Frankfurt "on bullshit"

PHI 2010 M,W,F, 10:25am class (summer B)

PHI 2010 T,R 9:50am class

Topics for second exam M,W,F, 10:25am

Chapter 2 (Philosophy of Mind)

2.2
Descartes's Dualism: Mind = a non-physical thinking substance.

Logical Behaviorism: MS ---> (where BhS are behavioral  dispositions; BhS are, the ability to act in certain ways to certain stimuli ). C/E "Perfect pretender", "Super Spartans." Qualitative content (qualia = the unique feeling of our mental states).Identity Theory: MS ---> BrS, where BrS is the passing of electro/chemical signals from cell to cell. C/E "Nagel's Bat." (You must be able to tell the counterexamples and derive conclusions).

2.3
Functionalism: MS ---> FS. According to functionalism, to have a mind is to have the ability to perform certain functions. C/E "Putnam's inverted spectrum."Turing Test for Intelligence: C/E Searle's Chinese Room.Intentionality
 
2.5 
Property Dualism, Primitive Property (intentionality as a primitive property).Emergent Property and Downward Causation.

Chapter 3
 
3.1
Causal Determinism: (every effect has a cause that makes it happen) and Hard determinism (there is no free will): An argument to problematize HD is the idea of "Human responsibility, " i.e., if we are not free, we cannot be responsible for our actions, (one is responsible if and only if one can make the choice). 

3.2
Traditional Compatibilism: The view that we will actions from the inside, provided that we are not externally constrained. C/E "Taylor's Ingenious Physiologist. A good example of the ingenious physiologist is TV. Problem: How about being "internally" constrained? What Taylor example shows is that one can will from the inside and still have internal constraints. Ex: gambling.
"Hierarchical Compatibilism: First and Second Order Desires; 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 one decisely acts upon. Harry Frankfurt's three drug addicts: 
(Let's call a first order desire: FOD, a second order desire: SOD, a second order volition: SOV) 
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, not SOV, not free).

3.3
Libertarianism
Event and Agent Causation. E-C: An event causes an event. A-C: An agent causes an event. Libertarianism holds that one is responsible for one's action only if one does it (caveat: one has to act on one's own desire). If the desire is not yours, you're not responsible, ex. one's desire to surrender one's money at gunpoint.

Radical Libertarianism (Existentialism): Jean-Paul Sartre's kind of libertarianism (known as Existentialism) holds that the self is essentially free. What we do, how we act in our life is what determines what and who we are. In order not to deal with the weight of our own FREEDOM, we create fictitious excuses or "bad faith". We're always responsible for our actions, because even when we think we don't choose, we choose. The only possible constraint is our facticity (the stuff we don't choose, like being born and having a certain name and parents).

Stoning women in Iran?

Yes, the practice continues in Iran. The reason? Sakineh had an "illicit relationship," even though she was a widow at the time of the alleged affair. Ashtiani has already endured 99 lashes and -obviously- a confession(?). What place has a government of Iran stoning women for "supposed" adultery? The reason for the punishment is feeble, the punishment itself is barbaric.

Let's sign the petition to free Sakineh! 

In Iran, male victims of execution by stoning are first buried up to their waists, then pelted with stones by a crowd of executioners. Women are normally buried up to their necks. The stones used are large enough to cause serious injury but not kill the person, and the victim often dies slowly and painfully (At least 126 executions have been carried out in Iran this year, according to Amnesty International).

A Yoga (Socio-Political) Manifesto

aTrifF 

Nature should have priority.¹ It's here first and sustains everything.

The guiding principle is ahimsa. Non-violence translated into deep & skeptic ecology, i.e, the interdependence of human and non-human life in a world out of joint. We cannot understand ourselves if we estrange ourselves from nature, but we're already estranged!   

Socio-political starts bottom-up not top-down.² We don't need to wait for the top to change. As real actors, close to the local/regional nodes of action, we can acquire the know-how to build connections and mobilize public opinion to challenge institutional and social alienation.

* From the bottom ---> up: The initial transformation is individual but it doesn't stop there. We are ONE: There is no true path without dharma/activism.³

* The aporia of human anthropocentric emancipation: We need to see non-human life under a different optic. The Greeks of ancient times didn't realize that non-Greeks were persons. American plantation owners in the late-18th Century didn't realize that blacks were not inferior brutes. The majority of Americans don't realize that non-human animals are more than just foodstuff. We have an obligation to treat animals with dignity⁴ (animal farming in America needs to be transformed from intensive farming ----> extensive farming).

* The aporia of pollution vs. development: Blaming corporations in order to feel safely excluded from the pollution cycle while feeding the very thing we try to prevent. We are the world's worst polluters! ⁵

* Though it may be a little late, the move towards eco-conservation is a social imperative. Let's fight to stop deforestation, to protect sea life from extinction (due to overfishing), ensuring ecological diversity for future generations. Yes, it seems daunting, but it begins by understanding, doing & telling others.

* The aporia of technology vs. emancipation: What makes us human is a result of our cultural evolution: language, rituals, arts and technology. Yet, our anthropocentric-based culture is leading us to a dead end. Let's move from an anthropocentric to a bio-centric culture!⁶

We must learn to curb and manage our waste: Reuse, donate, recycle! The present corporate-driven/production-intensive food paradigm needs to be turned upside down, from fast food ----> slow food. ⁷ Let's switch our eating habits and bring back food sacralization. Let's turn environmental degradation and human exploitation into eco-erotics!⁸

* The aporia of development vs. under-development⁹: Our post-Capitalist global society is craft-deprived. Globalization has outsourced our manufacturing and trade/skills base. Let's get back to cooking, arts and crafts, organic horticulture,¹⁰ etc. We should balance our individualism with communitarianism!

Let's change our cities by fighting urban decay with environmental sustainability, changing ugliness into beauty.

Let's become eco-Romantics!¹¹ engaging in heritage conservation, infrastructure efficiency,  mass transit, regional integration, human scale, and institutional integrity.

Let's transform our neighborhoods by building sustainable structures, limiting urban sprawl, reducing car dependence, promoting pedestrian friendly urbanism.¹²

What to do? 

 anti-advertising, 

protest, 

social graffiti,
urban farming,

disvestment, 

Zenarchy, 

nonviolence, 

anarcho-syndicalism, 

building consensus,

civil disobedience,

E-democracy,

potlatch

ACT NOW!

____________

¹ Aristotle's naturalism can be seen as a forerunner of eco-thics, as expressed by his dictum that Nature "does nothing in vain." John Clearly, Aristotle and the Many Senses of Priority, (Southern Illinois University Press, 1988) p. 60. ² We don't have to choose between markets (Welfare Capitalism) or governments, as instruments of emancipation (Communism, planned-economy Socialism). Nor is there need to eliminate markets, trade, private ownership, the welfare state, or the institution of the corporation. What we need to do is bring about new practices for each of these institutions appropriate to a balance between prosperity and conservation. This task belongs neither to corporations nor to states: They are incapable of questioning the legitimacy on which their present institutional form is based. Citizens, not big-money interests, have to set the terms of the economic and political agenda. This is the force of emergence: Millions of people joining voluntary movements, discovering that the good life is more fulfilling than the endless cycle of accumulation and consumption. Professor Steven Buechler makes a similar (hopeful) point: "Movements can be crucial switching stations in the direction of history (...)  vital free spaces that promote democratization and restore a meaningful public sphere." See Steven M. Buechler, Social Movements in Advanced Capitalism: The Political Economy and Cultural Construction of Social Activism (Oxford University Press: 2000) p. 214.  Enacting Niyama at the social level can bring about a life of material sufficiency with cultural, intellectual, and spiritual abundance in balance with the environment. By osmosis, the social level can bring about needed changes in the political sphere. ³ One's embeddedness in a particular context: job, household/family, or community can lead one to recognize a problem, learn about community needs, and find a way to make life better through new -or reconfigured- social linkages.  ⁴According to philosopher Tom Regan, animals have "inherent value" as subjects-of-a-life, and cannot be regarded as a means to an end. See, Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, (University of California Berkeley, 2005) p. 245. ⁵The United States has 4.2% of the world's population and produces 24% of the world's C0₂ emissions. ⁶One must be careful not to write off culture, as if humans have fallen from paradise straight into some artificial exile of civilization. This is where the ancient Greeks can help. They understood that us humans are not completely "natural" but rather the site of a collision of nature and culture, which uniquely defines us. See Bruce Thornton, Plagues of the Mind: The New Epidemic of False Knowledge (ISI Books, 1999) p. 96.  ⁷ "Slow food" goes against the received notion that cheap food = good food. Carlo Petrini, the man behind this movement defends the "unpolitical" idea that cheap food is really expensive, bad food, when compared with good, clean, carefully harvested food. He is right. In his book, Petrini advocates the idea of "gusto" (taste) and diversity. There is a correlation between slow food and health, which makes slow food more enjoyable. The locus for this revolucion is la osteria, a place where one can find "traditional cuisine run as a family business with simple service, welcoming atmosphere, good wine and moderate prices." See Carlo Petrini, Slow Food, the Case for Taste (Columbia University Press, 2003) p. 51-58. "Cheap food" is a Capitalist ploy to misrepresent real capital allocation and profit in the name of "abundance," hiding government subsidies for monoculture and intensive production which end up as profit for Big Business in food and energy. Take for instance American corn policies: We subsidize corn while (protect Monsanto's right to sell it to farmers as genetically modified seed). Coincidentally, corn is the foodstuff staple for raising cattle in the US (funded by whom?) and an energy commodity. Wonder why such a labor-intensive commodity such as meat is so cheap? Corn is heavily fertilized — both with chemicals like nitrogen and with subsidies from Washington. Over the past decade, the Federal Government has poured more than $50 billion into the corn industry, keeping prices for the crop — at least until corn ethanol skewed the market — artificially low. That's your Big Mac @ McDonald's, a $5 meal bargain, with 1,400 calories (more than half the daily recommended requirement for adults). ⁸ I thank my friend Gene Ray from Scurvy Tunes, for his suggestion. I'd like to spin his idea of eco/erotics as an embodied striving for well-being that connects us with the animal and non-animal other (life). The opposite of eco/erotics is eros gone astray, a perversion of Nishkam Karma. A desire in the form of a will-to-control that aims to secure itself by mastering all around it. Ridden with anxiety, this eros reduces other to self. In fact, there are examples of such versions in modern times: Certain "peak" historic moments, when factors motivating nations and individuals, such as the desires for profit, security, and hegemony got transformed militaristic erotics. ⁹ It turns out that the mantra of "emancipated" Communist development in Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean throughout the 1960's-1980's consisted in mimicking the Capitalist "anthropocentric development" model: 1- constant growth, 2- domination of nature, 3- industrialization and technologization of production and society at the expense of environmental degradation, abandonment of agriculture (land reform in this case meant very little, since arbitrary and exploitative prices were set by the bureaucrats, not by the farmers), massive migration to the cities, urban unemployment and loss of crafts skills. The deterioration of nature brought by these mistaken policies, was invoked by the communist  bureaucracies as a step in the right direction for the attainment of development. ¹⁰ Who would think of pursuing horticultural studies in Miami, now, when the expected move of disenfranchised farmers is from the rural areas to the city? Precisely! This overall migration has to do with the switch from farmer-produced to corporate-produced agriculture. How can one reverse it? By encouraging simple living. Diversifying instead of homogenizing food consumption; by making good, simple food (not gourmet food) a desired commodity, so that corporations are forced to alter their mode of production. Surely, one must be watchful of corporation's good intentions! It's all about awareness: As we become more educated in our food habits, there is gradual a move from agriculture into crafted horticulture. Are people ready for it? After the subprime mortgage crisis, the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, and BP's gulf disaster, the answer is yes. ¹¹ The new eco-Romantic is committed to ecological flourishing, but she is neither anti-technology, nor naive in her political expectations about Messianic utopias. The traditional Romantic lived in a paradox he was blind to. (H)e deprecated technology from his studio in the industrial-brought comfort of the pre-Modern city. We must see the good and bad in technology. The Industrial Revolution cannot be simply undone (the remedy would be worst than the disease). It needs to be transformed. Technology can serve us in using the ecosystem resources more efficiently. On the other hand, there is a strong historical relationship between growth in economic output and growing human demands on the earth's finite ecosystem. We've pushed since 1950's the human burden on the planet's regenerative systems, its soils, air, water, fisheries, and forestry systems beyond what the planet can sustain. Anthropocentric "development" is not the answer. Pushing for economic growth beyond the planet's sustainable limits accelerates the rate of breakdown of the whole. It also intensifies the competition between rich and poor for the earth's remaining output of life-sustaining resources. ¹² See my  "Miami's Urban Mess."

Topics for quiz #2 T,R, 9:50am class (summer A+B)

Find topics for review of quiz #2 here.

M,W,F 10:25am (post on population explosion and sustainability)

T,R 9:50am (post on population explosion and sustainability)

Can a fetus feel pain?

Time Magazine: UK report says "NO."

The end of the tuna

Dramatic article from the NYTImes. We live the era of the tuna. Our voracious appetite is depleting this beautiful species!

Many nations have contributed to the Atlantic bluefin’s destruction. Europeans and North Africans do most of the catching and ranching of the fish in the world today. The United States continues to allow bluefin fishing in its waters even though the Gulf of Mexico-spawned stock is considered by many scientists to have entered into full-scale collapse. But it is Japan, the world’s largest bluefin importer, that has taken perhaps the most aggressive pro-tuna-fishing position. 

The article presents an interesting question:

How then do we get ourselves out of the Age of Tuna with our moral center and our food supply intact? Can we develop a civilized hunter-gatherer relationship with tuna and indeed with all other fish and reach a point of equilibrium with our last wild food? Can the management bodies that have overseen the collapse of the most magnificent food fish we’ve ever known be trusted to manage what is left in its wake?

Do you care that the tuna will disappear from the high seas? How could we manage the blue fin tuna population so that future generations can still enjoy it? 

Topics for quiz 2 (chapters 2 and 3)

Chapter 2 (Philosophy of Mind)
2.1: Cartesian dualism: The mind is a thinking non-physical substance.
2.2: Logical Behaviorism: MS ---> BhS, where BhS are behavioral dispositions. C/E "Perfect pretender", "Super Spartans." Qualitative content (qualia = the unique, private feeling of our mental states).

Identity Theory: MS ---> BrS, where BrS is the passing of electro/chemical signals from cell to cell. C/E "Nagel's Bat" and "Lewis Pained Martian." (You must be able to grasp and understand these counterexamples and derive conclusions).

2.3: Functionalism: MS ---> FS. According to functionalism, to have a mind is to have the ability to perform certain functions. C/E "Lewis Pained Madman and Putnam's inverted spectrum (imagine a color-blind driver driving like we do, only he inverts green with red). "Turing Test for Intelligence: C/E Searle's Chinese Room. Intentionality (the ability of mental states to be "of" or "about" anything).

2.5: Property Dualism,

... is the view that non-physical, mental properties (such as beliefs, desires and emotions) inhere in some physical substances (namely brains).
Primitive Property (intentionality as a primitive property).
Emergent Property and Downward Causation.

Chapter 3
3.1: Causal Determinism (every event has a cause that makes it happen + laws of nature) and Hard determinism (the doctrine that there are no free actions). Hard determinism assumes that if CD is true, then there are no free actions because as our bodies made up of matter, we must be subjects to the same laws of causation. In class we discussed an argument to problematize HD. If HD is true, then there is no human responsibility: i.e., if we are not free, we cannot be responsible for our actions, (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. One "soft" theory is Traditional Compatibilism (Free actions are 1- caused by one's will and 2- not externally constrained). The idea is that you're free provided you are not constrained from the outside. C/E "Taylor's Ingenious Physiologist. In class we discussed how TV can "plant" desires. So in a way is a kind of ingeneous physiologist.

"Hierarchical Compatibilism: First and Second Order Desires; 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 one decisely acts upon. 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, not SOV, not free).

3.3: Libertarianism

Event and Agent Causation. Event---> event or Agent---> event.

Libertarianism holds that agents can cause events. How? remember we talked about the possibility that the mind causes the brain. Libertarianism also holds that one is responsible for one's action only if one does it (one has to act on one's own desire). If the desire is not yours, you're not responsible, ex. one's doing something by being coerced to do it by somebody else.

Radical Libertarianism (Existentialism): Jean-Paul Sartre's kind of libertarianism (known as Existentialism) holds that the self is essentially free. When he says: "L'existence précède l'essence" he means that we exist first, and are "defined" later. Sartre puts it as sucgh: "il n'est rien d'autre que ce qu'il fait de sa vie."

We cope with this heavy "weight" of our own FREEDOM by creating fictitious justifications, what Sartre calls mauvaise foi or "bad faith". We're always responsible for our actions, because even when we think we don't choose, we choose. The only possible constraint is our facticity (the stuff we don't choose, like being born and having a certain name and parents). "La mauvaise foi" in a practical sense means that what counts is the intention (" c'est l'intention qui compte"). Sartre rejects the freudian "unconscious" as well as other forms of determinisms. As he puts it: "L'homme est condamné à être libre."

In Being and Nothingness, Sartre discusses the example of a gambler who wishes to stop gambling as an illustration of anguish as it relates to the past, "anguish in the face of the past". The gambler has resolved, in the past, to stop gambling because he recognizes the toll his habit is taking on his life. In the moment of that resolution, that choice to no longer gamble seemed "a real barrier" between gambling and the one who gambles, between the human being and his freedom. However, in the light of a new moment, minutes, hours or days later, that earlier resolution seems nothing more than a "memory of an idea, a memory of a feeling" (p. 126) when the gambler is presented once again with the opportunity to gamble. Precisely nothing (what Sartre calls "Néant": no previous decision that attempts to put a "barrier" – a something – between a subject and his freedom) stops the gambler from gambling again. He is always free to choose, to gamble or not to gamble. "The resolution is still me to the extent that I realize constantly my identity with myself across the temporal flux." The gambler thus feels anguish in the face of his own freedom. He has finally apprehended the "nothingness" of his own being. He "perceives with anguish that nothing prevents him from gambling" (p. 126).

M,W,F, 10:25am

T,R, 9:50am

Is animal cruelty related to human cruelty?

From the NYTimes:

In addition to a growing sensitivity to the rights of animals, another significant reason for the increased attention to animal cruelty is a mounting body of evidence about the link between such acts and serious crimes of more narrowly human concern, including illegal firearms possession, drug trafficking, gambling, spousal and child abuse, rape and homicide. In the world of law enforcement — and in the larger world that our laws were designed to shape — animal-cruelty issues were long considered a peripheral concern and the province of local A.S.P.C.A. and Humane Society organizations; offenses as removed and distinct from the work of enforcing the human penal code as we humans have deemed ourselves to be from animals. But that illusory distinction is rapidly fading.

The article goes on to make this claim:

“A Study of Firesetting and Animal Cruelty in Children: Family Influences and Adolescent Outcomes,” found that over a 10-year period, 6-to-12-year-old children who were described as being cruel to animals were more than twice as likely as other children in the study to be reported to juvenile authorities for a violent offense. In an October 2005 paper published in Journal of Community Health, a team of researchers conducting a study over seven years in 11 metropolitan areas determined that pet abuse was one of five factors that predicted who would begin other abusive behaviors. In a 1995 study, nearly a third of pet-owning victims of domestic abuse, meanwhile, reported that one or more of their children had killed or harmed a pet.

The opinionator

Check out this New York Times column where well-known contemporary philosophers debate current affairs.

I picked this one, by professor Peter Singer. He writes:

Have you ever thought about whether to have a child? If so, what factors entered into your decision? Was it whether having children would be good for you, your partner and others close to the possible child, such as children you may already have, or perhaps your parents? For most people contemplating reproduction, those are the dominant questions. Some may also think about the desirability of adding to the strain that the nearly seven billion people already here are putting on our planet’s environment. But very few ask whether coming into existence is a good thing for the child itself. Most of those who consider that question probably do so because they have some reason to fear that the child’s life would be especially difficult — for example, if they have a family history of a devastating illness, physical or mental, that cannot yet be detected prenatally.

This Saturday at 3:30pm: Beach!

Farewell is best with nature: beach, sea, sand and sun.

If you draw a sort of semi-parallel line to Alton Rd. we'll meet around 64th St., near Hotel Casablanca.

What people are (so far) bringing:

Triff: Beer (no Bud or Miller), Middle Eastern food, some water and umbrella.
Karen: Cooler.
Jose: Ice and some food.
Angela: Some food and perhaps another umbrella.

You're more than welcome to bring food stuff (but not too much, since this is neither lunch nor dinner).

If you want to post last minute suggestions, go ahead, the comment option is available!

The koan (2 cases)

Kōans are verbal tools that convey a deep message, such as "Does a dog have Buddhanature?" or "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

A koan should be short and more importantly non-obvious. Think cold shower to the mind. Dadaists used koans, example, the one above.  
Here is a good compilation.

Topics for Final Exam M,W,F, 8am class

Chapter 4

1. Qualitative Identity, numerical identity

Animalism; C/A: Siamese Twins, The "transgender" issue, Locke's tale of the prince and the cobbler.

2. Memory Theory: Reid’s Tale of the Brave Officer; Direct and indirect memories; Real memory, apparent memory, quasi-memory.

3. Psychological Continuity Theory. C/A: The Reduplication Problem: William’s Reincarnation of Guy Fawkes; Williams’ Reduplication Argument. Parfit Teletransporter and its implications.

4. Brain Theory. C/A: Parfit’s Division

5. Identity and what matters in survival and responsibility. From section 4.3 we learn that identity does not matter for survival. What matters for responsibility is character.

6. What does it mean to say that the self is "a process."

Chapter 5

Section 5.1

1. Subjective Absolutism: The view that what makes an action right is that one approves of it; Objections: (a) SA makes moral evaluations a matter of personal opinion, (b)impossibility of moral disagreements (one can only agree with the absolutist and the reason is that he believes he's the ONLY ONE THAT'S RIGHT). 2. Subjective Relativism: What makes an action right is that it is approved by that person. Objections (same as above). You must be able to tell the difference between the (the absolutist thinks she's the only one that's right, whereas the subjective relativist believes that many people can disagree and still be right at the same time) absolutist and the subjective relativist.
6. Are there universal moral principles? YES! 1- Principle of mercy (Unnecessary suffering is wrong) and 2- Principle of justice (Treat equals equally).

Section 5.2.

1. Consequentialism is the theory that judges the rightness or wrongness of an action in terms of its consequences. Formalism is the theory that judges the rightness or wrongness of an action in terms of the action's form (i.e., "killing is wrong": the formalist believes that moral actions are objective).
2. Intrinsic (value for its own sake; personhood is an essential value: 1-reason, 2-autonomy, 3-sentience, 4-freedom) and instrumental values (value for the sake of something else):3. Ethical egoism: What makes an action right is that it promotes one's best interest in the long run = PRUDENCE. Counterarguments: (a) Egoist's motivations (if known, the egoist's intentions seem to betray reversibility principle). (b) Egoism is not a socially or politically cogent theory (i.e., you would not vote for an egoist in office).4. Act Utilitarianism: What makes an action right is that it maximizes happiness everyone considered (which means, "bringing happiness for the greatest majority of people"). Counterarguments: (a) Mc Closkey’s informant (b) Brandt’s Heir. In each one of these cases one has violated principles of justice, duty and equality.
5. Rule Utilitarianism: What makes an action right is that it falls under a rule that if generally followed would maximize happiness everyone considered. RU is a better theory than AU. Why? Because if applied, it can solve the problems posed by the previous counterarguments.

Section 5.3.
1. Kant’s Categorical Imperative: What makes an action right is that everyone can act on it (which yields universalizability), and you'd have everyone acting on it (which yields reversibility: Golden Rule)
2. Perfect duty: A duty that must always be performed no matter what. And imperfect duties.
Problems with Kant's first formulation: (a) Hare’s Nazi fanatic (Triff's The Bin-Laden Syndrome).
How do you solve that?
3. Kant's Second Formulation: TREAT PEOPLE AS ENDS AND NEVER AS MEANS TO AN END.
Problems with the second formulation: Problem of exceptions: Some times we have to treat people as means to ends: Broad's Typhoid Man.
Pluralistic Formalism: What makes an action right is that it falls under the highest ranked duty in a given situation.
4. Ross’ Prima Facie Duties. Actual duties: One that must be performed in a particular situation. Prima Facie Duty: A duty that must be performed unless it conflict with a more important duty. You must know hierarchy and each one of these duties as I explained in class: 1- Justice, 2- fidelity and 3- reparation being the first three, because they explain out the remaining ones: beneficence, non-maleficence, gratitude, self-improvement.
5. Why is Pluralistic Formalism better than Kantian theory? Because it allows for exceptions

Your (last) assignment

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

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

I surmise that Thomas Bayrle takes Jean-Paul Sartre's metaphor of the cup of coffee in La Nausée as a Pop paradox of the one and the many. Let's talk about this void which calls forth the fullness, the paradoxical coexistence of Tao in both subject and object, essence and appearance. Imagine a situation, which shows itself as something not complete, an event that demands our involvement. The situation appears imperfect, out of joint, sort of what Kenyan artist Ingrid Mwuangi does when she multiplies her own id-entity:

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

Really?

The Tao is like a well:
used but never used up.
It is like the eternal void:
filled with infinite possibilities. (vers. 4)¹

According to the Tao Te Ching, our will to fix things can take us into unexpected detours. Let me explain: Generally, I don't see my will as being impeded by anything other than my desire to act. But in the big realm of overall causation, I'm not alone. My will is differential, i.e., one amongst hundreds of millions of other wills. Seldom I stop to ponder my will as being a very small fraction of an overall sum of (unknown) wills, not only in the here and now, but as -already- established chains reactions which precede my time/space (and of which I'm a part of).

Mathematically speaking, what's my will vis-a-vis a higher order of will/differentials? What's the relative limit between my doing and my doing too much? Sure, voluntarism is a well-respected part of our strategy of success. But think about it, how many of the things (we think) we do turn out to be the opposite of what we anticipated?

For more (including your comment), click here.

Some recommended texts

Hindu Philosophy: 1- The Upanishads, 2- Bhagavad Gita, 3- Dhammapada (All by Nigiri Press). 4-  Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi, 5- The Life Divine (Sri Aurobindo), a recommended text for those versed in Western Philosophy. This is a nice edition of The Lotus Sutra.

Chinese Philosophy: Analects, The Lao Tzu,  Zen teachings of Bodhidharma.  

T,R, 9:50am

Are we not in part responsible for BP's debacle?

This article of the New York Times examines our present ambivalence with technology (particularly after the BP's debacle and the West Virginia Upper Big Branch mine accident).

It's not only energy, there are sophisticated technological financial instruments, linked to our present financial crisis.  

Is it that we have put too much faith in technology? Is technology betraying us? 

There are three distinct approaches to technology:

Optimistic: technology as a way to improve our condition in the planet.

Pessimistic: technology as a cul de sac, whereby we end worse than we started or (in the worst case scenario) enslaved by it.

Realistic: technology as a viable tool, if used with responsibilty.

Which of these models do you think the recent disasters point to? What should we do to avoid these problems in the future?

Your turn #3

Good class with a nice discussion on the subject of anger.

For your comment this week, please, go to miami bourbaki. You can comment on my manifesto (which I have fleshed out a bit) or in the "Forked paths" post. Take any of the Buddhist topics discussed in class: dukkha, tanha, sunyata, Four Noble Truths, etc. Be critical, be aware, be yourself.

Remember to become a friend of both PHI 2070 and Bourbaki!
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By the way, this is the book by Paul Lafargue (Marx's son-in-law) that I mentioned in class (yes, right to laziness, why don't we think more of these things today?).

Koyaanisqatsi

Dhammapada

(Pali: "Words of Doctrine," or "Way of Truth"), probably the best-known book in the Pali Buddhist canon and the most quoted in other Buddhist writings. It is an anthology of basic Buddhist teachings (primarily ethical teachings) in a simple aphoristic style. The Dhammapada contains 423 stanzas arranged in 26 chapters. It also appears in somewhat different versions in Prakrit, Sanskrit, and Chinese, and there are translations in other languages. More than half the verses are excerpted from other canonical texts and include many of the most famous Buddhist sayings; others come from the storehouse of pithy sayings drawn upon by much of Indian literature.The book is popular in Buddhist countries of both Theravada and Mahayana traditions. In Sri Lanka it has been used for centuries as a manual for novices, and it is said that every monk can recite it from memory.

Buddhism (1)

Buddha based his entire teaching on the fact of human suffering.* Existence is painful. The conditions that make an individual are precisely those that also give rise to suffering. Individuality implies limitation; limitation gives rise to desire; and desire (tanha)** causes suffering -since what is desired is transitory, changing, and perishing. It is the impermanence of the object of craving that causes disappointment and sorrow (cause/effect: one suffers because one desires). 

I'd like to spin this idea of desire with the idea of EROS as an embodied striving for well-being that connects us with things, animals and people, which situates us in the world with others. EROS is the fundamental energy by which we relate to all that is. SIN might be seen as human desire gone astray, a corruption of the basic potency for relation. SIN is a "desire" in the form of a will-to-control that aspires to secure itself by mastering all around it. Ridden with anxiety about its own lack of control, it reduces what is other to the self, placing a stranglehold on all that is not-I in order to guarantee absolutely its own self-perpetuation. By effectively closing itself off from the other, a genuine relation is negated in a posture of solipsism. Augustine referred to this selfish attachment "cupiditas," a need-based form of desire that seeks its own satisfaction above all else and therein refuses its genuine relation to creation and the Creator. 

2- By following the "path" taught by the Buddha, the individual can dispel the "ignorance" that perpetuates this suffering. 3- Reality, whether of external things or the psycho-physical totality of human individuals, consists in a succession and concatenation of microseconds called dhammas. 4- Moreover, contrary to the theories of the Upanishads, the Buddha did not want to assume the existence of the soul as a metaphysical substance. Life is a stream of becoming, a series of manifestations and extinctions. The individual ego is a delusion; the objects with which people identify themselves -fortune, social position, family, body, and even mind-are not their true selves. Nothing is permanent.

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*Suffering in this context is equivalent to disquietude. The mind is in a state of restless anxiety. Tahna (as mental state) is a vicious cycle (if one's desires are fulfilled it will, of itself, lead to one's lasting happiness or well-being). Such beliefs normally result in further craving/desire and the repeated enactment of activities to bring about the desired results. **I want to explore this idea of desire in the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze: "There is only desire and the social, and nothing else". What does it mean? 1- I can think of desire negatively, as striving to achieve what I do not have. 2- Alternatively, desire can be thought of affirmatively. It is not that "I" have desires; it is from desire that an "I" become. Desire will be nothing more than the development, production or assertion of what "I" will be or can become. So, Deleuze problematizes the idea of desire, as the affirmation or production of difference.

Confucius the pedagogue

Confucius was born in the small feudal state of Lu (noted for its preservation of the traditions of ritual and music of the Chou civilization). 1- Confucius' ancestors were probably members of the aristocracy who had become virtual poverty-stricken commoners by the time of his birth. His father died when Confucius was only three years old. Instructed first by his mother, Confucius then distinguished himself as an indefatigable learner in his teens. 2- Confucius had served in minor government posts before he married a woman of similar background when he was 19. It is not known who Confucius' teachers were, but he made a conscientious effort to find the right masters to teach him, among other things, ritual and music. Confucius' mastery of the six arts-ritual, music, archery, charioteering, calligraphy, and arithmetic- and his familiarity with the classical traditions, notably poetry and history, enabled him to start a brilliant teaching career in his 30s. 3- Confucius is known as the first teacher in China who wanted to make education available to all men and who was instrumental in establishing the art of teaching as a vocation, indeed as a way of life. Before Confucius, aristocratic families had hired tutors to educate their sons in specific arts, and government officials had instructed their subordinates in the necessary techniques, but he was the first person to devote his whole life to learning and teaching for the purpose of transforming and improving society. He believed that all human beings could benefit from self-cultivation. He inaugurated a humanities program for potential leaders, opened the doors of education to all, and defined learning not merely as the acquisition of knowledge but also as character building. 4- For Confucius the primary function of education was to provide the proper way of training noblemen (chün-tzu), a process that involved constant self-improvement and continuous social interaction. Although he emphatically noted that learning was "for the sake of the self" (the end of which was self-knowledge and self-realization), he found public service a natural consequence of true education. In his late 40s and early 50s Confucius served first as a magistrate, then as an assistant minister of public works, and eventually as minister of justice in the state of Lu. It is likely that he accompanied King Lu as his chief minister on one of the diplomatic missions. Confucius' political career was, however, short-lived. His loyalty to the King alienated him from the power holders of the time, the large Chi families, and his moral rectitude did not sit well with the King's inner circle, which enraptured the King with sensuous delight. At 56, when he realized that his superiors were uninterested in his policies, Confucius left the country in an attempt to find another feudal state to which he could render his service. Despite his political frustration he was accompanied by an expanding circle of students during this self-imposed exile of almost 12 years. His reputation as a man of vision and mission spread. Confucius was perceived as the heroic conscience who knew realistically that he might not succeed but, fired by a righteous passion, continuously did the best he could. At the age of 67 he returned home to teach and to preserve his cherished classical traditions by writing and editing. He died in 479 BC at the age of 73. According to the Records of the Historian 72 of his students mastered the "six arts," and those who claimed to be his followers numbered 3,000.

Teachings of Sri Aurobindo

Let's analyze some of the teaching of the Hindu philosopher Sri Aurobindo Ghose.

There is a basic human aspiration for the good life: Freedom (as inner peace), The Spiritual (a realm of good purpose and contentment) and  becoming ONE. One can become ONE, God (by overcoming adviya).

First, let's take a look at Aurobindo's general idea of planes of existence.

Nature evolves by contradiction (see dialectics). The apparent chaos of reality brings Aurobindo's idea of Harmony (sort of the kensho of Zen Buddhism)

Harmony means a deliberate decision not to fall for adviya in a given situation. Let's take world hunger, for example. The problem of food shortage in the world is not so much due to lack of food, but lack of policies and agreements in the production and distribution of food, as well as means to develop the Third World. A higher harmony takes all the parties to move beyond ego and self-concern to solve "the problem" (Is it Capitalism?). The question makes sense, but how to approach it from the position of the individual?

The greater the disparateness, the greater the opportunity for change.

Aurobindo analyzes the limits of science: 1- science is fixed in the material view of reality, 2- science does not perceive the subtle forces of life based on the vital, mental, and spiritual dimension of life, thus 3- science sees only part of the truth, not the whole of the phenomenon ("the spiritual").

Aurobindo thinks that science becomes irrational by denying other planes of life. Not so, it's not the province of science to establish something beyond its province. On the other hand, Aurobindo is right that we tend to see too linearly, preventing ourselves the acquisition of more integral forms of knowledge (what I'd call broadening our symbolic insights).

For Aurobindo, both materialism and Hindu asceticism miss the point. One negates the spiritual, the other the material. Here Aurobindo comes up with the idea of Cosmic Consciousness.

Perceiving the ONENESS:  For Aurobindo, matter is a form of spirit, the body of spirit. So, matter is spirit. (There is a similarity between Aurobindo and Hegel here, though there are important differences as well).

Perceiving ONENESS means seeing differently. Also "willing" a different outlook at things. Not falling for the tamas of thought. It means embracing ALL. ACCEPT ALL. It doesn't mean falling for anomie. By understanding FACTicity (the existentialists gave up and called it absurd). One learns UNDERSTAND and respect FACTicity.

This needs to be explained in more detailed with Aurobindo's Metaphysics.

Swami Vivekananda

Religion is realization; not talk, not doctrine, nor theories, however beautiful they may be. It is being and becoming, not hearing or acknowledging; it is the whole soul becoming changed into what it believes.-- Aphorisms.

They alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive. This is the gist of all worship – to be pure and to do good to others.-- Aphorisms.

Thus we find that Maya is not a theory for the explanation of the world; it is simply a statement of facts as they exist, that the very basis of our being is contradiction, that everywhere we have to move through this tremendous contradiction, that wherever there is good, there must also be evil, and wherever there is evil, there must be some good, wherever there is life, death must follow as its shadow, and everyone who smiles will have to weep, and vice versa. Nor can this state of things be remedied. We may verily imagine that there will be a place where there will be only good and no evil, where we shall only smile and never weep. This is impossible in the very nature of things; for the conditions will remain the same. Wherever there is the power of producing a smile in us, there lurks the power of producing tears. Wherever there is the power of producing happiness, there lurks somewhere the power of making us miserable.-- Maya and Illusion, Vol. II, Complete Works of S.V.