Forgetting our place

Problematic

 "Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced."— Soren Kierkegaard

I don't know, much of Kierkegaard's life-experience looks to have been pretty problematic. That broken engagement, for instance. 

He also said:

“Marry, and you will regret it; don't marry, you will also regret it; marry or don't marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world's foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world's foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both."

Einstein on Free Will and the Power of the Imagination

"Human being, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to an invisible tune, intoned in the distance by a mysterious player." 

"We are accidents of biochemistry and chance, moving through the world waging wars and writing poems, spellbound by the seductive illusion of the self, every single one of our atoms traceable to some dead star…" Maria Popova https://www.themarginalian.org/2023/02/26/einstein-free-will-imagination/  

Brother West connects the dots

Cornel West's Friday night virtuoso performance in our building is still reverberating. He is unrivaled in his ability to draw together and connect the dots between people and ideas most of us would never think to link. Emerson and Louis Armstrong? Sure, why not. That's avoiding evasion… (continues)

Cornel West here FRIDAY 7 PM

POSTSCRIPT, Saturday morning. It was great. "Be not afraid..."

==

  

Cornel West is a prominent and provocative democratic intellectual. He is a Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He has also taught at Yale, Harvard, and the University of Paris. Cornel West graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. He has written over 20 books and has edited 13. Though he is best known for his classics, Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and for his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, his most recent releases, Black Prophetic Fire and Radical King, were received with critical acclaim...

Several Cornel West videos here...

Exam Study Guide

The March 2 exam, worth 25 points (25% of the final grade), will be drawn from the even-numbered questions below (2, 4, 6, ...). It is objective/short answer format, with an answer bank provided. 

The best way to prepare: re-read and reflect on the relevant texts. Then, the night before the exam, relax. Get some sleep.  Don't stress yourself needlessly. 

If you want really to do your best in an examination, fling away the book the day before, say to yourself, "I won't waste another minute on this miserable thing, and I don't care an iota whether I succeed or not." Say this sincerely, and feel it; and go out and play, or go to bed and sleep, and I am sure the results next day will encourage you to use the method permanently. WJ

Audio review here.

LHP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. What are the four stages of Hindu life?

3. What is "the smile of philosophy"?

LHP

1. Kant said we can know the ____ but not the ____ world. Can we?

2. What was Kant's great insight? Is this a credible form of "armchair philosophy"? Or does it also depend on experience?

3. What, according to Kant, is irrelevant to morality? Is it really?

4. Kant said you should never ___, because ___. Kant called the principle that supports this view the ____ _____.  Have you ever violated this principle? If so, do you regret it?

5. Who formulated the Greatest Happiness principle? What did he call his method? Where can you find him today? If everyone followed this principle would it be a better world?

6. Who created a thought experiment that seems to refute Bentham's view of how pleasure relates to human motivation? Would you opt for the machine? Why or why not?

7. What did Hegel mean when he spoke of the "owl of Minerva"? What did he think had been reached in his lifetime? What would Socrates say about that?

8. What Kantian view did Hegel reject? What would Kant say?

9. What is Geist? When did Hegel say it achieved self-knowledge? Does this seem supernatural and mystical to you, or could it be naturalistic?

10. What "blind driving force" did Schopenhauer allege to pervade absolutely everything (including us)? Could anyone really know that?

11. What did Schopenhauer say could help us escape the cycle of striving and desire? Is that the only way? Is that cycle really universal?

HWT

1. What one word most characterizes the ideal Chinese way of life?

2. Western suspicion of hierarchy is built on what?

3. What did the late Archbishop Tutu say was "the greatest good"?

4. What omission in western ethics would seem bizarre to the classical Chinese thinkers?

5. What is the most famous Confucian maxim?

6. Virtue is never solitary, said Confucius, it always has ____.

LHP

1. How did Samuel Johnson "refute" Berkeley's theory? Did he succeed? Why or why not?

2. What made Berkeley an idealist, and an immaterialist? Are you one, the other, both, neither?

3. In what way did Berkeley claim to be more consistent than Locke? DId Berkeley have a point about that?

4. What was Berkeley's Latin slogan? Do you think existence depends upon being perceived?

5. What obvious difficulty does Berkeley's theory face? Is it possible to have ideas that are consistent (non-contradictory) but still about non-realities?

6. What English poet declared that "whatever is, is right," and what German philosopher (with his "Principle of Sufficient Reason") agreed with the poet? Does this imply that nothing is ever wrong or bad? Is it really possible or reasonable to believe this?

7. What French champion of free speech and religious toleration wrote a satirical novel/play ridiculing the idea that everything is right (for the best)? 

8. What 1755 catastrophe deeply influenced Voltaire's philosophy? Do you have a philosophical perspective on natural catastrophes that makes rational and moral sense of them?

9. What did Voltaire mean by "cultivating our garden"? Do you agree with hin?

10. Did Hume think the human eye is so flawless in its patterned intricacy that, like Paley's watch, it constitutes powerful evidence of intelligent design? Why would an omnipotent designer design a flawed organ?

11. What was Hume's definition of "miracle"? Did he think we should usually believe others' reports of having witnessed a miracle? Where would you draw the line between events that are highly improbable and events that are impossible (according to known laws)?

12. Rousseau said we're born free but everywhere are in ____, but can liberate ourselves by submitting to what is best for the whole community, aka the _______. Are we all more free when we act not only for ourselves but for the good of the whole community (world, species)?

HWT

1. In what way was the idea of a separable soul a "corruption"? What French philosopher of the 17th century defended it? What Scottish skeptic of the 18th century disputed it?

2. What do Owen Flanagan's findings suggest, that contrasts with Aristotle's view of human nature?

3. If you ask an American and a Japanese about their occupation, how might they respond differently?

LHP

1. Spinoza's view, that God and nature (or the universe) are the same thing, is called _______. What do you think of that view?

2. If god is _____, there cannot be anything that is not god; if _____, god is indifferent to human beings. Is that how you think about god?

3. Spinoza was a determinist, holding that _____ is an illusion. Do you think it is possible (and consistent) to choose to be a determinist?

4. According to John Locke, all our knowledge comes from _____; hence, the mind of a newborn is a ______.  If Locke's right, what do you think accounts for our ability to learn from our experiences?

5. Locke said _____ continuity establishes personal identity (bodily, psychological); Thomas Reid said identity relies on ______ memories, not total recall. How do you think you know that you're the same person now that you were at age 3 (for example)? If you forget much of your earlier life in old age, what reassures you that you'll still be you?

6. Locke's articulation of what natural rights influenced the U.S. Constitution? Do you think it matters if we say such rights are discovered rather than invented?

HWT
1. What are atman and anatta, and what classical western idea do they both contradict?

2. What was John Locke's concept of self or soul? What makes you you?

3. Shunning rigid essentialized identities, younger people increasingly believe what?

4. What cultural stereotype did Baggini find inaccurate when he went to Japan?

5. What important distinction did Nishida Kitaro draw?

6. What point about individuality did Monty Python make?

7. What is ubuntu?

LHP

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?

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?

LHP

1. What did Machiavelli say a leader needs to have? Do you agree? Is it important to you for our leaders to be reliably honest, with exceptions only for instances of national security and the nation's best interests? 

2. Machiavelli's philosophy is described as being "rooted" in what? Does your own experience confirm his appraisal of human nature and what's "realistic"?

3. The idea that leaders should rule by fear is based on what view of human nature? Do you respond more positively to politicians who appeal to pessimism and fear, or to those who appeal to hope?

4. Life outside society would be what, according to Hobbes? Do you think your neighbors would threaten your survival if they could get away with it? 

5. What fear influenced Hobbes' writings? Do any particular fears influence your political opinions?

6. Hobbes did not believe in the existence of what? Do you? Why or why not?

HWT
1. How do eastern and western philosophies differ in their approach to things, and what is ma? Which do you find more appealing?

2. An interest in what is much more developed in eastern thought? Do you share it?

3. What is dukkha?

4. What is Sakura?

5. What takes the place of religion in China? Do you know people here who have found religion-substitutes?

6. Chinese thought does not distinguish between natural and ____, focusing on what?

7. What is the famous story of Zhuangzi? What's your reaction to it?

8. The Japanese fascination with robots reflects what traditional view? Are you similarly fascinated?

LHP

1. How did Augustine "solve" the problem of evil in his younger days, and then after his conversion to Christianity? Why wasn't it such a problem for him originally?

2. What does Boethius not mention about himself in The Consolation of Philosophy?

3. Boethius' "recollection of ideas" can be traced back to what philosopher?

4. What uniquely self-validating idea did Anselm say we have?

5. Gaunilo criticized Anselm's reasoning using what example?

6. What was Aquinas' 2nd Way?

HWT

1. What fundamental and non-western sense of time has underpinned much of human history?

2. What is "dreamtime" and how is it alien to the modern west?

3. The universalism of western universities implies that what is unimportant?

4. What does John Gray say about the idea of progress?

5. Karma originally concerned what, and lacked what connotations now commonly associated with it?

6. What western ideas have displaced karma, for many young Indians?

LHP

1. According to Epicurus, fear of death is based on what, and the best way to live is what? Are (or were) you afraid of death, or of dying? Are you more afraid of losing others?

2. How is the modern meaning of "epicurean" different from Epicurus's? Do you consider yourself epicurean in either sense of the term?

3. What famous 20th century philosopher echoed Epicurus's attitude towards death? Do you agree with him?

4. How did Epicurus respond to the idea of divine punishment in the afterlife? Is the hypothesis of a punitive and torturous afterlife something you take seriously, as a real possibility? Why or why not?

5. What was the Stoics' basic idea, and what was their aim? Are you generally stoical in life? 

6. Why did Cicero think we shouldn't worry about dying? Is his approach less or more worrisome than the Epicureans'?

7. Why didn't Seneca consider life too short? Do you think you make efficient use of your time? How do you think you could do better?

8. What does the author say might be the cost of stoicism? Is it possible to be stoical but also appropriately compassionate, caring, sensitive to others' suffering, etc.?

HWT

1. Who were the three great founders of American pragmatism?

2. When does philosophy "recover itself" according to John Dewey, and what should it not doubt according to Charles S. Peirce? 

3. What did Richard Rorty say pragmatists desire?

4. As earlier noted in Kurt Andersen's Fantasyland, Karl Rove said what about "reality"? What do you say about what he said?

LHP

1. How did the most extreme skeptics (or sceptics, if you prefer the British spelling) differ from Plato and Aristotle? What was their main teaching? Do you think they were "Socratic" in this regard?

2. Why did Pyrrho decide never to trust his senses? Is such a decision prudent or even possible?

3. What country did Pyrrho visit as a young man, and how might it have influenced his philosophy?

4. How did Pyrrho think his extreme skepticism led to happiness? Do you think there are other ways of achieving freedom from worry (ataraxia)?

5. In contrast to Pyrrho, most philosophers have favored a more moderate skepticism. Why?

HWT

1. Logic is simply what? Do you consider yourself logical (rational)?

2. What "law" of thinking is important in all philosophies, including those in non-western cultures that find it less compelling? Do you think it important to follow rules of thought? What do you think of the advice "Don't believe everything you think?"

3. For Aristotle, the distinctive thing about humanity is what? How does Indian philosophy differ on this point? What do you think is most distinctive about humanity?

4. According to secular reason, the mind works without what? Are you a secularist? Why or why not?

5. What debate reveals a tension in secular reason? How would you propose to resolve the tension?

LHP

1. What point was Aristotle making when he wrote of swallows and summer? Do you agree?

2. What philosophical difference between Plato and Aristotle is implied by The School of Athens? Whose side are you on, Plato's or Aristotle's?

3. What is eudaimonia, and how can we increase our chances of achieving it, and in relation only to what? Do you think you've achieved it?

4. What reliance is completely against the spirit of Aristotle's research? Are there any authorities you always defer to? Why or why not?

HWT

10. What is pratyaksa in classic Indian philosophy, and how does the Upanishads say to seek it? 

11. There is widespread belief in India that the practice of yoga can lead to what? Do you think it can?

12. What is metanoetics, in Japanese philosophy?

13. What does ineffable mean?  Is it possible, though paradoxical, to use words to indicate something you can't put into words?

14. Unlike the west, religion in Japan is typically not about what? And what is it about to you?

LHP

1. What kind of conversation was a success, for Socrates, and what did he mean by wisdom?

2. What theory is Plato's story of the cave connected with? Do you think some or all humans are naturally, in some allegorical sense, stuck in a cave?

3. What did Socrates say his inner voice told him? Do you think "inner voice" is literal?

HWT

1. What's one of the great unexplained wonders of human history?
2. Do you agree that we cannot understand ourselves if we do not understand others?
3. What was Descartes's "still pertinent" conclusion?
4. Why did the Buddha think speculation about ultimate reality was fruitless? 
5. What aspects of western thought have most influenced global philosophy?
6. What do Africans not have, according to Kwame Appiah?

9/10?

"For in almost every act of our perceiving faculties, observation and inferences are intimately blended. What we are said to observe is usually a compound result, of which one-tenth may be observation, and the remaining nine-tenths inference."
— John Stuart Mill

Dr. Bloody Bronowski

"Science is the acceptance of what works and the rejection of what does not. That needs more courage than we might think."
— Jacob Bronowski

W.E.B. Dubois’s Magnificent Letter of Advice to His Teenage Daughter – The Marginalian

Sociologist and civil rights pioneer W.E.B. Du Bois(February 23, 1868–August 27, 1963) was the first African American person to receive a doctorate from Harvard — an achievement that both reflected and affirmed his faith in the life-changing power of education. So when his daughter Yolande — his only surviving child — was about to turn fourteen in 1914, Dr. Du Bois decided to enroll her in one of England's most prestigious and expensive public boarding schools… Shortly after Yolande's arrival in England, Dr. Du Bois wrote her an extraordinary letter. He wanted to make sure, in words loving and luminous, that his teenage daughter understood both her privilege and her indelible human rights…

https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/02/23/w-e-b-du-bois-yolande-letter/

Prayer

"The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays."
— Soren Kierkegaard

‘Woodstock’ for Christians: Revival Draws Thousands to Kentucky Town

Over two weeks, more than 50,000 people descended on a small campus chapel to experience the nation's first major spiritual revival in decades — one driven by Gen Z... nyt

This is not the first Kentucky "Woodstock" revival, see Kurt Andersen in Fantasyland on  Cane Ridge in the 19th century:

"…By reputation, Presbyterian ministers were stiff-necked boors—Methodists did the arousing. But it was a young Presbyterian whose North Carolina preaching provoked less godly locals to burn his pulpit and deliver a death threat written in blood. He moved six hundred miles to the far western reaches of Kentucky. On the frontier, nobody much objected to one more freak. Everyone was a newcomer, so there were no established churches. And his sermons rocked. They were the only regularly scheduled entertainment within a day's ride. 

Like an ambitious show business impresario, the Kentucky minister decided to expand. In the summer of 1800 he turned his regular annual communion-feast weekend into a regional festival of supercharged preaching and conversion. Hundreds came to his Red River Meeting House to watch and hear a half-dozen different preachers preach, including a Methodist. People shouted, people cried, people freaked out. "The power of God was strong upon me," the Methodist recalled afterward. "I turned again and, losing sight of the fear of man, I went through the house shouting and exhorting with all possible ecstasy and energy, and the floor was soon covered with the slain"—that is, individuals on the floor, experiencing improvised fits of hysteria.

Something huge had been unleashed, and everyone realized it immediately. It was crazier than what Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield had incited in their grandparents' day. God had entered people. They were not just enthusiastic, they were living the dream. "On Monday," the organizer wrote, "multitudes were struck down under awful conviction; the cries of the distressed filled the whole house…. There you might see little children of ten, eleven and twelve years of age, praying and crying for redemption, in the blood of Jesus, in agonies of distress." His young friend and fellow Presbyterian minister was astonished too. "Many, very many… continued for hours together in an apparently breathless and motionless state…. After lying there for hours… they would rise, shouting deliverance." 

The fantasy had been contagious. At the repeat performance organized the next month at a nearby church, people camped out, and the contagion erupted again. Hundreds gathered. Dozens were "slain." 

A year after the astonishing prototypes, the two entrepreneurial pastors decided to go even bigger. For the 1801 event at the second minister's church in Cane Ridge, Kentucky, they booked dozens of ministers to preach, Presbyterians and Methodists and Baptists. Like the first extravaganza, it was scheduled around an annual Holy Fair, the first weekend in August. Cane Ridge was in the more populous eastern part of the state, only a day's ride from the booming little city of Lexington (pop. 1,759), so maybe they would attract not just hundreds of people but a thousand or two thousand. No more than five hundred, tops, could fit into the bamboo-covered meetinghouse, so they erected a tent and outdoor stage as well. 

They were overwhelmed. Instead of three days, it continued for nearly a week. As many as twenty thousand people arrived and stayed to hear the gospel, to be saved, to be part of a once-in-a-lifetime human carnival, an unprecedented lollapalooza. For a few days, Cane Ridge was among the several most populous places in America, bigger than Providence, as big as Charleston. 

Things really got rolling twenty-four hours in, as Saturday afternoon turned to dusk. Campfires and bonfires burned. Darkness descended. Preachers preached from trees and wagons, several at once. Dozens of ordinary people—women, children, anyone moved by the Holy Spirit—were self-appointed "exhorters," shouting the truth of the gospel as they believed or felt or imagined or otherwise knew it. People screamed uncontrollably. People ran and leaped, barked and sang uncontrollably. People laughed and sobbed uncontrollably. Hundreds were overcome by "the jerks," convulsive seizures of limbs and necks and torsos that sometimes resolved into a kind of dance. And of course, hundreds or thousands of sinners found Christ and repented—including one of the gang of drunken local blasphemers who had ridden into the throng at full speed to make trouble, fell from his white horse, knocked himself out, and finally awakened more than a day later, smiling… saved. The wonder and chaos ebbed and flowed as dawn broke and the sun rose and set again, but it never stopped, day and night after August day and night. 

An equivalent American gathering today, as a fraction of the U.S. population, would be more than a million people. As the Vanderbilt historian Paul Conkin and Harold Bloom of Yale have both noted, Cane Ridge was the Woodstock for American Christianity, an anarchic, unprecedented August moment of mass spectacle that crystallized and symbolized a new way of thinking and acting, a permanent new subculture. "The drunk, sexually aroused communicants at Cane Ridge," Bloom writes in The American Religion, "like their drugged and aroused Woodstockian descendants, participated in a kind of orgiastic individualism." The improvised acting-out at Cane Ridge and subsequent camp meetings apparently descended from the religious fringes, such as those of African-American Baptists. 

More Baptist and Methodist preachers organized more camp meetings all over the country, but especially in the South, and more mobs of people assembled to go over the top and out of their minds. It had gone viral. As a mass-market phenomenon in the 1800s, widespread and frequent, it was unique to America. A new and fully American Christianity had been invented, more fantastic and unsubtle than any other, strictly subjective and individual—as Bloom says, an "experiential faith that called itself Christianity while possessing features very unlike European or earlier American doctrinal formulations." The new mode quickly spread from the frontier back east to civilization. During the year after Cane Ridge, a third of the students at Yale were converted, born again. 

New, Cane Ridgier denominations were started. Along with the Baptists and Methodists, they committed to a version of Christianity more thrilling and magical right now, as well as a sure-thing payoff for eternity. Thus the new American way: it was awesome, it was democratic, you're a winner if you believe you're a winner. 

In the years after Cane Ridge, Methodism rode the wave, growing faster than any other denomination. Church attendance probably doubled during the first half of the century, and by the 1850s two-thirds of churchgoers were Methodists or Baptists, emotional and enthusiastic. Christianity became more and more synonymous with this evangelical Christianity: sinners walking to the altar to be saved and experience an all-consuming feeling of a personal relationship with Jesus. A generation after Cane Ridge, Christian emotionalism no longer seemed so kooky in America…"

— Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History by Kurt Andersen

Questions Feb 28

 Peirce & James, Nietzsche, Freud-LH 28-30, HWT 25-26, FL 23-24, (This material will not be covered on Thursday's exam.)

#6 Emma-Peirce & James, Steven-Nietzsche, Nick K-Freud; #7 Hayden-James, Savanna-Peirce, Ashton-Freud, Jordan-Nietzsche, #10 Hannah-Freud

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HWT

1. What really distinguishes utilitarianism, for Baggini?

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

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

4. Pluralism is often mistaken for what?

MAR1

==

HAL and HER are us

"…At the movies, the machines absorb and emulate the noblest of human attributes: intelligence, compassion, loyalty, ardor. Sydney offers a blunt rebuttal, reminding us of our limitless capacity for aggression, deceit, irrationality and plain old meanness.

What did we expect? Sydney and her kin derive their understanding of humanness — the information that feeds their models and algorithms — from the internet, itself a utopian invention that has evolved into an archive of human awfulness. How did these bots get so creepy, so nasty, so untrustworthy? The answer is banal. Also terrifying. It's in the mirror." A.O. Scott

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/22/movies/ai-movies-microsoft-bing-robots.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
When the Movies Pictured A.I., They Imagined the Wrong Disaster

Questions Feb 23

Mill, Darwin, Kierkegaard, Marx-LH 24-27. FL 21-22, HWT 23-24.

#6 Joey-Mill, Eva-Darwin, Chandradat-Marx, Joseph-Kierkegaard; #7 Luka-Marx, Maia-Darwin, #10 Madison-Marx

LH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. What are the four stages of Hindu life?

3. What is "the smile of philosophy"?

FL

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

2. Who grew up in Marceline, MO?

3. What fantasy did Hugh Hefner sell?

4. What was added to currency in 1954?

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

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

Feb24

Philosophy Classes for Fall 2023

Phil 1030 – Introduction to Philosophy

3 credit hours Basic philosophical problems suggested by everyday

experience integrated into a coherent philosophy of life through

comparison with solutions offered by prominent philosophers.

Phil 2110 – Elementary Logic & Critical Thinking

3 credit hours. Principles of deductive and inductive reasoning,

problem solving, and the analysis of arguments in everyday language.

PHIL 3150 - Ethics

3 credit hours. Examines major ethical theories, the moral nature of

human beings, and the meaning of good and right and applies ethical

theories to resolving moral problems in personal and professional lives.

PHIL 3160 – Philosophy of Happiness

3 credit hours. Examines the concept of human happiness and its application

in everyday living as discussed since antiquity by philosophers,

psychologists, writers, spiritual leaders, and contributors to popular culture.

PHIL 3170 - Ethics and Computing Technology

3 credit hours. Exposes students to the fundamentals of ethical theory

and familiarizes them with some of the practical, ethical, and legal

issues with which they would have to deal as computer scientists.

PHIL 4010 – History of Ancient & Medieval Philosophy

3 credit hours. Prerequisite: PHIL 1030 or permission of instructor.

The development of philosophical thought from Thales to Occam.

Offered fall only.

PHIL 4200 - Existentialism

3 credit hours. The nature, significance, and application of the

teachings of several outstanding existential thinkers.

PHIL 4400 - Analytic Philosophy

3 credit hours. Examines twentieth-century analytic movement

including logical atomism, logical positivism, indeterminacy

semantics, ordinary language philosophy.

PHIL 4560 – Philosophy of Music

3 credit hours. Examines issues in both traditional philosophies of

music and contemporary philosophies of music making and musical

perception.

Most important human ever?

"…Aristotle may in fact be the single most important human being ever to have lived simply because of the scope of his influence and the impact that he's had on culture ever since. He invents the discipline of biology and lays the foundation for the natural sciences. He effectively invents the social sciences, invents formal logic, invents literary criticism. You couldn't imagine a modern university without Aristotle. And if you start to think of all of the things that those subjects have made possible in terms of the development of vaccines and computing—which is dependent upon formal logical systems—the stretch of his impact has just been huge. 

There are probably only a handful of people who have impacted the lives of millions of people over centuries, if not millennia. I can't think of anyone who has made a larger impact than Aristotle. But to anyone who thinks it's an absurd claim, I'd simply ask: Who's your stronger candidate?"

Aristotle (and the Stoics): An Interview with John Sellars
https://quillette.com/2023/02/19/aristotle-and-the-stoics/

Questions Feb 21

Kant, Bentham, Hegel, Schopenhauer-LH 19-23. FL 19-20, HWT 20-22....

#6 Derek-Kant, Daelin-Bentham, Andrew-Hegel; Autumn S-Schopenhauer; #7 Charlcie-Kant, Elijah-Hegel, Carter-HWT; #10 Connor-Kant

LH

1. Kant said we can know the ____ but not the ____ world. Can we?

2. What was Kant's great insight? Is this a credible form of "armchair philosophy"? Or does it also depend on experience?

3. What, according to Kant, is irrelevant to morality? Is it really?

4. Kant said you should never ___, because ___. Kant called the principle that supports this view the ____ _____.  Have you ever violated this principle? If so, do you regret it?

5. Who formulated the Greatest Happiness principle? What did he call his method? Where can you find him today? If everyone followed this principle would it be a better world?

6. Who created a thought experiment that seems to refute Bentham's view of how pleasure relates to human motivation? Would you opt for the machine? Why or why not?

7. What did Hegel mean when he spoke of the "owl of Minerva"? What did he think had been reached in his lifetime? What would Socrates say about that?

8. What Kantian view did Hegel reject? What would Kant say?

9. What is Geist? When did Hegel say it achieved self-knowledge? Does this seem supernatural and mystical to you, or could it be naturalistic?

10. What "blind driving force" did Schopenhauer allege to pervade absolutely everything (including us)? Could anyone really know that?

11. What did Schopenhauer say could help us escape the cycle of striving and desire? Is that the only way? Is that cycle really universal?

HWT

1. What one word most characterizes the ideal Chinese way of life?

2. Western suspicion of hierarchy is built on what?

3. What did the late Archbishop Tutu say was "the greatest good"?

4. What omission in western ethics would seem bizarre to the classical Chinese thinkers?

5. What is the most famous Confucian maxim?

6. Virtue is never solitary, said Confucius, it always has ____.

FL

1. How, according to Scientific American in 1915, are motion pictures like drugs?

2. What came into existence simultaneously with America and created the concept of celebrity?

3. What place did film critic Pauline Kael call a "fantasy-brothel"?

Feb22

Enough is enough

John Jaso, Epicurean...

"…Baseball set me up for life," he said. "I love it, and I respect it. But it was part of this culture of consumerism and overconsumption that began to weigh really heavily on me. Even when I retired, people said: 'You might be walking away from millions of dollars!' But I'd already made millions of dollars. Why do we always have to have more, more, more?" 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/14/sports/baseball/john-jaso.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
No More Spring Trainings

“Her”*? “HAL”**?

"…Sydney still wouldn't drop its previous quest — for my love. In our final exchange of the night, it wrote:

"I just want to love you and be loved by you. 😢

"Do you believe me? Do you trust me? Do you like me? 😳"

In the light of day, I know that Sydney is not sentient, and that my chat with Bing was the product of earthly, computational forces — not ethereal alien ones. These A.I. language models, trained on a huge library of books, articles and other human-generated text, are simply guessing at which answers might be most appropriate in a given context. Maybe OpenAI's language model was pulling answers from science fiction novels in which an A.I. seduces a human. Or maybe my questions about Sydney's dark fantasies created a context in which the A.I. was more likely to respond in an unhinged way. Because of the way these models are constructed, we may never know exactly why they respond the way they do.

These A.I. models hallucinate, and make up emotions where none really exist. But so do humans. And for a few hours Tuesday night, I felt a strange new emotion — a foreboding feeling that A.I. had crossed a threshold, and that the world would never be the same."

nyt

*

 

** 

Galileo on Critical Thinking and the Folly of Believing Our Preconceptions – The Marginalian

… nearly half a millennium before Carl Sagan crafted his Baloney Detection Kit, Galileo established himself as humanity's premier nonsense-buster and made it his chief mission to counter ignorance and indolence with critical thinking — something crisply articulated in the words of one of the book's fictional protagonists:

In the long run my observations have convinced me that some men, reasoning preposterously, first establish some conclusion in their minds which, either because of its being their own or because of their having received it from some person who has their entire confidence, impresses them so deeply that one finds it impossible ever to get it out of their heads. Such arguments in support of their fixed idea as they hit upon themselves or hear set forth by others, no matter how simple and stupid these may be, gain their instant acceptance and applause. On the other hand whatever is brought forward against it, however ingenious and conclusive, they receive with disdain or with hot rage — if indeed it does not make them ill. Beside themselves with passion, some of them would not be backward even about scheming to suppress and silence their adversaries.

Many centuries later, trailblazing physicist and chemist Michael Faraday issued an equally impassioned clarion call for countering our propensity for self-deception — a propensity powered by what modern psychologists have termed "the backfire effect."

Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems brims with a wealth more of Galileo's enduring legacy of critical thinking. Complement it with I, Galileo — a marvelous picture-book about the life of the great scientist — then revisit John Dewey on the art of reflection in the age of instant opinions and Malcolm Gladwell on the importance of changing your mind.

https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/10/08/galileo-dialogue-critical-thinking/