I’ve been watching reactions to Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s recent Unherd posting about claiming to now be a Christian. Mischievously reacting to some of those (anonymous) reactions, on Twitter and Facebook, but only actually read it this afternoon. Predictable reactions mostly from people who claim to be atheist, worse still new atheists and atheist / sceptic activists.
The essay itself is excellent, whether you believe her claimed belief or not. 20 years an avowed atheist since the aftermath of 9/11 having previously been a Muslim across the whole spectrum from passive to jihadi activist.
[As] different from the preachers of the Muslim Brotherhood as one could imagine. The more time I spent with [New Atheist types] — people such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins — the more confident I felt that I had made the right choice. For the atheists were clever. They were also a great deal of fun.
So, what changed? Why do I call myself a Christian now?
Her alignment with the New Atheists was my problem with her for years – from one kind of activist extremism to another. Like all extremists their main sin is failure to understand anything other than the extreme caricature position of the other side with an extra dose of intellectual smugness – they were “clever” (by their own limited intellectual standards). (Ditto Maajid Nawaz – whatever happened to him?) The problem is extremists, not their religion.
Personally, it was 9/11 (explicitly) set me too on the road to understanding this, in an active research sense, although the recognition that we had an everyday problem intellectually predates this by another 10 years – over 30 years ago in my case. 9/11 was just the kick in the pants. I was never more than a passive cultural Christian myself growing-up, though I’ve (explicitly) been a humanist since 1979 – what’s that 44 years? (I’ve been explicit too about my matured position in this minefield of belief.)
The whole section following that question, :
From
“Part of the problem … [global poly-crises] …”
To
“As Tom Holland has shown in his marvellous book Dominion, all sorts of apparently secular freedoms — of the market, of conscience and of the press — find their roots in Christianity.”
Is spot on. OK, so Christianity probably borrowed most of it from Plato and Aristotle (The Virtues, The Ethics et al) – and probably failed to acknowledge pilfering from other scholarly sources who also borrowed from the Greeks – but they preserved and maintained it for two millennia.
And so I have come to realise that Russell and my [new] atheist friends failed to see the wood for the trees […] Russell’s critique of [Christian doctrine] is serious, but it is also too narrow in scope.
Absolutely – I could have written that myself. In fact I hope my skeptic friends recognise that accusation of narrowness in “our” critical rationale? Self-ID atheists absolutely fail to see what they don’t understand.
[The] freedom of conscience and speech is perhaps the greatest benefit of Western civilisation. It does not come naturally to man. It is the product of centuries of debate [… it doesn’t matter who by].
As I always say, the UN Declaration of human rights, including freedoms of speech and belief, are the pinnacle of any global constitution.
atheism is too weak and divisive a doctrine to fortify us against our menacing foes …
… and Islam [unlike Christianity] hasn’t escaped its dogmatic phase.
For me personally, I’m not sure if the Christian story doesn’t already have too much distracting baggage beyond / after humanity and the virtues / virtue. I notice she only mentions God in her own history in Islam or when quoting the “too narrow” atheists. She doesn’t mention it as part of her Christian affiliation, still less belief. I still live in hope that some transnational secular entity like the UN can become the custodian of “our story” but we’d have to start taking it a lot more seriously than recent populist chancers. UN with its new found care for humanity andthe planet. And as Rabbi Sacks concluded, however we solve this problem it will be “a religion by any other name” – something to which we declare affiliation, value, defend as sacred in its current state, even whilst we critique and evolve it.
This final choice, of where to put the effort to preserve and maintain that story, is ultimately pragmatic – where’s our best chance of making it work – but the decision to recognise the need for it is not.
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POST NOTE:
And Dawkins has responded on behalf of the “New Atheists”.
One of the critical responses (echoes my “smug cleverness” criticism above):
“You’re an intelligent, brave person who has changed your mind about where the solid ground lies, and even courageously stepped off the ledge of unbelief, towards the unknown. But here are the same old arguments you’ve heard a thousand times because I know better, you idiot.”
And, this is one version of the approving summaries:
“No, Ayaan, you are not a Christian, you are just a decent human being who mistakenly thinks you need a religion in order to remain so.”
Predictable. The idea of being a “decent human being” is central to our freedoms of thought and behaviour. Culturally / institutionally we need a narrative that maintains (preserves and evolves) what that entails – beyond individual lives and democratic cycles. I “wish” the UN could take on that custodianship, but it’s simply a pragmatic choice which institutional arrangements might best guarantee such a thing. Judeo-Christianity has a track record, Islam less so, all have baggage. Whatever equivalent we set up. it will be (per Sacks) “a religion by any other name” that WE subscribe to as humanity. (Obviously this is about needs, AHA’s or mine, beyond our individual life, a need for our fellow humans now and in future.)
As a massive fan of PiL to this day – I missed the period between Metal Box and Album. Wobble and Levine originally and McGeoch briefly – with session musicians on Album (late-1985) inc Ginger Baker and Steve Vai – and later (to this day) Lu, Bruce and Scott, but this popped-up randomly from a pre-Album 1985 Tokyo “Anarchy” gig with a tour line-up I’d never heard of (!).
Not the best audio-visual recording, but looks and sounds like an excellent tight PiL set, with a couple of Pistols classics thrown in. I know John’s a bit Marmite (and he don’t care) but he represents an amazing body and continuity of work.
Set List 1985 Tour
0:03 Intro/Bad Life 4:55 Lowlife 8:34 Memories 16:11 1981 23:53 Tie Me to the Length of That 31:00 Bodies (Pistols) 34:14 Public Image 37:37 Annalisa 41:58 Flowers of Romance 48:50 This is Not a Love Song 55:35 Under the House 1:01:01 Religion 1:08:18 Attack 1:11:48 Anarchy in the UK (Pistols)
Personnel 1985 tour:
Mark Schulz – Guitar
Jebin Bruni – Keys/Guitar
Bret Helm – Bass Martin Atkins – Drums
I was left with a pretty negative view of Larry Krauss after his collaborations with Richard Dawkins – “The Unbelievers” (2013) and Dawkins breathless afterword to Krauss “A Universe From Nothing – Why is there something rather than nothing?” (2012)
In that recommendation – oft repeated in public sessions since – Dawkins concluded “The title means exactly what it says” despite the fact Krauss himself doesn’t claim that. It’s not unusual for publishers and editors to hype titles and headlines, but we’d hope for more honesty from professional scientists. Sadly in the whole New Atheists’ publicly declared war against God, the gloves were off – all’s fair in love and war apparently – so honesty and factual science are sacrificed. See “The Unbelievers” Dawkins and Krauss, (2013)
The most Krauss claims here is that the more complex structures in the cosmos evolved Darwinian fashion from our understanding of its simplest elements of space, time, energy, matter, particles, waves etc, without need of any intelligent design. I agree. (Any “intelligent design” has itself evolved the same way in the same time – after Dennett). What he is at pains to point out is that even “empty space” is full of potential and virtual instances of these elements. He’s talking about evolution of complex reality from empty space. Not from nothing.
Empty space is not nothing.
Frankly myself, I’m more interested in epistemology – what do we really know – than picking sides in a war, so I put this whole unfortunate episode behind me when in 2014 he was advertised to appear at the “Bang Goes the Big Bang” themed HTLGI event. I’d already had issues with Krauss science from back in 2006 / 2010 (below) and having failed to get his attention during the Unbelievers circus with Dawkins I had another try. To no avail. Sadly he appeared only by video link for a single session. Doubly disappointing there was no overlap with other physicists at the event, relevant to his 2006/10 work. Trebly sadly, he was lined-up against two philosophers, and was defending the line that science had made all real human progress since the time of Plato and even Aristotle had got most things wrong, so philosophy and philosophers were entirely redundant and discredited today. Science has no need of philosophy.
Strangely in 2017 – the Humanists UK “Darwin Day” lecture, also hosted by Dawkins, Krauss was pretty honest despite Dawkins over-selling Krauss claims again. He did a potted version of his 2012 (something from nothing empty space) work only very briefly before spending most of his time on the population evolution arguments of science and his heroes from Galileo & Faraday onwards. Fine and honest. (Plato again the only philosopher he’s prepared to acknowledge and even then I suspect his lesson from the cave was the reverse of mine.) He’s a great communicator, but I’d really already left him behind in 2014.
“Something rather than Nothing” is a much bigger philosophical question than this post, and fortunately despite the critical noise generated, we and Krauss already know he has nothing to say about it. The lesson is in the noise and spurious claims of public science communications. So something from nothing is NOTour topic here.
But, as I said, I’d first noticed him as a great communicator between 2006 and 2010 and it was the following earlier work of his I had been trying to follow-up.
The Anthropic Copernican Point:
Following the “Confronting Gravity” conference of hand-picked physicist colleagues – across the whole range and scales from quanta to cosmology, theoretical and empirical – Krauss was interviewed by John Brockman (of The Edge dot org) with the title:
(The page has a partial transcript and a partial video version of the same interview – embedded top right – they’re not inconsistent in any contradictory way, but as a result of editing they have different content & omissions – eg @ ~13mins? Worth reading / viewing both.)
Long story short – the inability of quantum theory and general relativity to combine to accommodate gravity in any consistent way – explain the gravitational constant and/or the energy of “empty space” – is (or should be) a major headache for fundamental physicists. (Why isn’t it zero? why is cosmic inflation at an accelerating rate? etc). Clearly then for Krauss it was the headache he was focussing on, but many simply appeared to have thrown up their hands (his words) as just one of those things we’re never going to solve by observation from our circumstantial human perspective in the universe we happen to inhabit. If ever there were an aspect of 21st C fundamental science that might be interested in philosophy, this is surely it? Anyway I’m interested. Metaphysical questions around the ontology of existence, what it means to exist as something rather than nothing, never go away. Something that can never be objectively verified by science isn’t science but a metaphysical choice.
Now, mentioned in the transcript but not the recording is the question I’ve been trying to get Krauss to revisit since 2006. Any mention of it is even missing from his 2012 work, despite many mentions of the importance of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) observations (as reverberations from the Big Bang). Because the question is in Krauss’ words:
There appears to be energy of empty space that isn’t zero! This flies in the face of all conventional wisdom in theoretical particle physics. It is the most profound shift in thinking, perhaps the most profound puzzle …
… when we look out at the universe, there doesn’t seem to be enough structure not as much as inflation would predict …
… when you look at CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background) map, you also see that the structure that is observed, is in fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us?
That’s crazy. We’re looking out at the whole universe. There’s no way there should be a correlation of structure with our motion of the earth around the sun, the plane of the earth around the sun, the ecliptic …
… telling us that all of science is wrong and we’re the center of the universe, or maybe the data is simply incorrect, or … maybe there’s something wrong with our theories on the larger scales.
He mentions the word “Anthropic” just once in the video recording edit, and this claim of “craziness” at the heart of physics is doesn’t make the video edit either. As I say, nor does any of this appear in his 2012 book, despite 30+ references to CMB and even addressing “fine tuning” Anthropic anomalies, in his story of cosmic evolution. That’s weird.
I’ve written lots about this before (see below) and I’m not an advocate of (any of) The Anthropic Principle(s) but I see an Anthropic anomaly in our scientific observations that needs explaining?
In some sense “our” model of physics does appear to have some dependency on “our” place in the cosmos. This undermines scientific claims of objectivity and, as above, the possibility or validity of empirical observation. Gödel was there before everyone. As Brandon Carter, the originator of Anthropic discussions, pointed out in 1974, science’s decision to ignore this non-scientific question is actually a political one.
In ignorance of metaphysics,
science is compromised by politics.
(END)
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Post Notes: Revisiting the above, in the light of Krauss appearance at Teesside Skeptics in the Pub November 2023.
In the absence of detailed references above this 2010 post contains many important linked papers: “Before The Big Bang?“. (Since Rick Ryals has died since then, I may need to secure copies of his work.)
My 100% review of the same – where I air my disappointments despite it being a great read in terms of cosmological evolution.
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UPDATE 9 Nov: Assuming this is the talk we are seeing tonight – (it was) – no science is fundamental at all scales, all is always contingent, so science must always be changing its mind, revising its model – is this one?
Awful “New Atheists” (!) production – but– a fine talk on the same content I mentioned from the 2006 Brockman interview above. And mentioning several “crazy” observations and predictions about the gravitational constant / cosmic expansion / energy of free-space that led to radical re-framing of fundamental laws / equations – and indeed completely new concepts like dark matter and dark energy needing to be added. Except – the one crazyobservation (outlined above) which he has never responded to from 2006 to 2010 nor even in his 2012 book.
QUESTION For Larry Krauss (question updated 9 Nov in line with the above). A question about whether you’ve changed your own mind:
A lot of what you described in your talk was the same as you shared with John Brockman (at The Edge) in 2006 following your “Confronting Gravity” conference with the great and the good of fundamental physics – all scales theoretical and observational. Several “crazy” things that demanded new elements in the theories and equations of fundamental physics – dark matter, dark energy, energy of empty-space etc.
After that, your 2012 book “A Universe from Nothing” covered the whole Darwinian evolution of the universe from the vacuum of empty space (not from nothing incidentally, despite the publisher’s title and the Dawkins afterword, but we can ignore that here). A great book, I reviewed and recommended at the time.
In the book you mention the importance of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) observations many times, and you also address several Anthropic questions of apparent “fine tuning” (most people just dismiss Anthropic questions, but you addressed them).
BUT YOU DID NOT mention (so far as I can see then or since) your position – restate, correct or explain – the Anthropic anomaly in the CMBR Map. That the observations themselves displayed a “crazy” correlation to the place of our planet and solar-system – in the cosmos? Are you still haunted by Copernicus? Or how have you since satisfied yourself with an explanation of this specific Anthropic anomaly?
Have you changed your mind, Larry?
(Or did I miss something in your book or since?)
Krauss Answer: (1) Stopped worrying about it, no-one talks about it any more. Assume later measurements (eg by Planck) have not reproduced the local ecliptic correlation in the CMBR anisotropy observations. And (2) even if there were correlations in angular alignment of the anisotropy with the earth’s solar system, there would be enough circumstantial reasons to conclude that’s just how it ended up, without need of further explanation.
My thoughts:
(2) is the dismissive response to Anthropic views, where I just believe we deserve more sophisticated causal arguments in either direction, the cosmos to us or us to the cosmos? Even that meta-argument – whether such an argument is or isn’t needed – is worthy of discussion, philosophically even if not empirically? Certainly Krauss took many other Anthropic indications seriously enough to address them in his 2012 book. (This is actually my main agenda about science’s political motivations in providing public explanations – Brandon Carter’s original point – no space for more here.)
(1) Is what leads one to question motivations – the passivity? Clearly it was such a “crazy” scenario, and massively disruptive – a disaster – for much of the foundations of cosmology and cosmogeny, the whole of science – that one way or another science hoped it would go away. Hence Krauss’ Copernican jibe. But, given that hope, you’d maybe think people would be actively looking out for the disconfirmation and an explanation of the effect of previous observational arrangements that caused the spurious anomaly?
Now, as I said, I left this behind in 2014/16 and only revisited it given the opportunity of Krauss’ appearance at TS-SitP. And I was never close to the empirical science, nor even expert enough, just concerned for the philosophical question of what counts as a “quality” explanation.
Looking at (say) these two more recent post-Planck papers, lots of discussion of interpretation of many different kinds of anisotropy, but not one direct reference to the particular prior “ecliptic” anomaly. Surely it would be easy for an expert like Krauss, to construct a conclusion of the form “[This observation / reference] shows that is statistically most likely the ecliptic anomaly was spurious and caused by [some local effect of the observation arrangement]”. Still seems odd not to want to do that?
I think the better model of the cosmos at all scales – including humanity within it – is essentially epistemological rather than ontological. Primarily about what can be known, with what exists and happens relegated to our secondary “model” based on that primary view. So those most fundamental elements of existence – space, time, energy, matter, particles, waves etc – are themselves derived from even more fundamental particles of knowledge – bits of information.
With this metaphysics, limits to knowledge are more properly recognised and anthropic limits with what we humans can know are also more properly explained- and in fact many other existential “human” questions in the cosmos – and on the planet – are better addressed.
It’s pretty clear why the scientific “sacred” attitude to empirical objectivity resists this politically, but equally clear (from so many other “sacred naturalism” issues beyond this post) that this is where many of our real human problems lie.
As the result of collaborations, planning and coordinating activities to mark the 50th anniversary in 2024 of the publication of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” ( #ZMM50th ) it was decided to immediately implement the Robert Pirsig Association (RPA) at robertpirsig.org So, as of now, all news related generally to the work of Robert Pirsig and specifically to the #ZMM50th activities will be posted there and emailed to subscribers (and shared on social media channels, including ZMMQuality on Facebook.)
“Dysmemics – Bad Ideas that Reproduce Furiously” caught my eye in the profile header of Paula Wright on Twitter / X.
I’ve been using “the memetic problem” for the idea that “bad ideas win over good ideas” in the battle for attention and adoption for at least two decades. Even the sciences themselves suffer from this addiction quite generally, before we get into socio-political minefields. Basically simplistic ideas are much easier to capture and share in a few memorable words and images than better ideas which are invariably more complex, nuanced and subtle. So bad wins over good, and that’s a degenerate state of affairs for humanity as a whole, an inevitable slide to lowest common denominators, especiallyas more of the process is (semi-)automated at the speed of light.
“Woke” wins over “everything before / after the but”.
[Post Note: Ditto anti-Woke btw.]
Until today, I hadn’t noticed someone had in the meantime coined a word for that memetic problem – “Dysmemics”.
“The decades after the printing press were some of the most violent and volatile in human history.
The same will happen with the Internet/blockchain/AI.
We’re just hurtling towards a wall, some screaming for the brakes, some claiming more speed will get us through it faster.”
(Note – the internet itself, not just the fashionable bits with flashy brandings and acronyms. I’ve been “screaming for the brakes” – calling for moderationof all internet enabled discourse since before social media.)
That damn meme again. “Dennett denies consciousness”. No he doesn’t.
(I already part reviewed Dennett’s memoir recently and added links to a few other sympathetic reviews which all naturally included summaries of his important works. Apart from one footnote of my own on a reconciliation of his physicalist determinist compatibilism with informational subjective pan-proto-psychism (*), I didn’t detect the problem meme this time, though I’ve rehearsed it umpteen times before.)
However, yesterday Thomas Nagel’s review in The New Statesman got this headline treatment: “What Daniel Dennett gets wrong. Is consciousness an illusion? Only a philosopher could convince himself of something as implausible.”
That same erroneous (and frankly, offensive) criticism expressed 3 ways, by the headline writer at least. I responded wearily: “I’m getting tired of correcting this misrepresentation of Dennett. Our common intuitive view of consciousness is the illusion. Consciousness itself obviously isn’t.” And, as I hit enter, I knew I’d need to explain that “common (but misguided) intuitive view” again. That’s “the illusion”. Consciousness isn’t.
A couple of positive responses agreed with me, but inevitably expressed what they were agreeing with in their own words.
One respondent suggested “I suspect these misrepresentations are because of differences in how we define or understand consciousness. That’s an underlying problem.“
Another had already suggested: “Dennett doesn’t think consciousness is an illusion, only that experiential qualities are illusory. But as Nagel says, that’s to deny what looks to be essential to consciousness.”
The first first. Obviously there are many different issues with defining and understanding “consciousness”. We all already know there are many aspects and multiple axes of sentience, attention, sense-of-self, agency, will, the mental<>physical relationship, etc. It’s a cop-out to suggest the illusion problem is due to lack of a definitive understanding of these. Frankly, as Dennett himself often says, definitions are the last thing we should start with. A cop-out because it misses the specific problematic illusion.
It’s the “experiential qualities” that are illusory? Not exactly. Dennett isn’t denying the reality of these qualia experiences either. He certainly rejects the language of qualia because: ‘he’s saying the idea of such qualia as *objects distinct from* our experience of them is the illusion – the point that objective science will never find such things. (A very common sensible view IMHO)
Those qualia (experiential qualities) ARE our subject, we are they. They’re not science’s objects. Not so much a “hard problem” as missing that [subjectivity] point?‘
(PS – Stopped my usual practice of embedding Tweets since the “X” API has a doubtful future. The quotes above are pasted from Tweets.)
So what is that common (but erroneous) sensible view. It’s what Dennett used to refer to as “the Cartesian theatre”. The idea that we are observers independent from the objects of our observation. An audience of homunculi witnessing the qualia performing on the stage. We ARE our experiences, but that makes us subjects, not objects of empirical science. Science denial of this fact, or of any truth value in such a fact, is the real underlying problem.
In fact this view is now very common, more common than the “noddy” Cartesian-theatre view I’d say. It’s just very hard to express it in ways that orthodox (physicalist, objective, empirical, deterministic, …) science and its publications will take seriously. Mark Solms – who gives one of the best comprehensive explanations of what consciousness really is, how it works and how it evolved to function – calls the problem “crossing the Rubicon” – getting that orthodox science to embrace the subjective view.
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[Post Notes:
The “second” correspondent above was Tom Clark of Naturalism.Org – long time, no contact – maintained his “but Dennett is wrong” line to the end, despite agreeing that qualia are not (do not exist as) objects. He shared some articles of his – “Dennett’s physicalist case against qualia in B2BnB” and “Why Experience Can’t Be Objectified” and “Are Feels Real? – dialogue with Keith Frankish” – concluding with “[but Dennett] categorically denies there’s anything qualitative about experience.” I sincerely doubt that, but what is this obsession with wanting to find disagreement, having agreed the substantive point?!?
Dialogic is not definitive. I suspect resolution lies in that footnote (*) I mentioned above, from my previous Dennett post. It’s about how we use the terms subjective, qualitative and especially physicalist / compatibilist. (The Pirsig – quality teaching – aspect of that post is irrelevant to the current Dennett point – apart from use of the word “quality” of course. Love it when a plan comes together.)
(Weirdly, Keith Mitchell “liked” a couple of my replies in the thread with Tom Clark – hold point for a proper dialogue).]
The overall thrust and message I completely agree with, but as someone who identifies as “Architect” I want to disagree with one point he repeatedly emphasises, or maybe sound a warning, a different way of looking at the same point.
I’m frequently citing variations of “The devil may be in the details, but the angels are in the abstractions.” Or, one message of “Systems Thinking” (after Levenchuk) is to preserve a domain, some space and time for the thinking at the more abstract – even holistic – level and not to confuse this with thinking about the current good / best-practice details of the planning and doing. The difference between a strategy and an implementation plan.
To be clear, when I’m talking Architecture. I’m talking in the most general human systems sense, not just the physical built-environment sense, that would fit with RIBA. Obviously, anyone engaging in architecture in the building sense needs a sound appreciation of the possibilities of materials and construction processes, as well as their vision for the functional reasoning behind shaping and scoping the building itself. Once upon a time the Master Builder might have literally had both at their fingertips. The visionary – shaping the plan in every dimension – also knew how to build and get stuff done.
The problem, where I think I agree with Heatherwick, is that if one is too prescriptive about the functional purpose of a building and the nominal – effectiveness and efficiency of – creation and intended “use” for a given design life say, it is easy to overlook the wider stakeholding of humanity in general having to live with the results – the soul as much as the physical and functional attributes. I’m not precious about job titles, architect, designer, builder and which different parties (contractors) takes responsibility for which aspects – thinking at different levels over different timescales – but what I am concerned about is that in integrating them they nevertheless remain distinct, with good fences between them. Either side of the builder-architect line, needs to engage in the integrating processes with the other.
[Personally, most of my hands-on construction experience, from strategic level down, has been with explicitly utilitarian facilities, manufacturing and processing plants in industrial areas, where having an economically defined design-life makes sense. Sustainability takes us as far as the recyclability of the materials (beyond the collateral damage of first creating and using it). An industrial facility can be seen as a part of permanent construction site with few aesthetic issues, but that’s not the case with buildings in the wider built human environment. If we’re too prescriptive – rigid – about the architecting in our regulation, we should not be surprised by the bland uniformity (and disposability, built-in obsolescence) of the results. Diversity and longevity includes caring for the wider consequences beyond those of the original funders purpose. I completely agree. What I wouldn’t do is attempt to define all the required attributes into a single educational and qualificational system. It’s about diversity of skills and interests, thinking skills as well as design and building skills – diversity in multiple dimensions.]
[The Long Now?
“German poet Heinrich Heine was once asked why men no longer build cathedrals. He replied: “People in those old times had convictions; we moderns only have opinions. And it needs more than a mere opinion to erect a Gothic cathedral.”Cologne Cathedral took 632 years to complete. Does modern man have the necessary conviction to build something like this today?”
German poet Heinrich Heine was once asked why men no longer build cathedrals. He replied:
“People in those old times had convictions; we moderns only have opinions. And it needs more than a mere opinion to erect a Gothic cathedral.”
I’m reading Dennett’s memoir “I’ve Been Thinking” – not really intending to read the whole right now, as I mentioned before, but it’s a pretty good read, so I am close to a third through.
The reason to pause and make some notes was a striking parallel to Pirsig that jumped out at me.
Like his collaborator Hofstadter, some biographical similarities, but not so much. Ocean-going sailing from Connecticut to Maine for one. Very much not into the 1960’s hippy and drug culture and disparaging about the faux-profound lifestyle philosophy. Serious jazz pianist. Anti-Vietnam war / conscientious objector, but not a pacifist – concern for Hilary Putnam’s mental health as an obsessive anti-war campaigner. But no, none of that.
No. What jumped out was his teaching quality.
At Tufts, one of the undergraduate courses I began teaching was a section of Introduction to Philosophy. It was a “writing intensive” course, in which a small group of freshmen and sophomores (twenty or fewer) were obliged to write, and rewrite, a series of short papers. It was a lot of work for me […] Only the grade on the final submission counted, so I graded the early efforts sternly, giving students D’s and F’s, which they had never before seen on any assignment in their lives.
We’d go through [awkward and boring sentences from their papers] on the blackboard one at a time. “What needs fixing in this sentence?” [Nothing grammatical or content-wise.] “Does it sing? Does it make you want to read the next sentence? […] Or does it just limp along?”
I’d be busy erasing and writing on the blackboard, while they argued among themselves about which revisions were the most apt. They knew good writing from bad writing; they had just never been encouraged to aspire to good writing and didn’t know how to raise their standards until I showed them.
Dennett p107-108
Assessing their own work in class, they knew good from bad.
Pirsig quoting Plato on having his class grade themselves rather than him assigning grades: “And what is good, Phaedrus, And what is not good, Need we ask anyone to tell us these things?”
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[Oh, and I think I spotted a way of reconciling Dennett’s determinist compatibilism with informational subjective pan-proto-psychism.]
[Great Dennett review / interview by Julian Baggini. Dennett<>Pirsig<>Baggini, now there’s an interesting triangle. It was Julian who attempted the only academic philosopher to philosopher dialogue with Bob – and it didn’t go well.]
Click for #ZMM50th
