Same as it ever was

gwendysmile @ 2009-12-13T15:01:00

2009-12-13T15:01:51Z

To do:
-finish Free Will essay
-do Epistemology essay referencing
-finish giftmas presents
-clean room
-apply for summer jobs
-make new Maelstrom costume

Aristotle

2009-12-07T22:36:31Z

Got a 62 on my essay for this. Which is kind of amusing. For the last two years, I have gotten a 65 on nearly every assignment I've handed in. This year, I haven't gotten any 65s yet (well, I did on my draft, but that isn't a recorded grade yet)... but the average grade for semester 1's essays is, in fact, 65. Exactly. I guess I'm a very solid B student.

I will post the essay sometime. But right now, notes on Aristotle.

Notes on Aristotle's Poetics, section 1

Part I
-inquire into the structure of various kinds of poetry
-Imitative: epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic, music of flute and lyre
-three points of variation among these: medium, object, manner of imitation
-these arts use rhythm, language, harmony
-various combinations of these
-we call all sorts of people poets, its not important what they're writing about
-"Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common but the meter"
-dithyramb: 'wildly enthusiastic speech or piece of writing', says the internet

Part II
-objects of imitation: men of action, represented as either better or worse than in real life
-different arts concentrate on 'better' or 'worse' (all men in epics are heroes, all men in comedy are fools...)

Part III
-differences in manner of imitation
-even in the same medium, a poet may speak as himself or not
-artists may be similar in one respect, but different in others
-that's it for structure

Part IV
-two causes for poetry
-instinct for imitation is natural to us, we are the only animals which do it to this extent
-imitation teaches us, which we enjoy
-also, instinct for harmony, rhythm
-poets now form two groups; those who imitate good men, and those who imitate 'meaner persons'
-Homer is pre-eminent in tragedy but also pioneered comedy
-tragedy originated with epic poetry
-comedy originated with lampooning poetry
-gradual addition of more than one actor, lessening importance of the chorus

Part V
-comedy is an imitation of lower, but not bad, characters. "To take an obvious example, the comic mask is ugly and distorted, but does not imply pain"
-took a while for comedy to be taken seriously as poetry, didn't get a chorus for ages
-epic poetry imitates the higher type of person, but differs from tragedy in its meter, and is narrative
-tragedy has all the elements of epic poetry, and more - epic poetry doesn't have all the elements of tragic poetry

Part VI
-tragedy: imitation of a serious action of a certain magnitude, using artistically embellished language, in form of action (not narrative), uses pity and fear
-"effecting the proper purgation of these emotions", catharsis whoo
-'embellished' language uses harmony and song
-uses 'spectacular equipment' - set and props
-distinct characters
-six quality-determining parts to every tragedy: plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle, song
-every poet uses these, really
-structure of incidents is most important, since drama imitates action, not men
-"character comes as subsidiary to the actions"
-there can be tragedy without character, but not without action (I'd like to see you put on a tragedy without characters, Aristotle)
-powerful emotional elements: recognition and reversal of situation scenes
-Plot is "the soul of a tragedy" :)
-character is next
-same in painting
-thought: "the faculty of saying what is possible and pertinent in given circumstances"
-rhetoric, civic language, oratory
-diction: "expression of the meaning in words"
-essentially the same in verse and prose. it's just about being able to express yourself well.
-Song is chief among the embellishments
-Spectacle has an emotional aspect but is not very artistic or poetic
"production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet" yay techies!

Part VII
-now: what's the propoer structure of the plot?
-must be a complete action which has magnitude
-'complete' - has beginning, middle, and end
-no loose ends or haphazard beginnings!
-things must be of a certain size for us to appreciate their beauty; not too small or too large
-length must be one which is "easily embraced in the memory"
-it must be large enough to allow for a reversal of fortune from bad to good or good to bad

Part VIII
-unity of plot is not the same as unity of a hero
-in making a play about someone, don't try to include everything they've ever done
-everything included must be essential to the story
-"a thing whose prsence or absence makes no visible difference, is not an organic part of the whole"

Part IX
-the poet's job is to show what could happen, not what has happened
-you could put a history book in verse and it would still be a history book
-poetry expresses the universal, history the particular
-tragedy tends to be about real people, but we shouldn't feel bound by this
-it is not less creative to write about things which have happened rather than inventing plots
-episodic plots = BAD
-what we want is something which follows as cause and effect, but is still surprising, and inspires fear or pity

Part X
-plots are either simple or complex, like real life
-it is simple if it is one continuous plot without recognition or reversal of situation
-complex does have recognition and/or reversal. this must rise from the plot, no randomness!

Part XI
-reversal of situation - the action goes round to the opposite, but is still bound by probability and necessity
-Oedipus: messenger comes to cheer Oedipus, produces opposite effect
-recognition - change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hate
-best when it's produced by or at the same time as a reversal (Oedipus again)
-reversal and recognition both depend on surprise
-third plot point: scene of physical suffering

Notes on Aristotle's Poetics, section 2

Part XII
-parts of a tragedy: prologue, episode, exode, choric song (choric song divided into parode and statsimon)
-all plays have these parts
-internet says:
-exode: farcical afterpiece
-parode: didn't you mean parody?
-statsimon: stationary song, song when the chorus takes up its place in the orchestra
-Prologue precedes chorus's songs
-Episode - between songs
-Exode: no songs after this bit
-Parode - 'first undivided utterance of the chorus'
-Statsimon is a choric ode

Part XIII
-what should a poet aim for/avoid while making his plots? how do we produce tragedic effect?
-should be complex, imitate actions which produce pity and fear
-no virtuous men brought from prosperity to poverty - this is just shocking, not pitiful or fearful
-bad men going from poverty to prosperity is not tragic. also, no downfalls of villains.
-"pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves"
-what we want is a plot involving a man who is not unrealistically good, falling into misfortune which is NOT the result of vice
-someone who is renowned and prosperous
-change of fortune only from good to bad
-an unhappy ending is the right one
-obviously, these are the most tragic!
-there is a lesser kind of tragedy with a double plot involving misfortune for both good and bad

Part XIV
-it is best if fear and pity are the result of the structure rather than spectacle
-should be a good story even for a blind person :)
-what circumstances are pitiful or terrible?
-must be between people, ideally friends or family (killing an enemy, for instance, is not particularly tragic)
-action may be done knowingly, or unknowingly and discovered later (Medea vs Oedipus)
-also could be about to do something, knowingly or not, and then stop
-this is less tragic, especially already knowing what the situation is and changing it
-good: deed done in ignorance and discovered afterwards
-best: ignorantly about to do action, then find out and prevent it

Part XV
-four aims for character:
-Morally good (even a woman may be 'good' )
-propriety (woman shouldn't have valour or unscrupulous cleverness)
-true to life
-consistent
-as sexist as possible
-with the character, again, aim at the necessary or the probable
-avoid deus ex machina
-when writing drama about real people, "make a likeness which is true to life and yet more beautiful"

Part XVI
-various kinds of recognition
-least artistic form: recognition of signs ("My long-lost younger brother had a birthmark just like that!" "Oh, you wear the symbol mentioned in the prophecyt!")
-better: turn of incident
-not so good: "recognitions invented at will by the poet, and on that account wanting in art" (someone just declaring themself, etc.)
-the recognised character says whay the poet rquires them to but not what is good in the plot
-memory when a sight awakens a feeling (hearing a song from childhood)
-process of reasoning - beware of false inference
-best: a startling dicovery made by natural means ("Woe is me, first my sister was sacrificed now I will be. *monologue*" "Hey wait, I have a brother about your age, and everyone thought I was sacrified years ago...")

Part XVII
-while writing, the poet should imagine the scene as vividly as possible
-the poet shouldn't neglect that actors' gestures
-"Poetry implies either a happy gift of nature or a strain of madness. In the one case a man can take the mould of any character; in the other, he is lifted out of his proper self."
-start by writing a general outline, then fill in detail
-edisodes must be relevant to the action

Part XVIII
-two parts to tyragedy: complcation and unraveling/denouement
-complication - beginning through unraveling, often involving subplots
-unraveling - from the change of fortune through the end of the drama
-four kinds of tragedy:
-complex: depend entirely on reversal and recognition
-pathetic: motive is passion
-ethical: mostive is ethical
-simple
-poet should try to combine elements
-don't make an epic structure into a tragedy, epics are too big
-"It is probably that many things should happen contrary to probability" -Agathon
-Chorus should be regarded as an integral actor

Part XIX
-thought:: every effect which has to be produced by speech (proof, refutation, excitation of feelings, and suggestion of importance or the opposite)
-object is to evoke pity, fear, importance, or probability through speech
-diction - really just need to know how to deliver a line

Part XX
-parts of language: letter, syl.... okay, this stuff is really not important.

Notes on Aristotle's Poetics, section 3

Part XXI
-two kinds of word: simple and double
-basically about length
-current, strange, ornamental, newly-coined, lengthened, contracted, and altered words
-metaphor is a transference of an alien name from genus to species or vice versa
-masculine, feminine and neuter nouns

Part XXII
-"perfection of style is to be clear without being mean"
-to increase clarity, use only current and proper words... but this is mean
-it's good to use unusual words, but if you use only them no one will know what you're talking about
-need a happy medium
-don't use language with the express purpose of being ludicrous!
-critics sometimes mock the dramatic use of language which no one would use in real life, but they're dumb
-the command of metaphor is the mark of genius

Part XXIII
-poetic imitations which are narrative and written in a single meter should be constructed on dramatic principles
-different from histories, which present a single period rather than a single action
-Homer is awesome

Part XXIV
-epic poetry has as many kinds as tragedy: simple, complex, ethical or pathetic
-same parts; reversal, recognition, scene of suffering
-thoughts and diction must be artistic
-epic poetry has larger dimensions, partially because it has the ability to describe multiple things happening at the same time
-epics mus be in hexameter
-the poet should speak as little as possible in his own person
-the irrational has a greater place in epics than in tragedies
-"the poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities"
-diction should be elaborated in pauses of action

Part XXV
-the poet must imitate things as they are, as they are said to be, or as they ought to be
-language is the vehicle of expression
-poetic errors are justified if it's good art
-"not to know that a hind has no horns is a less serious matter than to paint it inartistically"
-a word which seems to have been used incorrectly in poetry may have been used that way for artistic effect
-critics jump at groundless conclusions
-the impossible must be justified by artistic requirements, higher reality, or received opinion

Part XXVI
-which is a higher form of art, epics or tragedies?
-higher is more refined, appeals to better sort of audience
-"Epic poetry is addressed to a cultivated audience, who do not need gesture; tragedy, to an inferior public"
-epic poets also might overdo gesture though
-only action of bad performers is to be condemned
-tragedy, using music and spectacular effects, may produce "the most vivid of pleasures"
-maybe tragedy is better

More Epistemology

2009-12-05T11:29:31Z

i am procrastinating so badly with this. Only 11 days until exams are over and I still have two essays and a take-home exam to write. Argh.

Notes on The Raft and The Pyramid, by Ernest Sosa

I. Two Assumptions
1. Not everything believed is known, but nothing can be known without being believed. (Also justified and true.)
2. Justification involves an evaluative property. Epistemic justification is the important kind.

II. Knowledge and Criteria
-two questions: what do we know? how do we know it?
-answers: list of knowledge, list of criteria-when developing a theory of knowledge, we can start with either of these questions
-Particularism would ask "what do we know" first
-Methodism would ask "How do we know it" first
-Descartes basic knowledge = particularist, Hume's problem of induction = methodist (Hee, Hume was a Methodist!)

III. Two Metaphors: The Raft and The Pyramid
-concerns system of knowledge
-foundationalist pyramid: one basic node, other beliefs branching from it, others from those. Branches must terminate.
-radical foundationalism falls down because there are so few absolute truths
-coherentists - "knowledge is a raft that floats free of any anchor or tiw. Repairs must be made afloat, and though no part is untouchable, we must stand on some in order to replace or repair others." pg 136

IV. Coherentist Critique of Foundationalism
-propositional attitude: a mental state of someone with a proposition for its object (beliefs, hopes, fears)
-a headache does not have propositional content
-Objection 1 to foundationalism: propositional states do not give us direct contact with realisty, and therefore there is no guarantee against error. Without that guarantee, we can't use it as foundational knowledge.
-Objection 2 to foundationalism: If a mental state is not propositional, then it's unclear how it can support anything (no ability for logical relation.) If it can't support anything it can't be used as foundational knowledge.
-Every mental state either is or isn't propositional, so no mental state can be foundational.
-But - why can only propositional states support things?
-practices are justified by consequences, can't we say the same of beliefs?
-Must something really be infallible to be foundational?
-working on fallible - even false - beliefs may be advantageous
-anti-foundationalist arguments based on an Intellectualist Model of Justification
-this skewers coherentists too, and they're the ones objecting
-Being part of a coherent set does not yield immediate, logical justificatory power
-BUT perhaps these sets are indirectly based on logical relations between propositions
-But this leads to very small circular reasoning: P -> P -> P -> P...
-"If (i) only propositional attitudes can justify such propositional attitudes as belief, and if (ii) to do so they must in turn be justified by yet other propositional attitudes, it seems clear that (iii) there is no hope of constructing a complete epistemology, one whoch would give us, in theory, an account of what the justification of any justified belief would supervene on. For (i) and (ii) would rule out the possibility of a finite regress of justification." pg 138

V. The Regress Argument
-infinite regresses are bad, yay for foundational beliefs and their stopping power
-I'm skipping this section - can't use regress argument in this paper

VI. The Relation of Justification and Foundationalist Strategy
-foundationalists don't have to object to the possibility of an infinite justificatory regress
-foundationalists say justified beliefs have to be at the end of a terminating regress, but this isn't to deny the possibility of an infinite regress (there could be branches)

VII. Two Levels of Foundationalism
-formal vs. substantive justification
-formal - the view that the conditions within which a normative/evaluative property x would apply can be specified
-substantive - one way of doing so
-coherentism is another way
-classical foundationalism is flawed (see Descartes)
=unfortunately there isn't one generally accepted foundational theory now
-both substantive foundationalism and coherentism want "a simple theory that explains precisely how epixtemic justification supervenes, in general, on the nonepistemic." pg 143

VIII. Doxastic Ascent Arguments
-Objection to Foundationalism: A belief is foundationally justified only if it has a foundational quality, F, which makes it likely to be true.... but then it's not foundational anymore. (pg 143)
-But: what makes a belief foundational is having a quality that is nonepistemic
-the nonepistemic quality is not based on further beliefs
-a belief can require another belief and still befoundational - ex, my belief that I am in pain requires a belief that someone is in paion, but it's not based on that belief
-anyway, these objections are just as valid against coherentism

IX. Coherentism and Substantive Foundationalism
-why is substantive foundationalism superior to coherentism?
-coherentism - view by which justification for a belief lies in relations between it and other beliefs
-substantive foundationalism - there are ultimate sources of justification other than relations among beliefs, usually special content of a belief or the experience of the believer
-Objection to coherentism: there are many beliefs "with minimal coherence, whose detachment and replacement with contrary beliefs would have little effect on the coherence of the body." pg 145
-headache / no headache example
-saying that these 'peripheral' beliefs are always infallible would require the coherentist to admit the infallibility of beliefs about one's own subjective state
-also, not all peripheral beliefs are about this - some of them ARE pretty damn consequential

X. The Foundationalist's Dilemma
-current foundationalism is based on the idea that belief can be justified by a combo of observational content and origin in the senses
-Dilemma for this; maybe beings with observational mechanisms very different from... okay, I'm not talking about aliens.

Notes on A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge, by Donald Davidson

-in support of coherentism
-"If meanings are given by objective truth conditions there is a question how we can know that the conditions are satisfied, for this would appear to require a confrontation between what we believe and reality; and the idea of such a confrontation is absurd." pg 154
-coherence is a test for truth
-What kind of coherentism?
-beliefs held to be true by someone who understands them
-not every coherent set of beliefs is true, though
-"presumption in favor of the truth of a belief that coheres with a significant mass of beliefs" pg 155
-what does coherence require?
-how much induction is acceptable?
-problem; everyone's beliefs are somewhat contradictory
-not trying to define truth... BUT "truth is correspondance with the way things are"
-so a good coherence theory should be consistent with correspondance theory
-how can coherence alone supply grounds for a belief?
-the only thing which can be a reason for holding a belief is another belief
-Let's address the attempt to base knowledge on our sense experience
-what is the relation between our senses and belief?
-why should we trust our senses?
-some claim that beliefs have "the same epistemic content as a sensation" pg 156
-better: we can't be wrong about how things appear to us
-senesation beliefs require no justification
-if someone believes they don't have a sensation, are they still justified in the beliefs that come from that sensation?
-sensations aren't propositional so can't have logical relations, blah blah
-causal relationship instead
-but this still doesn't show the belief to be justified
-how do we know our senses aren't systematically deceiving us?
-if senses are causes, they just cause, not justify
-if senses give info, they might by lying
-"if knowing the meaning of a sentence... involves, or is, knowing how it could be recognized to be true... giving the meaning of the sentence will deamnd that we specify what would justify asserting it." pg 157
-coherentist: justification is other sentences held to be true
-foundationalist: some parts are justified by something nonverbal
-Quine: info value of P is determined by the sense experiences that would make someone agree or disagree with P
-remember the BIV
-difference between sentences justified by meaning and sentences justified by observation
-this is there, but isn't problematic
-Davidson: to further coherenitm, we should abolish the distinction
-we need a way to show a sceptic "that someone with a (more or less) coherent set of beliefs has a reason to suppose his beliefs are not mistaken in the main" pg 158
-we need a reason which is not evidence

Epistemology notes and essay

2009-12-02T13:56:26Z

I got an A on this essay. :)

Notes are for the upcoming one... more foundationalism, but from a different angle.

On a less academic note, got a wisdom tooth out on Monday. Owwww.

Foundationalism is the Best Solution to the Infinite Regress Problem

Although infinitism is convincing, it is not the best solution to the regress problem. Peter Klein's description of infinitism is very well thought out and does give a satisfactory answer to the regress problem. However, his arguments in favor of it also give merit to foundationalism, and do not answer our intuitive desire for a final resolution. In this paper I will examine these problems and address some possible responses.
The regress problem arises when it is observed that people's beliefs are usually justified by other beliefs, and those beliefs by other beliefs, and so on ad infinitum. Peter Klein is the main proponent of a solution to called infinitism. Infinitism is the theory that "the structure of justificatory reasons is infinite and non-repeating" [1]. It depends on the Principle of Avoiding Circularity, which requires that no reason in its own chain of justification, and the Principle of Avoiding Arbitrariness, which requires that if a belief is justified, there must be a reason for the belief, and that reason must be available to the believer. Klein claims that together, these two rule out the other possible solutions to the regress problem, namely coherentism and foundationalism.(Interestingly, in a very foundational bit of reasoning, Klein relies on our intuitions to see that PAC is obviously true.)[1] Broadly speaking, coherentism is the theory that "a belief is justified if it fits in with a set of beliefs, appropriately specified" [2]. There are more specialized versions, which I will analyse shortly, but Klein claims that these are either easy to disprove or actually foundationalism masquerading as coherentism. Foundationalism claims that "knowledge is ultimately based on beliefs which require no further justification" [2].
Klein distinguishes between two types of coherentism: warrant-transfer and warrant-emergent. Warrant-transfer coherentism "holds that some proposition, p, transfers its warrant to another proposition which can, in turn, pass it to another proposition. Eventually the warrant is transferred back to p" [3]. This argument is quickly rejected due to its circularity. Warrant-emergent coherentism holds that "warrant emerges from the structure of the mutually supporting propositions" [3]. However, this makes warrant-emergent coherentism essentially a form of foundationalism, as it suggests that the reason for a proposition having warrant is that it is part of a set of foundational beliefs.
Having rejected coherentism, Klein moves on to foundationalism. He imagines a dialogue between two people, Fred the Foundationalist and Doris the Doubter. Fred states a proposition, P, and Doris questions it. Fred states that P is justified by R1, and Doris questions R1. When Fred justifies R1 with R2, Doris questions R2, until eventually it reaches the point where Fred gives as justification a foundational belief, B, which he claims is autonomously justified. At this point, Doris grants that B is perhaps self-justifying, but does it at least have a foundational quality F which makes it (and any other propositions containing F) likely to be true?
At this point, Fred has three options: he may deny that it does have the quality F, refuse to answer, or affirm that yes, B has a quality F which makes it likely to be true. Should he take either of the first two options, Fred will surely feel that he should no longer use B as justification. But if he affirms that B does have a quality F, then he has effectively justified B with reference to something other than itself, and the regress continues. As such, Klein argues, foundationalism will never give a satisfactory answer to the regress problem. What we need is a theory which is warrant-emergent, but is not coherentism - in a word, infinitism. According to infinitism, warrant does emerge from a large set of propositions, and as such is not arbitrary, but these propositions are not circular in the way that the basic beliefs of coherentism are. There are two main problems with this reasoning.
The main problem is that by Klein's definition of the regress problem and his account of warrant, foundationalism is as valid a solution as infinitism. John Turri sums this up in his answer to Klein's dialogue, relying on Klein's own definitions of the regress problem and how warrant may be increased. First, Klein tells us that the regress problem asks us to consider "Which type of series of reasons and the account of warrant associated with it, if any, can increase the credibility of a non-evident proposition" [3]. Further, he says that "warrant increases as the series of reasons lengthens" [3]. In the dialogue between Fred the Foundationalist and Doris the Doubter, Fred gave a long series of reasons to justify P. This series ends at some point with B, but can be as large as we would like. With this information, we can sum up the problem for infinitism as follows:
1. Solving the regress problem requires giving a series of reasons and account of warrant which can increase the credibility of a non-evident proposition.
2. Klein's account of warrant is that it increases as the series of justifications lengthens.
3. A foundationalist may give an arbitrarily long series of justifications for a proposition.
4. Therefore, by Klein's reasoning, foundationalism solves the regress problem.
While this argument on its own does not prove foundationalism to be superior to infinitism, it does show them to be at least equal.
Another aspect of the debate which is problematic for infinitism is, as Klein puts it, "The Spectre of Scepticism" [1]. One of the main reasons for us to be questioning our justification for beliefs in the first place is so that we can find some final answer which will settle the matter once and for all, and guarantee that we can be confident that our beliefs are justified. This should reveal some a priori knowledge, and should complete a series of justifications. Infinitism does not seem to successfully address this issue, because although we may feel that we can be justified in our beliefs if we can keep giving reasons for them, there will never be one single argument we can point to and say "I have worked through this entire chain of beliefs, and this is why I am justified." Klein does not seem to think that this should be a requirement for solving the regress problem, saying that with infinitism, "although every proposition is only provisionally justified, that is good enough if one does not insist that reasoning settle matters once and for all" [1]. In contrast, foundationalism provides final answers in the form of its basic beliefs, giving it another advantage over infinitism.
The most obvious response to the claim that foundationalism is superior to infinitism by Klein's own description is to argue that lengthening the justificatory chain loses all of the gained warrant if the chain is then ended with an arbitrary belief. However, as Turri points out, "Klein does not take it as a premise of his reasoning that a chain of reasons must be infinite to do its epistemological work; rather, that is his conclusion" [4]. If Klein were to also take it as a premise that a chain of reasons must be infinite, he would be violating his own Principle of Avoiding Circularity, so it should not be assumed that this was simply a mistake on Klein's part. As such, the infinitist belief that a chain of reasons must be infinitely long does not affect the case for foundationalism.
A related objection is that since we are using Klein's reasoning to justify foundationalism, we must take the Principle of Avoiding Arbitrariness into account when we allow Fred to finish his argument by citing B. There are two answers to this. First, the Principle of Avoiding Arbitrariness does not actually come into our argument above. We do use Klein's definitions of the regress problem and how warrant may be increased, but the Principle of Avoiding Arbitrariness and the Principle of Avoiding Circularity don't enter into the discussion. Secondly, it's not clear that B actually is arbitrary. If a fact is self-justifying, that does not mean that it is lacking in justification. (That is not to say that there can't be arbitrary reasons, of course.) Klein asks foundationalists to justify basic beliefs from an infinitist point of view! Since we do not accept that infinitism is the best answer to the regress problem, there is no reason to do this. Similarly, we would not expect Klein to be able to justify the theory of warrant increasing only through an infinite chain of reasons from a foundationalist point of view.
Klein's account of infinitism does present a solution to the regress problem. However, the arguments he uses to show why it is the best solution fail in that they also give credit to foundationalism. Foundationalism has another advantage over infinitism due to Klein's dismissal of the sceptical problems associated with infinitism, which are not problematic for foundationalism. Although there are a number of objections which can be made, they are easily addressed by closer examination of Klein's argument.

Notes on Does Empirical Knowledge Have a Foundation? by Wilfrid Sellars

-'being green' reduces to 'looking green'
-"fundamental concepts pertaining to observable fact have that logical independence of one another which is characteristic of the empiricist tradition." pg 120
-but then... we can't form concepts unless we already have them!
-there must be "a structure of particular matters of fact such that A. each fact can not only be noninferentially known to be the case, but presupposes no other knowledge either of particular matter of fact, or of general truths; and B. such that noninferential knowledge of facts belonging to this structure constitutes the ultimate court of appeals for all factual claims - particular and general - about the world." pg 120
-basically, we need to be able to have some knowledge which we can always appeal to and which doesn't rely on other knowledge.
-statements on this level must be 'worthy', and be made credible in a way which involves their credibility (I'm not sure whether the correct response to this is "duh" or "circular")
-knowledge shouldn't always be supported by other statements
-noninferential knowledge = good
-perhaps statements which report observations are noninferential?
-two ways a 'sentence token' can have authority: 1. inherit it from the authority of its type, 2. come to exist in a certain set of circumstances
-correctness is a necessary and sufficient condition of the truth of observational report statements
-intrinsically authoritative episodes (non-verbal awareness that something is the case)
-but these are just causal, we don't think about them
-inability to have observational knowledge of a fact without knowing many other things also
-need to know "X is a reliable symptom of Y", so observational knowledge doesn't stand on its own feet

Notes on There is Immediate Justification, by James Pryor

I. Justification
-what is justification?
"you have justification to believe P iff you are in a position where it would be epistemically appropriate for you to believe P, a position where P is epistemically likely for you to be true." pg 181
-if you know P, you have justification for it (not "you must have justitification in order to know P")
-all 'justification' is here is appropriate belief
-justification-making condition / justification-maker: a state/condition which gives justification to believe P
-justifiers
-distinction between having justification for P and actually appropriately holeding a belief in P

II. Immediate Justification
-what is immediate justification?
-sometimes get justification from other beliefs
-latter justifications 'mediate' justification of P ("inferential")
-whether P is mediate or immediate is not a question of how much justification, but of what kind
-not about mental processes either
-to have immediate justification, the belief doesn't need to have 'come from nothing'
-there may be beliefs other than those which justify P which are required to form/entertain the belief that P
-justification is usually defeasible
-we may have immediate and mediate justification to believe P

III. Why Believe in Immediate Justification
-Regress Argument (careful with this, people talk about different regresses)
-4 possible outcomes of regress:
1. never ends.
2. justificatory chain includes some closed loops.
3. We have some beliefs which are unjustified but justify other beliefs.
4. There is a P which is justified in a way other than believing further propositions.
-FOundationalists go with 3 or 4
-problems:
-are 1 and 2 really untenable?
-"assumes that justificatory relations always have a linear, asymmetric nature" pg 184
-So, this is not the best argument. Better: argument from considering examples
-What proposition justifies our belief that we are feeling a headache?
-what justification for my belief that I am doing something for a particular reason?
-this is opaque sometimes, but not always
-do examples like these stand up to critical reflection?

IV. The Master Argument for Coherentism
-foundationalism as subclass of view that there is immediate justification
-coherentists deny immediate justification
-argument that "to be a justifier, you need to have certain characteristics, and that having those characteristics makes you be ths ort of thing that itself needs justification" pg 186
-this is an argument against the 'Given Theory'
-it is a master argument for coherentism
-The Content Requirement - in order to be a justifier, you need to have propositional content.
-maybe: a state must stand in logical relation to a belief to justify it
-and it can only stand in logical relation to something if it has propositional content
-perhaps only beliefs have propositional content
-what about desires?
-just need to specialise it more to deal with this
-Argument: Only beliefs (or other states that are epistemically like beliefs) can be justifiers
-even if this is sound, doesn't establish coherentism, and would a coherentist even accept it?
-More importantly, there's a popular belief that experiences have propositional content. But this doesn't make them beliefs, and experiences don't need justification.
-foundationalists can stop here.
-"Premise Principle - the only things that can justify a belief that P are other states that assertively represent propositions, and those propositions have to be ones that could be used as premises in an argument for P." pg 189
-concerns what cna give justification to believe things, not actual beliefs
-no easy relation between this and question of whether perceptual justification is mediate or immediate
-"[Foundationalists] argue that there can be justifiers that satisfy the Premise Principle but aren't beliefs." pg 191
-But, many Foundationalists won't like the premise principle, because it puts such a demanding constraint on immediate justifiers
-is the premise principle really valid?

V. Avoiding Arbitrariness
-how can we make a non-arbitrary justifying relation between the pain in my head and the belief "I have a headache", rather than "I don't have a headache"?
-Chisholm: having an experience "tends to make evident" certain beliefs
-this seems ad hoc and unsatisfying
-Perhaps events have logical structure?
-not only the Premise Principle can save us from arbitrariness

VI. Evidence and Reasons
-some philosophers talk about evidence/reasons rather than about justifiers
-is this really the same thing?
-perhaps we sometimes use "evidence" to refer to propositions which are evident to one rather than states which make them evident
-"We call those propositions 'our evidence' because they can serve as evidence for further reasoning. This diagnosis would permit things like headaches, that do not themselves have propositional content, to be justification-makers - so long s what they give one justification to believe is a proposition." pg 193
-"justify: 1. proving/showing a belief to be credible 2. making a belief just, rather than showing it to be just
-"If the foundationalist can make sense of beliefs being grounded on non-representational justfiers like headaches, then he can make sense of those justifiers being sufficiently available to you." pg 195

VII. Grouning and being Guided by Norms
-what is it for a belief to be grounded on a condition C?
-"When in C, believe P."
-What does it take to be guided by a norm like that?
-epistemic norm - a claim about how we should be, in epistemic matters
-difference between being guided by a norm and acting in a way that just happens to accord with it
-"your belief can be guided by the norm 'When in C, believe P' only when you represent to yourself that you are in C, and can employ that proposition as a presmise in reasoning." pg 196
-does this support the premise principle?
-do we actually do things in accordance with rules this deliberately?
-do we form beliefs this deliberately?
-"some beliefs are appropriately held, and so properly grounded, even though they aren't formed by deliberate choice." pg 196
-'ideal reasoner' - is this even coherent?

Free Will Essay Prep

2009-11-01T14:57:34Z

Notes on The Impossibility of Moral responsibility, by Galen Strawson

I.
-Basic argument - it doesn't matter whether determinism is true or false - we can't be truly morally responsible for our actions
1. Nothing can cause itself (causa sui)
2. we would have to be causa sui to be truly morally responsible
3. Therefore, we can't be truly morally responsible
-paper will reconsider this argument (in support of it)
-"I suspect that it is obvious in such a way that insisting on it too much is likely to make it seem less obvious than it is" pg 212 (basic argument)
-more cumbersome version:
-particular interest in actions performed for a reason
-when acting for a reason, what one does must be responsible for how one is
-but then we need to have brought about the way we are - consciously and explicitly chosen it
-We can't be said to do this unless we have some principles of choice already (P1)
-But then to be truly morally responsible, we need to have chosen P1.
-to choose P1, we must have P2, and so on ad infinitum
-thus, impossible.
-People can change the way they are, but not in such a way as to make themselves truly responsible for themselves and, thus, their actions

II.
-2 main reactions to the basic argument: convinces most of author's students, but is usually dismissed in contemporary discussion
-some would say there's nothing wrong with the argument, but that it's not central to the debate
-but it's the natural place to start for FW&MR!
-it's the main point of these discussions!
-"Most human societies can be classified either as 'guilt cultures' or 'shame cultures'" pg 215

III.
-what sort of "true moral responsibility"?
-the kind that would make it just to send us to heaven or hell
-don't need to believe in heaven or hell for this, but it's a convenient standard
-we don't need to refer to religion, but it's handy
-even if determinism is true, it will seem to us like we have free will and moral responsibility
-our daily basic decisions are what makes it so hard to give up the notion of FW&MR

IV.
-various big philosophers have agreed that we must be able to determine who we are in order to be MR
-"we do tend, in some vague and unexamined fashion, to think of ourselves as responsible for - answerable for - how we are" pg 218
-A general identification with our characters predominates in most of us - a sense that we are in control of who we are, and perhaps answerable even for traits we don't like
-implicit recognition that MR involves responsibility for how one is
-but, also, tendency to think we can be MR regardless of determining our own character because we are aware of ourselves as agents with choices

V.
-very conversational statement of BA:
"1. You do what you do, in any situation in which you find yourself, because of the way you are. So...
2. To be truly MR for what you do, you must be truly MR for the way you are - at least in certain crucial mental respects."
-1 is incontrovertible. Let's argue 2.
-"Nothing can be causa sui in the required way." pg 220
="the evident consequence of the BA is that there is a fundamental sense in which no punishment or reward is ever ultimately just." pg 221
-but we still feel like FW&MR exists

VI.
-Three sorts of response to BA
-First, compatibilism. Step 2 comes out as false here, since one need not be responsible for how one is
-But, fails to show true moral responsibility
-some compatibilists happy to admit this point: since "true MR" can't really have applications, we should ignore it
-maybe true MR doesn't have real applications, but how much of philosophy does?
-second response - libertarian. Incomptibilist belief that we have FW&MR and therefore, determinism is false.
-Power to make choices grounded in fact that agents are partially indeterministic but will be deciding between the choices their character makes them predisposed to
-But how can this help with moral responsibility?
-"How can the occurence of partly random or indeterminstic events contribue in any way to one's being truly morally responsible either for one's actions or for one's character?" pg 223
-indeterministic factors can't contribute to moral responsibility
-ultimate responsibility here depends on indeterminstic nature of outcome
-if we accept that MR depends on indeterminism we'd have to grant that we could never know whether any agent was MR
-Third response - one can't be held responsible for one's character etc., BUT 2 is false.
So one can be truly FW&MR without being held responsible for one's character
-We do often experience the world in this way
-CPM: character, personality, motivational structure
-our self (S) is imagined to be in some way independant of our CPM
-CPM gives S info, S chooses
-S's existence shows step 2 of the BA to be false
-but - S decides on what it does because of the way it is. So we're back where we started.
-"Nothing can be causa sui, and in order to be truly MR for one's actions one would have to be causa sui, at least in certain crucial mental aspects." pg 226
-it's good that it's hard to imagine not being MR in our daily life

VII.
-this isn't anything new
-we'd save time if people would acknowledge the BA more widely
-there may be moral advantages in acknowledging it.
-

Notes on Toward a Credible Agent-Causal Account of Free Will by Randolph Clarke

I. Intro
-agent-causal accounts widely considered to be discredited
-free will = agent's action not causally determined by prior events
-first problem: inadequate description of relationship between agent, agent's action, and agent's reason for action
-second problem: no intelligible explanation of just what causation by an agent is

II. Rational Free Action
-Chisholm and Taylor: when an agent acts with free will, her action is uncaused
-Chisholm: any action must be caused by agent, not caused by event
-but if an agent doesn't have reasons for her actions, how can she be rational?
-"agent causation should be seen as required for acting with free will, but not for acting." pg 286
-also, free actions can be caused by prior events without sacrificing our argument
-variety of things an agent can do, and she brings it about that she does one in particular
-agent causation is a libertarian view - it requires that determinism be false. (this allows for the agent's wide choice of possibilities)
-possibilities must abide by natural causal laws
-agent causation places huge importance on the agent bringing about a particular event
-"An agent's causing her performing a certain action is taken to be really that, and not really something quite different, such as the causation of her action by an event involving the agent." pg 287
-uncaused event causing agent's action won't work
-this is fine with the idea of events being caused, so long as the causation is probabilistic rather than deterministic
     -this allows for actions caused by CPM
-reconciles free will with a thesis of event causation, but not with determinism
-Objection: agent exists before, during, and after the action. the fact that the action is caused by the agent doesn't explain why it happens at a certain time.
     -explained just as well as it is on nondeterministic event causation
-"although agent causation adds nothing to our ability to explain human behavior, neither does it subtract anything." pg 289
-How are event and agent causation related on this account? can actions still be rational?
-when she acts with free will, she causes an action based on particular reasons. she chooses which reasons to act on based on their relevance etc.
     -this seems pretty rational
-"it is important for a libertarian view that on a significant number of the occasions when an agent acts with free will, there is more than one action that she might rationally perform." pg 291
-we do have the ability to act irrationally, but this is not what is attractive about free will
-does the view explained here really allow us to choose among a selection of genuine, rational alternatives?
-situations where one option is just as rational as another (barrel of perfectly good apples - how do you pick one over another?)
-we can also change our minds about which reasons are most important to us (pleasure of smoking / health of quitting)
-"presence or absence of agent causation makes no difference to the rationality of the action... such actions are nevertheless rationally explicable." pg 291-292

III. Causation by an Agent
-Chisholm's language portrays agent causation as intentional actions, which would make it not causation
-van Inwagen suggests that an action on agent causation must have a component event which is uncaused by another event, but this doesn't really tell us what causation by the agent consists of
-agent causation is a relation between agent/person and event
     -agent always comes first
-so what is this relation?
-Same relation as event causation
-"the only difference between the two kinds of causation concerns the types of entities related, not the relation." pg 293
-but is there any intelligible account of the relation?
-maybe: causal relation as a basic constituent of the universe
-Tooley-ish account: "an event (particular) causes another just in case the relation of causation obtains between them. Two events can be so related only if they possess (or are constituted by) properties that are in turn related under a law of nature." pg 294
     -Tooley is talking about event causation, but this could also work for agent causation
-agent can be said to be related to action if she and action have particular properties
     -if so, there might be a law of nature which states that individuals who act with those properties have free will
-agent's control resides in her causing what she does

IV. Why Believe It
-this is an intelligible thesis, but give me reason to believe it over others
-will start with arguments not available, then arguments in favor
-if it works like this, observational evidence can't tell us so. so we'll never get any suppot from there, unfortunately.
-it would not improve our ability to predict or explain human behavior
-But, doesn't undermine explanatory significance of event causes
-agent causation doesn't contribute to nor detract from scientific understanding
-contributes to understanding of selves as moral agents
-"transcendental argument...
     1. we are morally responsible agents
     2. if we are morally responsible, then we act with free will
     3. if we act with free will, then determinism is false
     4. if determinism is false & we still act with free will, the we agent-cause our actions
     5. if our acting with free will requires that we agent-cause our actions, then that freedom is as presented in the account sketched above " pg 298
-we generally feel that any kind of free will which requires our actions to be caused by actions in the distant past unsatisfactory

Free Will Essay Outline

Title: meh

Thesis: Agent causalism, specfically the kind described by Clarke, reflects the way the world really is.

Intro:
     -thesis
     -will examine whether Clarke's account satisfies conditions for free will
   -will conclude it does
     -logically and intuitively a good explanation

Overview of Clarke's Agent Causation
     -probabilistic connection between agent's CPM (cite G strawson) and agent's actions
     -connection between agent and action as law of nature
     -required for acting with free will, but not for just acting
     -has advantage that it means our behavior is still rational, won't detract from scientific understanding

Objection one: This looks like Determinism!
     -if there's a connection between the CPM and the action, it's not free will
     -first, you really wouldn't want totally irrational action. Any good account will have a connection here.
     -second, connection is probabilistic, not deterministic
     -third, agent decides which part of CPM to act on and can reconsider importance of various bits

Objection two: Doesn't fulfill requirements for Free Will
     -Campbell: Agent must be the cause of their actions, not a cause of their actions - here the agent and their CPM is causing the action
     -But: the agent is the only cause, really. Her CPM influences the choices, but SHE decides which to go with and SHE causes the action
     -But: causal chain argument. Her action is caused by her CPM, and her CPM isn't up to her.
     -this doesn't matter, since as established, her CPM presents her with options, but it does not determine her actions.

Conclusion:
     -agent causation as described by Clarke = win
     -important to understand that it's probabilistic causation, which may resemble determinism but isn't
     -satisfies our intuition that accounts of free will which have our actions rely on the distant past (compatibilist) are unsatisfactory
     -allows for moral responsibility

Ancient Aesthetics Essay Prep

2009-10-29T23:06:16Z

Notes on Plato's Republic Book III
-Sorts of stories that kids should hear
-no fearing death
-"It is not that they are bad popular or are not popular; indeed the better they are as poetry the more unsuitable they are for the ears of the children or men who are to be free and fear slavery more than death." 387b
-negative qualities given to villains so the guardians won't imitate them 388a
-truth = good, indulgence = bad
-need to define justice to decide what can be said about human life
-stories consist of in-character speeches, with narrative passages between them
-poet representing themselves as someone else (imitating someone else)
-in this translation "representation" = "imitation"
-poetry which uses only imitation; tragedy and comedy. Poetry where the poet speaks only as themself; lyric. Poetry which uses both; epic.
-"We must decide whether we should allow our poets to use imitation freely in their narratives..." 394d
-One man can only be good at one thing
-he also would not be good at imitating many people
-artists also have to stick to one kind of art
-guardians should only play heroes in plays
-"Dramatic and similar representations, if indulgence in them is prolonged into adult life, establish habits of physical poise, intonation and thought which become second nature" 395 c-d
-can't play loony women, slaves, cowards...
-can't play craftsmen, since the guardians aren't meant to learn about other trades
-a good man won't feel comfortable acting as a bad one
-worse men will happily imitate anything (397a)
-But, imitation gives most pleasure
-"My own vote... would go to the unmixed style which imitates the good man." 397d
-now, song and music
-no dirges or drinking songs, only marches and hymns
-"Good literature, therefore, and good music, beauty of form and good rhythm all depend on goodness of character." 400d-e

Notes on Plato's Republic, Book X

-might be an appendix, really
-generally, belief that poetry is illusion

I. Art and Illusion
-in this translation, mimesis = representation rather than imitation
-artists don't have any knowledge of what they imitate; their works tell us nothing about life.
-imitations can hurt the minds of their audiences
-what is imitation?
-painters can "create" anything and everything; but it's only a reflection
-Craftsmen don't produce the Forms of things they make, though, only reflections
-Take a bed, for example
-There are three types of bed; the bed made by God (Form of a bed), the one by the craftsman (particular, physical bed), and the one by the painter (imitation of a bed).
-The artist just imitates what the other two make
-The thing the artist produces is "at third remove from reality" 597e
-When we look at a real bed from different angles, it looks different, but it isn't really different. The painter, though, can do his bed from only one view.
-art can imitate everything because it knows very little about anything (jack of all trades effect, says gwen)
-someone who thinks they know everything can't tell the difference between knowledge, ignorance, and imitation
-we're told that expert tragedians, esp. Homer, know about nearly everything
-people think a poet must know all about his subject if he's to write well. But do poets actually know all this?
-if someone can make both originals and copies, they won't devote their lives to making copies
-poets couldn't tell us about medicine or other highly skilled trades
-No one would expect Homer to create legal systems or military strategy
-if poets actually had knowledge to impart, they would stay and teach
-they just have superficial knowledge of everything, including human excellene
-but poetry convinces people that poets know it all!
-If poetry was converted to prose, it would have very little content.
-"the quality, beauty, and fitness of any implement or creature or action [is] judged by reference to the use for which man or nature produced it". 601d
-the person who uses a thing is the one who can say how good it is, and the maker relies on their judgements. User has knowledge, gives the maker true belief.
-Painter doesn't have this relationship with a user, and thus has no knowledge of the goodness or badness of what he creates
-same for poet
-huh? what, viewers can't say whether they think the art is good? are viewers different from users in this case?
-But they'll still go on making art.
-note two trios. "God, craftsman, user" and "user, maker, artist". Not totally consistent with each other.

II. The Appeal of Art and Poetry
-"Art and poetry appeal to, and represent, the lower, less rational part of our nature." Author's comment pg 345
-What part of a person does art exercise power over?
-Artists and conjurors depend on tricks of the eye and mind
-these are overcome using reason
-if our measurements contradict appearances, we trust the measurements
-the part of the mind which agrees with measurements != the part which contradicts them
-part which relies on calculations and measurement is best part
-part which contradicts = inferior
-So, work of artists is removed from truth, associated w/ parts of ourselves equally removed
-"Imitative art is an inferior child born of inferior parents." 603b
-Poetry as well as visual arts?
-Poetry represents people in action - there's a similar struggle between rational and irrational here
-a good person will be better able to handle tragedy, because they will moderate their sorrow
-He'll try harder to moderate his sorrow in front of others, since "reason and principle demand restraint" 604 a.... but it'll be difficult due to the two opposing elements of his nature
-the rational element doesn't give much fodder for dramatic representation, but the other element does
-So, poets also "have a low degree of truth and.... deals with a low element of the mind" 605a-b
-poet encourages the lower elements

III. The Effects of Poetry and Drama
-poetry teaches its audiences to imitate the faults it shows, so banish poets! Dramatic poets especially.
-corrupts even the best characters
-*****we praise poets who can affect us emotionally the most
-But we pride ourselves on being able to control our sorrow
-should we admire something we would be ashamed to be? No!
-we relax our better natures during plays because it is not us wailing, snd let it feed our worse nature
-Same with jokes we would be ashamed to tell... We'll become buffoons!
-sex, anger... etc
-So, we can't allow these entertainments in our ideal state
-if they can show that they have a place in a good society, though, then we'll accept them

Notes on Plato on Poetic Crativity, by Elizabeth Asmis
-quarrel between philosophy and poetry leads to poetry's expulsion from the ideal state
-but if someone can defend it, he's willing to listen
-plato's view of poetry as subordinate to politics is very jarring
-Greek poets had crucial role in transmission of values
-Poets believed to be inspired by the Gods
-Poetic recitations as worship
-a bit like today's Hindu dramas
-Poets preserved values, but also questioned tradition
-many poets also criticized other poets, it wasn't just Plato
-role of sophists in Plato's argument
-taught methods of argument, relied only on own wisdom
-Plato "often thought to have lacked a notion of poetry as an expression of personal feelings and beliefs." pg 346
-divine inspiration + notion of imitation = no room for self expression
-poetry as a means of educating children... concerned for the effect poetry might have on them
-also adults
-in books 2 and 3, poets must tell truth about gods and heroes as role models
-poets must only imitate good people, so that when their audience imitates them they'll still be good
-imitate = impersonate?
-poet's experience becomes the listener's
-"If the listener persists in imitating the same kind of characters from childhood, he ends up having the same moral configuration." pg 348
-poets and other imitators make the city of pigs "ill" in book 2
-poetry has power to heal or poison souls
-"The right kind of poetry, therefore, will have only a small amount of imitation, consisting only in the imitation of the good, and it will have much narration." pg 348, 396e
-eliminates tragedy, comedy, and Homeric epic (394d)
-same thing with music - must resemble the "simplicity and restraint of good moral habits"
-401b
-the "sacred" poet (Probably Homer) is revered but not allowed in
-all artists, not just poets, are to create images of goodness.
-association of moral character with objects
-in book 10, they say they banned all imitative poetry during book 3, but they didn't! what's the deal?
-maybe expelled all poets who were indiscriminately imitative
-imitation is at the farthest remove from genuine goodness
-only imitative poetry, not all poetry
-Keep hymns, praises of the good (607a)
-Plato depends on analogy between painter and poet

Yet More Notes

2009-10-29T11:48:46Z

Notes on An Argument for Incompatibilism, by Peter van Inwagen

I.
-Main question for free will is not "do we have it" but "is it compatible with determinism"
-Inwagen is an incompatibilist
-compatibilists tend to make stupid mistakes

II.
-Consequence Argument: If determinism is true, everything is determined by past events and laws of nature, so the consequences aren't up to us

III.
-What is determinism?
-Three subordinate ideas: proposition, state of the entire physical world at an instant, law of nature.
-Propositions:
1. There is a proposition which is true for each way the world could be if it is that way.
2. Propositions are either true or false.
3. The conjunction of a true and a false proposition is a false proposition.
4. Propositions obey the Law of Contraposition.
-Law of Contraposition: if a proposition x must be true and y is false, then not-x cannot be true and not-y cannot be false.
-Propositions associated with possible worlds
-State of the world:
1. 'State' must not imply anything about the state at another instant
2. If there is an observable change in the world, this entails a change in the state of the world
-"A proposition expresses 'the state of the world at t' provided it is a true proposition that asserts of some state that, at t, the world is in that state." pg 41
-'law of nature' is not an epistemological term, doesn't depend on current state of scientific knowledge, and may never be altered by us
-something can be true but not a law (if, for instance, someone could falsify it)
-laws of nature limit what we can do
-de dicto principle: no one can change a law of nature
-de re principle: it is impossible for any individual to falsify a law of nature
-are psychological laws an exception?
-it is tempting to call regular patterns of behavior 'laws'
-laws of nature apply to things which are not rational agents
-*****determinism: "for every instant of time, there is a proposition that expresses the state of the world at that instant; if p and q are any propositions that express the state of the world at some instants, then the conjunction of p with the laws of nature entails q." pg 45

IV.
-determinism is about propositions, free will is about agents
-there are some propositions we can render false, but this does not mean we enter into causal relationships etc.

V.
-"I shall imagine a case in which a certain main, after due deliberation, refrained from performing a certain contemplated act. I shall then argue that, if determinism is true, that man could not have performed that act." pg 48
-Judge not raising hand
-First Formal Argument:
1. If determinism is true, then the conjunction of P' and L entails P
2. It is not possible that J could have raised his hand at T and P be true
3. If 2, then if J could've raised his hand at T, J could have rendered P false
4. If J could have rendered P false, and if the conjunction of P' and L entails P, then J could have rendered the conjunction of P' and L false
5. If J could have rendered the conjunction of P' and L false, then J could have rendered L false
6. J could not have rendered L false
7. If determinism is true, J could not have raised his hand at T.

J = Judge, L = Laws of Nature, P = state of the world at T, P' = state of the world at T', T' = any instant before J's birth

-these premises aren't necessary truths due to modal reality
-the premises are true in all possible worlds where the judge's story is true
-lots of stuff explaining each premise in greater detail - I get it, thanks
-Premise 6 is true no matter how you define 's can render P false'
-most philosophers seem to think "if [act] was incompatible with J's birth conditions and L, the J can't [act]" is based on some mix-up
-try thinking about one such situation, and see if you agree with them!

Epistemology notes, part the second

2009-10-19T12:58:44Z

Notes on Infinitism is not the solution to the regress problem, by Carl Ginet

I. Intro
-most of our beliefs are "such that epistemic rationality would not forbid us holding them." pg 140
-these beliefs are justified by inference to other beliefs
     -and so on. how do we end it?
-Klein: every belief must be inferential, and part of an infinite, non-circular chain
-Ginet: if justification is possible, non-inferential justification must be possible (this is foundationalism and finitism)

II. Examples of Non-Inferential Justification
-if we can give clear examples of it, it must exist, so here goes...

A Priori
-if you disagree with "anything that lasts exactly one hour lasts exactly sixty minutes", you don't understand it.
-if you understand and believe it, you're justified in believing it.
-this doesn't appear to involve inferential justification
-"anything that lasts one hours lasts longer than 55 minutes" depends on above statement and "anything that lasts 60 minutes lasts longer than 55 minutes."
     -but if things can be inferred from definitions, A&B aren't final! We haven't defined hour... says Gwen

A Posteriori
-belief in seeing a blue smear on a white wall in good light, with no reason to suspect visual impairment.
     -justified in believing this

III. Objections to these examples
-Klein: chain of justification cannot end with an arbitrary reason
     -Ginet: Yes, if you say a belief is unjustified because you lack a justification for it, you'd be right... but justification doesn't have to be inferential
-Klein needs to show why justification must be inferential
-Klein: Property P in a belief, which entails not needing an inferential justification for it. Why is P truth-conducive?
     -if you can answer this question, the regress continues
     -if you can't, it's arbitrary
-Klein: A belief isn't justified unless you have a further belief that a particular property makes it true
-Ginet: most people don't have further beliefs to back up those formed perceptually
-Klein: the belief just needs to be available to them, and the believer acts as if he had the further belief already formed anyway.
-maybe, but it being 'available' doesn't make it actually one of the believer's reasons and as such not part of his justification
-yes, he must have that belief available, but that is entailed by his believing what he does, not required by it
-if someone believes 2+3=5, they would also believe that the smallest even prime plus the cube root of 27 is equal to the square root of 25, but that isn't a reason for them believing 2 + 3 = 5.
-maybe: L is available to Bob, and if Bob thought about L, he would say it was among his reasons for believing Q. (tacit justification)
-but he's still justified just by seeing Q and not having a reason to believe he was mistaken. If L wasn't available to him, he would still be justified.

IV. Two Problems for Infinitism
First Problem
-assume strong potential belief as sbove
-How can we say a believer has an infinite chain of stronger beliefs?
-arguing for it in principle is not enough, need examples
-not that we expect them to explain the whole chain, it's infinite! But an algorithm could work.
    -could everyone ever actually do this?
-42.

Second Problem
-"inference cannot originate justification, it can only transfer it from premises to conclusion." pg 148
     -so justification couldn't be inferential
-inferential justification is similar to instrumental value
     -things have value as a means to something else only if that something else has value
-Klein: yes, things will only be provisionally justified, but that's fine if you accept that it won't settle things once and for all
     -doesn't this kind of miss the point?

Epistemology notes, part the first

2009-10-19T10:31:47Z

Hopefully, once I've gotten all my notes on here, I can get organized and write the actual paper... in the mean time, I have hummus. Mmmm.

Notes on Human Knowledge and the Infinite Regress of Reason, by Peter Klein

I. Introduction
-in favor of infinitism
-infinitism: "the structure of justificatory reasons is infinite and non-repeating." pg 297
-provides account of rational beliefs, unlike foundationalism and coherentism
-infinitism usually dismissed
-foundationalism depends on accepting arbitrary reasons
-coherentism begs question
-so they don't provide rational belief, and thus, do not provide knowledge
-Foundationalism, according to penguin dictionary of philosophy: "doctrine that knowledge is ultimately based on beliefs that require no further justification"
-coherentism, again from dictionary: "a belief is justified if it fits in with a set of beliefs, appropriately justified"

II. A Sketch of Infinitism
-infinitism, like most forms of coherentism, holds that only reasons justify belief
-Principle of Avoiding Circularity: "For all x, if a person, S, has justification for x, then for all y, if y is in the evidential ancestry of x for S, then x is not in the evidential ancestry of y for S." pg 298
-there are coherentists who wouldn't argue this - they're closet foundationalists!
-infinitism, like foundationalism, holds that there are features of the world which make belief reason - BUT no ultimate ones, unlike foundationalism
-Principle of Avoiding Arbitrariness: "For all x, if a person S has justification for x, then there is some reason r1 avilable to S for x, and some reason r2 available to S for r1, etc." pg 299
-PAA doesn't rule out self-justification of x, but PAA + PAC does
-"It is the straight-forward intuitive appeal of these principles that is the best reason for thinking that if any beliefs are justified, the structure of reasons must be infinite and non-repeating." pg 299
-notion of "availability"
-objective availability - basically, if a rational person would accept p as a reason for q, p is objectively available as a reason for q
-subjective availability: A person S has to be able to call on p as a reason (So if p is a goodreason, but it would never ever occur to you in a million years, it's not subjectively available)
-how can humans deal with infinite beliefs?
     -we have lots of beliefs we don't think about unless asked to
-only way to disprove infinitism is to disprove PAA or PAC
-PAC seems intuitively obvious
     -Gwen says: aren't you assuming a foundational truth here? :P
-PAA less so. Things other than reasons might justify beliefs - reliable circumstances etc.
-Let's deal with the objections.

A. Reliablism
-reliabilism: reasons aren't always required to justify a belief
-but being able to produce reasons for beliefs ia characteristic of our knowledge!
-radical reliabilism "fails to capture what is distinctive about adult human knowledge" pg 302
-there is a sense of "know" which would suit reliabilism and PAA, but it's really just "posses knowledge that"
-even if rational beliefs were unnecessary, infinitism would still make an important point about them.

B. Meta-Justifications
-some beliefs are acceptable even in the absence of a reason because they have some quality P which makes them likely to be true
-does this avoid arbitrariness?
-"Why is having P truth-conducive?" 303
     -If there's an answer to this question, the regress continues
     -If there isn't, it's arbitrary
-basically, this doesn't avoid foundationalism's problem

C. Harmless Arbitrariness
-maybe we can accept arbitrary beliefs we have no reasons for!
-this would basically undermine every theory, ever.
-It wouldn't help anyway
-It doesn't stop the regress. There aren't ultimate resons, so there can't be arbitrary ultimate reasons.
-Even if reasons were arbitrary, this wouldn't help our goal of getting a complete and accurate picture of the world.
-Gwen says: There's something wrong here.

III. Objections to Infinitism
-rejections of PAA and PAC individually fail, let's have a look at what people say about them together (infinitism)
-four main objections

A. Finite Mind Objection
-human minds are finite, so reasons for beliefs need to not be infinite chains
-surely that can't be all? A "finite" box occupies infinite points, but we don't have issues with the concept of a box
-No - it's something about justified belief states in particular which means we can't be in an infinite number of them
     -we cna't consciously believe them because there's not enough time
     -we can't unconsciously believe them because some would then "defeat human understanding"
-300 miles from boston example. If I believe I'm 300 miles from boston, I also believe I'm less than 400 miles from boston, less than 500 miles from boston, less than 501 miles from boston, less than 604.2 miles from boston...
     -presupposes finite vocabulary
-"each proposition in an infinite set of propositions is subjectively available" pg 308
-infinitists aren't claiming that we have an infinite number of already formed, unconscious beliefs
-there is a sense in which we believe 366 + 71 = 437, but most of us haven't formed that belief until presented with the sum
-we just have a capacity to form beliefs about each member of an infinite set
-when we don't already have explanations we're able to invent them
-maybe we can't have an infinite number of justified beliefs?
     -would lead to "too complex" beliefs
-but we're not requiring people to examine the quality of their justifications here!

B. Aristotelian Objection: If some knowledge is inferential, then some isn't
-Yup, agreed. But this does not entail finiteness.
-Assume that at some point a human is entirely ignorant. Later, it has knowledge.
     -We can't account for the knowledge by referencing old knowledge
          -But! We can obtain belief through means other than reasons - experience, say.
-Not even totally clear that Aristotle had a problem with infinitism
-there are times when asking for a reason for a belief is just dumb, usually during everyday conversations - but that doesn't mean the questions are always dumb

C. The Reductio Argument
-"If there were an infinite regress of reasons, any arbitrarily chosen contingent proposition would be justified. That is absurd." pg 311
     -the reason being I suppose that if there are infinite reasons, one of them is going to justify my beliefthat this carrot is actually blue
-if e -> p, then e & q -> p & q
     -if this were true, it would screw infinitism; luckily it violates PAC
-If violates PAC because the only reason for p&q is e&q, and q can't be in its own chain
-another reductio argument: for any contingent proposition one can construct an instance of an infinite regress
     -thus justifying beliefs which might not be true
-but: infinite chains are necessary, yes, but not sufficient. All beliefs must also be "available".
-there is potential justification for every contingent proposition

D. Specter of Skepticism
-basically, the point of reasoning is to settle the issue once and for all. it produces a gaurantee that a proposition is more reasonable than its contraries; if the reasoning is infinite, it doesn't do that.
-all justification is conditional
-distinction between a belief being justified and showing that it's justified
-yeah, infinitism won't give you that final gaurantee
     -but then, descartes just stopped it by crediting God
-"completion requirement: in order for a belief to be justified for someone, that person must have actually completed the chain of reasoning that terminates in the belief in question." pg 314
     -this asks for more justification than even non-infinitist accounts do
-having a belief that P is justified vs P actually being justified (guessing 437)
-but for theinfinitist, all beliefs are provisional

-no, it's not a final gaurantee.
-but it's a great temporary one!

Notes on On The Regress Argument For Infinitism, by John Turri

-Abstract: foundationalism can also "enhance the credibility of a questioned non-evident proposition", and provide infinite chains, so let's not be convinced by infinitism.
-infinitism solves regress problem, but is underdeveloped
-the Regress Problem: what kind of justificatory chain can increase the credibility of a proposition?
     -non-evident proposition, that is, about which we may have credible disagreement
-if a self-conscious practitioner can use a theory to enhance his credibility at all, it solves the regress problem
-Klein: only infinitism manages it
     -Regress argument for infinitism:
          1. Neither coherentism nor foundationalism can solve it
          2. Infinitism can!
          3. Foundationalism, coherentism and infinitism are all the options
-Turri: what Klein says about 2 means we should reject 1. The reasons he give also work for foundationalism.
-Two kinds of coherentism: warrant-transfer and warrant-emergent
-warrant-transfer is circular
-warrant-emergent is really foundationalism
    -this is putting even more weight on Klein's argument against foundationalism
-foundationalism according to Klein: justification comes from basic propositions and is transferred to others through inference
     -no problems with these basics being self-justified
-Fran the foundationslist and Dan the doubter
-being justified vs. showing that one is justified

-Fran: that tree is an elm. (Call this proposition P.)
-Dan: You'd better have a good reason for saying so.
-Fran: it's got elm leaves. (Call this reason R1.)
-Dan: How can you tell?
-Fran: They look like other elm leaves. (=R2.)
-Dan: Why are you sure?
-Fran: R3...
-Eventually, Fran reaches a basic belief, B.
-Dan: B?
-Fran: B doesn't need a reason.
-Dan: Okay, it has a foundational quality (F) but are such beliefs at least likely to be true?

-At this point Fran hs three options: she can affirm, deny, or not answer.
-If she denies: B isn't arbitrary, but using it for Rn is. Doesn't help.
-If she withholds an answer: then she'd be tempted to think she shouldn't use B any more. Also doesn't help.
-If she affirms that they're likely to be true: Then B is a reason for Rn, and that's not arbitrary - but the regress has continued, because there's a reason for B to be used.
-Fran's argument: B -> Rn -> ... -> R2 -> R1 -> P
-n (from Rn) may be arbitrarily large, but not infinitely large
     -although it wouldn't really be inconsistent if it could be infinitely large
-we want a view that's fine with PAA + PAC
-Klein says his infinitism is
-So, can an infinitist increase the credibility of a proposition?
-Leain's response to Sextus shows that a foundationalist can...
-Sextus: an infinite chain results in suspension of judgement, since there is no starting point (ultimate bit of evidence) for the debate.
-Klein: If effective reasoning required that credit come from a basic belief, this would be fair, but infinitism doesn't say that. The starting point is doubt. "Warrant increases not because we are getting closer to a bsic proposition but because we are getting further from the questioned proposition." pg 10. Warrant increases the bigger the chain gets, but yes, it's never totally settled.
-But, Fran lengthened the chain! So, she increased the credibility, as a foundationalist.
     -and remember: n is as large as we like.
-So, does the eventual ending-with-B negate everything? Well, Klein never says so.
-Maybe infinitism's incompatibility with dogmatism sets is above foundationalism?
     -is foundationalism predisposed to dogma? not really.
-foundationalism is just as satisfactory
-May object to idea that longer chain - more credibility, fine, but still -argument stands
-Credibility from long chain and basic beliefs aren't incompatible
     -chain doesn't need a last link to have a basic belief
          -2:05 example

Notes on some relevant bits of Foundationslist Theories of Epistemic Justification, from the SEP

I. Intro
-foundationalism: "all knowledge and justified belief rest ultimately on a foundation of noninferential knowledge or justified belief."
-most things are "known" because they rely on other things we know
-"classical" account: JTB
-understanding of knowledge depends on understanding of justification
-foundationalism assumed to be true for ages
-two regress arguments: epistemic and conceptual

II. The Regress Argument for Foundationalism
-"to be justified in believing P on the basis of E one must be justified in believing E."
-Principle of Inferential Justification: "to be justified in believing P on the basis of E one must not only be 1. justified in believing E, but also 2. justified in believing that E makes probable P."
     -leads to a regress
-but; we can't complete and infinite chain, so we can't use inferential reasoning to gain knowledge
     -so, there must be some non-inferential beliefs
-supposed unaccesibility of an epistemic regress
-what makes PIJ true?

III. A Noninferential Justification as Infallible Belief
-Descartes, the classical foundationalist
-infallible belief: S's belief that P at t is infallible if S's believing Pa at t entails that P is true."
     -well this doesn't help much...
-leads to... if I believe P, and it is a necessary truth, it doesn't matter why I believe it or if I am able to prove is - my belief is infallible.
-'infallible beliefs' foundation is quite flimsy
-it's hard to come up with any infallible beliefs which aren't self-referential (like the cogito)

B. Noninferential Justification as Infallible justification
-maybe we should start by locating the source of infallibility
-justification for believing P must relevantly entail P's truth
-relevant vs. irrelevant entailment?
-P makes Q true only if x, which makes P true, also makes Q true.
-special relation we have to beliefs such as "I am in pain"
     -acquaintance theory
-need to know not only x, but relationship between x and P.
-BUT! To make something a given, it needs to not be dependant on concepts and 'givens' are designed to counteract some very specific concepts
-to make sense of inferring things from a given, it must have a truth valuse
-things which have truth values involve the application of thought
-an acquaintance between x and P may not be an epistemic relation
     -you wouldn't have the belief if not for the relation, but they're not seperable...

blah blah blah important bits coming up...

-"The infinitist accepts the need to be able to supply non-circular justification for believing what we do, but argues that given the complexity of the human mind and it's capacity to entertain and justifiably believe an infinite number of propositions, there is nothing vicious about the relevant regresses we face."
-but can it deal with regress foundationalism?

Oh god so stressed right now

2009-10-15T21:01:01Z

To do list:
-Change into something comfy
-Make huge mug of coffee
-Read Human Knowledge and the Infinite Regress of Reasons
-Read On the Regress Argument for Infinitism
~~-Read SEP article on infinitism~~
-outline epistemology essay
-drink some tea
-Read the Republic Book III
-Read The Republic Book X
-~~shower~~
-Read some relevant bits of The Cambridge Companion to Plato
-Find a copy of that other plato companion and read it
-Outline Aesthetics essay
~~-eat something~~
~~-yarrr some tudor knitting patterns~~
-read Agent Causation
-read Towards a Credible Agent Account of Free Will
-clean all the dirty dishes in room
-read Towards a Reasonable Libertarianism
-read Responsibility, Luck, and Chance
~~-clean room~~
~~-outline free will essay~~
~~-watch some west wing~~
~~-send off schillysocks' scarf~~
-apply for internships

Ask professors:
-What's an example of a way we can gain beliefs through something other than reasons? experience?

Some deadlines:
Free Will Formative Essay: 23 october
Aesthetics Midterm Essay: 30 October
Epistemology Midterm Essay: 30 October
Free Will Midterm Essay: 6 November
Applied Ethics Formative Essay: Novermber 21

Other dates:
Trip to Pendle HIll: October 24
Visiting Jon: 2nd week of November?
Thanksgiving with Mom: 27th November (weekend)
Hogsmanay: 1-3 January
Player Event: 7 January

don'tthinkaboutjondon'tthinkaboutjondon'tthinkaboutjondon'tthinkaboutjon

Genetic Engineering

2009-10-12T08:47:43Z

Notes on Selecting Children: The Ethics of Reproductive Genetic Engineering, by S. Matthew Liao

I. Intro
-potential to exacerbate social inequality
-ethics of doing research on children
-pressure on women
-somatic genetic engineering - targets organs in existing person, doesn't affect eggs etc.
-germline genetic engineering - targets eggs, sperm, embryos
-this paper concentrates on germline
-distinction between reproductive and therapeutic engineering
-modification vs. selection (both covered here)
-reproductive modification raises possibility of kid saying "I could have been different" - selection doesn't
-views for: Perfectionist View, Libertarian View
-views against: Human Nature View, Motivation View
-deaf child example
-pig-human child

II. The Perfectionist View
-the view: "Given a choice between selecting a life that will have the best chance of living the best life and a different being... it is morally obligatory to choose the former." pg 4
     -chief advocate: Julian Savelescu
-weak perfectionist view vs. strong perfectionist view: Purposely going to your friendly local Designer Baby Clinic vs. screening against kids with issues
-(im)permissibility of selecting for disabled children
-two potential weaknesses:
     -some countintuitive connotations (should we be selecting for tall, heterosexual white men because that demographic has the best       quality of life?
          -but: maybe this requires social solution, not biological
                -but the tall thing! do we need a social solution for something that isn't really acknowledged discrimination?
     -examples for view do not seem to work: wine capacity objection, blind lady objection

III. Libertarian View
-"the permissive libertarian view: it is morally permissible to engage in the selection of any beings." pg 10
      -John Robertson defends this
-assumption that we can do what we like until proven otherwise
-people would select traits they think are good, but people have different definitions of "good". I would want my children to be creative, focused, and intelligent, you might be more concerned with them being charitable, physically active, and charismatic. Libertarian view requires not forcing one set of "good" traits on other potential parents.
-Life Worth Living Libertarian view: "it is morally permissible to engage in selection if the beings selected can have a life worth living." pg 11
-transhumanist implications
if a child is glad to be alive, how can it be that we owed it to that child to select against its life?
     -harmless wrongdoing
     -how can we know ahead of time? (says Gwen)
-Sufficientarian: "given a choice between selecting a being that will have a decent chance to live a sufficiently decent life and a different being who will not... there is a prima facie obligation to select the former." pg 13
     -tall white boys again, but not wine capacity case
     -doesn't obligate us to create children with lives merely worth living

IV. Human Nature View
-belief that genetic engineering interferes with human nature
-what's so special about human nature?
-"interfering with nautre view: it is morally impermissible to interfere with human nature, because this is interfering with nature, and it is morally impermissible to interfere with nature." pg 16
     -but: vaccinations, pain relief...
-human nature maybe only applies to modification (as opposed to selection) because human nature has to be there in the first place to be interfered with
     -No. Just no. (I say, anyway.) I don't agree with this view, but you're not talking about the nature of an invidual human here, you're talking about human nature as a whole. Saying that you're altering it before that particular human comes into being is NOT a good counterargument.
-assumes GE to be absolutely wrong. But, "end of world" and "great net benefit" cases.
-Human species view: humans are special and ought to be treated in a specific way. It's special just cuz it's ours!
     -unjustified speciesism
-humanity constraint: engineer, fine, but it had damn well better be some kind of human
-maybe we're special because of our moral agency
-Human Flourishing view: don't change the requirements for a flourishing life. Making a child with no need for personal relationships, for example, would change human nature too much.
     -but this nature just tells us what is good for us not that we should impose this nature on others
          -but improvements (maybe) for that set of goods!

V. The Motivation View
-the view: "it is not morally permissible to engage in election if one does not have the appropriate motivation." pg 24
     -Sandel: modification expresses an immoral desire for mastery, soo.....
-Hubristic Motivation view: "it is morally impermissible to engage in selection if one has a hubristic motivation to control reproduction in enhancement cases." pg 25
-Lover case: we can look for a certain set of properties as long as it's the person, not the properties, which we come to love
-wrongs that harm relationships rather than people
-Weak Hubristic Motivation view: as above, but also one has only a weak motivation to love the child for it's own sake - so it's okay if you'd love your child even if it didn't come out as the virtuoso violinist you asked for.

For my Free Will and Moral Responsibility class

2009-10-08T13:51:41Z

Notes on Human Freedom and the Self

I.
-humans are responsible, but... determinism! and also, complete non-determinism seems just as conflicting
-we must make assumptions about people to solve this problem

II.
-someone is responsible only for acts which they could have refrained from performing
-if someone has the choice, the action is not pre-determined
-if someone is compelled to do something it makes no difference whether the cause was internal or external
-but - are we responsible for the beliefs and desires which make us do things?
-"he was good because he could not have been otherwise" - not exactly praiseworthy, then, is it.
-Aquinas, God as prime mover... if we accept this, no one is responsible for their actions.

III.
-main objection to all this: determinism may be consistent with human responsibility
-"if he had chosen to do otherwise, then he would have done otherwise" may be compatible with determinism
     -if he'd chosen otherwise it would have worked, but it was determined that he'd choose what he did
          -is that really free will?
-so, we're back to responsibility vs. determinism

IV.
-maybe we don't have to prove (or work as hard to prove) that responsibility also conflicts with an indeterministic view
-if acts are totally random, no one can be responsible for them
-are there other options?

V.
-perhaps we can say that events aren't uncaused, and aren't caused by other events, but are caused by people
-this implies a lot about the nature of man
     -which might not be a bad thing, just complex, says Gwen

VI.
-in natural/inanimate objects, causation is a relation between states of affairs
-but perhaps this is not true of men
-imminent causation - caused by an agent
-transeunt causation - caused by an event

VII.
-but how do we know that the man causes anything? All actions can be traced back to processes in the brain, and how can we prove that he causes those?
-People don't cause things in their minds in the same way that they cause things with their hands, but they still cause them
-distinction between doing something and making it happen is important
-when you pick up a rock, other things happen: you realese the grass under it, etc. but these are things you make happen, not things you purposely do.
     -similarly, moving your hand makes something happen in your brain
          -Gwen says: but, recent research has shown that when we move a body part, the movement signal is sent before we consciously decide to move it

VIII.
-what does causation consist of?
-what is the difference between A just happening, and me causing A?
-we can't attribute A to an event which happened in the agent, since that would be transeunt, not imminent, causation
-but if there's nothing we can point to as evidence of the agent causing A, then it's no different from A just happening
-the problem is with our concept of causation

IX.
-perhaps it is only by appealing to our own causal efficacy that we can understand causation
-Hume: we don't derive the concept of cause from external things (problem of induction)
-if we didn't understand imminent causation (through ourselves) we wouldn't understand transeunt causation

X.
-The question is whether men are free, not whether their wills are

XI.
-if we are responsible, we are like God; we are each Prime Movers
-we cause events, but nothing causes us to cause them

XII.
-if nothing causes our actions, this includes our desires
-so the relationship between what we want and what we do isn't actually very simple
-Hobbes: if we know a man's desires and his potential ability to act on them, we can deduce what he will do
-Kant: there is no logical connection between wanting and doing, or even a causal connection
-we can predict what people will probably do, but we can't ever be certain

XIII.
-Leibniz: our desires may 'incline without necessitating'. What does this mean?

Notes on In Defence of Free Will, by C.A. Campbell

-Free will is a major issue which has fascinated people for ages
-Campbell: Free will in the "vulgar" (uninhibited) sense is a fact
-important because of connection with moral responsibility
-"what are the conditions, in respect to freedom, which must attach to an act in order to make it a morally responsible act?" pg 36
     -2 fundamental conditions
-Firest: act must be self-caused
    -agent must be the cause, not a cause
-but just this leaves the possibility of acts "necessitated by the agent's nature"
-Second: the agent must have been able to do otherwise
-So, can we actually do this?
-But: characteristics/propensities of the agent, caused by past circumstances beyond his control
-people still believe in a core of totally self-originated activity
-situation of moral temptation
     -our desire towards 'right' action is felt to be weak relative to our desire towards 'wrong' action
-we may be inhibited in choosing the 'wrong' action by:
     -conflicting desire/aversion (most common way)
     -sheer willpower towards the 'right' action
-in this case, agent believes his choice was free
-"formed character perscribes the nature of the situation within which the act of moral decision takes place" pg 43
     -character doesn't really affect our decisions
-So, decisions in situations of moral temptation appear to the agent to fulfill both requirements
-burden of proof is very much on the skeptic here
-when we are making decisions we believe we have free will. it's only when we think abstractly about it that we doubt.
-not challenged by idea of God as Prime Mover now
-physical science has also gone quantum and non-deterministic
-isn't self-determination which isn't determined by our character a contradtiction?
     -self = character, right?
-this is assuming an external viewpoint. internally, we think of "self" as seperate from "character"
-people who find Libertarianism unintelligble are viewing it from an inadequate standpoint
-this doesn't mean that we don't have reasons for our decisions
-"to demand 'intelligibility' in this sense is simply to prejudge the whole issue in favour of Determinism" pg 49
-so does the 'internal' standpoint really have that much value?
-why do determinists throw away the concept of practical self-consciousness so easily?
-they throw away the only evidence for self-determinism because "the only evidence for it is the only evidence there ever could be for it" pg 51

And the year has started

2009-09-29T10:39:13Z

Notes on A Defense of Abortion, by Judith Thomson

-most opposition from "fetus = person"
-drawing a line for personhood is supposedly arbitrary - but acorns aren't trees
-but, let's allow this argument. why does it make abortion wrong?
     -fetus has a right to life
-the violinist argument: Say there is a very talented, very ill violinist. He has some sort of rare blood disease, and while there are many people willing to help him, only specific people have compatible blood type etc. In desperation, the dastardly Society for the Appreciation of Music kidnaps you, since you are the only nearby compatible person. When you wake up, you find yourself attached to the violinist via various tubes and such in a hospital. The doctor says "Well, this is terrible, and if we had known they were going to do it we would certainly have stopped them. But now that the violinist is hooked up to you, he'll die if you leave, so you'll have to stay here hooked up to him - otherwise you'll be killing him. If you stay hooked up to him for nine months you can both be on your way, healthy as horses."
     -are you obliged to stay with him? certainly it would be nice of you if you did, but is it necessary?
-But - that's not voluntary, in the violinist argument. It's like rape, and most anti-abortion people do say it's okay in the case of rape.
-But from the point of view of the fetus, why does being the product of rape give you less of a right to live? It's not your fault.
     -child's right to life vs. mother's right to be in control of her body both from the rape and the pregnancy
-what about people who would choose the child's life over that of the mother's? (the extreme view.) don't they have an equal right to life?
-the most common answer: killing the child vs. letting the mother die
     -isn't it self-defense for the mother to kill the fetus?
     -would it be okay for the doctor to say "having the violinist hooked up to you will kill you, but you still need to do it, because it's immoral to directly kill an innocent violinist, but not immoral to let you die"?
-it's important to remember that it's a question of what the mother can morally do, not bystanders, although it is of course difficult for a mother to perform an abortion on herself.
-what is it to say that we can't choose between the life of the mother and the life of the child?
-we do have a right to refuse to get involved
     -which is saying "I will not act" rather than "no one may choose between them"
-So, what about when her life is not at stake?
-the 'right to life' is not unproblematic!
-do we have a right to have things which are necessary for our lives to continue?
-possibly we just have a right not to be killed, rather than a right to life. (what about the violinist's right not to be killed, then?)
-maybe - we DO have a right to life, but this does not grant a right to hte use of other people's bodies
-possibly just the right not to be killed unjustly
-So then, is abortion unjust killing?
-Well, victims of rape haven't given consent to being used for food and shelter by a fetus. What about others?
-if we voluntarily cause the existence of fetuses, can we abort them even to save our own lives?
     -not just "tried to get pregnant", here - "had sex knowing that pregnancy might occur, without taking steps to avoid it"
-if pregnancy lasted only an hour, would we be obliged to always go through with it, even if it was a result of rape?
     -think of the violinist - if it only took an hour to save him, and you'd be fine afterwards, wouldn't you stay?
          -but would you be obliged to stay?
-but - surely if it is something of ours, other people don't have a right to it, even if maybe we ought to let them have it.
     -A very poor person does not have a right to steal the money of a rich person, although the rich person really ought to give some money to charity.
-it feels like we have more of a right to be helped if it is easy for others to help us - but that's horrid! we should always help people who need it, it shouldn't matter whether it's convenient for us, right?
-good samaritan vs. minimally decent samaritan
-there is no law which requires people to be even minimally decent samaritans
-but if we outlaw abortion, we are making it law that women be Good samaritans to the people inside them
-there is no injustice in helping people get out of situations where people are making unjust demands on them; it is fine for us to unhook the victim from the violinist, or perform an abortion on a pregnant woman
-we've been talking about the fetus as a person, but that still hasn't proved that abortion is immoral
-maybe the important thing is that the mother has a special kind of responsibility for this little person?
     -in that case, the violinist would be irrelevant
-can we have this kind of responsibility without taking it on, implicitly or explicitly?
     -parents who purposely get pregnant, make sure the pregnancy go well, etc. have taken responsibility for it - but what of the woman who doesn't want to be pregnant and certainly doesn't want a child? can we say that she has responsibility for the baby even though if asked she definitely would not take it on?
-these arguments do not show abortion to be permissible OR impermissible
     -surely this is a good thing - absolutes always lead to problems
-this is a discussion of the permissibility of abortion, not wanting the child to die - a vague line, but still a line
-and again, fetuses aren't really children from the moment of conception. we've just been pretending it for the sake of argument.

gwendysmile @ 2009-09-15T10:54:00

2009-09-15T09:54:42Z

Oh god the freshers

Kill me now

I ought to be packing

2009-07-22T13:45:15Z

Larping this weekend. I'm excited, although it means I have to pack today...leaving tomorrow morning, although time-in is on Friday afternoon. Blah. Oh well. It will be awesome! Trying to bring lots of food to avoid spending money on it there. Speaking of which, will go make muffins in a few minutes.

Money has been a bit tight, but I'm doing okay. Had a bit of a debacle with the rent this month when money that was supposed to have gone in by then hadn't. I got the rent worked out, but I still haven't gotten the money and it appears that no one knows where it is. I hate international transfers. Give it a few days...

I've been finding ways of saving money though. The internet is awesome. Placing a food order from here before I leave so it'll be here when I get back or soon after. A box of instant quaker oats, two boxes of cereal, ten milky way bars, five fig bars, a box of tea, two boxes of jaffa cakes, 500g of rice pasta, eighteen packets of pudding mix, 8 packets of instant mushroom soup, twelve pot noodles, three instant tomato pastas, three instant cheese and broccoli pastas, four instant cheese and ham pastas, and sixteen croissants for a few pennies less than £20, including shipping. Excellent. Obviously not gourmet or very nutritious, but I've been getting my veggies and such from farmfoods lately which is also very cheap... shouldn't have any trouble making it through the summer I hope...

Getting a job has been pretty much impossible. I must have tried eighty or ninety things by now - online applications, gumtree things, CV in at shops, etc.... no luck. Oh well. Keep trying.

I'm working on getting a driver's license, too, which should be fun. Learn to drive with a gearshift on the left side of the road... oi vey...

Feeling a bit meh today, I guess. But everything's awesome really. I am knitting socks. :)

Freedom

2009-07-16T14:48:11Z

Notes on 'Freedom and Necessity', by AJ Ayer, from Free Will

-only held morally responsible for actions when it's believed we could have done differently
-if behaviour is governed by causal laws, can any action be avoided?
-we do feel as if we have free will - but that doesn't show much
-"Why should it be that every event must have a cause?" pg 16
-not necessary for science
-we can make pretty good predictions about what people will do and how they'll feel in a number of situations
-theoretically, it's possible for psychology to eventually explain exactly why anyone does anything
-but it's also possible that there are actions which we might never be able to give an explanation for - and this might be because those actions were totally free
-"if it is a matter of pure chance that a man should act in on way rather than another, he may be free but he can hardly be responsible." pg 17
-if we have no idea what a person will do, that's generally a bad thing!
-but we're not trying to show that people act completely freely/randomly, but that their actions are a result of their free choice
-but if our actions aren't random, surely there's some causal explanation for them. determinism again!
-perhaps our choices are led by our characters. but are we responsible for those?
-we tend to be held responsible for actions which are "in character" for us more than for ones which are unusual for us. doesn't this actually presuppose determinism as necessary for moral responsibility?
-idea that if we are conscious of necessity we can somehow master it. just sort of silly.
-we still need to define freedom
-it turns out freedom shouldn't be contrasted with causality - how about constraint? being constrained to do an action entails being caused to do it, but being caused to do it doesn't entail being constrained to do it, necessarily. (Jon asked me to help him clean his flat, when he moved, which caused me to do it - but he didn't force me to. I was caused but not constrained.)
-it's not when our actions have a cause, but when they have an especially pressing and unavoidable cause, that they are regarded to not be free
-but how do we say which are caused and which are compelled? it's a bit arbitrary, isn't it?
-to say we acted by choice, we must say that 1. we could have acted otherwise 2. our action was voluntary 3. nobody compelled me to take that action
-one event doesn't have power over another, they're just factually correlated. the event is not contained in the cause.
-if an event can be predicted by the cause, then if we knew enough about the past we could predict the future - but doesn't this suggest that the future is already decided, and we're back to classic determinism?
-No. If we;re saying that's it's possible to deduce information about the future by examining the past, that doesn't make us prisoners of fate - our actions still affect the future. It's just that they can be predicted.

Notes on 'Human Freedom and the Self', by Roderick M. Chisholm, from Free Will

I.
-humans are responsible, but determinism... determinism! and also, complete non-determinism seems just as conflicting
-we must make assumptions about people to solve this problem

II.
-someone is responsible only for acts which they could have refrained from performing
-if someone has this choice, the action is pre-determined
-if someone is compelled to do something it makes no difference whether the cause was internal or external
-but - are we responsible fr the beliefs and desires which make us do things?
-"he was good because he could not be otherwise" - not exactly praiseworthy, then, is it.
-Aquinas, God as Prime Mover.... if we accept this, no one is responsible for their actions

III.
-main objection to all this - determinism may be consistent with human responsibility
-"if he had chosen to do otherwise, then he would have done otherwise" may be compatible with determinism
     -if he'd chosen to do otherwise it would have worked, but it was determined that he'd choose what he did.
          -is that really free will?
-so, we're back to responsibility vs determinism

IV.
-maybe we don't have to prove (or work as hard to prove) that responsibility also conflicts with an indeterministic view
-if acts are totally random, no one can be responsible for them
-are there other options?

V.
-perhaps we can say that events aren't uncaused, and aren't caused by other events, but are caused by people
-this implies a lot about the nature of man

VI.
-in natural/inanimate objects, causation is a relation between states of afairs
-but perhaps this is not true of men
-imminent causation - caused by an agent
-transient causation - caused by an event

VII.
-but how do we know that the man causes anything? All action can be traced back to processes in the brain, and how can we prove that he causes those?
-people don't cause things in their minds in the same way they cause things with their hands, but they still cause them
-distinction between doing something and making it happen is important
-when you pick up a ock, you also do things like release the grass under it - but these are things you ake happen, not things you do
     -similarly, moving your hand makes something happen in your brain

VIII.
-what does causation consist of?
-what is the difference between A just happening, and me causing A?
-we can't attribute A to an event which happened in the agent, since that would be transient, not imminent, causation
-but if there's nothing we can point to as evidence of the agent causing A, then it's no different from A happening
-the problem i with our concept of causation

IX.
-perhaps it is only by appealing to our own causal efficacy that we can understand causation
-Hume: we don't derive the concept of cause from external things (problem of induction)
if we didn't understand imminent causation (through ourselves) we wouldn't understand transient causation

X.
-the question is whether men are free, not whether their wills are

XI.
-if we are responsible, we are like God; we are each Prime Movers
-we cause events, but nothing causes us to cause them

XII.
-if nothing causes our actions, this includes our desires
-so the relationship between what we wan and what we do isn't actually very simple
-Hobbes: if we know a man's desires and his potential ability to act on the, we can deduce what he will do
-Kant: there is no logical connection between wanting and doing, or even a causal connection
-we can predict what people will probably do, but we can't be certain

XIII.
-Leibniz: our desires may 'incline without necessitating'. What does this mean?

Time for some prep work

2009-07-16T12:43:46Z

So, i recently got my Honours course assignments, which I'm really happy with. I emailed all the profs asking if I could get some idea of the reading lists ahead of time, and now that they've all gotten back to me, it's time to get to work. Yay! So, for the next couple days, it's time to prepare for Free Will and Moral Responsibility...

Notes on Free Will, edited by Gary Watson: Introduction

I. The Problem of Free Will
-subtle constraints like phobias and brainwashing lead to questions of 'free will'
-disquieting thought that free will might be an illusion even for those of us who aren't brainwashed etc.
-assumption that free will matters (autonomy and moral responsibility at stake)
-would not having free will hurt us, or liberate us?

II. Free Will and Determinism
-determinism: "the view, roughly, that every event and state of affairs is 'causally necessitated' by preceding events and states of affairs." pg. 2
-free will generally assumed to oppose determinism
-determinism's threat to moral responsibility: if all events are determined, we can't help but dothe immoral things we do, and so shouldn't be held responsible
-argument against this: we could choose to do otherwise, but because of who we are, we won't. (It is determined that I will sit here quietly and take notes, because of my preferences - but it's possible for me to strip and run around the ancient history section singing the hallelujah chorus.)
-this view that people could have done otherwise is called 'compatibilism' (the view that free will and determinism aren't mutually exclusive)
-ambiguities in 'can' and 'possible'
-Van Inwagen: if determinism is true, the conditions of my birth and the laws of nature entail every true statement about my physical movements - so I could only do otherwise if I could alter these conditions or falsify the laws of nature.

III. Incompatibilism as the Best Explanation
-according to incompatibilism, we are pretty much helpless
-but, we have a usual way of determining when something is "helpless", and incompatibilism really doesn't go along these lines (so what? just because t hey do something differently doesn't mean it can't be valid. damn philosophers.)
-I could remove my hoodie right now - I'm physically able, they're not glued on, I'm awake and free to move, no one will stop me. These things don't seem to have much to do with the laws of nature or conditions of my birth.
-not taking clothing off because of a phobia of self-exposure would seem to be deterministic
-if determinism were true, all behavior would be explainable in the same way as the person with the phobia of self-exposure not taking their clothes off.

IV. Freedom and Resentment
-incompatibilists say that particular deterministic explanations for behavior are inconsistent with moral freedom/responsibility
-are our experiences with phobis etc. actually examples of deterministic behaviour?
-claim that we never really accept that other people aren't responsible for their own actions unless they are incapable of having relationships
-rejection of the idea that we should stop participating in the "moral community" if we accept determinism

V. Compatibilism Refined
-free will as the capacity to form "volitions" - desire that a particular first-order desire move one to action. (I'm hungry, and as such have a first-order desire for food. Since I walso have free will, I have a volition that this first-order desire will make me get up and go find a sandwich. Well, if I had money.)
-most people have this capacity, but some are sometimes moved contrary to their volitions (the anorexic person may be hungry and want food, but not be able to bring herself to act on the volition to actually eat it.)
-but, can't some people have volitions and not free will? someone who is brainwashed, for example? they may have a volition to transfer all their money into their cult leader's account, but is this really freely motivated?
-idea that human freedom can't be understood independantly of practical reason/judgement
-to be free is to be able to affect what determines your actions (this view deals with brainswashing and phobias)

VI. Libertarianism and Scepticism-does determinism threaten our capacity for meaningful endeavour and critical evaluation?
-so far the determinists haven't really shown it to do that
-determinism doesn't seem to be very credible - so why are people so concerned about making it compatible with free will?
-because of the fear that incompatibility leads to doubts about freedom and responsibility, because of the suspicion that incompatibilist requirements for freedom can't be met (even if things aren't deterministic, how can we prove that WE decide anything?)
-libertarian - an incompatibilist who confirms freedom (they have to tell us what else is needed, other than the absense of determinism, to ensure freedom)
-events being caused by human action rather than other events
-hard to analyze this sort of causation
-just need to show that events are non-deterministic but not toally random - we can see why they happened, afterwards, but they could also have happened differently.

VII. A New version of Incompatibilism
-perhaps "It is not that bevaiour must be undetermined and in addition teleologically intelligible; rather it must be undetermined in order to be so intelligible." pg 11
-possibility of purely physical determinism - not taking into account desires, intentions, etc. (explanatory incompatibilism - "mechanism displaces ther purposive")
-explanatory incompatibilism doesn't excuse our immoral actions, it calls into question the whole situation where "immoral actions" makes sense

Life is stupendous

2009-07-06T10:51:13Z

Hm. I just opened this up and it had Electronics notes saved. Yeah, deleting that. Screw you electronics!

I passed. I really thought I wouldn't, but I did - I even managed to get a C. I have all my grades back now. For the year overall, two Cs and three Bs. Not nearly as good as I'd like, but pretty decent, and I'd have done a lot better if I'd only taken subjects I knew I'd be good at - the two Cs are from Programming and Electronics. So that's nice. I also got my schedule for next year, and I got all my first choices! It's amazing. I'll be taking Ancient Aesthetics, Ancient Ethics, Free Will and Moral Responsibility, Applied Ethics, Themes in Epistemology, and The Nature of Value. I'm also going to take at least one 20 credit religion class, probably two. I'm thinking of maybe Religion 1A, which covers Christianity, Judaism and Islam. (I took Religion 1B last semester, it was a good course.) Or maybe Christian Ethics: Sources, although that will probably take a lot of Bible-reading. I kind of wish I had taken Christian Ethics: Topics when they offered it last year, although I'm sure I probably would have killed my blood pressure with it. I could do God in Philosophy, but I'm already sort of concentrating on that stuff myself. Dunno. We'll see! I'll probably take an extra course each semester, even though I only need to take 20 extra credits, just because they're interesting and I can. Also it means I'm getting better value for my money, since they don't charge me more for extra courses.

I've got options. It's awesome.

Right now I'm sitting in the lounge, listening to Elvis Costello. Someone is having a barbecue, and the smell is wafting in through the window. I'm wearing some really nice socks I knit recently. I was at Jon's last night and had some excellent sex. Life just doesn't get much better. Wait no...

..okay, I'm back, and I have a bottle of Irn Bru. Now life just doesn't get any better.

We only live in this instant - Japanese got Jesus robots!, says Elvis.

I haven't been able to find a job this summer, but I've stopped caring really. I have more than enough saved to pay my rent, and I've been able to pay bills and buy food and such with babysitting money. I even bought myself a sewing machine as a reward for passing Electronics. It's excellent. I'm mending all my clothes, and my tokidoki backpack, and making a waistcoat. Sandy gave me all his old jeans, which fit me really well other than the fact that they're guy-jeans and don't do good things for my butt. So I'll be wearing lots of denim skirts this autumn.

Okay, I'm going to go do something else now.

More Religion Notes

2009-05-11T20:11:35Z

Notes on Religion in the Modern World, African Religion chapter

I. Introduction
-modern sub-Saharan African religions discussed here
-great diversity of ideas and practices
-Christianity and Islam also present
-1997 population of sub-Saharan Africa: 613.7 million
-other religions with some adherents there: Buddhism, Rosicrucianism, Hinduism, Scientology
-participation in both a world religion and traditional worship widespread
-colonial partitions by Europeans had huge effect
     -mostly complete by 1904
-rise of nationalist movements in the 1940s
-Independance given to most countries by mid 1960s
     -Zimbabwe, South Africa stay European
     -Portugese colonies hold out to '70s
-significance of Western missionaries
-3 main forms of religion: Islam, Christianity, traditional religions

II. Sources and Resources
A. Indigenous Religions
-religious knowledge gained only after religious practice
-not exclusive
-material and spiritual world not separated
-reliance on oral traditions to bring flexibility
-basic assumptions shared over wide areas

B. Islam and Christianity
-Islam spread from 8th century
-Christianity from 4th century
-Eastern coast had many trading centers, which facilitated the spread of religion

C. The Missionary Impact
-19th and 20th century: major increase in influence of Islam and Christianity
-christian missionaries active along coast
-internal conversion left to African missionaries
-use of education for conversion
-missionaries and colonials sometimes at cross purposes
-emergence of African-led churches
-use of Islam to assert alternative identity

III. Interactions with Modernity
A. Ancestors, elders, and community
-idea of ancestors very important
-ancestors can reward or punish
-elders are mediators, by virtue of age (closer to ancestors)
     -many variations on this theme

B. Masquerade, spirits, and embodiment
-relations with spiritual world embodied in Masquerade figures
-masqueraders almost always male
-Pro and Sande societies
-use of masquerade to political ends

C. Spirit possesion and cults of affliction
-possession by both ancestral and non-ancestral spirits
-recruitment through possession rituals
-acquisition of more than one deity
-possession used for political ends as well
-personal misfortune inerpreted as intervention of spiritual agencies
     -cults of affliction used to resolve this

D. Sacred Kingship
-ruler's ancestors represent ancestors of entire kingdom
-king is reincarnation of previous kings
-and yet again... these kings were used in colonial politics

Notes on Religions in the Modern World, New Religious Movements chapter

I. Introduction
-new religions began emerging in 60s and 70s
     -moonies, hare krishna, scientology
-West (especially USA) fertile ground, but all areas had some
-NRMs: 'religious groups and movements which have emerged mainly since the Second World War and which have come to prominence in Western Societies in the late 1960s and early 1970s'.
-clear boundaries between NRMs and rest of society
-community based
-main joiners are young, well-educated, relatively affluent, enjoy travel
-New Age movement started later than NRMs (80s)
-NRMs generally arise from one of these categories: Eastern traditions, Christian context, particular countries, esoteric teachings, self-religions, focus on extra-terrestrial entities, links to New Age movement

II. Public and Media Perceptions of NRMs
-at start, only people acutely aware of NRMs were families of joiners
-Jonestown mass suicide increased public awareness
-allegations against NRMs: brainwashing, breaking up families, exploiting members, promoting totalitarian worldviews, undermining social order, deceiving public
-fear that any cult can turn violent at any time
     -this fear repeatedly shown to be a valid one
-such violence/loss of life impossible to rule out, but also (nearly) impossible to predict

III. What are New Religious Movements?
-foundation of some NRMs pre-1945
-most came to prominence in USA
-'front' businesses, usually in form of charitable institutions

A. Variety and Similary of Aspects
-great variety WRT leadership, concept of individual, family, origin, size, relationship with world, etc.
-major aspects looked at by academics: leadership and authority, authoritative texts, idea of family, role of women

B. Leadership and Authority
-predominance of charismatic male leaders
     -often (not always!) supported by patriarchal structures and female devotion
-there are also some female leaders who require extreme devotion and submission
-pyramidal power structures
-charismatic leaders often require individual to surrender to their will
-sometimes, betrayal of this trust through sexual misconduct, abuse of power

C. Authoritative Texts
-sometimes building on old texts (bible etc.)
-leader acting as medium/prophet
-writing/speeches of leaders
-sometimes writings compiled by members and published in leader's name

D. Idea of Family
-groups often considered 'the true family' with leader as parent
-living in communal settings
-consulting leaders before making decisions, or leaders making them - even who to marry
-wide range of child rearing strategies, not very well documented

E. The Role of Women
-"women's conversion to unconventional religions can be interpreted as a response to the rolelessness resulting from dramatic upheavals in the structure of society" pg 272
-dichotomy of very egalitarian, feminist NRMs and traditional, patriarchal NRMs
-sometimes, strict chastity. sometimes, 'free love'.

F. Causes for Controversy
-in formative stages, NRMs were not immediately thought to be problematic
-not all NRMs are controversial
-controversies arise over deviant behavior (claims of divinity, abuse of members/children, communal lifestyles)
-controversy applied blanket fashion to all NRMs

IV. Number of NRMs and Membership
-estimates of number of NRMs varies (partially due to different definitions of NRM)
-perhaps 500-600 in USA
-some (ACMs) say more like 2000-5000
-perhaps 400-500 in Britain
-definitions of 'member' very fluid
-core membership often libes communally and is devoted full-time
-change over time generally leads to fewer full-time members
-NRMs do not give numbers, or give optimistic ones. media inflates numbers, as well.
-numbers growing but still a very small proportion of population
-discrepancy between numbers and amount of attention paid

V. NRMs as a New Phenomenon
-emerging religions are hardly a new concept
-teachings aren't completely new either
-not new in terms of way groups congregate and are arranged/organized

A. The Combination of Ideas and Practices
-new in way they combine ideas and practices, and 'package' these combinations
-for example, self-religions focus on 'uncovering God withing' through meditation (but hey, so does Quakerism!)
-drawn from wide range of sources
-use of Internet

B. Types of Members
-attracts young, well-educated, middle class people, from intact families, with a concern for religious/spiritual questions
-recently, more varied age range

C. Visibility
-great visibility achieved through media and modern transport
-media attention disproportionate to number of members

D. Opposition to NRMs
-distinctive in that they have produced the Anti-Cult Movement
     -counteracts member recruitment, supports affected families and former members
-dissemination of info, counseling, lobbying
-"deprogramming" - reverse effects of brainwashing. very controversial.
-ACM groups largely founded by parents of cult members
-ACM group reject this label (well, of course. cults reject their label, too.)

E. NRMs and the Academic Community
-lots of attention from academics (NRMs were recruiting their children and students!)
-academics found NRMs to share similar features but vary significantly from each other
     -so, avoid making sweeping statements - but this leads to friction with Anti-Cult Movements.

F. Response of NRMs to views about them
-presented their views on this in an articulate, organized way
-NRMs stipulate conditions before allowing researchers access
-NRMs sometimes make use of findings about them (applying for tax-exempt status? well, this paper here says you're a religion...)

VI. Contruction of NRMs and cults
-term "NRM" used by academics because of its objectivity
-NRMs object to 'cult' because of negative connotations
-continental europe - 'sects', grouped with movements such as Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons
-3 qualities identified by Heeck: world saving formula, saved family, holy master
     -also, originates in USA and attracts young people
-governments have trouble preventing abuse while avoiding religious persecution
-no consensus about what should be considered a 'NRM' or 'cult'

VII. Future of NRMs
-difficult to predict
-observers not always apprised of the facts
-3 types of group which become engaged in violence: groups which are mistakenly thought to be dangerous and are attacked, fragile groups which initiate violence to preserve their ultimate concern, revolutionary groups which wish to overthrow the existing order
-NRMs don't usually start with apocalyptic scenarios

Notes on Religion in the Modern World, Secularization and De-Secularization chapter

I. Secularization Theories
-sociology of religion has always been fascinated with secularisation
-secularization: religion's importance diminishes in society and in the consciousness of individuals
-generally thought to be a result of modernization
-this view not confined to the anti-religious
-assumption in religious circles that we are living in a secular world

II. Secularisation and de-Secularization
-today, most don't adhere to modernity -> secularization equation (most sociologists, that is)
-the world is as (more?) religious than ever
-in some places, very powerful upsurges of religion
     -especially Islam and Evangelical Protestantism
-far reaching social and political consequences
-revitalization movements among other religions
-secular elites (political, cultural) defensive against resurgent religious movements

III. Mapping Secularity
-who's secular, and where?
-highly educated intellectuals, especially those who have had a Western education in the humanities and social sciences
     -these are spread internationally
     -no wonder intellectuals are saying secularization is widespread, if they think they're representative!
-geographical stronghold of secularization: Western and Central Europe
-Is Europe religiously different, and if so, why?
-US is very religious compared to Europe: but it's the US that fits with the rest of the world on this, not Europe
-secularization as 'curious case of deviance that requires explanation' pg. 294
-Western and Central Europe: decline in church attendance, influence of religions, people choosing religious vocations, people professing religious beliefs
-also Quebec, strangely. Europeanization at a distance, perhaps? They'd probably say so...
-alternatively: large numbers of people are practicing their religiosity in individual, non-institutional ways; this doesn't mean they're not religious
     -even if we accept this, Europe's still weird! so... why?
-how/why are chruches still priveleged entities?
-Europe/America comparison interesting, and makes modernization -> secularization claim hard to support
-education? separaction of church and state?
-you don't get 'born-again Christians' except in America
     -also 'patchwork religion' - taking what they like from a number of sects
           -this group tends to be affiliated with particular churches much more in America than in Europe

III. Pluralism and Secularization Revisited
-pluralism: 'the simultaneous existence in a single social arena of a number of different world views'. pg 297
-religious beliefs are chosen rather than assumed, but they're still around
-pluralism affects 'how', not 'what', of religious practice

Religion review notes: South Asian

2009-05-10T12:11:52Z

Notes on A Handbook of Living Religions, Hinduism chapter

I. Introduction
-few traditional characteristics of religion: no founder, no particular dogma, concept of God not central
-incredibly diverse
-unified by common Indian origin
-"Hindu scriptures" not coherent, don't apply to all Hindus - written by Brahmins
-Hindus presented Hinduism as ancient mother of all religions to Western missionaries
-Brahman came about as result of search for underlying cosmic power
-asceticism & meditation - internalization of sacrifice
-Samsara - endless rebirth until liberation (moksha)
-500 BC - 500 AD: classical Hinduism, rise of Jainism and Buddhism, dharmas (laws)
-three aims: dharma (religious merit), artha (wealth), kama (satisfaction of desires)
-Vishnu - descends in times of moral decline to restore righteousness
-Shiva - many faces. loving, destroyer, lord of dance, ascetic, lord of beats, god of procreation.
-Lakshmi - Vishnu's wife, goddess of prosperity.
-Durga-Parvati - Shiva's wife, Durga in fierce aspect, Parvati in benevolent form. Basis of Mother-Goddess cult.
-Two great epics: Ramayana, Mahabharata. In latter Krishna speaks of three ways to salvation: enlightenment, action, devotion to the Lord (bhakti)
-characteristic of temples - sanctuary housing image, spire over sanctuary, porch or canopy.
-500-1800 - middle Hinduism, proliferation of castes, darshanas (schools of salvation)
-literature emerged - handboks on yoga, meditation, doctrine, temple-building, etc.
-bhakti made more passionate
-many sects devoted to particular devas/avatars emerged
-Islam made very little headway

II. Hindu presuppositions/beliefs
-attempts to pin down "fundamental beliefs" of Hinduism will always be partial and misleading
-dharma - one of the few things constant to all Hindus, the concept of 'right way of living'. Righteousness, religion, eternal order. leads to idea that Hinduism is a way of life, which has some validity.
-purity and pollution - underlies caste system. also substances like urine are considered polluted, as are menstruating women, and the dead.
-proper behavior determined by caste and life-stage. very strict guidelines on conduct, but almost total freedom in religion, kind of interesting.
-worship of chosen deity as supreme god
-"Other deities and beliefs are not denied or opposed, but accepted as valid for others, although not regarded as of the same order of excellence as one's own." pg 282. That is rather awesome.
-Sannyasa - the renunciation of home, society and previous life. Becoming an ascetic, achieving liberation while alive.
-universe is created and dies in cycles spanning a huge amount of time. The Vedas are recreated by seers each time. The universe goes through stages/ages in the same way people do - current stage is the Kali-age, a time of declining righteousness. (Supposed to last for 432,000 years.)

III. Hindu Practice
--huge attention to ritual - daily rituals, life-transition rituals
-marriage is right between the impurities of birth and death, and as seen as the hieght of religious purity - the couple getting married are treated as gods. marriage is a religious duty.
-funeral rites are very important and should ideally be performed by the eldest son to ensure a good rebirth- this is a main reason for the Hindu desire to produce sons.
-rituals performed without a priest are less prestigious but still valid
-three types of worship: temple, domestic, congregational. there is no requirement, though, for Hindus to go to temple. Temple worship is the most elaborate, domestic worship the most common. Congregational worship usually performed by sects.
-pilgrimmages highily meritorious and undertaken for a variety of reasons... absolution, experience fo the divine, relieve misfortune, etc.
-pilgrimmages reinforce the idea of India's geography being sacred
-annual cycle of festivals. festivals very local, thousands of different ones celebrated but only up to 20 or so per year in any one place, and not a lot shared between places. There are major all-India festivals, but even then - there's lots, and lots of variation in how they're celebrated.
-women held to be equal partners in charma with their husbands. they are usually the religious leaders of the household and are thought to share the fate of their husbands, so have a good motive for looking after the men's spiritual well-being! They hold considerable authority, although they are expected to show deference to their husbands publicly.
-practices such as child marriage, self-immoliation of widows, and predjudice against female education have been mostly overcome.

IV. Hinduism in the Villages
-80% of Indian population lives in villages - as such there is a huge variety, and the concept of 'village Hinduism' should be dismissed
-concerned mostly with pragmatic side of religion
-caste groups can move up and down in the hierarchy over generations, but Brahmans are always at the top and Harijans ('untouchables') are always at the bottom
-villages are not self-contained - they are influenced by the region they are a part of
-village deities are the least powerful but receive the most attention
-many villagers are sceptical of the existence of village deities, and higher castes do not pay any attention to them, but they still get a ton of worship
-there are local priests or ecsatics who act as go-betweens for the villager and the village deity (also exorcists)
-most widepread form of worship is the taking of vows - if such and such comes about, the villager rpomises to worship the deity in a particular way for a certain amount of time
-villagers may also venerate a more major god - this is not really seen as polytheism as all god are one, Brahman

V. Modern Developments
-major changes prompted by perceived necessity of presenting Hinduism to the West as a single world religion (among other things)
-new self-awareness and self-identity, more cohesion
-rejection of image worship and new rationalism in some groups (neo-Hinduism). Appealed mainly to intellectual elite, campaigned for social change.
-formation of various new Hindu religious sects, some concentrating on Westernization and some on getting back to older forms of the religion
-strengthening of message that all religions are true and that Hinduism is the mother of all religions
-Gandhi - believed in adherence to the truth, non-violence, universal uplift and welfare of all. Fasted until temples were opened to untouchables, established an ashram,
-last 50 years or so, rise of nationalistic Hinduism
-new temples, gurus, deities, pilgrimage sites, etc.

Notes on Religion in the Modern World, Hinduism chapter

I. Introduction
-Hinduism 'the eternal religion'
-Veda: 1500 BC. held to be eternal, reappearing at each new creation of the universe.
-extreme diversity/openness - contrast with caste system
-Brahman: "the highest absolute, formless consciousness about which nothing else can be said" pg 15
     -distinction between this and deities
-Buddhism and Jainism: originally Hindu reform movements
-Sokhism: combination of Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim ideas
- ~95% of Hindus live in India
-coming of the Brits brought modernity, more understanding of caste system and Hindu texts, even to Indians

II. Sources and Resources
A - Deities
-traditional Hindus see themselves not as Hindu but as worshippers of their chosen deity
-rituals, texts, beliefs usually similar
-divine reality has an explicit form
-consciousness is the first reality
-gods of other religions can be considered lower incarnations of Brahman, in the same way Hindu deities are
-chosen deity (ishta devata) is considered to be supreme deity by those who choose it
-Puja - offering of food, flowers etc. to the divine
-India itself worshipped as a goddess
-worshippers can see the divine through images of their deity, and the divine sees them - this interaction is Darshan

B. Texts
-Rig Veda - describes creation of world as a result of the sacrifice of a cosmic man
-Sanskrit - language of the Vedas
-Vedas preserved primarily by brahmans
-many teaching passed on as oral traditions
-best-known text: Bhagavad Gita, Krishna's teachings on yoga and devotion
-in all texts, gods take visible form, are described by sages
-Puranas - sanskrit, like bibles for some sects
-increasing amount of goddess worship after 400 AD
-triad of Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer
-Brahma not worshipped by himself
-all goddesses are an expression of Devi
-from 200 BC, some texts in Tamil
-teachings of gurus become primary texts for followers

C. Self and Society
-thousands of castes, which have a strong influence on career and marriage
-four castes (main): brahmas, warriors, farmers, peasants. Also outcastes.
-position in life morally justified through karma (but lower castes don't just accept it)
-4 life stages, male: student, householder, ascetic in forest, wandering ascetic.
-2 life stages, ideally, female: girlhood, wifehood. (but also widowhood.)
-proper and normal state: marriage!
-four goals: sensory gratification (kama), money (artha), religion (dharma), escape from rebirth (moksha)
-fourth life stage can be early for a very spiritual person and never happen for a normal person. it involves dying to ordinary life.

D. Gender
-families continue along male lines (widow stays with husband's family, bride moves in with husband)
-VERY patriarchal
-many goddess temples
-unmarried woman (or goddess) = DANGER   >:D
-substances not in the body but of it are impure (blood, semen, afterbirth, etc.)
-culture which rises above nature is pure (abstinence, vegetarianism, etc.)
-impurity is more female than male
-menstruating women don't cook or go to temple (sounds good to me)

III. Interactions with Modernity
A. India in modern times
-four world ages: current is Kali Yuga
-Kali: black goddess of destruction, worst throw of the dice
-3 key events in modern Indian history:
          1858: British takeover
          1947: formation of independant, secular India
          Rise of Hindu nationalism (esp. 1992 destruction of Ayodhya mosque by Hindu nationalists)
-Rise of Hindu-Muslim conflict
-British takeover allowed by internal conflict
-Brahman middle class in Bengal <3 Western thought
-new forms such as novel encouraged nationalism
-Kali recast as symbol of violent revolution
-closer to independance from Brits, more conflict between Hindus and Muslims
-new border between India and Pakistan leads to a million deaths
-Nehru founds independant India as a secular state
-constant tension between India & Pakistan, Pakistan & Kashmir
-Hindu nationalists currently in power
-major problems: position of Islam, secular state with religious population
-also, hostile feelings towards Christianity, especially missionaries
-widespread poverty and corruption
-well-educated middle class, lots of scientists & IT people

B. Traditional Hinduism
-TV shows and films about gods, demons... Ramayana TV show incredibly popular to point where airlines rearranged flight schedules so people would not miss it
-lots of temple-building still
-great religious leaders give automated telephone advice, have elaborate websites
-Tantra: 'pleasure is liberation'
     -chakras
     -sex! :D
-Hare Krishna: odd and modern for its missionary zeal
     -Hinduism Today magazine

C. 'Reformed' Hinduism
-neo-Hinduism: Western philosophy expressed in Hindu terms
-Arya Samaj: aims to be purified Hinduism, resmbles Protestantism but vigorously rejects Christianity
-Aurobindo: India is the guru of nations and will give rise to the Eternal Religion
-"neo-Hinduism" somewhat inaccurate in that Hinduism has always been changing

D. Gurus
-universality of Hinduism and social work popular, but teachers otherwise stick to traditional stuff
-standard: initiation where disciple is given secret mantra
-Ananda Marg: Hindu mafia? :)
-Transcendental Meditation: relaxed meditation on personal mantra
-gurus often worshipped as gods by their followers
-why gurus?
     -muslim king led to strong religious leaders, or
     -choice of guru is the only really free decision people make
-Sathya Sai Baba: famous godman, produces 'miracles' (produces watches from nowhere for the faithful...), teaches duty and purity, extensive charitable works

E. Gender
-arranged marriages still popular, even amongst the highly educated
-goal is raising of children, divorce is frowned upon
-high percentage of female MPs
-women play leading role in domestic religious life
-self-immoliation of widows on husband's funeral pyre (now has legal penalties but continues)

F. Caste
-Ambedkar: anti-caste activist
-caste associations 'comfortable'
-outcastes = 'dalit' (downtrodden)

Notes on A Handbook of Living Religions, Buddhism chapter

I. Introduction
A. A Vast Expanse
-very asaptable - spread all over - butt still continuous
-common source: ancient Indian Buddhism
-insights of the right sort lead to liberation/freedom/transformation
-requires spiritual training

B. 3 Great Traditions
-Southern (Theravada) Buddhism: 125m adherents. Sri Lanka, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand. To a lesser extent in China, Vietnam, Mayasia, Bangladesh and India.
-Eastern Buddhism: China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam. Hard to say how many people but possibly 150m adherents.
-Northern Buddhism: Tibet, Mongolia, Himalayas, China, Soviet Union, emigrant populations. 10-20m adherents, but surprisingly large influence.
-Lamaism: insulting term for Northern Buddhism.
-Hinayana: insulting term for Southern Buddhism.

C. Incompleteness
-coexists w/ indigenous traditions
-there is no 'pure Buddhism'
-doesn't seek to guide things which are not spiritual
     -this is a strength!

II. Ancient Buddhism
A. The Background for Early Buddhism
-Buddha's main activity probably during late 5th century BCE
-Came about at same time as Jainism
-Middle India in this time very similar to Grrece in power and influence
-extreme goals (indulgence/asceticism) frowned upon
-avoids dogma, teaches only the necessities for spiritual development
-influenced by, but not part of, Hinduism, Jainism, Ajivaka

B. The Three Jewels
-reliability of Buddha's life story debated
-born near Nepalese border
-Called Siddhart(h)a
-royal but rejected family life to search for spirituality
-"buddha" = "one who has awoken". One who knows the dhamma, basic truth. neither man nor god.
-dhamma = true nature of things, law of the universe.
-'who sees dhamma sees me. who sees me sees the dhamma.' -Buddha
=the three jewels of Buddha, dhamma, Sangha
-Sangha = religious community
-many rituals involve foinf to Sangha for refuge
-Pattimokha - set of training rules for the Sangha, 150ish core ones
-only four things lead to expulsion from theSangha: sex, theft, murder, and false claim of spiritual accomplishment.

C. Development of Ancient Buddhism.
-Emperor Ashoka, 1st century BCE, turned to Buddhism out of revulsion for war. Revered as ideal Buddhist ruler.
-literature divided into three sections or 'baskets', the Tipitaka
    -Vinaya-pitaka, basket of discipline
    -Sutta-pitaka, discourses of the Buddha, divided into four or five parts/traditions
    -Abhidhamma-pitaka classifies experience into groups of events
-Buddha slowly became percieved as more and more exalted
-devotional practices increasingly important
-path to Buddhahodd viewed as based upon compassion
-early on Buddha represented through symbols, not images
-gradual change to Mahayana Buddhism

D. The Place of the Mahayana
-Three main tendencies of Mahayana:
     -heroic ideal
     -cosmology related to visualization
     -new expression based on 'emptiness'
-altruistic action gains importance
-nothing else exists independantly or permanently
     -makes liberation possible
-became distinguished from classic Buddhism in the goal it aimed for
-Classic Buddhism = Hinaya
-some modern Buddhist movements have taken on elements of Protestantism

E. Dissapearance of Ancient Buddhism
-Buddhism always 'patchy' in India
-declined in 12th century
-Ancient Buddhism survives in Nepal
-misleading to say 'declined in India': places such as Sri Lanka are no longer part of India partly due to Buddhism surviving there

III. Southern Buddhism
A. Intro
-recent history is pretty much the history of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia
-Buddhism introduced to Sri Lanka by Ashoka
-by 5th century CE widespread in Burma & thailand
-Vibhajjavada: dominant school - 'teaching which distinguishes'
-strong tradition of chronicles helped resist Mahayana
-Mahavihara accepted as traditional
-Theravada also gains power
-conquest & missionaries messed with Buddhism in Sri Lanka
-not much knowledge of Buddhism in Europe
-like Hinduism, not much learned until 1800s, and heavily biased by missionaries

B. Structure of the Teaching
-picture presented makes it difficult to reconcile teaching and everyday practices
-traditional teaching: start with 'step by step discourse' on giving, preceptys, the heavens, defects of sensuality. continues with 'elevated teaching' of suffering, arricing, cessation, path to cessation.
-first part is more basic Indian religion than specifically Buddhist
-dana, giving = foundation of Buddhist practice
     -not charity etc.
     -kind of like sacrifice
-precepts - the act of undertaking training rules. often starts a ritual. do unto others...
-kamma - understanding, law. you must understand what you're doing, not just do it.
-buddhism has a concept of worlds arranged into galaxies and super-galaxies, and of levels ofthe universe
-parallelism of psychology and cosmology
-Buddhists are trying to get into heaven too.
-sensory experience distorts the mind.
-heaven reachable through meditation
-Four Noble Truths lead to purification
     -suffering/the world
     -arising of suffering
     -cessation of suffering/escape
     -path leading to the cessation of suffering
-four truths symbolized by 12-spoked wheel
-two types of meditation, based on calm and insight
-normal to start with calm

C. Buddhism in Ordinary Life
-mostly giving and taking precepts
-sometimes meditation
-teaching and hearing the dhamma
-caution towards ritual forms
-three types of object of worship: relics of a Buddha, relics of use, symbolic relics.
-religious events on full-moon days, and festivals. guided by lunar calendar.
-Sri Lanka - two biggest full-moon days are Wesak and Poson
-South-East Asia - main full-moon days in the three rainy months
-pilgrimage, especially local, is widespread
-local deities accepted, within laws of the kamma

D. Modern Developments
-most important trends: reformism, 'ultimism', modernism
-Reformism: emerging fraternities seek to be close to the Sangha ideal
-Ultimism - identify tendency towards ultimate truth as the whole of Buddhism
     -emphasis on Four Noble Truths, insight meditation
-modernism - Buddhism with Christian values, scientific thought, rejection of rituals and superstitions
-Esotericism - meditation based on ritual, visualization, letters and sounds, elaborate correspondances
-meditation revival
-traditional Buddhism still the norm

IV. Afterword
-lots of desctruction from Communism
-spreading to Europe and North america
-all 3 traditions increasing
-lots of emigration
-revival since 1980s

Notes on Religion in the Modern World, Buddhism Chapter

I. Intro
-357m-ish adherents
-challenges from communism, nationalism
-spreading West
-this focuses on Southern Buddhism

II. Sources and Resources
A. Origins and Fundamental Tenets
-founded by Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha
-goal of enlightenment and freedom from the material world
-intentional action has consequences
-problem of ignorance, need to develop wisdom
-development of meditation techniques
-Buddhist path as 'middle way'
-oral traditions written down at start of Christian era

B. Historical Change and Diffusion
-helped to spread by Ashoka and Mahayana
-actions over spiritual path adopted by early Mahayana
-wisdom of emptiness
-acceptance of new sutras shows Buddhist dynamism (chinese esp.)
-Vajrayana (tantric) Buddhism spreads in north India
-declined in India, grew in the rest of Asia
-3 main types: Southern, Northern, East Asian

C. Organization and Authority
-monasticism = superior way of life
-emergence of separate monastic orders-forest monks: meditators, wanderers, focus on gaining realization
-town monks: bookish, in a permanent monastary, focus on preserving tradition
-Southern Buddhism: Pali texts, monastic tradition, conservative, triple gem
     -Sangha: the monastic ommunity
     -meditation increaingly popular
     -ideal of righteous king
     -relationship between state 7 Sangha
-Tibetan Buddhism: shares Mahayana & Vajrayana, monastic orders are organized into schools. tendency to educate self in more than one school.
     -three types of monk: scholar, ascetic meditationist, lay mantra practitioner
     -these types represented in all schools
     -monastaries central to sociopolitical practice

D. Buddhism in the West
-establish through immigration and conversion
-West Coast of USA & Canada, Hawaii.
-response to secularization, pluralistic cultural orientation, disenchantment with traditional churches
-attractiveness of verifying teachings through own experience rather than just accepting them
-still not a large Sangha in the West, and what there is, isn't central to the organizations
-urban lifestyle unsuited to monasticism (this has also contributed to the decline of monastic practice in Asia)

III. Looking to the Future
-Buddhism able to resist socio-economic change
-tolerance of diversity and teaching on nature of the mind very much relevant today
-greatest challenge: loss of state and community support
-increasing demands for involvement from the laity, but resilient monasticism
-helped (possibly) by having little to say on 'correct' family/social relationships
-meditation retains appeal
-Buddhist scholarship threatened by academics

Notes on Handbook of Living Religions, South Asian Diaspora chapter

I. Religion and Migration
-many migrate to UK and are identified by religion rather than nationality despite moving for other reasons
-migration forces reassessment of meaning of religion
-necessity of creating institutions once taken for granted
-questions of what to teach the children

II. The History of Religions of South Asians in Britain
-19th century: many immigrants from India (also many visitors)
-real formation of immigrant communities starts in 1920s
-religious groups become active in 1950s
-women and children begin to join men in 1960s
-many mosques. First Hindu temple in '69.
-'twice-migrants' arrive from Africa in mid-1960s
-second generation, born in UK, has major effect from 1980s

III. The Religions in the 1990s
-1991: 1,476,900 south asians in the UK
-Muslims highly concentrated in north England
          -retain strong links with subcontinent
-debate between 'Islamic fundamentalism' and 'anti-Muslim sentiment'
-Sikhs and Hindus feel lumped in with Muslims by whites
-Sikh and Hindu communities most numerous in midlands and south
-Hindus generally worship at home and learn religious traditions through mother
-Sikhs more congregational
-caste practice altered but still important, especially WRT arranged marriages
-many religious groups focused on living teacher

IV. Emerging Trends in the Reproductions of the Religions of South Asians in Britain
-1970s-1980s, concentration on finding religious buildings to use
-development of conservative, protective stance to avoid total Westernization
-distinction and discrimination between South Asian and white communities
      -cemented by well-intentioned multiculturalist policies
-South Asian religions often expected to conform to Christian template
     -'protestantization'
-local traditions maintain indirect links with home
-British groups often more conservative, less dynamic than Indian counterparts
-family links to home increasingly indirect
-events in mid 80s led to increased politicalization
     -raised questions of liberalism, freedom of speech, blasphemy, state/religion/citizenship relations, ethnic/religious co-existence
-Women Against Fundamentalism
-issues with arranged marriages and dowry abuse (if you're being paid to marry a girl, why not kill her off, keep the money and get married again... well, less extreme, get divorced, say it's her fault, and keep the money.)
-other ethical debates (sexuality, AIDS, abortion, ecology) rarely addressed by elders
-younger community tackled these issues
     -magazine: Muslim Trends, The Sikh Reformer
-Interfaith Network UK set up in '87
     -all South Asian religions in UK represented
     -discussed religious education, women's religious concerns, shared values, the media, worship in schools...
-also a number of meetings between South Asian religious people and Christians
-main challenges now:
     -cultural competence of religious leaders
     -use of English and vernacular/sacred languages
     -young people's interest
     -involvement of women

gwendysmile @ 2009-02-03T13:34:00

2009-02-03T13:48:13Z

I am in one of the numerous little computer labs in the main library. Sitting across from me, there's a woman who is creeping me out. From her face, I would say she's maybe 18. I mean, I would say she were younger, even, but she's here, so. Maybe 17. Her hands, though, are the hands of a 40 year old woman. You know - kind of wrinkled, skin looks a bit thinner somehow, the veins stand out more, the knuckles are ever so slightly swollen. It's really, really weird.

Aaaanyway.

The weather is pretty bleak right now. It was snowing a ton yesterday and the day before, and actually sticking, which is highly unusual for Edinburgh AFAIK. Right now I'm looking out the window and it's gone back to good Scottish gray - gray sky, bit of wind, bit of mist, makes everything look gray. Probably still kind of wet out. I like this weather, as long as it doesn't start actually raining or get any colder. Isn't it supposed to be spring soon?

Going down to do this birthday thing in Lincolnshire for the weekend. I'm going to be missing my tutorial on Friday, and I tried to email the tutor but it bounced back. Grr. Well, I'll just show up in two weeks with all the extra work, I guess. At least I'm not presenting. I'm not entirely sure what the plan is - I know we're down there all weekend, and we seem to be going to a really nice restaurant on Friday evening. Which is nice. I always feel kind of awkward when other people are paying for me to be there, though. And the presents! I'm being absorbed.

Before then, I have two essays to write - they're both due Monday. I think I could get away with just having a draft of each of them and then polishing them up on the drive down or whatever, but yes, still stressful. I have one of them mostly done, on McTaggart's paradox. Running into serious issues with the word limit. The other one I've not even done the reading for yet, which makes me nervous. Electronics I'm really behind in, having screwed up a lot in the first two lab sessions (not entirely my fault) and missed this week's because I was working on the essay. And there's a flat inspection on Friday, so I need to falsify our smoke detector testing records (we know it works anyway - twopointoh set it off when he was cooking) and clean my room. which is going to be a monumental task. I've been so busy I haven't been paying any attention to it, can hardly even walk in there.

Class in 15 minutes, I should get going. I forget what the topic is, which is bad. Something ancient. Um. Oh, Aristotle's physics. Crap, I have a tutorial on it tomorrow as well. *sigh*

Note to self: don't forget -
-thank you cards to grandparents and aunt dorothy
-call opera and laserquest
-catch up on lab work
-stop by advice place and careers center

Moo

2009-01-30T10:35:49Z

Fnar.

shitshitshitshit d'you ever feel like perhaps there are too many coincidences and maybe you should be a bit more superstitious? like if a friend pokes you and says "I've decided you're pregnant" the condom's going to break next time you get laid?

Anyway.

Got me exam results back, not ecstatic but not too unhappy. I got a 55 in Programming, which is a C. (And I was learning C! Lookit, another coincidence.) I think I could have done better but seeing as the night before the exam I was sure I was going to fail, it's not too terrible. Got Bs in both of my philosophy exams - 62 in 2A, 67 in 2B. I'm pretty happy with that, as the highest grade anyone got was 75 and 76, respectively. I placed pretty well. So yay.

Classes this semester are killer though. I'm taking four - continuing the two philosophy classes, and then also taking Electronics 1 and Religion 1B. This ends up being about 9 hours a day of necessary work for classes, plus an hour or so traveling on top of my normal travel time because Religion is in New College, Philosophy is in George Square, and Electronics is in KB. ARGH. Didn't realize that when I signed up. So, trying to get all my work done and run a society and keep participating in other societies and give the boy some attention and still manage to get some sleep... I've actually managed to work it pretty well so far through extreme use of caffeine and having Wednesdays off since Alan's still in NZ. Main bad effect I've noticed so far: huge increase in typos.

But essay season is coming up so we'll see how that goes. I need to go find birthday presents for Jon's sister and dad (meep) this weekend but I also have two essays to write - hm...

I should be typing up my tutorial sheet right now. Okay. Bai.

Also someone poke me if I haven't posted a ton of notes up here in a couple days.

Okay, okay, I'm updating

2009-01-09T10:01:52Z

*nudge*....*nudge*....*nudge*....alright alright

So. Um. Went on vacation with Mom over the holidays. We went to Rome for about a week and were there for christmas, and then Greece for a few days, including new years. Saw all sorts of stuff - the colosseum, the roman forum, the spanish steps, the vatican, lots of museums, the sistine chapel, pompeii, the acropolis, the athenian agora, this really cool ancient theater which is acoustically perfect and no one can figure out why, the oracle of delphi... I was mildly worried about being in Athens because of the riots (thanks jj_maccrimmon for making me paranoid :P) but it was fine. We walked around for pretty much a whole day shopping and looking at the agora, and had no problems. We saw a couple of small demonstrations and lots of really well done, angry street art, but that was about it. And it was great shopping! (I'll post pictures of the art once I get it uploaded.) The rest of the time we spent in Greece was on a bus tour, which we'd never done before. It was pretty good though. Our tour guide was a trip. I spent a decent amount of time arguing philosophy and politics with him. ("Plato was not subversive! I mean hello? Republic?...morality/justice is only acheivable through absolute loyalty to the state..." "Ah, but have you read it in the original Greek?")

I think my favorite part was Pompeii. It's pretty amazing. Really well preserved, you could imagine people living there. (I even recognized Alexander the Great in a mosaic on the floor of one of the houses, which made me feel smart. Or maybe I've just been hanging out with Caitlin too much.) The acoustically perfect theater was also rather cool. I was glad to get home by the end of it though, ten days in close quarters and tight schedules with my mother gets to be a little bit much. Only other bad part was that I had my period while I was there and it made me really ill, like it hasn't since high school... but I guess you're not really a traveler until you've puked on the public transportation in a country where you don't speak the language, right?...right. (It worries me how many life experiences I define by throwing up in odd circumstances.)

Now I'm hanging out in Edinburgh, waiting for classes to start. I'm taking four classes this semester - normal is three - so I'm probably going to be rather stressed out... it'll be okay though. Also Jon is back in town, so, y'know. Win. What else... I made two new year's resolutions: cook more, and don't skip lectures even if they're at 9 AM and I was partying the night before and I know the lecturer sucks. I've already started cooking more. (Last night I made pasta with vegetables, tonight I'm using the leftovers to make ziti.) We'll see how the not skipping lectures thing goes. I'm still waiting for exam results from last semester, although that's not really surprising, at least for my philosophy classes. I really wish they'd get to it and put up programming though, as I'm kind of worried about how that one turned out.

Oh! Also! I am currently using my new computer, which I finally built! It runs really well and makes me oh so happy. I have already filled up more space on it than I had on my old laptop, heh. (Akago = 750 gb, Aiko = 80 gb.) When I first built it I was using an old CTX monitor that was in the flat when we got here and a really grungy keyboard Oscar lent me, but now Jon's hooked me up with a nice keyboard and his old monitor (which is pretty decent.) Now I just need to get some speakers. And paint the case! I got a beige one since I wasn't sure whether I wanted to go steampunky or more traditional gamery. I'm pretty fond of this design, though. so that's probably what I'm going to do.

And now I am off to meet some friends for tea! Wonderful!

I meep in your general direction

2008-12-08T19:04:44Z

So, today I got up early and kicked butt on my Philosophy 2A exam. I ought to be studying for my Philosophy 2B one now - it's on Thursday - but I'm taking it easy for the evening. I was going to just take a couple hours break and then get back to studying, but I dunno, I'm feeling kind of down. I got mildly annoyed at someone for a reason which was not entirely crazy, and was promptly called a bitch, which just kind of made me realize how sick I am of people generally. It seems like everyone is having stupid middle school drama and then whining to me about it. I usually don't have a problem with people whining to me, except for when they are ALL doing it, the people on all sides of the issue. That just leads to more drama, which I do not need during exams. Ugh. And people seem to have very little respect for me lately. Sandy doesn't seem to understand that just because I am rather open about sex and am not completely adverse to him as a person doesn't mean it's okay to grope me. 2.0 is tending to take the few things I say are not okay to joke about and get the entire society laughing about them right in front of me. Squishy is a particular bastard lately and has been treating me rather like an idiot. And then there's the usual "I am an American philosophy student who believes in some concept of the divine and hangs out with british scientists who worship the technological singularity" thing.

I also find Vix insulting my character somewhat difficult to swallow. But there you go.

It's probably just that I miss Jon. I sometimes think he's the only sane person I know. Sane in the good ways, I mean. Or maybe it's just that I started up the pill again a little bit ago and my hormones are out of whack.

And in a few weeks I am sure I will read this and say to myself "and I was complaining about them acting like middle schoolers? Grow up, Gwen."

I am not a bitch. *sighs*

Philosophy Exam tomorrow

2008-12-07T21:07:11Z

At film night last night:

2.0: "We should have more black people in sciffy. Gwen, get us more black people."
Me: "I'd love to, but there's no black people in Scotland. It's still weird for me, everyone's white..."
Andrew: "There are some black people here..."
Me: "What, like, three?"
2.0: "We need more black people. Ooh, get us gay black people! D'you get gay... black... people? hm..."
Me: "I love how you realized how racist that was halfway through saying it."

Ah, sciffy. So much love. Seriously though, it's still weird. I guess I kind of got used to hanging out in balck neighborhoods, when I was in new york.

So, yes, philosophy exam tomorrow. My review sheet:

Philosophy of Mind

I. Consciousness
-consciousness originally conceived of as a non-physical thing, basically the mental capacity (Descartes)
-lately it has been popular to go with the scientists rather than the (majority of) philosophers and say consciousness is entirely physical
-qualia are a defense against this. they are the way things seem to us - not just how we feel when we see blue, but what it is like to see blue
-Dennet says they're either nonexistent or irrelevant
-the two major problems: what is consciousness, and what is it good for?
-Philosophical zombies: bodies without minds. If they exist, body and mind are separate. Possibly what they are lacking is qualia.
-Mary: the super-duper neuroscientist of the future in a black and white room. If she learns something when she sees red for the first time, qualia exist.
-The position of qualia is in doubt. A better identifier for the mental may be intentionality.

II. Intentionality
-intentionality is supposed to be the hallmark of the mental, and distinguish it from the physical. No physical thing can exhibit intentionality. (Brentano)
-physicalism - everything is reducible to physical laws, but some physical things aren't material - gravity for instance.
-non-reductive physicalists think mental states supervene on the physical. Reductive physicalists think they're the same thing.
-What is intentionality? the property of the mental to be about soething else. The mind has intentions toward other things.
-Dretske: representational systems, belief, learning. Intentionality requires holding beliefs about things. For it to be a belief, it has to be useful because of what it says, and that can happen only through learning.
-Chinese room -> computers are not minds. (We knew that already. Silly philosophers.)
-Fodor: trying to make intentionality more scientifically viable. Psychophysics.

III. Mind reading and folk psychology
-Folk psychology: people's common sense understanding of how their minds work. Explaining other people's behavior in terms of their mental states. Our ability to ascribe mental states to ourselves and others. Might be what separates us from animals.
-Is folk psychology a valid theory of the mind?
-Children under four base their predictions on reality, not on their knowledge of others' mental states. (Marble in drawer - false belief task.)
-Theory theory: in order to master the false belief task, one needs to be able to think "A believes d", which requires having a concept of beliefs. (Different from just having beliefs!) So you need to be able to have theories. This is another theory of mind - as far as we can tell, only humans do this. (And it also means kids under 4 don't count as human. Heh.)
-Theory theory is tacit. It works so well that it disappears, hence why people can't give a good account of their use of it.
-One objection to FP: It really doesn't look like science. But maybe it's more like linguistics than, say, chemistry. A competent linguist applies complicated grammatical rules tacitly.
-Theory theory claims that we do not have privileged access to our own mental states. (misremembering, mind changing.)
-The self-other gap: predicting our own behavior is dead easy. Predicting the behavior of others, less so.
-Cognitive penetrability: predictions are based on beliefs - if the belief changes so will the prediction.
-Goldman vs Gordon: For Goldman, simulation is "putting yourself in their shows". For Gordon, simulation is what we mean when we talk about beliefs. There is no need for inner undestanding.

Tutorial Questions

1. Explain and discuss at least two different ways of understanding the knowledge argument.
           The knowledge argument challenges the physicalist view by saying that there is some knowledge which can be gained only through experience. One way of understanding it is through Jackson's Mary example, which deals with qualia. If she learns something when she sees the red apple, physicalism is false. There is also Dretske's approach through intentionality, which says that intentionality (which is the hallmark of the mental) can only actually come to be through learning.

2. Explain and discuss the main claim of eliminative materialism.
      Eliminative materialism claims that only physical things exist. Thoughts, feelings, and other mental states are either nonexistent or entirely physical phenomena. This view is pretty much endorsed only by the Churchlands, because they kind of go "emotions should be logically eliminated THROUGH SCIENCE!!!" and everyone else goes "wtf."

3. Discuss the role of learning in Dretske's theory of intentionality.
       Dretske says that for something to be a belief, it has to affect the believer's behavior because of what the belief says. This can only happen satisfactorily through learning. (And intentionality requires that things are able to have beliefs.)

4. Is our theory of mind really a theory?
        Yes, it is. It's tepting to say that it's not because theory theory doesn't look like science, and people can't give a clear account of how they use it. But probably it is like linguistics, where people apply a set of rules without even realizing it, once they've mastered them in the first place.

5. Compare Goldman's and Gordon's accounts of simulationism.
       Goldman subscribes to the more popular "putting yourself in someone else's shoes" view of simulationism. Gordon thinks that this whole introspection thing is a silly way to predict behavior, though. After all... say you go into a bakery. To pick which loaf of bread you want, you look at the bread, you don't look at your beliefs. Simulation is just what we do when we talk about the beliefs.

The Phaedo

I. Cyclical Argument
-depends on the principle of opposites: things come from their opposites (hot wouldn't exist if cold didn't.) also something which is able to contain one of a pair of opposites must do so, any will never contain both.
-since things must come from their opposites, the living must comes from the dead. so, the soul must exist somewhere separate from life and death in order to bring a person to life.
-death is the separation of soul and body.

II. Recollection Argument
-when we 'learn' things, we are actually recalling information we already knew. This is supported by the fact that you can get someone to give a correct answer about something which they have no prior knowledge of just by askking the right questions, as illustrated in Meno with the slave boy example.
-Our souls must exist someplace immortal in order to store that knowledge.

III. Affinity Argument
-things which are invisible (Truth, Beauty) have immortal, unchanging Forms. Visible things like men change constantly.
-the soul is similar to the Forms in that it is invisible yet close to the divine (the divine is meant to rule and lead, as the soul rules and leads the body) and therefore the soul must also be immortal and unchanging.
-This deals with Cebes' cloak argument by saying that the soul is unchanging, so it can't get "worn out" over many reincarnations.

IV. Final Argument
-the soul is a Form, and is that which renders the body living.
-Forms never become their opposites.
-The opposite of life is death.
-therefore, the soul can never become dead.

Tutorial Questions

1. What are the logical faults in the Cyclical Argument?
          The fact that things come from their opposites could just mean that the soul becomes alive from death. Putting that aside, the argument also only shows that souls have to be there before we're born, not that they survive after our bodily death. (Much less that they are still intelligent.)

2. What is the logic of the final argument?
    1. Forms will never admit their opposites.
     2. The soul is a Form.
     3. The soul is that which makes the body living.
     4. The opposite of living is dead.
    Therefore, the soul cannot become dead.

Descartes

I. Separation of mind and body
-cogito ergo sum - the mind must exist, no matter what, because it has to in order to be able to ponder its own existence! I think, therefore I am. (Or properly - I think, and things which think must exist, therefore I exist. But Descartes did very few things properly.)
-But, the body doesn't necessarily have to exist. You could easily imagine that your body doesn't exist (brain in vat, evil demon) but not so of your mind
-we can only call our bodies "ours" because we are not separate from them like we are from other bodies
-physical feelings have mental effects - if I'm in pain, I'll feel upset. If I'm hungry, I'll want to go get food. But this is just because nature has taught me to be like that over the course of my life.
-I can't trust my senses, even my internal ones at times. (Ghost limbs)
-My essence consists solely in that I am a thinking thing. My body is separate from me and I can exist without it. (Like to see you try that one, bud.)

II. Existence of external objects
-the attributes of a body: a certain space which other bodies can not enter, perceived by the senses
-our perceptions of external objects are often wrong (square/round tower)
-piece of wax becomes entirely different when it's melted: it's only our intuition saying that it's the same object
-material objects do exist as subjects of math
-I can have a clear and distinct perception of material things
-God exists; God is never wrong; my perceptions are sometimes wrong; therefore my perceptions cannot come to me from God. So they must come to me from external objects, which must, therefore, exist.
-This does not mean that our perceptions of them are accurate
-the one property of all material objects definitely have is extension: they DO take up space

III. Clear and Distinct perceptions
-I can easily picture real things (ex. a chair) in my mind, clearly and distinctly
-I can't imagine unreal things (ex. a unicorn) as clearly
-So, it must be only real things which I can have a clear and distinct perception of
-I have a clear and distinct idea of God
-So, God is real
-all the things which I clearly and distinctly perceive can be created by God in the way that I perceive them

Tutorial Questions
1. What is meant by the claim that Descartes' reasoning in Meditations is circular? Is it true?
         Yes, it is.     "Whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive is true -> I clearly and distinctly perceive God -> God wouldn't let me be wrong -> Whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive..."