I've just finished my first book by Jonathan Haidt, recommended to me by Dr. P.
At first I felt wary of it, the full title (The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion) contains both words that I try to avoid in my readings: religion and politics. That sounds horrifying short sighted. I guess I'm trying to avoid developing partisan views before I understand the debates surrounding each topic.
Haidt makes three major points in Righteous Mind: We are rational 'riders' on intuitive 'elephants', his Moral Foundations Theory and its six faceted view of morality, and our evolutionary disposition (90% chimp and 10% bee).
Conservatives, according to Haidt, use all six of their foundations when making moral judgements. Liberals only use three. These foundations (Care, Justice, Liberty, Sanctity, Loyalty, Authority) evolved to suit us in the stone-age environments. Haidt may be guilty of the naturalistic falacy here if he means to suggest that all of the domains continue to serve us today. What is good may not be associated with all of the domains equally (what if laws were based on sanctity instead of justice?).
However, I'm not sure Haidt is giving a lesson on ethics. What is intuitively right may not be ethically right. If Haidt's intuitive elephant and rider is the reality of our psyche then we have to train the rider to have more decision power. The unconscious associations test referenced has scary associations for a world run by elephants.
Seeing as how the MFT concerns moral intuitions and not sound arguments, what value can we place on them at all? Our first intuitions, often unjustifiable or incorrect, differ based on political preference. It simply doesn't follow that one intuition is preferable to another. The answer is to move past 'tasting' with any number of moral foundations. We have to avoid the elephant altogether.
Friday, 8 March 2013
Tuesday, 19 February 2013
Lately
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| A Study of Michelangelo |
It's been an artful month for me. I've picked up visual art (sketching) and learned a couple of new songs on the guitar. Not that I haven't been reading.
Colin and I are both enjoying Ulysses (though the amount of enjoyment depends on the chapter). I've also picked up The Elements of Style and The Elements of Expression. I've finished most of the books listed in the previous post. I'm not sure if I'll write reviews of each of them.
Currently it's Reading Week and I hardly have any idea of what to do with myself. Today I volunteered with Let's Talk Science. That entailed some bizarre activities, not limited to: eyeball dissection, examination of freeze-dried lungs, and gawking at a human skeleton. The children visiting the University were about thirteen, all of them grade seven students from Stanley Knowles school. I was thoroughly impressed by some homeschoolers who tagged along.
These children were a few years younger, but much better behaved and more interested in the topic at hand. I also found that their attention span was longer and they asked better questions. One of those questions which haunts me was asked by one of the younger boys just before we entered the lab. "What's a nuclear melt-down?" he asked, very innocently. My heart broke a little.
My winter term classes began in January. It's been difficult to get used to them. The most difficult of the classes is chemistry. I feel frustrated that I didn't pay attention to the sciences in high school. If I had, life would be much easier now. Another new class this term is Personality Psychology with Dr. Trapnell. The course material so far has focused on the research methods and popular areas of scientific investigation. Dr. Trapnell and I have had a couple of excellent discussions in his office. I appreciate his willingness to answer my sometimes outlandish questions.
Memorable quotes from earlier today:
"Why do you think these dried lungs are so light?" "Because they're dried."
"Why does Joe have only one boob?" "Jo can be a girl's name too."
"Can I lick those eyeballs? I already licked the hearts."
Thursday, 31 January 2013
Book's I'm Currently Reading/Read
Flatland. A Way of Being. Joan of Arc. Client-Centered Therapy. The Feminine Mystique. On Becoming a Person. Toward A Psychology of Being. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Brideshead Revisited. Sphereland.
Saturday, 24 November 2012
Narssicus and Goldmund
I found this book deepy moving and disturbing.
Am I a Narssicus or a Goldmund?
It was very Apollonian/Dionysian.
I was so happy to see Plato in some of their conversations.
My heart hurt when I felt like Goldmund, and my heart didn't feel at all when I was Narssicus. Goldmund lived with his body. Narssicus lives with his mind.
The question at the end is still with me. "How will you die when your time comes, Narssicus, since you have no mother? Without a mother, one cannot love. Without a mother, one cannot die."
Am I a Narssicus or a Goldmund?
It was very Apollonian/Dionysian.
I was so happy to see Plato in some of their conversations.
My heart hurt when I felt like Goldmund, and my heart didn't feel at all when I was Narssicus. Goldmund lived with his body. Narssicus lives with his mind.
The question at the end is still with me. "How will you die when your time comes, Narssicus, since you have no mother? Without a mother, one cannot love. Without a mother, one cannot die."
The Scientific Renaissance 1450-1630
This book filled in a lot of gaps left by 'A Birth of A New Physics'. It was a plesure to read. I especially liked the format of the book- each chapter explored a different scientific disipline and the prominent figures within it.
Humanism played a large part in the rise of science in the Renaissance age. The translation movement of the 12th century led to the rediscovery of Hellenistic Greek works. However, the European scholars found these translations unsatisfactory and decidede to write new ones in the 15th century. The works of Aristotle, Ptolemy, Galen, Hippocrates and others were repopularised and regarded as the authoritative texts in their respective fields.
Copernicus wrote On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres in exactly the same format as Ptolemy's Almagest. Copernicus wasn't a pioneer, he got the idea for a heliocentric universe from what he understod was the Pythagorean model. Osiander's preface stated his own views on Astronomy, not those of Copernicus. Astrology was a popular discipline. Most men studied star charts to be able to predict horoscopes. Brahe and Kepler weren't above it.
The book also mentioned alchemy, and how widely practiced it was. Ultimately the appearance of syphilis caused much stress to be placed on the alchemists to synthesise mercury (it was the most common treatment) and this eventually led to the new science of chemistry.
Galen and Aristotle were used in medicine. Cadavers were a topic for debate. Vesalius, Cesalpino, Fernel. Harvey's text would replace them all later.
Gilbert and his magnetism would play a big influence on Kepler. Magic was widely practiced, and was closely associated with math. Gilbert was quite the mystic.
The book ended with Galileo. I was disappointed they didn't go on to talk about Newton.
Humanism played a large part in the rise of science in the Renaissance age. The translation movement of the 12th century led to the rediscovery of Hellenistic Greek works. However, the European scholars found these translations unsatisfactory and decidede to write new ones in the 15th century. The works of Aristotle, Ptolemy, Galen, Hippocrates and others were repopularised and regarded as the authoritative texts in their respective fields.
Copernicus wrote On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres in exactly the same format as Ptolemy's Almagest. Copernicus wasn't a pioneer, he got the idea for a heliocentric universe from what he understod was the Pythagorean model. Osiander's preface stated his own views on Astronomy, not those of Copernicus. Astrology was a popular discipline. Most men studied star charts to be able to predict horoscopes. Brahe and Kepler weren't above it.
The book also mentioned alchemy, and how widely practiced it was. Ultimately the appearance of syphilis caused much stress to be placed on the alchemists to synthesise mercury (it was the most common treatment) and this eventually led to the new science of chemistry.
Galen and Aristotle were used in medicine. Cadavers were a topic for debate. Vesalius, Cesalpino, Fernel. Harvey's text would replace them all later.
Gilbert and his magnetism would play a big influence on Kepler. Magic was widely practiced, and was closely associated with math. Gilbert was quite the mystic.
The book ended with Galileo. I was disappointed they didn't go on to talk about Newton.
Sunday, 11 November 2012
Sunday, 4 November 2012
Emile
Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote a two part treatise on Education. The first (and often assumed the only) volume of this work is Emile.
Emile is raised in a garden by a tutor who retards his moral development in favour of physical development. Emile at age 12 is totally ignorant of the right/wrong, true/false, good/bad distictions key to the TJEd's Core phase.
The garden is an image of nature and the tutor is an image of Man's understanding. What Rousseau is saying by educating Emile in this way is that he should have knowledge of natural laws (Might is right) before any human laws are imposed on him.
Rousseau was a careful student of Locke, who proposed that the free market should replace the battlefield of natural laws. Instead of might is right, we should have political and economic contracts which govern our behaviour. The State is the only entity who possesses the right to kill (the death penalty). Rousseau agrees with all of this, but argues that there are two other types of contracts that should exist: social and loving.
Social contracts are cultural customs, ettiquette, etc. Love, Rousseau says, is the most important type of contract and it should be dealt with last. This is reflected in the Emile, where Emile is kept wholly ignorant from the differences of the sexes for as long as possible.
Economic contracts sometimes conflict with political ones, as social contracts sometimes do with loving contracts. Rousseau's central question is how do we educate for all four of these contracts, given that sometimes they conflict?
A key observation of Rousseau's is that humans fear losing the 'sentiment of existence' more than anything else. This is why we fear death. This sentiment is satisfied by love. Because of this and because Rousseau asserts that political and economic education has been covered satisfactorily by Locke, he will focus on education for love and social contracts.
Rousseau describes two types of love. Amour de soi is the ability to evaluate yourself by your own standards. Often this is translated as self-esteem. This is entirely desirable and it is cultivated in Emile by his tutor. Amour propre is the other type of love described by Rousseau. Rousseau defines it as defining your worth in relation to others and is totally undesirable. He means to eliminate this from Emile.
The picture of love painted by Rousseau is very similar to the Greek story of love. According to Rousseau, every human is incomplete. It is impossible to complete yourself so must seek another to complete you. You need amour de soi to do this. Completion has two effects: attaining the 'good', which is the objective truth and experiencing sentient, passionate love.
By being brought up in political and economic surroundings we surrender our natural freedom, which causes us to lose the knowledge of what is truly good for us. Rousseau knows that finding the truth about what is really good for us is vexingly difficult. He does know for certain that domestic education is the best education to preserve love.
Emile is raised in a garden by a tutor who retards his moral development in favour of physical development. Emile at age 12 is totally ignorant of the right/wrong, true/false, good/bad distictions key to the TJEd's Core phase.
The garden is an image of nature and the tutor is an image of Man's understanding. What Rousseau is saying by educating Emile in this way is that he should have knowledge of natural laws (Might is right) before any human laws are imposed on him.
Rousseau was a careful student of Locke, who proposed that the free market should replace the battlefield of natural laws. Instead of might is right, we should have political and economic contracts which govern our behaviour. The State is the only entity who possesses the right to kill (the death penalty). Rousseau agrees with all of this, but argues that there are two other types of contracts that should exist: social and loving.
Social contracts are cultural customs, ettiquette, etc. Love, Rousseau says, is the most important type of contract and it should be dealt with last. This is reflected in the Emile, where Emile is kept wholly ignorant from the differences of the sexes for as long as possible.
Economic contracts sometimes conflict with political ones, as social contracts sometimes do with loving contracts. Rousseau's central question is how do we educate for all four of these contracts, given that sometimes they conflict?
A key observation of Rousseau's is that humans fear losing the 'sentiment of existence' more than anything else. This is why we fear death. This sentiment is satisfied by love. Because of this and because Rousseau asserts that political and economic education has been covered satisfactorily by Locke, he will focus on education for love and social contracts.
Rousseau describes two types of love. Amour de soi is the ability to evaluate yourself by your own standards. Often this is translated as self-esteem. This is entirely desirable and it is cultivated in Emile by his tutor. Amour propre is the other type of love described by Rousseau. Rousseau defines it as defining your worth in relation to others and is totally undesirable. He means to eliminate this from Emile.
The picture of love painted by Rousseau is very similar to the Greek story of love. According to Rousseau, every human is incomplete. It is impossible to complete yourself so must seek another to complete you. You need amour de soi to do this. Completion has two effects: attaining the 'good', which is the objective truth and experiencing sentient, passionate love.
By being brought up in political and economic surroundings we surrender our natural freedom, which causes us to lose the knowledge of what is truly good for us. Rousseau knows that finding the truth about what is really good for us is vexingly difficult. He does know for certain that domestic education is the best education to preserve love.
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