Quaker/Philosophy

Visualizing a Healthy Planet

2011-02-09T13:48:00.000-05:00

Modern Quakers don’t talk a lot about faith and hope, but they are an important part of our relationship to the earth and to God. Seeing the world through spiritual eyes requires that we see the kingdom of heaven both as not yet and as already here. For centuries the populations of two of the largest nations on Earth, India and China, remained trapped in abject poverty and showed no signs of progress. But in the last twenty years both these nations have experienced a huge shift which has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. When people rise out of poverty they have fewer children and they use resources more efficiently. When we visualize a healthy planet I think we want to visualize good lives for all Earth’s people. Visualize all the world’s poor finding productive jobs and being able to live decent, comfortable lives.
With the Cold War over, only the United States remains fully militarized. We spend as much on war and preparations for war as the rest of the world combined. If this changed, it would mean a huge transfer of resources towards constructive activity. At the moment about half of America’s engineers are employed designing weapons. Visualize all those engineers working steadily away at making little improvements in solar panels, electric cars, commuter trains, etc.
And we should not be afraid to dream big dreams. Imagine the Sahara Desert covered with a solar energy grid supplying the energy needs of both Europe and Africa. Imagine huge wind farms on the great plains of Siberia supplying clean energy to China and Russia. A healthy planet does not require that people go back to living in the Stone Age. The way humans live on this planet now is not sustainable. But that is because we believe we must live with war and with a huge gap between rich and poor. A world of peace and social justice would be a world of small families living in modest comfort. Such a world is not impossible in the least. It is a dream we must dream with all the passion and the faith we can muster to make it real.
The prophets of Israel looked and saw a spiritual picture of how God’s world could and would be. They visualized “every man neath his vine and fig tree” beating swords into ploughshares. Faith and hope tap into the power of God and make visions real.

A Short History of the Protestant Reformation

2011-01-24T16:03:00.000-05:00

Human beings are evil. Everything we do is evil. Any appearance of humans seemingly doing good things is an illusion. When a person seems to be doing something good it is actually God who is doing the good act. The person remains completely evil. There is no such thing as free will which would allow people to choose to do good or choose to do evil. We are all evil and have no choice about it. Since everyone is evil without a single ounce of goodness, justice demands that everyone go to hell and suffer for eternity. Jesus however was perfectly good. He did not deserve any suffering at all because he was perfectly good. However, he did suffer and die. Now comes the really tricky part. God can now pardon any sinner he chooses to pardon because his sense of justice has been satisfied by the fact that an innocent person has been punished. Since everyone is equally and completely guilty God has no basis at all for pardoning one person rather than another. So he grants this pardon to some people for no reason at all and withholds this pardon from others for no reason at all. Those whom he pardons are those to whom he gives the “gift of faith.” (This is where it all comes around full circle.) Being given the gift of faith means God has caused you to believe the tricky part! Faith is believing what I called the tricky part. How do we know this is true? It is true because this is what Paul says in his epistles, chiefly Romans. Now Christians had read Paul for fifteen centuries before Luther picked him up and nobody ever found this doctrine in Paul before. How do we know this is what Paul meant? Well, because this is the “plain and obvious” reading of Paul and being given the gift of faith means that you do find this in Paul. Not being able to find this in Paul means you have not been given the gift of faith and so are not among the lucky to be pardoned. Sorry about that. Maybe you will just get lucky later. As one of the blessed lucky few I’ll pray for you. As for me I’m feeling really happy and relieved that I will spend eternity in paradise because I do believe the tricky part.

Focus in the Classroom

2011-01-22T11:31:00.002-05:00

This semester I am trying two new things in my classes.

First of all, I am declaring the classroom a "technology-free" zone. While in the past I've only had a few students bring laptops, and those students have been good students who remained highly engaged in class, last semester suddenly a lot of students started bringing laptops and smartphones, using them in ways that clearly disengaged them from class discussions. It also became clear that those students missed a lot that we went over in class. So, this semester I am going to ban laptop computers, cell phones, and smartphones from class, explaining that I want us to focus on each other and on the discussion happening in the classroom.

Second, I am going to start each class with five minutes of quiet meditation. I have in the past used meditation in some classes, where it was obviously relevant to introduce students to a variety of meditation techniques. And the students have really loved this. And so now I've decided to do this in all of my classes, and for every class session, simply because it is good for us. It quiets the mind, and prepares us all to focus.

Related to both of the above, I am going to make time now and then to talk in class about how to think more consciously about how we live our lives.

I'll report back about how this goes.

Public vs. Private

2010-09-25T13:11:00.000-04:00

As a society we have divided into Red and Blue ghettoes. Liberals and conservatives talk only to each other and look with contempt on those in the opposite camp. The complaints that each side makes about the other offer a curious parallel. Conservatives claim that liberals are too individualistic when it comes to sex. There need to be public standards of sexual behavior, conservatives think. Liberals tend to think that homosexuals should be allowed to marry, that adults should not discourage teenagers from having sex so long as they use condoms, that women can raise children just fine without fathers, that high divorce rates are nothing to worry about and that couples living together for short or long periods of time without marriage is fine and healthy. Conservatives tend to disagree with all of the above. They would usually encapsulate their views on sex as “supporting marriage” and they would describe this collection of liberal attitudes as “attacking marriage.” In short, conservatives think that sex is not a purely private matter and that society as a whole should exercise some measure of control over the sexual behavior of individuals. Hard line conservatives want standards of sexual conduct enforced with legal sanctions. Liberal individualism about sex is seen as promotion of selfishness that is destructive to a healthy social order. Conservatives see a social order breaking down with harmful effects on everyone. Leaving individuals completely “free” to pursue their own sexual happiness leads to the destruction of the familial relations which are the essential to the health of society and ultimately to the happiness of individuals themselves. The search for sexual gratification unrestricted by social sanctions of any kind paradoxically leads to individual misery.
When it comes to money conservatives think that liberals are not individualistic enough. Here the key word is not “marriage” but “socialism.” Liberals want the government to be active in solving some of society’s problems. Government should place restrictions of business to protect the environment from degradation, to protect workers from discrimination based on sex or race, to protect consumers from dangerous and defective products. They want society to support healthcare, education, and public transportation. Liberals recognize that all this costs money and see nothing wrong with taxing the rich to pay for it. When it comes to money, conservatives think, individuals should do whatever they want and the public needs to back off. Taxes should be low and rates should not be higher for the wealthy. People should pay for their own medical care and for the educational needs of their own children. If they feel their employer is discriminating against them, they should quit and find a new job. Consumers should protect themselves by researching products before they buy them. And finally, the threat that unrestricted business activity poses to the environment is wildly exaggerated.
Looking at society from the liberal point of view reverses all this as if looking into a mirror. Conservative resistance to “socialism” is a sign of selfish individualism which blinds itself to public good. Economic activity is too important to be left to unrestricted free markets. Laissez faire capitalism would naturally destroy our natural environment, reduce the middle class to poverty, and ultimately destroy itself by collecting more and more wealth into fewer and fewer hands. Common sense demands a measure of public control of economic activity because completely “free” economic activity leads to moral disaster. On the sexual side of things, conservatives lack respect for individuals and their power to make choices unconstrained by society. The conservative sneer at “socialism” in economic matters is paralleled here by the liberal sneer at the “Puritanism” of conservatives.
The Red/Blue divide thus takes the shape of a disagreement about where to draw the line between public and private. Liberals want sexual relations to be purely private but think there should be a larger measure of public control of economic relations. Conservatives believe that society must support marriage and exert some measure of control over personal sexual behavior but that society should never interfere with “capitalistic acts between consenting adults.” Both sides see themselves as being unbending defenders of freedom where they think such freedom is appropriate and as being sensible opponents of due restraint where they think that such “freedom” is actually selfish irresponsibility.
In 1982 MacIntyre described our modern situation as a desolate one in which people could not reason with each other about what was right and what was wrong and instead could only express their anger and engage in ruthless political maneuvering to achieve their own favored ends. Now that we are in the second decade of the 21st century the modern situation looks even more like this than it did in 1982. Few, very few, liberals will actually make a serious attempt to argue that unrestricted sexual behavior will actually promote the well-being of society. Generally this is simply assumed and those who disagree are sneered at. Few, very few, conservatives will actually make a serious attempt to argue that the invisible hand of the marketplace solves all problems in the long run. Generally the mere use of the label “socialism” is considered enough of an argument.
Pity the poor moderate who seeks compromise and gets sneered at by both sides.

Teaching to students with disabilities

2010-09-02T15:10:00.002-04:00

What has been your experience teaching to deaf and hard-of-hearing students?

A little background:

I will be teaching at RIT starting next week, and a significant part of the RIT culture is the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. 9 out of the 75 students currently signed up for my courses are in the NTID; in orientation we've already been given some preliminary tips on how to integrate these students into the class, and of course there are many other resources available at RIT.

That said, in my decade plus of teaching, I've only had one deaf student, and it was a mixed experience for me. I got used to having a translator in the classroom, and had positive interactions with the student in and out of class. However, her written work seemed limited by the grammar of ASL, and I worried that my lectures never quite made it through translation (admittedly, she should have been able to keep up through the required reading).

Do you have any positive (or negative) experiences you'd be willing to share?

Avatar and Philosophy

2010-09-01T14:26:00.002-04:00

The idea of modern European/American people “going native” is not new. At first it was overwhelmingly viewed as a very bad thing. As far back as the 17th century the Pope worried that the missionaries he had sent to covert the Chinese were becoming Chinese instead. After James Fenimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans Americans devoured horror stories about white women being forced to go native. In the 19th century the British worried about officers and men stationed too long in India losing their British identity and this is a theme in some of Kipling’s tales. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902) depicts going native in Africa as a horrifying descent into madness and evil. At some point in the 20th century the tide shifted and “going native” started to seem appealing rather than appalling. Dancing with Wolves depicts a white American shifting loyalty from American culture to the Lakota as something positive. In 2010 Avatar takes the going native theme and transports it into a beautiful science fiction setting and becomes the most popular movie of all times. Is this merely due to the stunning visual effects or did the movie make the idea of going native hypnotically appealing?

In Avatar Jake, a paraplegic ex-Marine is feeling useless and abandoned in an ugly world. The world of 2154 in which Jake lives is much like ours but darker, dirtier and nastier. Nature has been all but completely destroyed and human relationships are coarse, violent and exploitive. Medical science has the ability to heal Jake and let him walk again but society won’t pay for the operation. Jake has been left by society to fend for himself and he’s not doing very well. Jake shows no trace of anger or rebelliousness at his treatment by society. His whole attitude and demeanor is that of hopelessness. Jake is offered a chance to pay for the operation and get his legs back by taking his brother’s place in an expedition to an alien world. The organization that hires Jake has tremendous resources at its disposal and pursues its economic ends with unblinking ruthlessness. His mission is to infiltrate the alien culture and get them to sell their natural resources in exchange for modern consumer goods. But the Na’vi do not like the deal. They prefer to live simple lives in harmony with each other and with the animals and plants that make up their natural environment. They do not want to be like us. They don’t want to trade their forest homes for Ipods. Jake is stranded among the natives. They don’t like Jake but they take him in. They live in harmony with nature and with each other. Jake comes to feel that that this simple natural life is better than the world he left behind. A moment of crisis arrives and Jake finds his loyalties have firmly switched to his new people. There is a climactic battle in which the Na’vi win and a conclusion in which Jake abandons his human body and permanently becomes an alien.

The movie appeals to so many because so many feel like Jake does at the beginning of the story. He feels as though he’s been used and abandoned by a grimy, violent, uncaring society. Jake sees no reason to hope that things will get better for himself or for society as a whole. Life is hard and business is business. Nothing, not nature or the feelings of sensitive people, is going to interfere with the juggernaut of modern civilization. Mother Nature and poor little Jake are powerless. Resistance, shall we say, is futile. In the movie Jake escapes from the bleakness of modern life and finds love, harmony and right order among the Na’vi. The feel-good victory of Mother Nature depicted in the film is exposed as fantasy by the time the moviegoer gets to the parking lot to drive home. You are not on Pandora and there’s no way back. We told you that resistance was futile. Little wonder that some moviegoers felt depressed in the weeks following the movie.

Why is any of this of interest to a philosopher? Because it is evidence that many people feel something is deeply wrong with modern society and the lives it encourages us to live. Things are not in right order. If there is a deep dissatisfaction with the way things are then this is a call to philosophers to think deeply about how things should be.

Summing Up

2010-06-28T15:38:00.002-04:00

The course is over. It's been an exhausting five and a half weeks. I won't post any more on this since there seems to be no interest in discussing how to teach basic intro. This disappoints me since I think it is in some ways the most important course any of us teach.

I think that my efforts to tie the core areas of epistemology and metaphysics to ethics was a success. My students, at least the better ones, saw the connection and it made epistemology seem meaningful and not farfetched. The key was building the whole course around Glaucon's question to Socrates in the Republic: "how then, shall we live?" Only the most unthinking person fails to understand and appreciate the force of this question. It is the question that fired my interest over forty years ago when I first stumbled upon philosophy and I find that returning to it and making it the center of my intro course is the most honest and direct way of making the case for why students should devote at least a little serious thought to abstract and difficult ideas.

What's wrong with professional philosophy in general and analytic philosophy in particular is that most professional philosophers now look down their noses at such a "juvenile" and "unprofessional" way of looking at philosophy. I cannot disagree more with this kind of elitism. Philosophy that strays too far from this root is merely self-indulgent sophistry.

Midpoint in the course

2010-06-03T15:27:00.002-04:00

We have reached the midpoint of summer school. It's too soon to say whether my experiment of trying to emphasize the connection of metaphysics to ethics will spark more interest latter on because I haven't hit Descartes yet. When discussing Aristotle I stressed that his view of happiness is directly tied to his view of human nature and that what human nature really is does not seem to be merely a matter of opinion but rather some kind of objective fact. I think I was successful in getting them to see Aristotle's view of ethics as a live option for them. I don't think they see him as just another "dead white guy."

I introduce Epicureanism by comparing it with Buddhism. The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism represents a theory about human life that is both more radical and more negative than Epicureanism but extremely similar in its motivations.

A couple of highlights: "A stomach can be full but a bank account is never full." worked well as an illustration of the Epicurean doctrine about the difference between natural and socially conditioned desires. My comparison of Epicureans to potheads drew some smiles of recognition in my students.

I tried to show that these ideas are not locked into the past by briefly discussing Mill's attempts to answer the standard objections to Epicureanism a thousand years later. I also spoke about the paradox of hedonism and its possible connection with Mill's depression. "Since pleasure is the by-product of pursuing other goods when you desire pleasure itself you cut the ground from under your own feet. Pleasure become impossible."

I can say that I have at least a few students who seem intensely interested in the course thus far. Naturally there are also those who are obviously just taking the course to pick up a humanities credit and want nothing more than that. I'll have a better sense of how much this is sinking into their minds when I grade the midterm tomorrow.

Revising Intro

2010-05-13T16:22:00.002-04:00

I start summer school next week and one of the two courses I'm doing is Intro again. I want to change the structure slightly in order to maximize what went well and minimize what didn't.

What went well was the first half of the course where I concentrated on value issues as they arise in Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and the Epicureans. The students saw the point of thinking about the nature of the good life and could understand and mostly appreciate the different perspectives offered. But when I switched away from ethics to metaphysics and epistemology with Descartes and Berkeley, they lost most of their interest.

I'm going to try to correct this by tieing the metaphysics and epistemology to the ethics. Ethics will continue to be the foundation but then I plan to point out that what kind of universe we inhabit makes a difference to what kind of life it is sensible to live. The epicureans are materialists and their hedonism makes sense from that perspective. The Stoics take a more spiritual view of reality and their insistence that virtue is necessary and sufficient for happiness makes sense from that perspective. So, making a rational choice between Epicureanism and Stoicism would require figuring out if the world was fundamentally spiritual or material. Now when we ask: how do the Stoics know that the world is fundamentally spiritual skepticism takes on a more practical aspect.

Concretely I plan to bounce around from one philosopher to another much more than I did in the Spring. I want to show the students how all the particular topics covered in philosophy are interrelated and form part of one BIG conversation.

This is a somewhat risky strategy. Bouncing around too much may look more chaotic and less unified if I don't do it well. But if I do it right, it should produce a greater sense of unity.

I plan to post a few comments to report how this is going and if there seems to be any interest I will continue posting comments.

MLK National Memorial

2010-04-15T09:08:00.004-04:00

I've been asked to post some links about the effort to build a memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This is the sort of project that Quakers tend to support, and several members of my meeting (Roanoke Monthly Meeting) have been talking about Dr. King this month, the 42nd anniversary of his death and 43rd anniversary of his declaration of opposition to the war in Viet Nam. However, I don't have much to add beyond providing a couple links with resources both about Dr. King and the proposed memorial.

http://mlkmemorialnews.org

http://www.mlkmemorial.org/

The fault, dear Brutus, ...

2010-04-07T13:27:00.003-04:00

The course has not gone as well since I left classical philosophy and started on the modern period. I continued to relate the issues to contemporary times, but this didn't seem to have much effect. I think the main thing is the switch from a focus on ethics and the good life to epistemology and metaphysics. It just doesn't grab them in the same way. Is the external world composed of material objects having primary qualities that affect our senses with color and sound? Or is the external world composed of sensible objects that consist of patterns of ideas caused by God? My students don't care.

When we find something interesting it is hard to understand why someone else would not find it so. The temptation is to assume that the person is disinterested because they just don't understand it. Many philosophers give in to the temptation of thinking this but it seems self-serving and false to me. As a side note did you see the piece in the Chronicle of Higher Ed by a philosopher bemoaning the fact that philosophy has become marginalized. The possibility that we are doing something wrong is not considered. It is assumed that people are just too lazy to make the effort to read what we write. I don't buy this explanation.

Ethics, at least ancient ethics, still engages the interest of contemporary Americans when it is well-presented. But equally well-presented discussions of modern epistemology and metaphysics do not.

At the moment I don't have an answer to the question that interests me in all of this: what kind of epistemology and metaphysics would interest people now? Any suggestions?

update on Intro class

2010-03-18T13:15:00.002-04:00

I haven't posted about the Intro class in a couple of weeks because I have been distracted by working on the truth paper. But now that the paper is practically done, I will resume updates.

Today's class didn't go well. The reason seems pretty clear to me. I got news last night that a friend of mine has cancer and the news doesn't look good. This has been on my mind and I'm sure it affected my mood and classroom demeanor. I just couldn't be as energetic and upbeat as I normally am. It really seems to me that it affected the students. They tried to engage in discussion but it seemed flat. Nothing felt right.

Unfortunately I can't just choose to feel upbeat and optimistic under the circumstances. And knowing that I hadn't done a good job teaching today just made me feel worse. I'm wondering if I shouldn't have just told my students what had happened and how it was affecting me. I would hesitate to get that personal with my students. I fear it would almost sound like I was asking for their sympathy. So I don't know what I should have done. I think I just have to accept that sometimes class isn't going to go well for reasons beyond my control.

Paper on Truth

2010-03-09T15:54:00.002-05:00

I finished my paper on truth this afternoon (thanks to Spring Break). I plan to let it sit awhile before rereading it to see what I'm missing or messing up. At the moment it doesn't contain any notes or references, I suppose it will take me another day of work to insert them, but I did want to keep it rather informal so that it could be read by a wider audience than just professional philosophers.

I'd like to share it with any interested Quaker philosophers. I'll email it to you if you want it.

More on Truth

2010-02-25T15:31:00.000-05:00

OK, here's a new paragraph. Does this sound fair and reasonable?

Moreover, when concerned people looked at inequality it seemed to be no temporary or accidental phenomenon. Inequality seemed to be deliberately maintained by those who profited from it. The powerful kept control of society in part by the use of crude physical violence but also, and more importantly, by control of information. John Stuart Mill had argued that the free flow of information and the interplay of rational argument would ensure that in the long-run the truth would emerge victorious over falsehood and superstition. On the contrary, in the 20th century people began to argue that what emerged as victorious in the marketplace of ideas were the ideas that had the backing of the moneyed classes. Wealth and not the objective worth of arguments determined what books were published and how many copies; what movies were produced and where they were distributed; etc. The world-picture painted by mass education, mass entertainment and mass communications seemed deliberately designed and controlled to justify existing inequalities. Wealth is the natural result of hard work. So the explanation of poverty is laziness. Thus, the rich deserve to be rich and poor deserve to be poor. This is the picture that the rich ensure is overwhelmingly reinforced in popular culture as being the truth. If the Enlightenment represented a new cosmopolitan faith, then the history of the 20th century represented a crisis of faith. Recognizing that the powerful manipulate ideas to protect their interests is enough to give truth a bad name. Thus, the most radical postmodern response is to reject the most central notion of the Enlightenment: truth itself.

Postmodernism

2010-02-24T15:11:00.002-05:00

I would really appreciate some reaction to these four sentences on postmodernism. As you know I'm an Analytic guy so I'm struggling to understand postmodernism. If these four sentences aren't on the right track then I may just have to give up.

We live in a postmodern age and what this means is that there is a consensus that the intellectual synthesis that was the Enlightenment is no longer acceptable and must be replaced. But the consensus does not go much farther than that. The Enlightenment is a complex phenomenon and the debate does not become substantive and interesting until we have identified which elements of the complex we intend to reject and what we intend to offer in their place. The Enlightenment variously stood for many things: laissez faire capitalism, democracy, human rights, the scientific method, individualism, mass education, free speech, cosmopolitanism and progress.

Stoics, Epicureans and Buddhists

2010-02-19T18:57:00.002-05:00

I haven't been keeping up with reports on Intro lately so here's a quick update.

The essay exams took me approximately nine hours to grade. It got pretty tedious towards the end. They did pretty well though and that's encouraging.

Since then I have been talking about late classical philosophy. I introduced it will a quick synopsis of the 4 Noble Truths of Buddhism. The similarity as I see it is that original Buddhism is rather like Stoicism and Epicureanism in that 1) the goal is ataraxia and 2) there is an analysis of human psychology that leads to conclusions about how we should pursue it.

I do the Epicureans first and central to my account of them is the distinction between moving pleasure and static pleasure. A cat sitting contentedly on a sunny windowsill while I go to work embodies static pleasure. I summarize the Epicurean preference for static pleasure as the advice to "be the cat." Then I ask them to imagine trying to follow this philosophy today. They would drop out of school, get a job at Starbucks, and find a cheap apartment to live in with a couple close friends.

Next lecture I introduce the Stoics. They seem to like the idea of holding themselves to high moral standards while simultaneously not blaming other people for their behavior. I can see that a few of them really come to appreciate the Stoic philosophy.

Plain-speaking vs. Oversimplification

2010-02-16T13:20:00.002-05:00

What is the line between between being clear and simple (the Quakerly virtue of plain-speaking), and oversimplifying or being simplistic?

Incident Report

2010-02-15T11:57:00.004-05:00

Below is a copy of an email exchange with student names deleted. To get the full flavor of this start reading from the bottom up. Do things like this happen where you teach?

From: McCarty, Richard
Sent: Saturday, February 13, 2010 6:20 PM
To: Collins, John
Cc: Miller, Richard
Subject: RE: Student

John;

I'm taking care of this student--nothing administrative is required. In essence, the student has been absent from my 1175 for four weeks and I've agreed to meet with her and help her catch up. She could not be transferred to Richard's 1110--which she had been attending--because she had already taken 1110.

Yes, for four or five weeks she had been attending a class she had already passed, without realizing it. She even had bought the books for my class. So she obviously never attempted any reading assignments in Richard's class. She attended my class for the first time on Thursday, and sat on the back row with her laptop open. After I told her laptops were not allowed in my class she proceeded to read the newspaper. It became clear to me then how she could have attended for so long a class that she had already taken.

.RMc

From: Collins, JohnSent: Saturday, February 13, 2010 2:53 PMTo: Bailey, GeorgeCc: McCarty, Richard; Miller, RichardSubject: RE:
George,
I don’t know who the other confused student is. Richard, Rick: if there’s a second student, besides XXXXXXXX, who enrolled in Rick’s but attended Richard’s and who needs to have this fixed, please send the info to George so he can have the registrar fix both problems at once.
-John

From: Bailey, George Sent: Friday, February 12, 2010 9:10 PMTo: Collins, JohnSubject: Re:

The second time? You mean we have to do another student as well? No problem, I hope, but if so, have someone get me the relevant info – better to do both at once if there are two.

And thanks.

George

From: "Collins, John" Subject: RE: Her name is XXXXXXX. She is enrolled in McCarty’s 1500 section 001 and has been attending Miller’s 1180 section 001 (both courses have just the one section). Same initials, same time, and the rooms were right next to each other. Richard tells me this is the second time this has happened this week. From: Bailey, George Sent: Friday, February 12, 2010 5:32 PMTo: Collins, JohnSubject: Re: It would be better coming from me – what is the student name and banner id and what sections of those courses are involved?

Thanks,
George

From: "Collins, John"

George,

Yesterday I mentioned to you the philosophy student who was mistakenly enrolled in a different class than she was attending. Rick and Richard have both agreed to letting her into 1180 and out of 1500 (without a late drop). I’ll go ahead and explain it to the registrar and ask for what we want, unless you think it would be better coming from you. What do you think? (And should the email go to the registrar or to the special attention of any particular person there?)-

John

Working on Truth Again

2010-02-08T15:02:00.002-05:00

I'm working on my contribution to the anthology on truth that several of us are contributing too. I've read through what I wrote early on and through all the abstracts that Jafe sent to us. Now I am rereading the article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (plato.stanford.edu) on truth. This article is firmly in the Analytic tradition and it makes a lot of sense to me but what bothers me is that there is nothing in it about the postmodern views on truth.

The Stanford article provides what seems to me a perfectly clear and adequate summary of what Analytic philosophers have said about truth. Is there anything that does the same for the postmodern/continental crowd? I would feel better about writing this if I could read a brief clear summary of what the other side thinks about truth. I want to know what I am missing before I try to put my thoughts in final form.

Distributive Justice

2010-02-04T14:12:00.002-05:00

I've been wondering why this class has been going so well. I am doing a couple of things differently, or more accurately I've changed my emphasis slightly. Could such subtle changes really make a significant difference?

Three small differences stand out to me. 1) I am consciously trying to emphasize the relevance of Plato and Aristotle to our lives today. I want the students to see that we are not studying Plato and Aristotle. We are reading them to study the topics they were interested in. 2) I am not trying to control the pacing of the lectures but rather allowing it to flow with the student discussion. If I don't get to something that I have in my notes which I had planned to talk about I don't make an effort to squeeze it in. I just drop it or leave it until later. 3) I am putting myself into the discussion more. After going through what can be said for and against a position, I tell them what I think. I also reveal little facts about me as a person--that I'm married, have grown kids, two dogs, etc. I just drop these facts into the lecture. I think they help them to see me as a three-dimensional person and not just a teaching machine.

In discussing distributive justice I did a quick compare and contrast of Aristotle's view with Nozick's and Rawls' theories. I ran this by them earlier but I sensed that they didn't fully see its relevance. So today I went through distributive justice again and tied it specifically to the million dollar bonuses being paid to the investment gurus who brought the world economy to its knees and had to be bailed out by Joe Taxpayer. It turned out to be another very successful class. I haven't covered as much material as I normally do by this point in the semester but the quality of the classroom discussion is much better than it normally is.

I give the first test next week and that will tell me more objectively how I am doing. If the tests are good, then I will be positively ecstatic about how the class is going. But if they do awful, it will really disappoint me. If anyone out there is following this, I'll keep you posted.

Aristotle

2010-01-30T10:23:00.002-05:00

The first class on Aristotle's ethics didn't go well. He's a harder read than Plato and I wasn't at my best. So for Thursday I just started over. I went back to the first sentence of NE. It worked very well second time through. I could tell the students were starting to get a sense of who Aristotle was. Second time through gave me the opportunity to offer fresh examples.

Aristotle's point that happiness is an activity is hard for the modern mind to grasp. We are so strongly inclined to think that happiness is a state of mind that we have trouble hearing this. I eased into this by talking about happiness as a product. Suppose someone thought that winning the Superbowl was happiness. Would looking at that Superbowl ring next week, next month, next year, ... really be the same? Then I talked about how good it feels to do something really well. This could be playing music for those with that kind of talent, or skiing if you are good at that. Excellent activity feels good but Aristotle doesn't identify happiness with the feeling. He thinks that the feeling is merely a by-product of the activity. So what we want is an excellent activity that we can sustain for a very long time.

At this point I felt my students really got what Aristotle was saying.

Socrates and Martin Luther King

2010-01-21T14:40:00.002-05:00

Today we did the Crito, Plato's discussion of the just man's duty to respect the law. In the Apology Socrates makes a point of telling the jurors that he would never obey a law that ordered him to stop questioning and speaking his mind. Then when Crito asks him to accept help escaping from prison, he says that his respect for the law prevents this. How do you square the Socrates who must "obey the god rather than you" when it comes to unjust law with the law and order Socrates of the Crito? Since this lecture occurs on the heels of MLK Day this is a nice hook. Respect for the law in the Crito means "persuade or obey." The just man does not have an obligation simply to obey the law. His obligation is to respect the law. This means obey or "persuade". By engaging in what we have come to know as civil disobedience Socrates continues to persuade the Athenians. This kind of persuasion is different from the mere lawbreaking of the criminal. The civil disobedient 1) does this publicly and not in hiding, 2) nonviolently, and 3) willingly accepts the penalty for breaking the law.

This class has gone better than any class of mine in recent memory. Something I am doing differently is working.

Relativism

2010-01-19T16:38:00.002-05:00

I taught the Apology today and discussed whether Socrates corrupted the youth. Socrates was connected in people's minds with the Sophists and many Athenians thought that the Sophists corrupted the youth. Why did they think so? One reason was that many of the Sophists taught some form of relativism. I explained that relativism itself is a very conservative philosophy. It says that right is whatever your society says is right. Making society's rules correct by definition is about as conservative as you can get. Nevertheless, relativism leads by a very natural train of thought to moral skepticism. If my society says that this is wrong and another society, with equal justification, says that it is right, then why should I take right and wrong seriously. I then took a quick pass through Macchiavelli and Neitzsche for some later examples of moral skepticism. Then I went bake to Socrates. There's no reason to actually think that
Socrates was a relativist.

Socrates is a critic of the moral standards of his society. He does not accept them as they stand. Does that make him a moral skeptic who rejects all moral standards or seeks to invert them as Nietzsche does? No, it is better to describe Socrates as one who thinks the moral standards of his society are too low. Socrates is a moral reformer; not a moral skeptic or nihilist.

So far things are going well. The students seem to get that what these old dead guys were talking about matters to us now.

new ideas for intro to philosophy

2010-01-14T16:45:00.002-05:00

I am teaching intro to philosophy this semester and will be trying out some new-to-me ideas. If anyone seems interested I will post short reports on how the experiment is working.

I like to use classic texts. In the past I have lectured on each philosopher one by one. What I found I didn't like about this approach is that it fails to convey to the student that these texts are part of a dialogue that continues throughout history. So now I will be mixing it up more.

In the opening lecture I asked them what justice was and got a few attempted answers which I poked holes in. Then I presented them with William James' little example of the man chasing the squirrel around a tree. The squirrel always moves so that the tree trunk remains between him and the man. James says that the question: does the man go around the squirrel has a clear yes or no answer so long as you have a clear definition of "go around." I explained that much of what philosophers do is try to get clear definitions not of trivial stuff like "go around" but of important things like "justice." Then in the second lecture we began the Euthyphro and I showed them that Euthyphro was unclear about "piety" and that his problems were similar to some of the problems that arose in our discussion of "justice."

I explained the difficulty that people have with defining concepts this way. We learn most concepts my ostention. So we develop a bunch of examples in our heads. Most ordinary concepts seem to be nothing more than a montage of pictures in our heads. No wonder then that Euthyphro, when asked to define piety, just points to a couple of examples.

Students seemed to relate to the idea that ordinary concepts are a montage of pictures. Freedom is a flag waving, jets streaking overhead, a little kid saluting at a parade, etc. It is a good thing, I told them, that Thomas Jefferson had a clearer concept of freedom in his head when he sat down to write the Constitution. His clearer concept enabled him to thoughtfully design a form of government that would promote freedom.

So far the class seems to be going well.

Deflationary Theories of Truth

2009-12-28T10:18:00.002-05:00

I want our discussion of truth to continue because I will profit from hearing other points of view. So I'm going to post again on a view of truth (or perhaps it's better to call it a bunch of related theories about truth) that is genuinely contemporary. In addition it spans the Analytic/Continental divide.

Deflationary theories of truth say that truth doesn't really mean anything at all. It is a word that has a function,but it's function is not to describe the statements or beliefs being called "true". Minimally a deflationary theory can claim that to say "What Mary said was true" is just to repeat what Mary said in fewer words. So "true" is just a kind of abbreviation, the way that I will use a pronoun. As in when I say a person's name in my first sentence and then use "he" or "she" instead of the name.

This simple deflationary view has its good points. "True" does seem to work like this to some extent at least. A related theory says that we use "true" to mean "warranted assertibility." So what I really when when I say "That's true" is "we have good reason to believe or say so." Again to some extent "true" seems to work like this.

However, this doesn't seem right to me. Having a good reason to believe p implies, it me at least, that p is probably true. Moreover, I sometimes use true in circumstances that seem to definitely not mean "warranted assertibility." For example, I would say it might be true that intelligent aliens are observing human civilization right now. I don't mean that I might have adequate evidence to say this. I think the correspondance notion is at the core of what I am saying here. I think those aliens might be out there doing this totally undetectable by me.

Similarly for the "ditto" version of truth. When I would repeat what Mary said I do so because I think what she said was true. The presumption that people normally use assertive sentences only when they believe that the propositional content of those sentence is true is what makes "true" work like "ditto."

On the continental side it appears that deflationary theories often take on a "speaking truth to power" tone. "True" is used by the powerful to silence the powerless. It is "true" that capitalism is good for society just means "shut up, we are not going to redistribute the wealth!"

I agree that the powerful bully the powerless. I agree that the powerful have a disproportionate amount of control over sources of information and what gets said and what views are taken seriously. I see that power is used unjustly. But I am not convinced that it's a good theory of truth to say that the function of "true" is to silence the voice of the poor.

My reason for not going along with this is similar to my reason for rejecting the Analytic deflationary theories--I don't think they would work this way if there were not a correspondance notion of truth at the core. Imagine this. Rush Limbaugh or
Bill O'Reilly is shouting down someone who says that the rich don't pay enough in taxes. Instead of saying "That's not true!" he says "That offends the rich!" It just wouldn't work. To have any plausibility Rush or Bill must at least be claiming that there are objective facts on their side. To just nakedly say "I dislike what you are saying" falls flat.

So I'm saying that the rich do oppress the poor and that they use the word "true" as part of this, but that these facts can't be the basis of the theory of what "true" means.

Theories of Truth

2009-11-20T10:53:00.004-05:00

In my studies, I learned that there are three major philosophical theories of truth:

The correspondence theory of truth = truth is what corresponds with reality.
The coherence theory of truth = truth is what coheres with other well-established beliefs.
The pragmatic theory of truth = truth is what "works."

There are of course also denials that the concept of truth is meaningful any more. Here are some of those views, more spelled out:

"Truth" is merely an invention of those in power, used to maintain their power. (They use claims to truth to bully others into submission.)
Truth is a matter of individual determination. We each make beliefs true (for ourselves) by believing in them. (Relativism.)

Are there other major philosophical perspectives on truth that I am forgetting?

Pedagogical Question: Accusing someone of plagiarism

2009-02-17T14:59:00.002-05:00

In my years of teaching, I have only accused four students of plagiarism. In all the cases, I brought the essays they had submitted and, using a bright yellow highlighter, made a direct comparison with another, uncited text. I was able to find the texts myself, but I certainly would have asked other people who were more familiar with a particular subject area if I couldn't track down a source; that is to say, I would both pursue it seriously, and also grant the student the benefit of the doubt. This seems appropriate for a religious community who jokes, "Well, those cows are brown, at least on this side."

I'm not posing an academic question about the nature of truth here (although I certainly recognize that it's not unconnected): this is about being a good Quaker and a good teacher.
Are there any circumstances under which you would accuse a student of plagiarism without having the text from which you think the student has plagiarized in hand?

Befriending Truth Anthology

2009-02-05T16:33:00.002-05:00

In hopes of restarting this blog I'm posting the abstract of my contribution to Jeff Dudiak's anthology on Truth.

"Not Giving Up on Truth"

Philosophy from its beginnings has been a search for truth. It is motivated by a sense that what is taken by society at large to be the truth is not the real truth. And a belief that finding the real truth and announcing it is a radical act that liberates first the individual and finally the world. Lately, however, some have challenged the very notion of truth. In the paper I argue for a recovery of the idea of truth.

We live in a postmodern age and what this means is that there is a consensus that the intellectual synthesis that was the Enlightenment is no longer acceptable and must be replaced. But the consensus does not go much farther than that. The Enlightenment is a complex phenomenon and the debate does not become substantive and interesting until we have identified which elements of the complex we intend to reject and what we intend to offer in their place. The Enlightenment variously stood for many things: laissez faire capitalism, democracy, human rights, the scientific method, individualism, mass education, free speech, cosmopolitanism and progress. Central to all of these is perhaps the belief that truth is to be found by overthrowing tradition and relying on a combination of human reason and careful objective observation. In the 20th century faith that the application of the scientific method to society will yield nothing but progress and justice for all was shaken by war, colonialism and economic depression on a global scale. The vast majority of the world’s poor and powerless remained so and dreams of inevitable progress through reason began to seem at least somewhat hollow if not cynically manipulative. So the most radical postmodern response is to reject the most central notion of the Enlightenment: truth. Philosophically there is a parallel development that pointed to the same result. At the beginning of the modern age Descartes posed the problem of skepticism in a particularly acute form. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries philosophers struggled to exorcise Descartes’ evil demon without success. By the 20th century a weariness with skepticism was leading some to reject the elusive goal of coming to know the objective truth about the world.

But is truth really the problem or is the wholesale rejection of objective truth too radical? The question of truth needs to be divided into specific problems that should each be examined in turn. First there are technical issues. Truth in its ordinary common sense meaning is some sort of correspondence between the world and what we say about it. The sentence “the cat is on the mat” is true if and only if in the real world the mat is the place where the cat is at. This seems plain enough but there are many true sentences where it is hard to identify some fact out there in the world that makes them true. For example, it is true that there are no bananas on the Moon but what exactly does the fact look like that makes this true? Second, how facts make sentences true looks rather mysterious up close. John Locke held that our thoughts were like pictures in the head and that truth was a matching up of these pictures with the world outside our heads. But serious thinking about the nature of thinking makes it look less and less like pictures in the head. Third, the inability of philosophers to agree on any solution to the problem of skepticism seemed to put the world out of reach. If we do not really have access to the world, then how could we ever compare our sentences or our thoughts to see if they really correspond with the world? Fourth, people began to notice how the powerful used their power to project a very self-serving view of what was true and to impose it on the public as the official version of the truth. Looked at in this way, the “truth” begins to seem like a notion designed to protect the privileges of the powerful. Finally, there is quantum mechanics. The investigation of the physical world on the smallest scale began to reveal a deep strangeness about the world in which the objectivity of the physical world begins to look like an illusion.

Can and should the simple notion of truth as correspondence with reality be saved? It can and should. Since the problems with truth are multiple it makes sense that the solution should be complex. There are four main developments within philosophy which point the way. First, we should be fallibilists. Descartes started the modern period with his demand that beliefs be absolutely certain to count as knowledge. This has proven an unrealistic demand and his gambit should be rejected. We do not have to possess certainty in order to know the truth. Second, we should be contextualists. Justification for beliefs comes in varying strengths. How strongly a particular belief must be justified to count as knowledge ought to vary according to context. Third, accept a modest pragmatism. Radical pragmatists went along with the rejection of truth but more moderate pragmatism goes less far. It accepts that concepts are mostly human creations and notes that which concepts we use is up to us. It then recommends that conceptual choice cannot be guided by truth, for that makes no literal sense, but should instead be guided by human values. Finally, we should be metaphysical pluralists. One of the dominating visions of the Enlightenment has been the quest for a theory of everything. Underneath the blooming buzzing confusion of the world as we know it lies, they believed, a very simple world with only a few kinds of things operating according to a few fixed laws. This dream was an illusion. We should accept the fact that the world is so complex that there is in fact no one way the world really is. Instead we must accept that there are many ways the world is and that each way represents an independent truth not reducible to any of the other ways.

Request for Examples

2008-07-30T15:19:00.002-04:00

It would assist my critical thinking project if some of you could help me out with a few examples. What I am looking for are examples of statements in the usual forms logicians study but whose content is derived from some academic discipline other than philosophy. I'd also like to avoid the kinds of stock examples from biological classification that logicians are fond of like "All dogs are mammals." The statements could be quite simple or moderately complex.

For example, a very simple statement taken from business is "All budgets are estimates." A somewhat more complex example taken from geology is "All marble is non-foliated metamorphic rock."

So if you could supply me with a couple of examples of categorical statements (A,E, I, O) or conditionals or disjunctions that might actually appear in a textbook or lecture outside of philosophy, it would be of much help.

Critical Thinking

2008-07-15T13:44:00.002-04:00

My university decided to give me very generous release time from teaching to work on creating web-based critical thinking units. I will be teaching only one course each semester so that I can devote the bulk of my time to the project. The long range plan, still tentative, is for these units to be assigned in courses across the curriculum so that each one of our 25,000 students will be assigned a short critical thinking unit to do every semester. The implementation of this is a long way off but for this year I have the job of creating eight critical thinking units and have them ready to deploy by next summer at this time. In the meanwhile I will use the units in the one course I am teaching--a section of Critical Thinking.

As I work on this I'd like to try out some ideas on the group and get some feedback. If you have some experience with teaching critical thinking that's great, but even if you don't your perspective as philosophers should be of value. I will provide a link to the webpages themselves so that you can look at them.

The general public and especially employers are asking colleges to do a better job teaching students to think. What I think meets the need most effectively is logic. The logic should be nonsymbolic and practical. I find that categorical logic is useful. I also find that simple sentence logic forms like modus ponens and disjunctive syllogism are good. I am still not completely satisfied with any of the usual approaches to inductive logic, but I do not want to stick wholly to deductive logic. Also I find that specific training in how to object to arguments is both necessary and valuable for students. (For example, asking: "is this an objection to the first premise of the argument or to the second premise?" is surprisingly challenging to ordinary students at first. But once they get used to it their thinking becomes much clearer and more focused.)

That's enough for now. If some of you are willing to help me on this, I will post regular topics for your feedback.

Quakers and Kant: That of God in Everyone

2008-02-17T09:47:00.005-05:00

Quakers recommend that, in our relations with each other, we should strive to respond to "that of God within everyone." In my own thinking, I have always related this to a supreme principle of respect. At least part of respect includes believing that everyone is capable of goodness. And at least part of the recommendation to look for and respond to "that of God" within everyone is also to assume that everyone is capable of goodness.

Immanuel Kant proposes something similar in his moral theory. One formulation of his "categorical imperative" is "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means" (Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 429, trans. James W. Ellington, Hackett Publishing Company, [1785] 1981).

For Kant, understanding people as "ends" is the same as understanding them as "rational agents." By this, he means that people set their own goals, and thus are sources of new activity in the world. Kant then connects human rationality to the concept of "goodness" in the following way. Ultimately, the "true function" of our rational nature "must be to produce a will which is not merely good as a means to some further end, but is good in itself" (396). He makes this comment on the heels of just having argued that rationality is not for the purpose of survival alone--instinct can and does aid in the survival of many other living organisms. Nor is the purpose of rationality to ensure happiness--it doesn't do a very good job at that! We cannot really plan for our own happiness (even if we do all desire it). So there is some other purpose for our having rationality: producing a will that is good in itself (that wills good for the sake of goodness alone).

When our will is thus purified, the goals that we set and the activity that results from our trying to fulfill these goals brings new goodness into the world. By treating people "as ends," we respect them as potential sources of new goodness for the world. And by "responding to that of God within everyone," we try, in our relations with others, to encourage them to bring that potential goodness forth.

The early Quakers believed that humans can reach a kind of perfection in life, and they too connected this notion with a kind of purification of will (see for example Barclay's Proposition VIII, in his Apology [1675/1678]). Barclay believed that it is an insult to God to think that God created us so badly that a kind of human perfection is impossible. He also worries that a doctrine that human perfectibility is impossible can make us all too willing to accept our shortcomings.

"What is the purpose of such a strange doctrine? The imperfection of Christians comes either from God or from themselves. If it is of their own doing, it must be because they fall short of using the power of obedience that was given them. In that case, they were capable of achieving God's will with his aid. But our opponents deny this, so they are not to be blamed for continuing in sin since they are incapable of doing otherwise" (Barclay's Apology in Modern English, edited by Dean Freiday, p. 158).

Barclay does not believe that reaching a kind of perfection makes us invulnerable to future sin or error. "If [those who have attained a measure of perfection] are not watchful they may fall into iniquity and lose it. Many good and holy men have had their ups and downs of this kind" but sin "does not destroy him altogether or make it impossible to rise again" (156). He goes on to argue that, "nevertheless a state can be attained in this life in which it becomes so natural to act righteously that a condition of stability is achieved in which sin is impossible" (157).

Do Quakers today still believe that this kind of perfectibility is possible?

Quakers and Plato

2008-01-29T10:25:00.000-05:00

I am under the impression that the early Friends were not sympathetic with the Cambridge Platonists, and I am wondering if anyone who reads this blog knows more about this.

I see lots of resonances between Plato's ideas and Quakerism.

For example, in Plato's Republic, Socrates argues that "it is never just to harm anyone" (335e).

Another example: the account of wisdom in the Republic is based on the sun analogy (506e-509d). Goodness is like the sun: it shines down the world offering illumination and warmth. The wise person sees not just what there is, but also perceives the play of light cast by the sun (goodness) upon what is. I interpret this to mean that the wise person is not merely knowledgeable about what there is and how it all works, but is also able to perceive or discern ebbs and flows of goodness in all that happens.

And I think that this is similar to the Quaker quest to look for that of God within everyone, and to live in a way that lends strength to the growth of goodness in the world. Isaac Penington writes about this in his letter to the Royal Society, where he argues that scientific knowledge alone (based on observation and reason) are not enough: attention to the spiritual dimension is important too. And Arthur Eddington, much later, writes about how science and religion are not at all at odds, because we have two modes of knowing: we perceive the world both in terms of what is, and what ought to be.

Both Penington and Eddington seem to be saying something similar to how Socrates defines wisdom. The best form of knowledge, wisdom, does not stop with just observing what is. We must also hone our ability to perceive the play of goodness over the world: to perceive what is in relation to what ought to be.

References:

Eddington, Arthur Stanley, Science and the Unseen World, 1929.

Penington, Isaac, Some Things Relating to Religion, Proposed in the Consideration of the Royal Society (So Termed), to wit, Concerning the Right Ground of Certainty Therein, 1668. Available in: The Works of Isaac Penington, Vol. III, Quaker Heritage Press, Glenside, PA, 1996.)

Plato's Republic (multiple translations and editions available).

Laying This Blog Down

2008-01-21T14:14:00.000-05:00

I think it is time to recognize that it is time to lay this blog down. There hasn't been sufficient interest to continue it. I think it is better to make this as a conscious decision than it just let it happen through inertia. As Quakers we should let our yea be yea and our nay be nay. I wish the blog could have been more of a success but I must recognize that it is not. It is time to lay it down.

The Meaning of Life

2007-11-30T16:18:00.001-05:00

I can't remember the exact quote but Iris Murdoch says something rather like this: any philosophical theory that you can't live isn't worth reading. Whatever the exact words; I heartily endorse the idea.

Contemporary philosophy, particularly the Analytic Philosophy in which I am trained, has become remote from life. It has become a series of intellectual puzzles to challenge refined intellectual tastes. It was not always so. In ancient times, particularly in the Hellenistic period, philosophy was viewed as medicine for the soul. It was the use of argument and reasoning deployed for the express purpose of curing the suffering of human life.

My question to my fellow Quaker philosophers is this: to what extent do you, in your teaching or your research, seek to address the problem of how to live. Do you see this as a proper part of philosophy or as something arrogant or juvenile (or both)?

This semester I added a few lectures on Hellenistic philosophy to my Introduction to Philosophy lectures and found that students related quite well to the issue of how we should live. Have any of you had similar experiences?

A Bigger Role for Philosophy in the Curriculum

2007-11-14T14:28:00.001-05:00

Philosophy used to have a very big role in the college curriculum. The role has grown progressively smaller with each decade. I think we have been outmanoevered by other fields (mainly by the social sciences) in the game of academic politics. We should have a big role to play. How can we get it back?

In the standard American college curriculum today the English Department gets every student for at least one and usually for two required courses in composition. This means big English Departments. People in general recognize that the thinking skills of college students are poor. So a demand for critical thinking has arisen. But Philosophy has been outmaneovered here. As philosophers we understand clearly that good thinking requires a grounding in logic. You don't have to be able to do proofs in predicate logic with overlapping quantifiers, but if you don't see the difference between modus ponens and affirming the consequent you are in bad shape. Most college students are in bad shape. A simple practical applied logic course would do them a world of good. But instead on our campus we have every department claiming that they teach critical thinking already. The art department claims that they teach students to "think critically" when they teach them how to critique a work of art. Well, as valuable as that skill is, it isn't going to help people to see the fallacies in political speeches and editorials. You need a good solid grounding in logic for that and there is no substitute for it.

We ought to push our institutions to make Critical Thinking a required course for all students and the course should be 100% under the control of people with solid training in logic. This will require a huge shift of resources on campus and this amount of change is not easily accomodated by colleges. It's easier to "solve" the problem of lack of critical thinking skills by redefinition. "Critical Thinking" becomes whatever the Art School, Communications Department, Business SChool etc. want to call by that term. In other words change nothing in fact but rename what we are already doing. Real change requires a shift of resources. A whole army of new philosophers must be hired specifically to teach these courses and that means a gradual shift of resources away from other departments. But the shift does not have to be done overnight. It could most smoothly be accomplished in phases over a ten year period. Right now our Sociology Department mandates PHIL 1180 for its majors as their way of satisfying the humanity general education requirement. A gradual plan could target different years in which different departments made a equivalent shift in their graduation requirements. As the demand for Critical Thinking courses grew new philosophy positions could be added incrementally to handle the demand.

What do you think of my utopian vision?

Plain Speech in Action

2007-11-02T11:22:00.000-04:00

I promised to be more regular in posting on this site. Here is a copy of the email I sent to our Provost after her visit with the philosophy department this week.

Dear Dr. Sheer,

Thank you for visiting us to share views about where ECU is going. I thought I’d take a few minutes to try to restate what some of us see as the problem with plans to turn ECU into a high-powered research institution. I speak only for myself and not for Umit and Rodney, though in some ways what I will be saying echoes their thoughts.

The quality of our students is quite a bit lower than that of students at most high-powered research institutions. As our discussion revealed there is no realistic prospect of raising ECU’s admissions standards to anything like Chapel Hill levels. In fact, as you point out, it will be a challenge not to lower them. So the kinds of students we have now are the kinds of students we will have for the next ten years and any rational plan must recognize that as a fact.

Being a high-powered research institution means asking faculty to spend more time doing research and less time teaching. No one should ignore the fact that more time for research means less time for teaching. The question is: is it wise or appropriate to continue to transfer faculty time and effort away from teaching? In high-powered research institutions typically a large proportion of the teaching is turned over to graduate students in order to free up the regular faculty for research. Another way faculty resources are freed up for research is by building and filling large lecture halls so that more students can be taught with less investment of faculty time. This standard operating procedure works tolerably well under two conditions: 1) the undergraduates are reasonably good students and can learn independently with little help from the faculty, 2) the graduate students doing the face-to-face teaching are of high quality.

Unfortunately at ECU neither of these conditions obtains. Our undergraduates are not independent learners and the students admitted to our graduate programs are of marginal quality as well. To move to the high-powered research institution model is, in my opinion, irresponsible. The result will be, and to some extent already is, educationally disastrous. There is plenty of talk among faculty about how those who once regularly assigned papers are now moving to multiple choice tests. Larger classes means that fewer faculty have attendance policies. The decline in educational quality is largely invisible but it is real and it is the result of administrative policies that promote research over teaching. I hope you will seriously consider resisting the drive to turn ECU into a research institution.

Thanks again for your time and attention,

Richard Miller
Associate ProfessorPhilosophy

Philosophers' Roundtable again?

2007-09-26T19:49:00.000-04:00

Dear fellow contributors to, and readers of, Q/P blog,

Recalling the surprising and encouraging level of interest in the Philosophers’ Roundtable at the recent FAHE conference at Earlham (which was the motivation for establishing this blog), and remembering the approaching (and early) due date for FAHE proposals this year (November 1st), I am wondering whether we should not be in the process of putting together a proposal for another Philosophers’ Roundtable at the upcoming FAHE conference at Woodbrooke. My suggestion - and I’m just floating something here, open to counter-proposals or revisions - is that we organize around a more focussed query this time (last year’s queries were great, but it turns out were far too extensive to even begin to discuss in the time we had), and invite three or four prepared responses (of a maximum of five minutes each, and from diverse philosophical perspectives - maybe from the more regular respondents to this blog?) that can serve as the stimulus to a broader ranging discussion for the rest of the session. The moderator should probably not be one of the presenters, so that the discussion that follows not be channelled to anyone’s response/interests in particular. Given the theme of the conference, perhaps our query could be: “In what ways does your Quaker faith impact upon your philosophical practice?” (There is a broader question implicit here, of course, as to how one’s Quaker faith impacts upon academic work in any discipline, so the discussion might be of interest to others too.) But I would be interested in what others would like to hear discussed as well. What do we all think?

Jeff Dudiak

One Response to "What is Philosophy?"

2007-09-04T11:40:00.000-04:00

In a comment to Jeffrey's posting below, I noted the difference between answering this question in conversations with other philosophers, and answering the question for a broader audience. And so I thought it would only be fair if I offered my own response! Here is one way I answer the question to those not already immersed in philosophy: this is something I wrote for the Philosophy Blog at the college where I teach.

A summary here: I have two related answers.

1. (Following Plato): Philosophy is love of wisdom. What is wisdom? Perception of goodness. What is goodness? It is like a light that shines down on the world, illuminating it in a certain way. You can choose to just focus on what is, or you can see in a more complex way, also perceiving the way that the "light" of goodness plays on this world of "what is": what that light illuminates, and what that light casts into shadow. The philosopher is the person who learns to see in this more complex way.

2. Most (all) other fields of study investigate what is in various ways. The natural sciences focus on physical reality. The social sciences focus on psychological tendencies and social forces. The arts train both in techniques of expression, and in examining and interpreting what others have expressed. The humanities study the ways that people make sense of life and construct meanings. All of these fields do employ critical analysis of what they investigate as well.

Some of philosophy overlaps with some of these, but philosophy does something else besides. It doesn't just study the world of what is, and critically investigate this world. It also acknowledges the reality (at least in human consciousness) of a world of what should be. It acknowledges that our lived experience is comprised of a dual awareness: our awareness of what is is constantly attended by another awareness of what should be (even though we may get this wrong sometimes -- just as we sometimes get wrong what is), and we are always trying to reconcile these. And so philosophy does examine directly this other modality of experience as well. It investigates our critical faculties. It even critically examines our critical faculties! Or, like I said in the above-linked posting, philosophy includes the normative study of normativity itself. I do not think that any other fields of study do this.

The Conflicted Quaker

2007-07-25T21:34:00.000-04:00

"Do we ever find our Quaker identity in conflict with our academic-philosophy identity, and if so, how do we respond to such conflicts?"

I mentioned my own struggle with this question during the roundtable at FAHE, but wasn't too specific about it. My AOS is 19th century continental, and although I make gestures towards Kierkegaard and even Hegel on occasion, my heart lies closer to Marx and especially Nietzsche--both serious critics of Christianity and religion in general. Right now I'm finishing my manuscript for a book on Nietzsche, so I'll be done in time for classes--both the classes I'm teaching and the classes I'm taking at ESR. I mention that because I'm immersed in an atmosphere where the question of Quaker identity, and more generally Christian identity, is a constant topic. What I find as I read Nietzsche is, more often than not, he's right on target. For instance,

"It is not their love for humanity but rather the impotence of their love for humanity that keeps today's Christians from--burning us." Beyond Good and Evil, 104.

I'll offer some exegesis on that if necessary--exactly how I see this aphorism instantiated in a contemporary seminary--and I could easily point to many other similar passages in Nietzsche, but the short version is that I find Nietzsche's comments resonate with me in a way that I find disconcerting. Other than making a lot of jokes about it, I'm not sure how to reconcile these two parts of my identity.

Responses to Quaker Philosophy Roundtable Queries

2007-07-08T15:46:00.000-04:00

My responses to the Queries posed at the “Philosophers’ Roundtable” at the 2007 Annual Meetings of the Friends Association for Higher Education:

How do we see ourselves as scholars for peace, justice, or/and sustainability?

I will attempt to respond to this opening question “indirectly,” by means of responses to the subsequent questions, which I understand as sub-questions to this principal one, as ways of “getting at” this principal one. It would be both illusory and an impediment to “peace, justice, and sustainability” to think that we need to answer the following questions “first,” as if they were more abstract or foundational ones, before we could turn to this more practical one. Rather, we are as Quaker philosophers (or should be attempting to be, at least on my view) precisely scholars/philosophers for peace, justice and sustainability, and so the proper relationship between this first question and the subsequent ones is not that between an application and its theoretical bases, but that between end and means. Still, this relationship is complicated by the challenge of determining - even while being committed to them!, and perhaps above all for this reason - more exactly what peace, justice, and sustainability are and should be. And so the question that is perhaps rightly first in “religious priority” may not be the first we should attempt to answer, even if our responses to the subordinate questions cannot be adequate unless they are first of all (albeit necessarily incomplete) responses to this principal one, if at first only tacitly so.

What are we trying to accomplish in our teaching, our research, and our service?

I see my task as a teacher, broadly speaking, and as a teacher of philosophy in particular, as one of “encouraging cultivated imaginativity.” That is, I am of the conviction that “the world” (which is always the world in which we live and so includes us and our formative practices) is ever changing, and that each generation therefore faces challenges that the previous generations could not even have anticipated. (Analogies to already navigated waters can, of course, very often be found “after the fact,” so to speak, but to determine that a new situation is analogous to a foregoing one [and that it therefore calls for an already worked out solution, or some variation of it] itself requires a fresh judgment, and one that cannot presuppose the validity of the analogy.) My students will not only have to provide answers to new problems that I could not have taught them (the “answers” that I can teach them [even if “correct,” which is far from certain] may well not be answers to the questions that they will have to ask, and will almost certainly not be the answers that will fit the context in which they will be called upon to provide their answers), they will even have to ask questions that I could not have anticipated. In fact, I see it as one of the great disservices of dogmatic philosophy (and dogmatic theology, and dogmatic science) to put itself forth as providing, or even as seeking, timeless, “once and for all” answers that will not only be serviceable in every possible context, but will even, as universal, be an attempt to govern the parameters of any possible context. My task, then, cannot be to teach my students the right answers, for even if (miracle of miracles!) I could do so today, these answers would no longer be the right answers for tomorrow by dint of the changing questions. Or less radically (though for this perhaps so much the more subtle and the more commonly missed), the changing contexts in which the “same” questions need to be answered (those of a reputed philosophia perennis, for example) would effectively change the questions, and thus the required answers. I see it as my task then, to provide students with the broadest possible range of “tools” (in the loosest possible sense) for the imaginative work that lies ahead. I want to encourage an ever deepening plasticity and agility of mind (coupled with a perpetual questioning of the status quo), and philosophy is (historically, at least, and whatever else we might take it to be) a discipline (perhaps the paradigmatic one) that by its practice - if not always by its doctrine - is a model of the indefatigable variation of “takes” on things, of alternative paradigms, of the restless “reconstituting” of “the world” (i.e., of what we “best” take “the world” to “be,” and what we are to “do” about it - where all of these terms in scare quotes - and others - are precisely “in question,” i.e., yet to be determined). This is, whatever else it claims to be, at least rich fodder for the imagination. I take this (for rhetorical purposes, to be sure, but for more than that) to extremes in encouraging students “not to be intimidated too much my reality,” which is admittedly a peculiar charge coming from a philosopher. But I want students to genuinely believe that things do not have to be what they are, that (positive and radical) change is possible (tied to the Pauline claim that the me on is brought to humble and confound the on, that “what is not” is the necessary interruption and ultimately the redemption of “the powers that be [that are]”). And if this is not able to be transacted on the deepest levels (at the level of what is generally considered as the most real, at the level of what we generally take to be questions of ontology, or metaphysics, or cosmology), then the “changes” will correlatively never be anything other than ornamental. (Such that we might well get the change that, for a time at least, it will be lambs eating lions rather than lions eating lambs, but, unless the very structure of things is malleable, we’ll never get to the truly revolutionary: “lions lying down with the lambs” - which is a wonderful example of a marvelously imaginative, necessary, and true [“truer than true”] counter-factual.)

And yet, this “imaginativity,” so important on my view, cannot rest content with being an imaginativity “free like the wind,” cannot be confused a with mere fantasizing that abandons rather than transforms reality. (I am simultaneously committed to and want to question my own “cannot” in the forgoing statement. Who says we “cannot” rest content with mere fantasy? Backed up by what, or whom? But it is this “backed up by” that in each case I am suggesting we question, for it is this - and the fact that not only may we not question them, but that we cannot [reasonably] do so - upon which “the powers” rest.) And this is why it is essential to qualify this imaginativity with cultivation. We do not (it seems) get to start fresh, with a clean page, but inherit an already made world (but not for that immutable), one with which we need to seriously and soberly engage if our work of communal re-imagining is to be effective, and thus one it is essential that we understand as best we can. We awaken, spiritually and philosophically, already implicated in a history, in a history of struggle over “what is (to be) what”. Entering into this struggle is not only limiting, but also empowering. It is what we have been “given,” but it is not given as given once and for all - it comes with a call, a call to an ongoing responsibility.

What is philosophy?

My own sense is that philosophy is without an enduring essence; that philosophy, like everything else, is going to be for us largely what we make of it. Part of the task of each generation (school, type) of philosophers is to determine what philosophy is, i.e., what philosophy can and should responsibly be for its own time. And, indeed, perhaps the mark (or one of them) of a mature philosopher is a well worked out (and often idiosyncratic) version (although I would prefer here “vision”) of the nature of philosophy. (Never mind that in most cases this has been dressed up as the very essence of philosophy for all time, rather than as a responsible version for its time.) But this “responsibility” bespeaks a response; the discourse of philosophy is, qua discourse, a response to something beyond itself. We do not answer to our philosophies, we need to answer for our philosophies. Working out what it is that our philosophies answer to, trying to articulate “within” philosophy that which “precedes” in calling for philosophy, is one of the most interesting and perplexing problems of philosophy. What needs to be avoided is the “illusion” - created by the effort to articulate that to which philosophy is a response (and thus related to idolatry) - that that to which philosophy is a mere response becomes the “object” of philosophy, over which it then exercises a power. What we “have” within philosophy is a response, and not that to which it is a response (the call to philosophizing), we “have” the echo without the original sound, which leads to the illusion that it is philosophy that is, and that whatever else is going to be (to be taken as being) has to prove itself on philosophy’s terms. Thus the disasters of the famous “proofs for the existence of God,” “the criteria for meaningfulness” arising from logical positivism, even the prejudicing of “knowledge” over mere opinion, and an endless line of such pretensions.

There is therefore some cause for preferring to think of philosophy as “a way of life” rather than as a discipline with its subject matter, as a love of “wisdom,” but before “wisdom” is translated as “knowledge.” Philosophy needs be, on my view, an attentiveness to that to which it is a response, an “attentiveness” (an ongoing attending to, “hearing” of) precisely because none of its articulations of that to which it is a response are going to capture it. Philosophy is thus both a questioning (which gives it a certain power), and a being in question (which demands of it a deep humility) - charged to respond, to be responsible.

Is it the task of philosophy to connect with real world problems?

On my view, it is indeed the task of philosophy to engage in real world problems, and more than that, to transform them; that is, not only to participate in the clarification of the questions, and the formulation of responsible answers to our questions, but to assist (and perhaps even take the lead) in encouraging a re-visioning of the questions themselves (although this latter will of necessity be an “interdisciplinary” project [even if the tenets and outcomes of the very idea of disciplinarity are themselves questionable]). Put most radically: philosophy is not only charged to engage in real world problems, but to transform “the world” - to revision, to re-constitute, what “the world” itself is. (Mundane example, but for the sake of clarity: we might want to participate as philosophers in answering the question of how we can more justly distribute wealth, but we might also want to call into question the very mode of thinking whereby “wealth,” its meaning and value, is presupposed.) And that requires, at the same time, both the deepest engagement with the problems (the “cultivated” from above) and a supreme power of abstraction (the “imaginativity” from above). I cannot be “detached” or I’ll fail to understand the problem in its profundity and seriousness, and yet I cannot be so “engaged” that I cannot see a way “through,” or a way to reconfigure the field to allow for creativity and innovation. The “purely theoretical” aspect of philosophy is thus constitutive of its practicality, is one of the key moments in its applicability; philosophy must be “above it all” (but not in any moral [or extra-moral sense]) if it is to perform its function, but it cannot perform its function if it is merely or arrogantly “above it all.” The “abstract” nature of philosophy is thus not to be gainsaid by a too quick demand for relevance, but neither may it be an end in itself, or provide a justification for a smug and aloof sense of superiority.

Do we ever find our Quaker identity in conflict with our academic-philosophy identity, and if so, how do we respond to such conflicts?

This has never been a problem for me, but perhaps in part because of the way in which I conceive of philosophy.

Is there something that could be called “Quaker Philosophy”?

I am hesitant to think there is something that could be called “Quaker philosophy” if by that we were to think that we could translate “Quakerism” - a living religious practice - into a set of philosophical claims (against which I would have the same objections as I would against translating Quakerism into a set of theological claims).

I am more inclined to think that we should rather think of philosophizing in a Quakerly manner, but where the “way of engaging” in philosophical discourse is no mere add-on after the fact that would leave “philosophy” undisturbed at its core, but where the manner of philosophizing (e.g., in a Quakerly way) would affect (and sometimes even transform or effect, though not as a one-to-one correlation) the content of philosophy itself. (For this reason I think it ultimately inadequate for Quaker philosophers to be engaged only at the level of the adopting/adapting of philosophers that seem to resonate with, or at least not violate, Quaker notions, and avoiding those that do seem to contradict them). To philosophize peacefully, for example, neither presupposes nor guarantees any definitive philosophical content, but could hardly fail to give shape to whatever content it had at its disposal, or any content to which it would participate in giving shape.

So while the idea of a “Quaker philosophy” is not unproblematic, it is no more problematic than is the idea of philosophers who happen also to be Quakers (as if the latter were incidental to their philosophical practice), and so I generally prefer - at least in most contexts, and at least until persuaded otherwise - the former problematic term to the latter problematic one, as I prefer the designation “Quaker philosopher” to that of a “philosopher who is (i.e., just happens to be) a Quaker.”

Do Quakers have anything distinctive to offer to academic philosophy?

I trust this is the case, and am - buoyed and inspired by (and in gratitude for) the strong precedents established by Quaker philosophers in the twentieth century - anxious (and committed) to participate in discovering what we, as Quaker philosophers, might have to contribute in the twenty-first. Of course, such offerings are already being made by various individuals in a range of philosophical areas and schools, and I think it essential that we encourage and support each other, and learn from each other, even (and perhaps particularly) when we don’t agree with one another. But I wonder too whether there is not a contribution that we are called to make as a community of Quakers in philosophy, with the particular and peculiar set of sensibilities and insights and responsibilities with which we have been gifted. I am excited at the prospect of being a participant in an ongoing process of determining what this “distinctive offering” might be, and am hopeful that our “philosophers’ roundtable” at FAHE at Earlham College, and the discussions following up on it, may be an opening upon such an “opening.”

Jeffrey Dudiak, Associate Professor of Philosophy
The King’s University College, Edmonton, Alberta

Our Responsibility to the Natural Philosophers

2007-06-30T11:27:00.000-04:00

Some people are natural philosophers. The very first time that they are exposed to philosophical thinking it explodes in their brain like a bomb going off. Not only do they see that philosophers question basic assumptions and try to get to the bottom of things. They also instinctively want to try to do it themselves. With very few exceptions we professional philosophers are people like this and so should be able to understand what it is like to go through this again for the first time.

Being a natural philosopher causes lots of problems for people. For one thing it is very exciting and more than a little addictive. Once you start you want to do it all the time. At first it interferes with your relationships with people who are not natural philosophers--they think you are being more than a little tedious and argumentative. And you, for your part, are astonished that everyone isn't just as fascinated by these ideas as you are. So relationships can suffer at least at first. Second, philosophy seems to give you a God's eye view of things. It can cause an ego to swell rapidly to enormous proportions. Thinking about things from this angle can make one feel infinitely superior to the common rabble who are immersed in ordinary life. This is potentially very dangerous and harmful to people. How do we communicate to those we have "infected" with philosophy that it does not mean that they are better than other people? Finally, I worry about those who graduate with degrees in philosophy and are clearly addicted but are not going to make careers as professional philosophers. Honestly only a very tiny percentage of our majors will be professors some day. But a substantial percentage of our majors are addicted to philosophy and will have a hard time adjusting to a world where they won't get their daily philosophy fix! What do we do for these addicts to prepare them to adjust to the "real world."

Have others thought about these issues? Do you have helpful ideas to share?

Quaker Philosophy Roundtable

2007-06-17T11:44:00.000-04:00

The following questions were raised at the most recent meeting of Friends Association for Higher Education as part of a roundtable discussion about what it means to be a Quaker and a philosopher and how these things intersect with issues facing Quakers (i.e., Peace, Justice, and Sustainability). As one participant put it, all three days of the conference could have been spent on these questions; because of the interest in and complexity of these questions, this blog has been started in order to foster an ongoing discussion.These questions are intended to be a starting point, rather than boundaries around discussion.

How do we, as philosophers, each see ourselves as "scholars for peace, justice, or sustainability"?
What is it that you are trying to accomplish in your teaching, in your research, and in your service?
What is philosophy, anyway?
Is it the task of philosophy to connect with real world problems, or not?
How do you see your primary identity? Quaker? Philosopher? Quaker-Philosopher? Teacher? Scholar? Something else?
Do you ever find your Quaker identity in conflict with (or in tension with) your academic-philosophy identity? How do you respond to these situations?
Is there something that could be called "Quaker Philosophy"?
Do Quakers have anything distinctive to offer to academic philosophy?

Anyone is welcome to reply, but we hope others will join this blog in order to write at greater length.