Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  An odd letter of recommendation which, nonetheless, seems to have done the trick: Hart got the job. https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2024/01/blast-from-the-past-isaiah-berlins-letter-of-recommendation-for-hla-hart.html   Brian Leiter writes about how important Hart became, and how ironic it is that Berlin was so condescending about his merits, since it is Berlin who is now fading into history.  I disagree with Leiter's snark at Berlin's expense here. Berlin is a philosopher of considerable importance, IMHO.  Hart (pictured) was the leading legal positivist of his generation. I suppose it is surprising Berlin didn't work up more enthusiasm for him but, after all, I don't have a high opinion of legal positivism.  Still, a nice stand-out piece of history.  Yesterday I included something random about low-brow pop culture in this blog. Consider this an equally random bit of flotsam about the high-brow stuff.  

  The silliest 'pop culture' controversy of the moment involves the actress Margot Robbie, who plays the title character in the blockbuster 'Barbie.'  https://time.com/6576866/oscars-2024-greta-gerwig-snub-internet-fan-theory/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon   The Academy did not include either the lead actress or the director of Barbie as nominees for Best Actress or Best Director respectively.  But we are repeatedly reminded that both women are producers. If the movie wins Best Picture, they'll each have something nice for the home mantle.  The indignation feels forced. As does the sense that it is all a set-up for the campaign to win that Best Picture prize on a guilt theme. These are inside-Hollywood controversies that ought to concern us as much as a good watch to a retiree we've never met from a corporation for which we've never worked.  (Ah, but we buy their products! We should care who gets the nice gold watch. Sorry, no.)  Now,...

  Danger. 35 hundred words of philosophizing headed your way. I’m going to discuss the relationship between two philosophical issues: the mind-body problem on the one hand, and the existence of a God (in a sense that we will try to limn out as we move along) on the other.  My point? We can understand the relationship between mind and body as quite analogous to the relationship between God and cosmos. Furthermore, this parallel applies to, and helps us understand, a wide range of views about what the mind is.  The mind-body problem, as I understand it, breaks down into at least three parts. First, is it feasible to describe human behavior fully in physicalist/mechanical terms? Second, if it is NOT feasible, and we add another element to the description of humanity which we call ‘mind’ -- how should we conceive of that second element? Third, if we do add this extra element, do we believe that mind and body interact? How are we to understand THAT?  These three inquirie...

Hey, Bud, isn't that a lovely plant?  This month the Food and Drug Administration issued a report arguing that marijuana ought to be re-classified.  (Actually, it ought to be declassified entirely -- but this is better than nothing).  With the benefit of this recommendation, the Drug Enforcement Agency is now expected to initiate a rule-making process that could end with marijuana as schedule III.  Marijuana is a Schedule I drug and has been such since 1970. The talk is of moving it down to Schedule III -- a big difference (Tylenol with codeine is schedule III).  This is a matter in which the states have led the way toward sanity -- a process that showed up on my 'top financial stories'  list here for 2016  -- and the feds may finally  be following them.   

Continuing the list from yesterday... I think I'll end with five.  4. Trump hush-money case, New York.   Of all the Trump litigation, this one holds a special place in my heart.  The indictments of the formet President have piled up over the last year, so it has become easy to forget that this one was the first.  It is a bit like a moment in Rocky IV (1985)  Rocky has had to resign as Boxing Champion in order to fight an unsanctioned match against Drago, a Soviet-trained monster of a boxer.  We can ignore the late-Cold-War context for now. The point to know is that it was part of the Drago mystique that he was an invulnerable machine, not a human.  In the second round of what turns out to be a very long fight, Rocky Balboa appears to have taken on more than he can handle. But then one of his punches lands, and cuts Drago. Shockingly, to the audience, blood is running down the 'machines' face. Back in his corner at the end of the round, Rocky hears...

  This year will be remembered for at least five very high-profile trials, each offering a window on a different part of American life.  We will discuss them all today and tomorrow.  To be frank, there is a little bit of duplication.  Two of them are antitrust cases.  But they are very distinct examples thereof and, to reduce any sense of overlap, we will begin today with one of the antitrust matters and end tomorrow with the other.  1. Apple v. Department of Justice In March of this year, DoJ antitrust enforcers will make their case that Apple has imposed both hardware and software limits on their iPads and iPhones to make life difficult for competitors. The messaging service Beeper, the bluetooth tracker concern Life360 Inc, and Spotify Technology are all alleged to have been victimized by Apple's hardball.    The defendant company hasn't had much to say about this, aside from very general assertions that it doesn't hold a monopoly in any market...

 Last week, in a decision of great sacrifice, I decided to watch the final debate of the remaining two non-Trump Republican presidential candidates before the Iowa caucus ... so you, dear reader, didn't have to.  Only a couple of points are worth mention.  Ambassador Haley seemed to think it an important point about DeSantis that under him insurance rates for homeowners have gone up in Florida. He never really responded on point, though she came back to this several times.  Neither of them really said anything about WHY property insurance rates have risen. Haley could have made it seem an important point if she had said, "property insurance rates are up because insurers are factoring in the increase in extreme home-destroying weather events in Florida. THAT is happening due to climate change. Here is my plan for what to do about THAT."  But she didn't make that connection -- EVEN when she was specifically asked about climate ch...

  Suppose there is a bank that will give you a great [underlying] rate of interest on your deposit: let us say 100% per year. Yes, I know that is an outrageous hypothetical, but humor me.  If you give this "Bank of Euler" $1 on Dec. 31, then on the following Dec. 31 you can withdraw $2.  Great! But, even better, the bank offers a half-year compounding. You can give the bank $1. on Dec. 31. On the following July 1 the bank will calculate your interest so far, and thereafter your interest will compound onto that new figure.  This means that on July 1 they gave you half of the annual amount due you.  In this case: fifty cents.  So as of July 1 you have $1.50 in the bank. The rest of the year you  earn NOT the other 50 cents, but half of the annual rate on that new number.  This is $0.75.  On Dec. 31, then, you will have the original $1.00 plus the mid-year $0.50 plus the end of year $0.75 in the bank.  This is: $2.25. Better.  By compo...

  It sounds like a Catch-22, but it is inherent to the growth of many industries that are split into infrastructural and superstructural components.  Which comes first?  There is no financial incentive to build charging stations unless there are a lot of electric vehicles on the road.  There is no sense buying an electric vehicle unless one knows one will be able to find a charging station at need.  Thios is the sort of thing that sometimes inspires arguments (I consider them overly facile arguments) for  central economic planning.   That is, as it happens, a lousy argument.  A government that plans the infrastructure is locking in a path for its economy over the years or even the decades to come (cough! Eisenhower highways cough!). In terms of market forces, infra and super structure can very well develop in smallish form and then scale up together. But hey, I used to make arguments like that back when I called myself an anarcho-cap. Now I'm...

 This sounds like a fascinating book.  Not in my budget for time or money but ... if anyone out there does read it, feel free to give me a precis.  Thanks.  Sally Low, COLONIAL LAW MAKING: CAMBODIA UNDER THE FRENCH "The court of King Norodom and the temples of Angkor Wat became orientalist icons in the French colonial imagination, perpetuating an image of the Protectorate (1863–1953) as special and worthy of preservation. This contributed to exceptionalism in the way the Kingdom was colonized, including through law. Drawing on previously unexamined archival material, Sally Low presents a comparative case study of French approaches to colonial law, jurisdiction, and protection. Although the voices of non-elite Cambodians are largely absent from the archives, their influence on colonial law is evident as they resisted efforts to regulate their lives and their land. Low argues that the result was a set of state legal institutions and an indigenous jurisdiction that blen...

 In the opening days of this month/year, the El Sharara oil field in Libya ceased operations. It is said in all descriptions to have closed down due to "protests," of a generally unspecified nature. What may have happened sounds  like union activism .  I gather that union organizing is so verboten in Libya that no one wants to call it what it is. But the "protests" seem to consist of workers making demands, and refusing to do the work essential to such a plant unless such demands are met.  Which sounds to me like a labor union has come into existence. It will be worthwhile keeping an eye on this, and NOT just because of the marginal impact that the Sharara close-down has on oil prices. Right now such factors as uncertainties about Red Sea shipping far overwhelm this one oil field in significance.  The El Sharara news is worth watching to see if organized labor is becoming a considerable force in that country in general, or if these protests are just a one-off....

The relationship is complicated. Let us take four points. First. both were path-breaking mathematicians. Descartes’ invention of analytic geometry made possible, a generation later, Newton’s (and Leibniz') development of calculus. Second, they had very different ideas about matter and how different chunks of matter interact. Descartes wanted to get rid of the idea of “occult” causes and effects, or what some call teleology. To speak very roughly, mechanistic explanations involve pushing and teleological ones involve pulling.  For Descartes, everything that happens in the material world had to be explained by things pushing each other around. There could be no “action at a distance,” no pull, just as things didn't happen because inanimate objects (or non-human animals!) wanted them to happen. So the Cartesians of the following generation argued against Newton’s law of gravity — in their eyes Newton was trying to bring back those occult causes, pulling at each other across vast d...

 Last month I wrote on this blog that Harvard wasn't very much like the University of Pennsylvania.  Because, I oh-so-brilliantly said, Harvard has an endowment sufficiently successful to allow them to wait out political tides "with ... a shrug."   I have one more thing to say about the subject. Oops.  [The fellow above is he for whom the institution is named -- John Harvard -- the son of a butcher in Surrey.]  Harvard did not shrug at the attacks on Claudine Gay .  I still suspect they were in a financial position in which they could have.  Harvard, alas, is not William James' Harvard.  In that era they were amassing the cultural capital that they have been expending for much of the time since.  Actually, I have the following to say about the subject too.  The president of MIT, Sally Kornbluth, needs to make the point, publicly and often, that for some of those who are making the “two down and one to go” noises, this whole thing ...

When I have previously shared the thoughts I discussed in the two preceding blog posts, I have often got answers that can be paraphrased "but what about the Jews?"  Judaism was a lively part of the east-Mediterranean thought world in which Epicurus wrote. Indeed, his lifetime coincides with the period of the creation of the great translation of their sacred literature into Greek (the Septuagint).  That chronological fact comes to mind because, as I have mentioned, it is not clear on the face of it WHO Epicurus was arguing with.  If he did make something like the statement Hume attributes to him, and a lot of AD 21st century memes pick up on then, as I suggested last week, he may have had Stoicism in mind.  If so, he may not have understood it well.  This draws the riposte: why could Epicurus not have had the monotheism of the Jews in mind?  It would be good to have some context of when and why he said it -- if he wrote this in a lost text entitled "Why thos...