Simon Critchley on Heidegger, Thinking, and Philosophy

“Anxiety reveals the Nothing”… https://substack.com/@critchleyonheidegger/note/c-379811099?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

Questions NOV 10

 NOV 10 Dark 3, MoL 3 (Rec)

Presentations: Bella-Dark. Jacquez-Dark. Caroline-Dark [Please coordinate among yourselves to avoid redundancy... or perhaps one of you can do MoL?]

1. Seems like our discussion Thursday largely anticipated this chapter. We can go back and discuss earlier material, if you've already had enough grief. (But of course, in this life we almost always get more than we bargained for, don't we?!)
2. Any comment on William James's letter to his dying father that I referenced in class Thursday?*
3. And for something completely different: Following up the last question, last time: "Douglas Adams chose 42 as a completely arbitrary, ordinary, and mundane number to create a humorous bathos—contrasting a serious, grand search for the meaning of life with a totally unremarkable number..." (says AI) Is humorous bathos the right attitude, in response to the "ultimate question"? **
4. Is our "pathologization of grief" driven too much by the business/productivity/consumer culture? 76
5. What are the worst examples of "toxic masculinity" you've encountered (or heard of... and surely not committed)? 80
6. Is the Stoics' memento mori good advice? Does it spark gratitude in you? Or in others, when you remind them of their own mortality? Should it?
7. "As a New Yorker, I loved Epictetus." 81 Comment? How would you fill out that sentence if it began "As a Nashvillian..."?  (Or substitute your preferred alternate locale.)
8. Was Montaigne's "capsized" grief excessive, or self-indulgent, or in any other way problematic? Or do you also, with Mariana, find it beautiful?  82-3
9. Do you agree with Cicero about "getting a hold" of oneself? What does that mean to you? Can you do it? Does philosophy help you do it? 87
10. Are you with Burton, or Freud? How do you distinguish grief from depression, or both from "the human condition"? 88
11. Do we too frequently "medicalize normality"? 89 If so, how can we stop doing that?
12. Do you keep your blinds closed? Do you think it's healthy to do so? 90
13. Has anyone ever told you a loved one had gone to "a better place"? How did you respond? (Or how did you want to respond?) 92
14. Have you read or seen A Grief Observed? Did it make you think well (or better) of C.S. Lewis? 93
15. Do you ever experience Cicero's "gulf" or a rift between thinking and feeling? How do you cross the gulf or heal the rift?
16. Do you have an additional example of a "botched condolence" or "unhelpful platitude"? 97
17. Do you agree that Colbert canb "see in the dark"? How do you imagine you'd have handled his tragic family situation? Can you name other examples of night vision? 100
18. Has Kubler-Ross been misunderstood?
19. [MoL ch3]  What's the difference between the world's being "absurd all the way through" and its being "pointless"? 57
20. Was the world ever just "story-shaped"? Has it ever really enjoyed a universally-shared "grand narrative"? Does it need one?  Is it not in fact multi-story-shaped? And isn't that kind of pluralism preferable to a monolithic conformist story that does not brook dissent? 58
21. Is a nihilist just a disillusioned metaphysician? What does that mean? 59
22. Is history empty? Or just people's knowledge and understanding of history? What does it mean to say the world may be redeemed but not saved? 61
23. Is "perhaps" the right attitude when combatting fascism? 62 Consider Yeats ("The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity") and Russell ("the stupid are cocksure, the intelligent are full of doubt").
24. How can life be neither meaningful nor meaningless? Must there be a Meaning of meanings? 64-5
25. What do you think of Freud's view that death is the meaning of life? 66
26. Is Nietzsche's approach ot meaning narcissistic? 67
27. Is the universe "appallingly shoddy"? 68
28. Are we puppets according to Schopenhauer but not to Sophocles? 70 Was Troilus an existentialist? 71 Was Euthyphro as anti-essentialist? 73
29. Are you more exhilarated or alarmed about the absence of a "given" meaning of life? 74
30. Why must the Protestant spirit "grope fearfully in the dark"? 75

*[I read the parts in bold to my dad, on his patio in Missouri, not long before he died at age 79 in 2008. I have it on video, which I've just watched for the first time in  years. And I'm dabbing a tear... well, figuratively and on the inside. I don't cry easily. But I do feel.]

To his Father.

Bolton St., London, Dec. 14, 1882.

Darling old Father,—Two letters, one from my Alice last night, and one from Aunt Kate to Harry just now, have somewhat dispelled the mystery in which the telegrams left your condition; and although their news is several days earlier than the telegrams, I am free to suppose that the latter report only an aggravation of the symptoms the letters describe. It is far more agreeable to think of this than of some dreadful unknown and sudden malady.

We have been so long accustomed to the hypothesis of your being taken away from us, especially during the past ten months, that the thought that this may be your last illness conveys no very sudden shock. You are old enough, you've given your message to the world in many ways and will not be forgotten; you are here left alone, and on the other side, let us hope and pray, dear, dear old Mother is waiting for you to join her. If you go, it will not be an inharmonious thing. Only, if you are still in possession of your normal consciousness, I should like to see you once again before we part. I stayed here only in obedience to the last telegram, and am waiting now for Harry—who knows the exact state of my mind, and who will know yours—to telegraph again what I shall do. Meanwhile, my blessed old Father, I scribble this line (which may reach you though I should come too late), just to tell you how full of the tenderest memories and feelings about you my heart has for the last few days been filled. In that mysterious gulf of the past into which the present soon will fall and go back and back, yours is still for me the central figure. All my intellectual life I derive from you; and though we have often seemed at odds in the expression thereof, I'm sure there's a harmony somewhere, and that our strivings will combine. What my debt to you is goes beyond all my power of estimating,—so early, so penetrating and so constant has been the influence. You need be in no anxiety about your literary remains. I will see them well taken care of, and that your words shall not suffer for being concealed. At Paris I heard that Milsand, whose name you may remember in the "Revue des Deux Mondes" and elsewhere, was an admirer of the "Secret of Swedenborg," and Hodgson told me your last book had deeply impressed him. So will it be; especially, I think, if a collection of extracts from your various writings were published, after the manner of the extracts from Carlyle, Ruskin, & Co. I have long thought such a volume would be the best monument to you.—As for us; we shall live on each in his way,—feeling somewhat unprotected, old as we are, for the absence of the parental bosoms as a refuge, but holding fast together in that common sacred memory. We will stand by each other and by Alice, try to transmit the torch in our offspring as you did in us, and when the time comes for being gathered in, I pray we may, if not all, some at least, be as ripe as you. As for myself, I know what trouble I've given you at various times through my peculiarities; and as my own boys grow up, I shall learn more and more of the kind of trial you had to overcome in superintending the development of a creature different from yourself, for whom you felt responsible. I say this merely to show how my sympathy with you is likely to grow much livelier, rather than to fade—and not for the sake of regrets.—As for the other side, and Mother, and our all possibly meeting, I can't say anything. More than ever at this moment do I feel that if that were true, all would be solved and justified. And it comes strangely over me in bidding you good-bye how a life is but a day and expresses mainly but a single note. It is so much like the act of bidding an ordinary good-night. Good-night, my sacred old Father! If I don't see you again—Farewell! a blessed farewell! Your

WILLIAM.

 

The elder Henry James died on the nineteenth of December…

**

Questions NOV 5

Congrats to our classmate Brent Mercer, who successfully defended his Honors Thesis on strife, order, and chaos Wednesday!  

 

Presentations Connor-MoL 1. Chris-Dark

Dark 2. Rec MoL 2 

1. Where do you draw the line, in your own experience, between "normal" sadness and clinical depression? Do you think our culture is too quick to medicalize pain, worry, and unhappiness? Do we collectively suffer a variety of nyctophobia?
2. Do you think you have to choose between being good and being happy? Do you side with Aristotle, the Stoics, the Epicureans, or none of the above? 50-2
3. Do psychological "tools" imply a broken psyche or spirit? 53 Are you surprised that positive psychologists are often Epicureans?
4. Should parents try to raise optimistic children? Was that the message of Inside Out? (And by the way: Do you think "optimistic existentialist" is an oxymoron?)
5. Is Jody's family "emotionally illiterate"? 59
6. What does it mean to say that happiness and sadness cannot coexist? 61, 73 Don't the Epicureans simply propose happiness as an aspirational ideal, rather than the suggestion that sadness can actually be entirely eliminated?
7. When does a positive attitude become tyrannical? 63 Can't a generally-positive person also achieve "intimacy and connection"? "Do humans connect best when their spirits are up?" 66 Are you good at detecting "companions in misery"? 67 (And is that another way of describing most existentialists?)
8. Do you agree with Unamuno and Brene Brown that it requires strength to be vulnerable? 69 What's an example of that?
9. "Joy and hope need not be bright-sided... Sadness is not the opposite of happiness." 71 Comment?
10. [MoL] What do you think of MacBeth's soliloquy? 38
11. What do you think of Douglas Adams's "ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything?" And what do you make of the answer appearing on the page it appears on? 42
12. Is life a problem in any sense? 43 Comment?: "Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced." Kierkegaard
13. What do you think of Schopenhauer and his philosophy? 48-50
14. Is commitment the key to authentic existence? 53 Is this what WJ meant by "the solid meaning of life"? (See the sidebar)

Just a friendly reminder: commenting on the assigned material in the discussion thread prior to class is how you earn participation credit, which could redound to your benefit when final grades are assigned. More importantly, though, it's the best way to prepare for class discussion and sustained learning. You don't have to respond to my questions, if you can come up with relevant comments unassisted. But if you find them helpful, please do... preferably at least 24 hours before class, if possible.

Final report presentations

 Starting Oct 20 you can indicate your preference (in the comments' space of this post) for the topic and date of your report presentation. It can be on any relevant topic of your choice that you can relate to the reading assignments (required or recommended) on the corresponding date. Presentations will begin on the 27th. We'll do two presentations per class, planning to finish before the exam on Dec 1. I'll give you a free base or two on the scorecard if you volunteer to present on the 27th.

Take a look ahead at the coming syllabus assignments (reprinted below). Scan the assigned texts and indicate your date/topic preference in the comments section below accordingly. You do not have to cover everything, just anything you can plausibly relate to something in that day's assigned/recommended material. Also scan the lists of recommended books in the right sidebar, to see if you would like to use any of them as a basis for your report. If the library does not have the text(s) you choose, go to the circulation desk and request via inter-library loan.

Have fun with the project. Be creative. Consider using the podcast/video resources in the library's MakerSpace to prepare your presentation. Plan to present for at least 10 minutes, with the goal of teaching us something we wouldn't have learned merely reading the assignment. Then give us a discussion question or two and lead oiur discussion. Don't stress, you'll get all 25 available points if you fulfill these minimal criteria.

27 - Cafe 10-11. Final report presentations begin - Aaliyah; 

29 - Cafe 12-14

NOV

3 - Dark Intro-Ch1. #RECOMMENDED: MoL preface, ch1

5 - Dark 2. #RECOMMENDED: MoL ch 2 - Connor. Chris-Dark

10 - Dark 3. #RECOMMENDED: MoL 3. Bella-Dark. Jacquez-Dark. Caroline-Dark ch 3--- how grief is experienced in religious versus a non religious perspectives

12 - Dark 4. #RECOMMENDED: MoL 4 - Marissa-MoL ch3 -- the eclipse of meaning/waiting for godot; Erick-Dark chapter 4: A different way to see depression

17 - Dark 5. Nicholas; Natalie-MoL ch4; Jake S-MoL 

19 - Your choice (see recommended texts in the sidebar) - Jake K-Notes from Underground Dostoevsky; Brent, Haidt's "The Righteous Mind"; "The WEIRD Search for Meaning"

24 - Final report presentations conclude: Gin- "Being and Time by Heidegger. It's a dense read." [Ya think?]

Common ground

Questions NOV 3

Night Vision by Mariana Allesandri (Dark) Intro-Ch1. RECOMMENDED: A Very Short Introduction to the Meaning of Life by Terry Eagleton (MoL) preface, ch 1

1. Did any of you happen to attend Mariana Allesandri's Lyceum lecture in 2024? (see below*) If so, thoughts? Or any thoughts on the Sidelines account? Or the videos?**
2. Do you also feel as though you’ve been raised on “a diet of light” associated with “everything good”? Has that diet been palatable? Do you share Mariana’s temperament and frustration, and her wish to “see in the dark”? Or do you find light an appropriate symbol of enlightenment, reason, and good temper? 
3. Are you thinking differently about Plato’s cave, after reading Mariana’s version? What does the sun in that allegory mean to you? 4 Or the puppeteers? 
4. Mariana says she’s angry “genetically” (when she was here she said anger is her “jam”) and “sad most of the time” 5… Can you relate? If so, is that something you want to change about yourself? Or are you comfortable with it, reconciled to it, or aggressively committed to it? More broadly, do you want to be happy? Can a chronically angry and sad person even be happy?
5. Are you an Eeyore, a Tigger, a Rabbit, a Pooh, …? Do you recoil from positivity?
6. One may resent a sol-centric worldview, but in fact the sun IS (to quote Eric Idle) “the source of all our power” etc. And as we noted the other day, Carl Sagan was right: we ARE “starstuff contemplating the stars... a way for the cosmos to know itself,” products of the cosmic light show. Light IS “our savior,” no? So why isn’t Allesandri’s attraction to the dark side perverse and nihilistic? Why isn’t her attitude “ungrateful” and “self-indulgent”? 7-8 [Let me note: I spent a lot of time with Mariana when she visited. She was pleasant, amiable, delightful, in no way presenting as an Eeyore. So we’re talking mostly about an internal mood, not in most instances a demonstratively uncongenial and anti-social demeanor.]
7. Should positively-tempered people just concede that darkness is a (not THE) human condition for some of us? 9 Haven't the existentialists taught us not to make sweeping generalizations about human nature and the human condition? Should they not then make alliance with the pragmatic pluralists who acknowledge a wide variety of legitimate ways of being human?
8. Is it stigmatizing to name anxiety an “epidemic” or view it as symptomatic of mental illness or affliction? 
9. How would you distinguish “toxic positivity” from healthy-mindedness (or healthy-mindedness from reasonable cheerfulness)? 10 If you’re not anxious, does that imply that you’re not “paying attention”?
10. Mariana found “love at first sight” with Existentialism. Do you share her characterization of existentialists on p.12?
11. Have you read Ehrenreich or Burkeman? 13* If you ever contract a terminal illness, will you resent being told to “chin-up” and “look on the bright side”? How about Wendell Berry? 14 Do you keep a gratitude journal? Or do you ever say to yourself, as the often-sad Kurt Vonnegut did, “if this isn’t nice I don’t know what is?” 
12.  Should women study philosophy, precisely because their numbers are low and their male counterparts so often are jerks? Should anyone ever have to justify their approach to philosophy as “real”? 17
13. Is Plato’s “charioteer” unhelpful? Based on Mariana’s intra-familial self-disclosure, does she have an anger-management problem? 21
14.  Are the Stoics unhelpful, with respect to managing anger? Or Aristotle? Or the “view from above”? Or Mr. Rogers? 22f. What do you think of “Broicism”? 26
15. Was Lorde right about anger, progress, and change? 29
16. Can repressed anger manifest in physical symptoms? 32
17. What would have happened to the Jan. 6 rioters if they’d been Black, or immigrants? 34
18. Would you add anything to the taxonomy of the varieties of anger? 37
19. Have you ever suffered epistemic injustice? How’d you respond? 43 
20. [MoL] When he was here, John Kaag agreed with my characterization of Terry Eagleton as "clever" (not necessarily in a good way). What do you think?
21. Regarding the dedication to "Oliver": Why would the question of life's meaning be "embarrassing"?
22. What do you think of the story of Bertrand Russell and the taxi driver? Why shouldn't philosophers be expected to have something to say concerning "what it's all about"? 28
23. Is the question of meaning, or of Being, just a ponderous way of saying 'Wow!'? If it's a valid question for poets and mystics, why not for (non-poet/mystic) philosophers? 3
24. If we knew the meaning of life, would life then be devoid of meaning? 9 Would we cease to "meditate on our being in the world"? 13 Do those who seek meaning already possess it? 29
25. Are Americans still "chronically up-beat," compared at least to Brits? 11
26. Have religion, culture, and sexuality really become "less central to public life"? 20
27. What are "chiropractors of the psyche"? 24 Why is the quest to find oneself "tiresome"? 
28. Is sport (or gambling on it) "now the opium of the people"? 26
29. Eagleton can't remember Monty Python's meaning. Check the sidebar, it's there. What do you think?

*MTSU Philosophy Department hosts annual Lyceum lecture series with Mariana Alessandri

DeAsia Powell, Contributing writer • September 29, 2024


The MTSU Philosophy Department held their annual Applied Philosophy Lyceum lecture series 

on Sept. 27, 2024. (Photo by DeAsia Powell)

The Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies hosted Mariana Alessandri Friday at its annual lecture series lyceum, “The Upside of Anxiety: Kierkegaard on Feeling Better About Feeling Bad.”

Since 1992, the Philosophy Department held a lecture series devoted to lectures on Applied Philosophy. Lyceum pays tribute to Aristotle’s school of philosophy, founded in 334 B.C. The department intends to bring philosophical insight to all students interested in the concepts. They achieve this by stimulating private reflection and the human practice of thinking broadly on an array of applied philosophical topics.

“We’re thrilled with the variety of speakers and topics we’ve been able to sponsor,” said Mary Magada-Ward, the philosophy department chair. “Students come out just to hear the topics. Topics covered in this lecture have ranged from topics of love and relationship to environmental ethics.”

This year, the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies hosted Alessandri, an author and associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Motivated by educating others on feeling better about their bad feelings, Alessandri came to MTSU to share her perspective on “anxiety,” a mental illness 1-of-3 college students battle.

In the lecture, she discussed redeeming humans from always feeling broken due to dark moods of anxiety, anger, depression and sadness. She mentioned shame and feeling bad for having anxiety or depression. 

Alessandri aimed to encourage others to look at society in the dark, from a dimmer light, to actually see it for what it is. She felt that when people look at anxiety from a light–everyone is supposed to be happy all the time–perspective, it makes the world look terrible.

She suggested the concept of existentialism. Alessandri said the human condition is holding hands through rough moments and human suffering, not shaming oneself and others for having moods and feeling emotions.

Phil Oliver, Associate Professor of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, like other department officials, feels the lecture helped students understand sadness.

“This helped students think they’re not broken because they have anxiety, that it’s human, and if you can see that you’re not broken, you can learn from being anxious and being human,” said Oliver.

In addition to her perspective, Alessandri drew from her book, “Night Vision: Seeing Ourselves Through the Dark Moods,” and used the findings of philosopher Seren Kierkegaard to defend her perspective. In her book, she cited philosophers in every chapter and countered it with existentialist philosophers to help her see the mood in the dark.

Alessandri said she was inspired to write this book after struggling to stay positive and wanting to live, to help others live. After an abundance of demands her peers had for hearing her speak about this unusual topic, she decided to lecture on it at MTSU to college students. 

Her interest in philosophy grew from finding others in the field who were willing to think the way she did without ridiculing her.

“It felt welcome to be able to think deeply,” said Alessandri.

She said she liked talking to others about dark moods because it felt emotionally honest, and gave advice to everyone who battles anxiety and other dark moods.

“We’re not broken, just human,” said Alessandri.

Students and faculty attended the annual Applied Philosophy Lyceum on Sept. 27, 2024. (Photo by DeAsia Powell)

Teachers and students engaged in deep questioning of the philosopher’s perspectives and concepts. The audience generally enjoyed the lyceum and discussion.

“In the most profound sense, the absurdist in me is happy to learn about a speaker in philosophy who embraces the thought of Kierkegaard,” said Sneh Gandhi, a junior philosophy and English major.

The lyceum audience included philosophy students, professors, the College of Liberal Arts Dean Leah Lyons and Magada-Ward, eager to hear Alessandri’s perspective. Lyons was especially delighted with the event turnout.

“The Philosophy Lyceum offered our campus the opportunity to see a common issue in our society–anxiety–through a clearer lens, a lens that invites us to think more deeply about the human condition,” said Lyons. “This is at the heart of a Humanities education–thinking critically about our world and our place in it, so I am pleased that our Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies invited Dr. Alessandri to our campus. I am equally pleased that this Philosophy Lyceum was so well-attended.”

**

Claude on Haidt

For what it’s worth:

“In The Righteous Mind he describes a move from partisan liberalism toward centrism. A PolitiFact interview puts it as moving from being a self-described liberal to a centrist, and one reviewer also takes centrist to be how Haidt identifies himself. In a 2011 NPR segment he said the people writing to him were mostly centrists or liberal Christians rather than conservatives…

Jason Collins, a sympathetic reviewer, wrote that Haidt's swing toward conservatism makes him disinclined to critique the conservative moral foundations. He added that Haidt applies little substantive judgment to the merits of those foundations. The usual criticism is that his framing is friendlier to conservative intuitions than to progressive ones. Others read him as a liberal trying to enrich liberalism: one review says he seeks to enrich liberalism with a deeper awareness of human nature…

In the study with Jesse Graham and Brian Nosek, participants took the Moral Foundations Questionnaire as themselves and also as they imagined liberals or conservatives would. In his words from the book, moderates and conservatives were the most accurate in either role, and liberals were the least accurate, especially those who called themselves "very liberal". The biggest errors came when liberals answered care and fairness items while pretending to be conservatives, because they assumed conservatives would disagree. His explanation, as reported in the New York Times, is that liberals put little weight on the group-protecting foundations. Conservatives, who weigh all the foundations, often understand liberal views better than liberals understand conservative ones.

Two caveats. Critics have questioned the study's sample and the moral foundations framework more broadly. And the finding concerns accuracy in predicting the other side's survey answers, not who is more empathetic in general.”

Questions OCT 29

 Happy almost-Halloween! Feel free to come costumed and with treats (for a free base on the scorecard).

I'll not wear my Mad Scientist outfit to class, I'd be blind. Anyway, the Mad Anti-scientist in contemporary America is far scarier and more prevalent.

1. Does Sartre’s “eyes of the least-favorited” approach 271 remind you of John Rawls, or of Social Darwinism in reverse?
2. Do you agree that "an ideal does not become any less inspiring just because it is impossible to stick to"? 272
3. Must anti-imperial revolution inevitably be violent? Can such violence be justified as "a Nietzschean act of self-creation"? 274
4. "One does not imprison Voltaire," de Gaulle supposedly said. 276 Comment?
5. Did Du Bois have greater claim to "double consciousness" than Hegel or Sartre? 277 Have you read Baldwin, Ellison, Wright, or other Black authors who were contemporaries of the Existentialists? Were they Existentialists too?
6. Will "tradwives" rediscover de Beauvoir, as Kate Millett did? What will stop them? 281
7. After reading Yalom's When Nietzsche Wept, what's your opinion of existential psychotherapy? 282 [If you liked it, you might also like Yalom's The Schopenhauer Cure.]
8. What do you think of the conformist non-conformist men in the gray flannel suits? 283Are they still with us?
9. Have you read Growing Up Absurd, Eichmann in Jerusalem, or any of the other books mentioned on 284? Comments? What do you think of Norman Mailer's version of Existentialism? 285-6
10. Is Carnap's Anglo/Continental distinction still helpful? 287
11. Have you read Iris Murdoch? Colin Wilson? 287-92 Are you also "against dryness" in philosophy? Are too many philosophers out of touch with "the density of life"?  Do we need another counter-culture to arise?
12. Is it possible for a philosopher to be too human? 293
13. Was Philip Roth right? 294
14. Is the Pope fallible? 295
15. Is phenomenology more radical than existentialism? 298
16. Can death really not be prepared for? Is it an alien intruder? Would immortality be unbearable? 299
17. Is having had “something rather than nothing” a mere consolation? 300 Or is it a great privilege?
18. Was it bad faith on S’s & deB’s parts to mourn only for the “true Camus” of their youth? 301Who gets to declare the true version of anyone, if there even is such a thing?
19. Why do you think Jaspers found the groundless ocean so liberating? 303
20. “…the single documented example… of Heidegger actually doing something nice.” 305 “…a dreaming boy… with his eyes closed.” 307 Comment?
21.  Does typing spoil writing? 308
22. Is it possible to think about nothing (or Nothing) while fully present to existence? 309
23. Was the “vanilla Sartre” really inferior to the earlier version? 310
24. Does deB’s “splendid” comment remind you of Dr. Seuss? (“Don’t be sad she’s gone, be happy she was here.”)
25. Can you square deB’s “absolute integrity” and “moral authority” with her “years of heavy drinking”? 312
26. Do you ever feel deB’s “childish amazement”? 313
27. What do you make of the last scene of “Jackson’s Dilemma”? 316
28. Any comment on any of the films mentioned on 318? Are the Singularitarians who predict the “inevitable” rise of computer dominance in bad faith?
29. “To think is to confine yourself to a single thought.” 320 Comment?
30. Was Sartre “full of character”? 322 Is Sartrean anarchy worth emulating? 323
31. Are computers bad phenomenologists? What can we learn from “The Machine Stops”? 325
32. Are people more interesting than ideas? 326 Should philosophy generally be more biographical than it has tended to be?

Algorithmic Erasure of the Individual, OR…?

Computational social scientist, Sandra Matz, discusses what is at stake when we outsource to AI the very things that make us human. Can we expand our humanity by giving the AI the right incentives? 



 

Questions OCT 27

 Sign up for FINAL report presentations, beginning today with Aaliyah; ... PIZZA PARTY after class, JUB 202

1. Merleau-Ponty's happy childhood was followed by a conventional academic career, and the view that his [our] particular nature and history "does not restrict my access to the world [but is] my means of communication with it." 229 Does he sound too sane and sensible to be an existentialist in the cohort of Sartre & Co.? Do you agree with him?
2. M-P says "a philosopher's thought is merely a way of making explicit his hold upon the world." William James said our philosophy is "our individual way of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos." Are they saying the same thing? Do you agree with either/both? [and see #12 below]
3. Another connection with WJ: "He was influenced by gestalt theory... experience comes to us as a whole rather than as separate bits..." 230 WJ said (contrary to Lockean empiricism) that experience flows, is a more or less continuous "stream" and does not present itself to us "chopped up in bits." Is that how your experience seems to you?
4. M-P says "we cannot understand our experience if we don't think of ourselves as overgrown babies." 231 How so? Does this imply that we should philosophize more about childhood, in order to address our adult questions?
5. In light of proprioception, do we too rigidly draw the boundaries of selfhood at the skin? 233 Is a self really a relational composite of multiple extensions of self, via automobiles, tools, human relationships, etc.?
6. Is solipsistic speculation about the reality of others ridiculous? 234
7. Do you like M-P's "fold in the world" metaphor of consciousness?
   or the "chiasm"? 235
8. "I am made of the world's own stuff." 236 That Carl Sagan cosmic connection again. Have too many philosophers historically failed to make this connection, urging instead a diremption between human consciousness and the world? Descartes obviously, with his res cogitans only contingently related to res extensa... but also his post-Existentialism "Theorist" heirs, Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Félix Guattari, Jacques Lacan, Paul de Man, et al?
9. "M-P had a flair for the boogie-woogie... he was also their best dancer." 237 Nietzsche had written: “I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his art, and-finally-also his only piety, his 'divine service.'” Comment?
10. "It was sometimes difficult to be a philosopher's daughter." Why should that be, beyond the possibility that a teacher (like M-P's daughter's) might draw an unflattering comparison in class?
11. "...philosophy and life were the same to him." 238 But there's more to life than philosophy, right? And the same should be said, shouldn't it, for anything we might subsitute for philosophy?
12. Contrary to Sartre, "M-P was not followed down the street by lobsters; h had no fear of chestnut trees... for him, looking and being looked at are what weave us into the world and give us our full humanity... Their difference was one of temperament." 239 -40 Comment? 
13. Is M-P's "the most attractive description of philosophy [you've] ever read"? [I like WJ's "unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly" myself, coupled with that statement about the push and pressure of the cosmos mentioned in #2 above.]
14. Are we still "between hell and reason" in the sense Camus had in mind? 242 Are you optimistic or hopeful we'll move in the right direction?
15. Would Hannah Arendt find us guilty of "unimaginable stupidity"? 245 Do you think American ideals are bereft of "noble possibility"?
16. Was Alyosha right? Was Camus? 246, 257
17. "Could you be friends with someone if you disagreed with them politically?" 249, 258
18. How much should "future people" matter in the present, ethically speaking? 250, 260 What's your view of Effective Altruism and Long-termism?
19. Is fascism in style now? 251
20. Does being committed to a party mean "never having to think again"? 252
21. What do you think of America's "duck and cover" '60s? 253
22. Are philosophers "people who are wakeful while others sleep"? 264 Were they ever? [Have you been to a philoosphy conference?]
23. Is a "firm identity statement" always an "act of bad faith"? Is it bad faith not to be bothered to lose a friend? 265 Was Sartre good? 268