October 15

I found the interview Charlie Rose did with Gergiev this evening absolutely exceptional. I am not sure when it will be posted on the web but think this will be where you can find it: http://www.charlierose.com/guest/view/2310
I wish I had a recording of it that I could trust to keep instead of the temporary internet records. I will have to ask Rick if he has played any of his CDs. I was lured into ordering his Parsifal to see what it might be like.

Meanwhile, the interview interrupted a great evening with Peter Hitchens whose new book is a great counter to those I have read of his brother. I suspect many friends will love it if they have a chance to pick it up. So far the description of growing up in England when they did is quite startling in its effect on me. Maybe there has been too much estrogen in my food lately? Between Peter and Gergiev my evening was full of ammunition against the likes of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins.

I enjoyed Steve's article this morning on the impact of the Internet on Alaska villages and can't but help to think I am posting this via the Mukluk Telegraph. It was great seeing some of the beautiful prose from Steve's earlier messages in the article so that others could enjoy it as well.

Looking at everything through an energy lense

http://www.math.uaa.alaska.edu/~afkjm/video/MaryLogan-Energy/MaryLogan-Energy.html Or added as a link:



This is a very nice summary of the issues that seem to be the ground of everything else that is happening.

Feminist tools of the trade

Reading Jane Austen
The irony of it all. There are lots of differing points of view regarding how to interpret the irony in her novels. Part of this problem I suggest is the nature of thinking to be recursive. Do I interpret a line like "imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms" to be meant as true? Is it a comment on the nature of males? Is it irony in that is is ridiculous because of the injustice of it but still true of males attitudes? Is there irony since the smart women use this to charm stupid men? How many other levels of irony might be interpreted here? Which, if any, were the intentions of the author? All of them?
But it certainly shows one way of dealing with the injustice of the situation in Jane Austen's day and certainly still applies in many respects today. This is certainly one tool feminists have at their disposal.

Reading Slavoj Zizek

Spur of the moment purchase for me the other day was "Living in the End Times" by Slavoj Zizek. It has been a great relief! Having watched Slavoj on multiple Youtube videos I have grown used to his presentation style: very fast speech with a nice Slavic accent and frequent spastic movements that suggest a very active mind more than some sort of disorder. The relief in reading the book comes from the fact that while I can still hear his voice as I read his pace has slowed down considerably! In fact, he can even repeat himself when I want to hear something over again. But there has also been a terrible disappointment. Having never read one of his books before I wanted to review some of his research and started with the startling summary of Martin Luther's point of view regarding human beings as God's excrement. Did Luther say anything of the sort I wondered? A friend said yes. But using Google to check this have so far found multiple exact quotations of Zizek's point - made in multiple books - such as "The Parallax View" where virtually two pages from the new book are there complete. And still again in another web page. Typing ths before continuing my explore I wonder if anyone else has noticed a propensity for Zizek to repackage his books under new titles and reissue them? I can see using similar material to make similar points but would certainly not want to be paying the price for a new book that is mostly an old book.

Anticipation

Ok, so maybe there is a difference between the old edition owned by a philosopher who liked Bloch and penciled notes in the text and a new copy in paperback:

http://www.amazon.com/Werke-20-B%C3%A4nden-ein-Registerband/dp/3518097180/ref=pd_ecc_rvi_cart_1

But I am anticipating its arrival non the less. Where on my shelf will I put this? Perhaps in the office?

Wish list

Had an interesting eye opening experience several weeks ago at Title Wave Books when I found a new complete set of Kant's works for $19.95 - all six volumes for that! I confess when I went to the counter it was initially to see if they were really going to charge that for the whole set or per book! When the clerk said it was the whole price I could not help myself. So then I figured - I ought to start reading it. So far I made it through the biography and started the first Critique. Hey! It is not bad. I am managing and find I am following it. So I became curious and checked the Consortium and sure enough the edition they have is different but it is there. So is the complete set of Fichte's work. But for Hegel? Nada. Nichts on the pommfritz. So had a look at Amazon:
Sämtliche Werke: Jubiläumsausgabe 
Now that would be an interesting set for the library to have! But how do I get them to buy it?

Meanwhile. Donna took pity on me and let me order the paperback set - 20 Banden for $349! No kidding. The odd thing was she would not let me order that for my birthday but insisted it would be for Father's Day. (In other words she already has something for August.) So within 12 business days I should have it - and be wondering what to do with it.

Reading in the sun

Except today so far is not as sunny as it has been! So I shiver out on the deck with Aristotle for awhile then retreat into the house for something to eat and read E.D. Hirsch or stop in the garage (my office) to check if there are any new emails. A radio is playing KLEF in both places.

Better catch up

Today a friend has created a blog at long last. This has reminded me that for months I have given up on adding to mine. I guess I better catch up!

Not your mother's Alice in Wonderland

Tim Burton has created an interesting work of art that plays on Lewis Carroll's "Alice" but this is not the children's story in continuo unless the children are made of sterner stuff. We must determine the outcomes of our own dreams if we are going to be true to ourselves. If we do not become the hero of our own dream we can't be our own hero in life either. I suppose. An odd feeling when the movie ended - you feel almost as if there is an emotional let down in finding yourself back in the real world. Does everyone feel this? What causes it? Are we able to reach an emotional high similar to a drug high because of the way the music and cinematography act on us? And when it ends the body goes back to stasis. How can everyday life compete with this?

Intro to Humanities II Mar 4

Today we looked at the theory of the semiotic. C. S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey were basically reviewed in order to discuss pragmatism. Since the origin of pragmatism was Peirce's theory of meaning - "the meaning of a word is its use in the language" we looked at art from the literary perspective of how a work fits into the story it tells. Van Eyck's "Arnolfini's Wedding" was a starting point for a discussion about how we "record" weddings today. From this painting to photographs to DVD recordings of our weddings - to YouTube videos of "wedding dance". From this we went on to Baroque music and asked if the Alleluia chorus of Messiah could be as powerful a piece to someone who did not know the story it is part of? Or further to someone who both knows and believes the story? This was the quiz question.

Intro to Philosophy Mar 4

Today we moved on to John Locke. Two main issues include the problem of Empiricism and the Social Contract Theory. The problem of empiricism results from Locke's recognition that the things in themselves do not have the characteristics we sense but instead those characteristics result from the interaction of our senses with what he called the primary characteristics of those things. This leaves us in a quandry regarding what we can know about the things in themselves since the primary qualities - the matter of those things - are essentially unobservable by us. This leads to a very skeptical point of view which George Berkeley will be concerned with later. This also begins the point of view regarded as Materialism. The second issue: since Jefferson honored John Locke along with Frances Bacon and Isaac Newton as his favorite philosophers, Locke's version of the Social Contract was fundamental in Jefferson's philosophy and use of political theory in his work in Virginia and the Federal Government. I emphasize that the state of nature as conceived by Locke is different than with Hobbes and this changes the purpose of the social contract. Instead of concluding that an absolute authority should govern Locke argues for a balance of powers. Under this members of the contract do not yield their rights to absolute monarch but instead maintain the right to overthrow the monarch if the executive does not ahere to the legislature's intent. Another important point inherited by Jefferson from Locke (that comes from Locke's reading of Spinoza) is the need for toleration of different religions. Since all great religious prophets were essentially doing science and religions based on their teachings are in the end all aiming at the same thing, there should be tolleration of those with different views. After all, with education and the improvments of science we will eventually all be in agreement anyway! So Jefferson fights for a seperation of Church and State. We ended this session puzzled with the famous question concerning the tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear it. Does it make a sound?

Truth Beauty Goodness March 3

A main focus of today's discussion concerned the impact language may have on the development of music. Do the tones in speech in different languages have an impact on the melodies we use to communicate emotion in song? This may even effect dialects as well. We laughed at Robin Williams immitating a Scottish accent for this. (By the way, I did not ask this but should have, what is the significance of taboo sounds and words? Why do they have the power they do? Why do comics use them so much?) We looked at a variety of cultural arts using music especially contrasting oriental music such as the Beijing Opera and Japanese Court music with pop music from Asia and wondered why pop music from the west would have such an impact on music with such a different tradition. We also re-discussed the idea of the Golden Ratio and what it might have to do with the way nature develops. If mathematical proportions have a bearing on what we find to be beautiful (perhaps because symetry and balance indicate health) then do the same sorts of mathematical proportions have an effect on what we find beautiful in music? In poetry? We also revisited the Dove Evolution commercial and spoofs on the same to think about the Golden Ratio in its use to remake faces to fit a mathematical ideal of beauty that real people cannot match.

Intro to Humanities II Mar 2

Today our topic was Feminism. We looked briefly at my link: http://afwsj.uaa.alaska.edu/fem.htm I took a very conservative tack - usually a good move to start a lively discussion, but discovered for the most part the class seemed in agreement! When asked who felt as though they were feminists only one person raised a hand. There was agreement that most of the goals of the first and second waves of feminism were achieved! In fact today it seems that males are in decline for lots of reasons. Lionel Tiger's book "The Decline of Males" was mentioned as were current problems with employment for males. There was agreement that males are more often the care givers for their children. We then moved to address the art of the Northern European Renaissance in light of the feminist interpretation of art. I suggested after looking especially at music from southern European opera - Monteverdi through Andrew Weber that music in southern European Catholic culture is sexy! But Northern European music is much more restrained as is the art. Is this true? Could we argue that feminism would only have developed in a culture dominated by Northern European Puritans? We ran out of time to discuss this further! We should pick it up next class.

Intro to Philosophy Mar 2

We finished by discussing the traditional view of Descartes as the beginning of Continental Rationalism and Hobbes as an empiricist (though Locke is traditionally viewed as the beginning of the British Empiricist tradition as we will see.) We then briefly discussed a few highlights about Pascal including his wager, his triangle, and his calculator. But Spinoza was the main topic for the day and we dived into the Ethics reading the definitions, axioms, and propositions. I argue that his conclusion that the Scholastic definitions lead to a view of Pantheism - God is all there is. How persuasive was his argument? That was one quiz question for today. The other was: given how light looks to us, how do we look to light?

Truth Beauty Goodness Mar 1

We listened to the noises made by lots of mammals from North America courtesy of
the Audubon North American Mammals disk. Maybe we had to guess at a few but it
was pretty clear at least how large the animals were. My attempt was to bridge
the gap between song and noise. Where do we draw the line? Family resemblance
tells us what is a song and what is not but once we realize that line is a
result of our preference can we interpret the noise a buffalo makes as music?
Music at least to the buffalo? This discussion led to song - the human variety
and we listened to "When you're alone, you're not really alone," Charlotte
Church doing "Pie Jesu" followed by an interesting comparison with Sarah
Brightman doing the same piece - noticing her relative maturity and so a
different nuance in the prayer for pity from the Divine. From this we went to a
selection from Leonard Bernstein's Judaica album - from the Kadesh - or funeral
for President Kennedy. I selected the piece where the tenor yells at God - "Your covenant is tin!" Is this song? How about rap? While this is usually as far as Iwould go for this session some naturally brought up the question about poetry and what difference there was between that and song. I played with the idea that, at least with Shakespeare in "Much Ado About Nothing" the song "Sigh no more ladies" is a poem until the directions say it should be sung. We should be clear that we know what is song and what is not, what is poetry and what not, but we also should be clear how dependent we are on a muddling consensus that enables us to have such a sense of what is what.

I have enjoyed asking several classes what they thought the cultural implications of this ad for headsets were. The ad was in the Chicago Airport between gates.

Feb 26 Charles Wolhforth

CW gave his presentation to the LS Dept today as well as others that elected to come. The presentation was a continuation of themes in his book "The Whale and the Supercomputer" (It occured to me afterwards that I have never had him sign my copy of his book) and what will be his new book coming out in June (?) I made mention of the book by Kathleen Dean Moore "The Pine Island Paradox".

On Lincoln and Shakespeare

The Polaris lecture the evening of Feb 25 (See the Polaris web page for details) left me with the interesting question of how the development of human rights were tied to the evolution of the self (thinking here of Charles Taylor's two books "The Sources of the Self" and "A Secular Age") and following Harold Bloom's book "Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human". As Lincoln was influenced by Shakespeare and this is evident through an analysis of his use of Shakespeare in his speeches, is Lincoln a great source of this evolution of the self especially as it played out in America through his political power. Prof Briggs focused on the nature of tyranny in his lecture and viewed Lincoln's understanding of it as Shakespearean - Falstaff, Macbeth, and others. The tyranny is internal and a property of the modern individual that wants to be free even from the tyrannical parts of himself - the demons we most have to fear.

Intro to Humanities II Feb 25

The task today was to delve into formalism, sociological theory, and Marxism, to see how those theories would effect our view of art. The art to be the topic of our analysis was late Renaissance. Of the art the only piece we looked at was Primavera and we did not do much with that. Instead we spent most of the time talking about the Socially Constructed Reality and implications of the theory. A major part of this concerned the limits of social construction and trying to figure out what those might be. I mentioned Wilson and Daly's book "Homicide" as the book that started the Evolutionary Psychology point of view which is often contrasted with those that take the Social Construction of Reality too liberally. The contrary view is that Evolutionary Psychology is just the old status quo in a new disguise.
On Marx I discovered the class was basically unfamiliar with Marx and Marxism so the remaining portion of the class was a review of who Marx was and the essential nature of his philosophy as a revolt against Hegelianism. As usual, I touched on Kierkegaard to contrast how two students of Frederich Schelling both sought to discredit Hegel's philosophy but from contrasting points of view. Soren K took the view that the individual is isolated and must create meaning for themselves. Marx took the view that the individual is a myth and all "individuals" are as the culture creates them. And how the culture does that is not top down as Hegel thought but bottom up. The economy, or means of production, is the source of culture and the nature of the individual from one community to the next.

Intro to Philosophy Feb 25

We continued discussing Hobbes. A main concern I have in presenting the concept of social contract is the idea that what makes the theory coherent is understanding the concept of rights as coming from the contract. In the conceptualization of the State of Nature everyone has all rights - to take anything - but even from others - in short, the State of Nature Hobbes describes is a dog eat dog anarchy where rights are meaningless. Then the contract is formed and everyone that is a member of the contract gets the rights as described in the contract. I point this out with regard to a person who buys a house. By contracting with the bank and municipal authority the person who pays successfully for the house gets the rights of ownership. We would all realize just how wrong it would be for someone else - homeless - to declare they also have a right to live in the house. That right is not given them by the contract. Apply this to citizenship and you have a way of understanding much of what seems confusing to many. Aliens do not have the rights of citizens. Slaves were property and not members of the contract - nor were women, children, and others not recognized as the sort of person Jefferson et al were thinking about. But as the nature of the contract changes others are admitted and the nature of the rights change. Notice how silly this makes it seem for someone to argue about the rights of women in China, for example. They are certainly not citizens of the US and so do not have the rights such membership gives a woman who is a US citizen. A person who thinks they do is just confused. Notice the question of whether or not women in China should have such rights is a totally different question!
Another different question concerns what the founders thought regarding the rights they described. It seems they clearly thought what they were describing were God given and so they may have understood all persons - whatever they may have considered worthy of the name - had those rights. But notice this requires acceptance of such an authority for that to be coherent.

Truth Beauty Goodness Feb 24

Today's discussion was a continuation on the intuition of beauty. One hypothesis is that what appeals universally to human beings may be the source of our sense of loss in stories like the Fall. Was paradise a life where human nature fit nature making subsistence sustainable? Jared Diamond titles his first chapter of the book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" "Yali's Question". Is New Guinea and example of what sustainable human life have been before the Fall? As civilization becomes more complex, human beings develop more complex social structures that require the imposition of rules on what otherwise would have been our free natures. Good and evil arrive. An interesting contrast seems also there regarding the development of the brain. Are certain abstract thinking abilities developed because of the necessity resulting from more complex social structures? (Referring to the Charlie Rose Show on the Developing Brain series 5.)

Intro to Humanities II Feb 23

Applying Psychology to art, especially with regard to the art of the late Middle Ages.
Using Youtube videos of Hildegaard von Bingen Ecclesia, the Shadowlands trailer, Sainte-Chapelle, I tried to contrast the nature of art from the context of traditional religious narratives with that of scientific - objectivity narratives with an emphasis on the psychological affect on the adherents of the narrative. I used Lucian Freud as an example of how depressing his grandfather's narrative is compared to Lewis whose re-conversion reflects the psychological viewpoint of William James, that for psychological reasons it is better to beleive in traditional religious narratives than not to. Brian Boyd's book "On the Origin of Stories" and a video of him (search string on Youtube "science religion Brian Boyd") emphasized that we are dependent on symbolic universes in order to think as humans. Quiz question was: What narrative sustains you when modern life is so depressing? What is your escape?

Intro to Philosophy Feb 23

The Discussion today continued on Descartes but included Galileo. The previous quiz question was: Does the earth go around the sun or does the sun go around the earth? I argue for an answer that these are each useful models, that there are other useful models besides these, each of which has truth value for us just as they are useful. But was Galileo thinking this way?

But back to Descartes: we left with a quiz question for today regarding Cartesian Mind-Body Dualism wondering what people thought today regarding the existence of a soul. Do we have a soul?

Today we began a discussion of the nature of the beautiful and just as we earlier did with the nature of truth started asking what gave us each an intuitive sense of happiness. As a discussion starter we looked at some Youtube videos of places in Disney World. First stop: "Its a Small World". The discussion went pretty well with this as it turned out that many members of the class had been to Disney World or Disney Land and had their favorite memories of specific rides. This were good examples of that intuitive feeling of happiness. But what explains that happiness? Is it a direct biological connection or does a complex system of cultural connections have something to do with it?

Thanks to Mudflats

Had a very engaging presentation today by the blogger who started Mudflats and considered doing a blog an interesting idea. My intention would be to use the blog to be a web log of my thoughts teaching philosophy. What kind of lessons I present, what kind of reactions I get from students, what works, what does not, all would be topics for the blog. This would also include the books I am reading and my thoughts on the usefulness of those. I shall see how this goes. If anything, I would imagine it to be a good way to keep a diary of my thoughts on these efforts.