Scottish Nous

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".