Let us eat cake

I stopped by @PresidentMcPhee's house Tuesday afternoon, with a couple of colleagues, for his annual campus holiday reception. He met us at the door and instantly remarked on what a nice conversation we had the other week, when he visited our Environmental Ethics & Action class to discuss the ACUPCC. (Let's keep pushing on that!)

And then he directed us into the parlor, where the baby grand piano was groaning under the weight of a cake designed to resemble this humble Carolina abode:

Whatcha think, Scott? Maybe next year we can persuade him to order up from Aramark an Earthship cake?

Bioethics at MTSU

New Course, Spring 2013

Philosophy 3345 – Bioethics

Mondays & Wednesdays, 2:20-3:45, Peck Hall 220

This course explores ethical issues arising from the practice of medical therapeutics (conventional and “alternative”), from the development of new biomedical technologies, and more largely from reflections on life’s meaning and prospects. 

     The course aims at clarifying relevant bioethical and medical issues and debates, representing various perspectives in application to present and future human possibilities and concerns (for example: genetic engineering and biochemical “enhancement,” longevity and life extension, end-of-life decisions, health care access, nanotechnology, cloning, stem cell research, mood and performance-enhancing pharmaceutical use, animal research, and reproductive technologies). 

        We’ll also explore the future of life (human, nonhuman, and trans- or post-human).

The course’s ultimate objective is to provide students with critical resources and tools they can apply in making crucial life-choices.

“Bio” means simply life, but questions about life’s goals, about appropriate means for attaining them, and about the professions devoted to sustaining life, give rise to the most basic, enduring, and fascinating ethical problems and prospects.

Primary text:

 

Bioethics for Beginners: 60 Cases and Cautions from the Moral Frontier of Healthcare “maps the giant dilemmas posed by new technologies and medical choices, using 60 cases taken from the headlines, and from the worlds of medicine and science… shedding light on the social, economic and legal side of 21st century medicine while giving the reader an informed basis on which to answer personal, practical questions and decide for themselves exactly what the scientific future should hold.” [NOTE: Kindle edition available]

Course website: Bioethics - Supporting the philosophical study of bioethics, bio-medical ethics, biotechnology, and the future of life, at Middle Tennessee State University and beyond... http://bioethjpo.blogspot.com/

For more info, contact Dr. Phil Oliver, poliver@mtsu.edu

Lysaker speaks

Today's Lyceum Lecturer, John Lysaker ("Coming to Terms With the Self", James Union Building 304, 4 pm)-

Office hours on Saturn

It's 73 and sunny in Murfreesboro, TN this afternoon, so today's 4 pm office hours will be here.

Emory Prof coming to terms with self

Applied Philosophy Lyceum: John Lysaker

COMING TO TERMS WITH SELFHOOD

On Friday April 20 Professor John Lysaker will give a lecture entitled, "Coming to Terms with Selfhood."

Professor Lysaker is currently Professor of Philosophy at Emory University. From 1996 to 2009 he taught Philosophy and Comparative Literature at the University of Oregon. Raised in NJ, he attended Kenyon College and did his graduate work at Vanderbilt University. His work concerns the nature of the self, with a particular eye on the conditions under which humans do and do not flourish. This has led him to consider the importance of poetry for life, the nature of mental illness, schizophrenia in particular, the importance of friendship for human growth and happiness, and the ways in which various institutions (e.g. government, markets, professions) enable or undermine human well-being.

He is the author of Emerson and Self Culture (Indiana University Press), You Must Change Your Life: Poetry, Philosophy, and the Birth of Sense (Pennsylvania University Press), and co-author (with his brother Paul) of Schizophrenia and the Fate of the Self (Oxford University Press). He has also co-edited Emerson and Thoreau: Figures of Freindship (Indiana University Press).

The purpose of the Applied PhilosophyLyceum is to provoke philosophical reflection by bringing distinguished scholars to the MTSU campus to address crucial contemporary issues.

The lecture will be held April 20, 2012 at 4:00 in James Union Building, Room 304 on the Middle Tennessee State University Campus. The lecture is free and open to the public. A discussion period and an informal reception will follow.

For more information, contact the MTSU Philosophy Department at 898-2907.

Environmental Ethics

A note to those still making course decisions for Fall: 

I'm doing environmental ethics again, with a focus on activism: can there be an effective and responsible Green Movement, given the political climate, the machinery of media disinformation, etc.? To my mind, thinking about things like the long-term health of the planet and our status as the thinking/planning/deciding part of nature is the practical point of making such a big deal of atheism & philosophy. As Carl Sagan said, there's no sign of help coming to save us from ourselves. The question is, can we save ourselves?

Every day is Earth Day.

“What Can NOTHING Do For Politics?"

Professor Bill Martin

Applied Philosophy Lyceum:

On Friday April 6, 2012, JUB 304, 4 pm

PROFESSOR AND AUTHOR TO  SPEAK ON MARXISM, BUDDHISM, AND POLITICS

Professor Bill Martin will present a lecture entitled, “What Can Nothing Do For Politics? Mao, Mu, Badiou, Buddhism."

Bill Martin is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University and is best known for his work on Derrida, Sartre, Marxist theory, and aesthetics. Martin’s current projects include a book on the post-Maoist current of Allain Badiou’s philosophy, and a book taking account of Harry Frankfurt’s concept of “bullshit” in a social-political context.

He is the author  of  nine books, including Matrix and Line: Derrida and the Possibilities of Postmodern Social Theory, Politics in the Impasse: Explorations in Postsecular Social Theory, Marxism and the Call of the Future: Conversations on Ethics, History, and Politics co-written with Bob Avakian.

Having played bass guitar for more than thirty-five years, he has also made substantial contributions to music criticism, authoring: Avant Rock: Experimental Music from the Beatles to Bjork, Music of Yes: Structure and Vision in Progressive Rockand  Listening to the Future: The Time of Progressive Rock, 1968-1978.

The Department of Philosophy at Middle Tennessee State University is happy to have Bill Martin make his second appearance as part of its annual Applied Philosophy Lyceum.  The purpose of the Lyceum is to provoke philosophical reflection by bringing distinguished scholars to the MTSU campus to address crucial contemporary issues.

The lecture will be held April 6, 2012 at 4:00 in James Union Building, Room 304 on the Middle Tennessee State University Campus. The lecture is free and open to the public.  A discussion period and an informal reception will follow.

For more information, contact the MTSU Philosophy Department at 898-2907.

Baseball Conference 2012

Agenda for 17^th Annual Conference on Baseball in

Literature and Culture

Friday, March 30, 2012

MTSU, Murfreesboro TN

7.45-8.15              Registration and Breakfast

8.20-8.30              Welcome:            

                                Warren Tormey, Conference Coordinator

                                Dr. Mark Byrnes, Dean, College of Liberal Arts

8.30-9.15              Keynote Address: 

Dr. Dan Anderson, Dominican University:

“Renaissance Men: Sportswriting, Popular Culture, and Negro League Baseball in Harlem"               

9.20-10.20            Concurrent Sessions A

Session A1:  Baseball in Fiction

Location: Hazlewood                                                                          Chair:  

Don Johnson, East Tennessee State University: “The Real Modern Prometheus at the Plate.”

Shawn O’Hare, Carson-Newman College: “Baseball as Narrative Metaphor in Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding”

Steve Andrews, Grinnell College: “Some Thoughts on The Art of Fielding.”  

Session A2:  Baseball in Popular and American Culture

Location: Dining Room C                                                                    Chair: 

Crosby Hunt, Middle Tennessee State University: TITLE TBA

Bryan Steverson, Maryville, TN: “Negro League Baseball and American Culture”

Bob Barrier, Kennesaw State University: "’How 'Bout That!’ Favorite Baseball Announcers--and Why.”

10.30-11.30           Concurrent Sessions B

Session B1:  Baseball in Foreign Lands

Location:  Hazlewood                                                                         Chair:  

Matt Nichol, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia: “Is the Posting Agreement Already Twelve Years Old? The Need for a New Posting Agreement to Facilitate Player Transfers from Japan to Major League Baseball”

Mac Williams, Coker College: “Only Anansi So Far:  Baseball in Costa Rican Literature and Culture”

Michael Pagel, Northeast State Community College: “Lament for Lost Baseball Talent in Brock’s Havana Heat”

Session B2:  Baseball in Media

Location:  Dining Room C                                                                   Chair:  

Matthew Bruen, New York University: “Traditional Fandoms in the Digital Age”

Andy Hazucha, Ottawa University: “The Cubs and Conservatism”; or, Why I Hate George Will”

Nick Bush, Motlow State College: “Judging Others and Laughing at Idols:  The Rhetoric of Humor in HBO’s ‘East Bound & Down’”

11.40-12.05           Concurrent Sessions C

Session C1:  Baseball Back in the Day

Location:  Hazlewood                                                                         Chair: 

Skip Nipper, Nashville, Tennessee: "The Colorful, Quirky Confines of Nashville's Sulphur Dell"

Location:  Dining Room C: 

Session C2:  Baseball and Memoir

Bill Gruber, Emory University: “Pitching Lessons”

12.15-2:00            Luncheon and Tommy John Talk

Tennessee Room

12.15-12.45 Lunch

12.45-1.30  Tommy John (20 min + ~10 min. Q & A;  Autograph Signing to follow)

2:00-3:00  Concurrent Sessions D

Session D1: Creative Baseball

Location:  Hazlewood                                                                         Chair: 

Steven Walker, Middle Tennessee State University: “Civil War.”

Mark Sickman, Baseballbard.com: "Hip Hop, the Blogosphere, and the Emergence of Baseball Poetry."

Session D2: Baseball in Philosophy and Religion

Location:Dining Room C                                                                   Chair: 

Phil Oliver, Middle Tennessee State University: "Baseball and the Meaning of Life."

Warren Tormey, Middle Tennessee State University: “John Milton, Ballplayer: How England’s Pre-Industrial Epic Shaped America’s Pastoral Game” 

So you want to teach Religious Studies?

We're in the process of interviewing candidates for a new full-time, tenure track position in Religious Studies, in our heretofore-merely-nominal Department of Philosophy and Religion.

That is, we've always offered religion courses taught by adjunct instructors; but we've never employed a full-time Religious Studies specialist, with a degree in the field of Religious Studies, charged with developing the Religious Studies curriculum. It'll be a new ballgame. So what shall we ask the candidates? A few interview possibilities:

• What do you see as the important differences between philosophy and religious studies, as academic disciplines in the university? 
• Do you see religion and philosophy as complementary , antagonistic, in tension, or ...?
• How would you feel about being theonly RS faculty in a department of philosophy?
• What do you understand by "collegiality"?
• Would you agree that RS attempts to clarify the meaning and significance of religious experience and language but (unlike philosophy) does not critique religious discourse or attempt to rationally adjudicate differences among religious claims or between religion and secular society?
• Do you agree that the province of philosophy is wider than that of religion?
• What do you see as the peculiar challenges and opportunities (and headaches) of building a religious curriculum within an established department of philosophy?
• Would you expect or encourage philosophy majors who do not consider themselves religious to take your classes? Would you expect or encourage religious studies majors to take philosophy classes (including Atheism & Philosophy)?
• Do you have a favorite philosopher? Favorite works of philosophy? What book by a RS scholar do you wish every philosopher would read?
• Have you read Varieties of Religious Experience (James) or Varieties of Scientific Experience (Sagan) ? 
• What do you think James meant when he said that religion is our "most important function" - even if all religious creeds and doctrines turned out to be "absurd"? What do you think of non-believers who say they "believe in believing"?
• What's your view of atheism, agnosticism, humanism, and naturalism? Do you see them as more "anti-religion" or pro-humanism (etc.)?
• What do you think of Alain de Botton's recent suggestion that atheists should borrow the formal trappings of religious ritual, architecture, etc. (including atheist "temples")?
• How do you feel about moving to a southern state?
• Would any kind of professional collaboration between yourself and the Atheism & Philosophy prof be worthwhile?
• Do you have any questions?

New Intro to Philosophy text?

I've been trying to replace the late Robert Solomon's A Passion for Wisdom: A Very Brief History of Philosophy for a long time in the course formerly known as Intro which I've started calling "CoPhi" instead (short for the pluralistic collaborative form of  "CoPhilosophy" William James advocated).

It packs philosophy's story into an extremely concise and accessible package, without sacrificing too much precision or honesty. But Passion's nearly fifteen years old, and I'd like to try something a little fresher.

So far, I have yet to find a worthy successor. But Nigel Warburton's A Little History of Philosophy looks promising. (Sample pages)

My concern is the new book may be just a little too light and breezy. Its ideal reader, I think, would be a motivated high schooler encountering philosophy for the first time. Will it strike our college students as beneath them? Will they read it? (Always a question, nowadays, whatever the text.)

I would supplement it with an intellectual biography or two. How to Live,  perhaps. Or Courtier and Heretic. Or maybe bring back Logicomix, which went over well last year. Or stick with Doubt and Passion.

Change is a good thing, but it's never good to fix what ain't broken. This'll be a tough call.

"New Courses"

I went back to visit our curriculum committee again Friday afternoon. The results this time were quicker and happier than back in April.  PHILOSOPHY 3160, "Philosophy of Happiness," now enjoys a permanent designation and place in the university's course catalog: 

This course examines the concept of human happiness and its application in everyday living, as discussed since antiquity by philosophers, psychologists, writers,spiritual leaders,  and contributors to popular culture. 

Likewise for PHIL 3310, "Atheism and Philosophy":

This course examines various philosophical perspectives on atheism, understood as the belief that no transcendent creator deity exists, and that there are no supernatural causes of natural events. The course compares and contrasts this belief with familiar alternatives (including theism, agnosticism, and humanism), considers the spiritual significance of atheism, and explores implications for ethics and religion.

Ron Bombardi

Very nice profile piece in the Honors College Fall magazine (p.43) by my colleague Ron Bombardi. Handsome photo too.

When John Adams wrote his beloved Abigail in 1780, “I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy,” he understood the pursuit of philosophy to encompass what we should today call the natural and social sciences. English usage has since changed; disciplinary boundaries have been declared, funded, and institutionalized. Yet, as I see the role of philosophy in contemporary American education, the spirit of Adams’s aspiration remains central to our own, for we too recognize that there are two educations: one that “should teach us how to make a living, and the other how to live.” The tenor of my own teaching is grounded in this fundamental principle, that liberation of the intellect is essential to human flourishing. Intellectual freedom is, in my view, tantamount to the practice of sound scholarship—that is, to maintaining rigorous habits of organized skepticism and reasoned consensus in all collective endeavor. (Continues...)

Atheism & Philosophy

Spring Semester 2012-

PHIL 4800-003  Readings in Philosophy:

Atheism & Philosophy

With special emphasis on ethics, and how atheists, agnostics, humanists and other deity-deniers establish a personal sense of right and wrong.

Were all other things, gods and men and starry heavens, blotted out from this universe, and were there left but one rock with two loving souls upon it, that rock would have as thoroughly moral a constitution as any possible world which the eternities and immensities could harbor. It would be a tragic constitution, because the rock's inhabitants would die. But while they lived, there would be real good thing and real bad things in the universe; there would be obligations, claims, and expectations; obediences, refusals, and disappointments; compunctions, and longings for harmony to come again, and inward peace of conscience when it was restored; there would, in short, be a moral life, whose active energy would have no limit but the intensity of interest in each other with which the hero and heroine might be endowed.

We, on this terrestrial globe, so far as the visible facts go, are just like the inhabitants of such a rock. Whether a God exist, or whether no God exist, in yon blue heaven above us bent, we form at any rate an ethical republic here below. And the first reflection which this leads to is that ethics have as genuine and real a foothold in a universe where the highest consciousness is human, as in a universe where there is a God as well. "The religion of humanity" affords a basis for ethics as well as theism does.

-William James, “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”

Was James right? We’ll see. The course will meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:40 – 4:05, in James Union Building room 202.

Readings will include

·        Baggini, Atheism: A Very Short Introduction

·        Anthony, Philosophers Without Gods

·        Blackford, Fifty Voices of Disbelief

·        Harris, The Moral Landscape

For more information contact Dr. Oliver, poliver@mtsu.edu

"Global Perspectives on the Holocaust"

The annual Holocaust Studies Symposium is back on our campus next week, Oct. 19-22. Here's this year's program... and here was my notice of the excellent conference two years ago.

Organized in 1988, the Middle Tennessee State University Holocaust Studies Committee's original mission was to encourage the study of the Holocaust at Middle Tennessee State University and in the mid-South.  Since that time the committee's mission evolved to:

• disseminate greater understanding of and knowledge about the Holocaust from an inter-disciplinary and bi-gender perspective;

• serve as a bulwark against the spread of Holocaust denial and antisemitism, as well against racial, religious and ethnic hatred;

• memorialize the lives and suffering of all people persecuted during the Holocaust.  These include but are not limited to Jews, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, Hitler’s political opponents, people of African descent, Slavs, Jehovah's Witnesses and other religious groups, and persons with physical or mental disabilities

• raise awareness in both the academic community and the general public that genocidal hate did not end in 1945 by disseminating information about other genocides, past and present.

John Adams in Tennessee

Stopped in at the Walker Library yesterday, at Middle Tennessee State University, to check out the visiting "John Adams Unbound" exhibition. Don't miss it if you're in Murfreesboro, it'll only be there through September. Adams used to be a relatively unsung revolutionary hero, but David McCullough, HBO, and PBS have chipped away at his obscurity.

Another side of Adams was a bit misrepresented by the religion panel, though, which played up his Unitarianism and portrayed him as a more-or-less conventionally pious pilgrim. In fact, as Jennifer Hecht points out in Doubt: A History, he was a doubter and a skeptic both before and after his affiliation with the Unitarians. Just like me.

As President he declared: "The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation." And as for those who would ban questioning the Bible's allegedly divine origins? "I think such laws a great embarrassment, great obstructions to the improvement of the human mind."

You hear that, Rick & Michelle? Probably not.

MTSU Convocation

We're back, and this time we're "true blue."

Listening is an act

And it's a good one. Dave Isay is on campus this afternoon, talking about his StoryCorps project to get more of us listening attentively and respectfully to one another. His book Listening in an Act of Love was the summer Freshman Read. (It sure beats the Vanderbilt offering my friend from there was telling me about yesterday at the Sounds game, the late Peter Gomes' preciously self-important Good Life.

We'll talk about Listening soon, classes begin tomorrow. Time always begins on opening day. Play ball!

enjoy

Happiness 101* impends. Can't wait!

*Officially Philosophy 4800-001, "Readings in Philosophy: Happiness and the Secret of Life"

absurd

"If I didn’t have writing, I’d be running down the street hurling grenades in people’s faces."


Paul Fussell said that. I don't often feel that way myself, but it's exactly the state of mind I was in at 4:30 pm this afternoon when I finally was liberated from the suffocating "Sun Trust" room at the far end of my campus. 


The curriculum committee had deliberated in that room for over three hours before finally coming to my own modest "New Course" proposals and, for the first time all afternoon moving with dispatch, promptly informed me that my papers were not in order. A couple of details (projected enrollment numbers, full bibliographic entries for course materials) had been omitted. Hence, proposals to add my courses to the university catalog would be "tabled" 'til I got those i's dotted and t's crossed.


Never mind that the committee had no substantive objections whatsover, none, to my courses. Never mind that I could have fixed the omissions instantly, on the spot, simply by logging on and entering the solicited information. No, rules are rules, procedures are procedures, committees are committees. Bye. See you next year.

So, I'll come back in the fall and sacrifice another perfectly fine afternoon in the service of bureaucratic protocol. Sure, why not? I'll happily push that stone up the hill once more. Move over, Sisyphus. Absurdity loves company.


There, that feels better. Posting is such sweet therapy. Now I don't have to think about hurling any real grenades. After all, "one must imagine Sisyphus happy." Unless he had to deal with academic committees.

Sidd!

Sidd Finch apr11

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