This was “day 2” of OCON. I didn’t take any pictures on this day, so I’m’ just putting it on my blog. “Day One” can be found on my Facebook page, which has pictures: https://www.facebook.com/dean.cook.5011/posts/10156994148213968
My written journal says I went to day 2 of the Logic class and learned about “example”, by which, I mean, the concept of “example” -what you use when you are trying to explain or elucidate a concept. This was done by examples of, well, example. Various principles of what makes a good “example” were gone over. For instance (and by way of example), a good “example” is concrete and specific. I take this as meaning if someone wants an example, of the concept, “love”, you present them with a mother taking care of her child or newlyweds kissing. You don’t start out by telling them “love is compromise” or “love is a change in brain chemistry that creates a positive association about another person”, even though those are probably true statements.
The previous homework was gone over. One example of “Philosophy determines history” that I really liked involved an attempted counter-example of this assertion. Economists will say that the Roman Empire fell because it became a welfare state and the Romans inflated their currency, which destroyed their economy and made them weak militarily. Then, the Gauls and the Visigoths invaded and sacked Rome. This is all true, and I’ve heard Economists say this before. But, it doesn’t disprove that “philosophy determines history”. If you look “behind” this Economic explanation for the fall of the Roman Empire, you ask: “Why did the Romans think they could inflate their currency without bad consequences in the long run?” This had to do with the move away in Roman thinking from the “empiricism” of Aristotle and towards the “other worldliness” of Plato and his “world of forms”. In other words, the Romans turned away from accepting that reality is what it is and has a specific nature, and began to believe that there is a “higher” or “truer” nature that is somehow more “pure”. This means you cannot trust your senses and your logic to tell you that if you inflate your money supply, there will be bad economic consequences and that the barbarians to the North will kill you if they think they can get away with it.
The homework assignment was pretty interesting and really stimulated my thinking. It involved defining certain concepts, including: (1) The number “seven”; (2) “war”; (3) “prize”; (4) “Dignity”; and (5) “Racism”.
According to my journal, the next lecture that day had to do with Burnout and Rational Self-Interest. I believe there were three speakers on this one. Burnout was defined as: (1) Exhaustion; (2) Cynicism; and (3) Diminished sense of self-confidence. There was a discussion of how adopting an other-regarding, altruistic morality will create “burnout” as it had been defined, although external causes of “burnout” were noted as also possible – specifically the fact that the government interferes in some professions to such a degree that it makes it difficult to avoid burnout. (Medicine was given as an example -with its massive amounts of bureaucratic controls and “red tape”.)
There was also an interesting discussion of “selfishness in the moment”, in which you never think “I have to do this.” I’ve heard similar things, and I think it’s basically the idea that if you need to do something to achieve some goal, like studying for a test, but you feel great reluctance to start, you remind yourself that you don’t “have” to do anything, and then ask yourself why you’re feeling this great reluctance, and try to see if there is some other important thing in your life that you might feel like you’re neglecting. Then, you may need to alter or amend your goals, or adjust your work schedule to account for this other important thing.
I will comment on this a little bit, and say that I think the speakers are assuming you’ve got a basic level of wealth and can survive okay in this moment. Sometimes, you may be so impoverished or broke that you just need to work a job you dislike in the short term in order to make money, and it takes an act of pure “will” to get up in the morning, and you hate everything about the job and the people you work with -which I’ve done before. But, that’s not sustainable long-term, and probably will lead to “burn out”. But, over-all, I think what they’re saying makes sense in most situations.
The next lecture was on creativity. The overall argument seemed to be that creativity is really an act of the conscious mind rather than something that comes out of the subconscious. The speaker explicitly said he wasn’t talking about the arts, so I don’t know if he thinks this about fiction writing, music, and painting.
Several examples of highly creative people were given. Steve Jobs being one.
Although the speaker didn’t believe the subconscious was “primary”, it is necessary. Basically, he said when engaged in creative activity, you should engage in active thinking and work, and then take a break periodically as there seems to be something about your mind that will engage in some sort of “mental consolidation” while you’re resting, and then make your next round of work more productive. I’ve noticed this myself in my own work. He also noted this sort of thing works well in collaborative endeavors, where you sit down with colleagues and discuss the problem and solutions, and then you all separate and do some individual thinking and work, and then get back together later, and the next round of collaboration will be better.
He also said expect to fail a lot. Failure was described as a signal to keep moving. He said that geniuses fail a lot because they try so many ideas.
He also noted that the “10,000 hours to competence” assertion you hear sometimes is a myth. I think he said the studies that have been done just don’t support that.
He also noted that “experts” can only be experts about the past, so “experts” aren’t likely to generate new ideas.
The final lecture of the day in my notes wasn’t a lecture per se. It was a panel discussion between Jordan Peterson, a philosophy professor from the Ayn Rand Institute and the Institute’s CEO. A fourth person steered the conversation with questions for all three people.
I’m uncertain of Jordan Peterson’s level of “sympathy” for Ayn Rand and her philosophy, and he said several things that made it clear he wasn’t in line with key aspects of her philosophy. The biggest one had to do with him saying something like religion is necessary in order to give you a basic framework from which to organize the factual data you observe. He basically said the universe is too complex, and you need some sort of “narrative” to have it all make sense, and that for most people that need is fulfilled by religion. I would need to hear more about what Peterson means here than just an hour-long, somewhat “freewheeling” discussion, and I don’t want to misrepresent what he said. He referenced Sam Harris, and said he is having a similar sort of debate with Harris, and that Harris says you can derive “oughts” from “what is”, so I’d like to hear his debate with Harris on this point. (Harris also has explicitly disagreed with key points of Rand’s philosophy, so his view isn’t going to be Rand’s.) I also haven’t read any of Jordan Peterson’s books. I cannot find the complete discussion online, but here is a youtube channel with “outtakes” from it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMEBQJoPumc
Frankly, I’m not sure that the “problem” Peterson is pointing to is a real problem at all. The universe isn’t “complex” or “simple”, these are concepts having to do with human action and the things we create. Also why do you need the universe to “make sense”? Is it in order to live successfully? Then wouldn’t that imply that your own life is your ultimate goal? I think when you start thinking about ethics, you can start from the perspective of a normal adult with a normally functioning mind who has basic knowledge, and who has made the choice to live. I start from this point because you’d have to have basic knowledge and be a normally functioning adult to really be in a position to think about ethics at all. (A child has insufficient knowledge, and a mentally retarded person doesn’t have the intelligence level to even ask the questions, much less find any answers.) Such a person, if he wants to live, is going to have to observe reality, organize his thinking into certain normative concepts like “rationality”, “virtue”, and “ultimate value”, which must have some connection to reality for success, and then he must act on those normative principles. But, maybe I’m missing Peterson’s point.
