Sending your peer-reviewed drafts to me. Due: all of next week (I'll review in the order I receive!) HONORS

Now you're going to input the observations obtained in our in class peer-review session and send then to me via email.
Please, in the email subject write down your Honors group, i.e., MWF 11am Honors 
Otherwise I'll send it back and ask you to do it. I don't have time to open the doc and find out which class you belong to (remember I'm teaching three Honors classes!)

Remember that your draft's heading must look like this:

Doe, John
First Draft (peer reviewed)
Phi 2010 Honors
MWF 10am

Same Sex Marriage: How Civil Rights Matter

I will not accept drafts that are not peer-reviewed (you've got to get a Student Assistant or a friend to do this for you, otherwise I'll send it back).

are you interested in the neurobiology of memories?

click here.

Also this important video about the history of the neurobiology of memories. 

why causes are so complicated

social events are all exteriority. a person does X, but the causes are hidden. where? it's complicated.
don't just jump to conclusions.

again: suppose A does X,
A may do it,

1. automatically (first order desire, contidioned behavior, i.e., shopping habits, marching in the square under totalitarianism, eating disorder, phobias, etc).
2. influenced (positive stimulus: immediate level of family, school, peers, church, gang, cabal, etc)
3. coerced (same as above, the stimulus is negative now)
4. free (reluctantly)
5. free (willingly)

though 1-5 are socially equivalent, there are different causal colors: 
1. is compulsive, whether brain, DNA, or conditioning (mitigating factors of responsibility)   
3. & 4. are conflictual (mitigating factors of responsibility)
2. is willing but it hides foreign influences (mitigating factors for responsibility) or self-deceptive influences ("bad faith" in sartre's jargon)
only 5. seems transparently willing,

be tough, easy is deceptive.

traditionalist view of tweaking social roles

social conditioning is in part conventional -but not solely conventional.

social roles express social memes passed on by social selection. and these are not stereotypes. at least not taking "stereotype" in a negative sense. there are actually positive stereotypes.

remember, society supervenes on individuals and societies of societies supervene on societies. so i ask, what's important and not important in social roles? we don't fully know.

in economics, history and system theory, this is known as law of unintended consequences.

here are some examples.

* spain's discovery of the new world and gold, actually made spanish mercantilism stronger (more money more mismanagement) which makes for more war (england, france, etc) which ends up depleting the very sources of wealth. in less than three centuries, spain became poorer and weaker.
* the chimney solves the exhaust industrial problems of 19th century, only to contribute to acid rain in the twenty-first century.
* antibiotics are one of the great advances in medicine, but their over prescription has resulted in the development of antibiotic-resistant diseases.
* the bolshevik revolution of 1917 in Russia announces a new era of human equality and progress. instead brings the horrors of the gulag labor camps and the purges of the 1930s under Stalin.
* as farming becomes automatized to serve the needs of a more populated planet, which is a direct cause of deforestation. 
* the discovery of nuclear fission, so important for nuclear power, simultaneously becomes the main ingredient for the nuclear arms race during the cold war.
* at a supervinient level, modernity is responsible for the ills of postmodernity.
* animal farming seeks the laudable goal of maximizing production output and keeping affordable prices, while on the other hand it increases carbon footprint, methane and poor living conditions for these animals.

*we're beginning to understand the negative side of renewable energy (it pollutes the environment and costs more than hydrocarbons.

the list goes on and on.....

as we pretend to cherry-pick social roles, we ignore that they are cogs-in-a-wheel.how so? a "role" is not just one thing. it's a composite, each with different influence:

1-micro/social influences: say, taking children to learn judo, which gives them structure perseverance and resilience.
2- genetic influences: for instance, how athletic ability predisposes athletic roles and mathematical abilities predispose some for scientific roles.
3- cultural influences: for example, soccer players are regarded higher in european countries, not so much here, where soccer is less popular. &
4- situational influences: roles which depend on the situation a person is put in outside their own influence, i.e., say, myself as consumer (but which impacts my family and my community)

societies are supervinient structures. they are necessarily hierarchical. no matter what you do to change a hierarchy, in the end another hierarchy replaces the old one.

don't fight it. you can't eliminate social roles. they exist for a reason.

(to boot, don't ignore that there's proof of darwinian sex roles in the animal kingdom).

it's Π day!

it's Π day!!
your highness Π is at once irrational & transcendental! (another in this league is e)

Π figures in these eleven wonderful mathematico-physical formulas:

1- Euler's formula, 
2- Cauchy's integral formula, 
3- the gamma function,
4- Riemann's zeta function,
5- Gaussian integral, 
6- Plank's constant,
7- Einstein field equation, 
8- Stokes' law, 
9- Fourier's transform, 


What would math be without Π?

________________________
note: how about mixing these e and π? you get the gelfond constant.

 which is a transcendental number!

Are you into kinetic art? Come this Saturday at check out Julio Le Parc's exhibit at PAMM

Dear classes: Don't miss Julio Le Parc show at PAMM.

When Le Parc arrived in Paris from his native Argentina in the late 1950s, he was just a young artist about your age, trying to make his name in the world’s art capital. Over the next fifty years, he would develop his signature optical style, going on to win the Grand Prize in Painting at the Venice Biennale.

But since the 1960s, the artist has only exhibited a few times in the United States. Now, American audiences will be able to rediscover the frantic energy of the 88-year-old’s work with a survey of over 100 pieces in his oeuvre at Miami's PAMM —this is the artist's first solo museum show in North America.

Learn the interactive beauty of cinetic art. The best part. This saturday is FREE.

Are you coming? I'll be there around 10am. Please, send me emails to coordinate.

cherry-picking the past

Jimmi lived an intense short life and yet, left a legacy wondrous artistry   

Dear class:

I should clarify some of the points discussed in our last class, since a lot was said. I implied that we should learn to see the past with the proper lenses of the past. You have to start at the bottom and build up to the next level and so on. Without proper context, one's analysis of history is disconnected. History supervenes on events. History is always a collection of events and events are big lumps of contexts. One doesn't go all the way up without proper understanding of what happens at the bottom. 

To that effect, I brought up the Flower Generation of the 1960s and their use of drugs, which is quite different, in terms of social consequence, from, say, our present opioid epidemic. Past & present belong in different social & political contexts. It's a mistake to hastily link the two without sorting the contextual differences. To that effect I made the point that Jimmi Hendrix's formidable artistry cannot be separated from his drug addiction.*

What I meant to say is that wishing for a different outcome in the case of Hendrix's life, i.e., that his life would have been better off without his drug addiction, simply points to a fruitless projection of the present into the perfect sufficiency of the past.

One cannot cherry-pick the past into an idyllic version of one's choosing.

But my point was broader. I wasn't talking about drugs per se, but about comprehending the past in its proper context. Judging the past demands subtle analysis.  

The past comes together with all its GLUNK.

I had Spinoza's Property #33 of his Ethics in mind:

Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained.

Which brings us to the actual world. Ours. With all its seemingly unsolvable problems. Our world is perfect in all its foul-smelling nastiness, boundless greed  and gaping horror. But there's also youth, faith, honesty and much beauty. Embrace the world: all of it.

AMOR FATI.

 This world cannot not have you in it!  

____________________
* This in no way glamorizes drug addiction. There is no "glamorization" of a life, because a life is irreducible to any possible description of it. Heroin was the drug of choice of bebop virtuosos that revolutionized jazz in the 1940s: Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Dexter Gordon, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, et all. Why do we find this problem? Bebop's context! Perhaps bebop was a sort of "contagious disease." There was the hardship of racial segregation, musical discovery, the hardship of a music form understood only by a few, etc.

PHI 2010 HONOR CLASSES advice for your first drafts!

1. the paragraph form of your paper here. 

2.  how to properly transition from paragraph to paragraph (the art of transitioning phrases).

3. every factoid you mention in your draft must be cited in-text and in the bibliography. 

4. follow this advice, please.

5. refrain from injecting your thesis views in the counter's paragraphs, or using innuendo or disparaging the counters' views. this is prohibited!!

6. do not just drop-a-quote like a brick.

incorrect: 

A study show that a "retrieval from long term memory is a vital cognitive skill that can be practiced by children from the age of three." (Popovich, 2014)

instead, properly identify the quote for the reader:

correct:

A study published by Tom Popovich, professor of epidemiology at the University of Texas, concludes that "retrieval from long term memory is a vital cognitive skill that can be practiced by children from the age of three." (Popovich, 2014)

7. Rashila Fernando, president of the 2015 Voltaire Society, offers a good triffian advice here. 

8. do not Copy & Paste paragraphs. I'll detect it.  masticate & digest the ideas, internalize what you read!!! 

9. read your draft out loud once! read your draft out loud twice! your draft's words are your mind's distillation.  

HONORS CLASSES these are the guidelines for our in-class draft peer-review session (next Wednesday)

our in-class peer-review session is next Wednesday

click here for details.

Triff's tomato sauce

"... nothing like spaghetti & tomato sauce to start a romance."-- Anonymous Italian cook.

Querida clase: No compren más pomos desabridos de salsa de tomate en PUBLIX. ¡Qué bochorno! EL TOMATE EN SU SALSA A FUEGO LENTO... ESA ES LA VERDAD.

This recipe is simple and rewarding and entertaining and liberating. It has taken some time to perfect. Here's what you need:

Hardware

a decent 10 inch chef's knife (sharpened)*, later, you will need this,
and a decent cutting board,

Ingredients:

x-tra virgin 1/4 cup olive oil,
1 onion, finely diced** (thus the sharpened knife),
2 bay leaves (preferably fresh, retrieve them before serving),
1 teaspoon chopped fresh oregano,
4 garlic cloves, mashed & roughly chopped.

Method:

Place your chef's knife on top of each clove, and use your hand's heel to give it a decisive thump where the clove sits underneath and crush away. Then you can chop it (not too much). Italian old masters advised that the garlic oil is released much better if chopped without it.

salt to taste,
2 tablespoons tomato paste,
a splash of white wine (any pinot grigio works, not vino seco!  Please)
two 26-ounce boxes Pomi Chopped Tomatoes (or two 28-ounce cans whole plum tomatoes, CENTO San Marzano with its liquid). San Marzano is a better option.

Preparation:

Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add onions, bay leaf, oregano, garlic, and salt and cook, stirring until the onions are soft and translucent, about 10 minutes (don't be compulsive, don't stir your food too much). Now, add the tomato paste and continue cooking for 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes and the wine and stir constantly until the sauce begins to boil (if you use San Marzano plum tomatoes, squeeze them with your hands [watch out, your hand pressure! you don't want plum bits in your white shirt] as you add them, add the liquid).

Lower the heat now and simmer for 45 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes or so to prevent the sauce on the bottom of the pot from burning. A secret: if needed, add a pinch of sugar, or if you want a barky overtone, grate a cinnamon stick two strokes, just for a taste-color. Season with additional salt, if desired. Remove the bay leaves before serving.

Voilà!

___________________
*You are not a cook until you own a 10" chef knife. No negotiations here.

** You tell a cook from his ability to chop an onion, by the way, Ramsey is a natural (caution: practice carefully and little by little, or you'll lose a distal phalange in the process).

Nazzira's hummus

Hummus is tasty and homey. It is a good source of protein and fiber. Chickpeas are high in iron, folate, phosphorus, and vitamin B.

Nazzira's* hummus

1 cup dried chickpeas,
2 teaspoons baking soda,
4 garlic cloves peeled
⅓ cup (or more) fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more
⅔ cup tahini
¼ teaspoon (or more) ground cumin
x-tra virgin olive oil (for serving)

The secret is baking soda for your chickpeas. If you do it from a Goya can, boil water and soak the chickpeas for five minutes. Do not throw away the can juice; use it later.  

Go through the steps of tradition. slow is better! This is how you learn the history and the secrets. secrets are in the details:

1. place chickpeas and 1 tsp. baking soda in a bowl and add cold water to cover by 2". Cover and let sit at room temperature overnight. drain and rinse.

2. bring to a boil, skimming surface as needed. reduce heat to medium-low, partially cover, and simmer until chickpeas are tender and completely falling apart, 45–60 minutes. drain, set aside.

(Secret: if you remove the skin off the chickpeas the end result is much better). 

3. meanwhile, mash the garlic and salt with a pestle (you need something like this), add the lemon juice; let the paste sit 10 minutes to allow garlic to mellow.

4. return liquid to food processor. add tahini and pulse to combine. with motor running, add ¼ cup ice water by the tablespoonful and process (it may seize up at first) until mixture is very smooth, pale (this is important), and thick.

5. add chickpeas and cumin and process, occasionally scraping down sides, until mixture is extremely smooth, about 4 minutes. thin with more water if you prefer a looser consistency; taste and season with salt, more lemon juice, and more cumin if needed.

6. spoon hummus into a shallow bowl, making a well in the center, and drizzle with oil. top with spanish smoked paprika.

mmmmm, earthy, creamy, nutty and pungent. serve this with pita bread: the pita should be hot, either in the oven or few seconds in a microwave.

Bon appétit!
_________________

* Nazzira was my jida, good cook and a polyglot (she spoke arabic and french fluently, some spanish and broken english). not a bad singer. 😃

Interamerican class (HONORS)

Dear class: Sorry I missed today’s class. I had an urgent personal problem to attend to.

Let me address our test Monday. The topics are up. There couple of things I want to come back to:

1- Traditional Compatibilism. Remember that they maintain that determinism and free will are compatible. How? Our DNA, brain, social conditioning, etc, cause our mental states. They become Nagel properties (subjective 1st person reports) that the subject acts upon. It’s in this sense that one is free. Free will is expressed as a tree of possibilities. Suppose you have a node with (a) and (b) options. You are free at (b) provided you could’ve taken (a) and didn’t. It’s in this sense that they say you’re free if you could’ve done otherwise. The Traditional Compatibilist

2- Sartre’s Existentialism & the issue of facticity. Facticity is the external impediments one is not responsible for. They are very few: Your parents, DNA, name, culture embeddedness (at least the formative years). Everything else you are responsible for, including being responsible for the forthcoming hurricane coming through Florida. Why? Because you choose to live here. A student in my 10 am honors class asked me if the laws of nature are facticity. The answer is yes. Anything that constrains your free will is facticity.

presentism & PC are inseparable friends

1. presentism is the belief that the present is normatively infallible. in this sense they are time absolutists. 

this a Pyrrhic victory, because the present is merely the past of the coming future, and as "past" it will be judged accordingly by the next generation. we always find ourselves in a space/time box (what historians call weltanschauung).

2. what happens is that our world/view supervenes on our particular subject/view.

one is simply not aware of one's social embeddedness until later -maybe never. as time flows, difference sets in the world/view as a shift. we call this entre-temps. in a sense, we're always entre-temps, though we don't realize it -incidentally, presentists don't belabor these details.

here's a nuanced statement a presentist would disagree with:

Thomas Jefferson had slaves and yet, he was still enlightened for his times. 

but for the optic of 1800s America, Jefferson was by no means your average smarty. he was -politically speaking- ahead of his time. make no mistake: slavery is wrong, but this was not entirely clear in early 1800s America (for the reasons explained in 2.)

3. presentists's black-and-white optic ignores these necessary color gradations. they are not ready to wear 1800s glasses to understand Jefferson's times because their motto is "my time rules."

their thinking is unidimensional.   

PC only adds a layer of partisan avouchment. PC's problem is not its content, but its delivery.*      
  

____________________________________ 
* take these silly recommendations. transgender people ought to be protected, but you don't have to create a new sub-grammar to achieve social justice. if "she" and "he" don't fit this particular case, we still have "it." why should a non-binary transgender be offended that i use "it" or "this person" to refer to their non-binary status? this constant preempting a "possible" offense ends up causing the very problem it tries to solve.

PC and diversity

diversity is the condition of being diverse.

for the idea of diversity to make sense, it needs to be defended across the spectrum. diversity means that no argument should be rejected solely on the grounds that it's offensive.

here are some examples:

Hitler's Mein Kempf, (in the 1920s, still offensive to Jews in the 2000s)
Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, (1990s, offensive to Muslims, particularly during Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini's tenure)
Ginsberg's Howl (offensive to 1960s sexual mores)
Nabokov's Lolita (1950s, still offensive for its pedophilic content)
Burroughs' Naked Lunch (offensive to 1960s sexual mores)
Serranos' Piss Christ (offensive to Christians in the late 1980s)
Hebdo's caricatures of Mohamed (2010s, offensive to Muslims)
Mapplethorpe's Black Book (erotic depictions of black men became offensive to some in the black community during the late 1980s)
Prodigy's Smack My Bi*** Up (offensive to some Feminists during the 2000s)
Passolini's SALÒ (banned for a long time, due to its pornographic content)
Spasojevic's A Serbian Film,  (banned in many countries because of its pedophilic content)
... etc,
that's a pretty diverse list (if you are ready to defend it).

clearly, diversity, as such, cannot check itself. we need a system of checks and balances to give diversity a proper space among the different factions pulling it apart. this is called tolerance.

tolerance doesn't require you to accept -or reject- something; only that you allow it to exist.

for the sake of diversity, that something has a right to be there.

are you? better ask yourself this question,  am I ready to defend such-and-such even if it insults me, disgusts me?

depending your answer, you're ready -or not- to defend the tolerance of diversity.

(as it turns out, these efforts contradict the idea of diversity -and the purported idea of PC as arbiter of such protection).

what true diversity requires is tolerance.

PC going amuck

this idea is crazy. language is not a top/down proposition. it needs to emerge from the bottom/up

proof 1: MLK's words are now (offensive?)

proof 2: "boy" and "girl" are offensive

proof 3: "freshman" is sexist

proof 4: "mothers" can be sexually offensive

proof 5: (math is offensive)

proof 6: a new sub-grammar (to avoid being offensive)

proof 7:  Schiele's art is offensive (& should be covered) 

proof 8: Balthus @ the MET is offensive

proof 9: skii slopes are masculinized (how about gravity?)

proof 10: deserves a quote (benches' handrails are hostile)

Handrails also divide the benches at Trinity Church and Jamaica Pond, and solar panels segment flashy new seats in Central Square. This is hostile architecture. These narrowly spaced partitions—like concrete spikes on highway medians and iron studs on sidewalks—exist to keep people from lying down when they have no place else to sleep. Hostile architecture is designed to repel the homeless and others who “loiter” in public spaces.

proof 11: the statement, "effort was 10 percent of the grade" in a syllabus is "sexual harassment"

the list goes on and on...

when is a proposition false, true?

mind experiments. why? (for gabrielle)

gedankenexperimente (G) for short, are used in every discipline.

here are some famous Gs.

Zeno's arrow 
Putnam's Twin Earth,
Thomson's violinist, 
Einstein's elevator, 
Seartle's Chinese room, 
Schrödinger's cat,
Maxwell's demon, 
Foot's Trolley Problem,
Einstein's light beam,
Ship of Theseus, 

and many more......................................

what are the conditions under which G operates? It should not violate either logical or causal possibilities. 

what do Gs achieve?

1. they challenge the prevailing status quo (which includes activities such as correcting misinformation, or misapprehension;
2. they identify flaws in the arguments presented, to preserve objectively established facts, and to refute specific assertions that some particular thing is permissible, forbidden, known, believed, possible, or necessary;
3. they extrapolate beyond the boundaries of already established fact; predict and forecast the (otherwise) indefinite and unknowable future;
4. they explain the past; the retrodiction, postdiction and hindcasting of the (otherwise) indefinite and unknowable past;
5. they facilitate decision making, choice and strategy selection;
6. they solve problems, and generate ideas;
7. they move current (often insoluble) problems into another, more helpful and more productive problem space;
8. they attribute causation, preventability, blame and responsibility for specific outcomes;
assess culpability and compensatory damages in social and legal contexts;
9. they ensure the repeat of past success;

mind experiments are great to investigate essential properties in things.
an essential property is one that the thing cannot lose without ceasing to exist. example: consciousness in persons.

I presented in class the possibility that I, Triff, am Haitian, born of Haitian parents. Is it possible? Yes. If so, that shows that my race, or ethnicity, is not an intrinsic property of myself.
If so, we keep finding consequences, and so on.

Hope this helps.

Philosophy Club First Debate: next Monday, March 6

elephants are being hunted with poisoned arrows

We finally will have a Philosophy Club debate (and I'm honored to be invited as observer).

The club has come up with the following topic:

How the human treatment of animals can improve the treatment of humans themselves. 

Few would agree that the practice above is Ok. The club wants to probe a more the issue of our treatment of those animals we use for food, entertainment, etc.

Carnivorous, vegetarians, pet owners, hunters, get ready!

Rules of engagement

*Be prepared with a basic argument to defend your position.
*Each contender has 3 minutes to expose and from then on, a minute to counter. 

The moderator

After each group exposes their initial argument, the discussion begins. Both individuals are supposed to be aware of their time (1 min) to counter. If one goes over the time, Marcos will politely add: "Your time is up" and yield 30 more seconds. This will allow the person to finish their point without being cut off. The moderator's job is to keep the discussion going, and keep the point from meandering too much. The moderator avoids circularity and takes back the discussion to the main argument. He will exhibit grace and politeness.     

Debate behavior

*Avoid addressing the opponent. Stick to the argument.
*When discussing, allow the opposer to talk and finish her point. If you get interrupted, you could politely say: "If I may, I wish to add something" or "Can I finish my point?" 
*While discussing the point, be prepared to acknowledge that the opposer has made a point worth pondering. This brings down the temperature and tends a bridge of consensus between you and your opponent.  
*Bring your behavior to show engagement and curiosity. Avoid facial expressions that show either disdain, contempt, or aloofness. After the debate it's better to have a friend than an enemy. 
*The debate moderator will reserve the right to indicate when one side needs to yield.   

Good luck!

PHI 2010 HONORS some good advice for how to plan your PHI 2010 draft

some good advice for how to plan your PHI 2010 draft (will you read the whole thing? methinks not)

PHI 2010 student assistants: please pass attendance sheets prior to your midterm reviews!

PHI 2010 HONORS getting your draft in shape

in this link, a brief analysis of a final draft (HONORS).  

this is a good video defending determinism (by sam harris)

click here.

Topics for exam #2 (MINITERM)

Chapter 7: Epistemology
belief: a mental state of acceptance
justification: reason for holding your belief
suspension: neither belief nor disbelief


truth by correspondence: truth is a fact
pragmatic theory of truth: truth is whatever does the best job at hand
coherence theory of truth: truth is whatever best coheres with the rest of our knowledge
standard theory of knowledge: knowledge is true belief

you should be familiar with the definitional boxes on chapter 7, pages 537 & 539.

Idealism (Plato): 

Reality is always changing, senses are limited. Knowledge is acquired through an exercise of Reason. These are the Forms. Reason is used to discover unchanging forms through the dialectical method, a process of question and answer designed to elicit a "real definition". These are the necessary and sufficient conditions for the concept to apply. Example: a chair is a form, "this blue chair in my office" is an example of the form. the actual chair is but a manifestation of the "real" chair in the forms.

Skepticism: An attitude of suspension to the possibility of knowledge or absolute knowledge. The skeptics use suspension as a method. The he goal of ancient skepticism is to produce a state of "ataraxia" or "freedom of mind" in the souls of its practitioners. It is not about eliminating doubt, but eliminating the cause of the mental distress people experience when doubts assail their minds.

Faith and reason:  A fundamental discussion throughout the Middle Ages is the dichotomy between faith and reason. Faith takes St. Paul's definition: "... faith is the assurance of what we hope for and the certainty of what we do not see." There are three moments: 1- Emphasis on faith over reason in the early patristic theology  2- both faith and reason become complementary in St. Thomas Aquinas, 3- with William of Ockham faith and reason are not related.

Rationalism:  (Spinoza, Leibniz, Descartes) In epistemology, rationalism is the view that regards reason, la Raison in Descartes, as the chief source and test of knowledge. How does reason operates. Take the idea of a priori or knowledge independent of experience. You don't need to know that it's actually raining to know that the proposition "it's either raining or not raining" is true. The proposition is true a priori. 1=1 is a priori, "all triangles have three sides" is a priori, etc. 

The arguments used in Rationalism are generally deductive arguments.

That's why Descartes believed that scientific knowledge can be derived a priori from "innate ideas" through deductive reasoning.

Empiricism:  Empiricism is the idea that the origin of all knowledge is sense experience. It emphasizes the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory perception, in the formation of ideas. Instead of Cartesian "innate ideas," humans have a posteriori knowledge (i.e. based on experience).

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.

Kantianism: Kant provide a synthesis between Empiricism and Rationalism.

Kant acknowledges both reason and sense experience. This is how he does it:

We have a sort of "hardware" of a priori knowledge. He calls them "pure intuitions" which make experience possible. These pure intuitions are space, time and causality. 

Chapter 3


3.1
 
Causal Determinism (C-->E + LN) and Hard determinism (the doctrine that there are no free actions). 

Hard determinism assumes that: if CD is true ---> -Fw  

As our bodies made up of matter, we must be subjects to the same laws of causation which apply to all matter.

In addition, if HD is true ---> -HR (there's no human responsibility) if we are not free, we cannot be responsible for our actions (since one is responsible if and only if one can make choices). 

3.2
 
Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are not mutually exclusive.

Soft determinism: Determined actions can nevertheless be free. 

1- Traditional Compatibilism (Free actions are 1- caused by one's will and 2- not externally constrained). The reasoning is this:

Principle of alternative possibilities: one can be held responsible for doing something only if one could have done otherwise. "could have done otherwise." 

I suggested this formula. 

f(b) iff -f(a)  (you are free at b if you could have taken a but didn't)

which means "if you had chosen otherwise, then you would have done otherwise." 

Think of our "fork-example" of a student being late for class. He chooses ( A) "having coffee with lots of traffic," instead of (B) "not having coffee and no traffic." For Traditional Compatibilism the student is responsible for being late since "if he had choosen (B) instead of (A), he would have been on time for class. 

C/E "Taylor's Ingenious Physiologist. Here the phisiologies plants desires in the subject and he acts on these desires. But the desires are not his. 

2- "Hierarchical Compatibilism: 

Harry Frankfurt postulates first and second order desires; then there are 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 on which wants to act. 

Then Harry Frankfurt's three drug addicts: Let's call a first order desire: FOD, a second order desire: SOD, a second order volition: SOV. So we get the following:  


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), SOV, but now he cannot act on these SOV, so he's not free). Remember, to be free one has to either formulate a SOV or be able to act on it. 

Punishment: How do compatibilists see punishment? look at p. 203. Punishment cannot be  retributive (eye-for-an-eye). The only legitimate way of punishment is rehabilitation and deterrence. Criminal actions are dictated by genes and habits (nature and nurture). Retributive punishment makes sense if it's deserved. But nothing people do is up to them.

3.3 Libertarianism
 
You should know the difference between "event causation" and "agent causation." 
synaptic activity is event causation. mental states causing synaptic activity is agent causation. 

Libertarianism holds that agents can cause events. How? Well, this is how the mind causes actions. There are two arguments here:


Argument from Experience. Argument from deliberation. In class I called it argument from experience, because you experience it from the inside. You feel you wanted to come to class, you got ready, drove through rush hour and got to the class on time. You feel you chose that. You are responsible for that action. 


Read pages 216 and 217! For the libertarian if the wants you act on are not yours, you are not free and therefore not responsible. If you declared nursing as a major because it's the dream of your parents that doesn't automatically make you free.That may not be your desire. In fact you may not even know what you really want!

Libet's Neurophysiological challenge: it seems to show that consciousness of a decision arises only after the decision has already been made (the 300 millisecond gap between the decision to press the button and the brain signal). Rebuttal by libertarians: There's a difference between making a "conscious decision" and a "meta-conscious decision" (meta-conscious awareness is second order). For the libertarian, the subject in Libet's report is not having a "conscious" but a "meta-conscious" decision. So it's no surprise that it happens "after" the conscious decision was made.

How to find reliable sources for your Philosophy Paper

I know some of you have asked me where to find reliable arguments in favor and against our topics.

I cannot do this for you. It's part of the effort to find it yourself. So, I'm going to help you help yourself:

1- Make a PHI Paper Folder with FOR and AGAINST points

2- Type: "Fast food, arguments in favor" and then, "fast food, arguments against" in your google search bar.

3- Narrow the search by typing "fast food.org" and "fast food.edu" you get a more specialized more reliable kind of aggregation.

After you look for  .org and .edu articles, look for magazines like The Economist, The Atlantic, National Review, The New Yorker, Scientific American, or reputed newspapers like New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, LA Times, etc.

So, in the FOR subfolder I find:

this,
this (from The New Yorker),
this,
this (from The Atlantic, discussing the issues)
this, 
this (with the best 7 Fast Food restaurants)
this, (at fastfoodnutrition.org)

Now you would do the same now with the AGAINST subfolder.

Another option is google scholar

If you have three article in each file, you have plenty to start, then as your discussion gets more interesting, you may want to search in more detail. For example, suppose you are talking about a particular issue, like obesity. I typed for a more specific search: "fast food, obesity, .edu". I got 15 M articles!

this Princeton study on the effects of Fast Food on obesity.

If you don't find the topics it's because you are not doing a good search. Believe me, the topics are out there!

Determinism vs. Free will vs Compatibilism (videos)

This is an interesting video on determinism & free will. 

This one about compatibilism.

Thanks to Ryan LaPointe

second assignment, philosophy paper

This assignment takes care of four paragraphs. The first two are the most important in your paper. This is the program you will follow in your paper. You tell the reader what you are going todo. Each thesis and counter paragraph has two points. Each each point is explained.
_________________________


in green you have the thesis and counter thesis entries.
in red you have the thesis and counter thesis points.
in yellow you have the explanation of the points 
_________________________


 In this paper I argue in favor the legalization of marijuana. First, the prohibition of marijuana attempts against personal freedoms we take for granted. Our laws should respect individual free will and the right of self-determination. Secondly, there is a majority of the public in favor of marijuana legalization. If Congress is supposed to represent the will of the people, they should change the laws prohibiting the use of marijuana.

Prohibitionists disagree. First, they believe that marijuana is addictive and may help create new consumers rather than rescuing current ones. Studies reported by The National Institute on Drug Abuse shows that 30 percent of those who use marijuana may have some degree of "marijuana use disorder." In addition, marijuana can be a gateway to  more addictive drugs, such as meth and heroin. Studies have consistenly shown that individuals who have had experiences with marijuana are more likely to try these other drugs.

Paragraph 1 is the thesis paragraph. Paragraph 2 is the Counterthesis paragraph. See that each paragraph above has about 5 sentences. Keep your explanatory sentences (in yellow) short and to the point. Avoid unnecessary wording. Use my pluggings in green. Separate each point with "First" and "Secondly" or "In addition."
___________________________

Below comes the discussion of these points. In Paragraph 3 you go back to your thesis, but now you're going to take your first point, only now you flesh it out. Bring outside sources (experts, known magazines, studies, following MLA conventions). Paragraph 4 is the counter thesis turn to do the same. And so on...
_______ 

Marijuana legalization advocates argue that tax payers should be able to choose what they want with their bodies, including the recreational use of drugs, as long as they do not harm others. Such arguments often cite John Stuart Mill's harm principle, which urged that "the state had no right to intervene to prevent individuals from doing something that harmed them, if no harm was thereby done to the rest of society." (Mill, Liberty, 75). 

Marijuana legalization critics reject this idea. They believe marijuana is addictive and people who use marijuana before age 18 are four to seven times more likely to develop this use disorder than adults. Peter Maswell, a fellow researcher at St. Paul Hospital in Fresno cites a recent study where out of four million people with marijuana addiction only 140,000 voluntarily sought treatment. This shows that the disorder can morph into an addiction when the person can't stop using the drug even when it interferes with their daily activities. ( Maswell & Tipper, Fresno Journal).

MINDWORK: let's find likes and dislikes by tracing back their causal series

write down the following:

1. 3 foods you hate, dislike, or love,
2. 3 genres of music you hate, dislike or love,
3. 3 movies you hate, dislike or love,
4. 3 individuals you hate, dislike, or love,
5. your actual major (why not your second choice of major),
6. your present boyfriend & your previous boyfriend,

next, find in each case try to put together a tentative series, think of what triggered the series and how did it become a behavioral disposition. you may have to go back to your infancy (ages 4-8), look for events, picture your parents or family members, or a teacher, or a friend or admired peer, whether they play as reward or aversives,

remember for the determinist, no disposition happens on its own. it must have a cause, we only have to find it!

__________________
for you foodies or chocolate or avocado haters, we've talked about this in class already (scroll down the oxford academic article.

student assistants TR classes

TR 8:25am

Maria Trinidad Guerra

TR 11:15am

Federico Colombo
Tamara Jean
Daniela Silva

brain causing our minds

see how brain causes mind states. this is a good introduction to brain function (read the whole thing)

which you need to know when we discuss hard determinism, because it all happens inside the brain.

Proposal for phi 2010 paper Spring 2018

Page, Betrice Philosophy Paper Proposal T,R 8:15am

Why animals should be protected against abuse

          In this paper, I will try to prove that animals being raised in factory farms in America deserve a better treatment. My main argument will show the public and environmental health risks associated with unregulated factory farming, while stressing that animal cruelty is ethically wrong.