As a person who went to a quite expensive liberal arts college myself "Saint John's in Santa Fe", I can say with experience that it was one of the most awful and wonderful experiences of my life. The worst of it was the "don rag" where adults far more studied, more ingrained in the culture, and far more educated than myself "assessed" my skills and weaknesses as a student. I got quite depressed hearing my faults of being a "contrarian". That one in particular disturbed me because I was unaware of just how argumentative I was capable of being. Took many months to figure out how to undo that quirk of mine (not that I don't argue endlessly still).
However, there was a singular moment that entirely changed my view of the educational program. I was in a science class at the end of the school year and it was supposed to just be a "talk about what we've been through". At that time, I learned how to have an honest dialogue as equals and I was incredibly excited to fill that hour and a half of class with productive conversation. In fact, I was so lost in the ideas I had learned, I had forgotten about how little everyone else had anything left to say. I certainly don't mind filling the hour and a half up if I need to do it alone. I am a rather quiet intellectual with little interest in socializing. Other people had many other things they were thinking about during the year I am sure. But what killed any interest in going back to that school was a single man in the room.
He was sitting on the opposite side of the classroom of me. He just wanted to leave class as quickly as possible. I didn't (my Mother had to pay for the entire school year herself!). I had no intentions of wasting the moment. But what silenced me without any extra effort was the look in his eyes. He HATED me for being an intellectual enjoying learning. And I don't just mean "fuck, can he shut up already!". I mean unadulterated malice that would make me not want to show up to class in the future. The look a criminal gives even if he was never going to act on it...
That is the educational world we live in today. It's not the fault of the tutors at that college (though I am sure some aren't great as with any place). It was the students. That's what killed it for me. It's a person telling me to get the hell out of there because I was looking to learn.
Ironically, in that same class, a black kid from Zimbabwe with a struggling understanding of the English language, and a heart of gold, came up to me after class and said, "hey, you should keep doing what you are doing. I have never seen a classroom be so animated about a class discussion before." The horrible irony being that a kid who probably needed a language aide to even understand the English just to get by was more interested in the art of education, than the 10 other kids who just wanted to feel good about being smarter than everyone else. I even said in the lunchroom I was going to give a scientist crap for being a reductionist fixated on how science is the power of control over nature. A philosophical principle that started in around the late 1700's because science was struggling to produce an effective theory on anything. So instead of being better, they became quicker and we live with that paradigm of dangerous science today because of it. His name was Claude Bernard.
The essay or thesis or whatever you'd like to call his control scheme of nature, was called "An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine", Part Two: Experimentation With Living Beings. It was written in 1865 and although his theory was highly productive, the further I read into the paper, the more and more I saw how in order to prove himself correct, he has to negate interrelational dynamics of living things. This meaning that if someone has high blood pressure, we give them blood thinners. And if further analysis says, "Oh hey, he needs more X, Y, and Z because his liver isn't being nourished properly, "Give him the blood thinners. That's your JOB as doctors." That is why today, instead of having "pro health" discussions, we have discussions of how to medicate people's lack of general health and well-being. Which isn't the fault of Doctors honestly. It's the fault of society saying the role of a Doctor is to be both a medically trained genius, a fully licensed nutritionist, a psychologist, a good friend and so on and so forth. Not even doctors get paid enough to do all of that... That and it goes against laws preventing doctors from deciding the lifestyles and behaviors of patients. Doctors are there to medicate, prevent and cure disease, not dictate our lives even if and when they know how best to do it.
If faculty are going to encourage group discussions with students, then they also need to monitor and create an environment that is conducive to the sharing of ideas, and to being passionate about learning. This means shutting down anti-intellectual behavior like the bullying (yes) that you experienced, even if it was done entirely with his eyes.
Halfway through the Nature's Prose term--five weeks into a ten week term--I was frustrated with the lack of engagement among the students. They had signed up knowingly and enthusiastically (I had had to turn several students away) for a program that required, among other things, spending a lot of time outside, alone. But most of the students weren't doing it. Why would they sign up for such a program, take a spot that other students wanted, and then not do the most obvious and basic part of the expectations of the program?
This was at a time when the "retention rate" at Evergreen was becoming a problem. Many students came as first-year students, but never came back for their sophomore year. So the administration was advising the faculty to do everything we could to "retain students."
It was in this environment that I walked into class and gave them an impromptu monologue on why they should definitely drop out of college, figure out what they wanted to do in their lives, and then--if it was part of the plan--come back to school. Why waste their, or more often their parents', money on curriculum to attend school if they are just spinning their wheels, not learning, playing some social game the specifics of which will fade quickly from memory?
I had their rapt attention with this unusual speech. I wasn't angry with them, and they knew that (anger would have come across differently). I was legitimately confused, and a little hurt, and truly did think that, for some of them, leaving, figuring themselves out, and coming back months or years later, would have been the right move.
The following Fall term, the administration had its knickers in a twist about all of the previous year's first year students who had failed to return. But every single one of my Nature's Prose students came back. (And I had many of the most remarkable of them in later programs, too.)
I think part of this “lack of engagement and participation” problem is the idea that colleges have lost their way, which has simultaneously caused the students to lose sight of the big picture. I think students feel obligated to go rather than recognizing it as an opportunity for growth, which in fairness to the students it is often not.
The university I attend, like many others, is also experiencing retention problems. And it makes me laugh to see them build new and nice buildings in the hopes that they fix the problem. They’re missing the point. They need to focus more on creating courses like yours shown here. Students, whether they’ll admit to it or not, want to be engaged. And I think offering that to them would increase retention more than a new entrance to our rec center.
Hmm, sad. Although I am excited about the potential I see within the online realm of education. The classes I’ve had over zoom have functioned well and allowed for decent conversation. I think it’d be cool if an institution were created, or perhaps it already exists, that had online class but then met for monthly, weekly, etc., field trips. Sounds like that would be a good fit for your brother!
My Brother became a TA for a university. He just had his budget because TAing "isn't in". He only got in because his professor recognized his intelligence and sincere interest in learning. And unlike the rest of the TA's, he was genuinely trying to connect and relate with the kids there. But since his budget and hours got sliced, he's having to quit entirely and now kids will be left with TA's half-heartedly showing up because it makes their schooling cheaper. He has resigned himself to just having to teach independently through animation and online "for fun" education curriculums so kids can still learn without it being an attack on their humanity whether through costs, budgets cuts, or simply not having respect for the kids who go there and feel unseen by the system. I feel the worst for kids with bad family history that are expected to perform just as well solely because they are smart.
I decided to fully give up on the education program of today. I had no actual problems with a single one of my tutors. I might have disliked one a bit, but not in any serious way. It was hearing the way students bitched about being educated that confused me. They acted as though all of these people with PhD's were their parents or something just lashing out rather than teaching...
I am glad that you managed to save them from the "scheme" of the modern system. There was only one tutor I had of my 6 that could have kept me loyal to that program to the end of days. His name was Michael Wolfe. A hard man to reach, but an exceptional educator to the likes I have never seen before and don't expect to.
I know I made the right choice leaving the program even if things got better there a little bit. I am one of the least respectful people by temperament, but even I could see that my tutors were being my better half even when I disliked the pain of being corrected so tightly.
Thank you for sharing this. I have been teaching (in a different subject area) for many years but your podcasts and writings have informed and transformed my own teaching. It inspired me to be more creative and freer. Looking forward to more pedagogical posts!
ooofff - okay, reading the course requirements just gave me massive anxiety. If your class were only one of two or three, then doable, but with a full course load? It would have been difficult to accomplish, and to do well without worrying about all of the other work that had to take a back seat to make room for yours. I would have struggled with whether or not to drop your course, the latter decision having been a lost opportunity...
As a side note, if you would like the papers I read Heather, I could probably take pictures of them and email them to you to show what I read. If you can't find it yourself that is, I sort of used my lab notebook as a notebook while I read so it is covered in writings especially that paper because it irritated me so greatly.
A quote I am sure you will appreciate was this one, "We must believe we are right. We must view living beings as machines and pull the parts of the machine apart so that we may understand how it works."
or perhaps, "Screw spirituality! Understand things only through a physiological perspective as It (spirituality) is a waste of time."
"Vitalists/lovers are dumb. Scientists/physicalists are smart and lead to actual discoveries"
"If they accept determinism, they can understand things that don't remain consistent."
"Exception doesn't exist. Exception means we lack an understanding of the conditions. Approximations are not tolerable." Although science has almost entirely been grounded on the idea that all thoughts are merely "theories" with very few exceptions.
And I could go on indefinitely with this faultiness.
I will end with this quote of mine while reading his work, "The core of life is the thing that if destroyed, it will cease to exist." That idea alone became the thesis of the "Modern 1984" I talk about. What in this modern day specifically are we killing that will make life itself, cease to exist. And although at the moment it is only a philosophically dead belief, I truly believe it is only a matter of time before we create the "apocalypse machine" we are so afraid. Modern day politics is only a symptom of this "death" eating away at life itself.
Sorry for the long windedness. It was fun to go back a few years and see what I was thinking that I agree with today like Heather's way of grounding the classroom in reality and education. Though I am a bit of a vagrant and trickster unlike her...
How thought-provoking! Typical first-day handout? Oh, TESC! Wait till I tell my tenure-track prof daughter. For one thing, Evergreen was a back-up college app in 2011.
How do I get you back in a classroom? Respectfully, lol.
Your initial couple of sentences give me pause. I'm pretty sure that even at 18 - I'm WAY WAY older now- I knew that the world existed before I scanned my peepers across it. That would seem a pretty elementary understanding (as in elementary school).
Yet, there is still so much to learn.
I was fishing on the Rainy River Monday, Canada a mere couple hundred yards off port. Let me tell you, there'd be far fewer illegal's trying to swim into America if the Rio Grand were 36 Deg f.
So much to wonder about.
We caught Burbot, Red Horse, Sucker, Sauger, and one grade school age sturgeon.
In this collection are fish with scales, fish with skin, and fish with armor plating and spikes.
How did species inhabiting the same habitat arrive at 3 different exterior surface design?
Are these sturgeon really like crocodile, little changed since before the dinosaurs?
Did the successive ranks of ice sheets that advanced and retreated across this land scape erase the biological etch - a -sketch every time and create a new blank slate to be re explored and occupied by life in all its variety?
So may questions to ponder while a guy tries to keep his teeth from chattering.
Wow the opening paragraph and opening line of Nature's Prose is amazing,
"The natural world exists with or without humanity’s interpretation of it."
This is something I have been considering throughout the last 3 years, I think if you combine that opening paragraph with the Medicine, Against Reductionism section from your book A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide To The 21st Century, you can gain a great insight into the root of the problems of the last 3 years. Humans hubristic belief in the conquest of Nature.
Humans conquest of Nature, the dreams of some scientific planners.
Humans create visions of how the world works. In modern times we have created numerous visions or dogmas that attempt to explain how a modern society functions. Politicians use these visions to attract followers and rely on the visions to explain why things occur even when there is no evidence to support such contentions. Autocrats use visions to strengthen their grip on power and punish or kill heretics and blasphemers who doubt their vision. The populists substitute these visions in place of facts or truth and even go as far as denying facts or truth when they do not fit within the scope of their vision.
As David Bohm says, Imagination, that miracle of inner image-making, lifts humanity to new heights and possibilities. At the same time, seduces with endless opportunities for self-deception. Most fail to understand the fundamental nature of this rare capacity, fewer still distil its use in ways that negate reification, believing, and treating concepts or mental images as independent things or reality. I am a human being, embedded in nature, not a Democrat, Muslim, American, or a machine. Imagined mental images are theatre, pure play. To mistake play, the mental image, for one’s identity is the beginning of self-deception and conflict.
C.S. Lewis Quote
“For the wise people of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue,” Lewis writes. “For some scientists the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of people: the solution is a technique; in the practice of this technique, some are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious…”
As a fun little game since I am bored and curious what others might come up with, can anyone answer this question. "How is a baby made?" But I want to see someone do it through a purely reductionist logic of nothing but mechanisms. In other words, the question I really want to know the answer to (Bret and Heather included if possible), is "how can something inorganic, nonliving, (chemicals, atoms, and so forth) create a baby?" I understand that material is needed to give a body form. That is pretty basic. But what about explaining to me why human beings can "create life" out of dead things? And I am not looking for a "God is here" answer even though I am a believer. And I do actually have my own answer if anyone would like to here it after some people have said a thing or two that might change my theory. Especially Bret, as I think he and I have a fundamental disagreement about the nature of living things that I don't know how he explains away. Specifically his belief against pan psychism which I don't believe in literally, but do believe in fundamentally as true and inescapable.
I will engage with you on one point. Humans--or any life form--don't 'create life out of dead things', they continue it 'out of dead things' by means of existing biological (life) processes. It appears the real question you are asking is 'what is the nature of panpsychism?' and if it is what gave rise to these processes. I think it is simply a projection resulting from our limited scientific awareness, though it is nevertheless a potential improvement on leaving it up to God(s).
Perhaps I am simply being unclear, but the question I am asking is not about panpsychism at all. The answer is panpsychism, but something adjacent to the concept. What I am really asking is the "alchemist's search for gold" about creating life. What you are referring to is still a process of mechanisms. By this I mean, should a person have a proper quantity of materials, then put sperm into an egg, life will be born. Yes, that is the natural process and natural continuation of biological processes. What I am asking is where does "bio" life, biology begin and end. In other words, where does the start of "life" begin? Because alchemy has shown itself incapable of denying thermodynamics. We cannot destroy or create matter, simply change its state of existence. What I would like to know, is how can carbon, etc. etc. somehow become a human being? In what logical reality can unintelligent, non sentient beings become sentient ones? Does sperm somehow have some magical property to life? Does an egg somehow have a brain preordained in it by some mechanistic process that can develop like a computer or something?
My argument is a rather simple one. As Aristotle said, all things have "soul" and thus I would say that all things are living. And perhaps this is a redundant interpretation of something simple, but I do believe the consequences of denying this basic philosophical principle are quite dire.
And to gratify your efforts because it was educational for me to think about, I will push the conversation further with this. In fact, it is the same argument I made at Saint John's.
The argument is about subjectivity and the nature of it in nature. I, as a human being, define myself as sentient because of subjectivity or personal preference. But, if that is what defines subjectivity, personal preference, does a rock not prefer a stable temperature? In other words, does a rock not try to find some semblance of stable heat, an equilibrium? Does a rock, like all things in nature, resist change the way we do because of what I can only see as subjective preference.
In the end, my philosophical argument becomes a statement about "the nature of things". In order for a rock to remain as a rock, it must to some degree resist change otherwise it is no longer a rock. The same is absolutely true of a human being, we are just far more flighty and fidgety beings. Much more sensitive to change and alteration than "lesser beings".
And to fight against the argument that "rocks have no feelings", I am not saying that a rock has an agenda hidden in their making the way "sentient", independent beings do. What I am arguing is that the statement of "subjectivity" and stability of reality, are one and the same. Thus concluding with a theory that "all things are sentient, self aware, concious" or some other better way of putting it.
I would gladly have someone try to argue against me on this, perhaps someone who is more of scientist and less of a flimsy artist with nice words and funny ways of seeing things. If I could convince a true scientist through logic, then I think I will have succeeded in proving my theory as logically viable as I cannot see its fault as I have presented it. Though perhaps I have done nothing more than a bit of artistic sophistry to make myself look appealing? And thus I have no logic behind what I have said?
The only agency a rock has is the 'agency' of entropy, to which we are also subject, though we seem able to forestall it (perhaps we are actually in the process of increasing it in our locale?) with technology emergent from science emergent from human consciousness.
"Stability of reality" is a hard first principle to support, unless the reality of entropy is what you have in mind. "The only sure things are death and taxes." ;-)
Well yes, I will concede a rock has a lot less agency against change than human beings do. but at the same time, I can put a rock in a furnace and bring it out a bit blackened. Would you perhaps like me to put you in the same furnace and see how you handle it? I think you might fair a bit worse... Though I'd imagine as the rock is a badass and rolls with the punches, you will be the one to throw the punches once you realize my dire intentions of "scientific" nature.
Nevertheless, I don't believe this has defeated my proposition of "all things are living" or "all things have soul" or most pointedly "all things have subjective experience, thus consciousness, thus there is no such thing as 'inorganic matter'".
But yes, I posit an a priori belief that subjectivity, thus the origin of conscious minds, is a consequence of the reality of entropy. A perfectly reasonable dialectical argument that should suffice in a scientific inquiry into nature. Perhaps not the work of a lab, but the workings of the mind which satisfies my personal needs for proof in the realm of thought and theory.
A salient difference between me (or any other human) and a rock is that I can deploy technology to survive your fiery furnace (assuming you allow me agency to do so ;-).
" I posit an a priori belief that subjectivity, thus the origin of conscious minds, is a consequence of the reality of entropy." Could you perhaps entertain the notion that the concept of entropy is a consequence of conscious minds? Chicken and egg stuff there.
Here is a recent podcast that addresses this better than I can in a discussion of this very subject between two currently eminent scientists:
I am not looking for some braniacs to tell me anything. I just wanna learn through active discussion because it's just a lot more fun. And you have made a rather good point. Though, if we are to be truly scientific, and do order of operations according to scientific law, I am pretty sure the proper conclusion is "entropy starts first, then as a counteragent to prevent pure chaos, subjectivity or conciousness comes later." So as a scholar and a man of proofs, I agree with you.
That said, as a philosopher, I am a believer in creationism. So I firmly believe in the creation myth which would propose that God came first. But I can't imagine any scientific theory supporting a creationist myth because there is no basis for believing. Even as a theist I stand by that statement. Theism or belief in God is meant to be a matter of faith not something you prove or disprove.
That is why I will fervently defend a man like Bret (I know less about Heather's personal beliefs on things). Because the difference between his view of reality and my own might truly only differ on the matter of origin. In my opinion, a rather shallow place to define right or wrong because they are matters of faith or belief. As far as I can tell, we agree down the line very buy and large to the point I am nearly blind in my faith to his thoughts.
Now, as a final conclusion, I will defend my theism. Aristotle talked about the nature of creating children. He talked about the egg as the basis of creation and the sperm as the cause of locomotion. I find this to be a very theological perspective I can stand behind. God is the originator of locomotion in a similar fashion to how only sperm can make a woman pregnant (in nature, fuck what science can make happen). Science has often tried to create some rationalist theory for the cause of locomotion through theories like the big bang and whatnot. But to me, the theory of origin is just as absurd as the idea we can have knowledge of the end. Better to leave those sorts of impossible discussions to philosophy over science would you not agree?
Quite a productive discussion! Glad to find it because you made my argument even better by clarifying a misshapen step I had made.
If you want to continue this discussion as I think we can do freely from here, I would ask you the question of why we should believe that scientists can contextualize the origin of reality(if that is the belief you hold)? Because as a theist, I simply don't have a mode to process that way of thinking. It's sort of like asking me to "eat through the wrong hole" when the hole I have eaten with up to this point has perfectly contented my needs. (Sorry for the rather vulgar analogy though it might be good in my efforts to provoke you lol).
Also, no offense to the "men of eminence", you've satisfied my needs for a logical argument so I likely won't be listening to the podcast unless you find it necessary to continue the discussion.
As a person who went to a quite expensive liberal arts college myself "Saint John's in Santa Fe", I can say with experience that it was one of the most awful and wonderful experiences of my life. The worst of it was the "don rag" where adults far more studied, more ingrained in the culture, and far more educated than myself "assessed" my skills and weaknesses as a student. I got quite depressed hearing my faults of being a "contrarian". That one in particular disturbed me because I was unaware of just how argumentative I was capable of being. Took many months to figure out how to undo that quirk of mine (not that I don't argue endlessly still).
However, there was a singular moment that entirely changed my view of the educational program. I was in a science class at the end of the school year and it was supposed to just be a "talk about what we've been through". At that time, I learned how to have an honest dialogue as equals and I was incredibly excited to fill that hour and a half of class with productive conversation. In fact, I was so lost in the ideas I had learned, I had forgotten about how little everyone else had anything left to say. I certainly don't mind filling the hour and a half up if I need to do it alone. I am a rather quiet intellectual with little interest in socializing. Other people had many other things they were thinking about during the year I am sure. But what killed any interest in going back to that school was a single man in the room.
He was sitting on the opposite side of the classroom of me. He just wanted to leave class as quickly as possible. I didn't (my Mother had to pay for the entire school year herself!). I had no intentions of wasting the moment. But what silenced me without any extra effort was the look in his eyes. He HATED me for being an intellectual enjoying learning. And I don't just mean "fuck, can he shut up already!". I mean unadulterated malice that would make me not want to show up to class in the future. The look a criminal gives even if he was never going to act on it...
That is the educational world we live in today. It's not the fault of the tutors at that college (though I am sure some aren't great as with any place). It was the students. That's what killed it for me. It's a person telling me to get the hell out of there because I was looking to learn.
Ironically, in that same class, a black kid from Zimbabwe with a struggling understanding of the English language, and a heart of gold, came up to me after class and said, "hey, you should keep doing what you are doing. I have never seen a classroom be so animated about a class discussion before." The horrible irony being that a kid who probably needed a language aide to even understand the English just to get by was more interested in the art of education, than the 10 other kids who just wanted to feel good about being smarter than everyone else. I even said in the lunchroom I was going to give a scientist crap for being a reductionist fixated on how science is the power of control over nature. A philosophical principle that started in around the late 1700's because science was struggling to produce an effective theory on anything. So instead of being better, they became quicker and we live with that paradigm of dangerous science today because of it. His name was Claude Bernard.
The essay or thesis or whatever you'd like to call his control scheme of nature, was called "An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine", Part Two: Experimentation With Living Beings. It was written in 1865 and although his theory was highly productive, the further I read into the paper, the more and more I saw how in order to prove himself correct, he has to negate interrelational dynamics of living things. This meaning that if someone has high blood pressure, we give them blood thinners. And if further analysis says, "Oh hey, he needs more X, Y, and Z because his liver isn't being nourished properly, "Give him the blood thinners. That's your JOB as doctors." That is why today, instead of having "pro health" discussions, we have discussions of how to medicate people's lack of general health and well-being. Which isn't the fault of Doctors honestly. It's the fault of society saying the role of a Doctor is to be both a medically trained genius, a fully licensed nutritionist, a psychologist, a good friend and so on and so forth. Not even doctors get paid enough to do all of that... That and it goes against laws preventing doctors from deciding the lifestyles and behaviors of patients. Doctors are there to medicate, prevent and cure disease, not dictate our lives even if and when they know how best to do it.
Thank you for sharing all of this. Thank you.
If faculty are going to encourage group discussions with students, then they also need to monitor and create an environment that is conducive to the sharing of ideas, and to being passionate about learning. This means shutting down anti-intellectual behavior like the bullying (yes) that you experienced, even if it was done entirely with his eyes.
Halfway through the Nature's Prose term--five weeks into a ten week term--I was frustrated with the lack of engagement among the students. They had signed up knowingly and enthusiastically (I had had to turn several students away) for a program that required, among other things, spending a lot of time outside, alone. But most of the students weren't doing it. Why would they sign up for such a program, take a spot that other students wanted, and then not do the most obvious and basic part of the expectations of the program?
This was at a time when the "retention rate" at Evergreen was becoming a problem. Many students came as first-year students, but never came back for their sophomore year. So the administration was advising the faculty to do everything we could to "retain students."
It was in this environment that I walked into class and gave them an impromptu monologue on why they should definitely drop out of college, figure out what they wanted to do in their lives, and then--if it was part of the plan--come back to school. Why waste their, or more often their parents', money on curriculum to attend school if they are just spinning their wheels, not learning, playing some social game the specifics of which will fade quickly from memory?
I had their rapt attention with this unusual speech. I wasn't angry with them, and they knew that (anger would have come across differently). I was legitimately confused, and a little hurt, and truly did think that, for some of them, leaving, figuring themselves out, and coming back months or years later, would have been the right move.
The following Fall term, the administration had its knickers in a twist about all of the previous year's first year students who had failed to return. But every single one of my Nature's Prose students came back. (And I had many of the most remarkable of them in later programs, too.)
I think part of this “lack of engagement and participation” problem is the idea that colleges have lost their way, which has simultaneously caused the students to lose sight of the big picture. I think students feel obligated to go rather than recognizing it as an opportunity for growth, which in fairness to the students it is often not.
The university I attend, like many others, is also experiencing retention problems. And it makes me laugh to see them build new and nice buildings in the hopes that they fix the problem. They’re missing the point. They need to focus more on creating courses like yours shown here. Students, whether they’ll admit to it or not, want to be engaged. And I think offering that to them would increase retention more than a new entrance to our rec center.
Hmm, sad. Although I am excited about the potential I see within the online realm of education. The classes I’ve had over zoom have functioned well and allowed for decent conversation. I think it’d be cool if an institution were created, or perhaps it already exists, that had online class but then met for monthly, weekly, etc., field trips. Sounds like that would be a good fit for your brother!
My Brother became a TA for a university. He just had his budget because TAing "isn't in". He only got in because his professor recognized his intelligence and sincere interest in learning. And unlike the rest of the TA's, he was genuinely trying to connect and relate with the kids there. But since his budget and hours got sliced, he's having to quit entirely and now kids will be left with TA's half-heartedly showing up because it makes their schooling cheaper. He has resigned himself to just having to teach independently through animation and online "for fun" education curriculums so kids can still learn without it being an attack on their humanity whether through costs, budgets cuts, or simply not having respect for the kids who go there and feel unseen by the system. I feel the worst for kids with bad family history that are expected to perform just as well solely because they are smart.
I decided to fully give up on the education program of today. I had no actual problems with a single one of my tutors. I might have disliked one a bit, but not in any serious way. It was hearing the way students bitched about being educated that confused me. They acted as though all of these people with PhD's were their parents or something just lashing out rather than teaching...
I am glad that you managed to save them from the "scheme" of the modern system. There was only one tutor I had of my 6 that could have kept me loyal to that program to the end of days. His name was Michael Wolfe. A hard man to reach, but an exceptional educator to the likes I have never seen before and don't expect to.
I know I made the right choice leaving the program even if things got better there a little bit. I am one of the least respectful people by temperament, but even I could see that my tutors were being my better half even when I disliked the pain of being corrected so tightly.
Thank you for sharing this. I have been teaching (in a different subject area) for many years but your podcasts and writings have informed and transformed my own teaching. It inspired me to be more creative and freer. Looking forward to more pedagogical posts!
ooofff - okay, reading the course requirements just gave me massive anxiety. If your class were only one of two or three, then doable, but with a full course load? It would have been difficult to accomplish, and to do well without worrying about all of the other work that had to take a back seat to make room for yours. I would have struggled with whether or not to drop your course, the latter decision having been a lost opportunity...
As a side note, if you would like the papers I read Heather, I could probably take pictures of them and email them to you to show what I read. If you can't find it yourself that is, I sort of used my lab notebook as a notebook while I read so it is covered in writings especially that paper because it irritated me so greatly.
A quote I am sure you will appreciate was this one, "We must believe we are right. We must view living beings as machines and pull the parts of the machine apart so that we may understand how it works."
or perhaps, "Screw spirituality! Understand things only through a physiological perspective as It (spirituality) is a waste of time."
"Vitalists/lovers are dumb. Scientists/physicalists are smart and lead to actual discoveries"
"If they accept determinism, they can understand things that don't remain consistent."
"Exception doesn't exist. Exception means we lack an understanding of the conditions. Approximations are not tolerable." Although science has almost entirely been grounded on the idea that all thoughts are merely "theories" with very few exceptions.
And I could go on indefinitely with this faultiness.
I will end with this quote of mine while reading his work, "The core of life is the thing that if destroyed, it will cease to exist." That idea alone became the thesis of the "Modern 1984" I talk about. What in this modern day specifically are we killing that will make life itself, cease to exist. And although at the moment it is only a philosophically dead belief, I truly believe it is only a matter of time before we create the "apocalypse machine" we are so afraid. Modern day politics is only a symptom of this "death" eating away at life itself.
Sorry for the long windedness. It was fun to go back a few years and see what I was thinking that I agree with today like Heather's way of grounding the classroom in reality and education. Though I am a bit of a vagrant and trickster unlike her...
You had me at: "The natural world exists with or without humanity’s interpretation of it."
How thought-provoking! Typical first-day handout? Oh, TESC! Wait till I tell my tenure-track prof daughter. For one thing, Evergreen was a back-up college app in 2011.
How do I get you back in a classroom? Respectfully, lol.
Your initial couple of sentences give me pause. I'm pretty sure that even at 18 - I'm WAY WAY older now- I knew that the world existed before I scanned my peepers across it. That would seem a pretty elementary understanding (as in elementary school).
Yet, there is still so much to learn.
I was fishing on the Rainy River Monday, Canada a mere couple hundred yards off port. Let me tell you, there'd be far fewer illegal's trying to swim into America if the Rio Grand were 36 Deg f.
So much to wonder about.
We caught Burbot, Red Horse, Sucker, Sauger, and one grade school age sturgeon.
In this collection are fish with scales, fish with skin, and fish with armor plating and spikes.
How did species inhabiting the same habitat arrive at 3 different exterior surface design?
Are these sturgeon really like crocodile, little changed since before the dinosaurs?
Did the successive ranks of ice sheets that advanced and retreated across this land scape erase the biological etch - a -sketch every time and create a new blank slate to be re explored and occupied by life in all its variety?
So may questions to ponder while a guy tries to keep his teeth from chattering.
Wow the opening paragraph and opening line of Nature's Prose is amazing,
"The natural world exists with or without humanity’s interpretation of it."
This is something I have been considering throughout the last 3 years, I think if you combine that opening paragraph with the Medicine, Against Reductionism section from your book A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide To The 21st Century, you can gain a great insight into the root of the problems of the last 3 years. Humans hubristic belief in the conquest of Nature.
Humans conquest of Nature, the dreams of some scientific planners.
Humans create visions of how the world works. In modern times we have created numerous visions or dogmas that attempt to explain how a modern society functions. Politicians use these visions to attract followers and rely on the visions to explain why things occur even when there is no evidence to support such contentions. Autocrats use visions to strengthen their grip on power and punish or kill heretics and blasphemers who doubt their vision. The populists substitute these visions in place of facts or truth and even go as far as denying facts or truth when they do not fit within the scope of their vision.
As David Bohm says, Imagination, that miracle of inner image-making, lifts humanity to new heights and possibilities. At the same time, seduces with endless opportunities for self-deception. Most fail to understand the fundamental nature of this rare capacity, fewer still distil its use in ways that negate reification, believing, and treating concepts or mental images as independent things or reality. I am a human being, embedded in nature, not a Democrat, Muslim, American, or a machine. Imagined mental images are theatre, pure play. To mistake play, the mental image, for one’s identity is the beginning of self-deception and conflict.
C.S. Lewis Quote
“For the wise people of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue,” Lewis writes. “For some scientists the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of people: the solution is a technique; in the practice of this technique, some are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious…”
As a fun little game since I am bored and curious what others might come up with, can anyone answer this question. "How is a baby made?" But I want to see someone do it through a purely reductionist logic of nothing but mechanisms. In other words, the question I really want to know the answer to (Bret and Heather included if possible), is "how can something inorganic, nonliving, (chemicals, atoms, and so forth) create a baby?" I understand that material is needed to give a body form. That is pretty basic. But what about explaining to me why human beings can "create life" out of dead things? And I am not looking for a "God is here" answer even though I am a believer. And I do actually have my own answer if anyone would like to here it after some people have said a thing or two that might change my theory. Especially Bret, as I think he and I have a fundamental disagreement about the nature of living things that I don't know how he explains away. Specifically his belief against pan psychism which I don't believe in literally, but do believe in fundamentally as true and inescapable.
I will engage with you on one point. Humans--or any life form--don't 'create life out of dead things', they continue it 'out of dead things' by means of existing biological (life) processes. It appears the real question you are asking is 'what is the nature of panpsychism?' and if it is what gave rise to these processes. I think it is simply a projection resulting from our limited scientific awareness, though it is nevertheless a potential improvement on leaving it up to God(s).
Perhaps I am simply being unclear, but the question I am asking is not about panpsychism at all. The answer is panpsychism, but something adjacent to the concept. What I am really asking is the "alchemist's search for gold" about creating life. What you are referring to is still a process of mechanisms. By this I mean, should a person have a proper quantity of materials, then put sperm into an egg, life will be born. Yes, that is the natural process and natural continuation of biological processes. What I am asking is where does "bio" life, biology begin and end. In other words, where does the start of "life" begin? Because alchemy has shown itself incapable of denying thermodynamics. We cannot destroy or create matter, simply change its state of existence. What I would like to know, is how can carbon, etc. etc. somehow become a human being? In what logical reality can unintelligent, non sentient beings become sentient ones? Does sperm somehow have some magical property to life? Does an egg somehow have a brain preordained in it by some mechanistic process that can develop like a computer or something?
My argument is a rather simple one. As Aristotle said, all things have "soul" and thus I would say that all things are living. And perhaps this is a redundant interpretation of something simple, but I do believe the consequences of denying this basic philosophical principle are quite dire.
And to gratify your efforts because it was educational for me to think about, I will push the conversation further with this. In fact, it is the same argument I made at Saint John's.
The argument is about subjectivity and the nature of it in nature. I, as a human being, define myself as sentient because of subjectivity or personal preference. But, if that is what defines subjectivity, personal preference, does a rock not prefer a stable temperature? In other words, does a rock not try to find some semblance of stable heat, an equilibrium? Does a rock, like all things in nature, resist change the way we do because of what I can only see as subjective preference.
In the end, my philosophical argument becomes a statement about "the nature of things". In order for a rock to remain as a rock, it must to some degree resist change otherwise it is no longer a rock. The same is absolutely true of a human being, we are just far more flighty and fidgety beings. Much more sensitive to change and alteration than "lesser beings".
And to fight against the argument that "rocks have no feelings", I am not saying that a rock has an agenda hidden in their making the way "sentient", independent beings do. What I am arguing is that the statement of "subjectivity" and stability of reality, are one and the same. Thus concluding with a theory that "all things are sentient, self aware, concious" or some other better way of putting it.
I would gladly have someone try to argue against me on this, perhaps someone who is more of scientist and less of a flimsy artist with nice words and funny ways of seeing things. If I could convince a true scientist through logic, then I think I will have succeeded in proving my theory as logically viable as I cannot see its fault as I have presented it. Though perhaps I have done nothing more than a bit of artistic sophistry to make myself look appealing? And thus I have no logic behind what I have said?
The only agency a rock has is the 'agency' of entropy, to which we are also subject, though we seem able to forestall it (perhaps we are actually in the process of increasing it in our locale?) with technology emergent from science emergent from human consciousness.
"Stability of reality" is a hard first principle to support, unless the reality of entropy is what you have in mind. "The only sure things are death and taxes." ;-)
Well yes, I will concede a rock has a lot less agency against change than human beings do. but at the same time, I can put a rock in a furnace and bring it out a bit blackened. Would you perhaps like me to put you in the same furnace and see how you handle it? I think you might fair a bit worse... Though I'd imagine as the rock is a badass and rolls with the punches, you will be the one to throw the punches once you realize my dire intentions of "scientific" nature.
Nevertheless, I don't believe this has defeated my proposition of "all things are living" or "all things have soul" or most pointedly "all things have subjective experience, thus consciousness, thus there is no such thing as 'inorganic matter'".
But yes, I posit an a priori belief that subjectivity, thus the origin of conscious minds, is a consequence of the reality of entropy. A perfectly reasonable dialectical argument that should suffice in a scientific inquiry into nature. Perhaps not the work of a lab, but the workings of the mind which satisfies my personal needs for proof in the realm of thought and theory.
A salient difference between me (or any other human) and a rock is that I can deploy technology to survive your fiery furnace (assuming you allow me agency to do so ;-).
" I posit an a priori belief that subjectivity, thus the origin of conscious minds, is a consequence of the reality of entropy." Could you perhaps entertain the notion that the concept of entropy is a consequence of conscious minds? Chicken and egg stuff there.
Here is a recent podcast that addresses this better than I can in a discussion of this very subject between two currently eminent scientists:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/can-scientists-be-spiritual-alan-lightman-into-the/id1169885840?i=1000606192788
I am not looking for some braniacs to tell me anything. I just wanna learn through active discussion because it's just a lot more fun. And you have made a rather good point. Though, if we are to be truly scientific, and do order of operations according to scientific law, I am pretty sure the proper conclusion is "entropy starts first, then as a counteragent to prevent pure chaos, subjectivity or conciousness comes later." So as a scholar and a man of proofs, I agree with you.
That said, as a philosopher, I am a believer in creationism. So I firmly believe in the creation myth which would propose that God came first. But I can't imagine any scientific theory supporting a creationist myth because there is no basis for believing. Even as a theist I stand by that statement. Theism or belief in God is meant to be a matter of faith not something you prove or disprove.
That is why I will fervently defend a man like Bret (I know less about Heather's personal beliefs on things). Because the difference between his view of reality and my own might truly only differ on the matter of origin. In my opinion, a rather shallow place to define right or wrong because they are matters of faith or belief. As far as I can tell, we agree down the line very buy and large to the point I am nearly blind in my faith to his thoughts.
Now, as a final conclusion, I will defend my theism. Aristotle talked about the nature of creating children. He talked about the egg as the basis of creation and the sperm as the cause of locomotion. I find this to be a very theological perspective I can stand behind. God is the originator of locomotion in a similar fashion to how only sperm can make a woman pregnant (in nature, fuck what science can make happen). Science has often tried to create some rationalist theory for the cause of locomotion through theories like the big bang and whatnot. But to me, the theory of origin is just as absurd as the idea we can have knowledge of the end. Better to leave those sorts of impossible discussions to philosophy over science would you not agree?
Quite a productive discussion! Glad to find it because you made my argument even better by clarifying a misshapen step I had made.
If you want to continue this discussion as I think we can do freely from here, I would ask you the question of why we should believe that scientists can contextualize the origin of reality(if that is the belief you hold)? Because as a theist, I simply don't have a mode to process that way of thinking. It's sort of like asking me to "eat through the wrong hole" when the hole I have eaten with up to this point has perfectly contented my needs. (Sorry for the rather vulgar analogy though it might be good in my efforts to provoke you lol).
Also, no offense to the "men of eminence", you've satisfied my needs for a logical argument so I likely won't be listening to the podcast unless you find it necessary to continue the discussion.