(Successor site to CoPhilosophy, 2011-2020)
A collaborative search for wisdom, at Middle Tennessee State University and beyond... "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'"-William James
LISTEN. All our closing texts in CoPhi end on guardedly-hopeful notes.
Kurt Andersen imagines we might have hit "Peak Fantasyland" and are ready to come down the other side, in the direction of greater fealty to truth, facts, and reality-the real varieties, not fakes.
Susan Neiman says "real grown-ups are not long distracted by bread and circuses. No longer confused by baubles or shy with inexperience, we are better able to see what we see, and say it. We? All of us..."
Earlier, making the same point about the pleasures of maturity, Neiman said we "no longer care if that sunset in that moment would seem kitschy if seen through other eyes. You see it with yours, and you're simply grateful..."
John Kaag concludes with sunset and gratitutde too. "I looked out to the Statue of Liberty again, and back down into the water below. The sun was indeed setting, and I tried to let myself watch it, as Whitman and James hoped we would, for what seemed like many minutes. Just long enough to be glad that I still had the chance." Earlier, channeling James, he agreed that "chance makes the difference between a life of which the keynote is resignation and a life of...hope."
Henry David Thoreau wrote a pretty good conclusion too, reminding us that every sunset is also a sunrise. "Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star."
LISTEN. Thoreau, like all stolid New Englanders, was much concerned with the efficient and reliable generation of personal warmth, in the literal (not emotional) sense.
...man’s body is a stove, and food the fuel which keeps up the internal combustion in the lungs. In cold weather we eat more, in warm less. The animal heat is the result of a slow combustion, and disease and death take place when this is too rapid; or for want of fuel, or from some defect in the draught, the fire goes out. Of course the vital heat is not to be confounded with fire...
The grand necessity, then, for our bodies, is to keep warm, to keep the vital heat in us...
How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men?Walden
It's a philosophical, environmental, aesthetic, and practical matter that comes up every year about this time, at this latitude. I have a propane space heater out in the barn where I like to hang with the dogs, a wood-burning Earth Stove out in my Little House, and a round and glowing radiant electric space heater I like to position in front of my La-Z-boy. I have a fireplace in the library too, but my wife doesn't like smoke so it tends to lie sadly dormant through the winter, except on rare holiday occasions.
What is the climatically-correct view on the use of any and all of these warming contrivances?
If you get your electricity from renewable sources, an electric patio heater is probably your most environmentally friendly choice...But if your electricity is generated by fossil fuels, a propane heater is likely a better solution...“If you’re concerned about the climate, this isn’t the largest source of impact, even within your control,” he said. “The car you drive is going to make a bigger difference over the car’s lifetime than whether you burn wood or propane in the backyard for one or two nights a week for the winter.”
...using a radiant space heater might allow you to maintain a similar comfort level at a lower setting, thereby reducing your electricity usage...having “perceived control” over the temperature, through, say, a nearby space heater, can increase your “thermal acceptability,” or the range of temperatures in which you feel comfortable. nyt
Keeping my "thermal acceptability" within our range of climate sustainability is the goal here, but retaining vital heat is also a happiness issue. Once again, we should look to our Nordic friends for guiding light. The Danes are happy, and the Fins and Norwegians and Swedes. Danish Hygge Is So Last Year. Say Hello to Swedish Mys-"the essence of mys is the feeling of warmth." Alright then. I'm going to fetch that radiant heater from the shed, and I'm going to be remorselessly thankful for it.
The last few weeks have underlined a main lesson many of us have drawn from the Trump presidency: that many Americans, and many American politicians, are not all that interested in democracy. And I mean: explicitly not interested, not even to the point of paying lip-service to it (https://twitter.com/Plural_truth/status/1331303169297682433?s=02)
LISTEN. It's that time again, time for end-of-semester parting words. "It got late real early" (as the old Yankee may or may not have said*) this Fall, since we'll not be re-convening in December. Maybe I should scour the Yogi files for other good words to end on. But I don't think I can do better than this:
"Formula for our happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal,” wrote Nietzsche. But what did he know of happiness? Less, possibly, than Grandfather Philosophy. He sees the connection between happiness, hope, goals, and another Yogi-ism: it ain't over 'til it's over.
Yogi didn't say, but would in his own way have understood:
“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.
—"Old Man's Advice to Youth: 'Never Lose a Holy Curiosity.'" LIFE Magazine (2 May 1955) p. 64”
And, again:
Let _my_ last word, then, speaking in the name of intellectual philosophy, be... "There is no conclusion. What has concluded, that we might conclude in regard to it? There are no fortunes to be told, and there is no advice to be given.--Farewell!" William James, "A Pluralistic Mystic"
And finally, also from Willy James: "Keep your health, your splendid health. It's worth all the truths in the firmament."
LISTEN. It's time to wrap things up. We'll not be Zooming any more, this Fall semester, after Thanksgiving.
For our last week, in both CoPhi and Environmental Ethics, I'm inviting students to think about our larger legacy. Will we be well regarded by our descendants, after we've thinned out?
"...we're gonna be like him! I mean, he was probably one of the BEAUTIFUL people. He was probably dancing and playing tennis and everything. And now look: this is what happens to us. You know, it's very important to have some kind of personal integrity, you know? I'll be hanging in a classroom one day, and I want to make sure when I thin out, that I'm... well-thought of." Manhattan
Or will they excoriate us, as short-sighted and selfish Oncelers?
Got an email about Fantasyland--my "cultural supremacy" & "implicit bias" of my "religious bigotry," and how it's only "alcoholism and substance abuse that has made us crazy." Was thinking of replying, but then: "Luckily, we still have the sober President in the White House." (https://twitter.com/KBAndersen/status/1330573833401733123?s=02)
Even before the pandemic, this holiday was a reminder of loved ones gone before. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/23/opinion/thanksgiving-covid-families.html?smid=em-share
Toby Ord, a philosopher who studies our species's "existential risk," has been both frightened and encouraged by our response to the pandemic.
Humanity's potential is worth preserving, he argues, not because we are so great now but because of the possibility, however small, that we are a bridge to something far greater.
...There are the natural risks we’ve always lived with, such as asteroids, super-volcanic eruptions, and stellar explosions. “None of them keep me awake at night,” Ord writes. Then there are the large-scale threats we have created for ourselves: nuclear war, climate change, pandemics (which are made more likely by our way of life), and other novel methods of man-made destruction still to come. Ord is most concerned about two possibilities: empowered artificial intelligence unaligned with human values (he gives it a one-in-ten chance of ending humanity within the next hundred years) and engineered pandemics (he thinks they have a one-in-thirty chance of bringing down the curtain). The pandemic we are currently experiencing is the sort of event that Ord describes as a “warning shot”—a smaller-scale catastrophe that, though frightening, tragic, and disruptive, might also spur attempts to prevent disasters of greater magnitude in the future.
Unlike doomsday preppers who seem, on some level, to relish the idea of social breakdown, Ord believes in humanity’s potential for greatness...
Remember to post your points grand total for the semester (not including blog post & final presentation points) with your final weekly essay.
Something a little different, for our last week:
After viewing Bertrand Russell's message below, what do you think Immanuel Kant's (or Susan Neiman's) and William James's (or John Kaag's) messages to future generations would be (see the concluding chapters of WGU and SSHM)? What is yours? Mine would include Kurt Vonnegut's:
"What are the facts, and what is the truth that the facts bear out?
...Love is wise, hatred is foolish..."
What will you tell them about how people in the 2020s either did or did not become "good ancestors"? Did they reach and reject "Peak Fantasyland" then, and begin to really value truth, facts, and reality?
"...seven trillion people will be born over the next 50,000 years.
How will all these future generations look back on us and the legacy we're leaving for them?
...A global movement has started to emerge of people committed to decolonizing the future..."
And what do you think future generations' message might be, to us? Will it be anything like the following?
"We knew that we needed to save the planet and that we had all the technology to do it, but people were scared. They said it was too big, too fast, not practical. I think that’s because they just couldn’t picture it yet..."
"We are all now stuck in a science fiction novel that we are writing together." Kim Stanley Robinson
"Where there is no vision, the people perish." Abe Lincoln
"The really vital question for us all is, What is this world going to be? What is life eventually to make of itself?" William James
More questions:
SSHM
"Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation." 129 Can you (partly) describe an example of that?
"Everything makes sense. Just not to you or me." 133 Does this make sense?
What do you think it means to say "truth is our story about the facts"? 134
Something's being "useful at a particular time for a particular person" does not make it true. 136 Why do you think so many of pragmatism's critics misunderstand this?
What do you think it means to have "conversations with sensations"? 137
Are you a meliorist? 143-4
What do you think of the Gertrude Stein anecdote? 152
Do you like James's "Hands off" message? 158
How do you interpret Protagoras's "Man is the measure" statement? 161 Is it a "radical humanism"? 164 What does that mean to you?
Do you agree about "the greatest use of life"? 169
Do you agree about "the art of being wise"? 172
How does chance make the difference between resignation and hope? 174
Must James's "unseen order" be something supernatural? 177 Or can it just be aspects of nature not yet understood?
Have you ever experienced "the sublime or the religious" in some mundane activity (like Whitman on the ferry)? 182
Kaag concludes his book with a sunset, which Neiman (201) says young people typically have no time for. Do you?
WGU
Which of the synonyms for "serious" Neiman mentions do you associate with being adult? 193
Is Peter Pan a worthy hero for a grown up? 194
In what way is growing up "the work of generations"? 195
How is life like Neurath's boat? 196 Is Otto Neurath a good adult role-model? 197
Neiman wishes she'd "known enough to ask my teachers the right questions before they died." Do you know some of the right questions? 198
Does the U-Bend surprise you? 199 Does it encourage you to think more positively about aging?
Do the older people in your life (grandparents for example) "manage emotions more smoothly" or remember fewer negative things?
Do you think James was wrong about what happens by age 30? 200
Do you look forward to "escaping" the urgencies of "your natural force" (like Sophocles)? 202
Do you yet realize "that no time of one's life is the best one"?
Do you look forward to "giving back"? 204
Are the people you know who possess the soundest judgment and the most common sense also the wisest? 207
Was Kant right that philosophy is (or should be) "natural to all of us"? 208
Did you "grow up in a home filled with good books and articulate people"? Did that "enlarge your mind" and world? 209-10
Can you "tell someone how to think for herself"? 215
Would you choose to live your life again, unconditionally-as Nietzsche's eternal recurrence proposes? 220 Or only on condition that it would be different next time, as Leibniz said? 216
Was Voltaire right about why people would choose life? 217
Do you expect the next 10 years of your life to be better than the last? What will you do to fulfill that expectation? 221
"It's more common to think about death in your twenties than it is in your fifties..." 230 Do you hope that's true?
Do you think fear of growing up is really fear of living, not dying? 230
"Real grown-ups are not long distracted by bread and circuses." 234 Are you?
FL
What will you do to escape, or avoid falling into, Fantasyland?
