Month: December 2016
Self-Reliance
Self-reliance is a principle of worldly wisdom only. Rely on Other-reliance for the ultimate wisdom.
Judging Trump
Should we judge the man by his tweets or his picks? By what he says or what he does? Judging by their content, his tweets are injudicious; his appointments so far are outstanding and show good judgment. Here are Trump's choices for cabinet and administrative slots.
Similar Bogart-Like Poses
Mike Valle at Big Sticks
Mike Valle and I got together the other day at the premier cigar lounge in the East Valley, Big Sticks, to discuss Grundlagen des Marxismus-Leninismus, chapter 1, Der Philosophische Materialismus. Mike has read the entire stomping 800+ page tome. It is an outstanding manual of Soviet scholasticism. Originally written in Russian and published in 1960, near the height of the Cold War, it appeared in German in the same year in Dietz Verlag, Berlin. Mike acquired two copies and kindly gave me one.
I had him pose with the cigar store Indian for the following shot. No day without political incorrectness, as I always say. And that reminds me of the Seinfeld "Cigar Store Indian" episode. TRIGGER WARNING! This smokin' excerpt may cause snowflake meltdown.
Russian ‘Hacking’ Claim is a Farce
Searle on Religion
For some religion is too good to be true. For others it would be awful if true. And then there are the indifferent for whom religion is simply not an issue. Among the latter are those who consider talk of religion to be in bad taste in polite society.
In Mind, Language and Society, John R. Searle writes:
In earlier generations, books like this one would have had to contain either an atheistic attack on or a theistic defense of traditional religion. [. . .] Nowadays nobody bothers, and it is considered in slightly bad taste to even raise the question of God's existence. Matters of religion are like matters of sexual preference: they are not to be discussed in public, and even the abstract questions are discussed only by bores.
What has happened? [. . .] I believe that something much more radical than a decline in religious belief has taken place. For us, the educated members of society, the world has become demystified. . . . we no longer take the mysteries we see in the world as expressions of supernatural meaning. We no longer think of odd occurrences as cases of God performing speech acts in the language of miracles. Odd occurrences are just occurrences we do not understand. The result of this demystification is that we have gone beyond atheism to the point where the issue no longer matters in the way it did to earlier generations. (pp. 34-35)
My commentary on this Searle-y passage here.
Prayer Wheels
'Mechanical' prayer fully mechanized.
Disproportionate Impact
Laws against arson have a disproportionate impact on pyromaniacs and arsonists.
Of ‘Broach’ and ‘Brook’
Utilitarianism and Natural Normativity: Further Foot Notes
Philippa Foot argues (Natural Goodness, Oxford UP 2001, p. 48 ff.) that a naturalistic approach to normativity rules out utilitarianism. In this entry I try to understand the argument. Foot writes,
. . . utilitarianism never gets off the ground in a schema such as we find in the work of Elizabeth Anscombe and Michael Thompson. For utilitarianism, like any other form of consequentialism, has as its foundation a proposition linking goodness of action in one way or another to the goodness of states of affairs. And there is no room for such a foundational proposition in the theory of natural normativity. Where, after all, could good states of affairs be appealed to in judging the natural goodness or defect in characteristics and operations of plants and animals? In evaluating the hunting skills of a tiger do I start from the proposition that it is a better state of affairs if the tiger survives than if it does not? (Italics in original)
The argument in nuce is this:
A. Utilitarianism is founded on a proposition P linking goodness of action to goodness of states of affairs.
B. There is no room for P in the theory of natural normativity.
Ergo
C. Utilitarianism is inconsistent with the theory of natural normativity.
Ad (A). Unfortunately, Foot does not deign to tell us what P is. But I think the following is what she has in mind: What makes a good action good is its issuance in, or contribution to, a good state affairs where the state of affairs in question is a consequence of the action. The action is good because the state of affairs it brings about or helps to bring about is good. It is not the case that the state of affairs is good because the action is good. On consequentialism, the goodness of the state of affairs is the metaphysical ground of the goodness of the action, and not vice versa.
Example. For one sort of utilitarian, my behaving politely at a party is good, not because behaving politely at parties is intrinsically good, good in itself, but because it contributes to a good state of affairs, the conviviality and social harmony of the party. It is the goodness of the resultant state of affairs that is the source or ground of the goodness of the action. Suppose my behavior at the party also involves false modesty, mild flattery, and perhaps even lying: Asked what I think of Trump's selection of James 'Mad Dog' Mattis as Secretary of Defense, I say: "I'm a metaphysician who spends his time thinking about the meaning of Being; I have no political opinions." Now if the party were thick with liberals such a lie could be justified on utilitarian grounds inasmuch as it contributes to the greatest comity of the greatest number at the party in question.
Ad (B). Foot must reject P because it is characteristic of her view that the source of the goodness or badness of an organism and its traits and operations is grounded in its intrinsic natural features. An oak tree's roots are good roots because they are healthy roots: they go deep and wide in search of water and other nutrients. The search is of course pre-conscious, but there is a sort of intentionality or teleological directedeness to it. The same goes for the dispositions of the human will. Good dispositions are good because of their intrinsic natural features. They are not good because they are the objects of pro-attitudes by others or because they issue in good consequences. Foot assures us that "there is no change in the meaning of 'good' as the word appears in 'good roots' and as it appears in 'good dispositions of the human will.'" (39, italics in original.)
Note that Foot needn't deny that there are states of affairs or that they have normative properties. Her claim is that such normative properties cannot be foundational. The foundational normative properties are properties of living things, whether plants, animals, or humans, not properties of nonliving states of affairs.
Foot is right that her approach is inconsistent with utilitarianism. But her approach continues to strike me as obscure.
Foot asks, rhetorically, "In evaluating the hunting skills of a tiger do I start from the proposition that it is a better state of affairs if the tiger survives than if it does not? " It is not clear to me why could not evaluate the skills of the tiger in this way. Why couldn't the evaluation proceed as follows:
For a living thing, to survive is better than to perish. Tigers are living things. Therefore, it it better for a tiger to survive rather than perish. To survive it must be fleet of foot and sharp of claw, etc. Now this tiger specimen before me is lame and has been declawed. So this tiger is not likely to survive. Therefore this tiger is not a good tiger.
Note that the first four propositions are true whether or not any tigers exist. So why can't the normative properties be grounded in abstract states of affairs?
We are back to the problem of the exact nature of the relation between the species and the specimen, or the life form of the species and the specimen. There is something abstract about the species which removes it from the natural order. As I said in an earlier entry in this series:
This naturalistic scheme strikes me as obscure because the status of species has not been sufficiently clarified. Aristotelian categoricals are about species, but what exactly are species or the "life forms of species"? The species peacockpresumably exists only in individual peacocks, but is not identical to any such individual or to the whole lot of them. (The species is not an extensional entity such as a mereological sum, or a set.) It looks to be an immanent universal, a one-in-many. But then it is not natural in the very same sense in which an individual peacock is natural, i.e., in space and time at a definite spatiotemporal location, and only there. (Universals are multiply located.) So Foot's natural norms are not natural in the same sense in which the organisms of which they are the norms are natural.
So there still is a fact-norm distinction in the form of the distinction between a member of a species and the species. This whole scheme will remain murky until it is explained what a species is and how it is present in its members. We are in the vicinity of the ancient problem of universals. Foot's norms are not outside of things in a realm apart, not in the mind; they are 'in' things. But what does this 'in' mean exactly?
Is Waterboarding Torture?
Here is the opinion of a man who has both done it and had it done to him. "I volunteered to be waterboarded myself and can assure you that it is not a pleasant experience. But no one volunteers to be tortured."
Words mean things. They ought to be used responsibly. No good purpose is served by exaggeration in a context such as this. If waterboarding is torture, what would you call having a red-hot poker rammed 12 inches up your anal cavity? Would anyone volunteer for that?
Come Thursday it will be the fifth anniversary of the death of Christopher Hitchens. He, along with other journalists, allowed himself to be waterboarded.
I grant, however, that being waterboarded by friends is considerably different from being so treated by enemies.
The Message of Visible Tattoos
All visible tattoos deliver the same message: I am not interested in being hired for any position that involves interacting with the public. Tattoos on the neck and face deliver the message in capital letters.
Time was when tattoos were found mainly only among the demimonde of grifters, members of outlaw motorcycle gangs, rough trade, a certain segment of merchant seamen, and other denizens of the dark side.
I tend to take a dim view of tattoos, seeing them as the graffiti of the human body, and as yet another, perhaps minor, ingredient in the Decline of the West. Christians who believe that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit ought to consider whether tattoos deface the temple. But I do not dogmatize on this topic. You can reasonably attack my graffiti analogy, and if you insist that tattoos are beautiful, not ugly, I won't be able to refute you. Or at least I won't be able to persuade you.
If you argue that there is no, or needn't be, a connection between tattoos and cultural decline, you may have a case. You might even be able reasonably to maintain that the bodily temple is sometimes beautified by judicious inking. Leviticus 19:28 forbids the practice, but that text does not settle the matter. I tend to think that fascination with the ugly and grotesque does not ennoble us. The connection between the aesthetic and the moral needs to be explored.
But I celebrate the liberty of the individual and tolerate the tattooer and the tatttoed.
I only advise caution: permanent or semi-permanent modifications of the mortal coil are to be made only after due deliberation. You might want to consider such things as: the signal you're sending, your future employability, and, for the distaff contingent, how ugly that tattoo will look on your calf when you are 45 as opposed to 20 and the ink is cheek-by-jowl with varicose veins and cellulite. Cute baristas in hip huggers with tattoos on their lower backs bending over the espresso machine invite impertinent questions as to how far down the pattern extends. "Does it come up the other side?"
If you are thinking of a career in public relations, a bone through the nose is definitely out, as are facial hardware and a Charley Manson-style swastika tattooed onto the forehead. And if you sport a 'tramp stamp,' keep it covered.
See here for a harsher view.
Addendum. Astute Opponent e-mails:
Something you allude to, but don’t completely address, is the allure of fashion, and its strange nature. Fashion has a lifetime of at most ten years, usually in a way that what once conferred stature and gravitas turns into the ludicrous. Fortunately we can discard clothes, and change our hairstyle. This is more difficult with tattoos.
I.e. it’s not just that the tattoo will look ugly when the ink is ‘cheek-by-jowl with varicose veins and cellulite’. It’s that it will look ugly and ridiculous in itself.
I haven’t seen any theory that neatly explains the transformative power of time over fashion. Those of us who are older and have been through a few cycles of such changes are aware of it, and are somewhat, though not completely, impervious to it. It is philosophically challenging. How can the very same thing turn almost into its exact opposite? Moreover, when you look at what is now most ridiculous about the fashion, it was the very thing which in a bygone era was the most fascinating and important.
Some things do not date, and perhaps that is the essence of great art. I also think writing dates much slower. I mean, you can read Strawson or Moore and you don’t have a strong sense that it was written 50 or 100 years ago. Then you look at pictures of the writers, and they look quite silly in tweeds or glasses or smoking a pipe.
Fascinating questions. Why are people swayed in their sartorial choices by what is clearly ridiculous and non-functional? Ghetto blacks strutting around in baggy cargo shorts hanging half-way off their butts; women prancing in high heels; stout lesbians stomping around in work boots at a poetry reading; Beltway boys in their bow ties. The absurd corsets and bustles of yesteryear. Statement-making and sexual signaling are part of what's going on.
The Opponent seems to be suggesting that tattoos will go out of fashion and come to look ridiculous. I don't know.
Theme music: ZZ Top, Sharp-Dressed Man
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Some Space Tunes in Honor of John Glenn
The third American in outer space, and the first to orbit the earth, John Glenn passed away the other day at 95. So I raise my glass this Saturday night in salute of a great American hero.
1960's psychedelia explored inner space, but there were a few songs from the '60s about outer space themes. Telstar, an instrumental by the British band, The Tornados, 1962, was presumably in celebration of Telstar, the first communications satellite which got high in '62. (Telstar the song made it high on Earth to the #1 slot on both the U. S. and British charts.)
Speaking of getting high, the Byrd's Eight Miles High, 1966, tells of a trip into the outer or perhaps into the 'inner' or both. I never paid much attention to the obscure lyrics. The Coltranish riffs executed on a 12-string Rickenbacker were what got my attention. Damn if it doesn't sound as raw and fresh as it did back in '66.
Also by the Byrds, 1966, is the playful Mr. Spaceman. And we can't omit Elton John, Rocket Man from 1972.
Steve Miller Band, Space Cowboy, 1969
Kinks, Supersonic Rocket Ship, 1972. My favorite Kinks number is Waterloo Sunset.
Police, Walking on the Moon. With Apollo 11 footage.
‘Post-Truth’
'Post-truth' is a silly buzz word, and therefore beloved by journalists who typically talk and write uncritically in trendy ways. There is no way to get beyond truth or to live after truth. All of our intellectual operations are conducted under the aegis of truth.
Here is one example of how we presuppose truth. People routinely accuse each other of lying, and often the accusations are just. But to lie is to make a false statement with the intention of deceiving one's audience. A false statement is one that is not true. It follows that if there is no truth, then there are no lies. If we are beyond truth, then we are beyond lies as well. But of course lies are told, so truth exists.
I could squeeze a lot of philosophical juice out of this topic, and you hope I won't. I will content myself with some mundane observations.
'Post-truth' is used mainly to describe contemporary politics. The idea is that it does not much matter in the political sphere whether what is said is true so long as it is effective in swaying people this way or that. What is persuasive need not be true, and what is true need not be persuasive. But this has has always been the case, so why the need for 'post-truth'? Is it really so much worse these days?
For the Left, Donald Trump is the prime post-truther, the post-truth poster boy if you will, the prima Donald of the practice of post-truth. Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post doesn't expect him to truth up anytime soon. "Indeed, all signs are to the contrary — most glaringly Trump’s chock-full-of-lies tweet that 'I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.' "
A very stupid example, Ms. Marcus! There is not even one lie in the tweet, let alone a bunch of them. Although verifiable in principle, Trump's tweet is unverifiable in practice. Trump had no solid evidence for the truth of his assertion. Still, it could be true. Don't forget the 'necro-vote' (a word I just coined) and the illegal vote. Trump's epistemic 'sin' was not that he stated what is not the case with the intention to deceive but that he confidently asserted something for which he had insufficient evidence. He pretended to know something he could not know. Very annoying, and possibly a violation of a Cliffordian ethics of belief, but not a lie.
So he didn't lie. What he did was close to what Harry Frankfurt defines as bullshitting in On Bullshit, a piece of close analysis, fine, not feculent, that was undoubtedly more often purchased than perused. The bullshitter doesn't care how things stand with reality. The liar, by contrast, must care: he must know (or at least attempt to know) how things are if he is to have any chance of deceiving his audience. Think of it this way: the bullshitter doesn't care whether he gets things right or gets them wrong; the liar cares to get them right so he can deceive you about them.
So you could fairly tax Trump in this instance with bullshitting. He shot his mouth off in a self-serving way without much concern over whether what he said is true. But why pick on Trump?
Because you are a leftist and thus a purveyor of double standards.
Obama bullshits with the best of them. A prime example was his outrageous claim that 99.9% of Muslims reject radical Islam. It is false and known to be false. (You can check with PEW research if you care to.) Now was Obama lying in this instance or bullshitting? A lie is not the same thing as a false statement. Let us be perhaps excessively charitable: Obama made a false statement but he had no intention of deceiving us because he did not know the truth. (Compare: G. W. Bush was wrong about the presence of WMDs in Iraq, but he did not lie about them: he was basing himself on the best intelligence sources he had at the time.)
But that Obama is pretty clearly bullshitting is shown by the cliched and falsely precise 99.9% figure. The whole context shows that Obama doesn't care whether what he is saying is true. He said it because it fits his narrative: Islam is a religion of peace; we are not in a religious war with Islam; Muslims want all the same things we want, blah, blah, ad nauseam. The difference between this case and the Trump tweet is that we know that Obama was wrong, whereas we don't know that Trump was wrong.
So once again we have a double standard. Trump is 'post-truth'; but Obama and Hillary are not?