Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Jeanne Darc, known in the English speaking world as Joan of Arc was executed (burned) on this day, May 30, in 1431. Nearly a full six centuries ago, but still a thought that makes me woozy.  One odd fact that doesn't help at all: in 1456 an inquisitorial court reinvestigated Joan's alleged offenses and overturned the earlier verdict. The latter court said that the proceedings a quarter century before had been tainted with error.  https://archive.org/details/joanofarcherstor00pern/ Oddly enough, Joan's ashes were not re-animated by this vindication. 

  The oft-used word "sustainability" states an ideal.  It would seem to be a simple one, even a low bar.  Can the human species sustain itself on this planet?  Do our practices sustain our planet's ability to host us?  Three years ago the University of Alberta put the point this way: " Sustainability means meeting our own needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." At the same time, "artificial intelligence" is on everyone's lips. Nothing about the near future seems more certain than that there will be ever higher levels of AI there, doing ever more and ever-more complicated tasks. So, let us promote the battle of the finance world buzzwords, by asking: is AI sustainable?  What is the ever-increasing dependence of the human race on self-teaching complexes of algorithm going to do to the environment in which we live?  The reason for asking? AI uses up a lot of power.  A story that appears recently in MIT N...

For my day job, I recently wrote an article on the use of artificial intelligence within a certain specialized field of investing. I won't tell you what the investments in question were. Rather, I'd like to make a point about AI that I learned, or at least came to appreciate more fully, while working on this piece. One of my interviewees for the story told me this,      “For many people, AI is still a black box.  But the source of the innovation, and of the resulting errors, is in principle simple: a random number generator. This is attached to a machine-learning system that reins in that randomness according to a model of what is realistic and what is not.” So: randomness is critical to AI, just as it is critical to, say, biological evolution. Random variations give the process of natural selection some clay to shape. In the AI context, this notion of AI as a box containing a random number generator which has to be restrained reminds me of Goldilock's love of ...

    An astonishing display of ignorance by a US cabinet member played out in a hearing room on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 20. The ignoramus in question was Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security, testifying before the Senate Committee on ... homeland security.   Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire asked Noem what the phrase "habeas corpus" means. Digression here.  As a matter of simple translation, that Latin phrase means in English "you have the body".  The phrase is significant in Anglo-American jurisprudence because we are to think of it as directed to a warden or jailor, "You have the body of John Doe in your custody, now you are required to come to court and explain why you are holding that body and whether you should be allowed to continue to do so." In other words, "habeas corpus" is the name for a venerable proceeding that limits unlawful detention by requiring such public explanations.  Digression complete.  Secretary Noem...

  Credit soundness affirmed. Israel can continue to finance its war.   This month, S&P Global -- the company formerly known as Standard & Poor's', the bond rating giant -- affirmed the long and short term foreign and local currency sovereign credit ratings of the state of Israel at A/A-1.  Of course, since they aren't idiots, the authors of this report observed that prolonged or intensified military conflict can negatively impact fiscal soundness and balance-of-payments performance.  So the resumed military operations in Gaza and 'ongoing military activities' in Lebanon and Syria, could lead to a ratings deterioration. The time for that deterioration is not yet, though.  But the report also says that Israel has  strong fiscal fundamentals (which means it has a sufficiently productive economy to create tax debtors and it is good at collecting from them), which have gifted it with a  net external asset position  and a current account su...

You may be excused for not knowing the name, dear reader.  But Sheldon Leonard Bershad was an important figure in Hollywood for decades.  He was a ubiquitous character actor in the 1940s, playing the bartender Nick in A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946) for example, and playing Cyprian Boyle, a pirate, in CAPTAIN KIDD the following year. You can find his name in the above movie poster, although you may have to look closely for it there. By the mid 1950s Bershad had moved behind the camera, becoming a successful movie and television producer.  Very successful, especially on television. He produced MAKE ROOM FOR DADDY, THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW, GOMER PYLE USMC and others.   In the second season of the show THE MONKEES, there is a sort of tribute to Sheldon Leonard Bershad, and in fact to his role as a pirate.  In the eighth episode of that season a character named "Sheldon Leonard" approaches Peter Tork and persuades him to trade in his guitar for ... a treasure map! ...

From the history of ancient philosophy that we discussed yesterday we now turn to the history of modern philosophy, because a distinguished intellectual historian concerned with the latter subject, and associated with the University of Notre Dame, passed away recently and we should note the fact. Karl Ameriks is best known for his work interpreting Immanuel Kant in particular and German idealism more generally. He is known as a critic of a strict anti-realist view of Kant (or of that broader tradition). Kant is less of an anti-realist than, say, George Berkeley, on his account.  Not just a different sort of anti-realist, but less of one.  To explain the relative degrees of anti-realism he had in mind, Ameriks invoked a distinction between "long" arguments and "short" arguments for idealism.  Here is a short argument: Any experience I have must be an experience of mine. That which is mine is subjective -- i.e. it depends upon me. Therefore, any experience I have is s...