Political Diversity Will Improve Social Psychological Science

ideology

Here’s an interesting paper co-authored by Jonathan Haidt. Also, here is a good accompanying article in The New Yorker. The problem though with all the discussion is that the terms “conservative” and “liberal” and their supposed practical politics correlates “Republican” and “Democrat” are meaningless. When push comes to shove, self-ascribed or pejorative usage of these terms, flounder. People invoke these labels as if necessary and sufficient conditions can be specified, oblivious to what Michael Freeden called ideological morphology, something Percy understood. As I repeatedly say, epistemology not ideology.   

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Whatever Happened to Wim Wenders’ Project to Adapt Percy’s The Second Coming?

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A few months ago I made a posting concerning Wim Wenders, Peter Handke and Walker Percy. In conversation/correspondence with a filmmaker chum I mentioned that of all Percy’s novels The Thanatos Syndrome would be the most translatable into the modality that is film since it works brilliantly and disturbingly as a thriller on a purely surface level. My second choice of adaptation would be The Second Coming (in my view the most optimistic of his novels) which my chum informed me that apparently Wenders was working on. Googling this, all I came across was this now six year old squib. So in all probability given what I know about the film business, this ain’t gonna happen.

Speaking of Wenders, his biography is not that dissimilar to Percy. According to his Wiki entry:

He then studied medicine (1963–64) and philosophy (1964–65) in Freiburg and Düsseldorf. However, he dropped out of university studies and moved to Paris in October 1966 to become a painter. Wenders failed his entry test at France’s national film school IDHEC (now La Fémis), and instead became an engraver in the studio of Johnny Friedlander, in Montparnasse. During this time, Wenders became fascinated with cinema, and saw up to five movies a day at the local movie theater.

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A Double Agent in the Dream of Michael Oakeshott

Robert Orr

This still rates as one of my favorite pieces of secondary literature on Oakeshott using it to critical effect in the essay “Constructivism and Relativism in Oakeshott“. Robert Orr, by the way, also wrote a memorable article on Machiavelli. When I asked him why the only books he had in his LSE office (pretty much the complete set of Biggles), he in his wry way said something along the lines that most academic books have the shelf-life of a loaf of bread. By then he had given up the ghost and was thoroughly disillusioned with academia — and perhaps given the non-entities that had come to populate the Government department, his outlook was understandable. His inscribed first edition of A New Guide to the Derby: How to Pick the Winner was the first time I’d seen a copy in person. I enjoyed several chats with him, especially the ones over a cheap and bland curry at the YMCA. It was good to see the sparkle return to his eyes if only for the few days that the Oakeshott conference was on.    

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The incumbent of the revived post of Dean of the Graduate School is a New Zealander, Robert Orr. He took his BA (1951) and MA (1953) in New Zealand, Victoria University, and his PhD (1958) at LSE. He was an assistant lecturerin Political Science, Queen’s University of Belfast, 1957-59, a Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of Western Australia, 1959-62; and a Senior Lecturer in Politics at Monash University, 1963-1965. He joined the staff of LSE in 1965 and is presently Senior Lecturer in Government. He has held Visiting Professorships at the Charles University of Prague, the University of Bratislava, and the University of Western Australia…’ Extract from ‘The Graduate School,’ LSE Magazine, June 1978, No. 55 p.6

It would be unfortunate if psychiatry moved fully — prematurely — to squeeze the art out of its science.

psychiatry

Peter Kramer in the NYT

Because so little evidence stands on its own, incorporating research results into clinical practice requires discernment. Thoughtful doctors consider data, accompanying narrative, plausibility and, yes, clinical anecdote in their decision making. To put the same matter differently, evidence-based medicine, properly enacted, is judgment-based medicine in which randomized trials, carefully assessed, are given their due.

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The Moviegoer – quotes and extracts – 7

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She refers to a phenomenon of moviegoing which I have called certification. Nowadays when a person lives somewhere, in a neighborhood, the place is not certified for him. More than likely he will live there sadly and the emptiness which is inside him will expand until it evacuates the entire neighborhood. But if he sees a movie which shows his very neighborhood, it becomes possible for him to live, for a time at least, as a person who is Somewhere and not Anywhere.

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Probability is the Very Guide of Life

Bishop Butler

Bishop Butler’s quote “Probability is the Very Guide of Life” (Joseph Butler, The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature (Charlottesville: Ibis, n.d.), is one that I invoke from time to time in the most unlikeliest of contexts. (The other Butler quote I invoke from time to time in “identity talk” is “Everything is what it is, and not another thing.” Fifteen Sermons, Preface § 39). I confess that I haven’t read much Butler but if, like me, you appreciate a subtle mind, David E. White provides the best overview of the Bishop’s life and work.

Butler expressed distaste for Oxford’s intellectual conventions while a student at Oriel College; he preferred the newer styles of thought, especially those of John Locke, the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury and Francis Hutcheson, leading David Hume to characterize Butler as one of those “who have begun to put the science of man on a new footing, and have engaged the attention, and excited the curiosity of the public. — David White

Butler, a respected clergyman and philosopher himself, influenced some of the greatest English-speaking thinkers of his time, including David Hume, Thomas Reid, and Adam Smith. The Analogy of Religion is a work of apologetics, directed at a deist audience. Butler hopes to convince the many deist scholars and public figures of his day that returning to Christian orthodoxy is indeed rational. As he proceeds, he provides more and more evidence for orthodoxy over deism, arguing that a personal rather than a detached God is more likely to exist. Butler did not seek to embellish his language with flowery phrases, and his prose is very straightforward. — Christian Classics Ethereal Library

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