Blog Round Eight: Haters Gonna Hate - End of Semester Finale + Revision Process

All in all, I'd say that I had a great time in this class during the semester. Based on the format of my last History of Philosophy class (lectures + daily homework assignments), I wasn't looking forward to it. The format of the class and how it was run was very enjoyable.

For my final blog post, I'll comment on the inter-connectivity of different philosophies across different times and locations. While writing and revising my essay, I noticed that a lot of concepts from the Pre-Socratic turned up in other religions and philosophies. In my essay, I wrote about Pythagorean metaphysics. In my research, I found that the idea of an over-arching harmony is actually pretty popular. It's the crux of the Buddhist religion, it appears in European philosophy (Spinoza and Leibniz), and is a part of the Ontological argument for the existence of God.

I'd like to think that something like this is indicative of the existence of a divine harmony. Just the fact that so many different philosophies and religions recognize the existence of harmony doesn't necessarily mean that it exists, and we can't know the characteristics of the harmony from this fact either. But it would be nice.

Nothing comes into existence as an original idea. Different areas of philosophy do not exist in isolated vacuums. I don't think that it's really too strange how philosophical ideas are interconnected. It's certainly cool and can help to establish credibility.

So yeah. Peace.

-Andrew

Blog Round Seven: Jank Jam Session - Paper Abstract Thought Process

Pythagoras! My original plan was to try and link the perfect concordes to moral theory, but I think that whole operation is shaky, at best. That topic would involve quantifying values which would be subjective by nature. So what will I do now? That's a good question.

Pythagoras has a quote that I really like. It is the sixteenth aphorism from his chapter in the reader. "The tetractys is a certain number, which being composed of the four first numbers produces the most perfect number, 10. For 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 come to be 10. This number is the first tetractys and is called the source of ever-flowing nature, since according to them the entire kismos is organized according to harmonia, and harmonia is a system of three concords, the fourth, the fifth, and the octave, and the proportions of these three concords are found in the aforementioned four numbers."

Just... wow. For a musician, it is an amazing thing to hear that harmony is the origin of the universe, and it kind of makes sense in a romantic way. Everything in our bodies works together in a kind of harmony, and at our best, we interact with our environment harmoniously. I would like to make a paper topic out of this, but my concern is making it 3000 words (That's a lot of words! I barely even speak 3000 words out loud on a good day.) Here are my thoughts:

1. Explain Pythagoras' world view in relation tot he tetractys. I'll need to use secondary sources for this. Unfortunately, the reader doesn't give too much information about it besides aphorism 16.
    1.1- I think I'll gush about the importance and awesomeness of music somewhere around here. At some point, I'll need to talk about the beauty of harmony, why harmony is an inherent quality of goodness, and why music is awesome.

2. Analyze it. Is this a sound way (hah. music pun) to construct the world? How does this relate to abstract ideas and corporeal objects?

3. Do I agree with it? Why? Here's another section which will require a lot of sources. Fortunately, there's a lot about Pythagoras in our library. That makes me happy.

4. Who objects to this? If I can't find anybody in the books in the library, I'll look to European Philosophy. Those guys have a few ideas on how the world is made, and I'm sure they'll disagree with Pythagoras.

5. Who concurs with this? For example, I think Gottfried Leibniz would concur with the theory of harmony. His theory of Monads revolves completely around the theory of pre-established harmony within the monads.

6. Conclusion! Yeah!

So yeah! Pythagoras! Conference Paper! Go Team!

Blog Round Six: Dubstep Remix - Diotima

Woah. I've seriously neglected this. My bad.

Anyways, I like the chapter in which Socrates recounts his questioning by Diotima. The first thing that struck me is that she quickly broke Socrates' usual style of reasoning. In other Socratic dialogues, Socrates tends to reason in binary. What I mean by this is that he says either something is or it isn't, with no middle ground. But Diotima quickly says, "Then don't force whatever is not beautiful to be ugly, or whatever is not good to be bad. It's the same with Love: when you agree he is neither good nor beautiful, you need not think he is ugly and bad; he could be something in between." Indeed, the whole theme of the Diotima sections is reconciliation between absolutes.  She says that Love is neither mortal nor immortal, but in between. Love, according to Diotima, is a mediating force between the extremes of wisdom and ignorance, good and bad, and beautiful and ugly.  Love is the state of wanting something, instead of having something. Therefore, loving is an action, rather than a state. As Diotima says, "I conclude that you thought Love was being loved, rather than being a lover."

I'll admit that when Diotima begins to talk of "reproduction and birth in beauty," she loses me. I think her conclusion is that a desire for immortality is love. But is that it? I hope we cover that in class today.

I really need to step up my game on this. The semester is almost over.

-Andrew

And Now In Place Of Your Regularly Scheduled Programming, Part 2: Grainger

My music post is a little overdue. I said last time that I would go over Shepherd's Hey by Percy Grainger, but I've decided to look at another Grainger work, Irish Tune from County Derry.

Here is a recording of Irish Tune from County Derry, as played by the University of North Texas' Wind Ensemble.

As you're listening to this piece, listen to the areas of tension at 1:28, 2:25, and in other places. The harmonic structure gathers for a second, then releases outward to provide softness and harmony. There are three distinct phases to this song. The first is a brass and low woodwind choir. This phase explores the melody and its progression. The second phase is the high woodwind choir, which is an echo of the first phase. The same melody is developed, but more emphasis is placed on higher, rather than lower notes, for a brighter feeling. The third phase is where everything comes together in one last repetition of the melody. Elaborate chord structures are built, tension is used sparingly, and harmony is reached in the end. 3:27 is the climax of the piece, when the tension is brought to its maximum, then tight harmonies are played down the scale.

This is a beautiful piece. It is not technically difficult. And by that, I mean it is just quarter, half, and whole notes. Technically, it is a very direct and easy piece. The difficulty in this piece comes from the necessary tuning and subtle intonation. This piece doesn't sound right if all of the notes are just played one by one. The performers give shape to the notes and phrases, animating the whole piece. As the performers move, the song moves with them.

Sit back, plug in some headphones, and turn this song up to 11. It's worth the listen.

-Andrew

Blog Round Five: Hive Mind Jive - Class Today + More Paper Ideas

Today was an informative class period. Plus, we had desserts. Desserts make everything better.

Anaxagoras is an okay guy. He reminds me a lot of Kant. The aphorism that is most similar is number 20, which reads, "Owing to their [the senses'] feebleness, we are not able to determine the truth." This is just like Kant's nouminal and phenomenal world. The nouminal world is the world as it truly is. The phenomenal world is the world as it appears to us, through our perceptions. According to Kant, we cannot know the nouminal world because we continually perceive the world. By nature, we can only know the phenomenal world. Anaxagoras, like Kant, emphasizes limits on human reason. The truth which is beyond our understanding is the Nous. And while, we have a part of the Nous inside of us, we cannot truly know the nature of it. The Nous we observe can only be as we perceive it, and not as it actually is.

I wish I could talk about Anaxagoras more, but there weren't a lot of aphorisms to read, and there isn't too much to infer from what there is. The people who presented today did very well, but I felt bad that there wasn't too much in the primary source for them to use.

Switching gears now, I'm going to move over to my conference paper. Pythagoras and moral philosophy! There's a lot of books in Moody library about Pythagoras, so I'm not in want for materials. The first thing to note is the Pythagorean declaration, "All things known have number." This is the first major part of my paper; establishing if things like epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics can have number. Can they? Well, it's hard to assign a system of order to (sometimes) vague and intangible concepts. In terms of metaphysics, Pythagoreans asserted that there were patterns of numbers in the universe, and that the whole kosmos follows these patterns. For epistemology, numbers are part of our perceptions; we will be more likely to identify a pattern in the world, and its discovery can enable us to learn.

Ethics is the difficult category here. In order to link musical chords and moral philosophy, ethical criterion and their qualities must be linked with music. There must be something about the qualities of Justice, Love, or Humility that are obvious to the Fourth, Fifth, and Octave chords.

I think I've got my work cut out for me. You know, it would really suck if I were to find that I couldn't actually write about my paper. You know, no links, no source, etc. I'd laugh for a bit. But I think I'll be able to find something good and make a good paper out of it.

-Andrew

Blog Round Four: Dance 'til You're Sore - Empedocles Postgame + Paper Idea

So yeah. I thought my presentation went pretty well today. Maybe I'm biased, but I was happy with the presentation and the performance. I'll admit that halfway through my preparation I realized that I was working on the Metaphysics of Empedocles instead of the Epistemology, so I ended up having to modify half of my work to fit the presentation that I gave today. Luckily the metaphysics and epistemology are pretty well related, so it isn't too weird for me to talk about the metaphysics.

Final thoughts on Empedocles: Honestly, I liked him a lot. He's pretty cool. What I liked the most was his account on how we come to have knowledge. " For by earth we see earth, by water, water, by Aither, divine Aither, any by fire, destructive fire, yearning by yearning, and strife by mournful strife." Through the expression of the classic elements in our own bodies, we can come to observe and know other expression of the elements and how love and strife influence the different shapes. It's total crap and there's no way to prove it, but it's fascinating nonetheless.

Now onto greater heights! Today in class we talked about how we will be presenting conference papers at the end of the semester. I am not in want of a topic. My mind immediately went back to Pythagoras and his discussions on music. I want to see if there is a link between music and moral philosophy, using Pythagoras as a base for the concepts of music and morality. I don't know if there is even a link there, but this is too interesting of a topic and too good of an opportunity to pass up. I'll make another blog post once I've done some preliminary reading. I need to find some new sources for this because the parts about music aren't covered too well in the reader.

- Andrew

And Now In Place of Your Regularly Scheduled Programming...

The title of the blog says that music is a part of this thing. So yeah. I'll try and make a musical post a week to have a break from all of the deep thoughts.

This week's piece is Aurora Awakes by John Mackey (Youtube Link Here).

I'm particularly fond of this piece because I played it with the Granbury High School Wind Ensemble my senior year. It was a great experience. This is one of the few pieces where I was able to really form a connection with the music, where I as an individual ceased to exist, and I was part of the music. Pay attention to the clarinet (I played the solo during high school) and flute solos at the beginning. The piece is a musical representation of the Goddess Aurora waking up, bringing light to the world. The early woodwind solos herald the coming of dawn in a subtle manner. The tension that is brought up in the loud section helps emphasize the resolution in the measure before the tempo picks up. When the song picks up in tempo and volume, think of a great sunrise over a beautiful landscape. Everything comes to life as the sun rises. To listen to this piece, plug in some good headphones and crank the volume up to 11. Lie down and let yourself go. Become one with the music.

I hope you enjoy the music. Even after playing this in high school, I still listen to it regularly. Next week, I'll go over Shepherd's Hey by Percy Grainger.

-Andrew

Round Three: Knee of the Bee - Presentation Preparation

I'm not going to lie. I spent my free time on Thursday playing Civilization V on my computer instead of working on my presentation (Babylon for the win!). But I'm working on it now, so it's all good.


Empedocles "at-a-glance": Grade A narcissist with an ego the size of the Indian subcontinent. "I go about you, an immortal god, no longer mortal, honored among all, as it seems, wreathed with headbands and blooming garlands." To quote my fraternity brothers, his declaration is "hoish." Anyways, his philosophy seems pretty cool. My presentation will be over his epistemology so let's take a look at that.

The first relevant aphorism that I find in the reader is number 108, which reads, "A single sight [visual impression] comes from both [eyes]." While this is a short statement, a lot of Empedocles' epistemology can be derived from this aphorism. In its most basic form, this aphorism can be interpreted as, "What you see is what exists." You can only perceive what you see. This point can be taken further to mean, "If you are not perceiving something then it does not exist," but I don't think Empedocles means exactly that. It is true and obvious that if you are not seeing something, you cannot directly perceive the object (tautology! woooooo!), but the wider implication is that outside of our vision, our perception, objects might not exist. I think this is an interesting point that I will definitely look into for my presentation. A lot of the philosophers that I studied last semester in Modern European Philosophy covered this topic. There's a lot to read here.

The second area that I will focus on during my presentation is Empedocles' theory of knowledge. In aphorism 115, he says, "For by earth we see earth, by water, water, by Aither, divine Aither, and by fire, destructive fire, yearning by yearning, and strife by mournful strife." Actually, I'm getting ahead of myself here. Context: There are four main elements and two powers which control their formation and separation. The elements are Earth, Air, Water, and Fire. The two powers are Love and Strife. All things in the kosmos are formed through the elements and governed by the powers. So what Empedocles is saying in this aphorism is through the earth, air, fire, and water that is in our essence, we can come to observe the elements in the world. Empedocles says in aphorism 118, "For from these [the roots] (the classical elements) all things are joined and compounded, and by these they think and fell pleasure and pain." We have knowledge through the elements inside of us expressing their familiarity with the other forms of the elements.

So yeah. That's the initial prep. The next step is to take a look at the works of Hume, Berkely, and Reid to see if they have anything to say on the theory of knowledge.

-Andrew

Blog Round Two: Electric Boogaloo - Heraclitus

I also like Heraclitus. The first thing I noticed about him is that in his writings he takes a lot of swings at other authors and poets, like Homer, Archilochus, Pythagoras, and Hesiod. His main reason for disliking them so is they have knowledge, but not understanding.

The distinction between knowing and understanding is very important to Heraclitus. Aphorism 3 states this clearly. Is reads, "Much learning ["polymathy"] does not teach insight. Otherwise it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras and moreover Xenophanes and Hecataeus." The next Aphorism also corroborates this point. "Pythagoras the son of Mnesarchus practiced inquiry more than all other men, and making a selection of these writings constructed his own wisdom, polymathy, evil trickery." I think the difference between learning and wisdom is rather obvious. People who have knowledge are common, but people who are wise are rare. 

Another point Heraclitus harps (haha instrument pun) on is the importance of objective thought. He says in aphorism 19, "One ought not to act and speak like people asleep." By "asleep", he means living and thinking in a personal matter. Heraclitus believes all people should live and act as if they are awake and sharing the same world. Objective thought and selfless action are necessary to live in the same world as other people, as to not be considered a bad person. 

The major point of contention I have after my first reading is at aphorism 28, which reads, "Heraclitus judged human opinions to be children's playthings." Heh. That's a pretentious statement. If human opinions are child's play, then how are we as adults supposed to transcend them? This line of thinking reminds me of the beginning of Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, where he says, "In our time nobody is content to stop with faith but wants to go further. It would be perhaps be rash to ask where these people are going, but it is surely a sign of breeding and culture for me to assume that everybody has faith for otherwise it would be queer to them to be going further." Heraclitus seems to echo (or perhaps precede) the common people of Kierkegaard's society. He talks of going further than human opinions, but doesn't outline how. 

Second, the nature of going beyond human opinion is contradictory to me. We are humans, and so the highest opinions that we are capable of holding are human opinions. There are varying degrees of our opinions, good and bad, but I don't think we can transcend human thought. Kant wrote about the limits of human knowledge, the nouminal and phenomenal world, and how when knowledge has reached its limit, faith is needed to fill in the gaps. I generally agree with him. There are limits to things we can know, and there is a higher truth that is above us. There is a way in which the universe works that we are blind to due to our living in it. The truth (divine truth, THE truth) can only be observed by a being outside of our universe. 

So yeah, Heraclitus is pretty cool. There are a lot of obvious statements in the reader that he supplies (maybe they're not obvious to a citizen of Ancient Greece), a lot of pretentious statements (it takes a lot of balls to go after Homer and Hesiod), and few contentious statements. All in all, not a bad philosopher.

- Andrew

Blog Round One: Here Comes The Fun - Pythagoras

I like Pythagoras a lot. His theory on the transmigration of souls is interesting in the fact that he was teaching it around the same time that Buddha Siddhartha Gautama would have been teaching the same theory, only in a different part of the world. However, the area of Pythagorean philosophy that I have the most interest is the work on numbers and music.

 The passage I am referring to is 16 in the reader, which says,

 "The tetractys is a certain number , which being composed of the four first numbers produces the most perfect number, 10. For 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 come to be 10. This number is the first tetractys and is called the source of every-flowing nature, since according to them the entire kosmos is organized according to harmonia, and harmonia is a system of three concords, the fourth, the fifth, and the octave, and the proportions of these three concords are found in the aforementioned four numbers." 

Here, Pythagoras is asserting that all of nature and the kosmos can be explained through the musical chords of a major fourth, major fifth, and a perfect octave. 

And because this topic interests me so, I raise my question here: Can the harmony of the universe be explained through chords?

First we must know what Pythagoras truly means when he says, "the proportions of these three concords are found in the aforementioned four numbers." A concord is different from a chord in that two tones are only used as opposed the the normal three notes of a chord. The numbers 4, 5, and 8 can be made in the tetractys of 1, 2, 3, and 4. And the proportion which Pythagoras is referring to is the size ratio of the different pitches in the concord. The fourth, fifth, and eighth notes in a scale are all connected proportionally to the original note. And so the argument I think Pythagoras is trying to make is that everything is proportionally and mathematically related to each other. The most pleasing shapes and forms will be in a ratio of 1.5:1, 1.625:1, and 2:1 (The fourth, fifth, and octave concord, respectively). So, these ratios can be applied to many different things, including the order of the heavens, and the formation of pleasing things around us. Pythagoras believes that all pleasing things around us (sounds, tools, shapes, etc.) are constructed in these ratios because these particular ratios are inherently pleasing to us.

This argument is flimsy, and perhaps I am misrepresenting Pythagoras' view. If I am, feel free to correct me. However, I remain immensely interested in this topic.

- Andrew