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

https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberal-rhetoric-of-harm-danger-and-trauma/

Jack Halberstam on trigger warnings

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/ The Atlantic, The Coddling of the American Mind

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).

Leopold, Thinking Like a Mountain

• A great example of "showing vs. telling", Leopold conveys a basic points about ecology through a story.

Forster, What I Believe

• The title here conveys the genre. A statement of personal creed; a classic sort of philosophical rhetorical stance. We should discuss the pitfalls of this form, but also it's creative possibilities.

Golding, Thinking as a Hobby

• This piece is a bit more didactic, mixing biography with a "lesson learned" about thinking.

Boyd, The Redneck Way of Knowledge

• I'll explain in class why I'm torn about this piece as a use of biography for doing philosophy, but it is clearly an example of that. Notice also that the author is trying to capture something rather elusive -- a culturally and regionally specific "way of knowing" or being.

Dennett, "Where Am I"

(by Michael)

• Story Summary:
  • In some unspecified modern age, Daniel Dennett has gained permission to relate his story
  • He was asked by Pentagon officials to do a security mission to disable a tested warhead
  • They needed to surgically remove the agent’s brain and separate it from his body, because the mission required tunneling underground in Arizona to a radioactive warhead
  • His body would then be controlled remotely from his brain through transmitters
  • Officials approached him because of his interest in brains and cognitive philosophy
  • After a successful operation, Dennett does some thought experiments (see questions)
  • He begins the mission, but loses all radio transmissions and becomes a lifeless body
  • This causes a shift in perspective, to the primary point of view being from his disembodied brain rather than his bodily sense perception
  • After a year of induced sleep, the scientists restore his brain’s connection to a new body
  • They also reveal that his real brain is wired in parallel to a computer copy, and he can switch between the two at will
  • He ultimately continues life in this state, having demanded and received sole control over which brain controls his body
  • By the end, he cannot differentiate between the two brains.

• Questions / Points of Reflection:
  • Where is the seat of selfhood? Is it in the brain, body, or somewhere else? Reference the following quotation (pg. 232): “I thought to myself: ‘Well, here I am sitting on a folding chair, staring through a piece of plate glass at my own brain.’ But wait, shouldn’t I have thought, ‘Here I am, suspended in a bubbling fluid, being stared at by my own eyes?’”
  • Is the location of a person determined by the location of their point of view, and therefore relative? (pg. 234 #3)
  • The immateriality of the soul (pg. 237-8)
  • The possibility of keeping individuals alive indefinitely (pg. 240)
  • The advantages/disadvantages of a computer versus a brain

Dillard, "Seeing"

• I don't recall if this was on our original list, but I wanted to note it as the "tour de force" that it is. Dillard connects a pretty thorough set of examples and reflections on a basic epistemic phenomenon -- seeing. The effect is to complicate our understanding through description. Another case of "showing", the piece works through accumulation of examples.

SEP 30

Topic preferences

Click on the link below to add notes from your browsing exercise to the page:

Fall 2015 Proseminar Browsing Exercise

Singer, Ch. 1, "A Changing World"

• Globalization: Terrorism, climate change, (added: human migration)
• US interests: political consensus (dems/repubs) on Bush remark.
• Should political leaders adopt an internationalist stance (beyond interests of their nation-state)?

• competing models of leadership

• Historical parable: reaction to 1914 assasination of Crown Prince Ferdinand (and wife) by Bosnian Serb nationalists, starting WW1. Objections to Autro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia. Compare to international reaction to US demands of Taliban to hand over Osama bin Laden. principle p. 7, new today vs. WW1.
• Rawls "old school" scope for theory of justice
• Is the Nation-state on the decline?
• Should we be internationalists? Why is multilaterism no longer a political topic in the US?

Singer, Ch. 5, "One Community"

• Considers aid given after 9/11 to other international aid needs. again with partiality.
• Sidgwick and Himmler on partiality. Godwin on saving Fenelon vs. the chambermaid.
• Singer's famous example of saving the small child drowning in the university fountain. distance doesn't matter.
• Biblical reference to Paul and ethics of partiality.
• Examination of different forms of partiality: family and kin, gratitude 160ff.
• Compatriots 167ff. prefering our own might be justified by obligation of reciprocity.
• Choice between "imagined" community of nation-state and "imagined" global community.
• Justice between vs. within states: Wellman's arguments
• Rawls and The Law of Peoples: Rawls example of the two societies: no obligation to redistribute to improve the worst off between the two societies.
• 2nd criticism: Why allow difference between countries to circumvent redistribution and not allow differences within a country to do so? 178
• Millenium Development Goals (MDGs); US shortfalls; public perceptions of giving (15% rather than actual 1%)
• Comparative Value Exercise: Unger's thought experiment: Bob's bugatti. amputation scenarios. yuck.

Sachs, Jeffrey, "Can the Rich Afford to Help the Poor?" (2006)

• (One of the architects of the UN Millennium Development Goals. Opposed by some noted development economists.)
• Optimist about relief: .7 GNP level of giving adequate. Absolute poverty down from 1/3 to 1/5 (interesting to compare US discussion in 1960 at the start of the domestic "war on poverty" of the Johnson administration)

• Increase in wealth of the rich world is dramatic (note Rawlsian difference principle from yesterday)
• (Digression on actual giving: [2]
• Note analysis on pages 294 of amounts that developing countries can supply to meet their own poverty needs. Middle-income countries like Brazil, Chile, and Mexico have enough.

• Can the US afford to meet a .7 GNP target?

• Sachs considers this obvious. To dramatize his point, on pages 304-308, he points out that the wealthiest 400 US citizens earned more than the total populations of Botswana, Nigeria, Senegal, and Uganda. More to the point, the tax cuts this group received during the Bush administration in 2001, 2002, and 2003 totaled about 50 billion a year, enough to meet the US giving goal of .7% of GNP.

Singer, "Rich and Poor"

• facts about absolute poverty
• difference between grain consumption accounted for in terms of meat consumption. problem of distribution rather than production.
• absolute affluence = affluent by any reasonable defintion of human needs. Go through paragraph on 221.

• figures on giving by country: OPEC countries most generous. U.S. and Japan least.

The Moral equivalent of murder? five purported differences:

• 1. allowing to die not eq. to killing. no intention to kill.
• 2. impossible to ask us to be obligated to keep everyone alive.
• 3. uncertainty of outcome in not aiding vs. pointing a gun. less direct responsibility, less like 1st deg. murder.
• 4. no direct and identifiable causal connection between consumerist action and death of individuals in other countries.
• 5. People would be starving with or without me. I am not a necessary condition for there to be starving people.

• Singer's point: these differences are extrinsic to the moral problem. there would be cases with these features in which we would still hold the person responsible.

• Showing the extrinsic character of the differences: Singer's argument strategies at this point is to show that the differences are smaller and more contingent that one might think. Point by point:

• 1. example of salesman selling tainted food. doesn't matter if no identifiable victim in advance.
• 2. lack of certainty about the value of donations does reduce the wrongness of not giving (concession), but doesn't mean that its ok not to give.
• 3. responsibility for acts but not omissions is incoherent way to think about responsibility. consequences of our actions are our responsibility. irrelevant that the person would have died if I had never existed.

Considers non-consequentialist justifications for not aiding (166)

• idea of independent individual in Locke and Nozick doesn't make sense. Note appeal to social conception of humans based on ancestry!

• absence of malice also doesn't excuse inaction. involuntary manslaughter (in the case say of a speedin motorist) is still blameworthy.
• grants that we may not be as blameworthy for not saving many lives if saving those live requires heroic action.

• The obligation to assist: Main Principle: If it is in our power to prevent something vey bad happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance, we ought to do it.

• goes on to claim that it is within the power of dev. countries to aid the poor without sacrificing . . . etc.

considers major objections:

• taking care of your own
• property rights [at most weakens the argument for mandatory giving (but note that governmental means might be the most effective, esp. where problems have a political dimension)

• population and the ethics of triage:
• questions whether the world is really like a life boat

OCT 7

Fight Club Film Viewing

Fall 2015 Proseminar Browsing Exercise

• Some Fight Club links:

• A general culture site that identifies five philosophical lessons in the movie. [3]
• This article makes the Fight Club / Nietzsche connection. [Fight Club: Inhuman or Superhuman?

Submitted by A_Schiller on Mon, 12/20/2010 - 21:55]

• This one focuses a bit more on alienation. [4]

Fight Club x Sexuality http://jaconlinejournal.com/archives/vol21.4/peele-fight.pdf

Fight Club x Gender http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma02/freed/fightclub/masviol.html

Fight Club x Capitalism https://www3.nd.edu/~olizardo/papers/jcr-fight-club.pdf

OCT 14

• Check out this article on the Trolley Problem, just sent in yesterday by an former ethics student. Some interesting details: [5]