This is just for me. I used last semester's quite a bit.
I think those are all my courses that have web pages.
So, as an update to my post about the snowstorm, I've decided I'm ditching my friend and driving up to DC tomorrow morning to try to beat the storm. She'll be able to get a ride home on Sunday, so things are worked out for her, and she's even letting me stay in her place while she's not there (so that saves me a Benjamin for a hotel room -- ha, I said a Benjamin). I'm meeting her early tomorrow at the wedding reception to get her key. She may even be able to meet me Sunday when she gets back so I won't not get to spend any time with her.
So, no more worrying about how to get down to DC, so long as I actually do beat the storm and actually do get my friend's key and actually do find her place ok. Now I can start worrying about what I'm going down there for in the first place 
For one of my classes we read a selection from Steven Pinker's "How the Mind Works". In the selection he discusses some of the objections to his conception of the mind as a product of evolution (thus having certain built-in characteristics "designed" by natural selection -- i.e. a human nature), one of them being that "if obnoxious behavior like aggression, war, rape, clannishness, and the pursuit of status and wealth are innate, that would make them "natural" and hence good". All Pinker says in rebuttal to this is that "the fallacy" of this objection "is so obvious it has been given a name: the naturalistic fallacy, that what happens in nature is right."
I really like Steven Pinker -- I've made my way through most of his "The Language Instinct". He is excellent as a cognitive scientist, but lousy as a philosopher. The naturalistic fallacy presupposes that there is some external standard of morality that supersedes nature, yet if our nature is a product of evolution and there is no God, then nature's all we got.
David Hume (correctly) pointed out that you cannot derive ought from is. The problem is, for an atheist, there simply is no ought possible. Obligation can only come from authority, and, without God, there is no standard of authority. You can try to do the opposite of what Wittgenstein said he did -- rather than throwing away the ladder once you've climbed up it, you start up in thin air with no ladder in the first place -- and try to construct some emergent social theory of authority, but it's impossible to justify why that would supersede any of our natural inclinations that contradict the social authority, or why the social authority has any authority at all -- hence the starting in thin air.
The Christian worldview has a basis for authority, and morality. Only upon the Christian worldview can we correctly separate ought from is. In fact, only upon the Christian worldview can we have any conception of "ought" at all. So, the naturalistic fallacy, which claims that what is natural is not necessarily good, and what's good is not necessarily natural, has no way to justify that apart from the Christian worldview. So, only on the Christian worldview, a worldview that views nature as corrupt and not existent as God originally intended, is the naturalistic fallacy justified.
I'm planning on driving down to DC on Saturday night. Unfortunately, they're predicting a big snowstorm. I always figure "Hey, I'll drive slow". But I haven't been following the weather reports, and my dad and our realtor are telling me I'm crazy to attempt it. So, I'm trying to decide what to do.
I've been watching The Weather Channel for the past few minutes and I haven't seen anything that sounds terrible. I've been told they're predicting 6-12 inches, but The Weather Channel says something like 1-3 inches are expected. Though that's around here -- I don't know what it's supposed to be farther south. Actually (later), I thought I heard them say that most of the snow should be up between Philly and Boston, not south.
I could leave earlier on Saturday, but I'm driving down with a friend who I'm planning to stay with on Saturday night, so that screws her up since she's at a wedding during the day on Saturday. But the chance of getting stuck along 95 in a snowstorm and freezing overnight is unacceptable. So, I have to decide what I want to do.
Update: they said 6-12 between Philly and Boston, and I think 4-6 around Baltimore and DC. Hmm...
Update: Argh, they keep upping the estimates. We're supposed to get up to 18 inches up here.
Friday, January 21, 2005
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Keith: Jul 4, 11:32am