1. I am Dr. John Fruncillo and I will be your professor for this
on-line course. Let's look at a brief overveiw of Philosophy's
Fundamental Questions: The history of western philosophy
spans over 2500 years and begins with the questions raised by
the Presocratic philosophers. Among the fundamental questions
formulated by the Presocratics are: 1) what is the foundation of
reality-what is being? The problems of Metaphysics and
Ontology 2) what is the nature of the soul?, 3) What can we
know, the study of knowledge-epistemology 4) what is the
good, what is the life of virtue, 4) what is beauty? Philosophy
has been and still is, a search for the conditions for the
possibility of experience and reality. In order to tackle this
seemigly absract endveour, philosophy must be both historical
and critical in its methods. We need to understand what the
authors of the past have said so that we can gain a better
understanding of where we are today. How did we go from
anceint Greece to modern technological society? How do we
justify any knowledge claims? What is the difference between
opinion and knowledge or appearance and reality? What is the
difference between good and evil? Each thinker will approach
these questions in a different way depending on the historical
context in which they lived. So, for example, Aristotle takes for
granted the reality of physical motion (Kinesis) and attempts to
explain how things change from one physical state to the next,
birth, growth, death while the fundamental ground of reality for
Aquinas is God's creative act of bringing all things into being
ex-nihilo (out of nothing). As we will see, there is a tremendous
ontological gulf between the Greek understanding of nature and
time and the Christian understanding in the middle ages.Please
don't become worried if my example seems too technical. I'm
am only using the Greeks and Christians to illustrate a basic
principle underlying the history of philosophy: that the ultimate
conditions for what is taken as 'real' change with each historical
time-frame. I’d like to describe the fundamental questions of

2. philosophy in relationship to the basic fields of philosophy:a)
Epistemology: the theory of knowledge, the standards for
justifying knowledge claims, what is truth? What are the limits
and sources of our knowledge? From theGrrek words- ‘Epistme’
and ‘logos’ = discourse about knowledge b) Metaphysics:
fundamental questions about the nature of reality, is the
universe finite or infinite? What is the foundation of reality? Is
reality made up of one kind of substance or many? Composed of
matter or spirit? Meta/physis = after physics, beyond the
sensible world. Is the universe finite or infinite, does God exist,
do we have a soul? c) Ethics: what is good? What is evil/wrong?
What standards can we use to justify our asserting that certain
actions are wrong and others are right? What rational arguments
can we give to support a moral argument? These three fields of
philosophy do not exhaust the subfields of philosophy but
provide a traditional guide to the study of philosophy. Have you
ever been treated unfairly? How did you know that your
experience was unfair? Where did you get your
concept/understanding of fairness from? Friends, family,
school, media? Fairness is just a synonym for justice. You
would not be able to recognize unfair unless you already had
some idea, however vague and unclear, of what fairness means.
So, you carry around within you certain ideas about justice and
fairness. You see, even if you don’t clarify your ideas through
rigorous reflection, which is part of the work of philosophy, you
are, in a very real sense, relying on ideas which are
philosophical in nature. Regardless of the agents of
socialization, you have taken on and assimilated certain
historical ideas about yourself, the world, and how you can
know the world-you are already acquainted with philosophy but
no one has ever shown you where those ideas come from and
what they really mean and so it just seems like common sense to
you. By the way the notion of a “common sense” is really an
Enlightenment ideal-more about this later in the course. What
we want to do in philosophy is to clarify and bring into the light
of reason these unclear ideas and when we look at things in the

3. most fundamental way we find that reality can be organized in
terms of the fields I’ve outlined above. All three of the above
branches of philosophy are incorporated into our everyday
activities. Why study philosophy? Because each of us has an
interest in knowing the truth about the world and knowing
what’s real and what’s an illusion. Knowing something about
these problems also has a secondary benefit: it helps us survive.
In order for you to know philosophy you have to see that
philosophy must be understood within two basic orientations:
Historical- texts of the traditionPhilosophy = Critical- Rigorous
thinking Philosophy must be historical because it is only by
reading and understanding the great works of the past that we
can understand were we are in the present. By knowing the
arguments of the great philosophers we can make our own
thinking and speaking more fool-proof and guard against the
naivete of unknowingly repeating ideas from the
past.Philosophy must be critical because without rigorous
thinking we cannot be sure that what we’re saying is clear and
logically consistent.One way of understanding Philosophy is to
look at the difference between philosophy and mythology. The
transition from Greek mythology to Pre-Socratic philosophy
occurs with Thales at aprox 624-545 B.C. The movement from
Myth to Pre-Socratic philosophy is a transition in explanatory
modes.Mythic Language Pre-Socratic Philosophy a) Poetic
tropes: metaphor, analogy a) Rational concepts/definitions b)
Animistic forces in nature b) Natural causes (not divine) c)
Polytheism: many gods act as personified c) Natural elements:
earth, air, water and fire The word ‘Cosmology’ originally
means the study of the History of the order of the world. How
did the world originate? From the Greek ‘kosmos’ = ‘order’ of
any kind-later identified with the order seen in the heavens and
ultimately the universe. Even the earliest civilizations give an
account of how the universe comes into being and how the
world is structured. In Myths the element of the universe are
personal divine beings that cause the development of the
universe. With the Greek author Hesiod, the cosmos comes from

4. the will of the gods in their sexual unions with one another:
hatred, love and jealousy ect. The mythological conception of
the universe attributes animistic qualities to the forces of nature
– ‘anima’-the latin word for ‘soul’-the world is inhabited by
different types of soul’s; the world is alive. For Hesiod the
constituents of the universe are personal divine beings and the
causes of the development of the universe are personal causes:
sexuality, hatred, jealousy, and so forth. The earth produces
new natural forces chiefly through sexual contact with heaven
who lies on top of her. Ouranos (sky-heaven) refused to let the
new beings be born and kept them pushed down within the earth
(Gaia). Gaia, being both in pain and angry at Ouranos for his
treatment of their offspring, plotted with their youngest,
Kronos. Kronos went forth with a sickle and waited until
Ouranos came towards Gaia desiring love. When Ouranos lay
outstretched on Gaia, Kronos castrated his father. Ouranos drew
back in pain-and thus was the gap between heaven and earth
created. In Hesiod’s mythic tale the gap between sky and earth
is created by an act of castration. An unwanted son castrates his
own father thus initiating, before Sophocles, the Oedipal
triangle between son, mother and father. Hesiod’s tale is of
course, much different than the one we find in the Old and New
Testaments, for here we find sexual potency and castration at
play in the origin of the cosmos, rather than the asexual love of
a single creator god. Now lets look at one of the first
philosophical explanations of the origin of the world-the
argument of Thales.(pronounced Thay-lees). The generative
principle of the cosmos is sought by Thales in his argument that
moisture or water is the origin of the world. In the beginning
the universe was nothing but an expanse of watery chaos. Out of
this watery chaos our present differentiated universe developed.
Now, notice that Thales is not talking about mythological
beings in his account about the origin of the world, he is instead
talking about natural phenomenon-that is, he focuses on natural
processes rather than myths. Second point: Thales speaks of the
basic stuff (like matter) out of which the world is made-water.

5. Long ago everything came from and still is water. How can this
be? How is a solid object or air water? Thales starts with the
basic assumption that everything originates from a watery
chaos, but rather than say this primordial water was replaced by
other elements he maintains instead that the development of
other objects is really a transformation of water into a variety of
new forms. How does this happen? Aristotle conjectures that
Thales provided empirical observation to support his
hypothesis. Water can actually be seen to be transformed into
other states-for example: by evaporation water turns into steam
and transforms into air. Water also freezes and becomes as solid
as a rock Moreover, both of these processes can be reversed:
rain and condensation are a return of water from the air while
melting turns a solid into water. Thales used these facts to
support his claim that water is the basis of the cosmos and that
these different state were really various transformations of
water. The idea of an original substance, water disguising itself
in different states is also suggested by the Greek myths- where
the gods & goddesses appear to human beings in different
forms-Athena appearing as a man to Odysseus. For Thales,
water is the fundamental stuff/matter out of which the world is
made. Thus, water is neither created nor does it ever cease to
exist-it suffers neither non-existence nor death and in this
regard, some have suggested that water is divine for Thales.
Water may have been a divinity for Thales, an immortal process
of being; something that is living and because it is living is
capable of self-initiated movement and change. With this
possibility we can see that our historical distinction between
rationality and myth is not satisfactory in giving an account of
the difference between an author like Hesiod and Thales. Please
read Chapters 1 & 3 and discuss: Do you think the universe is
made out of one basic substance or many different kinds of
substances? Please take the quiz "What is philosophy during the
week of 9/16/-9/23/13

6. Chapter 14
Existentialism Lecture Existentialism seeks to find meaning by
creating meaning. In other words you find your own truth. Truth
isn't out there waiting for you. The true self that you are
supposed to turn into does not and never will exist. The only
self that is true is the one that you create through your choices.
This is the core of existential thought. We act and by our
actions we make meaning for ourselves. Because the world is
absurd and can never give us direction, we are condemned to be
free in this existential universe, and that means we are
condemned to always make choices. "Existence precedes
essence." The stuff that makes me, the living body composed of
muscle and bone and blood and other tissues, is merely a mass
of living cells that exist in space/time. The essence of what
makes me unique and different from all the other masses of
living cell tissue, are the choices I have made for myself: I am
made up out of thousands of choices. Fate is being born and
growing up with parents you didn't choose, and finally dying.
There is nothing you can do about that. Everything else is a
choice. The "objective" facts of a life cannot account for its
existential quality. The mere facts are not a person's truth. Did
anyone see the movie "American Splendor" which is available
in DVD? This movie drives home the fact that there is no
"ordinary" life. How can anyone belong to an abstraction? This
is society's way of leveling, of massing the individual. Is it
possible to be unique? Are you more at home in a crowd or by
yourself? Why do we depend on experts such as Oprah, or Dr.
Phil, or Martha Stewart, to tell us how to live? There is no
essential me waiting to come out. I am not "me" by essence, by
mere fact of what I am, but only by what I do: my actions, my
decisions, my choices, my risks, my gambles. There is no fixed
self. Instead, what you have, according to Sartre's
phenomenology, are three states of consciousness:
"Forlornness"--life alone without God. Consciously this allows
us to play God and to decide our own fates. "Anguish"--
Conscious awareness of how others ought to make choices.

7. "Despair"--Conscious reminder over what falls immediately
under our control in the moment based on the possibilities in the
moment and the choices we can make around those possibilities.
You will see how existentialism resembles some ancient
philosophy in many ways, especially Socrates and Epictetus. It
is a philosophy that made sense for many after the horrors of
the great wars in Europe. It is basically a philosophy of making
choices for yourself. For example, the fact that you are here,
that you are born into this world is out of your control. That is
fate. Everything else is a choice you make. And you can choose
many things including how you feel about something. You have
to decide for yourselves what your priorities in life are going to
be and base your choices on those priorities. The choices you
make affect every aspect of your existence. If you choose to go
to college and get a degree you are choosing a certain type of
life. If you choose to drop out you are also choosing a certain
type of life. You choose friends and spouses and jobs and
careers. You don't choose your parents and you don't choose
your birth. Those are given. The beauty of existentialism is that
you take full responsibility for your choices and your actions
and for who you are. You never play the blame game. This is
not easy, I know. Choices are hard to come by. How can we
ever know that we are making the right choices? This is the
question. Do you do what others want you to do? Or do you do
what you want to do? Do you follow the crowd? Or do you make
up your own mind? Kierkegaard wanted to be authentic. This
meant that he wanted to be himself not some notion or made-up
image of what someone else had in mind. He thought society
was passionless and that the crowd always overwhelms the
individual and then the individual gets lost, thereby losing
himself. Sartre saw that we become mere social types in order
to fit in. That is we dress the same, eat the same, do the same
and our values are controlled by others, by the massing of the
individual into a non-authentic version of a person. Since Sartre
believed that there is no fixed self, that we become a certain
type of person. If we are not careful, we let others make the

8. choices. If we are true and authentic to who we are and what we
want, we make our own choices. For Sartre, there is no real self
out there waiting for us. We have to build that real self. It won't
happen when we retire or when we get the degree or the right
job. It is now and must be acquired now in the present of our
very existence. According to Sartre, nothing limits our choices.
I disagree with this somewhat. I think money and physical
ability and mental ability can limit our choices to a degree. But
otherwise I think he was right. We are free to choose and we are
condemned to be free. This is the heart of existentialism. God is
removed from this philosophy and for good reason. Sartre
witnessed the horrors of World War Two and the Nazi
occupation and the Holocaust. How could God let that happen
he wondered. His philosophy removes God and puts all the
responsibility on the individual. Men can create evil and destroy
the world. He realized this. Sartre believed that God got people
off the hook and made them irresponsible that is not responsible
for their actions. He wanted the opposite, complete
responsibility for his actions. This is what existentialism is
about, about taking responsibility for your own actions. Now for
our discussion I would like all of you to consider Sartre,
Heidegger and Kierkegaard. Does their philosophy have merit
for you? Do you believe that you are responsible for who you
are? Do you feel that you are a social type? Is it possible to be
authentic? Please read chapter 14-thanks. Go to YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ5NWXUnoOo
Chapter 17
WittgensteinDear Class,Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein's teacher
and mentor, came up with a famous paradox. As a
mathematician and a philosopher, a logician, he tried to
investigate the solving of problems using statements that were
either true or false. Something can't be both true and false, can
it? Can God exist and not exist? That is called the "rule of the

9. excluded middle." Using the "set" logic of a mathematician he
constructed this logic puzzle "Who Shaves Harry the Barber."If
Harry the barber shaves only those who do not shave
themselves, who shaves Harry the barber?orCan the set of all
sets that are not members of themselves be a member of
itself?Go to the link on Russell's Paradox
http://www.jimloy.com/logic/russell.htmUntil Bertrand Russell,
and from the time of Descartes, the central branch of philosophy
had been epistemology—the study of what we can know.
Descartes had searched inside himself for secure knowledge.But
after Russell, epistemology was displaced by the philosophy of
language and the premise that our words are the lenses through
which we access thoughts and the external world. We cannot
“see” the world without them.And the real significance for
philosophy came when Russell transferred the techniques he had
employed in this work to the study of language and then to the
perennial problems of metaphysics: the nature of existence,
knowledge, truth, etc. The most famous of his theories concerns
the baldness of the French monarch.In this sense the
relationship is language versus the world. How is it that a series
of letters, say “p-i-p-e,” when placed in appropriate order
acquire meaning?The creed in the early 20th century that was
part of a branch of philosophy known as logical atomism was
that all words stand for objects—words mean their objects.But
this view of the link between language and the world raises a
number of perplexing issues. What object does a fairy tale
creation such as a golden mountain signify?Back to Russell’s
bald monarch: If we utter, “The King of France is bald.” It is a
perfectly coherent statement. One who didn’t know might
believe it to be true. “We are confused by our language,”
Russell believed.“The king of France is bald” actually masks a
complex logical triplet. Its three ingredients are:1. There is a
king of France.2. There is only one king of France.3. Whoever
is king of France is bald.Once this logic is exposed, we can see
how this statement makes sense but is false: it is because the
first premise is untrue.Wittgenstein had come to see the

10. linguistic scrutiny of objects/concepts as of value in itself. His
book, The Tractatus, opens with: “The world is all that is the
case” and concludes with “Whereof one cannot speak, therefore
one must remain silent.”For Wittgenstein, a thought is a
linguistic picture of reality.Since language is governed by rules
it is essentially public and embedded in practice in public
through rules which have to be interpreted through consensus—
that we all agree on the rules. Otherwise language would not
work.The idea of a “private” language is incoherent even though
you can make up your own language. Since you must create the
rules for your own language (all languages are made-up, that is
created over time), you may teach someone how to speak it, but
only through this public consensus.Therefore, Descartes, by
looking inside himself for knowledge sought certainty from the
wrong direction. His proposition, “I think therefore I am” is
nothing more that a linguistic circular statement equal to the
“King of France is bald.” From this insight, Wittgenstein
overturned several hundred years of philosophy and
emancipated his followers from the search for rock-bottom
certainty.For Wittgenstein, the aim of philosophy was to
disentangle ourselves, to show the fly the way out of the bottle.
To discourage those who stare at objects and feel that they can
somehow penetrate phenomena and reach immaterial
core.Philosophical problems then are puzzles. Wittgenstein
writes that philosophical problems arise because we
misunderstand the logic of language. Our troubles arise when
we try to burrow below the surface.He writes that people say
again and again that philosophy doesn’t really progress, that we
are all still occupied with the same philosophical problems as
were the ancient Greeks. But the people who say that don’t
understand why this is and don’t understand that it is because
language, our language, has remained the same and keeps
seducing us into asking the same questions.And so the theory
that meaningful statements have either to be analytic where
truth or falsity can be established by examining the meanings of
words—for example: All triangles have three sides (true by

11. definition) or open to observation by testing, became known as
logical positivism and many logical positivists took the
Tractatus as their Bible. They extracted this principle of
verification from the Tractatus and they accepted, as had
Russell, one of Wittgenstein’s core claims: that all proofs and
all logical inferences such as, “if it is raining, it is either
raining or it is not raining” are merely tautologies. In other
words they give us no information about the actual world. They
are devoid of substance. They are only about the internal
relationship of the statements or equations.Do you believe
Wittgenstein was right, that what cannot be expressed through
language cannot be thought? In other words, is it possible to
form a thought without some word, or some component of
language? Can you think without a language?
Chapter 16
NietzscheNietzsche was a deeply spiritual atheist who saw
sickness at the core of modernity. Modernity is a period of
nation states dominated by enlightenment ideals with an abiding
faith in science, progress in capitalism, urbanization, large-
scale industrial enterprise, mass literacy, media, culture,
politics, etc…Nietzsche’s life affirming call to action of self-
creation in the death of God.From Schopenhauer he learned that
for every satisfied desire ten new ones arise and that life is a
purposeless striving for a pointless existence. What a happy
camper he was.Nietzsche responded positively to Schopenhauer
in being unable to find meaning in pleasure or religion. From
Schopenhauer, Nietzsche concluded life makes no objective
sense (think about 9/11) not part of any divine plan, nor is/it
orderly, life is just an outward expzession of will.!0DSo wdat
does a poor joy have to do? He has to use his will to impkse his
values of himself. Nietzsche was impressed with the 19th
century German leader, Bismark who ruled with an iron
fist.Nietzsche reads Darwin and combines will with evolution
and he transforms Schopenhauer’s pessimism into tragic
optimism.A tragic optimist is someone who imposes his will on

12. a meaningless world and who freely chooses values in finding
joy and vitality in a purposeless universe. Nietzsche thought
Schopenhauer failed to see Darwinian dominance in the struggle
to survive and so “whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger”
and we are able to overcome our weakness and fear.Nietzsche
sees himself as a prophet of a healthier morality.According to
Nietzsche aesthetic vision (art, culture, taste) is the basis for
meaning, not science, nor religion, nor morality.Nietzsche sees
Art as a life-style choice. Kierkegaard saw this, too. But
Nietzsche sees it also as a lie, a mask to hide behind. Nietzsche
takes the stance that any view of reality is just one individual
asserting a perspective. According to Nietzsche, we must justify
life as an aesthetic phenomenon.[question: is it possible to
rationalize another perspective, to get into someone’s head, to
see things their way?][question: do you think it is possible to be
neutral?]Perspectivism: every interpretation creates its own
truth (facts). Impossible to decide if any one is not
correct.Nietzsche insists his readers assert their own perspective
lest they forget that they have a perspective so that they can
make their own judgments.Nietzsche takes anti-moral (amoral)
stance, not immoral, from Christian moral science. Disputes the
possibility of objectively, universality and rejects the absolute
authority of reason and rejects the idea of a neutral stance, the
idea of a perspectiveless perspective.Witness what happens
when individual breaks out of “herd consciousness.” I get
burned in the stock market crash by following “herd
consciousness.”[example: stock market investments pre 2000;
faith in banking institutions, faith in system to govern itself,
was in reality built on lies.]The problem then becomes, what do
you replace authority with—the Will to Power.Nietzsche even
doubts self-knowledge (in the Kantian sense, part of us, nearly
most of us, is noumena.)We can never get at the truth of
anything. Therefore, truths are the ones we create aesthetically,
and they are not some concoction derived from reason. There
are no absolute, unchanging, objective truths.You will see how
William James attacked science.Nietzsche’s assault on

13. objectivity rejects Descartes’ notion of a fixed self, a view
similar to Hume’s.A person’s view of himself as a self that
persists over time is a fiction, a metaphor.Nietzsche said
Christians and scientists and certain philosophers believe that
terms like “substance” and “God,” and “gravity” actually refer
to things—they don’t.There’s a hidden agenda in science and
religion due to manifestations of the will to power, a natural
impulse to dominate and control and to seek power over world,
even self.Nietzsche sees a power basis for the distinction
between good and evilWhat one did for the sake of God, one
now does for the sake of money. What now gives us the highest
feeling of power and good conscience.The modern disease—
another perspective:World is just a monster of energy enclosed
by nothingness (space)Moral problem in terms of Christian
doctrine: for Christians whatever raises one above the herd is
evil. The mediocre submissive wins moral brass
ring.Nietzsche’s view—our attraction to science, desire to
control, indicates our true urge to dominate. This outside
domination seeks to reduce and narrow our life.Science is
always for a purpose (hidden agenda). Philosophy is always for
a purpose (hidden agenda).Morality is nothing but the sign
language of the affects. It reflects the moral codes of those who
create them. And since moral code reflects true perspective of
desires of those who create them, to be moralistic is to be
common (herd) and that herd gets the reward for virtuous herd
living.According to Nietzsche, this is hypocrisy: the preacher
who preaches against sin lusts for vice.Reaction formation
prevents dangerous desires from being exposed by saying
opposite. Freud borrowed many of his ideas including this one
from Nietzsche.Modernity to Nietzsche is anti-life, anti-nature.
Christian utilitarian moralistic altruism is toxic to individual. It
wants to tame and subdue human selfish passions which are
good, because there is excitement and creativity.Nietzsche’s
critique of culture centers on his abiding suspicion of all
attempts to generalize or universalize a code for living.For
Nietzsche—science turns away from vital life. Scientist’s sterile

14. abstractions, generalizations, believer’s timid suppression of
passion, meekness.Science and philosophy do not provide us
with meaning—We create meaning.Religion does not provide us
with salvation—God is dead. “Almost two thousand years, and
no new god!”Idea of God has no creative force. The herd is not
aware of this. They still believe in a dead god.We have let
modernity take god’s place.We have not created new gods.We
have progress instead. Our faith is empty.Some of us may
realize old religions are dying. We are unable to face universe
alone.Nihilism: If no God, then our values need to be assessed.
World lacks meaning and purpose.Nietzsche predicted as more
become aware that religious values are empty, and science has
no meaning to offer (as in NASA being meaningless); it all
amounts to life as a cosmic accident.Without God, we can turn
only to ourselves, to choose our own value systems, to gain
advantage over others based on our sense of power.My question
to the class for this discussion:After reading the above and
chapter 17, do you believe that what Nietzsche says about God
being dead is true?NietzscheNietzsche was a deeply spiritual
atheist who saw sickness at the core of modernity. Modernity is
a period of nation states dominated by enlightenment ideals
with an abiding faith in science, progress in capitalism,
urbanization, large-scale industrial enterprise, mass literacy,
media, culture, politics, etc…Nietzsche’s life affirming call to
action of self-creation in the death of God.!0DFrom
Schopenhauer he learnid that for everu satisfied desive ten new
ones arise and that life is a purposeless striving for a pointless
existence. What a happy camper he was.Nietzsche responded
positively to Schopenhauer in being unable to find meaning in
pleasure or religion. From Schopenhauer, Nietzsche concluded
life makes no objective sense (think about 9/11) not part of any
divine plan, nor is it orderly, life is just an outward expression
of will.So what does a poor boy have to do? He has to use his
will to impose his values on himself. Nietzsche was impressed
with the 19th century German leader, Bismark who ruled with
an iron fist.Nietzsche reads Darwin and combines will with

15. evolution and he transforms Schopenhauer’s pessimism into
tragic optimism.A tragic optimist is someone who imposes his
will on a meaningless world and who freely chooses values in
finding joy and vitality in a purposeless universe. Nietzsche
thought Schopenhauer failed to see Darwinian dominance in the
struggle to survive and so “whatever doesn’t kill us makes us
stronger” and we are able to overcome our weakness and
fear.Nietzsche sees himself as a prophet of a healthier
morality.According to Nietzsche aesthetic vision (art, culture,
taste) is the basis for meaning, not science, nor religion, nor
morality.Nietzsche sees Art as a life-style choice. Kierkegaard
saw this, too. But Nietzsche sees it also as a lie, a mask to hide
behind. Nietzsche takes the stance that any view of reality is
just one individual asserting a perspective. According to
Nietzsche, we must justify life as an aesthetic
phenomenon.[question: is it possible to rationalize another
perspective, to get into someone’s head, to see things their
way?][question: do you think it is possible to be
neutral?]Perspectivism: every interpretation creates its own
truth (facts). Impossible to decide if any one is not
correct.Nietzsche insists his readers assert their own perspective
lest they forget that they have a perspective so that they can
make their own judgments.Nietzsche takes anti-moral (amoral)
stance, not immoral, from Christian moral science. Disputes the
possibility of objectively, universality and rejects the absolute
authority of reason and rejects the idea of a neutral stance, the
idea of a perspectiveless perspective.Witness what happens
when individual breaks out of “herd consciousness.” I get
burned in the stock market crash by following “herd
consciousness.”[example: stock market investments pre 2000;
faith in banking institutions, faith in system to govern itself,
was in reality built on lies.]The problem then becomes, what do
you replace authority with—the Will to Power.Nietzsche even
doubts self-knowledge (in the Kantian sense, part of us, nearly
most of us, is noumena.)We can never get at the truth of
anything. Therefore, truths are the ones we create aesthetically,

16. and they are not some concoction derived from reason. There
are no absolute, unchanging, objective truths.You will see how
William James attacked science.Nietzsche’s assault on
objectivity rejects Descartes’ notion of a fixed self, a view
similar to Hume’s.A person’s view of himself as a self that
persists over time is a fiction, a metaphor.Nietzsche said
Christians and scientists and certain philosophers believe that
terms like “substance” and “God,” and “gravity” actually refer
to things—they don’t.There’s a hidden agenda in science and
religion due to manifestations of the will to power, a natural
impulse to dominate and control and to seek power over world,
even self.Nietzsche sees a power basis for the distinction
between good and evilWhat one did for the sake of God, one
now does for the sake of money. What now gives us the highest
feeling of power and good conscience.The modern disease—
another perspective:World is just a monster of energy enclosed
by nothingness (space)Moral problem in terms of Christian
doctrine: for Christians whatever raises one above the herd is
evil. The mediocre submissive wins moral brass
ring.Nietzsche’s view—our attraction to science, desire to
control, indicates our true urge to dominate. This outside
domination seeks to reduce and narrow our life.Science is
always for a purpose (hidden agenda). Philosophy is always for
a purpose (hidden agenda).Morality is nothing but the sign
language of the affects. It reflects the moral codes of those who
create them. And since moral code reflects true perspective of
desires of those who create them, to be moralistic is to be
common (herd) and that herd gets the reward for virtuous herd
living.According to Nietzsche, this is hypocrisy: the preacher
who preaches against sin lusts for vice.Reaction formation
prevents dangerous desires from being exposed by saying
opposite. Freud borrowed many of his ideas including this one
from Nietzsche.Modernity to Nietzsche is anti-life, anti-natuze.
Christian utilitarian moralastic altruism is toxic to individual. It
wants to tame and subdue human selfish passions which are
good, because there is excitement and creativity.Nietzsche’s

17. critique of culture centers on his abiding suspicion of all
attempts to generalize or universalize a code for living.For
Nietzsche—science turns away from vital life. Scientist’s sterile
abstractions, generalizations, believer’s timid suppression of
passion, meekness.Science and philosophy do not provide us
with meaning—We create meaning.Religion does not provide us
with salvation—God is dead. “Almost two thousand years, and
no new god!”Idea of God has no creative force. The herd is not
aware of this. They still believe in a dead god.We have let
modernity take god’s place.We have not created new gods.We
have progress instead. Our faith is empty.Some of us may
realize old religions are dying. We are unable to face universe
alone.Nihilism: If no God, then our values need to be assessed.
World lacks meaning and purpose.Nietzsche predicted as more
become aware that religious values are empty, and science has
no meaning to offer (as in NASA being meaningless); it all
amounts to life as a cosmic accident.Without God, we can turn
only to ourselves, to choose our own value systems, to gain
advantage over others based on our sense of power.My question
to the class for this discussion:After reading the above and
chapter 16, do you believe that what Nietzsche says about God
being dead is true?Reminder: the first paper is due Friday
10/18/13 by 5:00pm.Each day your paper is late you lose 10
points.
Matrix
Matrix Metaphysics Dear Class, We enter an area in this
discussion called "metaphysics." It is an area that Wittgenstein
said that we should pass over in silence. Plato had a system of
metaphysics whereby he describes what is real from what is not
real. Plato used the principle of the "Divided Line" to separate a
higher and a lower order of knowledge. Plato was a
metaphysician. He thought in terms of a higher order of reality.
Today, physics is struggling with "quantum mechanics" which is
trying to come up with equations that unify the larger order of

18. the universe with the smallest sub-atomic particles. The laws of
the large universe do not coincide with the laws of the small
universe. Quantum physics sees reality as made up of fields of
forces based on sub-sub atomic particles that change back and
forth from energy to matter and vice versa. These particles
cannot be plotted and they may even exist in two different
dimensions simultaneously. To a quantum physicist "I"am not
even really "here" since there is no "here" there. I am just a
force field swirling like a tornado and your force field is part of
my force field when we encounter each other. We can literally
move through each other, our particles can on a quantum level.
The strong forces of the atom, the forces that hold the neutrons
and protons together, help keep up the illusion that there is a
fixed entity, a hard shell of a surface. But this energy shell can
be broken open. A nuclear reaction does this and splits the atom
releasing tremendous amounts of energy from the nuclei's
strong forces. Radiation is the weak force of the electrons being
pulled away from the pull of the nucleus. It is relatively easy to
gather electrons into electrical current. Just rub your feet on a
carpet on a dry day and watch your hair stand on end. Those are
electrons that you have gathered into your body from the
friction of rubbing two surfaces. Gravity is the other force and
the weak and strong forces combine with magnetism. When you
watch the Matrix you will see how reality can evaporate in a
quantum cloud of other dimensions and people disappear and fly
off buildings and fall or dodge bullets by manipulating their
quantum energy fields. And then this brings up the Platonic idea
of what is real and if there is such a thing as fixed reality. Plato
believed that what we see here around and among us is a
representation of a form of reality, a mere copy of a copy. In
Plato's metaphysics, we only achieve reality when we acquire
the right kind of knowledge, which is the knowledge of the
"Forms." In Greek he called these "Eidoi" or Eidos in the
singular. The very word "idea" derives from "eidos" and Plato
believed that these were fixed and permanent and could never
change. You see the problem was from the time of the earliest

19. philosophers, the Pre-Socratics, how do you account for
change? How is it that things come into existence and then go
out of existence? Heraclitus believed that everything was
always in a state of flux and that there was only change and that
permanence was just an illusion. Parmenides believed that
everything was "One" and unified and that there was no
possibility for change since existence or "being" is "One" and
there is only one being. But then, when you look around, you
see that there are a lot of different things in the world and they
all look different and have different sizes and forms and shapes
and colors and smells and tastes. So how do you account for all
this variety if there is only one form of matter? Well, Plato
thought that we live in a lower realm of shadow. He came up
with the allegory of the cave. Inside, we are staring at a wall
and we are being manipulated into believing that what we see
reflected on the wall is the real form of something. Plato
believed that the real form of that something was outside the
cave up in the higher realm of light, in the rays of the sun, his
allegory for true knowledge. For Plato this was the "good" and
it was fixed. Plato was influenced by the Pre-Socratics and he
wanted to accomodate the ideas of Heraclitus and Parmenides.
So he came up with a two-world system of reality or
metaphysics. He was also influenced by Pythagoras who started
a cult religion based on mathematics and his followers believed
everything contained number. And Plato wanted the certainty of
math and that the higher order of thinking contained this
knowledge of math. Descartes centuries later comes up with a
system of thought that believes it can beat the illusory power of
this world's deceptions. In some ways he is a modern day
Platonist, someone who believes that there is a real world but
that it is not this one. For Descartes, this world is made up of
Res Extensa and that it has qualities but they are changeable.
And of course, our whole brain can be deceived into thinking
what the deceiver wants us to perceive. Descartes believes it is
possible our brains are in vats being forced to perceive what is
being stimulated by an outside agency and Plato believes that

20. we are all chained together sitting in front of our televisions
watching the flickering lights cast by puppet masters who only
want to show us what is fake and changing. In the movie the
Matrix, the character played by Keanu Reeves experiences the
disbelief of his own senses. He crosses over to another reality
and he encounters "Morpheus" played by Laurence Fishburn. In
that encounter, Morpheus explains to him what is happening or
what will happen and he offers him a certain pill. What does the
pill symbolize? and How is this character like one of Plato's
cave dwellers and what is he able to gain in the form of
knowledge?
Chapter 5
Online Lecture: PlatoGood morning/afternoon/evening/late
evening folks, I’d like to talk about one of the pillars of the
western philosophical tradition: Plato. Plato’s work spans 36
dialogues which are traditionally divided into three periods of
development: 1) Early dialogues 2) the Middle period and 3) the
latter dialogues: Timeaus, Theatutus and the Parmenides. Plato
sets out to find the foundation of reality, of being as such, but
argues that the only way we can find this foundation is to look
for something that is always stable and never changes. Where
can we find something that never changes? Plato argues that the
world of sense impressions is characterized by ceaseless
change; things grow, flourish and die over and over again, just
as the stars constantly rotate around the earth in seemingly
endless revolutions. Opinions constantly change and are never
really a reliable guide in our search for the truth. What is true
must always be true and never subject to social conventions or
the mere opinions of people. The world of appearances, the
world we encounter with our five senses, is one of change and
instability; not truth and stability.Where can we find the
changeless foundation of reality? Plato’s tells us there is a real
foundation for truth and being but this foundation cannot be
found anywhere in the world of our senses. Even if we searched
all of time and space we would never find the source of being,

21. of reality and yet there is order in the world of appearances. The
only region where things never change must be a region
somehow different from time and space (where things always
change) and yet affecting time and space in their very being.
Where or what is this region? Plato calls this place the ‘Eidos’,
inadequately translated as ‘The Forms’. What are the forms?
The forms are real but they do not exist in time and space so
how do we know them? We can’t see, feel, hear or touch them
so how do we encounter them? Plato tells us that we can catch a
glimpse of the Forms by the arduous process of dialectical
reasoning. The highest human faculty is reason and we can see
the forms by training ourselves in the process of dialectical
thinking. So, we can see the Forms through the highest faculty
of the human soul-the faculty of reason (Nous). What kind of
faculty is Reason? Plato tells us that reason must be trained and
developed like any other human capacity, but the capacity of
Reason works the best when it moves from one step to the next
in a process of deductive analysis. Reason is fully functioning
when it moves logically and mathematically, from premises to
conclusion in a chain of deductive certainty. For example: 1.
All men are mortal2. Socrates is a man3. Therefore Socrates is a
mortal.The above example is a simple deductive syllogism in
which the conclusion is deductively entailed by the premises. In
formal logic we would say that the above syllogism is
deductively valid. What about the Forms:1. All Forms are
Eternal2. Justice is a Form3. Therefore Justice is EternalIf
Justice is eternal then why don’t we see it here on earth; in the
region of time and space? Plato argues that while the form of
Justice is real and eternal men do not see it and because they
don’t see it they have no knowledge of it and hence cannot find
it. So, how do we know it even exists? Plato argues that in our
Souls we have certain ideas that are unlike any of the ideas we
get from our five senses. He calls these ideas “innate” because
they are the most important elements of our minds and we
possess them before any experience of our senses. Innate Ideas
are given to us from the eternal place where our Soul dwells

22. before it is born into our body. This eternal place is where the
forms are fully present in their perfection and imprinted on our
souls before we are born into a material body of flesh and
blood. For Plato, like the Pythagoreans before him, the eternal
Soul preexists prior to its birth in our bodies. Once the soul is
born into our bodies in the region of space and time it suffers a
tremendous shock and forgets the innate ideas with which it
shares its essential kinship with the Forms. Only by a process of
anamnesis, of remembering, does the Soul begin to recover
these eternal ideas and begin to see a glimmer of the light of
truth, justice, wisdom and beauty = the Forms. Thus, justice is
not present in our world of space and time because we have not
turned inwards towards our souls and the innate ideas in our
memory and then upwards towards the Forms. The Neo-Platonic
philosopher Plotinus (a follower of Plato) described the process
of learning and discovery in the following way: • From things
outward = sense, opinions, change, time and space, appearance •
To things inward = the Soul, Innate Ideas & Knowledge or
Opinion & Error • To things upward = The Forms, eternal,
changeless, Real Plato did not formulate the process in exactly
the same way, but we can use Plotinus as a guide in the
meantime. A difficult problem looms between the eternal realm
of the Forms and the changing world of our senses: what is the
connection between the Forms and the world of appearances?
How does the temporal interact with the eternal? Plato argues
that the source of order and being arises from what is most
permanent. What is unchanging and stable is the source of
reality and this source can only be found in the Forms. Now, the
visible world of change, the world of appearances, can only
exist by virtue of its participating in the reality of the Forms.
For example, the beauty of a rose only lasts a short while before
the rose withers and dies. But beauty itself, the Form of beauty,
never dies because it alone is eternal while all beautiful things
are beautiful because they participate in the form of beauty. The
forms transcend the world of appearances and yet
simultaneously inform and organize the world of appearances.

23. Transcendence is the nature of the forms since they must
transcend the world of space and time in order to act as the
eternal source of order for the world. The forms are real but
they don’t exist in the same way that everything else in the
world exists. The forms have a separate existence from the
world of appearances, but the world of appearance does not and
cannot exist in separation from the forms. All things in the
world are necessarily dependent on the forms for their being
and their essential nature. For example, let’s look at the beauty
of a rose. Now a rose is something we recognize as beautiful but
how do we come to this thought: ‘Ah, look at that beautiful
rose!’? The rose itself will whither and decay but the concept of
beauty will not decay or change but remain stable regardless of
whether we recognize beauty in a rose, a painting, a poem or a
symphony. The essence of beauty cannot exist in the things we
sense as beautiful, but it must exist in something that is
changeless and transcends all things and allows us to recognize
certain things as beautiful.The changeless essence of beauty is
found in the transcendental Form of beauty. The form of beauty
is the essence, the archetype of all individual things that are
beautiful. The rose is beautiful because it participates in the
form of beauty. How does the rose participate in the form of
beauty? The rose participates in the form of beauty by deficient
similarity-the rose is a diminished imitation of the eternal form
of beauty. The rose is similar to the form because it shares the
essence of the form without being identical to the form and yet
it simultaneously is a diminished imitation of the form because
the rose is mixed with matter and matter for Plato is a relative
non-being. Since the rose is mixed with matter it can never be
changeless and eternal but instead must change and become
nothing. The Forms are not mixed with matter and so do not
participate in time or space and hence cannot undergo change or
alteration of any kind. Let me give you a simple example:
suppose you are an alien and you’ve never seen a bakery. I take
you to a bakery and there on the top shelf is a large tray of
ginger bread men. You ask: ‘what are those?’ I tell you that

24. they are ginger bread men cookies and you ask how they all
become alike. I tell you that the baker has a special ginger bread
mould which he uses to stamp out the shape of each ginger
bread man in the cookie dough. The baker’s act of stamping the
dough is like the act of the forms stamping the order of reality
into the world of space and time. Now, in this simple analogy
there are buried a few very complex ontological problems
regarding the nature of making, the role of the Platonic
Demiurge and its relationship to the form and the world, but
what we need to focus on are the Forms. How do we know
anything at all about the forms? Plato tells us that ours souls -
.Pre-existence of souls, soul is eternal/body mortal, soul has
forms impressed upon it in eternal realm, forgets about forms
when born into a mortal body but contains innate ideas about
forms which process of education coax by guiding the soul to
elicit the innate ideas by a process of re-collection-of
remembering what the soul already contains innately. Education
doesn’t really teach you anything new it only helps you to
remember what you forgot and already knew in your soul’s pre-
existence. The theme of the Republic is justice and the critique
of Athenian democracy.Universal Incompetence =
Institutionalized Ignorance Athenian Democracy =Political
Selfishness = Gov. tool for class interests, Creates factionalism,
class conflict, Based on love of money + power Where can we
find justice? Plato tells us: in a healthy soul. What is the nature
of the human soul? Soul Virtues Social Position Property
QualificationReason = Wisdom = Philosopher = No property
Passions =Courage Guardian No property Appetite =Moderation
Productive Class Property Reason is the faculty that defines our
humanity because it is the only aspect of our constitution that
differentiates us from the animals. In a healthy soul reason
governs and rules the faculties beneath it. To be reasonable is to
be perfectly natural for Plato since reason is the defining
attribute of our humanity. Reason is the universal quality that
defines what it means to be a human being. When reason rules
the soul we see balance and harmony in the life of a person and

25. the actualization of human excellence-of human virtue. If the
appetites should gain the upper hand and rule the soul we see a
sick and disordered soul. A person given entirely to the
satisfaction of their bodily pleasures without moderation or
restraint is more like a beast than a human. Think of what
happens when a person lives just to get high, drunk or to eat-
they become sick and unhealthy. The achievement of a healthy
soul requires training and discipline and does not simply happen
overnight-a healthy soul is not a given in Plato but rather the
result of moral and intellectual training-the development of a
persons character and not just their test skills. The healthy soul
is the model for a Just City. A just Gov. governs for the good of
the commonwealth, the good of Athens and not for the selfish
interests of the rich or the poor. Gov. ought to be the impartial
exercise of political power for the sake of the whole of the
people and not just one part of the city. Why should the wise
rule? Since the realization of justice requires that the best men
habitually rule the best men would have perfected what is best
in human nature-reason. The perfection of reason is the virtue
of Wisdom thus the rule of the wise would be the rule of the
best. Plato argues that since wisdom represents the highest
condition of humanity it must also be the highest authority in
all political matters as well-ergo: the wise must rule.The wise
are perfectly public spirited and have the good of the whole of
Athens in sight as the end of governing. Governing is for the
sake of the governed not for the sake of the rulers-government
must be the impartial exercise of political authority, not the use
of political authority to further the interests of one class or
some selfish interest. The Platonic notion that Justice must
require an impartial exercise of political authority aimed at the
good of the commonwealth is the classic articulation of ancient
Greece. The issue of how to implement a just political order is
precisely what Plato develops in The Republic. To simply the
basic components of Plato’s argument we must recognize at the
outset that political reform will never occur unless two
processes take hold simultaneously: a) Economic reform b)

26. Educational reform. Moreover, the inculcation of a just order is
a labor of generations and cannot be accomplished by any quick
fix solutions or magical methods. Why? Because the
reformation Plato advocates is really nothing less than a
transformation of every social institution and every aspect of
culture.The American model of the nuclear family will give way
to the communal living of shared living conditions for the
guardians and rulers. Before you post your response make sure
you understand Plato’s arguments. It does no good to write that
you agree or disagree with someone without first knowing what
it is they are arguing about.
Chapter 6
ARISTOTLE Dear Class:There’s a famous fresco by Rafael in
the Vatican called “The School of Athens” and in it Rafael has
depicted all the great philosophers from antiquity mingling
together. Commanding the center of the composition are Plato
and his famous student, Aristotle. Plato is pointing up at the
ceiling and Aristotle is holding his hand out palm facing down.
I like to think of this as Aristotle’s bringing Plato down to
earth, where the forms live among us not up in the realm of airy
nothingness. For Aristotle turned Plato on his head to give us
another philosophical system, again, one based on form, but in
Aristotle each form, small letter “f” comes into being through a
series of four causes.The first is the “formal” cause and this
cause is in homage to Plato, his teacher for twenty years. The
formal cause gives us the “what” as in “what is it?” Is it a rock,
or a tree, or a dog?The second cause is the “material cause,” the
what’s it made of? Is it rubber, or wood, or metal, or flesh and
blood?The third cause is the “efficient” cause, and this cause is
something we would gather intuitively in our effort to name the
agency through which a “change” occurs, like “what made this
thing be this way?”The fourth and last cause, and the most
mysterious in Aristotle’s metaphysics, is the “final” cause,
which is the end purpose for which this preceding “change” or
cause has occurred. For Aristotle, who put Plato’s “Form” into

27. things, but not with a capital “F,” what changes then is
“matter.” He had to work this out from Plato who thought all
form was changeless and eternal. So an acorn, planted in the
ground changes its matter and becomes in its adult and “final
form” the oak tree that it was destined to become because that
was its purpose toward which it had changed.Aristotle strangely
defends Plato in one respect, of coming into existence and going
out of existence, the old Parmidean problem of oneness, of
offering the explanation of potency, or “potential” that a thing
has in it to become, like the acorn. It’s potency is to become an
oak tree. For Aristotle, this is the kingdom of “Ends” that all
things even people must strive for.ACORN—plant in soil—
ENDS in oak tree.TELEOLOGY—PURPOSE (a sort of
intelligence in the universe). “Hierarchy,” whenever you hear
this word, you are hearing Aristotle, in the same way that when
you hear the word “Form” you are hearing Plato.This “Kingdom
of Ends” will come back with the German 18th century
philosopher Immanuel Kant, who used it for his system of ethics
based on our behaving and acting in such a way that ultimately
our actions will have their lasting purpose in this universal end
realm.Aristotle borrowed Plato’s notion of the “soul” but
instead of there being a fixed, permanent, and universal soul out
there that we were cleaved from and from which we seek our
eternal “other” in the form of a “soul mate,” Aristotle thought
that there was a hierarchy (that word again) of souls starting
with the lowest and going to the highest.Plants—NUTRITIVE
SOULAnimals—SENSITIVE SOULHuman—MIXTURE of
above plus talk, desire, INTELLECTUAL soul—the part
PLATO discusses. We have all four.Now in order to nourish the
SOUL, you must first take care of the lower parts of the soul,
that is in a human sense since we are a mixture of the lower
parts as well as the higher, we must nourish and sensitize all
within the “Golden Mean,” Aristotle’s term for the right and
proper balance of not too much and not too little, and then
concentrate on the intellectual. For Aristotle, this meant reading
and studying philosophy all day—which is what you are doing

28. right now.Everyone borrowed ideas from Aristotle and you can
see his influence all over Western thought. Take the
psychological precepts of Abraham Maslow whose “Hierarchy
of Needs” mirrored Aristotle notion of “Entelechy” or the
“purpose” of something to actualize its meaning. For an acorn,
its “Entelechy” is to become an oak tree. It becomes actualized
when it has reached this goal. This type of goal is called an end
goal or “teleological” goal, to fulfill its end purpose, its
teology. Read the article below and note the similarities to
Aristotle:Purpose in Work: A Realizable Ideal:How to feel at
home in your own skinByLillian Little (from the Humanist)
Over twenty-five years ago, Abraham Maslow, the venerable
psychologist who pioneered the concept of the hierarchy of
needs, hypothesized that self-actualization awaits those who
have satisfied the lower needs, such as security, love, and
esteem. His hierarchy of needs became popularized during the
60s and 70s, during which time it was unfortunately
misinterpreted to mean that the road to self-actualization was
self-indulgence. In actuality, Maslow said something quite to
the contrary: …seeking personal salvation is anyway the wrong
road to personal salvation. The only real path…[is] hard work
and total commitment to doing well the job that fate or personal
duty calls you to do, or any important job that “calls for” doing.
Maslow was not limiting the meaning of the word “work” to
paid work; one of his self-actualizers was a homemaker who
incorporated devotion and love into everything she did. Maslow
was not the only one to draw the conclusion that self-fulfillment
is gained through commitment to something important. Gail
Sheey, in her popular book “Pathfinders,” declared purpose to
be one of the ten characteristics of well-being. In fact, purpose
was the characteristic which was most strongly correlated with
greatest satisfaction in life. Sheehy concluded that “a person
who is not connected to something larger than himself has no
hope of continuity or breadth of vision,” and she discussed
commitment to work, an idea, other people, or a social objective
as the means of achieving a sense of purpose in life.

29. Psychologist Charlotte Buhler, in attempting to determine the
main aspects of life-fulfillment in people toward the end of
their lives, found many of the people she studied had dedicated
their lives to some larger purpose—such as family, social
groups, humankind, or progress in some field of endeavor.
Viktor Frankl, a Viennese psychiatrist and concentration camp
survivor, argued that “the will to meaning” was humankind’s
primary motivation. Frankl, who had developed his theory
before the Holocaust, witnessed empirical support for it in the
death camps. Inmates who had something to live for, such as a
determination to tell the world of the horrors they endured, were
most likely to survive, while those who had given up on
meaning of any kind were more likely to perish. (This is not
meant to suggest that they had any control over the atrocities
inflicted upon them.) This phenomenon has been seen
repeatedly in other studies of prisoners of war. Frankl himself
became the leader of a “suicide brigade” which, when alerted to
an inmate’s impending suicide, would provide informal
counseling to convince the inmate of purpose. According to
Frankl, a sense of purpose is fostered through meaningful work,
experiencing forms of beauty and goodness, or loving
relationships. The story is familiar. We’ve all known or heard
of people who seemingly have everything—money, prestige,
looks, active social lives, the whole works—and yet feel aimless
and depressed. Then there are those individuals who, to the
observer, may have less of obvious value but who, upon closer
scrutiny, turn out really to have found their niche. They feel at
home in their own skins; they are, in a word, happy. Why the
paradox? The only sensible conclusion is that there is little, if
any, relationship between wealth, status, or other outward
symbols of success and a real sense of worth. People are
fulfilled when they can fill their lives with purpose. What
exactly is meant by purpose? Very simply, it is being immersed
in something bigger than oneself. It is, in essence, the ability to
put oneself aside, to transcend ego-involvement. This is not to
say that people with purpose don’t have egos or don’t care

30. about their own well-being, rather, that most of their energy and
thoughts are not egocentric. Interestingly enough, it seems that
purpose delivers more ego-enhancement than a self-involved
individual will ever be able to experience. Purpose can be found
in a variety of ways. Of course, purpose is extremely subjective;
things that bring great satisfaction to one person may seem
quite pedestrian to another. Being in a position of responsibility
for the welfare of others almost automatically brings a sense of
purpose, as anyone who takes parenting seriously knows.
Although the day-to-day experience of raising children can be
exhausting, it provides the parents with an overriding positive
feeling of worth. In fact, in these times of planned parenthood,
it could be argued that the search for purpose has become the
primary reason for entering into parenthood. Having a cause is
another source of purpose. It can range from taking a small part
in a community cleanup to being a leader in a major social
movement. Volunteerism, in fact, is an excellent means of
finding purpose because the most personally meaningful activity
can be chosen. The only problem is that, unless we have the
luxury of unlimited time on our hands, other commitments—
such as making a living—tend to get in the way. The real
challenge lies in finding purpose in something almost all of us
do: work. This is a relatively modern phenomenon. Until recent
decades, work was viewed not as an end in itself but, rather, as
a means to an end. A man’s purpose was to provide for his
family; a woman’s purpose was to nurture the family. Thus,
work was an instrument of purpose but did not in itself provide
purpose. It would be naïve, of course, to assume that no one
today views work as a means to an end, particularly those with
dreary, monotonous jobs. But now, more than ever, the
opportunity exists for finding purpose directly in work. This
fact is easily demonstrated by post-retirement syndrome: many
people eagerly look forward to their retirement, but when it
finally arrives they find themselves at loose ends, without
direction or focus. Maybe it’s presumptuous to think that people
even want purpose in work. If television commercials are to be

31. believed, we work in order to spend, preferably on ourselves.
But despite the current yuppie stereotype of unending
acquisition, most people who have satisfied their basic needs
are searching for something more. Most of us would like to have
a sense of purpose in our work—to feel that we are striving
toward something important, something greater than ourselves.
Yet, why do so few of us achieve it? Is it a matter of luck?
Personality? Persistence? Intelligence? Upbringing? Does
purpose come to us if we wait patiently or must we pursue it
aggressively? There are a few guidelines available on how to
find purpose in work. It certainly isn’t taught in school on any
level. And although there is no shortage of academic literature
concerning job satisfaction and commitment to a particular
career or organization, material regarding the issue of purpose
is virtually nonexistent. Even the popular literature on finding
the perfect career focuses overwhelmingly on the process of
doing what you enjoy rather than on the end product. Not that
such enjoyment isn’t important; certainly the ideal would be a
combination of enjoyment and purpose simultaneously. Several
years ago, I designed a research project to discover how people
found purpose in their work. I was not looking for social
crusaders because their purpose is all too obvious and few of us
aspire to or find ourselves leading social movements. Rather, I
was interested in how ordinary people find and sustain meaning
in their everyday work. I interviewed a wide variety of people
in an equally wide variety of occupations. There were, however,
certain personality characteristics that a great majority of the
interviewees had in common. First, they all seemed to feel
comfortable with who they were and had accepted both
themselves and their particular situations. Second, each was
basically optimistic without being unrealistic. I also found that
their career paths had not been perfectly planned and linear. In
fact, more often than not, they wound up being employed at
something radically different from the career they had pictured
in their youth. Rarely were their parents directly influential in
the development of a sense of purpose; in fact, sometimes their

32. sense of purpose appeared to have developed in spite of the
upbringing they received. For example, one respondent had been
the child of parents who were abusive alcoholics.
Characteristically, those interviewed didn’t run with the pack.
They had made some unusual decisions at some point in their
lives, defying the pressure and sexual stereotyping of their
contemporaries. The man who went into horticulture or the
woman who became an investment banker before it was
fashionable for women to do so were not atypical examples of
this tendency. Without exception, they worked for organizations
that allowed for individuality and flexibility; they refused to be
straitjacketed. Asked if they would ever work in a tightly
structured bureaucratic organization, their response was
resoundingly negative. Their definition of success was not in
the traditional vein. Some of them had annual incomes well into
six figures, a few were barely getting by. Yet, although they all
recognized the comforts that money can bring, none of them
saw money as a measure of success. Many of them called
themselves ambitious but not in the sense of gaining more
power or prestige; their ambition was manifested in the process
of seeing a project to completion and then going on to a new
project. Their definition of success boiled down to simply liking
what they were doing and having an impact on the world around
them. Asked if they were happy, their response was
overwhelmingly and unequivocally in the affirmative. The
people I interviewed knew their strengths and limitations, but
they typically didn’t recognize them until adulthood. When
asked if they could picture themselves in any other kind of
work, the most common response was yes, but many felt that
certain types of work would make them very unhappy. Many of
the individuals I interviewed had ideals which enabled them to
put their work and other aspects of their lives into a meaningful
context, giving them perspective. Often they had little homilies
in which they truly believed and by which they lived—such as
“You will always reap what you sow” and “You get what you
expect to get.” A great number of the respondents felt that they

33. were lucky but explained their luck in terms of the opportunities
they had seized. “I made my own luck” was a recurring
statement. Along with the ability to take advantage of
opportunities, people with purpose are good risk-takers; they
are frequently willing to try new approaches or experiences
without much guarantee that they will work. Burnout didn’t
seem to be an issue. The strategy used most frequently by the
respondents was shifting tasks—when they sensed themselves
dangerously close to boredom or burnout, they changed
directions, usually within the job they already had. Enthusiasm
was then renewed. Such shifting emphasizes the necessity for
flexibility within the workplace. Purpose, then, is something we
all require to be fully human. And while it can be found in
many contexts, work is one of the most logical places to seek
it.For this discussion, how is “Purpose in Work” and Maslow’s
“Hierarchy of Needs related to Aristotle’s philosophy? And, is
there a connection to existentialism, or is there a fundamental
difference between the two? Do you believe that there is a way
to find "Happiness" in the Aristotelian sense in the work that
you do?Please take the Aristotle quiz during the week of 10/28/-
11/11/13. Read chapter 6 before taking quiz!
Chapter 10
Hume and Kant Dear Class, This is our last discussion. Read
and think carefully about your response. I want to leave you
with philosophical ideas about "Ethics" an area of philosophy
that has many applications to the world we live and work in.
Hume—Moral Theory versus Kant’s Categorical Imperatives
How do you arrive at calling one set of behaviors good and
another bad? (animals don’t make moral judgments) Hume
argues that we find our own moral judgment in sentiments of
approval and not in reason, in some rational abstract way which
is Kant’s method. For Hume, we base our morals on observation
(Hume’s empiricism—you observe) When we witness someone
do an act of kindness, we react with approval. But what makes
us react with approval of some and not others? Why are

34. sentiments stirred by some actions and not others? Hume says
we examine (observe) them for their usefulness, their utility.
(This word “utility” will return later on with Bentham and Mill
who devise their own ethical system of morality) And so for
Hume, that which gives the greatest the good to the greatest
number results in benevolence and justice for all. Hume gives a
famous example: Imagine there is life on Mars and they have
the same faculties that we have. There’s one difference. They
have no advanced military technology and they’re one inch tall.
Do we treat them justly? Hume says, no, we don’t have to. They
are powerless therefore justice is useless. This is a dark view of
human nature that Nietzsche will take up later. Hume believes
that this is just human nature and empirical. He does not
approve of it, quite the opposite. Hume is pointing out
something here about human nature in the 18th century. If you
doubt him just think about the way women are treated in India
or China, or the way Native Americans and African slaves were
treated in the 18th and 19th centuries in the U.S., or the
genocide of the Jews in Europe by the Nazis in World War II, or
even today, the way the people of Rwanda were slaughtered by
a larger tribal group within their own country, or the genocide
going on right now in Sudan, or the war in Iraq, the civil war
between two tribal sects of Moslems. And you know what, I
have come to believe him after all that I have seen in my
lifetime. We are by human nature built this way, our animal way
is in us and it takes power to hold power in check. And religion
hasn’t stopped any of this slaughter, in fact, religion is probably
responsible for more of it happening. Hume is not happy with
this state of affairs. Moral progress comes when we learn to
think of women and children and the old and treat them fairly.
In fact, if you want to live in a good country, just examine how
the women, children and old people are treated in that country
and it will tell you more about its social conscience than
anything else will. Hume asks, how do you learn to change this
immoral behavior? He says that you don’t learn it from reading
Plato and Descartes. You only learn it from reading literature,

35. poetry. If you want to enlarge your sentiments toward Native
Americans, read “Black Elk Speaks.” Our text uses the example
of a murder. Murder is never an observable fact if you observe
it. What you see is A shoots B, B falls to ground, bleeds to
death. Remember that Hume is just observing Phenomena and as
an empiricist he is just recording sense data. What happens is
that we “co join” our personal emotion to the observable facts.
There’s a big difference in saying, “The queen died, then the
king died,” and saying, “The queen died, and the king died of a
broken heart.” The one is emotional and the other factual. That
is why when you see the police accident report from your car
accident it feels strange to look at it. It lacks all of your
emotional response to the accident. Now Kant comes along and
he is upset by Hume knowing how right he is by the accuracy of
his observations and so he goes about constructing his own
metaphysical moral universe. He wants to believe that there is a
way of telling right from wrong and that it is not based on
Hume’s notion of having “warm fuzzies” for people who lack
power. Kant believes that feelings of moral duty come from
within, from practical reason, from being rational as opposed to
Hume being emotional. Hume’s empiricist notions can only
make observations of what people actually do: kill, slaughter,
steal, pillage, rape, enslave, not what they SHOULD do. Kant
believes that practical reason monitors how we “OUGHT” to
behave and he derives from reason universal laws of behavior.
Even if we can’t act on our own good intentions—Kant favors
that even the reasoning of our intent is as good in and of
itself—otherwise known as “it was the thought that counts.” But
he didn’t mean half-hearted, lazy attempts at wishing well, but
full-focused intent on achieving those intentions—“Do it like
you mean it.” Moral duty can never be based on what “I” want
to do. For Kant, it is the principle that governs moral duty. I
turned in a woman’s wallet that I found in the parking lot in a
strip mall in West Paterson. I drove it to the police station after
looking inside and seeing three hundred dollars in cash and
credit cards. The police took my name and address and phone

36. number. I never got a call or a card or a reward from the woman
who got her wallet back with nothing stolen. But that was not
the reason to turn it in. I didn’t do it because I am Christian and
I wanted to win points with God, or that I am Buddhist and I
wanted to deposit good Karma in my Karma bank. Those would
be selfish reasons even though they do good in the service of
selfishness. Kant lays out his moral law as a command, an
imperative, an order to be followed and it is universal and I
shall not act otherwise and shall act so that my actions should
become universal law. This is Kant’s “Kingdom of Ends”
(Aristotle returns). He wants to create a universe of moral
beings who act in accordance within their intrinsic worth and
value in their power and possession to behave as if each person
is and end in him or herself. We are human, thus the human
ability to reason carries the obligation to respect the rights of
others. This is Kant’s concept of dignity, acting as if you really
mean it, that you treat others with the respect that you would
want to be shown (Do unto others…Christian overtones), not as
a means to gain “warm fuzzies”—as in Hume’s sentimental
reasoning—but for the principle, that it is the right thing to do.
I knew that the woman would get her wallet back and that it was
the right thing to do. Act as if this could be made into a
universal law so that if and when I lose my wallet, someone
would do the same, act in accordance with this principle, not
with the idea that there’s a payoff, a bonus, a reward. But is
there a problem here in that Kant’s moral philosophy exempts
us from responsibility for our actions due to the value he placed
on “good intentions” and that bad consequences may result and
maybe Kant was after all just using his own Western European
Christian background to define what is “reasonable.” Maybe he
was guided by Hume’s moral sentiment after all. But what if I
knew that the money in the wallet was going to be used to buy a
gun, and that the woman was going to use the gun to kill her
husband. Would the right thing, according to Kant’s categorical
imperative, still be to turn the wallet in? Discuss this question
and try to come up with an answer.

37. ELEVENTH EDITION
Communicating
in Small Groups
Steven A. Beebe
Texas State University
John T. Masterson
Texas Lutheran University
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Principles
and Practices
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ISBN-10: 0-205-98083-X
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedicated to
Sue and Nancy

40. This page intentionally left blank
v
BRIEF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1 Introducing Group Principles and Practices 1
CHAPTER 2 Understanding Small Group Communication
Theory 36
CHAPTER 3 Facilitating Group Development 55
PART I Foundations of Group Communication
CHAPTER 4 Preparing to Collaborate 76
CHAPTER 5 Relating to Others in Groups 102
CHAPTER 6 Improving Group Climate 129
CHAPTER 7 Enhancing Communication Skills in Groups 148

41. CHAPTER 8 Managing Conflict 178
PART II Managing Group Relationships
CHAPTER 9 Leading Groups 218
CHAPTER 10 Making Decisions and Solving Problems 240
CHAPTER 11 Using Problem-Solving Techniques 269
CHAPTER 12 Enhancing Creativity in Groups and Teams 301
APPENDIX A Principles and Practices for Effective Meetings
326
APPENDIX B Principles and Practices for Communicating to an
Audience 337
PART III Managing Group Tasks
This page intentionally left blank

42. vii
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1 Introducing Group Principles and Practices 1
What Is Small Group Communication? 3
Communication 3
A Small Group of People 5
Meeting with a Common Purpose 5
Feeling a Sense of Belonging 5
Exerting Influence 5
What Is Team Communication? 6
Characteristics of an Effective Team 8
Characteristics of Effective Team Members 10
PUTTING PRINCIPLES INTO PRACTICE: Strategies for
Becoming
a Competent Team Member 12
Communicating Collaboratively: Advantages and Disadvantages
13

43. Advantages 13
Disadvantages 14
When Not to Collaborate 16
Me Versus We 17
Communicating in Different Types of Groups 19
Primary Groups 19
Secondary Groups 20
Communicating in Virtual Groups and Teams 21
Channels of Virtual Collaboration 22
Differences Between Virtual and Non-Virtual Collaboration 23
Virtual Group and Team Theory 25
How Can You Become a Competent Small Group
Communicator? 26
VIRTUAL GROUPS 27
The Essence of Communication Competence 28
The Nine Core Small Group Communication Competencies 28
CASE STUDY: The Battle Over Working as a Virtual Group 29
COLLABORATING ETHICALLY: What Would You Do? 31
STUDY GUIDE Review, Apply, and Assess Group

44. Communication Principles and
Practices 32
CHAPTER 2 Understanding Small Group Communication
Theory 36
The Nature of Theory and the Theory-Building Process 37
Theory: A Practical Approach to Group Communication 38
Explanatory Function 39
Preface xvii
Acknowledgments xxii
PART I Foundations of Group Communication
Contentsviii
Predictive Function 39
COLLABORATING ETHICALLY: What Would You Do? 39
The Purpose of Communication in Small Groups: Making Sense
40
Complexity 41

45. Small Groups: More Complexity 41
Theoretical Perspectives for the Study of Group Communication
42
Systems Theory 42
Social Exchange Theory 43
Symbolic Convergence Theory 44
CASE STUDY: How Do You Keep a Group on Task? 46
Structuration Theory 46
Functional Theory 47
PUTTING PRINCIPLES INTO PRACTICE: Structuration and
the Exercise
of Free Will 48
A Model of Small Group Communication 49
VIRTUAL GROUPS 50
STUDY GUIDE Review, Apply, and Assess Group
Communication Principles
and Practices 52
CHAPTER 3 Facilitating Group Development 55
Why People Join Groups 56

46. Interpersonal Needs 56
Maslow’s Theory 56
Schutz’s Theory 57
Individual and Group Goals 59
Establishing Mutuality of Concern 60
COLLABORATING ETHICALLY: What Would You Do? 62
Interpersonal Attraction 62
Similarity 63
Complementarity 63
Proximity, Contact, and Interaction 63
Physical Attractiveness 63
PUTTING PRINCIPLES INTO PRACTICE: Mutuality of
Concern 64
Group Attraction 64
Group Activities 64
Group Goals 65
VIRTUAL GROUPS 65
Group Membership 66

47. Culture and Group Development 66
Individualism and Collectivism 67
High-Context and Low-Context Cultures 67
High-Contact and Low-Contact Cultures 68
Homogeneity and Diversity 69
Group Formation over Time 70
CASE STUDY: How Do You Manage Conflicting Needs and
Goals? 71
STUDY GUIDE Review, Apply, and Assess Group
Communication Principles and
Practices 73
Contents ix
CHAPTER 4 Preparing to Collaborate 76
How to Develop a Discussion Plan 77
Get Acquainted with Your Group Members 78
Clarify the Goals of the Group 78
Develop a Plan for Gathering Information and Analyzing Issues

48. 79
Follow a Structured Agenda to Accomplish the Task 80
Share Information with Others 81
Determine How to Present Your Information 82
PUTTING PRINCIPLES INTO PRACTICE: What Should You
Do with Group
Members Who Don’t Pull Their Weight? 82
How to Formulate Discussion Questions 84
Questions of Fact 85
VIRTUAL GROUPS 85
Questions of Prediction 86
Questions of Value 87
Questions of Policy 88
CASE STUDY: Questioning the Cost of Textbooks 89
How to Use Logic and Reasoning Effectively 90
Inductive Reasoning 90
Deductive Reasoning 91
Causal Reasoning 92
How to Evaluate Evidence in Group Discussions 92

49. Facts 92
Examples 93
Opinions 93
Statistics 93
Gathering and Evaluating Evidence: A Special Emphasis on
Web Resources 94
How to Develop Critical-Analysis Skills 95
Causal Fallacy 95
Either/Or Fallacy 95
Bandwagon Fallacy 95
Hasty Generalization 96
Attacking the Person 96
Red Herring 96
COLLABORATING ETHICALLY: What Would You Do? 97
STUDY GUIDE Review, Apply, and Assess Group
Communication Principles
and Practices 98
CHAPTER 5 Relating to Others in Groups 102
Roles 103
Who Are You? 103

50. Self-Concept Development: Gender, Sexual Orientation,
Culture, and Role 104
Diversity of Roles in Small Groups 105
Group Task Roles 106
PART II Managing Group Relationships
Contentsx
Group-Building and Maintenance Roles 106
Individual Roles 107
Norms 108
How Do Norms Develop? 109
Identifying Group Norms 109
PUTTING PRINCIPLES INTO PRACTICE: Establishing Group
Norms 110
Conforming to Group Norms 110
COLLABORATING ETHICALLY: What Would You Do? 112
Establishing Ground Rules 112

51. Status 114
Privileges Accorded to High-Status Group Members 114
Effects of Status Differences 114
Status Differences in Online Groups 115
Observing Status Differences to Predict Group Dynamics 116
Power 116
Power Bases 116
VIRTUAL GROUPS 117
Effects of Power on Group Process 118
Power and Gender 119
Status and Power: A Cultural Footnote 119
Trust 120
Developing Trusting Relationships 120
Trust in Face-to-Face and Virtual Teams 121
The Development of Group Relationships over Time 121
CASE STUDY: Adjusting to Variable Status and Power 122
Gender and Communication 122
Culture 123
Conversational Style 124
Time 124

52. STUDY GUIDE Review, Apply, and Assess Group
Communication Principles
and Practices 126
CHAPTER 6 Improving Group Climate 129
Defensive and Supportive Climates 130
Evaluation versus Description 131
Control versus Problem Orientation 131
Strategy versus Spontaneity 131
Neutrality versus Empathy 132
Superiority versus Equality 132
Certainty versus Provisionalism 132
Interpersonal Confirmation and Disconfirmation 133
COLLABORATING ETHICALLY: What Would You Do? 134
Disconfirming Responses 134
Confirming Responses 135
Group Cohesiveness 136
Composition and Cohesiveness: Building a Team 136

53. Contents xi
Individual Benefits and Cohesiveness 137
Task Effectiveness and Cohesiveness 137
Communication and Cohesiveness 137
Cohesiveness in Virtual Teams 138
Communication Networks 138
PUTTING PRINCIPLES INTO PRACTICE: Cohesiveness
and Productivity at Harley-Davidson 139
Group Size 140
Group Climate and Productivity 141
VIRTUAL GROUPS 141
CASE STUDY: Avoiding Defensiveness 143
STUDY GUIDE Review, Apply, and Assess Group
Communication Principles
and Practices 145
CHAPTER 7 Enhancing Communication Skills in Groups 148
Verbal Dynamics in Small Groups 149

54. Words as Barriers to Communication 149
Listening 151
Listening Styles 151
Obstacles to Effective Listening 152
A Guide to Active Listening 154
The Importance of Nonverbal Communication in Groups 155
More Time Is Spent Communicating Nonverbally Than Verbally
156
Emotions and Feelings Are Typically Expressed Nonverbally
Rather Than Verbally 156
Nonverbal Messages Are Usually More Believable Than Verbal
Messages 156
Applications of Nonverbal Communication Research to Groups
157
Posture, Movement, and Gestures 157
Eye Contact 158
Facial Expressions 160
Vocal Cues 160
Personal Space 161
Territoriality 162
Seating Arrangement 162
Personal Appearance 164

55. Communication Environment 165
PUTTING PRINCIPLES INTO PRACTICE: Improving
Nonverbal
Communication Skills 166
Functions of Nonverbal Cues in Groups 167
Nonverbal Messages Influence Perceived Leadership 167
Nonverbal Messages Influence Persuasion Skills 167
Nonverbal Messages Help Synchronize Interaction 167
Nonverbal Messages Provide Information about Perceived
Honesty or Dishonesty 168
Interpreting Nonverbal Communication 169
VIRTUAL GROUPS 170
Contentsxii
COLLABORATING ETHICALLY: What Would You Do? 171
CASE STUDY: Interpreting Indirect Communication 172
STUDY GUIDE Review, Apply, and Assess Group
Communication Principles

56. and Practices 174
CHAPTER 8 Managing Conflict 178
What Is Conflict? 180
Causes of Conflict 180
Misconceptions About Conflict 181
Types of Conflict 182
Pseudo-Conflict: When People Misunderstand One Another 182
Simple Conflict: When People Disagree about Issues 183
Ego Conflict: When Personalities Clash 184
Conflict and Diversity in Small Groups 186
Conflict in Individualistic and Collectivistic Cultures 186
Conflict in High-Context and Low-Context Cultures 186
PUTTING PRINCIPLES INTO PRACTICE: Strategies for
Managing Conflict
in Diverse Groups: Surface and Deep Diversity 187
Approaches to Conflict When There Are Gender Differences
188
Conflict-Management Styles 188

57. Avoidance 189
Accommodation 189
Competition 190
Compromise 191
Collaboration 191
Collaborative Conflict Management: Principles and Skills 192
Separate the People from the Problem 192
Focus on Shared Interests 193
Generate Many Options to Solve Problems 193
Base Decisions on Objective Criteria 193
When People Are Not Cooperative: Dealing with Difficult
Group Members 194
Manage Your Emotions 194
CASE STUDY: Practice in Applying Principles 194
Describe What Is Upsetting You 196
Disclose Your Feelings 197
COLLABORATING ETHICALLY: What Would You Do? 197
Return to the Issue of Contention 197
Groupthink: Conflict Avoidance 199
Symptoms of Groupthink 200

58. Suggestions for Reducing Groupthink 202
VIRTUAL GROUPS 204
Consensus: Reaching Agreement Through Communication 206
The Nature of Consensus 206
Suggestions for Reaching Consensus 206
STUDY GUIDE Review, Apply, and Assess Group
Communication Principles
and Practices 212
Contents xiii
PART III Managing Group Tasks
CHAPTER 9 Leading Groups 218
What Is Leadership? 219
Trait Perspective: Characteristics of Effective Leaders 220
Functional Perspective: Group Needs and Roles 220
Task Leadership 221
Process Leadership 222

59. Situational Perspective: Adapting Style to Context 224
Leadership Style 225
Hersey’s Situational Leadership® Model 227
Some Observations on the Situational Approach to Leadership
228
Shared Leadership in Teams 228
Transformational Leadership 228
VIRTUAL GROUPS 229
CASE STUDY: Adjusting Leadership Style to Situation 230
Emergent Leadership in Small Groups 231
The Minnesota Studies 231
COLLABORATING ETHICALLY: What Would You Do? 232
Leadership and Gender 233
PUTTING PRINCIPLES INTO PRACTICE: Servant Leadership
233
STUDY GUIDE Review, Apply, and Assess Group
Communication Principles
and Practices 236

60. CHAPTER 10 Making Decisions and Solving Problems 240
Group Decision Making: Choosing among Alternatives 241
Elements of Effective and Ineffective Group Decision Making
242
Methods of Group Decision Making 243
Group Problem Solving: Overcoming Obstacles to Achieve a
Goal 246
Problem Solving Defined 247
Barriers to Group and Team Problem Solving 247
Three Approaches to Group Problem Solving 249
Descriptive Approach 249
COLLABORATING ETHICALLY: What Would You Do? 250
Other Descriptive Models of Group Problem Solving 252
VIRTUAL GROUPS 253
Functional Approach 256
PUTTING PRINCIPLES INTO PRACTICE: Real Groups, Real
Challenges:
The Bona Fide Group Perspective 258

61. Communication Functions of Effective Group Problem Solvers
259
Prescriptive Approach 261
CASE STUDY: Keep Tuition Low 262
Cultural Assumptions About Group Problem Solving and
Decision Making 263
STUDY GUIDE Review, Apply, and Assess Group
Communication Principles
and Practices 265
Contentsxiv
CHAPTER 11 Using Problem-Solving Techniques 269
An Overview of Prescriptive Problem-Solving Strategies 271
The Origin of Prescriptive Problem-Solving Strategies 271
Finding a Balance between Group Structure and Interaction 271
Groups Need Structure 272
Groups Need Interaction 273

62. Reflective Thinking: The Traditional Approach to Group
Problem Solving 274
Step 1: Identify and Define the Problem 274
Tools for Defining the Problem 275
COLLABORATING ETHICALLY: What Would You Do? 276
Step 2: Analyze the Problem 278
Tools for Analyzing a Problem 279
How to Establish Criteria 282
VIRTUAL GROUPS 283
Step 3: Generate Several Possible