I'll step out of hibernation for a moment to post (without giving judgment quite yet) a striking assertion from Mussolini on fascism and cultural moral relativism, as I've just encountered it in C.A.J. Coady's recent & slim book Messy Morality. As Coady (2008, p37) quotes Mussolini:
"Everything that I have said and done in these last years is relativism by intuition. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable. If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories and men who claim to be the bearers of an objective, immortal truth, then there is nothing more relativistic than fascism."
Now, Mussolini should not get to frame the discussion here, to be sure. But (he says unhelpfully) it does give one pause.
25 April 2010
06 April 2010
realist, anti-realist, and NOA wagers
In covering Pascal this week in my philosophy of religion courses, attention soon turns to the many-gods problem. It's a problem tackled in a variety of ways. One interesting suggestion by Lycan & Schlesinger is that one might apply parismony to the issue and infer that the simplest God is the most likely one. Or, to put it a bit differently, that the simplest conception of God is the most likely one. L&S suggest that Anselm's perfect being (the being none greater than which can be conceived) is a good candidate for this simplest & thuse most likely option, which would then tip the scales away from perfectly even distribution of probability among the many possible gods.
There's a lot going on here, to be sure. But what I've been mulling over, on this most recent go round, is the realist / anti-realist / and dare-I-say-NOA attitudes one might take here. Even if one finds simplicity theoretically attractive -- and I'm pretty sympathetic to the view that it's at most theoretically attractive in limited contexts, while not in others -- one still must decide what sort of position to take toward all of this. Will I believe that the simplest theory / simplest God is thereby the one most likely to really be right, to really exist? That would be a realist approach.
What might the anti-realist move look like here? That the simplest God is the one that functions best for my purposes here (in this case, my purposes in wagering as to which God to endorse)?
There's a lot going on here, to be sure. But what I've been mulling over, on this most recent go round, is the realist / anti-realist / and dare-I-say-NOA attitudes one might take here. Even if one finds simplicity theoretically attractive -- and I'm pretty sympathetic to the view that it's at most theoretically attractive in limited contexts, while not in others -- one still must decide what sort of position to take toward all of this. Will I believe that the simplest theory / simplest God is thereby the one most likely to really be right, to really exist? That would be a realist approach.
What might the anti-realist move look like here? That the simplest God is the one that functions best for my purposes here (in this case, my purposes in wagering as to which God to endorse)?
05 April 2010
the sound of sad
It strikes me that sad is considerably more onomatopoetic than happy.
Or so it struck me while biking back from the train on this fine, cool, about to storm spring evening.
Upon reflection, perhaps this is as much a matter of circumstance as anything else. Perhaps the eager puppy connotations of happy may at another time & context seem in fact just right, while the slumped shoulders of sad would then too flimsy. But not for now, at least, and not for me.
Or so it struck me while biking back from the train on this fine, cool, about to storm spring evening.
Upon reflection, perhaps this is as much a matter of circumstance as anything else. Perhaps the eager puppy connotations of happy may at another time & context seem in fact just right, while the slumped shoulders of sad would then too flimsy. But not for now, at least, and not for me.
04 April 2010
on walden pond
In honor of a delicious veggie Easter brunch and visit to Walden Pond, this passage from Thoreau's Walden --
One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with"; and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle. Some things are really necessaries of life in some circles, the most helpless and diseased, which in others are luxuries merely, and in others still are entirely unknown.
Greens, greens for everybody (or, more precisely, for those of us who can flourish & thrive on a vegetarian diet) !!!
One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with"; and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle. Some things are really necessaries of life in some circles, the most helpless and diseased, which in others are luxuries merely, and in others still are entirely unknown.
Greens, greens for everybody (or, more precisely, for those of us who can flourish & thrive on a vegetarian diet) !!!
03 April 2010
good friday and sizdeh bedar / the morning star is the evening star
Arlington Mass hosts the Partridge family this weekend. Folk have come in from all over, Chicago and Cincinnati contingents arriving on Sizdeh Bedar and Good Friday respectively - which are the same day! The morning star is the evening star!
Enough nuclear family for a rousing kickball game and cheering section for tonight's black light gallery show. And whilst Jesus takes a breather between Good Friday & Easter Sunday, our gang has decorated a mess of eggs. This year's twist is melted birthday candle wax!
Enough nuclear family for a rousing kickball game and cheering section for tonight's black light gallery show. And whilst Jesus takes a breather between Good Friday & Easter Sunday, our gang has decorated a mess of eggs. This year's twist is melted birthday candle wax!
01 April 2010
writing wrongs
I spent this lovely spring day poking around MIT, working a bit in the humanities library and elsewhere on an in-progress paper on plagiarism as a sort of testimonial injustice. Unlike Fricker's lovely approach, where the injustice is perpetrated by listeners against speakers, the idea here is that speakers are perpetrated the injustice against their listening audience. More to come...
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