Questions FEB 12

PRESENTATIONS: 

12 *Montaigne, Descartes, and/or Pascal - #2 Ben

*Pascal - #1 Artin  

#1 Sarah (conclude)

Additional options today:

🐟Darwin (in honor of Int'l Darwin Day) - #1 Sakina (or Feb 26?)

❤Plato's Symposium (in honor of Valentines Day, and your Prof's b'day) - #1 Zariayana

1. What state of mind, belief, or knowledge was Descartes' Method of Doubt supposed to establish? OR, What did Descartes seek that Pyrrho spurned? Was his approach more sensible than Pyrrho's? Do you think it's possible to achieve the state of mind Descartes sought?

2. Did Descartes claim to know (at the outset of his "meditations") that he was not dreaming? Do you ever think you might be?

3. What strange and mythic specter did Gilbert Ryle compare to Descartes' dualism of mind and body? ("The ____ in the ______.") Does that specter seem strange or silly to you?

4. Pascal's best-known book is _____. Do you like his aphoristic style?

5. Pascal's argument for believing in God is called ________. Do you find it persuasive or appealing?

6. Pascal thought if you gamble on God and lose, "you lose ______." Do you agree?

7. (T/F) By limiting his "wager" to a choice between either Christian theism or atheism, says Nigel Warburton, Pascal excludes too many other possible bets. Is that right?


Weiner-

1. Why doesn't Eric "buy" Epicurus's dismissal of death as a worry? Do you agree?
2.  What's the best Montaigne thinks we can do to find truth? Do you think he was trying to build a "tower of certainty"?
3. How did Montaigne reverse himself on what we learn from philosophizing? But is it really a reversal?
4. What was Montaigne's experience of his equestrian accident? Do you share his newfound confidence that nature will make dying comfortable and easy? Is this a form of "denial" (notwithstanding his likely disapproval of our culture's form of denial)?
5. What did Horace say to persuade yourself of? Is that a good idea?
6. Montaigne's philosophy boils down, says Eric, to trust, surprise, responsibility, and ___? And what other four words sum up his philosophy and way of life?

(See more Montaigne bonus questions below*)

Montaigne's tower

HWT

1. What familiar western distinction is not commonly drawn in Islamic thought? 

2. According to Sankara, the appearance of plurality is misleading. Everything is ____.

3. The Islamic concept of unity rules out what key western Enlightenment value, and offers little prospect of adopting modern views on what?

4. What Calvinist-sounding doctrine features heavily in Islamic thought?

5. What deep philosophical assumption, expressed by what phrase, has informed western philosophy for centuries? To what concept did Harry Frankfurt apply it?

* BONUS QUESTIONS 

Also recommended: (How to Live, ch1); LISTEN Sarah Bakewell on Michel de Montaigne (PB); A.C. Grayling on Descartes' Cogito (PB); WATCH Montaigne(SoL); Descartes (HI)

• Sarah Bakewell says Montaigne's first answer to the question "How to live?" is: "Don't worry about _____."
• What was Montaigne's "near death experience," and what did it teach him?
• Montaigne said "my mind will not budge unless _____."
• What pragmatic American philosopher was Descartes' "most practical critic"?
• (T/F) A.C. Grayling thinks that, because Descartes was so wrong about consciousness and the mind-body problem, he cannot be considered a historically-important philosopher.
• What skeptical slogan did Montaigne inscribe on the ceiling of his study?

FL

1. Conspiratorial explanations attempt to make what kinds of connections?

2. What was the Freemasons' grand secret, according to Franklin?

3. What conspiracy did Abe Lincoln allege in his famous "House Divided" speech in 1858?

4. Why did many northerners think the Civil War went badly for them early on?

5. What did the narrator of a popular 1832 work of fiction say about the slaves?

Feb 10 

==

Will machines ever say "I think, therefore I am"?

Something to consider when we talk about Descartes... [I had a chat with ChatGPT about reality and related matters. It may not be conscious but it does simulate the appearance of consciousness pretty impressively...]

We had a serious and sober conversation in Environmental Ethics about the difference between living longer vs. living better, between a life of many years vs. a life of completion and earned satisfaction. I was encouraged by the maturity and wisdom of the young people in the room, whose acceptance of mortality stands in striking contrast to that of futurologist/transhumanist Raymond Kurzweil. 

Ray's the guy who pioneered optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology etc., and then went to work for Google to help Larry and Sergei figure out how to conquer aging and the biological restrictions of mortal life. He's the very antithesis, in this regard, of Wendell Berry.

I first became aware of Ray when I read his The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, which audaciously and (we should see now) prematurely, if not ludicrously, predicted that we'd have self-conscious machines "before 2030"... We'll talk about this in CoPhi soon, when we turn to Descartes.

Descartes’s famous dictum “I think, therefore I am” has often been cited as emblematic of Western rationalism. This view interprets Descartes to mean “I think, that is, I can manipulate logic and symbols, therefore I am worthwhile.” But in my view, Descartes was not intending to extol the virtues of rational thought. He was troubled by what has become known as the mind-body problem, the paradox of how mind can arise from non-mind, how thoughts and feelings can arise from the ordinary matter of the brain. Pushing rational skepticism to its limits, his statement really means “I think, that is, there is an undeniable mental phenomenon, some awareness, occurring, therefore all we know for sure is that something—let’s call it I—exists.” Viewed in this way, there is less of a gap than is commonly thought between Descartes and Buddhist notions of consciousness as the primary reality. Before 2030, we will have machines proclaiming Descartes’s dictum. And it won’t seem like a programmed response. The machines will be earnest and convincing. Should we believe them when they claim to be conscious entities with their own volition?

Ask that again when they make that claim. If they do. 

At least Ray has inspired entertaining films like Her, Ex Machina, Transcendence...

But his desperate quest to "live long enough to live forever"-- see the Wired Magazine feature story on Ray,wherein it was revealed that he'd daily been popping upwards of 200 pill supplements and downing oceans of green tea every day in hopes of beating the Reaper (lately he's cut back to just 90)-- really does look sad and shallow, alongside the mature view we've explored in The World-Ending Fire and that I was gratified to hear echoed by my fellow mortals in class yesterday.

==

The World Is Waiting to Be Discovered. Take a Walk.

…Study after study after study have proved what we feel, intuitively, in our gut: Walking is good for us. Beneficial for our joints and muscles; astute at relieving tension, reducing anxiety and depression; a boon to creativity, likely; slows the aging process, maybe; excellent at prying our screens from our face, definitely. Shane O'Mara, a professor of experimental brain research in Dublin, has called walking a "superpower," claiming that walking, and only walking, unlocks specific parts of our brains, places that bequeath happiness and health.

I have no beef with any of this, but I believe we have it backward. We are asking what we can get out of a walk, rather than what a walk can get out of us. This might seem like a small distinction, a matter of semantics. But when we begin to think of walking in terms of the latter, we change the way we navigate and experience — literally and figuratively — the world around us... nyt

The simplest things

2330 years ago, Epicurus wrote about how too much low-quality pleasure results in the devastation of mind, body and spirit.

He advocated for true pleasure: which comes from the voluntary reduction of our need to be stimulated so that we can enjoy the simplest things more fully. Like breathing, thinking, conversing and living well.

The cheap dopamine-addled world we have built, with its infinite instant gratification loops that fuel anhedonia and anxiety, is Epicurus' version of hell.

https://www.threads.com/@yepicurus/post/DUce16sjf5J?xmt=AQF0LWocC52_Sn7F7fdKopFCSYnoA6LbmxcOMkEWf4Ghj-_RraW3PqhyLWj1CzTUGi46_iON&slof=1

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

My conversation about consciousness with ChatGPT

Read to the end to see what the machine has to say directly to YOU, MTSU students:

https://chatgpt.com/share/6987c5fe-caa4-8007-afad-db246c3c9755

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

Why Michael Pollan Thinks Humanity Is About to Undergo a Revolutionary C...

https://youtu.be/XsA4tmqTMUE?si=TfPENcktDbvyqVhf

Michael Pollan Says Humanity Is About to Undergo a Revolutionary Change

"…I've thought a lot about what good is it to think about consciousness, and I came to think that it's more important than ever. Scientists are now learning that more and more animals and creatures — going all the way down possibly to insects — are conscious. So that's one interesting issue: We're sharing consciousness with more creatures. And then the big threat is artificial intelligence and the effort to create a conscious A.I., which is going to be an enormous challenge to this question of what does it mean to be human. Is consciousness something that a machine can possess? Are we more like intelligent machines or conscious, feeling animals? Who are we? So I think we're approaching this kind of Copernican moment of redefinition.."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/07/magazine/michael-pollan-interview.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

Why more is never enough

Humans carry millions of years of evolutionary pressure to acquire more resources and higher social status. But it's our relationships that really make our lives fulfilling today. PsychToday 

Epicurus: we don’t need to chase so hard after unimportant things

Ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus thinks happiness is available to all of us; we just have false beliefs about what makes us happy.

If we think more wealth, fame, or power is the answer, for instance, we must recognize that, no matter how much we obtain of these things, it's always possible to get more.

Satisfying such desires is thus impossible, so we shouldn't waste our lives anxiously in thrall to them.

As he puts it…

https://www.threads.com/@philosophybreak/post/DOOkwn_jE45?xmt=AQF0j_qNi9hCP7q7h6taU_JSIIEeTnKROKfeX-iBHTe_2g&slof=1

A new bio: Augustine the African

Augustine of Hippo (354–430), also known as Saint Augustine, was one of the most influential theologians in history. His writings, including the autobiographical Confessions and The City of God, helped shape the foundations of Christianity and Western philosophy. But for many centuries, Augustine's North African birth and Berber heritage have been simply dismissed. Catherine Conybeare, a world-renowned Augustine scholar, here puts the "African" back in Augustine's story. As she relates, his seminal books were written neither in Rome nor in Milan, but in Africa, where he had returned as a wanderer during a perilous time when the Western Roman Empire was crumbling. Using extant letters and other shards of evidence, Conybeare retraces Augustine's travels, revealing how his groundbreaking works emerge from an exile's perspective within an African context. In its depiction of this Christian saint, Augustine the African upends conventional wisdom and traces core ideas of Christian thought to their origins on the African continent.

https://a.co/d/0hcKz8E

Study Abroad Funding

If students have a Pell grant, they should consider the Gilman Scholarship to help pay for a study abroad. 

Gilman offers up to $5,000 to support credit-bearing study abroad or internship programs. Additional funding may be available for students who are studying critical languages or conducting STEM research abroad. The Gilman-McCain Award supports dependents of active-duty military members. Next deadline is early March. 

Please contact Laura Clippard, Fellowships Director, at Laura.Clippard@mtsu.edu.

Testing philosophy

Depends on what you mean by "test," doesn't it?

It is the birthday of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Hofstadter, born 1915 in New York City and best known for his research on the nucleus of the atom. He was the son of a salesman and attended the City College of New York. Hofstadter wanted to major in literature and philosophy until a physics professor told him, "the laws of physics could be tested and those of philosophy could not." He won the Kenyon Prize for outstanding work in physics and mathematics in 1935.

Hofstadter went on to measure the precise size and shape of the proton and neutron, the particles of the nucleus, winning the Nobel Prize on December 10, 1961, for presenting the first reasonably accurate picture of the structure and composition of atomic neutrons and protons. Hofstadter's discoveries played an important role in medicine, astronomy, military defense, and many other fields.

https://open.substack.com/pub/thewritersalmanac/p/the-writers-almanac-from-thursday-337?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

Scientia and Collage: submissions welcome

Two of MTSU’s award‑winning student publications, Collage and Scientia, are now accepting submissions, but the deadline is fast approaching! You don’t have to be an Honors student to submit. Any MTSU student, including graduate students, can submit their work.

Collage features creative work across genres:

• Poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction

• Visual art, photography, and multimedia

Students can explore past issues and submit at collage.mtsu.edu.

Scientia highlights outstanding undergraduate research from all disciplines:

• STEM fields

• Social sciences

• Humanities and creative scholarship

More information and submission guidelines are available at scientia.mtsu.edu.

The deadline for both publications is February 15, and selected winning submissions receive a $75 award in addition to publication.

Robin E. Lee

Manager - Strategic Communications, Honors College

Paul W. Martin Sr Honors College, Room 225

1301 East Main Street, Box 267 | Murfreesboro, TN 37132

Phone: 615-898-5759

honors.mtsu.edu

Honors Spotlight podcast | Collage | Scientia et Humanitas

USAF Reserve, Retired

Epicurean economics

"The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run."

— Henry David Thoreau, Walden

==

The original Tiny Home...

Cornel West’s perspective

Bold language. Called for, by events?

https://www.threads.com/@josh.jagdfeld/post/DUTNC9iDRBv?xmt=AQF0a1QHI6pTdQziGJds2BpwhT9ugICJ0f1McGZPcnCvvR7TQcEGXramoB_C5uCOQrlznp4&slof=1

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

How humanist are you?

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

(Some) Students Are Skipping the Hardest Part of Growing Up

Artificial intelligence is replacing young people's social intuitions.

...Back in 2023, when ChatGPT was still new, a professor friend had a colleague observe her class. Afterward, he complimented her on her teaching but asked if she knew her students were typing her questions into ChatGPT and reading its output aloud as their replies.

At the time, I chalked this up to cognitive offloading, the use of artificial intelligence to reduce the amount of thinking required to complete a task. Looking back, though, I think it was an early case of emotional offloading, the use of A.I. to reduce the energy required to navigate human interaction.

You've probably heard of extreme cases in which people treat bots as lovers, therapists or friends. But many more have them intervene in their social lives in subtler ways. On dating apps, people are leaning on A.I. to help them seem more educated or confident; one app, Hinge, reports that many younger users "vibe check" messages with A.I. before sending them. (Young men, especially, lean on it to help them initiate conversations.)

In the classroom, the domain I know best, some students are using the tools not just to reduce effort on homework but also to avoid the stress of an unscripted conversation with a professor — the possibility of making a mistake, drawing a blank or looking dumb — even when their interactions are not graded...

nyt

Tiny acorn, majestic oak, positive change

Speaking of Aristotle, as we were about to before the ice so rudely interrupted us… 

The dogs and I took a hike at Stone's River Greenway yesterday and came across this memorial to the woman responsible for its existence.

Bertha Chrietzberg was a meliorist, like Aristotle and William James.

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

“ Think how lucky we are”

Or were? Freedom of expression, the rule of Law, untrammeled public libraries, … All seem vulnerable in 2026.

2018 Commencement - David McCullough

https://youtu.be/1kFZy2kpEL0?si=wbrdHbCLRgccwgtd

UPDATE: see you in class!

 We're still displaced by the ice storm and living out of suitcases, my wife and dogs and I. We may not get back in our home in Nashville for another week, they're saying.

But the good news is that we've temporarily relocated to an airbnb in Murfreesboro, 15 minutes from campus. 

So, I look forward to seeing you all in class tomorrow. We've got ground to make up, and we'll need to finalize the midterm report presentation schedule. Look for the sign-up post here tomorrow morning after 6.

It'll be nice to get back on track!

Murfreesboro/Rutherford county book bans

"Email the Rutherford County Library System Board of Directors and demand they stop the book bans, protect the Freedom to Read, and fund our libraries at the February 2025 meeting.

The Rutherford County Library System Board is proposing eliminating key “Freedom to Read,” Library Bill of Rights, and ALA Code of Ethics policies. By stripping the policies, the board is also paving the way to ban over 2,700 titles from their shelves, targeting materials that represent LGBT+, Black, brown, immigrant, and other marginalized identities and factual histories.

This is not about protecting children in Rutherford County – it's about erasing truth from history and eliminating identities from existence, thus paving the way for further attacks on civil liberties on our communities..." https://act.aclu-tn.org/a/rucofeb

A World Full of Different Moral Compasses

MTSU student Sneh Gandhi has written a lovely Substack essay on the importance of civility and neighborliness. When times are challenging (due to threatening weather, bad health, whatever), it's important to be able to count on our neighbors--politics aside. Like it or not, after all, we're all human.

https://open.substack.com/pub/snehgandhi/p/a-world-full-of-different-moral-compasses?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

UPDATE

 It's Day 7 for me and my family without power. Check "NEXT" on Tuesday morning before class, for the latest update.

==

Wind chill below zero when I took the dogs out this morning. Robert Frost comes to mind...

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I’ve tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To know that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

I'm not really this pessimistic. But I'm ready for Spring.

Day 6

 

Still without power, holed up in a downtown hotel a stone's throw from the Seigenthaler pedestrian bridge so artfully depicted in the lobby. Want to dogwalk it, but it's forbiddingly icy. Hurry please, NES. 

UPDATE Jan 28

POST-UPDATE, 10:20 a.m.: University still on remote status Thursday. Looking forward to seeing you all Tuesday, one way or another. jpo

Still powerless in my neighborhood, I'm unlikely to make it to Murfreesboro tomorrow whatever the university decides about Thursday (29th). Please continue keeping up with the readings (Aristotle, Pyrrho etc.) and post your comments about them as you are able. We’ll catch up when we can. See you eventually. jpo

No class today

 Or tomorrow. Probably not the rest of the week, though that  determination has not yet been made as of 5 AM Tuesday. I hope you are all well, staying warm wherever you are. It’s day three of no power where I live, in Nashville. We’re spending a lot of time bundled and huddled around the fireplace and consuming warm beverages. Last time this happened was the big chill of ‘94. Every 30 years or so is often enough!

Please keep up with the readings and post your comments about them as you are able. We’ll catch up when we can. See you soon. jpo

What matters?

"Of course, I matter to myself—that's self-evident—but do I actually, truly, objectively matter? Does my objectively mattering just come along with my objectively existing, or is there rather something that I must do, something that I must be, to deserve all the attention that I can't help lavishing on myself?

Should I pursue power or fame to vindicate my self-mattering, strive to have the fact of my existence register in as many lives as possible and in that way come to truly matter, or should I rather dedicate my life to the service of others? Should I strive to create something of beauty in the world, giving pleasure to many, or contribute to the ongoing search for knowledge that our self-characterization as Homo sapiens suggests we are supposed to be all about? Must I please a deity to whom I owe my existence and live out the purpose for which the deity might have created me, or live my life as if it were a work of art, cultivating such aesthetic qualities as style, originality, and coherence? Should I merge my identity with something greater than myself, something that will outlast me, perhaps a cause, such as justice for all, or, as in Buddhism, with reality itself so that my personal ego shrivels into the purity of nothingness? Or do I achieve mattering simply by doing my best by the people with whom the circumstances of my life have contingently bound me—my family and friends, my colleagues?"

— The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

How we'll begin each class

 I like to take a few moments each day to notice our context within the "continuous human community in which we are a link" (John Dewey)...

So we'll begin with a glance at history and sometimes the Writers Almanac, and at the historical "newspaper of record," the New York Times.

Don't forget to activate your free student subscription to the digital edition of the Times.

And don't forget to read it.

A Tennessee Dean Had ‘Zero Sympathy’ for Charlie Kirk. She Was Fired.

This is old news now, but it made the New York Times yesterday. Not great publicity for MTSU.

"If I'm wrong, and this speech is not protected, then I have never understood what the Constitution means and I have never understood what it protects," Ms. Sosh-Lightsy said. "Either I haven't understood it or we are on the edge of completely changing what it means."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/19/us/politics/middle-tennessee-state-university-dean-fired-charlie-kirk.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Introductions

 Greetings, Spring '26 CoPhilosophers. ("CoPhilosophy," or "CoPhi" for short, is my informal name for Intro to Philosophy. Read the masthead quote above, to see why. I'll elaborate on the first day of class.)

Note also: we're going with a no-screens policy this semester... so please do not open your laptops or stare at your phones at any point during class (exceptions noted in the sidebar to the right).

We begin with Introductions. Please click on the comments tab below and tell us 

• Who you are;
• Why you're here (at MTSU, in the Honors program, in this course, on this planet); 
• What you think Philosophy is;
• Whether you have a pithy personal philosophy of your own (think Sally Brown, Charlie's little sister: "No! That's my new philosophy!");
• Whether you have a favorite philosopher (famous or not);
• The title of the last unassigned book you read and enjoyed;
• Whatever else you'd care to share.

Include your section # (1, 2, or 3), we're sharing this site. 

Just for fun: Monty Python's Philosophers Song (it's not true that all the old dead philosophers were drunks), and Douglas Adams's answer to the ultimate question of the Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Looking forward to meeting you all on the 20th!

Dr. Oliver

Surviving Autocracy

Very good piece by @mashagessen, the author of Surviving Autocracy, who left Russia in 2013 as the authoritarian hammer really started coming down, and moved to the United States.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/18/opinion/trump-one-year-later.html?unlocked_article_code

Dump the chariot

What Are We Thinking?

Our thoughts are an ever-changing swirl of fears, feelings, desires, impulses, memories and body sensations that interact to form a single mind.

...we can dump one of the more unfortunate metaphors we in the West have relied on to understand the mind. This metaphor, going back to ancient Greece, holds that reason is a wise charioteer and the passions — emotions and desires — are the stallions who pull the chariot. In this fable, reason is the calm, sophisticated smart guy, while the emotions and desires are dumb, primitive beasts. People lead good rational lives when they use reason to suppress and control the passions.

This chariot metaphor rests on an overly positive estimation of the power of pure reason and an overly negative view of the passions. The fact is that your emotions are not primitive and dumb. Positive emotions encourage risk-taking. Awe encourages you to broaden your focus beyond your narrow self. Sadness encourages you to change your way of thinking.

Your desires are not dumb, either. They tell you what is worth valuing and where you should go. Your body also contains its own form of wisdom. Cortisol increases vigilance. Adrenaline prepares the body for quick and decisive action.

As Annie Murphy Paul writes in her book “The Extended Mind,” “Recent research suggests a rather astonishing possibility: The body can be more rational than the brain.”

If we wanted to step back and look at the whole mind, we’d say — to the extent that we can even separate these faculties — that reason, emotions and desires are just different resources people draw upon to help make judgments about what to do next. Each faculty has its own strengths and weaknesses, and life goes best when a person coordinates all the faculties in one graceful swirl.

Your job as a conscious person is not to be a dominating, rationalist charioteer. It’s to read the judgments that your emotions, desires and body are sending you, act on them when their judgments are appropriate and redirect them when they are getting carried away.

Some people are so misled by the charioteer fable that they don’t cultivate or use all their faculties. They are so smitten with their own high intelligence that they don’t pay attention to their own emotions and desires, or to the signals their guts are sending them. This is why phenomenally smart people often do astoundingly stupid things...

David Brooks
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/16/opinion/neuroscience-thinking-human.html?smid=em-share

eTexts at the library

…Based on our search, the following eBooks are available to your students:

A little history of philosophy

https://ezproxy.mtsu.edu/login?url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/j.ctt5vkvxd

Sick souls, healthy minds : how William James can save your life

https://ezproxy.mtsu.edu/login?url=https://muse.jhu.edu/book/73048

…

To see more about the library's effort to support students and faculty in offering affordable course materials, please check out our web page and newaffordable course materials search. 

And if you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Best wishes,
Suzanne

Suzanne Mangrum, MLS
Acquisitions Librarian
James E. Walker Library

If You Can’t Teach Plato in a Philosophy Class, What Can You Teach?

An ancient classic is canceled in Texas.

...University administrators and state lawmakers are saying, in effect, that academic freedom won’t protect you if you teach ideas they don’t like. Never mind that decades ago, the Supreme Court described classrooms as the very embodiment of the “marketplace of ideas”: “Our nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us, and not merely to the teachers concerned. That freedom is therefore a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom...”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/12/opinion/plato-texas-academic-freedom.html?smid=em-share

WJS Newsletter – William James Society

Spring 2026 Newsletter

President's Message from Dr. Phil Oliver

LISTEN (audio file on Google Docs)

'Tis the season of William James's birth, in 1842.

By an odd twist of coincidence, January 11 happens also to be my wife's birthday. So it's a date I cannot and dare not ever forget.

The late great biographer Robert Richardson, noting the legendary James "family tradition" according to which Emerson blessed infant William, cautioned against attaching either too much or too little import to that mythic connection. It does seem too right to be true, but also too good not to be...

https://wjsociety.org/news/

Unenlightened "theory"

"What’s confusing about the woke movement is that it’s born from traditional left-wing emotions: empathy for the marginalized, indignation at the plight of the oppressed, determination that historical wrongs should be righted. Those emotions, however, are derailed by a range of theoretical assumptions that ultimately undermine them. ‘Theory,’ in English, is such a nebulous and trendy concept that it’s even been used to launch a fashion line, but if the word today has no clear content, it does have some direction. What unites very different intellectual movements bound together by the word ‘theory’ is a rejection of the epistemological frameworks and political assumptions inherited from the Enlightenment. You need not spend years deciphering Judith Butler or Homi Bhabha to be influenced by theory. We rarely notice the assumptions now embedded in the culture, for they’re usually expressed as self-evident truths. Because they are offered as simple descriptions of reality rather than ideas we might question, it’s hard to challenge them directly. Those who have learned in college to distrust every claim to truth will hesitate to acknowledge falsehood."

Left Is Not Woke by Susan Neiman

(Susan's point: enlightened people are skeptical, but they're also truth-and-wisdom-seekers.As we'll see when we read her Why Grow Up, she thinks that's the mature view.)

Simone de Beauvoir on love and friendship

Simone de Beauvoir, born on this day in 1908, on love and friendship — simply superb: https://www.themarginalian.org/2025/04/11/simone-de-beauvoir-love-friendship/

Time travel

"I feel so sorry for anyone who misses the experience of history, the horizons of history. We think little of those who, given the chance to travel, go nowhere. We deprecate provincialism. But it is possible to be as provincial in time as it is in space. Because you were born into this particular era doesn’t mean it has to be the limit of your experience. Move about in time, go places. Why restrict your circle of acquaintances to only those who occupy the same stage we call the present?"

"Brave Companions" by David McCullough: https://a.co/2aRCw9Q

Why Plato Matters Now

Does Plato matter? An ancient philosopher whose work has inspired and informed countless thinkers and poets across the centuries, his ideas are no longer taught as widely as they once were. But, as Angie Hobbs argues in this clear-sighted book, that is a mistake.

If we want to understand the world we live in – from democracy, autocracy and fake news to celebrity, cancel culture and what money can and cannot do – there is no better place to start than Plato. Exploring the intersection between the ancient and the modern, Professor Hobbs shows how Plato can help us address key questions concerning the nature of a flourishing life and community, healthcare, love and friendship, heroism, reality, art and myth-making. She also shows us how Plato's adaptation of the Socratic method and dialogue form can enable us to deal with contested issues more constructively.

Plato's methodology, arguments, ideas and vivid images are explained with a clarity suitable both for readers familiar with his work and for those approaching Plato for the first time. This book shows why Plato really matters, now more than ever.

==

"A.N. Whitehead claims that the European philosophical tradition can best be characterized as a 'series of footnotes to Plato'. This is not true, but it is true that after Plato no philosopher in the West can fail to have been influenced by him, for better or worse, whether they are aware of it or not.

I fell in love with Plato when I was a student of 19, and have been reading his works, writing and broadcasting about them, and discussing them with undergraduates and graduates throughout the decades since. 'Philosophy begins in wondering, and nowhere else,' says Socrates in the Theaetetus; Plato helped harness and nurture that sense of wonder in me, and I shall always be grateful to him. I still find his dialogues inexhaustibly rich, beautiful and thought-provoking. At times I find them disturbing, but they always provoke me into exploring why I am disturbed, and thus coming to a more precise and lucid understanding of the questions at stake."

— Why Plato Matters Now by Angie Hobbs

https://a.co/d/3DNA6xy

==

Texas A&M has ordered a professor to remove the teachings of Plato from his course as part of an institutional policy banning race and gender "ideology."

Reached for comment, Plato said: "We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light."

https://www.sacurrent.com/news/texas-news/texas-am-bans-radical-woke-teachings-of-greek-philosopher-plato/

==

PEN America condemns educational censorship at Texas A&M after a professor is told not to teach Plato, a foundational thinker in the study of Western philosophy, merely because his writings discuss questions about love, gender, and human identity.

https://pen.org/press-release/plato-has-been-censored-what-next/ censorship #highereducation

Texas A&M, Under New Curriculum Limits, Warns Professor Not to Teach Plato

Definitely planning, now, to discuss Plato's Symposium in my classes around Valentine's Day. What a moment we're living through! And what a platonic irony, as they're literally killing poets too.

… On Wednesday, as word of disputes like Dr. Peterson's spread, critics of the Texas A&M policies said free-speech clashes became inevitable after the board's moves. The College Station campus's chapter of the American Association of University Professors said the move against Dr. Peterson "raises serious legal concerns."

The group said its misgivings went beyond the Constitution.

"Silencing 2,500-year-old ideas from one of the world's most influential thinkers betrays the mission of higher education and denies students the opportunity to engage critically with the foundations of Western thought," the group said. "A research university that censors Plato abandons its obligation to truth, inquiry, and the public trust — and should not be regarded as a serious institution of higher learning."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/us/tamu-plato-race-gender.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Orenda

Orenda is when we look at how things are and decide how we want them to be.

https://substack.com/@philosophyminis/note/c-192409784?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

Don’t fall into the gap

And what's the word for hanging onto your dreams, no matter how daunting the present actuality?

Near-death survivors

…at the annual conference of the International Association for Near-Death Studies

Near-death experiencers are the best dancers. I could identify which attendees at the annual conference of the International Association for Near-Death Studies have been to the brink, because they moved their bodies with un-self-conscious abandon, ripping up the floor of a tent on the grounds of a suburban Chicago Hilton.

The dance party, which took place on the penultimate night of the conference, was dominated by longtime members of the organization. There were over 700 people at the conference and around 300 at this celebration. I recognized many of their faces from the jackets of the books sold at the conference’s bookstore and from the panels I attended.

You could walk up to any one of them, and they would matter-of-factly tell you about how they almost died. Evan Mecham, the president-elect of IANDS, had an archetypal near-death story, which he started telling me a few minutes after we met. He had been driving on an icy mountain road at night when a deer appeared. He swerved, saving the deer’s life but almost losing his own. He nearly bled out waiting for medical help after a semi truck hit his driver’s side.

“All the pain left me, and if death was a warm blanket, it drew itself up over me, and I crossed over. I let go. I had an incredible experience of talking with another dimension, and I died with gratitude and love for a creator and for my life and for family,” Mecham told me. It changed his life permanently. “I became kinder. I became a vegetarian.” He became a more mindful spouse and father... nyt

MALA 6010 Spring 2026

UPDATE, Feb. 26: Here's a more direct link to our Week 1 reading assignment, "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings" by William James.

The Connection Between Liberal Arts and Well-Being

Block 1 - 1/29 and 2/5     Will Perkins
Block 2 - 2/12 and 19      Yang Kim
Block 3 - 2/26 and 3/5     Phil Oliver - The Philosophy of Well-Being *
Block 4 - 3/19 and 26      Francis Koti
Block 5 - 4/2 and 9        Angela Mertig
Block 6 - 4/16 and 23      Kate Goodwin 

The Philosophy of Well-Being
 Philosophers since antiquity have concerned themselves with the pursuit of happiness and human flourishing, which (along with physical and mental health) substantially comprise "well-being" as most of us conceive it. 

William James said "If we were to ask the question: What is human life's chief concern? one of the answers we should receive would be: It is happiness. How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness, is in fact for most people at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure." 

And he once advised an ailing friend: "Keep your health, your splendid health. It is better than all the truths under the firmament." 

In this block we'll discuss what philosophers like James have said about well-being as our chief concern.

Readings/assignments - selections to be announced and posted on the CoPhilosophy site.

Grade distribution (to total 15% of the overall course grade or 150/1000 points) - 50% participation (attendance, blog posts on the CoPhilosophy site); 50% report presentation-Week 2.


The Connection Between Liberal Arts and Well-Being: Liberal arts education encompasses various disciplines, including humanities, social sciences, and the arts, which contribute to a well-rounded understanding of human experiences. This holistic approach helps individuals develop critical thinking and empathy, essential for personal and societal well-being.

 
The liberal arts significantly contribute to well-being by equipping individuals with the skills and knowledge necessary to understand and address complex human issues. By fostering critical thinking, cultural awareness, and emotional intelligence, liberal arts education prepares individuals to lead fulfilling lives and positively impact their communities. These skills are crucial for navigating life's challenges and fostering resilience, which are key components of well-being. They offer not just tools for work, but tools for life.

 
This interdisciplinary approach is essential in today's fast-paced world, where holistic well-being is increasingly recognized as vital for personal and societal health. The connection between well-being and the liberal arts is a powerful one, rooted in the idea that education is not just about acquiring job skills, but about becoming a thoughtful, reflective, and flourishing human being.

==

* For what it's worth, chatGPT's overly-ambitious suggestions:

You said:

I am participating this semester in a team-taught course in the Master of Liberal Arts (MALA) program at Middle Tennessee State University called MALA 6010 The Connection Between Liberal Arts and Well-Being. I and several other professors from various departments in the college will each meet with the students twice. My block, called The Philosophy of Well-being, is February 26 and March 5. This is my block description: Philosophers since antiquity have concerned themselves with the pursuit of happiness and human flourishing, which (along with physical and mental health) substantially comprise "well-being" as most of us conceive it. William James said "If we were to ask the question: What is human life's chief concern? one of the answers we should receive would be: It is happiness. How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness, is in fact for most people at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure." And he once advised an ailing friend: "Keep your health, your splendid health. It is better than all the truths under the firmament." In this block we'll discuss what philosophers like James have said about well-being as our chief concern. Can you suggest suitable readings for Week 1? In Week 2, students will each present a short report on some aspect of well-being, health and happiness, and what philosophers (particularly American philosophers) have written about this. In Week 1 I would like to assign something by William James, possibly his essay "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings"... I would also like to assign something that will give students a brief and broad overview of the field, perhaps an excerpt from Daniel Haybron's Very Short Introduction to Happiness. Can you suggest other possible reading assignments and recommendations?

ChatGPT said:

This sounds like a wonderful block—especially in a MALA context, where you can move fluidly between historical, existential, and practical dimensions of well-being.

Since Week 1 sets the conceptual and interpretive framework for student presentations in Week 2, I’d suggest structuring it around three layers:

A classic American philosophical voice (James)

A concise conceptual map of the field


A contrasting or complicating perspective on happiness/well-being

Below is a curated set of suggestions, organized by role in the syllabus.
Core Anchor: William James
1. William James – “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings” (1899)
Excellent choice.
Why it works:
Introduces pluralism about values and well-being.

Undermines moralistic and elitist accounts of the good life.

Emphasizes sympathy and the opacity of others’ goods.

Pairs beautifully with contemporary debates about subjective vs. objective accounts of well-being.

You might frame it with questions such as:

• Does James defend subjectivism about well-being?
• Is well-being plural and perspectival?
• What role does “recognition” play in human flourishing?

2. James – “The Moral Equivalent of War” (optional pairing)

This essay complements Blindness by connecting individual vitality with collective purpose and discipline. It raises the question:

Does well-being require struggle? Is comfort the enemy of flourishing?

If you prefer something more psychological, an excerpt from The Varieties of Religious Experience (e.g., “The Sick Soul” vs. “The Healthy-Minded”) would deepen the conversation about health, optimism, and tragic consciousness.
Concise Overview of the Field
3. Daniel Haybron – Happiness: A Very Short Introduction

Excellent for conceptual scaffolding.
Particularly useful sections:

Distinction between happiness and life satisfaction

Emotional condition vs. evaluative judgment

Critique of “life satisfaction” metrics

Students will benefit from:

Clear taxonomy (hedonism, desire-satisfaction, objective list theories)


Introduction to measurement debates
Classical Foundations (Short Excerpts)

Even in an American-focused block, grounding in antiquity clarifies the tradition James inherits.

4. Aristotle – Nicomachean Ethics, Book I (selections on eudaimonia)

Why:
Establishes flourishing as activity in accordance with virtue.

Provides a non-hedonic model of well-being.

Useful contrast to modern psychological accounts.

Even 10–15 pages would suffice.
A Pragmatist Expansion
5. John Dewey – Excerpt from Human Nature and Conduct
Dewey reframes well-being in terms of:

• Habit formation
• Growth as an ongoing process
• Democratic and social dimensions of flourishing

This keeps the focus distinctly American and ties well-being to education and civic life—very appropriate for a Liberal Arts course.
A Contemporary American Voice
6. Martha Nussbaum – Excerpt from Creating Capabilities or “Capabilities and Human Rights”

Though not a pragmatist, she offers:

A robust objective-list theory

A bridge between philosophy and public policy

A framework for thinking about health and human dignity

This will give students options for their Week 2 reports (e.g., capabilities vs. happiness metrics).
Existential / Psychological Depth

7. Ralph Waldo Emerson – “Self-Reliance” (selections)

Emerson enriches:

• Individual authenticity
• Non-conformity as flourishing
• The moral psychology of independence

He pairs beautifully with James’ pluralism.
Alternative American Perspective

8. Henry David Thoreau – Selections from Walden

Especially chapters on:

• Economy
• Solitude
• Higher Laws

Raises the question:
Is simplicity essential to well-being?
A Useful Structure for Week 1

You might assign:

Primary Text

James, “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings”

Conceptual Overview

Haybron, selected chapters

Philosophical Counterpoint (choose one)

Aristotle (virtue model)

Dewey (growth model)

Nussbaum (capabilities model)

Emerson (authenticity model)

That keeps the load reasonable but conceptually rich.
Framing Questions for Week 1 Discussion

You might structure discussion around these tensions:

Is happiness primarily:

• A feeling?
• A judgment?
• A way of living?
• A moral achievement?
• Can someone be happy but not flourishing?
• Is well-being subjective, objective, or plural?
• Does health ground happiness—or is it only instrumental?
• Is suffering compatible with well-being?

Additional Optional American Thinkers (For Student Presentations)

If you want to seed ideas for Week 2:

William James – health and vitality
Jonathan Edwards – religious happiness
Josiah Royce – loyalty and community
Cornel West – prophetic pragmatism and hope
Laurence Thomas – moral psychology and respect

==

Also available for Week 2 report presentations:

• "I am an American philosopher" - interviews with contemporary philosophers in the pragmatic tradition (pick 2 or 3 to tell us about)
• William James Society - letters from the President, and other content
• The School of Life - short videos on historical philosophers and ideas (pick 2 or 3 to show us, and discuss
• Little History of Philosophy -tell us about 2 or 3 philosophers and their ideas about well-being. 
• Any of the books I've placed on 3-day reserve at the library (see the right sidebar on my CoPhi site).
• Anything else of interest to you (and pertaining to philosophy and well-being/happiness/flourishing) that you find in the library, or online (at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, for instance), or on any of my sites.
• Chapter II, Blindness and Optimism, in William James's 'Springs of Delight': the Return to Life (in the library, not on reserve... or I can lend you a copy)

One Week Without Smartphones on a College Campus

"Classes at St. John's are discussion-based — no laptops allowed."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/03/style/smartphone-tech-fast-college-students.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Seek wisdom

"Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul."

— Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus

Best philosophy lectures on YouTube

https://open.substack.com/pub/jaredhenderson/p/the-best-philosophy-lectures-on-youtube?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay

They Want to Influence You to Do … Nothing

Some GenZ influencers are so weird. For goodness sake, do something: go for a walk, read a book; don't just sit there making empty "content"…

…James Danckert, who runs a "boredom lab" at the University of Waterloo in Canada, where he studies the psychological and neurological roots of boredom, cautioned new practitioners not to indulge a "gross misunderstanding of boredom," in which this mental state is assumed to be a de facto good.

"Boredom is signaling for you a lack of meaning, a lack of purpose in your life," he said in an interview, calling the TikTok challenge in particular "a misguided approach." The goal, he explained, is not to wallow in feelings of disinterest and malaise but to find some way to alleviate them.

There are better ways for people to cope, Dr. Danckert said, other than locking themselves in a cage of existential ennui — by going outside or finding a new hobby, for instance. Reading also works. "You don't have to do nothing."

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/01/style/boredom-online-trend-influencers-tiktok.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Be good

"There is a gap between where we would like to be and where we are in terms of our behavior."
https://fivebooks.com/best-books/how-to-be-good-massimo-pigliucci/