Final Exam

Just a reminder: the final exam is Monday, December 19th, in our normal classroom at 11:00 a.m. You'll have 50 minutes to take it.

Rational-Empirical Babies

Psychologist Alison Gopnik wrote a book called The Philosophical Baby. It's loaded with cool insights on the rationalism-empiricism debate. Here's an interview with Gopnik about the book, and here's a review. Below is her appearance on The Colbert Report.

Nihilism

Here is the (mildly depressing) approach to the meaning of life mentioned in our class discussion on Wednesday:

• "The Myth of Sisyphus" by Albert Camus
• "The Absurd" by Thomas Nagel

It Pays to Believe?

Here are some links on Pascal's Wager:

• Links to several articles on the argument.
• Here's an audio interview on the argument and Pascal's entire work Pensées.
• NOTHING TO LOSE? Is there really not much to lose in this wager? This cartoon thinks otherwise.
• WHICH GOD? With so many religions out there, which God should we believe in? This cartoon dinosaur has the most practical solution.
• More on decision theory, the branch of math Pascal uses to argue that belief in God is a good bet.
• Some related entries in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: evidentialism vs. nonevidentialism, religious versions of nonevidentialism (or fideism), other pragmatic arguments for believing in god, and Pascal's other contributions to philosophy.

My Identity is Personal

Two cartoons on personal identity:

1. Does physical or psychological continuity matter? Let's think about teletransportation...
2. Perhaps our identity is all in the way we're arranged:

Kantian Links

Here are some links related to Immanuel Kant's theory of ethics:

• An intermediate overview of Kant's theory of ethics.
• An advanced overview of Kant's ethics.
• Kant's theory is deontological (which is a fancy word that basically means morality is about more than just the consequences of an action). Here's an advanced overview of deontological ethics.
• Some harsh criticisms of Kant's ethical judgments. My favorite excerpt: "Kant's philosophical moral reasoning appears mainly to have confirmed his prejudices and the ideas inherited from his culture. Therefore, we should be nervous about expecting more from the philosophical moral reasoning of people less philosophically capable than Kant."
• A 3-minute video on Kant's ethics is below:

The Psychology of Happiness

Since utilitarianism focuses so much on happiness, I thought I'd share some links on the cool new psychological research on happiness popping up lately.

• Here's a great overview of the psychology of happiness. And here is another, and another.
• Recent studies suggest that our baseline level of happiness doesn't change much throughout our life. So, even if we won the lottery, we wouldn't wind up that much happier. This is potentially very depressing news, although some say there's room for some optimism, and others think the research is wrong.
• There's an insightful, accessible book by Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert called Stumbling on Happiness. One of his big points is that we often don't know what makes us happy. Here's Gilbert's appearance on The Colbert Report:
• And here's Gilbert giving an awesome TED talk on his research:
  
  

Utilitarios!

Here are some links on the theory of utilitarianism:

• A neat little biography of know-it-all John Stuart Mill
• An advanced encyclopedia article on utilitarianism and other theories that focus on consequences of an action.
• The trolley problem gets brought up a lot when evaluating utilitarianism. A short video intro on it is below. Also, there's some new research on the psychology of the trolley problem.

Religion and Free Will Journal Guideline

Worth: 15% of your overall grade

New Due Date: the beginning of class on Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

Assignment: The assignment is to keep a journal during our section on philosophy of religion and free will. I want you to write several short journal entries about the various arguments for and against the existence of God, as well as an entry on our section on free will. We’ll be going over all these topics in class during the next few weeks. Each entry should be around two paragraphs long.

This assignment is a chance for you to do philosophy. I want you to demonstrate that you understand what we are reading and discussing. (Present each argument in your own words.) In addition to this, I want you to critically evaluate each argument we read and discuss. (Are any premises questionable? Does the argument provide enough support for its conclusion?) It is also a chance for you to give your opinion on these arguments, and defend your opinion with good reasons.
You should have the following journal entries, in this order:

1) An entry explaining and evaluating the cosmological argument (Aquinas reading).

2) An entry explaining and evaluating the ontological argument (Anselm & Guanilo readings).

3) An entry explaining and evaluating the design argument (Hume reading).

4) An entry explaining and evaluating the problem of evil argument (Sober and Augustine readings).

5) A philosophy of religion wrap-up entry where you discuss your thoughts about God after reading these philosophers and discussing this in class. Has your opinion about God changed? Have your reasons for your opinion changed?

6) An entry on free will (Nagel, Sober, Maimonides, Aristotle, and Hospers articles). Do you think we have free will? Why or why not? Consider the various arguments for and against free will we’ve studied in class, as well as the various theories (libertarianism, hard determinism, and compatibilism).

There is no length requirement. (Again, the suggestion is around two paragraphs per journal entry.)

Divine Aftknowledge

Here are some links to stuff related to our recent class discussions:

• Here are two encyclopedia entries (one and two) on divine foreknowledge and free will.
• Here's an entry on Augustine.
• Here's an entry on Maimonides (plus an entry on the impact of Islamic thought on his philosophy).
• Here's a review of a recent book on Maimonides in my favorite free online philosophy review publication.

Hear No Evil

If you like to get philosophical on the treadmill, try downloading and listening to these podcasts on the problem of suffering:

• Well-known contemporary philosopher (and ordained priest) Marilyn McCord Adams offers some insights into the problem of evil in this audio interview. (Download)
• The NPR program Fresh Air has an audio interview with Bart Ehrman on the problem of suffering. (Download)
• Here's even more audio from a few philosophers on the problem of suffering. (Download)

Suffer-iness

Here's Stephen Colbert's take on evil:

Bad Things to Good People

Here are some links on the problem of suffering.

• This is a great introductory article on the problem of suffering.
• There is a collection of resources all about the problem of evil, including criticisms of several different responses to the problem. I mean, wow.
• I'd like to highlight one article in particular: a discussion of the "God works in mysterious ways" response: do we have enough evidence to believe that there is a reason for all the suffering in the world, but humans aren't smart enough to understand what that reason is?
• And here's a video talk on the humility response.
• Does everything happen for a reason? This cartoon dinosaur has an interesting take on that question. (T-Rex also occasionally wonders why bad things happen to nice people, and whether we're in the worst possible world.)

Random Comedy

As usual, The Onion nails it:

• "Realistic Announcer Shouting How Kevin Durant Making His Last 4 Shots Has No Bearing On Whether He Will Make Next Shot"
• "Cornell Drains Fun Out Of Cinderella Run By Explaining How On A Long Enough Timeline The Improbable Becomes Probable"

The Importance of Being Stochastic

Here is a bunch of links related to our natural tendency to misinterpret randomness as if it's an intentional pattern:

• Most of us are pretty bad at statistical reasoning.
• Here's a review of a decent book (The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives) on this topic.
• What was that infinite monkey typewriter thing we were talking about in class? Someone recently tried it! Well, sort of.
• A radio show I love recently devoted an entire episode to probability.
  
• Another radio show I love ran a great 2-part series on the screening for diseases called "You Are Pre-Diseased".
• What's up with that recent recommendation that routine screenings for breast cancer should wait until your 50s rather than 40s? Math helps explain it.

Design in the Mind's Eye

Here's an interesting approach to explaining the seeming complexity, order, and functionality of the universe: maybe it's all in our mind.

Psychologist Paul Bloom argues that we see intentional design and patterns too much... including in things that are actually random. So things that seem so fine-tuned and unlikely from our perspective might not actually be. Here's a video dialogue on this topic:




Bloom has two great books (Descartes' Baby and How Children Learn the Meaning of Words) on how our minds develop from early childhood on.

Blind Watchmaking

Here are some more critical links on the design argument for God's existence.

• Here is an audio interview on Hume's criticisms of the design arg.
• One philosophers' take on the debate between evolution and intelligent design.
• Is our universe fine-tuned for life? Maybe not.
• Wait, can science even judge religious claims, or are they talking about different things? Maybe an inference to the best explanation can help us...
• What about all the "design flaws" in nature? Are they evidence against a supreme designer?
• In the video below, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson points to all kinds of "design flaws" in the universe.

Like a Machine, Only More So

Here are some links on the design argument for god's existence.

• Here is a nice explanation of the design argument, along with an explanation of the ontological argument that we just finished studying.
•  Here's an audio interview with Elliott Sober (a philosopher we'll be reading soon) on the design argument:
  
• Here's a long-ish video lecture on the notion of fine-tuning.

Think [Tap-Dance] God

Here is some stuff on the ontological argument:

• This article by philosopher Alex Byrne contains the best explanation of the ontological argument I've read.  Here's another good one.
• the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry
• the Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy entry
• the entry on St. Anselm
• Logician and mathematician Kurt Gödel came up with an impressive version of this argument based on modal logic.  Check out a formalization of it below.

Why Is Anything Anything?

The website Closer to Truth has a ton of short interviews with modern-day philosophers (and other smart people) on their thoughts about god. For instance, there's an entire episode on the cosmological argument titled "Did Our Universe Have a Beginning?" and an entire section titled "Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?" Here are some related videos:

• Theist John Leslie says God best explains why there is something.
• Theist Peter van Inwagen believes in God, but doesn't like this arg.
• Atheist Colin McGinn thinks it's a meaningless question.
• Physicist Steven Weisberg says we should wait for science's answer.
• Apatheist Master Shake uses it as an excuse to be lazy.

Speaking of silly jokes, here's one of my favorite responses to the cosmological argument (from Gerald Dworkin's list of philosophy quips:)

When a philosopher announced that the title of his talk was “Why is there Something rather than Nothing?” Sydney Morgenbesser said to the man sitting next to him, “If there was Nothing he would still complain.”

And here's a video on the relationship between philosophy and religion:

• Does Philosophy Illuminate Religion?

Hey, where's the interview with an agnostic? Oh, here it is!

• Nick Bostrom (the author of "Do We Live in a Computer Simulation?") argues for agnosticism