Scottish Nous

The Clone Wars

It keeps getting worse.  Somebody needs to stop George Lucas.  What's coming next?  Another animated television series? Oh, right.

Is "Bad Cop" Redundant Yet?

Unfortunately, while Andrew Glover is preparing to sue over cops breaking into his house and ripping out his catheter, he likely won't be very successful.  First, the city will try to settle with him to ensure that there is no real basis for reprimanding the violent police officers they employ or changing the culture of violence and brutality they are promoting.   Second, there will probably be ridiculously low limits on how much the city and/or department can be held responsible for.  These limits exist to ensure that groups of people who employ violent criminals don't have to bear any significant financial responsibility for the barbarians they enlist and train as thugs.  Third, whether or not he reaches some settlement or wins a case, it is highly unlikely that the animals who assaulted him will receive more than a slap on the wrist from some illegitimate "internal review" which exists for the express purposes (as it exists in all police departments) of covering up the highly criminal acts of the gangsters in blue.  This "review" might result in something as drastic as temporary reassignment to a desk job or paid leave.  Finally, it is a given that the these trained thugs will lie as hard as they possibly can, pleading that their use of reasonable force was justified, as it undoubtedly was when three pigs tased this 82 year old man.  From the comments thread at Majikthise, we have some meathead who sounds like he "served the people" defending the tasing of hospitalized and bed-ridden dementia sufferers on oxygen who wield pocket knives:

You may not be able to approach and use a manual disarm.  A Taser allows you to lessen the threat level and not increase the risk of damage. Some WATB will whine that police are paid to be injured on the job. Yes, there are risks. But I'll do my level best to reduce the harm to myself and others.  In the Bad Old Days we'd either beat them senseless (coup and countrecoup) or shoot them.  Tasers are the lesser evil.

Served them a heaping pile of pain, that is.  If this guy is serious, one has to speculate that his brain was manually disarmed by his parents/guardians.  It's hard to see how you could get this stupid, or be this much of an asshole, without taking repeated coup-countrecoup injuries over the course of your entire childhood.

You're Known by the Company You Keep

The Idiot of the Day award goes to Sal Cordova, one of Dembski's co-bloggers over at Uncommon Descent.  Cordova has been commenting at the post I referred to here.  Let's take a look at what he has to say.  Trying to defend himself, he wrote (quoting Darwin), "I was taking issue with Darwin's statement:

Natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all that are good." [his emphasis]

This quotation of Darwin was supposed to be the evidence for Sal's claim that:

Darwin was responsible in large part for the false assumption that “every advantageous mutation that appears in the population is inevitably incorporated”.  -Sal Cordova

Now isn't that cute?  Here's what Darwin wrote:

It may metaphorically be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all that are good. [emphasis mine]

The bloggers over at UD have the reading comprehension skills of anencephalic babies.  That, or they're just compulsive liars.  For more evidence of this, see my post here.  And I don't want to check this myself, but it sounds as if another Dembski co-blogger has refuted Kimura and Ohta's mathematics based on his/her glance at Google Books preview:

Since there was a link that provided a ‘look-see’ inside the book, I did so.  Well, what I found was very fascinating. -PaV

PaV goes on to "refute" Kimura and Ohta.  So much good science and brilliant creative thought goes on over at UD it just gives me the willies thinking about it.
 

Procrastination + Charity

There is a nice vocab builder at FreeRice.com.  These words get hard, and the premise is kind of cute.  They'll donate twenty grains (yes, grains) of rice for every word you get correct.  It's a non-profit, and honestly, you don't even see that ads while playing.  It also learns, and so provides a pretty accurate measure of your vocabulary level.  Play it once and post your level/grains in the comments!  Before you play, go to the settings and force it to start at level one.  I died on "anserine" which, apparently, means "goose-like".  Level: 42 Grains: 2540

God Drops Out of the Math

One of Dembski's c0-bloggers (referenced in my last post), Sal Cordova, is set straight by UW professor Joseph Felsenstein.  Read Sal's original post here, which is characteristic of the quality of blogging you find at Uncommon Descent.  And if you feel like it, mosey on over to Sal's blog, Young Cosmos, where you can catch up on all the "Advanced Creation Research" you never wanted to hear about:

This equation is a parital differential equation. For this equation to be physically actualized, however, boundary conditions must be applied not only in the past but also in the future! The past boundary conditions we might call the Alpha, and the future boundary conditions the Omega. The Alpha and Omega must exist.

Simple, see? [via Pharyngula]

Dembski's Descent

I think I'll let the first real post concern the laugh riot of a blog that is Uncommon Descent.  Bill Dembski (an evil man who reported a professor to the DHS for no good reason) and his blogger friends (like Sal Cordova, who has an unusual obsession with penises) have been in an amusing state of uproar over the release of the scatological film Expelled.  At this post, Dembski (whose freakish blogging behavior must be costing him any remaining tidbit of academic credibility) defends Exelled's attempt to link Darwinism to Nazism:

In other words, Hitler saw himself as undoing a negative form of artificial selection due to society. Hence, when David Berlinski says that something like Darwinism was a necessary condition for Nazism, he is spot on. -Dembski [in comments]

Now it is an interesting question how intentionally misleading and underhanded Dembski is.  I have been given to understand, by some of those much more familiar with him than I, that he might be aptly compared with a snake.  The sort of disgusting rhetoric witnessed above is evidence of this claim, if it is assumed that Dembski is not a complete idiot.  I take it he is not a complete idiot.  Therefore, he is a snake.  He eschews no strategy, however despicable, for propagating his ideas.  In this case, he thinks he can promote ID by manipulating the beliefs of the folk so they link adherence to evolutionary theory with vicious character.  But enough of Dembski's pernicious reasons for making statements like the above.  What of the superficial facade of reasons he erects to conceal his real motives?

Well, the juvenile reasoning Dembski offers in support of this nonsense (see the comments thread) runs like this.  Darwin asserted that civilization creates a climate in which the weak and unfit, who would otherwise have been weeded out by natural selection, manage to survive.  Furthermore, the Nazis took themselves be accomplishing the weeding out of the unfit which civilization prevents natural selection from effecting.  Let's (reasonably) suppose all this is true.  There is still no interesting sense in which Darwinism can be said to be a necessary condition for Nazism.

Why is that?  First, one ought to note that for Darwin, the terms "weak" and "unfit" are descriptive rather than normative.  An organism is "weak" or "unfit" just in case the organism will not naturally be selected for.  What organisms count as "weak" and "unfit" will depend, in part, on the circumstances these organisms find themselves in.  In the right sort of circumstances, the blind would not be weak or unfit, though, for example, in natural and well-lit circumstances in which carnivorous creatures with well-developed capacities of sight are prevalent, they will count as "unfit".  Hence, there is absolutely nothing whatsoever which is offensive, to either general principles of moral law or reason, about the claim that civilization permits, aids and promotes the survival of the weak and unfit.  This claim is purely descriptive when made about current civilizations.  But if taken more generally, it's just analytic, that is, true in virtue of the meanings of the constituent terms.  The unfit are those who wouldn't be likely to survive or procreate without the help of others, that is, without (loosely speaking) civilization.  Since that claim is analytic, it is necessarily true.  As such, its truth is a necessary condition for Nazism.

Of course, the truth of any necessarily true proposition is a necessary condition for Nazism.  This includes the truth of the proposition that 2 + 2 = 4, and the truth of the proposition that god exists (if, per impossible, it were true).  Dembski takes god to be a necessary being.  So Dembski might just as well have asserted that god's existence is a necessary condition for Nazism.  This would not, however, have had the pernicious rhetorical effect Dembski was after.

Suppose I were to introduce a new sense of "unfit".  Say that someone is "unfit" if they do have the intellectual horsepower and respect for careful argument needed to survive in a rigorous academic environment.  Departments often convene and vote down offers to job applicants because they are unfit.  Here, "unfit" has a purely descriptive sense.  Those who are "unfit" will not survive in academia without "outside help".  This is trivially true.   In this sense of "unfit", Dembski is unfit.  But from the fact that Dembski is unfit, it doesn't follow that he ought to be exterminated.  Only a moron would believe that.   And if you suggested that departments ought to do away with this business of terming people unfit because it sets the stage, or is a necessary condition for, Nazism, you wouldn't be wanted in a department which votes on job offers based on assessments of fitness.  First, because you couldn't participate in part of department life.  But really because you'd be a crackpot.

Of course, Darwin himself recognized that the trivial truth that the weak and unfit would not be likely to survive or reproduce without the help of civilization does not entail that the weak and unfit ought to be exterminated.  In fact, he explicitly denounced the notion that the "weak" and "unfit" ought not receive aid because they are "weak" and "unfit".  He took it to be obvious that only savages, barbarians and creeps would make that sort of statement:

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil. -Darwin, The Descent of Man

It takes perverts and morally depraved whackjobs to wage campaigns of mass extermination.  It takes a lying snake or an ignorant blockhead to suggest that anything Darwin said had any relevance whatsoever to Nazism.  Sure, a sloppy thinker might make the mental slide from someone's being descriptively unfit for survival in the wild to them being normatively unfit in the sense of not deserving to live.  Many people have made that mental slide, I suppose.  But this is because they don't think clearly.  Dembski is trying to elicit this mental slide in his readers, and he is condoning Ben Stein's similar attempt to elicit that mental slide.  Now Ben Stein made much of his money as a snake oil salesman (doing political speechwriting). So it's no surprise that Expelled is a load of trash.  But Dembski is supposed to be an academic.  Instead, he's peddling bullshit in an attempt to get people who don't think clearly to hate on evolution.  And he knows it.

But I think matters are worse than that.  Not being a complete idiot, Dembski crafts his sentences carefully.  He wants to have a pernicious influence on other's thinking while nevertheless leaving himself room to retreat when pressed.  So he is peddling carefully crafted bullshit.  Thus his penchant for terms "Darwinism" and "Nazism", which he'll be able to define in almost any way he likes, and his reliance on modifiers such as "something like".  This is a common ID move.  Dembski knows that it is Social Darwinism, or something like it, that may have provided some of the underpinnings of Nazism.  But Social Darwinism bears no interesting connection to current evolutionary theory, ID, or Charles Darwin's own theory.

Dembski and Pals want to get people to reject evolutionary theory.  In this case, their tactic is to move from evolutionary theory to Darwinism to Social Darwinsim or something like it, to the underpinnings of Nazism.  Then they will point out that Nazism is horrifying, and hope that you'll  transfer that horror back through the dubious linkages they've implicitly set up and attach it to evolutionary theory.  Dembski is trying to get you to make these mental links while leaving himself room to wiggle out of the claim that evolution has something to do with Nazism.  When you point out that Darwinism has none of the consequences he claims it has, he'll retreat by telling you he meant "something like it" which is, really, nothing like it at all.

Consider what one of Phillip Johnson has to say about the book one of Dembski's crackpot buddies  at the Discovery [sic] Institute wrote:

The philosophy that fueled German militarism and Hitlerism is taught as fact in every American public school, with no disagreement allowed. Every parent ought to know this story, which Weikart persuasively explains. -Phillip Johnson

Seriously? Just how stupid do you have to be to think that evolutionary theory "fueled" Hiterlism?  When proponents of ID have to work this hard to get people to side with them against evolutionary theory, you ought to bet they don't have a peg leg to stand on.  Dembski and Pals are running out of arguments almost as fast as they've been run out of the scientific community.  Grab a cup of coffee, head over to Uncommon Descent and catch the show.  Watch them in their flimsy little ship as they work hard, post by post and comment by comment, to take on water.  Treat yourself to Dembski co-blogger Sal Cordova's work in Advanced Creation Research, which is even more hilarious than Uncommon Descent, if that's possible.  Revel in the fact that for every careless thinker who joins their ranks, fifty more must be watching with wonder and horror at the absurd scene playing out online - proponents of the ID movement thrashing about wildly, bailing water in reverse, hastening their death throes.

Wow!

Check it out! I cleaned house! (I know I deleted some comments I didn't mean to.  Sorry.)

More Rylean Acerbity

FROM THE EDITOR OF MIND

     MAGDALEN COLLEGE

      OXFORD OX1 4AU

     August 24th, 1970.

Dear Mr. Feldman,

I am sorry but for many years MIND had to keep the door shut against contributions which are entirely or primarily expository.  Your paper seems to be expository both of Leibniz and of Russell's interpretation of Leibniz and I am afraid I can do nothing with it.  This is not a polite way of saying that the thing is no good since, to be frank, I haven't even read it.

Yours sincerely,

G. Ryle

Typewritten Notice From Fritz Warfield's Door

FROM THE EDITOR OF MIND

     MAGDALEN COLLEGE

                OXFORD

    December 29, 1967.

Dear Mr. Feldman,

I am returning your paper.  There may be a little in it, but it doesn't seem to cut enough ice.

Yours sincerely,

G. Ryle

Yeah, Well, It's Your Set of Laws Buddy

Former House member Randy Cunningham is whimpering in prison due to federal laws he can only hold himself and his ilk responsible for:

I am human not an animal to keep whiping [sic]... I hurt more than anyone could imagine.

Should have thought about spending more time reforming a perverse justice system which every day inflicts immeasurable harm on citizens and non-citizens alike.  Instead, you spent your time figuring out more ways in which to swindle tax payers out of their money.  How do you like it now?  Can you say the words "zero sympathy"?

Pure Ugliness

Read excerpts from e-mails sent by (probably Christian) anti-abortionists who need to be Hellenized or sterilized.  [via Majikthise]  Perhaps some of these neo-Nazi skinheads can be identified via their e-mail headers?  It'd be great fun outing them to their fellow non-denominationalists who could then give a special altar call for their murderously raging comrades in arms, lay hands upon them, and exorcise their demons.  That solution would, of course, be just as good as the worthless solutions this sort of person proposes to decrease the number of obtained abortions: from the mild "abstinence only education" to the extreme "bomb a clinic" variety. 

Empirical research proves that the best known way to minimize the number of obtained abortions is to provide comprehensive sex-ed programs and unfettered access to contraceptives and the morning after pill.  There is also no reasonable objection to contraception, because empirical research also shows that up to 50% of conceptions result in natural abortions, and philosophical argument suggests (what will likely be scientifically demonstrated in the near future) that the rhythm method results in vastly more embryonic death than the pill.  (I am obviously assuming that it is unreasonable to insist that it is morally permissible for couples to have sex only for the purpose of procreation at the times that conception is most likely or while pregnant or otherwise infertile.  And note that, if you're going to bite this bullet, you'll have to stop having sex as soon as in vitro fertilization becomes more reliable than sex the natural way.)

Another Blogroll Update!

Visit the new blogs: Janus Blog (Virtue Theory), Ideally Speaking (SUNY g.s. Adam Taylor), De Crapulas Edormiendo (Michigan g.s. Nate Charlow), The Web of Belief (Tufts Group), The Fighting Mongoose (Western Michigan Group), Making the Cooler Argument the Stronger (ND g.s. Eric Hagedorn), Transcendental Idealism (St. Andrews g.s. Ralf Bader), Lemmings (Missouri's Berit Broogard), American Philosophy (RIT's John Capps), In Search of Enlightement (Waterloo's Colin Farrelly), Blogitations (Biola g.s. James Gibson), Seeing Things (Princeton's Sean Kelly), Footnotes on Epicycles (SUNY's P. D. Magnus), Dulcius Ex Aspersis (Notre Dame g.s. Alex Arnold), Brain Hammer (WPU's Pete Mandik), Brains (also Mandik), Per Caritatem (Dallas' g.s. Cynthia Nielsen),  Knowability (St. Louis' Joe Salerno), The Splintered Mind (UC Riverside's Eric Schwitzgebel), Philosophy Hurts Your Head (Univ. of Newcastle g.s. Sam Douglas), hpb etc. (Cincinnati's Robert Skipper), Ratiocination (ND g.s. Andrew Bailey),  Logic Matters (Cambridge's Peter Smith), dim lit philosophy (Ultrecht's Rob van Gerwen), This is the Name of This Blog (Rochester g.s. Trent Dougherty), Virtual Philosopher (Open University's Nigel Warburton), Mnemosynosis (Rutgers g.s. S. Kate Devitt), Theories 'n Things (Leeds' Robert G. Williams), The Glfer (g.s. Greg),  Philosophy Blog (St. Louis' g.s. Aaron Cobb), Aspiring Lemming (Arizona g.s. Adam Arico), Scribo (Calgary's Nicole Wyatt), Staff of Ra (ND g.s. Dan Hicks, et. al.), Philosophical Remainders (g.s. Jeff Dauer), and Stop That Crow! (g.s. Jeffrey Giliam).

Richard Heck: Logician and Computer Programmer

He's written a Greasemonkey script for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.  Get it! (You need to be using Firefox, of course.  If you aren't using it, then you must just like coping with needlessly unsolved problems.)

Nostradamus Me

Lindsay asks a rhetorical question regarding the devil's servants in Republican guise:

How inept are these people? They can't even protect teenagers in the halls of congress. How are they supposed to protect the rest of us?

She has in mind, of course, sexual predator and elected congressman Mark Foley.  While Foley's disgusting e-mails do provide us with a nice, concrete case of some of the wickedness infesting the halls of congress, Foley by no means exhausts the depths of congressional moral depravity, which, of course, is hardly confined to the Republican camp.* 

We live in a country in which a whole plethora of rich, white, male, self-interested moral perverts with god-complexes are actually voted into office by poorer, harder-working unthinking citizens who pay them hard cash to be dominated and abused.  Bizarrely, some people actually seem to believe that this is democracy rather than tyranny.  Granted, your average American hopes to be dominated and abused less then they are protected, and so appears to at least tacitly endorse utilitarianism w.r.t politics.  Yet intellectually lazy Americans will get what they're satisifed with, and so long as they're satisfied with electing tyrants, they shouldn't be surprised that their tyrants are morally depraved.  This is because the sort of psychological freak of nature who desires to wield widespread and near-unilaterial powers over others is more likely than not to be both rationally and morally incompetent.

Perhaps it comes as a bit of a surprise that Foley, in particular, turned out to be just another common moral pervert.  But it is no surprise that yet another moral pervert has been found out in the halls of congress.  I hereby safely prophesy that moral pervert after moral pervert after moral pervert will be uncovered in the foolishly revered halls of congress.

* The moral terminology employed here (wickedness, depravity) presupposes only moral realism, and not any particular member of the class of moral realisms.  So in particular, I am not presupposing any religious set of beliefs by using the English word "wickedness".  I make solely metaphorical use  of "devil's servants" for "civil servants".

Lingua Pranca

The linguist's version of Special Creationism: Wrathful Dispersion Theory.  Far more amusing than the FSM ever was:

Wrathful Dispersion is couched in more cautiously neutral language; rather than tying linguistic diversity to a specific biblical event, it merely argues that the differences among modern languages are too perverse to have arisen spontaneously, and must therefore be the work of some wrathful (and powerful) disperser who deliberately set out to accomplish a confusion of tongues. When asked in court to speculate about the possible identity of the disperser, Michael Moringa, a prominent proponent of WD, demurred, saying that the theory makes no claims about the answer to that question, and that it certainly does not insist that the Disperser is the God of Genesis.

From the comment thread at Pharyngula:

The fact remains that Grimmism's "language evolution" has never been demonstrated under scientific conditions. You can put a Chinese speaker, an English speaker, and a speaker of any Altaic* language you like together in the same room, but will they end up speaking Japanese? Hardly!

I'm a bit behind on this.  Oh well.  Also see: Language Log and Spec Gram.

Notre Dame Flunks Sex Ed Test

Notre Dame is keeping bad company.  It ranks second to last - right down there next to Brigham Young - when it comes to promoting sexual health, according to a survey by Trojan.  In fact, ND and BYU were the only two universities to receive an "F" in all seven categories.  It looks like some administrators here might need to take a class or two in the philosophy department: sexual ethics.  Ah well.  I'm in a great philosophy department, and you can't have everything, now can you?  I give you the actual policy on sexual misconduct from the Student Handbook:

Because a genuine and complete expression of love through sex requires a commitment to a total living and sharing together of two persons in marriage, the University believes that sexual union should occur only in marriage.  Students found in violation of this policy shall be subject to disciplinary suspension or permanent dismissal. -Du Lac, p. 95

Seriously...  This is not intended as a joke.  Maybe ND doesn't want to educate women who will have sex on how to have safe sex so they can "find them out" and "dismiss" or "discipline" them?  Call this the "we like to screw you over again" policy.  Note further that it disadvantages women far more than it disadvantages men, for how will the Grand Enforcers of THE Policy determine that a man has had sex?  It's about now that the boring platitude common in religious circles, "of  him to whom much is given, much is required" is invoked in a lame justificatory attempt, with "her" replacing "him" and "a womb" replacing "much".  So what do we think about the "lets make your college degree conditional on your sex life" policy?  Comments? [Via The Headpiece for the Staff of Ra]

Suppose You Were An Idiot

Racists, sexual perverts, and abusive thugs?  You decide.  Not commenting further may save me from having to vomit.

Higher Education

Not a philosophy class.  Rather, a collosal waste of time.  Note that too much weed may be responsible for Hall's three refereed publications in sixteen years (since Ph.D.).  Or perhaps I spoke too soon.  Don Hutchinson seems to mix Plato, marijuana and reggae.  Via Boing Boing:

I had another baked professor for first-year philosophy.  From the Toronto Star's article, I now understand why he was so hard to follow in lectures; he smokes pot with a medical clearance from the government. I'm not sure how it can be that he's just allowed to lecture whilst high. One of the questions on our term test involved correlating Plato with an excerpt of lyrics from one of the prof's favourite reggae songs.

I'm sure I'll take some criticism for knocking the teaching of Plato through reggae, but frankly, I don't much care.  What could pot have to do with Plato, you might ask?  Berkeley journalism professor Michael Pollan has the most asinine suggestion ever, according to this book review:

Pollan even wonders if Plato's metaphysics might have been drug-induced, given that the Greeks used psychedelics and that Plato wrote, in terms that will sound familiar to pot-smoking readers everywhere, about focusing one's attention on an object with such intensity that it eventually seems to become the ideal, universal form of that object, not just an individual shoe, hand, chair, or roach clip. (Well, Plato didn't mention the roach clip.)

<sarcasm> Pollan's insightful analysis (assuming Seavey isn't misrepresenting him) obviously betrays the depth of his understanding for Plato's arguments. </sarcasm>  What are these people smoking?

The Good Life

CU Boulder's Center for Values and Social Policy now has an online face.  Check out the website here.  All of my rocking thesis advisors are affiliated.  I recommend picking up a copy of Mike Huemer's Ethical Intuitionism, favorably reviewed here, from Amazon.

Philosophical Agreement

Dennett claims:

David Chalmers and I have discussed this for what seems an indeterminable number of years, and he candidly grants that he has no arguments in favor of qualia that I haven't rebutted to his satisfaction, he just can't let go of the belief in them. [link]

Chalmers retorts:

In any case, I'm pleased to report that in private e-mail, Dan not only retracted the attribution, but candidly acknowledged that he now thinks that the arguments for his view are all unsound, and that he now privately favors Cartesian dualism. [link]

Update: Giles Charle and David Siller Released

In When Human Refuse Meets The Law, I blogged about Giles Charle and David Siller, two young men who were sentenced to a six month jail term for taking waste from a dempster dumpster.  Richard Myers has updated me on their situation by providing me with a link to Colorado Freedom, a website which chronicles the debacle.  Due to intense public pressure, Giles and David were released after serving three days post-sentence (ten in toto ) in jail.  A transcript from the DA's office is cited:

[Shop owner Jonathon] Hieb: So among all this other stuff that you’re doing, and the mistakes that you’ve already made, now you’re calling me a liar? Is that what you’re doing?

[Assistant District Attorney Kerry] St. James: I’m saying we disagree as to that conversation.

Hieb: You know, right now, I think, this is just my two cents. It’s probably worth nothing. But right now, what you need to do, as a man, is take responsibility for your actions.

St. James: I’m sorry. I can’t do that.

A very amusing section from the transcript:

Roesink: They [the police officers] called the owner of the store – Ms. Zambrana.

Jonathan Hieb (Sweet Pea owner): Katherine Zambrana

Roesink: Zambrana, Katherine Zambrana. She came down to the store, she looked around, and things were amiss.

Hieb: We both were down at the store. I’m Jonathan Hieb, the owner of Sweet Pea Produce, along with Katherine. We both came down to the store.

Roesink: Well, our police reports don’t indicate that you were at the store.

Hieb: Well, if we’re getting things accurate here, let’s get them accurate.

Roesink: OK, I’m going off police reports. That’s how we – let me tell you what the police reports say.

Hieb: I know what they say. Go ahead though.

Roesink: They don’t say that you were there.

Hieb: I was there.

Roesink: OK. But they don’t say that.

Hieb: The bottom line was, I was there.

Roesink: OK, but it doesn’t say that you were there.

So the police can't do their job either?  But that's not really news.  Throughout the transcript, co-owner Hieb suggests over and over again that Bonnie Roesink, Routt Count DA, is some kind of clueless:

Roesink: And then, the owner was contacted – Mr., you said, Hieb?

Hieb: Hieb.

Roesink: Mr. Hieb was contacted by Mr. St. James, and he was told the two plea offers and –

Hieb: I actually contacted him.

Roesink: OK, well I’ll let Kerry address this because I’m commenting on something I don’t know firsthand. I just know that Kerry’s told me this is what happened.

Hieb: I’m just trying to keep things straight.

Roesink: OK. Kerry can comment on his conversation with you – that wasn’t necessary for him to have. He could handle this case any way he wanted to handle this case. So he contacted Mr. Hieb, and I’ll let him address –

Hieb: I contacted him.

Roesink: OK, well you all – I don’t know that. Kerry, do you want to address that?

St. James: I returned your phone call, Mr. Hieb.

Hieb: Yes, I left you a message and you did return it.

St. James: I contacted you.

Hieb: I made first contact, right?

St. James: Yes.

Hieb: OK. Good deal.

A comment from Sweet Pea Produce co-owner Jonathon Hieb reads in part:

Sweet Pea does not agree with the offer made to these young men, by DA St. James.

I personally spoke with St. James concerning this matter a month ago. I told St. James that I was concerned with what he had offered these men, and before I could even explain my position St James rudely interrupted me and specifically told me he wasn't going to have these young men and the rainbow people come into our nice town and take it over. And he added, that he was going to make an example out of them. I was so furious I soon ended the conversation, in fear I would say something that I would later regret.

Now I'm going to say what I should have said to St. James that day.

In my opinion DA St James purposely put these young men in a situation were they had to choose jail time instead of excepting a felony that would have ill effects on them for the rest of their lives. These young men are clearly not criminals and are ambitious in their endeavors as social workers and as teachers, a felony on thier record would surely crush these dreams.Basically, St. James made them choose between the lesser of two evils.This matter could have been handled with an apology, an at most a small amount of community service.Instead, St. James has made Steamboat Springs look like a place that is absent of compassion and most of all common sense.I think it's time Mr. St. James questioned his ability to serve the people of routt co. [link]

Hopefully efforts to recall Kerry St. James and Bonnie Roesink from public office proceed successfully.  While both should really be imprisoned for gross dereliction of their duties, putting them out of a job is probably the next best thing.

The Best Of...

... blog comment threads.  If you never wondered why some philosophers love to reason by analogy, well, look no further.

Frege Comes With Both Morning Star and Evening Star Accessory

(Only one accessory included.)  Earth! Fire! Wind! Water! Heart! Anyways... get your Philosophical Powers on. I want the Noumenal Self (R) Kant. [Via The Plurality of Blogs]

Third Household Post

For the first two, see here (how to fold shirts) and here (how to vanish marks off any surface).   The subject of today's lesson in home economics is the removal of bloodstains from fabric.  I hereby testify that Carbona(R) Stain Devils #4, for Blood & Milk (as well as, presumably, all other protein based stains such as egg or baby formula) removed two week old untreated bloodstains nigh instantaneously.  This was a pleasant surprise, since the fact that you can buy Carbona(R) Stain Devils in numbers one through ten, coupled with the fact that the active ingredients are not listed on the admittedly small plastic bottles, made me suspect a devious marketing strategy was at work: might the same formula be packaged in differently labelled containers?  Well, if so, I certainly have no complaints about #4. My quilt has been restored to perfect condition with no rubbing required.

When Human Refuse Meets The Law

Are you interested in seeing what happens when idiots pass and enforce laws?  Embryos which might possibly save lives get trashed and hungry people who take unwanted produce out of the trash get six months of jail.  But seriously, folks, what else can you expect when you live in a country where mental midgets pass and enforce laws?  What happened to the two victims, Giles Charle and David Siller, involved a real prick of district attorney threatening them with a felony charge if they didn't plead guilty to misdemeanor trespassing.  Fighting the charge would give them the option of risking a felony conviction on the meager hope that a jury of their "peers" would (despite the letter of the law passed by the elected representatives of their "peers") acquit them of the charge (something known as "jury nullification") the district attorny would tell the jury members they absolutely must - on the basis of the law! - convict them of.

Now it is possible that Giles Charle had a prior conviction for shoplifting.  In fact, Giles Charle may be addicted to produce, for the Concord Monitor reports that a Giles Charle (in the New England vicinity) was charged with stealing $4.43 worth of salad.  But this, of course, is irrelevant.  In the first place, that information could not be brought up in a trial.  But more importantly, Giles took unwanted produce from a trash can.   Consider the following quote from the GJSentinel:

"We didn't have any intention of committing a crime or doing anything wrong," Charle told the Steamboat Pilot & Today newspaper. "We had just come in town and we were prepared to buy groceries from a store but everything was closed."

How many people do you think would be aware of the fact that they might face a felony charge for taking produce from a trash bin?  It's wholly plausible that poor Giles had no idea whatsoever that he was breaking a morally questionable law.  (I am here reminded of of a verse from Scripture.  Look below the fold.)  Perhaps (supposing it's the same Giles) instead of stealing salad this time, Giles thought he'd do better to ease his aching stomach with garbage.  But good Americans didn't think he'd learned his lesson, and so the prosecuted him to the fullest extent of the law, threatened him with a felony conviction if he didn't plead guilty on the spot, neglected to provide him with the best chance at a legal defense against an unjust charge a moral pervert of a DA wanted to pad his record with, imposed a cruel and unusual sentence, and offered no ex post facto aid in his time of distress.

I want comments on what should happen to this district attorney (Kerry St. James).  How do you think his life should be ruined/destroyed?  Or do you think nothing should happen?  If the latter, I'd like some justification for what I'd be inclined to call your disgusting and perverse heartlessness.  Finally, why isn't a good lawyer working this case pro bono and doing everything in her power to try and withdraw this guilty plea?

Update: In fact, the fascist State prosecuted them even when the owner of the produce store did not want them prosecuted at all.  From the Times Leader:

Hieb said he told Assistant District Attorney Kerry St. James he didn't want the men prosecuted and thought his input would have carried some weight. He said if they were going to be prosecuted, 10 to 20 hours of community service would have been punishment enough.

Why Study Analytic Philosophy?

So you don't wind up saying something like this:

Broken into 37 meditations, Being and Event is centrally an intervention in what Badiou calls the “Cantor-event.” It goes something like this: Georg Cantor’s work in set theory circa 1874 shatters the distinction between the finite and the infinite by proposing that in any given set of numbers, say [a,b,c], the one, a, is merely a count and not oneness in and of itself. Rather, it is an effect of the presentation of the multiple, a, b, and c; all three take place in the particular situation of the set. Such a presentation allows for the members of the set, and not vice versa. Badiou uses set theory to revise the Heideggerean being-as-one: “Ontology, if it exists,” he says, “is a situation,” that is, one in which beings-as-multiples are presented. It is this structure of which a representation of oneness is an effect.

And his startling proposition: ontology, if it exists, is mathematics.

There's definitely something startling here, but it's not that proposition.  Rather, it's the fact that Pythagoreanism is being cited with tacit approval.  But the point of this post is not to dismiss the notion that the only fundamental kinds of things which exist are mathematical entities.  Oft times those of pseudo-intellectual persuasion invoke scientific principles or mathematical theorems with the mistaken belief that these principles provide them with novel arguments for some thesis.  This is almost always not the case.  The Heisenberg Principle is likely the most abused scientific proposition, but here set theory is the whipping boy.

Cantor did not shatter the distinction "between the finite and the infinite".  In fact, under any natural understanding of what it might mean to "shatter" such a distinction, there is no longer any distinction between the finite and the infinite.  That, of course, is false.  This post contains a finite number of letters.   

What Cantor did was to introduce the notion of equicardinality between sets, such that set A and set B have the same cardinality if and only if there is a 1-1 function from A onto B.  A function is a set of ordered pairs R such that, for all x, y and z, if <x,y> and <x,z> are members of R, then y = z.  (Think of a set of points.  The requirement for a set of points constituting a function is that for any x value of the function, there is only one y value.  For the intuitive graphical examples, note that a vertical line is not a function, a horizontal line is a function, and a diagonal line is a one-one function.)  Finally, and to fully define all the terms used in the definition of "equicardinality", a function with domain A is "onto B" just in case the domain of the function is identical with B.

Here's a nifty way of thinking of equicardinality that was recently suggested to me.  Imagine a table at your favorite fine restaurant with dinner service set for eight.  Suppose you wonder whether the table setting is complete, or perhaps, whether everybody had a wine glass.  There are two obvious ways to figure out whether or not everybody has a wine glass.  The slowest way would be to count all the chairs first, count all the wine glasses second, and then see if your numbers match.  Most of us, however, would probably instead check to see if every chair is paired with a single unique wine glass.  If you can match every chair to a single unique wine glass, then there is a one-one function from the set of chairs onto the set of wine glasses.  That is, the sets have the same cardinality.  For any finite number of chairs and wine glasses, these two methods of counting will return the same answer, but matters become tricky if we move to infinitely long tables.    

There was a distinction between the finite and the infinite both before and after Cantor.  But after Cantor, we could draw further distinctions between infinite sets on the basis of their cardinality.  (It should be remembered that cardinality is a semi-technical notion, stipulatively defined.)  Consider two infinite sets: the set of natural numbers {0, 1, 2, 3, 4...} and the set of even numbers {0, 2, 4, 6, 8...}.  Intuitively, the set of even numbers contains exactly half plus one as many members as the set of natural numbers.  But the two sets have the same cardinality.  Each member of the evens can be paired with exactly one unique member of the naturals.  That is, there is a one-one function from the evens onto the naturals.  To see this, pair zero with zero, one with two, two with four, three with six, etc...

The notion of cardinality is, pretty obviously, not the same as the commonsense notion of size.  Thus, the fact that two infinite sets have the same cardinality does not entail that they have the same number of members, though the fact that two finite sets have the same cardinality does entail this.  (The former claim is mildly controversial.)  But in any case, cardinality is a technical notion, and while applying it to infinite sets yields amazing mathematics, the results are not really surprising since "cardinality" is a notion introduced by stipulative definition.  You shouldn't be shocked to hear that the set of the evens has the same cardinality as the set of the naturals, though you might well be shocked to hear that these sets are the same size, or have the same number of members, etc...  With the notion of cardinality defined above, it can be proven that some infinite sets have greater cardinality than others.  So  while Cantor opened up the field of transfinite mathematics, but, not to belabor the point,  shattered no distinction between the finite and the infinite.

I have no idea whether Badiou makes such a ridiculous claim or whether Alexandra Heifetz invented it, but either way, some training in analytic philosophy will prevent one from making such bizarre assertions.  I leave to my readers the task of attempting to come to grips with the rest of that strange business involving sets not being "oneness in and of themselves".

What Can't You Do With A Philosophy Degree?

Worries about just what standardized tests prove aside, I'm going to follow Vintage Piranha by pointing out that GRE takers who intend to pursue a graduate degree in philosophy drastically outperform all other GRE takers on the verbal reasoning and analytical writing sections of the test.  Data is available here.  Their analytical writing mean is 5.1 out of a possible 6.0, and their verbal reasoning mean is 589 out of a possible 800.  Compare with physics and astronomy (4.5/534), engineering (4.2/467), biological sciences (4.4/491), chemistry (4.4/487), english language and literature (4.9/559), early childhood education (4.1/418) and the social sciences (4.5/486).

Philosophers don't totally dominate the field when it comes to quantitative reasoning, but they do pretty well.  Like the verbal reasoning, this section is scored out of 800 possible points.  Vintage Piranha places them in fifteenth place out of a field of fifty, yet this is only because he counts each of the seven engineering disciplines (civil, mechanical, electrical, etc...) separately.  If we collapse the engineers into one class, the philosophers (636) lose only to the economists (706) and financiers (barely - 637), engineers (720), mathematicians (733), chemists (682), earth scientists (again, barely - 637), physicists/astronomers (738) and computer scientists (704).  I place them at 9th place in a field of thirty-six (by collapsing education as well).  For a discipline in the humanities with terribly low (university imposed) mathemtical requirements, that's pretty slick.

It is also well-known that philosophers (along with classicists) dominate the LSAT.  A list of the estimated IQ's of some of known history's greatest thinkers includes a proportionate number of philosophers, that is, the high number of philosophers one would expect.  You can also input some of your own scores to get some interesting interconversions and percentile data.  (Who knows how reliable this is.)  My GRE scores, for the record, were 650 (verbal), 780 (quantitative) and 6.0 (analytical writing).  According to the calculator here, that's the 99.865 percentile, a number which is at least roughly confirmed by the non-specialized standardized test data I have available.  Having never studied or reviewed for any general academic test in my life (in my case, the TCAP, PSAT, ACT, and GRE), this warms me over.  I'm done tooting my own horn.  For a little more data and a WSJ clipping, go here.

The Worst Argument Ever for the Divine Authorship of Scripture

I give you, for your amusement, an excerpt from the preface of John W. Haley's Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible:

The author was moved to prepare and publish the present volume by the circulation of a pamphlet, in a certain parish, setting forth in a striking and plausible manner the so-called "self-contradictions of the Bible."  This production, cunningly adapted to deceive the ignorant and unwary, was reviewed by me in a course of Sabbath-evening lectures, which form the nucleus of the present work.  The pamphlet just mentioned, with many others of a similar character, I afterwards found to be the fruits of an organized and systematic plan to poison the public mind by scattering broadcast, in the cars and upon steamboats, and in other places of public resort, as well as through the mails, a cheap and virulent infidel literature.  That these nefarious attempts result, in far too many cases, in subverting the religious faith and the morals of the young, there can be no question.  And the means employed by the friends of virtue for exposing and defeating these "devices of Satan" seem, I regret to say, less efficient than is desirable.

The preface is thoroughly populated with references to infidels.  Haley is "hard core".  At least, that is how my girlfriend pithily described the overbearing calvinistic tones up to the glorious loss of the soul even to which the Almighty God has decreed that the "discrepancies"  be "permitted to exist" within the canon.  Yet perhaps the most amusing portion of the book consists of one argument, given in the chapter "Design of the Discrepancies", for the inclusion  of countless prima facie inconsistencies.  I quote:

In nature, then, we perceive mighty discords, tremendous antagonisms, which in appearance seriously involve and militate against the character and attributes of God.  Nevertheless, nature is confessedly his work.  Now, we find the Bible claiming the same supernatural origin, and exhibiting, among other features of resemblance, similar, though far less important, discrepancies; hence these latter afford a valid presumption in favor of its claim.

Permit me to summarize this argument:  The world is areally shitty place, yet God nevertheless created the world.  God is, therefore, the creator of a piece of pretty shitty work.  The Bible also appears to be piece of pretty shitty work.  Therefore, God is probably responsible for it.

Epistemic/Metaphysical Modal Confusion

From an old conversation (with a very bright philosopher) that brings back fond memories:

Scott Hagaman:  After all, it seems to me that there's always the possibility I could be wrong.
Sean Choi:  Hey, it might even be actual. ;)

The State of the Career

Once again, I'm apologizing for keeping a very uninteresting blog these past months.  As the end of the semester approached, I noticed that several philosophy bloggers reduced their posting habits, so at least I'm not alone.  For the record, there seems to be no point, at least at a state school like CU, to holding extra office hours.  Students, including those that would benefit greatly from doing so, almost never show up.  But the semester is over, and all I have to focus on now is my upcoming thesis defense five days away.  With that out of the way (at least, I'm not foreseeing any problems), I'll be prepared to leave Colorado for my shiny new graduate program (news that hasn't appeared here to date).  So yes, I'm both very excited and insanely busy.  Anyone reading this whom I'll be meeting in the near future?

The Paradox of Grammar

Via Musings of an Editress:

A curious paradox exists in regard to grammar. On the one hand it is felt to be the dullest and driest of academic subjects, fit only for those in whose veins the red blood of life has long since turned to ink. On the other, it is a subject upon which people who would scorn to be professional grammarians hold very dogmatic opinions, which they will defend with considerable emotion.

The quotation is excerpted from W. Nelson Francis, "Revolution in Grammar," in Aspects of American English (Elizabeth M. Kerr & Ralph M. Aderman eds., 1963).

Hippie Epistemology

A strange group of people interrupted the thesis writing at my favorite local coffee shop.  Sometime after they had finished setting up dozens of tea lights around the stage, I wandered back up to the front of the coffee shop for a cigarette.  Forced to pass by the table they had turned into a checkpoint to stop everyone passing into the back of the coffee shop and accost them for a "donation", I glanced down and read the following "warning" on their flier: "Be prepared to rethink some of what you already know."  Obviously, their performance was going to be detrimental to my epistemic health.

Bill Dembski: Would You Want This Guy as a Colleague?

Maybe if you teach at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary?  What kind of sick man reports professors like Eric Pianka to the Department of Homeland Security?  The state needs to get something right here and sue the pants off Bill Dembski for friviolous finking.  It's your tax dollar that Bill Demsbski is trying his best to waste on the mini-crusade he's waging apparently for the purpose of reaping perverse, hypocritical glee by backstabbing scientists with whom he (here: quite reasonably) disagrees.  For a relatively poorly written account of Pianka's views by the editor of The Citizen Scientist, Forrest Mims, go here.

In point of fact, there is just no good reason for reporting Pianka to the DHS.  Dembski's actions, in this respect, are  not rationally motivated.  Of course, I support Dembski's right to wage his other campaign against Pianka at the university level, but Pianka is not a national security threat.  Why is Pianka not a national security threat?  Well, for one, it appears that Pianka does not endorse the following principle, or at least, there is no evidence he endorses it:

(P)  For any current state of affairs A and other, all things considered better, state of affairs A', it is good to act in such a way so as to bring about A'.

No rights-based theorist would endorse the above, obviously.  Maybe we should be reporting more consequentialists to the Department of Homeland Security?  Actually, Forrest Mim's poorly written remarks (linked above) suggest to me that Pianka probably believes we need to act quickly (forced sterilization) so as to avoid catastrophe.   If you read Mim's article closely, you will see that he is exceedingly careful to avoid libel by never attributing to  Pianka the view that it would be a good thing if 90% of the population was eliminated by a nasty virus such as Ebola.   That Mim's is  obviously working so hard to walk such a fine line, while failing to draw attention to this point, suggests to me that intentional inflammation is his goal.  If so, this is dishonest reporting.  Fellow graduate student Diana at Noodlefood is also somewhat skeptical, if less so than myself. 

What about the philosophical ability of a man (Dembski) who constantly rants and raves about how the climate of modern academia so often hampers his ability to express his (scientifically unsupported) views, but reports other academics to the State for expressing their equally philosophical views?  If it hasn't already been sufficiently called into question, it's time to reevaluate.  Moreover, Dembski gives the ridiculous and bizarre questions of his colleagues a public airing when he rhetorically asks whether or not Pianka thinks that "the holocaust was an 'excellent thing'".  The professorship of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary needs to learn to think critically, but then again, SBTS may not be the school of choice if acquiring critical thinking skills is your aim.  It might have occured to this credulous group, if they weren't so easily inflamed, that Hitler endorsed (P) though Pianka has not.   To his discredit, this points seems not to have occured to Dembski either.  Finally, Dembski implicitly endorses (despite his attempt to waste your money) the view of a colleague who is angry that taxpayers (partially) fund Pianka's "pulpit".  [via Pharyngula]

A Suggestion For Philosophers

If you use the Philosopher's Index, try Google Scholar instead.  You may well be amazed.

Is My Hoax Detector Malfunctioning?

Ok, so here's a link for you.  I strenuously suggest that you read this entire page.  An excerpt following a time lapse picture of the night sky directly "above" the north pole:

If you can do so for a few minutes, just lay aside the Copernican indoctrination that accompanies such pictures and take a good hard look at these photographs of something that really, really happens every single night.  Do you see what I see? I see all the visible stars in the northern skies going around the North Star in perfect circles. In other words, I see all the stars which these time exposures have recorded actually going around that navigational star that is there for we Earthlings in the Northern Hemisphere... This means that each star circles in one 24 hour day (i.e., 23 hours and 56 minutes). (The same thing is captured in circumpolar photos taken in the Southern Hemisphere....) [emph. orig.]

Yes, bizarrely enough, a time lapse photograph of the night sky shot along the earth's axis of rotation from the north pole resembles the corresponding photograph taken at the south pole.  This is because both all the stars directly "above" the earth and all the starts directly "below" the earth move in perfect circles centered on the north and south poles, respectively.  I'll <sarcasm> respectfully </end sarcasm> have to disagree.  This is clearly a case in which the simpler explanation is the better, although, of course, not merely because it's simpler.  He goes on to ask (rhetorically):

What will it be? Will you trust your eyes (and your camera!) to record the truth of the matter?

and answer:

Trust your eyes and your cameras! They have no reason to deceive you about whether the stars are going around nightly!

Frankly, I'm having a lot of difficulty getting this picture to work.  Let's take it for granted that the vantage points of the north and south poles should be privileged.  That is, it's the photographs we take at these special locations that enable us to know how the stars are moving.  (Why?  Who knows.  Maybe because they're the only spots on earth at which compasses spin freely?)  So given this picture, there are one or more planes of stars rotating around a point intersecting with the line defined by the two points known as the north and south poles?  And I know this because "the photographs obviously tell me so".  So what am I supposed to see when I look up at those stars from the equator?  And how are the st