Cause of death

The Chauvin trial is at last underway, with excellent daily reporting from PowerLine. The defendant is fortunate enough to have drawn a judge who takes his job seriously, almost alone in a city that appears unified in its desire to make this a show trial against an unjust society. As a result, to my amazement, the opening arguments largely stuck to the issue of what exactly it was that killed Mr. Floyd. After a disgraceful piece in the local rag arguing that the trial was a "vessel into which a splintered society places its rage, anxieties and hopes"--pretty much a recipe for lynch law--the same paper actually ran a fairly reasonable piece this week trying to sort through the conflicting evidence on the cause of death. It's hard to imagine how he got it past his editors.

If this were a civil case, it would be difficult to sort through the relative weight of the various contributing factors to Mr. Floyd's death. The picture is intolerably complicated by a fatal dose of fentanyl. I try to imagine how I'd view the evidence if it were myself being arrested, or someone from my own social circle that I knew and loved. Would I be thinking, "The person you're arresting is in clear medical distress; why are you so cavalier about the risks?" Or would I conclude that, if you resist arrest and act crazy and have to be restrained, then it turns out that you're dying of an OD, then it's just a slow-motion suicide by cop? Looking at it from the opposite perspective, if the defendant in this trial had for some reason forcibly administered the fatal dose of fentanyl to Mr. Floyd, then tried to argue that what really killed him was a knee on the neck, wouldn't I scoff? Wouldn't I reject the argument that the fentanyl wasn't all that dangerous, because Mr. Floyd, an addict, had such a high tolerance?

In a civil trial, the jury might be allowed to allocate percentages to the liability of the various people who created dangerous conditions, which in this fact pattern might well result in a very high percentage being allocated to the decision to swallow the fatal evidence of fentanyl. In a criminal trial, however, the jury has to resolve any reasonable doubt over whether Mr. Chauvin's actions were the effective cause of death. It can't help much that the jury will be allowed and/or instructed to take into account that there can be multiple causes of death, or that a potential fatal treatment can be considered the cause of death even if someone else (including the decedent) had contributed a cause of death that either took effect seconds before the action of the criminal defendant, or would have caused death within seconds in any case.

The only certain conclusion I can draw is that I wouldn't want to live there, and I certainly wouldn't want to serve on a police force in that city. It's a mystery how they keep a police force together at all. Frankly it's hard to see how such a broken city survives.

Heroic Materialism

Raven mentioned this series, and this is the conclusion of it. 

He says at the end that the collapse of Marxism -- a little over-eager, sadly -- left us with no alternative but "Heroic Materialism." By this I assume he meant that we should endeavor to live boldly and virtuously according to the ancient pattern, but with no belief in any metaphysical beings or realities that might reward such virtues in an afterlife. We should do well because doing well led to physical prosperity; and if it didn't, quite, we should work harder, because working harder might. But ultimately it is heroic because it is a fight without hope; and worse, without faith.

       "Night shall be thrice night over you,
         And heaven an iron cope.
         Do you have joy without a cause,
         Yea, faith without a hope?"

God save us from that; and only a god can. The Greeks built their great temples to divinity, not to materialism. They would not have built them if they had not believed. The Cathedrals of the Middle Ages were built to a God who was believed in because of the best arguments of Athens, and the best poetry of Jerusalem.

Where comes anything without a cause, joy or any other thing? Where comes faith in a thing you don't even hope to be true? 

It is Holy Week. What better time to ask these questions?

Plato's "Hidden Theorem on Distribution of Primes"

While I was trying to remember where Aristotle says the thing about primes that Parmenides said, I came across this paper. It argues that the 5,040 number in Plato's Laws (which you will remember from the long series on the Laws here over the winter) hides a secret theorem. 

I'm not sure about that, but read it for yourself if you like. The full text is there, and it's short.

Against Karl Popper

I've always liked Popper's answer, but hear them out. First, what is the answer?

Popper was struck by Einstein’s prediction. “Now the impressive thing about this case,” he wrote decades later, “is the risk involved in a prediction of this kind.” Had the measurements found Einstein in error, Popper said, the physicist would have been forced to abandon his theory. Popper built his demarcation criterion around the bravado of wagering against refutation: “One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.”

Second, what was the answer meant to contrast?

All demarcation criteria are designed to exclude something. What Popper really wanted to do was to show why psychoanalysis and Marxism were not scientific. Those theories had been widely understood as “scientific” in his Viennese milieu because of a logical empiricist theory called verificationism. According to this view, a theory is scientific if it is verified by empirical data.

From my perspective, successfully excluding Marxism and psychoanalysis from science justifies the project. However, others have disagreed, and not only Marxists and psychoanalysts. 

First, it is difficult to determine whether you have actually falsified a theory....  Not so fast. How do you know that your experimental result was accurate?

That's a terrible objection. Falsification is about whether or not the theory could in principle be falsified. The fact that it may be hard to do is quite different from the objection to Freud's theories, wherein a man who e.g. didn't appear to have any Oedipal concerns would just be said to be suppressing or projecting them or whatever. Marxism, too: Lenin wrote a book about how Marx's theory's failure to materialize was just a further proof of how right he was about the evils of capitalism. These theories aren't falsifiable because they let you just tell another story about how they were right all along. 

Yes, the instrument could be wrong; do it again. But if there's not a fact of the matter that could falsify a theory if known, it's not science.

The second problem with Popper’s proposal has to do with the actual demarcations it gives us. The very minimum we should expect from a demarcation criterion is that it slices the sciences in the right places. We want our criterion to recognize as scientific those theories that are very generally accepted as hallmarks of contemporary science, such as quantum physics, natural selection, and plate tectonics. At the same time, we want our criterion to rule out doctrines such as astrology and dowsing. Popper’s falsifiability standard is not especially helpful in this regard. For starters, it is difficult to present the “historical” natural sciences, such as evolutionary biology, geology, or cosmology—those fields where we cannot “run the tape again” in the laboratory—exclusively in terms of falsifiable claims. Those sciences provide persuasive explanations of nature through the totality of a narrative chain of causal inference rather than a series of empirical yes-no votes. Popper thus inadvertently excludes important domains of contemporary science.

I would argue that this is also a terrible objection. To say that you want to "slice the sciences in the right places" indicates that you think you already know where the slices should be made. Actually, Popper raises an important objection to theories even from these widely recognized fields: they aren't doing quite the same thing as the sciences that can provide replicable testing, and their theories remain rather more theoretical as a consequence. They're not in the same category as Marxism, but maybe that only means that there is Hard Science, and then degrees of distance from it. I'm inclined to score this Popper 2, objections 0 so far.

The situation with inclusion is even worse. The difficulty was sharply expressed by philosopher of science Larry Laudan in an influential article from 1983. Popper’s criterion, he wrote,

has the untoward consequence of countenancing as “scientific” every crank claim that makes ascertainably false assertions. Thus flat Earthers, biblical creationists, proponents of laetrile or orgone boxes, Uri Geller devotees, Bermuda Triangulators, circle squarers, Lysenkoists, charioteers of the gods, perpetuum mobile builders, Big Foot searchers, Loch Nessians, faith healers, polywater dabblers, Rosicrucians, the-world-is-about-to-enders, primal screamers, water diviners, magicians, and astrologers all turn out to be scientific on Popper’s criterion—just so long as they are prepared to indicate some observation, however improbable, which (if it came to pass) would cause them to change their minds.

OK, that one's better. Popper's criterion may not be sufficient to exclude fields that are easily falsifiable because they are crazy. We might need to address that objection to have a proper definition of hard science. That seems to be the evolving position, and it's not that hostile to Popper: he said something important, but he may have mistaken that something for everything.

Other approaches might prove more successful. Philosopher and former professor of biology Massimo Pigliucci, for example, has suggested that the problem with falsicationism is its one-dimensionality, not its effort to establish clear criteria. Perhaps we could add more dimensions that correspond to the heterogeneity of scientific practice. 

You Don't Say

Theroux gets that readers might perceive him as cranky, but he thinks the problem might be with the readers. 

Paul Theroux gets older.

His new novel tells the story of Joe Sharkey, an aging North Shore surfer... Sharkey feels acutely that he is being overtaken by younger surfers with big endorsements. For him, surfing was a way of life, an existence centered on catching waves, a commitment to the ocean.

Theroux sees surfing as a metaphor for his own life.... like the surfer past his prime, he is not immune to feeling forgotten, to the sense that the world has become hostile to the pure joy of the waves. There’s a fear of being overlooked, unread.

“I was once a hot shot, I was once the punk,” Theroux said. “And anyone who has once been a punk, eventually you’re older, and you see the turning of the years as it is."

Well, he has had more attention than most; and more wealth and success, too. But there is still a kind of universality to the experience of growing older.  

This looks like fun

"Conservatism" is No Longer Enough

A provocative and worthy piece at The American Mind, by Glenn Ellmers.

Fewer are willing to take the next step and accept that most people living in the United States today—certainly more than half—are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term.

I don’t just mean the millions of illegal immigrants. Obviously, those foreigners who have bypassed the regular process for entering our country, and probably will never assimilate to our language and culture, are—politically as well as legally—aliens. I’m really referring to the many native-born people—some of whose families have been here since the Mayflower—who may technically be citizens of the United States but are no longer (if they ever were) Americans. They do not believe in, live by, or even like the principles, traditions, and ideals that until recently defined America as a nation and as a people. It is not obvious what we should call these citizen-aliens, these non-American Americans; but they are something else.

That's a very grave problem statement. Is it just? I wonder about the percentage -- "certainly more than half" may be overstating the numbers -- but it is certainly true of some percentage. Percentages aside, too, it seems to be true especially of the part that occupies all the seats of power: in government, both elected and the bureaucracy; in corporations; in the media, to include news, social media, and entertainment; and, at the moment at least, even in top positions of the military. 

Sad times for MIT

I kept reading aloud Townhall excerpts from this extraordinary MIT paper to my husband, who kept insisting that it was a hoax. It does sound as though someone were auditioning for the Bee, and sailing very close to the wind.

[C]alling for increased media literacy can often backfire: the instruction to ‘question more’ can lead to a weaponization of critical thinking and increased distrust of media and government institutions . . . . [C]alls for media literacy can often frame problems like fake news as ones of personal responsibility rather than a crisis of collective action. . . . [Anti-maskers] value unmediated access to information and privilege personal research and direct reading over "expert" interpretations. . . . As a subculture, anti-masking amplifies anti-establishment currents pervasive in U.S. political culture. . . . Data literacy, for anti-maskers, exemplifies distinctly American ideals of intellectual self-reliance, which historically takes the form of rejecting experts and other elites. The counter-visualizations that they produce and circulate not only challenge scientific consensus, but they also assert the value of independence in a society that they believe promotes an overall de-skilling and dumbing-down of the population for the sake of more effective social control. As they see it, to counter-visualize is to engage in an act of resistance against the stifling influence of central government, big business, and liberal academia . . . . Most fundamentally, the groups we studied believe that science is a process, and not an institution.

The solution?

Convincing anti-maskers to support public health measures in the age of COVID-19 will require more than ‘better’ visualizations, data literacy campaigns, or increased public access to data. Rather, it requires a sustained engagement with the social world of visualizations and the people who make or interpret them.

"Social," posited as an alternative to data literacy and explained as a "sustained engagement with the social world," remains a little fuzzy to me. Shaming? Censorship? Police raids? How I hope this turns out to be a Sokal hoax.

Holy Week

If any of you are Jews, Passover was I understand yesterday; I hope your holiday was satisfying. For Christians, of course today is Palm Sunday and the start of Holy Week. (If we have any Muslim readers, I note with surprise that Ramadan will also fall at nearly the same time this year, beginning on the 12th of April. A sacred spring for us all, this year.)

This is the occasion of one of my favorite stories from scripture. Probably I am guilty, like many, of focusing too much on the parts that appeal to me personally. I love the story of Jesus riding an unbroken colt, though. This is Luke 19:28-36:

28 After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29 As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, 30 “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it.’ ” 32 Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” 34 They replied, “The Lord needs it.” 35 They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. 36 As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road. 

You try riding an unbroken colt sometime, and see if it's as easy as that for you.  

A Good Day for Strongmen

At the Central Georgia’s Strongest Man competition today, resumed after COVID, a man named Shannon Willits finished his courses and then perished. The best of us can hope for no better. He died in competition after finishing a set of heavy farmer’s walks carries and an immediate heavy bag carry. Most people couldn’t do either, given all the time in the world. 

A fit and worthy death. God send us each such when our time comes. 

Plato's Parmenides VIII, The One III: Time

This is a long section, so I'm going to put it beyond a jump. It's important to note at the beginning that this dialogue was written before almost any of the philosophy of time. Aristotle wrote one of the most important pieces on time in the ancient world, Plotinus another, and St. Augustine wrote another one. None of that thinking was available to Plato or to Parmenides. We saw in the preface to this series that Zeno appears to have believed that time, like space, was atomic in nature; Aristotle rejected both, but his rejection has not yet appeared. 

There are a lot of philosophical problems about time. One of them is the status of things (like ourselves) that seem to be extended in time. I can remember existing yesterday. Does that me still exist somewhere? For Zeno, the answer might be yes: there might be a 'time atom' (or rather a whole series of them) in which yesterday me still exists, and permanently (and changelessly). Or it might be 'no,' just as easily: that only the present time atom exists, neither one before nor one after. Both views admit of his apparent theory that change is impossible: the first view for the reasons we've already seen, as about the arrow that must be frozen in time because at any atom of time it is frozen; the second because, if only the current time atom actually exists, there is nowhere to move from or to move towards. 

Lacking a built-out philosophy of time this bit is quite difficult to follow. It is at odds with the way that we tend to think about time. The basic problem is that the one cannot be many, but if it exists through time there will be a part of it that is younger than itself (i.e., the part that existed yesterday) and a part that is older (i.e., the part that will exist tomorrow). The One cannot, then, be in time. This is another reason it can neither 'come to be' nor perish.

You Don’t Say

NCO: Most soldiers thought extremist training was a waste of time. 

Sweden

Preliminary data from EU statistics agency Eurostat compiled by Reuters showed Sweden had 7.7% more deaths in 2020 than its average for the preceding four years. Countries that opted for several periods of strict lockdowns, such as Spain and Belgium, had so-called excess mortality of 18.1% and 16.2% respectively.

UPDATE: Sorry about that; I posted this from my phone, and the mobile version of the Hall didn't show me the formatting error.  

Neighborhood Ordinance: No Whining

Austin immigrants versus “toxic masculinity,” plus an awesome Caddy.

In honor of our heroes, some Tejano music you can blare as loudly as you wish. 

9th Circuit: "What Do You Mean, 'Bear' Arms?"

Hawaii has a law that permits you to carry firearms, provided you obtain a license from the state that requires you to establish that you have an "urgent need" for such a firearm. A man named George Young applied for such a license, but the state was not satisfied that he proved the urgency of his need to carry one. He just wanted to carry a gun in case he needed to defend himself, but had established no reason to believe that it was likely he would need to do so. They thus turned him down, and he sued. 

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld them in doing so, but gone rather farther. They assert that Americans have no right to carry weapons in public at all. 

“There is no right to carry arms openly in public; nor is any such right within the scope of the Second Amendment,” the court ruled in an “en banc” decision that involved all the panel’s judges.

“We can find no general right to carry arms into the public square for self-defense,” the majority wrote, claiming that the Second Amendment applies to the “defense of hearth and home.”

“The power of the government to regulate carrying arms in the public square does not infringe in any way on the right of an individual to defend his home or business,” the judges wrote.

This seems to be the evolving position on the Second Amendment from the statists in response to Heller. 'Ok, maybe you have a right to own a gun that we can't completely reject,' they say, 'but only at home.' The District of Columbia will now let you own a gun, to be kept at home, registered with the police; you may not even possess ammunition for it without that permit. You may also not carry it anywhere without an additional license that they are under no obligation to provide you. (They also have a list of handguns you're allowed to buy if approved to buy them, which is called the "List of Handguns Not Determined to be Unsafe," and a list of guns you're definitely not, which they call an "Assault Weapons" ban though it appears to have been constructed largely based on scary appearances.)

So they are responding to the "right to keep and bear arms" somewhat like Ms. Clinton asking whether she was being asked if she had wiped her server with a cloth. "Yes, you can keep it at home; but bear it? What on earth could that mean? Like ride around on a bear with it? That sounds horribly unsafe."

Addendum to Part VII

Though I'm going to leave the discussion of whether our approach to relations is better than the Greeks for another day, I would like to say some things about how we handle it in logic.

There are different ways that contemporary symbolic logic tends to handle relations like the kinds Parmenides was discussing in the previous post. I'll walk through just one. Let's say that we wanted to express a likeness relation such as "All crows are black." It would look like this:

∀x(Cx⊃Bx)

That is read, "For every x, if x is a crow then x is black."

Notice that this relationship does not include any actual crows, only a variable x. It is a statement that describes every object in the universe, most of which will fail to be crows. Those things that satisfy the crow condition will, if the statement is true, also satisfy the black condition.

It is possible to talk about an actual crow. Let's say object a is a crow. (Variables are from the end of the alphabet, whereas letters taken from the beginning of the alphabet are constants. That is to say that x or y could be anything, but a is a particular something.) Now you can test the proposition, because if Ca is true and Ba is false, then the proposition is false. It only takes one counterexample to falsify a universally quantified statement like the one above (the upside-down A is the universal quantifier).

So one way we can talk about relations between objects is to use the capital letter to indicate a class of things. All of those things are automatically related to each other by being members of the class. 

That doesn't actually solve the problem Parmenides is raising, though, because you still need two things at work to express the relation. Let us say that a is not a crow, but the One or really any Form that is a unitary idea. Being a pure unity, it is just a and not Fa. A genuinely pure unity cannot admit of likeness in this way either.

It also, it turns out, can't admit of unlikeness on this model because you'd have to say that a was not a crow, and that requires three concepts working together: the constant, the class, and the negative operator. (¬ Ca). The pure unity does not admit of either the ¬  or the C, because if it did, it would no longer be just one idea but multiple ideas.

It actually seems like the Form of a Crow would be C, though, not a. After all, it is x's participation in C that makes it a crow. Now you might say that the One is "O," and any x might participate in it without changing it. So you could have Oa and Ob, where a and b each participate in the One without being the One. This addresses Parmenides' concerns somewhat, because whether any x does or doesn't participate in O, O remains singular and unchanged by the participation or lack thereof. 

Viewed that way, contemporary symbolic logic depends upon Platonic forms. So too does mathematical logic, and therefore math itself. 

Plato's Parmenides VII, The One II

We continue from yesterday.

Neither will [the One] be the same with itself or other; nor again, other
than itself or other.

How is that?

If other than itself it would be other than one, and would not be
one.

True.

And if the same with other, it would be that other, and not itself;
so that upon this supposition too, it would not have the nature of
one, but would be other than one?

It would. 

Then it will not be the same with other, or other than itself?

It will not.

That part was straightforward: the One is not the same as anything else, because it's itself and not the other thing (whatever that thing might be). The next part is trickier. 

Neither will it be other than other, while it remains one; for not

one, but only other, can be other than other, and nothing else.

True.

Then not by virtue of being one will it be other?

Certainly not.

But if not by virtue of being one, not by virtue of itself; and if
not by virtue of itself, not itself, and itself not being other at
all, will not be other than anything?

Right.

Neither will one be the same with itself.

How not?

Surely the nature of the one is not the nature of the same.

Why not?

It is not when anything becomes the same with anything that it becomes
one.

What of that?

Anything which becomes the same with the many, necessarily becomes
many and not one.
True.

But, if there were no difference between the one and the same, when
a thing became the same, it would always become one; and when it became
one, the same?

Certainly.

And, therefore, if one be the same with itself, it is not one with
itself, and will therefore be one and also not one.

Surely that is impossible.

This argument that pure unity cannot admit of 'sameness' is going to end up being a problem for Plato and even for Socrates, because the unity he is seeking is supposed to explain something else. The idea was that largeness was supposed to have a Form, and that Form was the thing that somehow produces the sameness by virtue of which all large things are large; or all good things are good. If the kind of unity Parmenides is describing cannot even admit of 'sameness' to the degree that it can be said to be 'the same as itself' the whole concept is going to be unworkable. This is sort of the third man problem in reverse: instead of producing an infinite number of additional forms, it can't even produce one additional thing. If that's true, it can't do what Socrates proposed it should do. 

The One cannot be the same in part, also, because the concept of sameness requires a concept of difference; and that is two things (in addition to itself). Once again, the idea of a unity produces a trinity. (See the comments to yesterday's post for further discussion). If the One is a kind of mind, this realization is itself productive: of that which is different, and sameness, and then a space between them for similarity and difference. The Neoplatonists will explain creation -- including the creation of the Platonic Forms -- in terms of the way that the thinking of the One ends up producing everything else. 

Parmenides is not going to make that move; he's going to block it by trying to show that the One not only cannot be the same as another, it cannot even be like another. 

And therefore the one can neither be other than other, nor the same

with itself.

Impossible.

And thus the one can neither be the same, nor other, either in relation
to itself or other?

No.

Neither will the one be like anything or unlike itself or other.

Why not?

Because likeness is sameness of affections.

Yes.

And sameness has been shown to be of a nature distinct from oneness?

That has been shown.

But if the one had any other affection than that of being one, it
would be affected in such a way as to be more than one; which is impossible.

Why is it impossible? Because motion and therefore change in the unity have already been shown to be impossible.

True.

Then the one can never be so affected as to be the same either with
another or with itself?

Clearly not.

Then it cannot be like another, or like itself?

No.

Nor can it be affected so as to be other, for then it would be affected
in such a way as to be more than one.

It would.

That which is affected otherwise than itself or another, will be unlike
itself or another, for sameness of affections is likeness.

True.

But the one, as appears, never being affected otherwise, is never
unlike itself or other?

Never.

Then the one will never be either like or unlike itself or other?

Plainly not.

The Archangel Michael's name is translated in a way that captures the Judeo-Christian-Islamic sense of this difficulty. "In art St. Michael is often represented as an angelic warrior, fully armed with helmet, sword, and shield, as he overcomes Satan, sometimes represented as a dragon and sometimes as a man-like figure. The shield at times bears the inscription: Quis ut Deus, the translation of the archangel's name, but capable also of being seen as his rhetorical and scornful question to Satan." The difference between God (or the One) and everything else is so categorical that it does not admit of likeness. 

It seems stranger to say that it does not, then, admit of unlikeness: it seems as if everything is unlike God, both categorically and in degree. Partly that is because we think differently than the Greeks here. Aristotle will divide the world into substances and the attributes they have. A relation, then, is a kind of attribute of a substance. If X and Y are related, X has attribute a which is 'is like Y,' and Y has attribute b which is 'is like X.' Xa and Yb thus produce the relationship, which is not 'real' in itself (i.e., it is not a substance); it is a product of their similar but distinct attributes.

Thus, you can see how from the Greek perspective it makes sense that the One, being a pure unity, cannot admit of a relation such as 'is unlike Z.' Being a pure unity, it cannot carry any attributes -- not sameness, not difference, not like nor unlike, neither red nor blue.

Our metaphysical approach to relations is different, such that it seems illogical to say that A is not like B, and also not unlike B. Whether or not our approach is better is a topic for another day. For now, keep it in mind as Parmenides runs through several more apparent paradoxes. 

Again, being of this nature, it can neither be equal nor unequal either

to itself or to other.

How is that?

Why, because the one if equal must be of the same measures as that
to which it is equal.

True.

And if greater or less than things which are commensurable with it,
the one will have more measures than that which is less, and fewer
than that which is greater?

Yes.

And so of things which are not commensurate with it, the one will
have greater measures than that which is less and smaller than that
which is greater.

Certainly.

But how can that which does not partake of sameness, have either the
same measures or have anything else the same?

Impossible.

And not having the same measures, the one cannot be equal either with
itself or with another?

It appears so.

But again, whether it have fewer or more measures, it will have as
many parts as it has measures; and thus again the one will be no longer
one but will have as many parts as measures.

Right.

And if it were of one measure, it would be equal to that measure;
yet it has been shown to be incapable of equality.

It has.

Then it will neither partake of one measure, nor of many, nor of few,
nor of the same at all, nor be equal to itself or another; nor be
greater or less than itself, or other?

Certainly.

Well, and do we suppose that one can be older, or younger than anything,
or of the same age with it?

Why not?

Why, because that which is of the same age with itself or other, must
partake of equality or likeness of time; and we said that the one
did not partake either of equality or of likeness?

We did say so.

And we also said, that it did not partake of inequality or unlikeness.

Very true.

How then can one, being of this nature, be either older or younger
than anything, or have the same age with it?

In no way.

The next argument changes grounds from the previous series, so we'll proceed with it in the next post. 

The Devil “Gender Neutrality” Dealt Fatal Blow

The Army admits that it has to score women differently from men if it wants women to be able to pass. It also eliminates the requirements for job specific roles, or that you pass the parts of the test women had trouble with. 

And you will only be ranked according to sex: “The new scoring system will ‘place everyone that passes the ACFT into an individual performance category based off of how well they score relative to their gender,’ tweeted Michael Grinston, sergeant major of the Army.”

Plato's Parmenides VI: The One I

Ok, so let's go through Parmenides' argument in a few stages. It is done in a dialogue, with Aristoteles answering him. I see no alternative but to quote the whole long thing, breaking in at points for discussion. 

Parmenides proceeded: If one is, he said, the one cannot be many?
Impossible.
Then the one cannot have parts, and cannot be a whole?
Why not?
Because every part is part of a whole; is it not?
Yes.
And what is a whole? would not that of which no part is wanting be a whole?

Certainly.
Then, in either case, the one would be made up of parts; both as being a whole, and also as having parts?

To be sure.
And in either case, the one would be many, and not one?
True.
But, surely, it ought to be one and not many?
It ought.
Then, if the one is to remain one, it will not be a whole, and will not have parts?

No.

Now the first difficulty for me is Parmenides' decision to 'cash out' (as philosophers love to say) wholeness in terms of having parts. That seems circular: a part is a part of a whole, but a whole is that which has all its parts together. I would have preferred at least one of these terms to be defined independently of the other.

However, I spoke with a friend of mine who is a mereologist, and he thought it was a reasonable thing to do under the circumstances. His problem was that Parmenides might be confusing spatiotemporal wholes with the kinds of wholes that Socrates' ideas are meant to be. A thought can have parts, even though it has no spatiotemporal parts; if you think through a remembered psalm (to borrow an example from St. Augustine), you think through the first part before the last part. It's divisible without being spatial.

Socrates wants to get from discursive thinking to grasping a unitary idea, though; and Parmenides is exploring whether the idea of a unity like that has sense. What would it be like? Well, it wouldn't have parts; and therefore, it wouldn't be a whole.

But if it has no parts, it will have neither beginning, middle, nor end; for these would of course be parts of it.

Right.
But then, again, a beginning and an end are the limits of everything?

Certainly.
Then the one, having neither beginning nor end, is unlimited?

Yes, unlimited.
And therefore formless; for it cannot partake either of round or straight.

But why?
Why, because the round is that of which all the extreme points are equidistant from the centre?

Yes.
And the straight is that of which the centre intercepts the view of the extremes?

True.
Then the one would have parts and would be many, if it partook either of a straight or of a circular form?

Assuredly.
But having no parts, it will be neither straight nor round?

Right.

These are fairly straightforward consequences of what it is to be a unity like they are exploring, but it is useful because it ends up dismissing several analogies and metaphors. Later philosophers often speak as a circle as a kind of unity, for example; but it isn't this kind of unity. A circle has parts, is a whole, and has features that are definable. The Form of the Good ultimately will not have any of those things.

And, being of such a nature, it cannot be in any place, for it cannot be either in another or in itself.

How so?
Because if it were in another, it would be encircled by that in which it was, and would touch it at many places and with many parts; but that which is one and indivisible, and does not partake of a circular nature, cannot be touched all round in many places.

Certainly not.
But if, on the other hand, one were in itself, it would also be contained by nothing else but itself; that is to say, if it were really in itself; for nothing can be in anything which does not contain it.

Impossible.
But then, that which contains must be other than that which is contained? for the same whole cannot do and suffer both at once; and if so, one will be no longer one, but two?

True.
Then one cannot be anywhere, either in itself or in another?

No.

Where is an idea? We might say "in my mind." Materialists will want us to 'cash that out' as "in my brain." But the brain is a place that occupies physical space; and Parmenides is proving that an idea like a Form, at least, can't be in any place. It therefore can't be contained, neither by a brain nor by anything else material.

That's not a problem for ideas like Augustine's psalm, but it is definitely a problem for any kind of Greek Form -- and especially for Aristotle's, which is supposed to somehow be 'in the thing.' Where is the form of a table? It's in the table, somehow. If the parts of the table are laying on the ground in a heap, you don't have a table. It's when the right order comes to be that the thing becomes a table. For Aristotle, form is a kind of order or structure; and thus it must be in the thing. Yet, as Parmenides is showing, a form can't be.

You can say something here that is quasi-material about the table: the 'form' is a way of speaking about a bunch of relations between the material objects, so that a properly formed table will have electromagnetic force relations between the proper atoms that make it up, such that they allow other objects to be placed upon it at "our level" of organization; the atoms of the book placed onto the table interact with the atoms of the table, etc. Form ends up being supremely complex, but explicable in terms of material relations.

Yet even in that case form is immaterial; the table and book interact as they do only because they've been put in that order, and they were put there for a reason. There's a purpose, a telos, in the construction of the table; and the form of the organization is defined by that. That form isn't in the thing; it is an idea in the mind of the creator of the artifact. If it is a form in that sense, it is closer to Plato/Socrates/Parmenides' sense of a Form; and if so, it can't really 'be in the brain,' either, because it can't really exist in a physical place. It can perhaps be in a mind, but where then is the mind?

Further consider, whether that which is of such a nature can have either rest or motion.

Why not?
Why, because the one, if it were moved, would be either moved in place or changed in nature; for these are the only kinds of motion.

Yes.
And the one, when it changes and ceases to be itself, cannot be any longer one.

It cannot.
It cannot therefore experience the sort of motion which is change of nature?

Clearly not.
Then can the motion of the one be in place?
Perhaps.
But if the one moved in place, must it not either move round and round in the same place, or from one place to another?

It must.
And that which moves in a circle must rest upon a centre; and that which goes round upon a centre must have parts which are different from the centre; but that which has no centre and no parts cannot possibly be carried round upon a centre?

Impossible.
But perhaps the motion of the one consists in change of place?

Perhaps so, if it moves at all.
And have we not already shown that it cannot be in anything?

Yes.
Then its coming into being in anything is still more impossible; is it not?

I do not see why.
Why, because anything which comes into being in anything, can neither as yet be in that other thing while still coming into being, nor be altogether out of it, if already coming into being in it.

Certainly not.
And therefore whatever comes into being in another must have parts, and then one part may be in, and another part out of that other; but that which has no parts can never be at one and the same time neither wholly within nor wholly without anything.

True.
And is there not a still greater impossibility in that which has no parts, and is not a whole, coming into being anywhere, since it cannot come into being either as a part or as a whole?

Clearly.

This is a huge challenge: if a Form is a kind of unity, and such a unity cannot have parts, then it cannot come to be in anything. Really, the conclusion here is that it cannot come to be at all. 'Coming to be' is a kind of motion, and Parmenides is going through all the kinds of motion and showing that a unity cannot experience any of them. 

The conclusion is that Forms, if they exist, are eternal; they do not come to be, and they do not perish. They aren't in anything that we encounter in the world. The Forms, thus, belong to another world -- one that interacts with our material, spatiotemporal world in some way, but that is not itself material or spatiotemporal.

Then it does not change place by revolving in the same spot, not by going somewhere and coming into being in something; nor again, by change in itself?

Very true.
Then in respect of any kind of motion the one is immoveable?

Immoveable.
But neither can the one be in anything, as we affirm.
Yes, we said so.
Then it is never in the same?
Why not?
Because if it were in the same it would be in something.

Certainly.
And we said that it could not be in itself, and could not be in other?

True.
Then one is never in the same place?
It would seem not.
But that which is never in the same place is never quiet or at rest?

Never.
One then, as would seem, is neither rest nor in motion?
It certainly appears so.

Questions? Discussion?

A Shopkeeper Remembered

An older lady who ran a shop out on a rural highway out this way died last week. Some of the neighbors were talking about her, telling stories about how she ran the place. I guess she was about 85.

One fellow was on a construction crew that was working in the winter time, and they staged up about her store before going out to work. One of the workers had bought a cup of coffee, and after finishing it decided he wanted another. Now while outside he'd pulled his ski mask down to keep his face farm, at first halfway so he could drink the coffee, and then all the way. He went in to the store without removing it, and this fellow went with him for something he wanted. No sooner had they walked through the door than the old woman intercepted them, shoved a .357 Magnum right between the one guy's eyes, and demanded that he immediately remove his mask. His hands were full, so in order to free them up to do it he handed her the empty coffee cup and the other guy his money.

Another time one of them went in and she had filled these hard candy hoppers she had with a new kind of green jawbreaker. She told him to try one, and when he did it nearly knocked him down. "What is this?" he asked.

"Wasabi candy," she said.

Apparently some of the migrant laborers who'd been coming in to her store had been stealing candy out of her hoppers when they came in. She decided to put a stop to it. It reportedly worked, although I'll bet she put a stop to her candy sales, too. 

America's Disinformation Source of Record

"We know it can't be satire, because it's NOT FUNNY."

Trail Songs

Marty Robbins apparently did this album in a single take, I hear. He is said to have convinced the studio that they had to let him do it because he'd done so many things that they wanted done. Neither they nor he thought it would be a big success, but he wanted to do an Old West album.

The song "El Paso" alone went to #1 on the country chart... and also on the pop chart. That one day's work paid for his whole life, and probably is still supporting his grandkids. It's one of the few dozen songs I can sing from memory, and do, much to the annoyance of everyone but my wife who finds it charming.

Johnny Cash did an experimental 'true West' album too, but it wasn't nearly as successful. Fortunately, he had other songs that did well. I've always liked this piece from it, though.

Also this one, even more, about the old "Wilderness Road." "Boone recommended three essentials for a pioneer: 'A good gun, a good horse, and a good wife.'" 

And this one, which I quote from time to time. "I saw him one day, but I ain't seen him since."

 Appropriately, I did come across a loose horse along a mountain road today. I returned him to his owners. 

Seems like a solid point

Project Veritas’ lawsuit came to be due to The New York Times’ labeling Project Veritas’ investigation into illegal ballot harvesting taking place in Minnesota during the 2020 election cycle as 'deceptive.'

The New York Times defended calling Project Veritas' Minnesota Ballot Harvesting videos 'deceptive' by arguing this was simply an 'unverifiable expression of opinion.'

Project Veritas pointed out this 'opinion' was printed in the news section of The New York Times and the Court agreed: 'if a writer interjects an opinion in a news article (and will seek to claim legal protections as opinion) it stands to reason that the writer should have an obligation to alert the reader ... that it is opinion.' The Times did not do so, and the Court found this troubling.

As I was reading the other day, "Hey, we were just inserting our unverifiable opinion into the narrative in order to tell you what to think. Don't shoot the messenger!" Next step: depositions of the New York Times reporter and publisher.

They lost me with "vision statement"

In case we needed more reasons to let the education tax dollars (if any there must be) go to parents instead of schools, the public and private version of which should have to compete with each other and with home-schooling, there's this from Zero Hedge:

A proposed curriculum in California for elementary and high school students would attempt to “decolonize” American society with an “ethnic studies” course.

In the course, children will be instructed in Aztec chants to various gods of human sacrifice and cannibalism, asking the gods to make them warriors for social justice.

This is all to help the children “challenge racist, bigoted, discriminatory, imperialist/colonial beliefs” rooted in “white supremacy, racism and other forms of power and oppression.”

For example, Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of war, was traditionally worshipped with human sacrifice. The school children will ask the deity to instill in them “a revolutionary spirit.”

The curriculum’s vision statement admits this is not about education, but rather a “tool for transformation, social, economic, and political change, and liberation.”

Mainstream Extremism

Kyle Shideler points out that the word "extremism" is even more dubious than it appeared the last time we discussed it. 

How the government shifted its “Counter-Extremism” strategy to target the mainstream.

The narrative is here, and it doesn’t like you very much.

In recent remarks before members of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, the chief of the D.C. Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency claimed that domestic extremism has become “part of the cultural mainstream.”

Former DHS official and USA Today contributor Elizabeth Neumann agrees: “Far-Right Extremists went mainstream under Trump.”

“Extremists have gone mainstream,” echoes journalist Zahra Ahmad. “Lawyers, realtors and every-day folks make up their ranks.” Ahmad cites a figure suggesting a quarter of Americans hold “ideas incubated by white nationalists.”

Not to be left out, NPR warns that white extremism “seeps” into the mainstream. The Atlantic says the mainstream has gone extremist too. A study by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats warns that most January 6 “insurrectionists” were mainstream to the extreme...

That's incoherent, as he points out.

This is not sustainable. The mainstream of a society cannot be extremist. It might be foolish, or misled, or prone to irrational things, as crowds often are. The mainstream of a society might even be immoral or wicked in an objective sense when measured against other societies. But what it cannot be is extreme. An elite, however, can be extremist. An elite’s views may be so outside the mainstream of the society, beholden to foreign ideologies, that their views are unrecognizable to those they purport to lead.

He suggests a 'three cups of tea' strategy for getting to know those mainstream extremists, and figuring out how to work with them instead of against them. I suppose it's worth a try; although as a long-time counterinsurgent myself I can say that what really worked in Iraq was paying them to guard their own houses and communities, while trying to get the central government to treat them more fairly than it was inclined to do. The reason it stopped working was that we left the central government to its own devices, and it immediately resumed mistreatment. 

Who's going to make sure the central government doesn't do what it's inclined to do this time? We could do it in Iraq because we didn't really have any animus towards any of the Iraqi factions, and could not have cared less about their internal disputes. As such, all sides could respect the US military as a disinterested agent. Who is the reliable third party who can tell our central government to play nice with the parts of the citizenry it despises? 

Sensible cop

I enjoyed reading this blog, which is published by a guy who comments on Astral Codex Ten.

The Chinese People Are Not a Problem, but China Really Is

Vice is stretching quite a bit at points here, trying to make yesterday's shootings in Atlanta evidence of some kind of broad anti-Asian sentiment; and especially in trying to avoid blaming the Chinese Communists for their role in spreading the virus. The Communists disappeared doctors who tried to give warnings to the world, while allowing international travel from Wuhan and elsewhere well after they knew it was a hazard. 

Still, Vice is right that this well-intended sentiment probably should have been thought out more than it was.

During a House Judiciary Committee meeting Thursday, Rep. Chip Roy said Texans “believe in justice” while simultaneously invoking the imagery of one of America’s most unjust legacies.  

“There’s old sayings in Texas about ‘Find all the rope in Texas and get a tall oak tree,’” Roy said Wednesday during the House Judiciary Committee meeting. “We take justice very seriously, and we ought to do that. Round up the bad guys. That’s what we believe.” 

On Tuesday eight people were killed and another was injured after a suspect is alleged to have bought a gun and targeted three spas in the Atlanta area. Most of the victims were Asian women.

In principle Roy was expressing anger at the murders, not racism towards Asians; his point was that murderers should be hanged, not that Asians ought to be. However, it's quite right to point out that the quality of justice in our lynching history was ugly at best.

As if Roy’s point wasn’t convoluted enough, it was also patently ahistorical. Lynchings are not, in fact, complimentary to the “rule of law.”  The 1871 “Chinese Massacre” in Los Angeles, in which at least 17 Asian immigrants were hanged, was one of the worst mass lynchings in U.S. history. 

If they'd stopped there, I'd have nothing to say against their argument, but they really shouldn't be using any of this to create defenses for the Communists. 

"My concern about this hearing is it seems to want to venture into the policing of rhetoric in a free society, free speech, and away from the rule of law, taking out bad guys,” Roy added.

According to Roy, these “bad guys'' include the Chinese government, which he referred to as “Chi-Coms.” ... Former President Donald Trump often referred to COVID-19—which he repeatedly downplayed even as hundreds of Americans died on his watch—as the “Chinese virus” and “kung flu.” Current White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said this week that there was “no question” that Trump’s statements “led to perceptions of the Asian American community that are inaccurate, unfair,” and that they “elevated threats against Asian Americans.”

There's no reason that criticisms of the Chinese government, which is actively engaged in genocide and slavery, should redound even against the Chinese people -- let alone Asian-Americans. The People's Republic of China is a tyranny of the first water. There are plenty of good people in China, such as those who have recently been robbed of their cherished freedom in Hong Kong. 

Somehow our national conversation turned this weird murderer in Atlanta into a national problem, one that returns as always to the same themes. It would be good if we could stop trying to view every problem in America through the lens of racism and politics; but that is probably too much to hope for, as it is too valuable for a whole class of politicians. It would be nice if people like Roy would stop stepping in it in ways that give opportunity, but that may be too much to hope for as well.

What might still be avoidable is the new theme of protecting the PRC. They really are evil -- the government, I mean, not the people who live under it. Anyone who spins up a defense of the PRC out of any of these stories about America should be asked why, and challenged on the moral quality of doing so. If you think you oppose slavery, they are slavers. If you think you oppose genocide, they are murdering and sterilizing people today.

The Sons of Liberty

Looking for an old quote from Rio Grande, I came across this old post from 2005. I was so confident when I was young.

Things that go south in a serious way will be met with a serious response. We'll form lawful militias to keep order if the government breaks down under disease or disaster. We'll volunteer for government-led efforts if they need us, or form private companies to take care of the jobs the government can't handle.... What comes, comes, but however hard it is we shall stand and fight it. It is our way, as it is our heritage.

We are the Sons of Liberty. We have nothing to fear. When death comes for us, we will pass into that world of which so much has been written, where there is no fear but love and all love is without pain. If we have done our duty, we will leave behind us those we have bred or trained in the ways of America. They will take up our cause and bury our bones, and our names will be their warcry.

There are names like that written in gold, below. The men they trained will give them voice. They are warriors, heroes, and riders of bulls. Perhaps there is a name like that on your lips as you read this: Washington's? Jackson's? Your father's? Another?

So what is there to fear? Live boldly. This is America, the home of the brave.

God give me the strength to finish as I began. I don't mind to die at any time: even today is not too soon. Only let me die in such a way that this younger me would not be ashamed.

No, Not Consistency!

The Pentagon is worried.

During military training sessions to address extremism in the ranks, some service members have challenged why the Pentagon is not treating the violence during racial injustice protests last summer as equal to the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol. 

That the two events are viewed as equivalent by some troops has caught the Pentagon’s attention in its effort to educate service members that extremist views and activity — on either side of the political spectrum — go against the oath they took when they joined the military, the top enlisted leader told reporters on Thursday.

“This is coming from every echelon that we’re talking to,” said Ramón Colón-López, the Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Possibly you should listen, if in fact every echelon is telling you the exact same thing. 

What, by the way, is "extremism," and why is it forbidden? The military has traditionally permitted extreme pacifists to serve, even accommodating them by finding nonviolent forms of service for them to perform. What exactly is the philosophical principle at work here? Thou shalt not depart from commonly held opinions... well, thou might depart X far, but not X+1? Where is the X? What is the 1? 

Exceptions and Rules

LTC(R) Samantha Nerove has an impressive record, as she explains in her recent article for The Federalist.

I couldn’t just barely meet the standards, because that would have given them ammunition to use against me. I had to crush the standards. And I did. I could easily do 100 push-ups in two minutes; got maximum scores on land navigation tests and always sprinted the entire course; and aced 12-mile road marches carrying 55-pound rucksacks (10 pounds more than the requirement). I weighed 120 pounds.

Now I know Sam, so I believe every word of that. What I think, though, is that she makes a great case for accepting her as an exception to an ordinary rule against women in the combat arms. All rules need exceptions, for the same reason that logical proofs don't really apply to physical things. There are going to be exceptional cases, and the rules should be weak enough to make room for things to be what they are.

That said, the ordinary situation is not that women of 120 pounds can or do crush military standards. The Army is having to redesign its combat fitness test because 65% of female soldiers fail it. And those are not recruits, but serving soldiers who have already been subject to the rigors of military discipline for some time.

There are a very few combat arms positions where women are really needed, such as for interoperations with male special operators who need to blend in to a mixed population rather than appearing as a military-aged-male unit. There are some similar positions, especially in medial units and civil affairs, where women can make a big difference in terms of the ability to move in female areas of households especially in the Islamic world. The exceptional cases could fill those out nicely.

For the vast majority of cases, however, it would be wise to adhere to the rule. Pass the test, or give way to someone who can. The Samanthas of the world will continue to crush whatever standards you put in their way, because it's very important to them to do that. They'll excel, and room should be made for them to excel. But the Army isn't made up of only exceptional individuals; like any sufficiently large organization, most of the members will be ordinary. Exceptions should be for the exceptional; a well-crafted fitness rule shouldn't be excepted for a general inability to meet it.

Plato's Parmenides V: The Tell

I've been trying to figure out how to approach the rest of the dialogue. This is where Parmenides is given the ability to speak most directly and plainly, and for himself. For that reason, I am disinclined to add a layer of summary or explication; maybe the best thing is to encounter it directly, with all that has been said before as support.

It's too long to quote, though, and probably will benefit from extended discussion. So let's try it this way: read it yourselves, encountering it directly. Ask any questions you have in the comments to this post. Then let's tackle it in three or four sessions next week.

Phil Sheridan Can Order What He Wants

In case any of you were curious about how the cavalry movie ends, it ends just this way.

A St. Patrick's Day Feast, VII: Rifles

It might be that some of you own a little Armalite. Perhaps some were lost in boating accidents recently. I hear that is common.

Hopefully there will be no reason to regret their loss in those boating accidents I hear so much about.

A St. Patrick’s Day Feast, VI

A St. Patrick’s Day Feast, V: The Actual Feast

Shepherds Pie and Irish soda bread. 

A St. Patrick's Day Feast, IV

Now back to our regularly-scheduled program.

A Germanic Interlude

We interrupt today's Celtic feasting for an attempted conversation between and Old English speaker and an Old Norse speaker, to see if in fact they were mutually intelligible languages.

Old English and modern Friesian are, in fact, sufficiently similar to be intelligible. 

A St. Patrick’s Day Feast, III

I love this one because, while it is “a traditional tune,” it was an error to claim it was in the period of the movie. The Fenian revolt was nearly contemporary to the American Civil War; this movie is supposed to have happened a few years after. The “old woman” who saw the Fenian men training in her youth would still have been young. 

It’s a fine song anyway. As mentioned below, this movie was made by John Ford’s players in order to fund The Quiet Man. The studio didn’t think a movie about Irish things was viable, and anyway it was going to be expensive to film on location. So they made Ford and Company film another cavalry movie to pay for it. 

The Quiet Man ended up making much more money.

A St. Patrick's Day Feast, II

The long fight scene from The Quiet Man. Don't watch it if you've not seen the movie; watch the movie, and you'll see it in a far better way.

A St. Patrick's Day Feast, I

Rio Grande

Now today is the right day to watch The Quiet Man, if you can. It is one of the greatest good movies ever made. But the Warner Bro's didn't think it could make any money, a movie about Irish Americans and Irishmen. 

So they told John Ford and John Wayne that they had to make another movie, a cavalry movie, to fund their Irish movie. It turned out to make more by far than the very successful Rio Grande.

There's a small matter of fitness: can you ride like the ancient Romans?

It breaks my heart to think how far we have fallen from this display of respect of man to woman; this loss of chivalry. We aren't half our grandfather's generation. God help us.

Extended Waylon

I'm mostly going to do St. Patrick's Day stuff today, though I'm not at all Irish except through the distant way in which the Scots are "Scotti" from Ireland once upon a time. However, this piece is an extended cut of a 1970s piece in which Waylon and his crew were at the very top of their game.

 

The songs are fun, but the real meat of it is when they are done singing and start playing.

Sovereign Crime

Perhaps the most important question of the moment in terms of self-governance, and whether it still exists.

Your government, at the state and federal level, the FBI, government agencies can be in on the scam.  That is the realization slowly being accepted by millions of Americans.

We have technologies that can identify dead voters the moment they cast a ballot.  We can identify people who are out-of-state, voted twice, are underage, live in a vacant lot or a UPS or FedEx postal box.  We can even show a photo of that vacant lot so you can see where your fake neighbor claims to live.

Literally, the second their ballot is counted, they can be flagged as a likely fraud.

Yes, we can deploy that technology today....

The question is, if the government is pretty much in on the election fraud, does it really matter?

It is important to note, however, that the government is not the sovereign. It may be that they have forgotten who the sovereign really is. 

“Seeing as How it’s Near the 17th of March...”

A hand extended in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.

       

Not to spoil the fun, but the opening joke in that clip is immediately relevant to the Parmenides post below.

Plato's Parmenides IV: The Setup

After the great difficulties are raised, Socrates admits that his idea of Forms seems hard to defend. Parmenides agrees that it is very hard to defend, but in terms that strongly suggest that he nevertheless believes it must be right:

These, Socrates, said Parmenides, are a few, and only a few of the

difficulties in which we are involved if ideas really are and we determine

each one of them to be an absolute unity. He who hears what may be

said against them will deny the very existence of them-and even if

they do exist, he will say that they must of necessity be unknown

to man; and he will seem to have reason on his side, and as we were

remarking just now, will be very difficult to convince; a man must

be gifted with very considerable ability before he can learn that

everything has a class and an absolute essence; and still more remarkable

will he be who discovers all these things for himself, and having

thoroughly investigated them is able to teach them to others.

I agree with you, Parmenides, said Socrates; and what you say is very

much to my mind. 

And yet, Socrates, said Parmenides, if a man, fixing his attention

on these and the like difficulties, does away with ideas of things

and will not admit that every individual thing has its own determinate

idea which is always one and the same, he will have nothing on which

his mind can rest; and so he will utterly destroy the power of reasoning,

as you seem to me to have particularly noted. 

Parmenides is suggesting that, without the Forms as at least objects of thought, we cannot reason at all. He's also telling us something about the character of a Form: it is characterized by an essence, which is absolute and unitary. Not just some things of especially high and noble character must have Forms, but anything at all. 

Now we still have the difficulty of understanding whether these Forms are metaphysical or psychological. Parmenides' defense of them is that we need them to think; and if that is true, it is possible that the world doesn't have Forms in it, but rather that they are the way that our minds work. A thing then doesn't have an essence, but is assigned one by us. In this way, everything becomes an artifact, in a way: the thing in the world is not, but the thing as it exists in our mind is an artifact that we have made and assigned a purpose, our thought an artifact just as surely as if we had built a fork out of wood. We made the thing out of raw materials we found in the world, and assigned it a purpose to serve us. 

In that case, then, telos is real enough; but all the telos is human-made, and not inherent in the world. (This is roughly the pre-Socratic philosopher Protagoras' position: "Man is the measure of all things," as it is often given.)

Aristotle will not believe this; his assigning Form as not-separate from the things means that the form really is in the thing. We learn the form by examining the things; our minds grasp it from grappling with the things we encounter. Aristotle's Form is metaphysical, and also physical (but not material). Plato's, as presented in the Republic, is metaphysical but not physical. Parmenides isn't being clear about what he takes the nature of the Forms to be.

Socrates confesses that he has no idea how to proceed under the circumstances. Parmenides tells him this is because he is young, and as yet untrained in rhetoric and debate. If he developed skills in this kind of discourse, it would help him work out his philosophical ideas in a way that he is not ready to do yet.

Socrates asks him how to do this, and Parmenides gives a response he surely meant to be helpful.

I mean, for example, that in the case of this very hypothesis of Zeno's

about the many, you should inquire not only what will be the consequences

to the many in relation to themselves and to the one, and to the one

in relation to itself and the many, on the hypothesis of the being

of the many, but also what will be the consequences to the one and

the many in their relation to themselves and to each other, on the

opposite hypothesis. Or, again, if likeness is or is not, what will

be the consequences in either of these cases to the subjects of the

hypothesis, and to other things, in relation both to themselves and

to one another, and so of unlikeness; and the same holds good of motion

and rest, of generation and destruction, and even of being and not-being.

In a word, when you suppose anything to be or not to be, or to be

in any way affected, you must look at the consequences in relation

to the thing itself, and to any other things which you choose-to each

of them singly, to more than one, and to all; and so of other things,

you must look at them in relation to themselves and to anything else

which you suppose either to be or not to be, if you would train yourself

perfectly and see the real truth. 

Socrates finds this answer as mystifying as most readers do when they first encounter it. He asks for a practical example to help him understand how this process is supposed to work.

That, Parmenides, is a tremendous business of which you speak, and

I do not quite understand you; will you take some hypothesis and go

through the steps?-then I shall apprehend you better. 

That, Socrates, is a serious task to impose on a man of my years.

Nevertheless, that will be the business of the next part. Zeno and others present join in the request to hear Parmenides walk through an example at length, so that they can better understand how to perform this sort of inquiry. 

UPDATE: If your response to reading Parmenides' answer was similar to this, don't feel bad. It's perfectly normal. 

Politicizing the Military

I don't know how much attention this stuff gets, but it really is both stupid and illegal. It's not just the praetorian guard stuff they're pulling with the National Guard deployment to DC, either. This weekend there were several stunts in which military personnel and leadership deployed as political weapons against American citizens who disagree with the current government. 

Stupid:

Illegal:

Here's the military publication cited in that last. The conduct is not illegal because the publication says so; the publication says so because it's illegal. The general officer who signed that document is none other than our current Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, currently overseeing what increasingly looks like an opportunity to purge right-wing views from the military. 

The leadership, at least, has internalized that it is their job to parrot political support for the administration and mock its enemies. The fact that this is illegal will only matter if laws are still being enforced -- well, I mean, obviously they would be against you. It does seem like the lesson of the last few years, though, is that the FBI and the DOJ work for the political establishment: they exist to excuse their crimes, but punish their enemies. Has the military legal sphere fallen as well? Signs point to "yes." 

"Get right before you get left, boomer." From an official USMC account. A lot of those Boomers were Marines too, and they fought a harder war in Vietnam than we ever faced. 

Bullets

 

What About Confession? What Do You Think Confession's For?

"The Archbishop Who Fears for Joe Biden’s Soul"

When Catholics receive Communion, they must strive to do so “worthily,” meaning they have repented of their sins and desire to live in keeping with the teachings of the Catholic Church. In the Bible, the apostle Paul warns of grave consequences for those who take Communion unworthily. But Naumann is also worried about the message Biden communicates to other Catholics when he takes Communion while continuing to support abortion rights: “Whether he intends it or not, he’s basically saying to people, ‘You can be a good Catholic and do similar things,’” [Archbishop] Naumann told me.

I don't know. Captain Thomas Bartholomew Red has a good point. What's a mortal sin or two as long as you've got Confession? 

 

The problem isn't so much the sinning as the lack of confession. If you could just admit the cannibalism was wrong, it'd be more tolerable all the way around. 

Boo

It’s been a minute since a singer could get away with calling himself “Stonewall Jackson,” but I remember hearing this on the radio. 

Ancient Greek Computation

On the Antikythera mechanism. A familiar name appears: Parmenides may be the source for the measurements of two planets in this analog computer that models the Cosmos. 

The Present Regime, circa 2016

Worth reconsidering in light of the present moment, and the last several years -- or even the last six months. I am posting it here because I haven't time to read it this morning, and want to get back to it when I do have time.

UPDATE: Also interesting is the Codevilla essay it begins with -- again, this is 2016 -- that declares that Trump will be the end of America as a republic. 

Mind-Blindness

Some people can’t visualize mental images. Those people also aren’t scared by ghost stories. 

A Curfew on Men

This idea seems to get proposed just from time to time, and the time has come around again in the UK. The problem, as Wretchard points out, is: who enforces this curfew on men? In this case, the man accused of the horrible crime was (in addition to being a man) a 'gun cop,' one of the few UK police entrusted to carry firearms. 

Why don't we have a 6 PM curfew on police, or at least 'gun cops'? Well, again: who enforces it? The unarmed police? The helpless victims? 

Ultimately there is no alternative beyond these: (a) let ordinary people protect themselves, which includes giving them the right to keep and bear the tools they need to do it; (b) accept those people being victimized by those you did entrust with power and/or weapons. All versions of (b) prove immoral over time.

Faust

The Dead South

I had a YouTube Tom Lehrer set on all afternoon, but whoever put it together started interspersing other music he likes, including this band:

That's no reason why they cain't be friends

Taking a break from all the unity and healing to escape into Gilbert and Sullivan and Rodgers and Hammerstein. "I don't say I'm better than anybody else--but I'll be danged if I ain't just as good." I didn't remember how terrific the Mikado and The Pirates of Penzance were.

Plato's Parmenides III: Greater Difficulties

Parmenides now moves on to raise two stern objections to Socrates' theory of Forms. Edith Hamilton's translation has a very brief introduction to the dialogue in which she says that it is unclear why Plato wrote a dialogue that was so harshly critical of his own most cherished idea. It is "certainly a curious procedure since in the end he apparently neither demolishes them nor establishes them," she says, but "[t]o some people, however, it is only what is to be expected from Plato, never out to defend his own views, always with one object alone, to know the truth. It would be natrual for him to do his best to find out if what he had built up could be torn down."

Especially the second of these two objections will remain relevant in theology even to this day: in the Middle Ages, Maimonides and others were gravely concerned with the proof that God could not know us. 

Parmenides sets up his first objection with a reprise of his Third Man argument. If these Forms exist like ideas in a mind, then they are unlike the things in the world. The things in the world that are supposed to be 'made in their image' have extension in three dimensions, weight, color, and so forth; the forms are unextended objects, which cannot have parts (as per the last discussion). Thus, no Form is anything like the things for which it is supposed to be the model. 

A further proof that the Forms cannot be 'like' the things in the world is that, if they were, then there is room for a third concept that unifies the Form and the thing it is 'like.' You have the Form of a Table, say, and a bunch of actual tables; what holds those things together as a category? If the Form of a Table is an idea about the essential nature of a table, then it is the thing that holds all the tables together in a category. Yet if the Form of a Table is like the tables in some way, then another idea must exist that holds the Form together with the several tables. (The real objection is not that there must be a 'third' thing, but that the process will repeat infinitely, so that knowing any Form requires knowing an infinite number of higher Forms as well).

Now he gets to what he calls his "worst" objection to the Theory of Forms. If the Forms are supposed to be ideas that capture the real essence of a thing, then knowledge of them should be knowledge of the real things. Yet knowing a Form gives you no knowledge about the facts of the world. His (unfortunate) example is slavery: knowing the Form of Master and the Form of Slave doesn't tell you who is a slave; and even if you recognize a slave, it doesn't tell you who his master is. "The significance of things in our world is not with reference to things in that other world [i.e. the world of the Forms]." 

If that is true, the real and best kind of knowledge will be knowledge of a world so separate from ours that knowing the truth would provide us with no benefits. Our branches of knowledge, insofar as they exist in this world, would seem to involve knowledge of the real things -- not knowledge of the ideal things. 

This leads to the second objection, which is the one that bothered theologians. It would seem that "a god," and certainly God, would have the best kind of knowledge. Indeed, the usual way of talking about the Forms since the advent of Christianity is to talk about them as "Ideas in the Mind of God." So God, at least, knows the forms even if none of us do.

But because God knows the Forms, what God knows is not knowledge of this world but of the world of Forms. Later monotheistic theologians will prove to their satisfaction that God himself must be simple and unextended -- this is Aquinas' position, and Avicenna's, and Maimonides' -- and thus the Forms are the only things God could know, because they are simple and lack parts too. 

Even in Parmenides' day, the perfection of divine knowledge implied knowledge of the Forms rather than knowledge of particulars. 

Then if the most perfect mastership and most perfect knowledge are in the god's world, the gods' mastership can never be exercised over us, nor their knowledge know us or anything in our world. Just as we do not rule over them by virtue of rule as it exists in our world, and we know nothing that is divine by our knowledge, so they, on the same principle, being gods, are not our masters nor do they know anything of human concerns.

This is an intolerable objection in the eyes of the Christian philosophers especially, for whom a personal relationship with God is the essence of the faith. Yet it's also a problem for Jewish philosophers, for whom their foundational books are all about God knowing particular prophets and others, and working with them directly. 

(The Muslim philosophers seem unbothered by it; this would explain, e.g., why Allah communicated to Muhammad through an angel rather than directly. The angels serve a metaphysical role as messengers and intermediaries between the divine and the human. Avicenna's proofs of divine simplicity are thus thoroughgoing and unbothered by the fact that the consequence is that humans cannot have a direct relationship with such a God as he describes.)

Aristotle accepts these objections, and generally rejects separate Forms (with the exception of Unmoved Movers, as mentioned, whose role for him doesn't require them to know us). He has a totally different idea about how knowledge of the forms works. If you're interested, and you have a little more than an hour, here is the best philosopher working today on this subject explaining how he believes Aristotle's model works.

Plato's model is that the Forms do exist separately, in spite of these problems that Parmenides raises. We still have a lot of ground to cover, but at least now you understand some of the problems that Plato expects to have to overcome in order to maintain his position.

The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty

A sad song, all around; perhaps especially in its embrace of betrayal of friendship to power and wealth.

They're right: Lefty needs your prayers, far more than Pancho Villa, who was not merely a bandit as according to the American understanding. He was a constitutionalist, even; for a while.