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.