Posted by: N.S. Palmer | January 25, 2012

“Helping” the Afghans

By N.S. Palmer

A friend who’s active-duty military and who was in Afghanistan remarked that he didn’t think the Afghans could get by “without our help.”

Hmm. I held my tongue, but hmm.

My friend is a decent enough sort, but he’s in the Army and sees the world from that viewpoint. As a matter of psychological self-preservation, he must see the world from that viewpoint.

Nobody likes to see himself or herself as a villain. We always try to believe that we do what is right. If not right, then necessary. If not necessary, then what we had no other choice but to do.

When my friend thinks about the American occupation of Afghanistan, he thinks about building clinics and dispensing antibiotics to kids. As much as he can, he avoids thinking about the more common instances of bombing wedding parties, shooting kids, and urinating on the corpses. He doesn’t do that, so he tries to ignore it and focuses on any positive images he can find.

But “helping the Afghans”? Forget about making a sarcastic retort. It was all I could do not to laugh.

The Afghans did not request American “help” any more than they requested it from the Russians or the British, who previously attacked and occupied their country. They did not request that the United States install a puppet government. They did not request that their country be bombed and that their people be slaughtered.

One thing I’ve learned is that war is constant. Three reasons are most important.

First, human nature contains an aggressive and destructive impulse that war satisfies. That impulse often drowns out the voices of conscience and reason — in some of us more often than others.

Second, war is financially profitable for some people. Not for the soldiers who fight in it, and certainly not for the victims of its carnage. But bankers and weapons merchants make a killing,  figuratively and literally. Smedley Butler, a Marine Corps Major General, discussed this in his book War is a Racket.

Third, war is politically profitable for government officials. It allows them to pose as courageous heroes who defend the nation. It enables them to crack down on dissent and enact oppressive laws. It distracts the population from the country’s real problems, “busying giddy minds with foreign quarrels,” as Shakespeare said. And it keeps the military busy overseas, instead of giving them free time to think about staging a coup at home.

I don’t have anything particularly wise to say to my friend about Afghanistan or America’s other imperial aggressions. As long as he wears the uniform, he has to believe in what he’s doing, and there’s no point in trying to talk him out of it. You or I would probably feel the same in his circumstances.

What I can do is talk more generally about how every person’s life is sacred; how war, killing, and destruction should be avoided whenever possible; and how America was founded to be a republic, not an empire.

War and oppression will always be around because they’re a consequence of human nature. However, from time to time, we can moderate and reduce them a bit.

It’s not as inspiring a goal as universal peace and brotherhood, but it’s what we can achieve on earth.

Copyright 2012 by N.S. Palmer. May be reproduced as long as byline, copyright notice, and URL (http://www.ashesblog.com) are included.

4 Comments

Posted in history, Politics, United States | Tags: , , , , , ,

Posted by: N.S. Palmer | January 7, 2012

Good and Bad Reasons to Limit Voting

By N.S. Palmer

Graphic: United Federation of Teachers.

Like most informed people, I’ve watched in disgust as over a dozen Republican-controlled state legislatures have enacted laws to prevent Democrats from voting.

They don’t come right out and say that’s what they’re doing, of course. To hear them talk, it’s about preventing “vote fraud.” That follows a script from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a right-wing group that works for America’s super-rich against the 99.9 percent.

Those same people were curiously incurious about vote fraud in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. The 2000 election was stolen by rigged electronic voting machines, voter suppression, and “spoiled” ballots in Florida — where the election machinery was controlled by George W. Bush’s brother Jeb. The Bushes’ dirty tricks made the vote count so close that a recount was needed. Then, Bush’s friends on the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a halt to the recount and they awarded the presidency to Bush. Rather than cast doubt on the legitimacy of the U.S. government, Democratic candidate Al Gore conceded without a fight. Later, a consortium of six major newspapers (including The New York Times) and the University of Chicago did a comprehensive recount and analyzed the data under various assumptions. In every scenario, Gore won.

The 2004 presidential election was stolen by the Bush-Cheney machine in much the same way, but this time in Ohio rather than Florida. A University of Pennsylvania statistician found that based on the data, it was virtually impossible for Bush to have won the 2004 election. But the ever-subservient news media ignored the evidence of massive vote fraud when it benefitted the Bush-Cheney regime.

At the retail level, however — that of individuals or small groups of people conspiring to vote fraudulently — very few cases have been documented. Republican cries of “vote fraud” are simply a pretext to prevent voting by groups likely to vote Democratic: minorities, young people, the poor, and the elderly.

In the eyes of Republicans and their super-rich corporate paymasters, such people have no business voting in the first place. They’re not “the right kind of people.” If they were good enough to vote, they’d be rich. And corrupt. And white.

The Republican agenda is simple: Government should be of, by, and for the rich and the politically connected. Voting by the common people is a nuisance that should be minimized as much as possible.

Democrats want more people to vote for the same reason that Republicans want fewer people to vote: The majority favors ideas, programs, and policies that Democrats say they support, even if their actions often contradict their promises.

Progressives believe that for democracy to be legitimate, voting should be extended as widely as possible. No group should be deprived of the vote, either directly or through subterfuge.

But It’s Not That Simple

But the issue isn’t quite as simple as either side pretends. Democracy as an institution was not handed down to us on tablets from Mount Sinai. It has taken many forms in many different times and places.

In the South prior to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, literacy tests were used to prevent black citizens from voting. That’s an unsavory purpose. The law was also used to harass and humiliate black citizens. That’s despicable.

On the other hand, consider the official justification for the law: In order to be properly informed about the issues, voters had to be able to read. If they couldn’t read, then they couldn’t be properly informed. If they weren’t informed, then they couldn’t vote intelligently. Society has a legitimate interest in limiting the vote to people who can vote intelligently. You can say that the argument was abused, and it was, but it’s not a crazy argument. It makes sense.

In the early days of the American republic, voting was limited to white male property owners. Women couldn’t vote. Even if they were free and not slaves, blacks couldn’t vote. That limitation of voting rights led to a particular kind of government and political system. It was worse in some respects than our system, and better in other respects.

Even in the birthplace of democracy, ancient Athens, only white male Athenians could vote. Women couldn’t vote, and were considered about equal in status to horses. Foreigners couldn’t vote, and were considered fit for enslavement. That limitation of voting rights led to a government and society that was pretty good for white male Athenians. Its results were pretty good for all of Western civilization that came afterward, giving us foundations in science, philosophy, art, and politics. The cost was what we’d call injustice. Athenian males disagreed.

The Real Issues in Voting Rights

The real issues in voting rights are:

  • What values do we consider most important?
  • What kind of society and government do we want?
  • And who counts as part of “we”?

From a political-science standpoint, democracy only works in small political units up to populations of about 500,000. When a political unit is bigger than that, democracy breaks down because (1) it’s impossible for the majority to know what’s going on, and (2) each individual’s vote is so diluted that it has almost no chance of making a difference. Ancient Athens had a population of about 250,000 — of whom only about 30,000 could vote.

With larger populations, democracy degenerates into oligarchy, just as it has in the United States. Democracy is no longer about rule by the majority, because that’s practically impossible. Instead, it becomes a device by which the ruling oligarchy deceives the majority into consenting to whatever the oligarchy does for its own benefit. It’s a way to give the majority of people the illusion that they have some control without actually giving them control. In essence, voting is transformed from an exercise in governance into an act of consent to be ruled and exploited by the oligarchy.

That said, there is some wider benefit in having people feel that they are part of the society. That applies even if the political system is corrupt. Voting rights are a way to recognize people as full citizens, giving them status and respect. People who feel that they are part of the society are more inclined to cooperate with others, help the needy, and contribute in other ways that the ruling oligarchy neglects because it’s too busy stuffing its bank accounts and starting wars.

For those reasons, I think that voting rights should be extended as widely as possible, even though the people voting are unlikely to have any power. It’s not a political but a social exercise: People who can vote are part of our society. We, as their peers, show them respect and acceptance.

Copyright 2012 by N.S. Palmer. May be reproduced as long as byline, copyright notice, and URL (http://www.ashesblog.com) are included.

Technorati Tags: , , , , ,

Leave a Comment

Posted in history, Philosophy, Politics, Society, United States, USA | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: N.S. Palmer | December 17, 2011

Inverting the Constitution

By N.S. Palmer

It’s inscribed on a sign above the entrance to the Pentagon:

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

I recalled that principle of American government when I read about the “National Defense Authorization Act.” Enacted by Congress and signed by President Obama, it states:

Nothing in this section is intended to limit or expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military Force.

Congress passed the Authorization for Military Force in 2001 after the 9/11 false-flag attacks that were blamed on “al Qaeda.”

All right-thinking people believe it means the president and the U.S. government may kill, torture, oppress, or launch wars of aggression against anyone they choose.

They will retain that authority for the duration of the “war on terror” — or, as commentator Jon Stewart remarked,

until the war on terror ends, and terror surrenders and is no longer available as a human emotion.

In other words, if it’s up to them, forever.

In that respect, the “war on terror” is exactly like the “war on drugs.” It can never be won and is never intended to be won. It’s merely an open-ended justification for profiteering and a police state.

Notice how the wording of the new law:

Nothing in this section is intended to limit or expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military Force.

almost precisely inverts the meaning of the Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

All “evil empires” collapse sooner or later, often in unpredictable ways. We’re waiting to see how it will happen this time.

It will probably involve a good deal of suffering. We can only hope that some of the suffering hits the right people.

Copyright 2011 by N.S. Palmer. May be reproduced as long as byline, copyright notice, and URL (http://www.ashesblog.com) are included.

Leave a Comment

Posted in history, Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: N.S. Palmer | November 10, 2011

What I Didn’t Know About Racism

By N.S. Palmer

I recently saw the movie “The Help,” which chronicled the insults and indignities suffered by black people in the early 1960s.

Its basic theme, of black people humiliated and oppressed by whites who were either racist or oblivious, rang true. It was consistent with my experience in life, though it took me many years to understand that experience.

As a child, I knew almost nothing about racism. It never occurred to me that racial differences were significant.

I don’t say that to establish how virtuous and enlightened I was, because I wasn’t. Virtue requires conscious choice. And children, no matter how clever, are almost never enlightened. I didn’t choose not to be a racist. I simply wasn’t one.

Even as a child, I was a nerd. I lived in a world of books and ideas, not of people. I still do. I might not remember your face (or your race), but I’ll remember numbers and facts about you. We nerds don’t dislike people, but people don’t register with us as vividly as do ideas, facts, and principles. As a character on the delightful and quickly-cancelled TV sitcom “Wonderfalls” said of himself, “It’s a borderline autistic thing.”

By the way, that’s not just a funny line from a TV show. Some neuroscience researchers think that autism is an extreme form of male cognitive organization. But I digress.

In my primary school class, Greg was the only African-American kid. There were no Hispanics or Asians, so except for Greg, we were all white. As far as I could tell, no one treated Greg any differently from the rest of us. I never noticed anyone make hostile remarks about him or pick fights with him. Of course, as a nerd, I wasn’t attuned to that kind of thing. However, I would have noticed it if it had been intense or repeated.

Much of the time when I was a child, one or the other of two black ladies took care of me.

Margie, my parents’ housekeeper, was from Alabama. She’d previously worked in an ice cream shop, which to a seven-year-old boy seemed like a glamorous and exciting job. She taught me how to scoop ice cream “the professional way” and how to make chocolate sodas. She praised the childish comic strips that I drew and she encouraged my artwork. She nagged me to practice for my piano lessons.

Bea, my grandparents’ housekeeper, was a plump, good-natured lady a little over four feet tall. Whenever my father saw her, he jokingly asked Bea if she was standing up or sitting down. She was devoted to my grandparents and to me. She taught me a lot, including personal hygiene.

And yet, there was something odd about Bea’s relationship to my grandparents. I didn’t understand it at the time. My maternal grandfather loved Bea but hated black people. That wasn’t what he called them, but you can guess the word he used.

After a while, I realized the inconsistency of my grandfather’s attitude: he hated black people in general, but every black person who he  knew personally was “different.” The ones he knew were all right. It was only the ones he didn’t know who were — well, whatever he thought they were. He never elaborated on the subject, at least not to me.

In high school, one of my best friends was John, an African-American who again was one of a very small number of black students at the school. Everyone, including John, made jokes about race, but as far as I could tell it was all good-natured. Just as with Greg in primary school, I was never aware of anyone being unfriendly to John or saying hateful things on account of his race. He was a very likeable guy, and as far as I could tell, everyone liked him.

In college, one of my friends was Charlie, a pre-med student. That was when I first became aware of race as an issue, though I was still fairly obtuse and insensitive about it. Charlie was one of a fairly small number of black students at our college.

My perception might have been unfair, but it seemed to me that most of our black students confirmed the worst racist stereotypes. I thought that they weren’t serious about their studies, and that they complained constantly about real and imagined insults. Looking back, I’d guess that my perception was biased by those very same racist stereotypes, but that’s what I thought I saw.

Charlie was different. (That sounds just like something my grandfather would have said.) Unlike the other black students, he wasn’t on scholarship. Whenever you saw Charlie, he was doing one of three things: studying, participating in class, or working at one of the part-time jobs he held to pay his way through college. The other black students thought he was “acting white” and viewed him with disdain. He graduated with straight ‘A’s. I’m sure that he’s now an eminent doctor somewhere.

How much hurt and anger lurked beneath the smiles and easy-going demeanor of all those black people? Were they really as happy as they seemed?

I hope so. But I suspect it was partly because they knew what happened to black people who expressed dissatisfaction or stepped out of line.

What have I learned from all that? I suppose it amounts to this:

  • A just society doesn’t treat any group of people as second-class citizens.
  • Even if people smile when they’re mistreated, it doesn’t mean they’re happy about it or that they think it’s okay.
  • An injustice done to any person is an injustice done to all of us, and we should treat it as such.

As well as what I always knew:

  • All people have infinite worth and importance. To the extent that we can, we should treat them that way.

Copyright 2011 by N.S. Palmer. May be reproduced as long as byline, copyright notice, and URL (http://www.ashesblog.com) are included.

6 Comments

Posted in Class System, Culture, Feuilleton, history, Politics, psychology, Society, United States | Tags: , , , , ,

Posted by: N.S. Palmer | November 6, 2011

Making Sense of Christian Belief

By N.S. Palmer

The title of this blog post is not meant to be disrespectful. It reflects my sincere quest, as a non-Christian, to understand what Christians believe.

Some of the best people I know are Christians. They are not merely good people: they are also smart people who think deeply about their faith.

They talk a lot about Jesus being the son of God, dying for the sins of mankind, and so forth.

Most of the time, I literally don’t know what they’re talking about. But I do know that whatever it is, it’s important to them. It helps them be the good people that they are.

For that reason alone, I want to understand it. In addition, of course, I want to understand it because they’re my friends.

As a college student, I was kind of a low-rent Richard Dawkins, full of logic and superiority, sneering at those benighted souls who believed in God. I thought that if you couldn’t understand something clearly in human terms, then it didn’t exist. I had no patience with the mysteries that arguably form the heart of human life.

Over the years, I came to believe that I’d been wrong. There are all kinds of realities that we don’t understand, and that we might be unable to understand. But they still exist. However vaguely, we can sense their presence beckoning to us from beyond the cosmos. We can also talk about them, but since we don’t understand them, we shouldn’t expect to make much sense when we do talk about them.

So I’m perfectly at home with the idea that some realities transcend human understanding. At the same time, Christians seem to think they’re saying things about Jesus that are quite literal and definite, not vague and metaphysical. Can I make any sense of what they’re saying?

For example, take one of the central tenets of Christian belief: “Jesus is the son of God.”

That was a controversial idea in the early years of Christianity, but it’s now accepted as a defining belief.

If you tell me that William is the son of James, then I understand what you’ve said. William and James are human beings with physical bodies. They stand in a certain biological relationship as well as a social relationship. I know what that relationship is.

But if you tell me that Jesus is the son of God, it’s not quite that easy.

That kind of statement made more literal sense in ancient times, when people believed that gods had physical bodies and often visited earth to cavort with human maidens. However, if God is conceived as an immaterial, infinite, transcendent, incomprehensible Being, it’s not at all clear what you mean when you say that someone is His son.

I’ll go further than that: As far as I am able to determine — and perhaps someone will correct me — the statement has no literal meaning. It’s a metaphor that suggests ideas different from the literal meaning of its words.

I think what it actually means to Christians is this:

  • Two millennia ago, there was a Jewish man named Joshua (referred to as “Jesus” by the Greeks).
  • He was able to perceive the love of God more profoundly and completely than other people could.
  • Because of that, his character and his teachings reflected how God wants us to live.

More generally, not specific to Christianity, I think that saying one believes in God means:

  • There is a transcendent moral and spiritual dimension to our lives and our world.
  • That dimension is benevolent and is based on love.
  • We commit ourselves to live according to the loving and benevolent nature of that dimension.

Obviously, there’s a lot more to Christianity and theism than I’ve discussed here. But it seems to me that those are two of the most central issues.

Copyright 2011 by N.S. Palmer. May be reproduced as long as byline, copyright notice, and URL (http://www.ashesblog.com) are included.

13 Comments

Posted in religion | Tags: , , , , ,

Posted by: N.S. Palmer | September 29, 2011

What Is the Soul?

By N.S. Palmer

A friend asked, “what is the soul?”

It’s a worthwhile question. My answer is that you can’t have a mundane answer to a question about a reality that is wholly or partly transcendent. It’s the same reason that no one can come up with a conclusive proof for the existence or non-existence of God.

We know that some things are mental and others are physical, but we can’t define the terms very well and we aren’t sure how they are related to each other. Materialist attempts to reduce everything to physical phenomena tend to be just as tautological and arbitrary as early 20th-century idealist attempts to reduce everything to phenomena of consciousness.

G.E. Moore pointed out that however we explain reality, “mental” and “physical” are categories that we use to organize our experience. In a discussion with an idealist (a person who thinks that only consciousness is real and that physical objects don’t exist), Moore once held up his right hand, pointed to it, and said “This is a physical object.”

Many people have regarded that argument as simpler than it really was. Moore, who was one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century, did not believe that he could refute a metaphysical theory simply by holding up his hand. No, his point was twofold, and much more interesting.

First, regardless of their metaphysical views, people deal with physical objects all the time. No matter how we explain the nature of physical objects, they are part of our daily lives. “Physical object” is the name we give to certain types of phenomena. Talk to an idealist on the street, outside of a philosophy seminar, and ask “What’s the difference between a rock and a mathematical theorem?” The answer will be that one is a physical object and the other is an idea.

Second, Moore was making an epistemological point. Idealism is a theory about the nature of reality, and it denies the existence of physical objects.* This part of his argument was simplicity itself: “Which is more certain: that idealism is true, or that my hand exists and it’s a physical object?”

The same applies to materialist arguments that the soul does not exist. Neuroscientists often breathlessly announce that changes in mental states can be caused by changes in the brain and vice versa. They act as if it were a new insight provided by modern science. But the correlation between mental states and brain states was old news when Plato and Aristotle were alive. Back then, it didn’t prove that mind was reducible to brain activity, and it still doesn’t.

So, which is more certain: that materialism is true, or that you are conscious and reading this sentence?

What the question about the soul really amounts to is not, “Do I exist as something distinct from the physical aspects of my body,” but:

“Do I exist as something independent of the physical aspects of my body, and which will continue to exist when my body dies?”

The answer to the first question is obviously “yes,” for as Descartes observed, “cogito ergo sum.” The answer to the second question is unknown and probably cannot be known in terms of this frame of reference.

As St. Augustine said, “In this world, we live by faith, not by sight.”
______________________________________________
*Meaning, as objects that can exist independently of consciousness.

Copyright 2011 by N.S. Palmer. May be reproduced as long as byline, copyright notice, and URL (http://www.ashesblog.com) are included.

4 Comments

Posted in Philosophy, religion | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: N.S. Palmer | September 12, 2011

The Meaning of Life

By N.S. Palmer

In today’s New York Times, its column “The Stone” asks what The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy called “the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything:”

What is the meaning of life?

The British comedy troupe Monty Python devoted an entire movie to that topic. At the end of the movie, John Cleese summarized the meaning of life as follows:

  • Be nice to people.
  • Don’t eat too much fat.
  • Try to get some walking in.
  • Read a good book every now and then.
  • Live in peace and harmony with people of all races, creeds, and nationalities.

That’s a good answer, considering that the question itself is badly stated. As the supercomputer Deep Thought observed in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, you can’t understand the answer unless you understand the question.

So you can’t answer to the question “What is the meaning of life?” unless you can answer “What is the meaning of the question?”

The New York Times column has some good ideas in it, but largely misses the point. It approvingly quotes Jean-Paul Sartre‘s remark that without God, life has no meaning. But then it disputes the idea that life has meaning with God, either.

The Meaning of Meaning

In logic and linguistics, meaning typically refers to intentionality, the property by which an object refers to something other than itself.

If I say “there is an elephant in the living room,” my statement is not self-contained. It refers to something beyond itself, that is, to the presence of an elephant in the living room.

In fact, intentionality is one of the defining characteristics of consciousness, and therefore of us. To be conscious is to be conscious of something.

That isn’t too far removed from people’s vague sense of what it means for their lives to have meaning. We want our lives to be about more than just themselves. We want them to be in relation to something else.

Most people want to live for something beyond themselves: for God, for their spouse, for their children, for their political ideals, for music, and so forth. They want their lives to be in accordance with their objects (God’s wishes), pleasing to those objects (God’s approval), or beneficial to those objects (the welfare of their children, the success of their political ideals, and so forth).

In that sense, God does give meaning to people’s lives, both:

  • In an absolute, metaphysical sense (whether people believe in God or not), and
  • In a psychological, moral sense (if people choose to devote their lives to following God’s directions as they understand them).

But you can’t make sense of the answer unless you can make sense of the question. That’s how I make sense of it.

Your answer might differ: but if it makes sense to you, that’s what counts.

Copyright 2011 by N.S. Palmer. May be reproduced as long as byline, copyright notice, and URL (http://www.ashesblog.com) are included.

1 Comment

Posted in Culture, Feuilleton, Philosophy, religion | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: N.S. Palmer | July 11, 2011

Old Science in New Bottles

By N.S. Palmer

“Old wine in new bottles” is a common phrase in English. It refers to the practice of taking something old, dressing it up a little, and then pretending that it’s new.

Like so many phrases and proverbs in Western civilization, this one comes from the Bible. In this case, however, it reverses Jesus’ statement from Matthew 9:17:

Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.

In our time, we get a lot of old wine in new bottles. At the grocery store, we get “New! Improved!” laundry detergents whose only change is a “new! improved!” price. In politics, we get the “unitary executive” theory, which recycles the medieval doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, and “privatization,” an updated version of the 18th-century enclosure movement. In literature, we get dumbed-down re-workings of Shakespeare, made suitable for our thuggish and illiterate popular culture.

And then there’s science. We’ve been conditioned to believe that science is always new and shiny. But contemporary scientific research often just re-states, in modern terms, truths that have been known for centuries or millennia.

The latest case of old science in new bottles is reported in the June 18, 2011 issue of Science News:

Villagers from an Amazonian group called the Mundurucu intuitively grasp abstract geometric principles despite having no formal maths education, say psychologist Veronique Izard of the Universite Paris Descartes and her colleagues …

Study co-author and Harvard University psychologist Elizabeth Spelke argues that evolution has endowed people with “core knowledge” about several domains, including physical space.”

(“Geometry Comes Naturally to the Unschooled Mind”)

None of that would be a shock to the ancient Greek philosopher Plato (424 – 348 BCE). Over 2,000 years ago, he told in his dialogue “Meno” about an encounter between his teacher Socrates and an uneducated slave boy:

SOCRATES: He is Greek, and speaks Greek, does he not?

MENO: Yes, indeed; he was born in the house.

SOCRATES: Attend now to the questions which I ask him, and observe whether he learns of me or only remembers.

MENO: I will.

SOCRATES: Tell me, boy, do you know that a figure like this is a square?

BOY: I do.

SOCRATES: And you know that a square figure has these four lines equal?

BOY: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And these lines which I have drawn through the middle of the square are also equal?

BOY: Yes.

SOCRATES: A square may be of any size?

BOY: Certainly.

SOCRATES: And if one side of the figure be of two feet, and the other side be of two feet, how much will the whole be? Let me explain: if in one direction the space was of two feet, and in the other direction of one foot, the whole would be of two feet taken once?

BOY: Yes.

SOCRATES: But since this side is also of two feet, there are twice two feet?

BOY: There are.

SOCRATES: Then the square is of twice two feet?

BOY: Yes.

SOCRATES: And how many are twice two feet? count and tell me.

BOY: Four, Socrates.

SOCRATES: And might there not be another square twice as large as this, and having like this the lines equal?

BOY: Yes.

SOCRATES: And of how many feet will that be?

BOY: Of eight feet.

SOCRATES: And now try and tell me the length of the line which forms the side of that double square: this is two feet—what will that be?

BOY: Clearly, Socrates, it will be double.

SOCRATES: Do you observe, Meno, that I am not teaching the boy anything, but only asking him questions; and now he fancies that he knows how long a line is necessary in order to produce a figure of eight square feet; does he not?

Copyright 2011 by N.S. Palmer. May be reproduced as long as byline, copyright notice, and URL (http://www.ashesblog.com) are included.

Leave a Comment

Posted in history, Mathematics, Philosophy | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by: N.S. Palmer | June 26, 2011

A Political Tip from Marion Barry

Marion Barry, former mayor and current city councilman of Washington, DC. Photo: Politico.com

By N.S. Palmer

Unless you’ve lived in Washington, D.C. as I have, you’ve probably never heard of Marion Barry. He was mayor of Washington from 1979 to 1991, and again from 1995 to 1999.

Now, you have to understand something about Washington. Its population divides neatly into two groups. The lower-class majority is mostly black, mostly struggling financially, and often living in poverty. The upper-class minority is mostly white, mostly affluent, and sometimes astonishingly rich.

The black majority loved Marion Barry. They elected him repeatedly as mayor and stood by him no matter what he did.

But the white power elite hated Barry. To them, he was the epitome of the “uppity black man.” He repeatedly challenged their authority and defended the interests of his black constituents. Even more infuriating, he failed to show white government officials the deference to which they felt entitled from blacks. Despite what you’ve heard, racism is alive and well, even among people who wear expensive suits and speak in politically-correct lingo.

So Barry was a thorn in the side of people with power. They tried for years to get rid of him. There were corruption investigations, embarrassing leaks to newspapers, and attempts by Congress to cripple the D.C. government in various ways. None of it worked.

One of the repeated allegations against Barry was that he used illegal drugs. Based on that allegation, his political foes demanded that he take monthly drug tests to prove his innocence.

And that’s when the crafty Barry demonstrated one of the classic tactics of political gamesmanship.

When asked by reporters if he would take a drug test, Barry replied that he already took drug tests regularly, every time he went to the doctor.

His answer was nonsense, of course. But that was its brilliance. It changed the subject. Now, people were no longer talking about whether or not Barry used drugs. Instead, they were talking about whether or not he knew the difference between giving a routine urine sample for a physical exam and giving a urine sample for a drug test. It threw his attackers completely off-message.

Others have used the tactic, of course. When the FBI, ATF, and military units made their final deadly assault on the Branch Davidian religious sect in Texas, they used tanks, flame throwers, poison gas, and automatic weapons. They also used loudspeakers that blared “This is not an attack.” When President Obama wanted to continue his unprovoked military attacks against Libya, he claimed that the U.S. was not engaged in “hostilities” and he could continue the attacks without Congressional authorization. In both cases, the claims were nonsense, but they had the desired effect of confusing the situation.

The feds finally got Marion Barry, of course. They investigated him thoroughly, just as right-wing operatives recently profiled Rep. Anthony Weiner, and laid a trap based on his known weaknesses.

In 1990, they lured Barry to a hotel room and videotaped him using cocaine. FBI agents then burst in and arrested him. He went to prison for six months.

The D.C. black majority had the last laugh. In an obvious gesture of defiance to the federal power establishment, they re-elected Barry as mayor in 1995.

Copyright 2011 by N.S. Palmer. May be reproduced as long as byline, copyright notice, and URL (http://www.ashesblog.com) are included.

Leave a Comment

Posted in Class System, Politics | Tags: , , , , , ,

Posted by: N.S. Palmer | June 17, 2011

Knowing the End of the World?

By N.S. Palmer

Harold supposedly didn’t know jack. Poor Harold.

Based on his interpretation of the Bible, radio evangelist Harold Camping predicted that “the Rapture” would occur on May 21, 2011.

He was wrong. But in today’s New York Times, Notre Dame philosopher Gary Gutting argues that Camping didn’t know the Rapture was coming even if he had turned out to be right.

The Rapture is an evangelical Christian idea based on a few passages in New Testament. It asserts that when Jesus returns, believers will be snatched off the earth’s surface to “meet Jesus in the air.” They will then be taken to Heaven to sit out the Tribulation, during which all hell will break loose on earth. Meanwhile, the unsaved people left on earth will have to struggle against the Antichrist (either Michael York or Sam Neill, depending on which movie you watch).

One could say a lot of things about Camping and the idea of the Rapture.

Camping seems to make money on his predictions. Hmm. It doesn’t mean he’s insincere, but hmm.

As for the Rapture, the Catholic Church historically didn’t want the Bible to be available in common languages for everyone to read. Interpreting Biblical passages requires a certain amount of knowledge and context. As long as it was only available in Latin and Hebrew, only priests, rabbis, and other clergy could read it. The Church feared that if just anyone could read and interpret the Bible, then some people were likely to come up with uninformed and dubious ideas.

But that’s not why Gutting claims that Camping didn’t know about the Rapture.

Gutting’s argument is based on the definition of knowledge. Traditionally, knowledge has been defined as justified true belief. Suppose I say that there is an elephant in the living room. Do I know it? That amounts to asking:

  • Can I justify my statement by giving reasons and evidence to support it?
  • Is it true? Is there really an elephant in the living room?
  • Do I in fact believe it?

If all those conditions are fulfilled, then I know it.

Gutting argues that Camping’s belief, even if true, would not have been knowledge because it was not justified. He bases his argument on the unstated premise that support from Bible passages cannot justify beliefs. If beliefs aren’t justified, then they aren’t knowledge (justified true belief).

However, the notion of “justifying a belief” can include many kinds of evidence: scientific, logical, mathematical, and, of course, Biblical. That’s where Gutting goes wrong.

In the early part of the 20th century, physicist Paul Dirac predicted the existence of positrons based solely on the results of some mathematics he had done to describe electrons. No one had ever seen a positron. Fifteen years later, they were detected. Was Dirac’s belief unjustified? It wasn’t based on observation. The same applies to some of Einstein’s theories, and even to string theory, which is the current darling of subatomic physics. It’s not based on observation. Is it not knowledge? (Physicist Lee Smolin thinks it’s not knowledge, but he’s in a tiny minority.)

Likewise, it’s arbitrary to say that Camping’s beliefs were unjustified merely because they were based on his idiosyncratic interpretation of the Bible. That applies whether or not we think it’s okay to base knowledge claims on the Bible.

Gutting applies a different argument to other evangelical Christians who believe in the Rapture but don’t try to predict when it will occur. In their case, he argues that without a date attached, predictions of the Rapture are not “falsifiable” and are therefore not knowledge.

That’s an idea popularized by the philosopher Karl Popper. Popper argued that statements about the world qualified as “knowledge” only if they could be proven false. But consider the following statement:

On the evening of October 25, 1946, at the meeting of the Cambridge Moral Science Club, Karl Popper had precisely three shillings in his pocket.

Or:

Whatever is coloured is extended.

Those are both statements about the world that cannot be proven false. Even so, it is possible for someone to know the first, and impossible for anyone (who understands it) not to know the second.

So it’s just as arbitrary for Gutting to claim that other evangelical Christians’ beliefs about the Rapture (and by implication, Orthodox Jews’ beliefs about the Messiah) aren’t knowledge.

To justify a belief means simply to give reasons for it. The reasons might be good or bad, adequate or inadequate. Some justifications are better than others. But if you can cite supporting reasons for a belief, and you can answer objections to the belief, then you’ve justified it.

Notice, of course, that justifying a belief isn’t the same as proving it. When you justify a belief, you show that you can reasonably hold the belief. It might still be false, and future evidence could prove that.

But let’s breathe a sigh of relief that, at least for the moment, we don’t have to contend with the Rapture.

Copyright 2011 by N.S. Palmer. May be reproduced as long as byline, copyright notice, and URL (http://www.ashesblog.com) are included.

3 Comments

Posted in Philosophy, religion | Tags: , , , , , ,

Older Posts »

Categories

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.