Why (or why not)? Perhaps the key question is "Why in between?"

Prompt: Why (or why not)? Perhaps the key question is "Why in between?"

"Crescat scientia; vita excolatur"

"1 plus 1 equal to two"
"Why"
"Why what"
"Why is 1 plus 1 equal to two, not 11?" my seven-year old cousin asked me with both her index fingers up.
"..."
"Good question. I can't answer you."
"Why not?"

I chose not to answer my cousin, but then I was absorbed into my own thoughts. Indeed, it's just a simple word composed of three letters. Coincidentally it formed three unanswerable question in my head: Why? Why not? Why in between? These questions have shaped the foundation of my life and possibly the foundation of humanity.

Why? This was probably the most common question. But do you know it has a sibling, who is perhaps the most gorgeous "answer" in existence? "I don't know." Indeed, you are right. It could be the only one who is capable of stopping "why" without going into a rampage of questions. For centuries, we had constantly asked about "why" things happened, things were already in existence, and anything the human mind can possibly imagine- IDEAS, ideas that had transformed the world, shaped who we are today.

"Why not?" A loner by itself, can be both a question and an answer. Why did John Wilkes Booth assassinate President Lincoln? Why not? Most people would approach the question by asking why? By asking "why not," it might sound as if President Lincoln deserved to die, but an in-depth thinking might allow historians to stand in John Wilkes Booth's shoes, allowing them to figure out more about the motivation (another form of idea) behind the assassination. "Why not" can also be think of as an ambitious beast. Most people would do what the statistic shows. But often by just asking "why not," you are on your way to create the life of your dreams. When people chose to ask why to do certain things when the success rate is low, I realized I should have ask "why not?" Robert F. Kennedy quoted George Bernard Shaw said "Some men see things as they are and say, why? I dream of things the way they never were and say, why not?" - the inspiration to Yale Professor Barry Nalebuff's book of "Why Not." The "why not" approach might be illogical but, nevertheless, it could work wonders.

"Why in between?" Perhaps it's the most uncommon question or maybe not a question at all, but to me it's the question that has the most potential of discovering the "truth" of humanity, if it's even possible to comprehend humanity fully. It could be the key (or lock) to most questions of our civilization. Throughout history, both extremes of ideas, thoughts, and decisions were taken care of by "why" and "why not," but these were the small portion of humanity. The larger portion was clouded to the human eyes since most of us could only see the beauty or the grotesque. They were as obscure as the idea of good and evil. What is good? What is evil? Only a small portion of humanity was categorized by these two terms, so why are we so obsessed by them? Have we looked between? Indeed, we have. For centuries we have sought compromises, peaces, anything that could come in between the things we don't like. But why were we not used to questioning ourselves of the "in between" decision. Perhaps we did subconsciously?

There is a saying by Socrates that goes "true knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing." Then does true knowledge exist? Is it possible to obtain the state of true knowledge? Could it be that everything we understood was merely an illusion of knowledge? Perhaps by asking the "right" question we could make the world into a better place. To me, how did I get caught was not a question. We had always been caught in the whirlpool of ideas. But one might ask "are we slaves to ideas? Or seekers of truth?" Perhaps we seek because we want to escape. Even though we created the idea, but it was too much for us to control. So we remain slaves to idea or "truth" one might say.

please tell me what you think.

Very philosophical. Very convoluted, as most of philosophy is.

I would make changes. I know it's in three sections, and that's good. But I'd check the vocab, forst. then think about the questions you pose. Are they the best ones? The ones with the most explanatory potential?

its an interesting approach! i wonder if it should be more personal. prob not, since some of UChicago's prompts require analytical responses instead of personal responses.

i'm answering the caught/not caught by writing how i was caught by the "travel bug" and the consequences of the bug, such as risking majoring in anthropology.

just a little extra: an example of why not
I'm not sure about the exact details. In China, students took a difficult science test. One of the questions was a free response that asked why a phenomenon occurred. the students who wrote pages and pages of an explanation failed; those who wrote "why not?" passed

hopefully that example will spark some ideas

I like the introduction you chose, but i think you can change the format. add some detail about body language? you should prob remove the "..." This is a professional essay, not an IM chat.

Thank you, I have been thinking about writing something relate to philosophy for months now, almost gave up because I saw none of the university essay wrote things like that(that's conformity there). You make me more confident now!

and umm what's forst... I can't find it on google.


I have heard of that too, but not in China.
An ivy school has an adimission essay with questions like "Why would you belong to the University?" and there were people wrote "Why not" and got accepted.

I think that's a myth though, maybe not the first one who thought of that. I was really tempted to do that lol. but too much risk. :)

and thanks for all the advices, I will surely use them. :)

oh and without "..." how would show that I had paused to think about the question for a sec?

Does this make sense to anyone? It seems my teacher don't get what I meant, I need to better rephrase this so people can understand...

First, let me say this. Your topic is golden. Do not let anyone take this away from you. I'm a philosophy major who also has great admiration for maths and you've got a simmering idea here that is ripe for discussion and good reading.

After seeing your initial response for why you couldn't answer whether one plus one is equal to two, I was a bit let down to be honest, since I assumed this might be a creative essay involving departures from a base 10 number system but you've got something equally interesting, namely, the "why in between".

Correct me if I'm wrong here. From why? We are led to reason towards that which is true. From why not? We are led to reason towards the negation of why? That is, what makes a true statement false given that we assume the truth of the first statement. Yet, in many cases, we are not ABSOLUTELY sure if the answer to why? is true, and likewise, whether the answer to why not? is true. We only know that IF THE ANSWER TO WHY? IS INDEED TRUE, THEN IT'S NEGATION, THAT IS, THE ANSWER TO WHY NOT? SHOULD BE FALSE. VICE/VERSA.----This type of definitional anxiety is a perfect example of why we need to define validity which I think might help your essay out a lot. You can pick up an intro-to-logic textbook just about anywhere these days or just google "deductively valid argument" for a primer on what precisely makes an argument valid and take it from there.

Now, let's say the conclusion to our reasoning of why? is true, it is only true if the premises are taken to be true and makes the conclusion necessarily true. Otherwise the argument is invalid. Without going into all the craziness that is logical theory, I think your essay begins to make the case for necessity, causality, and the unknown. That perhaps because there is so much in this world that is uncertain, it is difficult to answer a question within a why / why not paradigm without ending up somewhere in the middle. Not to say that there isn't knowledge that is pretty much certain. Basic laws in physics are an example:

In a natural state, why do our bodies stay grounded on earth?
Gravity
Should our bodies not stay grounded on earth, Why would this be?
The absence of gravity.

I mean, there isn't really much in between there unless you depart or misinterpret the natural state condition. One could say Hey! I'm in hot air balloon, floating, and therefore not grounded on earth with gravity obviously still present and laugh his way out of the argument, but that would just be ridiculous and I would probably try to give the guy a bad day by shooting an arrow through his balloon. The sciences are really the disciplines in which you'll find causal relationships to be abundant and things that are true because there hasn't been anything discovered to prove them otherwise.

Yet I think when you're dealing with human action, which is what I'm assuming your essay is focused on, what is "in between" the answers to why? and why not? becomes more pronounced because human nature and nature are different. Aristotle in his Nichomachean Ethics described virtue as the mean between two extremes. For example, courage was the mean between fear and confidence, temperance the mean between pleasure and pain, and so on..I think your essay captures the human tendency to gravitate towards the extremes rather than the means. That this tendency manifests itself in our decisions and views about the world resulting in a certain weakness. This weakness comes in the form of not being able to make compromises, or even worse, compromising when we don't even realize it. It speaks to a human need for more clear and straight thinking and likewise, action that reflects such thinking.

The ending is nice, the possibility that maybe all that we know is merely an illusion. That there is no such thing as truth. I mean, one would have to first define what exactly truth and knowledge are before attempting to assert that they don't exist, but can one define something that doesn't exist in the first place? hahaha funny... And are we slaves to ideas? Or seekers of truth?

Again, you've got a great topic but you might want to organize your thoughts a bit more, especially when moving from the abstract to concrete examples.... Try thinking about what the core argument you are trying to make is. Creative writing is so much different than philosophical writing which demands a type of precision and rigor that I don't think the admissions committee for a college will expect you to have. That is, they shouldn't expect you to have.

Best of luck and hope this helps.

Also, look over the philosophical definitions of rationalism and empiricism. It might give you a stepping stone from which to write a creative piece as I think currently, you are walking on air. Grammer and punctuation errors are legion as well but I'm not much of a grammarian.

Best of luck and hope this helps.

Another way to look at this problem is that in the empirical sciences, causation probably emerges on a more frequent basis. Whereas in the more "human", or social sciences, a lot of what one might find instead, is correlation. The data is more convoluted because it is difficult, maybe impossible to find out what really motivates people. Are human beings, as market participants indeed rational? If so why? Why not? Why "in between"? One could say incentive structures are more clear in businesses but are they? This recession is a prime example of how they may not be quite so rational(CEO bonuses).What about in places like the government for example, where incentives are inherently skewed, and in homes across the country where most people (myself included) probably align their values and decision-making based on their own philosophies of life rather than what the market tells them would be rational. At times, humans are more self-interested than altruistic. At times, humans are more altruistic than self-interested. Just by thinking about it, without the hours of filtering through data, one could probably intuit that some sectors of the market are irrational, others are rational, and the vast number of people are in-between, we could call them quasi-rational. In the face of overwhelming inconsistencies inherent in decision-making, finding causation that is, finding the answer to why?/why not? questions is likened to chasing a chimera. One could say that technological systems can be devised to help make people tend towards rational decisions more often but in the end, humans are the ones controlling these systems, and humans are inherently irrational and prone to misgivings. Nothing and nobody is perfect.

First thank you for all your comments, and I do have more thoughts but it isn't easy for me to express them clearly yet, since I'm lacking grammar and vocab.


Yes, the essay is dealing with human action. I thought of writing something like this when I saw the UChicago prompts a few months ago, or perhaps I have been thinking about human actions for years. I like to argue, even argue with myself.


When I first see this line, I thought "nice! you don't mind if I use it?" Then another thought: "ummm perhaps we seek cause we want to escape? Or perhaps it is not truth that we "seek" but "ideas" we create. Even though we created the idea, but it was too much for us to control. So we remain slaves of idea or "truth" one might say.


honestly departure from base 10 is not that "original" since someone came up with it... lol But it sure is an interesting topic if one wants to write about.

Yeah, the base 10 thing is pretty mundane, but it would be difficult to write a creative essay based on it though!

Regarding human beings as seekers of truth:

It could be all of the above really. We seek causal relationships to understand, improve upon, and relinquish (or escape in a way) ideas that have ran their course. All in the name of "searching for truth", creating new ideas that matter, have pragmatic value, or for creating ideas for the sake of creating ideas.... I think if left to our own devices, we have a penchant to think just for the sake of thinking. Because we realize that truth is beyond comprehension, we seek short term compromises through creating methods that help us in finding patterns or consistency lying among a vast universe of randomness. In a sense, we never get past the portion in life where we actually find truth, but are forever bounded within the process or hope of attaining it. In such a sense, time acts as a universal constraint. Another question one might ask is, Is truth, if it exists, bounded by language? And if so, are we slaves to language?

By the way, if you want to use any of the remarks used in the discussion here, you're free to do so. It's not like this is a roundtable meeting of professional intellectuals. It's a public forum for opinions and I'm just a lowly undergraduate minion trying to put some possible words to the ideas you might be trying to convey.... Help any?

I can't say I agree with everything, since it is so abstract, none can be right.
But yes, you are a great help.

what we have discussed can be used to write another essay or two lol. I don't think the admission person want to read that much. :)

My purpose is just to use my essay to spark the UChicago peoples' "thoughts."
And what I like about it is that it's 100% original. :)

Your essay is pretty original and it was fun discussing it. Best of luck to you!

Thank you, do you know what DF_Stephen meant by "forst"

and do you think you can read my 150 words essay for common application, it's one of first ones I attempted to write, but it ends up to be the last. I only have 2 days left...

Thank You.

oh yea wondering if you have thought of another question after finishing reading my essay? like anything can argue about.

one might ask what happen to "why not in between"

My counter argument: I didn't write anything about that because why in between and why not in between could essentialy be the same thing. Imagine it's a strong with two end bended together to form a circle. The point the two ends make will esstiantlly be on the same line as the original mid point of the string. (lol not sure if that made any sense) :)

oh and can you read all my 4 essays(I know that's a lot to ask... but you are very helpful). kind of gave u some credit on the why or why not and why in between paper lol.

one might ask "blah blah blah"

Hi,

I have a suggestion and a question.

First, I think one reason the "why between/why not in between" distinction you're trying to articulate suffers is from a lack of the propositional calculus Take a look at this wikipedia article regarding questioning (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Question#Questions_and_answers) first and then the one for propositional calc. This might give you some better groundwork from which to explain your ideas a bit more effectively.

Second, in your counter-argument, are you referring to something like Riemannian/Elliptical geometry and more generally, non-Euclidean geometry? It sounds like it.

That's all I really have for now. I can take a look at your other essays if you want, but can't say whether I'll find the necessary time to really pick them apart since I have some essays of my own to take care of, as well as a paper and finals next month.

Hope this helps!

yes please, can you just just take a look at my two short ones(#2 and #4) and ummm maybe fix my grammars(my grammar sucks) and tell me if there is anything you can't understand that needs rephrase etc...

no need to look at my longer ones, thank you.

and deadline for early action is nov. 1st, which means I can turn in tomorrow right? I don't want to be too obessed with my essays and miss the deadline lol...

and what college are you in right now? just wondering.

and the answer to your question, honestly I don't know anything or read anything about philosphy. Everything I wrote came from my head lol. It's my own view of the world or human action or whatever. I'm not reffering to anything but simply presenting my thoughts.

I don't know if this helps or not, but try to cite classical philosophers. As an example,you might want to mention thomas aquinas when talking about empiricism/ causation. Also when talking about your inablility to answer your cousins simple question, mention St.Augustine and his theory that numbers cannot be altered by reason.

ummm can mods delete the first post? so ppl don't read the first one and leave comments and forget about my latest version...

MSetYo
thank you, but I don't think I should explain that much to a kid...

some feed backs on my new version plz...

bump... I need someone to read my new version plz so I can submit it...

especially the why not section cause I add a lot new infor ...

I will read yours back!

thank you!!!!!!!

This is how I would write it:
"Why does one plus one equal two and not eleven?" my seven-year old cousin asked me with both her index fingers up.

That is a cute sentence!! :-)


There is a saying by Socrates that goes "true knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing." Then does true knowledge exist?----yes, it exists in realizing that the things you think you know are not reliable. I don't think it is good to say "Then does true knowledge exist?" right after you quote Socrates' explanation of how it exists.

But anyway, this is excellent. It is excellent even if you do not make any changes to it.

:-)

Thank You :). I'm glad you like it, so far everyone who read it likes it. Hopefully everyone will like it. :-)