Counting Votes

The Presidential election is finishing up today, with the official count of Electoral College votes. It is still being completed, because, of course, the riot at the Capitol; I suppose that as we started four years ago with anti-Trump rioters acting as if the United States were a tinpot fake republic, it is less surprising than it should be to find pro-Trump rioters acting as if the United States were a tinpot fake republic. Notably the one thing that has been completely stable and unmarked by gross partisan bias through both idiocies is the Electoral College process. Not, of course, that anyone will give it its proper due; they never do.

As of my writing this, Congress is going through the states alphabetically. An official objection was taken over the Arizona slate, and rejected by both chambers of Congress (no slate can be rejected without the agreement of both chambers). There will certainly be one more official objection (Pennsylvania); each official objection has to be debated by each chamber separately, which will draw out the process. As the chances of any of the objections getting the agreement of both chambers is minute, there is no reason to expect any surprises, and any single surprise would not change the result. In 2016, I heard many nasty comments about 'proceduralism' -- by which they meant, in context, trust in the election process laid out in the US Constitution -- but an election is nothing but procedures; and the US Constitution is an immensely stable thing, difficult to manipulate, as it should be. And I suppose it's not really surprising in politics to find many of those very same people suddenly converted to absolute belief in the sacrosanctness of those procedures, at least as they imagine them to be.

The actual success of those storming the Capitol was a surprise, but as I've repeatedly noted (to deaf ears in this time of people repeatedly trying to give themselves a hysteria high), until today nothing has happened that is really unprecedented. Election Night regularly gives a major surprise; litigations, audits, recounts, inevitably ensue; people have come up with uncertified "alternative slates" before; formal objections have been made to slates before; we've had people protesting the vote count before. It wasn't even the noisiest process we've seen, although perhaps that was partly due to relatively light reporting on it. But even if you object to the noisiness of it, anyone in the entire process who used the word 'coup' or 'attempted coup' anything similar to describe anything in the process is an idiot and a moron and should be ignored on any political matter forever after. Nor, I suppose it should be noted given that the hysteria-junkies will say otherwise, is a few hundred people storming the Capitol building a 'coup', either.

The most serious thing today was not, in fact, the riot at the Capitol, but the discovery of explosive devices at the headquarters of both parties and on the Capitol grounds (all of which were discovered by law enforcement and safely detonated). Such terrorism is a more serious threat, and it is absolutely necessary to come down hard on any attempt to use terroristic threat against any part of the election process, as a warning example to any and all who might try it in the future. Unfortunately the precedent has not been as clear as it should be. 

And one suspects that no one will learn anything whatsoever; this seems the primary truth of American politics these days.

World's Wealth, Heart's Worship, and Life's Suffering

The Epiphany
by Samuel John Stone

Lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them.
... They presented unto Him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.
St. Mart. ii. 9, 11.

O tongue* of heaven, whose silence eloquent,
What time that night's evangel nearer fell,
Foretold the mystery of Emmanuel
To those far off, whose alien eyes intent
Kept faithful vigil toward the Orient:
Star-Pilot of the watchful and the wise,
Thus, speaking through my eastward-gazing eyes,
Win my soul on to the Divine Event.
That so, soon kneeling at the Sacred Feet
There only losing thee, my harbinger
With gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh,
I, too, may make my offering complete:
World's wealth, heart's worship, and life's suffering,
Meet for my Fellow-Man, my God, my King.

* Lingua cæli is the expression of St. Augustine, referring to the star.

Some Notable Links, Noted

* Amanda Patchin, A Jane Austen January, at "Front Porch Republic"

* Thony Christie discusses Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace at "The Renaissance Mathematician"

* Robert Pasnau, How to Read Scholastic Latin (ht)

* Jennifer Frey, Taking Humanity Seriously

* Ben Burgis reflects on the great Quentin Smith, who died in 2020.

* Anastasia Berg, Similar Minds, reviews Kate Manne's recent work. Berg notes something that I've also found odd about Manne's work, namely, the centrality of incels despite the fact that Manne doesn't seem to have much understanding of or any sympathy with them -- which is perhaps odd, because many of Manne's own arguments about men, particularly in this most recent work, are weirdly similar to arguments associated with incel forums about a sense of entitlement among women. I think for anyone who has been long online, it inevitably gets strange reading her for that very reason: her arguments often look very familiar but upside-down, as if things have slipped into the mirror universe.

* Hrishikesh Joshi has a really nice paper, "What Are the Chances You're Right About Everything? An Epistemic Challenge for Modern Partisanship", which you can read on his website. A great many people would benefit from considering carefully the argument of that paper.

Factual and Evaluative

 Bill Vallicella has a nice discussion, with his usual clarity, of MacIntyre's argument that evaluative conclusions can be drawn from factual premises. However, I think he makes a mistake, one easy to make in his reply, and it's an interesting one. He says (of the example, "This watch is inaccurate, therefore this is a bad watch"):

Speaking as someone who has been more influenced by the moderns than by the ancients, I don't see it. It is not the case that "the concept of a watch cannot be defined independently of the concept of a good watch . . . ." A watch is "a portable timepiece designed to be worn (as on the wrist) or carried in the pocket." (Merriam-Webster) This standard definition allows, as it should, for both good and bad watches. Note that if chronometric goodness, i.e., accuracy, were built into the definition of 'watch,' then no watch would ever need repair. Indeed, no watch could be repaired. For a watch needing repair would then not be a watch.

The assumption that is made here is that if the concept of a watch cannot be defined independently of the concept of a good watch, then being a good watch would have to be part of the concept of a watch. But this is surely not what MacIntyre means. Rather, the claim is that the definition of a watch contains or implies a standard according to which something can be a good watch. The point is not that chronometric goodness is built into the definition of a watch, so that all watches are good watches, but that you cannot understand something as a timepiece without relating it to standards for keeping time, and from the fact that a watch is a timepiece one can recognize that between two otherwise equal watches, if one is more chronometrically accurate, it is better qua watch.

MacIntyre focuses on the timepiece or time-keeping component of the concept, but in some ways the point is easier to see with the other component of the Merriam-Webster definition that implies evaluative standards, portability. Portability is something that admits of degrees. You could strap a timepiece the size of a small alarm clock to your wrist; it would be portable, but would obviously be less portable than a normal wristwatch. Portability is in fact also relative to your end, because it is a feature describing how well a means relates to certain kinds of ends. For one kind of end, 'portable' might mean you can drive it around in a van; it is pretty clear that 'timepiece you can move around using a van' is not an adequate standard for watch-portability. As the Merriam-Webster definition says, the portability of a watch is such as to be put in a pocket, or strapped to your wrist, or strapped to your ankle, or hung around your neck as a necklace (to take the most common cases). But even granted this, not all watches are equally portable. And if the definition of a watch includes portability, this means that not all watches will capture equally well this aspect of the definition. It is not a part of the definition of a watch that it excel at portability; but it does seem implied by the very fact that portability is part of the definition that one can evaluate a watch according to its portability. And if this is the case, then it does appear that you can conclude from a watch not being very portable that it is, to that extent, not very good as a watch. The same thing is true of the 'timepiece' component and (possibly, if it is not taken merely to specify the other two) the  'designed' component of the Merriam-Webster definition.

If this is true, does this mean that "Watches are portable timepieces" is an evaluative, not a factual statement? As far as I can see, it does not. The fact that a statement includes or implies the fact that there is a particular standard of evaluation, does not itself imply that the statement is an evaluative one. "Watches can be evaluated according to how well they keep time" is, despite explicitly mentioning evaluation, a factual statement, not an evaluative one; in making the statement, you are not evaluating watches but recognizing the fact that watches can be evaluated. It is, after all, a fact that things are evaluated; it is a fact that when they are evaluated, they are evaluated according to standards; and it is often a fact whether or not something has the features that make it fit those standards or not. Because they are used for measurement, and because they may be more or less useable for such measurements, watches are as a matter of fact things that can be evaluated according to how well they serve for such measurements. Means of measurement may be more or less good; they may even be bad; but it is not intelligible to say that something is a means of measurement and yet there is no way to assess whether it is good at measuring. But it is a fact that timepieces are things used for measurement, and it is a fact that they can be more or less good at measuring; and there are facts that will guarantee that it is less good.

One could, of course, go another direction and argue that all statements are in fact evaluative; that there is no such thing as a statement that is purely factual without anything whatsoever that is evaluative. But again, that a timepiece is evaluatable according to a standard of good time-keeping seems a fact about timepieces, not an evaluation of time pieces. It's not even normative; it's just true as a matter of fact that you can evaluate the quality of a timepiece according to its time-keeping. It doesn't make any sense to talk about timepieces without any regard for whether the things in question can be assessed according to their time-keeping ability. If you were going to do that, you might as well say that I can create a watch by strapping a rock or a living mouse to my wrist: "Look at my mouse watch, it's a portable timepiece, although I have no idea even what standard might be used to assess whether it is any good at keeping time." To say it is a timepiece already implies that it can be evaluated according to its time-keeping; this does not make the existence of timepieces any less matters of fact.

Fortnightly Book, January 3

 Looking over the Fortnightly Books, I've done Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Lady Susan, Sanditon, and The Watsons, but I haven't done my favorite Austen novel, and I have other reasons to re-read it, so the next fortnighly book will be Mansfield Park.

MP is Austen's third published novel, with its first edition published in 1814 and its second in 1816. The novel was a modest success with readers -- hence the two editions in Austen's lifetime -- and although critics were slower to take notice of it, they also tended to regard it favorably. Its reputation dipped when people started reading Austen more as comic society novels, surged again a bit during the decades of the World Wars, largely collapsed in the 1960s and 1970s, and then for the next several decades has maintained a status as Austen's most controversial novel. One reason for its complicated reputation is that its heroine, Fanny Price, is in several ways deliberately the opposite of what one would ordinarily expect a heroine to be, being a weak and sickly girl who cries many times throughout the work; she has also repeatedly been called a prig by readers who are unsympathetic to her. Another reason is its sophisticated consideration not just of moral questions but of differences in moralities. It also touches, even if subtly, on questions of empire and slavery.

But all of this is beside the way. MP suffers most when you try to read it as if it were a failure at being a very different sort of novel. For what it is, an exploration of constancy and how society and character affect it, it has few parallels. Most of the ups and downs of the novel's reputation, and most of the controversies tell us more about the critics than about the novel. And some of us just like Fanny Price, the girl who can be constant because she cannot merely act a part.

Watchwords

Many a disciple of a philosophical school, who talks fluently, does but assert, when he seems to assent to the dicta of his master, little as he may be aware of it. Nor is he secured against this self-deception by knowing the arguments on which those dicta rest, for he may learn the arguments by heart, as a careless schoolboy gets up his Euclid. This practice of asserting simply on authority, with the pretence and without the reality of assent, is what is meant by formalism. To say "I do not understand a proposition, but I accept it on authority," is not formalism, but faith; it is not a direct assent to the proposition, still it is an assent to the authority which enunciates it; but what I here speak of is professing to understand without understanding. It is thus that political and religious watchwords are created; first one man of name and then another adopts them, till their use becomes popular, and then every one professes them, because every one else does. Such words are "liberality," "progress," "light," "civilization;" such are "justification by faith only," "vital religion," "private judgment," "the Bible and nothing but the Bible." Such again are "Rationalism," "Gallicanism," "Jesuitism," "Ultramontanism"—all of which, in the mouths of conscientious thinkers, have a definite meaning, but are used by the multitude as war-cries, nicknames, and shibboleths, with scarcely enough of the scantiest grammatical apprehension of them to allow of their being considered in truth more than assertions.

John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, Part I, Chapter 4, section 1 (43-44).

Fortnightly Books Index 2020

 A bit of a chaotic year for my reading, as all my schedules were upended in one way or another, but I did get through Doyle's Sherlock Holmes works. It happened to be a fairly international year beyond that. I'm thinking for the upcoming year that I will do some more Dickens, although not his whole corpus, and some Scandinavian literature.

November 22: Maximus the Confessor, The Life of the Virgin
Introduction, Review

November 8: Richard Adams, Watership Down
Introduction, Review

October 25: George du Maurier, Peter Ibbetson
Introduction, Review

October 11: Ahmet Midhat Efendi, Felâtun Bey and Râkım Efendi
Introduction, Review

September 27: Arthur Conan Doyle, His Last Bow; The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes
Introduction, Review

September 13: Patrick Rambaud, The Battle
Introduction, Review, Timeline

August 30: Kim Man-Jung, The Nine Cloud Dream
Introduction, Review

August 16: Arthur Conan Doyle, The Return of Sherlock Holmes
Introduction, Review

August 2: Brendan Hodge, If You Can Get It
Introduction, Review

July 19: C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Introduction, Review

July 5: Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Introduction, Review

June 21: Nguyễn Du, The Story of Kiều
Introduction, Review

June 7: The Song Celestial (Bhagavad Gita)
Introduction, Review

May 24: Roger Scruton, Notes from Underground
Introduction, Review

May 10: Wace, The History of the Norman People (Roman de Reu)
Introduction, Review

April 26: Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hounds of the Baskervilles; The Valley of Fear
Introduction, Review

April 5: Charles Dickens, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club
Introduction, Review

March 15: Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Hard to Be a God; Monday Begins on Saturday; The Doomed City
Introduction, Review

March 1: Julian of Norwich, The Showings of Julian of Norwich
Introduction, Review

February 16: Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet; The Sign of Four
Introduction, Review

February 2: Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard; My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
Introduction, Review

January 12: J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
Introduction, Review

*************

Fortnightly Books Index for 2019

Fortnightly Books Index for 2018

Fortnightly Books Index for 2017

Fortnightly Books Index for 2016

Fortnightly Books Index for 2015

Fortnightly Books Index for 2014

Fortnightly Books Index for 2012-2013