SSHM ch6; WJ "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings"; "A Pluralistic Mystic" [see below]
1. The greatest use of life is what, according to WJ?
2. What did WJ write to Benjamin Blood about education?
3. What was WJ's final entreaty in "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings"?
4. What does WJ say is the difference between resignation and hope?
5. What would we lose, if we were without feeling?
6. When does a life become "genuinely significant"?
7. "To miss ___ ___ is to miss all."
8. "Life is always worth living" if you have responsive sensibilities like ____'s.
9. What is distinctive about B.P. Blood's version of mysticism?
10. What's WJ's last word in philosophy?
LH
- Why did Glaucon say we pretend to care about justice? Does KS agree? Do you?
- What does KS say about Maya? Do you think living well and being happy are the same?
- What was Simone Weil's self-sacrifice? Is her life and death illustrative of what it truly means to care about injustice?
- For Weil, reading is a metaphor for what?
- What do Weil and Iris Murdoch say we need (and not need) in order to appreciate and care about human suffering and injustice?
- What was Plato's ambition, and what 20th century American philospher shared it?
- What does ideology distort?
- What is KS's advice to those who feel overwhelmed by the injustice of the world?
- What was Marx's eleventh thesis?
- Why does KS call Theodor Adorno a cautionary tale?
- What is "the tyranny of the ameliorative"?
Setiya
- The question of absurdity is about what? 148
- Why isn't "42" a good answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything? 151-2
- What did Samuel Scheffler say about "the afterlife"? What's "the Alvy Singer problem"? 161-3
- What does Rebecca Solnit say about the relation between hope and action? 175
- What did Seamus Heaney say about the relation between hope and history? 182
And one last question:
SSHM 1-3
ReplyDelete1. William James wrote that "the greatest use for life is to spend it on something that will outlast it."
2. "No man is educated who has never dallied with the thought of suicide."
3. The text states that James "reminded his readers that they often don't have a clue about how other people experience the meaning of their lives. Better to leave it at 'maybe.'"
Section 2
ReplyDelete5. What would we lose, if we were without feeling?
According to John Kaag and William James, we would lose our ability to notice the traces of our actions even beyond the removal of the source. Kaag illustrates this specifically with the imagery of throwing an object into a river. Despite the fact that the object has long since disappeared beyond view, it still leaves disruptions in its wake, such as the ripples in the pond. By extension, he relates the experience to hope and religion/mysticism.
For me, this question is quite odd but entertaining to analyze. First, what is intended by “feeling”? Not having a concrete answer myself, I will posit several hypotheticals and explore them respectively.
If feeling refers to literal emotion, as in the chemical reactions that occur in our bodies in response to stimuli to alter the inclination of our behavior, then I suppose we would lose all motivation. I believe that emotions are the body’s mechanisms to react accordingly to complicated stimuli. Breathing, though controllable for most people, is typically a background function and needs very little by way of contingency plans compared to other behaviors. It just expands and contracts, with the typical amount of defenses in case the system is mismanaged or attacked (healing tissue and whatnot), but certain systems, such as movement and decision making, are much more context-dependent functions that rely both on specific stimuli and proper motivation to justify their utilization. I believe that, because of this, someone with no emotion (not just little emotion, but absolutely no emotion whatsoever) would be both perpetually indifferent to circumstance and aimless regardless of the situation. If there is pain, even if other systems trigger reflexes or immediate recoil, there would be no incentive to escape further because there would be no fear to illicit the want to flee, and there would be no sadness or panic at the pain because that would require emotion as well. This person would not love or hate, experience moods or even have a drive to eat necessarily because discomfort would not exist for that person. The interesting thing is, though I, having only known life with emotions, would never imagine myself opting for an existence without them (I suppose this preposition might seem more appealing to those who have a far more negative experience with emotion). The almost paradoxically funny part of this, however, is the fact that I am motivated to deny such a decision because of my emotion. Not just because of the positive experiences it has given me, but because it, in a sort of self-fulfilling way, is the reason I feel at all and therefore the motivator for its own continued existence.
(Continues in replies)
(Continued from above)
DeleteAnother strange thing is that, assuming what I established may occur for an emotionless person is true, I would cease caring immediately about my decision if I did opt to rid myself of emotion. The things that dissuade me currently from making such a choice are specifically positive emotions (love, happiness, etc.), fear or sadness at the prospect of both losing positive experience but also at the drastically increased likelihood of my own demise (caring about your own wellbeing is a great way to keep yourself alive), and a dread at abandoning motivation altogether (I would likely cease every hobby of mine). Weirdly, these are only matters which current, emotive me cares about, so realistically there is no sacrifice aside from the comparatively brief period of stress before losing emotion, and yet I still cannot fathom accepting the offer. Emotions are powerful mechanisms.
If feeling, however, is more spiritual, as James and Kaag seem to imply, my answer is very different. Instead of emotion, James and Kaag speak about it in reference to hope (which is similar to my earlier rant on motivation) and resignation (which is dissimilar in that it implies a sort of negative response, requiring emotion). I personally am an atheist and have not struggled with desiring more than the material realm (not as in materialism, but as in what physically exists as matter such as human beings/organisms that exist and can be interacted with). Because of this, I do not derive hope from the potential existence of the immaterial or ethereal. If it does exist, that is very interesting and I would have to upend and reevaluate much of my philosophical grounding, but if it does not, then I am still interested, I just don’t need to drastically rethink my entire existence (which would not necessarily be positive or negative to me, just surprising).
4. He says it is the presence of a chance of a positive outcome.
ReplyDelete9. He used drugs like nitrous oxide to induce altered states of consciousness to achieve his version of a mystical experience.