A couple of other good ones.
* This great evolution-based Guinness ad.
* And this old Monty Python sketch - rival Greek and German teams of philosophers clash on the soccer field.
Enjoy!
About Me
- Russell Blackford
- Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. My latest books are THE TYRANNY OF OPINION: CONFORMITY AND THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM (2019); AT THE DAWN OF A GREAT TRANSITION: THE QUESTION OF RADICAL ENHANCEMENT (2021); and HOW WE BECAME POST-LIBERAL: THE RISE AND FALL OF TOLERATION (2024).
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
YouTube movie about Uvvy Island
Here's a nice little movie that someone posted on YouTube about Uvvy Island in Second Life.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Monday, February 12, 2007
What is the worst book ever written?
Just quickly, I wonder if anyone is willing to offer a view on this one. (Hint: books by present company, such as Kong Reborn by Russell Blackford, do not count.)
The Future of Human Nature by Jurgen Habermas must go very close. I'm re-reading this, in the wake of recent discussion about Fenton's critique of Habermas - I hadn't read it for a a year or two. In that time I had forgotten what an execrable piece of bio-Luddite rubbish this book really is, committing just about every possible sin: it is repetitive and badly structured (even within the individual pieces from which it has been cobbled together), relies on sonorous rhetoric, rather than careful, rational analysis, is full of bizarre logical non sequiturs, projects an almost mystical view of human nature, and just generally is one book you would not want to give as a token to a favourite smart adolescent (or anyone else).
Any other suggestions?
The Future of Human Nature by Jurgen Habermas must go very close. I'm re-reading this, in the wake of recent discussion about Fenton's critique of Habermas - I hadn't read it for a a year or two. In that time I had forgotten what an execrable piece of bio-Luddite rubbish this book really is, committing just about every possible sin: it is repetitive and badly structured (even within the individual pieces from which it has been cobbled together), relies on sonorous rhetoric, rather than careful, rational analysis, is full of bizarre logical non sequiturs, projects an almost mystical view of human nature, and just generally is one book you would not want to give as a token to a favourite smart adolescent (or anyone else).
Any other suggestions?
Sunday, February 11, 2007
You are Magneto
You fear the persecution of those that are different or underprivileged so much that you are willing to fight and hurt others for your cause.
Magneto
63%
Apocalypse
62%
Mystique
61%
Lex Luthor
58%
Dr. Doom
56%
Venom
55%
Riddler
54%
Catwoman
50%
Green Goblin
49%
Two-Face
49%
The Joker
47%
Kingpin
44%
Dark Phoenix
42%
Poison Ivy
39%
Mr. Freeze
37%
Juggernaut
33%
Click here to take the "Which Super Villain are you?" quiz...
Muahahaha! Try it. I was surprised to get the character I was hoping for; though of course, I'm really a pussycat who would never hurt anybody. :)
Magneto
63%
Apocalypse
62%
Mystique
61%
Lex Luthor
58%
Dr. Doom
56%
Venom
55%
Riddler
54%
Catwoman
50%
Green Goblin
49%
Two-Face
49%
The Joker
47%
Kingpin
44%
Dark Phoenix
42%
Poison Ivy
39%
Mr. Freeze
37%
Juggernaut
33%
Click here to take the "Which Super Villain are you?" quiz...
Muahahaha! Try it. I was surprised to get the character I was hoping for; though of course, I'm really a pussycat who would never hurt anybody. :)
Friday, February 09, 2007
Monkish virtues
I was just thinking about this famous quote from David Hume for another purpose. I love the way he skewers a lot of self-denying morality. It's worth quoting in full from the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals:
"Celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude, and the whole train of monkish virtues; for what reason are they everywhere rejected by men of sense, but because they serve no manner of purpose; neither advance a man's fortune in the world, nor render him a more valuable member of society; neither qualify him for the entertainment of the company, nor increase his power of self-enjoyment? We observe, on the contrary, that they cross all these desirable ends; stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper. We justly, therefore, tranfer them to the opposite column, and place them in the catalogue of vices; nor has any superstition force sufficient among men of the world, to pervert entirely these natural sentiments. A gloomy, hair-brained enthusiast, after his death, may have a place in the calendar, but will scarcely ever be admitted, when alive, into intimacy and society, except by those who are as delirious and dismal as himself."
We ought to take this to heart. I dislike arrogance and bragging as much as anyone does - Hume has some bad things to say about them, as well. He's not defending them here. But, as he suggests, we are not morally required to go around with long faces. We can enjoy life, be sociable, sexual creatures, and take a proper pride in what we do.
The worldly moral philosophy of Hume is a high point of the Enlightenment. Sure, I can think of one or two things in it that need updating, but overall it still makes a helluva lot of sense.
"Celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude, and the whole train of monkish virtues; for what reason are they everywhere rejected by men of sense, but because they serve no manner of purpose; neither advance a man's fortune in the world, nor render him a more valuable member of society; neither qualify him for the entertainment of the company, nor increase his power of self-enjoyment? We observe, on the contrary, that they cross all these desirable ends; stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper. We justly, therefore, tranfer them to the opposite column, and place them in the catalogue of vices; nor has any superstition force sufficient among men of the world, to pervert entirely these natural sentiments. A gloomy, hair-brained enthusiast, after his death, may have a place in the calendar, but will scarcely ever be admitted, when alive, into intimacy and society, except by those who are as delirious and dismal as himself."
We ought to take this to heart. I dislike arrogance and bragging as much as anyone does - Hume has some bad things to say about them, as well. He's not defending them here. But, as he suggests, we are not morally required to go around with long faces. We can enjoy life, be sociable, sexual creatures, and take a proper pride in what we do.
The worldly moral philosophy of Hume is a high point of the Enlightenment. Sure, I can think of one or two things in it that need updating, but overall it still makes a helluva lot of sense.
A manifesto for moral sceptics
I just dashed off a version of this over at Jason Rosenhouse's EvolutionBlog, which is an excellent site in support of evolutionary theory against the efforts of creationists and Intelligent Design warriors.
The subject matter was the ongoing blogosphere debate between Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan, two intellectuals whom I have a lot of time for, about the reasonableness of religious belief. Sullivan has most recently defended his theistic belief on what are, as I understand them, essentially fideist grounds - this belief has been fundamental to his thinking for longer than he can remember, and is (for him) simply not revisable under any circumstances. At the same time, he cannot support it with evidence that he would expect to be convincing to anyone who lacks it.
One person responded to Rosenhouse's commentary on all this with the observation that we apply standards of empirical evidence only to science; we don't, for example, apply them when we make assertions of moral or political principle, such as "I have a right to participate in government."
I think that this is incorrect, and importantly so. It may describe how people actually behave, but such assertions about rights are indeed fair game for sceptical scrutiny. Indeed, if they are understood in a certain popular, "objective" way, they are simply incorrect.
I'll pick up the story from here (somewhat re-edited for a different context and to sneak in some improvements), as I claim that this is not how the atheistic, scientifically-minded folks who tend to hang out at Rosenhouse's site should be thinking.
As a moral sceptic in the mode of John Mackie, Richard Garner, Richard Joyce, etc., etc. - I am certainly going to deny that there is any objective sense in which "people have a right to participate in their government". There may be such a right within some legal system, or even within some moral system - there's nothing spooky about legal rights or about rights that are recognised within a society's positive morality. But the idea that there "just is such and such a right", somehow built into the framework of reality, is as spooky and implausible as the idea that there is an all-powerful supernatural being floating around sustaining our existence.
Lots of people, including lots of atheists, seem to believe in these spooky "rights", and so on, for exactly the same reason that Sullivan believes in God: they were brought up in an environment where they internalised the idea, and it is now so ingrained into them that they treat it as axiomatic, and make the rest of their worldview conform to it (as they form new beliefs or revise existing ones).
That does not mean that there is no such thing as good behaviour or bad behaviour, or good or bad systems of government. There is such a thing, just as a good knife (in many contexts) will be sharp and durable, a good friend will be loyal, etc. We do have standards of goodness and badness, and they are not entirely arbitrary, because they are based on human interests (such as our interest in being able to cut our meat, our interest in all the needs that friendship satisfies, our interest in having stable societies, but not being tyrannised by arbitrary government power, etc.). However, while our standards of goodness and badness are not arbitrary, they are always relative to the framework of what we actually want or need.
To the extent that what "we" ultimately want or need may be contestable - since there is no monolithic "we", but just "me" plus "you", "you", "him", "her", "them", and so on - well, so are standards of goodness and badness. Fortunately (from my framework), most of us actually do want to reduce the suffering in the world, for example, and are more likely to dispute the means of achieving this rather than to to join Nietzsche in contesting the goal itself.
I am not proposing that we should jettison all morality, but we can always subject morality's claims to sceptical scrutiny. We should, indeed, jettison the idea that moral rights, duties, and so on, somehow exist "out there", independent of the social need to establish standards of behaviour that conduce to our interests. At any given time, the prevailing norms about rights, and so on, may have some kind of non-arbitrary grounding, but we should not (if we want to be intellectually informed and honest) think they are objective and absolutely binding, or simply "exist", in the way that is often imagined. They exist - in the restricted sense that they do - to meet serve our interests, and they are always open to rational revision.
The above is what I understand to be a way to think about such things as rights and morality within the scientific worldview, and it does indeed require evidence to support arguments for the retention (or, indeed, the abolition or modification) of particular ideas about rights, and so on. We can analyse what evidence we have about particular interests, etc., and what evidence we have about what standards would conduce to them.
Of course, we can't do this exercise all the way down every time we make any decision with a moral component. Sometimes - perhaps most of the time - we do need to act in accordance with standards of morality that we have internalised, just to save time and energy. For example, some of our political ideas are so well-established and useful that it is better in the heat of political practice to apply them than to be constantly re-examining their usefulness - I'm thinking of such ideas as freedom of speech and the rule of law, and the Millian "harm principle". But even these ideas are always open, in principle, to rational, evidence-based scrutiny, and we should feel free to reconsider them in cooler moments.
This can be a frightening way to think about morality if you love the sense of certainty of "knowing" God's commands. But it is also liberating to realise that our current standards are no more than useful, provisional human inventions that can be altered, or even replaced by something better - i.e., better for actually serving human interests and projects.
I should add (now departing further from what I said in EvolutionBlog) that the more our circumstances change - with changing technology and other changes to our physical and social environments, including our understanding of ourselves - the more pressing becomes the need to apply cool, sceptical scrutiny to our inherited morality. It is not something written in the stars or in the mind of a deity. It is something that human beings invented and can improve upon. We can, and should, adapt it to our changing circumstances and understandings.
The subject matter was the ongoing blogosphere debate between Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan, two intellectuals whom I have a lot of time for, about the reasonableness of religious belief. Sullivan has most recently defended his theistic belief on what are, as I understand them, essentially fideist grounds - this belief has been fundamental to his thinking for longer than he can remember, and is (for him) simply not revisable under any circumstances. At the same time, he cannot support it with evidence that he would expect to be convincing to anyone who lacks it.
One person responded to Rosenhouse's commentary on all this with the observation that we apply standards of empirical evidence only to science; we don't, for example, apply them when we make assertions of moral or political principle, such as "I have a right to participate in government."
I think that this is incorrect, and importantly so. It may describe how people actually behave, but such assertions about rights are indeed fair game for sceptical scrutiny. Indeed, if they are understood in a certain popular, "objective" way, they are simply incorrect.
I'll pick up the story from here (somewhat re-edited for a different context and to sneak in some improvements), as I claim that this is not how the atheistic, scientifically-minded folks who tend to hang out at Rosenhouse's site should be thinking.
As a moral sceptic in the mode of John Mackie, Richard Garner, Richard Joyce, etc., etc. - I am certainly going to deny that there is any objective sense in which "people have a right to participate in their government". There may be such a right within some legal system, or even within some moral system - there's nothing spooky about legal rights or about rights that are recognised within a society's positive morality. But the idea that there "just is such and such a right", somehow built into the framework of reality, is as spooky and implausible as the idea that there is an all-powerful supernatural being floating around sustaining our existence.
Lots of people, including lots of atheists, seem to believe in these spooky "rights", and so on, for exactly the same reason that Sullivan believes in God: they were brought up in an environment where they internalised the idea, and it is now so ingrained into them that they treat it as axiomatic, and make the rest of their worldview conform to it (as they form new beliefs or revise existing ones).
That does not mean that there is no such thing as good behaviour or bad behaviour, or good or bad systems of government. There is such a thing, just as a good knife (in many contexts) will be sharp and durable, a good friend will be loyal, etc. We do have standards of goodness and badness, and they are not entirely arbitrary, because they are based on human interests (such as our interest in being able to cut our meat, our interest in all the needs that friendship satisfies, our interest in having stable societies, but not being tyrannised by arbitrary government power, etc.). However, while our standards of goodness and badness are not arbitrary, they are always relative to the framework of what we actually want or need.
To the extent that what "we" ultimately want or need may be contestable - since there is no monolithic "we", but just "me" plus "you", "you", "him", "her", "them", and so on - well, so are standards of goodness and badness. Fortunately (from my framework), most of us actually do want to reduce the suffering in the world, for example, and are more likely to dispute the means of achieving this rather than to to join Nietzsche in contesting the goal itself.
I am not proposing that we should jettison all morality, but we can always subject morality's claims to sceptical scrutiny. We should, indeed, jettison the idea that moral rights, duties, and so on, somehow exist "out there", independent of the social need to establish standards of behaviour that conduce to our interests. At any given time, the prevailing norms about rights, and so on, may have some kind of non-arbitrary grounding, but we should not (if we want to be intellectually informed and honest) think they are objective and absolutely binding, or simply "exist", in the way that is often imagined. They exist - in the restricted sense that they do - to meet serve our interests, and they are always open to rational revision.
The above is what I understand to be a way to think about such things as rights and morality within the scientific worldview, and it does indeed require evidence to support arguments for the retention (or, indeed, the abolition or modification) of particular ideas about rights, and so on. We can analyse what evidence we have about particular interests, etc., and what evidence we have about what standards would conduce to them.
Of course, we can't do this exercise all the way down every time we make any decision with a moral component. Sometimes - perhaps most of the time - we do need to act in accordance with standards of morality that we have internalised, just to save time and energy. For example, some of our political ideas are so well-established and useful that it is better in the heat of political practice to apply them than to be constantly re-examining their usefulness - I'm thinking of such ideas as freedom of speech and the rule of law, and the Millian "harm principle". But even these ideas are always open, in principle, to rational, evidence-based scrutiny, and we should feel free to reconsider them in cooler moments.
This can be a frightening way to think about morality if you love the sense of certainty of "knowing" God's commands. But it is also liberating to realise that our current standards are no more than useful, provisional human inventions that can be altered, or even replaced by something better - i.e., better for actually serving human interests and projects.
I should add (now departing further from what I said in EvolutionBlog) that the more our circumstances change - with changing technology and other changes to our physical and social environments, including our understanding of ourselves - the more pressing becomes the need to apply cool, sceptical scrutiny to our inherited morality. It is not something written in the stars or in the mind of a deity. It is something that human beings invented and can improve upon. We can, and should, adapt it to our changing circumstances and understandings.
CNN's not-very-to-the-point reply
Having looked at some sites where all this is discussed, I'm not surprised at the reply I received. It looks like they assume that any feedback they get must have been about their memorial coverage of Steve Irwin's death.
Irwin's death was, indeed, a tragedy (especially for his family, who have my sympathy).
But maybe CNN ought to work out that there really are some other issues that some people sometimes write to it about. I mean, given it has a feedback page and all ...
.
.
.
.
Dear I-Reporter,
On behalf of CNN, please accept our sincere thanks for your I-Report submission during our memorial coverage of the tragic death of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin. Thanks to the many submissions from our viewers, our coverage carried the personal touch that came from his vast and personal outreach to his many fans. Our programming effort was a huge success, and you are part of the reason for that.
Again, we sincerely thank you and hope you will continue to send relevant submissions to us at http://www.cnn.com/exchange/ireports/topics/
Best wishes,
CNN Public Information
Irwin's death was, indeed, a tragedy (especially for his family, who have my sympathy).
But maybe CNN ought to work out that there really are some other issues that some people sometimes write to it about. I mean, given it has a feedback page and all ...
.
.
.
.
Dear I-Reporter,
On behalf of CNN, please accept our sincere thanks for your I-Report submission during our memorial coverage of the tragic death of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin. Thanks to the many submissions from our viewers, our coverage carried the personal touch that came from his vast and personal outreach to his many fans. Our programming effort was a huge success, and you are part of the reason for that.
Again, we sincerely thank you and hope you will continue to send relevant submissions to us at http://www.cnn.com/exchange/ireports/topics/
Best wishes,
CNN Public Information
Thursday, February 08, 2007
CNN atheism debacle
It's not normally like me to send off letters or e-mails complaining to the media about their handling of current issues, but just this once I've joined the bandwagon complaining about the panel discussion in Paula Zahn's recent segment on the social persecution of atheists in the US.
For those three people and a dog in the world who missed it, Zahn presented a segment about the harassment of a couple who were basically driven out of town by religious zealots. In the following panel session, two members of the panel essentially claimed that atheists need to "shut up", because they bring such intolerance on themselves.
The third, and the only one who made any sense, was an ESPN sports analyst who proclaimed that he loves the Lord but also believes in constitutional rights. Good for him. He tried to remind the other two that the US is a country which (supposedly) values freedom of belief and speech. This led to a general shouting match.
There has apparently been a massive flood of mail in response. In my own belated e-mail to Zahn's show, I said the following (typos and all, alas):
.
.
.
Dear Ms Zahn,
I was dismayed by the panel discussion in your recent segment on atheism, particularly by the suggestion that atheists bring hatred on themselves and should simply, as Ms Hunter put it so charmingly, "Shut up." This seems like a rather extreme example of blaming the victim, especially considering that it immediately followed your report on a case of blatant social persecution of a couple of (apparently) good citizens who happen not to believe in the existence of the Christian God.
I understand that the panel may have been chosen for another purpose (to comment on the Superbowl), and that this may explain the ignorance and egregious imbalance that we saw. However, it was most unfortunate that not one member of the panel was actually an atheist, and that the whole framing of the debate assumed atheists to be an "other" to be discussed in absentia as a problem for "us". Stephen Smith did make some commendable efforts to draw attention to the fact that atheists have legal and constitutional rights, like everyone else, but the attitudes of the other two panel members were appalling, and reflected badly on themselves, your segment, and CNN. It would be mild to say that they made fools of themselves, you, and the network.
None of this is to deny them (or you, if it comes to that) the right to express whatever views they wish, however intolerant or bizarre - I well understand the principle of freedom of speech. But I do believe that a major media outlet such as CNN should make an effort to achieve at least some semblance of balance, especially when discussing the possible reasons why a despised minority is actually despised.
In addition, I regret to say that I was surprised that you were unable to test the more outrageous claims and proposals that were being made - I expect any television moderator to hold panel members to account and test their claims, especially when they take the wild form that we saw from Ms Hunter in particular.
More positively - and I do regret that we are required to mark our feedback as either "positive' or "negative", with no more nuanced options available - I understand that Professor Richard Dawkins will now be appearing on your show in the aftermath of this segment. I commend the decision to invite Professor Dawkins as a guest. I hope that this will allow for a more considered and useful discussion of the topic of atheism and the widespread rejection of traditional religious belief. I look forward to seeing his contribution.
Your sincerely,
Russell Blackford
For those three people and a dog in the world who missed it, Zahn presented a segment about the harassment of a couple who were basically driven out of town by religious zealots. In the following panel session, two members of the panel essentially claimed that atheists need to "shut up", because they bring such intolerance on themselves.
The third, and the only one who made any sense, was an ESPN sports analyst who proclaimed that he loves the Lord but also believes in constitutional rights. Good for him. He tried to remind the other two that the US is a country which (supposedly) values freedom of belief and speech. This led to a general shouting match.
There has apparently been a massive flood of mail in response. In my own belated e-mail to Zahn's show, I said the following (typos and all, alas):
.
.
.
Dear Ms Zahn,
I was dismayed by the panel discussion in your recent segment on atheism, particularly by the suggestion that atheists bring hatred on themselves and should simply, as Ms Hunter put it so charmingly, "Shut up." This seems like a rather extreme example of blaming the victim, especially considering that it immediately followed your report on a case of blatant social persecution of a couple of (apparently) good citizens who happen not to believe in the existence of the Christian God.
I understand that the panel may have been chosen for another purpose (to comment on the Superbowl), and that this may explain the ignorance and egregious imbalance that we saw. However, it was most unfortunate that not one member of the panel was actually an atheist, and that the whole framing of the debate assumed atheists to be an "other" to be discussed in absentia as a problem for "us". Stephen Smith did make some commendable efforts to draw attention to the fact that atheists have legal and constitutional rights, like everyone else, but the attitudes of the other two panel members were appalling, and reflected badly on themselves, your segment, and CNN. It would be mild to say that they made fools of themselves, you, and the network.
None of this is to deny them (or you, if it comes to that) the right to express whatever views they wish, however intolerant or bizarre - I well understand the principle of freedom of speech. But I do believe that a major media outlet such as CNN should make an effort to achieve at least some semblance of balance, especially when discussing the possible reasons why a despised minority is actually despised.
In addition, I regret to say that I was surprised that you were unable to test the more outrageous claims and proposals that were being made - I expect any television moderator to hold panel members to account and test their claims, especially when they take the wild form that we saw from Ms Hunter in particular.
More positively - and I do regret that we are required to mark our feedback as either "positive' or "negative", with no more nuanced options available - I understand that Professor Richard Dawkins will now be appearing on your show in the aftermath of this segment. I commend the decision to invite Professor Dawkins as a guest. I hope that this will allow for a more considered and useful discussion of the topic of atheism and the widespread rejection of traditional religious belief. I look forward to seeing his contribution.
Your sincerely,
Russell Blackford
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
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