I completely agree. I work as an educational consultant, and go into many schools - I see the tiny desks (often with integral chairs) that are hard to rearrange into clusters for students to work cooperatively and collaboratively. Instead, the very furniture invites teachers to stand and lecture their students, while the students vegetate in their little cages.
From watching the episode, the entire point of it seemed to be to show the absurdity of a prohibition on any depiction of someone. By making a depiction of Muhammed (PBUH) that involved no image that was recognizably of him, they showed that the prohibition was ridiculous, because it is then a blanket prohibition on any image. I could say that the category icon for this story was a depiction of the Prophet disguised as a white man in glasses with a black rectangle over his mouth - suddenly that would be a prohibited image. CAVEAT: This line of argument also means that prohibitions on depictions of things that _we_ think shouldn't be allowed are also absurd. Finally, this is not to say that I think that any image is acceptable, but it must have to do with the objective content (or at least consensus agreement of what the objective content is), rather than what the artist intended it to depict, or what it may have been interpreted as depicting.
While it is important that there are opportunities for use of different learning styles, (such as the blogger wanting to be able to take notes during a talk) there will also be others that learn differently. The blogger may find it best to take notes on everything that the professor is saying - there are others for whom it will be most productive to sit and listen intently and not take any notes at all. The problem seems to be then, not the PowerPoint itself, but the pacing that the professors use. If they are to do problems on PowerPoint, they should have the steps appear gradually as they are working through the problem, and use the appropriate pacing, to ensure that students have the opportunity to follow the problem. As for not having handouts of the PowerPoint slide, or their availability being in some way a disadvantage - I would say it's time to grow up. Adults are responsible for their own learning. If someone knows that they learn best by taking notes, then take notes anyway. The availability of the notes after the class will be something very positive for many others, and to request that the notes not be available for their sake is to fail to recognize the learning needs of others.
You're completely right. I was at Oxford when this incident occurred, and I'm appalled that the Guardian and BBC News have bought into this flagrant piece of self-promotion. From what I know of the story there was no attempt made to liaise with the University Computer Services to rectify this problem before they published the information in the paper. Unfortunately people involved in student journalism, particularly at Oxford in my experience, are only interested in bolstering their CV so that they can land a job at a British national newspaper. This means that they will do anything to promote themselves without any real thought for the consequences.
Insomnia is a terrible affliction, but oddly enough it doesn't seem to be insomniacs writing into this guy, just people who have enough time to surf the web aimlessly. These people are tired of life, not tired in the needing sleep sense. They don't think they have enough time for themselves, or they just don't want to be where they are. Insomniacs don't type "tired" into their web browser, they just stay up all night trying to go to sleep.
Ceci n'est pas un troll. I would have had something interesting to say, but it was 1am, and I'd had a hard day, so the best I could think of was "Umm, that's rubbish.". Something interesting: The article attempts addresses certain topics in philosophy, the question of the ontological status of numbers and other abstract objects, and the potential for intelligence (for which many will equally read consciousness) to be instantiated in a digital computer. I use the word attempts deliberately, as in his brief discussion of Platonism he fails to mention the views of more modern Platonists (such as Roger Penrose, who I believe is cited in this discussion elsewhere), for whome the familiar messy world is in fact the realm of Platonic forms, precisely because these mathematical entities model the familiar "messy" world so well, they indeed presented to us by it, and present in it. As for his attempt to dispell the Penrosian line of argument by claiming that the Platonist view would be amenable to quick discoveries by AI, shows that he has broadly misunderstood Penrose's arguments. Penrose argues, that as non-computable sets such as the Mandelbrot set can be conceived of by the human mind, and more generally such procedures as mathematical proofs which are not just a matter of strict application of rules (thanks to Godel), then the human mind, in fact any intelligence of our kind, cannot possibly be simulated/"run on" a digital computer, because it requires us to make a non-computable connection with the world of Platonic forms (although I feel that Penrose would be interested in some more explanation about this in scientific terms). Anyway, I stand by my assertion that this article is weak. I hope I shall not be branded a troll a second time. Moral of the story? Philosophers look like trolls when they're tired. (I'm currently completing my Masters' year at Oxford doing physics and philosophy, in case anyone was wondering what right I have to call myself a philosopher.)
I am a philosopher and hence have a little more time for philosophy than you, but this article is shallow and weak. This is to philosophy what idle musings on how everything is uncertain thanks to Heisenberg is to quantum physics. (I am also a physicist, as well as a philosopher).
You do a great disservice to many anti-realists when you say that they deny metaphysics. Logical Positivists, with their verificationalist doctrine, deny metaphysics, but not all anti-realists are logical positivists. Only arch-anti-realists completely deny metaphysics, and it is possible to be an anti-realist about a great many things, whilst still being a realist about others. If you want a good modern account of anti-realism, I suggest you look at Bas Van Frassen.
This is a very operationalist standpoint, and I would be pleased if it were followed completely through. The article which is being discussed here takes a very different view of quantum mechanics, feeling it has something to say about something real in the universe. If only observable quantities exist, then we can deny the reality of any theoretic substructure of physics, it's merely a model of the universe. I am quite happy to heap praise on this instrumentalist view, but it is not strictly relevant to a discussion of the implications of new theories within a realistically constrained paradigm.
Hate to be a pedant, but Rene Descartes was in the 16th century. Apart from that, you're right that he was the first to formulate the argument in such a way, although it is also true that the idea was mooted in different forms since Ancient Greek times.
If we wish to consider quantum mechanics as a complete theory of how the world is, then yes, we need to allow the universe to be represented by a quantum state vector. I'm not saying that this is necessarily true, but it would appear that in the case being discussed then quantum mechanics is being taken seriously as a theory for the universe.
I find it strange that you ascribe the Everett intepretation to a positivist dogma, when it was a reaction to the Copenhagen interpretation, which was very much of the anti-realist flavoured positivism of the time. I also think that you'll find that positivism is very much less en vogue currently, and that the most commonly persued philosophies of science are realism (not simple realism, sophisticated versions thereof) and some form of instrumentalism (see Van Frassen at Princeton).
This is essentially the Everett interpretation, where everything is a relative state, within the overall state vector of the universe, there are relative states which roughly define different macrorealms, which we take to be the universe, but no collapse has occurred and the world where the cat is not dead (assuming it died in our macrorealm) is just as real.
Be that as it may, she still has an enormously incoherent quantum cosmology. And maybe I was being a little harsh on myself, I'm actually a physics and philosophy student, so I study the philosophy of quantum mechanics in some depth.
Marvellous, I'll just reason using God's logic shall I? Oh wait, I can't. And as what we're talking about here is a physical theory, which you'll note was created by humans, and is essentially a human construct, it will also follow human logic, so it looks like if there's a flaw in my argument, it stems from a flaw in physics, which stems from a flaw in humanity. Therefore all reasoning is wrong, yours, mine, everybody's. So we shouldn't listen to a single word anyone else says, because they're always wrong. Woohoo! The skeptics win again.
Such a mentalistic approach to quantum mechanics is a fairly odd approach to take. For starters, it seems to be much more anthropocentric than we would usually like physics to be, indeed when Wigner first suggested a mentalistic theory of wave function collapse in the 1950s, people thought he had gone mad. The other problem is identifying exactly what kind of mind counts as an observer; does a rabbit observe? Maybe we want something more intelligent than that? How about a chimpanzee? If we start at this point, then we simply ask ourselves, how about if we made the chimpanzee a tiny bit less intelligent, an infinitessimally small amount less. Do we still want to allow him to be an observer? Of course we do. Now, let's repeat the process a near infinite number of times. What do we have? Something much less intelligent being an observer that we didn't initially want to be one. The same argument applies if we start from a human also. We have to define some threshold of intelligence, therefore. But this is hideously arbitrary and not the kind of pattern that we want to see in nature or in our scientific theories. The term observer is difficult to define, and does not, therefore, lend itself to inclusion in a well defined theory of physics.
See my post on quantum observers for further complaints.
Although you may feel that the measurement problem is solved by God observing the universe, that gives difficulties for the EPR paradox. If God is observing the universe, then every conceivable quantum quantity has a definite value, surely? But this is impossible, as there are numerous quantities that are not co-measurable. You could then argue that God is outside the rules of quantum mechanics, and hence can perceive what He damn well likes, but then you can't use Him within a quantum theory as an observer, as He is not observing in an acceptable manner to quantum mechanics.
I may still be a plain old physics student, but even I know that using the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, as she appears to, to create an entire cosmology, is very problematic. The standard interpretation is beset by massive difficulties in the form of the measurement problem, and most other intepretations are far more successful in dealing with this. The Everett interpretation (sometimes referred to as the 'Many-Worlds' interpretation, although this ascription is inaccurate in several ways) is the one most commonly used by quantum cosmologists, and with good reason, as it does actually allow for a quantum state vector to be applied to the universe. The standard intepretation, however, does not allow for such an assignation, it is nonsensical to talk about it in the standard interpretation, a point which seems lost on the writer and perhaps even the obviously very intelligent physicist. Maybe they both should have attended philosophy of physics 101.
Slashdot Mirror
I completely agree. I work as an educational consultant, and go into many schools - I see the tiny desks (often with integral chairs) that are hard to rearrange into clusters for students to work cooperatively and collaboratively. Instead, the very furniture invites teachers to stand and lecture their students, while the students vegetate in their little cages.
D'oh absurdum!
From watching the episode, the entire point of it seemed to be to show the absurdity of a prohibition on any depiction of someone. By making a depiction of Muhammed (PBUH) that involved no image that was recognizably of him, they showed that the prohibition was ridiculous, because it is then a blanket prohibition on any image. I could say that the category icon for this story was a depiction of the Prophet disguised as a white man in glasses with a black rectangle over his mouth - suddenly that would be a prohibited image.
CAVEAT: This line of argument also means that prohibitions on depictions of things that _we_ think shouldn't be allowed are also absurd.
Finally, this is not to say that I think that any image is acceptable, but it must have to do with the objective content (or at least consensus agreement of what the objective content is), rather than what the artist intended it to depict, or what it may have been interpreted as depicting.
While it is important that there are opportunities for use of different learning styles, (such as the blogger wanting to be able to take notes during a talk) there will also be others that learn differently.
The blogger may find it best to take notes on everything that the professor is saying - there are others for whom it will be most productive to sit and listen intently and not take any notes at all.
The problem seems to be then, not the PowerPoint itself, but the pacing that the professors use. If they are to do problems on PowerPoint, they should have the steps appear gradually as they are working through the problem, and use the appropriate pacing, to ensure that students have the opportunity to follow the problem.
As for not having handouts of the PowerPoint slide, or their availability being in some way a disadvantage - I would say it's time to grow up. Adults are responsible for their own learning. If someone knows that they learn best by taking notes, then take notes anyway. The availability of the notes after the class will be something very positive for many others, and to request that the notes not be available for their sake is to fail to recognize the learning needs of others.
Apologies, I had misread regarding Android's capabilities for multitouch. And when I said features, I was of course talking about the hardware.
Well, Android has been made able to support all the features of the iPhone (or so it seems), just need some crafty driver developers now.
You're completely right. I was at Oxford when this incident occurred, and I'm appalled that the Guardian and BBC News have bought into this flagrant piece of self-promotion. From what I know of the story there was no attempt made to liaise with the University Computer Services to rectify this problem before they published the information in the paper. Unfortunately people involved in student journalism, particularly at Oxford in my experience, are only interested in bolstering their CV so that they can land a job at a British national newspaper. This means that they will do anything to promote themselves without any real thought for the consequences.
Insomnia is a terrible affliction, but oddly enough it doesn't seem to be insomniacs writing into this guy, just people who have enough time to surf the web aimlessly. These people are tired of life, not tired in the needing sleep sense. They don't think they have enough time for themselves, or they just don't want to be where they are. Insomniacs don't type "tired" into their web browser, they just stay up all night trying to go to sleep.
Ceci n'est pas un troll. I would have had something interesting to say, but it was 1am, and I'd had a hard day, so the best I could think of was "Umm, that's rubbish.".
Something interesting:
The article attempts addresses certain topics in philosophy, the question of the ontological status of numbers and other abstract objects, and the potential for intelligence (for which many will equally read consciousness) to be instantiated in a digital computer. I use the word attempts deliberately, as in his brief discussion of Platonism he fails to mention the views of more modern Platonists (such as Roger Penrose, who I believe is cited in this discussion elsewhere), for whome the familiar messy world is in fact the realm of Platonic forms, precisely because these mathematical entities model the familiar "messy" world so well, they indeed presented to us by it, and present in it. As for his attempt to dispell the Penrosian line of argument by claiming that the Platonist view would be amenable to quick discoveries by AI, shows that he has broadly misunderstood Penrose's arguments. Penrose argues, that as non-computable sets such as the Mandelbrot set can be conceived of by the human mind, and more generally such procedures as mathematical proofs which are not just a matter of strict application of rules (thanks to Godel), then the human mind, in fact any intelligence of our kind, cannot possibly be simulated/"run on" a digital computer, because it requires us to make a non-computable connection with the world of Platonic forms (although I feel that Penrose would be interested in some more explanation about this in scientific terms). Anyway, I stand by my assertion that this article is weak. I hope I shall not be branded a troll a second time.
Moral of the story? Philosophers look like trolls when they're tired. (I'm currently completing my Masters' year at Oxford doing physics and philosophy, in case anyone was wondering what right I have to call myself a philosopher.)
I am a philosopher and hence have a little more time for philosophy than you, but this article is shallow and weak. This is to philosophy what idle musings on how everything is uncertain thanks to Heisenberg is to quantum physics. (I am also a physicist, as well as a philosopher).
Apologies, I have been lead on by the treachery of others. Or possibly myself, damn my memory. :)
Sorry, nit-picker here. Socrates was sentenced to death, but avoided his punishment by killing himself with hemlock.
I'd be more careful to state clearly exactly which Hilary Putnam you're talking about, he's got some fairly good papers on realism too!
You do a great disservice to many anti-realists when you say that they deny metaphysics. Logical Positivists, with their verificationalist doctrine, deny metaphysics, but not all anti-realists are logical positivists. Only arch-anti-realists completely deny metaphysics, and it is possible to be an anti-realist about a great many things, whilst still being a realist about others. If you want a good modern account of anti-realism, I suggest you look at Bas Van Frassen.
This is a very operationalist standpoint, and I would be pleased if it were followed completely through. The article which is being discussed here takes a very different view of quantum mechanics, feeling it has something to say about something real in the universe. If only observable quantities exist, then we can deny the reality of any theoretic substructure of physics, it's merely a model of the universe. I am quite happy to heap praise on this instrumentalist view, but it is not strictly relevant to a discussion of the implications of new theories within a realistically constrained paradigm.
Hate to be a pedant, but Rene Descartes was in the 16th century. Apart from that, you're right that he was the first to formulate the argument in such a way, although it is also true that the idea was mooted in different forms since Ancient Greek times.
If we wish to consider quantum mechanics as a complete theory of how the world is, then yes, we need to allow the universe to be represented by a quantum state vector. I'm not saying that this is necessarily true, but it would appear that in the case being discussed then quantum mechanics is being taken seriously as a theory for the universe. I find it strange that you ascribe the Everett intepretation to a positivist dogma, when it was a reaction to the Copenhagen interpretation, which was very much of the anti-realist flavoured positivism of the time. I also think that you'll find that positivism is very much less en vogue currently, and that the most commonly persued philosophies of science are realism (not simple realism, sophisticated versions thereof) and some form of instrumentalism (see Van Frassen at Princeton).
This is essentially the Everett interpretation, where everything is a relative state, within the overall state vector of the universe, there are relative states which roughly define different macrorealms, which we take to be the universe, but no collapse has occurred and the world where the cat is not dead (assuming it died in our macrorealm) is just as real.
I'd be glad to check that out, if your link worked. Please fix it, and I'll get back to you.
Be that as it may, she still has an enormously incoherent quantum cosmology. And maybe I was being a little harsh on myself, I'm actually a physics and philosophy student, so I study the philosophy of quantum mechanics in some depth.
Marvellous, I'll just reason using God's logic shall I? Oh wait, I can't. And as what we're talking about here is a physical theory, which you'll note was created by humans, and is essentially a human construct, it will also follow human logic, so it looks like if there's a flaw in my argument, it stems from a flaw in physics, which stems from a flaw in humanity. Therefore all reasoning is wrong, yours, mine, everybody's. So we shouldn't listen to a single word anyone else says, because they're always wrong. Woohoo! The skeptics win again.
Such a mentalistic approach to quantum mechanics is a fairly odd approach to take. For starters, it seems to be much more anthropocentric than we would usually like physics to be, indeed when Wigner first suggested a mentalistic theory of wave function collapse in the 1950s, people thought he had gone mad. The other problem is identifying exactly what kind of mind counts as an observer; does a rabbit observe? Maybe we want something more intelligent than that? How about a chimpanzee? If we start at this point, then we simply ask ourselves, how about if we made the chimpanzee a tiny bit less intelligent, an infinitessimally small amount less. Do we still want to allow him to be an observer? Of course we do. Now, let's repeat the process a near infinite number of times. What do we have? Something much less intelligent being an observer that we didn't initially want to be one. The same argument applies if we start from a human also. We have to define some threshold of intelligence, therefore. But this is hideously arbitrary and not the kind of pattern that we want to see in nature or in our scientific theories. The term observer is difficult to define, and does not, therefore, lend itself to inclusion in a well defined theory of physics. See my post on quantum observers for further complaints.
Although you may feel that the measurement problem is solved by God observing the universe, that gives difficulties for the EPR paradox. If God is observing the universe, then every conceivable quantum quantity has a definite value, surely? But this is impossible, as there are numerous quantities that are not co-measurable. You could then argue that God is outside the rules of quantum mechanics, and hence can perceive what He damn well likes, but then you can't use Him within a quantum theory as an observer, as He is not observing in an acceptable manner to quantum mechanics.
I may still be a plain old physics student, but even I know that using the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, as she appears to, to create an entire cosmology, is very problematic. The standard interpretation is beset by massive difficulties in the form of the measurement problem, and most other intepretations are far more successful in dealing with this. The Everett interpretation (sometimes referred to as the 'Many-Worlds' interpretation, although this ascription is inaccurate in several ways) is the one most commonly used by quantum cosmologists, and with good reason, as it does actually allow for a quantum state vector to be applied to the universe. The standard intepretation, however, does not allow for such an assignation, it is nonsensical to talk about it in the standard interpretation, a point which seems lost on the writer and perhaps even the obviously very intelligent physicist. Maybe they both should have attended philosophy of physics 101.