Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

In epistemology, the term "new realism" often refers to a school of thought that was prominent a century ago now. Here's a link to the new realist manifesto, published in 1912 . Who were they? Key figures in the movement included Edwin Holt and Ralph Barton Perry. Their thoughts owed a lot to William James' idea of "pure experience" and something to Bertrand Russell's notion of "neutral monism." What was their distinctive view? Recall, before we answer this, that two of the key epistemological questions in modern philosophy have been: do I know in a strong sense of the word "know" that there is an external world? and (if one answers that in the affirmative) how? The new realists, simply by virtue of the fact that they were realists, answered the first of those questions with a Yes. The answer to the "how?" is that my sense perception constitutes direct information about the outside world. Sense perception sometimes...

  Continuing down the list of assets on a balance sheet (beyond those described in our last discussion of such a sheet), we come to a line for prepaid expenses. If our business has paid $1,800 for a year of insurance coverage, it will own something, a claim against the insurance company. This may not sound like an “asset” in a rough commonsensical sense of the world but … hey … the common sense cookie often crumbles. We have to recognize this as an asset in order to convey fairly the economic realities our books are designed to describe. We’ll move now to tools & equipment. Perhaps our business involves a conveyer belt, which we use to move a product from the back room to the front, where it is shown to the customers and, with luck, purchased. The conveyor belt is a fixed asset or, in less formal parlance, it’s part of our “overhead.”   When we bought the conveyor belt and had it installed (for, we will say, $500) we might have paid $100 cash, charging...

... looks fabulous. For a story on the opening of the trial, go here: Dealbook.   By the way, if you already know the basics of the Tourre trial, if you make a point of following such things, you are excused. because I don't plan on getting very deeply into this today. For those of you still with me then, the central figure in the photo nearby is Fabrice Tourre, who was famous not too long ago. Indeed, one might have thought that his trial would be a major circus.  But the circuses are elsewhere just now. What with Zimmerman's acquittal, a new royal baby, the latest news about Mr. Weiner, and the bankruptcy of Detroit, the Tourre trial is passing under the radar. Tourre was a mid-level trader at Goldman Sachs who was involved in some of the Abacus trades. He and Goldman have gone their separate ways. But Goldman Sachs is still paying for his defense costs. This sounds awkward. What if his best defense is to pass the buck upward? At any rate, To...

I suspect that the state of Michigan, perhaps with a sharp push from a federal bankruptcy court, will eventually expand the  borders of the city of Detroit. They can't expand them southward -- that's an international border after all. But I can see Detroit, with the authorization of the federal bankruptcy court, and its state capital, grabbing some of those ["white suburbs"] to the north and west. Rochester Hills, Eastpointe, Voila! wider tax base, solvency (at least for awhile), and public service ads about how "we're back!" Just to be clear I'M NOT ADVOCATING THAT! This is a reflection about what will be, not what ought to be. I remember New York scraping along at something akin to insolvency, without the help of the bankruptcy courts, in the mid 1970s. There was a good deal of talk about extending the definition of the city into Westchester and Long Island. Nothing came of it. The people in those places would have raised a stink had such a b...

I've recently received the Midsummer catalog for Daedalus Books. Here are three of the offerings the especially caught my eye. There is a common theme to them, as indicated by the headline above. I'll just present the bibliographic particulars here without further comment. 1) Thomas de Wesselow, THE SIGN: The Shroud of Turin and the Secret of the Resurrection Dutton 2013. De Wesselow, an art historian by trade, contends that the famous shroud is not a work of art or a fraud but an authentic burial cloth from first century Palestine. Also, he contends that the shroud was central to the origins of Christianity. He seems not to believe in the orthodox Christian account of events -- he is skeptical that the tomb was found empty or that Jesus later appeared to his disciples and ascended into heaven, etc. But he does believe that the early Christians believed in the resurrection with sufficient ardor to be martyred for it. So ... what convinced them? A mysterious piece of c...

Entities large enough to hire accountants tend to keep a different set of books for each of three purposes: 1) Dealing with the tax authorities, 2) Communicating with their own investors and creditors, and 3) Allowing their managers to engage in informed internal deliberations about mergers, spin-offs, prices, wages, and so forth. That is to say, there are three sorts of accounting: tax, financial, managerial. The two sets of books that are designed for external communication, the tax and financial accounting books have a fascinating off-setting feature. The normal temptation in financial accounting will be to overstate revenue, and the normal temptation in tax accounting will be to understate it.   If you are a potential investor, and if you suspect the books they’re showing you are a bit too rosy, you’ll want to see the books they show the tax authorities. At any rate, in what follows we will chiefly discuss financial accounting. There is a good deal of drama ...

Leno's been mocking the NFL of late, only in part because of the lengthening rap of the league's players. A sample of his material: It's now 32 NFL players that have been arrested since the Super Bowl. To give you an idea of how bad it's gotten, now when a team says they've hired a new defensive coordinator, they're talking about a lawyer. The latest NFL player to get arrested is New York Giants linebacker Dan Connor. He was arrested at the Philadelphia airport for carrying a switchblade. Experts say it’s the first time anyone in Philly has been able to stop a New York Giant in three years. A lifelong Cleveland Browns fan, a man 55 years old, recently passed away and for his last request he wanted six Cleveland Browns as pallbearers so the Browns can let him down one last time. That’s what he said. The bad news? They fumbled the coffin five yards from the grave.