General rants about computers and politics, neither in that order, nor necessarily related, intertwingled with thoughts on whatever I've been reading lately.
From the "people without a clue" column on Fox News:
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is prepared to accept a Mideast peace plan put forward by then-U.S. President Bill Clinton in December 2000, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported Friday.
Sorry, dude. This isn't December 2000, by any stretch of the imagination. And Israel knows (and the U.S. is beginning to realize) just how irrelevant Arafat really is.
A Santa Monica elementary school has banned the game of tag, once synonymous with youth and innocence, because they say it creates self-esteem issues among weaker and slower children.
Yeah, my self-esteem nearly suffered irreparable damage from this when I was a kid. Then I realized I could sidestep the whole issue by reading a book during recess instead.
Armed and Dangerous - What al-Qaeda Wants
More from ESR on Islam, Jihad, and Al Quaeda
ABCNEWS.com : Israel to Seize Palestinian Lands
Go Israel!
Den Beste has a good analysis of Israel's actions, and the chances for its success.
TCS: Defense - Presidential Weeble Wobble
Ken Adelman has plenty of valid concerns about this administrations seriousness about the Axis of Evil.
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Arafat's star falling in White House critics
Ok, some people are beginning to realize that Arafat's a large part of the problem. Too bad Foggy Bottom's still clueless.
FOXNews.com Nineteen Killed in Jerusalem Bus Blast
Bastards. Can anyone really believe that Arafat is a partner for peace? The faster Israel gets that wall built, the better. And the faster the US removes the Iraqi, Iranian, Saudi, and European support for these terrorists, the better.
The recurrence of these tragedies should be taken as a severe indightment of the US and European state departments, more so than even 9/11 was an indightment of the US intelligence services, since these attacks have been going on for years now and the diplomats are still chasing futilely after "dialog" and "concensus" with Arafat and Hamas.
It is long since time for talking to stop, and some real action to begin. But as long as American foreign policy is dictated by Foggy Bottom instead of the White House, we do nothing but contribute to this continuing tragedy.
New York is starting to feel like Brezhnev's Moscow
The Guardian tries very hard to argue that popular "conformity" in the US is equivalent to totalitarian repression in the Soviet Union, in this case " a stifling conformity which muzzles public discourse on US foreign policy, the war on terrorism and Israel." One fine young leftists whines:
If people knew I held these views, I wouldn't be able to stay in this job," an old college friend confided as I passed through the city for a few days last week. He was appointed by the Bush administration to a top Federal position (not connected to foreign policy) some months ago. His subversive views on the Middle East, if uttered in Europe, would raise no eyebrows: Ariel Sharon has no vision or strategy; his tactics on the West Bank are counter-productive; the American media are failing to report adequately on the suffering of innocent Palestinians in cities ransacked by Israeli troops.
In the first place, he's full of himself if he thinks that such views would get him fired from a non-foreign-policy job. If this is just the tip of the iceberg, then maybe. But views such as this are viewed neither as particularly radical nor particularly inflammatory over here. As to his third view regarding American media's failure to report israeli atrocities, most Americans would classify it as simple ignorance and irrationality that he has repeatedly failed to notice that that nearly all of these Palestinian claims have been shown to be completely false.
Then there's this little gem that indicates a complete lack of understanding of international relations:
The Israeli prime minister's humiliating refusal to heed the White House's call last month for an immediate halt to Israel's West Bank incursions should have prompted a debate on whether Bush or Sharon makes US foreign policy, she argued. Instead, the leaders of most American Jewish organisations sided with Sharon and were pleased when Bush backed down.
This is an amazingly clumsy attempt to conflate US and Israeli foreign policy. There has never been a question as to whether Bush or Sharon was in charge of US foreign policy. Bush made a statement of US foreign policy in his demand, Sharon made a statement of Israeli foreign policy in his rejection. Both were within their rights (and indeed within their duty) as leaders of their respective nations.
If on the other hand, Bush had demanded Israeli withdrawal and Powell had rejected it, that would be grounds for an immediate debate over who makes US foreign policy, but it would be a short debate, for the US Constitution makes this very clear.
Continuing in this irrational vein, the Guardian continues thusly:
Listening to these anguished but private complaints suddenly reminded me of the Soviet Union of the Brezhnev era when lower-level officials, journalists and other fringe members of the regime sat around their kitchen tables, expressing their true views only to family and close friends. A far-fetched analogy, of course, until you look at the narrowness of public discussion, not just on Israeli-Palestinian issues, but also on the threatened American attack on Iraq and the administration's war on terrorism in general.
Anguished complaints that non-issues aren't debated? Worries that verifiably false stories aren't published more widely in the press? Concerns that the national concensus generated by 9/11 means their whacked-out viewpoint isn't being taken seriously any more? Do they really expect anyone to believe that this is what life in the Soviet Union was like?
Oh, wait. This guy ought to know:
"We live in a culture where there is a diminishing tolerance of dissent," commented Abe Brumberg, long-time editor of Problems of Communism, the Soviet-era journal which was funded by the US government.
Nope. We live in a culture where there has been a sudden crystallization of public opinion, and it crystallized against him.
Further evidence of the stifling of dissent in the US? Newspapers losing subscriptions because people are no longer willing to pay to listen to them. Television shows that headline with Noam Chomsky's anti-american screed but reveal their true anti-dissident biases by failing to invite him to appear in person, "like soviet television in the 1970's".
Reason? Logic? A Leftist needs not these things.
America's enemies speak out. In this case, the list of enemies includes Ed Asner, Noam Chomsky, Casey Kasem, Barbara Kingsolver, Edward Said, Gloria Steinem, and Alice Walker.
Armed and Dangerous The Elephant in the Bath-House
Eric Raymond has a thoughtful and well-reasoned analysis of the current crisis in the Catholic Church, and its impact on gay rights.
Somehow I missed this post by Sasha Volokh on the usefulness of biographies of old philosophers, and also why it might be still be important to read old philosophers.
As to the biography question, certainly one of the emphases of modern continental philosophy (derrida et al) is the deconstruction of an argument based on the speaker's biases, which would mean that biographical information is of great importance in properly understanding his work. And if such a biography concerns itself primarily with the factual details of the life of its subject, then that may well be the limit of its usefulness. However, a philosophical history as opposed to a personal history of that philosopher is another matter entirely. By relating the twists and turns of his philosophical development, it is possible to discern where his philosophy took a wrong turn, where the mistakes came in. For it is sure that as in science, all philosophy is only an approximation of the truth.
Like historical interpretation, and quite unlike the sciences, philosophy suffers from the problem of verifiability (or more properly falsifiability). Since philosophical theories can never be critically tested it is difficult to know which is more true, except insofar as a theory may suffer from some internal contradiction. However, it is reasonable to expect that the newer philosophy would be more far-reaching in its implications, more consistent, and certainly guided by the learning acquired by its close sibling, science.
It is true that there is a historical value to reading old philosophers. Since they tended to be problem-oriented (or at least saw themselves as tackling pressing problems), we may gain additional insight into the historical era in which they wrote by both the problems they were attempting to solve, as well as the way they attempted to solve it. The insights which they developed in turn frequently had an impact on the more conventional aspects of history -- certainly no discussion of the 19th and 20th centuries would be complete without a discussion of Marx, even though his social "science" has been completely discredited. Similarly for Hegel, Rousseau, Mill, Bacon, Augustine, Aurelius, and Plato. But as modern philosophy as increasingly turned its attention away from real-world problems to the pseudo-problems of criticising and analysing the criticism and analysis of their peers and professional competitors, it has rendered itself increasingly irrelevant to the rest of the world,
Modern philosophy has been afflicted by its own professionalization and institutionalization within the modern university. Once philosophy was enshrined as a profession (i.e. as a job) in itself (a) it became a tool for the acquisition and maintenance of power, and (b) it suffered from the petty bickering that afflicts mediocre minds in a university setting.
Point (a) is exemplified by the pseudo-philosophy of Hegel, which was directed and promulgated by the newly-unified German state under the Kaisers. In exchange for his position as official chairman of all philosophy departments within Germany, Hegel developed the philosophy of nationalistic dialectic as justification for Germany's monarchial system as the perfect, ultimate expression of political governance, and prophesied the coming inevitable dominance of the German state as justification for it's aggressive military and foreign policy. Coming on the heels as it did of Kant's brilliant Critique of Pure Reason and a resurgent German philosophical school, the state-sponsorship of this philosophy and the state-control of the universities quickly made Hegel's philosophy the only one inside Germany. Unaware of these developments, the outside world of philosophy was induced to take Hegel seriously by the complete dominance of Hegel's philosophies within Germany's respected philosophical circles, as well as its false claim to be the logical extension and successor to Kant's groundbreaking work. Schopenhauer, who had actually developed a logically valid and consistent extension of Kant, was completely suppressed within Germany and kept hidden from the rest of the world, completing the illusion of German philosophy's wholesale belief in the validity of Hegel's doctrines, and certainly Schopenhauer's compelling analysis of Hegel as babbling nonsense disguised by impressive-sounding language and verbiage would have completely undermined the seemingly authoritative philosophical justification that the German state needed from Hegel and its state philosophers.
Point (b) can be derived from the apparent fact that good philosophy is hard, indeed it seems that there are only a few people each century capable of the level of thought necessary to produce a lasting mark in philosophy. The professionalization of philosophy, therefore, simply guarantees that most "philosophers" are in fact unqualified by reason of intellect or aptitude for the task, yet required in order to keep their job, much more to advance professionally and obtain a measure of peer respect, to do something, anything, that looks sufficiently like real philosophy. Hegel's philosophically embarrassing policy of sucking up to the German monarchy, selling his mind and reason to the service of the state is therefore more understandable as a means for a mediocre yet ambitious thinker to obtain influence and power over his peers, and power over the people as a whole. More understandable, perhaps, but not more respectable. Whereas Plato in his Republic deemed philosophy the master of the state (with himself in charge, of course, as Popper's masterful analysis in The Open Society and Its Enemies observes), Hegel found more profit in reversing this, making the state the master of philosophy. In this he was more successful, for where Plato failed, Hegel succeeded.
In more recent years, especially in the 20th Century, the study of philosophy has rapidly deteriorated as professional philosophers have abandoned any attempt to solve real problems. The complete barrennes of Hegel's philosophies led them to conclude that philosophy itself is worthless, resorting in response to such futile and empty pursuits as logical criticism and linguistic criticism (both useful in their own right as means, but absolutely worthless as ends), and irrational mysticism and oracular prophecies. These pseudo-philosophers, following Hegel's example, conceal their lack of content with impressive words, obscure language, and oracular declarations, and defend the resulting emptiness with a rejection of rationality and reason. Their Hegelian embrace of internal contradictions results in their untestability as well as their lack of information content (In Conjectures and Refutations, Popper gives multiple proofs that a theory which contains internal contradictions can be used to prove anything at all, as well as a proof that the information content of a statement or theory is inversely proportional to its probability).
Which is not to say that there is not good modern philosophy out there. Popper in particular has helped revolutionize the natural, physical, and political sciences with his theories of falsifiability, and his compelling arguments against utopianism and historicism. In the process, he has provided a rational framework for political and social advancement, as well as a demarcation between scientific and non-scientific pursuits, and provided a well-reasoned and comprehensive attack on Hegelian/Marxian dialectical historicism.
Karl Popper in fact provides a good counterexample to current trends in philosophy, to the lack of practical problem-oriented though that has characterized the general deterioration in philosophy since Kant. Both Kant and Popper were inspired by real problems, by revolutions in science that challenged the foundations of philosophy and the nature of knowledge and science.
Kant seems to have been attempting to explain how it was that Newton could have discovered the physical laws that bear his name, given that Hume had previously shown that the process of induction (the only technique known for discovering general laws from discrete observations) was logically invalid -- it contained a fatal contradiction. The question Kant attempted to answer was "How then, without induction, did Newton discover his laws". His answer was essentially that Newton imposed his laws on nature, although his argument, and its conclusion is not as coarse as this statement implies.
Popper took up Kant's problem on the occasion of the overthrow of Newton's laws by Einstein's Relativity. Initially, his question was somewhat different, essentially "What is the difference between science and metaphysics", or more specifically in his case, what was the distinction between the science of Newton, Einstein, etc, and the so-called sciences of Marx, Adler, and Freud. The fundamental difference between the two branches of study turned out to be that of "falsifiability", which is to say that science is characterized by theories that can be proven false by observation and experiment, while non-science (metaphysics) theories cannot be proven false by observation (metaphysics can be proven false by contradiction, although Hegel attempted to remove even this constraint by embracing contradiction as an essential component of his dialectic).
Popper's realization also showed where Kant went wrong: Kant assumed along with everyone else in his day that Newton was right, that he really had discovered Truth-with-a-capital-T, despite all rational, logical argument that the only means humans possessed to advance knowledge (induction) was invalid for such purposes. The falsification of Newton's "laws" in favor of Einstein's theories by the famous eclipse experiments showed that Kant's analysis of Newton as a successful imposition of order by force of reason was flawed.
In its place Popper proposed that induction is unnecessary for the advancement of knowledge, and that since it is impossible for us to discover true laws in nature, the induction "problem" vanishes anyway. As an alternative to induction, Popper proposed that knowledge advances as humans invent through the application of their creativity, explanations for the phenomena they observe. These explanations, or theories, are then tested not for confirmation (which is easy and meaningless), but for falsification -- the theories are tested by attempting to prove them wrong. Only after a theory has survived many such attempts at falsification do we begin to lean on it as a basis for further theories, and it is shown false by observation it is discarded in favor of a better explanation, i.e. one that is capable of surviving yet more stringent attempts proving it false. This theory of human learning neatly avoids the problem of induction (no series of discrete observations can prove the validity of a general law). In addition, it provides a philosophical explanation for the scientific method, as well as a neat demarcation of scientific enquiry.
This theory has other implications in non-scientific areas as well, including economics, politics, and history, all of which Popper explored in his huge body of work. Among other things it provides a rational definition of democracy which avoids the democracy paradox, and an explanation for why democracy and capitalism are more rational and efficient than totalitarianism and socialism.
So I guess the answer to the original question is simply this: Most new philosophers aren't worth reading, and many of the old philosophers haven't yet been superceded. And given the rate of philosophical advance (1-2 great works per century), this is indeed to be expected.
