Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  Tuck's book on Hobbes is part of the Past Masters series.  Tuck was certainly qualified to write it. He was professor of government at Harvard. He was the author of Natural Rights Theories (1979) and Philosophy and Government 1572-1651 (1993).  Now, wait a second. The book was published in 1989, how can its About the Author page cite a 1993 book? I gather I'm looking at a reprint.  Anyway, the title of the 1993 book intrigues me. It gives the terminal dates of its coverage as 1572 to 1651. What events do the terminal dates reference?  In 1572, fifteen hundred English volunteers under Humphrey Gilbert (an adventurer, shown above, not acting officially on behalf of the Queen) fought the Spanish/Hapsburg forces in the Netherlands, on behalf of the Dutch resistance, known at this time as the Sea Beggars. That seems to be an important date in Tuck's understanding of British intellectual history, because it helped set England on the road to more direct confrontation...

  Continuing with our thoughts from yesterday.... What are we saying when we say we know that 45 + 303 = 348? That depends on what we understand numbers, and arithmetic, to be.  I think the sensible course is to adopt an operational/pragmatic view of mathematical knowledge according to which it is a shorthand for facts concerning the way the world works. In G.E. Moore's spirit, I might hold up a hand, "here is one hand." Then I might hold up another, :"Here, also, is a hand." Finally, with both of them in my field of sight, I can say, "there are two hands here."  So we can take 1 + 1 = 2 as settled. But 45 + 303 might be tedious to prove in that way, with some object other than hands (marbles?). Further, there would be the threat of false refutations. I might lose track of the first marble before I collected the 348th. Then I'd count them all and declare that the real answer to the question must be 347! A naive empiricism about such matters becomes...

  Recently in this blog I spoke of the death of Prof. Gettier, and of post-Gettier problems in epistemology. Prompted by a response to that post, I will in today's and tomorrow's entry go further on this subject.  My own views have changed in quite recent months, in large part through my discovery of Alvin Goldman's essay, "A Causal Theory of Knowing" from 1967, only four years after Gettier's famous essay.  Goldman looked at only a piece of the puzzle, the knowledge of the perceived world. He set aside the question of what it means to know, for example, that 45 + 303 = 348. He was concerned with knowing something like "this leaf is green."  If knowledge is "justified true belief," then I know this leaf is green if and only if (a) the leaf is in fact green, (b) I believe that it is green, and (c) I can see the leaf, and (say) I have recently had my eyes checked so I am confident in the health of my vision. Note that the justification elemen...

  It appears that there is a backlash brewing against a major accomplishment in the cause of liberty in recent years. The major accomplishment I have in mind is, of course, the legalization of marijuana use in much of the country at the state level. The accomplishment occurred in the Obama era, and many thought it was in for a reversal when Sessions took the reins as AG in early 2017. But Sessions, though he had been a war-on-drugs hardliner in the Senate, did little on point in the cabinet. Barr -- otherwise occupied to be sure, did even less.  So effective legalization remained.  Now, under Biden: a backlash? Possibly. It has taken the form of campaigns in several states to limit the THC content of the legalized products. The arguments aren't exactly your grandfather's Cadillac, or Grandpa's Reefer Madness either. But they ARE lame.  Something to watch. And worry about. 

  But rather than geeking out over it, I'll just provide the link.  How Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward Clarified Corporate Law by Margaret M. Blair :: SSRN You're welcome.  I was going to put a photo of Edward G,. Robinson, playing Daniel Webster, above. But on second thought -- nah -- he was playing Webster arguing with the devil. It's a stupid story and the lovely New England countryside above is more fit. 

  The once great Yahoo! brand has died a slow death. Yahoo the ISP was one of the pioneers of the internet era. Created in 1994 by David Filo and Jerry Yang, originally known by the simple yet cumbersome name "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web."  Yahoo had its glory days through the remainder of that decade. In 1997 it initiated Yahoo!Mail, the first free email offered to the general public. Some of you may know that I still have and make at least some use of my yahoo.com address. By 1998, Yahoo's homepage was the most popular starting point for web users. After that, there was the dotcom bust of 2000-01, which Yahoo weathered rather well given its leading position in many fields. But that experience may have instilled in the high ranks of the company a notion of the defensive crouch as a wise policy. It didn't prove to be in the years that followed.  Yahoo ceased to be an independent company in 2016-17, as Verizon purchased it in two stages. Since the...

President Biden's pick to be the new administrator of the US Agency for International Development (AID) has received Senate confirmation,  by a 68 - 26 vote. I'm assuming this means 6 (Republicans) did not vote so she received the votes of all Democrats plus 18 Republicans, with 6 Republicans NV and the others No. I can assume that without looking it up because this is my blog, dammit.  At any rate, if she did receive a supportive vote of 18 Republicans, roughly 1/3d of the caucus, that is a remarkable show of bipartisan support as such things go in 2021.  One neat fact about the now confirmed nominee, Samantha Power: she was a reporter for US News and World Report before she was either an academic or a civil servant.  She was a war correspondent covering the Yugoslavian helter-skelter in the years '93 to '96.   I went to the US AID website, in search of a simple explanation for what the AID does, and accordingly for what Power will now be responsible. I ca...

  A philosopher named Diodorus Cronus may properly be considered the first Stoic. He usually isn't. That title is usually given to Zeno of Citium -- not to be confused with the Achilles-and-the-tortoise guy of Elea. Diodorus is a sort of middle link between the two famous Zenos. He might have known the Eleatic, he certainly in later life knew the fellow of Citium The second Zeno was professedly a student of Diodorus, and some of Diodorus' teachings that come down to us seem distinctively Stoic already that it seems unnecessary to wait until Zeno's maturity to give them a distinctive name. So, let's just call Diodorus the first Stoic. One of his contributions is what is known as the "Master Argument." This consists of three propositions, and  the key point is that the first two together disprove the third. 1) every true proposition about the past is necessary; 2) the impossible does not follow from the possible, 3) something is possible which neither is true no...

Logic isn't a closed body of learning. Some people still think of it as something Aristotle created, and that allows for no improvement, so that the study of logic remains the study of Aristotelian principles to this day and forever. But that is not true. First, much of what is touted as central to Aristotle’s contribution was simply taken over from his mentor, Plato. Recall the discussion of the turning top in The Republic. But more important, not only did Aristotle not start it, he didn't finish it either. Quite soon after Aristotle’s death, perhaps before it, people (notably those of the Stoic school) were making new contributions, taking different perspectives.  Conditional statements fascinated the Stoics, “If p, then q.” It turns out there are different ways of interpreting that simple-seeming rubric, and Stoics thrashed them out. Note that  the "if/then" rubric is already different from Aristotle's categorical statements. "All men are mortal" and ...

Edmund Gettier passed away last month. Gettier was best known for a short 1963 article on epistemology, which set off whole new lines of thought.  He doesn't get on lists of "greatest philosophers of [specific period or country.]" He is too much of a one-trick pony for that. But: what a trick! Since Plato's time, "justified true belief" or some quite similar phrase has been taken as a sensible definition of Knowledge.  Gettier's paper made the case that this doesn't work. There are lots of situations in which someone can have a belief that is both justified and true, but in which understanding the whole situation that makes it so will cause us to doubt, or outright to deny, that the situation deserves the title "knowledge." I won't explain his argument now, but will assume it as a given for the following that he made his point.  Does it follow we are bound to adopt some other definition?  We could just say, in a Wittgensteinian fashion,...

 Reuters, in a recent report about the success of facial-recognition software company AnyVision, mentioned that a hospital in Los Angeles, California is one of its customers.   I've never heard of a hospital using such technology before so this was something of a jolt. Is security such a problem in US hospitals at present that they have to recognize potential trouble makers by face, so the private guards know who to encircle?  Perhaps it isn't so much violence that caused the admins at Cedar Sinai to make a purchase from AnyVision. Perhaps it is drug fraud. Joe Smith may be known to the police as someone who goes into emergency rooms, fakes an injury, and begs for a scrip for a powerful pain reliever. Could the AnyVision algorithms alert Dr. Jones before he writes that scrip? Or sends Smith home with a bottle of the stuff with a high street value? I would imagine the latter is more important than the former. And that the next time you, dear reader, visit a hospital, ...

Think of the classic food chain we were taught in school.  Plant life is at the bottom. That is where sunlight is first changed into biomass. Then herbivores eat them, carnivores eat them, and larger carnivores still eat them. And when any of them die, their biomass becomes available to scavengers on both a macro and a micro level.   Now think of the news business. Sunlight is reality. Commentators expounding their opinions for us on the "news" shows, and denouncing each others' opinions are large carnivores. Whatever there is of reality in those bloviations has been digested several times long before and they are chewing on it again. They don't add any biomass. They aren't equipped for the photosynthesis that adding biomass to the system actually requires.  Where does THAT adding-of-biomass take place? Largely amongst the old wire services: AP, Reuters, UPI, Knight-Ridder. They are still the bottom of the food chain.  I need scavengers to make this analogy work...