Author: Kleiner

An article today on the increased use of technology (particularly ‘smart phones’) on college campuses.  I am really hesitant about such things.  

I have a few comments.  One person argued that these phones would facilitate more interaction.  ‘Abilene Christian experimented with laptops in class, but “we weren’t pleased with what it did for us,” Rankin says. “The screens created a barrier between teacher and students.” ‘

I guess the argument here is that phones are less of an obstacle to interaction than laptops.  What is strange is the seeming inevitability that we have to use technology somewhere along the way.  What about those of us that think that both laptops and cell phones create unnecessary barriers between the teacher and the student?

And here is the most ridiculous argument (an argument for ‘educational gaming’):

‘A game called “Savannah,” which was developed in Britain using Mediascape, lets students play lions and gazelles whose geographic locations are tracked via cell phones. Whenever a “lion” finds a “gazelle,” the virtual gazelle gets eaten. But if the lions eat all the gazelles, they end up dying of hunger. “By the end, the kids learn the balance of life,” McKinney explains.’

Really?  Did they really learn the ‘balance of life’ by having little lcd lions eat little lcd gazelles?  Aren’t those students just dumber for having played that little game?

My attitude: If students want to play computer games and gab/text on cell phones, let them.  But PLEASE let’s not start calling it ‘educational’ just so we don’t have to feel guilty about it.

All that said, maybe I am just a [fairly young] dinosaur.  So much has changed so fast.  I graduated from college in 1996, but my college and no email at the time, and no one but doctors owned cell phones (and they were giant).  I heard some whispers about the coming ‘information superhighway’, but it meant nothing to me at the time.  

Here is my question: are profs like me who dig in our heels against the introduction of these new ‘education facilitating technologies’ going to seem increasingly irrelevant?  If a prof does not use technology in his class (podcasts, blogs, computer assisted lectures, …), do you think twice about the value of the class?  In other words, does an old-fashioned books and chalkboard prof just seem like an irrelevant relic?

A few Hitchens Hooligans (I thought the USU band of ‘new atheists’ needed a name) came by my office yesterday for a quick discussion.  It led to some questions about Catholic Saints.  Some of the questions were quite good, though others were founded in stereotpyped misunderstandings that have been refuted for so long that I am surprised that people (atheists and many Protestants alike) still hold on to such things.  Anyway, predictably we made no progress.  They likely regarded me as a kook (I know the feeling, I used to be a dyed-in-the-wool atheist), and I looked at them as sadly impoverished.

At any rate, something occurred to me after the discussion.

The Hitchens Hooligans are marked out, primarily I think, by their attitude toward mystery.  I do not think it is too much to say that they hate mystery.  You can tell by the way they recoil with contorted faces anytime they hear the word (okay, they usually just make a snide remark).  I would contend that this hatred of mystery is itself a spiritual response to the unknown.  We all encounter the unknown, but Hitchens Hooligans recoil from it.  Their immediate response is bitterness (so much anger against religion!) following by a very predictable reductionist movement.  For Hitchens Hooligans, the mysterious unknown – far from something to be wondered at – is immediately reduced to mere mechanical explanations.  Formal and final causes be damned, right?  Those are hated almost as much as religion itself.

To my mind, this is no more a rational attitude toward the unknown as is the religious attitude.  They are both attitudes, comportments, toward the unknown.  These comportments work like ‘first principles’ (we cannot argue for them, and everything else we believe is deduced from them).  I would accuse the Hitchens Hooligans of lacking a spiritual imagination.  It is almost inconceivable to them that the world could involve more than mere mechanics.  Oh, but there ‘are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’

Before any real argument is possible, what is needed for the Hitchens Hooligans is a ‘baptism of the imagination’ (CS Lewis).  Marcel is perhaps the best on this point.  He distinguishes between the ‘problematical’ and the ‘mysterious’.  The problematical is the world understood in merely mechanistic terms, where I am merely my [biological] functions and nothing more unique than that.  In the problematical world, science promises a total explanation of everything. 

Contrast this with mystery.  What is distinctive about mystery is that it constantly recedes.  While it seems like it could be grasped in a total rational comprehension, it always slips away.  As we disclose part of it, other parts become concealed.  In this comportment, the encounter with mystery does not explain by reducing but instead deepens and broadens the individual and his horizons.  (If you see Heidegger’s distinction between ‘thinking’ and ‘technology’ here, you are on the right track).

So the issue is, after all, a spiritual issue – how will we respond to the unknown?  Human existence is, at least in part, a spiritual question.  This is why thoughtful reductionists find themselves – perhaps despite themselves – drawn to the ‘spiritually literary’ works.  For instance, one of the Hitchens Hooligans in my office yesterday is a great fan of Dostoevsky.  Huenemann has a fairly serious love affair with Nz.  Dostoevksy and Nz – are there two more spiritual writers (even if they are spiritual in very different ways)?  I might add that Nz at least tries to overcome the lion stage in order to be like a child.  Hitchens and his Hooligans are stuck in vengeance (though it is unclear to me to what offense they are retaliating).  Perhaps their ongoing fascination with religion (why can’t they just leave it alone and move on?) itself speaks volumes about their own spiritual struggles.

By the way, Michael Novak has a new book out called ‘No One Sees God’.  I have only read reviews, but it seems that he is making a similar case there. 

An interesting article here (scalia-and-lure-of-natural-law1) from First Things on the recent 2nd Amendment decision.  It suggests that – gasp – Scalia made the most reasonable interpretation by appealing to something like the ‘natural law’.

[Full disclosure: While not being ‘anti-gun’, I am hardly ‘pro-gun’.  I do not own a gun, and will confess that I see little reason for why anyone would need one for self-defense or why anyone would need a handgun or an automatic weapon (since hunting appears to me to be the only good use for guns).  Guns seem to me to bring more danger than safety to situations.  But I think Scalia was right to avoid utilitarian social engineering and stick to the principles at hand.]

An interesting article that reacts to a recent edition of New Criterion that bemoans the rather pathetic state of liberal education at American universities and colleges.  

FirstThings-the-state-of-higher-desperation-matthew-j-milliner1

Count me as one who thinks instant replay in baseball is a bad idea.  Call me a ‘luddite purist’ if you must, but I resist the imperialism of technological thinking.  You can read George Will’s (whatever you think of his politics, he is a good baseball writer) recent column on the matter here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/13/AR2008061302637.html

This might seem at best tangentially related to philosophical questions.  But I think there are lots of interesting philosophical/ethical questions concerning umpires.  I friend of mine recently raised a number of them, I will parrot him here:

– How much of the human element do we want in sports?  Would a game (baseball, football, etc) be a better game if we had perfect referee robots instead of humans?  In such a game, let’s imagine, all the calls are right.  The outcome of the game would really be determined by the play on the field, right?  But then players and fans would no longer be able to influence the game by influencing the refs.  Is that influence an essential part of the games?  So would we damage the game?  Or would we just lose someone to yell at and blame things on?  Is there a hard and fast line to be drawn here?

– How important is it to always get it ‘right’?  How do we discern where and how the demand for precision and accuracy should be applied and where a more lax epistemological attitude is not only permissible but preferable?

–  Is it morally permisible to treat refs worse than we’d normally treat humans in other circumstances? 

– Is it permissible to deliberately try to influence them to make bad calls?