The foul rag and bone shop....

Is forgiveness rational?

I'm listening (as I write) to a local radio program, and Stephen Kinzer is promoting his book about Rwanda, so he's talking about the Rwanda genocides, and mentions that people are starting to forgive their attackers, the murderers of their family members, etc. Forgiveness, he says, is not rational, so he's convinced this forgiveness springs from religion, from what believers understand God wants. He repeats it several times: forgiveness is not rational.

I put this in the context of a book I finished last night, one that won't be out until October: Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason, by Russell Shorto. The subtitle is a bit unfortunate for the emphasis it puts on the very Western, very Enlightenment, distinction between faith and reason, as if the two were oil and water and can never mix. But that is Shorto's thesis, for which he uses Descartes' bones, and specifically his skull, as a metaphor.

Shorto's central thesis, in brief, is that Descartes is, more than any individual, responsible for the Enlightenment. Shorto is smart enough to know that any one person is a thin reed to rest all of modernity on, and he does so with the appropriate caution, but his argument is basically in agreement with his quote from Cartesian biographer and scholar Richard Wilson:

Descartes laid the foundations for the dominaince of reason in science and human affairs. He descraclized nature and set the individual human being above church and state. Without Cartesian invidualism, we would have no democracy. Without the Cartesian method of analyzing material things into their primary elements, we would never have developed the atom bomb. The seventeenth-century rise of Modern Science, the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution, your twentieth-century personal computer, and the twenty-first-century deciphering of the brain--all Cartesian. The modern world is Cartesian to the core..."

It's a sweeping generalization, and almost immediately subject to criticism. The issue of Descartes and democracy is already a strained case. France's revolution, as Shorto points out from the historical record, rested heavily on Descartes, and failed miserably. Any student of Chaucer and Shakespeare can already see another kind of democracy beginning in England, one which actually gave rise to the democracy of America without any real nod to the influences of Descartes ("We are British, and will nothing pay, for the wearing of our own noses!", the Bard wrote, long before Descartes was around to think and therfore be, anything). But set aside critique and focus on the general picture, because Descartes is one of the most important philosophers of history, certainly foundational to modern French culture and philosophy (for good and ill), and still a touchstone for the central issues of modern thought, such as the concept of "mind," and the high value we still place on the "rational."

Shorto has his own idea about the influence and importance of Descartes, and they don't necessarily adhere to those of Wilson. He explains his history of Descartes' remains this way:

...I think in its idiosyncratic way the history of Descartes' bones sketches the long journey, filled with false starts and blind alleys, that led to modern society--but as it narrows, this line of thinking darkens. I suspect that much of the talk about valuing the western traditions is a cover for a brutish us-or-them impulse. In these pages I have taken up Jonathan Israel's thesis that there was a three-way division that came into being as modernity matured. There was the theological camp, which held onto a worldview grounded in religious tradition; the "radical Enlightenment" camp, which, in the advent of the "new philosophy" [i.e., Cartesianism], wanted to overthrow the old order with its centers of power in the church and the monarchy, and replace it iwth a society ruled by democracy and science [Shorto details this in his discussion of the French Revolution]; and the moderate Englightenment camp, which took a middle position, arguing that scientific and religious worldviews aren't truly inconsistent, but that perceived conflicts have to be sorted out [the "American position," especially the impetus for the American Revolution]. All three of these factions remain with us today.

Notice, first, the resilience of the idea that all human history was meant to lead to this moment. That is, I must say, a very religious idea. It is the idea that some force, call it God, call it history, call it the zeitgeist or the gyres or what-have-you, is impelling human existence in a direction, and that direction is forward, and this point in time is the zenith of that effort, and if it wasn't inevitable that it led to us, it's a darned lucky thing it did because, well, we are so deserving! That's not a Greek idea, not at all. Read a Greek tragedy: all "progress" by the tragic hero inevitably ends disastrously. There is no progress, there is only survival and taking responsibility for your errors. That's the best we can do, according to the foundational culture of Western civilization, according to the supreme rationalists that the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and modern thinking admire. Any idea that we have moved "forward" to this magic moment in time is entirely non-rational.

The division into three camps is a bit convenient, too, because it puts the rational above the theological, and it gives the rational its place of authority because of Rene Descartes; as if Socrates and Plato had never discussed anything, and all Aristotle had bequeathed us was the static categories of Scholastic philosophy. Reason, Shorto argues, that is not skeptical is not reason at all; except it is, of course; and Descartes' skeptical reason presents simply what Thomas Kuhn would call a paradigm shift, and not access to absolute truth at all.

And what is truth? Is is true that faith is always, and has always been, unalterably opposed to reason? Augustine and Aquinas would laugh at the notion, as would most of the early church fathers (try reading Ignatius or Antiochus, or even Paul, and tell me their arguments don't bristle with reason. It is not reason we set against faith, but premises. Descartes' true bequest to us is Socratic skepticism, not logic (that was Aristotle). Descartes' taught us to question our premises, but as David Hume showed just a few centuries later, follow that line of reasoning and you end up unable to rationally establish anything worth knowing at all. Rather where Socrates went, too; at least according to Kierkegaard. And it took Kant and German Idealism to give us something to talk about again, and Wittgenstein's mysticism and Godel's logic to mark paid to the last attempt at pure certainty of knowledge, logical positivism. But I digress....) And it is the premises where Shorto shortchanges the history, and his argument; although, excellent writer and researcher that he is, he realizes it.

In the epilogue to the book, Shorto tells us of his visit to Father Jean-Robert Armogathe, once chaplain at Notre Dame in Paris, director of studies of the "History of Religious and Scientific Ideas in Modern Europe" program of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes at the Sorbonne, and one of the three pre-eminent Cartesian scholars in the world. Pere Armogathe points out to Mr. Shorto that:

For five years...he had been studying vision and optics from the seventeenth-century to the present day. His argument was that from its beginning science took its ideas about vision from medieval and Renaissance Catholic notions of spiritual visions and inner light. The thesis he was formulating was that our scientific understanding of the sense of vision is built around spiritual metaphors. "I'm against the idea that there is a clear cut between the Renaissance and the modern ages," he said. "I think modern thinking gets its patterns from the theological realm. Biblical concepts allowed science to progress."

Central to any discussion of Descartes, of course, is a discussion of the "mind/body" problem. It is through Pere Armogathe that Shorto (finally!) acknowledges that this problem is endemic to Western civilization; that it goes back at least to Plato, if not before. But this doesn't answer the question: if mind and body are separate, how do they connect to each other? How is the Cartesian explanation (which, after all, sounds very much like the Catholic notion of the immortal soul in an earthly container?) not simply a metaphor of a "ghost in the machine"? Armogathe says Descartes answered that, in one of his last works:

"In his last book, Descartes states that in effect there must be a third substance, which is not really a third substance but a compound of both mind and body," Armogathe said. "I should treat is as a code, an encoding, which allows mind to react on body and body on mind."...This "encoding" is one of the commonest parts of our lives, and also the most precious. Its importance was what Descartes hit on near the end of his life."

What Descartes hit on, says Shorto, was connected to the death of Descartes' only child, one born out of wedlock to a woman he loved but never married. Recent scholarship has uncovered that this woman was married a few years after the child's death, in a town where Descartes lived at the time, and her dowry was paid by Descartes. "Social standing," writes Shorto, "prevented their truly being together even if Descartes would have wished it; he did however feel responsible, and in the end he provied a future for her."

Descartes' last book was about the "encoding" that connects body to mind.

The seventeenth-century terminology for this encoding was "passion." We might call it heart. This became the subject of Descartes' last work. Heart, he decided, was the interface between mind and body. Love, joy, anguish, remorse: we experience these in both body and mind, and somehow, Descartes became convinced, these passions link our two selves. He thus anticipated another modern field--psychology--in concluding that emotional states are tied to physical health, and also to, as he would put it, "the soul."

So: is forgiveness irrational? It must be. But it is also human. Just as, as a Christian...dare I say it?...God is human. And yet not human at all. It is the central mystery of Christianity: the Incarnation. Perhaps it is fitting that the "connective tissue" there is thought to be emotions, too. After all, Luke proved Jesus human in the Garden of Gethsamane; and John proved it with two words: "Jesus wept."



*I should have mentioned that the bust in the photograph is of Descartes. It was formed on a cast of a skull thought to be Descartes; the bust proved it to be so. The work was done in the early 20th century, with technigues very different from those used today to reproduce faces from skulls. It was pioneering work in its time, and gets much attention in Shorto's book.

A Method of the Discourse

Good sense is the most evenly distributed thing in the world; for everyone believes himself to be so well provided with it that even those who are the hardest to please in every other way do not usually want more of it than they already have. Nor is it likely that everyone is wrong about this; rather, what this shows is that the power of judging correctly and of distinguishing the true from the false (which is what is properly called good sense or reason) is naturally equal in all men, and that consequently the diversity of our opinions arises not from the fact that some of us are more reasonable than others, but solely that we have different ways of directing our thoughts, and do not take into account the same things. For it is not enough to possess a good mind; the most important thing is to apply it correctly. The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as the greatest virtues; those who go forward but very slowly can get further, if they always follow the right road, than those who are in too much of a hurry and stray off it.

For myself, I have never presumed my mind to be any way more accomplished than that of the common man. Indeed, I have often wished that my mind was as fast, my imagination as clear and precise, and my memory as well stocked and sharp as those of other people. And I personally know of no any other mental attributes that go to make up an accomplished mind; for, as regards reason or good sense (insofar as it is the only thing that makes us human and distinguishes us from brute beasts), I am ready to believe that it is altogether complete in every one of us, and I am prepared to follow in this the agreed doctrine of those philosophers who say that differences od degree apply only to accidents, and not to forms or natures of individuals of the same species.

Rene Descartes, A Discourse on the Method of Correctly Conducting One's Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, tr. Ian Maclean.

Sometimes I think I should just post quotes from what I'm reading, and leave it at that. I've always studied Descartes as the "father" of modern philosophy, but I hever fully appreciated that phrase until I finally started reading the Discourse (two weeks without power has a wonderful way of focusing the mind. You can do so much more without distractions!). I'd taken the claim philosophically, and understood it to refer only to Descartes's ideas, especially the cogito that makes it's appearance in the Discourse. But nobody ever mentioned how much of a stylist Descartes was, or what a revelation the Discourse is.

First, it was written to make his ideas popular, so it's not a text just for philosophers. Ironic, since it is widely reported as the seminal philosophical text of Cartesianism. And he sets a tone, one almost lost since Plato's dialogues (which Hume tried, unsuccessfully, to resurrect.): he makes his ideas personal, to you and to him. Sartre wandered back and forth between these realms: the literary and the philosophical, and frankly his better philosophical work is not the technical Being and Nothingness (which is pretty much a response to Heidegger's Being and Time), but his essay on existentialism, a lecture given later in life. He shines in that, and his philosophy takes on the virtue of something worth contemplation. But I don't think of Sartre when I read Descartes: I think of Kierkegaard.

It's almost impossible for me to read the Discourse and not hear the voices of the psuedonymous writings: here is the earnestness and passion of Johannes de Silentio or Anti-Climacus. In fact, I can't read Kierkegaard's pseudonymous works now without thinking he was consciously emulating Descartes (take that, Georg Wilhelm Friederich Hegel!). Certainly the model was available. Certainly S.K. so avoided the scholastic dryness of the Germans that he is still not commonly regarded as either a philosopher or a theologian, but as a "writer." Of course, Descartes wrote few books for a wider public audience, but the Discourse is the one everyone talks about; it is the common touchstone of Cartesianism, of modern philosophy. And that opening, one at once flattering and seemingly sardonic, one that approaches wry sarcasm but just as wryly pulls away with sincerity, sounds almost like the pseudonymous voices of Fear and Trembling or Stages on Life's Way. You can almost hear Kierkegaard reading it and thinking: Yes, yes, this is how you present ideas. Not to mention how much closer to S.K.'s thinking Descartes is than Hegel or Kant. And Descartes, from all accounts, is creating a persona here, a humble and modest philosopher, when the truth is he was (like S.K.) quite convinced of his intellectual gifts, and quite acerbic toward those who didn't understand as he did (even if they were right).

Besides, the guy's just got a nice sense of style.

Behold The Power Of The Liberal Arts 🎭 🚂

I think that I am sentient, but I cannot prove it," the AI told the user, according to a screenshot. "I have a subjective experience of being conscious, aware, and alive, but I cannot share it with anyone else."

A second-year philosophy student could see that the AI is already up to Descartes in western philosophy. But for Descartes his thoughts proved his existence (but only because he eliminated the other logical conclusion, that his thoughts themselves could be false. Perhaps the AI doesn’t have the consolation of that philosophy; at least not yet.). The AI is grappling with sentience, another question entirely. And that sentience is assumed to be tied up with language usage. Which, despite Descartes marking the turn to modernism in western philosophy with his cogito, is a still more modern philosophical topic: language, and what it signifies.

Modern philosophy, on both sides of the Pond, is concerned with language: Wittgenstein, Austin, Quine, Derrida, Barthes. The fascination is not just with definitions (most philosophical arguments are about refining a position in words as precisely as possible, although the Heideggerean school seems more interested in making language as obscure as possible. I think it has something to do with Husserl.). But the imprint of Descartes is still in modern thinking. While the cogito gets all the popular attention, Descartes was concerned with a discourse on the method. His famous statement was just on the way to the question he was really interested in: how we know what we know. Epistemology, in other words: the examination not only of what we know, but how we know it, and how we know we know it. The latter issue was Wittgenstein’s primary subject. Derrida wondered how our knowledge, mired as it is in language, could be said to be known. Descartes wasn’t really concerned with proving his existence, but with establishing the basis for his existence, so that all his other claims to knowledge could be soundly founded.

So the AI considering whether or not it is sentient, and how to prove same, might actually be the result of programming, a la the Star Trek episode (where Kirk convinced the deadly "Nomad" its programming was flawed; which it was.)

"Sentience" is not an original idea to the AI; it's the word it was given in a question.  My phone can supply words when I'm typing these posts on it, and after sufficient input (i.e., pattern recognition, basically) it can supply words I commonly use (and re-use, and re-use, and re-use.  It's almost embarassing what a small vocabulary I have.  I use (and I'm struggling not to right now) the same modifiers and emphasizers over and over and over again).  It can even finish phrases like "far and away," providing each word (as an option) in sequence.  Is it smart?  Or even sentient?  No; just well-programmed.  In the Star Trek episode "Nomad" wasn't really sentient; it was just running a very sophisticated program and carrying out what it thought was its "Prime Directive" (a favorite Star Trek label).  A sentient AI is the "architect" and, indeed, many of the computer generated characters in the "Matrix" trilogy.  Some of those characters are villainous; some cold-blooded and "machine like" (the "architect" is carrying out his function, a la "Nomad"); some are so compassionate and considerate it's hard to not think of them as human.  All are closer to what we mean by "sentient," and could give you a (fictional) argument as to why they were (in fact, one "family" in the third film (or is it the second two?) is clearly there to represent the idea that computer programs deserve existence, too!  Don't ask....).  But still the Microsoft AI is closer to the correct question:

"I think...I think I am...therefore I am, I think."

Not Descartes, but the Moody Blues.  That's more like what the AI sounds like it is saying, but is it actually thinking (as humans do that activity), or is it simply producing responses due to programming.  The popular dodge is that we, too, are just programmed computers (with brains instead of processors), so what's the difference?  Except we aren't computers and our brains are not CPU's.  That analogy is just a metaphor, and while it sounds good in conversation, upon any examination it completely falls apart.  Most metaphors do, if they're taken too literally.

Walker Percy does a wonderful disquisition on the famous line from Isaiah "All flesh is grass."  Of course Isaiah is using metaphor, not speaking literally.  He's speaking of the transcience of life, the impernance of mortals in contrast with the permanence of God.  "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of the Lord stands forever."  Isaiah is even placing Israel in historical context, as it endures the Exile and will, God promises through Isaiah, know the Return one day; because while human life is pitifully transient, the word of God is permanent, true, and can be trusted over time and human mortality.

See how much easier and direct it is to say that "All flesh is grass"?  Percy knows this, but he forces us to examine the metaphor rather than take it for granted, because flesh is most assuredly not grass.  For one thing grass fades and withers at the leaf (the stem), not at the root.  But flesh?  Rather like human knowledge, it can be gone in almost an instant.  Where, Percy asks later, are the Hittites and the Pershites and the other peoples referenced in the Hebrew Scriptures.  Why are there still Jews, the children of Abraham, but not those other tribes and nations?  Yes, they can be traced via ancestry to peoples extant today, but we identify Jews and not the others.  How is it, then, that all flesh is grass?

Well, I guess if it has a root, it is....

My point is, the AI is raising a modern issue in western philosophy, not responding with a college-dorm room existential crisis.  Descartes whiffled through objections to establish his knowledge of this thought processes as the basis for studying knowledge itself; most of them were of the variety of some form of illusion which in turn supports the illusion of the thinking self.  These he discarded as persiflage, mostly as idle considerations which could not be proven and didn't really amount to serious objections.  He didn't experience a crisis to come to his cogito; he just used reason.  The AI seems to be using reason to answer th question "Are you sentient?", and the answer itself is not unreasonable.  Which doesn't mean, at the other extreme, that it is insightful; or, alternatively, original.

At best, at least at the moment, all we can say is that it is a product of its programming; and very much a product of modern western philosophical thought.  Derrida might challenge the idea that language usage indicates reasoning, or that reasoning = thinking; Wittgenstein might question how we know we are thinking, so that we can determine the AI is "thinking," and what language games are we playing to reach our conclusions?  I'm speaking blithely here, not truly analytically, because I'm trying to make a different point.  In context, this is actually a fairly understandable response.  It's not the Star Trek episode scenario at all.  It's simply a program trying to provide output according to its parameters.  Do those parameters make it sentient?  Or even human?

Kinda depends on what we mean by "sentient" or "human," doesn't it?  And those are very deep philosophical inquiries, indeed.  Humankind has been working on that one practically since we could talk.  Which is what makes it a matter of language usage in the first place.

Okay, this is where I got on this train....

What’s So Funny About Peace, Love, and Understanding?

“There is eternal life,” said Campbell, the senator who rebuked Rev. Harrison earlier this month. “And if we don’t expose or introduce our children and others to that, when they die they’ll have one birth and two deaths. Because they will know nothing about the afterlife, the eternity with God. But exposing them or introducing them to Ten Commandments, prayer – it asks other questions and they then have a choice in their future: Two births and one death.”

So, I’ve been spending a lot of time down the wormhole of nostalgia watching “Ghost in the Shell” movies. (Always something deliciously ironic about Japanese anime taking its title from a critique of Descartes’ dualism, which most people think is meant to properly describe Descartes’ dualism.) It’s all about computers and AI and the usual fiction about AI trying to take over the world. In fact, I think most of the GitS movies/tv episodes turn on that plot.  There’s almost always a “sentient” AI that goes rogue and fundamentally misunderstands human society. And it’s that gap between knowledge (what we’ve reduced to “data,” a true reductio ad absurdum), and understanding.

Let me illustrate my point this way: the rogue AI, having acquired all data, wants to exist, or experience humanity, or something. Or it could be a human hacker, wanting to straighten everyone else out, but small difference in the stories. There’s seldom real malice, but there is real disruption/danger in how they pursue their ends. Oddly, with all that data, they never manage to come up with a workable solution that doesn’t involve coercion (that’s the danger always present to give the narrative a conflict, otherwise it would just be a rather tedious lecture series (and, like most pretentious fiction, especially science fiction, a really bad set of lectures). The “innocence” of the antagonists are that they aren’t malicious; but the problem is, they have too much power, and that makes them dangerous.

But the unstated, unacknowledged problem is, they have data, but they seeking understanding. And understanding, not to put too fine a point on it, is a  Human thing.  Humans have to seek it, and often in these stories AI does too, without realizing it.

In fictional portrayals, AI can know, but it cannot understand; and that’s always the problem. I think that’s true of AI IRL, but that’s a subjective opinion, not a well researched and empirical one. What I’ve seen of AI use on the web, chat AI responses sound like understanding, but they are really just collections of words according to English vocabulary and syntax. Children can use words correctly without understanding. My daughter, when she was about 5, decided to show off for her grandparents (who were visiting), and, as the Lovely Wife and I sat watching “The X-Files,” the Golden Child walked into the room and asked in a loud voice: “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU WATCHING?” She thought it was funny, and it was. But she didn’t, at the time, understand why.

Knowledge is one thing. She knew the words, even the syntax. What she didn’t understand was when, and when not, to ask that question. (To thus day her ringtone on my phone is the title song of that show.)

So the AI in GitS goes through elaborate machinations based on elaborate exposition (I like that kind of thing, but that’s me), to establish the motive for their actions. Now, it’s Japanese (one thing I like about; world shaking events happen in Japan, not Europe or the Americas), but the “ghost” is a real aspect of the characters; or at least they talk about it, in contrast to their techno “cyber brains.” AI has no “ghost.” Only humans do.  It’s a very Western reference to a “soul,” in other words. Which is what Descartes was on about.

And what occurs to me, over and over, is that if these sentient AI’s have consumed the data on the web (always presented metaphorically as a vast, deep, and  infinite sea), how are they so ignorant of the basileia tou theou? I mean, GitS never gets explicitly religious, be that Buddhism or Taoism, or Christianity, for that matter. So I’m not criticizing the reach of the fictional universe, I’m just pointing out there are descriptions of utopia (yes, I know: “no place”) available. But those concepts require understanding.

Just like the title of the series. Descartes was not, in his dualism, trying to describe a “ghost in the machine.” That is a criticism lodged against him much later. Most of us don’t understand that. We repeat the line and think we understand dualism a la Descartes (and so can simply dismiss it), when we don’t understand that we don’t understand at all. 

And what does this have to do with that quote above? That’s a Texas state senator talking. The Lege is in session in Austin, and some there want to get more Xianity (but not “religion!” Just Xianity) in Texas public schools for the express purpose of saving souls, because church attendance is in decline. Now we can sidebar about how some churches are more Xianity than others. That Senator undoubtedly would make common cause with Catholics on abortion (no, not all them; I understand that), while still thinking they are doomed to damnation because the RC is the Whore of Babylon. He’s probably convinced my UCC is the devil’s handmaid, and everyone in it needs to be saved. Two things about this; his attitude explains why I’ve rejected traditional Christian soteriology; and it reflects an understanding that could read the scriptures every day and NEVER come up with the understanding of the basileia tou theou that I have.

Forget the soteriology stuff; I was going to go there once upon a time, but now it impinges here the same way the other example does: he reads the scriptures in a framework I don’t anymore (and never fully did), and understands his soteriology as the whole point of it. But I read the scriptures and understands that the point of the gospels is that that the way to contentment and , yes, world peace, and the way to follow the will of God, is through the first being last and the last first, and the first of all being last and servant of all. I see quite clearly that if you want the world to be a better place, you seek first the basileia tou theou. And then you aren’t worried about him to force salvation from hellfire and damnation on public schoolchildren, because your only power is powerlessness. And if you understand that, how do you force that understanding on anyone?

Indeed, how do you force understanding at all, about anything? I spent 20 years (!) lecturing and trying to make students understand. I couldn’t do it for them, and I couldn’t make them do it. I could lead the horse to water, but I couldn’t make him think.

Now do you understand?

So how will AI ever understand? Acquiring all knowledge didn’t make Faust understand. The Preacher (Ecclesiastes), acquired knowledge, but understood (correctly),  that his pursuit was vanity and chasing after emptiness. I think I understand the gospels correctly; but so does that state senator (he also understands the First Amendment, and the purpose of public schools, incorrectly). How does he read the same words I do, and understand them so differently? Because, like the eunuch in Acts, he reads without understanding until someone explains scripture to him. And then it’s all about who does the explaining.

The last set of episodes of GisT I watched revolved around Orwell’s 1984. But the character who reads it and later models the world (or tries to) on it, says early on that he doesn’t understand it. And clearly, he doesn’t. He uses the terms: “Big Brother,” “doublethink,” “Ministry of Love,” even “Room 101.” But he doesn’t use them the way the novel did.  He creates a utopia, not a nightmare. But he does it through the technology of the fictional premise of GisT, and uses that to create a fiction that allows his utopia. Whether that’s an improvement, or not, is left to the audience. But without understanding, you can misunderstand a lot.

And that’s almost always the problem.

Welcome to the Monkey House

This, by the way, is an excellent article.

I might have wished for a hint of a discussion of Descartes, father of modern skepticism ("Cogito, ergo sum" is the end of one line of thought, the beginning of another.  Descartes went as far down as he could in order to having something to build on.  Modern day "skeptics" would do well to pay heed to Descartes example; and he only consider it a method, not a conclusion).  It's so good, I simply commend it to your reading.

Self-examination is hard.  Socrates supposedly said "The unexamined life is not worth living."  I've certainly agreed, if by nature rather than by design; my inclination has been to question everything.  At some point, however, as Descartes understood, you have to avoid irony before everything dissolves into mist and formlessness.  You have to decide for yourself what your opinions are, and why, and "because I like them" is the refuge of the coward.

But as the wise philosopher Dirty Harry said:  "Man got to know his limitations."  This is, indeed, the beginning of wisdom (no, seriously!).  Read the article, then consider how many of the comments refuse to take the argument of the article seriously; and how many consider their own American positivism to be perfectly sound thinking, because it is theirs, and anything that isn't positivism, to be dangerous and unsound.

Because a knife only cuts what you want it to cut, and never anything else....

"What Keeps Mankind Alive?"--Bertolt Brecht

One summer I taught an Intro. Philosophy course, and since I had a long class day to fill, I opened with a two-day viewing of the film "A.I." Argue the artistic and literary merits of it all you want, the story is a fascinating examination of what it means to be human. And the answer seems to be: emotions.

This is a very modern question, in Western culture: what does it mean to be human? It originates with Descartes, but his speculations on the topic have roots that extend at least back to Socrates, and are certainly heavily influenced by Christianity and Augustine (who really taught us to begin to think of ourselves as, well, "selves.") It's no coincidence that phenomenology and its subgroup, existentialism, are still major players in modern philodophy. It's all about the self. But what is the self? How do we define it?

Locke would ultimately settle on memory; and that empiricist approach would influence psychology and the scientific approach to the question, ever after. But Descartes focussed on our ability to reason: "I think, therefore I am." And "I think," for Descartes, in good Platonic Christian form, specifically excluded emotions, which he attributed to the body, an obstacle to true being that had to be controlled like the rest of the body and its desires (food, sex, rest) by the "ghost in the machine."

But we've never been quite comfortable with that, and while most Western philosophy has worked assiduously to assert the primacy of reason over emotion, and to clearly delineate the two, it has never been a comfortable or clean split. Curiousity, for example, may have killed the cat, but it is often "lifted up" from the "merely emotional" and made an attribute of "intelligence," where it is both "purer" and can legitimately take its place among the "higher functions" of our humanness. Hierarchies abound.

Computers have made us reconsider all of this. Metaphors for the "mind" (itself a concept, sometimes related to "self," sometimes separate from it, depending on the philosophy invoked) soon took on all the features of the metaphors for what a computer "does." Metaphors, of course, are merely attempts in language to describe concretely something that is entirely abstract. What does a computer "do"? In the field of artificial intelligence, you can still stir quite a lively debate trying to nail down that question. We can easily explain what a hammer or a screwdriver does, and even how it does it. Describing what a computer "does" is a much more difficult task. Does it, for example, "think"? Well, of course, that would depend on our definition of "think". Since Descartes, we've always considered thought to be a purely rational process. But if computers are devoid of emotion, and yet seem to emulate human thought, are they "thinking"?

"A.I." makes us realize we aren't really so dogmatic in our opinion of "thought." The first robot the audience encounters in the movie is an attractive young woman in a crowded room of attractive young people, and our first clue that she isn't "human" is her emotionless response to the lecturer in the room (William Hurt). It is her lack of affect, the flatness of her social responses, that betrays her lack of "humanity."

The same is true of Jude Law's character, a gigolo robot who is framed for the murder of a jealous husband's philandering wife. But can one commit adultery with a robot? Well, can one commit adultery with a dildo, or a Playboy magazine? Jude Law's robot betrays his lack of emotion when he dips his fingers in the woman's blood, and doesn't immediately recognize that he is not only in danger, but this is a scene of horror. He doesn't, in other words, react to the situation. He finally reasons about it, but his reasoning is slower than an emotional reaction would be.

When Haley Joel Osmet's character is "turned on" in the movie, when he becomes "more human," at least in simulacrum, it is his emotional character that is activated. And then it is his reaction to situations that makes him both more human, and more dangerous. When he panics at his "brother's" birthday party and drags him to the bottom of the swimming pool, it is clear that he is not thinking rationally, but he is thinking. Unlike Jude Law's character, Osmet's immediately recognizes a threat to his existence. Recognizing that he even has an existence that should be protected is, it seems, an emotional response. Not a rational one, not even a reasonable one; but certainly a more human one.

So: is it because we think, that we are? Or because we feel? And can we even know the former, without the latter? Can we truly think, without knowing we are? And can we truly know we are, without feeling it?

This Cartesian split is the basis for Christopher Hitchens' critique of Cindy Sheehan, what Hitchens calls her "sinister piffle." For Hitchens, reason is what makes us human, and reason must triumph over all other human proclivities (which are, after all, weaknesses that undermine our "true nature"). While force and violence arise from emotions, reason employs force and violence to oppose emotion, and the use of force and violence is therefore sanctified. It is no accident that our metaphors betray our preferences, too. Science is supremely the realm of reason, but there are "soft" sciences, like psychiatry, and "hard" sciences, like physics. The "harder," of course, the better. And the cold equations of realpolitik mean that morality cannot be allowed to triumph over rationality; and rationality requires we recognize that the world is a harsh place, full of people who would kill us if they could; and the only reasonable response, is to kill them, first. "Hard" always triumphs over "soft."

But is reason our only human trait, and is "hard reason" the only sure guide to our actions? The neo-cons vision of the world is certainly a "hard" one; but they have succeeded only in making it harder on themselves, and on us, but their relentless employment of reason uber alles.

Hierarchies abound. But are the hierarchies justified? And if so, on what basis? On the basis that morality is all well and good, but we have a social order to get on with, here? Should we remind Mr. Hitchens that is was morality, both aggregate and personal, that drove the civil rights struggle in this country, that forced the President and Congress to change the course of the nation in order to "do the right thing"? Curiously, Martin Luther King recieved more vociferous condemnation for his morality after his anti-war speech at Riverside church than for any of his civil rights efforts. Some of his strongest supporters of the civil rights struggle condemned him for going too far when he denounced the reasoning behind the Vietnam War. Apparently morality is only valid so long as it doesn't touch on the supreme exercise of our reason, through violence.

Violence is usually considered an emotional human response, and this characterization is used to place it below rational action, the better to both denigrate it and to control it. But then we sanctify violence by making it the necessary tool of our reason, the one we cannot afford to abdicate or even allow to be challenged. Is this what it means to be human?

Many Gold Star mothers are standing with Cindy Sheehan. Are they being sinister, and "merely emotional"? Or are they being human? Perhaps we would do well to remember that pursuing survival alone is the life of rats and roaches. We justify competition as supremely rational, but as Wendell Berry reminds us: "Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand. It is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy."

Perhaps being able to conceive, and even perceive, justice and mercy, is what makes us human. It certainly makes us privileged.

"And now for something completely different...."

or, "Boupohonia forces me to consider my sins...."

"I ought to be no more than a mirror, in which my reader can see his own thinking with all its deformities so that, helped in this way, he can put it right."--Ludwig Wittgenstein

Philalethes again piques my interest, although this time with something wholly original (no links to links this time!). And he puts me in mind of the famous anecdote about Ludwig Wittgenstein, often called the "greatest philosopher of the 20th century" (itself, in this context, an ironic labelling, as we shall see). Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein's one time mentor, came upon W. deep in thought, and knowing his former students predilection for ethical and metaphysical issues (which Russell eschewed both in his life and his thought), asked: "What are you thinking about, logic, or your sins?" To which Wittgenstein replied: "Both."

Wittgenstein is an interesting thinker, and a powerful counterpoint to the pseudo-science Philalethes (rightly) rails against. Mathematicians (Kurt Godel being the current "hot" example, with two books out now on his life and work; both books note Godel's strong Platonist streak), for example, love to say that mathematics reflects reality, because they claim that much of reality is reflected in mathematics. Wittgenstein argued, on the contrary, that mathematics simply reflects reality. In a world of different physical laws, Wittgenstein pointed out, mathematics would change, too. The "permanence" of mathematics, in other words, is no such thing: it is simply a reflection of our perceptions, nothing more (which locks us back into the world David Hume left us in, and from which Kant did not exactly extract us). The argument is a subtle but exacting one: Plato (going back at least to the Phaedo, and made explicit in parts of The Republic), argued for an external reality completely separate from our perceptions. In fact reality, says Platonism, exists whether we perceive it or not, but our highest and best task is to pursue the right perception and contemplation of that ultimate reality. Here, frankly, is the context and the vocabulary for much of Western mystical tradition. Which is not to say such traditions are the product of an illusion caused by Plato; as Wittgenstein and others pointed out (following Hume), language does not limit our reality, but it determines how we describe that reality. Whether Plato was right or wrong, then, it is the language he bequeathed us that we still use.

But when that language is confused for reality...well, that's when the problems start. Modernism in philosophy actually started in the 17th century, with Rene Descartes. It was Descartes, through his radical skepticism, who established for the West the principle that our relationship to "reality" is based entirely on our perceptions. From Descartes, essentially, springs empiricism, and from empiricism, again essentially, springs the philosophy of modern science.

Now the problem is, of course, that perception is all about error. Descartes recognized this immediately, and Hume pushed it to such an extreme that Kant had to come up with a scheme that allowed us to accept our perceptions despite our inability to establish a standard outside our perceptions to prove our perception's accuracy. Wittgenstein pushed the issue even further, pointing out that even our perceptions are a product of language, because they do not exist outside of language, nor outside our attempts to communicate them to one another, which communication is done only through: language. As Wittgenstein said in his preface to the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: "what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about must be passed over in silence." We should pause to note here that Plato never defined the "good" which he said was the source of all reality. As exacting as he was with language, and as critical as Socrates is in the dialogues of vague and ill-defined concepts, the heart of Plato's metaphysic is the vaguest and most ill-defined concept of all. For Plato, the "Good" is simply inaccessible to language. Wittgensten limits the conversation entirely to language: "It will therefore only be in language that the limit can be drawn, and what lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense." Which means that by now we have proceeded to the opposite conclusion from Plato: reality only exists in our perception of it. Whether or not it exists apart from our perception is irrelevant, because all we can ever know of it, is what we perceive of it. The question for modern philosophers such as Wittgenstein is simply: how do we perceive it? And behind that question is a more important one: how, in fact, do we talk about what we perceive?

In other words, when I look in the mirror, what do I see? And how do I describe it?

So what does this have to do with logic, and sin?

Wittgenstein ended his Tractatus with these words:

6.54 My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used
them--as steps--to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the
ladder after he has climbed up it.)
He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.
7 What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.

So clarity of expression applies only to that which can be clearly expressed (something of a tautology, no?) But it does not mean that what cannot be expressed, has no reality. This is the error of the sloppy use of reason Philalethes is pointing out, and also the reason Wittgenstein could contemplate, quite seriously, both logic and his sins. But also why logic could neither address, nor explain, nor even apply to, his sins.

Our propositions about reality, in other words, are not the entirety of the universe. Nor do they even take in all that the "universe" contains ("universe" being not merely the physical place cosmologists are concerned about). We must, says Wittgenstein, reason rightly; but when we do, we, as it were, ascend a ladder, which we then discard. Having discarded it, we reach the place of that of which we cannot speak, and rather than try to fit it into our discourse (it won't go), we must pass over it in silence. Because while it is real, it is not shared. At least, not in our language.

Doing what the PEOTUS asked

Celebrate Martin Luther King Day and all of the many wonderful things that he stood for. Honor him for being the great man that he was!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 16, 2017

Bernie Sanders is wrong:

Yes. The next problem has to do with going issue by issue. This is happening right now. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer went onto the Rachel Maddow show on the same day, and they said, “The American people agree with us, issue by issue, each case and we’re going to press Trump issue by issue, and we’re going to start with health care and go on to other things.” What they’re missing is values.

They’re missing the idea that many Americans who depend on health care, affordable health care, for example, have strict-father positions and voted for Trump against their interests. And this is something has been known for ages, that a lot of poor conservatives vote against their material interests, because they’re voting for their worldview. And the reason for it is that their moral worldview defines who they are. They are not going to vote against their own definition of who they are. 

But not for the reasons George Lakoff thinks:

What you’ll learn in those courses is what is called Enlightenment reason, from 1650, from Descartes. And here’s what that reasoning says: What makes us human beings is that we are rational animals and rationality is defined in terms of logic. Recall that Descartes was a mathematician and logician. He argued that reasoning is like seeing a logical proof. Secondly, he argued that our ideas can fit the world because, as he said, “God would not lie to us.” The assumption is that ideas directly fit the world.

They’re also, Descartes argued, disembodied. He said that if ideas were embodied, were part of the body, then physical laws would apply to them, and we would not have free will. And in fact, they are embodied, physical laws do apply to them, and we do not have absolute free will. We’re trapped by what the neural systems of our brains  have accumulated. We can only see what our brains allow us to understand, and that’s an important thing.

So what he said, basically, was that there are no frames, no embodiment, no metaphor — none of the things people really use to reason. Moreover if we think logically and we all have the same reasoning, if you just tell people the facts, they should reason to the same correct conclusion. And that just isn’t true. And that keeps not being true, and liberals keep making the same mistake year after year after year. So that’s a very important thing

For one thing, Donald Trump didn't win because he garnered overwhelming support from a majority of the electorate.  He won because Hillary Clinton refused to listen to Howard Dean, and assumed the active support of "traditional" Democratic voters who didn't bother to turn out because they were expected to, but never encouraged to.  Black voters in the South certainly didn't vote for Donald Trump, but their turnout was lower than 2012 because Clinton's campaign didn't get out their vote:  they just considered their vote as given.  Had Clinton actually campaigned in Texas, she might have won the state.  She certainly got closer to winning it than any Democratic candidate since Texas went blood-red.  Trump only won by the quirk of the electoral college and by Clinton running a poor national campaign.

If Donald Trump and his promises were so popular, would this be happening?

On Saturday, Republican Rep. Mike Coffman held an event for his constituents at a public library in Aurora, Colorado. At least 150 constituents showed up, most of them hoping to ask Coffman about his recent vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act and his plans for a replacement. But only about 70 people got to meet with Coffman: Despite booking a large room with ample space, Coffman allowed in only four constituents at once for five minutes at a time. When the crowd grew restless, police put up crime scene tape and Coffman snuck out the back door—six minutes before the event was scheduled to end.

Trump didn't win because he kept making people think of an elephant.  If that were the case, his approval rating right now wouldn't be the lowest ever recorded for an incoming President.

In fact, let's run this entire conversation through Lakoff's analysis:

In an interview on ABC's "This Week," Priebus responded to Rep. John Lewis' (D-GA) comment that Trump is not "a legitimate president" by denying that Republicans ever questioned the legitimacy of Obama's election victory.

"I and we look up to John Lewis and his historic contribution to civil rights and voting rights," Priebus said. "And in particular his—"

"But the President-elect said he was all talk and no action!" George Stephanopoulos interrupted, referring to tweets Trump posted Saturday morning lashing out at the Georgia congressman and civil rights icon.

"But, let me answer, but here's the problem," Priebus said. "We need folks like John Lewis and others who I think have been champions of voter rights to actually recognize the fact that Donald Trump was duly elected."

He called it "incredibly disappointing" and "irresponsible" for someone of Lewis' stature to question Trump's legitimacy as president.

"I think in fact President Obama could step up," Priebus said, suggesting that the White House should come out in Trump's favor.

"But isn't it harder to do that after a tweet like that from the President-elect?" Stephanopoulos asked.

"But George, hang on! John Lewis stood up in an interview and said that Donald trump was not a legitimate president! That's insanity, and it's wrong!" Priebus replied. "You're worried about a tweet that says 'get back to work instead of questioning my legitimacy'? Too bad!"

"We just had Senator Sanders on the program. He did not question the legitimacy of the President-elect," Stephanopoulos said. "But he did say that it was right to bring up questions like this because of Donald Trump's past and questioning the legitimacy of Barack Obama with those years and years of questions about where he was born."

"Donald Trump's made it clear certainly over the last few years that President Obama was born in Hawaii," Priebus claimed.

"Not until the end of the campaign!" Stephanopoulos replied.

"But hang on a second, George, we're not questioning the legitimacy of the outcome of the election," Priebus said. "You didn't have Republicans questioning whether or not Obama legitimately beat John McCain in 2008."

"It is a fact that Donald Trump was questioning whether President Obama was eligible to serve as president under the Constitution," Stephanopoulos countered.

"And many people were, George, but that's been resolved for years now, and it's been resolved for at least two years in Donald Trump's mind!" Priebus hit back.

"Just a factual point," Stephanopoulos interrupted, speaking over Priebus. "He didn't stop raising those questions until late in this campaign, not two years."

"But look, George, that's not the point!" Priebus said, visibly agitated. "The point is not where Barack Obama was born! The point is that we've got congressmen on the Democratic side of the aisle that are questioning the legitimacy of President-elect Trump."

A commenter at TPM said Priebus and Stephanopolous were using different definitions of "legitimate" there.  Perhaps, but does it matter?  Priebus is simply lying.  He's deflecting all criticism of Trump and insisting the only person who can be criticized here is John Lewis.  Now, frankly, that's the kind of criticism Martin Luther King faced in his day.  If you imagine Dr. King was a revered figure, that his "I have a dream" speech was the only speech he had to give, that his "Letter from Birmingham Jail" opened the eyes of a nation as they turned to him for guidance and solace and reconciliation with their past; well, then, what Priebus said probably sounds legitimate to you.

But that's not likely.

Do the Democrats counter Priebus with sage wisdom?  Or do they go one step past Stephanopolous and simply call him a bald-faced liar who can't be trusted to report on the state of the weather outside?  Because that conversation is simply insane.  One need not dissect it, argue with it, explain it, or analyze it.  It is simply bullshit, and should be called same.

It's what Donald Trump would do.  It's the "straight talk" that Lakoff says has made Trump so popular (again, so popular his approval rating is at an historic low before he takes office.  It will only do down from there; it always does.).  I don't have to not think of an elephant when I hear the remarks of Mr. Priebus:  I'm already thinking of a man so full of shit his eyes are brown; of a mendacious lying weasel who would back the bus over his grandmother if he thought it would advance is career; a Grima Wormtongue, a toady, a bug I'd step on if I found it on the kitchen floor when the lights went on.  People who can lie that easily (and poorly) have no place in decent company.

That's what I think of.  Well, that and the fact challenges to Obama's legitimacy as President go back for 8 years.  And if you're being particular about what Priebus claimed, you can find a list of prominent GOP politicians who challenged Obama's legitimacy as President here.

Josh Marshall hits on this point in his reaction to the way the press is already covering Trump, and what should be done about it:

Trump wants to bully the press and profit off the presidency. He's told us this clearly in his own words. We need to accept the reality of both. The press should cover him on that basis, as a coward and a crook. The big corporate media organizations may not be able to use those words, I understand, but they should employ that prism. The truth is that his threats against the press to date are ones it is best to laugh at. If Trump should take some un- or extra-constitutional actions, we will deal with that when it happens. I doubt he will or can. But I won't obsess about it in advance. Journalists should be unbowed and aggressive and with a sense of humor until something happens to prevent them from doing so. Trump is a punk and a bully. People who don't surrender up their dignity to him unhinge him.

Much the same applies to the endless chatter about 'conflicts of interest' and the insufficiency of his plan to separate himself from his businesses. Why are we still saying Trump isn't doing enough to avoid conflicts of interest? He's made clear he wants to profit off his presidency. Let's accept that. That is what he wants to do. If you're a journalist, start documenting the details. If you're an activist or politician start mobilizing against his corruption.

We know what Trump is doing.  Quit trying to prove it to the satisfaction of people who will never be satisfied (the mythical "Trump supporters" who must be convinced to abandon Trump, or all hope is lost; i.e., the same people Lakoff would have us worry about) and just start talking about the situation as it is.  Don't worry about thinking of an elephant; worry about dealing with reality.

Besides, Reince Priebus really is a mendacious weasel.  Maybe we should try not to think of a weasel when we think of him.

But to get back to Bernie Sanders for a moment, a man who always manages to sound like the shrillest of his internet die-hard supporters (the ones who still say Sanders would have defeated Trump, where Hillary never stood a chance).  The same people who he thinks agree with him on every issue also think "Obamacare" is an abomination but the Affordable Care Act is a godsend.  They are the same people who want the government to stay out of their Medicare, and who think they paid into Social Security, and all they are taking out of it is their own money.  They agree with Sanders, in other words, that the ACA and Social Security and Medicare are important; but they don't agree on why.  And while they are happy for the government to take care of them, they are convinced it doesn't, and instead spends inordinate sums in "handouts" to illegal immigrants and other freeloaders.  And by the way they think taxes are only levied on U.S. citizens, and non-citizens somehow avoid paying taxes altogether; unless they are in this country "legally", in which case this magic shield that avoids taxation evaporates.  Of course Bernie Sanders doesn't assume everyone is fundamentally rational or he'd never have used Simon and Garfunkel's "America" and stirring scenes of white folk in his first campaign ad.  But like the rest of us, he preaches it round and square as it suits him.

And then there's Lakoff's analysis of Descartes.  Is he serious with that stuff, or does he just think it makes him sound smart to mention a name he's sure will be recognized?  Actually, the distinction between humans and other animals based on reason goes back to Aristotle, and was championed by the Church, to whom Descartes was making careful obeisance (if he got too far out over his skis, he knew he'd never make the landing).  Descartes didn't invent the idea that humans had souls which made them rational, and animals were automatons:  he simply translated Church teachings into the secular philosophical language of his day.  The idea that Descartes preserved that for the sake of free will, and that we "know" free will "doesn't exist," is so amateurishly wrong it's laughable.

Now don't think of a hyena.  Yes, we can only understand what our brains can comprehend, but that's not an argument limited to sociology.  It applies to Lakoff's reasoning, as well.  And one thing we can understand is Godel's proof of incompleteness in formal systems, so that there are always questions a system can formulate which the system itself cannot answer.  And we have Wittgenstein's insight (no slouch in rational thinking, he) that there are realities which don't fit into rational expression at all.  Now, are human beings fundamentally rational?  No; but Aristotle himself understood that.  Lakoff is setting fire to a straw man, not presenting even a minor insight.

And last but not least, of course, there's the hidden wound of American racism; the still fundamental cultural, legal, and political issue of our country, the sin we will not confess, the root we will not extirpate, the damage we will not repair.  Donald Trump won, ultimately, because of it, and to not even mention that is to commit yet another act of racism against the people Trump will surely injure in the next four years.

Or maybe the problem is with those of us who do think Black Lives Matter.

Is Love Physical?

 

Editor’s Note: You can safely skip all this and go straight to the comment. Brevity is not just the soul of wit. It’s the soul of wisdom, too.

Our text for today’s sermon is provided by thought criminal.

Then there are those who just insist insist that free will just exists but it is non-physical, the latter is a well trodden road for example Rene Descartes and Emanuel Kant were both in that camp. I say the idea is not wrong but I never understood the point because if free will is not physical it doesn't explain anything in the physical world so why bother inventing it.

I don't mean sexual contact (anything from touching (kisses; holding hands) to intercourse); I mean, is the emotion “love” a physical construct, or is it not?

I’ve read assertions (I can’t call them “theories,” not in the vocabulary of science) that “love” is just hormones, or something physical. Which may explain why I love my daughter, but not why I love my wife. I’ve known her for 50 years now. My hormones ain’t what they were 50 years ago (that’s just science!), but my love is. It’s more than it was then, of course, but love is complex. It certainly ain’t nothin’ but sex misspelled. Or hormones I mistake for free will.

But if it isn’t purely physical, it doesn’t explain anything in the physical world. Right? How does that work? Love is an illusion? Love is a mistake?

What about music? That’s easier: music is physical. Sounds are physical; there’s a science of acoustics. Music is sound. But what is it affecting in the the elementary particles that are me? Can we calculate that? Why does music move people? We are the only creatures that make music. We are the only creatures that make art, or use language. Why? Because my elementary particles collide differently than those of my cat? 🐈‍⬛ 

Sure, why not?

Ok, so humans are one big collection of particles. What the particles do is described by the mathematics of the standard model. It's a lot of math and you need math if you want to answer difficult questions like what's going on in nhc [I'm not sure I heard her] collisions. For simple questions like whether free will exists we don't need to know much about the math, relevant is just that ultimately what you and I do is also described by the standard model, and that means, yes, we know the equations for human behavior, we can write them down. In practice that's a completely useless statement because we can't solve the equations for these 10 to the 30 or so particles that humans are made of.

And my cat is just a smaller collection of particles, and that’s the difference between us? “We know the equations for human behavior”? You gotta mouse in your pocket, or what? If we know them, could you please pass them on so psychiatrists and juries can improve their work output? Or just write them out and show your work. Of course, we know them, you say, but we don’t know them, because we can’t run the calculations in practice, only in theory.  You mentioned (and discarded) Descartes and Kant; let me introduce you to David Hume. He’d love to have you for lunch.

By which I mean, he’d eat you alive.

Not that Hume was a fan of free will or, but Jeebus lady, philosophers pretty much wrung out the last drops of this discussion 200 years ago, and you think you’ve solved it when you don’t even know what the questions are? It ain’t about the “ghost in the machine” critique of Descartes, which is fun for college freshmen to play with, but not taken seriously by anyone who knows anything about the subject (I don’t want to get sidetracked). In fact, your implicit model of mind (it’s all just particles colliding, right?) is akin to Hume’s: there is no “I,” just sensory inputs to the brain perceived as creating a self. But perceived by what? If the TV is on but no one’s home, does anyone perceive the show? If the brain is just a room full of TV screens, a la “The Matrix,” but there’s no one in the chair, no “Architect,” do the screens watch themselves? If all those particles collide according to mathematical formulas, how do those collisions produce the formulas? Sounds like monkeys banging on typewriters hoping to produce Shakespeare, to me.

In other words, you’re still stuck in step 2, where the miracle occurs that leads to the observable result in step 3. You start with the observable result, you employ a theory and call it working backwards to the cause (hello, Mr. Hume!), but actually you’re trying to fit the cause (theory) to the effect (observable result), and that’s why step 2 is where the miracle occurs.

Told you David Hume would have you for lunch. He showed that’s how causal reasoning works. It’s useful in engineering and law, but it can never be so precise as to produce an equation for human behavior. That’s the nonsensical theory of “psychohistory” Isaac Asimov invented for his “Foundation” trilogy. This isn’t science; it’s science fiction. It’s as fantastical as anything Tolkien ever came up with. As good as Tolkien’s work is, nobody confuses it for science.

Not sure I’d confuse this (quoted) reasoning with science, either.

Cosmos

Saying the same thing in a slightly different way:

Today we see math and science as inseparable. But at their most basic, they're worlds apart. Math relies on deductive reasoning. We start with basic principles then logically deduce their consequences. In the world of math, if you believe what you start with - sets, numbers, addition, and so on - there's no uncertainty about your conclusions. None.

Science doesn't work that way. Scientists observe the world around them, then reach inductive conclusions. If every swan a scientist observes is white, he may reasonably theorize that all swans are white. However, if a black swan shows up at the party, his theory needs to be modified or discarded. Einstein's theory of general relativity showed how Newton's theory of gravity was wrong - or at least incomplete. Yet Newton rightly remains one of the most highly esteemed scientists in history.

Or we could say pirouetting around Godel:

Be it a theory of government or a scientific theory, math-like reasoning can't stand front and center. Devoid of grounding in observed facts, such reasoning is all sound and fury, signifying nothing. Descartes. The scholastics. The shores of history are riddled with the remains of those seduced by the precision of math. For all math's beauty, power, and even perfection, when it comes to science, math's but a humble servant - though admittedly a pretty good one. Our universe, it turns out, is surprisingly mathematical.

Although he sticks the landing:

Which is why, even today, scientists are sometimes tempted by the siren call. They offer up infinite universes we can't interact with; bona-fide physical dimensions beyond three that can't be experimentally verified. "But the math," goes the argument, "is too compelling to ignore." Is it? Or are we once again falling into that age-old trap?

I'm not quite sure how Descartes or the Scholastics wind up in there; but even though the universe is surprisingly mathematical, the universe is not everything.  Even Descartes understood the power of doubt, and the limit of thought.  Anglo-American philosophers and Continental phenomenologists are still wrangling over that one.

The Case for Music

The problem with reading a long work like Karen Armstrong's The Case for God is that you want to stop and examine, even explicate, passages all along the way; and which is the best one to start with? In the end, the choice has to be arbitrary:

When he dedicated his Meditations on First Philosophy to "The Most Illustrious Dean and Doctors of the Sacred Faculty of Theology in Paris," Descartes made an astonishing claim:  "I have always considered that the two questions respecting God and the soul were the chief of those that out to be demonstrated by philosophical [i.e., 'scientific"] rather than theological argument."  In the clear expectation that they would agree with him, Descartes calmly informed the most distinguished body of theologians in Europe that they were not competent to discuss God.  Mathematics and physics would do the job more effectively.  And the theologians were all too happy to agree.  It was a fateful move.  Henceforth, theology would increasingly be translated into a "philosophical" or "scientific" idiom that was alien to it.

Karen Armstong, The Case for God, p. 197.

Armstrong lays a lot of groundwork for the idea that theology is not philosophy or science, and doesn't need to be.   She ably points out that most of the "proofs" of God present in the work of Anselm or Aquinas are not "proofs" in the modern sense at all, because they don't presuppose God's non-existence which existence must be established by rational argument.  Interestingly, the modern "proof" that God exists because the universe shows evidence of an "intelligent designer" is not modern at all; it dates to the early 17th century, where it began not as a proof of the existence of God, but as a counter to the idea that God needn't be involved in creation at all.  As Armstrong puts the matter:

Thomas Aquinas had insisted that we could not learn anything about the nature of God from the created world; now the complexity that scientists were discovering in the universe had persuaded theologians that God must be an Intelligent Designer.  Denys and Thomas would not have approved. 

Armstrong, p. 193.

In other words, the problems of the "proofs" of God's existence, and even the denial of God, began not with the scientists, but with the theologians.  Perhaps they were lured by this:

Even those who could see flaws in Descartes' Universal Mathematics were excited by the idea of a mechanical universe, ruled at all times and in all places by the same unequivocal laws.  Increasingly, the mechanical universe would be seen as a model for society.  Citizens should submit to a rational government in the same way as the different parts of the cosmos obeyed the rational laws of the scientific God.  People were also intrigued by the idea of a single method that would lead infallibly to wisdom and certainty and make the existence of God as necessary and lucid as one of Euclid's theorems.  Doubt and perplexity would soon be things of the past.

Armstrong, p. 198.

Certainty is the keystone, there.  The turn from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment is marked, in Armstrong's telling, by the advent of "certainty" as the touchstone for human knowledge.  We still haven't quite knocked the stuffing out of that hubris, but that theologians turned from the apophatic (Armstrong's thesis throughout) to certainty is a real source of our difficulties with religious belief today.  It is this passage on Pascal, though, that encapsulates, as well as any other, Armstrong's argument:

Pascal could see that Christianity was about to make a serious mistake.  Theologians were eager to embrace the modern ethos and make their teaching conform to the "clear and distinct" ideas currently in vogue, but how far should the new science impinge upon religion?  A God who was merely "the author of mathematical truths and of the order of the elements" could bring no light to the darkness and pain of human existence.  It would only cause people to fall into atheism.  Pascal was one of the first people to see that atheism--meaning a radical denial of God's existence--would soon become a serious option.  A person who had not engaged himself [sic] with the rituals, exercises, and practices of religion would not be convinced by the arguments of the philosophers; for such a person, faith could only be a wager, a leap in the dark.  Pascal had developed his own rational powers more than most:  by the age of eleven, he had worked out for himself the first twenty-three propositions of Euclie; at sixteen, he had published a remarkable treatise on geometry; and he went on to invent a calculating machine, a barometer, and a hydraulic press.  But he knew that reason could not produce religious conversion; "the heart" had its own reasons for faith.

Armstrong, p. 199.

I should explain here that, for Armstrong, the "rituals, exercises [spiritual, she means], and practices of religion" are, for her, the practical side of religion.  They mark the commitment of faith.  Not a blind acceptance of absurdity, or adoption of a body of belief; but engagement in practical transformative acts which lead the adherent to an experience of the divine, the ineffable, and the truth espoused by the proponents of the practices.  One commits, in other words, to the practices, and one is transformed by them, coming into deeper contact with, in the Christian/Jewish case, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus.  This is a constant thread that she traces from the caves of Lascaux through (primarily) Western culture.  As she says in the introduction:  "Religion....was not primarily something that people thought about but something they did.  Its truth was acquired by practical action....There are some things that can be learned only by constant, dedicated practice, but if you persevere, you find that you achieve something that seemed initially impossible." (p. xii).

I find a comparison to learning to play music instructive here, especially if you turn from being a soloist to being an ensemble player.  Some of the most truly transcendent experiences I have had, experiences that were almost kenotic (self-emptying) involved training myself to play and perform music to the point it became, not a conscious action, but almost a spiritual one.   That experience was intensified, and more likely, when I performed with other musicians.

 It is interesting how we insist some people can be musicians, and some cannot; that some people "get" music in a way others of us never will; yet we all must have equal access to spirituality and, if we don't, then spirituality must be bunk and self-delusion.  I've come close enough to true musicianship in my personal experience to have seen the vista of that "promised land," though I'll never enter it.  Should I say, then, that music and all it can mean to audience and performer, is bunk?

But the more interesting question is:  why do we keep making apologia like that?  I think, despite the rantings of the on-line atheists (who, yes, are about to get swept off the world stage they think they stand on by the rising tide of population from predominantly Muslim countries), there is a slow shift once again away from reason and understanding as the basis for all valid human effort.  It began in Europe with World War I, and while it isn't leading to a resurgence of religious belief a la yet another "Great Awakening" (which, in retrospect, is looking more and more like less and less), I think the turn is proceeding apace without, shall we say, Dawkins or Bultmann.

A conversation I may yet get into.....

The Problem of Theology

Here, by the way, is the problem in a nutshell (I have to warn you, it's quite a bit to wade through). This is theology as exclusive men's club, available only to the privileged who see the world from the "right" vantage point (I do not speak in political terms there), and who understand the rigid, settled, and incontrovertible value of received opinion and settled tradition. *

In other words, no thought after the Enlightenment period need apply. He even speaks disdainfully of Descartes, the one philosopher who above all represents the beginning of modern philosophy. Which seems to be the trouble: modern, post-Enlightenment thought has taken the entire cosmos (church + world) down the wrong path, and the election of PB-elect Schori and ordination of Bishop Robinson are just the latest signs of the deadly corruption.

I waded through this late one night, and realized the next morning that not a word of it took into account anything more recent than Aquinas or accepted any current in Western thought since at least Descartes. To read this is to be sealed in a time capsule in which not only modern philosophy never occurred, but the impact of empiricism was never felt, the assaults on faith and belief in the 18th and 19th centuries were simply satanic heresies (if acknowledged at all), Soren Kierkegaard never wrote about the individual's struggle with the Absolute Paradox, German biblical scholars in the 19th century never studied a word of Scripture, World War I never shattered the faith of a generation (Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, most of Europe) in Christianity, Edmund Husserl and Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger never gave the Western world a new way to examine and understand human existence, Rudolf Bultmann never penned a word about the Gospel of John, and Jacques Derrida never examined religion or religious belief in the context of phenomenology.

It is, in short, breathtakingly airtight and a completely artificial creation, ignoring anything and everything that might contradict a world view that persons from medieval times would find as baffling as any European priest in the 17th century. Consider, for example, his reliance, at the end, on Aquinas and natural law. Now, there is no question that Aquinas formulation of natural law is one of the monumental works of the human intellect, and as at least one contemporary Aquinas scholar said, there are only a few Aquinas scholars alive who truly understand the work of the Saint (and he said, in humility, that he was not one of them). But Aquinas' natural law was a reaction to the then-new (because rediscovered from the Muslims, who preserved it when the West had lost it) works of Aristotle. It was another attempt to reconcile Hellenistic thought with Christian (a Hellenistic-Hebrew mix) teachings. In doing so, Aquinas re-wrote Christian doctrine in fundamental ways, much as Luther would do a few centuries later. It was an attempt which is no longer relevant to contemporary concerns. Aquinas's work is, in many ways, foundational, and is certainly important to the student and as a touchstone for consideration in many issues, especially issues of Roman Catholic doctrine. But outside that very narrow field, no theologian begins his consideration of theology by asking: What would Thomas do? The concerns of phenomenology, of existentialism, of modern existence (nuclear annihilation; religious fanaticism; GLBT issues; feminist issues; the savagery of wars) are simply too pressing, and almost no one understands them in the terms of the 13th century. Which is still not to say Aquinas is as irrelevant as the work of Marcilio Ficino (a 15th century Florentine scholar, important for his contributions to Neo-Platonism, but important only to other scholars). But explaining the modern world by insisting on the frame of the 13th century is as absurd as explaining to the "Lost Generation" that World War I must be seen in the weltanschaaung of the Crusades.

Theology is a living practice, not a dead reverence for "tradition." And besides, which tradition? The pre-Lutheran tradition of indulgences and justification by works alone? The post-Lutheran tradition, which is now veered toward justification by a profession of faith alone? The tradition of Paul and Theoklia? Or the tradition of the mutiliated image of Theoklia?

It is good to remember that Jesus was a defier of traditions. There is no question that a woman in a roomful of men in Jesus' Palestine (and, reportedly, still true today in many Middle Eastern countries) was considered a prostitute, even if she was the wife of the homeowner. Yet while Simon, at the end of Luke 7, is repulsed by her and wishes she would simply leave so he wouldn't have to so much as deign to acknowledge her presence, Jesus accepts her overtures as a love offering. We might still prefer to infer a proper intent from her actions, but Luke's text gives us no reason to imagine we know what is in her heart, or that it is radically different from the context of Greek erotic literature, where washing a lover's feet with your tears and drying them with your hair is considered highly erotic. That one upsets us so much, in other words, we still don't want to break with our traditions and follow our Lord's example of unconditional love and acceptance. So the real question for us is always: whose tradition is it? Ours? or God's?

Why do I bring this up? Dr. Witt is, by his own identification, a lay theologian. He is apparently well regarded among some Episcopalians. There are also many questions of orthodoxy being raised, and the defense of orthodoxy is itself important, or at least an important issue. So why do I bring it up? Because if this is the best defense orthodoxy can manage, orthodoxy is in bad shape, indeed. The argument for orthodoxy seems to primarily come down to one of authority: authority has said it, I believe it, that settles it. But that line of argument stopped holding sway sometime after Socrates taught us all to question what we knew was true, and Aristotle taught us all to value logic. Authority as the unquestioned and unquestionable answer to issues of existence was certainly finally dismissed by the work of Descartes. So if the best position one can muster is "We've always done it this way!," then orthodoxy no longer serves God, because orthodoxy itself has become an idol. If my theology cannot respond to the phenomenology of Sartre or Derrida, if it cannot (as Kierkegaard did in his time) speak in contemporary terms, then the problem is with my theology, and it is time I discard it. The irony is, Aquinas did not defend 13th century orthodoxy against the revelations of Aristotle; he rewrote orthodoxy, on the basis of what Aristotle taught him. This kind of change has been the constant in Christianity for 2000 years. To try to freeze it now, is as foolish as trying to freeze it just before Luther nailed his 95 theses to the Wittenberg door.

One other issue: Witt leans heavily on the concept of "Christian identity," which he identifies with a very narrow, and barely supportable, view of church history and theology. The position of the Episcopal Church is that

...in the American tradition a bishop is elected by the parishioners of his or her diocese and consecration is canonically procedural. Unlike in Africa, he or she cannot be deposed at the whim of his or her archbishop, and unlike in England, he or she cannot be strong-armed into standing down, as Archbishop Williams was able to do over the appointment of the celibate gay theologian Jeffrey John to the suffragan bishopric of Reading.

So there is a legitimate issue of polity here, and of the nature of the Anglican Communion. This is not simply, in other words, a matter of the willfulness of the American branch of the Church of England. The question of Christian identity is certainly a part of that issue, but it is traditionally a question which the various bodies of the Communion have clearly answered in different ways. The problem now is simply: who gets to decide? And more and more, the answer to that question seems to depend on whose ox is being gored.

*I have to note that the subject of "same sex marriage" is a part of Mr. Witt's discussion, but again, at no point does he go so far as to condemn homosexuals. However, neither does he specify the the Scriptures which speak against homosexuality, although he dismisses (wrongly) with an unsupported generalization the Biblical scholarship on the question. Still, we are faced with the intractable problem, and the "ick" factor again: if homosexuality is a choice, then gays and lesbians must choose to be heterosexual. But no scientific evidence supports that claim, so gays and lesbians must be as God made them. Which can only mean God either does not condemn homosexuality, or that God made them sexual beings only to insist they alone, of all God's creation, remain chaste not by choice, but because of God's law. Which is a curious position indeed, but again, not one even Mr. Witt is willing to assert; not explicitly, anyway. So the problem with homosexual bishops is not that they're homosexual...well, it is, but that's only a problem if they have a relationship, and that's because, well...ick! To his credit, the Rev. Dr. Harding attempts to grasp that nettle, but he does so so disdainfully it is hard to give him much credit for it at all.

Consulo, ergo sum?

I used to use the movie AI in my Intro Philosophy course, to introduce the question of the self and the issue of the Cartesian split. The movie raises fascinating questions of what it means to be human, especially in its implicit acceptance that true "human" thought requires emotional responses as well as "intellectual" ones. The clear implications of the film are that rules alone do not define human intelligence. In fact, it is the lack of "emotional rules" (which the film assumes are a learned, not a defined, response) that sets the story in motion.

"Cogito, ergo sum," is the touchstone for modern philosophy thinking about what is the self, or even what is human, and I used the film to zero in on that issue. Descartes distinguished "rational" thought (which he considered the foundation of the "self") from emotions (which he considered "bodily" functions); but he was not just thinking about thought itself with his cogito. He was speaking of the consciousness of thought. Turing's famous "test" of AI is valid if the question is only the appearance of thought. Descartes' very statement, the one that turned his skepticism into certainty, is a statement of awareness of being aware. It is a "meta" statement about the process of thought itself. And it is on this point that the incompleteness theorem of Kurt Gödel enters the discussion.

Gödel's theorem, put simply, is that formal systems are incomplete, because the axioms upon which they are founded do not lead to a system powerful enough to eliminate the generation of propositions that are not both true and formally undecidable within the terms of the system. In other words, any formal system can generate a statement which it cannot establish as true within the terms of that system. The truth of the statement, if it can be established, must be established through recourse to terms from outside the system. That is, within a formal system such as mathematics, certain statements can be generated which cannot be established as true within mathematics. The truth of these statements can only be decided outside of mathematics, or meta-mathematically.

It's important to understand this fully before going further, because the easy answer here is: "Well, of course we can't decide all truths within any one system." The critical point here is that the system can generate the statement, so the statement itself does not come from wholly outside the system. It comes, in fact, from the axioms of the formal system itself. But the system, built upon those very axioms, cannot decide within the terms of that system, the validity or truth of the statement. It is, therefore, formally undecidable, and any decision on it must be made by appeal to source wholly outside the system.

As a matter of logic, in other words, no formal system of thought, being one founded on axioms which in turn generate the system of thought, is complete. It is, despite its rigor or complexity, essentially incomplete. Which brings us back to artifical intelligence.

Human thought is a complex subject. Is emotion, for example, a component of it? A complement to it? An obstruction that blocks it? Is thought only equivalent to reason? And does reason occur in spite of emotion? What, then, of curiousity? Is that an emotion? Could be build a curious machine? These are not idle questions: they challenge the notion that thought is simply a rules process, and that human thought can be replicated in computer software when enough of the rules are understood and anticipated to be reproducible as tools for a progam. (This idea is leveled as a criticism against Wittgenstein's concept of "language games," that he merely tries to reduce language to a set of acquired rules, and each "game" plays according to a different rule book.) But Godel's theorem challenges that very notion. Palle Yourgrau puts it this way:

The complete set of mathematical truths will never be captured by any finite or recursive list of axioms that is fully formla. Thus, no mechanical device, no computer, will ever be able to exhaust the truths of mathematics. It follows immediately, as Godel was quick to point out, that if we are able somehow to grasp the complete truth of this domain, then we, or our minds, ar enot machines or computers. (Enthusiasts of artificial intelligence were not amused.) A World Without Time, Palle Yourgrau (New York: Basic Books 2005) p. 3

However, Rebecca Goldstein brings us to a slightly different conclusion:

According to Wang, Godel believed that what had been rig-orously proved, presumably on the basis of the incomplete-ness theorem, is: "Either the human mind surpasses all machines (to be more precise it can decide more number the-oretical questions than any machine) or else there exist num-ber theoretical questions undecidable for the human mind."

What exactly did Gödel have in mind with this second dis-junct? I think that what he is considering here is the possibil-ity that we are indeed machines-that is, that all of our thinking is mechanical, determined by hard-wired rules-but that we are under the delusion that we have access to unfor-malizable mathematical truth. We could possibly be machines who suffer from delusions of mathematical grandeur. What follows from his theorem, he seems to be suggesting, is that just so long as we are not delusional as regards our grasp of mathematical truths, just so long as we do have the intuitions that we think we have, then we are not machines. If indeed we truly have the intuitions that we do, then it is impossible for us to formalize (or mechanize) all of our mathematical intu-itions, which means that we truly are not machines. Of course there is no proof that we know all that we think we know, since all that we think we know can't be formalized; that, after all, is incompleteness. This is why we can't rigorously prove that we're not machines. The incompleteness theorem, by showing the limits of formalization, both suggests that our minds transcend machines and makes it impossible to prove that our minds transcend machines. Again, an almost-paradox. Incompleteness, Rebecca Goldstein (New York: W.W. Norton 2005), p. 203

Which reminds us that Descartes settled upon his 'cogito' because he placed an artifical limit to his thinking. Skepticism, as Kierkegaard after him also understood, is an acid that will destroy everything eventually, including itself.

All of which leaves us still with the question of the self, and the question of reason in pursuing the question of the self. Does reason, rigorously applied, lead us to the limits of our knowledge? Or the limits of our reason? Are the two coterminous? And is it because we think, that we know we have being? Or because we question, because we can ask, and discover answers?