Quizzes Feb 4, 6

Neuroexistentialism (MP) 1-2 (Catch up on Baggini first)
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Add your quiz & discussion questions, comments, links, et al...

1. What distinguishes neuroexistentialism from previous varieties of existentialism? (1)

2. Neuroexistentialism is defined here as ...? (2)

3. Neuroscience adds what to Darwin's message? (8)

4. What's problematic about the hypothesis that altruism is not a naturally evolved trait in humans? (26)

5. What serious drawback initially faces the view that religion is the watershed of moral values? (27)

6. Just like prairie voles, humans have many ...? (32)

Add your quiz questions, please.

Discussion Questions

• Is there an inherent clash or incompatibility between the scientific and humanistic images of humanity, or is the perception that there is due to contingent assumptions about science or humanity (or both) that we need to reconsider? 
• If you're familiar with Wilfred Sellars' "manifest image," how would you characterize its relation to what Caruso and Flanagan call the "humanistic image"?
• Is a geist necessarily the same as a ghost?
• Are we really "100% animal"? Or does the evolution of human culture distinguish the human animal in ways that challenge that characterization?
• Would Darwinian evolution still be controversial, if there had been no history of religious  devotion preceding its articulation?
• If you consider yourself a humanist, do you accept the list of humanistic "commitments" on p.6?
• If you embrace a scientific worldview, do you accept the assertions attributed to the scientific image on p.6?
• If altruism is a naturally evolved trait in humans, why are there so many selfish people? 
• If you are not religious, have you concealed that from acquaintances so as not to arouse their suspicion that you might be amoral, or worse?
• "Group living often involves norms that keep selfish behavior in check." (34) How would you characterize the present status of such norms in our society? How resilient is the normative structure of civilized behavior at this moment? Are we about to find out?
• COMMENT: "There is not JUSTICE, there is just us."
• Add your DQs please

01:04 What is neuroexistentialism? 04:12 Neuroscience, free will, and existentialism 10:43 The "compatibilist" claim that free will and determinism can co-exist 22:21 To define “free will,” first redefine “agency” 30:22 Why the importance of luck should make us doubt intuitions about free will 39:00 Moral responsibility and the Nazi war criminal thought experiment 50:30 Does Gregg’s personality predispose him to reject retribution? Robert Wright (Bloggingheads.tv, The Evolution of God, Nonzero, Why Buddhism Is True) and Gregg Caruso (SUNY Corning, greggcaruso.com)

"...I am optimistic about the prospects of life without free will. I call myself an optimistic skeptic.As an optimistic skeptic, I maintain that life without free will is not only possible but that it's preferable. Prospects of finding meaning in life and sustaining good interpersonal relationships, for example, would not be threatened..."

And I am an optimistic free will skeptic skeptic...


Feb 6, MP 3-4
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1. Love and what seem to be similar phenomena? (39)

2. Early relationships determine adult relationships, according to what theory? (42)

3. Lewis says we can be attracted to others with whom we do not share  what? (47)

4. Some worry that even if neuroscience doesn't really undermine morality, people might be incited to behave immorally if what? (55)

5. The study involving people who'd been hypnotized to report feelings of disgust shows what? (61)

6. Philosophers and psychologists might make more progress if they focused on what? (65)

Add yours please

Discussion Questions

• Are charity and kindness natural? (41)
• Is love rational? Friendship? (43) 
• Is Lewis right about the affect of Eros on happiness? (46)
• Do you agree that our capacity for love is in some important way foundational or a prerequisite for our moral nature? Is there any particular reason why a godless person should favor or disfavor this view?
• Should we in any sense immunize our moral beliefs from alteration in the light of the current state of neuroscientific understanding? Is the attribution of personal responsibility just so crucial to social stability and the public interest that we ought to erect a wall between neuroscientific facts (where consensus can be identified) and moral values?
• COMMENT: “While friendship has been by far the chief source of my happiness, acquaintance or general society has always meant little to me, and I cannot quite understand why a man should wish to know more people than he can make real friends of.” C.S. Lewis
• COMMENT: “Walking and talking are two very great pleasures, but it is a mistake to combine them. Our own noise blots out the sounds and silences of the outdoor world; and talking leads almost inevitably to smoking, and then farewell to nature as far as one of our senses is concerned. The only friend to walk with is one who so exactly shares your taste for each mood of the countryside that a glance, a halt, or at most a nudge, is enough to assure us that the pleasure is shared.” ― C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life
• Add your DQs please

I'm not a C.S. Lewis fan (surprise!), but Shadowlands is a lovely film and a moving love story. If I were Lewis, though, the events it depicts would have sorely tested my faith.

==
The subject of Love came up in discussion the other day, it often being alleged that materialists (physicalists) can't account for it in their ontology... and since atheists are most often physicalists, that's relevant. Also, Valentine's Day is coming.

Anyway, with love in the air I thought I'd share this recent essay from Garrison Keillor. Being a lower-midwesterner by birth I still appreciate his upper-midwestern drollery... and still regret his having been indiscriminately swept up in the #MeToo moment and unfairly lumped with the creepy, criminally- reprehensible Harvey Weinstein. Mr. Keillor is one of the funniest storytelling poet-promoters of his generation. I miss Prairie Home Companion.

The art of love in the far North

Winter is a thoughtful time. Snow falls in the trees and my natural meanness dissipates and the urge to bash my enemies’ mailboxes with a baseball bat. I put fresh strawberries on the cornflakes and taste the sweetness of life. I speak gently to the lady across the table. Marriage is the truest test — to make a good life with your best-informed critic, and thanks to her excellent comedic timing, we have a good life. My third marriage and this year we ding the silver bell of twenty-five years.

America is the land of second and third chances, not like Europe. We have remedial colleges for kids who slept through high school. In Europe, the system is geared toward efficiency: it separates kids by age 12 into Advanced, Mediocre, and Food Service Workers, and once they assign you to a lane, it’s hard to get out of it. In this country, if our children are lazy and undisciplined, we try to see signs of artistic ability. We put them in a fine arts  program. They spend three years writing weird stuff and get an MFA and you drive through McDonald’s and the young people fixing the Egg McMuffins are poets and songwriters.

It’s a land of high hopes, thanks to the Atlantic and Pacific that serve to isolate us from reality. Our ancestors were happy to escape the zeal of revolutionaries and the madness of despots and come to America and work like draft horses, hoping their children and grandchildren would have an easier time of it. And we do. Fifty years ago, when we referred to “homosexuals,” it sounded like people suffering from a condition that required treatment, but when “gay” became common usage, it changed everything. How can you be opposed to happiness?

For an old man, there aren’t many second chances, but we still hope for them. I miss my youth, the buzzin’ of the bees in the cigarette trees near the lemonade springs where the bluebird sings, and now the bee population is down, the smokes are gone, lemonade contains dangerous additives, and when did you last see a bluebird? In my youth, men worked on their cars, changed the oil and the spark plugs, replaced the fan belt, and other men gathered, squatted around the car, and talked about manly things. The driveway was their territory. This is all gone now. Cars can’t be repaired by ordinary people with ordinary tools. Men have been forced into the living room, which belongs to women. They say, “Take your shoes off” and you have to do it.

The country is falling apart. There are new food allergies every week so we can’t have dinner parties anymore unless we limit the menu to locally sourced artisanal lentils. And people who come for dinner spend the first half hour talking about how long it took to get here — rush hour is horrendous, three and four hours, so people email and text behind the wheel, even shave, and do makeup, change a shirt, put on a tie, nobody dares tailgate because they’re steering with their knees so traffic moves even more slowly. Online medical education means someday we’ll go in for a tonsillectomy and come out missing our left lung. The Boeing debacle means we can only ride Airbuses now, planes designed by engineers who eat mussels and wear silk scarves. And Washington — Mr. Drumpf wouldn’t have been a capable water commissioner in a midsize city but here he is, running foreign policy based on phone conversations with Tucker Carlson. Republican politics is based on the imminence of the Second Coming: if Jesus doesn’t descend within three years and take the Republicans to heaven, they are going to be in very deep waste materials.

But hope remains. People still fall in love. I know millennials who are crazy about each other and don’t try to hide it. The country is on the skids but still I see people going to the trouble of seducing each other. In Minnesota, this is done by owning a snowblower and going to the home of the person you adore and blowing the snow, and if he or she (or they or we or those) is receptive, they will invite you in for a bowl of homemade chili. I don’t know what Californians do but in the north, it’s very simple. Snowblowing followed by chili. Chili with ground beef or chicken in it. What the heck — take the risk. Veganism can wait until after marriage.