logicomix

1. (Ch.4) What form of reference invites paradox?

2. What was Russell's collaborative project with A.N. Whitehead? What famous theoretical principle did Russell claim to endorse? What did he call "the right way to philosophize"?

3. What did Russell mean by his turtle analogy?

4. What philosophical confusion does Aeschylus suggest to Apostolos?

5. (Ch.5) What was young Wittgenstein say to Russell (at their first meeting)about facts and certainty, and (later) about mathematical reality?

6. In what does Russell find "redemption" from the fear of dying? What "immunized" him against nationalistic war-mongering? What did war teach Russell about language? What does it (finally) teach Wittgenstein about meaning? What does he claim to have solved?

7. (Ch.6) What did Russell fear would be the outcome of the collapse of the pre-war world's values? Why does he dislike Wittgenstein's view that logic results only in tautologies?

8. What did the Vienna Circle credit Russell with helping to make possible? Who pointed out to him his "failure"? What will there "always be"? How did Wittgenstein think the Vienna Circle misunderstood him? What was its "tragic final act"?

9. How does Russell characterize his stance towards doubt and certainty? What does he conclude about "Leibniz's dream"? What is the message of his "cautionary tale"? What position does he come to share with Wittgenstein?

10. What, according to Christos, is "our prime hope for peace, democracy, and freedom"?

lightly, carefully, gracefully

1. (T/F) The number of people with too little to eat is now falling.

2. Steven Chu says the American public fails to grasp what?

3. Michael Pollan says we do what, when we eat from the industrial food system?

4. (T/F) Large farms produce more food per acre.

5. What percentage of global warming gases can be tied to the livestock industry (and the federal farm subsidy)?

6. (T/F) Cutting energy waste in America will be extraordinarily painful, according to Amory Lovins; and energy sources must necessarily remain large and centralized.

7. (T/F) McKibben agrees that the future he's described (to p.196) would be dull.

8. What traditional choice about where and how to live does the Internet now allow us to duck? How did it enable "the most widespread day of political action" ever?

lucky

So much to be thankful for, this and every day. Happy Thanksgiving.

We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here...

We have woken after hundreds of millions of years asleep, defying astronomical odds. Admittedly we didn't arrive by spaceship, we arrived by being born, and we didn't burst conscious into the world but accumulated awareness gradually through babyhood. The fact that we slowly apprehend our world, rather than suddenly discover it, should not subtract from its wonder...

Isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a thought, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be a part of it? Unweaving the Rainbow

backing off

1. What words will better help us think about the future than "sustainable"? Why?

2. What was Alan Greenspan's explanation of the current economic recession? What large reversal does McKibben identify as the underlying cause? What's wrong with "bigness"?

3.What's different about America's idea of itself now, compared to 1775 (but overlooking James Madison's argument in "Federalist 10")?

4. (T/F) McKibben is excited about Mars (and other big projects) but skeptical about the conservative critique of Pythonesque big government.

5. Are we still fixated on expansion and growth? 

6. What will be ironic about a Jeffersonian future? What are the "most radical words" in the Declaration of Independence? What kind of independence do McKibben's Vermont neighbors display?

7. What has cheap energy done to our sense of neighborhood and community, with what psychological impact? Is this changing? What's instructive about the Farmer's Diner?

8. What's Wendell Berry's advice?

9. "The key projects aren't national anymore," with what kinds of exceptions?

10. Why is McKibben hopeful about the future of "community"?

 

Secret of Life

My colleagues and I are being prompted to firm up our Fall '11 course plans, so I'm again soliciting your suggestions on my survey.

And here's another candidate:

__ The Secret of Life. Rhonda Byrne says "The Secret" is a law of attraction: the universe wants you to be rich and happy in every way you desire, you just have to put it out there. James Taylor (among other philosopher-poets) says the secret is enjoying the passing of time. William James said it's attention, and the ability to find satisfaction and sufficiency in the present moment. Albert Camus said "real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present." Barbara Ehrenreich says all of these attitudes are much too positively "bright."  This course will examine these and other perspectives. Could the secret be that there is no secret?


From FoL to SoL? It's not the greatest of acronyms (or is it just me, reminded of "S*t outta Luck"?) but I do like the symmetry of it, and the trajectory: back from the future.

changing education

The plague of unquestioning obeisance to Bigness Bill McKibben deplores in Eaarth definitely has its correlate in our public educational establishment, and in its assembly line mentality. Can the grassroots energy of 350.org be brought to bear on that?

For those who missed Paul's Monday report:

Wittgenstein, Russell

1. Gottlob Frege rejected what starting point in philosophy, and founded what new movement? What was his view of mathematics? What did he mean by "sense and reference"?

2. Who were the two English philosophers Frege inspired to try and define math in terms of logic? Who said mathematical systems cannot be entirely defined and are necessarily incomplete?

3. Which branches of analytic philosophy are Ludwig Wittgenstein mainly associated with? What did he claim he accomplished with his Tractatus? What did he consider the proper relation between language and the world? What was his last philosophical pronouncement (for awhile)?

4. Carnap and the Vienna Circle Positivists said all philosophical problems are really about the structure of language, aka _______. Who did they hate? What is the Verification Principle? What did Karl Popper turn it into?

5. When he began philosophizing again, how did Wittgenstein see language? Was its function still to picture the world's facts? What role did he now see the philosopher of language playing?

Logicomix-

6. In his 1939 speech, Bertrand Russell compares what to being "your brother's keeper"?

7. (T/F) The "forbidden books" in his grandfather's library included all nature and philosophy books?

8. What showed Russell the "only way towards reality," whose power came from ______?

9. What moment ignited Russell's life?

10. Which philosopher's dream revealed Russell's vocation to him? What was it?

11. How did mathematics resemble the Indian cosmos?

12. Frege says the aim of logic is what?

13. "Ignorabiumus" means what?

wave of reason

Bertrand Russell:
When you are studying any matter
Or considering any philosophy
Ask yourself only: what are the facts,
And what is the truth that the facts bear out

Carl Sagan:
Science is more than a body of knowledge
It's a way of thinking
A way of skeptically interrogating the universe

If we are not able to ask skeptical questions
To be skeptical of those in authority
Then we're up for grabs...

Carolyn Porco:
The same spiritual fulfillment
That people find in religion
Can be found in science
By coming to know, if you will, the mind of God...

Sagan:
Cosmology brings us face to face with the deepest mysteries
With questions that were once treated only 
in religion and myth

The desire to be connected with the cosmos
Reflects a profound reality
But we are connected; not in the trivial ways
That Astrology promises, but in the deepest ways...

Russell:
Never let yourself be diverted 
By what you wish to believe
But look only and surely
At what are the facts



Symphony of Science

high tide

1. Thinking "with special clarity about the future," Bill McKibben says we must break what 200+ year habit?

2. (T/F) McKibben is a fan of Tom Friedman.

3. What are McKibben's predictions for the next decade?

4. Who's the "world's greatest company" and how did they spend the last decade? What's their prediction for the next half century?

5. Why will "fighting off the next Katrina" be more expensive? Why is "Eaarth" more expensive in general?

6. What's not "green" about China's new investment in railroads? Why is it "easy"?

7. What is the Pentagon's "grim" prediction of abrupt climate change? How can we avert it?

8. What did the Club of Rome announce, in 1972? What was the initial response? Who proposed "Buddhist economics"? How did the White House respond?

9. What's McKibben's view of "collapse porn"? Are our best days ahead of us?

nashville cats

Hello, Kitties. That's Zeus on the inside, and the unnamed interloper who's been eating his food for a few weeks now on the outside. Guess he needs a name, he's clearly here to stay.