Lady Philosophy

            I did steaming hot, sweaty yoga on Tuesday morning and later I was singing very loudly. Maybe that was because of the heat as well.

            I printed up the paragraph that I would have to hand in to my TA in the early afternoon. I also made a few small changes to the poem that I planned to read that night at Shab-e She'r.

            It was a hot ride to class, with a bus in front of me at first and construction on College, but I got around both.

            I plugged my laptop in behind me. Ryan, the student that always sits behind me, plugged it in for me on his side.

            In Professor Black’s lecture she finished up her talk about Augustine’s “On Free Choice of Will”.

            He thinks that he has proven that there exists immutable truth and that “god” either is that immutable truth or something higher. Although he was influenced by the Neoplatonists he differs from them in putting god above being.

            Evil is privation of good – all and only good things come from “god” so evil is a defect.

            God contains the hierarchy of reason, life and existence.

            It is not clear how moral evil comes about. Augustine has a problem understanding how free choice of will is the source of action and how it goes astray. Free choice is unusual because it makes the person that uses it responsible. We suffer from not understanding god’s order. Free will is unique because there is no prior cause or explanation in its own right. Free choice is the start of any action.

            Augustine was the first person to talk philosophically about free will. His position is actually Libertarian. His idea of the voluntary gets picked up by later philosophers and they try to reconcile it with Aristotle.

Is free will good? What is its defect? Why did I steal the pears? If free will can be abused why throw it into the mix and how can it still be good?

Hierarchy of goodness:

There are absolute goods such as virtue. Enjoyment – ultimate end.

There are intermediate goods such as the will, which is as origin of action is the means to higher or lower.

There are basic goods like chocolate cake or a sunny day of 20 degrees rather than 30 degrees.

We have a problem when we put will in relation to god’s plan. Free choice of will is not really free. There is a difference between voluntary and natural will. Natural equals necessary, such as rocks falling. God made a place in nature for free agents.

The second problem:

Aristotle’s “On Interpretation “ is concerned with S is P and later about the future contingent. A sea battle will happen tomorrow. True or false? If there is an omniscient god it entails that god knows if there will be a battle. If god knows something will occur then that thing is necessary. Necessity already has free choice built in. God’s knowledge includes knowledge of choices and free agents. God has foreknowledge of our will. God’s foreknowledge is a guarantee that action is free. God knows whether constrained or free. Boethius will later develop how this works.

If god knows what is going to happen then god is culpable if it doesn’t stop me from doing the wrong thing. Many are not satisfied with Augustine’s answers.

There were two Augustines: Before his conversion he was worried about evil, but later he focused on Grace. Original sin became a big deal later on.

Can humans take credit for good actions? Palagians thought Augustine agreed with them but he didn’t think so. We need grace to exercise free will and to orient ourselves toward virtue.

She said that one Halloween, one of her students came to class dressed like Lady Philosophy.

After class I went to the washroom. On the wall beside the urinal was an ad promoting the exciting opportunities for MBA graduates in car dealerships.

I had an hour before tutorial and so I decided to go to the Help Desk at Robarts because I wanted to make sure that my latest laptop could access the U of T network if I ever decided to do so. So far I hadn’t even tried, so first of all I rode up to the library but I had to walk all the way up to its north end just to find a free bike post. I went into Robarts and sat near the help desk to try and log in. My user name and password should have been the same as logging onto the student website, but it failed. I was offered a choice between trying again and terminating, so I terminated and got in line for the help desk behind a young woman that looked about ten years older than the usual student. She said she’d seen me sitting there when she’d arrived so she let me go ahead of her. It turned out that when my computer gave me the two choices it was just a matter of double-checking if I wanted to go onto the network.

I went to University College to look for the room where my tutorial would be and found it quite easily on the main floor. The noon tutorial was still going on so I sat outside in the nearest window seat and did some reading on my laptop.

My TA is Celia Byrne. She told us that she likes Medieval Philosophy because it’s weird and that the thinkers have some cool answers. She said that it’s fun to try to figure out how they think and it expands one’s horizons.

First of all she had us all introduce ourselves and tell us a little bit about who we are. I was at the very end of a long semi-circle and so I was the last one to speak. Noah, the third to last said that he’s the son of a parson and so he probably already knows a lot of the answers. Celia commented that probably wouldn’t be the case when we got to the Islamic philosophers. Jeremy, the guy next to me was a philosophy major with one of the snootiest sounding British accents I’d ever heard. He spoke so slowly and extended the words and the ends of phrases into a dangling drawl. I told everyone that I was an English major and that this was my fifth Philosophy course. I pointed out one interesting difference between English courses and Philosophy courses.  If one can do well in one English course one can do well in most of them but with Philosophy there is a much wider spectrum of difficulty or compatibility. I did well in both the Philosophy of Sex and the Philosophy of Art but lousy in Knowledge and Reality.

We started talking about paragraphs we’d written and it turned out that I’d committed a faux pas right off the bat. We were supposed to write based on the readings but I had written based on the lecture. She said it was okay this time. The tutorials are worth 15% of our course mark and the paragraphs make up half of that.

She asked what humans fear the most. Someone answered public speaking but she had meant death. We want to maintain our existence but death is non-existence.

She says that all medieval thinkers start with the letter A.

Why did Augustine steal the pears? I pointed out that he’d admitted that it was partially peer pressure. He perhaps wanted to look good before his friends. Breaking the rules made him feel powerful. He was imitating god. It was never just for the sake of stealing.

What counter examples could there be as motives for doing wrong? Someone said vengeance. I offered that it could be just to expand one’s horizons.

Has Augustine given a complete account?

Celia confessed that she is afraid of heights because she doesn’t trust herself not to jump.

We moved on to Augustine’s relating numbers to the existence of god. Numbers are proof of an immutable truth that is greater than our minds. He concludes that something greater than our minds must be god.

One of the students thought that our number system is man made and so it couldn’t be an immutable truth. It was pointed out to her that neither Augustine nor most of us would consider numbers a man made system. One plus one will always be two by any understanding. Numbers are part of the fundamental structure of reality.

“Judging about” versus “judging with”.

Judging about would be evaluation by certain standards.

Rules of judgement would be a cake made with a recipe; math; numbers; that which is above us.

I picked up some grapes, yogourt, bread and peanuts from Freshco on the way home. When I got there my neighbour Benji came out to tell me that he’d been scared all day because he could smell something burning. He figured Nickie had gone to work and left something on the stove. I had smelled something at the top of the stairs when I’d come in. He seemed to think it was all right then though.

I had time to go home and have lunch, then take a siesta before going to Shab-e She’r.