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.