Huenemann

Religious Studies meeting

This from the Religious Studies club:

We’re excited to announce the first Spring meeting of the religious studies club will be held this Thursday, January 24th at 4:30 in 326 of Old Main. We will first have a ten minute presentation on Hebrew Exegesis and then a thirty minute presentation on the development of modern Norse Paganism. It should be very interesting and I know our two student presenters are very knowledgeable in their individual fields. Just a brief note – because our previous meetings were extending well beyond an hour, we have limited student presentations to one opening presentation of ten minutes and one full forty minute presentation. In any case, we’re gonna have a lot of fun this semester. We’ll spend a few minutes talking about some of our plans and the speakers that are coming this semester on Thursday. (Including some very special opportunities we have in the month of February.) Look forward to seeing you there.

Searle on mind and politics

Here is an interesting article in the TLS about John Searle and his latest book, which discusses both the mind-body problem and political philosophy.

Boltzmann’s brains

Here is a bit of material for philosophical reflection, from yesterday’s NYT.

The basic idea, as I understand it, is this. Scientists think that the universe’s level of disorder, as a rule, never decreases. What this means is that things decay, disperse, and lose any non-uniform distribution of qualities over time. You can’t unscramble an egg; you can’t unswirl the cream in your coffee; you can’t make the universe, as a whole, warm up, or even stay the same temp. This is the second law of thermodynamics: disorder (entropy) never decreases.

That’s a law for the universe as a whole. It doesn’t preclude little isolated burps of increasing organization, so long as, over the long haul, there is a net loss in order. So the universe can tolerate isolated exceptions to the second law. But, since nature seems to always choose the simplest path, these exceptions should be kept to a minimum.

Here comes Boltzmann. Suppose the universe had two choices. One is to allow the great big exception to the second law known as the history of human evolution and civilization. The second is to allow the comparatively minor exception which would have you spontaneously come into existence, for a few seconds, with all the memories, perceptions, and expectations you are experiencing right now. Case number two is the smaller breach of entropy. So we should believe that that’s the truth: you think you are part of a great big exception to entropy, but you’re not. You’re something like a one-second-old brain in a vat.

What do you think?

Spinoza hits broadway!

You know, Spinoza — “perky and adorable, a brash but modest young fellow whose head is amusingly stuffed not with baseball statistics but with incisive conclusions about God, nature and the universe.” See the NYT review of a new play about Spinoza.

Nietzsche lecture coming up

See the details in the Announcement box, on the right. Here is the abstract for Rutherford’s talk:

“Nietzsche’s writings offer pointed challenges to received views in almost every area of philosophy, from metaphysics to ethics. One question that is too infrequently raised, however, is how Nietzsche conceives of the activity of philosophy itself. What is the overall goal of philosophy? What does it mean to think and live as a philosopher? I canvass a range of answers to these questions, and argue for the distinctive answers that I believe Nietzsche gives to them. I conclude by describing what I see as the significance of these answers for Nietzsche’s principal philosophical project: the revaluation of all values.”

All are welcome to attend!