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Tag Archives: philosophy

When was the last time an argument changed your mind?

31 Oct

I mean, really.

Imagine you are watching a debate for the presidential candidates and you go into the debate with certain opinions on how things should be run – say: tax code. Then, after sitting and watching the candidates outline their rationale (right?! I know I’m reaching here) you think to yourself, ‘huh. Well, that guy just changed my mind.’

Does this ever really happen?

Fairly certain this guy has never been persuaded to a different opinion

Fairly certain this guy has never been persuaded to a different opinion

Can people who believe in a ‘flat tax’ be persuaded that a ‘progressive tax’ structure is more fair and more worthy of their support? (I threw in the ‘and’ there because you can be shown the rationale for something and agree with it without changing your position)

Can proponents of a ‘pathway to citizenship’ be convinced that it’s simply too impractical to actually be enacted?

Can pro-lifers be converted to pro-choice by the right argument?

(as a side note, I wrote the above statements in a completely arbitrary manner, because I recognize that people also seek out ‘echo chambers’ for their own ways of thinking, which may be a part of the problem as a whole. Anyway, I don’t mean to deter a reader because they see words like ‘pro-choice’ or ‘pro-life’.)

Kepler could have applied himself better...

Kepler could have applied himself better…

Sometimes I question whether the Greeks were just wasting their time spending all that energy thinking about rhetoric. They didn’t persuade the Romans to stay out of their lands and to not steal their whole pantheon of gods. Maybe if they spent a little more time practicing their phalanx formations and a little less worrying about whether there was really a place filled with Perfect Forms (I’m looking at you, Plato) that we vaguely remember from before the time we were born, they might have effected a more sturdy border guard.

Nevertheless,

I changed my mind today about something. (I’m still working on changing it about some other things that would make my life easier, but I’m off to a good start) I got an email pointing me to the following post by Brett Berry on Medium this morning.

https://static.medium.com/embed.jsWhy 5 x 3 = 5 + 5 + 5 Was Marked Wrong
My first reaction was to be upset with the teacher who gave this kid points off for correct answers. I opened the article in order to satisfy my own desire for hearing an echo chamber of my thoughts only to find that the author took a different stance.

I kept reading because I was determined to write a comment to express my ire – but, you know, wanted to make sure that I could point out the best examples of the author’s flawed thinking first. I first saw that he was making a reasonable argument, but felt like it was still wrong. Then I saw how his examples supported his way of thinking and was starting to lament that he was making it more difficult for me to undercut him. Finally, he added that, depending on the order that things were taught, the answer could be considered correct under some circumstances, but that it was better to teach the meaning of the maths stepwise in order to law the proper framework for future lessons.

I give up. You win, Math Guy.

Not only did you change my mind on this issue, but you also laid the framework for me to re-examine my whole approach to Common Core.

 
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Posted by on October 31, 2015 in Uncategorized

 

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Bill Nye, Popular Guy

18 Feb

Bill Nye was on The Bill Maher Show tonight.He’s been very popular the past week or two, appearing in a debate on evolution and the viability of intelligent design, he spoke about climate science with Marsha Blackburn on Sunday’s Meet the Press, and now Bill Maher.

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Teddy Roosevelt and party at the tree, General Sherman.

On Maher’s show Nye was asked how it is that we know the world is older than 6000 years. Or to rephrase, “How could we know if a tree is older than 6800 years old?”

It’s actually a good question.  It’s a good question that gets to the crux of what Bill Nye was engaging Ken Ham on: how do we know things?

To address that big question, let’s talk about how we would answer the smaller one about the tree and see if that gives us any insight into how we gain knowledge…

Every kid has heard that the rings in a tree stump correspond to years that that tree lived. But how do we know?

ImageForestry.about.com tells us that, “The new, large cells that are produced the following spring are easily distinguished from the previous year’s tree growth as a distinctive ring. A ring composed of a light part (spring growth) and a dark part (late summer/fall growth) represents each year’s growth.”

If you want to test this method for dating trees, the best place to start is to find a tree that you know was planted at a certain date. Perhaps in a housing development, something you planted yourself, something your parents planted, or better yet… get some trees to plant this year and come back in a decade or so. 

ImageOver the course of a decade or so, cut one of your trees or use an increment borer to take a sample that includes the pith (the centermost section of the tree). Now count the rings. While you’re at it, consult some records that can tell you the weather patterns over the time that this particular tree lived. With this information, you can now cross-reference your tree ring data with weather data. If you have bores from your trees over successive years, you can line your samples up and compare. Do the older trees have more rings? Do all of your trees have numbers of rings corresponding to their known age? Do you see any weather-related patterns in your ring spacing? Do all the trees have the same weather patterns for the same years?

What I’m proposing is, you can adopt the hypothesis that trees make a ring every year and then test it just as we described above.

If you do this, you’re doing science. You can see the data yourself, see how the data supports or refutes the hypothesis you made. You don’t need any outside help, you just need time and access to some trees (and perhaps the equipment that enables you to get your data).

Now ask yourself, ‘do you believe your data? Do you think it supports your idea? What experiment would give you the best opportunity to change your mind about this?’

Now do that experiment.

And call yourself a scientist while you’re at it.

You aren’t just answering the question that started this column. You are seeing how scientific method works and getting a glimpse into the way that we learn from the world around us.

 
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Posted by on February 18, 2014 in Uncategorized

 

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Dawkins and Chopra

11 Nov

Unfortunately, I missed the live stream of a debate between Richard Dawkins and Deepak Chopra this weekend. I made the faulty assumption that I would be able to view / listen to it later, but for some reason that I don’t understand, youtube has blocked replay of this event in the United States. I’ve been assured that there was nothing particularly groundbreaking in this event…

Chopra says, “Blah blah, quantum, blah blah blah, consciousness, other way of knowing…”

Dawkins replies, ” What in God’s name are you talking about?”

A clip of a prior interaction between the two can be found at:

As my previous post hints, there is a problem in the communication of science to the public. It may be added that there is a deep valley between the way that scientists speak and the way that the public – or more importantly, the way some public personalities like Chopra- speaks.

Dawkins can be heard in the video clip above trying to make sense of Chopra’s language. Is he speaking in metaphor or does he mean to speak literally?

 
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Posted by on November 11, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

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The ethics of vaccination

07 Jul

ImageI recently came across an interesting article on vaccination. The article, written by Dr. Stemwedel of San Jose State University, addresses the ethics of non-vaccination with respect to the social contract.

Although this aspect of the argument may be mentioned in other articles, it is seldom given such thorough treatment.

What I find most comical is that parents can bypass the social contract and decline to vaccinate their children but still send them into public school (etc.). Apparently (although I may be wrong here), all you have to do is express an ethical opposition to vaccination and that’s acceptable.

Are all obligations of the social contract as easily dispensed with while still keeping the benefits?

Can I send my son to school with a pack of Marlboros because we don’t agree about the dangers of secondhand smoke? After all, it’s just my one son who will be smoking in class. -I know this is an absurd argument, but don’t we forbid smoking in class for the same reason we insist on vaccination? And I would be pretty disappointed if my son started smoking – he is only 8.

What other elements of the social contract can be ethically declined?

Must I pay taxes even when the guy I voted for lost?

Can I be the one guy who declines to be burdened by speeding laws?

 

By the way, last year saw an outbreak of Measles in Wales that has been attributed to declining vaccination rates over recent years.

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Posted by on July 7, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

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TED Talks, free speech and scientific integrity

07 Mar

Screen Shot 2013-03-07 at 3.15.39 PMThere’s a fascinating, fast-moving discussion join on right now sparked by a recent TEDx talk. If you aren’t aware of TED talks, take some time and check them out, they’re a fascinating group of short talks that cover a variety of ideas. Under the TED umbrella, there are also TEDx talks (TED-liscenced talks that are like the parent, TED talks, but more widespread and under less scrutiny), there are TEDed videos that provide short, educational videos targeting classroom use, etc. I’ve been a big fan of TED because of the caliber or speakers and the quality of their talks.

However, one talk has stood out and has received a lot of attention from the scientific community. This came to my attention recently because I follow Jerry Coyne’s blog and he posted the talk in one of his entries along with a strong critique of the talk. You can check out his post here.

Fortunately, and to the credit of TED, this critique has been taken very seriously and the TED site now has an open comment section where the value of this post is being discussed. If you are interested in thinking about what science is… what evidence is … you might like reading through the extensive comments that have simply exploded. As of right now, there doesn’t appear to be much flaming going on and there are some very good comments being made about what it means to do science.

I’ve had conflicting thoughts about whether to bring this discussion up here, because I think the talk is simply terrible in its treatment of science and I was worried that readers might be mistakenly wooed down the garden path by his wonderful oratory skills, but I think the comments section adds enough balance to the discussion and  the holes in his logic are laid bare.

Happy reading.

 
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Posted by on March 7, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

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Your Inner Fish – Chapter 1

28 Jan

tiktaalik_reconstructionThis semester, like the preceding three or four semesters, my general biology class is reading ‘Your Inner Fish’ by Neil Shubin. Every week, we cover one chapter and my students write an essay with their thoughts before we discuss that chapter in class.

Last week was our first week with this book, so I’ve just completed reading several essays on chapter 1 from my students. Overall, I’d say that the book seems to be getting a good response and at least interests most people. I’ve had a wide variety of responses with respect to accepting the author’s interpretations of Tiktaalik, his find of a ~375 million year old fossil species that shows evidence of being a transition species for the first quadrupeds to come onto land.

This is always a fun group of essays for me to read because it challenges students to consider their perception of science as a way of viewing the world. Or, perhaps I should say, ‘science, as a way of understanding the world around us.’ A scientific view of the world is actually a fairly unnatural one. It is easy to see how it is even evolutionarily disadvantageous to have a scientific view of the world. If you have been a victim of a crime (you imagesget mugged walking down a city street) don’t you always expect that crime to happen again? It doesn’t matter that this happened only once out of thousands of times you walked the same route home, you now feel convinced that this is dangerous and are more alert and cautious. You may even find a new way home. And who would blame you? We’re programmed to look out for our own safety. This often means over-exaggerating  our fears and assuming the worst. It also means that we will now overestimate the real danger.

The other thing this discussion brings up is: what does science do for us?

The answer is supposed to be, ‘it enables us to learn from the past and have a better ability to predict the future.’  We can make predictions about things if we closely observe the world and learn its laws. The corollary to this is, if you can’t learn from the evidence you see about you, how can you ever know what to expect from the world?

All of these are interesting questions. All of them challenge how we look at the world, what we take for granted and what we can expect to get from our experiences. I’m really looking forward to reading more of my students’ reflections on this text and hope that you (anyone reading this) feel free to engage in a dialog about either this book, or the questions it brings up.

 
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Posted by on January 28, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

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Brainstorming a new class

27 Dec

I’m not certain whether I can push this through or not where I teach, but I’m interested in designing and teaching a course on the nature of science and addressing some of the philosophical questions around science. I brought this up with my wife on the way to the airport yesterday to discuss it and we identified two central problems: What is the appropriate scope of a class like this? i.e. Should it address just a few central questions or cover more of the reach of science? Secondly, how much can I really expect students to read in a semester? Many of my students are part time and have full-time jobs and children they are managing around their academic schedules.

Let me be honest, I really want to do this course because I want to read or re-read a lot of these books and do a much better job when I have to discuss it in front of a class.

Here’s the rough draft outline of what I would love to teach in a perfect world. I’d love to get comments and suggestions about how to shape this course. More readings, key chapters of books to excerpt from the books I identified or others, etc. Also, if you’ve taught or taken a course like this, what was the reading load like?

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The Nature of Biology: A Reading Course

A Proposal for a one credit course in biology focusing on reading, discussion and writing assignments.  Student grades come entirely from written and oral discussion – no tests

Format: Meet once or twice a week for one and a half  hours to discuss readings, organize schedules and discuss writing assignments

Assignments: Ongoing discussion groups online – every student must write at least one post with a significant contribution AND at least one reply to another student’s post for each book read.

Objective: To consider the physical and chemical laws of the universe and assess how these come together to ‘create’ biological life. Also, to discuss what we know of the origins of the universe, the earth and life itself. How does science teach us to think about these things? How do we know what is real and what is not?

Structure

Unit I: The Nature of Science

  1. What makes us think that we can believe what our senses tell us? What is reason and how can we make rational decisions in this world?
    1. Something on the nature and philosophy of science
    2. How can we tell the real from the make believe?
      1. Show the scene for 2001 when Dave Bowman is running around the inside of the Discovery.

i.     “What are we seeing?”

ii.     “How is it possible that he can run continuously and keep going around in circles?”

iii.     Why do we need an explanation at all. Can’t we just accept what we see?

  1. Dawkins, The Magic of Reality
  2. Massimo Pigliucci, Nonsense on Stilts

Unit II: Physical Origins

  1. What do we know about the universe?
  2. How did it begin and how will it end?
  3. We are all star-stuff: Basic Physical and Chemical Laws
    1. a.     ____________, Carl Sagan
    2. Origin of Earth
      1. a.     The Earth, the Moon and the Solar system – some video…. What if we had no moon?

Unit III: Biology

  1. What is Biology?
    1. What makes Biology Special, Ernst Mayr
    2. Life is United
      1. Something on Evolution??? Mayr again? –or- Why Evolution is True, Coyne
      2. Craig Venter on creating synthetic life in the lab
 
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Posted by on December 27, 2012 in Uncategorized

 

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