2010 Fall Proseminar Professor Blog

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On this page, you'll find my "after class" blogs for the course. I'll send them as email to the class.

1st Class, August 31, 2010

Great start gang. I hope you feel oriented to the course and have a sense of the possibilities for our work. It's great to be underway, and you all seem ready for some kind of philosophical adventure! Thanks for the helpful information about your interests, which I'll be working on.

I hope you found the fist discussion useful for thinking about assumptions we have about philosophy. Definition turns out to be a focus in some of our work on method, so don't stop thinking about how you define philosophy. Consider a "thin" definition, like "evaluation of arguments and points of views on basic questions of reality and existence" as well as "thicker" ones, like "the love of wisdom". Maybe the definition you gravitate toward tells you something about your focus. The article by Hadot for next week should also connect with this issue.

Please start your browsing, along with the reading for next week. It's not too early to rough in your grading scheme on the course website. And feel free to stop by during office hours or by appointment to talk about your interests.

2nd Class, September 7, 2010

Thanks for a good class last night. We're still settling in with each other and next week class should feel more like a seminar. If the class seemed a tiny bit random or digressive, don't worry, we'll start to focus more. Early on I want to motivate you to explore your interests and base some of your work on this exploration. You have discretion about the work your do in the course. Certainly, we all need to be committed to prepping for each week's seminar, (and I don't think we've reached our peak there yet), but beyond that, you should still have room in your time budget for the course to explore specific interests you might have and even write about them. As the seminar progresses, though, you'll notice that I'll be less digressive and we'll focus on positions, claims, arguments, explanations, and interpretations. Of course, we don't want to get rid of all the digressions!

My summary of class topics this morning goes like this: We used the Hadot reading to look at both a definition of philosophy (as therapeutic / related to living a good life) and an interpretation of a period of philosophy. Hadot's reading is intrinsically interesting, but it also challenges our intuitions about the nature of philosophy. I heard many of you agree that you expect philosophy to help you live life better (whether it's "learning to die" or not), but we also acknowledged that academic philosophy's contribution to that might be indirect. Knowing about the Hellenistic period helps us imagine how philosophy might accomplish its academic aims while providing real, knowledge-based, guidance about life. We'll also explore this by reading some non-academic philosophy.

In the next part of class, we started our work on philosophical method by introducing some terms and a theory of rationales. Some of this will feel like review, but soon we'll attack those lists of philosophical methods on the wiki. We'll start pointing out the methods as they are occurring in our readings, but please try to notice the methods as you do reading in your other philosophy classes as well.

The final chunk of the class involved the reading by Haidt about the brain. We detailed the discrepancies between our contemporary understanding of the brain and typical philosophical assumptions about consciousness. I hope we started to sketch the competing intuitions that philosophers have about this. In the extreme, that "psychology and neurology don't matter" to philosophical accounts of consciousness and that, at the other end, that they are at the center of knowledge and therefore central to a knowledge-based philosophy. We're going to see this dynamic in more readings in the coming weeks and then in historical context in November.

Ok, gang, that's what I recall. For next week, we're going to work toward more of a seminar style, so please recall the list of suggested ways for you to develop content and reflection for the class. Let's agree that those who are posting content for this week do so by Sunday night (again we're shooting for 1/3 to 1/2), but everybody should try to study the readings in sufficient depth that you have a good initial sketch of the central arguments and things you found interesting. I gather we couldn't have done that last night, but we're just getting started. Getting this to work will require some planning, so please put course prep time on your calendar!

Looking forward to our seminar next week.

Alfino

3rd Class, September 14, 2010

That was a really good class, thanks. The energy level is great, we had good discussion, and even ice cream (there's more in the freezer if you want to drop by Rebmann for some). As you could tell from the second installment of "method," I'd like you all to practice good reconstruction skills. Posting a reconstruction of the reading is a good thing to do, but hold off putting those up until Sunday night. That way we get more than one and you're encouraged to read the text before reading someone's summary of the rationales. If you practice the discipline of giving good reconstructions, it will help you become wise. So post a reconstruction of a part or whole of next week's reading to the wiki.

Speaking of wiki posts, I think we could increase the number and diversity of posts from this week. In addition to posting a critical comment or reconstruction, you can find out more about the authors and let us know something about them. Next week that's Dennett and Nagel. Dennett is a big controversial philosopher so I'd like someone to represent some of his views and controversies. How about a link to a video segment of the dude? He's all over. Then don't forget we're talking about theory of consciousness (philosophy of mind). Someone should go do some browsing on this. What are the main positions? Where does Dennett's fit into the landscape of thought on the nature of mind? All that is great stuff for posts. Remember that without a final, it's your preparation of each class that becomes a focus. That's all to the good, since we can achieve even greater heights of philosophical progress and pleasure if we really take the seminar aspect of the class seriously, as I sense you guys are doing.

Don't forget to post your examples of method from other readings. I assume you all have the two documents on method taped above your workspace, right?

Thanks to Samantha for bringing dessert next week.

Alfino

Return to Philosophy Proseminar

On this page, you'll find my "after class" blogs for the course. I'll send them as email to the class.

4th Class, September 21, 2010

Thanks for a really good class. I thought we did well in trying to follow this discussion pattern in which you get start with a general description of what's important to the author, what they are driving at, and then try to formulate that into distinct rationales and articulate more precisely their overall conclusion (reconstruction), and from there move to assessment. I know it's a bit formulaic, but it's good for a seminar because it allows us to work through issues of understanding cooperatively. At least that's the ideal.

In terms of key ideas, I hope this week's seminar readings on Dennett and Nagel made it clear how basic philosophical differences can arise over how one understands the relationship between 1st person (subjective) experience and 3rd person (objective) experience. The stakes are high in this discussion; they include your view of the nature of consciousness and the relative priority of different ways of relating experience to knowledge. By the end of the night, the whole religion and science conflict (one of the major public philosophical issues of our time, by the way) was peeking it's gnarly head around the corner.

Going into this week, two of our readings are more historical than argumentative, so we'll focus our reconstruction skills on the third reading (Shop Class). For the first two readings, keep track of things that you found interesting about the philosophers and historical narrative you read. Since this is just an overview, don't expect too much, but try to pose additional questions about the thinkers or times and that will be the basis of our discussion of that part.

I just remembered a posting opportunity from last year that was popular. It's called "Second Thoughts". So, for example, right now you could go to the wiki for Sept 28 and post some second thoughts on last night's issues. I posted a couple of questions, but just suggestions. This kind of post is especially helpful if you feel that you have more to say after the seminar than before it. Still, let's keep posting ahead of the meetings as well.

Wonderful brownies. Thanks, Samantha. If someone wants to offer a dessert for 9/28th, let me know by email.

Have a great week everyone.

Alfino

5th Class, September 28, 2010

Class,

Maybe it was cool night air distorting my judgement, but I thought you all did really well with the Crawford discussion. Sometimes you have to remind philosophy majors that doing philosophy isn't just "target practice" -- not just about refuting whatever you read. Crawford's argument has some weaknesses that could have set him up for the "kill," but I thought you made measured criticisms and tried to save the insights that would otherwise have been lost. Lots of balance, though I probably talked too much!

On the "fly over" of Modern Philosophy: I hope you all found value in that. Sometimes it's good to read for the big connections because it helps give you intuitions about the current scene and where philosophy is heading. But I agree it's pretty general. Glad I don't have to test you on it.

About next week's topic and packet: You'll notice that after the long article "The Ways of Taoism," (Schwarz) there is a third article, not listed on the cover. It's "The Way of Nature and Mind as Aspect and Perspective," Chapter 10 of Walter Bensch's Introduction to Comparative Philosophy. Please read this before Schwartz. Also, on the Course Schedule for next week you'll notice a selection from a primary text, Chuang Tzu's "The Autumn Floods," which is Chapter 17 from a text called the "Chuang Tzu". By the way. This would be a great time to get your Lao Tzu and you Chuang Tzu and a bunch of other dates sorted out, so here's a collaboration assignment: Please post 10 dates related to any major Asian philosophical traditions (yoga, buddhism, confucianism, hinduism, etc.) in the Ancient world, say. There's a link on the Student Work wiki page for posting your dates. Please do this in the next couple of days, if you would. It will take you about 10-15 minutes. Less time if you get to it soon!

Also, please read the Thompson piece. It's going to give us a bunch of interesting method points, including a major recent example of the use of thought experiments (very controversial, but we're ready).

Ok, gang, this is a bucket of reading, but use your "reference" research skills first (wikipedia, encyclopedias of phil, etc.) to soften the terrain. YOu'll find it speeds the reading and increases retention. And start tonight for next Tuesday!

I'm grateful that we have a such a talented, interesting, and enjoyable group in this seminar. We've done some good philosophy in the first month. Let's not lose momentum through mid terms! And what's the desert plan next week? Volunteers?

Alfino

6th Class, October 6, 2010

First, before I forget. I'd like to meet with each of you about your work in the course sometime in the next two weeks. It's a good opportunity to talk about work that you're planning for Oct in the course and about how things are going, philosophy-wise. In addition to office hours, I've got time around mid-day and after 2 most days. Please suggest a time or two by email and I'll reply.

I hope the Taoism discussion worked well for all of you. I felt like we built up a view from particular stories and details from the text. I won't try to reduce that to a few conclusions here, but in the discussion I thought we were able to link the points made by the various stories to larger claims about the Tao and the relation of language to it. As with Greek thought, we find philosophy and religion mixed here, as it probably naturally was in history. I hope we brought out some of the philosophical themes that resonate between Taoism and Greek thought, such as scepticism, a sense of a natural order to the cosmos, and some of the big differences, such as conventionalism, a more Heraclitean model of reality (also, perhaps a "process philosophy" model), and a very different view of the reality of the individual.

On Thompson, our primary goal was to complete our study of method with an article famous (or infamous) for its thought experiments. I hope we were able to see how the different positions philosophers take on thought experiments (see wiki notes) could be applied to the article. Don't forget Thompson's article is also a good example of applied ethics work.

We've got a bit of a challenge in next week's class since we're going into our prep time with only one required article, Sartre's "Existentialism is a Humanism". I'll post some other things, but I would like all of you to add your own preparation based on some browsing in reference sources. Then find something to contribute to the seminar. It could be a recommendation that we watch or read something and/or you could post a summary and response of things you have read. There are "prompts" or suggestions on the Class Notes page for thing you should look into. Try to come back to the wiki on Friday or Saturday to pick up things from others in the class. This method can produce a great seminar experience, but you need to put in some time. You should have budgeted six hours for this class each week in prep time. Please keep track of this time. I think you'll find that with about four hours of work spread out over the week, you can make a good contribution.

Maybe we should make some coffee next week for the Methods Test. You looked like tired puppies at 8:30 last night. But I can't say I wasn't either.

Have a great week and exploration of existentialism. I'm already looking forward to it!

Alfino

7th Class, October 12, 2010

Sorry I'm late with this. I hope you all survived the rest of your exams, and that you didn't find the Methods test too hard. I thought we did ok with our treatment of existentialism given the other pressures in our lives. Your wiki posts were interesting and added alot of different resources and even quirky facts to the mix.

I've posted readings for next week to the wiki. We're going to get some depth on the question of naturalism next week, but I realized we also need to get a basic understanding of phenomenology as we head into more continental work. So don't miss the short secondary reading on Phenomenology.

Please also think about a collaborative research topic for us to start next week.

Alfino

8th Class, October 19, 2010

Well, in spite of some pedagogical mistakes on my part, I hope we were able to consolidate a basic appreciation of what it is to "naturalize" a philosophical problem and to naturalize epistemology. The contemporary naturalist does have a radical critique of the project of modern philosophy and epistemology, and you all we right to see that if the naturalists are correct about the way we should think about knowledge and explanation, then the job description of being a philosopher looks very different. That's true even if you take one of the milder positions we hinted at earlier. Personally, I think it affirms the position of philosophers as "omnivores" in intellectual life. Philosophy loses its position as "queen of the sciences" or "foundation builders for science" (which it never really succeeded at). But connecting philosophy to all forms of scientific and cultural production also ends the isolation of philosophers within the academy, which is an effect of believing in a "first philosophy" that entails unique methods and results (that others can't understand!). But then if you have a really broad conception of philosophy, no one revolution disturbs it too much.

I think we're doing a good job in the Proseminar in achieving some of the goals from the beginning of the semester. I think you all have a good sense of argument theory and philosophical method. I think we've "exposed" you to lots of information about philosophy, some good historical overviews, and some good topics (including some that are coming up). However, I do think I've let a couple of other goals fall by the side a bit and I'd like to make some adjustments to focus on them. If I can get you all to start visiting me about your work (research and formal writing) and if we follow up on your projects through the rest of the semester, I think we can realize the goals of having a significant research experience and developing your philosophical writing. Those are both really important goals to me and to the department and things we can afford to do individually due to our class size.

The other goal that might get shortshrifted if we don't do something about it is the goal of getting us doing philosophy together. I realized this a bit when I noticed how comfortable you all have gotten with each other. That's a good sign that you'd produce some good philoosphical discussion if I just got out of the way long enough. So I think we're spending too much time trying to digest information that would normally take weeks of preparation to really follow closely. I'm not going to give up on the goal of exposing you to lots of developments in philosophy, but I'd like to carve out more class time for us to do philosophy together and in small groups. I think I see how to do that with next week's class, and I'll say more about that when I get the readings ready for next week, probably by tomorrow. Feel free to offer some suggestions about this.

Have a great week and weekend. Thanks to those who agreed to put something short together for next week.

Alfino