Many thanks, pleasant journey!

My dear ones: It was a real pleasure to have all of you in my class!  

Vivre la philosophie!

:)

FINAL EXAM (link to "Doing Philosophy")

This is the link to our textbook's Website. Click on chapters 5 and 6 and review each section/. It has flash cards, "true" or "false" and multiple choice questions. Test yourself and good luck.

Chapter 6.3 (Fideist arguments)

Kierkegaard’s Leap of Faith: According to Kierkegaard, God needs not be proved because -at best- He would become "probable." He agrees with Tertullian's motto: "I believe because it is absurd." The best solution is to believe by faith. We need St. Paul's definition of faith: Faith is the certainty in things that although one cannot see, yet one believes. The more absurd the predicament, the more intense the faith. What’s important with faith is not "what" one believes but "how" one believes. Kierkegaard defines it as "subjective truth." Counterargument: 1- What if one is wrong? 2- How about the result of blind faith in fundamentalism or fanaticism?

Evidentialism: It holds that not only we need evidence to support our beliefs, but that we have a responsibility to have adequate evidence to avoid unnecessary wrongs to innocent people (Torquemada and Savonarola during the Inquisition are good examples: They had faith in what they were doing, yet, they didn’t have evidence. Same with the kind of religious fundamentalism that Bin Laden defends.

Existentialism: In a world without a God, humans are free and responsible for what they do. We constantly create ourselves in the act of making choices. Life is absurd: There is no single explanation for the way things are.

Chapter 6.2 (Theodicies)

The Ontological Defense: Goodness cannot exist without evil. So a world without evil is impossible. C/A: 1- Lack of evil doesn’t preclude goodness. If it did, there would be no goodness in heaven. Also, there is no evil in heaven.

Knowledge Defense: Knowledge of evil is important (even to understand goodness) and it cannot exist unless there’s evil in the world. C/A: Suppose this is true, then how can one explain the excess of evil? Unnecessary evil is not justified by the knowledge defense. Evil must be necessary for something other than our education. Necessary evil: Evil that is required to prevent further evil or to bring about a greater good.

Free will defense: Evil is necessary for free will. We choose and sometimes we choose evil over good. C/A: 1- A being with free will who always chooses good is logically possible. God is such a being. 2- There’s still much more evil in the world that is necessary. Why is unnecessary evil chosen so often? The theist needs to answer this question. 2- Angels are free and yet they don’t choose evil. Why not?

Ideal Humanity Defense: Evil improves the human race. C/A: There is little evidence that the struggle for survival has improved the human race. One could argue that the advancements we've made in science are not the result of natural evil. Finally, the ideal humanity defense seems to contradict the Christian prionciple that each human is of infinite value.

Character (or soul) building defense: According to philosopher/theologian John Hicks, evil is not wrong for our own sake. C/A: It works both ways, suffering can also debase us. If this is true, then fighting evil becomes wrong (you shouldn’t alleviate a person’s suffering because it’s good for her character).

Chapter 6.1 (Review)

Find a succinct breakdown of some of the most important arguments and counterarguments from 6.1 under Theism.

Cosmological Argument by St. Aquinas: The universe must have a “first cause,” which must spring from an eternal Being. That eternal Being is God. Aquinas is doing 12th century physics. He is trying to demonstrate the existence of God from a series of (cause and effects), i.e., the series must have a beginning = GOD. C/A: In the Big Bang Theory the universe just “happens”. The universe is not caused because time and space begin with the Bing Bang.

Analogical Design Argument: A watch is to a watchmaker as the universe is to God. C/A: 1- John Stuart Mill sees the creation of the universe as evidence against the omnipotence of God. If God needs the universe to accomplish HIS goals, then HE is not omnipotent. 2- One can see the universe an "organism" rather than a machine (where living things come into being through reproduction rather than conscious design).  2- One could cite the evidence of Evolution (i.e. natural selection, speciation, etc).

St. Anselm’s Ontological Argument: If one can conceive of a God (the greatest possible Being), then that God could also exist in reality, but then it would not be the greatest possible Being. So, God must exist in reality. C/A: Following Anselm's argument one could easily justify the “Superman”'s existence (ex. just plug "Superman" wherever you see God in Anselm's proof).

Argument from Miracles: The universe must have been performed by a miracle worker. C/A: Why should God bend its own rules?

Argument from Religious Experience: A subjective experience that’s so powerful and unique that the only possible explanation is that it was produced by a supernatural being.  C/A: Hallucinogenics have been used by ancient civilizations as worship experiences to tap into altered states. This kind of experience is internal and vague and not enough to warrant an external source.

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Wiki-leaks: Tragedy or comedy?

Alfredo Triff

If the government knows that the willingness of people to give up rights in order to fight terrorism is proportional to their level of fear, then it’s obvious that we should expect more fear.-- Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 1954

Wiki-leaks has delivered another digital coup. Yet, compared with the previous Iraq Log,¹ these memos -with detailed characterizations of world leaders' behaviors- seem out of a libretto from la commedia dell'arte. We learn that Libya's Qaddafi has vertigo and "cannot travel" without his "voluptuous blonde" nurse from Ukraine. Mr. Putin, is an "alpha dog" who behaves like "Batman," while Medvedev "plays Robin." Sarkozy is referred to as an "emperor with no clothes," "thin-skinned" and "authoritarian." Germany's Angela "teflon" Merkel "avoids risks and is rarely creative," and so on. American diplomats are running for cover (there's much foreign trepidation and Schadenfreude).

 Honoré Daumier, At the Theater, (1860-64). 

Public reactions to the leak are as faithful to the script as you may expect: Politicians of all persuasions portray Wiki-leaks as the monster. Republicans like Palin want to hunt Asange "with the same urgency we pursue Taliban leaders." Fox personality O'Reilly wishes the leakers were executed. Congressman Peter King avers that the website should be declared a foreign terrorist organization (shouldn't these libertarian conservatives distrust government's reach and defend the people's freedom of expression?).

Then, Hilary Clinton's response is -predictably?- surprisingly conservative! Our government feels betrayed, ridiculed. Even some progressive thinkers question Wiki-leaks' ulterior motives. A liberal commentator declares on the radio that "America has lost its credibility." In contrast, journalists all over the world support the mission of the website. They agree that the most insidious effect of our present political and economic crisis is the undermining of public opinion (the press is dying by slow strangulation).²

Keep in mind that politics is a constant struggle among different actors (groups) pursuing conflicting desires on public issues. Then there is power. And right now our military power has become political and one dimensional. This hegemony is the greatest danger. As a political observer has written, "The paradox of American power is that it is too great to be challenged by any other state, yet not great enough to solve problems such as global terrorism and nuclear proliferation."^2a It is as if due to a society forcefully laid open by the pressure of globalizing forces, power and politics drift ever further in opposite directions, the system operating beyond itself, its resources become over-extended and it declines as a result.

The Pentagon, Washington, DC.

Politics as "morals"

The individuals portrayed in these cables recall Northrop Frye's Theory of Comedy.³ We're not dealing with heroes, but rather defeated, stereotyped characters. We live in a skewed, absurd world filled with unforeseen danger, social apprehension and hypocrisy, where unscrupulous characters win and the honest lose. Yet, one doesn't get a sense of impending doom but instead, an ordinary this-is-the-way-it-is debriefing. Is this not a bit manipulative? ⁴  

What's going on? Politics is "presented" by politicians as guided by morals, but it's actually a realm of means-to-end, which is why Machiavelli counsels that in politics, one must suspend what's right for what's expedient.⁵ 

Politics as Law
 
Legal experts weigh in: Wiki-leaks has stolen documents, which constitute a criminal act (as if legal arguments cannot be overridden by moral considerations, such as transparency to the public and coherence in foreign policy). As Norman Solomon suggests, "the recent mega-leaks are especially jarring because of the extreme contrasts between the U.S. government's public pretenses and real-life actions." Of course the legal reach gets intractably complicated: there is anonymity, tracking down violations, locating the offender, claiming jurisdiction over such offender (which brings forth geography, problem with mirror siting, etc, etc.).

Is Wiki-leaks not a counterbalance in an environment where the media plays an "opiates of the masses" role, subsidized by political interests? 

Politics as comedy

One should resist looking at this as a showdown between good and evil. It's too simple. True, at one local level, some people feel they have to oppose an unjust and secretive system -while others feel betrayed by it. At a more systemic level, Wiki-leaks transcends the issue of freedom of expression vs. national security.⁶ Like any organism, whatever comes its way, the system tries to adapt. In this case, the balance lies between two opposite hypothesis: The Slippery Slope and the Weimar Hypothesis. In the first scenario, the government trims some rights, which raises little alarm at the time (e.g., Guantanamo and torture under G.W. Bush's reign). Then a few other rights are curtailed (wiretapping, public coercion against opposing the wars, etc). Soon, more rights are lost and gradually the entire institutional structure on which democracy rests tumbles down the slope with nobody able to stop it. In the second hypothesis, we resemble the Weimar Republic of the 1920's, which lost its legitimacy and opened the door to a tyrannical government due to its woefully insufficient responses to major public needs.

Let's not ignore that Internet technology offers the potential for more liberating forms of social organization. Capitalism and Marxism are predicated on the belief in technological progress and its potential for social improvement (unfortunately, far from fostering social change, technological developments are generally absorbed by the system and actually reinforce existing social structures). Communication and information have two sides. They provide a collection of "facts" but at the same time they become a tool for social management.

Isn't information a form of cultural and political domination?

Facebook Ad (2009).

What if Wiki-leaks presents a way for the system to purge itself in order to find an ideal equilibrium between its internal and external pressures? First, the leak is received as an unexpected, undesired event. Then we get all sort of reactions: surprise, incongruity, conflict, and the aftereffect of opposite expectations. It's all in synch with the part!

What if the leak's unmitigated public attention works in favor of the American policies the leak denounces?

Some have already observe that, compared with their American counterparts, the tone of the Arab leaders on the Iran problem (as it appears in the memos) "seems pretty jingoistic." David Rothkopf writes in The Financial Times that the Wiki-leaks information shows "the formidable courage and capabilities of many US diplomats." As you may expect from comedy's ethos, the memos already have the redeeming effect of producing more happiness than suffering. The endless repetition of the cables in all the major papers of the world ensure the desired mirroring didactic effect.

Let's wait and see how the initial shock gives way to a more optimistic assessment. The system will end up in a better place than it started at. Whether that's "really" better is another thing.
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¹Actually, this dump is no Pentagon Papers either. What makes this event different is the new technology. At the moment of publishing this post, one cannot access the Wiki-leaks link. Has the site been hacked? The New York Times link seemed the best second choice. ² The inference is not that citizens ought to refuse to sacrifice individual freedom on behalf of measures proposed in the name of national security, but rather that any sacrifice should be made knowingly, with full consciousness of what is being given up, and why. It should always be necessary to make a positive case for any limitation upon individual freedom, and also for the specific method to be employed in administering the limitation. By viewing these dangerous possibilities in advance, we can reasonably hope to prevent or mitigate their occurrence. The picture projected is what might happen, not what must happen. ^2a Sebastian Mallaby, "A Mockery in the Eyes of the World," Washington Post, January 31, 1999, B5.  ³Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, Four Essays (Princeton University Press, 2000).  ⁴ Spanish El País follows the New York Times style of parading the different memos on its global front page. French Le Monde (in French style) presents a photo-series ridiculing world leaders. Wiki-leaks can be seen as a unique phenomenon of the digital era. The most dramatic moment in Wiki-leaks' short history is when the site revealed the so called Iraq War Logs, detailing information that the American people didn't know: 109,032 deaths in Iraq (comprised of 66,081 'civilians'; 23,984 'enemy' (those labeled as insurgents); 15,196 'host nation' (Iraqi government forces) and 3,771 'friendly' (coalition forces). ⁵In other words, "moral pathos resides in a situation, not where the end justifies the means, but where the end dictates means of a type which renders both the wholly good and the wholly evil superfluous."  Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision, (Princeton University Press, 2004) p. 87. ⁶ Most intelligence experts agree that these memos are not "NOT DIS" information, which would be really compromising.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Of course, we always have to come back to good explanations!

Human evolution

Animal evolution

Natural selection

Some quick notes on "religion"

You could see religion as a sort of complex system, with myths, moral & symbolic codes, codified worship behaviors (i.e., rituals), and creation-and-destruction narratives. Religions are extremely successful because they give purpose, and meaning to life.    
_________
From the point of view of belief:

Theism, is the belief that some sort of personal God exists and HE is involved with the universe.
Agnosticism: The truth about certain religious claims, is unknowable.
Deism: There is a God but this supreme being does not intervene in human affairs. Deists typically reject supernatural events such as prophecy and miracles.
Monotheism: The belief that there is only one God.
Pantheism: God is the summation of the all universe. God = Nature.
Transtheism: A system of philosophy which is neither theistic, nor atheistic. Paul Tillich writes:

The courage to take meaninglessness into itself presupposes a relation to the ground of being which we have called "absolute faith." It is without a special content, yet it is not without content. The content of absolute faith is the "god above God." Absolute faith and its consequence, the courage that takes the radical doubt, the doubt about God, into itself, transcends the theistic idea of God.

Fideism: It maintains that faith is independent of reason. Tertulian's Credo quia absurdum.

Big Bang (please, watch these videos)

Part 2 here.

What is the age of the universe? The best available measurements as of 2010 suggest that the initial conditions occurred between 13.3 and 13.9 billion years ago.

What caused the BB? Remember: The question doesn't make much sense. It's meaningless. However, it's still logically possible to imagine that the universe is caused.
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Here you have the evidence for BB in 10 minutes!

Cosmogonical myths

Mesopotamian cosmogony:  The basic feature of Mesopotamian cosmology was the firmament, or vault of heaven, that created a dry space above the Earth. The Earth was a disk, and the firmament rested on the Earth around its edge – as was obvious to any Mesopotamian scanning the horizon. Beneath the Earth were the waters of the abyss. The Earth had some thickness as was obvious from digging and from caves. Within the thickness of the Earth-disk was the underworld.

Sumer: Nammu the mother of all. Nammu creates an (heaven) and ki (earth). An, the sky, is a hard metallic shell lies on the earth, ki. The union of an and ki produce Enlil, the god of air, wind, and storm. Enlil lifts an away from ki, filling the space in which humans live. The space is filled with lil (atmosphere). The brighter parts of the lil form the sun, moon, and stars. Enlil also creates all living things. He also invents all the tools used by man and teaches him to use them. But it isn’t Enlil that creates man; it is his son Enki.

Babylon: But there are two kinds of water: fresh, deified in Apsu (male), and salt, deified in Tiamat (female). They call into being a whole genealogy of gods. The new gods were noisy and Apsu complains that he gets no rest either by day or night. This is significant since the gods are still existing in the primordial waters; sun, moon, and earth have not yet been created. This shows that the Babylonians were not aware that day was caused by the sun. They thought of day and night as fundamental and the sun as a mere marker of day. Apsu proposes to kill off the children gods that he and Tiamat have produced. But the gods take measures to prevent this and kill first Apsu and then Tiamat. The latter is accomplished by Marduk who is then the chief god. He splits Tiamat’s body in two ‘like and oyster’.

Ancient Israel: It is referred to as the “Preistly” or “P” account. It is very close to the Babylonian account and was probably learned by the Hebrew priests during Jewish captivity in Mesopotamia. It begins with a formless void of water. Yaweh’s spirit (i.e. breath, like Enlil the air) moves over the waters. He creates night and day; before creating the Sun, just as in the Babylonian myth. He creates the firmament that separates the waters and creates the Earth. He brings forth vegetation first and then produces the Sun, Moon, and stars. After creating all the other living things he makes man and woman and tells them to multiply and dominate the Earth.

Egypt: The Egyptian world view was dominated by the Sun and the Nile. For the Egyptians godhood was flexible. Kings and noblemen could become gods. Even the common people could be immortal. Gods, people, animals, and the natural world were suffused with the same kind of life force. The cosmos emerged from primeval waters, just as in the Mesopotamian myths. It was hollowed out of the abyss, Nun. This was no doubt suggested by the way high ground reappeared, rising from the water as the Nile’s floodtide receded. The primeval waters were held back by an arched living female figure Nut, as shown in figure 3, instead of a metallic firmament; Or in some accounts by a cow or a shell.

Greek: The world began with chaos. Gaia, mother Earth, arose from the chaos. She gives birth Uranos. Uranos is the sky and holds back the chaos. As in the Babylonian myth, there is a revolt among the gods and Zeus becomes the chief god. In the Greek mythology the gods are just humans writ large. They live on Mount Olympus and engage in power struggles and intrigue and sex. As in the Egyptian and Mesopotamian religions, different gods are benefactors and protectors of different cities.

I will close this week's post Monday @ 10pm.

Americans don't save

The problem is here.

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Confucius' Analects (Excerpts)

On Filial Piety

Mang asked what filial piety is. The Master said, "It is being obedient." Soon after, as Fan Chi was driving him, the Master told him "Mang asked me what filial piety is, and I answer him 'being obedient.'" Fan Chi asked, "What exactly did you mean?" The Master replied, "That parents, when alive, should be served according to ritual; that, when dead, they should be buried according to ritual; and that they should be sacrificed to according to ritual." (Note: "ritual" here is "Li" the idea being of developing meaningful practices that can be seen as embodying what is right. For Confucius there must be a blueprint to be followed).  

Ziyou asked what filial piety is. The Master said, "The filial piety of now-a-days means providing nourishment for one's parents. But dogs and horses likewise are able to do something along that line for their own kind. Without reverence, what is there to distinguish the one support given from the other?"

On Goodness

The Master said, "A youth, when at home, should behave well toward his parents, and when abroad, respectfully to his elders. He should be earnest and truthful. He should overflow in love to all, and cultivate the friendship of the good."

The Master said, "With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow, I still have joy in the midst of these things. Riches and honors acquired by unrighteousness are a floating cloud."

Zhong gong asked about perfect virtue. The Master said, "When abroad, behave to everyone as if you were receiving an important guest; treat people as if you were assisting at a great sacrifice; do not do to others as you would not wish done to yourself. Thereby you will let no murmuring rise against in public, and none in private. . . ."

On the Chuang Tzu

The Master said, "Riches and honors are what men desire; but if they cannot be obtained in the proper way, they should be let go. Poverty and meanness are what men dislike; but if they cannot be avoided in the proper way, they should not be avoided. If a gentleman abandons virtue, how can he fulfill the requirements of his title? A gentleman not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. Even in moments of haste, and in times of danger, he clings to virtue."

The Master said, "A gentleman, well studied in literature, and abiding by the rules of ritual, will not go very wrong."

"When gentlemen perform well all their duties to their relations, the people are inspired to virtue. When they remain true to their old friends, the people are preserved from irresponsible behavior."

The Master said, "A gentleman points out the admirable qualities of men and does not point out their bad qualities. A petty man does just the opposite."

The Master said, "A gentleman is distressed by his lack of ability, but he is not distressed by men not knowing him."

The Master said, "What the gentleman demands is something of himself. What the petty man demands is something of others."

A gentleman does not wear a deep purple or a puce color, nor in his at-home clothes does he wear red. In warm weather, he wears a single-layered garment, either of coarse or fine texture, but when going out he wears it over another garment. He wears lambskin with a garment of black, fawn with white, and fox with yellow. His fur dressing gown should be long, but with the right sleeve short. His night clothes must be half again as long as his body. When staying at home, he wears thick furs of the fox or the badger. So long as he is not in mourning, he wears all the trimmings of his girdle. . . . He does not wear lamb's fur or a black cap when making a visit of condolence. And on the first day of the month he must put on his court robes and present himself at court.

On Ritual and Music

The Master said, "If a man lacks the human virtues, what has he to do with ritual? If a man lacks the human virtues, what has he to do with music?"

The Master said, "Respectfulness, without the rules of ritual becomes laborious bustle; carefulness, without the rules, becomes timidity; boldness becomes insubordination; straightforwardness becomes rudeness.

The Master said, "It is by the Odes that a man's mind is aroused, by the rules of ritual that his character is established, and by music that he is perfected [finished]. . . ."

Education is, of course, important to Confucius, as one needs to learn the traditions and profit from the wisdom of the past. Government can then be carried on by "moral force," as opposed to requiring military or legal force. As to religion, Confucius does not challenge it, but he doesn't put his hope in it either. His stress is always on living well, which means living properly, here and now and by our own actions.

Which is more important for an orderly state: food, weapons, or a government that one can trust.

On Education

The Master said, "Anyone learning without thought is lost; anyone thinking but not learning is in peril."

The Master said, "Yu, shall I teach you what knowledge is? When you know a thing, to realize that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it: this is knowledge." The Master said, [I have been] "a transmitter and not a maker, believing in and loving the ancients. . ."

When the Master went to Wei, Ran Yu acted as driver of his carriage. The Master observed, "How numerous the people are!" Ran Yu asked, "When they are more numerous, what more shall be done for them ?" "Enrich them," was the reply. "And when they have been enriched, what more shall be done?" The Master said, "Instruct them."

On Government

The Master said, "To rule a country of a thousand chariots requires reverent attention to business, sincerity, economy in expenditures, and love for men, as well as the employment of the people only in the right seasons."

The Master said, "If the people are governed by laws and punishment is used to maintain order, they will try to avoid the punishment but have no sense of shame. If they are governed by virtue and rules of propriety [ritual] are used to maintain order, they will have a sense of shame and will become good as well."

Ji Kang Zi asked Confucius about government, saying, "What do you say to killing those who are unprincipled [i.e., the immoral] for the good of those who are principled?" Confucius replied, "Sir, in carrying on your government, why should you use killing at all? Let your obvious desires be for what is good, and the people will be good. The relation between superiors and inferiors is like that between the wind and the grass: the grass is bound to bend when the wind blows across it."

Zigong asked about government. The Master said, "The requisites of government are that there be sufficient food, sufficient military equipment, and the confidence of the people in their ruler." Zigong said, "If one had to dispense with one of those three, which should be given up first?" "The military equipment, " said the Master. Zigong again asked, "If on had to dispense with one of the two remaining, which should be given up?" The Master answered, "Give up the food. From of old, death has always been the lot of men; but if the people have no faith in their rulers, they cannot stand."

On Religion

Someone asked the meaning of the great sacrifice. The Master said, "I do not know. Anyone who knew its meaning would find it as easy to govern the kingdom as to look on this," and he pointed to the palm of his hand.

Zilu asked about serving the ghosts of the dead. The Master said, "Until you are able to serve men, how can you serve their ghosts?" When Zilu ventured to ask about death, the answer was: "While you do not know life, how can you [hope to] know about death?"

Knowledge surplus?

I published something recently about knowledge surplus. By the way, you're more than welcome to leave a comment, or become a friend of Bourbaki.

A new edition of Philo-Symposium

Man and political animality.

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How important is the brain (or memory)?

I found this article in Esquire about the story of Henry Molaison a man who, after brain surgery could not have new memories: 

When a surgeon cut into Henry Molaison's skull to treat him for epilepsy, he inadvertently created the most important brain-research subject of our time — a man who could no longer remember, who taught us everything we know about memory. Six decades later, another daring researcher is cutting into Henry's brain. Another revolution in brain science is about to begin.

I'm extending the post for comments until this Wednesday, 10pm.

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Personal Identity

Chapter 4 discusses human iddentity. First we have to understand what's the idea. Identity comes from the root id, idem (again and again).

Let's complicate things a bit: What sort of things are you and I and other human people?

For instance, are we made up entirely of matter, just as stones are, or partly or wholly of something else? And if we are made of matter, what matter is it? (Just the matter that makes up our bodies, or might we be larger or smaller than our bodies?) Where, in other words, do our spatial boundaries lie? More fundamentally, what fixes those boundaries? Are we substances - that is, independent beings—or is each of us a state or an aspect of something else, or perhaps some sort of process or event?

Generally speaking, we take identity to be that what makes you unique as an individual and different from others. Let's take a look at some views:

Animalism is the idea that you are your body. If we are "animals," we have the persistence conditions of animals. And animals appear to persist by virtue of some sort of brute physical continuity. So Animalism seems to imply a somatic version of you.

Careful! Being a person however is only a temporary property. A person is the kind of entity that has the moral right to make its own life-choices, to live its life without (unprovoked) interference from others. In general PERSON = an entity that has the moral right of self-determination.

The problem with animalism is that there seems to be something more fluid within the body that, for a variety of reasons can hate hie/her body. This brings us to the transgender issue and transgender-related topics.

Model Isis King

Locke disagrees with Animalism. For Locke, ous identity lies in something more fluid. In fact, the problem begins with Biblical texts asserting that we will have the same body at the Resurrection as we did in this life. Locke explicitly tells us that the case of the prince and the cobbler shows us the resolution of the problem of the resurrection. The case is one in which the soul of the prince with all of its princely thoughts is transferred from the body of the prince to the body of the cobbler, the cobbler's soul having departed. The result of this exchange, is that the prince still consider himself the prince, even though he finds himself in an altogether new body. Locke's distinction between man and person makes it possible for the same person to show up in a different body at the resurrection and yet still be the same person. Locke focuses on the prince with all his princely thoughts because, on his view, it is consciousness which is crucial to the reward and punishment which is to be meted out at the Last Judgment.

The Soul Theory:

To say that one has a soul, acording to the Soul Theory is to say that the basis for one's memories and feelings and desires -the whole basis for one's personality- is made possible by an entity known as the soul. The idea here is that even if one loses this memory or that, or even if one's personality changes, that which underlies these things -- the soul -- remains unchanged and as such provides the basis for saying that it is the same person over time.

One counterargument against the Sopul Theory is Leibniz's King of China:

Leibniz asks if we would be willing to have our souls switched into the body of Bill Gates (to update the example) if it meant that all of the "pins" were switched (so Bill Gates' pins are put into your pincushion and your pins are put into his pincushion). By Soul Theory, you would become very rich, even though you would have all of the memories and desires of Bill Gates. Leibniz thinks that no one would agree to this switch, proving that no one finds it intuitive that "same soul" is a sufficient condition for personal identity.

The text makes an interesting point, the soul doesn't explain anything that you wouldn't know by looking at people's behavior. That is to say, what we call "soul" is generally the character of the individual.

Philosophy Club (minutes)

Philosophy Club's feedback #1, here. As you can see on the Dali-like poster above, future meetings of the club will take place in room 1565.

Donald Duck discovers Glenn Beck in "Right Wing Radio Duck"

I can't take it any more!

@ Miami Bourbaki.

Philosophy Club's first meeting

For all the details: here.

Is there free will?

The principle of free will has religious, ethical, and scientific implications. For example, in the religious realm, free will implies that God does not assert its power over each one of our choices. In ethics, it holds implications whether persons can be held morally accountable for their actions. The question of free will has been a central issue since the beginning of philosophical thought.

The basic philosophical positions on the problem of free will can be divided into two questions:

1. Is determinism true?
2. Does free will exist?

(Keep reading here)

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Geniuses

Meet the 2010 MacArthur "Genius Grant" Award Winners.

Philosophy of Mind, part 2

We had left at the point of Functionalism and the counterarguments leveled against it.

A theory that tries to avoid the reductionism of Identity Theory and Behaviorism is Property Dualism, which is a form of "non-reductive physicalism." Property Dualism relies on the idea of emergence.

Emergence involves a layered view of nature, with the layers arranged in terms of increasing complexity and each corresponding to its own special science. Some philosophers hold that emergent properties causally interact with more fundamental levels, while others maintain that higher-order properties simply supervene over lower levels without direct causal interaction. For example: Water has a new property when Hydrogen H and Oxygen O combine to form H2O (water). The emergence of the transparent liquid emerges would not have been predicted by understanding hydrogen and oxygen as a gas. This is analogous to physical properties of the brain giving rise to mental states.*
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*Recall that intentionality is the capacity of mental states to be directed towards (about) or be in relation with something in the external world. This about-ness (or of-ness) of mental states entails that they have contents.

Check the Philosophy Club new site!

Check the new site for the philosophy club. They will hold their first meeting soon under a new directorship. Please, sign in, become a friend. Participate. I'll keep you posted.

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Philosophy Club: Update

Daniella, president,
Leo vice-president,
Yaney and Florencia, secretaries.

Congratulations!

Now, you should meet one another. Make some flyers and planning for your first meeting.

The mind or the body?

What do you value more, the mind or the body?

Well, my question is loaded. And Descartes is to blame. Why not seeking a balance between the two?  Here is a nice advice from philosopher/boxer Gordon Marino, professor of Philosophy at St. Olaff College, in a recent piece in the New York Times:

Western philosophy, even before Descartes’ influential case for a mind-body dualism, has been dismissive of the body. Plato — even though he competed as a wrestler — and most of the sages who followed him, taught us to think of our arms and legs as nothing but a poor carriage for the mind. In “Phaedo,” Plato presents his teacher Socrates on his deathbed as a sort of Mr. Spock yearning to be free from the shackles of the flesh so he can really begin thinking seriously. In this account, the body gives rise to desires that will not listen to reason and that becloud our ability to think clearly.

In defense of his hobby, he explains:

And let’s be clear, life is filled with blows. It requires toughness and resiliency. There are few better places than the squared circle to receive concentrated lessons in the dire need to be able to absorb punishment and carry on, “to get off the canvas” and “roll with the punches.” It is little wonder that boxing, more than any other sport, has functioned as a metaphor for life. Aside from the possibilities for self-fulfillment, boxing can also contribute to our moral lives.

(This post is not for comment).

Did you know that the meat you eat contains antibiotics?

From the NYTimes:

Dispensing antibiotics to healthy animals is routine on the large, concentrated farms that now dominate American agriculture. But the practice is increasingly condemned by medical experts who say it contributes to a growing scourge of modern medicine: the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, including dangerous E. coli strains that account for millions of bladder infections each year, as well as resistant types of salmonella and other microbes.

Why?

As drug-resistant strains of microbes evolve on the farms, they are passed along in meat sold in grocery stores. They can infect people as they handle the uncooked product or when eating, if cooking is not thorough. The dangerous strains can also enter the environment via manure or the clothes of farm workers.

We have a philosophy club going!

 Click here and learn the details.

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Animals and extintion

I don't think it makes sense to talk about moral values to apply exclusively to humans when the planet is in danger! Here is a list of UN endangered species. How about the tuna?

Here a Times gallery on 10 species near extintion.

I'll close these posts next Wednesday, 10pm.

PHI 2010 T 5:40-8:10pm

PHI 2010 T,R 11:15-12:30pm

PHI 2010 M,W,F, 11-11:50am

PHI 2010 M,W,F, 10-10:50am

PHI 2010 M,W,F, 9-9:50am

PHI 2010 M,W,F, 8-8:50am

Women's untold suffering

Evil has a face: gang-rape in Congo

From the NYTimes: "A mob of Rwandan rebels gang-raped at least 179 women last month during a weekend raid on a community of villages in eastern Congo, the United Nations said Monday." The news has been confirmed here and here.*

Evil has a face: man-against-woman brutality, a new weapon of fear. Gang rape is meant to inflict physical and emotional pain and trauma. After a woman is raped numerous times she is tortured. Many are shot in the vagina or penetrated with a machete, sticks, bees, etc (listen to the testimonies in the video).

Women who are raped suffer physical ailments such as bleeding, infection, nausea, sleep and eating disorders, and sexual dysfunction; posttraumatic stress disorder, including nightmares, depression, and paranoia; feelings of fear, anger, helplessness, vulnerability, guilt, self-blame, anxiety, low self esteem, and a deep suspicion of men and sex, which only feeds the sexual myths about women cited above.

In Congo's 10 year civil war, raping has become a prize because it delivers a strategic victory: Safe and soft. Safe, because the raping of women can hardly be compared with face-to-face combat. "Soft" in that there is a perverse pleasure involved; the body of a woman reduced to loot.

Is this appalling violence just about war? How can the identity of a woman become so objectified?

Because rape is considered to bring dishonor to a woman's family and community, there is a culture of silence which aggravates the problem. Humiliation and intimidation of victims by the police, as well as the "embarrassment" of public acknowledgment is common. The culture of silence reinforces the stigma already attached to the victim rather than to the perpetrator, as the dominant perception is that women have generally provoked the abuser to attack. Consequently, many victims are often unwilling to testify about their experiences.** So we get a bizarre combination of a society that stigmatizes rape while harboring rapists.

Can we talk about man's "violence" as a form of cultural perversion? 

We know that the enforcement of violent masculinities come in many forms, their lowest common denominator equates "manliness" with the sanctioned use of aggression, force and violence. This  "manliness" often needs to be renegotiated through the violent subjugation of others, particularly women. So, the question is whether this stereotype of "manliness" actually serves an exploitative

Now, what are your thoughts?

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*Congo is not alone. Gang-rape has spread to other war-conflict zones in Africa. In Nigeria, rape has become alarming. Rape is used by the police as intimidation. Yet, the authorities pay no attention to these crimes, even when photos of the assaults are shown in a national newspaper, and victims' interviews are broadcast on national television (Akande et al 2005; Amnesty International 2006). In Darfur, Sudan the United Nations has since accused the Janjaweed-Arab militiamen -of abducting and gang-raping thousands of women and girls (Mariner 2004). It is estimated that a third of all women and girls in Sierra Leone were subjected to sexual violence in the Sierra Leone conflict of 1991 and 2002. **The raped woman ends up paying the violence inflicted on her by the abuser, who walks away unharmed. In the end, we get this perverse unending cycle: It's precisely because of rape is such a cultural stigma for a woman that it's used so effectively. Peace woman promotes

Salmonella, eggs and philosophy

Something as simple as eggs reveals a whole socio-economic -and political- structure. From the New York Times:

A half billion eggs have been recalled for possible salmonella infection, but the cause of the problem, at two giant farms in Iowa, has not yet been pinpointed, said Margaret Hamburg, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. Many poultry experts suspect that rodents infected with salmonella got into the chicken feed because the infection seems to be inside the eggs.

Isn't the salmonella just a sign of a way of doing business in America?  This is not only about food safety, it is about the sheer size of these Iowa egg-farms. See that only a couple of Iowa producers are involved in the recall of more than 500 million eggs!
(This is not a post for comment).

Become a google friend!

Become a friend of PHI 2010! All you have to do is get an gmail account and add our site.

Hasta pronto...

It was a pleasure to have you in my class. Good luck!

Summer B (M,W,F, 10:25am) Topics for Review, Final Exam

For Topics for Review, Final Exam (Summer B), M,W,F, 10:25am, please, click here. I'll leave the post open for comments, suggestions, questions, etc.

Frankfurt "on bullshit"

PHI 2010 M,W,F, 10:25am class (summer B)

PHI 2010 T,R 9:50am class

Topics for second exam M,W,F, 10:25am

Chapter 2 (Philosophy of Mind)

2.2
Descartes's Dualism: Mind = a non-physical thinking substance.

Logical Behaviorism: MS ---> (where BhS are behavioral  dispositions; BhS are, the ability to act in certain ways to certain stimuli ). C/E "Perfect pretender", "Super Spartans." Qualitative content (qualia = the unique feeling of our mental states).Identity Theory: MS ---> BrS, where BrS is the passing of electro/chemical signals from cell to cell. C/E "Nagel's Bat." (You must be able to tell the counterexamples and derive conclusions).

2.3
Functionalism: MS ---> FS. According to functionalism, to have a mind is to have the ability to perform certain functions. C/E "Putnam's inverted spectrum."Turing Test for Intelligence: C/E Searle's Chinese Room.Intentionality
 
2.5 
Property Dualism, Primitive Property (intentionality as a primitive property).Emergent Property and Downward Causation.

Chapter 3
 
3.1
Causal Determinism: (every effect has a cause that makes it happen) and Hard determinism (there is no free will): An argument to problematize HD is the idea of "Human responsibility, " i.e., if we are not free, we cannot be responsible for our actions, (one is responsible if and only if one can make the choice). 

3.2
Traditional Compatibilism: The view that we will actions from the inside, provided that we are not externally constrained. C/E "Taylor's Ingenious Physiologist. A good example of the ingenious physiologist is TV. Problem: How about being "internally" constrained? What Taylor example shows is that one can will from the inside and still have internal constraints. Ex: gambling.
"Hierarchical Compatibilism: First and Second Order Desires; Second Order Volitions. Remember: A first order desire is directed to an object or state of affairs, a second order desire is a desire about a desire, a second order volition is a second order desire one decisely acts upon. Harry Frankfurt's three drug addicts: 
(Let's call a first order desire: FOD, a second order desire: SOD, a second order volition: SOV) 
Wanton addict: FOD, not SOD, not SOV, not free. 
Happy Addict: FOD, SOD, SOV, free.
Unwilling Addict: FOD, SOD (only this desire is against his taking the drug, not SOV, not free).

3.3
Libertarianism
Event and Agent Causation. E-C: An event causes an event. A-C: An agent causes an event. Libertarianism holds that one is responsible for one's action only if one does it (caveat: one has to act on one's own desire). If the desire is not yours, you're not responsible, ex. one's desire to surrender one's money at gunpoint.

Radical Libertarianism (Existentialism): Jean-Paul Sartre's kind of libertarianism (known as Existentialism) holds that the self is essentially free. What we do, how we act in our life is what determines what and who we are. In order not to deal with the weight of our own FREEDOM, we create fictitious excuses or "bad faith". We're always responsible for our actions, because even when we think we don't choose, we choose. The only possible constraint is our facticity (the stuff we don't choose, like being born and having a certain name and parents).

Stoning women in Iran?

Yes, the practice continues in Iran. The reason? Sakineh had an "illicit relationship," even though she was a widow at the time of the alleged affair. Ashtiani has already endured 99 lashes and -obviously- a confession(?). What place has a government of Iran stoning women for "supposed" adultery? The reason for the punishment is feeble, the punishment itself is barbaric.

Let's sign the petition to free Sakineh! 

In Iran, male victims of execution by stoning are first buried up to their waists, then pelted with stones by a crowd of executioners. Women are normally buried up to their necks. The stones used are large enough to cause serious injury but not kill the person, and the victim often dies slowly and painfully (At least 126 executions have been carried out in Iran this year, according to Amnesty International).

A Yoga (Socio-Political) Manifesto

aTrifF 

Nature should have priority.¹ It's here first and sustains everything.

The guiding principle is ahimsa. Non-violence translated into deep & skeptic ecology, i.e, the interdependence of human and non-human life in a world out of joint. We cannot understand ourselves if we estrange ourselves from nature, but we're already estranged!   

Socio-political starts bottom-up not top-down.² We don't need to wait for the top to change. As real actors, close to the local/regional nodes of action, we can acquire the know-how to build connections and mobilize public opinion to challenge institutional and social alienation.

* From the bottom ---> up: The initial transformation is individual but it doesn't stop there. We are ONE: There is no true path without dharma/activism.³

* The aporia of human anthropocentric emancipation: We need to see non-human life under a different optic. The Greeks of ancient times didn't realize that non-Greeks were persons. American plantation owners in the late-18th Century didn't realize that blacks were not inferior brutes. The majority of Americans don't realize that non-human animals are more than just foodstuff. We have an obligation to treat animals with dignity⁴ (animal farming in America needs to be transformed from intensive farming ----> extensive farming).

* The aporia of pollution vs. development: Blaming corporations in order to feel safely excluded from the pollution cycle while feeding the very thing we try to prevent. We are the world's worst polluters! ⁵

* Though it may be a little late, the move towards eco-conservation is a social imperative. Let's fight to stop deforestation, to protect sea life from extinction (due to overfishing), ensuring ecological diversity for future generations. Yes, it seems daunting, but it begins by understanding, doing & telling others.

* The aporia of technology vs. emancipation: What makes us human is a result of our cultural evolution: language, rituals, arts and technology. Yet, our anthropocentric-based culture is leading us to a dead end. Let's move from an anthropocentric to a bio-centric culture!⁶

We must learn to curb and manage our waste: Reuse, donate, recycle! The present corporate-driven/production-intensive food paradigm needs to be turned upside down, from fast food ----> slow food. ⁷ Let's switch our eating habits and bring back food sacralization. Let's turn environmental degradation and human exploitation into eco-erotics!⁸

* The aporia of development vs. under-development⁹: Our post-Capitalist global society is craft-deprived. Globalization has outsourced our manufacturing and trade/skills base. Let's get back to cooking, arts and crafts, organic horticulture,¹⁰ etc. We should balance our individualism with communitarianism!

Let's change our cities by fighting urban decay with environmental sustainability, changing ugliness into beauty.

Let's become eco-Romantics!¹¹ engaging in heritage conservation, infrastructure efficiency,  mass transit, regional integration, human scale, and institutional integrity.

Let's transform our neighborhoods by building sustainable structures, limiting urban sprawl, reducing car dependence, promoting pedestrian friendly urbanism.¹²

What to do? 

 anti-advertising, 

protest, 

social graffiti,
urban farming,

disvestment, 

Zenarchy, 

nonviolence, 

anarcho-syndicalism, 

building consensus,

civil disobedience,

E-democracy,

potlatch

ACT NOW!

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¹ Aristotle's naturalism can be seen as a forerunner of eco-thics, as expressed by his dictum that Nature "does nothing in vain." John Clearly, Aristotle and the Many Senses of Priority, (Southern Illinois University Press, 1988) p. 60. ² We don't have to choose between markets (Welfare Capitalism) or governments, as instruments of emancipation (Communism, planned-economy Socialism). Nor is there need to eliminate markets, trade, private ownership, the welfare state, or the institution of the corporation. What we need to do is bring about new practices for each of these institutions appropriate to a balance between prosperity and conservation. This task belongs neither to corporations nor to states: They are incapable of questioning the legitimacy on which their present institutional form is based. Citizens, not big-money interests, have to set the terms of the economic and political agenda. This is the force of emergence: Millions of people joining voluntary movements, discovering that the good life is more fulfilling than the endless cycle of accumulation and consumption. Professor Steven Buechler makes a similar (hopeful) point: "Movements can be crucial switching stations in the direction of history (...)  vital free spaces that promote democratization and restore a meaningful public sphere." See Steven M. Buechler, Social Movements in Advanced Capitalism: The Political Economy and Cultural Construction of Social Activism (Oxford University Press: 2000) p. 214.  Enacting Niyama at the social level can bring about a life of material sufficiency with cultural, intellectual, and spiritual abundance in balance with the environment. By osmosis, the social level can bring about needed changes in the political sphere. ³ One's embeddedness in a particular context: job, household/family, or community can lead one to recognize a problem, learn about community needs, and find a way to make life better through new -or reconfigured- social linkages.  ⁴According to philosopher Tom Regan, animals have "inherent value" as subjects-of-a-life, and cannot be regarded as a means to an end. See, Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, (University of California Berkeley, 2005) p. 245. ⁵The United States has 4.2% of the world's population and produces 24% of the world's C0₂ emissions. ⁶One must be careful not to write off culture, as if humans have fallen from paradise straight into some artificial exile of civilization. This is where the ancient Greeks can help. They understood that us humans are not completely "natural" but rather the site of a collision of nature and culture, which uniquely defines us. See Bruce Thornton, Plagues of the Mind: The New Epidemic of False Knowledge (ISI Books, 1999) p. 96.  ⁷ "Slow food" goes against the received notion that cheap food = good food. Carlo Petrini, the man behind this movement defends the "unpolitical" idea that cheap food is really expensive, bad food, when compared with good, clean, carefully harvested food. He is right. In his book, Petrini advocates the idea of "gusto" (taste) and diversity. There is a correlation between slow food and health, which makes slow food more enjoyable. The locus for this revolucion is la osteria, a place where one can find "traditional cuisine run as a family business with simple service, welcoming atmosphere, good wine and moderate prices." See Carlo Petrini, Slow Food, the Case for Taste (Columbia University Press, 2003) p. 51-58. "Cheap food" is a Capitalist ploy to misrepresent real capital allocation and profit in the name of "abundance," hiding government subsidies for monoculture and intensive production which end up as profit for Big Business in food and energy. Take for instance American corn policies: We subsidize corn while (protect Monsanto's right to sell it to farmers as genetically modified seed). Coincidentally, corn is the foodstuff staple for raising cattle in the US (funded by whom?) and an energy commodity. Wonder why such a labor-intensive commodity such as meat is so cheap? Corn is heavily fertilized — both with chemicals like nitrogen and with subsidies from Washington. Over the past decade, the Federal Government has poured more than $50 billion into the corn industry, keeping prices for the crop — at least until corn ethanol skewed the market — artificially low. That's your Big Mac @ McDonald's, a $5 meal bargain, with 1,400 calories (more than half the daily recommended requirement for adults). ⁸ I thank my friend Gene Ray from Scurvy Tunes, for his suggestion. I'd like to spin his idea of eco/erotics as an embodied striving for well-being that connects us with the animal and non-animal other (life). The opposite of eco/erotics is eros gone astray, a perversion of Nishkam Karma. A desire in the form of a will-to-control that aims to secure itself by mastering all around it. Ridden with anxiety, this eros reduces other to self. In fact, there are examples of such versions in modern times: Certain "peak" historic moments, when factors motivating nations and individuals, such as the desires for profit, security, and hegemony got transformed militaristic erotics. ⁹ It turns out that the mantra of "emancipated" Communist development in Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean throughout the 1960's-1980's consisted in mimicking the Capitalist "anthropocentric development" model: 1- constant growth, 2- domination of nature, 3- industrialization and technologization of production and society at the expense of environmental degradation, abandonment of agriculture (land reform in this case meant very little, since arbitrary and exploitative prices were set by the bureaucrats, not by the farmers), massive migration to the cities, urban unemployment and loss of crafts skills. The deterioration of nature brought by these mistaken policies, was invoked by the communist  bureaucracies as a step in the right direction for the attainment of development. ¹⁰ Who would think of pursuing horticultural studies in Miami, now, when the expected move of disenfranchised farmers is from the rural areas to the city? Precisely! This overall migration has to do with the switch from farmer-produced to corporate-produced agriculture. How can one reverse it? By encouraging simple living. Diversifying instead of homogenizing food consumption; by making good, simple food (not gourmet food) a desired commodity, so that corporations are forced to alter their mode of production. Surely, one must be watchful of corporation's good intentions! It's all about awareness: As we become more educated in our food habits, there is gradual a move from agriculture into crafted horticulture. Are people ready for it? After the subprime mortgage crisis, the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, and BP's gulf disaster, the answer is yes. ¹¹ The new eco-Romantic is committed to ecological flourishing, but she is neither anti-technology, nor naive in her political expectations about Messianic utopias. The traditional Romantic lived in a paradox he was blind to. (H)e deprecated technology from his studio in the industrial-brought comfort of the pre-Modern city. We must see the good and bad in technology. The Industrial Revolution cannot be simply undone (the remedy would be worst than the disease). It needs to be transformed. Technology can serve us in using the ecosystem resources more efficiently. On the other hand, there is a strong historical relationship between growth in economic output and growing human demands on the earth's finite ecosystem. We've pushed since 1950's the human burden on the planet's regenerative systems, its soils, air, water, fisheries, and forestry systems beyond what the planet can sustain. Anthropocentric "development" is not the answer. Pushing for economic growth beyond the planet's sustainable limits accelerates the rate of breakdown of the whole. It also intensifies the competition between rich and poor for the earth's remaining output of life-sustaining resources. ¹² See my  "Miami's Urban Mess."