Eros and university teaching

Here's an interesting article from The American Scholar, 'Love on campus', about the erotic aspect of university education. It's somewhat polemical in tone, but it's worth reading just in order to wonder whether its attempt to point to Plato's Symposium as a model for a positive kind of passionate learning is successful; is it in fact something we can or should want even to try to emulate? (There you are, perhaps there is something worth thinking about in Plato's Symposium, even for philosophers...)

There is, I admit, something to the rhetoric of the piece. For example:

Love is a flame, and the good teacher raises in students a burning desire for his or her approval and attention, his or her voice and presence, that is erotic in its urgency and intensity. The professor ignites these feelings just by standing in front of a classroom talking about Shakespeare or anthropology or physics, but the fruits of the mind are that sweet, and intellect has the power to call forth new forces in the soul. Students will sometimes mistake this earthquake for sexual attraction, and the foolish or inexperienced or cynical instructor will exploit that confusion for his or her own gratification. But the great majority of professors understand that the art of teaching consists not only of arousing desire but of redirecting it toward its proper object, from the teacher to the thing taught.

The link to Plato is made explicit just below:

I’m not saying anything new here. All of this was known to Socrates, the greatest of teachers, and laid out in the Symposium, Plato’s dramatization of his mentor’s erotic pedagogy.

What is not said is that even for Diotima in the Symposium the love of souls is not the final resting point of the ideal conversion of the soul towards its proper erotic object. So the 'brain sex' (I kid you not, that is the phrase the article uses) of a teacher and pupil, although a step up from bodily sex, is not the be all and end all by any means. Still, I do encourage you to read the piece. It's quite funny, in an odd sort of way, as a kind of apologia. It is certainly an interesting example of the ongoing idealisation of Greek cultural practices through the prism of, first, an original Platonic idealisation of pederastic sex and courtship and, later, an idealisation of Plato as a touchstone for educational excellence.

I've wondered here before about the often supposed link between teaching (especially, for some reason, teaching philosophy) and erotic attractions of various sorts. Right now, I'm thinking about it again because I've volunteered to give a talk at the Cambridge Faculty of Classics Sixth Form Open Day (on 26 September) on the question 'How Platonic is Platonic love?' (One of those occasions when you come up with a title long before you've really thought about what you want to say about it.)

Philosophy for kids

I was really pleased by this report about philosophy classes for primary school children. The example problem being discussed was whether it is possible to step into the same river twice. Good question. And the children seem to have been thinking about it in an interesting way with skilled supervision. But then the teacher, Peter Worley, goes and says this:

"There's something wonderfully naive about the ancient Greeks because they were right at the beginning of it all," says Mr Worley. "There's something that the children can identify with - it is at the same level as themselves, but it is also sophisticated in its own way," he adds.

Sigh. You can find out more about this company, 'The Philosophy Shop' on their website. They also offer philosophical counselling.

Conspiracies

I've been wondering recently about conspiracies -- not, I hasten to say, about how to organise one or even how to spot one, but about how easy it is to convince oneself that one is afoot. It must have something to do with a combination of a lack of knowledge about a situation and a set of assumptions about other people's likely motives. Well, that's as far as I had got. Other people, fortunately, have thought more about it. And in a philosophical way! Hooray for philosophy!

For starters, look at Brian Keeley's 'Of conspiracy theories' JPhil 96, 1999, 109-26 (available online here or via JSTOR here; Keeley has some other online papers, some of which are follow-ups to this, available here.)

There is plenty more to read, including a volume of essays: Conspiracy theories: the philosophical debate edited by David Coady. Also, Pete Mandik's nicely-titled paper 'Shit happens'.

A lot of this discussion centres around the proper way in which one ought to criticize conspiracy theorising. What, in other words, are the epistemological shortfalls of this kind of approach? Is the difficulty with conspiracy theories generated particularly by the assumption that the agents whose intentions and actions they purport to illuminate are acting in a manner designed to keep those very actions and intentions secret? Or is the problem with conspiracy theories largely similar to the general problems of any post hoc explanation of historical events in terms of the intentions and beliefs of a set of agents?

I'm not sure. I do wonder, however, about the pressures which lead people to posit conspiracy theories in the first place. So it seems to me worth asking why conspiracy theories arise and how they take hold. I imagine it comes about from a combination of beliefs such as:

1. this particular event E promoted the interests of group X;
2. group X was able to influence the occurrence of event E;
3. group X had reasons not to declare that they influenced the occurrence of event E (perhaps because of 1...);
4. event E would not have occurred except as a result of some intentional influence on the part of some group or other;
   
5. conspiracies occur.

In any given proposed conspiracy, it seems to me that each of 1-4 will be subject to some plausible doubt. (I shall assume that 5 is true.) What will carry the day and generate the suspicion of a conspiracy is the combination of 1-4. And the combination of all 4, once it has generated this suspicion, will -- I think -- further suggest that each of 1-4 is itself individually more plausible than it is. For example, if a conspiracy theorist is challenged to defend 4, they might well point to 1, 2, and 3. Or if asked to defend 3 they might point to 1, 2, and 4. The more each is considered in the light of the general suspicion, the more each seems to be independently plausible. And this in turn makes the overall general suspicion more and more plausible.

De signis II

I park my bike in front of this sign. Something about it makes me confused.

Does this mean that when the Chapel is not open I can walk on the grass and enter the other buildings?

More charity

In response to some of my earlier fumblings about the Principle of Charity and the reconstruction and assessment of historical philosophical views, Steve Makin kindly and gently reminded me of his paper: 'How can we find out what ancient philosophers said', Phronesis 33 (1988), 121-32. I had read this before but should have gone back to it because it is a very helpful and thought-provoking paper. I particularly like his strong support for the principle that we are indeed justified in using rational reconstruction of a philosophical view in ascribing a particular claim or argument to some philosopher. After all, we should assume that -- even ancient, even 'Presocratic'(!) -- philosophers were in the business of trying to offer what were to their mind consistent theories. Now, this does of course provoke the question of how we go about assessing what would seem a consistent theory to a given historical philosopher, so there is a certain amount of historical reconstruction needed also. But that's just as it should be.

Stupid Dad!

Our 5-year-old palaeontologist has been looking at some small fossils we bought on holiday in Dorset. She has decided that there are some small marks on the ichthyosaur vertebra (left) and has matched them up with the fossil shark's tooth (right). 'Ha! Case solved', she declared. (The shark's tooth is, it has to be admitted, only about 50m years old, so much younger than the other fossil, but it's not a bad match.) I just thought she might want to consider some other possibilities so tried hard to think of any other possible culprits. Perhaps it was a liopleurodon, I wondered. Or a mosasaur.

'But Dad', she sighed, 'There were no ichthyosaurs in the Cretaceous!'. Duh!

Social desires

I have just begun reading I. Persson’s monumental, The retreat of reason (Oxford, 2005; see the review in NPDR). There is a lot to think about already in the first forty pages or so, particularly about pleasure and pain. But I have just come to a very interesting argument which Persson thinks is sufficient to refute ‘experientialism’, that is the claim that the only thing desired by us is to have experiences of one kind or another. These may be experiences of pleasure, or of intellectual discovery, or whatever. What matters, nevertheless, is that the only things we desire are experiences which we have. As he puts it on p. 43:

[T]he falsity of experientialism is shown also by the existence of certain ‘social’ desires the content of which is that one be surrounded by other conscious beings who perceive and understand one and whose uptake is friendly and generous, that is, desires to the effect that others have certain experiences of oneself.

These ‘social’ desires are still self-regarding: it is not a general desire that there be in the world conscious beings, but rather that there should be in the world beings conscious of oneself. But it is not a desire for oneself to have a certain kind of experience; it is, rather, a desire to be experienced.

Persson’s argument for the denial of this claim turns on the idea that we would be most upset were it to turn out that there are no mental properties but only physical properties. So there are animate beings, but they act and respond just as one would expect a minded agent to act and respond, but do so solely on the basis of physical stimuli. The world would look, in other words, just as it does now. But there are simply no mental states in addition to physical ones. Persson says that should it turn out that this is the case, and should we find out that this is the case, we would feel ‘intolerably lonely’ (43).

This loneliness is interpreted as being generated by a desire for there to be other minded agents in the world on whom we might leave certain ‘imprints’ (44). There should, in other words, be people whom we might cause to love us, remember us, even despise us. It is not enough that people merely behave towards us in certain ways; we must also be confident that they think about us in certain ways etc. Persson interestingly uses this as a grounds for the common view that we are reasonably justified in having the desire to be remembered after our deaths (presumably fondly, for the most part, but I suppose some people may conceive a desire to be feared or simply well-known whether positively or not). Would this be so intolerably lonely? I’m not sure. Persson insists that the absence of mental states applies to all living beings, the addressee of his argument included. So the loneliness would be of a very strange sort; what we have realised is that all of us, that is all people we would normally classify as alive and conscious are in fact responding solely on the basis of physical stimuli, ourselves included. Loneliness would seem to be the appropriate description of my reaction only in the case in which I discover that I am the only possessor of mental properties in a world of otherwise solely physical living things.

Second, if we were to be convinced of the truth of the no-minds picture of the world that is presumably enough to convince us that there will be no mental properties at all. We might simply have to give up on the desire to be loved, thought of and the like. But if, as Persson insists, we too should turn out to be mindless in this sense but still have these social desires, we would also radically have to revise what it is for ourselves to want to be loved and the like. If we can find any room to retain such a desire in this mental-property-less world then it is less clear to me that we cannot also reorient our understanding of what it is to love, say, such that we can allow it to be possible all the same to be loved (on this new understanding) by other mental-property-less people.

This does not mean, of course, that Persson is wrong to think that what he calls ‘experientialism’ offers too narrow a range of things for which we can have intrinsic desires. But I am not so sure that this is a good argument against it. Perhaps the common and widespread desire for certain states of affairs to obtain after one’s death could offer a starting-point from which to build a similar case. However, it would remain to be shown that it is (i) rational or justified to have such desires and (ii) that such desires are in fact what they seem to be on the face of it and not, as one might claim, disguised desires to experience during one’s life certain emotions of being held in high-regard, loved, respected and the like.

These are still early thoughts, but I’m very keen now to work through the rest of the book. It seems to be an example of what I like most of all in philosophical work.

Dinosaurs are cool

I'm sure I've said this before, but palaeontology is cool. At least, it seems so to an amateur like me. It appears to combine the interesting elements of archaeology and biology and require both scientific rigour and a great deal of creative thinking to produce anything like a detailed picture of the remote past and the lives of the animals who were around then. My eldest daughter is quite a fan, in particular, of Dr Phil Currie of the University of Alberta. Mostly, this is because she has seen him (in fact, has repeatedly watched him) in an excellent BBC Horizon documentary (transcript here) on the odd world of the Cretaceous period in Patagonia -- where enormous Giganotosauruses (like a T-Rex but even bigger and with serrated knife-like teeth rather than thick bone-crushing T-Rex teeth) took on enormous Argentinosauruses (like a Diplodocus but bigger). Just like in the films! Apparently, T-Rex itself had to make do with eating Triceratops and the like because there weren't any big sauropods around in its time in North America.

Horizon did a great doc on these finds, including Currie's hypothesis that the large tyrannosaurids hunted in packs (you thought one was scary!) and it inspired my little girl to produce this picture of a pack of Giganotosauruses taking on a spotty Argentinosaurus. I did ask about the spots, but was told in no uncertain terms that since we don't really know what colour dinosaurs were she could do whatever she liked. Fair enough. I reckon this one has just about had it, though, spots or not.


There is a good Walking with Dinosaurs-style BBC programme on this stuff showing Nigel Marven trying to track down these beasts, but we had to order a DVD from America (which also includes the original Horizon documentary) and our DVD player can't cope with it. So we had to use the PC upstairs. But come on, BBC, why limit the fun to people in the US? Release it here as well!

Despair

For those not so keen on 'motivational' posters at work, there is solace from the good people at Despair, inc., who produce an excellent range of demotivational apparel, mugs ('This mug is now half empty'), and other literature. Particularly good is their poster generator, which helped me to make this:

Balls and songs

It's an in-between week in Cambridge for most of us. The marking is finally over, even the MPhil marking and viva voce examinations, and now there is a brief hiatus while marks are collated before a final examiners' meeting early next week. The students are busy get rained on at May Balls (it's Corpus Christi's Ball tonight and the forecast doesn't look good, unfortunately) and by Monday only the graduands will still be around for a final week before they too disappear and leave the colleges to be occupied by conferences and summer schools.

But that leaves a bit of time for some pleasant events, like the garden parties which a lot of colleges throw for those people who've taught for them during the year. I was at Fitzwilliam College yesterday, which is particularly nice because there are often lots of kids there. My two have acquired a taste for smoked salmon through events such as these, which is not a bad thing in itself, I suppose, but does tend to increase our grocery bill at home if ever they get their way.

On the way to Fitz yesterday I was walking along listening to some music and came across one of my favourite ever songs. It's so good that I think everyone ought to listen to it regularly. It's a song that has the odd ability to make me both sad and somehow elated at the same time. It's not beautifully sung, but the singing is heartfelt. The voice cracks and strains at the words but is carried along nevertheless by the backing. Here are the lyrics to the first verse:

I dreamt we were standing
By the banks of the Thames
Where the cold grey waters ripple
In the misty morning light
Held a match to your cigarette
Watched the smoke curl in the mist
Your eyes, blue as the ocean between us
Smiling at me.

You can hear a bit of it here. It is Misty morning, Albert bridge by the Pogues from the 1989 album Peace and Love and was written by the group's banjo player, Jem Finer. And I reckon it should be exhibit A in any case for including the group, particularly, Shane MacGowan (official website here) in the list of great songwriters of the past twenty-five years. (Exhibit B is of course Fairytale of New York...) He is also an Olympic-standard drinker, and there is presumably some kind of link between that and the songwriting (or at least with his distinctive voice). On this record, though, the combination is perfect.

The ties that bind

I have to attend a University event on Wednesday and, to make it worse, I will have to have my picture taken for use in various bits of University 'development' literature/propaganda. (Here's some blurb about last year's). This is all a pretty grim prospect, but at least there might be a nice supper. But it also turns out that it is a sartorial minefield. I am very happy to work in a job which allows me most of the time not to wear a tie. In fact, unlike some of my colleagues who still put on the uniform, I hardly ever wear a tie unless absolutely required. (For example, it is still essential to wear a tie if you go in to 'dine' in the evening in college at High Table. Fair enough, I suppose. We make the Butler wear a tie so it's only proper that we should make some effort too.) But looking at my tie options the other day I discovered that I hadn't bought a new tie for years and the ones I had were looking a bit sad and out of date.

Tie-buying, I now discover, is also not an easy matter. It is very difficult, in fact, not to end up buying a tie that makes you look like one of the following main categories: (1) an accountant who buys ties only if they come ready packed with a shirt; (2) a footballer leaving court after pleading guilty to various traffic offences; or (3) that 'wacky' bloke in the office who thinks that having a cartoon character on his tie will make up for not having a personality. So if, like me, you are looking for a tie that shows that you don't normally wear a tie and don't have to wear a tie that makes you look professional and boring but also don't want to look like a dandy or a weirdo, there is a very fine line. And it is not easy to hit, or at least that is my impression from a 20 minute dash (my usual clothes-shopping maximum tolerance) to Tie Rack and M&S. I could, I suppose, have a supply of 'amusing' or 'cultured' ties that shout at the world that I am a Classicist: perhaps a Rosetta Stone tie, or an Attic vase painting etc. All the kind of thing you can get at the British Museum or Fitzwilliam Museum shop. Or perhaps something 'philosophical', though those are harder to find. (Nothing as nice as the T-shirt from the excellent Unemployed Philosophers' Guild which reads: 'Here's looking at Euclid'. Their 'Freudian slippers' are also good.) But in the end I ended up with this. I'm hoping it looks not quite like a work tie, and not like the tie you had to buy for a friend's wedding.

Not easy this sort of thing...

Charity work

I've been thinking about the 'Principle of Charity' [1], in part because I mentioned it in a previous post and a colleague expressed surprise, thinking perhaps it was a typo for 'Principle of Clarity' or similar. What role does charity have to play in philosophy, after all? (Aren't philosophers generally charitable types? Perhaps best not to answer that.)

Nevertheless I think I invoke the principle regularly, particularly when working with obscure or fragmentary texts. There are often gaps to fill in or multiple potential readings of a given phrase and -- perhaps automatically now -- I try to go for the strongest, or best, or most plausible reading. But perhaps there is more than one role for the Principle to play.

First, the Principle has a role in simple philosophical debate and exchange. It is tactically justified. Here it seems to me that the Principle is not a two-directional thing. I mean: it is not the case that while I employ it when thinking about other philosophers' arguments I can assume that others will employ it when thinking about mine. For example, this seems to me like sound advice from Jim Pryor's useful guide for students writing philosophy papers:

Pretend that your reader has not read the material you're discussing, and has not given the topic much thought in advance. This will of course not be true. But if you write as if it were true, it will force you to explain any technical terms, to illustrate strange or obscure distinctions, and to be as explicit as possible when you summarize what some other philosopher said.

In fact, you can profitably take this one step further and pretend that your reader is lazy, stupid, and mean. He's lazy in that he doesn't want to figure out what your convoluted sentences are supposed to mean, and he doesn't want to figure out what your argument is, if it's not already obvious. He's stupid, so you have to explain everything you say to him in simple, bite-sized pieces. And he's mean, so he's not going to read your paper charitably. (For example, if something you say admits of more than one interpretation, he's going to assume you meant the less plausible thing.) If you understand the material you're writing about, and if you aim your paper at such a reader, you'll probably get an A.

No doubt this is in part a good and pragmatic dialectical stance: assume that you will be interpreted uncharitably and therefore make sure that you are clear and methodical. Of course, this sometimes makes for very dull philosophy papers which spend a lot of time rejecting pre-empted objections that no one but the most perverse critic would ever offer. But it is still a good practice. And, I suppose, if this is coupled with the original Principle of Charity it will make the stance even stronger: give your dialectical opponent the very best argument you can and assume that this opponent will be mean and uncharitable to you. Not only will you, if you refute the best option available to your rival, undermine in the process all other weaker versions (including probably your opponent's own genuine position), but you will also offer in advance a position already protected from as many mean and nasty criticisms as you can imagine.

This is interesting, though, because it is part and parcel of a dialectical situation which is certainly adversarial. The budding philosopher is being told to be clear and charitable in the face of an opponent who is mean and perverse.

Is this the same as when we invoke the Principle is studying ancient philosophers? I don't think so, since the second and distinct role the Principle plays is as an aid to the deployer of the Principle's own understanding. There, it seems at least in part not to be primarily part of a dialectical exchange between the interpreter and the text (though such an exchange will perhaps arise when we begin evaluating the reconstructed position) but rather a methodological principle tied to the difficulties of making sense of someone else's position, which may be expressed in a foreign language, may be based in geographically and chronologically remote cultures, and so on.

Yet another thought, this time even less well-considered: How is the Principle of Charity to be related (if at all) to a popular principle in historiography, famously outlined by Quentin Skinner?

No agent can eventually be said to have meant or done something which he could never be brought to accept as a correct description of what he had meant or done. [2]

How in practice this proposal is precisely to be applied is of course, no easy matter. But how is it related to the Principle of Charity? Does it place a constraint on what might charitably be offered as an interpretation of a given philosopher? Imagine if, in our eyes, the best version of some philosophical argument found in an ancient text is such that there are reasons to think that the philosopher concerned could not 'be brought to accept' this interpretation. Then how do we proceed? I suspect that answering that question will involve some grand thoughts about just what it is to 'do the history of philosophy' [3]. But I can leave those from another day... Back to the marking!


[1] See also Richard Feldman's article on the Principle in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
[2] Quentin Skinner, 'Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas', History and theory 8,1969, 28. [JSTOR access here.]
[3] There are some interesting thoughts in R. Rorty, 'The historiography of philosophy: four genres' in Rorty, Schneewind, and Skinner (eds) Philosophy in History, Cambridge 1984, 49-75.

Shopping tips

Things can be hard if you have a five year-old who is mad keen on palaeontology and wants to build up a serious collection of miniature prehistoric animals that she can lay out in evolutionary order. But S. recently discovered an excellent site here that will point you to the right places to get all the excellent Bullyland and Schleich models you need, including some fun unusual stuff like this Therizinosaurus. They are shipped from the US, so lots of toy-miles, but the exchange-rate is so good at the moment that you feel it's sort of wrong not to buy that Arsinotherium or Dunkleosteus you've always wanted.

While we are at it, RJR's concerns over comfortable shoes have reminded me that I saw some excellent Firetrap brogue-cum-trainers in one of the Saturday magazines a couple of weeks back. If anyone can tell me where to get hold of some in the Cambridge area I'd be very grateful. (Now, don't misunderstand me: most of the stuff in those magazines is clearly guff designed to make me think that I really should care about where I source my focaccia. And I don't feverishly head out each week to get hold over whatever Alexis Petridis is wearing in the little is-he-happy-or-is-he-sad picture. Here's one of him looking silly in sandals and socks. But these shoes looked fun. Certainly more fun than marking Latin translation papers, which is what I am mostly doing this week...)

Wizard philosophy at Cambridge

It seems that Emily Watson, 'Hermione' in the Harry Potter films, has decided that she wants to come to Cambridge to study philosophy. Good for her. It will probably be a bit dull after saving the world with a stick and a scarf and what-not, but she will at least be used to the gown-wearing and the dining halls.

She might already be used to some 'philosophical' disagreements. The metaphysics of the Harry Potter world is already a touchy subject in some quarters, what with the books being in some people's minds tantamount to witchcraft... (It seems to me that there really ought to be a fairly clear line between fiction and non-fiction, but apparently not.)

If she's thinking about choosing a Cambridge college, she could do worse than consider coming to Corpus (plug). After all, there are some Open Days soon. I've just finished judging our first schools philosophy essay competition and found some extremely good entries on all sorts of topics. We asked for a short (2500 words) essay on one of the following:

1. Can a computer have a mind?
2. Is it possible to alter the past? If so, how? If not, why not?
3. ‘This sentence is false.’ Is it?
4. What is the best argument against democracy? Explain your choice.
5. ‘The value of a work of art is entirely dependent on the amount of pleasure it produces in its audience.’ Discuss.

I was pleasantly surprised by the range of answers (all 5 options got plenty of takers) as well as by the quality of the best essays. There's a brief report on the college website here and here.

The court of Athens?

Hahahaha. Plato's got the slick moves but Aristotle takes it to the hoop.

For more see here. Credit to Brain Hammer. For the background on this stuff see here.

Mayweek roundup

I suppose I ought to say something about how the Mayweek seminar on Diogenes Laertius 9 unfolded. (This will be my own perspective, obviously, and others' may well differ; we don't keep minutes of any kind, though some keep their own notes.)

First, I had a lot of fun. The discussion was lively and good-natured and I think we made some good headway. I imagine it is not often that anyone sits down to read a book of DL as a book, and some surprising things emerged. In particular, it was very clear that this is an enormously varied text: in tone, register, subject matter, and -- presumably -- in the date of the original sources, which must range from (in DL 9, anyway) the early Hellenistic to at least the early Imperial. We found it tricky to be sure whether DL was ever citing the original source he mentions or some later intermediary, but he is certainly interested in impressing the reader with the range of his scholarship.

As for the quality of the work, as philosophy or as a history of philosophy, opinions were very divided. I was more prepared than most to see some kind of unity of purpose in the book, while others were more prepared to explain a particular omission or concentration on DL's part to his being unable to find a particular source or otherwise simply tickled by a racy story. For example, his treatment of Parmenides omits nearly everything you would find in a modern treatment of that philosopher. Is it because DL simply did not know the section we call the 'Way of Truth'? Or did he know it but think it unimportant? Or perhaps he simply could not understand it...

Nevertheless, DL's treatment of Pyrrhonism got some praise, thoroughly compressed though it is, and some were even prepared to say that in some aspects it represents an improvement on Sextus Empiricus (e.g. on the arrangement of the 10 modes and the separation of the material between the 10 and the 5 modes).

And was DL an Epicurean? That was the notion floated in the final session, on the basis that Epicurus seems to be the final destination of the work and is introduced in very positive terms, but I got the impression it did not win a great deal of support. Still, it would certainly be worth reading book 10 as a whole, and in tandem with book 9. Then again, I think we ought to have a good go at the prologue to book 1 as well.

That's the problem with seminars like this: the more you read the more you realise you need to read properly to understand what you've just read.

One final question that turns out to be tremendously important: How was DL read in antiquity? I don't mean to ask how he was interpreted, but simply how the work was consulted. Was it possible, for example, to turn to DL to look up some particular philosopher as one might now consult an encyclopedia or dictionary of philosophy? If so, then he did indeed make some surprising choices about what to include and omit. But if it was read rather as a continuous narrative, then it does seem that it is more legitimate to look for an overall strategy in the work, perhaps even to see it as a unified whole of some kind.

Lonely hearts

I got to bed too late last night, in part because I ended up watching the BBC 2 programme about current bands recreating the Beatle's Sergeant Pepper's... I would have given up sooner had I not spotted S's brother, a professional musician and principal horn for the RPO, tooting away on Bryan Adam's bash through the title track. Then there was the Magic Numbers' destruction of She's leaving home to endure before Razorlight (minus the really annoying one who insists on wearing white trousers and a t-shirt that looks like the V-neck has been stretched in the dryer) bashed through With a little help... (While I'm on the subject, what is the point of Razorlight? Second only to the awful Snow Patrol, they are my current pet hate. What are they talking about? Why has Johnny Borrell spent his life 'wochin' Ameri-cuh' and why does he think there's panic there? Pointless.

Anyway, is Pepper really such a great album that it deserves this kind of a mauling? Was there similar interest in the fact that last year was the fortieth anniversary of John Coltraine's A love supreme? I don't think so. (Actually, there was an anniversary concert by Ravi Coltraine and Branford Marsalis...)

What is interesting is that my two young kids seem to like the Beatles. A lot of Pepper is chummy sing-along stuff, now sufficiently familiar that it doesn't really sound like pop music at all, more a book of songs that had always been around. Perhaps that's a measure of its importance. Still, I prefer Revolver by some way.

Genealogy...

I've finally realised what's so familiar about BB's over-age raver, Tracey:

She's clearly the secret offspring of two national treasures, Sir Jimmy Savile and Carol Thatcher, who are themselves no strangers to 'reality' TV. Come on, Channel 4, 'fess up!

Sorry...

...if this ruins your revision or marking, but this game is frighteningly addictive!

Who was Diogenes Laertius?

We've just begun our annual Cambridge 'Mayweek' seminar (at least most of it is in May, this time), this year reading Diogenes Laertius 9. It is already evident that it is going to be a very interesting exercise, and for me one of the interesting things is the ease with which it is possible to imagine looking 'through' Diogenes and instead begin to think about his sources and the subjects of his biography. It is certainly possible to separate questions about, for example, what Heraclitus thought, from questions about what Hellenistic writers -- Diogenes' usual sources -- thought Heraclitus thought, from questions about what Diogenes himself thought Heraclitus thought. But in cases like Heraclitus, in which we have lots of other evidence, it quickly turns into a case of wondering how much Diogenes 'got right' and the extent to which we could use him as a source for these earlier philosophers.

But what did Diogenes think he was doing when he was writing this odd work? And to what extent was he interested in writing something we might be happy to call a history of philosophy with the same sorts of concerns about accuracy, charity of interpretation, thoughts about the history of ideas and the influence between one position and another? It seems to me that it is not at all clear what we should say. I've tried to say something about these questions in a piece to be published later this year, but it strikes me as I think about it more that Diogenes himself is a very elusive figure. It is not easy to date him securely, or to place his own intellectual allegiances with much confidence. And, in part, it is his care to name so many sources that encourages us to look through him to a period of Hellenistic and classical scholarship.

Who knows? Perhaps over this week more of Diogenes will emerge as we read through the book carefully. Certainly, this would seem to be the only way to make any headway. It's time to read Diogenes for himself and not simply as a source for reconstructing others' philosophies.

Word of the day

Today's word is: mobbing. This is what the OED offers:

1. a. The action of a mob or group of people in attacking, harassing, or crowding round a person (now esp. in adulation or acclamation); an instance of this. Also: the action or an act of congregating in a mob or crowd.

It is apparently an ornithological term, used of flocks which turn on one particular member. But it is a useful description of occasional human behaviour too.

Caution: Pyrrhonist crossing

We're getting ready for a seminar next week on book nine of Diogenes Laertius. I'm going to be introducing the section on the life of Pyrrho. Like Socrates, Pyrrho wrote no philosophical works and, like Socrates, it is incredibly difficult to make clear headway in working out precisely what he thought. Also like Socrates, Pyrrho inspired a series of followers -- Pyrrhonists -- who later went on to elaborate a sophisticated and self-reflexive form of scepticism which professed to suspend judgment over everything.

The stories about Pyrrho's life often found in later sources like Diogenes, clearly reflect the later history of the school and might not, therefore, be simple guides to early Pyrrhonian attitudes. But they are fun, nevertheless, and also revealing of just how weird philosophers were imagined to be. Pyrrho was evidently a great target for this kind of speculation, precisely because of his professed refusal to assent to any dogmatic assertion.

Still, it is not always perfectly clear to me when a given story is supposed to be critical and when it is not. For example, this extract from DL 9.62 might be a fairly straightforward example of a charge commonly made against various forms of scepticism: it is impossible to live that way. Pyrrho was supposed to be constantly in danger of being struck down as he wandered about, paying no heed to what his senses told him (or, perhaps, actively rejecting what his senses told him):

Ἀκόλουθος δ’ ἦν καὶ τῷ βίῳ, μηδὲν ἐκτρεπόμενος μηδὲ φυλαττόμενος, ἅπαντα ὑφιστάμενος, ἀμάξας, εἰ τύχοι, καὶ κρημνοὺς καὶ κύνας καὶ ὅσα <τοιαῦτα> μηδὲν ταῖς αἰσθήσεσιν ἐπιτρέπων. σώζεσθαι μέντοι, καθά φασιν οἱ περὶ τὸν Καρύστιον Ἀντίγονον ὑπὸ τῶν γνωρίμων παρακολουθούντων.

This is Hicks' translation:

He lived a life consistent with his doctrine going out of his way for nothing, taking no precautions, but facing all risks as they came, whether carts, precipices, dogs or what not, and, generally, leaving nothing to the arbitrament of the sense; but he was kept out of harm's way by his friends who, as Antigonus of Carystus tells us, used to follow close after him.

There is no reason to think that Antigonus, whose biography of Pyrrho Diogenes uses here and there, is particularly hostile to Pyrrho. And it is worth noting that Pyrrho did live to a ripe old age. So do we have here a familiar apraxia charge? On this view, it was only because of his followers that Pyrrho did not meet a sticky end rather quickly. Surely his followers had to take a rather different attitude from Pyrrho himself to the prospect of an on-rushing cart, so the viability of this form of scepticism is parasitic of at least someone somewhere taking a resolutely non-sceptical attitude. (It is worth noting that the next comment in Diogenes comes from Aenesidemus, the first century BC fan of Pyrrho, who set out to deny that Pyrrho had ever behaved so bizzarely.) I'm more attracted to this critical interpretation than I once was, but I still wonder whether perhaps this story too is part of a more positive spin. After all, a large number of the anecdotes in Diogenes seem to be trying to offer a positive image of Pyrrho's equipoise. Can this one be viewed in this way? On this view, Pyrrho did indeed live according to his scepticism precisely because of his charismatic tranquillity which encouraged such devoted followers. On either view there is a pun to be found here. Pyrrho lives 'following' (akolouthos) his doctrine because of his followers (parakolouthountes) who pull him out of harm's way.

It's a tricky thing, reading ancient philosophical biography...

Presocratics: the revenge

Catherine Osborne, the author of a recent Very short introduction to Presocratic philosophy wrote an interesting comment on my last post. I think it is worth quoting it here:

I have to admit to finding the opposition to "Presocratic" as a category rather irritating. In some cases it seems to be based on the simple misconception that "pre" must mean chronologically prior--whereas logical or developmental priority is surely what is intended by this term. (Where one thing is the inspiration or target or provocation for another, the latter is in a sense posterior). And priority in this sense needn't be anything to be ashamed of: on the contrary in all ancient thought priority is preferable and dependence is inferiority. Only if one assumes that all development is progress should one assume that being described "pre" Socrates is an insult. And why on earth should one think that?

That's a nice twist: why not think of 'Presocratic' as a way of saying that a particular philosopher is a necessary progenitor of Socrates? Some things from Platonic dialogues could certainly be offered as supporting evidence: Socrates' interest in and eventual rejection of Anaxagoras in Phaedo; his interest in Eleaticism as made clear in Republic V, Parmenides, Sophist and so on; and other less explicit strands of influence such as the possible influence of Philolaus, or Diogenes of Apollonia's teleology. The difficulty is, of course, that these are all cases from the Platonic Socrates. So how about reviving the Nietzschean category of 'Pre-platonic' philosophy?

Were there Presocratic philosophers?

A strange question, perhaps, but one worth asking. It is particularly interesting for me, having just completed a book called Presocratics which at least one of the press's reviewers thought was unfortunately titled. Haven't we moved away from the anachronistic and misleading designation of a group of people, some of whom are contemporaries of or later than Socrates, as 'Presocratics'? And doesn't this term make us fall into the trap of seeing early Greek philosophy merely as a prelude to something more impressive? And doesn't it mislead by implying that there was a distinguishable group of 'philosophers' in sixth and fifth-century BC Greece, contrasted with the various other doctors, astronomers, theologians, poets, historians and the like? Come on, these people might go on, let's give this eighteenth century fiction the boot (perhaps with a recognition that we can blame people like Aristotle for recommending it for this long)! Down with Die Vorsokratiker and up with something less contentious: 'Early Greek philosophy', maybe, or -- if you're sticking to a certain view of what these people in fact did -- 'Early Greek natural philosophy'. In fact, the US distributors of my book were particularly concerned by this sort of criticism and have added -- without asking me -- a subtitle. In the US, it is called: Presocratics: Natural philosophers before Socrates, even though there is quite a lot of epistemology, for example, discussed in it. The subtitle does not seem to be on the cover, though, so I doubt it will make a great deal of difference.

Now, I've no significant investment in the term 'Presocratic' such that I think these criticisms are all misguided. On the contrary, I think they are generally sound. All the same, I think it is a term which is not wholly useless. In fact, it is the easiest and more effective way to refer to a recognised tradition and period of ancient philosophy. True, this tradition -- like any other -- is to some extent manufactured. The classical Greeks put this lot together, even if they didn't use the term 'Presocratic' to refer to them, and that means that thinking about them in the 'traditional' way is not wholly out of touch with at least some of antiquity. It's a bit like other historiographical terms, like 'The Dark Ages' or 'Archaic Greece', retrospectively applied and a touch misleading on occasions but not completely useless. How strongly do people feel about discarding this sort of categorisation?

In any case, I was excited this morning to get hold of a copy of a recent book by one of the most intelligent and persuasive critics of the unthinking acceptance of this category of ancient philosophical historiography, André Laks: Introduction à la «philosophie présocratique». (Note the importance of the 'entre guillemets..'.) He has published a series of important pieces on this question recently and here is the full statement of his views. While I was at it I also bought his Le vide et la haine: éléments pour une histoire archaïque de la négativité. They are, I'm afraid to say, not the sort of thing that could easily be put on to one of our undergraduate reading lists, not least because they are not in English and undergraduates in Classics and Philosophy don't read much in other modern languages. That's a shame, because they are bound to be very interesting.

Stoic education

I was a bit taken aback by a brief report in the Guardian explaining that some teachers from the UK have visited the US to see schools which implement 'happiness' lessons. This is already something of an odd idea, I think, since I reckon Aristotle had it right when he saw an important role in early life simply for the inculcation of positive character traits, habits, dispositions and the like. It's odd to give lessons in happiness, in other words, if that is any more than encouraging children to become the sort of people who might in time go on to live happy lives. Perhaps 18 hours of 'role, playing, confidence-building games and discussion' might help but it certainly doesn't constitute much of an education in happiness.

But perhaps that's OK. Surely these aren't meant to be sufficient for an education in happiness, whatever that is. The bigger surprise came as I read on, since it became clear that the happiness involved is not anything Aristotle would have recognised and, I think, is not really anything that I recognise as deserving the name either. Instead, happiness seems to be equated with something called 'emotional resilience'.

Here is Manchester city council's director of children's services, Pauline Newman:

"This is very much about providing children and young people with the tools they need to manage their feelings and motivation and to find solutions. The work complements what schools already do in parts of the curriculum and in ways they support children.

"Like adults, some children and young people seem able to deal with anything that life brings their way, but others do need help. Learning the kind of skills that will help them cope better emotionally with these things can make an enormous difference in young people's lives - not just at school but later in life as adults. "

Manage their feelings? As in 'anger management'? Dealing with anything life brings their way? Coping emotionally? Am I the only one to find these thoroughly depressing components of a happy life?

Certainly enormous and extravagant bursts of rage at inappropriate objects are not a good idea; they disrupt and damage the person and those around them. But what is it to 'manage' these feelings? Perhaps it's some good old-fashioned English bottling up of one's feelings. Or perhaps its the older Stoic notion of apatheia: putting up with the world because of an acceptance of one's place within the order of things.

This doesn't sound like happiness to me. And I'm worried that children of 11 years old are being encouraged to take on this sort of idea. Surely it would be better to offer them hope, encourage their ambition, excite their creative and intellectual abilities? That sounds like a useful set of tools for happiness to me. But then again, perhaps Manchester city council thinks it is better to have 'emotionally resilient' young people who put up with things as they are.

Philosophy and real life

When you write a philosophical work, the connection between the various arguments and claims you make and practical application are not always at the forefront of your mind. But they should be, particularly if like me some of the philosophical questions you write about are ethical ones. So I was given an important reminder of the kind of audience I should have in mind always by something I read this morning.

Do not go gentle is a blog written by a young man suffering from pancreatic cancer. He died in December 2006. One of the books he was reading is my own Facing Death. His reactions to it, and in particular to which of the various ways of fearing death was the most troubling for him, are extremely interesting. (Read them here and here.) The Epicureans did indeed want their philosophy to be directly applied to 'real life' cases, so this would have been of great interest to them too. I wonder if our most basic and general feelings and concerns about death have changed significantly since the third century BC. Probably. It would be odd if Christianity, modern health-care and palliative care have not had some effect. But it is notable that some arguments peddled over two thousand years ago still have some evident resonance.

Update 8 May: please read the comment from Scott's sister. I should have said originally that reading Scott's blog was a humbling experience. He was evidently a special person and I am honoured that at that time he would consider reading and thinking about something I had written.

Hegesias

Here's a philosopher who ought to be better known: Hegesias the Cyrenaic, sometimes nick-named the 'Death Persuader' because of his general pessimism and unfortunate habit of convincing people that there is no point to living. It is said that he was so persuasive when talking about this topic that he was banned from speaking in public by Ptolemy Philadelphus; the body-count at the end of each of his lectures was too high (Cic. Tusc. 1.83-4). Perhaps he would have got on with David Benatar...

Anyway, perhaps I'll come back to Hegesias and his generally gloomy picture of life some other time. For now, I just want to share one of his pearls of wisdom from the report in Diogenes Laertius 2.95:

καὶ τῷ μὲν ἄφρονι τὸ ζῆν λυσιτελὲς εἶναι, τῷ δὲ φρονίμῳ ἀδιάφορον.

For the fool life is advantageous; for the wise it is indifferent.

Wisdom makes life less valuable? Perhaps he means it appears advantageous to the fool but in fact it is merely indifferent; only the wise man can see that properly. Or perhaps he means that life is worth living only if you are not (yet) wise. Once widom is achieved there is nothing more of any worth in continuing to live. Perhaps this is what is meant by the frustratingly brief report at DL 2.94 of another of his claims, which seems pointedly different from other thoughts along the lines that life and death are indifferent:

τήν τε ζωὴν καὶ τὸν θάνατον αἱρετόν.

Life and death are choiceworthy.

However we make sense of Hegesias' view, it certainly doesn't give much incentive to go out and try to become wise... And it is also a nice twist on the old Socratic maxim that 'an unexamined life is not worth living'; now, the less you examine your life, the less wise you are, the more point there is to living.

Why live football on TV is a bad idea...

... because if you're busy saving a penalty the whole world can tell you're not at home.

Kids' TV....

.. can be so much better than the grown-ups' version. This is brilliant:

The raving pigs after about 5 minutes are fantastic! (And, plenty more episodes to be found where that came from...)

Xenophanes and the hero

How much did the early Greek philosophers react to social and cultural changes in Greece at the time they were writing? Can we use the evidence of early Greek philosophy to shed light in turn on what those changes may have been? I am tempted to think sometimes we can, and have been mulling over an possible example.

There is a story told twice by Aristotle and three times by Plutarch that Xenophanes insisted that different attitudes should be adopted towards dead mortals and gods. The citizens of some city come to Xenophanes and ask how they should treat a particularly revered citizen, now thought to have somehow become immortal. Xenophanes replies that they must decide finally whether the person in question is a mortal or a god. If the former, she should be mourned but, if the latter, she should be honoured (DK 21 A12, 13).

Xenophanes‘ other well-known philosophical output is equally concerned with delineating the correct set of differences between gods and men. Xenophanes insists, famously, that god should not the thought of as anthropomorphic (though god does see and hear, for example) and that we should not attribute to the gods the sorts of unsavoury behaviour found in, for example, the Homeric poems and which is also indulged in by mortals.

Presumably, the problem of the distinction between gods and men is compounded by the regular practice in Greek religion of honouring a mortal who was later made into a god (as was Leucothea, about whose cult the Eleans question Xenophanes in Aristot. Rhet. 1400b5ff. (DK21 A13)). And I wonder if it might be in response to a prevalence of this kind of practice that Xenophanes’ general concern might best be viewed. From what I can tell, worship of ‘heroic’ ancestors (well, perceived ancestors) was going on in Greece from the middle of the eighth-century BC, often centred around Bronze Age tombs. That’s well before Xenophanes’ time, so it is not as if Xenophanes is reacting to anything new in general terms. However, the idea that this is all a long-standing practice might have to be qualified. It is possible that the identification of these ‘heroes’ with particular Homeric characters may have been a later innovation, perhaps even as late as the late Archaic/ Classical period: much closer to Xenophanes. So perhaps this is what prompted his particular interest in the worship of certain named 'heroised' individuals.

It is plausible to relate some of this emergent behaviour to the gradual expression of distinct polis identities, which involved looking back to a presumed ancestor and the institution of shared religious practices [1]. So even if the target of his criticism is not a relatively new religious turn, Xenophanes may have felt that the entire, albeit longstanding, practice was misguided enough to launch a concerted assault on it, along with various other usual treatments of the divine. If that’s along the right lines, then it seems that it would certainly be incorrect to think of Xenophanes as a religious conservative, since in his poetry he is taking on a set of generally agreed and long-standing practices and conceptions with strong political and cultural roots.

[1] See A. Snodgrass, ‘The archaeology of the hero’, reprinted in R. Buxton (ed.) Oxford Readings in Greek Religion (OUP, 2000)

Reading

I was cheered up yesterday by a present from S: the new novel by Mark Z. Danielewski called Only Revolutions. It looks like it's going to be fun: two parallel stories running (physically) through the book in opposite directions; 360 pages of 180 words each of each story; the stories begin taking up most of the page but shrink as they progress and you move towards the beginning of the opposite story. There's a nice summary that doesn't give away the plot (as if that mattered...) if you go here. Sounds a bit pretentious, I know, but I love that kind of thing. And like all good stuff these days, there is a funky website to go along with it. (Click on the picture of the dust jacket...)

I'm excited because S and I both loved his first novel, The House of Leaves, which used similar typographical tricks and was packed with fake scholarship and odd footnotes. But most of all The House of Leaves was genuinely frightening. I'm not much of a fan of horror films or fiction, but this was a very disturbing read; disturbing in a good way, I mean, because some of the parts of the story stayed with me for some time. It's certainly worth looking out for if you haven't read it already. Of course, not everyone likes it, but that's the way with all fiction. Others did. (I cannot stand Jane Austen... 'Oh, Mr ___, would you like to take a turn around the garden?'... Don't tell me it's all a clever and witty take on contemporary manners. It's just pants.)

Wittgenstein and Socrates

An article in the new volume of Philosophy argues that Socrates and Wittgenstein shared some important personal affinities: M. W. Rowe, 'Wittgenstein, Plato, and the historical Socrates', Philosophy 82 (2007): 45-85. From a quick skim through, these include:

1. Both began by being interested in 'science' but then moved to linguistic concerns; they underwent a significant change in outlook.


2. Both became more pious as their scientific confidence wained. (Here Rowe uses evidence from Aristophanes' Clouds and Plato's Apology for the view that, at least at some point, Socrates was (thought of as?) an atheist natural philosopher.


3. Both had strong artistic streaks. (Socrates even seems to want to learn to play the lyre while waiting to be given the hemlock...)


4. Both lived through periods of significant political conflict and war.


5. Both were rather introspective and shunned politics.


6. Both lived rather ascetic adult lives although they came from wealthy backgrounds.


7. Both were interested in the philosophical role of reminiscence and reminding.


8. Socrates claims to be a kind of midwife. Wittgenstein was interested in medicine and psychoanalysis...


9. Both aim at creating an integrated and healthy psyche via a kind of 'talking cure'.


10. Both were (in some sense or at some time or to some degree...) homosexual.

See Rowe p. 43 n.3, by the way, for some important disclaimers about his omission of any discussion of the problem of the 'Socratic' problem and also qualms about referring, say, to ancient 'science' or 'homosexuality'...

I'll have to ponder the significance (and truth) of these claims a bit more before I can formulate a full response. Certainly, it seems likely that there was some similarity between the methods of teaching adopted by Wittgenstein and Socrates (or, at least, Plato's Socrates). Beyond that, however, I'm not sure how important many of these sometimes strained similarities genuinely are. It's plausible that some of the similarities were generated by Wittgenstein's own reaction to Platonic works; certainly, as Rowe points out, he was interested in philosophical dialogue [1]. (Wittgenstein insisted he had never read Aristotle, but he did certainly read Plato.)

It's also worth wondering, I think, whether Socrates -- or perhaps the image of Socrates generated by ancient works, Plato especially -- has become something of a paradigm in the European imagination for what a 'philosopher', perhaps a philosopher of a certain stripe, must be like. We might owe to Plato, then, the notion that philosophers must be somewhat other-worldly irritants of conventional practice and commonly-accepted notions. If that's right, then this image may have exerted its attraction on both Wittgenstein himself and also the mythology around Wittgenstein.

But one of Rowe's thoughts in particular, (related to 10. above) struck me as worthy of pause (p.78):

None of the foregoing suggests that philosophy is necessarily homosexual, but it may suggest that it is best conducted between people who are mutually attracted.

I think this is meant to be an explanation of Wittgenstein's view rather than Rowe's and even then it takes some digging to extract much from the scattered comments W. is supposed to have made which might be relevant. For Socrates, on the other hand, there's some decent evidence that he was happy to exploit quite a close relationship between philosophy and erotic desire. But, regardless whether either Ludwig or Socrates thought that philosophy must involve some kind of sexual chemistry, is it true? I'm certain that philosophy isn't necessarily homosexual (if I understand what such a claim would amount to, anyway: does it mean that it necessarily can happen only between same-sex dialectical/sexual partners?) but what about the latter suggestion? Personal experience seems to tell against it. Fortunately so, I think.

[1] See also: B. J. Heal, "Wittgenstein and Dialogue" in Philosophical Dialogues: Plato, Hume, Wittgenstein ed. T.J.Smiley Proceedings of the British Academy 85, 1995, 63-83

A new Socratic text

I recently discovered that Socrates has in fact produced some written philosophical work. You can even order it from Amazon.

The art of fishing

Here's an interesting claim from Sextus Empiricus M 9.3:

Hence, as it shows more art to be able to catch a great number with a single onset than to hunt after the game laboriously one by one, so too it is much more artistic to bring one's counter-argument against all in common rather than to develop it against the particular tenets. (trans. R. Bury)

ὅθεν ὡς πολλῷ τεχνικώτερόν ἐστι τοῦ καθ’ ἕκαστον θήραμα πονεῖσθαι τὸ διὰ μιᾶς ἐφόδου πολλὰ δύνασθαι ἀγρεύειν, οὕτω πολλῷ χαριέστερον τὸ κοινῇ κατὰ πάντων κομίζειν ἀντίρρησιν τοῦ προσειλεῖσθαι τοῖς κατὰ μέρος.

He is contrasting his own, skillful, approach, which tackles all dogmatic natural philosophers' assumptions together, with the Academic approach which takes on each one by one and tries to find flaws in them severally.

Clearly, there is something appealing about the metaphor of hunting to describe the philosophical pursuit of some difficulty. Aristotle is certainly referring to a related image when he writes that if truth is as claimed by some of the misguided souls he tries to set right in Metaphysics gamma, then we would be left with the depressing thought that the philosophical quest for truth would be like 'chasing birds' (i.e. trying to catch on foot something that can at any moment simply take to the air and evade your grasp): 1009b33-1010a1.

But I was struck by the assumption on Sextus' part that we will agree that, for example, trawling for fish with a large net that will catch everything in its path is more artful (τεχνικώτερόν) and much more elegant (χαριέστερον) than fly-fishing for one fish at a time. It is, arguably, more efficient and I suppose Sextus' point is that in doing so it is necessary to have identified a common error in all the various philosophers one is criticising. He certainly can't mean that the process is more complicated. Certainly, his description of hunting birds with bird-lime on a cane (M 9.3; for an explanation see here) sounds like a pretty complicated business that needed rather a lot of invention. More than it would take to use a big net and simply ensnare anything too big to get out of its way, in any case. Rather, the skill involved is precisely that needed to recognise the affinity between a variety of quarries and design a method which can take them all on in one fell swoop.

I rather like that as an evaluation of the relative merits of philosophical criticisms. Prefer the one which identifies a more general difficulty to the Academic (academic?) dissection of a particular difficulty in one philosopher's treatment of a single question.

Wired

Last night, S and I finished our viewing of the first season of HBO's The Wire and we already have seasons two and three ready. I know I've probably come late to this series and that its praises have been sung by plenty of critics, but I had no idea just how good it would be until we took a chance on some reduced box sets. We've watched the first season in sessions of two episodes a night over the last week and can't wait for more. Here's Charlie Brooker telling it like it is:

It's not so easy to say what is so compelling about it. Certainly, US series and those from HBO in particular (e.g. Sopranos) have high production values and equally high standards for scripts and acting. But they also score because somehow US 'tec or crime dramas are just more exciting than ours. Perhaps crime is more interesting in the US. More likely, they have cottoned on to the idea that there is more to this sort of programming than leading the audience into a guessing game of whodunnit. (Compare our ploddy but otherwise OK output such as Morse or Waking the dead...) The Wire never hides whodunnit. What's more interesting is howdunnit or whydunnit, and the careful and gradual exploration of character, circumstance and the pressures of life in a gang (whether on the street or in a police team). Only rarely does it descend into moralising or the annoying habit some shows have of suddenly making a character voice some unlikely profundity (as when D'Angelo, about to rat on his family business, starts describing how he was more free when in prison than under the control of his uncles.) Still, just imagine the writer of the BBC's New Tricks coming up with this, from David Simon who created The Wire:

The second season of The Wire, centered around Baltimore's dying port unions, is a meditation on the death of work and the betrayal of the American working class, it is a deliberate argument that unencumbered capitalism is not a substitute for social policy, that on its own, without a social compact, raw capitalism is destined to serve the few at the expense of the many.

Can't the BBC manage anything like this? And can't someone other than FX show this show in the UK?

Naturalism

Off today for what is becoming an annual pilgrimage with the kids to the Natural History Museum. (The Museum also has, by the way, an excellent website. We particularly like the Dino-directory.) The main attraction today was the fun (but pricey) Dino Jaws exhibition -- with seven moving animatronic dinosaurs. This is a baryonyx about to grab a fish:

The kids loved it to bits, and I did too. The other great thing about the Museum is its architecture: the whole building is covered inside and out with little carved animals and plants, climbing up the pillars and looking down from the balconies. I suppose it is meant to echo the architecture of a cathedral, but this time it is a cathedral to naturalism rather than the supernaturalism which is the driving force behind the more familiar cathedrals.

Silver linings

Andrew Oswald, Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick, whose research interests include measuring and promoting happiness, has written something in the Independent about why academia is a rewarding career to enter. His comments about projected earnings look on the generous side to me, but otherwise he makes some good points and raises some significant caveats to potential applicants for academic jobs. Still, it's nice to read something which reminds me of the positive parts of my job.

On the other hand, I'll reserve judgement on his approval of the Labour government's introduction of top-up fees. Let's wait and see whether all those £3K/year bits of funding find their way into improving teaching, research, and academic salaries. And let's see what effects it has on the number and type of student entering universities. Perhaps Economics departments will feel less of a pinch that Classics or Philosophy departments. Time will tell.

Thick epistemology

There are some exciting developments in epistemology coming from the US. Not only can we thank them for the clarity of Rumsfeldian epistemology, but we can also look forward to the exploration of 'thick' epistemological notions (e.g. trust, gullibility) alongside the conventional 'thin' stuff (e.g. justification, knowledge). See here for a call for papers on 'Thick epistemology'.

But perhaps the most useful piece of recent epistemological work is the identification of the quality of 'truthiness': that feeling that some view is right, although (or perhaps because) it is backed by absolutely no justification or logic. The origination of the term is disputed, but its usefulness (or indeed its prevalence) is not.

Hot on its heels ought to be an investigation of the related phenomenon that conflates sincerity with truth. I've too often heard politicians or other public leaders attempt to win an argument by stressing that they do, really, honestly, believe what they are saying. Well, that's all very interesting. I now know you aren't lying to me. (Or do I? Are you sincere in your protestations of sincerity?) But just because you really believe that, for example, there are shed-loads of awful weapons stashed somewhere in a country far away has nothing to do with whether they are in fact there! I don't care whether you really believe it. I care if it's true.