Mid-South Philosophy Conference

Great news! I got accepted to the Mid-South Philosophy Conference, hosted in Memphis the 24th and 25th of February. I don't know how "prestigious" this conference is, but being a professional, regional conference as opposed to a graduate or state conference has got to count for something. And my parents are going to come listen to me speak (how unfortunate for them). So I'm hanging on cloud 9 right now.

Admittedly, it's slightly bitter-sweet. The bad news is that I won't be able to make it down to New Orleans during that weekend. It really is going to suck not seeing all my friends, including those I didn't see during Gene's wedding. There is still a slight hope that I present on Friday and can make it down for Saturday, but I can't guarantee that even if I do go Friday. I am still looking for a way down, though, whether during Spring break or maybe just a random long weekend.

But, as one of my best friends recently said, "Jeff, you're a philosopher now. You've got to do philosophical things." Wow...I feel so full of energy right now. I feel that all those dreams of doing exactly what I'm passionate about might actually have a chance....Who'da thunk...

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Jeff's World

In a course on 20th Century Analytic Philosophy, Prof. Buller was attempting to relate the rejection of the phenomonological approach in favor of logical atomism. While I won't bore you with what these movements actually entailed, his analogy is appropriate. He related these advances to Freudian stages of psychosexual development.

There's the oral phase, the anal phase, the phallic stage, the latency phase, and the genital phase. The oral is a dependent phase marked by blind acceptance of their surroundings. The anal phase is marked by a controling characteristic, very rigid and, in a sense, anal-retentive. The phallic stage, albeit most controversial, is a stage of agression towards and eventual identification with their same sex parent. In essense, the child begins to understand their position in the hierarchy of life. The latency phase is just chillin' out for a bit. Then comes the genital stage, which is self explanitory. But Buller added onto to these the appropriate philosophical movements. Once the individual understands his or her role, what they can do with themselves and what they can do with others, they begin to wonder why they exist at all? Existential angst is bound to follow. I'm sure most people who are reading this have gone through a period, normally in the very late teens, early 20's, where they wonder what the meaning of it all is, why they're confined to function as they do, and to what end. And then comes the British Idealism phase (logical atomism, logical positivism, empericism). While I'm just now getting in this scholarly movement, I understand that, basically, it is an attempt to put to rest those existential questions in light of what we can understand of our reality. From what I understand about understanding reality, it's some pretty cool stuff. And yes, sometimes I feel like I'm in Sophie's World; my life mirroring my philosophical inquiries at the time.

But to the point, the collective human consciousness has succeeded in a relatively small number of adventures. We, as a society, have developed through the oral (meat...good), anal (um...3rd century A.D....'nuff said), phallic (sword envy...I mean, come on, who doesn't want a Anduril or Narsil of their own?), latency (dark ages...perhaps still going on), and genital (free love, baby!). Ok, given, that's over-simplified as a matter of jest, and yes, you could make the analogy of human progress fit any developmental model. But it does leave the question of what lies ahead. Because, Sophie's world or not, philosophy does correlate well with where we are as a race.

It seems as though I had so much more to say, but I'm having difficulty writing it out. Maybe it'll get drafted in the next couple days, because in the back of my throat, where all thirsts originate, I can tell its important. Till then...

Namaste'.

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Wake Up

The title of this post is linked to the Tulane University website devoted to the speech Wynton Marsalis gave to the student body last week. It is an amazing speech, and though it's a little on the long side, I highly recommend reading it. His approach to New Orleans being "home" and his comments on social change are both very important and moving. Anyways, just wanted to share that...


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Thirst

For all the metaphors which are a bit cliche', I can't find a better term for how I feel than being thirsty. It signifies that burning feeling, that draw towards, the need for something you consider an essence for life, and that satisfaction once quenched. And don't get me wrong, I don't want many things. I'm a minimalist. I have no misguided notions that I'll ever be rich, I make due with what's available, and I feel best when living on 3 hours sleep and a meal of snow peas and brown rice.

But then there are the things I need...the thirst. And it's been building for over a week. I need challenge, adventures, a sharpening stone, and to kill a few demons.

Quite a few friends gathered over at S&T's place tonight and we got to talking about the philosophy program. SM made the comment that I'm one of the few individuals in the program with the least cognitive dissonance with philosophy. If asked, sure, I'm loving every minute of what I'm doing right now. After the first week, covering hardly more than the syllabi and introductions to the text, I already know this is going to be a semester of searching into the sub-disciplines that move me. But when I asked why some of the others have this disparity between themselves and the program, one theory given was that certain people came to the program expecting to find solutions to their own personal, existential angst. They had questions, the kind of deep questions that may hit you when you're driving at 3am without headlights in view or when you see something so real it can't exist. Presumably, these individuals' questions haven't been answered. But this is a huge part of why I'm continuing in philosophy. Sure, I'm in the program for professional reasons; to advance my scholarly knowledge, to test my metal and get good letters (academic and reference), and, ultimately, to get into a good PhD program. But half of my contentment comes from that personal search through the philosophical depths. As I said earlier tonight, as a consequence of being in this program, I've been killing my own demons weekly.

But this thirst, as it happens from time to time, began before the first day of class and, though some cool thoughts and ideas have already occurred this past week, it persists. It's like having something on the tip of your tongue, or that moment after a question is asked but before the answer is received, or even that feeling when you pass by someone and there's that moment that something important was about the happen...but nothing does. That's the shadow of a demon causing the thirst, and, this time, I've yet to see what's on the other side of things.


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The Humor of the Situation

Your Power Color is Teal

At Your Highest: You feel accomplished and optimistic about the future. At Your Lowest: You feel in a slump and lack creativity. In Love: You tend to be many people's ideal partner. How You're Attractive: You make people feel confident and accepted. Your Eternal Question: "What Impression Am I Giving?"

What's Your Power Color?

Nothing is More Real

I hope I haven't become boring with my logic series. I will be continuing it, if just to have a bit of direction and an means to flush out my own opinion on the matter. But I figured I'd pause here for a catch-all update.

I submitted my Quantifying Qualities paper to the Mid-South Philosophy Conference. It would be amazing if I got accepted, as it would both look good on a CV and be a fun experience. It's in Memphis, too, which is within driving distance for my parents. I don't know that they'd enjoy a philosophy conference, but I'd like them to see what I've chosen to do in my life, all the same. The downside is that it's the weekend of February 24th and 25th. For those friends of mine not from Tulane, this is the weekend before Mardi Gras and, hence, the Saturday of Shopping Cart Day. I know, I know...but no worries. Seeing as I'd be a graduate student presenter, I'd hope to be placed on the Friday schedule and then drive the 6 hours Friday night to get into town in time to claim my cart along with JMD, SLC, and all my other best friends. But, that's only going to be an issue if I get accepted, about which I should be contacted by late January.

Winter break has been good to me, but it has been rather uneventful, so I won't drone on about that. I did get the Chronicles of Narnia box set, and I'm now getting into the 6th book, The Silver Chair. My favorites so far have been The Horse and His Boy (3rd) and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (5th). These stories remind me a bit of The Great Divorce, also by Lewis. Like many works of fiction regarding these deeper themes, the author makes some humorous point to explain that this is only a work of imagination from their own head. Yet, it makes you think.

I was talking with a good friend up here, Tristan, about this tonight and I think we came upon the reason I rate these books so highly. Even though it's a work of fiction, for the author nothing could be more real. I don't know how many of my readers consider themselves mystics, but I'd wager a great deal that most have at least had a mystical experience (regardless of what you called it at the time). As most of my readers probably know, I meditate often. And though I don't think one's own meditation is an appropriate topic for conversation, it does allow ready access to these type of experiences. It can come on as a vibration of energy that slowly builds then passes or can come in a blink of eternal light, but by whatever medium is passes, it leaves you with a sort of unspoken wisdom. You don't want to move or do common place things or even see other people for awhile afterwards. You just want to sit and experience the afterglow of a realization that had been waiting for you for some time. And, though it takes an exceptionally gifted writer to put those realizations into words, it makes perfect sense that it comes out best in a work of fiction. But the truth of the matter is that these sudden insights don't just seem more real but are as if awaking from the in-between state into actual reality. There's a point in The Great Divorce where Lewis describes just this relation of our existence and reality. In his book, he describes the experiences of the newly ascended beings on their first encounter with the low-lying plains of Heaven. He describes the beings as being almost ghostlike, and though they are just as real as they had been on Earth, they cannot so much as bend a blade of grass or lift a fallen leaf in this new place. The grass has so much reality compared to them that it even pricks and hurts their feet by refusing to bend under their shadow of an existence. Well, that's what it's like when returning from these 'mystical' experiences and why, at least for me, the thing I most refuse to do when returning is anything commonplace. Even so much as sitting in a chair (as opposed to my zafu cushion) or turning on the lights if it's gotten dark, all these things seem so empty and besides the point of existing in reality.

So, though that may have been a bit deeper inside my head than you cared to travel, I hope it's at least brought a little random relief to what some consider the dull subject of logic. My point is that I have a high opinion of all of Lewis's writing and I highly recommend the Narnia series to those who had fun reading the Harry Potter books. It's light enough to remind you of your childhood yet deep enough so that you don't feel like you're wasting time reading fiction. And, at least in my opinion, if you relax into the book, listening while you read, you just may sense the reality in the imagination.


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Follow what I mean, not what I say...

So forward we march in to the depths of the statement. Our task is to find how deep they actually run, especially the unseen pitfalls.

To understand how a simple statement can hold so much power in an argument, we must first understand how a statement is an argument. Don't worry, we'll take a further look into the structure of an argument later. Yes, you'll be able to understand the concept of "getting around the horns of the delimma" soon. But, as we're in no rush, let's just get the basics down.

Any argument has a set of premises and/or assumptions and a conclusion. In any system of logic, even informal ones, there must be a process to get from the premises to the conclusion. Sometimes it's a straight shot; P1 is the antecedent to the conditional P2, and the conclusion is the consequent [A, A->B; B]*. Or, if you like, consider a conjunction elemination; "Apples are fruit and oranges are fruit, therefore apples are fruit."[A&O; A] Simple enough. But othertimes there might be many intermediate steps, even further assumptions that must be made, to get from A to B. Here informal logic has a step up on the formal varieties. This is because, in informal logic, its customary to walk through the proof from premises to conclusion, each step of which may be questioned for its integrity. As such, instead of a 42 step proof possibly relying on only 3 premises, in informal logic we refer to all 41 steps of the proof as individual premises (the 42nd step is, of course, the conclusion and the answer to life, the universe, and everything). What we end up with is a form as follows:
P1
P2
...
_Pn_
C

Luckily this is all you need to know for the moment. We'll talk about the interaction the premises play with one another and how assumptions cause one of the main fallicies in arguments later. Remember, we're still on statements, the building blocks of arguments. Luckily, everything you've just learned about an argument applies to statements, with one little switch. Instead of stacking everything up, we line all the premises out in a row, joining them together with '&'s. Then we simply place a conditional between that mass conjunction and the conclusion, and you've got yourself a statement. P1 & P2 & ... & Pn -> C

Now's a good time to pause for an example. "You're late for work again. You were recently told that if you were late for work again, you're fired. Therefore, there's nothing left to say but you're fired." Now, imagine instead you walk into work with pillow creases still on your forehead and your boss simply says "You're fired." This statement can be seen as a truncated form of the previous argument. "If you're late for work again and it's the case that if you're late for work again then you're fired, then you're fired." For you're boss, the two premises have already been conceded, so he finds them redundant to repeat. But, logically, it follows that they're true, hence it's true that you're fired. For homework, try to map out the argument behind the statement, "You can shove that pink slip right up your ass."

Here's a good place to stop (but please read the * footnote). We're almost done going down into the structure of the statement. In the next segment, we'll talk a little bit about how to undercut a statement by finding it's underlying argument. By the end, you'll be able to take down the Kansas School Board at any town-hall meeting. Till then, have some fun paying attention to the logic of body signals. Or as I call it, really informal logic.


*As you've seen here, I've noted the underlying structure in brackets. I'll try my best to describe things so you understand them without looking at letters and symbols, but it's good to start practicing with them for the later segments. Below I've listed some definitions of terms and symbols for those new to the formal side of things.
~ = 'not' :: ~B = It's not the case that bees make honey.
& = 'and' :: B&E = Bees make honey and Bears eat honey.
v = 'or' :: Bv~B = Either bees make honey or they don't make honey.
-> = 'if...then...' or 'a conditional' :: B->E = If bees make honey then bears eat honey.
antecedent = the B of B->E. If the antecedent is false, then the if/then statement has to be true.
consequent = the E of B->E. If the consequent is true, then the if/then statement has to be true. (some cool things you can do with this later)
<-> = a bi-conditional. B<->E is the same as saying B->E and E->B. Either both E and B are true or both E and B are false for the biconditional to be true.
Also, I'm using ';' to signify 'therefore.' This is used to mark the conclusion, though it is normally marked with three dots (where the angles of an upward pointing triangle would be) or an solid line such as in an elementary subtraction problem. But as I have neither of those on Blogger, the semicolon will suffice.

This will get you through the next couple segments. We'll spend a little time with each of these notions later.


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Blog Tags

Here's a cool waste of time for you. The title of this post is linked to a site that lets you generate your own blog tags (as normally seen at the bottom of the sidebar). Here are a couple I generated in my late-night free-time. I don't know how many of you have blogs, but I thought it was pretty cool.

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Ok, but why?

I got into what I thought was a long discussion (turned out to just be a long talk) with a friend of mine who felt studying logic was pointless; it's better just to think things through. Her argument was simply that she's used logic all her life and the introductory logic course she took didn't help her at all. Well, I concede that introductory logic courses are quite redundant.

But, to elaborate on my initial response, in "thinking things through" we are appealing to the underlying logical structure of the situation. What if I say that "if the dice come up doubles(D), I get to roll again(R) and, look, the dice came up doubles, therefore I get to roll again"? In trying to determine if it's true I get to roll again, you may think to yourself that I've satisfied the antecedent (I rolled doubles), and that, by recalling what the rules of the game, I know the conditional is true, therefore the conclusion that I get to roll again must be true. Now, whether I'm thinking through the previous statement, or the formal form of D --> R, D, therefore R, I'm analyzing the same structure.

The following response was that dealing with letters doesn't help one in real life. Well, again, I concede that thinking in letters at the introductory level doesn't help many people. This is because many people are already competent at some elementary level of logical deduction. We deal with letters because we're too lazy to write out the actual statements again and again (and, admittedly, it's easier to see relationships when things are simplified symbolically). But that's not to say the study of logic past the introductory level isn't useful.

Consider the analogy of studying English. In middle school, the classes on grammar and punctuation weren't all that illuminating. We used the English language to a higher level outside of class than we did underlining the adjectives and circling the adverbs in class. This is the same with introductory courses in logic. But if we happened to take an English course in college, whether an in-depth look at Shakespeare or a comprehensive study of poetry, we're actually studying the English language to a higher level than the slang and lifeless expressions we tend to use in everyday conversations. However, by studying the theory of a metaphor or the more complex means of stucturing a sentence, we can then utilize these tools outside the ivory tower. We needn't, necessarily, but if we wanted to be more eloquent or more precise in our description of things, we could do so.

Well, the same goes for logic. We naturally acquire a sufficient level of logical understanding through our everyday encounters. And though introductory courses don't add to this understanding, by studying logic that exceeds our everyday requirements, we can be more proficient and effective in our everyday deductions. Mind you, we needn't use these new tools; afterall, we've gotten through life fairly well with our limited understanding thus far. But through the study of logic, we at least able to better argue our position, make more elaborate extractions from a set of conceded points, find the weak points in arguments and follow through by showing their fallacies. And though I talk about this in an opponent-based confrontation, this applies to all types of logical situations; arguments with oneself, mass-media statements, and taking a set of known facts and developing new solutions to a problem. So while I agree whole-heartedly that studying logic for the sake of studying logic is quite pointless, this brings me to my last point.

In the English example, it was argued that the higher level of comprehension is really only useful if you wanted to write or be an editor. Well, I agree that these occupations provide abundant opportunities to utilize the understanding gained through your coursework, but I also contend opportunities exist outside specialized employment. The next argument was that maybe it'd be more useful to learn about things with a larger scope of applicability than English. And this is the best answer I can give to why I love philosophy so much. Philosophy is often times seen as dealing only with the abstract, higher order nature of things. Well, true. But from this higher order, the conceptual understanding and tools gained through study filter down to all aspects of life. In philosophy, we take an understanding of political theory at their most abstract and apply it to current diplomatic situations. We take an understanding of the purpose of science and approach artifacts in our environment that have never been tested against the scientific method (this is how all the major scientific disciplines developed, included the most recent offspring of psychology). And, though this involves a bit more theory than necessary to make my point, philosophy itself has a hierarchy. Epistemologists would say the study of knowledge was the mother of all philosophy. But, like any great mythological genealogy, the study of knowledge was beget by the great, all-pervasive structure of wisdom as a whole; logic. For, without logic, we could not deduce any truths or even argue coherently for the existence of knowledge, ethics, metaphysics, etc. So this is why I consider the study of logic not only useful, but necessary for any personal development in our attempt to understand the world around us.


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Darwinian Poetry

tonight
you made thin conversation

with cold knowledge

revealing
one dream
a love strangely motionlessness


Modified from #18484

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Do Bees Make Honey?

If you were to ask me about informal logic, as a best friend recently did, I would say there is no such thing. However, I would understand that this imaginary thing you were asking about could be summed up in the title of this post. You probably want to know how to better understand everyday arguments. You might wonder about the underlying implications of statements and how to show their fallicy. You might even want to know how to win an argument with me. Well, I'm not going to tell you that. I like winning. But, as I promised to repay a friend for what turned out to be one of the best evenings I've had in many months, this is the first post to a 46 part series on "informal" logic.

To begin with, let's discuss why we're looking into to such a ludicrious concept as informal logic. Afterall, wouldn't it be better to learn about formal logic? The statement "bees make honey" is so much easier to pick apart in statement logic (SL). Watch;

B, where B = Bees make honey.

See, how easy is that to understand? It has a truth value, nothing more. It either is the case that bees make honey or it is not the case that bees make honey. Flip a coin, form a committee, or google it to determine the truth-value and you've done logic. In fact, in SL we can form any statement we need to analyze (after the first 26, we start putting up primes to keep from getting confused). But B doesn't get the whole story, does it?

So let's try monadic predicate logic;

Mb, where Mx = x makes honey and the constant b = bees.

Well, this also has a truth value, and it gives us a bit more to work with. We can determine if bees make honey, or perhaps only that something makes honey, or that the process of making honey is impossible. Taking another step would be diadic predicate logic;

Mbh, where Mxy = x makes y and the constant b = bees and the constant h = honey.

There, for the purposes of our statement, we have fully expressed what we desired. So, let's pick up a book on polyadic predicate logic (as we might come across some slightly more complex statements) and scrap the other 45 segments of this series.

Ok, so you won't let me get away with that. True, there are mathematical and sentential truths out there that could not have been explored without these forms of logic (plus modal concepts such as possibility and necessity), but that doesn't mean we have to deal with them. Afterall, the whole reason of translating any argument into a form of logic is just so that we may, in the end, re-translate it to the common tongue. So this is where we end up; informal logic, as I'll be using it, is understanding statements and arguments without tediously traslating, doing the sums, and re-translating in time to sweep the rug out from under your opponent (even if your opponent, as I often find with myself, is yourself). Sound fun? Good, then let us begin with the small and work our way up.

Concept 1: Statements, even statements as simple as bees make honey, are not atomic. You should think of them more as tiny little arguments in themselves.

In accepting any statement, consider how much ground you've just yielded. Though it is a bit silly, in accepting 'bees make honey' you are conceeding that there exist objects of the nature of 'bees'(P1), there is a process by which one substance is manipulated to produce another substance(P2), and there exists a substance of the nature of 'honey'(P3). In the tiny little argument form, you're allowing that (P1), (P2), (P3), therefore 'B'. Worse, you're saying P1-3 are all true.

Further, you have allowed that the primary substance remain unnamed. Do bees make honey out of fairy dust? Do they make it out of unicorn hair? Though it is not displayed in our informal logic, 'makes' is actually a triadic predicate; 'Mxyz' = "x makes y from z". In accepting such a simple statement as 'B', you are dealing with things both said and unsaid. And this is the case with all statements, even within the infinite regress that results once the sub-statements, such as P1-3, are called into question.

In a real life example, consider the cliche' lawyer's question to a defendent who's taken the stand: "Did you simply throw your clothes away or burn them after murdering Jones?" You can imagine the implications regardless of how the defendent answers the question. Eitherway, by even answering the question he has conceeded that the statement [T (thrown the clothes away after committing the crime) or B (burned the clothes after committing the crime)] is true. Following this, through disjunction elimination we know he either threw his clothes away or burned his clothes and this was done after he committed the crime. This is why cliche' lawyers get paid so much; they leave no room for the 5th.

But don't worry, this post was just the building blocks. You may have been wondering about arguments, but now may think statements are overwhelmingly complex. Well, there's truth to that. Luckily, once you understand why statements have such depth, you'll be well on your way to winning an argument against me. The next step will be taking a further look into the relationship between statements and arguments, which we refer to as associated conditionals. Till then, try undercutting a few statements for the fallicy...any good fundementalist website will do for practice.

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Realms

The realm of reality is as vast as cosmic space; it is the knowing mind of sentient beings that is small. Just as long as you do not become egotistic and selfish, you will be ever sated with the spiritual food of nirvana.

-Pao-chih


And by the way, I do actually have a substantive post coming, I've just been trying to nail the ending. But soon...