A Very Important Day

Happy 375th Birthday to Spinoza, and Happy 150th Anniversary to “The Origin of Species.”

For those reading, it may be a couple weeks before anything is updated. There is an especially large number of papers to grade and social events to attend to in the coming weeks. This drains me. But who knows? A stress-induced insomia was responsible for the recent Darwin and philosophy posts, and were otherwise spontaneous. It may strike again.

The reading list below is a work in progress, and if anyone has recommendations, please make a post. The winter break is looking a little grim, as I am scheduled to teach a condensed Ethics course. I assume this will take up all of my time, and almost completely eliminate my break. But it may fall through, as winter intern classes tend to have very low enrollments.

Reading List for Winter Break

Aristotle’s Politics

Virginia Held, Feminist Transformations of Moral Theory (From Philosophy and Phenomenological Research)

michaels,  shape of the signifier

James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son, The Raft Is Not The Shore

W.E.B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk

Benjamin, Fanon, Brecht, Artaud

 

 

 

 

 

Darwin’s Principles: Natural Selection

For the record, the two previous posts, this one, and probably a few more are works in progress. I will be jumping around and updating them as I have time to write and as inspiration carries me.  Again, I am discussing this ultimately to discuss the “multiple idea-streams” discussed in the Core Principles post of November 3.

In this post, I will eventually include some text from The Origin, but I know the topic well enough to write some important things immediately.

Background (In BRIEF)

As a bit of background, “Evolution” was not Darwin’s idea. Aristotle proposed a form of evolutionary theory, as did the Q’uran. Erasmus Darwin, Darwin’s grandfather, assumed some evolutionary principles in a poem. Darwin was aware of all of these (perhaps not the Q’uran). Evolution is the hypothesis that organisms did not exist in their present form since their first appearance on Earth. There are a lot of ways that you could interpret this. Some early evolutionists believed that there were a large number of first creations, and that those “types” changed over time. Hence, perhaps God created a primitive form of elephant, and although that elephant does not exist in the world today, and modern elephants did not exist in the world in the past, the primitive elephant changed over time into the modern day elephant.

This is contrary to Darwin’s notion of “common ancestry,” which is distinct but compatible to natural selection. Common ancestry holds that all organisms, from bacteria to mushrooms, oak trees and grasshoppers, cobras and humans, all ultimately had the same ancestor, which was some clump of proteins that could not even be considered a cell by today’s common standards. In fact, it could barely be called living.

Natural Selection is Darwin’s most important contribution. It does not state that organisms change, but how they change. It is a mechanism, describing the well-known and accepted conditions of nature, and then showing how those conditions necessarily leads us to the more radical and controversial natural selection. In itself, natural selection does not prove common ancestry, although it provides a way for common ancestry to exist (Darwin’s Origin is a massive and wide ranging book. After he establishes Natural Selection, he goes through a vast array of other topics to argue that natural selection is not only an existing mechanism, but one with truly wide-ranging implications). I will explain how natural selection works below.

Natural Selection was not the first mechanism, either. Famously, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck had already proposed a mechanism, which was “willing.” An organism is capable of slightly changing its form through the power of will, and those changes are then adopted by the offspring. The paradigmatic example is that of the giraffe. Fossil records show that more primitive giraffes had much shorter necks and legs that modern giraffes. In order to get leaves from tall trees, a primitive, short-necked giraffe would strive to stretch its neck and legs. As a result, the offspring would have slightly longer legs and neck.

Darwin thought this was a silly idea. Plants, for example, do not will. And neither Darwin or Lamarck were animists (the belief that all things have a will).

How Natural Selection Works

The three most important notions of Natural Selection are things that are completely ordinary and non-controversial.

1. Given a number of offspring that were born of the same parents, there will be some variation amongst the traits of those offspring (in simpler terms, you are biologically different from your brothers and sisters).

2. Traits, both physical and instinctual, are passed from parent to child. (You acquire your traits from the traits of your parents).

3. Far more offspring will be born than will survive to maturity and have children (people sometimes forget that this is a very true statement: in our contemporary culture, most children who are born survive to child-bearing age, and it is considered a travesty when they do not. But our contemporary culture presents a relatively new and isolated phenomenon. In nature, and in much of the present, human world, the vast majority of organisms die before they have children).

Following added November 5, 10:35pm CST:

On top of these three simple facts, there is also an very important conceptual shift that needs to be considered. It is close to the third condition, but less mathematical and more severe. In short, Nature is not about chipmunks and song birds playing amongst the calm birch tree and moss. Rather, it is a place of eternal struggle and strife:

“In looking at Nature, it is most necessary to keep the foregoing considerations always in mind–never to forget that every single organic being around us may be said to be striving to the utmost to increase in numbers; that each lives by a struggle at some period of its life; that heavy destruction inevitably falls either on the young or old, during each generation or at recurrent intervals. Lighten any check, mitigate the destruction ever so little, and the number of the species will almost instantaneously increase to any amount. The face of Nature may be compared to a yielding surface, with ten thousand sharp wedges packed close together and driven inwards by incessant blows, sometimes one wedge being struck, and then another with greater force.” (Origin of Species, Chapter III: The Struggle for Life)

Darwin’s Principles: Species versus Varieties

I am going to run a short series on Darwinian concepts that I believe are most important to my philosophy. I am applying mechanical principles that Darwin saw amongst species to idea-streams (discussed in the previous post under the notes of #1). Although I have work to do, my hypothesis is that these mechanical principles can be applied to ideas because the causes for the mechanisms amongst species has to do with the form of specimen creation and survival, and not the content of the living organism. This form of specimen creation and survival is, I hypothesize, present in the conditions of a turbulent, thinking mind (with some conditions).

The following section is from Chapter 2 of On the Origin of Species, titled “Variation Under Nature”. I believe it to be one of the most underrated and most important conceptual revisions in appreciating and understanding Darwin’s mechanism. This morning, my aim is to transcribe the section, and when I have time later, I will make some commentary on it:

“Certainly no clear line of demarcation has as yet been drawn between species and sub-species–that is, the forms which in the opinion of some naturalists come very near to, but do not quite arrive at the rank of species; or, again, between sub-species and well-marked varieties, or between lesser varieties and individual differences. These differences blend into each other in an insensible series; and a series impresses the mind with the idea of an actual passage.

Hence I look at individual differences, though of small interest to the systematist, as of high importance for us, as being the first step towards such slight varieties as are barely thought worth recording in works on natural history. And I look at varieties which are in any degree more distinct and permanent, as steps leading to more strongly marked and more permanent varieties; and at these latter, as leading to sub-species, and to species. The passage from one stage of difference to another and higher stage may be, in some cases, due merely to the long-continued action of different physical conditions in two different regions; but I have not much faith in this view; and I attribute the passage of a variety, from a state in which it differs very slightly from its parent to one in which it differs more, to the action of natural selection in accumulating (as will hereafter be more fully explained) differences of structure in certain definite directions. Hence I believe a well-marked variety may be justly called an incipient species; but whether this belief be justifiable must be judged of by the general weight of the several facts and views given throughout this work.

…(paragraph on population skipped)

From these remarks it will be seen that I look at the term species, as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, and for mere convenience’s sake.”

Darwin Conference, Revisiting the Core Principles

This past weekend, I continued with my lecture-attendance trend and made my way to Hyde Park for a major Darwin conference at the University of Chicago. As you may know, 2009 is the 150th anniversary of The Origin of Species original publication, and the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin. For this reason, this year has been filled with Darwin celebrations of various sorts. 50 years ago, at the University of Chicago, another Darwin conference was held which went down in history as an important one for the Darwin community. This was also quite exciting, although I doubt that it will be as historic as the previous one. Anyway, I have not been thinking a great deal about Darwin lately, so listening to these lectures brought to life ideas that had fallen dormant. I continue to find a lot of value from attending lectures, and I will certainly continue to do this. This weekend, however, I am taking a break. Three consecutive weekends of lectures and conferences have been fascinating, but a bit exhausting too.

In short: Lecture attendance is good.

Anyway, I have about forty minutes before I need to start my commute, and I wanted to re-visit my philosophical principles. I don’t think I have anything new, but it has been so long since I’ve given it serious consideration that I feel inclined to review. Instead of starting from scratch, I’m going to go back to a previous post, include those principles here, and see if I can add any worthwhile commentary.
This is from February 8, 2009:

(Feb 8 text follow the numbers. Today’s commentary follow the bold note that follow each number’s proposition.)

1. The world, properly understood, is one in absolute flux– there are no discrete ‘things’ because they are constantly changing, affecting and being affected by the world around it. (For any given object, there is no discrete line between where the object ends and the rest of the world begins) Note: I include ideas, but not minds, as things of the world too. This includes two implications. FIRST, ideas are also in constant flux. Each time I recall an idea, whether it is a memory, a desire, or process of reasoning, the idea is slightly different than in previous instances (and in cases where it is identical, it is by accident). This is because every idea that arises to our mind is a cocktail of memories, sensations, emotions, strength of drives, and opinions of who the self is within the ever-changing context of one’s life. The self is never the same, because it is constantly acquiring new memories and finding itself in a different place of ones life. SECOND, the existence of minds are largely illusory. By “mind,” I understand that singular, indivisible thing that a person refers to when she says “I.” Concepts such as individual responsibility (although understood differently by different people), free will, and sometimes “knowing one’s self” are dependent on this notion of the mind, and are therefore flawed and in need of revision. Rather than residing in the indivisible mind (or soul), a more accurate picture of the self is of many strands of “idea-streams,” each of which is striving for different ways of being. These “idea-streams” have personality tendencies, modes of self-identification, are inspired by different conditions, and constantly affect one another. As with all psychological phenomena, different people are affected by the force of this more so than others. A person who has exceptionally disconnected idea-streams is thought of as having multiple personality disorders, for example, while someone who has fewer or exceptionally connect idea-streams is thought to be a very steady and consistent person who rarely behaves very differently than normal. Most of us are somewhere in the middle. This post goes into some more details of this notion, and this Atlantic article from last year references both philosophical and psychological precedents. As a side note, David Brooks of the New York Times recently wrote an article that tied in the Atlantic article with the movie “Where the Wild Things Are.” On a further note, it is on this point of idea-streams where I see the opportunity to tie in Spinoza’s concept of the Conatus, Things, and Adequate Knowledge, Nietzsche’s Overcoming, Forgetting, Guilt, Bad Conscience and “Philosopher as Attempter,” Darwin’s Natural Selection, and Dewey’s Democratic spirit. But I write this not for the reader, who can only guess what I mean by this, and more for myself, so that I can remind myself where to pick this up next time I revisit it.

2. The flow is determined by laws that are not subject to the will of the mind, but can be understood to some degree….

3. The essential part of all things is the striving for their own preservation and increased power. Note: However, as expanded on below, the thing can only be aware of its existence if it has a mind, it must understand the links between cause and effect in order to have power, and the principal effect, which determines whether or not any knowledge is trivial or worthy by whether or not a cause directly links to it,  is the preservation and increased power of the thing itself.
4. There is no ‘I’ in the soul/cogito sense– the mind should be understood as a stream of ideas, brought about by previous causes and bringing forth new conditions.
5. Obviously, the ‘I’ has no freedom– from 2 and 3.
6. Knowledge of the laws of process, and the streams that largely flow through the self, allow one to better steer one’s self in accordance
7. The mind is our fundamental place of existence– we do not ‘live’ in the material world– we live in the phenomenal world.
8. In order to have freedom, the mind must grow in its understanding of the world.
9. Our ideas of the world are formed by looking at clashes, conflicts and resolutions.
10. Education depends on exposing the mind to contrary ideas that we believe are relevant to the expansion, preservation, and empowerment of the self.
11. Incorrect ideas, especially in regards to Good and Evil and the nature of truth, destroy our freedom.
12. One’s character is moldable over time, by first understanding how to mold it and then having the strength of will to bring into affect the necessary conditions to motivate the change.

13. The pursuit to preserve one’s self and to increase the breath of the self (which, recall, is not the body, but the body of knowledge of one’s self) is the greatest human virtue: happiness.

NOTE: After finishing the notes on #1, I ran out of time. I will revisit this soon and record the updates, both content and time. Last update: Notes on #1, 5:04am, November 3.

My Visit to Hyde Park and the Plan it Creates

I love teaching. It is a worthy challenge to take the philosophers I love and present them to minds near the beginning of a higher education and participate in their reaction. However, one feature of teaching first and second year students is that I am usually unable to discuss those more subtle and sophisticated arguments about correct interpretation or the most well-formulated reactions. In short, I still need peers and teachers to keep me stimulated and challenged. I have had little opportunity, or at least not taken advantage of opportunity, to pursue these conversations. As a result, almost all of my conversation on philosophy are with my students. The task there is to achieve basic comprehension and engage at a level of conversation where the student feels that their own inquiry (instead of my lecturing) is advancing their knowledge. If I am incorrect, sloppy, or vague on a subtle point, it is rare that I will be challenged, or even that it will matter as my students work to get a basic comprehension.

My trip to Eastern Michigan University reminded me of the pleasure, contentment, and intellectual stimulation that I receive from peers and teachers.  I realized that a good portion of my mental activity had been dormant.  Driving back to Chicago, I decided that a change was needed. But simply deciding that “I will be more stimulated” has not been sufficient in my life. This time, I decided to pursue as many free lectures as I could.

Lectures. When I was in undergrad at Bemidji State, I would frequently attend the free lectures that were provided by the University’s faculty every month, no matter the subject. It felt great to attend a lecture that was not required. I recall that I was probably happier at that time than at anytime since.

For some reason, living in Chicago, I have not been attending lectures. There are probably a lot of motivators for this. I was a little traumatized by graduate school, I think, although I was largely able to overcome that and teach community college classes. I also never felt at home at the University of Chicago, unlike Bemidji State University. I always felt like an impostor or outsider.

Probably out of a combination of desperation, enthusiasm from Michigan, and self-realization, I ran searches for philosophy lectures on the 4-year institutions in Chicago: University of Chicago, DuPaul, Loyola, University of Illinois-Chicago, and Northwestern. I found a few for this weekend and decided I ought to go. I attended three lectures in all:

1. Ironic existence in Socrates and Kierkegaard, by Johnathan Lear.

2. Roman Stoicism

3. The continuing archaeological research on the so-called “Fortification Tablets” from Persepolis (Iran) being conducted at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute.

They were all excellent, although the first was by far the best. The second was an excellent lecture, but it was aimed at the complete neophyte of ancient philosophy, and it was entirely descriptive. I picked up a few new things, and the lecturer was very talented and knowledgable. But it was not stimulating in the way that Lear’s was. The last one was a bit disappointing, mostly because I was more interested in what we knew about Persepolis, whereas the lecture was focused on the state of the research project itself, including political, legal, and technological concerns. The few historical pieces were interesting, though.

Anyway, it has been a great weekend. I usually spend my weekends resting and doing some casual grading and reading, feeling that I am too exhausted from the week to do anything intellectual. But I discovered and remembered an important pattern about how my mind works: when my intellectual curiosity is stimulated and compelled, it is not exhausting, but energizing. It makes me want to do more, not less.

And so this is the new plan: every weekend, I will seek lectures around town. On philosophical subjects when possible, on others when not. The lecture is great, because so long as I go through the relatively easy process of moving my body to the correct time and place, I will receive something, even if my mind is exhausted and depressed. In this case, it is better than a book, because if I am exhausted, I will easily put it aside and do something (or nothing) else.

After the lectures, I walked around campus for a bit (I am writing this from Reynolds Hall, in fact). And I noticed with fresh eyes how much is going on here. It is amazing how much I forgot about what goes on in this place. But most of the things I saw posted are not things that I would travel to Hyde Park for, although if I was in Hyde Park, and frequently inhabited the campus, I would attend them frequently. It got me back to thinking why I live where I do. My friends are on the north side. I have more access to music, movies, and people in general. I have had fun up there. My favorite bars are up there. But do I need them? These things bring me pleasure, but how much happiness does it induce? My friends certainly are necessary for my happiness, but I rarely see them more than once per week. And everything else I can live without. But can I live without lectures? I have, but perhaps having them will increase my happiness.

Hyde Park is a neighborhood  that is all about academics. The number of bookstores, lectures, and people who are devoted to ideas is unmatched in Chicago, with the only rival being Northwestern in Evanston (and I am far more alien to Northwestern). I posted before that I would consider a move to Hyde Park when my current lease is up, and that I would need to make some trips down here to make a decision. Well, here I am, and I like what I see. Again, this is a big decision. It is still a very long way from my friends, and I would more or less be moving to a different city, although one where I could make visits about once a month without difficulty.

Anyhow, my current hypothesis is this:

Given the conditions of my mind, my interests and habits, attending more lectures is a powerful cause for an increase of my happiness, my mental stimulation, and progress toward my professional and personal goals.

Furthermore, given the relatively isolated location of Hyde Park in relation to the rest of Chicago, and its distance from my friends and favorite bars, living in Hyde Park would cause me to have an increased tendency to work on intellectual interests.

On the other hand, for the same reason, moving to Hyde Park may be the cause for a greater erosion of my social skills and social life. Habits that do not come easily to me may be eroded even further. I may become depressed and despondent.

To help test these hypotheses, I will spend much more time travelling to Hyde Park and spending days here, attending lectures and working in the library. I will keep track, through journaling, how I am feeling and how well I am thinking. Will I produce more written works than I have been doing? Will I read more books? Will I drink less? Will I feel more motivated to leave the apartment and engage in fulfilling activities? Will the quality of my conversations improve? I think inquiring into these questions will not provide a certain answer, but a topic like this one does not permit for certain answers: it only permits for approximations.

To Michigan

I am about to leave for Michigan. I have rented a car. By sheer luck, they did not have any of the economy cars that I reserved, so I was given a free luxury car upgrade. I have never seen so many mysterious buttons.

The problems that I have expressed in the previous post seem to be coming to a head. Yesterday,  I had my first excellent conversation with my brother in months, since he was married. Then, I had an excellent evening with one of my best friends. We talked, saw other people, and then talked alone some more. All in all, we were together for ten hours of conversation, and I had more emotions bubbling up at that time than I have had in a very long time. Today, I will see old professors, mentors, and friends. I will see people who only know me from the book I helped to write, I will meet people with criticisms, and people with praise. I will likely be respected by people who are my senior. I am not entirely prepared for this weekend, but I will focus my energies on it until Sunday. Wish me luck. It is time for a battle.

Sublimated Emotions

To be frank, I have felt emotionally mute since the beginning of this semester. Probably more than at any previous time in the past few years, I have “lost touch with my emotions,” although it is difficult to state precisely what that means. I know that I have feelings for people that I have not been acknowledging, either to myself or to those people. Rather than dealing with the people, I have ignored the emotions and focused on school as my distraction. I recognized this for the first time last week, or perhaps the week before. But simply acknowledging my sublimated emotions does not call them to the foreground. I believe, however, that there is a need to actually weep over what I have lost, or what I have allowed myself to lose. And I need to weep in order to move on. But I do not feel strongly enough to weep. It is like there is some sort of emotional blockage or dam beneath my consciousness, and I do not know how strong the force is that is building up behind that damn. Perhaps it is so powerful that once the dam breaks, I will be shattered. Or, perhaps the reason that it does not break is because there is not anything there, and my imagination is the only thing that is causing me to think it is so. But there is some emotion that is there, although I do not actually feel it. I somewhat feel like I am not a whole man, but only the outline. Is this the feeling that caused the idea that a person can lose one’s soul?

Ethics

Nobody thinks about ethics in a productive way when there is no conflict. Conflict is the empirical test of ethics. Whether that conflict be political, social, or within the breast of a human being, without a conflict of any sort, the human being has nothing to think about. Ethics become nothing but niceties and pedantics. It embraces love of mediocrity, relaxation, and the enhancement of simple pleasures.

But in conflict, it is absolutely necessary to think about ethics. When the alternative is to conquer or be vanquished, then those traits that promote conquering need to be examined. Excellence is loved. Mediocrity is thought pathetic. Behavior that is reviled in times of peace and tranquility are thought of as the interesting character flaws of heroes in times of conflict.  You lust after women other than your wife? In peace, you are pathetic and weak. In conflict, you are a red-blooded, masculine creature of nature. Your virtue has nothing to do with the absence of lusts that offend other people: your virtue has to do with having powerful lusts and exhibiting some level of control over them.

In peace, it is easy to be good without passion. In conflict, it is always difficult to be excellent. What is worth more? What is the mark of the best human being?