Month: March 2012

Of Cranks and Crackpots

London Ed quotes neurologist Steven Novella who makes an insightful observation in Cranks and Physics (the whole of which is well worth reading):

… cranks around the world have been able to form their own “alternative” community, publish their own journals, and have their own meetings. There is just one requirement in this alternative community – acceptance. All ideas are accepted (there is no chaff, all is wheat), that is except for one. Whatever is accepted by mainstream science is wrong [my emphasis]. That is “the one ring” of crank mythology, that brings all crank theories together and in the darkness of their community binds them together. Otherwise they are largely mutually incompatible. Each crank’s “theory of everything” is a notion unto itself, and is mutually exclusive to every other crank’s own theory of everything (unless there is some incidental overlap). So they get together, present their theories without criticism, and all agree that the evil conspiracy of mainstream science must be taken down. Of course, if any of them got their way and their ideas became accepted, they would instantly become rejected by the rest of the crank community as mainstream physics.

Ed comments:

Correct. My enemy's enemy is my friend, whatever my enemy believes. I have seen this effect in Wikipedia a number of times. Cranks unite to defeat the mainstream, orthodox view. Orthodox editors get blocked or banned. Cranks then war with each other, and get banned themselves. The orthodox editors mount appeals to the powers that be – the arbitration committee, none of whom have any expert credentials as far as I can see, and get unbanned. Or they just open 'sockpuppet' accounts and start editing again under a different name. So do the cranks, and the whole nightmare begins again. Another difficulty that Novella omits is 'mainstream' crankery. That is, bad science or quackery that unites its practitioners by financial interest. Homeopathy and 'Neurolinguistic programming' are good examples of this.

This would not matter at all, if Wikipedia were not increasingly used as a 'reliable source' by students, and even some medical researchers, as I noted in an earlier post.

Philosophy, Superman, and Richard C. Potter

I was pleased to hear from Patrick Kurp of Anecdotal Evidence this morning.  He inquired:

About four or five years ago you wrote about an American writer and thinker, perhaps an academic philosopher, who published, I believe, two books and seemed to disappear. You had difficulty finding information about him online. I believe you said he had an interest in East Asian thought. His “career” was eccentric by conventional standards and he seemed to be something of a loner.

Then I remembered a post of mine which begins:

This post examines Richard C. Potter's solution to the problem of reconciling creatio ex nihilo with ex nihilo nihil fit in his valuable article, "How To Create a Physical Universe Ex Nihilo," Faith and Philosophy, vol. 3, no. 1, (January 1986), pp. 16-26. (Potter appears to have dropped out of sight, philosophically speaking, so if anyone knows what became of him, please let me know. The Philosopher's Index shows only three articles by him, the last of which appeared in 1986.)

I don't know whether Potter is the man Kurp had in mind, but the former does satisfy part of Kurp's description.  In any event, the Richard Potter story is an interesting one. 

I recall talking to him, briefly, in the summer of 1981 at Brown University.  I was a participant in Roderick Chisholm's National Endowment for the Humanities  Summer Seminar, and Potter, who I believe had recently completed his Ph.D. at Brown, sat in on a few sessions.  My impression was he that he was unable to secure a teaching position.  I also recall a slightly derogatory comment I made about the Midwest and  how one might have to go there to find employment.  Potter's mild-mannered reply was to the effect that he preferred the Midwest over other geographical regions.  His name stuck in my mind probably because of a paper on the paradox of  analysis he co-authored with Chisholm and because of  the F & P article mentioned above.  See here.  But then he dropped out of  philosophical sight.

A few years back, I did a search and he turned up again as a George Reeves and Superman aficionado.  So here is part of the rest of the Potter story.  Here  is Potter's George Reeves site.

A checkered career, his.

I too enjoyed the Superman series while growing up in the '50s.   Some thoughts of mine on George Reeves are in Superman: The Moral of the Story.

Hats Off to Hentoff: Abortion and Obama

It is often assumed that opposition to abortion can be based only on religious premises. This assumption is plainly false. To show that it is is false, one need merely give an anti-abortion argument that does not invoke any religious tenet, for example:

   1. Infanticide is morally wrong.
   2. There is no morally relevant difference between abortion and
   infancticide.
   Therefore
   3. Abortion is morally wrong.

Whether one accepts this argument or not, it clearly invokes no religious premise. It is therefore manifestly incorrect to say or imply that all opposition to abortion must be religiously-based. Theists and atheists alike could make use of the above argument.

And as a matter of fact there are pro-life atheists. Nat Hentoff is one. In The Infanticide Candidate for President, he takes Barack Obama to task:

     But on abortion, Obama is an extremist. He has opposed the Supreme
     Court decision that finally upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban
     Act against that form of infanticide. Most startlingly, for a
     professed humanist, Obama — in the Illinois Senate – also voted
     against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. I have reported on
     several of those cases when, before the abortion was completed, an
     alive infant was suddenly in the room. It was disposed of as a
     horrified nurse who was not necessarily pro-life followed the
     doctors' orders to put the baby in a pail or otherwise get rid of
     the child.

 

Internet Crackpots and the Perils of Autodidacticism

One of the (very minor) drawbacks of having a Web presence is that one becomes the target of crackpot e-mail from people like this.  He describes himself as an autodidact, thereby illustrating the perils of autodidacticism. 

And yet some negotiate the straits of autodidacticism quite well, Eric Hoffer for example.  In general, however, he who educates himself has a fool for a pupil. That being said, I advise a modicum of skepticism concerning academic credentials.

If you expect to have 'cred' in the 'sphere, it helps to have established credibility in peer-reviewed venues.  Some of my publications are listed here, at PhilPapers. 

It comes as no great surprise that the crackpot in question is an anti-Semite.

The Voter Photo Identification ‘Issue’

Some positions are so absurd as to be beneath refutation. To respond reasonably to the unreasonable lends them a veneer of credibility to which they are not entitled.  Mockery, derision, and ridicule are often much more appropriate and effective.  Oftentimes, all it takes is a cartoon to refute a stupid liberal.  By the way, this voter ID 'issue' — pseudo-issue, actually — is a perfect example of the lunacy of contemporary liberalism.  But it is worse than lunacy given that the motive (not the reason, they have none) is to encourage voter fraud.  For a leftist, the end justifies the means. Does it take fraud to win?  Then you commit fraud.

Voter ID

Saturday Night at the Oldies: ‘Green’ Songs

I was going to cover 'strange' songs tonight, but then I remembered it is St. Patrick's Day. 

Remember The New Christy Minstrels?  Here is Barry Maguire belting out their 1963 hit,
Green, Green."  It was sanitized, well-scrubbed hootenany stuff like this that caused a lot of my generation to pick up guitars and then find our way back to the more authentic material.  Check out this video of a live performance at an Arizona university.  This was before the '60s became the '60s. But by '65 the cultural as opposed to the calendrical  '60s had arrived with a vengeance and the same Barry Maguire came out with The Eve of Destruction.  Topical songs and social protest came to displace songs about Tom Dooley and workin' on the railroad . . . .

Joan Baez, Green, Green Grass of Home.  Red Foley does a great job with this 'green' song.

Hoyt Axton, Greenback Dollar. Here is the Kingston Trio's cleaned-up collegiate version.  Fretkillr's  killer amateur version is modelled on Hoyt Axton's.

Hoyt Axton, Greensleeves

Jim Lowe, Green Door, 1956.

Roy Buchanan, Green Onions.  A guitar-slinger's version.

Finally, a song about the lean green.

And now to bed.

Via Platonica Versus Via Aristotelis

School of athens

I have spoken more than once of the fruitful tension between Athens (philosophy) and  Jerusalem (Biblical revelation). But there is also a tension, and it is also a fruitful one, within Athens. It is depicted, if such a thing can be depicted at all, in Raphael's School of Athens.   Take a gander at the close-up below.  Plato points up, Aristotle, the younger man, points down. The Forms are, in a manner of speaking, up yonder in a topos ouranos, in a heavenly place; his star pupil would, again in a manner of speaking, bring them down to earth.  In a terminology I do not wholly endorse, Plato is an extreme, while Aristotle is a moderate, realist.

The vitality of the West is due, in part, to the fruitful tension between Athens and Jerusalem. And much of the vitality of philosophy derives from the fruitful tension between the Platonic and Aristotelian ways of thinking, not just as regards the problem of universals, but on a wide range of issues.

Plato and aristotle

In the Arena

Say what you want about politicians, they are in the arena taking the heat, under their own names, unlike the wordslingers, too many of them hiding behind pseudonyms, who snipe from the sidelines:

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat. (Theodore Roosevelt, "Citizenship in a Republic," Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910.)

Cooperation and Competition

Liberals tend to oppose cooperation to competition, and vice versa, as if they excluded each other. "We need more cooperation and less competition." One frequently hears that from liberals. But competition is a form of cooperation. As such, it cannot be opposed to cooperation. One cannot oppose a species to its genus.

Consider competitive games and sports. The chess player aims to beat his opponent, and he expects his opponent to share this aim: No serious player enjoys beating someone who is not doing his best to   beat him. But the competition is predicated upon cooperation and is impossible without it. There are the rules of the game and the various protocols governing behavior at the board. These are agreed upon and respected by the players and they form the cooperative context in which the competition unfolds. We must work together (co-operate) for one of us to emerge the victor. And in this competitive cooperation both of us are benefited.

Is there any competitive game or sport for which this does not hold? At the Boston Marathon in 1980, a meshuggeneh lady by the name of Rosie Ruiz jumped into the race ahead of the female leaders and before the finish line. She seemed to many to have won the race in the female category.  But she was soon disqualified. She wasn't competing because she wasn't cooperating.  Cooperation is a necessary condition of competition.

In the business world, competition is fierce indeed. But even here it presupposes cooperation. Fed Ex aims to cut into UPS'  business – but not by assassinating their drivers. If Fed Ex did this, it would be out of business. It would lose favor with the public, and the police and regulatory agencies would be on its case. The refusal to cooperate would make it uncompetitive. 'Cut throat' competition does not pay in the long run and makes the 'cut throat' uncompetitive.

If you and I are competing for the same job, are we cooperating with each other? Yes, in the sense that our behavior is rule-governed. We agree to accept the rules and we work together so that the better of us gets the appointment. The prosecution and the defense, though in opposition to each other, must cooperate if the trial is to proceed. And similarly in other cases.

Is assassination or war a counterexample to my thesis? Suppose two warring factions are 'competing' for Lebensraum in a no-holds-barred manner. If this counts as a case of competition, then this may be a counterexample to my thesis. But it is not that clear that the Nazis, say, were competing with the Poles for Lebensraum. This needs further thought. Of course, if the counterexample is judged to be genuine, I can simply restrict my thesis to forms of competition short of all-out annihilatory war.  Or I could say that rule-governed competition is a species of cooperation.

Competition, then, contrary to liberal dogma, is not opposed to cooperation. Moreover, competition is good in that it breeds excellence, a point unappreciated, or insufficiently appreciated, by liberals. This marvellous technology we bloggers use every day — how do our liberal friends think it arose? Do they have any idea why it is so inexpensive?  Competition!

Not only does competition make you better than you would have been without it, it humbles you.  It puts you in your place.  It assigns you your rightful position in life's hierarchy.  And life is hierarchical.  The levellers may not like it but hierarchies have a way of reestablishing themselves. 

Existence and Property-Possession

Necessarily, whatever exists has properties, and necessarily, whatever has properties exists. So, necessarily, x exists iff x has properties. But it does not follow that existence is the property of having properties. Why not?

Peter and Paul differ in their existence. But they don't differ in point of having properties. They have different properties, of course, but they don't differ in respect of the property of having properties. So singular existence (the existence in virtue of which each is and is not nothing) is not identical to the property of having properties.

And yet very competent philosophers make this mistake. To name names: Dallas Willard, J. P. Moreland, J. K. Swindler.

One source of the mistake (though it might not be the source of the mistake in any of the above-mentioned) is the confusion of (broadly logical) equivalence with identity. Necessarily, x is triangular iff x is trilateral: there is no broadly logically possible world in which the extensions of the terms differs. But it doesn't follow that triangulariy = trilaterality. They are distinct properties despite their being necessarily coextensive.

So from the fact that nothing can exist without having properties, and nothing can have properties without existing, pace Meinong, it does not follow that to exist = to have properties.

Besides, is it not obviously circular to say that the existence of a is its having properties when a cannot have properties without existing? Think about it.

Leftism Not a Religion

Dennis Prager often says that leftism is a religion. That is a sloppy use of language. Leftism is an anti-religious political ideology that functions in the lives of its adherents much like religions function in the lives of their adherents. To call leftism a religion only sires confusion. It is enough to say it is like a religion in certain key respects.

Or you could say that leftism is an ersatz religion for leftists. 'Ersatz' here functions as an alienans adjective. A substitute for religion is not a religion.

It is also important to observe that conservatism for irreligious conservatives does not typically function as an ersatz religion for them. That would make a nice separate post.

Resemblance is not identity. Language matters.