The Byronic hero; what others can say about him; what he can say about himself. The coherence of writing poetry when your lacerated breast is no longer capable of feeling pleasure or pain, hope or fear. Who should narrate the Byronic hero? Milton's narrator? Julian?Lockwood? The importance of seeing Byron's range, as given by Shelley in Julian and Maddalo (that unutterably wonderful poem), and by Byron in his own letters -- all this as the beginning of an introduction to Don Juan . The perfectio...
Jan 30, 2013•1 hr 20 min
Some discussion of what made Byron "mad, bad, and dangerous to know." Letters to Lady Melbourne and to Thomas Moore. Byron's sexuality. His dog Boatswain. ("His dog was dead" -- Julian and Maddalo ) Opening of Childe Harold III. Allegra. Ada Lovelace. Julian and Julian the Apostate. Shelley's characterization of Byron in Julian and Maddalo .
Jan 27, 2013•1 hr 14 min
A comparison of the Invocation to Book 3 of Paradise Lost and The Intimations Ode , which we complete reading. Celestial light vs. the light of common day. The mirror image similarities Wordsworth explores: he (now) sees only those things visible to mortal sight, in contrast to Milton. Loss as gain and the fall from heaven in both poets.
Jan 19, 2013•1 hr 21 min
First class on Shelley's relation to Wordsworth. An introduction about Romanticism and Milton. The two Romantic generations. Shelley's critical sonnet "To Wordsworth" and its relation to Wordsworth's Intimations Ode.
Jan 16, 2013•1 hr 18 min
Last class: a review of the irrationality of the square root of 2; and of Cantor's diagonalization proof. How the difference between infinity by addition and by division corresponds to the difference between the infinity of natural numbers (which are all under the rubric of infinity by addition) and the reals between 0 and 1, all of which may be ranged under the rubric of infinity by division. What makes one set "larger" than another. The idea of a list as involving the concept of "next." The no...
Dec 13, 2012•1 hr 17 min
Some discussion of the nature of proof; listing rationals between 0 and 1; function vs. algorithm; question whether any list of irrationals is possible; Cantor's diagonalization proof that it isn't; discussion about 1-many correspondence between rationals and reals; approach to the idea that the power set of an infinite set is a higher order of infinity because you could do the diagonalization proof on binary expansions between 0 and 1, leading to the construction 2^n numbers not in the original...
Dec 11, 2012•1 hr 20 min
Paper assignment,* which requires a lengthy exposition of the set-up for Newcomb's problem; segue via Descartes and an exposition of the difference between romanticism and Cartesian skepticism, with Kant as a pivot, to Shelley's Mont Blanc . A word more about that difference: Descartes was trying to prove that it wasn't all in the mind; the Romantics were trying to prove that it more ore less was. But they are similar (via Kant) in believing that the external world was empirical trash, that this...
Dec 06, 2012•1 hr 19 min
Paul Klee on space and time -- a line taken out for a walk. Back to Kant and a tedious brief exposition of the third critique. The beautiful as the harmonious, showing the mind as tuned or tuned up, with the willing that organizes perception or the structure of appearance coming from elsewhere, viz. the beautiful object. (This is what Kant calls the reflective rather than regulative use of reason, and is the reason the analytic of the beautiful in the Third Critique is so important: it shows the...
Dec 04, 2012•1 hr 18 min
Trying to get to Shelley's Mont Blanc, we spend another whole class on Kant, and on the structure of appearance. How this leads to a Kantian idea of the will. Relation of Kant to Pascal: in Kant you don't just decide to believe in God, because of the incentive to do so: you believe in the freedom of your will because of your duty to do so, a duty which presumes that freedom because it is a duty to presume that freedom. Next: The Sublime.
Nov 30, 2012•1 hr 17 min
We discuss Kant and causality via Hume's skepticism with respect to cause. Kant's defense of causality as how to distinguish space from time. Simstim in Neuromancer as an example of the necessity of causality as an essential component of any perception: does the inevitable flux come from me or the world? A very short introduction to the Critical Project.
Nov 28, 2012•1 hr 18 min
What began looking like an interminable introduction to the Halting Problem. Things ellipses can mean in an infinite decimal expansion. More on one to one correspondence: its unrecoverable priority to counting like oral language's priority to written; Turing tests; Descartes on self-knowledge; the Dixie Flatline and his saying that it feels like he's sentient; the fact that Case is also a flatline, at least when jacked in. (Last podcast before Thanksgiving.)
Nov 15, 2012•1 hr 21 min
Descartes everywhere, and in particular in the theory of aether; excursus on the statue of Ether in the Public Garden; excursus on Rick Deckard; aether as extended substance; how waves work; how waves work in empty space; aetherial mechanics and dynamics; the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica; Borges; the nature of space, in Kant and in William Gibson; the irrationality of the square root of 2
Nov 13, 2012•1 hr 22 min
A class on Prisoner's Dilemma, via game shows based on it. Making it vivid through fixing the stakes (Nazi reprisals instead of time in jail, for example). Five game show versions. Evidential decision theory and how to influence good readers of personality: by changing your beliefs about what you'll do, and therefore your commitments as well. Just as in Pascal's wager.
Nov 10, 2012•1 hr 12 min
Discussion about Pascal on the infinite. Excursus on Einstein and the constancy of the speed of light. Cost-benefits and how to think about Pascal's wager.
Nov 07, 2012•1 hr 20 min
I meant to get us to game theory today, to talk about it with respect to the idea of other minds. So, based on the 70% contest from the previous class (the winning number would have been 20.8) we started discussing polls and Keynesian Beauty Contests. My theory that people thought their candidate would lose was exploded (at least in the classroom). Discussion of eternity in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man , and then of the meaning of its title.
Nov 05, 2012•1 hr 18 min
A discussion about elementary ways of thinking about probability (which is always counterintuitive), as a way to start thinking about game theory, and the ways in game theory that we have to consider others considering what we'll do when we consider what they do, etc. Pascal as founder of science of probability. Peirce on cutting a deck once for the fate of the universe. More discussion than anything else.
Oct 27, 2012•1 hr 23 min
A class first on what it means to argue against the best version of an argument, including Darwin's approval of Plato's idea of pre-existence (as monkeys), then on to Pascal which leads to a discussion of the anthropic principle and of the sublime, in Kant but mainly in Burke: grasping in thought what could annihilate you in fact.
Oct 24, 2012•1 hr 6 min
We consider the difference between infinity by addition and by division, in Aristotle and Cantor; the way the rationals are denumerable; Macbeth on the present moment vs. ownership of the future; Macbeth's syllables and Dickinson; the difference again between syllable and sound; and (naturally enough) iambic pentameter.
Oct 18, 2012•1 hr 6 min
Augustine on meaning and understanding a sentence as instantaneous. His reading of the beginning of the Gospel of John. Ontology and its relation to language. Berkeley. Occam's razor. Ptolmey, The Sheffer stroke. Thought as the criterion for Occam's razor. Sentences and time.
Oct 16, 2012•1 hr 18 min
Beckett. Who he was. His interest in Augustine. Hilarity and depth of his work. Augustine. Back to Poincarré on math induction. What we can see here and now. Difference between induction and deduction. Wittgenstein's point, from Poincarré, that proof by induction doesn't yield one QED, one string of symbols as the end-point of a mechanical process but two . It's only in the mind that the two can be combined into a single insight: this is a synthetic activity. We may make claims about an infinite...
Oct 12, 2012•1 hr 21 min
[Fixed: was missing audio file before] Why read Augustine if you're not religious? What philosophical questions are like. Motives to ask them: to prove that you're right, or to wonder. How they questions are better than the arguments they're for: Zeno thought he was proving there was no motion, but in fact he raised very subtle questions about motion. Why philosophy matters to people. Kinds of questions that Augustine wonders about. Math induction.
Oct 11, 2012•1 hr 19 min
A couple of paragraphs from Aristotle - his thinking about Zeno. Relation between motion, mind, and time. Motion without time. Time slices, four dimensional stasis. The moment of transition. Is space real? Is nothingness spatial?
Oct 05, 2012•1 hr 16 min
Axioms and self-evidence. Euclid's fifth postulate. Non-Euclidean geometry and the difference between infinite and unbounded space. Anaximander and Parmenides, and the principle of sufficient reason.
Oct 02, 2012•1 hr 21 min
More on the difference between extension and intension. Intension as similar to the category of the interesting, and paradoxes of interestingness. Interestingness of 6210001000 and 1729. Zeno's paradoxes. Galileo's paradox.
Sep 22, 2012•1 hr 20 min
Mainly about the idea of one-to-one correspondence, after some review of the infinity of primes, and then of some controversies in set theory, especially over whether intensional or extensional ways of referring to sets are more basic. Counting as coming after one-to-one correspondence. One-to-one correspondence and infinite sets.
Sep 20, 2012•1 hr 18 min
How it could be that we could think of God as a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere (to use the formula Borges is so fond of). A little bit about infinite sets. Seeing the Aleph (or another Aleph) in the Aleph. The relation of such sight to the Library of Babel: could there be an accurate (multi-volume) catalogue in the Library of Babel which listed every catalogue that didn't list itself? Leonardo on focal points and their relation to the Aleph. By occasion, mention of t...
Sep 13, 2012•1 hr 22 min
We mainly discuss Borges's "Library of Babel" and its implications, but this leads us a little to discussions of black holes, the sphericality of the universe, the nature of codes, meaning, OuLiPo, Quine, and infinitesimals.
Sep 11, 2012•1 hr 19 min
THINKING ABOUT INFINITY “The definitive clarification of the nature of the infinite, instead of pertaining just to the sphere of specialized scientific interests, is needed for the dignity of the human intellect itself.” –David Hilbert Syllabus: W 5 Sept Introduction: Dickinson M 10 Sept Borges: “Library of Babel" “The Aleph" Leonardo da Vinci (in class distribution) W 12 Sept Hilbert: “On the Infinite,” (Latte) Borges, Early Greek Philosophers [EGP], Chapter 3 M 17 Sept NO CLASS (Rosh Hashanah)...
Sep 06, 2012•1 hr 18 min
[Renaissance poetry: last class] Two sonnets of Milton's: Milton's dream compared with Adam's; Adam before the fall; Eve after the fall.
May 04, 2012•53 min
[close reading] Last class: a last class, on Merrill's Book of Ephraim ; La Tempesta , on the surface nothing less than earthly life in all its mystery; holding still, being held still; photography; burning the box ( Children while you can ...).
May 02, 2012•50 min
