A Man's a Man, an' Love is Love

Parted
by Paul Laurence Dunbar

De breeze is blowin’ ‘cross de bay
My lady, my lady;
De ship hit teks me far away,
My lady, my lady;
Ole Mas’ done sol’ me down de stream;
Dey tell me ‘t ain’t so bad ’s hit seem,
My lady, my lady.

O’ co’se I knows dat you'll be true,
My lady, my lady;
But den I do’ know whut to do,
My lady, my lady;
I knowed some day we'd have to pa’t,
But den hit put’ nigh breaks my hea’t,
My lady, my lady.

De day is long, de night is black,
My lady, my lady;
I know you'll wait twell I come back,
My lady, my lady;
I'll stan’ de ship, I'll stan’ de chain,
But I'll come back, my darlin’ Jane,
My lady, my lady.

Jes’ wait, jes’ b’lieve in whut I say,
My lady, my lady;
D’ ain't nothin’ dat kin keep me ‘way,
My lady, my lady;
A man's a man, an’ love is love;
God knows ouah hea’ts, my little dove;
He'll he’p us f’om his th’one above,
My lady, my lady.

Particular Ought, Particular Can (Re-Post)

Perhaps it's just the papers and comments I happen to have come across, but I have seen a bit of an uptick in criticisms of 'ought implies can' that make, or at least seem to make, a naive mistake I have pointed out before, so I re-post, in slightly revised form, a post on the subject from 2016.

'Ought implies can' is an old principle, usually attributed to Kant (although you can certainly find older arguments requiring something analogous). There has been an increasing tendency to criticize it in recent years. I think these criticisms are often extraordinarily naive, and tend to confuse the often sloganish way in which the principle is stated with what it was originally intended to mean. If we look at Kant, he is quite clear that it is entirely possible that you can't do what you ought to do -- Kant actually doesn't think it's the sort of thing you could know for sure one way or another. But to command something as a categorical 'ought' is to put it forward as something to be done, and trying to comply, practically speaking, requires taking it as something you can do. The point is that it is reasonable to treat the action as possible for practical purposes; but this is different from having a proof that we can in fact do it, because that would require a proof of free will, which Kant doesn't think we have. Thus it's reasonable to hope you can do what you ought, although you can't in fact guarantee that this is true. Or to put it in other words, an 'ought' morally and practically requires that we treat it as implying 'can', although we limited human minds are not able to prove that it does in fact do so for us in particular. This is quite clearly not a naive interpretation of 'ought implies can'.

But even more naive interpretations are not as naive as the versions sometimes criticized as if they were the way to understand the principle. Here is a case that, as far as I am aware, everyone who has ever claimed that 'ought implies can' has accepted could happen:

Jay has an obligation to do X at a certain time T. Jay fails to do X at T, and thus fails to fulfill his obligation.

But it is also quite self-evident that if you are not fulfilling your obligation, you cannot also be doing what fulfills it. Therefore if Jay is not doing X at T, he can't fulfill his obligation to do X at T. Therefore, one might conclude, he can't do it, so he has no obligation to do it. This would obviously be a problem for the principle, if it required a conclusion like this -- it would mean that no one ought to do anything they don't actually do, so 'ought' would actually imply 'does'. But, of course, this does not appear to be what anyone has ever thought the principle required, which is a sign that this is likely a bad interpretation of the principle. And the culprit (one that seems quite common among criticisms of the principle) would appear to be the idea that the principle 'ought implies can' requires that 'ought' implies every kind of 'can' rather than just some kind of 'can'.

Consider the following scenario:

Kay has an obligation to meet Jay at no later than noon. Kay puts off going to the meeting until it is physically impossible to meet Jay by noon.

Kay can't meet Jay; she's guaranteed she can't. Thus, one might say, it's not true that she ought to meet Jay. But this is not really any less absurd (in philosophy, the technical term for 'blatantly and hopelessly stupid' is 'absurd')as an interpretation of the principle than the previous one: she only can't fulfill her obligation because she's already violating it. That she can't fulfill it in this way does not imply that the obligation does not imply any possibility at all. And, indeed, we know that Kay's obligation was not an impossible obligation to meet; the whole set-up requires that meeting Jay at no later than noon is possible.

To be sure, the possibility is fairly attenuated; but this does not mean that it is not a genuine possibility. I cannot be at home now, for the obvious reason that I am currently somewhere else, namely, on campus finishing up required office hours. But I can be at home now in the limited sense that it is a possible state of affairs that is not inconsistent with my abilities: I could have stayed home rather than doing what I ought, and I am perfectly capable of going home at any point. And the reverse works exactly the same way. Suppose I were at home instead of on campus where I am required to be at this time. I cannot be at home and away from home at the same time and in the same way; therefore, I couldn't be doing what I ought. But the obligation is not linked to what I am able to do when I am violating the obligation; that 'ought' does not imply that 'can'. But this does not show that the 'ought' does not imply some 'can'. And, indeed, if it were literally impossible to do something, one might well say that this shows that you have no such obligation. For instance, if I went around claiming that everybody has an obligation to jump over the moon, it's perfectly legitimate to reject this claim on the grounds that we know for sure that no human being could possibly do so.

Consider another kind of case.

You have an obligation to meet Jay and Kay at noon. As it happens, God, who is omniscient, knows that you won't. If God knows that you won't, however, then you won't. And if you won't meet Jay and Kay at noon, you can't also meet them at noon. So you will not fulfill your obligation.

This works exactly the same way: the impossibility is conditional (it is impossible only given that you in fact won't), and is not in fact an impossibility relevant to that particular obligation.

It's likely that there are cases where the relationship between 'ought' and 'can' is non-trivial. But it is a confusion to hold that the principle requires that if you ought to do something, you can do it, simpliciter; 'ought' does not imply every 'can'. Things may be possible in one way and not possible in another way. And, what's more, you can entirely make sense of the notion that you might have different kinds of 'ought' depending on the different kinds of 'can' to which the 'ought' is linked. What you would need to counter the principle is not to find situations where you can't do what you ought, in some particular sense of 'can't', but to find an 'ought' that is linked to no particular 'can' at all. It would at least be hard work to argue that anyone ought to do things that are absolutely impossible in every way. Without such an argument, however, it seems that every obligation does imply some kind of possibility, even though it doesn't imply every kind of possibility.

(There are, of course, other questions in the vicinity of this, which complicate the question of how obligation and possibility are related. For instance, we sometimes treat trying to fulfill an obligation as if it were not significantly different from fulfilling it, and we sometimes don't. But if trying ever counts, then this changes what counts as 'being able to fulfill the obligation'. And there are a number of other things that suggest that we should also not be too facile in assuming what it even means to say that one can fulfill an obligation.)

International Year of the Periodic Table

Apparently 2019 is the International Year of the Periodic Table, being the 150th anniversary of Mendeleev's first formal presentation of the principles of his classificatory feat. Some various items of interest with respect to the periodic table:

* Ben McFarland, Predicting the past with the periodic table, at the OUP Blog.

* A debate on the nature of the periodic table between Birger Hjørland and Eric Scerri, with a comment by John Dupré.

* Eric Scerri, Mendeleev's Periodic Table Is Finally Completed and What To Do about Group 3?, from 2012, after Mendeleev's original periodic layout was completely filled.

* Eric Scerri, How Should the Periodic System be Regarded? A brief look at some published proposals, which summarizes the basic lay of the land in philosophy of classification

* Make your own periodic table, using the icons in the left-hand upper corner.

Where Galleons Crumble and the Krakens Breed

Atlantis
by Clark Ashton Smith

Above its domes the gulfs accumulate.
Far up, the sea-gales blare their bitter screed:
But here the buried waters take no heed—
Deaf, and with welded lips pressed down by weight
Of the upper ocean. Dim, interminate,
In cities over-webbed with somber weed,
Where galleons crumble and the krakens breed,
The slow tide coils through sunken court and gate.
From out the ocean's phosphor-starry dome,
A ghostly light is dubitably shed
On altars of a goddess garlanded
With blossoms of some weird and hueless vine;
And, wingéd, fleet, through skies beneath the foam,
Like silent birds the sea-things dart and shine.

I Know What the Caged Bird Feels

Sympathy
By Paul Laurence Dunbar

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!

Voyages Extraordinaires #46: Le Testament d'un excentrique

A stranger, having arrived in the principal city of Illinois on the morning of April 3, 1897, would have had every right to consider himself as favored by the God of travelers. That day his notebook would have overflowed with curious notes capable of furnishing material for sensationalistic articles. And, assuredly, if he had extended his stay in Chicago for some weeks before and some months after, he would have been able to take part in the passions, palpitations, alternating hope and despair, feverishness, even bewilderment, of that great city, which had lost its self-possession.

[My translation.]

The Noble Game of the Goose (PDF) is one of the most widely popular board games in history. Racing by dice roll on a track of sixty-three squares, players try to land exactly on the end square; certain squares on the track impose special operations -- if you land on a goose square, you automatically advance by the same number that you rolled to land on it: if you land on the death's head, you have to start over; if you land on the prison, you lose a turn; if you land on the bridge, you advance twelve; if you land on the maze, you regress thirty; and so forth. In addition, if you land on a square occupied by another player, you force them out of the space and back to the square whence you came.

It's not at all difficult to see why Verne saw the game as having potential for some of his 'geographical fiction'. Given the choice to use it as the structure of the story, you would need a location that would, first, give a reason for people to play, and, second, be large enough, diverse enough, and modern enough to make it geographically interesting. There is obviously only one real answer: the United States of America, land of crazy millionaires and doing anything for dollars, a country vast in size, modern in infrastructure, and endless in geographical variation.

In Le Testament d'un excentrique, published in 1900 and known in English as Will of an Eccentric, the death of multimillionaire William J. Hypperbone, enthusiast for the Game of the Goose, member of The Eccentric Club, and upstanding citizen of Chicago, Illinois, creates a great sensation. In his will, he proposes a large-scale version of his favorite game, to be called The Noble Game of the United States. Six residents of Chicago are chosen by lottery to play; a mysterious seventh is added by codicil. The game takes place in 1897; there are forty-five states, Utah having just become a state in the previous year. In addition, there is the District of Columbia and five territories (Oklahoma Territory, Indian Territory, New Mexico Territory, Arizona Territory, Alaska). Alaska is left out for convenience -- it's a little too much of a challenge -- but that makes for fifty squares on the board. The rest of the squares are filled out by Illinois, which is the starting and ending point and so takes the role of the goose squares. To land on a square, the player has to check in by a certain day at a particular city and post office in that state or territory; at that post office, they will also at the given time receive, by telegram from Chicago, the results of their next dice roll and thus their next location. The special function squares are in the same location on the US board that they are on the Game of the Goose; it seems that there was some attempt to match the special functions to the locations (e.g., the death's head is Death Valley), but this isn't always explained (e.g., the prison square is St. Louis). The players pay out of their own pockets, and on certain squares they can be fined, which they must pay or forfeit the game, but it's a one in seven chance to win a big prize, sixty million dollars in 1897 money, and if you come in second, you get all of the pot from the fines collected during the game.

Coming near the end of Verne's career, it is not well known; despite taking place in the United States, it was never really marketed to the US. It's a very readable book, although the actual plot is inevitably basic, and the characterization, divided among several characters who only occasionally interact with each other, also ends up being fairly basic. But I've noted before that one of Verne's charms for an American is his depictions of the United States as an exotic country, full of weirdness: Maine, where you can be fined for asking for whiskey; Cleveland, where people get strangely enthusiastic about prize pigs; Wyoming, where women can vote; and, of course, that favorite of nineteenth-century European writers, Utah, with its Mormons. And while not deep, it is a swiftly running tale that never flags.

Fortnightly Book, June 9

One of the reasons I started the Fortnightly Book was that I inherited my grandparents' library and wanted to work through the books I hadn't read, and thought I might as well re-read those I had. In practice, probably only about a third of the books I've done have fit this category; others have been new books, or books recommended to me by someone else, or just books I had already that I wanted to look at again. And with things like the Verne project I've drifted further from it. But there are still books on my shelves from my grandparents that I have never gotten around to reading at all. So I think I will deliberately do one that is a complete mystery to me -- not only have I never read it, I don't know anything about the authors, I have never heard anything about it from a secondary source, and the only place I've come across it is the copy that I inherited: Triptych, by Dora Landey and Elinor Klein. It's a sizeable book, but I think part of this is the typography, since the print is not small.

Since I know nothing about the authors, I present to you the information from the "About the Authors" page:

DORA LANDEY was born and raised in Manhattan. Currently a student at Sarah Lawrence College, she lives in the country with her husband and three daughters.

ELINOR KLEIN was born and educated in Massachusetts and was graduated from Smith College. With her son, her husband, and her three dogs, she commutes between an apartment in Manhattan and a donkey farm in the country.

As to the topic of the book, I can tell you that it's about Russia under the Romanovs, as the Revolution approaches, and that the Kirkus Review of the book makes it sound completely insane, like a soap opera in which everyone is on cocaine. We shall see.

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

Dora Landey & Elinor Klein, Triptych, Houghton Mifflin (Boston: 1983).