What is philosophy?

The Philosophy Bites podcasters are sponsoring a twitter contest to find the best 100-character definition of philosophy. Lots of interesting and preposterous proposals are turning up at #philbitescomp. 


My entry, exapted from William James and melded with linguistic skepticism:

Philosophy: an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly about what can & can't be clearly stated. 

And then there's Ambrose Bierce's:


PHILOSOPHY, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.


He must have had a bad class. Existentialism was after his time.

worth every penny

More good publicity (it's all good, right?) for our department in today's Tennessean, under the headline "MTSU avoids cutting programs":

Before the federal stimulus funds arrived, MTSU President Sidney McPhee warned students that the looming state budget cuts might force the university to eliminate entire departments and majors of studies. The social work, criminal justice administration, sociology, anthropology and philosophy departments all were being eyed for the chopping block.

Students reacted with outrage, marching in protest and bombarding the administration with calls and letters of protest.

Wendy Caldwell is a former MTSU student who is working as a cook while she saves money for her next round of classes.

With the Board of Regents considering another 6 percent to 11 percent increase in tuition, the process could take even longer.

Caldwell, who was double-majoring in math and philosophy, launched a Facebook group last year to protest the very idea of eliminating the philosophy department.

"The word philosophy means 'love of wisdom.' You can't have an education without philosophy," Caldwell said.

Philosophy classes taught her how to think, she said, recalling one class in which the professor discussed the link between the philosophy of Taoism and string theory in physics.

"Every penny I've ever spent on higher education was worth it for that moment."

In the end, the 2010-11 draft budget doesn't eliminate any majors or departments. In fact, it creates a brand-new college, the College of Applied, Behavioral and Health Sciences, and tweaks the administrative structures of other departments...

hey to Goober

I've been waiting for an opportunity to mention Mayberry's resident philosopher. He didn't get tenure, but it was fun while it lasted. Thinking about Barney's Rock naturally put me in mind of the time "Goober [made] history."

"It seems like the me that is really me and was bein' held back by the I that I am is comin' out all over my face."

That was the fictive television filling station attendant Goober Pyle, Gomer's cousin, in Andy Griffith Show episode 196 ("Goober Makes History"), reflecting on growing a beard and discovering his inner philosopher. Goober had to shave—not with Occam's razor but Floyd's—to rediscover "his self": a cautionary tale for all professional thinkers.

philosophy and mortality

Philosophy teaches us, among other things, how to die: that was today's main lesson, on the first day of Intro to Philosophy. (See Simon Critchley's Book of Dead Philosophers for palatably-told details.)

Douglas Adams' whale didn't learn that lesson, but of course he didn't really need to: his own demise was quick and unexpected. That's true enough for plenty of humans, too, but if we're being brutally honest with ourselves most of us will admit our natural mortality. Then, we must seek some form or other of accommodation to the unpleasant fact. Religion is the adaptation of choice for most people in this culture. Philosophy thus has a lot of catching up to do. Our work is cut out, stay tuned.

Retreat edu-tainment

The academic year formally commenced today with our Senate retreat. It was everything one might have expected, and less.

Worth the price of admission: a colleague from another department, our new Best Friend, challenged President M. to acknowledge the traditional centrality of Philosophy as an anchor of liberal learning across the academic spectrum, "queen of the sciences," bellwether of critical thinking etc. The president declined, and shortly thereafter departed.

Then came the "team-building" exercise, a staggeringly irrelevant invitation to engage in "non-evaluative" brainstorming of our various unfiltered imaginings of possible futures for our institution and for Higher Ed generally. This involved closed-eye visualizations of a desert, a cube, a ladder, a horse, and a flower, all purported to symbolize something profound and personal and revelatory. I am not making this up.

In the wake of this surreal squandering of a lovely morning on planet Earth we won't ever (he deplored) get back, our champion took his leave. He promised his department's continued support, and predicted his letter of censure from the boss who's earned a reputation for brooking no criticism, constructive or not.

But still, despite the sufferance of this academic theater of the absurd, we're buoyed to remind ourselves that classes - our refuge from a world seemingly gone mad - are blessedly about to begin.

No Greater Challenge

Captain Picard would've been a good NASA philosopher.

This is the scene in which young Ensign Wesley Crusher tells Picard that "William James won't be on my Starfleet exams." Picard answers, "Nothing really important will be. Open yourself to the past—history, art, philosophy—and all of this might mean something."

Out of nostalgia (I guess) I've been following Wil ("Wesley") Wheaton's tweets. But I'm going to have to let him go. He actually thought it worthwhile, the other day, to inform the universe that he hates (literally) biting his tongue.

He won't miss me, he'll still have 968, 790 followers to regale with such riveting bits of ephemera from a mid-scale ex-celeb's stream of consciousness.

What would Jean-Luc say?

Emanations

From today's Sidelines, the student newspaper at Middle Tennessee State University:

[President] McPhee said that the Physics Department was also under consideration for elimination, but after drafting a report to show how the department planned to grow, it was taken off of the list. He said the Philosophy Department has the same opportunity to present a plausible plan.

"If the department doesn't develop a concrete plan on how they intend to not only reduce costs but increase growth then it is my opinion that we ought not have that department at MTSU," McPhee said.

Diane Miller, vice provost for Academic Affairs and interim provost, said if a decision to eliminate or merge the department is made, a plan to phase out the major over a three- to four-year period will allow students currently enrolled in the major to complete their degree program.

McPhee said he thinks that the Philosophy Department is already preparing a plan for how to decrease spending and increase enrollment.

Ron Bombardi, Philosophy Department chair, was unavailable for comment.

McPhee said that the elimination of the department does not mean that the major would not still be available, however, the merging of the department could still be an option if the elimination were to occur.

"Should a decision be made to eliminate the Department of Philosophy, the interim provost, in consultation with the appropriate deans, academic personnel and Faculty Senate representatives, will explore the various options for merging the department with the most appropriate and compatible existing academic department at the University," the report said.

McPhee said that the possible departments that the Philosophy Department could be merged with would not be looked into unless the elimination is emanated.

"Not available for comment?"

Well, I'm available. I've already commented on the fishy quality of these developments, now I'll add simply that an emanation (neo-Platonically speaking) is supposed to elevate those it reaches, and raise their status. This has not been an uplifting process.

Philosophy majors

According to this morning's newspaper account,

The Department of Philosophy must present a viable plan for significantly increasing its number of majors. It must be approved by the interim provost and president by Sept. 30. If it is not, various options for merging the Philosophy Department with the most appropriate and compatible existing academic department at the university will be considered. The major may be phased out over a three- or four-year period.

Also noted in the article,

The dean is quick to point out that the Philosophy Department has an acceptable number of majors based on Tennessee Board of Regents standards. "That is an average of 10 majors over a five-year period," he said.

Thank you, Dean. The majors issue is a red herring, in the original report because the task force that produced it passed false information along to the President... or because someone wants it there for ulterior reasons.

Almost no philosophy department in the country has a surfeit of majors compared to larger, standard-vocation-oriented programs. This is America, after all. Of course we want more majors, and goodness knows the country (and its pool of collegiate administrators!) can use more thoughtful people. But pretty clearly, that's not what our university's present budget-slashing initiative is about.

Anhedonia & consummatory experience

I commented in public on two philosophy papers this morning, one concerned with John Dewey's notion of "consummatory experience" and the other with the phenomenon of "anhedonia" -- the loss of zest, spring, joy, delight -- and what French philosopher Gabriel Marcel might have to teach William James about it. I was concerned to make just a couple of points:

1. Consummatory experiences are better had & enjoyed than talked about & analyzed.

2. The more consummatory experiences you have, the less likely you are to experience anhedonia.

I made those points, but not (of course) so concisely. This being an academic philosophy conference, and philosophy being a discipline that trades chiefly in words, I was expected to talk at much greater length about those two points and others besides. I did not disappoint.

But I hope my confreres will do what I did yesterday: go outside, breath the fresh air, take in some new sights, walk around... even if you don't have a consummatory moment, you'll still feel better and will be far less vulnerable to the dreaded anhedonia (which, btw, our French speaker pronounced not as rhyming with "Caledonia" but instead with the greater stress on the penultimate syllable -- so I learned at least one thing this morning).

I also related my experiences of the past week, which to my mind show that it is indeed possible to chase down your consummations (or at least become open to them) if you want to.

Next stop: the mountainous environs of Asheville, NC. Then, to invoke the inevitable baseball metaphor, I'll round 3d and head for home.

Dawkins, Dennett, & James on religion

Is religion one of our species' most valuable "springs of delight," even when it veers (as so often it does) into absurdity and unreasoning dogma? (I don't share Richard Dawkins' view that it pretty much lives there permanently, though he scores plenty of points in that direction in The God Delusion).

William James thought religion to be one of our most important cultural achievements, even while admitting the absurdity of its many and contradictory doctrinal intransigences. In Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) he defined religion as "the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine." Elsewhere James wrote that religion is not about God, it's about life and our quest for a richer, more meaningful experience thereof.

By sharp contrast with James's neutrality about supernaturalism in religious persons' designation of their own sense of "the divine," Daniel Dennett in Breaking the Spell proposes to define religions as "social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought... a religion without God or gods is like a vertebrate without a backbone."

I confess some ambivalence about all this. I like the open-endedness of James's receptivity to all kinds of religions, which for him really was just a way of saying "hands off" other people's personal enthusiasms. But I also find myself cheering many of Dawkins' and Dennett's acid repudiations of casual supernaturalism and mysticism, their "Bright"-ness (see www.the_Brights.net).

I plan to discuss some of this tonight, when I teach the second and last installment of an adult evening (fundraiser) course at my kids' school. It'll probably come up in class this afternoon, too, at ESU (my particular Enormous State University) -- today's topic is "the problem of evil." That always provokes students' religious reflexes, and often instigates discord, not a bad thing in a philosophy classroom if it can be constructively harnessed. I look forward to good conversations today.

Welcome to "Delight Springs"

"Delight Springs" is a blog about ideas, culture, philosophy, baseball, personal enthusiasms of all sorts, and we'll see what else. The name borrows and inverts a phrase from William James (1842-1910), who wrote of our "springs of delight," the habitual and idiosyncratic sources of light and life that quicken the pulse, excite the imagination, and bring down barriers to sympathy and respect between people. I will attempt to cultivate, or at least acknowledge, some of those sources here. If I can elicit an occasional responsive echo from the other side of my keyboard, so much the better.

More prosaically, the name "Delight Springs" aims also to suggest a quasi-geographic, cyberspace sense of place -- analogous to real-world places like Colorado Springs, Warm Springs, Hot Springs, or (my favorite) Red Boiling Springs, the little Tennessee town that a century ago was a mineral bath mecca for the likes of Woodrow Wilson. Is it too much to hope that visitors here will go away reinvigorated, and will wish to return for more? Yeah, probably. So I'll just wish instead that you find enough here to sustain your interest, sometimes provoke your constructive comments, and occasionally bring you back.

Thanks for reading.