Fertility

A fertile mind or a fertile idea?

If one pursues a fertile idea, does one consign themselves to personal and intellectual staleness?

Conversely, does the fertile mind say anything about its activity? Is the fertile mind eclectic, studious, or the polymath.

I suppose having strong elements of both will always be ideal, but coming down to one; what is more important? Can we continue to argue of old issues and debates to the effect of having overly technical terminology so as to prevent the kind of repetition that is inevitable from being age-old issues; or does intellectual fertility as a mindset allow for a freshness and interplay of perspectives in such a way that invokes originality?

It would seem that there is a subtle difference between one who seems to have depth as the scholar of the fertile idea, and one who appears to have depth as the one with a fertile mind.

With the former, depth in a specific issue is a well-rehearsed and tired routine.

With the latter, depth comes not necessarily out of expertise, but the surprising depth, clarity, and summation that comes from the sporadic and spontaneous entertainment of the idea itself.

Destre

Harris’ argument on Christian moral sentiment

There is an line of thought on Letter to a Christian Nation (Sam Harris) that I find an interesting point about Christianity.

Harris makes a point about how the Christian Right in the US spend much effort campainging on what might be seen as marginally morally important campaigns particularly concerning sexual morality and promoting pro-life ideals. While someone on the Christian right may not see this as a marginal issue, it seems ephemeral an issue to the more important global issues of human rights abuse and poverty. Christianity (or bettter put, Christians) have the flaw of overemphasising these self-indulgent national issues over the global human catastrophes.

A lot can be said about Harris’ argument, one can direct it in many ways, and as such, pull it apart in many ways also. Responses include:

i. The critique of Christian-believer behaviour says nothing about the character of Jesus
ii. This only applies to a sector of the Christian contingent

There is, however, a very powerful thought in this line of argument. Something we often forget are things distantly in the past, to which some or many are still affected by. Often, the issues in the public’s consciousness only involve those issues which are directly or closestly reminded to them.

Stephen Fry made the point once that the plight of HIV/AIDS victims are slowly becoming forgotten by many. It is seen less as a problem compared to something like obesity. There are various reasons for it, one, is the newness of it fading as years passed.

HIV/AIDS is becoming slowly forgotten, and we often need reminding about global poverty. Indeed there are many campaign issues in the world, and I suppose, there are so many that we often must dedicate ourselves only to a few. Those few that we consider are often those that have immediate or distant impact upon us (breast cancer, for instance). Otherwise, they are then dismissed and forgotten.

That seems to be the most salient point about Harris’ appeal to the poor moral sentiment of Christianity in his Letter.

Destre

Same matter, different subject

Crime, how do we study it?

There are many different ways to look at crime. The most conventional way it would seem to me is to look at it as a human and social behaviour. There are many perspectives on crime, and that there are perspectives on crime reflects the way we construe our subject manner. We might say for instance:

1. Crime is a social construction (constructivist)
1*. (therefore, there is no such thing as crime)

2. Crime is a natural phenomenon, we shall see it as while inevitable, there should be a rate to define a healthy rate of crime (positivist)
2*. Crime, or evil is a necessary pervailance in the immanent world (a religious-leaning viewpoint)

3. Crime is a situational behaviour established by a series of circumstances to dispose one to deviant action (generic psychological)

4. Crime is a situational occurence established by a system or social organisation which oppresses people to commit crime (Holist)

There are so many different ways to cut a phenomenon such as crime, here are some distinctions:

1. Focus on the individual vs. Focus on society or groups as a whole
2. Focus on the agent’s preferential and motivational set/Focus on causal factors
3. Focus on quantification of recorded occurences/Focus on speculative insights to which fit best to explain data
4. Focus on a scientifically validated measure or dataset, and establish as tight a methodology as one can/Focus on instituting change

Note that these distinctions are not mutually exclusive.

There has been recent talk as to the establishment of teaching sexology as a subject in universities. While a similar point is to be made about crime, there is an established ‘criminology’ that is taught in many universities (how it is organised often, is as  a collaboration of law scholars, social scientists and sometimes psychologists).

I may pose a similar question: how do we understand sex? There can be many ways to understand sex, how we determine this question leads to what kinds of answers we have. Is sex a natural phenomenon wherewhich we may address issues of medicine? Is sex a social issue, that represents at its most fundamental, the power relations between men and women, the complexitity of social identity (sexuality), and the relation with other important social notions (criminality, deviance, education, class, work).

Sex and criminality bring up many issues: the notion of paedophilia, for instance has a question-begging notion of childhood. A study like Philippe Aries and many others shows how our attitude towards the pre-pubescent and pubescent has changed over the past few centuries with industrialisation. Some criminalised sexual behaviours can reflect social attitudes, why is it criminal to put out a cigarette on one’s partner if they both want it [there are many documented stories like this]?

Legal issues can come up; age of consent is an obvious one, borderline cases, what about sex and legislation on an international level; where homosexuality is a corporal punishable offence at one sovereignty and acceptable at another. What about the plight of those who are between cultural identities and yet torn apart by them by virtue of their sexual identity (transexuals in Iran; the double discrimination of homosexual Israelis; the custom of forced marriage in British Pakistani communities).

Biological issues: does it make sense to classify between sexes of male and female? If sexual intercourse is a notion held by other species, is sexuality a workable notion? Can we for instance, use the insights of observing animal sexual behaviour as to understanding our own? Are we sufficiently genetically comparable?

Education: how do we properly teach sexuality in the classroom? How do we teach sexuality to children as parents and adults?

Normative: is it ethical to study sexual behaviour? What are the provisions required for ‘ethical’ study? Does the ‘is’ of animal sexual behaviour entail the ‘ought’ of sexual behaviour genera? (the answer is no).

To speak of a ’sexology’ is a bit of a misnomer in some respects. While there are many insights to be made as the biological scientist, the social psychologist, the clinical psychologist, the sociologist, the philosopher, or even the educator; those issues of sex often presuppose or come to bear upon wider issues of those subjects. To have a ’sexology’ would be at worst a failed understanding of the underlying issues which lie far beyond sex itself, or at best, an understanding simultaneously of many many disciplines at little depth or only one subject at much depth. There are some subjects that, while are importantly interdisciplinary, are not subjects suis generis, that is, without some failure or exclusion of one discourse.

This is not fair to say that some interdisciplinary efforts are irrelevant.

Many subjects in the mathematical sciences often have specialists who are non-mathematicians. Calculus as applied to the many aspects of chemistry, or the subject that has now come to be known as computer science; are noble species of wider genera subjects.

There is a sense of question-begging to which I have decidedly not answered, as to how to understand crime, or sexuality. While we may be conciliartory between the biologist interested in evolution, or the law scholar who is also an amateur marxist; we find not necessarily competing theses, but rather; competing ideologies and methods. To group them as one exclusive category excludes the manifold within each subject matter.

Destre

Philistinism

I would quite dislike a world ruled by philistines:

i. Where a non-philosopher would teach arguments for the existence of God
ii. Where someone without a sense of history would be a politician
iii. Where an artist or writer cannot look to the past, or the present, or even the future, for a source of influence, but be stuck in a moment of a style, which may or may not have passed a long time ago
iv. Where targets are a priority over concern and human interpersonal contact.
v. Where skill is seen as a threat, and not a virtue
vi. Where the best orator wins, and personal attacks are currency
vii. Where training is a distraction
viii. Where the closed-minded and unimaginative cannot see the potential for creativity or connection in the pursuit of the non-task. It is in the serf that the Romantics reintroduced folk culture; it is in the proletariat’s tragedy of war that the most sophisticated of composers found inspiration in the early 20thC; it is in nature where those greatest natural scientists found divinity; it is in the seemingly irrelevant that we can find the most eloquent and succinct exploration of our most relevant concerns and interests.

All too often I hope for the Nietzschean superman to find rule, in disdain and disgust of the very flock they object. It is, the one who is entirely delved in the most fundamental of skills and arts, I think, who would be the one that pushes those who appeal to their position rather than their inner skill, to challenge their very existence.

Antisophie (and Destre)

Alienation from one’s ends

Often I have come across the thought that being alienated from one’s ends is absurd, or rather, in some way incomprehensible.

What would this phrase possibly mean? Here are some interpretations:

1. To be alienated from your ends is to not act in accordance with your prima facies motivational states, those being desires, beliefs, and other such attitudes and epistemic states which form our preferential set.

Response: our percieved ends do not necessarily need to be our actual ends. There are many cases of self-deception, or simply not being aware of one’s ends. Nussbaum gives an example in Flawed Crystals (or is it The Golden Bowl?), where the Henry James character kept his feelings of love hidden from himself, only by discovering it, is it instantiated. But it was, however, hitherto unawares to the agent.

2. To be alienated from your ends is not to act in accordance with things in your preferential set?

Response: This requires clarification, what exactly does this mean? Surely there is always a case where there is an ellipsis to one’s own ends?

Response*: Consider the case of carrying out posthumous tasks. Perhaps for instance, you have a friend who tended to a garden, or campaigned against noise pollution; perhaps you, the agent, have no interest in these activities. You might even hate gardents or enjoy the late night party with loud music; such that pursuit of these ends are contrary to your own motivational set. If this is the case, does it look like there is an alienation of one’s ends? Perhaps.

But there is still an ellipsis. Conflicting desires are not a sufficient condition of alienation, nor are they necessary. Most preferences we have may have conflicting desires. I may desire to lie in bed for a few minutes, this may lie against the desire to get to work early, or get more work done, or curb one’s own laziness. The desire to have a lie-in for a bit longer may also be strong, so strong to overwhelm one’s pre-existent motivations. A conflict is not a sign of alienation.

Destre

The antiomies of the foundations

There is a distinct contradiction, and yet, agreement, in the following two propositions:

P1. Mathematics cannot be shown to be complete
P2. We cannot but conceive of Mathematics, properly construed, as ideally composed of a set of axioms such that all and any system of mathematics can be reduced to a common simple system, or set of axioms such that shows a common genus to all mathematics.

This view, I maintain, is a Kantian view of mathematics. Kant’s constraints upon the proper conduct of science is that there ultimately originates a primary concept, but, that this concept is knowable or discoverable, or even actual, is not relevant, nor should we be too concerned if we never find it.

For science to be proper, Kant says, it must fit an ideal of knowledge, but such an ideal is projected (this entails the ideality of natural kinds) and not real. Such an ideal also seems to suggest that we use a bit of elipsis in our explanations and descriptions of science. A Kantian view of science also would set as a desideratum that there were a formalisability/mathematicisation constraint on anything if it is to be proper science at all.

The ideal is a projection, and is an “as if it were real” constraint (that is the ellipsis to which I speak of). Because it is a projection, our kinds and entities and laws within the scientific frame work not only can be subject to change, but desirably so, are they changeable, for scientific theories could always change, and are not rigidly set.

Rigidity is still present in the Kantian conception of science, however, in the desideratum of the constructability of formal langauges upon which we describe our phenomena. Consider the difference between ‘Water’ (h20) and water (that stuff we drink). Most, if not all the water we come across is not ‘water’, perhaps in some ways, ‘water’ does not exist, HOWEVER. Water necessarily presupposes ‘water’, in virtue of its ideality. For what makes water1 the same as water2 other than h20? Nothing.

H20 is criterial of water, but in a way, its pure form is never to be found in water, only ‘water’, which projects onto all thigns called water, makes sense of our empirical concept in such a way to be science. But, because ‘water’ is a priori regulatively ideal, it is also subject to change. The contradiction is, then, how is water necessarily h20, yet only indexical to our scientific understanding?

The answer to this lies in the conception of necessity. Necessity here, is defined as a criterial relation. Therefore, to say that “2 is a number” is necessarily true is to state a criteria. Necessity is criteria. But then, is not necessity similar to possibility? For criteria presupposes the conditions, and conditions is construed in the Kantian system as possibility. It would seem then that necessity can only take place as a concept where possibility is first defined, such that in a sense, necessity is only possible if, possibility allows, and this is necessarily so.

Destre (and Michael)

Beyond Survival (another take)

[Editorial: In a strange turn of events I made the title seem like a rejoinder to the post previous to this, but these both were submitted to me accidently and not related to each other]

That mechanism of survival

Throughout the later 19thC, and perhaps onto the 20thC, many spoke of the notion of natural selection as a social narrative; both descriptive and normative. Some people talk of the function of society, or some biological mechanism (e.g. monogamy, sexuality, anxiety) as being part of the pre-programmed function or genetically inherited as a survival feature, or a feature to propagate, or react etc.

It almost becomes a moot point when people address the issue; some people make natural selection look like teleology, or innatism, or more like their actual default view, and yet oppose it on those grounds, where others, show it is a little more subtle and strain themselves to show how natural selection explains away design.

I find it interesting when the same appeal can be used for opposing arguments. Let me consider one example. The proliferation of culture, art, science, and morality, as a point to contend with this social interpretation of natural selection.

Why culture opposes natural selection and vice versa

Sometimes people say that culture and literature and those things that make us human cannot be explained by natural selection (but who said it did?). Conversely, some people say that various social features like courtship, competition, and even governance, hums to the harmony of survival of the fittest and the propagation of one’s genus. Insofar as either relate to the individual or group survival, and reproduction of humanity.

But let us consider now, what place has the literary and cultural in human life? Does it oppose, or promote natural selection? I saw both points are wrong. To say literature and morality opposes natural selection is misunderstand what the actual Darwinism purports to (it works as a natural scientific, not social thesis); and to say that culture and art looks favourably to natural selection is to invoke a poor explanatory propositional schema by way of presupposition (to think that the biological determines action directly as an input->output relation is far too crude, but not necessarily wrong).

We could say neither of these things. But rather, that culture, art, morality, literature, etc. are in fact, tangential developments. But, why? While the survival instinct may be very present in us, and things like reflexes behaviour (reacting to danger situations by panic and increased adrenalin etc.) may have been helpful responses and learned (I say this term metaphorically) over the generations; we are then to say that these kinds of responses are no longer helpful in our new social and human situation.

It is because of the security of our social system and the established things such as religion, culture, music, morality, philosophy, science; that we do not need to consider survival as our most ultimate concern, sure, it’s important, but think of our daily lives; we don’t wake up in a branch and protect ourselves and children from potential competition or fight for immediate resources. In a way, we seemed to have deferred the job of survival and, more importantly, resource management, to bureaucracies and government; our resources, like our waste, litter, consumables, and energy, are up to the bigger powers that be to help us.

It is, in a way, a testament to the advancement and ingenuity of humanity as a species to think beyond survival, but also, it is a reminder of how fundamentally vulnerable we are to necessarily depend on the good people who take our waste every day, clean our streets, keep our nations safe (well, relatively), and supply us with food quite easily. Such that, the way to use these new, accidental features of literature and morality, are, ironically, new and innovative ways to cope with the human impulse. I write to live; I can’t live without football; what is the meaning of life? Why should I live?

Fundamentally, to the human impulse of survival, there is nothing more important; but once our own survival is secured, we then are led to other questions. Is it merely that human survival, once put away as a concern, leaves us to ponder other things to find meaning, purpose and motivation? I am not sure. This is not a moot point, but just an unclear thought

Destre