the harder they shimmy.
It's a sign of real liberation that Iraqis are increasingly buying these little dancing Saddam Hussein dolls. A tryant's shadow is waning. I'm reminded of seeing Lenin's statue being toppled when the USSR caved in, or of sections of the Berlin Wall being hammered down in November 1989. Now, I know there was footage of a big Hussein statue being torn down; but this doll captures our present Zeitgeist so much better.
Fifteen years ago, it meant something, it had real old-fashioned symbolic meaning, to tear down a leader's monument. Now, however, the best way to signal a political change is to look at what kids are buying. The world is moving ever-faster towards total commodification -- total "for-sale-ability" -- marketing everything from frozen embryos to oxygen naps. These days, driven by our commodifying Zeitgeist, we know a leader is ousted, not when we see his likeness in ruins, but when we see it for sale on the shelf. Saddam is gone; his downfall is mere ideological chattel afloat on the free market.
Thursday, July 1, 2004
Augustine Day by Day - July 1 - One Teacher: Christ
"Avoid being called 'Teacher.' Only one is your teacher, the Messiah. Let him therefore speak to you interiorly, in that place where no one can enter into your heart.
"On second thought, let there not be no one in your heart--let Christ be there. Let his unction spread in your heart, lest it be a heart thirsting in the wilderness and having no fountains to be quenched."
-- Sermon on 1 John 3, 13
Prayer. You have accompanied me on my path, O Truth, teaching me what to avoid and what to desire.
-- Confessions 10, 40
"On second thought, let there not be no one in your heart--let Christ be there. Let his unction spread in your heart, lest it be a heart thirsting in the wilderness and having no fountains to be quenched."
-- Sermon on 1 John 3, 13
Prayer. You have accompanied me on my path, O Truth, teaching me what to avoid and what to desire.
-- Confessions 10, 40
Christian Heritage - July 1 - We Must Be Men and Women of Action
"This saying of our Master on the law obliges us to be diligent not only in hearing God's word, but also in obeying it. We do well to listen to the law, because it moves us to good works; it is a good thing to read and meditate on scripture, because our inmost thoughts are thus purified from all evil; but to be assiduous in reading, listening to, and meditating on the law of God without doing what it says is a wickedness that the Spirit of God has already condemned, forbidding those guilty of it even to pick up the holy book in their unclean hands. God said to the sinner: Do not touch the book of my commandments, because you have taken my covenant on your lips, but have hated correction and cast my words behind you.
"Assiduous readers who do no good works are accused by their very reading, and merit a more severe condemnation because each day they scorn and despise what they have heard that day. They are like dead people, corpses without souls. The dead will not hear thousands of trumpets and horns sounding in their ears; in the same way souls dead in sin, minds that have forgotten God, do not hear the sound and cry of divine words; the spiritual trumpet leaves them unmoved. They sleep the sleep of death and find it pleasant."
Philoxenus of Mabbug (AD 440-523), Hom. 1: SC 44, 27-31
"Assiduous readers who do no good works are accused by their very reading, and merit a more severe condemnation because each day they scorn and despise what they have heard that day. They are like dead people, corpses without souls. The dead will not hear thousands of trumpets and horns sounding in their ears; in the same way souls dead in sin, minds that have forgotten God, do not hear the sound and cry of divine words; the spiritual trumpet leaves them unmoved. They sleep the sleep of death and find it pleasant."
These are some hard words, and they strike me deeply. I am a hollow reader all too often. And I stand condemned. God, help me to obey You. Do not teach me unless I also shall obey.
Philoxenus of Mabbug (AD 440-523), Hom. 1: SC 44, 27-31
Philoxenus of Mabbug is also sometimes referred to as Philoxenus of Heirapolis. He was a Syrian spiritual master and theologian who achieved a brilliant synthesis of the Syriac and Greek theological schools of thought. As I mentioned a few days ago, he was also a leading advocate of Monophysitism and a leading opponent of Pope Leo the Great's (AD 400-461) orthodox formulation of the nature of Christ, which was dogmatically ratified at the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451.
Christian Heritage - July 1 - We Must Be Men and Women of Action
"This saying of our Master on the law obliges us to be diligent not only in hearing God's word, but also in obeying it. We do well to listen to the law, because it moves us to good works; it is a good thing to read and meditate on scripture, because our inmost thoughts are thus purified from all evil; but to be assiduous in reading, listening to, and meditating on the law of God without doing what it says is a wickedness that the Spirit of God has already condemned, forbidding those guilty of it even to pick up the holy book in their unclean hands. God said to the sinner: Do not touch the book of my commandments, because you have taken my covenant on your lips, but have hated correction and cast my words behind you.
"Assiduous readers who do no good works are accused by their very reading, and merit a more severe condemnation because each day they scorn and despise what they have heard that day. They are like dead people, corpses without souls. The dead will not hear thousands of trumpets and horns sounding in their ears; in the same way souls dead in sin, minds that have forgotten God, do not hear the sound and cry of divine words; the spiritual trumpet leaves them unmoved. They sleep the sleep of death and find it pleasant."
"Assiduous readers who do no good works are accused by their very reading, and merit a more severe condemnation because each day they scorn and despise what they have heard that day. They are like dead people, corpses without souls. The dead will not hear thousands of trumpets and horns sounding in their ears; in the same way souls dead in sin, minds that have forgotten God, do not hear the sound and cry of divine words; the spiritual trumpet leaves them unmoved. They sleep the sleep of death and find it pleasant."
Damn dirty apes!
Sneakiest primates have biggest brains
(NewScientist.com news service, Hazel Muir, 10:57 30 June 04, Journal reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2004.2780))
God gave us big brains to worship him in creative ways. The Fall has retained those multifarious capacities, but has, in Luther’s phraseology, turned them in ourselves (curvatus in se) against our Creator and fellow creatures. These primate studies are intriguing from a behavioral perspective, but I’ve never been able to get very worked up about their “startling implications” for biblical anthropology and cosmology. For a more thorough discussion of these ideas, I highly recommend you read Dr. Dennis Bonnette's book, Origin of the Human Species (Sapientia Press).
I smell a neuroscientific fallacy. The key is not to have large brain, but to have enhanced neural portions which modulate advantageous behavior. I could have a massive brain that only distinguishes between reds and greens. What good is my big, dichromatic cranial fuel-suck then? (Well, I would enjoy The Red Green Show a lot more, if that were possible.) I think these researchers are underemphasizing the importance of language in such social maneuvering. I’m suspicious that the enlarged neo-cortex of these crafty apes has enough going for it, cognitively speaking, to give apes what they need upstairs to be truly Machiavellian.
That last line is a golden qualifier and a point well worth remembering in discussions of cognition science and, more generally, epistemology. Just because a monkey does what is right in a situation doesn’t mean that monkey knows what is right. Behavioral felicity is not, in other words, equivalent to epistemic legitimacy. This is the core of Alvin Plantinga’s already famous “evolutionary argument against naturalism” (in the first of his “Warrant” trilogy). Plantinga argues that since naturalism presupposes our rationality is derived from every evolutionary adjustment before us, rather than from a rational, divine creator, we can only assess our rationality in terms of the dynamics of evolution by natural selection (ENS). So far so good.
But now imagine a prehistoric caveman (rather, I suppose, than a postmodern one) named Marv. One day Marv sees a tiger. Understandably enough, Marv’s super-animal brain recognizes the tiger is a threat and Marv sprints for cover. Then again, if he’s feeling plucky, he might face off with the lion. What Marv does, however, is not the point. The crucial point is why we claim he does what he does. From our perspective, we give Marv the benefit of the doubt and just assume he knows the tiger is a tiger, that a tiger is a threat, and that running away or killing it is the best course of action.
But, asks Plantinga, how do we know Marv knows all this about lions and tigers and bears? What epistemic right, so to speak, do we have to bestow such clear-headed rationality on Marv? What if, in actual pre-historical fact, Marv had a wacky, worthless irrational mind driven by all sorts of perception-fritzing impulses (a “rationality cum desire” scenario as Plantinga sometimes calls it)? What if Marv’s brain interpreted a tiger as a friendly kitty? Or as a pretty lady on the make? Or as a rolling stone? Or what if he simply didn’t register tiger-data at all? What if, to use a technical term, Marv’s “noetic input” (i.e., perceptual input) were utterly unreliable as a guide to the perceived world?
In short, what if Marv had no real capacity to interpret his surroundings rationally and accurately but he nevertheless outlived the tiger? If Marv survived all those close encounters with tigers, though he never knew what risk he was truly in, he would pass on the genes for his deficient rational abilities. And, as long as his ancestors survived in a similarly benighted fashion, right down to our day, then there would be countless descendants of Marv with the same irrational minds. The upshot is that even the most behaviorally successful outcomes of ENS have no bearing on the noetic integrity of the mind that orchestrates that behavior. The mere fact that Marv escapes from a tiger, and thus does what we, in magnanimous retrospect, deem to be a truly rational move, does not entail that Marv accurately perceived the tiger, let alone any other thing about the world. Further, it’s perfectly conceivable that there were thousands and thousands of cases just like Marv’s – irrational survivors who passed on completely worthless noetic capacities – and that each and every one of us alive today is but the irrational, noetically scrambled, epistemologically aimless offspring of Marv & Co.
What then? Well, assuming we have all inherited such faulty cognitive capacities, we have no basis for saying we accurately perceive the surrounding world. Since Marv, as a mere product of ENS, had no assurance his noetic input was accurate, then neither do we, as mere products of ENS, have any such noetic assurances. If the chief criterion for interpreting the present world is simply that ENS has gotten us this far – and thus, “surely,” would not tolerate such irrational cognition – if that’s all it takes to size up our minds, then ENS leaves us completely in the dark. If it’s possibly the case that we are merely the “lucky” descendants of people who had no sound rational access to the world, then we are cast into the same evolutionary blind spot as Marv. We may try to assure ourselves we accurately perceive the world, since, after all, we successfully avoid moving cars and dangerous people all the time, but our self-assurances are worthless. Like Marv, we may be totally misperceiving the world without ever going wrong in it.
Our blind (but oh so lucky) noetic input leaves the defender of blind ENS relying on a unreliable noetic input about the natural world, which he uses to arrive at his conclusions about the soundness of the theory of ENS. The dynamics of ENS undercut the very basis we have for trusting our noetic input in defending the dynamics of ENS. As Plantinga says, this puts the pro-evolutionist in a diachronous, if not synchronous, loop, in which every affirmation of our evolution by sheerly naturalistic means simultaneously undermines our basis for trusting the noetic evidence behind our affirmations. Plantinga is willing to grant this loop may not actually be started by the claims in favor of ENS (synchronicity), but both epistemic occurrences – affirming ENS and losing our grounds to do so – occur in parallel (diachronicity).
In conclusion, ENS, according to Plantinga, gives us, at worst, a non-existent or, at best, only highly inscrutable basis for affirming the reliability of our noetic input, and thus of the realibility of the theory of ENS.
So, do those apes know they’re being dishonest? Don’t ask them. A better question is whether we know they’re being dishonest, and how we know that.
(NewScientist.com news service, Hazel Muir, 10:57 30 June 04, Journal reference: Proceedings of the Royal Society B (DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2004.2780))
Monkeys and apes who are good at deceiving their peers also have the biggest brains relative to their body size. The finding backs the "Machiavellian intelligence" theory, which suggests the benefits of complex social skills fuelled the evolution of large primate brains. . . .
God gave us big brains to worship him in creative ways. The Fall has retained those multifarious capacities, but has, in Luther’s phraseology, turned them in ourselves (curvatus in se) against our Creator and fellow creatures. These primate studies are intriguing from a behavioral perspective, but I’ve never been able to get very worked up about their “startling implications” for biblical anthropology and cosmology. For a more thorough discussion of these ideas, I highly recommend you read Dr. Dennis Bonnette's book, Origin of the Human Species (Sapientia Press).
That is consistent with the idea that natural selection favoured larger brains for sophisticated social interactions, among them tactical deception. . . .
I smell a neuroscientific fallacy. The key is not to have large brain, but to have enhanced neural portions which modulate advantageous behavior. I could have a massive brain that only distinguishes between reds and greens. What good is my big, dichromatic cranial fuel-suck then? (Well, I would enjoy The Red Green Show a lot more, if that were possible.) I think these researchers are underemphasizing the importance of language in such social maneuvering. I’m suspicious that the enlarged neo-cortex of these crafty apes has enough going for it, cognitively speaking, to give apes what they need upstairs to be truly Machiavellian.
However, it is still not clear whether primates are ever aware of being deceptive. They may have no concept of dishonesty, knowing simply from experience that these behaviours get the result they want.
That last line is a golden qualifier and a point well worth remembering in discussions of cognition science and, more generally, epistemology. Just because a monkey does what is right in a situation doesn’t mean that monkey knows what is right. Behavioral felicity is not, in other words, equivalent to epistemic legitimacy. This is the core of Alvin Plantinga’s already famous “evolutionary argument against naturalism” (in the first of his “Warrant” trilogy). Plantinga argues that since naturalism presupposes our rationality is derived from every evolutionary adjustment before us, rather than from a rational, divine creator, we can only assess our rationality in terms of the dynamics of evolution by natural selection (ENS). So far so good.
But now imagine a prehistoric caveman (rather, I suppose, than a postmodern one) named Marv. One day Marv sees a tiger. Understandably enough, Marv’s super-animal brain recognizes the tiger is a threat and Marv sprints for cover. Then again, if he’s feeling plucky, he might face off with the lion. What Marv does, however, is not the point. The crucial point is why we claim he does what he does. From our perspective, we give Marv the benefit of the doubt and just assume he knows the tiger is a tiger, that a tiger is a threat, and that running away or killing it is the best course of action.
But, asks Plantinga, how do we know Marv knows all this about lions and tigers and bears? What epistemic right, so to speak, do we have to bestow such clear-headed rationality on Marv? What if, in actual pre-historical fact, Marv had a wacky, worthless irrational mind driven by all sorts of perception-fritzing impulses (a “rationality cum desire” scenario as Plantinga sometimes calls it)? What if Marv’s brain interpreted a tiger as a friendly kitty? Or as a pretty lady on the make? Or as a rolling stone? Or what if he simply didn’t register tiger-data at all? What if, to use a technical term, Marv’s “noetic input” (i.e., perceptual input) were utterly unreliable as a guide to the perceived world?
In short, what if Marv had no real capacity to interpret his surroundings rationally and accurately but he nevertheless outlived the tiger? If Marv survived all those close encounters with tigers, though he never knew what risk he was truly in, he would pass on the genes for his deficient rational abilities. And, as long as his ancestors survived in a similarly benighted fashion, right down to our day, then there would be countless descendants of Marv with the same irrational minds. The upshot is that even the most behaviorally successful outcomes of ENS have no bearing on the noetic integrity of the mind that orchestrates that behavior. The mere fact that Marv escapes from a tiger, and thus does what we, in magnanimous retrospect, deem to be a truly rational move, does not entail that Marv accurately perceived the tiger, let alone any other thing about the world. Further, it’s perfectly conceivable that there were thousands and thousands of cases just like Marv’s – irrational survivors who passed on completely worthless noetic capacities – and that each and every one of us alive today is but the irrational, noetically scrambled, epistemologically aimless offspring of Marv & Co.
What then? Well, assuming we have all inherited such faulty cognitive capacities, we have no basis for saying we accurately perceive the surrounding world. Since Marv, as a mere product of ENS, had no assurance his noetic input was accurate, then neither do we, as mere products of ENS, have any such noetic assurances. If the chief criterion for interpreting the present world is simply that ENS has gotten us this far – and thus, “surely,” would not tolerate such irrational cognition – if that’s all it takes to size up our minds, then ENS leaves us completely in the dark. If it’s possibly the case that we are merely the “lucky” descendants of people who had no sound rational access to the world, then we are cast into the same evolutionary blind spot as Marv. We may try to assure ourselves we accurately perceive the world, since, after all, we successfully avoid moving cars and dangerous people all the time, but our self-assurances are worthless. Like Marv, we may be totally misperceiving the world without ever going wrong in it.
Our blind (but oh so lucky) noetic input leaves the defender of blind ENS relying on a unreliable noetic input about the natural world, which he uses to arrive at his conclusions about the soundness of the theory of ENS. The dynamics of ENS undercut the very basis we have for trusting our noetic input in defending the dynamics of ENS. As Plantinga says, this puts the pro-evolutionist in a diachronous, if not synchronous, loop, in which every affirmation of our evolution by sheerly naturalistic means simultaneously undermines our basis for trusting the noetic evidence behind our affirmations. Plantinga is willing to grant this loop may not actually be started by the claims in favor of ENS (synchronicity), but both epistemic occurrences – affirming ENS and losing our grounds to do so – occur in parallel (diachronicity).
In conclusion, ENS, according to Plantinga, gives us, at worst, a non-existent or, at best, only highly inscrutable basis for affirming the reliability of our noetic input, and thus of the realibility of the theory of ENS.
So, do those apes know they’re being dishonest? Don’t ask them. A better question is whether we know they’re being dishonest, and how we know that.
What a drag
Cannabis smoke 'worse' than tobacco
(BBC, Monday, 11 November, 2002, 22:23 GMT)
One commenter on the linked page noted you could convert cannabis -- with all its fabled sedative and hallucinogenic effects -- into a harmless, non-carcinogenic spray. The only problem is, this conversion process, if it were to be applied on a large scale for public consumption, would require taking the neo-con nightmare step of legalising cannabis. Conservative nightmare or not, I do think taking that step is only a matter of time. The drug war is not over, for it never got off the ground.
(BBC, Monday, 11 November, 2002, 22:23 GMT)
Dame Helena Shovelton, chief executive of the British Lung Foundation, said: "Puff and inhalation volume with cannabis is up to four times higher than with tobacco - in other words you inhale deeper and hold your breath with the smoke for longer before exhaling.
"This result in more poisonous carbon monoxide and tar entering into the lungs."
One commenter on the linked page noted you could convert cannabis -- with all its fabled sedative and hallucinogenic effects -- into a harmless, non-carcinogenic spray. The only problem is, this conversion process, if it were to be applied on a large scale for public consumption, would require taking the neo-con nightmare step of legalising cannabis. Conservative nightmare or not, I do think taking that step is only a matter of time. The drug war is not over, for it never got off the ground.
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