same sex marriage is the thing!

for those of you who picked same sex marriage as a paper topic.

how the justices could rule.

if you are interested in our discussions

become a google friend of miami bourbaki! all you have to do is click the "join this site" bar on top of the google members box.

the transgender issue

the article in the new york times about the 6 yr old transgender boy.

it's a social issue, with transgender camps for gender-variant children & their families.

my answers to some of your comments about the gita

as usual, i need to find a better space of reflection. here it goes:

1- i agree with specific points made by veronica, lars, geoffrey, ninie and carolina. for them the truth is sort of "already inside." the words in the gita just propitiate a rediscovery. valerie took the discussion home when she talked about our dharma (duty) to engage action and stop dithering.
martin's point of action "in the moment" rings true. the essence of bushido is to die everyday. knowing this "readiness" in action is the essence of dharma.

2- regarding jose's point about the gita advocating moral relativism:

if relativism means that there's no right and wrong (it's all relative), or that right and wrong is relative to history, culture, self, etc, this is NOT what YOGA stipulates. the three yogas: bhakti, karma and jnana refer to a clear path of righteousness, i.e., thinking, living and knowing the good. a path surprisingly close (save the immense meditation component in YOGA) to aristotle's idea of arete. in this realm there is a clear right and wrong. as you know the regulation principle is ahimsa.

it's here that manny was referring to this "getting better" without reaching a limit (of perfection?). if i understood correctly he saw this "getting better" as a tension. why? the move is one of gradual improvement. how could one become the best one can be without the tribulations of change?

krishna's point is a metaphor for action (the sort that becomes "sovereign" by taking one's action off the economy of means-to-end). to vinicious i'd say: there is nothing utilitarian in the path of action put forth in the gita.

what's confusing is krishna's counsel to fight now, justified with reasons as high and supervenient as the ONE itself. but take the perspective of BRAHMAN for a second:  is there right and wrong in this heights of causation?  as more and more layers of history are added we literally witness how becoming "becomes." up there is just undifferentiated oneness. at the level of BRAHMAN, predator and prey are the same. how else can you explain ONEness with words?

3- fabio's interesting twist of krishna as "evil man whispering" reminds me of descartes' evil genius (malin génie) in his Méditations sur la philosophie (a very readable book in french by the way). i take the point because it makes for a great discussion.

surprise: the devil doesn't have to come back from gehenna. veronica's point is that evil dwells within oneself!

first outside: how do we deal with an external malin génie? well, the world is full of them: from wall street, to politicians, to religious leaders. from misguided parents, to pseudo friends, to stupid teachers. in fact, to really problematize fabio's point we'd have to factor the possibility that the evil genius is no genius. if by "genius" one has an edge, then misleading me just "for the sport" is as ignorant as me buying into it. there must be a better "genius" than that. the devil feels victorious to the degree that he really persuades me. so, convincing takes two.

keep in mind: ignorance is a two way street.

descartes' genius is worthy of his name because he plays for the sake of truth (truly on the other side). he knows what he believes. he also wants me to believe a lie. 

is arjuna that naïve? i advance three possibilities?

1- arjuna pretends to argue, i.e, "play along" and try to "fool" the genius (i.e., he's not trying to find out truth, but to argue as a devil's advocate). does arjuna really cares for truth?

2- arjuna argues in good faith until either he or krishna "win." let's call this option "socrates' hope."

the third one is weird, but here is goes,

3- arjuna inadvertently fools himself by fooling the genius. here they both lose: krishna, because he's not appearing "as good" anymore (how could he, if arjuna is not falling for his "angel of light" routine? remember, this is all a matter of perception!), arjuna, because he forfeits the opportunity to extract a formidable lesson, winning the truth from the devil himself! this is more than dr. faustus ever bargained for.

now let's go inside: arjuna knows what has to be done. he only needs a push, this is what we call a volition. but the reason buttressing the volition needs to be argued successfully. that's why philosophy has been presented as midwife for truth, what socrates called maieutics.

can one lie to oneself? indeed, this is the "bad faith" (la mauvaise foi) which sartre defined as "a lie to oneself, on condition that we distinguish the lie to oneself from lying in general". why?

according to sartre, the liar, in order to complete his task, must maintain complete lucidity about some truth that he possesses. one cannot lie without possessing some personal truth, and lying is different than simply being in error.

(in case you want to talk, say it here. comments are open). 

the evolutionary aspect of morality

in class i've been stressing the importance of evolutionary biology and its importance for society. here's an interesting angle: 

A four-dimensional scheme for social behavior that is shaped by interlocking brain processes: (1) caring (rooted in attachment to kin and kith and care for their well-being), (2) recognition of others’ psychological states (rooted in the benefits of predicting the behavior of others), (3) problem-solving in a social context (e.g., how we should distribute scarce goods, settle land disputes; how we should punish the miscreants), and (4) learning social practices (by positive and negative reinforcement, by imitation, by trial and error, by various kinds of conditioning, and by analogy).

is infinity even or odd?

from the math section of the new york times: 

I explained that infinity is neither even nor odd.  It’s not a number in the usual sense, and it doesn’t obey the rules of arithmetic.  All sorts of contradictions would follow if it did.  For instance, “if infinity were odd, 2 times infinity would be even.  But both are infinity!  So the whole idea of odd and even does not make sense for infinity.”

 if imagining infinity is not crazy, what is?

the discussion we've been having in class

fresh from the new york times: can science explain consciousness?

We trust science because its claims are based on experience. But experience itself is a subjective reality that seems to elude the objectivity of scientific understanding. We know that our experiences—of seeing red, feeling pain, falling in love and so forth—depend on physical systems like the brain that science can, in principle, exhaustively explain. But it’s hard to make sense of the idea that experiences themselves could be physical. No doubt experiences correlate with objective physical facts, but, as subjective phenomena, how could they be such facts? When I feel intense pain, scientists may be able to observe brain-events that cause my pain, but they cannot observe the very pain that I feel. What science can observe is public and objective; what I feel is private and subjective.

then, there's the speculative question, What’s to say that future scientific developments won’t allow us to understand how experiences can be entirely physical?

let's have the introduction to the paper ready for next week

Some tips:

1- Write a clear and concise opening sentence. In philosophy papers, the opening sentence should not be cliché, and it should not be making a general statement about philosophy. The majority of philosophy papers are making an argument, so start your first paragraph with the phrase: "In this paper, I will argue that..." This opening sentence is also known as your thesis statement, which is a statement that summarizes your main argument or purpose for writing the paper.

2-  Write a brief description of all the main points you will make in your philosophy essay. Your essay will probably have about two or three main points that are being used to prove your argument. Write about a sentence for each point in your introduction.

3- You want to explain the opposing POV. If you are pro-life, this is the time to explain which argument of the pro-choice debate you will tackle. You don't have to argue yet. This is just an introduction. Your job is to advance what is going to happen so far (it can be changed later if you want). In other words, you are giving the reader a taste of what you will do later. 

4-  Proofread the opening paragraphs. Make sure your introduction clearly explains the points you make in your paper.

i've read most of your proposals, now move on

i'm almost done. what transpires is ok. you have chosen a topic and your position in it. what i need now is the following.

1- having a position is just the beginning. remember that your espousing a position is as good as your ability to defended it against a counter-position. philosophy is parrying.
2- when looking for sources find sources "for" and "against" your view.

3- i've had some students turning a hand-written page to me. threw them away. not acceptable.

so now, move on. let's write an introduction and more on to the body of the paper.

are you free to shop?

The reason Target can snoop on our shopping habits is that, over the past two decades, the science of habit formation has become a major field of research in neurology and psychology departments at hundreds of major medical centers and universities, as well as inside extremely well financed corporate labs (...) One study from Duke University estimated that habits, rather than conscious decision-making, shape 45 percent of the choices we make every day, and recent discoveries have begun to change everything from the way we think about dieting to how doctors conceive treatments for anxiety, depression and addictions.

in Miami Bourbaki.

UPDATE:: paper length, and tentative schedule

the paper will be 1,500 words. that is, about 4 pages, double space, 12 p. new roman typeface.
MLA format.

as you know a paper cannot be done in a week. neither you (nor I) will be able to read and approve so much work to-andñ-fro. so, this is a tentative schedule:

1- this coming week i get your proposals. 

2- a week after the mid term i need the introduction and one page from the paper body.

3- the week after quiz #2 i need a 2 page draft.

4- a week before the final i need a possible first draft of the paper, or 3 pages into it. 

why are mental states non-physical?

for the T 5:40pm class. eimelech expressed that the idea of a "non-physical property" doesn't make much sense. i felt that i wasn't clear enough in my defense.

why should we accept the idea of a non-physical property in this case?

neither the qualitative content (how they feel) or their aboutness (intentionality) of mental states are knowable from a third person point-of-view. so, we have this bizarre predicament that we can know all the physical and functional properties of a mental state (as we've seen with the neuro siences and AI) without knowing "what's like to have it" or "what it is about."

the conclusion that the property is non-physical seems unavoidable.

here is one example, from erwin schrödinger (1887-1961), the famous physicist: 

The sensation of color cannot be accounted for by the physicist's objective picture of light-waves. Could the physiologist account for it, if he had fuller knowledge than he has of the processes in the retina and the nervous processes set up by them in the optical nerve bundles and in the brain? I do not think so.

not satisfied yet? i understand. these hypothesis are complicated. contrasting them can take the course of a semester (as when you sign for a "philosophy of mind" course). the purpose of this course is to introduce these ideas.