Conclude midterm report presentations
- Peter Singer - #H3 Brooke Hale
- Anyone else?
WGU
1. After Plato, the next philosopher to turn his attention to the details of child-rearing was who?
2. What's the first step of human reason, according to Kant?
3. If we have hope for moral progress, what do we want for the next generation?
4. What was Orwell's nightmare?
5. What "perfidious reversal leaves us permanently confused"?
6. What are you committed to, if you're committed to Enlightenment?
7. What is freedom, according to Rousseau and Kant?
5. What "perfidious reversal leaves us permanently confused"?
6. What are you committed to, if you're committed to Enlightenment?
7. What is freedom, according to Rousseau and Kant?
8. What's the key to whether or not we grow up?
Discussion Questions
WGU
WGU
- Should philosophers pay more attention to child-rearing and parenting? 36
- What do you think Cicero meant by saying that philosophy is learning to die?
- Do you feel fully empowered to "choose your life's journey"? If not, what obstacles prevent that? 37
- In what ways do you think your parents' occupations influence the number of choices you'll be able to make in your life?
- If you've read 1984 and Brave New World, which do you find the more "seductive dystopia"? 39
- Are we confused about toys and dreams? 40
- Do others make the most important decisions for you? 41
- Do you "make a regular appointment with your body"? 42
- Do you trust anyone over 30? 45
- Is it "reasonable to expect justice and joy"? 49
- Are you "committed to Enlightenment"? 51
- Do the passions for glory and luxury make us wicked and miserable? 53
- What does it mean to say there are no atheists in foxholes? Is it true? 54
- Was Rousseau right about inequality and private property? 55
- Should philosophy be taught to children, so as to become thinking adults? 57
- Should children "yield to the commands of other people"? 61
- Should parents "let the child wail"?
- Are Rousseau and Kant right about the true definition of freedom? 62
- Is Rousseau right about desire? 65
- Did Rousseau's abandonment of his children discredit his thoughts on child-rearing? 69 Or show him to be a hypocrite for saying no task in the world is more important than raising a child properly? 72
FL
1. What percentage of evangelicals believe "Jesus will return no later than he year 2050"?
2. Who's "the most prominent blame-the-victims horror-storyteller"?
3. How many Americans say they believe in the devil or demonic possession?
4. How many people in the U.K. said they have no religion?
5. What's the latest scholarly consensus about America's exceptional religiosity?
The right side of the U-curve
…People aged 60 and older in the U.S. reported high levels of well-being compared to younger people. In fact, the United States ranks in the top 10 countries for happiness in this age group.
Conversely, there's a decline in happiness among younger adolescents and young adults in the U.S. "The report finds there's a dramatic decrease in the self-reported well-being of people aged 30 and below," says report author Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, a professor of economics and behavioral science, and the director of the Wellbeing Research Centre at Oxford University…
U.S. drops in new global happiness ranking. One age group bucks the trend
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/03/20/1239537074/u-s-drops-in-new-global-happiness-ranking-one-age-group-bucks-the-trend
Dewey and Wittgenstein (and flies, ducks, and rabbits)
John Dewey and Ludwig Wittgenstein were very different philosophers, but I think this is roughly what Wittgenstein meant about showing the fly the way out of the fly-bottle:
1. Babies have a surprisingly sophisticated understanding of the physical and social world before their first birthday…
Paul Bloom
https://open.substack.com/pub/paulbloom/p/three-intruiging-findings-about-pleasure?selection=4d9a0446-a681-4791-bafb-f2b14423fdc2&r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios
“Intellectual progress usually occurs through sheer abandonment of questions together with both of the alternatives they assume -- an abandonment that results from their decreasing vitality and a change of urgent interest. We do not solve them: we get over them.”― John Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays
And sometimes, you have to show that what you thought was a duck was in fact a rabbit, depending on how you're looking at it (and with whom)...
No rose-tinted glasses for Arthur
"No rose without a thorn. Yes, but many a thorn without a rose." — Arthur Schopenhauer
https://www.threads.net/@philosophors/post/C4voMgbiBPv/?xmt=AQGzWuxT83vYdDTA8n2MfUgSp2i3AtGIcLI5QOFxrgw1Tw
https://www.threads.net/@philosophors/post/C4voMgbiBPv/?xmt=AQGzWuxT83vYdDTA8n2MfUgSp2i3AtGIcLI5QOFxrgw1Tw
Happiest Countries, 2024
Missed the cut:
The Top 20 World's Happiest Countries, 2024.
1. 🇫🇮 Finland
2. 🇩🇰 Denmark
3. 🇮🇸 Iceland
4. 🇸🇪 Sweden
5. 🇮🇱 Israel
6. 🇳🇱 Netherlands
7. 🇳🇴 Norway
8. 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
9. 🇨🇭 Switzerland
10. 🇦🇺 Australia
11. 🇳🇿 NZ
12. 🇨🇷 Costa Rica
13. 🇰🇼 Kuwait
14. 🇦🇹 Austria
15. 🇨🇦 Canada
16. 🇧🇪 Belgium
17. 🇮🇪 Ireland
18. 🇨🇿 Czechia
19. 🇱🇹 Lithuania
20. 🇬🇧 UK
https://www.threads.net/@veryfinnishproblems/post/C4vsMHdCwSQ/?xmt=AQGzroRKipmonTpbvrsVPpXE70zfgLQiLcd5Kp6YmQ4TKA
The Top 20 World's Happiest Countries, 2024.
1. 🇫🇮 Finland
2. 🇩🇰 Denmark
3. 🇮🇸 Iceland
4. 🇸🇪 Sweden
5. 🇮🇱 Israel
6. 🇳🇱 Netherlands
7. 🇳🇴 Norway
8. 🇱🇺 Luxembourg
9. 🇨🇭 Switzerland
10. 🇦🇺 Australia
11. 🇳🇿 NZ
12. 🇨🇷 Costa Rica
13. 🇰🇼 Kuwait
14. 🇦🇹 Austria
15. 🇨🇦 Canada
16. 🇧🇪 Belgium
17. 🇮🇪 Ireland
18. 🇨🇿 Czechia
19. 🇱🇹 Lithuania
20. 🇬🇧 UK
https://www.threads.net/@veryfinnishproblems/post/C4vsMHdCwSQ/?xmt=AQGzroRKipmonTpbvrsVPpXE70zfgLQiLcd5Kp6YmQ4TKA
10 robust psychological discoveries
William James said the world of a newborn must be a "blooming buzzing confusion." Paul Bloom reports that the learning curve rises steeply and quickly.
Paul Bloom
https://open.substack.com/pub/paulbloom/p/three-intruiging-findings-about-pleasure?selection=4d9a0446-a681-4791-bafb-f2b14423fdc2&r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios
ReplyDeleteRoman Phillips H#03
WGU
4. George Orwell's nightmare was a place that was controlled by propaganda where Big Brother was always watching and manipulating enemies to maintain a constant war. Orwell based his dystopian novel 1984 on this very idea of maintaining complete control of society.
6. If you are committed to enlightenment, you are committed to understanding the world in order to improve it.
FL
1. 58 percent of evangelicals believe Jesus will return no later than the year 2050.
2. Pat Robertson is the most prominent blame-the-victims horror-storyteller.
3. One in nine adults say they believe in the devil or demonic possession.
4. In 1985, a third of people in the United Kingdom said they had no religion, while in 2012 it was up to half the population claimed to have no religion.
5. The latest scholarly consensus about America's exceptional religiosity is an economic theory with the idea being that all forms of religion are products in a marketplace based on ample supply and demand. Not only do humans have basic needs such as housing and food, but they are also in need of existential explanations. Although there is a separation of church and state, each religious option in America competes with the others to acquire and keep customers.
WGU-1: After Plato, the next philosopher to turn his attention to the details of child education was Rousseau. Rousseau’s ideas on education and child development, especially in Emile, show his concern with nurturing autonomy and moral independence in children.
ReplyDeleteWGU-2: According to Kant, the first step of human reason is to recognize one’s own limitations. This acknowledgment of our limits is essential for the pursuit of maturity and is crucial to Kant’s concept of enlightenment.
WGU-3: If we have hope for moral progress, we want the next generation to develop both autonomy and reasoned moral judgment/perception. Neiman suggests that raising children to think for themselves and to act morally is key to the idea of moral progress.
WGU-4: Orwell’s nightmare was the fear that society would lose its focus on objective truth. This concern with truth aligns with his warnings in 1984 about the dangers of totalitarianism and the manipulation of reality, which Neiman connects to contemporary issues.
WGU-5: The "perfidious reversal" that leaves us permanently confused is the cultural association of adulthood with childhood innocence. Neiman critiques the way society idealizes youth while viewing maturity as a loss of joy or happiness, rather than as an achievement of wisdom and morality.
#H02
ReplyDeleteWGU 2- According to Kant, the first step of human reason is to understand one's own limitations. Kant points out that the brain is physically unable to comprehend things outside of space, time, and matter, which is a wall that prevents the human brain from every truly understanding everything there is to know about the universe. With this limitation in knowledge, Kant believed one would become mature when they truly understand the impossibility of understanding the noumenal world.
WGU 4- Orwell's nightmare was an authoritarian society in which the government controlled all aspects of life including media and human emotions, turning society into figurative zombies. This nightmare serves as warning for what an authoritarian state could do with unchecked power.
WGU 5- the perfidious reversal is the confusion society experiences when one is unable to view adulthood as a gift, while looking positively at their youth. The joy and happiness one experiences as a child seem to entice many to believe their adulthood is a bad experience. This confusion is ultimately brought about from the inability to see the development of wisdom and morality as more valuable than the childish pleasures.
#H01
ReplyDeleteWGU
1.The next philosopher to turn his attention to the details of child-rearing was Rousseau.
2.According to Kant, the first step go human reason is understanding what your limitations are. He believed that our path is open when we are born but we still do not grasp the understanding of the world. As we get older, we can gain independence through experiencing the world.
H01
ReplyDeleteWGU “Do you feel fully empowered to ‘choose your life's journey’? If not, what obstacles prevent that?”:
Obviously there are some aspects of my life’s journey that I can choose, and others I cannot. One way of putting it would be that I don’t necessarily get to write the whole story, but I can choose what type of character I want to be in it.
WGU “Are we confused about toys and dreams?”:
This is really a case-by-case scenario. Some people do place too much importance on material wealth, but there are many who recognize that no amount of “toys” can substitute for more important things like friendship for example. There is definitely a sense in which “dreams” tend to get diminished as we get older, but that may be due to completely benign reasons (for example if the dream was legitimately unrealistic or foolish).
WGU "Are you 'committed to Enlightenment?'":
Based on the idea of commitment to Enlightenment put forth in the book, I would say that I am indeed committed to Enlightenment, and I think that we all should be. We sometimes get dogmatic and start trying to get the world to fit into our predetermined framework, and it can be hard to attempt to see the world in a more objective way.
WGU "Is it 'reasonable to expect justice and joy'?":
This is a bit of a vague question, but in general I think that expecting justice makes sense, since we should uphold a fair moral standard, but expecting joy does not really, if what we mean is that we expect joy to be served to us the way that justice may be. I believe this because joy is more of a choice than an item; it is something you do. It is the decision to put your efforts into life even when life does not seem to be reciprocating.
#H02-
ReplyDeleteWGP-
Qn.1
So, after Plato, the next big thinker to dive into the nitty-gritty of child-rearing was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He was all about shaking things up in the 18th century. In his book Emile, he laid out some pretty revolutionary ideas about education and child development. Rousseau believed that kids should grow up with a sense of autonomy and moral independence. He thought that instead of just stuffing their heads with facts, we should nurture their natural curiosity and let them learn through experience. Somewhat like saying, “Hey, let kids be kids and figure things out on their own a bit.” His ideas were pretty radical for his time and have had a lasting impact on how we think about education today.
Qn.2
According to Kant, the first step in human reason is to understand the world through our senses and experiences. He believed that our minds actively shape our experiences by organizing them into categories like space and time. This process is what he called the “Transcendental Aesthetic.” Essentially, Kant argued that before we can even start reasoning about the world, we need to have a framework in place that allows us to perceive and make sense of it. So, the first step is setting up this mental structure that helps us interpret everything we encounter. It’s like building the foundation before you can start constructing a house.
Qn.4
Orwell’s nightmare is a dystopian world where totalitarianism reigns supreme. In this grim future, society is under constant surveillance by the government, led by the omnipresent figure of Big Brother. The state controls every aspect of life, including thoughts and behaviors, through propaganda, censorship, and psychological manipulation.
Orwell’s vision warned about the dangers of unchecked political power and the loss of individual freedoms. He feared a world where truth is distorted, history is rewritten, and people are stripped of their autonomy and humanity. It’s a chilling reminder of what can happen when power is concentrated in the hands of a few and used to oppress and control the masses.
Maheswari Ramesh (Maahi)
Erick Martinez H02
ReplyDeleteWGU Discussion Questions
• Do others make the most important decisions for you? 41
Every time we have to make a tough decision it's easy to grab input from others as a way of seeing other perspectives and it makes deciding easier. In reality, some of us just want to hear someone else make the decision and run with that. If someone else would make that decision, it must be the right one? We allow other people to influence our thoughts, because even if we don't go with the decision others input, their opinions still impact our choice one way or another. So, yes in many cases we don't really make our own decisions, we tend to give that power to the opinions we hear from other people.
• Do the passions for glory and luxury make us wicked and miserable? 53
There should be a limit to our passion for glory and luxury. We can't want it all, that will lead to wicked and miserable lives. There should be passion, and we should have goals, that way we create meaning to our lives. But we shouldn't want certain things just to have them, there should be purpose behind these goals we create, they should impact our lives in meaningful ways. Yes, it's okay to dream big, but when our goals are built solely on wants, they can make our lives miserable.
• Do you feel fully empowered to "choose your life's journey"? If not, what obstacles prevent that? 37
I do feel empowered to choose my own journey. I think that having an education and growing up with my parents not having the same opportunities fills me with even more desire to choose how my life may look. There are times where that does change though especially when I think of the future and become uncertain of what it may look like, I feel like I lose control and let whatever happens happen without caring about my goals. I feel like I get to a point where I’m not striving for anything. But every day I choose my own life’s journey and continue to do so.
#H01
ReplyDeleteWGU-39
I have read both 1984 and Brave new world. Both do a wonderful job of revealing possible certainties in the future. Brave new world, however, is far more seductive in its attempts. Its entire premise is along the lines of perfectly catering to everyone's needs through pleasure. No matter what caste you are born into no one knows any better as the children are genetically engineered to endure their circumstances and enjoy it. It is quite scary to say the least.
WGU-45
Yes, it may be dogmatic but I do believe that there are many people over the age of thirty who have great insight. I think it would be very intellectually dishonest for me to say that I could not learn anything from someone over thirty. I may not speak for all our generation, yet we could advance so much quicker if we would humble ourselves to learn from older people's past mistakes.
WGU 54-
I believe it means that pleasure, easiness of life, and success often do breed grounds for atheism. Those who truly live 'in the foxholes' usually do believe in God because they realize their need for something greater and something within their inner conscience tells them the world should not be this way. Whenever you do not know where your next meal is coming from or where you will be sleeping it changes confidence in yourself. You have to rely on God for basic needs because you do not have anything. When people have 'everything' they could want, I believe it incites a falsehood of not needing God because everyone wants to be their own god of their life, myself included. As I used to say to God in my heart " let me live how I want to live, who are you to tell me what to do" until I realized that I needed far more than this world could ever give me.
H#2
ReplyDeleteWGU #1 - After Plato the next philosopher to look into child-rearing was Rousseau.
WGU #2 - The first step of human reasoning according to Kant is to understand our own limitations first. Kant said after we realized our limits to which we could understand about our world then we could mature.
WGU #4 - Orwell's nightmare is basically a society controlled in all aspects by a government. Society loses focus on goals and are like zombies with no passion or individualism.
H03:
ReplyDeleteWGU
1: After Plato the next philosopher to turn their attention to child rearing was none other than Rousseau
2: The first step of human reason according to Kant was that humans could realize that they are free to choose their lifes journey.
4. Orwells fear was for society to be corrupted by governments seeking their own goals and as a result losing freedoms even if it isn't apparent.
H03:
ReplyDeleteWGU Q1: Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the next philosopher to turn the attention to child-rearing. Rousseau believed in a natural education. The kind of education that discards routines and conventional ways of learning. The type of learning that one could form naturally from problem solving. He thought no child's day should look like the last. A day should not be set and planned but created on the way.
WGU Q6: Enlightenment can bring about many various ideas. Enlightenment sets forth on self-thought allowing people to think and learn for themselves. It creates a moral change in society. Enlightenment would be committed to growth in society. This would allow for educational advancements, human behavior improvement, and freedom of the mind.
WGU Q7: The key to growing or not growing up is understanding the world as it is today. It is understanding the unfairness and corruption we see before us daily. Not growing up means not understanding the cruelty of the world. The world can be so unfair and harsh. Understanding the aspects of it that made it that way would result in maturity.
#H1 - Zoe Kuhn
ReplyDeleteWGU - #1
After Plato, the next philosopher to turn his attention to the details of child-rearing was Rousseau.
WGU - #2
According to Kant, the first step of human reason is to know your own limits.
WGU - #3
If we have hope for moral progress, we want for the next generation to act with a moral code and grow with their character/morals.