wyas yuor biran dcevies you

Your brain is not malevolent. At least, scientists are pretty sure it’s not malevolent. It does not seem to have anything against you…not personally, anyway. Your brain is adapted to survive. Sometimes survival depends on getting you to believe false things. For instance, red things are probably dangerous, along with things that slither; and a good meal now is more important than a good meal next week (since, otherwise you may not be here next week).

But this survival strategy doesn’t translate easily and simply into abstract concepts like long-term planning, especially when it comes to money or relationships. If someone offers you a choice between $50 now and $300 next year, you may be tempted to take the $50 now, especially if you are barely scraping by. But it is not clear that you could invest $50 and turn it into $300 by next year. So, delaying gratification seems prudent.

Similarly, if you graduate college, your income is likely to be somewhere between $35,000 and $50,000, whereas if you spend an extra two to three years in graduate school (getting an MBA, law degree, finance, accounting, etc.) your income is likely to be much, much higher… even in the 6 figure range. What are those three years worth to you? More than thousands of dollars?

A writer from Cracked.com (associated with the perrenial classic Cracked Magazine) has compiled a list of ways your brain deceives you. So, take note, beware, end the deception. But don’t be too hard on your brain. We’re pretty sure it’s not malevolent…

http://www.cracked.com/article_18388_6-logical-fallacies-that-cost-you-money-every-day_p1.html

The moral: delay gratification.

Lecture by Former Death Row Inmate

The Social and Behavioral Sciences Division and Arts & Assemblies invite you to a lecture by Juan Melendez April 6^th, 7 pm in Wilson Lecture Hall.  Juan Melendez spent nearly 18 years on Florida’s death row for a crime he did not commit. He was released with evidence of innocence on January 3, 2002.

 Mr. Melendez’s presentation takes approximately 50 minutes, followed by Q & A.  Please encourage students to attend! 

Click below to see the trailer for a documentary about his life:

http://nylatino.bside.com/2009/films/juanmelendez6446_nylatino2009

 

Why Study Philosophy? Some Perspectives

Coming soon, I will post an excerpt on the value of philosophy from a forthcoming book. Until then, here are some classic philosophical writings on the value of philosophy:

Epicurus, “Letter to Menoeceus”  http://www.epicurus.net/en/menoeceus.html

Immanuel Kant, “What is Enlightenment?”  http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/kant.html

Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (especially chapter XV)  http://www.ditext.com/russell/russell.html

John Dewey, “The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy”  http://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/Dewey/Dewey_1917b.html

Summer and Fall Philosophy Courses at YHC!

“Can we actually ‘know’ the universe? My God, it’s hard enough to find your way around in Chinatown. The point, however, is: Is there anything out there? And why?  And must they be so noisy?” (Woody Allen)

Summer:

    * Introduction to Ethics, M-F, 1-2:40 PM, June 14 – July 16

Fall:

    * Critical Thinking – NEW COURSE! – MWF, 1 PM

This course introduces basic techniques of good reasoning. Students will learn to (i) identify the features of good and bad arguments, both deductive and inductive, (2) eliminate vagueness, ambiguity, and extraneous material from arguments, (3) identify and avoid formal and informal fallacies, and (4) construct a clear argumentative essay. Content includes analogical, causal, probabilistic, statistical, and scientific reasoning.

   *  Introduction to Philosophy MWF, 8 AM

   *  Introduction to Philosophy, MWF, 9 AM

   * Introduction to Ethics, T/R, 8 AM

   * Introduction to Ethics, T/R, 9:30 AM

Faith is No Place for Rhetoric

I recently read an article called, “Faith = Illness: Why I’ve had it with religious tolerance,” by Douglas Rushkoff. Rushkoff is graphic novelist, a media studies instructor at the New School University, a documentary filmmaker, and a prolific commentator on culture and media’s role in shaping cultural values. His writings earned him the Neil Postman award for Career Achievement for Public Intellectual Activity.

I have a lot of respect for intelligent, clear-minded individuals who voice their concerns about society in new and captivating ways, especially those clever enough to make money at it. I lose that respect, however, when the medium for their message overpowers and undermines any substance the message might have.

Any good “intellectual” (whatever that means these days) can foul up, so this response to Rushkoff is not personal; it is simply a matter of form. I will argue that Rushkoff’s article is little more than an unprincipled string of weakly or fallaciously supported claims. In addition, I will argue that his liberty to express his distaste publically and mine to respond is the very heart of the concept of rational “tolerance” espoused by so many classical liberal thinkers (Mill, Kant, Jefferson). But this means that the very rational values that permit Rushkoff to rant about the dangers of religion are the very values that prevent people like Rushkoff from eliminating religious discourse from public life (however fanatical or irrational).

Discussions of “religious tolerance” raise the hair on the back of my neck as well as my blood pressure. Many times I find myself tempted to share Rushkoff’s sentiment that, “I’ve had it with religious tolerance.” Tempted, that is, until I remember what “tolerance” really means.

Rushkoff makes four central claims: God does not exist; some religious beliefs “alter our ability to contend with reality”; the Bible is unreliable as anything but metaphor; and, finally, as a metaphor, the Bible’s point is that we should be freed from belief systems.

As for “God does not exist,” Rushkoff implies that the idea of God is a function of our imagination. Rushkoff offers no reasons here, but simply points it out as a matter of course. Perhaps he means the idea of “God” is something of a coping-mechanism, as Freud and Marx argued. He doesn’t say exactly, but it seems that the non-existence of God is fundamental to his belief system. Since there are no reasons given here, I take it his intent is not to convince his audience, but to simply express his position on the matter.

With respect to “some religious beliefs alter our ability to contend with reality,” Rushkoff is more forthcoming: “The Bible contradicts itself all over the place”; “…the myths of the Bible had already been understood as mythology by the pre-Biblical cultures from which many of them came”; “the Bible comments on its own stories, as stories, directly! On numerous occasions, the narration asks its hearers whether they get the joke.” But Rushkoff says we can ignore all these apparently obvious reasons because, most importantly:

…for the Torah’s first hearers…, all those jokes really were jokes. They understood that Jacob’s sons weren’t really the fathers of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, but parodies – racist parodies, at that – of the qualities that had come to be associated with each of these existing groups. They understood that the “plagues” against Egypt were literary desecrations of the Egyptian gods. (Blood desecrates the Nile, which was a god. Locusts desecrate the corn, a god, and so on.)

Should we believe Rushkoff, here? I know of no biblical scholars who espouse this view–at least not as extremely as Rushkoff. And even if some readers have used the biblical narratives to support racism or sexism, there seem many more plausible hermeneutical methods that would reject those interpretations. In addition, Rushkoff offers no hermeneutical framework for his interpretation. His opinion is not relevant here; systematic textual and historical studies are.

But aside from this biased take on Scripture, the primary mistake Rushkoff makes is called a “false dilemma.” Either the Bible should be taken literally (and has no further use) or it should be taken metaphorically (and has no further use). Most scholars accept a bit of both literalness and metaphor, depending on the text, and sometimes in the same passage (David, the least of his family, becomes the king of the Hebrews, a metaphor foreshadowing the suffering Messiah from Nazereth who would conquer sin).

But even the most extreme interpretive framework, under which the Bible is pure metaphor, does not entail that it serves no edifying purpose. In a letter, C. S. Lewis wrote:

Dyson and Tolkien showed me… that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn’t mind it at all… I liked it very much and was mysteriously moved by it… I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp tho’ I could not say in cold prose ‘what it meant.’ Now the story of Christ is simple a true myth…. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets … while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call ‘real things.’

But the real worry in Rushkoff’s piece is his use of “tolerance.” Tolerance means that you are willing to live with someone who disagrees with you. It does not mean that you come to accept or believe what someone else believes; it does not mean you have to like it; it does not mean you have to treat it with praise or political correctness. It does mean you have to respect it as, potentially, rational.

This goes back to my article on the principle of chairty. I could be wrong and so could you. So, if we disagree, the most practical thing for me is not to beleaguer you with my beliefs or try to deceive you into believing as I do, or even for us to discuss differences among our beliefs. The most practical, fruitful, powerful thing for me to do is simply present my best case and ask you to present yours. If you refuse, our conversation ends. If we do not find one another’s case convincing, we continue to disagree.

So, how do we deal with nasty, brutish, irrational religious people? The same way we deal with nasty, brutish, irrational non-religious people: challenge them. If they refuse our challenge, ignore them or show others the rational errors of their ways.  I hate to break it to Rushkoff, but he also has a belief system. It includes claims like, “God does not exist” and “The Bible is only metaphor.” In addition, he thinks that people who have a different belief system are wrong–sometimes morally wrong. Does this mean that, in rejecting religious tolerance, Rushkoff is just as fundamentalist and intolerant as many of the biblical literalists he has in mind? If so, he is the butt of his own joke.

Science Lecture at Young Harris

Discovering the Forgotten City

Of El Purgatorio, Peru

 

Free lecture sponsored by the Math/Science Division of the Arts & Assemblies Committee of Young Harris College.

Thursday, March 18 at 5:00 PM in Wilson Lecture Hall

Speakers:  Melissa Vogel, PhD of Clemson University & Susan Mowery of Penn St.

Recent investigations into the relatively unknown Casma polity reveal an emerging power that had previously been ignored in discussions of Andean prehistory.  Evidence from the capital city of El Purgatorio indicates that this coastal polity claimed far-reaching ties and interactions with other contemporary cities, including long-distance trade of both goods and ideas.  The Casma incorporated foreign influences into their material culture while continuing to assert their own cultural identity.  Project El Purgatorio examines both the archeological and bioarcheological evidence for the occupation of this capital city and the Casma culture in general during this important period in Peruvian prehistory.

For more information contact Linda G. Jones, PhD in the Biology Dept. at 706-379-5352 or lgjones@yhc.edu

Principles of Reasoning 3: The Law of Excluded Middle

Philosophy Professor: “Is claim X true or false?”

Student: “Neither. Or, rather, both.”

PP: “What do you mean?”

S: “Well, it’s sorta true and sorta false, depending on how you look at it.”

PP: “So, if you look at it Way A, it could be true, and if you look at it Way B, it could be false.”

S: “Yes. I think so.”

PP: “Good. So you agree that Way A is different from Way B?”

S: “Yes.”

PP: “So, if I told you that claim X just means what claim A means, would you say it is true or false?”

S: “True.”

PP: “Not both or neither?”

S: “Not if you just mean X on Way A.”

The Law of Excluded Middle is a principle of reasoning that says, for any claim and its negation (X and not-X), at least one of them must be true. The idea is that X, once it has been clearly specified, is never kind of true, sort of true, more true or less true; it is either true or false.

Examples:

“This is a cat.” Here we may need to distinguish “house cat” from “jungle cat,” “my cat” from “your cat,” a “feline” from a “pole cat” (skunk), etc. Nevertheless, once we make these distinctions, remaining claim is either true or false; nothing in-between.

“The barn is red.” Here, again, we may need to make fine distinctions between shades of red, such as mauve, garnet, rose, etc. But once we specify a shade, we can be sure that our claim is either true or false.

“2 + 2 = 5.” Unless by “2″ you mean something eccentric, like “cardigan” or “squid,”  this one should be obvious.

“Barack Obama is caucasian.” This one is a bit trickier. There may be controversy over how to define “caucasian.” If you simply mean white-skinned, the claim is clearly false. If you mean geneologically descended from the Russian Caucuses (the actual origin of the term), the claim is also false. If you mean, “not of African descent,” the claim is false, at least on his father’s side. Nevertheless, Australian aborigines are caucasian despite their lack of white skin and lack of descent from the Russian Caucuses. So, we may have to jump some difficult hurdles in defining “caucasion.” But, nontheless, once we settle on a definition, Obama will either meet that description or he will not.

This principle is useful in staving-off vague and unuseful language in our writing. It helps us achieve a greater degree of precision in our claims aobut reality. It forces us to say exactly what we mean, and gives us clear direction as to how to respond to objections that miss the point or that are off-topic. The principle tells us that, for every claim, when properly qualified, our response should be acceptance or rejection based on the available evidence, or suspension of judgment given the lack of sufficient evidence. But never both or “kinda-sorta.”

Could any claim be “sort of” true, even after we clearly define our terms? What about future claims? For instance: It will be raining on June 26, 2050. Presumably June 26, 2050 does not exist, so there is no truth now about its weather conditions. But it seems one of the claims “It is raining” or “It is not raining” must be true of that date. Yet, since that date does not exist, is neither true?

The answer is simpler if we assume, as many physicists and philosophers argue, that all times exist. The future, while not accessible to our conscious awareness, nonetheless exists as a metaphysical reality, with future-you intact and doing whatever present-you will be doing at that time. In this strange scenario, there is a matter of fact now about whether it is raining on that future date–though present-we won’t know until we get there.

(from www.foundalis.com)

But what do we do with the more intuitive possibility that the future does not exist? Perhaps for claims about non-existent entities, we must first carefully define our realm of discourse. For instance, do hobbits live in the Shire? Well, strictly speaking, there is no Shire or hobbits, so no. But in the Tolkein’s Middle Earth, the answer is yes. The claim: “Unicorns have one horn,” is true, as long as we’re talking about the definition of mythical creatures and not listing biological taxa.

So, on the assumption that the future does not exist, it remains true that, on June 26, 2050, it will either be raining or it will not–whether any humans are there to see it or not. If Earth ceases to exist before then, then it won’t be raining. But since this future date does not now exist, it is as inappropriate to make a claim about it as it is to talk about hobbits or unicorns as if they were fauna. It would be sort of like saying–the following sentence is false: