December 4th

November 29th

The man with two brains The split brain phenomenon is well-known and documented. There is even a rather strange animated game you can play here that attempts to illustrate what it would be like to have a split brain. There is an overview of the psychologist Roger Sperry's original research here. Some of the implications for consciousness are explored on this page. It appears that if the two hemispheres are split by cutting the corpus callosum the left hemisphere works at giving 'reasons' for the actions of the right hemisphere.

Half a mouse brain There is a report on the simulation of half of the activity of a mouse's brain here. The computer used 4,096 processors, each one of which had 256MB of memory and the machine's speed was about 327 trillion floating point operations per second. All of this to reach the ability to think 'smells like cheese.' The development of artificial intelligence is still quite a long way off.

Distributive justice This site has some very interesting material on distributive justice - Click on the shell icon for information about different theories of justice. The wheel icon takes you to some informative maps. If you register you can play a game that allows you to work through various ideas about fairness and social justice. Although the site is not very user friendly it is worth spending a little time exploring.

November 27th

Hume and Descartes' World Views Descartes and Hume have different world views. Descartes believes that the world is approachable and understandable through the process of thought. This rationalist viewpoint means that he gives priority to the truths available through mathematics over the truths available through experience.

For Descartes the mug pictured here could be described in mathematical terms such as curves and ellipses. You are seeing the cup now because it is ultimately reducible to a series of 0s and 1s that a computer can manipulate.

Hume,  is far less concerned with the idea of ultimate reality. He is mainly interested in experience; although he might speculate on how the idea of this cup is related to real cups. As an empiricist Hume was far happier than Descartes with the notion that there might be gaps in his knowledge.

However, both philosophers share the basic assumption that the world is explainable and that this explanation can be achieved by looking very closely at the way things work. This Enlightenment world view is still prevalent today. This site explains this world view and offers some criticisms.

Fairness There is a whole website devoted to this topic; its strap line is 'Life isn't fair... but we are working on it. The primary focus is on social justice but there are many different categories to explore.

November 24th

Moral Instincts? Recent research has shown that babies as young as 6 months are capable of making moral judgements. The babies were shown circles attempting to climb up a hill; a square hindered progress and a triangle tried to help. The babies then showed a preference for the triangular shape. You can read more about the research here.

November 22nd

Rene Descarpes - goldfish philosopher Meditation 1

Year 13 students might wish to think about how the goldfish above is in advance of Descartes.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill has been in the news recently - particularly the section that would do away with the requirement for a father to be involved. The Catholic Church is quite upset according to this article.

Year 12 students should attempt to consider the issues from a Utilitarian and from a deontological point of view by next Tuesday.

Moral Dilemma The film below presents an interesting moral dilemma - would you kill another person for $10 million? The resolution in the film is a little disappointing but the question is worth considering.

Hume, Global Warming and Uncertainty Part of the problem with the debate over global warming is that governments - and the media - want to know if there is a causal link between CO₂ emissions and global warming. The basic principal, enshrined in the policies of many governments, is: 'if scientists can prove a causal link we will do something about it.'

Hume states that we can never prove a causal link and almost all scientists agree with him; we can only really talk about strong and weak probabilities. A better understanding of Hume would remove the idea of cause and effect from policy making and enable more realistic behaviour based on probability. See this article for more details.

November 20th

Fairness A leader in today's Guardian reports on some recent research on fairness which suggests that fairness may be an instinct. The research asked people to make a decision about distributing a sum of money and found that they took longer to make unfair decisions than fair ones. The conclusion drawn from this is that being fair is natural and comes easily whilst unfairness takes time whilst people override their natural inclinations. You can read a pdf press release about the research here.

Today's Lessons

November 15th

Kant

There is a very useful introduction to Kant here. In particular look at the section on Kant's Ethics, section d. 'Duty'

The three formulation of the Categorical Imperative are given as:

1.  Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
2. Act as though the maxim of your action were by your will to become a universal law of nature.
3. Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only.

Nature In Section V of the Enquiry Hume persistently refers to nature as an active force. This Wikipedia article gives some idea of the complexity of the idea of nature in philosophy.

Roman Emperors Hume mentions Tiberius and Nero as examples of misapplied absolute power. A lively and somewhat scandalous account of these appalling tyrants was written by Suetonius around 120 AD. You can download a translation of his Lives of the Twelve Caesars here. Robert Graves used the first part of the book as the main source material for I Claudius.

November 13th

Logical argument There is a useful guide to the Top 20 logical fallacies here. Not only does it show different ways that arguments can go wrong it also suggests some ways of countering them. Hume helps us to see the weaknesses in Arguments from final Consequences, Confusing association with causation and Post-hoc ergo propter hoc arguments. There is an even fuller guide on how to argue here.

Truth and Knowledge There is a good simple summary of Plato's tri-partite definition of Knowledge here. In his essay Of Truth Francis Bacon comments that truth is all very well but it's not much fun.

November 6th

Altruism When Charles Darwin said in The Descent of Man that

November 1st

 John Stuart Mill There is a very full account of Mill's illustrious life and writings here. You can also read his short book Utilitarianism here. 

Chapter two, What Utilitarianism Is, explains his ideas about a hierarchy of pleasures and his claim that intellectual pleasures are greater than physical ones. He establishes this superiority by stating that
   Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure.
This neat piece of circular argument suggests that only intellectuals can decide if intellectual pleasure is greater than physical pleasure because only they have experienced intellectual pleasures. Mill was keen to make sure that people didn't think of Utilitarianism as a form of hedonism. Notes on today's lesson are here.

The ghost in the machine The phrase 'ghost in the machine' was coined by Gilbert Ryle in his 1949 attack on Cartesian dualism. There is a wikipedia article about it here. Not to be confused with the 1967 book by Arthur Koestler or the 1981 album by the Police.

Please send any comments about this blog or the lessons to the usual e-mail address. I will post them if they are relevant or enlightening or amusing.