imports from thinkspot.com

content/post/a-potential-defense-of-naturalistic-idealism.md

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+---
+title: "A Potential Defense of Naturalistic Idealism"
+date: 2019-12-30T12:19:44Z
+tags: ["plato","forms","eidos","naturalism","materialism","universalism"]
+topics: ["philosophy"]
+image: /img/plato-thinking.png
+draft: false
+---
+
+One frequent appeal by determinists in the free will debate, involves invoking certain facts about neuroscience to deny efficacy to the conscious subject. In order to do this, one of the things the determinist must say, is that sense impulses are somehow processed unconsciously into a coherent whole, before they are presented to the 'conscious' subject as an 'experience', and that this processing (along with pre-conscious processing of decision-making activity), shows that we are entirely causally determined.
+
+Setting aside the implications on free will for now, I want to address the idea that sense experience must be pre-processed, before it is consciously "perceived". If this is true -- and from a cursory reading of a few bits of literature, it does seem like this is in fact the case (impulses from nerve endings in our toes get to the brain before impulses from nerve endings in our nose, for example) -- then it's hard to avoid the conclusion that Berkeley came to.
+
+Berkeley insisted that perceptual experiences were nothing but ideas in the mind. This is a simplistic way to put things. But what would we call the preconscious processing necessary to assemble an experience into a perception that can be consciously understood? Would not the product of that -- the perception -- be an idea? The idea of a book, or a table, or of the color red, or of the wind on our face and its sound in our ears? How could it not be?
+
+Even if we reject the notion of "universals" or Platonic forms (which this consideration does not rely upon), we must still say that the particular things of which I am having an experience, are indeed ideas in my mind at least as much as they are "things in the world".
+
+```[Imported from thinkspot.com on 2 December 2021]```
+

content/post/deduction-seems-vulnerable-to-the-problem-of-induction.md

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+---
+title: "Deduction Seems Vulnerable to the Problem of Induction"
+date: 2019-12-02T12:38:11Z
+tags: ["logic","induction","deduction"]
+topics: ["philosophy"]
+image: /img/symbolic-logic.jpg
+draft: false
+---
+
+Dirty little secret about logic: If induction has a justification problem (and it does), then so does deduction. Why? Because deductions rely on inductive conclusions imported into their premises. Here are a few examples.
+
+A. Aristotelian Syllogism:
+
+1. All men are mortal
+2. Socrates is a man
+3. C: Socrates is mortal
+
+Look at premise 1. What gives us the right to say that this is a true premise? Well, because we cast our gaze over a range of humans, and we see that they have all grown old and died. So, we all must die, yes? That's an inductive inference. How is it justified?
+
+B. Disjunctive Syllogism:
+
+1. This gas is either helium or it is nitrogen
+2. It is not helium
+3. C: It is nitrogen
+
+This time, look at premise 2. What gives us the right to say that this premise is true? In this case, we perform some test on the gas in question. That test takes as its presupposition, that certain gasses always behave in certain ways, under certain conditions. That is an inductive inference.
+
+C. Modus Tollens:
+
+1. If it has rained, then the pavement will be wet.
+2. The pavement is not wet
+3. C: It has not rained.
+
+Again, we see in premise 1, an obvious inductive inference, as a hypothetical proposition. The idea that wet pavement always follows, from rain. This may be obvious common sense, but in formal induction, the inference is not a necessary truth, and is thus not justified.
+
+There are many, many other examples of this. These three are just the most dramatic I could surface at the moment. The point here, is not to delegitimize the use of either form of reasoning, or to call into question the idea of bivalent truth. It is only to point out that the confidence we have in these tools is not grounded on what we seem to think it is, and that we really need to work on improving it.
+
+```[Imported from thinkspot.com on 2 December 2021]```
+

content/post/roger-scruton-rest-in-peace.md

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+---
+title: "Roger Scruton, Rest in Peace"
+date: 2020-01-15T12:06:34Z
+tags: ["eulogy","obituary","roger scruton"]
+topics: ["philosophy"]
+image: /img/rscruton_color.jpg
+draft: false
+---
+
+It's a tragedy that his death is being ignored by everyone. His voice was an essential one, in today's culture. I do not think there is anyone sufficient to replace him. Peter Hitchens, as erudite as he is, is a pale imitation. Scruton was the last of the "somewhere" people.
+
+I first discovered Roger Scruton with the release of the book "Thinkers of the New Left" (1985) -- recently re-released as "Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands" -- a book I discovered in the mid-nineties after reading Allan Bloom's "Closing of the American Mind". But it wasn't until "Beauty" (2009) and "The Uses of Pessimism" (2012), that I began to really appreciate him as a serious philosopher. 
+
+I wish I had the words to do his career justice. I will just say that the BBC documentary "Why Beauty Matters" (accompanying his book) is the best philosophical attempt in the twentieth century to rescue the third leg of the transcendental stool. With that book (and it's accompanying documentary) he literally made Beauty a credible concept again for me:
+
+{{< odysee "Why-Beauty-Matters--(Por-que-a-beleza-importa-)-Roger-Scruton" >}}
+
+For a more fitting eulogy, might I recommend [Steve Turley's video, here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wma5-G-dGs0).
+
+```[Imported from thinkspot.com (with edits) on 2 December 2021]```
+

content/post/the-alienation-of-childbearing.md

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+---
+title: "The Alienation of Childbearing"
+date: 2019-12-19T12:32:11Z
+tags: ["abortion","marxism"]
+topics: ["philosophy","psychology"]
+image: /img/full-surrogacy-now.jpg
+draft: false
+---
+
+According to Sophie Lewis (in {{< newtab title="Full Surrogacy Now)" url="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Full-Surrogacy-Now-Feminism-Against/dp/1786637308/" >}}, if you are a woman, you are a vulnerable victim who at any moment, can be pressed into slave labor as a "gestational worker", subject to horrors as evil as cancer, and as brutal as an animal attack:
+
+> "...It is a wonder we let fetuses inside us. Unlike almost all other animals, hundreds of thousands of humans die because of their pregnancies every year, making a mockery of UN millennium goals to stop the carnage.......biophysically speaking, gestating is an unconscionably destructive business. The basic mechanics, according to evolutionary biologist Suzanne Sadedin, have evolved in our species in a manner that can only be described as a ghastly fluke. Scientists have discovered—by experimentally putting placental cells in mouse carcasses—that the active cells of pregnancy “rampage” (unless aggressively contained) through every tissue they touch. Kathy Acker was not citing these studies when she remarked that having cancer was like having a baby, but she was unconsciously channelling its findings......a human cannot rip away a placenta in the event of a change of heart—or, say, a sudden drought or outbreak of war—without risk of lethal hemorrhage. Our embryo hugely enlarges and paralyzes the wider arterial system supplying it, while at the same time elevating (hormonally) the blood pressure and sugar supply. A 2018 study found that post-natal PTSD affects at least three to four percent of birth-givers in the UK......It seems impossible that a society would let such grisly things happen on a regular basis to entities endowed with legal standing. Given the biology of hemochorial placentation, the fact that so many of us endowed with “viable” wombs are walking around in a state of physical implantability—no Pill, no IUD—ought by rights to be regarded as the most extraordinary thing.......even the most wrongheaded of textbooks written a century ago at least stated the problem to be solved in uncompromising terms: “Birth injuries are so common that Nature must intend for women to be used up in the process of reproduction, just as a salmon die after spawning.”..."
+
+And what is the elixir that will cure this global horror? Why, Marxist labor theory, and the communist utopia, of course!
+
+>  "...What if we reimagined pregnancy, and not just its prescribed aftermath, as work under capitalism—that is, as something to be struggled in and against toward a utopian horizon free of work and free of value?...What is the point of this book?... The aim [of Full Surrogacy Now] is to use bourgeois reproduction today (stratified, commodified, cis-normative, neocolonial) to squint toward a horizon of gestational communism. Throughout, I assume that the power to get to something approaching such a horizon belongs primarily to those who are currently workers—workers who probably dream about not being workers—specifically, those making and unmaking babies..."
+
+This book really deserves an examination. Not for it's positive usefulness, but for its negative usefulness. Some ideas are so bad, they need to be inspected for insight into their origins.

content/post/the-irrationalist.md

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+---
+title: "The Irrationalist"
+date: 2019-12-15T12:49:02Z
+tags: ["sam harris","meditation","buddhism"]
+topics: ["psychology"]
+image: /img/sam-harris.jpg
+draft: false
+---
+
+Sam Harris, {{< newtab title="in his latest podcast," url="https://samharris.org/podcasts/174-life-mind/" >}} gives his listeners a special treat late in the episode. He hounds Richard Dawkins into submitting to a mindfulness meditation, and we get to spend nearly 15 minutes listening to Harris guide us and his guest through it, while waiting for Dawkins to finally ask Harris "what was the point of that?". 
+
+What is remarkable about this whole segment, is the sales pitch that Harris has to offer Dawkins, in order to cow him into doing it. Through it, Harris essentially admits to a view of the universe that is fundamentally irrational. There are aspects of reality that are inaccessible to the rational mind, Harris insists. There are states of transcendence that require the surrender of the conscious self, and the quieting of the thinking mind, in order to to achieve them. Finally, he tells us, the most skeptical of us must imbibe hallucinogenic and psychotropic chemicals in order to disengage the critical faculties and "take the first step". 
+
+My point here, is not to question the sanity of these methods, or even the metaphysics. My point is also not to question the morality of drug-induced altered states. Rather, it is to point out an incredibly glaring inconsistency in Harris' narrative about himself, and the nature of the universe. On the one hand, he is adamant in his atheism and almost dogmatic in his commitment to the idea that such things as truth, goodness, and beauty can be arrived at entirely through reason and science -- and that religious dogmas asserting views of these things are fundamentally wrong, because of their inherent irrationality. 
+
+Then, on the other hand, through his advocacy of meditation and psychedelics, he is telling us that he thinks there are states of consciousness and aspects of ontological reality that are fundamentally incompatible with the reason-conditioned self. This is an irrationalist stance, and it is in direct contradiction to his arguments for atheism and a secular consequentialist ethic. Which is it, Sam?
+
+```[Imported from thinkspot.com on 2 December 2021]```
+

content/post/the-next-stage-of-the-polis.md

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+---
+title: "The Next Stage of the Polis"
+date: 2019-12-01T12:43:27Z
+tags: ["political economy","society","human nature","law","nation states"]
+topics: ["philosophy","politics"]
+image: /img/oresteia.jpg
+draft: false
+---
+
+In Aeschylus' play Oresteia, Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter as an offering to the primitive (pre-classical) gods of nature and war, meant to insure sea passage and victory in an upcoming battle.
+
+ In doing so, he sets in motion a cascade of blood vengeance that echoes the historical practice of pre-classical Greek retaliatory clan justice. On Agamemnon's return home, Clytemnestra cuts his throat in his bath. On the discovery of this horror, Orestes then, on prompting from his sister Elektra, murders his mother Clytemnestra. At this point, Orestes is chased through the rest of the play by the Erinyes (the furies), a symbol of ancient natural justice.
+
+ In the climax and conclusion of the play, on Orestes' pleadings for escape from the Erinyes, Athena descends from Olympus and presides as judge over (mythologically speaking) the first trial by jury. Orestes is spared, and the Erinyes are cast into the earth, with a new task: they are to be ever wary of injustice, and report to her when they see it.
+
+This play is important, because it records (at least in allegory) the social evolution of the Greek people, from ancient nomadic clans, to oligarchic familial tribes, to their "final" stage as citizens in a polis.
+
+ Humanity is ripe for another transformation of this nature, I think. Given the modern capacity of humanity for rapid communication, broad distribution of basic goods, and ever-expanding and ever-mixing intellectual and artistic culture, it seems to me that the city-state model (as expressed in the expanded nation-state form) of organization is struggling to cope. There is a constant tension between local and global, between parochial and universal, between individual and group.Legal regimes don't know how to deal with something like Amazon or Twitter, where everything from toilet paper and Mein Kampf is available to anyone anywhere in the world, and everything from neighborhood school closing notices to international politics is open to all discussion, by anyone in the world. National boundaries appear an anachronism in such a circumstance.
+
+From this perspective, it is easy to see why the idea of nationalism has become a cause célèbre once again, and where the fears which give rise to it come from. Nationalists are right to be deeply concerned about the erasure of traditional borders, and local controls. And the so-called "globalists" are wrong to naively think they can simply expand the model of the city-state one more time, to accommodate the expanding consciousness of mankind.
+
+What is needed is something that can transcend this false dichotomy between city-state and global-state. What that is, I do not know. But I'm not sure the anarchists are right either (just erase the whole thing). I'm not even sure the human species itself is capable of coping with either the idea, or the day-to-day practice of living in a tribe as big as an entire planet. We weren't really evolved to deal with that.
+
+Unfortunately, neither Athena nor God are going to descend from the heavens to rescue us from ourselves. So, we'll just have to figure it out together, if we don't want to end up being just another Greek tragedy.
+
+```[Imported from thinkspot.com on 2 December 2021]```
+

content/post/the-visual-framing-of-narrative.md

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+---
+title: "The Visual Framing of Narrative"
+date: 2020-02-13T10:48:00Z
+tags: ["aesthetics","art","propaganda"]
+topics: ["philosophy","psychology"]
+image: /img/sam-vs-majid.png
+draft: false
+---
+
+I am 36 minutes into the documentary "*Islam and the Future of Tolerance*", and I could not help but notice the contrast in the way that Sam and Majid are visually presented. I am not a filmmaker, but it seems clear to me that there is visual framing of a dichotomous narrative going on here.
+
+ Light/Dark, Good/Evil, Angel/Demon. On the left, Sam is not talking about his own experience in that scene. He's talking about Majid's transformation. On the right, Majid is talking about his own experience of that transformation. Sam is on an upper floor with large windows, centred symmetrically in the frame. Majid is in a parking garage basement with no significant windows, off-center in the frame and at an angle to the architecture of the room. This is clearly religious imagery I'm not quite sure exactly what the narrative is, but it strongly suggests something like, "Sam is saving Majid's soul".
+
+It never ceases to amaze me, how religious non-religious people are - and here, I am referring to the filmmakers, as much as I am Sam and Majid. 
+
+```[Imported from thinkspot.com (with edits) on 2 December 2021]```
+

content/post/totalitarianism-a-hypothesis.md

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+---
+title: "DRAFT: Totalitarianism - an Hypothesis"
+date: 2019-12-23T12:25:26Z
+tags: ["tribalism","communism","fascism"]
+topics: ["philosophy","politics"]
+image: /img/totalitarianism.jpg
+draft: true
+---
+
+Fascism is a form of tribalist totalitarianism. A traditional particularist tyranny, which privileges a core ethnic identity, and views the individual as an 'organ' in the 'body politic', which must conform in order for the organism to succeed. Where the individual rejects "the body", he will, after the fashion of Rousseau, "be forced to be free". History tends toward the ascendance of the most righteous organism, in this view.
+
+ Communism is a form of universalist totalitarianism. A non-traditional, quasi-scientific tyranny, which privileges a wholistic "rational order", above ethnic identity, nationality, or any particular feature of individual identity. Where the individual is given any regard, it is merely as an atomic component of a mass. History tends toward the unification of all organisms, in this view.
+
+ The reason why the latter seems to fascinate us most, today, is because of our penchant for scientific determinism, which gives the idea of communism a certain superficial credibility by analogy to scientific explanations of causal necessity. Both forms of political organization deny the importance of the individual, but fascism seems to transfer the idea of the individual onto a local collective identity, while communism rejects all particularism.
+
+ The liberal response to this, is to attempt to revivify enlightenment notions of the self, and the dignity of the "sovereign" individual. But this is also incomplete, and unsatisfying. The end result of the absolute libertarian ideal can be just as alienating and destructive, as the end result of either the absolute collectivist ideal. It's the ultimate horseshoe.
+
+The American system - a fusion of the enlightenment individualist ideal, with various forms of religious communitarianism - seemed stable at first. But even this has proved unstable over time. Even setting aside the pressure from communist and socialist ideology, the American state, and its citizens, have radically circumscribed their notion of the free individual, from its initial ideal conception, encapsulated in the Declaration of Independence.
+
+ Dismissing this analysis on the basis of circumstantial "corruption" or "perversion" of the ideal simply makes my point more vivid, and is to miss the forest for the trees. It is precisely the problem that the ideal is not conforming to reality, that we must re-evaluate the ideal. Absolutist individualism has sustained numerous valid critiques, which have yet to be addressed politically. Absolutist collectivism, in both its forms, at this point is self-evidently untenable to anyone sane. So, what is left?
+
+I do not think a merging of collectivism and individualism is the right way to think about this. Blending milk and Pepsi doesn't make a new drink. It makes an undigestible mess. Rather, there must be some narrow path between the two, which we have yet to navigate. I'm not convinced secular communitarianism is a good answer to that question, either. But I'll take that up elsewhere.
+
+There must be some third axis we're not seeing, that will allow us to escape the linear dichotomy of individualism vs collectivism (in all its forms). Maybe the answer is not a static model at all, but some sort of temporal framework, in which we move in and out of various groups over time, assuming different degrees of individual responsibility as we do.
+
+```[Imported from thinkspot.com on 2 December 2021]```
+