What We Can Learn From A Goose

I've just been for a walk in the park. While I was there I sat for a while at one of the picnic tables, and decided to spend some time watching the geese and the ducks.

Not much was happening. They were all sitting dozing or preening on the grass near the water's edge. The geese (as I discovered later from Google - I'm not very well-versed in types of animals!) were Canada geese and the ducks were all Mallards. They are extremely tame and accustomed to the proximity of humans so I was able to sit quite close to them without alarming them.

It occurred to me that some people might think of them only as a rather pleasant choice for lunch, but then wiser counsels prevailed when I remembered that there is a very high quality supermarket within 100 metres of the spot, where you can get duck or goose or anything you want, ready to cook. That would seem the obvious choice, at least for most of us who live in the so-called "civilised" world, for whom the thought of having to kill and pluck their own goose would be quite a gruesome prospect.

While I was pondering on this, I noticed something I had never known about before. As you are probably aware, the Canada goose has very dark, almost black, colouring on its head, and the eye, which is also dark, does not make a great contrast with the rest of the head. However, when the goose shuts its eye, for example to doze off, the situation changes quite dramatically. It is the lower eyelid that moves, which looks strange enough, but the astonishing thing is that the eyelid is a pure white colour. This makes a marked contrast with the rest of the face. I can think of no reasonable explanation for this, except maybe that it is for the protection of the goose against predators. Perhaps when the eye is shut it looks like it is open, which might possibly make a predator hesitate for a minute. I just don't know.

I noticed also that the Mallard duck has the same eyelid arrangement, although not so strikingly as the Canada goose.

This led me on to thinking about what it must be like to actually BE a goose or a duck. I spend a lot of time wondering about what it is like being something or someone else, so this is not completely surprising. I would certainly miss being able to scratch my ear (do geese have ears?), or ride a bicycle. And when was the last time you heard about a goose logging on to the World Wide Web (though they DO have webbed feet - ha ha sorry about that one!) But anyway, a goose would not miss those delights, never having experienced them.

However, if you were a goose, you would have one truly amazing skill that maybe would make up for your lack of opposable thumbs. You would be able to FLY - under your own power and control! And you would be able to land on water! Think of that. Now, be honest, wouldn't that be absolutely awesome?

Why am I writing this? Well, as I am a philosopher I think it is great if we can learn something from any experience, so here are some things I learned, and maybe they will be useful to you as well.

1. Canada geese have pure white upside-down eyelids.

2. It is worth taking the time and trouble to REALLY look at things.

3. We probably focus too much on the things we cannot do, especially when we compare ourselves to other people. Instead we would do better to focus on the amazing things we could do, if we only tried.

4. If you want to survive in this world, it is a good idea to try to avoid being tasty when eaten. If you cannot manage this, then try to live somewhere where they have a decent supermarket nearby.

Ethical Relativism

Many people nowadays assert that the moral sense is completely subjective, that there are no absolute ethical values, that it's all purely a matter of opinion.

Opponents of this view have raised a number of objections.

1. We tend to judge actions by our own moral code, and we can also find ourselves judging one moral code to be better than another, as for example, someone might say that the Buddhist morality is better than the Israelite one.

The relativist would reply that when we do this, we are comparing those moral codes with our subjective on, and then judging the one which is most similar to our own subjective code to be superior.

2. If no moral code is superior to another, it is logically impossible to speak of a moral progress or a moral decline. Yet many people do actually speak in those terms.

3. Again, if there is no superiority in one code over another, and therefore no such thing as moral progress, then there is no point in moral effort.

Relativists might reply that a person should strive to be true to their own moral code. But this still begs the question as to why anyone should bother to do so.

4. The logical outcome of ethical relativism is that no one person is better than any other, since there would be no absolute standard to judge them against. Thus a murderer could not be regarded as morally worse than anyone else, since one code would be as good as any other.

The ethical relativist might reply that this is not a fair inference from their theory. They deny the existence of an absolute universal code of morals, but they accept that there may be a code of moral standards that apply to a limited group of people, although there are still problems with this reply, in that there appear to be no adequate criteria for defining the limits of such groups, and also no particular reason why the group should contain more than one person.

The philosopher says that there is indeed an absolute standard of moral behaviour, although how it has come to us, or where it originated, are questions which are still being strongly debated. The fact of the absolute standard is something that can be seen every day, when people talk about what someone else did or said, or what they themselves did, in a certain situation. Time and time again, an appeal will be made to some or other moral precept, which the speaker invariably expects there listeners to know about and share their opinion about.

Certainly there are differences, but these are usually very minor ones, and by and large, there is general agreement that this or that action is right or wrong. This cannot just be explained away as the code of a particular country or race. The practice is accepted worldwide, as, for example, when a country invades another country, there is general acceptance of the view that such an action is wrong if the motive is to seize power in the invaded country, but right if the motive is to help the invaded country remain free from oppression.

So the standard appealed to is a universal one. As to whether it is absolute as well as universal may still be open to question, but the difference between the two could be said to be too subtle to be of any value in practice.

The Key Words of a Discussion

I participate in quite a lot of forum discussions, and I really enjoy them. People there have (I think) got used to me going on about having clear definitions of key words in the discussion. Anyway, I make no apology for doing this. I'm a philosopher (or anyway, a trainee philosopher) so it's what I do.

Let me explain to you what I mean about defining terms. Let's say you and I decide to have a discussion about oak trees. Now you know what an oak tree is, you have seen them before, you know a lot about them. Now, on the other hand, when I was very young, my parents took me to see an apple tree, and they said, "There, you see that? It's an oak tree." (I don't blame them for this, by the way, they didn't know any better.)

Now our discussion might go like this:

You: Ah the oak is the most majestic of trees!
Me: What? No, it's quite a small tree really.
You: No, you're quite mistaken, it's very tall.
Me: Oh well anyway, it's nice to have an oak in the garden. And the fruit is so good to eat.
You: What?? You actually eat acorns?
Me: Of course I do. Doesn't everyone?
You: No certainly not, what a disgusting idea!
Me: Well everyone I know eats them, they're delicious. You really should try them, you know.
You: Ugh, what a strange person you are. Nothing would induce me to try them! Acorns would make you ill.
Me: It's you that's strange! We make them into pies mmmmm! And there's a tasty drink you can make from them too.
You: Aaaargh!

And so on. Eventually, we might come to blows, or go off and form some armies and fight a war over this issue. Or we might realise we're talking about a different meaning of the key word of our discussion, and then we might start to agree.

You see what I mean? Often, people have discussions in which words like truth, beauty, goodness, knowledge, existence, proof, reality, God are used. These words are all highly charged with meaning and association. It's only to be expected that they will have different associations for different people. But people don't seem to take this into account, and they argue with each other. The arguments are often a waste of time and energy and stress, because, like the two people arguing about the oak tree, they are using the same word but meaning different things.

That's why I always want to have the important terms of the discussion clearly and exactly defined before joining the discussion. I think if everyone did that, then we could really get somewhere.