Lunch Chat (3/22): Love & Death

Something about this post seems oddly familiar. . . .

This column from "The Stone" on "Love and Death" caught my eye — partly because it looks to the 1993 film "Groundhog Day" (one of my favorites) for examples to consider. I've never really thought about these issues before but now that we have some safe distance from Valentines Day, perhaps it'd make for some interesting conversation.

So stop on by the Philosophy Lounge on Thursday at noon for pizza and the last lunch chat before Spring Break. Hope to see you then. If we somehow get stuck in a Groundhog Day loop, let's hope for some good company and weather, at least.

Deadline extended for Lehigh Valley Undergraduate Philosophy Conference

Faculty, Friends, and Fellow Philosophers:

We graciously appreciate your continued support for the 2012 Lehigh Valley Undergraduate Philosophy Conference. As we became aware of communications mishaps throughout the past few weeks, we have decided to extend the submission deadline until March 9, 2012. Regardless of whether your college has submitted papers or not, we encourage you to register your attendance via our website (http://home.moravian.edu/public/phil/conference/). As we make reservations for morning refreshments and the catered lunch with presenters and the plenary speaker, confirming your attendance as soon as possible would greatly assist our efforts to make this conference our best on yet.

At this time, we are working to organize the current submissions into panels. A schedule of events for the day will be posted on our website in the coming weeks. As always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Sincerely,

Armando Chapelliquen '12 & Kathryn Miller '13

Program Coordinators

2012 Lehigh Valley Undergraduate Philosophy Conference

Pizza or Philosophy = False Dichotomy

Come join other philosophy majors and faculty for a dinner of pizza and some stimulating yet casual conversation.

Where: Coleman 62 (Philosophy & Classics Lounge

When: Wednesday, 29 February, 4:30-5:30

Why: That's a philosophical question. Hey, we can talk about that over pizza on Wed!

Lunch Chat (3/1): Thought Experiments

Breaking Philosophical News!: Famous Philosopher Faked Results of Thought Experiments!

So reports the new, hilarious Philosophy "News" Blog, FauxPhilNews — a sort of philosophical analog of The Onion. The parody got me thinking, though: how important are thought experiments to philosophy? — or to science, for that matter? How, exactly, do they differ from mere intuitions?

In a way, this picks up on the game, . . . er, discussion from last week about counterfactual conditionals: we often decide what to do based on thinking about how things would go if we acted in a different way. I decide not to give in to my craving for a third slice of pizza because I know that if I did, I'd feel sick. Perhaps something similar goes on when physicists use thought experiments. One famous example is Einstein's "Elevator" thought experiment. Here's the best video I can find on it (though there must be better ones — anyone?):



But the worry here is pretty obvious: if we find that in reasoning about certain counterfactuals absurd (as in the "Big Bang Theory" game), how can we be assured that thought experiments won't lead us astray? Brown and Fehige summarize this worry nicely in their article on thought experiments in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

How can we learn about reality (if we can at all), just by thinking? More precisely, are there thought experiments that enable us to acquire new knowledge about the intended realm of investigation without new data? If so, where does the new information come from if not from direct contact with the realm of investigation under consideration? Finally, how can we distinguish good from bad instances of such thought experiments? These questions seem urgent with respect to scientific thought experiments because most philosophers and historians of science “recognize them as an occasionally potent tool for increasing man's understanding of nature. […] Historically their role is very close to the double one played by actual laboratory experiments and observations. First, thought experiments can disclose nature's failure to conform to a previously held set of expectations. In addition, they can suggest particular ways in which both expectation and theory must henceforth be revised.” (Kuhn, 1977, p. 241 and 261) The questions are urgent regarding philosophical thought experiments because they play an important role in philosophical discourse. Philosophy without thought experiments seems unthinkable (see e.g., Myers, 1968).

So that's what I'd like to talk about on Thursday over pizza. Hope to see you there!

Lunch Chat (2/23): The Counterfactual Game

A friend of mine recently alerted me to this scene from "The Big Bang Theory" (I haven't watched more than an episode or two, but this makes me think that perhaps I should watch more!). So I thought that for a change of pace for our next Lunch Chat, we should try playing the game "Counterfactuals" a bit.

I'll start here with a famous example: If Caesar had been in command of the U.S. forces in the Korean War, would he have used the atom bomb or would he have used catapults? The philosopher W.V.O. Quine used examples like this to suggest that such questions lack single correct answers. There are straightforward arguments that the suggest that both of the "counterfactual conditionals" 'Had Caesar had been in command of the U.S. forces in the Korean War, he would have used the atom bomb' and 'Had Caesar had been in command of the U.S. forces in the Korean War, he would have used catapults' are true — but then again, they conflict; so how can they both be true? So perhaps there are no objective facts about counterfactuals such as these. . . .

On the other hand, it seems that many counterfactuals are objectively true. We certainly seem to act as if they were in many cases. We constantly make use of them when planning about our actions. We might consider what would happen, say, if we didn't study for the next test or if we moved to New York rather than L.A. They show up in the sciences and humanities too. CERN physicists assure us that if they fired up their particle accelerator all the way, it wouldn't create any earth-destroying black holes. Closer to home, you know that if were to release your grasp on that book, it would fall on our foot and we would yelp in pain (so you'd better readjust your grip!).

What makes all these (apparent) facts true? Are there similar facts about who would have won WWII had Rhinos been domesticated? Join us this Thursday at noon and let's see if we can figure this out. Pizza provided as usual.

No Lunch Chat this Week

Sorry folks, I'll be out of town at a conference on Thursday. But we'll be back with pizza and philosophy talk next week — stay tuned. In the meanwhile, I'd encourage you to check out some of the offerings on Ken Taylor and John Perry's fabulous Philosophy Talk radio program (the last week's discussion on the philosophical foundations of Black Solidarity) is available for free streaming.

TED Talk: Philosophy in Prison

I just came across this short TED talk by a philosophy professor who teaches courses in prisons. Definitely worth watching. . . .