On philosophy, physics, and pangolins

Here is a very interesting and insightful article about the efforts of physicists to see math in nature, and how that sometimes might result in paradoxes and dead ends. An excerpt:

That said, we should be wary of claims about ultimate truth. While quantification, as a project, is far from complete, it is an open question as to what it might ultimately embrace. Let us look again at the colour red. Red is not just an electromagnetic phenomenon, it is also a perceptual and contextual phenomenon. Stare for a minute at a green square then look away: you will see an afterimage of a red square. No red light has been presented to your eyes, yet your brain will perceive a vivid red shape. As Goethe argued in the late-18th century, and Edwin Land (who invented Polaroid film in 1932) echoed, colour cannot be reduced to purely prismatic effects. It exists as much in our minds as in the external world. To put this into a personal context, no understanding of the electromagnetic spectrum will help me to understand why certain shades of yellow make me nauseous, while electric orange fills me with joy.

Rest of the article here.

Causation lecture

The USU Philosophy Club is pleased to welcome back USU alum Mike Otteson.  Mr Otteson graduated from USU 4 years ago and is now pursuing his PhD in philosophy at the University of Kansas.

Mr Otteson will be presenting a lecture titled “The End of Humean Supremacy and the Return of Aristotle: The Rebirth of Causal Powers.”  I take it the paper will consider neo-aristotelian responses to Humean skepticism about causation.  Should be very interesting!

Thursday, January 14, 4:00-5:00 in Main 201.  All are welcome!

How to Write a Philosophical Essay

by Huenemann

I recently came across this handout I made for some previous class, and thought it might be of some use to our readers. Note that not all professors are the same, and not all assignments are the same; still, the advice that follows covers a great many paper assignments in a great many courses, I believe.

How to write a philosophical essay

Specifically: how to write an essay that explains and provides an analysis of a philosophical text and a critical (thoughtful) response to it.

  1. Focus on an interesting claim of argument within a larger body of work.
  • E.g., the argument for God’s existence in Descartes’s Third Meditation; Hume’s argument against miracles in section 10 of the Enquiry; Kant’s argument that truths about space are a priori synthetic in the first part of the Prolegomena; Fichte’s view that human experience arises from an ego positing a non-ego through which it can understand itself.
  • Sometimes you will focus on a specific argument for a specific claim; other times you will be explaining a general view or perspective, and trying to determine its value.
  1. You must devote time and effort to “inhabiting” the philosophers’ perspective. This means being able to feel and understand why an intelligent person would have this view. You should be able to explain the appeal of the view, in your own words to a sympathetic friend. Do your best to convince yourself the view is right.
  • As you do this, you will find that there are things you don’t understand, or questions you can’t answer. This is good. Read the work again, or look up materials online, or talk to another student, or think it through on your own. After all this, you might find that you still aren’t sure. But you will have found a couple of possibilities – maybe X is the answer, or maybe Y is. This is really good, as it will give you some material to explore in your paper.

Continue reading “How to Write a Philosophical Essay”