Introduction to Philosophy

Today we finished up a few things with regard to Aquinas before mentioning William of Occam and John Duns Scotus. The end result was Scholasticism which was criticized by D'Israeli as arguing over such things as "How many angels could dance on the head of a pin?" Which question I made the first quiz question. I also mentioned Frances Bacon who was Thomas Hobbes' teacher. We started reading Descartes' Meditations remembering the reference to Augustine's reply to the skeptics in our texts. (Was this the model Descartes used for the Meditations?) We discussed the answer to his Cartesian doubt - Cogito ergo sum. Which, apart from the problem of the nature of the res cogitans moved on to a version of the Ontological Argument that then led to concluding that what is clear and distinct must be true. That is, mathematics is the new model for scientific knowledge. With this the modern period begins and intellectuals cast off the faith in the Church authorities. Which brings up the issue of the Reformation(s). We briefly discussed Martin Luther and his 95 theses, the impact on this through John Knox on the Scottish Enlightenment and eventually the Whig political ideas that resulted in the Revolution against Britain and the founding of the United States. Also note the Gutenberg press which made the Bible more affordable, and the translations into the languages of the people added to that, with the emphasis in Protestantism that everyone should be a good Christian, not just the clergy. Descartes also was a friend of Galileo who famously gives us the conflict over the Cosmological models - solar centered model instead of the earth centered. (I argue a contemporary position called Modeling that views each model as a tool and useful as long as it works for the purpose intended. So the only mistake is thinking that since one model is true the others must be false. They are not! We can accept multiple models realizing the apparent conflicts are not an issue. With regard to the earth centered model, I also mentioned solar centered, Einstein Light Cone, Brian Greene Fabric of the Cosmos, and the galactic model which views the solar system as moving around the galactic center. The second quiz question was does the earth go around the sun or does the sun go around the earth? Hobbes was next and we read some of the text to emphasize how amazing he was for his day.

Logic

The first forty minutes of class was spent taking test 1. Syllogisms. Following the test we began looking at symbolic logic. This is where we will pick up again next Friday.

Introduction to Humanities II

Thursday we talked about Marxist theory and how it might analyse art. The art we were examining was Italian Renaissance and so I picked the Medici Palazzo but after going over the economic situation of Europe that seems to have precipitated into Marx's theory, Charles Dickens (Hardtimes - and look at Thomas Malthus, and Oliver Twist), John Stewart Mill and Utilitarianism, and the unions in Great Britain - see also the Great Exhibition England avoided the Communist threat. The Communist Revolution in Russia was not in accordance with Marxian theory since the country was Feudal and not industrial. Hence, the name Marxist-Leninism. Lenin basically argued that the capitalist period could be skipped. The end result was not communism but a corrupt totalitarian government that made everything worse than it was. But even today we see totalitarian corruption such as Viktor Yanukovych and his Villa in Ukraine.

Notes on my visit to Gruening Middle School today

It was wonderful visiting an eighth grade class at Gruening Middle School today that were each reading various philosophers. The questions showed that they were understanding what they were reading and very interested in the topics. I look forward to the day when, I expect four years or so from now, some of those young people will be taking Philosophy at UAA!

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.

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.

History of Philosophy II

Today we finished up talking about Leibniz (Microsoft seems to insist that is how to spell his name) by talking about his concept of the Monad (which Microsoft doesn't think is a word.) I mostly compared it to contemporary physics (what I know about it) mentioning Brian Greene and the standard model My argument is that Leibniz was way ahead of his time and his positions are very close to much of contemporary thought. While Newton was a proponent of the steady state universe - I suppose it seems called the static universe instead Leibniz was of the opinion that it was a relative universe (much closer to Einstein's conception.) Following this I moved in on a brief discussion of Berkeley and his dialog between Matter and Love of Mind. I argued that Berkeley's position is more likely in tune with that of Leibniz who he corresponded with than the traditional interpretation of his position. Usually he is considered an Idealist and a British Empiricist which seems incoherent. But if we think that his argument is that Spirit is what we mean by Energy today, and Matter is what we mean by Mass, then his argument that matter does not exist, only spirit does, is just like Leibniz - essentially the contemporary point of view. I also mentioned Jonathan Edwards and used this as a point to enter some comments about the colonies in the New World. The quiz question today was what do you think of as a miracle? And if they exist, what are they?

Intro to Philosophy

Today we reviewed some of the text from the beginning to emphasize the importance of the material we have been reviewing. Since I usually lecture about the text or ideas developed in the text most of the onus is on the student to follow the text and read ahead to follow this connection but today we spent time going over the highlights to make those connections. Then we continued on with Aristotle to discuss the conception of the soul as the activity of the body. This being the case, the nature of ethics changes to be that of how to live the good life while the body has life. While Aristotle follows his teacher Plato's psychology in most respects dividing the classes of people up into three main groups, it would be easier to find nurture much more important for Aristotle than nature so that quality of life is best for those who are born in a good family in a good society than Plato's position that each person is essentially born with the character they will have. I mentioned Maslow's hierarchy of needs and it is easy to see how this ties in with Aristotle. Moving on to the Ethics a first quiz question was who was Nicomachus? I consider this a trick question since as you will see there are two individuals of that name in Aristotle's life and it makes me wonder which might be so honored. Most consider his father as the honoree, but it makes more sense to me if it is both or his son, since we may think of the book as written to instruct the young. Since there is a lack of physical things if you love physical pleasures then your happiness is not under your control and you will most likely often be unhappy. The same situation applies to social pleasures since social status, honor, and love are not really easy to come by! But knowledge for the sake of knowledge alone is something that you can gain and keep and there is plenty to go around if you have the wealth to spend the time learning. With the death of Alexander the Great Aristotle famously had to flee lest Athens sin twice against philosophy. But two years later he died and following that much of his thought ended up being lost to the west (saved in the east until the reintroduction about the time of the Crusades and the rebirth of Western interest in Greek culture - the Renaissance.) (You know, the very brief way I describe all of this is easily so shallow that digging deeper can lead someone to finding it is misleading or even false!) The Post-Aristotelians are next and I like to put the various choices across the board starting with the Cynics on the right, (no special reason) followed by the Epicureans, then the Skeptics, then the Stoics, and then the Neo-Platonists. The Cynics prime example is Diogenes and I told several stories about him. Living a homeless carefree life is the main characteristic of the Dog philosophy. In the text we have Epicurus who gives us the answer that the best life is one of avoiding stresses up to a point, self sufficiency is his aim. I suggest that the Bush life style fits this philosophy pretty well. The Skeptics are not represented in the text but is the position that arguing over these issues itself is a source of great stress and that the questions can never be answered due to the nature of the questions, so accepting the apoiretic nature of these issues is a best way to avoid the stress and have a good life. Epictetus is our example of a stoic and the duty of a stoic is to the society. If you want to live the good life, someone has to make sure the society is good and functioning. But how do you remain happy while doing so many things for the good of other people? You maintain an internal intellectual removal from the stress so that in your heart you are at peace regardless of what is going on around you. The second quiz question of the day was which of these philosophical positions best fits your own thinking today? Next week we will look at the Neoplatonists and the success of the Christian philosophy / theology.

Logic

We ended this evening with a survey of Conversion, Obversion, and Contraposition. I started by finishing up a point from chapter three concerning the difference between sufficient and necessary conditions. Everyone seemed pretty fine with those. So we went on to Informal Fallacies using the Nizkor site I have a link to in the syllabus and the text. We went through these pretty quickly but they are good to be familiar with because psychologically they are traditionally powerful ways of getting people to do what you want them to do, or to believe what you want them to believe. But they are not examples of good reasoning and should be avoided if you want to be a good critical thinker. I did some things to relate fallacies to jokes and mentioned Daniel Dennett's book Inside Jokes and explained the basic thesis that jokes and humor are universal in humans because they reward debugging problems. After the break we went on to look again at Categorical Reasoning - chapter 5. Much of this was a review of the standard categorical statement forms A, E, I, O and the square of opposition. This seemed fun. Part of the class was testing true and false statements to see if they do in fact fit this theory. One type of statements that do not clearly fit are referred to as relational predicates. The quiz question had nothing to do with any of this but was sure to be interesting: what does it mean to you to be a Seawolf?

Humanities II

I picked up with the problem of empiricism and then discussed Kant's revolutionary approach that argues each of us are the center of our universe and our consciousness creates and orders the time and space that structures our perceptions. Phenomena are categorized by the rational mind in the same ways and so humans have a shared understanding of the universe. On that note we looked at primal music, Indian raga music (and Celtic music) but then the change with Greek music after Pythagoras and the invention of the octave. We talked about how music influences the mood of a person through the waves effects on the brain. The quiz question was, does the Doberhuahua strike your intuition as completely unnatural?

History of Philosophy II

Today we went over the difference between primary qualities and secondary qualities of things according to John Locke. This is the official academic start of the problem of empiricism. I touched on Berkeley a bit too since he will be the next British Empiricist - even though he is also considered an Idealist - and the first quiz question is really more associated with Bishop Berkeley than Locke and that is: If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it does it make a sound? We will do more with Berkeley next class. I then went on to Leibniz covering some of the reasons he was so incredible. His scholarship, his calculator, his System of the Calculus, binary code, his universal language translation project, his military plans for Egypt and the canal, his visits to England and the Netherlands, and then we began to think about his Monadology by talking about Euclid first. The second quiz question was, how can a point have no parts? See Euclid definition of a point. Compare the definition of a monad with Euclid's point. Interesting!

Humanities II

Today the goal was to review theories up to and including Kant and then use that to apply it to art - primarily Islamic. Since Kant only makes sense when you see what his philosophy was in response to I did a quick review starting with Plato and Aristotle (in the classic interpretation of Plato as an Idealist and Aristotle as an Empiricist. I stressed that Augustine was the essential developer of Christian dogma and was Platonist. Then when Aristotle was reintroduced to the west during the Crusades the impact forced a change in the dogma which was achieved by Aquinas (and we looked at Article 1 of the Summa Theologica.) While Aquinas solved the problem it was a very complex philosophical point of view and opened the way for Descartes who wanted to establish knowledge on a firm basis - cogito ergo sum. Then I skipped to Locke who develops what is called the problem of empiricism regarding what we can know of the empirical world since we cannot trust our senses. Primary and secondary qualities are fairly common sense today. Quiz one for today was what is your favorite sense! But how do we know if the real world (the primary qualities of a thing) are anything like the secondary qualities of a thing? This brings up Berkeley and the famous question of the tree falling in the forest. If a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody there to hear it does it make a sound? So in short, we never got to Kant today. So we should pick up there on Thursday because you can't go on without doing Kant.

History of Philosophy II

Finishing up with Spinoza we talked a bit about Pantheism - aka Spinozaism - and I also argued in his Ethics his conclusion that God must be everything to satisfy the Scholastic definition of God as that than which nothing greater can be thought seems to be successful. But what exactly does that mean for us? How should that change our life? For Spinoza it would be to argue that the Enlightenment - science and reason - should be the religion - and is the true religion. Plus, all other religions and great religious leaders were essentially doing science. All religions are essentially trying to improve the quality of life of mankind, and so there should be mutual toleration for all religions. It seems clear his assumption was that as science progressed, within a generation or two science would know everything and religions would go away and be replaced by science. John Locke is influenced by both Hobbes and Spinoza and so we see elements of both in his thought. He continues the view that government is legitimized by a social contract among the members of the contract but disagrees with Hobbes on the state of nature that drives the impulse to form a government. Instead of fear, the problem is society becomes too complex and we have to form government to deal with that. Further, if the government does not abide by the laws people have the right to rebel. Ownership of property is discussed and especially regarding the nature of slavery. We left off talking about the tabula rasa and our senses. The quiz question was what is your favorite sense?