What, Why & How do we Know ?
Another interview promoting the re-publishing of Lila, pointed out by Ant and linked by Horse.
Actually a very sympathetic interview of the man by Tim Adams who recalls reading Zen and the Art at the age of 14. Lots of anecdotal recalls of biographical (and very personal) events behind the two books, including some worth adding to the timeline.
Update.
Even better, Ant has captured a copy of the full transcript here.
Brian Eno speaking on BBC Radio 3, at Hope University, Liverpool Future City of Culture “Free Thinking” series. Nothing new in terms of this blog, but lots of good material, worth a listen.
Darwinian optimism. “Scenius” the genius of “the scene” – everyone is smarter than anyone. Emergence from simplicity. Art and politcs. Power of community. Flash-mobbing. Moveon.org Observer-participant collapse. Historical technology cycle drivers … new technology (eg TV & Vietnam) creates change, attracts control, technology evolution, etc. Internet built to be hard to control, by design, fast feedback loop crucial. Time-paradox, “the long now”. 10,000 year planning horizon (remember blogging before about a project to establish a construction that might last that long). Lagos traffic chaos “negotiation”. The Netherlands traffic experiment. Self-regulation. Art as the stylistic “don’t have to do” overlay on top of the necessary … very Maslow.
The whole “free thinking” series seems to have some good content. Links are only valid for 7 days after broadcast. Hope permanent links appear.
Anthony Grayling too, on Radio 2 promoting a book; extolling the idea of teaching philosophy to schoolkids. Never been a better time to study philosophy, he says, employers should be snapping people who know how to think.
Meta-thinking methinks.
Can’t believe I let the Stern Report and the press response go by without comment. I guess I had the BBC links in my side-bar at all times, so I was following events there. This link at Know Your Place (via Sam) is as good an entry point as any.
The interesting thing, given agreement that this is the point where we all agree, “OK, so it’s real – it’s official” is that it doesn’t in itself answer the question “So what alternative world would we like instead”.
Some romantic return to “noble savagery” or utopian communist agrarian society (as one commenter suggests) is not only highly unlikely (positively impossible, given all the “interests” already involved) but almost certainly not the sensible thing to aim for anyway.
The fun has only just begun. Cool heads needed as I mentioned most recently here.
Excellent edition of The Edge NEwsletter, includes not only Dan Dennett, recovering from an acute heart condition, and Evolutionary Morality from Nick Wade of the NYT, but also last weekend’s Observer piece by their religious correspondent Jamie Doward, reviewing the three popular science books lined up against God in the best seller charts as we run up to Christmas.
Richard Dawkins – The God Delusion
Dan Dennett – Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
Sam Harris – The End of Faith / Letter to a Christian Nation
Not yet read any of the three. As a big fan of Dennett, I will almost certainly obtain and read that. Dawkins, I’ve said enough about, what he seems unable to see is that being “scientifically right” is hardly a convincing argument. Sam Harris was recommended by Sue Blackmore on “A Good Read” recently, so I may give it a try, though Sam seems to shoot the atheist cause in the foot with a “Nuke the Bastards” suggestion if reason fails to impress not just religious extremists, but masses of religious moderates. (See previous piece on moderate but sophisticated theological issues here.)
The “final solution” outburst from Harris is interesting though. A sign of the seriousness of the issue under debate here. As the footnote to every page of my blog has said since 9/11 “The phrase ‘Creative Destruction’ can never again be used lightly.” Cool heads needed like never before.
Nothing to lose but an ideology.
Brilliant via Rivets yet again.
Some more great Weird Al Jankovic spoofs on YouTube too.
Not heard this one before, but as an engineer in the s/w business it rings true.
“If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.”
– Weinberg’s Second Law
Via TCL via Rivets. Guessing Steve Weinberg, but I don’t know, must check.
(Gerry (Gerald) Weinberg apparently. Hat tip to Dermot and EDinCT for the comments)
And talking of software and engineering, after Napster and I-Tunes along came, no not YouTube, but the phonograph. Fascinating actually (Rivets never fails to find ’em)
Interesting post from Anecdote about peer pressure influencing moral decisions. I first noted this 15 years go when I read DeLorean’s (auto)-biography. The paraphrased quote of his I keep dredging up is “Committees of moral men make immoral decisions”.
Nils Brunsson has this well documented as “Management Hypocrisy”
Interstingly another recurring memory on that score, comes from an early management training course I did, with a role-playing exercise, where we were each given different briefings. The point was that noticing the smell of something not quite right is one thing, diagnosing the problem is another. The situation involved some “falling out” between groups of colleagues that was interfering with harmonious working, in fact every role involved had some hidden issues, weird-religious-interest, domestic-upset, office-stationary-pilfering, promotion-rivalries, fiddling-expenses, stealing-work-time, office-romance-jealousy / infidelity, you name it – all human life was there. In fact the greatest cause of the friction was not the least moral actions – eg the “stealing”, but the least “congruent” – the religious odd-ball. A salutory lesson.
I’ll keep that link for a rainy day on MoQ.Discuss. 😉
Not the kind of stuff I usually expect to find at The Apothecary’s Drawer, but it looks like Ray Girvan has found YouTube too.
This takes me back to the jukebox in the Fisherman’s Arms in Scalloway, when Sylvia and I first met back in 1979. Don’t think I’ve ever seen the video before.
Great set of photos by Ray too.
Just a snippet to store away, since I’m not really up on Hume yet.
Hume’s metaethics … his emotivist stance on the nature of moral judgment and … the assertion of rationality as part of that process is only an ad hoc attempt to somehow “independently” justify the moral conclusions we’ve already reached.
A recurring theme, but the context is a spoof Tim McSweeney monologue linked by Matt Kundert.
As a confirmed atheist, I was about to do some research on the coincidences of atheist philosophers converting to catholicism in later life (Wittgenstein ? McLuhan ? and a couple of others ?), basically wondering if there was an intellectual elitst attraction with the hierarchy in said church. That’ll have to wait.
I stumbled across the BBC’s John Humphrys’ “In Search of God“, in an extended discussion with Anglican Archbishop Dr Rowan Williams.
Apparently Humphrys was a believer, but lost the faith in recent years. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the Beslan schoolchildren’s massacre. He is challenging multi-denominational faith leaders to re-convert him.
I’m no great fan of Humphrys, but I’ve noted before that the Archbishop does seem to speak sense in public life.
Williams was painfully honest in trying to address questions, about what is the God he believes in and why. I made a lot of notes, but here are just a few.
He believes in a God, which at some level of abstraction is the root of causality, first cause, but not in any literal direct (interventional) cause of any specific events. The setter of the framework of the processes in the physical world, the only set of processes the world can have, even a god created world. God’s “omnipotence” limited by that physical framework “he” created. Ditto prayer, “somehow” a channel of “hope” for such influence, but no identifiable or explicable causal effect. He pretty freely used love and bliss as almost synomyms for God.
Since the true nature of that abstract God is unknowable, crude anthropomorphic metaphors – the bearded wise omnipotent old man – were actually preferable to any more sophisticated abstractions, because they may have the illusion of being closer to a real picture of God, whereas they cannot really be. At least with the crude metaphor, you are unlikely to forget “he’s” only a metaphor.
(A fair bit of stuff about “free-will” and “eternal afterlife”.)
Here is the main point, if I can articulate it. “Faith” in that God, and that description of the divine creation, underlies a belief in the observable facts that the world (governed by “his” physical framework) comprises uncertainty, contingency, complexity, risk & probability and arising (emergence) of unwillable outcomes, unwillable even by God.
Significantly, the Archbishop didn’t draw on any arguments of authority, biblical quotations, or historical weight of numbers to support any of his answers. (Compare the christian non-theologian response to Sue Blackmore on “A Good Read”)
Ultimately he appeared to see faith as “sense-making intellect”, and god as that “sense” ? Some significant silences, in trying to distinguish mysticism from theistic faith. Apart from “historical doctrine” only “holistic consistency” distinguished religious faith.
Even Dawkins might struggle to find anything to disagree with there, if he could get past the choice of word and metaphor.