Category: Life of the Mind

Saturday Night at the Library: What I’m Reading #1

Jan of Warsaw, Poland writes,

Would you please start a series of posts akin to the "Saturday Night at the Oldies" except about books? A few books presented every week, each with a one sentence description, from as wide a thematic range as possible — fiction, history, philosophy, biography and others. I would profit from it immensely, as would many others.

An excellent idea.  So, in keeping with my masthead motto "Study everything," here are (some of) my recent reads.  Disclaimer: Much of what follows are quick bloggity-blog remarks scribbled mainly for my own use.  They are not intended as balanced reviews.

1. Hugh J. McCann, Creation and the Sovereignty of God (Indiana University Press, 2012). 

I am finishing a review article about this book for American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly.  Three sentences from the introduction:  "Hugh McCann is an old pro in action theory and the philosophy of religion whose expertise is well-displayed in the eleven chapters of  his magisterial Creation and the Sovereignty of God. [. . .] McCann’s central conviction is that God is absolutely sovereign, so much so that God is not only sovereign over the natural order, but also over the moral order, the conceptual order, and the divine nature itself. [. . .]  The book can be summed up by saying that it is a detailed elaboration in all major areas of  the consequences of the idea that God is absolutely sovereign and thus unlimited in knowledge and power.

2. Greg Bellow, Saul Bellow's Heart: A Son's Memoir (Bloomsbury 2013).  Held my attention to the end.  A son comes to grips with his relation to his famous conservative father. I found the son's uncritical liberalism annoying in places.

3. Colin McGinn, Problems in Philosophy: The Limits of Inquiry (Blackwell, 1993). One-sentence summary: The central problems of philosophy have naturalistic solutions, but we are prevented by our cognitive architecture from ever knowing them.  Here is Peter van Inwagen's review.  (A tip of the hat to sometime MavPhil commenter, Andrew Bailey, for making PvI materals available online.)

4. Marcia Clark (with Teresa Carpenter), Without a Doubt (Viking, 1997).  Marcia Clark was the lead prosecutor in the ill-starred O.J. Simpson trial.  Simpson was accused of first-degree murder in the brutal deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, but acquitted.  Clark's side of the story.  I'm at p. 159 of 486 pp.

5. Dominick Dunne, Another City, Not My Own: A Novel in the Form of a Memoir (Crown, 1997).  Another book about the Trial of the Century as Dunne calls it (the Simpson murder trial) by the late novelist, socialite, reporter, and gossip.  Aficionados of that vast, sprawling monstrosity know as the City of the Angels will find this and the previous title of interest.  I'm from there, so that helps explain my interest.

6. Aurel Kolnai (1900-1973), Ethics, Value, and Reality: Selected Papers of Aurel Kolnai (Hackett, 1978).  I thank my young friend Kid Nemesis for bringing Kolnai's work to my attention.  One of the ten papers collected here is Kolnai's seminal "Forgiveness" (orig. in Proc. Arist. Soc. 1973-74).  David Wiggins and Bernard Williams co-author a useful introduction to Kolnai's life and work.

7. Josef Pieper, Hope and History: Five Salzburg Lectures, tr. D. Kipp (Ignatius, 1994, orig. publ. as Hoffnung und Geschichte by Koesel-Verlag in 1967).  The German Thomist meditates on hope with the help of Kant, Teilhard de Chardin, Franz Kafka, and the Marxist Ernst Bloch.  Pieper very politely criticizes Bloch's Marxist idiocies which cumlinate in the simultaneously outrageous and hilarious  Ubi Lenin, ibi Jerusalem!

8. Ralph C. Wood, Flannery O'Connor and the Christ-Haunted South (Eerdman's 2004).  A study of themes from the work of a Catholic novelist in the fundamentalist South.

9. Daniel C. Dennett, Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking (W. W. Norton 2013). Is Dennett a philosopher or a pseudo-philosopher?  He is undoubtedly brilliant, as brilliant as he is sophistical, snarky, and unserious.  I find the man and his works repellent.  But Colin McGinn, atheist, naturalist, and apparently also a liberal, I find simpatico.  McGinn is a real philosopher!  You want to know my criteria?  Some other time.  My Dennett drubbings are here.  

Correction.  Monterey Tom correctly points out that " the  title 'Trial of the Century' should go either to the  Hiss Case or the Rosenberg case, both of which had social and political  ramifications far beyond the mere sensationalism of the Simpson  fiasco.  The only reason why so few college graduates, even graduate students specializing in national security affairs, are familiar with the Hiss  and Rosenberg cases is that both trials disprove one of the essential  tenets of PC, namely that there never were any Communists in the first  place.  Of course, only a system as twisted as PC could require people to  believe at the same time that while there never were any Communists they  were good people."   

Related articles
Thomas Nagel, Heretic
Which is the Hardest of the Philosophical Subdisciplines?
The Putative Paradox of Forgiveness
Colin McGinn: Good News and Bad News
Neuroscience & Philosophy: An Exchange
Sweet Dreams of Dennett

Critical Thinking Versus Utopian Thinking

Critical thinking is not necessarily opposed to the status quo. To criticize is not to oppose, but to sift, to assess, to assay, to  evaluate. The etymology of krinein suggests as much. A critical thinker may well end up supporting the existing state of things in this or that respect. It is a fallacy of the Left to think that any supporter of any aspect of the status quo is an 'apologist' for it in some pejorative sense of this term. After all, some aspects of the status quo may be very good indeed, and others may be unimprovable without making things worse in other respects.

The notion that critical thinking entails opposition to the status quo presumably has its roots in the nihilism of the Left. Leftists are  often incapable of appreciating what actually exists because they measure it against a standard that does not exist, and that in many cases cannot exist. It is the leftist Nowhere Man who judges the topos quo from the vantage point of utopia. There is no place like utopia, of course, but only because utopia is no place at all.

Just as leftists do not own dissent, they are not the sole proprietors of a critical attitude. Kritische Theorie as used by  members of the Frankfurt School is a tendentious and self-serving expression.

Related articles
Trotsky's Faith
Philosophy is a Useless Major; All Praise to Philosophy

Year Ten Begins: In Praise of Blogosophy

Today I begin my tenth year as a 'blogosopher.'  Traffic is good: rare is the day when the page view count drops below 1200, and there are numerous surge days above 2000. I'm in this game 'for the duration,' as they say: as long as health and eyesight hold out.

In Praise of Blogosophy

Philosophy is primarily an activity, not a body of doctrine. If you were to think of it as a body of doctrine, then you would have to say there is no philosophy, but only philosophies. For there is no one universally recognized body of doctrine called philosophy. The truth of course is one not many. And that is what the philosopher aims at: the one ultimate truth about the ultimate matters, including the ultimate truth about how we ought to live. But aiming at a target and hitting it are two different things. The target is one, but our many arrows have fallen short and in different places. And if you think that your favorite philosopher has hit the target of truth, why can't you convince the rest of us
of that? 

Disagreement does not of course prove the nonexistence of truth, but it does cast reasonable doubt on all claims to its possession. Philosophy aspires to sound, indeed incontrovertible, doctrine. But the quest for it has proven tough indeed. For all we know it may lie beyond our powers. Not that this gives us reason to abandon the quest. But it does give us reason to be modest and undogmatic.

Philosophy, then, is primarily an activity, a search, a quest. Somewhere deep in the bowels of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Kant remarks that "Philosophy cannot be taught, we can at most learn to philosophize." I agree. It cannot be taught because it does not exist as teachable doctrine. Philosophy is not something we profess, except perhaps secondarily; it is something we do. The best professors of philosophy are doers of philosophy.  A professor, obviously, need not be a paid professor, an academic functionary.

How then should we do philosophy? Conversation face-to-face with the like-minded, intelligent, and sincere is useful but ephemeral and often hard to arrange. Jetting off to conferences can be fun especially if the venue is exotic and the tab is picked up your department. But reading and listening to papers at conferences is pretty much a waste of time when it comes to actually doing productive philosophy. Can you follow a technical paper simply by listening to it? If you can you're smarter than me.

So we ought to consider the idea that philosophy in its purest form, its most productive form, is 'blogosophy,' philosophy pursued by weblog. And there is this in favor of it: blogging takes pressure off the journals. Working out my half-baked ideas here, I am less likely to submit material that is not yet ready for embalming in printer's ink.

Related: Should One Stoop to a Defense of Philosophy or the Humanities?

Misattributed to Socrates

I am a foe of misquotation, misattribution, the retailing of unsourced quotations, the passing off of unchecked second-hand quotations, and sense-altering context suppression.  Have I ever done any of these things?  Probably.  'Suffering' as I do from cacoethes scribendi, it is a good bet that I have committed one or more of the above.  But I try to avoid these 'sins.'

This morning I was reading from Karl Menninger, M.D., Whatever Became of Sin? (Hawthorn Books, 1973).  On p. 156, I found this quotation:

Our youth today love luxury.  They have bad manners, contempt for authority, disrespect for older people.  Children nowadays are tyrants.  They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.

At the bottom of the page there is a footnote that reads:  "Socrates, circa 425 B. C.  Quoted in Joel Fort, The Pleasure Seekers (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969)."

I was immediately skeptical of this 'quotation.'  In part because I had never encountered the passage in the Platonic dialogues I have read, but also because the quotation is second-hand.  So I took to the 'Net and found what appears to be a reputable site, Quote Investigator.

Therein a pertinent post entitled Misbehaving Chidren in Ancient Times? Plato or Socrates? It turns out that  the answer is neither.  The above quotation, or rather something very close to it,

. . . was crafted by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his Cambridge dissertation published in 1907. Freeman did not claim that the passage under analysis was a direct quotation of anyone; instead, he was presenting his own summary of the complaints directed against young people in ancient times. 

Sertillanges on Reading

The erudite Sardonicus kindly sends this to supplement my earlier remarks on reading:

We want to develop breadth of mind, to practice comparative study, to keep the horizon before us; these things cannot be done without much reading. But much and little are opposites only in the same domain. . . [M]uch is necessary in the absolute sense, because the work to be done is vast; but little, relatively to the deluge of writing that . . . floods our libraries and our minds nowadays.
[. . .]
What we are proscribing is the passion for reading, the uncontrolled habit, the poisoning of the mind by excess of mental food, the laziness in disguise which prefers easy familiarity with others’ thought to personal effort. The passion for reading which many pride themselves on as a precious intellectual quality is in reality a defect; it differs in no wise from other passions that monopolize the soul, keep it in a state of disturbance, set it in uncertain currents and cross-currents, and exhaust its powers.
[. . .]
The mind is dulled, not fed, by inordinate reading, it is made gradually incapable of reflection and concentration, and therefore of production; it grows inwardly extroverted, if one can so express oneself, becomes the slave of its mental images, of the ebb and flow of ideas on which it has eagerly fastened its attention. This uncontrolled delight is an escape from self; it ousts the intelligence from its function and allows it merely to follow point for point the thoughts of others, to be carried along in the stream of words, developments, chapters, volumes.
[. . .]
[N]ever read when you can reflect; read only, except in moments of recreation, what concerns the purpose you are pursuing; and read little, so as not to eat up your interior silence.

A.G. Sertillanges,  The Intellectual Life:  Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods ( Catholic University Press, 1998), pp. 145 – 149.

I agree with the above, except for the extreme statement, "Never read when you can reflect."   

Is Graduate School Really That Bad?

100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School is now at #79.  Despite its unrelenting negativity, prospective applicants  to graduate programs may find the site  useful.  I cannot criticize it for being negative since that is its implied purpose: to compile 100 reasons not to go.  But there is something whiny and wimpy about it.

Suppose you are paid to spend five years, from age 22 to age 27, studying in depth a subject you love and have aptitude for in the idyllic environs of a college campus.  You have been give tuition remission and a stipend on which to live.  You really enjoy reading, writing, thinking, and studying more than anything else.   You have good sense and avoid the folly of assuming debt in the form of student loans.  You live within your very modest means and have the character to resist the siren songs of a society bent on crazy consumption.   A little monkishness never hurt anyone. You spend five years enjoying all the perquisites of academic life: a beautiful environment, stimulating people, library privileges, an office, a flexible work schedule, and the like.  At age 27 you are granted the Ph. D.  But there are few jobs, and you knew that all along.  You make a serious attempt at securing a position in your field but fail.  So you go on to something else either with or without some further training.

Have you wasted your time?  Not by my lights.  Hell, you've been paid to do what you love doing!  What's to piss and moan about?  You have been granted a glorious extension of your relatively carefree collegiate years.  Five more years of being a student, sans souci, in some exciting place like Boston.  Five more years of contact with age- and class-appropriate members of the opposite sex and thus five more years of opportunity to find a suitable mate.  (But if you marry and have kids while a grad student, then you are a fool.  Generally speaking, of course.) 

Of course, if your goal in life is to pile up as much loot as possible in the shortest possible time, then stay away from (most) graduate programs.  But if the life of the mind is your thing, go for it!  What's to kvetch about? Are you washed up at 27 or 28 because you couldn't land a tenure-track position?  You have until about 40 to make it in America. 

For more on this and cognate topics, see my Academia category.

Suggestions on How Best to Study

Just over the transom:

Noting your desire to correct spelling, here are two that I spotted: "…gave an argment [sic] a while back (1 August 2010 to be precise) to the conclusion that there cannot, as a matter of metaphyscal necessity [sic]…"

Holy moly!  Thanks.  I just corrected them, and then found three more.

My current frustrations stem from mental mistakes, not typos.  Thinking clearly about philosophy is more difficult for me than writing about my thoughts, which makes me suspect that I should write more (summary papers, counterarguments) while I'm working through the material instead of just taking notes along the way.

Right.  Reading by itself is too passive to be very profitable even if done while alert in a quiet environment in an upright position.  So one ought to take notes and mark passages (assuming you own the book).  But even this is not enough.  The only way  properly to assimilate a philosophical text is by writing a summary and a critique of it.  The summary is an attempt to understand exactly what the author's thesis or theses are, and (just as important) what his arguments are.  Having done that, one advances to critical evaluation, the attempt to sort out  which theses and arguments you consider true/valid and which false/invalid.  Blogging can be very useful for this purpose and can lead to worthwhile exchanges and the refinement and testing of one's ideas.

As I see it, there is no point in seriously studying anything without a decision as to whether or not one should take on board the author's theses and arguments and incorporate them into one's own thinking.  The point of study and inquiry is to get at the truth, not to know what someone else  has maintained that the truth is.

I have just completed a semester of Searle's intro to the philosophy of mind via podcast. I worked through the primary readings and also studied his textbook.  It was very difficult and rewarding.  Now it is time to tackle his semester on language.

Searle is good.  You will learn a lot from him.  My posts on Searle are collected in the aptly-named Searle category.

Always enjoy your posts.  Occam's Razor is sorely abused by apologists from all corners of the debate.

Glad we agree, and thanks for the kind words.

Should One Stoop to a Defense of Philosophy or the Humanities?

Philosophy_discussionThe place of philosophy in college curricula is often defended on the ground that its study promotes critical thinking.

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 the goal of philosophical study. The reason to study English literature is not to improve one's vocabulary or to prepare for a career as a journalist.   Similarly, the reason to study philosophy is not to improve one's ability to think clearly about extraphilosophical matters or to acquire skills that may 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 Ninth 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 responses are patently 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."  You should not acquiesce in the philistine's values and assumptions, but go on the attack and question his values and assumptions.  Put him on the spot.  Play the Socratic gadfly.  If a philistine wants to know how much you got paid for writing an article for a professional journal, say, "Do you really think that only what one is paid to do is worth doing?"  

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 typical Board of Regents. But philosophy is what it is, lofty by nature, and if we are to defend it we must do so in a way that does not betray it.

It might be better, though, not to stoop to defend it at all, at least not before the uncomprehending.  It might be better to show contempt and supercilious disdain. Not everyone can be reasoned with, and part of being reasonable is understanding this fact.

Serious Reading and Bed Reading

There is serious reading and there is bed reading. Serious reading is for stretching the mind and improving the soul. It cannot be well done in bed but requires the alertness and seriousness provided by desk, hard chair, note taking and coffee drinking. It is a pleasure, but one stiffened with an alloy of discipline. Bed reading, however, is pure unalloyed pleasure. The mind is neither taxed nor stretched or much improved, but entertained.

Whitehead on Education and Information

Whitehead Alfred North Whitehead's The Aims of Education and Other Essays (Macmillan, 1929) begins with this paragraph:

Culture is activity of thought, and receptiveness to beauty and humane feeling. Scraps of information have nothing to do with it. A merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God's earth. What we should aim at producing is men who possess both culture and expert knowledge in some special direction. Their expert knowledge will give them the ground to start from, and their culture will lead them as deep as philosophy and as high as art. We have to remember that the valuable intellectual development is self-development, and that it mostly takes place between the ages of sixteen and thirty. As to training, the most important part is given by mothers before the age of twelve. A saying due to Archbishop Temple illustrates my meaning. Surprise was expressed at the success in after-life of a man, who as a boy at Rugby had been somewhat undistinguished. He answered, "It is not what they are at eighteen, it is what they become afterwards that matters."

That few today understand what education is is betrayed by the readiness of all too many to use 'educate' in place of 'inform.'  Suppose you tell me about some petty fact. You have not 'educated' me, you have given me a scrap of information. The educated person is not the one whose head is stuffed with information, but the one whose experientially-honed judgment is capable of making sense of information. To become well-informed is not difficult; to become well-educated is a task of self-development for a lifetime.

I Get a Rise Out of Aristotle

Michael Gilleland, the Laudator Temporis Acti, in his part-time capacity as 'channel' of Aristotle, submits this delightful missive:

Intellectual Maturity

One mark of intellectual maturity  is the ability to tolerate uncertainty, the ability to withhold assent, the ability to withstand contradiction and recognize the merit of opposing views – all of this without lapsing into skepticism or relativism.  The intellectually immature, by contrast, bristle when their pieties and subjective certainties are called into question.  Their doxastic security needs trump their need to inquire into the truth.