Month: May 2005

Quixote’s Progress

Cervantes’ Don Quixote is indeed a “great book” in every sense. I make it almost half a million words, and I’m just a third of the way through its 1100 pages. Clearly at that scale, it’s full of stories within stories, and from the fact that the stories people quote from it – the “giant” windmills and the “army” of sheep – are half a page each in the first 50 or so pages, leads me suspect that not many people stay the course.

Who is really mad, what makes a story true or real, and what makes a good justification or rationalisation for action are the main themes. The device of portraying Quixote as completely barmy and Sancho as a simpleton, simply allows Cervantes to put into their mouths his unpalatable truths. The book-burning curate is the recurring baddie in the plot so far – now there’s a surprise.

(Must research whether the logical inconsistencies in the plot, pointed out by Smollett, were believed to be deliberate or genuine accidents – if this was cinema, continuity would be sacked over Sancho’s re-appearing ass. Talking of ass, the coarse and lewd descriptions of bodily functions put me in mind of Melville’s butchery in Moby Dick – you can almost smell it.)

The story of Anselmo and Lothario (8 sheets of manuscript but over 50 pages of the book ?) is an excellent parable of best-laid plans, road-to-hell, best intentions. Put me in mind of William James (or was it Barrett) – “the most rational plans often bring about the complete opposite of what they intend”. Oh, and the women are cleverer than the men, naturally. ‘Twas ever thus.

Can’t help thinking about those million 21st century Venezuelan’s ploughing through the 17th century Spanish – the 18th century English is tough enough. I wonder what Chavez was (is) hoping to inspire – intriguing.

(I have ten other unread books stacking up behind me – but I may be some weeks before I can get round to them.)

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[Post Note – my conclusions after finishing the read.]

[Post Note – 2003 review from Harold Bloom.]

A 21st Century Atheist ? I wish.

I really would like to get off this “anti-theist” track, but it just keeps coming.

The Rev Sam Norton posted this UK Grauniad link on MoQ the other day. It met with mixed responses ranging from cheering on the battle against “immature” atheists to those critical of its mealy mouthed tone eg “I can almost hear the editors commissioning this piece: We need something that looks like a whole lotta critical thinking is going on, and yet comes down firmly on the side of the angels.”

Both sides of the argument make my point. Firstly mainstream opinion must indeed tread amongst the eggshells in being critical of “theism”, and secondly naive scientific argument plays right into the theist trap.

These were my responses to these specific quotes from the article …

“Not believing in God is no excuse for being virulently anti-religious or naively pro-science.” I say – Agreed. I keep complaining about the naive use of science in debates everywhere.

“No other atheist has done more for the cause of religion than Richard Dawkins.” I say – you must have heard me say exactly that a hundred times. Catch-22.[Here is the article where I said it most comprehensively.]

“The only mature attitude to religion is to see it for what it is – a kind of art, which only a child could mistake for reality …” Ian says – absolutely (A placebo, an opitate of the people, he goes on to say in his book). It can no more be false as it could conceivably be true in connection with reality.

I am genuinely A-theist, but am conscious that I take an Anti-theist stance, but that’s because I find theists arguing about “reality”. If they didn’t, I could respectfully ignore the lot of em. (As in fact I will, should anyone so much as suggest a “god” with any causal effect on the real world.)

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On A More Lighthearted Note

“Troubleshooter” in the Enlightened Caveman thread provides this link.

Actually it’s funny, but it’s not lighthearted is it ? It’s quite chilling how true it is. It’s even more chlling that the creator (of the cartoon) felt he had to use Norse mythology as his foil, rather than christianity. Now I am being paranoid.

File under “many a true word” and “every picture paints”.

Post Note : Looking beyond the cartoon link, there is quite a bit of thinking here that gels exactly with mine – there is some critique of the creationists quest to get their “theory” on an equal footing with the other one on school curricula. How many times have we referenced that ? Two specific points ..

(1) The Darwinist gets to say something important before he get’s it – Evolution is a theory the elegantly explains the available data AND is supported by empirical …

(2) He says – It?s always both cute and pathetic listening Fundamentalists try to use the language of empiricism to try to defend their wonky myths and superstitions, sort of like seeing chimpanzees wear little human clothes or very young children trying to use polite etiquette. They can approximate the form, but they just don?t get the content. They don?t understand what the word ?theory? means; they confuse correlation with causality; they argue by analogy; they can?t keep a grip on logic. I?m not going to waste any space in this artist?s statement explaining or arguing for the theory of evolution; it?s like having to argue for the theory of gravity or electricity. And anyway, there?s no point in engaging advocates of Creationism or Intelligent Design in debate as though they really accepted enlightenment values or could be convinced by evidence or persuaded by rational discourse. There?s no reason to talk to them at all.

This “lighthearted note” is deadly serious, and correct.

You’re right Robert – Tim Kreider’s Pain Comics site is very good. This is not a space you can work in without humour. When will it all end ? is the desperate message though. Eclectic set of lists too – Beefheart Bacon Zappa Nietsche Kubrick Axis-of-Eve Mongoloidian-Glow rubbing shoulders.

I Need You To Keep This Secret – OK ?

Nice to get a word of encouragement in response to the previous post – thanks Georganna. I’ve actually stepped out of both threads of debate, purely for a breather – I’ll be back. I don’t want to go the same way as Pirsig, exhaustion to the point of total breakdown, “in the effort to outflank the entire body of western thought”. It sure is hard work.

I genuinely don’t want to waste the breath – like Dennett, amongst others who “peremptorily dismiss” such issues of faith in any kind of purposeful causal god, my preferred tactic is just to ignore and if necessary reject out of hand any such suggestions. However there are good and bad theologians and some, after overcoming the initial offence, do seem prepared for open debate – open to everything except a change of premise it seems. What is the point ? Well none it turns out, if I explain to you my thought for today, really just another re-statement of my Catch-22 I guess.

I think I’ve stumbled on something. Clearly religious faith is in deep in all socio-political structures. Religious faithful were never my target – are still not a “target” at all – I really would ignore them if they went away to mind their own business. There is clearly another suggestion (equally offensive, no doubt) of an element of religious faith for the non-intellectual who just want something convenient to plug the mysterious gaps in the world – isn’t that Marx’s opiate of the people ? Anyway, as long as people who’d really rather not worry about difficult questions never get into positions of power and influence then we might be OK.

The dangerous ones are those who are either cynically exploitative (I might say evil) in their power, or worse still, the buggers who seem to want to argue using “dishonest intellect” – and this is the key point – that dishonesty is of course generally NOT pre-meditated NOR evil NOR a conspiracy (see exceptions above). Of course it looks to have a conspiracy behind it, in exactly the same way the creation looks to have an intelligent designer behind it. What it is, is the same widespread misplaced western faith in objective / logical positivism. Exactly the same. As in exactly. Using that misplaced style of argumentation, you can indeed convince / be convinced you are right in your faith. The intellectual argument is not so much “dishonest” as plain misguided.

The very problem I was trying to find a solution to for more parochial “business management” reasons. I always knew it spread across all “organisational decision making”, right to the highest national and international government and non-government organisations, but until this moment I had never spotted it was exactly the same problem “western” churches suffered from. How right Pirsig was with his “Church of Reason” – even if he was using “church” in the more figurative sense.

Oh my god, this is truly awful. The logical positivist memeplex reinforces the religious memeplex. Science has unwittingly been it’s own worst enema.

So back to plan A. The original plan was in fact correct. Ignore them as politely as possible and keep working to get “higher quality” argumentation and decision rationale in at a very simple level, far away from the battlefront. Evolution always needed segregation and nurture as well as comptetition for survival. We need a domain where the meme has space to replicate, re-inforce, meet complementary memes, breed a nice healthy memeplex and some suitably supportive environmental conditions, and then find opportunities for stealthy break-out into the wider world.

So, we’re looking for a godless place to breed. Don’t you just love the dirty jobs.

(And psst – as I said, it neeeds to be a conspiracy, kept secret from those other buggers. Talk about Catch-22. Mum’s the word.)

What is science ?

I’m getting into a tight corner on MoQ-Discuss, where it has been impossible to avoid debate between scientific belief and religious faith. At least we’ve got the level down below the history of global politics and war, where there is some chance of debate rather than propagandised gain-saying. As you know I’ve been in many respects anti-science, or at least anti the extreme-logical-positivist or exclusively-scientific-fundamentalist aspects of some applications of “science” in management in particular. (I see even Enlightened Caveman is embroiled in an identical debate – this god stuff is pernicious, gets everywhere.)

However, finding myself practically a universal Darwinist – most real world change processes have some element of “copy, vary, select” – I can’t help but reject any kind of intellient designer creationism, or indeed any purposeful, causal “god” real or metaphorical.

I made the point that what was convincing about science, “quality of explanation”, was not exclusive to science, and lumped just about any of the intellectual spheres of thought into the same pot philosophers, artists, ologists of practically any kind. Except theologians, where either such explanations were not made, or if they were, were constructed with “dishonest intellect” using false logic and premises of mediaeval science. I was not alone, but seem to be carrying the brunt of the demand for explanation. (See David Deutsch posts earlier for post-Popperian scientific explanations.)

Anyway faced with “explain what you mean by science, or at least a high-qualty explanation” I spotted via Sue Blackmore the “Spiked” Guardian survey of 250 scientists asked “What one thing do you think everyone should know about science” as part of the Einstein / e=mc2 centenary year of science. (The full survey is here, along with more analysis.)

Some of it is quite predictable – Dawkins’ plea against intelligent design … some of it is fairly simple, single tangible examples from that scientist’s sphere, targetted for a lay public …. and a good deal of it focusses on uncertainty, and the intent of scientific method, as the distinguishing aspect of science.

In fact the majority are about the easy half of scientific method – the disproving of false hypotheses – very little said about the creativity of formulating good candidate hypotheses, and explaning why before subjecting them to falsification.

Well I’m still reading – only 200 to go, but I’ve reached the D’s – and lo David Deutsch is amongst them. Sadly he was lost for words, or rather refused to be drawn on a single fact – so responded “read my book” (which as recorded earlier is about how not one but four distinct threads support each other as the most fundamental science). I know he’s right, but it’s a pity he missed that chance. He didn’t make the cut to the Guardian summary.