Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  The last notes of the Theranos melody have sounded.  The symphony is over and the audience is heading home. That is what it feels like to see this headline: Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes loses fraud appeal.   (BBC). Theranos was a huge story in the business world in the period 2014-2018, in the rise and fall of its claims to revolutionize healthcare tech.  It was a big story in the world of crime and punishment in the period that followed its collapse, ending with the conviction of Theranos founder Holmes and her sentencing in the US district court for northern California in November 2022 for a little over 11 years.  In the two and a quarter years since, though, the world of constant short news cycles has passed her by. So it comes as a bit of a nostalgic trip to be reminded of the particulars by the circuit court's denial of her appeal in recent days.  The appeal contained the usual range of evidentiary issues -- some things were allowed in the evide...

The point, again, is to make the case that the period 1880 to 1920 was a golden age for western thought -- in philosophy and in the leavening by philosophy of related intellectual work.     I've changed several of the items from my earlier list.  I will include some commentary on this version of the list.  Again, a caution.  The use of UPPER CASE LETTERS for all the published items below does not discriminate among genre or by length.  Many of the pieces below are books. But some below are brief articles (such as Harris on education, right at the top). Some are plays, speeches, etc.  Roll with it.  1880:  Fyodor Dostoyevsky [pictured above], THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV                  William Torrey Harris, PSYCHOLOGY OF EDUCATION                           Commentary:  The Harris item was a contribution to the Journal of Sp...

  If there was any one subject about which Donald Trump has been pellucidly clear, it has been this:  Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are to remain sacrosanct. Indeed, I would argue this has been central to his takeover of the Republican Party -- he adopted not just elements of the New Deal but elements of the Great Society too, jettisoning the political baggage of having to oppose them.  When he did debate other Republicans in the spring of 2016 he was consistently 'to their left' on such matters.  And (a distinct but related point) when he was President the first time, he consistently told us that in another two weeks or so we would see a great new plan for health care coverage that would make Obamacare obsolete. Talk like a populist though you walk like a plutocrat.  The Republicans in the House of Representatives, it appears, did not get any of those memos.    One and only one Republican voted against the budget resolution, which uses Medic...

Claims have long been made that introspection is special. I have a peculiar sort of knowledge about what is happening inside my own head.  Descartes, Wundt, James all spoke to the issue of the epistemological status of introspection. They took three distinctly different views of it, but such august names indicate the importance of the idea.    In more recent years, one particular thread within this larger controversy has focused on the idea of immunity from error through misidentification (IEM).  Some authors, such as Sydney Shoemaker, [above] have stressed the notion that many propositions go wrong through misidentification. If I hear someone crying out in the next apartment I might say "My neighbor Joe is in pain." This might be wrong for several reasons (i.e. Joe might be practicing a part in a play, feigning pain.)  But one way that I might go wrong is misidentification -- Joe might have moved out -- it may be my new neighbor who is in pain.    Wit...

Not only is Richard Glossip still alive, but he will receive a new trial, a new opportunity to establish the reasonableness of doubt about his guilt.  A really ugly injustice has been done here already, by virtue of the very fact that such celebration is necessary.  But it is an ugliness that may avoid a final consummation now.  Glossip is alive because the US Supreme Court, more than a year ago now, agreed to hear his case. You can enter his name in the search engine to this blog if you want to find a fuller explanation. Or, go to other sources of news if you believe that there are other sources.   https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/02/supreme-court-grants-richard-glossip-new-trial-in-capital-case/     In January 1997 (yes, more than 28 years ago, and days before the second inaugural of President Clinton) and man called Barry Van Treese beat Justin Sneed to death with a baseball bat. In order to avoid the death penalty, Sneed testified that Glossip ...

Gabby Petito was murdered by her fiancé, Brian Laundrie, as the two were travelling cross-country in the hopes that Gabby would develop a broad body of followers in the van life community.  The precise date is uncertain but Petito died in late August of 2021. Her body would be discovered in Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming on September 19th of that year.  The case was a mass media sensation in large part because she seemed to have martyred herself to the cause of social media influence. An 'influencer' is nowadays a sort of job title.  I know, I know, I tend to wince when I hear the word used that way, too.  But it is.  Anyway, if the "van life community" had taken to regular consumption of Petito's posts, she could have sold her services as a social media guru to advertisers, that is, selling her mention in the course of her YouTube videos of products useful for life in a confined and often moving space.  As a new Netflix docuseries stresses, Petit...

Samsung has in recent days cancelled $2.11 billion of its shares. In its own native currency, that of the Republic of Korea (the won) that number of 3.05 trillion.  This follows up on earlier buy-backs of those shares of course.  You have to own them before you can cancel them.  Significance of this move?  Like the initial buy-back, the point of a share cancellation is to support the price. The price needs the support largely because of the Trump administration's tariff policy.  Samsung is a Korean company with indispensable business ties both in the US and in the PRC. A trade war between those two counties is a nightmare for its managers and shareholders.   Consider this post just a random bit of flotsam from the stream of recent news. 

  Even the ads did not live up to the hype this year.  One of the first was a Coca-Cola ad that began with a 2025 argument over artificial intelligence and how AI was going to take over the world. Two young hotheads were engaged in this dispute, and an older woman smiles benignly at them and says, "I think we're going to be just fine."  Then we see an event in 1975 -- a memory of hers. She was then as a young woman a participant in a similar argument, except that the key word was "computers" rather than "AI".  Someone or other ar that earlier moment had apparently said, "I think we're going to be just fine" in the same benign way. Only after all of this does one see the logo and realize that it was all a Coca-Cola commercial.  Meaning what?  That "it" has been "just fine" for fifty years despite worries about digital technology because we've had coke? And it will continue to be just fine because we still have it?  ...

I am thinking today of an expression my father used to use. The occasion for this expression could come about because my father had just told us a story about something that had happened years before, maybe during his time at an engineering school. One of the members of his brood would ask him, "where was I when this happened?"  He would reply, "You weren't even thought of yet."  It took me a looong time to realize that I hadn't fully understood this nice bit of paternal wordplay. It was a pun on the word that Dad did not use here, the word "conceived". He punned on that word by NOT using it. Conceived has two meanings, and Dad was explicitly invoking only one of them. Dad passed away in 2003. Twenty two years later I have to say, without any effort at word play, that he is thought of often and with gratitude. 

 Throughout this book the authors use the word "securitization" as the name of a process, or "securitize" as a verb. To securitize an issue X is to come to regard X as a security issue or threat. The process of securitization brings a nation-state's decision-making elite to this point: X is a threat.  Once in a while, too, a desecuritization takes place.  What had formerly been considered a threat ceases to be so, not because it disappears but because it fades into the status of a background fact.  Their use of these two words can be a little confusing for someone accustomed to the very different use of "securitization" in financial news: an asset or income stream is "securitized" by being used as the basis for the sale of securities. But over time I did become accustomed to their use.  Simply by using the word in this way, they have suggested that what is or is not a security issue is not a given -- that it is, to a great extent, a matter of...

  I realize that you, dear reader, can hardly believe that the Super Bowl is over until you hear about it from me. So, here we go. I'll say something about the game today -- I may say a few words about the ads that played during its run, later this week.  The only point I want to make is: yes that was an awful game. The Chiefs never even seemed to show up until near the end when the cause was lost.  That long pass into the end zone near the end of the fourth quarter, and then the two-point conversion to make it an 8 point touchdown -- THAT was a bit of derring do that made the final score seem less lopsided and less ugly. But it also raised the question: since the Chiefs are capable of such explosive play as that, WHERE HAD THOSE CHIEFS BEEN?  There were no omens of disaster in the very early going. The Eagles received the opening kickoff routinely, so that the first play from scrimmage took place at the 30 yard line. That first play got them four yards. If those fac...

Not a huge story, but this is my bloody blog and I'll i nclude what catches my fancy. Andrea Mitchell, a giant of US TV journalism, is cutting back on her workload. Friday, Feb. 7 was her last appearance as the host of Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC.  She is not going into retirement, but her appearances on television news and commentary programs hereafter will be occasional, as a guest commentator within the NBC system. Mitchell was born in 1946 -- she'll turn 79 this October. One of the highlights of her career has to be the day in July 2005 when she was forcibly ejected from the room in Khartoum where the President of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, was holding a press conference. Al-Bashir only wanted to take questions only from the well-tamed domestic reporters.  Genocide was underway in Sudan's Darfur province, at the hands of a semi-public militia. Mitchell shouted at al-Bashir, Mitchell shouted at him, "Can you tell us why the violence is continuing?" "Can ...

  Tip of the hat to philosopher Brian Leiter, on whose typepad blog I discovered this admission by our border Czar, Tom Homan, pictured.  Homan complained to a CNN interviewer that non-government agencies operating in Chicago, a declared sanctuary city, is educating potential targets of ICE raids. “For instance, Chicago—very well-educated,“ Homan continued. ”They‘ve been educated on how to how to defy ICE, how to hide from ICE. I‘ve seen many pamphlets from many NGOs: ’Here‘s how you escape ICE from arresting you. Here‘s what you need to do.’" Important: Homan is NOT claiming that anyone in Chicago has taught any of these folks anything illegal. The NGOs aren't saying "here is how to make a bomb." They are saying -- here's how you can avoid arrest.  How DARE THEY! The HORRORS. The powerful always prefer it when their targets stay still and submissive.  Ignorance helps.  

I'm told there is a new documentary, "Predators," that takes a good look at Chris Hansen and the television program that made him famous, "To Catch a Predator" (2CaP).  For those of you who don't remember: "To Catch a Predator" was part of the development of the moral panic about child predators that would in time lead us to QAnon.  2CaP was a spin-off of DATELINE.  It Premiered in late 2004 and its run continued through 2007. The format was always the same. The key segments would take place in a sting home, which looked to the sting targets like an ordinary suburban house, although containing a critical hidden camera and lots of sound equipment. Typically, a man would show up at the front door of the home, in the belief that he had a 'date' with an underage girl.  He had acquired that belief by way of internet communication with adults impersonating underage girls in chat rooms.  The sting targets, then, would arrive at the home and a poli...

We continue our tour of the world, at least as it existed two decades ago, through the eyes of two political scientists, Barry Buzan and Ole Waever, pioneers of the "regional security complex theory" of international relations.  They write about two Europes.  Not East and West on the terms of the old Cold War division. The dividing line has moved well to the east.  Western Europe extends right up to the former Soviet Union, and the new Eastern Europe consists wholly of the former Soviet states in their complicated interactions.  Turkey and the Balkans (where the latter means specifically the states that used to be part of Yugoslavia) make up special cases. The Balkans sometimes seem as if they are about to be incorporated into (Western) Europe.  But they are such trouble there is sentiment in the west to avoid or delay that incorporation. On the other hand, Turkey is a classic "insulator" state.  But let us start with the west. These nations, roughly speaki...

 I was going to try to say something profound today about DeepSeek, the PRC's entry into the race for AI dominance. "Who can create a global HAL out of large language models?"  The news about DeepSeek arrived on Monday, January 27 -- one week after President Trump's inauguration, six days after the Trump-led hoopla over "StarGate," a US initiative on this very subject that I discussed here earlier this week. Instead of actually saying my say about any of this, though, I will simply post some links that will allow you to catch up on the story if you care to.  https://mashable.com/article/china-deepseek-dethrone-openai https://www.fool.com/investing/2025/01/27/chinas-deepseek-ai-model-shocks-world-sell-nvidia/ https://www.fool.com/investing/2025/01/30/deepseek-history-has-flawless-track-record-ai/ https://www.ign.com/articles/chatgpt-maker-suspects-chinas-dirt-cheap-deepseek-ai-models-were-built-using-openai-data-and-the-irony-is-not-lost-on-the-internet Enjoy...

The spelling of the word "Monkees," as the name of a 1960s pop cultural sensation, the so-called "pre-fab four," contains a very clever bit of word play. So clever that sixty years later it comes to my mind for no good reason.  Allow me to expound. For those who don't remember: the Monkees were a fictional band (which in time came to treat itself as a real-world band) created for a comedic television show on NBC in 1966. This was the peak of Beatlemania. Indeed, the Monkees' TV show first aired around the time the Beatles released REVOLVER.  The Monkees were designed specifically to catch the Beatles vibe, more as a comedic tribute group than as a parody.  The neat bit of word play? It involves the names of the two groups.  The name "The Beatles" refers, of course, to an insect. It involves a deliberate misspelling of the first syllable of the name of that insect in order to incorporate a musical term, "beat".  The name "The Monkees...

To the point.  Musk has been left out of the staging of an "infrastructure" announcement, and he is acting as if he is very unhappy about that. What this portends for the coming months and years of the second Trump administration I do not know -- let me know, dear reader, if you figure it out. On Tuesday, January 21, Donald Trump's first full day as POTUS the second time, he announced a joint venture that would be backed by the US and that would involve as operating companies OpenAI, Oracle, and Softbank. It was supposed to use the billions those companies are pitching in, in order to build data centers and computing infrastructure across the US with an idea to advancing the development of artificial intelligence while creating more jobs than it costs -- though surely some humans will be rendered redundant in the process.  Little were they to know that the Chinese were about to steal a Long March on them with the release of a quite different AI system, DeepSeek.  But we w...

As I indicated last time, I'm here to discuss what Barry Buzan and Ole Waever have to say about the Americas in their book on the application of the regional security complex theory of international relations.  I should begin by adding something to what I have said so far about a foundational concept here: what IS a "regional security complex"?  It is a group of countries in proximity, whose chief security interests entail one another, making them a system onto themselves.  Buzan and Waever contend that the map is largely divided up into various such complexes, or RSCs, and that the global picture is best understood from the bottom up, looking at the globe from the perspective of the regions rather than the other way around.  More specifically, it is worth our while to distinguish two sorts of RSCs: "conflict formations" and security communities". South Asia is a conflict formations.  The underlying conflict between India and Pakistan has been central to th...

By now you have all seen the footage. Elon Musk, amidst the pageantry of the so-called "indoor parade" after the inauguration of a President -- Musk showed his own view of our new chief executive by offering him a long familiar sort of salute.  Then, to make it clear that this was no accidental expression of exuberance, he turned around and did it again. He wanted to make sure we all saw the Sieg Heil gesture. [Also, look at that facial expression: neither accidental nor exuberant.]  Nor has he denied that this is what he was doing.  Others have denied it for him. But he has not denied it.  He has said that "they" shouldn't make such a big deal of it.  That is not a denial.  “Frankly, they need better dirty tricks,” he wrote. “The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.” I am happy to speak for a moment as one of the "they" who think this a big deal.  We don't think you're Hitler, dude. We think you're Hugo Ferdinand Boss.  The German cl...