Saturday, January 21, 2012
Notable and Noted Links
* The Atlantic has an interesting interview with Tim Maudlin on philosophy of physics.
* Bernard Yack reviews Virtue and Politics, edited by Blackledge and Knight, and discusses the relationship between MacIntyre's current Aristotelianism and his Marxist background.
* I was hoping to have something to say about John Wilkins's recent post on what he calls the Shandyan dilemma for historical disciplines. I'm not sure I actually have enough well-formed ideas to say anything, but the post is definitely worth reading.
* I was impressed by the post on Fact and Value in Lawrence Solum's legal theory lexicon series -- in a short space and simple language, he manages to locate the problem's relation to Hume's famous ought/is passage, and yet to avoid virtually all serious interpretive mistakes. This is no mean feat -- there's a lot of confused and confusing discussion of the subject. There are things I would say slightly differently, but, again, I was impressed; it takes considerable powers of summarization and clear thinking to write something this good at this level without getting tangled up.
* I loved this post at "Obliscent" : The Adventures of Magical Realist Sherlock Holmes: A Scandal In Colombia.
* Reformed philosopher Michael Sudduth has converted to Hinduism -- Vaishnava Vedanta, to be exact. As Bill Vallicella notes, it's a bit of a surprise, although people have been noticing Sudduth's extensive engagement with Hindu ideas for some time now. The turning point was apparently a religious experience of Krishna. I suppose a possible good consequence of this is that we may get more analytic discussions of Vaishnavism, which I think is actually needed -- analytic philosophers of religion tend to walk a tight treadmill of topics despite the fact that there are many issues that need to be clarified, whether for exposition, defense, or refutation, and getting them to look around will inevitably have some benefits. But judging from his conversion testimony, I suspect that we will have to wait a bit for anything along these lines from Sudduth; the convert's warm glow is not always the best environment for cool reasoning.
* John Corvino has a post at the Independent Gay Forum arguing that it is hypocritical (particularly for Catholics, I think, is the subtext, but it is not explicitly stated) to combine easy tolerance for remarriage after divorce with (at least certain kinds of) arguments against homosexual marriage. It's a very interesting argument, although Corvino doesn't develop it with proper care. There's some good discussion at the Volokh Conspiracy.
* Michael Flynn on Why the Future Never Gets the SF Right.
ADDED LATER
* Eric Schliesser has a post on shared myths among analytic philosophers; this is something I've always said, so I'll definitely have to check out the Candlish book that he mentions.
* Kenny Pearce discusses William King on free will
* Bernard Yack reviews Virtue and Politics, edited by Blackledge and Knight, and discusses the relationship between MacIntyre's current Aristotelianism and his Marxist background.
* I was hoping to have something to say about John Wilkins's recent post on what he calls the Shandyan dilemma for historical disciplines. I'm not sure I actually have enough well-formed ideas to say anything, but the post is definitely worth reading.
* I was impressed by the post on Fact and Value in Lawrence Solum's legal theory lexicon series -- in a short space and simple language, he manages to locate the problem's relation to Hume's famous ought/is passage, and yet to avoid virtually all serious interpretive mistakes. This is no mean feat -- there's a lot of confused and confusing discussion of the subject. There are things I would say slightly differently, but, again, I was impressed; it takes considerable powers of summarization and clear thinking to write something this good at this level without getting tangled up.
* I loved this post at "Obliscent" : The Adventures of Magical Realist Sherlock Holmes: A Scandal In Colombia.
* Reformed philosopher Michael Sudduth has converted to Hinduism -- Vaishnava Vedanta, to be exact. As Bill Vallicella notes, it's a bit of a surprise, although people have been noticing Sudduth's extensive engagement with Hindu ideas for some time now. The turning point was apparently a religious experience of Krishna. I suppose a possible good consequence of this is that we may get more analytic discussions of Vaishnavism, which I think is actually needed -- analytic philosophers of religion tend to walk a tight treadmill of topics despite the fact that there are many issues that need to be clarified, whether for exposition, defense, or refutation, and getting them to look around will inevitably have some benefits. But judging from his conversion testimony, I suspect that we will have to wait a bit for anything along these lines from Sudduth; the convert's warm glow is not always the best environment for cool reasoning.
* John Corvino has a post at the Independent Gay Forum arguing that it is hypocritical (particularly for Catholics, I think, is the subtext, but it is not explicitly stated) to combine easy tolerance for remarriage after divorce with (at least certain kinds of) arguments against homosexual marriage. It's a very interesting argument, although Corvino doesn't develop it with proper care. There's some good discussion at the Volokh Conspiracy.
* Michael Flynn on Why the Future Never Gets the SF Right.
ADDED LATER
* Eric Schliesser has a post on shared myths among analytic philosophers; this is something I've always said, so I'll definitely have to check out the Candlish book that he mentions.
* Kenny Pearce discusses William King on free will
128 Ways of Being Wretched
Rosmini, in Society and Its Purpose, Book IV, proposes an exact rundown of all the ways in which human beings can make themselves unhappy; according to him, there are exactly one hundred twenty-eight ways in which we frustrate ourselves. He gives a brief summary in chapter 27:
Each of the 128 ways listed is a way in which merely apparent good can be substituted for actual good, in which we hope to get unbounded good from necessarily finite goods; he discussed these in prior chapters. Actually, Rosmini goes on to add a 129th; but this is a sort of union of all the 128 ways, and thus, as Rosmini puts it, is itself a moral dementia, pure unadulterated pride; in another of Rosmini's phrases, it contains diabolical grandeur, in which put ourselves in the place of God. I stick with the 128 number for convenience, because, as Rosmini further goes on to point out, none of the ways of being unhappy are inconsistent with any of the others, so the actual number of ways of being unhappy is every possible combination of the 128, and the 129th is only one of those combinations. And even this is not enough to map out all possible human unhappiness, because these are only the specifically distinct capacities for unhappiness; each one of these capacities of misery can be exercised in varying degrees.
So now you know. Actually, it's an interesting approach; what Rosmini is trying to do is to posit a manifold of possible states of human life, both morally successful and morally unsuccessful, so that in the formation and governance of a society of people we will be able to assess the quality of the society by how it helps people navigate this manifold.
We see, therefore, that the errors which the practical reason can make about unhappiness, and the various kinds of illusory capacities which continually extend and aggravate the human spirit as they lead it to a state which can only be called moral madness, are one hundred and twenty-eight.
Physical pleasure has one unsatisfiable capacity whenever the pleasure sought is not real and determined, but conceived in general.
Wealth has two unsatisfiable capacities; the aim is either wealth in general, or wealth sought for the sake of pleasure in general.
Power has four unsatisfiable capacities; the aim is either power in general for its own sake, or for pleasure in general, or for wealth which again, as we have said, forms an undetermined object whether sought for itself or as a means of obtaining pleasure in general.
Glory has fifty-six capacities, all of them unsatisfiable of their own nature. I have distinguished seven kinds of glory, each of which can be desired 1. for itself, or 2. as a means for obtaining physical pleasure, which has only one abstract concept, or 3. for the sake of obtaining wealth, which admits two abstract concepts, or 4. for the sake of obtaining power, which admits of four abstract concepts under which it is presented to our appetite as an abstract, chimerical object.
Finally, sixty-five capacities can be listed in knowledge. All of these are unsatisfiable, extend indefinitely in human beings and can never be filled. They are present 1. when pleasure in general is sought in knowledge; 2. when indefinite richness of mind is sought. Knowledge, considered as enrichment of mind, can then be desired for itself, or as a means to pleasure, or power, or wealth, or glory. As we saw, pleasure opens the gate to error in the intellect and waywardness of heart in one way, wealth in two, power in four and glory in fifty-six ways. All these ways constitute the same number of illusory, indefinite ends for which knowledge can serve as means.
Added together, all these unsatisfiable capacities, each specifically different from the others, is found to number one hundred and twenty-eight. This is the vast labyrinth in which the hearts of men and women wander endlessly and lose themselves.
Each of the 128 ways listed is a way in which merely apparent good can be substituted for actual good, in which we hope to get unbounded good from necessarily finite goods; he discussed these in prior chapters. Actually, Rosmini goes on to add a 129th; but this is a sort of union of all the 128 ways, and thus, as Rosmini puts it, is itself a moral dementia, pure unadulterated pride; in another of Rosmini's phrases, it contains diabolical grandeur, in which put ourselves in the place of God. I stick with the 128 number for convenience, because, as Rosmini further goes on to point out, none of the ways of being unhappy are inconsistent with any of the others, so the actual number of ways of being unhappy is every possible combination of the 128, and the 129th is only one of those combinations. And even this is not enough to map out all possible human unhappiness, because these are only the specifically distinct capacities for unhappiness; each one of these capacities of misery can be exercised in varying degrees.
So now you know. Actually, it's an interesting approach; what Rosmini is trying to do is to posit a manifold of possible states of human life, both morally successful and morally unsuccessful, so that in the formation and governance of a society of people we will be able to assess the quality of the society by how it helps people navigate this manifold.
Friday, January 20, 2012
Triage
There has been some discussion of the recent case in which the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia was accused of denying a three-year-old girl a kidney transplant solely on the basis of mental retardation. (The Hospital has apologized, and the parents have since suggested that it was perhaps merely one doctor rather than the hospital as a whole.) One thing I have noticed is that several people have raised the issue of triage as a defense of the original decision; some of these are interesting arguments, but unfortunately most of these appeals to triage principles don't show an understanding of what triage actually is.
The entire point of triage is that only need is considered. Triage systems were originally developed in a military context when field doctors started giving medical treatment not on the basis of rank but on the basis of need, as determined by purely medical criteria. This is what genuine triage is: it is a system, operating under a scarcity of resources significant enough to require careful discrimination of who actually receives those resources (most clearly in emergency or disaster, but resources do not necessarily have to be anywhere near that scarce to become an issue), where distribution of those resources is done purely on the basis of actual medical need according to established principles that only consider medical issues. Remember, it has always been the case that doctors have had to make hard choices based on scarce resources. Actual triage systems only developed when the principles governing those choices were no longer official rank, social status, subjective assessment, or any other nonmedical criterion. We can call those other resource-management systems 'triage' in a loose sense, but they are radically different for moral purposes, and cannot all be lumped together as if the justification for one were justification for another. Just as genuine triage management cannot, by its nature, be indiscriminate in the use of medical resources, so it cannot, by its nature, take into account anything other than medical need. And precisely the reason why triage is an important ethical as well as medical concept is that it operates in conditions of necessity according to principles wholly geared to dealing with the necessity; it's the medical necessity, and the proportion of means to the end of dealing with that particular necessity, that justifies triage decisions.
Precisely one of the worries in this case -- and whether it is right or not, the issue needs to be taken seriously -- is that we here have a case in which the discriminatory principles were not purely concerned with medical need, but involved making subjective or merely pseudo-objective judgments about something like future quality of life. If this were in fact true, it would mean that the system was not a genuine triage system, and that triage principles could not justify the action. Mere scarcity of resources and the need to make hard decisions is not enough; and you can only defend an action on the basis of triage principles if the principles involved were real triage principles. This is something that requires investigation, and cannot be merely assumed.
The entire point of triage is that only need is considered. Triage systems were originally developed in a military context when field doctors started giving medical treatment not on the basis of rank but on the basis of need, as determined by purely medical criteria. This is what genuine triage is: it is a system, operating under a scarcity of resources significant enough to require careful discrimination of who actually receives those resources (most clearly in emergency or disaster, but resources do not necessarily have to be anywhere near that scarce to become an issue), where distribution of those resources is done purely on the basis of actual medical need according to established principles that only consider medical issues. Remember, it has always been the case that doctors have had to make hard choices based on scarce resources. Actual triage systems only developed when the principles governing those choices were no longer official rank, social status, subjective assessment, or any other nonmedical criterion. We can call those other resource-management systems 'triage' in a loose sense, but they are radically different for moral purposes, and cannot all be lumped together as if the justification for one were justification for another. Just as genuine triage management cannot, by its nature, be indiscriminate in the use of medical resources, so it cannot, by its nature, take into account anything other than medical need. And precisely the reason why triage is an important ethical as well as medical concept is that it operates in conditions of necessity according to principles wholly geared to dealing with the necessity; it's the medical necessity, and the proportion of means to the end of dealing with that particular necessity, that justifies triage decisions.
Precisely one of the worries in this case -- and whether it is right or not, the issue needs to be taken seriously -- is that we here have a case in which the discriminatory principles were not purely concerned with medical need, but involved making subjective or merely pseudo-objective judgments about something like future quality of life. If this were in fact true, it would mean that the system was not a genuine triage system, and that triage principles could not justify the action. Mere scarcity of resources and the need to make hard decisions is not enough; and you can only defend an action on the basis of triage principles if the principles involved were real triage principles. This is something that requires investigation, and cannot be merely assumed.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
2012 Edge Question
The 2012 Edge Question is What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation? The answers to Edge Questions are often a mixed bag at best, althought the 2011 one ("What scientific concept would improve everybody's cognitive toolkit?") actually had a lot of good answers. This year, I think, is one of the worst; most of the answers are not very good. For one thing, many of the answers seem to have weird assumptions about what an explanation is; they often propose something that, however useful, wouldn't be useful as an explanation at all (e.g., purely descriptive models, redescriptions of the explanandum, heuristics, practical arguments, metaphors, existence or nonexistence proofs for symptoms or correlations, and so forth). And, further, it seems clear that many of these people are simply unable to convey coherently what they mean by calling something deep, elegant, or beautiful, much less able to explain what it is about an explanation that makes it any of these things.
There are a handful of answers that are interesting, mostly from a few of the physicists. Dawkins's, I think, was actually the most interesting proposal; most of the others, at least the others that could be seriously considered as explanations of some kind and whose depth, elegance, or beauty was given an explanation, were rather trite examples of the sort you would expect -- not necessarily wrong, but also not necessarily indicative of having put any serious thought into the question.
There are a handful of answers that are interesting, mostly from a few of the physicists. Dawkins's, I think, was actually the most interesting proposal; most of the others, at least the others that could be seriously considered as explanations of some kind and whose depth, elegance, or beauty was given an explanation, were rather trite examples of the sort you would expect -- not necessarily wrong, but also not necessarily indicative of having put any serious thought into the question.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
A New Poem Draft
Almost Half in Love
The rain on the eaves in the moonlight
was sparkling like pure diamond; it was so bright
that our eyes could hardly tell that it was midnight
and I was almost half in love.
Your hand was on my arm; it felt so nice
that I wouldn't have removed it for the world's price
and your eyes in light of moon had me so enticed
that I was almost half in love.
The memories of that night through each life-phase
have mingled with the ones in which we parted ways;
but who could ever lose the lessons of those old days
when we were almost half in love?
The rain on the eaves in the moonlight
was sparkling like pure diamond; it was so bright
that our eyes could hardly tell that it was midnight
and I was almost half in love.
Your hand was on my arm; it felt so nice
that I wouldn't have removed it for the world's price
and your eyes in light of moon had me so enticed
that I was almost half in love.
The memories of that night through each life-phase
have mingled with the ones in which we parted ways;
but who could ever lose the lessons of those old days
when we were almost half in love?
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