Happy Halloween

Since it's in my job description to "corrupt the youth," like Socrates...

Tuesday is not too late to bring candy to class (especially Snickers and Almond Joy).  

Pita doesn’t like Target. Or Halloween. pic.twitter.com/J5prhkJGcr

— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) October 30, 2022

Nell and Pita don’t like Halloween pic.twitter.com/KRi45Sogsw

— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) October 31, 2022

Wore this to class just once, years ago… but the photo recurs eternally. pic.twitter.com/WqekrheP79

— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) October 31, 2022

Today is All Hallows’ Eve, or Halloween. It’s believed to originate in the Celtic festival of Samhain, a pre-Christian festival held around November 1 to mark the end of summer and the beginning of winter. It was the biggest holiday of the Celtic year: a combination of harvest festival, New Year’s Eve, and community meeting. Animals were brought in from the pasture and made secure for the coming winter, and some of them were slaughtered to provide salted meat for the winter. It was also a time of year when the veil between living and dead was particularly porous, so the spirits of the dearly departed were more easily able to return to their earthly homes. And it meant that other otherworldly creatures — like fairies, leprechauns, and other tricksters — were more likely to be among us. But even though ghosties and ghoulies wandered among the living during Samhain, the supernatural wasn’t the main focus of the holiday the way it is for Halloween.

As the Christian Church grew, Samhain blended with a Christian holiday known as All Saints’ Day, All Hallows’ Day, or Hallowmas, which was originally observed in May but later moved to November 1. It was a time for believers to honor and remember those who had passed on to heaven. This blending was not coincidental. Early Christian leaders told their missionaries that if they wanted to convert pagans to Christianity, they shouldn’t waste time on trying to suppress their rituals and practices, but rather they should consecrate those practices to Christ and incorporate them wherever possible. This had the effect of establishing Christianity among the pagans — but it also preserved many of the pagan practices instead of quashing them. So Samhain and All Saints’ Day rituals influenced each other and eventually merged, and that is when we begin to see the traditions that we associate with Halloween today.

One such tradition was the practice of “souling,” common in Britain and Ireland in the Middle Ages. Poor people would go door to door on Hallowmas and offer to pray for the souls of the family’s dead relatives, in exchange for an offering of food. It mingled with the practice of “mumming”: dressing up in costumes and performing wacky antics in exchange for food and drink, and eventually trick-or-treating became a traditional part of Halloween. WA

Boswell

It's the birthday of James Boswell, 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...

https://www.garrisonkeillor.com/radio/twa-the-writers-almanac-for-october-29-2022/

Questions NOV 1

 WGU -p.234. FL 37-38

1. What mixed messages keep us in states of immaturity?

2. The older you get, the more you know what?

3. What does the U-bend tell us about aging?

4. Growing up means realizing what?

5. Philosophy is an attempt to wrestle with what three questions, according to Kant?

6. The young have only vague and erroneous notions of what, according to de Beauvoir?

7. Shakespeare's As You Like It is a gloss on what modern message?

8. Philosophers seek answers to children's questions such as what?

FL

1. What was the message of The Courage to Heal?

2. What happened in Bakesfield CA in the early '80s?

3. A line of "consequential synergy" extends from flying saucers to what?

4. What's important to recognize about the Branch Davidian cult in Texas in the '90s?

5. What tv-radio"symbiosis" stoked conspiracism in the '90s?

Discussion Questions:

• "Children make more compliant subjects and consumers." 193 Are we a nation of children, in this sense? 
• Do you know any adults who never grew up, or who say they admire Peter Pan, or who are "young at heart" and "open to the world"? 194 Or any young people who missed out on the joys of childhood? 
• Do you wish you looked older than you do? Why?
• Is life like a journey in Neurath's boat? 196
• "Maturity cannot be commanded, it must be desired." 198 Do you desire it?
• "I wish I'd known enough to ask my teachers the right questions before they died." 198 Do you (now) have questions for people it's too late to ask? 
• "Most people grow happier as they grow older." 198 Does this surprise you?
• "Growing up means realizing that no time of one's life is the best one," just as each season of the year brings its own unique joys. 202 "To be interested in the changing seasons is, in this middling zone, a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring." (George Santayana) Do you agree?
• Do you understand what Kant meant by saying you have duties to yourself? 203
• Have you yet discovered the pleasures of generativity and generosity? 204
• Do you know anyone who treats people as means to their own ends? 206 Do you want to?
• Did you grow up in "a home filled with good books and articulate people"? 209 Do you intend to provide such a home for your children? 
• If musicians and bilingual speakers have more neural connections than others, why aren't music and languages more heavily emphasized in our schools? 210
• Do you see college as an opportunity to "expand your judgment and enlarge your mind"? 213
• Is "think for yourself" necessarily vague? 215
• Are you glad you didn't live before the Enlightenment, when your life would have been largely determined by your father's (and his, and his...)? 216
• Do you agree with Leibniz, that most people would choose on their deathbed to live their lives again only on the condition that they would be different next time? 
• Do you prefer Nietzsche's version of eternal recurrence (220), or Bill Murray's in Groundhog Day, or Hume's preference for the next ten years and not the last (221), or none of the above? 
• Do you enjoy the music of any older popular musicians (Dylan, Springsteen...)? 225
• "The fear of growing up is less a fear of dying than a fear of life itself." 230 Agree?
• Was Shakespeare really saying life sucks and then you die? Or was he mocking that view?

 

FL

• If/when you become a parent, will you be "anxious, frightened, overprotective" and constantly worried about the threat of child-napping? 326
• What do you think of "the message of The Courage to Heal"? 328
• What accounts for the "rising chorus of panicky Christian crazy talk"? 330
• Do you know any real "Devil worshippers"? Do you believe devils exist? Why? 334
• What do you think of Bakersfield's "big outbreak" and LA County's "Satanic Panic"? 337
• "Younger people know nothing about [our Satanic Panic of just a generation ago], and almost nobody is aware of its scale and duration and damage." True? 340
• What's the harm of obsessing about flying saucers etc.? 345
• Do you know anyone who believes that "everybody has been in on" a one-world government conspiracy orchestrated by space aliens? 347-8
• Were the Branch Davidians fundamentally different from mainstream Protestantism? 350
• What do you think of The X-Files? 354

Humankind: A Hopeful History

By providing a new historical perspective of the last 200,000 years of human history, Rutrger Bregman sets out to prove that we are in fact evolutionarily wired for cooperation rather than competition, and that our instinct to trust each other has a firm evolutionary basis going back to the beginning of Homo sapiens. Bregman systematically debunks our understanding of the Milgram electrical-shock experiment, the Zimbardo prison experiment, and the Kitty Genovese "bystander effect."

In place of these, he offers little-known true stories: the tale of twin brothers on opposing sides of apartheid in South Africa who came together with Nelson Mandela to create peace; a group of six shipwrecked children who survived for a year and a half on a deserted island by working together; a study done after World War II that found that as few as 15% of American soldiers were actually capable of firing at the enemy.

The ultimate goal of Humankind is to demonstrate that while neither capitalism nor communism has on its own been proven to be a workable social system, there is a third option: giving "citizens and professionals the means to make their own choices." Reorienting our thinking toward positive and high expectations of our fellow man, Bregman argues, will reap lasting success. Bregman presents this idea with his signature wit and frankness, once again making history, social science and economic theory accessible and enjoyable for lay readers... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52879286-humankind

What pragmatists hope for

 Although Immanuel Kant is best known for his work on epistemology and ethics, he is arguably the first philosopher to declare the central importance of a philosophy of hope. In his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), he claims there are three fundamental questions that philosophy should address:

• What can I know? (Epistemology)
• What should I do? (Ethics)
• For what may I hope? (?)

Despite its fundamental importance, Kant’s third question went largely unheeded for over a century. Even today, the philosophy of hope is a minor topic in philosophy at best, especially when compared to epistemology and ethics. This is exemplified by the topic’s lack of its own label.

But hope becomes a central concern for a group of primarily American philosophers in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries aligned under the banner of pragmatism.

According to Louis Menard’s definitive history of the founding of pragmatism, The Metaphysical Club (2001), this focus on the philosophy of hope known as meliorism is sparked by three seismic events that upend the traditional religious answers to “For what may we hope?” These events are the US Civil War, Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection, and the development of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Classical pragmatists respond to these events in a few different ways. While Chauncey Wright accepts a world of boundless change, he offers little hope or certainty beyond the constants of what he calls “cosmic weather.” Charles Sanders Peirce embraces a reality without foundations while believing humanity will progress toward a gradually perfecting and salvific existence.

But it’s in William James’ meliorism that we encounter a naturalized theism that accepts the tragic nature of a constantly changing reality while providing hope for a world in which eternally perfect unity is not guaranteed but, perhaps, remains possible.

This latter meliorism is what animates the hope of those with a pragmatist temperament similar to William James...

https://erraticus.co/2022/10/27/what-can-pragmatists-hope-for-in-a-boundless-world/

Huxley to Orwell: "my dystopia's better than yours"

In 1949, George Orwell received a curious letter from his former high school French teacher.

Orwell had just published his groundbreaking book Nineteen Eighty-Four, which received glowing reviews from just about every corner of the English-speaking world. His French teacher, as it happens, was none other than Aldous Huxley who taught at Eton for a spell before writing Brave New World (1931), the other great 20th century dystopian novel...

https://www.openculture.com/2015/03/huxley-to-orwell-my-hellish-vision-of-the-future-is-better-than-yours.html

TPA

 Tennessee Philosophical Association

53rd Annual Meeting: Oct. 28-29, 2022
Vanderbilt University
 

 Keynote Speaker

Gordon Hull, UNC Charlotte

How Epistemic Injustice can help us understand problems in AI

 

Abstract. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) systems increasingly purport to deliver knowledge about people and the world.  Unfortunately, they also seem to frequently present results that repeat or magnify biased treatment of racial and other vulnerable minorities.  This paper proposes that at least some of the problems with AI’s treatment of minorities can be captured by the concept of epistemic injustice.  To substantiate this claim, I argue that (1) pretrial detention and physiognomic AI systems commit testimonial injustice because their target variables reflect inaccurate and unjust proxies for what they claim to measure; (2) classification systems, such as facial recognition, commit hermeneutic injustice because their classification taxonomies, almost no matter how they are derived, reflect and perpetuate racial and other stereotypes; and (3) epistemic injustice better explains what is going wrong in these types of situations than does the more common focus on procedural (un)fairness.

Friday, 7:30 P.M., 114 Furman Hall, followed by a spirited reception

 

 

Sessions: Saturday, Furman Hall

9:00 am through 4:40 pm

9:00-9:55 a.m.

Author Meets Critics – The Politics of Black Joy
Lindsey Stewart, The University of Memphis
Comments by Tempest Henning, Fisk University; Lucius Outlaw, Vanderbilt University; Tiffany Patterson, Vanderbilt University
Furman 007

Social-Epistemic Problems with Intellectual Grandstanding
Lucy Vollbrecht, Vanderbilt University
Commentator: Zach Auwerda, The University of Memphis
Furman 209

The Escaped Prisoner’s Story
Charles Cardwell, Pellissippi State Community College
Commentator: Courtland D. Lewis, Pellissippi State Community College
Furman 109

Living and Gaming—Experimenting with Nguyen’s Account of Agency
Wangchen Zhou, Vanderbilt University
Commentator: Ryan Gabriel Windeknecht, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Furman 217

10:05-11:00 a.m.

Author Meets Critics – The Politics of Black Joy (continued)
Lindsey Stewart, The University of Memphis
Comments by Tempest Henning, Fisk University; Lucius Outlaw, Vanderbilt University; Tiffany Patterson, Vanderbilt University
Furman 007

Humean Collective Identity
Zachary Auwerda, The University of Memphis
Commentator: Jim Fieser, The University of Tennessee at Martin
Furman 209

Disagreement over the Beautiful Grounded in the Ethical
Jennifer Lowell Vanderbilt University
Commentator: Qingyang Cui, Vanderbilt University
Furman 109

Secularistic But Not Secular? An Analysis of the Philosophy of William Connolly
Bill Meyer, Maryville College
James Phil Oliver, Middle Tennessee State University
Furman 217

LISTEN

Pluralizing Migrant Psychology: A Non-Homogenous View of Selfhood Across Borders
Ashleigh Morales, The University of Memphis
Commentator: tba
Furman 132

11:05-11:10 a.m.

Business Meeting:  Elections for President and Secretary; Furman 109

11:15-1:05 p.m.

Lunch:  On your own (see insert in conference packet for local eateries)

1:10-2:05 p.m.

Collateral Damage: Black Ideologies Formed Post-Enslavement
Natalyah Davis, The University of Memphis
Commentator: tba
Furman 007

Always Look on the Bright Side of Crisis
Courtland D. Lewis, Pellissippi State Community College
Commentator: Kelly Cunningham, Vanderbilt University
Furman 209 

Metaphysical Infinitism and Theoretical Virtue
William Welchance, University of Virginia
Commentator: John Stigall, Howard University
Furman 109

The Private Servant of the Public as a Privately Educated Public Servant: Foucault and Habermas on the Role of the Public Intellectual
Bernardo Alba, The University of Memphis
Commentator: Bill Meyer, Maryville College
Furman 217

2:15-3:10 p.m.

Nature’s Revenge? On the Coronavirus and Natural Evil
Daniel J. Smith, The University of Memphis
Commentator: Emanuele Costa, Vanderbilt University
Furman 007

Fallacy Accusation and Meta-Argument
Scott Aikin, Vanderbilt University
Commentator: William Welchance, University of Virginia
Furman 209

The Ascetic Ideal, the Threat of Nihilism, and How to Transcend
Qiuyue Chen, The University of Memphis
Commentator: Bernardo Alba, The University of Memphis
Furman 109

Revitalising Baier: Trust Beyond Beliefs & Attitudes
Kelly Cunningham, Vanderbilt University
Commentator: Cheri Thomas, University of Tennessee, Southern
Furman 217

3:25pm-4:20pm

Author Meets Critics – Sextus, Montaigne, Hume: Pyrrhonizers
Brian Ribeiro, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga
Comments by Lucy Alsip Vollbrecht, Vanderbilt; Andrew Cling, University of Alabama-Huntsville; Scott Aikin, Vanderbilt
Furman 209

Author Meets Critics – Aristotle’s Vices
Audrey Anton, Western Kentucky University
Comments by Dan Larkin, Georgia Southern University; Alyssa Lowery, Vanderbilt University; Andrew Burnside, Vanderbilt University
Furman 217 

Questions Oct 27

 WGU -p.192. FL 35-36.

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?

FL

1. What are "squishies"?

2. Who (who should have been defenders of reason) instead became enablers of Fantasyland?

3. Who is Jodi Dean?

4. What is Responsive Ed?

5. Why did Jefferson say America should neither ban nor embrace any particular religion?

Discussion Questions

• Was Locke's "sweet" labor theory of value invalidated by the invention of money? 166
• Do we have a duty to our own humanity to work? 167
• Was Arendt correct about the distinction between labor and work, and about their rootedness  in natality? 168-9
• Was Rousseau right about the value of learning to work with your hands, particularly carpentry?  172
• Do you worry, as Paul Goodman did, that there may be "no decent work to grow up for"? 173
• Is it a "travesty" to call people who work in advertising "creatives"? 175
• Is consumer capitalism infantilizing?
• Do you regularly discard "unfashionable" clothes or other goods before they wear out or break down? Should you? 179
• Do you want to produce something of value? Why? 181
• Do you expect to find meaning in your work? If not, where will you find it? 185
• 
  

• Is there something self-contradictory about being a "committed relativist," if all knowledge claims are "self-serving opinions or myths"? 308
• Have you had any "nonjudgmental Squishie" teachers who taught that reason was not for everyone, or that "someone's capacity to experience the supernatural" depends on their "willingness to see more than is materially present"? 308 
• What do you think of Schwartz's "synchronicities"? 310
• What do you think of Jodi Dean's defense of UFO "abductees"? 311
• What do you think of "the boy who came back from heaven," etc.? 314
• Have you had any textbooks similar to Responsive Ed's science texts? 315
• Will COVID give survivalism more momentum? (317) Will it boost alternative medicine? 318
• Are Survivalists and Preppers "wacky and sad"? 319 Why is this such an American phenomenon?
• Do you agree with Jefferson's statement about freedom of and from religion? 320
• COMMENT, in light of recent events?: "Some American fantasies have become weaponized, literally." 321 
• Do you agree "that so many of our neighbors are saying so many loony things [and Kurt Andersen wrote that before the Q-Anon conspiracy loonies surfaced, and before January 6] is doing us real injury"? 322  

Hypatia

 Ariana's report... (#11)_

==

More on Hypatia of Alexandria:

Hypatia of Alexandria (in Greek: Υπατία) (c. 370 C.E. – 415 C.E.) was a popular Hellenized Egyptian female philosopher, mathematician, astronomer/astrologer, and teacher who lived in Alexandria, in Hellenistic Egypt, just before the advent of the Dark Ages. Her father Theon, a mathematician and the last fellow of the Museum of Alexandria, educated her in literature, science and philosophy, and gave her credit for writing some of his mathematical treatises. She became head of the Platonic school in 400 C.E., and lectured on philosophy and mathematics to large audiences which included some prominent Christians. Hypatia also studied science and mechanics, and her contributions to science are reputed (on scant evidence) to include the invention of the astrolabe and the hydrometer. None of her written works have survived, but several works are attributed to her by later sources, including commentaries on Diophantus's Arithmetica, on Apollonius's Conics and on Ptolemy's works... (continues)

==

MALA

 For those about to graduate but unsure about their next steps...

Life is a ballgame

 (But not really. Cool song, though.)

Feeling your pain this morning, Yankees and Padres fans. Felt it myself a couple weeks ago, and many times before. Strange how much worse it feels when your team goes deep into the postseason before losing, as opposed to going out quickly. Just remember, as Chance the gardener said, there will be new growth in Spring.

And as Kieran Setiya says in Life is Hard, "the past can't be erased. But for that very reason, all we can aspire to do is mend the future." Hope springs eternal.

Meanwhile, my advice is to pick a team. I'm with the Phils... (continues)

Straight outta Fantasyland

The Problem of Marjorie Taylor Greene
What the rise of the far-right congresswoman means for the House, the G.O.P. and the nation.

...Greene's argument was that the "Russian collusion conspiracy lies" had created a kind of permission structure in her mind. As she would say on the House floor, "I was allowed to believe things that weren't true."

In this passive-voice explanation, Greene was "allowed to believe" that a Democratic staff member named Seth Rich had been murdered by Hillary Clinton's top adviser, John Podesta, in order to cover up the fact that it was Rich, not Russia, who had leaked Democratic emails to WikiLeaks. (Later, Greene would modify this conspiracy theory: It was the Latino gang MS-13, "the henchmen of the Obama administration," who had murdered Seth Rich.) Greene was "allowed to believe" that Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Trump's ties to Russia, was actually quietly working to bring down the Clintons. And that "many in our government are actively worshiping Satan." And that Trump was single-handedly battling evil — that, as she reposted from the website MAGAPILL, "thousands of Pedophiles and Child Traffickers have been arrested since Trump was sworn in." This "Global Evil," she was allowed to believe, was all being funded by the Saudi royals in concert with Jewish billionaires: George Soros and the Rothschild family... nyt

Questions Oct 25

WGU -p.165. FL 33-34

1. Kant's definition of maturity is what?

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

FL
1. Who was Mary Baker Eddy, and what was her basic idea?

2. How is Oprah like Ronald Reagan?

3. What's the "law of attraction"?

Mar24