Friday, May 29, 2020

Tweet by Five Books on Twitter

Why learn more about human psychology? Well, all kinds of reasons—but beyond being a fascinating subject in its own right, it may well empower you to make better decisions, control your habits, be more motivated and even be more productive. fivebooks.com/category/psych…

5/28/20, 2:30 PM

Download the Twitter app

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

The cosmic perspective -- Jill Tarter, TED

The real Ellie Arroway*

*

Thursday, May 28, 2020

The big picture

Maybe just stick to the bigger picture, not the biggest.

Knowledge outpaces wisdom

Especially the things people "know that just ain't so" (Mark Twain?)...

"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."
- Isaac Asimov pic.twitter.com/xbN5NUyNro
— Ethics in Bricks (@EthicsInBricks) May 28, 2020

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

What's New

Updates for the Last Three Months Listed in Reverse Chronological Order https://plato.stanford.edu/new.html

[Subscribe to our RSS feed at https://plato.stanford.edu/rss/sep.xml
Users with RSS-enabled browsers can click here.]

[Note: All dates are given in UTC]

Hume on Free Will (Paul Russell) [REVISED: May 27, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Henri Bergson (Leonard Lawlor and Valentine Moulard Leonard) [REVISED: May 27, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Bertrand Russell (Andrew David Irvine) [REVISED: May 27, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Spinoza’s Psychological Theory (Michael LeBuffe) [REVISED: May 26, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Race (Michael James and Adam Burgos) [REVISED: May 25, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Edmund Burke (Ian Harris) [REVISED: May 24, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Wilhelm Windelband (Katherina Kinzel) [NEW: May 18, 2020]
Multiple Realizability (John Bickle) [REVISED: May 18, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (Andrew Bowie) [REVISED: May 18, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (Brian Copenhaver) [REVISED: May 15, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Communitarianism (Daniel Bell) [REVISED: May 15, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html
Intuitionism in Ethics (Philip Stratton-Lake) [REVISED: May 15, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Collapse Theories (Giancarlo Ghirardi and Angelo Bassi) [REVISED: May 15, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
History of the Ontology of Art (Paisley Livingston) [REVISED: May 14, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Self-Consciousness (Joel Smith) [REVISED: May 12, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, scepticism-indexicality.html
al-Ghazali (Frank Griffel) [REVISED: May 8, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Philosophy of Immunology (Bartlomiej Swiatczak and Alfred I. Tauber) [REVISED: May 7, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Intensional Transitive Verbs (Graeme Forbes) [REVISED: May 7, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
A Priori Justification and Knowledge (Bruce Russell) [REVISED: May 6, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Touch (Matthew Fulkerson) [REVISED: May 6, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Temporal Parts (Katherine Hawley) [REVISED: May 5, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Rudolf Carnap (Hannes Leitgeb and André Carus) [REVISED: May 5, 2020]
Changes to: Bibliography, semantics.html
Existence (Michael Nelson) [REVISED: May 5, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
International Distributive Justice (Michael Blake and Patrick Taylor Smith) [REVISED: May 4, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (Vincent C. Müller) [NEW: April 30, 2020]
Homosexuality (Brent Pickett) [REVISED: April 28, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Methodological Individualism (Joseph Heath) [REVISED: April 27, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
al-Farabi’s Psychology and Epistemology (Luis Xavier López-Farjeat) [REVISED: April 26, 2020]
Changes to: Bibliography, notes.html
Scottish Philosophy in the 19th Century (Gordon Graham) [REVISED: April 24, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Recursive Functions (Walter Dean) [NEW: April 23, 2020]
Hume’s Newtonianism and Anti-Newtonianism (Eric Schliesser and Tamás Demeter) [REVISED: April 21, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
The Role of Decoherence in Quantum Mechanics (Guido Bacciagaluppi) [REVISED: April 21, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html
Hume’s Aesthetics (Theodore Gracyk) [REVISED: April 21, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Non-Deductive Methods in Mathematics (Alan Baker) [REVISED: April 21, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html
Justification Logic (Sergei Artemov and Melvin Fitting) [REVISED: April 20, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, supplement.html
Discrimination (Andrew Altman) [REVISED: April 20, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Baruch Spinoza (Steven Nadler) [REVISED: April 16, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Quantum Approaches to Consciousness (Harald Atmanspacher) [REVISED: April 16, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Roger Bacon (Jeremiah Hackett) [REVISED: April 15, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html
Ancient Logic (Susanne Bobzien) [REVISED: April 15, 2020]
Changes to: Bibliography
Space and Time: Inertial Frames (Robert DiSalle) [REVISED: April 15, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Imaginative Resistance (Emine Hande Tuna) [NEW: April 13, 2020]
Epistemology (Matthias Steup and Ram Neta) [REVISED: April 11, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, notes.html
Reism (Jan Woleński) [REVISED: April 10, 2020]
Changes to: Bibliography
Sounds (Roberto Casati, Jerome Dokic, and Elvira Di Bona) [REVISED: April 10, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Philosophy of Biomedicine (Sean Valles) [NEW: April 9, 2020]
Empedocles (K. Scarlett Kingsley and Richard Parry) [REVISED: April 7, 2020]
Changes to: Main text
Auditory Perception (Casey O'Callaghan) [REVISED: April 7, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, supplement.html
John M. E. McTaggart (Kris McDaniel) [REVISED: April 7, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Events (Roberto Casati and Achille Varzi) [REVISED: April 3, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Medieval Theories of Obligationes (Paul Vincent Spade and Mikko Yrjönsuuri) [REVISED: April 3, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Fallacies (Hans Hansen) [REVISED: April 2, 2020]
Changes to: Main text
Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems (Panu Raatikainen) [REVISED: April 2, 2020]
Changes to: Bibliography
Vienna Circle (Thomas Uebel) [REVISED: April 1, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Confucius (Mark Csikszentmihalyi) [NEW: March 31, 2020]
Philosophy in Chile (Ivan Jaksic) [REVISED: March 31, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Francisco Sanches (Rolando Pérez) [NEW: March 31, 2020]
Medieval Theories of Future Contingents (Simo Knuuttila) [REVISED: March 31, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Naturalism (David Papineau) [REVISED: March 31, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html
Nonconceptual Mental Content (José Bermúdez and Arnon Cahen) [REVISED: March 30, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Simone de Beauvoir (Debra Bergoffen and Megan Burke) [REVISED: March 27, 2020]
Changes to: Bibliography
Episteme and Techne (Richard Parry) [REVISED: March 27, 2020]
Changes to: Main text
Ibn Sina’s Metaphysics (Olga Lizzini) [REVISED: March 26, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html
Form vs. Matter (Thomas Ainsworth) [REVISED: March 25, 2020]
Changes to: Bibliography
Territorial Rights and Territorial Justice (Margaret Moore) [NEW: March 24, 2020]
Ayn Rand (Neera K. Badhwar and Roderick T. Long) [REVISED: March 23, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, supplement.html
The Ethics of Manipulation (Robert Noggle) [REVISED: March 22, 2020]
Changes to: Main text
Property and Ownership (Jeremy Waldron) [REVISED: March 21, 2020]
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
Song-Ming Confucianism (Justin Tiwald) [NEW: March 19, 2020]
Edith Stein (Thomas Szanto and Dermot Moran) [NEW: March 18, 2020]
Tibetan Epistemology and Philosophy of Language (Pascale Hugon) [REVISED: March 18, 2020]
Changes are prior to March 21, 2020 (Main text, Bibliography) and are available in Spring 2020 Edition.
Concepts of Disease and Health (Dominic Murphy) [REVISED: March 18, 2020]
Changes are prior to March 21, 2020 (Main text, Bibliography) and are available in Spring 2020 Edition.
Hermann Cohen (Scott Edgar) [REVISED: March 17, 2020]
Changes are prior to March 21, 2020 (Main text, Bibliography) and are available in Spring 2020 Edition.
Computational Philosophy (Patrick Grim and Daniel Singer) [NEW: March 16, 2020]
Naturalism in Epistemology (Patrick Rysiew) [REVISED: March 16, 2020]
Changes are prior to March 21, 2020 (Main text, Bibliography, notes.html) and are available in Spring 2020 Edition.
Feminist Perspectives on Globalization (Serena Parekh and Shelley Wilcox) [REVISED: March 12, 2020]
Changes are prior to March 21, 2020 (Main text, Bibliography) and are available in Spring 2020 Edition.
Modal Fictionalism (Daniel Nolan) [REVISED: March 10, 2020]
Changes are prior to March 21, 2020 (Main text, Bibliography, notes.html) and are available in Spring 2020 Edition.
Seventeenth-Century Theories of Consciousness (Larry M. Jorgensen) [REVISED: March 6, 2020]
Changes are prior to March 21, 2020 (Main text, Bibliography) and are available in Spring 2020 Edition.
Johann Sturm (Andrea Sangiacomo and Christian Henkel) [NEW: March 5, 2020]
Psychologism (Martin Kusch) [REVISED: February 27, 2020]
Changes are prior to March 21, 2020 (Bibliography) and are available in Spring 2020 Edition.
Nietzsche’s Moral and Political Philosophy (Brian Leiter) [REVISED: February 27, 2020]
Changes are prior to March 21, 2020 (Main text, Bibliography) and are available in Spring 2020 Edition.
Hegel’s Aesthetics (Stephen Houlgate) [REVISED: February 27, 2020]
Changes are prior to March 21, 2020 (Main text, Bibliography) and are available in Spring 2020 Edition.

Chronological List of Published Entries

A.J. Ayer

A. J. Ayer is our #philosopherOTM. Explore our recommended reading and free book and journal article Collection on Ayer and his key fields of work here: https://t.co/A2rvX9Z6bJ. #logicalpositivism pic.twitter.com/zowcpZGMDb
— Oxford Philosophy (@OUPPhilosophy) May 4, 2020

Aristotle wins again

Aristotle wins twitter, again. pic.twitter.com/N2JA7OoWTR
— Agnes Callard (@AgnesCallard) May 27, 2020

Nigel Warburton interviewed

Website: The Philosophers' Magazine
Title: Virtual Philosopher
Description: The website of The Philosophers' Magazine.
Link: https://www.philosophersmag.com/interviews/16-nigel-warburton-virtual-philosopher

Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Best introductions to philosophy (or some of them)

Philosopher Nigel Warburton (@philosophybites) recommends the best Introductions to Philosophy

The Best Introductions to Philosophy | Five Books Expert Recommendations https://t.co/WpMZTQR8L7
— Anita Leirfall (@anitaleirfall) May 25, 2020

Sunday, May 24, 2020

Democracy: What’s It Good For? - The Philosophers' Magazine

https://www.philosophersmag.com/essays/216-democracy-what-s-it-good-for

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

Saturday, May 23, 2020

Tweet from To The Best Of Our Knowledge (@TTBOOK)

To The Best Of Our Knowledge (@TTBOOK) tweeted at 5:49 PM on Sat, May 23, 2020: "When people are in crisis, they tend to ask existential questions — like, why am I here? Where did I come from? Is life worth living? How do I go on in a meaningful way? That might be the silver lining to this pandemic." — Philosopher @JohnKaag https://t.co/EbavQuY1GO (https://twitter.com/TTBOOK/status/1264327542737076226?s=02) Get the official Twitter app at https://twitter.com/download?s=13

Thursday, May 21, 2020

Pandemic philosophy

The current issue of The Philosophers' Magazine features philosophers thinking through the pandemic. Read @katfurman on communities and contagion for free on the tpm website. https://t.co/s3xIMsOwrJ
— TPM (@philosophersmag) May 21, 2020

Monday, May 18, 2020

Philosophy essay | Spinoza: God-intoxicated man - The TLS

Philosophy essay | Spinoza: God-intoxicated man - The TLShttps://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/god-intoxicated-man-spinoza-philosophy-essay/

Be a web skeptic

"Don't believe everything you read online."
- Diogenes pic.twitter.com/5QMQLxKrah
— Ethics in Bricks (@EthicsInBricks) May 18, 2020

Bertrand Russell on "a free man's worship"

Bertrand Russell on "a free man's worship"-United with his fellow-men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common doom, the free man finds that a new vision is with him always, shedding over every daily task the light of love. The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instil faith in hours of despair. Let us not weigh in grudging scales their merits and demerits, but let us think only of their need--of the sorrows, the difficulties, perhaps the blindnesses, that make the misery of their lives; let us remember that they are fellow-sufferers in the same darkness, actors in the same tragedy as ourselves. And so, when their day is over, when their good and their evil have become eternal by the immortality of the past, be it ours to feel that, where they suffered, where they failed, no deed of ours was the cause; but wherever a spark of the divine fire kindled in their hearts, we were ready with encouragement, with sympathy, with brave words in which high courage glowed. Bertrand Russell, A Free Man's Worship... Russell's message to future generations (vid)

William James on the religion of humanity

William James on the "religion of humanity"- Whether a God exist, or whether no God exist... we form at any rate an ethical republic here below. And the first reflection which this leads to is that ethics have as genuine and real a foothold in a universe where the highest consciousness is human, as in a universe where there is a God as well. "The religion of humanity" affords a basis for ethics as well as theism does. William James, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life

John Dewey

John Dewey on experience, education, secular "faith," and the continuous human community

“What the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that must we want for all the children of the community. Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy.” The School and Society

One of America's greatest philosophers outlines a faith which is not confined to sect, class, or race. Dr. Dewey calls for the emancipation of the true religious quality from the heritage of dogmatism and supernaturalism that characterizes historical religions. He describes a positive, practical, and dynamic faith, verified and supported by the intellect and evolving with the progress of social and scientific knowledge. g'r

Natural piety is not of necessity either a fatalistic acquiescence in natural happenings or a romantic idealization of the world. It may rest upon a just sense of nature as the whole of which we are parts, while it also recognizes that we are parts that are marked by intelligence and purpose, having the capacity to strive by their aid to bring conditions into greater consonance with what is humanly desirable. Such piety is an inherent constituent of a just perspective in life...

A [properly] religious attitude needs the sense of a connection of man, in the way of both dependence and support, with the enveloping world that the imagination feels is a universe. Use of the words "God" or "divine" to convey the union of actual with ideal may protect man from a sense of isolation and from consequent despair or defiance.

The things in civilization we most prize are not of ourselves. They exist by grace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community in which we are a link. Ours is the responsibility of conserving, transmitting, rectifying and expanding the heritage of values we have received, that those who come after us may receive it more solid and secure, more widely accessible and more generously shared than we have received it. A Common Faith

Story Corps, This I Believe

Story Corps

"This I Believe"

Another final report option: Read and listen to others' "This I Believe" essays, and post your own (as I did-see below), at their website and on ours. I did. (May be time to update this...)

(I believe in) the next 40 years Phil - Nashville, Tennessee Entered on July 20, 2009

I believe that humans have a bright future among the stars. A 12-year old boy might have been excused, on July 20, 1969, for picturing the world of 2009 as far closer to Captain Kirk’s than this. The “space race” had been run and won in a few focused frenetic years, from Sputnik in the […]
(continues)

Recommended texts

(Scroll down for *MISCELLANEOUS LINKS)

RECOMMENDED-

[ATTN: Buchanan Scholars] Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean... and see "How the Koch Brothers Are Killing Public Transit"
A Passion for Wisdom: A Very Brief History of Philosophy by Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins, and its longer version A Short History of Philosophy
A Philosophy of Walking by Frederic Gros
Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit
The Joys of Walking ed. Edwin Mitchell (JW)
The Stone philosophy blog (NYT)
The Stone Reader (compilation from the NYT philosophy blog)
Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments: A Stone Reader
Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter(Peter Singer)
The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically (Singer)
America the Philosophical by Carlin Romano
At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Others by Sarah Bakewell
How to Live: Montaigne... (Bakewell)
How Democracies Die by Levitsky & Ziblatt
How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence
Philosophy Bites iPhone app
Philosophy Bites Back (PB)
Philosophy: The Basics (P)
Philosophy: The Classics by Nigel Warburton (book & podcast)
Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away by Rebecca Goldstein
Popular Culture & Philosophy Series (and see below)
Pragmatism: A New Name for an Old Way of Thinking by William James
The God Dialogues: A Philosophical Journey by Torin Alter & Robert J. Howell
The Greeks: An Illustrated History by Diane Harris Cline
The Meaning of Human Existence by EO Wilson
Very Short Introductions (OUP)
Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Storyby Jim Holt
The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell
Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truthby some guys with difficult Greek names

Walker Library

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

CoPhi (PHIL 1030) returns to the classroom January 21, 2025: T/Th 9:40 (#5), 2:40 (#7) JUB 204, 1 pm (#6) PH 312... DEC 6 Final report blog post (final draft) due. Post earlier for feedback... Posting will close after Dec.6. If you are unable to post, send your report directly to me - phil.oliver@mtsu.edu - and include footnotes to all terms you intended to link... OPEN YOUR AUTHOR INVITATIONS, if you haven't yet, before they expire... To those who noted more LIFE IS HARD questions than anticipated: that was because there were so many presentations on it and we discussed it quite a lot in class. Having told you all via the audio review about those questions in advance, I assumed there wouldn't be an issue. Evidently there was, for some. So I'll discount a couple of the Setiya questions. Live and learn, right? And to those inquiring about EXTRA CREDIT, that effectively is what strong participation earned you (if the scorecard reflects it). But if you still feel compelled to do more, I suggest lengthening and strengthening your final blogpost. PHIL 1030, sections H1, H2, H3: TTh 9:40, 1 pm, 2:40; in HONR 116... phil.oliver@mtsu.edu

Texts Fall 2024

REQUIRED: Nigel Warburton, LITTLE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY (LHP) (etext linked below)... Susan Neiman, WHY GROW UP (WGU)... John Kaag, SICK SOULS, HEALTHY MINDS: How William James Can Save Your Life (SS)... Eric Weiner, THE SOCRATES EXPRESS: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers (Weiner_)... RECOMMENDED (and available for 3-day checkout at the library): Mariana Allesandri, NIGHT VISION: seeing ourselves through dark moods... Kurt Andersen, FANTASYLAND: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History by Kurt Andersen (FL) ... Julian Baggini, HOW THE WORLD THINKS (HWT)... Kaag & J. van Belle, BE NOT AFRAID OF LIFE: In the Words of William James... Robert Richardson, THREE ROADS BACK: How Emerson, Thoreau, and William James Responded to the Greatest Losses of Their Lives... Kieran Setiya, LIFE IS HARD (LH)

JPO bio

The author of "William James's Springs of Delight: The Return to Life, (VU Press, 2001) " Phil Oliver specializes in the American philosophical tradition with supporting interests in applied ethics (particularly Bioethics and Environmental Ethics), Anglo-American literature, history, humanism, naturalism, science and exploration, peripatetic ("walking & talking") philosophy, baseball, cycling, swimming, the pursuit of happiness, and the perpetual dawn of day. One of his favorite MTSU courses is The Philosophy of Happiness. He is academic advisor for minors in American Culture (American Studies), and a founding board member and current Vice-President of the William James Society. You can follow him on Threads, Instagram (@OSOPHER), Substack (philoliver.substack.com) and on his blogsite Up@dawn (jposopher.blogspot.com) but of course, as Immanuel Kant and Monty Python's Brian Cohen agreed: You don't have to follow anybody. "Sapere aude," have the courage to think for yourself. But not by yourself. Good philosophy collaborates and converses.

Philosophy tutor & Writing Center

The tutor for this year is Elle Robinson. Her email address, should you need to contact her, is: ljr3s@mtmail.mtsu.edu ... Her hours will be Mondays & Wednesdays, 6 pm until 7:45 pm, Feb 19--Apr 24. She will offer tutoring in the library... No tutoring will be offered during Spring Break... WRITING CENTER: The Margaret H. Ordoubadian University Writing Center is located in LIB 362 and online at www.mtsu.edu/writing-center. Here, students can receive valuable (and FREE!) one-to-one assistance in person or online on writing projects for any course. Please make your appointment by stopping by LIB 362, calling 615-904-8237, or visiting the UWC website. Visit early and often! https://www.mtsu.edu/writing-center/

Gymnasiums of the Mind

"Followers of the Greek Aristotle were known as peripatetics because they passed their days strolling and mind-wrestling through the groves of the Academe. The Romans’ equally high opinion of walking was summed up pithily in the Latin proverb: “It is solved by walking.” Nearly every philosopher-poet worth his salt has voiced similar sentiments. Erasmus recommended a little walk before supper and “after supper do the same.” Thomas Hobbes had an inkwell built into his walking stick to more easily jot down his brainstorms during his rambles. Jean- Jacques Rousseau claimed he could only meditate when walking: “When I stop, I cease to think,” he said. “My mind only works with my legs.” Søren Kierkegaard believed he’d walked himself into his best thoughts. In his brief life Henry David Thoreau walked an estimated 250,000 miles, or ten times the circumference of earth. “I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits,” wrote Thoreau, “unless I spend four hours a day at least – and it is commonly more than that – sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields absolutely free from worldly engagements.” Thoreau’s landlord and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson characterized walking as “gymnastics for the mind...” Christopher Orlet, Philosophy Now https://philosophynow.org/issues/44/The_Gymnasiums_of_the_Mind

Admirable profession

"...Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward. We know not much about them. It is remarkable that we know so much of them as we do. The same is true of the more modern reformers and benefactors of their race. None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live..."

"I went to the woods because...

I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion... "

"I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there...

Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now... I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours..."

Where he lived, and what he lived for

"Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through church and state, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin, having a point d’appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had gathered from time to time. If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business."

Vote!

"The 2024 election is going to be decided by people under 30, who have the most at stake, and they need to register to vote in order to make a difference. That’s the answer, simple democracy." -GK... Please visit TennVoterLookup if you would like to check your Tennessee registration status or check RockTheVote.org. TN residents can update or change their information on the TN Government's website. If you're currently registered in another county it may be easier for you to vote here. Register in Rutherford County: https://www.mtsu.edu/amerdem/register-to-vote.php

Thinking is a social activity

"We do not (on Justice Holmes's reasoning) permit the free expression of ideas because some individual may have the right one. No individual alone can have the right one. We permit free expression because we need the resources of the whole group to get us the ideas we need. Thinking is a social activity. I tolerate your thought because it is part of my thought—even when my thought defines itself in opposition to yours." — The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand https://a.co/8qI6C9a

A proper education

“The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research. It's proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible. This cannot be done by gathering or "accessing" what we now call "information" - which is to say facts without context and therefore without priority. A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first.” ― Wendell Berry

The college project

“The American college may be considered a continuation, at the human level, of the self-education process of the earth itself: universe education, earth education, and human education are stages of development in a single unbroken process...The entire college project can be seen as that of enabling the student to understand the immense story of the universe and the role of the student in creating the next phase of the story.” --Thomas Berry, “The American College in the Ecological Age,” in The Dream of the Earth

Planting seeds

One thing is certain: if our educational system does not honestly and explicitly promote the central tenet of science—that nothing is sacred—then we encourage myth and prejudice to endure. We need to equip our children with tools to avoid the mistakes of the past while constructing a better, and more sustainable, world for themselves and future generations. We won’t do that by dodging inevitable and important questions about facts and faith. Instead of punting on those questions, we owe it to the next generation to plant the seeds of doubt." Lawrence M. Krauss, "Teaching Doubt"-The New Yorker

Enlightened thoughts

“Reason drives your search to make sense of the world by pushing you to ask why things are as they are. For theoretical reason, the outcome of that search becomes science; for practical reason, the outcome is a more just world.”

“A defence of the Enlightenment is a defence of the modern world, along with all its possibilities for self-criticism and transformation. If you’re committed to Enlightenment, you’re committed to understanding the world in order to improve it.”

“Freedom cannot simply mean doing whatever strikes you at the moment: that way you're a slave to any whim or passing fancy. Real freedom involves control over your life as a whole, learning to make plans and promises and decisions, to take responsibility for your actions' consequences.”

“Doing what you can to move your part of the world closer to the way that it should be, while never losing sight of the way that it is, is what being a grown-up comes to.”
― Susan Neiman, Why Grow Up?: Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age

The thinkers of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment saw an urgent need for a secular foundation for morality, because they were haunted by a historical memory of centuries of religious carnage: the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch hunts, the European wars of religion. They laid that foundation in what we now call humanism, which privileges the well-being of individual men, women, and children over the glory of the tribe, race, nation, or religion. It is individuals, not groups, who are sentient—who feel pleasure and pain, fulfillment and anguish. Whether it is framed as the goal of providing the greatest happiness for the greatest number or as a categorical imperative to treat people as ends rather than means, it was the universal capacity of a person to suffer and flourish, they said, that called on our moral concern.”

“The Enlightenment thus translated the ultimate question ‘How can I be saved?’ into the pragmatic ‘How can I be happy?’—thereby heralding a new praxis of personal and social adjustment.”

“The ideals of the Enlightenment are products of human reason, but they always struggle with other strands of human nature: loyalty to tribe, deference to authority, magical thinking, the blaming of misfortune on evildoers.”― Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

“We must cultivate our garden.”

“Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too.” Voltaire

“Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.”

“To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.” ― John Locke

“One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.”

“I pretend not to teach, but to inquire; and therefore cannot but confess here again,–that external and internal sensation are the only passages I can find of knowledge to the understanding. These alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into this DARK ROOM. For, methinks, the understanding is not much unlike a closet wholly shut from light, with only some little openings left, to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas of things without: which, would they but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man, in reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them.”

― John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.”

“Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

“It does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are 20 gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

Religion. Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty & singularity of opinion... shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear... ...Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you... In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it... [Jefferson, Letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, advising him in matters of religion, 1787]”

“The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.”― Albert Einstein

“There is strong shadow where there is much light.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Götz von Berlichingen

“How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?”
― Plato, The Allegory of the Cave

“Enlightenment means taking full responsibility for your life.”
― William Blake

“To live is not to breathe but to act. It is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves which give us the sentiment of our existence. The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years but he who has most felt life.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education

“We owe a huge debt to Galileo for emancipating us all from the stupid belief in an Earth-centered or man-centered (let alone God-centered) system. He quite literally taught us our place and allowed us to go on to make extraordinary advances in knowledge.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“It is not easy to convey, unless one has experienced it, the dramatic feeling of sudden enlightenment that floods the mind when the right idea finally clicks into place. One immediately sees how many previously puzzling facts are neatly explained by the new hypothesis. One could kick oneself for not having the idea earlier, it now seems so obvious. Yet before, everything was in a fog.”
― Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit

“I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishments after I am dead.”
― Kurt Vonnegut
==

“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American life is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”

“We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.”

“If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

==
On the other hand, eastern enlightenment...

“Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.”
― Bodhidharma, The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma

How to add links, embed videos etc.

Videos: in Blogger, after clicking on "New Post"-- 1. Copy the URL of the video you want to share. 2. Click on "More options" on the far right of the toolbar above, then Insert Video icon (3d from left) 3. Select YouTube 5. Select Search 6. Paste the URL & Select it == To insert links: 1. Highlight a word or phrase in your text 2. Click on the link icon 3. Paste the URL address of the site or passage you want to link to == To insert graphics, either just copy-&-paste... OR, click on the "insert image" icon (to the right of the link icon, to the left of the "insert video" icon) and select the appropriate option == To embed Google Books pages: 1. Find the book you want to embed. 2. Select Preview 3. Select (click on) the page you want to embed. 4. Click More Actions (the three vertical dots in the upper right) 5. Select Embed (unless you just want to link the page) 6. Copy the code 7. In edit mode on blogger, select the pen icon in the upper left and click on HTML view 8. Paste the code == Familiarize yourself with the edit icons in the drop-down menu (link, insert image, insert video, etc.) Always make sure, after you Publish, that the formatting is correct on the blogsite. If not, click More options (the three horizontal dots in the upper right) and then Clear Formatting on the far right (the T with a diagonal slash).

Up@dawn 2.0 (blogger)

Delight Springs

Friday, May 29, 2020

Thursday, May 28, 2020

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

What's New

Updates for the Last Three Months Listed in Reverse Chronological Order https://plato.stanford.edu/new.html

Tuesday, May 26, 2020

Sunday, May 24, 2020

Saturday, May 23, 2020

Thursday, May 21, 2020

Monday, May 18, 2020

John Dewey on experience, education, secular "faith," and the continuous human community

Story Corps

"This I Believe"

The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truthby some guys with difficult Greek names

Walker Library

More books

Historical links: happiness

Planning the day

Home

Why we begin class with news, history, and (sometimes) poetry

James Union Building (JUB)