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.