2014 Fall Proseminar Class Notes A

Return to Philosophy Proseminar

SEP 2

Introductory Class

SEP 9

Discussion of Hadot, "Spiritual Exercises"

"Spiritual exercises can be best observed in the context of Hellenistic and Roman schools of philosophy. The Stoics, for instance, declared explicitly that philosophy, for them, was an "exercise." In their view, philosophy did not consist in teaching an abstract theory - much less in the exegesis of texts, but rather in the art of living. It is a concrete attitude and determinate life-style, which engages the whole of existence. The philosophical act is not situated merely on the cognitive level, but on that of the self and of being. It is a progress which causes us to be more fully, and makes us better. It is a conversion which turns our entire life upside down, changing the life of the person who goes through it. It raises the individual from an inauthentic condition of life, darkened by unconsciousness and harassed by worry, to an authentic state of life, in which he attains self-consciousness, an exact vision of the world, inner peace, and freedom." 82

86: "For the Stoic, then, doing philosophy meant practicing how to "live": that is, how to live freely and consciously. Consciously, in that we pass beyond the limits of individuality, to recognize ourselves as a part of the reason-animated cosmos. Freely, in that we give up desiring that which does not depend on us and is beyond our control, so as to attach ourselves only to what depends onus: actions which are just and in conformity with reason."

• Philosophers as therapists / Philosophy as therapeutic.

• In Epicurean thought -- the tetrapharmakos; also in Phaedrus.

88: "For the Epicureans, in the last analysis, pleasure is a spiritual exercise. Not pleasure in the form of mere sensual gratification, but the intellectual pleasure derived from contemplating nature, the thought of pleasures past and present, and lastly the pleasure of friendship. "

• Prosoche -- attention.

• Learning to Die -- It's role in defining philosophy.

• Plotinus - sculpting your statue.

Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life

• Opening quote from Philo of Alexandria - mix of stoic thought. wise are joyous

• thesis: Philosophy was a way of life. Discusses Symposium as model.

• Wisdom sought also because it brings peace of mind (ataraxia) and inner freedom (autarkeia)

• Philosopy as therapeutic.

• "Philosophy presented itself as a method for achieving independence andinner freedom {autarkeia), that state in which the ego depends only uponitself. We encounter this theme in Socrates, among the Cynics, in Aristotle for whom only the contemplative life is independent - in Epicurus," among the Stoics." Although their methodologies differ, we find in allphilosophical schools the same awareness of the power of the human self tofree itself from everything which is alien to it, even if, as in the case of theSkeptics, it does so via the mere refusal to make any decision." 266

• Hadot claims there was a big distinction between "discourse" on philosophy and doing philosophy. The task of philosophy was living wisely. Anecdote about the carpenter (267). read par. top of 268, "Does the philosophical life..."

• Ancients sought for integration.

• 269: Thesis: "From its very beginnings - that is, from the second century AD on - Christianity had presented itself as a philosophy: the Christian way of life. Indeed, the very fact that Christianity was able to present itself as a philosophy confirms the assertion that philosophy was conceived in antiquity as a way of life. If to do philosophy was to live in conformity with the law of reason, so the argument went, the Christian was a philosopher, since he lived in conformity with the law of the Logos - divine reason. In order to present itself as a philosophy, Christianity was obliged to integrate elements borrowed from ancient philosophy. It had to make the Logos of the gospel according to John coincide withStoic cosmic reason, and subsequently also with the Aristotelian or Platonicintellect. It also had to integrate philosophical spiritual exercises into Christian life. The phenomenon of integration appears very clearly in Clement of Alexandria, and was intensely developed in the monastic movement, where we find the Stoico/Platonic exercises of attention to oneself (prosoche), meditation, examination of conscience, and the training for death. We also re-encounter the high value accorded to peace of mind and impassibility."

• claims this tradition lapse in medieval period. Revived by Ignatius.

• exceptions - Hegel / Marx, Descartes' Meditations, but then, pretty much theoretical philosophy?

Deleuze, "Introduction: The Question Then...(What is Philosophy?)"

• Philosophy - the art of forming inventing, and fabricating concepts.

• conceptual personae - philosopher as friend/lover of wisdom and philosopher as "concept's friend"

• like "friend" philo - Sophia -- connected with "societies of friends" (Including rivals)

• theory of concepts: p. 5,

• What it's not: contemplation, reflection, communication.

• we even build concepts with intuitions inside them (7). Concepts remain "signed" (Kant's, Nietzsche's, etc.).

• cultural contest: philosophy's rivals today (10).

SEP 16

Work on Method

• brief look at methods lists
• Reconstruction (mention SWoRD rubric coming soon). Criteria. Usage in writing and speech. Variations.
• Interrogative Reconstruction.
• Logical Structure in Deductive and Inductive Reasoning. (Note: What other kinds are there? Are philosophers always reasoning?)
• Reconstructing arguments as Deductive or Inductive.
• Problem of Induction. (Transition to Science).

Schick and Vaughn, "Science and its Pretenders"

• Emphasis: features of scientific theory, how theories are assessed, criteria of good theory

Giere, "Understanding and Evaluating Theoretical Hypotheses"

• Emphasis 1: Double Helix Case Study -- How science/scientists work?
• Emphasis 2: Model of Science, Reality, Data, Models of Reality

Barnes, "Natural Science in the 17th and 18th Centuries

• Emphasis: Sociology of Science -- Technology of science -- Circumstances of development -- The lateness of chemistry (note on nutrition science)
• Emphasis: Achieving a New Cosmology

Bryson, "How to Build a Universe"

• Emphasis: Using speculative science writing to speculate as philosophers.

Major Research Questions

1. What makes something science? How does science work theoretically?

2. How do scientists work? What would a "sociology of knowledge" tell us about methods in science?

3. What is the relationship between science and philosophy? Does science ask all of the interesting questions? What sorts of questions doesn't it answer?

OCT 7

Thought Experiments

from SEP

• Thought experiments in history of science.
• Lucretius' boundary argument
• Note reconstruction of Thompson's argument
• Popper's classification: heuristic, critical, apologetic. SEP: constructive and destructive

from Schick and Vaughn

• Warren's space traveler
• Time Travel - grandfather paradox
• Gallileo's paradoxes for Aristotelian motion
• Newton's bucket

Case Study of Thought Experiments: Thompson's "A Defence of Abortion"

• identify and critically discuss: Violinist, Tiny House, People Seeds.
• how would you argue against these thought experiments (strategies: accept/reject the premises of the experiment)

Genetic Engineering & Transhumanism

Even thought Glover and Bostrom aren't offering thought experiments directly, this topic seems to fit here because genetic engineering and transhumanism seem to generate "what if" scenarios that are similar to thought experiments and might generate them.

Glover, "What Sort of People Should There Be?"

• role call question.

• negative vs. positive
• Raising a single trait, like IQ -- Argument against: playing God, ultimately separates into a blasphemy component and a part which objects to specific people playing God.
• considerations of justice.

• Nozick's genetic supermarket. What kinds of kids should we be allowed to create?

OCT 21

Major Research Questions Tonight

• What is the best way to think about the relationship between faith and reason? Action: define each. Draw pictures.
• What is wrong with fideism?
• What dynamic is established by committing one's religion to a philosophical theory of truth (such as Aquinas')?
• Or, How does a revealed religion figure out which parts of the revelation are universal?
• Is theology a science? Is philosophy a science?
• Can articles of faith be objects of knowledge like objects studied by science? Do religions make factual claims?
• How does the church's discussion of the faith and reason question differ from the problem as it arises in the sciences?

Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio

-Thematics: Faith and Reason and destinies of church and philosophy; Faith's correction of philosophy; Philosophy within the bounds of faith.

• p. 3: Philosophy seems to have forgotten...
• legitimate plurality vs. agnosticism and relativism.
• Faith as obedient response to God p. 7
• "ultimate purpose of human existence" a common theme of theology and philosophy.
• "no reason for competition".... "each contains the other"...reason leading to mystery.
• p. 12: ack: that you can't reduce eschatology to logic.

• Christianity's adoption of philosophy, pl 18 ff.
• Follow from p. 22: The Drama of the Separation of faith and reason
• Wrong turns and error" ... " Task of Magisterium...." "communism, marxism..."

• Fideism: (from Tkacz: the view that religious belief is based on faith alone -- that is, religiously belieing is a pure assent of the will)
• Criticism of philosophy for abandoning metaphysics

Current Requirements and Tasks (Requirments for philosophy to be consonant with word of God: (p. 39)

• must search for ultimate and over arching meaning in life
• must verify the capacity to know the truth
• must transcending empirical data to attain the metaphysical and foundational

• more of the bad list: phenomenalists, relativists, postmodernists, atheists, pragmatism, scientism

Tkacz, "Faith, Reason, and Science"

• Gould and NOMA
• Religion makes factual claims.
• T's position: Religious beliefs can be articulated as knowledge and are no less rational and objective than are the beliefs about the physical world investigated by science.
• Note hierarchy in final quote.

Barrett, CSR & Sosis, "Adaptive Value of Religious Ritual"

1:"Rather than specify what religion is and try to explain it in whole, scholars in this field have generally chosen to approach 'religion' in an incremental, piecemeal fashion, identifying human thought or behavioral patterns that might count as 'religious' and then trying to explain why those patterns are cross-culturally recurrent."

2:CSR "seeks to detail the basic cognitive structure of thought and action that might be deemed religious and invites historians, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists and other religion scholars to fiU in the hows and whys of particular religious phenomena."

":...through the course of development in any cultural context, human mind/brains exhibit a number of functional regularities regarding how they process information. These functional regularities are also known as domain-specific inference systems or 'mental tools'.^ Foi For instance, one mental tool concerns language. Humans (especially pre-pubescent humans) readily acquire and use natural languages but are not facile with non-natural symbolic communication systems such as binary code."

TC - Theological Correctness -- studies involving online/offline tasks

MCI - Minimally Counterintuitive Ideas -- 4 " Compare the idea of a barking dog that is brown on the other side of the fence to a barking dog that is able to pass through solid objects on the other side of the fence. The first dog is wholly intuitive and excites litde interest. The second dog is slightly or minimally counterintuitive and is, consequently, more attention demanding but without overloading on-line conceptual systems. The idea of a dog that passes through soUd objects is made of metal parts, gives birth to chickens, experiences time backwards, can read minds, and vanishes whenever you look at it would amount to a massively counterintuitive concept - if it is a coherent concept at all."

-transmission advantages for MCI's?

Older research -- Guthrie "Faces in the Clouds" - evolution would favor false positives in "agency detection". This may explain hyperactive agency detection. HADD

6: "Additional motivation to talk about and believe in gods may come firom their ability to account for striking events that otherwise have no intuitive explanation."

Born Believers:

promiscuous believers -- studies on children.

Theory of Mind

Whitehouse's "modes of religiosity" theory

Costly Signal Theory --

Sosis, "Adaptive Value of Religious Ritual"

• Costly Signal Theory again: studies on longevity of communities by costly requirements
• Cooperation within religious groups: The Shekel game as a measure.

OCT 28

Nagel, "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"

Starter small group question: If intelligent life forms visited us, would we be able to communicate?

• treating the mental as the physical is reductive and mistaken (GC)
• "Without some idea, therefore, of what the subjective character of experience is, we cannot know what is required of a physicalist theory." 437 -- follow argument : "every subjective phenol. is essentially connected with a single point of view and a physical theory will abandon that"
• Example/Analogy of Bats:

• imagination doesn't help -- always about imagining us being a bat.
• 440: "permanently denied to us by the liits of our nature...441: belief in the existence of facts beyond the reach of human concepts"

• Phenomenological facts, 442
• Restatement of problem: 444

Dennett, "What It Is Like to Be a Bat?

• note difference is makes if you choose bat, spider, monkey, cat.
• note distinction (in reconstruction) of N's argument: could we confirm that we knew what being a bat was alike, or could we even represent it. N's point is the latter.
• Thesis: There is a lot we can know about being a bat and not much that's interesting that we can't know. (note method: erosion and deflation!)
• Claim: It is a mistake to think that csness consists of an inner observer (the "audience" in a "Cartesian" theater).
• We could know that bat had csness if it could talk. So, not in principle out of reach. "cognitive ethology" "cognitive archaeology"
• (Still, a lot of the research seems to be about "what's missing" from human csness in animals. Other examples: social cognition in dogs, empathy in primates. fairness studies in monkeys.

W. T. Jones, "The Phenomenological Method"

• Natural Standpoint
• Epoche, bracketing of natural standpoint. quote on 266
• Interesting comparison of Husserl's project with Romanticism (267)
• Absolute subjectivity as the basis for absolute objectivity.
• note, p. 267: connected for Husserl to crisis in European culture.

• phenomenological reduction "foregrounds" csness.
• What do I see from this standpoint? Lots of acts of csness.

270: Note how phen changes the project of modern philosophy: not about verifying that the phenomenally perceived coin correlates with a real (csness independent) entity, but getting the phenomena to disclose structures of consciousness and essences in the appearances.

• Husserl really thought he was offering a more fundamental and rigorous science that physical sciences provided. 274

NOV 4

Major questions in Philosophy of Law readings

• What are the minimal conditions for something being valid law or jurisprudence?
• How is the law related to morality, if at all (natural law, positivism)?
• Can law be understood as a set of formal conditions?
• Can law be understood as a anything but a set of formal conditions?

• How should we assess the liability of a person who commits a felony or creates a reckless situation during the commission of a crime?
• How does proportionality (of crime to punishment) enter into assessments of felony murder? Is it in competition with other goals of law?

Fuller, Speluncean Explorers

• basic facts:

• Foster - acquittal

• the resort to clemency invalidates law
• Two points:

• Law doesn't apply. the case falls under "Law of Nature"
• Law does apply. Falls within exceptions to literal interpretation of law -- unforeseeable circumstances, textual errors, self-defense (ok because not a deterrent to prosecute)

• Tatting - withdraws from case

• refutes Foster's state of nature claim: doesn't make sense in itself and not clear what it's code is. Are contracts more powerful that murder prohibition? Could Whetmore have defended himself?
• problems with reading law as only have force in relation to its purpose.
• they acted willfully.
• Les Mis case: stealing bread not justified by hunger. if hunger can't justify stealing how can it justify eating a person?
• problems about the scope of the exception - does it extend to analyzing the procedure they followed?

• Keen - affirms conviction; postivist (fidelity to written law)

• problem of judicial activism and "supremacy of legislature"
• not our role to divine the "purpose" of the law in applying it.

• Handy - anti-formalist

• law should take into account realities of human emotion and experience
• examples of discretion in law: whether to prosecute, jury acquittal; hung jury; pardons

Fletcher, Reflections on Felony Murder

• felony murder: doctrine that killing in the course of a felony is presumptive for homicide.

• applies liability standards to criminal law: recklessness and extreme indifference to human life.

• Model Penal Code offers a very strong doctrine of felony murder. 447: problem is when FM doctrine treats the commission of the felony as conclusive for establishing culpability for the homicide.

• People v. Fuller: facts, "What did defendant do to endanger human life?" formalists says its enough that they committed the felony.

• FM increase bargaining power of prosecutors.

• accomplices and the affirmative defence against FM. 448

• two primitive intuitions in FM: idea of "taint" on loss of life and idea that once one is doing wrong, one is culpable for circumstances: case of person who kills and later discovers the victim is police officer. "offender must take his victim as he finds him" 450 But these intuitions violate the principle of proportionaly punishment.