Weekly Class Work Space for Proseminar Fall 2015

Return to Philosophy Proseminar

SEP 2

• Course Introductions:

• Introductions, Course goals, Course websites: alfino.org and wiki, Grading Schemes, Peerceptive, Google forms, Philosophical Research Tools
• Assignment for Friday: Choose your pseudonym (google form), then write a short reconstruction and critical response to the McGinn article.
• Explication of "reconstruction" and "critical response"
• Break
• Having a philosophical life --
• Recent Books:

• Matthew Crawford, The World Outside Your Head
• Nicholas Carr, The Glass Cage
• Pope Francis, LAUDATO SI’
• David Sloan Wilson, Does Altruism Exist
• Peter Singer, The Most Good you Can Do (appear on the West side soon!)

• Course Topics

• Historiography in Philosophy/What is Philosophy? (Who were the Ancients?)
• Science and Philosophy -- Problem of Induction
• Philosophy vs. Non-Philosophy
• Obligations to Aid and Globalization of Ethics
• Thought Experiments / Genetic Engineering and Transhumanism
• Kant as Turning Point
• Faith and Reason / Contemporary study of Religion
• Introduction to Continental and Analytic Divide
• Philosophy of Law - Felony Murder
• Naturalism, Evolution, and Epistemology
• Buddhism and Personal Identity
• Food and Philosophy
• Free Will

Can Morale Disputes Be Resolved? The Stone Article (Poster: Austin)

SEP 9

• Notes from the Readings for September 8 (contributed by Michael Barbarossa)

Hadot's "Philosophy as a Way of Life"

• Hadot's Notion of Philosophy:

• Philosophy is teleological; it may seem obvious, but all the thinking is oriented towards a specific and measurable end
• That end is the betterment of the individual in the present moment
• As Hadot quotes from Philo of Alexandria,

• When pursuing philosophy a person “is in training for wisdom”
• Philosophy’s “goal is a life of peace and serenity”
• Sometimes it involves disregarding exterior evils and discomforts

• All of these traits are components of wisdom, and “real wisdom does not merely cause us to know; it makes us be in a different way” (265).

• Thesis about the Period of Hellenistic Philosophy:

• Stoics separated “philosophical discourse” and the “act of philosophy itself”

• A theory of logic, ethics, and physics must be set forth when teaching, but philosophy is really about putting those into practice and living them

• Both Stoics and Epicureans advised us to live in the present, not the past or future
• Philosophy was not elitist, because everyone who worked to implement the lifestyle of the philosophical masters was himself a philosopher

• Christianity as a Philosophy:

• Christianity was a philosophy, in this sense of a practical and presently-lived worldview

• If philosophy meant living in accord with reason, then the Christian lived in accord with the Logos (Divine Reason)

• A shift occurred with Scholasticism in the Middle Ages: professionals began training professionals at universities with no aim for practical use of philosophy
• Philosophy also began to serve as only a foundation for theology.

• Hadot's "Spiritual Exercises"

• Satisfying the Contemporary Spiritual Demands:

• Christianity, Judaism, or Oriental religions are not compatible with currents situation
• Those who desire a “revolution” must prepare for that “revolution”

• The way of preparation requires bettering oneself
• Transcending the self allows one to better the self

• This idea is strongly reminiscent of Greco-Roman philosophies

• Why spiritual exercises? Because the individual replaces his self (spirit) within the presence and vision of the Whole

• Roots in Hellenistic and Roman Schools of Philosophy:

• A switch from the “human” focus on passions and possessions to a “natural” focus of each event within a universal nature
• Groups of the Stoic Spiritual Exercises:

• First Group: Attention, Meditations, Remembrances of Good Things

• Attention allows us to respond immediately to events; to live in the present

• Intellectual Group: Reading, Listening, Research, and Investigation
• Active Group: Self-Mastery, Accomplishment of Duties, and Indifference to Indifferent Things

• Four goals: Learning to Live, Learning to Dialogue, Learning to Die, Learning to Read

• The philosopher must be not a sage and not a non-sage at the same time
• He must have one foot in the world of habitual life and the other in the domain of consciousness and lucidity.

• Short Biographical Notes on Deleuze:

• Influential French philosopher of the 20th Century
• Did not accept the Heideggerian notion of the “end of metaphysics”

• Instead, he considered himself a pure metaphysician
• Developed a metaphysics consistent with contemporary science and math

• Philosophy, science, and art were all comparable modes of thought; no subordination

• For information, here's a link to a good article on his background and work[1]

Deleuze, Introduction to the Question, "What is Philosophy?"

• theme of seeing things from "old age" How old was Deleuze when he wrote this?
• there was too much desire to do philosophy to wonder what it was, except as a stylistic exercise.
• philosophy is the art of forming, inventing, and fabricating concepts.
• "conceptual personae" (there is a rhetorical and dramatic dimension to this)
• the object of philosophy is to create concepts that are always new (5)
• there is no heaven for concepts
• philosophy is not contemplation, reflection or communication.
• implies that philosophy "lost the battle" for the word "concept" itself.
• For more, there is the first chapter, "What is a concept". kind of like a "field"; kind of whiteheadean,

SEP 16

• Reconstruction article for practice this week: The Stone (again). When Vegans Won't Compromise

• Feel free to fill in detail or add your own notes - Alfino.

Giere, "Understanding and Evaluating Theoretical Hypotheses"

• Watson/Crick excerpt: note ways in which science is collaborative vs. competitive. ways in which personality enters into research.

• Models: ways on thinking about models.

• Data & Models: discuss diagram on p. 32. - difference between a "model view" and "realism"

Collaborative vs. Competitive Science: (by Michael)

• Watson initially pursued the quest for DNA structure motivated by hope for fame
• Wilkins allowed Watson & Crick to work because of his own slow progress and personality conflict with Franklin
• After humiliation of the three-chain model failure, Watson & Crick were prohibited by the director of The Cavendish from doing any more research – he wanted to protect the scientific respectability of the institution
• They were later readmitted to research because of the threat of an American discovering the structure first – thus, national pride also affected the process
• In 1968, Watson published his book The Double Helix

• Many claimed it was too personal and that it distorted the true story

• Thus, the progress and pioneers of science are determined less by altruistic desire for discovery and more by individual competition and desires.

Model vs. Realism in Science (Fig. 2.9, pg. 32): (by Michael)

• As Giere emphasizes, there is no physical interaction between a model and the real world
  • A process of reasoning or calculation is all that connects them
  • This introduces a majorly human element into the process
• Especially research fields of science (which operate in the model/prediction area) are very incorporeal
• Science is actually a rather abstracted discipline

Schick and Vaughn, "Science and Its Pretenders"

• note how S&V talk about relationship of hypotheses and reality - implications of testing hypotheses in bundles. "saving the theory"
• note criteria for adequacy: testability, fruitfulness, scope, simplicity, conservatism.

What is a scientific hypothesis? (by Michael)

• General goal of Scientific Inquiry: identify “explanatory and predictable” principles
• This implies a certain rationality and stability to the world; otherwise: impossible task
• A hypothesis helps us to know what information to gather; i.e. what is relevant and not
• Designed to account for data, but rarely can be derived from data
• Hypotheses are not discovered but created, just like artistic generation
• They are the beginning of true scientific inquiry
• Good to remember: science is not a worldview but rather a method of discerning the truth

Bryson, "How to Build a Universe"

Bryson Reading, First Half

• Starts off by making it clear how impossible it is to comprehend or to understand the vastness of the universe. Then Bryson moves to the Big Bang
• Singularity, the tiny space that held everything and that the Big Bang started from
• There is nothing around this piece of space- it is everything
  • "There is no past for it to emerge from"
  • "And so from nothing, our universe begins"
• Big Bang occurred, we think, somewhere around 13.7 billion years ago- although truly we aren't very certain.

Idea of Big Bang

• Georges Lemaitre, a Belgian priest, first proposed the theory in the 1920's
• In 1965 two astronomers, Astro Penzias and Robert Wilson tried to run an experiment with large communications antenna, but they were troubled by a persistent hissing sound. For a year they attempted to find the cause of this sound by replacing parts, rewiring etc.
  • Previously, a George Gamow theorized in the 1940's that if you went deep enough into space some background radiation should exist from the Big Bang. He said by time it would reach Earth, it would arrive in the form of microwaves- he was right!
• Penzias and Wilson were eventually connected the dots with the help of researches at Princeton. Penzias and WIlson went on to publish a paper on their work and they won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978 for it.

How We Know These Things

• Most of what we know about the early moments of the universe are thanks to a theory called inflation theory
• Developed by Alan Gruth, the idea is that the moment after the dawn of creation, the universe underwent a sudden dramatic expansion.
• In these starting moments, physics came to be. Interestingly, if physics had come to be at all differently than they are, the cosmos would not have been able to create stable elements that allowed for everything the universe has
  • Page 13: "It seems impossible that you could get something from nothing, but the fact that once there was nothing and now there is a universe is evident proof that you can"
• There may have been trillions upon trillions of Big Bangs before this one, and this one is finally the one where things worked out

• Martin Ree's, a British astronomer, promotes the idea that there are many universes and we simply live in the one that allows us to exist.
  • He argues six numbers govern our universe.
    • One, is that hydrogen is to be converted to helium in a way that allows .007 of its mass to convert to energy. If this changed to .006 or .008 the universe, and us, would not exist as it does.

"Everything is just right so far" (16). Three future possibilities

• Gravity could cause a collapse of the universe, eventually bringing the universe back to singularity
• Gravity could be too weak, and the universe may ever expand and become so spread out that there is no hope for material relations
• Lastly, it may be just right, allowing for the universe to continue indefinitely

Barnes, Chapter 16: "Natural Science in the 17th and 18th Centuries"

• Note causes and factors leading to/ fueling scientific revolution
• Barnes rather unsubtle theme.
• note parallel to Crick story.
• new knowledge coming from outside the university.
• role of philosophical and learned societies (digress to modern academic freedom).
• How will you create philosophical society as a student and in your life?

SEP 23

Some of the authors we are focusing on:

On good reflective personas

http://feministkilljoys.com/2015/06/25/against-students/

This blogpost is by a badass philosopher, critical theorist and feminist named Sara Ahmed. She outlines some of the problematic student personas that have emerged in university settings and how they can work to maintain systems of power. I think this is an important read in light of our conversations about what make good, reflective dialogue

Woolf, Death of the Moth

• This is an example of a creative non-fiction treatment of something in our ordinary experience (a moth) that leads us into a philosophical statement or insight about life.
• Some rhetorical/argument features:

• sets up description of moth as energy by describing scene that way;
• creates interest and attention to the ordinary (strangeness of the ordinary);
• some elements of a point of view or judgement about the observation of the moth (you could enter into agreement or disagreement).