Month: April 2011

Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Marvelettes

In the calendrical '60s, before the '60s became the cultural '60s,* there was a lot of great music from girl groups like the Marvelettes.  I spent the summer of '69 delivering mail out of the Vermont Avenue station, Hollywood 29, California.  One day out on the route two black girls approached this U. S. male singing the Marvelettes' tune, Please Mr. Postman.   Ah, yes.  Ever dial Beechwood 4-5789?  Playboy.   Don't Mess With Bill.

*I reckon the cultural '60s to have begun on 22 November 1963 with the assasination of JFK and to have ended on 30 April 1975 with the fall of Saigon.  Your reckoning may vary.

The Politically Incorrect Incendiarism of Ann Barnhardt

I confine my politically incorrect incendiarism to the occasional lighting up of a fine cigar. In some circles that is 'incendiary' enough.   I don't believe in burning books.  If you want to understand National Socialism, you must read, not burn, Mein Kampf.  If you want to understand Islamism, you must read, not burn, the Koran.  

Ann Barnhardt, Koran-burner, does both.  She reads, then burns those pages that she has marked with strips of bacon.  A pretty lass with balls of brass.  Gypsy Scholar provides commentary and links.  Check it out!  Move over Terry Jones.

Companion post:  Legality and Propriety: What One Has a Right to Do is not Always Right to Do.

Is Obama Bush III?

Those of you who voted for Barack Obama to offset the depradations of the evil Bush II must be gnashing your teeth long about now.  In the main, he's out-Bushing Bush!  It is with a certain amount of Schadenfreude that I contemplate the spectacle of the Bush-bashing boneheads of the Left waxing apoplectic over the antics of Barack the out-Bushing Bushite.  See Lorne Gunter, The George W. Bushification of Barack Obama.

Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) Caught Lying

Here at 3:40:  The Tea Party "has an ideology to get rid of all government."  That's a blatant lie.  A lie is not the same as a false statement.  Every lie is a false statement, but not every false statement is a lie.  A further condition is necessary: one must make the false statement with the intention to deceive.  And that is exactly what Schumer is doing.  His intention is to deceive.  For he is not so stupid as not to know that limited government is not the same as no government.  He knows full well what Tea Partiers and other conservatives advocate.  He's lying to hold onto power.

We need to make it clear to him and his  ilk that when they  lie about us we will tell the truth about them.

 

A Common Misunderstanding of So-Called Cambridge Changes

There are philosophers who think that 'Cambridge' changes and real changes are mutually exclusive. Thus they think that if a change is Cambridge, then it is not real. This is a mistake. Real changes are a  proper subset of Cambridge changes.

Consider an example. Hillary gets wind of some tomcat behavior on the part of Bill and goes from a state of equanimity to that lamp-throwing fury the Bard spoke about. ("Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned!"). Bill, on the other hand, as the object of Hillary's fury, also changes: at one time he has the property of being well thought of by Hillary, and the contradictory property at a later time. Common to both the real change (in Hillary) and the relational change (in Bill) is the following: x changes if and only if there are distinct times, t1 and t2, and a property P such that x  exemplifies P at t1 and ~P at t2, or vice versa. Change thus defined is Cambridge change. The terminology is from Peter Geach:

     The great Cambridge philosophical works published in the early
     years of this [the 20th] century, like Russell's  Principles of
     Mathematics and McTaggart's Nature of Existence, explained change
     as simply a matter of contradictory attributes' holding good of
     individuals at different times. Clearly any change logically
     implies a 'Cambridge' change, but the converse is surely not true.
     . . . (Logic Matters, University of California Press, 1980, p.
     321.)

In sum, every (alterational) change is a Cambridge change, but only some of the latter are real changes. The rest are mere Cambridge  changes. It is therefore a mistake to think that Cambridge and real   changes form mutually exclusive classes. What one could correctly say, however, is that mere Cambridge changes and real changes form mutually  exclusive classes.

But what about existential (as opposed to alterational) change, as when a thing comes into existence, or passes out of existence? Are such changes real changes in the things that pass in and out of   existence? Are they merely Cambridge changes? Or neither?

Philosophy Under Attack: An Exercise in Philosophical Apologetics

Philosophy’s place in the world has always been precarious and embattled. The assaults on our fair mistress are of two sorts. I am not concerned on this occasion with brutal ad baculum suppression, but with objections of an intellectual or quasi-intellectual nature. By my count, such objections come from as many directions as there are deadly sins, namely, seven. What are they, and how might we respond? What follows are notes toward an apologia for the philosophical life.

Continue reading “Philosophy Under Attack: An Exercise in Philosophical Apologetics”

Philosophy Under Attack at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Start with this piece by Todd Edwin Jones, chairman of the UNLV philosophy department:  Budgetary Hemlock: Nevada Seeks to Eliminate Philosophy.  The original plan to eliminate the philosophy department entirely has apparently been revised.  See here. Excerpt:

UNLV’s College of Liberal Arts received news Tuesday from its dean of a revised budget-cutting plan that includes the elimination of non-tenured professors in the philosophy, anthropology and sociology departments.

This is a departure from the college’s previously stated plans, which recommended the philosophy department be cut entirely. The women’s studies department, also previously slated for elimination, is still on the chopping block. Women’s studies, philosophy, anthropology and sociology have the least amount of majors within the college, which also includes political science, psychology and English.

Professor Jones' defense of philosophy's role in the university curriculum  takes a familiar tack:  philosophy is useful because it teaches critical thinking.  Jones writes,

. . . people think of philosophy as a luxury only if they don’t really understand what philosophy departments do. I teach one of the core areas of philosophy, epistemology: what knowledge is and how we obtain it. People from all walks of life—physicists, physicians, detectives, politicians—can only come to good conclusions on the basis of thoroughly examining the appropriate evidence. And the whole idea of what constitutes good evidence and how certain kinds of evidence can and can’t justify certain conclusions is a central part of what philosophers study.

Now I don't doubt that courses in logic, epistemology, and ethics can help inculcate habits of critical thinking and good judgment.  And it may also be true that philosophy has a unique role to play here.  So, while it is true that every discipline teaches habits of critical thinking and good judgment in that discipline, there are plenty of issues that are not discipline-specific, and these need to be addressed critically as well.

What I object to, however, is the notion that philosophy needs to justify itself in terms of an end external to it, and that its main justification  is in terms of an end outside of it.  The main reason to study philosophy is not to become a more critical reasoner or a better evaluator of evidence, but to grapple with the ultimate questions of human existence and to arrive at as much insight into them  as is possible.  What drives philosophy is the desire to know the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters.  Let's not confuse a useful byproduct of philosophical study (development of critical thinking skills) with  goal of philosophical study.  The reason to study English literature is not to improve one's vocabulary.  Similarly, the reason to study philosophy is not to improve one's ability to think clearly about extraphilosophical matters or to acquire skills that will prove handy in law school. 

Philosophy is an end in itself.  This is why it is foolish to try to convince philistines that it is good for something.  It is not primarily good for something.  It is a good in itself.  Otherwise you are acquiescing in the philistinism you ought to be combating.  Is listening to the sublime adagio movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony good for something?  And what would that be, to impress people with how cultured you are?

To the philistine's "Philosophy bakes no bread" you should not respond "Yes it does," for such reponses are lame.  (Doesn't Professor Jones' apologia for his way of earning his bread strike you as slightly lame?)  You should say, "Man does not live by bread alone," or "Not everything is pursued as a means to something else," or "A university is not a trade school."

Admittedly, this is a lofty conception of philosophy and I would hate to have to defend it before the uncomprehending philistines one would expect to find on the Board of Regents.  But philosophy is what it is, and if we are to defend it we must do so in a way that does not betray it.

The Difference Between Me and You

I'm sensitive, you're touchy.  I'm firm,  you are pigheaded.  Frugality in me is cheapness in you.  I am open-minded, you are empty-headed.  I am careful, you are obsessive.  I am courageous while you are as reckless as a Kennedy.  I am polite while you are obsequious.  My speech is soothing, yours is unctuous.  I am earthy and brimming with vitality while you are crude and bestial.  I'm alive to necessary distinctions; you are a bloody hairsplitter.  I'm conservative, you're reactionary.  I know the human heart, but you are a misanthrope.  I love and honor my wife while you are uxorious.  I am focused; you are monomaniacal.

In me there is commitment, in you fanaticism.  I'm a peacemaker, you're an appeaser.  I'm spontaneous, you're just undisciplined.  I'm neat and clean; you are fastidious.  In me there is wit and style, in you mere preciosity.  I know the value of a dollar while you are just a miser.  I cross the Rubicons of life with resoluteness while you are a fool who burns his bridges behind him.  I do not hide my masculinity, but you flaunt yours.  I save, you hoard.  I am reserved, you are shy.

I have a hearty appetite; you are a glutton.  A civilized man, I enjoy an occasional drink; you, however, must teetotal to avoid becoming a drunkard.  I'm witty and urbane, you are precious.  I am bucolic, you are rustic.  I'm original, you are idiosyncratic.

And those are just some of the differences between me and you. 

Hocking on the Value of the Individual

WilliamErnestHocking William Ernest Hocking (1873-1966) had his day in the philosophical sun, but is no longer much read – except perhaps by those contrarians who take being unread by contemporaries as a possible mark of distinction. Recently I came across this magnificent passage:

Life itself is individual, and the most significant things in the world – perhaps in the end the only significant things – are individual souls. Each one of these must work its own way to salvation, win its own experience, suffer from its own mistakes: "through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui," yes, and through crime and retribution, "what you are picks its way." Any rule which by running human conduct into approved grooves saves men from this salutary Odyssey thwarts the first meaning of human life. ("The Philosophical Anarchist" in R. Hoffman, ed. Anarchism, New York: Lieber-Atherton, 1973, pp. 120-121.)

The quotation within this quotation is from the last stanza of Walt Whitman's "To You" from Leaves of Grass.

General Petraeus, the Koran, and Political Correctness in the Military

Here is General Petraeus' condemnation of the burning by a Florida pastor of the Koran.  And here is some excellent commentary by Andrew C. McCarthy.  Excerpt (emphasis added):

Down at Gitmo, the Defense Department gives the Koran to each of the terrorists even though DoD knows they interpret it (not without reason) to command them to kill the people who gave it to them. To underscore our precious sensitivity to Muslims, standard procedure calls for the the book to be handled only by Muslim military personnel. Sometimes, though, that is not possible for various reasons. If, as a last resort, one of our non-Muslim troops must handle or transport the book, he must wear white gloves, and he is further instructed primarily to use the right hand (indulging Muslim culture’s taboo about the sinister left hand). The book is to be conveyed to the prisoners in a “reverent manner” inside a “clean dry towel.” This is a nod to Islamic teaching that infidels are so low a form of life that they should not be touched (as Ayatollah Ali Sistani teaches, non-Muslims are “considered in the same category as urine, feces, semen, dead bodies, blood, dogs, pigs, alcoholic liquors,” and “the sweat of an animal who persistently eats [unclean things].”

This is every bit as indecent as torching the Koran, implicitly endorsing as it does the very dehumanization of non-Muslims that leads to terrorism. Furthermore, there is hypocrisy to consider: the Defense Department now piously condemning Koran burning is the same Defense Department that itself did not give a second thought to confiscating and burning bibles in Afghanistan.

Quite consciously, U.S. commanders ordered this purge in deference to sharia proscriptions against the proselytism of faiths other than Islam. And as General Petraeus well knows, his chain of command is not the only one destroying bibles. Non-Muslim religious artifacts, including bibles, are torched or otherwise destroyed in Islamic countries every single day as a matter of standard operating procedure. (See, e.g., my 2007 post on Saudi government guidelines that prohibit Jews and Christians from bringing bibles, crucifixes, Stars of David, etc., into the country — and, of course, not just non-Muslim accessories but non-Muslim people are barred from entering Mecca and most of Medina, based on the classical interpretation of an injunction found in what Petraeus is fond of calling the Holy Qur’an (sura 9:28: “Truly the pagans are unclean . . . so let them not . . . approach the sacred mosque”).

I don’t like book burning either, but I think there are different kinds of book burnings. One is done for purposes of censorship — the attempt to purge the world of every copy of a book to make it as if the sentiments expressed never existed. A good modern example is Cambridge University Press’s shameful pulping of all known copies of Alms for Jihad (see Stanley’s 2007 post on that). The other kind of burning is done as symbolic condemnation. That’s what I think Terry Jones was doing. He knows he doesn’t have the ability to purge the Koran from the world, and he wasn’t trying to. He was trying to condemn some of the ideas that are in it — or maybe he really thinks the whole thing is condemnable.

This is a particularly aggressive and vivid way to express disdain, but I don’t know that it is much different in principle from orally condemning some of the Koran’s suras and verses. Sura 9 of the Koran, for example, states the supremacist doctrine that commands Muslims to kill and conquer non-Muslims (e.g., 9:5: “But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war) . . .”; 9:29: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the last day, nor hold forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the Religion of Truth, from among the people of the Book [i.e., the Jews and Christians], until they pay the jizya [i.e., the tax paid for the privilege of living as dhimmis under the protection of the sharia state] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued”). I must say, I’ve got a much bigger problem with the people trying to comply with those commands than with the guy who burns them.

Krauthammer’s Situational Libertarianism

I have argued more than once that toleration has limits.  See, for example, The Danger of Appeasing the Intolerant and other entries in the Toleration category.  I am pleased to see that the astute Charles Krauthammer has argued  something similar. He calls his position "situational libertarianism":  

     Liberties should be as unlimited as possible — unless and until
     there arises a real threat to the open society. Neo-Nazis are
     pathetic losers. Why curtail civil liberties to stop them? But when
     a real threat — such as jihadism — arises, a liberal democratic
     society must deploy every resource, including the repressive powers
     of the state, to deter and defeat those who would abolish liberal
     democracy.

     Civil libertarians go crazy when you make this argument. Beware the
     slippery slope, they warn. You start with a snoop in a library, and
     you end up with Big Brother in your living room.

     The problem with this argument is that it is refuted by American
     history. There is no slippery slope, only a shifting line between
     liberty and security that responds to existential threats.

Krauthammer mentions Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War and FDR's internment of Japanese during World War II, and points out that after the crises were resolved, liberties were restored.

It is worth noting that there is no logical necessity that one slide down any slippery slope. One can always dig in one's heels. Slippery slope arguments are one and all invalid. But there is more to argument than deduction, and so the topic is a large and hairy one. See Eugene Volokh, The Mechanisms of the Slippery Slope.

What, Me Worry?

Alfred e neuman The evil event will either occur or it will not.  If it occurs, and one worries beforehand, then one suffers twice, from the event and from the worry.  If the evil event does not occur, and one worries beforehand, one suffers once, but needlessly.  If the event does not occur, and one does not worry beforehand, then one suffers not at all.  Therefore, worry is irrational.  Don't worry, be happy.

Am I saying that that one ought not take reasonable precautions and exercise what is pleonastically called 'due diligence'?  Of course not.  Rational concern is not worry.  I never drive without my seat belt fastened.  Never! I never ride my mountain bike without donning helmet and gloves.  But I never crash and I never worry about it.  And if one day I do crash, I will suffer only once:  from the crash.

Worry is a worthless emotion, a wastebasket emotion.  So self-apply some cognitive therapy and send it packing. You say you can't help but worry?  Then I say you are making no attempt to get your mind under control.  It's your mind, control it!  It's within your power.  Suppose what I have just said is false.  No matter: it is useful to believe it.  The proof  is in the pragmatics.

Kierkegaard on Immortality

S. Kierkegaard/J. Climacus, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Swenson and Lowrie tr., Princeton UP, 1941, pp. 154-155, emphasis added):

All honor to him who can handle learnedly the learned question of immortality!  But the question of immortality is essentially not a learned question, rather it is a question of inwardness, which the subject by becoming subjective must put to himself.  Objectively the question cannot be answered, because objectively it cannot be put, since immortality precisely is the potentiation and highest development of the developed subjectivity. [. . . ] Systematically, immortality cannot be proved at all.  The fault does not lie in the proofs, but in the fact that people will not understand that viewed systematically the whole question is nonsense, so that instead of seeking outward proofs, one had better seek to become a little subjective.  Immortality is the most passionate interest of subjectivity; precisely in the interest lies the proof. [. . . ]

Quite simply therefore the existing subject asks, not about immortality in general, for such a phantom has no existence, but about his immortality, about what it means to become immortal, whether he is able to contribute anything to the accomplishment of this end, or whether he becomes immortal as a matter of course . . .

I agree that the question of immortality is primarily an existential question, a question for the existing individual, and not primarily a learned or scholarly or 'scientific'  or  objective question.  And surely there is no immortality in general any more than there is a chamber pot in general.  Mortality and immortality are in every case my mortality or immortality and it is clear that I have an intense personal interest in the outcome.   I am not related to the question of my own immortality in the way I am related to a purely objective question that doesn't affect me personally, the question, say, whether the universe had a beginning 15 billion years or only 5 billion years ago, or had no beginning at all, etc.  Such questions, as interesting at they are from a purely theoretical point of view, are existentially indifferent.  What's more, occupation with such questions can serve to distract us from the existential questions that really matter.  Finally, I agree that one is not immortal as a matter of course, but that immortality is at least in  part a  task, a matter of  the free cultivation of  inwardness, the ethical constitution of the self. 

Kierkegaard So far, then, I agree with SK.  Unfortunately, SK exaggerates these insights to the point of making them untenable.  For surely it is preposterous  to maintain, as SK does maintain above, that the immortality question has nothing objective about it.  Let us suppose that how I live, what I do, whether and to what extent I cultivate my inwardness, and whether or not I lose myself in the pseudo-reality and inauthenticity  of social existence does affect whether I will survive my  bodily death.  Suppose, in other words, that my immortality does depend on the highest development and potentiation of my subjectivity and that soul-making is a task.  Well, if this is the case, then this is objectively the case.  And if it is the case that immortality is a possibility for beings like us, then this is  objectively the case.  It is not the case because of some subjective stance or attitude that I might or might not assume.  I cannot make it be the case if it is not the case by any potentiation of inwardness.  I cannot will myself into immortality unless it is objectively the case that immortality is a  possibility for beings like us.  Furthermore, if we do not become immortal as a matter of course, then this too is objectively the case if  it  is the case.

And because the question of immortality has an objective side, it is important to examine the reasons for and against. 

Kierkegaard/Climacus comes across  as a confused irrationalist in the above passages and surrounding text.  If a question is primarily existential, it does not follow that it cannot be "objectively put," for of course it can.  If a question is primarily subjective, it does not follow that it is purely subjective.  And if immortality cannot strictly be proven, it does not follow that there is nothing objective about the issue.  This is another, fairly blatant, confusion.  Has any one succeeded in strictly proving that the soul is immortal or strictly proving the opposite?  No.  Is the question an objective question? Yes. 

It is simply false to say that "viewed systematically the whole question is nonsense."  What is true is that, if the question is viewed SOLELY in a systematic and objective way it is nonsense.  For it is clear that the question affects the existing individual in his innermost being.  What is troubling about SK is that he cannot convey his insights without dressing them up in irrationalist garb that makes them strictly false.

Does my interest in my personal immortality constitute the proof of my personal immortality?  Of course not.  So why does SK maintain something so plainly preposterous?  For literary effect?  To serve as a corrective to Hegelian or other 'systematic' excess?  But surely the proper response to an extreme position is not an equal but opposite extreme position, but a moderate and reasonable one.