Free workshop with the author of our last-scheduled book

John Kaag (@JohnKaag) tweeted:

Very honored to be 2020 William James Scholar in Residence at University of Potsdam. Slated for three Zoom workshops next month on SICK SOULS, HEALTHY MINDS (@PrincetonUPress and @UMassLowell ) Free but need to register now! https://t.co/XyRJkmI4Rm
(https://twitter.com/JohnKaag/status/1321460130349801472?s=02)

This is on Mondays in November at 1 pm our time, coinciding with our reading of the book. John says he'll expand the workshop to make room for any of us who want to join. Mention our class if you decide to register.

Audible philosophy

Nigel asks:

Well read? I'm really impressed by the quality of the @audible version of A Little History of Philosophy read by @krisdyer. Which other Philosophy audiobooks would you recommend?
(https://twitter.com/philosophybites/status/1322478949847441408?s=02)

I reply:

Anthony Gottlieb reading his own Dreams (of Reason & Enlightenment), Jonathan Keeble reading Russell's History, @JohnKaag's books (if only the readers would learn to pronounce "Peirce"), Jennifer Michael Hecht's Doubt: A History...

Audible.com has lots of philosophy...

But if you have a library card you can access free audio, through services like Hoopla and Overdrive.

The monk and (his dad) the philosopher

"You first need to have an ego in order to be aware that it doesn't exist."

A fascinating conversation between a biologist turned Buddhist monk and his French philosopher father about the nature of the self and the true measure of personal strength https://t.co/C2TvhPUf3j
(https://twitter.com/brainpickings/status/1322278367450877954?s=02)

Highly recommended.

The gap between ought and is

We need to stop saying "This is not who we are" in "America."

Indeed, this is not who and what the United States should be, but denial won't make the injustices and inhumane ideologies less so.

We can't change without truth.
(https://twitter.com/BerniceKing/status/1322055843202949120?s=02)

"Talk with me"

Philosophy should be conversation, not dogma – face-to-face talk about our place in the cosmos and how we should live 

In 1913 the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein fled the interruptions and distractions of Cambridge to live as a hermit in Norway. No one knew him there, and he could focus on his work on logic in isolation. It worked. He lodged for a while with the postmaster in Skjolden, a remote village 200 miles north of the city of Bergen, and later had a hut built overlooking the fjord. Alone, he wrestled with the ideas that would metamorphose into his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921). Anyone who tried to pass the time of day with him got short shrift. ‘Go away! It’ll take me two weeks to get back to the point where I was before you interrupted me,’ he is supposed to have shouted at one local who made the mistake of greeting him as he stood pondering what could not be said. From Wittgenstein’s perspective, the year he spent in Norway was the source of much of his philosophical creativity, some of the most intense thinking this markedly intense philosopher achieved in his lifetime. While there, he did little more than think, walk, whistle, and suffer from depression.

Wittgenstein ensconced in his Norwegian ‘hut’ (really, a two-storey wooden house with a balcony) is for many the model of a philosopher at work. Here the solitary genius sought out isolation that mirrored the rigours of his own austere philosophy. No distractions. No human company. Just a laser-like mind thinking about first principles, as he stood surveying the fjord or strode through the snow. Wittgenstein had precedents. The sixth-century Boethius wrote his Consolation of Philosophy in a Roman prison cell, his mind focused by his imminent execution; Niccolò Machiavelli produced The Prince (1532) in exile on a quiet farm outside Florence; René Descartes wrote his Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) curled up next to a fire. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was happiest living in the middle of a forest, away from civilisation, and so on. Philosophy in its highest forms seems intently solitary and often damaged by the presence of others.

Yet this stereotype of the genius at work in complete isolation is misleading, even for Wittgenstein, Boethius, Machiavelli, Descartes, and Rousseau. Philosophy is an inherently social activity that thrives on the collision of viewpoints and rarely emerges from unchallenged interior monologue... (continues)

Nigel Warburton, Aeon

Free Zoom workshops next month on SICK SOULS, HEALTHY MINDS

Very honored to be 2020 William James Scholar in Residence at University of Potsdam. Slated for three Zoom workshops next month on SICK SOULS, HEALTHY MINDS (@PrincetonUPress and @UMassLowell ) Free but need to register now! https://t.co/XyRJkmI4Rm
(https://twitter.com/JohnKaag/status/1321460130349801472?s=02)

Johnson’s Boswell

It's the birthday of James Boswell (books by this author), born in Edinburgh, Scotland (1740). He is best known as the author of Life of Johnson (1791), a biography of Dr. Samuel Johnson, which is considered by many people to be the greatest biography ever written in English. As a young man, Boswell's father wanted him to settle down and take care of the family's ancestral estate in rural Scotland. Boswell wanted adventure, excitement, and intrigue, so he ran away to London and became a Catholic. He began keeping a journal in London, and instead of describing his thoughts and feelings about things, he wrote down scenes from his life as though they were fiction. He described his friends as though they were characters and recorded long stretches of dialogue.

As a young man, Boswell was the life of the party, and everyone who met him liked him. The French writer Voltaire invited him to stay at his house after talking to him for only half an hour. David Hume asked him to stay at his bedside when he died. He hung out with the philosopher Rousseau, and Rousseau's mistress liked him so much that she had an affair with Boswell. He was even friends with the pope. And then on May 16, 1763, he met the scholar and writer Samuel Johnson in the back room of a bookstore. Johnson was a notoriously unfriendly man, but Boswell had long admired him and tried hard to impress him. The next time they met, Johnson said to Boswell, "Give me your hand. I have taken a liking to you." Johnson was 30 years older than Boswell and he was the most renowned literary scholar in England. Boswell was undistinguished compared to Johnson's other friends, but Boswell never tried to compete with Johnson's intellect. Their relationship was like an interview that went on for years. Boswell would just ask questions and listen to Johnson talk, and then he would go home and write it all down in his journal.

The two men eventually became great friends. They talked about everything from philosophy and religion to trees and turnips. Boswell knew early on that he would write Johnson's biography, but he didn't start until after Johnson's death. The work was slow going. He watched as several others published books about Johnson, and he worried that no one would care about his book when he finished it. He had to fight with his editor to keep the odd details, like the things Johnson had said to his cat and what kind of underwear he thought women should wear. He felt that these were the details that revealed who Johnson really was. When the book finally came out, it was a huge best-seller. No one had ever written such a personal biography that so completely captured a life, and no one has done so since.

https://www.garrisonkeillor.com/radio/twa-the-writers-almanac-for-october-29-2020/

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

"The Fire of Life"--a philosopher appreciates poetry

Preparing for my upcoming contribution to the MALA course on Communication ("the conversational nature of philosophy"), I've come across a poignant late-life lament by neo-pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty. He writes of regretting, after receiving a diagnosis of inoperable pancreatic cancer, that he'd not spent more time enjoying poetry.

Charles Darwin also looked back with regret at not having devoted more time to poetry (and music). Don't let it happen to you. A good place to start, if you don't already appreciate it, is the daily poem on The Writer's Almanac podcast... jpo

Some months after I learned the bad news, I was sitting around having coffee with my elder son and a visiting cousin. My cousin (who is a Baptist minister) asked me whether I had found my thoughts turning toward religious topics, and I said no. "Well, what about philosophy?" my son asked. "No," I replied, neither the philosophy I had written nor that which I had read seemed to have any particular bearing on my situation. I had no quarrel with Epicurus's argument that it is irrational to fear death, nor with Heidegger's suggestion that ontotheology originates in an attempt to evade our mortality. But neither ataraxia (freedom from disturbance) nor Sein zum Tode (being toward death) seemed in point.

"Hasn't anything you've read been of any use?" my son persisted. "Yes," I found myself blurting out, "poetry." "Which poems?" he asked. I quoted two old chestnuts that I had recently dredged up from memory and been oddly cheered by, the most quoted lines of Swinburne's "Garden of  Proserpine":

We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

and Landor's "On His Seventy-Fifth Birthday":

Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of life,
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

I found comfort in those slow meanders and those stuttering embers. I suspect that no comparable effect could have been produced by prose. Not just imagery, but also rhyme and rhythm were needed to do the job. In lines such as these, all three conspire to produce a degree of compression, and thus of  impact, that only verse can achieve. Compared to the shaped charges contrived by versifiers, even the best prose is scattershot... (continues)

poetryfoundation.org

Humean parenting

 David Hume's brand of parenting would have been no fun.

Nothing doing

LISTEN. Today in CoPhi we continue, with Susan Neiman, to ask why grow up? 

Why wake up? In the pre-dawn of day, and of life, why not snooze through "the sleep of reason" indefinitely?

The short answer for Neiman, we've already noted, is Kantian: perpetual immaturity is a benighted state of dependence on the thoughts and instructions of others, an irresolute absence of courage to think for oneself. It's the path of least resistance, of servile subjugation to the will of others, of ignorance and docility and vulnerability to manipulation by unscrupulous authoritarians. It is to make oneself a pawn in service to someone else's ends, to abrogate one's birthright of freedom.

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things," says The Book. The trick to the art of mature living, though, is to retain childlike wonder and a capacity for spontaneous joy throughout life, but also to own your freedom and independence of mind and will. A properly happy childhood imbues a person with that capacity.

What does a happy childhood look like? Rousseau said "a child ill taught is further from virtue than a child who has learnt nothing at all," while for a child well-taught the days are packed with running and jumping and exploring and dreaming. Those are not nothing. "You are afraid to see him spending his early years doing nothing. What! is it nothing to be happy, nothing to run and jump all day? He will never be so busy again all his life long."

You know who that reminds me of?

 
 
I'd like nothing more, right now, than to dive into the Calvin and Hobbes archive and explore their brand of Nothingness. It's a way of Being the grim authors of Being and Nothingness and Being and Time seem to have known nothing of.

But I have something to do. Freely. I don't have to do it, existentially speaking, except from the perspective of a happy childhood. Happy maturity is something else.

Fully human

Heard a Christian Trump voter on the radio defend him saying "Nobody is perfect, except Jesus".
Jesus wasn't perfect. For example, he got angry, and cursed a fig tree for not fruiting out of season.
Whether he was just a man or God-made-man, the point is that he was fully human.
(https://twitter.com/JulianBaggini/status/1321431762824794115?s=02)

Gaia

 A follow-up to our discussion of mind-uploading, meat-eating, etc.

LISTEN. It was great Zooming last night with the whole far-flung family, celebrating Older Daughter's 25th birthday. When she was a toddler she once flung coins in the fountain outside the old Davis-Kidd bookstore in Green Hills and wished "we would all be together." And there we were last night, together again though she's in LA and her sister's in the 'boro.

Then the 2020 MLB season ended. For the record, I called it: LA in 6. Was hoping for 7, though. One of their stars was pulled after testing positive for COVID, and then joined the celebration. Unmasked, partly.

Will there be a Spring Training? Hard to see past Nov.3, with the larger fate of the human game so uncertain. I'll still be counting the days 'til pitchers and catchers are supposed to report, starting now. 110...

How many days 'til we can report springtime for Gaia? In Environmental Ethics today we wonder: If the earth is a "living organism" is that metaphorical or literal? Does it matter? What part of the organism are humans?

The first time I taught the course in '06 we read The Revenge of Gaia, James Lovelock's second book exploring his controversial Gaia hypothesis that "Earth functions as a self-regulating system" and "living meta-organism." This view

conceives of the Earth, including the atmosphere, oceans, biosphere and upper layers of rock, as a single living super-organism, regulating its internal environment much as an animal regulates its body temperature and chemical balance. But now, says Lovelock, that organism is sick. It is running a fever born of the combination of a sun whose intensity is slowly growing over millions of years, and an atmosphere whose greenhouse gases have recently spiked due to human activity. Earth will adjust to these stresses, but on time scales measured in the hundreds of millennia. It is already too late, Lovelock says, to prevent the global climate from “flipping” into an entirely new equilibrium state that will leave the tropics uninhabitable, and force migration to the poles. The Revenge of Gaia explains the stress the planetary system is under and how humans are contributing to it, what the consequences will be, and what humanity must do to rescue itself. g'r

Yesterday in CoPhi we were talking about Peter Singer, Michael Pollan, and the ethical/ecological case for veganism. Lovelock: “I think that we reject the evidence that our world is changing because we are still, as that wonderfully wise biologist E. O. Wilson reminded us, tribal carnivores. We are programmed by our inheritance to see other living things as mainly something to eat, and we care more about our national tribe than anything else. We will even give our lives for it and are quite ready to kill other humans in the cruellest of ways for the good of our tribe. We still find alien the concept that we and the rest of life, from bacteria to whales, are parts of the much larger and diverse entity, the living Earth.”

Lovelock turned 101 in July ('The biosphere and I are both in the last 1% of our lives') and celebrated with the paperback release of his new book, The Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence. “The experience of watching your garden grow gives you some idea of how future AI systems will feel when observing human life.” Has he been talking to Ray Kurzweil? 

He argues that the anthropocene - the age in which humans acquired planetary-scale technologies - is, after 300 years, coming to an end. A new age - the novacene - has already begun.

New beings will emerge from existing artificial intelligence systems. They will think 10,000 times faster than we do and they will regard us as we now regard plants - as desperately slow acting and thinking creatures. But this will not be the cruel, violent machine takeover of the planet imagined by sci-fi writers and film-makers. These hyper-intelligent beings will be as dependent on the health of the planet as we are. They will need the planetary cooling system of Gaia to defend them from the increasing heat of the sun as much as we do. And Gaia depends on organic life. We will be partners in this project.

It is crucial, Lovelock argues, that the intelligence of Earth survives and prospers. He does not think there are intelligent aliens, so we are the only beings capable of understanding the cosmos. Maybe, he speculates, the novacene could even be the beginning of a process that will finally lead to intelligence suffusing the entire cosmos.

Hmm. “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.” Lovelock is clearly a sort of Humean, reason as slave of the passions etc., but without so many skeptical scruples.

I don't know about the "novacene" and all that, but I do hope I'm still dreaming incredible dreams of the (more-or-less) human/post-human future when I'm in my last 1%. I hope we all are.

And I hope I'm a cheerful centenarian then, too.

Philosophizing with kids

 The Philosophers' Club by Christopher Phillips

What is silence? What is wisdom? How do you know you're here? Socratic dialogue—for kids? At least the answer to this last question is an easy, resounding Yes! The rest you'll have to think about and discuss with your friends, which is just what philosopher Christopher Phillips is hoping for. He has long been leading thinkers of all ages on a thoughtful and thought-filled quest for knowledge, and this picturebook models for young children that mulling over some of life's big questions can be done anytime, anywhere. g'r

Philosophy for Children

In the United States, philosophy typically makes its formal entry into the curriculum at the college level. A growing number of high schools offer some introduction to philosophy, often in special literature courses for college bound students. In Europe and many other countries, it is much more common to find philosophy in the high school curriculum. However, philosophy prior to high school seems relatively uncommon around the world. This may suggest that serious philosophical thinking is not for pre-adolescents. Two reasons might be offered for accepting this view. First, philosophical thinking requires a level of cognitive development that, one may believe, is beyond the reach of pre-adolescents. Second, the school curriculum is already crowded; and introducing a subject like philosophy will not only distract students from what they need to learn, it may encourage them to become skeptics rather than learners. However, both of these reasons can be challenged. They will be addressed in turn.

• 1. Are Children Capable of Philosophical Thinking?
• 2. Philosophy in a Crowded Curriculum
• 3. The Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children (IAPC)
• 4. Philosophizing With Others?
• 5. Philosophy For Children Today
• Bibliography
  • Books and Articles
  • Periodicals
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

(SEP, continues)

Emile

“Hold childhood in reverence, and do not be in any hurry to judge it for good or ill. Leave exceptional cases to show themselves, let their qualities be tested and confirmed, before special methods are adopted. Give nature time to work before you take over her business, lest you interfere with her dealings. You assert that you know the value of time and are afraid to waste it. You fail to perceive that it is a greater waste of time to use it ill than to do nothing, and that a child ill taught is further from virtue than a child who has learnt nothing at all. You are afraid to see him spending his early years doing nothing. What! is it nothing to be happy, nothing to run and jump all day? He will never be so busy again all his life long. Plato, in his Republic, which is considered so stern, teaches the children only through festivals, games, songs, and amusements. It seems as if he had accomplished his purpose when he had taught them to be happy; and Seneca, speaking of the Roman lads in olden days, says, "They were always on their feet, they were never taught anything which kept them sitting." Were they any the worse for it in manhood? Do not be afraid, therefore, of this so-called idleness. What would you think of a man who refused to sleep lest he should waste part of his life? You would say, "He is mad; he is not enjoying his life, he is robbing himself of part of it; to avoid sleep he is hastening his death." Remember that these two cases are alike, and that childhood is the sleep of reason. The apparent ease with which children learn is their ruin. You fail to see that this very facility proves that they are not learning. Their shining, polished brain reflects, as in a mirror, the things you show them, but nothing sinks in. The child remembers the words and the ideas are reflected back; his hearers understand them, but to him they are meaningless.

Although memory and reason are wholly different faculties, the one does not really develop apart from the other. Before the age of reason the child receives images, not ideas; and there is this difference between them: images are merely the pictures of external objects, while ideas are notions about those objects determined by their relations.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education

The Philosophical Baby

What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life
by Alison Gopnik


For most of us, having a baby is the most profound, intense, and fascinating experience of our lives. Now scientists and philosophers are starting to appreciate babies, too. The last decade has witnessed a revolution in our understanding of infants and young children. Scientists used to believe that babies were irrational, and that their thinking and experience were limited. Recently, they have discovered that babies learn more, create more, care more, and experience more than we could ever have imagined. And there is good reason to believe that babies are actually smarter, more thoughtful, and even more conscious than adults.

This new science holds answers to some of the deepest and oldest questions about what it means to be human. A new baby’s captivated gaze at her mother’s face lays the foundations for love and morality. A toddler’s unstoppable explorations of his playpen hold the key to scientific discovery. A three-year-old’s wild make-believe explains how we can imagine the future, write novels, and invent new technologies. Alison Gopnik - a leading psychologist and philosopher, as well as a mother - explains the groundbreaking new psychological, neuroscientific, and philosophical developments in our understanding of very young children, transforming our understanding of how babies see the world, and in turn promoting a deeper appreciation for the role of parents. g'r

“In developmental psychology we talk breezily about the big differences between nine-month-olds’ and twelve-month-olds’ conceptions of objects, or three-year-olds’ and four-year-olds’ understanding of minds. But what this means is that in just a few months, these children have completely changed their minds about what the world is like. Imagine that your world-view in September was totally different from what it was in June, and then completely changed again by Christmas. Or imagine that your most basic beliefs would be entirely transformed between 2009 and 2010, and then again by 2012. Really flexible and innovative adults might change their minds this way two or three times in a lifetime.”

“...raising children is one of the most significant, meaningful, and profound experiences of their lives. Is this just an evolutionary illusion, a trick to make us keep on reproducing? I’ll argue that it’s the real thing, that children really do put us in touch with truth, beauty, and meaning.”

― Alison Gopnik, The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life

Last "w" Withdrawal day

 A note from One Stop: 

Good morning, all! Today is the last day that students can withdraw on Pipeline with a grade of W.

 

Please see procedures below for those students that may need assistance beginning tomorrow until the end of the semester.

 

·        Students wishing to withdraw from individual courses must obtain a signed drop form (signed by instructor and department) and bring that to the One Stop for processing. The last day for forms is December 5^th.

·        Students wishing to withdraw from all courses at this point will fall into two categories:

o   Those with documentation of an extenuating circumstance can submit that information to my office for review. If the documentation is dated within the term and is appropriate, I can withdraw with a grade of W through December 5^th without a drop form.

o   Those with no documentation can withdraw on Pipeline (via Add/Drop Classes, Withdraw link) through December 6^th with a grade of W/F, meaning the instructors will have the option to assign either a W or an F at the end of the semester. They MUST complete the form provided in that link. I will process and send them a confirmation email.

·        Students asking to withdraw from anything between December 6^th and December 13^th must provide both a signed drop form and documentation of an extenuating circumstance to my office.

·        Any requests to drop/withdraw after December 13^th will be classified and treated as a retroactive withdrawal request.

 

If you have questions, let me know. I just thought it might be helpful for you to know the procedures we are communicating to students from here till the end of the term. As always, if in doubt, give us a call and/or send the student over. You can also direct them to withdraw@mtsu.edu. We’re happy to help!

 

Becca Seul, CFLE

MT One Stop- Associate Director
Middle Tennessee State University

SSAC 210

615-494-8910 (o)

615-904-8423 (f)

Minimally acceptable

 “Living a minimally acceptable ethical life involves using a substantial part of our spare resources to make the world a better place. Living a fully ethical life involves doing the most good we can.”

“Effective altruists do things like the following: •Living modestly and donating a large part of their income—often much more than the traditional tenth, or tithe—to the most effective charities; •Researching and discussing with others which charities are the most effective or drawing on research done by other independent evaluators; •Choosing the career in which they can earn most, not in order to be able to live affluently but so that they can do more good; •Talking to others, in person or online, about giving, so that the idea of effective altruism will spread; •Giving part of their body—blood, bone marrow, or even a kidney—to a stranger.― Peter Singer, The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically

Peter Singer's Utilitarian Calculator, and at the Utilitarian party... Existential Comics

An Animal’s Place, by Michael Pollan

The first time I opened Peter Singer’s “Animal Liberation,” I was dining alone at the Palm, trying to enjoy a rib-eye steak cooked medium-rare. If this sounds like a good recipe for cognitive dissonance (if not indigestion), that was sort of the idea. Preposterous as it might seem, to supporters of animal rights, what I was doing was tantamount to reading “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” on a plantation in the Deep South in 1852.

Singer and the swelling ranks of his followers ask us to imagine a future in which people will look back on my meal, and this steakhouse, as relics of an equally backward age. Eating animals, wearing animals, experimenting on animals, killing animals for sport: all these practices, so resolutely normal to us, will be seen as the barbarities they are, and we will come to view “speciesism”–a neologism I had encountered before only in jokes–as a form of discrimination as indefensible as racism or anti-Semitism.

Even in 1975, when “Animal Liberation” was first published, Singer, an Australian philosopher now teaching at Princeton, was confident that he had the wind of history at his back. The recent civil rights past was prologue, as one liberation movement followed on the heels of another. Slowly but surely, the white man’s circle of moral consideration was expanded to admit first blacks, then women, then homosexuals. In each case, a group once thought to be so different from the prevailing “we” as to be undeserving of civil rights was, after a struggle, admitted to the club. Now it was animals’ turn.

That animal liberation is the logical next step in the forward march of moral progress is no longer the fringe idea it was back in 1975. A growing and increasingly influential movement of philosophers, ethicists, law professors and activists are convinced that the great moral struggle of our time will be for the rights of animals... (continues)

The New York Times Magazine, November 10, 2002

==

 

What should we have for dinner? For omnivore's like ourselves, this simple question has always posed a dilemma: When you can eat just about anything nature (or the supermarket) has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety, especially when some of the foods on offer might shorten your life. Today, buffeted by one food fad after another, America is suffering from what can only be described as a national eating disorder. The omnivore's dilemma has returned with a vengeance, as the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous food landscape. What's at stake in our eating choices is not only our own and our children's health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth... g'r

“Imagine if we had a food system that actually produced wholesome food. Imagine if it produced that food in a way that restored the land. Imagine if we could eat every meal knowing these few simple things: What it is we’re eating. Where it came from. How it found its way to our table. And what it really cost. If that was the reality, then every meal would have the potential to be a perfect meal. We would not need to go hunting for our connection to our food and the web of life that produces it. We would no longer need any reminding that we eat by the grace of nature, not industry, and that what we’re eating is never anything more or less than the body of the world. I don’t want to have to forage every meal. Most people don’t want to learn to garden or hunt. But we can change the way we make and get our food so that it becomes food again—something that feeds our bodies and our souls. Imagine it: Every meal would connect us to the joy of living and the wonder of nature. Every meal would be like saying grace.”
“Eating is an agricultural act,' as Wendell Berry famously said. It is also an ecological act, and a political act, too. Though much has been done to obscure this simple fact, how and what we eat determines to a great extent the use we make of the world - and what is to become of it. To eat with a fuller consciousness of all that is at stake might sound like a burden, but in practice few things in life can afford quite as much satisfaction. By comparison, the pleasures of eating industrially, which is to say eating in ignorance, are fleeting. Many people today seem erfectly content eating at the end of an industrial food chain, without a thought in the world; this book is probably not for them.”
― Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

Justice in bricks

 Ethics in Bricks Retweeted

Ethics in Bricks

@EthicsInBricks

·

8h

"The more progress that has been made toward eradicating social injustices, the more intolerable the remaining injustices seem, and thus the moral imperative to mobilizing to correct them." -

@FukuyamaFrancis

(born #onthisday)

Sapere Aude!

LISTEN. Happy birthday, Older Daughter! XXV!

Today (again) in CoPhi we close Warburton's Little History with Rawls's Veil, Searle's Chinese Room, Turing's Test (and Depp's Transcendence), and Singer's Effective Altruism, before opening Susan Neiman's Why Grow Up? Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age.

She says you're fooling yourself if you think youth is the happiest time of life. Ask Grandfather Philosophy. Enlightened maturity is best, though her hero Kant was more about deserving than actually achieving happiness. We should go for both. You should not have to "renounce your hopes and dreams" to get what you want and need. That's Stones (not Stone) philosophy.

In "What is Enlightenment?" (1784) Kant answered his own question promptly and succinctly, for once. "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!"

In a distracted age like ours, and a country like ours (like Brian's) where we're so lockstep-sure that we're all individuals, it takes a resolute and committed will to think for yourself. Even those who think they're thinking may just be re-arranging their prejudices, William James probably wasn't the first to say. Most people would die sooner than think, Bertrand Russell repeated. Real originality is hard. Don't believe everything you read on the Internet, Honest Abe.

But I can vouch for the accuracy of this statement from Susan Neiman: "All the information in the world is no substitute for the guts to use your own judgement... Judgement is important because none of the answers to the questions that really move us can be found by following a rule." Surprising statement from a Kantian, though even he was probably not much moved by the Categorical Imperative. Point is, there's a big gap between the way things are (according to experience) and the way reason tells us they should be. "Growing up requires confronting the gap between the two, without giving up on either one."

If travel is essential for growing up, the pandemic's going to really set us back. Former Harvard President and Obama Treasury Secretary Larry Summers's disdain for language-learning would too. As we've noted in discussing Julian Baggini's How the World Thinks, and as Wittgenstein's "language games" imply, learning a language is inseparable from thinking new thoughts and expanding your mental world.

Is 18 to 28 the best time of life? Neiman thinks it's the hardest, made harder by the conceit that you should be loving it then and missing it the rest of your life. Better to look forward with the poet to a long and gratifying maturation. "Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made."

Today in Fantasyland we notice the precedent in POTUS 40 for 45's dangerous conflation of myth and reality, and wonder if there's any way to control the spread of "cockamamie ideas and outright falsehoods" on the Internet." Only one surefire way, apparently: log off.

And what do we think of the 80% of Americans who "say they never doubt the existence of God"? I think they need to think about it.

The real question

The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do.--B. F. Skinner
(https://twitter.com/tpmquote/status/1320862794091241472?s=02)

A burning thing

  LISTEN. Went to see the otherworldly Chihuly at Cheekwood exhibition the other night. Highly recommended, especially when it's not raining. 

 

Chihuly.com

Today in Environmental Ethics we turn to Naomi Klein's On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal. "Delving into topics ranging from the clash between ecological time and our culture of “perpetual now,” to the soaring history of humans changing and evolving rapidly in the face of grave threats, to rising white supremacy and fortressed borders as a form of 'climate barbarism,'" she has Greta's endorsement as "an inspirer of generations.” 

And she endorses Kim Stanley Robinson's rejection of resignation in the face of inevitability. It ain't over 'til it's over. (Go Rays.)

Speaking of Greta and the generations, the stinging chorus of scolding young voices ("You don't learn these things [anthropogenic climate change etc.] in school"..."You sold our future, just for profit!"... "You have failed us all so terribly") should bother all "boomers," whether captains of industry or mere consumers. But of course the Exxons and BPs and Shells have more oil on their hands, and in our oceans. 

"If emissions have to stop, then we must stop the emissions. To me that is black or white," Greta says. 

Klein has authored The Leap Manifesto, calling not for a leap of faith but of conscience and commitment. 

We could live in a country powered entirely by renewable energy, woven together by accessible public transit, in which the jobs and opportunities of this transition are designed to systematically eliminate racial and gender inequality. Caring for one another and caring for the planet could be the economy’s fastest growing sectors. Many more people could have higher wage jobs with fewer work hours, leaving us ample time to enjoy our loved ones and flourish in our communities.

We know that the time for this great transition is short. Climate scientists have told us that this is the decade to take decisive action to prevent catastrophic global warming. That means small steps will no longer get us where we need to go.

Will a Green New Deal take us where we need to go? What's actually in H. Res. 109? 

This resolution calls for the creation of a Green New Deal with the goals of

• achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions;
• establishing millions of high-wage jobs and ensuring economic security for all;
• investing in infrastructure and industry;
• securing clean air and water, climate and community resiliency, healthy food, access to nature, and a sustainable environment for all; and
• promoting justice and equality.

The resolution calls for accomplishment of these goals through a 10-year national mobilization effort. The resolution also enumerates the goals and projects of the mobilization effort, including

• building smart power grids (i.e., power grids that enable customers to reduce their power use during peak demand periods);
• upgrading all existing buildings and constructing new buildings to achieve maximum energy and water efficiency;
• removing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation and agricultural sectors;
• cleaning up existing hazardous waste and abandoned sites;
• ensuring businesspersons are free from unfair competition; and
• providing higher education, high-quality health care, and affordable, safe, and adequate housing to all.

Some call that socialism, and some are sadly incapable of thinking beyond tired old cliches. "How are we going to pay for it?" We're going to pay a far steeper price if we don't leap. We'll pay with tomorrow. 

But won't it be nice to look back, from the other side, and realize how smart it was to be bold?

Do we have a right to be hopeful? With political and ecological fires raging all around, is it irresponsible to imagine a future world radically better than our own? A world without prisons? Of beautiful, green public housing? Of buried border walls? Of healed ecosystems? A world where governments fear the people instead of the other way around?

“A Message From the Future II: The Years of Repair” is an animated short film that dares to dream of a future in which 2020 is a historic turning point, where the lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic and global uprisings against racism drive us to build back a better society in which no one is sacrificed and everyone is essential.

The film is a sequel to the 2019 Emmy-nominated short film “A Message From the Future” with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez... Produced with The Leap, https://theleap.org... Watch Part 1 "A Message from the Future" with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9uTH... 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m8YACFJlMg

"Young people are ready for this kind of deep change," I just hope enough of them are ready and willing to vote out the old people who are standing in their way. Early voting here lasts through Thursday, folks.

Today in CoPhi we finish the Little History with Rawls's Veil, Searle's Chinese Room, Turing's Test (and Depp's Transcendence), and Singer's Effective Altruism.

And then we'll begin Susan Neiman's Why Grow Up? She says you're fooling yourself if you think youth is the happiest time of life. Ask Grandfather Philosophy. Enlightened maturity is best, though her hero Kant was more about deserving than actually achieving happiness. We should go for both. You should not have to "renounce your hopes and dreams" to get what you want and need. 

So again: please vote.