manwithoutqualities

Why Spinoza still matters

April 30, 2016Spinoza

Steven Nadler writes in Aeon that “At a time of religious zealotry, Spinoza’s fearless defence of intellectual freedom is more timely than ever.” This fundamental liberal value is of course foreign to the regressive left.

In his distress over the deteriorating political situation in the Dutch Republic, and despite the personal dantheoger he faced, Spinoza did not hesitate to boldly defend the radical Enlightenment values that he, along with many of his compatriots, held dear.

Spinoza is one of history’s most eloquent advocates for freedom and toleration.

All opinions whatsoever, including religious opinions, are to be absolutely free and unimpeded, both by necessity and by right.

No matter what laws are enacted against speech and other means of expression, citizens will continue to say what they believe, only now they will do so in secret.

Spinoza understands that there will be some unpleasant consequences entailed by the broad respect for civil liberties. There will be public disputes, even factionalism, as citizens express their opposing views on political, social, moral and religious questions. However, this is what comes with a healthy, democratic and tolerant society.

Hegel on Hamlet

April 29, 2016shakespeare

Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster in Spiked Review.

Perhaps it is this yearning for a Catholic Shakespeare that must be given up in order to see Hamlet aright and see ourselves in its light. Perhaps we will have to dispense with the ghost’s prayer for an unadulterated life, for Catholic absolution, for an absolute.
Hegel doesn’t put it as strongly as this, and, in any case, he has a dialectical trump card up his sleeve: tragedy is overcome by comedy, and both are overcome by philosophy.

hamlet Hegel philosophical literature Philosophy shakespeare simon critchley

Simon on Social Identification: Two Connections with Bounded Rationality

April 29, 2016Herbert Simon

The twelfth in a series of excerpts from Minds, Models and Milieux: Commemorating the Centennial of the Birth of Herbert Simon.

Rouslan Koumakhov

Social identifications are one of Herbert Simon’s most recurrent themes. Starting with Administrative Behavior (hereafter, AB) (Simon, 1947/1997), he investigates that theme throughout his scientific work on an impressive number of occasions. Perhaps it is section 3, entitled Perception and identifications, of chapter 6 (“Cognitive Limits on Rationality”), in March and Simon (1958/1993), that symbolizes Simon’s main concern in this issue – its connection with human rationality and emphasis on every individual’s multiple “belongings” to social groups (in the broad sense, i.e. from primary groups to formal organizations to the whole of society). From this general standpoint, “identification with groups is the major selective mechanism controlling human attention in organizations (and elsewhere) (…)” (Simon, 1993, p. 137). Accordingly, social identification is a process allowing people to stabilize their anticipations, to coordinate perceptions and interpretations of reality. While this tendency to identify with groups appears necessary to build and maintain social systems, it also leads to mimetic opinions and behavioral conformity.

Compared with the notion of bounded rationality, however, Simon’s analysis of identification was only taken up to a limited extent by the social and human sciences that he so strongly influenced. Because his analysis is complex and appeals to major concepts developed in related disciplines, this begs the question of the exact place of social identification in Simon’s account of decision process and social interaction. My argument is that, in this account, not only is there a strong connection between bounded rationality and social identification, but also that such connection implies value systems and cognitive representations. Considered in this manner, the problem of identification is central in Simon’s decision-making and social theory, with its focus on mental states and understanding reality.

Bounded Rationality Decision making Herbert Simon Minds Models and Milieux: Commemorating the Centennial of the Birth of Herbert Simon Rouslan Koumakhov social ontology

Sociology and Classical Liberalism

April 28, 2016sociology

We venture to say that self-reinforcing sorting mechanisms now make the discipline unapproachable by anyone who is unabashedly classically liberal.

— full article.

This was all true (and patently obviously so) even thirty years ago. I, however, got very lucky — I had the amazing Paul Hirst as a tutor. Almost ten years ago I wrote: “Paul was the only member in the School of Politics and Sociology that “got it”. He never allowed his own ideological predelictions to colour his approach to students’ work – he relished giving a fair and insightful account of positions he didn’t hold to, which I noticed confused students who were there precisely because of Paul’s viewpoint. Indeed, he once told me that he thought it tiresome that the departmental profile was so ideologically homogenous.” Where are the Pauls of today?

Though he began as a Marxist, his ideas helped to provide the intellectual scaffolding for New Labour. His irreverent approach to conventional political ideas gained him many admirers who, fired by his spirit, went on to break new ground of their own. Above all, he was a fierce egalitarian, an evangelist of honesty and the enemy of can’t.

— The Guardian

ideology Liberalism paul hirst Sociology

The Real Adam Smith

April 27, 2016adam smith

What can a man with a plain name who lived over 200 years ago tell us about life today? Who was The Real Adam Smith? And why should we care? In this two-hour, two-part documentary, Swedish author, commentator and Cato Senior Fellow Johan Norberg explores Adam Smith’s life, his ideas about morality and economics, and how the concepts he discussed in his books and lectures are still relevant today. (H/T Jason Potts).

adam_smith_poster_hi

Adam Smith Economics johan norberg Theory of Moral Sentiments Wealth of Nations

Walker Percy Wednesday 82

April 27, 2016walker percy

Then they sat in their house at Pass Christian, put a bottle of whiskey between them, felt a surge of happiness, were able to speak frankly and cheerfully to each other, laugh and joke, drink, even make love. But that is crazy. Why should people be miserable in good weather and happy in bad? Surely not because they are sinners in good weather and saints in bad. True, people help each other in catastrophes. But they don’t feel good because they help each other. They help each other because they feel good. No, it’s because something has happened to us which is so bad that we don’t even have a word for it. Sin isn’t the word. Your Christ didn’t exactly foresee anything like this, did he? Hurricanes, which are very bad things, somehow neutralize the other bad thing which has no name, so that one can breathe easy, become free once again to sin or not to sin. The couple I spoke of became free and happy only during the passage of the eye of the hurricane, that is, capable of both love and hate (ordinarily they were numb, moved like ghosts), of honesty and lying.

*****

No, it was so much simpler than that. It was simply that there is such a thing as a beautiful day to go out into, a road to travel, good food to eat when you’re hungry, wine to drink when you’re thirsty, and most of all, 99 percent of all, no: all of all: a woman to love.

*****

There are only three ways to go. One is their way out there, the great whorehouse and fagdom of America. I won’t have it. The second way is sweet Baptist Jesus and I won’t have that. Christ, if heaven is full of Southern Baptists, I’d rather rot in hell with Saladin and Achilles. There is only one way and we could have had it if you Catholics hadn’t blown it: the old Catholic way.

*****

If I were a Jew, I’d know what to do. It’s easy. I’d be in Israel with the sabras. They’re my kind. The only difference between them and the Crusaders is that the Crusaders lost. Ha, isn’t that a switch, come to think of it—that the only Crusaders left in the entire Western world are the Israelis, the very Jews who huddled and shrank and grinned and nodded for two thousand years? The Jews are lucky. They know who they are and they have Israel. We have to make our own Israel, but we know who we are.

existentialism lancelot philosophical literature Walker Percy

The Morality of Freedom/Morals by Agreement

April 25, 2016liberalism

It’s been thirty years since arguably the last great works of liberal political philosophy in the analytical tradition appeared, setting aside Rawls’ Political Liberalism from 1993. The Morality of Freedom is freely available — click image.

David Gauthier John Rawls joseph raz Liberalism moral philosophy perfectionist liberalism Political philosophy

With all this talk of Shakespeare Cervantes is overlooked

April 23, 2016Cervantes

His words still shape our consciousness, even if we fail to read him. This is not due to some hackneyed idealism (“tilting at windmills”), but rather to his pervasive impact on the genre that taught us to think like moderns: the novel. He pioneered the representation of individual subjectivity and aspiration, which today undergirds the construction of agency in any narrative, whether in novels, films, television, or the daily self-fashioning by millions of users of social media. Thus William Egginton recently bestowed upon him the title, “the man who invented fiction.” He discovered the fictive within each of us. — Cervantes’s pen silenced today

Don Quixote Literature Miguel de Cervantes novel philosophical literature

Rick’s Picks smokra

April 23, 2016gastronomy

Time for something gastronomical. Without doubt the best pickled Okra I’ve had. Double the price of your standard supermarket bottle, but really worth it. And from Brooklyn! Really smokey, the Islay of pickled veg.