Read Appiah, pg 73-83. You need to read the whole section. In your group divide these sections with each student taking one:
Local Agreements
Changing Our Minds
Fighting for the Good
Winners and Losers
Become an expert on your assigned section of Appiah. For your section, your job is to understand every small detail. This means, you’ll look up any unfamiliar words or allusions–be sure you’re clear about the terminology he’s using.
In your brief, (one to two paragraph) BLOG post, discuss anything that is unclear in your excerpt, a challenging or important passage, or a question you have. Discuss how this excerpt fits into the overall argument. You will be the expert on your section telling the others in the group what they need to know to fully understand it. Try to cluster the posts from your group together.
October 16, 2015 at 11:18 am
Winners and Losers
After reading the title of my section “Winners and Losers”, I tried to identify who Appiah was classifying as the winners and losers of Cosmopolitanism which is the link that fits into his overall argument of being a proper world citizen. Appiah wraps up his example of disputes on abortion and gay marriage from the “Fighting for the Good” section by explaining how they divide those who share a society and government because of their strong appeal to emotion. Appiah then goes back to the idea of a shared government to bring up international human rights and the treaties (which are weaker laws) that we expect every nation on the earth to follow such as the outlaw of slavery. However, in some countries, like South Asia, slavery continues to exist and serves as the only means of survival for those enslaved. Therefore by outlawing slavery, anger and violence may potentially be evoked towards those who have tried to change their government and society by adopting new rules. From my initial interpretation, I saw those with the most power who imposed the treaties as the “winners” of the situation and those enslaved who would lose their means of survival as the “losers” in the situation. This example was extremely confusing but I believe was included to show how telling someone what is right and wrong and thinking you are right in the situation without fully understanding their individual situation will possibly evoke a negative response.
Appiah then talks about the influence of Western culture on more anti-Western cultures, such as Muslims, that feel pressured by the United States (a more powerful nation) to reshape relations between men and woman to be seen more as equals. Appiah states “We make treaties enshrining these rights. And then we want their government to enforce them”(Appiah, 81) without realizing that this would change the balance of power between men and women which is an extremely long process. This passage gets deeper as Appiah talks about our societies gender habits in our culture that continue to show the attitudes of the old ways of life where men and woman were not treated as equals that are still prevalent to this day. Overall I think the overall argument Appiah tries to make is that there is a right and wrong way to communicate, and by making treaties about what is right and wrong and expecting them to be followed no questions asked makes our nation the “Losers” in Cosmopolitanism and the “Winners” are those who understands that “people are not easily shifted by reason”(Appiah, 82) and instead we must just discuss without trying to reason or persuade. Winners of Cosmopolitism engage into conversation with different types of people to gain a sense of their lives and ideas. Losers try to debate and are blind to the experiences and values of others and do not want to engage.
October 18, 2015 at 10:42 am
Changing Our Minds
Appiah begins this section by saying “the reasons we exchange in our conversations will seldom do much to persuade others who do not share our fundamental evaluative judgments.” This quote comes after Appiah’s explanation of the benefit that comes from conversation between different groups of people, though the quote leads us to believe that they don’t pull much weight in persuading people to agree with us. I chose to single out this quote because I find it challenging to understand, seeing as how I personally disagree with it and find the author’s view on it to be very close minded. Appiah sees the necessity for conversations, but does not believe the magnitude of change that can be caused by them. In my opinion, conversations have a lot of power, maybe even more than our preconceived judgments, but as Appiah goes on, you discover that his opinion is different. He sees these strong judgments as justification for our past actions, and a crutch to use when something doesn’t go our way. Another part of the excerpt that I found noteworthy was Appiah’s idea of societal standards controlling what we see as right and wrong, and his use of the example of spanking your kids. This concept is powerful to me and I feel that Appiah makes an interesting point. Regardless of the pain spanking your child causes, society told you it was helpful, and therefore you do it without the harsh judgment that would come from thinking independently. Appiah’s whole message in this section is that we do the things we do because the society that we live in is dictating what is okay, to the point where we don’t really think about it. We judge based off of what society deems socially acceptable, without contemplating the reality of it.
The idea that I need further discussion on is the quote “A large part of what we do we do because it is just what we do”. Initially this is a confusing statement and hard to wrap your head around, but when thinking about it, it is bizarre that our world works that way. I just feel like the reasoning “it is just what we do” isn’t good enough to justify our actions. We have to dig deeper than simply accepting that there is no reasoning minus the fact that we just do something because we do it. Changing our Minds fits into The Primacy of Practice because Appiah is extremely focused on the idea that the world needs to strive for mutual respect of each other’s beliefs. This passage is a good explanation of what bias, unreasonable judgments are preventing us from doing just that.
October 19, 2015 at 12:52 pm
Local Agreements
Appiah starts off his article by mentioning agreements that are among the Asante and how they all have their own opinions. As he gets deeper into this topic he uses incest, theft, and language to discuss the differences of opinions. He states that people don’t challenge the rules rather they accept it. He then shift his directions to how the Jews and Christians lived under the Muslim rule and they accepted all the laws without disagreement because these laws were an established agreement among them. In my opinion Appiah believes that to a certain extent values beneath the surface don’t matter as much to people rather they are willing to accept whatever is given. But, he does believes that our thought process on a topic will naturally change over time rather than being convince by a principal. Appiah uses the U.S. Constitution to show how Americans follows rules that their government has set forth “but that does not require anyone to agree to any particular claims or values” (Appiah, 74). This statement shows how an agreement is set between two parties where they both agree and disagree on topics but at the end they can still live together. Appiah uses another Scholar (Sunstein) to back up his claim about how we don’t need to agree on everything to live among each other. “We can live together without agreeing on what the values are that make it good to live together; we can agree about what to do in most cases, without agreeing about why it is right” (Appiah, 74). He wants the reader to understand that even though we may have differences of opinion on topics but we can negotiate the terms without dispute.
October 19, 2015 at 2:53 pm
Fighting for the Good
In this section, Appiah talks about how most conflicts are not brought up by two sides fighting over something different, but the fact that conflicts arise when two people have identified the same thing as good. Groups with differing ideas are rarely at odds because they are clashing ideas of what is right over what is wrong. The problems persist when they both care for it deeply and for the same reasons. He mentions how both the Palestinians and Israelis have a personal, and important, relation to Jerusalem. “The problem isn’t that they disagree about the importance of Jerusalem: The problem is exactly that they both care for it deeply and, in part, for the same reasons.” They are only fighting because they care so much for Jerusalem and the fact that they find themselves in conflict when they agree on the same values.
October 18, 2015 at 8:36 am
Changing Our Minds
I found “Changing Our Minds” an enjoyable section to read. Appiah talked about how peoples opinions are formed at a young age and as people grow older they’re able to form new opinions because they’re able to broaden their span of thinking.
People are not going to agree with each other all the time, but it helps to gather different opinions. You can see or try to understand the ways in which others think and that’s the whole point of what Appiah is getting across. There are almost eight billion people in the world, but it would do us all justice if we figured out a way to coexist in a world where people can have their own opinions and not shape disagreements into potential hatred and physical acts against any ones person. The first step to establishing a form of rule of “agreeing to disagree” is to be open mined. Our agreements and disagreements are what help enlighten our minds.
October 19, 2015 at 10:02 am
Winners and Losers
I thought that “Winners and Losers” was an interesting section to read because while in other parts of his text he talks about cosmopolitanism and how it links people together, here he is talking about how morality can separate us. Appiah says that some people are for abortion and others against it and some people are for gay marriage and others aren’t. Appiah quotes John Von Neumann, “in mathematics, you don’t understand things, you just get used to them.”(82) What Appiah is trying to get at here, is what I believe to be is a standpoint where he realizes that there is some things in this world you yourself cannot reason with but that you just have to live with the fact that they are apart of our world. As much as we dislike something, we can’t get rid of it and most of the time when we don’t like it, it’s because we don’t understand it. I believe that Appiah is saying that regardless of our differences in life, whether we believe in something or not, we all stand on common ground when we know we can’t get rid of something just because it doesn’t appease our specific interests.
October 19, 2015 at 5:18 pm
Fighting for the Good
In this section Appiah talks about warring sides of opinions. He say that the actual conflict comes when both side actually agree on the same thing. Because both side agree, but may have different, more in depth reasoning behind their opinions, that’s what causes the debate.
He uses two examples, abortion and homosexuality. In regards to abortion, he says both sides actually agree that both life and choice are important. But the debate is which is more important, the fetus (is it’s considered life at this moment), or the mother’s choice (in her own medical preference). As to homosexuality, he makes the point that both sides to the argument could agree that everyone has the concept of perversion. But what is perversion: gay and lesbian sex, S&M, stc. And does this perversion make the other concepts that come along with it, such as gay marriage, wrong?
October 18, 2015 at 8:59 pm
Changing Our Minds
Appiah has a habit of stating ideas, but not clearly presenting them (I think we can all agree on that). Even though his approach at writing this piece could very well be intentional and serve as a higher purpose, it doesn’t allow the reader to carry on without interruption. There were many moments where I found myself rereading passages over and over again so I could fully understand his position. For example, the first sentence in the section, “Changing Our Minds”, was due for some interpretation on my part. “It’s not surprising, then, that what makes conversations across boundaries worthwhile isn’t that we’re likely to come to a reasoned agreement about values.” – from this, I viewed it as him basically saying that we don’t all have the same outlook, and different values bring forth a more interesting conversation. As I progressed through the reading, I came across one point that I found to be very important in regards to his final conclusion. He stated, “And a good deal of what we take to be right, we take to be right just because it is what we are use to.” – this idea initiates the affects of society and environment on those who are under its rule. If you’re use to something being the way it is, then what would make you want to change it? Throughout this section he encouraged the reader to look past the preconceived notions, and gave them a chance to dive deeper into the situation as a whole. A couple examples include: the circumcision of female/male genitals; foot-binding Chinese women; cannibalism; and spanking your children. He had also involved his father’s circumcision story that somewhat confused me. It’s not that I didn’t understand; it was a matter of “Why is this here?”. It just didn’t serve a purpose to me.
October 19, 2015 at 1:54 pm
Local Agreements
Appiah discusses how people go through their lives accepting certain things to be true, but each person has their own individual opinion on the matter. He says that people “depend on being able to agree about practices while disagreeing about their justification”(73). He goes on to explain this by giving the examples of how the Jews and Christians lived under Muslim rule. The individual Jewish or Christian communities were able to survive there because they didn’t have to “agree on a set of universal values”(74). He then goes on to say that Americans all share in the fact that we are governed by a certain set of laws but that “does not require anyone to agree to any particular claims or values”(74). I agree with what he is saying because there are certain laws that I see regularly broken with no consequence. Underage drinking happens everywhere, drug consumption as well. Certainly people do get into trouble for these things but for the most part it is fairly easy to get away with. As a culture we are moving into a more accepting view of these two particular things. Some colleges look the other way when it comes to students drinking on campus who are not yet 21. Marijuana is an example of an “illegal drug” that is starting to become legalized all over the country. Regardless if people partake in these activities, the overall view on them has relaxed and even though the law still states that it’s illegal, it’s becoming allowed.
October 19, 2015 at 3:18 pm
When reading “Changing Our Minds” I found it interesting when Appiah says “the reason we exchange conversation will seldom do much to persuade others who do not share our fundamental evaluative judgments already.” This was interesting to me because in many ways I feel as though it confused me that he would say this when in the following part of the reading all I see is examples of different times when someone who had a fundamental perspective on a certain course of action such as; circumcision, feet-binding, beating children, giving women rights, and allowing homosexuality within society changed their mind because of influences from people who opposed their views. I think it is also challenging to understand if Appiah means to say that things can become acceptable because of people’s ability to change their standing on certain things or simply because it becomes a social norm and people adapt their views to conform those norms.
October 19, 2015 at 3:42 pm
Fighting for the Good
Appiah uses many examples to explain how even though people may choose sides on certain issues, there are still more specific issues pertaining to each side. For example, he uses gay marriage. One side of people thinks that homosexuals should not be aloud to get married, one side thinks the opposite, yet for each side there are many people that have even deeper opinions for their case. For instance, Appiah mentions how some people who may be against gay marriage also believe that any homosexuals should be arrested and jailed just for being gay, while others who are against the marriage may just think that the terminology for marriage just doesn’t fit so they cant be married. Both sides agree on the main issue, yet they still have their own specific ideas for their sides. Another thing that Appiah mentions is that under most circumstances for argument, both sides fight for the same thing, just in different ways. She explains this by comparing it to the abortion debate, and how whether if you are pro abortion or pro life, you are still fighting for human life, they just have different standards and beliefs on human life. Lastly, I did not understand what Appiah was trying to explain when speaking of Jewish and Muslim people in Jerusalem and I do not know what point she was trying to make by using that example, I think it was pretty unclear.
October 19, 2015 at 4:32 pm
“Fighting for Good”
The overall point in this section is to emphasis the idea that even if you agree on values there can still be conflict. Appiah says “conflict arises most often when two people have identified the same thing as good” (78 Appiah). I think Appiah makes some very strong statements and gives great examples in this section. One great example is when he talks about the Palestinians love for Jerusalem and the Israelis love for the city. They both value it for religious reasons, yet they fight eachother over it.
As the section goes on I feel he veers to far from the main point, or I don’t fully understand what he means. In paragraph 39 and 40 he talks about colonialism, which he doesn’t mention agian in this section. He also mentions Shakespeare, which to me didn’t make his multiple examples of colonialism any stronger. Unlike the other examples he used, these were not easy for me to understand, and I am unclear on what point he is trying to make. After these paragraphs he goes back to the main point about how people value the same things, but still have conflict with eachother.
October 19, 2015 at 5:07 pm
Winners and Losers focuses on the ideas of Gay Marriage and Abortion. Gay Marriage is the push for equality so two members of the same sex can be happily married. They want to make it so they dont feel different as if this new law was in place for years. Abortion is the killing of a baby before it grows big enough to be given birth to. They do this in case someone cant support the baby or if the women had the baby unwillingly. He discusses how these two ideas are very controversial and people have very strong feelings regarding these two ideas. He pushes the idea that we should all be able to accept these ideas for what they are. To put it simply he wants people to respect other peoples beliefs but also to be able to live amongst these people and not react negatively. The title relates to how some people want these ideas and some dont. The ones who want these new laws are the winners and the opposers are the losers if they dont get what they want. The most important lesson to come out of this is that we cant fuss about a situation we dont agree with so we must adapt to diffrences we cant change.