excuse me while I throw up

CLASS WARFARE AT THE MUNDANE LEVEL---- A FACT OF LIFE IN THE UNITED STATES (UNITED STATES of banks?)

Message to Albertson's, "Jitterbug phones" and the United States Postal Service: cut the crap!

And, while we're at it: Let's return to the days of government monopolies--did that once exist in the USA?

The Postal Service should be a government monopoly. It should be cheap and post offices should be open longer hours--at least 2-3 hours after normal quitting time. Not this outrageous close at 5:30pm bullshit.

And they should cut this crap about being efficient and profit-making like a business. F*CK business. The post office is and should be a public service.

In Slovakia post offices were open even on Sundays until 9pm. And Saturdays into the late afternoon. (I've forgotten exactly when, but certainly until 3pm.... downtown ..and if you went to a mall later....) and normal weekday evening hours were much more generous than the stingy phoney crap we get from the US postal service.....

IF it's good enough for a former Eastern European ("communist"/"Socialist") country, then it should be good enough for the old USA, don't you think?

And then there is this phony business; when you've completed your transaction and have what you need, they waste your time with this false caring question: need anything else, (suggesting archly) like stamps?

MAKES ME WANT TO PUKE

Just like when Alberton's wastes my time with that bullshit about how much I saved.

PLEASE DON'T WASTE MY TIME WITH BULLSHIT

And then there is so called "jitterbug" phones. Whenever you call they WASTE YOUR TIME
TRYING TO SELL YOU THIKGS YOU DON'T Want

When I first set up my account, the g.d. company wasted about 20 or more minutes of time. I knew what I needed and could have done it quickly, but no... they had to waste my precious time......

/The person i spoke with was plainly following a computer program written to follow someone's needs--but not my own....

i am not an idiot and i don't need these wholly phoney and insincere time-wasters

It is positively insulting.

about my previous post:

yes, my previous post was too fragmentary. I apologize. I don't know when I'll get round to revising it...

a warning to doctors

Note added: Tuesday October 5, 2010
Two inadequacies in what I've written below: talk about "abstract" thinking is too vague. It surely cannot be good to get more abstract if one uses categories like Nelson Goodman's famous "grue". So, people who talk about the advantage of "abstract" thinking are not being clear.
Secondly, I would like to add a quotation from Flynn's book to illustrate my general point.

a warning for all doctors : You are in danger--danger for what Socrates would call your "souls" ("psuche"--not a Christian soul capable of independent existence, but rather that part of your mental organization which allows you to live well...) In a more modern idiom: Don't lose your intellectual integrity!!! You are in danger of indulging in the privileges of your position! Treat your patients as genuine equals!

It happens that doctors are a well-studied population when it comes to making fallacious inferences. Doctors are just as prone to make basic errors in statistical reasoning as are non-doctors who have had no statistical training. Moreover doctors are inclined to rely upon "clinical judgment' even when it is unreliable.
[note added 5 October: This is not to say that other professions do not also make reasoning errors. It just happens that doctors have been studied. Reference: See references in Keith Stanovich, Decision Making and Rationality in the Modern World (Oxford UP 2009)]

so, to all doctors, we might say: People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

More recently, apart from that general warning, I have experienced an overly hasty youngish doctor who mis-diagonosed my eighty four year old mother as suffering from senile dementia.

Mis-diagnosed? How dare I say that when I am not a doctor?

I'll make a bet that the doctor in question (as well as most doctors) has not read James R. Flynn's "What is intelligence?" In that book, a psychologist who specializes in intelligence, points out that our culture has changed in the past hundred years. ROughly it's become more abstract, less concrete. It's not that we are really smarter, but jobs today (and computers etc.) require us to think a different (not necessarily better) way.

I suggest that some doctors who meet older people are unaware of this general phenomenon.

So, if my eighty-four year old mother doesn't think like a computer program/menu, that doesn't mean she is stupid or has dementia.

I noticed that the doctor who made this diagnosis spent as much time looking at his computer screen as my mother during our recent visit.... hmmmm....doesn't he know that our evolutionary biology has equipped us with a fantastic skill to read faces and body language? Or has he let those skills atrophy as he relies upon his computer to tell him what to do next?

Let's be clear: my mother and father came of age at a time when there were no personal computers. They don't think like people who use computers regularly. My mother might seem to treat another person as an actual person capable of emotion and with broad worldy knowledge, and she will call upon that knowledge which is irrelevant if we think like a computer.

But among human beings of her generation those irrelevant details were relevant. IT was a different world.

Now I know there are wise men who think we are making progress, and I won't tackle them today, but I am not convinced. My mother has people skills. She can communicate.

And she can perform the tasks she needs to on a daily basis. Moreover, she managed quite well when we were growing up.

So, I am suggesting that any evaluation of a person's skill in dealing with life, their life, the problems they face must (unsurprisingly) consider what skills the person actually needs to possess to function in their daily life. My mother does indeed possess the relevant skills.

And I'll bet the doctor who is the target now did not stop to consider what she needs to do in her ordinary environment. He was more concerned with whether her style of conversation fit into his game plan. She probably treated him too much like a person, and an equal (when it comes to that), and was insufficiently passive in allowing him to frame the discourse....

There's more to say on this subject, but I will stop now, hoping to return some day with further references and more argument to and fro....

I cannot continue this note now, but hope to return to it soon.

Post script
In fact, as my entry about jitterbug phones, albertsons, and the united states postal service indicates, I think there is altogether too much SCRIPTING IN ADVANCE of our conversations by the rich and powerful, and I object to it.

Sorry, I've been hearing about efficiency in conversation all my life, and what I've been hearing represents a sort of phoney folk pragmatics which primarily serves the needs of the rich and powerful.

LET'S START A CONVERSATION LIBERATION MOVEMENT

Yes, the more I think about it, we can demand real conversations, as in RESISTING:
BULLSHIT PROPAGANDA WORDS "I'm just doing my job"
REPLY, "sORRY, you are a human being with a heart and a brain, and you are allowed to use them. EVen if you and I are both powerless, we can agree that this is an absurd situation which benefits neither one of us... As a thinking creature, you can recognize the justice in my complaint --NOT THE PHONY 'I am sorry you feel that way'... (another make me puke phrase)....." dON'T BE SORRY, admit that I have a point, and that you as a rational creature understand that I am not merely "feeling" a certain way, but that I have a legitimate grievance....even if we are both powerless to change anything (ahhhhh but why are we powerless/?

Note added Sunday 3 October: I've added a few words to prevent misunderstanding by careless readers....

disgusting america

it is disgusting that a book goes out of print and then instead of 20 dollars, it costs

forty or sixty or more....

books are food for thought--and I don't mean junk food...

books are not mere things to be made into objects of speculation (nor is food, but that's another story....) not mere commodities to be traded.....

I see no cause for optimism on any level...

libraries? no good ones are easily accessible for me where I am currently located. Nor will a decent library be conveniently located any time soon.... even if I manage to escape from this poisoned pimple they call "El Paso"....

I find it increasingly difficult to maintain any level of intellectual integrity.....perhaps it's not even worth trying.....

I've been using this blog in ways I hadn't anticipated when I set out. It seems that as my customary means of self-expression have been eliminated, I have turned to sending my thoughts out through this medium...
And much of what I've written needs some kind of warning label: provisional, not publishable, subject to revision--read at your own risk....

And tonight I find myself annoyed at the interpretations of Socrates as an airtight system....not that there isn't much insight there...

But I find myself longing for the pain and tragedy one can express in literature.

I am thinking of the sadness of the book we call in English "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"....

Finally, when Tomas is old, he is completely Tereza's, and she feels a kind of sadness....
And he? He does care, in the end, that he should not do something to hurt her...
But that development through conflict--both inner and outer--That is not like the clash of arguments in Plato's dialogues. For me there is something light about Socratic conversation, even when Socrates is talking about the most important matters... even when an interlocutor is angry with him . . . The inner world one finds in novels just isn't there...

And that disappoints me....

I don't want a theory that's going to package human suffering as due to error or ignorance or whatever. That sort of theory is cold and heartless. It's a bit like saying it doesn't really matter...

Yet, then I think of Tomas, toward the end of ULB, saying that a "career", a "calling" is meaningless, bullshit--when earlier, we know, all he'd ever wanted was to be a surgeon.....

Yes, but he's not saying what this insight is. He's not saying that his previous life belonged to one particular philosopher's category. He's just used ordinary non-pretentious language and said it's bullshit... That's not what life is about....a career.......He's realized that he gave up his career, but was happy being with Tereza....career advancement, status,--all bullshit.....

But to say it all like that means ripping it out of context. We can't take it as if there were general principles about careers and such-like. What's to be learned here is not so simply put....and without more of a surrounding context, what I've just written is misleading . . . without saying more about the story it belongs to........

(An after-thought: One could say that when Socrates has a conversation about how to educate the young (as he does, e.g., in the "Laches"), the suffering is off-stage. The parent wants the child to have a good education to spare the child suffering....)

assholes

basically, the people who run the USA (and the world) are assholes.

they totally fuck up other peoples' lives--and they just don't care.

I do not find it adequate to say: they are like tyrants with disordered souls, who do not really know what they are doing....

These assholes live lives of great privilege and they do so on the backs of the suffering of others.

It's somehow just not adequate to say: they (the assholes) are really unhappy--even though they don't know it. Even if true, it leaves out the misery they cause.

At the same time, I recognize that it is also unhealthy to wish to harm another human being. So, in that sense, punishment is out.

But what is the proper reaction? Yes, making the truth known and public is good. That must be part of a wise reaction. Indeed, the truth when made public can be disturbing for the people responsible for suffering.

But, then again, I don't expect to see wide scale public truth telling anytime soon...

Note (added Sunday 3 October)

"asshole" (not to mention the "f" word) is of course vulgar and as a teacher of English as a Second or Foreign language, I would strongly recommend to my students that they avoid using it. Nonetheless, it is a word of English. If I were to attempt justify my judgments above, I might begin by using some of the following sources:

Does the United States behave badly?

See Richard W. Miller, Globalizing Justice, Oxford University Press, 2010.

Who really runs the USA?

See: G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America?, fifth edition, 2006, McGraw-Hill

Merely by adding these references I do not show that what I have said is correct, but it does suggest, at the very least, that there is some room for argument in favor of what I am saying.

in passing....

I am a regular reader of the Leiter Reports, and have only praise for Professor Leiter.

Yet, I cannot resist commenting upon his (dare I say it) "austere" academic prose...

(surely a register of English which it is valuable to have in one's linguistic repertoire for all kinds of reasons.)

He is now running a discussion about the job market which "may be unusually austere".

It is no criticism of him, I hope, if I say that in plain English one could say that the job market in philosophy is SHIT or SHITTY....

Ahh, yess I can't help recalling the letter I got from the APA as I was just about to begin graduate school. Written undoubtedly in straightforward language, it warned me of my slim job prospects. Being only twenty years old and very inexperienced, I took it as a death sentence..

But let's not get into that now.....except to say, I've often wondered whether it did me more harm than good.... and (to be brutally frank) I wonder whether it wasn't about some people who just wanted to cover their asses.....

CAVEAT: I've just taken another look at Leiter's blog. He begins by saying the job market is "very bad".... so even his use of austere academic prose is balanced by that very frank headline.... (But I let what I've said stand because it might have some amusement value)...

further reflections

Penner's paper on Socrates (which I alluded to in the previous entry) brought to mind a variety of thoughts:

-that, for example, when I used to teach Plato, a sticking point was always the view that one who does injustice suffers more than the one to whom injustice is done.

In a general way, I can see that if we are able to live well by means of our "soul", and the "soul" is damaged by such action, then we are worse for it.

But, concretely, many bad people seem to go unpunished and don't notice what they've done.

But, then again, on another level, we don't know what goes on with those invisible and distant men behind the curtains of power....

And, if we consider Penner's emphasis upon Socratic conversations,we notice their absence.

The so-called great and powerful avoid answering questions and don't allow people to even ask them honest questions--at any rate, not in public.

One example that springs to mind is the interview a few years ago that Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now" had with Bill Clinton. Goodman asked Clinton many questions, and she did not pursue him with follow-up questions---not to the extent one might, not to the extent one should, I would say. Yet, Clinton became angry, and took a "how dare you?" attitude...

Just one example.

Tony Blair would be another....

What lives do such creatures really live? Can you be dishonest in an insular part of your life without it spilling over? It would be quite a risk to take.... trying to practice dishonesty only on Monday, Wed, and Friday or only with this group of people..... "dishonesty"? is that what it is? or, rather cowardice, engaging in a policy of deliberately limiting one's thoughts and, even, feelings, in the service of something which is neither truth nor goodness, nor justice, nor beauty.....not putting one's self in a situation where one might say or think or feel something....

I began by wanting to write about cruelty and injustice, and how I came to believe that the institutions in our world aim at injustice, and that this influences our relationships to one another, and how shocked I was to arrive at the conclusion that an enormity of suffering is unnecessary, the product of specific decisions by specific individuals who aim at something we call their self-interest.

But if they thereby make themselves to have the ugly souls that I have described above, then the world seems even a more perverse place....

I think perhaps Simon Blackburn misunderstands such thoughts as the claim that bad people are "irrational", but that thought is not one I can expand upon or justify right now.

The Grouch Reads

I've started reading an essay by Terry Penner, "Socratic Ethics: Ultra-Realism, Determinism, and Ethical Truth"...

I've not finished it, but I can't resist sharing this passage from the latter part of the paper.
In it Penner is responding to someone who complains that on his account of Socratic thought there is nothing recognizably moral. (Readers of this blog might recall that I've alluded to remarks of the linguist Wierzbicka on the conceptual primacy of good/bad over 'right/wrong'.....I should not say that her views are identical with either Penner or Socrxates; nonetheless there's something interesting there.)

Here is part of Penner's response:

"Socrates and a tiny band of followers aside, no one is content to resort to the Socratic device of intellectual discussion to change people's views as to what it is good for them to do. We 'don't have the time' for that sort of thing. So instead--starting with Plato and Aristotle--we try to train people's characters by conditioning, using the devices of reward and punishment. ('What would happen if you allowed to people to do that? We've got to forbid it and back that prohibition by punishment.') ..."

Penner goes on to say that this system--promulgated by "leaders of family, society, and a legal system" persists in the face of "obvious failures".

And I wonder now about the Buddhist who once suggested that people feel a need for punishment because they start with self-hatred.... a fear that within one's breast there may be uncontrollable forces?

Post-script added
31 September
Is it just cowardice of I don't try to explain to my boss that s/he is confused about basic things? I have some doubts here. Most bosses/managers/supervisors are not very interested in hearing something new. At any rate, that has been my experience. They won't make you drink hemlock, but they will fire you or fail to renew your contract. (After all, that's one good reason for having an institution like tenure....) Can I resort to Socratic conversation with a boss and live to tell about it?--or escape firing?

The Grouch Reads...

The Grouch Reads....SLOWLY...

I've taken another peak at John M. Cooper's introduction to the complete works of Plato published by Hackett.... and while I've not finished reading that introduction, it is striking for its omission of a very striking feature of both Plato's and Aristotle's writings....

namely, their moral realism--what Penner I think is now calling (in Socrates' case))

"hyper" realism...(correction: that should have been "ultra")

For them it's unproblematic to speak of a good man or a bad man.

--Something I think we do not do unproblematically. ("We" moderns--or perhaps,

with awareness of some claims of the linguist Wierzbicka, We who speak English...)

Striking that Cooper does not notice or comment upon this fact--something that, I think,

a modern reader, might need some help understanding....

Plato's and Aristotle's way of speaking/thinking can seem to us to be naive, or simply mistaken.

(But is it mistaken? Should we say they belong to a different time, and leave it at that?

Or, should we say: Let the reader find her/his own reaction.(?) Or, can we use this striking difference as an opportunity to raise for a reader the philosophical issue . . . . and an opportunity to point out a different point of view from the one which will seem natural to many moderns?

Perhaps in the future I can try to find some examples of this moral realism ....

the grouch reads

The Grouch Reads: John M. Cooper's Intro. to "Plato: Complete Works" (Hackett)

note/correction added below 30 November 2010

I have to admit that I'm puzzled by Cooper's hostility to attempts to find a chronology in the dialogues. I must also admit, though, that he seems reasonable in describing the idea that Plato's works fall into three distinct periods.

Apparently he is worried that it will limit the imagination or readers, and also that it is not based upon secure evidence. He speaks of the danger of presenting the hypothesis under the "guise of a presumably objective order of composition." (p. xiv)

Well, I just don't see it. At any rate, so far as the central philosophical differences among the dialogues, Cooper seems to end up recognizing many of the central components acknowledge by those he would criticize: e.g., the Socratic focus upon ethical questions and a lack of interest in metaphysics, contrasted with Plato's metaphysical concerns. ("those he would criticize"--he mentions Vlastos by name, and I am supposing that Penner's views about chronology would be sufficiently similar to elicit criticism from Cooper as well--though Penner is not mentioned.)

If Cooper's target is the attempt to present a precise chronology--first, second, etc....
Then, I agree with him. Yet, he mentions Vlastos as a target, and I find it hard to see that Vlastos made such an error. (Though I suppose to be confident in this claim I shall have to re-read Vlastos.)

I've not read all of Cooper's Introduction, but I didn't notice that he mentioned something Terry Penner was fond of mentioning: that stylographic analyses rely upon features of style which are beneath the level of a writer's conscious awareness.

Cooper insists upon the importance of philosophical content. But the chronological approach does seem to jibe well with a focus upon philosophical content in the following sense: the metaphysics in Plato does become more sophisticated. (Contrast the Sophist or Philebus with the Phaedo or Republic.) So, to some extent, it seems that the results of the attempt to find chronology don't depart from a concern with philosophy. That was a cautious sentence, but I am wondering about just what the problem is here.

One point Cooper seems to make is that a dialogue in what some would think of as an "early" style might have been composed late in Plato's life. (p. xvi) Well, perhaps if it is just about "style"....but probably not if what we are calling "style" is intrinsically connected with patterns of thinking.

One way to get a grasp on that point might be to find an example of a writer the order of whose works is known, and who changed his style. Could we imagine Wittgenstein late in life returning to the style of the "Tractatus"? I think not.

Certainly from what I recall of Terry Penner's remarks about these matters he certainly did not present them as "hard facts"--to borrow a phrase from Cooper.. On the other hand, I suspect that Cooper's thoughts about methodology and science may not be so sophisticated as they might. His willingness to use terms like "hard facts" suggests to me a view of knowledge or science that is, roughly, too empiricistic. A more liberal (less "empiricistic" view) would allow that philosophical interpretations can interact with stylometric findings, to provide mutual support for hypotheses about the order of composition. No not certain facts, but reasonable or plausible hypotheses--open to revision.

Note/Correction
I've just been looking at George Rudebusch's book about Socrates, and Rudebusch points out that stylometric ordering of the dialogues doesn't always agree with the ordering made according to philosophical content. If so, that means what I say above is confused. I don't have time to sort this out now, so I am just adding this note.

The Grouch Reads...

Michael Taylor, Community, Anarchy, & Liberty

As I continue to experience the fundamental lack of civility in El Paso Texas--the non-stop noise of pounding stereos in cars and in houses, dogs with their screeching barks, and the sheer aggressiveness and indifference of drivers toward pedestrians, I am always heartened to find that someone is aware of the general problem, even if their acknowledgment is made very much in passing, as below:

Bicycles and motor-cars can be lumped together because they have the same basic function, but there are differences between them which are interesting from certain points of view (the bicycle is thermodynamically more efficient than the car, is less destructive of people and environment and community and so on).

(added emphasis, Michael Taylor, Community, Anarchy & Liberty (Cambridge UP 1982), p.p. 7-8)

Natural Gas??? clean????

Message for the Bus company in El Paso, Texas that has the effrontery to call itself "Sun Metro (sic)"---("sic" because the bus system is slow and inefficient. nothing like a real metro!)

The way that companies remove natural gas from the ground is NOT CLEAN!!

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/14/as_regulators_weigh_drilling_in_marcell

The Grouch Reads

I've been reading Richard W. Miller's "Globalizing Justice" (Oxford 2010)

and I've no doubt that I'll profit from the book...

Yet, I am very disturbed by Miller's appeal to TRUST as an ideal of relationships and the notion that I share a COMMON PROJECT ("joint project", e.g., on page 44 ") with my co-citizens. ("trust" is appealed to as an ideal in the global warming chapter; I don't recall if it occurs earlier)

As a pedestrian in EL Paso Texas, I cannot trust the people in cars.

And as a citizen of the USA, I am daily faced with misleading advertisements at every turn.

DO I share a common project with those who provide my internet services? I doubt it. It seems to me that their project is to squeeze all they can out of me, while giving me as little back in return as possible.

And, that seems to characterize many interactions with people who provide the services I truly need.

DO book publishers really attempt to charge a fair price? I doubt it. Book prices have increased much more than wages in the past fifteen years.

Other examples could be found.

This is not a final judgment about Miller's book.

Offhand, and provisionally, the problem seems to be that while I would endorse some notion of doing my fair share in a common effort, I find precious little evidence that such a notion governs the behavior of the richest and most powerful, and thereby shapes the character of the society.

On the other hand, I am heartened when I read such lines as the following (also occurring in Chapter Two, "Compatriots and Foreigners")

"...the enormous growth of US national income in the last quarter of the twentieth century, which did essentially nothing for the poor and mostly benefited those who were not deprived to begin with, should be deemed a failure..."

Given the guidelines of careful academic prose writing (and I don't mean to reject those standards) those lines could not stand alone without the material I have omitted. It is worthwhile now to supply the missing bit from the end:

".. unless no feasible alternatives would have done more for the disadvantaged."

(pp. 46-7)

So the thought is: the enormous growth of income for the wealthiest represented no moral progress--unless one could make out/ defend the claim that if the wealthier had profited less then the poor would have not profited more.---that is to say, Miller is imagining a world where:

the rich did not profit as much as they really did

and

the poor profited more (than they did in the actual world where the rich profited enormously)

The existence of non-existence of that world will determine whether the profits of the wealthy in the US in the last quarter of the twentieth century was justified. Only if such a world was not possible could the growth of income for the wealthiest be considered a good thing.

But doesn't this leave something out? Isn't there the fact that the increase in the wealth of the wealthiest is simultaneously an increase in their power, contributing to an increasing societal myopia about the goals of the society--precisely what makes me grow cold when I hear talk of a common or shared project. The increasing wealth of the wealthy makes it increasingly unlikely in the future that the legitimate expectations and needs of the rest of us will be met.

Trust? Cars? Someone might make a rejoinder to my brief comment above. Don't most cars obey the traffic laws?

Even if that's right, it is still reasonable for me to enter every intersection with caution, and that requires an unpleasant wariness I never experienced as a pedestrian in Europe.

But we can connect this point to my closing one. As the gap between rich and poor increases, the psychological presuppositions which have to be satisfied if you are to successfully appeal, as Miller does, to such notions as "trust" and "a common goal/project" will vanish. People will not be moved by such appeals because they will have become adjusted to an unjust world.

Is that cynicism? I suppose it depends upon the state of the real world. (Cf. the arguments in Wilkerson and Pickett, "The Spirit Level")

An after-thought: my remark about "trust" might be partially mis-guided in the following sense: The chapter on global warming talks about a situation where some agreement among the parties must be reached--otherwise everyone suffers. In such a situation, it might be reasonable to expect that all will accept trust as a value. Yet, even with that legitimate point, the psychological point does not go away.

In any case, these are provisional remarks. Label them under the category: not considered or final thoughts, but merely thoughts I had while reading....

Military Keynesianism

Just want to comment briefly...

The Internet was developed by the US Government under the aegis of the Defense Department. That means that working people (the people who really pay taxes--not corporations and the wealthy) paid for the Internet.

Now we are paying again both in the form of connection fees and advertising.

That's something you won't hear from free market fundamentalists.

A Freak Show?

As a graduate student I had the good fortune to study with Terry Penner. He supervised my Ph.D. dissertation.

Once upon a time I read a paper on Plato's "Cratylus" and one member of the audience complained that what I had done was not ancient philosophy at all, mainly because (as I gathered) because I had devoted too little time to analyzing Plato's Greek. And, that is an important aspect of the study of Plato, to be sure.

I had, in fact, raised a philosophical objection to one interpretation of that text.

My objection was roughly that: according to the then reigning view about the theory of reference, the theory being put forward by Plato (on this interpretation) was patently false.

My opponents found descriptivism there. I didn't see how there could be descriptivism there since Plato seemed to say that the original name-givers were Heracliteans, a view Plato himself rejected.... (Later at another meeting one proposer of this interpretation defended it by pointing out an older and more distinguished interpreter had proposed it. I should have laughed..) The descriptions backing referring terms belonged to a false theory.....So why should Plato himself think that terms manage to make contact with reality via theories? Something like that was (as I dimly recall) my thought......

Well, maybe Plato held a false theory. Fine, but if so, who cares? What's the point of studying it? Why bother working out the details of a bad theory? Unless of course you are going to find out that Plato was defending a theory people reject today for bad reasons? What's wrong with using a modern theory in an ancient context? Why can't it be like rubbing two stones together to make a spark?

Why bother if there's nothing to be learned beyond making a catalogue of what a famous person believed? Just to keep the historical record straight? But, then who cares if something is just wrong? Why not find a better way to spend your time than by making a list of what a famous person believed?

This recollection occurred to me because recently I read a review of a book by another student of Terry Penner, a student who was also writing about Plato. As I recall, the reviewer closed the review with a bit of psychoanalysis, saying something like: apparently these interpreters of Plato are afraid that Plato's ideas might not be philosophically true..... (something along that line)...

Well, at one level, that's a patent ad hominem. If the interpreters have got no textual support, then they deserve criticism because they are just making things up and pinning Plato's name on them.... But, as the texts themselves may very well be ambiguous on many levels and at various points, one might like to try to find a philosophically interesting interpretation which is consistent with the texts such as they are.

But I don't understand why anyone would want to read and study Plato if you didn't think there was something true there.

This thought occurred to me once when I read a famous Aristotle scholar explaining that while Aristotle's biology might, ultimately not make sense.... it represents something like an alternative universe...

But, to put my reaction in the crudest terms: doesn't studying the history of philosophy then become a sort of freak show?

If Plato's got no insights into how to live or whatever.... Well, maybe Aristotle is describing an alternative life-form? a way biology might have turned out but didn't? That's not exactly a freak show.

As I recall the reviewer said something about "historicity". Plato, I suppose, is so much a man of his day that... what? His views are incomprehensible to us? He has a different "logic"?

You can hardly read a bit of Plato or Aristotle without noticing that these guys come at things differently. You may think their ethical approach is quaint or innocent, but it is plainly not contemporary..... but that it might amount to something like a theory or view, that we can formulate in our own language, and that we might need to notice unstated assumptions, or puzzle about how the pieces fit together.... while also wondering if it could be true that you can't gain happiness through injustice, e.g., Well, all that is about wondering what is true and what is true (or false) in Plato (or Aristotle or whoever) ..... and it seems to me to be a coherent and sensible method which need not in and of itself damage the historical and cultural and linguistic differences. It is, however, an attempt to find something of relevance to us, while simultaneously attempting to recognize that the thoughts in question have a different origin....So, I continue to be mystified by what some people imagine they are doing... and I'll just continue in my own way until I hear a clear explanation of what exactly my error is......Perhaps those who talk of historicity have in mind a strong relativism... a sort of irreducibly different time.... but then, again, I don't see the point.... if the time-period is so irreducibly then and not now, maybe we should just let it be....

But the review I read recently also seemed to me to be unnecessarily antagonistic.....if you don't care about truth, then what do you care about? Does reading Plato stimulate one of your glands or what? "Truth" is, of course, a rather ostentatious word, but I don't need to use it. Do you get some kind of insight from reading Plato? Does he go wrong, at least, in interesting and revealing ways?

I'm puzzled. But I do think I've now discovered a phrase which nicely captures my reaction: If the history of philosophy is just some sort of freak show, then why bother?

An After-Thought: After writing the above words, it occurred to me that there is a comparison to be made with method in the study of Ancient Philosophy and the practice we find in two well-known anthropological works studying emotion, Catherine Lutz's ""Unnatural Emotions", and J.L. Briggs, "Never in Anger". I hope to add a note on this soon.

Conversations Overheard

Conversations Overheard/Noted in Passing

It is shocking to me that citizens of the USA can be so utterly thoughtless, when they talk blandly and comfortably about World War Two or genuine "weapons of mass destruction", but fail to identify them as the willful and evil instrument of governments, and the cause of needless suffering.

There is no thought whatosever that airplanes and rockets are used to kill, and maim, and cause enormous suffering, or any awareness that those who die in modern wars (including the war against fascism in Europe and... well, what was the war with Japan about? I wanted to write "fascism", but what am I to think of reports that the US had planned to attach Japan before Pearl Harbor, that there was a competition for resources....?)... the victims in modern wars are mainly civilians--women and children.

This is an enormous cultural failure, a reprehensible if convenient form of ignorance,something enormous in its depravity, a shocking and repulsive moral blindness

El Paso, Texas is a city with a disproportionately large number of individuals who are soldiers,and who have been soldiers, and they naturally seek jobs in what is euphemistically called "law enforcement" or "border control". So there is here a deep culture of thoughtlessness and obedience to authority... .(Not for nothing has one scholar warned that if torture is tolerated within the military, that means it will continue at home among police and others--for another generation.)

This is a deeply disturbing moral failure, a cultural failure, a failure of imagination, a lack of basic humanity.... a frightening defect.... which can only lead to further harm, further suffering, all needless and in the service of nothing just or beautiful...

Curses

Curses! Curses!

Evil upon them who profit from the good works of others!

freedom of information? Make me laugh!

There will be neither freedom nor justice so long as the goods of the mind are treated in this consumerist way!

http://www.reference-global.com/doi/pdf/10.1515/agph.1997.79.2.117

AVAILABLE FOR $40???????

Curses on you!

Reading Nico H. Frijda

In a volume of "Emotion Review" dedicated to the late Robert Solomon, Frijda writes in his characteristically personal way--mixing what he's experienced with what he's read in a way that, for me at least, creates a sort of comfort.

Ah, but what of his theory? Not completely clear to me, though I should probably be making a list of what I regard as his insights.

I am puzzled, however, by the possibilities latent in the Platonic/Socratic metaphor of vision of The Good. Let us suppose that The Good is present in the mind's eye, yet our vision may be cloudy, or The Good may not be in the foreground of our mental-visual field.

If you are troubled by the expression "The Good" this is an English translation of Plato's greek, and it means something abstract, which has much of the character of a law of nature, but in the realm of human happiness--like a natural law in being independent and objective.

Frijda works with a characteristically contemporary divide between rather quick thoughts or reactions and more deliberate or deliberative ones. (This is not his vocabulary.)

It is interesting that he points out that ethical decisions can be made very quickly without much thought. (And his example is the case of individuals in Nazi-occupied Holland who decided to hide Jews from the Nazis.) Usually, I tend to think the quick decisions go in a less sophisticated direction--such as running away from a bear. (An example popular in the literature, which I guess may come from William James, but is itself mentioned by Frijda as not probably a good example to have as the prototypical emotion!)

But my aporia (puzzlement) is this: to what extent are the emotional strategies discussed by Frijda--e.g., a man in a concentration camp who decided not to let himself think of himself as a victim, and advising "a fellow inmate not to pick up and eat potato peels from the mud."--an example of knowing the value of things, or possessing something like a Socratic "measuring science"--a way of knowing what is of more and what of less good, what is more harmful and what less harmful?

On the surface if we talk of what's better and what's worse, perhaps we are tempted by a to concrete visual image--more and less..But why couldn't knowing that by doing this I will lose a certain perspective itself be part of knowing how to live? Socrates was fond of the comparison between virtue/knowing how to live and physical training. If life is not worth living with a diseased body, then it is even less worth living if the part of us which lets us decide and act wisely is damaged. What is the part of us that lets us decide and act wisely? Translations use the word "soul" here but that's likely to be confusing. The thing in question isn't a Christian soul. (Nor do I suppose that the historical Socrates was especially an advocate of the immortality of the soul....) Isn't the concentration camp survivor's wisdom knowledge of what's worth choosing and what's worth avoiding? Can't we describe it in a way that seems more Socratic? And can our descriptions seem fair? (not distortions)

There is an interest in these sorts of self-manipulation that goes beyond Frijda. I suppose there is something real here. But is it an act of will? I decide: I won't let myself think of myself as a victim? Or, is it a matter of mental focus on something like justice or my life?--a mental focus on doing justice to myself? (I like the visual language here. I think it can do work.) It may require a kind of mental energy, but so too does simple looking. On the other hand, one's eye can be drawn to something, and then one can concentrate on it, study it (or one can let one's attention wander)...

In Plato's "Protagoras" the character of Socrates' suggests that the thing needed to be happy would be a sort of science of measurement (metrike technike). People who say they've been "overcome" by pleasure lack that science. The connection with emotion is easy to make. People say they did the wrong thing because of their emotions. That's what interests Frijda (and interested Solomon).

Can I fairly regard the sorts of processes mentioned by Frijda as part of a Socratic measuring science? I don't know.

Offhand, I am not inclined to reject Socrates' thinking with the claim that weakness of the will is simply a fact, or that pleasure can overcome us. To some degree, the phenomena which interest Frijda in this essay (and which interested Robert Solomon when he argued the emotions can be strategic) fall in the same area as Socrates' discussion of whether knowledge could be overcome by pleasure. The original text in Plato, however, is more complicated than I've allowed for here, and there is much more to say and think. I also should probably mention that so far as historical influences go, Frijda himself draws inspiration from Spinoza. Nonetheless, at a broad level, Frijda and Solomon agree that we are not slaves to passion--and that doesn't seem so terribly different from Socrates complaint that knowledge cannot be dragged about by pleasure. Perhaps, it raises the question (again): are the strategic processes described by Frijda anything like what can reasonably interpret Socrtates to mean by "knowledge"--the knowledge needed for "virtue" and happiness? Above I've made some baby steps in the direction of saying yes--but without further thought I don't want to confidently say "yes". It would be very unfortunate if I ignored differences between Socrates and the contemporary thinkers. It would also be an error to neglect details. But that is a task I cannot undertake tonight.

Reference

"Not Passion's Slave", Nico H. Fridja, Emotion Review, (2010) Vol. 2, No. 1, 68-75

El Paso Hell

If only there were a cruel hell

for the owners of dogs that bark in the night!

Cruel, and Nasty, but Slow,

with peaceful pauses that lasted just long enough,

that the punished party would think his punishment was about to end...

America, The Police State

Update Monday Morning
I've just received an email explaining what happened. The Police Department had just received a phone call telling them that a woman was being assaulted, had been thrown to the ground, and that people were leaving on foot...

But you know, that still doesn't make me feel better......This never happened to me in Europe. I have been stopped on the street by police and asked to show ID, and I once had a student who was a member of the Surpreme Court in Slovakia who told me that such behavior violated the Slovak Constitution.... but that was not as unnerving as having a bright light shone upon me, blinding me......No, I don't feel better.

I continue to feel that if you are a pedestrian in El Paso, Texas, you have fewer rights than everyone else....

In any case, I've sent the following email to the police...

I've been thinking about your message, and, even given the new information youhave kindly provided, No, I do not agree with you. I do not think that the officer did the right thing. It was not necessary to be so aggresive in the way he "inspected" me. His behavior was very impersonal and aggresive--as I said before, it was tantamount to assuming I was a criminal. He or she shone a very bright blinding light on me. I did not even know it was a police car when this happened. I did not know who it was, and for all I knew it was the behavior of a criminal gang. It was disconcerting. And that was completely unnecessary. It was not the most prudent or wise behavior. The officer could have spoken to me. That would be enough to prevent my anxiety. And, in any case, you cannot tell by looking and shining a spotlilght on a person what a person has done five or ten or twenty minutes ago. No, I do not agree with you that this was good or justified behavior. It was not necessary to behave in that provocative and aggressive way. It was acase of jumping to a conclusion.

I am now posting an email I have just sent to the Police Department of the City of El Paso.
File this under "Fascist America", or "Police State USA"...
The incident described below happened between 9 and 10 pm on the sunday evening before the state holiday called "Labor Day"....(not that this matters to the offensive nature of the behavior).

Monday, September 6, 2010

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing to demand an apology for mis-behavior by an El Paso Police Department employee.

Every evening I walk for my health. I walk up and down Sanders Avenue. Tonight, as I walked down the street, a car approached. The car shone a very bright light (additional to the headlights) in my eyes, partially blinding and disorienting me. I was shocked and surprised.

This was unpleasant, aggressive, and rude. It was inexcusable. I was an ordinary citizen taking a walk. There was no reason to violate my peace so rudely. My peace was broken in the most aggressive and barbaric manner.

But, as the car passed me and turned, I saw that it was a police car.

As I continued down the street, once again a police car approached me. Once again a light was beamed at me—not for so long as the first time, but it was still disorienting and unpleasant.

One basic right in a democratic society is freedom of movement. Before democracy appeared, ordinary people were tied to the land and needed to get permission before they traveled. That principle of free movement was destroyed tonight by an employee of the El Paso Police Department.

If I have to be inspected by the police before I can continue a harmless and fully legal activity like walking down the street, then my democratic right of free movement has been abridged.

Another basic democratic right is the presumption of innocence. If a policeman or woman approaches me with suspicion, and beams a spotlight at me, aggressively disturbing my peaceful exercise of democratic rights, that arbitrary and disrespectful act robs me of an elementary freedom I am owed as a citizen in a democracy.

This is inexcusable, a blatant abuse, harassment, trampling on the rights of free citizens. I protest. I demand an immediate apology.

Mark J. Lovas (Ph.D.)

Note: ON the context--If You Are A Pedestrian You Do Not Have Any Rights!

In the past year, in El Paso, Texas, I have had cars try to run me over, even when I was crossing at a light. I have had cars speed by shouting obscenities at me. And, now, to the joys of being a pedestrian in El Paso, Texas, I can add: being harassed by the police....ALL UNPLEASANT EXPERIENCES THAT I NEVER HAD IN EUROPE, NEVER HAD IN "EASTERN" EUROPE!

Is America a civilized country? Is El Paso civilized? I think not.

The Fundamental Incivility of El Paso, Texas, Citizens of the USA, and Capitalism

Half past two.

A dog barks

I cannot concentrate.

A few hours ago there was a thump-thump-thumping noise.

The residents of El Paso Texas behave towards each other with a fundamental lack of respect.

They can possibly think this far: I paid for it.--But they can think no further.

El Paso, Texas is a sterile place.

Every other house walled in, or fenced in, with guard dogs.--A medieval frame of mind.

Not a city!--Not a place where people have come together to share their skills

and thereby prosper.

Instead, a place of pettiness and fear.

The dog barks.

And I hope that tomorrow or the next day I will find a job in a civilized country.

A New Link: File under "Threats to Democracy"

One person interviewed here speaks of an attempt to de-professionalize teaching.
I've experienced this first-hand while employed in Europe--the American-based University where I taught had the ideal of creating a recipe or program which told "instructors" exactly what to teach and thus made it easy for any given teacher to be replaced... I saw something similar in the American owned and managed International School where I taught. Needless to say, when you teach at an actual university in the United States you not only write your own syllabus, but also choose your text/s....something I was not allowed to do at the American owned and managed "university" where I taught in Central Europe. (The link below is to "Democracy Now".)

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/3/educators_push_back_against_obamas_business

The real problem here is very broad and very political.

When I worked as a "freelance" language teacher in Vienna, one of my colleagues understood the problem very well, when he remarked to me that when the manager of the "German department" at the "Institute" where we both taught increased her control, and specified exactly what he had to teach, that simply left him less room for creativity.

It is an old piece of anarchist (and other) political philosophies that every human being has a right to be creative.

As Adorno said in his essay "Leisure Time", the human need for culture and creativity is an intrinsic right, not merely something to be bestowed upon us by employers nor the sort of gift the cultural conservative imagines it to be. We are patronized insofar as such vital elements of human life are treated as extras--as if we were being granted privileges when we are merely allowed to be human.

footnote to Wacquant

comments to follow
how to brainwash youngsters into performing poorly paid, low skill, jobs...
in the name of "helping" them....
aka: exploitation....
more commentary to follow
(The more I see, the less I like what I see....)
Just a quick thought--a proper commentary is coming--
In light of the fact that government money (do they still call it "welfare" as in the poster, or is it "workfare"?) is not enough to live on. I repeat: the money the government provides to poor people who manage to prove that they are (sic) deserving is not adequate. That means that people receiving wholly inadequate and insulting government help require additional sources of income--to avoid death from starvation. That means that they are frequently forced to perform activities which are officially illegal in order to survive. Given that background, this poster and the policies it represents are sickeningly exploitative. Nothing to smile about.... Mom receives a stingy hand-out, so the government is going to "help" her children by giving them low-wage, low-skill jobs (not serious job training, mind you)......a way to legalize and normalize child labor...

let's not get too personal

The Grouch Reads Blogs.....
In recent months, Brian Leiter, over at the "Leiter Reports" has done a pretty good job
of keeping up with the attack on tenure at universities in the USA, and sometimes the attempt to get rid of philosophy departments.....

Over at "On Fiction" they are crowing about a new journal devoted to the scientific study of literature... a journal which, of course, will be readily available if you work at a decent university,--and otherwise not---.... The other day I was looking at some philosophy articles being sold individually for about 30 US dollars each...... Insofar as "On Fiction" itself seems to aim at the largest possible public, and it makes available high quality stuff, there is something like a version of schizophrenia here. I can be glad that people doing research in an area I have some interest in are able to talk to one another, but I can't be glad to be prevented from hearing the conversation...In other words, the new journal seems not to be "open access"....

Today I don't personally see any reason whatsoever to jump in the air and click my heels.... In my experience, most people I have met--however good or even charming and attractive they may be in other respects-- have had precious little time to themselves, little or no time to write or think, and have had precious little honest feedback about their thoughts (except, of course, on a very personal level)... .with the result that, what I'm complaining about today would be more or less incomprehensible to them...

And then, the worst case scenario is you work like a dog all week and then fritter your life away with frivolous amusements on weekends and holidays....but you don't know what you are doing because that's what everyone around you is doing. Although you are aware that other people don't even get to enjoy the frivolous amusements that you live for, so you imagine yourself to be "well off"...

So, I myself see absolutely no reason for optimism.

The Grouch Reads...."Pravda.sk"

"Slovak Woman Returns from Vacation and Learns that She is a Prostitute, and, What's More, Dead."

--headline in Pravda.sk, a Slovak newspaper (online edition)

A Slovak woman was murdered in Vienna. She was registered as a prostitute there. (Prostitution is legal in Austria.) The article indicates that the living woman has contacted a lawyer and plans to take legal action against the Austrian media. The dead woman and the living woman have the same name.

source: ČTK, "Slovenka prišla z dovolenky a zistila, že je prostitútka a navyše mrtva", 2 septembra 2010

http://spravy.pravda.sk/

I mention only in passing: Even when prostitution is legal, women who work as prostitutes face such dangers. I am not competent to discuss the topic in detail, but I will say that I am convinced by Debra Satz ("Why Some Things Should Not Be For Sale") that so long as the fundamental situation between men and women is not equal, many things which might be unproblematic in a just society will only contribute to that inequality. When I lived in Slovakia I did hear anecdotes about prostitution under communism. In at least one case, the person speaking suggested it was very informal and --as compared to prostitution controlled by a mafia--innocent.... I myself am sceptical whether there was full equality under the old regime, but, at any rate, it would have been different, and, I suppose, in some respects better. (That in no way amounts to an endorsement of the brutality of what used to be.)
As I recall, Colin McGinn in a little book on ethics once discussed the hypothetical case of harmless prostitution; and went on to acknowledge that in the real world, there may be no such thing.... or that it might be rare....(But as I think of it now, and without looking at McGinn's little book, I wonder how helpful the imaginary or hypothetical or possible case is....)