Incusblack

“It’s Discrimination!”

July 11, 2009 · 2 Comments

     In a neat little article titled “It’s Discrimination!” Ben O’neal, lecturer in statistics at the University of New South Wales in Australia, challenges the indiscriminate usage of the term, ’discrimination.’ He says that,

Quite often, this tiny statement, without any elaboration or explanation, is enough to provoke looks of shock or revulsion from others, or at the very least, solemn looks of concurrence and disapproval. In many cases, it will provoke fervent denials and apologetic defensive maneuvers from those accused of this heinous act, even if the accuser has made no attempt to deliver his case. The mere charge is enough.

People do not often realize it, but when they disparage “discrimination” without any attempt to elaborate or justify what they are talking about, they are disparaging an abstraction. Moreover, they are disparaging an abstraction on which they rely to think — an abstraction without which they would be docile vegetables unable to make sense of the world around them. When someone shrieks “It’s discrimination!” the irony is usually lost on them, but without their own discrimination they would not be able to establish that others are discriminating, and be offended by it.

If one does venture to ask questions about why discrimination is to be condemned, one may be treated to a slight elaboration as to what is upsetting people. One may be informed that so-and-so is discriminating on the basis of race, sex, age, sexual orientation, political affiliation, attractiveness, or some other factor that should not be a part of his decision making, and that just settles the matter, consarn it!

But what is relevant to rational thinking, moral conduct, and justice is not whether discrimination has occurred, or even whether such discrimination is made on the basis of some particular set of purportedly prohibited criteria; what should ultimately be at issue is the reasons why the factors used in a decision were used, and whether these factors do indeed form a rational basis for the inferences that underlie discriminatory decisions (by which I mean, all decisions). In assessing the rationality, irrationality, morality, or immorality of particular instances of discrimination, it behooves us to ask the reasons for discrimination and to assess these reasons in the light of the logic of inference. This may sound trite, but it is a step rarely taken in the rush to disparage the ghastly abstraction of “discrimination.”

O’neal goes on to defend the legitimate uses of discrimination in everyday life as statistical probability boiled down to common sense. His case is compelling and refreshing. This article can be found in it’s entirety at: http://mises.org/story/3545.

 

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Greek Glory

June 20, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Ok, so I’m no Shakespeare, but I thought I’d try my hand at a sonnet. So as not to be confused with the bard, I decided to try an abba rhyme scheme.

 

When in times past men thought it no great thing
To leave hearth and home and comfort withal,
What drove them but hope of fame immortal,
To live with unborn men in songs they sing?
 
The insensible souls of perished men 
Can feel no joy in noble memory,
For if they be no more and so shall we,
Who should care what earthly glory they win?
 
But if life ends not through doors Death flings wide
And the fruit of seed planted will endure,
Men’s faith may then eternity secure
And glory attained by those who have died.
 
T’is no happy truth but it must be such
If this life is all then all is not much.

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The Best Season

June 20, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Here’s an original work I have been tweaking for some time now.

 

Asphalt forms the blacktop

On which I play,

Blood-red seeps from my legs

When kness I scrape.

 

 Tight kinks crown my head

Like saintly halos,

Passing through dense brick

Of earthen ghettos.

 

 My shape is lean and seems

As glist’ning bronze,

When seen to perspire

‘Neath Summer’s sun.

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Blame Not My Gun

May 7, 2009 · Leave a Comment

I wrote some time ago about sir Thomas Wyatt’s “Blame Not My Lute” but some gentleman named Randy Niere has written a delightful parody of that classic English poem which also doubles as a plea perhaps to gun control advocates. Remember, guns don’t kill people; apparently, poets kill people.

 

Blame not my gun, for it must shoot

at him or her as likest me

for as I point, my gun is bound

to give such wounds as pleaseth me.

Although you give me cash and change

and wish that I was out of range,

Blame not my gun.

 

My gun, alas, doth not offend

to lethal force it must agree

to make such holes as I intend

in those who do not mark my plea.

And though my plea is somewhat rude,

with mercantile greed imbued,

blame not my gun.

 

My loaded gun may not deny

but as I shoot it must obey

curse it not then, so wrongfully

but give me all your hard-won pay.

I, through this crime which you so spite,

do get my gain by dark of night.

Blame not my gun.

 

Loot needs to loot and spending, change

and pilfered cash must needs be sown.

your purse so great, my debt’s wide range,

of right it must abroad be blown.

and though you would some cop alert,

yield now, or I will do thee hurt.

Blame not my gun.

 

Blame but myself, that hast misdone

and well deserv’ed to have blame.

But do not strike at me, or run

for then my gun shall sound thy name.

For if my trigger-finger plays

and your death proves that robbing pays.

Blame not my gun.

 

Farewell thou rube, for though thou soak

my threads in gore and crimson rain,

it seems I am no longer broke

and can now pay my debts again.

Yea if perchance this churlish crime

results in my not doing time,

Blame not my gun.

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Looney Tunes and Necessary Connection

May 3, 2009 · 3 Comments

coyote-effect

Necessary connection is the idea that there is a necessary connection between the things we call causes and the things we call effects. Hume argues that if there were such a necessary connection, the effect of any cause and the cause of any effect would be known a priori. He claims that if there is some secret power which necessitates that b result from a, we have no knowledge of it. Then where do we get this impression that b must result from a necessarily? The answer: constant conjunction. For Hume, the constant conjunction of event a followed by event b leads us to assume a necessarily connection. There may be a necessary connection, there may not be; all we know for sure is that the events (which we call cause and effect) are conjoined in our experience. This leaves open the possibility that we have no knowledge about the world based on causal inferences because this conjunction, constant up to this point, could fail us in the next instant. The Looney Tunes characters could run off cliffs and walk on air until Bugs Bunny got them to read a book on the laws of physics. From that time forward, whenever the characters ran off a cliff, they fell. Hume’s negative conclusion about the source of our idea of necessary connection makes it possible that unsupported rabbits might walk on air–or speak, for that matter–in the very next moment. In this case, experience can tell us about experience, but nothing about the world. Oh, what a looney world this would be!

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Descartes: An Augustinian?

April 26, 2009 · Leave a Comment

     Stephen Menn’s Descartes and Augustine, published in 1998 by Cambridge University Press, explores the relationship between these two giants of western philosophy, seeking to demonstrate the debt the former owes to the latter and the important contributions each thinker has made to Western thought. Menn, who teaches ancient and medieval philosophy at McGill University in Montreal, takes a holistic approach to his subject, taking care to unfold the work of each man, distinguishing Augustine and Descartes from the Augustinians and Cartesians of the intervening centuries. Menn goes further, constructing for the reader the intellectual climate in which the two philosophers developed their methods and the body of thought for which they have come to be known.

     The structure of Menn’s work suits his purposes. His central concern is Descartes and he makes that clear by first addressing Descartes’ place in the history of philosophy, the scope of his work, as well as Menn’s own program for establishing the link between Descartes and his predecessor of 1200 years. Menn will have considered his project successful if, in the end, he has “answered the challenges presented by Gueroult, Gilson, and Gouhier.”

     Gueroult is the 20th century French philosopher, Martial Gueroult, who points to Descartes’ own proclamations of intellectual independence and his insistence on building a completely new philosophy without appeal to authority as proof that Descartes could have no more than a superficial link to Augustine. Gueroult argued that Descartes moved from first principles employing pure logic without appeal to anything outside of his system. Menn addresses Gueroult’s challenge like a criminal prosecutor, showing that Descartes had means, motive, and opportunity to make considerable use of Augustine’s thought and work. The atmosphere in which Descartes moved, Menn argues, was so saturated with Augustinianism that Descartes may have taken for granted the degree to which he borrowed from Augustine. Menn supports this claim by providing a clear historical account of the prevailing intellectual climate of Europe at that time as well as correspondences between Descartes and his explicitly Augustinian acquaintances. Menn makes it clear that Descartes both read and discussed Augustine with his friends. Further, Descartes’ strong desire to wrest philosophy away from the Aristotelians led him down the same path as Augustine of acquiring wisdom, and the mandate Descartes received from several influential friends to create a new philosophy based on sound metaphysics was all the opportunity he needed.

     Menn’s other two challengers, the French philosophers Etienne Gilson and Henri Gouhier, agree with Menn that Descartes was significantly influenced by Augustine in his method, but they say that the spirit of the former’s work is opposed to the latter’s in such a way that Descartes could never rightly be called an Augustinian. Menn cites Gouhier’s declaration that,

 

it matters little that the matter is the same in the two systems; it matters little that the cogito is found in one and in the other; it matters little that the two apologetics have recourse to the same procedures; it matters little that the two dialectics work themselves out beyond the bounds of the sensible world (8).

 

Even as Gouhier concedes Menn’s very point against Gueroult, he argues that these similarities could never make Descartes an Augustinian because “there is a soul that these resemblances do not touch.” What could separate thinkers who share such a resemblance? For Gouhier and Gilson it all turns on the faith-reason dichotomy. Menn tells us that, “Gilson agrees with Gouhier that the relations between faith and reason are decisive on the question of Descartes’ Augustinianism: in developing a philosophy unconnected with faith, Descartes is ‘pursuing radically anti-Augustinian ends.’” Augustine’s work, they argue, is a fusion of faith and reason; Descartes leaves no room for faith in his philosophy (8).

     Menn, in trying to demonstrate that the faith-reason dichotomy does not separate the two men, might have shown how both men use the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, omni-benevolent God as a guarantor of truths about the external world, but he chooses a different approach. Rather than attempting to show that there may be an element of faith in Descartes’ philosophy which connects him to Augustine, he endeavors to “set Augustine’s doctrine of faith and reason in its proper perspective, showing that it does not have the priority in Augustine’s thought that Gilson supposes, and that it does not dictate a fusion between faith and reason.” Menn wants to show that his two challengers fundamentally misunderstand Augustine (16).

     Augustine, Menn argues, was essentially a man of reason. It was reason that led him away from the doctrines of the Manicheans; it was reason that, like Descartes, led him away from Aristotelian philosophy; it was reason which assured him that the path to wisdom could only be found in turning one’s focus inward and upward, toward the self and God. Like Descartes, Augustine saw that arguing from external things to inward things was arguing from that which is less certain toward that which is more certain. Wisdom, both men maintained, could only be found in starting with that which is most certain, the self and God, and then forming, by logical steps, an understanding of the external world. Thus, Menn says,

 

Augustine wanted to pass from ignorance of God to knowledge of God, and knowledge is acquired only by reason; but those who promised to lead him to God by reason were unable to deliver him from his ignorance. In these circumstances, he began to think that he could pass from ignorance to knowledge only by passing through an intermediate stage of belief (188).  

 

This intermediate stage of belief meant that some truths could not be reached as conclusions but must be taken on authority, and this was necessary because of ignorance and impurity. The wise man knows the truth because he reasons rightly. He reasons rightly because of the purity of his soul which is turned away from inferior things and towards God. The ignorant man, then, has two problems: he lacks the truth and he lacks the ability to find it in his impure state. How, then, can he come to the knowledge of the truth? Answer: he must accept the authority of others. Augustine, Menn says, at first thought it unreasonable to accept the judgment of another when we do not know whether they are right, but concluded that life is full of countless cases of people doing this very thing for their own good:

 

In all these cases, we must believe things that we do not know, if we are to be able to act rightly in securing temporal goods or in fulfilling our moral obligations…We believe on authority in everyday matters because we do not know them for ourselves, and because our chance to acquire some good depends on our adopting some belief to guide our action. But in matters of religion, where we are concerned with God and the soul…the good we stand to acquire is much greater; thus Augustine concludes that the willingness to believe on authority instead of waiting for certain knowledge is all the more reasonable in these matters (189).

 

     Belief, then, for Augustine, is a bridge for the ignorant man across the chasm of his ignorance to a place where reason may take over. But is this not what Gilson called a fusion of faith and reason? It depends on how one interprets the word ‘fusion.’ For Augustine, Menn claims, belief must assist reason only in those areas where unaided reason may not guide us to certain knowledge; the two are not used in tandem nor are they ever at odds with one another. This is far superior to opinion, in which people consider themselves knowledgeable when they are still, in fact, ignorant. One problem with this approach is that it does seem to gloss over an important difference between Augustine and Descartes: Augustine held that the very nature of God and the soul was such that, aside from faith, one could not be fully certain of; Descartes, however, after establishing that the proposition that he exists is epistemically indubitable, works out his entire metaphysics in logical steps without appeal to authority or faith. Descartes certainly had faith, but he did not appear to build his philosophy on it. Descartes thought he had proven by reason what Augustine held as a matter of faith. Though both men were devout Catholics, and neither was willing to contradict the central Christian doctrines, Augustine seemed to reason from his beliefs, while Descartes seemed to hold his philosophy and his faith apart from one another.

     So, how well does Menn meet his goals? Well, he establishes a clear link between Descartes and Augustine, and any reasonable juror would convict Descartes of Augustinianism in some limited sense. Each man had a similar contemplative method, each sought to establish the existence of God and the soul before extending their thoughts to the external world, and each had a strong faith in the Catholic Church. But, as for whether or not there is a fundamental distinction in the “animating spirit” of each man’s thought and work, the jury may still be out.  

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Hooah!: Is it in you?

April 26, 2009 · 8 Comments

this-sucks2
Which character do you most identify with?

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Herbert Gives You Wings!

April 10, 2009 · 3 Comments

In the spirit of the season, I give you George Herbert’s “Easter Wings”:

Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,

   Though foolishly he lost the same,

      Decaying more and more,

        Till he became

           Most poore:

           With  thee

        Oh let me rise

   As larks, harmoniously,

  And sing this day  thy victories:

Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

 

My  tender  age  in  sorrow   did   beginne:

   And still with sicknesses and shame

      Thou  didst  so  punish  sinne,

         That  I  became

           Most thinne.

           With  thee

        Let me combine

      And feel this day thy victorie:

   For,  if  I  imp  my  wing  on  thine

Affliction shall  advance the  flight in  me.

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Have Poetry, Will Travel

April 6, 2009 · 6 Comments

I was made to memorize Poe’s ”The Raven” in high school by my English teacher and I still recite it to myself today. I’m sure Mrs. Moore didn’t realize what she had done for me. I didn’t  realize how much I enjoyed that poem until it became my constant companion. Since then, I have amassed quite an impressive mental repository of poetry and other literature that suits my fancy. It is so satisfying to carry around my favorite works with me like old friends. I think many more people would agree with me if they could get over their initial compunction. I find that recitation of poetry to one’s self is therapeutic, a healthy way to relieve incidental boredom, vocabulary building, and occasionally helpful at a dinner party. Whereas reading is off-set by the tedium of actually following along in a book, memorized recitation is a pleasure more analogous to a familiar dance: since the movement is already familiar to you, you may simply bask in the beauty of the music. Whenever I am tempted to think I am alone in this world, I come across a compatriot from the land of Mnemonia. One such compatriot recently wrote an essay in the New York Times called “Got Poetry?”. The author makes a pretty good case for memorizing poetry: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/books/review/Holt-t.html?_r=1&emc=eta1 

Thanks for the link, Justin.

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The Flower and the Call:

April 4, 2009 · Leave a Comment

An Imaginative Exposition of Frost’s “The Telephone”

     The first thing one notices when glancing over the structure of Robert Frost’s poem, “The Telephone,” is that it is a conversation between two unnamed persons. The first speaker, let’s call him John, says:

When I was just as far as I could walk

From here today,

There was an hour

All still

When leaning with my head against a flower

I heard you talk.

Don’t say I didn’t, for I heard you say—

You spoke from that flower on the windowsill—

Do you remember what it was you said?

The person to whom John is speaking is his wife, Jill. It is about mid-day on a warm spring Saturday. This young couple had had fight the previous night, as young couples do, and things had not yet thawed the following morning. So, John, as young men are wont to do, decided to take a walk to blow off some steam. He thought he’d be walking all day, but it turns out he was not very far at all before he began to miss his young wife and longed for her company. He did indeed see a flower in a small park a few miles from their little apartment in the city. It reminded him of the very flower in the windowsill above the kitchen sink, and he imagined her there doing the morning dishes. He realized that he had not even kissed her before he left. He always kisses her before he leaves. Then, he did lean down to that flower, just to be close to it, to be close to her. All of a sudden, this little flower, which he had usurped from a small yellow bee about its work, became the receiver of a magical telephone through which he heard, or thought he heard, Jill’s voice. Jill, still a little angry, was about to deny any such silly thing, but hesitates. She coyly responds,

First tell me what it was you thought you heard.

Then, perceiving an opening, John:

Having found the flower and driven a bee away,

I leaned my head,

And holding by the stalk,

I listened and I thought I caught the word—

What was it? Did you call me by my name?

Or did you say—

Someone said ‘Come’—I heard it as I bowed.

Jill, forgetting her anger, smiles and says:

I may have thought as much, but not aloud.

And John, happy for the opening, says with a grin:

Well, so I came.

John claims the kiss that should have been his this morning and all is right with the world again.

 

For a reading of the poem without my eisegesis, here’s a link:

http://www.bartleby.com/119/6.html

 

 

 

 

 

 

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