Sunday, January 31, 2010
The Globe on Trial by Ordeal
The Boston Sunday Globe has a fascinating article on the medieval practice of trial by ordeal here. The most amazing aspect is the positive account the article gives for the Church's relationship to such trials - any compliment to the Church by the Globe being itself a miracle.
Aristotelian Principles of Engineering
The hiatus in my blogging was due to the fact that, early in October, I learned that the company I worked for was going out of business. Sunset for the company was January 1, so I had from October through December to find another position. As you can imagine, this caused me more than a little anxiety, being responsible for a family of five in this economic environment.
Anyway, I eventually was offered a new position on Dec. 23. Surprisingly enough, it was Aristotle who helped me land this job. Normally in interviewing for these technical positions (I work as a software engineer), I keep silent about my passion for philosophy. But in this interview, I decided to be a little more bold, especially as I didn't think I was particularly well-qualified for the job - and these days, you have to be outstandingly well-qualifed to even be considered. So I figured what the heck, and went on for a little bit about Aristotle. My interviewer, to my surprise, showed real interest and we talked philosophy for a while. The interview was on Friday, and on Saturday I wrote a paper expanding on some of my ideas. I emailed it to him, and the next week I was offered a job. Here is the paper I wrote:
Aristotelian Principles of Engineering
Conventional and Unconventional Thinking
Back in my undergraduate days, a psychology professor conducted an in-class experiment with scissors and string that has stuck with me. I cannot recall all the details of the experiment, but I do remember that it consisted of a challenge to retrieve an object some distance away without touching it with your hands or moving from your spot. The subject was allowed a pair of scissors and a length of string with which to complete the task. It turned out it could be accomplished by tying the string to the scissors, throwing the scissors over and on top of the object, and then using the weight of the scissors to drag back the object. The psychological point of the experiment was that the conventional use of scissors (as something with which to cut string) often prevented the subject from seeing an unconventional solution involving scissors. When the experiment was conducted with the scissors replaced with a conventional weighting object like a paperweight, nearly all subjects quickly perceived the solution.
The unconventional solution of problems is, of course, the phenomenon that has come to be known by the phrase "thinking outside the box", now virtually a cliche. The ability to find unconventional solutions is valuable, but it occurred to me that the vast majority of our thinking is necessarily conventional - "thinking inside the box." Since so much of our thinking is conventional, rather than seeking ways to escape conventional thinking into unconventionality, why not find ways to make our conventional thinking as fruitful as possible? That is the theme of this paper - the investigation of conventional thinking with specific reference to engineering.
Let us consider a little more deeply the meaning of "conventional." With respect to scissors and string, it is not arbitrary or accidental that the conventional use of scissors is to cut string; scissors were designed for that very purpose. The conventional use of scissors reflects their fundamental nature. To think conventionally, then, is to think in terms of nature. To think well conventionally is to think well in terms of nature.
Who shall teach us how to think well about nature, and therefore to think well conventionally? It may seem surprising that an ancient Greek philosopher can teach us valuable lessons about nature, and in particular lessons valuable to modern engineering. Skepticism is only increased when we remember that Aristotle's physics was decisively overthrown by the physics of Newton in the 17th century. Nevertheless, I have found that Aristotle, the great classical philosopher of nature, has important lessons to teach about modern engineering. Whether there is irony in the unconventional use of Aristotle to understand conventional thinking in modern engineering, is a decision I will leave to the reader.
Aristotle's Understanding of Nature - The Four Causes
Aristotle taught that we understand something only if we understand its causes. In his Physics, he analyzes causes into four types: The final cause, or the point or purpose of something (e.g. scissors are for cutting); the formal cause or the principles that make something what it is (scissors consist of two blades working in tandem to achieve a cutting); the material cause or the "stuff" of which something is made (scissors are made from steel or plastic blades); and the efficient cause or the source of its coming into being (scissors are put together in a factory.) Our modern minds tend to think of causation only in terms of the efficient cause, but it is worthwhile to consider Aristotle's other three causes.
The final cause, for instance, is not merely the point of something but is the goal (telos) of its existence. Aristotle thought that all natural beings have a tendency or drive to fulfill their individual natures; fire "wants" to consume things in flames. Whatever our view of the ultimate reality of such an internal drive, thinking in its terms can provide a different and potentially valuable perspective on systems. In our scissors and string solution, for example, if we think of scissors as "wanting" to cut things, then we can perceive a certain instability and even danger in our solution. Even though we are only using the scissors as a weight, they still retain their sharp blades and hinged connection. The blades can fly about when we toss them, perhaps slicing through the string, sticking into a surface, or possibly injuring someone. The scissors will continue to "try" to cut things even though cutting is not part of the intent of our solution. More generally, to the extent that our solution does not permit its elements to fulfill their teloi, or is in conflict with them, it will include elements that may contribute to instability. Solutions with elements fulfilling their teloi will tend to increase stability; replacing the scissors with a paperweight (an object with no telos beyond weighting) in our experimental solution would create a more stable system.
There is something even deeper going on as beings fulfill their teloi. Aristotle teaches that being exists in two primary modes: Act and potency. An acorn is an actual nut and a potential oak tree. The careers of temporal beings can be thought of as a series of movements between potentiality and actuality, as an acorn grows from being a potential oak tree into an actual oak tree. The telos of something points the direction from potentiality towards full actuality. But things can act only insofar as they exist; therefore things are more powerful insofar as they are actualized, or insofar as they have fulfilled their teloi. When we engineer our solution such that its elements fulfill their teloi as much as possible, we know that they are operating at their maximum power. Conversely, a clue that our solution may not be optimal is the discovery that its elements are not employed at full actuality or against their teloi.
Let me flesh out these principles with an example from software engineering. We may be able to use any particular software language to solve any particular problem, just as we can use a pair of scissors as a paperweight. We have nature working for us, however, if we match the nature of the language to the nature of the problem at hand. The C programming language was designed as a "general-purpose programming language... not specialized to any particular area of application." It is a relatively "low-level" language, has an "absence of restrictions", is not a "strongly-typed language" and one that "retains the basic philosophy that programmers know what they are doing."[1] If we use C in accord with its nature, then we will use it for low-level programming that does not permit restrictions, and we will remain careful and self-disciplined in its use. Only then will C function at its maximum power. C++ is an extension of C that provides support for data abstractions and object-oriented design.[2] If C++ is part of our solution, then our solution will tend to be maximally powerful and stable if the software reflects the abstract and object-oriented nature of C++; that is, if the software fulfills the telos of C++.
Aristotle's Understanding of Nature - Hierarchy
Aristotle's understanding of nature was hierarchical. Things do not exist in isolation but in the context of intelligible systems. Aristotle uses the example of the eye, which is truly itself only when it is in the body and functioning properly. An eye in a lab dish is, for Aristotle, something that is not really "being" an eye at all. So the eye can fulfill itself only in the context of a human being that is also fulfilling itself. The telos of the eye consists of more than completing itself in an act of vision; it finds its true fulfillment in the flourishing of the complete human being.
We can think along similar lines concerning the elements of our engineering solutions. It's not enough that a particular element be perfectly designed in itself. It truly fulfills its telos only to the extent that it goes beyond its own perfection to contribute to the perfection of the overall system. Our C++ solution may evidence isolated perfection in its use of object-oriented principles, but that solution is not optimal if it does not promote the operation of the overall system in the best possible way. It may be that, by compromising object-oriented principles somewhat, we can save resources (e.g. processing overhead) that are particularly sensitive in a certain system. Such a solution fulfills the "remote" final cause more fully at the expense of the "local" final cause, and is more perfect since the local final cause is in service to the final cause of the system as a whole. Final causes, teloi, find their meaning in a downward hierarchy or, if we prefer it this way, the teloi of the elements of a well-made system come together in a symphony expressed in the telos of the complete system.
The Philosophical Engineer
Aristotle begins his Metaphysics by stating that "All men by nature desire to know." He means by this more than knowing external nature. He means as well man knowing himself in his own act. The Aristotelian engineer, then, is an engineer self-consciously aware of what he is doing as an engineer. He understands the relationship of formal, final, material and efficient causes, the hierarchical relationship of final causes to each other, and his own role as the agent who brings each element to its perfection in the context of an entire solution. He knows how to think well in terms of nature, to think well conventionally.
But he can do more than this. There are times when conventional solutions are called for, and others when unconventional solutions should be sought. If the Aristotelian engineer understands himself as an engineer, he will have some idea when he is in either situation. Consider for the last time our scissors and string experiment. Its most outstanding feature are the restrictions on the solution. We can only use string and a pair of scissors and cannot move from our spot. We are not in the position of finding the appropriate elements to include in a complete solution; we are handed the elements and must make of them the best we can. This is a situation that calls for unconventional thinking. In fact, a wise student subjected to this experiment may very well guess this from the restrictions.
In our engineering life, we should sense that unconventional solutions may be required when we are subject to restrictions in time, materials or methods. To the extent that we are not subject to restrictions, we should try to think well in a conventional manner; that is, according to the natures of the problem and its possible solutions. It is the difference between constructing a carbon dioxide scrubber in the development phase of the Apollo program, and constructing one from scratch in the Apollo 13 capsule after an explosion. The former may be a model of elegant engineering, the latter a hodgepodge of duct tape and cardboard that nonetheless gets the job done.
In any case, it is part of good conventional thinking to know when conventional thinking has reached its limits or is inappropriate. The Aristotelian engineer knows when to stop thinking like Aristotle.
[1] Kernighan and Ritchie,The C Programming Language, 2nd Edition, Preface to the First Edition.
[2] Stanley Lippman,C++ Primer, Preface.
Anyway, I eventually was offered a new position on Dec. 23. Surprisingly enough, it was Aristotle who helped me land this job. Normally in interviewing for these technical positions (I work as a software engineer), I keep silent about my passion for philosophy. But in this interview, I decided to be a little more bold, especially as I didn't think I was particularly well-qualified for the job - and these days, you have to be outstandingly well-qualifed to even be considered. So I figured what the heck, and went on for a little bit about Aristotle. My interviewer, to my surprise, showed real interest and we talked philosophy for a while. The interview was on Friday, and on Saturday I wrote a paper expanding on some of my ideas. I emailed it to him, and the next week I was offered a job. Here is the paper I wrote:
Aristotelian Principles of Engineering
Conventional and Unconventional Thinking
Back in my undergraduate days, a psychology professor conducted an in-class experiment with scissors and string that has stuck with me. I cannot recall all the details of the experiment, but I do remember that it consisted of a challenge to retrieve an object some distance away without touching it with your hands or moving from your spot. The subject was allowed a pair of scissors and a length of string with which to complete the task. It turned out it could be accomplished by tying the string to the scissors, throwing the scissors over and on top of the object, and then using the weight of the scissors to drag back the object. The psychological point of the experiment was that the conventional use of scissors (as something with which to cut string) often prevented the subject from seeing an unconventional solution involving scissors. When the experiment was conducted with the scissors replaced with a conventional weighting object like a paperweight, nearly all subjects quickly perceived the solution.
The unconventional solution of problems is, of course, the phenomenon that has come to be known by the phrase "thinking outside the box", now virtually a cliche. The ability to find unconventional solutions is valuable, but it occurred to me that the vast majority of our thinking is necessarily conventional - "thinking inside the box." Since so much of our thinking is conventional, rather than seeking ways to escape conventional thinking into unconventionality, why not find ways to make our conventional thinking as fruitful as possible? That is the theme of this paper - the investigation of conventional thinking with specific reference to engineering.
Let us consider a little more deeply the meaning of "conventional." With respect to scissors and string, it is not arbitrary or accidental that the conventional use of scissors is to cut string; scissors were designed for that very purpose. The conventional use of scissors reflects their fundamental nature. To think conventionally, then, is to think in terms of nature. To think well conventionally is to think well in terms of nature.
Who shall teach us how to think well about nature, and therefore to think well conventionally? It may seem surprising that an ancient Greek philosopher can teach us valuable lessons about nature, and in particular lessons valuable to modern engineering. Skepticism is only increased when we remember that Aristotle's physics was decisively overthrown by the physics of Newton in the 17th century. Nevertheless, I have found that Aristotle, the great classical philosopher of nature, has important lessons to teach about modern engineering. Whether there is irony in the unconventional use of Aristotle to understand conventional thinking in modern engineering, is a decision I will leave to the reader.
Aristotle's Understanding of Nature - The Four Causes
Aristotle taught that we understand something only if we understand its causes. In his Physics, he analyzes causes into four types: The final cause, or the point or purpose of something (e.g. scissors are for cutting); the formal cause or the principles that make something what it is (scissors consist of two blades working in tandem to achieve a cutting); the material cause or the "stuff" of which something is made (scissors are made from steel or plastic blades); and the efficient cause or the source of its coming into being (scissors are put together in a factory.) Our modern minds tend to think of causation only in terms of the efficient cause, but it is worthwhile to consider Aristotle's other three causes.
The final cause, for instance, is not merely the point of something but is the goal (telos) of its existence. Aristotle thought that all natural beings have a tendency or drive to fulfill their individual natures; fire "wants" to consume things in flames. Whatever our view of the ultimate reality of such an internal drive, thinking in its terms can provide a different and potentially valuable perspective on systems. In our scissors and string solution, for example, if we think of scissors as "wanting" to cut things, then we can perceive a certain instability and even danger in our solution. Even though we are only using the scissors as a weight, they still retain their sharp blades and hinged connection. The blades can fly about when we toss them, perhaps slicing through the string, sticking into a surface, or possibly injuring someone. The scissors will continue to "try" to cut things even though cutting is not part of the intent of our solution. More generally, to the extent that our solution does not permit its elements to fulfill their teloi, or is in conflict with them, it will include elements that may contribute to instability. Solutions with elements fulfilling their teloi will tend to increase stability; replacing the scissors with a paperweight (an object with no telos beyond weighting) in our experimental solution would create a more stable system.
There is something even deeper going on as beings fulfill their teloi. Aristotle teaches that being exists in two primary modes: Act and potency. An acorn is an actual nut and a potential oak tree. The careers of temporal beings can be thought of as a series of movements between potentiality and actuality, as an acorn grows from being a potential oak tree into an actual oak tree. The telos of something points the direction from potentiality towards full actuality. But things can act only insofar as they exist; therefore things are more powerful insofar as they are actualized, or insofar as they have fulfilled their teloi. When we engineer our solution such that its elements fulfill their teloi as much as possible, we know that they are operating at their maximum power. Conversely, a clue that our solution may not be optimal is the discovery that its elements are not employed at full actuality or against their teloi.
Let me flesh out these principles with an example from software engineering. We may be able to use any particular software language to solve any particular problem, just as we can use a pair of scissors as a paperweight. We have nature working for us, however, if we match the nature of the language to the nature of the problem at hand. The C programming language was designed as a "general-purpose programming language... not specialized to any particular area of application." It is a relatively "low-level" language, has an "absence of restrictions", is not a "strongly-typed language" and one that "retains the basic philosophy that programmers know what they are doing."[1] If we use C in accord with its nature, then we will use it for low-level programming that does not permit restrictions, and we will remain careful and self-disciplined in its use. Only then will C function at its maximum power. C++ is an extension of C that provides support for data abstractions and object-oriented design.[2] If C++ is part of our solution, then our solution will tend to be maximally powerful and stable if the software reflects the abstract and object-oriented nature of C++; that is, if the software fulfills the telos of C++.
Aristotle's Understanding of Nature - Hierarchy
Aristotle's understanding of nature was hierarchical. Things do not exist in isolation but in the context of intelligible systems. Aristotle uses the example of the eye, which is truly itself only when it is in the body and functioning properly. An eye in a lab dish is, for Aristotle, something that is not really "being" an eye at all. So the eye can fulfill itself only in the context of a human being that is also fulfilling itself. The telos of the eye consists of more than completing itself in an act of vision; it finds its true fulfillment in the flourishing of the complete human being.
We can think along similar lines concerning the elements of our engineering solutions. It's not enough that a particular element be perfectly designed in itself. It truly fulfills its telos only to the extent that it goes beyond its own perfection to contribute to the perfection of the overall system. Our C++ solution may evidence isolated perfection in its use of object-oriented principles, but that solution is not optimal if it does not promote the operation of the overall system in the best possible way. It may be that, by compromising object-oriented principles somewhat, we can save resources (e.g. processing overhead) that are particularly sensitive in a certain system. Such a solution fulfills the "remote" final cause more fully at the expense of the "local" final cause, and is more perfect since the local final cause is in service to the final cause of the system as a whole. Final causes, teloi, find their meaning in a downward hierarchy or, if we prefer it this way, the teloi of the elements of a well-made system come together in a symphony expressed in the telos of the complete system.
The Philosophical Engineer
Aristotle begins his Metaphysics by stating that "All men by nature desire to know." He means by this more than knowing external nature. He means as well man knowing himself in his own act. The Aristotelian engineer, then, is an engineer self-consciously aware of what he is doing as an engineer. He understands the relationship of formal, final, material and efficient causes, the hierarchical relationship of final causes to each other, and his own role as the agent who brings each element to its perfection in the context of an entire solution. He knows how to think well in terms of nature, to think well conventionally.
But he can do more than this. There are times when conventional solutions are called for, and others when unconventional solutions should be sought. If the Aristotelian engineer understands himself as an engineer, he will have some idea when he is in either situation. Consider for the last time our scissors and string experiment. Its most outstanding feature are the restrictions on the solution. We can only use string and a pair of scissors and cannot move from our spot. We are not in the position of finding the appropriate elements to include in a complete solution; we are handed the elements and must make of them the best we can. This is a situation that calls for unconventional thinking. In fact, a wise student subjected to this experiment may very well guess this from the restrictions.
In our engineering life, we should sense that unconventional solutions may be required when we are subject to restrictions in time, materials or methods. To the extent that we are not subject to restrictions, we should try to think well in a conventional manner; that is, according to the natures of the problem and its possible solutions. It is the difference between constructing a carbon dioxide scrubber in the development phase of the Apollo program, and constructing one from scratch in the Apollo 13 capsule after an explosion. The former may be a model of elegant engineering, the latter a hodgepodge of duct tape and cardboard that nonetheless gets the job done.
In any case, it is part of good conventional thinking to know when conventional thinking has reached its limits or is inappropriate. The Aristotelian engineer knows when to stop thinking like Aristotle.
[1] Kernighan and Ritchie,The C Programming Language, 2nd Edition, Preface to the First Edition.
[2] Stanley Lippman,C++ Primer, Preface.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Scientism Summary
I have been very busy with other things and have been unable to blog for these last several months. This unfortunate situation will continue for a little while longer.
But I can't let pass John Derbyshire's neat summary of scientism at the Corner on National Review Online. Like every thinker in the thrall of scientism, Derbyshire can't see that his formulation denies its own possibility. Take the last paragraph:
Let me call the proposition "The things we know to high probability we know through methodical inquiry, observation, measurement, classification, etc.. - through science" proposition S. Now proposition S is not itself known through the methods it specifies, the methods of science. Derbyshire did not go into the lab and measure the molar mass of proposition S vs. the molar mass of some other proposition, say "Truth is best known through philosophical dialog" or "Science can only defend itself through philosophy, and if philosophy is undermined, science inevitably will be as well." No, proposition S is either known philosophically or it is not known at all. But proposition S denies "high probability" to anything other than that which is known through the methods of science; therefore it cannot be known with high probability. We can know it at most with low-probability. In fact, according to Derb's epistemology, it's got to be either wishful thinking, power games, social fads or the sleep of reason. I wonder which he prefers.
We could leave proposition S to its absurd self-destruction, if scientism were the only casualty. Unfortunately Derbyshire's self-contradictory scientism puts science itself in danger; proposition S seems to be the only possible defense of science conceivable to many. But science can only truly be defended through a genuine philosophy of knowledge; a philosophy that explores the ways of knowing and the relationships between them. Such a philosophy would certainly acknowledge the methodical power and certainty of science and provide a philosophical foundation for them (as Kant did in the Critique of Pure Reason.) Defending science by undermining philosophy can't work, anymore than science can be defended by undermining arithmetic.
Beyond all that, I am always fascinated with the man who can tell us about things he himself denies he knows. We know very little about the natural world, Derbyshire says, compared with what we don't know. How does he know how much we don't know? He doesn't say, for the good reason that he doesn't know what he doesn't know. At least I don't know what I don't know and can't say anything about it, including how much of it is lurking out there. Derb, however, can somehow get a quantitative estimate of what he doesn't know, no doubt through the best practices of science - inquiry, observation and measurement and whatnot. Now that's some powerful science.
But I can't let pass John Derbyshire's neat summary of scientism at the Corner on National Review Online. Like every thinker in the thrall of scientism, Derbyshire can't see that his formulation denies its own possibility. Take the last paragraph:
We don't know much about the natural world; what we don't know is vastly more than what we do know; and there are squishy areas where we aren't sure whether we know or don't know. The things we do know to high probability, though, we know through methodical inquiry, observation, measurement, classification, discussion, comparison of results, consensus — through science. The rest is wishful thinking, power games, social fads, and the sleep of reason.
Let me call the proposition "The things we know to high probability we know through methodical inquiry, observation, measurement, classification, etc.. - through science" proposition S. Now proposition S is not itself known through the methods it specifies, the methods of science. Derbyshire did not go into the lab and measure the molar mass of proposition S vs. the molar mass of some other proposition, say "Truth is best known through philosophical dialog" or "Science can only defend itself through philosophy, and if philosophy is undermined, science inevitably will be as well." No, proposition S is either known philosophically or it is not known at all. But proposition S denies "high probability" to anything other than that which is known through the methods of science; therefore it cannot be known with high probability. We can know it at most with low-probability. In fact, according to Derb's epistemology, it's got to be either wishful thinking, power games, social fads or the sleep of reason. I wonder which he prefers.
We could leave proposition S to its absurd self-destruction, if scientism were the only casualty. Unfortunately Derbyshire's self-contradictory scientism puts science itself in danger; proposition S seems to be the only possible defense of science conceivable to many. But science can only truly be defended through a genuine philosophy of knowledge; a philosophy that explores the ways of knowing and the relationships between them. Such a philosophy would certainly acknowledge the methodical power and certainty of science and provide a philosophical foundation for them (as Kant did in the Critique of Pure Reason.) Defending science by undermining philosophy can't work, anymore than science can be defended by undermining arithmetic.
Beyond all that, I am always fascinated with the man who can tell us about things he himself denies he knows. We know very little about the natural world, Derbyshire says, compared with what we don't know. How does he know how much we don't know? He doesn't say, for the good reason that he doesn't know what he doesn't know. At least I don't know what I don't know and can't say anything about it, including how much of it is lurking out there. Derb, however, can somehow get a quantitative estimate of what he doesn't know, no doubt through the best practices of science - inquiry, observation and measurement and whatnot. Now that's some powerful science.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Complexity as Inevitable
I would love to leave the Intelligent Design/Evolution controversy alone and read John Derbyshire in peace... why must I be ambushed by comments such as these from his Straggler column?
There are great cosmic principles at work here. Simplicity yields to complexity. From ammonites and trilobites come seven hundred species of dinosaur; from the spare pronouncements of the Master come annotations, exegesis, and commentary upon commentary; from the convenience of a phone call we advance to email inbox folders, texting, MySpace, Facebook, and twittering. There were originally three federal crimes: there are now, according to one scholar's tally, at least 4,452. (Did you know that as of 2002 it has been a federal crime to move birds across state lines to engage in fights?)
Derbyshire is a highly intelligent man, certainly smarter than I am. Yet this quote is open to a Sesame Street-level analysis that seems beyond the reach of committed Darwinists like him: Which one of these things is not like the others? His examples of exegesis and commentary, email and twittering, and the increase in federal law are all examples of the effects of intelligent agency. The complexity in these cases doesn't just "happen" as though complexity is waiting in the wings for simplicity to "yield" to it. It only happens because intelligent men apply their minds to the world and add complexity to it. The one case where this is alleged not to have happened is in the simplicity of ammonites "yielding" to the complexity of dinosaurs. Can't you just hear those complex dinosaurs banging at the door to be let in?
It may very well be that dinosaurs developed from ammonites through the unintelligent, mechanical process that Darwinists suppose. I don't know. I do know that email and federal law certainly didn't. What is perplexing about Darwinism, and makes me wary of it, is the manner in which its allegedly hard-headed and skeptical advocates fail to see the obvious. If they can't see intelligent agency in email and federal law, why should I put any stock in their assurances that there is no intelligent agency in the development of life?
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Conventional Courage and the Western Way of War
Jonathan Lear's Radical Hope, Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation recalled for me Victor Davis Hanson's thesis of the "Western Way of War." In a series of books (this and this one for a start - both good), Hanson argues that the West has prosecuted wars in a peculiarly violent and effective manner throughout its history. He attributes this to cultural reasons, which are summarized in the Amazon editorial reviews.
Hanson doesn't get much into philosophy, but I wonder how much the philosophical distinction between nature and convention that I mentioned in this post has contributed to the lethality of the West. Cultures that do not possess this philosophical distinction (and it seems that they do not prior to their encounter with the West, but I am not enough of a cultural anthropologist to say this categorically) tend to have a conventional way of fighting. By this I mean a way of fighting that is not necessarily rationally ordered to the end of victory, but is a stylized way of fighting that has developed for peculiar religious or traditional reasons.
For instance, the life of the Crow warrior was centered around "counting coups", which meant performing bold exploits against the enemy. Lear writes that
If the survival of the Crow tribe as a social unit had been the primary good, one might expect that highest honor would go to the warrior who killed the first enemy in battle, or the warrior who killed the most. But to count coup it was crucial that, at least for a moment, one avoided killing the enemy. There is a certain symbolic excess in counting coups. One needed not only to destroy the enemy; it was crucial that the enemy recognize that he was about to be destroyed.
Lear analyzes the notion of counting coups and concludes that, for a nomadic hunting tribe like the Crow, the crucial point was to establish boundaries with respect to other tribes. The form that counting coups takes with the Crow makes sense from this point of view; tapping the enemy with your coup stick before killing him makes him recognize the boundary he has violated before he dies; taking his weapons from him while he is still alive demonstrates that he cannot pass this boundary as a warrior:
The establishment of boundaries will, of course, be important to any cultural group. But it is especially tricky when it comes to a nomadic group whose migration depends heavily on hunting. As the tribe migrates, its defensible boundaries will shift, but it needs to be able to exert a proprietary claim over the animals within its (shifting) domain; and it needs to be able to repulse the proprietary claims of its rivals. Counting coups is the minimal act that forces recognition from the other side. The about-to-die Sioux warrior is, after all, about to die: if all goes as planned, he will be no further threat to the Crow. Recognition of the Crow boundary is the second-to-the-last thing the Crow warrior wants from him. (The last thing is his scalp, but that will serve as a token that he achieved that recognition.) If the tribe's goal is the firm establishment of a boundary, then the act of counting coups is not excessive. It strikes the mean between the defect of wishful thinking that one has boundaries when one is unwilling or unable to defend them and the excess of slaughtering one's enemies so quickly that one does not obtain from them recognition of anything. When struck with a coup-stick, the Sioux warrior recognizes a Crow boundary because he also recognizes that he is about to die.
The problem with Lear's argument is that, since the Sioux warrior is about to die, what does it matter whether he recognizes a boundary or not? If the establishment of boundaries is the goal of counting coups, then what matters is whether the surviving Sioux recognize the boundary, not the dead Sioux. Furthermore, even if Lear were successful in establishing a rational goal for counting coups, it doesn't follow that the Crow counted coups for those rational reasons. Lear's analysis attempts to show that the conventional form of Crow courage is the form it should take according to the nature of Crow life; in other words, it is an analysis from means to end. But there is no reason to think that Crow traditions were established with this sort of rational analysis. They seem to have developed innocently and unreflectively, like most traditions within aboriginal peoples.
Counting coups is reminiscent of the Aztec way of war that Hanson discusses in Carnage and Culture. Aztec weapons were not particularly lethal; their purpose was to stun the enemy so the Aztec warrior could drag his opponent back to the pyramid to be a ritual human sacrifice. It turns out that this way of fighting was effective against other native tribes for psychological reasons. But it is unlikely that it developed as a deliberate way to psychologically demoralize the enemy. Probably the religious ritual came first, and it was later discovered that Aztec warriors capturing the enemy to be human sacrifices had a particularly devastating effect on their morale. Whatever the case, it didn't have much impact on the morale of Hernan Cortez and his men. One reason so few Conquistadors were able to conquer an Aztec empire of hundreds of thousands is that the Aztec way of war was singularly ineffective against Spanish steel. But, more significantly, the Aztec could not adapt their methods of war to the novel enemy constituted by the Spanish. Their staggering losses to Spanish swords and armor did not cause them to reconsider the practice of human sacrifice as a way of war. Courage for an Aztec warrior still meant dragging an enemy off to the pyramid. They had no rational tradition of philosophy to treat warfare abstractly as a mean to an end, or to understand courage as involving means to an end.
Although Cortez was not a philosopher, he was raised in a culture that was informed by the philosophical notions of nature vs. convention and means vs. ends. Courage in the West is not finally specified by a particular act in battle, like striking the enemy with your coup stick or stunning him so he can be a human sacrifice. It means overcoming your fears and facing lethal dangers in the service of victory - whatever form that might take in any particular situation. Cortez approached the Aztecs rationally as a military problem to be solved. (The moral analysis of the Conquistadors is another subject entirely.) He even went so far as to construct his own navy from scratch to eliminate the Aztec mobility on the lake surrounding Tenochtitlan.
It is the Western tradition of philosophically-based rationality that has made it so lethal, for it has given the West a flexibility and creativity in war not known to non-Western peoples.
Monday, September 7, 2009
More on Lear and Radical Hope
In this post I began a discussion of Jonathan Lear's Radical Hope, Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation. Here I would like to discuss more specifically the content of radical hope.
In Ch. 3, the "Critique of Abysmal Reasoning", Lear writes this about radical hope:
I would like to consider hope as it might arise at one of the limits of human existence. In the scenario outlined in the preceding chapter, Plenty Coups responded to the collapse of his civilization with radical hope. What makes this hope radical is that it is directed toward a future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is. Radical hope anticipates a good for which those who have the hope as yet lack the appropriate concepts with which to understand it.
The reason Lear says that the hope transcends the current ability to understand it is that the Crow understanding of the good life was specific to their mode of living - hunting buffalo, roaming the plains, "counting coups" against their enemies. This way of life was inevitably doomed with the coming of the white man, a future Plenty Coups anticipated through several dreams he experienced as a youth. In these dreams he was advised to pay attention to the "wisdom of the Chickadee", a bird that is smaller than other birds yet is more intelligent and perceptive. Plenty Coups applied this wisdom as a chief, allying the Crow with the U.S. Army against the Sioux, rather than fighting a hopeless battle against irresistible U.S. government force. The end result was that the Crow were unusual insofar as they never suffered a defeat at the hands of the U.S. military, and they were also able to retain their ancestral lands under their own possession (with the usual encroachments and false dealing by the U.S. authorities.)
My philosophical interest in this post is Lear's statement about a hope that is directed toward "a future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is." For hope to be any sort of hope at all it must have some content. Hope is hope for something. We can't merely hope that "things will be different" because things might become different by becoming worse; we only hope if we can anticipate some state of affairs that we recognize as desirable in itself. It must have a goodness that doesn't entirely transcend our current ability to understand it so we can direct ourselves toward it as an end. The situation is similar to the attributes of God. If the goodness of God is a goodness that utterly transcends any possible conception we might have of it, then God is not a being who can be an object of our desire. In fact, according to St. Thomas, we can have a genuine but limited notion of the goodness of God through analogy.
And, in fact, the hope of Plenty Coups was not a leap into the dark or across an abyss but had some content. Arguing the point that the radical hope of Plenty Coups was not simply wish-fulfilling fantasy, Lear writes:
Finally, it has been the aim of this entire chapter to argue that Plenty Coups's radical hope was not mere wish-fulfilling optimism (criterion 5), but was rather a radical form of hope that constituted courage and made it possible. After all, through a series of canny decisions and acts, the Crow were able to hold onto their land, and Plenty Coups helped to create a space in which traditional Crow values can be preserved in memory, transmitted to a new generation, and, one hopes, renewed in a new historical era.
Lear is certainly right that Plenty Coups was a man of outstanding virtue, a man who was able to transcend the concept of courage as it was taught him in the Crow tradition when it became clear that the traditional notion of courage was no longer relevant. But the fact that he and the Crow were able to preserve their lands through "canny moves" shows that they had some notion what they were doing. A man with a contentless hope can't make canny moves, because he doesn't know what he is moving toward. Plenty Coups saw in his wisdom that "counting coups" in the traditional sense against the U.S. Army was futile; he realized that planting the coup-stick in no way intimidates the man firing a Gatling gun. But by allying themselves with the white man, and learning his ways, he seems to have understood that some parts of the Crow nation might be preserved - in particular, their land. This is not a hope that transcends understanding, but a hope that is real but limited. Plenty Coups was remarkably successful in handling the encounter of the Crow with the white man, but there is a sense of melancholy in what he says of life after the Crow were included in the reservation system. "After this," Plenty Coups said, "nothing happened." This is a statement of limited hope fulfilled.
Darwinian Logic and the Mind
The post Darwinists Check Their Logic at the Door over at Uncommon Descent brings up one of my favorite topics, the relationship of evolution to the mind. I think all three of the participants in the main post miss the logic of the situation.
The problem with Delurker's response in the first exchange ("To the extent that nature is comprehensible, modern evolutionary theory predicts that alignment with reality will be selected for.") is not that it is circular. Barry A. confuses an epistemological question with an empirical one in making that argument. No, the problem with Delurker's response is that it is a philosophical response rather than the empirically contingent one he seems to think it is.
There is nothing wrong with philosophical responses, of course, unless they are mistaken for something else. This is what happens here. "Alignment with reality will be selected for" cannot be a contingent conclusion from evolutionary science, but is a precondition for the possibility of evolutionary science itself. Is evolutionary science about the true world or merely about our impression of the world, an impression that may or may not have anything to do with true reality? (I.e. do we have a science of the noumenal or the phenomenal?) Evolutionary scientists to a man take it for granted that their science is about the world as it really is, which means that they already assume that their minds are "aligned with reality." Evolutionary science must predict that alignment with reality will be selected for, because only a mind aligned with reality can truly investigate how it is that the mind is aligned with reality. I happen to agree that our minds are aligned with reality, but not because I think it is a possible empirical conclusion, but rather because Aristotle settled the issue thousands of years ago in his Metaphysics Book IV.
The logic of Exchange #3 is similar. How did the mind and world become coordinated? The answer is that "organisms who don't deal with reality die (eventually)." This again cannot be a contingent conclusion from evolutionary science, but is a precondition for the possibility of evolutionary science itself. If it were a contingent conclusion, then we would have to seriously consider the possibility that "organisms who don't deal with reality fare quite well." But if this latter possibility were true, then since human beings have fared quite well, we may very well be the type of creature that fares well without dealing with reality. Our evolutionary science, in that case, might have nothing to do with the way things really are. The assertion "organisms who don't deal with reality die" is an assertion about reality only if it is spoken by a creature already confident of his connection with reality; if its negation is taken seriously as an empirical possibility then the mind has put itself out of its own misery.
In exchange #4, the point is made that "the nature of reality is not addressed by modern evolutionary theory. The fitness of organisms to that reality is." If the nature of reality is not addressed by modern evolutionary theory, but the fitness of organisms is, then the fitness of organisms must have nothing to do with the nature of reality. We are back to the point that the possibility of evolutionary science requires that the human mind be "fitted" to reality; if this fitness is not itself part of reality but only our imaginations, then evolutionary science as a science of the way things truly are is not possible.
The problem with Delurker's response in the first exchange ("To the extent that nature is comprehensible, modern evolutionary theory predicts that alignment with reality will be selected for.") is not that it is circular. Barry A. confuses an epistemological question with an empirical one in making that argument. No, the problem with Delurker's response is that it is a philosophical response rather than the empirically contingent one he seems to think it is.
There is nothing wrong with philosophical responses, of course, unless they are mistaken for something else. This is what happens here. "Alignment with reality will be selected for" cannot be a contingent conclusion from evolutionary science, but is a precondition for the possibility of evolutionary science itself. Is evolutionary science about the true world or merely about our impression of the world, an impression that may or may not have anything to do with true reality? (I.e. do we have a science of the noumenal or the phenomenal?) Evolutionary scientists to a man take it for granted that their science is about the world as it really is, which means that they already assume that their minds are "aligned with reality." Evolutionary science must predict that alignment with reality will be selected for, because only a mind aligned with reality can truly investigate how it is that the mind is aligned with reality. I happen to agree that our minds are aligned with reality, but not because I think it is a possible empirical conclusion, but rather because Aristotle settled the issue thousands of years ago in his Metaphysics Book IV.
The logic of Exchange #3 is similar. How did the mind and world become coordinated? The answer is that "organisms who don't deal with reality die (eventually)." This again cannot be a contingent conclusion from evolutionary science, but is a precondition for the possibility of evolutionary science itself. If it were a contingent conclusion, then we would have to seriously consider the possibility that "organisms who don't deal with reality fare quite well." But if this latter possibility were true, then since human beings have fared quite well, we may very well be the type of creature that fares well without dealing with reality. Our evolutionary science, in that case, might have nothing to do with the way things really are. The assertion "organisms who don't deal with reality die" is an assertion about reality only if it is spoken by a creature already confident of his connection with reality; if its negation is taken seriously as an empirical possibility then the mind has put itself out of its own misery.
In exchange #4, the point is made that "the nature of reality is not addressed by modern evolutionary theory. The fitness of organisms to that reality is." If the nature of reality is not addressed by modern evolutionary theory, but the fitness of organisms is, then the fitness of organisms must have nothing to do with the nature of reality. We are back to the point that the possibility of evolutionary science requires that the human mind be "fitted" to reality; if this fitness is not itself part of reality but only our imaginations, then evolutionary science as a science of the way things truly are is not possible.
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