Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

A recent story in Slate discusses replication issues with recent experiments on the relationship between emotions and facial expressions. This is appropriate grist for a blog called "Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed" if only because the initiating issue sounds so much like the James-Lange theory of emotions. But, I would submit, the sounds-like is key. There are big differences. But to start from the (logical) beginning. One normally suspects that a facial expression is, as the term implies, that which expresses something deeper.  The emotion is the something deeper. So happiness is the cause and a smile is the effect. But some psychologists have claimed that they could increase an experimental subject's happiness by getting him to smile. By hooking his face up to electrodes that lead nowhere, for example, and telling him, "you're helping us in an experiment on the neuro control of facial muscles." That way, his "smile" comes about fo...

"Color itself is a degree of darkness." German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said that, and much else, in his publication Theory of Colors. Brain pickings recently ran an appreciation of this Treatise, calling it "an absorbing account of the philosophy and artistic experience of color." It was also part of the romantic rebellion against classicism -- Goethe was taking on boring clockworks-loving old Newton. Here's a link to the Amazon page which will allow you to look inside Goethe's text if you're so inclined. https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262070375/braipick-20

With no small content I read Mr. Hobbes’ book De Cive , and his Leviathan , about the rights of sovereignty, which no man, that I know hath so amply and judiciously handled. I consent with him about the rights of exercising government, but I cannot agree to his means of acquiring it. It may seem strange that I should praise his building and yet mislike his foundation, but so it is. That was Robert Filmer, the divine-right-of-kings theorist, apologist for the whims of the Stuart family. I take the quote from Yves Charles Zarka's book about Hobbes, newly translated into English by James Griffith. Griffith also contributes an introduction, stressing that though Leo Strauss is "to some degree an ally of Zarka's in the argument against historicism, they are not involved in identical projects."   I have a full review of Zarka's book in a forthcoming issue of The Federal Lawyer.  I go into more particulars about the Filmer/Hobbes contrast there, as ...

For those of my readers not familiar with the lingo of the financial world, let me begin with a definition of clearing and then of a clearinghouse. Clearing is the process by which transactions are reconciled, that is, money matched to the product or service it is purchasing. An institution that "clears" a transaction is also the institution that, in the first instance, runs the risk of default. Simple example: I make some large purchase with a check. The seller accepts my check in payment. In that case, in a common arrangement my bank would be the clearing party, and would bear that initial risk of default.  It is the bank, not the seller, and not in the first instance me either, who will be "out" if my check is in excess of my deposit account. In finance, then, a clearinghouse (sometimes written in two words as 'clearing house') is an institution that provides clearing and settlement services for commodities, derivatives, or securities transact...

A very old joke. My great aunt told this to me. Back before anybody had heard of the fellow whose portrait I've pasted here. There once was a family of potatoes who thought of themselves as socially very lofty. They looked down on television as a new fangled technology filled with blow-hards, whether human or potato. Anyway, the family had a pretty good life on the farm. Until one day the daughter decided she was going to elope with a young spud (I think that was my great aunt's pronunciation) who didn't live up to the family's high-brow notions. In fact, this young spud had even appeared on television. "You're going to have to get this marriage annulled," yelled father. "He's just a commen tater." Get it? Common'tater? Commentater? Ah, never mind.

I have to say right up front: I haven't read Grob-Fitzgibbon's book. Nor do I plan to. Nonetheless, his is a really cool hyphenated surname, and that at least makes him and by extension his new book worth some mention here. The book, Continental Drift, is apparently about the drift of Great Britain's political self-image away from the continent of Europe. Chronologically, the sweep seems to be from Ernest Bevin to the present. Bevin was the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs under Prime Minister Attlee from 1945 to 1951. That is his photo, above. Bevin accepted the loss of India, but thought the British Empire had to compensate by holding more tightly onto its possessions in Africa and the Middle East. Bevin also hoped to encourage a united new political structure in Europe, with Britain of course to play the leading role. This would enable Britain to retain Big Three status alongside the US and USSR.   Britain's self-image as a member of this Big Three club...

As we discussed yesterday, if a nation's central bank lowers its interest rates, the usual expectation is that it will weaken its currency. Part of the reason why: it will set up a carry trade, in which profiteers will borrow money at its low rates, then exchange that currency for another currency, that issued by a higher-interest rate country, so these profiteers (I use the term without animus -- it simply means "those seeking a profit") can lend out for a higher rate than the one at which they are borrowing, pocketing the difference. This activity, given supply/demand principles predictably weakens the currency the profiteers are leaving and strengthens that into which they're moving. This brings us back to the mystery with which we began. Australia and New Zealand have both recently lowered interest rates. In each case, though, that has corresponded to a strengthening of the currency. Back in late May, you would have needed 1.39 Aussie dollars to buy a US do...