amimetobios

Infinity 18: Descartes, Gibson, Turing Tests

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.)

Infinity 17: Etherization

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

Infinity 16: Making Prisoner's Dilemma Vivid

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.

Infinity 15: Pascal

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.

Infinity 14: Polls and other minds

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.

Infinity 13: Elementary probability and the philosophy of probablity

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.

Pascal, the anthropic principle, what counts in philosophy

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.

Infinity 11: by addition, by division, one-to-one correspondence, Macbeth, and time

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.

Infinity 10: Augustine on time and language

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.

Infinity 9: Something of a change of pace

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 number of examples but we have to synthesize those claims.  Turing machines (and who Turing was).  Relation to formal manipulation of symbols.  States and soda machines.

Infinity 8: Philosophical questions

[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.

Infinity 7: Aristotle and the reality of space and time

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?

Parmenides, Anaximander, Hilbert, the Fifth Postulate

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.

Infinity 5: Extension and intension and interesting numbers

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.

Sets and counting

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.

Infinity 3: God's Point of View

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 the Kabbalistic idea of the Aleph uttered only once in history, by God at Mt. Sinai.

Infinity 2: Borges

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.

First class on Thinking About Infinity

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) W 19 Sept Russell: “Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy” (Latte) EGP, 9-11 Th 20 Sept EGP, 9-11 (Brandeis Monday) M 24 Sept Aristotle (Latte), Poincaré: “On the Nature of Mathematical Reasoning” (Latte) W 26 Sept NO CLASS (Yom Kippur) M 1 Oct NO CLASS (Sukkot) W 3 Oct Aristotle, Augustine, Confessions Books: 1-4 M 8 Oct NO CLASS (Shmini Atzeret) T 9 Oct Augustine, Confessions, Book: 11 W 10 Oct Shakespeare: Macbeth M 15 Oct Macbeth, Tennyson: “Tithonus” W 17 Oct Pascal: Pensées, nos. 47, 68, 113, 131, 147-66, 198-201, 220, 271, 373, 418, 420, 427, 564, 597-99, 653, 682, 688, 721-23, 919 M 22 Oct Pascal W 24 Oct Tucker: “Prisoner’s Dilemma” (Latte) FIRST PAPER DUE M 29 Oct Joyce: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man W 31 Oct Portrait M 5 Nov Descartes: Meditations W 7 Nov Descartes, Lem “Non Serviam” (Latte) M 12 Nov William Gibson: Neuromancer W 14 Nov Gibson M 19 Nov Kant on space and time W 21 Nov NO CLASS (Thanksgiving) Th 22 Nov NO CLASS M 26 Nov Kant W 28 Nov Shelley: Mt. Blanc M 3 Dec Shelley W 5 Dec EGP 5-6, Smolin “Atoms of Space and Time” M 10 Dec Aaronson: “Who Can Name the Bigger Number?” W 12 Dec Review of Cantor SECOND PAPER DUE The Brain -- is wider than the Sky -- For -- put them side by side -- The one the other will contain With ease -- and You -- beside The Brain is deeper than the sea -- For -- hold them -- Blue to Blue -- The one the other will absorb -- As Sponges -- Buckets -- do -- The Brain is just the weight of God -- For -- Heft them -- Pound for Pound -- And they will differ -- if they do -- As Syllable from Sound -- --Emily Dickinson

Last class - Milton

[Renaissance poetry: last class] Two sonnets of Milton's: Milton's dream compared with Adam's; Adam before the fall; Eve after the fall.

Last class on Merrill's Book of Ephraim

[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...).

Marvell

[renaissance poetry] Last official class, a short one, on Marvell and his self-involved imagery: the flowers that stand under their own colors in "Upon Appleton House," the drop of dew that looks like its own tear, the self-sustaining images of "The Garden," and "Damon the Mower."

Ephraim 4/26/12

[close reading] We continue the Book of Ephraim; the furnace, the lives of animals from Miranda to Maisie to the cats and dogs that keep on raining.  What it means for God and the Unconscious to be one.  Water imagery. Strato.

Satan, God, Adam and Eve

[renaissance poetry] A last or almost last class on Paradise Lost.  God's evil sense of humor.  Similarities between God and Satan.  Adam and the son's superiority to them.  The point - not quite made in the class - is the way the narrator slowly comes to see this.

Keeping them down on the farm

[close reading] Merrill continued: keeping the bumpkin seers down on the farm.  Erzulie's heart emblem. Miranda and the "Happy Sign."

Ephraim 4/23/12

[close reading] We continue, with Ephraim's long prose discourse, from section Q, and then with Maya's dream, and Erzulie's heart emblem.