From MTSU student to Philosophy professor, Kaity Newman finds her way home – MTSU News

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — When Kaity Newmanwalks into Room 202 of the James Union Building on the campus of Middle Tennessee State University, she can't help but smile.

Dr. Kaity Newman 

The room feels familiar. Not just because she's taught here this semester, but because it's the same classroom where she sat wide-eyed as an undergraduate student taking Introduction to Philosophy at MTSU more than a decade ago.

"Standing at the front of that room now, where I once sat as a student, it's surreal," said Newman, a new lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies. "It feels really good being back on campus."

…

https://mtsunews.com/philosophy-professor-mtsu-alumna/

Happy Halloween

https://bsky.app/profile/osopher.bsky.social/post/3m4iclswh5s24

Want me to post the little video I took of our Ghostbusters Dance Party here?

    --Okay.

Boo!

To[morrow] is Halloween, or All Hallows’ Eve, a day in which the dead are traditionally believed to walk among the living. Communities all across the country throw Halloween parties and parades, but Salem, Massachusetts, goes all out...trying to make everyone happy...”*

Bring candy to class, if you want. Best costume(s) get extra bases on the scorecard.

 

* It started with “Haunted Happenings” in the 1980s, a celebration that took place over a single weekend. But more and more happenings were added to the events calendar every year until they filled the entire month of October and now a quarter of a million tourists flock to Salem to celebrate the monthlong Festival of the Dead. There’s a psychic fair and witchcraft expo every day. Psychic mediums deliver messages from departed loved ones — or an expert can teach you how to communicate with the dead on your own. Witch doctors and hoodoo practitioners explain the art of graveyard conjuring. There are séances and cemetery tours. You can solemnly honor your lost loved ones at the Dumb Supper, a feast with the dead. And the whole thing culminates with The Official Salem Witches’ Halloween Ball at the historic Hawthorne Hotel.

Salem has had a complicated relationship with witches ever since the infamous witch trials of 1692. Over the course of a year nearly 200 residents of Essex County were falsely accused of witchcraft; 19 people were hanged and one man was tortured to death. For generations after the trials the residents of Salem Town and Salem Village just wanted to put the tragedy behind them — so much so that Salem Village changed its name to Danvers. But some modern-day pagans and Wicca practitioners have turned Salem into a pilgrimage site so the city ironically, and somewhat uneasily, has made witchcraft part of its marketing strategy. Author J.W. Ocker wrote about this phenomenon in A Season with the Witch: The Magic and Mayhem of Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts (2016). He says:

“The Witches, capital W, religious Witches, they balk a little bit at the Halloween witch, because it’s ugly and it’s a stereotype, and it has all these historical associations with it. Then there are people like the historians who balk at the religious witches, who kind of co-opt the cause of the accused witches by saying that they were almost martyrs for the cause. Then there’s the city trying to make everyone happy.” WA

==
Today is Halloween. Halloween’s origins date back about 2,000 years, to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. The Celts lived in the cold parts of Northern Europe — in Britain, Ireland, and the north of France — and so for them, the new year began on November 1st, the end of the fall harvest and the beginning of winter. The night before the new year, on October 31st, the division between the world of the living and the world of the dead dissolved, and the dead could come to earth again. This was partly bad and partly good — these spirits would damage crops and cause sickness, but they also helped the Celtic priests, the druids, to tell the future, to make predictions about the coming year. The druids built huge bonfires, and regular people put out their own fires in their homes and crowded together around these fires, where they burned sacrifices for the gods, told each other’s fortunes, and dressed in costumes — usually animal skins and heads. At the end of the celebration, they took a piece of the sacred bonfire and relit their own fires at home with this new flame, which was meant to help them stay warm through the long winter ahead.

First the Romans co-opted Samhain and combined it with their festivals, and then the Christians co-opted both the Celtic and Roman celebrations. In the ninth century, the pope decided that these pagan festivals needed to be replaced with a Christian holiday, so he just moved the holiday called All Saints’ Day from May 13 to November 1. All Saints’ Day was a time for Christians to honor all the saints and martyrs of their religion. The term for All Saints’ Day in Middle English was Alholowmesse, or All-hallowmass. This became All-hallows, and so the night before was referred to as All-hallows Eve, and finally, Halloween. WA

Phil Oliver

‪@osopher.bsky.social‬

Boo! substack.com/@philoliver/...

Phil Oliver (@philoliver)

I’ve now worn a Halloween mask to class twice in my teaching career, the first time many years ago. It was time for a new photo to recycle annually.

substack.com

"All great things must first wear monstrous and terrifying masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity." Nietzsche

Kant & AI; Jaron Lanier on breaking our "allegiance to humans"

...the advance of A.I. technology may soon put an end to our species' monopoly on mind. If computers can think, does that mean that they are also free moral agents, worthy of dignity and rights? Or does it mean, on the contrary, that human minds were never as free as Kant believed—that we are just biological machines that flatter ourselves by thinking we are something more? And if fundamental features of the world like time and space are creations of the human mind, as Kant argued, could artificial minds inhabit entirely different realities, built on different principles, that we will never fully understand? These kinds of questions are discussed in the 2022 anthology "Kant and Artificial Intelligence," in which one contributor observes, "You can easily get the impression that much of contemporary cognitive science is heavily influenced by Kant's philosophy."

Of course, it is impossible to draw a straight line from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first, or to say with certainty what Kant would have thought about Ukraine or ChatGPT. As Willaschek writes, "Kant does not offer any ready-made solutions to the questions of our age." But what makes a philosopher great isn't that they have all the answers; it is that they help us formulate our most important questions, even ones that they could never have anticipated. Kant, Willaschek says, "challenges us to critically examine them for ourselves and form our own judgment." Perhaps the Kantian idea hardest to accept today is his confidence that humanity is able to do such difficult things, and wants to. ■

New Yorker nov3 '25

==

Your A.I. Lover Will Change You

Jaron Lanier, VR pioneer and author of "You Are Not A Gadget," says you're still not.

"...Why work on something that you believe to be doomsday technology? We speak as if we are the last and smartest generation of bright, technical humans. We will make the game up for all future humans or the A.I.s that replace us. But, if our design priority is to make A.I. pass as a creature instead of as a tool, are we not deliberately increasing the chances that we will not understand it? Isn't that the core danger?

Most of my friends in the A.I. world are unquestionably sweet and well intentioned. It is common to be at a table of A.I. researchers who devote their days to pursuing better medical outcomes or new materials to improve the energy cycle, and then someone will say something that strikes me as crazy. One idea floating around at A.I. conferences is that parents of human children are infected with a "mind virus" that causes them to be unduly committed to the species. The alternative proposed to avoid such a fate is to wait a short while to have children, because soon it will be possible to have A.I. babies. This is said to be the more ethical path, because A.I. will be crucial to any potential human survival. In other words, explicit allegiance to humans has become effectively antihuman. I have noticed that this position is usually held by young men attempting to delay starting families, and that the argument can fall flat with their human romantic partners..."

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/your-ai-lover-will-change-you

🍕 party

A.I. Threatens Our Ability to Understand the World

Artificial intelligence threatens students' most basic skills. If they lose their ability to understand what they read, will they lose their ability to think?

Last spring, it became clear to me that over half the students in my large general education lecture course had used artificial intelligence tools, contrary to my explicit policy, to write their final take-home exams. (Ironically, the course was titled Contemporary Moral Problems: The Value of Human Life.) I had asked them about some very recent work in philosophy, parts of which happened to share titles with entirely different ideas in medieval theology. You can guess which topics the students ended up "writing" about.

My situation was hardly unique — rampant A.I. cheating has been reported all over the country. But I felt a dread I struggled to express until a colleague articulated the problem in stark terms: "Our students are about to turn subcognitive," she said. That was it. At stake are not just specialized academic skills or refined habits of mind, but also the most basic form of cognitive fluency. To leave our students to their own devices — which is to say, to the devices of A.I. companies — is to deprive them of indispensable opportunities to develop their linguistic mastery, and with it their most elementary powers of thought. This means they will lack the means to understand the world they live in or navigate it effectively.

A.I. is hardly the first technology to threaten our cognitive competence. Long before ChatGPT, the smartphone and the calculator, Plato warned against writing itself. Literate human beings, he foresaw, would "not use their memories." He was not entirely wrong. But few of us would consider this a bad bargain. The written word is, after all, the condition for the survival of these very same Platonic dialogues across two millenniums. Great gifts have often come at great cost. The question is always: Are they worth it?

As students' A.I. use has proliferated, many of its critics focused on intellectual gifts. "A.I. undermines the human value of attention," the poet Meghan O'Rourke wrote in a guest essay for Times Opinion, "and the individuality that flows from that." Other endangered powers: "unique human expression," "the slow deliberation of critical thinking" and the "ability to write original and interesting sentences." As a humanities professor, all these concerns resonate with me...

Anastasia Berg
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/opinion/ai-students-thinking-school-reading.html?unlocked_article_code=1.xE8.cbCE.xWI9KNbZ3YzQ&smid=em-share

Crash and recovery

The stock market crash of 10.29.29, the ensuing economic depression, the New Deal—and then 🎶Happy days were here again…

HCR
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/october-28-2025?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

Try this

"At the end of my show in Princeton, NJ last Friday, I took questions from the audience. The final question was from a Princeton undergraduate, who asked how to deal with the stress she and her fellow students are feeling in our current dystopia.

I shared some advice that my grandfather gave me..."

Andy Borowitz
https://open.substack.com/pub/borowitzreport/p/secret-to-happiness?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

“Adult problems nobody warned you about”

Consider yourself warned. (But some of these are truly "first world problems" nobody should ever whine about.)

https://www.threads.com/@riv.shan/post/DQX_bAxFTO0?xmt=AQF0Yjedztv0Y52ykwLfIrN-tqwaludRBlaZ3fH_XAu5yA&slof=1

Questions OCT 30

Pizza Party/Open House, JUB 202, 5 to 6:30... an opportunity to learn about next semester's course offerings.

WGU -p.165

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

SSHM Prologue

1. Young William James's problem, as he felt "pulled in too many directions" and worried that we might be nothing but cogs in a machine, was ____.

2. What is distinctive about "our age" that makes James particularly relevant?

3. What happened on Feb. 6, 2014 that prompted Kaag to write this book?

(See "Is Life Worth Living...)

4. "Too much questioning and too little active responsibility lead" to what?

5. Human history is "one long commentary on" what?

6. A "wider world... unseen by us" may exist, just as our world does for ___.

7. The "deepest thing in our nature," which deals with possibilities rather than finished facts, is a "dumb region of the heart" called (in German) ___.

==

As we commence reading John Kaag's Sick Souls, Healthy Minds (SSHM), here's a new venture he's recently launched:

Rebind: a new interactive way to read, a novel application of AI to learning. "Turn books into conversations"-

For the past year, two philosophy professors have been calling around to prominent authors and public intellectuals with an unusual, perhaps heretical, proposal. They have been asking these thinkers if, for a handsome fee, they wouldn’t mind turning themselves into A.I. chatbots.

John Kaag, one of the academics, is a professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He is known for writing books, such as “Hiking With Nietzsche” and “American Philosophy: A Love Story,” that blend philosophy and memoir... (nyt, continues)

==
Discussion questions:

• Have you ever felt "pulled in too many directions"? 2 How did you respond?
• Do you approach philosophy as a "detached intellectual exercise," an "existential life preserver," or something else?
• Where would you place yourself on the spectrum between "sick soul" and "healthy-minded"? Does that change, over time?
• Can belief that life is worth living become self-fulfilling?
• Do you know any "sick souls"? 3 Or "healthy minds"? 4 Are they the same person?
• Do you agree that believing life to be worth living "will help create the fact"? 5
• Do you like WJ's answer to the question "Is life worth living?" 9
• Is suicide always "the wrong way to exit life"? 10
• Have you ever visited the Harvard campus? What were your impressions?
• Is "maybe" a good answer to the eponymous question of James's essay below?
• Do you like Whitman's poetic expression of "the joy of living"?
• Have you ever been as happy as Rousseau at Annecy?
• Do you agree that nature cannot embody the ultimate "divine" spirit of the universe? What if you remove (or re-define) "divine"? 489
• Do you agree that "sufferings and hardships do not, as a rule, abate the love of life..."? 491
• Does the "purely naturalistic basis" suffice to make life worth living? 494
• Does life feel like a "real fight" to you? 502

==
*IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? (see the Library of America's terrific William James : Writings 1878-1899... vol.2 is William James : Writings 1902-1910).

When Mr. Mallock's book with this title appeared some fifteen years ago, the jocose answer that "it depends on the liver" had great currency in the newspapers. The answer which I propose to give to-night cannot be jocose. In the words of one of Shakespeare's prologues,—
"I come no more to make you laugh; things now,

That bear a weighty and a serious brow,

Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe,"—

must be my theme. In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly; and I know not what such an association as yours intends, nor what you ask of those whom you invite to address you, unless it be to lead you from the surface-glamour of existence, and for an hour at least to make you heedless to the buzzing and jigging and vibration of small interests and excitements that form the tissue of our ordinary consciousness. Without further explanation or apology, then, I ask you to join me in turning an attention, commonly too unwilling, to the profounder bass-note of life. Let us search the lonely depths for an hour together, and see what answers in the last folds and recesses of things our question may find... (continues)

FL 39-40

1. Who's the (former-fringe) freak and Sandy Hook "truther" who nonetheless draws the line at shape-shifting reptilian humanoids?

2. Where did the reptilian conspiracy idea begin?

3. What started to happen with "unhinged" people in the 90s?

4. What fictional work and author influenced libertarian/conservative politicians like Paul Ryan?

5. What has the GOP become, besides a distinctly Christian political party?

6. What two states "require officeholders to believe in Heaven and Hell"?

7. What did H.L. Mencken say about "civilized Tennesseans"?

DQ

• Why does anyone give Alex Jones any credibility at all?
• Why do people like Ayn Rand's message that selfishness is a virtue?
• Was Mencken right about the Scopes Trial? 375

Artful Dodgers

FREDDIE FREEMAN WALK-OFF HOME RUN IN THE 18TH INNING!

 https://www.threads.com/@mlb/post/DQV_BqYiXYl?xmt=AQF0yTg1XtZqxBb591r1V6kVh1GYQRFNVG2LkwsdJQPVKQ&slof=1

e

Do you aspire to "thrive in an intensive leadership experience"?

Would you like to be nominated to participate in the Institute for Leadership Excellence (see below*)? If so, say why in the comments section or in an email to me. jpo

*Distinguish yourself at ILE

Experience an extraordinary program with an interdisciplinary focus designed especially for personal growth and skill development!

Held each year during the first week of S3A Summer Term, the Institute is open to ALL undergraduate students who have completed 30 credit hours and who have a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.0 or receive the nomination of a faculty member.

Enrollment is limited to provide the best experience for those who attend. 

Thanks to donations we will provide all materials for this 3 credit hour pass/fail course!

https://ile.mtsu.edu/

“GenZ is worse than you think”

Is it?

"…Figures like Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro often advise young people to become Christian, get married, and have kids young. Many, including myself, object to such a narrow vision of happiness, but they aren't wrong about having connection, moral framework, and responsibilities, as footholds in life. Too many of Gen Z have fallen into a life with little connection or responsibility to the outside world because it's no longer a basic requirement to survive. And by responsibility, I don't mean feeling pressure to solve the big issues like climate change, I mean a life of small responsibilities, of things that will not save the world. Driving our friends to the airport instead of letting them Uber. Helping a neighbor carry groceries. Showing up to a nephew's sports practice. Starting a garden to tend to. Little by little we can find structures for our freedom that enable our joy and build a life of them."

Clare Ashcraft writes The Mestiza where she makes observations about identity, psychology, and culture. She is a proud Ohioan.

https://open.substack.com/pub/therepublicofletters/p/gen-z-is-worse-than-you-think?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

Questions OCT 28

LAST CALL: conclude all remaining midterm report presentations today, so we can commence final report presentations (sign up now... or I'll assign a date/topic).

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?

8. What's the key to whether or not we grow up?

==

Discussion Questions
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

Mar17

A stark reminder

"…We are not living in a functional democracy any longer. It's not too late to save it, but it is just important to acknowledge that we aren't on the precipice of losing our democracy. We are losing it every single day. We are not a functional nation with a rule of law any longer, and those toppled walls in the East Wing are a pretty stark reminder of that..."

HCR
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/october-22-2025?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

Wittgenstein’s therapeutic philosophy

How Ludwig Wittgenstein "came to think of philosophy as a never-ending form of therapy."

https://lithub.com/on-the-simple-life-of-ludwig-wittgenstein-and-philosophy-as-neverending-therapy/

Simone de Beauvoir on the art of growing older

How to keep life from becoming a parody of itself –

https://www.themarginalian.org/2022/07/31/simone-de-beauvoir-coming-of-age/

Wittgenstein’s Philosophy Is Daunting. This Biography Makes Him Human.

… Readers seeking a fuller picture of the thought and its context must turn to Ray Monk's 1990 biography, which still has the best balance of context, exposition and anecdote. But Gottlieb's more selective treatment, precisely because it doesn't try to say everything, illuminates everything it touches: Wittgenstein's restiveness, his ambivalent Jewishness and how much, despite his years in Britain, he remained a creature of Vienna.

Gottlieb does not accept Wittgenstein at his own estimation. Whatever the man may have grandly declared, his work "was not an end to traditional philosophizing but a highly personal continuation of it." In showing us a philosopher shaped as much by the musical salons of the "Palais Wittgenstein" — the local name for the family's sumptuous townhouse — as by Cambridge logic, Gottlieb makes a quiet case for including this most reluctant of Jewish lives, a man who could never quite escape the Vienna he left, nor the heritage he spent his life both denying and confessing.

Like its subject's later philosophy, this book finds clarity not through ambitious systematic claims but through careful attention to particulars — and in those particulars, we glimpse not just a more Jewish Wittgenstein, but a more human one.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/18/books/review/ludwig-wittgenstein-anthony-gottlieb.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Questions OCT 23

1. What did John Rawls call the thought experiment he believed would yield fair and just principles, and what was its primary device?

2. Under what circumstances would Rawls' theory permit huge inequalities of wealth between people?

3. What was the Imitation Game, and who devised a thought experiment to oppose it?

4. What, according to Searle, is involved in truly understanding something?

5. How do some philosophers think we might use computers to achieve immortality?

6. What does Peter Singer say we should sacrifice, to help stranger

7. Why did Singer first become famous?

8. How does Singer represent the best tradition in philosophy?

WGU

1. Being grown-up is widely considered to be what? Do you agree?

2. Is Leibniz's optimism more likely to appeal to a small child? Why? 3

3. What was Kant's definition of Enlightenment? 5

4. What do Susan Neiman's children say she can't understand? Do you agree? 9

5. Why is judgement important? Is this a surprising thing to hear from a Kantian? 11

6. Being a grown-up comes to what? 12

7. What did Paul Goodman say about growing up? Are his observations are still relevant? 19

8. Why (in Neiman's opinion) should you not think this is the best time of your life, if you're a young college student? 20

9. What did Samoan children have that ours lack? 27 Can we fix that?

10. What is philosophy's greatest task? 31

Law is king

Over the weekend, as millions of Americans attended "No Kings" protests, President Donald J. Trump's social media accounts responded by posting images not just of Trump as a king—defecating on Americans, even—but also of Vice President J.D. Vance in a royal crown, suggesting that American democracy has been supplanted by tyranny that will last past Trump into the future.

In the United States, no man is a monarch: the law is supposed to be king. In January 1776, newly arrived immigrant Thomas Paine published Common Sense, explaining to his new countrymen why they should declare independence from the King of England. He called for a new government based not in heritage or tradition, but in the law. "[I]n America the law is king," Paine wrote. "For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other."

But under Trump, the law is under attack...

HCR https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/october-20-2025?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios