Philosophy and Literature Blog

 So, as I've been reading this book along with Courage of Truth  by Foucault, I can't help seeing parallels, real or imagined, there they are. Kierkegaard's point here at the beginning is that disputations about the truth of the Bible do not provide assurance of eternal happiness; they can't, even if the historical proofs are good, because you can only get approximation in this world. And even if you could get a proof, where would the passion of your faith be? Faith, he implies in some passages, requires imperfection: "For someone who believes that there is a God and a providence, things are made easier(in preserving the faith) in an imperfect world, where passion is kept alive, easier too in definitely gaining faith(as against an illusion) than in an absolutely perfect world. Indeed in such a world faith is unthinkable. Hence the teaching that faith is abolished in eternity."(Concluding Unscientific Postscript pp.26-27) For Kierkegaard faith IS passion, not s...

Looks like I'm going to be reading this book this year. The book is very, very long, and I have bad eyes, so I will likely be reading it for a long time. I seem to be in a Kierkegaard frame of mind these days. You don't have to be religious or mystical to like Kierkegaard as I do, perhaps it helps if one has an unconscious remnant of religion from one's youth, I don't know. These things have a way of coming back, insisting themselves on you. But in some important ways that's beside the point. The point is one's subjectivity and individuality. The forward of the book mentions that some have suggested that Wittgenstein's reference to the words of the Tractatus as a reference to this book ,which the author of the forward says Wittgenstein admired. Wittgenstein combined this powerful mystical bent with his analytic writing; one is tempted to think that the mysticism is responsible for his more radical later statements Russell so hated.  In the meantime I've ...

 The events of January 6, 2021, a terrible day for the United States, and I fear not the end, have prompted me to post some thoughts on this short book. It seems to me that I might think I'm being an individual when I'm online when I'm really not, I'm really part of a crowd, but it's not always clear which crowd. There are philosophers who think we are always part of a crowd since we inherit our language and mores from various crowds, and they may be right. But I want to suggest that, notwithstanding, there is usefulness in considering ourselves as individuals. If I posit myself as an individual, does that make me one? Maybe so. Another reason to think I might actually be an individual is that it sure seems like my body is distinct from that of others, and furthermore the character of my mind and heart, including the details of my aortal sclerosis, are unique to me. So I want to, perhaps against the grain here, suggest that there ARE individuals and that you are one...

 I had just poured myself a cup of Highlander Grogg, non-alcoholic of course, and added some caramel syrup, when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were declared the winners of the 2020 election. Suddenly a weight lifted from my chest and I was able to breathe more deeply. Today could be one of the great days in American History if we will seize it. From now on Highlander Grogg will be my toast to this day, I hope I will remember it for the days I have left.

My recent reading of James Baldwin has turned into a full-on binge. In order simply to keep up with myself, I'm going to be putting links and thoughts in this blog. The first link below is the YouTube video of the debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, which is a must-see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Tek9h3a5wQ Next are two videos of James Baldwin on Dick Cavett: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWwOi17WHpE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzH5IDnLaBA The next video is an examination of James Baldwin's  No Name in the Street  with Darryl Pinckney: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW6KwSE4958

Scanlon is dilating on the notion of  'reasons to act' and whether one can be right or wrong about such things. As a mathematician I really liked this great paragraph where he describes mathematical reasoning as not about oneself, something one can be right or wrong about, but not being outside the self. That way, we are not committed to Platonism. A very nice summary of this position.  Can reasons for action be the same way? Can we be incorrect? If so, how can we know we are incorrect? Is there a logic underlying reasons for action that is close enough in analogy to math that we should at least not dismiss? It does seem that we have a kind of Kantian thing going on here -- adoption of rationality in some form as a way to decide about action. I have to admit I am attracted to this general philosophy. Look, you can say 'why should I be reasonable anyway?' and I don't have a good answer. But, being reasonable has helped me in so much of my life, perhaps I sho...

Over the last year I have gotten more heavily into reading moral philosophy. As a result, some of my long-held views have been significantly challenged -- most especially my Nietzschean or nihilist intuitions have been challenged. Thus I have to admit that in the past I have not given sufficient attention to certain other views, especially more contemporary views, including, perhaps, though I need to read him more thoroughly to know for sure, the views of Derek Parfit. But, before I haul off and read thousands of pages of Parfit, I will start by looking at this book by Scanlon, which I am just now reading. But first, I'm going to describe the main consideration that has made me re-think things. It all started with Kant. I listened to the Critique of Practical Reason on audiobook -- my eyes are such that physically reading is difficult, though there is no audiobook of Scanlon that I know of. The basic point is, do I have a reason to be rational in my moral behavior? If not, then s...

I haven't really studied Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics. I read the entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on this subject, which I highly recommend. This does NOT qualify me as anywhere near an expert on this subject, but since I've studied math in my life it was interesting to read, whether I completely agree, or even understand, or not. My own experience of math has had moments where I felt like I was entering a Platonic realm. But, according to what I read, Wittgenstein will have none of this! If you're like me, and you've experienced an other worldly sensation sometimes in math -- something unexpected suddenly makes sense, like coming over a hill and seeing an awesome view, a space that you can't help but believe somehow existed before you got there -- then you might not like his philosophy. The Encyclopedia says Wittgenstein insisted that math was invented, not discovered. It is a language game that involves truth. He famously rej...

If this post title doesn't bring in readers... "The way to solve the problem you see in life is to live in a way that will make the problematic disappear.      The fact that life is problematic shows that the shape of your life does not fit into life's mould. So you must change the way you live and, once your life does fit into the mould, what is problematic will disappear.      But don't we have the feeling that someone who sees no problem in life is blind to something important, even to the most important thing of all?"(CV 27e) Seems to me we have two things going on here: 1. Your problem is a lack of alignment with life. The problem is to get in alignment. 2. The problem is something important about life itself. Does 1 contradict 2? Wittgenstein goes on to say that if you see the problem correctly it isn't a sorrow but a joy. So the problem exists, but is a good thing? Well, what to make of that? A little later we get: "In the cour...

Wittgenstein writes in Culture and Value: "It strikes me that religious belief could only be something like a passionate commitment to a system of reference. Hence, although it's about belief, it's really about a way of living, or a way of assessing life."(CV 64e) So, what is a 'system of reference'? Let's see, I suppose words are supposed to refer to things and if you have a system of those you have locutions, games, patterns of speech. So, the word God, while not referring to something empirical, has its use in the center of a religious system of reference that has empirical consequences. These consequences involve how one spends their time, their money, how one evaluates life situations, talks themselves into various emotional states, copes with life's stresses, thinks about the future, in many cases provides a community. A religious system of reference can accomplish all of these things. He further says in 64e: "It would be as though s...

Quoting from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy quoting from Culture and Value : "Rules of life are dressed up in pictures. And these pictures can only serve to describe what we are to do, not justify it. Because they could provide a justification only if they held good in other respects as well. I can say: "Thank these bees for their honey as though they were kind people who have prepared it for you"; that is intelligible and describes how I should like you to conduct yourself. But I cannot say: "Thank them because, look, how kind they are!"--since the next moment they may sting you." p. 29e While this is not directly a religious statement, I think for Wittgenstein ethics and religion both involve language games that exceed what I'll call the "Logical Positivists' theory the of Legitimate Use of Language"(LPL for short). But for Wittgenstein it seems, the most important things are beyond LPL. And it is difficult for m...

I've been reading, here and there, parts of Culture and Value , and just got another book on Wittgenstein's lectures and conversations on a variety of topics. I thought I would focus my thinking on some of his remarks on religion. I come to it with the thought that Wittgenstein, kind of a mystic, would not apply standard empirical blahblahblah to religious thinking, but would focus on parts of religious practice, language games, and emotions. One remark that has me thinking is when he wrote that when a believer in God asks "where did it all come from" s/he is NOT asking for a causal explanation, but is expressing an attitude toward ALL explanations. I think he is on to something here. In my religious periods I would have agreed with that. This suggests that a Wittgensteinian gloss on religious talk is that there are language games that practitioners engage in, the features of those games are different than other types of games; but, and this is what I would add an...

I noticed in part of the argument that Socrates mentions that goodness of something is due to the 'presence' of goodness, badness due to the 'presence' of badness. He uses this to defeat Callicles. Now, this is all in translation, so I don't know how close 'presence' is to the actual Greek word. But you can't hear this and not think about Derrida. Callicles admits Socrates is right about all of this presence business. Is the fact that I found this line of argument questionable that I'm some sort of crypto-postmodern? I agree that the point where Callicles could stop losing the argument is by refusing to admit the 'presence' stuff. But if you don't buy the presence stuff, you disagree with both Callicles and Socrates. Callicles is a moralist in the same way that Nietzsche is. I'm sure that using the word 'moralist' here may seem strange, but if you think about it, there is a kind of ubermench-ish morality in play here. The pr...

After discussing rhetoric with Gorgias, Socrates takes on Polus and talks him around to agreeing that the one who suffers injustice is better off than the one who inflicts it. They discuss dictators who seize power unjustly and do not suffer punishment. I'm not going to rehearse the arguments, rather, I'm going to talk about the suffering of Macbeth. The power of Macbeth for me is Macbeth's powerful imagination and the depiction of guilt and insecurity of both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Shakespeare dramatizes the damage the murders do to the psyche of the Macbeths. Macbeth says he heard voices saying "Macbeth has murdered sleep", and he goes on, indicating apparent remorse. And Lady Macbeth is driven to insanity and suicide. Macbeth himself degenerates to concluding "life's but a walking shadow". Is Macbeth's famous speech merely a representation of the effects of treason, or has Macbeth, in his degenerated state, seen a deeper truth? Or is the ...

So I started listening to Plato's Gorgias on my MP3. I bring it up because it goes back to an issue I have wrestled with over the years:  are there real answers to adversaries like Callicles? But before Callicles there is a VERY timely discussion of rhetoric. So I will concentrate on that here. Gorgias admits that the rhetorician does not know medicine but knows how to persuade patients to submit to the knife. In fact, the specialty of the rhetorician is to persuade. Thus the students of Gorgias, and the other accomplished sophists, can be very powerful, more powerful than those who actually know the arts themselves. Now, convincing sick people to go to the doctor seems like a great thing. But, as Gorgias admits, specialists at persuasion can also persuade others to do bad things. Gorgias says the teacher can't be held responsible for students using their training for evil. But rhetoric is a particular kind of skill, a skill at persuading, completely neutral, that bends oth...

     In sections 139-142 are some of the most interesting so far. Here he uses the example of the cube to investigate the relations between the picture we get of a word and how we may use it. That is, how does the picture we get of a cube really limit the way we may use it.      One may think that the picture we have of a cube will completely determine how we use the word. But, we will be surprised when we can think of a triangular projection of a cube and still have to call it a 'cube'.      It is too easy to just say, as everyone does these days, that the USE of a word is what we mean by it. Wittgenstein, pun intended, turns it around in his mind and shows how the notion of 'use' reveals potentials in a word beyond what we immediately think when a picture occurs in our mind. We may think we mean the picture by the word, and that has to be an important part of it, but it is not the full expression of the word. It is the plac...

Alright, I'm going to say a few things about Ferguson. Here goes: 1. The prosecutor did not want to prosecute the case, that's obvious. I think a special prosecutor would have avoided the appearance of a conflict of interest. The presentation he gave the night of the announcement sounded more like a defence attorney. Furthermore, while it may seem fair to present both sides to a grand jury, my gut tells me other defendants do not get the same consideration. This appears to be a double standard. 2.  Wilson said he didn't carry a taser because it was 'bulky'. I understand that a police officer has to be agile, but we should consider the possibility that a bulky encumbrance is a small price to pay if it means not killing an unarmed person. Also, I've certainly heard of and even seen on TV police using tasers, I would need to know how they were able to carry them if they were so bad, but I'm not an expert on this and would be interested to hear other opinion...

     So, I had a sudden inspiration to read Thomas Merton's book The Inner Experience , which talks a lot about the "I", and play that off against Harris' book, which will talk about how the "I" is an illusion, and see whether anything interesting comes from it. Maybe, maybe not.

     Here Harris is right on. There is no reason to conclude from QM that the universe is fundamentally Mind. QM is indeed mysterious and counter-intuitive in many ways, but Idealism is not the necessary consequence of this. As Harris points out, 'measurement' does not invoke Mind per say, it only invokes measurement.      Now, there are strange things in QM, mainly non-separability, which is genuinely strange, but that doesn't mean we have to smoke doobies and try to use The Force.      Additionally, Harris points out that the Mind is still dependant upon the physical processes within the body, and, as much as I find Penrose an interesting read, it is not obvious that QM gets us anywhere when it comes to solving the PHILOSOPHICAL problem of Mind.

     Here I'm going to digress onto some of his comments about Christianity and its relationship to mysticism. I'll open by quoting the opening of Dante's Paradiso: "The glory of the One who moves all things permeates the universe and glows in one part more and in another less." This is from the Allen Mandelbaum translation. Other Christian mystics, many of whom are quoted in The Perennial Philosophy , which Harris takes to task for being an inaccurate representation of Christianity, make similar points to the above.  I see the mysticism in Christianity as not merely the result of a few outliers, but as part of the mainstream integration of Greek thought into Christianity. The opening Gospel of John is as mystical as anything you are likely to read: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God ... All things were made and came into existence through Him; and without Him was not even one thing made that has come ...