by Chris Bertram on September 26, 2005
I’ve been engaged in some correspondence which began around the question of whether or not Mark Steyn rejects Darwin , but which has switched into a discussion of the views of philosopher and metaphysician, Peter van Inwagen . Specifically, the following passage from Van Inwagen’s essay “Quam Dilecta”:
bq. I remember reading a very amusing response made by David Berlinski to Stephen Jay Gould’s statement that modern science was rapidly removing every excuse that anyone had ever had for thinking that we were much different from our closest primate relatives. Berlinski pointed out that you can always make two things sound similar (or “different only in degree”) if you describe them abstractly enough: “What Canada geese do when they migrate is much like what we do when we jump over a ditch: in each case, an organism’s feet leave the ground, it moves through the air, and it comes down some distance away. The difference between the two accomplishments is only a matter of degree.” I am also put in mind of a cartoon Phillip Johnson once showed me: A hostess is introducing a human being and a chimp at a cocktail party. “You two will have a lot to talk about,” she says, “–you share 99 percent of your DNA.” I’m sorry if I seem to be making a joke of this, but…well, I am making of joke of this. I admit it. Why shouldn’t I? The idea that there isn’t a vast, radical difference, a chasm, between human beings and all other terrestrial species is simply a very funny idea. It’s like the idea that Americans have a fundamental constitutional right to own automatic assault weapons: its consequences apart, it’s simply a very funny idea, and there’s nothing much one can do about it except to make a joke of it. You certainly wouldn’t want to invest much time in an argument with someone who would believe it in the first place.
I’m not a scientist (or a metaphysician for that matter), but I’m not shy to ask the advice of those who are. So comments are open for general observations on the passage. I’d be interested to know, though, whether anything as unvarnished as that can actually be pinned on Gould (van Inwagen provides no reference). I can well imagine him saying that chimpanzees and humans have a great deal in common compared what they share with, say, sharks or spiders (but that’s a different claim). The other thing that occured to me is that it is rather rich for someone to propose a laugh test to rule out counterintuitive scientific generalization when they themselves believe that only human beings and elementary particles exist . My correspondent has corrected me to say that my characterization of van Inwagen’s view is inexact and that he holds that not only human beings by anything else with a “unified consciousness” can exist. So God and the angels are in too. That doesn’t really diminish my sense that when it comes to claims that are, on the face of it, laughable, van Inwagen may be a man throwing stones in a glasshouse.
by Chris Bertram on September 16, 2005
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of blogospheric comment yet about the more surreal aspects of the British governments intention to criminalize the “glorification” of terrorism. Saying that a particular terrorist act or event was a good thing is set to be a criminal offence unless the event was more than 20 years ago, except that the Home Secretary will draw up a list of older events the “glorification” of which will also be an offence. So far there’s no clear indication of what will be on the list except the suggestion that glorifying the Easter Rising of 1916 or the French Revolution (1789-whenever you think it ended) will not be illegal. Will it be illegal to praise the following events?
* The Irgun bombing of the King David Hotel (1946)
* Any bombings or shootings by the Baader-Meinhof gang.
* ETA’s assassination of Prime Minister Carrero Blanco in 1973
* Any acts of Palestinian terrorism.
* The assassination by Mossad of Palestinian leaders in foreign countries.
* The assassination of any member of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.
* The sinking of the Rainbow Warrior by the French secret service in 1985.
However repusive it may be to praise some of these acts, it is just incompatible with a free society for it to be in some politician’s gift to decide which historical events it is or isn’t acceptable to “glorify”.
by Chris Bertram on September 16, 2005
Alan Johnson of Labour Friends of Iraq emails to tell me of a new online journal he’s editing, Democratiya . It won’t be any great secret around here that we’ve not exactly seen eye-to-eye recently with people who call themselves the “pro-liberation” left (or similar). But Demokratiya includes writings from some people who didn’t think the war was such a great idea, such as Gideon Calder (who has an interesting review of Walzer on war ), and involves some others whom I continue to like and respect. And I certainly share with them the hope (against hope) that Iraq somehow turns into a flourishing democracy. So surf over there and take a look.
by Chris Bertram on September 16, 2005
I hesitate to come over all Mel P here, but I was astonished to read the following bit of opportunism in the Law Society Gazette from the Solicitors’ Pro Bono Group:
bq. The government should not profit from compensation payments made to victims of the London bombings when its own policies may have contributed to the attacks, the Solicitors Pro Bono Group (SPBG) claimed last week. SPBG acting chief executive Robert Gill said that lawyers had not provided advice to victims free of charge ‘so that the government could save money’. ….
bq. ‘It is normal for CICA payments to be taken off benefits, but in these circumstances it should be different. It is about a particular set of actions which in part were brought about by the fact that Britain has taken a prominent role in Iraq – which was a government decision. Government action is part of the reason [for the events], so it is not fair that the government should benefit from private citizens who are injured.’
The government quite reasonably insists that the same rules apply for all Criminal Injuries compensation cases and that bomb victims should be treated the same as everyone else.
by Chris Bertram on September 13, 2005
The blogosphere ecosystem just lost a bit of its biodiversity with John Band’s decision to shut down Shot by Both Sides . I’ve alternately enjoyed and been infuriated by John’s blog and he’s certainly been a major irritant to the decent smug and self-satisfied former left and the samizdatistas. Both Daniel and I were regular commenters on John’s site and I’ll miss the mix of friendly repartee and ill-tempered invective there. Still, there’s an upside: John says he’ll be writing more at the excellent Sharpener . Go to read him there.
by Chris Bertram on September 9, 2005
Maria’s post about America got me thinking about issues to do with social mobility. Here I want to offer some completely data free speculations, to float a hypothesis for commenters to shoot down if they want to. That hypothesis is that there’s far too much higher education in Western societies and that it constitutes a real barrier to social mobility (and is probably bad for demographics too). To put it in a nutshell: strategies for improving social mobility by getting a broader swathe of the population into higher ed are bound to fail because it is too easy for the middle classes to maintain their grip on access to education. A better strategy would be to take that card out of middle class hands by abandoning the insistence on credentials that aren’t materially relevant to the job at hand.
[click to continue…]
by Chris Bertram on September 8, 2005
Two trade unionists and paramedics from California who found themselves trapped in New Orleans have written an account of their experiences . (Alternative link ) A sample:
bq. By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was dangerously abysmal. As the desperation and despair increased, street crime as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and locked their doors, telling us that the “officials” told us to report to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the City, we finally encountered the National Guard. The Guards told us we would not be allowed into the Superdome as the City’s primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole. The guards further told us that the City’s only other shelter, the Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and squalor and that the police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally, we asked, “If we can’t go to the only 2 shelters in the City, what was our alternative?” The guards told us that that was our problem, and no they did not have extra water to give to us. This would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile “law enforcement”.
(via Bitch PhD – who has possibly the best background graphic in the blogosphere.)
by Chris Bertram on September 6, 2005
OK, I know that there are people who think that we shouldn’t lower ourselves to engage with the likes of Mark Steyn, but I did post a few days ago about his previously-expressed view that “natural” disasters reveal the shortcomings of the societies and political institutions they happen to. So I’ve been looking out for his reponse to Katrina and in today's Telegraph he lets us have it. Sure there’s a lot of Bushite spin about how the local politicians are really the ones to blame. But Steyn finally distills the essence of his view:
bq. Welfare culture is bad not just because, as in Europe, it’s bankrupting the state, but because it enfeebles the citizenry, it erodes self-reliance and resourcefulness.
So there we have it. The lavish benefits showered on the poor of Louisiana (how the Dutch, French and Germans must envy them!) have eroded their resourcefulness.
by Chris Bertram on September 5, 2005
Listening to Bob Harris Country last Thursday, I was really captivated by Tom Russell talking about Charles Bukowski. I didn’t know anything about Bukowski, except having a vague idea that he might be something to do with the beat poets. Anyway, I was intruiged enough to go out and buy Post Office , Bukowski’s grittily written account of working for the US post office as a relief postman and then as a clerk whilst being almost permanently drunk, gambling and womanizing.
bq. It began as a mistake.
A great opening line to hook you in, reminiscent of Hammett or Chandler, except this isn’t a crime story. Brilliant muscular writing about snagging with petty authority figures, trudging around delivering letters to lunatics in the pouring rain, mean and manipulative men and women, making money at the track, routine, boredom, cheating the system.
One of the best things I’ve read in a while, I don’t mind saying. Completely non-boring. I’ve now gone out and bought Ham on Rye , which I’m really looking forward to, as well as a book of poems: You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense . Comments to further remedy my Bukowski-related ignorance (or my Tom Russell-related ignorance for that matter) would be most welcome.
by Chris Bertram on September 2, 2005
by Chris Bertram on September 2, 2005
In comments to Kieran’s last post Daniel has catalogued some of the things that the right-wing blogosphere said about the French heatwave of 2003. We could add op-eds like Denis Prager’s Socialism Kills to the roster, but pride of place should surely go to — who else? — Mark Steyn. Steyn makes the following observation in his 'Events' don't just happen :
bq. One of the most tediously over-venerated bits of political wisdom comes from the late British prime minister Harold MacMillan. It was his characteristically laconic Edwardian response as to what he feared most in the months ahead: “Events, dear boy, events.” It turns up in a gazillion books of quotations and 1,000 Fleet Street columns as if it’s some brilliant insight. It’s not. It’s an urbane banality. Even events come, so to speak, politically predetermined. If, for example, you have powerful public sector unions, you will be at the mercy of potentially crippling strikes. The quasi-Eastern European Britain of the 1970s was brought to a halt by a miners’ strike in a way that would have been impossible in the United States. A strike, of course, is man-made. But the best test of the political character of “events” is supposedly natural phenomena.
He draws the following conclusion about earthquakes in Iran, SARS in China, and the French heatwave (having paused to kick the Canadian welfare state along the way) :
bq. By the standards of the world, Iran, China and France are all wealthy societies. They’re vulnerable to “events” because of their organizational principles – a primitive theocracy which disdains modernity; a modified totalitarianism which thinks you can reap the benefits of capitalism without the institutions of liberty; and a cradle-to-grave welfare state that has so enfeebled its citizens’ ability to act as responsible adults that even your dead mum is just one more inconvenience the government should do something about.
Read the whole thing, as they say.
by Chris Bertram on August 30, 2005
Wow! Just had my first Google Talk conversation. I’m sure most of you are old hands at this voice-over-internet stuff but it was my first time. Set it up, invited some friends and then up pops a mate from Novosibirsk (equipped with headset) for a chat, as if he was just down the road. It works, it’s simple and easy to use. Fantastic.
by Chris Bertram on August 28, 2005
The NYT has a great story on how Western-style reality tv is spreading to Iraq .
bq. Reality TV could turn out to be the most durable Western import in Iraq. It has taken root with considerably greater ease than American-style democracy. Since spring 2004, when “Materials and Labor” made its debut, a constellation of reality shows has burst onto TV screens across Iraq. True to the genre, “Materials and Labor” has a simple conceit at its heart – Al Sharqiya, an Iraqi satellite network, offers Baghdad residents the chance to have homes that were destroyed by the war rebuilt at no cost to them.
Read the whole thing, as they say.
by Chris Bertram on August 27, 2005
Don’t miss the Guardian's profile of evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers . A nervous breakdown after reading too much Wittgenstein, friendship with Huey Newton of the Black Panthers and the following priceless comment on Richard Dawkins: “My first wife, a wonderful woman, used to refer to Dick as the Selfish Gene, just because of the way he acts. ” Definitely worth a look.
by Chris Bertram on August 26, 2005
I’m back from a few days in Munich, which I’d recommend as excellent value to visit. (I suspect there’s an oversupply of hotel rooms in advance of next summer’s world cup.) It rained nearly the whole time I was there, but that didn’t stop me from visiting some excellent art galleries: the wonderful Alte Pinakothek , the goodish Neue Pinakotek and the sinister and intruiging Villa Stuck . Of course I also managed to consume a large number of excellent sausages and quantities of Dunkles Weißbier ! All of which brings me on to a less flattering observation on Germany and the Germans, namely, that the Germans may well be the worst dressed of the major industrial nations. Admittedly, the competition is stiff from us British and from the Americans, but I think the Germans may win on grounds of sheer uniformity. It is possible to sit and watch a string of people of all ages and sizes walk past all dressed as follows: dark denim jeans, dark denim jacket, trainers (sneakers). The monotony is hardly broken by the occasional deviant who leaves the denim jacket behind for a regulation black leather one. Since Jamie Oliver's Naked Chef is now dubbed into German — so much for Chirac joking with Schroeder about British cuisine — I can’t help wondering whether the Germans aren’t in line for some British or American clothing-and-lifestlye fascism TV: Trinny and Susannah or Queer Eye for the Straight Guy perhaps. But perhaps they already get those shows and are showing a laudable determination to resist.
[For Alex: here’s a link to a picture of Gabriel Cornelius von Max’s Monkeys as Judges of Art from the Neue Pinakothek.]
