Recap: Lessons 1-4

We started with basic terms, Philosophy, Ethics and Morality, and we made a distinction between Ethics and Morality for the purpose of this course. Remember, most people use the terms Ethics and Morality interchangeably (though they wouldn’t say something like “business morality” or “the ethic of the story”). We make the distinction here because (1) the words have seperate roots and origins, and (2) when we look at the etymology, we find that ancient difference informs an important feature of your relationship to the Academy.

It goes something like this: You come here with an established set of morals. The job here at the Academy is to present to you our military ethic. Your job then is (1) to decide whether you want to be a part of the military, and (2) to adopt the military ethos. We all operate under the assumption that the answer to (1) is “yes,” so the real work is going on with (2). Adopting the military ethos is a process, not something you do overnight. Throughout that process, we, the faculty, staff and personnel at the Academy, work to reinforce your decision in various ways. Ultimately, we’re working to persuade you to adopt our ethos. That may sound strange at first, but much of human communication and interaction amounts to little more than some function of persuasion. In class I said philosophers have two main tasks; to analyze and to persuade. The same could be said for any academic field. Science, for instance, does the majority of its business behind the scenes, with scientists working to persuade one another about what constitutes evidence. In the Air Force, our “official” (i.e., the one we learn in PME) definition of leadership is “the art and science of influencing and directing people to accomplish the assigned mission.” Sometimes the best way to persuade someone is to have them persuade themselves, so your fist assignment for the course, reading George F. Will’s lecture and answering the two questions, was designed to have you reflect on your own process of internalizing the military ethos up to this point.

We talked in class about how persuasion moves one to adopt a belief or position or course of action and how it’s based on argument. We looked at the construction of arguments and the different types, how our experience of the world is matured through argument, and how we judge good arguments from the bad ones, which is the critical step in developing our knowledge. On that last point, the Harry Frankfurt reading took us beyond fallacies with his work on BS. We read him as an exemplar of how philosophers do their work. His examinations of lying and intent are also applicable to your experience with the Honor Code here at the Academy. Your second assignment will explore that further and consider whether Frankfurt might offer some enhancement to the Code and its application.

Finally, we applied some tools of the trade to a case study by taking a critical look at the justifications for going to war in Iraq and identifying the bad arguments, i.e., those that failed to persuade.