[PROPOSAL] Philosophical Thought Experiments Art (fourth edition)

This project goal is to bring the academy more close to people and we think that art is the way for that. With that in mind, we want to produce a bounty in which the NEAR community can express its creativity by creating art from philosophical thought experiments.

benefit/justification: the benefits of the project are: (1) to spread philosophy and its thought experiments through the artistic NEAR community; (2) to create products that could be sold by the DAO and be used to get resources; (3) to integrate The Philosophers DAO more deeply with the community of creative artists on NEAR and to spread The Philosophers DAO’s Community; (4) to produce art NFTs and transactions on the blockchain; (5) to bring university professors to the ecosystem, who could be the next collectors when they understand well how web 3 works.

the project

The project is to give an acquisition prize of 100 usd in near or dai for each of the 4 best pieces of art produced by the community in our bounty. The pieces of art must not be minted, because they are going to be minted by us, with the due credits, in our store and with royalties and revenue splitted equally between the artist and The Philosophers DAO; they must come with a cover image (an associated image - if the art is an image, it can be itself) they can be pictures, including memes, videos, poetry, 3d objects, gifs, and should express the following thought experiment:

Thought experiment: The Famous Violinist

This thought experiment was created by Judith Jarvis Thompson in the famous paper “A Defence of Abortion” (1971) and aims to recreate some of the conditions of pregnancy in a different scenario. The goal is to test how some of the moral claims around abortion apply to a morally similar, contextually different situation. Thomson will argue that the fetus has a right to life, but defends the permissibility of abortion.

The thought experiment was originally proposed as follows:

You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist’s circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. [If he is unplugged from you now, he will die; but] in nine months he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.

The big questions are: Is it permissible, from a moral point of view, for a person to disconnect from the violinist even if it causes his death? Does the right to life include the right to use another person’s body? If not, disconnecting from the violinist does not violate his right to life, but merely deprives him of something (using someone else’s body). In Thomson’s words: “If you allow him to continue using your kidneys, that is a kindness on his part, not something he can claim from you as his due.” Likewise, abortion does not violate the fetus’s legitimate right to life, but only deprives the fetus of something (the non-consensual use of the pregnant woman’s body to which it has no right).

Consultant: Thomson, J. “A Defense of Abortion”. Philosophy and Public Affairs 1:1 (Autumn 1971): 47–66.

timeline

week 1: to launch the bounty and publicize it.

week 2: to publicize the bounty.

week 3: to choose 4 winners, to mint the NFTs.

week 4: report and accountability.

budget

4 winners (best art chosen by council) x 100USD (100 USD in NEAR or DAI, whichever is more convenient for the DAO, and NEAR value will be measured according to the exchange rate used by NEAR to pay the DAO)

Subtotal: 400 USD

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Project Report

Status: Completed

Budget: 400 usdc
Spent: 300 usdc (100 usdc was not claimed, however the task was fulfilled, so this resource returned to the treasury)

Project:

Bounty generated by the project:

Project Accounting:

We released a bounty for choosing 4 different pieces of art to express a philosophical experiment, and mint them as NFTs, in order to stimulate the philosophers to use the blockchain and the development of NFTs from philosophical material. We’ve chosen the artworks through telegram and we confirmed it on astro.

We minted 4 NFTs, from the chosen artworks, with royalties and revenues divided between the philosophers and the dao. Each artist received 100 usd in near.

Payout to the winners

(3 members of the community receiving 100 usd in USDC each - one of them did not request payment):

https://app.astrodao.com/dao/the-philosophers-dao.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/the-philosophers-dao.sputnik-dao.near-193

https://app.astrodao.com/dao/the-philosophers-dao.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/the-philosophers-dao.sputnik-dao.near-187

https://app.astrodao.com/dao/the-philosophers-dao.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/the-philosophers-dao.sputnik-dao.near-182

Updated Project Timeline:

The project was completed in the appropriate time, although one of the winners minted the art, but did not request for payment.

Highlights and Final Products:

We could produce 4 NFTs illustrating philosophical thought experiments on Mintbase, with revenue and royalties split among the writer and the dao.

27.77 NEAR distributed to the each artist

NFTs:

Learnings:

The project was a success, with 54 replies, 1.1k views, 29 users, 215 likes. We could learn that we will only let available the possibility of request for payout up to a certain amount of time, for it not to disturb our reporting process.

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