My chum Andrew Irvine has a terrific piece “David Armstrong and Australian Materialism” along with a Reader’s Guide in the latest issue of Quadrant. Andrew mentions that Armstrong attended Oakeshott’s History of Political Thought lectures earlier on his career when he had a stint at Birkbeck. I’d forgotten this unlikely connection: Armstrong had mentioned this to me in the early days of setting up the MOA.
Also in this issue there is a heretofore unpublished tribute to DMA by David Stove.
Paul Bloom in The Atlantic
For the most part, I’m on the side of the neuroscientists and social psychologists—no surprise, given that I’m a psychologist myself. Work in fields such as computational cognitive science, behavioral genetics, and social neuroscience has yielded great insights about human nature. I do worry, though, that many of my colleagues have radically overstated the implications of their findings. The genetic you and the neural you aren’t alternatives to the conscious you. They are its foundations.
Knowing that we are physical beings doesn’t tell us much. The interesting question is what sort of physical beings we are.
Evan Thompson reviews two of the most controversial books of recent years:
What Darwin Got Wrong by Jerry Fodor, Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini and Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False by Thomas Nagel.
This was supposedly published on the 12th . . . now the 14th. I have two long reviews in this collection, items 48 and 104.
A brief discussion from an anthropological perspective on Robert Logan’s book from a few years back.
His blue and yellow eyes rested on an unopened manila envelope on the top of the toilet. For quite a while Ignatius had been trying to decide whether or not he would open the envelope. The trauma of having found employment had affected his value negatively, and he was waiting until the warm water in which he wallowed like a pink hippopotamus has a calming effect upon his system. Then he would attack the envelope. Paradise Vendors should prove to be a pleasant employer. He would spend his time parked somewhere by the river accumulating thoughts for the Journal. Mr. Clyde had a certain paternal quality that Ignatius liked; the old man, the scarred and wizened mogul of the frankfurter, would be a welcome new character in the Journal.
At last Ignatius felt relaxed enough and, raising his dripping hulk out of the water, picked up the envelope.
He tore the envelope open, wetting the paper, and pulled out a folded poster that said in large letters:
LECTURE! LECTURE!
M. Minkoff speaks boldly about
“Sex in Politics: Erotic Liberty as a Weapon Against Reactionaries”
8 p.m. Thursday, the 28th
Y.M.C.A. – Grand Concourse
Admission: $1.00 – OR – Sign M. Minkoff’s Petition Which Aggressively Demands More and Better Sex for All and a Crash Program for Minorities! (The petition will be mailed to Washington.) Sign now and save America from sexual ignorance, chastity, and fear. Are you committed enough to help in this bold and crucial movement? (p. 152).
Check out the InPhO project the led by the very excellent Colin Allen.
Immersed in reading Percy it has become blindingly clear that these two writers have such similar concerns. de Unamuno’s the Tragic Sense of Life rates as having made the most profound of impressions upon me — and that was going on thirty years ago. Whatever else separates Percy and de Unamuno, it is my view that de Unamuno and Percy are kindred spirits, more so than Flannery O’Connor and Percy. Here is a good and recent essay on the Tragic Sense of Life. For my “Precyeana” see here.
Frank Jackson on the Mary thought experiment and “Epiphenomenal Qualia”
Elsewhere I’ve written:
Jackson’s thought experiment bears a striking resemblance to Hayek’s discussion in The Sensory Order, 1.95. Hayek took inspiration from C. D. Broad, the idea that an omnipotent being would still not be able to predict the qualia associated with a substance, for example, ammonia (Broad, 1925, p. 71). Here Hayek poses the question: how could one communicate the idea of vision generally and color in particular to the congenitally blind? In The Sensory Order, 1.97 and 1.98, Hayek cites physicist Kenneth Mees’ thought experiment as illustrating the distinction between the physical and the phenomenal orders. Mees asks us to consider the case of a congenially and totally deaf person confronted by someone playing a violin. Moreover, he asks us to suppose that this person knows nothing of sound even in a theoretical way. Confronted by the actions of the violin player, to the deaf person the actions will appear irrational. But, says Mees, if our deaf person was a scientist, he or she would eventually figure out that the movements of the violin bow generated vibrations that could be detected by equipment (the science of acoustics). Now whatever the issues Hayek has with Mees’ example, his conclusion is this: ‘‘the congenitally blind or deaf can never learn all that which the seeing or hearing person owes to the direct experience of the sensory qualities in question, because no description can exhaust all the distinctions which are experienced’’ (Hayek, 1952/1976, 1.102). The similarity of the conclusion shared by Hayek and Jackson is uncanny.
