Presentations-
Russell - #1 Ainsley
Ayer - #2 Truett [We'll get to these on Thursday, today we're reading the Declaration...]
Camus - #2 Caleb
Sartre - #2 - Ava
19 Wittgenstein, Arendt, Popper & Kuhn, or Foot & Thomson -
Wittgenstein - #1 Kiersten #2 Johnathane #3 Shaun
Popper & Kuhn - #1 Graham W
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?
Weiner ch 13
- 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?
HWT
- 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
Discussion Questions
- 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
FL
- 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
==
Bertrand Russell's River of Life, message to future generations, and why he was not a Christian
‘An individual human existence should be like a river – small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past boulders and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and – in the end – without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man or woman who, in old age, can see his or her life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things they care for will continue.’ Bertrand Russell, How to Grow Old
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQJ3sqkdCRE
There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ’s moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment....
When you come to look into this argument from design, it is a most astonishing thing that people can believe that this world, with all the things that are in it, with all its defects, should be the best that omnipotence and omniscience has been able to produce in millions of years. I really cannot believe it. Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce nothing better than the Ku-Klux-Klan or the Fascists?
...
Of course I know that the sort of intellectual arguments that I have been talking to you about are not what really moves people. What really moves people to believe in God is not any intellectual argument at all. Most people believe in God because they have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason. Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth -
a graphic novel featuring Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein
Podcasts-Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus, Russell, Wittgenstein, Ayer, Arendt, Popper, Ordinary Language, Trolley Problems
In Our Time
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.
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.
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.
Sartre. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jean-Paul Sartre, the French novelist, playwright, and philosopher who became the king of intellectual Paris and a focus of post war politics and morals. Sartre's own life was coloured by jazz, affairs, Simone de Beauvoir and the intellectual camaraderie of Left Bank cafes. He maintained an extraordinary output of plays, novels, biographies, and philosophical treatises as well as membership of the communist party and a role in many political controversies. He produced some wonderful statements: "my heart is on the left, like everyone else's", and "a human person is what he is not, not what he is", and, most famously "we are condemned to be free". Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how Sartre's novels and plays express his ideas and what light Sartre's life brings to bear on his philosophy and his philosphy on his life.
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.
Bertrand Russell. Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential British philosopher Bertrand Russell. Born in 1872 into an aristocratic family, Russell is widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytic philosophy, which is today the dominant philosophical tradition in the English-speaking world. In his important book The Principles of Mathematics, he sought to reduce mathematics to logic. Its revolutionary ideas include Russell's Paradox, a problem which inspired Ludwig Wittgenstein to pursue philosophy. Russell's most significant and famous idea, the theory of descriptions, had profound consequences for the discipline.
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.
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.
Ludwig Wittgenstein. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, work and legacy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. There is little doubt that he was a towering figure of the twentieth century; on his return to Cambridge in 1929 Maynard Keynes wrote, “Well, God has arrived. I met him on the 5:15 train”.Wittgenstein is credited with being the greatest philosopher of the modern age, a thinker who left not one but two philosophies for his descendents to argue over: The early Wittgenstein said, “the limits of my mind [language] mean the limits of my world”; the later Wittgenstein replied, “If God looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of”. Language was at the heart of both. Wittgenstein stated that his purpose was to finally free humanity from the pointless and neurotic philosophical questing that plagues us all. As he put it, “To show the fly the way out of the fly bottle”.How did he think language could solve all the problems of philosophy? How have his ideas influenced contemporary culture? And could his thought ever achieve the release for us that he hoped it would?With Ray Monk, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton and author of Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius; Barry Smith, Lecturer in Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London; Marie McGinn, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of York.
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.
==
Philosophy Bites
Sebastian Gardner on Jean-Paul Sartre on Bad Faith
Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness is sometimes described as the bible of existentialism. At its core is the notion of Bad Faith. For this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast Sebastian Gardner, author of a recent book about Bei...
Kate Manne on Misogyny and Male Entitlement
Cornell philosopher Kate Manne discusses misognyn, male entitlement, together with the notion of 'himpathy', a term she coined, in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. Manne is the author of two recent highly influential books, ...
Ray Monk on Philosophy and Biography
Ray Monk discusses the relationship between philosophy and a philosopher's life in this interview with Nigel Warburton for the Philosophy Bites podcast. Can understanding the biographical context of a philosopher and the type of person t...
David Edmonds on Wittgenstein's Poker
For this second special lockdown episode of Philosophy Bites, Nigel Warburton interviewed David Edmonds about his bestseller Wittgenstein's Poker, which he wrote with John Eidinow. This brilliant book is an exploration of an event that...
Melissa Lane on Plato and Totalitarianism
Was Plato's ideal state a totalitarian one? Karl Popper, thought so, and made his case in The Open Society and Its Enemies. Melissa Lane, author of Plato's Progeny discusses Popper's critique of Plato in this episode of Philosophy Bites....
David Edmonds on Trolley Problems
Is it ever morally acceptable to kill one person to save five? Most people think that it can be. But are we consistent in this? In this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast Nigel Warburton interviews David Edmonds (co-creator of Philo...
Julian Baggini on Thought Experiments
Philosophers often use elaborate thought experiments in their writing. Are these anything more than rhetorical flourishes? Or do they reveal important aspects of the questions under discussion. Julian Baggini, editor of The Philosophers'...
==
Sartre - existence precedes essence
"...there are two kinds of existentialists. There are, on the one hand, the Christians, amongst whom I shall name Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel, both professed Catholics; and on the other the existential atheists, amongst whom we must place Heidegger as well as the French existentialists and myself. What they have in common is simply the fact that they believe that existence comes before essence – or, if you will, that we must begin from the subjective. What exactly do we mean by that?
...
--Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946)
--Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946)
LHP:
ReplyDelete2. The idea of a barber who shaves all who don't shave themselves is a logical paradox, a seeming contradiction that is both true and false. Another example of the same thing would be a statement like "This sentence is False." Do these examples show a deep problem with language and its ability to accurately portray reality?
I've been hearing 'this sentence is false' for years, and I never thought that this meant that language is flawed. Instead, I've always taken it to mean that humans are creative and our language is wider than our understanding of reality- which I find beautiful because it allows us to create art. Moments of peace found in utter nonsense.
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?
"You decide." It's your freedom to choose. Slightly cruel-- but very honest from his perspective. I like that manner of thinking behind it. We all, for ourselves decide what being human means to us. Do you put more importance on compassion, love, and care for the elderly, or righteousness and liberty and betterment of all above one?
Now, the kid was just looking for some guidance from someone he looked up to to learn what it means to be human, best to let him down gently. "I can't tell you how to be a human. All I can tell you is what I thought humanity looked like. You have to determine for yourself if that is what you believe humanity should look like. Be the human you want to see more of.
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?
Women aren't born women, we are born people and then defined as women (and in her time often defined as lesser and limited because of it until the definition of women was forcibly expanded). We are trained from a young age to accept the mantel of women. Brain chemicals help induce some of that malleability and ease of which the mantel fits for some of us, but not all of us, and they certainly can't explain corsets or petticoats or parasols.
Are any essential identities conferred at birth? Considering the still ongoing debate of nature v nurture, I would say we cannot be certain. Gender is not limited to sex. Neither is sexual orientation. Neither is identity limited to the human body we were born in. If everything is genetic based and conferred at birth, some of these would be very confusing alterations to the code and likely be passed on-- but no evidence of that has been found-- (although there is still much more digging to do inside the human genome). Our other options would be it is either 'soul' or learned, right? But wait, what about mixtures of both? Or all three?
And what about less noticed traits? Can we say with fact: these things led to that? Things like my love of stories may have been a part of my genetic legacy and born talents-- after all I do good focus work (I can work on something for hours on end without breaks-- even when I'm not particularly interested/invested) and I have a broad imagination and a good head for remembering songs and rhythms that would have been necessary to pass down histories in oral cultures. However, my love of reading could also have been due to the books I watched my older siblings practice reading on mom's lap as I lay across the back of the couch. Happy memories lead to later happiness when I do it myself-- like smells of grandma's cooking and other nostalgia leads. It could be a mix-- 50/50 27/73 2/98. It could be a happy coincidence that the two met and merged and formed my voracious appetite for new stories. I can't prove any of it, and any sort of proper testing would require unethical experimentation, time travel, and/or clones (ask me how I know...).
DeleteCertainly, we can say people with certain genetics are better suited to different tasks-- like long fingers and piano players. However, we cannot prove that these people will enjoy the pastime of pianos more due to their genetics and will self identify as pianists-- especially if they are brought into or find themselves playing piano without the outside positive input of people praising their ability-- aka positive reinforcement gifted after birth for the identity of pianist. That would devaluate our data because it could be a learned habit so that they are praised or can remember the praise via the nostalgia tug.
Again, any testing would be highly unethical... Gahhh. I thought I had made it short enough this time.
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?
ReplyDeleteThis is a logical paradox. An example of this is the statement, “This sentence is false.” Yes, these examples show how language is not a precise tool to express logical problems and the nature of reality. Logic is a naturally tricky thing, and the vagueness of language doesn’t help to make explaining logical progressions any clearer.
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?
His advice to the student was that he should make his own decision, as he is a human being with the freedom to decide for himself what he does, regardless of the reason for his decision. I think Sartre gave the student the correct answer in this case, but he could have given a better one. The student may have been unhappy because he had asked for advice and received none.
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?
She meant that women tend to accept what society (or rather men) has defined women to be as what they objectively are. She said that there are no essentially identities conferred by birth and that every person has the freedom to choose how they live regardless of the way they are born.
Section #1
ReplyDelete1: 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?
Reading John Stuart Mill's "Autobiography" was what highly influenced Russell to reject God. What made him ultimately reject the First Cause Argument was asking the question: "What caused God," which rendered the First Cause Argument unreliable.
2: A.J. Ayer's Verification Principle, stated in his 1936 book Language, Truth and Logic, was part of the movement known as Logical Positivism.
Is unverifiability the same thing as meaninglessness?
To me, no. Something can be unverifiable but still meaningful... or insightful to think about, at least.
3: Regarding Ayer's argument about discussing claims
I actually like Ayer's idea that stating something vague like "kindness is good" is meaningless in regard to advancing overall human knowledge/discussions. I think taking a more evidence-based approach to claims can help us deduce much more than simply using the "A=B because it's obvious" approach.
Section #1
ReplyDelete1.) Reading the autobiography of John Stuart Mill led young Bertrand Russell to reject belief in God. Russell thought the First Cause Argument had a logical problem. If everything must have a cause, then God would also need a cause. If something can exist without a cause, then the universe itself could exist without one, so the argument does not prove God. I agree with Russell to an extent because the argument seems to make a special exception for God.
2.) The idea of a barber who shaves all who do not shave themselves is a logical paradox, a seeming contradiction that is both true and false. Another example would be the statement “This sentence is false.” These examples do not necessarily show a deep problem with language itself. They mostly show that certain kinds of self-referencing statements can create confusion or contradictions.
3.) A.J. Ayer’s Verification Principle, stated in his 1936 book Language, Truth and Logic, was part of the movement known as logical positivism. The principle says that a statement is meaningful only if it can be empirically verified or is analytically true. Unverifiability is not exactly the same thing as meaninglessness in everyday language, but according to Ayer’s view, a statement that cannot be verified does not have real cognitive meaning.
LHP
ReplyDelete3. A.J. Ayer's Verification Principle, stated in his 1936 book Language, Truth and Logic, was part of the movement known as logical positivism. Is unverifiability the same thing as meaninglessness?
For A.J. Ayer and the logical positivist movement, unverifiability is the same thing as meaninglessness. They argue that a statement must be true by definition or empirically verifiable in order to be considered meaningful. I appreciate the usefulness of this protocol for determining whether something is true or not scientifically. However, I do not agree with the presumption that something must be verifiable to be meaningful. For example, my friends and I sit around and discuss the possibility of extraterrestrial life in our universe for fun. If there was a problem that needed to be solved or a truth to be discovered then this conversation would be pretty meaningless. On the other hand, a conversation's meaningfulness can also be determined by its context. For instance, I really enjoy these conversations about aliens and it brings curiosity and excitement to my life. Therefore in the context of entertainment, these conversations do provide meaning.
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?
Sartre’s advice to the student was a reminder. A reminder that the student was free to choose his own path and that he should choose it for himself. I do not know how to feel about this. Part of me likes Sartre’s advice, because he basically says that he will not decide the student’s fate for him, but that he must choose that alone. I also want to imagine what the students' motivation behind asking Sartre's advice was. Perhaps the student was coming to Sartre for clarity and wisdom that only someone older could possess. It is possible that Sartre's response was the wrong one for the student’s needs. It is also possible that if Sartre were to offer up his practical advice, it would make the student's fate his responsibility. In providing a more self reflecting answer to the student, Sartre says, in a simple way, “look bro, you got to figure that out on your own”.
Weiner
8. What was Bertrand Russell's advice? Do you know any older people who've followed it? Are they role-models for you?
Bertrand Russell’s advice was to expand the circle of your interests as you age. He describes the beginning of a person’s life as a narrow river rushing past boulders and under bridges, and then as you age the river widens, the banks erode, and finally the river merges with a great sea. Therefore, by widening our interests, we become more connected with the world’s vast amount of information and knowledge out there waiting to be learned. My grandma is the best example of an older person in my life who practices a life of boundless curiosity, and it has had a profound impact on how I interact with life. She is an avid reader who is constantly exploring topics and histories outside of her comfort zone. In addition, she never stops experimenting with different modes of living. She has her established habits like reading in the hot tub at 5am every morning, but then every once in a while an aspect of her day will change. She might try meditating, or learning a language, or taking a class at the local college, etc.. I don’t give justice in my writing as to how adventurous my grandmother is. Despite this, she inspires me to never stop learning and reminds me that life has no shortage of things to be discovered.
1. Reading whose autobiography led young Bertrand Russell to reject God? Reading John Stuart Mill's autobiography led young Bertrand Russell to reject God.
ReplyDelete3. 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? A.J. Ayer’s Verification Principle, stated in his 1936 book Language, Truth, and Logic, was part of the movement known as logical positivism. I don't think unverifiability is the same thing as meaninglessness, something could be meaningless but still be verifiable or the other way around.
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? Humans don’t have an essence, said Jean Paul Sarte, and are in “bad faith” like the waiter who thinks of himself as completely defined by his work. I don’t think it is possible to avoid bad faith in every situation we are in.
Section #1
ReplyDeleteReading John Stuart Mill's autobiography led Russell to rejecting god. Mills asked "what caused god?" which went against Russell's previous beliefs of the first cause argument explaining that everything has a cause.
The idea of a barber who only shaves people who don't shave themselves so he can't shave himself either is an example of a logical paradox! "This statement is false" is also a paradox! I love the idea of paradox's and I feel like I could go down a rabbit hole of them. I feel like I try to find paradox's in a lot of things and end up stressing myself out.
AJ Ayer's verification principle first appeared in his book Language, Truth and Logic as a part of the logical positivism act. I don't think that things are meaningless of they're invulnerable but they're not as meaningful as they could be.
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?
ReplyDeleteReading John Stuart Mill’s autobiography is what led him to reject God. His logical problem with the first cause argument was that if there is one thing that doesn’t have a cause then it can’t be true that “everything has a cause.” It made more sense to him to think that even God had a cause. I’m not sure that I agree with this critique of the first cause argument. My understanding of the first cause argument was that God was the first cause because he is an all-powerful, all-knowing being and needs no cause because of that. Kind of like if something has no cause from our physical world, it must be something else. I’m not saying I agree with the first cause argument, but I don’t think I understand this particular critique.
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?
The idea of a barber who shaves all who don’t shave themselves is a logical fallacy, and so is a statement like “This sentence is false.” I don’t think the existence of paradoxes show a deep problem with language’s ability to accurately portray reality. In the barber situation, you could simply add “and himself” to the end of the statement to solve the problem. Language can still communicate this situation about the barber, so I don’t think it’s a problem with language.
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?
Human beings don’t have an essence, said Jean Paul Sartre, and we aren’t here for reason. Like the waiter did, “bad faith” is running away from freedom; telling yourself the lie that you aren’t really free to choose what to do with your life when, according to Sartre, you are. I think sometimes there are factors that force us to make certain choices in which it would feel like we do not have freedom. For example, people need to work jobs to afford food to stay alive. This feels like something we aren’t really free to choose, which might be considered “bad faith” to Sartre.
Section #1
ReplyDelete1. 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?
A: Reading John Stuart Mill's' "Autobiography" is what led Bertrand Russell to reject the existence of God. Russell was an initial adherent to the "First Cause Argument," but soon came to question and extrapolate inconsistencies within its reasoning. If everything had a distinct cause, then, Russell asked, what caused God? We must assume that "even God had a cause," as nothing could exist without being caused by something else. I tend to agree with Russell here. There is a logical skip in the "First Cause Argument," that many simply regard with ignorance when God's authority/existence is called into question.
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?
A: The idea of a barber who shaves all who don't shave themselves is a logical paradox, a seeming contradiction that is both true and false. Another example of the same thing would be a statement like "This sentence is false." Linguistic conventions are inherently flawed, and cannot possibly convey reality to an accurate degree. Languages aren't science. Languages aren't bound by a metric system. We stumble across these peculiar phenomena, such as the paradox, purely because languages aren't meant to portray reality, but are instead oral/written interpretations of reality construed by imperfect humans.
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?
A: A.J. Ayer's Verification Principle, stated in his 1936 book, "Language, Truth and Logic," was part of the movement known as logical positivism. "Unverifiability," as Ayers stated, implied meaninglessness, as claims that cannot be substantiated by tangible evidence aren't legitimate, consequential arguments. More often than not, Ayers is correct. Why concern ourselves with the metaphysical realm of life when we cannot provide physical proof of its existence?
LHP 1 - Russell's rejection of God was spurred by John Stuart Mill's autobiography. Mill writes about the First Cause argument, Thomas Aquinas's hypothetical which states that everything exists because of something before it (a cause), and if you were to trace all of these causes back to the very first cause, it would be God. Mill asks, 'What caused God?' and Russell sees that God existing without a cause is the fallacy in the argument "everything has a cause."
ReplyDeleteLHP 2 - The barber who shaves all who don't shave themselves is a logical paradox. Another logical paradox would be "This sentence is false." I think these ideas could show a problem with how definitive language can be, but I also think humans are smart enough to recognize a paradox when they see one and realize that it has no answer. That could actually speak to the profoundness and effectiveness of such simple language as "This sentence is false": our brains can clock this as a problem with no solution.
LHP 7 - Albert Camus uses the Greek myth of Sisyphus to explain human absurdity. His point was that humans will push a metaphorical rock endlessly up a metaphorical hill, with no reward possible. We will perform highly difficult tasks in our lives that will go unrewarded. The heart of the metaphor is that life itself is the most punishing task, and our only "reward" for completing it is dying, where anything we gained during life is effectively null and void to us. Camus says we must imagine Sisyphus happy, because the reward is in the struggle. Humans shouldn't think about simply being rewarded for a task, but instead finding enjoyment in that task.
Section 1
ReplyDelete1. It was John Stuart Mill’s autobiography. Russell read a passage where Mill explained that asking “Who made me?” only leads to the question “Who made God?” . Russell realized that if everything must have a cause, then God must also have a cause. If something can exist without a cause, then the universe could also exist without one.
I believe that his reasoning is very persuasive because it exposes an inconsistency in the First Cause argument. If the rule “everything must have a cause” has exceptions, then the argument for God as the first cause becomes weaker.
2. The barber who shaves everyone who doesn’t shave themself is a logical paradox, similar to “this sentence is false” which makes a loop of incorrectness. Contradictions that limit logic in philosophic discussions.
3. AJ Ayers Verification Principle was apart of Logical Positivism. This states that a statement can only be meaningful if it can verified either through observation or logic, obviously things like religion and ethics cannot be verified this way but are still important to others.
4. People act in bad faith like the waiter who treats himself as nothing more than his role. Bad faith happens when people pretend they are fixed things instead of free individuals.Can we avoid this completely?Probably not, society constantly pushes roles on us, so avoiding bad faith entirely is very difficult.
5. Sartre said the student must choose for himself because no moral rule could decide for him. His point was that we are responsible for creating our own values, and some think he should have offered clearer guidance, but Sartre believed freedom means we must decide without absolute rules.
6. Simone de Beauvoir said women are not born that way. She meant women often accept gender roles created by society and men's expectations.Her famous idea was that “One is not born, but becomes, a woman.” Some biological traits are given at birth, but social identity is largely constructed.
1. The latest research has found that the greatest source of happiness is quality friendships. This may matter to me more as I age, but I’m also trying to keep this in mind right now. It’s really difficult to balance all the important things of life and sometimes it feels like the 24 hour day isn’t long enough; this semester especially I’ve realized that I need to work on balance. Work is necessary and hopefully enjoyable, but we are social creatures and the best and most lasting memories are formed through our connections with other people.
ReplyDelete2. Camus said “The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.” Life is absurd and often our efforts prove futile, however, we should not allow ourselves to despair or become apathetic. Like Sisyphus pushing his rock up the mountain over and over again, we must continue trying, and through this action we find purpose and determine our fate.
Section #1
ReplyDeleteLittle History of Philosophy
3.) Ayer’s Verification Principle was part of a movement called logical positivism. In Ayer’s words, unverifiability was the same thing as meaningless. I disagree. Not everything has to be verified to have meaning. Some things are open-ended, some thing we just won’t know, but that doesn’t equate to their meaning going away. We may not know what the meaning of it is, but it doesn’t equate to meaninglessness.
5.) Sartre’s student asked for advice about whether to stay home with his mother or to go to war—Sartre responded by telling the student he was free and that he could choose for himself. I think this is perfect advice. It gives the student a feeling of having control over his life if he’s making this decision. Otherwise, the student would be allowing someone else to rule his life, because he’s letting someone else make the choice for him.
7.) Camus used the story of Sisyphus’ where he is punished by Zeus and forced to roll a huge rock up a mountain, and when it falls, he has to repeat the same act again. Camus uses this to explain that human life is pointless, but we also have to recognize that Sisyphus is happy. I don’t currently feel like life is pointless, but I do worry that once I get a stable job and I do it for a few years, I’ll get tired of it. But, if Sisyphus is secretly happy rolling a rock up and down a hill, maybe I can take Camus’s advice and make the most out of my job.