| Monday, July 22, 2002 | |
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Up, Up, and Away!
By Diana Hsieh @ 11:03 PM   
At some ungodly hour of the morning tomorrow, I'll be flying east for my sister's wedding. I won't be back until August 1st. I don't expect to be blogging much while I'm away. Be sure to write lots of comments while I'm gone! :-)
Oh, and the Titan Toastmasters web site is finally up and running. (Toastmasters is an organization devoted to developing public speaking and leadership skills. It has made a huge difference in my skills and confidence in public speaking.) Denver-area bloggers are particularly welcome to visit the club!  E-mail Diana Hsieh
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Radiology in a Nutshell
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:34 AM
This quote, from a satire, has got to be the best summary of radiology ever: "Look, radiology is a stressful profession. You're sitting all day looking at films. It's dark. Did I mention you're sitting all day?"
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| Sunday, July 21, 2002 | |
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A Tidbit or Three
By Diana Hsieh @ 10:13 PM
Tidbit #1: Camp Indecon was great! I'll have to blog more on that later. (Perhaps much later, as I'm headed out of town for 9 days on Tuesday.)
Tidbit #2: Alex Baia, a friend up at Boulder, read my reasons for switching from ethics to epistemology and wrote me this delightful response: I'm glad that you have decided to join the darkside once again. Why be concerned with an uninteresting issue like whether abortion is right or wrong, when you can write an abstruse treatise for or against the logical possibility of time travel through backwards causation? I can see no reason. Tidbit #3: To get to Camp Indecon today, I drove down Highway 67, though some of areas burned by the Hayman fire. It was a mind-boggling mixture of destruction and beauty, often all in a single view. I hope to take some pictures on my drive down tomorrow. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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Off to Camp!
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:59 AM
I'm off to spend the day at Camp Indecon! I've heard great things about the camp over the years, from instructors, parents, and the kids themselves. Since I'm interested in teaching kids about philosophy, I wanted to see the curriculum in action with my own two eyes. As you can see from the statement of philosophy below, this isn't any ordinary camp!
If we don't formally teach our children how to think — society will teach them not to. Cool, eh? E-mail Diana Hsieh
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Tips and Tricks
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:17 AM
I love Miss Manners, not just because she is wry and witty, but because she is committed to a wall of separation between etiquette and state:
Rudeness is not illegal, nor should it be, even though it would save Miss Manners a great deal of trouble to be able to back up her persuasive powers with police action. The law has quite enough to do without nosing into every case of petty irritation. But her comments on tipping from this same column left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, as a former waitress, I appreciate the incentive to good service that my tips offered me. The best of the waitstaff did deservedly make more money than average thanks to their tips. And I suspect that it would be difficult for management to monitor customer service in a restaurant (and certain other professions) without intruding upon the privacy of the customers. On the other hand, I despise the proliferation of tip jars and the expectation of tips for minor niceties of customer service. So tipping does seem appropriate in certain limited professions. Pondering for a moment, Miss Manners may well have a point that the proliferation of tips as a method of paying employees is attributable to their being largely unreported income. But the solution to that problem is to lessen our absurd tax burden, not to allow the IRS to extrapolate what tips employees likely received. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Saturday, July 20, 2002 | |
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Rants and Raves
By Diana Hsieh @ 6:02 PM
Ah, I must have been possessed by the devil to write the following small rant on agnosticism in response to these comments on belief in God from Eric Olsen:
Okay, I'm going to be blunt here. Agnosticism of any variety is damn stupid. I'm usually nicer than that. Perhaps my cantankerous attitude is the result of reading Eve Tushnet's blog this afternoon. In writing about Christian forgiveness, she quotes extensively from an e-mail from Kairosperson, a portion of which is reproduced below: Of course, an extraordinary person in the final seconds of his life may forgive his killer, but most ordinary people need at least a little time to reflect on something before offering forgiveness. That we are called to forgive unconditionally and automatically, but often do not, makes it very much worse, as a moral matter. Though I don't for a moment believe it to be true, it is possible within our theology (because there are so many mysteries in it) that the bank teller gunned down swearing at the thief would be damned on the spot for not forgiving the killer. The victim of rape or torture at least has the time and opportunity to consider forgiveness. (I believe--hope--that the merciful God can create a way in which the victim of a murder is really given a chance to forgive, but there is little comfort on this sunject [sic] to be found in Scripture.) What sort of monstrous perversion of a morality would damn the victim of a murder to hell because of insufficient time (here, measured in seconds) to forgive the (unrepentant) murderer? Augh! Evil, evil, evil! In 2001, I gave a lecture on forgiveness and redemption, so I've thought a fair amount about the issues surrounding moral wrongs. Oh, and while I'm not exemplifying the non-virtue of humility, I may as well mention that I've lectured on arguments about the existence of God before too. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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More on Objectivists and Libertarians
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:49 AM
Ari Armstrong has some excellent comments on the recent blogosphere debates about Objectivism and the Libertarian Party. Being completely unobjective, my favorite bit was:
In terms of presenting new material that advances libertarian theory, Diana's speech was far and away the best presentation at the convention. Her views are not "rigid" -- they are sophisticated and insightful. They are "rigid" only in the sense that they are intellectually consistent and they adhere to the forms of good argument. Oh, I always like being "sophisticated and insightful"! E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Friday, July 19, 2002 | |
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Not So Quick Quickies
By Diana Hsieh @ 6:24 PM
Much thanks to various folks for interesting and thoughtful comments about my report on the Colorado LP Convention. Here are a few quickies in response, some not so quick.1. In the comments, Noho-missives asks: "Is it not rational for me to give money to the government in exchange for setting and enforcing fair rules of trade?" Well, I'm not an anarcho-capitalist, so the question really boils down to what is meant by "fair rules of trade." Governments certainly do have a legitimate role in banning fraud, enforcing contracts, prosecuting theft, protecting property rights, and so on. But as for all the rest of government regulations of business, the answer is a short and sweet but forceful "No!" All people have the capacity to determine what sorts of trades with others are or are not in their best interests. Poor people are not made stupid or helpless as a result of their poverty. No government bureaucrat (or army thereof) has special knowledge or understanding of the world that makes his interference in the voluntary trades of others legitimate. So the "fair rules of trade" are pretty limited in my view. 2. Noho-missives also comments on whether the Right and the Left do actually hate capitalism. Ah, clarification seems to be in order. Neither the Right nor the Left defend consistent and principled capitalism, which is of the laissez-faire variety. The Left is openly hostile to it for the most part. The Right appears to defend some form of capitalism, but does so with arguments that only give ammunition to the critiques by the Left. Of course, some people from both sides of that political spectrum have a better grasp of the delights and wonders of freedom of trade than their compatriots, but they are rarely (if ever) consistent defenders of laissez-faire. Just as an example, politicians on both the Left and Right support government schooling, the welfare state, environmental regulations, and so on. They might quibble over the details, but the underlying support for these programs never questioned. However, none are consistent with genuine capitalism. QED. :-) 3. While I still would say that the income tax and all its accoutrements is the greatest violation of rights we suffer here in the US, I've at least been convinced that the Drug War likely comes in second. Having known too many druggies and drug dealers, I'm still not too concerned about people's right to get high, but the Drug War does certainly serve as a convenient justification for all manner of tyranny. Pondering the matter from my comfy philosophical armchair, I would guess that the various regulation of business (through the EPA, OSHA, licensing, the FDA, minimum wage laws, and so on) probably comes in third. These burdens are obviously unevenly distributed onto business owners, leaving the rest of us blind to their likely substantial effects upon prosperity and innovation. 4. Walter in Denver posted some interesting commentary on my report too. I agree with his comments about the need for activists. Philosophers like me tend to like to stay in our cushy armchairs, thinking about the public good problems of political activism. :-) However, I do have qualms with the following objection to the basic premise of my speech: There are many ways that a person can come to a generally libertarian viewpoint, that people have the right to do as they please, as long as they don't interfere with others' right to do the same. Well sure, people can come to a libertarian viewpoint from all sorts of ways... but will they stay there? Let me explain... Speaking philosophically, people's new ideas about politics tend to be abandoned over time as they come into conflict with more fundamental philosophical views. So a person might initially gravitate towards ending welfare based on economic arguments about poverty and private charity, but return to their original position as moral considerations of fairness ("everyone has to pay their fair share") and universality ("we can't let anyone fall through the cracks") reassert themselves. This scenario is particularly likely if the person encounters any one of the multitude of arguments for statism designed to pump people's (misguided) underlying philosophical intuitions, like that kindness means supporting welfare or that opposition to racism means supporting affirmative action. That being said, I have absolutely no problem with people coming to the libertarian ideal from any number of directions. I'm not arguing that a person must start in a rational metaphysics, work their way through epistemology, then ethics, and finally derive their political conclusions. That would be silly. I'm not even saying that Libertarians ought to be Objectivists. That's an unnecessarily deep philosophical commitment as far as politics are concerned. Rather, I'm saying that Libertarians need a basic understanding of the philosophical foundation of libertarianism. They need to make sure that their underlying philosophy is not at odds with their political ideals. If they don't, those libertarian political ideas are unlikely to endure. Such a process of philosophizing isn't onerous, as there are just four key philosophical ideas that I identified in my talk: reason, egoism, mind-body integration, and harmony of interests. (David Kelley made a good case that arguments for liberty are untenable without the first three in his famous lecture Objectivism and Struggle for Liberty.) Gosh, it is really a big problem for people to ponder questions like "Are people fundamentally irrational? Do they have the capacity to determine their own best interests?" and "Is pursuing my own happiness a moral and worthy goal? What should I do when others object that I'm being selfish?" on their commute to work? Given that these issues come up in daily life all the time anyway, I hardly think so. Now, someone might object to this line of reasoning, as Walter in Denver so presciently did in arguing along the following lines: Neither Democrats nor Republicans really have a deep understanding of their own underlying ideology, so why should the Libertarians? Or, in his own words: Go to a gathering of Democrats and poll them on the theories of Keynes. See how many respond, "Who?" Try a similar experiment at a Republican convention. Ask them if they've read Goldwater's 'Conscience of a Conservative.' Well, sure, Democrats and Republicans might not be well-versed in the literature. But, as I've said, I'm not arguing that Libertarians need to read Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. But more to the substance of the prescient objection, Republicans and Democrats (respectively) do tend to share a core ideology. The driving force behind the Right is the pre-Enlightenment ideals of faith, family, duty, and tradition. The driving force behind the Left is the anti-Enlightenment ideals of subjectivism, communal self-expression, emotionalism, egalitarianism, ludditism. Of course, not every Republican or Democrat agrees with all of these ideals. (But then again, the Republicans and Democrats are more interested in attracting the necessary numbers to get elected than in being consistent or principled.) Nevertheless, these pre-Enlightenment and anti-Enlightenment ideas are definitely the dominant themes in the ideologies of the Left and Right. In contrast, the dominant theme of the Libertarians ought to be the same Enlightenment ideals of reason, happiness, individualism, progress, and so on that gave rise to limited government in the first place. And yes, the unjust expansion of government power can be fairly clearly traced to failures to understand and defend these core Enlightenment ideals adequately. (The "three cultures" idea comes from David Kelley and is explained in this interview.) So the basic point of all that was simply that people do need at least a basic understanding of their philosophical premises in order to remain committed to libertarian ideals. Such understanding is also essential for convincing others of the validity of those ideals -- in other words, for political activism. After all, people are not convinced of libertarianism by mere assertions that people ought to do as they please, so long as they leave others free to do the same. There needs to be some argument, some rationale for adopting that proposition. So people who can articulate clear reasons for that libertarian ideal, both moral and economic, will be in a much better position to actually win over others to their viewpoint. Looking at the darker side of this issue, we can see that bad justifications for libertarian ideals may lead others to the erroneous conclusion that there is no decent philosophical justification for liberty. For example, many libertarians rely upon the skeptical subjectivist argument for liberty. That argument says that we can't ever be certain that an idea is true or false or that an action is moral or immoral, so we ought to leave people alone to make up their own minds and choose their own actions, so long as they don't interfere in the liberty of others to do the same. But this argument is self-defeating in a very important way: If we are genuinely ignorant about truth and morality, then there can be no reason for me to refrain from initiating force with whomever I please. Who is to say that initiating force is wrong if we can't know right from wrong in the first place? The skeptical subjectivist libertarian might attempt to argue for parity between people, but if I'm mighty and you're weak, why should I care about any sort of parity? A thinking person will see through these self-defeating skeptical subjectivist libertarian arguments -- and probably not bother with libertarianism again. So bad philosophical foundations for liberty can inhibit the spread of libertarian ideas. Whew! That's all my musings for the moment! Update: My views on libertarianism changed substantially since I originally wrote this post. The details can be found on my web page on The Many False Friends of Objectivism. In particular, see the second half of my blog post Stinky Garbage on Islam and my husband's essay The Fable of the Cardiac Surgeon and the Organization of Health Practitioners or Why I Don't Support Libertarian Organizations. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Thursday, July 18, 2002 | |
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A Small Thought About Academic Philosophy
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:21 PM
Tom Stone (of Episteme Links) sent me a thoughtful note about my blog entry about switching my focus from ethics to epistemology, pointing out some the upsides and downsides of either choice. While writing my reply, I came up with this pithy formulation:
The danger in ethics (and politics, to some degree) is that the Objectivist ideas are regarded as obviously false and evil. So we hear stupid objections like that egoism can't be a moral theory since moral theories concern restraining self-interest or that the egoist would want everyone else to be altruists, and so on. That's hardly the whole story of Objectivist ideas in academia, but it is an important part, I think. Labels: Academia E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Wednesday, July 17, 2002 | |
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Powerpuff Girls!
By Diana Hsieh @ 10:38 PM
Part of my luxurious vacation has involved watching the surprisingly delightful and funny Powerpuff Girls on the Cartoon Network. So I just had to take the quiz.
Of course, I wanted to be Buttercup, so I wasn't exactly objective. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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Honesty, Social Construction, and Personal Questions
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:09 PM
My post to OWL on honesty, social construction, and personal questions was finally distributed! (There is a big backlog at the moment.)
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| Tuesday, July 16, 2002 | |
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Fire Them All!
By Diana Hsieh @ 11:56 AM
Shame on the State Department for their complicity with totalitarian governments in oppressing innocent American citizens. Amjad Radwan is an adult American citizen who was taken to Saudi Arabia as a child. She wishes to leave, but is unable to do so, thanks to the American Embassy's "Sure I'll bend over and drop my pants" approach to the Saudi government.
So with a State Department like ours, precisely what is the point of citizenship?!? Fire all the bastards, starting with Colin Powell. From what I've read, much of the lack of responsiveness to these cases stems from promise of lucrative jobs with the host country after these officials leave the State Department. So why piss off your future employer for the sake of some individual person? Obviously, this situation creates huge conflicts of interest. Perhaps some limits on who former State Department employees can work for are in order? E-mail Diana Hsieh
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Imprison the Innocent!
By Diana Hsieh @ 11:26 AM
Anyone who has ever said "Better ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be punished" is hereby required to go read Jonah Goldberg's article on cliches. Of course, I disagree with Goldberg on the immorality of making arguments about rights that appeal to self-interest. Upholding the rights of all people is a self-interested endeavor! However, upon a moment's reflection, it seems that some of the "they'll come get you next" arguments for rights are self-interested in a rather shallow way, which is surely suboptimal. But there is certainly nothing wrong and much right with showing that upholding the rights of all people is in all of our interests! For a good explanation of the self-interested case for rights, see Ayn Rand's article "Man's Rights." E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Monday, July 15, 2002 | |
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Fallacies and Reasoning
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:59 PM
I just updated the web site with a few tidbits. I added my lecture notes from this evening's speech to Toastmasters, "Fuzzy Thinking." Since that speech concerned fallacies, I have also revived my old file of Definitions of Fallacies. Enjoy!
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An Overdue Report on the Colorado Libertarian Party Convention
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:42 PM
Back in May, I gave a speech to the Colorado Libertarian Party Convention on the philosophical underpinnings of capitalism. I wrote up some thoughts on the experience immediately afterwards, but just never got around to editing and posting them. So now I've done both...First off, kudos to Ari Armstrong for putting together an excellent convention. Apart from the (apparently usual) Libertarian time delays, all went smoothly. Ah well, one minor gripe, of which Ari was aware: The microphone was attached to the podium, so speakers were forced to boringly stand in a single spot during their speeches. During my speech, all of my Toastmaster training was screaming in protest at my lack of movement. Unfortunately, the more mobile microphone was of fairly poor quality, so stuck we were. I was pretty pleased with my speech, in that I wasn't just regurgitating the usual libertarian dogma. I argued that there are four philosophical ideas that serve as "pillars" of freedom of trade: reason, egoism, harmony of interests, and mind-body integration. Rejection of any of these pillars leads to a particular form of statism (respectively): the paternalistic state, the welfare state, the egalitarian state, and the theocratic state. People who deny any of these philosophical ideas see economic arguments about the prosperity of capitalism as irrelevant; only philosophical arguments can save the day. So, as I said, it wasn't just the usual libertarian blah-de-blah. (I might propose an expanded version of this speech for the TOC summer seminar in 2003.) Before I arrived at the convention, my basic worry was that I was presuming too little, that these philosophical issues would be old hat to most people. But after a few casual conversations and a sampling of the other lectures, I began to worry that perhaps I was presuming too much, that these philosophical issues would be foreign and undigestible to many. My flip-flop was largely the result of my total lack of contact with purely Libertarian Party folks. I'm no neophyte to the libertarian movement, but my associations have been almost entirely though think tanks like The Cato Institute. (In fact, my only prior LP event was the Colorado LP's annual banquet last fall.) So, up until very recently, any big-L Libertarians I knew were also either Objectivists or super-smart policy wonks. Of course, I had heard all the usual stuff about the suits and freaks of the LP. But I expected the vast majority of attendees to be at least fairly well-educated about the substance of libertarianism. But many more than expected seemed to be fairly clueless. (Don't get me wrong: I'm not looking to bash LP folks as a whole, as lots of people there were clearly smart and informed.) Most noticeably, far too many people seemed to be more anti-government than pro-freedom. Perhaps the most popular speech I heard was Douglas Bruce talking about his multiple fights and lawsuits with the government. The immense delight of the audience, I think, came largely from his tweaking the big bad authority of government, rather than his actually accomplishing anything worthwhile in the fight for freedom. It all smacked too much of the glee of an adolescent rebellion against authority. (And really, I don't have anything against Bruce, despite his stupid comment about my talk being sponsored by Enron.) (As a contrasting side note: Shortly after the convention, I read this excellent piece by Ari on the dangers of the big brotherish ideas promulgated in a popular anti-methamphetamine video. Unlike Bruce, whose presentation focused almost entirely on his personal fights with government officials, Ari's commentary was all about the facts. His unpleasant run-in with the Larry Blunt, the News4 anchor who contributed to the video, merely served as an amusing and puzzling epilogue. That's the way it should be done.) Also noteworthy was the fact that ending the war on drugs seemed to be a top priority for a great many people. Let me rephrase that: gaining the freedom to get high seemed to be a top priority for a great many people. Now, I'm all for ending the drug war. People have the right to put whatever substances they want into their bodies. And the drug war, like prohibition before it, promotes crime and fosters the worst in government. But the drug war is hardly the worst violation of rights we suffer here in the US. So by focusing heavily on the drug issue, Libertarians come off as a bunch of druggies just looking for an easier high. Of course, I suspect that that's precisely what a great many of them are. Overall, I have to admit that I left the convention underimpressed with a great many of the participants and with the Libertarian Party as a whole. But I am grateful for the invitation from Ari to speak. Perhaps my speech got a few people thinking about some deeper philosophical issues. Update: Today, I would not speak to the Libertarian Party, nor to any libertarian group. For my reasons why, see the second half of my blog post Stinky Garbage on Islam and my husband's essay The Fable of the Cardiac Surgeon and the Organization of Health Practitioners or Why I Don't Support Libertarian Organizations. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Sunday, July 14, 2002 | |
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Tasty Treats
By Diana Hsieh @ 10:37 PM
Andrew Breese pointed me to this excellent article on paleo versus modern diets. Seeing the modern low-fat, high-carb diets get a righteous whooping in the mainstream media is quite a tasty delight! Just read this tidbit:
Few experts now deny that the low-fat message is radically oversimplified. If nothing else, it effectively ignores the fact that unsaturated fats, like olive oil, are relatively good for you: they tend to elevate your good cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (H.D.L.), and lower your bad cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (L.D.L.), at least in comparison to the effect of carbohydrates. While higher L.D.L. raises your heart-disease risk, higher H.D.L. reduces it. Yeah baby! Lard straight from the can! I've been a big advocate of paleo diets for a number of years. Personally, I have followed The Zone (sometimes more strictly, sometimes less) for the past three years or so. The diet put an end to my miserable rollercoaster rides of blood sugar, eliminated afternoon lethargy, and (most importantly) eliminated my daily afternoon migraine. So horray for paleo! One interesting subtext of the article is a pathetic tale of the failure of government science: It was Ancel Keys, paradoxically, who introduced the low-fat-is-good-health dogma in the 50's with his theory that dietary fat raises cholesterol levels and gives you heart disease. Over the next two decades, however, the scientific evidence supporting this theory remained stubbornly ambiguous. The case was eventually settled not by new science but by politics. It began in January 1977, when a Senate committee led by George McGovern published its "Dietary Goals for the United States," advising that Americans significantly curb their fat intake to abate an epidemic of "killer diseases" supposedly sweeping the country. It peaked in late 1984, when the National Institutes of Health officially recommended that all Americans over the age of 2 eat less fat. By that time, fat had become "this greasy killer" in the memorable words of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, and the model American breakfast of eggs and bacon was well on its way to becoming a bowl of Special K with low-fat milk, a glass of orange juice and toast, hold the butter -- a dubious feast of refined carbohydrates. Yikes. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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Report on the 2002 Summer Seminar
By Diana Hsieh @ 4:35 AM
So now for my long-awaited report the 2002 Summer Seminar of The Objectivist Center!In the three days before the regular Summer Seminar, I attended the small graduate-seminar-style Advanced Seminar. On the second day (6/27), I presented my paper "Excuses Excuses: Undermining Moral Growth in the Concealment of Wrongdoing ." My 15 minute presentation at the opening went fine, and the discussion was good as well. We mostly focused on self-deception, particularly on the validity of the psychological literature indicating that self-deception is an integral part of high self-esteem. On the whole, the other participants seemed pleased with my paper, both in argumentation and scholarship. My only regret about the session is that it was not recorded, as I find my memory of it (despite my notes) far too fuzzy to be of any use in editing my paper. If only I had thought to bring my tape recorder! (I wonder how well it would have picked up sound in the room.) I very much enjoyed the other five sessions of the Advanced Seminar. The quality of the papers has improved every year, which has in turn improved the quality discussion. I was particularly excited to see good papers from some of the younger Objectivists: Jason Raibley, Jason Walker, and Christopher Robinson. (Those papers should be made available through the TOC web site sometime soon.) The increasing success of the Advanced Seminar makes me hopeful that the TOC can effectively cultivate and support young scholars. So now onto the regular six-day Summer Seminar! Since I'm an egoist, I'll once again start with a report on my own lectures. :-) I gave seven lectures in the six days of the seminar. Starting on Sunday (6/30) and ending on Friday (7/5), I gave a one-hour lecture every morning at 8:30 AM for my "Objectivism 101" course. On Thursday (7/4), I also gave my one-and-a-quarter-hour lecture "White Lies, Black Lies." It was, without a doubt, a grueling week. Merely gearing myself up to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed every morning was difficult enough. But the stress and difficulty was compounded by the fact that I was finishing up these lectures throughout the week. As a result, I was almost unbearably sleep-deprived over the course of almost two weeks. But despite these difficulties, my lectures went very well. I was personally very pleased with the results, both in terms of content and presentation. Those attending my lectures seem to have been pleased too, as I got an almost overwhelming amount of praise for my work. I certainly didn't expect or even dream of such an enthusiastic response! (Of course, I'll find out what people really thought in reading the comment cards...) I have to attribute much of the success of the lectures to my seven months in Toastmasters. Cultivating my skills of public speaking at Titan Toastmasters every week has provided me with some obvious benefits: weaning me from my lecture notes, reducing (but not yet eliminating) ums and ahs, cultivating my skills of speechwriting, improving eye contact and purposeful gestures, and so on. All of these improvements were a critical part of the quality of my lectures this year. But the deep-down benefit of Toastmasters was that these skills have become so habitual that I could speak confidently and easily despite the intense stress and inadequate speech practice. (I only practiced each of my speeches once or twice, if that, instead of the normal six times.) My speaking this year was really a mind-bogglingly dramatic change from the previous two years. I still have much work to do in Toastmasters, but to so concretely see my progress was absolutely delightful! As for the overall experience, I would say that the seminar was something like giving birth, in that the memory of the pain was washed away in a huge rush of endorphins afterwards. So on the one hand, the seminar was definitely extraordinarily difficult, both mentally and physically. Wednesday night, the night before my "White Lies, Black Lies" talk, was particularly horrendous. I was trying to finish up my lecture notes, but I was simply too nauseated to think, thanks to the previous week of sleep deprivation. I remember thinking something along the lines of "a body can't feel much worse than this and still function..." (And that means something from someone who regularly suffers migraines!) But in the aftermath of my lectures came a huge endorphin rush, thanks to my own and others' pleasure in my performance. That rush dulled and faded all those horrible memories of the pain, such that what stands out in my mind is now just the pleasure of the accomplishment. As far as other Summer Seminar lectures, here's a few (in random order) that I would particularly recommend buying on tape when they become available through TOC Live:
I heard many good things about other lectures, but I can't comment or recommend since I didn't hear them personally. In sum: I'm very pleased with the work I did for and at the seminar. And I am very much looking forward to next year, when I only have to do some minor editing and tweaking to the "Objectivism 101" lectures. Perhaps then I'll have some time for hanging out with friends in the common room! Oh, and for luxuriously long nights of sleep too... Update: Due to serious philosophic and moral objections, I am no longer associated with The Objectivist Center in any way, shape, or form. My reasons why can be found on my web page on The Many False Friends of Objectivism. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Friday, July 12, 2002 | |
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From Ethics to Epistemology
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:11 PM
Over the past few weeks, I have been pondering shifting my primary focus in philosophy from ethics to metaphysics and epistemology, particularly for my work in graduate school. (Since metaphysics and epistemology are so closely intertwined, I'm mostly just going to talk about epistemology here, with the understanding that I'm referring to many issues in metaphysics too.) My reasons are many and varied, so let me just indicate a few of them here.First and most importantly, I have always considered epistemology to be my first love in philosophy. My first two philosophy classes at WashU concerned epistemology, as did a great many of my later classes. It was Ayn Rand's theory of concepts that spurred me to take a more serious interest in her philosophy. And, as I've mentioned before, my autobiography will simply have to be titled How I Was Seduced By Epistemology. So I would not be developing an interest in epistemology, but rather returning to it. I might be a bit rusty after all these years, but the necessary gears are still there. Second, I have slowly come to realize that refocusing my attention on issues in metaphysics and epistemology need not require me to sacrifice my interest in the practical, real life impact of philosophical ideas. Towards the end of my time at WashU, I turned my attention away from epistemology and towards ethics, largely because I was tired of heated debates over esoteric subjects like the status of future tense propositions. When I started lecturing at the Summer Seminars of The Objectivist Center, I wanted those lectures to be interesting and relevant to the regular folks, so ethics seemed like a natural choice. But listening to Barbara Branden's excellent tape course Principles of Efficient Thinking, working on issues related to self-deception for my paper "Excuses Excuses," developing the lecture on metaphysics and epistemology for "Objectivism 101," and hearing Mike Huemer's excellent lecture "Why Political Beliefs Are Irrational" drove home the point that the abstract and technical issues in metaphysics and epistemology often have significant and interesting real-life consequences. Many of these philosophical issues have the added benefit of intersecting with psychological issues, which (sometimes) adds good empirical data into the mix. So the challenge for me will be in finding and highlighting those real-life consequences of these very abstract ideas for my more popular writings and lectures on philosophy. Third, I worry about finding a hospitable climate in which to do ethics at Boulder. Boulder has a strong applied ethics section, but it may well be too leftist for me to do well there. If I want to do ethics, my best bet would be through the also-noteworthy ancient philosophy section, but I doubt that my interest in the ancients would be strong enough to sustain a Ph.D. (I'm just in the MA program at the moment, but pursuing a Ph.D is definitely not out of the question.) On the other hand, Boulder is also well known for metaphysics and epistemology. And those are also Mike Huemer's primary areas of focus. (Mike isn't an Objectivist, but he's Objecti-familiar and Objecti-friendly -- perfect for graduate school.) Fourth, good work in metaphysics and epistemology requires a depth of understanding that will simply be easier to achieve during graduate school than at any other time. I have generally found the literature in ethics to be fairly straightforward and easy to master while working solo. But the debates in metaphysics and epistemology are simply much more twisted and slippery, so help is far more critical. So better to work on those more difficult subjects when the resources of graduate school are at my disposal! Fifth, focusing on metaphysics and epistemology will allow me to stretch myself and stand out in a way that I simply would not as just another woman in ethics. Given my interests and capacities, I have no desire whatsoever to be permanently associated with "softer" subjects like ethics. To be so associated would mean not being taken as seriously, since it is generally so much harder to do good work in metaphysics and epistemology than in ethics. So metaphysics and epistemology offer me a genuine challenge with the potential for greater rewards. Of course, I won't be forever departing the field of ethics! I plan on continuing to work in that area, particularly on the virtues. But my scholarly focus is shifting. And my popular work will be broadening into metaphysics and epistemology as a result. So now I just need to figure out what sort of course changes for the fall I might want to make! Update: Due to serious philosophic and moral objections, I am no longer associated with The Objectivist Center in any way, shape, or form. My reasons why can be found on my web page on The Many False Friends of Objectivism. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Wednesday, July 10, 2002 | |
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Slides and Swings
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:12 PM
As promised, I've posted the slides from my seven lectures to the 2002 TOC Summer Seminar. White Lies, Black Lies: PowerPoint or HTML The raw, unedited tapes of these lectures should be available through The Objectivist Center at some point soon. I'll be sure to post an announcement when they are. In the meantime, it seems that my 2001 lecture "Forgiveness and Redemption" is still available on audiotape from TOC Live! under a horribly hyphenated perversion of my name. I've also posted the notes from my introductory remarks to my Advanced Seminar paper "Excuses Excuses." I've give a report on how the seminar went a bit later. Update: Due to serious philosophic and moral objections, I am no longer associated with The Objectivist Center in any way, shape, or form. My reasons why can be found on my web page on The Many False Friends of Objectivism. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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Orsies!
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:48 PM
My horses have returned! Hooray! Order and balance has returned to Chez Hsieh! (For those of you who don't get the joke, "Chez" and "Hsieh" are basically pronounced identically.)
As usual, Jackson seemed unperturbed at the move back home; he just wanted to know where grain could be found. Tara was a bit more disturbed at the change of scenery, but she seems to have settled back into the routine just fine. (A bit of history: Mike Paul was kind enough to keep the horses at his farm until our return from California. We didn't want our housesitter to have to deal with evacuating the horses in the unlikely event that the Hayman fire flared up again.) Once I've recovered from my seminar sleep deficit, I'll be able to get Tara going again. Yeah! E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Tuesday, July 09, 2002 | |
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Untested Courage
By Diana Hsieh @ 9:09 PM
Eugene Volokh has a nice piece on courage in National Review.
Those of us enjoying the benefits of a free society often inadvertently demean the virtue of courage by presenting small acts of courage (like risking an academic career by voicing unpopular opinions) as more significant than they actually are. Those on the left, I think, are particularly prone to this error (or perhaps evil), often acting as if they are the equivalent of Soviet dissidents in critiquing the policies of the US government. But risking harsh criticisms by people who think their ideas are stupid is hardly on par with risking 10 years of forced labor in a Siberian work camp for opposing Soviet totalitarianism. We ought to be careful about what we call brave and courageous. Most of us living in a free society are simply lucky enough to never have had our internal sense of courage put to significant test. If we were, I suspect that many of us who think ourselves courageous would crumble. And unexpected others would rise from nowhere to meet the challenge. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Monday, July 08, 2002 | |
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Moooooooo
By Diana Hsieh @ 11:38 PM
I have reached a milestone in my marriage.
My husband spontaneously made mooing noises as he passed a herd of cows a few days ago. Wow. Marriage really can change a man. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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More on Sins (of Memory, That Is)
By Diana Hsieh @ 3:00 PM
I am always pleased when merely reading the opening pages of a book conveys a clear sense of the insights and delights to come. I had exactly that experience in reading the introduction to David Kelley's Truth and Toleration. His tone was so reasonable and his writing was so clear that I was almost certain that I would agree with the substance of his arguments. I was not wrong.
I am currently enjoying a very similar impressing in the opening pages of Daniel Schacter's book The Seven Sins of Memory. Interested in why and how memory fails us, he has divided up the errors of memory into seven basic categories:
These sins of memory, however, are not ammunition in a simplistic attack on memory, but rather consequences of "otherwise desirable and adaptive features of the human mind" (6). But it is not merely the prospect of the content of the book that has me all warm and fuzzy inside, but rather the promise held out by his engaging and clear writing. His style of writing is friendly and accessible, without being condescending. So far, it is popular science writing at its best. Of course, my predictions could be entirely wrong. I am no Miss Cleo! :-) But if the reviews on Amazon are any indication, my initial impressions will likely last. So off to read I go! E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Sunday, July 07, 2002 | |
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Arabs on Arab Problems
By Diana Hsieh @ 10:58 PM
Josh "I need a blog" Zader sent me a link to a rather interesting story on the good grasp that Arab scholars and intellectuals have on the problems in their own countries.
I particularly enjoyed this tidbit: But the academic Left isn't alone in misjudging the Middle East. The realpolitik of the U.S. government that allies itself with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and other "moderate" Arab states offers little long-term hope for an improved relationship with people of the Middle East. It is no accident that America is more popular in countries whose awful governments hate the United States -- Iraq and Iran, for example -- than among the public of its so-called allies. Saudis, Kuwaitis, Pakistanis and Egyptians, after all, have been murdering Americans far more frequently than have Iranians, Iraqis and Syrians. Yup! (Josh mentioned that he found the story through InstaPundit, but I haven't caught myself up on the InstaVacationBacklog yet. So it's like those NBC summer reruns: New to me!) E-mail Diana Hsieh
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Productiveness: The Next Battle
By Diana Hsieh @ 10:52 PM
Since my talk on honesty at the seminar was so well-received, I've been thinking about lecturing on other virtues at upcoming seminars. While it would make sense for me to return to start with the primary virtue in Objectivism, rationality, I think that I would like to focus on the virtue of productiveness next instead. My reasons are primarily personal, in the sense that productiveness is the virtue I have struggled with most over the past year. The problem is not that I'm unproductive, but rather that I think I could be so much more productive if I instilled good habits within myself. Or perhaps not. I just don't know. So productiveness it is and shall be!What follows are simply some preliminary notes on the direction I think such a lecture should take. As usual, I would like to integrate a theoretical understanding of the virtue with its practical applications. As those who are familiar with my previous work on virtue, good habits will be just that link between theory and practice. (I was dissatisfied with my explication of the function of habit within the virtue of honesty in my recent lecture "White Lies, Black Lies." I fear that I failed to convey the richness and robustness that habit brings to theory and practice of honesty. Additionally, there is much, much more in the psychology of habits that would be useful and productive for me to explore. For example, I am presently reading what promises to be an excellent and useful book entitled The Seven Sins of Memory. In short, I want to be sure to fully explicate the role of habits in any forthcoming lectures on virtue.) From a theoretical perspective, the Objectivist case for productiveness is fairly simple. We need to create values in order to survive. Productiveness means creating those values necessary for life and happiness. Of course, there is always the perennial and thorny question of the prudent predator -- or in this case the prudent moocher and prudent looter. I think the basic answer to these apparent counter-arguments is that we are wasting time and energy, not to mention creating bad habits, by keeping ourselves open to and on the lookout for such opportunities for predation. In other words, being on the prowl has consequences all its own. Another theoretical issue concerns the relationship between the virtues of responsibility and productiveness. In common parlance, productiveness seems to relate primarily to work and career, while responsibility concerns all of life's activities. So it would seem that responsibility might be the primary virtue, with productiveness as one aspect of it. This is essentially what David Kelley has argued. He conceives of productiveness as primarily relating to the creation of wealth. Responsibility is the more fundamental virtue of achieving all the values necessary for a long and happy life. He has a point. However, I'm not sure that I entirely agree with this conceptual schema. Productiveness perhaps ought to be defined as David Kelley defines responsibility, as the virtue of achieving all the values necessary for a long and happy life. After all, one of Objectivism's more interesting insights is the way in which the pursuit of value in an individual's personal life is fundamentally the same as in the economic sphere. For example, Objectivists don't just see trade as only activity of business relationships, but also something we do in friendships, in romantic relationships, and familial relationships. (The trades in such personal relationships, of course, tend to be longer-term, unaccounted, and more spiritual in nature than in business. But the fundamentals of trade still apply.) So it would not be unprecedented in Objectivism to take a virtue that seems to primarily apply to the economic sphere and broaden it to apply to all areas of life. Such would be essentially consistent with much of the Objectivist project in ethics. Speaking of the relationship between virtues, I should also think about the nature of certain key minor virtues within productiveness, such as self-discipline, ambition, creativity. I will want to be able to given account of these aspects of productiveness, given how essential that are in daily life. One interesting topic along these lines would be an account of competitiveness, rational and irrational. Also, on both a theoretical and a practical level, I am interested in comparing and contrasting the Objectivist virtue of productiveness with the ideas in the current business self-help literature, as well as the Protestant ethic of thrift and industry championed by Benjamin Franklin and others in years and centuries past. From a purely practical perspective, the major issue seems to be how to become more productive in daily life. In other words, how can we make ourselves maximally-efficient pursuers of value in all areas of life? I think that I might find a great deal of insight in the business self-help literature. (But I will need to be careful not to get mired in the business side of productiveness, if I do take the virtue to be applying to all of life.) Some relevant question include: Those are just a few of the issues that come to mind at the moment. I'm sure there will be more! E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Saturday, July 06, 2002 | |
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Home Again, Home Again
By Diana Hsieh @ 11:04 PM
Paul and I just returned from the TOC summer seminar this evening. Giving seven lectures in six days was a painfully exhausting experience, but both the "Objectivism 101" course and the "White Lies, Black Lies" talk were quite successful. I'll be posting my PowerPoints in the next day or so. Raw tapes will also be available from the TOC. Blogging will resume tomorrow.
It's good to be home! E-mail Diana Hsieh
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