Month: April 2017

I’ve expressed my views on Assad’s chemical weapons specifically and previously on (chemical weapons generally).

Even if the recent awful events weren’t caused by Russian supported Syrian forces using chemical weapons – Boris quite carefully suggested absence of any evidence they weren’t – but were collateral damage due to ISIS / rebel or even circumstantial stockpiling locally, then Assad is still guilty.

Assad is responsible for the stockpiles being in his country and for agreeing to manage their disposal safe from use, deliberate or accidental. If there are Syrian chemical weapons unaccounted for, Assad needs to apply caution in any Syrian / Russian military action in his own country.

Exactly what is or isn’t “anti-semitic” is getting pretty blurred and it’s getting pretty hard to follow when and why Ken Livingston keeps mentioning his pet theory on Hitler and Zionism.

If he is genuinely raising it himself – out of the context of any actual debate on the history of Jews in Germany, or rather simply answering provocative questions – then the question has to be why? What point is he making and why? That might be anti-semitic, even if it is a fact in historical context that Hitler did for a while conveniently support the idea a Jewish homeland outside Germany. The fact – even if it isn’t one – is plausible but it isn’t anti-semitic. A fact isn’t anti-semitic simply because Hitler was.

The real issue is that the UK Labour party is dealing with a persistent anti-semitism “taint” to which their response seems to be some PC variation on “Don’t mention the Jews” … just in case. The furore becomes almost self-fulfilling between accusation, defense and victimhood and, of course, Corbyn / Chakrabarti Labour has enough management leadership problems right now.

EITHER WAY – Ken is clearly no longer an astute enough politician to know how to avoid a “scandal” or has a hidden agenda that benefits from his continually stoking one. He really needs to be retired from any party involvement, whether he is anti-semitic or not.

[And I say this as a big fan of Ken back in the 1970’s when his GLC gave us students practically free 24 hour travel in London.]

[Post Note: My point, the historical Hitler / Zionism point is nowhere near Holocaust-denial. It’s only a step on the slippery slope to anti-semitism if you are a peculiarly PC version of “zero tolerant”. Jeez!]

[And here the full Facebook version of the David Baddiel piece in the Guardian. As he says, it’s the tone of what Ken is (may be) trying to say with his interpretation of historical facts and how he comes to be saying it – with PC avoidance of the word “Jew” – that’s the real problem, as I said. Think it’s more the lefty / liberal / PC commentary that is being “anti-semitic” with the conflation of all things Jewish / Zionist / Israeli. Hard to say whether Ken is or not, given his unclear message But as I say, as an experienced politician he’s either lost it or is exploiting the lack of clarity for an implied message or hidden agenda. Either way, as I said, Ken is in the wrong, anti-semitic or not.]

Is he a scientist or is he a philosopher? He’s a philosopher. His contributions to science (and anything else) are philosophical. He’s learned a great deal from science and is very pro-science. Some, but not so many, scientists appreciate philosophical input or explicitly concern themselves with the philosophical underpinnings of their subject.

Is he a “four horsemen” atheist or not? Yes, he is an atheist, but unlike most others, he’s not against religion per se, it has value in love and belonging (religiare – that which binds us culturally) and sees an entirely naturalistic explanation for religion. He’s against dogma and fanaticism – he certainly would “cage and/or disarm” extremists.

Does he believe consciousness is an illusion or not? No and Yes. It’s real and natural, but our typical view of it is illusory. It’s really a user interface behind which actual causality is quite different to the objects we can perceive in the interface. (How else would we / nature / god “intelligently-design” a supervisory dashboard for a complex system? – it’s a bag of tricks – The “mind” doesn’t need to know everything the “brain” is doing. See machine view.)

Does he explain or explain-away consciousness? Yes and Yes. Everything he has done has been of a piece attempting to explain and understand consciousness but, in “Consciousness Explained” and since, he has certainly been explaining away – pointing out an illusory idea – the “special” nature of consciousness – beyond natural evolutionary explanation. It’s a wonderful bag of natural tricks.

Does he believe in human exceptionalism? Yes and no. Human consciousness, intelligence and culture is the most wonderful bag of tricks we know about so far, but it’s no exclusion from natural evolution in any exceptional way.

Is he just a “materialist”, are minds just “machines”, can “culture” just be a product of the mind as materialist machine? Yes, but not “just”. Dawkins and Turing both showed us that evolution and computation are algorithmic, competence without comprehension, leading eventually to comprehension of competence. Robots made of robots made of robots made of robots made of robots made of …. Requires a stranger (loopy) version – an inversion – of reasoning more than mere greedy reductionism, reducing the “wonderful bag of tricks” to a direct chain of causation between the objects we choose to define (*). Always need to see big historical (evolutionary, fluid) picture as well as isolated local and temporal detail. [Post Note: ie Compatibilism is not simply (need not be) a fudge – after Julian Baggini on Freedom Regained. (*) This “shifting the basis of the argument” point is key to “Dennett’s wager“.]

Critics in both the Humanities and the Sciences need to shift their (appreciation of) materialist (naturalist) thinking away from that kind of objective reductionism. Neither need have anything to fear except dogmatism in what may or must be explained in any particular way.

Hat tip to Jim Al-Khalili and the “Life Scientific” of  Dan Dennett this morning.