Category: Actual philosophical discussion!

Watch some classic 70s gangster movies over the next few weeks – to be followed by discussion!

 

Here is a philosophical question for students and teachers alike:

What should the relationship be between students and teachers?

I’ll say a bit more to motivate the question. One model, maybe a traditional one, is that teachers are sort of “totally other” from the students: they have the knowledge, wisdom, and expertise, and they should command respect from the students and serve as a kind of challenge to the students. The icon here is Professor Kingsfield, the law professor in The Paper Chase — students do whatever they can to earn his respect, and he is constantly raising the bar for them.

A second model is the teacher as friend of the student, or a co-learner. In this case the teacher might even pretend to know less, to make the student feel as if he/she is making new discoveries along with the teacher.

I’m sure there are other models, or compromises between these two. What do you think?

Here is a strange but true brain story about a guy who has trouble figuring out what number “5” represents, let alone adding and subtracting, but who has other unimpaired comeptencies. I find this interesting because the rationalist in me has always found the ability to comprehend math simply basic to having an intellect. I need to study the article further, but a quick read suggests he has an intellect without even a minimal capacity for math.

In the long chain of comments following Kleiner’s “Are we alone?” post, Vince suggests that there are some basic truths any human can recognize, if they are paying attention, and recognizing them forces a move in one direction or another:

1. I am not who I want to be.
2. I cannot change things of my past.
3. I have a dead end in the future.
4. I cannot completely control my relationship with others.
5. The world around me is full of terror and sadness that I cannot erase.

… I sound a bit like Schopenhauer (”the worst of all worlds”).

But these conditions bring angst when a finite person reflects on his very large and (mostly) uncontrollable environment. The Buddhist hopes to remove the desires that bring this angst. The Christian hopes to receive forgiveness and an new life to remove this angst. Sartre hopes to remove angst by being free to choose his experience (his estimate of freedom is rather optimistic). Nietzsche, who seemed to be full of alienation and despair, required of himself the complete embracing of his actions in the presence of his alienation and despair — to live his actions (and angst) eternally.

I still hold that anyone with a human self-consciousness experiences angst over something or they are not working as a complete human in some way. The existentialists seem to be saying that these discoveries and decisions of the finite self in the midst of this large world are the essence of a human. I don’t believe this is necessarily metaphysics. It is observational sociology. Once the existentialists start relating the human condition to Other or Being or No Other, then this is metaphysics.

This does seem to me to be a plausible list of items we typically try to ignore in our day-to-day lives, but once we recognize them, we can either try to do something or try to forget. And “doing something” means, in part, doing philosophy.

Any thoughts?

… can be found here. This time the focus is on comedy in philosophy, or philosophy jokes, or philosophical satire. There are some interesting links, though I wish someone would treat the philosophy of humor with the seriousness it deserves.

To what extent might philosophy require humor, satire, and buffoonery? It seems to me that there is a kind of skepticism that is built on satire. It’s a simple as the Dr. Phil question: “how’s that working out for you?” Imagine Kant laying out the categorical imperative at length, only to be faced with that question. The question undercuts his whole enterprise, in the sense that it trades upon viewing his moral philosophy as a kind of psychological coping mechanism, and raises the question whether a moral philosophy, at bottom, is anything more than that.

There, I just spoiled a good line. doesn’t the fact that I spoiled it reveal something about the significance of satire for philosophy?