a television drama 

depicting an AA meeting might be preceded by a glamorous vodka advertisement. 

Such logical inconsistencies are buried by the spectacle’s relentless proffering of 

goods and imagery. Gradually, we begin to conflate visibility with value (Morgan and 

Purje).

Yes, technically speaking, it is ironic that the same consumers are being shown 

ads for booze are also being shown ads for ways to get off of booze. But this isn’t 

exactly a ‘logical inconsistency.’ It is, indeed, just a humorous irony: advertisements 

are seen by millions of people; some of them want vodka and others want to drop 

drinking vodka---just as some of them want to buy sneakers and others want to buy 

dress shoes. 

Also, Morgan and Purje are interpreting Debord overly literally. In their view, 

Debord is making the pedestrian point that, in a market-society, people focus almost 

as much on packaging—on the wrapper and the ribbons and the like—as they do on 

the actual product. But Debord is trying to make a much deeper point—one to the 

effect that capitalistic transactionalism drains turns human beings into soulless 

widgets who, as such, have nothing on the ‘inside’ and are therefore pure ‘outside’— 

pure appearance in other words. 

As for Stuart Hall’s “The Spectacle of the Other” (Hall, 2001), this work was a 

combination of very sharp and accurate and also very misconceived. Hall points out 

that, thanks to predatory capitalistic practices, human beings were enslaved and that 

this was subsequently rationalized on free-market grounds. This is true, of course. Hall 

then insightfully says that capitalism ‘otherizes’ human beings—which it does, in that, in 

a ‘free’ market system, people do not interact, so much as they transact, with the result 

that kinship and moral ties are dissolved in an acid bath of acquisitiveness.

Where, in my view, Hall goes quite astray is his contention capitalism reinforces 

distinctions of race and gender. As Marx and Engels themselves said, capitalism does 

quite the opposite: capitalism replaces the biological with the financial: biologically 

rooted instincts---both wholesome ones, such as feelings of warmth for friends and 

family, as well ugly offshoots, such as chauvinism and racism---are replaced by cold 

calculations, with friends and family and even children having only as much worth as an 

accounting program says they have. So yes—historically, just as Hall says, capitalism led 

to acts of profiteering that involved exploiting racial differences. What Hall fails to say is 

that, when capitalism is allowed to run its course, it dehumanizes everybody: all 

people—man, woman, black, white—are equally required to toil in cubicles for 

paychecks that barely cover their rent; and if, in order to tend to a sick child or make a 

much needed visit to the doctor’s office, they take so much as a day off without ‘written 

permission’ from their supervisor, they are rewarded for it by having their livelihood cut 

off—none 

Debord, G. (2006). The commodity as spectacle. Media and cultural studies: Keyworks, 

117-21.

Hall, S. (2001). The spectacle of the other. Discourse theory and practice: A reader, 324- 

344. 

Morgan, Tiernan and Purje, Lauren (2016). “An Illustrated Guide to Guy Debord’s ‘The 

Society of the Spectacle’”. Retrieved from: https://hyperallergic.com/313435/anillustrated-guide-to-guy-debords-the-society-of-the-spectacle/ 


STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL WORK 

I understand that Capella University’s Academic Honesty Policy (3.01.01) holds 

learners accountable for the integrity of work they submit, which includes, but 

is not limited to, discussion postings, assignments, comprehensive exams, and

the dissertation. Learners are expected to understand the Policy and know that 

it is their responsibility to learn about instructor and general academic 

expectations with regard to proper citation of sources in written work as 

specified in the APA Publication Manual, 6th Ed. Serious sanctions can result 

from violations of any type of the Academic Honesty Policy including dismissal 

from the university. 

I attest that this document represents my own work. Where I have used the 

ideas of others, I have paraphrased and given credit according to the guidelines 

of the APA Publication Manual, 6th Ed. Where I have used the words of others, 

(i.e. direct quotes), I have followed the guidelines for using direct quotes 

prescribed by the APA Publication Manual, 6th Ed. 

I have read, understood, and abided by Capella University’s Academic Honesty 

Policy (3.01.01). I further understand that Capella University takes plagiarism 

seriously; regardless of intention, the result is the same.

Signature for Statement of Original 

Work 

Vineta Mitchell 

Dr. Guillory 

Learner Name 

Mentor Name 

Vmitchell26@capel 

patricia.guillory@capella 

Learner Email 

la.edu 

Mentor Email 

.edu 

vmitch16@gmail.co 

m 

21356578 

10/07/2019 

Learner ID 

Date

QUANTITATIVE Dissertation Research Plan 2 

Dissertation Research Plan: QUANTITATIVE STUDIES ONLY 

PRELIMINARY INFORMATION 

Learners, please insert your answers directly into the expandable boxes that have been 

provided! 

A. Learner and Specialization 

Information (to be completed by 

Learner) 

Learner Name 

Learner Email 

Vineta Mitchell 

Vmitchell26@capella.edu 

Learner ID Number 21356578 

Mentor Name 

Dr. Guillory 

Mentor Email 

patricia.guillory@capella.edu 

Specialization 

Nursing Education 

Specialization Chair Name

Specialization Chair Email 


Committee Member #1 

Name 

Committee Member #1 Email 

Committee Member #2 

Name 

Committee Member #2 Email 

Methodology 

QUANTITATIVE


Section 1. Topic Endorsement 

1.1 Research Topic The proposed research study topic is implicit bias on the 

part of Nursing Faculties against African Americans who are 

not first-generation immigrants. It is therefore important in 

this context to distinguish between native born African 

Americans and first-generation African Americans, since the 

current study is concerned with implicit institutional biases 

that are direct towards native born African Americans but 

are not, at least not with equal intensity, directed towards 

first-generation immigrants of African Ancestry. A case will 

be made that native born (Muronda, 2015). 

Less than 10% of Nursing Faculty members are of African 

(Sub-Saharan) descent, even though African Americans are 

over 13% of the population (US Census Bureau, 2018). At 

the same time, first-generation immigrants of African 

descent disproportionately represented in Nursing Faculties 

(South, 2018). The population of the United States is 

approximately 330 million, approximately 42 million of 

whom are of African ancestry. Of those 42 million, 

approximately 3.4 million are first generation immigrants,


approximately 95% of whom come from one of the 

following countries: Jamaica, Haiti, Nigeria, Trinidad & 

Tobago, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Guyana, Kenya, 

and Somalia (US Census Bureau, 2018). Immigrants from 

these countries are twice as likely as native born Americans 

to be employed as medical professionals, over three times 

as likely as native-born African Americans to be employed as 

medical professionals, over four times as likely as nativeborn 

African Americans to be employed as nurses, and over 

five times as likely as native-born African Americans to be 

employed as members of Nursing Faculties (South, 2019).


1.2 Research Problem 

(1 Paragraph) 

Although there is a voluminous scholarly literature 

concerning racism towards African-Americans, there is a 

paucity of literature concerning the effects of such literature 

in the context of Nursing Faculties, and there extremely little 

literature concerning how the attitudes of nursing faculty 

members towards first-generation immigrants of African 

descent differ from their attitudes towards native-born 

African Americans. 

There does exist purely statistical data relating to the 

rates of employment in Nursing Faculties of both native-born 

African Americans as well as first-generation immigrants of 

African descent. But this data has not been interpreted 

(Akintoye, 2019). It has been observed that, in many 

different professional context, including nursing and nursinginstruction, 

first-generation immigrants of African descent 

do in fact ‘outperform’ native-born African Americans, both 

when it comes to being hired and also when it comes to 

being promoted. But this has not been treated as a sign of 

bias or prejudice. In fact, it has been celebrated as evidence 

of their absence (White-means, 2009).


RESIDENCY LEARNERS ONLY: 

Specialization Chair Topic Endorsement 

• After completing Section 1, “Topic Endorsement,” addressing the 

Research Topic and Research Problem, submit the form to your Residency 

Instructor for approval. Follow the instructions carefully. 

• Collaborate with your Residency Instructor until you have approval for the 

Section 1, “Topic Endorsement.” After you have received their approval for 

Section 1, your Residency Instructor will submit this section to your 

Specialization Chair or Designee for Topic Endorsement. 

• The Specialization Chair or Designee will notify you and your Residency 

Instructor of their decision and a copy of the decision will be sent to 

Dissertation@capella.edu.

Section 2. Research Overview 

QUANTITATIVE Dissertation Research Plan 8


2.1 Research 

Problem 

Background 

American laws and mores have changed enormously over 

the last sixty years. Jim Crow laws, which explicitly 

discriminated against African Americans, were abolished 

and replaced with laws designed to ensure equality of 

treatment and opportunity (Akintoye, 2019). Also, during 

this period, the United States has transitioned from being 

90% white, has become highly diverse and multicultural, 

with whites being expected to become a minority by 2043 

(Lieberman, 2019). 

It is difficult, however, to track the psychological realities 

underlying these massive demographic shifts and, in 

particular, to know whether people’s private attitudes have 

kept pace with the just-mentioned legal and institutional 

changes. Racism and ethnic bias no longer assume overt 

forms, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. For example, 

even though the white population has shrunk by almost a 

third over the last sixty years, nursing faculties are still over 

90% white, even in areas, such as Detroit and Chicago, 

where they make up less than one third of the population 

(Phillips, 2014). 

Also, the fact that first-generation immigrants of African


descent are so much more likely than equally qualified 

native-born African Americans to be hired and promoted by 

such faculties suggests that their members are still uneasy 

about native-born African Americans (Sabin, 2009). 

A related fact is that native-born African Americans are 

culturally and even to some extent ethnically distinct from 

first-generation immigrants of African descent (Hamilton, 

2019). The upbringing and outlook of a given immigrant 

from Lagos, Nigeria is likely to be very different from that of 

an African American who was raised in Baltimore or Los 

Angeles; and in addition to speaking with different accents, 

the two are likely to have different preferences in relation 

clothing and other personal matters (Hamilton, 2019). 

Researches have established that racial bias is triggered not 

by skin color alone but by skin color in conjunction with 

distinctive accents, clothing styles, and personal manner, 

and first-generation immigrants of African descent may 

therefore fail to trigger the biases that operate against his 

native-born counterpart (Smedley, 2003).


2.2 Research 

Question(s) 

Is implicit bias on the part of nursing faculty members 

towards native-born African Americans responsible for the 

fact that, compared to equally qualified first-generation 

immigrants of African descent, they are disproportionately 

unlikely to be hired and, if hired, disproportionately unlikely 

to be promoted?


If so, is this bias conscious? 

What non-disruptive and politically feasible measures can be 

taken to counteract the effects of this bias? 

What are the economic consequences of this bias and what 

would the economic consequences of their elimination be?


2.3 Purpose of the Study The purpose of this study is to identify and delineate the 

social consequences of the psychological forces 

responsible for the fact that native-born African Americans 

are less likely than members of all other ethnicities, 

including first-generation immigrants of African descent, to 

be recruited/promoted by nursing faculties. 

2.4 Methodology and 

Basic Design Overview 

This study will be divided into two parts, and the 

methodology used in each part will be quantitative. 

In the first part, the relevant statistical data will be 

analyzed, so as to establish that the above-stated 

discrepancies are indeed a function of implicit bias. Since 

this will involve correlating hiring-rates and promotionrates 

with applicant-credentials, the methodology in 

question, being causal-correlational, will be quantitative 

(Cresswell, 2015). 

In the second part, the nature and causes of the biases 

in question will be investigated. This will be done through 

a carefully constructed survey, which will be administered 

online. The survey will use the standard six-point Likert 

scale, making it possible for results to evaluated 

automatically and objectively (Bachmann, 2015).


2.5 Dissertation Title 

Identifying Implicit Racial Barriers and their 

Impact on Changing the Face of Nursing Faculty


Section 3. Research Theory 

3.1 Theoretical 

Foundations 

Ultimately, the foundations for this study lie in Levi- 

Strauss’s structural approach to anthropological research 

and in James Gibson’s ecological approach to 

psychological research. 

According to Levi-Strauss’s structuralism, human 

interrelations are governed by rules, most of them 

implicit, that are defined in terms of binaries, such as 

black/white, good/bad, boss/underlying, and male/female 

(Levi-Strauss, 1963). It is to be stressed that the rules in 

question are not laws or even conventions. Rather, they 

are largely unconscious understandings that, although 

having some biological roots, are changeable and only 

assume rigid forms when given external reinforcement in 

the form of statutes and other expressions of institutional 

force. 

According to Gibson’s ecological methodology, 

interactions among organisms, including human beings, 

are guided by implicit understandings as to how maintain 

viable equilibria in a sustainable manner (Gibson, 1977).


Oftentimes, these understandings give rise to enlightened 

practices, but they may also lead to behavior that, 

although productive in times past, has long since ceased to 

be so (Gibson, 2002). 

Structuralism has been used with great advantage in 

the study of racism, including in the medical profession, by 

a number of scholars, including Bonilla-Silva (1996) and 

Viruell-Fuentes (2012), who have shown that otherwise 

inexplicable and highly invidious forms of racism, such as 

Jim Crow and Apartheid, can be understood, though 

obviously not justified, if mapped onto Levi-Strauss’s 

structuralism Bonilla-Silva (1996). 

As for Gibson’s ecological school of psychological 

research, Anderson (1999), Williams (2001), and Krieger 

(2014) have done extensive work showing that racial 

institutions, as well as their psychological residues, can be 

understood along Gibsonian lines by regarding them as 

over-deployed defensive-mechanisms, comparable to 

those that mediate asthma, lupus, and other auto-immune 

disorders (Krieger, 2014).


3.2 Contributions to 

Theory 

In this work, we will show that the just-mentioned 

contextualizations of the theories of Gibson and Levi- 

Strauss not only make it possible to interpret irrationally 

Describe how your study 

will contribute to theory 

in your field by meeting 

one or more of these 

four criteria. 

discriminatory behavior on the part of otherwise rational 

professionals but also help identify feasible policyrecommendations 

that would help reconcile the various 

parties afflicted by the racial biases examined in the 

current study. 

1. The study should 

generate new theory. 

2. The study should 

refine or add to an 

existing theory. 

3. The study should test 

to confirm or refute a 

theory. 

4. The study should

expand theory by 


telling us something 

new about 

application or 

processes 

• Use current (within 5-7 

years), scholarly, 

PRIMARY resources to 

support statements. 

• Use APA style in citing 

all resources. 

3.3 Theoretical 

Implications 

The primary theoretical implication of the present study 

is that racial attitudes, along with the social damage 

thereby done, can be mitigated without overhauling the 

Describe the theoretical 

implications you believe 

your study could have for 

your field AND your 

specialization area. This 

will be the theoretical 

institutions that host them or otherwise engaging in 

extreme measures that are likely to lead to hate, as 

opposed to reconciliation (LeGrande, 2018). 

Thus far, racism has been combatted either through 

heart-wrenching but ultimately empty pleas for 

‘compassion’ or through massive social changes requiring

framework(s) to be used 

in conceptualizing the 

study and analyzing the 

data. 


prohibitively large amounts of political will and financial 

capital (Kumi-Yeboah, 2019). The current study will identify 

measures that are both non-ideological and also envirofriendly 

and, for those reasons among others, would be 

loss costly and less likely to meet with emotional or 

political resistance (LeGrand, 218). 






all resources.


3.4 Practical Implications 

Discriminatory behavior is never innocuous, but it is 

especially harmful in the context of decisions relating to 

Please describe the 

specific practical 

implications that may 

result from this research 

that can be used by any or 

all of the following 

stakeholders: the 

population being studied, 

professionals for whom 

this topic pertains, and/or 

the wider community 

itself. 

the hiring and promoting of healthcare employees. 

Researchers have established that discriminatory hiringpractices 

correlate with lower-quality healthcare being 

given to members of the group thereby discriminated 

against (Sen, 2018). 

Also, economists in the United Kingdom, Germany, and 

the United States have estimated that biases on the part of 

healthcare providers, including racial biases, increases 

health-care costs by as much as 20%. Any insight that can 

be provided as to how to mitigate such bias is therefore 

likely to improve quality of healthcare while stabilizing 

costs (Simon, 2019)







all resources.


Reference 

s 

Akintoye, E., Miranda, W. R., Veldtman, G. R., Connolly, H. M., & Egbe, A. C. 

(2019). National trends in Fontan operation and in-hospital outcomes in 

the USA. Heart, 105(9), 708-714. 

Bachmann, A., Dansuer, B., & Marin, D. (2015). Developing a theoretical 

framework using a nursing perspective to investigate perceived health in 

the “sandwich generation” group. Nursing Science Quarterly, 28 (4), 308- 

318. Doi:1177/ 

0894318415599217


Bonilla-Silva E. Rethinking racism: Toward a structural 

interpretation. American Sociological Review. 1996;62:465-480. 

Clark R, Anderson NB, Clark VR, Williams DR. Racism as a stressor for 

African Americans: A biopsychosocial model. American 

Psychologist. 1999;October 1999:805-816. 

Cohen G, Garcia J, Purdie-Vaughns V, Apfel N, Brzustoski P. Recursive 

processes in self-affirmation: intervening to close the minority 

achievement gap. Science. 2009 Apr 17;324(5925):400–3. 

Creswell, J. (2015). Educational research: Planning, conducting, and 

evaluating quantitative and qualitative research. (5 th Ed.). Upper Saddle 

River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc. ISBN: 978-0-13-354958-4 

Frieden, T. (2014). Six components necessary for effective public health 

program implementation. American Journal of Public Health, 104 (1), 

17-22. 

Flemings, C., Lamont, M., & Welburn, J. (2012). African Americans respond to 

stigmatization: The meanings and salience of confronting, deflecting conflict,


educating the ignorant and “managing self. Ethnic & Racial Studies. 35(3), 400- 

417. 

Flora, P., De Jong, P. R., Le Grand, J., & Kim, J. Y. (2018). The State and Social 

Welfare, 1997: International Studies on Social Insurance and 

Retirement, Employment, Family Policy and Health Care. Routledge. 

Gee GC, Payne-Sturges DC. Environmental health disparities: a framework 

integrating psychosocial and environmental concepts.Environ 

Health Perspect. 2004;112(17):1645-1653. 

Gibson, J. J. (2002). A theory of direct visual perception. Vision and Mind: 

selected readings in the philosophy of perception, 77-90. 

Gibson, J. J. (1977). The theory of affordances. Hilldale, USA, 1(2). 

Graham L, Brown-Jeffy S, Aronson R, Stephens C. Critical race theory as 

theoretical framework and analysis tool for population health 

research. Critical Public Health. 2011;21(1):81-93. 

Hamilton, T. G., & Massey, D. S. (2019). Immigration and the Remaking of 

Black America. Russell Sage Foundation.


Hassouneh, D. (2013). Unconscious racist bias: Barrier to a diverse nursing faculty. 

Journal of Nursing Education, 52(4), 183-184. 

Hassouneh D, Akeroyd J, Lutz K F , Beckett A K , (2012). Exclusion and control: Patterns 

aimed at limiting the influence of faculty of color. Journal of Nursing Education, 51(6), 

314—325. 

Hassounch-Phillips, D., Beckett, A. (2003). An education in racism. 

Journal of Nursing Education, 42(6), 258-265. 

Krieger N. Got theory? – on the 21st c CE rise of explicit use of 

epidemiologic theories of disease distribution: a review and 

ecosocial analysis. Current Epidemiol Reports 2014; 1(1):45-56 

Kumi-Yeboah, A., Brobbey, G., & Smith, P. (2019). Exploring Factors That 

Facilitate Acculturation Strategies and Academic Success of West 

African Immigrant Youth in Urban Schools. Education and Urban 

Society, 0013124519846279. 

Le Grand, J., & Robinson, R. (2018). Privatisation and the welfare state. 

Routledge.


Lévi-Strauss, Claude, and Monique Layton. Structural anthropology. Vol. 1. 

New York: Basic Books, 1963. 

Lieberman, J. S., Austin, G., Austin, G., Bajpai, R., Bajpai, R., Basrur, R. M., ... & 

Bernstein, J. (2019). The political consequences of preferential policies: 

a comparative perspective. In The Socio-political Ideas of BR 

Ambedkar (Vol. 35, No. 21–22, pp. viii-x). New Delhi: Columbia 

University. 

McNeil, G. (2008). African-American nurses faculty satisfaction and scholarly 

productivity at predominately white and historically black colleges and universities. 

ANF Journal, 14 (1), 4- 12. 

Mertler, C. (2016). Introduction to educational research. Thousand Oaks, CA. Sage 

Muronda, V. (2015). The culturally diverse nursing student: A review 

of the literature. Journal of Transcultural Nursing. 

NLN (2018), Biennial Survey of Schools of Nursing, Academic Year 2017-2018. Retrieved 

from: http://www.nln.org/newsroom/nursing-education-statistics/biennial-surveyof-schools-of-nursing- 

academic-year-2017-2018 

Phillips, J. & Malone, B. (2014). Increasing racial/ethnic diversity in nursing to reduce


health disparities and achieve health equity. Public Health Reports, 129 (2). 

Sabin J, Nosek BA, Greenwald A, Rivara FP. Physicians' implicit and explicit attitudes 

about race by MD race, ethnicity, and gender. J Health Care Poor 

Underserved. 2009 Aug;20(3):896–913. 

Sen, A. (2019). The political economy of hunger. 

Simon, J. L. (2019). The economics of population growth (Vol. 5403). Princeton 


Smedley BD, Stith AY, Nelson AR, editors. Unequal Treatment: Confronting 

Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Healthcare. Washington, DC: National 

Academy Press; 2003. (Eds) 

U.S. Census Bureau (2018). Projections Show a Slower Growing, Older, More Diverse 

Nation a Half Century from Now. Retrieved from 

http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/. 

White-Means, S., Zhiyong, D., & Hufstader, M. (2009). Cultural competency, race, and 

skin tone bias among pharmacy, nursing, and medical students: Implications for 

addressing health disparities. Sage Journals, Retrieved from:


https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1077558709333995# 

Viruell-Fuentes EA, Miranda PY, Abdulrahim S. More than culture: 

Structural racism, intersectionality theory, and immigrant health. 

Soc Sci Med. 2012. 

Williams DR, Collins C. Racial residential segregation: a fundamental 

cause of racial disparities in health. Public Health Rep. 

2001;116(5):404-416.

QUANTITATIVE Dissertation Research Plan 29

ISBN:-13 978-14833-7548-9 


NLN (2016). Achieving diversity and meaningful inclusion in nursing education: A 

living document from the national league of nursing. Retrieved from: 

http://www.nln.org/about/position-statements/nln 

Schriner, C., Deckelman, S., Kubat, M., Lenkay, J. & Nims, L. (2010). Collaboration of 

nursing faculty and college administration in creating organizational change. Nursing 

Education Perspective, 31 (6), 381-386. 

Sen, A. (2019). The political economy of hunger. 

Simon, J. L. (2019). The economics of population growth (Vol. 5403). Princeton 


Stewart, D. L. (2008). Being all of me: Black students negotiating multiple identities. 

Journal of Higher Education, 79, 185-207. 

Sutherland, J., Hamilton, M., & Goodman, N. (2007). Affirming at 

risk minorities for success ARMS retention graduation and


success on the NCLEX-RN. Journal of Nursing Education, 46(8), 

347-353. 

U.S. Census Bureau (2018). Projections Show a Slower Growing, Older, More Diverse 

Nation a Half Century from Now. Retrieved from 

http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/. 

White-Means, S., Zhiyong, D., & Hufstader, M. (2009). Cultural competency, race, and 

skin tone bias among pharmacy, nursing, and medical students: Implications for 

addressing health disparities. Sage Journals, Retrieved from: 

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1077558709333995#

32 

DISSERTATION LEARNERS ONLY: 

Specialization Chair Topic Approval 

(To be completed by Specialization 

Chair/Designee after Section 1 and 2 are 

approved by Faculty Mentor) 

Chairs: Please insert 

your electronic 

signature to certify that 

Signature: Vineta 

Mitchell Date: 

10/07/2019 Comments: 

the Research Topic is 

appropriate for your 

specialization and 

return to 

dissertation@capella.ed 

u.

33 

Discussion Post #8 (worth 30 points; at least 200 words): Due by Saturday, Oct 26th, by 

11:30 p.m. 

Read the introduction to the theme of “Culture and Identity” on pp. 428-430. Then 

read Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” on pp. 442-454 (I've also 

put an audio reading of the story above, so you can listen to it as well.) Then read 

any ONE other piece of fiction or poetry or drama or nonfiction from the “Culture 

and Identity” theme from pp. 428-575. Again, though, you may NOT use the same 

piece for post #8 as you did for post #7 

For discussion post #8, there are two parts: 

First for part A (worth 15 points). SUMMARIZE “The Yellow Wallpaper” and the other 

piece you read with one FULL paragraph of 6-8 sentences (at least 50 words) given to 

each piece for a total of at least 100 words for this part (remember, your summaries 

should be detailed enough to SHOW you read well . . .). Make sure when you do your 

post that you give the title of the piece you are responding to, as well as the pages 

it is on in our text.

34 

For part B (worth 15 points). Then RESPOND to the story and other piece and/or the 

ideas in them in some way--either creatively or critically (for critical, for example, see 

the handout called "An Inductive/Inquiry Approach to Studying Texts" in week two’s 

module or the “Glossary of Critical Approaches” on pp. 946-954). You might write 

several questions (as outlined in the Inquiry Approach) or you might choose one of 

the critical approaches and analyze the story or stories from that perspective. Or you 

could compare/contrast the story and the other piece in terms of what they say about 

the theme of “Culture and Identity.” Or you could write about how you interpreted 

these pieces. These are just some suggestions for ways you can respond to literature 

you have read. 

If you want to do a creative response, then write your own "mini-story"or poem 

about this theme or in the style/vein/voice of one of the pieces you read. 

Or you can answer/address this question: Charlotte Perkins Gilman said that she 

wrote this piece as a feminist protest against the way women were treated during her 

time. Do you see this character as protesting or not? Is she trying to create a 

different kind of identity for herself than the one that was acceptable for women at 

that time—or is she just mentally unstable? Write about her and this story and 

compare it to the other piece you read somehow.

35 

For the response part, I am looking for at least 100 words for this part also. The 

more detail the better; the more thoughtful/thought-provoking, the better! 

Jennifer Johnson posted Oct 19, 2019 

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (page 442-454) 

From the beginning this story will open the doors to a psychological thriller that will 

leave you wanting more all the way to the end. It begins by detailing the daily struggles 

of a Physician named John and his wife who seem to operate strangely in their personal 

relationship. John is his wife’s physician and that will hinder her ability to cope with her 

mental illness throughout the story. John seems to be in true denial of his wife’s mental 

condition. This story will lead you to believe that John’s wife is going through 

postpartum depression in many ways. He has taken her away to a beautiful yet older 

rental home to heal, and ultimately this home will begin to unravel her mental 

illness. She becomes obsessed with things she sees and begins to write about them in 

her journals. The story will explain how John’s wife is hiding a lot of her fears and 

feelings. She begins to write a secretive journal detailing the things she is experiencing

36 

and seeing in the rental house. The yellow wallpaper in the house will have a major 

significance to the story and will add to the wife’s perception of reality. She begins to 

see an imprisoned woman within the yellow wallpaper which will leave the reader 

wondering. At times this story will go from documenting the first person struggles of 

anxiety and depression to something that is a bit evil and full of suspense. 

Hi Jennifer! I very much enjoyed your post. But I feel that you simply stated the ‘cold 

facts’ of the case, as it were. Yes, this woman is obviously cycling into psychosis, possibly 

caused by post-partum depression, and yes she does start to project onto the wallpapers. 

But what, in your opinion, does all of this mean? In other words, what is it that 

isn’t said but lies beneath the surface of these events? For example, is the husband 

deliberately torturing her? If so, why? Is there a larger conceit at work concerning 

gender relations? If so, what? I would be very interested on your thoughts on these 

matters! -Monzer 

A Poet To His Baby Son by James Weldon Johnson (page 504-505) 

This poem is about a father who wants his son to grow up to be something great. As his 

son lays in front of him as a baby, he begins to think of the future and what his son will

37 

grow up to be. His son is described as being blessed with his mother’s face and cursed 

with his father’s mind. He wants his son to grow up to be a banker, a politician, leader 

or a type of go getter. The father seems to have strong opinions on what he does not 

want is son to be. He states, “Take the advice of a father who knows.” He clearly does 

not want his son to become a poet. He defines in the poem that it is no time or place 

for poets today. He views the language of poets as an unknown tongue today. 

Great post! What are your thoughts on the father’s values? Is the father right to have 

such specific views as to what constitutes success? And why does he have them? Is it 

because he is himself unfulfilled? Or is it just that he is ‘old school’ and has rather 

retrograde beliefs about how life is to be lived? Finally, what are your own views on 

these matters? Are you a poet who others tried to force into some pre-existing 

professional template? Cheers, Monzer 

Questions about the Yellow Wallpaper 

What type of physician is John? Does he have any experience with mental illness or 

postpartum depression? Is a psychiatrist? What type of physician is her brother? 

Probably a general practitioner who, if given the choice, would specialize in psychiatry.

38 

How did she really feel about the yellow wallpaper? She used words like flamboyant, 

repellent, revolting and unclean. Did she really hate the yellow wallpaper? 

She does not like it. It is clinical and fake. 

The story mentioned that Mary is good with the baby. Is this their first baby? Has Mary 

been there as the caregiver for more than one child for John and his wife? Does Mary 

know she has postpartum and that’s why they are at the rental house? 

I don’t know that she thinks in quite such logical, transactional terms. 

In the story she states she is angry enough to do something desperate. She also 

mentions she has a hidden rope. Does John take her suicide signs seriously? Does John 

know that his wife could be suicidal? 

He is probably deliberately causing her to be suicidal, or so the subtext suggests.

39 

John takes it as far as to take his wife to a rental house to recover from postpartum 

depression. Has John seen signs that would make him think his wife would harm their 

child? 

Great suggestion, but his objective seems to be to hurt, not to protect. 

Questions A Poet To His Baby Son 

Why does the author think becoming a poet is such a bad choice? Is the author a poet 

himself? 

He thinks it’s a bad choice, because, financially speaking, it is a bad choice. Panhandlers 

make more money than poets. 

Why does the author think that poets are unfortunate fellows? Why doesn’t he want 

his son to grow up to be like one? Is that because you cannot earn a living being a 

poet? The poem says that poetry is unknown tongue? Does he think that no one reads 

or respects poetry anymore?

40 

He thinks this, because they have no earning power and are therefore defenseless. 

Plus, there are great poets who have day-jobs, such as Wallace Stevens, who was an 

investment banker. Even Shakespeare made his living as an actor, not as a poet or 

playwright. 

It seems the author wants the best for his son. Why would he be critical of what he 

does not want his son to be when he grows up? 

Asked and answered. See above. 

Why would the author think that poetry is not a good way of communicating love for his 

son if he is writing his own son a poem like this? 

Poetry is a great way to communicate love, but it isn’t a good way to pay the bills. A 

friend of mine is a poet, and he always had to ask other people for money, including 

me. One day I lent him my car, and he just drove away. With my dog and birthcertificate.

41 

How would the author feel if his son grew up to become a poet and read this poem that 

was written for him as a baby? Would be feel regretful that he has such harsh feeling 

on poets knowing his own son became one? 

less 

That really depends. It depends on the father and also depends on the son’s situation. 

Is he writing the poem from his mansion or from his jail cell? 

Discussion Post on the Statement “‘Whatever happens is meant to be” (my content in 

boldfaced italics) 

‘Whatever happens is meant to be’: I disagree. First of all, ‘meant’ by who or 

what? God? Us? If I get a cold, did God ‘mean’ for that to be? Doubtful. Why 

would he care? As for the idea that some other, lesser being ‘meant’ for it to be, 

that is a non-starter, since, first of all, in most cases, what happens is not the 

result of the plotting on the part of sentient beings and, second, even when it is, 

it is not for that reason ‘meant’ to be. If my boss deliberately infects me with his 

cold, it doesn’t follow that my cold was ‘meant to be’, even though my boss 

meant it to be. 

It may be that whatever happens was predetermined. In fact, that seems a 

veritable certainty. But first of all, there are predetermined events (e.g. particle 

collisions) that mean nothing and therefore surely were not ‘meant’ to be. The 

concept of meaning is relevant only to psychologically pregnant events, e.g. e.g. 

weddings and promotions. But it’s a stretch to say that each and every single 

such event was ‘meant to be.’ If any of them are ‘meant to be’, it is only in the 

sense that they are consistent with the character-traits of the people involved, 

this being what it would mean to say that Mozart was ‘meant to be’ a 

composer. But with this rather exiguous qualification, there is little substance to 

the idea that whatever happens is ‘meant to be.’

42 

Whatever happens 

Contains unread posts 

Rebecca Miller posted Oct 29, 2019 3:40 PM 

Subscribe 

As mentioned in the post description, people mean various 

things when espousing "whatever happens is meant to be." It 

seems obvious that whatever happens, all the means for it to 

happen existed. In general, I think the sentiment is simply 

meant to express emotional support for someone experiencing 

something outside of their control, and to accept that control 

over one's environment and others' interactions is 

limited. Hindsight is 20/20, as they also say, and everything we 

conceive has an inherent human bias. Everything might as well 

be predetermined but we would do well to accept that we can't 

ever really predict the future with absolute certainty because of 

our inherent human biases, we cannot experience anything 

outside of this reality and we will likely never know all there is to 

know about it. Perhaps homo sapiens will continue to evolve 

into something else that can perceive in new ways, or perhaps 

we will go extinct. I think this is consistent with determinist free 

will and moral responsibility because as we read previously, no 

one is in practice a moral subjectivist, therefor moral concepts 

can be logically deducible. And as our laws exist now, intent, 

which is sometimes quite difficult to prove, is taken into 

consideration, so in a way, we are meant to be held 

accountable. Moral responsibility exists not just as individual 

principles but societal principles as well. Our understanding of 

moral responsibility has expanded as we learn more about how

43 

individuals operate under certain conditions. We have a societal 

duty to foster a healthy environment for the communities in 

which we reside, because this affects most everyone. This is 

why we should be careful to judge past historical figures or 

events through the moral lens of today, because our current 

understanding only exists by learning from the past. 

With respect, Rebecca, ‘whatever happens is meant to be’ does not mean the 

same thing as ‘whatever happens, happens.’ In a world that is governed by 

physical law, things happen because of blind compulsion, not because they are 

meant to be. Determinism has nothing to do with ‘fate.’ There is determinism in 

a world of billiard balls, but not fate. 

As for your point that people should behave ethically—I agree, but only because 

the statement ‘people should behave ethically’ is a tautology, since ‘ethical 

behavior’ is defined as ‘behavior that one should engage in.’ 

As for your point that we shouldn’t judge historical figures—I have to disagree 

with you. Can we not judge Stalin or Mao? What about Jefferson and Benjamin 

Franklin? If we cannot judge, then we cannot praise, since praise is simply 

positive judgment. So is your position that we should never praise any historical 

figure? 

What if someone wrongs you? Can they not be judged? Is your position that if a 

few years pass, then they cease to be blameworthy? If so, why? 

Or are you simply making an evidential point to the effect that we have 

insufficient information about historical figures to make judgments about them? 

If so, is that really true? Do we really have no information about Eisenhower or 

Mosaddeq?

44 

Is Everything Meant to be? 


Angelica Sylvester posted Oct 28, 2019 10:40 AM 

Subscribe 

In regards to the statement “whatever happens is meant to be;” I 

relate it to the saying “everything happens for a reason,” which I 

don’t believe in. I think that whatever choices you make in your 

life determine your fate. Arguably, yes life sucks at times and 

can throw you some curve balls which are not determined upon 

your actions. However, it is your reaction that determines your 

fate. So with that being said, I do not believe that all life events 

are predetermined. Secondly, I believe that we are all held 

accountable for our actions because of free will. I truly believe 

that your actions seal your fate and your future. This kind of 

reminds me of psychopaths or career criminals and their 

excuses for “why” they committed the crimes they are charged 

with; and quite frankly, unless there is an organic mental 

problem…they too had free will and decided to act upon it in a 

criminal way. I think that from reading my discussion post you 

all can infer that my opinion on this topic is based off of life 

experiences, and with that I reject the claim that “whatever 

happens is meant to be.” To be completely transparent, I was a 

law enforcement officer for four years; therefore, along with my

45 

morals and values I have a very strong sense of accountability 

for your actions. 

Why do not believe that all events are pre-determined? What we know about physics strongly 

suggests otherwise. What are your grounds? Is it simply that you take it for granted that we are 

morally accountable for our actions and, in your view, morally accountability is incompatible with 

determinism? 

Literature Discussion Post 9 Discussion 

Post # 9 


Jennifer Johnson posted Oct 26, 2019 7:02 AM 

Subscribe 

Discussion Post # 9 

Love in Infant Monkeys by Lydia Millet (page 622-627) 


What did the author mean when he used the statement “A mother’s love is a dangerous 

instrument?” Was he implying that mothers cuddle and hold their babies too much? The word 

dangerous is powerful, why did the author use that word in describing the experiment’s hypothesis? 

The story describes acts such as cats being pinned down until their legs withered and dropping rats 

into boiling water. Were scientists all over the United States in the fifties doing such cruel 

experiments on animals? Was this accepted behavior in research labs and schools? 

Obviously not. It sounds more like an attempt to use scientific protocols as an excuse to be sadistic. 

Even with empirical observation the value of love seems to differ from person to person. Is the value 

of love able to be demonstrated and studied in a controlled scientific environment? Is withholding 

such things as love and nurturing from an animal morally acceptable? 

One doesn’t have an obligation to love every animal, surely. 

Harry Harlow stated “If my work will save only one million human children, I can’t be overly 

concerned with 10 monkeys? Does Harry Harlow have any children of his own? Does Harry have any 

pets of his own?

46 

Harry Harlow was described by his Chief Biographer as a “Rose in a cornfield.” Was this because he 

was unusual and different? Or did this description have a positive meaning as roses are beautiful 

and desired? 

The fourth experiment describes trying to create a bad-mother surrogate. This was the most 

intriguing. The findings were that a bad mother is better than none. Exactly to what extents could a 

bad mother go to and still receive love from their offspring? Could the mother harm the child and 

they will still return love for the mother? 

Yes, parents are typically ambivalent (of two minds) about their children and direct both love and 

hate towards them. 

In Harry’s dream he seems to be haunted by the cruel things he has done to the monkeys. Was he 

starting to realize that he himself could not turn love off? Was he starting to feel love for the 

monkeys? 


What scientific methods are used today in modern medicine to study psychological problems like 

depression, anxiety, PTSD, anorexia, etc.? 

The scientific method is simply ‘gather data’, ‘form hypothesis’, and ‘test hypothesis’—and those 

methods have been in use in psychology, including in the study of anxiety etc. for quite some time. 

Am I doing everything I can in my community to help animals at the local shelters? Could I organize 

a way to visit the humane society and take the dogs for a walk and just show them love? 

How are large drug companies testing their medications and the psychological outcomes they have 

on the patients taking them? 

They test them thoroughly. There are strict guidelines in place. They post ads on Craig’s List and 

other places, where they clearly state who they are, what they are doing, and what the risks are. 

I’m currently taking Anatomy and Physiology in college and we are doing several animal 

dissections. How do I morally feel about using dead animals for scientific purposes in school vs. 

using live animals? Is it morally acceptable because the animals are dead? 

It depends on why they are dead. 

If I show more love and affection to my spouse will that make them thrive more in life? Does that 

work both ways? Does being shown love and affection make me feel more positive about 

myself? Am I showing the people I love that I love them? 

Yes, people thrive on love and encouragement. A supportive wife is strength, and undermining or 

insufficiently supportive one is weakness.

47 


Jennifer Johnson posted Oct 26, 2019 7:02 AM 

Subscribe 

Discussion Post # 9 

Love in Infant Monkeys by Lydia Millet (page 622-627) 


What did the author mean when he used the statement “A mother’s love is a dangerous 

instrument?” Was he implying that mothers cuddle and hold their babies too much? The word 

dangerous is powerful, why did the author use that word in describing the experiment’s hypothesis? 

The story describes acts such as cats being pinned down until their legs withered and dropping rats 

into boiling water. Were scientists all over the United States in the fifties doing such cruel 

experiments on animals? Was this accepted behavior in research labs and schools? 

Obviously not. It sounds more like an attempt to use scientific protocols as an excuse to be sadistic. 

Even with empirical observation the value of love seems to differ from person to person. Is the value 

of love able to be demonstrated and studied in a controlled scientific environment? Is withholding 

such things as love and nurturing from an animal morally acceptable? 

One doesn’t have an obligation to love every animal, surely. 

Harry Harlow stated “If my work will save only one million human children, I can’t be overly 

concerned with 10 monkeys? Does Harry Harlow have any children of his own? Does Harry have any 

pets of his own? 

Harry Harlow was described by his Chief Biographer as a “Rose in a cornfield.” Was this because he 

was unusual and different? Or did this description have a positive meaning as roses are beautiful 

and desired? 

The fourth experiment describes trying to create a bad-mother surrogate. This was the most 

intriguing. The findings were that a bad mother is better than none. Exactly to what extents could a 

bad mother go to and still receive love from their offspring? Could the mother harm the child and 

they will still return love for the mother? 

Yes, parents are typically ambivalent (of two minds) about their children and direct both love and 

hate towards them.

48 

In Harry’s dream he seems to be haunted by the cruel things he has done to the monkeys. Was he 

starting to realize that he himself could not turn love off? Was he starting to feel love for the 

monkeys? 


What scientific methods are used today in modern medicine to study psychological problems like 

depression, anxiety, PTSD, anorexia, etc.? 

The scientific method is simply ‘gather data’, ‘form hypothesis’, and ‘test hypothesis’—and those 

methods have been in use in psychology, including in the study of anxiety etc. for quite some time. 

Am I doing everything I can in my community to help animals at the local shelters? Could I organize 

a way to visit the humane society and take the dogs for a walk and just show them love? 

How are large drug companies testing their medications and the psychological outcomes they have 

on the patients taking them? 

They test them thoroughly. There are strict guidelines in place. They post ads on Craig’s List and 

other places, where they clearly state who they are, what they are doing, and what the risks are. 

I’m currently taking Anatomy and Physiology in college and we are doing several animal 

dissections. How do I morally feel about using dead animals for scientific purposes in school vs. 

using live animals? Is it morally acceptable because the animals are dead? 

It depends on why they are dead. 

If I show more love and affection to my spouse will that make them thrive more in life? Does that 

work both ways? Does being shown love and affection make me feel more positive about 

myself? Am I showing the people I love that I love them? 

Yes, people thrive on love and encouragement. A supportive wife is strength, and undermining or 

insufficiently supportive one is weakness.

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