Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

As regular readers will have noticed, I've been creating a multi-entry list of Supreme Court decisions, naming just one stand-out decision per year. Here is my final entry on that theme, bringing us up to date. Supreme Court cases, 2010 to the present 2010: McDonald v. Chicago -- second amendment 2011: Snyder v. Phelps --  limit on tort liability for emotional distress (Westboro Baptists and the first amendment) 2012: NFIB v. Sebelius -- the big Obamacare decision 2013: Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics -- genes and patents 2014: Halliburton v. Erica P. John Fund -- class certification and securities fraud 2015: Obergefell v. Hodges -- marriage equality 2016: Merrill Lynch v. Manning -- state courts have concurrent jurisdiction on certain securities fraud civil liability issues with the federal courts. I've now listed a total of 47 SCOTUS decisions in this very subjective way. There should be some broader gener...

A new book by David Rudenstine, THE AGE OF DEFERENCE, looks at the extent to which judges defer to the President, and to the executive branch more generally, especially since the end of the Second World War. Rudenstine discusses a variety of Supreme Court decisions going back to the Truman era, in which the high court ceded authority. The trauma of 9/11 seems only to have made this habit more settled. Rudenstine thinks this a bad thing, an abdication of the courts' task to protect individual rights on the one hand and to check otherwise uncheckable power on the other. Here's more from the Legal History Blog. http://legalhistoryblog.blogspot.com/2016/09/rudenstine-on-supreme-court-national.html

Strange movie. Had its moments, but ... what happened to the theme of foot size? SPOILER ALERT. As usual, I will proceed to discuss this movie without any regard to whether you've seen it or not or what plot twists I may be revealing. TURN BACK if you don't want to learn what this might teach you. Anyway, half of the movie is the set up, the other half is a "who done it" where the "it" is "impregnated Bridget." The two suspects are: Mark Darcy, played by Colin Firth, and Jack, played by Patrick Dempsey. Bridget has a long history with Mark; Jack is the new guy in her life. Before my train of associations went elsewhere, I was going to say something about foot size. At one point, Bridget gets a sonogram, and learns that her baby (a) is a boy and (b) has large feet. A little later, we're privy to a conversation between Bridget and her father, where Dad mentions that HE has "dainty" feet which Bridget has inherited. Yes, I ...

I'm about to disclose to you a cliff diving fact I learned in a magazine recently, and then explain why it stuck in my head. SInce it is unlikely that any reader of this blog gives a damn about cliff diving, this may seem odd but, hey, it's my blog. To pad this out a bit, I'll start with the sourcing. The following fact comes from the Sept. 2016 issue of SELF magazine. SELF is a woman's health periodical, which includes some celebratory pieces on distaff athletes, and I encountered this issue while sitting in a waiting room with a dearth of other worthwhile material. Moving on..... Here's the fact. If a cliff is 30 meters above the water, then a diver will hit the surface of the water at 50 miles an hour.  I haven't done the computation to check it out. On this planet, IIRC, an object in freefall due to gravity moves toward the center of the earth at an accelerating pace, velocity increasing at 9.8 meters per second per second. So: what struck me as w...

I'm continuing my list of the most important U.S. Supreme Court decisions, year by year. Today, we turn the corner into a new millennium. Still as subjective as ever. 2000: Bush v. Gore -- equal protection clause and county-by-county voting rules 2001: Good News Club v. Milford Central School -- establishment clause and school-sanctioned clubs 2002: Zelman v. Simmons-Harris -- establishment clause and school vouchers 2003: Sell v. United States -- forced medication of a defendant charged with non-violent offenses, doesn't necessarily violate due process. 2004:   Austria v. Altmann -- sovereign immunity, Nazi theft of art 2005: Kelo v. New London -- eminent domain 2006: eBay v. MercExchange -- injunctions and patent infringement -- patent trolling? 2007: Weyerhauser v. Ross-Simmons Hardwood -- antitrust and predatory bidding 2008: Stoneridge Inv. Partners v. Scientific-Atlanta -- securities fraud 3d parties 2009: Melendez-Diaz v. Massac...

On the critical question of the relationship between the mind and the brain, James seemed to have two distinct views. Sometimes he was a sort of dualistic interactionist. Not of course in a Cartesian sense, in which the "ego" is a soul, an enduring substance. But in a distinct sense of his own in which the ego is a "stream of consciousness" consisting of a series of overlapping pulses of attention, each appropriating the pulses that came before it. THIS self seems to be immaterial in some of James' tellings, even a potential candidate for survival after death, hence his concern with Leonora Piper and all that. Further, this mind/self seems to interact with the brain, in both directions. James doesn't know how that is possible, but isn't concerned unduly by that, since he sees causation itself as a mystery, so brain/mind interaction isn't ESPECIALLY mysterious. In other contexts and passages, though, James was a monist. There is only one stuff,...

I was always under the impression this treaty consisted only of five lines. The new King is "Orange," we find, Though the name of that color won't rhyme. But let's have a feast And then live at peace, For a day if ya really don't mind. Turns out the history was more complicated than my verse. Which is bad but in an uncomplicated sort of way.