Questions NOV 5

 WGU -192

Presentations: #2 Violet; Keziah ( Does Traveling Make Us More Open-Minded), #3 Qiuyang (Young) Zhang (WJ, WtB)

1. What hallmark of modernity reversed Plato's and Aristotle's judgment?

2. What gives life meaning, for Kant?

3. In a truly human society, according to Marx, how would our capacities to work develop?

4.  Most jobs involve what, according to Paul Goodman? 

5. People were certain, as late as 2008, that what?

6. What alternatives to consumerism have small groups begun to develop?

==

Setiya Intro, ch1

1. What reminder does Kieran Setiya say he needed when he was younger? What kind of philosophy did his teachers say he needed? (pref) What has he experienced since age 27?

2. What is moral philosophy about?

3. Does Setiya think "everything happens for a reason"? What were Job's friends wrong about?

4. What did Nietzsche say about happiness and the English?

5. Who is Susan Gubar?

6. To whom should disability matter?

7. What's the difference between disease and illness?

8. What does Setiya think Aristotle gets wrong?

9. Who are Setiya's heroes? 

10. What does Setiya say about Marx's vision of communist society?

11. What was Harriet Johnson's reply to Peter Singer?

12. What did Setiya appreciate about his fifth urologist?

13. What, contrary to Descartes, does pain teach us about our bodies?

FL 41-42
1. What became of the 1998 study that promoted the false belief that vaccines cause autism?

2. How many people refusing vaccines can lead to the collapse of herd immunity?

3. What do experts say about most mass killers?

4. Who wrote a "demented" letter on behalf of gun rights in 1995?

Fwd: CLASS PRESENTATION

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Adedoyin Adeyeni <apa3h@mtmail.mtsu.edu>
Date: Tue, Nov 3, 2026 at 8:55 AM
Subject: CLASS PRESENTATION
To: Phil Oliver <Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu>

Good morning,

Attached above is a copy of my powerpoint slide for my presentation today.

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#inbox?projector=1

Get Outlook for Mac

--

James Phil Oliver, PhD

Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies

Resident Faculty, University Honors College

Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU)

President, William James Society 2025-6

1301 East Main Street, Murfreesboro, TN 37132-0001

220 Honors Building*, 300 James Union Building
(615) 898-2050, 898-2907, ***-****

Campus Mail Box 73
=========================

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

poliver.mtsu@gmail.com

president@wjsociety.org

http://jposopher.blogspot.com/ (Up@dawn blog)

https://philoliver.substack.com (Up@Dawn@substack)

@osopher on Bluesky

 Solvitur ambulando, Sapere aude 

Save or savor? “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” ― E. B. White

Fwd: Institute of Leadership Excellence Class of 2027

Let me know if you are interested in being nominated forthis program. jpo

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: University Honors College <uhc@mtsu.edu>

ILE provides an intensive, unique, and interdisciplinary total-immersion experience in leadership development for promising students from across the university.  Accepted students who enroll in ILE study leadership theory and practice through a combination of lecture, discussion, activities, speakers, and interaction with their classmates, all with a clear focus on application and experiential learning. 

 

ILE 2027 is scheduled for May 17-21 and will meet from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm each day that week as a three-credit-hour course.  Last year’s class was a successful online learning experience.  We hope to have the class in-person (with appropriate distancing) and will adjust to online again if necessary.  As is typical of the ILE experience, we will present a series of outstanding external speakers throughout the week at lunchtime (lunch is provided on site at no cost to students) to share their thoughts on leadership and provide practical insights from their own experiences. 

Questions NOV 3

 WGU 80-122

Presentations: #1 Adedoyin, #2 Geena; Lindsey (WJ, ILWL). #3 Is life worth living -- Alex Stover

 

1. "The miracle that saves the world," said Hannah Arendt, is ____.

2. For Kant the most important fact about us is what?

3. What is "the metaphysical wound at the heart of the universe"? 

4. How did David Hume dispel "this philosophical melancholy and delirium"? 

5. What did Kant say we must take seriously, in order to grow up?

6. What must reason find intolerable about the world?

Discussion Questions

• Is Hannah Arendt's emphasis on natality as important as mortality, in defining the human condition? Would it still be, if we ever achieved natural immortality? 80-81
• Is the US still a proud nation of immigrants, or more like those European nations "struggling with what they regard as the problem of immigration? 81
• Are there ways other than travel to "experience the world as babies do" etc.? 83
• Did your upbringing make it easier or harder for you to trust? 86
• "Once you start asking why, there's no natural place to stop." 88 So why do so many people stop, or else never start?
• How long would we have to live, to see this as Leibniz's "best possible world" 89
• Was Hume right about reason being slave to the passions? 93
• Was Thrasymachus right about justice? 94
• Do you agree with the cliche about socialism? 100
• Is Hume's strategy for dispelling melancholy good? 104
• Has the gap between ought and is narrowed in the world, historically?107
• Was Nietzsche right about stoicism? 113
• Is it childish to expect the world to make sense? 114
• How can philosophy help us grow up? 119
• Do we have a right to happiness? 122

==

1. Kant's definition of maturity is what? 123

2. Education, travel, and work share what common purpose, ideally?

3. You're not grown-up if you've not rejected what? 

4. Why should languages and music be learned as early as possible?

5. What is the message of Rousseau's Emile?

6. What does it mean to love a book?

7. The internet, says Nick Carr, is a machine geared for what?

8. If you don't travel you're likely to suppose what?

9. What did Rousseau say about those who do not walk?

10. What is travel's greatest gift?

Discussion Questions

• What are some other signs of being grown-up, besides the ability to think for yourself? 123
• Are you good at accepting compromise? Are the adults in your life? 124
• Have you "sifted through your parents' choices about everything"? 125
• Do you "love the world enough to assume responsibility for it?" 126
• Has your educational experience so far broken or furthered your "urge to explore the world"? Do you still "desire to learn"? 127
• Should corporations like Coca-Cola be allowed to have "pouring rights" in public schools? 132
• "You must take your education into your own hands as soon as possible." Did you? How? 140
• Should the age of legal maturity be raised to match the age of brain maturity? 140
• "Minds need at least as much exercise as bodies..." 141 Do you get enough of both forms of exercise? Too much of one or the other? Do you subscribe to Mens sana in corpore sano?
• Do you love books and reading? 143 
• Do you agree with Mark Twain?: "A person who won't read has no advantage over a person who can't."
• Are you willing to go a month without internet? Or even a day? 148
• Were Augustine and Rousseau right about travel? 150-51
• Does group travel "preclude real encounters" with a place? 158
• Do you hope to live and work one day in another culture for at least a year? Do you think it will contribute to your maturity? 162-3

Questions OCT 29

Happy almost-Halloween! Feel free to come costumed and bring treats (for a free base on the scorecard). 

I'll not wear my Mad Scientist outfit to class, I'd be blind. Anyway, the Mad Anti-scientist in contemporary America is far scarier and more prevalent.

Presentations #1 Zane Graham, Austin?.  #3 Eric Chen

1. After Plato, the next philosopher to turn his attention to the details of child-rearing was who? (36)

2. What's the first step of human reason, according to Kant?

3. If we have hope for moral progress, what do we want for the next generation?

4. What was Orwell's nightmare?

5. What "perfidious reversal leaves us permanently confused"?

6. What are you committed to, if you're committed to Enlightenment? (51)

7. What is freedom, according to Rousseau and Kant? (62)

8. What's the key to whether or not we grow up? (77)

==

Discussion Questions
WGU

• Should philosophers pay more attention to child-rearing and parenting? 36
• What do you think Cicero meant by saying that philosophy is learning to die?
• Do you feel fully empowered to "choose your life's journey"? If not, what obstacles prevent that? 37
• In what ways do you think your parents' occupations influence the number of choices you'll be able to make in your life?
• If you've read 1984 and Brave New World, which do you find the more "seductive dystopia"? 39
• Are we confused about toys and dreams? 40
• Do others make the most important decisions for you? 41
• Do you "make a regular appointment with your body"? 42
• Do you trust anyone over 30? 45
• Is it "reasonable to expect justice and joy"? 49
• Are you "committed to Enlightenment"? 51
• Do the passions for glory and luxury make us wicked and miserable? 53
• What does it mean to say there are no atheists in foxholes? Is it true? 54
• Was Rousseau right about inequality and private property? 55
• Should philosophy be taught to children, so as to become thinking adults? 57
• Should children "yield to the commands of other people"? 61
• Should parents "let the child wail"?
• Are Rousseau and Kant right about the true definition of freedom? 62
• Is Rousseau right about desire? 65
• Did Rousseau's abandonment of his children discredit his thoughts on child-rearing? 69 Or show him to be a hypocrite for saying no task in the world is more important than raising a child properly? 72

 

Mar17

Call It Evil by Susan Neiman

“…Arendt’s account of evil was developed as she observed the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the major architects of the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Devoid of any hint of satanic greatness, the balding, nearsighted bureaucrat on the stand in Jerusalem looked more like an accountant than anything else. He wasn’t driven by personal hatred or pleasure in cruelty. He was punctilious in refusing to profit from stolen goods and had done nothing but what was expected of him after joining the SS in 1932. The one time he observed a gas chamber in action, he swore that it made him sick. Dostoyevsky’s sniveling devil comes closest to portraying the man chiefly responsible for organizing the Final Solution. Not malevolence but thoughtlessness was behind Eichmann’s deeds. 

He merely, wrote Arendt, did not realize what he was doing. This last claim was false, as the German philosopher Bettina Stangneth proved in her 2011 book Eichmann Before Jerusalem. Unlike Arendt, Stangneth had access to recordings made in 1956 in Argentina. In a series of lectures Eichmann told other exiled Nazis the truth about what they had hitherto called “The Auschwitz Lie.” Protocols of every meeting were made, corrected, and signed by Eichmann himself. At those meetings he resisted every suggestion that he’d been the sort of mindless civil servant he performed at his trial, and he said his only regret was his failure to murder all 11 million Jews in Europe. So much for the claim that he didn’t know what he was doing; Arendt, like many, had been fooled by the role he played in hopes of escaping the gallows. But her fundamental point remains: Evil acts are seldom committed by monsters. All they require is an ordinary person who abandons integrity. 

 Arendt’s radical claims still stand, in principle, though not for the man Adolf Eichmann...” 

 — Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era by Susan Neiman https://a.co/0eBKZJoK

Questions OCT 27

 Catch up, sign up for FINAL report presentations... PIZZA PARTY today, 5:30 pm in JUB 202

WGU

1. Being grown-up is widely considered to be what? Do you agree?

2. Is Leibniz's optimism more likely to appeal to a small child? Why? 3

3. What was Kant's definition of Enlightenment? 5

4. What do Susan Neiman's children say she can't understand? Do you agree? 9

5. Why is judgement important? Is this a surprising thing to hear from a Kantian? 11

6. Being a grown-up comes to what? 12

7. What did Paul Goodman say about growing up? Are his observations are still relevant? 19

8. Why (in Neiman's opinion) should you not think this is the best time of your life, if you're a young college student? 20

9. What did Samoan children have that ours lack? 27 Can we fix that?

10. What is philosophy's greatest task? 31

Questions OCT 22

1. What did John Rawls call the thought experiment he believed would yield fair and just principles, and what was its primary device?

2. Under what circumstances would Rawls' theory permit huge inequalities of wealth between people?

3. What was the Imitation Game, and who devised a thought experiment to oppose it?

4. What, according to Searle, is involved in truly understanding something?

5. How do some philosophers think we might use computers to achieve immortality?

6. What does Peter Singer say we should sacrifice, to help stranger

7. Why did Singer first become famous?

8. How does Singer represent the best tradition in philosophy?

Coming next week

Philosophy and Religious Studies 

OPEN HOUSE & Pizza Party 

Tuesday, October 27, 2026 

5:30 pm – 6:30 pm JUB 202 

Coming next semester

PHIL 3340 Environmental Ethics-Supporting the philosophical study of environmental issues at Middle Tennessee State University and beyond... TTh 4:05 pm, HONR 218

We'll explore environmental ethics through the lens of "cli-fi" and "eco-fiction"...

 

We'll all read Richard Powers's environmental trilogy beginning with The Overstory, following the arc of humanity's historical movement from a more intimate original relation to the rest of nature to the increasingly computer-mediated world of the present, to a who-knows-what future. We'll also look at Jill LePore's The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, which imagines a future in which we've surrendered our autonomy to the machines... but also holds out hope that we can still avert that future.

Then, each of us will select a different additional work of eco-fiction to write and report on. In that way, we'll canvas this growing, exciting genre of literature that addresses what is arguably our most urgent concern.

William James long ago said it best: "The really vital question for us all is, What is this world going to be? What is life eventually to make of itself?"

  

“The best arguments in the world won't change a person's mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story.... 

What you make from a tree should be at least as miraculous as what you cut down...

This is not our world with trees in it. It's a world of trees, where humans have just arrived.” Richard Powers, The Overstory

Final report presentations

Starting Oct 20 you can indicate your preference (in the comments' space of this post) for the topic and date of your report presentation (include your section #). It can be on any relevant topic of your choice that you can relate to the reading assignments (required or recommended) on the corresponding date. Presentations will begin on the 27th. We'll do two presentations per class, planning to finish before the exam on Dec 1. I'll give you two bases on the scorecard if you volunteer to present on the 27th.

Take a look ahead at the coming syllabus assignments (reprinted below). Scan the assigned texts and indicate your date/topic preference in the comments section below accordingly. You do not have to cover everything, just anything you can plausibly relate to something in that day's assigned/recommended material. Also scan the lists of recommended books in the right sidebar, to see if you would like to use any of them as a basis for your report. If the library does not have the text(s) you choose, go to the circulation desk and request via inter-library loan.

Have fun with the project. Be creative. Consider using the podcast/video resources in the library's MakerSpace to prepare your presentation. Plan to present for about 10 minutes, with the goal of teaching us something we wouldn't have learned merely reading the assignment. Then lead a brief class discussion. Don't stress, you'll get all 25 available points if you fulfill these minimal criteria.

NOTE: We re-arranged the syllabus so we could read John Kaag's book before he spoke at the Lyceum in October... but you can choose any of the chapters in SSHM as the basis of your final presentation on the available date of your choice. Same for any of the chapters in Socrates Express.

27 WGU Introduction-p.35. Rec: WJ, Is Life Worth Living? Final report presentations begin [two free bases for extra participation credit on the scorecard, if you're first or second in your section to volunteer for this date] - #1 Austin Vance #2 Brennan, #3 Nat (Kant)

29 WGU -p.79. Recommended: WJ, The Dilemma of Determinism - #1 Zane Graham, #3 Eric Chen

NOV

3 WGU -p.165. Rec: WJ, Is Life Worth Living? - #1 Adedoyin, #2 Geena; Lindsey (WJ, ILWL). #3 Is life worth living -- Alex Stover

5 WGU -p.192. Rec: WJ, The Will to Believe - #2 Violet; Keziah ( Does Traveling Make Us More Open-Minded), #3 Qiuyang (Young) Zhang (WJ, WtB)

10 WGU -p. 234. Rec: WJ, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life - #1 Krish Patel #2 Tyler (WJ, MPML). #3 Spencer

12 Rec: WJ, The Gospel of Relaxation. Your choice: see recommended texts in the sidebar. #1 Baker. Avery. Lanisa. #2 Charlie. #3 Aliya

17 Rec: WJ, On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings. Your choice: see recommended texts in the sidebar - #1 Amariah (WJ, Blindness), Vi Nobles. #2 Fena. Michelle-Blindness (over-education). Erik-Stoic Pragmatism. #3 Will-Blindness.

19 Rec: WJ, What Makes a Life Significant. Your choice: see recommended texts in the sidebar - #1 Brian. Zander. #2 Dawn  (WJ, WMLS), #2 Nev-Philosopher Queens, Simone deB.

24 Your choice: see recommended texts in the sidebar. #3 Cecile-Katya Night Vision