Typology and Natural Classification

One of the more interesting aspects of Whewell's theory of natural classification is his argument that natural classes are to be fixed not by definition by by type. The general line of thought is very nicely summarized in Whewell's aphorisms (vol. 2, p. 460-461):

XCII. Natural Groups are best described, not by any definition which marks their boundaries, but by a Type which marks their center. The Type of any natural group is an example which possesses in a marked degree all the leading characters of the class. (VIII. 2.)

XCIII. A Natural Group is steadily fixed, though not precisely limited; it is given in position, though not circumscribed; it is determined, not by a boundary without, but by a central point within;--not by what it strictly excludes, but by what it eminently includes;--by a Type, not by a Definition. (VIII. 2.)

XCIV. The prevalence of Mathematics as an element of education has made us think Definition the philosophical mode of fixing the meaning of a word: if (Scientific) Natural History were introduced into education, men might become familiar with the fixation of the signification of words by Types; and this process agrees more nearly with the common processes by which words acquire their significations. (VIII. 2.)

It might be helpful to look at the argument behind aphorism XCII in a bit more detail. Whewell argues that definitions in natural history will tend to become indefinite and inconsistent; definitions are quite OK for abstract sciences, but natural history is concerned with classifying actual, concrete things, which admit of considerable variation. We might think that this means that the classes established by natural history are "quite loose, without any certain standard or guide," but it is not actuall so (vol. 1, p. 494). As Whewell puts it (vol. 1, p. 494):

The class is steadily fixed, though not precisely limited; it is given, though not circumscribed; it is determined, not by a boundary line without, but by a central point within; not by what it strictly excludes, but by what it eminently includes; by an example, not by a precept; in short, instead of a Definition we have a Type for our director.

A type is an idealized example of a class: one that eminently possesses all the characters of the class. Other types are ranged around it, deviating from it in various degrees and in various ways. This forms our classification. And, as Whewell notes, the fact that there might be some species whose relations to a type are hard to determine doesn't change the general effectivenessness of the classification as a whole, any more than scattered trees between two hills makes it impossible to talk rationally about two different forests on two different hills.

An example of type-based classificationThe type of the rose family has alternate stipulate leaves, no albumen, non-erect ovules, simple stigmata, and so forth. It is entirely possible for individual roses to break this pattern without ceasing to be roses. But while individual roses vary around it, the type forms a center for all the variation. It's as if you shot a paintball at a target: the type is the point in the center, and the variants are the splatter around it.

Whewell on Natural Classification

Natural classification is the heart of Whewell's view of the classificatory sciences. As he argues, the diataxis or plan of the system can aim at a natural system or an artificial system, but "no classes can be absolutely artificial, for if they were, no assertions could be made concerning them" (PIS, vol. 2. p. 460). The difference between an artificial system and a natural one is not that the former is wholly artificial, but that some of the classifying divisions in the former are created by what he calls a "peremptory application of selected Characters," whereas a natural system tries to make all the divisions natural, with no arbitrariness at all (vol. 2, p. 461). To use his metaphor, artificial classification is travel by means of latitude and longitude; natural classification is travel on the basis of a knowledge of the country (vol. 1, p. 499).

Classifications are regulated by the Idea of Likeness; but to get a natural classification you have to go beyond resemblance to something else. This something else is what Whewell calls "natural affinity". As Whewell says (vol. 1, p. 488):

The assumption that there is a Natural System, an assumption made by all philosophical botanists, implies a belief in the existence of Natural Affinity, and is carried into effect by means of principles which are involved in that Idea.

This is not immediately obvious, though, and Whewell, as one might expect of the father of the history of science, is quite aware of the fact that people have attemped natural classification without a clear notion of natural affinity. Following Decandolle, Whewell distinguishes such attempts into three types: blind trial, general comparison, and subordination of characters. He summarizes them very conveniently in an aphorism (vol. 2, p. 462):

XCV. The attempts at Natural Classification are of three sorts; according as they are made by the process of blind trial, of general comparison, or of subordination of characters. The process of Blind Trial professes to make its classes by attention to all the characters, but without proceeding methodically. The process of General Comparison professes to enumerate all the characters, and forms its classes by the majority. Neither of tehse methods can really be carried into effect. The method of Subordination of Characters considers some characters as more important than others; and this method gives more consistent results than the others. This method, however, does not depend upon the Idea of Likeness only, but introduces the Idea of Organization or Function. (VIII. 2.)

The problem that arises with finding natural classification is this. We have some notion of natural classes that organize resembling kinds of things and of affinity among the classes; but this notion is very vague. In fact, it is nothing more than an "obscure feeling of a resemblance on the wohle, an affinity of an indefinite kind" (vol. 1, p. 500). Linnaeus is a good example of this. Linnaeus denied that there was any a priori rule for natural classification, and held that the only way to classify into a natural system was to take into account the symmetries of all the parts of the plant. Thus Linnaeus proposes various classes as natural, but can give no reason to ground this classification as natural; indeed, he even declares it impossible to identify a system of characters that could do so. Whewell diagnoses this situation as a failure to look beyond resemblance for the purposes of classification (vol. 1, p. 500):

This persuasion was the result of his having refused to admit into his mind any Idea more profound than that notion of Resemblance of which he had made so much and such successful use; he would not attempt to unravel the Ideas of Symmetry and of Function on which the clear establishment of natural relations must depend.

Needless to say, classification according to a general feeling of resemblance gives us something whose justification is very vague, so it was inevitable that people would try to find a more systematic way of doing it. This way was hit upon by Adanson, who, trying to classify plants in Senegal, found himself stymied again and again in his attempt to classify newly identified vegetation. Because of this, he started examining all the parts of the plants, building up as complete a description of each as possible, noting all the similarities and differences with other plants. By this aggregation of comparative descriptions, he found that the plants more or less arranged themselves into classes. To put it another way, we construct many different artifical systems, each based on some part, and then classify together those plants that resemble each other in the greatest number of artificial systems.

It's an ingenious approach, but it suffers right from a fatal flaw, right from the beginning. The amount of work you have to do even to begin to get it off the ground is utterly immense. Adanson, for instance, created sixty-five artificial systems; the sixty-fifth, to take one example, consists of ten classes that are further subdivided into ninety-three sections. Of these, only thirty-five are retained in the end result. And, at the end of the day, you can never be sure you've considered all the relevant aspects of the plant. Even more importantly, the principle of the method of general comparison if flawed, because it assumes that all possible artificial systems are of equal importance, which is obviously false. Without at least a dim feeling for natural affinity, this method is simply not practicable, and cannot reach the natural system.

For general comparison to become practicable it must introduce some ideas other than resemblance alone, and, in particular, it must identify some resemblances as more important than others. That is, general comparison must be transmogrified into subordination of characters. Subordination of characters, however, leaves us with a serious puzzle (vol. 1, p. 536):

It is easy to see that some organs are more essential than others to the existence of an organized being; the organs of nutrition, for example, more essential than those of locomotion. But at the same time it is clear that any arbitrary assumption of a certain scale of relative values of different kinds of characters will lead only to an Artificial System....It is clear that this relation of importance of organs and functions must be collected by the study of the organized beings; and cannot be determined a priori, without depriving us of all right to expect a general accordance between our system and the arrangment of nature. We see, therefore, that our notion of Natural Affinity involves in it this consequence;--that it is not to be made out by an arbitrary subordination of characters.

Whewell asks us to consider the integration of living things. Each organism is a system in which functions play an essential part; they facilitate each other, and it is often difficult to pry them apart without being arbitrary. This is often viewed in light of adaptation or conditions of existence; but Whewell argues that it is also an illustration of affinity. His argument is rather important, so I might be forgiven for quoting it in full (vol. 1, p. 537):

It has sometimes been asserted that if we were to classify any of the departments of organized nature by means of one function, and then by means of another, the two classifications, if each strictly consistent with itself, would be consistent with each other. Such an assertion is perhaps more than we are entitled to make with confidence; but it shows very well what is meant by Affinity. The disposition to believe such a general identity of all partial natural classifications, shows how readily we fix upon the notion of Affinity, as a general result of the causes which determine the forms of living things. When these causes or principles, of whatever nature they are conceived to be, vary so as to modify one part of the organization of being, they also modify another: and thus the groups which exhibit this variation of the fundamental principles of form, are the same, whether the manifestation of the change be sought in one part or in another of the organized structure. The groups thus formed are related by Affinity; and in proportion as we find the evidence of more functions and more organs to the propriety of our groups, we are more and more satisfied that they are Natural Classes. It appears, then, that our Idea of Affinity involves the conviction of the coincidence of natural arrangments formed on different functions; and this, rather than the principle of the subordination of some characters to others, is the true ground of the natural method of Classification.

Or, as he summarizes it in an aphorism (vol. 2, p. 463):

C. The basis of all Natural Systems of Classification is the Idea of Natural Affinity. The Principle which this Idea involves is this:--Natural arrangments, obtained from different sets of characters, must coincide with each other. (VIII. 4.)

In other words, you find natural classes not by arbitrarily assuming that one characteristic is more important than another, but by showing that there is a similarity of gradation among several different characteristics. Correspondence of classification among functions is indicative of natural affinity. Thus Whewell formulates a maxim for testing whether a system is natural or not; and the test is this: the arrangement obtained from one set of characters coincides with the arrangement obtained from another set. By seeking out this coincidence of arrangement, he thinks, we can find the natural connections among various classes in our classification, whether we are organizing organic or inorganic things.

Murdering Rastari, Part I

This is the beginning of a short story draft I've been dabbling with for a while, which I'd forgotten I had in my post editor. I'll probably add to it bit by bit over the next few weeks.

There was nothing in all the world I hated more than Danny Rastari. His very presence could make me angry. I am certain, however, that being angry is a morally bad state of affairs; so this set up an obvious chain of reasoning. Danny Rastari's very existence was morally problematic. I have always prided myself on the serious pursuit of virtue, and, as Rastari was clearly a moral temptation, I engaged in some evaluation of moral risks and drew the only rational conclusion: for the sake of virtue, I would have to kill Danny Rastari. I would need help, though, so I recruited Max Sanders, another of Rastari's many enemies.

Our plan was simple. I would lure Rastari to a high place, and Max and I would push him off. To an extent, it was a beautiful plan: all Max and I would be doing is assisting the order of nature; gravity, not us, would kill Rastari; and therefore we would not be responsible for his death. It did, of course, require some exposure to the source of temptation; but however arduous the cause of virtue, and however much it requires sacrifice, I always say it's worth it. I set out to lure Rastari to the top of the First International Bank building in order to push him off.

It was surprisingly easy; the man is as gullible as can be. I told him that Max and I had found a great place to view the city at night, we took him to the top, and pushed him off. Down he went. It was beautiful, and all the more so given that we knew that the world would be a better place the next day.

We found, however, that it was not so easy to destroy a cause of morally bad states of affairs. By some strange miracle Danny Rastari did not die on hitting the ground, and when Max and I finally reached the ground floor, Rastari's body was nowhere to be found.

To be continued....

Default Permissibilities, Moral Problematics, and Omnivorism

Thomas Nadelhoffer has an interesting post on what he calls 'non-compassionate omnivorism'. In it he suggests that "if confinement agriculture is morally problematic, then knowingly eating meat produced by these methods—when doing so is unnecessary—is also morally problematic." I have an immense amount of sympathy for this line of reasoning, and especially for its conclusion. However, I think people who reason in this way tend not to have good arguments for their conclusion, and I don't think Nadelhoffer manages to resolve this initial problem. Nadelhoffer is considering the position of the person who does not insist that the meat he eats have been treated humanely when it was a living animal, and asks "Are there any compelling arguments for the permissibility of being a non-compassionate omnivore—especially when being a compassionate omnivore, vegetarian, or vegan is always an option?"

I think there is a straightforwardly compelling, although clearly defeasible, argument: for any action or behavior, if there is no good reason to regard it as otherwise, it is permissible. The reason for accepting default permissibility here is not quite burden of proof -- burdens of proof are simply a matter of argumentative convenience. Rather, the basis for this default is that, since it is morally deficient to go around forcing people to treat as immoral things that are not immoral, we should have reasons, such that a reasonable person of sound mind could accept, to justify our claim that it is immoral. Allowance can be made for mistakes about whether a given set of reasons is good or not; but even then there need to be reasons that could reasonably be mistaken for good ones. Perhaps an example will help. In eighteenth-century Scotland there was a big kerfuffle over the morality of stage plays. John Home, a member of the Moderate Party of the Church of Scotland (and David Hume's cousin), wrote a tragedy, Douglas, that was produced in Edinburgh. The Evangelical Party of the Church of Scotland protested this vehemently, and a sort of war of essays and pamphlets broke out. The problem was not the content of the play, which almost everyone ignores in their arguments; the point under debate was whether it was moral for anyone to produce and attend stage-plays. One of the major figures on the Evangelical side (stage plays are immoral) was John Witherspoon, who wrote a work called A Serious Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Stage. In it he argues, with all seriousness, that stage-plays are immoral, and he reasons this position out at great length. Many of his reasons -- e.g., the dissolute lives of actors, the creation of pseudo-sympathy, disconnection from reality -- are very intelligent and rational reasons to put forward against something. On some cases I think Witherspoon hits his target quite well: some people are morally escapist in the way they engage with drama, there are serious questions about whether we are morally improved by watching violent deaths and villainous successes. I don't think Witherspoon is right at all about the morality of stage-plays; but his reasons aren't stupid reasons to be against them. This contrasts with some of Witherspoon's Evangelical fellows, whose reasons for treating stage-plays as immoral were barely significant, when they had them at all. It is entirely reasonable for those who attended stage-plays to regard stage-play attendance as (defeasibly) permissible by default. To the extent that people like Witherspoon brought forward serious reasons, those reasons need to be engaged; but only so far. By analogy, we can say that the non-compassionate omnivore can, reasonably and in good faith, simply presume permissibility unless there are adequate reasons for thinking otherwise. Such default permissibilities can be abused, of course, since they are not an excuse for ignoring moral reasons in order to do whatever you please; but it is a morally reasonable default and, what is more, will as a matter of moral requirement be in play in most circumstances.

Now, Nadelhoffer and others often give reasons, but I am not so convinced that they are adequate. Nadelhoffer's whole reason, for example, is summarized in the sentence mentioned before, that "if confinement agriculture is morally problematic, then knowingly eating meat produced by these methods—when doing so is unnecessary—is also morally problematic." All well and good, so far as it goes. However, I don't think this gets one as far as Nadelhoffer seems to think, and I think we can see that when we recognize there are different shades of morally problematic, and that our response to all of them is not uniformly the same.

Consider the Douglas controversy again. Witherspoon brings up reasons, some of them good reasons, for considering attendance of stage-plays morally problematic. He can easily point to the disreputable lives of actors; he can easily identify temperaments that are made morally worse by attending stage-plays; he can easily show the scandal and social disruption created by a clergyman's writing a tragedy. There are morally problematic aspects to stage-plays, and this even before we get to the question of their content. But it doesn't follow from this that Home was wrong to write the stage-play, or that his friends were wrong to produce it. Witherspoon shows that stage-plays are to some extent morally problematic, but none of his reasons are adequate for showing that it is wrong to have stage-plays. They are adequate for showing that it is wrong to have stage-plays (or, at the very least, was wrong in the eighteenth-century) without recognizing that certain aspects of them present a moral challenge. But there are many, many different ways of handling this moral challenge; eliminating them altogether, the Evangelical option, is only one possible way to go. Another possibility might be to work for the reform of the theater (in which case Home's action might be eminently valuable); yet another might be to work to encourage a better understanding among stage-play audiences of the potential pitfalls; and so forth. The only limit here is the limit of ingenuity.

So there is a weak sense of 'morally problematic' in which it means nothing more than that the thing in question presents a moral problem that needs to be handled in some way or another. And we can see that this sort of thing is important when we consider the hard questions of moral complicity that inevitably arise in any human society. By living in society we facilitate excellence in our fellow human beings; we also facilitate many very bad things. This is morally problematic. But it does not follow from this that we should quit such a society altogether. However, the degree to which our participation in society is morally problematic is never stable: it is continually in flux, and there will be circumstances under which our participation in society will be much, much more problematic than others. In all these cases, there will usually be different paths that are acceptable to a reasonably cultivated conscience. But in some cases there will be a vast number of acceptable paths, because the morally problematic character of our participation will be analogous to the stage-play case: it's not that the action (e.g., attending stage-plays) is morally wrong, but only that it brings with it moral issues that should not be ignored. Even here, there is a spectrum of possibilities. In some cases if the issues are ignored, it is only a very venial failing; in others, it will be more serious. In some cases, however, the moral problems raised by our participation in society will become so many and so serious that acceptable options will be sharply constrained. These would be cases of a serious and troubling kind -- an obvious case is the participation of Germans in German society during the Holocaust. Merely living life in a society will put us into proximity with morally problematic features of that society. But there are many different ways in which such features can be morally problematic, and it would be silly of us to assume that the mere fact of their being morally problematic is always and ever a reason to eliminate them entirely. There is a word for such an assumption: it is called puritanical, and is not usually considered morally admirable.

So it is simply not enough to argue, as I think can reasonably be argued, that eating factory-farmed meat is morally problematic. If the question is no longer eating such meat at all, for instance, it must be argued that it is sufficiently problematic to warrant such a measure. And if the claim is that it is sufficiently problematic to be avoided unless a countervailing justification can be found -- then that is what must be argued. If eating such meat is morally problematic, and there is no adequate argument that it is morally problematic in a serious enough way, then the response to such a morally problem may well have nothing to do with continuing to eat factory-farmed meat or not. For instance, someone might argue that it isn't actually important whether you eat it or not; what is important is that we be taking steps, even if only small ones, to reform the factory system, and that this is enough to handle any morally problematic aspects to our participation in the factory system. If responses like these aren't enough, we need arguments for this -- and these arguments need to tell us much more than that it is morally problematic.

Otherwise history might have its revenge on us. No one takes Witherspoon's reasoning very seriously today, even though he occasionally brings up points that are genuinely worth thinking about; and, by the ultimate irony of history, his direct descendant is a very famous movie star, knee-deep in all the morally problematic features of plays that Witherspoon worried about. Our moral demands must be proportionate to our reasons for those demands, and I fear that the arguments against the 'non-compassionate omnivore' usually don't seem to exhibit such a proportion.

Admin Note

Blogger is bugging out on me, for some reason, so we'll see how well I'll be able to post for a while. There are several small posts almost ready for posting, though, having to do with the concept of natural classification; there are also posts on Hume, juries, Feuerbach's atheism, and George Eliot's Romola in the works.

Whewell on Constructing Classificatory Sciences

From the Apohorisms Concerning Ideas (The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, volume 2, second edition [1847], p. 460):

LXXXVII. The construction of a Classificatory Science includes Terminology, the formation of a descriptive language;--Diataxis, the Plan of the System of Classification, called also the Systematick;--Diagnosis, the Scheme of the Characters by which the different Classes are known, called also the Characteristick. Physiography is the knowledge which the system is employed to convey. Diataxis includes Nomenclature. (VIII.2)

Or, as he says in VIII.2, which this aphorism summarizes (volume 1, pp. 480-481):

We may begin by remarking that the Idea of Likeness, in its systematic employment, is governed by the same principle which we have already spoken of as regulating the distribution of things into kinds, and the assignment of names in unsystematic thought and speech; namely, the condition that general propositions shall be possible. But as in this case the propositions are to be of a scientific form and exactness, the likeness must be treated with a corresponding precision; and its consequences traced by steady and distinct processes. Naturalists must, for their purposes, employ the resemblances of objects in a technical manner. This technical process may be considered as consisting of three steps;--The fixation of the resemblances; The use of them in making a classification; The means of applying the classification. These three steps may be spoken of as the Terminology, the Plan of the System, and the Scheme of the Characters.

As Whewell notes, classification is an example of the importance of words, because a great deal of the knowledge acquired by sciences like botany and mineralogy is built up by honing the descriptive language available for talking about things in a systematic way; the lack of such a terminology makes it very difficult to classify anything with precision or accuracy. With this in hand, however, it is possible to have a healthy taxonomy or diataxis, which, however, requires more than mere fixation of resemblances, because it is an attempt to find a natural classification, one that involves no arbitrary classification. The end result of this is a nomenclature, which is the system of labels by which different classes are named. To use this classification, we must have a diagnosis, a means of placing things in their proper classes according to identifying characteristics (which are not necessarily those that distinguish the classes in the classification itself). As Whewell calls it, the diagnosis for a natural classification is "an Artificial Key to a Natural System": as natural it is based on as few characteristics as possible; as natural, the characteristics chosen are not selected by any arbitrary rule but follow from the natural affinities we learn about in the natural classification.

Links and Notes

* Lindsay Beyerstein reviews the documentary, The War Tapes.

* A very good post at "DarwinCatholic" on the whole science vs. religion cliche.

* June 5th is St. Boniface's memorial. Medieval Sourcebook has selections from Willibald's Life of Boniface and documents related to the conversion of Germany. Since Boniface is patron saint of Germans and brewers, if you needed an excuse to drink a beer, today's the day that gives you one.

* It's also Monday in Whitsun-Week. You can read the relevant poem in Keble's The Christian Year. The subject is the City of Confusion.

* "Timotheos Prologizes" quotes an interesting essay by Fulton Sheen on Muslims and Mary.

* At "Philosophy, etc." Richard has an interesting post on whether time travel is logically possible.

* Writers who use big words without needing to do so give off the impression of being less intelligent than those who don't -- as do those who use less reader-friendly fonts. You can get the scoop at JohnHawks.net. (HT: MM)

* The Valve is apparently a place where literary people get together and talk about philosophy and mathematics. Of course, it's not quite accurate to say that before Cantor people though that infinity was only a potential thing, unless we clarify what that means (and whether, for instance, the infinity of the objects of divine knowledge is being counted); and it's false to suggest, as one of the commenters does, that the Kalam argument is question-begging, since there are theists and atheists on both sides of the question of whether the universe began or not. But it's worthwhile to read the discussion. For a discussion of relevant philosophical texts on infinites, see page at The Logic Museum devoted to the subject; there is also a page under development on questions that are relevant to the Kalam argument itself.

* An interesting article on exploiting the past by Ulf Zander (HT: Cliopatria). I think the argument is quite right insofar as the value of history for civic life lies less in being able to equate historical events with modern-day happenings for partisan purposes than in being able to compare the two objectively. And he's right that political users of history are simply not facing up to the challenges and complexities of history. But I think he doesn't quite do justice to the fact that political use of history is absolutely unavoidable -- the only serious question here is not whether history will be used politically, but whether it will be used well. I also think the argument ends up going too far when he argues:

The Nazi genocide has a strongly moral, emotional and political charge, but in a deeper historical sense it is difficult to draw any conclusions from it. As for example the Holocaust and military historian Omer Bartov has pointed out, the murder of the Jews is problematical as a reference point not primarily because it is unique, but because it is extreme. It seems unlikely that there should be lessons to learn that are applicable for us in our everyday lives or in forecasts of the future if we look for them in one of the most atypical events in modern history.

While it's certainly true that the Holocaust is for this reason almost useless as a basis for forecasting of the future, it doesn't follow from this that it has no lessons to learn that are applicable for us in our everday lives. In fact, quite the opposite seems to be true; and the more informed our notions of the Holocaust, the more genuinely applicable to our lives such knowledge would seem to be. This is because applying knowledge of an event to our everday lives has nothing to do with how extreme or unique an event is, and everything to do with what Zander calls the strong "moral, emotional and political charge" of the event. A historian should not confuse applicability to everyday life with value for the historical analysis of our times (well, no one should confuse the two, but historians are especially likely to do it). And precisely because knowledge of historical events is applicable (in good ways and bad ways) to everyday life, there is no avoiding the political use of history, because there is no avoiding the application of history to civic life. (Another reason there is no avoiding it is that people in part need to use history to constitute themselves as communities; and this means history is already there at hand to be used in politics. The only community in which the political use of history can be eliminated is the community that has no historical memory. Such is barely a community at all, and is not, I would presume, what a historian would want as a civic goal.) I think historians should not be abusing politicians for using history politically, as such, but challenging them to use it in a less purely partisan and more seriously thoughtful way.

* On Thursday I went to see X-Men: The Last Stand. It has several great storylines and manages to mangle them all quite a bit. However, enough comes together that if you're not seeing it just because of the bad reviews, and you're not the nitpicky type, you should go and see it. If you can cut them some slack for not quite succeeding in juggling all the characters they have to juggle, then you should be able to enjoy it. All of the newcomers, especially Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde and Kelsey Grammer as Beast, are worth seeing; in fact, several of them outshine the returning actors. Storm has more of a good, serious storyline than she did in the previous movies, although they never quite manage to do justice to it. The race between Juggernaut and Kitty -- the two people no solid object can stop -- was done quite well. Beast is never given the storyline he deserves, particularly with Grammer's excellent acting. The whole charm of Beast is his backstory: he's one of the world's most brilliant scientists, and the scientific community refuses to recognize him because he's a mutant who looks like a big, blue, furry brute. It's this that grounds the occasional pedantry and pompousness that shows up in his relationships with others -- it's not an affectation, because he's a gentle and humble person; it's all innocent and due to the fact that he's a gregarious, sociable person forced to be intellectually alone. Very little of this shows up in this movie. But Grammer still brings everything to the role that's needed; and I don't really understand why some fans were worried before it came out that he wouldn't be able to fill the role well -- he's perfect for the role, and everything else is just make-up and special effects. It's impossible to imagine a better silver screen Beast. The Eric-Charles dynamic, which should have virtually made this movie, is the most disappointing part of it; neither side of it is written quite well.

* UPDATE: Part 2 of the History Carnival is up at "Aqueduct."

* Also, "Is That Legal?" is hosting a mini-symposium on Mitsuye Endo, a civil rights hero who is often forgotten, despite her considerable importance. Greg Robinson gives some of the background. [UPDATE: Patrick Gudridge continues the discussion.]

Pentecost

Today is the Feast of Pentecost, also called Whitsunday, when every saint is a Sinai and the Church is birthed into the world. From John Keble's The Christian Year:

Whitsunday

And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting: and there appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them: and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost. Acts ii. 2,3.

When God of old came down from Heaven,
In power and wrath he came;
Before his feet the clouds were riven,
Half darkness and half flame:

Around the trembling mountain's base
The prostrate people lay,
Convinc'd of sin, but not of grace;
It was a dreadful day.

But when He came the second time,
He came in power and love,
Softer than gale at morning prime
Hover'd his holy Dove.

The fires that rush'd on Sinai down
In sudden torrents dread,
Now gently light, a glorious crown,
On every sainted head.

Like arrows went those lightnings forth,
Wing'd with the sinner's doom,
But these, like tongues, o'er all the earth
Proclaiming life to come:

And as on Israel's awe-struck ear
The voice exceeding loud,
The trump, that angels quake to hear,
Thrill'd from the deep, dark cloud,

So, when the Spirit of our God
Came down his flock to find,
A voice from heaven was heard abroad,
A rushing, mighty wind.

Nor doth the outward ear alone
At that high warning start;
Conscience gives back th' appalling tone;
'Tis echoed in the heart.

It fills the Church of God; it fills
The sinful world around;
Only in stubborn hearts and wills
No place for it is found.

To other strains our souls are set:
A giddy whirl of sin
Fills ear and brain, and will not let
Heaven's harmonies come in.

Come, Lord, come, Wisdom, Love, and Power,
Open our ears to hear;
Let us not miss th' accepted hour;
Save, Lord, by Love or Fear.

Whewell on the Moral Faculty

A persuasion that moral good is something different from, and superior to, mere pleasure, is requisite to give our preference of it that tone of enthusiasm and affection which belongs to virtuous feeling. To approve a rule as right, is different from liking it as profitable; to admire an act of virtuous self-devotion as we are capable of admiring, is a feeling so different from the apprehension of any usefulness the act may have, that the comparison of the two things is altogether incongruous. The moral faculty converts our perception of the quality of actions into an affection of the strongest kind; nor can we be satisfied with any account of our moral sentiments which excludes this feature in the process. Thus, as we hold the affections to be motives of an order superior to the desires which have reference to ourselves only, we maintain the moral faculty, the conscience, the affection towards duty, to be a principle of action of an order superior both to the duties and to the other affections. Without the acknowledgment of this subordination, the language and feelings of men when they compare the claims of personal pleasure, of social affection, and of duty, are altogether unintelligible and absurd.

William Whewell in Sir James Mackintosh, On the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, chiefly during the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries, William Whewell, ed., Fourth edition, (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1872) xxxv-xxxvi. Whewell has in mind the hedonistic utilitarianisms of Paley and Bentham, which is why he emphasizes both the need for something more than pleasure and the need for something more than utility. I was happy to come across this in the library today. Because it is in an editorial preface, it's the sort of thing that might easily be overlooked even by people who study Whewell's moral philosophy (not that there are many people doing that anyway). In any case, it means that I won't overlook it if I write a paper on the subject, as I've been thinking of doing.

Proving Before Defining

We have all run across him before. He's the guy who says, in response to every argument for something's existence (let's call it "X"), "You have to define X first." And then the argument gets diverted into word-chopping discussions of how to define X, before we even know whether there exists any X worth defining.

Most people have difficulty dealing with this word-chopper, because his point seems initially plausible. I would suggest, however, that this plausibility is merely apparent. It is simply wrong. To argue for the existence of X you don't need a definition of X. What is more, it is irrational to make such a claim, because the reverse is true. We can only define a thing if we know what sort of arguments could be made for its existence (or nonexistence). Any other sort of definition is merely stipulative definition of the term -- and, since we can stipulate as we please, the only thing worth arguing over when it comes to stipulative definitions is whether they are unnecessarily misleading in the context. (Not, of course, that you need to define "X" first even verbally -- that can come after the argument for X's existence, because it isn't necessary for the argument itself.) The only time anyone defines before they prove is when it's important for a premise of the argument -- a premise, not the conclusion.

This point might might be made clearer by an example of good practice in this regard. When Suarez in his Metaphysical Disputations argues for the existence of substantial forms, he begins by arguing for their existence, and ends by defining them. And it is easy to see why. The existence of substantial forms is not obvious; it has to be proven. But what we can say substantial forms are will depend on the sort of arguments we can give for them. All we need to do this is to have a vague notion of the sort of thing you might apply the label 'substantial form', so that you can determine the right sort of premises. Then, when you have shown that something of (more or less) this sort exists, you can look at the reasons you gave in order to give a proper definition of 'substantial form'. Since you already have the arguments for its existence in hand, you can use these to define the term in a non-arbitrary way. If you do it any other way, you have to (with magical intuitions, apparently) hit on exactly the right definition from the get-go. (This is a reason why the word-chopper mentioned above is often someone arguing for the negative: if you convince people that they can't ever prove something's existence before they've defined it, you've made it very, very difficult for them to prove that anything exists. If their definition is a little off -- e.g., part of it is confusing things that shouldn't be confused, or they have made a mistake in the precise formulation -- then it could block all their attempts to argue for its existence, even if what they are trying to prove exists along with good arguments for its existence.)

Another example is arguments for the existence of God. Thomas Aquinas is often criticized for arguing for the existence of a certain sort of thing (e.g., a first cause), and saying, "And this all men call God." But Aquinas, as is often the case, has the right idea. From a philosophical perspective, what you need to examine when you're examining whether God exists, is whether we have any reason to think that anything that would more or less be the sort of thing we would call 'God' exists. Once this is in hand you can look at the details of what sort of thing, precisely, this divine thing is. This is exactly how Aquinas proceeds.

The point is general, and fits many different fields of thought. You don't define until you prove, because the proof is the only thing that keeps your definition rooted in reality. Rarely, if ever, is it rational to try to define X before having shown (or assumed) that X exists. (The only cases in which it would be are ontological arguments, and those would only be relevant if sound ontological arguments weren't question-begging, which they are.)

Notables

Jason Kuznicki has a post worth reading on a recent Utah polygamy case. I agree with him that the law in question is utterly absurd, and for similar reasons: marriage springs from the people, not from the state. The most the state can do is decide what it will recognize as marriage for the purposes established by state interests (e.g., facilitating inheritances, encouraging care for children, protecting spouses from abuse, etc.). It has no say on whether something may be counted a marriage or not by those who are in it (at least none without usurping the privileges of the people).

* Some good posts on the atonement at Adrian Warnock's blog, 42, Connexions and verbum ipsum.

* Richard Chappell presents a Vellemanian view of life in Living as Storytelling.

* At "Evolutionblog" Jason Rosenhouse has an interesting post on Dembski's theodicy. As you may recall, Alejandro Satz had a post on the subject about a month ago. Both are worth reading. Some of the comments made by commenters on Jason's post, on the other hand, show just why people need to read up seriously on the subject before they start pulling things out of various dark places; because there are a lot of things said that show considerable ignorance of the arguments on both sides.

* G. K. Chesterton's birthday anniversary was May 29. Celebrate the occasion by visiting the American Chesterton Society webpage, or re-read Chesterton's exquisite The Man Who Was Thursday. From The Ballad of the White Horse:

"Out of the mouth of the Mother of God,
More than the doors of doom,
I call the muster of Wessex men
From grassy hamlet or ditch or den,
To break and be broken, God knows when,
But I have seen for whom.

Out of the mouth of the Mother of God
Like a little word come I;
For I go gathering Christian men
From sunken paving and ford and fen,
To die in a battle, God knows when,
By God, but I know why.

"And this is the word of Mary,
The word of the world's desire
`No more of comfort shall ye get,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.' "

* Since it's Justin Martyr's feast day, it seems appropriate to link to works of the the second-century philosopher-saint. From his Discourse to the Greeks:

These have conquered me--the divinity of the instruction, and the power of the Word: for as a skilled serpent-charmer lures the terrible reptile from his den and causes it to flee, so the Word drives the fearful passions of our sensual nature from the very recesses of the soul; first driving forth lust, through which every ill is begotten--hatreds, strife, envy, emulations, anger, and such like. Lust being once banished, the soul becomes calm and serene. And being set free from the ills in which it was sunk up to the neck, it returns to Him who made it. For it is fit that it be restored to that state whence it departed, whence every soul was or is.

* Part I of the History Carnival is up at Aqueduct, with the second to follow Monday. I especially recommend the discussion of Jews and Muslims in the Middle East at "Brian's Study Breaks" and So Who Was Our First President? at "American Presidents Blog".