I occasionally hear from students that they don't have time to get to class. I recommend a bike. The Rec Center rents bikes... 

Bike Shop

Whether you are an avid cyclist or a beginner, we can help you with information, gear or repair. The Bike Shop hosts numerous free safety rides and workshops each semester. These are educational in nature and help create a safe environment for riding on campus.

Bringing your own bike?

Use the Bike Shop entrance in the loading dock area rather than the main entrance. If you are facing the the Rec from Blue Raider Drive and see the drive-thru Pharmacy, the loading dock and Bike Shop is just past this area. You can easily access this part of the building by using Homecoming Circle next to Womack Lane Apartments.

The Bike Shop has:

• A commuter fleet of 30 bicycles for rent. The bikes are single speed bikes with regular v brakes; the rental includes a helmet and lock.
• Rental cards for $35. The cards allow you to rent a bike for a 5-day period at any time for the semester. Rental must occur while the bike shop is open. With a rental, you sign an agreement to follow all rules and regulations for bike safety on campus.

Click here for Bike Shop Hours

 

Email josh.stone@mtsu.edu with any questions.

https://www.mtsu.edu/camprec/cycling/index.php

Peter Singer, Socratic gadfly

LISTEN. We close Warburton's Little History today and tomorrow in CoPhi, with Peter Singer's utilitarian urgency about expanding the circle of our moral concern beyond narrow speciesism and parochial self-interest.

In The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty, he says "one wants to feel that one’s life has amounted to more than just consuming products and generating garbage... one likes to look back and say that one’s done the best one can to make this a better place for others. You can look at it from this point of view: What greater motivation can there be than doing whatever one possibly can to reduce pain and suffering?” g'r

One does want that, notwithstanding Paul Bloom's thesis that some "chosen suffering" enriches life. (The Sweet Spot: The Pleasures of Suffering and the Search for Meaning). A good life, a life of well-being, involves more than hedonistic self-indulgence. Of course. The effort to minimize the suffering of others must inevitably incur a measure of pain. Humanists like Vonnegut and Pullman ("there is a meaning, and it is to make things better & to work for greater good and greater wisdom") get that. Humanism is not a hedonism. Nor is it a variety of existentialism that treats meaning as a strictly personal object of manufacture. The greater wisdom does pursue the greater good... (continues)

John Rawls

 John Rawls, a 20th-century American philosopher, asked questions like how can we live in a just world when children starve to death while there are people with so much money they don’t know what to do with it? He lived from 1921 to 2002. He fought in WW2 and lived through two other wars. He did not approve of war as a way of resolution and justice-seeking. His time at war influenced his future writings a lot. He found justice in thinking and writing. In his book The Theory of Justice, he provided a never heard before perspective on fairness and justice. It was originally only meant to be read by fellow academics but it became very popular and many people read it. It became one of the most influential books of the 20th century.  His core belief was that we need to think deeply about how we coexist as a society and think about the ways the state controls our lives. 

“All is fair in love and war”

This saying is one that Rawls would not agree with. He created a thought experiment called the “Original Position”. It was based on the idea that humans are innately biased and selfish. If a person is asked to restructure our systems to create a better society they will focus on their experiences to change it without considering others. For example, a wealthy person often times will not consider less fortunate people when thinking about the issues in the world. Rawls says that they have to have an “Original Position”. They cannot know what position they will hold in this new society in order to organize it fairly.

DQs

1. What are the biggest injustices you find in the world around you?

2. Is it possible to coexist?

3. Do you think there is a way to be unbiased when assessing the state of our society?

4. Do politicians serve using the “veil of ignorance?” 

More readings: 

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rawls/

https://iep.utm.edu/rawls/

Minds and feet are connected

As Montaigne knew...

	The New Yorker ⁦‪@NewYorker‬⁩ It seems there's a curious link between our minds and our feet. nyer.cm/JJiwCyg   10/19/21, 10:14 PM

Heaven’s Gaits
What we do when we walk.

By Adam Gopnik

Why people walk is a hard question that looks easy. Upright bipedalism seems such an obvious advantage from the viewpoint of those already upright that we rarely see its difficulty. In the famous diagram, Darwinian man unfolds himself from frightened crouch to strong surveyor of the ages, and it looks like a natural ascension: you start out bending over, knuckles dragging, timidly scouring the ground for grubs, then you slowly straighten up until there you are, staring at the skies and counting the stars and thinking up gods to rule them. But the advantages of walking have actually been tricky to calculate. One guess among the evolutionary biologists has been that a significant advantage may simply be that walking on two legs frees up your hands to throw rocks at what might become your food—or to throw rocks at other bipedal creatures who are throwing rocks at what might become their food. Although walking upright seems to have preceded throwing rocks, the rock throwing, the biologists point out, is rarer than the bipedalism alone, which we share with all the birds, including awkward penguins and ostriches, and with angry bears. Meanwhile, the certainty of human back pain, like the inevitability of labor pains, is evidence of the jury-rigged, best-solution-at-hand nature of evolution... 

Walking is the Western form of meditation: “You’re doing nothing when you walk, nothing but walking. But having nothing to do but walk makes it possible to recover the pure sensation of being, to rediscover the simple joy of existing, the joy that permeates the whole of childhood.” There’s a reason, Frederic Gros suggests, that a dominant school of philosophy in the ancient world, revived in the medieval, was called the “peripatetic.” In Raphael’s great fresco of assembled ancient philosophers, conventionally called “The School of Athens,” Plato and Aristotle are shown upright and in movement, peripatetic even when fixed in place by paint, advancing toward the other philosophers rather than enthroned above them. Movement and mind are linked in Western thought... (continues)

“Many people nowadays live in a series of interiors...disconnected from each other. On foot everything stays connected, for while walking one occupies the spaces between those interiors in the same way one occupies those interiors. One lives in the whole world rather than in interiors built up against it.”

“Perhaps walking is best imagined as an 'indicator species,' to use an ecologist's term. An indicator species signifies the health of an ecosystem, and its endangerment or diminishment can be an early warning sign of systemic trouble. Walking is an indicator species for various kinds of freedom and pleasures: free time, free and alluring space, and unhindered bodies.”

“The multiplication of technologies in the name of efficiency is actually eradicating free time by making it possible to maximize the time and place for production and minimize the unstructured travel time in between…Too, the rhetoric of efficiency around these technologies suggests that what cannot be quantified cannot be valued-that that vast array of pleasures which fall into the category of doing nothing in particular, of woolgathering, cloud-gazing, wandering, window-shopping, are nothing but voids to be filled by something more definite, more production, or faster-paced…I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought or thoughtfulness.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Vonnegut’s decency

	Kurt Vonnegut ⁦‪@Kurt_Vonnegut‬⁩ Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.   10/19/21, 2:07 AM

Pullman’s meaning

	Humanists UK ⁦‪@Humanists_UK‬⁩ 'I'm responsible, there is a meaning, and it is to make things better & to work for greater good and greater wisdom. That's my meaning'. A great quote by our patron ⁦‪@PhilipPullman‬⁩ to celebrate on his birthday and during our #thatshumanism campaign. Happy Birthday, Philip! pic.twitter.com/nY6a9qJ5Jz   10/19/21, 11:17 AM

Cousin Mary: “Don’t worry.”

	Maria Popova ⁦‪@brainpicker‬⁩ "Things take the time they take. Don't worry." Mary Oliver on the meaning and measure of aliveness: brainpickings.org/2015/02/09/mar…   10/19/21, 8:07 PM

Against presence

	Cardiff Philosophy ⁦‪@cardiffphilos‬⁩ You can now watch the 2021 Royal Institute of Philosophy Cardiff Annual Lecture recording. Richard Moran argues against the idea that we should live in the present. Includes discussion with Sophie Archer and responses to audience questions. youtu.be/IEKSBTWSb6Y   10/19/21, 3:24 AM

Questions Oct 20/21

1. What did John Rawls call the thought experiment he believed would yield fair and just principles, and what was its primary device?

2. Under what circumstances would Rawls' theory permit huge inequalities of wealth between people?

3. What was the Imitation Game, and who devised a thought experiment to oppose it?

4. What, according to Searle, is involved in truly understanding something?

5. How do some philosophers think we might use computers to achieve immortality?

6. What does Peter Singer say we should sacrifice, to help strangers?

7. Why did Singer first become famous?

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


Discussion Questions:

• What can we do to restore a public/political commitment to facts, reality, and truth?
• Will Drumpf's exploitation and encouragement of partisan division and narrow nationalism have lasting consequences for the country and world? Or will we put it behind us with the election of the next progressive president?
• Why do so many extreme conservatives proudly proclaim their lack of knowledge and expertise ("I'm not a scientist but..." etc.)? Is Know-Nothingism a winning political strategy? What are its long-term implications for the nation?
• Do you value truth and honesty, even though our "leaders" increasingly do not?
• Are we at peak Fantasyland yet? Or does just about every day set a new low-mark?
• Is religious missionary fieldwork inherently hypocritical? How can missionaries avoid hypocrisy?
• What does it mean for philosophy to be "realistic"?
• What is the point of preserving the memory and legacy of our ancestors? Do you hope to be similarly "preservesd" by our descendants?
• Is "maybe" the best answer to the question of life's being worth living?

• Should college students be required OR encouraged to devote a year or two to public service immediately after graduation?
• Is Descartes' "cogito ergo sum" too individualistic, or even solipsistic?
• Have you had to "push beyond your awkwardness" like Royce? 165
• Do you agree with Hegel and Royce that you can know yourself only insofar as you are known by others?
• Do you possess a loyalty and sense of belonging to "a greater whole"? What community/-ties do you consider inseparable from your own sense of self? 169
• If you were in Rawls's "Original Position," what kind of economic system would you argue for? 
• In what sense are we "better off" in a society that allows huge income discrepancies between the least and best well-off?
• Will Artificial Intelligence surpass human intelligence, or has it already? Is this something we should worry about? 
• What "luxuries" are you prepared to give up, to help people less fortunate than yourself?
• Are you a speciesist? Why or why not?
• Is meat-eating ethically defensible?
• • Are we "guests and cast members" in the USA?  (402) What's good and bad about that?
  • Do you find it odd, charming, or just normal that so many childless adults, like Peter Pan, don't want to grow up-and keep going to Disneyland?
  • Have we become an infantilized culture, living fantasy lives, playing video games, and extending childhood indefinitely?
  • Is Mark Zuckerberg a hero, villain, neither... ?
  • Do you engage in magical thinking? 
  • "Most men of Hocking's age fell in love at a very early age. With themselves." (185) Has this changed? Do you think sexist assumptions and attitudes continue to dominate philosophical thinking, and life in general?
  • Why isn't Jane Addams more famous? 194
  • 
    

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1.  Peter Singer ‏@PeterSinger 6m6 minutes ago

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Holden Chapel, Harvard

Is Life Worth Living? by William James

These, then, are my last words to you : Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is
worth living, and your belief will help create the fact. The "scientific proof " that
you are right may not be clear...