Michael Fogleman

David Cope, profiled in Triumph of the Cyborg Composer

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:24:24 -0500

David Cope, profiled in Triumph of the Cyborg Composer

"Can you tell me, Socrates, can virtue be taught? Or is it not teachable but the results of practice,..."

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 10:33:00 -0500

“Can you tell me, Socrates, can virtue be taught? Or is it not teachable but the results of practice, or is it neither of these, but men possess it by nature or in some other way?”

- Plato: Meno (via fuckyeahphilosophy)

After spring break, all of the Freshman Language classes at St. John’s will be translating the Meno. First question for me: why do we commonly translate the word ἀρετή as virtue, and not as its other, more general meaning, excellence? The way you translate that word completely changes the meaning of the dialogue.

After talking with Tommy about this, I’m not under the general suspicion that ἀρετή absolutely should be translated as excellence in the Meno, I’m just wondering how a translator can distinguish when the word should be translated as virtue or excellence.

"Long ago, when I was a young man, my father said to me… “Norman, you like to write..."

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 13:09:19 -0500

“Long ago, when I was a young man, my father said to me… “Norman, you like to write stories?” And I said, “Yes, I do.” Then he said, “Someday, when you’re ready… you might tell our family story. Only then will you understand what happened, and why.””

- A River Runs Through It

This is my submission for the Send a Postcard, Get a Postcard...

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 09:52:42 -0500

This is my submission for the Send a Postcard, Get a Postcard project that I funded on Kickstarter.

Some Short Questions about Happiness

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:19:00 -0500

To what degree is happiness a product of our choices? Assuming our choices do have some impact on our happiness, what sorts of choices can we make for ourselves to maximize our own happiness? Certainly that pattern of choices varies from person to person, so what do we need to know about ourselves to find out which choices those are?

"Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; ..."

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:25:42 -0500

“Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”

- On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer by John Keats

"Deep reading — the kind that you engage in when you get lost in the syntax and imagery and the long,..."

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 11:46:17 -0500

“

Deep reading — the kind that you engage in when you get lost in the syntax and imagery and the long, convoluted sentences of a really meaty book — is a special sort of exercise that creates a new part of the brain that did not exist at birth.

“It’s semi-miraculous, really,” said Dr. Wolf, the director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University. “We don’t have genes for reading. It’s an activity we invented, and by doing it, we show that our brain has the capacity to go beyond itself, to take all these circuits that were created for oral language or vision, and do something entirely different with them — deduction, critical analysis, imagination, contemplation.”

”

- Wife/Mother/Worker/Spy - The Endless First Chapter - NYT (via karigee) (via whilebird) (via literarypiano) (via somethingchanged) (via robot-heart) (via notemily) (via nerdgasms) (via 12minds) (via andeventhis) (via fuckyeahreading)

godelescherbach: Welcome to the Gödel, Escher, Bach, Tumblr...

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 14:05:00 -0500

godelescherbach:

Welcome to the Gödel, Escher, Bach, Tumblr reading group! We’d love to have you read along with us - you can sign up right here.

I’m reading Gödel, Escher, Bach at the rate of one chapter a week with a couple friends here at St. John’s, and with this online reading group. Now is a great time to read this fantastic book.

"Well then, Protagoras, we’re also stating opinions of a human being, or rather of all human..."

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:41:45 -0500

“Well then, Protagoras, we’re also stating opinions of a human being, or rather of all human beings, and claiming that no one at all does not consider himself wiser than others in some respects and other people wiser than himself in other respects, and in the greatest dangers at least, when people are in distress in military campaigns or diseases or at sea, they have the same relation to those who rule them in each situation as to gods, expecting them to be their saviors, even though they are no different from themselves by any other thing than by knowing; and all human things are filled with people seeking teachers and rulers for themselves and for the other animals, as well as for their jobs, and in turn with people who suppose themselves to be competent to teach and competent to rule. And in all these situations, what else are we going to say but that human beings themselves consider there to be wisdom and lack of understanding than among them?”

- Socrates, Plato’s Theaetetus 170B

Conversation from Before Sunset

Sun, 27 Dec 2009 19:57:00 -0500

Céline: Have you ever spent some time in Eastern Europe?
Jesse: Eastern? No, no...
Céline: No? I, uh, remember as a teenager I went to Warsaw, when it was still a strict communist regime. Which I don't approve of at all.
Jesse: (Sarcastically.) Oh yeah, sure you don't...
Céline: No, I don’t.
Jesse: No, I'm just kidding!
Céline: But, anyway, something about being there was very interesting, I found. After a couple of weeks, something changed in me. The city was quite gloomy and gray and...but, after a while, my brain seemed clearer. I was writing a lot more in my journal, ideas I had never thought of before.
Jesse: Communist ideas?
Céline: Listen, I'm not...
Jesse: I'm sorry, I can't...Go on!
Céline: I'll send you to a Gulag! No...but it took me a while to figure out why it felt, you know, so different. And then, one day, as I was walking through the Jewish cemetery, I don't know why, but it occurred to me there, I realized that I had spent the last two weeks away from most of my habits. TV was in a language I didn't understand. There was nothing to buy, no advertisements anywhere. So, all I've been doing was...walk around, think, and write. My brain felt like it was at rest, free from the consuming frenzy. And I have to say, it was almost like a natural high. I felt so peaceful inside, no...strange urge to be somewhere else, to shop...Maybe it could have seemed like boredom at first, but it quickly became very, very soulful. It's interesting, you know?

A Few Thoughts on Language

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:04:47 -0500

1) Language is one attempt at creating a tool to convey ideas- in many ways it is our best attempt, although music and painting and other arts can often convey an idea in ways that words cannot.

2) Human ideas are composed not only the facts or conclusions of their originators, but also their memories and emotions.

3) Language as we know it is only able to convey an imitation of the original idea to its receiver. During the reception of ideas, receivers add a layer of subjectivity to their own ideas, memories and emotions.

4) Words of any language are useful (and often beautiful) imitations of the perfect language.

5) The perfect language would convey not only the original idea in fact and conclusion, but also the relevant memories and emotions of the originators. Furthermore, it would allow the receiver to receive not only the parts and whole of the idea, but to allow for the same layer of subjectivity as well as interaction and synthesis. There must be clear boundaries between these layers in the receiver’s mind.

6) The perfect language will be found to be made not of words, but of pure, undiluted ideas; therefore it will be less of a language and more of a method.

7) This method for recording, transferring and receiving ideas in a perfect way will be either mechanical or divine.

"In short, the indirectness of animal existence holds in its wakefulness the twin possibilities of..."

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 17:22:04 -0500

“In short, the indirectness of animal existence holds in its wakefulness the twin possibilities of enjoyment and suffering, both wedded to effort. The two evolve together, and the liability of suffering is not a shortcoming which detracts from the faculty of enjoyment, but its necessary complement.”

- Hans Jonas, To Move and to Feel: On The Animal Soul (from The Phenomenon Life: Toward A Philosophical Biology)

30%

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:33:00 -0500

30%:

A public update about Autodidactism 2010, discussing my fundraising progress and other goodies about the project. If you pledge, you get access to all of these updates, public and private.

The Principles of Unitarian Universalism

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:12:21 -0500

The Principles of Unitarian Universalism:

I grew up in a Unitarian Universalist church- it was interesting to revisit and re-educate myself about UU ideals.

Autodidactism 2010: A Student's Summer of Learning and Writing

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:39:00 -0500

Autodidactism 2010: A Student's Summer of Learning and Writing:

Autodidactism (from the Greek αὐτοδίδακτος, meaning self-taught) “is self-education or self-directed learning. An autodidact is a mostly self-taught person, as opposed to learning in a school setting or from a full-time tutor or mentor. Autodidacts might spend their time reading either in solitude or in public spaces such as at libraries or via educative websites. They may or may not have designed a plan for their course of study. They may or may not engage a network of experts for guidance.” [Wikipedia]

I would like to spend my summer break reading books, learning about and trying things I am interested in. If I raise at least $1,400, I will do these things in addition to writing and self-publishing a book composed of essays written over the course of the summer. The money will go towards my college education.

Flexibility is an important element for any autodidactic pursuit, but I do have a starting point. I maintain a list of books that I would like to read on Goodreads (http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/543548…. I am studying the Great Books at St. John’s, so I would like to supplement that knowledge with more modern works of non-fiction and literature. Some general areas that I am interested in studying this summer include psychology, linguistics, education, Eastern religions and philosophy, mathematics and science, and history.

As far as the experiential part of my summer, I have a few projects I will investigate and probably try: polyphasic sleep, Vipassana meditation, new exercise routines, learning languages such as Esperanto and Latin, attempting programming, etc.

I will self-publish the book on Lulu.com, a print-on-demand self-publishing company.

Thank you in advance for your generous support! I’m very excited about this project and with your help, I can achieve something that will not only be formative and educational, but I will also have a tangible final product, my book.

"What must survive a student’s higher education today is a facility for life-long learning. Consider..."

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:19:09 -0500

“What must survive a student’s higher education today is a facility for life-long learning. Consider how steep the learning curve has become in the professional workplace. Knowledge has become so ephemeral that management experts have tried to get a handle on the educational challenge by using a yardstick they call the “half-life of knowledge.” This is the amount of time it takes for half of one’s professional knowledge to become obsolete. I’ve seen estimates that, overall, the half-life of knowledge is somewhere between four and seven years. For technical fields, it is much less; half of what software developers know now, for example, will likely be irrelevant in just 18 months.9 As Maryanne Rouse has written, “We used to think of the long run as ten to fifteen years; in many technology-dependent industries the long run may now be six months or less. And while the pace of knowledge-creation is accelerating, the half-life of knowledge becomes shorter each year. What this means for us is that concepts are far more important than facts and the ability to analyze and synthesize has much greater value than the ability to memorize. In short, school may be multiple choice but real life is all essay.”
In real life, then, the skills of synthesis and systemic thinking are not just luxuries, they are invaluable. We are, after all, living through an Information Revolution, which parallels the Industrial Revolution in its impact and far-reaching consequences. Information—of all varieties, all levels of priority and all without much context—is bombarding us from all directions all the time.”

- Vartan Gregorian, Higher Education in an Age of Specialized Knowledge

Higher Education in an Age of Specialized Knowledge

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:07:00 -0500

Higher Education in an Age of Specialized Knowledge:

The Campaign for St. John’s College published a transcript of this lecture to promote liberal education and The Program in particular. The Library of Congress also has a streaming video of this lecture.

"‘In the first place,’ I said, ‘the man who is to take it [philosophy] up must not..."

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:44:49 -0500

“‘In the first place,’ I said, ‘the man who is to take it [philosophy] up must not be lame in his love of labor, loving half the labor while having no taste for the other half. This is the case when a man is a lover of gymnastic and the hunt and loves all the labor done by the body, while he isn’t a lover of learning or of listening and isn’t an inquirer, but hates the labor involved in all that. Lame as well is the man whose love of labor is directed exclusively to the other extreme.’”

- Socrates, Plato’s Republic, VII.535d

"For we never, for example, become mathematicians by remembering all the demonstrations of others..."

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:50:31 -0500

“For we never, for example, become mathematicians by remembering all the demonstrations of others unless we are also capable of solving any kind of problem that may be proposed, nor do we become philosophers by reading all the arguments of Plato and Aristotle, for if we cannot ourselves reach a firm judgment concerning whatever it at issue, it would appear that we are not devoting ourselves to science, but to history.”

- René Descartes (via sententious)

"What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same..."

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:52:04 -0400

“What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology! — I know of no reading of another’s experience so startling and informing as this would be.”

- Henry David Thoreau - Walden