I always feel inadequate in terms of knowing what to say in these kinds of situations.

Some time back, I read a novel (The Unbearable Lightness of Being), a central thesis of which is that because each of us is the embodiment of but one life out of so many billions, what happens in our lives is inconsequential, insignificant, and thus the decisions we make are unimportant.

I would say that because each of us has but one life, that makes what happens and our reactions to what happens all the more important.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being: A Novel

When I’ve gone through some bad times in my life — breaking up an eight-year relationship that had been hell, but which I really didn’t want to let go of; getting an 8 a.m. call on December 31, 2003, to tell me I had stage II malignant melanoma (and, oh, by the way, Happy New Year!); learning a beloved uncle walked into his boss’s office and shot two people before killing himself in Florida — people have sometimes said things like, “I know how you feel,” or, “I understand,” or my favorites, variations on “You’ll get over it.”  (“You’ll get through it,” “this too shall pass,” and so on.)

And my reaction to that was anywhere from feeling that they did NOT understand, or they wouldn’t say such things, to being pissed off at them for being trite. Occasionally, I could get that they were trying to empathize, but, even then I thought a different way of showing that might be better.

Nobody can ever know exactly what another person is feeling.  Nobody can really understand how another person copes (or doesn’t cope) with the vagaries of life.  Sure, everyone experiences them — the feelings, the vagaries of life — and the things that happen to us may be similar, but we really don’t all experience them the same.

And even if we did, even when it’s true that “this too shall pass,” somehow saying such things not infrequently feels belittling to the person currently in the agonal throes of existential ache and angst.

And I don’t want to belittle those in pain.  I want to help.  I don’t know how. Sometimes you just have to let people feel what they will feel; to have and to hold, for as long as the feelings live, the unique pain that is part of their one life.

What I can do is say, “I’m here.  I’m going to be here.”  I feel with my friends.  I don’t know that what I feel is similar, because I know that I don’t understand just how they feel.

I only know that I care about them.

Why does the time fly?  I still remember (and remember like it was yesterday!), after an argument with my mother, yelling, “I can’t wait until next year!” And I remember being unable to wait; the days then dragged.  I swear that when I was 17, a year lasted at least twice as long as it does now.  Inflation?  Each breath costing even more seconds than the one which came before?

I have a theory about this:  When we learn a new skill, we step through it at first slowly, haltingly.  Whether it’s a new motor skill, like swinging a golf club to hit the ball just so — or to hit it at all! ( how does Tiger Woods do that?!) — or learning how to add, subtract, multiply, or divide, we struggle in the beginning.  With practice comes familiarity and we not only need to think less of how to do the thing, we begin to do it without thinking.  Without noticing.

I think time is like that.  Each second that passes, each minute, each hour, each day and before we know it, each year etches experience with time onto our brains.  As new ones are added to the total of those we’ve lived, subtracted from those we have left, the cares of adulthood multiply, dividing our attention.  This causes us to think less of how we do a thing; we begin to do most without thinking.  It’s a new kind of familiarity we’re developing, but a familiarity that tends to breed wistfulness, not contempt.

Why does the time fly? I cannot ponder this one any longer.  I wash the shampoo from my hair.  Time to take a swing at another day.

This article is not another attempt to explain to those embracing the logical form of the Intelligent Design argument why that argument is illogical in form. I want to go a step further. Let’s ignore the illogic of the argument usually presented. In this article, I’m going to talk about what it would mean to accept Intelligent Design as true. (Really. I’m serious.)

For one thing, the existence of a Designer is not incompatible with even a purely darwinian theory of evolution. The teleological argument for the existence of a Designer is just about “how the Universe came to be.” Darwinian theories of evolution — so-called because although they don’t look exactly like what Darwin said, Darwin provides the starting point for “darwinian” views — talk about “how the Universe came to be the way it is.” There’s a difference.

On the one hand, you’re talking about how something began to exist. On the other, you’re talking about how it came to exist in a particular way. First is a question of existence. Second is a question of how something looks, operates, behaves, fits into the rest of existence — hopefully you get the point.

Hence, the teleological argument — and that’s what “Intelligent Design” boils down to — and the theory of evolution explain two different things.

A Question of Honesty

First, let’s cut through some crap. When 99.999999999999% of Americans argue for the idea of Intelligent Design, they’re arguing for the existence of the Christian G-d. Under normal circumstances, this would not be a problem. After all, why can’t Christians provide teleological reasons for believing in their G-d? There’s nothing wrong with that. (There are ways to construct logically-sound, well-formed teleological arguments; it’s just not usually done.) The irony is that the supporters of the One True G-d, who stands in diametric opposition to All That Is Evil are making this argument for dishonest reasons.

The dishonest reason Christians push Intelligent Design, of course, is that the U.S. Constitution makes it impossible to teach, in public schools, that our Universe was created by the Christian G-d. Furthermore, many (but not all) Christians believe the biblical story of Creation and a darwinian theory of evolution are incompatible. The problem is more profound among so-called fundamentalist Christians, because they believe that every word of the Bible — at least the words they decide should be treated this way — has to be taken literally.

Christians push Intelligent Design because it’s the only way to get around these co-existent problems. Since they can’t legally teach their Christian beliefs in public schools and since darwinian theories, in their opinions, are anti-biblical, Intelligent Design provides a way to get the government to teach something that is at least compatible with their religious beliefs. They simultaneously get to question otherwise incontestible views they feel are in opposition to their religion. And properly implemented, it lays the groundwork for introducing children from non-Christian families to Christianity.

That’s dishonest.

So let’s try a little honesty. Let’s seriously consider Intelligent Design and what it might mean if we were not simply interested in pushing a Christian Agenda.

The Identity Problem

As noted, Christians like Intelligent Design because they believe it dovetails nicely with their theological beliefs. But one wonders how much it would upset Christians if the rest of us recognized how nicely Intelligent Design can be abbreviated “I.D.” Is that coincidence, or is Someone working behind the curtain? Either way, when you get serious about Intelligent Design, what we have is an identification problem.

Most people — and perhaps Christians especially — understand a version of the teleological argument for Intelligent Design that is too simplistic. (Maybe for that reason, we should require teaching Intelligent Design in our schools, just not in our science classrooms!) To them, the world is so amazingly well-fitted together that it must have a Designer. And, of course, what better candidate for Designer than the Christian G-d?

Yet a serious look at the Universe reveals that there’s a lot of Chaos. Furthermore, an intellectually-honest approach to Intelligent Design leaves open a couple of its own interesting questions: Who is the Designer? And is there just One?

As nearly as we can tell, early humans — closer in time to the events, by the way — believed that these two questions went together. Of course the world was designed! Not only was it designed, but the various designers kept things in relatively good working order. The god of agriculture watched carefully over agricultural design issues; the god of the sea took care of the ocean; the god of the sky took care of the sky; the god (or, more typically, goddess, because unlike Christianity the “heathen” could have female gods) of love took care of relationships (at least the loving ones); and the god of mysteries presumably took care of how all this stuff remained confusing, but believable.

Then — so the bible-based views of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam tell us — along came Abraham, who said, “There’s just One G-d” and he began the lines that destroyed most people’s belief that multiple gods designed and care for the Universe.

Polytheism, Monotheism & The Problem of Evil (and Disorder)

Christians will spit fire from their eyes, ears and noses over this, but the polytheistic beliefs of early humans, including the Greeks and Romans in particular, make more sense than do the monotheistic views of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

For one thing, the problem of Evil is more easily explained.

In Christianity, evil presents a bit of a paradox. If G-d is perfect, and perfectly good, how do bad things happen? How does evil exist? Christians explain this by the confusing doctrine of Free Will. Somehow, this perfect G-d decided that “he” — the Christian G-d is addressed as “he” by virtually all but the most rebellious of Christians — wanted to create beings who could choose to believe in “him” or not.

Why this was important is anyone’s guess. The most usual reason given is that G-d is the universe’s most enormous egotistical entity. He created humans with Free Will to show what a terrific guy he is. Or perhaps it was “to prove his glory,” whatever that means. For some reason, angels with Free Will (like, apparently, Lucifer, his followers, and the angels who showed Free Will by not rebelling), wouldn’t suffice.

That “first creation” of angels didn’t go so well, anyway. The ongoing “cause” of evil in the Universe is that one of the angels somehow chose to disobey G-d. If you know the Christian story, you’ll recognize some inconsistency here, already alluded to above. Another inconsistency is that G-d is supposed to be the cause of all things.

At any rate, one reason given for why G-d created humans is to show his glory in creating those who could choose to worship him or not. Those who would not were to be sentenced to death; only it’s not really death, it’s the perfectly-good G-d’s version: eternal burning in a lake of fire. (Revelation 20:15.) But because he’s such a terrific guy, he sent his only begotten son — who, by the way, just happens to be him, too (don’t ask) — to die in the place of those who rejected him, including those who rejected him before he was born. And if they just believed in him, that would fix everything. (John 3:16.) And, of course, he wouldn’t really die. (Which makes one wonder about the whole death sentence thing.)

Another way of looking at it is that there wasn’t really a death sentence, it’s just that Jesus took on everyone’s sin, even those who hadn’t committed any yet, went into hell and then escaped. (2 Corinthians 5:15.) This is true even though anyone else who committed sin and went to hell wouldn’t be able to escape — because not escaping is part of the “sentence.”

Anyway…that’s one possibility for the identity of the Designer.

Another is the old idea: Numerous gods, like those of the Greeks, Romans and other “heathen.” And these gods participated in the design and functioning of the Universe. But they don’t always see eye-to-eye. So one of those gods might like people and bring good things to them. Another might not. Like the Christian G-d, these gods get upset when you diss them. But dissing one god generally makes another god happy. The result is that there’s good stuff in the world and there’s bad stuff. There’s living and there’s dying. There’s one or more gods out to get you and another one or more who think “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” The problem of evil isn’t as complicated as it is in the Christian version, because some gods are just that way. And all of them are subject to getting pissed off and taking it out on people, animals, plants, river streams, oceans, mountains and other parts of the universe.

Frankly, if you have to accept some kind of theistic belief, polytheism hangs together better than monotheism.

But you won’t see proponents of Intelligent Design suggesting that we teach that there might be more than one Designer. That wouldn’t comport well with the hidden agenda of the Christians pushing the idea.

Incidentally, because I tried — really, I tried — to keep this article as short as possible, I don’t even discuss the possibility of an impersonal theistic or even non-theistic Designer or Designers. But one could very well posit some kind of non-personal, non-humanoid, even perhaps some non-cognizant “force” or “forces” as being responsible for the “design” of the Universe. (Perhaps one such candidate is a biochemical theory for the origin of the universe, and then an argument that biochemical “laws” are responsible for the subsequent appearance of design.) There’s evidence that some of America’s Founders held such impersonal theistic beliefs.

No Inconsistency in Teaching Evolution

I said before that the theory of evolution and the teaching of Intelligent Design are about two different things. And there’s no reason — except Christian fundamentalism — for thinking that they are incompatible. It’s possible for there to be a Creation Theory for earthly life, a Theory of Evolution for earthly life and for both to co-exist.

This is because Intelligent Design is just a “theory” — not of the same type as the “theory” of evolution, but a “theory” nonetheless — that the world is a product of a Designer (or multiple Designers). The idea that there is a Designer doesn’t require us to say “and ‘his’ design didn’t include evolution.”

At the same time, evolution doesn’t explain how existence happened. It doesn’t even talk about how life evolved out of whatever existed before there was life. For that, you need an ancillary theory. That theory might be a biochemical theory; or, it could be some variation of Intelligent Design, including unabashed Christian monotheism.

Proponents of Intelligent Design don’t advocate teaching these things, however, because — as noted near the beginning of this article — the motivation behind their advocacy is essentially dishonest.

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the guys haven’t seen it that way.

Since I’m in the midst of mid-terms — Evidence this Wednesday; Advanced Criminal Law and Constitutional Law next week — my blogging time is limited. In order to avoid neglecting my own blog while participating at Chepooka’s, I post my response here.

Besides, as Taughnee pointed out, the “philosophy of language” path I’m taking here has taken the discussion off-topic from the original post.

Advance warning: Sometimes when I get pedantic in my writing — a major flaw of mine — it can sound like I’m being (shall we say?) “cantankerous.” (Except the word most people would use starts with a “b”.) That’s not my intent at all. It’s really an attempt to be thorough and precise. (I’m saying this so no one accidentally thinks I’m refusing Taughnee’s offer for discussion as opposed to argument [used in the non-logical meaning of the term].)

Language is certainly powerful. And, unfortunately, no one (including me…or you) can avoid the fact that our upbringing and our societies influence us in ways of which we’re never completely aware, including the way we speak.

Language is weird, too, because it’s both a product and shaper of that. The language you speak not only often carries “hidden” content, but actually impacts what you’re able to see. The most famous “example” of this is the fabled story about Eskimos having 5000 words for “snow.” (That’s an exaggeration, but, then, so’s the original story.)

According to that fable, non-Eskimos just don’t have all the concepts available to them that Eskimos have. We look at a pile of cold white stuff and we say, “I’d prefer dark meat, please.” Oh, wait…wrong story. We say, “Snow.” But — so the story goes — Eskimos see something else. It’s not just snow they see, it’s “snow that quickly collapses into an avalanche if you cough” — and that’s different from “snow that collapses underfoot if you laugh too loud.” (That’s one place the fable kinda falls apart. After all, if it’s describable to us, it’s not really a foreign concept.)

The fable about the Eskimos is just that — a fable — sometimes called “The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax.” But the principle behind it appears to have some validity.

For those interested in more, google “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis,” which is a theory about the relationship between thought and language and is the basis for some of these comments. And to my way of thinking, both W. V. O. Quine and Donald Davidson extend this line of thought. For what might be a slightly different point of view by a contemporary and extremely intelligent philosopher of language — I met him once years ago in San Francisco at a meeting of the Society for Philosophy & Psychology, of which I was a charter member — check out Steven Pinker. And I stressed the word “might” because I read his comments on the page I linked in as a potential explanation for the indeterminacy-of-translation theories of Davidson.

At any rate, back to the point…

The comment Mr. M made in his post on Chepooka (“most women vote the way their husbands do”) appeared to be based on a belief about something veridical and it did not appear that he was saying it because he believed women were stupid or sheeplike. It appeared that he meant that if you looked at the votes of married women, you’d find that they tracked the votes of their husbands. And if you dug into it, you’d find that they did that because their husbands voted as they did.

If this is true, there could be a variety of reasons why, most of which would probably be indicative of sexist underpinnings of our society. Women might do it because they worry about their husbands finding out they voted differently and getting pissed off (sexist underpinning). They might do it because they think their husbands are smarter about such things (major sexist underpinning). But it could also be because people who get married tend to share some common beliefs and so they both vote the same way because they both like the same candidate (possibly non-sexist reasons). And — probably Taughnee’s point — it could be that husbands voted the same as their wives; i.e., that the wives were the driving force. And while that might be sexist, too, it’s not what we traditionally think of when we say sexist, because, after all, we usually think of “sexism” — rightly or wrongly — as denigrating women.

Regardless of what the reason was, you could actually tabulate this, if you wanted. Just look at the votes of husbands and wives and see if they vote the same, then ask if men voted the way they did because of their wives or vice-versa. (But then there’s the problem of whether their answers to your questions might be driven by societal concepts of gender discrimination!)

The statement, “Many men tend to make decisions about voting without putting much thought into it,” on the other hand, is different in kind. It might be true. But the statement itself carries with it negative connotations in a way that the statement “most women vote the way their husbands vote” does not. For while you can think of ways in which the latter statement is true that are possibly not overtly sexist — indeed, possibly not sexist at all (in the case of married couples who share similar values) — the statement about men making voting decisions without thinking can only have a negative interpretation. Furthermore, it would be virtually impossible to empirically test it. What person — man or woman — is going to say, “Yeah, I vote without thinking.” Maybe some Republican complete ditz, but most people think they have good reasons for what they do (even if they don’t)…and that requires at least thinking that you think before doing what you do.

So, to my way of thinking, one is a potential insult, but a testable hypothesis; the other is just an insult.

I really have to find a way to explain things more succinctly…

The discussion concerned someone submitting a question to Scalzi asking, “What is the meaning of life?” His answer was a bit long, but parts of it were quite entertaining. And who am I to talk about long posts, nu?

Without further ado…here was the post that, so far, constitutes my participation in that conversation:

The great sage and philosopher, Pedro Amaral, who was also a student of Wilfrid Sellars, used to say of that question (“What is the meaning of life?”) that it was akin to the question, “What is the meaning of 2+2=4?” (He probably still does.)

It seems to be a bit of a non-sensical question — which is not exactly the same as “stupid.” Nonsense can be very entertaining sometimes, as John’s answer reveals.

Okay, okay…I’m kidding (about John’s answer).

What I’m not kidding about is that (as John skimmed over in one part of his note) one answer is that there is no meaning of life. Life just is. Personally, I happen to think that’s the most veridical answer.

Can you still making something wonderful of it? You betcha. Rocks and clay “just are”; pigments used for paint “just are.” This doesn’t stop us from making some really enjoyable statues and paintings or improving our living spaces with them!

Something doesn’t have to have a meaning — and you don’t have to even create a meaning for/with it — in order to make of it something worthwhile.

Incidentally, people periodically submit stories and links to me and say, “This is blogworthy.” (And it usually is.) I liked John’s idea of answering readers’ questions. Feel free to email suggestions or questions to (surprise!) either suggestions – at – unspun dot us or questions – at – unspun dot us. I don’t promise to answer them all (especially homework questions!), but on days when George Bush isn’t working, it’s hard to find comedy material. You might find your question answered then!

If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, he might surf once or twice for porn. Somehow I doubt it would be much more important to him than that.

If it were, he would not be Thomas Jefferson.

This has nothing to do with my thinking that Jefferson was a man of deep moral convictions. I believe he was that — but I’m not even sure that being a man of deep moral convictions and the occasional enjoyment of Internet porn are mutually exclusive.

It seems to me that there is a juxtaposition of the potential anyone has and the material to which they become exposed which makes that person who they are — and makes them either memorable, or not.

“Potential” would depend upon the mix of characteristics of a person, such as drive, intelligence, organizational skills, and one’s rapidity or vapidity of knowledge acquisition, among other things. Take someone with the greatest potential and stick them in solitary confinement for 20 or 30 years. It’s doubtful when the door opens, a Thomas Jefferson will pop out. On the other hand, there are high school seniors who are without a doubt of lesser “potential” (in the sense I’ve been using it here) than Copernicus, who will probably achieve more, in terms of actual volume of output relating to hard science. The education they receive affords them exposure to a richer scientific milieu; they see and do more because they stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before.

No doubt the matrix is more complicated than this. For example, another key component would be the population in which they are found. I may be in the top five or top ten of my law class, or not, dependent at least partly upon who else is in my class. Al Gore may lose an election to — wait, bad example; he would have lost that election anyway.

Seriously, every class has a valedictorian (and usually only one). But the valedictorian of 2005 might not be valedictorian if he (or she) were placed into the class of 2006; either that, or the “real” valedictorian of 2006 is no more a valedictorian. After all, only one of them is going to get that title. (Theoretically, it would be possible to have co-valedictorians, but this is rare.) In fact, the valedictorian of 2005 might even be “only” seventh or eighth in their class, were they moved to another class. And it doesn’t stop there. Ironically, a good Harvard law student could find himself bested by a good San Joaquin College of Law student on a consistent basis. It’s perhaps not likely, because of the greater quality of the Harvard student’s education (which itself is due to similar factors working at a different level), but it is possible. Yet that Harvard student is going to have better opportunities after graduation based on nothing more than the fact that he is a Harvard graduate.

Clearly this will have an impact upon future opportunities. Valedictorians and Harvard law students may receive more and better job offers than non-valedictorians and non-Harvard law students. One job offer may lead ultimately to connections that bring one to political office, while another does not, for example.

Well, what’s all this got to do with whether or not Jefferson would have surfed porn?

Just this: Jefferson would not have been the Jefferson he was but for (at least) the juxtaposition of his abilities with both the intellectual milieu in which he found himself and the period in which he lived. Given his demonstrated abilities, he would likely have still done very well — maybe even become famous — if he lived in our era. However, this would depend upon the information to which he was exposed, the intellectual milieu in which he found himself immersed. Likely as not, he would not have been overwhelmingly interested in Internet porn. If he were, this would have decreased his focus on other bits of information. Jefferson would have been a different person, probably not even recognizable as the Jefferson we know, were it even possible for him to surf the Internet — for porn or anything else.

Because on top of everything else, the amount of information — trivial, useless, mundane and profane as well as stimulating, intriguing, inspiring and transmogrifying — that Jefferson was exposed to is nothing like what the world today, particularly with the Internet, has to offer. And not only does one not “need to read the sports section of all seven major New York-area newspapers to find out whether Cliff Floyd [whoever that is] is going to be on the disabled list,” anyone doing so would be hampered in leveraging their potential.

At any rate, all my prattling aside, I think if Thomas Jefferson were alive today a) he would likely not surf Internet porn sites (at least not often) and b) we wouldn’t even know he was here. Because, in a very real sense, he would no longer be. He would just be someone named Thomas Jefferson.

And there are plenty of those to go around.

I ran across the quote above while desperately searching the last two days for a way to re-do my logo. I was discussing this with a graphic artist and the idea came about of using the face that currently appears in my logo, but making it look like it was “unwinding.” If you can imagine taking an apple-peeler and peeling and apple, with the peel staying intact and then superimpose a face on that, well, that’s what I’m talking about. So far, I can’t figure out how to do it. I thought I remembered seeing it as an Escher print once, so during a search on “Escher” and “displacement map” (because I think that’s what this would be), I found the quote above.

It perfectly characterizes what I’m trying to do here, too.

Gotta love the irony.

I’ll try to get back to regular posts soon, but I’m trying to get myself refocused on law school studies….

In my “free time,” I’ve just started reading Steven Pinker’s the blank slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. I met Pinker once years ago at a meeting of the Society for Philosophy & Psychology of which I was a student member. Being a part of that group was a highlight of my educational experience and I attended several of the yearly meetings. I had the pleasure of attending one in Montreal, Canada. It was an experience I won’t soon forget.

Somehow — and I don’t recall exactly how now — I had managed to befriend someone who worked with John Searle. Because of this, he responded to some questions I’d asked by sending me drafts of the chapters for Searle’s book, The Rediscovery of the Mind, which was just about to come out. And because of that I ended up spending some time talking to Paul Churchland at the Montreal meeting. As I recall, the book was just about to hit the market when the meeting occurred and he had not yet seen it. We spent some time discussing it, as I went through the mental gymnastics of attempting to get my weak brain to recall enough of the material to respond without looking like a complete fool. (It almost worked, too! Actually, Churchland seemed satisfied, but afterwards I was in a fugue and couldn’t recall what I’d said — what an experience! — I think I was in shock that I’d had an actual philosophical discussion with Paul Churchland and did not come out looking like a complete fool.)

As I was saying before my ADD kicked in again, I met Pinker at one of the sessions (I’d tell you about having met Dan Dennett, too, but then I’d just start to sound like some kind of twisted geek groupie). Pinker was like a walking philosophy of language/cognitive science computer. I was in a group of several people with whom he was talking. After just a few minutes, I made two decisions. I actually stuck to one of them. I reminded myself that it was better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt; I was not going to open my mouth in his presence. And I decided I was going to try to read what I think was his first book, which (I’m going off a very weak memory here) I believe was just about to come out around the time I met him. So now it’s time to (sort of) follow through on the second decision: I’m finally going to read one of his books, although it’s not his first.

Since I’m about to read the blank slate, I was reviewing some of my old cognitive science notes this weekend and ran across a journal entry I made in November 1991, which seemed appropriate:

In the Ansel Adams Wilderness area, where I like to go camping, there is a long ragged depression in the land strewn irregularly with rocks, boulders, branches and mountain detritus which sometimes houses a small river. It represents the course of that river. It is the means of production by which the mountain is able to convey water from its uppermost portions to its lowermost portions. The mountain is able to convey this water from upper to lower levels, but it is not aware of its ability. Furthermore, this watercourse is not innate for this mountain. What is innate to this mountain is a characteristic it shares with other mountains: the ability to develop watercourses as a means of conveying water from a higher level to a lower level in large quantities and in a short period of time.

It takes the water, acting on the mountain, and over some period of time which probably varies as a function of both the amount of water and certain aspects of the mountain, to carve out the watercourse. Each time there is a situation which presents water to the top of the mountain, it reaches the bottom following various routes, but tending to utilize the same ones again and again. The result is that repeated presentations of water select and thereby accentuate structures in the side of the mountain for the communication of water from top down. (At the same time, this can only occur, because the sediments in the watercourse are lifted from the bottom up.)

Water doesn’t only, or always, travel along exactly the same pathway, but I daresay if the mountain could speak, it might be heard to remark that it just “felt right” when water was processed this way, and perhaps would say that it “felt funny” when it was not.

The above seems to me a perspicuous metaphor for my own ideas about language ability or propensity, acquisition and internalization of grammar. Our brains are the mountain. Early in our lives, sounds present in the environment serve (as a minimal set of stimuli) to carve out pathways in the brain — neuronal structures responsible for language processing develop over time — just as the water present in the biosphere begins working in the infancy of the mountain. A grammar has been internalized when the structures are so well developed that any other way of processing a string of meaningful sounds doesn’t “feel right”; the neuronal pathways are well worn. The well-worn neuronal pathways represent the grammar of a language.

There are at least two important differences between living creatures like the human beings I have been discussing in the last two paragraphs and the mountain. We are capable of presenting water to ourselves and that presentation carves pathways both in the processing and processes which bring it about and in the subsequent processing of the heard product. Second, we can sense the presence, however inchoately, of the structures, once carved. Some of us even work very hard at this; we are the philosophers of language and the linguists. If mountains do introspect, they have thus far been quite circumspect about it.

Well, I liked it, anyway. Incidentally, if you’re not already familiar with this topic, you may want to look up some terms — I’d post links for it, but I’ve got to get back to my law books! Some phrases and terms, such as “represents,” “means of production,” “top down,” and “bottom up” are philosophical patois; although they come variously from linguistics and philosophy of language, the nexus for their use here is my own twisted mind and the cognitive science books I was reading at the time I wrote the passage — that is, some of the earlier writings of the discipline when it was beginning to come into its own in the early 1990s. The phrases “feel right” and “feel funny” are, to my recollection, the ways I remember some of the cognitive science folks at these early SPP meetings talking about the self-referential aspects of being conscious of, or perhaps trying to making sense of, inchoate apprehensions of electrical activity within one’s own brain. For more on that topic, take a look at Dennett’s Consciousness Explained.

I found this entry on Feyerabend, “objective knowledge,” and relativity.

At the end of the third chapter of Against Method, Paul Feyerabend says:

To sum up: Unanimity of opinion may be fitting for a church, for the frightened or greedy victims of some (ancient, or modern) myth, or for the weak and willing followers of some tyrant. Variety of opinion is necessary for objective knowledge. - Feyerabend, p. 46.

One of the things that has struck me to this point in the reading is what I had perceived as a reinforcement of the idea that “objective knowledge” was not really objective. Knowledge, it seemed (seems), is always perspectival and relational; it depends upon who is doing the knowing, and what their relation is to both a set of pre-existing beliefs and to a situation which they are knowing (i.e., a “fact”). What sense, then, does the phrase “objective knowledge” have? None, I thought; it is a mythological creature on part with unicorns.

The absence of (or the impossibility of) any real objective knowledge does not, however, seem to necessitate rabid relativism. It only should serve to ameliorate any tendency towards dogmatism. The impossibility of objective knowledge is not the same as, or does not justify a belief in, the impossibility (or absence) of objective reality (realities?).

The goal of science, which is sometimes mistakenly put forth as “to know/understand the world/reality,” is to effect predictive power—the power to make things happen which we desire and to block those we do not desire. (This latter is really only another way of stating the former; we desire not to have some things happen. [Today, I would add that "predictive power" doesn't require the drive to "effect" something; it could also just be the ability to predict what will happen; i.e., if we don't intervene.]) Examples of things we want to have happen include increased crop yields, more powerful weaponry, new energy sources, and various “creature comforts,” to name only a few. Things we don’t want are to be blown up by enemies, to overmuch damage our environment, to starve to death, etc.

The problem is that, besides the fact that some of us have an unpragmatic fetish for “objective knowledge” which, like many fetishes, is a kind of compulsive disorder, [many of] the rest of us have been duped into thinking that “objective knowledge” is necessary to our real goals of making things happen which we desire and blocking those we do not desire.

In the passage quoted above, Feyerabend, too, seems to have succumbed. This is especially odd in view of his statements regarding anarchism. The claim that “anything goes” (p. 28) seems more important when the goal is the pragmatic one of predictive power over the world in which we live [rather] than any impossible dream of objective knowledge.

I’m just a little puzzled, I guess, because Feyerabend seems to have presented excellent reasons for the anarchistic methodology for the exploration of a supposed objective reality which does not necessitate the aspiration to objective knowledge (a fact which, as it seems to me, explains why objective knowledge ought not to be aspired to) and yet, at the same time, he seems to aspire to objective knowledge.

According to the notation I made, this was written on either May 6 or 7 of 1994 at 10:50 a.m. I still find this interesting, although I might state some things a little differently today; for one thing, I can never be certaint that back then I properly understood Feyerabend!

I used to write like this daily (for hours at a time). To help “flesh things out” here, I’m going to occasionally throw in some old entry like that on a topic that’s still interesting to me, mixed with things like I’ve been writing here the last several weeks. That way, there should always be something worth reading (hopefully!) here.