Overall, I think I had a good experience with this course. I learned a lot about the application of philosophy to real world issues, practiced my writing skills and got to read a lot about a huge range of issues, many of which I had no idea even existed. 

Before taking this course, I tended to look at political issues that interested me, and through discussion with people who had different points of view, come to the philosophical differences at the root of our disagreement. One example would be that in arguments about capitalism, my friends and I would differ on what our understanding of freedom would be. We would realize after talking for a while that they understood freedom to be a lack of rules by a paternal government or organization, in some frameworks this is referred to as the freedom to, while I thought that freedom must also include freedom from hunger, overwork and sickness, all factors which severely limit people’s ability to do what they want. It was only after we recognized our philosophical differences that we could begin to have a productive discussion, as before we realized these differences we were talking about completely different things.

This class sort of took the opposite approach in that it was proactive about identifying these differences: first we learned about a few ethical frameworks, then we looked at what sort of issues those frameworks might be usefully applied too. I like this approach as it seems more transparent. We can better have a conversation about a topic if we all agree to use a common framework to analyze it. This especially showed up in our online forum discussions, as we had to explicitly use a certain ethical theory to talk about an issue. 

I also thought I did get better at writing papers, especially research papers. I finished a paper early for the first time, so I had time to edit and look over it more than usual. One thing that I struggled with was that this class had a lot more structure around writing than I am used too. In the last two years of highschool, my teachers would give a prompt (sometimes a very vague one, as simple as :”Make an argument about this book”) and set a due date a couple weeks later.  We were free to go about the writing process as suited us, which of course led to some procrastination but also allowed for us to figure out what methods worked best for ourselves specifically. It was kind of tough for me to go from that environment to a class in which we had far less freedom to write the way we chose. I think I definitely learned some things from the intermediate assignments, but I also think I could have been more academically successful in this specific class had I had few constraints on that process.

Finally, I think that this class helped me grow in my open mindedness when reading an argument.Many of the readings had rather provocative premises that I would almost immediately have an opinion about. Through reading their line of logic, I would frequently reconsider my initial reaction. I think doing this so many times made me less judgmental at the start; in the last few readings, I sort of gave up being opposed to the point until I had finished reading. This made the actual experience of reading papers much better. 

I’m glad I took this class. While it differed from my expectations, these differences weren’t necessarily bad ones. I’ll sign off with a good spoken-word/rap piece about philosophy that reminds me of this course:

Most of the research we read in this class regarding the ethics of plastic surgery and body image was done more than 10 years ago, if not further in the past. I would say a major development in this area has occurred within my lifetime which may exacerbate the problems outlined by that research–the skyrocketing popularity of social media.

In the time of Frances Macgregor’s article “Social and Cultural Components of the Motivations of Persons Seeking Plastic Surgery of the Nose,” people got plastic surgery as a result of ethnic bias in their interpersonal and professional relationships as well as non-racialized negative characteristics associated with this trait. On one hand, in the past 70 years we as a country have made some progress to break down prejudice and hate against Jewish and Italian people, which hopefully would have lessened the explicit discrimination these people would have faced due to their appearance. On the other hand, the second category of people (“fixers”) may have had their treatment worsened due to social media.

Social Media essentially takes a persons appearance and gives it a quantitative rating based on the number of likes and comments their posts receive. Women in college who use Instagram compare their bodies to an ideal, and compare themselves with other women who get more validation through social media. To make the problem even worse, many social media posts are heavily edited to make something completely unattainable look normal.

Influencer’s post showing how video can be manipulated too from Instagramreality

As people become more and more fixated on attaining an ideal that is essentially impossible, resorting to plastic surgery seems like a natural consequence of these social pressures. However along side the destructive influence of some social media comes another community, the Body Positive Movement. This movement, which also primarily takes place on social media, resists Photoshop, extreme posing and lighting and instead tries to show their authentic bodies so that other people know that they are in fact normal.

Preliminary studies have shown that young women who primarily see body positive posts as opposed to “thin-ideal” and “appearance neutral” generally have better body image, although more research is needed.

In addition to social media communities which advocate for body positivity, some corporations which sell clothing have started to use more body positive models.

These advertisements come with their own slew of problems however. To me, they seem to say “people who buy and use our product have good body image-see? you should buy it too, and then you might feel better about yourself.” Instead of focusing on change from within, by rewriting thinking habits or through actual therapeutic work, they seem to suggest that body positivity can be comodified and bought.

Macgregor mentions in his article, as does Ann Suzedelis in her article concerning plastic surgery done on children with down syndrome, that the burden to change should not be put on those who do not fit the conventional standards of attractiveness, but on our society as a whole to stop placing value on attractiveness as a trait. In some ways, the Body Positive movement fails to do this. It focuses on changing those who have been hurt by conventional standards of beauty, not those who benefit and therefore reinforce it. But in some respects this focus seems good. The people who have damaged self-esteem should not have to wait for entire cultural shifts in order to feel good about themselves and carry on with their lives.

I will leave off this discussion with one of my favorite modern punk songs, an anthem of self love from the newest album of the punk band IDLES, Joy as an Act of Resistance. This song counters the narrative above, and promotes an active form of self love through the lyrics:

I go outside, and I feel free

‘Cause I smash mirrors, and f*** T.V.

For this class, I expected to grow as a writer, a reader and a student of philosophy.

I knew that first-year perceptional are designed to be writing intensive and to help high school students into college-level writers. I took many English classes in high school and feel fairly well prepared for college level writing, but I believe that with every paper I will continue to improve both my writing process and the product itself. I also have never had feedback from a college professor, so I’m interested to see how their perspectives on my papers differ from that of a high school teacher. Finally, most of the papers I wrote in high school were literary analysis or historical research papers, so philosophy-based papers will be completely new for me, and as philosophy is a possible major for me I am eager to figure them out.

Going into the class, I expected to read more primary philosophic sources, which in my experience in high school I both found challenging and enjoyed immensely. I found it difficult to get past the esoteric language, as well as the background in philosophy that many writer’s seemed to assume their readers would have. I thought that through practice reading more philosophy, and through understanding some foundational concepts, I would become better at understanding it on the whole. I also wanted to become better at recognizing the dialogue between seemingly disparate subject matters–sometimes it seems to me as if two writers are talking about completely different concepts, but in reality they are just presenting two different ways to look at the same thing.

Finally, I acknowledge my relative ignorance of most philosophical ideas going into the course. I wanted to gain a more thorough understanding of any idea that would give me a foundation for the continued study of philosophy. I was especially interested in the application of more abstract concepts to the real world, so the focus of ethics was perfect.

Going into college, I was excited for the expansion of trust in my academic abilities that I thought would come from being a college student. In my last few terms in high school, my teachers trusted my ability to formulate my own theses and explore those idea’s and concepts that interested me within the works we were studying and writing, so that’s definitely something I am excited to be able to expand upon.

Over all, I am excited to finish the class and continue my growth as an interested learner.