A Philosophical Analysis of Noise
In the
film Noise the character David known as
the rectifier has a moral dilemma, based on the fact that he believe car alarms
are beyond a nuisances but can also be considered assault and battery on all of
people in the neighborhood. He uses
Kant’s categorical imperative which states that all unneeded noise is wrong;
wrong in the sense that noise is a type of pollution, the same as air and water
pollution. He uses a Utilitarianism
approach saying that a car alarm doesn’t do the most good for the most people.
It is also categorically wrong because the noise from a car alarm may help one
person from getting their car stolen, but at what cost to others? According to
“Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, an action is right if it tends to promote happiness and wrong if it tends to produce the reverse of
happiness (West).” So using their approach what the rectifier is doing is not only
right, but is providing happiness to others so in a utilitarian sense his
vigilante destruction of personal property is moral.
The opposite approach is that he is destroying people’s property when
they or it, in the sense of the car alarm approach, has not done any physical
or lasting harm on the individuals around the car. This is the type of ethical approach that is
commonly adapted by societies. Physical
property damage is held to a higher level than individual happiness. Categorical imperatives apply to this side of
the argument as well. Many people
consider the fact that he breaks the driver side window pops the hood of the
car and cuts the batter y cable as wrong as it is causing permanent property
damage. This is against laws as it is
breaking and entering and well as vandalism.
The problem with the categorical imperative is that it would still be
considered wrong if he were to go about doing this in a less damaging way. He could get into the car using a slim jim,
pop the hood and disconnect the battery cable without doing any permanent
damage to the car that the owner would have to repair before being able to use
the car again. So the moral arguments
against doing this are now moot. This
is the problem with the categorical imperatives, that it is just an absolute stance. This is talked about by Postmodern
philosophers Feyerabend as he says “The only absolute truth is that there are
no absolute truths (Haselhurst).” This is consistent with
Nietzsche, Kuhn, Popper as they follow that “All truth is limited, approximate,
and is constantly evolving” (Haselhurst).
Ego ethics can also be applied to this however it might not be the most
relevant as he is doing this for himself but he is also doing his vigilante
action as well as the legal action of doing the petition to get rid of the
noise for all of New York so his actions even though they may have started as a
personal issue with him hating the noise, they have expanded away from this and
tried to reduce the noise.
Ramakrishna
concludes ego ethics best by saying that "When the ego dies, all troubles
cease (Vedanta Society)." This is why when it quit being a personal attack
for the David it became more focused on the overall objective of reducing the
noise in the city.
“The term
“morality” can be used either
- descriptively to refer to some
codes of conduct put forward by a society or,
- some other
group, such as a religion, or
- accepted by
an individual for her own behavior or
- normatively to refer to a code of
conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all
rational persons(Gert).”
With any
of these definitions it seems that in the movie noise the morality of the
rectifier is following the moral code.
This is because the vast amount of people agree with what he is doing,
some just having objections to how he is doing it, but they clap whenever he
destroys an alarms on a store. The
reason he must resort to the dramatic actions that he does as the rectifier is because
when he tries to do it as a law abiding citizen no one will listen to him and
all of his cases are dismissed.
Contemporary
Deontology is the philosophy that fits best to the Rectifier. Francis Kamm’s
principle of Permissible Harm states “that one may harm in order to save more
if and only if the harm is an effect or an
aspect of the greater good itself (Ask Define).” So in David’s mind he is doing this for the
greater good of New York, by the principle of permissible harm this is ethical.
In his mind running away into the quite country is only removing the problem
for himself but all the other people will still be affected and that is
categorically wrong in his mind.
The problem you get into here while defining ethics is between who is
the victim. During the movie David takes
this principle and tests it. He hooks up
as many alarms as he can to a truck and drives it up to the front of the
mayor’s office where he sets it off causing a major disturbance and but technically he is not doing anything illegal. This scene ends when a citizen takes a golf
club to his window and then gets arrested.
David uses this during the court case to cross examine the citizen to
show the jury that the citizen’s act was justified and as an act of self
defense. During this court case David
who is by all known standards the victim, as his property was damaged and he
did no physical harm to the citizen, loses the court case on purpose to
establish that noise can be not only considered assault but assault and
battery.
This concludes the movie as it shows that not all legal actions are
ethical actions, and not all illegal actions are unethical. The rectifier, who is just a vigilante like
figure with the mission to free the city of New York from its unneeded noise,
who may go a little far with the vandalism with which he makes his point, is
still following a school of ethics. His school of ethics is just more from
contemporary deontology then the ethical guidelines that we have based our
legal system on.
Works
Cited
"AskDefine | Define Deontological." Define
Deontological. Web. 08 May 2012.
<http://deontological.askdefine.com/>.
Gert, Bernard. "The Definition of Morality."
(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). 2011. Web. 08 May 2012. <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-definition/>.
Haselhurst, Geoff. "PostmodernismOn the End of
Postmodernism and the Rise of Realism. Absolute Truth from True Knowledge of
Physical Reality. Postmodern Definition and Quotes." Philosophy of
Postmodernism: Definition, Postmodern Philosophers Quotes, End of Post
Modernism Rise of Realism. 1997. Web. 08 May 2012.
<http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Philosophy-Postmodernism.htm>.
Noise. Dir. Henry Bean. Perf. Tim Robbins. Seven Arts
Pictures, 2007. Netflix.
Vedanta Society. "What Is Morality?" Vedanta
Society of Southern California. 2011. Web. 08 May 2012.
<http://www.vedanta.org/wiv/practice/ethics/ethics.html>.
West, Henry R. "Utilitarianism." Utilitarianism.
Web. 08 May 2012. <http://www.utilitarianism.com/utilitarianism.html>.
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