Ice Cream is True

Many philosophers seem to think that what we like and want may also be true. Critique of "On Truth", by Simon Blackburn

Hardly any academic field is subject to such divergent opinions as philosophy. While most people ignore philosophy and especially what philosophers say, with complete indifference, if not mockery, philosophers see themselves as grappling with the most enormous questions that lie at the very heart of our society and humanity. They are the ones asking the deepest questions of what is good, what is true, what is meaning, and what is being. Why, oh why are they marooned in ivory towers writing tedious monographs that no one reads or cares about? Specialization is particularly pernicious in this field, transforming what might be a pleasant conversational raconteur and dorm room bullshitter into an academic mired in most arcane and pointless hairsplitting, in emulation of fields of actual research, employed solely because university students must, after all, have philosophy courses.

Still, hope springs eternal that the mental firepower so evident in the written work of these fields could come down off the mountain and briefly enlighten the masses about what is true. Such is the project of Simon Blackburn, eminent atheist philosopher retired from Cambridge and other institutions. His book is modeled on that great work of Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit. Bullshit happens when the speaker doesn't care about truth at all, whether for it (truth) , or against it (lying). Our current president puts out a lot of bullshit, but mostly he is a pathological liar with a genius for coming up with the most mendacious and divisive lie in any situation. That is why speaking with Muller was deemed by everyone around him to be a "perjury trap". Going further, the new politics we inhabit seems to have left rational discourse behind. The right decries political correctness, which cruelly enforces reason and decency. The solution is to create an emotional discourse full of tribal identifiers but otherwise senseless, making of our politics a simple blue/green contest, ending up, ironically enough, in identity politics.

Blackburn also takes some political shots, which, since he is British, aim mostly at the egregious lying prevalent in the pro-Brexit campaign. But the book is largely a survey / critique of philosophical attitudes towards truth. The starting point, naturally, is the correspondence theory of truth. While called a theory, is it more a definition- that truth consists of mental models that correspond with reality. Heliocentrism is more true than geocentrism, Thucidides is more true than Herodotus, NPR news is more true than FOX news. Blackburn takes those outré philosophers (postmodernists particularly) to task for disputing such basic conceptions.

"At the end of the twentieth century the intellectual fashion known as postmodernism took an ironical stance towards science, regarding it in an anthropological spirit as simply the ideology of a particular tribe of self-selecting people calling themselves physicists, chemists, engineers, and biologists. The standpoint seemed to many to be a sophisticated response to science's claims to authority. It was tough-minded and knowing, and its proponents could flatter themselves as having seen through and exploded spurious claims to authority, as relativists and skeptics typically do. It was all very exciting- until one saw the same sophisticates using iPhones and GPS devices, relying detergents and paints and aeroplanes, vaccinating their children, and doing all the other things that the progress of science has enabled us to do. And then its glamour disappears, and instead it looks more than a little bonkers."

But there have been other, less dismissive approaches to defining truth- the coherence theory and pragmatism. Both take a step back from the correspondence definition, in light of our practical difficulties in knowing when we have gotten to that glorious state of correspondence. Coherence substitutes an agreement among authorities, such as a convergence among physicists of the late 1800's that everything of importance had already been found, and it was only left to work out the details. Global warming supplies another example- if 99% of relevant experts assign it to human causes, then perhaps it is, for all practical purposes, true. Pragmatism takes a similarly indirect approach relying on practical effects for validation of a truth. If planes fly, then much of the aeronautical theory underlying them is likely, again, to be true. I think it is useful to class coherence and pragamatism as methods of ascertaining or approximating truth, not as definitions. The point of truth remains getting us in sync with reality. If we were gods, then no pragmatism or coherence among authorities of lines of evidence would be needed- we would just know what the truth is, but it would still be a matter of correspondence between reality and our sovereign mind.

From there, things really start going downhill. Blackburn makes a diversion into deflationism, which claims that the correspondence theory is not so much a theory as a tautology, therefore meaningless. The problem here is a reliance on absurd linguistics. The word truth is generally not needed in truth claims, like "grass is green", as opposed to "the thought that grass is green corresponds with the facts", or "it is true that grass is green". It should be obvious that in the first phrase, the word "is" does a lot of work, setting out the truth claim quite clearly. It is hardly meaningless, or not a truth claim, thus it is little surprise that adding extra "truthy" qualifiers hardly add anything.

From there, the discussion descends into aesthetics, morality, and religion. Blackburn seems to have a hard time making sense of these fields, virtually giving up critique, and laying out lots of philosophical history and attitudes, which end up putting quite a bit of value on truth talk in these fields. For example, if we all agree that killing babies is bad, then it is true that killing babies is bad. Or, if ice cream is good, then it is true as well. There is a lengthy discussion of the formation of tastes, such that experts with deep knowledge of some art form can educate others to have more refined tastes, which all seems to form an argument for the truth of the tastes and the authority of the experts.

"But if we have been careful and imaginative and profited from the best opinion of others in the common pursuit, we can be reasonably confident that we have done justice to the topic [of some case of artistic evaluation]. We can advance our opinions, which also means we can judge them, perhaps provisionally and in cognisance of our own fallibility, as true."

But here I have to differ fundamentally. Philosophy deals with what is true and what is good. These are not the same things. Just because everyone agrees on something being good ... does not make it true. The criterion is radically different, being our judgement of goodness for human existence, whether for us personally, or for larger social structures such as our family, country or global society. Even if that judgement is putatively objective, such as population growth in response to "good"  policies or virtues, the value of that criterion remains subjective, as it is we who value population growth and flourishing, not perhaps the other animals who may die as a result. So one might claim it to be true that something is good, given expert justification or widespread agreement, but calling things true because they are good, or very good, in some aesthetic, moral, or other subjective sense, is bad philosophy as well as bad language. Whether Blackburn really intends this claim is unclear due to the murky nature of the discussion, unfortunately. At any rate, it is the age-old gambit of religions, to cast what they wish and like as truth. For philosophy to confusedly retain this atavism in its approach to morality and other goods would be deeply mistaken.

• Lawyers and truth.
• Facebook is evil.

The Quest For Meaning

We spend our lives searching for something that does not exist. And then realize that we have been fighting over it the whole time.

The meaning of life: 42? Or something more profound? Religions have been founded, and wars fought, over what by definition is most important to us, but on which no one seems able to agree. One advance in the philosophy of meaning was Maslow's hierarchy of values, which starts with basic sustenance, and rises through the more refined social values to self-actualization (possibly a dated concern!). If one does not have enough to eat, nothing else means much. But whether these form a true hierarchy is unclear, since many people have died for some of the more esoteric levels of this hierarchy, indicating that we are mixed-up beings, not always valuing life over some principle or ideology. It turns out that propaganda, social pressure, and decent odds, can make people kill and die for the most arcane propositions. Also, that winning means a lot to us.

Meaning is not given or objective. There is no star or cloud telling us that we mean X, while people in the other tribe mean Y. Quite the other way around. I think we can safely say at this point that we have constructed religions (as one example of indoctrinating human institutions) as complex machinery to propagate meanings that we (or at least some) have devised, using gods as fronts for desirable social hierarchies, idle speculations, melodramatic ruminations, and elevated emotions. That these machineries are passed off as objective and profound is critical to their function, elevating their impressiveness (and oppressiveness). If your meaning and values can be dictated by me, who wins? If god says you should have a beard, how can you complain, and to whom? This is the quest of propaganda generally- to instill meanings into, and thus lead, masses of people.

So we have been fighting over meaning and values all along, through our social relations. There is nothing to seek, but rather a world to win, for as far as others share one's meaning, one gains power. For example, a recent post told the story of Arthur Kornberg, eminent biochemist. One of his leadership qualities was an absolute conviction of the importance of what he was doing. If his team members were not willing to be tied to the bench at all hours and have midnight phone calls for urgent updates, their tenure was short. How much of this was willing? That is hard to say, and is one of the mysteries of personal, charismatic, leadership- the diffusion of meaning to others. Parenting is the same story, naturally, as is politics. Parents promote respect for elders and the elderly as a core societal virtue ... and no wonder! Advertising is another big example in our culture. The alchemical transformation of a natural desire- for status, sex, safety- into a value and meaning structure that renders some product essential. We are far more what we buy than what we eat.

Meaning turns out to be more of a fight than a quest. Meanings are swirling all about us, and are up for grabs. There is no grail to find, but only a social contest between those who seek to tell other people what is most valuable and important, others who promote other, maybe contrasting, values, and innocents in the middle, caught in the cross-hairs of domineering social warfare. Even Buddhism, whose doctrine revolves around the illusory nature of existence, the non-self, and the dampening of one's attachments, seems eager to propagate those very doctrines, promoting the somewhat ironic meaning of meaninglessness.

Returning to Maslow's hierarchy, many of our meanings are objectively based. We need to eat, have room to live, and have the other necessities of our current technological status. Social status is another need, biologically based. Since most of these are subject to scarcity, we are immediately thrust into competition with our fellow humans. These objective necessities can be woven into much larger ideologies of competition and tribalism. On a theatrical basis, they are portrayed in sporting events, game shows, and reality TV. But they become more grounded in the business world- that merciless competition that ends in bankruptcy and homelessness. Which is in turn only a slight step above the level that characterizes the ultimate competitive test of meaning: warfare, massacre, and murder.

We are bombarded from earliest childhood with values and messages of meaning, many of which conflict. The confusion can be difficult to deal with, leading many into the arms of simple solutions- taking meaning from those who shout the loudest, or who simplify most audaciously. It is up to us to choose, though our basis is necessarily the choices we have made already and which have been made for us earlier on in our lives. Meanings build on each other. But they also have a rational aspect. If compassion is part of our value system and self-meaning, that will not sit well with projects of tribal pride and dehumanization. It is complexity that requires careful thought, which is why morality is not just a matter of feeling, but also of reason.

The meaning of life is not hard to find, but it is hard to decide on, from the myriad choices and influences surrounding us. That is why sticking with positive influences and avoiding cesspools like Facebook / Fox news is so important. It is also why "big question" discussions are often overblown, shills for the dissemination of some particular and parochial set of meanings.  The quest is not for some elusive single meaning, but for ways to chose among the vast numbers of them we meet along the way of life.

• Imagine ... if Trump ran Hollywood.
• We are in the middle of propaganda warfare.
• More lies.
• Automatons have long been used to fake the work of gods.

Hitler and Donald Trump

With apologies to "God and Donald Trump". An authoritarian comparison.

Hitler did not pounce on Germany suddenly and unannounced. His rise was a lengthy story of norms broken, lies told, prejudices nurtured, institutions destroyed, brilliant propaganda, judicious bullying, and the age-old scapegoating alchemy of victimization and hate. We are in the midst of a similar process, with the worser angels of our natures being seduced and exemplified by the current president. Trump loves authoritarian leaders, pines for authoritarian methods, (reads authoritarian speeches), and, overall, seems to use a playbook from one of the greatest authoritarians of all time. Maybe it is worth counting up the similarities. One of the best books on this remains William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Propaganda
Trump had a few difficulties with FOX at first, as they had a few components still beholden to the old GOP, or with principles otherwise. But nothing succeeds like success, and FOX could not deny the beast they themselves had created through years of alternative reality and hate-filled programming. It is now a fully consumated marriage, with daily hate, direct policy integration, and personnel going back and forth. Joseph Goebbels would have been proud, though he would have criticized us for still allowing free media to exist. Trump has been doing his best to discredit all responsible media, and is getting a sympathetic hearing from those in his camp. Whether this infection of corrupt media values spreads into the rest of the culture is one of the biggest questions of our time.

Novel modes of communication
The Nazis used film, radio, graphics, and other media in very innovative ways, still admired today in some instances. Mass communication was still young, and they made great use of it for their propaganda. Now we have the first twitter president, marrying his lack of self-control and need to bully and  lash out at every source of anxiety with the new media of our time which narrow-casts and broadcasts simultaneously and instantly. These new media themselves are not the problem, rather it is the content, obviously. The issue is whether we neglect to take a longer view and are able to maintain our intellects and moral values while marinating involuntarily in this cesspool of Newspeak.

Scapegoats and concentration camps
Immigrants are the current administration's scapegoats and objects of hatred. No insult is too vile, no policy too harsh. Walls are to be built, detention centers filled, children ruined. Germany never had organized and nation-wide resistance to the antisemitism of the Nazis, so we are slightly ahead there. But in Germany too, the concentration camp system started slowly, first only holding communists and political opponents, and only gradually developing into the slaughterhouses found by the allies in the end. Immigrants are right now an easy target, not being citizens, with nebulous rights, if any.

Bullying
Trump's bullying is instinctive, relentless, and always personal. (Just ask Stormy Daniels!) If there is policy involved, it is decades out of date, and uninformed. The Nazis were obviously bullies as well, with far more lattitude, given their paramilitary organizations and eventual totalitarian control. Hitler's temper tantrums were evidently very Trumpian. But in foreign policy, they directed their bullying more sensibly- against their enemies rather than their friends. First Austria, then Czechoslovakia, were crushed by propaganda and threats. England was cowed from interfering, Russia was subborned and bribed, before being turned on later. There was method to the madness, where with Trump, we have daily lashing out without much sense let alone long term strategy. China is our friend, then our enemy. Russia is complemented on one hand, and sanctioned with the other. Canada is turned from our best friend to a bitter spouse. The authoritarian instinct is obviously the same, but with Trump, the point gets lost in personal narcissim, short attention span, and poor judgement.

Narcissism
Was Hitler a narcissist? Perhaps not as flagrantly as Trump, but anyone who starts a world war and ends up incinerating his own country in the pyre of his ambition probably gets the nod. There was also the personality cult, Führer, etc. So yes, he and Trump are cut from the same cloth there. Trump has tried mightily to identify himself with the nation and its wounds and salvation- just listen to his clunky inauguration speech. He is the only one who can fix what is wrong with the nation! The instincts are there, and the charismatic connection to at least some of his base. But he is far, far, from closing the deal with the country at large, and also has such appalling lack of judgement, intellect, and self-control that the whole project simply falls flat on purely operational grounds.

Economic policy
Here we get to a big constrast between the two. Trump has talked alot about infrastructure spending and beautiful airports and roads. But he has not lifted a finger to get there. His version of deficit spending is to give a lot more money to the rich- he's no national socialist! Hitler, on the other hand, really built the autobahn, the Beetle and other infrastructure. His Keynesian policies put everyone to work, as well as re-arming the nation. Of course all this led to tears, but it illustrates the difference between someone who really wants to rebuild the nation, and someone who only wants to get a feeling from a crowd of believers, while selling them down the river to his rich friends.

Crony capitalism
Yes, Hitler's economics put the big companies in control. But the program was obviously derigiste- under the state, and secondly, with the ultimate goals, successfully achieved, of rebuilding both the economy and the armed forces. Trump, in contrast, is spending all his efforts in strightforward Republican projects of favoring the corporate class generally over the wroking class. The tarriffs, the death of consumer protection, the death of the EPA, the corporate tax cuts- none of that is making America as a whole better let alone great. The nationalist rhetoric expresses Trump's authoritarian instincts, but his heart and whatever else passes for his head is with his corporate cronies, not with workers, or the nation at large.

Tastelessness
Here, Trump is almost in a class of his own. Hitler was a notoriously bad painter, but not entirely talent-less, and led a party that innovated in media, graphics, public displays, and architecture (if of an oppressively bombastic and brutalist style). Trump's style is more classic mobster and nouveau-riche. Both cases betray a lack of empathy and human feeling. As the Greeks and many after them maintained, aethetics are moral. We express ourselves and our vision of humanity through the art we make, support, and appreciate. It is a window into the soul or lack thereof of our leaders to see what they are capable of appreciating. Trump's case is one of edifice complex with a slather of gilt.

Fighting the last war
Hitler took a great deal of his ultimate program from America. We shamelessly swept Native Americans from our fertile prairies. We had slavery. We supported eugenics. He thought that the Ukrainian and Russian breadbasket could be the great fertile frontier for Germany. Too bad that the people already living there had airplanes and tanks! In this case, Hitler was several decades, if not centuries out of date, and paid grievously for it. For all his prowess in harnessing modern technology and economics to a program of national rebuilding and totalitarian control, Hitler was additionally obsessed with the the defeat by France in World War 1. It was all very backward-looking. Trump's errors of history are smaller-bore, but analogous, in that his conceptions, such as they are, are generally decades out of date. Is coal going to come back? That is absurd, not to mention environmentally suicidal. Is manufacturing coming back? Only with robots. He is harping on the nefarious trade policies of China (and Canada!). Well, that ship has mostly sailed. China has developed with our implicit help and support (not to mention funding our prodigious deficits). The remaking of a poverty-stricken communist basket case into a prosperous capitalist nation over the recent decades is the strongest possible compliment to our ideology and generous guidance of the international system. (Though further work remains to make our democracy functional and attractive as an alternative to China and Russia's new model of authoritarian capitalism). We should concentrate on fostering an increasingly rule-based and legitimate international system that keeps China on a responsible and lawful path, rather than introducing instability that only diminishes our current and future standing.

Love for fellow authoritarians
Whether there is a compromising Russian dossier on Trump or not, his love for Putin is unfeigned. G. W. Bush looking into Putin's eyes was bad enough, but this is revolting. Whether Duterte, Jinping, bin Salman, or Jong Un, Trump seems to love them all. Naked power is his elixir and dream. How sad that America's power has been built over the last century on more subtle foundations- the attractiveness of a properous, lawful, and respectful system that other peoples and nations can aspire to rather than cow before. Making America great used to involve opposing dictatorships rather then trying to emulate them.

• A linguistic emergency.
• State of the border. 
• Turning the international order upside down.. on Putin's orders?
• Mental illness.
• Remember the dust bowl? 
• Empathy is not weakness.

Philosophy of Science, or Philosophy vs Science?

A review of "Theory and Reality", by Peter Godfrey Smith, touching on a few criticisms and issues in the philosophy of science.

The philosophy "of" science has been fraught for decades, if not centuries. The usurpation of the theological explanation certainly rubbed many religious thinkers the wrong way, and modern philosophy has, perhaps unconsciously, carried on that rather adversarial tradition. A 2003 book by Stanford professor Peter G. Smith recounts the more recent back and forths in a judicious fashion. The modern story starts with the logical positivists of the inter-war Vienna Circle. They wanted to put science on a firmer footing by describing a logical basis for the scientific method. While scientists were groping in the dark, they, with their logical powers as philosophers, were going to straighten out the whole field. Never mind that, at the very same time, Gödel and others were showing that even logical systems have their limits, quite apart from the details of how they are applied to what we (so naively!) call reality.

A logical positivist.

The logical positivists were a little like the behaviorists- they tried their best to ignore invisible abstractions and hidden causes. They were obsessed by language and clarity, attempting to make of scientific language something purely empirical, linked at every point to directly observable entities and tests. This language was also supposed to be comprehensive and simple, hopefully mathematical in nature. And everything "scientific" would then end up being proven and lock-tight. However there were many problems, some inspired by the arch-skeptic, David Hume.

One was the problem of induction. While the sun has come up over 4 billion times, and reliably in our personal observation, there is still no guarantee that it will rise tomorrow. Such a prediction, premised on the inductive logic that since the sun has always come up, it will ever do so, can never be "proven". It can only be a matter of probability, confounded by the next black hole to come sailing through the solar system. The positivists and others trying to put the routine scientific logic of explanation and induction on a footing of certainty could not do so, however hard they tried. Even calling our most regular and elegant findings "natural laws" doesn't help. They remain founded on the clay of repeated observation and probabalistic extrapolation, not gold-plated logic (except for relations that are actually mathematical, like the symmetry laws of Emmy Noether; yet these rely on other observables for their premises, so ultimately rest on contingent properties of the universe). There was a sort of mathematics envy going on, as philosophers obsessed with making sense of physics yearned to make everything provable.

But that is not possible. Our findings about the world, however carefully observed, elegantly abstracted, and powerfully predictive, are necessarily probabilistic generalizations. Late in Smith's book, he delves into Bayesian logic and its stong attractions to philosophers as a way to represent probabilistic representations of the claims of science. Smith is dubious, and hopes for another solution, but it is important to point out that Bayes' theorem is not just a technical innovation to parameterize our belief and doubt. It is a solution for the whole problem of induction, which is to say that our expectations for certainty (whereby it is called inductive logic) need to be fundamentally tempered. An earlier breakthrough along these lines happened from Karl Popper, who offered disproof as the coin of the scientific realm. Perhaps, since nothing could be inductively proven, scientists could just work in disproving bad hypotheses, and leave it at that. But that is not how science works either. More on that below.

There were many other problems with the logical positivist program, such as an inability to make of language a pure, clean, perfectly observation-based mode of expression. No, languages of any kind presuppose large networks of meaning that have to be learned, and imply ontologies (unseen and abstract, no less) which model some version of reality, including hidden aspects. The whole positivist program is now a historical curiosity, (though its empiricist aspects are far from dead), but it paved the way for other, sometimes even more extreme approaches.

The most devastating critique was a social one. The 60's and 70's brought philosophers who looked more closely at what scientists did, and found that, far from following the dictates of the logical positivists, or at least those of Popper, they were behaving a lot like humans, with pet theories, a mania to prove themselves right, and petty squabbles over elaborate theories and the credit for them. Thomas Kuhn led the way, with an altogether nuanced and sophisticated picutre of the scientific process. Kuhn is probably the hero of Smith's book, and is rehabilitated in several respects. Kuhn devoted most of his main work to the process of "normal science", which goes forth within an over-arching paradigm that is largely uncontested, is inculcated by lengthy training (not to say indoctrination!), and digs ever deeper into the secrets of its field. Kuhn then followed with a description of the crisis phase of science. This is when paradigms change, and old verities no longer hold. He noted dryly that this is when scientists tend to become interested in philosophy! The clearest example is the quantum and relativistic revolutions in physics, which upended the stable, indeed Euclidean, Newtonian world.

To step out of the story briefly, it is imporatant to note here that, while Kuhn's story has given us the impression that such paradigm shifts are a necessary and continuing part of science, thus that nothing we know now is really stable or "true", that would be misleading. The Newtonian world lives on as a first approximation of reality- it was not discarded in any complete way. Equally important, some fields have really come to a final picture of their subjects. Molecular biology is an example. New things continue to be found and we have very far to go to unravel all the molecular networks that touch on health, not to mention consciousness, but the basic picture of DNA and its core processes are not going to change. Biology after Darwin could have been upended by the new technologies of genetics, microscopy, crystallography, and then of DNA. But it has not been- far from. Each innovation has only provided deeper and more detailed explanations of the theory of natural selection, in all its ramifications.

While Kuhn was very measured in his portrayal, his successors in social constructivist and postmodern philosophy let it all hang out, generating a decades-long body of work that, at its fringes, claimed that science was entirely socially constructed, and had no more say about the nature of reality than did the science of voodoo, which was at least the province of an oppressed and thus virtuous and authentic society. This fed on the age-old obsession of philosophy- what is reality? If observation is theory-driven, which everyone now agrees on, (in contrast to the logical positivists), how does reality enter our models of it? Obviously, there is a cycle (one might even call it a dialectic!) going on, of hypothesis, observation, evaluation, problem, and re-hypothesis. Our minds excel in making models, which then inform our observations, which then feed back (if we are paying attention) to those models. But a sufficiently motivated philosopher with a sufficiently narrow and uncharitable view of what is going on in science can come to a different conclusion. Smith provides a valedictory about this phase of his field:

"A lot of work in these fields has been organized around the desire to oppose a particular Bad View that is seen as completely wrong. The Bad View holds that reality determines thought by stamping itself on a passive mind; reality acts on scientific belief with 'unmediated compulsory force'. That picture is to be avoided at all costs; it is often seen as not only false but even politically harmful, because it suggests a passive, inactive view of human thought. Many traditional philosophical theories are interpreted as implicitly committed to this Bad View. This is one source for descriptions of logical positivism as reactionary, helpful to oppressors, and so on. 

What results from this is a tendency for people to go as far as possible away from the Bad View. This encourages people to asset simple reversals of the Bad View's realtionship between the mind and world. Thus we reach the idea that theories construct reality. 

Some explicitly embrace the idea of an 'inversion' of the traditional picture, while others leave things more ambiguous. But there is little pressure within the field [Science studies, particularly] to discourage people from going too far in these statements. Indeed, those who express more moderate denials of the Bad View leave themselves vulnerable to criticism from within the field. The result is a literature in which one error - the veiw that reality stamps itself on the passive mind - is exchanged for another error, the view that thought or theory constructs reality."

One author comes in for extra discussion- Paul Feyerabend:

 "Feyerabend was not, as he is sometimes portrayed, an 'enemy of science'. He was an enemy of some kinds of science. In the seventeenth century, according to Feyerabend, science was the friend of freedom and creativity, and was heroically opposed to the stultifying grip of the Catholic church. ... But the science of Galileo is nto the science of today. Science, for Feyerabend, has gone from being an ally of freedom to being an enemy. Scientists are turning into 'human ants', entirely unable to think outside of their training. And the dominance of science in society threatens to turn man into a 'miserable, unfriendly, self-righteous mechanism without charm or humor.' In the closing pages of Againt Method, he delcares that society now has to be freed from the strangling hold of a domineering scientific establishment, just as it once had to be freed from the grip of the One True Religion."

One can see how this ties in with the anti-intellectualism of the current Trumpian moment, and how the Evangelical movement sees its deepest interests in the construction and maintenance of an alternate reality that has been comprehensively threatened by intellect salvaged by a man like Trump, who shares their postmodern view about things like reality and its moral implications.

Smith spends the later parts of the book not on historical review, but on an effort to synthesize a more mature view of the field, taking a pluralistic view of what counts as evidence in science, and how the interaction with reality operates, ending up with a very reasonable view of the matter:

".. we might think of science as something like a strategy. In this sense science is the strategy of subjecting even the biggest theoretical ideas, questions, and disputes to testing by means of observation. This strategy is not dictated to us by the nature of human language, the fundamental rules of thought, or our biology; it is more like a choice. The choice can be made by an individual or a culture. The scientific strategy is to construe ideas, to embed them in surrounding frameworks, and to develop them, in such a way that exposure to experience is sought even in the case of the most general and ambitious hypotheses about the universe. That view of science is a kind of empiricism."

There are a couple more points that I would add to what Smith presents. First is about the role of criticism in science. This gets somewhat short shrift, I think, in favor of citation credit as the primary mode of motivation, yet plays a central role. Everyone is a critic- that is true in all walks of life and work. There is great power that accrues to scientists who brilliantly point out the flaws in others' work. This is why thesis committees exist, and peer review, grant review, group meetings, conferences, and much of the social apparatus of science, such as it is. Criticism, especially in public, inspires fear, which in turn inspires enormous efforts to address weaknesses in one's work. It is one of the primary motivations for scientists to make extra mental effort step outside their pet theories and obsessions- to strain to be "objective".

A second point is about another motivation in science, the ultimate one. This is not social at all, whether social approbation, credit, or fear, but is rather more spiritual: personal contact with reality. There really are eureka moments, in science as elsewhere, and they are tremendously fulfilling. All the care about details, the straining to be objective, and the acceptance of criticism, all function in the service of making contact with some new truth about the real world. Scientists are not Marines. They do not live and die for their band of brothers. They dedicate their lives to truth ... the pursuit we all share in some portion in our native curiosity to learn ever more about our world, but which, taken seriously, morally, and systematically, turns into the privilege of working full time to push forward knowledge about topics more or less obscure and useful, aka science.

It is an implicit recognition of the philosophical difficulties of dealing with and knowing about reality- this shadow world that we study incessantly, through our mental powers of modeling, but can never directly know. This is why students are given laboratory exercises, rote as they may be- to show that what seems so inert on the pages of their textbooks was once alive as a question which was answered by nature via a theory-driven and carefully constructed test. That the sought-after truth may be imperfect, tentative, and probabilistic is no matter. Any progress is better than none. And touching a new truth about how things work, which no one has witnessed before, after a lifetime spent feeding on the regurgitated knowledge of others, is truly addictive.

Smith's book finally shows a significant retreat from the glorious early aims of the queen of the sciences to rule over her dronish brethren. Philosophy may deal in big questions, but it is not very adept at answering them, or even posing them very constructively. Its lack of empirical engagement leaves it prone to the kind of appalling group-think that led the French constructivists and science studies acolytes so thoroughly off the rails. Its attitude towards science has been remarkably patronizing and counterproductive, not to say politicized and naive. Smith retreats to a far more humble descriptive, rather than normative, program of accepting pluralism in the methods and criteria of various sciences, and working, (one might say almost scientifically), to sort through and make sense of each of them in turn.

• Errol Morris blames Kuhn for postmodernism and scientific faith-ism ... which is unfair.
• Coming to terms with reality.
• Trumpire Putinesca. "Sater is the one who famously sent Cohen the email in 2015 that said 'I will get Putin on this program, and we will get Donald elected.'"
• Comey v McCabe.
• Pigs on Twitter.

mm-Hmmm ...

The critical elements of conversation that somehow didn't make it into the "language". A review of How We Talk, by N. J. Enfield.

Written language is a record of elision. The first written languages were hardly more than accounting symbols, and many early forms of writing lacked basic things like vowels and punctuation. The written forms are a shorthand, for those practiced in the art of spoken language to fill in the blanks, and they still hide a great deal today. For example, the same letter, such as "a" can stand for several vowel sounds, as in ate, art, ahh, am, awe. Another rich part of the language left on the editing room floor are completely unrecorded (except by authors of dialog looking for unusual verisimilitude) sounds, like um, ah, huh, mm-hmmm and the like. N. J. Enfield makes the case that, far from being uncouth interjections, these are critical parts of the language, indeed, part of an elaborate "conversation machine" which is one behavior that distinguishes humans from other animals.

Arabic, a language commonly written without vowels.

When we are in conversation, time is of the essence. We expect attentiveness and quick responses. It is a relationship with moral aspects- with obligations on each side. The speaker should repeat things when asked, not take up too much of the floor, provide clear endings to turns. Enfield describes a very disciplined timing system, where, at least in Japan, responses begin before the first speaker has stopped. Other cultures vary, but everyone responds within half a second. Otherwise, something is discernably wrong. One thing this schedule indicates is that there is a sing-song pattern within the speaker's production that signals the ending of a speaking turn well before it happens. The other is that there is an serious obligation to respond. Not doing so will draw a followup or even rebuke from the speaker. Waiting more time to respond is itself a signal, that the response is not what is desired.. perhaps a "no". It can also be softened by an "uh" or "er" kind of filler that again signals that the responder is 1. having some difficulty processing, and 2. paving the way for a negative response.

Likewise, "mm-Hmm" is a fully functional and honorable part of the language- the real one used in conversation. It is the encouraging sign that the listener is holding up her part of the bargain, paying attention to the speaker continuously. Failing to provide such signs leads the speaker to miss a necessary interaction, and interject.. "Are you listening?".

Finally, Enfield deals with "Huh?", a mechanism listeners use to seek repair of speech that was unclear or unexpected. When a response runs late, it may switch to "Huh?", in a bid to say that processing is incapable of making sense of what the speaker said, please repeat or clarify. But at the same time, if something of the original speech can be salvaged, listeners are much more likely to ask for specific missing information, like "Who?", or "where was that?" or the like. This again shows the moral engine at work, with each participant working as hard as they can to minimize the load on the other, and move the conversation forward in timely fashion.

Huh is also a human universal, one that Enfield supposes came about by functional, convergent evolution, due to its great ease of expression. When we are in a relaxed, listening state, this is the sound we can most easily throw out with a simple breath ... to tell the speaker that something went off track, and needs to be repeated. It is, aside from clearly onomatopoeic expressions, the only truly universal word among humans.

A conversation without words.

It is a more slender book than it seems, devoted to little more than the expressions "uh", "mmm-Hmmm", and "Huh?". Yet it is very interesting to regard conversation from this perspective as a cooperation machine, much more complex than those of other species, even those who are quite vocal, like birds and other apes. But it still leaves huge amounts of our face-to-face conversational engine in the unconscious shadows. For we talk with our hands, faces, and whole bodies as well. Even with clothes. And even more interesting is the nature of music in relation to all this. It is in speech and in our related vocal intimacies and performances that music first happens. Think of a story narration- it involves not only poetry of language, but richly modulated vocal performance that draws listeners along and, among much else, signals beginnings, climaxes, endings, sadness and happiness. This seems to be the language of tone that humans have lately transposed into the free-er realms of instrumental music and other music genres. Analyzing that language remains something of an uncharted frontier.

• Machines can do it too.
• Varieties of technoreligion.
• Monopoly is a thing.
• Appalling display of religious fundamentalism: The US ambassador to Israel refers to old testament and 3,000 year old rights of Israel. If other 3,000 year old land claims were to be honored, the US would be in substantial peril!
• In praise of Jimmy Carter.
• Collapse or innovation.. can we outrun the Malthusian treadmill?
• Truth and Rex Tillerson.
• Sunlight makes us feel better.
• We still have a public sector pension crisis.
• Economic graph of the week. Worker quit rates are slowly rising. Will that affect pay?

Americans, Plain and Simple

How about doing away with the term "African-American"?

It has taken me a while to realize that African Americans are far, far more American than I am. I am a naturalized citizen and immigrant. Yet the Protestant, white, suburban Boy-Scout culture fit like a glove- I was assimilated into 60's-70's America with plenty of personal and family issues, but no larger political or cultural issues.

How different that is from the black experience, where whole political parties remain dedicated to keeping black Americans down! A small part of that social antagonism and "othering" is furthered by the distinct names that have been applied to the black community. While the term "African American" is about as neutral as can be, in strict analogy to the many other ethnic terms like Irish-American, Jewish-American, German-American, Chinese-American, etc., there have in practice been some distinctions.

First, "Irish-American" is not frequently used. Most ethnic groups, especially those of such long vintage, have simply melted in to the pot of generic Americans- have assimilated or had America assimilate to them. So the continued intensive use of the term "African American" does not flow from a lack of assimilation, at least not from an African originating culture, but something quite different. Second, why is "African" lumped together so promiscuously, as if a continent as large as three Europes contained only one culture? "Latino" suffers from the same syndrome, hiding vast differences and diversity for the convenience of the dominant culture. It is a natural problem with naming and grouping of any kind, but is another sign that the "African" in "African American" doesn't really refer to Africa.

What all this does signify is continued segregation in all sorts of dimensions- social, physical, economic- based on a long cultural history of fear, disgust, hate, and social and economic oppression/powerlessness. Pride in an African heritage is admirable, but that seems so distant as to be mostly contrived; there is very little such heritage afoot in contemporary America, in any way that is distinct to one community, beyond genetics. (Though Wakanda may change all that!) A more accurate designation might be "formerly enslaved Americans", though that hardly trips off the tongue either. There have been many attempts at labels, more or less successful, (Negro, colored, minority, Urban, Afro-American, ghetto, racialized people, diverse, people of color). I would suggest the preferred usage just be "Americans" when and where possible, without further ado or elaboration.

A word-cloud of my own creation, text drawn from Wikipedia and other history sites focusing on the back experience. This  appears to militate against the thesis presented, showing "African" with high usage, and as perhaps the primary locus of identity. But the corpus was a very backward-looking, perhaps not reflective of the current cultural setting.

Obviously, from the very nature of this very article, some term is needed to refer to Americans descended from those were formerly under bondage and even more formerly kidnapped from West Equatorial Africa. "Black" seems to fit that best, if still very uncomfortably. Despite all the etymological / symbological freight, simplification, and label-i-fication, it is simple and widely used. It is also part of a deeply unifying symbology. The Ying/Yang symbol is an example, showing light and dark as part of all things, and all cycles and processes. Ebony, Jet, Black power, Black is beautiful... all have been ways to rectify the dominant-culture valence of this term.

• Another view of police.
• Worse than collusion.
• Why do we have a new nobility & feudal system?
• UBI is a symptom, not a cure.
• A network of deranged people.
• Social conformity is (partly) genetic.
• Consumer protection? Not us!
• Watch Bill Mitchell in lecture.

The Poisoned Pen

Jefferson and the Republicans had their own (early) version of FOX news.

I am reading the McCullough biography of John Adams, which is a real hagiography. But it is also well-written, packed with information and insightful in many respects. His portrait of Thomas Jefferson is particularly harsh, as would be natural because he and Adams became bitter antagonists. Jefferson's main tool in their fights was the press. Specifically, secret relationships with the National Gazette, and its successor, the Aurora General Advertiser.

The polical parties of that time broke down along centralizing, pro-government (Federalist) and pro-agrarian, decentralizing, and Southern (Republican / Democratic). The latter were also, at least in the person of Jefferson, much more enamored of the French Revolution. Adams immediately saw the mob nature of that revolution, so different from that of the Americans, and forsaw chaos as well as its eventual descent into dictatorship. But there were many other sources of conflict such as the basic party splits over Southern vs Northern interests and ideologies, personal enmities, and personal ambitions.

The vitriol that came pouring out, once the founding era was swept away and the two-party system was established, is truly disturbing to behold. Secretary of State Jefferson employed Phillip Freneau in the State Department as a translator, but with little work. Freneau spent his main energies as publisher of the National Gazette smearing Jefferson's (and James Madison's) enemies within the administration, including Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and George Washington. (On the other side, Hamilton gave his favored printer, John Fenno of the Gazette of the United States, a large government printing contract.)

They made a great deal of hay out of a long debate fostered by John Adams as vice president on the proper forms of address towards the president. Adams favored something a little more grand like his highness, or something of the kind. For this he was painted as being a monarchist and wanting to subvert the independence that had so recently been achieved. Also that his lengthy stay in Europe as ambassador to France, the Netherlands, and Britain may have turned his head.

The language of these attacks was often hyperbolic and scurrilous. A birthday party for Washington was described as "a forerunner of other monarchical vices." Adams was described as being among the men who proposed "the principles of monarchy and aristocracy, in opposition to the republican principles of the Union and the republican spirit of the people." There was a reference to the "corrupt sqadron of the Treasury," and to Hamilton as "a vile sycophant". The Federalists proposed laws that are "injurious to liberty and enslaving to the happiness of the people." And Republicans concluded that "our Constitution was galloping fast into Monarchy."

It was a combination of party rivalry and tribalism, along with honest fears that the fragile experiment of American self-government could, if entrusted to the wrong hands, or blown off course by a crisis, end in tears. Today, we have a more settled system, indeed well-neigh an imperial system with its own problems of vast size, corruption, and unmanageability. And, thanks to the poisoned press of our own age, a president-elect far from the founder's ideals.

A lot has been made of how the elite media was out of touch from the angry Trump voters. But Trump was covered incessantly during the campaign, with the helpless passivity of a star-struck media long-used to a commercial role and to reality-TV imperatives. Just as in the founder's day, there were political operatives pulling the strings behind the faux-news curtain, such as Roger Ailes and Steve Bannon- operatives whose regard for the system and nation as a whole took a distant back seat to their vitroloic personal and tribal campaigns.

For all the complaints about political correctness, which seems to be the animating animus of the alt-right troll brigade, political correctness was a stranger to this campaign, and we are now the worse for it. Civility and decorum are not just fusty relics of a puritanical age, but basic ingredients, even institutions, of an operating political system. Strength and manliness are not indicated by grossness of expression, nor are honesty and truthfulness. There was no better con man than the insurgent candidate, Trump, whose obvious contradictions, lies, and mean-ness seem to have been swallowed with equal relish by media and supporters alike with the complimentary condiment of "controversial".

When the going got really rough, during the Quasi-War with France in the late 1790's, Adams and the Federalist party passed the Alien and Sedition acts, which allowed the administration to jail and fine anyone, especially those in the media, who insulted the President or otherwise made what were deemed false statements critical of the government. And Adams has rightly been pilloried then and since for not vetoing this obviously unconstitutional legislation, hardly a decade after passage of the first amendment.

So the internet is not a new thing, in its capacity to foster rumors, spread lies and invective, and keep its readers in thrall to a mean-spirited and partisan echo chamber. We have survived such media from the start. But that doesn't mean it isn't a problem. The US was blessed with a special period of media civility in the mid-twentieth century, due to the cultural bonds of the world wars and depression, and also to the uniquely restrictive technical landscape of radio and TV, which only allowed a few channels and thus special federal rules for equal time and public interest in media behavior. That was a time when corporatism in the media industry largely served the stability of political system.

Now is different, and we need to think hard about ways to preserve some sanity in a media landscape so incredibly diverse and free, yet at the same time so starved of resources that in-depth reporting, balanced perspectives, and public interest investigations are disturbingly scarce. Where corporatism has turned the media into a thoughtless race for clicks, if not the plaything of retrograde billionaires, and where trolls use twitter to win political office. We need to fight against this creeping post-truth condition, which was a continues to be exemplified by the information practices of the Soviet, and now Russian, state.

While the first amendment prohibits government from meddling with the freedom of other's speech, it does not prohibit it from sponsoring public interest media. We need a segment of distinterested media that is not driven by an ulterior agenda such as greed, partisanship, or more obscure ideology. Non-profits would be ideal purveyors of this, but they do not on their own have the resources to address this quite large need. The public providers PBS and NPR stand as great accomplishments of the last fifty years. This is where we can build a better media landscape, perhaps expanding them into print and enhanced, deeper reporting. The BBC is a model of such expansion, to evolve towards broader news organizations.

The danger, of course, is that the wrong hands at the top could break down the barriers of independence at these institutions, and turn them into especially powerful cudgels of partisan warfare- new Ministries of Truth. On the other hand, even if not explicitly directed by the government, their government funding might make them reluctant to look too deeply into offical corruption and instritutional breakdowns. One can already see this in the tendency of PBS and NPR news to avoid breaking dramatic stories about government problems. Yet who broke the Flint water crisis story? It was the ACLU, reported by NPR affiliate Michigan Radio.

The landscape we face now desperately needs better media. Abigail Adams wrote a remarkable passage to Thomas Jefferson late in his presidency, after a newspaper writer whom he had previously supported and colluded with to smear John Adams turned against him, extorted him and exposed Jefferson's correspondence as well as his relationship with Sally Hemmings:

"The serpent you cherished and warmed, bit the hand that nourished him, and gave you sufficient specimens of his talents, his gratitude, his justice, and his truth. When such vipers are let loose upon society, all distinction between virtue and vice are leveled, all respect for character lost."

• On the media of today.
• On the importance of norms, and truth.
• Normalizing the unacceptable.
• A critique of capitalism and financialism.
• Is carbon waste worse that nuclear waste?
• The nature of decisions today.
• Shed a tear for that secular religion.
• Great negotiator gives away the store.
• Swamp drainer fills up the swamp.

We Just Found the Outrage

The GOP reaches a new low in incivility and untruthfulness.

The recent Republican debate struck a new low for our body politic. Not much remarked, but striking to anyone suffering through it, was a new tone of empty vitriol directed especially at President Obama. The Republicans have been consumed with hate since he was elected, but I have never seen decorum drop to quite such a low level.

"America has been betrayed. We've been betrayed by the leadership that Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton have provided to this country over the last number of years." - Governor Chris Christie.

"This is why -- this is what I said at the beginning that this administration, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton through their foreign policy, have betrayed the American people, because the weakness they've displayed has led to Putin's incursions in the Middle East and in eastern Europe, and has led -- has led to significant problems in the Middle East as well, and the death and murder of lots of folks." - Governor Chris Christie

"As far as other people like in the migration, where they're going, tens of thousands of people having cell phones with ISIS flags on them? I don't think so, Wolf. They're not coming to this country. And if I'm president and if Obama has brought some to this country, they are leaving. They're going. They're gone." - Donald Trump

"One of the things I would immediately do, in addition to defeating them here at home, is bring back the warrior class -- Petraeus, McChrystal, Mattis, Keane, Flynn. Every single one of these generals I know. Every one was retired early because they told President Obama things that he didn't want to hear." - Carly Fiorina

"This president and this is what the focus ought to be, it's not the differences between us, it's Barack Obama does not believe America's leadership in the world is a force for good. He does not believe that our strength is a place where security can take place." - Former Governor Jeb Bush

"And let us remember one other thing. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are responsible for the growth of ISIS because they precipitously withdrew from Iraq in 2011 against the advice of every single general and for political expediency. It's not these people up here. It's Hillary Clinton." - Carly Fiorina

"Well, Wolf, I'll tell you what reckless is. What reckless is is calling Assad a reformer. What reckless is allowing Russia to come into Crimea and Ukraine. What reckless is is inviting Russia into Syria to team with Iran. That is reckless. And the reckless people are the folks in the White House right now. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are the reckless people." - Governor Chris Christie

"Barack Obama has said he doesn't believe in American leadership or America winning -- he is wrong." - Senator Ted Cruz

• The word "kill" came up 26 times in the debate

"I would certainly be open to closing areas where we are at war with somebody. I sure as hell don't want to let people that want to kill us and kill our nation use our Internet. Yes, sir, I am." - Donald Trump

• Then there was the bizarre over-inflation of ISIS as a threat.

"Regarding national security, we need to restore the defense cuts of Barack Obama to rebuild our military, to destroy ISIS before it destroys us." - Former Governor Jeb Bush

The "reckless" charge is particularly ironic in light of Barack Obama's predecessor, who sort of defines the term, including the "killing of lots of folks" part. At any rate, extreme competition among a very crowded field of mediocre candidates has lowered the level of rhetoric, to what I would regard as unconscionable levels. How do they expect to be treated in office, and how do they expect the office to maintain its value if they as public officials make of it such a pig-sty?

This is not even to delve into Mr. Trump's ugly past rhetoric. In this debate, he continued to expound on his "strength", as shown by his willingness to kill relatives of terrorists, and to prohibit Muslims from immigrating to the US. From a left perspective, the GOP is a motley circus, but that doesn't excuse us from paying some attention and noting that we all share in the national discussion and need to draw some lines of basic decency if our politics is not to descend to the level of farce, and worse.

• Some are uncomfortable with this language.
• A few more lies.
• Is ISIS going to kill us all?
• Which side are the Saudis on, really? What a change from the 60's, when a Muslim military alliance was forged against Israel. And how did that work out?
• And they don't just imprison political protesters, they behead them.
• A look back at the Arab spring. Note especially (and in connection with the new Saudi "coalition") how the social and economic dominance of the military in Muslim countries like Egypt, Syria, and Pakistan has no relationship to its effectiveness. It is empty, political, patriarchal machismo writ large.

"If Islamic fundamentalist forces managed to become dominant among the organized forces in those uprisings, with no exception, it is surely due, on the one hand, to the practical and/or political weakness of the Left, but, on the other hand, it is also and above all a product of decades of rule by the despotic regimes. No one should miss that. The Syrian regime was not a shield against Islamic fundamentalism, nor were Mubarak or Ben Ali, and nor are Assad and Sisi today." 

Islam as a religion and ideology, of course, seems to go unnoticed. Time and again in this discussion, it come up in passing as the most powerful regional ideology, by far. What does modern liberalism have to offer in its place?

"Add to this the very active involvement of the regional counterrevolutionary stronghold represented by the Gulf oil monarchies, which did their best to strengthen the Islamic fundamentalist component of the Syrian opposition at the expense of anything else. Because, a real democratic uprising is the major threat to them like it is for Assad. In a sense, they concurred with the Assad regime in promoting the Islamic fundamentalist component of the opposition at the detriment of the secular democratic."

• Upward redistribution is a thing.
• No, it can not go on indefinitely.

Animals Ain't Got Rhythm, but (Some) Humans Do

Animals ain't got Rhythm, but (some) Humans do.

Do animals have music? Do dogs appreciate piano playing? Typically not. Do even birds, who sing so well, engage in choruses or appreciate songs not their own? Not really. And to hear jays and crows going at it can make one want to run and hide. Insects can carry on very rhythmic thrums of specific kinds, even in choruses, such as the crickets. But the mental bandwidth is such as to prohibit consideration of this monotonous output as music.

Sound is certainly important to virtually all birds and mammals, but the coding is static, not flexible, the meaning very limited. It conveys intense emotion, just not in what we understand typically as music, which includes rhythm as an essential element. So while we regard our own music as quite primal- a direct communication of emotion prior to its elaboration as speech or its perception by other modes- it combines primal emotion with something that is not universal at all: the language of music.

A recent review looked at the capacity of non-humans to learn and appreciate rhythm. It cites "... what biologist Tecumseh Fitch has called “the paradox of rhythm.” As Fitch notes, “Periodicity and entrainment seem to be among the most basic features of living things, yet the human ability (and proclivity) to entrain our motor output to auditory stimuli appears to be very rare.”"

"While the rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) could successfully listen to two metronome clicks and then reproduce the same interval by tapping twice on a key, they had great difficulty learning to tap in synchrony with a metronome of several beats. Specifically, each monkey took over a year of training to learn the metronome task, and when tested, their taps were always a few hundred ms after each metronome click rather than aligned with it."

The author thinks that our evolution of speech was intimately connected to musical and rhythmic ability:

"Specifically, I proposed the “vocal learning and rhythmic synchronization hypothesis” (henceforth, “vocal learning hypothesis”), which suggests that the capacity to synchronize with a musical beat resulted from changes in brain structure driven by the evolution of complex vocal learning. Complex vocal learning is learning to produce complex vocal signals based on auditory experience and sensory feedback. This is a rare trait in nature: most animals (including all nonhuman primates) have a small set of instinctive vocalizations which they can modify in only modest ways in terms of their acoustic patterning."

Parrots provide some comparative evidence for this. They can both learn complex and responsive vocalization, and can keep time with a tempo from a metronome or music, unlike our primate cousins, who are virtually incapable of doing so, even after lengthy training. But parrots do so poorly, (not having music in the wild), so humans remain unique not only in our complexity of music, but in the very basic ability to enjoy and propagate rhythm. The author speculates a bit about the brain anatomy of this, pointing out what are thought to be relevant fiber pathways that are elaborated in humans, but this is all quite schematic to date.

One might hypothesize that for wild animals, keeping rhythm impairs their ability to stay vigilent, one of their highest goals. Entrainment is a sort of hypnosis, which we humans seem to love, along with other mind-altering practices such as drugs of many descriptions. We have given up a measure of individual vigilence in favor of the imaginative and social benefits of daydreaming, music-making, dancing, novel-writing ... many forms of social glue and mental exercise that have higher-level benefits.

• On beat-deficient humans.
• Patriots for anarchy.
• On the importance of ideology in capitalism.
• Science: truth, or just another ideology?
• Deregulation is criminogenic.
• Pushing on a string... in recessions, forget about monetary policy, go fiscal.
• This week in Das Capital: "The over-work of the employed part of the working class swells the ranks of the reserve, whilst conversely the greater pressure that the latter by its competition exerts on the former, forces these to submit to overwork and to subjugation under the dictates of capital. The condemnation of one part of the working class to enforced idleness by the overwork of the other part, and the converse, become a means of enriching individual capitalists, and accelerates at the same time the production of the industrial reserve army on a scale corresponding with the advance of social accumulation. ... Taking them as a whole, the general movements of wages are exclusively regulated by the expansion and contraction of the industrial reserve army, and these again correspond to the periodic changes of the industrial cycle."
• Economic graph of the week. It graphs the correlation between political polarization and economic inequality, in the US.

Definitely not a dick-tionary

Mary Daly's feminist Wickedary of the English language.

Is the job of feminism done? More women than men are now in college, and the employment prospects of men seem to have taken a particularly significant dive in the current economic crisis. Yet the upper reaches of our society continue to be addled by testosterone. Presidential contenders compete over how shamelessly they can sweep their personal misogyny under the rug. The economic downturn can be largely chalked up to an army of besuited males gambling, cheating, "innovating", and cronying their way into financial armeggadon, and thence into the pockets of the government for bailouts and bonuses.

Women were among the most significant and prophetic obstacles to this headlong descent into what Mary Daly might term our financial phalloclasm- such key officials as Sheila Bair, Brooksley Born, and Elizabeth Warren. The Occupy Wall Street movement might usefully consider a name change to Castrate Wall Street.

bored, Chairman of the: any bore-ocratically appointed bore who occupies a chair- a position which enables him to bore others all the more.

Dragon: Primordial Female Foe of patriarchy whom the gods, heros, and saints of snooldom attempt to slay over and over again; Metamysterious Monster, Original Knower and Guardian of the Powers of Life.

Her-etical: Weird Beyond Belief.


Mary Daly passed away almost two years ago, and the brief mentions of her life in the media piqued my interest enough to read one of her works- "Websters' First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language, Conjured in Cahoots with Jane Caputi". A "Webster" being "A Weaver of Words and Word-Webs". Daly was a poet and wordsmith, a philosopher and theologian, curiously educated and employed throughout her life by Catholic institutions, at least until her refusal to admit men to her advanced women's studies course at Boston University finally brought a discrimination complaint and retirement in 1999. She was a creature of the liberal 60's and Vatican II, when the church's windows were opened and fresh breezes such as Jungianism and Feminism found a brief audience.

Papal Bull: the most sacred form of bull. Wholly, Holey, Holy baloney.

Incarnation, The: supremely sublimated male sexual fantasy promulgated as sublime christian dogma; mythic super-rape of the Virgin Mother, who represents all matter; symbolic legitimation of the rape of all women and all matter. See Sadospiritual Syndrome.

omniabscence: essential attribute of the wholly ghostly divine father, who is acclaimed by the the-ological reversers as "omnipresent"; attribute of the dummy deity who is never there, no all there, and therefore does not and can not care.


Daly was also a great humorist. Her Wickedary is a hilariously ascerbic re-valuation of all values, setting women as "Biophilic", "Shrewd/Shrewish", and many other positive, inverted, new-age-y attributes, while condeming the "snoolish", "bore-ing" daddy-ocracy with its daddygods and Big Lies that destroy not only women in a mire of silence and oppression, but the entire biosphere, as becomes clearer by the day.

Biophilia: the Original Lust for Life that is at the core of all Elemental E-motion; Pure Lust, which is the Nemesis of patriarchy, the Necrophilic state. Compare necrophilia N.B.: Biophilia is not in ordinary dictionaries, though the word necrophilia is.

Broom: Hag-ridden vehicle propelled by Rage, Transporting Dreadful/Dreadless Women out of the State of Bondage.


Her favorite symbol was the Labrys- the double headed axe of antiquity with which she notionally split phallocentric words into new and better forms, like her famous construction Gyn/Ecology, and which also carried feminist and lesbian overtones.

Naming: Original summoning of words for the Self, the world, and ultimate reality; liberation by Wicked Women of words from confinement in the sentences of the fathers; Truth-telling: the only adequate antidote for phallocracy's Biggest Lies; exorcism of patriarchal labels by invoking Other reality and by conjuring the Spirits of women and of all Wild natures; Re-calling the Race of Radiant Words.

patriarchy 1: society manufactured and controlled by males: Fatherland; society in which every legitmated instution is entirely in the hands of males and a few selected henchwomen; society characterlized by oppression, repression, depression, narcissism, cruelty, racism, classism, ageism, objectification, sadomasochism, necrophilia; joyless society, ruled by Godfather, Son, and Company; society fixated on proliferation, propagation, procreation, and bend on the destruction of all Life   2: the prevailing religion of the entire planet, whose essential message is necrophilia.

foolosophy: fooldom parading as wisdom. See academentia.

phallosophy: inflated foolosophy: "wisdom" loaded with seminal ideas and disseminated by means of thrusting arguments.


It isn't only in its word-smithing and attitude that the Wickedary excells, however, but also in Daly's introductory essays, which are prose poems of revolt by the Revolting Hags of Wildness. One might note in passing that she puts all the male attributes in lower case, while the transvalued female terms are excited into capitalized status. A sample:

"Wielding our Witches' Hammer, Websters Dis-close the Glamour of words, their magical/musical interplay as they Sound and Resound together in complex combinations. We Dis-cover connections, not only among words, but among the realities they Name."

"Daredevil dolphins, declaring and end to jumping through hoops, take Muses for Be-Musing rides. Mischievious monkeys mimic men of science. Denouncing the latter as "missing links to nothing," whose sadistic kinks require final solution, the foment revolution. Encouraged by guinea pigs, rabbits, and mice, they "deconstruct" cages, mazes, treadmills, and other shocking tools employed by evil "experts"/fools."

"Other Spirited animals also Denounce. The formerly baited and "dancing" bears, for example, dance rings around rippers who have used them for atrocious a-Musement. Viragos dance with them, proclaiming the end of such tyranny. Sagacious Seals, Denouncing their "training" in prestigious aquariums- the degrading institutions where they learned to bounce balls in return for a fish- Bark Out Loud their Seals of Disapproval and Distain. Bitches Bark with them, Outshouting the users of animals, women, and words."

"Spinsters Spinning Widdershins- turning about-face- feel/find an Other Sense of Time. We begin by asking clock-whys and then move on to counter these clock-whys with Counterclock Whys- Questions that whirl the Questioners beyond the boundaries of Boredom, in to the flow of Tidal Time/Elemental Time. This is Wild Time, beyond the clocking/clacking of clonedom. It is the Time of Wicked Inspiration / Genius, which cannot be grasped by the tidily man-dated world.

The man-dated world is clockocracy- the society that is dead set by the clocks and calendars of fathered time. ..."


One might think all this overkill, and Daly certainly took things to extremes. She was quite enamoured of the society of bees, whose males are barely tolerated and cast off with their one and only mating flight. For humans too, she proposed limiting males to 10% of the population. I take it all quite tongue in cheek, recognizing that when it comes to religion and values, literal belief and systemic seriousness are the most dangerous falsehoods. Daly knew very well that the Dolphins were not taking the Biophilic Revolting Hags for rides in the surf, but used this mythic poetry to open her listener's imagination to a trans-value system, while indicting and getting a rise out of her antagonists.

"... Brainstorming, Be-Spelling women Distemper in both of these senses, throwing bore-ocracy out of its odious order and smoothly working adjustment by Raising Hailstorms and Tempests and Otherwise Exercising Disturbing Elemental Powers.
To Be-Spellers overthrowing dronedom/clonedom it is clear that such disturbance/derangement is absolutely necessary. The Spelling of Soothsayers throws the old order out of order, Dis-covering New/Archaic Orders. In this Stormy atmosphere other women begin to Realize their own Ecstatic E-motional Disorder. Finding her Rage and Hope, a woman observes the melting away of plastic passions that had possessed her, blocking the flow of Elemental Communicating Powers. The old guilt, anxiety, depression, bitterness, resentment, frustration, boredom, resignation and- worst of all- feminine full-fillment begin to disappear. Seeing these as pseudopassions injected into her soul by the fathers of fixocracy, she flushes them away. As she exorcises these plastic parasites she begins Be-Spelling. She finds it especially efficacious to begin Spelling/Be-Spelling Out Loud."


Looking at societies like contemporary Afghanistan and Pakistan, where an unoppressed woman can hardly be observed without being beaten or raped, and where the incessent quest for "honor" among males has made their societies a living hell for everyone, her proposals might, however, not be so far-fetched.

Courage to Sin [sin derived fr. Indo-European root es- to be]: the Courage to commit Original Acts of participation in Be-ing; the Courage to be Elemental through and beyond the horrors of Obscene society; the Courage to be intellectual in the most direct and daring way, claiming and trusting the deep correspondence between the structures/processes of one's own mind and the structures/processes of reality; the Courage to trust and Act on one's own deepest intuitions.

• Saudi malegarchy.
• Archetype of the monster.
  
• Speaking of which ... those communist Muppets!
• Did Rome fall due to inequality and debt-bondage?
• Too big to police? Corruption has won.
• Church, coming to a public school near you.
• Carbon spewage worse than ever.
• Apparently Hayek wasn't such a big fish after all.
• Afghanistan: $10 billion a year, or else we go all crazy again.
• Poor children need better resources and teachers, not worse.
• Intriguing view of the individual / institution divide.
• Yes, Newt actually wrote a dissertation.
• The cycle of authoritarian parenting, existential insecurity, and political extremism keeps turning.
• On the role of Darwinism in economic inequality.