Courses:

• Paper Assignment 1 (PDF)
• Paper Assignment 2 (PDF)
• Paper Assignment 3 (PDF)

Lecture 2: Forester, E. M. "The Machine Stops."

1. The Machine Stops depends upon a difference in the relation between people where body-language and nuances of expression carry important weight and relations–such as conference-calls like the one that preceded the Challenger disaster–that are managed via the operations of machinery. The former is referred to as "direct experience" and the inhabitants of the Machine have a horror of it. How valid is this opposition? Do we ever encounter each other directly? Our social identities have many aspects, and these aspects, more often than not, are tied to the considerable variety in kinds of social situations; explicit and inexplicit codes and conventions find expression in speech and behavior and mediate our experience of one another. Why should talking down a telephone, say, be any less immediate than the ritual gestures and speech of a conversation in a board room or during a presentation at presidential mansion?

2. Hackers and nerds who frequent internet "chat-rooms" experience a novel freedom from their everyday social identities and often claim to have developed a series of new ones, to which they give mysterious, misleading, or comic names. Can media be a vehicle for the expression of an alternate social identity? Consider the difference between tools and machines. Tools, we know, can become extensions of one's body. (The blind often claim that they feel what their canes are touching, not the cane that their fingers are touching.) Is a bicycle a tool or a machine? Can automobiles become an extension of your body? How about the hacker and his computer?

3. What does it mean to live inside a machine? Is the machinery simply a metaphor, a stand-in for features of human relationships that Forster judged adversely? Or is the story actually about machinery and what happens to human relationships when human relationships become dependent upon machines, particularly in the way of communication? Or can these questions both be answered affirmatively—by raising the possibility that the story is about something in human nature (of which Forster does not approve) which does not depend upon the existence of machinery but which is encouraged by an increasing reliance of human beings to manage their relationships with one another by means of machines?

4. Can people be part of a machine (or a machine-like process)? Would you regard the workers on an assembly-line as serving the conveyor belt, which embodies an idea of consecutive assembly that the workers do not have to grasp to perform their function? Can one regard the factory itself as a machine in which the workers are functioning parts?

5. Workers might be elements of a machine-system but how about staff and management? Any corporate entity (e.g., a government or a business) with a table of organization regards each element as performing a distinct function within the system of the whole, as the system turns input into output. Is it necessary to understand how the system works at every stage to operate efficiently as a subordinate element within it?

6. Some specific questions, among others about The Machine Stops: Vashti agrees to "isolate" herself to talk to Kuno. Is she in the presence of "several thousand people" when she hasn't "isolated" herself? Why does she feel that she is "wasting time" when she agrees to talk to only one person? What does Kuno mean when he says that mankind is the measure of all things? The Book of the Machine is a set of instructions for operating the cell inhabited by each of the people of the Machine plus a set of timetables for various public facilities. Vashti holds it "reverently", kisses it, and feels "the delirium of acquiescence." What is she "acquiescing" to? Regard for the Machine is presented in the text as a kind of misplaced form of religious worship, and yet there is much talk that the present age has successfully banished superstition. Is this a contradiction? How about the notion that each year (p. 263.) the machine is served more efficiently and less intelligently? Looking at the stars or the Himalayas, Vashti thinks, "No ideas here." What sort of ideas could one discover simply by looking at such things?

Lecture 3: Ancient Views of Nature: Aristotle. Physics. Bk II. and Cicero. Excerpt from On the Gods: The Discourse of Balbus.

Physics, Book II.

1. The word physis in Greek means nature; the title of this book might well be The Nature of Things. Aristotle believes that understanding anything has to do with identifying the sort of thing it is and that this identification depends upon being able to identify its inherent principle of change–change in appearance, in location, in motion. Do we believe that change is inherent in things? Or is it always induced by externalities? Or a combination of both?

2. Understanding the nature of things depends upon asking the right questions about them. The answers, for Aristotle, are aitai–a word usually translated as causes, but perhaps better translated as becauses, for they are the answer to a properly formulated question about why something is the way it is. Aristotle offers four aitai. What are they? Can you give an account of them?

3. We can easily think of kinds of things that have no intellectual significance (Example: all physical objects that are approximately five inches from the nearest wall) or things that might have significance but do not exist (phlogiston, witches); but Aristotle believes that everyday perception and a trained intelligence can see into the nature of things–get at the inherent principle of change in things. Is this a naive assumption? Is it still in operation today?

4. The inherent tendency to change is called eidos by Aristotle–usually translated as form, but it is also the ancient Greek word for idea and also for species. Do you see any connection between these things? He has a quarrel with the philosopher Antiphon about whether eidos is inherent or external in chapter one of Book II. What is the nature of the quarrel?

5. Aristotle believes that there are two features of the world that do not submit to understanding the nature of things–luck or chance (tyche) and spontaneity or coincidence (automaton). What is his understanding of these features and how does it differ from our own?

6. Inherent principles of change each make for change in a particular way. This way is called its telos, its end, its aim, its goal. Things in the world all possess a telos, and the purposeful activities of human beings constitute only one sort of teleological activity. Do we still employ teleological descriptions of the nature and activity of things? If things are properly described teleologically, does it follow that they have purposes?

7. In chapter eight, Aristotle considers the idea that things happen, not "for the sake of something", that is, in accordance with an end, an aim, or a goal, but rather of necessity, "just as rain falls, not to make crops grow but of necessity." What is his argument against this view?

Balbus on The Nature of the Gods.

Cicero's book, The Nature of the Gods, actually gives a précis of three ancient views of the nature of the universe. The second part of the book offers an account by one of the three disputants, Balbus, of the Stoic view. It is a view which insists that the teleological nature of things is evident and its denial flies in the face of the obvious. How does it differ from Aristotle's view?

Lecture 4: Montaigne. "On Cannibals."; Bacon, Francis. "The New Atlantis."; Drayton. To the Virginia Voyage.; Marvell. Bermudas.; and Shakespeare. The Tempest.

1. How serious is Montaigne's account of the life of the Cannibals? What are the chief features of their lives? What enables the cannibals to live in the manner that they do? Would it be possible to import Cannibal institutions into the Europe of Montaigne's day? Would you say that the Cannibals, as Montaigne describes them, live more or less according to nature than Europeans do?

2. Drayton's poem is typical of verse about the New World during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. What features of the world that it describes are of particular interest? How does it compare with Marvell's Bermudas, which is somewhat later in time?

3. Compare Montaigne's Cannibals with the people of the New Atlantis. How do their institutions differ? If you had to live among one or the other, which would you choose? Why do the Atlanteans try to keep their existence hidden from Europeans? The chief institution in the New Atlantis is the House of Solomon; why are its practices kept secret from most of the people? Should there be such a thing as "forbidden knowledge"? Does the issue bear in any way upon the knowledge forbidden Adam in the Garden of Eden? What is the purpose of the House and its practices? Does it embody a reasonable notion of knowledge? One of its practices is to fiddle with natural kinds–breeding intermediate species of plants and animals. Would Bacon's contemporaries have regarded this as ethical? Do we?

4. Would Prospero have done well in the House of Solomon? How does his magic compare with their science? What is the scope of Prospero's magic? Why does he require the services of Caliban, of whom he says, "We cannot do without him"? How does Caliban compare with Montaigne's Cannibals? One of the courtiers (the good Gonzalo) quotes Montaigne verbatim (in the translation current in Shakespeare's day) about the nature of an ideal commonwealth. The evil courtiers mock him. Is the quotation foolish? Is Caliban evil or just innocent? Why does Prospero abandon his magic when he returns to Europe? Both Ariel and Caliban yearn for freedom. Ariel achieves it; Caliban elects to remain in servitude. What ideal of "freedom" lies behind this contrast. To test his worth, Prospero condemns Ferdinand to (temporary) servitude. Is servitude a positive value today? What is its value in the play? What is guilty knowledge and why should we want to keep children from it? What is innocence and why should it be cherished? How "innocent" is a populace of the obligations of office? What is the value of chastity? Is it magical? Is the earth chaste? What is the implication of the courtly masque and the absence of Eros and Aphrodite?

Lecture 5: Shakespeare. The Tempest. (continued)

Lecture 6: Defoe. Robinson Crusoe.

1. The earlier adventures of Robinson are usually left out of popular discussions of the book, with the result that readers new to the text are surprised to find them there. What do we learn about Robinson from that part of the book–from his relationship with Xury, the slave-boy, for example. Do you think that the assumptions about slavery that animate Robinson's conduct were shared by the mass of Defoe's readers?

2. "I had been reduced to the state of nature", exclaims Robinson about one third through the book. Has he? Some of Crusoe's readers in later centuries thought that it spoiled the tale to let Crusoe have all the implements of civilization that he salvages from the ship for use on his island. Is their annoyance right or do they misconceive the book?

3. What notion of "nature" does the book rely on? How does Crusoe's island differ (by implication of the constraints that it imposes upon him) from the habitation of Montaigne's cannibals or Prospero's island?

4. What does Robinson mean when he says, "I had to earn every experience before I had it." Is this a condition to be valued or to be avoided? Does the idea behind the phrase offer any insight into the condition of the people in Forster's The Machine Stops?

5. Robinson often undertakes enormous labors that turn out to be useless, and not just because he has been lacking in foresight. For example: he oversees the construction of an enormous canoe, only to have a better one delivered into his hands by accident. What is the point of introducing such episodes into the story?

6. It has been said that Defoe's book is a hymn of praise for the Protestant work-ethic and the dignity of labor. What is your view of this judgment?

Lecture 7: Defoe. Robinson Crusoe. (continued)

Lecture 8: Linnaeus. Excerpts from The Economy of Nature.; White, Gilbert. Excerpt from The Natural History of Selbourne.; and Hume, David. Excerpts from Dialogues on Natural Religion.

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

1. At the outset of the dialogues (not reprinted here), one of the listeners refers to the "accurate philosophical turn of Cleanthes", "the careless skepticism of Philo," and "the rigid, inflexible orthodoxy of Demea." The first paragraph in our excerpt gives the basis of Demea’s position. What about it makes for "rigid, inflexible orthodoxy"?

2. How good is Cleanthes’s case that the whole universe is one vast machine, composed in turn of lesser machines? How does it differ from the case advanced by Balbus in Cicero’s dialogue?

3. How close is Cleanthes’s argument both here and later in the text to Aristotle’s view of telos?

4. In Part II, Philo argues that ideas have an inherent principle of organization and that without experience, one might well suppose that material parts might have a principle of organization in themselves, too. But experience convinces us otherwise, and this, he says, is the heart of Cleanthes’s view that the organized character of the universe implies a Divine Creator. What would Aristotle say of the distinction that Philo suggests between matter and mind?

5. Expound Cleanthe’s argument about the "vegetable library". Why is it invoked? How valid is the analogy to the case that he is making?

6. What is the force or validity of Cleanthes claim that without anthropomorphism, the worship of deity is atheism?

7. Cleanthes argues (in Part IV) that you have sufficiently accounted for a machine by pointing to the mind that invented it. Philo insists that this is like accounting for the movement of the earth by arguing that it is carried on the back of a celestial elephant. What is at issue in this quarrel and who has the better of it?

8. How convincing is Cleanthes’s argument about the eye, in Part III? How would you refute it?

9. Compare Philo’s example (in Part V) of the ship and the carpenters who made it with Cleanthes’s view that design is a mark of an intelligent and knowledgeable designer. Is it an effective refutation?

10. At one point (in Part VII), Philo resorts to the alleged plausibility of the view that the universe is not a machine but a vegetable. Is the move valid? What issue does it address? Does it suggest a fallibility in Cleanthes’s position?

11. When Philo (in Part VIII) introduces the notion that, given an infinity of time the chance movements of atoms alone must sooner or later create an ordered universe, Cleanthes counters with the thought that the universe is not merely ordered but is benevolently ordered. Rightly or wrongly, the difference between organized ideas and disorderly or random matter is presented as intuitively apparent by Philo; is it intuitively apparent that the arrangement of things in the world is benevolently intended? Suppose it looks like a benevolent arrangement: why cannot the random motions of atoms create it, given an infinity of time? In any case, is this turn in the argument a novelty or is their an ethical idea lurking in the very notion that the various parts of the world are well fitted to each other?

12. In Part X, Philo succinctly poses "the problem of evil". What is your sense of this problem? Is it a real one? Cleanthes believes that the problem affords the clearest evidence of the advantage of his view of God. Is he right?

13. At the end of the dialogue, the transcriber of them offers the judgment that Cleanthes argued best in the discussion. Most scholars believe that Hume wrote this view into the end of his text in order to pacify the majority of his readers, who were possibly not ready for outright skepticism with regard to religious matter; these scholar hold that Philo gets the best of the argument. What is your view?

Lecture 9: Hume, David. Dialogues on Natural Religion. (continued)

Lecture 10: Rousseau. Excerpts from On the Origins of Inequality.

1. Describe the state of nature as Rousseau conceives it. How does it differ from the state of nature in Hobbes.

2. Hobbes's says that the state of nature probably never existed "generally". Rousseau describes it as a general condition of humanity but also that it may never have existed. Does this make a difference between the two philosophers? Why does it not matter to Rousseau's argument (or so he seems to think) that the state of nature as he describes it never existed?

3. What does "perfectibility" mean to Rousseau? (He actually invented the word for the sake of this argument.) Is it adequate to the task of indicating the decisive feature of humanity?

4. Rousseau accuses other philosophers before himself of attributing to mankind in the state of nature only characteristics of mankind in a state of civilization. How adequate is the accusation? Can it be leveled at Rousseau as well?

5. At the end of his text, Rousseau says that it would be impossible to explain the life of minister or a modern public official to a Caribbean (still the typical image in Rousseau's day of someone who lives naturally), who would simply not understand how anyone could come to live in that way. What does Rousseau have in mind here? Does the difficulty–assuming that we admit it–invalidate the life of the minister or official?

6. At length, says Rousseau, "man becomes a tyrant over himself and nature". Can you explain this phrase? Can one tryrannize over oneself? Can one tyrannize over nature?

7. How does Rousseau describe the course of history, during which humanity became progressively more civilized? What are its main stages? Rousseau describes the invention of law as a trick played by those possessing much property upon those possessing none. Is this account intelligible?

8. Is Rousseau a partisan of the idea of progress? Do you believe in a course of progress marking the growth of civilized institutions?