Today at Farley’s again. I’m sure that the patrons and the staff must think that I am insane as I mutter and pace about as I hack and slash though this book.
I think that someone should have given this book to an editor. As a master of the recursive sentence, I can appreciate what MacIntyre is doing, but dammit man, sometimes your points are simply lost!
I also get irritated when philosophy writers think that they have to hide what they’re really getting at to keep you interested. If you want to string the suspense out over a paragraph or two, fine, but this novel format of philosophical treatises grows taxing quickly.
Interlude We live in an Emotivist culture characterized by the bureaucrat. It was not always this way, contrary to the Emotivist claim. It broke in the enlightenment era where man became conceived as independent from his social roles and where he became regarded as no longer a function object. From this cascades a difference between is and ought, and the belief that factual premises cannot lead to evaluative conclusions.
The manager appeals to effectiveness, a myth.
We threw off the Aristotelian conception as a limiting factor to our development and awaited the day when social science would overcome the vagaries of our existence.
On the up side, this gets us out of the relentless discussion of Emotivism.
I am not entirely sure that I understand why Chapter 3 was written. I assume
that this will be used as a target to attack later, but I think that we got all
the value out of this discussion in chapter II.
The argument goes:
“We have lost the ability to talk about morality, incommensurate (Ch I).” No this has always been the case, I am an Emotivist
“OK, the Emotivist world looks like this” OK, so what
Is MacI trying to say that this is proof that the Emotivist society is NOT
something that always was? It seems like chapter 3 is a lot of overkill to
make that fairly easily granted point.
I hope that he is going to use the paradigms set up in this chapter
to pick out qualities of older moralities that had it together(?) or what our
new goal should be (?).
Chapter 4 was pretty good. A lot tighter / faster moving. It basically gives
the specific instances in Kant, Kierkergaard, and Hume of how the Enlightenment
project of answering rationally “Why should I be moral” failed. He also
asserts a close similarity between the Enlightenment (which asked the same
question we ask, but they did it first) and today. They asked the
question that we, 300 years later, still have not addressed.
Chapter 5 promises the essential flaw that guaranteed failure, but I’m still
reading it.
Notes to Chapters 5-10 of AV In chapter 5, Mac. addresses the inherent contradictions which assured that any project (Enlightenment Era) which sought to rationally justify morality was doomed to fail.
In Chapter 6 we talk about how the world view must look in light of these failings.
Chapters 7 and 8 talk about the failure of ‘social science’ to provide us a coherent explanation of human behavior.
Chapter nine serves as a bridge as we ask, in light of the failure of social science, ethics persists, where do we go?
Chapter ten starts charting the birth of the Classical (Aristotelian) ethical mode’s genesis with the heroic cultures (Illiad, Oddyssey).
Chapter 11: The Virtues at Athens Many moral debates in real societies find context in the heroic tales Plato Is not showing error held by Athenians Is showing conflict in the inherited political / moral discourse Removing Homeric vocabulary from Athenian moral debate (purging) Disconnect between Homeric values and Classical values as explored by Sophocles in Philoctetes Odysseus displays Homeric virtues Ultimately resorts to deceit, a trickery praised by Homeric virtue schemes Neoptolemus disagrees, thinks this is immoral, represents the Athenian / Classical Model Sophocles exploys deus ex machina to resolve (Heracles) Orestes is civic obligation versus familial obligation The Athenian debate is not simply a result of familial versus state context Kinship nations survive and aristocratic society’s values endure Virtue becames detached from any particular person (Hector’s virtue virsus Virtue) The separation of virtue from any particular person was an Athenian invention Involvement in the greatest polis demands we know “good citizen” vis-a-vis a “good man” What do Athenians share?
When formulating a mathematical theory, the great mathematician, philosopher, artist, polymath Edsger Dijkstra thought, much like Plato, we should endeavour to express ourselves clearly and precisely above all else. To enforce this he made sure he could explain his rationale to a layman in both Dutch (his mother tongue) and English.
What does this say about The White House’s policy if the executors of the rationale are not convinced?
Why?
Today I met my friend and former Daily Texan columnist Roahn at the AMC movie theatre over off of Bay Street.
Appropriate that we should see a movie about a simulated reality at a shopping center that is a simulation of Main Street Shopping Center (Yeah, “Bob’s General and Clothing Store’s” wares were JIT inventory imported from East Asian sweatshops back in those nostalgic good old days, eh?)
I thought it was a very good ending, I got most of the answers I wanted and the areas that were left gray, all my pre-film thinking managed to build a connecting narrative.
Purpose and Atheism or Purposelessness and Christianity, an Exploration
By: Steven G. Harms
Introduction:
“…if one does not believe in God, where does one’s purpose come from? Where does meaning come from?”
Essentially, and if I may be so gauche as to meta-analyze my friend and co-worker, Mice is asking The Great Existential Question. In this, he joins a long legacy of philosophers both atheist and Christian. I provide a quote and a ‘mindset’ that wrestled with a different formulation of the quote in parentheses.
“Without God, what is the purpose of my existence?“1 (Ancient Greek, Roman virtue ethics) “Without God, what is the basis for moral behavior” (Sartre) “Under the all-watchful eye of a non-interventionist God, how shall I comport myself?
Using special cameras, Getty photographs the president’s usually-invisible advisor
If you’ve been paying to the ongoing return of the Enlightenment, you know the name Richard Dawkins. Dawkins is a famous evolutionary biologist who, of late, has been spreading the message of atheism.
Dawkins’ primary book that has been the subject of a great many counter-opinions is “The God Delusion”. Lauren and I both noticed that RD was doing a book-signing at BookPeople downtown ( although I’m very thankful to live in a town where BookPeople exists ) and we resolved to attend…but then we found out there would be an ancillary lecture that evening at my alma mater.
NPR recently shared Erik Baard’s suggestion of why humans ought, and perhaps are morally obligated to, develop Artificial Intelligence.
Traditionally AI opinions are predictable. Either “bots run amok (possibly enslaving humanity, determining us a parasite, rendering all matter indistinct, or generically squashing our free will and giving us a life that we consider less human)” or “bots are our salvation: they will help us, we will become them, or they will optimize humanity’s place on Earth benevolently.”
Baard makes an interesting supposition, the ecological fate of the Earth is sealed: we will exhaust the resources on this planet in a finite measure of time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8h-xEuLfm8
I see this again every few years and I’m still astounded by the clarity of Russell’s explanation and the applicability of these two imperatives.
I recently read, and greatly enjoyed, Jonathan Foer’s article “Utopian for Beginners” as appeared in “The New Yorker” on December 24th of last year.
The article describes the work and passion of John Quijada who has painstakingly crafted, alone, a language called “Ithkuil”. What could possess someone to try to create a new language, a “constructed language,” or “conlang?” Quijada, when surveying the vast panoply of the world’s languages, saw a missing ideal language that perfectly blended maximum conciseness with maximum expressivity and maximum precision. To create a language that met this ideal has been Quijada’s quest over the last 30 years.
Introduction On my walk home from work I often listen to the Ruby Rogues podcast. In their episode with Glenn Vanderburg on “Complexity,” there’s a fascinating discussion on the nature of science, and how that defines the modus operandi of “computer science.” Dave, a panelist, asserts that: “computer science is heaving with science, but its heaving with formal science as opposed to empirical science.” I believe development is “heaving” with “formal science” because of of an all-too-human reason: vanity. Developers esteem formal reasoning over empirical reasoning out of peer pressure to seem “smart” which is associated more with the formal style of reasoning.
Introduction Before I went on vacation I printed up a copy of Alan Kay’s seminal paper “The Early History of Smalltalk.” The article is quite fine and provides a background on the ideas that were in the computing zeitgeist of the mid- to late-60’s and which lead to the innovative programming language Smalltalk in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Remarkable about this article, and lamentably rare, is that Kay’s erudition in the fields of philosophy and biology shine through in his lucid text and provide a holistic series of metaphors which make his technical writing a joy to read.
I’m fascinated by how people describe the act of creation to outside
observers. What exactly is happening “in there” when a writer tries
to tell us Zorba’s anguish is so great that he must dance, that the
weight of modern life can only be expressed in rich tonal hues (e.g.
Rothko), or that an if/else construct can be elided if the
determining evaluation is made more ignorant 1? Who is
it that solves problems when we’re trying to puzzle something out? Who
is it with whom we argue to decide whether to add or take away a dollop
of paint (or, for that matter, eat a cookie)? It’s a wonder that we’re
able to go through these ineffable states to arrive at abstractions that
help us create new solutions, but it’s an even greater feat that we’re
able to abstract that process and communicate it by gestures, sign,
and metaphor to one another. In sum, how do creators go about creating?
Inside
Consider a hard problem in a creative endeavor; I’ll consider
programming, the field with which I’m most familiar. It’s become very
clear that the thing that “solves” a problem is not really under my
control. If I think about my “ritual” to enter the “dream state”
where problems are resolved, I realize that it’s all a form of cargo culting: I’m doing rituals that I believe make my brain, over which
I have only nominal control, offer up a solution such that I can utter:
“I know!” or “I had an idea.” While I do my best to not let my mind
stray, I’m certainly not “wiring up” connections a la a 1960’s
switchboard operator nor am I drag-clicking mental components as if I was
seated in front of the Smalltalk or Self or Interface Builder
graphical programming environments.
Is there a thing I could do that would more directly produce “Eureka!”
moments? No. Is there a communicable process whereby I could tell
someone to execute a series of steps in order to come to the same
insight? No. I have to try to perform a dance of cargo-culted
behaviors (charts, blog posts, poor drawings on whiteboards) in order to
convince their own unconscious processes, over which they too find
it convenient to believe they hold control while having only little, to
offer up to them a “Eureka!” moment.
Ego
It is clear that we are not in control of our own insight capabilities.
Nevertheless we tend to use ego-centric, originative language to
describe our ideation process e.g. “I had an idea” or “Oh it just came
to me.” Despite our clear lack of control about ideation, we find it
very attractive to let our egoes claim credit for it. Who is the “I” in
those exclamations about successful ideation?
I have finished translating (although I’m not sure the level of proficiency) the first quarto page of Bruno’s “On the Shadows of Ideas.”
It’s been a real treat to get back into Latin.1
You can see my progress at my Github hosted blog site dedicated to the translation: Translating Bruno’s DE VMBRIS IDEARVM.
Footnotes “Treat” coming from the ancient Latin word meaning “profound pain” requiring a half-dozen of grammatical references, grimoires, and
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2013/11/i-embrace-you-with-all-my-heart.html#.UnuWE_kNuXc.reddit
Next time someone tells you that existentialists / atheists / agnostics / Humanists / Rationalists / Free-Thinkers have dead hearts, read this letter from Albert Camus to his childhood teacher.
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/01/29/carol-dweck-mindset/
Powerful model. It’s messaged pretty heavily at DevBootcamp to help students about to process tons of information stay afloat.
Mark Ronson, the producer behind Winehouse’s “Back to Black” shows off his prestidigitation with technology and sampling and creativity. I had always regarded sampling, at the time, as a sort of creativity infringement. I think that Ronson makes me think otherwise.
I also think that the postmodern aesthetic also supports sampling. I remember Eddie van Halen complaining upon hearing a Tone Loc song that “Those are Alex’s Drums!” (in “Funky Cold Medina” from Van Halen’s “Jamie’s Cryin’”). I think that’s exactly the point. Tone could have gotten any drummer to play that big tom-tom fill, but it’s that they were Alex van Halen’s tom fills that were used that seems significant.
http://danielmiessler.com/blog/two-things-i-learned-in-my-thirties/
My friend Daniel wrote a great summary of some of his greatest learnings in his 30’s.
On the literary and the philosophical side of things, this debate is about the question of free will, about the relation between human choice and the idea of fate. So many of the old stories are about fate being fulfilled or frustrated. It has always been an intense human fascination, how much freedom we have and whether we have any at all. I remember at a poetry reading in San Francisco once, during the question and answer period, an earnest young woman she was quite pregnant, I remember raised her hand and asked if there was such a thing as free will.
It is commonly said that you can’t judge a book by its cover. Most people have a story where this wasn’t true and here’s mine.
Help me internet! Who designed this cover?
This amazing cover to Camus’ “The Stranger” got me to read this book and my life was never the same afterward. But before I tell the story of its impact on me I must ask: “Does anyone know about who made this cover or who this troupe on the cover is?”
This cover was one of my first exposures to conceptual art. I had never seen anything like this: the make-up, the absurd yet regimented uniforms, the implication of “theatah.
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/philosophical-queries-of-academia-that-prompted-classic-songs-by-hair-bands
80’s hair band lyrics phrased as philosophy.
Introduction For the last year I have been teaching passionate beginners about programming at DevBootCamp. In this time I have come to realize that one of my primary tasks as teacher is to process the patterns and idioms of the computer and of programming languages (as I have experienced them) and rareify them into metaphors that my students can grasp experientially and/or emotionally. Having found an emotional or experiential connection to the rareified metaphor, they are able to condense it back into the universe of text-on-screen where I show the praxis of the metaphor.
The primary advantage to this approach, as I see it, is that even if the praxis of “what to type” or “what is the computer doing” is unclear, having a series of metaphors whereiwth to communicate or reason about the praxis greatly faciliates understanding.
https://betterhumans.coach.me/cognitive-bias-cheat-sheet-55a472476b18
As cognitive agents, humans are incredibly vulnerable to the biases and heuristics that divert our efforts from thoroughness. This long post provides a number of strategies for crippling these effects.
If the last men went this way, they would become bored by what Fukuyama called “masterless slavery – the life of rational consumption”. The spread of egalitarian values that went along with secular democratic politics would open up spaces of severe resentment – especially, we might now postulate, among those who had lost their traditional places at the top of social hierarchies, and felt cheated of the recognition that they believed they were owed.
Fukuyama did a lovely synthesis of Hegel and Nietzsche and predicted many elements of 2016. A solid read:
https://aeon.co/essays/was-francis-fukuyama-the-first-man-to-see-trump-coming
Stoicism has given me so much. This particular document covers the beauty of philosophy to purge a special kind of ignorance and why “free speech,” when it comes to Nazis, is a ruse they’re willingly using to trap the good-hearted middle into arguing about the wrong thing. So much goodness in this:
There’s nothing deep about it [the ignorance] — nothing demonic! There’s simply the reluctance ever to imagine what the other person is experiencing…
https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2016/01/19/one-crucial-word/
A wonderful piece that seeks to guard Nietzsche against the eternal return of nationalists trying to co-opt his message.
https://medium.com/situation-nine/white-supremacists-love-nietzsche-but-nietzsche-would-hate-white-supremacists-492e996d0477
Spoiler Warning: Light spoilers in the introduction. Full spoilers past the jump.
For Valentine’s day 2017, Lauren bought me a PS4 and “Dark Souls 3,” [From Software’s][from] final offering in the “Souls” universe and, at the time, the game to get for the platform. It follows the standard platform of taking the D&D that I used to get teased for, wraps it in amazing graphics, and sets it in a story universe that’s engrossing, fantastical, and labyrinthine.
As I came to find, “Souls” fans are die-hards, not just to master the game’s complex mechanics and to best the punishing bosses, but also because of the lore of the game.
In my role as educator, parents sometimes ask me what I think about some
educational program or activity. Instead of speaking to any one program, I’d
rather detail behaviors that have, observationally, predicted success in
students at DevBootcamp and the Flatiron School. If an educational program
builds deep, consistent depth in the five listed capabilities, it is “good” and
merits consistent, large investment.
Caveat I feign no scientific rigor for these observations. Attendees at
the schools were / are are assuredly non-representative of the general
population. Additionally, my assessment of their educational background is
based on inferences made from in-person interviews, work product,
examinations, etc.
In my experiences to date, the biggest signals that predict success for
students are:
A pre-existing ability to stick with reading challenging material without moving
A pre-existing strategy for “how to study”
A pre-existing respect and capacity for memorization and drilling
A pre-existing willingness to be boldly wrong
A pre-existing willingness to imagine the solution before looking to see if it exists
An ethnic school activity really crushes these five (Hebrew School, Chinese
School). Chess camp might well cover many of these as well. Piano lessons also
strike me as a pretty good winner as well.
Aside: It’s not really and surprise that a bar mitzvah requires all of
these (ceremonially, at the least) because these capacities are the
capacities of one who can care for himself and others i.e. “be a man.”
Among these disciplines, some probably have a quantitative edge, but as long as
the student engages with discipline in disciplines, i.e. process, they will
have a massive edge versus those who have not engaged in such a way.
Additionally, I think the student (child, preferably) should be engaged with
the idea that they’re learning a process that is applicable in many contexts.
Engage them with the idea that how they think can be “thunk” about.
But how to teach learners, students, children, to build these capabilities? I
have some recommendations after the jump.
Revisit: I’ve always felt like I didn’t quite get the original post on
this topic quite right. So I’m revisiting!
Spoiler Warning: Light spoilers in the introduction. Full spoilers past the
jump.
For Valentine’s day 2017, Lauren bought me a PlayStation 4 and “Dark Souls 3,”
From Software’s final offering in the “Souls” universe and, at the
time, the game to get for the platform. It follows the standard design of
taking the D&D that I used to use polyhedral dice for, wraps it in amazing
graphics, and sets it in an expansive, fantastical, and labyrinthine world.
As I played (and re-played) the game, I saw many elements of Nietzschean
philosophy surface that I kept mulling even after I’d finished. Months later, I
contend that “Dark Souls” is a narrative exploration of Nietzsche’s “Last Man”
thought experiment.* I’d like to record how and
why here.
For more about Nietzsche’s presence in “Dark Souls” read on…
Recently, while traveling the interior of Texas, my friend Mike texted a photo
of these T-shirts to me. To me this was a postcard from hyperreality: a
different place with different rules of meaning that, seductively, was
masquerading as reality.
Seen hanging around Central Texas
Socialism Distancing? Socialism Distancing? What is that? It looks like word
salad generated by a CAPTCHA gone crazy. “Socialism,” noun; “Distancing,” noun.
The more I thought about it, the more perplexed I became. The noun of
“distancing” should certainly be modified by an adjective.
So, the shirt designer’s intention, rendered grammatical, was to say
“social(ist) distancing.” Holding that to be true, that doesn’t seem to
communicate much either. What is signified by “socialist distancing” instead
of:
“capitalist distancing”
“supply-side distancing”
“voodoo distancing”
“Keynsian distancing”
“Maoist distancing”
I humbly submit that no one, including the designer or the proprietor of the
establishment could tell me what the sign “socialist distancing” means
vis-à-vis Merriam Webster’s definition:
socialism: noun: any of various economic and political theories advocating
collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of
production and distribution of goods
This word, “socialism,” as used on this T-Shirt was a message in a bottle from
hyperreality that had drifted into our world. To understand what’s afoot here,
I leaned on my recollection of postmodern philosophy, French Style. And for
this we will turn to that enfant terrible, Jean Baudrillard and his
challenging work Simulacra and Simulation.
