USUPhilosophy

for your viewing pleasure:

 

Welcome to Spring 2014! I hope your classes fill you with new and exciting ideas.

And to get you started, here is a link to a brief essay on whether Plato is right in his criticisms of democracy. The conclusion: “Our claim is that democracy is the political manifestation of our aspiration to rationally pursue the truth; it is, in other words, the political correlate to our pursuit of wisdom. Accordingly, democracy is the only system of government fit for a philosopher.”

Intermountain West Student Philosophy Conference
March 20th – 22nd, 2014
Hosted by the University of Utah Department of Philosophy
Keynote Speaker: Sarah McGrath
Princeton University
Plenary Speaker: Jacob Stegenga
University of Utah
Submissions Due: January 13th, 2014
Papers should be no more than 8 pages or 3,000 words, whichever is shorter. Papers should be submitted as a .doc or a .pdf file. Papers should be prepared for blind review and should include a separate file with the article’s title and the author’s name, email, and university affiliation. Please submit papers to: uuiwgpc@gmail.com

Philosopher Thomas Nagel recently wrote a book, Mind & Cosmos, which has caused quite a ruckus. The ruckus is due to the fact that he has long been a well-respected, influential philosopher, and yet this book challenges the adequacy of naturalism and evolution to explain our world. Many philosophers have risen up to defend this orthodoxy and have tripped over themselves in flagging Nagel’s errors. So it is nice to see what reads as an even-handed consideration of Nagel’s overall philosophical approach. Indeed, it’s convinced me to buy and read the book. An excerpt from the review, explaining Nagel’s “metaphysical rationalism”:

The starting point is this powerful proposition: “The intelligibility of the world is no accident.” That is, nature is at least in some measure rationally comprehensible. There cannot even be a hope for science without this premise, and that we have science is the strongest evidence of its plausibility. At the same time, nature has generated creatures capable of rationally comprehending it. In Nagel’s words, “Nature is such as to give rise to conscious beings with minds; and it is such as to be comprehensible to such beings.” And that is the heart of the matter: “The ability of creatures like us to arrive at such truth, or even to think about it, requires explanation.” We owe ourselves an account of “how the natural order is disposed to generate beings capable of comprehending it.”

On Saturday there will be a full performance of Alexandr Scriabin’s “Prometheus” (“A Poem of Fire”). By “full performance” I mean it will include the “color organ” or a keyboard that triggers various light projections to accompany the truly trippy music. It should be quite a spectacle, accompanied by some informative expert guidance. 7:30 at the Kent Concert Hall; free for USU students with ID. (For a preview, check this out.)

This week also features a roundtable discussion with on “Esotericism and the Occult in the University”, featuring USU’s own Brian McCuskey (English) and Christopher Scheer (Music), along with Anna Gawboy (assistant professor of music at Ohio State) and Marco Pasi (associate professor of the history of hermetic philosophy at the University of Amsterdam). This will be Friday at 11:30 in Library 101. Your mind will never be the same.