philosophy

Wittgenstein and the Lying Dog

In Philosophical Investigations by Wittgenstein: (281.) …It comes to this: only of a living human being and what resembles (behaves like) a living human being can one say: it has sensations; it sees; is blind; hears; is deaf; is conscious or unconscious. Where do we draw the lines between human and the rest of the world? Humans have a set of behaviors and a language that seems to differentiate them from the animal world.

Art, Harm, and Interpretation

A long and interesting discussion about art and interpretation at last nights Understanding Philosophy Meetup. We started with Susan Sontag’s essay “Against Interpretation” and went from there. One of the issues that came up was the potential for harm caused by art or interpretation. Since Plato philosophers and critics have acknowledged that art can be dangerous. For Plato this was a major reason to banish poets from the republic; art could only distract us from real world of truth and forms.

Private Experience and Intoxication

I’ve been reading Philosophical Investigations by Wittgenstein with some fellow philosophers over the last few weeks. We’ve reached the point where Wittgenstein argues against private languages and qualia, like pain. Wittgenstein argues against private descriptions or recognitions of these experiences, according to him we learn how to use the word “pain” in a certain context, together with certain expressions and feelings. We may act as though we have indicated some internal sensation to ourselves when we use a word like “pain” but there is no way to verify the identity of this word with any of our previous experiences of pain.

Counterfactuals

Is there a difference between the following statements: If a kangaroo had no tail then it would fall over. If the gravitational constant were different then humans would not exist. If you were a woman then you would have a different philosophy. The Wednesday philosophy meetup was sparsely attended, only 4 of us, and a bit thick to get through, but still interesting. Our topic was counterfactuals. Harland proposed the topic because he wanted to find a logical response to (3), an argument that he wants to reject.

Twitter, Peripheral Perception, and Empathy

What if social networking and media apps such as Twitter improve our collective sense of empathy? When I joined Twitter I followed two types people, personal friends and complete strangers. The friends were neighbors or colleagues whom I met regularly in person. Sometimes I met them at school, others I met through other electronic media such as blogs. The complete strangers were celebrities, people whom I had heard of or read about.

What are we responsible for?

There are two extreme answers to the question of what we are responsible for? The maximalist position is that we are responsible for everything. When we act, whether consciously or not, something happens in the world. A series of effects propagates outward from our actions, and that series may be endless. For the want of a nail the shoe was lost, for the want of a shoe the horse was lost… and on, and on.

Harry Boyte - Reinspiring Citizenship

I drove into the Weisman Art Museum last night to listen to Harry Boyte and Don Shelby talk about re-inspiring citizenship in the 21st century. Boyte just released a book called the Citizen Solution about the growing movement to reconnect ourselves to politics and the communities we inhabit. Shelby started things off by recapping an anecdote about his third grade teacher from the forward to the book. He speculated about Lincoln’s delivery of the Gettysburg address - especially the emphasis on the famous phrase “of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Causation, Social Construction, and Relativism

I can feel myself being pulled to the dark side of philosophy through this semester’s classes and readings. I’m starting to think about causality. (mock horror) In my STS class we just finished reading “The Strong Programme in the Sociology of Knowledge” by David Bloor. Bloor lists four conditions for an explanatory theory of science. It must explain the cause of beliefs, be impartial to the truth or falsity of beliefs, be symmetrical and use the same explanatory framework for true and false beliefs, and be reflexive or capable of being applied to sociology as well as science or any other human knowledge seeking/creating endeavor.

Is there a difference between information ethics and media ethics?

Many of the discussions about information ethics I’ve had this semester have conflated information ethics with media ethics. Is there a difference between the two or is the conflation natural? When I use the term media I usually think of television, radio, and print, especially magazines or newspapers. Some properties of media are ephemerality, and political or cultural content. Most of all its mass communication. I associate information with high technology such as computers or the internet.

Arguments by Nostalgia

I’m broadly sympathetic to arguments questioning technology in modern society. There are a lot of questions that need to be asked about our over-reliance on technology and the effect it has on our social and cognitive development. I recently reread Shenk’s book The End of Patience for class and was struck by how much of it is just proper common sense. The list of principles at technorealism.org seem jaw-droppingly obvious to me: technologies aren’t neutral, the Internet is not utopian, government has an important role to play on the electronic frontier, etc.