Philosophy links, Sept. 6

The photo is of Elizabeth Anscombe speaking on the occasion of her receipt of an honorary degree at the University of Navarra.

'The Anscombe Forum is an annual event designed to explore the work of G.E.M. Anscombe in particular and Catholic thought in general.' (via LGH)

Richard Marshall interviews Joseph Raz.

Huenemanniac on Collingwood. 

The online journal Diametros hosts a collection of articles on the radical enlightenment. It includes a paper by Jonathan Israel.

Jane O'Grady's Guardian obits of several English philosophers (Geach, Goldie, Quinton, etc.).

Jonathan Glover's site is a real joy. I especially like the part called 'Travesties and Encounters', with anecdotes about Oakeshott, Waugh, and this bit about Bomber Harris and Rev. John Collins:

John Collins invited the Minister of Aircraft Production, Sir Stafford Cripps [grandfather of philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah], to give a talk on the subject "Is God My co-pilot?". Cripps argued that officers should only send men on bombing raids which they thought were morally as well as militarily justified. Sir Arthur Harris replied by arranging a lecture on "The Ethics of Bombing". This was given by T.D. ("Harry") Weldon. a Fellow in Philosophy at Magdalen College, Oxford. ... He was Personal Staff Officer to Sir Arthur Harris in Bomber Command and drafted the communications Harris sent to the Cabinet and the Air Ministry. Predictably, his talk was rather different from that given by Cripps. When Weldon had finished, Collins asked whether Weldon had not taken his subject to be "The Bombing of Ethics"?

On Vimeo, Robert Pippin on 'Critical Theory as Political Philosophy? Reflections on Honneth and Hegelianism'.

Here are four of my favourite replies to The Edge's question, 'What scientific idea is ready for retirement?'

Martin Rees: We'll Never Hit Barriers To Scientific Understanding.

Donald G. Hoffman: Truer Perceptions Are Fitter Perceptions.

Joel & Ian Gold: Mental Illness is Nothing But Brain Illness.

In the New York Times, Gary Greenberg reviews the Gold bros' new book:

What is in tatters for T.S.D. [Truman Show Delusion] patients is something crucial to negotiating social life, and that, according to the Golds, is the primary purpose toward which our big brains have evolved: the ability to read other people’s intentions or, as cognitive scientists put it, to have a theory of mind.

Leo Coleman on the recent English translation of Vincent Descombes' The Institutions of Meaning: a  Defense of Anthropological Holism. The same book is reviewed by Jocelyn Benoist.

Stéphane Haber reviews Descombes' Les embarras de l'identité (Identity's Difficulties). Descombes replies (beneath Haber's review).

Samuel Scheffler is interviewed about his book Death and the Afterlife:

What is not frequently noticed is that our practices of valuing and finding meaning in our lives draw upon the presumption that others will outlive us, that there will be generations of human beings continuing into the future.  One way to grasp the significance of this presumption is to imagine a scenario in which we know that humanity has no future.  How would this knowledge affect our lives in the present?

Physicist and novelist Alan Lightman on 'My Own Personal Nothingness'.

Michael Saler reviews physicist Marcelo Gleiser's book The Island of Knowledge: The Limits of Science and the Search for Meaning. John Gribbin also reviews Gleiser's book.

John Horgan interviews philosophical physicists George Ellis and Carlo Rovelli.

Massimo Pigliucci on 'the return of radical empiricism'. 

Cheer up, Arty! It's your birthday

I recently read some of Arthur Schopenhauer's work. He was a first-rate aphorist who, unfortunately, diluted his pithy wisdom with mediocre metaphysics (a sentiment shared by Isaiah Berlin).

Here's some of George Carlin's wisdom: 'Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.' No one more clearly epitomizes this truth than Schopenhauer. He was 'cynical' in the everyday sense of that term (as opposed to the technical, philosophical sense). Schopenhauer's cynicism was an aspect of his pessimism. He held out no great hope for humankind, which is one reason why he recommended resignation and renunciation -- resign yourself to our collective failure to advance morally beyond our predecessors, resign yourself to the fact that romantic love is generally a cruel joke, etc. etc. and, accordingly, renounce your worldly hopes. Such world-denying pessimism must be grounded in idealism (Carlin's point), for only against the backdrop of very high, ideal standards can such a sweeping condemnation of worldly endeavour make sense. And Schopenhauer was an idealist with a vengeance. He damned the chilly shadow-land of history as forever farcical and, shunning it, sought the perfect luminescence of Plato's ideal forms. Since he eschewed any divine agent of vengeance, Schopenhauer took its expression upon himself. From his disillusion flew the cutting aphorisms.

Schopenhauer set his idealism in a metaphysical nightmare. He tried to bring together Kant's noumenon, the Platonic forms, and the will ... oops (cue the Beethoven) ... the WILL. A volatile mixture, to be sure -- I just hope he had good insurance. Somehow, the really real is supposed to be noumenal (hence beyond time and plurality) and ideal in Plato's sense (also beyond time but apparently plural despite the Form of the Good's best efforts) and volitional (and thus essentially temporal). Moreover, for Schopenhauer, each person's deeds arise from her character. But character, for Schopenhauer, is noumenal, which puts it beyond the reach of causation and, indeed, beyond any application of the principle of sufficient reason. So how can anything 'arise' from it? Also, being noumenal, it admits of no plurality. But then how can there be several characters, each accounting for our diverse acts? Perhaps the really real was also beyond arithmetic. Ah well, whereof one cannot speak ....

[Update (added Feb. 23): The status of Platonic Ideas in Schopenhauer's system is tricky, to say the least. They're the focus of pp. 232-4 of v. 1 of the World as Will and Idea. Schopenhauer there says that the Platonic Ideas are beyond any application of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which, in his system, suggests that they're noumenal. Nevertheless, he also says that that the Ideas are essential to an objectification of the will, which suggests that they're phenomenal. The most thorough investigation of this matter that I know of is in a paper by James and Dale Snow: 'Was Schopenhauer an Idealist?' (Journal of the History of Philosophy 29 (4) 1991). They conclude that Schopenhauer's 'Platonic' Ideas are meant to be in time; the Ideas are sempiternal rather than eternal.]

Still, the metaphysical train wreck should not detract so much from Schopenhauer's accomplishment. He advanced good criticisms of Kant's ethics (and anticipated some of G. E. M. Anscombe's points) and developed our notion of the unconscious (along with Fichte and Schelling). No other second-rate philosopher (but first-rate aphorist) has had such a profound influence. Among those whom Schopenhauer influenced the most are Wagner, Wittgenstein, Borges, Burckhardt, Turgenev, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, Samuel Beckett, Richard Taylor, and Thomas Mann. (Mann wrote an adulatory piece about Schopenhauer in 1938.) And on and on. Nietzsche, Tolstoy, and Huysmans had intense Schopenhauer phases but eventually opted for more life-affirming views. And though he denied it, there has long been a suspicion that Freud must have read Schopenhauer earlier in his life. Finally, here's Albert Einstein in 1933 with one of my favourite Shopenhauer quotations:

I do not at all believe in human freedom in the philosophical sense…. Schopenhauer’s saying, ‘A man can do what he wants, but not will what he wants,’ has been a very real inspiration to me since my youth; it has been a continual consolation in the face of life’s hardships, my own and others’, and an unfailing wellspring of tolerance. This realization mercifully mitigates the easily paralyzing sense of responsibility and prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it is conducive to a view of life which, in part, gives humour its due.

Schopenhauer was one of the earlier western philosophers to take seriously an eastern philosophical tradition and he was among the first prominent intellectuals to take seriously the ethical status of animals. These advances, together with the list of luminaries who admired Schopenhauer, lead me to suspect that the above metaphysical objections may well derive from misunderstandings on my part. 

Ludwig's outcasts

In the comments to this thread on Brian Leiter's blog, I said that Iris Murdoch had attended Wittgenstein's lectures. It turns out that she didn't. She wanted to, but Wittgenstein had stopped teaching by the time Murdoch arrived at Cambridge. She did have a couple of conversations with him.

This was in connection with Freeman Dyson's rant about recent philosophers. Dyson said that at Cambridge, "If a woman appeared in the audience, [Wittgenstein] would remain standing silent until she left the room."

While Wittgenstein might have adopted this policy when Dyson was at Cambridge, there were in fact several women who attended Wittgenstein's lectures over the years. You can find some of this info in O. K. Bouwsma's 1961 review of the Blue Book (pdf). Bouwsma quotes from a letter by Alice Ambrose, who attended Wittgenstein's classes in the 1930's. Ambrose says that she and Margaret Masterman were among a select group of students who recorded Wittgenstein's thoughts (under his direction) for the Blue Book. Ambrose adds that a Mrs. Helen Knight also attended some of those sessions with Wittgenstein. And, of course, there's G. E. M. Anscombe. In addition, Rose Rand attended some of Wittgenstein's classes in the early 1940's. In the thread at Leiter's blog, Michael Kremer adds that Margaret McDonald was at some of Wittgenstein's lectures and took some of the notes that were later published. So, at least six women attended Wittgenstein's classes. Moreover, Wittgenstein seems to have respected not only Anscombe's philosophical abilities but those of Ambrose and Masterman as well.

None of this undermines Dyson's anecdote about Wittgenstein's sexist behaviour in the classroom. In fact, in the comments at Leiter's blog, Kremer documents one such case (initially attested to by Geach).

Wittgenstein had a disconcerting tendency to turn against previously favoured students and even colleagues. After R. B. Braithwaite published an account of how Wittgenstein's views had changed, Braithwaite found that he was prohibited from attending any more of Wittgenstein's lectures. In 1935, after Ambrose published a paper that expressed some of Wittgenstein's thinking about math, she, too, was cast out (see this pdf by John G. Slater for more). In Ambrose's letter (quoted by Bouwsma [pdf]), Ambrose says that even Masterman (aka Mrs. Braithwaite) was on the outs with the master at one point and stopped attending his lectures (though Ambrose doesn't say explicitly that Masterman was required to do so).

These events occurred before the war and thus before Dyson's time at Cambridge. Still, I wonder if Dyson witnessed Wittgenstein freezing out another erstwhile favoured student who happened to be female. Or perhaps Wittgenstein really was less receptive to female students after the war.

Update (Oct. 23): Here's a bit from J. N. Findlay's "My Encounters With Wittgenstein":

Wittgenstein in that period became much beset by visitors, many from the U. S., and to some he was petulant, ungracious, or simply exclusive: Ernest Nagel [bio], an admirable person, vainly attempted to penetrate his courses or his conversations. He would have nothing to do with anyone who had had close relations with the Logical Positivists. (Studies in the Philosophy of J. N. Findlay, p. 57)

Update (Oct. 24): I wanted to focus on evidence against Wittgenstein's misogyny, but I've found some that supports Dyson's attribution. One of Iris Murdoch's biographers, Peter Conradi, says that Wittgenstein was known to remark, 'Men are foul, but women are viler.' For the attribution of this claim to Wittgenstein, Conradi refers to a conversation that he had with Georg Kreisel. I'm quoting from p. 123 of this recent collection of papers on Murdoch, to which Conradi contributed an article, though I think Conradi included the quotation in his earlier, biographical study of Murdoch.

Philosophy on the net from approx. the last 3 or 6 months

Carl Stumpf

Marilynn Robinson on William James: 'In James's understanding, it is theism that places us in the cosmos whole and wholly human.'

The Journal of Humanistic Psychology's special issue on William James

A new biography of Moses Mendelssohn

A website devoted to C. D. Broad (with his 'Autobiogrraphy' and several of his papers)

Ned Block reviews Damasio's new book 

From Philosophy Bites: Helen Beebee on laws of nature and Philip Pettit on group agency, Peter Singer on the life you can save

Kurt Gödel's ontological argument

A website devoted to Rudolf Carnap

Pierre Wagner on 'linguistic turn and other misconceptions about analytic philosophy'

Ben Granger on Hazlitt: 'He was prophetic in his critique of commerce, and of the narrow, selfish spirit of laissez faire individualism which it generates. Libertarian to the core in the true sense of this much-abused word, he saw straight through the gossamer thin arguments of those who use the word to defend big business, the lie that economic liberty for the rich few results in true liberty for society.'

On YouTube, Simon Blackburn on why Sam Harris is wrong

Margaret Midgley against humanism 

Rouven Steeves on Augustine, Calvin, Tolkien, Tocqueville, Hans Christian Andersen, etc. on evil (pdf)

Roger Scruton: 'The attempt to explain art, music, literature, and the sense of beauty as adaptations is both trivial as science and empty as a form of understanding. It tells us nothing of importance about its subject matter, and does huge intellectual damage in persuading ignorant people that after all there is nothing about the humanities to understand, since they have all been explained — and explained away.'

John Haldane objects to Stephen Hawking's dismissal of natural theology

Christopher Howse on Dummett's claim that 'a man's philosophy ought not to be controlled by his religious beliefs' and a putative example from Elizabeth Anscombe's life; and Howse on Anscombe's use of the doctrine of the double effect (see esp. the comments by Allectus)

Here's a podcast of Alan Saunders' discussion of the doctrine of the doube effect with a cancer surgeon and an ethics professor

Saunders' interview with Robert Wallace on 'Hegel and Hegel's God', a new sketch of Hegel's views at the Goethe Institute, and Saunders' conversation with Steven Nadler on the problem of evil

Videos of Don Marquis and Michael Tooley on abortion, Michael Boylan and Charles Johnson on philosophy in literature, and Barry Loewer and Tim O'Connor on emergence, quantum mechanics and consciousness

John Cornwell on Alasdair MacIntyre on money

Margot Lurie on Beauvoir's relation to Nelson Algren: 'A bit of cognitive dissonance sets in when one learns that The Second Sex was written while Beauvoir was romantically involved with a man whose calling card was his working-class virility, his easy assumptions of male superiority.' Rachel Kwan's review of Toril Moi's book about Beauvoir

Martha Nussbaum reviews a book on the history of US feminism: 'Modern feminist economists such as Amartya Sen (winner of the Nobel Prize in 1998 for his development work) have argued that no theory of development based on the satisfaction of people's preferences could ever be normatively adequate: such a theory would always be an unwitting accomplice of an unjust status quo.'

Podcast interviews with Nussbaum, Sen and others from Chicago, and here's Nussbaum speaking on the value of the humanities, and here's the text of Jeffrey Williams' 2008 interview with Nussbaum 

From December, 2010: Nussbaum interviewed in The Telegraph (Calcutta)

Madame de Staël as quoted in Ruth Scurr's review of a new book about her: 'This new kind of authority in the State, of which neither the nature nor the strength was as yet known, astonished the greater part of those who had not reflected on the rights of nations.'

Andy Lamey on Montreal Marxist, G. A. Cohen

Habermas in the NY Times on the recent hotheadedness over multiculturalism in Germany

Nicholas Xenos on Leo Strauss: 'The prominence given to the notion of a charismatic founder within the Straussian fold means that it quickly begins to look like a cult.'

'Ernest Gellner: an Intellectual Biography' 

'A Fresh Look at Thomas Kuhn's Philosophy of Science'

David Kaufmann on Walter Benjamin: 'Benjamin ... wasn’t just a book reviewer, although he wanted to be the best one in Germany. He was hardly a journalist, but a good deal of his considerable production was written for newspapers. He was not a philosopher, but he is treated like one.'

Gordon Marino on Kierkegaard