Ring Out the Old

Today is the 198th birthday of Lord Alfred Tennyson. Here's one of his hymns.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow;
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife,
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweet manners, purer laws.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

It's usually sung to the tune of Waltham (Calkin). As you can guess from the lyrics, it's chiefly a hymn for New Year's Eve.

Notes Toward a Formal Typology of Argument IV

In the first post I laid out in a rough way the notation for the typology.
In the second post I introduced the notion of attenuation and used it to establish hierarchies of arguments.
In the third post I introduced the notion of preclusion and used it to show how distinct hierarchies of arguments are interrelated.

That's the basic typology. In this post I will be looking at an optional bit of notation that doesn't fundamentally change the typology but gives it slightly more power for classifying arguments. However, before I do that I need to make a small but nonetheless important correction to my account in the above posts.

The problem with those posts is that the hierarchies presented in them are all incomplete. The relative orderings of arguments are right, as are the preclusion relations; but not all argument-types that should have been included were included, through an oversight early on. The argument-types that are missing for R1 are:

RL(XLT)
RL(XL~F)
RM(XMT)
RM(XM~F)
RL(XMT)
RL(XM~F)
RM(XLT)
RM(XL~F)

The first four are incorporated into the hierarchy in a fairly straightforward way. I had said that the strongest argument-type in R1 was RL(XT); that was correct of the hierarchies as given, but not of the full hierarchy. The strongest argument-type in R1 is, of course, RL(XLT). RL(XLT) can attenuate either to RL(XL~F) or RL(XT). RL(XL~F), like RL(XT) can attenuate to RL(X~F). Similarly, the weakest argument-type in R1 is not, as I had said, RM(X~F), but RM(XM~F). RM(XT) can attenuate not only to RM(X~F) but also to RM(XMT); and both RM(X~F) and RM(XMT) can attenuate to RM(XM~F).

The other four are rather more complicated. As it turns out, RL(XT) can attenuate to three independent argument-types. Two were those noted in the original hierarchy: RL(X~F) and R(XLT). However, it can also attenuate to RL(XMT). RL(XMT) can attenuate to RL(XM~F) or to R(XMT). It therefore is a shorter path of attenuation from RL(XT) to R(XMT) than that noted in the original hierarchy; it is also certainly independent of the other. RL(X~F) can attenuate to RL(XM~F), which can attenuate to R(XM~F). Similarly, R(XLT) can attenuate to RM(XLT), which is able to attenuate either to RM(XL~F) or RM(XT); R(XL~F) can attenuate to RM(XL~F) as well. RM(XL~F) can attenuate to RM(X~F). I leave it to the interested reader, if there are any interested readers, to work out the look of the hierarchy given these modifications. These patterns of attenuation give the hierarchy a 'three-dimensional' character rather than the two-dimensional character of the hierarchy as I originally presented it.

Preclusion follows the same sort of patterns noted for the incomplete hierarchy.

And, of course, analogous things can be said for all the other hierarchies. Therefore each hierarchy has not ten arguments, as I originally suggested, but eighteen; the four basic hierarchies together involve not forty types of arguments but seventy-two. It just goes to show that a small oversight in the classification system can lead to a massive oversight in things classified.

That correction out of the way, we can turn to the concept of candidacy, and we can motivate our introduction of it in the following way. The strongest argument-type in R1 is a : R_aL(XLT). These are arguments in which a is a reason thinking that it is a necessary truth that X is necessarily true. However, not all arguments of this type are of equal strength, because while they all argue for a conclusion of the same strength, they don't all argue on equally strong reasons. Some reasons, even good reasons, for thinking anything a necessary truth are defeasible or probable or plausible. Some rare bases, however, are stronger than this, being such that arguments based on them preclude any counter-argument, even on a different base. (Rigorous demonstrations would be an example.) One way to think of it is that they are cases where an argument based on a is such as to exclude all candidates for counterarguments. It is useful to have a notational option for capturing this. Since we speak of this sort of thing modally, it makes sense to use a modal sign, L, to indicate it; to distinguish it from the other modal signs, it will be standardly placed in front of the R.

Stated in the way I have above, this new L in front of the R is the complement of candidacy: an argument of that type rules out other arguments as being even potential candidates for argument(regardless of base). It makes sense, then, to have a complementary sign, M, which indicates candidacy given a base. That is, it indicates that a is potentially an argument for the conclusion. It too will be placed in front of the R.

It is clear that all LR's can attenuate immediately to plain R's. For instance, a : LR_aL(XLT) can attenuate immediately to a: R_aL(XLT). It is also clear that any R can attenuate immediately to MR. For instance, a : R_aL(XLT) attenuates to a : MR_aL(XLT). (Obviously, if an argument is actually made as a good argument, it is a fortiori a candidate for being made as a good argument.) The strengthened hierarchy created by this notation I will refer to as R1+. Similarly strengthenings may be accomplished for all the other hierarchies.

It is important to keep in mind that, while the same modal signs are used in several different positions (in part because we use very similar terms to speak of them, anyway), their positions are important. They do have relations, of course; these are traced out by the attenuation relations of the hierarchy. But they cannot have the same meaning precisely because they are only related to each other by the way they attenuate.

One of the interesting things about candidacy is that it shows something of the relation between the one-base hierarchies that we have been discussing and the multiple-base hierarchies we would sometimes meet. If we have a two-base argument-type:

a,b : R_a(R_b(XT)T)

this is related to:

b : MR_b(XT)

The reason is clear; if there is a good argument given a that b is a good argument for XT, it follows that b is a genuine candidate reason for concluding XT. This is not an attenuation relation, because you can go partially in reverse. That is, b : MR_b(XT) indicates there is some multiple base argument available for thinking R_b(XT) a good argument; but we don't know what it is. We don't know the bases, and we don't know the structure of the argument. To put it in other words, b : MR_b(XT) tells us of the existence of a multiple-base argument, but does not tell us anything about its nature. Since there is a loss of information in moving from a,b : R_a(R_b(XT)T) to b : MR_b(XT), but some information is preserved that would not be preserved in an ordinary attenuation relation, we can treat this as a new relation, and call it reduction. Reduction, of course, is key to understanding how multiple-base arguments relate to the simple one-base arguments we have been considering so far. This is a further sign of the value of the strengthened notation, since the strengthening allows us to relate certain kinds of multiple-base argument-types to the one-base hierarchies that could not be related to them without it.

In the next post on this topic I will close by giving a few simple examples showing the typology in action.

More Notes and Links

* Enigman hosts the 51st Philosophers' Carnival. It's a math/science/logic edition, and a very good one at that. I liked the post and discussion on proving that 1 + 1 = 2 at "Philosophy Sucks!"; "Good Math,Bad Math" on space-filling curves. The defense of Deleuze at "Sporting Thoughts" is also worth reading. My post on Duhem's view of mathematical generalization
is also there.

* Patrick Bahls keeps track of the geographical location of submitters to the Pluggers and the They'll Do It Every Time comic strips. Pluggers and TDIET are strips belonging to the same basic genre that exhibit widely different forms of American life: Pluggers depicts a hard-working, very simple, down-to-earth, almost rustic America, while TDIET depicts a suburban-to-urban, middle-class, almost Eisenhower-era America, so it's interesting, although not wholly surprising, what he finds. One of the interesting differences between the strips that has to be considered, though, is that the idea behind Pluggers is that of people poking fun at themselves (if not always themselves directly, then nonetheless at the sort of people they are), and in particular at the completely makeshift character of their lives; whereas TDIET is premised on poking fun at other people, in particular at their exasperating inconsistencies. So this could have some effect on the sort of submitter each gets -- at least, it's something in addition to the type of life depicted that the data alone can't rule out as a possible influence on the sort of patterns in geographical location Bahls notes. For instance, the jokes found in TDIET often involve the irrational inconsistencies of neighbors or co-workers, but of a sort that shows up when you get to know them over long periods of time; you can find such scenarios in rural areas and small towns, of course, but you might be more likely to get them in suburbs and cities, where exposure to neighbors and co-workers in this way may be less avoidable. (HT: CC)

* Camille Paglia, contemplating the tensions between religion and art, argues for the importance of religion to a renaissance of art, both as catalyst and as impediment. On the catalyst side one thinks of Makoto Fujiumura and the International Arts Movement, or the Asian Christian Art Association.

* Cyber Hymnal has some curious tidbits on their Hymn Trivia page, including two popular Christian hymns written by non-Christians, hymns in movies that were nominated for Academy Awards, a hymn that was inspired by a murder (fittingly, a translation of Dies Irae), hymns that made their first appearances in novel (including the very popular "Jesus Loves Me"), and more.

* A letter in 1997 from then Prime Minister Tony Blair to Isaiah Berlin. (ht: virtual philosopher)

* Jane Austen is apparently a good source of dating advice for girls.

* Scott Carson has a good post discussing some of the religious criticisms of the Harry Potter books.

One interesting issue that always arises as a tangent to this sort of discussion, and that of my recent post on Rowling vs. Pullman, is how durable these works are as fiction. It's usually put in terms of comparison with Narnia and The Hobbit, but, of course, one should really compare them with the great nineteenth-century children's works: The Secret Garden, The Water Babies, the Curdie books, etc. And I think it's very unclear. We have excellent reason to think the Narnia books will still be read a hundred years from now. There are a great many things that could happen between now and then, but they have everything in their favor: they are short, simple, profound, stylistically well-written, focused on timeless themes, and popular. The Harry Potter series has a few things going for it: it is popular, and popularity is a factor for durability because it finds more of the people who would be likely to keep reading it, and that is what durability is for literature. But popularity just means the book is finding people; it is the book itself that has to keep them reading. It has some good passages, but it is very inconsistent in style. It has a great many allusions to contemporary culture, which will become less comprehensible over time. It is also very long. The chief strength of the books is the overarching plot: we do not see Rowling at her best in the individual books but in the whole story, beautifully constructed, that binds them together. Harry Potter really is a case of the whole being more than the sum of its parts. But is this enough? I'm inclined to think not. Instead, what will likely happen is that people in general will stop reading it -- except, of course, for the same sort of people who still read, say, Charlotte Yonge's children's stories and write dissertations on them. Much the same could be said of Pullman. He has a better and more consistent literary style than Rowling, which is a plus, but his overall story is so inconsisently crafted it sometimes borders on silly. His Dark Materials is also, let us face it, a series of children's books that consists in moralizing at great length about sex, and it takes a very particular sort of society even to tolerate that, however well-written it may be. It's possible that it will endure; but more likely that it will not.

* The discussion on politics and quotation continues at ProgressiveHistorians.

* The Philosophical Midwife argues against the Catholic stance on birth control. It's an interesting argument, but I think it is weak on two points: (1) Although many Catholic theorists appeal to natural law alone on the issue of contraception, I think this is largely laziness, of which there is a great deal among Catholic intellectuals; the official Catholic position, going back to Humanae Vitae is really based on five points: a theology of marriage, a single vague sex-oriented point of natural law (namely, that sex has a moral connection with procreation given the constitution of human nature) along with the very general natural-law precepts relevant to virtue in general, reverence for the whole natural functioning of the human organism, what might be called a virtue-theoretical account of familial love (both between spouses and between parents and children) as part of human civilization, and the distinctively Catholic function of marriage as a source of natural growth for the Church. It's the combination of these that makes the Catholic rejection of contraception so intense; natural law only fulfills the function of laying down a general species-level guideline. To that extent the Philosophical Midwife is right, but the argument does not hit its target. (2) It is radically implausible to say that copulation is intrinsically the marriage-constituting act; this is a view of marriage that is, to say the least, rare, and needs a rather robust defense. (That this is needed, it should be said, is explicitly recognized; I merely note it to emphasize how serious a need it is.)

* A. C. Grayling discusses atheism in a recent Philosophy Bites podcast. It's actually quite good; he avoids the tendency he has had in some of his more recent columns to make exaggerated and rationally insupportable claims, and thus lays out in a reasonable, straightforward way a description of atheism. The response to the morality and atheism question was seriously inadequate, but perhaps not more inadequate than one usually finds among atheists, who tend never to have learned much from the range of possible positions on this question beyond the most easily caricatured versions of divine command theory; and it can be regarded as simply identifying one basic reference-point for what is actually a very complicated question.

ADDED LATER:

* The July Patristics Carnival is up at "hyperekperissou". My post on Cyril and the Victorians was included.

Augustine on the Transfiguration

Come down, Peter: you were desiring to rest on the mount; come down, "preach the word, be instant in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine." Endure, labour hard, bear your measure of torture; that you may possess what is meant by the white raiment of the Lord, through the brightness and the beauty of an upright labouring in charity. For when the Apostle was being read we heard in praise of charity, "She seeks not her own. She seeks not her own;" since she gives what she possesses. In another place there is more danger in the expression, if you do not understand it right. For the Apostle, charging the faithful members of Christ after this rule of charity, says, "Let no man seek his own, but another's." For on hearing this, covetousness is ready with its deceits, that in a matter of business under pretence of seeking another's, it may defraud a man, and so, "seek not his own, but another's." But let covetousness restrain itself, let justice come forth; so let us hear and understand. It is to charity that it is said, "Let no man seek his own, but another's." Now, O you covetous one, if you will still resist, and twist the precept rather to this point, that you should covet what is another's; then lose what is your own. But as I know you well, you wish to have both your own and another's. You will commit fraud that you may have what is another's; submit then to robbery that you may lose your own. Thou dost not wish to seek your own, but then you take away what is another's. Now if you do this, you do not well. Hear and listen, you covetous one: the Apostle explains to you in another place more clearly this that he said, "Let no man seek his own, but another's." He says of himself, "Not seeking my own profit, but the profit of many, that they may be saved." This Peter understood not yet when he desired to live on the mount with Christ. He was reserving this for you, Peter, after death. But now He says Himself, "Come down, to labour in the earth; in the earth to serve, to be despised, and crucified in the earth. The Life came down, that He might be slain; the Bread came down, that He might hunger; the Way came down, that life might be wearied in the way; the Fountain came down, that He might thirst; and do you refuse to labour? 'Seek not your own.' Have charity, preach the truth; so shall you come to eternity, where you shall find security."

Augustine, Sermon 28.6. So always must we bring down glory from the mountain through our service in the world.

Holy Transfiguration

We did not follow cleverly invented stories
when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,
but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
For he received honor and glory from God the Father
when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory,
saying, "This is my Son, whom I love;
with him I am well pleased."
We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven
when we were with him on the sacred mountain.

The image above is, of course, Fra Angelico's Transfiguration.

Literary Sketch

This is a very well-written post. It reminds me, in a general way, of Nathaniel Hawthorne's sketches. For an example, see "A Night Scene" here. The sketch is a literary genre that should be appreciated more than it usually is. If blogging brings it back, it thereby proves its worth a thousandfold. The reason, of course, that sketches fell so wholly out of favor -- almost no one writes them anymore -- is that it is a non-narrative genre -- any narration is incidental and usually only part of the frame, although of course in biographical sketches it occupies a larger place. It is an evocative description of the impressions of a mind of sensibility -- in effect, a sketch of mundane life -- and it so happens that many people find extended description in literary prose boring, having precious little sensibility. This, I am convinced, ranks almost up there with our distaste for didactic poetry as the most serious aesthetic flaw in the mind of the age; and that is saying quite a bit. It is possible to err in the opposite direction; but there are very few Mariannes left in the world, and, unfortunately, that lack is not even made up by a surplus of Elinors.

The basic point of a literary sketch is, in the words of Washington Irving, to observe "with the sauntering gaze with which humble lovers of the picturesque stroll from the window of one print shop to another, caught sometimes by the delineations of beauty, sometimes by the distortions of caricature, and sometimes by the loveliness of landscape." The writer of sketches is the literary equivalent of an artist on the Grand Tour (whether amateur or professional, it does not matter) drawing sketches of ruins, sculptures, people, and the like -- things that are 'picturesque', i.e., things he or she comes across accidentally or quasi-accidentally that admit of being observed with a leisurely and reflective eye and given a description evocative to those with sensibility. It is not a moralistic genre, but, as can be seen in some of Dickens's sketches, it can be designed to evoke thoughts about virtue or judgment or (as in Jack's sketch at the link) death. In the hands of a master it can be quite imaginative; one of Dickens's most famous sketches, and, indeed, one of the most famous literary sketches ever, is "Meditations in Monmouth Street," in which Dickens describes the clothes in the window of a secondhand store by imagining that they all belonged to one man, and reading that man's story off of them. Of course, this is a descriptive device; it is highly unlikely that the clothes all belonged to one man. But by treating them as if they did, Dickens is able to bring each suit into vivid outline. It is not a satirical genre, but a master writer of sketches can make the description evocative of a satirical, cynical, or ironic view of the world; some of Thackeray's sketches are notably good specimens of this. And it is not a fantastic genre, but someone like Hawthorne can (as in "A Night Scene") make the description evoke the wildest fantasies. If the picture is composed properly, the ordinary matter of life can intimate the highest and lowest things, evoke the fullest range of human sentiment and idea. Mundane things are shown to be, as Dickens's Boz puts it, "inexhaustible food for speculation," and we begin to see the world with new eyes.

Thrice Returning Echoes

Te Deum

Thee, Sovereign God, our grateful accents praise;
We own thee Lord, and bless thy wondrous ways;
To thee, Eternal Father, earth's whole frame
With loudest trumpets sounds immortal fame.
Lord God of Hosts! For thee the heavenly powers
With sounding anthems fill the vaulted towers.
Thy Cherubims thrice Holy, Holy, Holy cry;
Thrice Holy, all the Seraphims reply,
and thrice returning echoes endless songs supply.
Both heaven and earth they majesty display;
They owe their beauty to thy glorious ray.
They praises fill the loud apostles' quire:
The train of prophets in the song conspire.
Legions of Martyrs in the chorus shine,
And vocal blood with vocal music join.
By these thy Church, inspired by heavenly art,
Around the world maintains a second part,
And tunes her sweetest notes, O God, to thee,
The Father of unbounded majesty;
The Son adored co-partner of thy seat,
And equal everlasting Paraclete.
Thou King of Glory, Christ, of the Most High
Thou co-eternal Filial Deity;
Thou who, to save the world's impending doom,
Vouchsafedst to dwell within a Virgin's womb;
Old tyrant Death disarmed, before thee flew
The bolts of heaven, and back the foldings drew,
To give access, and make thy faithful way;
From God's right hand thy filial beams display.
Thou art to judge the living and the dead;
Then spare the souls for whom thy veins have bled.
O take us up amongs thy blessed above,
To share with them thy everlasting love.
Preserve, O Lord! thy people, and enhance
Thy blessing on thine own inheritance.
For ever raise their hearts, and rule their ways,
Each day we bless thee, and proclaim they praise;
No age shall fail to celebrate thy name,
No hour neglect thy everlasting fame.
Preserve our souls, O Lord, this day from ill;
Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy still:
As we have hoped, do thou reward our pain;
We've hoped in thee, let not our hope be vain.

This is John Dryden's free rendering into verse of the ancient hymn, Te Deum Laudamus. Dryden's poem is sometimes found in hymnals using the first line as its title.

(I think this will be the first in a series of posts on hymns by great and well-known poets.)

LMS, Spurzheim, Brown

In the journals of Amelia Opie, as found in the Memorials of the Life of Amelia Opie, we have an interesting account of Lady Mary Shepherd that is worth noting. She attended a dinner party that Lady Mary also attended, and later noted a philosophical debate that had arisen:

I did contrive to say civil things to Dr. Brown; but the wonder of the crowd, and the persons who sucked us all in turn into their vortex, were Professor Spurzheim and Lady M. Shepherd. Her ladyship fairly threw down the gauntlet, and was as luminous, as deep, as clever in her observations and questions, and in her display of previous knowledge of Gall's theory and Hartley's, as any professor could have been, and convinced me, at least, that when Mr. Tierney had said, of Lady Mary, she was almost the best metaphysician he ever knew, and the most logical woman, by far, he ever met with, he was probably right. The professor looked alarmed, and put on his pins; and Lady Mary began her dialogue at ten, and it was not over at a little past twelve.

Dr. Brown listened occasionally, and with an anatomizing eye, for he does not like literary women; therefore a woman, entering his own arena, must have called forth all his reviewer bitterness. L. M. had assured Dr. B. our parties were mixed ones, and nothing like science or learning displayed; and on his first introduction he meets with a scene like this! (pp. 150-151)

This event occurred in late May of 1814, so Lady Mary was about twenty-seven at the time. The "Dr. Brown" is Thomas Brown; as Opie says of him, he is "the Dr. Brown, professor and lecturer on moral philosophy, the successor of Dugald Stewart, the Edinburgh Reviewer" (p. 150). Brown's best-known philosophical work is his Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect, a defense of Hume. Lady Mary criticizes this work at great length in her An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect, which is a brilliant attack on all Humean theories of causation. The "Professor Spurzheim" is Johann Spurzheim, the phrenologist, a former associate of Gall's who was primarily responsible for popularizing him, and, indeed, coined the word 'phrenology'. Shepherd no doubt raised more than a few serious questions about it.

When Opie saw Lady Mary next she was self-conscious about it: "She was nervous about her display on Sunday last; but I assured her she was thought to talk well, though I could have added, but not by Dr. Brown" (p. 152).

Online Resources

C. L. Brightwell, ed., Memorials of the Life of Amelia Opie
Thomas Brown, Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect
Lady Mary Shepherd, An Essay upon the Relation of Cause and Effect
Johann Spurzheim, A View of the Elementary Principles of Education

[Cross-posted at Houyhnhnm Land]

Henri Gouhier on the Two Worlds of Ideas

The "ideas" of a philosopher belong to two worlds. There are those that are the product of reflection; they have been mulled over at leisure, purified by analysis, and joined together into a system, a logical poem that sings the triumph of reason when, freed of time, it was able to attend to eternal things. But underneath these clear ideas, there are those that participate in that other system that is the living person; these are rather the tendencies to concepts; they have not yet been collected into a definition, and they extend into each other, a landscape without lines like the colors of heaven; they live in those regions of the soul where heredity, education, social influences and other fay folk sow the seeds that will later develop into passions, into beliefs, into worries, without it being possible for us to follow the mysterious labor of their development. Interior temple where all the gods have their altar, it is from there that both cries of revolt and words of love escape; it is there that systems plunge their roots, for it is there where questions are perhaps posed and where certainly solutions are formulated. The relations of reason and faith, above all else, belong to this philosophical subconscious; nobody ever believed that it could be found at the conclusion of a syllogism; it is lived before being thought and it is thought all the more strongly as it is lived with more fervor.

Henri Gouhier, La vocation de Malebranche, J. Vrin (Paris: 1926) pp. 135-136. My translation.

Notable Linkables

* Karen Marie Knapp died in her sleep on August 1; blogging at From the Anchor Hold, she was a staple of the blogosphere. She first posted May 30, 2002; her last was July 20, 2007. Her archives are well worth browsing. God bless her; and may she remember us in her prayers.

* Common-place has an article on the only still-intact residence of Benjamin Franklin: the house he lived in on Craven Street when he was in London representing the Pennsylvania Assembly. It stands near Charing Cross Station, and has recently been renovated (its status as intact had recently become a bit precarious).

* Under Hill by Gene Wolfe is a fun little short story. (ht: CC)

* Mr. H has pictures from the first Jesuit emblem-book.

* Those interested in the Reformed view of justification should take Rebecca's quiz; it's a quick tour of the Westminster Confession on the subject. She gives and discusses the answers at length here, here, here, and here.

* Mike Wallace's 1959 interview with Ayn Rand: Part I, Part II, Part III. (Ht: MP)

* An interesting mistranslation: The "Aggressive House Spider", also known as the Hobo spider, is actually fairly nonaggressive. So why the name? It appears to be a misunderstandng of the Latin name, Tegenaria agrestis. A large number of spiders of the Tegenaria genus (the mat weavers) are common and well-known house spiders, so the genus is often treated as a genus of house spiders. But the Hobo spider is not a true house spider; it's an outdoor spider. That is, in fact, where the Latin name comes from: agrestis means 'rural' or 'pertaining to the fields'; in Western Europe, its indigenous habitat, it sticks to fields far from human habitation. (In the Northwest U.S., where it was transplanted, it has tended to encroach on human territory much more often, although this may be changing due to increasing competition from other spider species.) But someone at some point misunderstood 'agrestis' to mean 'aggressive', and so we have a spider that's agrestis (and thus not a house spider) called 'the Aggressive House Spider'. You can find information on hobo spiders here.

* Early Christian Writings has an E-Catena; an excellent resource for understanding how the Church Fathers read the New Testament.

* Some delightful logic books online: Lewis Carroll's The Game of Logic.
Alfred James Swinburne's Picture Logic.
Martin Gardner's Logic Machines and Diagrams
D. P. Chase's A First Logic Book
Richard Whately's Easy Lessons on Reasoning

For a more advanced inquirer, John Venn's Symbolic Logic is a good discussion of Boolean logic, while his The Logic of Chance is still one of the best accounts of probability in frequentist terms. De Morgan's Syllabus of a Proposed System of Logic is worth reading, as is his Formal Logic. Boole's The Mathematical Analysis of Logic also has much food for thought.

Rowling and Pullman

Horace Jeffery Hodges looks at Christian echoes in the Harry Potter books. (See here as well.) I had missed the "great silver cross". One of the key points of the cemetery, though, I take it, is that Voldemort tries to lay up his treasures on earth (the Horcruxes), where, of course, thief can steal, in order to destroy death; but those who oppose him treasure friendship which (as we see in the William Penn quote at the front of the book) is immortality before "that which is omnipresent" and therefore makes possible the triumph of love over death.

I think Hodges is right, incidentally, about Rowling vs. Pullman. Pullman is very clearly the better stylist; Rowling is at best inconsistent. But Rowling has far and away the better craft: Pullman is at least as inconsistent in his craft as Rowling is in her style. There's nothing wrong with that, since both are good to have, and few manage to be consistently excellent in both, particularly over several books. There's no question that Pullman is a skilled writer worth reading. But I think in the end it means that Rowling almost always hits her marks whereas Pullman hits nothing. Rita Skeeter is finely crafted to be a commentary on journalism, to take one small example of which the books have many; but nothing in Pullman's story is like this. Pullman's Magisterium is nothing like a Church, being utterly insane, and therefore cannot pull off the intended commentary on churches in general as things that "control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling"; we learn nothing about good or evil from Lyra and Will, and certainly not from the death of God, which makes no narrative sense. Part of that is due to the fact that Pullman has little more than a basic sense of narrative himself; it's why he subscribes to Blake's notion that the imaginative sympathy in Paradise Lost is with Satan, despite the fact that virtually everything in the poem is constructed so as to show that Satan is a liar and the Father of lies, who cannot even talk to himself without obviously lying, and sometimes contradicting himself, in an attempt to make himself seem bigger and more important than he is. Part of it is perhaps that Pullman can't outmaneuver Milton, for all he makes a valiant attempt. In Paradise Lost, Satan, too, is chiefly a literary stylist; it is God who has the skill of a storyteller. When Milton is the major influence, a story from the Devil's point of view will inevitably be stronger on style than storycraft. God, being Almighty, can let the tale unfold, unworried about the outcome, but for Satan to be the victor in a battle against God, the story has to be rigged, and Pullman manifestly does rig it.

But in Pullman we get a very rich style, Miltonic and at least more-or-less consistent, full of rich description and beauty. Rowling's not bad at it, but her style is far simpler and considerably less consistent. Similarly, Pullman's not horrible at storytelling -- we do get genuinely interesting bits of storyline -- but he's not nearly as consistent at it, or as frankly clever with it, as Rowling is. Rowling may seem simplistic to the superficial reader, but she can be beautifully subtle. As an example, most readers come away thinking Harry destroyed two Horcruxes. But he didn't; he only destroyed one Horcrux himself. Someone else destroyed the other one that most people attribute to him -- and it's the only person who really could have, the most narratively appropriate person possible, so that, setting aside the Horcrux destroyed by accident (but, notably, by the ones most closely associated with the room in which it was done) each Horcrux was destroyed by one of the six people in the whole world that the whole preceding storyline had shown to be the most dangerous to Voldemort. And the fact that she recognized the suitability of one of those six, and that that one had to be that one, was not just a good sense of narrative, but a sheer masterstroke of storycraft. Pullman has some beautiful subtle descriptions, but nothing remotely like that. People often make jokes about Pullman's plotting; no one could honestly do the same with Rowling.

Political Discourse and Quotation

Ralph Luker has a great post commenting on some recent commentary on a speech by Obama:

Great rhetoric works best when it is not innovative, but summons us to the best that is already latent in our public memory.

One might also add to the examples Ralph gives Lincoln's Second Inaugural -- which clearly quotes Mt. 18:7 and Ps. 19:9 and alludes to Gen. 3:19 (the particular form the allusion takes shows that Lincoln is actually alluding to a previous speech in which he alluded to Gen. 3:19) and Mt. 7:1. The 'charity towards all' part is certainly derived from elsewhere, although it's sufficiently widespread at the time that a particular source might not be discoverable (but its use here is very probably influenced by 1 Peter 4:8-9; note the point about charity covering a multitude of sins). The mention of the soldier's widow and orphan taps into a long tradition of prophetic and ministerial discourse about caring for the widows and the fatherless (cf. Zech 7:10, James 1:27) that would have been recognized. Nonpartisan, to whom Ralph is responding, makes clear in the comments that Scriptural quotations are being set aside for the purpose of that argument, which focuses on quotation from the speech of other politicians; that, no doubt, is why Kennedy's "Ask Not" speech made it onto the list, since Kennedy very explicitly quotes Isaiah 58:6 and Romans 12:12. So Ralph's point needn't be seen as problematic for Nonpartisan.

But the point is important, I think, and there is an additional speech explicitly mentioned by Nonpartisan that fits it very well. Washington's Farewell Address may have no direct quotes, but it has some very clear allusions. The most obvious is the claim that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government; the formulation of the maxim in terms of the 'springs of government is due to Montesquieu (The Spirit of the Laws, Book III), and since Montesuieu is widely read, it is a common claim. We find Robespierre, for instance, using very similar words just two years before (although he confines the maxim to times of peace; in times of revolution, he says, you need virtue and terror, which is a somewhat different twist). It's not a direct quotation of Montesequieu; but it's very, very close to being one.

It makes me wonder, though, if the problem is not originality or quotation of people who are effectively equals or even inferiors, as Nonpartisan suggests, but the fact that we have no political theorists worth quoting. You can build a government on Montesquieu; in the eighteenth century you could hardly do better. Even now, the primary difficulty with quoting him is just that he's over two hundred years old and no longer read by everyone interested in politics. Due to the fact that it has ongoing relevance due to reinterpretation, preaching, and the like, you can do much the same with the Bible; you have to select with good sense and good art, but you can tap into some powerful political thought by quoting the Bible. (MLK, Jr. is an excellent example of this; his task in this was made easier in part by the Social Gospel and political theological work with which he was very familiar and in part by the widespread use of the pulpit as a point from which society and sometimes government might be thoroughly critiqued.) But, honestly, what do we twenty-first century Americans have to build on? The Bible still has some residual force, perhaps; but setting that aside (and it is clear that, for a number of reasons, it would only take you so far these days, anyway) we really don't have any discourse you can build a government on. That takes both philosophy and poetry, and our talk about government has had precious little of either for a long time. And that's what's missing, I think.

Three Poem Re-Drafts

Matutinal

In the silent distance I can hear
the tumult of the dogs a-glow;
they bound on clouds and bay.
A shaft shoots swiftly forth
to strike the fleeing beast;
it staggers, stumbles, falls.
The sun leaps up and in smooth stroke
slits the throat of darkness.

The Dragons

The dragons are restless today;
they stir up hurricane and whirlwind,
puff forests to ash,
melt stone to rivers.

It must be mating day;
they sing with low trumpet-calls,
gather together and quarrel,
do aerial combat
and other things.

Once a century they come together
to multiply,
a fruitful congregation;
but with all these steel-clad knights
who rescue stupid damsels
(the kind who never learned how
to avoid the fiery dragons)--
they'll soon be extinct.

Then no one will know what it's like
to live in a world with dragons.
Imaginations will fail,
for a dragon is a sublimity
men and women cannot imagine.

Treasury

A cathedral hewn of a single stone
holds a golden cross and an ancient throne
where the glory sat above the cherubim
in the holiest holy.

The Ge'ez prayers of an ancient rite
softly rise into velvet night
as Ezana's children pray by the wall
of the holiest holy.

I dreamed of Adsum where angels rest
on every tabot and stars are guest
at revels of hope and undying light
near the holiest holy.

Maryam Ts'iyon walks a path alone
through the cherubim beneath the throne
of the Highest High with His glorious gift,
the holiest of holies.

Mixtape

A tiny taste of what I've been listening to lately....

* Johnny Cash: Ghost Riders in the Sky (originally performed by Stan Jones)

* The Who: Behind Blue Eyes

* Show of Hands: Roots

* Ella Fitzgerald: Summertime

* Charles Trénet: La mer

* Clannad: Theme from "Harry's Game"

* Sarah Brightman: Scarborough Fair

* Queen: I Want It All

* Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds: Red Right Hand

* Leonard Cohen: Dance Me to the End of Love

* The Clash: I Fought the Law (originally performed by Sonny Curtis and the Crickets)

* America: Inspector Mills

* Mocedades: Eres Tu

* Ides of March: Vehicle

* Wailin' Jennys: The Parting Glass

Supposition Theory

From Chapter X of Michael Flynn's Eifelheim:

I was teaching still at the Albert-Louis, and Tom sent me an e-mail asking me the manorial records for Oberhochwald to find. These were supposed to be in our University collection. I replied, Was that a personal supposition, a material supposition, or a simple supposition? And Tom responded <LOL?> because he did not understand the joke. He supplied a list of key words and a request to search our manuscripts and incunabula for references pertaining to Oberhochwald, which I suppose was fit punishment for my attempt at medieval humor. Supposition theory is not much funny, especially as we don't really know what they meant by it all.

I don't think it's quite correct to say that "we don't really know what they meant by it all" (it's not like the theory of supposition is as obscure to us as, say, the theory of obligationes), but there is indeed some dispute about it. The standard view is that supposition theory is a theory of reference. That this is the standard view is in great measure due to Peter Geach. Gyula Klima has done some interesting work showing that one can actually get pretty far with the standard view; this paper (PDF) gives some idea of it. Catarina Dutilh Novaes, however, has written some interesting and excellent papers arguing that the standard view is somewhat off, and that supposition theory should be seen as an apparatus for the semantic analysis of sentences, a means by which one might uncover ambiguities and clarify them. This one (PDF) is a good place to start in order to get the gist of her argument.

'It's Against My Religion.'

Orac notes this story about parents increasingly claiming religious exemption to prevent their children from being vaccinated. He then says,

The pernicious effect of religion here is more than just on the children of parents who follow specific religions that may find vaccines objectionable (which, by the way are few in number). In this case, religion gives cover to parents who just don't want to vaccinate because of pseudoscientific fear-mongering or "philosophy." Undue respect for religious beliefs that clash with the scientifically proven ability of vaccines to prevent disease safely enables these parents to easily bypass vaccination laws. With an increasing number of states providing more and more religious and "philosophical" exemptions to vaccines, I fear that it will only be a matter of time before diseases once thought vanquished return in a big way on these shores.

Now, Orac is a doctor -- a surgical oncologist, if I remember correctly -- so it is not the least surprising that he gets worked up about this, and quite rightly, too. But I don't think this is quite the right way to put it. In part this is because 'giving cover to liars' is not a pernicious effect of anything; quacks appeal to science as a cover for their cons; it does not follow that quackery is a pernicious effect of science. As Orac notes, in twenty states in the U.S. you don't even need a medical or religious reason to get an exemption; a 'philosophical one' will do. This is not a case of philosophy having a pernicious effect of giving cover to antivaccination; it is a case of a law written so that a 'philosophical exemption' just becomes an exemption anyone can get without having to do anything to prove that they really have a serious philosophical reason for not vaccinating their children. The primary problem in these religious cases is clearly that there is no system of accountability in place to guarantee that religious exemptions serve the function of protecting religious freedom. As Orac notes, very few religious groups actually have an anti-vaccination stance; it has been noted in a number of surveys that most religious groups tend to be favorable toward vaccination, with Church of Christ Scientist being the major exception. Moreover, it is incorrect to say that the religious beliefs "clash" with the scientifically proven abilities of vaccines; unless the religious beliefs are that the vaccines don't work, which is also going to be rare, rather than (say) some view about what is required for the integrity of the body, there is no clash. Medical science is an instrumental discipline, not a normative one; it can't "clash" with a norm, however bad for health that norm may be. What is at stake here is a clash between personal moral opinion -- a community opinion in the rare genuine case of religious exemption, like that of the Christian Scientists -- and the general political and moral interest in a healthy populace.