PHILOSOPHY PAPER FIRST ASSIGNMENT (HONORS CLASSES)

topics for philosophy paper here.

proposal sample for your final paper here. 

Our Philosophy Club board + members!

Board
Sebastian Gallo, President
Sebastian Perez-Espina, Vice President
Alenys Jimenez, Treasurer
Mayra Ona,  Secretary 

Members
1. Akeem Anglin
2. Sebastian Duque
3. Glen Camilo
4. Marcos Manuel
5. Karina Rivadeneira
6. Jormailin Valdes
7. Victor Ramirez
8. Natalie Ortega
9. Abraham Elmir
10. Yaqueline Jimenez
11. Carolina Fernandez
12. Salua Rivero
13. Juliane Patricia Alvarado
14. Nataly Gonzalez
15. Brigitte Iglesias

(more members will be added as they sign up)

Examples of conclusions from recent phi 2010 papers

for your conclusion you don't have to say "In conclusion." That's pretty stale. HERE YOU HAVE SOME EXAMPLES:

The conclusion should be assertive, but also deferential. You believe what you say but you don't sound bombastic.

or this,

On the distinction between number and quality when talking about ourselves

aLfreDo tRifF

Because of our discussion yesterday, and some of the comments put forward just before the class ended, we talked about how a white person is not qualified to speak for a black person (and vice versa), a man for a woman (and vice versa), a heterosexual for a homosexual (and vice versa), a non-transgender for a transgender and vice versa). At first, these qualifications may seem limiting, indeed overbearing. After all (as Roberto pointed out), even amongst blacks, a black person may say (referring to another black person), "this black person is not qualified to talk for me."

Let us take, for example, Samuel Horace, a black person, age 21, born in Haiti; an only child, honor student, living in Miami, attending MDC.

We advanced that he belongs in a club all by himself. That's his number. Then comes the qualities (characteristics) he shares with others, let's see: sex (man), race (black), gender (male), age bracket (in his 20s), health features (if he has diabetes, or if he's myopic, or if he's 6 tall, or if he's a math wizard. Even less obvious ones: being an orphan, or having traumatic social memories for being different, etc.

So,
one's own club (SH)
Black person club (..., SH, ...)
Haitian club (..., SH, ...)
Only child club (..., SH, ...)
20-year-old people club (..., SH, ...)
living in Miami (..., SH, ...)
going to MDC (..., SH, ...)
6' tall (..., SH, ...)

And so on...

Each of Samuel Horace's characteristics automatically makes him a member of an infinite number of clubs. What does this mean? Samuel is qualitatively identical to many people. The next question is, how does one evaluate these clubs? Which are the clubs that make up for essential characteristics?

The club race is more important than being 6' tall. Yes, there are both substance clubs, but culturally, one matters more than the other. I, Triff, don't belong to the black club (that doesn't mean I may be admitted to it later). Race is sort of biological; it's a substance. I don't share Horace's "black experience" (meaning culture). Historically, Homo sapiens has been embedded in cultures. Cultural practices and cultural presumptions generally precede our social interactions.

As a white person, can I have opinions about blacks? You bet (this was Athenais' point). That's quite different from the assumption that I can speak as a black, which I'm not. "But I'm a human being." Sure, but to talk about Samuel, I'd have to move up to the human-being club. 

What can I say as a human being to Samuel? All the stuff we share, all the OTHER clubs he and I both belong to! For example, I'm also myopic, live in Miami, and go to MDC. I could also speak about "having been in my 20s" (which I was), or "having been a student" (which I was), etc. I could speak of "being a minority" (which I am) or "being an only child."There's plenty, Samuel, and I share. And yet, not enough.

This will require deliberate, careful threading through the deep. We have a tool: Understanding.

Let us explore the deep: "Under," one must go below the foundation: "the standing": layers of different clubs, horizons of information.

We must get to the task: Not quickly, peremptorily, carelessly, hastily, no. Carefully, deliberately, patiently. The more we try, the more we bridge. We thread the cultural divide, learn the language, cook the food, travel to Port-au-Prince, befriend college students and professors, etc.  The more I do this, the closer I come to understanding Samuel. He'll come to see it.

Can I speak for Samuel now? Sort of. Understanding takes threading the deep, but there is always more to understand. One never understands fully (this is the point Zion made). Infinite number of clubs, many of which --surprise!-- Samuel himself does not understand.

Although in principle I will never "fully" understand Samuel, over time (and with effort), I can understand more and more, even to the extent of others who are in the black club. And that's plenty.  

Government and Philosophy Club constitution

We already have a Philosophy club government.

Here is our Philosophy Club constitution!

We have a president for the MDC Wolfson Philosophy Club!

Sebastian Gallo is the president of the MDC Wolfson Philosophy Club.

He has the names of the students that got in tough with me. Further elections are forthcoming.

Thanks,

Why is 7+5 =12 analytic apriori?

Find the answer here.

A brief history of epistemology (IMPORTANT)

PLATONISM:   Plato believes that reality is always changing, senses are illusory. Knowledge (episteme) needs to be permanent and unchanging. 

For Plato, knowledge is acquired through anamnesis, which is an innate form of recollection, a sort of hardware we come with (for example, humans come with a memory function already built-in by our brain evolution).

Here comes the idea of Forms. Forms exist independently of us: Think of math, logic, geometry, etc. Plato believes these Forms are "universals." A universal is a property that can be possessed by many things at once. Examples of universals: "goodness," "beautiful," "extended," "redness," "human," etc. See that each applies to many things at once. Take "beauty", it is not a physical concept. So, how do we know it? It's a concept that applies to many different things.¿

Hay mucha discusión sobre realismo e idealismo. 

¿Dónde están las formas?  La palabra griega que Platón usa es εἶδος (eîdos), y también ἰδέα (idéa). Ambas están estrechamente relacionadas y suelen traducirse como «Forma» o «Idea». Pero ojo. La «Idea» platónica no significa lo que normalmente entendemos hoy por una idea. 

1. Eîdos / idéa • εἶδος (eîdos) viene de una raíz relacionada con ver (ideîn, «ver»). • Originalmente significa algo como aspecto, figura, forma, aquello que se ve. • ἰδέα (idéa) tiene la misma raíz y también significa originalmente forma, aspecto, apariencia. Platón toma estas palabras y les da un sentido filosófico extraordinariamente preciso. Cuando habla de Idea de Belleza (to kalon), por ejemplo, no está hablando de: mi concepto de lo bello. Platón se refiere a aquello que hace que las cosas bellas sean bellas, una realidad inteligible que no depende de que alguien la piense. 

2. La diferencia con nuestra «idea» Hoy decimos: «Tengo una idea para una película.» Aquí idea significa un contenido mental, algo que ocurre en la mente de alguien. Para Platón la Idea no está primero en la mente; la mente debe llegar a conocerla. ¿En las cosas? No. Entonces la Forma sería simplemente una propiedad. En nuestra mente → tampoco: entonces dependería de nosotros. En un ámbito inteligible → ¡Caliente! Es un ámbito, no físico.

 Take a look at Plato's allegory of the CAVE.

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OTHER SCHOOLS

SKEPTICISM: An attitude of suspension to the possibility of knowledge or absolute knowledge.

It comes from Pyrrho of Elis (c. 365–275 bc). Pyrrhonists, while not asserting or denying anything, attempt to show that one ought to suspend judgment and avoid making any knowledge claims at all. The Pyrrhonist’s strategy is to show that for every proposition supported by some evidence, there is an opposite proposition supported by evidence that is equally good.


RATIONALISM:  (Spinoza, Leibniz, Descartes) rationalism is the view that regards REASON as the chief source of knowledge. Rationalism is also a methodology or a theory in which the criterion of the truth is not sense-based but instead deductive.

There is a connection between Skepticism and Rationalism.

Descartes uses skepticism in his Cartesian method. Doubt requires further rational proof. There are three parts: 1- the Dream Argument, 2- the Evil Demon argument and the 3- the Cogito argument (... I can't doubt that I doubt. Therefore I think, therefore I am). The conclusion is that Descartes believes that scientific knowledge can be derived a priori from "innate ideas" through deductive reasoning. Where these "innate ideas" come from? GOD.

EMPIRICISM:  (John Locke, George Bishop, David Hume) Empiricism is the idea that experience as the main source of knowledge. It emphasizes the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory perception.

Here's an interesting video. 

Empiricists believe in inductive reasoning (making generalizations based on individual instances) in order to build a more complex body of knowledge from these direct observations. This is the basis of modern science, and the scientific method, is considered to be methodologically empirical in nature, relying as it does on an inductive methodology for scientific inquiry.

There are two schools: Locke's Representative Realism and Berkeley's Phenomenalism.

(Lockes's primary and secondary qualities)

For Locke, external physical objects cause our sensory experiences. Primary and secondary qualities explain why people perceive the same object differently. 

The world is divided into realms of qualities: primary qualities, which exist in the object independently of our perception (solidity, motion, shape), and secondary qualities, which depend on our sense perception (sight, taste, hearing, touch, smell).

Berkeley believes that all qualities are secondary. As a result, there is no world independent of our perceptions, except what he calls unperceived perceptions. These are a bundle of perceptions caused by God.

David Hume's skepticism about cause and effect. Hume is an empiricist, so he believes that only experience gives us knowledge. This is why he remains skeptical about causation (the idea that every effect has a cause that makes it happen). 

He goes: "Of two events, A and B, we say that A causes B when the two always occur together, that is, are constantly conjoined. Yet, we don't experience A causing B. We take the conjunction as a fact and are certain that this conjunction "will continue to happen."

This is known as Hume's problem of induction.  

Causality is a posteriori, based on experience. We use induction to justify it. Now, can you conceive of yourself dropping a ball on Earth and it not falling? YES YOU CAN! 

So, Hume says: "the contrary of every matter of fact never implies a contradiction." We are left with a weak notion of causal necessity.

KANT'S SYNTHESIS

Take a look at this video.

Kant's synthesis between Empiricism and Rationalism. 

Kant takes on Hume's challenge. He proposes the following:

a priori: analytic propositions are a priori (independent of experience): "all triangles have three sides," "all bachelors are unmarried males,"

a posteriori: synthetic propositions are a posteriori (based on experience): "Water boils at 100º C," "All creatures with hearts have kidneys."

Then he adds another type: synthetic a priori. Synthetic a priori refers to a type of judgment or knowledge that is both independent of experience (a priori) and informative or expansive enough (synthetic), meaning it adds new information to our understanding rather than just repeating a definition.

For example, "7+5=12" or "the shortest distance between two points is a straight line."

KANT'S CATEGORIES

LAS CATEGORÍAS KANTIANAS Cuando percibimos algo, ¿qué tiene que hacer nuestra mente para poder pensarlo como un objeto? 

Comencemos con algo sencillo: «El vaso se rompió porque cayó al suelo.» 

¿Qué tenemos ahí? 

1. Algo: el vaso. → sustancia 

2. Algo ocurrió: se rompió. → causalidad 

3. Algo existió: el vaso existe. → existencia 

4. El vaso es un vaso particular; tiene ciertas propiedades. → categorías de cualidad, cantidad, etc. 

Kant NO dice que inventemos esas relaciones. Lo que dice es que, sin esas (categories of understanding) categorías del entendimiento, no podríamos organizar los datos sensibles como experiencia objetiva.

The synthetic a priori is a marvel!

1. Every event has a cause.

It's synthetic: the concept of an event does not logically contain having a cause.

Now, why is it a priori? Kant holds that causality is a category of the understanding, a condition for experience.

2. 7 + 5 = 12

Synthetic: the concept 12 is not simply contained in the concepts 7, 5, and addition. You could get 12 through endless addition. 

Addition: 7 + 5 = 12

Multiplication: 3 × 4 = 12

Substraction: 15 − 3 = 12

A priori: we don't need to count twelve objects in experience to know it. 

3. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

Synthetic: the predicate adds something to the concept of a straight line: two points.

A priori: its truth doesn't depend on measuring physical distances. This is probably the classic Kantian example of synthetic a priori knowledge.

KANT'S MIDDLE POINT BETWEEN RATIONALISM AND EMPIRICISM

RATIONALIST SIDE: Kant believes we bring categories with our perceptual apparatus. They are part of our reason capabilities. Ex: time, space, causation, quantity, quality, relation, modality, etc. He agrees with Hume that we do not experience these properties. They are not in the world. Instead, THEY ARE INNATE, HARDWIRED.

EMPIRICIST SIDE: Kant believes that experience is a posteriori: what the empiricists called SENSE DATA obtained through our senses, which is fundamental for the physical sciences. 

So, Kant's synthesis proves that both Empiricism and Rationalism hold.

STANDARD ACCOUNT OF KNOWLEDGE: Knowledge is justified true belief. 

K = JTB 

Phi 2010 syllabus

alfredo triff, ph.d.

room 3604-28 (Building #3, 6th floor)
tel. 305.237.7554
email: atriff@mdc.edu (math buff,  student-shrink, parodist, cook, music lover, design lecturer, cigar smoker, cat lover, part-time hedonist)
office hours: posted

text: Philosophy Here and Now, by  Lewis Vaughn (Third Edition).

goals
* become familiar with contemporary trends in philosophy. *learning how to problematize issues. basically philosophy seeks truth and honesty. the issues are pursued regardless of PC assumptions. *stimulate the philosophical spirit (curiosity & perseverance), *ethics of dialogue, which is the art of conveying your point & finally, * philosophy for life, which is Sophia's advice to the neophyte.

evaluation

1. grades "A," "B" and "C" stand for outstanding, good and average respectively. "D" is below average. "F" means not enough work to justify credit for the course.

2. we have 4 exams and a paper. all exams are worth the same. the final paper is about 15 pts of the final grade, punctuality and participation the remaining points.

the breakdown is a qualitative approximation (my grades are generally curved).

3. attendance is mandatory. 3 non-excused absences are permitted. each absence thereafter will lower the participation grade by a 1/3 of a grade. missing exams must be justified by a doctor’s note or the equivalent. under no circumstances a student will take two exams in my office!

4. homeworks are important but they are your duty. the routine is that we start each class with a HW-review. 

schedule of classes

Chapter 1: Philosophical and You

Chapter 7: Epistemology

Exam #1

Chapter 4: Mind and the Body

Chapter 5: Free Will and Determinism

Midterm Exam

Chapter 3: The Moral Life

 
Chapter 8: The Just Society

Exam #3

Chapter 7: Aesthetics

Chapter 2: God and Religion

Final Exam

i reserve the right to make changes in the order or chapters, provided i let you know in advance.

____________________
missing tests: if a student has valid reasons for missing an exam, i will grant a makeup (with proper justification). once justification is provided, the student may take the exam in my office. however, there is only one such opportunity. a student will not be allowed to take two exams in my office (or else they forfeit the result of the second test taken for a "C"). 

are there aesthetic facts?

 picasso's Guernica, 1937

is there aesthetic knowledge?

this is a very important question.

without aesthetic knowledge it becomes quite difficult to evaluate why we like what we like other than begging the question on our taste. "

It's good because I like it"? (kind of circular)

I propose this soft formula

aesthetic judgments  = aesthetic facts + aesthetic norms

aesthetic norms evolve through a process of trial and error in time (hundred of thousand of years). there is an evolutionary argument to be made for aesthetic norms (since late homo erectus and homo sapiens). they already had internalized certain facts pertaining early medicine, early cooking, moral norms (which we already discussed), early art, early religion. 

why do we enjoy certain colors? the smell of firewood? the sight of a sunset? why did we have to make this figurine?

Willendorf Venus, circa 30,000 BC

Our paleolithic ancestors are telling us what matters: THE GODDESS OF FERTILITY.  The figurine conjures at once beauty and magic. 

homo sapiens could not have built civilizations without aesthetic norms (Lacaux paintings)

look at the Karnak Temple in Egypt. the construction requires a degree of consensus pertaining planning, measuring, transportation of materials, construction methods, manufacture, masonry technology, etc. yet, from the anthropological standpoint it's difficult to establish which comes first, the norms or the society (since any society comes with norms in it).

NOT ONLY IN ART and ARCHITECTURE, BUT ALSO IN THE CULINARY ARTS.

are there aesthetic facts in the chicken broth? 

you bet.

in the long evolution of the production of the stock (we call it CULINARY SCIENCE) we get the right method. it's right because it tastes better, it tastes better because of the facts of the matter of the preparation. YES, SLOW IS MUCH BETTER. 

why? MORE COLLAGEN EXTRACTED FROM THE BONES. this is a chemical property, which translates into TASTE. this is a CULINARY FACT.

there are culinary facts, musical facts, political facts, etc:

what makes an aesthetic "fact"? 

aesthetic facts = aesthetic norms + facts

here is a diagram about the construction of consensus:

see that the info is negotiated via cause/effect inter-subjectively from the outside into consensus and from consensus into best consensus. best consensus' main property is that it's more reliable, more resistant to to and fro from the outside

take picasso's GUERNICA above. we'd examine the painting's formal qualities, the new style it represents  (Cubism & Surrealism), as well as the painting's reception (Spanish pavillion 1937 and all the people that have written about the painting) and its influence in subsequent 20th & 21st century art (the intersubjectivity explain the consensus, which takes time to build: best consensus cannot be produced overnight).

the best consensus provides the best explanation for these "notes." this slow layer-upon-layer of reasons through the centuries become a formidable value accumulation. the term "masterpiece" simply describes the process.    

this is when i made a distinction between saying:

1. I hate Guernica and 2. Guernica is a mediocre painting. 

there differences here to note:

1. is a personal opinion, which one is entitled to; 2. is a statement of "fact" going against the best consensus.

 2. is actually quite difficult. to prove 2. one would have to produce an argument to defeat 81 years of consensus; not impossible, but unlikely.

from 1. to 2. there is an enormous value/gap, which the counter would have to defeat.

Guernica is a masterpiece because of the "facts" pertaining Guernica, which is why it is in the CANON.

consensus is NEVER static. it's a dynamic process where each Guernica reviewed and written about, discussed, is different than the previous one. numerically speaking there is only one Guernica, qualitatively there are many.

this is how the work becomes canonical (or part of the canon of a civilization).

consensus lends itself to best consensus. best consensus is just the best of the previous consensus. "best" is important because it is more reliable. less subject to negotiation with plain info.

best consensus is not what makes Guernica a masterpiece. Guernica is a masterpice because of "facts" in Guernica. what the best consensus does is flesh out these "facts".

have gotten only one email about the philosophy club... c'mon, make this happen, it's yours!

triff office hours @ 3604-28

M,W,F: 8-9:40am
T, R: 9:50-11:05am, 
M: 3:30-5:30pm,
R: 12:30-1:30pm,

are you interested in leading a philosophy club?

the philosophy club (PHICLUB from hereon) at wolfson campus & it's ready for business.

if you're interested in becoming a president, vice, secretary, treasurer and eliciting philosophical discussions with the support of your professor and student union, etc, come to me, first-come, first-served.

PHICLUB points.

1- the responsibility of the PHICLUB: elect a president, secretary, treasurer, etc.

2- to stimulate a democratic environment,  the president conducts issues to be treated and assigns issues to be discussed in future meetings. based on suggestions and/or criticisms, he/she stipulates what to do next.

3- it's advisable to have an agenda that the president will provide. at least, the agenda must be announced at the beginning of the meeting.

4- since much of philosophy is about arguments, all disagreements be treated in a civilized manner. there should be a box for suggestions to be examined by the president and the secretary & suggestions should be aired and confronted.

5- the PHICLUB should meet weekly, preferable inside a classroom (accommodations are possible & the president could arrange it).

6- it's good to keep minutes of each meeting. they are the club's proof of direction.

7- the PHICLUB should try to expand and reach out to other students.

8- it's advisable to come up with some kind of calendar for the rest of the term served by the president.

9- events should include presentations, debates, field trips and others.

are you ready? send me an email!! election is next week.

triff's interests

1. math (pure beauty, f: topology)
2. science (our best methodologies, f: neurosciences)
3. music (non verbal complexity, f: jazz)
4. reading (philosophy for the most part)
5. nature (the power things in themselves, f: trees, baobab )
6. writing (check miami.bourbaki)
7. good wine (the closest to taste earth in its complexity)
8. cats (elegant, fickle and self-sufficient)
9. food & cooking (should be 4)
10. teaching (keeps me young)

biological naturalism: consciousness is a systemic property of the brain

this is a theory defended by philosopher John Searle.  (The Rediscovery of the Mind)

For Searle, consciousness emerges at certain levels of anatomical organization.

Certainly, the human brain with its approximate 100 Billion neurons (100x10⁹) and 125 Trillion synapses = 125x10¹² (just in the cerebral cortex alone!) has the complexity to generate consciousness.

This is probably true of the brains of nonhuman primates, which also have lots of neurons and neural connections. It is also true for other non human animals. It may not be true of snails, because they may not have enough neurons and interconnections to support (much) consciousness. It's not true of paramecia, because they don't have any neurons at all. And it's certainly not true of thermostats.

According to Searle, the mind (consciousness) is a systemic property of the brain. a biological phenomenon, a property of the brain, but not a purely functional property.

Systemic properties are very common in science, and some can seem quite unexpected just looking at the parts of the "system." For example, water is liquid, even though none of its parts, its molecules, are liquid. Liquidity is a systemic property. But we can explain why water is liquid in terms of its parts and their causal interactions. Another example is transparency – molecules aren't transparent; what makes glass transparent is the way the molecules are organized. In each of these cases, we can explain the "new" systemic property in terms of micro-level interactions.

Again, the mind is a systemic property of the brain. It is the brain as a whole that is conscious, even though its individual parts – neurons – aren't. Consciousness is caused by micro-level brain processes, and if the brain and its causal powers and processes were reproduced, so would consciousness be.

Consciousness cannot be eliminated from scientific discourse because objective, third-person descriptions of brain processes necessarily leave out the first-person subjectivity that lies at the core of phenomenal experience.  

First and foremost, consciousness entails first-person subjectivity. This cannot be reduced to brain-processes because any third-person description of brain-processes must necessarily leave out first-person subjectivity. For that reason, every attempt to reduce consciousness to something else must fail, because every reduction leaves out a defining property of the thing being reduced -- in this case, the first-person subjectivity of consciousness.