Category: Substack

Tribalism and Diversity

Substack latest.  First two paragraphs with a Study Guide I’ve just now appended.

Tribalism is on the rise while classical liberalism is on the wane. Given this fact, does it make sense to admit into one’s country ever more different tribes? A piety oft-intoned by leftists is that diversity is our strength. An Orwellianism, that, if tribal diversity is at issue.* For that would amount to the absurdity that the more domestic strife, the stronger we become. It is plain, after all, that different tribes do not like each other, and do not see themselves in the other. Tribal identification is other-exclusive. There is no comity without commonality.

I am against tribal identification. I realize, however, that I am sawing against the grain of the crooked timber of humanity. People will continue to identify themselves as members of groups. Classically liberal ideals such as toleration are no match for the ingrained tendency to revert to the tribal. So the realist in me says that immigration policy must favor those who are assimilable to our values and principles and must exclude those who aren’t.

You should be able to explain each of these terms:  tribalism, classical liberalism, Orwellianism, comity, toleration.

Who am I alluding to with the phrase “crooked timber of humanity”?

Disagreement in Philosophy

Substack latest.

That philosophers disagree is a fact about which there is little disagreement, even among philosophers. But what this widespread and deep disagreement signifies is a topic of major disagreement. One issue is whether or not the fact of disagreement supplies a good reason to doubt the possibility of philosophical knowledge. Czech philosopher Jiří Fuchs says it doesn’t. I say it does.

The Riddle of Evil and the Pyrrhonian ‘Don’t Care’

Substack latest on the aporetics of evil.  

Today I preach upon a text from Karl Jaspers wherein he comments on St. Augustine (Plato and Augustine, ed. Arendt, tr. Mannheim, Harcourt 1962, p. 110):

In interminable discussions, men have tried to sharpen and clarify this contradiction: on the one hand, evil is a mere clouding of the good, a shadow, a deficiency; on the other hand, it is an enormously effective power. But no one has succeeded in resolving it.

The problem is genuine, the problem is humanly important, and yet it gives every indication of being intractable. Jaspers is right: no one has ever solved it. To sharpen the contradiction:

1) Evil is privatio boni: nothing independently real, but a mere lack of good, parasitic upon the good. It has no positive entitative status.

2) Evil is not a mere lack of good, but an enormously effective power in its own right. It has a positive entitative status.

A tough nut to crack, an aporetic dyad, each limb of which makes a very serious claim on our attention. And yet the limbs cannot both be true. Philosophy is its problems, and when a problem is expressed as an aporetic polyad, then I say it is in canonical form.

Read it all.

Is A.I. Killing the World Wide Web?

From The Economist:

As AI changes how people browse, it is altering the economic bargain at the heart of the internet. Human traffic has long been monetised using online advertising; now that traffic is drying up. Content producers are urgently trying to find new ways to make AI companies pay them for information. If they cannot, the open web may evolve into something very different.

[. . .]

“The nature of the internet has completely changed,” says Prashanth Chandrasekar, chief executive of Stack Overflow, best known as an online forum for coders. “AI is basically choking off traffic to most content sites,” he says. With fewer visitors, Stack Overflow is seeing fewer questions posted on its message boards. Wikipedia, also powered by enthusiasts, warns that AI-generated summaries without attribution “block pathways for people to access…and contribute to” the site.

This won't affect me. My writing is a labor of love. I don't try to make money from it. I don't need to. I've made mine. You could call me a "made man." I may, however, monetize my Substack. It seems churlish to refuse the pledges that readers have kindly made.