TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2018
Oligarchs play to win: Impressively, we're prepared to admit it:
As of today, we're licked!
Yesterday, we previewed today's report in this award-wining fashion: "Truly, where to begin?"
We were scanning a list of 23 points concerning our own team's performance in the recent fight over Justice Kavanaugh. Over Here on our team, everyone knows how badly Trump and Graham have performed. But then again, what about Us? What about the various ways our own instincts (and incentives) have failed us all over again?
We wanted to discuss the endless overstatements—for example, the claims that Kavanaugh had "lied" in various cases where he pretty much hadn't. (Nicholas Kristof! Good God!)
We wanted to discuss the silliness of saying, as we scriptedly do, that "only 2-10 percent" of rape accusations are false. Did we really fail to see that this claim, which few people could explain, doesn't necessarily help the anti-Kavanaugh cause?
We wanted to discuss the absurdity of saying to Orrin Hatch (or to anyone else), "Do you believe women?" (As some journalist sillily did, after Hatch had rudely dismissed several female protesters.) Can you believe that anyone in our tribe still thinks that question makes sense?
We wanted to discuss the fuzziness of the Ramirez charge, at least as filtered through The New Yorker, with gratuitous undermining courtesy of the Times. Moving to the next disastrous step, we wanted to discuss the latest disgraceful lunacy by Michael Avenatti, who has clowned us again and again.
Most horrifically in this general area, we wanted to discuss the way Rachel Maddow treated that unsigned letter from Boulder, Colorado—the unsigned letter which supposedly put a fourth credible charge into play. Has anyone ever played the fool more perfectly than Maddow did that night? If that's what our Rhodes scholars do, what hope can there possibly be for our tribe's rank-and-file?
We wanted to discuss the way Blasey Ford's accusation became publicly known, despite her request for confidentiality. (In her testimony, she seemed to say that she never wanted her charges to be passed on at all.) We wanted to discuss the way Senator Feinstein waited and waited and waited and waited before finally saying, in fairly ridiculous fashion, that she and her staff didn't leak Blasey Ford's charge to the press.
We wanted to discuss the astonishing way Feinstein tried to pin the blame on Blasey Ford's friends when she finally managed to say that she and her staff didn't do it. We wanted to show you who Ryan Grim's reported sources were when he filed this initial report.
(Quoting Grim: "Democratic sources said." He didn't say he got the story from Blasey Ford's friends.)
We wanted to discuss the gong-show discussion Don Lemon led about the insertion of race into a set of Republican accusations (allegedly by "a bunch of old white men") in a case in which everyone was white.
Has there ever been a dumber discussion than the one Lemon led that night? We wanted to show you what conservatives had been hearing on Fox about this reflexive "racialization of everything that happens on the face of the earth" which has now become a low-IQ trademark of our failing tribe.
(We wanted to show you the ages of the "old white men" in question. Did you know that three of the Republican senators on the committee are younger than Lemon is?)
(One of the "old white men," Ted Cruz, is 47 and Hispanic. In fairness, the census would list him as a white Hispanic. When George Zimmerman was described that way, our liberal tribe spilled over with incredulous souls who had never heard of such a thing.)
Are we supposed to "believe the women," as somebody yelled at Hatch? We wanted to tell you what conservatives have been hearing on Fox about the Keith Ellison case in Minnesota, and about our tribe's alleged hypocrisy in that matter. As liberals, we're shielded from hearing about such matters on our own cable channels.
Beyond all this, we wanted to talk about the widely repeated claim that Blasey Ford was "incredibly credible"—the claim that she was "the most credible witness we could possibly have," the claim by a federal prosecutor turned MSNBC legal analyst that he "never had a single witness anywhere near as effective and credible as she was."
On the channel where We Liberals get propagandized every night, claims like that last one were common—and at least six different pundits said that Blasey Ford was "incredibly credible." At times of tribal war like these, tribes feed on overstatement.
For ourselves, we know of no reason to think or believe that Blasey Ford's account is false in any significant way. But we also can't swear that her account is accurate, and we could spend all day describing possible witnesses who would be more effective, through no fault of Blasey Ford's, in a case like this.
That doesn't mean her account is false. It means we're being endlessly propagandized by corporate hacks on Our Own Cable Channels.
Over on Fox, people are often being grotesquely propagandized. (Often, but not always.) But they're also hearing accurate presentations about how phony and foolish we are Over Here. They're hearing that Avenatti is crazy. They're hearing, over and over, that Democrats outed Ford.
Avenatti undercut Blasey Ford badly. Maddow acted like an unsigned, possibly deranged letter from Boulder actually counted as the latest credible accusation. Could she possibly have believed that? Or were we being fed tribal porridge to make us feel tribally good?
On our channels, no one asked how Blasey Ford's account got released despite her express request for confidentiality. We're not a smart or honest tribe. In truth, we aren't especially rational animals, and we're constantly serviced by hacks.
It's been like this for thirty years, through two generations of bullroar. (For 24 years, we twiddled our thumbs as Hillary Clinton got slimed, often in misogynistic ways by our own tribal gods.) Our decades of lazy indifference and vast gullibility have ended with Donald J. Trump in the White House and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court.
That said, to what did we return last night on our own cable channels? To feel-good piddle about the upcoming election—the same kind of piddle we got dumped on our heads back in 2016.
Back then, Hillary Clinton couldn't possibly lose. Last night, the hacks were saying there was no way we could lose this election.
We're silly and hapless and not very smart. The oligarchs are happy to see us like this. As Plato understood all too well, oligarchs play to win.
THE RATIONAL ANIMALS FILE: The Others showed symptoms of True Belief!
MONDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2018
But then, so did We Over Here: To appearances, many rational animals had little trouble deciding who to believe.
On Sunday morning, September 30, some of these “rationals” called C-Span's Washington Journal. They believed that Kavanaugh was telling the truth. They didn't believe Blasey Ford.
As we noted last Wednesday and then again Thursday, these callers didn't strike us as being enormously rational. There was no apparent basis on which they could be sure that Blasey Ford's account was false. But they seemed to be callers from the Trump right—and they seemed inclined to express "true belief" in the player who played for their side.
This behavior is less than perfectly rational, but it's extremely common “human” behavior. Indeed, such behavior even occurs Over Here, within our own liberal tribe.
Did Kavanaugh assault Blasey Ford, in the manner she has described, when she was just 15? If you gave us money and told us to bet, we would bet that he did—but we can’t say we’d be sure.
We'd bet that Blasey Ford's account is accurate, but we can't say we know it is. Nor do we agree with what Jennifer Granholm said on CNN's Cuomo Prime Time, four days after Kavanaugh and Blasey Ford testified.
Granholm is very smart. In our view, she's one of the brightest pundits or politicians you'll ever see on TV.
Granholm graduated from Harvard Law School; she was elected governor of Michigan twice. Despite these problems, she's very sharp—but we don't agree with this statement, which came to us, live and direct, from one of our tribe's most dominant scripts over the past few weeks:
That said, we can assume that Granholm was also describing her own view of Blasey Ford's testimony. One day before, on the September 30 State of the Union, she had described Blasey Ford as "the most credible witness we could possibly have."
We definitely don't agree with that statement. Indeed, it strikes us as utterly daft.
Was Blasey Ford "the most credible witness we could possibly have?" That statement strikes us as daft. That doesn't mean that Blasey Ford's allegations were false. But it does mean this:
In our view, Granholm's statement helps show that our tribe exhibited symptoms of true belief in the course of this ugly episode. Those C-Span callers displayed True Belief, but so did we, Over Here.
Was Blasey Ford "the most credible witness we could possibly have?" Perhaps through no fault of Blasey Ford', the assessment is absurd on its face, as anyone can see on perhaps ten seconds' reflection.
We'll proceed to that question tomorrow. For today, let's consider the ugliness of this debate, and the nature of true belief.
In our view, the bulk of the ugliness in this debate came from—who else?—Donald Trump.
At various points in the past several weeks, Trump somehow managed to rein in his demented, disordered instincts. He even said, one day after Blasey Ford testified, that he found her testimony "very compelling" and “very credible.”
To Trump, she seemed like a very fine woman. This was Trump’s fuller statement, from a Rose Garden press event:
As he continued, he said he hadn’t considered withdrawing his nomination of Kavanaugh, “not even a little bit.” He wasn’t asked to explain the possible contradictions in this various things he had said.
Trump was on his best behavior during large chunks of this process. But before and after that Rose Garden session, he engaged in his standard ugly behavior. He snarked at Blasey Ford’s “loving parents;” he mocked Blasey Ford herself for things she says she can’t remember, misstating basic facts as he did.
That was Standard Trump. Through twenty-six years of incompetent, sub-rational and frequently dishonest behavior, leading stars of our own liberal tribe worked to create the situation in which he now sits in the Oval Office, having filled two seats (so far) on the Supreme Court.
Rational animals within our own liberal rank and file still don’t understand the facts of this ugly, 26-year process. (We’re dating it from January 1992 through November 2018.) However rational we liberals may be, we’re also amazingly easy to fool, as are many rational animals in The Other Tribe.
On Sunday morning, September 30, rational animals from Trump’s own tribe flooded C-Span with phone calls expressing their true belief. That said, they’d heard a lot of things from their tribal news orgs which we liberals had been sheltered from Over Here, within our own tribal news orgs.
Those callers had been given lots of reasons, some of them sensible, to doubt Blasey Ford’s account. They’d also been given many reasons to disregard the various things our own liberal leaders were saying, some of which bordered on daft or perhaps dishonest.
Within this ugly, stupid context, one of our smartest leaders appeared on CNN and made an implausible statement about Balsey Ford. For the rest of the week, we’ll be exploring the ways our own tribe has failed.
Warning! The Others have been told about the ways our leaders failed. As we've watched our darlings Rachel and Lawrence, we liberals have been kept in the dark—propagandized, to employ a key word.
Plato didn’t believe in rule by us the rabble. Those calls to C-Span buttressed his point—but so did a great deal of conduct Over Here in our own sub-rational tribe.
Tomorrow: Truly, where to begin?
But then, so did We Over Here: To appearances, many rational animals had little trouble deciding who to believe.
On Sunday morning, September 30, some of these “rationals” called C-Span's Washington Journal. They believed that Kavanaugh was telling the truth. They didn't believe Blasey Ford.
As we noted last Wednesday and then again Thursday, these callers didn't strike us as being enormously rational. There was no apparent basis on which they could be sure that Blasey Ford's account was false. But they seemed to be callers from the Trump right—and they seemed inclined to express "true belief" in the player who played for their side.
This behavior is less than perfectly rational, but it's extremely common “human” behavior. Indeed, such behavior even occurs Over Here, within our own liberal tribe.
Did Kavanaugh assault Blasey Ford, in the manner she has described, when she was just 15? If you gave us money and told us to bet, we would bet that he did—but we can’t say we’d be sure.
We'd bet that Blasey Ford's account is accurate, but we can't say we know it is. Nor do we agree with what Jennifer Granholm said on CNN's Cuomo Prime Time, four days after Kavanaugh and Blasey Ford testified.
Granholm is very smart. In our view, she's one of the brightest pundits or politicians you'll ever see on TV.
Granholm graduated from Harvard Law School; she was elected governor of Michigan twice. Despite these problems, she's very sharp—but we don't agree with this statement, which came to us, live and direct, from one of our tribe's most dominant scripts over the past few weeks:
GRANHOLM (10/1/18): The part that's so frustrating about this is that we have a woman who gets up there and takes an oath and who comes across to most people as incredibly credible. I'm not sure that's the right thing to say, but as amazingly credible.Let's be fair! In that statement, Granholm described how Blasey Ford "came across to most people." She didn't say how Blasey Ford had seemed to her—to Granholm herself.
That said, we can assume that Granholm was also describing her own view of Blasey Ford's testimony. One day before, on the September 30 State of the Union, she had described Blasey Ford as "the most credible witness we could possibly have."
We definitely don't agree with that statement. Indeed, it strikes us as utterly daft.
Was Blasey Ford "the most credible witness we could possibly have?" That statement strikes us as daft. That doesn't mean that Blasey Ford's allegations were false. But it does mean this:
In our view, Granholm's statement helps show that our tribe exhibited symptoms of true belief in the course of this ugly episode. Those C-Span callers displayed True Belief, but so did we, Over Here.
Was Blasey Ford "the most credible witness we could possibly have?" Perhaps through no fault of Blasey Ford', the assessment is absurd on its face, as anyone can see on perhaps ten seconds' reflection.
We'll proceed to that question tomorrow. For today, let's consider the ugliness of this debate, and the nature of true belief.
In our view, the bulk of the ugliness in this debate came from—who else?—Donald Trump.
At various points in the past several weeks, Trump somehow managed to rein in his demented, disordered instincts. He even said, one day after Blasey Ford testified, that he found her testimony "very compelling" and “very credible.”
To Trump, she seemed like a very fine woman. This was Trump’s fuller statement, from a Rose Garden press event:
TRUMP (9/28/18): I thought her testimony was very compelling, and she looks like a very fine woman to me. A very fine woman.Trump said that Blasey Ford’s testimony was “very credible.” He said that Kavanaugh’s testimony was “incredible,” though he probably didn’t mean it that way.
And I thought that Brett's testimony, likewise, was really something that I haven't seen before. It was incredible. It was an incredible moment, I think, in the history of our country.
But certainly she was a very credible witness. She was very good in many respects.
As he continued, he said he hadn’t considered withdrawing his nomination of Kavanaugh, “not even a little bit.” He wasn’t asked to explain the possible contradictions in this various things he had said.
Trump was on his best behavior during large chunks of this process. But before and after that Rose Garden session, he engaged in his standard ugly behavior. He snarked at Blasey Ford’s “loving parents;” he mocked Blasey Ford herself for things she says she can’t remember, misstating basic facts as he did.
That was Standard Trump. Through twenty-six years of incompetent, sub-rational and frequently dishonest behavior, leading stars of our own liberal tribe worked to create the situation in which he now sits in the Oval Office, having filled two seats (so far) on the Supreme Court.
Rational animals within our own liberal rank and file still don’t understand the facts of this ugly, 26-year process. (We’re dating it from January 1992 through November 2018.) However rational we liberals may be, we’re also amazingly easy to fool, as are many rational animals in The Other Tribe.
On Sunday morning, September 30, rational animals from Trump’s own tribe flooded C-Span with phone calls expressing their true belief. That said, they’d heard a lot of things from their tribal news orgs which we liberals had been sheltered from Over Here, within our own tribal news orgs.
Those callers had been given lots of reasons, some of them sensible, to doubt Blasey Ford’s account. They’d also been given many reasons to disregard the various things our own liberal leaders were saying, some of which bordered on daft or perhaps dishonest.
Within this ugly, stupid context, one of our smartest leaders appeared on CNN and made an implausible statement about Balsey Ford. For the rest of the week, we’ll be exploring the ways our own tribe has failed.
Warning! The Others have been told about the ways our leaders failed. As we've watched our darlings Rachel and Lawrence, we liberals have been kept in the dark—propagandized, to employ a key word.
Plato didn’t believe in rule by us the rabble. Those calls to C-Span buttressed his point—but so did a great deal of conduct Over Here in our own sub-rational tribe.
Tomorrow: Truly, where to begin?
BREAKING: Ludicrous dog park study gets published!
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2018
But so did that Godel book: Warning! The study we're about to discuss was a deliberate hoax.
Still and all, the phony study got published! In a front-page report in yesterday's New York Times, Jennifer Schluesser described the contents of the faux study, which came to us, live and direct, from imaginary dog parks in a real American city:
Oof! The data in question were fake. People can judge the concepts involved in the fake study for themselves.
To some, the concepts seem absurd on their face. Still and all, the fake study got published as part of an overall hoaxer event.
At the start of yesterday's news report, Schuessler provides this overview of the hoax. She includies her first capsule account of the dog park dogmatics:
We can answer that question! (Some) men like to eat at such places because they lack sexual politics—because they've never developed grown-up views concerning boys and girls.
That said, the phony studies described in that passage were part of an "elaborate prank" in which the hoaxers submitted twenty such studies to various journals over the course of nearly a year.
According to Schuessler, the hoaxers "said that four papers had been published [and] three had been accepted but not yet published" when the hoax came to light.
"Seven [more] were under review and six had been rejected." Or at least, so Schuessler was told by the hoaxers—who, it must be remembered, are hoaxers, after all.
This hoax has already been widely discussed. Different people have different ideas as to what it may mean.
Slate's Daniel Engber isn't impressed by the hoaxers' point of view and conclusions. For ourselves, we were struck by one of the comments recorded by Schuessler:
The book in question is Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel. The book was written by Rebecca Goldstein, the high-ranking philosophy professor and highly regarded novelist.
In his blurb, Pinker hailed Goldstein's book as "a gem—the gripping story of a momentous idea." He said Goldstein had produced "not just a lucid exposition of Godel's brainchild but a satisfying and original narrative of the ideas and people it touched."
We're not saying that's wrong. We are saying this—there's nothing in those hoax studies which is any more ludicrous than this passage from The New Yorker's review of Goldstein's well-received book:
Has this alleged doctrine "always been popular among mathematicians," including those of the 1930s? Goldstein says the same thing, and it seems to be true.
Friend, nothing which appears in those hoax studies is any more ridiculous than the (unexplained) idea that numbers and circles have a perfect, timeless existence independent of the human mind. And even though the formulation posted above was written by Jim Holt, a widely lauded science/math writer, we'd say that it's a fair account of Goldstein's own gobbledygook, which extends far and wide in all sorts of directions.
We expect to spend the next week reviewing the way the Kavanaugh nomination fight unfolded. That fight produced a series of sobering insights into the way our nation's highly non-rational public discourse works.
After that, we expect to return to the larger story we're presenting under the heading "Aristotle's error." Eventually, we'll discuss the (hard-to-read but highly instructive) work of the later Wittgenstein.
In our view, the later Wittgenstein said that most of the work of western philosophy has come to us, live and direct, from the clownish, hoaxer realm of those Portland, Oregon dog parks. And yes—in the end, this connects back to the pitiful, pre-rational way our nation's public discourse has unfolded over the past thirty years.
That jumbled, wholly incompetent discourse has left us with Trump in the White House. Over here in the liberal world, we rail about the consequences of that state of affairs without displaying the slightest ability to understand the way our own enfeebled tribe has helped put Trump where he is.
We're lazy and stupid and nobody likes us except in Oregon dog parks! Those hoax studies are intended to point in that general direction, but so will the rest of our work concerning Aristotle's error and Professor Harari's bracing alternate view.
Those hoax studies were comically awful. So is the bulk of traditional western philosophy, or so Wittgenstein clumsily said.
Professor Horwich has our backs. We suspect he's gotten it right!
But so did that Godel book: Warning! The study we're about to discuss was a deliberate hoax.
Still and all, the phony study got published! In a front-page report in yesterday's New York Times, Jennifer Schluesser described the contents of the faux study, which came to us, live and direct, from imaginary dog parks in a real American city:
SCHUESSLER (10/5/18): In “Human Reactions to Rape Culture and Queer Performativity at Urban Dog Parks in Portland, Ore.,"...the study purported to observe dogs having sex, and how their owners reacted, to draw conclusions about humans’ sexual attitudes.The faux author of the faux study was called "Helen Wilson." She acknowledged the fact that, because of her own situatedness as a human, she was limited in her ability to categorize incidents of dog sex.
Humans intervened 97 percent of the time when male dogs were “raping/humping” other male dogs, the paper said. But when a male dog was mating with a female, humans intervened only 32 percent of the time and actually laughed out loud 18 percent of the time.
The paper’s author cautioned: “Because of my own situatedness as a human, rather than as a dog, I recognize my limitations in being able to determine when an incidence of dog humping qualifies as rape.”
Oof! The data in question were fake. People can judge the concepts involved in the fake study for themselves.
To some, the concepts seem absurd on their face. Still and all, the fake study got published as part of an overall hoaxer event.
At the start of yesterday's news report, Schuessler provides this overview of the hoax. She includies her first capsule account of the dog park dogmatics:
SCHUESSLER: One paper, published in a journal called Sex Roles, said that the author had conducted a two-year study involving “thematic analysis of table dialogue” to uncover the mystery of why heterosexual men like to eat at Hooters.Just for the record, why do (some) "heterosexual men like to eat at Hooters" and other such "breastaurants?" (The hoaxers actually used that term in their pseudo-study.)
Another, from a journal of feminist geography, parsed “human reactions to rape culture and queer performativity” at dog parks in Portland, Ore., while a third paper, published in a journal of feminist social work and titled “Our Struggle Is My Struggle,” simply scattered some up-to-date jargon into passages lifted from Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.”
Such offerings may or may not have raised eyebrows among the journals’ limited readerships. But this week, they unleashed a cascade of mockery—along with a torrent of debate about ethics of hoaxes, the state of peer review and the excesses of academia—when they were revealed to be part of an elaborate prank aimed squarely at what the authors labeled “grievance studies.”
“Something has gone wrong in the university—especially in certain fields within the humanities,” the three authors of the fake papers wrote in an article in the online journal Areo explaining what they had done.
We can answer that question! (Some) men like to eat at such places because they lack sexual politics—because they've never developed grown-up views concerning boys and girls.
That said, the phony studies described in that passage were part of an "elaborate prank" in which the hoaxers submitted twenty such studies to various journals over the course of nearly a year.
According to Schuessler, the hoaxers "said that four papers had been published [and] three had been accepted but not yet published" when the hoax came to light.
"Seven [more] were under review and six had been rejected." Or at least, so Schuessler was told by the hoaxers—who, it must be remembered, are hoaxers, after all.
This hoax has already been widely discussed. Different people have different ideas as to what it may mean.
Slate's Daniel Engber isn't impressed by the hoaxers' point of view and conclusions. For ourselves, we were struck by one of the comments recorded by Schuessler:
SCHUESSLER: Embarrassed journal editors quickly stamped the word “Retracted” across published papers this week, while the hoax drew appreciation from scholars who tend to be skeptical of work focusing on race, gender, sexuality and other forms of identity."Not so fast, Pinker!" one analyst cried. "In 2005, you approvingly blurbed Professor Goldstein's book!"
“Is there any idea so outlandish that it won’t be published in a Critical/PoMo/Identity/‘Theory’ journal?” the psychologist and author Steven Pinker tweeted.
Yascha Mounk, a political scientist at Harvard, called the hoax “hilarious and delightful” on Twitter. In an interview, he said of the authors, “What they have shown is that certain journals, and perhaps to an extent certain fields, can’t distinguish between serious scholarship and a ridiculous intellectual hoax.”
The book in question is Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Godel. The book was written by Rebecca Goldstein, the high-ranking philosophy professor and highly regarded novelist.
In his blurb, Pinker hailed Goldstein's book as "a gem—the gripping story of a momentous idea." He said Goldstein had produced "not just a lucid exposition of Godel's brainchild but a satisfying and original narrative of the ideas and people it touched."
We're not saying that's wrong. We are saying this—there's nothing in those hoax studies which is any more ludicrous than this passage from The New Yorker's review of Goldstein's well-received book:
HOLT (2/28/05): Gödel entered the University of Vienna in 1924. He had intended to study physics, but he was soon seduced by the beauties of mathematics, and especially by the notion that abstractions like numbers and circles had a perfect, timeless existence independent of the human mind. This doctrine, which is called Platonism, because it descends from Plato’s theory of ideas, has always been popular among mathematicians.Friend, was Godel seduced by "the notion that abstractions like numbers and circles had a perfect, timeless existence independent of the human mind?" (Goldstein refers to numbers and circles as "abstract objects.")
Has this alleged doctrine "always been popular among mathematicians," including those of the 1930s? Goldstein says the same thing, and it seems to be true.
Friend, nothing which appears in those hoax studies is any more ridiculous than the (unexplained) idea that numbers and circles have a perfect, timeless existence independent of the human mind. And even though the formulation posted above was written by Jim Holt, a widely lauded science/math writer, we'd say that it's a fair account of Goldstein's own gobbledygook, which extends far and wide in all sorts of directions.
We expect to spend the next week reviewing the way the Kavanaugh nomination fight unfolded. That fight produced a series of sobering insights into the way our nation's highly non-rational public discourse works.
After that, we expect to return to the larger story we're presenting under the heading "Aristotle's error." Eventually, we'll discuss the (hard-to-read but highly instructive) work of the later Wittgenstein.
In our view, the later Wittgenstein said that most of the work of western philosophy has come to us, live and direct, from the clownish, hoaxer realm of those Portland, Oregon dog parks. And yes—in the end, this connects back to the pitiful, pre-rational way our nation's public discourse has unfolded over the past thirty years.
That jumbled, wholly incompetent discourse has left us with Trump in the White House. Over here in the liberal world, we rail about the consequences of that state of affairs without displaying the slightest ability to understand the way our own enfeebled tribe has helped put Trump where he is.
We're lazy and stupid and nobody likes us except in Oregon dog parks! Those hoax studies are intended to point in that general direction, but so will the rest of our work concerning Aristotle's error and Professor Harari's bracing alternate view.
Those hoax studies were comically awful. So is the bulk of traditional western philosophy, or so Wittgenstein clumsily said.
Professor Horwich has our backs. We suspect he's gotten it right!
THE RATIONAL ANIMALS FILE: Obviously, scribe absolutely believes!
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2018
Two unexplained key words: Do you believe it? Do you believe that Brett Kavanaugh assaulted Christine Blasey Ford—then Christine Blasey, age 15—in the manner Blasey Ford has described?
As of last Sunday morning, it seemed fairly clear that several callers to C-Span's Washington Journal didn't believe Blasey Ford. What did they think of Blasey Ford, and of her allegations?
Allen from Ohio said, "She's not credible. Not credible at all." He based his assessment on his experiences with "professors and people with Ph.D.'s," who "can be a little goofy."
Philip from North Carolina had a somewhat similar view. "I don't believe her. She just doesn't have credibility," Philip said. "Maybe she believes that was Kavanaugh, but it wasn't." Full stop!
The very next caller, Sarah from Texas, didn't believe Blasey Ford either. "To come on TV and act like she did, I think she's a disgrace to the women," Sarah from Texas said. "And I believe that Kavanaugh is telling the truth."
Allen, Philip and Sarah directly said that they don't believe Blasey Ford, or that they do believe Kavanaugh. Others denigrated Blasey Ford without explicitly saying that they don't believe her account.
According to Jim from Delaware, Blasey Ford had been "drawn out of the woodwork" as part of "this, the whole conspiracy to keep Kavanaugh or anybody that is nominated by Trump off the court." Howard from Florida hotly complained that Blasey Ford, and one of her lawyers, had attended last year's women's march—and that the lawyer had made an incriminating statement in a speech at that march.
(Note: Blasey Ford didn't attend the march. We find no report that the lawyer attended, or of the lawyer's alleged statement.)
Carol from New York wanted an investigation of Blasey Fork's "drinking habits" and "drinking background." She speculated that Blasey Ford may have been too drunk to identify her attacker on the night of the alleged attack.
Jacqueline from Philadelphia complained that, if she herself had a doctorate, "I don't think I would be speaking in that teeny-tiny voice. I noticed that right away."
(Note: In fairness, Carol also said she wasn't sure that she liked Kavanaugh's crying. Also in fairness, a full investigation of Blasey Ford's claims probably would include an attempt to determine how much she drank on the evening in question, though it isn't obvious how such a thing could be determined.)
We listened to the first dozen calls to Sunday's Washington Journal. By that time, 7:30 AM Eastern, several analysts had gone catatonic. Skillfully, we turned the TV off and addressed their needs.
At any rate, quite a few callers seemed fairly sure that Blasey Ford's account was inaccurate, though none of these callers were asked to explain the basis for their apparent certainty. As a general matter, C-Span offers an open, welcoming forum for callers. Each caller is allowed to state his or her views, full stop.
Under this system, factual claims go unchallenged, even if they're inflammatory or prejudicial or almost surely false. Statements of belief, including so-called true belief, go unchallenged too.
On what basis did these callers believe that Blasey Ford's account was wrong? No one was asked to say, and the logic of the callers' presentations often came live and direct from la-la land. That said, this happens whenever C-Span opens its lines for viewer calls.
Here as elsewhere, these open phone segments tend to draw the curtain back concerning our ballyhooed human nature. That said, these callers are "regular people"—Joe and Josephine Sixpacks. They don't possess the special skills of our high journalistic class.
That said: Long before last Sunday's forum, we were struck by a pair of statements by a major national journalist.
The analysts woke us on Tuesday, September 18 to report an emergency sighting. Possibly behaving a bit like those unschooled C-Span callers, Michelle Goldberg had started her column in that day's New York Times with a somewhat puzzling statement—a statement anchored by a somewhat puzzling word:
Goldberg didn't say that she was inclined to believe Blasey Ford. She didn't say that she believed Blasey Ford at that point on balance. She didn't even say she believed Blasey Ford, full stop, and leave her statement at that.
Instead, she said she believed Blasey Ford's account—and she started with the word "obviously." She never explained where that word had come from. Nor had her editor required an explanation.
Later in her column, Goldberg said that Kavanaugh had been "credibly accused of attempted rape." As things have turned out, we'd say that statement turned out to be perfectly accurate. But "credible" isn't the same thing as "true." How did "credible" get us to "obviously" at roughly the speed of light?
Goldberg didn't explain. Two days later, she wrote on the topic again. Again, an unexplained word:
Our analysts went catatonic as they listened to those C-Span callers this Sunday. Several of the analysts even cursed sacred Aristotle, the mental giant who memorably said 1) that all matter was made of four elements plus the heavenly aether, and 2) that we humans are "the rational animal"—or at least, so he's said to have said.
That "rational animal" characterization is part of the western canon. That said, to what extent are we humans defined by our "rational" nature?
It's easy to be hard on the follies of C-Span's less than perfectly rational callers, especially those who hail from the other tribe. It may be harder to see the problems when they strike a bit closer to home, and when they strike at authority figures in the academy or in the upper-end "press."
It may be hard to see the problem when our team leaps to true belief. To see the way this may help our oligarchs tighten their grip on the world.
Coming next: "Incredibly credible," a raft of pundits said
Two unexplained key words: Do you believe it? Do you believe that Brett Kavanaugh assaulted Christine Blasey Ford—then Christine Blasey, age 15—in the manner Blasey Ford has described?
As of last Sunday morning, it seemed fairly clear that several callers to C-Span's Washington Journal didn't believe Blasey Ford. What did they think of Blasey Ford, and of her allegations?
Allen from Ohio said, "She's not credible. Not credible at all." He based his assessment on his experiences with "professors and people with Ph.D.'s," who "can be a little goofy."
Philip from North Carolina had a somewhat similar view. "I don't believe her. She just doesn't have credibility," Philip said. "Maybe she believes that was Kavanaugh, but it wasn't." Full stop!
The very next caller, Sarah from Texas, didn't believe Blasey Ford either. "To come on TV and act like she did, I think she's a disgrace to the women," Sarah from Texas said. "And I believe that Kavanaugh is telling the truth."
Allen, Philip and Sarah directly said that they don't believe Blasey Ford, or that they do believe Kavanaugh. Others denigrated Blasey Ford without explicitly saying that they don't believe her account.
According to Jim from Delaware, Blasey Ford had been "drawn out of the woodwork" as part of "this, the whole conspiracy to keep Kavanaugh or anybody that is nominated by Trump off the court." Howard from Florida hotly complained that Blasey Ford, and one of her lawyers, had attended last year's women's march—and that the lawyer had made an incriminating statement in a speech at that march.
(Note: Blasey Ford didn't attend the march. We find no report that the lawyer attended, or of the lawyer's alleged statement.)
Carol from New York wanted an investigation of Blasey Fork's "drinking habits" and "drinking background." She speculated that Blasey Ford may have been too drunk to identify her attacker on the night of the alleged attack.
Jacqueline from Philadelphia complained that, if she herself had a doctorate, "I don't think I would be speaking in that teeny-tiny voice. I noticed that right away."
(Note: In fairness, Carol also said she wasn't sure that she liked Kavanaugh's crying. Also in fairness, a full investigation of Blasey Ford's claims probably would include an attempt to determine how much she drank on the evening in question, though it isn't obvious how such a thing could be determined.)
We listened to the first dozen calls to Sunday's Washington Journal. By that time, 7:30 AM Eastern, several analysts had gone catatonic. Skillfully, we turned the TV off and addressed their needs.
At any rate, quite a few callers seemed fairly sure that Blasey Ford's account was inaccurate, though none of these callers were asked to explain the basis for their apparent certainty. As a general matter, C-Span offers an open, welcoming forum for callers. Each caller is allowed to state his or her views, full stop.
Under this system, factual claims go unchallenged, even if they're inflammatory or prejudicial or almost surely false. Statements of belief, including so-called true belief, go unchallenged too.
On what basis did these callers believe that Blasey Ford's account was wrong? No one was asked to say, and the logic of the callers' presentations often came live and direct from la-la land. That said, this happens whenever C-Span opens its lines for viewer calls.
Here as elsewhere, these open phone segments tend to draw the curtain back concerning our ballyhooed human nature. That said, these callers are "regular people"—Joe and Josephine Sixpacks. They don't possess the special skills of our high journalistic class.
That said: Long before last Sunday's forum, we were struck by a pair of statements by a major national journalist.
The analysts woke us on Tuesday, September 18 to report an emergency sighting. Possibly behaving a bit like those unschooled C-Span callers, Michelle Goldberg had started her column in that day's New York Times with a somewhat puzzling statement—a statement anchored by a somewhat puzzling word:
GOLDBERG (9/18/18): Obviously, I believe Christine Blasey Ford, the psychology professor who says that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in high school while his friend Mark Judge watched and, at moments, egged him on. I believe her when she says that Kavanaugh, who she says was drunk, held her down, covered her mouth when she tried to scream, and ground against her while attempting to pull her clothes off. I believe her when she says this incident haunted her all her life.Blasey Ford's name had appeared in the Times on Monday, September 17 for the very first time. One day later, Goldberg was saying who she believed—and she began with an unexplained word.
Goldberg didn't say that she was inclined to believe Blasey Ford. She didn't say that she believed Blasey Ford at that point on balance. She didn't even say she believed Blasey Ford, full stop, and leave her statement at that.
Instead, she said she believed Blasey Ford's account—and she started with the word "obviously." She never explained where that word had come from. Nor had her editor required an explanation.
Later in her column, Goldberg said that Kavanaugh had been "credibly accused of attempted rape." As things have turned out, we'd say that statement turned out to be perfectly accurate. But "credible" isn't the same thing as "true." How did "credible" get us to "obviously" at roughly the speed of light?
Goldberg didn't explain. Two days later, she wrote on the topic again. Again, an unexplained word:
GOLDBERG (9/20/18): Whether you believe Blasey or not—I absolutely do—something happened when she was 15 that damaged her. A friend from her teenage years told The New York Times how, after the alleged attack, the formerly outgoing, popular girl “fell off the face of the earth socially.” Much later, The Wall Street Journal reported, she told another friend that she needed more than one door in her bedroom to avoid feeling trapped. She sought therapy for what she experienced, and reportedly confided in her husband and in at least one friend well before Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination.Now, Goldberg "absolutely" believed Blasey Ford. She based this assessment on at least one reported fact which seems to have turned out to be mistaken. A more important claim was attributed to Blasey Ford's husband. It bore the key qualifier, "reportedly."
Our analysts went catatonic as they listened to those C-Span callers this Sunday. Several of the analysts even cursed sacred Aristotle, the mental giant who memorably said 1) that all matter was made of four elements plus the heavenly aether, and 2) that we humans are "the rational animal"—or at least, so he's said to have said.
That "rational animal" characterization is part of the western canon. That said, to what extent are we humans defined by our "rational" nature?
It's easy to be hard on the follies of C-Span's less than perfectly rational callers, especially those who hail from the other tribe. It may be harder to see the problems when they strike a bit closer to home, and when they strike at authority figures in the academy or in the upper-end "press."
It may be hard to see the problem when our team leaps to true belief. To see the way this may help our oligarchs tighten their grip on the world.
Coming next: "Incredibly credible," a raft of pundits said
THE RATIONAL ANIMALS FILE: C-Span callers know who they believe!
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2018
Rational animals, 2500 years later: Long ago and far away—indeed, it was at the dawn of the west—Plato's Socrates established several of the most basic norms which inform western thought, to the extent that that critter exists.
Today, some 2500 years later, we largely observe these norms in the breach. Despite our allegedly rational nature, we might almost seem to be a species of extremely slow learners.
To what norms do we refer? One concerns skepticism concerning intellectual or clerical authority.
Professor Lee provides the background to this foundational tale in his widely-respected "Translator's Introduction." The story starts with a proclamation by the oracle at Delphi:
"His method of doing so was to cross-question people he met about their beliefs," Lee writes as he continues. In the Apology, Plato's Socrates, on trial for his life, tells a foundational tale:
But alas! Wherever he went, Socrates found that people with reputations for wisdom actually had no wisdom at all. But these people falsely believed themselves to be wise, and thus were less wise than he.
Beyond that, they hated Socrates for suggesting otherwise. Did we mention the fact that he was on trial for his life?
In the end, Socrates acknowledged that the oracle had gotten it right this time. As it turned out, he actually was wiser than all these others because, while he had no wisdom to speak of, he at least knew that he wasn't wise. The other people believed they were wise, when they actually weren't.
In this foundational tale, Plato's Socrates establishes a preference for the three dirty words you can't say on (cable) TV: "I don't know." He knew that he himself lacked wisdom. The various people with whom he spoke—politicians, poets and artisans—didn't know this about themselves, and in that sense were less wise.
In this foundational tale, Socrates establishes the principle of skepticism in the face of intellectual or clerical authority. Beyond that, he establishes the importance of being able to recognize and acknowledge how much you yourself don't know.
He establishes the idea that wise people know that they often don't know. Twenty-five hundred years later, this principle is observed in the breach all over our floundering public discourse. Consider what happened on C-Span's Washington Journal when Steve Scully fielded the phone calls to which we referred in yesterday's report.
As we noted, many of Scully's callers delivered orations which may not have been perfectly "rational" in every conceivable way. But in that first dozen calls, no one voiced uncertainty about who they should believe in the current contradiction between Professor Ford and Judge Kavanaugh.
Callers spilled with certainty concerning these contradictory accounts! Yesterday, we showed you substantial chunks of the comments made by callers 2, 3, 7, 11 and 12. Today, let's consider callers 8, 9 and 10, focusing on their certainty about whose account should be believed. To hear all calls, click here.
Caller 8 was Philip from North Carolina, on the Republicans line. Rather plainly, he felt he knew whose account was correct, but he never said how he knew:
The next call came in on the Democrats line. This caller seemed quite sure too:
Sarah from Texas came next. She expressed high certainty too:
Late Sunday evening, Socrates visited us in our spartan founder's quarters in an almost dreamlike incident. "Why did I waste my time back then?" the great elucidator somewhat mournfully said.
Those three dirty words—"I don't know"—were never uttered by Scully's callers. That said, the immortal Socrates proceeded to caution us thusly:
"It's easy for you modern liberals to roll your eyes at the Philips and Sarahs," he thoughtfully said. "But many of your biggest stars have been playing the game this way too!"
Tomorrow: "Incredibly credible"
Rational animals, 2500 years later: Long ago and far away—indeed, it was at the dawn of the west—Plato's Socrates established several of the most basic norms which inform western thought, to the extent that that critter exists.
Today, some 2500 years later, we largely observe these norms in the breach. Despite our allegedly rational nature, we might almost seem to be a species of extremely slow learners.
To what norms do we refer? One concerns skepticism concerning intellectual or clerical authority.
Professor Lee provides the background to this foundational tale in his widely-respected "Translator's Introduction." The story starts with a proclamation by the oracle at Delphi:
LEE: The oracle at Delphi, in response to an inquiry by one of [Socrates'] admirers, had said that he was the wisest man in Greece. Socrates was sure that he was not, and set out to prove the oracle wrong.At the very dawn of the west, in a foundational act, Socrates set out to prove the oracle wrong!
"His method of doing so was to cross-question people he met about their beliefs," Lee writes as he continues. In the Apology, Plato's Socrates, on trial for his life, tells a foundational tale:
SOCRATES OF ATHENS (399 BC): When I heard [what the oracle had said], I said to myself, What can the god mean? and what is the interpretation of this riddle? for I know that I have no wisdom, small or great. What can he mean when he says that I am the wisest of men? And yet he is a god and cannot lie; that would be against his nature.Socrates knew that he himself had no wisdom. In order to prove the oracle wrong, he set out to locate someone who did!
After a long consideration, I at last thought of a method of trying the question. I reflected that if I could only find a man wiser than myself, then I might go to the god with a refutation in my hand. I should say to him, "Here is a man who is wiser than I am; but you said that I was the wisest."
Accordingly, I went to one who had the reputation of wisdom, and observed to him—his name I need not mention; he was a politician whom I selected for examination—and the result was as follows:
When I began to talk with him, I could not help thinking that he was not really wise, although he was thought wise by many, and wiser still by himself; and I went and tried to explain to him that he thought himself wise, but was not really wise; and the consequence was that he hated me, and his enmity was shared by several who were present and heard me.
So I left him, saying to myself, as I went away: "Well, although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is—for he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows. I neither know nor think that I know. In this latter particular, then, I seem to have slightly the advantage of him."
Then I went to another, who had still higher philosophical pretensions, and my conclusion was exactly the same. I made another enemy of him, and of many others besides him.
But alas! Wherever he went, Socrates found that people with reputations for wisdom actually had no wisdom at all. But these people falsely believed themselves to be wise, and thus were less wise than he.
Beyond that, they hated Socrates for suggesting otherwise. Did we mention the fact that he was on trial for his life?
In the end, Socrates acknowledged that the oracle had gotten it right this time. As it turned out, he actually was wiser than all these others because, while he had no wisdom to speak of, he at least knew that he wasn't wise. The other people believed they were wise, when they actually weren't.
In this foundational tale, Plato's Socrates establishes a preference for the three dirty words you can't say on (cable) TV: "I don't know." He knew that he himself lacked wisdom. The various people with whom he spoke—politicians, poets and artisans—didn't know this about themselves, and in that sense were less wise.
In this foundational tale, Socrates establishes the principle of skepticism in the face of intellectual or clerical authority. Beyond that, he establishes the importance of being able to recognize and acknowledge how much you yourself don't know.
He establishes the idea that wise people know that they often don't know. Twenty-five hundred years later, this principle is observed in the breach all over our floundering public discourse. Consider what happened on C-Span's Washington Journal when Steve Scully fielded the phone calls to which we referred in yesterday's report.
As we noted, many of Scully's callers delivered orations which may not have been perfectly "rational" in every conceivable way. But in that first dozen calls, no one voiced uncertainty about who they should believe in the current contradiction between Professor Ford and Judge Kavanaugh.
Callers spilled with certainty concerning these contradictory accounts! Yesterday, we showed you substantial chunks of the comments made by callers 2, 3, 7, 11 and 12. Today, let's consider callers 8, 9 and 10, focusing on their certainty about whose account should be believed. To hear all calls, click here.
Caller 8 was Philip from North Carolina, on the Republicans line. Rather plainly, he felt he knew whose account was correct, but he never said how he knew:
PHILIP FROM NORTH CAROLINA (9/30/18): I am a Republican, but I think it's time Republicans forgave Dr. Ford. I don't believe her. She just doesn't have credibility. Pray for her, she's got a lot of trouble ahead for her because she got involved in this and stepped up. Maybe she believes that was Kavanaugh, but it wasn't."Philip, thanks for the call," C-Span's Scully said. Philip seemed sure about what had occurred, but he didn't say, and he wasn't asked, how he could be so sure.
The next call came in on the Democrats line. This caller seemed quite sure too:
KELLY FROM FLORIDA: ...Yes, I believe Ford, I believe the professor. She put a lot on the line to come out, putting out her integrity and her whole life. And Kavanaugh, he's a spoiled little boy and the Republicans are going to pay him back for helping Bush win.That could all be true, of course. But what made Kelly so certain concerning the central question at issue?
Sarah from Texas came next. She expressed high certainty too:
SARAH FROM TEXAS: Good morning. I'm glad that you're talking to me. I'd like to say that Miss Ford, she has a Ph.D., she's well educated. To come on TV and act like she did, I think she's a disgrace to the women. And I believe that Kavanaugh is telling the truth and I think that our problem with Republicans is that they're not strong enough, they don't fight back as hard as they could...We listened to the calls from Scully's "daunting dozen." It's fair to say that no one expressed any uncertainty as to whose account was accurate. Beyond that, no one was asked to justify the certainly being expressed.
Late Sunday evening, Socrates visited us in our spartan founder's quarters in an almost dreamlike incident. "Why did I waste my time back then?" the great elucidator somewhat mournfully said.
Those three dirty words—"I don't know"—were never uttered by Scully's callers. That said, the immortal Socrates proceeded to caution us thusly:
"It's easy for you modern liberals to roll your eyes at the Philips and Sarahs," he thoughtfully said. "But many of your biggest stars have been playing the game this way too!"
Tomorrow: "Incredibly credible"
THE RATIONAL ANIMALS FILE: On C-Span, Scully talks to the animals!
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2018
Aristotle's key error exposed: We know Steve Scully the tiniest bit, from way back in the award-winning guest star appearances on C-Span's Washington Journal days.
We know Steve Scully the tiniest bit. Like everyone else, we like Steve Scully a lot.
Last Sunday, at 7 AM Eastern, Scully fielded a series of calls from the rational animals. We're going to say that these phone calls may have exposed Aristotle's error.
Back in the day, Doctor Dolittle gained worldwide fame by talking to the animals. By way of contrast, Scully speaks only to rational animals, the ones who pick up the phone and call Washington Journal.
Last Sunday, the topic was the Kavanaugh hearings and the way it might affect voting patterns in next month's elections. Steve's second caller, Jim from Delaware, took a shot at Aristotle, though only indirectly.
Trigger warning! This is not what we liberals have been hearing on our own cable channel since last Thursday's Senate hearing. Beyond that, Jim's comments, which we'll post in three parts, may not always seem to make complete total rational sense:
When was Blasey Ford on the (cold, forbidding) beach in that (foggy) place? Like you, we have no idea! But in Jim's view, Blasey Ford was drawn "out of the woodwork" to lodge her accusation as part of "the whole conspiracy to keep Kavanaugh or anybody that is nominated by Trump off the Court."
According to Jim, Blasey Ford "has been hiding in Delaware for the longest time." She seems to have had quite a few suspicious conversations with people on various beaches.
Blasey Ford has been conspiring with various people on the shores of two different oceans. Jim wasn't asked to explain this idea, but so it goes, on a regular basis, when we the people call Washington Journal to air our political views.
Jim went on a bit longer this day, occasionally flirting with the possible truth:
In our view, Jim may have been a tiny bit weak on the shape of Trump-era politics. He seemed to think that there is a chance that Trump might nominate a liberal to serve on the Supreme Court.
He thinks the Dems will try to destroy such liberals if Trump decides to name them. He thinks the Senate Judiciary Committee is largely peopled by RINOs.
No, that doesn't seem to make perfect sense. But neither does the famous definitional claim which is widely attributed to Aristotle—the famous claim in which we the people are defined as the "rational animal."
Are we humans "the rational animal?" Does that famous statement capture who, or what, we actually are?
As the weeks and months roll on, we'll be exploring that question in more detail. This Sunday, though, Scully's next rational animal had called on the Independents line—and he took a novel approach:
"Allen, thanks for the call," Scully politely said.
As the first half hour rolled on, so did the off-kilter calls from all the rational animals. We can't transcribe every call, though you can listen to all the calls here. But the seventh caller, on the Republican line, heatedly offered the thoughts and the claims shown below.
Warning! We can't vouch for this caller's "facts:"
Rationals, can we talk? It would hardly be surprising if Blasey Ford's lawyer, Debra Katz, attended the women's march. That said, we find no report which says that she did, and we certainly find no report which say that she made the statement Howard reports.
Blasey Ford did not attend the march. "Howard from Fort Lauderdale, Florida," Scully said at the end of the less than fully rational call.
Scully's eleventh caller this day called on the Democrats line. She too wants to see a tough probe—a probe of Blasey Ford's "drinking habits" and her "drinking background:"
Carol wants to know what Blasey Ford's parents thought of her behavior that day. Since Blasey Ford says she didn't tell her parents about what allegedly happened, this doesn't necessarily make complete perfect total sense.
Carol is also concerned that protesters will now be encouraged to trap our legislators in elevators and yell at them. She seems to think that Blasey Ford is the one who may have been drunk that evening—which of course is always possible.
The next caller completed Scully's "daunting dozen." It was Jacqueline from Philadelphia, calling on the Republicans line. She loves to people watch:
By now, it was 7:30 AM Eastern. Several of our youthful analysts had gone semi-catatonic.
"They don't sound like rational animals," one youngster managed to cry. "What was Aristotle talking about when he authored that famous assessment, the one we hear all the time?"
We thought the youngster was asking good questions. That said, we warned this youngster against going totally tribal.
You see, we also thought that some less-than-rational, great ape talk had been coming from some in the mainstream press, even from some on the left! Skillfully, we warned the youngsters:
We humans have been fashioning this great ape talk for an extremely long time.
Tomorrow: Doctor Dolittle meets sacred Descartes
Aristotle's key error exposed: We know Steve Scully the tiniest bit, from way back in the award-winning guest star appearances on C-Span's Washington Journal days.
We know Steve Scully the tiniest bit. Like everyone else, we like Steve Scully a lot.
Last Sunday, at 7 AM Eastern, Scully fielded a series of calls from the rational animals. We're going to say that these phone calls may have exposed Aristotle's error.
Back in the day, Doctor Dolittle gained worldwide fame by talking to the animals. By way of contrast, Scully speaks only to rational animals, the ones who pick up the phone and call Washington Journal.
Last Sunday, the topic was the Kavanaugh hearings and the way it might affect voting patterns in next month's elections. Steve's second caller, Jim from Delaware, took a shot at Aristotle, though only indirectly.
Trigger warning! This is not what we liberals have been hearing on our own cable channel since last Thursday's Senate hearing. Beyond that, Jim's comments, which we'll post in three parts, may not always seem to make complete total rational sense:
JIM FROM DELAWARE (9/30/18): Good morning! Based on the reaction of my friends, I think a lot of them are going to vote now that probably weren't going to vote.Jim was calling on the Republican line. After Scully asked a follow-up question, Jim further detailed his views:
They're going to vote Republican, definitely, because I think Trump and this whole hearing has exposed the fact that, no matter who they put up, they would have drawn people out of the woodwork to testify against, against whatever the nominee was going to be. This has just become a standard tactic of the Democrats in order to thwart the Trump agenda.
And it's just made people sick, this whole thing, especially here in Delaware, where she's been hiding in Delaware for the longest time. And I truly believe that our senators are complicit in this, the whole conspiracy to keep Kavanaugh or anybody that is nominated by Trump off the Court.
So I think people have blood in their eye and they're ready for a fight this time around, big-time, to support the president.
JIM FROM DELAWARE: If they do an FBI investigation, I want them to investigate everybody. I'm talking about all the associations that Feinstein dealt with, all the associations that Ms. Ford had over the years with Democratic operatives.Jim's position? He hopes the FBI speaks to everyone Blasey Ford spoke to on the beach in San Francisco.
I want her to have those people who she talked to on the beach in San Francisco talked to. I want everybody that she talked to down at Rehoboth Beach, [Delaware,] or wherever she was down at the beach, I just want everybody talked to. Let's get to the bottom of where this came from. And that's the only way an FBI investigation is going to satisfy me.
When was Blasey Ford on the (cold, forbidding) beach in that (foggy) place? Like you, we have no idea! But in Jim's view, Blasey Ford was drawn "out of the woodwork" to lodge her accusation as part of "the whole conspiracy to keep Kavanaugh or anybody that is nominated by Trump off the Court."
According to Jim, Blasey Ford "has been hiding in Delaware for the longest time." She seems to have had quite a few suspicious conversations with people on various beaches.
Blasey Ford has been conspiring with various people on the shores of two different oceans. Jim wasn't asked to explain this idea, but so it goes, on a regular basis, when we the people call Washington Journal to air our political views.
Jim went on a bit longer this day, occasionally flirting with the possible truth:
JIM FROM DELAWARE: I just have a feeling that there are so many RINOs on that Senate committee that are so sensitive to being criticized in the press for being anti-woman that they are not going to really push as hard as they should. They have to stand up. This is a big issue, because no matter who was appointed was going to face this sort of stuff."Jim, thanks, from New Castle, Delaware," Scully said. On Washington Journal, by rule, moderators tend to accept whatever the caller has said.
I am sure there is a war room somewhere in this country where they just strategize on how to destroy this individual, that individual. It doesn't matter whether you are liberal or conservative or moderate, if you are put up by Trump, there is an effort out to put a target on your face, without a doubt.
In our view, Jim may have been a tiny bit weak on the shape of Trump-era politics. He seemed to think that there is a chance that Trump might nominate a liberal to serve on the Supreme Court.
He thinks the Dems will try to destroy such liberals if Trump decides to name them. He thinks the Senate Judiciary Committee is largely peopled by RINOs.
No, that doesn't seem to make perfect sense. But neither does the famous definitional claim which is widely attributed to Aristotle—the famous claim in which we the people are defined as the "rational animal."
Are we humans "the rational animal?" Does that famous statement capture who, or what, we actually are?
As the weeks and months roll on, we'll be exploring that question in more detail. This Sunday, though, Scully's next rational animal had called on the Independents line—and he took a novel approach:
ALLEN FROM OHIO: Well, it's not really going to impact my vote. I consider myself independent, but I have a tendency to vote Republican. When I was watching the hearings—and I have a four-year degree in urban studies from Cleveland State, and I understand Ms. Ford, or Dr. Ford, has this Ph.D. And you know what, I've had a lot of experience, and I hate to sound judgmental, but I have had a lot of experience with professors, and people with Ph.D.'s, they can be a little goofy, OK? And you know, there is something—she just doesn't seem to make sense. She's not credible. Not credible at all.According to Allen, Blasey Ford had possibly seemed a bit goofy, and she wasn't credible at all. To Allen, who has a lot of experience, it looked like a Ph.D. thing.
"Allen, thanks for the call," Scully politely said.
As the first half hour rolled on, so did the off-kilter calls from all the rational animals. We can't transcribe every call, though you can listen to all the calls here. But the seventh caller, on the Republican line, heatedly offered the thoughts and the claims shown below.
Warning! We can't vouch for this caller's "facts:"
HOWARD FROM FLORIDA: This has been a headache. OK? Because since the inauguration, OK, since the inauguration of Donald Trump, the lawyer representing Miss Ford was at the Women's March. She stated on that stage that she's going to do whatever it takes to take down this president and everybody that he nominates.In Howard's view, this was all prefigured long ago, at the women's march.
This woman said that! There's also word that Miss Ford was also at that march. This has nothing to do with rights of a woman. Yes, if that happened, then by all means she deserves justice. But if Kavanaugh did not do it, OK, then he deserves to be heard.
Rationals, can we talk? It would hardly be surprising if Blasey Ford's lawyer, Debra Katz, attended the women's march. That said, we find no report which says that she did, and we certainly find no report which say that she made the statement Howard reports.
Blasey Ford did not attend the march. "Howard from Fort Lauderdale, Florida," Scully said at the end of the less than fully rational call.
Scully's eleventh caller this day called on the Democrats line. She too wants to see a tough probe—a probe of Blasey Ford's "drinking habits" and her "drinking background:"
CAROL FROM NEW YORK: Good morning. I'm a woman. I'm a lifelong registered Democrat. However, I have some problems with the situation going on with Kavanaugh and Dr. Ford."Carol, from New York."
First of all, I guess I'm glad to have an investigation, but I would like it to also investigate Dr. Ford and go into her drinking habits.
On the night, or the day, of this occurrence, I'd like to know how she got to the house and how she got back. I'd like to know what her parents thought of her behavior that day.
I'd like to know about the money track that Dr. Ford was talking about. Immediately afterwards she had 500,000 in her GoFundMe page. Where did that come from? What's the trail of that? How did she get 500,000 so quickly?
I would like to thank Mr. Flake for encouraging more and more protesters to trap our legislators in elevators and scream at them. There's going to be a lot more of that. Those two women are going to be heroes, and this has nothing to do with the MeToo movement...
I'd like to wait this out, but she needs to be a little more investigated into her drinking background. Perhaps she drank so much that night that when she was pushed from behind, maybe she was not correct on who pushed her into that room. I just have a lot of questions so thank you and have a good day.
Carol wants to know what Blasey Ford's parents thought of her behavior that day. Since Blasey Ford says she didn't tell her parents about what allegedly happened, this doesn't necessarily make complete perfect total sense.
Carol is also concerned that protesters will now be encouraged to trap our legislators in elevators and yell at them. She seems to think that Blasey Ford is the one who may have been drunk that evening—which of course is always possible.
The next caller completed Scully's "daunting dozen." It was Jacqueline from Philadelphia, calling on the Republicans line. She loves to people watch:
JACQUELINE FROM PHILADELPHIA: Hi! I was questioning Dr. Ford. I love to people watch and watch their actions, and first of all, if I have a "Doctor" in front of my name, I don't think I would be speaking in that teeny-tiny voice. I noticed that right away.This caller didn't like Blasey Ford's teeny-tiny voice. She doesn't know if she liked Kavanaugh's crying.
I'm a kindergarten teacher and I don't talk to my kindergarten children that way. I speak firmly, I speak up. And I noticed that right away. I don't know if she's guilty or innocent.
And then as far as Brett Kavanaugh, I'm not so sure I liked that he was crying. I was people watching him too and I don't know if I like that. So I just wanted to make that comment. I kept the sound off on some of the things.
By now, it was 7:30 AM Eastern. Several of our youthful analysts had gone semi-catatonic.
"They don't sound like rational animals," one youngster managed to cry. "What was Aristotle talking about when he authored that famous assessment, the one we hear all the time?"
We thought the youngster was asking good questions. That said, we warned this youngster against going totally tribal.
You see, we also thought that some less-than-rational, great ape talk had been coming from some in the mainstream press, even from some on the left! Skillfully, we warned the youngsters:
We humans have been fashioning this great ape talk for an extremely long time.
Tomorrow: Doctor Dolittle meets sacred Descartes
THE GUARDIANS FILE: Digest of reports!
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2018
New chapter starts tomorrow: Achilles begged for the help of the gods. We need the help of logicians!
Tomorrow, we offer the first report in our rational animals file. Below, you see links to our reports from the guardians file:
That said, our "Aristotle's error" opus now includes five such cycles. For links to all reports to date, you probably know what you can do:
You can just click here.
New chapter starts tomorrow: Achilles begged for the help of the gods. We need the help of logicians!
Tomorrow, we offer the first report in our rational animals file. Below, you see links to our reports from the guardians file:
Tuesday, September 25: Major professors abandon their posts! Semantics and paraphrase!So it went in our guardians file.
Wednesday, September 26: Plato actually got this one right. Our professors keep getting it wrong.
Friday, September 28: You know what you saw at yesterday's hearing? Plato saw the same thing!
Monday, October 1: Achilles needed the help of the gods. We need the help of logicians!
That said, our "Aristotle's error" opus now includes five such cycles. For links to all reports to date, you probably know what you can do:
You can just click here.
THE GUARDIANS FILE: Achilles needed the help of the gods!
MONDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2018
We need the help of logicians: Even the swift runner Achilles once called out for help from a guardian class—though in his case, the guardian class whose aid he sought was the Olympian gods.
As documented in Book XXI of The Iliad, Achilles had wandered far from the walls of Troy, slaying various Trojans. But he was discarding their bodies in the river Scamander, and the river god boiled with rage.
We offer the 1898 Samuel Butler prose translation, largely because it's available on line. Butler used the Roman forms of the gods' names, in which Zeus, to cite one example, appears as Jupiter/Jove:
Achilles disregarded the river god's command. When he did, the river descended upon him in the manner reported below. Swift-running Achilles was forced to seek help from a mightier guardian class:
"It is not your fate to perish in this river," Poseidon (Neptune) instantly told him, having taken the form of a human himself. "He will abate presently as you will see."
When Scamander threatened to destroy him, even swift-running Achilles was forced to seek help from a guardian class. Within our own failing culture and society, we ourselves are badly in need of help from some guardians too.
As effects of climate change advance, we could certainly use some help from the gods of nature. But as our society continues to fashion a clownish, broken national discourse, we also badly need the help of a human guardian class.
We need the help of our logicians, and perhaps of our ethicists too. It wouldn't hurt if our political scientists came down from their lecterns now and then to stand on their hind legs too.
It isn't that professors of the types we've named don't exist, in profusion. The problem lies in their alienation from the daily events of this earth.
When Achilles cried out to the gods, Poseidon was quick to respond. But as our embarrassing national clown show has rushed upon us in recent decades, our mighty logicians have distinguished themselves by their endless silence.
It would make a great Bergman film. (Max von Sydow calls out for help, but the logicians are silent!) But it also makes for a dying culture, of the type we see around ourselves every day of the week.
Let's be candid! No one imagines that our "logicians" will ever intercede in our great societal mess. It isn't clear that our greatest logicians have any skills in what might be called the logic of everyday discourse.
As we've noted in recent weeks, our logicians have busied themselves, even over the past hundred years, in the logic of 2 + 2 equaling 4. Or in the logic of 1 + 1, as a favorite writer reminded us roughly one week back.
Regarding that favorite writer of ours, we will make this point:
This favorite writer often seems to assume that we say the things we sometimes say through a great measure of ignorance. On this occasion, he assured us that Godel's theorems really do turn on the logic of the (pseudo) statement, "This very statement is false."
He also assured us that Lord Russell and Alfred North Whitehead really did spend a hundred pages proving that 1 + 1 = 2. He seemed to assume that we didn't know such things—that our assessment of giants like Godel would change if we did.
In fact, we do understand that our "greatest logicians" have tended to spend their time on such pursuits. But from our perspective, such facts indicate that our greatest logicians have spent the past hundred years (or more) involved in utterly pointless pseudo-disputes.
In our experience, we trace this notion to the (highly inarticulate) work of the later Wittgenstein. We'll be exploring this idea in the weeks and months ahead.
Were our "greatest logicians"—great figures like Godel—successful logicians at all? In large part, it seems to us they were not.
Beyond that, it seems to us that, as they have wasted their time on disputes about "the perfect. timeless existence" of such "abstract objects" as numbers and circles, they have utterly failed their citizen's duty to this failing republic. They've left us shlubs, us average Joes, very much in the lurch.
As anyone with a TV set knows, our daily public discourse is largely scripted by clowns. But when we humans cry out for help from a guardian class, our great logicians fail to respond. Our ethicists seem to be on sabbatical in the south of France.
The result:
As a nation, we're thrown back on the manifest horrors of endless discussion-by-clown.
In part, this is a comical story, but it also points the way to possible death and destruction. Beyond that, every step of the way, it points to the question we'll continue to ask:
Was sacred Aristotle more nearly right with his widely-bruited alleged claim that "man [sic] is the rational animal?"
Or is Professor Harari more right in his recent claim that our triumphant species, Homo sapiens, is more accurately seen as a type of great ape which developed the ability to "gossip" along with the ability to invent and promulgate stirring group "fictions?"
In the weeks and months ahead, we'll keep asking that anthropological question. Eventually, we'll also return to Professor Horwich's street-fighting claim—his claim that our professors stopped teaching the later Wittgenstein so that they could continue to teach the earlier bullroar they like.
We'd joked about that possibility for years. Then Horwich came out and said it—in the New York Times, no less!
We'll get to Wittgenstein soon enough. Tomorrow, we'll briefly pause for an embarrassing trip through the rational animal file.
"Man [sic] is the rational animal," Aristotle is said to have said. In fairness, Aristotle didn't have cable TV or access to comment threads.
He'd never heard the things The Others say. Beyond that, he'd never heard Us!
Tomorrow: From the rational animal file, C-Span's first dozen callers
We need the help of logicians: Even the swift runner Achilles once called out for help from a guardian class—though in his case, the guardian class whose aid he sought was the Olympian gods.
As documented in Book XXI of The Iliad, Achilles had wandered far from the walls of Troy, slaying various Trojans. But he was discarding their bodies in the river Scamander, and the river god boiled with rage.
We offer the 1898 Samuel Butler prose translation, largely because it's available on line. Butler used the Roman forms of the gods' names, in which Zeus, to cite one example, appears as Jupiter/Jove:
HOMER (Book XXI): [N]ow that he had killed Asteropaeus, he let him lie where he was on the sand, with the dark water flowing over him and the eels and fishes busy nibbling and gnawing the fat that was about his kidneys. Then he went in chase of the Paeonians, who were flying along the bank of the river in panic when they saw their leader slain by the hands of the son of Peleus. Therein he slew Thersilochus, Mydon, Astypylus, Mnesus, Thrasius, Oeneus, and Ophelestes, and he would have slain yet others, had not the river in anger taken human form, and spoken to him from out the deep waters saying, "Achilles, if you excel all in strength, so do you also in wickedness, for the gods are ever with you to protect you: if, then, the son of Saturn has vouchsafed it to you to destroy all the Trojans, at any rate drive them out of my stream, and do your grim work on land. My fair waters are now filled with corpses, nor can I find any channel by which I may pour myself into the sea for I am choked with dead, and yet you go on mercilessly slaying. I am in despair, therefore, O captain of your host, trouble me no further."As documented by Homer, Scamander had taken human form. He commanded Achilles to stop.
Achilles disregarded the river god's command. When he did, the river descended upon him in the manner reported below. Swift-running Achilles was forced to seek help from a mightier guardian class:
HOMER: Achilles sprang from the bank into mid-stream, whereon the river raised a high wave and attacked him. He swelled his stream into a torrent, and swept away the many dead whom Achilles had slain and left within his waters. These he cast out on to the land, bellowing like a bull the while, but the living he saved alive, hiding them in his mighty eddies. The great and terrible wave gathered about Achilles, falling upon him and beating on his shield, so that he could not keep his feet; he caught hold of a great elm-tree, but it came up by the roots, and tore away the bank, damming the stream with its thick branches and bridging it all across; whereby Achilles struggled out of the stream, and fled full speed over the plain, for he was afraid.Achilles begged for help from the ultimate guardian class, and his call for help was rewarded.
But the mighty god ceased not in his pursuit, and sprang upon him with a dark-crested wave, to stay his hands and save the Trojans from destruction. The son of Peleus darted away a spear's throw from him; swift as the swoop of a black hunter-eagle which is the strongest and fleetest of all birds, even so did he spring forward, and the armour rang loudly about his breast. He fled on in front, but the river with a loud roar came tearing after. As one who would water his garden leads a stream from some fountain over his plants, and all his ground-spade in hand he clears away the dams to free the channels, and the little stones run rolling round and round with the water as it goes merrily down the bank faster than the man can follow—even so did the river keep catching up with Achilles albeit he was a fleet runner, for the gods are stronger than men. As often as he would strive to stand his ground, and see whether or no all the gods in heaven were in league against him, so often would the mighty wave come beating down upon his shoulders, and be would have to keep flying on and on in great dismay; for the angry flood was tiring him out as it flowed past him and ate the ground from under his feet.
Then the son of Peleus lifted up his voice to heaven saying, "Father Jove, is there none of the gods who will take pity upon me, and save me from the river? I do not care what may happen to me afterwards. I blame none of the other dwellers on Olympus so severely as I do my dear mother, who has beguiled and tricked me. She told me I was to fall under the walls of Troy by the flying arrows of Apollo; would that Hector, the best man among the Trojans, might there slay me; then should I fall a hero by the hand of a hero; whereas now it seems that I shall come to a most pitiable end, trapped in this river as though I were some swineherd's boy, who gets carried down a torrent while trying to cross it during a storm."
"It is not your fate to perish in this river," Poseidon (Neptune) instantly told him, having taken the form of a human himself. "He will abate presently as you will see."
When Scamander threatened to destroy him, even swift-running Achilles was forced to seek help from a guardian class. Within our own failing culture and society, we ourselves are badly in need of help from some guardians too.
As effects of climate change advance, we could certainly use some help from the gods of nature. But as our society continues to fashion a clownish, broken national discourse, we also badly need the help of a human guardian class.
We need the help of our logicians, and perhaps of our ethicists too. It wouldn't hurt if our political scientists came down from their lecterns now and then to stand on their hind legs too.
It isn't that professors of the types we've named don't exist, in profusion. The problem lies in their alienation from the daily events of this earth.
When Achilles cried out to the gods, Poseidon was quick to respond. But as our embarrassing national clown show has rushed upon us in recent decades, our mighty logicians have distinguished themselves by their endless silence.
It would make a great Bergman film. (Max von Sydow calls out for help, but the logicians are silent!) But it also makes for a dying culture, of the type we see around ourselves every day of the week.
Let's be candid! No one imagines that our "logicians" will ever intercede in our great societal mess. It isn't clear that our greatest logicians have any skills in what might be called the logic of everyday discourse.
As we've noted in recent weeks, our logicians have busied themselves, even over the past hundred years, in the logic of 2 + 2 equaling 4. Or in the logic of 1 + 1, as a favorite writer reminded us roughly one week back.
Regarding that favorite writer of ours, we will make this point:
This favorite writer often seems to assume that we say the things we sometimes say through a great measure of ignorance. On this occasion, he assured us that Godel's theorems really do turn on the logic of the (pseudo) statement, "This very statement is false."
He also assured us that Lord Russell and Alfred North Whitehead really did spend a hundred pages proving that 1 + 1 = 2. He seemed to assume that we didn't know such things—that our assessment of giants like Godel would change if we did.
In fact, we do understand that our "greatest logicians" have tended to spend their time on such pursuits. But from our perspective, such facts indicate that our greatest logicians have spent the past hundred years (or more) involved in utterly pointless pseudo-disputes.
In our experience, we trace this notion to the (highly inarticulate) work of the later Wittgenstein. We'll be exploring this idea in the weeks and months ahead.
Were our "greatest logicians"—great figures like Godel—successful logicians at all? In large part, it seems to us they were not.
Beyond that, it seems to us that, as they have wasted their time on disputes about "the perfect. timeless existence" of such "abstract objects" as numbers and circles, they have utterly failed their citizen's duty to this failing republic. They've left us shlubs, us average Joes, very much in the lurch.
As anyone with a TV set knows, our daily public discourse is largely scripted by clowns. But when we humans cry out for help from a guardian class, our great logicians fail to respond. Our ethicists seem to be on sabbatical in the south of France.
The result:
As a nation, we're thrown back on the manifest horrors of endless discussion-by-clown.
In part, this is a comical story, but it also points the way to possible death and destruction. Beyond that, every step of the way, it points to the question we'll continue to ask:
Was sacred Aristotle more nearly right with his widely-bruited alleged claim that "man [sic] is the rational animal?"
Or is Professor Harari more right in his recent claim that our triumphant species, Homo sapiens, is more accurately seen as a type of great ape which developed the ability to "gossip" along with the ability to invent and promulgate stirring group "fictions?"
In the weeks and months ahead, we'll keep asking that anthropological question. Eventually, we'll also return to Professor Horwich's street-fighting claim—his claim that our professors stopped teaching the later Wittgenstein so that they could continue to teach the earlier bullroar they like.
We'd joked about that possibility for years. Then Horwich came out and said it—in the New York Times, no less!
We'll get to Wittgenstein soon enough. Tomorrow, we'll briefly pause for an embarrassing trip through the rational animal file.
"Man [sic] is the rational animal," Aristotle is said to have said. In fairness, Aristotle didn't have cable TV or access to comment threads.
He'd never heard the things The Others say. Beyond that, he'd never heard Us!
Tomorrow: From the rational animal file, C-Span's first dozen callers
BREAKING: Putting our rational skills on display!
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2018
Twilight of the animals: We rational animals are always quick to put our skills on display.
So it was in the case of Thursday's Senate hearing, which may have been scripted by Alice's queen:
"Hearing first, investigation later," we rationals said. And not only that:
"Let's put a time limit on our probe! We wouldn't want to take a chance on possibly learning too much!"
So we modern Americans play, in the twilight of our culture. Also this:
Within the framework of our rationality, Thursday, July 1, 1982 can't be scored as a weekend night. More specifically, it wouldn't have been the start of that year's July 4 weekend!
The Washington Post accepts this framework in this morning's otherwise instructive news report—a news report which makes us wonder if Kavanaugh's voluntarily provided calendars may turn out to be the equivalent of Nixon's undestroyed tapes. Featured in the Post's photograph is a familiar type of event—a liberal leader, Senator Whitehouse, arriving at the scene of the crime exactly one day late.
We mention Whitehouse for a reason. It's easy for us liberals to spot the dissembling in Kavanaugh's testimony—and it must be said that, for better or worse, Kavanaugh is an astoundingly unskilled dissembler.
The fact that he did a lot of dissembling doesn't necessarily mean that he assaulted Christine Blasey when she was 15. That said, his endless, amazingly unskilled dissembling cohabited on Thursday with a familiar phenomenon—the amazing incompetence put on display by our own tribal leaders.
First example:
Why did Senator Feinstein, and all the others, wait so long to deny the claim that she and/or her staff leaked the contents of Blasey Ford's confidential letter, thereby bringing Blasey Ford into the public eye?
Why in the world did they wait so long? We have no idea, but it amounted to (very familiar) intellectual misfeasance when the Democrats allowed this claim against Feinstein and her staff to go unchallenged so long.
If you want to inform yourselves farther, here is The Intercept's Ryan Grim saying that neither Feinstein nor her staff leaked the information in question to the Intercept, the site which produced the first public report concerning Blasey Ford's allegation.
Conservatives watching Thursday's hearing saw Feinstein fingered again and again before she finally got around to objecting. In these ways, our tribe's astounding incompetence contributes to false belief on the part of the other tribe's members.
Second example:
Anyone watching Thursday's hearing saw Kavanaugh claim, again and again, that everyone named by Blasey Ford had "refuted" her claim about the party or gathering in question. This was said again and again and again and again. As Kavanaugh kept repeating this claim, our tribal leaders performed like the famous "potted plants" of Watergate-era fame.
Our team has performed in such pitiful ways for at least three decades. It has been impossible to call liberal attention to this fact. In large part, this explains the way we got to the place where it falls to Donald J. Trump to make Supreme Court nominations.
In short, we created this amazingly stupid and dangerous world. The twilight of the rational animals achieved its full flower through us.
How else have we gotten to this place? If you watched Tucker Carlson on Monday night, you saw this appalling performance during his opening monologue:
"The few people Ford has named deny [the alleged assault] happened?" In fact, one of the people Blasey Ford named has said she believes it did happen. (Two of the people she named are said to have perpetrated the assault.)
That was penny-=ante stuff; we also note the apparent false claim about when Blasey Ford first named Kavanaugh as her alleged assailant. From there, Carlson went on to other false claims, including the claim we've highlighted.
Question:
When have Blasey Ford's lawyers ever said that her allegation is the result of a "recovered memory?" We find evidence of no such assertion, nor did Carlson specify any such statement.
That said, he was soon repeating this claim, several times, in the face of a less than fully competent liberal guest. As he did, he said that such "recovered memories" are less reliable than the regular kind.
In a familiar pattern on Carlson's show, his eager but overmatched liberal guest failed to challenge his bogus assertion. Several million viewers thus became even more misinformed, in a familiar old way.
At least sine the rise of Rush Limbaugh in the 1980s, such acts of disinformation have ruled American discourse. When these acts have come from the right, the liberal world has typically slumbered and slept and dozed and scratched and dreamily chosen to burble. Either that or we've gone on Carlson's show, where we typically offer the silence of the sacrificial lambs.
Not all the acts of disinformation have come from the right. During the Clinton/Gore/Clinton years, many of these acts came from the upper-end mainstream press, the source of employment to the many people who pose as our tribe's liberal leaders.
Our leaders have tended to stare into space as dis- and misinformation have come to rule our discourse. On the rare occasions where we manage to show up at all, we tend to show up one day late, as Whitehouse did yesterday morning.
People like Carlson can say what they please. Beyond that, attacks on the Clintons—including misogynistic attacks on Hillary Clinton—will run all over the New York Times without a word from our leaders.
(Those misogynistic attacks ran on cable for decades. Our liberal leaders clamored to get on the programs in question, so they could play right along.)
We reaped the whirlwind of our endless silence when Donald J. Trump drew an inside straight and squeezed his way into the White House. So it has gone in the never-ending twilight of the rationals.
There's no way to cover the full extent of this moral and intellectual breakdown, but our own tribe's relentless failure is a very large part of this mess. We're in this twilight up to our necks—this twilight of the rational animals, which could sweep us all away.
Is Blasey Ford's allegation true? We can't tell you that. But on Thursday morning, she rose to perform her citizen's duty. Over here in our self-impressed liberal tents, we rise to that level quite rarely.
Hearing first, investigation later! And don't let the probe run too long!
In fairness: After performing his acts of disinformation, Carlson typically spends some time airing tape of low-grade, inane behavior by our own liberal players.
These parts of Carlson's show are often all too instructive. If you ever watch his show, we're afraid you might see what we mean.
In these ways, the other tribe learns that we liberals can't be trusted. All too often, viewers see Carlson making a decent point.
Twilight of the animals: We rational animals are always quick to put our skills on display.
So it was in the case of Thursday's Senate hearing, which may have been scripted by Alice's queen:
"Hearing first, investigation later," we rationals said. And not only that:
"Let's put a time limit on our probe! We wouldn't want to take a chance on possibly learning too much!"
So we modern Americans play, in the twilight of our culture. Also this:
Within the framework of our rationality, Thursday, July 1, 1982 can't be scored as a weekend night. More specifically, it wouldn't have been the start of that year's July 4 weekend!
The Washington Post accepts this framework in this morning's otherwise instructive news report—a news report which makes us wonder if Kavanaugh's voluntarily provided calendars may turn out to be the equivalent of Nixon's undestroyed tapes. Featured in the Post's photograph is a familiar type of event—a liberal leader, Senator Whitehouse, arriving at the scene of the crime exactly one day late.
We mention Whitehouse for a reason. It's easy for us liberals to spot the dissembling in Kavanaugh's testimony—and it must be said that, for better or worse, Kavanaugh is an astoundingly unskilled dissembler.
The fact that he did a lot of dissembling doesn't necessarily mean that he assaulted Christine Blasey when she was 15. That said, his endless, amazingly unskilled dissembling cohabited on Thursday with a familiar phenomenon—the amazing incompetence put on display by our own tribal leaders.
First example:
Why did Senator Feinstein, and all the others, wait so long to deny the claim that she and/or her staff leaked the contents of Blasey Ford's confidential letter, thereby bringing Blasey Ford into the public eye?
Why in the world did they wait so long? We have no idea, but it amounted to (very familiar) intellectual misfeasance when the Democrats allowed this claim against Feinstein and her staff to go unchallenged so long.
If you want to inform yourselves farther, here is The Intercept's Ryan Grim saying that neither Feinstein nor her staff leaked the information in question to the Intercept, the site which produced the first public report concerning Blasey Ford's allegation.
Conservatives watching Thursday's hearing saw Feinstein fingered again and again before she finally got around to objecting. In these ways, our tribe's astounding incompetence contributes to false belief on the part of the other tribe's members.
Second example:
Anyone watching Thursday's hearing saw Kavanaugh claim, again and again, that everyone named by Blasey Ford had "refuted" her claim about the party or gathering in question. This was said again and again and again and again. As Kavanaugh kept repeating this claim, our tribal leaders performed like the famous "potted plants" of Watergate-era fame.
Our team has performed in such pitiful ways for at least three decades. It has been impossible to call liberal attention to this fact. In large part, this explains the way we got to the place where it falls to Donald J. Trump to make Supreme Court nominations.
In short, we created this amazingly stupid and dangerous world. The twilight of the rational animals achieved its full flower through us.
How else have we gotten to this place? If you watched Tucker Carlson on Monday night, you saw this appalling performance during his opening monologue:
CARLSON (9/25/18): There's a flip side to the new system. Because the accused are guilty by definition, the accuser suddenly have no responsibility to make credible claims. And we're seeing that principle in action too.Carlson made the same false claim about the people Blasey Ford named.
We covered the story all last week. Five nights in a row we said that we are giving Christine Ford every benefit of every doubt, and we did that. But let's be honest now. Not many of her claims would hold up in an actual court, the one governed by the justice system we thought we had until about 10 days ago...
When did this alleged assault take place? Ford can't say. When did it happen? She doesn't know. Where are the witnesses to this? Well, there aren't any. The few people Ford has named deny it happened. When was this first reported to authorities? Well, it never really was.
The story came out in stages. It was a recovered memory, apparently summoned by a psychotherapist 30 years after the fact. And even then, it was another six years before Ford named Brett Kavanaugh specifically, at exactly the point he was being nominated for the Supreme Court.
That's not our analysis of the case. It's the position of Ford's lawyers, nearly all of whom double as Democratic Party activists and operatives and some of whom defended Bill Clinton from far graver sexual assault claims when he was accused.
That doesn't mean Ford is lying. But it does raise legitimate questions so does a lot of her behavior.
"The few people Ford has named deny [the alleged assault] happened?" In fact, one of the people Blasey Ford named has said she believes it did happen. (Two of the people she named are said to have perpetrated the assault.)
That was penny-=ante stuff; we also note the apparent false claim about when Blasey Ford first named Kavanaugh as her alleged assailant. From there, Carlson went on to other false claims, including the claim we've highlighted.
Question:
When have Blasey Ford's lawyers ever said that her allegation is the result of a "recovered memory?" We find evidence of no such assertion, nor did Carlson specify any such statement.
That said, he was soon repeating this claim, several times, in the face of a less than fully competent liberal guest. As he did, he said that such "recovered memories" are less reliable than the regular kind.
In a familiar pattern on Carlson's show, his eager but overmatched liberal guest failed to challenge his bogus assertion. Several million viewers thus became even more misinformed, in a familiar old way.
At least sine the rise of Rush Limbaugh in the 1980s, such acts of disinformation have ruled American discourse. When these acts have come from the right, the liberal world has typically slumbered and slept and dozed and scratched and dreamily chosen to burble. Either that or we've gone on Carlson's show, where we typically offer the silence of the sacrificial lambs.
Not all the acts of disinformation have come from the right. During the Clinton/Gore/Clinton years, many of these acts came from the upper-end mainstream press, the source of employment to the many people who pose as our tribe's liberal leaders.
Our leaders have tended to stare into space as dis- and misinformation have come to rule our discourse. On the rare occasions where we manage to show up at all, we tend to show up one day late, as Whitehouse did yesterday morning.
People like Carlson can say what they please. Beyond that, attacks on the Clintons—including misogynistic attacks on Hillary Clinton—will run all over the New York Times without a word from our leaders.
(Those misogynistic attacks ran on cable for decades. Our liberal leaders clamored to get on the programs in question, so they could play right along.)
We reaped the whirlwind of our endless silence when Donald J. Trump drew an inside straight and squeezed his way into the White House. So it has gone in the never-ending twilight of the rationals.
There's no way to cover the full extent of this moral and intellectual breakdown, but our own tribe's relentless failure is a very large part of this mess. We're in this twilight up to our necks—this twilight of the rational animals, which could sweep us all away.
Is Blasey Ford's allegation true? We can't tell you that. But on Thursday morning, she rose to perform her citizen's duty. Over here in our self-impressed liberal tents, we rise to that level quite rarely.
Hearing first, investigation later! And don't let the probe run too long!
In fairness: After performing his acts of disinformation, Carlson typically spends some time airing tape of low-grade, inane behavior by our own liberal players.
These parts of Carlson's show are often all too instructive. If you ever watch his show, we're afraid you might see what we mean.
In these ways, the other tribe learns that we liberals can't be trusted. All too often, viewers see Carlson making a decent point.
THE GUARDIANS FILE: What you saw at yesterday's hearing!
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28. 2018
Plato saw the same thing: "It's not that easy being green," Kermit the Frog has said.
"People tend to pass you over 'cause you're not standing out like flashy sparkles in the water." Or at least, so Kermit has claimed.
Was Kermit feeling sorry for himself, or did he have a strong point? We'll leave that to the historians! But at least within our failing society, it's also "not that easy" to cast oneself in the guardian's role—to play the role within our society which Plato prescribed long ago.
Years ago, sacred Plato said a just city would need leadership from a guardian class. Indeed, he said a just city might need to be ruled by such an elite.
According to Professor Lane, Plato's Socrates said these "guardians"—these "philosopher kings" and "philosopher queens"—would have to live simply and communally. They would have to be educated in certain ways. They would have to be "dedicated to what is good for the city rather than for themselves."
They'd also have to be philosophers! Or so Plato said!
Just this once, let's be clear! Plato lived at a different time—at "the dawn of the west." When he was voicing these prescriptions through the person of Socrates, he was discussing the way to create a "just city."
He wasn't discussing the needs of a large continental nation like our own failing state.
It's estimated that Plato was born between 429 BC and 423 BC—that is, during the fifth century BC. The bulk of his adult life was therefore lived during the fourth century BC.
How large was the Athens of this day? You're asking a significant question. The leading authority on this matter offers this overview:
Plato held that this Athens should be ruled by the philosopher kings and philosopher queens who constituted the guardian class. In the modern context, one would more simply hope that various individuals and groups would step forward to play the role of the guardian, offering such expertise as may serve the public interest.
It isn't that easy being green? Given the nature of our mass society—given the situation experts are calling "the twilight of the rational animals"—it's virtually impossible to serve in the guardian role within our broken mass culture. Over the past thirty years, we've seen quite a few who have tried and failed:
We think of several efforts by Paul Krugman, including his attempt to encourage the mainstream and corporate liberal press to describe Paul Ryan as he actually is. Try and try though Krugman did, he couldn't get others to follow his lead, not even corporate liberals.
(It's an established part of Hard Pundit Law. There will always be a Judge Starr, a Ryan or a Comey who is being universally hailed as the nation's most upright person. Few Dems need apply.)
We think of Kevin Drum's attempt to present basic information about the recent history of lead exposure. Drum's attempts to spread information ran headfirst into the demagoguery of corporate clowns like Rachel Maddow, who used her high corporate platform to dumb the liberal world down as she kept selling the car.
We think, of course, of Gene Lyons' 1995 book, Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater, which began as a full-length report in Harper's. Alas! By "the media," Lyons principally meant the Washington Post and the New York Times. For this reason, his reporting on the early years of the war which eventually sent Donald Trump to the White House was disappeared by the various corporate players we liberals foolishly think of as our tribal leaders.
We think of our own endless work of the so-called "war against Gore," the twenty-month journalistic scam which sent George W. Bush to the White House.
As with Whitewater, so too here. This ugly, stupid war was largely conducted within the mainstream press by leading "liberal" figures. For this reason, our own attempts to serve in the guardian role were destined to be disappeared by the various mainstream careerists who pose as liberal titans.
We also think of the way the mainstream press reports domestic and international public school test scores. Returning to attempts by Krugman, we think of the way the mainstream press disappears the basic data concerning health care spending in the United States, which amounts to an astonishing form of looting.
.
For reasons which go unexplored/unexplained, it has been impossible to get the mainstream press to perform its normal duties with respect to such basic pieces of information. Those who try to play the guardian role with respect to such topics are destined to learn a basic sociological fact:
Performing this role in our mass corporate culture is, in the end, considerably harder even than being a frog!
In all these areas, "corporate liberal" speak-chuckers have reliably served the interests of corporate ruling interests. (Chomsky describes this process as "manufactured consent.") Meanwhile, make no mistake:
You've seen similar patterns in recent weeks concerning the liberal world's hapless attempts to address the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
In our next report from the guardians file, we'll take a brief look at Professor Wilentz's recent attempt to play the guardian role in this matter. For today, let's understand what you saw at yesterday's televised hearing.
Citizens, please! Yesterday's hearing was the latest iteration of a pattern as old as so-called humankind.
Yesterday's hearing can be viewed in more than one way, of course. Depending on which corporate channel you were being propagandized by, you were encouraged to react to the testimony in substantially different ways.
There are various ways to understand yesterday's hearing. But for those who principally saw a power elite rushing through a major power grab, we'll only say that yesterday's hearing was an echo of human experience during the age in which Plato lived.
Yesterday's hearing was the latest replay of familiar events from that earlier age. The leading authority on that era has thumbnailed the matter as shown below:
"In the wake of Athens' disastrous defeat in the Sicilian campaign in 413 BCE, a group of citizens took steps to limit the radical democracy they thought was leading the city to ruin. Their efforts, initially conducted through constitutional channels, culminated in the establishment of an oligarchy."
The establishment of an oligarchy! Especially in a mass society, citizens opposed to this type of human impulse are badly in need of the services of a capable "guardian class." They must hope that this class won't be undermined by the work of hidden corporate elites and their endless enablers.
A final note for today. In his famous Seventh Letter, Plato recorded his reaction to the ascension to power of "the so-called Thirty Tyrants." In this translation, we think Professor Lee has it just about right:
“The more closely I studied the politicians and the laws and customs of the day, and the older I grew, the more difficult it seemed to me to govern rightly,” he said in the Seventh Letter. “Nothing could be done without trustworthy friends and supporters; and these were difficult to come by in an age which had abandoned its traditional moral code but found it impossibly hard to create a new one.”
Plato abandoned his thoughts of a political career, deciding to spend his time dreaming up the perfect republic. Yesterday, we Americans saw a version of these events on our giant screens.
“Nothing could be done without trustworthy friends and supporters, and these were difficult to come by," Plato thoughtfully said. For "trustworthy," we'd substitute "capable"—and we'd say that he was seeking the intercession of a guardian class.
Our corporate liberal pseudo-guardians have been undermining progressive interests for at least thirty years. In our next report from the guardians file, we'll consider the recent attempt of Professor Wilentz to serve in the guardian role with respect to Kavanaugh's nomination.
Also, we'll raise the question we'll be pursuing for the next several months:
Let's consider the sweep of modern history, dating back to Lord Russell's work in 1901. Where have our logicians been during that expanse of time? More generally, through what means did our "philosophers" (our philosophy professors) decide to abandon their posts?
Tomorrow: The oligarchs' most recent rise
Plato saw the same thing: "It's not that easy being green," Kermit the Frog has said.
"People tend to pass you over 'cause you're not standing out like flashy sparkles in the water." Or at least, so Kermit has claimed.
Was Kermit feeling sorry for himself, or did he have a strong point? We'll leave that to the historians! But at least within our failing society, it's also "not that easy" to cast oneself in the guardian's role—to play the role within our society which Plato prescribed long ago.
Years ago, sacred Plato said a just city would need leadership from a guardian class. Indeed, he said a just city might need to be ruled by such an elite.
According to Professor Lane, Plato's Socrates said these "guardians"—these "philosopher kings" and "philosopher queens"—would have to live simply and communally. They would have to be educated in certain ways. They would have to be "dedicated to what is good for the city rather than for themselves."
They'd also have to be philosophers! Or so Plato said!
Just this once, let's be clear! Plato lived at a different time—at "the dawn of the west." When he was voicing these prescriptions through the person of Socrates, he was discussing the way to create a "just city."
He wasn't discussing the needs of a large continental nation like our own failing state.
It's estimated that Plato was born between 429 BC and 423 BC—that is, during the fifth century BC. The bulk of his adult life was therefore lived during the fourth century BC.
How large was the Athens of this day? You're asking a significant question. The leading authority on this matter offers this overview:
Estimates of the population of ancient Athens vary. During the 4th century BC, there might well have been some 250,000–300,000 people in Attica. Citizen families could have amounted to 100,000 people and out of these some 30,000 would have been the adult male citizens entitled to vote in the assembly. In the mid-5th century the number of adult male citizens was perhaps as high as 60,000, but this number fell precipitously during the Peloponnesian War...From a modern perspective these figures may seem small, but among Greek city-states Athens was huge: most of the thousand or so Greek cities could only muster 1000–1500 adult male citizens each; and Corinth, a major power, had at most 15,000.When Plato imagined the structure of a "just city," he was discussing the needs of a city-state of this general size.
The non-citizen component of the population was made up of resident foreigners (metics) and slaves, with the latter perhaps somewhat more numerous.
Plato held that this Athens should be ruled by the philosopher kings and philosopher queens who constituted the guardian class. In the modern context, one would more simply hope that various individuals and groups would step forward to play the role of the guardian, offering such expertise as may serve the public interest.
It isn't that easy being green? Given the nature of our mass society—given the situation experts are calling "the twilight of the rational animals"—it's virtually impossible to serve in the guardian role within our broken mass culture. Over the past thirty years, we've seen quite a few who have tried and failed:
We think of several efforts by Paul Krugman, including his attempt to encourage the mainstream and corporate liberal press to describe Paul Ryan as he actually is. Try and try though Krugman did, he couldn't get others to follow his lead, not even corporate liberals.
(It's an established part of Hard Pundit Law. There will always be a Judge Starr, a Ryan or a Comey who is being universally hailed as the nation's most upright person. Few Dems need apply.)
We think of Kevin Drum's attempt to present basic information about the recent history of lead exposure. Drum's attempts to spread information ran headfirst into the demagoguery of corporate clowns like Rachel Maddow, who used her high corporate platform to dumb the liberal world down as she kept selling the car.
We think, of course, of Gene Lyons' 1995 book, Fools for Scandal: How the Media Invented Whitewater, which began as a full-length report in Harper's. Alas! By "the media," Lyons principally meant the Washington Post and the New York Times. For this reason, his reporting on the early years of the war which eventually sent Donald Trump to the White House was disappeared by the various corporate players we liberals foolishly think of as our tribal leaders.
We think of our own endless work of the so-called "war against Gore," the twenty-month journalistic scam which sent George W. Bush to the White House.
As with Whitewater, so too here. This ugly, stupid war was largely conducted within the mainstream press by leading "liberal" figures. For this reason, our own attempts to serve in the guardian role were destined to be disappeared by the various mainstream careerists who pose as liberal titans.
We also think of the way the mainstream press reports domestic and international public school test scores. Returning to attempts by Krugman, we think of the way the mainstream press disappears the basic data concerning health care spending in the United States, which amounts to an astonishing form of looting.
.
For reasons which go unexplored/unexplained, it has been impossible to get the mainstream press to perform its normal duties with respect to such basic pieces of information. Those who try to play the guardian role with respect to such topics are destined to learn a basic sociological fact:
Performing this role in our mass corporate culture is, in the end, considerably harder even than being a frog!
In all these areas, "corporate liberal" speak-chuckers have reliably served the interests of corporate ruling interests. (Chomsky describes this process as "manufactured consent.") Meanwhile, make no mistake:
You've seen similar patterns in recent weeks concerning the liberal world's hapless attempts to address the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
In our next report from the guardians file, we'll take a brief look at Professor Wilentz's recent attempt to play the guardian role in this matter. For today, let's understand what you saw at yesterday's televised hearing.
Citizens, please! Yesterday's hearing was the latest iteration of a pattern as old as so-called humankind.
Yesterday's hearing can be viewed in more than one way, of course. Depending on which corporate channel you were being propagandized by, you were encouraged to react to the testimony in substantially different ways.
There are various ways to understand yesterday's hearing. But for those who principally saw a power elite rushing through a major power grab, we'll only say that yesterday's hearing was an echo of human experience during the age in which Plato lived.
Yesterday's hearing was the latest replay of familiar events from that earlier age. The leading authority on that era has thumbnailed the matter as shown below:
Before the first attempt at democratic government, Athens was ruled by a series of archons or chief magistrates, and the Areopagus, made up of ex-archons. The members of these institutions were generally aristocrats, who ruled the polis for their own advantage. In 621 BC Draco codified a set of "notoriously harsh" laws that were "a clear expression of the power of the aristocracy over everybody else." This did not stop the aristocratic families feuding amongst themselves to obtain as much power as possible.There's a lot to ponder there. Still, viewers of yesterday's hearing might consider the possibility that they were watching a TV rerun, in which they saw human history being relived. Consider:
Therefore, by the 6th century BC, the majority of Athenians "had been 'enslaved' to the rich", and they called upon Plato's ancestor Solon, premier archon at the time, to liberate them and halt the feuding of the aristocracy. However, the "enfranchisement of the local laboring classes was succeeded by the development of chattel slavery, the enslavement of, in large part, foreigners."
Solon, the mediator, reshaped the city "by absorbing the traditional aristocracy in a definition of citizenship which allotted a political function to every free resident of Attica. Athenians were not slaves but citizens, with the right, at the very least, to participate in the meetings of the assembly." Under these reforms, the position of archon "was opened to all with certain property qualifications, and a Boule, a rival council of 400, was set up. The Areopagus, nevertheless, retained 'guardianship of the laws'"...
Not long afterwards, the nascent democracy was overthrown by the tyrant Peisistratos, but was reinstated after the expulsion of his son, Hippias, in 510. This sort of aristocratic takeover "was ended by the appeal by one contender, Cleisthenes, for the support of the populace." The reforms of Cleisthenes in 508/7 undermined the domination of the aristocratic families and connected every Athenian to the city's rule. "Cleisthenes fixed the boundaries of the polis as a political rather than a geographical entity—boundaries which Solon had left permeable—by formally identifying the free inhabitants of Attica at that time as Athenian citizens." He did this by making the traditional tribes politically irrelevant and instituting ten new tribes...
A third set of reforms was instigated by Ephialtes in 462/1. While his opponents were away attempting to assist the Spartans, Ephialtes persuaded the Assembly to reduce the powers of the Areopagus: "in effect stripping it of all its controlling and supervisory powers and leaving it only as a court for cases of homicide and certain offences of sacrilege." At the same time or soon afterwards, the membership of the Areopagus was extended to the lower level of the propertied citizenship.
In the wake of Athens' disastrous defeat in the Sicilian campaign in 413 BCE, a group of citizens took steps to limit the radical democracy they thought was leading the city to ruin. Their efforts, initially conducted through constitutional channels, culminated in the establishment of an oligarchy, the Council of 400, in the Athenian coup of 411 BCE. The oligarchy endured for only four months before it was replaced by a more democratic government. Democratic regimes governed until Athens surrendered to Sparta in 404 BCE, when government was placed in the hands of the so-called Thirty Tyrants, pro-Spartan oligarchs. After a year pro-democracy elements regained control, and democratic forms persisted until the Macedonian army of Phillip II conquered Athens in 338 BC.
"In the wake of Athens' disastrous defeat in the Sicilian campaign in 413 BCE, a group of citizens took steps to limit the radical democracy they thought was leading the city to ruin. Their efforts, initially conducted through constitutional channels, culminated in the establishment of an oligarchy."
The establishment of an oligarchy! Especially in a mass society, citizens opposed to this type of human impulse are badly in need of the services of a capable "guardian class." They must hope that this class won't be undermined by the work of hidden corporate elites and their endless enablers.
A final note for today. In his famous Seventh Letter, Plato recorded his reaction to the ascension to power of "the so-called Thirty Tyrants." In this translation, we think Professor Lee has it just about right:
PLATO: The existing constitution, which was subject to widespread criticism, was overthrown...and a committee of Thirty given supreme power. As it happened some of them were friends and relations of mine and they at once invited me to join them, as if it were the natural thing for me to do. My feelings were what were to be expected in a young man: I thought they were going to reform society and rule justly, and so I watched their proceedings with deep interest. I found that they soon made the earlier regime look like a golden age. Among other things they tried to incriminate my old friend Socrates, whom I should not hesitate to call the most upright man then living, by sending him, with others, to arrest a fellow-citizen, and bring him forcibly to execution; Socrates refused, and risked everything rather than make himself a party to their wickedness. When I saw all this, and other things as bad, I was disgusted and withdrew from the wickedness of the times.The democracy was soon restored, but Socrates was brought to trial on “a monstrous charge.” His subsequent execution finished off Plato as well:
“The more closely I studied the politicians and the laws and customs of the day, and the older I grew, the more difficult it seemed to me to govern rightly,” he said in the Seventh Letter. “Nothing could be done without trustworthy friends and supporters; and these were difficult to come by in an age which had abandoned its traditional moral code but found it impossibly hard to create a new one.”
Plato abandoned his thoughts of a political career, deciding to spend his time dreaming up the perfect republic. Yesterday, we Americans saw a version of these events on our giant screens.
“Nothing could be done without trustworthy friends and supporters, and these were difficult to come by," Plato thoughtfully said. For "trustworthy," we'd substitute "capable"—and we'd say that he was seeking the intercession of a guardian class.
Our corporate liberal pseudo-guardians have been undermining progressive interests for at least thirty years. In our next report from the guardians file, we'll consider the recent attempt of Professor Wilentz to serve in the guardian role with respect to Kavanaugh's nomination.
Also, we'll raise the question we'll be pursuing for the next several months:
Let's consider the sweep of modern history, dating back to Lord Russell's work in 1901. Where have our logicians been during that expanse of time? More generally, through what means did our "philosophers" (our philosophy professors) decide to abandon their posts?
Tomorrow: The oligarchs' most recent rise
THE GUARDIANS FILE: No fish today!
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2018
We're watching the hearings instead: Was Christine Blasey Ford a credible witness? If so, does that mean that her account is accurate?
We're inclined to think her account is accurate. Does that mean her account is true?
Today only, we're assessing these age-old questions, as considered on cable TV. For that reason, we'll have no fish today. Our reports from the guardians file will resume tomorrow.
We're watching the hearings instead: Was Christine Blasey Ford a credible witness? If so, does that mean that her account is accurate?
We're inclined to think her account is accurate. Does that mean her account is true?
Today only, we're assessing these age-old questions, as considered on cable TV. For that reason, we'll have no fish today. Our reports from the guardians file will resume tomorrow.
THE GUARDIANS FILE: Plato actually gets it right!
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2018
Our "philosophers" get it bad wrong: Sacred greats though they may have been, Plato and Aristotle did, in fact, get quite a few things wrong.
You can't exactly fault them for this. Each fellow held forth "at the dawn of the west." For that reason, they didn't have oodles of prior scholarship to draw on.
That said, when Aristotle turned to basic physics, he made at least several mistakes. As we've noted in the past, the leading authority on his work spells it out like this:
In a somewhat similar vein, it's somewhat comical to see a brilliant mathematician like G. H. Hardy offer a statement like the one posted below. Hardy offered this assessment in his iconic 1940 essay, A Mathematician's Apology, which is still in print:
Have "other philosophers of high reputation" believed in much the same thing? Sadly, possibly yes. Meanwhile, Jim Holt, summarizing Rebecca Goldstein, tells us that many mathematicians believe in these mystical flying forms, as we'll remind you below.
Through no particular fault of his own, Plato advanced all kinds of claims which are hard to make sense of today. In at least one area, though, he rather plainly got it right. According to Plato, the healthy community—the sacred polis—needs the help, perhaps even the rule, of a well-trained guardian class.
What the Sam Hill is a guardian class? Given the way our modern-day guardians have tended to walk away from their posts, it's only natural that you might feel the need to be refreshed on this point.
Luckily, Encyclopedia Brittanica asked Princeton professor Melissa Lane to discuss this foundational concept. We'll start with this part of her essay, which appears under the title "Philosopher king:"
The form of government in which philosophers rule? Taken literally, that almost surely isn't the best form of government, though we'll never find out here, given the way our nation's "philosophers" walked away from their posts.
In Lane's treatment, Plato said the ideal city would have to have a soldier class. But above that group, the ideal city will need "guardians"—rulers who will be "dedicated to what is good for the city rather than for themselves."
As Lane continues, we reach the key point in her discussion. In Plato's mind, these "guardians"—these philosopher kings and philosopher queens—must in fact be philosophers, whatever that might mean:
There you have it! According to Plato's Socrates, "political power and philosophy [must] entirely coincide." The pitfall to his proposal was this: "Many Athenians saw philosophers as perpetual adolescents, refusing to take an adult part in the battle for power and success in the city."
That's what many Athenians thought, back at the dawn of the west. As we survey our own failing society, we'd have to say that, allowing for a few adjustments, those "many Athenians" may have gotten it right!
In our badly floundering, failing society, the philosophy departments of our colleges and universities are clogged with logicians and ethicists, along with practitioners of other specific types. But alas! Despite our desperate need for their services, these people have long ago abandoned their guardian posts.
As we've looked at our failing culture over the course of the past many years, we've seen a crying need for the assistance of a class of logicians.
According to eighth-grade civics texts, our journalists are expected to provide such services. But as you know if you've ever watched a prime time "cable news" program, our highest-paid, most visible journalists often stumble over themselves as they work on the metaphorical level of 2 + 2.
Good God! Tomorrow, we'll ponder a few recent examples of the work our journalists provide. But as we the people beg the gods to give us the boon of a cogent discourse, our greatest logicians never intercede in these destructive gong shows.
They've walked away from their guardian posts! They spend their time, quite literally, on questions involving the "logic" of 2 + 2:
Our logicians and ethicists, theoretical guardians all, have long ago walked off their posts. The lunacies of our failing discourse continue apace, night after night, absent any intercession from this lapsed guardian class.
Did you see Tucker Carlson on Monday night? Did you catch Hallie Jackson the following morning? Have you seen players from each of our tribes fervently saying Who They Believe in our current attempt at debate?
We're badly in need of the help of a guardian class. But our journalists are unable to serve, and our society's "philosophers" have largely walked away from their posts.
This pattern has given us President Trump. Neither of our warring tribes seems able to deal with this fact.
Tomorrow: Tucker Carlson, right and wrong, as "rational animals" flounder
Our "philosophers" get it bad wrong: Sacred greats though they may have been, Plato and Aristotle did, in fact, get quite a few things wrong.
You can't exactly fault them for this. Each fellow held forth "at the dawn of the west." For that reason, they didn't have oodles of prior scholarship to draw on.
That said, when Aristotle turned to basic physics, he made at least several mistakes. As we've noted in the past, the leading authority on his work spells it out like this:
In his On Generation and Corruption, Aristotle related each of the four elements proposed earlier by Empedocles, Earth, Water, Air, and Fire, to two of the four sensible qualities, hot, cold, wet, and dry. In the Empedoclean scheme, all matter was made of the four elements, in differing proportions. Aristotle's scheme added the heavenly Aether, the divine substance of the heavenly spheres, stars and planets.The basic four, plus the heavenly Aether? The majority of modern physicists will say that this looks to be wrong.
In a somewhat similar vein, it's somewhat comical to see a brilliant mathematician like G. H. Hardy offer a statement like the one posted below. Hardy offered this assessment in his iconic 1940 essay, A Mathematician's Apology, which is still in print:
HARDY (1940): I believe that mathematical reality lies outside us, that our function is to discover or observe it, and that the theorems which we prove, and which we describe grandiloquently as our "creations," are simply our notes of our observations. This view has been held, in one form or another, by many philosophers of high reputation from Plato onwards, and I shall use the language which is natural to a man who holds it.Alas! When it came to "mathematical reality," Plato believed in something resembling our own modern-day "flying spaghetti monsters."
Have "other philosophers of high reputation" believed in much the same thing? Sadly, possibly yes. Meanwhile, Jim Holt, summarizing Rebecca Goldstein, tells us that many mathematicians believe in these mystical flying forms, as we'll remind you below.
Through no particular fault of his own, Plato advanced all kinds of claims which are hard to make sense of today. In at least one area, though, he rather plainly got it right. According to Plato, the healthy community—the sacred polis—needs the help, perhaps even the rule, of a well-trained guardian class.
What the Sam Hill is a guardian class? Given the way our modern-day guardians have tended to walk away from their posts, it's only natural that you might feel the need to be refreshed on this point.
Luckily, Encyclopedia Brittanica asked Princeton professor Melissa Lane to discuss this foundational concept. We'll start with this part of her essay, which appears under the title "Philosopher king:"
LANE: In Plato's Republic the leading character, Socrates, proposes the design of an ideal city as a model for how to order the individual soul. Such a just city will require specialized military “guards,” divided subsequently into two groups—rulers who will be “guards” in the sense of guardians, dedicated to what is good for the city rather than for themselves, and soldiers who will be their “auxiliaries.” Already at this stage of the Republic it is stressed that the guardians must be virtuous and selfless, living simply and communally as do soldiers in their camps, and Socrates proposes that even wives and children should be in common.Lane's submission appears under the title "Philosopher king." She defines this as the "idea according to which the best form of government is that in which philosophers rule."
The form of government in which philosophers rule? Taken literally, that almost surely isn't the best form of government, though we'll never find out here, given the way our nation's "philosophers" walked away from their posts.
In Lane's treatment, Plato said the ideal city would have to have a soldier class. But above that group, the ideal city will need "guardians"—rulers who will be "dedicated to what is good for the city rather than for themselves."
As Lane continues, we reach the key point in her discussion. In Plato's mind, these "guardians"—these philosopher kings and philosopher queens—must in fact be philosophers, whatever that might mean:
LANE (continuing directly): At the outset of Book V, Socrates is challenged by his interlocutors to explain this last proposal. In response, Socrates expounds three controversial claims, which he acknowledges will expose him to ridicule. The first is that the guardians should include qualified women as well as men; thus, the group that will become known as “philosopher kings” will also include “philosopher queens.” The second claim is that these ruling men and women should mate and reproduce on the city’s orders, raising their children communally to consider all guardians as parents rather than attach themselves to a private family household. Those children, together with those of the artisan class, will be tested, and only the most virtuous and capable will become rulers. Thus, the group to become known as “philosopher kings” will be reproduced by merit rather than simply by birth. Finally, Socrates declares that these rulers must in fact be philosophers:A society's rulers—its "guardians"—must in fact be philosophers? As she continues, Lane provides the specific statement where Plato's Socrates expresses this key point:
LANE (continuing directly): "Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophize, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide...cities will have no rest from evils...there can be no happiness, either public or private, in any other city.""Socrates predicts that this claim will elicit even more ridicule and contempt from his Athenian contemporaries than will equality for women rulers or communality of sex and children," Lane says as she continues. "Many Athenians saw philosophers as perpetual adolescents, skulking in corners and muttering about the meaning of life, rather than taking an adult part in the battle for power and success in the city."
There you have it! According to Plato's Socrates, "political power and philosophy [must] entirely coincide." The pitfall to his proposal was this: "Many Athenians saw philosophers as perpetual adolescents, refusing to take an adult part in the battle for power and success in the city."
That's what many Athenians thought, back at the dawn of the west. As we survey our own failing society, we'd have to say that, allowing for a few adjustments, those "many Athenians" may have gotten it right!
In our badly floundering, failing society, the philosophy departments of our colleges and universities are clogged with logicians and ethicists, along with practitioners of other specific types. But alas! Despite our desperate need for their services, these people have long ago abandoned their guardian posts.
As we've looked at our failing culture over the course of the past many years, we've seen a crying need for the assistance of a class of logicians.
According to eighth-grade civics texts, our journalists are expected to provide such services. But as you know if you've ever watched a prime time "cable news" program, our highest-paid, most visible journalists often stumble over themselves as they work on the metaphorical level of 2 + 2.
Good God! Tomorrow, we'll ponder a few recent examples of the work our journalists provide. But as we the people beg the gods to give us the boon of a cogent discourse, our greatest logicians never intercede in these destructive gong shows.
They've walked away from their guardian posts! They spend their time, quite literally, on questions involving the "logic" of 2 + 2:
HOLT (page 8): Gödel entered the University of Vienna in 1924. He had intended to study physics, but he was soon seduced by the beauties of mathematics, and especially by the notion that abstractions like numbers and circles had a perfect, timeless existence independent of the human mind. This doctrine, which is called Platonism, because it descends from Plato’s theory of ideas, has always been popular among mathematicians...In the philosophical world of nineteen-twenties Vienna, however, it was considered distinctly old-fashioned. Among the many intellectual movements that flourished in the city’s rich café culture, one of the most prominent was the Vienna Circle, a group of thinkers united in their belief that philosophy must be cleansed of metaphysics and made over in the image of science. Under the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein, their reluctant guru, the members of the Vienna Circle regarded mathematics as a game played with symbols, a more intricate version of chess. What made a proposition like “2 + 2 = 4” true, they held, was not that it correctly described some abstract world of numbers but that it could be derived in a logical system according to certain rules.What makes a proposition like 2 + 2 = 4 true? Our greatest logician since Aristotle devoted his time to such puzzles! To all intents and purposes, this nonsensical situation still obtains today.
Our logicians and ethicists, theoretical guardians all, have long ago walked off their posts. The lunacies of our failing discourse continue apace, night after night, absent any intercession from this lapsed guardian class.
Did you see Tucker Carlson on Monday night? Did you catch Hallie Jackson the following morning? Have you seen players from each of our tribes fervently saying Who They Believe in our current attempt at debate?
We're badly in need of the help of a guardian class. But our journalists are unable to serve, and our society's "philosophers" have largely walked away from their posts.
This pattern has given us President Trump. Neither of our warring tribes seems able to deal with this fact.
Tomorrow: Tucker Carlson, right and wrong, as "rational animals" flounder
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