With the supervision of Dr. Victor Shrira, I undertook an independent study under mathematical modelling of history —“Historical Dynamics”, as it is often called. Specifically, I sought to model what happens, in the long-term, to the military and economic mights of two states that are intermittently at war with each other. Considering things like imperial overstretch, I attempted to adapt the model developed by Peter Turchin at Princeton to more practical scenarios.
It would be very interesting, I feel, to think of how such a model can be applied to study the long-term effects of head-on competition on two companies whose business models are not based on Michael Porter’s philosophy of shared value (in which case the community’s investment in the businesses could be considered to set boundary conditions for loss in shareholder value).
In my brief exploration of Theories of Truth supervised by Dr. Guessepina D’oro, I rejected the Correspondence Theory which says that a true statement corresponds to some state of the world. My main argument was that it assumes a world that it requires no observation, which I argued does not make sense in this context, (because why does an unobserved world need a notion of truth?). I rejected the Coherence Theory, arguing that it suggests a necessarily and abundantly communal notion of reality. (If you spent your entire life in solitary confinement, would that deprive you of the notion of truth? Wouldn’t you know, for instance, that it is true that you know no one?). Lastly, I rejected Deflationary Theories which seek to explain away the notion of truth, because, if one is trying to explore gaseous molecules, why would one waste time wandering about in a vacuum? (right?).
I then proposed an “Approximation Theory” which combined the Correspondence Theory of Truth and the Coherence Theory of Truth to define truth as a function of relevance. I argued, according to the proposed theory, that what is true (for a given observer) is a summation of what is relevant to the observations of as many observers as are relevant to his particular observation. This is easily expressed mathematically.
As part of an Executive Education course (title: Building, Sustaining, & Leading the Innovative Organisation) administered by MIT's Sloan School Of Management, Prof. Ralph Katz, author of The Human Side of Managing Technology Innovation, gave a series of thought-provoking lectures. His work is a must-read for entrepreneurs and managers seeking to develop an intelligent approach to managing people and ideas to create products, corporate cultures, and brands that take into account.
I have found it increasingly interesting to think about the many different levels on which Prof. Katz's work connects to New York University's Prof. Aswath Damodaran’s work on how companies mature themselves out of room to grow.
Dr. Karim Esmail, then at Cambridge, led these summer classes at Oxford that explored the evidential problem of evil, shortly before publishing his critically-acclaimed book, God: A Brief Philosophical Introduction. The central question was, “Can an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving God create a world in which there is evil?”. The context was: “If God is all-knowing, he would know how to prevent evil; if he is all-powerful, he would be able to stop evil; if he is all-loving, he would want to stop evil.” My paper, at the end of the class, was on Irenaeus’s Theodicy, a response to the question given by St. Irenaeus, the Greek Bishop of 3rd century France. Irenaeus argued that God can do so and has done so for the purpose of soul-making. That is, for man’s moral and spiritual growth.
This was my introduction to philosophy of religion! But I count it among the most important academic experiences I have ever had because the question under consideration presented clear evidence of how philosophical systems shape the world. We live in a world in which one-third of people, and the vast majority of nations (contrary, in some cases, to what their constitution suggests) identify with a religion. It is inconceivable to me that such a world can be possible without a philosophy unifying the overwhelming notion of God (as all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving) with the clear and abundance evidence of evil in the world.
Irenaeus’s Theodicy, which, in time, became part of official doctrine, made it possible to believe that the evidential problem of evil is part of a Compassionate System God created specifically to perfect an imperfect man; an idea, which, I would argue, has had tremendous influence on criminal justice systems, and the general notion of personal responsibility and civil liability; the idea that the creator has created or allowed (temptations for) evil in the world, but man has the ultimate responsibility to respond thereto in a way that improves him morally (and spiritually!)Anyway, in my paper, I derived a parallel system from St. Irenaeus’s propositions by (as it were) multiplying them by matrices of the attributes of God he grants. I then argued that if his Theodicy holds, then God, as the derived system suggests, must also be in a process of soul-making.
Dr. James Driscoll led this class at Oxford's beautiful Corpus Christi College, to explore big topics on which philosophy, science, and religion have particularly significant or curious positions; topics such as creation, ethics (euthanasia, abortion, reward and punishment, etc.), natural disasters, bioengineering, democracy, the state of being, the notion of a soul, how knowledge is obtained, etc. This was an exciting class because it cut across so many academic disciplines: biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, theology, linguistics, history, anthropology, and philosophy. More so, the class had a diverse and fascinating makeup. If I recall correctly, there were two priests from Poland, three scientists from the US and Europe, a novelist from Spain, an artist from Germany, an American who works with USAID, a corporate lawyer from South Africa, a medical doctor from Nigeria, a British conflict resolution expert who works for the UN, and me.
We discussed various works and shared our views and, in some cases, relevant personal stories. What struck me gradually was that as we explored various topics from the perspectives of all those disciplines, we were also inevitably exploring the professional and cultural backgrounds of members of the class. More important, I learnt something I really only appreciated in theory hitherto; the idea that in practical situations, logic itself is not applied independent of personal experience and cultural influence, and, it is not only possible, but also, common, for two parties who both make "perfect sense" to disagree on an issue. Years later, this fact I was lucky to grasp informs my approach both to presenting persuasive arguments, and to resolving everyday conflicts.
The brilliant ethicist, Dr. Adam Potthast, co-author of “Ethics For Dummies”, formally introduced me to philosophy at Park University. The following is my interpretation of what I learnt from his “Introduction to Philosophy” class: First and foremost, the notion of a correct answer is insanely simplistic. Underneath--or at the heighest levels of--all issues and subjects is (some) philosophy. In response to questions, problems, or difficulties, competing ideas or theories may be put forward. Thereafter, we may clarify and compare those ideas or theories. And if they are found to be unsuitable or insufficient in that particular instance, we may put forward our own ideas or theories.
The process of clarifying and comparing theories / ideas and putting forward supposedly better ones is "philosophising". As Simon Blackburn, the famous Cambridge philosopher, puts it in his "Think: A Compelling Introducion to Philosophy", "At this point, whether we realise it or not, we are doing philosophy. And we can do it well or badly. The point is to do it well". The job of philosophy is not to produce "the correct answer" anymore than the job of parents is to birth "the correct child". In other words, there are no correct answers in philosophy. This begs the common question, "What then is the point?" Well, the fact that we can never reach "the end of the world" and that we are not even trying to get there does not mean that there is no point in hailing a cab (to visit a friend's home, or even, to be driven around to see the city). Similarly, philosophy is a channel through which specific ideas or theories may be arrived at and applied in specific instances. And that has tremendous value even though there are not a set of correct answers we are looking for, after which we may promptly drop the mic and grab a beer. (It is also important to note that cabs generally do not select destinations; passengers do. Similarly, "correct" answers we arrive at through philosophy may say more about us than it does about the world.)