{"id":469,"date":"2019-04-01T19:10:22","date_gmt":"2019-04-01T19:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/?p=469"},"modified":"2019-04-01T19:10:22","modified_gmt":"2019-04-01T19:10:22","slug":"pride-prejudice-and-philosophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/2019\/04\/01\/pride-prejudice-and-philosophy\/","title":{"rendered":"Pride, Prejudice, and Philosophy"},"content":{"rendered":"

On March 18th<\/sup>, Colby\u2019s own Philosophy professor Keith Peterson contributed to our lecture series with a presentation titled, \u201cThe Past that has never been Present: The Changing Role of the a priori in Philosophical Anthropology.\u201d Professor Peterson began his talk by stating how the philosophical mindset is key to interpreting and solving the current beliefs around environmentalism. I was initially intimidated by what seemed to be the content of this lecture since I am not well versed in philosophical thought. However, the speaker explained how philosophy is a vast understanding and topic which encompasses reality, existence and knowledge. From this, Professor Peterson introduced how the concept of \u201ca priori\u201d is a contributing factor in how the average person creates their understandings, especially concerning climate change and our environment. I have never heard of this concept, but Professor Peterson explained how a priori is a thought which is formed from theoretical deduction prior to observations, as opposed to knowledge which is gained from experience. He looked to explain a priori through a series of examples and how it relates to the notion of prejudice. Professor Peterson elaborated on how prejudices are preconceived notions that are created through an a priori manner, and not supported by a personal experience. I found it interesting how the thoughts formed this way are by a lack of \u201cobjective validity,\u201d however this is what influences majority of our basic knowledge. This explains the gaps in fundamental awareness surronding climate change because most people do not have direct experience with the negative impacts which surround this topic and consequently do not have the drive to fix it.<\/p>\n

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I found Professor Peterson\u2019s lecture to directly connect to previous Presence of the Past talks by Yale\u2019s Wai Chee Dimock and Georgetown\u2019s Nathan Hensley. As I discussed in last week\u2019s blog post, both these professors presented us with examples of literary work in order to promote the importance of a greater environmental issue. They both believed that if science and the humanities can work together, then knowledge concerning fundamental environmental issues today will increase and solutions will eventually be derived. Professor Peterson highlighted the importance of how inter-discipline collaboration is the answer to success. Although he added a thought to our previous talks as he believes that philosophical literature is necessary for pinpointing why people craft prejudice concepts regarding climate change and environmentalism.<\/p>\n

To conclude his talk, Professor Peterson took questions. Most of the questions revolved around how and why we construct certain ideas surrounding climate change. The discussion I found most interesting was when he spoke about how us, as average people, are able to interpret and respond to the negative effects of climate change. It is unlikely that everyone will be able to get first hand experiences in this field and our education will not cover everything. However, Professor Peterson shared that the way fight against climate change is through increasing knowledge and understanding, which is developed through philosophical thought. Overall, I found this lecture to be a beneficial addition to our lecture series. I appreciated the ideas conveyed by professor Keith Peterson and how they built upon ideas constructed in previous talks.<\/p>\n

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On March 18th, Colby\u2019s own Philosophy professor Keith Peterson contributed to our lecture series with a presentation titled, \u201cThe Past that has never been Present: The Changing Role of the a priori in Philosophical Anthropology.\u201d Professor Peterson began his talk by stating how the philosophical mindset is key to interpreting and solving the current beliefs … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Pride, Prejudice, and Philosophy”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8565,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[441762],"tags":[443399,443400,1045],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8565"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":470,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469\/revisions\/470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/presence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}