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January 30, 2005
PHI 171: Critical Thinking
I will be teaching PHI 171: Critical Thinking 1st Summer Session (which I never have taught) and hope that I may borrow someone's syllabus who has taught the class before --- preferably someone who used Tom McKay's book.
Please send to kkukla at syr dot edu
Thank you.
Posted by kkukla at 11:06 AM
January 29, 2005
Contemporary Natural Law
I've asked this of a few of you in person, but let me throw it out there. I'm looking for a good, relatively short article on contemporary natural law theory. I use the Rachels book for my Intro to Ethics classes, but I'm just not too happy with his section on NLT and I think it needs to be supplemented. But my preliminary searches haven't really turned up anything I'm thrilled with. Specifically, I'm looking for an article that discusses a contemporary NLT perspective on some of the traditional problems raised for the theory (by Rachels and others) -- e.g. the difficulty of settling on a proper sense of "natural" that makes the theory plausible, and avoiding (or addressing) the naturalistic fallacy. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Posted by dbzdak at 4:58 PM | Comments (2)
January 27, 2005
The New Dawson's Creek?
Surfing this morning I found a neat video of that guy Ken from nodogs getting hot on Democracy with some young folks. It's a long video to download, but it's a good concept. I don't believe these are "normal" high-schoolers.
Posted by cmaxfield at 9:18 AM | Comments (12)
January 23, 2005
canned local grad
I don't happen to know much about this local event but I guess it is reason enough for some people to sweat. These things happen, maybe for good reasons, maybe for other reasons--my guess is that what the administration did was perfectly legal. But we have written some fun, maybe controvercial, papers...What if one of those was taken for being representative of our "teaching philosophy"? Some people might have read Hugh LaFollette's paper on licensing parents--a little bit controvercial. Should we take this as representative of the man? I guess not. Does anyone have an opinion on this issue?
Posted by cmaxfield at 10:13 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
January 21, 2005
Philosophers' Carnival VIII
I forgot to mention that the 8th Philosopher's Carnival is now up.
Posted by Jeremy at 2:38 PM
January 15, 2005
Philosophers' Carnival VIII Plug
The eighth Philosopher's Carnival is on Monday. Sorry I'm so late for posting this, but it got buried in a bunch of emails I wasn't looking back at. Submissions can be entered here. Please do so ASAP for the sake of the host, who will be enwe's meta-blog.
Posted by Jeremy at 9:05 AM
January 13, 2005
I Ask The Big Questions
[ok, the following is kind of silly and juvenile, somewhat akin to some playground-type questions. But, I do think it brings up some interesting issues, especially about what value we should give to very visceral feelings of disgustingness. I thought I'd just note some hesitancy here, so that I don't have to break any irony within the post itself, which would make it less enjoyable.] My friend and colleague Dan Orr once asked me, 'If you had to choose, would you rather eat poo-flavored-chocolate or chocolate-flavored-poo?' First, I had to clarify some of the background conditions. Would the poo make me sick? No. Would it be human poo? Yes. Would the poo really taste like chocolate, and have the consistency and texture thereof? Yes. Would the real chocolate taste just like real poo, and look like real poo? Yes. Would the real chocolate make me sick? No (except for possible attendant nausea of course). Would the poo be yours? Maybe. Would the poo be like dark or milk chocolate? Just answer the question! The answer is obvious, and goes down easy. I'd eat the poo. Why?
Because it tastes like chocolate, and it won't make me sick, whereas the chocolate would taste like poo. But, maybe I was being hasty, maybe I, against all reason, should actually eat chocolate instead of eating poo. Let's call those who'd choose the scatological option poo-eaters, and the thesis that, in this circumstance one should choose poo 'POC', (for, 'poo over chocolate'). Call the chocolate eaters chocolate-eaters, and the thesis that one should choose chocolate over poo in this circumstance 'COP' (for 'chocolate over poo'). What can be said in defense of the chocolate eaters? In Defense of COP The chocolate-eater can truly declare that they've never eaten poo, which seems like a good thing. Also, while the poo-eater does indeed avoid having the qualia of eating poo, he or she does have to square with the fact that what they are chewing on is digested food that has passed through a human colon and anus. Surely this is all the argument the chocolate eater needs! Also, while the experience of eating the chocolate is no doubt disgusting, the chocolate-eater can just content themselves with the fact that it's really just chocolate, and this sensation will pass. But I don't think this line of argumentation is very effective. [note-the arguments for COP came from my wife Irem...yes, we've actually talked about this.] In Defense of POC The poo-eater can quite rightly declare that, while they are in fact eating poo, that all the relevant causal powers which undergird our disgust at eating poo for which we've evolved avoidance behavior for have been removed. Namely, its (I imagine) sickening taste, and potential to cause sickness. Once the relevant causal powers have been removed, any hesitancy to eat said poo (vs. the chocolate) is just irrational. Furthermore, the fact that the chocolate actually has more of the relevant causal powers of actual poo than this poo does should further disarm the chocolate eaters of their poo avoidance strategies. We can say still more by adverting to primary, secondary, and tertiary qualities. Primary qualities are qualities of objects that are had intrinsically, such as shape, number (of atoms, quarks), extension, motion, and so on (well, I'm a little dubious of calling them intrinsic. Maybe we should say that they are objective, mind-independent qualities abstracted away from their tertiary powers as well). Secondary qualities are powers of objects to cause certain sensations in observers, such as appearing green, hard, or tasting like crap. Tertiary qualities are powers of bodies to change the intrinsic/primary or secondary qualities of other bodies, such as a lit candle's power to melt wax, or some poo to cause some sickness in your body. Now, the poo in our example no longer has the secondary qualities/powers to cause sickening sensations, nor the tertiary powers to cause sickness. (Almost) all that remains of the original poo is its primary qualities. But what�s so bad about shape, number, and so on? I can't see the problem. Once again, the chocolate eaters, however, have to contend with undergoing a phenomenally indistinguishable experience from eating real poo, one I'd rather avoid. So, serve me up a plate of chocolate-flavored poo. I can't choose otherwise. What do you think? I'd be interested in a poll reaction. Also, can more be said for either POC or COP?
Posted by MarkSteen at 12:14 AM | Comments (46) | TrackBack
January 12, 2005
Help!
At the last minute, I discovered that the textbook I've chosen for this coming semester (Stephen Darwall's Philosophical Ethics) is out-of-stock with no date from the publisher as to when it will be available. My second choice was Shelly Kagan's Normative Ethics, not because I think Darwall's book is better (I don't really have much experience with either) but because I wanted to do both meta-ethics and normative ethics, and Darwall covers both. These were the only two booksI looked at that appealed to me given my very particular criteria for the courses I'm teaching this semester (a text and not an anthology that is sufficient for a class of students who have had two philosophy courses but no ethics and also for a class of students at a different school, all of whom are taking at least their second ethics course, some of whom used James Rachels' Elements of Moral Philosophy, my preferred book, in their first course).
That means I'm stuck using Kagan's book now without having had any chance to look through it and figure out how the semester will go. For one of the classes, it will arrive around the time the class starts. For the other I have maybe a week of classes before I have the book. Suffice it to say that I'm not in a good position. I have to figure out at least a tentative syllabus in the next day or so, in order to get my reasings for the first week submitted to the library for scanning in for online reserve. That means I need to work out my schedule for the semester fairly soon. Is there anyone who has used this as the sole or primary textbook for something on the order of a 300-level (junior level) course who has a syllabus you wouldn't mind sending me to give me some ideas to start with for organizing my course? Normally I wouldn't want to rely on someone else's structure for a course, but given my time constraints it would help to see what others have done with this book if I can.
Posted by Jeremy at 3:08 PM | Comments (1)
Next Gen
I've just read an exciting article on the New Yorker website, linked from Arts and Letters Daily, written by Dan Baum. From this, I think there may be useful insights into undergraduate (standard intro. phil/ critical thinking type) teaching. The topic of the article is one of the things that excites me, as you may see for yourself, but while conjuring syllabi for the impending semester, I wonder how this information may be integrated. Here's the article:
I was stunned last semester when a student noted the difference between my generation and theirs. I think that we teach, or rather the way we teach, is in part a response to how we were taught--corrections, emulations, and adjustments to allow for the various new trends, technologies, and ready information. We've seen the creative (and sometimes unethical) use of unlimited (web) information by our students, how they can glean much more in a 50 minute lecture than they can in (alleged) 3 hours of reading. We have seen some of the amazing arguments and juggling acts younger students produce and perform (I am always impressed by smart people). How can we manage and utilize these generational differences while fulfilling our most basic role as educators (the freshman and sophomore readin, writin, critical thinkin stuff)? So that's my question, malformed as it is, wherever it leads...
Posted by cmaxfield at 11:02 AM | Comments (3)
David Chalmers Starts One Up
Looks like David Chalmers has started up a blog, "Fragments of Consciousness," which you can find here.
Posted by MarkSteen at 1:05 AM
January 10, 2005
Contest: Make the Best Actual/Potential Parts/Simples/Gunk/Composition Road-Map
I've just finished reading The Architecture of Matter (by Tom Holden, who used to be at Syracuse, now at UC Santa Barbara), which I recommend highly. In it Holden discusses the Early Modern debates between actual and potential parts theorists and how this intersects with the further issue of whether extended objects are infinitely divisible or not (and, what the nature of minima or simples would be, if there are any). He does a great job of showing the problems of reconciling the actual parts metaphysic with the doctrine of infinite divisibility. The actual parts metaphysic was accepted by most of the Early Modern bigwigs, and seemed part-and-parcel of denying medieval scholasticism, substantial forms, and the semi-mysterious Aristotelian doctrine of 'potential parts,' where such parts are created or actualized upon sundering from the object they are parts of (existing merely 'potentially' before). This represented a shift based upon embracing the new science and its corpuscularian explanations. But, going along with the new science was the geometrization of nature, which seemed to demand infinite divisibility and hence an infinite number of parts for any extended object, regardless of size. There are a lot of (prima facie, at least) paradoxes that crop up for the actual parts-theorist who holds infinite divisibility, which I won't cover here. One overarching problem, however, was that the putative good explanations for macro-phenomenon that the actual-parter could employ by adverting to nice chunky physical corpuscles seemed to dissolve as the minima reduced themselves to extensionless points (the pre-critical Kant, and Boscovich, however, with some influence by More, do a nice job of introducing force-shell atoms or fields to answer some of these problems). Anyways, in order to help in my research, and, because I'm a geek who enjoys this kind of thing, I've been making the following chart which attempts to map the space of views in this field, which, if you're interested, you can check out here (a power point version in landscape format followed by a word version in regular format): Actual/Potential Parts Road-Map Word Version The chart is not complete. I haven't plugged in every influential or famous person who fits into all the categories. I've put in some contemporary people, although hesitantly, and where they fit in (or where I think they fit in). But, mainly, this concerns the Early Moderns. I also wanted to fit in a brief bit on motivations and problems for each node on the tree, but I couldn't fit that in on one page. (if you think I'm missing a branch, or think I should plug in some people to some of the branches, let me know. To save redundancies, however, I only plug philosophers into terminal nodes). One thing to note is that the chart was made by mapping the space of the Early Modern debate, and so doesn't really correspond to a more complete map which would deal with some additional twists and further questions of more contemporary debates about parthood, individuality, and composition. For instance, is Van Inwagen an actual or potential parts theorist? It�s not clear. My hand is not a part (since the simples in my hand-region don�t compose an object according to him), yet all the simples arranged handwise are actual, and jointly compose me with the rest of my simples. (Similar questions can arise for any sortal-essentialist non-DAUP'er who admits that some proper parts of an object are objects, such as my heart, while other putative objects are not, such as all the water in my body or the left half of my heart). Also, consider Burke or Laycock and the doctrine that there can be concrete, non-particular 'entities,' such as the gold in Africa, the bronze that makes up the left half of a statue, or the water in my glass. For them, these items are not even potential parts (i.e., individuals), since, no matter what you make them into, they�ll never be identical to any thing, even such bare things as 'fusions' or 'aggregates' (since there are no fusions whose only persistence conditions are having the parts they do, according to them. Briefly, Burke and Laycock accept, or at least used to accept, that talk about stuff is plural-quantification talk about pluralities of elements). Anyways, in order to map not only the Early Moderns but contemporary folk in the scheme of actual and potential parts we�d need to put in some more divisions on the tree, and perhaps start at the top with different questions. Perhaps the best way would be to start the tree with the question, 'are there minima?', and go from there. Any suggestions? Is there a good way to develop a framework which can contain both the Early Moderns and our contemporaries? If anyone can develop a satisfactory, full chart that can map the space of positions around actual/potential parts, the nature of minima/simples/gunk, and answers to the Special Compositions Question (see Van Inwagen's Material Beings), I'll post it here, and, to make things extra sweet, give you a whole dollar! I expect participation to be minimal, given OrangePhilosophy's posting frequency and readership these days. But, if there's lots of feedback, perhaps we can post the various documents and let commentators vote on it. At the very least maybe we can discuss what ramifications the older divisions of potential/actual parts has for contemporary discussions.
Posted by MarkSteen at 5:54 PM | Comments (5)
January 6, 2005
Philosophy of Religion
Does anyone know of a good philosophy of religion resource web page?
Posted by kkukla at 12:10 PM | Comments (5)
January 3, 2005
Utilitarianism 2005
The call for abstracts for the Utilitarianism 2005 conference is here:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~isus2005/
The conference is August 11-14 at Dartmouth. Note the prizes for grad student papers.
Posted by bbradley at 2:49 PM
January 2, 2005
Posner: Condescending Moral Philosophers
Richard Posner has been posting at Brian Leiter's blog, making a couple fairly controversial claims. One is his fairly sophisticated moral relativism. Another is that he seems to think the average person should view moral philosophers as consdescending. I know little about Posner, so I can't evaluate whether the clearer statement of Posner's views by Jon Mandle at Crooked Timber comes from a misunderstanding of Posner's views (note his interesting claim that it's Posner rather than the moral philosopher who is condescending, which my relative ignorance of Posner also leaves me unable to evaluate). Still, it does seem to me even in my relative ignorance that Gerald Dworkin is the sort of person who would understand Posner completely, and the distinctions he makes in his Left2Right post do seem to undermine Posner's argument (if he's presented it accurately, which I would assume is the case).
I'm interested in the details here, but I don't feel like getting into them myself at the moment, which I would ideally at least summarize, so you'll have to read all those posts I linked to if you want more details before commenting. Here's what I'm interested in knowing, though. Does Posner really say what Mandle and Dworkin claim he's saying? In particular, does he really claim that every moral belief we have is held not by any rational reasons? Does he really believe that ethical reasoning is pointless? That claim seems to be refuted by the fact that people are sometimes convinced by reasons. In ethics courses, I've seen students convinced by arguments from papers I've assigned that argue for views that I myself don't even hold, but these students were convinced in class to change their view simply by hearing those arguments.
Update: John Turri at Fake Barn Country and Lindsay Beyerstein and Majikthese have more to say about Posner's posts.
Posted by Jeremy at 8:54 PM | TrackBack
January 1, 2005
Philosophers' Carnival VII
I forgot to mention that the seventh Philosophers' Carnival is now up at Mixing Memory. I haven't had a chance to look at it much yet. As with past ones, I'll probably write up a post about ones I find interesting at my own blog when I get around to looking at all the entries.
Posted by Jeremy at 11:21 AM