Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Posts

Four score and seven years ago

As soon as Abraham Lincoln received a favorable battle report from Gettysburg in early July 1863, he at once paired the time of year with the time in which the United States had declared its independence from its mother country, and before long Lincoln did the arithmetic. The two events were separated by 87 years. Months passed before Lincoln spoke on the subject of that battle and its consequences (in November), but his famous address on that occasion begins with the invocation of the length of time that passed between the two events: four score and seven years. This is likely the only reason the word "score" in that sense remains in the English language. All of which, as we close in on the 250th anniversary of the same declaration of independence, induces me to ask: what happened just 87 years ago as I write? That would be 1939. What happened on independence day that year? Four score and seven years ago, legendary first baseman Lou Gehrig delivered a farewell a...

The Supreme Court, equity theft and the Pung family

In Isabellas County, Michigan, the Pung family lost its ranch style home due to a mere $2,242 in disputed taxes. The country government sold the place for $76K at a public auction. The buyer then flipped it for $195,000. I'm a recovering anarcho-capitalist, so I will try not to go on too much of a bender about how much this sucks. But boy is the world of property taxation and enforcement offering up a delicious cuba libre to someone who is trying to get with the twelve steps, here!!! In May 2023, U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Tyler v. Hennepin County that home equity theft is unconstitutional. The Court determined that seizing excess value over a tax debt violates the fifth amendment's taking clause. So was Pung simply a straightforward application of Tyler ? No such luck. Lower courts essentially gave the Pungs the difference between the tax debt and the public auction value. But the Pungs asked the Supreme Court to affirm that (...

Electoral humiliation for a Kennedy

A poor third place finish for a Kennedy. And in the State of New York, no less -- the state where former Attorney General Bobby Kennedy served as US Senator. from his election in November 1964 until his assassination almost four years later. The primary campaign for the Democratic nomination to be the Congress critter from the 12th district NY -- midtown Manhattan, along with both the upper East and West sides -- was the first ever political campaign for Jack Schlossberg. Schlossberg is the son of Caroline Kennedy, and so he is the grandson of a President and the grand-nephew of the aforesaid AG and Senator. Whatever. Micah Lasher won with 39 percent of the vote. The second-place finisher was Alex Bores, with 35 percent. Schlossberg was far behind with just 10 percent. George Conway was in the mix, too. [At least Schlossberg beat Conway]. Voting turnout was likely key here. Lasher drew his strength from the Upper West side (pictured) where votin...

An important economist: not a celebrity

One of the important financial economists writing today is Mohamed El-Erian, who grew up as the son of an Egyptian diplomat and was the deputy director of the IMF for three years in the 1990s. He is quite well known to folks like me, who look to his analyses to guide our work reporting day to day events. But he is not well known at all to the "general public," where that term is taken to mean the sort of people who know that Paul Krugman or Robert Shiller are important economists. I'm old enough to remember when Friedman and Galbraith were the economists whose name came to the tongue of many non-economists. They both passed away in the first decade of the new millennium, and the public attention has done what it does ... it has passed on. I may say more about El-Erian's non-celebrity work soon. For now, I will only lay down that he has recently said that on June 24, "The most notable price action in US markets" was the fall by 9 basis points of US gover...

The Mosquitoes of Gilligan's Island

I just had a revelation about Gilligan's Island . Regular fans will remember that Gilligan would from time to time mention his favorite rock group The Mosquitoes. Eventually, the group itself visited the island, looking for a relaxing getaway after a difficult tour. Like all guest stars, the band left in a manner that didn't help the core seven castaways at all. Anyway, it is obvious that the group was conceived as a Beatles parody. The insectile name, to start with, The fact that the group appears to have had a single with the lyrics "don't go in there, yeah yeah yeah." It was not subtle parody. But what only recently occurred to me was the clever way that the names of the members of the fictional group mirror the real-world names of the Fab Four. The Mosquitoes had four members (of course): Bingo, Bango, Bongo, and Irving. Note that three of those names would be quite unusual for any of the men one meets on the street in any city in the Anglophonic world. ...

A random philosophical troika

An odd philosophical troika of philosophers in early modern Britain comes to mind today for no good reason. Locke, Berkeley, Hume. I saw a random post in Quora asking for a brief summary of the significant contributions of each "the" three major philosophers. No more specific context. I have no idea how one would pick THE troika the querent had in mind, But this is one troika if great significance. To summarize their “significant contributions” is a considerable task — or three different tasks, EACH considerable. But it does seem that together the three of them tell a tragic story. In essence we can say this (ignoring the politics of Locke or of Hume, and the vision theory of Berkeley): Locke: Accepted a dualist picture of the world in which minds, conceived of as properties of souls, are intangible beings that must come to grips with a material world around them. His contribution was to think through this material world in Newtonian terms — what he called...