Random Philosophy Links

Psychology research by philosophers is robust and replicates better than other areas of psychology

I didn't know there was a field called "experimental philosophy."

Philosophers Name the Best Philosophy Books

The War on Reason - A very interesting article by psychologist Paul Bloom that argues for a place for free will against the assault by sociology and psychology. It is long and wide-ranging and I found it thought-provoking. Plus, brief mentions of Aristotle.

The Theory of Mind Myth - a challenge to the idea that we can understand another person's mind

Update: Does reading give us access to other people's minds?

The Press


Revolution

I've been swimming around in G.K. Chesterton quotations today:
“There are two kinds of revolutionists, as of most things – a good kind and a bad. The bad revolutionists destroy conventions by appealing to fads – fashions that are newer than conventions. The good do it by appealing to facts that are older than conventions.” Illustrated London News, April 30, 1910

STEM Gerrymander

The infamous Jordan Peterson warns the STEM field that it is about to get sucker-punched.

Format Change

I've restored a very old all-black format as a test to see if it is easier to read. The white-on-red text, though I find the design attractive, may be harder on the eyes than is necessary. Feedback is welcome, of course. But the design isn't an innovation, for what that's worth; we blacked out the blog for a long time way back when. It was done to protest the anti-Free Speech initiatives of the late Senator McCain.

NPC Conan

One of the more effective memes developed lately is the meme of the NPC, short for "Non-Player Character." These are characters one encounters in video role playing games that are supposed to simulate human beings, but whose responses are scripted and thus limited and predictable. Politically Correct culture forces its adherents into a similar role of only being allowed certain thoughts and expressions. Thus, they come to act as if they were NPCs even though they are, presumably, actual humans.

Naturally members of the PC culture are describing this meme as "fascist," which somewhat amusingly makes the point that they have a very limited range of acceptable responses. They claim it is "dehumanizing," which is a favorite term they use that doesn't seem to mean what I'd expect it to mean. Human beings are characteristically capable of free thought and, therefore, free expression. Limiting one's own capacity for thought and expression is more dehumanizing (to one's self) than mocking others for refusing to engage in freer thought and expression. The guy who mocks you as an NPC isn't dehumanizing you; he's pointing out the degree to which you have agreed to dehumanize yourself.

I thought of all of this because of today's edition of "Conan the Salaryman," an often-amusing Twitter account that imagines Conan the Barbarian forced into modern life. Normally the joke is that Conan would probably kill people on a regular basis if forced into such a life, which allows the author to make jokes about the indignities of commuting or working in an ordinary office. Now and then, though, you get stuff like this:


I find transgender claims philosophically interesting, at least the ones that arise from people who physically are biologically male or female but who claim to be the opposite sex essentially. The claim seems to point to a sort of dualism, in which the sex of the body and the sex of the soul/spirit/mind/etc come apart. That's so at odds with the materialism that wrongly dominates much of our philosophical conversation today that I'm inclined to entertain it, if only because I see the value of the challenge it poses to ordinary received wisdom dominant in our culture. (In addition, at least some people aren't either male or female in the strict biological sense; these people have a sensible claim to accommodation as they have been born into a world that otherwise doesn't really have a place for them.)

That said, it's absurd to adopt the persona of Conan and talk movingly of transgender rights. Robert E. Howard would have laughed in your face, probably just before punching it. Howard was an early 20th century adherent of understanding even many mystical aspects of the world in terms of hard science; he wrote of demons as coming from 'outer space,' and of evolution causing 'races' of men to rise nearly to godhood, or fall back to bestiality. Indeed, there's no separating Howard's racism from his adherence to Darwinism, at the hour when Darwin was being treated with intense skepticism by the Christianity of the period. Howard believed a man could come from an ape, and he believed a line of men might therefore be closer to apes than another line; or that a line could fall back into apehood, under the right conditions. He believed apes could come to take on manlike intelligence, thus being even greater perils for his heroes.

As far as I know, Howard didn't even imagine a transgender character, but I can't imagine they would have come off kindly in Conan's eyes had he encountered one. But it's the only acceptable viewpoint for the PC today, and therefore even NPC Conan the Barbarian has to mouth the line. It's the only line in the script.

Stone Games


That event is Weight Over Bar, i.e. throwing a 56-pound weight over the rising bar. They were throwing at 18 feet when I took that photo.

These games have been an important part of my life for decades. Old friends, old swords, old stories, old ways.

Priorities

One of Maggie's Farm's recent posts concerned crushes in the workplace.  I liked this comment:
Life is too complicated for simple answers, but you fulfill your duties and obligations first. Then you make sure your actions reduce chaos and drama. THEN you satisfy your wibbly bits.

I Wonder If That's True?

AVI speculates:
Most of your ancestors did about as well as they could under the circumstances, but their times were not ours and you wouldn't have liked them much. You would have found them slow, ignorant, indifferent to violence, intolerant of people twenty miles distant, dirty, and smelly. On the other hand, they would find you pampered, soft, arrogant, overfed, sexually uncontrolled, irreligious, and wasteful. And they would be right, I suppose, though I don't think I would hang around to hear them talk about it.
Well, I don't have to care what anyone thinks of me who isn't my wife or a few close friends. I've built my life that way on purpose.

Still, I've spent a lot of time with the dead -- at least the ones who wrote books, or who had books or sagas written about them. I usually like them fine, often better than my contemporaries. It's a subset, of course, of the whole population; but then again, the population was a lot smaller in the old days and traveled a lot less. It wasn't as important that you learn to like people who were from far away, because it wasn't as likely to come up that you'd need to do so.

As an aside, I sometimes tell a story about how progressive and conservative thought are both the result of psychological illusions, and AVI's speculation reminds me of it. I'll run through it quickly here just because I haven't written it down in a while, and maybe it'll be interesting to some of you or at least useful to someone someday. The story goes like this:

For the most part people learn their values by contact. You can think of values as 'rubbing off' in an almost literal sense: you get yours by rubbing up against someone else who already has them. That's how they teach you to have them. Now you're more likely to rub up against people who are closer to you than who are further away. That closeness holds for both time and space: those who are closer to you in time rub up against you a lot more than those who are distant, unless you're one of those who goes out of their way to seek out the old books, or institutions that bring old things forward anew.

The illusion that gives rise to progressivism, then, is just that this process makes it seem like those who are closer to you in time are increasingly like yourself. Since what you believe is right is what you believe is right, and you got your values by rubbing up against those closer to you than further from you, naturally as you look further and further back the moral world of those older generations looks less and less in agreement with your own. Because you believe your own values are right, this fact makes it appear as if there is an 'arrow of progress' in history that points in your direction. Every generation gets closer to you, as if they were learning lessons that are bringing them closer to the true values you hold in your heart.

Of course it's just an illusion. As things get further away from you in the future, those people will have rubbed up less against you and those you rubbed against. Their values will change in a different direction. There's no arrow of history. It's an illusion, almost an optical illusion. It comes from this fact of perspective.

The illusion that gives rise to conservatism comes from picking a point in history -- real or imagined -- and holding it up as the exemplary one. It doesn't matter if it is the Founding, the Age of Mohammed and his Companions, the Early Christian Church, the Viking Age, the 1950s or the High Middle Ages. King Arthur. Camelot. Whatever. Once you've picked a point and a set of values as exemplary, this very same process I have been describing means that history looks like a long falling away from that moral ideal. Every generation is less and less like the one that lived in the great days.

That's an illusion too. It's an illusion of the very same kind.

What isn't illusory in the moral world is the transcendent values, the ones that hold true by virtue of the structure of reality and human nature. Courage is a virtue in every generation, because the courageous are more likely to succeed in achieving whatever it is they want to achieve. So too the self-disciplined. So too the ones who love at least certain particular others enough that they lead lives they enjoy and value. Courage, honor, moderation, discipline, love, friendship. These things really matter. They are not illusions.

Almost everything else is. Some of the illusions are harmless; others give rise to terrible tragedies. But they should be recognized by the wise for the illusions that they are.

The Logic of the Current Revolution

Dr. Codevilla has a long piece on what he calls the current revolutionary moment. He posits at least one scenario in which it ends well for the most part:
Were a conservative to win the 2020 presidential election, dealing with the Progressives’ renewed resistance would be his administration’s most pressing problem. But had the Left’s resistance failed utterly during the previous four years, it may be possible to convince it to switch from its present offensive mode to a defensive one. Were this to be the happy case, the conservative side of American life, operating from a dominant position, might be able to obtain agreement to some form of true federalism.

Unattainable, and gone forever, is the whole American Republic that had existed for some 200 years after 1776. The people and the habits of heart and mind that had made it possible are no longer a majority. Progressives made America a different nation by rejecting those habits and those traditions. As of today, they would use all their powers to prevent others from living in the manner of the Republic. But, perhaps, after their offensive resistance’s failure, they might be reconciled to govern themselves as they wish in states where they command a majority, while not interfering with other Americans governing themselves in their way in the states where they are a majority.
I used to think something like this could work; of late I've become unconvinced. I think the real issue now is that there are progressive urban areas even in the reddest states, and red areas even in the bluest ones. Federalism still might work, but not state-oriented federalism. We need some way of preventing the Mountain Tribe from having to be ruled by the City Tribe; and vice versa, not that I think the Mountain Tribe has much interest in ruling over cities or their people.

Seven Years in Prison for a 40 Year Old Mistake

A Vietnam Veteran awarded the Silver Star is being sent to Federal prison for buying an M-14 like the one he carried in the Army.
The raid and arrest on Pick’s Plano home came two weeks after his wife of 40 years died of cancer. They were using marijuana, which authorities found and added another criminal charge.

Friends of the vet showed up to support him after he pleaded guilty in a Plano federal courtroom and was sentenced to 87 months in prison by a judge.

“He’s had it all these years never robbed a bank or done anything with it,” said Shackelford. “Somebody that made one mistake and now 50 years later, he’s paying a really big price for it.”
Good candidate for a Presidential pardon, that.

Silence, Dogs!

I just don't get the concept that the best way to fight "dehumanization" is through speech bans. Nothing is more characteristically human than speech; respect for freedom of speech is the sin qua non of respecting someone's humanity. It is far less dehumanizing for Louis Farrakhan to suggest that his Jewish opponents are "termites" than it would be for us to tell Louis Farrakhan that he wasn't permitted to speak in public.

The right to think for yourself is one of the clearest cases of natural rights: nature itself defends this right. As long as you have a human brain -- unless some opponent should lobotomize it or physically destroy it -- you will think. Speech is just one step removed from this natural human right, as it's just a way of putting your thoughts in the air. No one has to agree with them. No one is necessarily going to be persuaded. Hearing Farrakhan doesn't make me scorn or dislike Jews; it persuades me only that he's a nasty person. But I know he's a person. I know it in part because I got to hear him speak his thoughts.

Freedom of speech should be non-negotiable, especially in America. Whatever they do elsewhere, here we speak our minds.

Elizabeth Warren's DNA


This raises a couple of thoughts in my pea brain.  One concerns identity politics: many pundits are saying that her DNA outcome and her touting of it spell the end of identity politics.  To the extent this works out to be true, would this make Warren a heroine of the right?

The other concerns the DNA itself.  I suggest that, by fair means or foul, we're all at least as much African-American as Warren is Native American.  We all can open our businesses and claim our minority-owned subsidy.

But why stop with molecules?  Why not take seriously particular groupings of DNA?  I have at least half the number of X chromosomes as my wife, as do all of the nominally male population of the Hall and of America at large.  On that basis we don't have to self-identify as female, our genetics make the case for us at least as soundly as Warren's DNA makes her case.  We can open our own businesses and claim our woman-owned subsidy.

We're all two-fers now.

Eric Hines

Bill Gates's Eulogy for Paul Allen

I somewhat dislike Microsoft, but Bill Gates & Paul Allen changed the world. Two days ago, Allen passed away. Yesterday, Gates wrote "What I Loved about Paul Allen," which is about their friendship.

The Worst Yet To Come?

A Bush administration veteran writes that the Left is not done; they intend to get worse, he warns.
That liberals’ orchestrated effort took both Congress and Court to new lows was not their concern. Their one and only goal was in not seeing the Supreme Court move any more to the right. Yet, the left’s effort also served notice: If they have their way, the process will only get worse....

More importantly for liberals, [the Supreme Court] is not directly dependent on a political majority. Certainly, the President nominates and the Senate confirms justices, but these can be far removed from particular decisions… and both can also have been wrong in their assumptions about their picks.

The Court’s lack of dependence on a political majority has been crucial to liberals, America’s smallest ideology. Lacking the thick edge of the political wedge, America’s left have sought the thin one of the Court to advance issues for which they could never have constructed a public majority.
We just had what was proclaimed to be a ricin attack on Susan Collins, following demonstrated ricin attacks on Mattis and the chief of the Navy. Howling mobs have been driving Republican elected officials out of public places. Today two Republican candidates in Minnesota report having been attacked and punched while attempting to campaign. Of course there was the 2017 baseball shooting targeting Republican Congressmen as well.

Meanwhile when Republicans in New York invited Vice-founder Gavin McInnes to speak, an Anitfa group formed to harass them. After one of the Antifa members attempted to steal the hat off a man's head, it turned into a brawl. The New York government is regarding it as a hate crime -- by the Republicans, whom they are going to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law in order to let them know they aren't welcome in New York City. There are of course regular street brawls in Portland, Oregon now.

All this leaves out non-violent but illegal attacks on Republicans, such as the Reality Winner leak of classified information because she thought it was about Trump; or the Treasury Department employee just arrested for leaking Paul Manafort's bank records. The ongoing illegality from within the government is a serious problem for the operations of that government, but at least it stops short of violent attacks.

As we discussed in the comments recently, the easiest way to end a lifetime appointment is to end the life. You can force a special election to replace a Senator you don't like if you off the Senator. You don't need to form a majority for that either; just a competent cell of radicals willing to operate 'by any means necessary.' People on the right should expect this, and take appropriate precautions.

Actuality and Potentiality

Reason proposes that self-mythologizing is fine 'when you're young,' but that at some point you have to set aside childish things. That's an interesting principle I find somewhat attractive. Younger people are still 'coming to be,' and imagination can help them to decide how to actualize what is still mostly potential in them. At some point, however, you are actual enough that you should stand on what you've really done.

On the other hand, one cannot actualize what does not already exist as a potential. I can't actualize being Cherokee; I can't actualize being a woman either, current fashion notwithstanding. This is in line with Aristotle's dictum that 'potentiality is first actuality.'

Still, I'm not inclined to view someone harshly who -- even in their 20s -- has a rich imaginative life, so long as they are working towards translating what they imagine of themselves into actual accomplishments. Deeds to be proud of; becoming someone who has 'been, and done.' If they do that, I'd let youthful imagination fall away as harmless as the actual person emerges in adulthood.

You'll Never Guess Why People Switched to Trump

It's a Vox article, so there's no real shock:

"Hint: It has to do with race."

Well, your study doesn't apply to me. I never voted for Barack Obama, not even in a primary. I did for Hillary Clinton, in 2008, in the hopes of beating Barack Obama. In retrospect I'm not sure if we came out ahead or behind in that exchange.

Hating Dolly Parton

In the wake of the recent fires near Gatlinburg, Dolly Parton was on the scene to help people get back on their feet. She runs charities and a foundation that operate all the time, not only when there is a major disaster.

But, she like me is what AVI calls "Mountain Tribe," and if you were born in the Mountain Tribe but want to join the City Tribe, you have to prove your loyalty.
I needed to question Dolly Parton’s meaning in my and our lives.

I needed to confront Dolly Parton’s blinding, dazzling whiteness....

Her Appalachia is pure and white and heroic; her Appalachia is drained of white America’s sins....

She’s embraced by feminists and queer folks at the same time she is declared a queen by Confederate apologists. Dolly-as-mountain-girl anchors her to an ancestral white home in the imaginations of white people, while her class-conscious and gender-transgressive performance of whiteness becomes a signifier for white progressives who embrace gender fluidity and working-class iconolatry. She exhibits worldliness at the same she cloaks herself in the symbols of white nationalism.

Dolly Parton has built her empire on and with the debris of old, racist amusements and wrapped it in working-class signifiers and feminist politics. I ignored that fact for a long time because it didn’t fit the script of the feminist, working-class heroine I had conjured. But I also ignored how others’ attachment to Dolly is exactly because of her embrace of Dixie and her complex celebration of whiteness. And I have ignored how whiteness clings....

Dolly Parton’s mythical story-songs of a mountain childhood and her witty and glitzy hillbilly performance were the secret ingredient to Dollywood’s success and expansion — an expansion that requires the ecological demise of the mountains, that gobbles up tons of water, land, and bodies in order to simulate a white Appalachian past of real hillbillies that Americans love.... Does Dollywood and Dolly Parton herself rejuvenate whiteness, fueling it so that it rises up again and again in its Dixie-forms and in its Appalachia-(Scots-Irish-Anglo-Saxon-mountaineer)-forms?
Do half as much good as she has done, and then get back to me with your criticisms of her. But they'd better be stronger criticisms than this. I don't much love Pigeon Forge just because it's so fake; but what I do love are the real things the fakery symbolizes.

Parton is for real.

New meme rising

Some numbers are rendered inherently ridiculous by rash political claims, like George McGovern's standing behind soon-to-be-ex-running-mate Thomas Eagleton "1000%."  So I suspect Elizabeth Warren's DNA-test face-plant will be with us for a while.  Greg Gutfeld immediately claimed that he was 1/1024th Asian, which "is why I can't get into Harvard."  A poster is circulating asserting that Sen. Richard Blumenthal's own test reveals that he is 1/1024th Viet Nam vet.

Remember Ivory soap's 99.44% purity?  The impurities were 1/179th of the total.