Friday, February 04, 2011
Muslims, Muslims Everywhere
Al Qaeda Populating U.S. With Peaceful 'Decoy Muslims'
It's true; some of them are so friendly you could easily become friends with them.
I also need to get a job as a pundit for the Concurrence Round Table.
A World Full of Gods: Chapter One
It has been noted over and over again that contemporary philosophy of religion is a bit one-note. It's actually gotten much better over the past fifteen years or so, but one still gets a real sense, when one reads much in the field, that it walks a relatively tiny treadmill of problems that are treated in a relatively isolated fashion. As I say, people have noted this quite often, but philosophers noting things and philosophers doing much about it are quite different things.
John Michael Greer's A World Full of Gods is an interesting attempt to do something about it. Greer is a modern Pagan associated with the contemporary Druidic movement. His goal in the book is to make a case for greater attention to polytheism and, since this is philosophy, polytheistic arguments. Greer's certainly right about that, and I think the book does touch on several reasons for thinking there is a real need to do so. I don't think the book is entirely successful in other ways, chiefly because Greer tries to do too much. But there is much that is interesting in the book, and here and there I will be posting on things Greer discusses.
Chapter One gives a basic case for why philosophers of religion should not uncritically accept the "monotheistic assumption": first, that there are still a great many polytheists in the world, and in the West they have become more visible than they have been in previous generations; second, that at least some philosophical work, albeit very scattered, has already been done, and this work shows that there are genuinely interesting philosophical issues to be discussed when it comes to polytheism. On the basis of an article by George Mavrodes, Greer characterizes polytheism as having the following features:
(1) realism about the divine: the gods are taken to be real and not figments of imagination or hypothetical constructs;
(2) pure descriptivism about the term 'god': the term 'god' is simply descriptive, and does not necessarily convey anything about one's personal worship (a polytheist can recognize gods he or she does not worship);
(3) pluralism about gods: gods are really distinct and not merely apparently distinct;
(4) finitism about divine attributes: something can be divine even if its attributes aren't infinite, e.g., a god does not need to be omnipotent;
(5) 'a common world', i.e., what we might call (Greer doesn't) interactionism about the relation between deity and world: the gods are involved with each other and with the ordinary world.
These five characteristics contrast in a number of ways with the assumptions that underly much philosophy of religion (which is usually either atheistic, and therefore lacking (1), or monotheistic, and therefore lacking (3) and usually (2) and (4), or deistic, and therefore lacking (5)), and this raises a number of philosophical questions. Greer will tackle these questions through the rest of the book; but it's important to keep in mind that his point in doing so is not to give definitive or magisterial answers to them, but to show that they may be worth raising in the first place. Chapter Two will argue that we can at least begin to answer such questions; and I'll discuss it briefly in a future post.
John Michael Greer's A World Full of Gods is an interesting attempt to do something about it. Greer is a modern Pagan associated with the contemporary Druidic movement. His goal in the book is to make a case for greater attention to polytheism and, since this is philosophy, polytheistic arguments. Greer's certainly right about that, and I think the book does touch on several reasons for thinking there is a real need to do so. I don't think the book is entirely successful in other ways, chiefly because Greer tries to do too much. But there is much that is interesting in the book, and here and there I will be posting on things Greer discusses.
Chapter One gives a basic case for why philosophers of religion should not uncritically accept the "monotheistic assumption": first, that there are still a great many polytheists in the world, and in the West they have become more visible than they have been in previous generations; second, that at least some philosophical work, albeit very scattered, has already been done, and this work shows that there are genuinely interesting philosophical issues to be discussed when it comes to polytheism. On the basis of an article by George Mavrodes, Greer characterizes polytheism as having the following features:
(1) realism about the divine: the gods are taken to be real and not figments of imagination or hypothetical constructs;
(2) pure descriptivism about the term 'god': the term 'god' is simply descriptive, and does not necessarily convey anything about one's personal worship (a polytheist can recognize gods he or she does not worship);
(3) pluralism about gods: gods are really distinct and not merely apparently distinct;
(4) finitism about divine attributes: something can be divine even if its attributes aren't infinite, e.g., a god does not need to be omnipotent;
(5) 'a common world', i.e., what we might call (Greer doesn't) interactionism about the relation between deity and world: the gods are involved with each other and with the ordinary world.
These five characteristics contrast in a number of ways with the assumptions that underly much philosophy of religion (which is usually either atheistic, and therefore lacking (1), or monotheistic, and therefore lacking (3) and usually (2) and (4), or deistic, and therefore lacking (5)), and this raises a number of philosophical questions. Greer will tackle these questions through the rest of the book; but it's important to keep in mind that his point in doing so is not to give definitive or magisterial answers to them, but to show that they may be worth raising in the first place. Chapter Two will argue that we can at least begin to answer such questions; and I'll discuss it briefly in a future post.
Thought for the Day
I got up this morning and checked my e-mail and discovered that it had snowed. (It's not much of a snow, but along with ice it was enough around here to cancel classes.) I think it says something about modern life that I learned from the computer about something that was just outside and visible through the window.
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Newman on Meditation on Scripture
And what the experience of the world effects for the illustration of classical authors, that office the religious sense, carefully cultivated, fulfils towards Holy Scripture. To the devout and spiritual, the Divine Word speaks of things, not merely of notions. And, again, to the disconsolate, the tempted, the perplexed, the suffering, there comes, by means of their very trials, an enlargement of thought, which enables them to see in it what they never saw before. Henceforth there is to them a reality in its teachings, which they recognize as an argument, and the best of arguments, for its divine origin. Hence the practice of meditation on the Sacred Text; so highly thought of by Catholics. Reading, as we do, the Gospels from our youth up, we are in danger of becoming so familiar with them as to be dead to their force, and to view them as a mere history. The purpose, then, of meditation is to realize them; to make the facts which they relate stand out before our minds as objects, such as may be appropriated by a faith as living as the imagination which apprehends them.
Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, 4.2.4.
Thursday Virtue/Vice: Mollience
[I'm going to try to start a series of posts for each Thursday, with each post talking briefly about a particular virtue or vice. I've long since found that I'm rather bad at keeping up extended series of posts, so no promises, and we'll see how long it lasts. But I do have a few things in the pipeline and also some things that can be revised and reposted, and the idea is that they'll usually be short summaries, so it might last a while before running out of steam.]
Yes, I made the word up; effeminacy is one of those vices that needs a new name. It's the usual English translation, but it has misleading associations. Malakia (which is one of the old Greek words for it, the other being anandreia, for which 'effeminacy' is a pretty straightforward translation) or mollience or mollity (which Anglicize the corresponding Latin, mollities, which is used in English occasionally as a medical term indicating abnormal softenss of an organ, but is not all that easy to pronounce) might work -- both mean 'softness' and have associations with the vice, although from what I understand the Greek word has come in modern Greek to have the sort of baggage (in this case, association with masturbation) that comes from being used as a vulgar insult. A new name is needed in part because 'effeminacy' suggests that only men can be effeminate, which is indeed how it has often been treated, but is obviously not true: Effeminacy considered as a vice is excessive avoidance of the difficult or painful. Thus Aristotle says in the Nicomachean Ethics (Book VII, section 7), "One who is deficient in resistance to pains that most men withstand with success, is malakos or luxurious, for luxury is a kind of malakia; such a man lets his cloak trail on the ground to escape the fatigue and trouble of lifting it, or feigns sickness, not seeing that to counterfeit misery is to be miserable." Aristotle also makes the interesting argument that, contrary to what is usually thought to be the case, excessive pursuit of amusements (for example, to the detriment of oneself or one's duties) really has more to do with avoiding pain than pursuing pleasure, properly speaking: amusement is a kind of rest from the pain of toil and labor, and so pursuit of amusement is (usually) more of a pursuit of rest from pain than a pursuit of pleasure itself. And that makes sense if you think about it; lots of amusements (slot machines, television) are obviously anodynes, and even amusements that are in some way difficult or tiring are usually pursued precisely because they are in some other way restful or relaxing.
Aquinas argues (ST 2-2.138.1) that effeminacy is opposed to the virtue of perseverance. He notes that nothing is considered soft if it yields to heavy blows (a wall is not soft if it can be broken by a battering ram), only if it yields to light ones, and so takes this to be the key feature of the vice. Since many of the motives that result in excessive yielding, like actual pleasure and fear of danger, are really pretty strong motivators, the motivation for real mollities has to be something that's generally pretty weak. On the basis of this he interprets Aristotle's account of vice in such a way as to come up with a full definition of the vice: withdrawal from good on account of sorrow caused by lack of pleasure, since mere dissatisfaction from not having pleasure is a comparatively weak motive, both psychologically and rationally. Someone who avoids a good solely because it doesn't give pleasure has a very weak reason for avoiding it, and is thus soft. The good in question is difficult only in the sense that it's not actively pleasant; it doesn't even need to be painful. That's a pretty low standard of difficulty.
With this refinement of Aristotle we get a good picture of just how common a vice mollities is: every act of avoiding something definitely good merely because it's not fun or enjoyable is an act associated with this vice.
Despite the fact that mollience is not confined to men, I think it's unsurprising that most words we have for it are words that are usually taken as insults for men; the virtue most associated with typical social ideas of masculinity is fortitude, and avoiding things that aren't fun is obviously a problem for fortitude (which requires perseverance).
Yes, I made the word up; effeminacy is one of those vices that needs a new name. It's the usual English translation, but it has misleading associations. Malakia (which is one of the old Greek words for it, the other being anandreia, for which 'effeminacy' is a pretty straightforward translation) or mollience or mollity (which Anglicize the corresponding Latin, mollities, which is used in English occasionally as a medical term indicating abnormal softenss of an organ, but is not all that easy to pronounce) might work -- both mean 'softness' and have associations with the vice, although from what I understand the Greek word has come in modern Greek to have the sort of baggage (in this case, association with masturbation) that comes from being used as a vulgar insult. A new name is needed in part because 'effeminacy' suggests that only men can be effeminate, which is indeed how it has often been treated, but is obviously not true: Effeminacy considered as a vice is excessive avoidance of the difficult or painful. Thus Aristotle says in the Nicomachean Ethics (Book VII, section 7), "One who is deficient in resistance to pains that most men withstand with success, is malakos or luxurious, for luxury is a kind of malakia; such a man lets his cloak trail on the ground to escape the fatigue and trouble of lifting it, or feigns sickness, not seeing that to counterfeit misery is to be miserable." Aristotle also makes the interesting argument that, contrary to what is usually thought to be the case, excessive pursuit of amusements (for example, to the detriment of oneself or one's duties) really has more to do with avoiding pain than pursuing pleasure, properly speaking: amusement is a kind of rest from the pain of toil and labor, and so pursuit of amusement is (usually) more of a pursuit of rest from pain than a pursuit of pleasure itself. And that makes sense if you think about it; lots of amusements (slot machines, television) are obviously anodynes, and even amusements that are in some way difficult or tiring are usually pursued precisely because they are in some other way restful or relaxing.
Aquinas argues (ST 2-2.138.1) that effeminacy is opposed to the virtue of perseverance. He notes that nothing is considered soft if it yields to heavy blows (a wall is not soft if it can be broken by a battering ram), only if it yields to light ones, and so takes this to be the key feature of the vice. Since many of the motives that result in excessive yielding, like actual pleasure and fear of danger, are really pretty strong motivators, the motivation for real mollities has to be something that's generally pretty weak. On the basis of this he interprets Aristotle's account of vice in such a way as to come up with a full definition of the vice: withdrawal from good on account of sorrow caused by lack of pleasure, since mere dissatisfaction from not having pleasure is a comparatively weak motive, both psychologically and rationally. Someone who avoids a good solely because it doesn't give pleasure has a very weak reason for avoiding it, and is thus soft. The good in question is difficult only in the sense that it's not actively pleasant; it doesn't even need to be painful. That's a pretty low standard of difficulty.
With this refinement of Aristotle we get a good picture of just how common a vice mollities is: every act of avoiding something definitely good merely because it's not fun or enjoyable is an act associated with this vice.
Despite the fact that mollience is not confined to men, I think it's unsurprising that most words we have for it are words that are usually taken as insults for men; the virtue most associated with typical social ideas of masculinity is fortitude, and avoiding things that aren't fun is obviously a problem for fortitude (which requires perseverance).
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Snowdrops and My Heart I'll Bring
Feast of the Presentation
by Christina Rossetti
O firstfruits of our grain,
Infant and Lamb appointed to be slain,
A Virgin and two doves were all Thy train,
With one old man for state,
When Thou didst enter first Thy Father's gate.
Since then Thy train hath been
Freeman and bondman, bishop, king and queen,
With flaming candles and with garlands green:
Oh happy all who wait
One day or thousand days around Thy gate!
And these have offered Thee,
Beside their hearts, great stores for charity,
Gold, frankincense, and myrrh; if such may be
For savour or for state
Within the threshold of Thy golden gate.
Then snowdrops and my heart
I'll bring, to find those blacker than Thou art:
Yet, loving Lord, accept us in good part;
And give me grace to wait,
A bruised reed bowed low before Thy gate.
And, of course, it is the Feast of the Presentation -- Candlemas.
On Sam Harris's Response to His Critics
Sam Harris has an article up at The Huffington Post defending his work against some criticisms. A few brief comments:
(1) It's a minor issue, but Harris's tendency to get sidetracked into polemic repeatedly, and I mean repeatedly, weakens the force of otherwise straightforward argument virtually every time he argues. This is a serious weakness, and it seems clear (e.g., from critical responses to the remarks about Francis Collins in the book) that it makes it harder for critics to take him seriously. And this is a problem. Harris is pretty much the only public New Atheist to have any sense of intellectual strategy worth speaking of; one of his strengths is that he has recognized that a much bolder and more ambitious set of intellectual projects is required if this latest phase of atheism is to end up being anything more than a flash in the pan. Large portions of the intellectual landscape need to be changed. He also, in contrast to, say, Dennett, has a real grasp on the general sort of thing boldness and ambition really entail in this context. What he seems to have difficulty understanding is that this pushes him into the sphere of a different kind of critic, used to heated intellectual debate on precisely these kinds of subject, who find polemic boring, especially if it's polemic against people they don't much think about or care about. They will regard it as so much gab. When you are doing work that is getting the attention of well-established philosophers, the demeanor that avoids unnecessary bias against one's position is that of cool rationality, impervious to anything but argument (unless one can be either viciously witty or can reasonably guarantee that almost everyone is on your side already, neither of which Harris can pull off). And indeed this is what one already finds in reviews of Harris's book. Most of the first third of the article could simply be eliminated -- no one who is going to bother to read Harris's arguments particularly cares about Deepak Chopra's response to Harris, for instance -- perhaps at most reducing it to a sentence or two, and then settling down briskly and quietly to a response to the people he's really decided to respond to, with the paragraph about Colin McGinn. Much smarter way to start.
As it is, however, I would encourage anyone reading Harris just to hop over his polemical passages; his arguments are often stronger than the polemic would lead you to believe.
(2) Harris is entirely right that most of the arguments made against his argument for a science of morality allow for no principled reason not to object to a science of health as well. This is a point that needs to keep being hammered home.
ADDED LATER: I see that Sean Carroll is attempting to address it. Unfortunately, his argument fails, for reasons noted below. (a) The initial values in practical sciences do not require consensus: in order to determine whether there is legitimately a science of health it is irrelevant how many people think health is important, or even what views of health there may be (and there are many more than Carroll suggests). But some of those views of health clearly do allow for scientific study, and thus there are sciences of health. Indeed, to the extent we do agree on health, it's pretty obvious that most of this is due to the science and not prior to it. So the degree of disagreement on the subject is absolutely irrelevant. (b) The initial values in practical sciences identify what is studied; thus removing it from what he calls 'science' is not relevant either. (c) Carroll keeps arguing as if Harris needed to present a complete science of health. I suspect this is because he's a physicist, and so his scientific specialty is one that has had geniuses hammering at it for centuries, ironing out confusions, finding new things to measure, and so forth. But all Harris needs to make his basic case is to present the start of a science, to show that we actually have in hand things that could reasonably be called first steps. Most of Carroll's arguments would, if sound, apply to almost any scientific field in its early stages -- including early physics.
(3) Harris identifies three significant challenges put forward against him; he address the first two at some length and the third, the Measurement Problem, only briefly. The first is the Value Problem:
Harris's argument is simply unconvincing on this point, since he concedes too much to his opponents. The fact of the matter is that Harris doesn't have to argue that there is a scientific basis for saying that we should value well-being. Two other positions (not mutually exclusive) are available to him:
(a) There is a basis for saying that human beings in the main do value well-being.
(b) There is a basis for saying that other things human beings value have some real relation to well-being (they presuppose it, or partly constitute it, or some such).
Consider the analogy with medicine again. Suppose you have people who literally do not care about their health in any way, shape, or form. How does that affect medicine? It doesn't. Medicine is a serious field of human endeavor because in the main human beings do value health, and many of the other things human beings value presuppose health. This on its own is enough to get medicine off the ground as a serious field of scientific inquiry, if only it can be established that there are actual scientific methods capable of contributing (however imperfectly at this stage) to our understanding of health. And that, of course, is determined simply by looking at the methods in question. Harris doesn't have to deliver an entire science of morality as a fait accompli; he just has to establish reasons for thinking (1) that it is a worthwhile endeavor; and (2) that at least some parts of it are already feasible. He does want to go farther than that, of course, and not just say (for instance) that only small parts of what we count as morality fall under scientific purview, but he does not have to defend this entire position to deal with the value problem. All sciences having to do with practical matters get their basic values (health in the case of medicine, structural integrity in the case of structural engineering, etc.) from what human beings in fact value. A science of morality need not be any different.
This is, incidentally, a very Humean response to the Value Problem, which is perhaps worth mentioning given that most of Harris's critics deploy loosely Humean objections against his project in general.
(4) The second challenge is what Harris calls the Persuasion Problem.
This, however, is not an issue arising from Harris's project but a difficulty with theories of morality in general. It's a sensible knave problem. It is true that any theory of morality has to deal with the sensible knave problem, but by the same token Harris can avail himself of any answer to the sensible knave problem that does not rule out the possibility of a science of morality (Hume's own, for instance). Arguably it's a hard problem (which is why rationalists tend to press objections like this against empiricists), but there's nothing about it that makes it a hard problem for Harris in particular.
(5) The Measurement Problem -- that we have no metric for well-being and therefore can have no science of morality -- succombs to similar arguments. For instance, to establish a science of morality Harris doesn't have to establish his full position, nor that he can measure everything to do with well-being; he just has to establish that some things widely recognizable as indicative of well-being or contributing to well-being in some essential way can be. Again, Harris doesn't have to present a fait accompli; he has to present a real beginning.
ADDED LATER (Feb 7): Harris has a new version of the essay up; the same basic argument, but with a much cleaner structure -- the problem noted in (1) is pretty much eliminated, to the great benefit of the argument, and just at a glance (I haven't compared the two side by side) it looks like a few other points might be given somewhat clearer formulation. Say what you will about Harris, but the man learns quickly -- he often revises in exactly the right direction.
(1) It's a minor issue, but Harris's tendency to get sidetracked into polemic repeatedly, and I mean repeatedly, weakens the force of otherwise straightforward argument virtually every time he argues. This is a serious weakness, and it seems clear (e.g., from critical responses to the remarks about Francis Collins in the book) that it makes it harder for critics to take him seriously. And this is a problem. Harris is pretty much the only public New Atheist to have any sense of intellectual strategy worth speaking of; one of his strengths is that he has recognized that a much bolder and more ambitious set of intellectual projects is required if this latest phase of atheism is to end up being anything more than a flash in the pan. Large portions of the intellectual landscape need to be changed. He also, in contrast to, say, Dennett, has a real grasp on the general sort of thing boldness and ambition really entail in this context. What he seems to have difficulty understanding is that this pushes him into the sphere of a different kind of critic, used to heated intellectual debate on precisely these kinds of subject, who find polemic boring, especially if it's polemic against people they don't much think about or care about. They will regard it as so much gab. When you are doing work that is getting the attention of well-established philosophers, the demeanor that avoids unnecessary bias against one's position is that of cool rationality, impervious to anything but argument (unless one can be either viciously witty or can reasonably guarantee that almost everyone is on your side already, neither of which Harris can pull off). And indeed this is what one already finds in reviews of Harris's book. Most of the first third of the article could simply be eliminated -- no one who is going to bother to read Harris's arguments particularly cares about Deepak Chopra's response to Harris, for instance -- perhaps at most reducing it to a sentence or two, and then settling down briskly and quietly to a response to the people he's really decided to respond to, with the paragraph about Colin McGinn. Much smarter way to start.
As it is, however, I would encourage anyone reading Harris just to hop over his polemical passages; his arguments are often stronger than the polemic would lead you to believe.
(2) Harris is entirely right that most of the arguments made against his argument for a science of morality allow for no principled reason not to object to a science of health as well. This is a point that needs to keep being hammered home.
ADDED LATER: I see that Sean Carroll is attempting to address it. Unfortunately, his argument fails, for reasons noted below. (a) The initial values in practical sciences do not require consensus: in order to determine whether there is legitimately a science of health it is irrelevant how many people think health is important, or even what views of health there may be (and there are many more than Carroll suggests). But some of those views of health clearly do allow for scientific study, and thus there are sciences of health. Indeed, to the extent we do agree on health, it's pretty obvious that most of this is due to the science and not prior to it. So the degree of disagreement on the subject is absolutely irrelevant. (b) The initial values in practical sciences identify what is studied; thus removing it from what he calls 'science' is not relevant either. (c) Carroll keeps arguing as if Harris needed to present a complete science of health. I suspect this is because he's a physicist, and so his scientific specialty is one that has had geniuses hammering at it for centuries, ironing out confusions, finding new things to measure, and so forth. But all Harris needs to make his basic case is to present the start of a science, to show that we actually have in hand things that could reasonably be called first steps. Most of Carroll's arguments would, if sound, apply to almost any scientific field in its early stages -- including early physics.
(3) Harris identifies three significant challenges put forward against him; he address the first two at some length and the third, the Measurement Problem, only briefly. The first is the Value Problem:
1. There is no scientific basis to say that we should value well-being, our own or anyone else's. (The Value Problem)
Harris's argument is simply unconvincing on this point, since he concedes too much to his opponents. The fact of the matter is that Harris doesn't have to argue that there is a scientific basis for saying that we should value well-being. Two other positions (not mutually exclusive) are available to him:
(a) There is a basis for saying that human beings in the main do value well-being.
(b) There is a basis for saying that other things human beings value have some real relation to well-being (they presuppose it, or partly constitute it, or some such).
Consider the analogy with medicine again. Suppose you have people who literally do not care about their health in any way, shape, or form. How does that affect medicine? It doesn't. Medicine is a serious field of human endeavor because in the main human beings do value health, and many of the other things human beings value presuppose health. This on its own is enough to get medicine off the ground as a serious field of scientific inquiry, if only it can be established that there are actual scientific methods capable of contributing (however imperfectly at this stage) to our understanding of health. And that, of course, is determined simply by looking at the methods in question. Harris doesn't have to deliver an entire science of morality as a fait accompli; he just has to establish reasons for thinking (1) that it is a worthwhile endeavor; and (2) that at least some parts of it are already feasible. He does want to go farther than that, of course, and not just say (for instance) that only small parts of what we count as morality fall under scientific purview, but he does not have to defend this entire position to deal with the value problem. All sciences having to do with practical matters get their basic values (health in the case of medicine, structural integrity in the case of structural engineering, etc.) from what human beings in fact value. A science of morality need not be any different.
This is, incidentally, a very Humean response to the Value Problem, which is perhaps worth mentioning given that most of Harris's critics deploy loosely Humean objections against his project in general.
(4) The second challenge is what Harris calls the Persuasion Problem.
2. Hence, if someone does not care about well-being, or cares only about his own and not about the well-being of others, there is no way to argue that he is wrong from the point of view of science. (The Persuasion Problem)
This, however, is not an issue arising from Harris's project but a difficulty with theories of morality in general. It's a sensible knave problem. It is true that any theory of morality has to deal with the sensible knave problem, but by the same token Harris can avail himself of any answer to the sensible knave problem that does not rule out the possibility of a science of morality (Hume's own, for instance). Arguably it's a hard problem (which is why rationalists tend to press objections like this against empiricists), but there's nothing about it that makes it a hard problem for Harris in particular.
(5) The Measurement Problem -- that we have no metric for well-being and therefore can have no science of morality -- succombs to similar arguments. For instance, to establish a science of morality Harris doesn't have to establish his full position, nor that he can measure everything to do with well-being; he just has to establish that some things widely recognizable as indicative of well-being or contributing to well-being in some essential way can be. Again, Harris doesn't have to present a fait accompli; he has to present a real beginning.
ADDED LATER (Feb 7): Harris has a new version of the essay up; the same basic argument, but with a much cleaner structure -- the problem noted in (1) is pretty much eliminated, to the great benefit of the argument, and just at a glance (I haven't compared the two side by side) it looks like a few other points might be given somewhat clearer formulation. Say what you will about Harris, but the man learns quickly -- he often revises in exactly the right direction.
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