| Monday, January 31, 2005 | |
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"First Amendment No Big Deal, Students Say"
By Paul @ 9:18 AM   
From this recent story:...[T]he First Amendment is a second-rate issue to many of those nearing their own adult independence, according to a study of high school attitudes released Monday.This is a trend worth keeping abreast of, especially given that loss of freedom of the press is one of the four key characteristics that Ayn Rand identified as a hallmark of a dictatorship. (The full list can be found in her essay "Collectivized 'Rights'" in The Virtue of Selfishness, and it includes "one party rule -- executions without trial or with a mock trial for political offenses -- the nationalization or expropriation of private property -- and censorship".)  E-mail Paul
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Commentaries on Ayn Rand's Centenary
By Diana Hsieh @ 9:14 AM
In my "Ayn Rand" Google News Alert, I've noticed a bunch of articles on Ayn Rand as the 100th anniversary of her birth approaches. (It's this Wednesday.) Most have been positive, but this passage from a Chicago Tribune article struck me as particularly interesting, even pleasant:
Read at the right moment in one's life -- usually in late adolescence, when the world seems like a tangled mess of hypocrisy and confusion, and you hate your parents and especially that stupid assistant principal who is seriously on your case -- "Atlas Shrugged" is a tonic, a dream, a throat-scalding draft of pure, radiant clarity. You feel as if you've been walking upside down for most of your life, seeing things the wrong way, and now -- now -- suddenly you're right-side up again and everything starts to make sense. Turns out it was the world that was upside down, not you.Generally, I have little patience or respect for people who dismiss Ayn Rand's ideas as an aberration of their youth. Upon reading this passage, I suspect that many (if not most) of them would be just as captivated by The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged now as they were so many years ago. In at least some cases, I suspect that that's precisely why they stay away: Ayn Rand would upset the fuzzy, compromising, pragmatic life they've made for themselves. Ick. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Sunday, January 30, 2005 | |
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"Chairman Kim's dissolving kingdom"
By Paul @ 7:52 PM
According to this fascinating article, there's new evidence that the North Korean regime is on the verge of collapse. Some relevant quotes:According to exiles, North Korean agents in Beijing and Ulan Bator are frantically selling assets to raise cash -- an important sign, says one activist, because "the secret police can always smell the crisis coming before anybody else".If they really are that close to collapse, I don't think any option should be off the table. E-mail Paul
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The Decline of America?
By Paul @ 11:30 AM
British intellectual Matthew Parris thinks America is in a "relentless decline." Victor Davis Hanson explains why he's wrong:The most recent doom-and-gloom forecast by Matthew Parris of the London Times would be hilarious if it were not so hackneyed. After all, Americans long ago have learned to grin any time a British intellectual talks about the upstart's foreordained imperial collapse. And as in the case of our own intelligentsia's gloominess, it is not hard to distinguish the usual prophets' pessimistic prognostications from their thinly-disguised hopes for American decline and fall.(Although I disagree with VDH on his theism, he makes some good points.) E-mail Paul
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"The art of seeing without sight"
By Paul @ 9:13 AM
A man who has been blind since birth "paints houses and mountains and lakes and faces and butterflies, but he's never seen any of these things. He depicts colour, shadow and perspective, but it is not clear how he could have witnessed these things either." Apparently, he is able to integrate the information from other sensory modalities, along with what sighted friends have told him about the world.One tidbit from the article: He confides that for a long time he figured that if an object was red, its shadow would be red too. "But I was told it wasn't," he says. But how do you know about red? He knows that there's an important visual quality to seen objects called "colour" and that it varies from object to object. He's memorised what has what colour and even which ones clash.Neuroscientists at Harvard and Boston University have been running a number of tests which show some fascinating differences from (and similarities to) the visual cortex of normal sighted people. Here's the article as well as one of his paintings. (Via Linkfilter.) E-mail Paul
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| Saturday, January 29, 2005 | |
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Sound Advice from Mom
By Diana Hsieh @ 9:54 PM
My mother, a very wise woman indeed, send this helpful bit of advice to me a few days ago:
I am passing this on to you because it certainly worked for me and we all could use more calm in our lives. By following the simple advice described on a Dr. Phil show, today I have a much more tranquil and serene feeling about life. Heh. Labels: Funny E-mail Diana Hsieh
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Spanky New Sports Orthotics
By Diana Hsieh @ 2:11 PM
Back in early August, I blogged about my problem with pain in my right knee during running. An MRI (courtesy of Paul) showed that the problem was an inflamed ilio-tibial band. From the research I did at the time, it sounded like the problem could be fixed with a different pair of orthotics.
Shortly thereafter, Paul and I bought a rowing machine, so I wasn't running as often or as much. In the weeks of recovery from my fall flu and winter cold, I was even rowing exclusively, since running made me too woozy. Even though I wasn't running so much or so often, the knee pain still bothered me regularly, such that I couldn't generally run more than three miles in a stretch. But I put off making the appointment, as I was busy with other matters. Lately though, I've been particularly eager to get back to running, as it's a harder cardio workout than rowing. So yesterday, I finally called Dr. Ng, the podiatrist recommended by Dr. Heble, my excellent family practice doctor. To my amazement and delight, he had an open appointment that afternoon. Dr. Ng determined within just a few moments that my regular three-quarter length orthotics (which enable me to walk about town without intense foot pain) were causing my knee pain during running. They were rotating my knees too far outward, thus putting pressure on my ilio-tibial band. They also lacked the necessary cushioning, as they are completely rigid. He took a plaster mold of my feet for a new pair of full-length sports orthotics. They should be arriving in about two weeks. In the meantime, I've started running without any orthotics at all. Last night, I ran four miles without a hint of pain. And I just ran three miles, again without a hint of pain. It was delightful! Notably, merely running without orthotics isn't a good long-term solution. After all, the reason that I started wearing my orthotics while running in the first place was an almost constant ilio-tibial band tightness in my left hip. In hindsight, it's pretty clear that wearing the orthotics while running solved that problem, but then created my much more severe (albeit limited) ilio-tibial band pain in my right knee. But in two weeks, I'll have my some spanky new sports orthotics to wear during running. Hooray! E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Friday, January 28, 2005 | |
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Crime-related handgun deduction in the Netherlands
By Paul @ 8:58 AM
Most of you know that it is nearly impossible for a law-abiding citizen to carry a handgun in Western Europe.
Yet, the courts in the Netherlands have ruled that if a criminal commits armed robbery, is caught, and has to pay restitution to the victim, he is allowed to deduct the cost of his illegal firearm from the amount payed back to the victim. The two primary conditions for being eligible for this deduction are: 1) The gun has to be one that he would not have purchased except for the purpose of committing the crime. In other words, if you commit a crime with a gun you also use for a law-abiding purpose, you don't get to deduct it as a crime-related expense. The expense incurred by the bad guy has to be directly related to his crime. 2) A crime actually has to be committed with the gun. In a certain perverse way, I suppose this increases the incentive for criminals to commit armed robbery with expensive high-quality firearms, not with cheap "Saturday Night Specials", since if they get caught it reduces the amount they have to return to the victims. According to the prosecutor in charge of the case, [T]he financial situation of the bank robber after the sentence is imposed must be the same as what it was prior to the crime. "It sounds a little bit strange, but that is the law"... E-mail Paul
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| Monday, January 24, 2005 | |
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Redesigned Web Site
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:38 PM
As you ought to have already noticed, I've designed (and reorganized) the web site. Mostly, I was tired of my old design; I wanted the site to be both more subdued and more compact. A few points of note:
Just for the record, not a single person has ever pressured, encouraged, or even suggested that I remove those outdated or objectionable portions of the web site. But I do get tired of this sort of stupidity. (Of course, it is precisely because I am not willing to "rewrite my own history" that Michelle Cohen was even able to find that old blog post of mine. Oh, I hid it ever so cleverly... on my web site!) Obviously, the basic point of the warning is to alleviate the confusion of reasonable people unfamiliar with my unfortunate history with The Appeasement Center. If you run into any problems with the redesign of the site, by all means, let me know. If you just hate the new design... well... too bad. :-) E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Friday, January 21, 2005 | |
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The Curse of the Slavedriver
By Diana Hsieh @ 10:03 AM
It's 10:00 am -- and I've already put in six hours of work today. That's not good, as it implies that I didn't get nearly enough sleep for the fourth night in a row. Then again, I didn't need to do any math to discern that unpleasant little fact, as I'm not exactly feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning.The good news is that last night, I decided to do something radical. You might want to sit down for this news. It's very exciting. Are you ready? Okay, here goes: I'm going to take the weekend off. Really, I swear. Sort of. My weekend is already pretty full, as Dr. Lewis will be speaking on homeland defense at Boulder tonight and on classical art in Denver on Saturday. There's also a send-off brunch early Sunday morning. Given that already-busy schedule, I decided that I wouldn't also push myself terribly hard to study my Latin, write various papers, or make headway in my reading over the weekend. I'll just have fun with my friends, watch a bit of football (Damn those evil Patriots!), and sleep sleep sleep. It's very generous of me, I think. I work for the worst slavedriver of a boss ever: I'm self-employed. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Wednesday, January 19, 2005 | |
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Exhausted
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:33 PM
I'm insanely, desperately tired. Yet I know that if I went to bed, I wouldn't be able to go to sleep. I'm just too wired. So I think that I'll go row a few miles. I'm hoping that I'll either be awake enough to work or set for bed afterward. Either way, this post will be the extent of my blogging.
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| Tuesday, January 18, 2005 | |
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Amazing Shirt Folding Technique
By Diana Hsieh @ 9:12 PM
Really, this short video is just astonishing. It's the pinnacle of excellence in the folding of shirts.
I kid you not. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Monday, January 17, 2005 | |
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A Very Busy Front Range Objectivism
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:48 PM
I must admit that I'm feeling pretty Objectivism'ed out after this weekend. Since that doesn't happen often, let me explain.On Saturday evening, 1FROG met to discuss four chapters of Ayn Rand's excellent The Art of Nonfiction, namely those on outlines, drafts, editing, and style. 1FROG is the original, longstanding Objectivism discussion group of the Denver area. Then on Sunday afternoon, 2FROG met to discuss the selections from The Fountainhead in the first part of The Ayn Rand Reader. 2FROG was started just this winter because 1FROG was in danger of growing too large for our living rooms and for productive discussion. Basically just three of us from 1FROG also attend 2FROG, as it's already a good-sized group -- amazingly enough. Immediately after the 2FROG meeting, we had our FROLIC Sunday Dinner. FROLIC is a social group open to all people interested in Ayn Rand's philosophy which meets at least once per month for dinner. It's a particularly nice way for 1FROG and 2FROG members to socialize, since they would otherwise not meet particularly often. 2FROG and FROLIC are deliberately scheduled to be on the same day, i.e. the third Sunday of the month, but it just so happened that 1FROG (which roams amongst the Saturdays of the month) was also scheduled for the same third weekend. As one of three people who attended all three events, I'm feeling pretty darned Objectivism'ed out -- even though I very much enjoyed both discussion groups and the dinner. Really though, that's a good sign, as it means that Front Range Objectivism is flourishing! I'll have to be fully recovered by the end of the week, as Objectivist historian Dr. Lewis is coming to town to speak on homeland defense at CU Boulder on Friday and classical art in Denver on Saturday. Below is the full announcement. Note that reservations for the Saturday FROST talk must be made with Lin Zinser by tomorrow (Tuesday the 18th). Front Range Objectivist Supper Talks is pleased to announce upcoming events: Dr. Lewis an excellent lecturer both in content and style, so I'm happy to recommend his lectures highly. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Friday, January 14, 2005 | |
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A Long Overdue Announcement About Harry Potter and Philosophy
By Diana Hsieh @ 11:48 PM
I've been meaning to write this post for months now, but just kept procrastinating for no good reason. Since the matter was favorably mentioned just recently on Objectivism Online, I thought I should stop putting it off for yet another day.
Next time you find yourself browsing the philosophy section of your local bookstore, check out a copy of Harry Potter and Philosophy. (Happily, you're almost sure to find it.) If you peruse the index, you'll quickly notice a familiar name. My essay "Dursley Duplicity: The Morality and Psychology of Self-Deception" is included in the volume. Here's my unofficial abstract: In light of the recent philosophical and psychological defenses of self-deception, this paper examines the basic harms of self-deception through the characters of Vernon and Petunia Dursley from the Harry Potter novels. Those characters show us that self-deception cannot insulate a person from confounding reminders of the denied facts, that it will often spread beyond the original denial into related areas of thought, and that it easily becomes a habitual method of avoiding all kinds of painful truths. In addition, examples from the novels illustrate the deep problems with the psychological concept of "positive illusions." It's a good essay, I think, perhaps even my best work to date. So I'm pleased to have it published in a volume that is likely to be fairly widely read. In general, I do recommend the volume. As expected, I disagreed at least in part with many of the essays. Yet all were clear, and many were quite interesting. (I particularly enjoyed the essay on Slytherin and ambition, as it got me thinking about the relationship between various virtues and other character traits which are related to virtues but not virtues themselves.) Also, the subtitle ("If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts") is very apt, as most of the essays were Aristotelian in flavor. Of course, my friend and editor Shawn Klein deserves a great thank you for making it all possible. Not only did he approach me about contributing to the volume, but he also gave me helpful feedback along the way. More importantly, in so doing he introduced me to the ever-delightful Harry Potter novels. They were the best philosophy reading I've ever had to do! (And speaking of Harry, the sixth novel is due out this summer. Rejoice!) E-mail Diana Hsieh
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Hubris and Scapegoating and Sacrifice, Oh My!
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:47 AM
A while back, I found this astonishing LewRockwell.com article by Bob Wallace via my "Ayn Rand" Google News Alert. Since it wasn't time-dependent and I didn't have time to blog it right then, I filed it away for a rainy day.
The article generally concerns the related evils of hubris and scapegoating. Wallace describes hubris as "conceit, arrogance, grandiosity, the belief that one is god-like and can transcend human limitations, usually through violence." He claims that it "devalues other people into mere things" and is "the sin of Satan, as described in the Bible." As such, hubris is "the only true crime that exists, because it is the basis of all other crimes." According to Wallace, "hubris always leads to scapegoating" and "scapegoating always leads to human sacrifice." He defines scapegoating as "when one person or a group projects problems onto another person or group, then tries to destroy them." In such cases, the scapegoaters claim that "Since we are good, then you must be evil. Being evil, you are the cause of our problems. If we destroy you, evil will cease to exist and our problems will disappear." As such, "scapegoating requires splitting groups into pure good and pure evil, into grandiose and devalued." And "that splitting -- indeed that belief -- in pure good and pure evil automatically leads to scapegoating and human sacrifice." Having described the theory, he then considers some examples. He writes: "In the 20th century, the best-known practitioners of scapegoating and human sacrifice were the Nazis and socialists. They weren't the only ones, just the best-known. All societies do it. The US did it to alcohol users during Prohibition and does it today to drug dealers and sellers." Even the behavior of serial killers can be explained by reference to scapegoating, he claims. Then, after considering various other examples, Bob Wallace hits the jackpot: The novel that most clearly shows the sequence of hubris to scapegoating to human sacrifice, and the function of the scapegoat, is Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. In it we have her god-like heroes, whose problem are due to "looters" and "parasites," all of whom Rand describes as subhuman. Her heroes are all-good; the villains, all-bad. He then continues his bizarre ravings for a while longer, including an absurd little plug for the Gospels as the only literature in which "the scapegoat function was brought to light" and "finally seen as a bad thing," meaning that it was "supposed to put a permanent end to hubris, scapegoating and human sacrifice." There's more, but I'll leave that to you to explore if you so choose. I would find the whole article utterly revolting, except for this one deliciously amusing twist: Wallace himself is guilty of scapegoating... the scapegoaters. His whole article cries out to the scapegoaters: "Since we are good, then you must be evil. Being evil, you are the cause of our problems. If we destroy you, evil will cease to exist and our problems will disappear." Heh. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Thursday, January 13, 2005 | |
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Two Good Men
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:01 PM
Paul pointed me to this excellent and lengthy profile of Daniel Pipes in Harvard Magazine. I haven't read a ton of Daniel Pipes' work, although I did very much enjoy and appreciate his Militant Islam Reaches America. I'm still reading his father Richard Pipes' excellent trilogy on Russia: Russia Under the Old Regime, The Russian Revolution, and Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. At present, I'm slowly working through the hefty second volume on the Revolution itself. (I can't afford much time for that reading, unfortunately.)
Given my familiarity with both father and son, I particularly enjoyed this quote from father Richard about the hostility that son Daniel engenders on campus from the article: "Of course we're worried. The Russians were more rational than the Muslims whom he confronts. They cared to live! But we are proud of him. Both of his courage and common sense. He understands the true nature of the danger the West faces." Those are two very good men, I think. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Wednesday, January 12, 2005 | |
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Porpoises!
By Diana Hsieh @ 10:32 AM
After I finished grading my first set of papers last semester, a friend e-mailed me a funny story about his wife's grading of undergraduate philosophy papers. (I only just recently got permission to post it.)
A student in one of her philosophy classes used the word "porpoise" instead of "purpose" throughout his paper. Thus he wrote phrases like "To consider this issue, one must first consult the porpoise" and "Was he guilty because of his actions, or because of his intention, or his porpoises?" Even after so many months, that still cracks me up. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Tuesday, January 11, 2005 | |
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Forced Obesity
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:27 PM
The obesity epidemic in America is bad enough, but at least it's not forced. Daniel Pipes writes:
Specialists on the Middle East have their own brand of gossip, and one staple of the genre is how Arab men appreciate rotund women, a fact pregnant with implications for Arab-Western social relations. Now, various organizations have issued facts and figures confirming this propensity, as reported by Gautam Naik in today's Wall Street Journal Europe. Then here's the bit quoted from the WSJ article: Ms. Ethmane says she was required to consume four liters of milk in the morning, plus couscous. She ate milk and porridge for lunch. She was awoken at midnight and given several more pints of milk, followed by a prebreakfast feeding at 6 a.m. If she threw up, she says, her mother forced her to eat the vomit. Stretch marks appeared on her body, and the skin on her upper arms and thighs tore under the pressure. If she balked at the feedings, her mother squeezed her toes between two wooden sticks until the pain was unbearable. "I would devour as much as possible," says Ms. Ethmane. "I resembled a mattress." ... It strikes me as highly significant that, just as with clitorectomies (a.k.a. female circumcision or genital mutilation), obesity is forced upon Arab girls by their female relatives. All too often, women seem to be their own worst oppressors. Honestly, it's less than clear to me how such perverse cultural norms are developed, sustained, and enforced. The feminist line about oppressive male patriarchy is clearly little more than wishful thinking about the moral superiority of women. Some complex explanation by way of deep commitments to ideology, social metaphysics, and the like is surely necessary, but the details elude me at present. (Via Andrew Sullivan.) E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Monday, January 10, 2005 | |
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A Delightful Latin Phrase
By Diana Hsieh @ 2:50 PM
Since it looks like I'll be doing a fair amount of medieval philosophy in the course of my approaching dissertation work on virtue ethics, I started learning Latin over the Christmas break. (Please, don't ask about the particulars of my dissertation topic. I have no answers at present! I'm still mired in coursework!) I'm not much of a fan of language classes, so I'm just working through Wheelock's Latin et al on my own. The work is a lovely change of pace. I'm only on Chapter 2, but I've already been delighted to translate this phrase into Latin:
Without philosophy, we often go astray and pay the penalty. Sine philosophia saepe errëmus et poenäs damus. (HTML doesn't do macrons, so you get umlauts instead.) Really, who doesn't need to know how to say that gem... in Latin?!? E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Sunday, January 09, 2005 | |
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The Appeasement Center
By Diana Hsieh @ 4:30 PM
The Supposedly Objectivist Center (TOC) might just have outdone itself. Last year, the Christmas op-ed from their Washington Man Ed Hudgins, entitled The Human Spirit of Christmas, bore no resemblance whatsoever to Ayn Rand's philosophy. Its warm and fuzzy remarks about baby Jesus as "a child whom many see as manifesting the highest aspirations of the human spirit" and about human capacities as "divine sparks" were basically just an expression of secular humanism appeasing religion. The insipid haziness of its closing thought that "most of all, if our hearts and minds are filled and open, we will reflect upon the spirit within us that can make peace on earth and peace in our souls truly possible" was truly laughable.
Admittedly, it is hard to imagine how TOC could have outdone itself this Christmas. I almost didn't bother to read Ed Hudgins' 2004 Christmas op-ed for just that reason. But Goodwill Toward Men is well worth perusing, as it is a stellar exemplar of need-worshiping altruism combined with Humean sympathy ethics. Let me generously quote the entire op-ed, commenting paragraph by paragraph. Oh, and you might want to be sitting down. Christmas is a season of beautiful lights, parties, gifts, food, family, friends, songs and sentiments. Among the latter "goodwill toward men" is a favorite, and we are urged to keep such sentiments not only during the holiday season but all year round. But what lessons from these sentiments should we really take from December to July? Consistent with his standard operating procedure, Hudgins opens the op-ed by accepting some common cultural bromide and merely asking what lesson may be gleaned from it. He does not consider the actual meaning or origin of "goodwill toward men," but merely accepts the Biblical phrase (from the account of the birth of Christ in Luke 2:14) as obviously morally praiseworthy. Often goodwill can mean a general sympathy for others. As self-conscious individuals, we can imagine what it's like to be in another's situation. When we see someone else stub their toe, we ourselves wince and cry "Ouch!" When we see someone in misery we want to ease their pain. During the holiday season many think of goodwill means giving food, gifts, donations or making visits to those who are in need. Here, Hudgins outlines the source and implications "goodwill toward men." Its source is a purely Humean mechanism of sympathy in which moral sentiments are aroused by imagining ourselves to be in the position of a suffering person. Its implication is altruistic concern with the plight of the needy. If you haven't been struck blind already, note the emphasis on suffering and need as the source of goodwill. Given the qualifications of "can mean" and "many think," it might seem that Hudgins is merely sketching a view that he will later reject. However, that never happens. Instead, he relies upon the foundation laid in this paragraph to distinguish between two kinds of need in the next few paragraphs. So despite the slippery wording, this paragraph does represent his actual views, confusingly disguised as the views of others. In some cases -- the death of a loved one, sickness, mental illness, the rigors of old age -- the cause of suffering might be beyond the individual's control and our sympathy for them as fellow human beings is quite appropriate as is reminding them with a visit or a gift of the good things still left in life. Notice that Hudgins is not speaking of the tribulations faced by people that we know and love. If that were the case, our actions toward them would be motivated by our particular feelings for them, not any general "sympathy for them as fellow human beings." So according to Hudgins, it is "quite appropriate" to visit random people in nursing homes and mental hospitals out of sympathy for their plight, perhaps even bringing them gifts of "the good things still left in life." Need I ask: How is that not counseling altruism?!? If you think it can't get worse, think again. In other cases -- drug addiction, broken families, poverty -- the causes might in part or whole be within one's power to change. In such cases, true goodwill would mean eliminating the causes, not merely treating the effects. Ultimately it is those who suffer who must show goodwill to themselves. They must appreciate that they have the power to resist that which is harmful to them and to change bad habits. Other persons of goodwill can help such individuals by urging them to hold to the best and highest within themselves, by showing them, especially during this season, what beauty and joy life holds. So it's not just the morally innocent who are worthy of goodwill, but also the morally culpable, including drug addicts, child abusers, and welfare queens. Of course, Hudgins cautions us not to enable such bad behavior, but rather help such people "resist that which is harmful to them and to change bad habits." Yet in the name of goodwill, we are urged to expend precious time helping such people, regardless of their personal value to us or their expressed willingness to change. The genuinely moral action in response to vicious people -- objective moral judgment and self-protection through distance -- are clearly not a choice consistent with the urged policy of "goodwill toward men." And apparently, we need not concern ourselves much with the innocent victims of such people. One can ask them to imagine future Christmases in which they, who are often the denizens of soup kitchens and homeless shelters, will no longer be objects of charity but self-sufficient, proud and prosperous individuals who will celebrate their regained lives in this most wonderful time of year. Of course, most such people are not merely confused, but rather unwilling to exert the required effort to become "self-sufficient, proud and prosperous individuals." Living a decent life just isn't that hard! In general, other than the astonishing lack of either quality or insight, how does this op-ed differ from the standard conservative view? Then they will join the rest of use in practicing a more personal form of goodwill through an active appreciation of those individuals in our lives whom we enjoy, respect, admire and love, not only in December but all year round. These are our colleagues at work; the paperboys, garage parking attendants or others who serve us during the year; neighbors whom we see on the run but with whom we'd really like to spend more time; friends with whom we go to movies, ballgames or shopping malls; relatives with whom we've shared important parts of our lives; and those we truly and deeply love -- parents, brothers, sisters, husbands and wives. Okay, so finally Hudgins considers the particular people in our lives with whom we can "practic[e] a more personal form of goodwill." Depressingly but not surprisingly, this category includes everyone but the kitchen sink: spouses, parents, and siblings; casual friends, co-workers, and neighbors; and my personal favorite of sundry unskilled service workers. And we are not merely supposed to "enjoy" and "respect" all such people, but also "admire" and "love" them! We will express our goodwill to these individuals in different degrees as they are of personal value to us: small gifts as tokens of appreciation for some; extravagant or extremely thoughtful presents for others; parties for many or intimate meals for others. Okay, so at least we don't owe our parking garage attendants lavish gifts or dinner invitations. I'm glad that's cleared up. Benevolent men and women recognize the value to themselves of living in society with others. They recognize the need to foster a harmony of interests that arises when each individual respects the humanity and independence of others. We each will show appreciation for those we value in our own ways and as others do the same, we will understand why this is indeed the season of goodwill toward men. Um, whatever. That's just vague nonsense without discernable connection to all that came before. Ed Hudgins is the Washington director of the Objectivist Center. Finally, some good news: Ayn Rand's name is nowhere mentioned in that tagline! Next year, I'm hoping that Ed Hudgins will serve up some good, old-fashioned Kantian ethics. Sure, he could do utilitarianism or pragmatism instead. But I'd really love to see him universalizing some Christian maxim and testing for contradiction. And remember, Ed Hudgins will soon be the Executive Director of The Appeasement Center. It's good to know that the ship will be steered by an experienced executive with a thorough knowledge of and deep commitment to Objectivism. Yup. Oy, I'm so glad to be gone! E-mail Diana Hsieh
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Creepy
By Diana Hsieh @ 8:13 AM
Wow, this skeletal drawing is damn creepy. Buttercup just doesn't look so good from the inside out.
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Corrected Missteps
By Diana Hsieh @ 1:26 AM
Earlier today, I was planning to post a short entry on ARI's retraction of an op-ed on aid to the tsunami victims by one of its writers. (The original is available here.) I didn't have any fabulously well-formulated thoughts, however. Happily, Noumenal Self has said all that needs to be said. Go read.
Update: I fixed the link to the original op-ed. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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| Saturday, January 08, 2005 | |
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A Plea from An Overworked Graduate Student
By Diana Hsieh @ 9:16 PM
Back in early December, I posted Meat is Yummy, my presentation for the second "TA Debate" of Robert Hanna's "Introduction to Ethics" class. In my introduction, I mentioned that the purpose of the presentation was to provide the students material upon which to comment in their short "critical response papers." I also mentioned that my presentation was "very short and hastily written."
Given the stated purpose of the presentation, not to mention my caveat about it being hastily written, I was rather annoyed by this comment from David Rehm: "But in fact, humans are substantially different from animals. We have amazing cognitive powers not found in other animals. By themselves, those powers do not give us the moral right to use and abuse animals." I responded: Oh, and thanks to David for disregarding the purpose of the presentation, erecting strawmen from my claims, and misunderstanding simple terminology. It was lovely. Since that was rather cryptic, let me indicate the particular reasons for my annoyance. First, I never said that the morally relevant issue was a mere quantitative difference in cognitive powers between humans and animals. I was even careful not to imply such, as I am certainly well aware that that very falsehood is critical to Singer's arguments for animal liberation. David's attribution of such a view to me, even by omission or implication, was unwarranted. Second, David misunderstood my use of the term "psychology." At least in philosophy, the term is often used to refer to our basic cognitive capacities, including the faculty of reason found only among humans. That ought to have been clear from the context -- or at least it ought to have been clear that I was not referring to the personal psychology relevant to a psychotherapist. In addition, labeling some bit of prose "completely bogus" is neither illuminating nor helpful. More generally, the primary purpose of the presentation was to offer the students comprehensible material upon which to write. As one would expect from an "Introduction to Ethics" course, the students were mostly freshman with a rather small understanding of the ideas and methods of philosophy. Moreover, the course largely focused on so-called "impartial" arguments from expected benefits (i.e. utilitarianism) and from intrinsic value (i.e. Kantian ethics) -- via appeal to intuitions. Obviously, that focus was neither my choice nor my preference, but it was the overall structure of the course within which I had to work in writing my presentation. I was thus extremely limited in the ideas on this very derivative subject that I could expect my audience to understand in the course of a ten minute presentation -- much to my frustration. Since my fellow TAs presented factory farming as obviously immoral, I simply hoped to sketch a few decent and comprehensible reasons for rejecting that view for the students. Now, I am certainly open to the suggestion that I did that badly -- or at least that I could have done better. Unfortunately, David's criticisms were not helpful in this regard, although I'm sure he meant well. In contrast, I was quickly convinced by Don Watkins' thoughtful, detailed, and friendly criticism of my last paragraph. Frankly, I'm not surprised that that paragraph had some seriously wrong implications. I wrote it in a crazy rush mere moments before a frantic drive up to Boulder to give the presentation. However, even with more time to prepare, I could not have offered a full proof of the morality of using animals as means to our human ends, as Don suggests. The presentation was severely constrained by the time limit of ten minutes, not to mention the background knowledge of the audience. Perhaps I might have been able to briefly sketch some better reasons than those I offered. But honestly, in those frantic moments of finishing up the presentation, I just couldn't think of them. In any case, it's worth keeping in mind that any extra time spent improving this relatively unimportant presentation would have meant less time spent working on my papers for my own classes. In general, I worry that some Objectivists, particularly those who have not endured the pleasures of graduate school in philosophy, might hold my work at Boulder to an inappropriately Objectivist standard. Granted, my interest in Ayn Rand is fairly well-known at Boulder, and my papers written for class are informed by Objectivist ideas. However, I do not strive to write Objectivist papers for class, either implicitly or explicitly. To attempt to do so would be cognitively paralyzing given the confusions and complexities of contemporary philosophy and my present limited understanding of Objectivism. It would also be impossible given the time pressures of full-time graduate work, not to mention often inappropriate in the context of the class. Instead, I focus on thoroughly understanding the material at hand and on developing reasonable arguments either in favor or against the standard views. I do strive to understand the issues in relation to the principles of Objectivism, but generally such ideas are omitted from the paper itself as irrelevant. (Of course, all of that applies only to papers written for my graduate classes. I hold myself to a very different standard for papers written for print publication.) Of the papers I wrote this past semester, I'm not too worried about reactions to my paper on Aristotle's action theory, Desire, Reason, and Action, since that mostly concerns the interpretive task of reconciling his views in De Anima with those of De Motu Animalium. However, I'm a bit more concerned about misplaced criticism of my three papers on Kant: Kant on Time, Kant on Unity in Experience, and Hume the Cause, Kant the Effect. Although those papers were written from an empiricist perspective, they are certainly not Objectivist critiques of Kant's metaphysics and epistemology by any stretch of the imagination. Of course, if my arguments in those papers go wrong in some noteworthy fashion, I'm happy to hear why and how. But please be kind to this overworked Objectivist graduate student by keeping in mind the basic purpose and context of my graduate school papers. E-mail Diana Hsieh
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