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Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu
👣Solvitur ambulando
💭Sapere aude
Thursday, June 4, 2020
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Wednesday, June 3, 2020
An Antiracist Reading List - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/29/books/review/antiracist-reading-list-ibram-x-kendi.html
Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu
👣Solvitur ambulando
💭Sapere aude
Monday, June 1, 2020
MALA 6010, Communication-Fall 2020
My block will be "The Conversational Nature of Philosophy"...
Description. The communication of ideas, and the constructive-critical work of discussing and evaluating them, is central to the mission of philosophy, "the search for wisdom." Philosophers in America's pragmatic tradition, in particular, have emphasized the notion of philosophy as an ongoing trans-historical conversation between and among ourselves, our forebears, and future generations. In that sense, philosophy is an intrinsically pluralistic philosophy of communication. We'll read and discuss
- William James, who said "The pluralistic form takes for me a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of, being essentially a social philosophy, a philosophy of 'co'..." *
- Richard Rorty, who called philosophy "the conversation of mankind" and said “The world does not speak. Only we do. The world can, once we have programmed ourselves with a language, cause us to hold beliefs. But it cannot propose a language for us to speak. Only other human beings can do that."
- David Whyte, the philosopher/poet who speaks and writes eloquently of "the conversational nature of reality."
(Specific texts/assignments to be announced)
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*
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*
The Meaning of Truth
Chapter 5: The Essence of Humanism[1]
Table of Contents | Next | Previous
HUMANISM is a ferment that has 'come to stay.' It is not a single hypothesis or theorem, and it dwells on no new facts. It is rather a slow shifting in the philosophic perspective, making thin appear as from a new centre of interest or point of sight. Some writers are strongly conscious of the shifting, others half unconscious, even though their own vision may have undergone much change. The result is no small confusion in debate, the half-conscious humanists often taking part against the radical ones, as if they wished to count upon the other side.[2]
If humanism really be the name for such
(122) a shifting of perspective, it is obvious that the whole scene of the philosophic stage will change in some degree if humanism prevails. The emphasis of things, their foreground and background distribution, their sizes and values, will not keep just the same.[3] If such pervasive consequences be involved in humanism, it is clear that no pains which philosophers may take, first in defining it, and then in furthering, checking, or steering its progress, will be thrown away.
It suffers badly at present from incomplete definition. Its most systematic advocates, Schiller and Dewey, have published fragmentary programmes only; and its bearing on many
(123) vital philosophic problems has not been traced except by adversaries who, scenting heresies in advance, have showered blows on doctrines -- subjectivism and scepticism, for example -- that no good humanist finds it necessary to entertain. By their still greater reticences, the anti-humanists have, in turn, perplexed the humanists. Much of the controversy has involved the word 'truth.' It is always good in debate to know your adversary's point of view authentically. But the critics of humanism never define exactly what the word 'truth' signifies when they use it themselves. The humanists have to guess at their view; and the result has doubtless been much beating of the air. Add to all this, great individual differences in both camps, and it becomes clear that nothing is so urgently needed, at the stage which things have reached at present, as a sharper definition by each side of its central point of view.
Whoever will contribute any touch of sharpness will help us to make sure of what's what and who is who. Any one can contribute such a definition, and, without it, no one knows
(124) exactly where he stands. If I offer my own provisional definition of humanism now and here, others may improve it, some adversary may be led to define his own creed more sharply by the contrast, and a certain quickening of the crystallization of general opinion may result.
I
The essential service of humanism., as I conceive the situation, is to have seen that tho, one part of our experience may lean upon another part to make it what it is in any one of several aspects in which it may be considered, experience as a whole is self-containing and leans on nothing. Since this formula also expresses the main contention of transcendental idealism, it needs abundant explication to make it unambiguous. It seems, at first sight, to confine itself to denying theism and pantheism. But, in fact, it need not deny either; everything would depend on the exegesis; and if the formula ever became canonical, it would certainly develop both right-
(125) wing and left-wing interpreters. I myself read humanism theistically and pluralistically. If there be a God, he is no absolute all-experiencer, but simply the experiencer of widest actual conscious span. Read thus, humanism is for me a religion susceptible of reasoned defence, tho I am well aware how many minds there are to whom it can appeal religiously only when it has been monistically translated. Ethically the pluralistic form of it takes for me a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of -- it being essentially a social philosophy, a philosophy of 'co,' in which conjunctions do the work. But my primary reason for advocating it is its matchless intellectual economy. It gets rid, not only of the standing 'problems' that monism engenders ('problem of evil, ' 'problem of freedom,' and the like), but of other metaphysical mysteries and paradoxes as well.
It gets rid, for example, of the whole agnostic controversy, by refusing to entertain the hypothesis of trans-empirical reality at all. It gets rid of any need for an absolute of the
(126) bradleyan type (avowedly sterile for intellectual purposes) by insisting that the conjunctive relations found within experience are faultlessly real. It gets rid of the need of an absolute of the roycean type (similarly sterile) by its pragmatic treatment of the problem of knowledge. As the views of knowledge, reality and truth imputed to humanism have been those so far most fiercely attacked, it is in regard to these ideas that a sharpening of focus seems most urgently required. I proceed therefore to bring the views which I impute to humanism in these respects into focus as briefly as I can. (continues)
II
==
The conversational nature of COVID-19. Disturbing news for pluralists and pragmatists (and we pluralists who think we can be pragmatists)... https://t.co/zI3AABQSZX— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) June 2, 2020
Democracy in America, 2021
Looking back at Alexis de Tocqueville's 19th century classic Democracy in America, and at recent reflections on the state of our democracy like Robert Talisse's Overdoing Democracy...
Lovely piece, concluding that the value of democracy is that "it is a society organised around the working aspiration for self-government among political equals". Alas, we're falling quite a bit short of our aspiration these days. https://t.co/jI0IHbZ1Ab— Cheryl Misak (@MisakCheryl) June 1, 2020
Friday, May 29, 2020
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Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu
👣Solvitur ambulando
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Thursday, May 28, 2020
Knowledge outpaces wisdom
Especially the things people "know that just ain't so" (Mark Twain?)...
"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."— Ethics in Bricks (@EthicsInBricks) May 28, 2020
- Isaac Asimov pic.twitter.com/xbN5NUyNro
Wednesday, May 27, 2020
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
What's New
Updates for the Last Three Months Listed in Reverse Chronological Order https://plato.stanford.edu/new.html
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[Note: All dates are given in UTC]
- Hume on Free Will (Paul Russell) [REVISED: May 27, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Henri Bergson (Leonard Lawlor and Valentine Moulard Leonard) [REVISED: May 27, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Bertrand Russell (Andrew David Irvine) [REVISED: May 27, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Spinoza’s Psychological Theory (Michael LeBuffe) [REVISED: May 26, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Race (Michael James and Adam Burgos) [REVISED: May 25, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Edmund Burke (Ian Harris) [REVISED: May 24, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Wilhelm Windelband (Katherina Kinzel) [NEW: May 18, 2020]
- Multiple Realizability (John Bickle) [REVISED: May 18, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (Andrew Bowie) [REVISED: May 18, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (Brian Copenhaver) [REVISED: May 15, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Communitarianism (Daniel Bell) [REVISED: May 15, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html
- Intuitionism in Ethics (Philip Stratton-Lake) [REVISED: May 15, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Collapse Theories (Giancarlo Ghirardi and Angelo Bassi) [REVISED: May 15, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- History of the Ontology of Art (Paisley Livingston) [REVISED: May 14, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Self-Consciousness (Joel Smith) [REVISED: May 12, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, scepticism-indexicality.html
- al-Ghazali (Frank Griffel) [REVISED: May 8, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Philosophy of Immunology (Bartlomiej Swiatczak and Alfred I. Tauber) [REVISED: May 7, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Intensional Transitive Verbs (Graeme Forbes) [REVISED: May 7, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- A Priori Justification and Knowledge (Bruce Russell) [REVISED: May 6, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Touch (Matthew Fulkerson) [REVISED: May 6, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Temporal Parts (Katherine Hawley) [REVISED: May 5, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Rudolf Carnap (Hannes Leitgeb and André Carus) [REVISED: May 5, 2020]Changes to: Bibliography, semantics.html
- Existence (Michael Nelson) [REVISED: May 5, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- International Distributive Justice (Michael Blake and Patrick Taylor Smith) [REVISED: May 4, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (Vincent C. Müller) [NEW: April 30, 2020]
- Homosexuality (Brent Pickett) [REVISED: April 28, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Methodological Individualism (Joseph Heath) [REVISED: April 27, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- al-Farabi’s Psychology and Epistemology (Luis Xavier López-Farjeat) [REVISED: April 26, 2020]Changes to: Bibliography, notes.html
- Scottish Philosophy in the 19th Century (Gordon Graham) [REVISED: April 24, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Recursive Functions (Walter Dean) [NEW: April 23, 2020]
- Hume’s Newtonianism and Anti-Newtonianism (Eric Schliesser and Tamás Demeter) [REVISED: April 21, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- The Role of Decoherence in Quantum Mechanics (Guido Bacciagaluppi) [REVISED: April 21, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html
- Hume’s Aesthetics (Theodore Gracyk) [REVISED: April 21, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Non-Deductive Methods in Mathematics (Alan Baker) [REVISED: April 21, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html
- Justification Logic (Sergei Artemov and Melvin Fitting) [REVISED: April 20, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, supplement.html
- Discrimination (Andrew Altman) [REVISED: April 20, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Baruch Spinoza (Steven Nadler) [REVISED: April 16, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Quantum Approaches to Consciousness (Harald Atmanspacher) [REVISED: April 16, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Roger Bacon (Jeremiah Hackett) [REVISED: April 15, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html
- Ancient Logic (Susanne Bobzien) [REVISED: April 15, 2020]Changes to: Bibliography
- Space and Time: Inertial Frames (Robert DiSalle) [REVISED: April 15, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Imaginative Resistance (Emine Hande Tuna) [NEW: April 13, 2020]
- Epistemology (Matthias Steup and Ram Neta) [REVISED: April 11, 2020]Changes to: Main text, notes.html
- Reism (Jan Woleński) [REVISED: April 10, 2020]Changes to: Bibliography
- Sounds (Roberto Casati, Jerome Dokic, and Elvira Di Bona) [REVISED: April 10, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Philosophy of Biomedicine (Sean Valles) [NEW: April 9, 2020]
- Empedocles (K. Scarlett Kingsley and Richard Parry) [REVISED: April 7, 2020]Changes to: Main text
- Auditory Perception (Casey O'Callaghan) [REVISED: April 7, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, supplement.html
- John M. E. McTaggart (Kris McDaniel) [REVISED: April 7, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Events (Roberto Casati and Achille Varzi) [REVISED: April 3, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Medieval Theories of Obligationes (Paul Vincent Spade and Mikko Yrjönsuuri) [REVISED: April 3, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Fallacies (Hans Hansen) [REVISED: April 2, 2020]Changes to: Main text
- Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems (Panu Raatikainen) [REVISED: April 2, 2020]Changes to: Bibliography
- Vienna Circle (Thomas Uebel) [REVISED: April 1, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Confucius (Mark Csikszentmihalyi) [NEW: March 31, 2020]
- Philosophy in Chile (Ivan Jaksic) [REVISED: March 31, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Francisco Sanches (Rolando Pérez) [NEW: March 31, 2020]
- Medieval Theories of Future Contingents (Simo Knuuttila) [REVISED: March 31, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Naturalism (David Papineau) [REVISED: March 31, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html
- Nonconceptual Mental Content (José Bermúdez and Arnon Cahen) [REVISED: March 30, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Simone de Beauvoir (Debra Bergoffen and Megan Burke) [REVISED: March 27, 2020]Changes to: Bibliography
- Episteme and Techne (Richard Parry) [REVISED: March 27, 2020]Changes to: Main text
- Ibn Sina’s Metaphysics (Olga Lizzini) [REVISED: March 26, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html
- Form vs. Matter (Thomas Ainsworth) [REVISED: March 25, 2020]Changes to: Bibliography
- Territorial Rights and Territorial Justice (Margaret Moore) [NEW: March 24, 2020]
- Ayn Rand (Neera K. Badhwar and Roderick T. Long) [REVISED: March 23, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, supplement.html
- The Ethics of Manipulation (Robert Noggle) [REVISED: March 22, 2020]Changes to: Main text
- Property and Ownership (Jeremy Waldron) [REVISED: March 21, 2020]Changes to: Main text, Bibliography
- Song-Ming Confucianism (Justin Tiwald) [NEW: March 19, 2020]
- Edith Stein (Thomas Szanto and Dermot Moran) [NEW: March 18, 2020]
- Tibetan Epistemology and Philosophy of Language (Pascale Hugon) [REVISED: March 18, 2020]Changes are prior to March 21, 2020 (Main text, Bibliography) and are available in Spring 2020 Edition.
- Concepts of Disease and Health (Dominic Murphy) [REVISED: March 18, 2020]Changes are prior to March 21, 2020 (Main text, Bibliography) and are available in Spring 2020 Edition.
- Hermann Cohen (Scott Edgar) [REVISED: March 17, 2020]Changes are prior to March 21, 2020 (Main text, Bibliography) and are available in Spring 2020 Edition.
- Computational Philosophy (Patrick Grim and Daniel Singer) [NEW: March 16, 2020]
- Naturalism in Epistemology (Patrick Rysiew) [REVISED: March 16, 2020]Changes are prior to March 21, 2020 (Main text, Bibliography, notes.html) and are available in Spring 2020 Edition.
- Feminist Perspectives on Globalization (Serena Parekh and Shelley Wilcox) [REVISED: March 12, 2020]Changes are prior to March 21, 2020 (Main text, Bibliography) and are available in Spring 2020 Edition.
- Modal Fictionalism (Daniel Nolan) [REVISED: March 10, 2020]Changes are prior to March 21, 2020 (Main text, Bibliography, notes.html) and are available in Spring 2020 Edition.
- Seventeenth-Century Theories of Consciousness (Larry M. Jorgensen) [REVISED: March 6, 2020]Changes are prior to March 21, 2020 (Main text, Bibliography) and are available in Spring 2020 Edition.
- Johann Sturm (Andrea Sangiacomo and Christian Henkel) [NEW: March 5, 2020]
- Psychologism (Martin Kusch) [REVISED: February 27, 2020]Changes are prior to March 21, 2020 (Bibliography) and are available in Spring 2020 Edition.
- Nietzsche’s Moral and Political Philosophy (Brian Leiter) [REVISED: February 27, 2020]Changes are prior to March 21, 2020 (Main text, Bibliography) and are available in Spring 2020 Edition.
- Hegel’s Aesthetics (Stephen Houlgate) [REVISED: February 27, 2020]Changes are prior to March 21, 2020 (Main text, Bibliography) and are available in Spring 2020 Edition.
Chronological List of Published Entries
A.J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer is our #philosopherOTM. Explore our recommended reading and free book and journal article Collection on Ayer and his key fields of work here: https://t.co/A2rvX9Z6bJ. #logicalpositivism pic.twitter.com/zowcpZGMDb— Oxford Philosophy (@OUPPhilosophy) May 4, 2020
Aristotle wins again
Aristotle wins twitter, again. pic.twitter.com/N2JA7OoWTR— Agnes Callard (@AgnesCallard) May 27, 2020
Nigel Warburton interviewed
Website: The Philosophers' Magazine
Title: Virtual Philosopher
Description: The website of The Philosophers' Magazine.
Link: https://www.philosophersmag.com/interviews/16-nigel-warburton-virtual-philosopher
Title: Virtual Philosopher
Description: The website of The Philosophers' Magazine.
Link: https://www.philosophersmag.com/interviews/16-nigel-warburton-virtual-philosopher
Tuesday, May 26, 2020
Best introductions to philosophy (or some of them)
Philosopher Nigel Warburton (@philosophybites) recommends the best Introductions to Philosophy— Anita Leirfall (@anitaleirfall) May 25, 2020
The Best Introductions to Philosophy | Five Books Expert Recommendations https://t.co/WpMZTQR8L7
Sunday, May 24, 2020
Democracy: What’s It Good For? - The Philosophers' Magazine
https://www.philosophersmag.com/essays/216-democracy-what-s-it-good-for
Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu
👣Solvitur ambulando
💭Sapere aude
Saturday, May 23, 2020
Tweet from To The Best Of Our Knowledge (@TTBOOK)
To The Best Of Our Knowledge (@TTBOOK) tweeted at 5:49 PM on Sat, May 23, 2020: "When people are in crisis, they tend to ask existential questions — like, why am I here? Where did I come from? Is life worth living? How do I go on in a meaningful way? That might be the silver lining to this pandemic." — Philosopher @JohnKaag https://t.co/EbavQuY1GO (https://twitter.com/TTBOOK/status/1264327542737076226?s=02) Get the official Twitter app at https://twitter.com/download?s=13
Thursday, May 21, 2020
Pandemic philosophy
The current issue of The Philosophers' Magazine features philosophers thinking through the pandemic. Read @katfurman on communities and contagion for free on the tpm website. https://t.co/s3xIMsOwrJ— TPM (@philosophersmag) May 21, 2020
Monday, May 18, 2020
Philosophy essay | Spinoza: God-intoxicated man - The TLS
Philosophy essay | Spinoza: God-intoxicated man - The TLShttps://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/god-intoxicated-man-spinoza-philosophy-essay/
Be a web skeptic
"Don't believe everything you read online."— Ethics in Bricks (@EthicsInBricks) May 18, 2020
- Diogenes pic.twitter.com/5QMQLxKrah
Bertrand Russell on "a free man's worship"
Bertrand Russell on "a free man's worship"-United with his fellow-men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common doom, the free man finds that a new vision is with him always, shedding over every daily task the light of love. The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instil faith in hours of despair. Let us not weigh in grudging scales their merits and demerits, but let us think only of their need--of the sorrows, the difficulties, perhaps the blindnesses, that make the misery of their lives; let us remember that they are fellow-sufferers in the same darkness, actors in the same tragedy as ourselves. And so, when their day is over, when their good and their evil have become eternal by the immortality of the past, be it ours to feel that, where they suffered, where they failed, no deed of ours was the cause; but wherever a spark of the divine fire kindled in their hearts, we were ready with encouragement, with sympathy, with brave words in which high courage glowed. Bertrand Russell, A Free Man's Worship... Russell's message to future generations (vid)
William James on the religion of humanity
William James on the "religion of humanity"- Whether a God exist, or whether no God exist... we form at any rate an ethical republic here below. And the first reflection which this leads to is that ethics have as genuine and real a foothold in a universe where the highest consciousness is human, as in a universe where there is a God as well. "The religion of humanity" affords a basis for ethics as well as theism does. William James, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life
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