Right Up My Alley

I almost always still get a Sunday paper, and when I do I always try my hand at the New York Times crossword, which is in the Detroit Free Press every week for some reason. Go figure.

While I only completely finish the thing about three times a year (hey, it's a challenging crossword) last week's offering was right in my wheelhouse, a great big fat pitch down the middle of the plate. The main clues were about logical fallacies. Logic is a subset of philosophy.

I nailed each answer without more prompts than the clues themselves. I even got, on the first pass, the Latin one: Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Roughly translated for those of you not familiar with the language of ancient Rome, it means, after, therefore because of. It's the argument that since A occurred before B, A caused B. Here's a solid example: Marty was born in 1960, and civil war broke out in Angola in 1961. Therefore, Marty caused the Angolan Civil War. That's obviously untrue. I think. I mean, I was a year old in 1961. I don't remember doing much of anything.

Anyway, I got them all correct, each and every error of logic, even the No True Scotsman. I knew one day that that minor in philosophy from the University of Detroit would pay off.

The Truth Is

If we aren't seeking truth, then what are we doing? I can't think of a useful alternative.

Should we seek change? All that really means is doing something different today than yesterday. So why do it, unless we see that, ahem, in truth the change was worthwhile?

Perhaps we want diversity. Well, murder and carpentry are certainly diverse. It appears though that we can legitimately be a carpenter while we should not murder. How can we know this? By seeking truth.

Follow science? Science is a very raw and unfiltered discipline. It merely demonstrates low grade, rote truths: aspirin can cure headaches and the like. What we do with science is useful only through the guidance of higher truth. Science tells us poison will kill a life form and that is all. Whether we ought or ought not kill it comes from a consideration of the truth of such matters. 

Education? But don't we have to make judgments about what to teach and how to teach it? How do we determine that? By looking for truth.

I'm open to suggestion here. But you're going to need some incredibly convincing arguments to sway me. That is, if you want me to accept the truth.

Well, Why Not?

Father Malcolm Willoughby, a former pastor of our parish at St. Dominic in Detroit and whom I've spoken of in the past, once offered during a conversation an idea I'd have never considered. "When bad things happen to someone, there's a tendency to ask, 'Why me?' Well, why not you?" he said. "Why shouldn't you be as subject to the awful things which can and do happen to others?"

He's right, of course. And, you'll notice, the question rarely gets asked when good things come along, as though the good might be seen as an entitlement and the bad an outrageous affront. Oh, and Fr. Willoughby made this point too as we talked, you don't say that to someone who is currently suffering from a death in the family, or a personal crisis of some sort. But the question, why me?, really doesn't have any value. It may be perfectly reasonable to feel that way when you're down. Yet just as you're not exempt from the good, you aren't protected from the bad either.

Monday morning philosophy

I didn't see the Grammy Awards last night, not one minute. There are few current TV shows which I watch, and even those I tend to miss and have to pull up On Demand. And even then I get behind.

Just the same, I don't feel as though I miss anything important. There are days where I believe that everything is simply passing fancy. I don't mean that as a bad thing either, nor do I mean it in any particularly judgmental way, or to be a downer. I'm just not impressed by fads. And far too much of what goes on is, in this or any time, exactly that: a fad.

I prefer the timeless to the current. Give me baseball or golf or curling ahead of cornhole. Tolkien means more to me than Game of Thrones because he speaks to the big questions. I doubt that Game of Thrones does, although to be fair I haven't seen a second of it, as is my wont.

I get more out of reading C. S. Lewis' The Abolition of Man for the thirtieth time than I expect I would get from reading the first thing by a current author, though to be fair I don't pay much attention to current authors either. Unless, that is, they tie into Lewis or Tolkien. That is a small and relatively unknown faction.

We tend to make our current times too important. That's understandable enough: they are our times, they are the times we live in, and to that point they are necessarily important. Still, where they don't interact with the timeless, if they aren't seen as part of a bigger picture, I wonder how truly important they are at all.

There's bit of (perhaps) heavy philosophy for you on a Monday morning. Have a good week.

Bottom line philosophy

Why can't I get the health care which suits me via an open market? Why must I participate in a government run (or heavily influenced) system? Simply because the majority of voters make me? We forget what I believe Abe Lincoln said: all democracy ultimately means is 50% plus one can everyone else do what that scant majority thinks right. That means that we as a people must be very careful about making others pay for things, even important things.

I have the moral right to seek my own health care as much as seeking work, home, and food. Society doesn't have the right to make those decisions for me except in very limited ways and manners. I think a free market best suited towards my being able to do for myself, and others for themselves.

That is a very condensed (I'm using the word very a lot aren't I?) version of my basic philosophy. But it's the essence of how I vote.

You need a philosophy

The people who are the most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all.

-G. K. Chesterton

Ayn Rand, though a very entertaining author, has her philosophical flaws. But if she is right about anything, she is right about this so far as it goes: you must have a philosophy to live by or you will have no bearings for judging your actions. You will have no way of interpreting what to do or when to do it.

Too many people lack this. Set aside for the moment whether any given philosophy is right. That is surely the next question to ask, but it isn't my point just now. The thrust of today's commentary is that a framework is necessary for us to determine the value of our life's, in fact even of our daily, work. Certain frameworks will prove to be wrong; indeed I suggest that there can only be one right, basic set of guidelines when all is said and done. But again, I am veering from the issue at hand.

Rand says, if I remember her correctly, that if you do not discipline yourself towards thinking about things at the least within a context of ideas which you take as a given, you will eventually merely wander from day to day, from idea to idea, and find yourself eternally at the influence of other forces without regard for what you may actually want or need. You will discover, if the thought ever actually develops in your mind, that you have not become an individual of any value. You will be a sheep. The time of slaughter will one day consume you, and you will have no way of defending yourself from it.

Or something worse will happen. You will become a petty little dictator, self assured that all that you wish do is itself the standard of right and wrong. And why not? You would be at the point where whims and passing fancy will guide you, or, more correctly, you will be the flag proudly fluttering in the wind, too proud to know that it is the air which unfurls you and not your own knowledge or will. As the breeze fades and dies, so do you. And what will be seen of you as you are opened to the world?

So you need a philosophy. You need some way of determining whether the people and events around you are evolving into things useful or things destructive. You need coherency in your life. You need to, in the words of that old saw, stand for something lest you fall for anything. This approach may well leave you standing for the wrong things in the end. Still, it's better than nothing, and indeed your only chance of being found by the just and true lies in the firmness of your stance.

The truth is out there

And looking out on high I saw Aristotle, the Master of Those Who Know, ringed by the great souls of philosophy.
-Dante, The Inferno

The exact translation of the line I paraphrase above seems in some dispute; what Dante is saying precisely is beyond my poor academic powers to determine. But the gist is reasonably accurate: the poet was speaking of Aristotle, and Aristotle was being commended for seeking and holding and teaching real knowledge.

Not, of course, that Aristotle's knowledge was perfect; no one's is. The overriding point is that we can know; we can hold a real knowledge of and appreciation for persons, things, and events.

Many thinkers today do not accept this preposition. My professors of education (I will not call them teachers) were very open in that they did not believe that there were any things true for all time and all places. In that light, should we be surprised that so many schools do such a poor job of education?

Questions of religion are tossed off as little more than personally interpretive systems which, at best, only help individuals cope with the traumas of this world. Could this be a reason that reverence for anything beyond the person involved has paled lately?

In politics, issues are little more than vague platitudes which help people get elected. Perhaps that is why men and women of depth and understanding eschew elective offices, for they understand that real things are at stake and are too busy actually dealing with them in real time?

Moral virtue is now all too often seen as a myth; should we wonder why there is so little respect for people and institutions?

All of this and far greater errors are based on the idea that we cannot really know anything. The fact is, if that false axiom should prove right, if there is no universal knowledge which we can all, if we wish, understand, then there is no meaning in the world or to life.

Do not fear. That cannot be the case. Aristotle and all the dead white guys, and a great many others of varying races and creeds (for truth is eternal and thus widely recognized across cultures and peoples) have shown us that we can know. Forget the liberal academics who have no respect for that tenet; it shows only their ignorance. Ignore the science trumps religion tribes; they will not accept that knowledge has different tests in different areas. In science, the test of truth is empirical. In philosophy, the test is Reason. With Theology, the standard of evidence is Faith. In the end, all knowledge compliments itself across these three major branches of her, that goddess we call Wisdom.

We can know. Therefore we can act. We can act for the greater good of ourselves and our world. We can do what we must with the clarity that truth is with us, that it dwells among us and at all levels. In the end, that is why we will win and the secular elements across the spectrum will lose. We have something to stand on. They have a bedrock of air.

Science Lacks Virtue

We overvalue science in our modern world. We truly do. Oh, this isn't to belittle the great engineering feats which science has made possible, nor the advances in medicine which make our lives longer and healthier, nor even things such as television or the Internet which offer the possibility of making our mental lives better, even when they merely entertain. All of that is well and good, so far as they go. The trouble lies in the attitude that science makes us better simply because it's science. We act as though science has value, or gives virtue.

Not necessarily, if at all, can science do that. It may offer the opportunity to be a better, more virtuous people. But it does only that, and we are speaking somewhat anthropormorphically in attributing that much to it really.

Can science define or defend the value of a human life? Can it teach us that stealing is wrong; indeed, can it define theft? Can it say anything about our responsibility towards the environment or, more importantly, one another?

Obviously not. To be sure, it may tell us that if we continue on such and such a road we might drive ourselves into extinction. But that's all it can do. Whether we ought to do such and such else so that we will not become extinct is a question of value. Science only tells us what will happen should we construct a building without the proper strengths, or perhaps even what may happen if we continue on a certain course with no variation. It does not, will not, and cannot tell us what we should do with the information it supplies.

People make those judgments, and they are not argued in the realm of science. They're argued in the realm of philosophy, the realm where we might actually be able, by conscious debate and a reasoned consideration of who we are rather than merely that we are, conclude what are and are not good things to do. Science provides facts; however useful they may be, they are ultimately very rote and, by themselves, without meaning. We provide value and virtue. We are above science.

Science by itself lacks virtue. Those who pray at its altar pray to a valueless void.

Thinking Rightly

The people who are the most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all.
G. K. Chesterton

Ayn Rand, though a very entertaining author, has her philosophical flaws. But if she is right about anything, she is right about this so far as it goes: you must have a philosophy to live by or you will have no bearings for judging your actions. You will have no way of interpreting what to do or when to do it.

Too many people lack this. Set aside for the moment whether any given philosophy is right. That is surely the next question to ask, but it isn't the point just now. The thrust of today's commentary is that a framework is necessary for us to determine the value of our life's, in fact even of our daily, work. Certain frameworks will prove to be wrong; indeed we suggest that there can only be one right set of guidelines when all is said and done. But again, we are veering from the issue at hand.

Rand says, if we remember her correctly, that if you do not discipline yourself towards thinking about things at the least within a context of ideas which you take as a given, you will eventually merely wander from day to day, from idea to idea, and find yourself eternally at the influence of other forces without regard for what you may actually want or need. You will discover, if the thought ever actually develops in your mind, that you have not become an individual of any value. You will be a sheep. The time of slaughter will one day consume you, as you will have no way of defending yourself from it.

Or something worse will happen. You will become a petty little dictator, self assured that all that you do is itself the standard of right and wrong. And why not? You would be at the point where whims and passing fancy will guide you, or, more correctly, you will be the flag proudly fluttering in the wind, too proud to know that it is the air which unfurls you and not your own knowledge or will. As the breeze fades and dies, so do you. And what will be seen of you as you are opened to the world?

So you need a philosophy. You need some way of determining whether the people and events around you are evolving into things useful or things destructive. You need coherency in your life. You need to, in the words of that old saw, stand for something lest you fall for anything. This approach may well leave you standing for the wrong things in the end. Still, your only chance of being found by the just and true lies in the firmness of your stance.

As we discuss issues and political activism whether here in Detroit, in the larger state of Michigan or the larger still United States, indeed even or especially of world affairs, we must see that without a useful framework no ideas can seriously be discussed. It is important that the framework itself be just, of course. Yet without something to bounce thoughts off of, they will only travel onward away from us to sink in the abyss of non-thought. Or be captured by imaginations sinister to what is really right or really wrong.

Hawking: Ignoring God is Senseless

Steven Hawking, the eminent physicist, has a new book coming out tomorrow which purports to say that God was not necessary for the creation of the universe. Indeed, that many other universes may exist. But does all of this, if true, actually do away with the role God would play in creation?

Hawking and his fellow author Leonard Mlodinow appear to be saying that science alone can explain creation. Yet the scientific view they are trying to espouse is very new, conflicting, already finding ridicule in some scientific quarters. Craig Callender, a philosopher of physics at the University of California, San Diego, says that what the authors are doing is ultimately merely imaginative. It cannot be proven, Dr. Callender says. This from a fellow scientist, it should be noted.

The string theories upon which Hawking and Mlodinow's assertions are based are far from conclusive, according to many in the world of science. Callender himself calls it the 'wild speculation' needed to attract the media. Still, the book apparently does not actually address why God is not needed. Hawking says that our universe began with 'spontaneous creation'. In short, it just happened. That isn't scientific. It's simply a guess.

Hawking argues that the discovery of many other planets in the galaxy makes it less impressive that one should have sentient life. "If there are untold numbers of planets in the galaxy, it's less remarkable that there's one with conditions for human life," he asserts. Why? It brings to mind the infinite monkeys theory, where we should expect that with an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters one would eventually pound out Shakespeare.

We wouldn't be awed that a random ape actually did it? We would not question why, of all the primates happy at their keyboards, one actually gave us writing which made sense? Really, now. So even if there were only one planet with conscious life among thousands of planets and universes, why shouldn't we be impressed by that? It should not be shocking that when no other life existed, it existed here?

To be fair, Mlodinow does say that they are not arguing that there is no God, but only that one isn't necessary to explain the creation of our own or the potentially other universes they say might be out there somewhere. Still, what they say does indeed reek of philosophy rather than science. I stand by what I have said so many times before: science only explains science, they how things work side of the equation. It cannot address the why questions of how it may all have come to be.

What Hawking and Mlodinow have produced is not science but philosophy. Their work is subject to logic, not empiricism. Perhaps they are right in their scientific theories. But as to their philosophy, it is really just the same wish fulfillment they typically claim is the basis for religious belief.