Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

 Yesterday, I spoke of James's discussion of the theory of mind-stuff, or mental chemistry, as a proposed basis for psychology. James famously responded that you cannot understand a sentence as a self-compounding of a number of words. The theory is a bygone. Why bother with it now, except as a curiosity that was on the way out even when James critiqued it in 1890?  Because the theory has one proponent whose name is still very much with us: Herbert Spencer. We tend to think of Spencer as a social theorist. We associate him with the notion that 'survival of the fittest' should be allowed to work its way through the social sphere as it did in the primordial jungle. Those of us who have been to law school associate this in turn with a famous taunt that Oliver Wendell Holmes directed at his laissez-faire colleagues, that the constitution does not enshrine Spencer's philosophy.  But, think of Spencer in this way, we may forget to think of Spencer as his own contemporaries tho...

I never claim to know what words like "right" or "conservatism" mean. So I was happy recently to encounter a discussion of the respective rightwardness of two Supreme Court Justices, Scalia and Roberts. It gives me grist for my anyway restless mental mill. As you, my well informed reader, probably remember, Justice Roberts cast the critical vote rescuing (most of) Obamacare from a constitutional challenge. Scalia would have struck it down. Also, and more recently, Scalia voted to strike down state laws that allow for the swabbing for the purposes of DNA collection of all arrestees. Voting with Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan -- not the company in which he is accustomed to find himself.  On the other hand, Roberts voted with the majority (consisting also of Kennedy, Alito, Thomas, and Breyer) allowing the practice. In both cases, Scalia was adopting [and given his originalist ideas, attributing to the Framers] a libertarian conception of government, limiting it...