what do you call 300 philosophers in a room?

The annual conference of the Australasian Association of Philosophy was held last week in Melbourne. Amongst the papers delivered was one by Professor Declan Smithies titled 'Do Zombies Have Beliefs?' - abstract

Zombies have no phenomenally conscious states, but beliefs are not phenomenally conscious states. So, do zombies have beliefs? I argue that beliefs are individuated by their relations to phenomenal consciousness and hence that zombies do not have beliefs. The argument relies on a thesis about the epistemic role of consciousness and a thesis about the epistemic individuation of belief. I go on to explore the consequences of this argument for functionalist theories of belief. Here, I distinguish between causal and normative versions of functionalism and I argue that belief is individuated by its normative role, rather than its causal role, in reasoning.

Not surprisingly, that wasn't the only absurd paper presented. What a waste of time - zombies are brain dead. They are dead, just re-animated corpses. Of course, zombies have no beliefs. I could have presented a paper to the conference on this topic in ten seconds without the pop/mock/pseudo intellectualism.

So what would one call 300 philosophers in a room? Pointless. Discuss.

Journal of Happiness Studies

Seriously, it exists.

Perhaps it might shed some light on what Thomas Jefferson meant when the US Declaration of Independence was drafted.

I could never work it out.

**************
One more day of work before the weekend.

Emily came around tonight for dinner of Hokkien noodles with Chinese roast duck, puff tofu and vegetables. She found out today that she will be posted to Jakarta, Indonesia next year for work.

Bernard-Henri Lévy on Darfur

Usually, I don't bother with French pop philosophers and their ramblings, but occasionally they are worth reading, especially Bernard-Henri Lévy on Darfur (at PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature, on 29 April 2008, at Flourence Gould Hall in New York City). See Guernica.

*************
I stayed home today in order to shake off some bug (probably a mild dose of a virus going around). Kane was happy to have me home.

Emily came over for dinner, having returned a few days ago from a holiday to Nepal, Iran, Lebanon and Syria. I made roast pork, potato and pumpkin with blanched green beans. Things are returning to normal a little bit.

Confucius said...

After decades of discrediting Confucius as being feudal, old-fashioned and bourgeois, the Chinese government now seems to be re-embracing him.

The Chinese government has set up the equivalent of Goethe Institute and Alliance française - called Confucius Institute.

Aimed at promoting friendly relationship with other countries and enhancing the understanding of the Chinese language and culture among world Chinese learners as well as providing good learning conditions for them, the National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language is to set up "Confucius Institute" in the world, whose major activities includes Chinese teaching in countries that have the needs and conditions. At the same time, the "Confucius Institute Headquarter" will be established in Beijing.

And as reported by BBC News (3 January 2008)

China's thriving Confucian schools

By Jill McGivering BBC News

Parents believe studying Confucius benefits the whole of society

As soon as they walk into the tiny school, a converted apartment in a tower block, the children are bundled into grey cotton wraparound robes, fastened at the back with modern Velcro.

Flowing sleeves flap round their wrists, square black hats wedged on to their heads - some, too big, slip down over the eyes.

The children, from three to six years old, have come to special weekend classes to learn the teachings of China's ancient sage, Confucius.

Every room here has a large portrait of Confucius.

It is very good for my son and very good for Chinese society as well Yu Fang, mother

The teacher shows the children how to put their hands together and bow to him before the start of each lesson.

In some classes, they sing and play chasing games. In others, the teacher holds up complex Chinese characters on white cards and the children recite the sayings of the great teacher.

"In a group of three people, one of them will become my teacher," they chant in high voices.

Many of the sayings extol the virtues of harmony, humility and courtesy to others.

Bringing balance

This small private school, in the city of Wuhan in the central Chinese province of Hubei, was set up last year. Since then, more than 100 children have enrolled for classes.

People want a higher standard of living and they are focused on material things, not spiritual ones Wang Ching, mother

"Traditional culture has many advantages that cannot be learned by modern education," says Yu Fang, the mother of a three-year-old pupil.

"It emphasises virtues like kindness and self-discipline. It is very good for my son and very good for Chinese society as well."

Another mother, Wang Ching, agrees: "This is a material world, people want a higher standard of living and they are focused on material things, not spiritual ones."

Modern China, with its headlong rush for growth, needs more balance and more of the social order and courtesy extolled by Confucius, she says.

We should combine our Chinese traditional culture with the best from the West Teacher Li Guang-bing

All this may seem innocuous, but in modern China it is breaking new ground.

Confucianism and Communism have never been happy bedfellows.

In the 1960s, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, Confucius was vilified.

Mao Zedong and his followers criticised him, calling him feudal and old-fashioned and part of the bourgeois hierarchical thinking of the past.

All that traditionalism should be swept away, they argued.

The communists were also threatened by the reverence accorded to Confucius by his followers, which could be akin to religious worship.

Even today, the authorities are watching closely.

Some new, full-time Confucian schools have opened in recent years, only to be closed down soon afterwards.

Best-seller

But in the chaos and change of modern China, there is clearly a market for his old-fashioned wisdom.

It is seen by some as a much-needed antidote to globalisation and the growing influence of Western culture on China's young generation.

The school's founder hopes to run classes outside China

A modern book of Confucian thought, simplified to make it accessible to the mainstream market, has become a surprise best-seller in China, selling about four million copies.

The founder of the weekend Confucian school in Wuhan, Li Guang-bing, has already opened seven schools nationwide. But his vision does not stop there.

He wants to open 100 schools in the future, both in China and further afield, in Sydney and Singapore.

"Students today have a great passion for Western culture," he says.

"We should combine our Chinese traditional culture with the best from the West."

He accepts that it might take time to rehabilitate Confucius after some difficult decades.

The understanding of Confucianism was lost in the 1960s, he says, but gradually China is now rediscovering its traditional culture, including his teachings.

"I think the government's attitude is more and more positive. The movement to embrace and spread Confucianism is growing."

But he expects the sage's rehabilitation in Chinese culture to take time.

"It is a process, something we can do not all at once but slowly, step by step."

Interesting. Confucian values aren't compatible with democracy (eg Singapore). I wonder if there will be a revival of the concept of filial piety, in particular in relation to women - as a girl, obey your father; as a wife, obey your husband; as a widow, obey your son.

Mao Zedong once said that women hold up half the sky. No wonder he didn't like Confucianism.

**************
Today was quite a warm day and I did nothing except re-watch episodes of Angel. Great tv shows are worth another look. I missed the early references to Wolfram and Hart.

Films that I have watched this past week - The Illusionist, and The Night Listener. Both pretty good. I did not expect the twist in The Illusionist.

POFT or pointless?

I really like this article by Bryan Appleyard in the Sunday Times (UK) of 30 December 2007. I think he was too kind.

Twilight of the greats?

This year saw the death of so many big names. Perhaps it saw the end of greatness, too. So, where do we go from here to find the artists that matter?

It was a year in which a certain type of person died — Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman, Norman Mailer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Jean Baudrillard. These were intellectually pungent, culturally potent individuals, angrily dismissed as often as they were called “great”, “seminal” or “genius”. And with Luciano Pavarotti dead, another type of greatness vanished from the planet.
...
The death of Baudrillard left a gaping hole in the cultural landscape. Suddenly, we lack a great POFT — a Pointlessly Obscure French Thinker. Baudrillard, like Kristeva, Foucault, Lacan and many others, was a poseur and rhetorician. But, like some of the others, though certainly not Foucault, he was also a very brilliant man. His insights into the constructed nature of contemporary reality were, while usually buried beneath pointless obscurity, scintillating. If the French could shake off the posturing that has disfigured their post-war thought, they could perhaps recover their role as the great essayists of the world. We need a new Pascal, a new Montaigne.
...

Pointlessly obscure? I think pointless would be a more apt description. As is much of post-modernism.

****************
Today was a work day, though most of the office was empty. Just like Christmas Eve, we were allowed to go home after lunch time. Woohoo! Except it was very hot in the middle of the day when I walked home.

I went over to Tim and Toni's for a barbeque dinner, but left to walk Kane2.

I should go back to Tim and Toni's now, but there is an interesting program on tv now - a telecast of the 2006 V Festival (squeezed into one hour). Maybe later. So much good music coming out of the UK. I know most of it. Unfortunately, they aren't as popular in Australia.

**********
(edit 11pm - new post in my music blog)

It's okay if a kid dances on your sand mandala

From The Kansas City Star

Posted on Wed, May. 23, 2007
Toddler's dance destroys monks' intricate sand painting
By MATT CAMPBELL
The Kansas City Star

• Security camera shows toddler dancing on monks' mandala at Union Station VIDEO

Talk about a test of faith.

Eight Tibetan monks spent two days cross-legged on the floor at Union Station, leaning over to meticulously create an intricate design of colored sand as an expression of their Buddhist faith. They were more than halfway done.

And then, within seconds, their work was destroyed by a toddler.

Monks are bald, so they couldn’t rip their hair out. But were they angry? Did they curse?

No. They simply smiled and started over.

“No problem,” said Geshe Lobsang Sumdup, leader of the group from the Drepung Gomang Monastery in southern India.

“We didn’t get despondent,” he said Wednesday through a translator. “We have three days more. So we will have to work harder.”

That the monks were able to shrug off their setback can be attributed to their religion.

“It teaches us that nothing is permanent,” said Staci Olsen, a volunteer at the Rime Buddhist Center in Kansas City.

Sometime Tuesday after the monks had finished their labors for the day a woman with her small child visited the post office inside Union Station, near where the design was being created. The child, apparently attracted by the pretty colors, wandered over to play with it.

“He did a little tap dance on it, completely destroying it,” said Lama Chuck Stanford of the Rime center.

The mother did not report the incident, but a security camera at Union Station captured the moment.

“She summarily picked the child up and boogied,” said Bob Smock, security manager for the station.

The sand design was surrounded by stanchions, but the child simply went under the tape. Officials have said they now will place benches around the new creation to further protect it.

The design is called a mandala, and there are thousands of different patterns. The one these monks are working on represents Chenrezig, the bodhisattva of compassion.

Traditionally, monks create a mandala to mark the new year.

To start, they put brightly colored sand into a metal funnel called a chakbu and rub it gently to distribute the sand. When they have finished the mandala they sweep up the sand and deposit it into a river.

These monks are on a yearlong tour of the United States and Canada to raise money for their monastery; the original in Tibet was destroyed by the Chinese. This is not the first time monks from the monastery have visited Kansas City and Union Station. On this trip, they will continue to work on the mandala today and Friday.

During a closing ceremony at 2 p.m. Saturday they will sweep up the sand and offer bits to onlookers to place in their gardens. The rest of the sand will be placed in the Missouri River.

“The belief is that it will carry the blessings all over the planet, from the Missouri River to the Mississippi to the gulf and to all the oceans of the world,” Stanford said.

Jampa Tenzin, one of the monks who can speak a little English, said this was the first time on this tour a mandala in progress had been destroyed. But the monks know the child was innocent.

“They have meditated so long they have developed this equanimity,” Stanford said. “Regardless of what happens — if a kid dances on your sand mandala — it’s OK. If everybody in the world had that kind of stability of mind we’d be better off.”

Hmmm... I have this kind of philosophy at work. Unfortunately it doesn't always balance out other people who seem to have a sense of unnecessary urgency over the most trivial of things.

******************************
Well, Melbourne this afternoon was a lot warmer than I expected. I attended the training session of my football team (as an observer). Afterwards, there was a sponsors' function where we were able to speak to the players over drinks and 'finger food'. The players didn't drink of course.

It was a great evening.

I decided to bring my laptop at the last minute this morning (but I forgot other things... like money).