The Chalkboard is not Green

Let me define green as that which is experience when seeing reflectance wave lengths of 510 nanometers.  What I need to convince you of is that what you experience when you look at the chalkboard might NOT be an experience of green reflectance, but of some other color.

Color constancy is the problem of how we see various shades of one color as really of one color.  For instance, we see a ping pong ball as white, when it is really a gradation of shades of gray--a painter would have to use dark pigments to paint a ping pong ball as a spherical object.

Here's another example, where the A square looks darker than the B square: 

The A square and B square look like they are different shades in the checkerboard above, but in the checkerboard below, they are shown to be the same shade.  

This suggests that the shade of the chalkboard that we see is in fact different from what we really see.  Of course, this does not amount to saying that the chalkboard is not green, but rather a different shade of green that what we seem to experience.

The Lilac Illusion however, produces an experience of green occurs from a gray experience, where there is no green to be experienced.  This, coupled with the shade illusion above, suggests that perhaps the color of the Chalkboard is other than what we experience.

1=2

There are several "proofs" that result in the absurd claim that 1=2.  Here's one from Bill:

      Step 1: Let a=b.

      Step 2: Then a² = ab,

      Step 3: a² + a² = a² + ab,

      Step 4: 2a² = a² + ab,

      Step 5: 2a² – 2ab = a² + ab – 2ab,

      Step 6: and 2a² – 2ab = a² - ab.

      Step 7: This can be written as, 2(a² – ab) = 1(a² – ab)

Step 8: and canceling the  (a² – ab) from both sides gives 1=2.

But to actually claim that you KNOW that 1 does NOT equal 2 you would need to have reasons.  So, what is the reason, i.e. what is the fallacious step in this proof?  Click on the step you take to be fallacious.  If you are incorrect, perhaps you don't have good grounds for thinking 1=1. 

The Nature of God

In Reading Response 1, I asked students the following question:

Think like the first philosophers and Socrates; what is the “one over the many” with respect to the nature of God?  It is tempting to think of God as “omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient”, but these are just qualities of God, not God’s essence.  What is God’s essential nature?  Explain why you think so.

Their answers varied considerably:

God's nature is LOVE: 7

God's nature is GOD: 7

God's nature is GIVER: 3

God's nature is CREATOR: 3

God's nature is MERCY (GRACE): 3

God's nature is EVERYTHING: 3

God's nature is POWER: 2

God's nature is PERFECTION: 2

God's nature is GOODNESS: 2

God's nature is HOLINESS: 2

That's 9 distinct conceptions of God amongst 34 students.  

And that doesn't include the 7 students which thought God's nature was unknowable (4) or consisted of many things (3).

I have two initial thoughts:

First, these students likely did not know how to express their views on the nature of God.  The smallest bit of philosophical training would have provided them with the following classic understanding of his nature, "A being so great none could be greater" from Anselm."  So "the greatest being" is classically thought to be God's nature.  This category seems to capture all of these various understandings of God's nature in a way that is intelligible (but maybe not).    

Second, many of the students who were in the majority-who answered "love" or "God", did so on a Biblical basis, citing, for instance, "God is Love" (1Jn. 4: 8, 16) or "I am that I am" (Ex. 3:14).  But this seems a bit inappropriate in a Philosophy class where, as has been stated many times in many ways, reason and observation are our sources of knowledge.  We are adherents of a tradition of wise men, not priests or prophets.  Furthermore, the answers are either useless (I love my wife, God is love, so I God my wife) or circular (God is God).  

These thoughts coalesce into the following claim: Christians need to be Philosophers to make sense of their faith.