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A Message from the Chair Who the Hell Is Avicenna?

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A Message from the Chair Who the Hell Is Avicenna? Fall Semester 2010 Volume 3, Number 1 semester. A Message from the Chair Our faculty has been equally busy on the research side. Two department members --Gualtiero Piccinini and Robert Northcott The past academic year has been busy – won highly coveted NSF awards while another – Anna Alexan- and productive for the Department of drova — won a prize for the best paper in Philosophy of Science Philosophy. Here are some accom- by a recent PhD recipient. Jon McGinnis, together with two col- plishments culled from various reports leagues from Washington University, secured a $175,000 grant we‘ve sent forward: In calendar year from the Mellon Foundation to support a series of seminars on 2009 we taught 153 course sections the Comparative Study of Cultures. Collectively the philosophy (67 of them online), generated 7428 faculty published 3 books and 42 papers in AY 2009/10. In addi- student credit hours, and graduated 15 tion, the Department sponsored one graduate and one profes- majors, 6 minors, and 11 MA students. sional conference and placed 7 MA students in PhD programs. In Spring 2010 we graduated an addi- Though the threat of tough budgetary times to come is already tional 7 BAs and 10 MA students. casting a shadow, the Department remains energized. Books and Thomas Knoten, a Philosophy graduate student, was one of papers are in the works, conferences are being organized, and three student speakers at the Spring Commencement. Over the plans are being devised to more actively recruit incoming majors. past academic year, we devised 5 new courses -- Happiness and If you are curious about our activities, please explore our web- the Meaning of Life, Markets and Morals, Philosophy of Science site, including the personal pages of our faculty. http:// in Historical Perspective, Philosophy of Film, and NeoPlatonism, www.umsl.edu/~philo/. Our spring conferences and colloquia agreed to develop or revamp several online courses, and partici- are open to the public. If you are among our alums, we‘d love to pated in the creation of 3 new interdisciplinary programs -- Evo- hear from you and learn how you are putting your degrees to lutionary Studies, Neuroscience, and History of Science, with yet work. Please send me an e-mail ([email protected] ) to catch me another, Science Literacy, now underway. We are also participat- up on what you‘re doing. ing in the new Freshman Experience course that debuted this ~Stephanie A. Ross Who the Hell is Avicenna? When I tell your average non- ested in him?‖ nistic thought up through the 500s CE philosophers that I work on Avicenna, Let me begin with how I came to after which philosophy began being they usually look at me blankly as if I work on Avicenna first. Ever since I done in Arabic. Similarly, medieval rattled off, ―Gmv = 8pTmv,‖ while was an undergraduate, I have had two Latinists were focusing research on the when I tell professional philosophers unabated passions: medieval thought intellectual precursors to such Latin that I work on Avicenna, they look at and science. Thus when I began gradu- Avicenna me as if (and sometimes actually say), ate work at Penn, I quickly decided to ―Why would you want to commit in- work on the history of natural philoso- tellectual suicide like that?!‖ Inevita- phy (what we now think of as physics). bly both groups ask me, ―So who is I initially began reading late Latin Avicenna and why did you get inter- scholastic natural philosophers, but soon realized that, since they Inside This Issue: frequently referenced medie- val Arabic philosophers, an understanding of these Mus- Stephanie Ross: A Message from the Chair 1 lim thinkers was going to be Jon McGinnis: Who the Hell is Avicenna? 1 necessary. Unfortunately, Gualtiero Piccinini and Brit Brogaard: when I went to find secondary Dialogue on Neurophilosophy 3 sources on Arabic natural phi- losophy, I discovered that vir- The Humanities Under Attack 5 tually nothing was available. I Faculty Briefs 6 also noticed that the trend in Calls for Papers and Abstracts 6 classical philosophy was to- wards research on late Helle- (Continued on page 2) University of Missouri-St. Louis Fall Semester 2010 Page 2 Department of Philosophy Newsletter Volume 3, Number 1 (Continued from page 1) decided to learn Arabic. What fol- lative theology and a generous help- luminaries like Thomas Aquinas, lowed was a number of intense years ing of plain and simple Avicenna. albeit limiting themselves to Greek, studying the language, made possi- Indeed his philosophical synthesis Jewish and Latin forerunners, and ble through a series of Foreign Areas was one of the most influential phi- Muslim thinkers only in Latin trans- Study Fellowships, Two summer losophical theologies in the Islamic lation. Not to put too fine a point on immersion programs at Middlebury East well into the 19th century (and it, both research trends were bump- College, a Graduate Fellowship at is still being taught in Iran as living Harvard and finally a Fulbright Fel- philosophy); it profoundly influ- lowship that took me to Cairo for a enced the thought of Latin School- year. men like Thomas Aquinas, Duns As for why I finally latched onto Scotus and scores of others; and it Avicenna, this question is perhaps provided the philosophical vision of best answered by addressing the ini- metaphysics that remained the pre- tial question, ―So who is Avicenna?‖ vailing model even in Europe until Avicenna lived between 980–1037 Kant. Even within the more tradi- in what is now modern-day Iran and tional scientific disciplines he was something like the intellectual showed himself a mind with which rock star of his time. He w as a prod- to be reckoned. For example, his igy, who at the age of 10 had memo- analysis of inclination foreshadows rized the entire Koran and begun Galileo‘s and Newton‘s conceptions studying law. By around the age of of inertia, and his theory of motion 11 he had outstripped his private at an instant with its accompanying teacher in the study of logic, geome- account of a limit predates the ap- try and astronomy. Thereafter he pearance of the Calculus by 600 taught himself and claims to have years, while anticipating a number mastered all the sciences by eight- of salient features of it. Finally, his een. Avicenna‘s adult life, like that Canon of Medicine was the standard of few others (and even fewer phi- medical textbook in Europe until as losophers), has all the elements of a late as the Eighteenth century and best selling novel: There was politi- even traditional healers in the Mid- cal intrigue, battles, imprisonment, dle East still use it today. harrowing escapes, alleged poison- After relating some of these details ings, drinking parties and (if one is in answer to the question, ―So who to believe Avicenna‘s biographer) is Avicenna?‖ I always feel free to lots of sex. Between afternoons raise my own query: ―The important ing up against the domain of Islamic spent working as vizier for the Sul- question isn‘t, ‗Who is Avicenna?‘ philosophy and yet scholars were not tan ‗Alā‘ al-Dawla (d. 1041/42) and but ‗Why don‘t we in the West know entering. It seemed to me that Arabic late evenings given over to riotous who Avicenna is?‘‖ philosophy was the last unexplored parties, Avicenna found time to de- lands of our Western intellect tradi- velop a philosophical system that ~ Jon McGinnis tion and I wanted to chart the way. was a unique mixture of Greek phi- Associate Professor Thus in a very mercenary move, I losophy and science, Islamic specu- Editor and Department Chair: Stephanie A. Ross Back Issues Available If you didn’t see the previous Copyeditor and designer: Nora Hendren issues of our Newsletter, please circle back and explore Department of Philosophy them. They’re available on the opening page of our web- 599 Lucas Hall site, and each issue has short but substantive articles by University of Missouri-St. Louis department members. Vol. 1 features Anna Alexandrova One University Blvd. writing on “Do Children Make Us Happy?”; Eric Wiland on St. Louis, MO 63121-4400 “Evaluating Evaluations,” and Stephanie Ross on “What Makes Bad Art Bad?” Vol. 2 features Robert Northcott on Phone: (314) 516-5631 “What Makes Something Innate?” Gualtiero Piccinini and Fax: (314) 516-4610 email: [email protected] Berit Brogaard on Philosophy Blogs, and Ronald Munson Web: http://www.umsl.edu/~philo on “Perpetual Stranger,” a real-life-based bioethics case. University of Missouri-St. Louis Fall Semester 2010 Department of Philosophy Newsletter Page 3 Volume 3, Number 1 background. Now I understand why you know so much Dialogue on Neurophilosophy neuroscience! A coincidence: I have achromatopsia, so if you decide to work on that topic, you can use me as a subject. As to my research, I have three main pro- Gualtiero: Until re- Between jects. The first is on what constitutes concrete computation-- cently, you were known what distinguishes for armchair philoso- things that compute phizing and not at all Brit Brogaard and Gualtiero Piccinini from things that for empirical research. Could you don't. This is rele- briefly explain how you became interested in doing empiri- vant to many sciences: computer science, computational cal research and what your current empirical projects are? psychology and neuroscience, and even physics. The second Brit: Actually, I started out in the sciences. I have a 5-year is on how to integrate psychology and neuroscience into a M.S. in neuroscience from University of Copenhagen and unified explanation of cognition. It piggybacks on the first The Danish National Hospital.
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