Essay 1 Philosophy 230 - Grade: A PDF

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Professor Padgett-Walsh...

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What are the keys to a good life? In Matthew Crawford’s essay The Case for Working with Your Hands Crawford talks about how as a society our idea of work has been focused more on knowledgeable careers such as ones that require a degree rather than ones that are looked down on as dirty like electricians and plumbers. Crawford disagrees with this point and believes that working in a blue-collar job is actually intrinsically better for you because, you get to see tangible evidence of what you accomplish every day you work. He also argues that blue-collar jobs tend to have more cognitive thinking and reasoning because, there is no such manual that you can follow to fix the problems that you are facing and that it relies more on past experiences that you have faced that can help you fix the problem. Crawford uses his evidence from both white-collar jobs and blue-collar jobs as evidence for his reasoning. In Crawford’s essay, he uses his experience as an abstract writer to justify that office work isn’t better than manual work because, in his opinion the work that he was doing served no betterment to the world. Crawford found it to be more mind numbing and painful to write the abstracts every day because he was never fully utilizing his degrees nor his skills to successfully complete the job. To prove his argument for manual work be intrinsically better he uses his experience from working in a motorcycle repair shop. While working at the repair shop he found the work to be more enjoyable because he was constantly using knowledge from past jobs to help him perform this job better. Crawford believes that the manual jobs require more complex thinking because you are constantly going through different scenarios of what the problem could be in order to fix it better and more proficiently. In Thomas Hurka’s The Best Things in Life Hurka states that achievement increases in value the more that it is extended in its efforts to the world and for how long it endures. He also states achievement whose goals are freely chosen have a greater value than those that are not chosen. According to Hurka in his book, the office job would have significantly less intrinsic value in terms of achievement as compared to the manual job in Crawford’s essay. You can come to this conclusion by the fact that in Crawford’s essay he says on page 11 that “such detachment was made easy by the fact there was no immediate consequence for me; I could write any nonsense whatever.” This quote proves that the office job had less intrinsic value because, he was feeling detached from his work therefore reducing the intrinsic gain from the office work. On the other hand, like Crawford said in his essay that the precision and cognitive analytics of the motor made it harder, but at the same time making the work more rewarding upon completion. According to Hurka on page 108 on referring to his golfing analogy he states that, “Tiger woods can intend and therefore achieve more precise goals than I, which gives him more items in his hierarchy of golfing goals.” This quote can be applied to the mechanic job in Crawford’s essay by the simple aspect that as a mechanic completes more jobs he gains more knowledge which allows him to set more precise goals on the next job. This constant status of learning and growing give the mechanic job more intrinsic value because it allows the mechanic to more precisely work his skills. Also, the mechanic’s job has an extended effect on the world making it more intrinsically better. After reading the excerpt from Richard Kraut’s book What is Good and Why about his beliefs on human flourishing, I have concluded that Richard Kraut beliefs a life is flourishing when it follows a path of growth both physically and psychologically. Richard Kraut never stated

that there was a certain path for humans to flourish. On page 10 there is a quote that practically sums up Richard Kraut’s beliefs on human flourishing, “And then that self-knowledge, together with our conception of the many things that are good for us, must be applied to particular circumstances. Speaking in the broadest possible terms, there is one kind of life that is best for all human beings-a life of flourishing, one that follows a pattern of psychological and physical growth, filled with enjoyment. But it is no less true that the concrete realization of such a pattern differs enormously from one person to another. “. I believe what he is saying all people are better at certain things and that no matter what those are as long as they’re continually growing to reach their end goal that they can still enjoy living a flourishing life. In order to tie Richard Burke’s work into to the two job experiences from Matthew Crawford’s essay talked about earlier would have to done by using Burke’s idea of the 5 human powers; sensory, cognitive, affective, social, and physical, and how they are exercised in the two jobs. The abstract writing job fails to allow adequate exercise of the sensory, cognitive, physical, and affective powers. Since, the abstract writing job is repetitive as well as morally unsettling it directly interferes with the exercise of the cognitive, sensory, and affective powers. In contrast, the job as a mechanic was able to sufficiently satisfy the exercise of all of Burke’s powers therefore making better in terms of human flourishing. In the electrician job Crawford was able to satisfy the physical and cognitive human powers by allowing him to work with his hands to fix a variety of problems with the help of knowledge of past experiences with a similar problem. Crawford was able exercise his sensory and affective powers by working at a job where he was morally and mentally happy. Finally, and most important in my opinion Matthew Crawford was able to utilize his social human powers by creating the mutual bonds with fellow mechanics across the country over a true passion that they all enjoyed. In the Ted Talk that I watched Sherry Turkle is describing how technology has significantly changed our lives and how it effects our well-being as well as our ability to live a good life. According to Turkle, cellphones has a very strong impact on us psychologically and social interactions between the people in our society. In her lecture Turkle describes how cellphones and the internet change the way we act and who we are. The psychological effects of cell phones are the general acceptance of needing someone else’s approval. Most importantly though the psychological effects it has on us as a society is the fact they we’re becoming more attached to our phones rather than people. The social effects of technology are the fact that people are allowing it to become normal to be on your phone during meals, office meetings, and even during family time. These connections to our phones have strained the relations between people and have made it harder to interact socially. The ways Sherry Turkle says we can combat this problem is to gain a more conscious relationship that we have with our devices in order to help our well-being as well as our ability to live a good life. The rapid growth of our cell phone uses has had a very significant impact on several of Hurka’s components to a good life. The one that interested me the most was how it affected virtue. I believe that the use of cell phones has encouraged us to more self-oriented and only care about yourself. This societal change has made us more selfish. It is safe to say that with the invention of the cell phone and the internet it has not only became a vice but also made it harder to obtain virtues which in turn make it harder to reach the higher-level goods that we as

people desire. In regard to, Richard Kraut and his beliefs in human flourishing as well as the exercise of human powers, I believe that cell phones have hindered our ability to live flourished lives. In Sherry Turkle’s lecture she talks about how cell phones have nearly taken over social interactions as well as our psychological emotions. The invention of cell phones capable of connecting to the internet has allowed us to feel connected to the world when in reality we are really not. Being connected isn’t a bad thing but, when you’re constantly on your phone it strains your relationships with other people. These strained relationships make it harder to exercise our social powers, therefore hindering out ability to live a flourished life. Cell phones have also been able to influence our psychological emotions. The rise of cell phones came with the rise of constant approval which effects our ability to live a well fulfilled life. Technology in general has also been able to affect so much of our daily lives that it is able to influence the way we act towards other people and how we think of ourselves....