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    • Voltaire’s Prayer

      We had a big internal debate at newapps a while ago about the use of snark and each of us individually resolved to try our best to avoid it from that point on out. First, it's too easy to be mistaken about when it might be justified. Second, even if might be in principle justified there are just too many negative consequences. We all resolved to try not to use snark even if snark was directed against us.

      Nonetheless, there is some great snark in the philosophical canon. Perhaps the most famous is from Voltaire:

      I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it.

      This is pretty funny at first glance, but I think a little bit problematic too.

      First, as Voltaire realized to his detriment, it's possible that one's enemies be ridiculous without people realizing that they are. This can get pretty destructive. So he could have come up with a better prayer. Second, in a more Nietzschean vein, ridiculous enemies don't really help you do a better job. At best they just waste everybody's time.  Finally, we should have some compassion for the ridiculous. We've all been ridiculed, rightly and wrongly. It's so little fun being ridiculed that it can drive people mad, making them that much more ridiculous. This is a pretty bad dynamic.

    • How do we interpret the IPCC’s statements regarding uncertainty?

      Not very well, claims a study recently published in Nature.   The principle claim is that "laypeople interpret IPCC statements as conveying probabilities closer to 50% than intended by the IPCC authors."  In other words, if the IPCC uses a term to convey that a hypothesis is 90% likely, people intepret it to mean that the hypothesis is significantly less than 90% likely.   And mutatis mutandis if the hypothesis is highly unlikely:  people intepret the phrase to mean something closer to 50% then the authors of the report intend.

    • Mechanisms and functions

      There appeared this morning a very interesting review of Craver and Darden’s recent book In Search of Mechanisms: Discoveries across the Life Sciences by the biologist Stuart Newman.   Among the points he makes is the claim that it will no longer do for philosophers to define the function of some mechanism (or anything else) as "the role the part played in the evolutionary history of the organisms that have it” (C&D’s phrase).   This is so, he argues, because  the “phenomenon of ‘developmental system drift’ plays havoc with conventional ideas about mechanism.”

       

      He gives the following examples:

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    • new philosopher’s metablog (hat-tip Spiros)

      Long-time Philosophers Anonymous discussion contributor Glaucon SonofAriston has started a Philosophy Metablog* here. The purpose:

      Don't like their comment policy? Think blogger x is a doofuss? Tired of threadjacking to air your grievances about other blogs? Here's a blog for you.

      It will be interesting to see if this works as a pressure valve for discontented anonymous posters who are being blocked at pre-moderated blogs and/or threadjacking at non-moderated ones (e.g a not untypical example here and Spiros' response here). I think it's a very nice idea independently of that though.

      I wish a smart Habermasian would write a book on internet communication. His theory of ideal speech situations might help people set up good policies, and the way communication characteristically breaks down on the internet is probably good grist for testing and ammending the theory itself. 

      We all know of the thing where not being face to face or even hearing the person's voice, yet still communicating in real time, leads to a rapid ramping up of negative affect. But I also think that we haven't quite mastered the art of communication between people who are not anonymous and people who are, especially in a culture where anything you say probably will be used against you.

      [*I am now meta-meta-blogging.]

    • Are FOX affiliates cutting to commercial when “Cosmos” mentions human evolution?

      There were news reports indicating that an Oklahoma affiliate did this in March, when there was brief mention of human evolution.   Some claimed it was an accident.   There are now rumors (I don't have an internet link for this) that they did this again last night in Louisiana.   Can any Louisiana viewers confirm or deny this?

    • Foucault 20th Century Viconian

      I am aware of exactly two comments Foucault made on Vico. From Discipline and Punish, with regard to the description of the 'spectacular' and famously brutal execution of Damiens: 'As Vico remarked this old jurisprudence was "an entire poetics"' (Discipline and Punish, trans. Alan Sheridan, Penguin, 1977: p. 45). Then from 'What is Enlightenment':

      The present may also be analyzed as a point of transition toward the dawning of a new world. That is what Vico describes in the last chapter of La Scienza Nuova; what he sees "today"; is "a complete humanity … spread abroad through all nations, for a few great monarchs rule over this world of peoples"; it is also "Europe … radiant with such humanity that it abounds in all the good things that make for the happiness of human life"

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    • Is there a recieved view about Evans’ argument against ontic vagueness?

      My co-writer* Joshua Heller is currently working on a project connections between vagueness literature, literature on semantic underdetermination, and new work on metaphysical indeterminacy.**

      One thing we're both interested in exploring the next few weeks is the extent to which Evans' argument against ontic vagueness applies to either semantic underdetermination or metaphysical indeterminacy. But I'm about ten years out of date on the vagueness literature. The last time I dipped my toe in this, it seemed like everyone was trying to save supervaulationism from Williamson's criticisms about wide and narrow entailment and from the charge that it has no advantages over three valued systems with respect to modelling higher order vagueness. I didn't think there was any consensus on Evans' argument
      then.

      Is there now anything approaching a consensus among people working on vagueness about Evans' argument? If so, what should I read? Have any of the new people working on metaphysical indeterminacy or semantic underdetermination said anything interesting about Evans' argument?

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    • Gary Becker (1930-2014)

      Gary Becker, the Nobel laureate economist at the University of Chicago, has died.

      Becker is perhaps best known for "human capital" theory, which talks about how one might, for example, come to think of education as an investment in one's future earnings.  As the absolute normalcy of a statement like this would suggest, I think it's probably hard to overstate how influential Becker has been on the development of the neoliberal world we all inhabit.  Foucault's analysis in Birth of Biopolitics is essential, as are the exchanges (here and here) between Becker, Bernard Harcourt (whose Illusion of Free Markets ought to be required reading), and the Foucauldian Francois Ewald.

      As readers of this blog will know, I'm no fan of neoliberalism.  But, as I tell my students, if you don't see neoliberalism at least as a temptation, you didn't get it.

      Here is the U. of Chicago notice; here is Leiter.

    • Sunday School lecture on PC(USA) General Assembly confessional issues

      449px-Allan_Boesak_(1986)Today I'm lecturing on issues relating to the adoption of a new translation of the Heidelberg Catechism and the possible adoption of the Belhar Confession into the PC(USA)'s Book of Confessions.

      In preparing for them I had to study a fair amoung of neo-Calvanist Kuyperian Apartheid theology (which, if Belhar is correct, is heretical) as well as scholarship on what the Christian Bible does or doesn't say about homosexuality (the new translation of Heidelberg removes a denunciation of gay people that was not in the original German). It's pretty interesting stuff, albeit very dispiriting at times. It's astonishing to me that defenders of Kuyperian "pluralism" at least on the web never seem to take into account its horrific legacy in South Africa.

      Anyhow, the full lecture is here.

      Given the connection between Dutch Calvanism and Apartheid, it is a wonderful sign of reconciliation that the two biggest American Calvinist denominations (RCA and CRCNA) have added it to the traditional three Confessions accepted by Calvinists (though the more conservative CRNEA has accorded it lesser standing).

      This being said, along with South African civil rights pioneer and leader of the campaign for Belhar Allan Boeseck, in my heart of hearts I can't help but take the Belhar rejections to apply to injustices committed against GLBT people. So it's a little bit weird to me that both of these denominations accept Belhar yet embrace explicit doctrinal statements decrying homosexual acts as sins (though some member churches of the CRA, which accords Belhar full confessional status, reject this teaching).

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    • Was that a Frampton reference in my store?

      The gypsies had no home. The doors had no bass.

      Nor bass:

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