Philosophy
Soft spiration, emblematic gift,
through which one anoints another
and both are bound together
in peace, in truth:
all are called by glory
to set themselves in order,
to set the world in order,
to utter the word of truth
and through it breathe philosophy.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Notes for Noting and Links for Linking
* Everyone knows Natalie Portman as an actress. But did you also know that she's done collaborative work in cognitive neuroscience? (ht) This means she has an Erdos-Bacon number. There are, I believe, less than 20 in the world who have been identified; she's in the company of people like Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman, Bertrand Russell, and Carl Sagan.
* Perhaps the only full-time actress besides Portman to have such a number is Danica McKellar, best known for her role on The Wonder Years. McKellar co-authored a paper (PDF) in mathematical physics and has written a book, due out in August, called Math Doesn't Suck: How to Survive Middle-School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail, directed a middle-school girls. It looks decent, so you might consider getting it for any middle-school girls you know. On her official web site, she also regularly answers questions about mathematics. They range from practical questions to quirky trivia to advice on how to handle math in general.
* There seems to have been an outbreak of Francis Schaeffer misinterpretation recently.
* PZ Myers has a few choice excerpts from Ken Miller's review of Behe's recent book.
* At "Holy Heroes" Gabriel McKee looks at the "utopian problem" in superhero ethics. I think the problem boils down to this: superpowers are technology, or equivalent to it. You can do with superpowers what you can do with exceptionally advanced technology, and these superpowers can deal with the problem to the extent that it is a technological problem. But this doesn't resolve the matter. Yes, a superhero might be able to overcome the technological problem in (say) growing enough food to feed all the world's hungry, and seeing to it that it is distributed to them. But in so doing he runs the danger of glutting the market and putting out of work all those who do their own hard labor in growing food and distributing it, and other things like that. (The result, of course, is snowball effect: you get the problem of having to swallow the dog to catch the cat you swallowed to catch the mouse you swallowed to catch the spider you swallowed to catch the fly; and at some point, we'd just have to say, "I guess you'd die." A technical fix isn't always a genuine remedy; sometimes it just trades your old problems for new problems.) What would be needed is the ability to find the perfect balance. But this requires superwisdom, not superpower. And that's a harder thing even to imagine.
* Daniel Mitsui has a post on iconoclasm and perversion. It includes, among other things, a link to this essay by Frederica Matthewes-Green, on the horrible Pitesti Experiment, a Communist attempt to break religious men in order to make them good Communists. It also discusses the case of Eric Gill, sculptor, engraver, printer, typographer, Catholic intellectual, and also psychopathic practitioner of adultery, rape, incest, bestiality, and the like. Part of the issue with Gill, I think, is that iconography is not like art in the secular world; its purpose is to be not merely art but pictorial prayer and preaching of the Word made flesh. You cannot take this seriously and put a sharp divide between the artist and his artistic work. You cannot be a genuine iconographer in your art and an iconoclast blaspheming the image of God in your life. It is true that human failure to measure up to Christ, the Icon of the Father, is universal, that we all to some extent fall to that iconoclasm called sin; but the inconsistency can only be tolerated so far, and only where it is healed and overcome by a penitent heart. Beyond that it ceases to be iconic and becomes perverted. It might pass for secular art, only surface-deep and for pleasing the eye according to one's tastes; but it is not an icon, which is supposed to be something much, much more.
* Brevard Childs died on June 23 at age 83. His The New Testament as Canon and Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context are in many ways lovely works; I read them with great benefit in my undergraduate days.
* Advice, from philosophy Ph.D.'s, for philosophy students considering graduate study in philosophy (ht). It is generally quite good. I would add four things, all of which fit into categories already there.
(1) It is one thing to warn students that getting a job after a graduate study can be difficult; people do that quite a bit. I think, however, that people rarely remember to warn entering students of how expensive the job search can be. And it certainly can be, particularly in philosophy.
(2) Also, every experience in the job search is different, so you can rarely trust anyone's advice about it. What you can do is listen to it, act according to your best judgment, and learn from your mistakes.
(3) When choosing a graduate program, remember that you aren't just choosing the program, but your living conditions for the next several years. If you're dedicated, you can power through under almost any conditions; but things like vacancy rate and rent and public transportation and crime rate in the place you'll be living can make an immense difference to your study. No matter how good it will look on your CV, or how easy it is to get into, or how nice the financial aid package, we all prefer not to study in hell. So think through not only the program but the place; it's not the most important thing by any means, but it shouldn't be ignored, either.
(4) It's true in most fields, but especially true in philosophy, that you don't have to be an academic to do good philosophical work, to interact with people in academia doing philosophical work, or to reap some of the benefits of academic institutions. Academic philosophy is not philosophy as such; it is an infrastructure for it, and it can serve that function whether you are in it or not. That's what it's there for, to provide an infrastructure for philosophy in the world. Academics themselves sometimes forget that, and talk and act as if the purpose of academic philosophy were to propagate their own form of academic life rather than to support philosophy as a fundamental aspect of human civilization. But (and to everyone's credit, it is very widely recognized in principle among academic philosophers) academic life does not subserve academic life, but everyone's enrichment. And you can be part of that even if you can't get an academic position.
-----
ADDED LATER
* Chris has begun the first of a series on the basics of statistics, with a particular view to its use in cognitive psychology: normal distribution.
* An interesting discussion of dualism at "Philosophy, et cetera".
* A Turkish court has ruled that the Patriarch of Constantinople has no legal standing as Ecumenical Patriarch. The reasoning is a little puzzling; besides being the Patriarch for the local Orthodox community in Istanbul, the Patriarch Bartholomew is surely the Patriarch for the Greek Orthodox Church abroad. What it really is, of course, is yet one more way in which Turkey can impose arbitrary legal restrictions on the Orthodox in Turkey on the grounds that, as they have been "allowed to remain on Turkish soil" (the court's own words), they are subject to whatever stupid laws Turkey wishes to place them under. It's Turkey's newest bit of the legal chain it has been using to choke out the Orthodox in the country.
* What Aquinas means by saying truth is adaequatio intellectus et rei, at "Just Thomism".
* Perhaps the only full-time actress besides Portman to have such a number is Danica McKellar, best known for her role on The Wonder Years. McKellar co-authored a paper (PDF) in mathematical physics and has written a book, due out in August, called Math Doesn't Suck: How to Survive Middle-School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail, directed a middle-school girls. It looks decent, so you might consider getting it for any middle-school girls you know. On her official web site, she also regularly answers questions about mathematics. They range from practical questions to quirky trivia to advice on how to handle math in general.
* There seems to have been an outbreak of Francis Schaeffer misinterpretation recently.
* PZ Myers has a few choice excerpts from Ken Miller's review of Behe's recent book.
* At "Holy Heroes" Gabriel McKee looks at the "utopian problem" in superhero ethics. I think the problem boils down to this: superpowers are technology, or equivalent to it. You can do with superpowers what you can do with exceptionally advanced technology, and these superpowers can deal with the problem to the extent that it is a technological problem. But this doesn't resolve the matter. Yes, a superhero might be able to overcome the technological problem in (say) growing enough food to feed all the world's hungry, and seeing to it that it is distributed to them. But in so doing he runs the danger of glutting the market and putting out of work all those who do their own hard labor in growing food and distributing it, and other things like that. (The result, of course, is snowball effect: you get the problem of having to swallow the dog to catch the cat you swallowed to catch the mouse you swallowed to catch the spider you swallowed to catch the fly; and at some point, we'd just have to say, "I guess you'd die." A technical fix isn't always a genuine remedy; sometimes it just trades your old problems for new problems.) What would be needed is the ability to find the perfect balance. But this requires superwisdom, not superpower. And that's a harder thing even to imagine.
* Daniel Mitsui has a post on iconoclasm and perversion. It includes, among other things, a link to this essay by Frederica Matthewes-Green, on the horrible Pitesti Experiment, a Communist attempt to break religious men in order to make them good Communists. It also discusses the case of Eric Gill, sculptor, engraver, printer, typographer, Catholic intellectual, and also psychopathic practitioner of adultery, rape, incest, bestiality, and the like. Part of the issue with Gill, I think, is that iconography is not like art in the secular world; its purpose is to be not merely art but pictorial prayer and preaching of the Word made flesh. You cannot take this seriously and put a sharp divide between the artist and his artistic work. You cannot be a genuine iconographer in your art and an iconoclast blaspheming the image of God in your life. It is true that human failure to measure up to Christ, the Icon of the Father, is universal, that we all to some extent fall to that iconoclasm called sin; but the inconsistency can only be tolerated so far, and only where it is healed and overcome by a penitent heart. Beyond that it ceases to be iconic and becomes perverted. It might pass for secular art, only surface-deep and for pleasing the eye according to one's tastes; but it is not an icon, which is supposed to be something much, much more.
* Brevard Childs died on June 23 at age 83. His The New Testament as Canon and Old Testament Theology in a Canonical Context are in many ways lovely works; I read them with great benefit in my undergraduate days.
* Advice, from philosophy Ph.D.'s, for philosophy students considering graduate study in philosophy (ht). It is generally quite good. I would add four things, all of which fit into categories already there.
(1) It is one thing to warn students that getting a job after a graduate study can be difficult; people do that quite a bit. I think, however, that people rarely remember to warn entering students of how expensive the job search can be. And it certainly can be, particularly in philosophy.
(2) Also, every experience in the job search is different, so you can rarely trust anyone's advice about it. What you can do is listen to it, act according to your best judgment, and learn from your mistakes.
(3) When choosing a graduate program, remember that you aren't just choosing the program, but your living conditions for the next several years. If you're dedicated, you can power through under almost any conditions; but things like vacancy rate and rent and public transportation and crime rate in the place you'll be living can make an immense difference to your study. No matter how good it will look on your CV, or how easy it is to get into, or how nice the financial aid package, we all prefer not to study in hell. So think through not only the program but the place; it's not the most important thing by any means, but it shouldn't be ignored, either.
(4) It's true in most fields, but especially true in philosophy, that you don't have to be an academic to do good philosophical work, to interact with people in academia doing philosophical work, or to reap some of the benefits of academic institutions. Academic philosophy is not philosophy as such; it is an infrastructure for it, and it can serve that function whether you are in it or not. That's what it's there for, to provide an infrastructure for philosophy in the world. Academics themselves sometimes forget that, and talk and act as if the purpose of academic philosophy were to propagate their own form of academic life rather than to support philosophy as a fundamental aspect of human civilization. But (and to everyone's credit, it is very widely recognized in principle among academic philosophers) academic life does not subserve academic life, but everyone's enrichment. And you can be part of that even if you can't get an academic position.
-----
ADDED LATER
* Chris has begun the first of a series on the basics of statistics, with a particular view to its use in cognitive psychology: normal distribution.
* An interesting discussion of dualism at "Philosophy, et cetera".
* A Turkish court has ruled that the Patriarch of Constantinople has no legal standing as Ecumenical Patriarch. The reasoning is a little puzzling; besides being the Patriarch for the local Orthodox community in Istanbul, the Patriarch Bartholomew is surely the Patriarch for the Greek Orthodox Church abroad. What it really is, of course, is yet one more way in which Turkey can impose arbitrary legal restrictions on the Orthodox in Turkey on the grounds that, as they have been "allowed to remain on Turkish soil" (the court's own words), they are subject to whatever stupid laws Turkey wishes to place them under. It's Turkey's newest bit of the legal chain it has been using to choke out the Orthodox in the country.
* What Aquinas means by saying truth is adaequatio intellectus et rei, at "Just Thomism".
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Irenaeus on the Proper Order of Knowledge
Preserve therefore the proper order of thy knowledge, and do not, as being ignorant of things really good, seek to rise above God Himself, for He cannot be surpassed; nor do thou seek after any one above the Creator, for thou wilt not discover such. For thy Former cannot be contained within limits; nor, although thou shouldst measure all this [universe], and pass through all His creation, and consider it in all its depth, and height, and length, wouldst thou be able to conceive of any other above the Father Himself. For thou wilt not be able to think Him fully out, but, indulging in trains of reflection opposed to thy nature, thou wilt prove thyself foolish; and if thou persevere in such a course, thou wilt fall into utter madness, whilst thou deemest thyself loftier and greater than thy Creator, and imaginest that thou canst penetrate beyond His dominions.
Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, Book II, chapter xv.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Eight Meme
I've been tagged by The Little Professor.
The Rules:
The Eight:
1. For most of my early school years what I wanted to be when I grew up was a chemist.
2. My favorite public broadcasting show is Keeping Up Appearances.
3. When I took the exams for AP English my senior of high school, one of the themes for the essay part of the test was "epiphany." So I wrote about epiphany in Jane Eyre.
4. I did not have a driver's license until very late. Last year, in fact. (Never needed one before then.)
5. I have difficulty finishing papers and other writing works because I am never satisfied with them; I always think they could, and should, be better. So I always have to force myself to stop revising them.
6. Between first and twelfth grade I lived in the following states: Louisiana, New Mexico, Texas, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and New Mexico again.
7. My last year of undergraduate I lived in the party wing of the party dorm. Since I had the single room on the floor and I spent most of my time at the library or visiting friends at the much nicer all-girls' dorm across campus, most of the kids in the wing who weren't seniors only knew me as That Guy.
8. The first book I ever clearly remember reading was Tales of Mr. Pengachoosa, by Caroline Rush. A convalescent girl discovers that her pet hamster can talk; he tells her stories of his uncle, Mr. Pengachoosa. I have very vivid recollections of the last story, about Mr. Pengachoosa giving the four seasons a ride on his bicycle. The book deserves to be much more widely known.
I'll play the outlaw and ignore rules four and five. But, by all means, if you're reading this and want to join in, count yourself tagged.
The Rules:
- I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.
- Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
- People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
- At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
- Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
The Eight:
1. For most of my early school years what I wanted to be when I grew up was a chemist.
2. My favorite public broadcasting show is Keeping Up Appearances.
3. When I took the exams for AP English my senior of high school, one of the themes for the essay part of the test was "epiphany." So I wrote about epiphany in Jane Eyre.
4. I did not have a driver's license until very late. Last year, in fact. (Never needed one before then.)
5. I have difficulty finishing papers and other writing works because I am never satisfied with them; I always think they could, and should, be better. So I always have to force myself to stop revising them.
6. Between first and twelfth grade I lived in the following states: Louisiana, New Mexico, Texas, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, and New Mexico again.
7. My last year of undergraduate I lived in the party wing of the party dorm. Since I had the single room on the floor and I spent most of my time at the library or visiting friends at the much nicer all-girls' dorm across campus, most of the kids in the wing who weren't seniors only knew me as That Guy.
8. The first book I ever clearly remember reading was Tales of Mr. Pengachoosa, by Caroline Rush. A convalescent girl discovers that her pet hamster can talk; he tells her stories of his uncle, Mr. Pengachoosa. I have very vivid recollections of the last story, about Mr. Pengachoosa giving the four seasons a ride on his bicycle. The book deserves to be much more widely known.
I'll play the outlaw and ignore rules four and five. But, by all means, if you're reading this and want to join in, count yourself tagged.
Holy Cyril on the Holy Spirit
As he is by nature the proper Spirit of the Son, existing in him and coming forth through him, so he is proper to the Father; and if the Spirit is common to them, surely the other aspects of their substance will not be divided. And let not the habitually impious use the arguments of ignorance to lead us toward what it would be wrong for us even to think: that the Son is playing some subordinate role when he supplies creation with the Spirit who comes from the Father -- for some, in their ignorance, have not been afraid to say even this! The consistent thing, rather, is to believe that it is because [the Spirit] is proper to him, as of course he also is to God the Father, that [the Son] sends him on his holy disciples for their sanctification.
Cyril of Alexandria, In Jo. 15:26-27 (Pusey vol. 2 p. 607); qtd in Brian E. Daley, SJ, "The Fullness of the Saving God: Cyril of Alexandria on the Holy Spirit," The Theology of St. Cyril of Alexandria: A Critical Appreciation, Weinandy and Keating, eds. T & T Clark (New York: 2003) p. 135. In the first sentence, 'existing' translates huparchon and 'coming forth' translates proion. What is interesting here, however, is the importance placed on the community of the Spirit for recognizing the unity of the Trinity. Cyril actually seems to do this quite a bit; it seems to be an important aspect of his teaching on the Trinity.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Notes and Links
* The Philosopher's Carnival is up at "Tales of Modernity"; it's short, but the posts are all fairly interesting.
* A renovation plan for the Vatican Library has put academic scholarship all over the world in disarray; the library is shutting down for three years to address structural problems. Since it is one of the most important manuscript archives in the world, a great many academics are going crazy trying to get in their research before it closes down.
* The Chinese province of Henan will be destroying a major Christian pilgrimage site.
* Johnny-Dee summarizes Bertrand Russell on the subject of mathematical intuition.
* Truth commissions are formed in order to encourage reconciliation among divided nations. James L. Gibson considers whether truth really does lead to reconciliation (PDF) by looking at the case of South Africa. The answer, as one might expect, turns out to be immensely complicated. I find the discussion interested because it is closely connected with the question of the vindication of the innocent, from which, however, it differs in important respects.
* For Thomas More's feast day, the Thomas More Institute launched Thomas More Studies 1: Utopia online. (Thanks to MTM who left a note in the comment box to my recent More Links post pointing this out.)
* Xavier at "Summa Philosophiae" discusses the grounding objection to Molinism. It's a good discussion; my own difference from it lies merely in the fact that I don't think the grounding objection requires a metaphysics of truth-making -- it's most natural, of course, to put it in terms of 'what makes a proposition true'; but you don't need to do so. I've suggested before that the grounding objection is really just one way of stating a more general concern about middle knowledge, namely, that we need a reason to think that there really is a separate, coherent middle ground between natural knowledge and free knowledge. It's one version of the worry that middle knowledge is proposing an incoherent tertium quid; to deal with such a worry we need a reason to think middle knowledge's tertium quid is legitimate.
* Carmelite coffee (ht).
* Nathanael Robinson has a post worthy of close reading and reflection on historical memory, looking at the case of Poland and the Holocaust. The general issue is especially important, but I think the issue of Poland and the Holocaust itself is an important issue, in part because I think Polish historical memory of the Holocaust has had, for various reasons, a rather massive influence on how much of the West views it; or, at least, one notices that (memory of) the Polish experience keeps coming up as a reference point, whether one regards it as an influencing factor or a symptom of something else.
* Chris discusses how children reason about wishes coming true and, in particular, how this compares to their ordinary causal reasoning.
* A renovation plan for the Vatican Library has put academic scholarship all over the world in disarray; the library is shutting down for three years to address structural problems. Since it is one of the most important manuscript archives in the world, a great many academics are going crazy trying to get in their research before it closes down.
* The Chinese province of Henan will be destroying a major Christian pilgrimage site.
* Johnny-Dee summarizes Bertrand Russell on the subject of mathematical intuition.
* Truth commissions are formed in order to encourage reconciliation among divided nations. James L. Gibson considers whether truth really does lead to reconciliation (PDF) by looking at the case of South Africa. The answer, as one might expect, turns out to be immensely complicated. I find the discussion interested because it is closely connected with the question of the vindication of the innocent, from which, however, it differs in important respects.
* For Thomas More's feast day, the Thomas More Institute launched Thomas More Studies 1: Utopia online. (Thanks to MTM who left a note in the comment box to my recent More Links post pointing this out.)
* Xavier at "Summa Philosophiae" discusses the grounding objection to Molinism. It's a good discussion; my own difference from it lies merely in the fact that I don't think the grounding objection requires a metaphysics of truth-making -- it's most natural, of course, to put it in terms of 'what makes a proposition true'; but you don't need to do so. I've suggested before that the grounding objection is really just one way of stating a more general concern about middle knowledge, namely, that we need a reason to think that there really is a separate, coherent middle ground between natural knowledge and free knowledge. It's one version of the worry that middle knowledge is proposing an incoherent tertium quid; to deal with such a worry we need a reason to think middle knowledge's tertium quid is legitimate.
* Carmelite coffee (ht).
* Nathanael Robinson has a post worthy of close reading and reflection on historical memory, looking at the case of Poland and the Holocaust. The general issue is especially important, but I think the issue of Poland and the Holocaust itself is an important issue, in part because I think Polish historical memory of the Holocaust has had, for various reasons, a rather massive influence on how much of the West views it; or, at least, one notices that (memory of) the Polish experience keeps coming up as a reference point, whether one regards it as an influencing factor or a symptom of something else.
* Chris discusses how children reason about wishes coming true and, in particular, how this compares to their ordinary causal reasoning.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Epieikeia
Via Volokh I came across this interesting passage from the decision in the notorious Genarlow Wilson case in Georgia.
It sounds like a case of an exercise of the virtue of equity, or epieikeia (Aquinas always spells it epikeia):
As he goes on to note in response to an objection, by setting aside the letter of law and regulation for particular cases, the virtue of equity does not involve setting aside what is just, but setting aside a strict interpretation of the rules in order to preserve what is just. The virtue of equity or epieikeia governs the application of legal justice or, in other words, the observance of the law, by allowing a less strict regard to law in a given case. This, of course, depends heavily on the particular contingent circumstances of the case at hand.
In Valenzuela v. Newsome, 253 Ga.793, 796, 325 S.E.2d 370 (1985), the Georgia Supreme Court decided not to define "miscarriage of justice." Instead, the Supreme Court stated that a miscarriage of justice should be determined on a case-by-case basis, "and will depend largely upon the sound discretion of the trial judge." Id. "Hence, on rare occasion, the writ must pass over procedural bars and the requirements of cause and prejudice, when that shall be necessary to avoid a miscarriage of justice." Id. The fact that Genarlow Wilson has spent two years in prison for what is now classified as a misdemeanor, and without assistance from this Court, will spend eight more years in prison, is a grave miscarriage of justice. If any case fits into the definitive limits of a miscarriage of justice, surely this case does.
If this Court, or any Court, cannot recognize the injustice of what has occurred here, then our court system has lost sight of the goal our judicial system has always strived to accomplish...Justice being served in a fair and equal manner.
It sounds like a case of an exercise of the virtue of equity, or epieikeia (Aquinas always spells it epikeia):
As stated above (I-II, 96, 6), when we were treating of laws, since human actions, with which laws are concerned, are composed of contingent singulars and are innumerable in their diversity, it was not possible to lay down rules of law that would apply to every single case. Legislators in framing laws attend to what commonly happens: although if the law be applied to certain cases it will frustrate the equality of justice and be injurious to the common good, which the law has in view. Thus the law requires deposits to be restored, because in the majority of cases this is just. Yet it happens sometimes to be injurious--for instance, if a madman were to put his sword in deposit, and demand its delivery while in a state of madness, or if a man were to seek the return of his deposit in order to fight against his country. On these and like cases it is bad to follow the law, and it is good to set aside the letter of the law and to follow the dictates of justice and the common good. This is the object of "epikeia" which we call equity. Therefore it is evident that "epikeia" is a virtue.
As he goes on to note in response to an objection, by setting aside the letter of law and regulation for particular cases, the virtue of equity does not involve setting aside what is just, but setting aside a strict interpretation of the rules in order to preserve what is just. The virtue of equity or epieikeia governs the application of legal justice or, in other words, the observance of the law, by allowing a less strict regard to law in a given case. This, of course, depends heavily on the particular contingent circumstances of the case at hand.
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