(PE) Bush and Stem Cell Research

A "lite" essay from Slate questioning the merits of George W. Bush's position on human embryonic stem cell research:

http://www.slate.com/id/2090244/

(IH) Russell, Fear, and Religion

Bertrand Russell on fear as the basis of our religious impulses:

"Religion is based, I think primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing - fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it."

(AP) Tolstoy's Formula

Here's the formula we constructed for Tolstoy's theory of art:

A(Tolstoy) = NH (Iace + Coe), where

I = intentionality
a = artist
c = communication
e= emotion
o = observer
NH= necessary for humanity

(IH) Forgetful, again

Here are the two references I couldn't recall this morning: Ted Honderich's "Freedom and Determinism" website (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/dfwIntroIndex.htm), and (the very much alive) Joseph finder, author of The Moscow Club and several other contemporary novels.

(IH) Freedom to reject Free Will?

Here's a nice collection of reflections on the intersection of theories of free will and ethics.

A sample, from one theorist intent on overcoming "free will panic":

"As rather sophisticated cognitive systems, we're very good at modeling the world, and any causal disconnection from the world would worsen, not improve, our ability to model it. Stepping outside of determinism, an impossibility, can't give us a more correct view of things. Any part of us outside the causal network, anything radically free to choose its words, would be uninfluenced by the world, and so this part couldn't know anything about the world. There's no conflict between being influenced or determined to have a view of the world and having a truer, more accurate view of it."

(PE) Abort Animal Rights?

I mentioned in passing today a potential incompatibility between the robust defense of (nonhuman) animal rights and a pro-choice position on abortion: If one supports, say, the rights of dogs, cats, or even lowly rats or fish, then shouldn't one, for consistency's sake, favor the basic rights of fetuses over a woman's right to choose abortion (in non-emergency situations)?

This is enough to rock the ideological foundations of many pro-choice animal ethicists, but I don't think it should. Aside from theological musings about human "ensoulment" at conception, the considerable intrinsic value of humans and nonhumans alike arises in the first instance from their degree of sentience (or capacity consciously to experience painful or pleasurable states).

Science and commonsense conspire to suggest that blastocysts, zygotes, and early fetuses are in fact nonsentient; that is, constitutively unable to think or want or prefer or (consciously) feel anything at all. However, the eventual sentience of most later-stage fetuses introduces a potential conflict in basic rights. At that point, (extrinsic, relational duties notwithstanding) we must consider both the emerging moral status of developing fetuses and their mothers' right to privacy and self-determination. Distinguishing "primary" rightholders (mothers) from "subserviant" rightholders (sentient fetuses), Gary Franzione (of Rutgers Law Center) offers one solution here.

(PE) IDA on Vivisection

Here's a link to IDA's (In Defense of Animals) page on the "truth about vivisection." See also, New England's antivivisection society and the American Antivivisection Society

Russell on Knowing That We Know

The quote from Bertrand Russell that I couldn't remember this morning:

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."

It serves as a kind of corrective to my view that fallibilism is the mark of the thoughtful (empirical) knower.

(AP) What Happens When We Close that Door?

A recent excerpt from the Karl Jaspers Forum, showing the results of Cartesian skepticism applied to the question of mind-independently existing things:

IS THE LIGHT ON IN THE FRIDGE ? OBJECT-IN-CONTEXT AND THE STRUCTURE OF THE WORLD
by Lauri Järvilehto
12 September 2007, posted 15 September 2007

....The idea of perception I defend hangs on the thought that objects can only be said to exist as objects-in-context – but that the same way the unmeasured particle exists as a "black-boxed" probability wave, unobserved objects do still exist as their full conceptual potential, the superposition of states of affairs. In both cases it’s like the matter of whether the light is on in the fridge when the door is closed. We can only observe the light when the door is open, so whatever we can know about the state of the light when the door is closed must be deduced from other factors than direct evidence. In quantum mechanics, a discrete state of a particle is by definition the result of a measurement – whatever happens between measurements is clouded. In perception, we perceive only what is perceived. Whatever happens to the world when it is not perceived meets the fate of the light in the fridge. The easiest way out is, of course, esse est percipi: Let’s refrain from saying anything about the "closed fridge". But certainly we can deduce a number of things from what we perceive. That is what I have attempted in my paper....

(IH) Defining Philosophy

Here's the quote from R. P. Wolff's About Philosophy that I read in class this morning:

"Literally, love of wisdom, philosophy is the systematic, critical examination of the way in which we judge, evaluate, and act, with the aim of making ourselves wiser, more self-reflective, and therefore better men and women." (p. 6)