New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

[Punkrockmonday #4] Charlie Patton- High Water Everywhere, Part 2

It's really hard to be a good Hegelian (or Christian, or Muslim, or really anything besides Buddhist maybe) during weeks like this, between the typhoon in Japan and the vicious counter-revolutions being waged by United States' allies in the Middle East. It's hard to see how anything could possibly make things like this worthwhile. As a good Hegelian you really want to believe that the universe is evolving the way it should, but to that we can go ahead and cue Voltaire.

Art doesn't justify anything or "provide closure" or make any of the real horrors and indignities of existence even the least bit better, but it's still probably the best we can do. So here is Charlie Patton singing about the Mississippi river flood of 1927. I wonder what great art will be produced by this generation of traumatized Japanese, Bahranian, and Yemeni kids that will be listened to eighty years from now? It is really quite amazing the extent to which all popular Western music now owes some debt to Charlie Patton and the musicians of his generation that were scarred so badly by the 1927 flood. . .

These lyrics are kind of inscrutible to the uninitated. Here's a transcription, completed below the fold. Please read them while listening. They make me cry.

Backwater at Blytheville, backed up all around
Backwater at Blytheville, done took Joiner town
It was fifty families and children come to sink and drown

Coining Concepts...or why Schlick is the father of analytic philosophy (and Deleuze the patron saint of its historians)

We our so in the grip of 'Frege-our-Father' that we forget that Schlick invented analytic philosophy. (He would make a great martyr if only he had been shot for philosophical reasons!) Einstein's great achievements had caused a crisis to philosophy--then in the grip of Neo-Kantianism (of various stripes). Schlick's great insight was to insist that part of Einstein's achievement was strictly philosophical: Einstein had developed wholly new concepts that turned out to be extremely fruitful. Frege's logic would be the tool, but it is Schlick that developed the program of the free play in conceptual invention. Carnap debased the coin a bit by insisting we should be more modest conceptual engineers. But a scientific philosophy requires worker-bees and philosophical queens.

While I work on historical figures, I am an analytic philosopher (not just because I did my apprenticeship with some impressive analytic philosophers, but especially) because I follow Schlick's dictum: I develop concepts that help clarify our philosophical situation and that are meant to have fruitful applications. The three main concepts that I have been developing are "Newton's Challenge" (that is the standing challenge of scientific authority vis a vis philosophy); "The Socratic Problem" (the complex relationship between intellectual activity and society); "Philosophic Prophecy" (the way philosophers make future(s) possible). The third is the most reflexive of the group. (I explain these concepts and offer lots of distinctions among them elsewhere more at length.)

This is my response to the recent discussions (here, here, and here); the history of philosophy is first and foremost philosophy.

On asking good questions...on the myth of Dutch Liberalism, or how the Chinese disappeared from the Netherlands.

Yesterday I had lunch with my dad; he spent most of his childhood in a Dutch refugee-camp (paid for by Dutch Jews not taxpayers!), which the Nazis  turned into a Concentration camp. In retirement, he participates in an education program, where he shares his  experiences. (He is also active in anti-Racist events. For those that can read Dutch, here's some quotes from him at a Muslim-Jewish dialogue.) He's articulate and mobile, and may well become the last Holocaust survivor. During the months before Dutch Memorial Day (May 4) and Liberation Day (May 5) he is in particular demand and travels all around the Netherlands to speak at schools. "What happened"," he asked "to the Chinese in Holland during the War? It was a question posed to him by one of the school-kids in Kromenie.

What happened to the Chinese?  Thanks to a handheld device and Wikipidia we quickly learned (part of) the answer (in Dutch). Most (2/3rds) got DEPORTED BEFORE WORLD WAR II BY DUTCH LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES! (The cheap bastards even refused to pay for transportation, so they were shipped on board open-air cargo lines.) Wikipidia does not say what happened to the few remaining Chinese in occupied Holland. It's an open question. My Dad and I were not surprised to discover that racism has deep roots around here. (No surprise, of course, the Netherlands was a colonial empire which justified its authority in moral-racist terms.)

Aaugh! screwup in APA Central Division Program concerning Author Meets Critics session for Lee Braver's "A Thing of This World"

The program for the Central in a few weeks does not give correct information for the Author Meets Critics group discussion for Lee Braver's A Thing of this World: A History of Continental Anti-Realism.

On the APA website it currently, and erroneously, reads:

GII-4. Society for Realist-Antirealist Discussion: Lee J. Braver, A Think of This World: A History of Continental Anti-Realism
5:30-7:30 p.m.
Chair: Mark Okrent (Bates College)
Critic: Samuel C. Wheeler III (University of Connecticut)
Author: Lee J. Braver (Hiram College)

What were they thinking?!?! This not only neglects to mention two of the other critics (one of whom is me) but it also gets the title of the book wrong. Here's the correct version!

Central APA 2011, Thursday 3/31/2011

5:30-7:30 PM

Society for Realist-Antirealist Discussion: Lee J. Braver, A Thing of This World: A History of Continental Anti-Realism

Session Chair: Mark Okrent, Professor of Philosophy, Bates College

Panelists:

Jon Cogburn, Associate Professor, Philosophy Department, Louisiana State University

Professor Robert D'Amico, Department of Philosophy, University of Florida

Samuel C. Wheeler III, Professor of Philosophy, Director of Graduate Studies in Philosophy University of Connecticut

Response:

Lee Braver, Associate Professor, Philosophy Department, Hiram College

A Response to Robert Pasnau on Studying the History of Philosophy

Robert Pasnau has recently written an open letter encouraging graduate students in philosophy to specialize in the history of philosophy. (Please do click and read it before reading on here.) Now I understand that Pasnau meant this letter to serve as a recruitment tool, and to this extent he was required to tailor it to what he rightly supposes are the preconceptions of most students going into graduate programs in philosophy and who are not yet convinced of the worthwhileness of specializing in the history of philosophy. However, while this approach might indeed raise the number of dissertations with a historical orientation in the short term, it does nothing in the long term to help us overcome, and in fact does much to reinforce, a number of misguided views about the relationship of philosophy to its history, about how the history of philosophy is best studied, about the proper role of history-of-philosophy scholarship within today's philosophy deparments, and so on.

via www.jehsmith.com

Keele Philosophy and Professional Ethics on the Chopping Block

"This was supposed to be embargoed, but there’ve been enough leaks to make me think I can go public with it: news has emerged today that the Centre for Professional Ethics at Keele (PEAK) is facing the axe, as is the Philosophy department." For more on this.

Brazilian music on Thursdays: 'Maracatu Atomico'

Last week, when writing about forró, I mentioned that the 1990s witnessed a return to traditional Brazilian music styles and rhythms in Brazilian pop music. This week I thought of presenting another example of this rekindling, again related to musical traditions from the Northeast of Brazil: the Mangue Beat (Mangue Bit) movement, which emerged in the city of Recife (state of Pernambuco) in the early 1990s. As the Tropicália movement in the 1960s, the Mangue Beat movement was, among other things, about mixing typical Brazilian folk rhythms with foreign music styles, in particular electronic music. The state of Pernambuco has a very strong folk tradition: their carnival is as lively as in Rio or Bahia, while having its special character and flavor, and this was the rich source the Mangue Beat movement was taking inspiration from. 

Some of the main figures in this movement were Chico Science and his band Nação Zumbi, and the song of today is taken from their second album Afrociberdelia (1996): ‘Maracatu Atômico’. The song is actually an ‘old’ song, composed in 1972 and first recorded by Gilberto Gil in 1973 (also a very cool version, but completely different). Maracatu is an elaborate cultural tradition of Pernambuco, involving sophisticated popular dance and music performances. It has a strong musical component, featuring a special style of drumming in particular (see here for a sample). (Unlike forró, though, Maracatu is not widely present in other parts of Brazil.) It provides the background inspiration for this version of the song, which also has a great guitar riff and electronic components. It is definitely the most ‘energetic’ song I’ve posted so far, so for those who found my selection so far a bit too much on the ‘tame’ side, you are likely to enjoy this one!

New APPS Interview: Catarina Dutilh Novaes

Today’s New APPS interview is with Catarina Dutilh Novaes, who is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation at the University of Amsterdam, and who is, of course, a frequent contributor to our blog.

Welcome, Catarina, thanks for doing this interview with us. Let’s start with your personal practice of philosophy. What are the pleasures and pains of philosophy for you? How do you experience solitary study and writing, collaborative writing, camaraderie at conferences? 

To me philosophy does not feel like a solitary enterprise at all, especially now with the ubiquity of Lady Internet in our lives. I’d say there is really nothing about my personal practice of philosophy that could be placed under the heading of ‘pains’ (ok, maybe journal rejections based on stupid referee reports…), it’s all pleasure for me. 

How did you come to study philosophy? Can you tell us a little about your childhood?

I was born in Sao Paulo (Brazil), which is not exactly the easiest place to grow up, given its megalomaniac size, but it didn’t prevent me from having a fairly normal childhood. My parents were academics (both medicine professors, and my brother is now a physicist – yep, a family of nerds), and accordingly I was very much the bookish kind, although from 10 years old onwards I was also playing in all of the school teams and swimming (I still have a mild exercise obsession).

Hooray for that I say. I’m a firm believer in mens sana in corpore sano! Did you live in Sao Paulo your whole childhood?

No, there was one big move that shaped my personality and changed my life forever: between 14 and 16 years old, I lived in Paris with my parents, who were then on a (very extended!) sabbatical. It changed my life in many different ways, but the decisive experience was to study for two years in a French lycée. I had a great time there, in spite of the many sadistic teachers I came across (“Mademoiselle, if you cannot even answer this question, then you clearly shouldn’t be in this class”, said in front of the whole class). It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life (well, with the exception of the very first months as a mother!), as upon arrival I spoke very little French and had to catch up with a huge academic gap. But I’ve never learned so much in my life, especially math and (French) literature, and by the end of the first year I was totally on top of things, so to say. At the time at least, philosophy was taught only in the last year of high school, by which time I was back in Brazil; but in the literature classes we discussed the likes of Montaigne, Pascal, Montesquieu, Diderot, Voltaire, so there was definitely quite some exposure to philosophy if broadly construed. You know the French, they are philosophical even when they try to be prosaic!

Philo eco blog: Keynes and Uncertainty (or a walk down memory lane to recover wisdom)

"We have, as a rule, only the vaguest idea of any but the most direct consequences of our acts." J.M. Keynes, 1937, 213. (I thank David M. Levy for calling my attention to this piece; see also Craig Friedland's (2008) Chicago Fundamentalism, Singapore.)

Not so long ago, Paul Krugman declared that the Keynesian moment had arrived. It did not happen. President Obama may regret his pragmatic (and disastrous) choice for the corrupt and overrated Larry Summers (rather than Krugman) as director of the White House National Economic Council. But even outside the US, Keynesian policies have not been pursued to the extent advocated by Krugman. (With several years of easy money and large budget deficits there HAS been considerable stimulus, of course!) This suggest we're dealing with more than parochial political balance(s) of power and lack of leadership.  It is worth asking why the Keynesian moment did not arrive (yet). For once I am disinclined to blame a corporate conspiracy (if only because corporations have always appreciated the benefits of Keynesianism.) The obvious answer is that stagflation of the 1970s thoroughly discredited Keynesian views among pragmatic economists--that is, the sort that become advisors to Presidents and prime ministers.

Keynesianism became a technocratic ideology for social engineers to fine-tune the economy.  Stagflation fatally undermined belief in fine-tuning (except at Central Banks, of course, where in the thrall of Milton Friedman's alternative approach to social engineering, they thought that they could manage the money supply and deliver low inflation, moderate growth, and never ending stock market gains--we know where that ended). But as my quote above already suggests, Keynesianism is no Keynes. We can identify three important aspects of Keynes' thought that were lost by his followers (including Krugman, who is too much a student of Samuelson).

History of philosophy as antidote to 'philosophical intuitions'

UPDATE: I further clarify some of the points made here at a different post.

Leiter has a post on an open letter by Bob Pasnau listing reasons why one might choose to specialize in the history of philosophy. I haven’t read all the comments ensuing from Leiter’s post carefully enough, but it is clear that the issue is not only whether specializing in the history of philosophy is a good career move, but more generally whether the history of philosophy is important at all for philosophical inquiry.

Full disclosure: as somebody whose list of publications is composed mostly of historical papers, I am of course not in any way neutral on this matter (and neither is Pasnau, for similar reasons). Even when I am not doing history of philosophy properly speaking, my philosophical analyses tend to be historically-informed: I like to know where the issues I discuss come from, and what other people before me have said on the matter, before I venture voicing my own views. I think there are thousands of arguments on why a philosopher who knows her history of philosophy will almost always be a better philosopher than one who does not, even when doing systematic work, and Pasnau has presented some of them. In a nutshell, the point can be summarized by two famous quotes on the relation between philosophy and its history:

“Philosophy, without its history, is blind, and the history of philosophy, without an understanding of philosophy, is empty.” (a paraphrase of Kant's famous slogan relating concepts and intuitions; not sure what the source is for this exact formulation)

"Philosophy without the history of philosophy, if not empty or blind, is at least dumb." (Sellars)

Nooit meer slapen, or this will make you sleep well at night

So, the Dutch Department of Energy announced that the Dutch Nuclear Reactor facility at Borrsele (on the coast in Dutch Zeeland near Flanders) can withstand flooding that is estimated to occur once in a million years. I have no idea of the uncertainty in those models. But the real shocker is in the claim that the facility is built to withstand an earthquake with a 5.2 magnitude on the Richter scale. The worst recorded earthquake in the Netherlands was 5.8 (in Roermond near the German border in 1992) with another too strong earthquake earlier in the 20th century. Of course, nearby Belgium has experienced a very famous, recorded earthquake that was far worse. I quote the great Dutch natural philosopher: Christiaan Huygens (who was hundreds of kilometers away from the centre): "De stenen vloer waarop ik stond werd enigszins opgetild, en zakte weer in, en dat enige malen gedurende ongeveer tien of twaalf seconden."

Update on the Hungarian philosophers

Stevan Harnad has provided us with this update. (See also Agnes Heller's column in Le Monde). 

Hungary: FUD Campaign and Constitutional Revision 

The harassment campaign against left-liberal philosophers in Hungary might be losing some of its momentum, thanks in part to international protests and scrutiny and in part to the integrity and independence of the Hungarian judiciary. See the ongoing postings on the American Association for the Advancement of Science's ScienceInsider website (following below the Feb 4 article): http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/02/hungarian-academicians-blast-government.html  

There is reason to believe that the open international scrutiny that the philosopher affair has drawn from the German and French press, the Open Letter from 67 external and honorary members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences', the American Philosophical Association's Eastern Division Open Letter, the AAAS Science/Insider and Chercheurs sans Frontières -- scrutiny that the anonymous poster(s) to ScienceInsider as well as Professor Palinkas (who is President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and former minister in the current ruling party's prior term of office) seem to see as interference in Hungarian internal affairs, if not outright obstruction of justice -- may be having a positive influence on the course of events in Hungary.

Hollywood and the War Machine

They filmed part of Battle: Los Angeles in Baton Rouge (thanks to the ridiculous tax breaks the Louisiana establishment gives the film industry the state loses money and gains only low-paying jobs). Roger Ebert disposes of its aesthetic merits in his lede: 

"Battle: Los Angeles" is noisy, violent, ugly and stupid. Its manufacture is a reflection of appalling cynicism on the part of its makers, who don't even try to make it more than senseless chaos.

But what's more interesting is the Hollywood / Pentagon connection. And that on two levels, before we even get into the Military-Nintendo Complex.

There's the overt propaganda level of relentlessly portraying the US military as the good guys, something examined in the documentaries linked above. There we have consciously registered images, plus whatever conscious emotions you might be in touch with.

But the other on the political physiology level. I'm speculating that the assault on the endocrine system by the fast cuts, loud explosions, and chaotic editing Ebert complains about on the aesthetic level also produce a sort of numbing effect after a while. Associating this numbing (pleasurable after the everyday tension of life in neoliberal insecurity) with the US military leads one to associate them with being saviors at a deeper level than consciously registered images, as in the traditional propaganda movie.

If readers can point me to studies of the subpersonal neuro-endocrine effects of these kinds of movies, I'd be very grateful for the leads. 

UPDATE: M 14 March 9:37 am CDT: Andrew Culp reminds me of the work of James Der Derian in this respect. 

Say it ain't so, Professor Nancy Cartwright!

As loyal readers of this blog know, we have been following the LSE-Gadaffi story closely on this blog (and here).The Independent of London runs a useful blog on the story. A passage in the March 13 story, caught my attention and filled me with sadness. Before I quote it without further comment, let me note that Nancy Cartwright is one of the greatest philosophers of science we have, and her work is clearly animated by a strong moral compass:

"Meanwhile, amid continued allegations of plagiarism by Saif Gaddafi, his formal PhD supervisor, Professor Nancy Cartwright, admitted that she could not be entirely confident that he didn't have help with his thesis. "I can hardly be confident that nobody else helped him since there's evidence that he lifted bits, but I'm confident that it isn't in the sense done by anybody else start to finish," she said."

two issues on nukes that get lost at times like this

Nearly every online discussion of the ongoing catastrophe in Japan has focused on the danger of nuke plants in the face of unpredictable events like earthquakes.  That is all well and good, and we would do well to recognize that seismology is a seriously inexact science, that will never give us precise predictions.  But while industry hacks comb the internet arguing with those suggesting prudence, there are two related issues that I would hope do not get lost - issues that have nothing to do with technical details concerning the safety of plants in the face of natural disaster.

Both have to do with the fact that nuclear power is centralizing - indeed, the most centralizing form of energy there is.  That is, it takes enormous capital investment to build, staff, protect, etc. a nuke plant.  This means that it serves to concentrate economic power.  (It also always strengthens the corporatist collaboration of government and big business.)  And it centralizes the distribution of electric power: producing at a single spot and then transmitting via lines to others, which is inherently wasteful.

In addition to all the socio-economic effects of this centralization, there is the fact that such centralized power generation is an open invitation to military attack.  Even if one hasn't the capability to breach containment with a bomb, reliance on nukes invites attacks that leave hundreds of thousands without power.  Every nuke plant, that is, is a giant neon invitation to terrorists.

No technological tweaking is going to change any of this.

This Week's Most Underrated Philosopher: Sarah Hutton

This week's most underrated, Sarah Hutton, teaches (I believe) in the English Department at Aberystwyth University in Wales. She is the great explorer of what one might call the shadow history to the canonical story of Early Modern philosophy. She has written (among other topics) on the great Renaissance and Cambridge Platonists, the Quakers, and the fascinating Anne Conway. Sarah Hutton is an important historian of medicine and she has made many significant scholarly contributions by, for example, editing Cudworth and the Letters between Anne Conway and Henry More. Her contributions are also more social: she is famous for bringing people together in conferences and pioneering volumes.

I am particularly fond of her paper on Emilie du Châtelet which called attention to one of the greatest minds of the eighteenth century; she attempted a creative synthesis of Newton and Leibniz. I remain baffled that people interested in the reception of Leibniz or, say, the long gestation of Kantianism remain ignorant of Voltaire's better half.

Impartiality and Self-command

Alva Noë offers another great contribution to philosophical commentary on contemporary events. Tom Bowles, a reporter, cheered at the Daytona 500's conclusion, when Trevor Bayne became the youngest winner of that storied event. As Alva writes,

in the world of sports reporting, [cheering] is an absolute no no, universally taken to be an inappropriate expression of bias. But he was the only reporter who chose to defend his actions, and indeed to tweet about them afterward. Three days later Sports Illustrated fired him.

Now, Alva uses the event to argue that the nature of impartiality is often misunderstood to mean observing without feeling. Alva quite rightly argues that expertise means that one has cultivated feeling. (Let's conceded for sake of argument that sports reporters are such experts.) Against folk that think of experts as glorified and highly credentialed Weberian bureaucracts (i.e., rule followers), I am in full agreement with Alva. (To drive the point home: having appropriate feelings is constitutive of one's expertise--of course, expertise is more than feelings.)

Nevertheless, I remain ambivalent about Alva's post. I agree with him that much reporting is "spineless," and mistakes sampling two (often pre-packaged) opposed views for objectivity (and impartiality). But as Adam Smith teaches, the impartial spectator (as do great reporters) also ought to have self-command and Bowles apparently lacked that. (If he is an excellent reporter in other respects, I think that should not constitute grounds for dismissal.) So, Bowles should have cheered inwardly (or even let out an appreciative grunt), but he should have kept quiet about it after. That is, it is a sign of expertise that one does not need public approval for one's deeds--living up to the ethos/norms of one's vocation ought to be enough. 

Looking in a Chrystal Ball.

The Sendai Earthquake that hit Japan is already a humanitarian disaster. If the Nuclear Reactors at Fukushima slide into meltdown, which seems increasingly,  an epic catastrophe could well be imminent. (Fukushima is not far from the Japanese industrial heartland.) It is to be hoped this can be avoided.

I suspect this may also be the end of the line for nuclear energy. Nobody can doubt Japanese technological quality--it also has a very deep nuclear infrastructure.  Its science and engineering is second to none, and it has long experience with preparing for earthquakes. Thus, the limits of present-day safety-engineering have been revealed in this earthquake, which seems to have completely overwhelmed back up systems. Because Japan is otherwise entirely dependent on imported oil, one fallout (excuse my language) of this disaster may well be an accelerated drive into renewal and safer energy sources spearheaded by Japan.

Nevada fights back!

This was originally received as a comment but deserves its own post. Many thanks for permission to do so from the writer, Deborah Achtenberg of Nevada Reno.

Faculty, staff and students in Nevada have demonstrated against the savage and unnecessary budget cuts in Nevada. At my institution, the University of Nevada, Reno (where my department, the Department of Philosophy, is not currently threatened), faculty and students rallied to SAVE UNR, OUR PUBLIC UNIVERSITY on March 2, 2011, the National Day of Action in Defense of Public Education; and students in the Las Vegas area demonstrated on the Las Vegas strip in the Shut Down the Strip for Education rally on March 11, 2011. A large statewide student rally will take place in the state capitol, Carson City, on March 21.

Nevada has an active progressive movement, including the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN) which has organized numerous demonstrations at the capitol. PLAN includes a number of labor organizations and a wide variety of non-profits. Another organization active in opposing the budget cuts Is the Nevada Values Coalition. Another active group is Nevadans for Fair Mining Taxes.

We're all in it together and say: DON'T GUT SOCIAL SERVICES AND EDUCATION! FIX THE REVENUE PROBLEM!

Poll at Feminist Philosophers on women's participation in conferences

There is an important poll going on promoted by the Feminist Philosophers, on whether women do indeed decline invitations to be keynote speakers more often than men, and if they do, what might be the reasons. We've been discussing this lately, as many conference organizers and volume editors have been reporting that they did invite women but that many (sometimes all) of them declined. If that's the case indeed, it would be important to try to figure out what mechanisms seem to be involved. So, if you are a female philosopher, go over there to report on your experience!

The collective dimension of science, but only for males

Following up on Eric's posts on conferences committing performative contradictions, here's another one: the collective dimension of science, with an all-male lineup. For the record, let me say that I am a great admirer of the work done by the Nancy people, and I've been an invited speaker at one of their conferences last year. But this is just too ironic...  :(

Paging Doctor Agamben

"Fiscal emergency" bill proposed in Michigan allowing the governor the power to declare a state of exception. "Corporate coup d'état" is not too strong a term.

From the Michigan Messenger: 

[The bill] would give broad new powers to emergency financial managers, who are appointed by the state treasurer. Those powers include the ability to nullify collective bargained agreements, imposition of new agreements for those bargaining units which will have effect for as much as five years after the EMF leaves office and the ability for the manager to dissolve local governing bodies of schools and cities. The EMF would also have the power to eliminate any local ordinance or law he or she decides to eliminate.

When do we get to say "aux barricades"?

UNLV: philosophy & women's studies threatened.

Brian Leiter and we have been reporting about the proposed elimination of the philosophy department and women's studies programs at UNLV. A letter writing campaign is under way (see the Leiter post for more info). These letters do get noticed, by the way, although the views of Nevada voters would probably be more influential in this instance.

This is a very good website with up to date information on the issues.

Philosophy of social science & philosophy of economics

Speaking of petitions to changes to the Gourmet Report, a few years ago Brian Leiter hosted a very good discussion about the status of philosophy of social science and philosophy of economics in the Gourmet report. I'll be curious to see if it had any impact!

A petition to include Philosophy of Race in the Philosophical Gourmet Report

Via Facebook: A petition to include Philosophy of Race in the Gourmet Report.

From the petition: "It is a vibrant and important area of research and deserves full recognition by the report and the professional legitimacy that brings."

Bring It On

Wisconsin Senate Republicans drop all pretense that their attack on public sector unions' collective bargaining rights was about the (phony in any case) budget "crisis" and pass their bill. There will be many legal battles as well as fights on the electoral level with the recall campaigns. Will there also be a general strike? It all depends on the struggle between union leaders who favor the electoral level, and the radical members of the rank-and-file: 

Meanwhile, get ready for more red-baiting.

Brazilian music on Thursdays: 'Esperando na Janela'

One of the hallmarks of Brazilian music is actually the fact that there isn’t really such a thing as ‘Brazilian music’: the variety of rhythms and traditions is astounding and, from the gringo point of view, probably quite disorienting. This is of course related to the generous geography and cultural diversity, but even factoring that in, this diversity is quite impressive.

So today I decided to talk about one of the most popular musical genres in Brazil, forró. Technically, forró is not a musical genre, but rather a dance style, which can be danced to a variety of different but related rhythms; nevertheless, as a generic name, forró is ok to describe this cluster of rhythms. Forró is the quintessential music of the Brazilian Northeastern region, widely popular both in rural and urban areas. It actually developed from European styles of folk music brought over by immigrants in the early 20^th century; tellingly, the prototypical musical instrument for forró is the accordion, which clearly illustrates the connection with its folk European origins. It is danced throughout the year, but is particularly associated with the June festivities (Festa Junina), a big thing in Brazilian popular culture which takes us back to our ‘rural roots’. Forró is very much a rural phenomenon originally, and the songs are often about the sad fate of individuals who must migrate out of their home regions towards the big cities, chased away by drought and hunger (such as in the classic ‘Asa Branca’, here in the voice of its composer, the king of the genre: Luiz Gonzaga).

Draft of a talk on Alva Noe's work: "Out of Our Heads and into Society"

Here's the draft. Comments welcome here or by email.

Here's the website for the lectures, hosted by the Philosophy Department at UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal), and organized by Mathieu Marion. Noë's website is here.

unwilling evil and the piacular...or, on seeing oneself as a cause..

This week I am giving a talk at this workshop on the problem of evil at Notre Dame. My talk will be about Adam Smith (the subject of my dissertation). After a few years away from his writings, I am reading him with fresh eyes. During a very clever talk on moral luck in Smith, by a graduate student (Arizona) Keith Hankins, the following passage caught my renewed attention.

“A man of humanity, who accidentally, and without the smallest degree of blamable negligence, has been the cause of the death of another man, feels himself piacular, though not guilty. During his whole life he considers this accident as one of the greatest misfortunes that could have befallen him. If the family of the slain is poor, and he himself in tolerable circumstances, he immediately takes them under his protection, and, without any other merit, thinks them entitled to every degree of favour and kindness. If they are in better circumstances, he endeavours by every submission, by every expression of sorrow, by rendering them every good office which he can devise or they accept of, to atone for what has happened, and to propitiate, as much as possible, their, perhaps natural, though no doubt most unjust resentment, for the great, though involuntary, offence which he has given them” (The Theory of Moral Sentiments).

My paper will be extended commentary on this passage (not moral luck) because it calls attention to the moral significance of seeing oneself as a cause. I'll try to post highlights after the week-end.

"Belief in Dialogue"....without women.

It must be great to have dialogue,  without half of humanity. (I can't make up this stuff!) Shame on the co-organizers, the British Council and the American University of Sharjah! (A recent CFP circulating online, listed the following as plenary speakers: Andrew Briggs, John Hedley Brooke; Philip Clayton; Paul Davies; William Grassie; Nidhal Guessoum; Salman Hameed; Aref Nayed; Zia Sardar; Jean Staune; Mehdi Golshani; Munawar Anees; and Ronald Numbers.)

It can't wait to learn from irate organizers, who will inform me that the cultural sensitivities of the Gulf hosts should be taken into account and that I should stop being such a anachronistic, colonial ass. (Equality and democracy are clearly for spoiled westerners only.)