P4F (Philosophy for Forumites)

[Mini Mac]

Hey guys, i have come up with a great new game and its all about thinking, so get your thinking caps on quick! This is just some simple excercises our Maths Teacher in year 11 gives us. He calls it Philosophy for Children. Iv decided to call it Philsophy for Forumites! The point of this game is there are no wrong or right answers! So im going to ask a question and youv got to think hard and then tell me your answer! Lets Begin!

Which is better?

A heroric failure
or
A cowardly success?

[timbp]

Hey guys, i have come up with a great new game and its all about thinking, so get your thinking caps on quick! This is just some simple excercises our Maths Teacher in year 11 gives us. He calls it Philosophy for Children. Iv decided to call it Philsophy for Forumites! The point of this game is there are no wrong or right answers! So im going to ask a question and youv got to think hard and then tell me your answer! Lets Begin!

Which is better?

A heroric failure
or
A cowardly success?

It depends!

(I win!! :clap::clap:)

[Mini Mac]

well i would go for cowardly success.

Because i would rather be a success than a hero whos known as a failure

fame isnt everything!

[geoff332]

One of the first rules of philosophy is define your terms.

What do you mean by hero?
What do you mean by success?
What do you mean by coward?
What do you mean by failure?Now the simple way out is to tell the people answering that they have to provide their own definitions - most likely implicit in any explanation of any answer. But this gets into some dangerous ground.

An obvious distinction is that heroism and cowardice define the intention or nature of actions while success and failure define the outcomes. But these are tricky concepts. Intentions are forever slippery and what we think they were tend to change over time. The success and failure of outcomes are similarly vague: a success can later become a failure and vis versa.

Then you bring in the idea of interpretation. For some, heroism and cowardice are retrospective constructions imposed when interpreting the intentions behind behaviour. Thus, the same behaviour could be interpreted as either heroic or cowardly, depending on the observer. The same is true for success and failure: whether it's successful or a failure can depend on where you're looking at it from. An action could be simulatiously heroic and cowardly, successful and a failure. Some people would argue that all actions can be seen as containing all four dimensions.

Then we could shift to the idea that these concepts are the opposite poles, defining dimensions of heroism and success. At one end, the person is heroic; at the other they're craven. The question then depends on how far apart those poles are and the granularity of the increments between: are the dimensions fluid and continuous or discrete - maybe even binary. Some people believe the difference between heroism and cowardice are very small; for others they are night and day. Can someone be slightly heroic? Can someone be a small success? Are the dimensions strictly related - or can someone be simultaneously a hero and a coward? This is more obviously true of success and failure: do you get points for second place?

This drifts into another point: are the terms symmetrical complements or are they in some way asymmetrical? Is failure the absence of success? Is success the absence of failure? Am I a coward if I am not heroic? Is cowardice the opposite of heroism or is it something else? Can all acts be called either a success or a failure?

I guess one should be careful when playing with philosophy...

[Mini Mac]

then i guess one will have to close this thread down because they know nothing of the subject!

[timbp]

I guess one should be careful when playing with philosophy...
What you're saying is "It depends".

So I win! :clap: :clap:

[ducasi]

I disagree with Mac Mini - heroes are never failures. Therefore there is no such thing as a heroic failure - just a hero who hasn't succeeded so-far.

[geoff332]

What you're saying is "It depends".

So I win! :clap: :clap:Winning is as meaningless as success.

[Dreadful Scathe]

I disagree with Mac Mini - heroes are never failures. Therefore there is no such thing as a heroic failure - just a hero who hasn't succeeded so-far.

The original question offered "heroic failure" which suggests the "attempt" to do something was heroic but still a failure, so it doesn't mean the hero involved was a failure at all, just the attempt to do something was. Cowardly Success suggests the person involved was still a success despite being mortally scared of even making the attempt. Theres really no contest is there. To overcome the odds and yourself and still succeed...I'd go for that every time:)

[bigdjiver]

Winning is as meaningless as success.If you cannot succeed at philosophy, why do you do it?

[geoff332]

If you cannot succeed at philosophy, why do you do it?It's not philosophy that's meaningless: it's success. So why do anything?

In my case, it fills in some time before I head out for the day.

[Mini Mac]

I disagree with Mac Mini - heroes are never failures. Therefore there is no such thing as a heroic failure - just a hero who hasn't succeeded so-far.

well it was the problem my teacher came up with yesterday, he said heroric failure. i was confused too but i agree it should be a hero who hasnt suceeded so far

[bigdjiver]

well it was the problem my teacher came up with yesterday, he said heroric failure. i was confused too but i agree it should be a hero who hasnt suceeded so farWhere heros are concerned failure often means death. Evolution seems to side with cowardly success, and success seems to be propogation of the genes.

Heroic failures have their place, if the survivors learn from it.

[Ghost]

The original question offered "heroic failure" which suggests the "attempt" to do something was heroic but still a failure, so it doesn't mean the hero involved was a failure at all, just the attempt to do something was. Cowardly Success suggests the person involved was still a success despite being mortally scared of even making the attempt. Theres really no contest is there. To overcome the odds and yourself and still succeed...I'd go for that every time:)
:yeah:
I remember reading "valour" defined as "having no fear" as opposed to "bravery" where you're afraid but do it anyway - Big Light Bulb Moment

The other question is does the "failure" refer only to that specific action or all the consequences of it? The Mormons refused to fight back and were completely killed - pretty heroic failure - but it stands as a success to my mind as an impressive example of pacifism working as despite that rather considerable setback, hundreds of years later the Mormon religion is now going strong.

"You know what you get for being a hero? Nothing. You get shot at. A little pat on the back, blah blah blah, attaboy. You get divorced. Your wife can't remember your last name. Kids don't wanna talk to you. Get to eat a lot of meals by yourself. Trust me kid, nobody wants to be that guy." - John McClane, Die Hard 4.0

[Ghost]

well it was the problem my teacher came up with yesterday, he said heroric failure. i was confused too but i agree it should be a hero who hasnt suceeded so far
I'm wondering if he adapred

"It's better to die on your feet than live on your knees" - Emiliano Zapata Salazar

which I actually do agree with,

"I once saw that a dog that had been beaten. It'd cringe if you went near it, it's spirit was broken. It's a terrible thing to see in an animal, worse to see it in a man" - MacGyver, The Golden Triangle

though sometimes you have to stay on your knees for a while and wait, especially when they've got a "knife" to someone else's "throat"


then i guess one will have to close this thread down because they know nothing of the subject!
Nah, this will serve you well in life. My advice is to have fun; be aware there are very few completely right answers that never change and that some people will use complicated arguements and latin terms to try and convince you they're right.


“There is no use trying, said Alice; one can't believe impossible things. I dare say you haven't had much practice, said the Queen. When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

[timbp]

Having read all the responses so far, my answer is:

It depends!

[geoff332]

It wouldn't take much digging to find a reasonable number of German soldiers in WWII who were nothing less than heroic in fighting a losing war for morally wrong cause. That seems like a good example of heroic failures. Similarly, I'm sure there were cowards successfully fighting in the allied forces: aren't they cowardly successes?

Which would you rather be?

Sweeping generalisations without context and definition are the wisdom of fools.

The teacher in question sounds as if they were doing no more than spreading nothing but their own form of poorly reasoned idealism. When I was a prepubescent teen, I'd probably have been impressed by this. Now, I'm not.

[bigdjiver]

It wouldn't take much digging to find a reasonable number of German soldiers in WWII who were nothing less than heroic in fighting a losing war for morally wrong cause. That seems like a good example of heroic failures. Agreed, as were the Allies that fought to keep Poland from being invaded.


Similarly, I'm sure there were cowards successfully fighting in the allied forces: aren't they cowardly successes?No, a coward who is fighting is a failure as a coward.


Which would you rather be?Actually, neither.


Sweeping generalisations without context and definition are the wisdom of fools.(Why am I tempted to think this is a "sweeping generalisation"?) In my book a "sweeping generalisation" that is defined ceases to be a "sweeping generalisation".


The teacher in question sounds as if they were doing no more than spreading nothing but their own form of poorly reasoned idealism. When I was a prepubescent teen, I'd probably have been impressed by this. Now, I'm not.I think I prefer that teaching style to faultless cynicism.:grin:

[Ghost]

The teacher in question sounds as if they were doing no more than spreading nothing but their own form of poorly reasoned idealism.
Possibly. Or maybe he's following a pretty old tradition of "here's a question that'll make you think, go away and think about it then come back to me". Then Mini Mac and co go "hang on, what do you mean by 'coward' exactly?" and "it depends" and he can go on and discuss those aspects, rather than trying to teach the whole thing in 30 secs. :wink:

[CJ]

I'd choose "heroic failure". As mentioned above, a heroic attempt at anything cannot be deemed as a failure. Whether or not you succeed at your original goal... the failing is on not trying.

[geoff332]

Possibly. Or maybe he's following a pretty old tradition of "here's a question that'll make you think, go away and think about it then come back to me". Then Mini Mac and co go "hang on, what do you mean by 'coward' exactly?" and "it depends" and he can go on and discuss those aspects, rather than trying to teach the whole thing in 30 secs. :wink:If that were true, the teacher wouldn't have given an answer - which is what mini mac told us the teacher did (and confused mini mac in the process - because his definition of heroism and success were slightly different from the teacher's):


well it was the problem my teacher came up with yesterday, he said heroric failure. i was confused too but i agree it should be a hero who hasnt suceeded so far

That particular question could have been a spring board for a discussion of virtue. But the point of questions like this is any specific answer carries with it a series of implicit definitions and value judgements. Each of us will have some idea of what a virtuous person is and that will govern how we answer that question. Such a value laden question could be used as a mechanism to dig out those implicit definitions and for the students to identify their own value systems. This is a good and wonderful thing - and a great piece of learning.

The role of the teacher the socratic method is to assist by giving context and direction, not to give an answer. Particularly when that answer carries with it a value system. In fact, giving a definitive answer is exactly what you don't do.

[Ghost]

If that were true, the teacher wouldn't have given an answer - which is what mini mac told us the teacher did (and confused mini mac in the process - because his definition of heroism and success were slightly different from the teacher's):

I think Mini Mac's a she :wink:


i love, shoes! I am after some gorgeous electric blue glitter shoes i found at standout dance wear at Blackpool. :D Dad said hed consider buying them for me, they are ideal for xmas celebrations!


well it was the problem my teacher came up with yesterday, he said heroric failure. i was confused too but i agree it should be a hero who hasnt suceeded so far

Unfortunately there's 2 ways of reading the statement; either the teacher said "heroic failure" as the answer, or in context with Ducasi's remark


I disagree with Mac Mini - heroes are never failures. Therefore there is no such thing as a heroic failure - just a hero who hasn't succeeded so-far.

well it was the problem my teacher came up with yesterday, he said heroric failure. i was confused too but i agree it should be a hero who hasnt suceeded so far
she was merely restating that the teacher had said "heroic failure" in his question, despite it not making sense. In which case I think we both agree it was a good beginning.

Um Mini Mac - what did you mean exactly? :flower:

[Dreadful Scathe]

I'd choose "heroic failure". As mentioned above, a heroic attempt at anything cannot be deemed as a failure.

I'll remember that next time I'm making a heroic attempt to disarm a nuclear weapon...if I can't fail, I'll go for the blue wire. :)

[Dreadful Scathe]

I disagree with Mac Mini - heroes are never failures. Therefore there is no such thing as a heroic failure - just a hero who hasn't succeeded so-far.


What colour are the drugs on your planet ? :)

[Mini Mac]

Um Mini Mac - what did you mean exactly? :flower:[/QUOTE]

In what way do you mean?

[Ghost]

In what way do you mean?

When you said
"well it was the problem my teacher came up with yesterday, he said heroric failure. i was confused too but i agree it should be a hero who hasnt suceeded so far"

Did you mean that the teacher had said that the answer was "heroic failure" or did were you just restating that he had said "heroic failure" in the question (or did you mean something else entirely)?

:flower:

[Ghost]

I'll remember that next time I'm making a heroic attempt to disarm a nuclear weapon...if I can't fail, I'll go for the blue wire. :)
Just remember to grab the cat :whistle:

What colour are the drugs on your planet ? :)
Chocolate :yum: