Sunday, August 30, 2009

Truth

I used to empathize too much with television shows. I found, and I was smart enough to find that there was a stock script between sitcoms in the early 1990's when I was growing up. In such a stock script, a young adult or some other character would lie just to have people like him or her. At the end of the episode, after weird consequences of the lie happened, of course the character is caught in the lie and has to say, "I just lied so that you would like me." I have, of course, no idea where this fits in except to say that it's an interesting experience.

I don't mean to sound cynical when I say that despite its flaws, Judaism is an incredible source of education. I see education as leading almost necessarily to progress. If we put a super-student characteristics list together, we might point to an Asian-American's experience in high school. We would then ask, what is it that makes him a great student?

1. Extreme parenting
2. The emphasis on individuality
3. Responsibility
4. (Perhaps) the ability to speak a different language
5. A community base to emphasize learning
6. An emphasis on argument within the community
7. The ability, even within communities, to say no to peer pressure

Malcolm Gladwell's article on Stanley Kaplan, who invented the Kaplan course, states that parenting is a uniting factor between high test scores for SAT.

Looking at other immigrant populations who came to America that I have seen, such as Russian, Bosnian, Cambodian, African, and other Europeans, I cannot help but feel that this is the case.

Alternatively, the high scorers in my high school who were not immigrants without question always had strong parenting in their households.

The cool part about all of this is that Judaism builds this sort of structure more or less naturally from culture and traditions.

Personally, I consider the limited brains that I do have to be mostly dependent on the seeding of my parents.


People talk about innate intelligence, and I think that is a fair caveat. After all, individuals who are born into orphanages grow up to be geniuses, like Isaac Newton. I think education is more important because even if we could count-predict-built the high-speed neuron functioning of finding a random genius, the rest of us still have to learn somehow.



Works Cited:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/12/17/011217crat_atlarge

Definition of Truth

truth

[trooth] Show IPA ,
–noun, plural truths [troothz, trooths] Show IPA .
1. the true or actual state of a matter: He tried to find out the truth.
2. conformity with fact or reality; verity: the truth of a statement.
3. a verified or indisputable fact, proposition, principle, or the like: mathematical truths.
4. the state or character of being true.
5. actuality or actual existence.
6. an obvious or accepted fact; truism; platitude.
7. honesty; integrity; truthfulness.
8. (often initial capital letter) ideal or fundamental reality apart from and transcending perceived experience: the basic truths of life.
9. agreement with a standard or original.
10. accuracy, as of position or adjustment.
11. Archaic. fidelity or constancy.
12. in truth, in reality; in fact; actually: In truth, moral decay hastened the decline of the Roman Empire.

Origin:
bef. 900; ME treuthe, OE trēowth (c. ON tryggth faith). See true, -th 1


truthless, adjective
truth⋅less⋅ness, noun


1. fact. 2. veracity. 7. sincerity, candor, frankness. 10. precision, exactness.


1. falsehood. 2, 4, 7. falsity.

Truth

[trooth] Show IPA
–noun
So⋅journ⋅er [soh-jur-ner, soh-jur-ner] Show IPA , (Isabella Van Wagener), 1797?–1883, U.S. abolitionist, orator, and women's-rights advocate, born a slave.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
Cite This Source Link To truth
truth (trōōth)
n. pl. truths (trōōthz, trōōths)
  1. Conformity to fact or actuality.
  2. A statement proven to be or accepted as true.
  3. Sincerity; integrity.
  4. Fidelity to an original or standard.
    1. Reality; actuality.
    2. often Truth That which is considered to be the supreme reality and to have the ultimate meaning and value of existence.

[Middle English trewthe, loyalty, from Old English trēowth; see deru- in Indo-European roots.]
Synonyms: These nouns refer to the quality of being in accord with fact or reality. Truth is a comprehensive term that in all of its nuances implies accuracy and honesty: "We seek the truth, and will endure the consequences" (Charles Seymour).
Veracity is adherence to the truth: "Veracity is the heart of morality" (Thomas H. Huxley).
Verity often applies to an enduring or repeatedly demonstrated truth: "beliefs that were accepted as eternal verities" (James Harvey Robinson).
Verisimilitude is the quality of having the appearance of truth or reality: "merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative" (W.S. Gilbert).
Truth, Sojourner 1797?-1883.


(click for larger image in new window)
American abolitionist and feminist. Born into slavery, she escaped in 1827 and became a leading preacher against slavery and for the rights of women.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Cite This Source
Word Origin & History

truth
O.E. triewð (W.Saxon), treowð (Mercian) "faithfulness, quality of being true," from triewe, treowe "faithful" (see true). Meaning "accuracy, correctness" is from 1570. Unlike lie (v.), there is no primary verb in Eng. for "speak the truth." Noun sense of "something that is true" is first recorded c.1362.
"Let [Truth] and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter." [Milton, "Areopagitica," 1644]
Truth squad in U.S. political sense first attested 1952. Truthiness "act or quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than those known to be true," catch word popularized in this sense by U.S. comedian Stephen Colbert, declared by American Dialect Society to be "2005 Word of the Year."
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
Cite This Source
Bible Dictionary

Truth

Used in various senses in Scripture. In Prov. 12:17, 19, it denotes that which is opposed to falsehood. In Isa. 59:14, 15, Jer. 7:28, it means fidelity or truthfulness. The doctrine of Christ is called "the truth of the gospel" (Gal. 2:5), "the truth" (2 Tim. 3:7; 4:4). Our Lord says of himself, "I am the way, and the truth" (John 14:6).

Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary
Cite This Source
Idioms & Phrases

truth

In addition to the idioms beginning with truth, also see gospel truth; home truth; moment of truth; naked truth; unvarnished truth.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
Cite This Source

Friday, August 28, 2009

Portfolio 13 - It's a unity issue

http://www.technicianonline.com/viewpoint/it-s-a-unity-issue-1.1823809


It's a unity issue

Jake Goldbas, Staff Columnist

Print this article

Published: Friday, August 28, 2009

Updated: Friday, August 28, 2009

Jake_mug_082809

© 2009 NCSU Student Media

The University has an easy way to improve -- we aren’t utilizing it: the unity of the Triangle itself. There are many benefits to greater unification. Unfortunately, they aren’t always obvious.

For example, the nature of the intentional division between UNC-Chapel Hill and NCSU was the emphasis of one on liberal arts, Carolina, and the other on engineering, State. Despite this difference, the schools share an obvious overlap in the sciences and many other programs.

Unification in this situation means the necessary blur between the schools. UNC students who want to take an engineering course could have access to better instruction over here. Many times this would be the only place to get information on an engineering topic. This same example applies to dozens of other majors.

Two of my friends have utilized the unity of the Triangle to great success. One friend took a basic level Hebrew course at UNC -- the other is taking specialized courses in upper-level economic philosophy. Neither class is offered here.

Too many of us have no idea how to utilize these resources without deep friendships with professors. There are no computer programs to help, and advisers have no recommendations for such programs.

Likewise, but in a different way, if there is a class Carolina and State offer, but have too many students for, having access to more teachers and classes brings down the class sizes. This is an essential point considering the budget cuts and increasing class sizes on campus. Schools that are in the UNC System, such as UNC and North Carolina Central University, already provide this sort of access.

A greater diffusion means students would have the ability to experience other schools. If people have access to more teachers the quality of education would increase.

Small class size is important because students have an easier time learning in those environments.

Additionally, distance courses would invite a sort of inter-campus diffusion.

UNC and Duke University are integral parts of the Triangle, but their significance to the University seems marginal. Most students here will admit that cultural diffusion between these schools from clubs, intramural (intra-Triangle) sports, conferences and various other programs are nonexistent. People who are friends with students from these schools were friends in high school or met through Greek Life programs.

But the biggest thing that both the student-life culture and the classes could benefit from is fun. The nature of more students means that there are people with our interests and specializations at those schools -- schools which are literally across the highway.

NCSU students, professors and faculty need to research these programs. Administrators and professors need to implement student exchange programs immediately. Duke and Carolina already have intricate programs for semester exchanges and intra-institutional classes. We must follow this example.

The InterResidence Council and the Union Activities Board should work toward greater Triangle unity with various interscholastic programs. Clubs and individuals should reach out and act for greater unity.

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And Another Thing 1: Sequel to What's Wrong with a Little Destruction?

Where, praytell, do we draw the line between superstition and science; pseudoscience meets science?

I've got some answers from our basic 100 level science classes (psychology and biology) that I'll reprint on this blog soon. I've also got some basic level Epistemology that I can post on here (hint: it's not Justified True Belief gang!)

Basically we figured out that science and knowledge is/are repeatable, fallible and capable of being proven wrong, and objective. People use Occam's Razor, which states that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. (How does this work for, say, complex explanations that are correct?)

From what I understood about Berkeley, his criticism of science stands pretty firmly. For example, when I ask what gravity is, and you say it's stuff falling to the ground, that's a substitution and not an elaboration of the definition. If we did an identity substitution, that helps out with logic-math, but not necessarily with answers. The sun is not yellow because it is yellow. Gravity is not just stuff falling to the ground.

Berkeley, Spinoza, and Descartes are too close to the edge of superstition. Berkeley believed that things only exist in the mind of God (or us); Descartes rested his entire foundation of knowledge on his faulty proofs of God, and Spinoza created an entire system that is so certain that it pushes the limits of science into pseudoscience: there is no way we could ever know the total objectivity and determinism of his system outside of the mathematics he cherished.

More on this later.

The Road to Hell is paved with Facades

My favorite philosophy, but not necessarily the true one or anything too serious, is the one where we connect everything. This is one of the central reasons that I love Spinoza so much, and subsequently Kant. This belief in the whole thing is called Holism.

Philosophy before the modern period relied significantly on Aristotle. Aristotle has this idea that substance is what is a subject and cannot be said of a subject. "What is called substance most fully, primarlily, and most of all, is what is neither said of any subject nor in any subject--for instance, an individual man or horse. The species in which the things primarily called substances belong are called secondary substances, and so are their genera. An individual man, for instance, belongs in the species man, and animal is the genus of the species; these things, then (for instance, man and animal), are called secondary substances." (Irwin and Fine 3, Aristotle: Introductory Readings).

Spinoza was influenced by both Judaism and Aristotle when he came up with his concept of substance. His concept of substance goes (unmenacingly enough) "By substance I mean that which is in itself and is conceived through itself; that is, that the conception of which does not require the conception of another thing from which it has to be formed." (Translated from the Latin by Samuel Shirley in Baruch Spinoza, The Ethics and Selected Letters (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1982; which was reprinted in Ariew and Watkins Modern Philosophy).

I said "unmenacingly enough" . Substance to Spinoza is God. Later, he writes in the Ethics that substance can be written God or Nature. In fact, Spinoza goes to great lengths to say that God is not anything other than what is real; what to Spinoza is known or can be known. Matthew Stewart comments that Spinoza's work was in order to make God immanent but not transitive. Immanent means that God is everything, and the not transitive part means that God is not between atoms. My atheist friends joke that Christians believe Jesus holds atoms together. Of course they don't really believe that, but there is a problem of the trinity in Christianity, and the problem of extra ideas in Judaism. We have already mentioned in this blog that the fundamental prayer of Judaism is "Hear, Oh Israel, God is one and God is everything." This was invoked during one of the speeches at President Obama's Inauguration last year, by the way (by the Reverend who spoke, I can't remember his name). In saying that God is nature and nothing else, Spinoza intentionally gets rid of all the mumbo jumbo. Unfortunately, a lot of us want to believe in the mumbo jumbo: heaven, angels, fairies, ghosts, trolls-under-bridges, souls, and all of that weird stuff.

Spinoza's idea of holism was part of a lot of people's ideas of holism. Holism means the belief in a greater whole, and Professor Bykova said that holism has the same root word as whole. Bykova said that the German Idealists use this idea of holism. While Bykova did not invoke Spinoza directly, Hegel did when he said that you are either a Spinozist, or you are not a philosopher. Of the German Idealist, Kant, Hegel, Schuller, and Fichte are among the most prominent.

The Kantian system is as regulated if not more regulated than Spinoza's. Spinoza's system is among the most well-organized projects of its kind. Unfortunately it's also the only project of its kind. I think Wittgenstein came close, but I haven't read enough Wittgenstein.

Kant's system is not divided topically, but argumentatively in comparison to Spinoza's Ethics. Spinoza's Ethics is five parts which are supposed to firstly argue his points and secondly lead the reader to enlightenment. The first part has to do with Skepticism and what this world is. Spinoza's substance is a sure answer to any skepticism. There's no way to doubt it after it has been declared. The fifth part is about leading someone to the love of knowledge. So for example, Part One is "Concerning God," Part Two is "Of the Nature and Origin of the Mind," and Part Five is, "Of the Power of the Intellect, or of Human Freedom." Spinoza's system is a marked contrast to Descartes' meditations, which show his personal journey. Spinoza instructed the reader. The Ethics are designed to be persuasive in the way that 2+2=4 is persuasive. I'm not kidding. The method of mathematical argument is based on Euclid and influenced the analytic tradition of philosophy in the United States; subarguments comprise the parts.

Kant's Architectonic is a labyrinth. Architectonic is the exact name of the organization of the book, and I think, but I don't remember exactly, that it was based on Aristotelian styling. I also don't know the reason outside of tradition that Kant would employ (or invent) the Architectonic. Aristotle comes in big later, in the Transcendental Deduction and surrounding areas, because the table of categories is based on Aristotle.

So, it's a fun labyrinth. Outside of that, I don't remember why the Architectonic itself was employed in the Critique of Pure Reason, but for the purpose of argument's sake. Believe it or not, Kant also attempted to be accessible. There is an obvious rise and fall to the philosophical action of the book.

The jewel-piece of the Critique of Pure Reason is The Transcendental Deduction, which is where Kant argues that we have the right to apply the categories to experience. The categories themselves are not as far sweeping as some would like. For example, there's substance (under number 3, Of Relation) and causality, but also ones that no one would really fault Kant for sticking in there even if they weren't a matter of minds and not conforming to reality. Ones that are not controversial are unity and plurality, and negation and limitation. People say, "duh, that comes from minds and not external worlds," but people weren't so sure back then. People aren't so sure about substance and causality these days. Stuff that people would like to be more far sweeping includes God, Angels, and good living. Sorry folks, it's not in the table.

The climax of the work are the Antinomies and Doctrines on Method, which are meant to divide philosophy and science.

Dylan Thomas #34

Let it be known that little live but lies,
Love-lies, and god-lies, and lies-to-please,
Let children know, and old men at their gates,
That this is lies that moans departure,
And this is lies that, after the old men die,
Declare their souls, let children know, live after.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

De Nile ain't just a river in Egypt

We went over, a bit, self-denial, but here is a song by the White Stripes. Why is denial so easy to do? Well I think it's cognitive dissonance all over again. I'm using this theory a lot, but I think it does apply. We'll knock it out with the next set of facts, and the next fad.


In the meantime, cognitive dissonance a la Aronson and Tavris in Mistakes were made but not by me, consider that if presented with two conflicting propositions whereupon a choice must be made, that choice will be fought for harder.

Once you choice something, that choice is going to be justified harder.

People who are superstitious a lot of times get more superstitious when presented with the wrongness of their superstitions, in the book.

People who end up justifying their behaviors have to come up with more and more erratic explanations to explain what seems, even to them, to be erratic behavior. They could never behave erratically, they think. Of course, this is denial.

To me, The Denial Twist is the twist that people have to do when they are in denial.

I've had to do the Denial Twist, and I think that the nature of justification means that it's a perfectly normal, human thing.

The difference is that the White Stripes talk about the way that a woman could be so cold. The song is addressed to a man who is the brunt of some serious weird abuse. The end of the song says, "You were hearing a different song."

Denial is the facade we give to ourselves. The problem is that it doesn't feel like denial at all.

I like the imagery in comic books of the ground crumbling beneath us. It's not the same feeling, but it is still an apt metaphor. The ground shakes when a lie crumbles beneath us, because often we were using those lies to build toward something else.


This is my third or fourth post today of above 200 words, so pat on the back for making up yesterday's deficit, and also an appropriate ending. I met my goal.

Facadesaside does the Denial Twist

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS8Y9kLsyCo&feature=related


If you think that a kiss is all in the lips
C'mon, you got it all wrong, man
And if you think that a dance is all in the hips
Oh well, then do the twist
If you think holding hands is all in the fingers
Grab hold of the soul where the memory lingers and
Make sure to never do it with a singer
Cause he'll tell everyone in the world

What he was thinking about the girl
Yeah, what he's thinking about the girl, oh

A lot of people get confused and they bruise
Real easy when it comes to love
They start putting on their shoes and walking out
And singing "boy, I think I had enough"
Just because she makes a big rumpus
She don't mean to be mean or hurt you on purpose, boy
Take a tip and do yourself a little service
Take a mountain turn it into a mole

Just by playing a different role
Yeah, by playing a different role, oh

The boat yeah you know she's rockin' it
And the truth well you know there's no stoppin' it
The boat yeah you know she's still rockin' it
The truth well you know there's no stoppin' it

So what, somebody left you in a rut
And wants to be the one who's in control
But the feeling that you're under can really make you wonder
How the hell she could be so cold
So now you're left, denying the truth
And it's hidden in the wisdom in the back of your tooth
You need to spit it out, in a telephone booth
While you call everyone that you know, and ask 'em

Where do you think she goes
Oh yeah, where d'ya suppose she goes, oh

The truth well you know there's no stoppin' it
And the boat well you know she's still rockin' it
The boat well you know she's still rockin' it
And the truth yeah you know there's no stoppin' it

You recognize the effect and the wreck
That it's causin' when she rocks the boat
But it's the cause hittin on the Cardinal Laws
'bout the proper place to hang her coat
So to you, the truth is still hidden
And the soul plays the role of a lost little kitten but
You should know that the doctors weren't kidding
She's been singing it all along

But you were hearin' a different song
Ya you were hearin' a different song
But you were hearin' a different song

Point is

The point is there are two conflicting freedoms involved.

One is the freedom of choice by potential to do that choice. The other is freedom of choice by actually choosing.

The the conflict is that they are mutually exclusive. We cannot both have the freedom of potential choice and the freedom of choosing it.


This is confusing because they are two alternatives about a single choice of two, that's why I used graph to illustrate premise 1 in the last question.

The reason we have to choose is by the first premise which by definition says that a choice has to be made in the first place. Take it or leave it examples do not function into here, but I think if we went in that route, it would just be another choice that has to be taken. Time is exclusive, as well. This all appears in freeze frames, but remember when you're on the clock in your action movie, you have got to push the red button of nuclear missiles or the green button of world peace in a flash; and the game must go on.

The reason we have to choose by the second premise is more complicated. The reason that we have to choose one or the other is definitional, sure. There are no simultaneous choices by this definition. In this way, it's more red-button green-button and less the ice cream example; you could have two flavors of ice cream at the same time, but not nuclear war and world peace at the same time.

More on premise two: you have to be able to pick one. This is where the second premise runs into trouble. This is because if you choose one, it rules out the other, sure. But alternatively, if you do pick one over the other, it takes away the freedom to do the other one.

Therefore, ironically, by premise two and premise one combined, the act of choosing takes away the potential to choose, but also the freedom to do the other one.


Afterword: This problem is obviously dependent on what we have seen as a very serious situation (nuclear war). If we put it in terms of chocolate cake and dog food, it's always easier. Choices where exclusion seems better and better, which I have previously said that I think are very much often the case, seem better and better. Choices which are by nature difficult are just that.

Two ideas of Freedom

Let's call this the Hinton Problem. I don't know if anyone has ever thought about it before, but I came up with it in class, while I was thinking out loud about what Professor Hinton was saying. Turns out he really didn't mean this at all, but it's a cool paradox nonetheless, if I can spit it out.


The problem is supposed to reveal a key and important feature of double-dipping two definitions of free will. As you're doing a chosen action, that choice is an act of freedom, but that freedom is really at the expense of other freedoms.


Premise 1:
So the first major definition that we have is a sort of before-the-choice-happens freedom. It's the freedom of choice, but it looks like the potential to choose one or the other.


Illustrative example:


Michelle's Choices:


Choice 1: chocolate ice cream

Choice 2: Vanilla ice cream


But she only has this choice as it happens before she chooses.

Once she chooses say chocolate ice cream, there is no way that she can have both at the same time. The choices are mutually and definitively exclusive.

Premise 2:

'Michelle chooses the chocolate ice cream' is an act of freedom. She is certainly not free to be without the ice cream at all.

For example of the previous sentence: Michelle, not knowing whether to go to the park or the beach locks herself in her room. (I realize that she could stay in her room, and that's part of the freedom thing, but just run with me on this one).

This does not look like freedom.

Therefore, the freedom is the freedom to take action.

There is no freedom to do that action unless that action is taken or capable of being taken.



Conclusion 1: Because of the exclusiveness of Premise 1, one option or the other must be selected at the expense of another option. This seems to greatly and paradoxically intrude on our definition of freedom. Because of premise 2, one option or the other must be taken, because freedom to not act seems like the opposite. The freedom of imprisonment just does not work.

Therefore, I conclude that there are two different definitions of freedom at work here, a precursor definition, and a subsequent retrospective (or during the action) definition of freedom.


Conclusion 2: It might that freedom is so huge that it encompasses both of these definitions.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Say you want a revolution, for example...

Kant's Copernican Revolution is usually lesson number one for people studying Kant. I went over it in my class about Kant last semester, and I refreshed myself with Robert E. on Monday. I'm about to go over it again with Professor Bykova's class.

The Copernican Revolution was the realization that the world revolves around the sun and the sun does not revolve around the earth.

The Kantian Copernican Revolution is that the world must conform to minds and that minds do not conform to the outside world.

Slower, and with more volume: the experience of the world must conform to the experience of the mind, and in that order; according to Professor Kant, the loveable namesake of this blog.


Listen to Immanuel Kant himself write it, "Up to now it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects; but all attempts to find out something about them a priori through concepts that would extend our cognition have, on this presupposition, come to nothing. Hence let us once try whether we do not get farther with the problems of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform to our cognition [italics mine],

I'm stopping to give you television addicts time to take it in. Basically he just wrote what I wrote up top. (Or did I write what he wrote? whatever.)

Quote continued:
"which would agree better with the requested possibility of an a priori cognition of them, whcih is to establish something about objects before they are given to us.

This would be just like the first thoughts of Copernicus, who, when he did not make good progress in the explanation of the celestial motions if he assumed that the entire celestial host revolves around the observer, tried to see if he might not have greater success if he made the observer revovle and left the stars at rest. Now in metaphysics we can try in a similar way regarding the intuition of objects. If intuition has to conform to the constitution of the objects, then I do not see how we can know anything of them a priori; but if the object (as an object of the senses) conforms to the constitution of our faculty of intuition, then I can very well represent this possibility to myself." [Certainly from the Preface B, numbered Bxvii, from Guyer and Wood].


There's an important and I think rather boring definitional note here: “thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind” (A51/B76) (help from the SEP)

Basically, intuitions are what is given to us. They are Experience with the capital e. If you see flying ghosts and walruses, that's your trip, man. But usually instead of swirls of colors and shapes we get the reality we all know and love.

So for Kant, intuition is what is given. This could be completely wrong, so this post will be subject hopefully to some kind of revision.

The other dear and clear thing to Kant's heart are concepts. Concepts are how we regulate what is given as intuition.

More work on this later....

Monday, August 24, 2009

Apples are better than coffee

So now what? I told my mother that the difference between pseudoscience and real science is the difference between an invisible hammer and a real hammer.

The difference is that you can use the real hammer, but you can't easily use the invisible hammer. The invisible hammer is a novelty, it is fun, and it works just as good as the real hammer (supposedly), but when you need it, you can't find it.

For the past couple of school years, I've been on a real coffee kick. I drank the amount of coffee that people only joke about drinking. I had obvious results of weird sleep patterns and lack of focus, but I also have more superstitious consequences. For example, my doctor told me at a checkup (not for coffee addiction) that caffeine is a vaso-congestant. That is, it can constrict your breathing a little bit. Superstitiously, I think it was making my nose red and ruining my complexion. She added afterward that there is no amount of coffee that would really hurt me in that way.

So the real reason that I'm not doing caffeine in the way that I was is not necessarily because of health concerns so much as it wasn't helping me do what I was doing.

This brings us back to our invisible hammer. The real hammer is easily accessible, it makes sense, and we can find it when we put it down. You could feasibly swing an invisible hammer, but that does not make it easier for anyone else to find it. That does not make it a more useable tool. This is an argument by metaphor, but also by utility. If we can't find the tools, the reasoning, the intelligence, the causality behind something, there are probably other tools out there that we can find.

Portfolio 12 Latest Article

http://www.technicianonline.com/viewpoint/the-expensive-soapbox-1.1819284


The expensive soapbox

Jake Goldbas, Staff Columnist

Published: Sunday, August 23, 2009

Updated: Sunday, August 23, 2009

Goldbas_82409

© 2009 NCSU Student Media

I propose recognition of the "expensive soapbox.” The common saying is anyone with a soapbox should be able to speak on the street, and anyone who wants to speak should be able to. This acknowledges free speech as an unalienable right. Anyone standing on a soapbox on the street has that right, but people are free to walk away; the people speaking are able to keep to themselves; and anyone who wants to follow them can do so.

The question is when and where the line should be drawn for freedom of speech in a college setting. Some speeches and speakers we can easily disqualify -- the preachers in the brickyard or ultra-conservative and ultra-liberal speakers fall into this category.

The recent freedom of speech controversies ask us to consider when a speaker should be invited to the University. In the last two semesters, N.C. State has been at the forefront of the issue with our Free Expression Tunnel.

The nature of the Bible Belt means that preachers who gain permission from the University can speak freely every semester. They will continue to bring this issue to the forefront.

Here’s where the expensive soapbox argument works. It applies when the speech in question costs something as opposed to the free soapbox that costs nothing. There are costs to having speakers at the school and thousands of successful, appropriate candidates compete for them. There are a number of levels: clubs, Philosophy club conference this semester; colleges, CHASS sponsors a speaker; the University as a whole, first lady Michele Obama and President Bill Clinton. All of these people and their lectures have price tags.

Because of the price tags, and the competition between speakers, these situations do not constitute free speech problems. The regulation is based on whether or not the speakers are appropriate for the school. Free speech is already guaranteed by the first amendment, it is not a limited resource.

The dollars people receive to speak are a limited resource -- I hope it was money well spent on President Clinton. There are examples where the money does not and cannot be equivalent to the speeches they purchase.

Speakers can be formally assessed based on how much they cost and how they compare with other possible speakers.

It seems as though there is a lot of mud to walk through to get a good speaker. But the nature of competition means that one spot has to be won among many speakers.

Given a choice between eating dog food and chocolate cake, most people would choose chocolate cake. It seems as though the choice is not a choice at all but rather one option is automatically ruled out. No one would seriously choose dog food.

Finding lecturers parallels this; terrible speakers are like the dog food. The first ethical consideration is how this lecturer competes against other lecturers who could use the spot. If the school had two competing lecturers, it would choose the better one every time. There is no need to entertain terrible speakers. There are plenty of empty parking lots and soap boxes for them to choose from.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Facades inside

I'm having trouble sitting down and studying. My friend Joseph Ladret said that if there is no problem there is no solution, which is interesting to me. I hear flavors of Cartestianism in this statement. There's another problem of formulating the problem. If we had a poster child to fight against, would a problem be easier to solve?

One time I talked to my friend and I asked her what superpower she would have, if she could have any super power. She said that she would like to be able to text message God. I don't remember how I responded but I asked her why or something. I don't remember what she said. My point then was why wouldn't you just talk to him if you could?

A couple of problems we run into: there's the mundanity of not having a facade. By this I mean that sometimes we form these facades as a way to explain something. If I had the ability to connect with someone on a pure energy level, I think it would be boring. Can you imagine two beams of light talking to each other?

Friday, August 21, 2009

This is not a post

You are not connected to the internet. Well, duh. We already talked about this a bit. There is a dramatic and fun distance between signified and signifier. When we say, 'tree' the thing said is not the tree itself.

This is the Magritte problem, among perhaps other problems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images

The wikipedia page should take you to the Treachery of Images painting. This painting is of a pipe, and it is realistically rendered. Underneath the pipe, it says, "This is not a pipe." (only in French).

Here is the wikipedia page about self-reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-reference

This all seems similar to Russell's paradox, which I'll explain as soon as I figure it out....



Where do we go wrong if at all?


Well one answer is that we never go wrong. Just to jazzersize for a bit; Spinoza's theory of wrong seems not to account for falsity. Everything that is wrong to Spinoza seems to be just a small part of the answer. All you have to do is zoom out. (I'm using Thomson again here.) I empathize with him. This is an extrapolation of neutral monism, which I am totally grabbing for easy and sloppy reference right now.

Ariel Levy in her manifesto Female Chauvinist Pigs, decries that when women act like pornstars or imitate pleasure, there's a difference between that and actually feeling pleasure. There's a problem from imitating pleasure and actually feeling it. People in our society, Levy argues, follow wave upon wave of mainstream culture trying to fit into these molds that mainstream culture builds. The end of the cycle is when we as consumers tell them to stop.

That is, Levy thinks that when we lose consciousness of how our actions have greater moral significance to truth; and when the relationship between reality and imitation are tainted (in this case hijacked by mainstream culture and ignorant media culture, and permutations of the four), that's when we go wrong and awry.

These are two takes on the same sort of feeling I think. The feeling is that this world is hostile to us as individuals. Spinoza's answer seems to always be: trust nature; you can always trust nature. Levy's is: yes there is a mistake, and we go wrong where we actually believe in the imitations and what we pretend to do and be.

There is a correct answer. I don't think that Spinoza was always right. He is a successful runner-up to Immanuel Kant (the namesake of this blog). Meanwhile, Levy does present something pressing and important to the discussion: it is factually a problem when it is virtually untrue or when that connection is false; when the relationship between facade and substance is false.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Considerations

A couple of considerations: does everything have a philosophical element to it? Are there anything behind facades by definition?

One of our first posts on this blog was Goldman's famous barn example. The question was about knowledge, and the example was to show that knowledge by chance is not knowledge at all.

The example goes like this: there are thousands and thousands of barn-facades in southwestern Kentucky, say for a movie. Doug and his wife Tricia are driving along the countryside when Doug points out his long hairy arm with his unkempt nails and says, "That's a barn!"

Except, this time, the thing that Doug pointed to actually is a barn. (Alarming, no?) The fact that it is surrounded by facades means that Doug could have just as easily been mistaken.


Does everything have a philosophical element to it? When I ask if everything has a philosophical element to it, I have no idea what I am saying. Philosophy, we have seen, at least in this blog, and also in our lives, can pertain to, but is not limited to:

The Art of Thinking
the Referee of the Sciences
Ethics and Morality
Theory of Genius
Theory of Success
Definitions and Lexicography
Knowledge aka Epistemology
The upper level of any science (doctorates in this country are called Doctorates of Philosophy and denote post-undergraduate studies)
The integration of sciences (this is what the Modern Philosophers were really known for. Guys like Descartes and Leibniz were able to explain what knowledge is and give pretty decent ideas of how to get to that knowledge. Much much later, guys like Russell were break out stars by crossing mathematics with the ideals of foundation, in order to make a foundation for mathematics.)
Aesthetics
Embryonic Sciences (if it becomes a science, it is out of the realm of philosophy; one example is Astronomy)
Existentialism - Why are we here?
Reasoning
Rationality
Argumentation
Regulation and consideration of Religion
Truth & Falsity (in a mathematical sense)
Truth & Falsity (in a greater sense; like what to do with the facts that we have after we get those facts)

And so much more!


The point, and the considerations of this entry are that indeed not everything has a philosophical element to it. We have to get back to this later, but I'm pretty sure of that.

Next, is there always something new to learn? Is there always something behind a facade? I think ontologically the answer is yes. Ontologically here means by definition, and I think by definition something must have something behind it. I'm thinking here of a great big facade of a building, and then you look behind and it's a prop for a movie studio. There's tons and tons of air behind the building. What is air? What was I doing in a gigantic movie studio?

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Types of lies

Lies are the happiest facades we can ever know, if we understand them:


White Lies: Lies here are those with the best of intentions. Say that someone has a terrible haircut and their friends tell them that it looks great. This is the standard white lie.

Lying to yourself: Neitzche said that memory yields. We can change or distort our reality to ourselves. This has to do with error and skepticism; but it could be more and less active. It can be more and less dictated by the will.

Straight up lying: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lying

lie

1[lahy] Show IPA noun, verb, lied, ly⋅ing. –noun
1. a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.
2. something intended or serving to convey a false impression; imposture: His flashy car was a lie that deceived no one.
3. an inaccurate or false statement.



Bullshit: Harry G. Frankfurt makes the distinction between lies and bull shit. Lies are deliberate distortions of the truth, but this still indicates a sort of reverence and respect for the truth. Bullshit has no such boundaries.



Partial Truth: I met a kid who never "lied" to his parents. He did it by systematically telling them only parts of the truth that were relevant to the conversation, but also only the ones that told the story that he wanted to tell them. Sure, he never lied, but this is something devious in and of itself.


Exaggeration and Hyperbole: My girlfriend gets me for this constantly. Exaggerations are almost by definition untrue. Nevermind your experience. It's not true and you know it.


Partial truths and lazy mistakes: Now we are further and further into the nebulous world of ethics. When, praytell, is a person lying if they are too lazy to look something up. Could we fault someone for saying that Pluto is a planet? Is that a lie.


Moreover, it seems that ethically speaking, a lie is always wrong. But by utilitarian standards, there are of course times when lying is correct, or right. There are some big and fun ethical issues that we will get to in later posts.

Portfolio 12 - Help you help yourself

http://www.technicianonline.com/viewpoint/help-you-help-yourself-1.1816943


Help you help yourself

Jake Goldbas, Staff Columnist

Print this article

Published: Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Updated: Tuesday, August 18, 2009

As undergraduates, our minds are our tools. We need to learn to use them in order to do our work.

To start with, psychologists Elliot Aronson and Carol Tavris, in their book "Mistakes Were Made But Not By Me" think cognitive dissonance is to blame for the failure to perform work. Cognitive dissonance is the resolving nature of brains. When we are conflicted between two thoughts, our minds resolve much stronger toward the idea we choose.

For example, say I have two conflicting thoughts, "I have to do my homework," and, "I want to play computer games." If I end up playing computer games, cognitive dissonance theory states that I am going to justify the playing action more because I had to fight for it.

It is easy to trick myself into thinking I am doing more work than I actually am. Worse, self-delusion is easier than deluding anyone else. This is because what I report to myself is a large part of anything that I can know about myself.

Therefore, the clear answer is to work to justify actions before I do them, instead of the other way around.

In light of this, Professor of Rhetoric Jason Ingram explained why Francis Bacon in the 17th century said that rhetoric is the application of imagination to the will. When I am at the dining hall and I want a doughnut but I know it will make me fat, I use my imagination of the negative consequences not to eat the doughnut. We should use our imaginations to influence our decisions.

Bacon's rhetoric is similar to a contemporary article by Stephen Wray from Newsweek last year. According to studies, if I think about concrete aspects of a task, I am closer to physically doing that task (read: less likely to procrastinate). In one of the studies, people assigned to tasks such as opening a bank account were asked to consider the kind of carpeting and what it would be like to go up to the bank teller. Whereas the other group was asked to consider more abstract thoughts like what banking is, the first group was more likely to do its task.

Use cognitive dissonance theory to be more aware about what you are doing and what you want to do. If I want to have better grades, great, but cognitive dissonance theory can at least help me own up to that. This theory helps in understanding why people end up justifying seemingly worse behaviors. Rhetoric, as self-persuasion by using imagination, can help the formation of better choices in the first place.

Finally, imagining material aspects of tasks, such as being in the library or studying the books, brings a person physically closer to doing that task.

When you do your work, life gets better now and also in the long term.

Send Jake your thoughts on cognitive dissonance to technicianonline.com.

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