Google Wave and My Course in Greece

Each year I teach a course in Greece, and I require my students to make presentations at a variety of archaeological and cultural sites.

This year I am playing around with Google Wave's map feature and wondering if I can use Wave to help prepare my students to make the most of our limited time in Greece.

Do you have suggestions for how I can use this for my course?  Are you also new to Wave and interested in Greece?  If so, send me a wave at dr.dlohara@googlewave.com and I'll include you in my "sandbox" where I'm playing around with the possibilities.

(Photo credit: Dr. Jeffrey A. Johnson, Providence College)

IAPS meeting at APA in NYC, December 2009

In case you're interested in the philosophy of sport:

IAPS meeting at APA in NYC

John E. Smith, RIP

I just heard the very sad news that John E. Smith, a past president of the Charles S. Peirce Society, died last night.  The few times I corresponded with him, he was remarkably generous with his time.  As a graduate student I spoke with him about Peirce and about the philosophy of religion.  Rather than speaking down to me as was his right, he spoke to me as a fellow inquirer, and his words were both words of wisdom and words of welcome.  Later, as a young professor, I corresponded with him about one of his books when I was teaching my first seminar in American philosophy.  He wrote back quickly and offered me both help and encouragement.  The world was better for having him in it, and I am deeply saddened by his passing.  I hope one day to meet him again, if only to thank him once again for all he did for me.  May he rest in peace, enfolded to the Bosom of Abraham.

I Cannot Tell A Lie

American mythology tells us that Washington said that.  Of course, if someone says "I never lie," you cannot tell from that statement whether it is true or not.  And if they say "I always lie," it's hard to make sense of what they are saying.  But that is beside my point here.  There are a number of ethicists and theologians who tell us that we should never lie.  Kant, for instance, says that lying is a violation of the Categorical Imperative.  That is, when you lie you are acting according to a rule that you wouldn't want others to adhere to, and you're manipulating what others believe, which is a way of using them as means rather than respecting them as ends.  Augustine and Aquinas both tell us that all lies, even "jocose" or humorous lies, are sinful because they are ways of bearing false witness, something we're commanded not to do.

Are they right?  Is there never a time when lying is justified?  What do you think?

Socrates and the Trees

It's always dangerous to assume one knows what Plato thinks, since Plato goes out of his way not to tell us what he thinks.  Nevertheless, inasmuch as Socrates is his mouthpiece, here is one place where I think Socrates is mistaken.  Socrates, speaking to Phaedrus, says, "I'm a lover of learning, and trees and open country won't teach me anything, whereas men in the town do." (230d)

I disagree with what Socrates says here, and it is an unfortunate fact of history that many Platonists have taken a similar position to this one.  I just read this line in an otherwise very good book, David Keller and Frank Golley's The Philosophy of Ecology: From Science To Synthesis.

It's a fine collection of key articles in environmental philosophy.  In the introduction, however, they contrast Socrates with Thoreau - something Thoreau himself did - and make Thoreau out to be the one more interested in trees.  Thoreau was interested in trees, especially at the end of his life, but that does not make the comparison apt.

The irony of this line is that it comes from a dialogue in which Socrates continues to point out to his interlocutor just how much one can learn from a close observation of nature.  He repeatedly draws attention to the trees, the water, and the cicadas.  Socrates and Plato are not known as fathers of empiricism, but the view that their heads are so far in the Clouds that they cannot see the well they're about to step into has occupied too much of our attention.  We would do better to notice that Socrates pays attention to the trees.  We would do better still to pay some attention to the trees ourselves.

Lying and Letters of Recommendation

Each fall I write a lot of letters of recommendation for my students.  This fall is no exception.  In fact, I'm writing more this fall than ever before, and I'm happy to report that I think all the students I'm writing for are in fact worthy of strong recommendations.

I'm also reading Sissela Bok's book Lying, in which she has a sub-chapter on letters of recommendation.  She makes the very sensible point that inflated letters of recommendation do some harm to everyone involved, and urges us to consider being far more honest than we tend to be in such letters.  The problem is that as this kind of letter has become mandatory, there has been something like "grade-inflation" across the board with these letters.  Arguably, no one expects letters to do much more than give a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.  But the form of the letter implies that the recommendation is not a binary decision but a nuanced exposition of the character of the recommendee.

Now, my principle has been to avoid saying behind someone's back what I would not say to their face.  But maybe I have the wrong orientation; maybe I should be more concerned about the person to whom the letter is addressed than the one about whom it is written.

I take my role as an advocate for my students seriously, and I attempt to do so with integrity.  I will not lie about my students, or so I tell myself.  But if I fail to point out small character flaws, does that count as a lie?  Am I obligated to make letters of recommendation into tell-all sessions?  What obligation do I have to scrutinize my students' weaknesses for future employers and for graduate schools?  What do you think?

More fun with logic

Here's another little bit of fun with logic for my students.  What, if anything, is wrong with this argument?

1) Nothing is better than good coffee.
2) A crust of bread is better than nothing.
Therefore:
3) A crust of bread is better than good coffee.

How can you know that someone is contrite?

For the last few weeks my ethics students have been studying forgiveness.  One of the persistent questions about forgiveness is whether, in order to be forgiven, one must first be contrite or repentant.  (We have not been speaking of the idea of God forgiving people; we've limited our discussion to the possibility of people forgiving other people.)

I have to confess that this posting was prompted as much by my viewing, last night, of Battlestar Galactica as by our readings.  In season 3, Laura Roslin calls for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (like South Africa's after Apartheid) after some human-on-human atrocities.  That got me thinking once again about Desmond Tutu and Simon Wiesenthal, and their respective books on forgiveness.

The easy answer to my question is to say that one does not need to be contrite to be forgiven.  This is easy, but not simple, because it raises other questions about the nature of forgiveness.  And it brings along with it the possibility of depriving someone of their moral agency by denying the reality of their choices.

Most of us are inclined to give the opposite answer, namely that it does not make sense to forgive those who are not sorry for their offenses.

But this raises another difficulty: how do we know when people are adequately sorry?  Additionally, does this position make it more likely that we will forgive those people who only seem sorry?  What if someone has expressed their contrition to the best of their ability but we have not been able to perceive it, for cultural or other reasons?  What if someone is not at all sorry, but has made a convincing public show of contrition?

What do you think?