The Philosophers Hotel

There's a Thales room that I believe has a water bed. That's just awesome. And a Spinoza room. Who wouldn't want to stay in a Spinoza room?

I'm watching Little Big Man, a Dustin Hoffman film from 1970 about a man who spends his life moving between a Cheyenne tribe and frontier America. In the 1870's he encounters Custer, an arrogant and insane version played by Richard Mulligan, and leads him into a trap at the Little Bighorn in revenge for Custer leading the troop that killed his Cheyenne family. Watching it made me think about history, revisionist history in particular, and what I feel is the ultimate goal of revisionist historians/biographers: to de-mystify, and de-heroify (new word!) the heroes that have become habit.

Until the middle of the last century Custer was a classic American hero. Seen as daring (to the point of recklessness) during the Civil War and beyond, he embodied a certain spirit of frontier certainty in an uncertain world, courage in a terrifying world, and yes, was a really white guy who killed many swarthy Indians.

Revisionist history seems to have done a spectacular number on this former cultural icon, and in watching "Little Big Man" I realized how successful the historians and biographers had been. It used to be habit to identify with Custer; and it was this very habitual acceptance that attracts the revisionist historian to the topic. It's not enough in professional academics to write about something you have a passion for; the topic also has to be sexy. In the middle of the last century, with the growing Red Power movement and the Civil Rights movement in full swing, it was very sexy to pick apart and even demonize the cultural icons of the habitual past. So Custer became a prominent villain.

This post isn't a lament for Custer; it's more about my own realization that revisionism in history seems to be one-directional: creating villains out of heroes. I can't think, off the top of my head, of a habitual villain who has been recast by historians as a hero.

Maybe the Marxists can help me with that. The observation was just off the top of my head, so I'm sure I'm wrong.

Since the dawn of time....


...philosophers have hated politicians. Rather, those who think philosophically have despised those who speak rhetorically.

Philosophers have arguments; politicians have debates. Some people might not see any difference between the two, but the difference goes back to at least the Greeks and Socrates' baiting of the Sophists*: arguments are first and foremost directed toward convincing your interlocutor that you are right; debates are first and foremost directed toward convincing an audience that you are right. And audiences are passive, malleable listeners, and they are affected in their beliefs by more than the logic of the points being made. An interlocutor is an active participant, in the best instances focused only on the logic of the points being made. Their conviction is more difficult to break, and can only reliably be done by being right; an audience can be convinced by your good looks, or how often you make eye contact.

The interlocutor in an argument is like an opponent in chess: both of you are playing the same game with the same rules, and at some point it either becomes clear to both of you who the winner is, or it becomes clear to both of you that you have a draw.

The audience to a debate is like, well, those teenagers who text in votes to American Idol. They aren't told explicitly what criteria they should be using to decide who to vote for, so they end up drafting their own criteria. Knowing this, the smart contestant models their performance to those criteria drafted by the (hopefully) largest voting group of teenagers. My point here is just that where the decision rules aren't clear, the contest, the debate, becomes a pandering performance rather than an offering of self.

In my daily life I've had many debates. I've also had many arguments. I've also had some debarguments: conversations in which I was arguing, trying to convince my interlocutor that I was right, and my interlocutor was debating, as though there was some invisible audience to our dispute and points needed to be scored with them.

Don't debate when you ought to be arguing. It's the quickest way to end a conversation with someone who thinks at all philosophically.

(* This is actually a funny example, because when you read Plato's dialogues involving Socrates and some Sophist or another, it is almost easier to see it as Plato debating, using an argument his characters are having as a way to score points with his readers. So, weird example.)

Christmas Dinner was a smashing success; one more year until I have to do it all again.

The past few days have been a blur of NHL 2007, Red Wings games, Star Wars: Empire At War, and Chicken Soup for the Father's Soul.

I've also managed to squeeze in 4 chapters of Paul Churchland's "A Neurocomputational Perspective". I was lucky enough to finish my B.A. at UCSD, where Paul resides; he also wrote a letter for me for grad school and I probably owe my current position at Stanford to him (to his letter, and the repuatation behind it). So I vowed that I would re-read his 1989 book over the break, as well as write down further philosophical project ideas so I don't forget them. What follows is a short list, and includes some (disputably) non-philosophical projects:

1. Developing a working and critical knowledge of the Medieval discussion of comparitive, unequal infinities; use this as a springboard for examing Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Newton, and Hume on infinity.

2. Link up the Medieval 'quo-est, quod-est' distinction with Descartes' discussion of material/formal falsity in the Meditations.

3. Examine Aquinas on Universal, integral, and potential wholes.

4. Research the issues at stake when Lee Hester (a Native philosopher) is given Churchland's neuroscientific philosophy of mind and epistemology.

5. Research the problem of humanity, specifically in the context of 'finding humanity' in neuronal activation patterns (Ramachandran, Churchland)

6. Prepare a Book of Job story, taking Humanity in the place of God, and akrasia in the place of the Adversary; can this story be made MORE relevant?

7. Begin the Big Book of Things I Believe: for instance, that Nietzsche was right about the big swirling mass of wills; but that this can be incorporated into a purely materialistic, neuroscientific, philosophy of mind and action.

8. Wonder aloud about Buddhism, vegetarianism, and the decision to not eat anything that feels pain
a. wonder if there is anything that is non-arbitrary about these decisions
b. wonder if there is anything that is non-hedonistic about the committed omnivore in the 21st century

9. Begin the book on the three generations of Scully men.

I wish I had 10. But I think 9 is enough for now. Plus, I keep forgetting them. For instance, the 3-panel cartoon I came up with: a neuroscientist, God, and a madman....hijinks ensue.....

Since I'm thinking about it, and can't seem to stop thinking about it: Infinity is cool. It's really, uh, big.

But what kind of big?

There were basically two definitions of infinity in use in the 13th century: (1) "so big that nothing else could be added"; (2) "never so big that you couldn't add more".

Aristotle says only (2) is possible, like taking a line and being able to divide it over and over and over and over and over...

Most of the medievals like this definition, but occassionally, especially with reference to God, some of them jump on (1) as well: God's knows everything; since he knows everything he couldn't possibly know more, so his knowledge, if it is infinite, must be infinite in the sense of (1). This is a maximal notion of infinity.

Robert Grosseteste, a 13th Century Franciscan scholar, appeals to this idea when he argues that one infinity can be bigger than another: If infinity is understood in this "allness" sense, then what do we get when we compare the sum of "all" the even numbers with the sum of "all" the whole numbers? Though both sums are infinite, the sum of the even numbers is just a part of the sum of the whole numbers, so it must be less, because parts, axiomatically, do not equal wholes.

Richard Rufus, another 13th Century Franciscan scholar, says: "You're an idiot. Infinity just means you can keep right on trucking. What's this "summing" crap? How do you sum something without end, like the infinite series of even numbers? Wanker."

Who wins? I win, that's who. I get to spend hours and hours and hours thinking about stuff like this. When I tell people I'm a philosopher, I also get to tell them that I really do think about things like 'infinity' all the time.

Infinity is cool. And blue.