entangled

We heard an interesting report from Will yesterday on reason, responsibility, Battlestar Galactica, Objectivism, and much else. Our classroom was his pulpit for 20 minutes.

The Q-and-A brought us to a discussion of the infamous double-slit electron experiment as featured in the film "What the [Bleep] Do We Know." One implication seemed to be that, because observations at the quantum level alter experimental results, "we're not supposed to know" reality. Or "magic is real," or "God exists," or... I'm not quite sure what. [bleeping banality...e-Skeptic review... debunked...Secret... Shermer vs. Chopra]



Steven Novella thinks this particular example of quantum weirdness is a species of a broader pattern of misunderstanding, often perpetrated by the likes of Deepak Chopra.  In the wave-particle duality of matter, illustrated by the double-slit experiment, "the collapse to a particle is not dependent on any observer – just interaction with other stuff. No observer is necessary." Chopra has interpreted this experiment as showing that the future can mysteriously alter the past. Novella says nonsense. "Physicists do not pretend to understand the fundamental nature of quantum entanglement."


Well, me neither. But Novella's observation rings true to me:

Chopra is using a common trick of the pseudoscientist – exploiting cutting edge science, which the public is not likely to understand, and pretend as if there is proof where there is uncertainty. Take some interesting experiments, then leap way ahead to conclusions that serve their metaphysical purposes, but which are not settled science.

In short – beware of anyone pretending to understand the ultimate implications of Quantum Mechanics  and that it supports their far out philosophy.

Don't get tangled up in woo: solid advice. And, reservations aside, a good provocative report, too.

age of reason

At what age is it appropriate to hold children accountable for their "sins"? When does God start keeping score and marking against your name?

Julia Sweeney found out her family's church's position on the question-- Happy birthday, little girl!-- on her seventh birthday. I'm not sure the church was quite on top of the best available brain science.

telling stories

The next annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy (SAAP) is scheduled for next March in Spokane, Washington. The announced conference theme is "narrative and identity."


How ironic, then, to note that Spokane native and former SNL cast member Julia Sweeney, one of the world's great storytellers (God Said Ha!, Letting Go of God), has declared her intention to begin a new chapter in her own personal narrative. Her blog announcement, posted this past March:

I plan to stop being a public, personal, storyteller.

Her new story begins with an old one, the one she'd recently told at a TED conference involving her 10-year old daughter Mulan's introduction to the sex lives of frogs. 

It got big laughs and even a partial standing ovation at the end.  People really loved it and I was so high and happy afterwards. 

I'm proud that I have the skill to tell a good story and make people laugh. I have a million happy memories of being onstage and making people laugh.  

But, she went home and thought about the embarrassment potential, of that and other of her stories-- their potential to embarrass the people she loves, mostly, but also their subversion of her own privacy and dignity. She was 

mortified and could not believe that I hadn’t considered this before.  Mulan looks good in the story – a curious, smart nine year old.  But the whole topic is embarrassing to a girl her age. 

As for herself, 

I no longer wish to be so naked and bare.  I am surprised I ever did want to do it.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I did.  I am proud that I learned to craft my experiences into a story and I am proud that I learned the craft of being on-stage.  But now, I need to stop doing it.  I am happily married, for one thing, and it’s boring and inappropriate to talk about.  My daughter is ten and she reads my blog, (OMG!) she goes to my shows.   In fact we have spoken at length about the stories I tell about her.   Not that, at ten, she is really capable of understanding the ramifications.  Still, she says it’s okay to tell the Mulan-frog story.  But ugh.   I don’t think she really understands.  I feel the need to protect her from myself!

The posted reactions of Julia's fans have ranged from supportive and  sad to hurt and angry. I consider myself a fan, and my own reaction is a combination of understanding and discomfort.  I blog, I have kids, and while I tend not to tell personal stories I consider overly revealing or invasive of their or my privacy, I still have to wonder if I am contributing (along with millions of others) to a phenomenon of public disclosure and transparency whose implications are not entirely sunny. 


Julia Sweeney is-- was?-- a professional "public, personal storyteller." Countless more of us are amateurs. What do we stand to gain and lose, specifically in terms of our personal and collective "identity," through the incessant spinning of all these public "narratives"?


Nick Carr, Clay Shirky, Jaron Lanier and others have begun to address these issues. What should a public philosopher steeped in the spirit of James and Dewey say about them?


Don't know yet. I'll ask around. 

theistic evolution?

Michael Shermer and Jerry Coyne had a little spat recently, Coyne calling Shermer an "accommodationist" for suggesting that theists who admit the provisional facts of science ought to not be badgered by atheists.  I sided with Shermer, as in general I side with the defenders of so-called theistic evolution. Putting a god behind the big bang may be gratuitous and non-explanatory but it's not obviously wrong, so long as scientific details aren't bent over backwards to fit (say) the narrative structure of Genesis.


And that's just what some theistic evolutionists and young earth creationists have done. They are Shermer's target here.  We saw Julia Sweeney saying, so sweetly, that the scientific evidence was stronger for her than her old unexamined religious pseudo-evidence. Shermer's making the same point here, less sweetly. He gives no quarter to those who attempt the logical absurdity of trying to squeeze the round peg of science into the square hole of religion. 





Shermer says this is not intended as a sacrilege of the poetic beauty of Genesis; rather, it is a mere extension of what the creationists have already done to Genesis in their insistence that it be read not as mythic saga but as scientific prose. If Genesis were written in the language of modern science, it would read something like this. Stephen Jay Gould, wherever he isn't, would approve. (That's what he meant about keeping religious and scientific magisteria apart.) But Jerry Coyne still calls him a sell-out. I'm still with Mike, and Julia, and Pearl too.

happy ending

"Call no man happy 'til he is dead." We talked about that in Happiness 101 in September. I disputed it then, and still do. It's just too dispiriting and irrelevant. What's the point of trying to be happily expired?

But I see no contest at all over the question of whether you can be happy and a scoundrel. I can't be, but of course you can... if you're that sort of person.

Sure, from my point of view (and from yours, I hope), the happiness of bad people is a degraded and inferior brand. Aristotelian eudaimonia is not supposed to be subjective, but people's estimations of their own well-being certainly are. Plenty of people are as bad as they want to be, and they seem plenty happy too. While that's an affront to the rest of us, it's just too bad. But I don't guess many of the rest of us will be lining up to join the scoundrels club, anyway. The institutions of morality are safe. We're all gonna be what we're gonna be.

So, Christine Vitrano, you're right too: "the happy tyrant, the happy hermit, and the happy immoralist" are perfectly possible, fairly-frequently actual human types. I hope Hitler wasn't overly happy but I fear he may have been, more often at least than most of his victims; and I wish my worldview allowed me the consolation of thinking that he finally got his. It doesn't. (Julia Sweeney: "You mean he just... died?!" Evidently, Craig.)

But the penultimate little essay in our final text hits just the right note of ambivalence, with Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors. Even the most upstanding of us, thinking ourselves "good" and decent and entitled to happiness, are capable of compromising our integrity and our self-respect in its pursuit, in horrible and harmful ways.

So? It's important to live well, but don't under-rate the importance of living with an eye to being well thought of after we're gone. (A point his character in another film makes, while standing alongside a classroom skeleton and noting that we're all going to "thin out"; when we do, it would be nice to retain at least a deserved reputation for having acted with a little integrity as moral agents while we still could.) That's not the same as being happy, but maybe it's a condition of being worthy, in one's own eyes, of being happy.

If that isn't a happy ending, isn't it a good place to begin thinking about our ends? As we said back when we began, "each of us must take responsibility for assessing the conditions of our own flourishing, must be open to the possibility of our good coming from the last places we'd ever expect, and should be prepared to jettison others' expectations (and sometimes our own)." And then? Play the scene. It's real life, not Hollywood.

Atheism and Spirituality

Hot off the presses:

New course, Spring 2010-

Philosophy 4800.3 -- Readings in Philosophy: Atheism and Spirituality. TTh 2:40--4:05, JUB 202.

"I'm not religious. I'm spiritual."

We've all heard people say that. Perhaps you've said it yourself. But what does it mean? Can an atheist say it? What, precisely, do atheists believe-- and believe in? What makes a non-religious person "spiritual"?

This course will tackle these and many other questions drawn from reflection on philosophical texts from Epicurus, Pascal, David Hume, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, and John Dewey (among others), as well as more recent writings and public polemics involving "New Atheists" Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett.

We''ll hear from Julia Sweeney about "letting go of God" and gaining new spiritual perspective. We'll look at the humanistic and skeptical traditions of doubt, and we'll also consult the wisdom of the late Carl Sagan, whose posthumous Varieties of Scientific Experience echoes, honors, and complements William James's Varieties of Religious Experience.

And we'll wonder if the Brights (who reject the supernatural) live up to their name.

Contact Dr. James P. Oliver (poliver@mtsu.edu, 898-2050, 307B JUB) for information and further details.

"Four Horsemen"

Students through the years have often told me that, so far as they knew, they'd never met or spoken with a real live atheist. They half-expected that such an encounter would be signaled by horns and cloven hooves and the acrid scent of sulfur.

So, whether you like these guys or not, please take note: no horns, no hooves (though some of the footwear looks questionable)... can't prove the absence of sulfur, that'll require some faith. Hitchens is a bit slouchy, sure, but whisky and smokes aren't exclusively devil's fare.

Here are Christopher Hitchens (God is not Great), Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell), Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), and Sam Harris (The End of Faith).

And here's a fifth horsewoman, the sweet and charming Julia Sweeney, SNL vet & lapsed-Catholic convert to the cavalry:

Glasses

Another nice Catholic girl sees the light. Did she put the glasses on? Or take them off?

Deepak

It's a good day for a domestic provocation.

With "spirituality" like this, who needs magic?

The Mormons

"It’s great to hear people who believe in something and can articulate it without sounding crazy or defensive," fawned the Times reviewer of the new PBS documentary on Mormonism. Sorry, but if it's not crazy to affirm young Joseph Smith's hallucinations (he was just 21) as revealed truth then what is?

After last night's first installment (the conclusion airs tonight) I came away shaking my head in renewed astonishment, that so many sober and serious-sounding people could believe something so preposterous. If people will believe that, what won't they believe? It does not bode well for the democratic prospect. I remembered Mark Twain's sarcasm in Roughing It:

"Some people have to have a world of evidence before they can come anywhere in the neighborhood of believing anything, but for me when a man tells me that he has seen the engravings which are upon the plates and not only that, but an angel was there at the time and saw them see him and probably took his receipt for it, I am very far on the road to conviction no matter whether I have ever heard of that man before or not, and even if I do not know the name of the angel or his nationality either."

(The angel's name was Moroni, by the way.)

Then I remembered Julia Sweeney's "Letting Go of God," which begins by recounting a visit from a pair of eager young Mormon missionaries whose tale was so absurd that she started rethinking her own "mainstream" (Roman Catholic) credulities -- and realized that Virgin Births, trans-substantiation, redemptive crucifixion et al aren't so different, the stories have just been around longer.

My instinct in religion is to be tolerant even when I can't be open to the alleged revelation, but I'm coming around to the Dawkins-Harris hardline that we need to stop giving a free pass to incredible superstition and calling it, respectfully, religion when what it is is nonsense. (On this topic, watch for a future post on E.O. Wilson's recent overtures to Southern Baptists.)

For a refreshing perspective on the "latter-day Saints" take a look at www.postMormon.org. Unless you've already drunk the Kool-Aid yourself, you'll feel better about your species.

Addendum. Just watched part II, which on the whole took a more critically-independent stance and (for instance) acknowledged that Mormon "niceness" can mask a kind of spiritual violence. The spectacle of very young children being indoctrinated into the faith, singing about wanting to become missionaries and so forth, emphatically makes Dawkins' point that this is a form of child abuse. They are not "Mormon children" -- they are children of Mormon parents whose birthright to think for themselves has been unconscionably violated.

But, for the record: I too have found Mormons (and other religionists) to be good neighbors.