Date: Mon, 19 Feb 1996 11:58:14 -0500 (EST) From: Joseph Harold Schwartz To: Beatle Ed Subject: Re: your mail Ok fine, i'll write you, but that's only because your last mesage was particularly affecting. You write really well, I had no idea. There might be a career ther for you -- maybe articles for some loser biking magazine or something. I'm very impressed; with your adventures, as well -- llyn cau, huh? Ok, I'm an idiot for not having camped up there and gone hiking on that next crisp morning. Next time, I promise. By the way, I DID respond to your last fucking message in the capacity it warranted, mr I'm-so-miserable-for-no-good-reason-when-everything- in-my-life-is-better-than-its-ever-been-kvetch-kvetch-kvetch. What the fuck? Either you're not explaining the problem with this chick well enoguh or your irretrievably morose and ought to just leap off some craggy cliff roght now cause you're utterly incapable in taking any pleasure in life. I hope it's the former, but if it isn't, can I have your CDs? Me I'm on an upward swing of my comet-like chemical composition, so I'm happy for no reason and have to remind myself that I don't and haven't had any physical contact in almost half a year and by rights Ishould be soaking my wrists with some Gilettes on the basin.... (suicide is figuring far too strongly in this message, but I'm reading all this existentialist crap and that's all they talk about) But I'm well, in any case. I've decided that when I graduate I'mgonna bike. Just bike. Like Forect Gump, but with wheels and a little more irony. I think I'll just head east. For a very long time. I've fallen in with this espanophonic crowd, and next froday we're having a sangria party. It's a little strange, but not boring. I've walked out on a check and jumped a turnstile in the past week. I'm on the rampage. Next thing you know I'll be kissing a girl. And that's the way I see it. In New York, I'm Joe Schwartz de de deee dedede de de deee dedede * * * * * Date: Wed, 6 Mar 1996 16:02:19 -0500 (EST) From: Joseph Harold Schwartz To: Beatle Ed Devipoo- Hey, look I'm not going to Israel anymore, and I 'm writing to warn you against going yourself. Meat, devon, pulpy charred meat. Think about it. There are plenty of neat places to go. Really. There's Algeria, especially if your name is Strolavitch, um, Libya'a nice, there's London parking lots, Tokyo subways, bangladesh gets flash floods this time of year and of course, Sarajevo is beautiful in the spring. All these places have plenty of neat souveniers and are all SAFER than Herzel's little bungalow-in-the-desert country-house. Think about it. Believe it or not, I'm missing OBerlin's politics a little. Here it's like nothing ever happens, except when the Barnard clerical staff strikes and then all the socialists stop brooding around with their back slouched at precisely the right parabola and hold up signs that say daring things like 'honk for justice'. NOt even the frummies do anything about the bombings except hold vigils at night when it won't interfere with their econ and orgo. It's like it's unseemly to care about something. And then the day of the second sunday bombing this guy with short hair and a braided rat ponytail is sitting with his latte and a bright red kfia around his neck, and no one cares, and I guess he just thought it looked cool with his hiking boots and whole Wolf Blitzer get up.Yeah, so, I'd rather have the jihad brothers giving me dirty stares right now than know that most people here probably forgot what even happened as soon as they closed their Times. joe ps, how was Cork? * * * * * Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1996 16:08:13 -0400 (EDT) From: Joseph Harold Schwartz To: Beatle Ed your jen wrote me about Cloumbia and I said really its only a good place to be for grad school if one has sex with devon first. I don't think she bought it, but we'll see. I'm always there for ya, pal. joe * * * * * Date: Mon, 15 Apr 1996 16:04:22 -0400 (EDT) From: Joseph Harold Schwartz To: Beatle Ed Devon- great message. Maybe you should think of doing a lets go guide or something. I have class in 2 seconds so just one funny thing: when I was in tuscany this summer, my dad and I went to services at that synagogue you went to. I, too, spoke to the little creepy rabbi guy in Hebrew, and fell in love with Sienna. I thought it was the most beautiful little escheresque medieval city I'd ever even seen. You lead a romantic life of adventure and beauty while I languor here. Better than languishing in Oberlin, but still. If I had been at that hospital and heard you do the French castle-guard Pythin thing I think I would have cried laughing. * * * * * Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 13:57:47 -0400 (EDT) From: Joseph Harold Schwartz To: Beatle Ed I don't wanna talk about Paris, I don't wanna talk about paris. Uh, the uberfrau(lein) eternal feminine and I did succomb, however, just this weekend, which is weird, but really good in some way, if only in a self-destructive indulgent way. She called me dionysian. A little too much, she said. what the hell physiopsychicalphenomenolgicalonticalism or what ever it's called? joe ps. you don't think its funny that we attended the same synagogue in Sienna for God's sake? * * * * * Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 11:13:50 -0400 (EDT) From: Joseph Harold Schwartz To: Beatle Ed Subject: Re: your mail Your philosophy is what I might call a "modified epiphenomenal utilitarianism", the modification being that it is somewhat primitive. Utilitarianism, as you may know, is a philosophy which finds its roots with the Scottish philosopher David Hume, and was begun by Bentham and then refined by Mill. THe gist is that "good' is defined by the most (or more) pleasure attainable, and "bad" by the most pain. This is indeed physical pleasure. This, Bentham says, is what our mores ultimately break down into. I forget how, but somehow Bentham gets to the point of saying that the Good is the most pleasure for the greatest neumber of people (the problem, of course, is that if I define good as my own pleasure, its hard to figure out how I can ever state any objective statement like the one I just did, since my own pleasure may have nothing to do with it). Mill, on the other hand, thinks of lower and higher pleasures, namely physical and psychological. He says that among the higher pleasures, altruism (assuring the greatest good for the greatest number) is the hughest, and le voila. But I do think he says that the higher pleasures must be developped, and that is the reason why a vast majority of people prefer TV to literature, etc. In that case, your tentative assertion that pleasures can be conditioned, or acculturated, puts you more in line with Mill, though you didn't say anything about "higher" or "lesser". I always thought it was a bit of a problem with Mill's philosophy that he calls one sort higher and another lower, which sounds to me like better and worse, when his only criterion for determining good and bad ought to be pleasure. Epiphenomenalism is the belief that there are not two distinct sorts of states, mental and physical, but only one, namely physical, and that mental states are incidental to them, like sparks coming off a grinding wheel: side effects of physical activity. But it sounded like you said that these mental states could have causal power as well, that they could get you to do something. I think there's another name for that, since side effects can't cause anything. Iforget. It might be something like physicalism. The problem you have, of course, is accounting for what we call conventional morality. If, for instance, I decide that I love you so much that I'd give you a kidney, despite the years of suffering and potential health hazards, it's hard to say that I'm maximizing my pleasure. You can always just assert that the amount of pleasure I receive (measured, Robin has just recently told me, in P tiles) is im fact greater than being healthy and not giving you the kidney and letting you die, and that I simply don't know it. But after a while, that starts to sound self-fulfilling, any moral action, you can say, gives more pleasure than not doing it, regardless of appearences. How, if I don't recognize it as a pleasure, do I decide to do it at all? Is it that one part of me knows it as a pleasure, while another part is ignorant? What is that other part if we are just creatures designed to maximize pleasure? Any way, you see the sort of questions that come up. I don't know why you refuse to take a philosphy class. I think you'd really like it. Write me back