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Teaching · Diary.. · thing?
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[Filter: Public] Ah, I'm really sorry for my recent abscence for the past few weeks. It was sort of abrut, I know, and I didn't tell any of you that you'd be getting a substitute teacher. I hope she was allright? Some erm.. urgent business came up. [Filter: Private] I broke it again, Cain. I, I don't think I killed, but..
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[Filter: Private] Travelling everywhere has kept my mind occupied for quite a while now, but when I'm in one place--like now--certain thoughts seem to reappear again. Especially in places with so many people. I've spent years without it, centuries even in that damn crypt, but when I have nothing to occupy myself with, the krusnik begins to stir again without my permission. I don't need blood, I don't. ((OOC Note: Those familiar with the Trinity Blood canon may find this a trifle odd, considering there is no evidence in either the anime, manga or novels that he craves blood of any sort, yet it is implied that he needs it, although that entire aspect of the thing is pretty much glossed over and nothing is ever specified regarding Abel's need/want for blood, therefore I took some creative liscence. Please don't kill me. ^_^; ))
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[Filter: Private] Ah, glad to be back somewhere, at least somewhere that I can stay for more than a few nights. It will probably take a bit of getting used to, staying in the same place for so long, but I just hope that this year is a bit more uhm.. normal than last year. Neither Muraki or Oriya have shown their faces, so I'm actually optimistic. I guess they stiil despise me, not that I should be caring. [Filter: Students] As you may or may not already know I'm Professor Nightlor---road. Nightroad, sorry. *giggles nervously* I'll be traching both Philosophy and Psychology this year. If you have any questions about either of the curriculums, come ask me.
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[Filter: Private] I should have known that I would get bored staying in one place for too long, especially if there's next to noone there..so I decided to leave. I'm staying at a House of Salvation outside of Palmacosta for the night and I'll be returning to the city tomarrow morning. I'm not sure how far I went, but I wound up at a small mountain village.. Hima, was it? Wandering feels much more natural to me than anything, so it's been refreshing. But I'll be back soon, as school is starting up again soon.. hmm.. I'm not sure when though. [Filter: Oriya] Have you uhm.. found a way to allow Muraki back?
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[Filter: Private] I'm back at the school, like I probably should be. As the meeting with Oriya didn't go well at all. If I;d known Muraki was going to be there I wouldn't have even troubled him, I wish I could do something though, he seemed so unhappy. [Filter: Oriya] This is all my fault, you have nothing to be ashamed of. What I did was for your own good, otherwise you'd become caught up in something that would damage you and Muraki's relationship. If.. you want to believe he's different now, then I won't stop you. Maybe he could be, for all I know. All I know was that when he looked at me, he was still the same Muraki that used me like before, and was intending on doing so again. You two look so happy together and I don't want to destroy that. [Filter: Private] ..I think that will happen enough on its own.
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[Filter: Private] Isn't this familiar? Wanting to leave somewhere but not having saved up the money to. It's allright though, the academy does provide lodgings for both students and teachers over the summer, but it just seems so... empty. I haven't the courage the go and see Seth yet, though I want to. She wrote to me once, saying that she misses me, but nothing more. I guess it's nothing urgent, then. *sigh* Summer isn't my favourite season at all, I burn really easily. ^^; [Filter: Oriya] Maybe I will take up your offer after all... what time is best for you?
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[Filter: Private] The school's been noisy lately, but quiet at the same time. That's hard to understand, but I mean more like it's been so quiet without Oriya or Muraki interrogating me, though the students are riled up, excited to be out for school. It's only just occured to me how boring it's going to be, but that doesn't matter, it's better than the alternative, I guess. I might go back for a little while, to see Seth for a little while.. get an update on how Cain's been doing, if he's still alive. It would be better for me if he wasn't, and for everyone else, too. It just.. would be hard knowing that it wasn't I who killed him. [Filter: Oriya] I was just wondering, have you spoken to Muraki lately..?
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[Filter: Public] In our earlier discussion of epistemology we looked at what the term means, some basics of the historical development of the subject, the idea that knowledge could be defined as justified true belief and some problems with this, the problem of induction and some possible ways to come by knowledge. In this second instalment, we will expand on some of these areas and consider the problem of skepticism in particular as means to appreciate why epistemology is important, both in philosophy and everyday life. The Problem of SkepticismAs we noted before, there are several problems in epistemology. We could identify the main ones as follows: What can we know, if anything; and
How can we know it?We can further divide the first into two questions: can we know anything at all and, if so, what can be known? Put this starkly, the answers seem obvious: we know plenty of things, and presume many of them before we can wonder about these issues in the first place. Indeed, this seems so commonsensical that doubting it can strike us as academic and/or pointless. Nevertheless, there were apparently plenty of straightforward notions we had in the past that turned out to be mistaken, so we can at least take a look at the matter. Before we do so, of course, we need to at least have an understanding of what we mean by knowledge. The best known meaning, as we said, is justified true belief, and we considered some of its potential weaknesses. Notwithstanding these, the justification of beliefs has typically been the most important aspect of any claim to have knowledge. Suppose, for example, we take an ordinary belief: 1.I am hearing this lecture in the classroom This is apparently quite straightforward, so how could we doubt it? There are times, however, when obvious beliefs turn out to be in error. In the past, for example, it was as plain that the planet does not move as we now consider it to be that it does. What about optical illusions, too, or mirages and hallucinations? A common experience for most people, for instance, is seeing someone we know in the distance, only to find when we get closer that we were mistaken. Likewise, sometimes a bush or a tree can look like an animal or person at first glance. Another problem, often referred to by philosophers, is dreaming. We seem to have vivid dreams in which events that seem real turn out to not be when we wake up (although this basic story can become even more complicated when we ask how we know when we are awake and when we are dreaming). And so on. If we wish to be skeptical, then, we can doubt the ostensibly ordinary belief in lots of ways. Perhaps we are dreaming the experience, or else hallucinating it? Notice that the response"if you're not sure, just reach out and touch the thing" is defeated by these possibilities. We could say that there are ways to test for both, such as by the traditional pinch, but why should this work when we can usually "feel" things in our dreams? We might claim that a good pinch has always sufficed before, but why should what happened before continue to happen in the same way in future? (This is the problem of induction in one of its forms, of course.) Can we know anything if we keep on in this fashion, always questioning what we claim to know when it appears to rest on other pieces of knowledge that can themselves be doubted, and so on forever? We seem to be trapped in an infinite regress, so how can we escape it? Historically there have been two main answers: we break out either via experience (the road taken by empiricism) or by our reason (the path of rationalism). Skeptics, in turn, have been critical of both. We will look at these after we consider some initial objections to skepticism itself. [Filter:Oriya] I've noticed uhm.. have you been avoiding me? Not that it matters or anything, I know what happened was on a whim, but I can't help but think this has something to do with Muraki. he told me to keep away from you, has he told you the same thing?
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[Filter: Students] Some common topicsWe'll finish this unit by looking at a few subjects that come up frequently and investigate them a little. The tree in the woodsMany of us have heard the question "if a tree falls in the woods and no-one is there, does it make a sound?" This conundrum here is based on the idea of verificationism: a claim is justified only if it can be verified in some way. In the case of our tree, then, we seem to know from past experience that falling trees make a noise; however, if there's no-one there to hear it, it can't be verified—hence the confusion. In fact, if we leave a tape recorder behind we can soon answer the question. The problem can be extended by disallowing any such monitoring device but this shows—quite clearly—that the epistemological ideas we adopt influence what we can say. InductionIn his writings, Hume (amongst other things) expressed what is now called the problem of induction: we ask whether a finite number of particular cases can ever justify a general conclusion. For example, suppose that we visit a farming district and see very many sheep that are all white. Can we then assert from the hundreds of sheep we saw that all sheep are white? It turns out that we would be wrong to do so, or else there'd be no nursery rhyme. How many white sheep would we need to see before we can justify saying that all sheep are white, though? To look at this further, let's lay out the information we have in a logical form. Premise 1: The first sheep was white. P2: The second sheep was white. ... P501: The five hundredth and first sheep was white. (And so on.) Conclusion: All sheep are white. The problem is that none of the premises contain the conclusion and all of them are moreover the same in form, so we're relying on a kind of brute force of numbers. Suppose we saw another thousand sheep, all of which were also white. Are we justified then? Again, apparently we aren't because in fact some sheep aren't white? Is there any way around this difficulty? One thing we can do is recast the problem: instead of asking when we're justified in saying that all sheep are white, we can wonder instead when it would be reasonable to assume it. In this light, the matter takes on a much different hue. If we see but one white sheep, it seems unreasonable to insist that all sheep are white. However, once we've seen several hundred of the walking sweaters we may be reasonable in supposing that they all are. The subsequent finding that some sheep are black doesn't change the fact that we were justified in supposing them to be white. In recent times, Goodman has posed what is called the "new riddle of induction". Rather than using his example, let's stay with the sheep and reconsider what we have. Our observations of hundreds of white sheep has led us to propose the theory that all sheep are white. Suppose now that we offer another theory: all sheep until some time T in the future will be white, but the next one will be purple. The evidence we have to date supports our theory, but it also fits this new (but silly-sounding) theory too. How do we decide which is the more reasonable, given that both are equally well grounded? Moreover, we could create plenty of other theories of the same form, involving sheep of all the colours of the rainbow and more besides. We can't say that we have to go with the white theory because we've only seen white so far because that is assuming what is to be proven; i.e. that we expect to see new sheep that are also white. This interesting and perplexing problem is notoriously difficult to escape. In scientific terms it's called the underdetermination of theories and we'll see it again when we come on to scientific epistemology and the philosophy of science. Look for these topics next... [Filter: Muraki] I've heard some.. things regarding me, via your uh..friend? Is it true that you intend to kill me?
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