CD: Serious Courage

In general it's hard to learn about civilly disobedient actions and arrests when they happen; they normally don't make the national news. If you dig around, though, quite a few people are regularly risking arrest -- and in this case deportation -- trying to make their concerns heard. This one took some guts:  http://truth-out.org/news/item/11409-no-papers-no-fear-undocumented-immigrant-activists-arrested-outside-dnc

LCR: Moral Judgments

We have learned that pieces of advice and commands are not generally statements, as they have no propositional content, can't be true or false, and thus can't serve as premises or conclusions in logical arguments. But you might wonder about certain common moral or ethical utterances, such as "You ought to call your mother." Is this advice, an order, or might it have propositional content? Context is important in such cases, and the question turns on whether there are objective criteria we might use to determine whether it is true or false. (See the Philosophy Toolkit for what I mean by 'objective' here). If, for example, your mother is ill, and left a message asking you to call her, we have grounds for thinking you really do have a strong obligation -- and a good reason -- to call her (she is, after all, your mother). In this case, it seems, "You ought to call your mother" is true. If, on the other hand, she died two years ago, it is clearly false, since you can't have an obligation to do something impossible. Either way, we're dealing with a bona fide statement.

As in determining whether a passage contains an argument, the intention of the speaker/writer is paramount to determining whether a string of words constitutes a statement, but other things equal it is generally best to treat moral or ethical pronouncements as statements, unless you have strong reasons not to in a specific case.

CD: Things to watch for in Crito

As you read Plato's Crito for next week, pay close attention to a couple of arguments, one explicit and one tacit. The first involves the claim that it is always wrong to cause harm. We will need to look closely for the stated and assumed premises in support of this conclusion, as well as observing some of its potentially radical implications. The second, largely tacit argument involves the idea, which the historical Socrates (or at least Plato's character of the same name, who is based on him) may be the first to articulate: that one acquires a duty of obedience to a legal/political/social order not by nature but by consent. We will likewise want to investigate the merits of all potential reasons for this claim.

LCR: Amphibolies

Later in the course we will discuss fallacies that arise from grammatical ambiguities. One such is called an amphiboly, which sounds like a wiggly amphibian, but is actually a case of drawing a conclusion based on the wrong horn of an interpretive dilemma. This morning's paper suggested one such to my warped eye. The caption to a photograph on the front page of the Berkshire Eagle reads in part:  "Drew Peterson Convicted; The former police officer is found guilty of murdering his third wife..." and it occurred to me immediately to wonder why they hadn't done anything about it when he murdered the first two (if you said "I just ate my third cookie," people would naturally assume you had in fact eaten the other two...). Of course, so far as we know he did not murder his first two wives, though as it turns out this case was launched only after his fourth wife disappeared, leading to suspicions about the death of the third. It would probably be a strong induction, and not a fallacy, to conclude that if he were to propose to a prospective fifth wife, she should just say no.

Fall Semester

Welcome students, new and returning. I will be posting from time to time matters of interest to our courses, as well as occasional matters of general interest. Comments specific to courses I will label in the title -- CD for Civil Disobedience, LCR for Logic and Critical reasoning. You will want to be sure to read those that are specific to your course, and you are welcome to comment on any of them. I look forward to lots of lively conversations, both in class and on our blogs.

Course Grading

Thanks to all of my students for a stimulating semester. I will be posting grades for my courses in a few days. When you retrieve them, please let me know if you think yours might be in error for any reason (a polite inquiry on email is sufficient; save the anger and righteous indignation for economic inequality, patriarchy, and the fossil fuel industry). I wish you all a pleasant and productive summer.

cheers,
Matt

Honors Logic

I am offering an Honors section of PHIL 200 in the fall for the first time, and I want to let people know that it is nothing at all like the logic course we have been offering for several years. I'll be using a different book, a completely different approach, and an accelerated pace (it is an Honors course, after all). This would be a good course for philosophy students, honors students from any discipline, and anyone who wants to score well on the law school entrance exam. Even if you've already taken logic, this will be valuable intellectual training.