Arrears blogging: March 12 -- Yes Man

In order to complete the year I have 24 days of readings to do. Why not blog them?

Here's a dialogue from my least favorite writer in the Harvard Classics, the good Bishop Berkeley. I'm not into the Bish because I don't like arguing about God, and I don't like arguing about God because the history of the human race shows that it is a generally unprofitable activity.

Not that there's really any arguing; here's samples from one side of the "dialogue" -- this guy Hylas is a huge patsy. The dialogue may not prove the existence of God, but it does prove the existence of sycophancy:

Hyl. I own there is a great deal in what you say.
Hyl. I do not deny it.
Hyl. I must confess they are.
Hyl. I begin to suspect my hypothesis.
Hyl. I now clearly see it was a mere dream. There is nothing in it.
Hyl. It is too plain to be denied.
Hyl. You are in the right.

I believe Hylas will go far in life. The actual argument can be summarized by these two limericks. Or maybe you'd rather read this:

But, on the other hand, it is very conceivable that they should exist in and be produced by a spirit; since this is no more than I daily experience in myself, inasmuch as I perceive numberless ideas; and, by an act of my will, can form a great variety of them, and raise them up in my imagination: though, it must be confessed, these creatures of the fancy are not altogether so distinct, so strong, vivid, and permanent, as those perceived by my senses—which latter are called real things.

Didn't think so.

December 18: John Locke Is Permissive

I wonder if spelling will count even more in the URL era.

The classics can be relevant. Here's John Locke holding forth on how to teach your child Latin. The best way, as we all know, is to hire someone who will do nothing but talk to your kid in Latin, then he'll pick it up. This would be the most incredible career niche ever. Here's the second-best, but first-best in terms of sanity, way :

by taking some easy and pleasant book, such as Æsop’s Fables, and writing the English translation (made as literal as it can be) in one line, and the Latin words which answer each of them, just over it in another.

Oddly enough, the other day I read this story on the Loeb Classical Library from the Boston Globe:

As it happens, the Loeb Classical Library, those famous red and green books published by Harvard University Press, have the translations on the facing page of the text. For that reason they are usually banned from beginning and intermediate language classes, branded as unhelpful crutches.

Not to our 17th century dude, they aren't!

But then Locke is kind of laid back, in general. His thoughts concerning education remind me a little of a theory my dad, who spent 30 years teaching and administrating, said he encountered in grad school -- which is, we should keep the kids out of school till they're 12, and in one year we can teach them what we've been trying to teach them for the past seven. Certainly with boys I can see the utility of this. Locke knows what boys are like:

There is yet a further reason, why masters and teachers should raise no difficulties to their scholars; but on the contrary should smooth their way, and readily help them forwards, where they find them stop. Children’s minds are narrow and weak, and usually susceptible but of one thought at once. Whatever is in a child’s head, fills it for the time, especially if set on with any passion....It is a contradiction to the natural state of childhood for them to fix their fleeting thoughts. Whether this be owing to the temper of their brains, or the quickness or instability of their animal spirits, over which the mind has not yet got a full command; this is visible, that it is a pain to children to keep their thoughts steady to any thing.

Thank god that now we've got all these TV and video games to calm them down, right?

The other interesting thing I found was that Locke is at the very beginning of the swing away from the liberal arts. It sounds like he hates the idea of Latin being taught and thinks it's foppery. In fact, this passage might be the very first theoretical underpinning of the Business major:

Could it be believed, unless we had every where amongst us examples of it, that a child should be forced to learn the rudiments of a language which he is never to use in the course of life that he is designed to, and neglect all the while the writing a good hand and casting accounts, which are of great advantage in all conditions of life, and to most trades indispensably necessary?

Why, Locke goes on to say, teaching people Latin is as meaningless as church! (That's a paraphrase, of course; if Locke had actually said it that way he'd have been arrested.) It's hard to refute this, and yet government by MBA's doesn't seem so hot either. I still feel that the long view you get from the classics might help you avoid folly, even though one of the things the long view teaches you is that folly is unavoidable. Maybe there's something to that accounting jazz after all.

December 1: Untranslated translationese

Reading all the way to the end of this excerpt? Moronic!

It's the last month, and just when I can smell the finish line, along comes my least favorite Harvard Classic, Bishop Berkeley:

PHILONOUS. Good morrow, Hylas: I did not expect to find you abroad so early.

Hylas. It is indeed something unusual; but my thoughts were so taken up with a subject I was discoursing of last night, that finding I could not sleep, I resolved to rise and take a turn in the garden.

Phil. It happened well, to let you see what innocent and agreeable pleasures you lose every morning.

Sure, it sounds like a translation, but, amazingly, it isn't; it was actually written that way. "Would you enjoy a journey to the shop of photography, Hylas?" "I indeed would, but first, I should like to take a meal of breakfast."

And we haven't even gotten to the philosophy yet.

The philosophy could be summed up with, "Again with the perceptions!" The anonymous graduate student or Collier's employee who I like to envision compiling the Daily Reading Guide gets lazy from time to time. We'd gone ages between any readings from the philosophical Volume 37, and now we get two in three days, and my dislike of the bishop has not changed since previous encountering it in April. And, although I'm able to follow it a bit better, that just means I'm more sensitized to when the bishop is trying to pull a fast one:

Phil. Pray, Hylas, what do you mean by a sceptic?

Hyl. I mean what all men mean—one that doubts of everything.

Phil. Whether doth doubting consist in embracing the affirmative or negative side of a question?

Hyl. In neither; for whoever understands English cannot but know that doubting signifies a suspense between both.

Phil. He then that denies any point, can no more be said to doubt of it, than he who affirmeth it with the same degree of assurance.

In other words, "If you deny certainty, then it's you who are certain -- of uncertainty!" It sounds better if you imagine it in Wallace Shawn's voice from "The Princess Bride," but even so it seems at best quasi-clever, no? There's something about this philosophy stuff that seems very college to me, and not in the good, shotgunning beers way, either. (To say nothing concerning the page or so of discussion about what "heat" is.)

My overall conclusion is that reading philosophy is like rewiring your house -- generally a bad idea for the do-it-yourselfer.

November 29: David Hume is bitchy

Hume. The toga is not slimming.

This will be brief because it's David Hume and, as noted, I don't cotton to philosophy. But, in all honesty, Hume doesn't seem to care too much for it either:

All ideas, especially abstract ones, are naturally faint and obscure: the mind has but a slender hold of them: they are apt to be confounded with other resembling ideas;...

On the contrary, all impressions, that is, all sensations, either outward or inward, are strong and vivid: the limits between them are more exactly determined; nor is it easy to fall into any error or mistake with regard to them.

I don't know if Hume thinks philosophy is better than a sharp stick in the eye, but the sharp stick is certainly easier to comprehend.

This will also be brief because the reading is brief and makes a simple point, which I will express in an equation:

Thoughts = experiences + additives

Where "additives" means our fooling around with experiences, like making a mountain out of gold. Or a molehill. Or making God out of a molehill, which Hume suggests we do:

First, when we analyze our thoughts or ideas, however compounded or sublime, we always find that they resolve themselves into such simple ideas as were copied from a precedent feeling or sentiment. Even those ideas, which, at first view, seem the most wide of this origin, are found, upon a nearer scrutiny, to be derived from it. The idea of God, as meaning an infinitely intelligent, wise, and good Being, arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and augmenting, without limit, those qualities of goodness and wisdom.

Clever Hume, to make God appear small and made up without literally saying that, since he would have been tarred and/or feathered had he done so.

Oh, and here's Hume being bitchy:

I must own it to be my opinion, that LOCKE was betrayed into this question by the schoolmen, who, making use of undefined terms, draw out their disputes to a tedious length, without ever touching the point in question. A like ambiguity and circumlocution seem to run through that philosopher’s reasonings on this as well as most other subjects.

Meow! Add a pair of thick, black-framed glasses and Hume could be a fashion editor.

October 28: BREAKING: John Locke recommends twenty-six sided die!

"...good old reliable Nathan, who always plays as an orc/In the oldest established permanent floating D&D game in New York"

Was John Locke all Dungeons-and-Dragons during a time when there were actual dungeons? Check it:

For example, what if an ivory-ball were made like that of the royal-oak lottery, with thirty two sides, or one rather of twenty four or twenty five sides; and upon several of those sides pasted on an A, upon several others B, on others C, and on others D? I would have you begin with but these four letters, or perhaps only two at first; and when he is perfect in them, then add another; and so on till each side having one letter, there be on it the whole alphabet. This I would have others play with before him, it being as good a sort of play to lay a stake who shall first throw an A or B, as who upon dice shall throw six or seven.

Unfortunately, this is all in the service of teaching people how to read. But, to be sunny and optimistic, once a child learns to read, can D-and-D be far behind? (Seriously, can it? I've never played the game.)

But we're not here to talk about some crazy system that claims to simulate existence -- we're here to talk about philosophy. Specifically, we're here to talk about "Some Thoughts Concerning Education," the whole of which is summarized here. You may know this work already because you wrote a paper about it back in college. It's pretty breezy in style for 1693, it seems eminently paperable. I never encountered it, myself; I didn't read any philosophy, as I believe I have amply demonstrated during the course of this year. But, god, college. Remember that time we went to that party and drank a lot of beer? And then somebody had a crush on somebody else and talked a lot about it. And some of our friends didn't know what to do with their liberal arts education, so they went to law school. I wonder what happened to them? And also, we wrote a paper on John Locke, or someone we knew did, or perhaps the paper was on "Self-Portrait In A Convex Mirror," and we were so high when we wrote it. Good times, good times.

Maybe a higher (heh heh) education experience like the above is Locke's fault; he seems awfully permissive by today's working-for-the-clampdown standards:

Thus children may be cozen’d into a knowledge of the letters; be taught to read, without perceiving it to be any thing but a sport, and play themselves into that which others are whipp’d for. Children should not have any thing like work, or serious, laid on them; neither their minds, nor bodies will bear it. It injures their healths; and their being forced and tied down to their books in an age at enmity with all such restraint, has, I doubt not, been the reason, why a great many have hated books and learning all their lives after.

"Children should not have any thing like work laid on them?" How in the hell are they going to be ready for the global economy? Does life in the global economy seem fun to anyone? Clearly not. So why teach kids that life is fun? Locke obviously doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. What are schools for, if not to be a dumping ground for all our anxieties?

But I digress in the manner of a parent of school-age children. And, as a middle-aged parent of school-age children, I find myself somewhat tired of an evening (I'll say one thing for teen mothers -- I bet they have more energy than I do), so I will touch on two more things and then watch last night's Daily Show on Tivo.

Thing 1. Locke on the Portugese:

...’tis so much a fashion and emulation amongst their children, to learn to read and write, that they cannot hinder them from it: they will learn it one from another, and are as intent on it, as if it were forbidden them.

"As if it were forbidden them." I still think the surest way for atheists to spread skepticism about prayer to God is to require the schools to compel it. It only looks good when you raise a big stink about it.

Thing 2. Locke wants everyone to learn shorthand. I think we have missed out on this hint; it would be useful to me. Ditto typing. I was required to take typing in high school, while I don't really remember the plot of The Great Gatsby, I can find the home keys drunk. Earlier this year, I advocated for the abolition of the teaching of literature to minors, and its replacement with the study of cookery. Maybe that's in this treatise too -- if you wrote a paper on it, could you let me know?

Apr 26: David Hume and the Miracles

I should note that I tried doing this project in 2000, when these volumes first moved from my parents' upstairs hall to my upstairs hall, and I said the hell with it after about five weeks. Why am I so much more successful this time? I think there are three reasons. First of all, of course, is that I don't have a day job (as of yet), so I can do my reading first thing in the morning, or any old time.

The other two reasons are technological. One is that I'm blogging about it. This makes the project quasi-public (in that my parents know about it) and so I have to be responsible even when I'd rather just drink beer and watch hockey, which is what I'm going to do once I finish writing this.

And the other is Wikipedia. Sometimes, the timeless, important authors that I have to read are people I've never heard of. Often -- indeed generally -- even if I have heard of these timeless, important authors, their fascinating, immortal works are completely unknown to me. But now I have an easy resource to prep myself, or just to turn to when I can't make heads or tails about what I'm reading. Wikipedia's like having an informative, if at times over-garrulous, TA. Although you can make this TA start talking about virtually anything, which is distracting to some people (me).

All of this is prologue to say that today's reading, David Hume on miracles, is far better summarized at its Wikipedia page than I could do. There is one thing I do want to pull out, though:

For first, there is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education, and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves; of such undoubted integrity, as to place them beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others; of such credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind, as to have a great deal to lose in case of their being detected in any falsehood; and at the same time, attesting facts performed in such a public manner and in so celebrated a part of the world, as to render the detection unavoidable: all which circumstances are requisite to give us a full assurance in the testimony of men.

This is an anti-democratic argument, it seems to me. It's not aristocratic, exactly, but it is elitist: it requires that men of good sense, education, and learning function as something one could appeal to. In other words, that they think themselves better than everyone else. I just don't see how that's going to fly. David Hume had better not run for public office, is all I'm saying.

Apr 12: How to be tedious in argument.

A dialogue today -- and it's supposed to be actually useful! Or so says the DRG:

12 The Perfect Argument
You would doubtless like to know how to hold your own in any argument. Read what Leslie Stephen declares the finest speci­men in our language of the conduct of argument.

One wants to turn on one's Homer Simpson voice: "Leslie Stephen says it, does he? Well, let's turn to the dialogue so that I may learn well how to conduct myself in your precious, precious argument." (Note that I don't know who Leslie Stephen is either.)

Doing so, we immediately we find lesson one -- hog the floor. This is about 5% of the opening speech:

Raise now your thoughts from this ball of earth to all those glorious luminaries that adorn the high arch of heaven. The motion and situation of the planets, are they not admirable for use and order? Were those (miscalled erratic) globes once known to stray, in their repeated journeys through the pathless void?

Poor Hylas -- he's the patsy in this dialogue -- the Beaker to Philonius's Bunsen:
Except that Philonius is way more patronizing, in his eighteenth-century way, than Bunsen Honeydew:

Phil. How often must I inculcate the same thing? You allow the things immediately perceived by sense to exist nowhere without the mind; but there is nothing perceived by sense which is not perceived immediately: therefore there is nothing sensible that exists without the mind. The Matter, therefore, which you still insist on is something intelligible, I suppose; something that may be discovered by reason, and not by sense.

Hyl. You are in the right.

Phil. Pray let me know what reasoning your belief of Matter is grounded on.

Nowadays, of course, we would expect Philonius to eventually get hit on the head with a hammer, which is probably why we're in accursed and fallen times -- no respect for authority, etc. But geez, all I can say is that Leslie Stephen must have been a tremendous bore at the dinner table.

As to the philosophical arguments, I cannot really say anything useful about them, because I am not A) a philosopher, or B) drunk. I have tries very hard during this project to read these things sympathetically, and get what I could out of them, but honestly this debate on whether things exist or just our perceptions of them do -- well, I'm with Dr. Johnson.

It begins

I'm capitulating tonight. There is too much to do and I am not up for Bishop Berkeley. I think it was around here:

Phil. Aye, but here lies the difference. Men commonly believe that all things are known or perceived by God, because they believe the being of a God; whereas I, on the other side, immediately and necessarily conclude the being of a God, because all sensible things must be perceived by Him.

that my eyes started to swim. And this:

Phil. I do not understand how our ideas, which are things altogether passive and inert, can be the essence, or any part (or like any part) of the essence or substance of God, who is an impassive, indivisible, pure, active being. Many more difficulties and objections there are which occur at first view against this hypothesis; but I shall only add that it is liable to all the absurdities of the common hypothesis, in making a created world exist otherwise than in the mind of a Spirit.

sealed the deal. I capitulate. Tomorrow is another day, and hopefully one with less philosophy in it.