Random accumulated thoughts and quotations

Below are some thoughts and quotes that have accumulated in my sticky note widget over the last week or two... the newest are up top, so the order may be clearer if it is read from the bottom. The quotations that are not cited are taken out of context from Daniel Hutto's Wittgenstein and the End of Philosophy.

"Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything. - Since Everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden, for example, is of no use to us." -Ludwig Wittgenstein

"The first step is to free ourselves from philosophical myths, the second is not to create new ones."

"...the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think." -Johannes Climacus (one of Søren Kierkegaard's pseudonyms)

"For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday." -Ludwig Wittgenstein

--In my view, a fair reason for rejecting purely secular humanistic ethical systems is that they are anthropocentric. A desire to transcend this (esp. the claim that value arises due to human need) and to value being in totality is what may lead one to search for God (i.e. a leap from subjectivity to objectivity), even if that is without the assurance of validation. --Epistemological barriers become irrelevant in such cases. That something cannot be known does not make the possibilites of that something irrelevant.

"When we do philosophy we are like savages, primitive people, who hear the expressions of civilized men, put a false interpretation on them, and then draw the queerest conclusions from it." -Ludwig Wittgenstein

"All theology is anthropology" -Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach

Objectivity and subjectivity: the world and the subject are both elements of the same narrative.

Action and inaction are equally active activities, inaction does not remove the aspect of participation.

"Philosophy can at best clarify and make perspicuous that which is already known to us."

Freedom only exists from an internal perspective–-from an external perspective a polyvalent web of propensities and circumstances ultimately determines the conduct of the individual; although from an internal perspective the individual is still responsible for decision-making (even if it is influenced by external phenomena).

Thoughts on morality, etc.

I started writing an outline for my understanding of what the function of the state is and how value relates to that...
i. Value and the function of the state

...But I grew tired of it and decided to start from morality on up. I'm hoping that I can have this be self-referential as far as political philosophy and axiology is concerned, so it may start epistemology onward. It's definitely not succinct or colorful yet, but here's what I have:

(This was written in OmniOutliner, which unfortunately can't export to PDFs and does an awful job of exporting to HTML... I modified the headlines so it is easier to navigate, but all italics, etc. were lost.)

11/17 update:

Nevermind! It can export to PDF, I'm just out of it. (And it probably can do fair HTML exports, but they aren't particularly suitable for use in Blogger.)

Here's the pdf version which is much, much more readable.

The not-so-pretty-or-readable text is still below:

- [ ] I. Experience is the case.
    - [ ] A. Metaphysics is incapable of delineating anything beyond its
          epistemological aspect, i.e. that nothing in it's domain can
          be known.
        - [ ] 1. Therefore, ethical systems, be they secular or
              theological in nature, must be compatible or otherwise
              not invalidated by experience in order to possess
              legitimacy (i.e. relevancy to the world).
    - [ ] B. Aside from physical traits, and perhaps some instincts, human
          beings are brought into the world tabula rasa.
        - [ ] 1. By instinct I am meaning aspects of the physical
              constitution that encourage certain behavior, which are
              essentially physical traits that are psychically manifest.
        - [ ] 2. Therewith, any inequalities in the human condition are
              due to physical or sociological factors.
    - [ ] C. It is assumed that human beings are rational actors unless
          somehow prohibited by cognitive faculties.
        - [ ] 1. The conduct of human beings should be seen in light of
              rationality.
            - [ ] a) By 'rationality' it is meant that decisions are
                  determined in accordance with applicable
                  circumstances and parameters (i.e. experience) rather
                  than arbitrarily.
        - [ ] 2. It is my belief that this should invite optimism.
            - [ ] a) And for fun, we could also say that freedom only
                  exists from an internal perspective–from an external
                  perspective, a polyvalent web of propensities and
                  circumstances ultimately determines the conduct of
                  the individual; although from an internal perspective
                  the individual is still responsible for
                  decision-making.
- [ ] II. Morality is based on aesthetic preference, i.e. desire, which is
      a priori.
    - [ ] A. Morality relies on vertical (i.e. hierarchical) relationships
          between preferences.
        - [ ] 1. Without verticality there is no distinction between the
              relative value of certain principles in relation to
              others.  Since morality is essentially the prioritization
              of different principles when they come into conflict,
              strict horizontality in a moral system would not be
              viable.
            - [ ] a) This does not mean, however, that there cannot be
                  horizontality with verticality.  What such a case
                  would mean is that a moral system would not
                  be fixed: there are principles in which there is no
                  basis on which to rank them (essentially a moral
                  system with ambivalences and gaps at certain places).
            - [ ] b) Horizontal principles could also be understood as
                  "uncoordinated" desires.  Desires that are
                  simultaneously present but not suited to be weighed
                  against other principles of the same verticality.
        - [ ] 2. One could argue that morality could instead only
              encourage or prohibit certain forms of behavior, but this
              would result in a generally untenable system of
              morality–there would be no way to handle cases when
              principles conflict.
            - [ ] a) Take, for instance, the example of a person with an
                  axe chasing after another person with the intent to
                  kill them.  The person being chased passes you and
                  the axe-wielding person inquires as to which way the
                  other went.  If you held the principle that one
                  should always tell the truth but at the same time
                  held that if one is capable of protecting another
                  from harm without placing others or oneself in harm's
                  way, one should do so, then you would be at an
                  impasse.  A tenable system of morality would argue:
                  the value of protecting the person's life is clearly
                  superior to that of being truthful and sincere, or
                  perhaps even vice versa if one's rational desires
                  allowed for such reasoning.
    - [ ] B. Desires may be divided into two categories: (1) somatic and
          (2) rational.
        - [ ] 1. Somatic desire pertains to the form of instinct
              previously discussed, they are desires that are
              physically manifest, e.g. appetitive desires (hunger,
              thirst), the avoidance of pain, genealogical
              psychological desires, etc., etc.
            - [ ] a) Although somatic desire alone could constitute a
                  system of morality, I believe that it would not have
                  any established verticality (preferences would shift
                  constantly) and that it would widely be considered
                  undesirable and lacking for normative reasons, namely
                  that on a large scale it would be unordered.
            - [ ] b) Additionally, there could be no tenable political
                  morality with such a system of morality.
        - [ ] 2. Rational desires are not immanent extensions of somatic
              desires, but rather principles that the subject creates
              or appropriates for his or her self, although these may
              take somatic desires into account.
            - [ ] a) Rational desire may invite intangible distinctions,
                  e.g. good and bad, right and wrong, beauty and
                  not-beauty.
                - [ ] (1) If intangible distinctions are avoided
                      altogether, there is no basis for fixed morality
                      as this would render only horizontal
                      relationships.
    - [ ] C. Aside from somatic desires, experience intrinsically lacks
          value.
        - [ ] 1. Experience is passive.  Value, by nature, must be
              prescribed or appropriated by a subject.
    - [ ] D. Rational desires develop aesthetic value preferences (moral
          tenets) upon which morality is expounded.
        - [ ] 1. Value preferences are based upon intangible distinctions,
              which cannot be established by somatic desires alone.
            - [ ] a) Good and bad, beauty and not-beauty, etc. are
                  distinctions that are foreign to experience in and of
                  itself.
        - [ ] 2. Moral judgments expound upon (are "explications" of)
              moral tenets, incorporating nothing more.
    - [ ] E. Value preferences are a priori.
        - [ ] 1. Tenets are obviously developed in light of experience,
              but they are nonetheless constituted a priori.
            - [ ] a) Intangibility is an a priori qualification.
        - [ ] 2. Although pleasure/pain may seem to be a universal, innate
              (as well as somatic) value distinction, one's preferences
              may accept or  reject these.  This, eo ipso, disproves
              innate, a posteriori value preferences.
            - [ ] a) This is furthered by the initial assumption that
                  experience begins tabula rasa.
        - [ ] 3. Providing that a system of morality is exclusive of
              horizontal principles, there may only be one proper form
              of reasoning for a given circumstance; unlike reasonings
              would only be possible if the initial tenets differ.
    - [ ] F. Aesthetics are subjective-psychological in nature.
        - [ ] 1. Therefore, conditioning and behavioral modification can
              play a significant role.
            - [ ] a) Conditioning is probably the most prevalent and
                  efficacious during an individual's upbringing.
        - [ ] 2. Competition is limited between entirely differing initial
              tenets.
            - [ ] a) Such competition would likely be between incompatible
                  worldviews or "existence spheres".  (That tenets are
                  a priori also contributes to this conclusion.)
            - [ ] b) The goal, then, is to discover normative initial
                  tenets and advance a tenable moral system from
                  them.

2/28/07 update:

This is all wrong. I'll release a version that is to the point and well-founded some time in the future.

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1. 'Only 50 years left' for sea fish


11/3 update:

2. Will seafood nets be empty? Grim outlook draws skeptics

This world of ours 3

As the US's population grows in excess of 300 million, the world is found to be the warmest for 12,000 years--global warming being a significant threat to the world's growing population as it threatens the water supplies of many LDCs (and I hate that acronym/term, if I have yet to voice that). And on a more local side of things, Bush signed into law a 700 mile fence along our southern border in order to combat illegal immigration, which president Calderon has likened to the Berlin wall.
1. US population reaches 300 million
2. World 'warmest for 12,000 years
3. Climate water threat to millions
4. Bush signs Mexico fence into law
5. Mexico anger over US border fence

Meanwhile, Beijing is trying to curb it's blatant (though often humorous) misuse of the English language in time for the 2008 olympics, we're using too much of the earth's 'natural capital', a recent report asserts that the UN did a terrible job in initially acknowledging the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region, a record number of US troops have died this month in Iraq, a declassified report suggests that the "war on terror" has actually fuelled global terrorism, some guy cancelled his plans to sell a Picasso painting after accidentially puncturing it with his elbow, and Apple is blaming the inherent insecurity of Windows for its virus-infected iPods.
6. Beijing stamps out poor English
7. Planet enters 'ecological debt'
8. UN 'missed' Darfur crisis signs
9. Grim month for US in Iraq
10. US press unmoved by terror report
11. Tycoon holes dream Picasso deal
12. Apple blames Microsoft for virus-infected iPods

Also: Half a million displaced northern Ugandans are expected to return home by the end of 2006, the US was called 'arrogant and stupid' on its stance on Iraq by a state department official, and allowing the regulated hunting of exotic, endangered animals is being used to aid in conservation efforts.
13. Large numbers head home in Uganda
14. US 'arrogant and stupid' in Iraq
15. Hunting 'has conservation role'

Intersecting ups, downs,
Upside-down, across and around
Remind that the bent edges of this
Story's pages
Are neither deriding or accidental.



Update:

A few more that I unintentionally left out:

16. Displaced by Darfur: Your stories
17. Darfur campaign cuts Sudan money
18. Bush's Iraq options limited
19. DR Congo children 'still armed'
20. UN ponders North Korea sanctions

Philosophy of law- 2nd exam: A1 and B2

I have an exam in my philosophy of law class tomorrow. The essay questions were handed out a week ago, and I just recently outlined some potential responses to them. (During the actual exam, they are to be answered without the aid of notes.) I figured I'd post them or else I'd never make any other use of them except to benefit my personal understanding.

I did this once before but after writing them:
i. Two recycled essays

I'm not 100% certain that everything is accurate, as it reflects a course that covers a limited range of readings and is presented in light of the historical development of jurisprudence, rather than jurisprudence conceptually unabated.

Okay, so:

Question A1: Dworkin (in Law's Empire, ch. 7) discusses some of the important features of common law reasoning. Lay out Dworkin's account and criticize it.

-The authorial interpretation of law provided by Dworkin ('law as integrity') roughly operates on the assumption that the legal and judicial history of a state were written by a single author, or, perhaps more accurately, that they exist as a continuous narrative, hence they exhibit some consistency in principle when viewed as a holistic body of law.
-These past political events reflect 'legal principles' in tandem with the law proper ('policy') and ostensibly express the "character" (i.e. political morality) of the body politic.
-In accord with this principle, a judge's post-interpretive decisions ought to be drawn from an interpretation that follows two dimensions: fit and justification. Fit meaning that the possible decision is also be coherently applicable to preceding cases and can be retrospectively judged according to similar standards (as much as it is possible), and justification meaning just that: that the decision operates effectively from a standpoint of political morality, i.e. justice, fairness, and political due process (althoug not necessarily in its original historical justification... but rather one that demonstrates it in its best light.).
-The test for the judge then becomes whether his or her decision relates to existing political structures and prior decisions in a manner that forms an intellectually coherent whole.
-Dworkin also expresses a desire for judges to use a constructive interpretation in the compartmentalization of law, i.e. the creation of 'local priority', wherein divisions separating departments of law reflect the practice in its best light--in particular by creating normative boundaries that assent with popular conviction. In this case, normative boundaries are used in order to allow for the shifting social practices and moral opinions of the body politic. This promotes predictability and coherence or say says Dworkin's idealized fictional judge, Hercules.
-Local priority should, then, not be turned to unless the compartmentalization has proved to be justified in a similar fashion.
-It follows from this that "hard cases" result from a threshold test of fit that permits multiple localized principles but doesn't discriminate among them.
-Following this, Dworkin argues that localized principles that meet this threshold of fit should be construed as competing, not as contradictory. The two (or more) are "still in play", so-to-speak, but the inquiry shifts toward which one demands priority. After weighing these principles, the one that both fits and justifies BETTER than the rest (meets the judge's criteria of 'expanded fit'... presumably with consideration given to 'BIG' principles like justice, fairness, etc.) is the one that should be the basis for decision.
-Though judges may carry out this test of fit differently, under a given method of constructive interpretation, Dworkin holds that there is only one "right" (or "best") answer.
-Although Dworkin offers some possible objections to Hercules's method, they appear to me as radically imbalanced and not terribly substantive. Reidy's take on Dworkin's second objection ('Hercules is a Fraud'), seems to carry more weight than those provided in LE itself. Namely, how can there be only one correct interpretation (not simply for the plaintiff or defendent) when the dimensions of justification and fit have a tendency to pull in different directions? How does one prioritize them in a morally neutral way in order to reach a certain decision? It seems to me that Hercules's analysis of McLoughlin v. O'Brien suffers from this. Although I agree, morally, with his conclusion, I don't see any explicit method used to determine why value was given priority. The only answer I would foresee would be that this invariably differs among judges' conceptions of law, justice, fairness, etc. and that it is ultimately a matter of discretion.
-A second, but more minor objection, could be that in using the method of 'law as integrity', the application of law (in prioritization and justification) is still retroactive and thus not ideal as well as contingently unpredictable... however, this seems unavoidable in "hard cases", and the method which would avoid this, conventionalism, seems sufficiently unsatisfactory.


Question B2: One of the most contentious issues between Hart and Dworkin is whether judicial discretion (or judicial 'legislation') should be allowed. Discuss this issue carefully and ritically in the light of relevant readings/discussions in this part of the course, using (a) Dworkin, (b) Reidy, chs. 2 & 3, and (c) also Hart's 'Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals' paper, sect. III, pp. 68-72. Try to come to some sort of balanced overview as to which view (Hart's or Dworkin's) seems best.

-With concern to judicial discretion, Hart emphasizes the significance of the "penumbral" areas that result from the use of general langauge to apply to specific, concrete instances, something that Dworkin refers to (to the dismay of Riedy, who considers the phrase neednessly pithy) as the "semantic sting". This problem with language creates fundamental problems in 'policy' law (especially statutory law) that makes strict literalism and pigeon-holing on the part of the judge implausible--what Hart calls "Blackstone's fiction".
-Consequently, "logic is silent on how to classify particulars." This means that short of resubmitting this dilemma to the legislature (as Joe suggested), a constructive approach becomes necessary.
-This method of interpretation is thus one determined by the judge. Dworkin emphasizes that even though this grants some non-objective discretion to judges, there is not any singular "objective" method available. Even the decision to adhere to a conventionalist line of reasoning, he argues, is chosen due to a political reason on the part of the judge. Thus no alternative practice is free from this objection. So, in the sense that there are multiple interpretive theories available to judges, there is discretion... there is by no means a rigid, existing framework for judges to abide by.
-In this respect, the matter of judicial discretion does call morality into question.. but not in a manner that may properly be termed judicial 'legislation'. As Dworkin makes clear, legislatures need only be concerned with policy, not principle, this is a far cry from the role of the judiciary.
-Although Hart and Dworkin seem to agree that a solution must be a product of constructive interpretation, that does not necessarily pronounce that judges have free reign to decide cases purely in accordance with their personal morality.
-(Hart's views seem more concerned the nature and foundational criteria of law, while Dworkin's seem to deal almost exclusively with a practical judicial understanding of law... in this respect they aren't equally opposed, so the comparison becomes somewhat difficult.)
-In Dworkin's account of 'legal principles', the discretion is lessened (with special effort made on his part to avoid the possibility of "strong discretion"): possible justifications are limited to those that are expressed in existing law through latent legal principles. Decisions are therefore guided in light of these principles, and in accordance with the Herculean 'law as integrity' method. This offers some degree of predictability and legislative deference while still permitting forward-looking criteria inasmuch as it can.
-In this light, Hart and Dworkin seem to have fairly compatible views on the need for judicial interpretive construction. In the case that there are existing differences beyond this, they could be understood as separate interpretive understandings of the "role" of the judiciary, rather than attributed to the presence of fundamental inconsistencies in what 'law' essentially is.


We'll see how it goes...

Hapless poetry concatenated

A pallid refrain
Treaded on treaded line...
Embraced, confined.

Saturated thoughts in empty, unchanging sky.

Through milkwashed eyes,
A siren rests
Softly
Upon enclaves,
Sleeping.

Winding breaths in heresy,
Terraced shades of asymmetric rescindency...

A flight
Compounded in emerald strata:
A Bouguereauic pendency,
Like the arms of a dream
Thoughtfully caressing.

A myriad resting,
A blushfaced sunspot
With leaves streaming
Seriatim.

A pang of dissonance

Shed in revenant line,
Staining black as folding midnight
Beneath echoes, creeping.

Like silhouettes.

(Cleaving.)

A positioned aria
Between the eye and austerity.
Layering. With
Wings in ink.
Draping, never dripping.

Weaning a palisade undefined.
Cast in open Walls,
Shifting.

Gray on brownish gray;
The autumnal agglomeration
Feasting.

Hapless poetry 12

A palisade undefined.

The future of humanity: elves and goblins?

Read this:

1. Human species 'may split in two'
2. The future ascent (and descent) of man


This is absolute nonsense for the following reasons:

1. This relies on WAY too many unstated assumptions.


2. That's just not how natural selection works... it's not that simple. If the argument is based on the assumption that the upper class will relentlessly alter their genes in order to be more appealing to potential mates, assuming that that is possible in the future, why would jaw muscles and skin color then be subject to natural selection, but not other physical characteristics?


3. The numbers in both articles don't make sense. What's the 100,000 year mark predicting? The 1,000? I'm confused.


4. Wait, so purely aesthetic sexual preference is not going to change at all in the course of 1,000 years? We'll have no cultural developments in that time; after a torrent of globalization everyone around the world will adopt current mainstream western preferences? Even after all of the supposed interbreeding?


5. The "highly educated" stratifications of society are not as apt to make their mating preferences primarily on physical appearance, nor are they statistically as likely to have as many children as the less educated. One could argue that the this assertion could apply to the bourgeoisie or a materialistic upper class, but even then the distinction would not be nestled in two simple categories.


6. Assuming that this new genetic modification technology was inexpensive enough to have become widespread, what reason would there be to justify the STRICT class distinctions between the poor, short-asymmetry-faced stupids and rich, tall-symmetry-faced "smarts"? Everyone has interbred to create a coffee-colored skintone and presumably accepted similar views on culture (at least with regard to aesthetics), yet there remains a class-based divide (which is ostensibly arbitrary) that cannot be resolved?


7. Since when has creativity been a strictly genetic aptitude? Indeed what is 'creativity'? I could be wrong, but 'imagination' and it's application are not primarily rooted within innate genetic traits as they are in psychology and social circumstance. Or so I doth claim.



8. Dr. Curry’s predictions were commissioned by the television channel Bravo to celebrate its 21st anniversary on air.

   Does that not jovially exclaim, 'BULLSHIT'?


9. What reason do we have to believe that human civilization as we know it will be around in 1,000 years (much less in 100,000 years)? We've already exceeded the planet's natural carrying capacity (and the population is still growing). And the optimistic "Star Trek"-like future seems implausible. What says that human civilization wouldn't revert to a "leaver" way of life before we reach the year 3000 (if it's still around by then)?

I can't go on... it's not worth the effort.

"..." 2

"How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life!"

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value

Hapless poetry 11

Wrinkled white tile cringes its woven frame,
Non sui generis, flocks in golden repeat,
Statures rewinding, gently

Un-tiding,

In subdued carpet scent, indign, confided:
Ex silentium the film-grain rattles,
Opening blinds of stitch-sown eyes.

A steady hand swaying, lacing brick after brick,
Binding rust to coursing forehead sweeps;
Blush-stroked clouds feasting, lashes tracing awry,
Deaf, crippling contraception winding

Behind closed doors, grinding.

Faceted lampshades stolen,
Cobblestone vanities plucked;
Lakes shuffling behind frostbitten syllables
To fill stare-fought depressions--

Winding, harrowing
Stumbling beneath a lark's breath,

Wet, dripping clouds easing the air,
Precipitating beneath cold feet and toes;
Declining empty, statuesque terrain,
Palpitations fragrant, annulled,
Stagnant like felicific protases.

Amaranths sating.

Layered walls hide the grass-stained weaves,
Blue stripes swagger, undestined in a row;
Scenic belt-flaps dripping from the walls,
A blind mouse flashback against the back-lit screen,

Blossoming, draping shade in shadow,
Faces on mute, clock after clock, creasing,
Red before the white, 'i' before the 'e',
Pennies on the dollar,
A neo-halycon propagation lain with
Two-and-a-half famished cradles per capita.
Shingles heaving condensed.

Light-headed suffrages,
Flattering viscous antipathy,
Hard to swallow, innate haphazard neckties--
Succumbed to glass-watered malnourishment,
Satirical like-minded abstinence,
Stretching beneath folded arms,
With teeth.

Barrelclatters, shimmering prismic collateral
Subsuming aromatic prescience,
Divisive trajectories weaving nascent, quantum,
Scatological substrata.

Pillowfaced. Clattering clattering.

Atavistic parasols,
Meandering, traversing.
A placid serif redux, commodified.

Cleansing.

Cleaving.

Livid lucre consigned to neither
Meadows nor shallows,
House nor home,
Interstices nor gallows,
Proudpleased resuscitation-liberation
From the serried cold.

Mouseteasing abstraction, detraction from
Neck-laced Bouguereauic pendency,
Asymmetric dependency, oligopsony,
Concentric ascendancy.
Jejune inter-associations
Ad hominem.

Terraformed ancillaries,
A flanger of parsimony, a flame of carotids,

A catafalque shattering, tumbling, tumbling, tumbling...

Nurse and leisure,
The list goes on.

The flooring ceiling,
The valenced doors:
The postmodern lifestyle.
Subsistence piled upon subsistence.

En masse.

Ceaseless sauntering,
Dilapidated shallows blinking,
Sparse tear-shed blankets of austere assembly
Soaked in sour-lipped petulance or perdition,
Inclined without warrant;
Lonely in abundance.
Worry-less syllogisms censuring in defiance.

A fistclenching aversion, a grimace
Of antipathetic cadence
Set loosely upon a landing;
A satyr or savior
Deteriorating or ascending
Upon or below Escherian overpasses

With

Flasks of sublimated paraffin
Pouring Eleatic aridity, a soporific antinomy,
Between street, road, and boulevard,
Crux of the intersection as destination;
A sophomoric despondency
Terraced by mane and mudra,
Contantric arriere-pensee
Ad infinitum.

Pacification: substratic corollaries crinkling,
Codified assimilation retreating,
Syllables transfusing, stitches stretching:
An existential comatose refined in sacra.
Cradling hand in hand.

Bound in nest and quarry, bloom and coffer.
Adiabatic sentience:
A pang of fidelity, staple and mold,
As the world passes on.

Teratogenic concatenation.

Suffering
From heath and hearth,
Dust and pollen; caltrop and flower,
Spine and plethora.

A concertina rising
With echoes grinding--
Clouds parting, no longer conceiving, contrite.
No longer weaving:
A respite, concise.

No longer penitent, peripatetic,
Lachrymal, or dreamlusting.
Confusing serif and seraph,
Paraffin and penchants,
Mudra and mantra,

Prosaic cacophonies.

Draping, never dripping,

This vacant clutterscape divided-decisive:
Footnotes in umbilical perdition,
Layered shelves of erudition.
Autumnal agglomeration.
Chamber and chromosome.
Wings in ink.

Following the vagary to its end,
Slowly drowning--
Neatly folded, loop after loop.

"World 'warmest for 12,000 years'"

1. World 'warmest for 12,000 years'
2. Scientists: Earth temperature reaches dangerous level


And a brief retrospective:

i. BBC climate change experiment [also: study finds that Earth is hottest in 400 years]
ii. Three more articles about global warming
iii. This world of ours 1
iv. The heated debate over global warming
v. The heat of 2005

My problem with philosophy

For some time, I've had a sort of love-hate relationship with philosophy; I sometimes become curious and absorbed in certain distinctions and elucidations and sometimes feel that they are of no value at all. My philosophical appetite is very fickle I suppose. I think that this has been demonstrated to some small degree over the last few months of keeping this blog... for the sake of convenience, some posts on my understanding of philosophy are listed below in chronological order (though I'm not terribly proud of them, with the exception of the last):

i. The future of philosophy
ii. Journal Entry - The Philosophical Jigsaw Puzzle
iii. What's left of metaphysics
iv. phi‧los‧o‧phy |fəˈläsəfē|


There seems to be one very simple nagging and perhaps naive (though it doesn't seem incorrect) principle that is always in the back of my mind. This principle is that however elaborate, prolonged and intricate a philosophical system comes to be, in the end it's conclusions must be self-evident. (If this is not the case, the conclusion is a product of the sciences or dogmatism.) This is quite an impediment on the subject--how difficult it becomes for philosophy to identify something profound!

I've often thought that it would be infinitely valuable for some author to compile a list of the fundamental questions that remain within the domain of philosophy, so that, with the questions identified, they could be addressed in a more clearheaded and expedient fashion. The problem with this method is that the unanswered questions do not take the form of a particular "this or this?", but rather "what is this?". In this respect, philosophy does not adopt the role of clarifying dilemmas, but of defining (i.e. constructing) them... and I would contend, further, that these dilemmas are artificial, resulting from a disoriented or very definite use of language where the former would say something illusory and the latter would say something ultimately trivial.

An example of a "defining" dilemma would be like asking, "What is freedom?" or "What is law supposed to do?". The only true philosophical answer to these is to understand "freedom" or "law" out of their common usage and in a (new) narrow, technical sense. However, this is what spoils the process, because in that marginalization the solution to the "dilemma" proper is ignored in favor of a constricted and often pedantic exploration of concepts, distinctions, and logic. I started to first think about this a few years ago when I began doing Lincoln-Douglas debate in high-school, and it appeared to me that the key to succeeding in your position was to adjust the definitions as to expunge any sort of penumbral area (if I may borrow Hart's term for no apparent reason). But in doing this, the real question that is posed is ignored (a new question takes its place)... because that question (which is generally determined to be an even-ended pro-con dispute) has either an inherent misrelation of ideas or hopelessly ambivalent terminology therein which does more than obstruct a solution--it forbids one.

At present, I am confident that what I have explained above is accurate... I could continue it further for the sake of clarity or to "systematize" it in order to inject it with some academic credance, but I think I lack the enthusiasm to do so. I would very much appreciate ANY and ALL responses to what I have stated above... I desperately want my idea to be challenged, it could determine whether or not I continue to pursue philosophy as one of my 2-3 majors in college.

And to pre-empt a clever quip that I wouldn't doubt to hear, I am not saying that all philosophy can express nothing (therefore I am not presenting a philosophical inquiry in why philosophy is non-sense or anything to that effect), on the contrary I am asserting that philosophy can only proffer trivial conclusions and the arguments in this post are following in that tradition. In this sense, I believe philosophy (in a narrow sense) has the capacity to identify and correct artificial and superfluous problems created by philosophy (in a broad sense... including quasi-philosophical concepts that appear in language).

I'd really like some feedback on this. Am I mistaken?



10/15 update:

Further discussion on facebook (I'm not sure if the link will work... in any case you'll need to login to view it):

1. Fun with metaphilosophy

And a few excerpts to elaborate on my argument above:

Nonetheless, I'm not sure that my ideas came through quite as I had hoped (I get whimsical at times when writing for my own amusement, hence the "how...profound!" statement). I'm not expecting "poetry" from philosophy in any sense, nor am I necessarily desiring a direct and substantive practical application of the products of philosophy. The idea is that the appropriation of language toward generalized accounts (philosophy in a broad sense) creates fundamental inconsistencies which are to be solved by philosophy (in a narrow sense). In this view, philosophy is incapable of expressing anything _beyond_ that... it's basically the synthetic clarification of language. And it's in that respect that it lacks any "profound", non-banal, or non-trivial quality, as I see it.

And in the comparison to astrophysics, etc. I don't think those are acting in the same manner. Astrophysics formulates theories to try to explain the workings of our world (even if this isn't of "practical" value), it's a *science*, viz. something with which it's conclusions rest in empirical confirmation (or the lack of empirical dismissal). Philosophy has nothing of this character intrinsic to it--some branches will deal with empirical inputs as presuppositions, but nothing which fundamentally tells us the nature of things as they are, only the nature of language and logic (which I again argue are present due to inadvertant artificial constructions).

Where I'm getting bogged down is in my present conviction that philosophy doesn't say _anything_ illuminating. Even in practical cases like ethics I think that philosophy plays a fairly insignificant role. The presupposed axiological or aesthetic judgments are the foundations on which the logic and "philosophizing" follows; philosophy plays no role except explicating the contents of the presupposed value judgments or evaluative criteria which are incapable of being formulated _by_ philosophy. And in cases of competition or comparison between ethical systems, the discussion ultimately takes place on the grounds of value judgment, which are foreign to philosophy as a study.

(I generally take preference and value in philosophy as something different altogether--be it psychological or deontological. I usually just call it "philosophy in a broad sense" or "dogmatic" philosophy.)

I couldn't agree more about philosophy determining whether or not propositions are valid, but I don't think that that is just a metaphorical example--that's all that philosophy (in what I have called a 'narrow sense') can hope to do.

In my view, the only real "philosophy", so-called, is metaphilosophy (and I suppose a practical extension of this would be epistemology). If philosophy then proves that logic can pronounce something that is outside of itself then that field may be annexed to it... but to my understanding this has yet to come to fruition. To this end, philosophy says what we me may sensibly say and what we may not sensibly say, but nothing more.

With regard to philosophy's universal applicability, i.e. as the "science of possibility", I would still contend that this is in merely in the domain of logic. In the realm of imaginable 'universes', the only "abstracted" ones that I can intuit are those of math and geometry, and they too are functions of logic. Further, I'd argue that language functions to _characterize_ and _describe_ experience so it isn't as far-reaching as I believe you are suggesting.

As to the bits about metaphysics, I'm somewhat confused. Firstly, I'm uncertain as to how numbers can have any metaphysical alignment. How can operators or operands even be considered in the domain of metaphysics? Secondly, in the case of the cat and cat-with-one-hair missing, the complication is that you are biding into the problem of identity by ascribing an "objective" quality of singular immutable identity (i.e. object-ness) to it. That seems to be a pretty acute demonstration of what I'm talking about when I speak of artificial constructions created by language. And if you were to gradually progress to a hypothetical "nightmarish cat" that is without limbs, a tail, fur, and numerous other items that in all make it wholly alien to the normative conception of 'cat', I would then ask how this is not a dilemma created solely by the misappropriation of language and belonging to no other domain. In this example, experience is the case (the phenomena which you are referring to by the name 'cat'), not the way in which it is characterized.

[...]

But in all of this, I hope you can see why I have come to consider philosophy as mostly trivial. Philosophy has metaphilosophy, logic, and some consequent epistemology going for it... and that's about it. And, as I argued before, philosophy that follows from presupposition (e.g. ethics, jurisprudence, political philosophy, etc.) does nothing more than carry out the logical form and inclination of those presuppositions, so the philosophizing doesn't even play an active role...

What I meant was that language, in it's origins, development, and proper function, describes experience (i.e. a state of affairs such as "The sheet of paper is on the table" or "The sun is rising"). This state of affairs is empirical if the statement is to be regarded as "true" or if the inquiry is to be practical in the least. As to problems with metaphysics and causal necessity, identity, being, and so forth, they, again, are strictly "artificial" (I can think of no better way to describe it) problems resulting from the _misuse_ of language in relating "apposite" concepts (a good example of which would be Zeno of Elea's dichotomy paradox).

As to metaethics, I think it is coordinated properly under metaphilosophy and philosophy, but it is then quickly disposed of. The best statement of this that I can think of is the Dostoevskian (if that's actually an adjective) "How can there be crime if God does not exist?". The only real philosophical (i.e. metaethical) statement I believe one can claim of ethics is that it rests on ontological, deontological, or preferential presuppositions. And this statement is essentially an exercise in the philosophy of language that is guided by epistemology, such that it doesn't describe a state of affairs but instead describes "latent" meaning within terms of language to which there are no empirical states of affairs that properly correspond. Yet this still does not offer greater insight to the "way things are", it merely states, "By the word 'self' in this context (by so-and-so and in this syntax) it is meant..." In a sense this also requires presupposition--and it still does not properly correspond to the way things 'are', only the way that we describe them, and with many such terms oftentimes being inherently contradictory or misrelational _in_ meaning ('self' included, given the right context and supposed meaning).

And on another note, I've since decided to simply minor in philosophy. So my current inclination will be toward two majors and two minors: majors in drawing/painting and sociology, and minors in art history and philosophy. We'll see how this holds up.

Hapless poetry 10

Poetry is
an expression of the tongue.
and soul.

a vividly unconstrained
river of ideas weaned by
a lingual aesthetic

a contiguous strand of
thought of beauty of sorrow
of insight of life of death that
is uninhibited by conventions
a comma is nothing but a premeditated breath
a lapse in a moment to accentuate ideas before lines are overgrown
and run off the pa...

Poetry and essay are not selfsame
Poetry cannot be

forwarded by a single declarative statement
that lacks association,
the color the touch the smell the sound, the intuition
of a dialogue that is composed for a different purpose
than to be heard, to be understood

when the conventions are stripped
bare, what remains?

the Poem that this ceases to be;
Only.
an essay with horrid structure.
poor conventions.

Value and the function of the state

I thought it would be an interesting exercise to try to conceive an "ideal" normative framework for a political system (according to my perspective). This post is my initial start on this project. It's maybe 1/8 of the way done, although I couldn't say for sure until I finish. There's a lot of things to clean up and even more to add. I'd just like to invite criticism every step along the way.


1 Within the normative framework of a capitalist state, discrepancies between matters of value occur in either of two sorts of things:
(1) The role and function of the state
(2) The "balancing acts" between established values

1.1 Fundamentally, the function of the state is to promote the welfare and well-being of its citizens. (This paradigm may, however, prove insufficient for interaction between states, but this will be addressed later.)

1.11 This is self-evident. A state that does not promote welfare (neither actively nor passively) is not only undesirable but superfluous.

1.12 All values that are to be reflected in the state are done so under the umbrella of welfare. Among these are liberty, order, justice, health, equality, democracy, etc.

1.13 This appears true regardless of one's political leaning; any disagreement that is bound to arise on this matter lies in the means and extent that the state should pursue to promote these, and in an inherently imprecise "balancing act" between the tenets of welfare (e.g. when in a certain conflict, liberty takes precedence over order).

1.131 The assigning of precedence between tenets need not be hierarchical.

2 In addition, the state may be seen as a formal extension of culture and society.

2.1 This poses the question of whether the social and political spheres should be separate or unified.

2.12 The social sphere can exist and function without becoming entwined in the political sphere.

2.121 Social standards can be upheld without the recourse of law, i.e. informally. (This practice is formally justified provided that the means utilized does not conflict with existing law.)

2.122 If an informal standard requires the recourse of law in order to be upheld, it must be synonymous with the formal. If this is not the case the formal standard would take precedence over the informal.

2.13 The political sphere cannot exist and function without becoming entwined in the social sphere.

2.131 The political sphere exists to regulate the social sphere.

2.132 The actors that comprise the political sphere are not independent of the social sphere.

2.2 The social sphere is intrinsically heterogeneous.

2.21 Therewith modes of ethics in the social sphere will inevitably clash.

2.211 Ethics necessarily requires presupposition (the prescription of value).

2.212 This presupposition is either worldly (viz. sensory-psychological, e.g. preference utilitarianism) or non-worldly (i.e. theological).

2.22 The formal dilemma lies in constructing a homogenous framework that allows for heterogeneity, while at the same time minimizing conflict within the formal domain.

2.3 Therefore, a compromise may be necessary, i.e. limiting factors, if heterogeneity is to be permitted.

2.31 Any compromise would require an arbiter, a "third" party. This arbiter may be a combination of objective sciences (i.e. science and philosophy in a narrow sense).

2.32 Science and philosophy can express objective validity. Social custom can only express objective validity if confirmed by science and philosophy.

2.33 By 'objective', I mean practical by virtue of worldly observation.

2.4 Social customs that lack objective validity should not be expressed formally, i.e. through law.

2.41 Non-worldly, i.e. noumenal, justifications are incapable of expressing objective validity. (Things that are outside of the world cannot be proven by means of the world.)

2.42 Justifications expressing objective validity apply to all sects of the social sphere.

2.421 Objectivity supplants dogmatism when in conflict. (That which is objective exists in the world and is proven by means of the world) [Also: natural law intrinsically takes precedence over human law.] In this case, objectivity--that which must be proven by means of the world--should be distinguished from dogmatism--that which must be proven by means of social custom or factors outside of the world.

2.422 If cultural heterogeneity is not to be formally subdued, the formal framework should not side with any cultural sect lest the state becomes a formal extension of that sect.

2.43 Therefore, social customs with non-worldly justification should not be expressed formally unless they also possess objective justification, and then only on the merit of the latter. Likewise, social customs that do not express objective validity should not be formally restricted unless they conflict with existing law.

2.431 The popular demand for formally expressed dogmatism does not itself constitute objective validity.

2.6 Therefore, the state (which is formal) should only function as an extension of culture insofar as it expresses the objective views of the (cultural) body that comprises it. Culture proper is to be expressed informally; it is the duty of the state to facilitate that expression within its formal framework.

2.7 The expression of objective validity is not wholly sufficient in determining the grounds for law--the baseline moral foundations are incapable of having objective determinacy.

2.71 These axiological "gaps" are sated by presupposition. The necessary moral foundations are found in the presupposition of the purpose of the state, i.e. welfare of the body it governs.

2.8 The formal ethics of a state that allows for cultural heterogeneity must appeal to either relativism or universality, or both.

2.81 Relativism is permitted through the lack of formal interference on informal practices. This is established passively, i.e. through laws granting negative liberties.

2.82 At the same time, no legal morality would be established under strict passivity. (A strictly relativistic ethical system ceases to be ethical.) Therefore, some code of universality is required on the part of the state--this is unavoidable.

3 Laws are formal propositions that collectively regulate the actions of the state and its citizens for a collective benefit.

3.1 Laws are moral in nature.

3.11 Just as the function of the state is to establish and promote welfare, so too is the function of law.

3.12 There is no such thing as a law that altogether lacks any form of moral objective. (Or, more accurately, laws that altogether lack a moral objective are undesirable and unnecessary.)

3.121 "Morally neutral" laws are components of formal schemata which collectively form cohesive, morally or objectively oriented laws.

3.122 A law can be comprised of separate components or procedural mandates which are themselves considered laws. These components, when viewed in a larger context, constitute a larger law that is not morally neutral.

3.1221 Contract law is no exception. The fields required of formal contracts are adopted for practical and moral reasons.

3.123 The descending hierarchy of law's formulation could be seen as moral -> moral application -> procedure.

3.1231 (e.g. Murder is immoral -> murder is therefore illegal -> recourse in the case of murder follows from these formal procedural requirements and leads to this formal procedural persecution.)

3.124 These sub-moral, "procedural" laws are inherently more corrigible than morals and moral applications.

3.2 The foremost moral-law would establish the system of law, the framework in which law operates.

To be continued...

Three more articles about global warming

1. Humans 'causing stronger storms'
2. Earth's species feel the squeeze
3. In pictures: Your changing world

Hapless poetry 9

Breathing that same recycled air,
Stiffly shifting... coalescing in neither
Hymn nor drone--

Neither flake nor stone
Shall fly from this enclave--
Neither softly grating, softly canvasing,
Neither flitting despondently
In concert from hem nor bone.

Neither erased; neither falling--
Suddenly shaped, enveloping
Garret eyes--wide and callow,

Softly stratifying, gently preening
Sanguine hallows, discarded shadows--
Neither weaning--

Neither shaking, nor trembling:
A carousel, like hands in a stream.

A weaving, interleaving mesh--
Foreign. Like the arms of a dream
Caressing oppressively.

Farewell Steve Irwin...

1. 'Crocodile Hunter' Irwin killed
2. Time: Death of a Crocodile Hunter
3. Death only 4th of its type
4. In pictures: Steve Irwin

phi‧los‧o‧phy |fəˈläsəfē|

noun ( pl. -phies)
the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, esp. when considered as an academic discipline.

or...

1. the synthetic clarification of language
2. dogmatism
3. the intermingling of the above two (esp. in a scholarly arrangement)

Poor, poor Pluto...

1. Pluto loses status as a planet


8/25 update:

1. Pluto vote 'hijacked' in revolt
2. Pluto's demotion creates galactic uproar

(Also, this photo of Pluto's discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh, in the BBC article looks bizarrely suggestive. Maybe I'm just immature.)

Journal Entry: Art and Indecisiveness

Let me preface this by saying that I write even more eclectically in my journal than I do when I'm writing for an "audience". I just finished this entry and thought its content interesting enough to post. But since I have no desire to take the time to reorganize it in a more intuitive fashion, I've left it as it is. Further, because I generally find "personal" accounts more interesting than "objective" ones, I thought I'd try posting it in its entirety rather than in snippets. If it seems a tad melodramatic at parts I apologize... that's just how it ended up.

I've been thinking about this lately and I'm uncertain of my choices as they relate to what I am presently involved in. For too long, I have wasted my time in academia, learning things from others that I could have learned myself, or learning nothing at all. (Or more accurately, learning very little over a tremendous expanse of time.) I have little or no desire to remain in this state of affairs for much longer (and the small globule of remaining desire is that which resists change). Ever since I returned to college this semester, I have had the feeling of being an observer to the social and academic processes--as though I didn't belong here, and was introduced to an environment that I did not take refuge in--like an exotic fish introduced to a small foreign aquarium (though I am not so without humility to consider myself 'exotic'). In general conversations, and occassionally in classes, I feel as though I was that exotic fish among a native school or a visiting anthropologist... a tourist, really, that has grown tired of his vacation but finds himself both unable to leave and without a place to return to. I don't feel that I belong here. I'm making slow and introverted passes to incorporate myself into my general surroundings, but the passes too often don't accomplish enough. This may smack of a typical response to social exclusion or estrangement, but I really feel as though I should be somewhere else. Doing something else... rather than trying to find my niche within my existing surroundings. I feel the urge to go exploring and finding new social surroundings that I don't find superfluous or misled.

The experience of life is a longing, not a gratification.

Unfortunately, this "ideal" path is one that I am finding too distant to abandon my current one in pursuit of. I once felt that becoming an art teacher would be the "dream" career for me. I could teach art, life, and everything in between, and that would be my service to society. However, I've recently become weary of my previous fascination. The argument for my changing majors would go along two lines, the first practical (and ill-meditated), the second philosophical.

The first, as I have often mentioned informally (and perhaps once or twice within this journal), is that there is no merit in teaching the subject. The teaching of art would be the teaching of the uncertainties of what has come to be called art, of the inter-related ambiguities of life and psychological experience as they pertain to the activities of humankind. What could come of such instruction but the continued and perpetual teaching of ambiguity and uncertainty? That others may teach uncertainty and ambiguity and devote their lives to it? In what way does it benefit society to tease man's curiosity?

The second, I suppose, is on almost equivalent grounds with the first, which is to say it isn't completely distinct. I've lately come to agree with Plato in some respects about the function of poetry (i.e. art in a broad sense), although not in the respect that I feel that it should be formally restricted. Rather, I believe that the proper way to express the understanding of the world is through language... whereas art expresses the world through the unintelligible, the ambivalent--and when it is clear it says nothing more than trite trivialities. (In more recent times, existential or meta-conceptual trivialities.)

In my first Art Since 1945 lecture, there was a video shown in which Jeff Koons made an effort to formally describe the implications of one of his works. (Spalding basketballs suspended in a small aquarium tank, I believe.) If anything, hearing his statements solidified my preconceptions that artists do not know shit about shit. Hearing Koons attempt to introduce imperious conceptual statements to justify his mediocre industrially-assembled piece, only proved to me that art can only say very little. There are, with the proper direction, arts that have a greater significance than what many aim to introduce, but there is still so little that they can express. In fact, art is simply not the medium of choice to express civil or sociological concerns. Why express the ever-important through the ambivalent? It's an exercise in nonsense.

And while I heartily admit that I enjoy art, and often find it quite amusing, I refuse to recognize it as seated on the pedestal on which it is so often erected. Art is a byproduct of interaction, of social processes... it should never have taken it's present formal chair and declared itself mighty, auspicious and sacrosanct. Is art a product of high-culture? No. It is a product of culture, and while I concede that it can often be interesting, its worth is often over-estimated, as is its significance. The poet claims to know what he does not know--what he is unsure of himself. The gut expresses very little but preference. What does art express? It expresses a filtered view of the world (albeit somewhat out of focus), a reductive concept, or nothing at all. What does it achieve? It provides new (albeit fragmented) contexts, although these contexts are themselves not always produced through or by account of its content, but by the responses of others to it. Therefore, meticulous and intentional schemes for "high" expression through art is a flawed trade. It is possible to express minor things, but not major things... the major things are extrinsic of the artwork. The major things, can be expressed much more fully, unabridged and in focus (though still not fully) through language. Visual and auditory phenomena can only convey what is auditory or visual... the lingual can express a concern--at best the visual or auditory can only entice a response (which it then has no control of directing beyond small trifles). I decry the "insight" into the nature of things that artists seem to proclaim; many even seem more arrogant than philosophers.

If I choose to reject philosophy as a major, so too will I reject art.

In my drawing class today, the class had a pseudo-intellectual discussion (it's not my intention to sound terribly derisive) about what makes drawings "good" and what could make them "better". Normative criteria for art is ridiculous. This is good, this is bad. This is aesthetically pleasing, this is aesthetically displeasing. Put an 'X' on the life-line:

Fear |-----------------------------| Love

That which is beautiful |-----------------------------| That which is ugly

For that matter, "non-representational" visual art is blasphemy. It's incorrect to look at aesthetics as a branch of philosophy: it is, more accurately, a subject of psychology. The nature of the sensory visual experience is to make sense of the world around you and to use that information to govern the interaction of your other senses and, consequently, your behavior. Thus when you see an image of something that appears unclear to you, the natural response is to try to figure out what it is. In this sense, it is ridiculous to consider art as "non-representational". It may be abstract and conceptual, but it would still represent a concept. The relationship of lines and forms in space represents just that, which is to say nothing: a confused visual arrangement.

Of course, in this case, the comparison to musical theory is tempting, but the two things seem too different in my mind to be compared. I imagine the comparison is unavoidable, and perhaps even fairly persuasive... at the moment, I reluctantly disagree with it even though I don't see anything wrong with it. Music isn't representational (or at least the vast majority of it isn't), yet there is something interesting in it. Why not, then, with non-representational visual art? Maybe it's just a matter of preference... I feel that music can be emotionally and psychologically provocative without being representational and that the same doesn't hold true with the visual arts.

And that's my disoriented rant with respect to art.

**Mitchel Edwards Klik Enters a Dreamlike State and It's Fucking Scandalous, De Facto**

8/24 update:

I think the reason that I don't like equating "non-representational" art with music is due to the nature of the two senses that experience those things. For the sense of sight, we are constantly and continually bombarded with sensory information and this includes a very broad range of stimuli. In the case of music, however, there is a sense of novelty in that it appeals to a sense that usually isn't stimulated in a very diverse way. In some ways, I think of listening to "good" music as analogous to tasting really well-prepared food. In everyday experience, taste and hearing aren't stimulated nearly as much or as diversely as is the case with sight. In these cases, something crafted serves a more profound function, whereas in visual arts the exercise is in extracting things that you find interesting from your everyday visual experiences. I think that life in general provides a more sufficient "feast" than with the other two senses and so experiences for the visual "organ" don't need to be supplemented nearly as much. (Awkward grammar anyone?)

I was also assigned to write a brief summary of my views on art in my Design II journal. Below is what I have come up with so far (left-click to view a more full-size and legible version).

"..."

The state is of the evil rather than of the good, a necessary evil, in a certain sense a useful, expedient evil, rather than a good.

The state is human egotism on a large scale and in great dimensions--so far off was Plato when he said that in order to become aware of the virtues we should study them from the state.

The state is human egotism in great dimensions, very expediently and cunningly composed so that the egotisms of individuals intersect each other correctively. To this extent the state is no doubt a safeguard against egotism by manifesting a higher egotism that copes with all the individual egotisms so that these must egotistically understand that egotistically it is the most prudent thing to live in the state.

—Søren Kierkegaard, JP IV 4238

A jumble of links...

Just as the title says:

1. Imagining the Tenth Dimension	An interesting flash presentation on hypothetical dimensions.
2. Bush's trash talk is heard	Bush said 'shit' during a private discussion with Tony Blair. Who cares?
3. Cheating rife in Vietnamese exams	"There is almost an epidemic of cheating in Vietnam."
4. iPodLinux	Linux on iPods!
5. DR Congo backs 'bikes for guns'	Bikes-for-guns program is successful in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
6. LRA victim: 'I cannot forget and forgive'	A Ugandan man's personal response to Joseph Kony's denial of the LRA's involvement in child abduction, deliberate mutilation, and other human rights violations.
7. UK 108th in new ‘Happy Planet Index’	An index among countries considering environmental practice and general happiness. The UK ranked 108th, the US ranked 150th.
8. What is the best way to deal with North Korea?	Perspectives of eight "every-day" Japanese citizens on the situation with North Korea.
9. China to test its 'artificial sun'	"...a successful test will mean the world's first nuclear fusion device of its kind will be ready to go into actual operation..."
10. Clinton: Only Gay When It Comes To Evil, Crazy Bitches	A humorous rebuttal on The Late Show to Ann Coulter's calling Bill Clinton 'gay'.

What's left of metaphysics

"The philosophical I is not the man, not the human body or the human soul of which psychology treats, but the metaphysical subject, the limit--not part of the world."
--Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Take Descarte's methodological skepticism and acknowledge that your world is comprised entirely of sensory perceptions (ideas are external to it). Next, recognize that the existence of God--defined as an infinite-eternal being, unmoved mover, or originator, sentient or not--cannot be proven by a priori logic, nor by observation. Causal regression in logic, distinctions between finite and infinite particulars, substances and extensions, monads, and the like are incapable of espousing an understanding of ontology greater than "I am", which is itself not a priori.

The understanding of I, the "I am", is inherently a posteriori: it is dependent on your perceptions and thus empirical. The seemingly metaphysical "space" occupied by your mind is outside of the world (see quote at top), yet ostensibly dependent on it. In light of this, one may suspect that the door is left open for the possibility of immortality of the Mind, as we would not be able to apply laws of this world-reality to it. This is probably false. The mind's constitution is independent of subjectivity. Two things lead me to believe this: (1) a law is present in both the world and pure Mind: time; (2) the world of waking reality (think constant, non-crazy reality) is capable of altering one's capacity to think.

That the condition of the psyche can be affected by worldly things external to the psyche (e.g. instinct, appetitive desires, drugs) without its assent, suggests that its physical constitution (e.g. the brain) is being affected. In a false reality, such as a dream or hallucination, the physical constitution of the thinker would remain unaltered. While the perceptions of someone in a dream-state would be radically different from someone in a waking state, the physical constitution of the mind cannot be affected by actions in those states--thereby one could not get a lobotomy in a dream and properly experience its effects.

(Then again, all of this relies on the assumption that there is a true "objective" world-reality that is experienced by the senses in a waking state and that other world-experiences are products of subjective psychology. The question of subjective versus objective reality is a noumenal and ontological one; its answer is beyond our capacity to observe. The arguments set forth on this subject are merely observational hypotheses for the sake of intellectual curiosity. Their practical application is non-existent, ethically or otherwise.)

Hapless poetry 8

Drifting
Slowly
Past

Downstream and sleeping


On a boat, sails cast,
Wind swelling, racing.

Down the river,
Downstream,
Disappearing...


Gliding

Gently past
Winding
Breaths


Gently. Sleeping.

BBC climate change experiment

The BBC has a distributed computing climate change project underway led by Oxford University:

1. BBC - Science & Nature - Climate Change

Check it out. It's worth looking into.


6/23 Update:

Also:

The Earth is the hottest it has been in at least four centuries and perhaps in thousands of years, according to a new report released in U.S.

The report also claimed that human activities are responsible for it.

The National Academy of Sciences, US, reaching the conclusion in a broad review of scientific work requested by Congress, reported Wednesday that the "recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia."

1. Earth is hottest now in 400 years: Study

Ethical subjectivity and the nature of ethics

Not long ago I put up a simple post arguing that all ethical judgment is formulated upon a priori value tenets (e.g. human happiness is the greatest good) that are presupposed. Without such there is no ground for ethical evaluation. And (to elaborate) because there is no truth in ethics without knowledge of God, and the knowledge of God is a noumenal matter, there is no absolute ethical system available to us. Consequently, presupposition is necessary in ethics.
i. Ethics presupposes deontology

The very nature of ethics (excluding the strictly relativistic) is inclined toward universalization. For example, if cannibalism is wrong, how can it not be willed that others should not be cannibals? In this sense, ethical subjectivity (with proper conviction) strives to become universalized.

In Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, the elder Zosima had a very memorable remark: "[H]ow can there be crime if God does not exist?" This is a key dilemma to be overcome by ethical systems if they are to succeed in extending beyond subjectivity. In the search for a comprehensive and universally applicable (i.e. "ideal") ethical framework, the uncertainty of God's existence is important as it makes the framework, objectively understood, atheistic. So, again, "how can there be crime if God does not exist?"

Utilitarians would argue that happiness is the most evident a priori tenet and I wouldn't be inclined to disagree with them. Peter Singer, for instance, takes our innate sensory (and psychological) faculties and transcribes them into good and evil. In an oversimplified sense, that which causes more pleasure than pain is good, and that which causes more pain than pleasure is bad (i.e. evil). Two problems that arise from this are the means to the Good and the feasibility of calculation, which I believe are relatively minor concerns that I will not argue here.

A third problem, and what I think to be the most important, is due to the interference of the will and the tendency of most ethical systems to strive for universalization in their own right. The will, comprised of ontological and teleological convictions (tenets), prevents axiological judgment (the determination of tenets) from becoming properly resolvable. I don't find this to be something that necessarily needs to be overcome, on the contrary I believe it is why universalized ethics cannot be a science. The arising problem is thus:

1. Ethics cannot be a science.
2. Non-relativistic modes of ethics seek to become universalized.
3. A strictly relativistic mode of ethics ceases to be ethical.

In my mind, there are two possible paths to take from this:

1. So be it. Ethics will continue the way that it has progressed. There will always be ethical conflict and globalization will never lead to any ethical universality.


2. How do we incorporate relativism and subjectivism into ethics without contradiction?

7/21 update:

I've thought about this off and on for a while and it would be best to disregard the two options at the end. The second "path" is illusory and almost rhetorical; what I have illustrated is the paradox of ethical systems, not their potential direction. Ethics is, after all, a purely subjective value (preference) judgment, so it is nonsensical to think that a system of ethics could ever usurp relativism or be adequate to function universally.

"Fearless feline strikes terror into treebound bear"

Hot off the press (as of yesterday):

1. Tabby cat terror for black bear

A Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA)?

For clarity, here is the text of the proposal for the controversial amendment:

JOINT RESOLUTION
Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to marriage.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States:

`Article--

`SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

`This Article may be cited as the `Federal Marriage Amendment'.

`SECTION 2. MARRIAGE AMENDMENT.

`Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.'.

1. The Library of Congress THOMAS: S.J.RES.40 (Senate)
2. Senate talks gay marriage


Contributors to Wikipedia did an admirable job at outlining the arguments in support and opposition of this amendment. If you're at all unfamiliar with them, I would highly recommend these.
3. Criticisms of the Federal Marriage Amendment
4. Arguments in Favor of the Federal Marriage Amendment


Before presenting my own views, I would like to first appeal to comedic defamation rather than reason. (If you don't care, click here to skip down.) In the senate, this bill is sponsored by a Colorado's Wayne Allard (R), of whom an official portrait appears below.


Creepy isn't it? Ironically enough, Time Magazine recently listed Sen. Allard as one of the nation's five worst Senators, calling him "bland" and uninfluential.
5. Wayne Allard: The Invisible Man
6. "Wayne Allard" on Wikipedia

To make the issue partisan for a moment, an enjoyable response on the part of Democrats is that this debate is a superfluous waste of time--a diversionary tactic. Senate minority leader Harry Reid said yesterday:

In spite of the many serious problems we have just discussed, what is the United States Senate going to debate this week?

A new energy policy? NO.

Will we debate the raging war in Iraq? NO.

Will we address our staggering national debt? NO.

Will we address the seriousness of global warming? NO.

Will we address the aging of America? NO.

Will we address America’s education dilemma? NO.

Will we address rising crime statistics? NO.

Will we debate our county’s trade imbalance? NO.

Will we debate Stem Cell Research? NO.

But what we will spend most of the week on is a constitutional amendment that will fail by a large margin, a constitutional amendment on Same Sex Marriage—an effort that failed to pick up a simple majority, when we recently voted on it.

[...]

So for me it is clear the reason for this debate is to divide our society, to pit one against another. This is another one of the President’s efforts to frighten, to distort, to distract, and to confuse America. It is this Administration’s way of avoiding the tough, real problems that American citizens are confronted with each and every day...

7. Democratic leader enumerates issues gay marriage vote won't solve


But alas, pros and cons are more important.

The organization that is ultimately responsible for this bill is the Alliance for Marriage. Their defense of this amendment, as I understood from their keynote on C-SPAN, was threefold (excluding the oft-spoken "marriage is between a man and a women because it just is"):

1. There is research that supports that the parents involved in a "stable" "traditional marriage", have "stronger relationships" and that their children "enjoy longer life, better health, and greater happiness". Therefore, the social institution of "traditional marriage", should be promoted in the interest of public health.


2. Law reflects our priorities to our children, if marriage between two members of the same sex is institutionally accepted, it encourages social acceptance as well, which does not reflect the consensus of many communities, and if the prior claim is accepted, plays a negative role in public welfare.


3. There is a democratic consensus in places such as Nebraska that marriage should be defined in this manner, and it is being undermined by "unelected" (?) "activist" judges.

Unfortunately, the AFM's website offers virtually no arguments specifically in support of the FMA, nor does it provide links to the research (that I could find) that they so eagerly spoke of at their keynote, so those first two arguments could be regarded as interpretive inferences on my part.
8. Alliance for Marriage Web Site

In my opinion, the arguments, as I understand them, don't justify the amendment as it is proposed. My thoughts are as follows:

On the first point, legally defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman will not coerce same sex couples into traditional family structures. While the "traditional family" may promote public health and welfare, this amendment would do nothing to correct it. It is curious that the only legislative initiative brought forth by this organization is aimed at same-sex marriages (or polygomy if wishes to be a pundit and demonstrate its versatility), rather than strengthening the requirements of marriage in order to curb divorce rates or anything to that effect.

On the second point, while it may very well be that our local, state, and federal laws do play a role in sending a message to our children, the proposed one would not be one that is more reflective of all communities, most notably in Massachusetts where same-sex marriages have been legalized. Introducing a federal social policy would be counterproductive in promoting community values because it would be an assertive homogeneous blanket policy. The traditional wisdom on matters of this sort is to leave it up to the states; if we turn to the constitution to restrict or enforce social tendencies, we'll end up with some akin to Prohibition.

On the third, if there is fault within the authority of the judiciary, there should be an initiative to reform it, not to bypass it in one specific instance with an amendment oriented toward a specific cause. Also, reflecting the wanton desires of the majority (in this case generally much less than a 70% consensus depending upon the region) does not mean it is good policy. In fact, I've long felt that a role of the judiciary was to prevent the majority from trampling the minority without sufficient cause. I think Plato was correct in calling unmitigated democracy one of the lowliest forms of government (just above tyranny, in fact): while largely self-determining, it lacks virtue.

The "horse race"-manner in which this issue is approached seems to discourage public debate, and it is my opinion that this approach is reflected through the AFM's website: scant emphasis on justification and paramount emphasis on numbers. Our friend Sen. Wayne Allard displays this tendency as well.

This morning on C-SPAN, Sen. Wayne Allard, when asked by a caller about his own personal views (several such questions surfaced, the answer was always the same), responded with a smirk. "This is not about me," he said, "this is about the people having a voice at the polls." If it is any indication, I think this may be why the people at Time think so lowly of Mr. Allard: he has little or no interest in the "debate" surrounding his propositions, all he is concerned about is seeing that he is in line with current opinion polls.

I think there must be some degree of practical pessimism adopted to reconcile this issue. To say that ## percent of people believe something should be done, does not mean that that percentage is well-informed or attentive, much less necessarily right in their convictions. What is needed to resolve these practical and ideological gaps is honest, open discussion, which I feel is not being pursued by the likes of many proponents of this amendment.

In my opinion (which I have hopefully supported somewhat through this discussion), this amendment will not do anything to improve societal values, nor will it indirectly advance public welfare. It will hamper the liberties of a social minority, tarnish our constitution, upset federalism, and intensify the ideological divisions in this country. That said, it's unlikely that this amendment will pass anyway, and I am disheartened that our president would endorse such an initiative.
9. Bush turns up heat to prevent same-sex marriages

I might also add that the reason that same-sex couples seek "marriage" is not completely rooted in a fascination in the word itself or a desire to "disrupt American values", but in its legal benefits. I've never understood why many groups that oppose same-sex marriage being legally recognized also oppose forms of civil unions and domestic partnerships aimed at creating equal legal entitlements.


As always, if I have left something out or portrayed something inaccurately, please correct me.



7/8 update:

10. Gay marriage amendment falls short again in Senate
11. Statement By President Bush

From President Bush's statement:

My position on this issue is clear: marriage is the most fundamental institution of our society, and it should not be redefined by activist judges. The people must be heard on this issue. And as this debate continues, each American deserves to be treated with tolerance, respect, and dignity.

As before, I understand the "most fundamental institution of our society" part somewhat, but where I lose grasp of the argument is when people refer to marriage as a whole, legally rather than socially considered, and declare that it is "under attack".

I also realize that I made no effort in this post to reply to the slippery slope argument (e.g. if we let two men or two women marry each other "what do we say to the polygomists?" and/or "people will marry their dogs"), because I don't think that argument has any of the validity that marriage between same-sex couples has. Jon Stewart and Bill Bennett had a interesting discussion on this on Tuesday night's Daily Show.

Here's a link and an attempt at a transcript in case the video should go offline:
12. Bill Bennett Places Huge Bet On Jon Stewart

Bill Bennet: ...it's the original department of health education and welfare. The social scientists who have looked at the family say if you didn't have this you'd have to invent it, 'cause there's nothing that could raise children so effectively.

Jon Stewart: It's a relatively modern invention, marriage was about chattel, it was a property arrangement at a certain point.

BB: But the family relationship is not so...is not so..

JS: So why not encourage gay people to join in on that family arrangement if that's what provides stability to a society?

(Applause)

BB: Gay people are members of families. They're already members of families, they're sons, they're daughters..

JS: (With sarcasm) What? So that’s where the buck stops, that’s the gay ceiling?

(Laughter)

BB: Look, it’s a debate about whether you think marriage is between a man and a woman.

JS: I disagree, it’s a debate about whether you think gay people are part of the human condition or just a random fetish.

(Commercial break, etc.)

BB: The question is, 'How do you define marriage? Where do you draw the line?' Immediately on the heels of this debate, Jon, you have...

JS: Don't go slippery sloping with me because that's ridiculous.

BB: No it isn't, what do you say to the polygomists? What do you say to the polygomist?

JS: Uh...you don't say anything to the polygomist. It's completely.. and that is a choice to get three or four wives, that is not a biological condition that 'I gots ta get laid by different women that I'm married to', that's a choice.

BB: Well that.. no...

JS: Being gay is part of the human condition. There's a huge difference.

BB: Well some people regard their human condition as between three women. Look, the polygomists are all over this, this is the practice...

JS: Let's look at the slippery slope the other way. If government says, 'I can define marriage between a man and a woman,' what says they can't define it between people of different income levels or they can decide whether or not you are a suitable husband for a particular woman.

BB: Because it.. gender matters in marriage. It has mattered to every human society, it matters in every religion. It has.. its...

JS: Race matters in every other society as well. Is it progress in understanding...

BB: It's not a good ground for distinction, race. But gender may be a good ground for distinction in marriage.

JS: Let's discuss this. Dick Cheney would be a perfect candidate for someone who wants to ban gay marriage. Is that...would that be correct? The ultraconservative, draconian...uh...drinks the blood of puppies. He's the guy...

(Laughter)

JS: He's a guy...wouldn't he be a guy...he's the perfect candidate for a guy who wants to ban gay marriage, no? And he's against it.

BB: I...I don't know if he is or not.

JS: If you look at...if you look at his voting pattern, he's a social conservative. He's a social conservative.

BB: He's a social conservative.

JS: But he's not against gay marriage, why is that?

BB: Because of his experience with his daughter. That's right.

JS: Exactly, and you said something earlier that...what was that? Isn't every gay person someone's son or daughter.

BB: Of course.

JS: So why is it that you have to have...

BB: I don't think you want to argue that, because all you need to do is find parents of gay children who do not think their kids should not be able to marry someone of the same sex. You do not want to reduce it to that individual level. But can I say something?

JS: I'm just grasping...

BB: Just grasping the reality here--I know you want to make the conservative boogeyman, you know, that we're intolerant and bigots. This debate is over Jon. Gay marriage is coming because the courts have done it..

JS: No-- the courts haven't done it. They are only reaffirming the natural progression of the human condition. I don't understand why there's always a fight. They always lose, they will continue to lose--so why bother?

BB: The question is whether you think this is the natural progression of the human condition. I don't think it is. You had some spoofing earlier about Norway and Holland...

JS: I'm a spoofer. I spoof.

BB: That's what you do. Yeah, alright, but there are some serious problems there.

JS: In Norway?

BB: No, in Holland...

JS: Because of same sex marriage?

BB: In Holland and Norway. Marriage is taken less seriously. When you define it out. When you start to say it can involve anybody, then I think any grouping, anybody who loves anybody, two can love one, three can love two.

JS: (Interrupting) I think marriage has problems of having nothing to do with gay marriage.

BB: It has serious problems. It has more...

JS: It has serious problems and divorce is not caused because 50% of marriages end in gay-ness.

BB: You are right about that.