Abstract
Lewis Gordon is Head of the Department of Philosophy at UCONN-Storrs in the United States, and is one of the leading scholars of Black Existentialism. In this interview, we caught up with Professor Gordon about his book Fear of Black Consciousness, which explores how racial identity and human meaning are constructed through history, art, and popular culture. Drawing on an extraordinary breadth of references, Gordon ultimately argues against ‘seriousness’ or ‘closedness’ towards the worlds we make, and advocates for a radical love and openness towards the multitudinous possibilities of reality:

>“For us to deal with the richness of existence, for us to acknowledge the many ways of living in the world we manifest simultaneously, the approach has to be multidimensional… People are seduced by reductive thinking, simplified thinking… but to be genuinely curious, you begin to realize reality is just bigger than you are. To have a real commitment to reality and truth, you have to reach beyond yourself, which means you could get your butt kicked. So you need to have some courage: the idea of philosophers who have no courage is an abomination… I’m arguing that we’re not trying to constrain future humanity to this mess we have made. Instead, we’re trying to open up the possibilities for future humanity to live lives worth living.”

Honestly, not dieing would probably be worse for everyone else in the long run. I feel like it would be much harder for some technology and lines of thought to evolve if dictators didn't die and people who lived in times when certain forms of abuse were normal were still around. Wanting eternal life always stroke me as an egoist attitude. Not to mention the repercussions for the environment and planet resources. I feel like in order to have a new generation of people to be born and give them a fair opportunity to live their own lives you need for the older generation to give them space.

Wouldn't valuing reason also be arbitrary?

So the argument is only aimed at skeptics who accepts the notion of "inherent value"? Not at a more radical skeptic who is skeptical of the very notion of the possibility of values being "inherent" in object in a stance-independent sense?

>the skeptic values reason. An arbitrary difference would violate that value.

> if its arranged in a certain way, then just replace my example with the cup and the desk together. The example can be anything with inherent value.

> the assumption that the value is dependent on something else. The premise is that X has value, not that X's value depends on Y. What I argue is that freedom has inherent value. Again, its not agent dependent since freedom is agency.

> If the cup is valued due to sentimental value, then its not inherent value. Its value is agent-relative.

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Interested in researching more about the Argument from Evil. Specifically, more responses to it (other than soul building and free will theodicies). Edited to add: Looking for recommendations on where to look for such responses.

And if there were to be a big “breakthrough”—for lack of a better term—in philosophy conversations, how would we go about learning about it? How do you determine who the great philosophers of our time are (like who is our Descartes/Plato/any other old philosopher) ?

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I’d read some Eckart Tolle. His book “A new earth: awakening to your life’s purpose” is a thought provoking text that talks about how we should have a different purpose to “hedonism” or “power” and argues the importance of spirituality (I haven’t finished it and I am slightly skeptical but it’s pretty interesting)

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I don’t know if there are too many biology philosophers but you’d be best off looking at analytical philosophy and maybe philosophers who evaluate Charles Darwin. Hope this has helped

So sorta like - natural selection in the work place only the strongest get to high positions or something like that?

What is your life philosophy? What is your everyday motivation to keep going? (sorry if this question is too broad i am new to this subreddit)

No what Im trying to argue is that the idea of natural selection is not unique to the biological definition and can be generalized to all systems that are dynamic and create their own outcomes.

> Whether or not a piece of what looks like garbage abandoned on the street, might have some value, sentimental or other, is not a good reason to claim that this particular “X according to reason is valuable among (sic) others”, regardless of the value it might or might not have for me.

Perhaps, but this is other than the current scenario, which is where you have asserted: "it is not “valuable among others”."

Have you substantial evidence to support this assertion as being substantially more than merely a personal opinion?

> I am disagreeing with the OP’s general assertion of value.

And due to the manner in which you have done it, you have acquired a burden of proof.

Whether or not a piece of what looks like garbage abandoned on the street, might have some value, sentimental or other, is not a good reason to claim that this particular “X according to reason is valuable among (sic) others”, regardless of the value it might or might not have for me. I am disagreeing with the OP’s general assertion of value.

Not sure if this helps but I remember Simone de Beauvoir saying that biology was not essential in explaining “woman”. Whilst that first part of the novel is pretty hard to read it’s possible that she discusses it. That being said are you trying to argue that natural selection can increase the probability of survival?

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> The value of something is based on the consequence of having one unit more or one unit less, and this will vary according to circumstances.

Perhaps, but that observation may not be comprehensive, there may be other variables involved in other (than your) implementations of ValueAmount(Object something).

> Which ties back to my finger painting. If I lost it on the street and it was found by a street cleaner, or anyone for that matter, how much value would they attribute to the actual finger painting. I think you conflate the value attributed to the physical object vs the value that some others might, or might not, attribute to my subjective sense of loss.

I think you might be conflating your opinion of how things are with how they really are?

Does there exist a theory that states that evolution and natural selection are not only biological phenomenons but properties of any system that results in change? Like I’m having a hard time wording it but is there work discussing how in a dynamic system where outcomes compete until the best outcome becomes the most likely outcome? The best examples I can think of are the market and technological development, where companies and technologies compete until the best or most successful ones become dominant. I’m interested in the metaphysical aspects and dynamic systems and the processes that underlie them.

> Ok but it is not “valuable among others”.

More than one person has expressed disagreement in this very thread though.

What meaning are you ascribing to the word "is" in this context? What does it refer to?

> For example 20 people voting to take the wealth of the richest person is a democratic but isn't exactly fair.

Isn't necessarily fair....it could be more fair though (or, lead to a more net happy/harmonious world regardless of "fairness", which is a subjective term so fairly misleading anyways).

Besides: the masses are subject to the whims of the rich and powerful few on the regular, perhaps they should be subject to the whims of the masses at least occasionally.

> but most public protests are against political or private interests that could never be addressed by democracy.

I think they could be addressed by legitimate democracy, but I can certainly agree that they are not addressed by our democracy theatre (that we refer to colloquially and ambiguously as "democracy", as if the word is a binary).

No one's confusing anything—the author didn't give sufficient context for their particular language game.

> If it’s something physical like the body

It could be the physical body, the organism, it could be some non-physical soul; we can be agnostic to the metaphysics. But yes, we can go along with the particular physical body.

> difference is still arbitrary

But what makes a difference "arbitrary"? And what's wrong with the Skeptic valuing some "arbitrary" difference?

> For instance, if the cup on my desk has a certain value, it has that value regardless of what desk it happens to be on.

Let's go with this example. Perhaps there is a skeptic who finds the cup valuable only if it is arranged in the desk in a certain way but not otherwise. He doesn't find the cup in itself valuable. So what is the problem with that? The fundamental values can be just brute physcological impulses; why should the skeptic need to provide any reason and justification for that? Similarly the skeptic may not find freedom by itself valuable, simply freedom as possessed by himself - the physical organism (or whatever).

> It wouldn’t make sense for it to change value if its physically on another desk (or if it did, that would require an additional premise that I’m not assuming)

What additional premise? The point I am making is that people are not compelled to value some high-level universals. They can value particulars with specific relations to their own physical embodied system and history. You can't just say it's all "arbtirary" differences.

> And any equivalent cup would have the same value.

Not necessarily. A skeptic (or even any normal person), may value a certain cup more because of the specific history they share with the cup. An otherwise materially equivalent cup may not just have the same value for the skeptic (of course, we can fool the skeptic by replacing the valued cup with a replica and misrepresent the value, but that's irrelevant).