This gentleman is a professor of philosophy at Boston College.
I find his argument flawed on two points, but I want to save laying out the second point -- the one I really think is decisive -- until we discuss it in the comments. I would like to talk about the first point, because it touches on an old debate we've had here many times, and it situates Joseph W. and I in strange places.
He argues that evolution cannot be the source of morality, because if it were, moral standards could change in ways that we don't intuitively want to accept. He frames this argument badly, I think, by making it sound like cultural change is an evolutionary process: his example is the current moral norm against slavery, which was not recognized in ancient times. In fact, even in modern times -- in the 1850s, say -- there were very strong advocates for slavery as a positive moral good.
(On the other hand, he treats what would more usually be called "evolution" under the heading "human nature," so what an evolutionary psychologist would say is captured -- it's just captured in a strange place. Furthermore, the point he's making about drifting moral standards holds even in cases of genuine evolutionary change in humanity, should there be any.)
So the problem is that we want to be able to say that slavery is really a moral wrong: and that it is a moral wrong now, and previously, even in the ancient world. The reason we want to be able to do that is that otherwise we can't say that society has improved by banning slavery: it has simply drifted from one norm to another. If it should drift back to slavery, there would be no moral harm to society, because there is no overarching standard against which you can test the proposition.
That lands us in odd places because Joseph W. is a strong advocate for moral progress, but not much given to belief in the supernatural. I have no problem believing in God, but have often argued against the idea that society engages in moral progress: I think that at least most of the time what we take for progress is really just change. Since on any timeline more recent societies are more like us (in terms of ideas about morality and otherwise) than more distant ones, from any perspective you will observe a change from more-distant moral ideas to closer moral ideas to your own moral ideas.
Of course that looks like an arrow of progress! But in fact, it would be true from any perspective. If in a hundred years Americans have decided to re-institute slavery for reasons of their own, they will regard us as further away, the middle-time when the pressures came up that caused the re-institution as a sort of period of progress, and their own time as having the enlightened truth. From their perspective, that is what will look like moral progress.
So one way of answering the mail on this question is to do what the professor does, and hold that it must be that God has given us laws that serve as a firm ground for moral standards. Then we can judge progress fairly, and not become confused by our perspective.
Is there another? I think so, but as I said, I'd prefer to leave it for the discussion.
Big 'un
Practice
I have begun reading "Complications" by Atul Gawande, a discourse on the fear and confusion inherent in learning to practice medicine, written by a surgical resident near the end of his eight years of training in general surgery. He describes the agonizing process of learning to insert a central line, something the more experienced residents made look easy:
Surgeons, as a group, adhere to a curious egalitarianism. They believe in practice, not talent. People often assume that you have to have great hands to become a surgeon, but it's not true. When I interviewed to get into surgery programs, no one made me sew or take a dexterity test or checked if my hands were steady. You do not even need all ten fingers to be accepted. To be sure, talent helps. Professors say every two or three years they'll see someone truly gifted come through a program -- someone who picks up complex manual skills unusally quickly, sees the operative field as a whole, notices trouble before it happens. Nonetheless, attending surgeons say that what's most important to them is finding people who are conscientious, industrious, and boneheaded enough to stick at practicing this one difficult thing day and night for years on end. As one professor of surgery put it to me, given a choice betwen a Ph. D. who had painstakingly cloned a gene and a talented sculptor, he'd pick the Ph. D. every time. Sure, he said, he'd bet on the sculptor being more physically talented; but he'd bet on the Ph. D. being less "flaky." And in the end that matters more. Skill, surgeons believe, can be taught; tenacity cannot. It's an odd approach to recruitment, but it continues all the way up the ranks, even in top surgery departments. They take minions with no experience in surgery, spend years training them, and then take most of their faculty from these same homegrown ranks.
And it works. There have now been many studies of elite performers -- international violinists, chess grand masters, professional ice-skaters, mathematicians, and so forth -- and the biggest difference researchers find between them and lesser performers is the cumulative amount of deliberate practice they've had. Indeed, the most important talent may be the talent for practice itself. K. Anders Ericsson, a cognitive psychologist and expert on performance, notes that the most important way in which innate factors play a role may be in one's willingness to engage in sustained training. He's found, for example, that top performers dislike practicing just as much as others do. (That's why, for example, athletes and musicians usually quit practicing when they retire.) But more than others, they have the will to keep at it anyway.
Film Noir
I remember this band from when they were new. An interview with them asked after their main sources of inspiration, and the one I remember them naming was 1940s film noir. Well, I liked that stuff too.
It's clearly 1990s from the sound, but there is something that harkens back to those movies. Still, it is subtle enough that I'm not sure exactly what.
It's clearly 1990s from the sound, but there is something that harkens back to those movies. Still, it is subtle enough that I'm not sure exactly what.
New reasons to home-school
From Ace, a link to a Telegraph article claiming that new standards applicable to most American states will require 70% of the public school reading curriculum to be devoted to non-fiction. Not just any non-fiction, though. Scintillating non-fiction along the lines of "Recommended Levels of Insulation by the the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the Invasive Plant Inventory, by California's Invasive Plant Council."
And they say home-schooled kids are nerds.
And they say home-schooled kids are nerds.
The Monkeys Have No Tails
If you've seen the old John Wayne / John Ford movie Donovan's Reef, the lyrics are given "the monkeys have no tails in Zamboanga." I haven't been to Pago Pago, but I have been to Zamboanga, and I did meet a tail-less monkey near there. He belonged to a Catholic priest, who had his collar attached to a steel ring that ran along a cable, so the thing could climb up and down the church.
Nice guy. Pretty brave ministry, there in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. But most of the Republic of the Philippines' special ops guys are Catholics.
Pearl Harbor Day
The Pearl Harbor surprise attack occurred 71 years ago today. It is an example of the kind of intelligence failure we would most like to be able to prevent in the future: a violent and severe attack against a critical American target, in a case when there is a pretty good set of reasons to expect an attack sooner or later. It is not, to use Donald Rumsfeld's old terminology, an unknown unknown: we must simply accept that we cannot predict those. It is an example of a known unknown.
Something similar is going on in Egypt today. Media coverage of the protests seems to be under the impression that there are three sides: the Muslim Brotherhood, the Army, and the protesters in the streets. In fact there are only two sides, because there are only two powers: the Muslim Brotherhood and the Army.
As recently as a couple of days ago, the Army was tacitly encouraging the protests -- sometimes more than tacitly, according to reports. This was about showing Mursi and the MB that their thugs weren't really capable of standing up to a full-scale revolt. Mursi has been very successful at out-maneuvering the Army politically, and has managed to win power and control at their expense several times.
It was clear that a deal had been struck in principle when the tanks surrounded the palace to protect it, and Mursi. Now the outlines of that deal have become clear.
Once the powers have finished dividing the authority between themselves in a way that both find acceptable, the protests won't be useful anymore. Then it will be time for a "whiff of grapeshot."
If I were an Egyptian protester, I would realize that now was the time to get off the streets. There is about to be an example made. The only question is exactly when.
Something similar is going on in Egypt today. Media coverage of the protests seems to be under the impression that there are three sides: the Muslim Brotherhood, the Army, and the protesters in the streets. In fact there are only two sides, because there are only two powers: the Muslim Brotherhood and the Army.
As recently as a couple of days ago, the Army was tacitly encouraging the protests -- sometimes more than tacitly, according to reports. This was about showing Mursi and the MB that their thugs weren't really capable of standing up to a full-scale revolt. Mursi has been very successful at out-maneuvering the Army politically, and has managed to win power and control at their expense several times.
It was clear that a deal had been struck in principle when the tanks surrounded the palace to protect it, and Mursi. Now the outlines of that deal have become clear.
Once the powers have finished dividing the authority between themselves in a way that both find acceptable, the protests won't be useful anymore. Then it will be time for a "whiff of grapeshot."
If I were an Egyptian protester, I would realize that now was the time to get off the streets. There is about to be an example made. The only question is exactly when.
Blood Mountain
There was a lot of rain on the way up to Vogel State Park today, so that by the time I finished the ride up on the motorcycle I was completely soaked. The soaking meant that everything I was wearing took on extra weight. My motorcycle jacket in particular seemed to have turned to iron. Still, it was worth it.
The trail rises 2,400 feet over the course of about five miles. The reward is this:
Clouds rising, seen from atop Blood Mountain.
A cairn along the trail.
The stone shelter, built by the CCC in the 1930s. Today two hikers from Maine were resting before the final assault, and had built a fire within it. The fire was most welcome.
Clouds mounting against the ridge.
Transportation anarchy
More from Maggie's Farm, a link to a blurb about the attempts of the Taxicab Medallion Bureaucrat Industrial Complex to crush the upstart mobile app livery service "Uber." Being a country mouse, I hadn't heard a thing about this service, but there are lots of articles out there about it now (here, here, here, and here). You sign up in advance with an app for your smartphone and put your credit card on file. When you need a ride, you punch in your position and wait far less time than you'd wait for a normal taxi. While you wait, you can see your driver approaching on the GPS map, which definitely beats the amusing habit of many taxi companies, which claim your driver is on the way when he's really across town with another fare and planning to drive out toward your area sometime in the next 45 minutes or so. No cash changes hands; even the tip is charged to your card. Fares are somewhat higher than traditional cabs. Users report mixed results.
Municipal taxi regulators hate this service, of course, and are doing their best to strangle it.
Municipal taxi regulators hate this service, of course, and are doing their best to strangle it.
You Know Who Deserves More Money? Like A Lot More?
The Atlanta City Council, that's who. Largest increase in the history of the city -- a $20,000 raise this year. Recession? More people on food stamps than ever before? Nonsense, give these people a gigantic raise at taxpayer expense.
My favorite part:
More and more, I find myself biting my tongue really hard.
My favorite part:
A spokeswoman for Reed said the mayor wants to review the ordinance before deciding whether to sign it, veto it or let it slide into law without his signature.Let me slide it on you people.
More and more, I find myself biting my tongue really hard.
Socialism Is About Respecting People's Dignity
After all, if we believe a person is truly dignified, we know they ought to have health care regardless of their ability to pay, and also a place to live.
Thus, a movement that began out of a respect for the dignity of humanity turns those same humans into "scum." It will happen here too.
Holland's capital already has a special hit squad of municipal officials to identify the worst offenders for a compulsory six month course in how to behave.It starts as "Hey, let's pay for other people to have the things we want them to have." It ends up as, "Hey, those jerks are costing us a fortune by being irresponsible, and saddling us with costs arising from their bad behavior!" So the solution has to be control of their behavior: and control at a level you couldn't employ against someone you respected.
Social housing problem families or tenants who do not show an improvement or refuse to go to the special units face eviction and homelessness.
Eberhard van der Laan, Amsterdam's Labour mayor, has tabled the £810,000 plan to tackle 13,000 complaints of anti-social behaviour every year. He complained that long-term harassment often leads to law abiding tenants, rather than their nuisance neighbours, being driven out....
The new punishment housing camps have been dubbed "scum villages" because the plan echoes a proposal from Geert Wilders, the leader of a populist Dutch Right-wing party, for special units to deal with persistent troublemakers.
"Repeat offenders should be forcibly removed from their neighbourhood and sent to a village for scum," he suggested last year. "Put all the trash together."
Whilst denying that the new projects would be punishment camps for "scum", a spokesman for the city mayor stressed... "This is supposed to be a deterrent[.]"
Thus, a movement that began out of a respect for the dignity of humanity turns those same humans into "scum." It will happen here too.
I Didn't Know God Made Honky-Tonk Angels:
Wow.
The Obama administration said Friday that it would charge insurance companies for the privilege of selling health insurance to millions of Americans in new online markets run by the federal government.Those federal exchanges aren't even legal, and already they're talking about you paying for the privilege of using them -- and by you, I mean you, because the cost can be passed right on to the consumer. It's like a tax, for an illegal service that the government commands you to accept.
The cost of these “user fees” can be passed on to consumers.
Advent
An aside: this Advent wreath was made by my wife in about fifteen minutes this evening, because I told her I wanted one this year. I'm really quite impressed with her.
Imperial Overreach
There's a pretty solid argument here from Rep. Eric Cantor, which includes something interesting on the link between the rule-of-law and GDP. We were discussing that recently, in one of the Politics sections, and it might be worth revisiting in light of this piece.
Better Enjoy the War: The Peace Will Be Terrible
So, allegedly, went a popular joke in Nazi Germany. How surprising to imagine that they thought of what the peace would be like! The ideology called for a system that was unlikely to ever produce it. A war of all against all, meant to lead to the ethic domination of one party on all others, seems least likely to produce anything like a peace.
Perhaps they always knew that vengeance was coming. The subject of the article is the question: does peace require vengeance? I suspect the answer is that it does: there are times when the failure to exact a due and dispassionate revenge will prevent you from being respected enough to serve as a new locus of authority.
But so say I; decide for yourselves. It is an interesting story.
Perhaps they always knew that vengeance was coming. The subject of the article is the question: does peace require vengeance? I suspect the answer is that it does: there are times when the failure to exact a due and dispassionate revenge will prevent you from being respected enough to serve as a new locus of authority.
But so say I; decide for yourselves. It is an interesting story.
The Party of Big Taxes
Which party? The Republican Party, or so advises Mark Steyn:
Any “debt-reduction plan” that doesn’t address at least $1.3 trillion a year is, in fact, a debt-increase plan.So what's the scale of "ponying up"? It's there in the piece: every tax of every kind needs to go up by half, assuming we can prevent entitlements from growing any larger than they are today. Which, of course, we cannot do.
So given that the ruling party will not permit spending cuts, what should Republicans do? If I were John Boehner, I’d say: “Clearly there’s no mandate for small government in the election results. So, if you milquetoast pantywaist sad-sack excuses for the sorriest bunch of so-called Americans who ever lived want to vote for Swede-sized statism, it’s time to pony up.”
Okay, he might want to focus-group it first. But that fundamental dishonesty is the heart of the crisis. You cannot simultaneously enjoy American-sized taxes and European-sized government. One or the other has to go.
Politics, Book III, Parts V-IX
A few more parts of Book III over the weekend, if you like. Part V asks whether everyone should be a citizen -- that is, to have a share in both ruling and obeying -- or if some orders of those in the city should be ruled only. This is similar to the debate we had a couple of years ago about the extent of the franchise, but this is the ancient take on the question. Aristotle doesn't give a final answer to the question here, but he does answer the question from the last post: are the virtues of the good man and the good citizen the same? Yes, he tells us, in states where all citizens are part of the ruling class.
After that Aristotle takes on the question of forms of government. We'll stop with Part IX because a new big question comes up in Part X, which is where the ultimate source of sovereignty ought to reside: with the people, or somewhere else? That's a discussion in itself.
After that Aristotle takes on the question of forms of government. We'll stop with Part IX because a new big question comes up in Part X, which is where the ultimate source of sovereignty ought to reside: with the people, or somewhere else? That's a discussion in itself.
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