A 6-3 Split on SCOTUS (but not the one you're thinking of)

Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Dunn said that he did not want to be vaccinated against Covid-19

for religious reasons. He did not identify a specific religion whose belief system leads him to this. But let us suppose it is Dunnism, and he is the Pope of it. He naturally doesn't want to be forced to excommunicate himself.

Six Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court said, "tough luck, soldier, you're in a chain of command." the other three -- Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch -- said that Dunn should NOT be relieved of his command for this reason. His religious rights should trump the chain of command.

(And yes, I know I'm using the word 'trump' there as a verb and that one could interpret that punningly as a reference to the guy who appointed Gorsuch. Grow up, folks. I use "trumpet" for such purposes. And you can spell it if you like with a silent "s" in front.)

What I would like to point out, though, is that in 2022 when one hears of a 6-3 vote on SCOTUS one automatically thinks of another split, one with the above-named three joined by Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, with the two Obama nominees and the one remaining Clinton nominee (Breyer, departing at the end of this term). THAT split didn't happen here.

What does this mean? Well, none of the Justices issues written opinions on this matter so there are limits to what we can infer. .

Yet I persist. Gorsuch/Kavanaugh have been erratic. My impression is that each of them is still rather dazed by the path that has brought him to where he is. They seem to take turns in their departures from Trumpet predictability, so that when it is Gorsuch who sides with Alito/Thomas, it is Kavanaugh who strays, and vice versa. But it is very often the cae that one of them will stray. For pure and dependable Trumpetism, one has to stick with those two Bush family picks, Thomas and Alito.

Anyway: get the shot or take the demotion, Lt. Col. Dunn.

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere. At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak...

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...

The Growing Block Theory of Time

My own disposition, in regard to the philosophy of time, is toward the "growing block" theory. This is the view that past events remain realities, that present-moment events are also realities, but that future events are not yet real. The image is of the universe as a block with an edge on (say) the right-hand side. The block is expanding because that edge is moving ever further right, and that edge is what we call the present, or, simply, "now." Everything to the left of that edge is both static (the past is complete) and, still and forever, real. Think of the phrase "the moving finger writes." The chief alternatives to the growing-block theory are "presentism" (only the now-edge itself is real) and "eternalism" (past, present, and future are all real." I believe that time is a growing block because (1) that's what it feels like, (2) we should stick with the introspective phenomenon unless we have good reason to abandon ...

Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

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