Kunming - IMG_3698

Kunming - IMG_3698
Originally uploaded by Robi L3.

The description says "Woman from the Sani branch of the Yi tribespeople." c

Karaok on the boat

Karaok on the boat
Originally uploaded by ericworld.

Flickr lets you browse by geographic location. I've been surfing photos from areas we are likely to visit this summer. This one is from Kunming, the capitol of Yunnan province. I'll be able to fill you in on ethnic costumes like these shortly, I hope

List of Resources for Environmental Issues in China

I've started a list in the side bar for resources for environmental issues in China. First on the list is China Dialogue: China and the World Discuss the Environment, a nifty site. Recent articles include a call to slow construction to reduce energy consumption, ease pressure on agricultural land, and avoid huge maintenance costs down the road; a lament for the river dolphin; and alternative energy sources for cars.

This should help things a little

My new grading standard for class participation

Classroom Participation: Most classes will contain periods of open discussion, because conversation is at the heart of the philosophic enterprise. You cannot understand a philosophical idea unless you have actively played around with it in conversation. To encourage involvement in conversation, I have made class participation 5% of your grade. You will get a 2.0 for participation if you speak when called on, but are otherwise disengaged. Someone who volunteers frequently receives a 3.0. A 4.0 is reserved for those who not only participate in conversations, but follow up on the ideas offered by others. The highest grade goes not to those who answer my questions, but those who help others talk through their own ideas.

I'm pleased with myself here because the grade scale better reflects the philosophical motivations for grading participation.

Worldwide philosophy job listings

This site lists philosophy jobs worldwide. It's been up since 1999, but seems underutilized.

RIP Momofuku Ando

The world mourns the loss of Momofuku Ando, the inventor of instant ramen noodle soup and founder of Nissen foods. Here are appreciations from the NYTimes, NPR, and The World. This is the site of the Momofuku Ando Instant ramen Museum. Here is the ramen wikipedia page

Here is the ramen noodle song we sing at dinner time in our house:

Ra! Ra! Ramen noodle!
Ra! Ra! Ramen noodle!
Ra! Ra! Ramen noodle!
Everything else is toaster strudel.

As near as I can tell, the English phrase "ramen noodle" is a pleonasm, like "pizza pie." Ramen basically means noodle in Japanese, just as pizza basically means pie in Italian.

Rural decay

PICT8222
Originally uploaded by myriadgreen.

One from the Rural Decay pool, a group I am more likely to contribute to. Heck, I could send some pictures of our barn.

Grazing Giants

Grazing Giants
Originally uploaded by Lost America.

from the Abandoned flickr group

Aesthetics of unscenic artifice

Originally uploaded by Madame Suzuki.

I've been meaning for a while to write something relating efforts by environmental ethicists and aestheticians to defend the value of unscenic nature with the popular movement to find beauty in urban decay, industrial development, and other ugly built environments.

Pippy and I have been emailing back and forth about this, as she has been
enjoying the post industrial sights of northwest Indiana.. She couldn't think of any professional artists doing work on this sort of landscape off the top of her head, but she did point out that there are a million flicker groups devoted to the topic. I've decided to join a couple ("urban decay" and "abandoned", so far) to see what comes up. This one is from Urban Decay

Richard Posner, Partisan Hack

Posner's most recent book defending the administrations right to try suspected terrorists using secret evidence gained from torture, was harshly criticized in the New York Review of Books by David Cole. His letter responding to the review opens with an ad hominem attack based on guilt by association.

Professor David Cole, who doubles as the legal affairs correspondent of The Nation and has received awards from the National Lawyers Guild and the American Muslim Council (founded by Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi, a supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah who in 2004 was sentenced to twenty-three years in prison for illegal dealings with Libya), is far to the left on matters of civil liberties and national security.

This is the sort of cheap shot one expects from Ann Coulter or Michelle Malkin, not a sitting federal judge and important conservative intellectual. "My opponent is a liberal who associates with Muslims." Oooh, burn. Perhaps I am being unfair in calling him a partisan hack, though. One cheap shot does not mean the arguer has abandoned fair play in argument, right? Unfortunately, in addition to being an ad hominem attack based on guilt by association, Posner's comment is based on a simple falsehood. Cole explains in his rebuttal:

For the record, the American Muslim Council was not founded by Mr. al-Amoudi, and in fact the council fired Mr. al-Amoudi as its executive director in 2000, after he made statements supporting Hamas and Hezbollah.

It is possible that Posner made this mistake in earnest. The wikipedia page for the AMC listed al-Amoudi as a founder as of 11 PM on Jan 9. However the source listed on the wikipedia page says that al-Amoudi was not a founder, and even says that the current organization using the name is different than the original. (This has inspired me to make my first edit to the Wikipedia; the article now reflects the source.)

Whether or not Posner was honestly mistaken about the history of the American Muslim Council, attempting to tar your oponents by calling them liberal and assocating them with Muslims is not the sort of thing one expects from a sitting federal judge.

Why do candidates

have to wear suits to job interviews in philosophy. No one wears a suit on any other occasion in our business. If you wear a tie to teach or give a presentation, you are considered somewhat old fashioned. Someone who wore a full suit would just look like a dork--or someone on their way to a job interview.

So what does it tell the interviewers that I wear my one good suit? That I could at one point afford to spend $400 on an outfit? That I know how to tie a tie? That I am willing to follow academic customs, no matter how arbitrary or irrational?

In other news, I kicked ass in my interview with NY College of Technology. I think I'd be a good fit and it would be a good place for me to work.

The nifty diagram from my talk today

aesthetics diagram
Originally uploaded by rob helpychalk.

I'm thinking about adding another half dozen thinkers and giving each one dots to represent how far along each spectrum they are. I'm not sure why I will do this, though, since I doubt the chart will wind up in any published version, and giving the dots exact locations only creates facetious objectivity.

Craig Delancey: "Optimal Ecosystems: A Positive Account of Wilderness"

Another nice talk at the session I was at attempted to provide a new definition of wilderness, one that works better than "A place that people haven't touched." Here it is:

A wilderness is an enduring ecosystem that, for the available genotypes and
resources, is highly optimal in terms of maximizing both the quantity of the
flourishing of the individual organisms and the quantity of kids of organisms,
relative to the historical conditions for that ecosystem.

Basically the definition points to the aspects of ecosystems that environmentalists find attractive as the defining characteristic of wilderness, and adds a clause relativizing it to historical conditions and available resources. This last bit is key, otherwise the Amazon would be more wild than the arctic, since it supports more life and more kinds of life. The idea is that a wilderness is a place that is doing as best as it can to create life, given where it started. It then turns out to be a historical contingency that areas less touched by humans are more likely to be wilderness.

It is worth noting how this definition deals with some potential counterexamples. A pig farm is not a wilderness because it supports few kinds of individuals, although it contains many individuals. A zoo is not a wilderness because although it supports many kinds of individuals, it doesn't large numbers of individuals. The moon is also not a wilderness on this definition. DeLancey thought this was an advantage of his account, although immediately after the talk, I bumped into someone who said "of course the moon is a wilderness!" Make of it what you will.

On this definition areas that have been stripped of life by either natural or human causes are "denuded wildernesses" which amounts to not being a wilderness at all.

liveblogging the APA 2

I just came back from my talk. I got an objection that I should have anticipated and that I think I can deal with, but which forces me to think again about the shape of my argument.

Backing up a second: I am presenting my paper on Buddhist nature appreciation. Basically what I do is look at the contemporary debate in analytic philosophy over the correct way to appreciate nature, and suggest that some ideas from traditional Buddhist poetry can solve it. My original post on the idea is here. More specifically, I create a logical space of two dimensions for the debate in analytic philosophy, place the Buddhist attitude that interests me (I call it the Theregatha model) in the same corner of that space as Kant, and say that it does a better job that Kant does. (I'll post my nifty chart later on.)

The objection: That's not Buddhism! Buddhist nonattachment has nothing to do with Kantian disinterestedness! You can't call mindfulness either cognitive or noncognitive! The metaphysical background is too alien to draw any comparisons!

My first attempt at a reply: Well, obviously there are differences, that is what makes the Theregatha model better.

Objection: There isn't even a family resemblance between them, because Kantian disinterestedness is still grasping.

Hmm. Maybe. The question I have to ask myself, though, is how important is it for my argument that the Theregatha model occupy this portion of the logical space I defined for the western debate. I placed it there as a way to frame the issue, so that I could formulate arguments tightly. But my ultimate goal is simply the acceptance of the Theragatha model. I could do that if the model wound up in another quadrant of logical space, or even in a different logical space altogether. I would need different arguments if that were the case, though. I can't provide arguments for every possible translation of the Theregatha model into the western debate. So maybe I should just stick with this one.

The problem is the same for any translator. I'm serving two constituencies: the ideas I'm translating, and the people I'm translating them for. Putting the model in a specific quadrant of logical space is a way of serving my audience which might not serve the ideas.

hmm.

On a different note: There were some good talks on my panel, including a nice talk by Sarah Kenehan which used van Frassen's notion of empirical adequacy, and Heather Douglas's treatment of inductive risk to show that climate models provide a stronger reason for action than economic models. The shorter version of the talk: Weather is easier to predict than people. I'll talk more about it later.