Thursday morning was the
beginning of another warm day, so I wore shorts again to philosophy class. I
got there about fifteen minutes early and did some writing on my laptop until
the algorithm class got out.
Professor Black told us about a medieval philosophy
seminar that would be happening that weekend on campus. She said the part that
takes place on Saturday would start at 10:00 because medievalists don’t like to
get up early on Saturdays.
Our lecture was on Augustine’s dialogue, “On Free Choice
of Will”. Liberum Arbitrium – Free Choice. He wrote this right after his
conversion to Christianity. It reflects discussions during his retreat in
Cassiacum, Italy. His son and his mother appear in the dialogues as well. His
work of this period is important for later periods. He comes back to some of it
in his Retractationes – or reconsiderations because there were complaints that
he had put aside divine grace in favour of free will and so he wanted to
address the issue.
His main concern here is the Manicheans.
Do humans have free choice?
Do humans have free choice?
What is the relation between “god” and free will?
Augustine takes a detour in the middle to “prove” that
“god” exists.
At this point Deborah Black thought that she had stepped
on a piece of chalk but then realized that her mic had fallen off and that she
had trod upon it.
Faith seeks understanding. Unless you believe you shall
not understand. Leap of faith, or more accurately “leap to faith” is not
Augustine’s language, but rather Soren Kierkegaard’s but that’s what he is
saying. Augustine says one has to begin with faith and question it later in
order to deepen one’s understanding.
Meno’s paradox, as stated by Socrates is, “A man cannot
search either for what he knows or what he does not know. He cannot search for
what he knows -- since he knows it, there is no need to search – nor for what
he does not know, since he does not know what to look for.” So how can one
learn?
Aquinas differs from Augustine with the argument that one
should believe until there is evidence and then there will be no need to
believe.
Augustine’s pillars of faith:
Certitude in one’s own existence.
Belief in the existence of god.
It’s an anti-sceptical argument but scepticism gives the
first principal:
Si fallor sum – If I err, then I exist – a certain truth.
The cause of evil is turning away from the good of
eternity to the temporal good. Human sin seems to be the result of free choice.
His vague premise is that if there is truth there is god.
The
hierarchy:
Intellect |
↓ |
Life | -
Each can infer the one below.
↓ |
Existence|
Professor Black likes this because she is interested in
medieval cognition theory.
Compare the intellect to other powers of cognition.
Augustine uses the Aristotelian idea that the senses only
perceive objects that are proper to them. The senses perceive objects but not
themselves. The inner sense perceives the outer senses and their acts.
Augustine says this inner sense exists in animals. Animals look for food when food
is absent. Her cat wakes her up half an hour before she needs to get up because
her bowl is empty.
Reason or intellect is reflexive – It looks at itself,
life and existence. Augustine thinks this shows that since judgement is the
mark of superiority, reason is the ultimate judge of that which is beneath it.
The inner senses judge the outer senses.
God, that than which nothing is superior is higher than
reason but that which is higher than reason may not be god.
Augustine thinks that which is higher than reason,
unchangeable and has no superior has to be god. If you can prove that there is
immutable truth, as in numbers, you can prove that there is god. He is setting
the bar low here, as this is a vague definition of god.
Rational truths are public but not private. You think
it’s hot but I think it’s cold are two private truths. Only I can taste the
cake that is in my mouth because taste consumes its object.
Truth is higher than the human mind because the mind is
mutable. Truth provides the standard for the mind’s judgement.
Why did “god” give us free will?
Deborah wished us all a great weekend and commented that
it was supposed to go over 30 degrees. She said she’d heard that some large
apartment buildings in Toronto have already turned on the heat. I learned later
that this is true, but it seems crazy that they can’t have furnaces controlled
by thermostats.
Since I was down to one pen, after class I went to
Staples to buy another pack of five. On the way home I stopped at Freshco. The
grapes were very cheap, so I bought three bags. Watermelons had dropped by $2
since Tuesday and I figured that would be the last time this year they’d be
that cheap. There were packs of Italian sausages for $2.50 and one lamb chop
was marked down for $3. There were six-packs of yogourt for $1. I couldn’t pass
up a large tin of Maxwell House dark roast for $6.99. I was getting tired again
of eating bananas with my yogourt so I got three cans of peaches in pear juice.
It had been almost a year since I ran out of black pepper pods and though
pretty much every time I’ve gone to the supermarket since then I’d thought
about buying more, I’d always forgotten while I was there. It wasn’t as urgent
for a long time because I still had paprika, which is a pretty good alternative,
but that finally ran out too. This time it occurred to me to seek out the
pepper but I was very surprised at how expensive it was. $6.99 for a little
jar. I got it anyway.
I grilled the lamb chop, boiled a carrot and a potato for
dinner. I tried to make gravy and my gravy usually turns out great but this
time the liquid didn’t have enough fat in it. I tried to flavour it up after
thickening it but it tasted wrong so I attempted to rescue it by adding a
carton of Thai tomato and coconut soup. That improved it but I added some honey
to take the edge off.
That night I watched an episode of Maverick and caught an
amusing inside joke. Roger Moore’s character, Beau Maverick was successfully
posing as an Irishman in Dakota among a group of Fenian militants intent on
invading part of Canada and exchanging it for Irish freedom. A cavalry soldier
was also spying on them and claiming to have the last name “Kelly”. They saw
through his disguise, beat him up and threw him out. Afterwards one of the
Irishmen commented that he was too good looking to be a Kelly. Roger Moore
smirked and told him he agreed. The joke was that Roger Moore’s co-star on that
show, but not in that episode, was Jack Kelly.
The previous episode I’d watched was nothing special for
the story, but it featured a strange game of poker that Bart Maverick got
caught up in with some old men, called “Pass the Buck” in Dodge City. Aces,
black threes, the eight of hearts, and your lowest card are wild and you pass
your worst three cards on to the man on your left. The hands had names like “St
Louis Sleeper”, “Ring tailed gazafrance” (which is the equivalent of five aces)
and a “Stuttering flush” (consisting of ace, deuce, three, king and eight of
hearts. The same as a royal flush but every other card is black), which always
beats a ring-tailed gazafrance). Another game was called “Eight Toed Sloth”, in
which an “Apache Nightmare” beats a “Texas Tornado” as long as the queen is
black but only until midnight, in which case it can be beaten by a “Woolly
Mammoth”.
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