It's a well-known phenomenon that the moon on the horizon looks larger than the moon high in the sky. This has turned out to be an extraordinarily difficult scientific problem to solve, and is still unsolved today. We have eliminated some solutions. We know it's not actually larger or closer (it stays the same size, of course, and I believe it's actually farther away at the horizon). I believe Aristotle and Ptolemy both proposed the idea that it was an atmospheric phenomenon, in which the air magnifies it, but promising an idea as it was, it has been rigorously ruled out for quite some time. In the medieval period arguments began to be made that it was actually a psychological effect, with the most popular being that it just looked bigger because intervening objects made it look farther away.
Berkeley argued for a mix of the atmospheric theory with the psychological theory in which the moon looked fainter on the horizon, and therefore farther away. His position was that the eye receives fewer rays throught he atmosphere and thus less light from the moon itself. I notice, however, that Malebranche had already rejected this position, although he puts it in terms of the horizontal sun rather than the horizontal moon. In Dialogue XII of Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion he recounts an experiment with smoked glass in which he looked at the sun with and without the glass (don't try this at home!) and says that it can't be that the glass is letting in fewer rays, because the meridional sun, high in the sky, looks the same size whether the glass is used or not. Malebranche takes his experiments with the smoked glass (which obscured intervening bodies) to indicate that the intervening-body theory, in which intervening bodies make the sun look farther away, was the right one. He also suggests that this effect is made stronger because "the sky appears like a flattened spheroid" (JS 220).
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
The Unservile Arts
An interesting article by Andrew Delbanco on the endangerment of liberal arts in the college context. It really does seem that liberal arts at the college level is in very bad straits. In any case, just some random thoughts on the subject:
(1) College is an extraordinarily inefficient way to teach workers what they need in order to work. The best way to teach workers what they need to do is to give them on-the-job training, or to make use of a workshop-and-licensing system. Sending someone to college so that they will be a more productive filer of papers is truly absurd; and right now the only thing that a college degree really signals to most businesses is that you can stick with something for a few years.
Likewise, you don't get a competitive and productive workforce by sending them to school; you get a competitive and productive workforce by making it worth the time and effort it takes to work competitively and productively, and by giving them the resources required to do so. We do, in fact, do this, in part by putting an immense amount of pressure on people to get things that most people can only get by being good workers; and school does, in fact, contribute directly to this by teaching people to sit at desks and do work, and the like, but this direct contribution is minor. Education mostly contributes indirectly, by turning out people who can do things and make things that make other people more competitive and productive.
Everyone should remember the Gilbert & Sullivan song about the modern major-general, which was making precisely this point.
(2) Our current system of higher education has all the features typically associated with an educational system on the verge of breakdown. Educational institutions go through phases of intellectual stagnation and institutional breakdown. 'Intellectual stagnation' here does not mean that no original or good work is done, but has to do with the conditions required for it: education stagnates to the extent that valuable ideas are more and more costly in terms of time, effort, or resources, either on the part of the student or on the part of the teacher, thus making actual education increasingly difficult, or inconsistent, or expensive. Serious intellectual life may not freeze completely, but it slows, wasted on things that are sterile -- like journal articles that are never cited, or paperwork that simply takes up time -- or on things that misfire because people aren't prepared to use them -- like teaching methods that, fine in themselves, don't work well with students who actually need several more years of study before they will be prepared to read or write at a college level. Institutional breakdown, on the other hand, is economic in character. As Randall Collins has argued, our current educational system exhibits symptoms of both. This is not always easy to see because we pour such an extraordinary volume of people through our academic system, and put such extraordinary pressures on the people going through, that we still come up with some very good things, just by luck and numbers and brute force. But simply looking at good results isn't a way to determine the quality of the system -- and on closer look there's a lot of deterioration. People are overworked; degrees glut markets; expenses rise without real improvement; and so forth. In our case, one of the major problems is that the people who have real power are (1) not educators; and (2) don't care about education itself, and treat it only as a means to something else entirely. The first isn't necessarily a problem; non-educators have sometimes been the greatest reformers of educational systems. But the second is a pathology that destroys an educational system.
(3) Which raises another point: the reason we call them 'liberal arts' is that they are the things that by nature are suitable for free persons. This is why utility is a secondary issue in liberal arts: the point is not to make people useful, it's to make them more free. Merely useful people are mere slaves, and if you think that the point of education is to build a competitive and productive labor force, you are saying that the point of education is to make people more effective instruments of other people -- which is, as Aristotle pointed out long ago, what a slave is. Now, we are all going to be someone's instrument for something, and our ability to be such is an important element of society; but what distinguishes the free citizen from the mere slave is that the free citizen is not merely a productive and competitive worker, but someone who can do things simply because they are excellent things to do, without any regard for profit beyond that. This is something that admits of more and less; something is a liberal art precisely in the way that it can make you more of that kind of person. This is the unspoken problem of the instrumentalist view of education: people who place instrumental usefulness above all things are evil -- and I mean that quite literally, since they subordinate the moral to useful, and treat people as mere means -- and while having an instrumentalist view of education does not automatically make you that kind of person, it does make you complicit with such people. It is a morally corrosive view.
Note, of course, that this does not imply that education can't have as one of its goals giving people what they need to be productive, competitive workers. But if you are judging everything in education on whether it is conducive to this end, you are advocating an educational system in which people are treated like tools and not like people -- in other words, a machine for enslavement.
(4) Of course, part of the problem with liberal arts is due to the academics who are supposed to teach them. 'Liberal arts' have always been those arts or disciplines that are suitable by nature to free people, but with the older meaning of the term they were envisioned as literally skills -- things like being able to add, or understanding how to use geometry, or being able to write and deliver a speech. This was well-defined. The more modern usage is not well-defined at all, and includes all sorts of content that may or may not give skills in the sense that used to be meant. And the result is that what you get is very much more of a mixed bag, and it's harder to tell whether you're getting quality. But it's still possible to do so. And the capacity of these things to improve one's character as a free person should always be foremost in one's evaluation. Jane Austen is worth learning because people who read Austen are people whose lives have value that is independent of their usefulness as labor. Other things, like (say) Zombie Studies, may not be as good as Austen for this while still contributing to this to some extent.
(5) But through it all we should remember that the liberal arts simply don't depend on the collegiate system; it depends on them, whether it acknowledges that fact or not. If the whole college system were to go bottoms up, people would still practice the liberal arts. There are real benefits to having educational institutions that support the liberal arts, but those institutions aren't essential to the arts. And I think this ends up being important. One reason why the liberal arts struggle is that so many people think of them as something you only do in college. This is clearly false. But as long as it is not recognized as false, people will never appreciate how much of what we call civilization is actually constructed entirely out of the liberal arts, or how much the liberal arts are a part of their lives when they aren't merely serving someone else's demands. Do you want people to appreciate the liberal arts? Start reminding them that their minds and hearts are free, and that they themselves show their true value in acts of liberty rather than in acts of servility.
(1) College is an extraordinarily inefficient way to teach workers what they need in order to work. The best way to teach workers what they need to do is to give them on-the-job training, or to make use of a workshop-and-licensing system. Sending someone to college so that they will be a more productive filer of papers is truly absurd; and right now the only thing that a college degree really signals to most businesses is that you can stick with something for a few years.
Likewise, you don't get a competitive and productive workforce by sending them to school; you get a competitive and productive workforce by making it worth the time and effort it takes to work competitively and productively, and by giving them the resources required to do so. We do, in fact, do this, in part by putting an immense amount of pressure on people to get things that most people can only get by being good workers; and school does, in fact, contribute directly to this by teaching people to sit at desks and do work, and the like, but this direct contribution is minor. Education mostly contributes indirectly, by turning out people who can do things and make things that make other people more competitive and productive.
Everyone should remember the Gilbert & Sullivan song about the modern major-general, which was making precisely this point.
(2) Our current system of higher education has all the features typically associated with an educational system on the verge of breakdown. Educational institutions go through phases of intellectual stagnation and institutional breakdown. 'Intellectual stagnation' here does not mean that no original or good work is done, but has to do with the conditions required for it: education stagnates to the extent that valuable ideas are more and more costly in terms of time, effort, or resources, either on the part of the student or on the part of the teacher, thus making actual education increasingly difficult, or inconsistent, or expensive. Serious intellectual life may not freeze completely, but it slows, wasted on things that are sterile -- like journal articles that are never cited, or paperwork that simply takes up time -- or on things that misfire because people aren't prepared to use them -- like teaching methods that, fine in themselves, don't work well with students who actually need several more years of study before they will be prepared to read or write at a college level. Institutional breakdown, on the other hand, is economic in character. As Randall Collins has argued, our current educational system exhibits symptoms of both. This is not always easy to see because we pour such an extraordinary volume of people through our academic system, and put such extraordinary pressures on the people going through, that we still come up with some very good things, just by luck and numbers and brute force. But simply looking at good results isn't a way to determine the quality of the system -- and on closer look there's a lot of deterioration. People are overworked; degrees glut markets; expenses rise without real improvement; and so forth. In our case, one of the major problems is that the people who have real power are (1) not educators; and (2) don't care about education itself, and treat it only as a means to something else entirely. The first isn't necessarily a problem; non-educators have sometimes been the greatest reformers of educational systems. But the second is a pathology that destroys an educational system.
(3) Which raises another point: the reason we call them 'liberal arts' is that they are the things that by nature are suitable for free persons. This is why utility is a secondary issue in liberal arts: the point is not to make people useful, it's to make them more free. Merely useful people are mere slaves, and if you think that the point of education is to build a competitive and productive labor force, you are saying that the point of education is to make people more effective instruments of other people -- which is, as Aristotle pointed out long ago, what a slave is. Now, we are all going to be someone's instrument for something, and our ability to be such is an important element of society; but what distinguishes the free citizen from the mere slave is that the free citizen is not merely a productive and competitive worker, but someone who can do things simply because they are excellent things to do, without any regard for profit beyond that. This is something that admits of more and less; something is a liberal art precisely in the way that it can make you more of that kind of person. This is the unspoken problem of the instrumentalist view of education: people who place instrumental usefulness above all things are evil -- and I mean that quite literally, since they subordinate the moral to useful, and treat people as mere means -- and while having an instrumentalist view of education does not automatically make you that kind of person, it does make you complicit with such people. It is a morally corrosive view.
Note, of course, that this does not imply that education can't have as one of its goals giving people what they need to be productive, competitive workers. But if you are judging everything in education on whether it is conducive to this end, you are advocating an educational system in which people are treated like tools and not like people -- in other words, a machine for enslavement.
(4) Of course, part of the problem with liberal arts is due to the academics who are supposed to teach them. 'Liberal arts' have always been those arts or disciplines that are suitable by nature to free people, but with the older meaning of the term they were envisioned as literally skills -- things like being able to add, or understanding how to use geometry, or being able to write and deliver a speech. This was well-defined. The more modern usage is not well-defined at all, and includes all sorts of content that may or may not give skills in the sense that used to be meant. And the result is that what you get is very much more of a mixed bag, and it's harder to tell whether you're getting quality. But it's still possible to do so. And the capacity of these things to improve one's character as a free person should always be foremost in one's evaluation. Jane Austen is worth learning because people who read Austen are people whose lives have value that is independent of their usefulness as labor. Other things, like (say) Zombie Studies, may not be as good as Austen for this while still contributing to this to some extent.
(5) But through it all we should remember that the liberal arts simply don't depend on the collegiate system; it depends on them, whether it acknowledges that fact or not. If the whole college system were to go bottoms up, people would still practice the liberal arts. There are real benefits to having educational institutions that support the liberal arts, but those institutions aren't essential to the arts. And I think this ends up being important. One reason why the liberal arts struggle is that so many people think of them as something you only do in college. This is clearly false. But as long as it is not recognized as false, people will never appreciate how much of what we call civilization is actually constructed entirely out of the liberal arts, or how much the liberal arts are a part of their lives when they aren't merely serving someone else's demands. Do you want people to appreciate the liberal arts? Start reminding them that their minds and hearts are free, and that they themselves show their true value in acts of liberty rather than in acts of servility.
Platonic Myths
Today for my hybrid Intro course I did what is usually my most popular lecture of the term -- on Platonic myths. My ordinary Intro course had this lecture a while ago, but I had my hybrid students take a brief survey at the end, as a way to get attendance and get some feedback. We looked at four myths -- the Allegory of the Cave, the Myth of Theuth, the Myth of Atlantis (briefly), and the Myth of the Last Judgment. And one of the survey questions was which one they found most interesting. The results:
The hybrid course is not a huge course, so the "6.667%" is actually one person. I also asked them why they picked the myth they did. Several people who picked the Allegory of the Cave said they were impressed by how relevant it was to today; one person who picked the Last Judgment said the same. Most of the people who picked the Myth of Theuth said they found it most interesting because it raised questions about what it is to understand something; a couple of people said the same about the Allegory of the Cave. And two people who picked the Last Judgment said, interestingly, that they really liked Zeus's solution to the problem with which the myth opens (which is that good people are ending up in Tartarus and bad people in Elysium because they all know when they are going to die and they are judged while alive by the living), and both of them indicated that they thought the moral message sent by the solution was an interesting one.
Of the following Platonic myths, which did you find most interesting?
The Allegory of the Cave (from the Republic) 40%
The Myth of Atlantis (from the Critias) 6.667%
The Last Judgment Myth (from the Gorgias) 20%
The Myth of Theuth (from the Phaedrus) 33.333%
The hybrid course is not a huge course, so the "6.667%" is actually one person. I also asked them why they picked the myth they did. Several people who picked the Allegory of the Cave said they were impressed by how relevant it was to today; one person who picked the Last Judgment said the same. Most of the people who picked the Myth of Theuth said they found it most interesting because it raised questions about what it is to understand something; a couple of people said the same about the Allegory of the Cave. And two people who picked the Last Judgment said, interestingly, that they really liked Zeus's solution to the problem with which the myth opens (which is that good people are ending up in Tartarus and bad people in Elysium because they all know when they are going to die and they are judged while alive by the living), and both of them indicated that they thought the moral message sent by the solution was an interesting one.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
State Popularity Contest
Public Policy Polling recently did a curious poll (PDF) in which they asked Americans whether they had favorable or unfavorable views of various states. Of all the states, Hawaii had the best favorable-unfavorable ratio (54-10), being almost universally liked. One imagines that has more to do with sunny beaches and hula dancers than cost of living. California has the worst favorable-unfavorable ratio (27-44). The break-up is also interesting. Democrats tend to have a high opinion of states that are usually seen as strongly inclined to Democratic politics, while having a low opinion of states that are usually seen as strongly inclined to Republican politics; and for Republicans it is the reverse. Hawaii does so well because while it is (comparatively) absolutely loved by Democrats, it's not hated by Republicans; and California does so badly in part because while it is (comparatively) positively despised by Republicans, it's really not all that loved by Democrats, either, although they are still much more likely to view it favorably than Republicans are. Texas does much better than California because Republicans like it massively more than Democrats hate it, which is interesting, because Texas's reputation as a Republican state is not very old. Women seem to have a higher opinion of New England, while men seem to have a higher opinion of the rugged north central states like North Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming.
Of course in virtually all of these cases there was a pretty heavy not-sure component. 62% of respondents seem to have been not sure what to think of West Virginia, for instance, as compared with states like Texas or California, where the number was down below 30%. And, of course, this is a portmanteau statistic, since approval and disapproval of a state is not something that's going to be entirely coherent as a concept, and will include the most disparate kinds of evaluation. So it means next to nothing. But it's interesting to see the top and the bottom.
Most Favorable
1. Hawaii (54-10)
2. Colorado (44-9)
3. Tennessee (48-14)
4. South Dakota (42-8)
5. Virginia (45-13)
Least Favorable
1. California (27-44)
2. Illinois (19-29)
3. New Jersey (25-32)
4. Mississippi (22-28)
5. Utah (24-27)
Of course in virtually all of these cases there was a pretty heavy not-sure component. 62% of respondents seem to have been not sure what to think of West Virginia, for instance, as compared with states like Texas or California, where the number was down below 30%. And, of course, this is a portmanteau statistic, since approval and disapproval of a state is not something that's going to be entirely coherent as a concept, and will include the most disparate kinds of evaluation. So it means next to nothing. But it's interesting to see the top and the bottom.
Most Favorable
1. Hawaii (54-10)
2. Colorado (44-9)
3. Tennessee (48-14)
4. South Dakota (42-8)
5. Virginia (45-13)
Least Favorable
1. California (27-44)
2. Illinois (19-29)
3. New Jersey (25-32)
4. Mississippi (22-28)
5. Utah (24-27)
James Wilson on Evidence
In his Lectures on Law, James Wilson gives fourteen kinds of evidence, which makes for an interesting list:
Wilson's position, that what makes something evidence is merely its serving a kind of role, and not anything to do with its intrinsic character, and thus that evidence should not be treated as being all of one kind, is an interesting one, and, I think, right. The approach here is essentially a modified Scottish Common Sense approach, as might be expected given his background and education. (James Wilson was born and educated in Scotland; he then moved to the American colonies at the age of 24; he signed the Declaration of Independence for Pennsylvania; he served on the Committee of Detail that produced the first draft of the U.S. Constitution, and he also signed the U. S. Constitution for Pennsylvania; he served as a Justice on the first Supreme Court; and he was the first professor of law at the College of Philadelphia.)
I. It arises from the external senses: and by each of these, distinct information is conveyed to the mind.
II. It arises from consciousness; or the internal view of what passes within ourselves.
III. It arises from taste; or that power of the human mind, by which we perceive and enjoy the beauties of nature or of art.
IV. It arises from the moral sense; or that faculty of the mind, by which we have the original conceptions of right and wrong in conduct; and the original perceptions, that certain things are right, and that others are wrong.
V. Evidence arises from natural signs: by these we gain our knowledge of the minds, and of the various qualities and operations of the minds, of other men. Their thoughts, and purposes, and dispositions have their natural signs in the features of the countenance, in the tones of the voice, and in the motions and gestures of the body.
VI. Evidence arises from artificial signs; such as have no meaning, except that, which is affixed to them by compact, or agreement, or usage: such is language, which has been employed universally for the purpose of communicating thought.
VII. Evidence arises from human testimony in matters of fact.
VIII. Evidence arises from human authority in matters of opinion.
IX. Evidence arises from memory, or a reference to something which is past.
X. Evidence arises from experience; as when, from facts already known, we make inferences to facts of the same kind, unknown.
XI. Evidence arises from analogy; as when, from facts already known, we make inferences to facts of a similar kind, not known.
XII. Evidence arises from judgment; by which I here mean that power of the mind, which decides upon truths that are self-evident.
XIII. Evidence arises from reasoning: by reasoning I here mean that power of the mind, by which, from one truth, we deduce another, as a conclusion from the first. The evidence, which arises from reasoning, we shall, by and by, see divided into two species—demonstrative and moral.
XIV. Evidence arises from calculations concerning chances. This is a particular application of demonstrative to ascertain the precise force of moral reasoning.
Even this enumeration, though very long, is, perhaps, far from being complete. Among all those different kinds of evidence, it is, I believe, impossible to find any common nature, to which they can be reduced. They agree, indeed, in this one quality—which constitutes them evidence—that they are fitted by nature to produce belief in the human mind.
Wilson's position, that what makes something evidence is merely its serving a kind of role, and not anything to do with its intrinsic character, and thus that evidence should not be treated as being all of one kind, is an interesting one, and, I think, right. The approach here is essentially a modified Scottish Common Sense approach, as might be expected given his background and education. (James Wilson was born and educated in Scotland; he then moved to the American colonies at the age of 24; he signed the Declaration of Independence for Pennsylvania; he served on the Committee of Detail that produced the first draft of the U.S. Constitution, and he also signed the U. S. Constitution for Pennsylvania; he served as a Justice on the first Supreme Court; and he was the first professor of law at the College of Philadelphia.)
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Malebranche on How to Be Unpopular
The great secret of delivering oneself from the importunity of many people is to speak reasonably to them. This language, which they do not understand, gets rid of them forever, without their having reason to complain.
Nicolas Malebranche, Dialogues on Metaphysics and on Religion VI.viii (Jolley-Scott 102)
The Feeling of Evidence
To say that evidence demonstrates, makes clear, and ascertains the truth of a fact, is rather to describe its effects than its nature. Its effects, too, are described in a manner, neither very accurate nor precise; as I shall afterwards have occasion to show more particularly.
But the truth is, that evidence is much more easily felt than described. We experience, though it is difficult to explain, its operations and influence. A man may have a good eye, and may make a good use of it, though he cannot unfold the theory of vision.
James Wilson, "On the Nature and Philosophy of Evidence," Lectures on Law. He doesn't, of course, simply leave it at this.
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