Prototype for Philosophy Themed Deck Completed

I have finished the prototype for my philosophy themed playing cards and am ready to go to press with a POD to see how they turn out in the flesh. I will keep you posted on the end result. I am thinking of kickstarting a project on these cards to have a nicer print and finish done by the USPC. Here are some previews of the finished product. I "watermarked" the sheets somewhat, so ignore the crosshatching. You should notice that I upgraded the art quality on almost all of the philosophers.

1. Tuckbox.

2. Card Sheets.

3. Card Back Design.

4. Individual Card Examples.

5. Art Progression. This shows the progression from the original art portraying the philosopher (whether a sculpture, drawing, photo, or painting) to the hand drawn sketch to the altered vectorized sketch to the finished digitally painted piece.

6. Alternate Designs. Some other possibilities for card faces that have two-way orientations.

Undecided Quotes for Philosophy Themed Deck

So, I have decided to include on each card face for a philosopher the art, his name, his birth/date dates, and a short quote. However, on a couple of the philosophers, I am debating on what quotes to use for them. Your input would be very helpful in reaching a decision! The difficulty is mostly on deciding which quote is more characteristic or unique to that philosopher, or deciding between a funny or more philosophical quote.

Friedrich Nietzsche: 1. "I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous... I am no man, I am dynamite."

2. "Whatever has value in our world now does not have value in itself… it was we who gave and bestowed it."

Blaise Pascal: 1. "All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling."

2. "Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false?"

Bertrand Russell: 1. "The rules of logic are to mathematics what those of structure are to architecture."

2. "There is no logical impossibility… that the world sprang into being five minutes ago... with a population that 'remembered' a wholly unreal past."

Karl Popper: 1. "No matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white."

2. "Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one... [then] you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve."

Jean Paul Sartre: 1. "Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."

2. "If I became a philosopher… it's all been to seduce women basically."

Arthur Schopenhauer: 1. "If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it."

2. "The will to live everywhere preys upon itself… the human race… reveals in itself with most terrible distinctness this variance of the will with itself."

Baruch Spinoza: 1. "Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature."

2. "Mind and body are one and the same individual which is conceived now under the attribute of thought, and now under extension."

Ludwig Wittgenstein: 1. "The meaning of a question is the method of answering it... Tell me how you are searching, and I will tell you what you are searching for."

2. “The aim... is to set a limit to thought, or rather — not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts.”

3. "It's only by thinking even more crazily than philosophers do that you can solve their problems."

4. "Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it."

Please leave a comment that states the quote number for each philosopher that you prefer. Thanks!

Philosophy Themed Card Deck: Card Face Content

As I have been working on the philosophy-themed card deck (see a post on the art here), I have struggled to determine the exact content of the card faces. Besides the art, the name of the philosopher, and the reversible suit and value in opposite corners what should be included (if anything)? Some possibilities are as follows:

(1) Birth and death dates to help contextualize the philosopher in history.

(2) Quotes. I thought it could be fun to include a quote from each philosophy that either typifies one of their philosophical ideas or says something funny. The difficulty with the former is that it is hard to gain a direct quote from some of the pre-socratics. Of course, I can borrow from later sources, but it isn't the same, and there is some questions of authenticity. Oh well, it isn't a breaker. I also am concerned about sharing an obscure quote that may seem to ridicule the philosopher as being nonsensical, even if it is somewhat fun to do so. The problem with the latter is that I don't want to be suggesting that they do not have anything interesting to contribute, especially if the joke is not philosophically related. I have thought that perhaps if I choose a funny quote that I should try to pick a short one and then have a more serious line included with it. Perhaps some examples will be helpful.

Picturesque quotes: "The condition of man...is a condition of war of everyone against everyone." - Thomas Hobbes

"The unexamined life is not worth living." - Socrates

"There is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself." - Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Quotes that could ridicule the philosopher: "The nothing itself nothings." - Martin Heidegger

"Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is." - Jean Paul Sartre

"Until philosophers are kings... cities [and the human race] will never have rest from their evils and then only will this our State have a possibility of life and behold the light of day." - Plato

Funny quote (not philosophically related): "A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine." - Thomas Aquinas

"Give me chastity and continence, but not yet." - Augustine of Hippo

"If a dog jumps into your lap, it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer.” - Alfred North Whitehead

Funny quote (somewhat philosophically related): "If I became a philosopher… it's all been to seduce women basically." - Jean Paul Sartre

"I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous... I am no man, I am dynamite." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Any suggestions on how to do quotes (if you think they should be done)? Should quotes not be done?

(3) Notable ideas and contributions. Instead of quoting a philosopher, I could give a short list of their notable ideas. This is somewhat difficult for philosophers that did not have as many novel ideas or for whom we know little about (little of their work has survived), but not all philosophers are equal. Here would be some ideas:

Peter Abelard: truth-functional propositional logic, intentionalistic deontology, moral luck, moral theory of atonement, nominalism, direct reference, adverbial theory of thought, supervenience of form on matter.

Jacques Derrida: deconstruction, post-structuralism, Différance, metaphysics of presence.

Euclid: Euclidian axiomatic geometry, number theory, optical perspective.

David Hume: reason as slave to passions, Hume's Fork, sentimental basis of morals (moral sense), constant conjunction, impossibility of miracles, association of ideas, bundle theory of the self, compatibilism.

Saul Kripke: Modality and modal logic, deontic logic, rigid designators, necessary a posteriori, admissible ordinals, Strong Kleene valuation scheme.

Is this a good alternative to the quotes? Is it better or worse?


I know that I should make sure the cards are not too busy, but it seems useful to have more than just the names and pictures of the philosophers. Any other suggestions for content?

Jolly Pirates: A Lengthy Exposé of a Board Game in “Dump Phase” Part 1

As some of you may know, I have been working on designing my own board game for a few months now. The project began back when I was working on expansions to the BANG! Card Game, and has evolved a lot since then. I enjoyed the strong theme in BANG!, the variable player powers, and roleplaying elements, but was dissatisfied with the large number of chaotic elements in the game that made it far less strategic (amongst other things). I decided to create my own game to solve the problems I saw inherent in BANG!, as well as incorporate elements I have noted in other games that I really like. The result has been the creation of a pirate-themed strategy game with RPG elements. Right now, the game is in sort of a “dump” phase with far too many elements. I plan on pruning a good number of them, while still allowing enough complication for both "basic" and "advanced" modes of play. This will help introduce new players to the game, and accommodate more casual versus hardcore board game players. Anyway, I hope that you will help me out with pruning; I would love feedback! The name for the game is still not decided: I have thought of "Arrr!", "Jolly Pirates," "Filthy Pirates," and "Raiders of the 7 Seas." Perhaps you could help me pick a name or suggest one yourself! For the purpose of the current discussion, I will adopt the name Jolly Pirates (JP, my personal favorite for the amusing tone I want in the game) to refer to the game. I recognize that this project is probably a gamer’s game, and will not make money, but I hope it will be fun!


This first part in the series explaining Jolly Pirates will focus on player-team setups and possible gameplay scenarios.

Player and Cooperative Team Setups. Differing from mainstream strategy games (say Risk or even Small World), players in Jolly Pirates do not control vast armies and gather resources to sustain or grow them. Rather each player controls 1 or more characters depending on the number of players in the game, and players are often teamed up with others to augment the amount of forces playing against another sizeable force.


In 2-player, each player controls 3 characters and is on his own team. In 3-player, each player controls 2 characters and is on his own team. In 4-player, each player controls 1 (perhaps 2, haven't decided) character and 2 players are on a team. In 5-player, each player controls 1 character and 2 players on a team, while 1 player is on his own team. He is known as the "Hand of the Black Admiral" ("of the Black" is a term used to refer to pirates in the past; the Black Admiral or "Admiral of the Black" was often seen as the leader of the groups of pirates) and is there to punish both of the opposing teams for their disobedience. His victory conditions are different from the other teams. Alternatively, if the Hand ends up being just too complicated, a player on a 2-player team could control an additional character. In 6-player, each player controls 1 character and 3 players are on a team. In addition, there is 1 6-player mode in a scenario where each player controls 1 character and 2 players are on a team. When 1 team is beaten, its players are subjugated, with 1 player getting absorbed into each of the remaining teams. Then 1 of 3-player teams must beat the other.

Scenarios. Jolly Pirates is composed of various scenarios (I am planning on 3 main scenarios) that have generally unique player objectives. The scenarios are in place to both encourage variety in gameplay (and thus enhance replayability), encourage strategic thought, as well as provide more flexibility for number of players. Certain scenarios fit a larger or smaller amount of players better than others do. Thus, at the beginning of the game, players decide which scenario they will do. While I have not picked exactly which scenarios I will include, the following 5 are being considered:


(1) Elimination Match. Objective: All the original characters on the other players' teams are eliminated OR 3 (2 characters a team) /4 (2 characters a team + the Hand of the Black)/5 (3 characters a team) characters on the other players’ teams. Hand of the Black Admiral’s Objective: Kill 3 characters, with at least 1 character being from each of the rival pirate teams. For 2 - 6 players. This is the basic “kill them all” scenario, but adjusted to accommodate respawning characters. There are 2 possible victory conditions: (a) Kill all of the other teams’ original characters. This means that all of the characters controlled by that team’s players at the beginning of the game are eliminated. (b) Kill 3/4/5 characters on the other players’ teams. These 2 conditions balance out the respawning, so that a remaining character does not simply run away and hide for the rest of the game in a corner to help his team achieve victory. However, victory cannot be achieved by killing the same player’s characters a couple of times. It is to your advantage to attack the other player characters.

(2) Base Destruction. Objective: Destroy the Enemy Pirate Ship OR their 2 Campsites. For 2, 4, or 6 players. Instead of having to kill player characters, in this game you have to kill non-player units (NPUs), namely either the enemy’s pirate ship or 2 of their base site tokens. Players of DOTA should be familiar with this idea, although in this scenario you have to defend more than your ancient (the ship), but also your campsites. Needing to defend the 2 NPUs keeps your forces from camping in one spot. Any player characters that die in this scenario can respawn infinitely until the conditions are met.

(3) Kill the Player with the Keys. Objective: Kill the player character on the enemy team who holds the keys, acquire the keys and then take them back to your campsite. For 2, 4, or 6 players. This scenario plans to add a twist on the typical kill the leader (like BANG!’s kill the Sheriff) and capture the flag arrangements; the “leader” is the player character who holds the keys (the flag), a card placed next to the character card and that is visible to all. Each team chooses which of their characters holds the keys first. Once the character holds the keys, he must hold on to them for at least 2 rounds at a time. After that, he can pass on the keys to another character on his team, so that the “leader” to eliminate shifts around. Passing is done by occupying the same space as a team mate. If the keyholder is eliminated, his killer immediately gains the keys (perhaps even if the killer is on his own team?). He then must take the keys to his campsite for his team to win. Player characters infinitely respawn until this condition is met. I am not exactly sure what the item should be –a flag, keys, a map for buried treasure, scandalous letters, or some silly amusing object like an ornate bath brush. Suggestions?

(4) Acquire the Buried Treasure/Medical Supplies. Objective: Teams vie to acquire the most buried treasure; those with the most at the end of the game win. For 2, 3, 4, or 6 players. This is an area control scenario. There are 2 tiles with buried treasure spaces marked on them which will be in the scenario by default. By occupying one of these spaces at the beginning of his turn, a player gains a buried treasure token for his team. There are a finite number of these tokens, which are odd in number. As soon as one team possesses a majority of the tokens, that team wins. If by the end there is a tie (as might be the case in 3-player), the game moves to a quasi-sudden death mode. Tokens are earned until 1 team has more tokens than the others. Player characters infinitely respawn until these conditions are met. I am not certain whether the teams should be trying to get buried treasure (the traditional pirate fiction plot) or medical supplies that had washed up on the island after a ship was taken down (a more historically accurate plot for pirates). What do you think?

(5) Marooned Captain’s Escape. Objective: Team 1--Extract the Captain to your ship. Team 2--Kill the marooned captain. For 2, 4, or 6 players. This scenario is more unusual in that teams have different goals. Team 1 starts on one side of the board and has to get to the other side to extract the marooned captain (a NPU). The ship will arrive in 10 rounds, so they have to survive that long and then get the captain to the ship. Team 2 starts in the center of the board and their goal is to kill the marooned captain before he can get away. Player characters infinitely respawn until one of these conditions is met.

Once a scenario is selected, there is a map diagram provided showing how the tiles should be arranged as a whole (the map’s shape), but not in any particular order (not the map’s content). It also notes each team’s territory. There is also a “recommended map” that tries to arrange terrain features in a more interesting way for the scenario. Players are free to choose to arrange the map however they wish; they make their choice and lay down the map tiles. 


Look forward to part 2!

Another religious phenomenon worth consideration

At church today, I was struck again and again by the structure, power, and significance of the prayers we offer in public settings. Their ability to set a mood or structure a gathering is incredible. They have all the makings of a focal practice as outlined by Borgmann. Pretty nifty!

I suggest that you add that to your list of religious things to devote further thought to, Marty.

Even More Art for the Philosophy Themed Deck

UPDATED 07/20/2012: Started proofing the prototype and asked the POD a few printing questions. Improved some of the artwork. My wife thinks that my tuck box art is better than the Flammarion colored engraving and so I should just use it for the back as well. What do you think? I have it in the card back format below.
UPDATED 07/19/2012: Finished the tuck box art! The original part of the School of Athens that inspired this work is also posted here, so you can see how I tried to model the "new school" on the old one. I also placed the art in a rough template to get an idea of the look I am going for. Take a look below.
UPDATED 07/18/2012: Finished a good chunk of the tuck box art coloring. Finished placing cards in templates. All backgrounds completed (samples below).
UPDATED 07/17/2012: Finished sketch for tuck box art. I chose to recreate the School of Athens by Raphael. I only kept Aristotle, Plato, and Hypatia from the ancient Greeks, and added in Kant, Wittgenstein, Descartes, Husserl, Russell, Nietzsche, Thomas Aquinas, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, and Hume. I tried to pose them mostly correctly into the piece, and studied some clothing from the different time periods to place them in it. You will have to tell me what you think. Now, I need to vectorize and color it. Ugh, another 10 hours, here we come!
UPDATED 07/11/2012: Started putting art into card templates. Decided on quotes. Created card face backgrounds for ancient/medieval, modern, and analytic philosophers. Progress shown below.
UPDATED 07/10/2012: Added Hypatia and G. E. M. Anscombe. Replaced Austin with William James. Although I originally did not include James due to being unable to easily identify him in one of the camps, I compared his novel ideas and philosophical contributions and saw that they far outweighed J. L. Austin. It felt wrong to include Austin comparatively speaking, and so I stuck James in the analytic camp as his replacement. IMO, while James has definitely had influence in Continental philosophy, and his pragmatism is often a middle road, his scientific background makes him fit more in the analytic camp anyway. This concludes the portraits for philosophers! Now there is just color formatting, standardization, and creating the cards themselves. I also plan on doing an art for a tuckbox.
UPDATED 07/09/2012: Adjusted Card Back art (Flammarion engraving).
UPDATED 07/08/2012: Added the Brain in a Vat and Plato.
UPDATED 07/05/2012: Added new Merleau-Ponty. Worked on card content.
UPDATED 07/02/2012: Added Thales and Parmenides. Revised Aristotle.
UPDATED 07/01/2012: Further cleaning up and revision of continentals.
UPDATED 06/30/2012: Further cleaning up and revision of continentals.
UPDATED 06/29/2012: Added Peter Abelard.
UPDATED 06/28/2012: Further cleaning up and revision of continentals.
UPDATED 06/27/2012: Added Chrysippus and Euclid.
UPDATED 06/26/2012: Cleaned up line work and coloring on lots of philosophers. Also improved the quality of older artwork; the greeks and medievals were looking too good comparitively speaking! More will have to be done in the future.
UPDATED 06/25/2012: Added Anaximander and Augustine.
UPDATED 06/22/2012: Added Rudolf Carnap and Socrates.

This post I will continue to update with art work as I finish more drawings of philosophers, as mentioned in the prior post.

Abstract for my Term Paper

Philosophersof the modern era, typified by Immanuel Kant, defined objects interms of human perception. Arguing that we could never have arelationship with the thing-in-itself, these thinkers felt it moreproductive to focus on our cognition of the objects. This ontology ofobjects, woven through human thought for centuries, has led to manyresults both good and bad, including scientific, medical, andtechnological advances. However, this ontology comes with a cost; ittends to abstract us from the world of objects, fragmenting ourexistence. The disconnect is apparent in our uncertainty-plagued foodsystem. Contemporary continental philosophers have rejected Kant'sontology begun to propose new theories of objects, theories thatilluminate the nature of objects and how they structure ourexistence. The concepts outlined by these philosophers of technologyand objects are refocusing our ontological gaze back to the thingsthemselves. New perspective arms us with tools to understand thecrucial part food plays in our life, an understanding that can be used to develop coping methods and solutions to the current foodcrises.

Art for the Philosophy Playing Card Decks

I wanted to give you the idea I had for the art of the playing card decks. For me, art is an important part of any game, providing the body for the concept and gameplay. Everyone is familiar with poker playing cards, and so adding something artistic for this philosophic theme is crucial. For the art, I chose to find what I thought were the most common or characteristic portraits of the philosophers (for recognition purposes), and then I drew them in a slightly cartoonish style. I chose to add color to the drawings, with each color introduced having both a light and dark shade. Hegel shown above is my first, generally finished art piece to exhibit (it still will be tweeked somewhat). I have finished the line drawings for all of the continental philosophers and I am in the process of adding color to them. What do you think of this style? Just looking for some feedback before I move ahead.

Here are 4 others that I just finished: Martin Heidegger, Soren Kierkegaard, F. W. J. Schelling, and Emmanuel Levinas.









This group may help you think of the art more as a series.

Critical Review of "Food Inc."

     The movie Food, Inc. effectively accomplishes its goal of alerting the viewer of the precariousness and unsustainability of the modern food system. Whether its mono-cropping practices, loss of genetic diversity, or bacterial resistance of antibiotics, the producers of Food Inc. make it very clear that maintaining the current system of food production will ultimately lead to ruin. It is abundantly clear that change is necessary. However, the food system does not exist in a vacuum, and how that change is enacted and what tradeoffs are required are integral questions. Several political ideological questions arise in connection with implied solutions to the problems manifested in Food, Inc.

     A frequently recurring idea for reforming the American food system is to cancel or overhaul the subsidies of industries and foods that are detrimental to the health and the ecosystem. However, these systems of subsidies directly affect the bottom line of food producers, and increases in cost will often be transferred to the consumer. Are we willing to accept a significant increase in price in staple foods that have become incredibly cheap relative to income levels? Will any politician or legislative group that passes laws that result in dramatically higher prices in milk, bread, or eggs be excoriated and removed from their positions of influence? It is possible to utilize local farmers and local distribution to offer quality food at cheaper prices, but it would require a major “backward” step in the long, steady migration away from farms among American workers. Are Americans willing to return to an agricultural lifestyle?

     Gary Hirshberg argues that the only way to achieve the desired results of the organic/local/sustainable movement is to work through the current capitalist system. This leads to major food conglomerates, whose goals and motivations appear to be more closely aligned with profits than with the safety and sustainability of the American food system, owning and operating most of the organic brands. Can the ideals of the minority alternative food groups be enacted on a large scale through companies like Wal-Mart or is a rejection of these massive systems necessary?

     Tony Airoso, Chief Dairy Purchaser for Wal-Mart, argues that customer demand dictates Wal-Mart's purchasing and supply process. Can consumer choice bring about the sort of change that is needed? Albert Borgmann, in his book Crossing the Postmodern Divide, argues that consumer choice is a poor political motivator. The decisions made by consumers, from the producer's perspective, are vague. “Does the purchase of an article signal approval, thoughtlessness, or a lack of a better alternative? Does the refusal to buy show dissatisfaction with the style of the article, its safety, durability, or its very existence?” queries Borgmann. Additionally, consumers are at the mercy of marketing and availability of products when they enter a market. Consumers are not, effectively, free to choose whatever they want. They are only free to choose among the alternatives offered them by the company that they are purchasing from. With these considerations in mind, is it prudent to rely on consumer choice to enact change? Certainly over the course of time good things stem from this theory, such as the proliferation of organic products in Wal-Mart, but is it enough?

    Each of these problems is accompanied by a host of complications and ideological difficulties: Conservative vs. Liberal, Libertarian vs. Communitarian, Invisible Hand vs. Controlled Markets... Given the pressing need to address the massive and unrelenting issues in our food system, it seems we would do well to pursue as many avenues as possible that offer a glimpse of helping solve the problem. In addition to good intentions and exuberant effort, however, the situation requires serious discussion about our goals, what we are willing to change to achieve them, designing the framework of our food system, and what sort of systemic changes can be put into place to promote lasting and substantive change.

Cool contemporary philosopher

I'm always on the lookout for contemporary philosophers and I found a doozy - Levi Bryant. For my current project exploring the objecthood of food, I've bumped into object-oriented ontology, an interesting theory of understanding objects as themselves in sort of a rejection-of-Kantian-theory-but-differently-than-Heidegger-did way. It's worth several long looks.

http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/

Great post on the Analytic/Continental divide

http://bebereignis.blogspot.com/2012/03/on-analyticcontinental-divide.html

Philosophy Playing Card Deck Project

So, as a fun project for myself, I have wanted to create a custom playing card deck (poker deck) with a philosophy theme. I want it to be fun and creative, and something that would be appeal broadly to those that have studied philosophy. My plan is to pick 52 philosophers, and use the colors and suits as categories. Thus, the blacks will refer to older philosophers and the reds to newer philosophers. Within the blacks, I want the clubs to be ancient philosophers and the spades to be either medieval or modern philosophers. While the medivals are older, I do not believe they are as well known as the moderns. Modern philosophers are also difficult to fit into a different category than their own. You will have to tell me what you think. As for the reds, they are subdivided into analytics (diamonds) and continentals (hearts). In line with traditional playing card decks, I will have a female philosopher for the Queens of each suit. For fun, I will try to have a deck with a Joker, and that will be Descartes' evil genie. I have preliminarily selected philosophers for the suits and assigned them card values. I would appreciate your input on any philosophers I should remove or include. Some didn't fit very well in any of the categories, and so they were sadly not included (even my buddy, William James!). I wanted the philosophers to be characteristic of their category. My list of philosophers are below:

Joker: Evil Demon

Diamonds (Analytics):
A - Bertrand Russell
K - Ludwig Wittgenstein
Q - G. E. M. Anscombe
J - Charles Sanders Peirce
10 - Gottlob Frege
9 - J. L. Austin
8 - Kurt Godel
7 - Saul Kripke
6 - G. E. Moore
5 - Alfred North Whitehead
4 - W. V. O. Quine
3 - Edmund Gettier
2 - Rudolf Carnap
Others I thought of including - John Stuart Mill, David K. Lewis, Daniel Dennett

Hearts (Continentals):
A - Martin Heidegger
K - Friedrich Nietzsche
Q - Hannah Arendt
J - Edmund Husserl
10 - G. W. F. Hegel
9 - Emmanuel Levinas
8 - Maurice Merleau-Ponty
7 - Jean Paul Sartre
6 - Hans-Georg Gadamer
5 - Jacques Derrida
4 - F. W. J. Schelling
3 - Arthur Schopenhauer
2 - Soren Kierkegaard
Others I thought of including - Miguel de Unamuno, Richard Rorty, Simone de Beauvoir, Franz Brentano

Spades (Moderns):
A - Immanuel Kant
K - David Hume
Q - Anne Conway/Margaret Cavendish [Any opinion here?]
J - Rene Descartes
10 - Gottfried Leibniz
9 - John Locke
8 - George Berkeley
7 - Baruch Spinoza
6 - Thomas Hobbes
5 - Nicolas Malebranche
4 - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
3 - Blaise Pascal
2 - Thomas Reid/Francis Bacon [Any opinion here?]
Others I thought of including - Francisco Suarez, Galileo, Isaac Newton, Christian Wolff, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke

OR

Spades (Medievals):
A - Thomas Aquinas
K - Pierre Abelard
Q - Hypatia/Hildegard of Bingen [Any opinion here?]
10 - Augustine of Hippo
9 - Duns Scotus
8 - Roger Bacon
7 - William of Ockham
6 - Anselm of Canterbury
5 - Boethius
4 - Plotinus
3 - Averroes
2 - Meister Eckhart/Machiavelli/Maimonides [Any opinion here?]
Others I thought of including - John Scotus Eriugena, Albertus Magnus, Al-Ghazali, Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Nicolas of Cusa

Clubs (Ancients):
A - Aristotle
K - Plato
Q - Hipparchia/Aspasia [Any opinion here?]
J - Socrates
10 - Parmenides
9 - Heraclitus
8 - Thales
7 - Anaximander
6 - Euclid
5 - Pythagoras
4 - Democritus
3 - Epicurus
2 - Epictetus
Others I thought of including - Protagoras, Anaxagoras, Theophrastus, Xenophanes

On each of the cards, I plan to have a caricature of the philosopher, their name, birth/death dates, a note of the main branches of philosophy they studied, and a pithy quote. Anything else you think I should add/remove?

Rudolf Otto: The Idea of the Holy Chapter 3 The Elements in the Numinous

Summary: Otto asks the reader to direct himself towards a moment of what he would believe to be a quintessentially religious moment. If this cannot be done, Otto requests the reader to go no further. While not blameworthy, the ignorant often view aesthetics in terms of sensuous pleasure and religion as a funtion of gregarious instinct, but an artist will decline such a theory, and the religious uncompromisingly dismiss it. Otto takes one moment of numinous experience, that of solemn worship, and tries to isolate what is unique about it. Solemn worship no doubt shares common features with being morally uplifted, with feelings of "gratitude, trust, love, reliance, humble submission, and dedication." But solemn worship is not exhausted by these terms; there is something in the being "rapt" that is more. Schleiermacher focused on the "feeling of dependence," and while important, Otto believes this feeling is not unique to numinous experience: such as when one recognizes one is determined by societal circumstances and the environment (think of people's judgments about their power to change during economic depressions). Schleiermacher recognized that the religious dependence was different from the other forms, and suggested the difference was between absolute and relative dependence. Otto thinks Schleiermacher made a mistake in having the distinction being a matter of degree; it is a matter of intrinsic quality. While it provides a close analogy, mental analysis shows that the religious feeling is so primary a datum that it can only be defined via itself. Otto sees this numinous feeling in the biblical text, where Abraham asserts that he will speak to the Lord, recognizing that he himself is "but dust and ashes" (Genesis 18:27). There is dependence, but something more/other than just dependence, and so Otto labels this experience "creature-consciousness" (or "creature-feeling"). The creature is overwhelmed by its nothingness in contrast to the supreme. Otto argues that the term is not a conceptual explanation of the experience, since everything revolves around the character of the supreme, which is ineffable, only suggested via the tone and content of man's feeling-response to it. Otto further faults Schleiermacher by reducing the religious emotion to self-depreciation, and having God appear through inference to a cause beyond the self for this sense of dependence. Otto believes this is opposed to the psychological facts. Creature-consciousness is derived from another feeling-element that has immediate (not inferred) reference to a sensed numinous object outside the self. With an unjustifiably poor understanding of William James' philosophic position, Otto yet correctly observes that James concluded that accounts of religious experience suggest that in consciousness there is a "sense of reality" (in Varieties, this is the "consciousness of a presence") that is deeper in perceiving the real than the five senses. Otto sees creature-consciousness again as deriving from and presupposed by this feeling of a numinous object objectively given. The depreciation comes in recognition of that object, and is carried out by the subject.

Rudolf Otto: The Idea of the Holy Chapter 2 Numen and the Numinous

Summary: Holiness is a valuation peculiar to religion, even though it has been applied in spheres such as ethics by transplant. Kantian thought had tied holiness with complete goodness, so that the will acting on the moral law alone was the holy will. But this transformation obscures the original significance of the holy. Like the beautiful, the holy contains an element or feeling-response "moment" that eludes apprehension in terms of concepts. This "overplus of meaning" is what the term holiness denoted foremostly in ancient languages; it was neutral in terms of moral significance. We need to disregard the moral and rational factors in investigating the term, and to help in that regard, Otto adopts the term "Numen" (and corresponding "numinous") for this focus on the holy. Otto believes the numinous state of mind is irreducible to another mental state, and as a primary one, cannot be strictly defined. Understanding is brought by consideration and discussion of the matter through one's own mind until the numinous in one may stir and be brought to life. The process can be advanced via comparing and contrasting it with other mental states/experiences.

Consumer-driven change?

In one of my gastronomy classes, we are currently studying classes and political influence. The current issue I am trying to wrap my head around is this: proponents of market economics (and western thought in general) suggest that consumer-driven choice can affect change in a society. For instance, if we want to change our food system to something healthier and more sustainable, "voting with our dollars" is the way to go. Basically, the theory is that by giving money to those producers that are aligning themselves with our ideals that those ideals will take over in a market setting. This is often done through shopping at very conscientious markets like Whole Foods or Trader Joe's. We assume that producers will eventually change their offerings to meet our monetary demands.

However, as we do so, a question arises. Are we really affecting change or merely setting ourselves and our class (well-off financially, educated, and frequently white) apart from general consumption? Will Whole Foods really change american buying patterns or just help us feel superior in our organic, sustainable, educated, white store? Will our consumer decisions do anything for the less well-heeled? Can systemic change be brought about effectively through individual actions or is a more holistic and politic approach called for?

Rudolf Otto: The Idea of the Holy Chapter 1 The Rational and the Non-Rational

Summary: Theists, by analogy, project and perfect their human rationality and personality on to their idea of God. The attributes that they apply to God can be understood and analyzed by the mind, and are thus what Otto calls "rational." Religions, such as Christianity, applying such attributes to God are rational religions and summon a belief and faith-based knowledge in their doctrines in contrast to vague, propositionless feelings. Yet it is wrong to suppose that God's essence can fully be understood through rational attributions, even though the rational occupies the foreground of discourse. Otto urges that the rational attributions imply a non-rational subject of which they are predicates. The rational elements are essential, but also "synthetic." Otto's explanation is dense: we have to attribute these rational elements to the God-subject, but this subject "in its deeper sense" is not comprehended by these elements. Comprehending it requires a different mode of understanding. Otto believes this mode must be utilized by mankind or we would not be able to assert anything of the God-subject, and we do this. Mysticism, in its assertions of experiential ineffability, does not mean nothing can be asserted of the object of religious consciousness, but their copious writings suggest there is something beyond the effable. Otto takes this as the first distinction between religious "rationalism" and "profounder religion." It is not the rejection of the miraculous that distinguishes them, but a difference regarding the "quality in the mental attitude and emotional content of the religious life itself." Orthodoxy constructed dogma/doctrine, and in the meantime failed to value the non-rational element in religion and so gave God an unbalanced intellectualistic spin. Eyes have been shut to the uniqueness of religious experience, but Otto believes it is one of the most unique of phenomena. In what follows, Otto will try to unpack the category of the holy or sacred.

Investigations into Religious Phenomena

A common topic amongst some of you and other philosophical friends in the past was what is philosophy of religion, its method, and what can it accomplish? We have discussed the place of theology (and "physical theology"), James' science of religion, transcendental philosophy of religion, and other possible avenues that might be unique (such as the ontological argument; not that I buy the argument, but it does take a different route). In general, I imagine our philosophical thinking in religion (amongst others) shows and attempts to remove contradiction and ellucidates/explains particulars, often through greater distinctions. These particulars are often done theologically (or intra-religiously), working and explaining a text or doctrinal propositions based on revelation claims. I have been interested, ever since reading James' Varieties of Religious Experience, in thinking about and explaining less "textual" religious matters, which are more external, in the sense of at least being intersubjective phenomena. And then I am interested in all elements of subjective religious consciousness. To poorly use "phenomenology" (as honestly it feels all do), I like trying to look at and explain phenomena that have a quasi-religious character about them(religious phenomenology). I wrote a quick list down of some of these (inluding more general thoughts) that probably needs to be pruned somewhat:

• The holy


• Beauty of existence


• Conversion


• Prayerfulness


• Revelation


• Religious testimony


• The ideal (heaven) and the longing for it


• Harmony


• Perfection


• Life's "purpose"


• Duty to the divine and religious guilt.


• The mystery of being (why do I exist, and in a greater sense, why is there anything at all instead of the nothing that might be in its place?). This one is strange, because it seems semi-religious, and yet also a place where the strictly philosophical emerge too. Perhaps it is a place of shared kinship?


• Covenant relationship and Covenant community


• The limits of reason and the feeling of something "more"


• Other "religious" values

Any others you might add to this list? My personal "acquaintance" with these things has made me want to examine them more fully, and the study of them seems a different track (investigatory) than other religious thought (which feels more puzzle piece fitting). I have started my study with a famous book that I haven't wanted to read for some time: Rudolf Otto's The Idea of the Holy. In it Otto, tries to isolate the unique content and feeling of holiness, which he will call the "numinous." You can find it for free off of archive.org if you want to follow along with me. I have finished the first 3 chapters and will start throwing up summaries as I go. After Otto's book, I will probably return (again) to James' Varieties, and from there I am open to suggestions. Some my old Faulconer readings come to mind...

The Appearance of People in Dreams

One thing I have been thinking about recently is when and why people start to appear in dreams, and also when they disappear from them. This morning I had my first dream (at least that I can recall, I suppose) where my baby Liam was conceptually and visually in it. Liam, as of yesterday, is 5 months old. Before then, I had talked with my wife Lindsay on how I hadn't had a dream with him in it yet; Lindsay hadn't either. We talked about how even with each other, we didn't have dreams of the other person until in our marriages, although we had dated for 11-12 months before marrying. It has got me thinking about what tends to hold for a person to appear in our "dream space." I remember that I use to dream of high school friends, and still do of some of them from time to time, but the majority of them no longer come into my dreams. This is certainly the case of middle school or very young childhood friends. I haven't dreamed of my grandmother who passed away almost 4 years ago in a very long time.

What is it that qualifies one to be a character in one's dream space? Is it that they have a certain enough "reality" in one's mind, or that they are an important enough figure in one's life? There may be something to this, but I have had many dreams in the past couple of years where the characters in the dreams have no resemblance to anyone I am close to. It is possible they were pulled from someone I glanced at in passing, or it possible I simply conjured their looks up, them having no correspond figure in the waking world. If the former, it is not the intensity of familiarity that draws a person into the dream space. Though perhaps the intensity affects the probability of appearing in the space. After all, I cannot say that I have recognized a person that was not in the waking world as reappearing in another dream. However, Lindsay, my parents and many friends have been recurring characters in my dreams. What makes them more recurring? The familiarity/intimacy with these people? Often people point to dream symbolism, and here they might suggest that one associates that person more with a certain thing about life. I think we tend to over-symbolize the dreams, since many of my dreams are also straight-forward narratives. There are no "caged eagles," suggesting my lack of freedom, for instance. Anyway, thinking about the appearance of Liam in my dreams has been a source of amusement. Have any of you thought about this?

William James: "What the Will Effects" Part 1

Summary: James begins his article by asserting that all animal activity belongs to reflex action; consciousness is simply an adjustment to the environment. Some reactions to the environment are voluntary and others are not. Surprisingly, James argues that the voluntary actions are derived from the involuntary. With involuntary action, the action is not mentally seen or understood until afterwards. In voluntary action properly called, the act is foreseen, the idea preceding its execution. Hence, no action can be voluntary the first time it is performed. Until we have done it, we have no idea of what sort of a thing it is like, and do not know in what direction to set our will to bring it about. We could not picture it, and one cannot will into the void. Once we get a sense for the feeling and what needs to be done, then we can train our voluntary power. Voluntary action is thus a secondary action, not of a primary sort. The consequence is that a creature with no memory can have no will, and that volitional utterances are built out of the automatic. James specifies that he does not mean a man cannot commit a murder voluntarily until he commits one involuntarily. Murder is a complex combination of movements, including crouching, springing, stabbing and the like. These elementary movements cannot voluntarily be performed unless already involuntarily performed.

Psychology’s second point is that our will needs nothing else but a recollection of how movements feel to execute its desires. They are sufficient conditions. All of us experience ideomotor actions. For example, while having a conversation we might become conscious of a pen on the floor, or of some dust on the sleeve. Without interrupting the conversation we brush away the dust or pick up the pen. No express resolve is made; the perception of the object and the fleeting notion of the act seem to bring the action about. James includes amongst these acts snacking on nuts when one is no longer hungry and they meet no express contradiction in the mind (if nothing stops it from having its way). With such actions, no separate fiat of the will is required. James generalizes his claim: anywhere and everywhere the sole known cause for the execution of a movement is the bare idea of the movement’s execution, and that if the idea occurs in a mind empty of other leading ideas, an attempted movement will fatally and infallibly take place. James suggests this is why the hypnotic subject passively acts out nearly every suggestion his operator makes. When ideas harmonize they reinforce a movement, but when they conflict, they block the path of its discharge and inhibit its motor efficacy. James urges that all our thoughts correspond to processes in the cerebral hemispheres. We know that certain thoughts conflict with others and that certain acts are only possible so long as objections to them do not arise. In fact, James thinks that most of our activity is not best described by a creative architectural volition, but by a nodding consent. Most of the time (James gives an arbitrary 75%) our conduct consists in taking off the brakes, and letting ideas and impulses have their way. Volition would in these cases lie in refusing consent. This refusal need not always be energetic either. Either consent or inhibition may require energy, but not as much as we think.

The ideas that most inhibit muscular activity, keep us quiet, are those of pains and pleasures. Think of the paralyzing effects of the bed’s warmth and of the cold in the room when you awaken. Pains and pleasures most urge us to action or to avoid an action. However, James denies psychological egoism: he declares it is absolutely false that pain and pleasure are the only possible or rational inciters to voluntary action. We can act from abstract goods and duties. Thus pleasure/pain regulates, but need not operate; steers, but need not propel. James believes experience alone can decide which ideas have power, and innumerable objects stimulate us. Ninety‐nine times out of a hundred we no more act for the pleasure connected with the action, than we do for the pleasure of the frowning, or blush for the pleasure of the blush. Often blind reactive impulses are there. A drunkard cannot often tell why so often falls prey to temptation. His nerve‐centers are unlocked by every passing conception of a bottle and a glass. He does not thirst for the beverage; the taste of it may even appear repugnant; and he perfectly foresees the morrow’s remorse. But when he thinks of or sees liquor, he finds himself preparing to drink and does not stop himself; more than this he cannot say. James summarizes his thoughts: We are mobile organisms placed in environments full of things that pull and clamp the triggers of our muscular machinery in various pre‐appointed ways. This is the involuntary life. But these involuntary actions form likenesses in images and pleasure‐pain consequences (amongst others). These images in turn incite to new discharges and reinforce and inhibit each other like the originals. This is the volitional life of consent.

Bertrand Russell: Problems of Philosophy Chapter 3 The Nature of Matter

Summary: Believing that he has shown that accepting a world with mind-independent objects is more rational, Russell next considers the nature of these objects. He explains how the science of his day has reduced objects to their motions and positions in space. Scientists admit that the objects may have other properties, but do not require them to explain natural phenomena. However, scientific explanations do not explain our sensations: light is what we immediately see, not a form of wave-motion, even if the sense-data is caused by wave-motion. Thus, a blind man could understand the scientific assertion, but not understand the sensation of light. The sensations of color, sounds, and even our experience of space emerging from sense-data, are absent from scientific discourse. The coin that appears to be oval, but we judge to be intrinsically circular, is so in an idealized space. Hence, science/math's idealized "real space" is public, and apparent space is private. But how are these spaces connected? Russell summarizes the prior conclusion that our sensation of sense-data is caused by matter, independently-existing stuff. If this is the case, Russell believes this presupposes a physical space in which these objects and our bodies are contained where one can pass on sense-data to the other. Sensation of sense data occurs when persons are in contact with a given object (say, an apple) via close bodily proximity, and no other impeding objects (closed cupboard doors) are in the way. Variation occurs through the relative positioning of the body and other objects in science's physical space, and this is borne out well in our private experience. While different spaces emerge in sight, touch, and so forth, we learn to group them together since they bear a similar testament. Russell gives this example: if one sees a house that looks nearer to oneself than another, our kinaesthetic experience confirms this by it taking shorter to reach the house that appeared visually closer. These spaces interlace because there is an actual physical space.

But while private spaces testifies of the real space, we cannot know much about the real space. Russell asserts that we can know only what is required to secure correspondence betwen the private and physical spaces; we don't know anything about the physical space as it is in itself. What this boils down to is us only knowing the "properties of the relations" necessary for holding correspondence. We reason towards the real objects from the sense data, not through the sense-data (studying observations versus the observing). So we can know that during an eclipse, the earth, moon and sun are in one straight line, but not know what a real "straight line" is. We lack the immediate acquaintance with the real "straight line" that we have with a line drawn by a ruler in our private space. Our feeling of duration is often disparate with "clock time" depending on our mental states and activities, so that our experience of time is private, although we recognize there is also a physical time. Despite how long I perceived the basketball game as being, I understand that the tipoff occurred before the end game buzzer. This order of before and after that things appear to have seems to correspond to real time order. It is not the case that the real objects have the same time-order as the sense-data constituting the perception of those objects. Really speaking, thunder and lightning occur at the same time, although I hear the thunder later than its occurrence. Russell also notes the delay in observing star light. Turning to everyday objects, Russell gives more examples of us understanding relational differences in the "real world," due to differences in the apparent one. When 2 objects give visual sense-data of different colors, we reason that there must be something different about the real objects, even though we are not immediately aware of the quality in the real object making it have a specific color. We might naturally assume that the real object has a color (some intermediate color between the various shades appearing at different times and to different people) and if lucky we will catch a glimpse of it. But Russell thinks that this naivity is groundless as we consider the influence of light waves, air, our own eyes; we discover that color is the result of the travel of the ray reaching the eye, not originating in the object itself. Given that a natural assumption about objects' color is wrong, we might wonder if there is any philosophical argument (form/method of reasoning) that can show us if matter is real, it must have a certain nature, so that a more prolonged investigation is unnecessary.

I'm bad at finishing stuff

I recently decided that I need to make a shift in my approach to creativity. I wanted to be prolific, which was something I've never been in my life. I decided that this was something that could be learned, so I started a project. The idea is that I would create something everyday, and post it to a blog dedicated to the project, and do this for 100 days. I made no restrictions on what the something was, be it a song, drawing, short story, rant, or philosophical treatise. I got off to a good start, but I've gotten behind. I've crashed headlong into the reason I started this project to begin with. I'm bad at doing things consistently.

Even as I've forced myself to learn to be creative on command at work, I've somehow failed to learn the same thing in my personal creative life. Part of this, at least, is a "path of least resistance" problem. It's much easier for me to lapse into the consumption of creative work (e.g. playing a video game or reading a book) than to create. I value those activities, as I love to have my imagination and emotions fired by the creative works of others, but we can't allow something good to rob us of something great.

Another problem may be that I seem to be slightly defiant most of the time, even to myself. As soon as a yoke of any kind is placed on my shoulders (even a self-imposed one!), I immediately want to do something else. This has been a recurring problem throughout my life. I can't fully explain its genesis, either. I especially don't understand why I resist even my own projects and goals. It's really self-destructive and I have no explanation.

Finally, something of Søren Kierkegaard's "despair of the infinite" rings in my ears. I sit down, knowing that I can do anything I want, and end up doing nothing. Sometimes, I don't even do anything else (like watch TV or play a game). I just sit there, overcome with the infinite possibilities, and end up doing nothing. It's really silly.

Anyway, I'm really just complaining to all of you. Any tips or suggestions?

SWTOR: Companions and the Other

Now to take things to somewhere less serious: a video game. I have long been aware of how the presence of other people impacts how I behave. If someone else is in the room, I won't typically pass gas, laugh obnoxiously, and so forth. If I am talking to someone and a stranger is there, I state things differently in case of offending some bystander's sensibilities. What I didn't expect is how this would carry over in a video game with digital characters. In the new MMORPG, Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR), each player is giving a set of companions that can help them out on their journeys. As players make choices--perform certain actions or state certain things--they can impact their companion's "affection" for them. Usually, the impact is negligible, but sometimes the impact is tremendous. I am not sure what this change in affection spells out to in the game; I have not read about it or progressed far enough into the game to know. I expect perhaps one of them could betray/leave you depending on how much they like you, or maybe they will get a stats boost? It is hard to know, but the "points" also adds a dimension to the relationship.

Regardless, as I had a companion with me, I noted that I wouldn't make certain choices that I typically would if they weren't around. I didn't want to "offend" her or hurt our relationship. For actions that I wanted to make despite their feelings, I found that I would send them away on a mission, so that they didn't have to be there for me to make that decision in their presence. I was surprised to find myself caring about the feelings, responses, and reactions of make believe digital characters. This had happen in the past in certain games, such as when I did not want to betray Tali's trust in Bioware's Mass Effect 2, but it has never occurred to the extent that it has an SWTOR. It has brought the impact of "the other" on me far more than I expected, and I applaud the game for adding this level of depth to the game. It is also nice that all of the companions really have different views--you cannot make them all happy with any decision that you make; just as it is with real people.

Taylor Petrey: "Towards a Post-Heterosexual Mormon Theology"

Following up on Eric's post, I wanted to read and summarize Petrey's pioneering article for those who are interested. I wish I could have made this shorter, but it was hard to scrunch down as it is. Feel free to give suggestions for where clarity can be improved, or what can be cropped to narrow this down.

Summary: Much LDS discourse has discussed homosexuality to consider its causes, give pastoral advice to LDS homosexuals, or to encourage a change in our attitudes towards practicing homosexuals. Taking on a suggestion from Alan Michael Williams, Petrey attempts to speculatively explore how Mormon theology might accomodate non-heterosexual relationships, in the hope that our sealing/family doctrines might make more "soteriological sense" for the emerging diversity in families.


He admits few LDS will believe there can be any reconciliation between homosexual relationships and church doctrine, and while they may be right, this is debatable. He suggests that we consider homosexuality not in terms of desires or practices, but in terms of relationships, such as we do for her heterosexuality (eternal marital relationships). Petrey believes this should be acceptable since some LDS heterosexual couples are celibate (physical incapacitation): marriage should not be reduced to sexuality.

Much resistance to accepting homosexual relationships comes from weakly supported LDS beliefs regarding celestial reproduction through sealed male and female couples. Petrey points out "theological tension" between beliefs in spirit birth and the eternal nature of intelligence. Some views of spirit birth employ a sexual edge to them (requiring something supposedly biological from the mixed-sex pairs), while others are more metaphorical and are likely disconnected from reproductive organs. Petrey thinks that the former views are pitiful, suggesting it must lead to a strong commitment to biological literalism (spirit babies gestasting for nine months in celestial female wombs). Besides this, Petrey believes it is strange that resurrected, celestial bodies should give birth to spirit bodies instead of ones like their own. If mortal bodies produce mortal bodies for their children, should not celestial bodies produce celestial bodies for birth? Petrey also suggests that each stage in our progression does not seem to require birth through other's bodies, such as in the case of the resurrection. Hence, we should not assume that moving from the intelligence stage to the spirit child stage required a biological birth, but instead a loose "organization" from matter that we may consider symbolically as a birth, as in the case of baptism. God's embodiment should not make us assume that God must engage in a sexual union to produce life. The creation of life on the earth, Eve from Adam's rib, and the virgin birth suggest otherwise. Thus, we might imagine reproduction for same-sex partners. With women, it becomes more problematic if creation is a priesthood function and women do not currently possess the priesthood. Eschatological reproduction set aside, what about the problem of same-sex partners being unable to "multiple and replenish" the earth in the here and now? Petrey notes again that there are mixed-sex partners that cannot fulfill this command and still consummate their relationships, and if afterlife procreation is not like mortal procreation, he thinks the inability to procreate here should not be a censorship for sealings. All couples should have the responsibility to provide for and rear children, but this can be done through adoption and reproductive technology.

While sealing often involves biological kinship ties, Petrey notes that the kinship ties have not historically been biological or for reproductive couples. By examining different culutures--African American, rural Chinese--we see kinship models that are not based on a father-mother-child paradigm, so it is not unique to same-sex relationships. Sealings for same-sex couples could provide ritual legitimization for existing social relationships, while also priviliging unions of long term filiation (marriage). Before 1894, Mormons sealed themselves to church leaders regardless of their blood/reproductive relationships, and this also established an alternate way of establishing kinship. The focus was not on sealing genealogical chains, but on uniting humanity into one sacred fellowship with the most righteous acting as the rulers. This older form of sealing helps us imagine same-sex relationships in a gospel sense. Woodruff's shift towards sealing in genealogical chains still provided for members to be sealed to Joseph Smith, but he paved the way for the emphasis of sealing to be about the ordinance and not getting sealed to the "right person(s)." Currently, adopted children are sealed to others they are not biologically/reproductively related to, so there is no sense of exclusivity to those relationships even amongst sealings now. Petrey notes how in rare circumstances children born into the covenant can be adopted by others and then sealed to the adoptive parents (he is personnally aware of one instance). Next, he thinks that since children born in the covenant maintain their "birthright" regardless of parents cancelling their sealings, the importance is not biology, but the sealing itself. With biology/reproduction being replaced with spiritual kinship, same-sex couple sealings are less jarring theologically.

The concept of an "eternal gender" is an important issue in this discussion, as gender is used in church literature as a means of normatively guiding behavior for and spelling out the inherents traits of the gendered person. It is often argued that same-sex marriages could cause "gender confusion." Petrey tries to investigate what eternal gender means in the LDS Community to address this allegation of "gender confusion," but finds the term lacking in ready-made distinctions. He tries to analytically break down the term's use in LDS discussion into the following: the morphological bodies of males and females (their sex), the sense of identity corresponding to those bodies that includes sexual desires, and the social roles assigned to those bodies.

(1) Gender as Sex. It isn't clear how "gender confusion" could emerge from same-sex relationships if it is about bodies or one's eternal marker as being a male/female (male/female bodies persist regardless). The sexes could be fixed, but the particular configuration of relationships could also be changeable. However, Petrey doubts whether there is a "natural" sex division, which may really be politically motivated to establish ideological goals. His evidence for this doubt is that intersex persons resist the sex binary, and some scientists like Anne Fausto-Serling have suggested that there are more than 2 sexes. Furthermore, Petrey struggles to discover what it is about our sexes that is eternal. If gender refers to body differences, what body differences persist from a person's premortal existence to be considered eternal? Sex is part of one's contingent genetic makeup. What reason is there for assuming that one's genitalia (or whatever else one wants to specify about a particular body that makes it male or female) is an eternal/fundamental part of one's physical make up and not some other characteristic that is non-sexually related? Also, if the physical characteristic was present in the premortal self, what function did it serve (such as the genitalia)?

(2) Gender as Sexual-oriented Identity. Petrey describes gender identity as is some sort of proper/balanced relationship between sex, gender and desire. Confusion here would seem to claim that homosexuality leads men/women to be effiminate/masculine as they have incorrect desires, which they shouldn't have. Petrey finds this claim unsatisfactory. First, there is the problem that what is masucline/feminine varies culturally. Next, if this gender identity is eternal, it isn't clear why children must be taught and encouraged constantly what their gender identity is. Petrey thinks this view is incompatible, asserting that if gender is performed/developed, then it is not naturally possessed.

(3) Gender as Social Role. In this area, the assertion of "gender confusion" seems to be that one partner in the same-sex relationships is failing to conform to his/her proper eternal gendered role that one's sex has inherent traits to help fulfill (such as women being more nurturing, which is supposed to help them be better mothers). Petrey again criticizes this position for failing to observe the wide variety of difference in such roles between men/women across cultures. When it comes to church policy, Petrey admits same-sex relationships to challenge the 1 presiding, but both equal paradigm in current heterosexual marriages as advocated by the church. In a male same-sex relationship, who presides over the other? Or with 2 women? Yet Petrey doubts whether father/mothering roles can make sense eternally, since it is not clear what they were in the premortal life. How were males breadwinners or women mothers?

One last criticism that Petrey discusses is the charge that homosexual relationships encourage gender separatism. He thinks this charge falsely assumes that the only valuable mixed-sex interactions can happen in marriage/procreation. He believes this is not the case.

Gender and Speculation

Taylor Petrey recently published an article in Dialogue titled "Toward a Post-heterosexual Mormon Theology." In it he argues that there are many different ways to think about gender, marriage, and sexuality within the LDS framework and outlines ways in which we could alter our views of homosexuality in order to accommodate the rapidly-changing social views on sexuality and marriage. I found it to be a rather well-written piece: exploratory, but not too prescriptive. Adam Miller posted a response on T&S in which he praises Petrey for doing what he (Adam) considers good theology. 

Ralph Hancock responded to Taylor Petrey and Adam by arguing against both. Not only did he seem to think that Taylor was mistaken in many of his ideas, he takes umbrage with the project of speculation about theology and Adam's praising of it. He feels that this is something best done in private, rather than projecting these ideas into the public sphere. 

Check all three articles out if you have a chance - I think they address two important concepts that are burdening LDS thought at the moment. First, obviously, is the place of homosexuality in LDS life. Second, how is theology to be done? There is so much unfruitful anti-intellectualism and anti-anti-intellectualism that many times the real issue gets left behind in a cloud of angry posts on T&S. How are we to approach the doctrines of the church (how to define that term is in itself a sticky situation)? Is there a place for public speculation of theology? Should we be publicly discussing our struggles with the occasional incongruities we feel between what we're taught and what we experience?

I welcome any and all thoughts on any topics connected with this idea. Bring it, people!

Bertrand Russell: Problems of Philosophy Chapter 2 The Existence of Matter

Summary: Russell continues to consider the possible difference between appearance and reality. In the past, we instinctively believed that sense-data were equivalent to objects, but observation, discovery, and dreams have at least at times shown them to be disparate. Given this, we can wonder whether or not there is in the general sense "matter" : something behind the absolutely certain sense data that continues to exist when no one is looking or if no minds were to exist at all. Russell thinks that if we cannot ascertain a matter with independent existence, then we may lapse into solipsism. If others are only known via their bodies, and the independent existence of bodies is doubted, then the existence of other minds also becomes debatable. Russell admits solipsism as a possibility, but he thinks we have no reason to suppose its actuality. Next, Russell reviews the Cartesian methodology of systematic doubting anything not shown to be clearly and distinctly true. While Descartes believes the method leads him to the certainty of his own existence, Russell doubts this. Particular experiences have far more certainty than personal existence. The sensation of a color is far more "a color is being seen" rather than "I am seeing a color." Even though an experiencer may be presupposed, this does necessarily involve any "I." The main payoff of the Cartesian method is to show that primitive thoughts, feelings, and experiences are the most certain, even if the sensations are of illusions.

Can we infer from these primitives the existence of something else? Clearly, our common sense says yes. When we put a tablecloth over a table such that the sense data attributed to the table is hidden from view, we do not believe that the table has disappeared and that a levitating tablecloth remains in its place. However, common sense has often been wrong. We might next refer to our public commerce that involves the supposition of "public neutral objects," objects that are the same for all parties even though the sense data received by each person is privately received. We believe this due to the similarity of sense data being received. Russell, however, believes that this reasoning begs the question because other people are being used to prove that there actually are other people. If we are to make headway, we have to look at our private experiences and show that they tend to show that there are others. Russell doubts that this can be shown certainly (the dream sequence is always a logical possibility), but it can be shown probabilistically. Russell's mainly argues that the hypothesis that there are independent objects is simpler. Several observed regularities such as the motion, the hunger, and language of sets of sense data attributed to objects require less explanation if they belong to real objects. Russell admits this conclusion is weaker than we might hope, but he argues it is typical of philosophical arguments. He believes knowledge is based upon instinctive beliefs, so that if all are rejected, nothing is left. After all, we cannot have reason to reject a belief except on the ground of some other belief. Nonetheless, instinctive beliefs can through philosophical reflection be organized into an hierarchy that forms a harmonious, coherent system that is "most possible." Yet it remains possible that the whole system is mistaken, so a healthy bit of doubt should be applied to all beliefs.

NOTE: To relate Russell's tangent at the end of the chapter back to the case in point, Russell implicitly seems to be asserting that we can compare an explanation asserting the existence of independent objects and one that does not, and that while both may be coherent, the latter will require far more propositions to do so. Since it requires the acceptance of more propositions to explain sense data, it is "less possible," since we can imagine far more possible universes in a system that has less propositions (like the independent object explanation). If we place our bets with the more possible, we have a greater chance of being right if we rolled the cosmic dice. While this may be valid, it is debatable whether or not the non-independent object universe requires more propositions. Furthermore, even if this is the case, it may not give Russell what he wants to say here: that it is more reasonable to believe in what is more possible, and therefore it is more reasonable to believe in a world with matter when it comes to explaining sense data.