TR, 9:50am

T 5:40pm

MWF, 11am

MWF, 9am

Gratitude is a virtue: It works! (LAST POST)

Although an ungrateful heart is not an offence in itself, still a name for ingratitude is regarded as baser, more odious and more detestable than a name for injustice.—Samuel Pufendorf (On the Duty of Man and Citizen According to Natural Law, p.66).

For the purpose of our discussion of Chapter 5, Section 4, I'd like to start a discussion about virtues. These days no virtue is more appropriate than gratitude.*

It turns that intentions are important for Seneca. According to Seneca the intentions of both the givers and the receivers of benefits are of the utmost importance in understanding gratitude. Good consequences devoid of good intentions do not create a debt of gratitude. There are two different aspects to take into consideration: If the intention of a giver is not to help another individual, but to bind the receiver or to make that person feel bad, then a benefit has not been given, and gratitude is not required. Similarly, a debt of gratitude has not been fulfilled if the receiver of the benefit does not truly feel thanks to the giver but responds to the benefit merely out of a sense of duty or guilt or anger. That is to say, rules join together providers and receivers of benefits, and these are the foundation on which gratitude rests.

For how else do we live in security if it is not that we help each other through an exchange of good offices? It is only through the interchange of benefits that life becomes in some measure equipped and fortified against sudden disasters. Take us singly, and what are we?

Thomas Hobbes, the author of Leviathan, proposes a argument with a political twist. From a Hobbesian position, gratitude is a necessary condition in society to assure us that self-interested people will be willing to act in disinterested ways for the benefit of others and for society in general. To use a slightly different terminology, gratitude (which Hobbes considered the fourth law of nature) helps to overcome problems of collective action when people do things that do not directly benefit themselves. Gratitude is thus less a result of the relationship between two people than it is a general social condition (or social virtue) that promotes general sociability in society as a whole.

In the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith, understands along a number of different dimensions. As a liberal economist, Smith thought that self-interest was more of a reliable foundation than beneficence and gratitutde for securing the basic economic needs of a society. Yet, he understood the importance of benevolence and gratitude. As Smith showed in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1790/1982), gratitude plays a vital role in making the world we live in a better place. Smith's analysis provided a secular account of gratitude that freed itself from many of the theological and hierarchical assumptions of medieval thought. Gratitude is a human phenomenon that binds people together in society.

I found this article in The New York Times. It approaches gratitude from the psychological point of view:

(...) it has recently become the favorite feast of psychologists studying the consequences of giving thanks. Cultivating an “attitude of gratitude” has been linked to better health, sounder sleep, less anxiety and depression, higher long-term satisfaction with life and kinder behavior toward others, including romantic partners. A new study shows that feeling grateful makes people less likely to turn aggressive when provoked, which helps explain why so many brothers-in-law survive.

The point is made that gratitude is not indebtedness:

Sure, you may feel obliged to return a favor, but that’s not gratitude, at least not the way psychologists define it. Indebtedness is more of a negative feeling and doesn’t yield the same benefits as gratitude, which inclines you to be nice to anyone, not just a benefactor.

 Also: 

“Gratitude is more than just feeling good,” says Nathan DeWall, who led the study at Kentucky. “It helps people become less aggressive by enhancing their empathy. “It’s an equal-opportunity emotion. Anyone can experience it and benefit from it, even the most crotchety uncle at the Thanksgiving dinner table.”

What are your thoughts on the subject?
___________________

*For this post, I'm borrowing ideas from the essay "Gratitude in the History of Ideas" by Edward J. Harpham, published in The Psychology of Gratitude, Robert A. Emmons, Michael E. Mccullough, Eds. (Oxford University Press, 2004).

do your work & step back (post for comment)

Thomas Bayrle, Maxwell Kaffee, Oil on canvas (1967).

The Tao doesn't take sides;
it gives birth to both good and evil.
The Master doesn't take sides;
she welcomes both saints and sinners.- Tao Te Ching

atRifF

i'd like to talk about this void of tao calling what fullness?

imagine an event before us, which appears incomplete. it's out of joint. and what isn't?

i take thomas bayrle Maxwell Kaffee (above) as a metaphor for the nausea that implacably pursues roquentin in La Nausée, the paradox of one-and-the-many that we find again in kenyan artist ingrid mwuangi's If:

The Tao gives birth to One.
One gives birth to Two.
Two gives birth to Three.
Three gives birth to all things. (vers. 42)¹

Ingrid Mwuangi, If, digital c-prints mounted on aluminum (2001).

The Tao is like a well:

used but never used up.

It is like the eternal void:

filled with infinite possibilities. (vers. 4)

according to the tao te ching, our will to fix things can paradoxically take us into unexpected detours. when to let just things be?

If you don't realize the source,
you stumble in confusion and sorrow.
When you realize where you come from,
you naturally become tolerant,
disinterested, amused,  (vers. 16)

we generally don't see our will as being impeded by anything other than our desire to act (a point we should heed from hard determinists). yet, in the big realm of overall causation, we're not alone. our will is "differential," one amongst hundreds of millions of other intersecting wills. seldom we stop to ponder our volitions as an infinitesimal fraction of an overall sum of (unknown) wills in the here and now, plus the already existing chain/reactions which our time/space.

how to see one's will vis-a-vis this higher order of will/differentials? what's the relative limit between one's doing and one doing too much? and viceversa, how much of our lives simply end up -unknowingly- "happening" to us?
 

ray bradbury, A Sound of Thunder, edition of collier's magazine (june 1952).

just as in bradbury's A Sound of Thunder,² imagine how much of our planet's future is -and is not- in our hands right now.

The Tao is like a bellows:

it is empty yet infinitely capable.

The more you use it, the more it produces;

the more you talk of it, the less you understand. ( vers. 5)

on the positive side, think of serendipity in science, randomness in quantum mechanics and aleatoricism in music. ³

Marco Fusinato, Mass Black Implosion, ink on archival facsimile of score (2007).

on the negative side, think of Black Swans, popper's historicist fallacy and uneventful events. which brings us back to the mismatch of essence/appearance. of course, the question that we need to answer is how can we tell the difference?

Look, and it can't be seen.

Listen, and it can't be heard.

Reach, and it can't be grasped. (vers. 14)

the answer to the problem is not that simple, because there is no single unequivocal course of action. it's at this point that jazz can help. when musicians improvise, they are also part of a center of energy given by the whole ensemble. if one sees it synchronically (as if you could make a slice in the music sequence) the musicians seem to solo, if one sees it diachronically, it plays as a perfectly fit sequence. the success of the solo depends precisely of this give-and-take between part and whole and vice-versa. this is known as "groove," the sort of tao of jazz.⁴ 

as in jazz, taoism is perspectival, i.e., there can be different solutions to a given problem. this doesn't mean that all solutions are the same. just as there are good and bad improvisations, there are good and bad solutions to a given problem (in its uniqueness, tao is plural).

tao has multiple interpretations. why? think of this question: is the Big Dipper made by nature? Philosopher nelson goodman thinks not: a constellation is a "version," i.e., a construction that picks some stars from others. the same with "star," which is a version that "picks" (configures) stars from other celestial bodies.⁵

Lecia Dole-Recio, Untitled, paper, vellum, tape and gouache (2003).

goodman explains:

Truth of statements,rightness of descriptions, representations, exemplifications, expressions,... is primarily a matter of fit, fit to what is referred to in one way, or other renderings, or modes and manners of organization.⁶

in our quest/struggle with reality, we keep building construction upon construction (human endeavor in science, politics and the arts, reflects this dynamic). what comes first in Ochoa's Collapsed? hint: the concrete wall is the future event of the aggregate of rock, sand and water. you see the cause, then you see the effect, but never at once. art does the trick! 

Ruben Ochoa, Collapsed, Concrete, steel, burlap, wood, dirt (2009).

at some point we discussed the apparent riddle of the Tao Te Ching, which brings forth the idea "speaking/not speaking" in zen, which we'll go into detail pretty soon. the Chuang Tzu helps: "if tao is made clear (by words), it is not tao. if words are argumentative, they do not reach the point."

yeah, every now and then we just have to let go and shut up. at that point one really but briefly understands the value of letting words flush down the word/sewer.

Close your mouth,
block off your senses,
blunt your sharpness,
untie your knots,
soften your glare,
settle your dust.
This is the primal identity. (vers 56)

  
tao listens to silence. composer & buddhist john cage puts is beautifully: "every something is an echo of nothing."

let's pay attention to tao's subtle groove:  

If you want to become whole,
let yourself be partial.
If you want to become straight,
let yourself be crooked.
If you want to become full,
let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn,
let yourself die.
If you want to be given everything,
give everything up. (vers 22)

in our reading tuesday, we commented an important and often glossed over element in taoism: humor. Let's come back to it. chuang tzu counsels: "the general idea is to show the happy excursion, the enjoyment in the way of inaction and self-enjoyment." (Chuang Tzu, A Happy Excursion)

no one fits this metaphor better than a child. we must try to bring back our lost innocence and sense of wonderment. there is something to be said for a child's natural ability to take in the world without any prejudice.

Brian Chippendale, Ninja and Maggot Series, (2006).

unfortunately, growing up means repressing this ability so that the adult becomes an entrenchment of hardened stereotypes. meanwhile, our ability for enjoyment gets regimented and instrumentalized.

"having fun" -as we usually use the word nowadays- carries this sense of being entertained, which in our post-capitalist society is exactly the opposite of true fun, the equivalent of forfeiting our curiosity by domesticating ourselves into vacuous, purposeless compliance.

against this disposition we must present tao's flexible, contrarian, comical, side:

 Teruhiko Yumura This is Ja, for Flamingo Studio

tao's flexibility avoids the pitfalls of intellectual constipation:
 

Proud beyond measure,

you come to your knees:

Do enough without vieing,

Be living, not dying.

now the fool comes back. he's been with us this semester. chuang tzu says: a man who knows he is a fool is not a great fool. how close this is to this. as you'll see, the fool becomes an distinguished character in zen.

i'd like to warn you however, of unproblematically going for enjoyment, not only because, to begin with, the capitalist imperative "enjoy yourself" can castrate the true feeling we seek, but because, as sarah kay points out, enjoyment can be a double-edge sword: "enjoy-meant," and the meaning displaces being.⁸ said differently, the desire ends up killing the feeling. i think this is what philosopher simon critchley has in mind when he cites a telling passage from beckett's Watt:

The bitter the hollow and -haw, haw!- the mirthless. The bitter laugh laughs at that which is not good, it is the ethics laugh. The hollow laugh laughs at that which is not true, it is the intellectual laugh. Not good! Not true! Well, well. But the mirthless laugh is the dianoetic laugh, down the snout - haw!- so. It is the laugh of laughs, the risus purus, the laugh laughing at the laugh, the beholding, the saluting of the highest joke, in a word the laugh that laughs -silence please- at that which is unhappy. ⁹

it is risus purus that may work as a therapy to demystify the negative attitudes of our political comedy: anal-retentiveness, social hostility, impetuous rage and self-importance.
________________
¹ taken from Tao Te Ching, translated by s. mitchell.  ² in his short story A Sound of Thunder, ray bradbury imagines the impact of the so-called butterfly effect:

Maybe Time can't be changed by us. Or maybe it can be changed only in little subtle ways. A dead mouse here makes an insect imbalance there, a population disproportion later, a bad harvest further on, a depression, mass starvation, and finally, a change in social temperament in far-flung countries. Something much more subtle, like that. Perhaps only a soft breath, a whisper, a hair, pollen on the air, such a slight, slight change that unless you looked close you wouldn't see it. Who knows? Who really can say he knows? We don’t know. We’re guessing. But until we do know for certain whether our messing around in Time can make a big roar or a little rustle in history, we’re being careful.

³ serendipity is the finding of something valuable without its being specifically sought. in general, activities and skills that can function in parallel may interact in unplanned and unforeseen ways. professor Jeffrey McKee argues that some of the most important forces of human evolution (the roles of which have been largely neglected) are chance, coincidence, and chaos. according to McKee one cannot understand how humans evolved without taking these three factors into account. see, The riddled chain: Chance, coincidence, and chaos in human evolution (Rutgers University Press, 2000). ⁴"when jazz is really grooving -whether it's a solo pianist, a quartet, or a big band -there is indeed an unmistakable feeling of buoyancy and lift (...) relaxed intensity is the key." Johnny King, What Jazz Is: An Insider's Guide to Understanding and Listening to Jazz (Walker: 1997) p. 24. ⁵ Hilary Putnam, Renewing Philosophy, (Cambridge, 1992), p. 115. ⁶Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking, (Hackett Publishing, 1978).  ⁷ See, Youru Wang, Linguistic Strategies in Daoist Chuang-Tzu and Zen Buddhism: The Other Way of Speaking (Routledge, 2003), p. 98.  ⁸Sarah Kay, Zizek: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge, 2003), p. 162. Simon Critchley, Infinitely Demanding, (Verso, 2007), p. 82

The mystery according to Ge Hong

Illustration by Pomme Chan

The Mystery is the first ancestor of the Spontaneous, the root of the many diversities.
Unfathomable and murky in its depths, it is also called imperceivable;
stretching far into the distance, it is also called wonderful;
so high that it covers the nine empyreans,
so wide that it encompasses the eight cardinal points;
shining beyond the sun and the moon,
speedy beyond the rapid light;
it both suddenly shines forth and disappears like a shadow.
it both surges up in a whirlwind and streaks away like a comet;
it is both stirred up by deep eddies and like a clear deep pool,
it is both flaky and at the same time misty, rising up in clouds;
it takes on form and gender, and it exists [you];
it returns to darkness and solitude, and it is no more [wu];
it plunges beyond, into the great darkness, and buries itself deep;
it rises above the stars and floats on high;
neither metal nor stone can equal its hardness,
and the moist dew cannot attain its softness.
Square without set-square, round without compasses,
it comes and no one sees it,
 it leaves and no one follows it;
through it, the sky is high and the earth low,
through it, the clouds rush by and the rain falls.
It carries within it the embryo of the Original One,
it forms and shapes the two Principles (Yin and Yang);
it exhales and absorbs the great Genesis,
it inspires and transforms the multitude of species,
it makes the constellations go round,
it shaped the primordial Darkness,
it guides the wonderful mainspring of the universe,
it exhales the four seasons,
it encloses the void and silence in darkness,
it frees and parcels out natural abundance,
it makes the heavy fall and the light rise up,
it makes the rivers Ho and Wei flow.
If one adds to it, it does not increase.
if one takes away from it, it does not grow less.
If something is given to it, it is not increased in glory.
If something is taken from it, it does not suffer.
Where the Mystery is present, joy is infinite;
where the Mystery has departed, efficacy is exhausted and the spirit disappears.

Be brutal, be macho, be obedient, be relentless

What shape are you?

Via Gilbert Garbiso, this site with designs for different philosophical schools. Who are you? 

Pangu transforms his body

At Miami Bourbaki

The Analects

Excerpts of the Analects here.

T, 5:40pm

MWF, 9am

MWF, 11am

TR, 9:50am

Is waterboarding torture?

During the last republican debate, the topic of torture came up. Ron Paul and John Huntsman were clear that waterboarding constitutes torture. On the other hand, though they claim to be against torture, these candidates call waterboarding an "enhanced technique".

This is an United Nations Convention definition of torture:

 ...any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in, or incidental to, lawful sanctions. --UN Convention Against Torture

If so, isn't "enhanced" just an euphemism for torture?

Wouldn't it be better for Cain, Bachmann, Gingrich, etc to just admit they are in favor of torture?

What's your opinion?

I'm closing this post Monday, November 21 at 11 pm.

Why is ethics important?

During the last republican debate the issue of torture came up. Are you in favor of the US government using torture as a policy of obtaining intelligence? I'll post soon on this.

the chicken soup dilemma

a chef & lover of philosophy invites a group of 4 philosophers over to try his chicken soup:

A is an absolutist
S is a subjectivst
R is a relativist
K is a skeptic

being quizzed about, they all counter affirmatively:

a great soup this is!

how could these four contrasting individuals agree?

because a statement by itself cannot constitute a criteria for a philosophical position.

Robots!!!

Why is ASIMO ground braking?

Here are the specs:

1. Height: 130 centimeters (4 feet 3 inches)
2. Weight: 48 kilograms (106 pounds), decreased 6 kg from previous model
3. Degrees of freedom: 57 DOF total, increase of 23 DOF from previous model
4. Running speed: 9 km/h (5.6 mph), compared to 6 km/h for previous model

High level balancing: ASIMO was capable of balancing itself, but the new version can survive a significantly more aggressive push by quickly taking a stabilizing step forward or backward, just like a human would. All this additional agility also enables ASIMO to walk over uneven surfaces without any trouble.

New hands: ASIMO's hands are dexterous enough (with independent finger control) to perform sign language (the hand gesture above doesn't mean ASIMO likes heavy metal -- it's Japanese sign language for "I love you"). By combining tactile and visual sensors, ASIMO can recognize objects and handle them appropriately, such as taking caps off of bottles and pouring liquid into paper cups without crushing them.

Sensor integration: The new ASIMO can integrate information from multiple sensors and estimate how its surrounding environment is changing. For example, it can combine both short and long range sensor data to better track and predict the motion of multiple humans, and it uses visual and auditory input to perform voice recognition in noisy and crowded environments.

Improved autonomy: ASIMO is now able to use sensor inputs, intelligent prediction, and past experience to autonomously determine what it should do without direct operator intervention. The goal here is to let ASIMO work alongside puny humans without needing continuous supervision, and ASIMO is able to walk around without bumping into anyone, politely stepping aside if it classifies you as a collision risk.

By the way, ASIMO comes in several colors! 

M,W,F, 9am

M,W,F, 11am

T, 5:40pm

T,R 9:50am

Wealth gap. Do you care? What can be done?

This article in the Huffington Post analyses the wealth gap between younger and older Americans, which has stretched to the widest on record, worsened by a prolonged economic downturn that has wiped out job opportunities for young adults and saddled them with housing and college debt:

The wealth gap between younger and older Americans has stretched to the widest on record, worsened by a prolonged economic downturn that has wiped out job opportunities for young adults and saddled them with housing and college debt. Households headed by someone under age 35 had their median net worth reduced by 27 percent in 2009 as a result of unsecured liabilities, mostly a combination of credit card debt and student loans. No other age group had anywhere near that level of unsecured liability acting as a drag on net worth; the next closest was the 35-44 age group, at 10 percent.

Keep in mind  that wealth is different than income. A storehouse of resources, wealth is what families own. It means a command over financial resources that when combined with income can produce the opportunity to secure the “good life” in whatever form is needed— education, business, training, justice, health, comfort, and so on. In this sense wealth is a special form of money not usually used to purchase milk and shoes or other life necessities. More often it is used to create opportunities, secure a desired stature and standard of living, or pass class status along to one's children. It is obvious that the positions of two families with the same income but widely different wealth assets are not identical, and it is time for us to take this into account in public policy.

What are the causes? Some primary causes contributing to the creation and persistence of wealth inequality include:

1- Financial Resources, 2- Money Allocation, 3- Higher rate of savings and hence asset accumulation by the wealthy, 4- Higher net rate of return to assets owned by the rich (the wealthy may have special knowledge, and the level of fees and other charges on their savings will be less than those with small investments), 5- Lower credit costs and credit constraints for the wealthy. 6- Access to credit at lower rates enhaces the level of profits and scope of investment opportunities, 7- Inflation.

For both the wealthy and not-wealthy, the process of accumulation or debt is cyclical. The rich use their money to earn larger returns and the poor have no savings with which to produce returns or eliminate debt. Unlike income, both facets are generational. Wealthy families pass down their assets allowing future generations to develop even more wealth. The poor, on the other hand, “are less able to leave inheritances to their children leaving the latter with little or no wealth on which to build…This is another reason why wealth inequality is so important- its accumulation has direct implications for economic inequality among the children of today’s families."

Corresponding to financial resources, the wealthy strategically organize their money so that it will produce profit. Affluent people are more likely to allocate their money to financial assets such as stocks, bonds, and other investments which hold the possibility of capital appreciation. Those who are not wealthy are more likely to have their money in savings accounts and home ownership. This difference comprises the largest reason for the continuation of wealth inequality in America: the rich are accumulating more assets while the middle and working classes are just getting by.

Now, let's take a look at some ideas (some better, some worse), which explore possible solutions:

1- The so-called "family net," i.e, helping a family not to fall into poverty is a good investment and it is the government's responsibility. 2- John Rawls's idea that social and economic inequalities can benefit the least advantaged of society if we create the right distribution, i.e., the rich should pay more taxes than the poor (you see how politically contentious this idea has become). 3- We are not that poor because there are poorer in the world. 4- Marx's motto: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." 5- Protect the poor with a minimum standard of living, not out of charity, but to protect the better-of-the-poor. 6- The well-to-do take care of the poor voluntarily. What economists call "market-distributive justice."

So where do we stand right now?

Wealth inequality is increasing within all age groups. Among the younger-age households, those living in debt have grown the fastest while the share of households with net worth of at least $250,000 edged up slightly to 2 percent. Among the older-age households, the share of households worth at least $250,000 rose to 20 percent from 8 percent in 1984; those living in debt were largely unchanged at 8 percent.

So, what is your idea?

I'm closing this post next Monday, Nov. 14 at 11 pm.  

How are you doing in my class?

There are ways to know how you're doing in my class. You could go by the average from our two tests so far: (q means quizz, mt = midterm). If you add "A" for good attendance and non-tardiness and "P" for posts and you have the following:

Cq---Dmt = C- & A+P  = C+
Cq---Cmt = C & A+P = B-
Cq---Bmt = C+ or B- & A+P = B

Two B's is a B+
Bq---Amt = B+ & A+P = A-
Aq---Bmt = B+ & same as above

Add to this attendance, tardiness ratio, participation and blog posts. You know how you are attendance-wise because I always bring up the subject (some of you have been dropped and reinstated). I've said that having more than 3 unjustified absences may have an impact on your final grade.

To the oft-asked question "can I get an A in this course?" I always say, "You can."

Protect your brains!

Contrary to previous theories of addiction, Dr. Nora Volkow claims that the sensitivity of the reward centers in the brains of addicts is significantly decreased. Here are some current myths shattered by her research.

1. Marijuana is not addictive
2. Prescription medications are always safe
3. You can control your addiction

The Guerilla Radio Show: Bringing Philosophy to the Masses

The Guerilla Radio Show is a pretty cool project. It's committed waging war against idiocy and bringing philosophy to the masses.

Here is an example of their programming: What is sex?

Buddhism (review for quiz this Thursday)

Find the notes for Buddhism for our quiz on Thursday here.

As usual, I'll ask you to complete the definitions for the basic terms as stated in this review.

Update: comments for my posts

Dear friends: Let's address the comments for my posts once again. These are posts for comments. They are mandatory. Comment should have 100 words, be informative and show a level consistent with the engagement we have with the class. The post is open for 7 days and I'll close them after that. Comments are part of the final grade. Please, from here on, post your comments in proper fashion.
Thanks.

Occupy Miami (young activists talk)

Alicia Cruz


Pedro Santana