Questions Oct 8

Midterm report presentations-

William James - #H1 Kenji Matsumura; #H2 Elloise Layus

Friedrich Nietzsche - #H2 Gavin Cooley; #H3 Bobby Goodroe

Something in FL 23-24 or HWT 25-26

Something in QE Part V - What is happiness? - #H1 Ella Helms; #H2 Will Stout

1. What's the point of James's squirrel story? Have you ever been involved in a "metaphysical dispute" of this sort? How was it resolved?

2. Who said truth is what we would end up with if we could run all the experiments and investigations we'd like to? (And what's a word his name rhymes with?) What does it imply about the present status of what we now consider true?

3. What did Bertrand Russell say about James's theory of truth? Was he being fair?

4. What 20th century philosopher carried on the pragmatist tradition? What did he say about the way words work? Does his approach seem reasonable to you?

5. What did Nietzsche mean by "God is dead"? (And what's a word his name rhymes with?) Does that statement seem nihilistic to you?

6. Where did Nietzsche think Christian values come from? What do you think about that?

7. What is an Ubermensch, and why does Nigel find it "a bit worrying"? Does it worry you that some of our peers think of themselves as exempt from the rules and norms that the rest of us follow?

8. How did Nietzsche differ from Kant but anticipate Freud? Is rationality less available to us than we think?

9. What were the three great revolutions in thought, according to Freud? Was he overrating his own contributions?

10. The "talking cure" gave birth to what? Have you had any direct experience with it, or any other form of "talking cure"?

11. Why did Freud think people believe in God? Was he right, about some people at least?

12. What was Karl Popper's criticism of Freudian psychoanalysis? Do you agree?

Weiner ch 11

1. What is Weiner's favorite movie? What philosophical themes does it wrestle with? What Nietzschean idea does it resemble? How would you respond to the "demon" who proposes it?
2. How do we write well, according to Nietzsche? Have you tried it? 
3. What is amor fati? Do you have an "all or nothing" attitude towards life? What does that mean to you?
4. What is the "as if" approach to life? Do you take it? Does it work?
5. What is Sonya's opinion of Nietzsche and Eternal Recurrence? Do you share it?
6. How does the "Hollywood version" of ER differ from Nietzsche's? Which do you prefer? Why?

HWT

1. What really distinguishes utilitarianism, for Baggini?

2. How did Mozi's maxim resemble J.S. Mill's principle of utility?

3. Each item of Jonathan Israel's key principles of Enlightenment concerns what?

4. Pluralism is often mistaken for what?

MAR1

==

Ed Craig (a distinguished MTSU alum, class of '21) introduces the philosophy of William James

MY FIVE STEP PLAN FOR KNOWING WILLIAM JAMES by Ed Craig ("Grandfather Philosophy" on YouTube)

 

I never had heard of William James before I went back to college at age 74, and I think of myself as a fairly well-educated man. I knew his brother Henry, the author. I have discovered that I am not alone in not encountering James in my education. I have been educating myself in James over the past couple of years and have come to love him. I have found that James speaks to me, and that there are great lessons in how to live in his writings. It has been worthwhile for me to know him better, and I think it would be for others. For any interested, here is a 5-step plan to get to know (perhaps) America’s greatest philosopher. 

 

Step 1 Do a quick Google search. Read Wikipedia. 

It helps your introduction to William James to get some sense of who he was and his place as an American philosopher. James is not part of the philosophical canon and does not belong to any “school” of philosophy. English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861 – 1947) claimed that the four great philosophical “assemblers” were Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz, and William James. Good company. James was a remarkable man. A quick read of his Wikipedia entry on his early life, career, and family gives a taste of who he was. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James  

 

Step 2 Watch an address by James biographer Robert Richardson.  

An address by James biographer Robert Richardson in August 2010 to the William James Symposium in Chocorua, New Hampshire, on the 100th anniversary of the death of James, provides helpful insight into the type of thinking that makes James so valuable in understanding how to live. (Chocorua was one of James’s homes, and the view of Mount Chocorua from his home, which “had 14 doors which all opened outwards,” is on the home page of Phil Oliver’s blog, Up@dawn 2.0)  https://jposopher.blogspot.com/ 

 

Robert Richardson, Will You or Won’t You Have It So 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7mYv-X0pLs&t=13s  

A second video from the conference contains the introduction of Robert Richardson and the Q&A discussion after the talk. Watch from @17:40. Note specifically James scholar John McDermott beginning at 19:40 when the discussion turned to James’s philosophical “school,” in which he says that James was not a part of any school, nor would he want to be, and that “in my experience there are persons who suddenly get introduced to James and things change, and that James becomes some kind of a presence in their lives.” (Richardson and Phil Oliver @26:04) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF7V1c3Glew  

Step 3 Read Jamesian scholar John McDermott’s introduction to The Writings of William James.  

John McDermott edited an excellent collection of James’s work in The Writings of William James. In his introduction to this collection, McDermott presents James's thinking in all its manifestations, stressing the importance of radical empiricism and placing into perspective the doctrines of pragmatism and the will to believe. The critical periods of James's life are highlighted to illuminate the development of his philosophical and psychological thought. The Preface and Introduction are the best place to start your journey into James. 

https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Writings_of_William_James/TbAwpWmJL14C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=the+writings+of+william+james&printsec=frontcover  

Step 4 Read John Kaag’s Sick Souls and Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life. 

Before turning to James’s essays and his biography, read John Kaag’s popular book, Sick Souls and Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life. John Kaag is professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts. In addition to Sick Souls, he is the author of American Philosophy: A Love Story (2016), and Hiking with Nietzsche: Becoming Who You Are (2018). It is a good story that shows how James can be a positive influence in your life. 

Step 5 Read biographies and essays.  

Now begins the study of James. He was a prolific writer and popular public lecturer. The best way to begin a study of James is with a biography and selected essays in hand and read the essays as they appear in the biography.  

Biographies: 

Robert Richardson, William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism 

Perry, The Thought and Character of William James, two volumes (the gold standard for James biographies) 

 

Essays:  

Robert Richardson, The Heart of William James  

John McDermott, The Writings of William James 

William James: Writings – The Library of America, two volumes (Best collection for the serious) 

(essays can be found online at https://www.gutenberg.org/  

==

"Best book in the MTSU library" (more modestly, the best book by me in the library):

Epicurean pleasure

When we maintain that pleasure is the end [goal], we do not mean the pleasures of profligates and those that consist in sensuality, as is supposed by some who are either ignorant or disagree with us or do not understand, but freedom from pain in the body and from trouble in the mind.

https://www.threads.net/@philosophybreak/post/DAq3NtqsTbb/?xmt=AQGzVsy-NcHX756NFBsgHiDy300SNfY_TEqLaGuYBlgWlA

Freedom & AUTOCRACY IN AMERICA

The fifth and final episode of AUTOCRACY IN AMERICA has dropped. The subject: Freedom, a word that in American history has sometimes meant freedom for some people and the repression of others.

Apple podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/autocracy-in-america/id1763234285
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/0ujIGO5bvCO6NkevvgsWTL
The Atlantic:
https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2024/10/the-danger-of-politicizing-freedom/680117/

MTSU undergrad philosophy club

The MTSU Undergraduate Philosophy Society is having its first official meeting this Friday, Oct. 4^th at 2:30pm-4pm in the Student Union building, rm 221. Dr. Principe will speak on 'What Is Existentialism?

Focus

It's not about books, but about an inability to focus on ... anything:

- By 2022, only 11.5 percent of high school seniors reported having read at least six books for fun in the previous year, compared to 40 percent in 1976.
- College professors report even sonnets too long for many

The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books https://buff.ly/3ZL464w

VP debate “highlight”

Post by @anneapplebaum2000

View on Threads

This was the moment that mattered. Trump's political movement relies on total impunity (and immunity) for liars, and mostly gets it. Threads

==
When moderator Margaret Brennan noted during last night’s vice presidential debate that Republican nominee J.D. Vance had, once again, lied about the legal status of migrants in Springfield, Ohio, Vance retorted: “The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check!” As scholar of propaganda Pekka Kallioniemi noted, this was “[t]he epitome of post-truth politics.”

Vance lied throughout the debate and has lied throughout this campaign, and in that, he is following the MAGA Republicans and Trump, who has become entirely untethered from reality. Aaron Rupar, who watches Trump’s rallies, and Noah Berlatsky wrote in Public Notice that Trump’s growing mental incapacity was obvious yesterday, as in two rallies he made a “wide-ranging journey through conspiracy theories, hatred, and nonsense.” He “seems ever more adrift in his own fog of hate and ego,” Rupar and Berlatsky wrote, “He mixes up world leaders, confuses countries, garbles pronouns, loses track of his nonsense talking points.”

... hcr

Questions Oct 3

Midterm report presentations continue

OCT 3

• Charles Darwin & evolution - #H1 Zoe Kuhn; #H2 Sawyer Crain
• Something in FL 21-22 or HWT 23-24
• NV last chapter, on Kierkegaard
• Karl Marx & Socialism - #H1 Faith Carbonari; #H2 Haley Gauda; #H3 Traden Davis

 LHP

1. How did Mill disagree with Bentham about pleasure? Are they both right?

2. What view did Mill defend in On Liberty? Is that view consistent with his criticisms of Bentham?

3. What's the benefit to society of open discussion, according to Mill, and what's wrong with being dogmatic? Is our society generally "open" in this sense, or dogmatic?

4. Who did Bishop Wilberforce debate at Oxford in 1860? What do you think of his response to the Bishop on the matter of ancestry?

5. The single best idea anyone ever had was what, according to whom? Can you think of a better one?

6. What scientific developments since Darwin's time establish evolution by natural selection as more than just a theory or hypothesis? What does it take to turn a theory into something more?

7. Who was the Danish Socrates, and what was most of his writing about? What do you think of his "leap" and his irrationalism?

8. Why is faith irrational, according to Nigel Warburton? Do you agree?

9. What is "the subjective point of view"? Do we need to value objectivity as well?

10. Why was Karl Marx angry? How did he think the whole of human history could be explained? DId he have a point?

11. What was Marx's "vision"? Is it an appealing one

12. What did Marx call religion? Was he being unfair?

HWT
1. What two concepts from Indian and Buddhist philosophy are essentially the same? 

2. What are the four stages of Hindu life?

3. What is "the smile of philosophy"?

FL

1. What were Americans spending a third of their time doing, by the end of the '50s?

2. Who grew up in Marceline, MO?

3. What fantasy did Hugh Hefner sell?

4. What was added to currency in 1954?

5. What did Jane Roberts "discover" in 1963?

6. The sudden embrace of what, in the 60s, helped turn America into Fantasyland?

Feb24