Google Wave and My Course in Greece
Each year I teach a course in Greece, and I require my students to make presentations at a variety of archaeological and cultural sites.
This year I am playing around with Google Wave's map feature and wondering if I can use Wave to help prepare my students to make the most of our limited time in Greece.
Do you have suggestions for how I can use this for my course? Are you also new to Wave and interested in Greece? If so, send me a wave at dr.dlohara@googlewave.com and I'll include you in my "sandbox" where I'm playing around with the possibilities.
(Photo credit: Dr. Jeffrey A. Johnson, Providence College)
IAPS meeting at APA in NYC, December 2009
In case you’re interested in the philosophy of sport:
IAPS meeting at APA in NYC
John E. Smith, RIP
I just heard the very sad news that John E. Smith, a past president of the Charles S. Peirce Society, died last night. The few times I corresponded with him, he was remarkably generous with his time. As a graduate student I spoke with him about Peirce and about the philosophy of religion. Rather than speaking down to me as was his right, he spoke to me as a fellow inquirer, and his words were both words of wisdom and words of welcome. Later, as a young professor, I corresponded with him about one of his books when I was teaching my first seminar in American philosophy. He wrote back quickly and offered me both help and encouragement. The world was better for having him in it, and I am deeply saddened by his passing. I hope one day to meet him again, if only to thank him once again for all he did for me. May he rest in peace, enfolded to the Bosom of Abraham.
I Cannot Tell A Lie
American mythology tells us that Washington said that. Of course, if someone says "I never lie," you cannot tell from that statement whether it is true or not. And if they say "I always lie," it's hard to make sense of what they are saying. But that is beside my point here. There are a number of ethicists and theologians who tell us that we should never lie. Kant, for instance, says that lying is a violation of the Categorical Imperative. That is, when you lie you are acting according to a rule that you wouldn't want others to adhere to, and you're manipulating what others believe, which is a way of using them as means rather than respecting them as ends. Augustine and Aquinas both tell us that all lies, even "jocose" or humorous lies, are sinful because they are ways of bearing false witness, something we're commanded not to do.
Are they right? Is there never a time when lying is justified? What do you think?
Socrates and the Trees
I disagree with what Socrates says here, and it is an unfortunate fact of history that many Platonists have taken a similar position to this one. I just read this line in an otherwise very good book, David Keller and Frank Golley's The Philosophy of Ecology: From Science To Synthesis.
It's a fine collection of key articles in environmental philosophy. In the introduction, however, they contrast Socrates with Thoreau - something Thoreau himself did - and make Thoreau out to be the one more interested in trees. Thoreau was interested in trees, especially at the end of his life, but that does not make the comparison apt.
The irony of this line is that it comes from a dialogue in which Socrates continues to point out to his interlocutor just how much one can learn from a close observation of nature. He repeatedly draws attention to the trees, the water, and the cicadas. Socrates and Plato are not known as fathers of empiricism, but the view that their heads are so far in the Clouds that they cannot see the well they're about to step into has occupied too much of our attention. We would do better to notice that Socrates pays attention to the trees. We would do better still to pay some attention to the trees ourselves.
More fun with logic
Here’s another little bit of fun with logic for my students. What, if anything, is wrong with this argument?
- Nothing is better than good coffee.
- A crust of bread is better than nothing.
Therefore: - A crust of bread is better than good coffee.
How can you know that someone is contrite?
For the last few weeks my ethics students have been studying forgiveness. One of the persistent questions about forgiveness is whether, in order to be forgiven, one must first be contrite or repentant. (We have not been speaking of the idea of God forgiving people; we’ve limited our discussion to the possibility of people forgiving other people.)
I have to confess that this posting was prompted as much by my viewing, last night, of Battlestar Galactica as by our readings. In season 3, Laura Roslin calls for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (like South Africa’s after Apartheid) after some human-on-human atrocities. That got me thinking once again about Desmond Tutu and Simon Wiesenthal, and their respective books on forgiveness.
The easy answer to my question is to say that one does not need to be contrite to be forgiven. This is easy, but not simple, because it raises other questions about the nature of forgiveness. And it brings along with it the possibility of depriving someone of their moral agency by denying the reality of their choices.
Most of us are inclined to give the opposite answer, namely that it does not make sense to forgive those who are not sorry for their offenses.
But this raises another difficulty: how do we know when people are adequately sorry? Additionally, does this position make it more likely that we will forgive those people who only seem sorry? What if someone has expressed their contrition to the best of their ability but we have not been able to perceive it, for cultural or other reasons? What if someone is not at all sorry, but has made a convincing public show of contrition?
What do you think?
Gratitude
It being Thanksgiving, I’m doing some reading about gratitude. Just read through part of Norman Wirzba’s Living the Sabbath: Discovering the Rhythms of Rest and Delight. Chapter 1 has a section on food - very apropos for Americans this week - and in particular on the production of food.
Wirzba’s contention, one that strikes me as probably right, is that the way we produce meat is violent and alienating, and that our willingness to accept food that comes to us this way is symptomatic of a culture that is more motivated by fear than by gratitude.
This could turn into a rant about locavorism, but I don’t want to go there right now. My point - and Wirzba’s, I think - is not that we need to change our food production, but that we need to ask ourselves why we produce food as we do. And that we ought to ask ourselves if we - and our world - wouldn’t be better off if we received what we have with gratitude. I find this very difficult, but I’m going to give it a try.
Reading the Holidays
This practice of reading the holidays began for me about ten years ago on July 4th. I decided then that I'd re-read the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. I was guessing that it had been so long since I'd read them, I'd probably forgotten much of what they say. My experiment proved my guess to be right.
I was struck, as I read them, just how remarkable these documents are. Since then, I've repeated this almost every year. Each time I re-read these documents, I find them moving. They're beautifully written, and they strive for things that are, in my estimation, praiseworthy.
I've begun to add other readings for other holidays as well. On MLK, Jr. Day, (and sometimes on April 4, the anniversary of his death) I listen to his "I Have A Dream" speech or read his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." I admit it: both of these regularly make me cry.
Of course, I also read the appointed Scriptures for Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, and for some other feast days as well. But here I'm interested in those holidays that are not holy-days but secular feasts. How about you? Do you have readings you associate with such holidays? What do you recommend?
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* (If you're interested, you can see my article on Puritanism by clicking here and searching for pp 631-632)
Love Is In The Air
For my students, a little fun with logic. Consider the following syllogism. Does the conclusion (3) follow from the premises (1, 2)?
- Everyone loves a lover;
- John loves Jane;
- Therefore, everyone loves everyone.
Two kinds of ducks
Recently I was speaking with some students about environmental philosophy, and about the ethical dimensions of hunting and fishing. Most of those students were not hunters, but all of them seemed to care about the environment. I asked them at one point if they knew how many species of ducks live in our region. I think the best (and most entertaining) answer I got was “Two: mallards and non-mallards.”
What struck me was how little, in general, my conservation-minded students know about the wildlife around them. And I think they are not unique in this. In fact, they may know a good deal more about nature than most of their generation.
Recently, Smithsonian published an article about conservation ecologist Patricia Zaradic. Zaradic worries that we are becoming ever more attached to video screens, and that, as a result, our knowledge of the natural world is suffering.
My fear is that we are, in a way, becoming modern-day Gnostics. (Gnostics hope to liberate the spirit from materiality by means of esoteric knowledge.)
But this is dangerous. Rejecting materiality–rejecting the body, its world, and its boundaries–seems like a bad idea. Maybe I’m wrong, and the transhumanists like Ray Kurzweil and his disciples have it right. But the body, it seems to me, is just as ethically significant as the soul or mind.
Losing touch with the material world makes it harder for us to notice when ecosystems are suffering. It also might make it easier for us to undervalue the bodily suffering of other people. And, speaking for myself, at least, I know that the pleasures of video screens are almost always more alluring than taking care of my own body. In fact, I’d be exercising right now–or duck hunting–but it has been a while since I checked in with my Facebook friends. I wonder if any of them can help me learn about ducks.
Desmond Tutu and The Most Subversive Thing Around
“We were inspired not by political motives. No, we were fired by our biblical faith. The Bible turned out to be the most subversive thing around in a situation of injustice and oppression. We were involved in the struggle because we were being religious, not political. It was because we were obeying the imperatives of our faith.” (No Future Without Forgiveness, 93)
Tutu is making a peculiar claim here, and I can’t entirely tell if he’s serious. He says they weren’t motivated by politics, but by the Bible; but then he says the Bible was subversive. Does he mean that it was politically subversive, or is he talking about some other kind of subversion - spiritual or moral or psychological subversion, perhaps? I guess the question is this: what exactly was being subverted? He says plainly that it was “injustice and oppression.” But what is not so plain is whether the injustice and oppression were primarily political; or if the political was only a sign or symptom of something else.
I've also been reading a lot of William James this week, especially The Varieties of Religious Experience. James argues that we should not judge religion a priori but rather a posteriori. As James puts it, "not by its roots, but by its fruits."
In that book and elsewhere, James argues that we are wrong to think that reason's chief role in religious experience is to judge the truth-claims of religion. Rather, religion is to be understood as playing a role within reason itself. Religion "is something more, namely, a postulator of new facts as well" as being a means of "illumination of facts already elsewhere given."
James and Tutu both offer religion as more than simply another second-string player on an already deep bench, and as more than a degenerate form of political reasoning. For both of them, religion is a source of insight that cannot be had in other ways.
The Best Rule in Writing
I've been editing the Religious Writings of Charles Peirce for a few years now -- hopefully will publish them within the next few years -- and this is one of the passages I love coming back to. I'm not always sure how to put it into practice, but the idea of writing out of love for my reader reminds me that there is precious little that we do or say or make that does not affect the lives of others. Even this "private thought" from Peirce's journal, written a century ago, has shaped my thinking.
Every Time You Open A Prison...
…you close a school." - Victor Hugo.
“Why is it considered morally offensive and economically unwise in this country to give a poor person a few dollars more than $13.22 per day, but ethically appropriate and fiscally sensible to incarcerate a poor person at an average cost of $55.18 per day?” - Jens Soering, An Expensive Way to Make Bad People Worse. (Click here for Wikipedia’s article on Jens Soering.)
Hugo is obviously being provocative; education does not guarantee moral goodness. And Soering is similarly making a comparison that leaves out the important fact that criminals freely choose to commit their crimes. Nevertheless, good education does create opportunity, whereas inequality in education seems like an invitation to the poor to continue to consider themselves to be perpetually unequal to the wealthy and so perpetually unable to advance economically without crime.
Selah.
Using God As A Weapon?
Gandhi once wrote that “the Satyagrahi’s only weapon is God.” (A Satyagrahi is one who practices Satyagraha, Gandhi’s peaceful and powerful version of civil disobedience.)
Some of religion’s most vocal (I do not say best) contemporary critics argue that religion is either irrelevant or dangerous. It’s irrelevant, they say, because it is just an evolutionary holdover that we no longer need. It’s dangerous, they say, because it allows people to use God as a weapon.
Gandhi and many others remind us that there are two ways of using God as a weapon. If we use God to justify using other weapons to kill or oppress people, we turn God into a tool or an idol. At that point, religious people would do well to ask just what it is they’re fighting for, since it can no longer be piety.
Gandhi illustrates the other way, in which God is that which can never be taken away from us, and that which is ultimately worth living and dying for. In this way, God is not a “weapon” we wield to harm people, but one that serves to fight against injustice.
Tyrants set themselves up as gods on earth; belief in a God above the tyrant can deflate the tyrant’s power and give the Satyagrahi the necessary soul-force to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with her God.” Against such things, it seems to me, only would-be tyrants and their servants will argue.
Russell Frank and the 4/40 Program
Frank wrote a weekly column for the Centre Daily Times. At the time, he was an untenured professor in the Department of Communications at Penn State. Even though he did not know me, and surely had many demands on his time, Frank offered to meet me for coffee.
We met for three hours that day, during which I took pages of notes and basically wrote my syllabus for the course. He also gave me a stack of textbooks from his office, offered to guest-lecture in my class (which he later did, several times) and then, to top it all off, he paid for the coffee.
I protested that I was getting all the benefit from this and that I should pay. He replied, "My rule is this: the student never pays." Instead of paying him back, he said, I could "pay it forward" to some of my students.
So I began what I now call The 4/40 program. Whenever I meet students for a meal or coffee, I explain this to them: during their four years of undergraduate study with me (and if they visit me while they're in grad school) I pay. If they want, then they can visit me sometime in the next forty years and take me out for a meal or, better yet, they can use the next forty years to take someone else out for a meal.
I find these meals are always worthwhile. Much of the best learning in college happens outside the classroom, in informal conversations, often while breaking bread together. I teach because I love teaching, and these meals or coffees have provided me with some of my favorite classrooms: coffee shops, restaurants, the dining room table or kitchen in our home.
So to any of my students who may be reading this: don't thank me, thank Russell Frank (you can find his email at the link above or right here if you want). And if you benefited from the coffee, or the meal, pay it forward to someone else.
And come back and visit sometime.
Philosophy and Empty Deceit
From today’s Lectionary, a reading from Colossians 2:
“See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ."
Good advice and sound. Of course, one of the best ways to make sure no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit is to study philosophy yourself so you can learn to distinguish bad thinking from good. At any rate, I am not aware of anyone ever successfully and consistently avoiding bad thinking by avoiding thinking altogether.
Latin American Philosophy Online
Soon I hope to be able to point you to the online presence of the Inter-American Philosophic Review, edited by Gregorio Pappas at Texas A&M. For now, I’ll begin with two other sites of interest: La red filosófica de Costa Rica, edited by Jethro Masís, and Cognitio Estudos, published at the Pontifical University of São Paulo.
Pappas has been instrumental in putting together an upcoming conference in February of 2010, the First International Conference on Pragmatism and the Hispanic/Latino World. It looks like it will be especially good.
Here’s a link to the Centro de estudios de filosofía analítica.
And while this doesn’t count as Latin American, the Grupo de Estudios Peirceanos at the Universidad de Navarra, in Pamplona, Spain, does a nice job of linking together other Spanish-speaking philosophers, especially those interested in Pragmatism.
I welcome comments making additions to this list.