History of Philosophy II

From our recognition that values are not universal we move towards a cultural relativism. This brings us to Hegel's generation. They accepted Kant's philosophy except they rejected the apparently contradictory notion that we could know that the ego must exist, things in themselves must exist, and God must exist, without knowing them! Instead, as cultural artifacts - spirit - they exist in our minds much as our conceptions of all phenomena do. But what is the nature of spirit as cultural artifacts? Reading the excerpt in the text we see a new kind of philosophical literature. Instead of describing the way things are, Hegel describes a dialectical process between the in itself and the for itself. That is, the subject of experience reacts to the object of experience. This dialectical interplay of forces happens at multiple levels so describes what is going on in my mind as I decide what choices I will make, or between two people, or between a person and a group, or groups with other groups, and even the world all together - the Weltgeist. We also have the conception of the Zeitgeist - the spirit of the times. All of these concepts are made to show the dynamic interplay that occurs that is very real even though it is only social interaction. But this social interaction creates real things - from buildings and nations to egos and fiction. The quiz question today was, how would Hegel's view of self-consciousness explain individuals with multiple personalities?

Introduction to Humanities II

Today we first broke up into groups so everyone could exchange information and begin helping one another in teams for the term project. If you missed this please make sure you get into a group since that is one of the requirements for the Term Project for the course. Following this we discussed Psychoanalytic Theory and I played a bit of the movie When Nietzsche Wept but we concentrated on Freud and his talking cure. We also talked about his atheism and took a moment to review the upcoming writing assignment that includes Freud's point of view as one of the topics. We then looked at the video How to Read A Gothic Cathedral which beautifully explains the symbolism of the art on the facades of Gothic Cathedrals. Here we attempted to understand the Augustinian Theological perspective behind that art and contrast it with what might be the perspective of someone from Freud's point of view. The quiz question was have you ever been saved and what does being saved mean to you?

History of Philosophy II

Today I discussed a variety of responses to Kant's argument that there is a structure to the rational human mind that enables each person to perceive the world and all rational humans share in that structure. The question immediately asked is what is the nature of that structure and what causes it? I quickly mentioned Gestalt, Eric Kandel (an important contemporary), Freud, Yalom (an important contemporary), Jung, and Joseph Campbell, and Viktor Frankl. Each can be viewed as attempts to explain what structures rationality either biologically or culturally. As a quiz question I asked the classic: do you help the woman in the car being attacked by three guys? What is your moral duty? And, what do you think you would actually do. We then moved on to consider Mary Wollstonecraft in relation to others like Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, and George Elliot.

Introduction to Philosophy

The quiz question today was - what did you think of the Ontological Argument? Did you think it was persuasive? We went over Anselm's Ontological Argument. I take the position that it is a winning argument. See Kurt Godel for a more contemporary approach. I then did a quick review of some famous Medieval Philosophers or reformers: Abelard (and Heloise) - Stealing Heaven Saint Frances - Brother Sun Sister Moon Hildegaard von Bingen who we have in the text. William of Occam who we will discuss next week. I argued that Boethius - the last Roman - wasn't really the last Roman in criticism of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. We looked at Moses Maimonides who influenced Aquinas by aiding the introduction of Aristotle's thought into the west. And we began looking at Aquinas.

Logic

We continued working on syllogisms this evening in preparation for the test at the beginning of class next week. There will be nine syllogisms to do including writing out the syllogism, drawing the Venn diagram, determining if the argument is valid or not, and if it is invalid describing which rule or rules the syllogism breaks. The quiz question this evening was problem 15 on page 269.

Introduction to Humanities II

I started off today by talking about a few of my own prejudices and the guilt I associate with that - and how my own cultural background led to both my prejudices and my guilt! This ties in with the theory explored this lecture - Modernism. As I understand it, modernism is essentially the evolutionary narrative applied to art. I invited the class to explore from their own experience how art has evolved and we talked about music, sculpture, architecture, computer games and fashion. The quiz question for the day was what language is Karl Jenkins The Armed Man, A Mass for Peace written in? We also listened briefly to his Adiemus where I pointed out that it is written in no language at all.

History of Philosophy II

How do you know what is real? That ended up (as I recall) the quiz question for today. We started by reviewing Hume's argument concerning the persistent self. I tied this in to what my one colleague says makes him suspicious - and that is contemporary insights into quantum mechanical physics - I mentioned Stuart Hameroff earlier last week (isn't this worth exploring?) Remember too that Thomas Metzinger discusses this in Being No One and Doug Hoffstadter does a similar thing in his I am a Strange Loop - so Hume's puzzle is still very much with us. I also posed his question concerning metaphysics - is metaphysics possible? I used the analogy of arguing over whether Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter would beat the other in a fight. Essentially, Hume says Metaphysics is such a complete waste of time. Arguments between different metaphysical theories amount to the same sort of game. So, apart from the value of studying the history of metaphysics to understand historical behaviors of those influenced by them, including the art, literature, and so on, is there a value to doing metaphysics if those questions can never really be resolved? (Notice Cornel West's book The American Evasion of Philosophy) Notice even Hume's challenge does not make senses unless you are familiar with the history that led to it's being a philosophical position about philosophy! But then we explore the answer posed by Kant - Did Kant Answer Hume? My answer is yes. So I resorted to the board to place Phenomena in the center, the Ego to the left, and The Thing in Itself on the right, with God on top. The noumenal and phenomena - how does Kant use these to answer Hume? He agrees with Hume but attempts to Transcend the dilemma with a method - the Transcendental Method - which allows us to conclude that those things required for phenomena to be experienced must be there for the experience to occur at all. At this point we ran out of time - so the quiz question was left as the thoughtful issue until Monday.