Misplaced Shonenizing

When I saw "Genshiken: Return of the Otaku" in my local bookstore, my heart skipped a beat. As any other Genshiken fan, I couldn't believe that there might be any more to that great storyline. It was especially pleasing to see that the Shimoku sensei contributed original artwork to the project. This is a paperback book and not a manga, and the actual author is Iida Kazutoshi. In the notes from the original author and artist at the end of this book, Kio Shimoku throws his gravitas behind the book and assures the reader that this too is also Genshiken.

Shimoku-san and Kazutoshi-san, I am terribly, terribly sorry (insert American style shoulder bows three times here) but I must decline the invitation to accept GenReOta as Genshiken canon. Please, let me explain.

It is of course natural that any proposed contribution to the Genshiken universe(s) would be just the sort of thing that would invite the Genshiken treatment, namely the sort of picking apart of a manga or anime that the Genshiken members would do. Unfortunately, I'm sure that if you ask them to answer the question of canonicity, the Genshiken would immediately say that the attribution of Genshiken status to GenReOta is an act of supreme generosity rather than one of true recognition.

There are predictable difficulties in any work that bears tribute to another original work. One is that it must connect to the fanbase of the original by making sure the author's established tropes for the characters and the setting are recognizable in the tribute. This leads to a lot of redundancy and tends to reduce the original characters to being two or even one dimensional behavioriods. This problem is aggravated in a Genshiken tribute because the original characters were so well developed. Indeed, this was one of the features of the original manga that made it stand out among the increasingly crowded manga market. GenReOta is no exception this difficulty. The reader tends to think, "Okay, I get that I am supposed to think that your Madarame is the Madarame. Please stop reminding me."

But even setting this standard, the story fails to meet it. In the original manga, a clear line is drawn between the world of the 'real' life of the members of Genshiken College Circle and the fantastic although analogous 'lives' of their favorite manga characters. I would say the integrity of this level distinction is a device crucial to the original manga. Its success as a story is part due to Shimoku's careful exploiting of this device. But this feature is thrown out in the book. This story (without spoiling it) is a fantasy story where some unreal things happen to the Genshiken members. This treats the Genshiken world like the Kujibiki Unbalanced world. In consequence of this, another crucial feature of the Genshiken manga is lost. The great twist in Genshiken series is that it is a coming of age story involving characters that are supposedly going through a protracted adolescence. The drama is in seeing who matures and who well they do, given the self-imposed hurdles. But GenReOta just is a shonen story. If it weren't for Shimoku's illustrations, we'd imagine the characters with big eyes and their speech in extra dark fonts.

That says enough to be a sufficient defeater for canonicity. However, there are other issues. Just to mention three; all of the characters as I said are flat and formulaic but Kasukabe-san is not only flat but wrong. In the story, Kasukabe is presented as a much more vulnerable and indeed much more girly than she is in the manga. As a character, she seems more like Sasahara's sister than the true secret behind the Genshiken's prosperity. Her original choleric driving nature is simply reduced to hitting Madarame. But Kasukabe is a force of nature. Even the hits have no real context in the story like the almost always do (if not always) in the original manga. What we have instead is the shonenization of Kasukabe. Second, why is Kuchiki in the story but not Ogiue, when they both joined the circle at the same time? Finally, there is no Kujibiki Unbalance references at all in the story, no doubt because that would betray that absence of the main story device.

So GenReOta is a shonen story with some of the main characters from Genshiken, also 'shonenized' for the sake of the story. I implied nothing about what I think of it as a story in its own right. But I would rather not think of it as official Genshiken, with all due respect.

There is one part of the book, however, to which I wholeheartedly concur. That is the sentiment expressed by Kazutoshi-san in the last page of his story.

The Gift of the Christian Idea of the World

I just finished teaching a course to some of our adult church members; an introduction to understanding the Bible for yourself. The central analogy of the course was unapologetically borrowed from Susan Haack's "Evidence and Inquiry". She used the image of a crossword puzzle to illustrate a concept of justification with a univocal sense, and as opposed to the two classic images of the raft and the pyramid. The puzzle illustrates the two kind of supports that give evidence to certain propositions; the original clues to the puzzle and the way the answers fit together in the puzzle.

The key idea in deciphering the meaning of a portion of text (where "meaning" is understood to be the sense of the text the original author intended for the original audience to receive - which I won't defend here) is to recognize a textual unit. A textual unit is a specifiable form of text such that all the textual material is mobilized to fulfil a function. A basic example is a paragraph, but other examples would be a poem or a parable or a proverb or an argument. This presupposes that we do recognize such units in our reading and can exploit them in our writing. If a text does form a unit, then the crossword analogy is appropriate since there is an internal coherence to the material as well as clues from the historical and literary context of the writing. Of course, basic units may be connected to form larger units of text, like paragraphs in a paper or verses in a poem. I take it that the claim that such units exist and that they are discernable able as substantially uncontroversial.

If that is so, then it is not out of the question to think that there may be larger recognizable units that incorporate scattered texts. Suppose fairies exist. A single fairy may perhaps use charms on different mundane people to make them dream in rich ways and compel them to write about there dreams over a large area of space and time. After comparing the written dreams of the various victim dreamers it, is discovered that they form a larger unified conception not schemed by any one of the authors. Or suppose that someone creates an Artificial Intelligence that inhabits a laser equipped satellite. The satellite, in a fit of creativity, uses the laser to write bits of prose on several parts of the planet's surface. Others who are not aware of the secret satellite's existence may at least recognize that the diverse scripts carved in the mountains and deserts throughout the world for a single unified document. They may even be able to determine that there remains some yet undiscovered portions from the clues that they have in hand (the ones that were carved in to the bottoms of lakes say).

It seems that someone of a religious frame of mind might thus hope that if God were to express Himself to mankind, such a unity of thought would be recognizable in it, not just in its texts but in all of its parts. Of course, many have a prior sense that such a thing would not be either possible if God existed, since the finite cannot comprehend the infinite, or likely, since we are as nothing to the gods as the fleas are as nothing to us. But supposing that God condescended to speak as we may understand for some reason, we might hope that such a unity would be found in the message.

That Christian teaching embodies such an essential gestalt is what we mean be speaking of it as a worldview. This means that the scattered textual material that comes to be codified in the sacred documents of the faith forms a systematic whole, organically developed over time, that is re-identifiable. Not only is it an intrinsic whole but also it unifies our concept of God, self, and world - which is to say that it brings into its unity our all transcendental representations. It also incorporates our theoretical and practical reasoning, and our emotional intelligence. It also makes sense of history. The basic schema of the Christian world view of redemption, presupposed by fall, which in turn presupposes creation, and which resolves into a final consummation captures in brief the internal logic of the Christian view.

But though the Christian worldview is meant to make some explanatory sense and is meant to be understood as being comprehensive of experience and strongly coherent (not merely consistent), it is also understood to be a gift. It is not expected to be what we would take to be the best explanation of the world that we would have had if we properly reasoned only according to our natural lights, although it must be compatible with what we do conclude by such lights on the principle that all truth is God's truth. Being a Christian is, at least prima facie, neither necessary nor sufficient for being a good scholar. philosopher, or scientist. It is even possible that qua Christian faith compared to qua the best inquiry has to offer at the time, the believer and the non-believer are in different places holding to incompatible claims. The person who is both a believer and a scientist may hold to p as a believer and not p as a scientist, whereas what she holds to, either p or not p, simpliciter will depend on an ethic of belief.

Such an ethic would have to oblige or permit the Christian belief without an ad hoc rejection of the scientific belief. Being a matter of practical reasoning it would have to makes sense from within a Christian worldview but also be consistent with moral reasoning about belief formation. Such a view is possible if we understand that the standard that all belief must be proportioned to evidence as being a prima facie obligation with appropriate exceptions. (A prima facie duty ethic such as W.D. Ross's is a way of making sense of William James' qualifications of Clifford's ethics.) But it may also be necessary to distinguish between the actual sense of the Christian worldview and our take on that sense, letting the observed facts force us rethink what we originally took to be the case. But besides grounding a set of duties in belief formation, a Christian worldview may encourage enquiry in the same sort of way that Socrates' doctrine of recollection encouraged him to seek the truth.

If we think of Christian experience as being exclusively mystical and ecstatic, we may neglect the experiential potentials of a religious intelligence. "To see that" is an important part of perception and requires a prior concept but it is also deeply religious and satisfying. This provides another motive for inquiry, to gain a deeper grasp on the Christian idea itself.

William Lycan Essays linked.

Two essays by William Lycan on eliminative materialism and dualism. I had the priviledge of hearing Lycan discuss the dualism paper at Syracuse University.


A PARTICULARLY COMPELLING
REFUTATION OF ELIMINATIVE MATERIALISM
William G. Lycan
University of North Carolina
GIVING DUALISM ITS DUE
William G. Lycan

Hat tip to Dr. Feser.

Getting John Calvin right.

Linked to this post header in Timothy George's CT article on John Calvin and the secret to his being principally neglected. I also linked the article on the side board.

The Echo

SCENE: Olympia, WA -- 09SEP17, 28 days after the outbreak. A special Army helicopter is coming toward the city carrying Major Karl Wesson USA special forces and Father Winston O'Bannon in hermetically sealed compartment. The priest is looking very concerned and the soldier very grim.

O'Bannon: How much longer before we get to the aid site.

Wesson: We'll get there soon enough. I'm glad you were willing to risk going back into that hell hole to retrieve more survivors without yet having been set down in a safe area yet.

O: I understand that time is of the essence. Besides that the look that appeared on your face when you received that radio call from base tells me that things have suddenly become even more grave than before. But I have a pastoral calling and I cannot but be willing to sacrifice my life when my Lord has sacrificed himself for me. If there is anything that I can do I am willing.

W: Those are some fine words, Father. But what really impresses is me is that you are willing to say that and go back to that particular place. I have seen seasoned combat troops come out of there screaming in horror. Yet you seem willing to face it all again in spite of knowing first hand what it was all like.

O: Oh, I could barely cope with it at the time, believe me. Five nights ago, it seemed that there was a sudden bright light in the sky that came down into the midst of the city. There was a huge explosion and many of the buildings were damaged from the shock wave. But even that was not the worst of it. Almost immediately several of the city people began to suffer. The began to grab their heads and scream in agony. Nothing could be done for them, even when they were rushed to the hospital. Whatever it was seemed to be affecting their minds. Very often the shear pain would make them pass out into a kind of coma. We tried to gather as many of the poor victims as we could and take them to homes, hospitals, schools, and so on. Whatever cause the syndrome, it seemed to only effect a certain percentage of the population. Many of us seemed totally unaffected by it.

W: I can tell you that what exploded on the city was a commercial satellite that was forced out of orbit by some kind of meteor. HQ thinks that the meteor or th satellite had contact with some kind of alien virus that attacks the brain and the CNS. The rapid spread of the viral effects makes it clear that it is something we haven't seen before. There was nothing we could do but quarantine the city and let the disease run its course. But that wasn't the worse part, was it?

(The priest took a deep breathe.)

O: No. No, not at all. The comatose eventually came to after a few hours or so. But it was clear that their humanity had been lost. They couldn't talk anymore, nor could the use their motor skills as efficiently as before. But even worse, even worse, they began to viciously attack anyone like some feral beast. Family members who were keeping vigil over their sleeping bodies were suddenly jumped by them and torn apart. The disease must have activated an increase in adrenaline because the victims displayed increased strength and speed. They did not stop at the ones near them but they began to rampage the city so that those who had not suffered from the disease still were hurt by those who were. And they didn't just attack them they . . . they . . .

W: They ate them.

O: Yes. Yes! I dare not describe the sites I saw. It must have been like the Black Plague only with people as the vermin and with no escape.

W: Please do not explain further. We have enough grisly documentation by satellite camera and by the various texts and photos from cell phones sent along to us. But can't you look at me when you talk about it?

O: But I am looking at you. Right at your eyes.

W: So I see. Sorry. It must be difficult even for you as a man of faith to accept such a horror from the hand of a supposedly good God.

O: Well, alien or not, what happened must have happened according to the course of the way nature regularly works. I can understand that God might rather make a world with natural regularities so that people could make reliable predictions and plans over one which nothing at all could be predicted, even if that means the some of the consequences include natural disasters.

(The major's stony face looked out of a portal into the night.)

W: Still, did God have to make a lawfully operating world that involved this much pain and horror. Doesn't it bother you at all that there seems to be no good reason for allowing this much suffering? God could have made the world regular without this having to happen.

O: I do know what you mean. But if there is a God, His nature would be such that He could have really good reasons for allowing such things that we in our limited resources cannot fathom, and that would explain we we don't see the reason for them. And there are to many great goods in the world like our mysterious universe and the sacrifices of good people that encourage me to believe that such a God lives.

(The major continued unmoved to look out of the portal and spoke again.)

W: Still, did God have to make a lawfully operating world that involved this much pain and horror. Doesn't it bother you at all that there seems to be no good reason for allowing this much suffering? God could have made the world regular without this having to happen.

O: I do know what you mean. But if there is a God, His nature would be such that He could have really good reasons for allowing such things that we in our limited resources cannot fathom, and that would explain we we don't see the reason for them. And there are to many great goods in the world like our mysterious universe and the sacrifices of good people that encourage me to believe that such a God lives.

(The major turned away from the window and began to stare at the floor between them. He began to rub the temple of his head.)

W: I had a friend and fellow combat officer put it differently. He told me that when he was in Afghanistan fighting, his troop came across a Taliban warlord's compound in a network of mountain caves. Apparently this warlord had been capturing Baha'ists migrating from Iran and had been torturing and abusing them, especially their women and children. The journals they kept were in extreme clinical detail and they told of the absolute indifference toward the victims as human beings. My friend told me that he knew at that time he had encountered genuine evil and not just suffering and that the recognition of the existence of actual evil actually had renewed his belief in God.

O: Yes, it is hard for good willed people to contemplate such a possibility in a fellow human being but there are times when we cannot fail to recognize an objective universal justice, if only when we see it violated.

(The major grimaced and a strange smile traveled part way across his lips. He continued to look at the floor.)

W: It's almost time for drop off.

O: Drop off? I thought we were picking people up? What about those who didn't fall sick to the virus?

W: There is no one who didn't fall sick to the virus.

O: What? What about me?

W: That call that I received informed me that the virus has broken out of the quarantined area into the centers where we were gathering the refugees from the city. They are frantically trying to redraw the quarantine area to contain the virus again.

O: But how could that be?

W: This is the picture we are getting from research. The theory is that it is not a virus but rather a parasite that multiplies and tries to take over the organism of a host body by taking over the higher order functions of the host's brain. The parasite is capable of multiplying and to network with its spawn while each of them work to kill the host and take over the existing neural connections and functional patterns in the brain. The success or failure of this seems to correlate with the rhesus factor in the blood. If the host is type positive, this attempt fails, the host succeeds in surviving the attack, and the parasites die, but the damage from the attack is so devastating that most higher brain functions are destroyed or isolated within the brain. It's like suffering from severe brain damage and falling into a permanently vegetative state, except in this case all that survives are the host's most basic animal instincts. The host essential becomes feral in the worst possible way but they still continue to live.

O: And what happens if the parasites win?

W: What happens if the type is negative is that the host dies and the body becomes simply the vehicle for the colony of parasites that are now using the existing networks to operate the body, camouflage their presence, and continue to spread and multiply. The host is dead but a simulacrum of the former host continues to persist until the parasites can suitably reproduce. The simulacrum is able to reproduce typical and predictable output behaviors to standard situations so that it seems as if the person that was their originally is still there.

O: I see. My blood type is O negative. This is why you were called to take me back to the hot zone.

W: To take us back to the hot zone. I was already pretty well exposed to you long enough before they found out and I'm A positive.

O: And you made it seem like a mercy mission in order to manage us better.

W: It's still a mercy mission of a sort. Even though type positives have become mostly feral, it seems that there is still complex brain activity in the part of the brain that is correlated with dreaming. This activity increases when the animal needs are sated. The feral become sated when they eat the simulacra and eating them destroys the parasites they are carrying while at the same time providing them a little more of their last joys as a human being. Eventually the feral will die -- they cannot survive for very long in that state -- and then controls will come in and clean up the mess. So the plan is to contain the situation until it burns out. No one survives.

O: A pyre for the dead and a hospice for those who are dying. I'm really sorry that you couldn't escape.

(The major collapses down on the floor between them, his face lined with pain.)

W: It was an echo of a good lesson before dying. Besides, being a simulacrum means never having to say you're sorry.

The major laid unconscious on the floor while the priest watched over him.

Archie at 600

Nothing says protracted adolescence like "Archie Andrews". Say what you want about Doonesbury, at least all their primaries survived their respective Mid-Life crises. Now, when the plot starts to actually develop, we see Archie proposing -- to Veronica rather than Betty, indicating Archie's failure to cultivate a learning curve -- which explains why he's been in high school for six decades.

Still the story begins by displaying some higher order alertness, such as reference to Archie as a Peter Pan. But the integrity of the story seems more due to viscosity than to coherence. Finally proposing to either member of Archie's harem would be a groundswell -- if it were really happening. But unlike recent "demises" of Superman and Capt. America, Archie comics lets the cat out of the bag right away. Commit-o-phobic males should take note of what happens when you go down memory lane the wrong direction. You can't call that a spoiler.

The first comics I ever collected where Archie's at 15 cents each and I thought prices were excessive at 30 cents. But here's to a revisit to the land of denominational requirement, monoxidal jalopies, and all you can drink milk shakes, and more states.

PnCing OGL

Or, how to incorporate Pulp in the Cup with D20 rules.

Treat all rolls like oppositional roles, even rolls against a difficulty class (DC).

For rolls against a DC, subtract 10 from the given DC, even if that leaves a negative number. Call this the difficulty adds. So when the player rolls their d20 and adds his bonuses, the GM rolls a 3d6 and adds the difficulty adds. If the player's total beats the GM's total, the player succeeds.

For saving throws against a fixed DC subtract 10 as before, but this time the player rolls a 3d6 and adds their bonuses, and the GM rolls a d20 and adds the difficulty adds to that.

In character versus character contests where both are equally footed (like arm wrestling, foot racing or competing for initiative in combat), everyone rolls a d20.

But in cases where one is acting and the other responding (such as when one is sneaking and the other guarding, or when one is attacking and the other parrying) the initiating player adds their bonuses (or boni) to a d20 roll and the responding player adds their bonuses to a 3d6 roll.

That ought to do it. It will also add some thrill to the game, I think.

Shadows of the Emerald City

Free RPG day has come and gone. I wanted to use it to make a dry run on my new campaign setting idea but no one showed up at the store. Sad. It looks like RPGs are in decline again from where I'm sitting.

About the setting: "Shadows of the Emerald City" (formerly "Mutants of Syracuse")

The Basic Idea: Make an actual city (in this case, Syracuse NY) the setting of a campaign. Syracuse is your typical upstate blighted urban city, standing always in the shadows of NYC (and even Rochester), yet a home to several people whose families have lived here for generations, with strongly defined ethnic neighborhoods and festivals that bring a taste of their cultures to the front. The city is struggling with harsh economic realities and faux relief proposals, just like any American city in a post industrial age. It has its local personalities (car dealers and mall builders, for example) and its own personality.

But also, unknown to the general population, the city is at the nexus of several circles of arcane power, a mysterious reservoir of concentrated perturbations of psychic force that has drawn the attention of those who live in the background of the world. The immediate effect is that this power has imbued several of the residents and given them (or cursed them) with strange powers and advantages, forcing them to go into hiding from the public. This has attracted ambitious scientists who have attempted to harness and understand (typically in that order) these strange powers to their own uses. But others have also noticed, others from in and outside of the Galactic Confederacy of Worlds, which sees Earth as a protected zone and Syracuse as its point of contact, but also yet others from alternate planes of existence also are drawn into the Mystical Vortex, including the Ancient Ones walled off in their Dimensional Prison wishing to reclaim their old authority over Earth. But first the must prevent the Final Cause from being born in the south side of the city.

In this campaign, player characters are Syracusian natives who have become thus surprised by their new powers and have begun to discover this alternate world that co-exists "alongside" the city. They discover the "openings in the hedge" that allow them to see the real contest of power that mundanes aren't able to see. In part, this is like a "Men in Black"/"Harry Potter" type of campaign where the existence of the hidden world is kept secret at all costs. Players have to solve the mysteries behind the curtain while maintaining the facade of civil society.

Often this involves adventures that are set among landmarks familiar to locals - bars, villages, malls, research institutes, and so on. The way these function as portals to the world alongside is in having things like a basement below the basement, the loft above the loft, the floor between the floors, the coliseum inside the phone booth, etc. Also, while the city setting follows the actual city to a large degree, in the actual narrative it is described as an alternate history of Syracuse so that features attributed to locations and persons in the city are not to be confused as attributions of actual locations and persons in the actual history of Syracuse. The setting is set in an alternate version of the 1990's prior to Y2K, Destiny Co. has placated the city boards by rebuilding the New White City" roller coaster park, and Franklin motors has reopened its plant to produce an innovative hybrid vehicle. This also allows a bit more color to be added to the setting.

I am adapting the setting to Mutants and Masterminds because it is a rules lite, narrative friendly, and widely used set of rules. I had to concede that this is a kind of superhero setting but in my mind it is definitely not a four color high power one (no capes!). Fortunately, M&M allows for power level adjustments and their new "Iron Age" supplement captures the vibe I want.

With respect to Christian integration; I am aiming to follow C.S. Lewis' example in his novel "'Til We Have Faces", which is basically to operate within a pagan interpretation of life but to make Christian points from within it, something that a Christian writer is well within their rights to do. The point of course is to work around the cloying familiarity (or rather the "quasi-familiarity) with the Christian tradition that causes people to dismiss understanding it out of hand while subtly reintroducing it afresh one little nudge at a time. And of course, the point is still to entertain and have fun in a creative and social way.

Big Gnus: You want a piece of me?

I have just received word that I (the Gnu) will be in print next year. The up coming volume of Open Court's series of books on philosophy and popular culture "Anime and Philosophy" will contain my chapter entitled "The CPU Has Its Reasons", an exposition of William James paper on the will to believe, using "Armitage the Third: Poly-matrix" to illustrate it.

Finally, my fan tribute op has come.

(And I suppose it has some pedagogical value also.)

Moe for Peno!

I just finished the anime series "Ergo Proxy". This is a thing to see especially if you are now burnt out with the whole anime interest as I imagine many are. The market has gotten pretty saturated with predictable tropes and there seems to be no expectation of avoiding them.

"Ergo Proxy" is not recent but it is breakout. Several of the typical themes in anime appear here. But there is still a greater and refreshing pitch in the execution and direction in this story. It is not a Gonzo product but it does use the latest in CGI techniques. The visuals are stunning and the music score production values are very high. The character designs are closer to American comic styles but are still well done. It is also important that they are not static. Changes in the plot coordinate with changes in the depiction of characters so that the design is part of the story.

There are several philosophical references but much of them are just for kitsch.

The supplements to the DVD indicate that the story was influenced by the turn to the "dark age" of comics in American comics. That's too bad since I have had it up to here with the Dark Age of comics, which seems to have reduced from striving for a sense of authenticity to a formula for a political platitude. However, that decline has not quite found its way into this piece which seem to reflect more of the original inspiration of that movement.

The story is edgy and hard hitting. It is not compromising, which makes this anime more tough than other recent eye candy. The story is fairly complete. There are refreshingly few danglers by the end of this than I have seen in a lot of recent anime. However, some moves still seem to be ad hoc to me.

Commentators speak well of the influence of dystopian nature of the story as if that were the reason to like it. It is dystopian but it trades most on striving being an original story and concept. The element of plausibility that is normally an important feature of a dystopian scenario is not so strongly highlighted here.

One of the things that I like in anime in general is the speculation about robots with a soul. That appears in different degrees of sophistication in many anime features. This anime features them also but without much speculation about their significance. But on the up side, it has one of the most endearing robot characters I have ever seen in an anime so far. One of the main characters is Peno, a robot originally designed as a companion android who gets infected with a computer virus that induces sapience and personhood in robots. But the important thing is the deep way this is portrayed in the story. I couldn't help but worry about this character and her fortunes in the story. What other anime accomplish concerning the theme of sentient robots by introducing exposition, this anime accomplishes in the Dickensian fashion of simply showing rather than saying.

For more details, see the link in the post title.

I have had to take seriously the belief that there very little chance that one is going to find the good stuff saving money. The best anime is often the BANDAI or GENEON which also is more expensive than ADVision.

"Above my pay grade"

It's old news but when Rick Warren had this year's two presidential candidates over to church for a little Q & A introduction to the evangelicals, he asked the Hon. Mr. Obama when he thought human life began. To this Mr. Obama replied that the question was "above his pay grade", suggesting that he did not have the capacity to make a judgment about the answer. The further suggestion was that no human being has the capacity to judge when a human being begins to live and that people who think otherwise (most everyone in the room at the time, I expect) are being presumptuous for whatever motive. This seemed to involve a serious disconnect between Mr. Obama and a good share of the audience in that he certainly must of thought that he was displaying an appropriate humility where that audience perceived arrogance. One recalls that that the character of mainline liberal theology made it a fashion to posture itself as awash in a sea of moral uncertainty, except when it came to certain romantic policies. ("I don't know about the arms race but I do care about the human race!" says a mainline pastor in an old political ad.) Evangelicals are especially sensitive to this as evidence of a rejection of theistic realism.

Someone in the democratic commentariat gave his own analysis of this disconnect as a case of the audience expecting to hear a saintly answer but getting a "head of state" type of answer. I think this shows how much evangelicals a almost perfectly misunderstood. Rather, I don't think evangelicals were expecting a Jesus but they hoped to find was a half-way decent Socrates. Mr. Obama's answer had a certain "hipness" to it continuing to reflect the defects of of old school university ethics education and not the recent developments of applied ethics classes. The old approach highlighted the difficulties of moral deliberation unnecessarily, relying on pedantic trolley and lifeboat examples that only focused on desperate situations. These courses were influenced by prevailing skepticism on moral judgments fueled by positivism about science. This pedagogy came under increased attack as the demand for moral guidance in opening fields of business, medicine, and technology were pressing new cases that required a determination from the moral point of view. Fresh writing from these fields brought new life to ethics. As someone who teaches courses in applied ethics myself, we still focus on practical reasoning and moral dilemmas but with a view that they are actually rare and typically resolvable, thus leading to an optimism about applying ethics to real life. If anything, the "above my pay grade" remark is woefully out of fashion and hearkens back to a deleterious point of view.

Is the question of when human life begins below everyone's pay grade? It seems not because most people don't think so. In answering, let me make three points.

(1) If it is human life we are talking about, clearly the question is when do humans begin to exist and the answer for humans is the same as for any other plant or animal -- at conception. The basis for saying this is as evident for biologists as it is for farmers or anyone else. Our experience with any birth triggers basic intuitions about the beginning of existence of an enduring living substance which can only be threatened by very sophisticated forms of skepticism, which can at least be rebutted. The judgment that human life begins at conception is certainly available to anyone and not above their pay grade.

(2) Of course, having said that, the real question then is not so much when does human being begin to exist but rather when does it become a person. Whatever a person is, it is seen to be the bearer of human rights and duties, a creature of moral standing. However, being a person also has something to do with displaying the attributes of an agent; self-consciousness, rationality, choice, etc. The concept of person is the concept of a natural kind and not just a set of attributes and yet it is also a moral concept. It is a concept that applies on both sides of the fact/value distinction and its the same concept in each case. If we assume that there is a time when the human becomes a person and that some humans may not be persons, this means that personhood is an accidental feature of humanity. But this seems straightforwardly false since the moral dignity of personhood seems to be an objectively intrinsic dignity of that which is a person which could not be the case if personhood were accidental. Our primary evidence for this is in our encounter with another person in the 'second person' -- as a 'you' which we say in face to face contact with the other. It might be suggested that this is an illusion but if so the mechanism of illusion has to be described to include the perception of personhood which is more complex that simply explaining it as a veridical insight. So the simplest explanation is that being a person is co-essential with being a human. It may be easy for people to believe in illusions but it is often harder to believe from a rational point of view that something is best described as an illusion. Certainly, choosing to think that humans are necessarily also persons (with moral dignity) as the most straightforward account is not above anyone's pay grade.

(3) Finally, whatever lingering doubt a person may have about the metaphysics of personhood, one is certainly entitled to think that we would all be better off as people if we choose to promote a culture of life rather than a culture of death. The importance of having an ethical culture is impressed on everyone when we witness the impact of culture on the morals of Southerners and Germans during slavery and the Holocaust. We continue to discover the impact of culture in institutions and governments. The attitude toward persons must be a a crucial factor in a leader. Certainly, to adopt the view that personhood is accidental to human beings is to look at human life as a whole as a case like a lifeboat example, in which people are saved or thrown over depending on whether they are a brain surgeon or a hobo. To be certain that we are better off thinking that humans are persons even though not metaphysically certain that humans are persons is a rational approach. To be neutral on this is just as good as to deny essential personhood to humans and to choose against incorrigible human dignity. The moral rationality of gambling on human dignity is certainly not above anyone's pay grade.

So the folks at the meeting were well within they rights to be miffed by Mr. Obama's remark. They need not be construed as hoping for a perfect saint, but rather as expecting that someone running for executive office would display some sufficient modicum of moral courage. Further, an option open to Mr. Obama would have been to say that while humans as persons begin to be at conception, there are various factors that may make it legitimate to not let them live, such as, at least, the case where they would threaten the mother's life. That is certainly not above anyone's pay grade either even though one might expect that many evangelicals would not like to hear it. But it is conspicuous that Mr. Obama did not take that approach.

Pulp in the Cards

Here is a narrative very-rules-lite mechanism I've been toying with, very much like my "Pulp in the Cup" game, only with cards instead of dice.

SOCIAL CONTRACT: Players design characters and navigate them through a world managed by a Game Master (GM) who conceives of the world and functions as the eyes and ears of the world for the characters. The Game Master also fairly applies the rules of the game, designs the story that the player's characters experience, and tries to assure that the players have a high quality time.

SETTING: The game setting is any setting familiar to all the player's and the Game Master, whether from some popular franchise or designed by the GM.

CHARACTERS: Character design is by straight description. Given the setting and other restrictions set by the GM, the player conceives of a character that fits the setting in a logical and coherent way. The working assumption is that the level of ability of the character is generally adequate to the level of challenge provided by the adventure according to the world of the narrative and is not either over qualified or under qualified for it. A good way to invite the player to design his character is ask him to be able to answer questions such as "How did your character come to be qualified to face this adventure?" and "What motivation led your character to accept this adventure?". The "Character Sheet" is simply the character notes made by the player about his character.

THE DECK: From a standard deck of playing cards, construct a deck of fourteen cards like so:

One black ace
One black deuce
One black four
Both red aces
Both red deuces
Seven picture cards (any mix of suits)

The value of the cards are as follows:

All aces are 1 point.
All deuces are 2 points.
The four is 4 points.
All picture cards are 0 points.

The sum of the points of the black cards represents the quality of the action taken by the character (higher is better). The sum of the points of the red cards represents the quality of the residence to the action by the circumstances (higher is greater). If there are no cards for one or the other color, the sum for that color is 0.


THE RULES:

Standard actions: In the course of playing, if a player 's character finds himself in a situation where he needs to make an action, the situation should be resolved logically from the character's description and the description of the setting. As much as possible, logic and plausibility should decide if a player's action was successful. If there is a chance of failure, resolve the action by the following means:

Have the character's player (which is the GM in the case of non-player characters) shuffle and cut the deck, then deal seven cards off the top. Fan and examine the hand. If the sum of the black cards is larger than the sum of the red cards, the action was a success. The difference between the black and red sums indicates the degree of success of failure. As with 'Pulp in the Cup', the GM describes what happened is such a way as to justify the figures in the result.

If its decided that the cards are necessary to resolve an action, the results should as often as possible be unmodified. But the logic of the description may require that the character be considered especially advantaged or disadvantaged in performing an action. In such a case, the GM may make a subjective judgment of the net difficulty and assign a value from +4 (nearly impossible) to -4 (nearly fool-proof) before the cards are dealt and add the modifier to the black card result before comparing. This modifier can be discussed with the players for cogency but the GM's ruling is final.

Critical successes and fumbles: If the degree of success on the pre-modified deal is +5 or more, the actions was a "critical success" and may have benefits beyond the goal of the action. Similarly, if the degree of failure of an pre-modified deal was -5 or less, the action was a fumble and has other detrimental consequences for the character making the action. The GM determines what these benefits or consequences are.

Resistance deals: If the character is not the acting agent but the recipient of the action (being enchanted, being poisoned, being diseased, etc.) the character's player shuffles, cuts and deals the cards as with a standard action, except the black cards represent the success of the action performed on the character and the red sum represents the resistance to it by the character. These deals may also be modified if deemed appropriate and they may also be critical successes and fumbles.

Combat: Combat between characters, if the story calls for it, proceeds in the following steps:

1. Determine surprise
2. Determine initiative order
3. Resolve combat actions according to initiative order
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until combat is over

If characters do not simply enter the arena of combat on an equal footing, it may be that one opponent may surprise the other. This is settled by a standard action deal using the relevant attribute of the character who is trying to gain surprise against the resistance of the character being surprised (such stealthy movement versus keen sightedness). Again, the description of the characters is decisive. If surprise is successful, the character gaining surprise gets a free attack without retaliation before combat starts. Once surprise has been determined and resolved, proceed to 2.

Initiative Order: Initiative is determined by shuffling the deck and dealing two cards to each combatant. The total number of points (red and black) is taken and whoever has the highest sum is first, then the next and the next. If there are ties, each tied character receives another card to determine the order between them. Keep doing this until all tied characters are resolved. If you run out of cards, go by birth dates or first names. The GM may decide to redo the initiative order after each cycle of combat or keep the initiative order until combat is finished, only adjusting it if combat effects it. It is possible that a character may have an advantage in initiative. In this case, the GM subjectively assigns a number (from 1 - 4) and adds that to each deal (initial deal plus tie breakers).

Combat Action: When a player's turn (or the GM's when the attacker is a non-player character) in the initiative order comes up, the player describes the attack and makes a standard action deal. This may be modified as any other standard action. The effects of a successful attack (a hit) are proportionate to the degree of success indicated by the deal and are determined by the GM (based on skill of the attacker, type of weapon used, etc.). A critical success indicates extended effects (crippling, losing an arm, insanity). A fumble indicates damage to the attackers self (his body or weapon). One of the effects of an attack could be to advance or lose one's place in the initiative order. The GM is encouraged to think creatively about combat and consider how to resolve running away, attacks prepared for in advance of combat, attacks of opportunity, and so on.

End of Combat: Combat continues until one character is incapable of fighting or tries to escape, possibly creating an opportunity for a free attack as in the case of surprise. Not all combat necessarily ends in death. It may end when a character is unconscious or incapacitated. If the character does not need emergency help he should get better over time with sufficient attention. Otherwise, the player will die without special assistance. Again, this should be resolved in the GM's story.

Powers: It is important to maintain the rule that the level of the characters ability is appropriate to the level of the adventure. Introducing powers must be done carefully. Some powers can be treated as skilled standard actions (psychic powers), some as resistance deals (spells) that cost the power user in some way (money, sanity, mana, physical damage), or some may just be part of the definition of the world and always resolve in some predetermined way (super powers). It's up to the GM to decide what world best for his story.

THE END OF THE GAME: This is also a pick-up game and there is no provision for experience points. However, it is possible to have the players keep their character sheets and replay there characters in another adventure. The GM is free to augment the character description to correspond with the in-game experience of the character but the real indication of this is that the character is promoted in rank and is qualified to go on even more challenging adventures than before.

When the game is over, pick up your deck and put it in your shirt pocket.

Gnucomb's Paradox Revisited

Newcomb's Paradox as a model of the rationality of believing in a limited atonement.

Cut from post I wrote on another forum.

A perfect atonement points to a limited atonement, but concerning this I said that, though limited, faith in the atonement for your own salvation was rational even if you could not know for whom exactly Christ died. I had said this as if it were a decision based on uncertainty, such that even if you didn't know if Jesus died for you it was better to gamble that he did than that he didn't (like Pascal's Wager). But it's more complex than that and I was reluctant to go into detail about it, but here it is if you are interested.

The problem is: If Jesus died for you, then you will believe in him in a saving way, but if not then not. So there is no way to isolate the effect of Christ's death for the belier from the believer's belief, as my first pass on this assumes. To illustrate why faith in the atonement is rational, consider the following fanciful story.

The Fairy Godmother appears to Cinderella and gives her a chance to go to the Ball. She presents Cinderella with two boxes, a really big box and a small box. "Listen carefully", says the Fairy, "You must make a choice. You can choose to just open the big box or you can open both boxes. In the small box there is a lovely new mop that will help with your chores, but if you just pick the big box, you don't get what's in the small box. Now you are very dear to me and I know you even better than you know yourself (and I'm magical and can see the future). If you take the big box alone, you will find that I foresaw that and placed a beautiful gown, glass slippers, a carriage and nine, and an invitation to the Ball. But if you take both boxes, I will foresee that and the big box will be empty. (I thought about giving you the trip to the Ball but making you come home at midnight, but what fun is that?)"

"Now, my dear, I have already foreseen your decision and have loaded up the boxes as I said I would. So I will leave you to your choice. Ta-ta." And thus, Cinderella was left to choose the boxes. Now, since it was already a settled fact whether or not something was in the big box, it seems that the most rational thing for Cinderella to do is to open both boxes and take everything, after all, a new mop would come in handy whether or not one goes to the Ball. But given that the state of affairs of the boxes was conditioned on what Cinderella would do, it seems that the most rational thing for her to do is to just open the big box. After all, no new mop is worth giving up a dance with the Prince. So what should Cinderella do? It seems clear that just choosing the big box is rational for Cinderella to given the story, even in spite of the apparent rationality of choosing both.

In a way the sinner who is convinced that the atonement is limited is in a similar situation. He knows that it is already settled who is saved and who isn't by the fact of Christ's death. Those who are saved will be saved and those who are not saved will never be saved. But one only receives the benefits of salvation through faith, so that only those who believe in Christ are saved. So Christ died for all those and only those who believe in him for salvation, and Christ's death foresees faith in those for whom he dies precisely because it is due to Christs death that they come to believe (as we will discuss later). So when a person is confronted with the claims of the gospel and they believe them to be true, they can decide to either believe in Christ or not. To not believe is like choosing both boxes by enjoying a pre-Christian life as much as possible -- after all if Christ died for you then you be saved anyway but if not what difference does it make? But it is clear that no one is atoned for that does not believe. So believing is like choosing just the big box.

Sorry, I've been really sick.

This summer was a bad adventure. One week into teaching, I contracted e coli, as well as seeing the doctor for Gall Bladder disease. It was a nightmare but the good news is that both are behind me and I didn't need surgery. So back to it.

Currently, I am trying to work on a "Pulp in the Cup" scenario set in the Serenity/Firefly universe of Joss Whedon. I also have one set in the "Ghost in the Shell" universe that I have rune a couple of times now and which I should just "write-up" somehow. The question is how.

On the Intellect

A long while ago, I took a stab at trying to defend the irreducibility and existence of the intellect as a defining feature of human beings, which amounted to only a sort of spelling out what I meant without providing a reason to accept it, as (a fellow forumite at ABC Forum) Hal at the time readily and disappointedly noted. I want to try again, this time focusing more on the defense of the faculty. Still, my defense is going to be circumlocutory, (an A.D.D. trait) the basic strategy being to retrace the steps in the dialectic between the three great fathers of western thought; Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. I won't be directly commenting on their works though, just briefly giving my own take on their thought.

To understand is to be able to reduce the plurality of facts to their essential principles and thus make sense of them. Assuming that is possible, how could it be so? Do we first know what things count as examples of what principles and then abstract the principles? But sometimes we realize that we have mistakenly identified things with the wrong principles and sometimes we disagree about which things are to be identified with which principles (especially in cases of morality and religion).

Assume for the sake of argument that we must somehow know the principles already and thus use them to identify the facts and things which exemplify them. But this leads to the following dilemma; If I already know the principles then I don't need to investigate them. If I don't already know the principles, then I cannot investigate them, since they, by assumption, have to be known in order to recognize them in their true examples. Of course, I either know them or I don't. Therefore, either way, investigating principles is unmotivated. But this would mean the end of all reasoning and discovery and the task of understanding is finished before it begins. This cannot be right since in my experience and in the experience of the race, we seem to make genuine progress in understanding through systematic efforts of inquiry and even in particular cases one who has had no education can make discoveries of some universal truths, such as mathematical truths.

How can that be possible, given our dilemma? Well, suppose that knowledge is ambiguous. Suppose that there is some sense we know and some other sense that we do not know what something is or what principle applies to it. Just suppose for the sake of argument, that we knew the truth of something and had forgotten it, but we recalled it through our efforts to investigate which led us to something that served as an inadvertent menomic device, like "a string tied around one's finger". Of course, to make that avoid the dilemma in every possible case, we would have to say that there was a time that we knew everything and that must be some time before any actual day in our life. We must have known it before we were born, forgotten it, but life and investigation bring it back to mind.

This would explain the apparent experience of "discovering truth on our own", which argues that this way of things might be the case. It also avoids the dilemma by showing it to be a fallacy of equivocation; What does the dilemma mean by "I know"? If "I know" means "I knew it before I was born", then my "knowing" does not mean I can't find out about it, since I might have forgotten it, and may still remember it. On the other hand, if "I know" means "I remember it from before I was born", then my not "knowing" it does not mean i cannot find it, because I could have known it from before I was born and not remembered it. So given this theory that identifies discovery as remembering and the two senses of "knowledge" it involves, there is no way to read the dilemma that does not make one or another of its premises false. So if the doctrine of remembering is true, then the dilemma fails, and we can go on investigating and seeking understanding.

Is this doctrine true? We can see it has some explanatory value as a possible way to explain cases of individual discovery of universal truth, but that does not prove it to be true, just that it is prima facie rationally possible. Still, even if that is the best we can do, that means it is not necessarily the case that the dilemma is sound. So even if we can not provide a sufficient theoretical justification for it, we have good reason on prudential grounds to accept it. Extrinsically, many great things have been accomplished through the pursuit of knowledge which would not have if we had followed the consequences of the dilemma. But perhaps even more importantly, the rigor and discipline of study has made us better people in the use of our faculties so that are better people for it. So even if uncertain, it is better to have the fruits of study even if it turns out that study is ultimately hopeless, than if study would be actually rewarding but we choose not to pursue it because of this dilemma. Since we cannot be certain whether the doctrine of remembering is true or false, it is still rational to risk that it is true rather than otherwise.

So we have prudential grounds, if not theoretical grounds, for accepting the recollection view of knowledge. In accepting the risk that our inquiries are not muted by the dilemma above, we must accept that we are risking at least that the world is objectively such a place that such a dilemma is unsound. A recollection world is just such a world. But once we have decided that such a risk is reasonable and accept it, we can ask if a recollection world is the most reasonable account that avoids the dilemma mentioned. We have good reasons for finding a better solution. For example, to redefine what in our experience is discovery and learning as a kind of remembering makes false our normal intuition that when I learn I learn something I didn't know before, that is, it makes false our ordinary judgments about learning and replaces them with something else. In that sense, it seems to be guilty of changing the subject as a way of dealing with the question. Is this really necessary? Further, as a way of explaining inquiry, it seems to make things more complicated than simple. If to understand is to reduce to principles, this theory seems to multiply the phenomena to be explained and does so by introducing hypothetical entities (like pre-existing souls). Also it seems to be redundant. We explain learning -- an encounter between a mind and a truth -- as a form of remembering some previous encounter of a mind and a truth. Why not use whatever works in the supposed prior encounter for the one you are trying to explain? These principles -- don't multiply facts unnecessarily, preserve the appearances, and avoid redundant or regressive explanations -- seem to be principled reasons for preferring one explanation over another. But notice that along with these desiderata is the principle that the explanation should avoid the dilemma above because a view which does so is more prudent than otherwise.

So instead of postulating a mythical prior encounter with the truth, postulate that the resources for understanding are already available in the context of the present encounter you are trying to explain. That means that rather than locating the universal apart from the concrete facts, say that the universal is present with the facts. Rather than postulating a mind prior to the body of the person encountering the facts, say that the mind is present with and as an essential part of the person encountering the facts. Finally, rather saying that the perception of the facts is a mere memento that reminds of a prior encounter with the truth, postulate that the mind directly encounters the universal in the facts as the person focuses on the facts, thus getting a progressively clearer account of what the universal is. This fits better with the principles above and it avoids the dilemma by diagnosing the equivocation in it not be priority in time but by priority in the natural order of cognitive functions. We discover the principle when we discover the fact, since the principle is there with the fact, but that principle is not clear to us until we think hard about what it could be, yet it may be sufficiently clear to us to discriminate between the things that exemplify that principle and the things that do not. It is possible we could be mistaken about that but it is not necessary. And if we have a mind that is developing by use, we may come to reasonably rely on it.

Which means we have good reason to replace the original assumption we started with -- that we have to know the principles before we can know the facts, if "know before" means "know prior in time". We can start with the facts and reason to principals in the sense that the facts already bear the principles and thus present them directly to the mind while the facts are mediately presented to the senses, not because of an arbitrary memory association but rather by the explanatory relationship that exists between the principles and the facts. Of course, this adaptation between the mind and the principles must be no mere accident but find the same principal of explanation in both in a common cause, most particularly finally and formally but also necessarily ultimately efficiently ("and this we call 'God'"). And this mind that is caused and causes knowledge we call the intellect, about which more could be said to follow, such as the immateriality of the intellect and so on, but that's for another time.

So the argument for accepting the doctrine of the intellect is this:

(1) The doctrine of the intellect explains how inquiry is possible. (Inquiry being the task of reducing the diverse facts to their ultimate principles.)

(2) The doctrine of intellect is a better explanation than the doctrine of recollection (or any other rival that tries to show how inquiry is possible, as far as we know).

(3) It is better to accept the doctrine of intellect and continue to pursue inquiry, than it is to reject the doctrine of the intellect and stop inquiry (because we and society will be better for doing so).
--------------------------------------------
(4) Therefore, we should accept the doctrine of the intellect as true.

Science and Whistleblowing

In the Dover trial, one of Judge Jones arguments that he gave to dismiss as religion was the usual one that ID fails to live up to this or that set of criteria for what counts as science. The assumption seems to be that what counts as science must conform to an absolute set of criteria as if such criteria were the necessary and sufficient conditions for science.

Can you imagine if some materialist philosopher in Athens had bumped into Socrates and was confronted by him with the question "What is science?"? Finally, Socrates would find someone who can actually give him the sort of definition he demands, a complete conceptual analysis of "science" without any slave boys to encourage him. But I imagine that Socrates would say that in the end what the philosopher is doing is simply providing an example of reasoning and that the real relevant target is to know what reason is. And to identify the definition of reason with the example of science would certainly fail Socrates test. "Science" would then be form of reasoning the philosopher happens to like the most.

But it occurs to me that identifying what has the right to considered science is very similar to identifying whether someone has the right to blow the whistle against his superiors. In such a case, instead of providing the would be whistle blower with hard and fast rules or criteria, ethicists typically provide a set of guidelines to help people determine this such as; do you have documentation for the wrongdoing you are about to expose, have you tried the instituted channels first, will whistle blowing make significant difference, etc. However, the guidelines provide an unnecessary but sufficient criteria that succeeds in identifying the right to blow the whistle, but it is clear that in the nature of some cases, one could have the right to do it without satisfying one or another of the guidelines. For example, the whistle blower may not be able to provide documentation because of national or corporate security reasons (i.e. trade secrets) or he may already have evidence that the ones who are involved in the proper channels are part of the conspiracy. But exceptions like this would not disqualify him from the right to blow the whistle, since the provide legitimate exceptions to the guidelines.

Now why is this not true of science? There are certainly certain conditions that we would like to satisfy in providing any scientific theory such as reproducibility, explanatory simplicity, fecundity, and predictive power. However there are many things that we can explain but not predict and that we can predict but not explain. In particular, there are many things that empirical examination informs us about which are not in principle reproducible, such as the Big Bang, the extinction of the dinosaurs, and other original phenomena in nature. Why aren't these cases similar to cases where one or another guideline of whistle blowing is legitimately suspended because of the nature of the case? There may be debates about whether a particular case counts as a case of original phenomena or a phenomena that ordinarily happens but that would simple turn out to be a debate over whether a scientific approach would legitimately suspend the criterion of reproducibility or not, not whether or not the account would be scientific.

It seems to me that ID draws it conclusions based on highly specialized empirical investigations into phenomena occurring in nature. That ID argues for these cases as original phenomena does not seem to make it unscientific, given what I have said. Paul Davies in one place postulates the existence of "Informational Laws" that are other than the physical laws but which account for certain cases of sudden information complexity in nature, since physical laws alone cannot. However, he thinks that these information laws are emergences of natural processes. If this means that there was a time when information laws didn't exist and then the did, I don't see how this improves upon Dawkin's "Aliens did it" claim, now made famous in the new film "Expelled". It just removes the explanation one step back. But if information laws "immediately emerge", that is, if they are the ultimate explanation of what seems to be a fundamental and irreducible part of nature itself, then it would be explain by virtue of being a necessary part of our view of nature. There must be a non-contingent source of information laws in order to explain cosmological phenomena (and this is what everyone means by "God"). But this is science not disconfirming theology rather than theology substituting for science.

Darwin and Hitler

The new film Expelled!, which I haven't seen and am not sure if I will see, makes some kind of claim about the relation between Darwinism and Hitler, only I am not sure yet what it is. The reviewers seem to perceive different claims being made.

One claim that is certainly false is that Naturalistic Darwinism (hereafter 'Darwinism') logically entails Social Darwinism. But there is nothing inconsistent with being a Darwinist and being against eugenics of any kind. There is still an account to be given about what sort of reasons might be given by a Darwinist to oppose eugenics, but it is not hard to imaging a possible social costs versus social benefits analysis type of account as possibly being empirically justified. So hopefully the movie is not embarrassingly making this claim.

However, one thing that can be said is that Darwinism sees all things as merely instrumental or extrinsic causes, and that includes human beings. So there is nothing inconsistent about being a Darwinist and being a eugenicist either. It is inconsistent with Darwinism to think that human beings are actual ends and not means (or mere means). It may be that even if Darwinism does not entail social Darwinism, it may be that there is no good comprehensive social policy that is consistent with Darwinism.

A possible exception to that claim would be treating human beings as if they were ends because that is the way the majority of people prefer to be treated. This can be secured through a social contract. Of course, if people's preferences change, so would the contract and there would be no motivation to resit it. Whether or not people ever adopted such a contract would be a matter of probability. However, if the eligible preferences are to be restricted to rational preferences such that they comport to the widest view of all the facts and all that we accept as true, it seems that we would reject a fortuitous preference for "as-if-endship" for a Weberian bureaucracy.

One connection that people are claiming to find is that Darwinism "inspires" eugenics or social Darwinism. This seems to mean that when one comprehends the meaning of Darwinism, one tends to adopt eugenics policies rather than otherwise -- something about the Darwinian vision creates a proclivity to accept eugenics. Perhaps something about the affirmation that, after all, humans are mere means, tends to attract the simpler minded to adopt the apparently most radical and clear way to affirm this (i.e. through adopting eugenics or Social Darwinism) rather than consider all the possibilities. This for the Darwinist would be a sociological question rather than a theoretical one. The evidence usually sited -- that Hitler continuously refers to Darwin as support for his ideology -- only fails to disconfirm the claim, but does not provided a significant sample for support.

Worldview and Truth

This is sort of a continuation of my thoughts about worldview and the two types of virtue.

Let's look at intellectual virtue as a moral virtue again. I take it that worldview formation would be an intellectual virtue of this sort, a virtue the good of which is intrinsic to itself and not merely extrinsic to it. Assuming that is right, what is the relation between such an intellectual virtue and truth? Not that the virtue maximizes truth relative to error in a reliable way, since that would just be extrinsic. The merit of the virtue is self-authenticating in the sense that if the virtue has a character then it succeeds by fulfilling its own characteristic ends.

This seems to point to some kind of epistemic theory of truth for such a virtue: truth is the final form such thinking takes and insofar as the state of my thinking is similar to that final state (CS Pierce). This conclusion is unattractive for a realist and I would intuitively want to be a realist, one that thinks of truth as a correspondence at least between thought and reality. What to do? If I want to recommend worldview formation as an intellectual intrinsic virtue but be a realist at the same time, how is that possible?

One approach to worldviews and truth is to see a worldview in itself as a set of truth claims. A worldview is a set of defining beliefs such that one has to hold such beliefs in order to be a member in good standing of a certain community. As such these beliefs are truth valued and evaluable by tests such as confirmation by evidence, logical consistency, existential confirmation, and so on. It seems to be a necessary condition of a worldview that it would receive a positive evaluation on such an approach.

However, it clearly would not be sufficient if worldview formation is an intrinsic intellectual virtue. One could have the appropriate set of beliefs that pass the test above based on nothing else but extrinsic intellectual virtues (and moral ones -- with the possible exception of whatever 'existential confirmation' turns out to mean).

(In fact, if existential confirmation means an intrinsic satisfaction, that raises the question of whether it is truth indicative.)

So something could satisfy the account of truth evaluation of worldviews given and still not be a worldview.

What to say then? As I understand the idea of worldview formation as an intrinsic intellectual virtue, worldview formation makes an integrated agent possible. A person with a well formed worldview is able approach everything with a common identity. She is not one person in one set of circumstances and another person in another where what determines which she is is the circumstances and not her reasons. So worldview formation is an essential to soul-making and and character building, which is a form of coming into being. This suggests that the truth maker for worldview formation as an intellectual virtue is the soul being made, whether or not and to what extent that soul is actualized.

Darwin and Worldview again

Here is something that a Darwinist might say in reply to my linked post. "It seems that the crucial aspect of worldview forming for you is the role it plays in the personal integration of the agent, which means the role it has in cultivating virtues in the agent. An integrated agent is one whose actions and reason are appropriately tied to virtues. But if that is right, then this poses no inconsistency for Darwinism. What makes a tendency a virtue is that in tends to maximize some good whether that end be truth, in the case of intellectual virtues, or happiness, in the case of moral virtues. The fruitfulness of virtues with respect to these ends is what makes those virtues virtuous (or simply "right"). And if one has several virtues, whether intellectual or moral, each of which is right, then a person is right through and through. What more can "integration of the agent" ask for? But it is clear that there is no paradox between this picture of personal integration and Darwinism. Methodological naturalism is an example of an intellectual virtue in this sense and right dispositions can be selected by fitness. In fact, Darwinism expects that picture. So Darwinists do get their worldview without a hitch after all."

This plays on a distinction that Aristotle makes between intellectual and moral virtues, which is a distinction not only between intellect and character but also a distinction between two senses of how something can be a virtue. On standard interpretations, for Aristotle an intellectual disposition is virtuous if it maximizes truth relative to error, but the benefit of a moral virtue is intrinsic to the disposition itself. Further, intellectual virtues are passive and receptive, while moral virtues are active and agent-expressive.

However, one could suggest that we see moral virtues as being like Aristotle's intellectual virtues, as virtuous because they maximize goods relative to bads. And one could even suggest that we see intellectual virtues as being like Aristotle's moral virtues, as privileging the truth that intrinsically results from a certain form of inquiry. To make a long story short one could identify four kinds of virtue; (a) intellectual passive virtues, (b) intellectual active virtues, (c) moral passive virtues, (d) moral active virtues. A problem with Aristotle's selections, (a) and (d), is that many see them to be in a kind of tension. One solution is to either adopt (a) and (c) or (b) and (d) to deny the tension. But another option is to accept all four to embrace the tension more uniformly.

In my first post, it seems clear that by worldview formation, I had in mind cultivating an intellectual virtue of type (b) to facilitate cultivating moral virtue of type (d). But I also think that virtues in the sense of (a) and (c) a relevant and necessary for this to be possible. This means i embrace the strategy of seizing the tension. The cultivation of active virtues in necessarily involved in rendering the results of the passive virtues into a coherent system for ourselves as agents. But that means accepting the point that this system is more tenuous than either (a) and (c) or (b) and (d), although the only (b) and (d) option is still open for me.

The Darwinist however avoids my objection by embracing only (a) and (c) and he does so successfully.

"There's this guy named William Alston . . ."

At the link, Pastor Tim Keller of Church of the Redeemer, gives a summary of some of his recent book of arguments for God and their relation to faith at Author's@Google. Keller is a highly competent pastor and church organizer and leader. He is also a fairly good reader of philosophy as a representative of an educated profession. His presentation gives examples of some of the best stuff out there in current philosophy, science, and social thought. This is pretty much as well as we can expect from him and he has done a good job. But he immediately gets sandbagged by the first objection, which clearly is given by someone who knows either professional philosophy or some other highly academic field. However, this hardly amounts to being a reason for giving up, since his own experience in reading let's hims know that there could be something that someone could say in professional philosophy against it and his own argument was that it is reasonable to take a chance on God in spite of the evidential uncertainty surrounding the claim of His existence.

If we accept that God is bigger than us and may have reasons for allowing suffering that we are not in an adequate position to detect, does it follow that anything follows from the nature of God and his "goodness", such as rewarding an atheist for his lack of faith or condemning a theist for believing? Does it follow that since some things that God tolerates are not what we expect that we cannot form reasonable expectations at all in what counts as good or evil for us within our ability to judge? I reasonable expect that if I trust Him, He will respond to me even though its possible, for all I know, that he could be justified in not doing so. I reasonable expect that if I do not trust Him, He will not respond to me even though its possible, for all I know, that he could be justified in doing so. This is because it is reasonable to think that God's character constrains His actions such that not just anything at all is possible, even if I cannot always tell what should or shouldn't happen. It still seems that Keller's conclusion is sustained that it takes less of a risk to believe in God than to not do so.