Reading Assignment are as follows:Kornhaber, SP. (2017, Jan 5). Pop Culture is Having a Metaphysical Moment. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/01/the

Reading Assignment are as follows:

• Kornhaber, SP. (2017, Jan 5). Pop Culture is Having a Metaphysical Moment. The Atlantic.  Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/01/the-oa-stranger-things-westworld-metaphysical-moment-alternative-realities-tv/511808/
  • Read the magazine article in The Atlantic giving modern examples of metaphysics in American pop culture. The idea is not as unapproachable and foreign as you may think. After reading this article, consider metaphysical questions from your own life and culture and prepare to discuss them in the Discussion Forum. 
• Even Philosophers can confuse themselves. Read the short article from Stanford University on Andronicus of Rhodes available at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-commentators/supplement.html and prepare to discuss the birth of Aristotelian Metaphysics in the Discussion Group.
• Read about Zeno’s Paradox at http://platonicrealms.com/encyclopedia/zenos-paradox-of-the-tortoise-and-achilles. This is a classic Metaphysical Dilemma that you will probably recognize.

• Watch the video about The Grandfather Paradox at https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/wi-phi/wiphi-metaphysics-epistemology/wiphi-metaphysics/v/the-grandfather-paradox
  • There are many such paradoxical ideas within the study of metaphysics. The conflict of time travel, the question of thinking of the mind as an entity (rather than a simple organ in your head), do we have Free Will, and what’s infinity are just a few of them.
  • Use The Khan Academy resource) to broaden your understanding of Metaphysical Challenges to reality. In the Discussion Group this week, you will be challenged to use what you’ve discovered in a way that brings meaning to those ideas.

• Read part “b.” in Kant article “The Duality of the Human Situation” available at:http://www.iep.utm.edu/kantmeta/#SH8b and think about whether we act upon the world or it acts upon us. How does reason guide our actions and reaction to the world? 

• More on Kant: https://philpapers.org/browse/kant-metaphysics

• Read: Harp, J. (2004). Simic's Surrealist Metaphysics: A Review of Charles Simic, "The Voice at 3:00 A.M.: Selected Late and New Poems"." The Iowa Review 34(2), 170-175. Available at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview/vol34/iss2/52

Metaphysics is everywhere. This is the stuff that makes life and love possible – or at least exciting. Having read about Charles Simic, I want you to think as a scholar for a minute:

1. First, “Reviews” in the scholastic sense are much more than “reviews” in pop-culture for movies and books. See how Harp (2004) teaches us not just what we’re going to read, but why it matters that we do

• As you grow as researcher, do not miss skip over these valuable resources to help you cage your experience around relevant key point and topics in the text(s).

• Now read: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/charles-simic about Simic

The approach to philosophy, and particularly metaphysics, from artists and poets like Simic, are examples of the place where ancient life meets modern life. You’ll be asked about this in Discussion group this (and next) week.   

• More from Simic at: http://www.occupypoetry.net/charles_simic

Part 1

• Your FIRST of TWO topic posts this week should be a reaction to The Atlantic article and Charles Simic. In this reaction give an example of this kind of search for meaning in your own life and culture.

• Your SECOND topic, keeping in mind that is a round-table discussion, please post if you think Bruno (the penguin in the Time Travel Paradox video) could or could not kill his Grandfather.