Somebody using the screen name "discovery" recently asked the following in Yahoo!Answers.
Philosophers argue that God is a delusion. How should I structure my essay.
This raises the question: is his essay supposed to be about the contention that "God is a delusion," or about the philosophers who argue that? The former requires that he think about God himself, the latter only that he pass along the thinking of others.
Let's imagine that he is expected to think about God himself. The statement "God is a delusion" covers a lot of ground. There are various ways of being wrong, so it is logically possible for an atheist to deny that God is a delusion -- to maintain that God is some sort of category error.
Nonetheless, let's again make the field-limiting assumption that the claim that God is a delusion simply denies that God exists. However many distinct ideas there are of God, there are that many distinct meanings to a possible denial.
Let us make a further limitation of the field in the spirit of the Passover/Easter season. One common and historically important meaning of God is as a giver of laws for human conduct, a moral legislator. With all that in mind, I proposed on Yahoo! the following structure for a possible essay:
1. Define the idea at stake. We know that government officials tell us what to do and punish us when we fail to do it. We know also that throughout history people have appealed to a higher Authority and its Higher Laws. "Let my people go!" they say to this-worldly legislators.
2. So: Is the idea of God defined in that way a delusion? Consider three influential arguments:
2a. Hobbes, The earthly state, the Leviathan, is the only proper source of guidance so there is no appeal, no excuse for disobeying Pharoah or King Charles.
2b. Kant. Although Kant adhered to religious faith in his own manner, he held explicitly that the argument to God as a moral legislator fails because our human reason by itself explains to us how we ought to act. The law to which we appeal when we defy the authorities is within us, not above us.
2c. Contemporary atheists argue that 'God' as people conceive of Him is a pretty lousy legislator, who tells them to fly airplanes into skyscrapers for example. So we're better off without such a legislator. This is presumably related to 21b, and specifically to what Kant was saying here, but Kant's broader system allowed room for further distinctions in which contemporary atheists (Hitchens, Dawkins etc.) are uninterested.
From each of these points of view, then, we could maintain that God is a delusion.
3. There are counter-arguments to each of those three arguments. Depending on how long your essay is going to be, you can either provide them in full or merely hint at them.
Showing posts with label Yahoo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yahoo. Show all posts
17 April 2011
27 August 2009
Ben Stein: Yahoo
Now that he's gone from The New York Times, we are of course going to have to keep track of Stein's other platforms more vigorously in order to sustain the viability of our humble Ben Stein Watch.
Fortunately for this feature, though perhaps unfortunately for other purposes, he has plenty. I'm looking just now at his Yahoo column.
On August 7, 2009, he wrote there a column titled, "Congrats, Bankers, You're Rich Again." Actually, they were never not rich, although the marginal people and institutions among their investor base became much less rich, as did their rank-and-file employees. But if "bankers" refers to the bigwigs, they weren't unrich even through the worst of the recent crisis.
Still, one knows what he means by the sentiment of that title, which is carried throughin the column. He means that the subsidization of banks in the final months of the old administration and the early months of this one was a bad, idea, qa classic case of lemon socialism, of government taking up the costs of the losers of an economy at taxpayer expense, thereby rewarding what Ben calls their "obscenely selfish behavior."
These sentiments seem unobjectionable. Indeed, I heartily share them. But they ought to come with some element of mea culpa. Because Ben was one of the great cheerleaders for the very subsidization against which he now rails.
Watch his screamathon with Neil Cavuto, for example. They are talking over each other through most of this clip, so you may have a tough time. But skip foward to about 1:50 in the clip. Stein is saying: "We go in for as much federal stimulus as it takes to keep us out of a Great Depression ... We've got to commit even more," and so forth.
That was the argument of the subsidization. That is always the argument. So he is now shouting "boo" to a bandwagon on which he was a rider back in the day.
He is entitled to "boo" that bandwagon. If he has changed his mind, I am happy to see it. But a "mea culpa" or two would be welcome.
Fortunately for this feature, though perhaps unfortunately for other purposes, he has plenty. I'm looking just now at his Yahoo column.
On August 7, 2009, he wrote there a column titled, "Congrats, Bankers, You're Rich Again." Actually, they were never not rich, although the marginal people and institutions among their investor base became much less rich, as did their rank-and-file employees. But if "bankers" refers to the bigwigs, they weren't unrich even through the worst of the recent crisis.
Still, one knows what he means by the sentiment of that title, which is carried throughin the column. He means that the subsidization of banks in the final months of the old administration and the early months of this one was a bad, idea, qa classic case of lemon socialism, of government taking up the costs of the losers of an economy at taxpayer expense, thereby rewarding what Ben calls their "obscenely selfish behavior."
These sentiments seem unobjectionable. Indeed, I heartily share them. But they ought to come with some element of mea culpa. Because Ben was one of the great cheerleaders for the very subsidization against which he now rails.
Watch his screamathon with Neil Cavuto, for example. They are talking over each other through most of this clip, so you may have a tough time. But skip foward to about 1:50 in the clip. Stein is saying: "We go in for as much federal stimulus as it takes to keep us out of a Great Depression ... We've got to commit even more," and so forth.
That was the argument of the subsidization. That is always the argument. So he is now shouting "boo" to a bandwagon on which he was a rider back in the day.
He is entitled to "boo" that bandwagon. If he has changed his mind, I am happy to see it. But a "mea culpa" or two would be welcome.
08 March 2009
The metaphysics of soap suds
Someone in Yahoo!Answers said recently that he/she had heard of some prominent philosopher who described human thoughts as "soap suds in the washbowl of nothingness," and asked if we could come up with a name.
I haven't found that exact quote, or anything with a distiguished pedigree, but I did find the use of the imagery, an invocation of soap bubbles in 'vain casings of nothingness,' and then the use of that image as a descriptor of intellectual constructions. I found this in a book review written for Union Seminary Magazine.
This just shows how neat a project Google Books has become. It is amazing the things you can find, including a bit of perhaps overly elaborate prose styling at the start of a review written in 1890.
The imagery appears as an expression of scepticism about theories of the "Aryan race," a subject that might have seemed harmlessly academic in 1890.
The author of the book review is R.B. Woodworth, and he begins this way: "To blow a bubble requires but a pipe, a basin of soap-suds and a blower. And it is pleasant, too, to watch these vain casings of nothingness as, reflecting in their diaphanous films the varied and beautiful colors of the rainbow, they float away beyond human ken into the azure depths of the heavens.' He goes on like that for awhile before he gets to the point. Adult intellectuals too, he says, "are bubble blowers. Castles in the air delight us children of a larger growth." And so forth.
If you want to read the whole bit, go to page 303 of the volume to which I've just linked you, and partake in Mr. Woodworth's bid for immortality.
This is probably far from what the Yahoo! questioner had in mind, but I ghad fun and, hey, isn't that the point of the existence of the cosmos?
I haven't found that exact quote, or anything with a distiguished pedigree, but I did find the use of the imagery, an invocation of soap bubbles in 'vain casings of nothingness,' and then the use of that image as a descriptor of intellectual constructions. I found this in a book review written for Union Seminary Magazine.
This just shows how neat a project Google Books has become. It is amazing the things you can find, including a bit of perhaps overly elaborate prose styling at the start of a review written in 1890.
The imagery appears as an expression of scepticism about theories of the "Aryan race," a subject that might have seemed harmlessly academic in 1890.
The author of the book review is R.B. Woodworth, and he begins this way: "To blow a bubble requires but a pipe, a basin of soap-suds and a blower. And it is pleasant, too, to watch these vain casings of nothingness as, reflecting in their diaphanous films the varied and beautiful colors of the rainbow, they float away beyond human ken into the azure depths of the heavens.' He goes on like that for awhile before he gets to the point. Adult intellectuals too, he says, "are bubble blowers. Castles in the air delight us children of a larger growth." And so forth.
If you want to read the whole bit, go to page 303 of the volume to which I've just linked you, and partake in Mr. Woodworth's bid for immortality.
This is probably far from what the Yahoo! questioner had in mind, but I ghad fun and, hey, isn't that the point of the existence of the cosmos?
18 January 2009
From Yahoo! Answers
Trolling Yahoo!Answers again for inspiration for this blog, I encountered the following naif-seeming question: "What are the 3 most important PHILOSOPHERS and why?"
I tried to think that through, and had trouble wrapping my mind around it. Important from what perspective?
So I just arbitrarily focused on one issue, one that occupies my mind a good deal, the mind-body problem. From this point of view, I gave the question the following answer.
Descartes, for bringing clarity to (certainly not for solving!) the question of how interaction between things and thoughts, between body and mind, is even possible.
William James, for stressing the true nature of the mind as a continuous unitary stream-of-consciousness in which each babble of the ongoing brook appropriates the babbles behind it.
And John Searle, for showing how the arrival of digital computers hasn't really solved or change the nature of the problem -- we are NOT a conjunction of software with hardware, whatever else we are.
I tried to think that through, and had trouble wrapping my mind around it. Important from what perspective?
So I just arbitrarily focused on one issue, one that occupies my mind a good deal, the mind-body problem. From this point of view, I gave the question the following answer.
Descartes, for bringing clarity to (certainly not for solving!) the question of how interaction between things and thoughts, between body and mind, is even possible.
William James, for stressing the true nature of the mind as a continuous unitary stream-of-consciousness in which each babble of the ongoing brook appropriates the babbles behind it.
And John Searle, for showing how the arrival of digital computers hasn't really solved or change the nature of the problem -- we are NOT a conjunction of software with hardware, whatever else we are.
31 December 2008
Top Financial Stories 2008
I generally ask myself at this time of year what were the biggest stories of the past twelve months, in business/financial news.
By "stories," I don't mean themes, such as "Bear market in bank stocks" or "volatile crude oil prices." I mean stories, such as one might have seen in a particular newspaper on some specific day.
Of course, I choose the ones I do largely because they illustrate an important theme. But the theme itself isn't the story.
Further, I don't rank them, as in a top ten list. Usually, on this blog last year at this time and at my blog-city home for two years before that, I've simply given one "top" story from each of the twelve months of the year now ending.
This year has been so wild, though, especially its second half, that I haven't been able to stick to the one-a-month presentation. I've ended up with a list of 18 big stories, two per month starting with July.
All that understood, here we go!
January. Frenchman Jerome Kerviel loses 4.9 billion euros for Societe Generale. $7 billion. The story started off the year with a bang. Kerviel leap-frogged past Nick Leeson as the all-time most rogue-ish "rogue trader."
February. A jury in Hartford, Conn. convicts a former AIG exec of skullduggery.
The executive in question was Christian Milton, once AIG's vice-president for re-insurance. He was convicted of an effort to inflate AIG's loss reserve numbers.
March. The Federal Reserve backs a JPMorgan takeover of Bear Stearns. At one point, [i.e. the morning of March 17] the price was actually $2 a share for Bear's stock, although less than a week prior -- at the close of trading Monday afternoon, March 10, the market valuation had been $70.08 a share. It was hard not to think JP Morgan was making off with ill-gotten gains somnehow. In fact, the purchase price didn't stay down at $2. To resolve some problem in the documentation, it was eventually raised to $10. Bully. Still, the value-evaporation was breaktaking.
April. Food price increases cause riots, political crises, worldwide.
There would be a lot to discuss under this heading, were that my goal in this entry. Instead, I'll just ask about the use of foodstuffs as a surrogate for gasoline: what impact did that have in triggering the price increases or the result?
May. Yahoo successful in warding off acquisition attempt by MS.
A victory for Jerry Yang, the founder of Yahoo!, who remains its guiding spirit and has preserved its independence.
June. Voters in Ireland reject the Lisbon treaty, thus slowing Euro unity..
The world continues to wrestle with the whole idea of "sovereignty," in terms of nation-states or of broader or smaller units.
Hereafter we award two biggest-story prizes per month.
July. (a) Israel, of Bayou and Bear Mountain infamy, turns himself in.
The whole Bayou funds meltdown had more than a touch of the bizaare to it. Israel's effort to simulate a suicide on the Bear Mountain Bridge, the failure of authorities to discover a body in the Hudson, and his re-appearance and surrender just added the garnish to that meal of oddities.
(b) Crude oil prices peak near $150 barrel, head down.
Why did it get that high? Why has each barrel lost close to three quarters of that value in the months since? Which one is the anamoly, prices above $140 or around $40? which one will be the norm going forward? Reviewing this year just leaves me full of questions.
August. (a) Second circuit court hears arguments in CSX/TCI dispute.
This is fascinating litigation about proxy votes and the working of the equity swaps market. These aren't issues that will go away anytime soon.
(b) CME, Nymex agree to consolidation -- part of the much broader trend of the consolidation of exchanges worldwide.
September. (a) Bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, all heck breaks loose re: bank stocks or, for that mnatter, US equities generally.
(b) SEC emergency order bans any short selling of bank stocks .
These two points rather adequately explain themselves. I'll only add that the ban later expired unlamented. Various restrictions of short-selling remain, but a simple ban on it is akin to a ban on pessimism. It is idiotic.
October. (a) Bush and 'leadership' put a TARP over troubles.
The acronym "TARP" stood for the "Troubled Assets Relief Plan," the keystone of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which became law on OPctober 3, after a turtuous legislative process that re-defined the Presidential campaign to Senator McCain's disadvantage. That isn't all it has redefined.
(b) Waxman hearings excoriate the credit rating agencies I'll just leave a link to my contemporaneous explanation of this hearing and its bovine idiom.
November. (a) Geithner an early cabinet choice of President Elect.
The Republicans during the campaign had sought to tag Sen. Obama a "socialist" (while a President and Treasury Secy of their party were nationalizing industries -- how odd!) Anyway, the Prez-elect's choice of Timothy Geithner as his own Treasuiry Secretary should have re-assured anyone who needed re-assurance on this front.
(b) Paulson completes the bait-and-switch with the TARP.
The outgoing Treasury boss has advertised the TARP as a fund for purchasing troubled assets. Hence, the name. Those purchases were meant to stabilize, without taking over, the banking system. But by one month out, Paulson was acknowledging that the real use of the money would be to make "equity infusions." In other words, takeovers.
December. (a) Bernard Madoff is arrested Dec. 11, one day after his sons had apparently revealed his pyramid scheme to the authorities.
You can't really call Madoff a "rogue trader" in the manner of Kerviel, the rogue with whom the year began. A rogue is a trader who gets a firm in trouble by going behind the back of his bosses there. Madoff was the guy with his name on the door. Call him a "rogue principal" if you like. Still, his fall gives a nice sense of symmetry to the year.
(b) Dec. 16, Federal Reserve lowers federal funds rate to a range between 0% and 0.25%, record territory. Three days later, the Bank of Japan followed suit, lowering its benchmark rate to 0.10%.
Wow. Funds rates are dropping like crude oil prices.
Whew. I'm sooo happy this year is over.
By "stories," I don't mean themes, such as "Bear market in bank stocks" or "volatile crude oil prices." I mean stories, such as one might have seen in a particular newspaper on some specific day.
Of course, I choose the ones I do largely because they illustrate an important theme. But the theme itself isn't the story.
Further, I don't rank them, as in a top ten list. Usually, on this blog last year at this time and at my blog-city home for two years before that, I've simply given one "top" story from each of the twelve months of the year now ending.
This year has been so wild, though, especially its second half, that I haven't been able to stick to the one-a-month presentation. I've ended up with a list of 18 big stories, two per month starting with July.
All that understood, here we go!
January. Frenchman Jerome Kerviel loses 4.9 billion euros for Societe Generale. $7 billion. The story started off the year with a bang. Kerviel leap-frogged past Nick Leeson as the all-time most rogue-ish "rogue trader."
February. A jury in Hartford, Conn. convicts a former AIG exec of skullduggery.
The executive in question was Christian Milton, once AIG's vice-president for re-insurance. He was convicted of an effort to inflate AIG's loss reserve numbers.
March. The Federal Reserve backs a JPMorgan takeover of Bear Stearns. At one point, [i.e. the morning of March 17] the price was actually $2 a share for Bear's stock, although less than a week prior -- at the close of trading Monday afternoon, March 10, the market valuation had been $70.08 a share. It was hard not to think JP Morgan was making off with ill-gotten gains somnehow. In fact, the purchase price didn't stay down at $2. To resolve some problem in the documentation, it was eventually raised to $10. Bully. Still, the value-evaporation was breaktaking.
April. Food price increases cause riots, political crises, worldwide.
There would be a lot to discuss under this heading, were that my goal in this entry. Instead, I'll just ask about the use of foodstuffs as a surrogate for gasoline: what impact did that have in triggering the price increases or the result?
May. Yahoo successful in warding off acquisition attempt by MS.
A victory for Jerry Yang, the founder of Yahoo!, who remains its guiding spirit and has preserved its independence.
June. Voters in Ireland reject the Lisbon treaty, thus slowing Euro unity..
The world continues to wrestle with the whole idea of "sovereignty," in terms of nation-states or of broader or smaller units.
Hereafter we award two biggest-story prizes per month.
July. (a) Israel, of Bayou and Bear Mountain infamy, turns himself in.
The whole Bayou funds meltdown had more than a touch of the bizaare to it. Israel's effort to simulate a suicide on the Bear Mountain Bridge, the failure of authorities to discover a body in the Hudson, and his re-appearance and surrender just added the garnish to that meal of oddities.
(b) Crude oil prices peak near $150 barrel, head down.
Why did it get that high? Why has each barrel lost close to three quarters of that value in the months since? Which one is the anamoly, prices above $140 or around $40? which one will be the norm going forward? Reviewing this year just leaves me full of questions.
August. (a) Second circuit court hears arguments in CSX/TCI dispute.
This is fascinating litigation about proxy votes and the working of the equity swaps market. These aren't issues that will go away anytime soon.
(b) CME, Nymex agree to consolidation -- part of the much broader trend of the consolidation of exchanges worldwide.
September. (a) Bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, all heck breaks loose re: bank stocks or, for that mnatter, US equities generally.
(b) SEC emergency order bans any short selling of bank stocks .
These two points rather adequately explain themselves. I'll only add that the ban later expired unlamented. Various restrictions of short-selling remain, but a simple ban on it is akin to a ban on pessimism. It is idiotic.
October. (a) Bush and 'leadership' put a TARP over troubles.
The acronym "TARP" stood for the "Troubled Assets Relief Plan," the keystone of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which became law on OPctober 3, after a turtuous legislative process that re-defined the Presidential campaign to Senator McCain's disadvantage. That isn't all it has redefined.
(b) Waxman hearings excoriate the credit rating agencies I'll just leave a link to my contemporaneous explanation of this hearing and its bovine idiom.
November. (a) Geithner an early cabinet choice of President Elect.
The Republicans during the campaign had sought to tag Sen. Obama a "socialist" (while a President and Treasury Secy of their party were nationalizing industries -- how odd!) Anyway, the Prez-elect's choice of Timothy Geithner as his own Treasuiry Secretary should have re-assured anyone who needed re-assurance on this front.
(b) Paulson completes the bait-and-switch with the TARP.
The outgoing Treasury boss has advertised the TARP as a fund for purchasing troubled assets. Hence, the name. Those purchases were meant to stabilize, without taking over, the banking system. But by one month out, Paulson was acknowledging that the real use of the money would be to make "equity infusions." In other words, takeovers.
December. (a) Bernard Madoff is arrested Dec. 11, one day after his sons had apparently revealed his pyramid scheme to the authorities.
You can't really call Madoff a "rogue trader" in the manner of Kerviel, the rogue with whom the year began. A rogue is a trader who gets a firm in trouble by going behind the back of his bosses there. Madoff was the guy with his name on the door. Call him a "rogue principal" if you like. Still, his fall gives a nice sense of symmetry to the year.
(b) Dec. 16, Federal Reserve lowers federal funds rate to a range between 0% and 0.25%, record territory. Three days later, the Bank of Japan followed suit, lowering its benchmark rate to 0.10%.
Wow. Funds rates are dropping like crude oil prices.
Whew. I'm sooo happy this year is over.
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