Author: Huenemann

Check out these free ones available online, from great professors around the world.

The philosophy faculty have been discussing the possibility of adding some pre-requisites to some of our courses, and we’d like to have some student feedback on the idea. Let me explain the proposal a bit. Right now, anyone can walk in and take any of our philosophy courses. For many courses this is a fine idea, as we all believe that as many students as possible should be exposed to philosophy. But some courses really are pretty advanced, and some background would be really helpful: e.g., Epistemology and Contemporary European Philosophy. We are thinking of requiring one other, non-ethics philosophy course as a pre-req for these courses. Also, we’re thinking about requiring Ancient (or Intro) before Medieval, and Early Modern (or Intro) before Kant. And once we start offering Contemporary Ethical Theory again, we would require Intro or an ethics course for it.

What do you think? Feel free to add comments below as well.

Galen Strawson recently posted his review of Dennett’s book. I’m linking to it here because so many of the students who were in Philosophy 4410 last term have expressed a continued interest in making sense of the topic. Happy exploring!

You might want to check out this review of the book A Tenth of a Second: A History by Jimena Canales. Here’s just a sample:

Canales ends with an account of the debate between Bergson and Einstein in which a few references to the tenth of a second or the personal equation occur, although they are not central to the debate. A psychologist participant, Henri Piéron, in a public confrontation referred to the personal equation. Bergson refers to it in a late essay. However, Canales surprisingly does relatively little with Bergson’s reference to the cinema as a model for time consciousness. (She neglects the story that Bertrand Russell, who had never seen a film, went to one only to examine Bergson’s analogy.)

So there’s a new edition coming out of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (coupled with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) where the “n-word” is systematically replaced by “slave”. (See the article here.) The main idea of the editor Alan Gribben is that people aren’t reading one of the greatest works of American literature merely because the work has frequent use of a word that now carries a tremendous emotional charge it didn’t carry back in Twain’s day. So, he says, take out the offending word, and encourage people to read the great work. (Note, of course, the obvious point that this is only a single edition of the work, and there will be plenty, yes, plenty of tamper-proof editions of the original work available for the rest of time.)

I say good for Gribben and NewSouth books. They are of course at the receiving end of a withering blast of scorn from textual purists who think the replacement constitutes censorship or some deep violation of a virginal text. Hogwash. Indeed, an argument can be made that retaining the “n-word” violates Twain’s text, since the word itself has changed in meaning over time. Certainly Twain never meant eyebrows to be raised every time the word made an appearance, and so retaining it fundamentally alters the good humor of the text. But the main point is this: if such a replacement allows Mark Twain to enter the public schools of America, then so be it!

And, yes, I could even go for renaming Melville’s work Moby Richard if it meant people would actually read the thing.