Second assignment for the Philosophy paper due next Monday (MINITERM)

Find the second assignment here. 

The identity of history

dead British soldiers at the battle of Fromelles, 1916

of history:

* history is one big glunk,
* history is not the summation of all events (not all events will be recorded), 

* history is not "in" time, time is not a bucket,
* time is a mode of being of reality, time is the becoming of reality,
* from the future we cannot cherry-pick globally while ignoring local regions,

of necessity:

* whatever happens necessarily happens (otherwise SOMETHING ELSE would happen),
* what happens supervenes on the agents contributing the diverse processes including the agents themselves,

problems with presentism:

* presentism is the distortion that the present is normatively better than the past,
* the past cannot be retrofitted into a principle of satisfaction: it is what it is,
* the past can only be understood as IT IS not as it should've been (principle of necessity)
* to understand the past one has to go to the past, rather than bring the past to the present,

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Let's apply what we've learned about the philosophy and neurophysiology of memories in chapter 4 to the idea of history.  

* History is an archive of human events in the world. All events of the past are fair game. A historian is an archivist of all these events.  

* History is not an exact science for two reasons: first, historians dig the past from the present (like a  social memory, whether in the form of texts of archaeological sites. The facts need to be reconstructed). This is where interpretation comes in. second, history is an interpretive science because as the historian describes the facts, he also prescribes (for example: which facts should be selected and what we learn from the past).

* Interpretation is all we have in history and it's OK (as long as we end up with a reliable interpretation), how? getting as close as possible to the truth.

Let's add three points:

1- The past is the memory retention of history,
2- We cannot cherry pick globally ignoring local contexts,
3- Whatever happened, necessarily happened,

Explanation of these points:

1- History is all we have to understand the past. Now, the whole past is a big glunk.

History can be divided into chunks of time that we call epochs. However, be mindful that making a cut in history remains local decision of a global occurrence. Whatever we bring back from the past has to be brought back discreetly. And local decisions always sacrifice global causation (which brings us to 2- and cherry-picking).

History supervenes on society, which supervenes on the agents contributing the diverse processes engulfing the agents themselves.

2- Marx's historical materialism proposes that history is dialectical in that each "moment" is always superseded in the next moment and so on. Supervening all the different "moments" is HISTORY, the glunk, which is as blind to previous and future moments as society is blind to individual agents -or groups trying to bring up change or lack of thereof (this feature of blindness is very important for Marx's historical materialism and Darwin's evolutionary biology).

The machine of history is always in automatic mode. THAT'S A LAW.

For example: we know, now, that slavery is shameful. But there was a moment when slavery was the lay of the land. Take the Rome of the 1st Century AD. At this time, slavery happens (following Marx's hypothesis) not because of specific agents' choices, but because of historic modes and relations of production within societies causing agents to act in certain ways.

Following Marx, one could argue that what ends slavery in America was not this or that particular action of agents, but rather, the North's industrial power plus the civil war, which was a result of fundamental economic changes taking place in America.

here are some moral questions to history (they distort more than they help), history's EVENTUALISM IS NOT MORAL.

1- If the French had a revolution in 1789, how come they had an emperor in 1804, just a few years later? we're asking history what went wrong.

2- Jefferson had slaves, but he was also an enlightened man for his epoch. How do we reconcile the two? Click here and look for 3 different contemporaneous assessments. Here we compare the past with the present to learn a lesson.

3- Are we better off now than before say 200 years ago? The answer seems affirmative (and yet, many people think we're worse off). Here the question compares historic periods.

PRESENTISM and ITS PROBLEMS

Presentism is the idea that we have the duty to correct the moral failings of the past:

1- Presentists ignore that the past is already full. It cannot be retrofitted. 
2- Let's apply proposition 3 above to the present. The present happens necessarily. This has important consequences.
3- Each "moment" is self-contained by its own complexity. Individuals at the bottom can only do so much.

We forget to include ourselves inside the complexity above ourselves!  

Presentism takes for granted that being in the present automatically grants the present epoch a particular privilege over the past. Clearly a mistake, since each cut in the process of history is necessarily caused by the previous one. In other words, the past is full of itself. This unbounded zeal to correct the past has had horrible consequences to the historic sites and memories from the past.

Take a look at this list of genocides committed throughout history.

Are they fair? Of course not. But the question and answer are out of order. It already happened! And it happened as a result of specific conditions IN THE PAST.

Genghis Khan's armies killed about 5% of the combined population of the world! Yet, it's not black and white,  (there are endogenous and exogenous reasons, dependent upon ethnic, economic, social, technological contexts). As you move up the complexity you better understand the seeming absurdity of it all, not to mention the causes for the Mongol's Empire expansion, without which you would not have, as ripple effects) the histories of Muslim and Russian expansion, plus the Renaissance in Europe.

Following their logic, Presentists would see the Mongol invaders as "monsters," "rapists" or "terrorists," etc. To understand the epoch, you have to travel to the past; don't completely give up your epoch, you just suspend it to gain insight into the Mongols' particular context. A good exercise is to become a Mongol soldier ready to fight, and then a native Alans, horrified at the prospect of Khan's army approaching your territory).

to understand the past we must travel to the past rather than bring the past to the present,
the present is always presenting. the past IS NOT.

doing history means "traveling" to the past to apprehend REALITY (reality is neither past nor present). accepting REALITY's own terms.
only then we're ready to bring that lesson to the present. 

let's take a look at some nasty consequences of presentism:

the pyramid of Menkaure, (destroyed by Saladin's son, 12th Century AD),  
Bash Tapia Castle (destroyed by ISIS, 2014),
the destruction of Warsaw (the Nazis 1940s)
Entartete Kunst (presented by the Nazis, 1937)
the Buddhas of Bamiyan (destroyed by the Taliban, 2001)
the Mosque of Babur, (destroyed by Hindus, 1990s)
the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, (destroyed by Stalin in 1931)
Larung Gar, Tibet (demolition by China in 2016)

presentists miss a didactic lesson: better to keep the records of our past, instead of repressing and or destroying and hiding it. for the sake of the future, so it may not happen again.

Midterm review furnished by Devorah Korf (Tuesday 5:40pm class)

Here is a review for the midterm by Devorah Korf (from our Tuesday 5:40pm class)

Triff's Office Hours

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Final exam schedule (Fall 2017)

Many of you have approached me about final exam dates.

Here is the Fall 2017 Exam schedule.

what is a synapse? (the most basic brain state)

a synapse is a structure that permits a neuron (or nerve cell) to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another neuron or to the target effector cell.

different kinds of synapses

Synapses are essential to neuronal function. Neurons are cells that are specialized to pass signals to individual target cells, and synapses are the means by which they do so.

At a synapse, the plasma membrane of the signal-passing neuron (the presynaptic neuron) comes into close apposition with the membrane of the target (postsynaptic) cell. Both the presynaptic and postsynaptic sites contain extensive arrays of a molecular machinery that link the two membranes together and carry out the signaling process. In many synapses, the presynaptic part is located on an axon and the postsynaptic part is located on a dendrite or soma.

List of student assistants (so far)

MWF 10am
Rosangela Rizo
Humbert Torres
Roxy Ochoa

MWF 11am
Selena Bridges
Wilda Jean
Ryan Figueredo

TR 9:50am
Ana Esclusa
Daffodyle Saget

TR 11:15am
Ashley Leonard
Wilson Pena
Gary Zamora

Student Assistant Duties: Organizing reviews before the tests. This takes coordinating the review with me0, as I will post these reviews by sending email blasts to the class and posting review dates on our website. Being available for consultation.

THANKS,

chapter 4: philosophy of mind (all sections)

4.1 Mind/Body problem

(you should know all the definition boxes in section 2.1)

Descartes believes the mind = res cogitans (non-physical substance)
body =  res extensa (matter has extension)

1- according to Descartes, the mind is a thinking, non-physical substance.
proof: conceivability argument: "I can conceive that I exist without a body"
divisibility argument: If the body and the mind were the same, what I say of the mind I can say of the body (Principle of Indiscernibility of Identicals), but mind and body are different, one is extended the other is not, one can be divided, the other not. so, mind & body are different.
  

therefore: mental states (MS) are non-physical.

2- The hypothesis that the mind and the body are completely different is called cartesian dualism.

3- how does the mind interact with the body? Descartes believes through a interactive process that passes through the pineal gland (clearly this explanation is flawed, given today's advancements in neurophysiology).

Counter to Descartes & the principle of closure of the physical
4- a physical effect can only have a physical cause, this is known as the principle of closure of the physical. clearly, since cartesian dualism violates this, many conclude that the mind (if it exists at all) must be epiphenomenal, e.g., the body affects the mind, but the mind doesn't affect the body).

5- the problem of other minds.
both epiphenomenalism and cartesianism are face the problem of other minds. the mind is experienced directly, but there's no way of telling from the outside whether one has a mind or not. you cannot experience anybody else's mind.

the importance of descartes' argument is that he provides a deductive argument for the mind as non-physical thinking substance that is valid (though not sound). 

(physicalist theories, MIND DISAPPEARS)

Logical behaviorism: (the mind as behavior)  is the theory that mental states are behavioral dispositions.

a behavioral disposition (behavioral states) is a tendency to respond to certain stimuli in certain ways.

ex: smoking. how is "smoking" a behavioral disposition? a person is in contact with smokers environments (parents, friends providing the stimuli, etc). the behavior is repeated (without the repetition we don't get the disposition), once the behavior becomes automatic we have a disposition, i.e., the person smokes given the right conditions.    

behaviorism is an important measure understanding habits, human actions, freedom and responsibility, it's essential in the analysis of character.

so, MS --> BhS 

counters to logical behaviorism: The Perfect Pretender & and Putnam's Superspartans (you should know these).

problem with logical behaviorism is that it defines

summary: logical behaviorism is a materialistic theory. it doesn't postulate immaterial entities. it's also reductive because any statement about minds can be reduced to statements about behavior.

Identity theory: (the mind as a brain) mental states are brain states MS --> BrS

summary: the idea now is that any discussion about the mind is really a discussion about the brain. identity theory seems a better theory than behaviorism because it's closer to the source which causes mental states.

counters to identity theory: Nagel's Bat and Lewis' Pained Martian (you have to know these).

see that from Nagel's Bats thought experiment we learn two important features of the mind: it's 1- subjective and 2-private. so, the fact that we feel our minds from the inside is actually points to a quality (qualia).

another problem for identity theory is multiple realizability:  the thesis that the same mental property, state, or event can be implemented by different physical properties, states, or events. in other words, a supercomputer, an alien, can have a mind (think of a property that must be able to be instantiated by different realizers and different mechanisms: for example: the classic spring mousetrap and the glue mousetrap instantiate the same property, the ability to trap mice, but they do so through different mechanisms).  

summary: brains states can be known by empirical investigation, not so with mental states. 
identity theory is a reductive theory because any talk about mental states means talking about brain activity. 

Functionalism: (the mind as a program) mental states are functional states. MS --> FS

for functionalism the mind is what the brain does. and it allows mental states to serve both as input and output of other mental states. example: suppose you believe your boyfriend is cheating on you, now your mind causes you to become jealous. so, mental states don't only cause behaviors, in addition, they also cause other mental states.  

counters to functionalism: Lewis' Pained Madman and Putnam's Inverted Spectrum.