One Course from Summer 2005:

• Phil 304, Philosophy of Sex and Love, Readings and other materials accessible on Moodle with some materials included via links at the end of the syllabus.

Past Courses:

• Spring 2005:
• Phil 303, Theories of Ethics.
• Phil 390, the department seminar, Philosophy vs. Literature.



• From Summer 2004:

  • Issues in Critical Thinking,
  • Assignment One, and links to readings for assignment are here
  • The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry for Informal Logic, by Leo Groarke
  • Don Levi's essay on "Why Do Illiterates Do So Badly in Logic?" from his book In Defense of Informal Logic, (Kluwer Academic Press, 2001) accessible via a link to my website.
  • My introduction to informal fallacies.
  • My quick summary response to the question, What Is the Standard of a Good Argument?"
  • Michael Levin's "A Case for Torture" and a description, including work on clarification of the issue.
  • Second Essay Assignment.
  • My article, "What's Education For?" from the journal Thought and Action
  • My essay on what's wrong with definitions.
  • a paper by a colleague at Helsinki which offers some of the context for the Wittgenstein quote, "what is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is . . . ." and tries to answer a part of the question, "What's philosophy for?"
  • The third assignment.
  • The fourth assignment. This has been revised since first posted. The first question summarizes a main argument developed in this course and allows students to evaluate the argument. The second question presents arguments on the issue of whether arguments matter, including objections based on such ideas as everyone has a right to one's own opinion. The third question asks about how we are kept from thinking clearly. Remember to keep your critical faculties intact.
  • Class White Paper, Proposal to HSU faculty to amend General Education Requirements.

  From earlier semesters:

  • Phil 380, History of Philosophy: Presocratics, Plato, Aristotle,
  • NAS 310, Native American Literature, which was also listed (with different requirements) as ENGL 240, World Lit: Issues in Indigenous Literatures
  • Phil 301, Reflections on Art, (Aesthetics), from Spring 2003
  • Philosophy 390, The Dept. Seminar, The Meaning of Life, (Fall 2002)
  • Phil 391, Wittgenstein's On Certainty (Fall 2002), co-taught with Prof. Shaeffer
  • Philosophy 304 Philosophy of Sex and Love (Summer 2003) A problems-oriented course with some classic and influential readings. What is love, really? Is love subjective? What are natural sexual practices? How can we do a good job of justifying moral judgements about sex? Are there things about sex or love which cannot be put into words?
  • Philosophy 390, Seminar: Wittgenstein, from fall of 1999
  
        How to Read (and How Not to Read) Wittgenstein (a handout for that class)
• Philosophy 399 or 391, Philosophical Methods: The place of examples

This has been an ongoing series on such questions as the following: How shall we appraise Grice's and Searle's arguments against Wittgenstein's ordinary language methods? What presuppositions underly the main problems in philosophy of language? How strong are arguments which appeal to intuitions? What choices have we for methods in working on epistemological problems? What methods are needed for appraising the argument from illusion?
• Philosophy 391, Pinker's How the Mind Works; this reading group in 2002 was instigated by students led by John Taylor. His website is at http://www.crumpled.com/cp/,
• Seminar: Madness and Human Nature, from Spring 96--write for more info. One-credit reading groups on Intentionality in Philosophy of Language, Identity and Personhood, Dichotomies.

Publications, presentations, current projects

• Language As Signs, Dissertation for the Ph.D., University of Oregon, December 1988.
• "What's Education For?" in Thought and Action, November 98: available from their archives at http://www.nea.org/he/heta98/f98 -109.pdf
• "Wittgenstein's Accomplishment Is Most Importantly One of Method" (Issue Introduction, Vol. 1, No. 2, of Essays in Philosophy, a web-based philosophy journal found at www.humboldt.edu/~essays; General Editor, Michael F. Goodman): available from their archives at http://www.humboldt.edu/ ~essays/introv1n2.html
• Articles submitted to journals or drafted: "When Does a Human Life Begin?" "Pacifism and Ethical Theory;" "Mightn't Language Be Inadequate to Express Our Ideas?" "Telling the Truth vs. Being Frank--Searle's Assertion Fallacy;"
• Articles in progress, near enough done to share drafts: "The Very Idea of Language," "What's In, What's Not In Language," "Depathologizing Madness," "Blackburn's Quasi-Wittgensteinianism," "What Searle, Derrida, and Austin Should Have Said About Context."
• Three other articles in progress: "Turn of the Definitional Screw in Plato's Symposium"; "Ordinary Language and John Searle's Retreat from the Assertion Fallacy;" "The Presuppositions of Linguistics and Philosophy of Language."
• Some recent presentations (titles only--for particulars, send me a note): "Navajo Sandpaintings As a Challenge to Aesthetics," "Picture Derek Parfit Pulling the Rug from under His Own Feet;" "Problems with the Distinction Between Being In and Being Out of Language;" "How To Take What Indians Say;" "What's Wrong with Definitions?" "Frazer's The Golden Bough, Wittgenstein, and Thinking Everything Is Good or Bad Science;" "Must a Biologist Be an Environmentalist?" "Critical Thinking's Uncritical Theory;" "Choosing Critical Thinking Texts For Their Bad Answers."
• Stuff on the web: most of this is light writing, but there is some philosophy going on too. See below.

University and Community Service

includes College Personnel Committee, Search Committees for Dean and for two Native American Studies positions, computing committees at college and university-wide levels, Provost's Task Force on Curricular Planning; presented high school workshops on critical thinking and research skills; assisted with grant proposals, e.g. to get technology for public schools and expanded mental health services for low-income students, volunteer driver for Karuk Jump Dance from parking lot down to dance grounds.

Personal Interests, Hobbies:



Parenting my daughter Hannah (born 2/21/2001) and my son Jonah (born 6/20/2003); reading, photography, hiking, fiction, e-mail correspondence.

Recent reading:

Lou Owens' short pieces, e.g. "Blessed Sunshine," in which the characters are the American Indians whom God repented creating, whom God has forgotten to provide an Ark in the Deluge, but who will not all consent to die; Dalva, by Jim Harrison. Harrison's long short story "The Beige Dolorosa" is another recent favorite.
Toni Morrison's Beloved, wonderful and spooky and out-Faulknering any male writer with bewildering ease.
Robert Bly's The Little Book of the Human Shadow.
Sherman Alexie's Ten Little Indians, and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (from which we have the film Smoke Signals).
Adam Gopnik's From Paris to the Moon. Tony Hillerman's mysteries.

Favorite philosophers:

Wittgenstein; Plato; Frank Ebersole .



Papers, Light Writing Projects, Fearsomely Miscellaneous

Here are links to pieces of humor, philosophical papers, pieces of a critical thinking textbook, abstracts or drafts of current projects.
• What's Wrong with Definitions? against the current overuse of definitions in academic work
• Report on the Birth of Hannah Sophie Powell 2/21/2001
• On the Nonexistence of Perceptions argues that the philosophical concept of perceptions is a myth--that no things fitting that account exist and that what perceptions do exist cannot be fixed up to fit the philosophical account required by the argument from illusion, the dreaming argument, or problems about skepticism and knowledge.
• Report on Navajo Studies Conference, September 2000. I presented at this conference on issues Navajo sandpaintings raise for Anglo aesthetics.
• Report on Navajo Studies Conference October 20-24, 1998. An amazing, delightful conference, sane and subversive.
• Orgone University's Time Schedule for Fall Self-Improvement Courses
• A news release from the Mercedes Hood Ornament Collectors Association
• Final exam (objective, multiple-choice) for the Philosophy of Sex and Love course. How will you do?
• An answer person column put together with my fey kids.
• A simulation/role-playing game prospectus for assistant professors, with the dark object of getting tenure. I'm looking for someone to do the graphics programming to fill this in.
• An attack against moral relativism and against moral absolutism.
• Abstract of an academic paper on Alcibiades, who gives the last speech in Plato'sSymposium. Here's where I started thinking there may be deliberate irony in Plato's Platonism.
• Some pieces from from Radish Logic, my critical thinking text.
• How to read the Pre-Socratic Philosophers --and how not to read them, with some commentary on Thales.
• Fulminations in a class handout against the claim that love is different for each individual, and raising questions about some standard views of subjectivity.
• Have a computer name your child .
• Questioning philosophical method using Derek Parfit's notion of empty questions.
• MTV to Become OTV? News release: MTV giving up on popular but unprofitable heavy metal, goes to opera.
• Being and Nothing, a Platonic dialogue among Dolly Parton, Marty Robbins, and Socrates, with background music by Johnny Cash.
• Skepticism and representational theories of mind require the soundness of the Argument From Illusion. Here's an abbreviated attack in the form of a nonphilosophical example.
• Today's Horoscope.
Send comments and suggestions about this page to: jwp2@humboldt.edu
Last Updated: June 2005. An update is planned for someday soon, as always.


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