Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

A well written editorial in the Vancouver Sun explains that there is and should not be any prohibition or sanction on the criticism of religions in Canada. It makes the basic old John Stuart Mill points. Tolerance doesn't just mean tolerance of a belief, religion, or way of life, etc. It means tolerance of its critics. It means nobody gets to be a 'snowflake,' even in Canada, where non-metaphorical snowflakes are so common. Why do these old and familiar points have to be made? Because as the op-ed says, some definitions of "Islamophobia" would include and stigmatize as potential targets of government disfavor "any criticism of Muslim people or Islamic practices -- be it political, cultural, or religious."  The sort of government disfavor involved is generally left unspecified in this context and, since this is Canada, would probably be 'nice.' Soft power and all that. Still: the Sun is right and the idea is repugnant. Let the sky ring wi...

And please don't anyone tell me that I ought to say "dialectic." All I mean is zig-zag. If "dialectic" means something more, it is a word worth avoiding. If, on the other hand, you wish to insist that you, dear reader, mean only "zig-zag" when you say dialectic, I answer that I prefer to say just what I mean. So when what I mean is zig-zag, that is the unpretentious word I use. Every solution generates a new set of problems, inspiring yet more solutions, and those again pose problems. For example: because the solution to acid rain involved getting the sulphur out of diesel fuel, the next generation of problems involved inadequate lubrication, blocked filters, etc. The solution for such problems has involved regular testing of fuel for lubricity, purity, and viscosity to ensure that it meets the specifications of the manufacturer of the engine for which it is intended. It has also involved high pressure common rail injection systems for many type...

Yes, I know the season hasn't begun yet. Still ... Two thoughts. (1) One of the enduring and endearing facts about baseball is that it doesn't have a clock to run down to zero. The duration of a game is defined by the rules, independent of any clock. When the last out has been recorded, the game ends. Much appeal of the game has long been that if one gives one's self to the game, one puts clocks aside. Another thought -- (2) sports might in general be placed on a spectrum from individualist to collectivist. Skiers in the winter Olympics are individualists. They perform on their own, they win the medals on their own, although their achievements are also chalked up to lists of which nation got how many medals, and they wear the colors of that national "team." Football players (American football) are collectivists. The front lines literally line up shoulder to shoulder. The structure is hierarchical, with one central figure calling out the plays and the ot...

There's a certain type of choice that plays a big role in the thinking of a certain type of ethicist. Its a motivational conflict, in a "resistance to temptation" (R2T) context. I really want to do X. Perhaps it has been my lifelong habit to do X every morning. I only recently gave up, or tried to give up, on X. Yet the temptation to X now and then still recurs and must be resisted. At a given moment I either succumb, or I find some non-X diversion and my thoughts thankfully move elsewhere. My question for today: just how important is R2T. Is it paradigmatic, or is it a side issue? Has it been overemphasized, or the reverse?

I've just been reading a blog by a philosophy professor who discusses the attitude with which he approaches his Intro to Ethics course. The practical upshot of the course should be to get students to reflect on the issues of morality in their own life in a systematic way, opening up reflection. There are two distinct approaches possible, and they will depend on the teacher, the college and the student body it recruits. For some Intro to Ethics courses, this course will be a "primer for higher courses" in applied ethics or delving deeper into ethical theory. If a given department views the course in this way, the instructor has to concern himself with harmony within the curriculum. Is A in fact leading toward BCD etc.? On the other hand, and especially given a "core curriculum," an Intro course may be taught with the presumption it is the only ethics (or perhaps the only philosophy) course that various of its students will ever take. In that case of cours...

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink. - George Orwell, 1984 (1949). Just dropping it in here. 

I'm working (too slowly) on a review of a book that takes an international comparative approach to copyright law. I'll record a point here that intrigues me, but that probably won't get into my review. In the European Union, it seems there is now a significant difference at law between the music that is playing in the dentist's office when patients are in the chair undergoing the rigors of examination or repair work on the one hand, and the screening of television programs in the waiting room of a rehab facility as a diversion for patients. I had never given any thought to copyright in either context before, so this is all new to me. It is not so much that there IS a difference that interests me, but how that difference is justified.  As EU directives put the point, a copyright owner has a right to control when his/her/its property will be "communicated to the public." Although this is not the sole consideration, a court is more likely to find a com...

Encino Motors turns up as a critical precedent in a recent federal judge's decision about DACA/Dreamers. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-otc-daca/how-an-obscure-scotus-employment-ruling-put-the-brakes-on-daca-rollback-idUSKBN1EZ2Y6 I wrote about the ENCINO decision here, a year and a half ago, in one of my end-of-session round ups of the big SCOTUS cases. http://jamesian58.blogspot.com/2016/07/continuing-discussion-of-supreme-courts.html The significance of ENCINO is simply that SCOTUS is cutting back on the amount of deference it thinks is due to the executive branch under the CHEVRON doctrine. Whether that's a good or a bad development depends as always on the answer to the question "who do you trust?" A more interesting question philosophically is why CHEVRON deference came about, and had the sort of run it has had since 1984.

In a lecture delivered in 1880, William James asked rhetorically, " Would England ... be the drifting raft she is now in European affairs if a Frederic the Great had inherited her throne instead of a Victoria, and if Messrs Bentham, Mill, Cobden, and Bright had all been born in Prussia?" Beneath that, in a collection of such lectures later published under James' direction, was placed the footnote, "The reader will remember when this was written." The suggestion of the bit about Bentham, Mill, etc. is that the utilitarians as a school helped render England ineffective as a European power, a drifting raft. The footnote was added in 1897. So either James is suggesting that the baleful influence of Bentham, Mill etc wore off in the meantime or that he had over-estimated it. Let's unpack this a bit.  What was happening in the period before 1880 that made England seem a drifting raft in European affairs, to a friendly though foreign observer (to the olde...

I think G,K. Chesterton's discussion of that mysterious fence is more clever than wise. Chesterton famously wrote: n the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.  It is clever and the point, so far as it goes, is correct. If there really is no better reason for tearing down a fence than one’s inability to understand why it is there, there is no reaso...