We theists recognize two general categories of causation: mechanistic (i.e., “cause-and-effect”) and agency (“ground-and-consequent”). Most people, including most God-deniers, will initially agree that these two categories are real, and distinct, and unbridgeable … until they see where the argument is going.From recognition of the unbridgeable distinction between mechanism and agency, I argue that agency cannot “arise” from mechanism – this is what the God-deniers who haven’t denied agency from the start will then deny and this denial can then be shown absurd and thus false – and thus that agency is, and must be, fundamental to [the] nature of reality.
The important step is the proof that agency cannot arise from mechanism (as he puts it); it is not obvious that this is true, and the fact that people might 'initially agree' to it doesn't establish it as more than an unchallenged assumption.
(By the way this frame is older than monotheism in the West: Aristotle explains causality in just this way in the second book of the Physics.)
Consider that, as far as we can tell, atoms have no agency. An atom of carbon or of hydrogen or oxygen seems to decide on nothing; it joins into bonds, such as hydrogen and oxygen forming water, for purely chemical and physical reasons. This is 'mechanistic' determination on the Orthosphere's model.
Yet water has properties that its components, hydrogen and oxygen, did not. Both of these are gaseous at room temperature, for example; water is liquid at the same range of temperatures. Water has the property of 'wetness,' then, which has somehow arisen from the bond between the things that both lack that property. We can say some things about how and why this happens, but that it happens is clear enough. New properties emerge from combinations that happen mechanistically.
Why, then, should not agency be a property that emerges from things that happen mechanistically? Other properties, even complex ones, seem to do this. The carbon joins into long protein chains, the water is joined with it, and (skipping a long discussion) eventually you have DNA. This has a new property -- the capacity to order things it encounters mechanistically into a design that is not random but follows a kind of 'intention.' This ability to take from the world and put things into the order that is also 'you' is called life (as explained by philosopher Hans Jonas).
If this kind of proto-intention can arise from what appear to be mechanistic actions, why not a real intention? Why shouldn't it be true that living beings of certain kinds have the property of agency, even though none of their components had it before they were joined and ordered into that form?
This is, by the way, a good reason to reject materialism: it is not merely the material that matters. All the same material -- all the same atoms of oxygen and hydrogen and carbon, etc -- if not ordered in this way lack the properties of life and agency. These only seem to arise when the right order is brought to them. Thus, the form -- which is not material, but the way in which the material is ordered -- exists and is causally important, and not only the material. Reality is not materialistic but hylomorphic as the ancients said.
This is not an anti-theistic argument or a theistic one; you can make both arguments from this ground. Perhaps a God is then unnecessary, and being unnecessary should be excluded according to Occam's Razor. Yet what explanation is there for reality having this strange quality, such that thinking agents can and do apparently automatically arise from deterministic material processes? Why should reason and decision be inherent in a material that does not need them, existing whether or not agents do? Occam's Razor is only a tool for gamblers, not a proof; and here it seems clear that unnecessary things do exist, because we experience being one of those things all the time.
Perhaps, then, reality has this order because the order was wanted; and if it was wanted, there must have been someone who wanted it. Someone who had the power to set this basic structure of reality, either through design or through will, or possibly merely through longing.
Judge Robert McBurney of the Superior Court of Fulton County said the law was void at the time it was passed in 2019 under the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade ruling, which established a federal right to abortion in 1973.McBurney said the state would have to pass the law again now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe for the ban to be valid. The 2019 law was "plainly unconstitutional when drafted, voted upon, and enacted," McBurney wrote in his opinion.
Now I would think this logic was correct if the reason for the change in what 'was' constitutional had been a constitutional amendment. Let us say that you passed a law that said that no one could vote until age 28, as apparently some particularly ignorant journalists think is being discussed somewhere. That's clearly unconstitutional: the Federal Constitution determines that the voting age is 18. Such a law would be unconstitutional and therefore void, and like all unconstitutional laws it would have no legitimate force from the moment it was enacted. You'd have to amend the Constitution first, and then pass the law later.
A Supreme Court ruling is not like that. The Supreme Court did not change the Constitution; it only stated that earlier courts had misunderstood it when they said it meant X, and that the correct interpretation is Y instead. The Constitution was therefore the same all the time; our judges just didn't understand it correctly for a while.
Too, the whole reason the Supreme Court was asked to rule on this was that there was a controversy about what the right meaning really was. It was not 'plain' what the constitutional stance was; lots of people disagreed, for decades, and eventually the court came to see it their way.
Thus, I think the logical position is that the constitution never barred this law, and that it is valid as enacted. Nobody changed the Constitution. The Supreme Court does not have that power.
Via Arts & Letters Daily, a review of a new translation of Ovid.
One day in the thirteenth century, James I of Aragon, not only a great conqueror but a king famous for his powers of memory, made a revealing slip: "We got to our feet and we began with an authority from the Sacred Scripture that says: Non minor est virtus quam quaerere parta tueri."
“It takes no less talent to keep what you’ve got than to acquire it”: for a crusading medieval monarch, what more convenient justification for territorial consolidation could there be than “Sacred Scripture”?
The problem is that that line of Latin doesn’t appear anywhere in the Bible. It comes, rather, from a notoriously risqué book of poems, published during the reign of the Emperor Augustus, whose narrator doles out advice on how to seduce women—preferably married ones.... That these lines of Roman erotic verse had become indistinguishable from Scripture by the Middle Ages isn’t really all that surprising. More than those of any other poet of ancient Rome, the works of Publius Ovidius Naso—we know him as Ovid—have insinuated themselves into the mind of Europe, influencing its literature, art, and music.
The translation is of the Metamorphoses, a long poem that introduces new twists to what were already old stories. For example, the story of Medusa was ancient even then; Ovid's new variation turns the goddess Athena ("Minerva" to the Romans) into a bad actor, who executes the transformation of a beautiful young woman into a monster in order to punish the woman for having resisted a divine rape by Poseidon ("Neptune," of course, for the Romans; (or, given that Athena was a virgin goddess, it may have been that Medusa failed to resist the rape; there is some scholarly debate about exactly what it was that offended Athena, the sex or the mortal defiance of a divine will).
That doesn't turn up in the review, but a lot of similar stories made the book.
Above all, Ovid’s presentation of Jove—the king of the gods and the obvious counterpart of Augustus himself—is almost uniformly disparaging in its contempt for the god’s use of his power. The Metamorphoses often reads like a catalogue of Jove’s violent offenses: Jove transforming himself into a bull in order to abduct Europa, Jove becoming a swan to get at Leda, Jove taking the form of an eagle in order to snatch up Ganymede....
In the Arachne episode, Minerva weaves a tapestry that celebrates her victory over Neptune, her uncle, in a long-ago contest for possession of Athens—an egotistical bit of divine P.R. Arachne’s weaving, by contrast, depicts nine rapes committed by Jove, six by Neptune, a few by Apollo and Bacchus, and one by Saturn, Jove’s father.
The new translation abandons 19th and 20th century habits of euphemizing what exactly these gods were doing. Numerous chapters are, the reviewer notes, titled in the form "X Rapes Y." The translator, Stephanie McCarter, writes:
The inclusion of so many stories of rape in the epic suggests, in fact, that Ovid felt such violence was worthy of critical interrogation. . . . To read Ovid with an eye toward his full complexity—his beauty and his brutality—allows us to scrutinize our own thorny relationship with the past and with the ambivalent inheritance we have received from it. To wrestle with the unsavory aspects of ancient literature is to do the hard work of self-examination.
A fair point. Ovid arguably used this not merely to play with violence, but to criticize his (very dangerous) political overlords. Who could object to being likened to a god, and the highest of gods in your pantheon, no less than Jove himself? When Ovid celebrates Augustus as being like Jove, he is not -- or not merely -- paying a compliment.
Elections officials held a meeting this morning to clear the air about a sudden increase in ballots favoring Democrats.
My best to all of you who have earned the distinction of calling yourselves Veterans. Have a glorious day, and a wonderful weekend.
In North Carolina, cyber units have trained state entities and officials in most counties, according to Maj. Gen. Marvin Hunt, adjutant general for that state’s Guard. He said the work of his cyber team will “surge during the election to ensure that we have 24-hour coverage throughout this whole process.”“We’re really that third party that comes in—it’s just assisting them—to give them a different look, so that on election day, we can all have confidence in our election systems,” Hunt said.Neely told Defense One that few states are strong enough in the cyber arena, and the need is only growing.Security professionals hired by states often face “military-grade adversaries” they aren’t equipped to counter, said Brig. Gen. Gent Welsh, assistant adjutant general and commander of the Washington Air National Guard.
Keep your eyes open, and take special care in case your local 911 service goes down. In the event of an emergency and the service isn't working, go to your local fire department, police station, or emergency medical service facility and report the emergency in person. Go to whichever one is closest. They'll have radios that work even if the phones are out.
It's not a bad idea to have the local phone number written down somewhere in case the phone lines work but the 911 services don't. People call the station here all the time rather than dialing 911, and for many purposes that works very well. In an emergency 911 is usually a better option because it allows the dispatcher to contact everyone who needs to respond at once, but it is good to have options.
How can we distinguish between the different types of Black Republicans? Johnson contends, “we can judge them by their words and deeds.”What type of Black Republican is Stuber? He was recruited by White Republican leadership to run against Ammons, the only African American clerk in Champaign County history. Like Deering, “the hard, overt and aggressive” White supremacist, Stuber is an election denier.And like the incompetent, subliterate and coonish Herschel Walker, Stuber reiterates “massa” Trump’s talking points. Intimating fraud, he cast aspersions on the 2020 elections. Stuber alleged votes were not counted in Georgia and Arizona, and further declared, “Champaign County may have stopped counting. I don’t know.” But during a late August interview with The News-Gazette’s Tom Kacich, he dissembled when asked if Trump had won. Again, disingenuously claiming uncertainty, he stated, “I don’t know if he truly was the winner.”About a month later, similar to Walker and nearly all election deniers, Stuber miraculously backtracked. Without explanation, he affirmed, “Joe Biden was legally elected president of the United States.” I find his reversal unbelievable. Indeed, I believe it’s a tactical move to deceive the electorate.
It's hard to realize how bad things have gotten outside of the wilderness in which I have fastened myself. I used to go to this part of Union Station on a regular basis, and it was as advertised a thriving shopping district. Here, where we have happy children and dogs, hikers and backpackers, picnics and boat trips, everything seems like America hasn't changed all that much. I have to look at the news to remember that Washington, D.C. has turned itself into a post-apocalyptic nightmare -- as has San Francisco and many other cities.
Probably a lot more Americans live in the parts of the nation that have horrified themselves than elsewhere, though. The country has been badly hurt even if there remain oases beyond the concrete.
President Biden has stated that we are living in a “decisive decade,” one stamped by dramatic changes in geopolitics, technology, economics, and our environment. The defense strategy that the United States pursues will set the Department’s course for decades to come. The Department of Defense owes it to our All-Volunteer Force and the American people to provide a clear picture of the challenges we expect to face in the crucial years ahead...
Definitely a confirmation bias issue here, but this does fit my experience of the people I have personally known who partake in this stuff.
[A neighbor] inched closer to get a better vantage, when he saw an olive-green Lenco BearCat G2, an armored tactical vehicle often employed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, among other law-enforcement agencies. A few Arlington County cruisers surrounded the jaw-dropping scene, but all of the other vehicles were unmarked, including the BearCat. Antonelli counted at least 10 heavily armed personnel in the group. None bore anything identifying which agency was conducting the raid....Meek has been charged with no crime. But independent observers believe the raid is among the first — and quite possibly, the first — to be carried out on a journalist by the Biden administration. A federal magistrate judge in the Virginia Eastern District Court signed off on the search warrant the day before the raid. If the raid was for Meek’s records, U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco would have had to give her blessing; a new policy enacted last year prohibits federal prosecutors from seizing journalists’ documents. Any exception requires the deputy AG’s approval.
Even stranger, in the months before he vanished, Meek was finishing up work on a book for Simon & Schuster titled Operation Pineapple Express: The Incredible Story of a Group of Americans Who Undertook One Last Mission and Honored a Promise in Afghanistan, which he co-authored with Lt. Col. Scott Mann, a retired Green Beret. Meek even featured a picture of the soon-to-publish book in his bio on social media and frequently tweeted about his involvement. But post-April 27, the book-jacket photo disappeared from his bio, and Simon & Schuster has scrubbed his name from all press materials.
There, [scholars] found the original writ in the case, from 1379. It showed that Staundon had brought an action against both Chaucer and Chaumpaigne, under a law known as the Statute of Laborers, which had been enacted after outbreaks of the plague had restricted the labor market. It was intended “to combat rising wages, and to prevent the poaching of servants” with the promise of better terms, the scholars write in their blog post.Chaucer, the writ stated, had hired her unlawfully, and then declined to return her to Staundon’s service as requested, causing him “grievous loss.”Those two documents, Sobecki and Roger wrote in a blog post summarizing the discovery, opened up “a radically different reading of ‘raptus.’” Instead of rape, they argue, it can be read as “the physical act of Chaumpaigne leaving Staundon’s service.”
[She] called the new documents “very exciting” but said the “exoneration narrative” some saw in them was overplayed.“I am eager to see how the conversation unfolds,” she wrote in an email, “but I remain insistent that the questions feminists have raised about the intersection of rape culture and women’s labor should shape our collective approach to these documents.”
By all means, let us not change our interpretation because of the facts.
Perhaps it’s all that New World fresh air and pioneering spirit, but Canada is taking to its new euthanasia legislation like a duck to water. It only became legal in June and already about 800 people have received a lethal injection at the hands of a doctor.Where it is beating the Old World euthanasia regimes is in its frank, open and creative ideas for integrating euthanasia into Canadian life. In December two Quebec bioethicists argued in the Journal of Medical Ethics that combining euthanasia with organ donation would be an excellent idea which could yield top-quality organs for needy patients.
Heritage rates the U.S. military as “weak” and “at growing risk of not being able to meet the demands of defending America’s vital national interests.” The weak rating, down from “marginal” a year earlier, is the first in the index’s nine-year history....Heritage says the U.S. military risks being unable to handle even “a single major regional conflict” as it also tries to deter rogues elsewhere.... The Navy has been saying for years it needs to grow to at least 350 ships, plus more unmanned platforms. Yet the Navy has shown a “persistent inability to arrest and reverse the continued diminution of its fleet,” the report says.... the shipbuilding industry has shrunk amid waning demand, and the Navy’s maintenance yards are overwhelmed. Maintenance delays and backlogs are the result of running the fleet too hard: On a typical day in June, roughly one-third of the 298-ship fleet was deployed, double the average of the Cold War.It’s worse in the Air Force, which gets a “very weak” rating.
The Army remains "marginal."
The Marine Corps? "Strong," but weakening:
Of the five services, the Corps is the only one that has a compelling story for change, has a credible and practical plan for change, and is effectively implementing its plan to change. However, in the absence of additional funding in FY 2023, the Corps intends to reduce the number of its battalions even further from 22 to 21, and this reduction, if implemented, will limit the extent to which it can conduct distributed operations as it envisions and replace combat losses (thus limiting its ability to sustain operations).
The whole document would take several hours to read, and more to study carefully, but if you just want the conclusions they are here.
St. Luke tells us that when Jesus first set his face towards Jerusalem, there was a Samaritan village that “did not receive him.” Indignant at this affront, James and a much younger John asked Jesus, “wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven.” Jesus, lamb-like in more than appearance, then rebuked them saying,“ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them” (Luke 9: 52-56).The Second Beast calls down fire to destroy anyone who does not worship the First Beast and its “hideous strength.” And it does this “in the sight of man,” nowadays on television, so that others will think twice before inviting such a rain of fire.
That is a very helpful discussion in learning to identify this ordinary thing from the genuinely divine thing it seeks to mimic.
She went on to say: "The cost of living crisis is part of the cost of oil prices."Fuel is unaffordable to millions of cold, hungry families. They can't even afford to heat a tin of soup."She started to add "meanwhile, crops are failing..." before a gallery security guard arrived and moved onlookers away and the clip comes to an end.....Ms Holland, from Newcastle, told a reporter: "UK families will be forced to choose between heating or eating this winter, as fossil fuel companies reap record profits. But the cost of oil and gas isn't limited to our bills."Somalia is now facing an apocalyptic famine, caused by drought and fuelled by the climate crisis."Millions are being forced to move and tens of thousands face starvation."This is the future we choose for ourselves if we push for new oil and gas."Ms Plummer, from London, said: "Is art worth more than life? More than food? More than justice?"The cost of living crisis is driven by fossil fuels-everyday life has become unaffordable for millions of cold hungry families-they can't even afford to heat a tin of soup.
While it is true that oil prices are part of the cost of living, the relationship is almost inverse from the one she imagines. If you want to help feed more people, or help poor people afford food, reducing the transport costs is one of the best ways you can do it. If you want crops not to fail, fertilizer is part of the answer -- and fertilizer needs to be transported too. On a small farm with a horse, you can do that with a shovel and a wheelbarrow, but there are limits to that production model.
Apparently destroying works of art is their new thing, though:
Cake has previously been smeared across the Mona Lisa in Paris while other activists have glued their hands to masterpieces by Botticelli and Boccioni.
While Two Extinction Rebellion protesters were arrested at the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia last weekend after gluing themselves to the 1951 Picasso painting Massacre in Korea.
Destroying these works of art makes sense for them. Their real target is civilization, after all.
I have a phone call in a few minutes so that this woman I work with can 'relay a request' to me. If she had just written down the request in an email, the request would already be relayed and I would have a written record of exactly what its terms are. Instead, I spent more time than it would have taken to read an email on back-and-forth texting to arrange the call she wanted half an hour later, and that call will now take as long as it takes for her to tell me what she didn't write down.
The written word is your friend. You can absorb ten times as much information by reading an article about a topic than by watching a TV news report about it. There are some few people who are so personally important to me that I'd rather talk to them than read what they have to say, and for them I'd rather have the call or the meeting. Everyone else, write it down.
Third, I would expect to see MOPP gear show up for Russian/Wagner troops. Open question for any OSINT who read this: is anyone seeing any MOPP gear with any Russian troops anywhere? Heck, is anyone seeing any MOPP gear anywhere?
That's a good point.
Myself looking at the Devil's Courthouse / Judaculla's Judgment Seat from the opposite direction as last time. This is the view from the northeast; yesterday, from the southwest.
On the way back from this jaunt, we came across a party of Germans near Balsam Lake, one of whom had suffered a traumatic compound fracture of her femur. This was occasioned by slipping and falling down while trying to reach the lake for some tourist purpose. Strongman practice proved very useful in clearing fallen trees off the trail so that the ambulance could deliver a stretcher to within ten (vertical) feet of her location; and then I got to tie one of the knots in the Technical Rescue system we used to move her up those ten feet. After that I assisted in moving the stretcher to the ambulance.
Very satisfying day.
On Indigenous Peoples’ Day, we honor the sovereignty, resilience, and immense contributions that Native Americans have made to the world; and we recommit to upholding our solemn trust and treaty responsibilities to Tribal Nations, strengthening our Nation-to-Nation ties.For centuries, Indigenous Peoples were forcibly removed from ancestral lands, displaced, assimilated, and banned from worshiping or performing many sacred ceremonies. Yet today, they remain some of our greatest environmental stewards. They maintain strong religious beliefs that still feed the soul of our Nation. And they have chosen to serve in the United States Armed Forces at a higher rate than any other group. Native peoples challenge us to confront our past and do better, and their contributions to scholarship, law, the arts, public service, and more continue to guide us forward.
Over 1,000 years ago, Leif Erikson, son of Iceland and grandson of Norway, embarked on a historic journey across the Atlantic, landing on the shores of North America. Widely believed to be the first Europeans to set foot on this continent, he and his crew embodied traits that would come to define a uniquely American spirit — restless and bold, brave and optimistic, and in search of a better future. This same spirit would guide generations of Danes, Finns, Icelanders, Norwegians, and Swedes to immigrate and build new lives in the United States. It would lead countless families to plant roots in the Great Lakes States, the northern Great Plains, and enclaves across the Nation. It remains ingrained in the hearts of roughly 11 million Americans who trace their ancestry to Nordic countries today.On Leif Erikson Day, we celebrate Nordic-Americans and all the ways they strengthen the fabric of our Nation. They are leaders in business and philanthropy, educators and scholars, artists and inventors, doctors and nurses, first responders, service members, and so much more. In every field and throughout every community, their contributions help bring us closer to making the promise of America real for every American.On this day, we also reaffirm our strong partnerships with Nordic nations and their people.
And the displaced Columbus Day got one too.
In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed from the Spanish port of Palos de la Frontera on behalf of Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand II, but his roots trace back to Genoa, Italy. The story of his journey remains a source of pride for many Italian Americans whose families also crossed the Atlantic. His voyage inspired many others to follow and ultimately contributed to the founding of America, which has been a beacon for immigrants across the world.
Many of these immigrants were Italian, and for generations, Italian immigrants have harnessed the courage to leave so much behind, driven by their faith in the American dream — to build a new life of hope and possibility in the United States. Today, Italian Americans are leaders in all fields, including government, health, business, innovation, and culture.
Columbus Day is formally on the 12th of October, but used to get moved around in order to craft a 3-day weekend for government workers. For some reason they're still moving it to Monday even though they no longer consider it a day off -- well, they still take the day off, but not on account of Columbus any more.
I'm struck by how each of these proclamations is almost identical: mention the historic issue, pander to a particular ethnic group, talk about their contributions to 'all fields' or 'every field' or 'every community.' Your group is so special, just like everyone else's!
...one of our faculty members participated in the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, and is alleged to be associated with other organizations that are connected with white supremacist groups that promote racism, exclusion and hatred.
Now that is quite a standard, even under the old definition of "white supremacist groups." Say the KKK is your white supremacist group -- and no arguing they are, and that they are evil and undesirable elements in society. So now we are looking at a group that is "connected" to them, which could mean a group from which they occasionally recruit or with which they share certain views -- say the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Barring a faculty member in South Carolina for being a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans would be a remarkable standard.
These days, however, the new definition of 'white supremacism' already embraces the Sons of Confederate Veterans. So now you're looking for people who are 'alleged to be associated' with groups that are connected to SCV -- say, the local historical society in Charleston, SC, which might have speakers occasionally who are SCV members (as they are often amateur historians who have done a lot of research and may have collections of primary sources).
And this is an allegation of an association with a group connected, etc.
I don't know the guy; maybe he's an outspoken jerk in real life. It does seem like we're pretty far down the string, though, if we're roping in people who are 'alleged to be associated with those connected with....'
I don't know how to embed twitter videos here, so here's a link to America's youngest Roman legionnaires. (H/t Ace's Overnight Thread on Twitter)
