Introduction to Humanities II

Continuing with Structuralism we applied both fractals and the golden ratio to art with an emphasis on some of the art in Africa. The links used are updated on the lecture notes page. The quiz today was a question concerning your opinion of this class so far. Is it boring you to death or are you enjoying it? What suggestions do you have to improve it?

History of Philosophy II

Today we started by finishing some things with David Hume, including the Distinguishable is Separable Principle which seems well explained here. (At least if that page works.) We also talked about the problem of the persistent self (and the quiz question for today was how do you know you have a persistent self?) I referred to Thomas Metzinger on this issue since it is a very current issue for those in neuroscience. We then moved on to talk about Rousseau - by talking first about Voltaire. (Note too that Rousseau spent about 18 months with Hume when Rousseau was having trouble in France.) In regard to the relationship Rousseau had with Voltaire I argue that they were not enemies from what I have seen so far but that their letters to one another show respect and mutual love of irony. I have also heard but can't figure out from where, that Voltaire gave the young Rousseau advice on how to become popular: write exactly the opposite of what everyone thinks. Which Rousseau then did to great effect. Emile basically argues that the best education is no education (student centeredness) The Social Contract argues that everyone should be free and good government is only possible when everyone agrees to what government does. (I mentioned here something probably rather odd and that is Nash Equilibrium as one possibility of something like Rousseau's idea that could work.) I also mentioned in response to Voltaire's critique of Leibniz Best of All Possible Worlds in his work Candide was based on a misunderstanding. Rather, I interpret Leibniz to be making basically the same point as Brian Greene here. I also pointed out a wonderful Americanized version of Candide by Bernstein. Last, in preparation for reading Kant I went over why the Prolegomena is usually what students read instead of the Critique of Pure Reason. Has Kant answered Hume? That will be where we pick up next class.

Behind in my email responses

The email system for the university was down for at least a day last week and I got behind in replying to essays and quizzes. I will try to catch up today. But even after the email system came back up I did not have extra time to spend catching up since I am also tasked at the moment with reading quite a large number of books for Amazon Vine. For some reason they really made a large number of books available for review this last month and at one point I had thirteen books to read in thirty days. Some of them are also quite large as was the Updike Biography and the one I am reading now John Quincy Adams. Both of those have been really good - I made it up to page 90 in the Adams book and it is a wonderful biography. It reminds me of both the Adams biography by McCullough and The Education of Henry Adams. That family was amazing. But today I will spend most of my time in the office trying to tackle the backlog of email. Sorry about the delay!

Introduction to Philosophy

Today the quiz question was have you ever been Saved? And what do you mean by that? We started the class off talking about Plotinus and how Neoplatonism was different than Platonism. I made references to meditation that enables a person to become one with the universe - including Dr Newberg and to the Golden Ratio and in general how his philosophy closed the gap between the material world and the ideal world by arguing that the material world has a direct connection to the ideal world. I then prefaced my discussion of Augustine by briefly pointing out highlights of the Jewish scripture and the Christian scripture. We discussed the Nicene Council and the one iota of difference, so to speak, in the Credo. Then looking at Augustine we read his conversion and his view of time from the text. I argued that his solution to merging a very violent anthropomorphic God in the Hebrew Scripture with a Platonic conception of the Good was resolved by his pointing out our finite secular limitations do not enable us to see God as God truly is but only through the historical interpretations we have moment by moment, while God must be beyond our understanding and still be eternal, all powerful, all good, etc. I also discussed the nature of Augustine's interpretation of the Fall and how the knowledge of good and evil always go together.

Introduction to Humanities II

Today the theory we explored was Structuralism and some of its variants up to Post Modernism. After the organic paradigm replaced the mechanistic one (a gradual process of course) the problem of relativity reared its ugly head. How could there be truth if everything was relative? But even Einsteinian Relativity holds that within systems there are structures - truths, the relativity comes into play between systems. This is a point I have emphasized earlier as well. But are the truths in systems explained? What are they based on? Structuralism attempts to answer this question in lots of fields especially linguistics. I mentioned the conflict between Noam Chomsky and Daniel Everett in this regard when discussing the Sapir-Worf hypothesis. So we looked at some examples of art to try to see how the over arching structure of a culture could be reflected in art work itself. As you see in the text there is an emphasis on the eyes, thin light figures, rich drappery, none of which looks realistic. Notice especially the baby Jesus looks like a 40 year old man. (Ugly baby). But contrast that art with still life paintings of fruit. Or even further, still life paintings of food including game. In the Byzantine Christian art the emphasis is on the abstract and the story is the narrative of Jesus. In the fruit we have an emphasis on the pleasures of life. I also pointed out the art on campus: Openheim Image Intervention and asked what that represents? Another I mentioned on campus in the Art Building is in the lobby. (And see the bottom of the page.) Clearly cultural changes effect the structure of the narrative and that affects the art. What about natural human characteristics? For example, differences between men and women? We are all people but we also notice differences between people as well. I argued referencing Daniel Dennett's concept of a super stimulus that art depicting women in Japanese Anime images are using a hyper stimulus set very much like Chocolate Cake (not a real food) to depict girls (not real!) but that demonstrably stimulate male viewers. So this much of physical structure must be accounted for. Nietzsche represents the advent of the post modern which in at least one interpretation is a rebellion against the structures imposed on us by metanarratives taught by authorities. To be truly free of those you must become an ubermensch. The quiz question today was what is an ubermensch and do you think you are one? By the way, Thus Spake Zarathustra was a book by Nietzsche but the tone poem was written by Richard Strauss

History of Philosophy II

Picking up with Berkeley we discussed the nature of mind (nous) and the mind of God. What worried Berkeley was that Locke's materialism would lead people to abandon belief in God and society would become selfish and materialistic. I can't help note that he was right about that especially with regard to western Europe. Hume in a matter of speaking makes things worse when he points out that the reason Berkeley's argument against Locke succeeds - belief in material substance we cannot sense is contradictory - also applies to Berkeley's own conclusion that the mind of God is what sustains the universe. (I am always about in the quad and that is why the tree continues to be.) Hume's skepticism (scepticism in British English) destroys our confidence in God, necessity, cause and effect, the thing in itself, the persistent self, and many other brilliant things. So Hume is the last of the great British Empiricists and perhaps the greatest philosopher to write in English so far. In preparation for the next class I looked at Hume's main argument against Metaphysics. The a priori, a posteriori, synthetic, and analytic types of information that we have. He argues we cannot have synthetic a priori information and so metaphysics is impossible. My quiz question is do you think metaphysics is possible? And next class we look to see if Kant answered Hume.

Introduction to Humanities II

Today I followed up on Kant's theory by discussing the attempts to make sense of his contention that all rational persons see things essentially the same way. I included Freud, Jung, Frankl, Gestalt theory, but focused on the move toward the organic paradigm of the universe as opposed to the modern static universe of Descartes and Newton. Hegel gives us the evolution of Spirit - or today we might say culture. Following this paradigm shift we see it applied to maturation, history, biological evolution, expansion of the universe, the dynamic evolution of languages, and even mathematics. I would argue that although most academics today are Kantian, that most of those are also Hegelian, assuming Hegel is a Kantian. So, especially in the US our culture as pragmatists is essentially Hegelian in that we accept science, evolution, history, progress, all as the paradigm elements in our view of the universe. Further, democracy and the increase in the amount of liberty - more people living more freely than ever before - is the goal of progress. So how does this theory apply to our appreciation and the development of art? We did not spend much time on that so far but the quiz question might be useful for the discussion to move further: what is your favorite Islamic art? Next class I would like to mention Tariq Ramadan and the connection between Islamic culture and Islam.