(Successor site to CoPhilosophy, 2011-2020) A collaborative search for wisdom, at Middle Tennessee State University and beyond... "The pluralistic form takes for me a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of, being essentially a social philosophy, a philosophy of 'co'"-William James
Thursday, October 17, 2024
Wednesday, October 16, 2024
Vox populi
I early-voted at Hillwood High School this morning.
“Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”
― Abraham Lincoln“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
― Winston S. Churchill
Still in the game
We finish Falter today in Environmental Ethics. It would be nice to think we’re all about to finish faltering, as a democratic nation under siege of pandemic, political chaos, and climate denial/indifference. For a brief while yesterday morning, queuing to vote in the pleasant middle Tennessee sunshine outside the Bellevue branch of the Metro Public Library, I believed.
My friends, today when I look out over Cicely, I see not a town, but a nation’s history written in miniature…we exterminated untold indigenous cultures and enslaved generations of Africans. We basically stained our star-spangled banner with a host of sins that can never be washed clean. But today, we’re here to celebrate the glorious aspects of our past. A tribute to a nation of free people, the country that Whitman exalted. (reading) “The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives and legislators, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.” I’ve never been so proud to be a Cicelian. I must go out now and fill my lungs with the deep clean air of democracy. Northern Exposure Season 3, Episode 15-“Democracy in America”
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Questions Oct 17
- Bertrand Russell - #H1 Hunter Dickson; #H2 Nick Luse; #H3 Daniel Chera
- Existentialism - #H1 Mai Gibbons; #H2 Sage Robinson; #H3 hadleigh Flowers
- Something in FL 25-26 or HWT 27-28 - #H1 Karim Al-Amin
- Something in QE Part VI - Does life have meaning? - #H1 Amelie; #H2 Liam Conran; #H3 John Owens
1. Reading whose autobiography led young Bertrand Russell to reject God? OR, What did he see as the logical problem with the First Cause Argument? Do you agree with Russell about this?
2. The idea of a barber who shaves all who don't shave themselves is a logical ______, a seeming contradiction that is both true and false. Another example of the same thing would be a statement like "This sentence is ___." Do these examples show a deep problem with language and its ability to accurately portray reality?3. A.J. Ayer's ______ Principle, stated in his 1936 book Language, Truth and Logic, was part of the movement known as _____ ______. Is unverifiability the same thing as meaninglessness?
4. Humans don't have an _____, said Jean Paul Sartre, and are in "bad faith" like the ____ who thinks of himself as completely defined by his work. Is it possible to avoid bad faith in every situation?
5. What was Sartre's frustrating advice to the student who didn't know whether to join the Resistance? Should he have said something else?
6. When Simone de Beauvoir said women are not born that way, she meant that they tend to accept what? Are any essential identities conferred by birth?
7. Which Greek myth did Albert Camus use to illustrate human absurdity, as he saw it? Do you ever feel that way? Do you worry that someday you might, in work or relationships or something else?
- What is an "unrealizable"? Can you imagine yourself at age 60+?
- What did Cicero say old age does to personality? Do you think that's inevitable?
- What was Sartre's metaphor for what to do instead of trying to "find" yourself? What metaphor for life is implied by de Beauvoir's early declaration that her life would be an improvised "beautiful story"? Do you like either or both?
- How does the "balance shift" as we age? When do you think the shift will begin for you?
- What is "bad faith"? How does Sartre's example of the waiter illustrate it? Can you think of another example?
- What does the latest happiness research confirm? Do you think this will matter more to you later?
- What did Camus say is "enough..."? Is he right, do you think, about absurdity and its overcoming?
- What wasBertrand Russell's advice? Do you know any older people who've followed it? Are they role-models for you?
- What do you think of the Japanese sensitivity to nature and the seasons? 293
- What do you think of Shinto's "no clear-cut separation between the aesthetic, the moral, and the religious"? 294
- What do you think it means to think without concepts? 295
- Do you agree with what "the enlightened [Buddhist] declares"? 296
- Is time more a feeling than a concept? 296 What would Kant say?
- What do you think of Hume's "is/ought gap"? 297
- What can tea teach us? 299
- What is wabi-sabi? 300
- Was Kravinsky crazy? 301 How about Peter Singer? 302
- Should we consider the welfare of distant strangers as much as of kith and kin? 303
- Are Mozi and Mill saying the same thing? 304
- Kant's categorical imperative, again: any comment? 309
- Do you like Rawls' veil of ignorance idea? 309
- Do you agree with the key principles of the Enlightenment? 310
- Is Owen Flanagan right about "no sensible person"? 312
- Is the mixing desk a good metaphor for moral pluralism? Do you agree that it's not the same as laissez-faire relativism? 314-15
- Reading Mill's autobiography led young Bertrand Russell to reject God. Do you agree or disagree with his reasoning? Why? 185
I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day at the age of eighteen I read _____'s Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: "My father taught me that the question 'Who made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question `Who made god?'" That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject." The argument is really no better than that. Why I Am Not a Christian
- Should it bother us that logical paradoxes that seem to be true AND false can be formulated in grammatically correct statements? Does this show something important about the limits of language, thought, and (thus) philosophy? 186
- Were young A.J. Ayer and the Positivists on the right track with their Verification Principle? Or was the older, post-Near Death Experience Ayer wiser about beliefs that cannot be conclusively verified? 190, 194
- Do you agree with Sartre that humans, unlike inanimate objects such as inkwells, don't have an essential nature? Is our common biology, DNA etc. not essential to our species identity? 197
- If you become deeply involved in your work (or seem to, like Sartre's Waiter) are you in "bad faith"? 198
- What do you think of Sartre's advice to the student who didn't know whether to join the Resistance? 199
- Do you agree with Simone de Beauvoir about accepting a gender identity based on men's judgments? 200
- Is life a Sisyphean struggle? Is it "absurd"? Do you agree with Camus that Sisyphus must be happy? Why or why not? 201
- Do you see any parallels between 1962 (as reflected in the SDS Manifesto, for instance) and today? 212
- What's your opinion of "Gun nuts"? And what should we do about the epidemic of gun violence in America? 218
- Do you think of The Force (in Star Wars) as a "spiritual fantasy" or does it name something you consider real? 222
- Was the sudden and widespread availability of contraception (The Pill) in the '60s a positive development, all things considered? 230
- Is the fantasy of perpetual youth an infantilizing force in America? 233 (Compare with our next read, Why Grow Up)
- Are we becoming "fake humans"? 234
Podcasts-Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus, Russell, Wittgenstein, Ayer, Arendt, Popper, Ordinary Language, Trolley Problems
Simone de Beauvoir. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir. "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman," she wrote in her best known and most influential work, The Second Sex, her exploration of what it means to be a woman in a world defined by men. Published in 1949, it was an immediate success with the thousands of women who bought it. Many male critics felt men came out of it rather badly. Beauvoir was born in 1908 to a high bourgeois family and it was perhaps her good fortune that her father lost his money when she was a girl. With no dowry, she pursued her education in Paris to get work and in a key exam to allow her to teach philosophy, came second only to Jean Paul Sartre. He was retaking. They became lovers and, for the rest of their lives together, intellectual sparring partners. Sartre concentrated on existentialist philosophy; Beauvoir explored that, and existentialist ethics, plus the novel and, increasingly in the decades up to her death in 1986, the situation of women in the world.
Camus. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Algerian-French writer and Existentialist philosopher Albert Camus. Shortly after the new year of 1960, a powerful sports car crashed in the French town of Villeblevin in Burgundy, killing two of its occupants. One was the publisher Michel Gallimard; the other was the writer Albert Camus. In Camus’ pocket was an unused train ticket and in the boot of the car his unfinished autobiography The First Man. Camus was 46. Born in Algeria in 1913, Camus became a working class hero and icon of the French Resistance. His friendship with Sartre has been well documented, as has their falling out; and although Camus has been dubbed both an Absurdist and Existentialist philosopher, he denied he was even a philosopher at all, preferring to think of himself as a writer who expressed the realities of human existence. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, Camus’ legacy is a rich one, as an author of plays, novels and essays, and as a political thinker who desperately sought a peaceful solution to the War for Independence in his native Algeria.
In addition to his academic work, Russell played an active role in many social and political campaigns. He supported women's suffrage, was imprisoned for his pacifism during World War I and was a founder of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He wrote a number of books aimed at the general public, including The History of Western Philosophy which became enormously popular, and in 1950 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Russell's many appearances on the BBC also helped to promote the public understanding of ideas.
Ordinary Language Philosophy. Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Ordinary Language Philosophy, a school of thought which emerged in Oxford in the years following World War II. With its roots in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ordinary Language Philosophy is concerned with the meanings of words as used in everyday speech. Its adherents believed that many philosophical problems were created by the misuse of words, and that if such 'ordinary language' were correctly analysed, such problems would disappear. Philosophers associated with the school include some of the most distinguished British thinkers of the twentieth century, such as Gilbert Ryle and JL Austin.
Hannah Arendt. In a programme first broadcast in 2017, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt. She developed many of her ideas in response to the rise of totalitarianism in the C20th, partly informed by her own experience as a Jew in Nazi Germany before her escape to France and then America. She wanted to understand how politics had taken such a disastrous turn and, drawing on ideas of Greek philosophers as well as her peers, what might be done to create a better political life. Often unsettling, she wrote of 'the banality of evil' when covering the trial of Eichmann, one of the organisers of the Holocaust.
Karl Popper. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, Karl Popper whose ideas about science and politics robustly challenged the accepted ideas of the day. He strongly resisted the prevailing empiricist consensus that scientists' theories could be proved true. Popper wrote: “The more we learn about the world and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance”. He believed that even when a scientific principle had been successfully and repeatedly tested, it was not necessarily true. Instead it had simply not proved false, yet! This became known as the theory of falsification.He called for a clear demarcation between good science, in which theories are constantly challenged, and what he called “pseudo sciences” which couldn't be tested. His debunking of such ideologies led some to describe him as the “murderer of Freud and Marx”. He went on to apply his ideas to politics, advocating an Open Society. His ideas influenced a wide range of politicians, from those close to Margaret Thatcher, to thinkers in the Eastern Communist bloc and South America. So how did Karl Popper change our approach to the philosophy of science? How have scientists and philosophers made use of his ideas? And how are his theories viewed today? Are we any closer to proving scientific principles are “true”?
The Scientific Method. Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the evolution of the Scientific Method, the systematic and analytical approach to scientific thought. In 1620 the great philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon published the Novum Organum, a work outlining a new system of thought which he believed should inform all enquiry into the laws of nature. Philosophers before him had given their attention to the reasoning that underlies scientific enquiry; but Bacon's emphasis on observation and experience is often seen today as giving rise to a new phenomenon: the scientific method.The scientific method, and the logical processes on which it is based, became a topic of intense debate in the seventeenth century, and thinkers including Isaac Newton, Thomas Huxley and Karl Popper all made important contributions. Some of the greatest discoveries of the modern age were informed by their work, although even today the term 'scientific method' remains difficult to define.
The Meaning of Life According to AJ Ayer. What was an English philosopher doing at a New York party, saving the young model Naomi Campbell from a rather pushy boxing heavyweight champion, Mike Tyson? The philosopher was Alfred Jules Ayer, who was just as at home mixing with the glitterati as he was with Oxford dons. On the one hand he was an academic, on the other a celebrity and bon viveur.
So what does this logician have to say about the meaning of life?
In 1988, a year before his death, he gave a lecture at the Conway Hall in which he set out his notion of existence. By this time, ‘Freddie’ Ayer was one of the UK’s most prominent public intellectuals, with regular television and radio appearances, discussing the moral issues of the day.
Ayer’s former student at Oxford, philosopher AC Grayling, remembers the tutor that became his friend. He explores the man of contradictions – the atheist who almost recanted after a near-death incident; the deep thinker with a weakness for mistresses and Tottenham Hotspur. What was his contribution to philosophy? How did it inform the way he lived his life? What, if anything, can we learn from Freddie’s view on the big question?
The Philosopher's ArmsSeries 4 Episode 2 of 4
Pints and Philosophical Problems with Matthew Sweet. This week, trolleyology: how should you decide between two morally troubling courses of action? This is a question which affects both soldiers in the heat of action and decision-makers in the NHS. Matthew is joined in the snug by philosopher David Edmonds.
Sebastian Gardner on Jean-Paul Sartre on Bad Faith
Kate Manne on Misogyny and Male Entitlement
Ray Monk on Philosophy and Biography
David Edmonds on Wittgenstein's Poker
Melissa Lane on Plato and Totalitarianism
David Edmonds on Trolley Problems
Julian Baggini on Thought Experiments
Thursday, October 10, 2024
Fwd: Open House / Pizza Party - Thursday, Oct. 17
Wednesday, October 9, 2024
Fellow-feeling
Enjoyed our discussion of Mr. Rogers (and SpongeBob) in #H1 yesterday, prompted by Ella's reading of Lyceum speaker Mariana Allesandri's essay "It's a Terrible Day in the Neighborhood..."
"When your heart can sing another's gladness,Fred moved a crusty old Senator to emotion when he testified on behalf of public television's children's programming in 1969:
Then your heart is full of love.
When your heart can cry another's sadness,
Then your heart is full of love." -Fred Rogers
Tuesday, October 8, 2024
Playing politics with people's lives
President Joe Biden has approved an emergency declaration for Florida, enabling the federal government to move supplies in ahead of the storm’s arrival, but the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has refused to take a call from Vice President Kamala Harris about planning for the storm. When asked about DeSantis’s refusal at today’s White House press briefing, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre noted that the president and vice president have reached out to give support to the people of Florida.
As for DeSantis, “It’s up to him if he wants to respond to us or not. But what we're doing is we’re working with state and local officials to make sure that we are pre-positioned to make sure that we are ready to be there for the communities that are going to be impacted. We are doing the job… to protect the communities and to make sure that they have everything that is needed." When asked about DeSantis’s snub, Harris answered: “It’s just utterly irresponsible, and it is selfish, and it is about political gamesmanship instead of doing the job that you took an oath to do, which is to put the people first.”
... hcr
Ben & Me (& me)
I'm enjoying Eric Weiner's Ben & Me: In Search of a Founder's Formula for a Long and Useful Life... (continues)
More lies (sigh)
MAGA Republicans are now lying about the federal response to Hurricane Helene in much the same way they lied about Haitian migrants bringing chaos and disease to Springfield, Ohio. Both disinformation efforts are flat-out lies, and both are designed to demonize immigrants. Immigration was the issue Trump was so eager to run on that he demanded Republican lawmakers reject the strong border bill a bipartisan group of lawmakers had hammered out.
The federal response to Hurricane Helene has drawn bipartisan praise, with Republican governor Henry McMaster of South Carolina thanking Biden by name for what McMaster called a “superb” response... hcr
Fact
https://www.threads.net/@aaron.rupar/post/DA18qLWg8Oa?xmt=AQGz7VjwHOwTkSavdxaES-uBgzuTtQCP78-YOGvY3hgQ8Q
Monday, October 7, 2024
LAST DAY to Register to Vote!
LAST DAY to Register to Vote: mtsu.edu/vote, until 11:59 p.m. tonight, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024, the final day.
Saturday, October 5, 2024
Audio review for Exam I, & WJ's advice
Here's your audio review for Thursday's exam...
And here's William James's advice for how best to prepare for an exam (after you've listened to the review and re-read the relevant texts):
"If you want really to do your best in an examination, fling away the book the day before, say to yourself, "I won't waste another minute on this miserable thing, and I don't care an iota whether I succeed or not." Say this sincerely, and feel it; and go out and play, or go to bed and sleep, and I am sure the results next day will encourage you to use the method permanently." -Talks to Students-The Gospel of Relaxation
This is how AI says he looked, btw:
Friday, October 4, 2024
Questions Oct 8
1. What's the point of James's squirrel story? Have you ever been involved in a "metaphysical dispute" of this sort? How was it resolved?
2. Who said truth is what we would end up with if we could run all the experiments and investigations we'd like to? (And what's a word his name rhymes with?) What does it imply about the present status of what we now consider true?
3. What did Bertrand Russell say about James's theory of truth? Was he being fair?
4. What 20th century philosopher carried on the pragmatist tradition? What did he say about the way words work? Does his approach seem reasonable to you?
5. What did Nietzsche mean by "God is dead"? (And what's a word his name rhymes with?) Does that statement seem nihilistic to you?
6. Where did Nietzsche think Christian values come from? What do you think about that?
7. What is an Ubermensch, and why does Nigel find it "a bit worrying"? Does it worry you that some of our peers think of themselves as exempt from the rules and norms that the rest of us follow?
8. How did Nietzsche differ from Kant but anticipate Freud? Is rationality less available to us than we think?
9. What were the three great revolutions in thought, according to Freud? Was he overrating his own contributions?
10. The "talking cure" gave birth to what? Have you had any direct experience with it, or any other form of "talking cure"?
11. Why did Freud think people believe in God? Was he right, about some people at least?
12. What was Karl Popper's criticism of Freudian psychoanalysis? Do you agree?
- What is Weiner's favorite movie? What philosophical themes does it wrestle with? What Nietzschean idea does it resemble? How would you respond to the "demon" who proposes it?
- How do we write well, according to Nietzsche? Have you tried it?
- What is amor fati? Do you have an "all or nothing" attitude towards life? What does that mean to you?
- What is the "as if" approach to life? Do you take it? Does it work?
- What is Sonya's opinion of Nietzsche and Eternal Recurrence? Do you share it?
- How does the "Hollywood version" of ER differ from Nietzsche's? Which do you prefer? Why?
Ed Craig (a distinguished MTSU alum, class of '21) introduces the philosophy of William James
MY FIVE STEP PLAN FOR KNOWING WILLIAM JAMES by Ed Craig ("Grandfather Philosophy" on YouTube)
I never had heard of William James before I went back to college at age 74, and I think of myself as a fairly well-educated man. I knew his brother Henry, the author. I have discovered that I am not alone in not encountering James in my education. I have been educating myself in James over the past couple of years and have come to love him. I have found that James speaks to me, and that there are great lessons in how to live in his writings. It has been worthwhile for me to know him better, and I think it would be for others. For any interested, here is a 5-step plan to get to know (perhaps) America’s greatest philosopher.
Step 1 Do a quick Google search. Read Wikipedia.
It helps your introduction to William James to get some sense of who he was and his place as an American philosopher. James is not part of the philosophical canon and does not belong to any “school” of philosophy. English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861 – 1947) claimed that the four great philosophical “assemblers” were Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz, and William James. Good company. James was a remarkable man. A quick read of his Wikipedia entry on his early life, career, and family gives a taste of who he was. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James
Step 2 Watch an address by James biographer Robert Richardson.
An address by James biographer Robert Richardson in August 2010 to the William James Symposium in Chocorua, New Hampshire, on the 100th anniversary of the death of James, provides helpful insight into the type of thinking that makes James so valuable in understanding how to live. (Chocorua was one of James’s homes, and the view of Mount Chocorua from his home, which “had 14 doors which all opened outwards,” is on the home page of Phil Oliver’s blog, Up@dawn 2.0) https://jposopher.blogspot.com/
Robert Richardson, Will You or Won’t You Have It So
A second video from the conference contains the introduction of Robert Richardson and the Q&A discussion after the talk. Watch from @17:40. Note specifically James scholar John McDermott beginning at 19:40 when the discussion turned to James’s philosophical “school,” in which he says that James was not a part of any school, nor would he want to be, and that “in my experience there are persons who suddenly get introduced to James and things change, and that James becomes some kind of a presence in their lives.” (Richardson and Phil Oliver @26:04)
Step 3 Read Jamesian scholar John McDermott’s introduction to The Writings of William James.
John McDermott edited an excellent collection of James’s work in The Writings of William James. In his introduction to this collection, McDermott presents James's thinking in all its manifestations, stressing the importance of radical empiricism and placing into perspective the doctrines of pragmatism and the will to believe. The critical periods of James's life are highlighted to illuminate the development of his philosophical and psychological thought. The Preface and Introduction are the best place to start your journey into James.
Step 4 Read John Kaag’s Sick Souls and Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life.
Before turning to James’s essays and his biography, read John Kaag’s popular book, Sick Souls and Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life. John Kaag is professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts. In addition to Sick Souls, he is the author of American Philosophy: A Love Story (2016), and Hiking with Nietzsche: Becoming Who You Are (2018). It is a good story that shows how James can be a positive influence in your life.
Step 5 Read biographies and essays.
Now begins the study of James. He was a prolific writer and popular public lecturer. The best way to begin a study of James is with a biography and selected essays in hand and read the essays as they appear in the biography.
Biographies:
Robert Richardson, William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism
Perry, The Thought and Character of William James, two volumes (the gold standard for James biographies)
Essays:
Robert Richardson, The Heart of William James
John McDermott, The Writings of William James
William James: Writings – The Library of America, two volumes (Best collection for the serious)
(essays can be found online at https://www.gutenberg.org/
==
"Best book in the MTSU library" (more modestly, the best book by me in the library):