Month: August 2012

Larry Krauss

I’m reading “A Universe From Nothing” following this post, and am 80% through already. Some quick notes summarising significant points he makes:

  1. Anthropic principles do warrant serious scientific consideration. (Despite the various “fine-tuning” questions, no updated mention of the CMBR correlation with earth’s orbit.)
  2. String theory(ies) are overblown in public consciousness well beyond their scientific credibility. (More of the Memetic Problem.)
  3. “Nothing” remains the infinitely recursive hard part of the “something from nothing” question – the nature of “space” – “quantum vacuum” etc … before the big bang; multiverses, etc. Literally meta-physics. (Same old, same old.)

Dawkins Talks Sense

Apologies for the headline, but since I tend to use Dawkins as my prime example of the arrogant scientist who doesn’t get the value anything other than science (and objective / deterministic logic), but by way of balance, this conversation with Larry Krauss from February this year, has some excellent content.

It does of course still have some cringeworthy moments – like the gratuitous mocking accusations of hypocrisy and madness of people, even scientific people, literally holding mythical truths – or that fact that the title “Something From Nothing” is completely misleading – they never really get past complexity from simplicity, or “matter” out of “nothing” (*) – but anyway … The nature of alternate life evolving anywhere other than life as we know it on earth; serious references (by both Dawkins and Krauss) to the Anthropic Principle and more. (Ordered Larry’s book on the strength of it.)

Krauss – Cosmic Humility. Excellent. Dawkins take note. At least Dawkins has the humility to admit his physics is 19th century.

(*) In fact Krauss does push back the nothingness … towards metaphysical cosmogeny (ie What’s this nothing from which something might come?). Good. Last time I majored on Krauss and Anthropic Principles was here: One of my more important posts.

Physics is science,
and cosmogeny is metaphysics or theology again.

I’m pretty sure Krauss gets it and there is some hope Dawkins listens to him.

Sartre vs Camus

Mentioned earlier enjoying the output of Andy Martin – surfer, Cambridge languages don, writer, film-maker. Tremendous personally-engaging, witty style whatever the topic. His latest book is “Sartre vs Camus – The Boxer and the Goalkeeper (aka Philosophy Fight Club)”

The premise of the book is typically personal – read the 5 minute memoir – extracted from the introductory chapter, now published in The Independent. (Funnily enough my own early career starts with the guilt of a “stolen” book – when in my final school year I was awarded a book as the school chemistry prize, I didn’t own up to a book I’d taken from the school library a couple of years earlier “Experimental Chemistry Laboratory Manual” and not returned when I left. Still on the shelf behind me as I type.)

Researching philosophy as I have been, I have been tempted to dip into the French existentialist canon, but every dip has been daunting. After trying Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus and finding sense in the later PoMo’s and Lacanian scholar Zizek, I’d concluded I’m already a PoPoMo and Proust, Sartre and Camus would remain left behind as the foggy-froggies I knew of, but would never really know.

Andy’s book provides a sympathetic introduction and summaries as well as the personal back-stories. No surprise to find the reaction to Platonic / Aristotelian ontological certainties mired in the nihilism of suspension in language beyond epistemology and experience of the real. If all philosophy is footnotes to Plato (clearly not true), then all PoMo philosophy Derrida et al, really is footnotes to Nietzche and Wittgenstein. Sartre comes across as grotesque – provocative and experimental living-philosophy sure, but all in-your-face back-story – hopeless – little chance I will actually seek out to read in the original, but Camus, with his balance and mystical Zen interests, comes across altogether more interesting. (Must revisit The Outsider).

Camus realized that in [the] very act of thinking, he was still in some sense a prisoner. Was he not a prisoner now of Plato, of the idea of the philosopher, to some extent chained to these thoughts? … A strange thought – or not even a thought, something more like the opposite of a thought. Camus had the realization, lying in bed, that if he wanted to be a philosopher – seriously – he had to break free of philosophy. He had to overcome thought itself, to somehow outwit and out-manoeuvre the forms of language he had worked so hard to acquire over many years. … In England about the same period, Wittgenstein said that if you wanted to become a philosopher, you should become a car mechanic. For Camus this was too much like hard work and it was enough just to lie there. And light a Gitanes.

He watched the smoke curling upwards towards the ceiling …

Then all at once there was a flash of light as the sun broke through from behind a cloud and illuminated a yellow vase of mimosa in the room. And it was like a bolt of lightning striking the young Albert – a coup de foudre. Transforming him, as if in a magical metamorphosis. He was ‘flooded with a confused and bewildering joy’. He became for a moment something other than he was.

‘I am the world.’

(Ibid, P54/55) Evocative of Pirsig’s motorcycle maintenance and his exhaustion “attempting to outflank the entire body of western thought”. Lots more in there – Peirce, James and pre-conceptual radical empiricism, Kafka, even Ramchandran. And such great chapter titles “Bad Hair Day”, “Fight Club”, “Pen Envy”, “An Octopus and Some Trees”, “New York, New York” and “Philosophers Stoned” to name a selection. About 2/3 through so far. Loving it.

[Post Note : Loved it. This from Stuart Kelly’s very positive review in The Scotsman:

Sartre and Camus are almost a parody of opposites. Camus, the pied noir, had the Bogart-like good looks; Sartre, the Parisian, was notoriously, unashamedly ugly (and usually unwashed). Camus died too young; Sartre lived too long. Camus’s engaged directly with the Resistance as editor of Combat; Sartre “intellectually” resisted (or, as Camus quipped, “aimed his armchair in the direction of history”). Sartre was an indefatigable, profuse writer while Camus aspired to silence, to “writing degree zero”. Sartre joined the Communist Party while Camus declined to be doctrinaire; Camus accepted and Sartre declined the Nobel Prize for Literature; Sartre constantly sought radical disjunctions while Camus looked for underlying continuities. Martin is too subtle a writer (and thinker) to allow these binary opposites to determine the story: time and again we see their positions reversing, merging and shifting.

(Andy Martin’s elegant study of the pair … is one of the most accessible and intelligent books on philosophy I have read this year, as alert to the human drama as the intellectual conflict, and unfailingly observant to the nuances and subtexts.)]

Font Credulity

Fascinating piece from Errol Morris on NYT Opinionator today.

Picked-up from a cross hit on Psybertron for David Deutsch. One of his quotes is used as an example, but in fact it is tangential to the subject of the article – why the experienced quality, value and truth in a text depends on the font used. Not new clearly, font selection always affects the character of the communication but a fascinating, thorough example.

(I have a recollection of the referenced Phil Renaud article The Secret Lives of Fonts from an earlier encounter, but can’t find my link.)

Too Much Communication

This is surreal and ironic on many levels.

Sam is probably my second favourite amongst the four horsemen, a real moral philosopher. No prize for guessing my least favourite, but it was he who tweeted the link picked-up by Ricky. (Dan, Sam, Hitch and the Dawk in that order in case you’re interested.)

Fact : internet enabled comment on blogs directly and via social media is a major source of miscommunication – an insidious spread of misinformed ideas. (aka The Memetic Problem). Apart from comic entertainment value – most are without value or with meta-value only or, more importantly, with negative content value, unless they can be editorially moderated. Life’s too short.

Weird : Sam reckons PZ Myers “shepherd of trolls” (Pharyngula Blog) to be odious. PZ is clearly on the side of (evolutionary) science in the god debates, so you might think an ally of Harris, along with the other three horsemen. But I’ve noted before the “baying mob” mentality of PZ and his commenters (similar to Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science and many Guardian “Comment is Free” contributors.) Makes intelligent debate hopeless. The baying mob is odious – see the memetic problem.

As I say, I have a lot of respect for Sam, but I have taken exception to some of his “narrow” rationality – a recent example here. I am really intrigued as to the reality of Sam’s take on PZ. Must have missed a significant spat or irony here?

The Memetic Problem ? Sam says:

The Internet powerfully enables the spread of good ideas, but it works the same magic for bad ones—and it allows distortions of fact and opinion to become permanent features of our intellectual landscape.

I say, it’s even worse than that, because the ideas that spread more easily tend to be the inferior ones. Too simplistic, too reductionist, too comfortable fit with existing prejudice and fashion, etc. all make such ideas easier to communicate and receive and re-communicate, and “stickier” when received. Evolutionary fidelity and fecundity both benefit from simplistication of the message and its fitness.

Jesus Christ

Says Ricky – “Jesus Christ !! – and I’m an atheist.” and later when comparing the death penalty with abortion, Jerry says, “so you can arrange these things to suit – when you’re wealthy ?” Comedians in Cars, getting Coffee.

Lords Spiritual

Here we go again. BHA and its negative campaigning. Removal of Bishops from the Lords this time.

The second (revising / conservative) chamber needs a cultural heritage component and a constituency representation component that is separate from “popular voting”, and – being political  – reflecting human psychology separate from “scientific” fact. When the churches have crumbled into the ground and church asset dwindled away in a hundred years or two, then sure, there will no longer be church representatives in the second chamber.

Ban this, ban that – BHA fascists.
We need to get the horse before the cart here.

One for Later

No time for review now, but thanks to David Morey for the link to this piece including Hillary Lawson.

Post Review: Contrary to the blurb, Giles Fraser (the theologian) is not really against the three metaphysicians, he’s just against Plato’s narrow metaphysics. Join the very large club.  Not listened to the “particle physics” section yet, but the only part of this I see differently is the idea of “ultimate map” I see “best available map” of reality – so it’s always the story of the journey, never the final destination. So many of the issues are linguistic and semantic (definitional), they’re not problems with reality or its map. Looks like the main areas of contention are the atomism / reductionism / upward-causation from “physics” being the one true story …. continuing …

Life After Death

A recurring theme, and target in the various naive God vs Science debates, I last mentioned it here, but it’s just not an issue for this atheist /scientist. It’s like this:

We are our minds; “our” minds are concentrated in our brains but distributed throughout “our” bodily electro-chemical systems; the content and consciousness of our minds is the sum total of our memes. Our memes live on in recorded copies, physically, including in the minds of others, even if we never create our own magum opus for posterity. We have a duty of care to the next generation for these memes, how we create, acquire and modify them, how we hold, express and communicate them. They live on when our body dies. No argument.

We (our mind) can rest when that happens, in the sense that “we” no longer have any role in how those memes are marshalled and used in the afterworld. Our minds are no longer a coherent set managed by us, but they are out there distributed in the world, living on from the state we left them in. Is that a reward,  an escape from responsibility in this life, a credit to wipe the slate clean the moral failings of our memes and deeds in this word, an excuse not to take that moral responsibility in this world?

Hell no, quite the opposite, but at death “we” can at last rest in peace, our job is done.

Just not a source of debate or argument worth any major disagreement, ‘cept maybe a few details for sure. This is good science – and consistent with the history of human psychology – start with Dennett if the idea is new to you. Co-create, onward and upward.

Which brings us to “we” as opposed to “us & them”, “me & other” …. Copernican revolution ? Pah!

[Post Note : http://rorysfindings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/secular-humanism-and-life-after-death.html ]