Montaigne, Descartes, & Pascal-LHP 11-12. HWT 14-15. Rec: FL 13-14. Report presentations: #6 Kailei-Montaigne, Nicholas S.-Descartes, Stella M-Pascal; #7 Alexander B-Montaigne, Isabel G-Descartes, Emerson J-Pascal; #10 Ruby-Pascal
2. Did Descartes claim to know (at the outset of his "meditations") that he was not dreaming? Do you ever think you might be?
3. What strange and mythic specter did Gilbert Ryle compare to Descartes' dualism of mind and body? ("The ____ in the ______.") Does that specter seem strange or silly to you?
4. Pascal's best-known book is _____. Do you like his aphoristic style?
5. Pascal's argument for believing in God is called ________. Do you find it persuasive or appealing?
6. Pascal thought if you gamble on God and lose, "you lose ______." Do you agree?
7. (T/F) By limiting his "wager" to a choice between either Christian theism or atheism, says Nigel Warburton, Pascal excludes too many other possible bets. Is that right?
HWT
1. What familiar western distinction is not commonly drawn in Islamic thought?
2. According to Sankara, the appearance of plurality is misleading. Everything is ____.
3. The Islamic concept of unity rules out what key western Enlightenment value, and offers little prospect of adopting modern views on what?
4. What Calvinist-sounding doctrine features heavily in Islamic thought?
5. What deep philosophical assumption, expressed by what phrase, has informed western philosophy for centuries? To what concept did Harry Frankfurt apply it?
* BONUS QUESTIONS- Sarah Bakewell says Montaigne's first answer to the question "How to live?" is: "Don't worry about _____."
- What was Montaigne's "near death experience," and what did it teach him?
- Montaigne said "my mind will not budge unless _____."
- What pragmatic American philosopher was Descartes' "most practical critic"?
- (T/F) A.C. Grayling thinks that, because Descartes was so wrong about consciousness and the mind-body problem, he cannot be considered a historically-important philosopher.
- What skeptical slogan did Montaigne inscribe on the ceiling of his study?
Will machines ever say "I think, therefore I am"?
Something to consider when we talk about Descartes...
We had a serious and sober conversation in Environmental Ethics yesterday about the difference between living longer vs. living better, between a life of many years vs. a life of completion and earned satisfaction. I was encouraged by the maturity and wisdom of the young people in the room, whose acceptance of mortality stands in striking contrast to that of futurologist/transhumanist Raymond Kurzweil.
Ray's the guy who pioneered optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology etc., and then went to work for Google to help Larry and Sergei figure out how to conquer aging and the biological restrictions of mortal life. He's the very antithesis, in this regard, of Wendell Berry.
I first became aware of Ray when I read his The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, which audaciously and (we should see now) prematurely, if not ludicrously, predicted that we'd have self-conscious machines "before 2030"... We'll talk about this in CoPhi soon, when we turn to Descartes.
Descartes’s famous dictum “I think, therefore I am” has often been cited as emblematic of Western rationalism. This view interprets Descartes to mean “I think, that is, I can manipulate logic and symbols, therefore I am worthwhile.” But in my view, Descartes was not intending to extol the virtues of rational thought. He was troubled by what has become known as the mind-body problem, the paradox of how mind can arise from non-mind, how thoughts and feelings can arise from the ordinary matter of the brain. Pushing rational skepticism to its limits, his statement really means “I think, that is, there is an undeniable mental phenomenon, some awareness, occurring, therefore all we know for sure is that something—let’s call it I—exists.” Viewed in this way, there is less of a gap than is commonly thought between Descartes and Buddhist notions of consciousness as the primary reality. Before 2030, we will have machines proclaiming Descartes’s dictum. And it won’t seem like a programmed response. The machines will be earnest and convincing. Should we believe them when they claim to be conscious entities with their own volition?
Ask that again when they make that claim. If they do.
At least Ray has inspired entertaining films like Her, Ex Machina, Transcendence...
But his desperate quest to "live long enough to live forever"-- see the Wired Magazine feature story on Ray,wherein it was revealed that he'd daily been popping upwards of 200 pill supplements and downing oceans of green tea every day in hopes of beating the Reaper (lately he's cut back to just 90)-- really does look sad and shallow, alongside the mature view we've explored in The World-Ending Fire and that I was gratified to hear echoed by my fellow mortals in class yesterday.
==
The World Is Waiting to Be Discovered. Take a Walk.
…Study after study after study have proved what we feel, intuitively, in our gut: Walking is good for us. Beneficial for our joints and muscles; astute at relieving tension, reducing anxiety and depression; a boon to creativity, likely; slows the aging process, maybe; excellent at prying our screens from our face, definitely. Shane O'Mara, a professor of experimental brain research in Dublin, has called walking a "superpower," claiming that walking, and only walking, unlocks specific parts of our brains, places that bequeath happiness and health.
I have no beef with any of this, but I believe we have it backward. We are asking what we can get out of a walk, rather than what a walk can get out of us. This might seem like a small distinction, a matter of semantics. But when we begin to think of walking in terms of the latter, we change the way we navigate and experience — literally and figuratively — the world around us... nyt
Jordan Martin 007
ReplyDelete4. Pascal's best-known book is _____. Do you like his aphoristic style?
Pascal's best known book is Pensées. I do like his aphoristic style, however I don't agree with his philosophy on God or religion.
Jordan Martin 007
ReplyDelete5. Pascal's argument for believing in God is called ________. Do you find it persuasive or appealing?
The argument is called Pascal's Wager. I do think it has some appeal, however I have always wondered myself how to know if you are following the correct God. I don't think it is persuasive enough to make anyone change their beliefs.
6. Pascal thought if you gamble on God and lose, "you lose ______." Do you agree?
"You lose nothing." I highly disagree because I think spending so much time trying to become a "good christian" is a loss in itself. Pascal speaks about imitating Christians and acting like them and eventually you will become one. This argument completely undermines what it is to be a true Christian and believe in God.
Section #6
ReplyDeletePascal's best-known book is _____. Do you like his aphoristic style?
His best known book is the Pensées. I do like his style and the way he approaches religion.
Hayden Dalton Section #7
ReplyDeletequestion 4 Pascal
-His Most famous Book is Pensées and I'm not a fan of the aphoristic style.
Question 5 Pascal
-It's called Pascals Wager, and I would say it's a persuasion tactic to convince people to act "good," then how people would act with no possibility of consequences after death.
FL #4
-The north thought the civil war was going badly at the start, from the victories that the south won early in the war.
Raymond Curry Section 6
ReplyDeleteI do not think that Pascal's Wager is a good bet. If you are practicing Christanity just to get into Heaven and miss Hell, I think that God will know that. Also the philosopher that said other religions might be true has a good point.
section 7
ReplyDeleteLHP, Q2. →no, he doesn’t. Sometimes, but I find it kinda useless to think about it, mostly because I’m extremely certain it's not true.
LHP, Q3→ he compared Descartes dualism to “the ghost in the machine”. It is pretty strange to me, however I see a little of what Ryle is trying to say here.
LHP, Q4. → his best known book was “Pensees”. And I do like his style, I believe it would be easier to read and helpful in picking up short, thought provoking snippets.
LHP, Q5. → I don’t really find it persuasive, it seems kind of lazy and not as well intentioned, however, I wonder what the agnostic or atheists response to this would be. Probably something like “I guess we’ll see once I die”.
Connor Haynes Section 10 HWT 1
ReplyDeleteThe western distinction between religion and politics is not commonly drawn in Islamic thought. In Islamic thought, there is no separation between religion and politics, and the Islamic legal system (Sharia) covers all aspects of life, including politics, economics, and personal behavior. In this system, religious and legal authorities work together to apply Islamic principles to all areas of life. This differs from the secularization of the state that has occurred in many Western societies, where religion and politics are generally seen as separate spheres of activity.
sec 10
ReplyDeleteMontains near death experience as him almost dying while on a horse. In this experience he did not feel any pain so he learned to not fear the pain of death because it simply is not painful and an inevitable outcome.
Pascals book is called pensees, While I think his style is interesting it was personally difficult for me to grasp.