Arbitrary Marks

Albanian Custom Fades - Woman as Family Man - NYTimes.com
These women swore to be virgins and live as men, but say they wouldn’t do it today because gender roles are more flexible.
(tags: glbt.articles ftm.articles)

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No time for a detailed post, but I want to draw your attention to this podcast from Buddhist Geeks. In it, the Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche says, in response to questions about the need for Westerners to believe in rebirth, that the concept isn’t necessary for practice, but it doesn’t hurt to assume it’s true. It makes for good living now.

In connection, I recommend Jay Garfield, “Nagarjuna’s Theory of Causality: Implications Sacred and Profane,” Philosophy East and West, Vol 51, No 4, 507-524. The article discusses just to what extent belief in rebirth is necessary, particularly for bodhicittas. The abstract is below:

The year was 2000 and I was just out of college, working for a subdivision of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Scarecrow Education. Many of the other employees were librarians, with degrees in Information Technology and Library Science. The hot topic in the office? Ebooks.
Ebooks were going to change the publishing business. It would [...]

Attention readers viewing Arbitrary Marks through uupdates.net. I’ve asked the moderator of that site to remove me, since 1) I don’t attend a Unitarian Universalist church frequently and–since that doesn’t seem to discount one as a member*–I don’t any longer identify as such**; 2) I rarely post about related topics.
If, though, you enjoy what you [...]

The Space of Reasons: Quine on Quine (Video Clip)
(tags: philosophy.language)

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The Splintered Mind: Self-Blindness?
Introspection and the possibility of being introspectively blind.
(tags: philosophy.mind philosophy.neuro)

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While I may not agree with the Churchlands on everything, I do appreciate their interdisciplinary approach to philosophy. I think these quotes, taken from Patricia Churchland’s book, Neurophilosophy, get at why:

“A theoretical value derived from studying neurological cases, therefore, is their potential for dislodging conventional assumptions…Such data seem to me crucially relevant in coming to understand how deficient folk psychology really is and how little we know of the deeper capacities underlying the known cognitive capacities of the brain…”

At the very least, neurological cases ought to be part and parcel of the thought experiments in philosophy of mind (and they are, much more, since the publication of her text). She talks about blindness denial and one philosopher’s argument that if one is conscious, it is impossible to fail to know you are blind. If empirical data seems to contradict this, then we should be perhaps a bit skeptical about arguments from a priori features, even while we continue to examine the data to be sure it’s represented properly.

Constructivism Article
See also Kirschner, P., Sweller J., & Clark R.E., (2006). Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching, Educational Psychologist, 41
(tags: education)

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It turns out my Arbitrary Marks ”splash” page has been broken for a while. Oops. I was planning to redo it, anyway, in honor of starting at a new school in the fall. I’ve taken down all of my papers and will be putting up fresh new ones (I don’t want potential employers to read what I wrote [...]

It isn’t often that I write about anything related to the city of Chicago, but this has been on my mind over the past week and I thought I’d bring your attention to it.
I’m on Flickr quite a bit, putting up my own photos and watching those belonging to my contacts. Some of those [...]