“Wire­less Phi­los­o­phy,” or Wiphi, is an online project of “open access phi­los­o­phy” co-cre­at­ed by Yale and MIT that aims to make fun­da­men­tal philo­soph­i­cal con­cepts acces­si­ble by “mak­ing videos that are freely avail­able in a form that is enter­tain­ing” to peo­ple “with no back­ground in the sub­ject.” To accom­plish this goal, they have con­tract­ed with an impres­sive range of pro­fes­sors of phi­los­o­phy from pres­ti­gious uni­ver­si­ties across the coun­try. Wiphi is still very much a work-in-progress, but they cur­rent­ly fea­ture some inter­est­ing intro­duc­tions to clas­si­cal philo­soph­i­cal issues. Cur­rent­ly, the site divides into sev­er­al basic cat­e­gories like “Crit­i­cal Think­ing,” “Epis­te­mol­o­gy,” “Meta­physics,” “Ethics,” and “Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy.” Much of these are still unfin­ished, but the few videos on the site, such as those relat­ed to the prob­lem of free will and the exis­tence of God, pro­vide view­ers with much to chew on.

In the video above, MIT phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor Richard Holton explains the basics of the prob­lem of free will. He divides this into two dis­tinct prob­lems: the meta­phys­i­cal and the epis­te­mo­log­i­cal. The first prob­lem states that if the laws of nature are deter­min­is­tic, every­thing that will hap­pen is fixed, and there is in fact no free choice (no mat­ter how we feel about it). Holton choos­es to focus on the sec­ond prob­lem, the prob­lem of fore­knowl­edge. Put sim­ply, if things are deter­mined, then if we know all of the con­di­tions of real­i­ty, and have ade­quate resources, we should be able to pre­dict every­thing that is going to hap­pen.

Holton leaves aside enor­mous­ly com­pli­cat­ed devel­op­ments in physics and opts to illus­trate the prob­lem with what he calls “a sim­ple device.” In his illus­tra­tion, one must pre­dict whether a light­bulb will turn on by turn­ing on anoth­er light­bulb, part of a sys­tem he calls a “frus­tra­tor.” In this sce­nario, even if we have all the knowl­edge and resources to make per­fect­ly accu­rate pre­dic­tions, the prob­lem of “frustrators”—or faulty observers and feed­back loops—complicates the sit­u­a­tion irrev­o­ca­bly

In the video above, Pro­fes­sor Tim­o­thy Yen­ter describes the Cos­mo­log­i­cal argu­ment for the exis­tence of God, clas­si­cal­ly attrib­uted to Aris­to­tle, elab­o­rat­ed by Islam­ic philoso­phers and Thomas Aquinas, and tak­en up in the Enlight­en­ment by Leib­niz as the prin­ci­ple of suf­fi­cient rea­son. One of that argument’s premis­es, that the cos­mos (every­thing that exists) must have a cause, assumes that the causal cir­cum­stances we observe with­in the sys­tem, the uni­verse as a whole, must also apply out­side of it. Pro­fes­sor Yen­ter describes this above in terms of the “fal­la­cy of com­po­si­tion,” which occurs when one assumes that the whole has the same prop­er­ties as its parts. (Such as argu­ing that since all of your body’s atoms are invis­i­ble to the naked eye, your whole body is invis­i­ble. Try head­ing to work naked tomor­row to test this out.)

This brings us to the prob­lem of infi­nite regress. In the sec­ond part of his intro­duc­tion to the Cos­mo­log­i­cal Argument—in which he dis­cuss­es the so-called Modal Argument—Professor Yen­ter explains the key prin­ci­ple of Ex nihi­lo nihil fit, or “out of noth­ing, noth­ing comes.” This seems like a bedrock meta­phys­i­cal prin­ci­ple, such that few ques­tion it, and it intro­duces a key dis­tinc­tion between nec­es­sary things—which must exist—and con­tin­gent things, which could be oth­er­wise. The most impor­tant premise in the Modal Argu­ment is that every con­tin­gent thing must be caused by some­thing else. If all caus­es are con­tin­gent (which they seem to us to be) they must pro­ceed from a nec­es­sary, self-exis­tent thing. Whether that thing has all or any of the prop­er­ties clas­si­cal­ly ascribed to the the­is­tic God is anoth­er ques­tion all togeth­er, but Aquinas and the clas­si­cal Islam­ic philoso­phers cer­tain­ly thought so.

While there may be no philo­soph­i­cal nut­crack­er large enough to crack these prob­lems, they remain per­pet­u­al­ly inter­est­ing for many philoso­phers and sci­en­tists, and under­stand­ing the basic issues at stake is fun­da­men­tal to any study of phi­los­o­phy. In that sense, Wiphi pro­vides a nec­es­sary ser­vice to those just begin­ning to wade out into the sea of The Big Ques­tions.

 Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 90 Free Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es and Start Liv­ing the Exam­ined Life

Lawrence Krauss Explains How You Get ‘A Uni­verse From Noth­ing’

Take First-Class Phi­los­o­phy Lec­tures Any­where with Free Oxford Pod­casts

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

“To those human beings who are of any con­cern to me, I wish suf­fer­ing, des­o­la­tion, sick­ness, ill treat­ment, indig­ni­ties, pro­found self-con­tempt, the tor­ture of self-mis­trust, and the wretched­ness of the van­quished.” Thus wrote for­bid­ding­ly mus­ta­chioed Ger­man philoso­pher Friedrich Niet­zsche, artic­u­lat­ing his coun­ter­in­tu­itive view of suf­fer­ing as some­thing desir­able. But sure­ly the Niet­zschean way could nev­er lead to an enjoy­able life? On the con­trary, explains the tele­vi­sion series Phi­los­o­phy: A Guide to Hap­pi­ness. “Friedrich Niet­zsche believed that all vari­eties of suf­fer­ing and fail­ure were to be wel­comed by any­one seek­ing hap­pi­ness. We should regard them as tough chal­lenges to be over­come in the same way as a climber might tack­le a moun­tain.” Thus speaks the show’s host, pop­u­lar­iz­er of philoso­phers from Socrates to Seneca, Epi­cu­rus to Schopen­hauer, Alain de Bot­ton.

Niet­zsche per­haps put more com­pelling­ly than any writer before or since the notion of “no pain, no gain.” De Bot­ton, a phi­los­o­phy enthu­si­ast eager to look for the­o­ry in prac­tice, vis­its a ded­i­cat­ed, sac­ri­fice-mak­ing dancer from the Eng­lish Nation­al Bal­let, the com­bi­na­tion of whose acquired phys­i­cal grace and painful his­to­ry of toe­nail bruis­es make the argu­ment in a vis­cer­al way.

He then chats with a drinks dis­trib­u­tor fresh off the fail­ure of his first busi­ness ven­ture and already work­ing hard on his sec­ond. Accord­ing to our host, Niet­zsche “did­n’t think that hav­ing failed was, in itself, enough. All lives have fail­ures in them. What makes some lives ful­filled as well is the man­ner in which fail­ure has been met.” Or, in the sim­pler words of the dis­trib­u­tor him­self, “How would you be able to judge your suc­cess if you haven’t failed?”

Although this broad­cast works as an intro­duc­tion, we don’t rec­om­mend you lim­it your learn­ing about a philoso­pher with a volu­mi­nous body of writ­ten work to videos alone. In our col­lec­tion of free eBooks, you can down­load eight of Niet­zsche’s vol­umes in a vari­ety of for­mats: Beyond Good and Evil, Ecce Homo, Homer and Clas­si­cal Philol­o­gy, Human, All Too Human, The Anti Christ, The Case Against Wag­n­er, The Gay Sci­ence, and Thus Spake Zarathus­tra.

You can watch more episodes in Alain de Bot­ton’s series, A Guide to Hap­pi­ness here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Wal­ter Kaufmann’s Lec­tures on Niet­zsche, Kierkegaard and Sartre (1960)

Sartre, Hei­deg­ger, Niet­zsche: Three Philoso­phers in Three Hours

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Image via Flickr Com­mons

Love him or hate him, many of our read­ers may know enough about Daniel C. Den­nett to have formed some opin­ion of his work. While Den­nett can be a soft-spo­ken, jovial pres­ence, he doesn’t suf­fer fuzzy think­ing or banal plat­i­tudes— what he calls “deepities”—lightly. Whether he’s explain­ing (or explain­ing away) con­scious­ness, reli­gion, or free will, Dennett’s mate­ri­al­ist phi­los­o­phy leaves lit­tle-to-no room for mys­ti­cal spec­u­la­tion or sen­ti­men­tal­ism. So it should come as no sur­prise that his lat­est book, Intu­ition Pumps And Oth­er Tools for Think­ing, is a hard-head­ed how-to for cut­ting through com­mon cog­ni­tive bias­es and log­i­cal fal­lac­i­es.

In a recent Guardian arti­cle, Den­nett excerpts sev­en tools for think­ing from the new book. Hav­ing taught crit­i­cal think­ing and argu­men­ta­tion to under­grad­u­ates for years, I can say that his advice is pret­ty much stan­dard fare of crit­i­cal rea­son­ing. But Dennett’s for­mu­la­tions are uniquely—and bluntly—his own. Below is a brief sum­ma­ry of his sev­en tools.

1. Use Your Mis­takes

Dennett’s first tool rec­om­mends rig­or­ous intel­lec­tu­al hon­esty, self-scruti­ny, and tri­al and error. In typ­i­cal fash­ion, he puts it this way: “when you make a mis­take, you should learn to take a deep breath, grit your teeth and then exam­ine your own rec­ol­lec­tions of the mis­take as ruth­less­ly and as dis­pas­sion­ate­ly as you can man­age.” This tool is a close rel­a­tive of the sci­en­tif­ic method, in which every error offers an oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn, rather than a chance to mope and grum­ble.

2. Respect Your Oppo­nent 

Often known as read­ing in “good faith” or “being char­i­ta­ble,” this sec­ond point is as much a rhetor­i­cal as a log­i­cal tool, since the essence of per­sua­sion involves get­ting peo­ple to actu­al­ly lis­ten to you. And they won’t if you’re over­ly nit­picky, pedan­tic, mean-spir­it­ed, hasty, or unfair. As Den­nett puts it, “your tar­gets will be a recep­tive audi­ence for your crit­i­cism: you have already shown that you under­stand their posi­tions as well as they do, and have demon­strat­ed good judg­ment.”

3. The “Sure­ly” Klax­on

A “Klax­on” is a loud, elec­tric horn—such as a car horn—an urgent warn­ing. In this point, Den­nett asks us to treat the word “sure­ly” as a rhetor­i­cal warn­ing sign that an author of an argu­men­ta­tive essay has stat­ed an “ill-exam­ined ‘tru­ism’” with­out offer­ing suf­fi­cient rea­son or evi­dence, hop­ing the read­er will quick­ly agree and move on. While this is not always the case, writes Den­nett, such ver­biage often sig­nals a weak point in an argu­ment, since these words would not be nec­es­sary if the author, and read­er, real­ly could be “sure.”

4. Answer Rhetor­i­cal Ques­tions

Like the use of “sure­ly,” a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion can be a sub­sti­tute for think­ing. While rhetor­i­cal ques­tions depend on the sense that “the answer is so obvi­ous that you’d be embar­rassed to answer it,” Den­nett rec­om­mends doing so any­way. He illus­trates the point with a Peanuts car­toon: “Char­lie Brown had just asked, rhetor­i­cal­ly: ‘Who’s to say what is right and wrong here?’ and Lucy respond­ed, in the next pan­el: ‘I will.’” Lucy’s answer “sure­ly” caught Char­lie Brown off-guard. And if he were engaged in gen­uine philo­soph­i­cal debate, it would force him to re-exam­ine his assump­tions.

 5. Employ Occam’s Razor

 The 14^th-cen­tu­ry Eng­lish philoso­pher William of Occam lent his name to this prin­ci­ple, which pre­vi­ous­ly went by the name of lex par­si­mo­nious, or the law of par­si­mo­ny. Den­nett sum­ma­rizes it this way: “The idea is straight­for­ward: don’t con­coct a com­pli­cat­ed, extrav­a­gant the­o­ry if you’ve got a sim­pler one (con­tain­ing few­er ingre­di­ents, few­er enti­ties) that han­dles the phe­nom­e­non just as well.”

6. Don’t Waste Your Time on Rub­bish

Dis­play­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic gruff­ness in his sum­ma­ry, Dennett’s sixth point expounds “Sturgeon’s law,” which states that rough­ly “90% of every­thing is crap.” While he con­cedes this may be an exag­ger­a­tion, the point is that there’s no point in wast­ing your time on argu­ments that sim­ply aren’t any good, even, or espe­cial­ly, for the sake of ide­o­log­i­cal axe-grind­ing.

7. Beware of Deep­i­ties

Den­nett saves for last one of his favorite boogey­men, the “deep­i­ty,” a term he takes from com­put­er sci­en­tist Joseph Weizen­baum. A deep­i­ty is “a propo­si­tion that seems both impor­tant and true—and profound—but that achieves this effect by being ambigu­ous.” Here is where Dennett’s devo­tion to clar­i­ty at all costs tends to split his read­ers into two camps. Some think his dri­ve for pre­ci­sion is an admirable ana­lyt­ic eth­ic; some think he man­i­fests an unfair bias against the lan­guage of meta­physi­cians, mys­tics, the­olo­gians, con­ti­nen­tal and post-mod­ern philoso­phers, and maybe even poets. Who am I to decide? (Don’t answer that).

You’ll have to make up your own mind about whether Dennett’s last rule applies in all cas­es, but his first six can’t be beat when it comes to crit­i­cal­ly vet­ting the myr­i­ad claims rou­tine­ly vying for our atten­tion and agree­ment.

via Mefi

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Daniel Den­nett and Cor­nel West Decode the Phi­los­o­phy of The Matrix in 2004 Film

Daniel Den­nett (a la Jeff Fox­wor­thy) Does the Rou­tine, “You Might be an Athe­ist If…”

90 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness