In praise of William James

 “The Varieties of Religious Experience” is a generous and endlessly insightful book about human nature.

I’ve devoted a significant chunk of this one life I have to reading, though I really don’t believe that books offer any greater chance of salvation than, say, windsurfing. Yet I can’t help feeling that I was saved, for a while, by William James.

About 10 years ago I was hurting; not from a broken heart so much as an exhausted one, having spent several of the previous years caring about people whose own hearts and minds were in states of distress. When I picked up “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” an edited version of 20 lectures that James delivered in Edinburgh in 1901 and 1902, I wasn’t expecting it to be a profound balm, but that’s what it was.

I immediately read more work by and about James. I began to verbally annotate everyday life to friends by referring to things he had done or said, with the same frequency with which I had once (no less annoyingly, I’m sure) called on scenes from “The Simpsons.” He was a Swiss Army knife of psychological and emotional insight.

It’s a cliché for people unswayed by religion to still believe in William James, to allow him access to their souls because of the way he sneaks in through their brains. A psychologist and philosopher (and oldest brother of the novelist Henry), James was not a follower of any church, and had little academic interest in institutional religion, but he was obsessively curious about the inner experiences of believers... (continues, nyt)

Beyond ‘Varieties’: A William James Starter Kit

‘THE WILL TO BELIEVE’ Instead of seeing a movie with friends, have everyone read the title essay of this collection and then go somewhere to argue about it.

‘A PLURALISTIC UNIVERSE’ Another series of lectures; a bit more wonky in its case against absolute idealism in philosophy, but still accessible.

‘PRAGMATISM’ James was one of the originators of this school of philosophy, and here he describes and defends it.

‘THE SELECTED LETTERS OF WILLIAM JAMES’ Elizabeth Hardwick writes in her introduction that James’s letters show him to be “benevolent, loving, loyal and completely without pompousness or self-importance.”

‘WILLIAM JAMES: IN THE MAELSTROM OF AMERICAN MODERNISM’ If you’re like me, reading James will make you want to know more about him. Robert D. Richardson’s first-rate biography is the place to start.

nyt

Fantasyland, Putin-style

	CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 ⁦‪@CBSSunday‬⁩ With the clampdown on independent news and social media within Russia, and the spread of propaganda and misinformation by state media, Russian citizens are getting a false picture of the war being waged by Vladimir Putin cbsn.ws/3t7CENI pic.twitter.com/rBmdU6boIx   3/13/22, 8:16 AM

Dewey knew how to teach democracy and we must not forget it

Did you attend a public school in the United States and perform in a school play, take field trips, or compete on a sports team? Did you have a favourite teacher who designed their own curriculum, say, about the Civil War, or helped you find your particular passions and interests? Did you take classes that were not academic per se but that still opened your eyes to different aspects of human experience such as fixing cars? Did you do projects that required planning and creativity? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then you are the beneficiary of John Dewey's pedagogical revolution... (continues)

The Return of Metaphysics: Hegel vs Kant » IAI TV

For most of its history western philosophy was dominated by metaphysics, the attempt to know the necessary features of the world simply by thinking. Then came Kant, who showed that reason alone can't gain knowledge of the world without the help of experience. Hegel's philosophy is seen by many as ignoring the lessons of Kant's critique of metaphysics and regressing to a pre-Kantian style of philosophy. But a more careful reading of Hegel shows that he was not in fact ignoring Kant's lesson, but following his argument: Even if pure reason can't know the world, it can know itself. And in discovering the nature of thought, Hegel argued, one also discovers the nature of anything that can be thought, that is, reality. Thus, writes Robert Pippin, Hegel was able to change the fate of metaphysics.

Philosophy is not an empirical enterprise. Its traditional claim is to be a form of knowledge about reality, even though it does not rely on observation about that reality. If there is philosophical knowledge, it is a priori knowledge, and if it is knowledge, it claims something true about reality not accessible to empirical observation or confirmation. Philosophy's claims to a priori knowledge seems to lead us inevitably to what has always been, until the last two-hundred and fifty years or so, the center of philosophy, its inescapable "big" question: metaphysics... (continues)

Questions MAR 15

Wittgenstein, Arendt, Popper & Kuhn, Foot & Thomson-LH 34-37, FL 27-28, WGU Introduction-p.35.

LH

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 strangers?

7. Why did Singer first become famous?

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

Susan Neiman, Why Grow Up? Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age (WGU -p.35)

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

2. Why did Kant say we choose immaturity?

3. Why is judgement important?

4. What is "the most pernicious bit of idealization"?

5. What is philosophy's greatest task?

FL

1. What changed for pro wrestling in the 1980s?

2. What happened in the 1980s to make dressing up for Halloween a "thing"?

3. What former child star had a ranch called Neverland in middle age?

4. How did the advent of home video, cable, and the Internet make adults more childlike?

Discussion Questions:

WGU

• Do you think of growing up as "a matter of renouncing your hopes and dreams"? 1
• Do you like the "well-meaning Uncle's" advice? Or the Rolling Stones'? 4
• Is Kant right, in "What is Enlightenment?," about why people "choose immaturity"? 5
• If distractions, especially "since the invention of cyberspace," are "literally limitless," is Enlightenment in Kant's sense a realistic goal for most people? 9
• Do you agree that it takes courage to think for yourself? 11
• Is travel necessary for growing up? 13-16
• Is Larry Summers wrong about language-learning? 16
• Do you believe the best time of life is between the ages of 18 and 28? 20
• How innocent should childhood be? What do you think of the way French children were raised in the 17th century? 24
• Do you wish you'd had a Samoan childhood? Do you think tests in school prepare you for life? 27
• Is it bad to be "WEIRD" (In the sense of the acronym)? 32
• COMMENT?: "...the important decisions are made by others we cannot even name. Or did you choose a world in which oil companies profit from wrecking the planet? Women are stoned for adultery or murdered for going to school? Children die of easily preventable diseases or are collaterally damaged by drones? Do your choices make a difference to any of these?" 34

5 books on ethics for AI... What will become of us?

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Arts & Letters Daily search results for “john rawls” (3)

2017-10-25 | John Rawls called it "the best of all games"; Mark Kingwell calls it "the most philosophical of games." What is it about baseball and philosophy? more »

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2018-09-04 | What's the meaning of freedom? Isaiah Berlin, John Rawls, and Robert Nozick disagreed on much. But they all emphasized universal values over group identity more »

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2018-08-24 | The famously liberal philosopher John Rawls has been recast as a sharp critic of capitalism. If Rawls really was a socialist, why was he so reticent about it? more »

Arts & Letters Daily search results for “ alan turing” (2)

2012-12-22 | Alan Turing was a courageous, patriotic, but sad, unconventional man. He was also gay. Can homosexuality help explain his genius? more »

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2014-01-01 | Alan Turing predicted that computers would be able to think by 2000. No dice. Not even close. We still don't understand what thinking is more »

Arts & Letters Daily search results for “john searle” (2)

2015-04-18 | John Searle has a bone to pick with Bacon, Descartes, Locke, and Kant. He blames them for the basic mistake of modern epistemology more »

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2015-06-23 | Everything you know about perception is wrong – and it’s the fault of Western philosophers, starting with Descartes. Or so John Searle would have you think more »

“I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted.” 

“I'm afraid that the following syllogism may be used by some in the future:

Turing believes machines think
Turing lies with men
Therefore machines do not think."

LA Theater Worksw dramatization, "Breaking the Code" - recording
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Jaron Lanier on the future of virtual reality etc. - and he says AI is not a thing... On Point  11.29.17... Dawn of the New Everything
==
“To protest about bullfighting in Spain, the eating of dogs in South Korea, or the slaughter of baby seals in Canada while continuing to eat eggs from hens who have spent their lives crammed into cages, or veal from calves who have been deprived of their mothers, their proper diet, and the freedom to lie down with their legs extended, is like denouncing apartheid in South Africa while asking your neighbors not to sell their houses to blacks.” 

“If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his or her own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit non-humans?” 

“The notion that human life is sacred just because it is human life is medieval.” 

“If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.” 

“To give preference to the life of a being simply because that being is a member of our species would put us in the same position as racists who give preference to those who are members of their race.” 

Just as we have progressed beyond the blatantly racist ethic of the era of slavery and colonialism, so we must now progress beyond the speciesist ethic of the era of factory farming, of the use of animals as mere research tools, of whaling, seal hunting, kangaroo slaughter, and the destruction of wilderness. We must take the final step in expanding the circle of ethics. -” 

“Philosophy ought to question the basic assumptions of the age. Thinking through, critically and carefully, what most of us take for granted is, I believe, the chief task of philosophy, and the task that makes philosophy a worthwhile activity.”

1.  Peter Singer ‏@PeterSinger 6m6 minutes ago

   Out for #GivingTuesday, Animal Charity Evaluators has a new list of recommended organizations working for animals: animalcharityevaluators.org/blog/introduci…

   Details Expand Collapse
2.  Peter Singer ‏@PeterSinger 7h7 hours ago

   Its #GivingTuesday and here's my #Unselfie. You CAN make a differencethelifeyoucansave.org

	Peter Singer (@PeterSinger)
11/19/17, 11:06 AM "Philosophy Changing Lives" - an interview with me on Why? Radio: goo.gl/ztR4m9

Arts & Letters Daily search results for “peter singer” (3)

2011-01-01 | For Peter Singer, the defining idea of the coming decade will be the Internet, which will democratize education, economics, and the media more »

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2010-01-01 | Abhorring animal cruelty does not entail the idea that all animals, humans included, sit at the same moral level. Peter Singer has an argument to answer more »

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2015-07-07 | Where morality meets rationalism. Is Peter Singer’s “effective altruism” the apotheosis of ethics, or an unempathetic, politically naive, elitist doctrine? more »

Spring Break!

 

What does Putin want?

 Passed along by an informed source from Lithuania...

Submit! (to CLA Scholars Day)

 A note from our chair:

please encourage your best students to submit.

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From: Meredith Dye <Meredith.Dye@mtsu.edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 3, 2022 9:29 AM
To: Mary Magada-Ward <Mary.Magada-Ward@mtsu.edu>
Subject: RE: scholars week

 

Abstracts are due Friday, March 4^th. I will accept them late if you need more time. The submission form is on the CLA website.  https://www.mtsu.edu/liberalarts/scholarsday.php

 

I plan to have the program together by March 14^th so that I can notify everyone who is presenting. March 23^rd is CLA Scholar’s Day.

Rationalism vs. Empiricism

In its most general terms, the dispute between rationalism and empiricism has been taken to concern the extent to which we are dependent upon experience in our effort to gain knowledge of the external world. It is common to think of experience itself as being of two kinds: sense experience, involving our five world-oriented senses, and reflective experience, including conscious awareness of our mental operations. The distinction between the two is drawn primarily by reference to their objects: sense experience allows us to acquire knowledge of external objects, whereas our awareness of our mental operations is responsible for the aquisition of knowledge of our minds. In the dispute between rationalism and empiricism, this distinction is often neglected; rationalist critiques of empiricism usually contend that the latter claims that all our ideas originate with sense experience...
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rationalism-empiricism/?s=02