Archive for the 'Philosophy Society' Category
Friday, February 19th, 2010
Type a one-page essay in support of (yes, I am only seeking pro-arguments so get into character if need be) the following prompt and post it in the comments section below. Feel free to perform some research–draw on Ayn Rand, Nietzsche, William F. Buckley, Herbert Spencer, Thoreau, Kierkegaard, et. al. Of course, you may quote such philosophers so long as you do so sparingly.
“Man owes nothing to society and man should ask nothing from society.”
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Thursday, February 4th, 2010
I teach you the Übermensch. Man is something to be surpassed. What have you done to surpass mankind? –Nietzsche
Analyze the following sources and come to our next session with written responses to the questions below.
Required Sources:
Optional Sources:
Response Questions:
1. Define and describe the concept of the ubermensch.
2. Apply the definition and description from #1 to characters throughout history, both real and imagined. Think: Omar from The Wire, Kurtz from Heart of Darkness, Tyler Durden in Fight Club, Dexter, etc.
3. Assess the functions and dysfunctions of the pragmatic applications of the ubermensch philosophy.
4. How does Judge Holden personify the Nietzsche’s ubermensch?
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Friday, January 8th, 2010
Pinker’s deep studies of language have led him to insights into the way that humans form thoughts and engage our world. He argues that humans have evolved to share a faculty for language, the same way a spider evolved to spin a web.
In 2003, Harvard recruited Pinker for its psychology department from MIT. Time magazine named Pinker one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2004.
Watch this video (there are 2 parts, 10 minutes each…here is part two) take notes and respond to these questions:
- Describe our physiological reaction to swears
- List the five “Contents of Swears” and explain the emotions that these types of words elicit
- What are the five reasons that people swear? Are any of these reasons unreasonable? Are there other reasons?
- Why do we need dysphemisms? What are the functions and dysfunctions of dysphemisms?
- What are the functions of idiomatic swearing?
- How and why are swears culturally specific?
- In conclusion, why do we swear? Oh, and why do authorities try to cease our swearing?
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Friday, January 8th, 2010
In this video, Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell gets inside the food industry’s pursuit of the perfect spaghetti sauce — and makes a larger argument about the nature of choice and happiness.
- Why is Moskowitz’s assertion “enormously” important?
- What does the Grey Poupon story suggest?
- How does Moskowitz battle with Plato? (hint: absolutism)
- What conclusion does Gladwell draw from his studies of Moskowitz? To what extent and in what ways do you agree with Gladwell’s conclusion?
BTW, here is Gladwell on The Ketchup Conundrum from the New Yorker. Awesome.
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Friday, January 8th, 2010
In an exclusive preview of his book The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker looks at language and how it expresses what goes on in our minds — and how the words we choose communicate much more than we realize.
In watching this video (18 minutes) take notes. In doing so, consider the following questions:
- What is the relationship between language and thought?
- What is the relationship between language and human interaction?
- How and why do we “veil” our speech?
- How would the human experience (both personal and political) be different if language only had literal/direct connotations?
- What is Pinker’s thesis and what is philosophical about it?
Bring your notes and your responses to these questions to our next session.
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Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
There has been quite the hullabaloo these days about implications of the financial troubles of newspapers in the West. For some time, I feared that the newsroom cutbacks in all newspapers and the outright bankruptcy and closing of others, would have a profoundly negative impact on American society. I was convinced by the assertions of David Simon, Steve Coll and Bob Garfield. However, I recently came around on this issue and decided that I have no valid reason to mourn the death of newspapers in America. Instead, I found myself as angry at newspapers as ever.
Then I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, On the Media (you should give a listen to their weekly, one-hour meta-gab ) where the host, Bob Garfield, invited listeners to email him with a eulogy (he seemed to be looking for nostalgia) for the dead American newspaper industry.
Here is my response to Bob Garfield’s call for eulogies
Now read a compelling argument to the contrary that is probably more convincing (and certainly more well-written) than mine: David Simon’s testimony to the Senate Hearing on the Future of Journalism. You can also watch him deliver this speech in the Senate
During our next seminar, we will discuss:
- Do the newspapers’ failures account for their insolvency? Or did modern technologies destroy the newspapers (or both)?
- Do we need newspapers in their current incarnation?
- Can we trust that a superior mechanism of digging up and delivering news will emerge in the place of newspapers?
- Can we rely on ‘democratic’ or ‘citizen’ journalists? (think ‘Emergence’)
- What should the role of the government be in saving newspapers (for instance, the French government bailed out Le Monde)?
Come to our next session with some well-reasoned, written responses to the above questions.
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Monday, October 12th, 2009
What is a memory? Science writer Jonah Lehrer tells us is it’s a physical thing in the brain… not some ephemeral flash. It’s a concrete thing made of matter. And NYU neuroscientist Joe LeDoux, who studies fear memories in rats, tells us how with a one shock, one tone, and one drug injection, you can bust up this piece of matter, and prevent a rat from every making a memory. LeDoux’s research goes sci-fi, when he and his colleague Karim Nader start trying to erase memories. And Nader applies this research to humans suffering from PTSD.
According to the latest research, remembering is an unstable and profoundly unreliable process. It’s easy come, easy go as we learn how true memories can be obliterated and false ones added. And Oliver Sacks joins us to tell the story of an amnesiac whose love for his wife and music transcend his 7 second memory.
Listen to this piece from WNYC’s “Radiolab”
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Friday, September 18th, 2009
What happens when there is no leader? Starlings, bees, and ants manage just fine. In fact, they form staggeringly complicated societies, all without a Toscanini to conduct them into harmony. How? That’s our question this hour. We gaze down at the bottom-up logic of cities, Google, even our very own brains. Featured: author Steven Johnson, fire-flyologists John and Elizabeth Buck, biologist E.O. Wilson, Ant expert Debra Gordon, mathematician Steve Strogatz, economist James Surowiecki, and neurologists Oliver Sacks and Christof Koch.
Listen Here (1 hour)
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Friday, September 18th, 2009
Where does our sense of right and wrong come from? We peer inside the brains of people contemplating moral dilemmas, watch chimps at a primate research center share blackberries, observe a playgroup of 3 year-olds fighting over toys, and tour the country’s first penitentiary, Eastern State Prison. Also: the story of land grabbing, indentured servitude and slum lording in the fourth grade.
Listen Here (1 hour)
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Saturday, August 15th, 2009
You have advanced kidney cancer. It will kill you, probably in the next year or two. A drug called Sutent slows the spread of the cancer and may give you an extra six months, but at a cost of $54,000. Is a few more months worth that much?
Read Singers’ take on the rationing debate
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