Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

You, dear reader, may have noticed that obits of an idiosyncratic sort are an infrequent but regular feature of this blog. In the fourth quarter of 2018 thus far there have been three: Adolf Grunbaum, Whitey Bulger, Mary Midgley. Three obits in a little less than three months. That frequency is characteristic. Two philosophers and a gangster. That's a decent sampling, too. During that same period, lots of other important people have passed away about whom I've had nothing to say, including most prominently George H.W. Bush, Bernardo Bertolucci, Paul Allen and William Coors! A politician, a director, and two captains of industry. Is there a principle of selection? None known to me. I'm not averse to writing about the holders of public office, or artists of any medium, or business titans. I've written about all of those and I believe (without checking this moment) I've done obits here of tokens of each of those types. If any of my readers has noticed a patte...

The riots in France seem to have accomplished their purpose. The next time someone tells you, "violence never settles anything" you can respond, "on earth, it settles almost everything that ever gets settled." [Okay, that's an opposition of the saccharine with the cynical.] On December 1st alone (perhaps the peak of the rioting) more than 100 cars were burned in Paris, and the Arc de Triomphe was vandalized. The city's mayor estimated property damages at more than 3 million euros. On December 4, the prime minister said of the carbon taxes that had catalyzed this response,  "no tax deserves to endanger the unity of the nation." The government has backed off the implementation of the new taxes. So that was "settled." So if your interlocutor insists on getting an example, that one is near at hand. As a bit of comic relief in this story, the US psychopath in chief, Donald J. Trump, tweeted that the crowd was chanting "We wan...

I came across this by accident while looking for something else, but it is a fascinating story. It's the life and death of the first woman executed in the United States, specifically by Massachusetts two years after Independence had been declared. I had never heard of the case and am happy for the serendipity of this discovery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathsheba_Spooner  It leaves me wondering why the case hasn't developed a higher pop-culture profile than it has. The wiki article cites a single radio dramatization of it back in the 50s Somebody ought to pick up on this!

A recent book by Emily Thomas, a historian of philosophy, looks at four different theories about the reality and significance of time advanced by philosophers in Britain in the seventeenth century. Her breakdown is this: there was a "void theory," "idealism," "absolutism," and "relationalism." The terms are pretty close to self-explanatory, but I'll spell it out anyway. The void theory: there is no time. Idealism: time is real, and consists of mind-dependent relations. The remaining two may each come under the broader folder "realism," in that they both hold that time is real and it is not mind dependent. But they are importantly different from one another. Absolutism: time is independent of the actions of material bodies -- that is, time could be passing even if every object were staying still. Relationalism: time is real, independent of mind, but dependent on the actions of material bodies. The Absolutist view...

Something happened recently at a town very close to mine that has me thinking again about what is a hate crime. Two 16 year old boys attacked a younger boy, 14 years old. The targeted boy had Down's Syndrome. He also had an iPhone in his possession, and the assailants robbed him of that. Now: under the relevant state's laws, as I understand them (I speak off the cuff here) -- IF the older boys, whom I will simply call AH, because I don't use crude phrases for the sphincter in this august blog -- if they attacked him because of who he was, because he has Down's Syndrome, that is a hate crime, and they can be punished as adults. On the other hand, if they attacked him just to steal the iPhone: that is garden variety theft, and they will be punished if caught under the juvenile justice system in play. I shall of course make no effort to defend or mitigate the AHness of the two AHes. If anything happened at all along the lines reported, their behavior was thoroughly...

I'd like to present today, without further ado, something David Hume wrote about the Tories and the Whigs of his day. As no party, in the present age can well support itself without a philosophical or speculative system of principles annexed to its political or practical one; we accordingly find that each of the factions into which this nation is divided has reared up a fabric of the former kind, in order to protect and cover that scheme of actions which it pursues. ... The one party [defenders of the absolute and divine right of kings, or Tories], by tracing up government to the DEITY, endeavor to render it so sacred and inviolate that it must be little less than sacrilege, however tyrannical it may become, to touch or invade it in the smallest article. The other party [the Whigs, or believers in constitutional monarchy], by founding government altogether on the consent of the PEOPLE suppose that there is a kind of original contract by which the subjects have tacitly reserv...

Quite suddenly, a web based operation called OptionSellers.com went dark last month.A casualty of the spike in natural gas prices. More accurately, it was a casualty of hubris, as manifest in a failure to hedge against natural gas prices. The suckers -- excuse me, its investors -- received an email November 15 with the subject line "Catastrophic Loss Event."  The catastrophic loss was that OS.com had bet heavily that natural gas prices would NOT suddenly spike any time soon. As the chart I've pasted on to this blog post indicates ... nat gas prices spiked in a big way.  This was part of the pitch that you might have encountered had you gone onto their website before the spike. "Stocks are great, until they aren't. Options are better, but most make the mistake of buying them."  OOOOOh, I see, so the trick is to be on the SELLING side. Taking a small amount of money in return for a promise to pay off later if specified events happen in ...