Intro to Philosophy

Today we went over some contemporary philosophers I had on my list and assigned those for the term papers. Everyone should have a philosopher to research now though there were several that might still change their minds depending on what they find out as they start looking various philosophers up. The quiz assignment for this was for each student to email me with their chosen philosopher so I could make some recommendations. Then we talked a little about Plato's philosophy of mind before moving on to Aristotle. After a little of a biography I talked about how his philosophy of mind differs from his teachers, in that instead of Matter and Ideas there can only be Matter with a Form, changed by Efficient causes for the Purposes - that is the Final Cause for which each thing is defined. We then talked about the three Laws of thought. This led to the categories and categorical statements. I went to the Traditional Square of Opposition and talked about the four kinds of statements that can be either true or false. The next step is to exam arguments and we began discussing those with Barbara - AAA-1. But we need to pick up from there next week. A second quiz question was to explain how you thought movement is possible given that there are an infinite number of points between A and B on a line.

Logic

This evening we played catch up with some things that are a little more tedious than I like but important. If we don't cover them they end up causing confusion later so there is a good reason they are in the book and need to be discussed. Since we went pretty fast, if you have questions on particular topics please see if a closer reading of the book and the relevant exercises helps or stop by and we can go over them. But at a rather hectic pace we went through chapters one, two and almost finished three. My syllabus definitely needs work since it lists Fallacies as chapter 2 but that is the topic for chapter 4 and we really need to get started on syllogisms, so next class we will split the time between fallacies and categorical statements. We have already touched on them since they seem so important to me. Hopefully, this will all come together nicely as we move on. The quiz question was in preparation for our discussion of fallacies and that was to send me your favorite joke - or if not your favorite, at least a joke you think funny. It would be best if you could send the link of the comedian who does the joke.

Humanities II

Today we briefly looked at New Criticism for the first time and I used The Wasteland as an example of art I presume was created with New Criticism in mind. I read through it first and then invited Fiona Shaw to read it. She read it much better than I did. I then played a scene from Fellini's Satyricon and pondered whether contemporary culture is similar at least in some wealthy enclaves - or even in general? Some things we looked at included the Las Vegas Strip, Madonna and Miley Cyrus at the awards, the song that won the award for best movie theme - for Hustle and Flow - It's Hard out here for a pimp, and last Avril Lavigne Standing on a Bridge. Quiz question was what impression does modern American art give you?

History of Philosophy II Pascal and Spinoza

We started off today finishing up some things with Hobbes and Descartes. I reviewed their exchanges regarding Descartes' Meditations especially emphasizing the interesting critiques Hobbes made in his Objection 2. We then moved on to Pascal and discussed his triangle and his wager and then his calculator. His most famous quote: "What's true on one side of Pyrenees is error on the other." We moved on to Spinoza. I referenced the difference between sufficient cause and necessary cause and then moved into the Definitions in the Ethics which then lead to propositions. It was at this point that we left off. The quiz question is to write your response to the concept of Pantheism which we will discuss next class when we continue with Spinoza. If you are interested in the short film I started showing it is here.

Humanities II

I started the class by discussing the significance of metanarration and how through this theory much is explained today. We each have multiple roles that we play which are defined by the various narratives we use to guide our life. These narratives come into conflict with one another and we resolve these conflicts by resorting to a higher level of abstraction in a metanarrative. The highest of these metanarratives (variously called Grande Narratives, religions, Weltanschauungen are what we are studying to contrast how art is produced within a particular metanarrative, and even how art might define such a narrative. The topics for the term paper are various theories of art (which we can select from the texts for the course) and each of those represent a particular metanarrative. Selecting the theory that most interests you and explaining your interpretation of that theory, and then using art to show how the theory is used in analysis of art - either to produce art or criticize it, is the goal of the term paper.

History of Philosophy II

We discussed Hobbes and Descartes. With Hobbes the main concern was the Social Contract theory as the legitimating narrative of modern democratic forms of government. I emphasized that the Original State of Nature was a hypothesis within which everyone has all rights but no protections of those rights. We form a contact that defines the rights that the state will protect provided we live according to the contract. With Descartes I contrasted his Meditations with Saint Augustine's Reply to the Skeptics from the City of God. Briefly we considered Descartes' version of the Ontological Argument and found it required that a cause must always be greater than the effect. (This turned out to be the quiz question in that I asked everyone to think about it and see if they could come up with a counter example.) I also hinted that with David Hume the necessary connection between cause and effect was going to be put under question and that ever since scientists that are worth their salt never say they have proved anything.

Intro to Philosophy on Friday covered Socrates and Plato. We discussed the Euthyphro - and that led to the quiz question: Jesus comes to your home, you know it is Him and He is God. He asks you to sell all you have, give the money to the poor, and follow Him. Do you go with him? Or argue? Or ask questions? Moving on to the Apology we concluded Socrates was guilty of not being pious and leading the children of the wealthy to be critical of those in power. In the Meno Virtue cannot be taught but instead seems to be inherent in those that have it from birth. So Plato heavily comes in on the side of nature and not nurture. We watched one version of the Allegory of the Cave and discussed the Republic. I used a triangle to represent the psychology: lower class, spirited class, and wisdom class. You should also see the divided line in the Republic that shows the division of the types of knowledge that we discussed. The bit from the movie Amadeus went well with this piece. There is clearly good, better, best, in all of the arts. We also briefly went over the politics that brought about Plato's conception of a Just State - a Republic - and I asked the second question: Do you think Democracy is a good form of government?

Logic

This evening we looked at different aspects of language that are relevant to logic. The difference in how the term sentence is used compared with statement (or proposition), the formal nature of arguments in logic rather than the variety of things we might normally call arguments, the frames within which words have meaning (here we looked at some of a presentation by George Lakoff) I mentioned Doug Hofstadter's argument in his book Le Ton Beau de Marot. We discussed the Laws of Thought. We looked at the Square of Opposition. I pointed out that many apparent arguments are actually disagreements over meaning. Then for fun and for the quiz question, we went over the Ontological Argument. The quiz question is what do you think of the Ontological Argument? Is it persuasive?

HUM II

We went pretty far off track today but the topics were pertinent none the less. We picked up from the quiz question from Tuesday concerning the question posed by Jesus. I sought to treat this as an example similar to that of the Euthyphro where the dilemma is one between the menis (faith position - actually wrath) of those who feel they are expressing the will of God, against those who feel there should be a critical, rational (metis)understanding of what is good, pious, and so forth. These in the Platonic tradition are the Ideas. In the Christian tradition the Greek philosophical theory is merged with the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. We have not discussed this more than briefly, but the philosopher theologian who accomplishes this is Saint Augustine. We also briefly talked about Roger Penrose (one of my favorites!) and Brian Greene, Einstein and his cone of Space/Time, and the soul. Pressing the conflict between faith and reason I showed a brief clip from the Monty Python movie The Life of Brian and the quiz question was do you think this clip (or the movie should you watch the whole thing) insults Christianity or not? For a fun look at how the sh** hit the fan when the movie first came out have a look at the discussion between John Cleese and Michael Palin, and the Bishop and Malcolm Muggeridge.

HIST II

Today we looked primarily at Hobbes and Descartes touching on Shakespeare following the argument Harold Bloom gives that modern self-reflection begins with Hamlet, but noticing also Pope John Paul II's argument that it was Descartes and his Cogito ergo sum that brought about the modern philosophical movement into the Enlightenment. Memory and Identity is the title of that book. (I did not explore why John Paul thought of this as an evil turn - but it was because it develops into a Culture of Death. Self Reflecting modern individuals are intrinsically selfish.) Reading Hobbes Leviathan I pointed out the similarity much of his thought has to do with B. F. Skinner's Behaviorism and discussed how selecting a jury can often be the crucial part of a case when the cultural viewpoint of the individuals selected determine whether or not they feel the person charged should be punished for being a free agent or considered innocent because any of us in like circumstances would have done exactly the same thing. Being free for Hobbes means not being restrained from doing what a person naturally wants to do as a result of a chain of causes. There is no miracle of free agency at all. He is a Determinist. The class ended with a quiz question concerning how Hobbes managed to keep his head from being chopped off considering his comments on religion in the Leviathan.

HUM II

Interesting discussion today! Went over the beginnings of monotheism with Akhenaten including the suggestion that mathematics has something to do with this progress. Even the idea that it is progressive has something to do with math. Then we moved on to Moses the Egyptian - and I mentioned various theories on who he was, but that he led the monotheists north and they established a kingdom - Israel. Moving further north discussed the beginnings of the Greeks - played Conan the Barbarian the Musical to the general amusement of the class. How did the Greeks move from this conception of virtue to Justice and Temperance? Socrates dialogs with Euthyphro. In this dialog Socrates asks Euthyphro to define piety. We get a first try: Doing what the gods love. But this is difficult when you want your principles to be coherent and consistent. For by now the Greeks have a conception of the true as statements that describe facts and some statements can't be true if others are true. This is mapped out in the Traditional Square of Opposition. So if being pious is doing what the gods love, but the gods do not love the same things, then we can't be pious to all of them at once. So we get a further revision of the definition with the question: is the pious pious because the gods love it or do the gods love the pious because it is pious? To examine this question I asked this as the quiz question for the day: Jesus comes to your door, you know it is Jesus and you know He is God. He tells you to sell all you have and give the money to the poor and then come follow him. Do you do it? Or do you argue with Him or question Him first? Do you see how it could be viewed as the same question Socrates asks Euthyphro?

Sunday events

Our Sunday morning session at the AUUF was a presentation by the Atwood Chair of UAA's Journalism Department speaking on the topic of Journalism in the Digital Age. Mark Trahant was a fascinating presenter. The members had a great discussion. Following the discussion breakfast was well attended by our usual group and the discussion continued. It was all too much intellectual fun. In the evening Kat and I attended the book group to discuss The Pearl. Everyone brought up such interesting aspects of the book that it went from a boring book to a very interesting book all in two short hours!

Friday - Intro to Philosophy

We had our first class - double session - of the Intro to Philosophy class for this semester on Friday. The sessions go from 11:15 AM to 2:15 with a half hour break for lunch starting around 12:30. There were two quiz questions. The first was what are the ten commandments? This was a memory exercise to display what I think are some interesting characteristics of how our memory works. The second quiz question referred to a previous blog - from Tuesday - where I highlighted two interesting articles in local papers. The first article was about Steven O. and the courts decisions regarding his hearing the voice of Jesus. The second was a wonderful article by Shannon explaining how Jesus has helped her over the years. I was curious about what you thought regarding the juxtaposition of these two situations. For those that might be enroled but missed class notice from the syllabus there are links to my notes which I think are pretty close to what we did. Now for a long weekend since there are no classes on Monday.....

Logic first session

Remember that we basically touched on the A, E, I, and O statement types before finishing this evening. Quiz question was what are the ten commandments.

Humanities II notes

Today the question concerned Egyptian art. I asked you to pick your favorite example of Egyptian art and describe what you think it says about the culture that created it. If you are curious about my own videos of art at the U of P Museum you can search for williamsjamison university of Pennsylvania museum on Google and get this set of links. Also, if you went to the Alaska State Fair this summer you may have seen the Presentation on Egyptian art there too.

Starting Humanities II today

Some asked for the link to the article I referenced this morning for the first quiz and here it is: Hearing Jesus' Voice in Alaska and if you wanted to see the other article I mentioned but did not show on the screen here is the link to that one: but at the same time in Eagle River

And the new semester is started. First class today was History of Philosophy II. I played off of Peter Sloterdijk's view in Rage and Time: A Psychopolitical Investigation to discuss the conflict between metis and menis, which I used to contrast Socrates and Euthyphro, Odysseus and Achilles, Faith and Science. Making the point while you can never have one without the other (Mr. Spock is really impossible) that none the less they can be useful as a way to contrast the Middle Ages with the Scientific Revolution, and even the conflict between Science and Faith today. I also mentioned the change in maps with the advent of Columbus and Magellan's voyages adding the oceans to the Earth - perhaps the Earth should have been called the Water? (Another thanks to Peter Sloterdijk this time his book In The World Interior of Capital and the question concerning the model of the universe. Copernicus was briefly discussed. The quiz question was to email me for the list of philosophers to choose from for the term paper.