Enough Thought; Time for Action

Credit: FSU News Release

By Marcus Carter

On Thursday, March 28, a crowd of about 50 people trickled into to hear the lecture “Why You Should Make Up Your Mind Already: Descartes and the Virtue of Resolution” from Dr. Shoshana Brassfield, Frostburg’s newest assistant professor of philosophy.

A press release for the talk suggested that "this presentation will help those who combat the problem of indecisiveness and show them how to make their lives easier and happier." Though it is true that everyone deals with indecisiveness to some extent, the cases presented seemed too simplistic. Philip the flip-flopper dealt with vacillation, Carefree Carol made decision on whims and Deliberating Dan could not stick to his diet plan when he was hungry. With each situation, Descartes’ ideas could be applied to find a straight forward solution to make a decisive decision.

During the second half, the discussion portion of the lecture, people began to ask questions more representative of life, such as life or death situations or Descartes’ advice about feeling regret about a decision in which, retrospectively, an individual feels that he or she should have known a valuable piece of information. At this point, the short comings of Descartes’ advice became apparent. In life or death situations, Descartes would still advise taking a moment to ponder the various outcomes. Even though in those instances, a reaction maybe the only thing that would save a victim’s life. Descartes thinks even if the decision ends poorly that the decider can take comfort that he or she did the best they could yet, the pain of a bad decision for failing to take just a little more time can still exist. For Descartes, the worst type of regret was failing to act because of lengthy deliberations, so his advice was focused on removing the regret of inaction.

Although the session ended with more questions for Descartes than answers, the audience seemed to like the lecture. “It was a pretty good talk,” said Derrick Barnes, a junior philosophy and sociology major from Washington, “having a resolution is beneficial.”

Elliot Wiedow, a senior philosophy and biology major, commented that the talk was, “well laid out; she took a deep topic and made it light hearted.” When prompted with the question if Descartes’ ideas would work in real life Elliot responded, “that’s the million dollar question… but that’s philosophy.”

Brassfield ended with comments which were more observations than caveats, noting that while Descartes’ main objective was to avoid guilt caused by irresolution and long considerations by having some requirements, such as basing a decision on logic, minimizing one’s emotions, and using discipline, he never discussed specifics. Descartes never mentioned, how long to deliberate or gave a stepwise method to make a good decision. Adding to the confusion, Descartes believes that the end result did not suggest if the decision was good or not. He simply noted that some characteristics were necessary in making a good decision and he ended by saying a catch all phrase that can be summarized as when in doubt find your own truth. According to Wiedow, the talk was “a mandate and a suggestion,” but I was just happy that I avoided regret by decisively choosing to attend.

Links:
Frostburg's news release: http://www.frostburg.edu/news/searchnewsdt.cfm?id_number=6602
Campus events calendar: http://www.frostburg.edu/events/