definitions…
I’ve run into major problems today with attempting to define things. Apparently life escapes definition. At lunch today Michael, Me, and Trey got into an argument about freedom. (I think this is what they were saying, at least this is what Trey was arguing for) According to them we have very little freedom because there are consequences for a majority of my actions. I say that freedom is independent of the consequences. I define freedom as having the ability to do something.
In example: if you are in jail, then you still have the freedom to escape the jail.
I think that we negate our freedoms for concerns that can sometimes be described as non-existent. I don’t scream now, but i certainly have the freedom to do so. It is irrelevant that the consequences are there.
I also think i pissed mealymel off by attempting to define humanities, or at least asking for a definition of humanities. What the hell is the definition of humanities?
Where does my desire for definition come from? In think it is because recently funding has been such that we are forced to justify the need of our departments. Not to long ago, the philosophy department was on the block for being cut from the university of louisiana in lafayette. This concerned me of course because it would nullify whatever benefits my degree could afford. The reason it was there was not because it wasn’t usefull, but because it was considered non-completor. This means it hasn’t produced the necessary amount of graduates in a certain amount of years.
During this dilemma, i was talking to Mr. Kinsella and apparently they were devising a degree plan for the humanities study. Soon students will be able to get a bachelor’s in humanities. It was at this time that i asked him what he concieved the humanities department as studying. He gave me his conception of it and i’ve been working with it since. They were going to add the humanities degree plan, and effectively destroy the philosophy department. Two seperate acts that are not in any way connected except that it is occuring at the same time by the university. (i’m not saying that it was a concious effort to replace philosophy with humanities, it is just coincidental).
So that is why i am interested in defining disciplines. Is it wrong to want to get a summarization of what it is your studying?
Identity is inherent in definition. When i say i’m a student of philosophy, you assume that i can give an understandable description of the discipline. If i say i’m an american, you can assume i can give a desciption of what being an american is to me. Our identities have defintiions built within them. Much like i think we should define numbers so we can validly describe what the truths are behind mathematics, i also believe we should attempt to offer definitions of what it is we claim to do.
Hello i’m D (also known as arglor, etc.). I am a student of philosophy, concerned student of ethics, student of film, student of art in general, blogger, blog consumer, consumer of video game technology, atheist, qualifier for a humanitarian minor, qualifier for a religious studies minor (whatever those mean), lover of my fellow man, concerned party surrounded by my fellow man, student of his fellow man, destroyer of worlds, etc.
I have many different interests, and although i seem to have captured some of them on digital paper, I am more then that. Definitions are there simply to give the world understanding of what it is to be like the object being defined.
April 19th, 2005 at 11:33 pm
I always thought Humanities is the study of what makes us humans. Art, Science, History, Philosophy, Literature and the many more wonderful specializations under the Liberal Arts umbrella. I always considered Humanities to be the generalized degree. I may be wrong. Back to our discussion: A Homonym is a word that is written and pronounced the same way as another, but which has a different meaning. The books lie on the table. They lie to me. Polysemy(polysemous homonyms) refers to a word that has two or more similar meanings. The house is at the foot of the mountains One of his shoes felt too tight for his foot To clarify what I was discussing earlier, Linguists have now started to minimize the difference between the two. The difference between the two is the process at which they seem to have formed. More on this later, go to eat.
April 20th, 2005 at 4:35 am
oh no, you didn’t piss me off. please don’t think that. It’s just that your inital response to M’s comment on the subject was something of an either/or fallacy in relationship to what humanities does… either it is “the study of human societal products […] or [it is] becoming a mild form of philosophy and concerning itself with ideas.” You must admit, the language of your comment implies (because of the structure) that humanities does not deal with ideas. I just can’t see how the two can be separated (these “products”– your examples were art, religion, etc– and then “ideas.”), particularly when said products spring from the discourse of these ideas. So my initial shock (the “of course [humanities] concerns itself with ideas!”) comes from the separation of the two that you, perhaps unintentionally, imply. If humanities studies these products and “how they demonstrate the human aspect of existence,” then aren’t we also dealing with the “ideas”? That’s all I was trying to ask / say. Definitions come from perspective. I’m honestly sorry, but while I think your definition is perhaps denotatively sound, I can’t ignore the connotations of what “humanities” is. Maybe it’s the study of human ideas through these products? It’s the closest thing to a definition I can offer. Hence, why someone could write a dissertaion such as the one M suggested… or why W. can study constructions of self– perhaps it’s the materials that are different (?) between philosophers and the other (I know not what to call it anymore). Then there was this: When i think of obscenity i think of sociology, actually because it is such a culturally defined phrase. It is similar to beauty. There might be general trends for beauty and obscenity, but those trends are based in cultural interpretations of the idea. I guess i’m curious at what a humanities scholar would interpret the defintion as.. and how will it be different with a sociological defintion.. and even a philosophical definiton. Maybe it’s just the way you were writing it, but it reads like “a humanities scholar” would not have considered this– but, and I can only speak for myself, the sociological bent seems inevitable. So I’m not really sure that the “definition” would change from a humanist to a sociologist (from scholar to scholar, more likely, but not because one is labeled “humanities” and the other labeled “sociologist”… if I use Durkheim to read a text, then what does that make me? (These are not smart-ass questions: I’m truly trying to get at your meaning. heh.) Since you’re the philosopher and I’m not, I’ll assume you know something I don’t. Maybe what you’re saying is that philosophy deals with “pure” ideas? I’m not sure anymore. I’m utterly confused at this point. Well, at least we’ll have a lot to discuss on the drive to Houston next month.:)
April 20th, 2005 at 6:12 am
First off, whatever label you adopt to focus on (folklorist, humanities scholar, sociologist, etc) that label is not something that is an all-inclusive definition. What I say about all humans might not be acceptable to you, but it might be the case that it is what is understood about you. So if I say a sociologist wouldn’t think of this, I?m saying that it is not within the Sociological Discipline’s study to know and use this. I am not saying that there exists no sociologist who would know and use this. The later is absurd, because sociologists are not fictional/abstract individuals who exist in a sociological vacuum. There are obviously Scholars of Sociology that know about violin concertos. Disciplines are simply generic descriptions of what methodology should be understood by the individuals involved with the discipline. To say that a Victorianist Literature Scholar wouldn’t be able to tell me the gravitational constant of the universe and be able to manipulate the mathematics inherent in solving for it is to say that it is not within her discipline to do so. It is not saying that you (mealymel) cannot come up with the statement, nor does this suggest that all Victorianists do not know physics. You are creating the false dilemma here, where there wasn’t one. So to conclude, when I say that a sociological interpretation should be this way, I am simply saying that if there were an individual who existed and concerned his/herself with simply the sociological interpretation of the world, they would define obscenity in a specific manner. A Victorianist would also define it in a specific manner. A philosopher would define it in a multitude of different manners, all slightly different from the last but just as relevant.* As for the disciplines, I did in fact separate the two. Why? Because I looked at Humanities as a separate discipline, not the umbrella discipline that Mary describes it as. If the Humanities Discipline is the umbrella discipline that she suggests, then I agree with the statement, “Philosophy is a domain of the Humanities.” As for the ideas controversy, there is an equivocation with the word “ideas”. When I say philosophers deal with ‘ideas’ and most other disciplines don’t, I?m talking about abstract ideas. Examples of which are Existence, God, Numbers, Moral Values, Language, Logic, etc. This is not to say that other disciplines do not describe or play with these notions, but I would argue that they do not focus on ideas themselves. A common misconception that has been propagated by continental philosophy is that philosophy is done in the armchair and requires no real formal tutelage. It simply requires the ability to question. This is incorrect. There are systematic methods regarding argumentation and logic. I am not even going to suggest that I can produce logical cogent arguments in my sleep. It takes a lot of work and study to fully iron out the ideas behind the arguments themselves. I would not suggest is not accessible to everyone, but I would suggest that it is difficult for everyone who attempts to do it. Symbolic logic has around a 75% failure rate. Is Symbolic Logic all of philosophy? Of course not, but it is the language, if you would allow me to use a metaphor. My point is not to point out the difficulty of philosophy, but to attempt to illuminate the differences between humanities and philosophy. Humanities, literature, arts, etc might work with ideas, but they do refine, define, analyze, script, and explore the avenues of abstract ideas. My initial reaction to the dissertation was simply confusion. Every humanities class I have ever been in was simply a watered down version of philosophy, and I apologize if that offends anyone on this board. It was undergraduate and perhaps the taint of undergraduate slacker was there. Every class I participated in resulted in me and the professor arguing philosophical doctrine, and perhaps a few humorous asides or anecdotes. Does that mean Humanities is a bad thing? Does that mean the Humanities Discipline is less complex? Of course not, it could be the case that the Humanities Discipline is just as Mary suggested and I agree, a broad encompassing discipline that cannot delve deeply into the ideas that they are exploring. As an aside, the Humanities Discipline is offering a class called, “The philosophy of Love”. Doesn’t it make you feel all-warm inside cockles of your heart? Is it wrong of them to call it philosophy and yet none of the professors teaching the class has any philosophical background? (One professor is a Renewable Resources Scientist and the other is a Professor of Law and Political Science.) What if these same professors offered a class on Victorian literature? Would it make you consider the situation differently? Perhaps my reaction is pure egotistical, an attempt at staking out the boundaries of the discipline, but I find the need to do this when in common parlance I hear people pass philosophy off as though it is simply a ?waste of time? (directed at you HLF!) or an ?everybody? sport because it is so open to subjectivity. I don’t know the whole answer. If we are going to define disciplines and decide how to distribute funding based on those definitions then there needs to be some form of adherence to the disciplines. Until tonight, I was working off of an incorrect definition of the humanities. Addendum Philosophy is not individualized, whatever the hell that is supposed to mean. We do not have our philosophies, of course people use it that way but that is not what I talk about when talking about philosophy. Buddhism is not a philosophy it is a religion. *a little humor with the other philosophers here and Trey. Some context, philosophical articles tend to begin by redefining the terms so that they can get a full understanding of what they want to argue. (edited shortly after for relevant changes)
April 20th, 2005 at 4:53 pm
Don’t have a lot of time now. Very interesting posts but I had to skim over a lot. Just to clarify on yesterday’s conversation. Speaking for myself, I was not trying to argue that we are not free because of consequences (although in one sense, I do agree with that). What I was saying is that there is more than one sense of the word “freedom”, and that the sense varies with the context, and that sometimes we equivocate between the different senses of the word. In one sense, we are free to do anything within the bounds of the laws of nature, as Sartre said. In another, [i:a9c0378b4e]completely different[/i:a9c0378b4e] sense, we are not free when other people impose negative consequences on our actions, or otherwise induce us to behave a certain way. That’s why I am able to express the paradoxical statement, “I am free to not pay my taxes; nevertheless I’m not free to not pay my taxes.” The sense of the first “free” is different from the sense of the second. I am not arguing that one “definition” is correct and that the other isn’t. I am just pointing out that the word has multiple meanings, or connotations, or whatever you want to call it.
April 20th, 2005 at 5:08 pm
He claimed we were free to anything we were able to do, but he recognized that consequences existed in the world and thereby forces you to choose certain actions. He would argue the freedom is there, you are chosing to ignore certain options due to social pressure. He believed you should live authentically which means making decisions based solely on your own impulses, not what others want you to be. So in the end i don’t think we were disagreeing. From the very begining i was arguing that there are two definitions of freedom, one used in common parlance and the other more philosophical definition.
April 20th, 2005 at 5:27 pm
I thought you were saying that what you call the more philosophical definition is the correct one, and that the other definition is wrong.
April 20th, 2005 at 9:26 pm
a word can have two definitions.. Chisolm doesn’t say the philosophical definition is more correct, simply that it is technical.