At this time, I'm teaching PHIL1602-Introduction to Philosophy and PHIL1605-Introduction to Logic for Barton County Community College's BARTONline, descriptions of which can be found here.
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BRUCE'S PHILOSOPHER'S SONG
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant Who was very rarely stable, Heidegger, Heidegger was a bozzy beggar Who could think you under the table, David Hume could out-consume Wilhelm Freiderich Hegel. And Wittegenstein was a beery swine Who was just as schloshed as Schegel. There's nothing Nietzche couldn't teach ya 'Bout the raising of the wrist, Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed. John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill. Plato, they say, could stick it away, Half a crate of whiskey everyday. Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle, Hobbes was fond of his dram. And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart, "I drink, therefore I am." Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed, A lovely little thinker, But a bugger when he's pissed. Composer: Eric Idle Author: Eric Idle Performed by: Monty Python's Flying Circus
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MY WRITINGS
In the third chapter of his Philosophy of Mind, Dale Jacquette
makes the following argument: (1) Minds are distinguished from physical phenomena by intentionality.
There is clearly a logical error here, but in hopes of finding some
hidden assumption that might save the argument, we examine the less
obvious terms of this argument (intentionality, Turing
Test, understands language). This only makes things worse:
Jacquette is confused about what the 'Turing Test' really tests, and
Searle's "Chinese Room" argument is shown to contain a flaw rendering
it incapable of establishing (4). Thus, the argument fails.
Jacquette also tries appealing to Godel's Theorem and scenarios in
which he quizzes computers about the meaning of sentences like "This
sentence cannot be proven." Once again he is shown to have made a
logical mistake, this time by assuming what he hopes to prove - namely
that computers cannot, in principle, understand language. Finally,
the subject of his fourth chapter, "mental maps," which he claims to
be inherently intentional, are shown to be the kind of thing even
today's computers are capable of possessing (and, in fact, have been
built to possess). As a result, while the question of whether or not
computers might be said to be (or to possess) minds is left open, it
is shown that Jacquette has clearly not shown that computers are not
intentional.
In works preceding his Counterfactuals, David Lewis has sketched out
how causal implication is to be treated as a species of counterfactual
implication. In Counterfactuals, Lewis develops a formal theory of
logic for the render ing and evaluation of counterfactual
conditionals. He also addresses laws of nature, which appear to
involve causal, and therefore, counterfactual implication.
Unfortunately, he makes the outrageous claim that a possible world,
very similar to the actual world in all its particular
matters-of-fact, but only if a "small miracle" occurs (ie a
"localized violation" of a natural law), might be considered closer
than any other possible world, even one where all the natural laws are
the same, but the matters-of-facts differ somewhat more from the
actual world than the 'miraculous world'. Lewis then claims that
inclusion of this miracle in the statement of the violated law may
leave it "simple and strong enough to survive to as a law." This
flies in the face of what appear to be the necessary conditions for a
statement to be regarded as a natural law. What these necessary
conditions are, why Lewis' claim flout these conditions, and Lewis'
possible motivation for making this claim is also discussed. On the
basis of this, it is claimed that the assignment of this kind of
'miraculous world' as the closest possible world should be disallowed.
If it is, Lewis' formal system is in no way harmed, and is, in fact,
left capable of rendering and evaluating natural laws.
Using Plato's statement that there will be "no rest from trouble" so
long as our kings are not also philosophers, a new Faculty,
dialectia, is proposed which falls between the faculties of
noesis/episteme (intelligence/knowledge) and dianoia
(thinking), and whose field of objects is the faculties themselves.
This suggestion is made in hopes of allowing mere mortals, who cannot
be expected to achieve noesis, which even Socrates himself
claimed not to have achieved, to be capable of judging if their
potential philosopher-kings are worthy. That is, if they have
actually achieved noesis. However, it is shown that the
proposal is for naught, because it would appear that the faculties are
themselves Forms, and therefore objects of noesis. As a
result, even in Plato's ideal Republic, the people are required to
"trust the politician." |
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