Raskolnikov, Lost in the Cosmos

Five interesting testimonies

2010-01-03T23:24:00.000Z

I am always fascinated to hear about the ways in which God has worked in people’s lives to draw them to himself. Every such story is interesting (and, moreover, a cause for rejoicing), and so perhaps the title of this post is badly chosen. But I choose to retain it because these are all testimonies with which I particularly identify in some way or other. I hope that many of my readers will feel the same way.

1) Escape from nihilism by J. Budziszewski

J. Budziszewski is a professor of Philosophy and Government at the University of Texas at Austin.

When some people flee from God they rob and kill. When others flee from God they do a lot of drugs and have a lot of sex. When I fled from God I didn't do any of those things; my way of fleeing was to get stupid. Though it always comes as a surprise to intellectuals, there are some forms of stupidity that one must be highly intelligent and educated to commit. God keeps them in his arsenal to pull down mulish pride, and I discovered them all. That is how I ended up doing a doctoral dissertation to prove that we make up the difference between good and evil and that we aren't responsible for what we do. I remember now that I even taught these things to students; now that's sin.

It was also agony. You cannot imagine what a person has to do to himself--well, if you are like I was, maybe you can--what a person has to do to himself to go on believing such nonsense. […]

Visualize a man opening up the access panels of his mind and pulling out all the components that have God's image stamped on them. The problem is that they all have God's image stamped on them, so the man can never stop. No matter how much he pulls out, there's still more to pull. I was that man. Because I pulled out more and more, there was less and less that I could think about. But because there was less and less that I could think about, I thought I was becoming more and more focussed. Because I believed things that filled me with dread, I thought I was smarter and braver than the people who didn't believe them. I thought I saw an emptiness at the heart of the universe that was hidden from their foolish eyes. Of course I was the fool.

2) How I came to faith by William Lane Craig

William Lane Craig is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology in La Mirada, California.

I became very bitter toward the institutional church because of the phoniness that I thought it represented […] I began to read the New Testament […] and as I did so I was absolutely captivated by the person of Jesus of Nazareth. There was a wisdom about his teaching that I had never encountered before, and there was an authenticity about his life that wasn’t characteristic of [some of] his followers […] I realised at that point that I couldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

3) Quam dilecta by Peter van Inwagen

Peter van Inwagen is John Cardinal O'Hara Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.

There is, I believe, an identifiable and cohesive historical phenomenon that named itself the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, and which, although it long ago abandoned the name, still exists. Like the Church, it does not speak with one voice. Like the Church, it has no central government. Like the Church, it is made up of many groups some of which heartily detest many of the others--some of which, indeed, regard themselves as its sole true representatives and all others who claim to be its representatives as wolves in sheep's clothing. Like the Church, it has a creed, although, unlike the Church's creeds, its creed has never received an official formulation. […]

The Enlightenment has had its chance with me and I have found it wanting. I was once one of its adherents, and now I am an apostate. On the level of intellectual argument and evidence, it leaves a lot to be desired. And its social consequences have been horrible.

I am going to compare the attractiveness of the Church and the Enlightenment. I will group my comparisons into three parts. First, it seems to me, the teachings of the Church are, as I shall say, "congruent" with the facts of science and history in a way that the "creed" of the Enlightenment is not, and I shall discuss this. Secondly, I shall compare the "fruits" of the Church with the fruits of the Enlightenment. Thirdly, I shall compare the effects of adherence to the Church and to the Enlightenment in the lives of individuals.

4) A surprising discovery by Anne Rice

Anne Rice is the author of the hugely successful Vampire Chronicles and many other books.

I had taken in a lot of fashionable notions about Jesus—that he’d been oversold, that the Gospels were “late” documents, that we really didn’t know anything about him, that violence and quarrelling marked the movement of Christianity from its start. I’d acquired many books on Jesus, and the filled the shelves of my office. […]

What gradually came clear to me was that many of the skeptical arguments—arguments that insisted most of the Gospels were suspect, for instance, or written too late to be eyewitness accounts—lacked coherence. They were not elegant. Arguments about Jesus himself were full of conjecture. Some books were no more than assumptions piled upon assumptions. Absurd conclusions were reached on the basis of little or no data at all.

In sum, the whole case for the nondivine Jesus who stumbled into Jerusalem and somehow got crucified by nobody and had nothing to do with the founding of Christianity and would be horrified by it if he knew about it—that the whole picture which has floated in the liberal circles I frequented as an atheist for thirty years—that case was not made. Not only was it not made. I discovered in this field some of the worst and most biased scholarship I’d ever read.

5) I am second by Brian ‘Head’ Welch

Brian Welch was formerly the guitarist for (and a founding member of) the multiplatinum nu-metal band KoRn, and is now a solo artist.

I felt so much fatherly love from heaven, and it was like ‘I don’t condemn you; I love you’. It was just love. And instantly that love from God came into me. […] It changed me – my heart was changed like that.

My dream came true way more than I dreamt about. […] I tried everything to try to get pleasure out of this life, and I thought that I could fulfil my life with all this stuff, having my dream come true. It came true, but it didn’t fulfil it. And Christ came in, that feeling he gives you: the gift of understanding life, which is that everything was created for Christ and by him, and we’re created to be with him. And it’s the most incredible feeling because you’re where you belong.

When all you have is a book on fallacies…

2010-01-02T01:12:00.002Z

A dear friend gave me How to win every argument: The use and abuse of logic (London: Continuum, 2007) by Madsen Pirie as a Christmas gift. It is possible that the friend in question will read this blog post (hi D!), so I should begin by stressing that I am very pleased with the gift and that I will certainly continue to read it despite the infuriating flaw in it that I am about to describe. In fact, I am touched by the gesture, since, according to a ‘publisher’s warning’ on the back cover, ‘In the wrong hands this book is very dangerous […] Only buy this book as a gift if you are sure that you can trust the recipient’. It is good to be trusted.

The aim of the book is to provide a list of formal and informal logical fallacies often seen in argument, with descriptions and examples. One of the fallacies listed is the ‘conclusion which denies premises’, about which Pirie has the following to say:

The conclusion which denies its premises constantly slips uninvited into religious arguments. People are so used to thinking of divine beings as exceptions to every rule that they tend to use the word ‘everything’ when they mean ‘everything except God’.

Everything must have a cause. That, in turn, must have a previous cause. Since it cannot go back forever, we know that there must be an uncaused causer to start the process.

(But if everything must have a cause, how can there be such a thing as an uncaused causer?)

The fallacy has a most distinguished history, being used (although not identified as such) by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas among many others. It has many faces. The ‘uncaused causer’ can be a ‘first cause’ or even a ‘first mover’. It can be reworded in many ways, but never without fallacy. (p 36)

Here’s a task for my readers: find a point in either Aristotle or Aquinas where either makes anything like as boneheaded an argument as is attributed to him here. Collaboration is allowed, although I wouldn’t expect much help from Dr. Pirie himself. One area in which he is helpful, though, is in his exposition of the straw man fallacy:

The straw man is, in short, a misrepresentation of your opponent’s position […] Like the ignorati elenchi society he belongs to, he is totally beside the point. His function is to elicit, by the ease of his demolition, a scorn which can be directed at the real figure he represents. (pp 155-6)

That is what is going on in the utter travesty of the philosopher and the angelic doctor quoted above. The sad thing is that Pirie is by no means alone in this tendency, as Edward Feser points out in a highly recommended blog post:

There are surely hundreds or even thousands of philosophers who think Aquinas is guilty of various fallacies because they simply don’t understand what his arguments are really about. […]

Take what everyone “knows” to be the “basic” Cosmological Argument for God’s existence: Everything has a cause; so the universe has a cause, namely God. This argument is notoriously bad: If everything has a cause, then what caused God? And if God needn’t have had a cause, why must the universe have one? Etc. The thing is, not one of the best-known defenders of the Cosmological Argument in the history of philosophy ever gave this stupid argument. Not Plato, not Aristotle, not al-Ghazali, not Maimonides, not Aquinas, not Duns Scotus, not Leibniz, not Samuel Clarke, not Garrigou-Lagrange, not Mortimer Adler, not William Lane Craig, not Richard Swinburne. And, for that matter, not anyone else either, as far as I know. (My emphasis)

Don’t believe me (and Feser)? Then go to the relevant page of the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy and see for yourself.

01/01/10

2010-01-01T23:37:00.001Z

A few scattered thoughts for the first day of the decade.

2010 and the 2010s

(In speech,) I will be referring to this year as ‘twenty ten’, not ‘two thousand ten’ or ‘two thousand and ten’, and this decade as the ‘tens’ or ‘twenty tens’, not the ‘teens’ or ‘teenies’ or whatever. The decade with the silly name is over, and in these times of austerity is behoves us to keep things simple. It will also help non-native English speakers no end if the system for talking about years gets back to what it was until 1999.

The falling post count: a resolution

2007: 63 posts
2008: 49
2009: 23
2010: ?

This is a cause for concern, no doubt. I hope that the reduction in post frequency is due to my holding higher standards with regards to what I allow to appear here, although that would probably be wishful thinking. With this in mind, I am making a new year’s resolution to blog more this year than last. Given that I gave up blogging and blogs for Lent last year, this marks something of a turnaround. Also: anyone who was waiting for the long-promised follow-up to my post on Jackendoff and conceptualist semantics shouldn’t lose hope just yet (although that may not appear for another few months).

Predictions

Argentina will win the Football World Cup (controversial…).
The result of the UK general election will be a hung parliament with the Conservatives the biggest party (not so controversial).
Absolutely nothing will be done about banking regulation, remuneration or anything else that will prevent global recessions in the future.
Tiger Woods will not appear in public at all if he can help it, never mind play in a major golf tournament.
Cadbury’s will be bought out by Kraft after all.
The Nobel Peace Prize will not be won by an American liberal, for once.

Final greetings

May God pour out all his blessings on you this year, this decade, and always. Happy New Year!

Calling all Europeans

2009-12-04T18:41:00.004Z

From the ProLife Alliance:

Across the European Union pro-lifers in member countries are collecting signatures for this petition in defence of the right to life of the human embryo, to coincide with the 60th Anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights. It is vital that the United Kingdom supports this initiative.
The European Union is the only vehicle for receiving such a petition from European citizens and this is primarily addressed to the President of the EU, but it is intended to send copies to the Council and Commission as well.

We ask you to participate either by signing online (see form below) or by downloading and printing the petition here to collect the signatures of your friends.

Please only sign the petition if you are a UK resident and if you haven’t already signed this petition. Please send completed signature pages to:

ProLife Alliance
PO Box 13395
London SW3 6XE

The ProLife Alliance will ensure that all online and paper signatures are forwarded to the President of the European Union. We must act immediately as it is intended to present all signatures after the forthcoming European Elections.

The petition itself can be found here.

A public service announcement

2009-11-20T22:19:00.001Z

from Pastor Justin Cox of P4CM:

New comments settings

2009-11-20T10:51:00.002Z

I've had to introduce a word verification step for comments on this blog following a spam attack from ‘freefun0616’. I suppose everyone else had this already but I perhaps foolishly thought I could get away without it. Sorry for the extra inconvenience this will cause.

The Nobel Peace Prize committee has surpassed itself

2009-10-10T19:34:00.003+01:00

Having complained two years ago when the prize was given to Al Gore, I could hardly let this year’s awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama pass without comment. When the deadline for nominations came around (February 1), Mr. Obama had been in office for two weeks. By then, of course, he hadn’t done a whole lot for world peace. Subsequently he hasn’t done a whole lot more.

In 2007 I said that ‘The judges appear, for some reason, to have been motivated to make some kind of political point beyond their remit’. This time there’s no ‘appears’ about it. According to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, the award is justified because

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play.

In other words, Obama gets the award for not being George W. Bush. OK, so we can be clear, the members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee are:
Thorbjørn Jagland
Kaci Kullmann Five
Sissel Marie Rønbeck
Inger-Marie Ytterhorn
Ågot Valle

I make the list as a name-and-shame exercise because, frankly, Europeans like this are an embarrassment to the continent (and yes, I consider myself a European). The tireless Bush-baiting was tedious enough while Dubya was still American President; the fact that it’s continuing now is, as I say, embarrassing (and I was never a fan of Dubya). Moreover, it cheapens the efforts of Nobel Laureates who have actually done something for their awards. For what it’s worth, I would have given this year’s prize to Morgan Tsvangirai.

Go here for an excellently-worded response to the fiasco by The Times.

Album review: The Incident by Porcupine Tree

2009-09-15T21:49:00.003+01:00

Porcupine Tree, The Incident (Roadrunner: 2009)

In the run-up to the release of this album I had two conflicting emotions. The first was great anticipation, because I’m a big fan of Porcupine Tree and their last album (2007’s Fear of a Blank Planet) was of very high quality. The second was a degree of trepidation when I heard that the new release would actually be a single 55-minute song split up into 14 tracks. That led me to expect a spaced-out affair like The Sky Moved Sideways, and I have more than enough albums like that already.

I needn’t have worried. While this (concept) album definitely sounds like an album, a single piece of work, it also contains a great deal of variety. So, for example, there are downtuned riffs liberally spread throughout, but also haunting synth-glockenspiel on ‘Drawing the Line’, Nine Inch Nails-esque robotic menace on the title track, a soaring guitar solo on ‘Time Flies’ and acoustic guitar atmospherics on that track, ‘Great Expectations’ (also featuring calming piano and vocal harmonies) and album-closer ‘I Drive the Hearse’, which sums the mood of the whole up beautifully with the genius simplicity of its chorus lyrics ‘And silence is another way of saying what I want to say / And lying is another way of hoping it will go away’. At the same time, the unity of the record is shown by the fact that the riff on the album opener ‘Occam’s Razor’ keeps popping up in different places without sounding incongruous, and by the recurrent lyrical themes. When the same few lines unexpectedly turned up on ‘The Séance’ as had on ‘Octane Twisted’ I nearly punched the air. This unity is such that first single ‘Time Flies’ sounds much better in the context of the album than it does on its own; although I should point out that the album version is also considerably longer.

In fact, I can truly say that on this album Porcupine Tree have perfectly married the soft prog (and sometimes spaced out) sounds of their 90s albums with the heavier metal of this decade that got them signed to Roadrunner. You can tell that the band have worked really hard on this piece of work, without falling into attendant traps like over-production. This is the best album that Porcupine Tree have ever released and I can’t see how they will ever be able to top it; but I would love to be proved wrong.

All the above is about CD1. CD2 isn’t up to the same standard, or even, really, that of the Nil Recurring EP, to which it is quite similar in spirit. But, frankly, you can treat CD2 as a bonus. CD1, The Incident, is the album of the year.

Track list: CD1 – The Incident

Occam’s Razor
The Blind House
Great Expectations
Kneel and Disconnect
Drawing the Line
The Incident
Your Unpleasant Family
The Yellow Windows of the Evening Train
Time Flies
Degree Zero of Liberty
Octane Twisted
The Séance
Circle of Manias
I Drive the Hearse

CD2

Flicker
Bonnie the Cat
Black Dahlia
Remember Me Lover

Album review: The Resistance by Muse

2009-09-14T21:27:00.003+01:00

Muse, The Resistance (Helium 3: 2009)

There are probably at least two types of Muse fan out there. If you thought Black Holes and Revelations was their best release to date, and genuinely deserved a Mercury Prize nomination, you’ll probably enjoy this album quite a lot. If, however, like me, you felt let down by BHaR, thought that it was mostly filler, and suspected that Muse were halfway to becoming a pop group (and didn’t like the idea of that), you’ll want to give The Resistance a miss. Maybe I’m the only one. Anyway…

Uprising: You’ve almost certainly heard this already. Prominent bassline and sci-fi sounds seemingly straight out of the Doctor Who theme tune. Pretty funky.
Resistance: The intro reminds me of ‘Interlude’ from Absolution. Overall, it is really rather bland, despite some interesting twiddles in the final section. ‘Love is our resistance’. Ahhh.
Undisclosed Desires: Ugh. This is a straightforwardly corny pop song that spends a while threatening to do something interesting, but never does.
United States of Eurasia / Collateral Damage: The other song you’ve almost certainly heard already. The piano work is good, but I think Muse’s Queen fascination has been taken to unhealthy levels. I don’t mind admitting that I don’t like Queen.
Guiding Light: There’s an 80s synth-pop beat going on here. At 1:00 a riff kicks in, then at 2:06 a guitar solo. I’m not sure at what point exactly, but somewhere between the two it becomes obvious that this is a power ballad. Skip.
Unnatural Selection: Finally the album gets somewhere near heavy. Pretty cool riffs; a good, threatening middle section with slowish guitar solo and vocal harmonies that actually remind me of System of a Down (maybe I’m going mad). The standout track so far.
MK Ultra: Some more good riffs on both synth and guitar, but a bit of a rubbish chorus. There’s more to like than to dislike here, just.
I Belong To You / Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix: Quite funky in parts, although not in a way that I think would bear much re-listening before it gets annoying. Not sure about the production, but meh. Terrible lyrics: ‘Then she attacks me like a Leo, / When my heart is split like Rio, / But, I assure you my debts are real’.
Exogenesis: Symphony, Part 1 (Overture)
Exogenesis: Symphony, Part 2 (Cross-Pollination)
Exogenesis: Symphony, Part 3 (Redemption): The band and orchestra merge perfectly. If this three-part ‘symphony’ were being released on its own, say as an EP or single, I’d give it full marks and recommend everyone go out and buy it; but it’s not, and these three tracks can’t save the album from being average.

So there you have it. In keeping with the title, a whole load of songs on this record complain about a mysterious ‘they’. I can understand why a lot of people will like this album, and they’re welcome to it, but I’m not among them.

Getting the crystal ball out

2009-07-22T13:00:00.002+01:00

In a comment on the comments on my last post, Blue Devil Knight complained that

It is hilarious that people would liken homosexual lovin' to incest and cannibalism. In 100 years it will be funny to look back at these types of arguments, the kooky old days.

Firstly, I should point out that I didn’t ‘liken homosexual lovin' to incest and cannibalism’; what I did was to cite incest and cannibalism as counterexamples to a certain sexual ethic used to justify ‘homosexual lovin’ (and much else), according to which anything that consenting adults do to each other in private is OK. But I took care of this at the time. What I want to do now is to focus on the second of BDK’s contentions, starting with an argumentum ad dinosaur comics:

HT: robhu

The point should be obvious: neither I, BDK nor anyone else has any idea of what people will find acceptable, unacceptable or ‘kooky’ in 100 years’ time, and so trying to argue on that basis is ridiculous on its face. I also found the specific topic of the dinosaurs’ discussion particularly relevant to the discussion in my blog post. Maybe if our culture does ‘end up swinging towards rampant fleshotarianism’ in the future, then campaigners for vegetarianism will be accused of ‘carniphobia’ – which would be about as brainless as accusing campaigners for traditional morality now of ‘homophobia’.

Carniphobia: a dialogue

2009-07-07T12:57:00.002+01:00

The scene is a university canteen. Adam is affixing a poster bearing the slogan ‘Meat is Murder’ to the student noticeboard. Bob, a coursemate of his, approaches Adam.

Bob: What are you doing?
Adam: Organising a vegetarianism meeting. Are you interested?
B: Furrows his brow No. And I didn’t have you down as a carniphobe, either.
A: What?
B: You’re campaigning against people eating meat?
A: Yes.
B: You’re a carniphobe. You’re bigoted and prejudiced against people like me who eat meat.
A: Puzzled No I’m not. I just think eating meat is immoral. I mean, don’t you think that…
B: If you don’t like eating meat, then don’t do it. What business of yours is it what grown adults put in their own bodies?
A: Well, I suppose there’s a sense in which it’s not ‘my business’. If someone stole from someone else on the other side of the world today, there’s a sense in which that’s not my business; but that doesn’t mean I’m not entitled to a moral opinion about it, or to campaign against it. Same here.
B: Eating meat is part of who I am!
A: Well, I’m not entirely sure that people are born carnivorous…
B: I WAS!
A: …but even if they are, that doesn’t mean that going along with that is OK. The fact that you, I or anyone has a tendency, inclination or urge or do something doesn’t make it OK to do that thing, even if the urge or whatever is innate. Wouldn’t you agree that animals…
B: Eating meat is almost completely accepted in society these days, except by wackos like you.
A: Uh, have you considered the possibility that ‘society’ is wrong about this?

Clive, a representative of the Student Union, approaches Adam and Bob.

Clive: What’s going on?
B: This bigot…
Adam shows one of his posters to Clive
C: No, no, no, you can’t use a university room for a meeting like this!
A: Why not?
C: You’re in contravention of Student Union Equality and Diversity policy. We can’t condone discriminatory events like this.
B: Thank you.
A: Discriminatory?
C: Yes. This event discriminates against carnivores, so you can’t hold it on campus.
A: Has the world gone mad?

(This dialogue was inspired by an old blog post from William Vallicella).

‘There is no magic’, part 1: conceptualist semantics

2009-06-23T10:00:00.012+01:00

I often hear the complaint that involving God in an explanation for anything that happens in the world is an appeal to ‘magic’ and therefore Not Allowed. In fact, this charge is levelled against any explanation which does not assume metaphysical naturalism. Ray Jackendoff makes this exact move in his 2002 book Foundations of Language: Meaning, Brain, Grammar, Evolution (Oxford: OUP), in the course of giving an outline of what he thinks a semantics of natural language should be like:

I propose to begin from the following surely uncontroversial postulate:

People find sentences (and other entities) meaningful because of something going on in their brains.

That is, we are ultimately interested not in the question: What is meaning? but rather: what makes things meaningful to people? This anchors the enterprise both in the theory of psychology and in ordinary human experience.
A second postulate is:

There is no magic.

That is, we seek a thoroughly naturalistic explanation that ultimately can be embedded in our understanding of the physical world.
Such an explanation comes at a heavy price. (p268)

Now, I could say something about Jackendoff’s first postulate, but for present purposes I want simply to take it as an introduction to the second. Of course, Jackendoff isn’t talking about God – the ‘magic’ charge is one he will come to level at rival theorists in semantics. I want to take a brief look at whether, by his own lights, Jackendoff’s own theory avoids being magical. I hope this will cast some light on the question of whether or not ‘a thoroughly naturalistic explanation that ultimately can be embedded in our understanding of the physical world’ is what we really should be after, or indeed what it would look like. This will take two or three posts; I haven’t decided yet.

Jackendoff thinks that realist views of language end up relying on ‘magic’:

Frege and much of the tradition following him take language to be independent of its human users: it relates directly to the world […] language is indeed “out in the world” and it refers to “objects in the world”; but people use language by virtue of their grasp of it, where “grasp” is a transparent metaphor for the “the mind holding/understanding/making contact with” something in the world. […]

One might interpret Katz’s program this way. he is personally interested only in the part of language that is an abstract object “in the world” […] But an abstract object by definition has no physical manifestations that can impinge on the nervous system. So how does the nervous system “grasp” them? Without a careful exegesis of the term – which no-one provides – we are ineluctably led toward a quasi-mystical interpretation of “grasping,” a scientific dead end. (pp296-9)

So much for those thinkers. Anyway, this is Jackendoff’s own view of word meaning:

Linguistic semantics per se is the study of the interface between conceptualization and linguistic form (phonology and syntax) […] In particular, lexical semantics studies the organizations of conceptualization that can be bundled up in a single word (or to be clearer, in an interface rule whose other end is a morpheme). (p293)

I’ll unpack that a bit. The idea is that a word has a particular meaning – for an individual, remember – by virtue of the fact that the word groups together particular concepts in the individual’s mind. So, what is a concept? This is a fraught question, but I’ll try to give as untendentious a characterisation as possible. Very roughly, a concept is a way of dividing up experience. That is to say, it’s because I have the concept BOOK¹ that I’m able to categorise items around me into books and non-books, and because I have the concept READ that I’m able to categorise actions into those of reading and those of not-reading (or, more accurately, that I’m able to categorise anything into an action of reading or not-an-action-of-reading), and so on. Which is not to say that the concepts themselves just are abilities. Some people say this, but I think that Jackendoff has in mind, rather, that concepts are parts of thoughts. This should become clearer as we go on.

OK, but what is it that gives concepts meaning, then? How can a concept be about books, or reading, or Ray Jackendoff, or natural language semantics? Concepts are in the mind, and these things are out in the world. What is the nature of the connection between them? Jackendoff doesn’t think much of Jerry Fodor’s suggestions for dealing with the problem:

For [Fodor], language is a mental faculty that accesses concepts […] In turn, concepts have a semantics; they are connected to the world by virtue of being “intentional.” The trouble […] is that one cannot make naturalistic sense of intentionality. If suffers from precisely the same difficulty as “grasping” language […]: there is no physically reliable causal connection between concepts and objects. (p300)²

So much the worse for naturalism, you might say. But Jackendoff doesn’t. Instead, he proceeds by ‘pushing “the world” down into the mind of the language-user too, right along with language’ (p303). His solution is that, actually, not only concepts, but also what concepts are about, are in the mind. In fact, concepts just are what they are about:

We must explicitly deny that conceptual structures are symbols or representations of anything in the world, that they mean anything. Rather, we want to say that they are meaning […] Language is meaningful, then, because it connects to conceptual structures. (p306)

Such an explanation comes at a heavy price, all right. What Jackendoff is saying is that the concept BOOK can be about books because books are in the mind – because the book I see ‘in front of me’ is, in fact, a set of sense impressions that are entirely mental. But without some additional qualification this looks like idealism, which I hardly think comports with ‘our understanding of the physical world’, which I’m quite sure Jackendoff takes to be, well, physicalist. Idealism, by his lights, would be ‘magic’.

Jackendoff doesn’t quite go down this route, although at points he seems to be toying with it³. Instead, the trick is to be found in the construction of concepts. That’s what I’ll focus on next time.

Notes
1 It's conventional to give the names of concepts in capital letters. I'm going to follow this convention.
2 The disagreements between Jackendoff and Fodor as to the nature of concepts, and their relation to word meaning, go much deeper than I have time, space or energy for here, although I may return to this issue in the next post. See for example Fodor’s 1998 book Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong (Oxford: OUP), pp49-56.
3 See the remarks on Berkeley on p305, and on reality ‘independent of human cognition’ on p309.

Life & Liberty Petition against measures in the Coroners and Justice Bill

2009-06-16T14:51:00.003+01:00

From the Christian Legal Centre:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Abandon the Government's opposition to the free speech protection clause in the Coroners and Justice Bill.
Preserving the sanctity of life and freedom of speech are vitally important to the preservation of liberty and good governance under the rule of law in the United Kingdom. These are under immediate threat by measures in the Coroners and Justice Bill. We the undersigned, therefore, petition HM the Queen, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House of Lords to:

1. Protect the value of human life in the UK by opposing proposed amendments authorizing state-sanctioned assisted suicide; and

2. Protect freedom of speech by abandoning its opposition to the free speech protection clause currently within the sexual orientation hatred offence which preserves the right to, discuss, criticise and urge to refrain from certain forms of sexual conduct or practices.

Go here to sign the petition. HT: Anglican Mainstream and Christian Today, where you can go for further details. The right to ‘discuss, criticise and urge to refrain from certain forms of sexual conduct or practices’, currently under threat, is something I think reasonable non-Christians will also want to see preserved.

Go Iranians!

2009-06-16T14:28:00.001+01:00

Riot after Iranian election - police run away from crowd:

I’ve subscribed to Mousavi1388’s YouTube channel for updates on the situation in Iran.

It’s not the economy, and don't call me stupid

2009-06-02T16:56:00.002+01:00

<rant>A quick note to all the Labour politicians I keep hearing and seeing on the radio and the TV, who are quick to explain in advance their party’s upcoming shockingly bad performance in the local and European elections as the result of a ‘global economic crisis which began in America’: stop treating the electorate as if we are stupid. If Labour gets a thumping tomorrow it’s not because the voters can’t tell the difference between problems which are the government’s fault and those which aren’t. It’s because the public is fed up with ZaNu Labour in charge. In my case, it’s partly because I’m fed up with being patronised.

To Harriet Harman in particular, whose performance on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this lunchtime was particularly irritating: the expenses scandal has not made me lose my faith in democracy (as if anyone thought a totalitarian regime would be less corrupt); rather, it has made me lose any last shred of faith in the people we have elected. Praising to the skies people who are about to resign because of the scandal, and blaming the media for their treatment, is sadly just what I have learned to expect from a government that has completely forgotten (if they every knew) that they work for us. Get ‘em out.</rant>

The porpoise-driven life

2009-04-20T16:42:00.001+01:00

‘Original fin’. Chuckle.

Christ is risen!

2009-04-12T18:52:00.003+01:00

He is risen indeed, Hallelujah!

I hope you all have a wonderful Easter. For the occasion, I recommend Ralph Wilson’s ‘Emmaus Road Story’ on Ben Witherington’s blog, along with the following video (added 21/04/2009):

I gave up blogs and blogging for Lent (without announcing that here), which is why this space has been quiet and I haven’t read anyone’s posts for the last six weeks. But I’m back now, and hope to have some observations to share soon.

How not to do evangelism

2009-02-23T11:15:00.002Z

Michael Jensen on martyrdom

2009-02-16T13:47:00.006Z

Going through some old notebooks over the weekend, I found the following notes (in grey) on the subject of martyrdom and the Christian "way of being a self", from a seminar given by Michael Jensen on a church retreat back in 2007. Jensen has subsequently finished his PhD on this very subject. I don't know how much of what follows was revised for that, as I haven't been able to find out where his dissertation was published, but I've reproduced my notes here becaue I thought parts of some of them would be relevant to the series of posts I've been doing about Christians facing persecution in the UK at the moment. I've also expanded them slightly to make them into full sentences, and filled in some sub-points from memory as well.

12 proposals about martyrdom:

Martyrdom is the external enactment, or representation, of the internal reality of the Christian life: that is, death to self (Mark 8:35) from the very beginning of our walk with God (Romans 6:3-4). Like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, himself martyred in Nazi Germany, said, "When Christ calls a man, he bid him come and die".
Etymologically, martyrdom means witness, and this is the New Testament use of the word. Suffering will be involved in witness (Matthew 10:17-20) as a result of the gospel proclamation that Jesus is Lord.
Martyrdom is an imitation, and an amplification (Acts 7:59-60), of Jesus in his passion and death.
Martyrdom is completely different to suicide because
Martyrdom affirms life by renouncing it. Life is very valuable, in fact, it is the most valuable gift we can give; and it also comes from the best thing there is, namely God. Nevertheless, some Christians are called to give it up, as some are called to give up other possessions for the sake of the gospel (Matthew 19:16-30). What's important is that we "sit loose" to these things.
As evidence that people are willing to die for Christ, martyrdom is a sign of the ongoing power of Jesus in the world.
As Augustine said, "It is the cause, not the punishment, that makes the martyr", so e.g. Gandhi wasn't a martyr, because he didn't testify to the truth.
Martyrdom is an act of God, not human beings, so one can't self-designate as a martyr. Martyrs don't pursue their own death (1 Peter 3:13-17).
Martyrdom is a sign of a distinctively Christian mode of speech: we love people to death. The way we speak means we run risks, ranging all the way from ridicule to death. But we don't (or shouldn't) bang on about our rights; rather, we should be concerned about what is right.
Martyrdom is a sign of the impermanence of earthly power compared with God's eternal reign. The book of Daniel gives a good series of examples of this.
Martyrdom is not merely a stand of dissidence, but a witness to the rule of God in Christ. Therefore, a (carefully-considered) truce is possible with the government or other power structures if they listen.
Martyrdom is a sign that our way of being a self is completely at odds with the secular one(s): we renounce pleasure and security if need be. Knowing this will help us to explore and perhaps understand the "mutual incomprehension" that often exists between Christians and non-Christians.

Points 4-5 about martyrdom vs. suicide remind me of G.K. Chesterton's remarks on that subject (the paragraph beginning "About the same time"). This is particularly relevant at the moment because I suppose (as Jensen supposed) then when people hear "martyrdom" today, the first thing they think of is suicide bombing. See also point 8.

As I recall, what provoked the most discussion at the time was point 9, particularly the insistence that we don't "bang on about our rights". Jensen was keen that the church shouldn't be making itself into just another special interest pressure group, trying to carve out its own space within which to operate. As I agreed with Alex Fear about the Nadia Eweida affair, I agreed (and agree) with Jensen about this. Something that emerged from the discussion is that one natural outworking of the point that we should, rather, be concerned about what is right is that we should be as concerned for other people's rights as our own. This means holding the state to account in terms of the justice it promises to provide.

Still more petition material

2009-02-14T13:37:00.002Z

I'm in a mood to keep digging these up.

Christian foster mother struck off after Muslim girl converts (Telegraph)

Foster parents are supposed to "respect and preserve" the faith of those in their care. However, in this case, the girl in question was 16 years old and the interest in Christianity was all her own, according to the article. Mike Judge of the Christian Institute said:

I cannot imagine that an atheist foster carer would be struck off if a Christian child in her care stopped believing in God.

Good point. Now the girl is back with her parents, who are apparently unaware of her conversion, I wonder if we could be facing another case similar to that of "Hannah".

What does St. Valentine's Day have to with St. Valentine?

2009-02-14T11:22:00.001Z

Not much. But I hope you have a good one.

John Sentamu on the Petrie and Cain controversies

2009-02-13T10:10:00.003Z

The intolerance towards Christians in the public sector is an affront (Daily Mail)

Asking someone to leave their belief in God at the door of their workplace is akin to asking them to remove their skin colour before coming into the office. Faith in God is not an add-on or optional extra.

For me, my trust in God is part of my DNA; it is central to who I am and defines my place in the world. It informs my whole life, not just a weekly service on a Sunday.

It is the failure to grasp this basic understanding of what it is to be a follower of Jesus Christ that lies at the heart of the problem of which these two cases are just symptoms.

More petition material, and musings on the senses of "secular"

2009-02-12T21:10:00.005Z

Teacher scolds girl, 5, for talking about Jesus (The Christian Institute)

Summary:

On 22 January, Jasmine Cain was told off by her teacher at Landscore Primary School in Crediton, Devon for "discussing heaven and God with a friend".
The next day her mother, Jennie Cain, who works part-time at the school, was told by the headmaster that "he wasn’t happy about [Jasmine] making statements about her faith".
That weekend Mrs. Cain e-mailed ten friends from church, asking them to pray for her daughter and for the school.
The head, Gary Read, called Mrs. Cain back into his office a few days later with a copy of the e-mail in his hand, and told her that she would be investigated for professional misconduct for "making allegations about the school and staff to members of the public".

The title of the article doesn't tell you the most disturbing part of the story. The most disturbing part of the story is that Mrs. Cain's private e-mail should end up in her boss' hands.

I have a theory about these controversies that periodically come up between Bible-believing Christians and various power structures in the UK recently (not wholly unlike John Richardson's): People are naturally worried about unfair discrimination, so they take measures to make sure that (for example) some people don't get an unfair advantage over others because of their religious beliefs. This push towards what we might call religious neutrality is sometimes known as secularism.

At the same time, there are people pushing to have any mention of anything religious-sounding removed from the public sphere. This is also known as secularism, but it's not the same thing as religious neutrality. In fact, it's de facto atheism, and hence just as unfair as any other kind of establishment. These two senses of "secular" are often confused, by Christians and non-Christians alike.

I just signed a petition in support of Caroline Petrie,

2009-02-05T10:44:00.006Z

the nurse facing disciplinary action for offering to pray for a patient, here. Terry Sanderson of the NatSecSoc has thrown all his toys out of the pram over this. My comment on the Telegraph piece was:

I'd like to register my support for Caroline Petrie. An offer to pray is just that, an offer - and a kind offer at that. How does this amount to an attempt to impose her beliefs on others?

But then, I would say that.

Update (22:53): For some reason my comment didn't make it past the mods, but that doesn't matter because now Mrs. Petrie has been reinstated. Hooray.

Rated R (for Raskolnikov?)

2009-01-16T14:15:00.005Z

I don't think this is a fair rating, though. It's based on the occurrence of certain words on this blog, but that includes words in the sidebar feed to blogs I read, including my friend Simon's travel blog. But then I shouldn't complain, given that in the past I've benefitted from such quirkiness.

HT: Ken Brown.