Religious Movements list

The University of Virginia has a great page at http://web.archive.org/web/20060902232910/religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/profiles/listalpha.htm giving profiles for a huge number of religious movements: be it the Amish, Falun Gong, Jesus Army, UFO cults or Zoroastrianism - they are all there...
Enjoy...

d.

Abraham and the Sacrifice of his Son in the three Abrahamic Faiths

The University is joining the Al Mahdi Institute in Birmingham in an exploration of the topic of Sacrifice in the three Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The focus is a single text: the story of Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son, which is told in the Scriptures of all three faiths (Genesis 22; Sura 12) and developed in their art and literature.

Professors Melissa Raphael and Gordon McConville from the Humanities Department will consider the text from the perspective of Judaism and Christianity respectively, while Dr. Ian Williams of Al Mahdi will do so from the perspective of Islam.

The event will take place at Francis Close Hall on 16th November from 11.15 in the Chapel Side Room. All are welcome.

To register, please contact Patricia Downes, pdownes@glos.ac.uk

Autumn is a time for paradox and punishment..

As the nights draw in, and summertime evening frolics become less feasible, our students, no doubt, are turning to more cerebral means to pass the evening hours. One way might be to consider the paradox at http://peasoup.typepad.com/peasoup/2009/10/smilanskys-nonpunishment-paradox.html which I thought interesting.

PEAsoup is good blog, which often has things of note on it - but I thought this, albeit drawn from a book (by Saul Smilansky) - was worth pointing out. I won't explain more - in the name of maintaining the suspense till you get to the actual site...

Best enjoyed in a leather armchair, with sherry and a cat while looking out at the quickening dark of the Cotswolds (or not).
d.

It is Never to Late to Learn

As I said to my students in RPE101, Philosophical and Ethical Arguing (and probably scaring them a little, though that was unintentional), you have to own your own learning, by which I meant you have to transform yourself from a passive to an active learner.

Of course this phrase 'active and passive learner' is a fine example of gobbledygook (even though it is beloved of our university), but even jargon can hide a kernel of truth. I was reading on the train that morning of an emeritus professor who is still working at the age of 90 (you can read the article here if you want to).

What inspired me wasn't his age (though it's impressive), but how he talked about his experience as a student. He said,

"It's really about whether you want to learn. There's a fundamental difference between being taught and learning yourself, which is what you've got to do to reach a really high standard."

"Learning for yourself", well that is what research is, and should't that be what we teach above all?

The Ethicist

Ethical advice via podcast?
"Randy Cohen, Times Magazine columnist, answers readers' questions on ethical issues each week."


I enjoyed some - but the phrase "Cake-free workplace"? : only in America...

d.

Philosophy Society Update

The October meeting for the Philosophy Society will be held on the 8th, at 7pm in The Gallery Room above the SU Bar at Park Campus. All following meetings will fall on the first Thursday of the month.

I found an interesting dialogue on "Before the Law" that you may like:

http://www.herzogbr.net/kafka/before-discussion1.htm

Also, an allegorical similarity has been drawn between "Before the Law" and the Seinfeld episode "The Chinese Restaurant", where entrance is obstructed by what appears to be an amorphous set of temporal circumstances (note how bribery and charm are used to seduce "the gatekeeper" in Kafka and in Seinfeld). What do you think? Is it fair to draw a comparison between the two? Here are the links to the episode (each about seven minutes):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnoV45-1bJE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnqDAMKDN74&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzUUAdAvQIA&feature=related

The link to "Before the Law" is:

http://records.viu.ca/~Johnstoi/Kafka/beforethelaw.htm

And Derrida's essay "Law of Genre":

http://mission17.org/documents/Derrida_LawOfGenre.pdf

Any questions or comments can be made here or to Shelley s0510427@glos.ac.uk

What is the difference?

Christian refuses to remove crucifix (at work): http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/8265321.stm

Jedi refuses to remove hood (in Tesco): http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/18/jedi-religion-tesco-hood-jones

Are the issues the same?

Dawkins on Science

I read this in the Guardian the other day. Though, as students in RPE 201 know (Philosophy, Science and Belief), I am not an ardent fan of his, I do believe he’s absolute right about this, when he writes about scientists,

"Scientists often disagree with one another, sometimes passionately. But they don't go to court to sort out their differences, they go into the lab, repeat the experiments, carefully examine the controls and the statistical analysis. We care about whether something is true, supported by the evidence. We are not interested in whether somebody sincerely believes he is right. There exist objective methods for discovering whether he is, as a matter of fact, right. If he is wrong, the evidence will show it, and – notwithstanding Judge Eadie – be blowed to whether he is sincere in his error or not."

Not quite sure what he means by ‘blowed’, but it’s a pretty accurate description of what scientists do as opposed to pseudo-scientists.

If you want to read more go to http://tinyurl.com/nok3ur

Schopenhauer and Love - by Alain de Botton; and Zizek too...

Interesting - but is it that persuasive?




OR...

Slavoj Zizek about love

The Philosophy Society September 2009

The Philosophy Society has ended its first year with the promise of a successful second year now dawning. We have a new wave of fervour from a long list of Freshers to add to our small, but dedicated, core group. Over the past year we have turned our attention to:

• business ethics by looking at a 1970s article by economist Milton Friedman, "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits" (in other words the business of business is business), and a short story by B. Traven, "Assembly Line"
• political philosophy by reading Machiavelli's The Prince and Thoreau's Civil Disobedience
• Herman Melville's short story Bartleby the Scrivener in tandem with Emerson's The Transcendentalist (which is considered the inspiration behind Bartleby)
• Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, studying the two famous chapters "Rebellion" and "The Grand Inquisitor"
• Paul Caddle, one of our members, led a meeting on paradoxes, which generated a rousing round of comments
• Christopher Norris, a philosopher from the University of Cardiff, who gave a paper entitled, "The New Musicology: What's it all about?", followed by a lively discussion
• Robert Ellis, another guest speaker, who gave a paper, "Moral Objectivity and the Middle Way". For more information, you can look at Robert's web-site at this address: http://www.moralobjectivity.net/
• the philosophical themes underpinning the two films Arlington Road and Primer

For our October meeting we are reading "Before the Law" from Kafka's The Trial found at this address: http://records.viu.ca/~Johnstoi/Kafka/beforethelaw.htm. Also, if you are interested in further study, please read Derrida's "Law of Genre" found at this address: http://mission17.org/documents/Derrida_LawOfGenre.pdf.

The Philosophy Society meets (usually) on the first Thursday of every month at 7pm in The Gallery Room above the SU Bar at Park Campus. However, I am still uncertain whether the meeting will be on the 1st or 8th of October. I will post and send emails with this information in due course.

If you have any queries about The Philosophy Society please contact Shelley Campbell s0510427@glos.ac.uk

Film & Philosophy

Some pictures here of today's induction-week presentations on Crimes and Misdemeanors - but for those still keen to think aobut this movies - there is some useful discussion at the Philosophical Films website, the C&M page is at http://www.philfilms.utm.edu/1/crimes.htm.

There were some really exciting ideas in the presentations this morning - and there is a forum for discussion of them on the RPE ning... (where there are more photos)

d.

Moral Modularity in Buddhism?

If you're keen to get going this term - you could head to the Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy and get the podcast of an intriguing talk: Owen Flanagan (Duke University). The lecture was entitled "Buddhist Ethics and Moral Modularity" and the respondent was Professor Wayne Proudfoot.

The podcast is HERE - enjoy!

Ning?

This is a post just for our current RPE / Philosophy students: we have a social network (with chat, forums, etc) for the course at http://rpeglos.ning.com/ - all level 2 and 3 students should have had an invite to join by now - and level 1 students (who are still in he process of registering this week) will get an invite soon...

If I have missed anyone - just email me from your glos account and I'll add you...
Cheers,
Dave

Bertrand Russell: Comicbook Superhero!

I always knew this was the case, of course. A new comicbook (or graphic novel) called 'Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth' has just been published by Bloomsbury. Described as: 'it's the story of the quest for the foundation of mathematics, starring and narrated by Bertrand Russell, the British logician, philosopher, mathematician, reformer, pacifist, activist, jailbird and chronic womaniser. It's set 50 years ago on 4 September, 1939, when Russell arrived at an American university to lecture on "The Role of Logic in Human Affairs" before a sceptical audience, just after Britain had declared war on Germany. The book delves into Russell's past, his childhood and the first inklings of his search for the certainties upon which maths, and therefore all science, ultimately rest.'

A real page-turner. Move over Batman!

Find more on this at: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/bertrand-russell-the-thinking-persons-superhero-1780185.html

A warm welcome to the new RPE students

It's the start of a new academic year and, hopefully, lots of interesting comments and debates on the RPE blog. Do make your voice heard and I hope you visit this site frequently as it is not only a place for debate, but also for useful information.

Enjoy induction week, and all the RPE staff look forward to seeing you in class.

More details of induction week can be found at:
http://resources.glos.ac.uk/newstudents/induction/fchinduction/index.cfm

Oh, and for Wednesday evening for the Project, the website for the Exmouth Arms can be found at: http://theexmouth.co.uk/