{proof}

Philosophy conferences are definately not what I expected (disclaimer; I have only one experience to base this off of, so yeah, I'm generalizing but completely open to being disproven). The trip wasn't a bad one, but honestly the high points were seeing my parents and stopping in Cape G on the way back to get a beer with Strain. It's not that my presentation didn't go well...outside a really odd comment at the very end ("So you're talking about the probabilities of an attitudinal proposition being true, but these beliefs...what is a belief? Do we even have beliefs?") Well, I don't know about you, but I've got beliefs, so I'm just kinda shooting from the hip at those. But, in essense, I was hoping for a crucible and what I found was a frosted mug.

See, I knew that each presentation was only 50 minutes long. 3,000 words takes just over 20 minutes to read, then the commentator's piece normally takes another 10 to 12. That leaves about 15 minutes of questions. So, intellectually, I guess I always knew there wouldn't be much time for substantial comments aimed at progress of my paper. But it went beyond that simple fact, because there was no sharpening of blades, testing of metal at the conference. I went down there for the purpose of improving my paper and assisting, if possible, the improvement of other's. But the feeling I got was that the conference was a place to hang-out, network a little bit, go drinking on Beale street, and get your travels reimbursed by the department. And while that's not a bad thing in itself, and where I to have known a few people going down there, I can imagine it would have been a kick-ass good time. But if the pursuit of that which can be shown and understood but never said is not the main goal of a conference, I wonder where that is the main goal (outside of one's study at 3am on a Saturday night).

I guess when it all gets flushed out, I just think we're doing some pretty important stuff here. And my problem is that I don't see this as a job or career, I see it as what I've decided to do with the finite time I have this go around. I had imagined walking in there and hearing those type of secrets that are innane if you don't understand them, are self-evident and poetic if you do understand them, but have the inherent danger of making you go insane if you can only partially understand them. Ok, now that I've got that out in the open, yes, I admit I am completely idealistic. But why not? Remember the first time you heard a sceptical hypothesis; how do you know you're actually sitting in front of a computer right now when you could be a brain, floating in a vat of nutrients, hooked up and stimulated by a super-computer to have all the exact same perceptions as you're having right now? What happened? Did you say, "What? that's just silly. Of course I'm not a brain-in-a-vat. Afterall, I ate cherrio's for breakfast this morning. Could a brain-in-a-vat do that?!?" Or was it more, "Ah, well of course I could be a brain-in-a-vat. Afterall, those cherrio's I ate for breakfast this morning could have simply been the super-computer sending sense-impressions of the tiny o's getting soggy in milk." And then there's the third option of, "Holy crap...I'm in the matrix!" Now, that's a pretty harmless example, yet it gets at my point. Why not break down the walls of our minds systematically? If you've ever taken a theoretical course, you'll know that the classes' collective theory changes with every article they read. Each new theory seems perfectly plausible at the time...but none of them need be correct! I don't need to hear true secrets about the world, I just want to be shown the hints others have found and similarly be shown any hints that could lead me to the secret I'm hunting. Oh, and yes, I'm having one of my multi-reality days (brought on, no kidding, by watching Proof, which is an amazing movie for those who feel the way I do about academia).

So, the short of it: I love to have a good time, I wish I'd been down in New Orleans drinking with all my best friends this weekend. And I respect the intent of others to come together for a good time. I was just expected that, while the nights were for networking and drinking on Beale street, the days contained a bit more philosophical rigor. But for now, it's back to grinding out an MA. Shoot me a comment if I'm way off base with this...

Windows

You are so handsome and you look so happy. But deep inside your eyes there is no gaiety, there is only sorrow, as though your eyes knew that happiness did not exist and that all that is beautiful and lovely does not stay with us long.

Narcissus and Goldmund
Herman Hesse

Grinding to a Pulp

Well, the daily grind is definately taking its toll on me. In the next week and two days, I have a meeting to decide next semester's colliquium speakers, a 5 pager for Mind, a 7 pager for Language, presenting my paper (the high point), presenting my commentary on another's paper (the low point), and, hopefully, finishing up my Phil Sci paper. Oh, and 16 hours of driving. And maybe, just maybe, starting to study for my three comprehensive exams that take place during Spring Break. If only I could be there for Mardi Gras...

----------------------------

"How can I tell that you are an enlightened person?" asked Sela the brahman of the Buddha.

"I know what should be known," answered the Buddha, "and what should be cultivated, I have cultivated. What should be abandoned, I have let go, In this way, O brahman, I am awake."

-Sutta Nipata

---------------------------

In this way, O brahman, I can tell that I am not an enlightened person.

Something to Work On

"The results of karma cannot be known by thought, and so should not be speculated about. Thus, thinking, one would come to distraction and distress.

"Therefore, Ananda, do not be the judge of people; do not make assumptions about others. A person is destroyed by holding judgments about others."

-Anguttura Nikaya

In Seeking Truth

Don't go by gossip and rumor, nor by what's told you by others, nor by what you hear said, nor even by the authority of your traditional teachings. Don't go by reasoning, nor by inferring one thing from another, nor by argument about methods, nor from liking an opinion, nor from awe of the teacher and thinking he must be deferred to.

Instead, when you know from within yourselves that certain teachings are not good, that when put into practice they lead to loss and suffering, you must then trust yourselves and reject them.

-Anguttara Nikaya

Jesus has been Kidnapped...

A best friend of mine from back home had this posted on her blog today, and reading through it, I knew those who check Divergent World could probably relate to this one. Click the title of this post to check out the news article (which is a very short piece). My only comment is that they definately could have added Pat Robertson's quote regarding Katrina being God's punishment on New Orleans, but that's just a personal issue. The article as a whole does well making the point.

J. B. Pretti
Philosophy Department
Northern Illinois University

815.501.5512
jbpretti@gmail.com
jbpretti


"There are trivial truths and there are great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true." --Niels Bohr

Have Patience

I beg you...to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer...

--Rainer Maria Rilke

Narcissus

Not surprisingly, I wasn't able to sleep tonight. Fortunately, though, I got an order from Amazon.com today and had a non-philosophy book to keep me occupied while waiting. My "Night Stand" and "Top Shelf" list are updated now, and tonight was reading Narcissus and Goldmund, by Hesse. I came across this quote, which, again, is along the same line as the previous two posts. Where the past few posts may have been cryptic, this if fairly clear. Anyways, figured I'd go ahead and post it since it was on my mind;

"You live fully; you were endowed with the strength of love, the ability to feel. Whereas we creatures of reason, we don't live fully; we live in an arid land, even though we often seem to guide and rule you. Yours is the plenitude of life, the sap of the fruit, the garden of passion, the beautiful landscape of art. Your home is the earth; ours is the world of ideas. You are in danger of drowning in the world of the senses; ours is the danger of suffocating in an airless void. You are an artist; I am a thinker. You sleep at the mother's breast; I wake in the desert. For me the sun shines, for you the moon and the stars." (p. 43)

However, I'd change this last line of his; "For you the sun shines on a beautiful scene, for me only the gray tones of the moon and stars." Anyways, that's just a personal preference I have for the night and it's ability to pull out the hidden side of ideas. But, take the quote how you like. The point is not that I'm living some arid life without humor or passions or deep friendships. But the point is in there somewhere...

Feedback, if you please

Consider the following quote:

The limit to your freedoms is where other peoples and other sentient beings freedoms begin. In other words, you don't have the right to harm others.
- Doc Trejo, who is appearently a Spanish muscician, though I could easily imagine this coming from the Dalai Lama

I'm inclined to agree outright with this statement. But by the same token, then, am I committed to rejecting paternalistic assistance towards others? I don't think this applies if, say, I were merely to offer help to another, as that sentient being would still have the freedom to choose to accept or decline the invitation. But what of helping others without their knowing? I don't want to say too much on this, as I'd like to hear what your take may be. Feel free to leave a comment or IM me on this one.

The 99th Curse

WILL
Do you play the piano?

SKYLAR
Come one, Will. I'm serious.

WILL
No, I'm trying to explain it to you. So you play the piano. When you look at the keys, you see music, you see Mozart.

SKYLAR
I see "Chop-sticks."

WILL
Well, all right, Beethoven. He looked at a piano and saw music. The fuckin' guy was deaf when he composed the 5th Symphony. They had to turn him around to take a bow because he couldn't hear the crowd going crazy behind him. Stone deaf. He saw all of that music in his head.

SKYLAR
So, do you play the piano?

WILL
Not a lick. I look at a piano and I see black and white keys, three pedals and a box of wood. Beethoven, Mozart, they looked at it and it just made sense to them. They saw a piano and
they could play. I couldn't paint you a picture, I probably can't hit the ball out of Fenway Park and I can't play the piano--

SKYLAR
--But you can do my O-chem lab in under an hour, you can--

WILL
--When it came to stuff like that I could always just play.


It would probably be best if I didn't continue on this train of thought, and so I'll stop for the moment. But it's been something weighing heavily on my mind lately, so chances are it'll pop up again.


Post Scripts...

Brokeback to the Future

Ok, admittedly, I haven't seen Brokeback Mountain yet. But the preview for the sequel looks great. Freakin' halarious...

Propositional Functions

Just so you know, I am not foregoing the logic series quite yet. Though my course work isn't all that time consuming at the moment, I am stuck working 30 hours on the weekends, which leaves me fairly worn out. But tonight I'm finishing up a philsci paper and tomorrow I'm looking into this paper I'm commenting on at the conference later this month, and before long these posts on logic will take some very interesting turns. To tide you over, here's two quotes from Bertrand Russell's The Philosophy of Logical Atomism:

"The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it." (p. 53)

"A propositional function is nothing, but, like most of the things one wants to talk about in logic, it does not lose its importance through that fact." (p. 96)

I mean, seriously, I'm going to get paid (someday) to deal with these sort of statements all day...how cool is that...

Post Scripts...