I thought for a change I'd let people know what I'm reading at the moment. I tend to be reading many books at once, sometimes taking a break from one for a few weeks before returning to it.
The First American, H. W. Brands. There were several new books on Benjamin Franklin. This is the one that didn't win the Pulitzer, although it was nominated. A very interesting book. I bought the book after seeing a few episodes of the PBS special based upon it. Very well written and amazingly intriguing. In many ways the archetypal American in that he set the tone for the basic pragmatic American intellictual.
What is so surprising to me was just how varied the early Americans were in their life. Franklin is a superb skeptic, but he is set in the middle of a mixing pot where religious ideas are as important as anything else. His philosophy is rather interesting, if surprisingly naive in places. I still have more than half the book to go, but if anything I find myself seeing in Franklin a kindred spirit despite our many differences in belief.
The Metaphysical Club, Louis Menand An other Pulitzer winner. Once again very well written. It deals with a group of individuals after the Civil War who largely set the tone of American intellectual life for the modern era. I'd long been appreciative of William James, whose "Varieties of Religious Experience" parallels a lot of Mormon thought. In the past few years I've become quite the student of C. S. Peirce as well. It is interesting in that the group becomes the focal point for a lot of intellectual change due to the Civil War as well as the rise of Evolution as a theory. The book wisely discusses the parents and context the main figures were raised in as well as their basic approach to intellectual questions. Fairly light on philosophy but it does raise the basic issues they dealt with.
I'm only about 1/4 of the way through this one. But it has been fascinating. To be honest while I'd read a lot of James and Peirce I knew raltively little about their personal lives. For instance I was shocked at Peirce's racism as well as his addictions to opiates and cocaine. I didn't know that James was so unread. Most significantly I keep forgetting that these men came from a rather radically different time. Menand does an excellent job of placing them in their context: the aftermath of a civil war where even abolitionists were racists. It is a culture so removed from our own that one can forget just how much we've progressed as a people. Further because the ideas of these men are so ingrained into society, I forget just how much of a break it was with the past. Lurking in the background is Darwin's theories of Evolution which were to affect ideas in a manner far beyond what I realized. I also didn't realize just how badly most Evolutionists read Evolution. Most considered it a march of progress towards better and better ideas. Social Darwinism was only one of the abuses of the idea. Yet the basic underlying statistical view of reality was often overlooked. Menand really does do a fantastic job of touching on these issues and how they changed politics, education, and science.
The history is engrossing, the background surprising, and the people are fascinating. It was a period when one still could be a "Renaissance Man" and be an expert on all subjects. It is also interesting relative to Mormonism since our own religious heritage starts in the "Second Awakening" when people's religious ferver was enflamed. This is the setting of the parents and mentors of the Metaphysical club. There are, I suspect, many parallels to the evolution of our own thought, although I think that our own ancestors took a very different reaction to the idea of Charles Darwin. (Perhaps incorrectly so)
The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker I've enjoyed many of Pinker's other books. His, How the Mind Works, for example, is a must read. The theme of the book is that culturally, the modern world has three "myths" about the mind.
The first is the myth of the "Noble Savage." Basically that is the idea that as primitives we were all pure and ethical and civilization corrupted us. Violence, greed, anxiety and so forth are products of the modern world and to overcome them we need find this Nobel Savage. It accompanied a view of primitives people as uncorrupted and in tune with the earth. You hear that myth a lot in the environmental movement although its main popularizer was the French philosopher Rousseau. It's rather unfortunate this view is still so popular in society since it is based upon fairly racist views of primitive people, even if they do appear "positive." It's also demonstrably false, with primitive peoples being amazingly violent with something like 60% of all people dying by violence. Unfortunately this myth was propogated even by sociologists and anthropologists well past when it should have been recognized as a myth.
The next myth was Hobbe's Leviathan which was basically the opposite view as Rousseau's but based upon the same racist view of primitive peoples. This is the myth of the ignorant savage which needs social structures to determine their fate. All that stands between us and savagery is our government. This then leads to the modern myths that socialization can determine who we are - with modern behavioralism being the most blatant example of this myth.
The last myth is the myth of the ghost in the machine arising from Descartes' and his mind - body dualism. This is the myth that "we" are separate from our body and have a blank slate where we can be anything - undetermined by external structures. In part this is where the name of the book arises although the other two myths also have a kind of "blank slate" notion to them.
The book is the attempt to see these incorrect myths working in society and show how modern science undercuts them. By and large he is successful, althought the first and last parts of the book are the best. The problem with the middle section is that it is mainly polemics against extremists - especially those in academics. I can't help but be sympathetic to some of his examples. Clearly there are many people uncomfortable with the idea that we are in part our brain and that this makes us "unequal" in certain ways. It also conflicts with the aims of social engineers who think that by controlling language, social structures, or home life that they can shape a personality. Pinker argues fairly convincingly that this isn't the case. Unfortunately because it is so filled with polemics he often misrepresents his opponents. (His discussion of Derrida, for instance, is completely off the mark) I'm ignorant of many he rails against, but those I was familiar with I notice that he tends to get them quite wrong. What is ironic is that he is attacking the fact that all this opposition to "innate" aspects of humanity keep setting up strawmen. Of course to be fair I should add that I think he is right that many misread these figures in a manner akin to what he presents. But I think he fundamentally misses their argument.
Take his attacks on relativism, for instance. He basically argues that an innate sense of personality implies something "fixed" and not relative because our brains evolved to deal well with our environment. His argument that what is amazing isn't how often we are wrong but how rarely we are wrong is well made. However he misses the fact that these structures (our instincts) are in some measure arbitrary. Which is what the critic is attacking. Once again there is some inconsistency on Pinker's part. In some places he recognizes instincts which are wrong - such as those leading to racism or even our instincts about how objects move which needs to be unlearned in physics classes. To say these are exceptions merely begs the question of what is our firm ground.
Overall it is as much as disappointment as it is a success. One wishes that he had engaged more directly with the ideas he opposes. I can't help but think we're getting one side of the story. Still he does an excellent job of showing how assumptions about humanity arising from the birth of the modern era still, in large part, determine how we view the mind. And, because these ideas are so demonstrably false, they probably should be stamped out as a way of dealing with education, crime, and other matters.
The Shakey Game: Einstein Realism and the Quantum Theory, Arthur Fine Fine has his own ontology of Quantum Mechanics and this book is in part a defense of that view. Yet the first part is primarily a reconsideration of Einstein's views of Quantum Mechanics. Einstein has a reputation for "losing it" in his later years by not accepting Quantum Mechanics. Yet Fine's close reading of Einstein's letters shows a more subtle and sophisticated position that has largely been overlooked. For instance he argues that the EPR experiment, as presented, doesn't really deal with Einstein's fundamental objection. It is impeccably researched and very well written. Obviously some familiarity with physics would help, but I think any undergraduate could probably follow it.
What is most interesting is the view of Einstein's realism that Fine presents. Despite Fine's denial, it ends up being very similar to the realism of C. S. Peirce. It is the idea that our realism is a realism in which theoretical objects are more motivational entities. Put an other way it isn't scientific realism in the sense of converging ever closer on the "actual entities" of the universe. Rather it is the demand that we postulate such entites as a motivation stance which makes the science worthwhile. It is taking a basically ethical approach to knowing in which theory creation is demanded by our realism. Yet it acknowledges a fallibilism in which any theory will always fall short - that we will never converge upon a fixed truth.
This is very significant as I think it a very worthwhile and significant approach to science. But it is also a very different view of Einstein than we normally get. It is an Einstein who is surprisingly sophisticated about both philosophy and Quantum Mechanics. One of my favorite stories is when he derives the Schrodenger wave mechanics independent of Schrodenger. He clearly was far better informed of Quantum Mechanics than we realize. (Which makes sense since his Nobel Prize was technically for the paper that ushered in the beginnings of Quantum Mechanics and not relativity as most people think)
What is most interesting is his approach, which is tied to his realism. He takes the theoretical entities of any theory and then tries to analyze their vagueness and see where we've made assumptions that may not be warranted. He then takes those vague notions and pushes them to see what results. This is what he did for classical mechanics and Maxwell's Laws which led him to his theories of Relativity. As Fine outlines Einstein's work in Quantum Mechanics you can see that this is what he was doing for the underlying assumptions about Quantum Mechanics and suddenly his objections become far more insightful than we often think - even where he is mistaken.
I've not come to the latter sections where Fine attempts to pull out a more cohrenent interpretation of Quantum Theory. I know that Fine's views haven't caught on that well. But I am interested in reading them.
There are a few other books I've been reading. But I'll leave those for an other day.
Once again apologies for being behind. I just found out my wife is pregnant and work has been unusually busy. I've also been doing various readings in Peirce not directly tied to things here. For those who didn't notice, I put up some things on Orson Pratt last week. Basically just excerpts from books that mention his philosophical heritage.
Something interesting that was pointed out to me. InteLex has CDs containing very complete works of various philosophers. Had I more disposable income I think I'd definitely pick up a few of these. Most are in the original languages though - bad news for those of us who don't speak Latin or German. Still the prices are fairly reasonable when you consider what books cost. The complete Peirce definitely looks appealing.
There's an interesting paper by Robert Cummings that is somewhat interesting to Mormons. It is called "Contextualization and the Non-obvious Meaning of Religious Symbols." I should add that there is a significant assumption that I think I disagree with. It is the idea that "religious doctrines and many other religious symbols often are not descriptive in the ordinary sense." While I agree with the thrust that religious meaning isn't descriptive, at the same time I think most liberal theologians significantly downplay description. This is often simply to avoid uncomfortable matters such as miracles. As such it (in my opinion) often ends up simply being a subtle way of denying the reality of religious experience by reducing it to a kind of ethics or motivation.
I've talked of this before - especially the "de-mythologizing" trend in religion. Clearly Mormons are a fairly literalistic people - perhaps a tad too much so. But we accept the idea that miracles not only happen, but are somewhat common.
The paper does, however, point out the obvious that religious doctrine ought to be understood within religious bodies and communities. But this raises an interesting question. If we adopt a realist view of religious meaning then religious belief has a meaning that transcends the community. That shouldn't be surprising, after all most scientists would say that the beliefs of the community of scientists are about things outside the community and that the meaning can't be limited to the community understanding. Still, if religious doctrine has a "directedness" to reality one must recognize that this direction must be located within the body of believers. Put more simply what a doctrine refers to must be understood in the context of that religious body. Since the religious body is not stable (new beliefs are entering in along with new people) then this suggests that religious doctrine itself is unstable.
That shouldn't be a shock to Mormons. We are a religious that essentially believing in continuing revelation and a constant reworking of our doctrines and beliefs. The role of symbolism is important because symbols offer a kind of transcendence that allows them to adopt to different times and places. Their very vagueness allows them to have more power than any theological discussion ever could. Put an other way, symbols become the vessels that enable us to have religious experiences in a concrete understanable way. Yet they simultaneously allow us to share these experiences in a common way with the entire body of believers.
Perhaps, for instance, Alma at the waters of baptism had a very different understanding and experience than we do at our baptisms. Yet the common symbol unites us in a common experience that transcends the essential differences our experiences have. The experience is always very individual, private and perhaps even incommunicable. Yet, in an other way, the symbol in which we commonly participate makes this incommunicable experience a shared one. While we could write of baptism, endowment, or any other deep religious experience, we recognize that we can't really describe it in any reasonable manner. Yet, upon meeting a fellow believer who has participated in the same ritual or symbol, we see a common experience.
and Theology
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Blogged by Clark Goble