I ran across this today on one of the blogs I follow, Atheist Republic and I thought you all might enjoy this quote from the author of, "The Good Book: A Humanist Bible", I know I did.

Daniel Dennett on Sam Harris's book "Free Will"

If you're looking for a critical analysis of free will v. determinism, look no further than Dan Dennett's protracted review of Harris's Free will in the link below.  I've only given it a cursory glance, but it looks as if Dennett pulled out the knives.

I'm sure Jon and others my wish to put their two-cents into the pot as well.  Link is below.


Take me straight to the debate.

Flanagan: Chapter Two Questions

I thought I would post a few more factual questions just to get the ball rolling as well as have something to study.  I've included one I posted earlier too.

(I'm working from a non-paginated Kindle version.  If you have a page number, post them below and I'll edit for future use.)

Q: When the rich king Plousios asked, "What kind of man is the worst among men?" How did Penicros answer?
A: He who is good in his own esteem.  Parables 1:16

Q: Does Flanagan argue that normative questions (e.g., is-ought, fact-value) can be addressed empirically?
A: yes

Q: How does Flanagan conceive of or interpret the Platonic Forms?
A: as natural categories

Q: According to Flanagan, what is the overarching reason that restrains humans from taking full advantage of human vulnerability, for example, obtained by Plato’s Lydian shepherd's ring of invisibility?
A: we are designed to be fit as social animals

Q: from Devin:  In the Platonic sense, what do all humans across cultural boundaries search for?
A: What is good, true, and beautiful.

Music: The Universal Language

Pressupositional Paradoxica: A Purely Scholastic Question - A Brief Analysis of the Linguistic and Logical Implications of Abrahamic Metaphysics (Draft 3)

Oi! This is the 3rd draft of the original essay entitled "Presuppositional Paradoxica." To anyone looking for the second, it lie dead and refuted on my desktop. The essay attempts to weed through the metaphysical language of Abrahamic (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc) Presuppositional Apology (Taking god as a presupposition) and understand the meaning and implication in context of what is being said, as well as what is actually meant. The 3rd draft introduces many new concepts to sympathetically understand the mental process of "faith," as well as a refining of the logical equations supplied previously by introducing temporal and modal logical concepts to our understanding of divine existential propositions. Of course, those are just some of the few improvements upon the original formulation.

As always, I'd love criticism and refutation, I extremely encourage it. If I was right whatsoever, my name would be Hegel, and even Hegel's name wasn't Hegel. So I welcome all critiques in order to better formulate a descriptive truth.

I'd warn against reading outside MS Word to anyone attempting to do so. The formatting becomes quite disastrous, and without the ability to hover over equations and concepts to see their respective end notes, and believe me, you'll need the end notes, the meaning quickly gets lost behind the language. I'm attempting to port the current version to a web-friendly alternative, but I'm not quite there yet. At any case, here's the link.

Presuppositional Paradoxica: A Purely Scholastic Question (Draft 3)



Here is also a crude PDF (no hovering, hyperlinks for end notes, to test out how well converting Word documents into PDF and embedding them into these sorts of blogs works. I get a few issues on Chrome with zoom in/out, the drop caps, hyperlinks, hover abilities, and other formatting seems to be gone, but the headers, footers, and notes are there. Still working on a more complete conversion though. Anybody want to help, or, convert and post a Word document, as I know some of us are more fond of Word, just talk to me after class one day.)

Group 3 Post: Recap and Moving Foward

FQ: Does Flanagan believe that, "the good," "the true," and "the beautiful" are Platonic forms (Eidos) or natural categories?

DQ: The word 'harmony' is often used in reference to eudaimonia; however, there is a prominent scientific angle of nature as chaotic, and not balanced. This, coupled with an absurdist or existential view of subjectivity being in conflict with the objective world, weaken a sense of life or human flourishing as naturally being harmonious. In this case then, is it up to us to manipulate our perceptions to make our life project balanced and harmonious, or is the harmony in a certain acceptance of the chaos? Likewise, we could also ponder if the term "harmony" is not in conflict at all, and if this is a merely verbal conflict, with meaning being lost as it is translated from philosophy to philosophy.

Recap: Last week our beloved Dr. Oliver dare say the friendly fellow Sartre didn't reconcile the social aspects of Marxism with his humanist brand of existentialism. Of course, my primary concern with that being, well if he didn't do it, than who did? (And who could've been in a better position to do so than the political prisoner, Jean, himself who famously bellows, "I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men."

The separation of the existentialist view, in any sense, from the social community of man seems to be a bit unfounded. As in a broad sense, the existentialist only experiences his conflict in relationship. That is to say, in relationship to another subject, object, concept, experience, phenomena, or of course the universe itself. This is the view elucidated by Camus in the Myth of Sisyphus as he declares, "Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world." Of course, the world, is not some ambivalent abstract astral apparatus. It is a composition of us, of our experiences, of the objects, concepts, and phenomena we come into contact with. Thus, it is only in relationship, in social interdependence, that the existentialist "problem," is even born. Of course, "problem," incurs a more negative connotation than one such as Sartre would infer. To Sartre, we must remember that Existentialism is a Humanism. It is also a note of fact. One's subjective pity over the fact of the absurd is duly noted, but not necessarily substantial. Likewise, one's reduction of the project to a pity party, and subsequent blind eye, does not make the fact go away. The existentialist project is not the project of a pity party for recognizing something that was already there. Instead, it is a practical project, a project that says in light of this fact, here are prescriptive methods to transcend it and find eudaimonia in each other and ourselves.

- Schwarzwald

Islamophobia? In MURFREESBORO? IMPOSSIBLE!!!

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."

--Ecclesiastes 1:9 KJV

Well goddamnit, here we go again.  I love Tennessee, really I do, and I'm happy as could be to call myself a Murfreesboroian (is that the demonym?), but I must wonder--what on Earth is with this obsessive Islamophobia?  It seems as though it never goes away.

As one journalist reports:

Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) is "deeply concerned" about a newly approved plan to build a cemetery for Muslim residents of the central Tennessee city of Murfreesboro. Desjarlais, a doctor who won his seat in 2010 in part because of his outspoken opposition to abortion rights, is best-known nationally for the 2012 revelation that he had urged one of his patients to get an abortion after he impregnated her. He expressed his anxiety about the cemetery project in a post on his Facebook page Friday afternoon. The comment was first noted by the Nashville Scene. 

"Unfortunately the Tennessee Religious Freedom Act, passed by the TN General Assembly, may have played a key role in allowing this cemetery to be approved," DesJarlais wrote. "There is a difference between legislation that would protect our religious freedoms and legislation that would allow for the circumvention of laws that other organizations comply with on a daily basis."

The Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, which is building the cemetery, has been a lightning rod for criticism from religious conservatives (including GOP Rep. Diane Black, who represents Murfreesboro), who have accused its members of plotting a stealth jihad against fellow American citizens. In 2010, opponents of a mosque expansion project filed a lawsuit to block it, arguing that the Islamic center was not protected by the First Amendment because Islam is not a real religion. According to the plaintiff's lawyer, the Islamic center would by default promote spousal abuse and pedophilia, which he considered to be core tenets of Islam. The building site was damaged by arson in 2010 before finally opening two years ago.

Source: Mother Jones, "GOP Congressman Blasts Proposal for Muslim Cemetery"

Pointed, right?  But it's a little dry.  I'm altogether more interested in the delightful article published in the Nashville Scene.  As writer Steven Hale states,

Some folks in Murfreesboro are very troubled by the fact that some other folks in Murfreesboro are Muslims who gather at a mosque in Murfreesboro. [...]

[Here he quotes the DesJarlais post] 

Unfortunately the Tennessee Religious Freedom Act, passed by the TN General Assembly, may have played a key role in allowing this cemetery to be approved.

The first part of this sentence is bewildering, so lets work through it backward. Here's what played a "key role" in allowing this cemetery to be approved: the mosque's plans complied with all zoning requirements for a cemetery.

As for the Tennessee Religious Freedom Act, it's not clear whether DesJarlais is bothered by the state having such a law or if he would just prefer it not be applied to Muslims.

There is a difference between legislation that would protect our religious freedoms and legislation that would allow for the circumvention of laws that other organizations comply with on a daily basis. 

There is a difference between legislation that would protect our religious freedoms and legislation that would allow for the circumvention of laws that other organizations comply with on a daily basis their's [sic]. 

Got it. 

As we said before, this is hardly surprising. Ever since we all learned that he has, at times, been a philandering hypocrite, DesJarlais has been in danger of losing his seat in Congress. With state Sen. Jim Tracy looking poised to defeat him in this year's Republican primary, he needs his constituents to know he's on their side. 

We'd remind him that the members of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro are his constituents but, you know — there's a difference between his constituents and ... them.

Source: Nashville Scene, "DesJarlais to Murfreesboro Muslims: Drop Dead Somewhere Else"

Islamophobia.  

It's a real thing, and it's got the potential to be disgustingly destructive in so many ways. But then, I'm not sure Rep. DesJarlais cares about that.  He just cares about what he feels is a threat to his religion (I still don't understand how).  I love Murfreesboro.  I really do.  But really, if we're going to start blatantly discriminating, at the political level, against people for their religion, then I'll just be on my way.  There is no excuse, none whatsoever, to engage in such hideous acts of unfounded prejudice.  Religious freedom must apply to everyone or it applies to no-one.  Quite frankly, I simply care too much about the free exercise clause to let some buffoon try to make it fit his purpose.

I have no moral to this story.  I have no rousing happy ending.  I have no grand, feel-good point to make.  There are only two truths to be herein revealed.

This is religious bigotry.

And I am pissed.