Gopnik on Popper

Some time back, we examined the fraught subject of academic discipleship  in this essay:

Chomsky, Freud, and the Problem of Acolytes

And now this postscript:

In The New Yorker for 1 April 2002,  Adam Gopnik recounts his pilgrimage, while still a grad student, to  the home of the philosopher Karl Popper, living in prickly retirement (the article is titled “The Porcupine”) in the English countryside:

Many years ago, when I was young and still in search of wisdom,  I went on a pilgrimage to meet the man I thought was the wisest in the world.

The sage’s relations with his philosophic colleagues  had  for long  been far from collegial;  indeed, the occasion for Gopnik’s publishing his meditation now, was the appearance of a book built entirely upon the long-ago incident of Wittgenstein threatening Popper with a poker (presumably upon the theory that “this tutorial room is not big enough for two philosophical prima donnas!”).  In his long talk with Gopnik, Popper denied he had ever received any useful criticism from colleagues.   And as for acolytes:

He smiled sadly.  “All of my students are attacking me now.  Three of my students, all of them I helped to get positions, to get chairs, and they know this, and still they attack me personally.  You know, when you do things for people, there are two types of reactions.  There are those who cannot forget you for it, and those who cannot forgive you for it.”

Gopnik ends his essay with a bravura what-if:

Had Jesus invited a few Pharisees over for the Supper … it might not have been his last.  Dining with disciples is a perilous business.

Principle of Sufficient Reason

The Principle of Sufficient Reason

together with its Corollary,

that All is Right with the World

“An object has been posited:
 a cat.”
 -- W.V.O. Quine

The cat is there

to be a cat.

And we are here

to greet that cat.

Non cogito -- sed sum

(QED)

The Trolley Problem: a new variant

What is currently commonly known as “the Trolley Problem” is an old chestnut in moral philosophy.  History and variants here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

In today’s superheated psychosocial climate, a new variant has arisen:

A child is lying unconscious across the trolley track.  Donald Trump is standing nearby, oblivious, thinking about his ratings.  A trolley is rapidly bearing down on the scene. You only have time to do one of two things:

(a)  Pull the child off the track to safety

(b)  Push Trump in front of the trolley

Which do you do?

Doctor Justice names the penguins

[Prefatory remarks:
In this space, we intend, favente deo, to begin a quest of world-historical import:  the Naming of the Penguins.   The project is to appear in installments.  To prepare yourselves, read (or re-read),  L’Ile des pingouins, by Anatole France.]

(1) We read in Scripture, how that Adam did name the beasts:

And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field ..

Further research reveals, however, that our Original Parent did not name each beast individually, but only by kind:   Behold, these are the lions, these the lambs;  these the hawks and kites and crows … 

Thus, much work remains to be done.  And as a linear descendant of Adam (on my mother’s side -- father’s too, in fact), I feel it is incumbent to me to take up this cross.

Where to begin?   Well, more numerous than all the beasts of the field, are the Penguins, of pure repute:

Appellavitque Adam nominibus suis cuncta animantia

Accordingly, all the penguins of Antarctica have lined up single-file, and are passing patiently beneath my hand, as I sain each one, and give each one its name before God.

“Fluffy; Chubby; Tumtums; Blackie; Whitey; Roly-poly; Poly-Roly …”

As of press-time, Dr Justice has individually named eighty thousand penguins; just five million more to go.

(2)  [Update, 28 April 2017]

Five hundred thousand and counting:

“….  Fishsnitcher, Egghuddler, Iceberg Bertie, Lollybop,

 Antarctic Archie, Austrobird,  Gus the Glacier Guy, Snowmelt…”

Te baptizo, Nitide !

[TBC, DV….]

Marxian monostich

Another philosopher  recently posed the question, “What is it Like to be a Thermostat?”

-- David Lodge, Thinks… (2001), p. 97

Thermostat, dissing the mere Thermometer:

“The question is not simply to measure the temperature; the point is to change it.”

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/

Meum et tuum (bis)

(I)  Mine and Thine

This morning I am, for my better edification, engaged in reading Roscoe Pound’s classic Introduction to the Philosophy of Law (1922; revised and augmented edition 1959).   It is rather dry; only a concurrent reading of Cozzens’ law-soaked novel  By Love Possessed (most gripping, precisely, in its legal passages) led me to once again  pick up this monograph.

In the penultimate chapter, Pound arrives at the question of Thine and Mine.  To get some clarity on this vexed subject, he begins with a clean desktop by doing what we all should do whenever tackling a difficult problem:  arranging the data into six convenient groups:

Theories by which men have sought to give a rational account of private property as a social and legal institution  may be arranged conveniently into six principal groups, each including many forms.  These groups may be called:

(1) Natural-law theories;

(2) Metaphysical theories;

(3) Historical theories;

(4) Positive theories;

(5) Psychological theories;  and

(6) Sociological theories.

-- (p. 114)

There!  And now (in the word’s of Portnoy’s psychoanalyst, at the end of the book) -- Now we can begin!

Our interest here lies chiefly in the metaphysical theories, which began with Kant.  And Kant began with this:

He begins with the inviolability of the individual human personality. A thing is rightfully mine, he says, when I am so connected with it  that anyone who uses it without my consent  does me an injury.

-- (p. 117)

Ordinarily, philosophical argument is supposed to start with what is self-evident, or at least colorable, and to proceed by ever-cleverer reasoning  to some conclusion  the path to which was not initially plain.  Yet here we find ourselves in quicksand, before the journey is quite begun.

For  consider:

Little Timmy is playing happily with his new toy dinosaur, bought for him by his grandmother the day before.  Along comes Tommy and seizes the object by main force.  Timmy is dismayed, his playtime ruined; tears  well in his eyes.

But now consider Tommy, happily at play with his newfound fun dinosaur.  Let Timmy, or Bobby, or anyone else, come along and likewise appropriate the coveted item, and -- now Tommy is dismayed, his playtime in tatters; salt tears  sting his eyes.

The only way we might distinguish between the sense of grievance of the two boys, is in light of some antecedent theory of ownership  and notions of justice attached thereto, held by one or both boys:  quod erat demonstrandum, sed demonstratum non est.

That, alas, is an actual incident, from America’s tragic past.  Here, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, are the facts (David v. The Cruel World, 1955):

~ The Case of the Purloined Dinosaur ~

I was not quite five years old, temporarily living with my maternal grandmother  in Garden City, Long Island, while my parents, having moved from Tennessee, were off house-hunting in New Jersey.  In the course of a visit to the Museum of Natural History (fondly recalled here) she had bought me a lovely little bronze statuette of a brontosaurus;  I had few or no toys dating from the time of our rather exiguous existence in Oak Ridge, and this brontosaurus  was by far my most precious possession.

I was outdoors alone, playing with this wondrous toy, when along came a neighborhood boy and, liking what he saw, calmly possessed himself of the animal and began walking home.  Stunned at this calamity, I trailed along after him, alternately remonstrating, threatening replevin or trover, and expostulating, citing seriatim the old Roman (“natural law”) theories of possession, along with the metaphysical, the historical, the positive, the psychological, and the sociological -- finally adducing canon law and the opinions of the early Church fathers concerning matters of tortious conversion -- or would have, had I heard of any of that.   He merely shrugged -- then trumped me, with a legal axiom of his own -- and one which stood irrefutable, as it rhymed:

~  Finders keepers,  losers weepers ~

That adage took me aback.  I was amazed that the world here below should be so ill-ordered, but such apparently was the case.

Later that day, I appealed to the local areopagus, in the form of my grandmother -- herself the daughter of a clergyman, and pretty clear on matters of right and wrong.   She phoned the boy’s mother, who then tried to recover the object from her child’s well-stocked toybox;  but by then it had been lost and forgotten.

~

Had we each, I and that larcenous lad (who now, if he yet live, is even older than I am, if such a thing may be conceived) -- had we, I say, myself and that Barabbas rapscallion (prior to his eventual death in the monastery  whither he had  no doubt  latterly repaired, in penance of his depredations, dying finally in an odor of sanctity, his palms emblazoned with stigmata  in the shape of brontosaurs):  had we, say I, either of us, possessed a copy of Pound’s treatise (necessarily the original edition, since the second was not yet out) -- had the two of us sat down, like men of reason, and conned its pages  for guidance in our perplexity -- I might not (contrary to intuition) have been the gainer thereby.  

For in that work, does not the author refer to “the maxim possession vaut titre in continental law” (p. 128);  and does he not likewise allege, that

when one appropriates a thing, fundamentally he manifests  the majesty of his will  by demonstrating that external objects that have no wills  are not self-sufficient

(-- p. 120)

?

Our light-fingered adventurer might well take that as praise.

~

Already  I sense, you are reaching for your well-worn,  dog-eared,  espresso- or brandy-stained copy of The Common Law, by Mr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Esq. (1881; which surely graces your night-table) for help in ascertaining what might lie aback of all of this.  To that work, therefore, we now repair.

Holmes’ tract is  if anything  even drier, even more nose-to-the-grounds-of-precedents (some quite ancient) than Pound’s.  Yet he claims to have his eyes as well on higher (or deeper) things:

The interest attaching to the theory of possession  does not stop with its practical importance in the body of English law.  The theory has fallen into the hands of the philosophers.

-- chapter “Possession”

And not merely  for their own abstract amusement;  for Pound goes on to declare the influence bidirectional:

Nowhere is the reciprocal action  of legal rules  and philosophical theories  more strikingly manifest  than in our law of contractual liability.

-- Pound, op. cit., p. 

Anyhow, readers hoping for sure philosophical guidance from Holmes’ book  might be disappointed.  As, consider the following hypothetical case:

A pocket-book was dropped on the floor of a shop by a customer, and picked up by another customer before the shopkeeper knew of it. 

-- Holmes, op. cit., p. 222

(And, be it understood, made off with it;  that is not stated in the text, but apparently was the expected behavior of a shopper.)

Now, for fifty points -- answer this simple quiz from WDJ.  The appropriate holding would be:

(1) The purloiner of the pocket-book is a common thief, and should be prosecuted as such, regardless of whether he repents and returns the stolen item.

(2)  In the event that, unprompted, the purloiner  of his own accord  return the lost property to its owner, no charges should be lodged.

(3)  Screw the owner -- the perp gets to keep it, free and clear.

(4)  Actually the shopkeeper gets to appropriate the mislaid item.

(Pause for reflection;  then read on.)

If you answered (1) or (2), you are (according to Bridges v. Hawkesworth), a patsy, a loser.  “Finders keepers, losers weepers” rules -- the correct answer is (3):

Common-law judges and civilians would agree that the finder got possession first, and so could keep it  as against the shopkeeper.

-- id.

 

~

After that little Gedankenexperiment, we gloomily wonder why a table-sweeping fifth option was not added:

(5) Property is theft.  (La propriété, c'est le vol. -- Proudhon.)

And indeed, Roscoe Pound does cite that 18^th-century ideological Brandstifter  J-J Rousseau, to much that effect:

Rousseau held that the man who first laid out of plot of ground and said, “This is mine”, should have been lynched.

-- Pound, op cit., p. 119

To that we might merely observe that … he probably was.  As was any man who, outside the receptive and self-developing Greco-Roman-Christian current of history, presumed to invent or discover anything (or at best, he was ignored, and his find  died with him). “No such constitutional framework of contractual security as the Roman  was evolved by any other people in the ancient world.” --  Adda Bozeman, Politics and Culture in International History (1960), p. 201. (See also Lord Raglan, How Came Civilization.)

(II)  Adverse Possession

Apart from simply seizing someone else’s property and walking off with it, or invading it by main force, there is a subtler way of annexing the same, which can even cadge recognition by the law.   This trick is called:  Adverse Possession.

Thus, Princeton University owns a bit of woodland, containing a birdwatchers tower, to which access is unrestricted.  Yet one day a year, they bar the access-road and say No Trespassing:  this, lest their title lapse.  

So put, the phenomenon may appear a mere curiosity; but the phenomenon is spreading, as here and there  governments lose their backbone.  This, most strikingly in France, where certain immigrants -- illegal to begin with -- have occupied buildings and even private residence, the authorities seeming powerless to defend the rights of the owners.  Meanwhile the public becomes glumly accustomed  to ever-wider infringements with impunity.

Ogden Nash captured an earlier version  in a celebrated poem of 1938:

How courteous is the Japanese;
He always says, “Excuse it, please.”
He climbs into his neighbor’s garden,
And smiles, and says, “I beg your pardon”;
He bows and grins a friendly grin,
And calls his hungry family in;
He grins, and bows a friendly bow;
“So sorry, this my garden now.”

Such is the sociological landscape of bisounours Europe today;  the frog slowly cooking in the crock-pot;  le grand Remplacement.

(III)  Debts & Promises

The early Romans were serious about debt:

Defaulters (addicti) could be sold into slavery  or even put to death by their creditors.

-- H.H. Scullard, A History of the Roman World, 753 to 146 BC (1935; 4^th edn. 1980), p. 83

Durch das frührömische Kreditrecht in der Form des nexum  hatte der Kreditgeber faktisch ein Zugriffsrecht auf die person des Schuldners.

-- Karl Christ, Die Römer (2^nd edn. 1983), p. 20

That practice found an echo as far away as England, as late as the nineteenth century, in the institution of debtor’s prisons, so memorably depicted by Dickens (who, however, was not an impartial observer in this case).   That institution strikes any contemporary who first hears of it, as wacky (quite apart from the humanitarian aspects), since how can the fellow pay back his debt  if removed from the economy?   A historical view, however, reveals an institution that made sense in a certain social context -- near-universal throughout much of antiquity, and still in effect in many later cultures -- in which the familia, gens, phratry, tribe or what have you, was responsible for each of its members:  imprisoning the prisoner was more like sticking him in a pawnshop until redeemed.  It wasn’t punishment per se;  he simply served as the logical collateral.

[Gist of omitted section:  As is by now notorious, such severity towards debtors has not merely been largely relaxed, but the background culture of… honoring one’s debts  has in many areas collapsed disasterously -- and this, not only at the foot of the economic ladder, but at its tippy-top, the culture of Bain Capital:  a culture of reckless gambling, whose losses are made up by the taxpayer.]

If you live in a nation which disdains to enforce contracts, you can either just shrug and take it as a gamble, or do business elsewhere -- or no business at all, go off and cultivate newts or something.

Transposed to our boyhood memory  in the form of a parable, the scenario would be:

“Could I borrow that brontosaur for a second?”

“Uhh… Yeh sure.”

The boy takes it and walks off.

“Hey!  Give that back!  I didn’t give it to you -- you said ‘borrowed’.”

An indifferent shrug.  “So, I’m an insolvent debtor.”

Homo sapientissimus

A leading philologian wrote:

Am meisten stimme ich mit Vossler (1919) überein;  nur stehen wir auf etwas verschiedenem Boden: 

ich kümmere mich um den homo sapiens, der sich mit dem homo alalus berührt, Vossler um den homo sapientissimus.

-- Hugo Schuchardt, “Sprachursprung”  (1920), in Leo Spitzer, ed., Hugo Schuchardt-Brevier (1921; 2^nd edn. 1928), p. 277

Here I must concur with Vossler, for reasons illustrated here:

Mathematics vs. “Mathematizing”

To fetter yourself to the alalus and his latter-day analogues, is to try to run a three-legged race.

Just the logic, ma’am (Chapter 1)

There are, as ever, several stories in the news, that seem to cry out for comment.  However:

(1)  There is no particular reason that readers should care about my personal opinions about such things -- even if they happen to value my analyses (and opinions) concerning, say, Cantorian Realism, or Trinitarian Minimalism, or Humble Woodchucks, since expertise in one area need by no means carry over to expertise (or even common sense) in another.  (So, indeed, I have argued, in satires directed against physicists or neuroscientists who come out with philosophical/theological absurdities.)

(2)  Even if, for some reason, you did care (say, if you were my mother), it’s still just an opinion:  and its appreciation-worthiness is not, so to speak, transitive -- it is not the case that everyone who knows my (let us say) mother, and everyone who  in turn  knows them, will in consequence care about said opinion.  So soon as you proceed, even so far as two degrees of separation, the thing goes pffht.

(3)  In any case, for reasons mentioned here, I have resolved to refrain from ever publically expressing an opinion about anything anywhere to anyone -- the political climate in this country is just too toxic.   There is really nothing in it for anyone thus sticking his neck out, other than flame wars and death threats.  Taceo igitur.

I do, however, have a certain (indeed, certified) knack for linguistic and logical/rhetorical analysis.  (Confer  the peer-reviewed volume,  The Semantics of Form in Arabic, for illustration.)  And,  within these strict bounds, staying not straying, certain observations may be made.

Thus, from earlier today:

When Jessica Kern gave evidence to lawmakers in Washington, DC, last summer opposing the legalization of surrogacy in the district, she was pointedly asked why she wasn’t grateful for the procedure that created her.

“The question was so simple and dismissive,” she recalls. “Like I would choose this for myself? When the only reason you’re in this world is a big fat paycheck, it’s degrading.”

Kern, 30, of Culpepper, Va., is among a number of donor-conceived children in the US who are campaigning for tighter controls on the law governing assisted reproduction.

“You can’t sell your kidney for profit but you can purchase an egg or sell a child,” she says. “There needs to be more checks and balances.

“Most of the consideration within surrogacy is toward the adults and what they want. Often, it’s not in the best interests of the children.”

Kern discovered the true story behind her birth after finding her medical records at the age of 17 which included details of the surrogacy arrangement.

“My biological mother was paid $10,000 for her services,” she says. “I was devastated.”

Kern, who is no longer in touch with her adoptive mother, tracked down her biological mother, but the two are now estranged because of her outspoken stance against surrogacy.

http://nypost.com/2014/06/16/children-of-surrogacy-campaign-to-outlaw-the-practice/

As regards the ethical pros and cons of all this, taceo.  (... Eppur’ si muove …)  But let us offer this purely logical observation:

There is no more a logical contradiction(**) between someone born by surrogacy  coming (upon mature reflection) to condemn the practice, than in the analogous case of someone born by rape, or prostitution, or incest, or bigamy, or A.I.D., or fructification by Zeus in the form of a swan, objecting to (as a general practice) rape, or prostitution, or incest, or bigamy, or A.I.D., or extra-Olympian dalliances by randy deities sub specie cygni.  In every such case, one would not have been born otherwise.   Ms. Kern has evidently progressed beyond that primitive stage of self-involved special-caseness, blind to all wider implications, which the Greeks called that of an ἰδιώτης, and has risen to a more nearly Kantian-level generalism.  (That does not guarantee that her enlarged and enlightened stance is quite correct, of course;  merely, that it is in the running -- that she is dining with the grownups now.)  Whereas those who “pointedly” ask her (the adverb here is comical, better befitting an insightful inquiry  than the sort of unreflective grandstanding involved here) why she personally should not be the measure of all things, rather than God or Man, have not so progressed, but are flailing about in blinkered sentimentalism.

Leda and her gentleman-friend

[**Footnote:  By the same token, neither is the contradiction less;  though in this case, it is not a logical contradiction, so much as a psychological disconnect.  Thus, it is entirely possible that, statistically, more of those born via incest  support incest, than those born by other means.  (Indeed, in pharaonic Egypt, that was almost certainly the case.)  Quite possibly such offspring would maintain that they like having just a single eye in the middle of the forehead;  quite attractive, really, once you get used to it.

In considering the testimony of such witnesses, the ethicist will consider what is known technically as their personal equation.   Its value may be compared to that of a witness who swears up and down that Sluggo could not possibly have murdered all those people, when the witness in question is Sluggo’s mother.   Such witnesses are treated gently in court, though their testimony is discounted.]

Srsly, swans make really great dads.

-- Polydeuces

[Note:  The above is, once again, a purely logical exercise.  No personal opinions have been expressed upon any controversial subject whatsoever.   In particular, my remarks should not be interpreted as either celebrating or condemning impregnation via shape-shifting Hellenic godlings, whether in the form of a swan, or a shower of gold.   

A.I.S.

Consequently please direct all hate-mail to the Dead Letter Office.]

[Footnote:  For more hot Greek swan-action, check this out:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-power-of-intransigence.html ]

~

So much, then, for the mere logic of the thing.   As my professional credentials amount to no more than a Bachelor’s in math and a doctorate in linguistics, rather than a Doctor of Divinity, I am in no particular position to comment upon fundamental matters of morals;  they are above my pay-grade.   Accordingly I refer you to the appropriate authorities;  Article 2376 of the Catechism:

Technicae artes, quae parentum provocant dissociationem per interventum personae a matrimonio alienae (spermatis vel ovocyti donum, uteri commodatum) graviter sunt inhonestae. Hae technicae artes (inseminatio vel fecundatio artificiales heterologae) filii laedunt ius nascendi e patre et matre ab ipso cognitis et inter se matrimonio coniunctis. Ius produnt « ad hoc ut alter pater aut mater fiat solummodo per alterum »

[Footnote on delicacy of expression]

You cannot make sense of any of those paintings above, nor hundreds of others like them, if you don’t know that Zeus had coitus with Leto in the form of a swan.  It’s the single thing anyone would want to know about Leto, in terms of cultural literacy, whatever else there might be to know;  just like “Hercules was strong” and “Ananias told lies”.   Yet The Oxford Companion to English Literature (third edition, 1946),  p. 447, makes no mention of this, identifying Leto simply as “the daughter of a Titan, and beloved by Zeus”.  That makes it sound as though Zeus worshiped her from afar; but the very next sentence says “Hera, jealous of her, sent the serpent Python to persecute her during her pregnancy.”  This is comically reticent.  When they mention “pregnancy”, you feel as though the film has skipped a reel.

The Life Aristocratic

We here at the World of Dr Justice (headquarters:  Geneva)  have taken it as our mission (as we contemplate the world from out the windows of our mountain fastness, frequently falling into melancholy until Beech, the butler, hastens by with a refreshing coffee-brandy) to elucidate age-old philosophical conundrums in a way that simple people -- farmers, toilers, Republicans -- can understand.

Dr Justice, hard at work,

contemplating the mysteries of the Universe

Click here for answers to questions that might have stumped you before,

but which never will stump you again:

What is the meaning of life?

What is Platonism, exactly?

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

Can virtue be triangular?

Where does information come from anyway?

Can there be a private language?

What is the deeper meaning of Columbus Day?

Can you compare apples with oranges?

Why should you never, ever  drop a large rock at the North Pole?

How can I argue the hind leg off a donkey?

Teacher Tenure

[That title is actually a teaser;  our contribution to the debate will be of a very general sort, applicable to eristics in general, and not specifically to this.]

I recently finished reading the autobiography of R.G. Collingwood, an English philosopher (by trade) and historian (by predilection).   The principle point he argues in that book, and in his own mature philosophical publications, is that:  Before one can judge the validity of a thesis (and the key here is more worth than truth, the latter issue being less clear-cut than it traditionally makes out) one must first determine, to what question was that intended as an answer.   This perspective extends to quite practical matters:  Before engaging in a dig (for archaeology was his violon d’Ingres), you must know what it is that you are trying to find, or you will merely spoil the site.

The media this evening is (quite properly) abuzz  with this:

A California judge ruled Tuesday that teacher tenure laws deprive students of their right to an education under the state Constitution and violate their civil rights.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/us/california-teacher-tenure-laws-ruled-unconstitutional.html?hp

Different news outlets  are spinning this  in very different ways:  As a (Republican-inspired) attack on teachers unions;  as a defense (worthy of Sir Galahad) of the special interests of racial minorities;  and other flavors as well.

I shall have nothing specific to say about any of this, never having taught at a pre-college level.   It is a very, very vexed question.  -- Or rather, an inhomogeneous complexus of vexed questions;  for Collingwood’s caveat  is very valid here.  Quite apart from the complexities of analysis, of any given aspect of the case, the very case itself  presents itself, from the very outset, in the light of at least four distinct areas of broader concern -- four traditions of thought and argument:

(1) sub specie Labor Relations

(2) sub specie Education Policy

(3) sub specie Race Relations

(4) sub specie Constitutional law.

Any competent overall assessment of the merits of the case -- such as, indeed, a sitting judge is forced to render, if only by refusing to review (he does not enjoy the luxury, of professors of philosophy, who can argue the matter endlessly, in footnotes to Plato) -- would need to address all of these.  But even that “all” is something of an oversimplification, since (so to speak) those four orthogonal vectors, though they form a basis for a noëtic space, do not themselves supply a metric, whereby their separate contributions might be combined.

(For more on the matter, for those mathematically inclined, consult this.)

~

Attempting to see how this story was being reported across the outlets, I went to Google News, where the featured article was this:

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2014/0610/California-court-strikes-down-teacher-tenure-rules-in-major-ruling

But when you go to that page, instead of letting you read the article, you are hit with a pop-up, to wit:

Answer a question to continue reading this page

Have you used one of the following methods for hair removal in the last 12 months?

Salon service (waxing, laser, etc)

No, none of the above

At home waxing

Hair removal cream

At home bleach

           

[Class assignment:  Debate the relative merits of (a) bikini wax  (b) Brazil wax. 
Cite appropriate authorities where needed.]

Sometimes I think this nation is not worth saving.

~

Footnote:   This skeletal contribution, is merely meta-critical, virtually devoid of empirical (or political, or psychological) content.   For a case in which we do venture to grapple in detail with an issue of public note (with what success, you must judge yourselves), try this:

            The Depth-Psychology of Global Climate Change

We also offer a couple of very minor observations about education specifically. 

* To end-run the question of tenure -- simply do away with teachers!  (This is a trendy trend; the same thing is happening to libraries.)

     Digitizing into oblivion

* California is something of a hothouse or petri-dish for bizarrely overreaching legal intrusions into education.  We examine one here:

   An Intolerable Intrusion

[Flash update]  Making up for our own abstention from discipline-specific comment, our longtime friend and colleague, Dr. Keith Massey,  currently a teacher of Latin in high school (though with several other careers under his belt, including a stint in Canon Law), and the author of several books, offers the following viewpoint (and, I believe, very judicious one) :

Philosophically, I agree. The best teacher for all those poor kids is not always the one with tenure and seniority. So if those poor kids ever once ever had a teacher who was not the best available because the best available was let go from lack of seniority, those poor kids received unequal conditions.

The problem is, staffing schools, including the ones for those poor kids, will be *impossible* if you don't provide significant incentives for dedicated people willing to make modest salaries for the common good. Tenure and seniority provide the incentives that a teacher need not fear that slighting the wrong parent by giving a fair grade will mean termination and that staying on the job long enough to make a bit more than a modest salary will put a target on your back.

Push the current system even a bit and you will quickly find all the nation's youth taught only by fresh graduates with no experience teaching a few years for 30k and then burning out to make room for the next wave of the same.

And apparently there is a movement that wants to blow up the system to establish just that...

[Update] More canny commentary:

I am a little confused by the slippage between equal education and good education in the court’s opinion. After canvassing several major state court precedents about educational equality, the court writes:

    While these cases addressed the issue of a lack of equality of education based on the discrete facts raised therein, here this Court is directly faced with issues that compel it to apply these constitutional principles to the quality of the educational experience.

The boldface is in the original. It almost seems like argument by pun.

Later on, the court seems to backtrack and suggest that the case is about equality, not just quality, after all; it says that the “ineffective” teachers have a disparate impact on poor and non-white students. That’s a hook, at least, but as my colleague Eric Posner points out, if it’s true it seems like the more natural remedy would be to address the unequal allocation of teachers directly, not to go after tenure.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/06/11/more-doubts-about-the-california-teachers-decision/

Have Theory, Will Travel

In his peripatetic scamper through the capitals of world philosophy, in a valiant search for something illuminating to say about, literally, Nothing (“Why is there something rather than nothing,” is the topic of the book), the philosophically-trained science journalist Jim Holt arranges to go interview Derek Parfit.  Yet, though the reporter must travel all the way to England to do this, Parfit imposes a restriction on the interview  which no newsman should be subjected to, and which even Ben Ladin did not have the chutzpah to demand:

He added that, since he was very slow in formulating his thoughts, he would prefer not to be quoted verbatim.  Instead, he would try to answer any questions I had about his written work  with a “yes” or “no” or some other brief response.

-- Jim Holt, Why does the World Exist? (2012), p. 223

(Sounds like a Turing Test.)   And this, note, for an interview broadcast live, where indeed the pressure of maintaining a snappy airtime  often trivializes discussion, and where the subject is his own work, which he has had a lifetime to think about, and approached by a deferential amateur in an attitude of near-reverence.

Accordingly, nothing of interest stems from the empty exercise of the interview itself;  undaunted, our author tricks out his report with quotations from Parfit’s previously published writings (something he could have done from home).   We are reminded of Edmund Morris’s desperate expedient, in his abortion of a biography of Ronald Reagan, where, confronted by the blank mind and depthless shallows of his subject, he filled things in with the imaginings of fiction.

For more on the old fraud, click here:

      Derek Parfit, Man of Mystery

 For the inspiration of the title:  
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgvxu8QY01s

Plato and Pulchritude

Anthony Gottlieb has a deft review of Rebecca Goldstein’s new riff on Plato:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/books/review/plato-at-the-googleplex-by-rebecca-newberger-goldstein.html?ref=books&_r=0

And here is our riff upon the beguiling Ms. Goldstein:

Physics and Physicality

Honi soit  qui mal y pense.