I was recently invited to Onondaga Community College near Syracuse to deliver an annual address hosted by the Honors College. The organizers found me online, and in spite of reading some of my posts on my dean’s blog and this blog, and even in spite of a live conversation by Zoom, they invited me anyway. […]
Continue ReadingCategory: Applied Philosophy
Your Future Perfect Self
It’s not what you think. Excellencifying is not about achieving perfection, which is out of reach for finite, temporal beings like rational animals. It’s about how reflection on grammar can ground your relationship with a future version of you. Resist the temptation to run away at the mention of grammar. I’m not going to make […]
Continue ReadingThe Essay as an Act of Courage
With AI tools comes discussion posts and essays and other coursework written by – notice, by and not with the help of – chatbots. And with these artifacts comes the decision we professors must make about how to respond. This is my response, just one example. I’m guided here by my grandfather, who in imminently […]
Continue ReadingLord Ram and the colonization of conscience
I’ve been following the (Western English-language) news coverage of the dedication of the temple in Ayodya, and, in the spirit of religious literacy, I think there’s something about the choice of language that we should note. But first, some background. Let’s start with leader from Reuters: AYODHYA, India, Jan 22 (Reuters) – Indian Prime Minister […]
Continue ReadingDecision-making essentials
Decision-making is an essential task in managing our lives. We make scores of decisions every day, from the trivial all the way to life-changing — for ourselves and often for others. But how many of us have really thought about what’s involved in making a decision? What are the key ingredients? How does decision-making work? […]
Continue ReadingWhat’s wrong with lifelong learning?
A tale of two grannies We like to talk about lifelong learning, and a lot of what we say — aspirational though it may be — leaves out the important part, which also happens to be the hard part. My two grannies illustrate this tendency: They were both “lifelong learners,” but what their love of […]
Continue ReadingPanpsychism, part 2: privileged access
In my previous post about panpsychism, I talked about postulates that allow us to engage in knowledge-making in certain domains. For instance, the assumption that the laws of nature that operate around our neighborhood operate everywhere: While this postulate is required for us to engage in science, it can’t be proved by science — for […]
Continue ReadingWhat Panpsychism tells us about Method
I recently read an interesting article about panpsychism: https://www.salon.com/2021/07/23/panpsychism-the-idea-that-inanimate-objects-have-consciousness-gains-steam-in-science-communities/ Briefly, panpsychism is the claim that “consciousness is inextricably linked to all matter.” If you’re trying to get your head around this idea, read Pullman’s His Dark Materials (one of my favorite works of fiction, incidentally). Pullman has created a world in which consciousness is thoroughly […]
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