Unlike, Their Normal Fare, I Would Actually Like to Watch This Episode

Link via GeekDad

A Philosophical Choose Your Own Adventure Book

Does anyone remember Choose Your Own Adventure books? When I was ten, I loved them. I wouldn't have enjoyed this one then (if it's real), but I would now.

via Anastasia Beaverhausen

Time Travel, Physics, and Free Will

Sean Carroll writes in Discover magazine that many of the paradoxes presented in time travel science fiction simply wouldn't occur if time travel were made possible. Paradoxes are logical contradictions, and logical contradictions can't exist.

As we will see, the time travel paradox—the possibility of changing our past—seems intractable only because it conflicts with our notion of ourselves as beings with free will. Consistent stories are possible, even in space-times with closed timelike curves.

To illustrate this point, imagine that you stumble upon a time machine in the form of a gate. When you pass through it in one direction, it takes you exactly one day into the past; if you pass through in the other direction, it takes you exactly one day into the future. You walk up to the gate, where you see an older version of yourself waiting for you. The two of you exchange pleasantries. Then you leave your other self behind as you walk through the gate into yesterday. But instead of obstinately wandering off, you wait around a day to meet up with the younger version of yourself (you have now aged into the older version you saw the day before) with whom you exchange pleasantries before going on your way. Everyone’s version of every event would be completely consistent.

We can have much more dramatic stories that are nevertheless consistent. Imagine that we have been appointed Guardian of the Gate, and our job is to keep vigilant watch over who passes through. One day, as we are standing off to the side, we see a person walk out of the rear side of the gate, emerging from one day in the future. That’s no surprise; it just means that you will see that person enter the front side of the gate tomorrow. But as you keep watch, you notice that he simply loiters around for one day, and when precisely 24 hours have passed, the traveler walks calmly through the front of the gate. Nobody ever approached from elsewhere. That 24-hour period constitutes the entire life span of this time traveler. He experiences the same thing over and over again, although he doesn’t realize it himself, since he does not accumulate new memories along the way. Every trip through the gate is precisely the same to him. That may strike you as weird or unlikely, but there is nothing paradoxical or logically inconsistent about it.

So could you mess up your own past, so that you ceased to exist? Carroll writes:

We know what the answer is: That cannot happen. If you met up with an older version of yourself, we know with absolute certainty that once you age into that older self, you will be there to meet your younger self. That is because, from your personal point of view, that meet-up happened, and there is no way to make it un-happen, any more than we can change the past without any time travel complications. There may be more than one consistent set of things that could happen at the various events in space-time, but one and only one set of things actually does occur. Consistent stories happen; inconsistent ones do not. The vexing part is understanding what forces us to play along.

All of which suggests that, since time is a closed curve, linking the future to the past, we are predestined to do whatever we do, or experience whatever we will experience:

Our concept of free will is intimately related to the idea that the past may be set in stone, but the future is up for grabs. Even if we believe that the laws of physics in principle determine the evolution of some particular state of the universe with perfect fidelity, we don’t know what that state is, and in the real world the increase of entropy is consistent with any number of possible futures. A closed timelike curve seems to imply predestination: We know what is going to happen to us in the future because we witnessed it in our past.

Closed timelike curves, in other words, make the future resemble the past. It is set in stone, not up for grabs at all. The reason we think the past is fixed once and for all is that there is a boundary condition at the beginning of time. The entropy of the universe started very small (at the time of the Big Bang) and has been growing ever since. Ordinarily we do not imagine that there is any analogous boundary condition in the future—entropy continues to grow, but we cannot use that information to draw any conclusions. If we use a closed timelike curve to observe something about our future actions, those actions become predestined. That’s extra information about the history of the universe, over and above what we normally glean from the laws of physics, and it makes us uncomfortable.

Link via Gizmodo

Immanuel Kant Explained Using Superhero Comics

(Video Link)

In this video, Douglas Wolk explains the ideas expressed in 18th Century German philosopher Immanuel Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgment using superhero comics. Wolk, a comic critic, is the author of the book Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean. Run time: 5 minutes.

via Comics Alliance | Wolk's Blog | Background on Kant | Previously on The Zeray Gazette: Kant Attack Ad

This Has Been My Metaphysical Suspicion for Years

(Larger Image)

From the webcomic Simulated Comic Product.

Philosophy in Science Fiction

Kenny Pearce is developing a bibliography of works of science fiction that are particularly noteworthy for expressing a philosophical worldview or premise. He presents several categories, such as Mind, Solipsism, and Sex and Gender. Some of the stories that he lists are available online, like Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question" -- a confrontation with entropy.

Kenny asks readers for suggestions. What would you add to the list?

The Moral Vacuum in Objectivism

In one of Reason magazine's many retrospectives on Ayn Rand, Shikha Dalmia neatly summarizes a major problem in Objectivist ethics:

This has profound and unfortunate political consequences. On the practical level, it makes it difficult to build a strong and growing anti-government movement based solely on Rand's philosophy, because the older cohort of her followers is falling off on a regular basis. On the theoretical level, Rand's ideas offer no real possibility of developing robust civil society responses to address the needs of those down on their luck. It is difficult to imagine a Randian qua Randian, say, volunteering in a soup kitchen to feed the hungry, or even founding the Fraternal Order of Fellow Randians to provide free health coverage and housing to jobless and homeless Randians. Since misfortune and distress are a normal part of the human condition, a philosophy that offers no positive, private solutions to deal with them will just have a harder time making the case against government intervention stick.

Rand held that charity was not only not morally obligatory, but was immoral because it placed the needs of others above those of the self. I've always found this to be an inadequate ethical premise, if for only pragmatic reasons.

Eventually, each one of us will find ourselves flat on our back and helpless, like a flipped-over turtle. We'll be down, crushed, and broken, and we'll need someone to pick us up -- with no expectation of remuneration. The Objectivist would simply pass by without stopping. And a society wholly comprised of such individuals will degrade over time because members would not get assistance when they need it. Some altruism is necessary.

Of course, a society in which there existed a general social contract -- you pick me up when I'm down, and vice versa -- could be said to espouse selfishness as the fundamental motive.

Libertarianism as a Religion

Ilya Somin recently reflected on the influence of Ayn Rand. I was particularly struck by this passage:

In becoming a libertarian without any influence from Rand, I was actually unusual. Over the last 15 years, I have met a large number of libertarian intellectuals and activists of the last two generations, including some of the most famous. More often than not, reading Rand influenced their conversion to libertarianism, even though very few fully endorse her theories or consider themselves Objectivists.

Emphasis added.

I have noticed that many self-identifying libertarians relate their ideological development in religious language that would be familiar to evangelical Christians. Once were blind, they now could see the falsehood of statist assumptions and the truth of individual liberty and responsibility.

Perhaps I spend too much time with libertarians, but I don't often see conservatives describe a similar political awakening as strongly, and I can't recall hearing liberals express a political conversion experience in this manner.

It makes me uneasy. I know from personal experience how damaging it is to adopt an ideology as a personal identity. Ideologies as identities have a way of stifling objective thought along the lines of "This is who I am now, this is my ideology, and I will now apply it to all situations or questions that I have about the world."

Ideologies blindly applied to the world, without regard to conflicts between what can and is objectively known about a topic and what the ideology's stance on that topic is, constitute sloppy thinking.

If you shook me awake at 2 AM and asked me if I thought that we should legalize all drugs for consenting adults, I'd probably say yes. But that's because my ideology would provide me with a shortcut around thinking critically about all aspects of an issue.

If I was awake and had time to think about the question a little more, I'd probably say that marijuana should definitely be legalized, but maybe crack cocaine shouldn't. Maybe the effects of that drug are so debilitating that we shouldn't go that far.

But that takes work, and I could avoid all of that simply by thinking "I'm a libertarian, so how should I respond to this question in a manner that is consistent with my ideology?"

Or to use a different example, "I'm a believer in religion X, so how should I respond to this question in a manner that is consistent with my religion?"

One need only glance at the pages of history to know how flawed ideologies can be. Which is why I get uncomfortable with libertarians expressing their political opinions using the certainty of religious language.

I generally identify myself as a libertarian. But not with a lot of enthusiasm. Well, at least not as much as I used to. I don't want to be a libertarian; I want to be a correct thinker. And that means keeping my options open. It means seeking truth instead of an ideological identity or tribe.

Instead of saying "I'm a libertarian," it would be better for one to say "I am a thinker and I have reached many libertarian conclusions." The goal should always be truth, not fidelity to an ideological identity.

Philosophers

From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereral.

Moral Priorities at Work

Annoyed Librarian often writes about librarian job postings are so demanding and so low-paying that they seem insulting to the librarians who read them. When I was in library school, we called these "West Jeff Jobs" because the West Jefferson Public Library was especially notorious for offering them. AL rants about what such jobs do for morale in the profession:

So, sure, in one sense, many of your jobs do suck, but I reserve my Library Jobs that Suck category for very specific jobs. A Library Job that Sucks must be temporary, part-time, and require an MLS and library experience. These have always seemed to me the most shameful jobs, the ones where libraries were trying to exploit a bad job market to get better librarians than they morally deserve, where they demand professionals but don't provide professional situations. Jobs like these make all of us worse off, because it shows that there are libraries that don't take seriously any professional or personal commitment to librarians. The librarians become mere widgets to be exploited at will and disposed of easily. That's hardly the sort of job that brings glory to the profession.

There's no such thing as "morally deserve" in relation to wages. You deserve only what your employer has agreed to pay you for your labor. And that's unlikely to be anything other than what the market can support. If you think that the market can support more, then go and get a different job.

You should assume that your employer is only interested in exploiting you for corporate (or personal) profit. Your employer should assume that your only interest is in personal profit. Once you understand that your employer only wants to exploit you, and that you only want to exploit your employer, you'll be much happier because you won't be guided by illusionary moral motives.

Your employer may regard you as nothing but a widget but (1) he'll do that anyway, even if you think that it's unfair or socially irresponsible and (2) you're free to do likewise to your employer. An employer might exploit a labor glut, but you're also free to exploit a labor shortage.

I think that some librarians get far too emotionally invested in their work, and that's why complaints like this are common. They want to save the world, or at least some part of it. They see their work as a moral calling rather than as a way to make money. And I confess that I, too, used to be afflicted with this impaired thinking.

Now, the only reason I go to work is for my paycheck. I earn it fair and square by doing the work that I agreed to do for that paycheck, and no more. If other people benefit or social goods are attained, it is of no consequence so me; only that I get paid.

And I'm quite open about this. My employer doesn't mind because I do my job well.

If you don't think that an employer is paying you enough money, don't work there. You have no moral duty to care about society in general or any institution or profession in particular. You're free to act in your self-interest, and so is everyone else.

Question of the Day

Jockeystreet lists the 72 books that he considers to be the most influential to him. Among his authors are Noam Chomsky, Jack Keroauc, Saul Alinsky, Peter Singer, and Soren Kierkegaard. I think that this is a simply fascinating exercise. I would provide my own list, but I think that it's largely redundant after these posts.

What books have been the most influential to your thinking?

UPDATE: Blogger links are acting up again, so you may have to edit the links in your URL bar.

UPDATE x2: Okay, the links appear to work now.

Benjamin Wiker's 10 Books that Screwed Up the World and Five Others That Didn't Help

I'm considering reading Wiker's book, in which he lists fifteen books that he thinks created or spread poisonous ideologies that have only harmed humanity. Here are those books with what appears to be (at a very quick glance) Wiker's primary critique.

1. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli. The author advocated that leaders divorce themselves from moral standards.

2. Discourse on Method by Rene Descartes. The author introduced subjective epistemology.

3. Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes. The author argued that there is no inherent morality, only cultural standards.

4. Discourse on the Origins and Foundations of Inequality among Men by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The author argued inequality was natural, inevitable, and therefore acceptable.

5. The Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx. The author created Communism. 'Nuff said.

6. Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill. The author reduced human needs and desires down to only physical considerations.

7. The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin. Using naturalistic reasoning, the author created the moral foundations for the oppression, enslavement, and genocide of undesired peoples.

8. Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrick Nietzsche. The author argued that concepts of good and evil, especially Christian ones, were irrational.

9. The State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin. The author starkly explained the evils necessary to create a Communist utopia.

10. The Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger. The author argued for eugenics.

11. Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler. (Self-explanatory -- I hope).

12. The Future of an Illusion by Sigmund Freud. The author argued that religion is an illusion caused by certain misdirected psychological needs.

13. Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead. The author used false data to argue that sexual licentiousness was healthy.

14. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male by Alfred Kinsey. The author created a study that would normalize his own profoundly deviant sexual behavior.

15. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. The author disguised herself as an ordinary suburban housewife when she was actually a radical socialist activist.

What would you add to the list? What books do you think have been especially ideologically destructive?

Bedtime Stories

More Ruminations on How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World

Two months ago, I read Harry Browne's How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World, a long out-of-print work of pop philosophy, once prominent in libertarian and objectivist circles. I often find myself thinking about Browne's ideas, many of which are unsound (e.g. his consequentialist morality), but others which seem rather revolutionary to me. Not that he is the first to espouse them -- but that they seem particularly insightful to me at this time.

Browne is principally concerned with the mental 'traps' that people find themselves in. These are self-imposed and inaccurate limitations that people maintain in their minds, like the proverbial elephant held in place by a weak chain.

The identity trap is the belief that you must be someone other than yourself; that you must adopt and conform to pre-existing identities, rather than invent one of your own. I remember as a young man identifying with geek subculture and intentionally trying to develop a taste in anime, which was much in vogue with local geeks. It never took, no matter how much money I spent. There are other, more serious identities that I have tried to nurture: American, Christian, evangelical, librarian, among other masks that I have wished myself to have and to project. But I don't have to impress anyone. I can just be myself.

The morality trap is that I must conform to an externally-provided moral code, instead of creating my own. No one has authority to dictate my moral code to me. I reject all authority over my life, for I am a sovereign individual. This was quite a reversal for me, for the "spiritual formation" processes of ministry and seminary directly taught and advocate submission to earthly authorities as a lifestyle. Richard Foster's discipline of submission is a good example of this line of thought. I'm contemplating Harry Browne's book in this very manner. Instead of thinking "How can I let this wise person influence and mentor me?", I'm asking "What's good in here? What's bad?" and tossing out the bad without a second thought.

Which brings us to one of the government traps; that there is a moral duty to obey the law -- any law. Browne rejects this notion, and so do I. The law and morality may overlap, but nothing is morally mandatory simply because it is legally mandatory, and vice versa. I might obey the law because it is moral, or I might obey it because I fear the consequences of disobeying it, but I need not obey it simply because it is the law. Now this is a trap that doesn't really effect me, as I had no plans to break any laws. This was not a barrier that ever really existed in my mind, as I never strongly attributed morality to government. But Browne explained clearly what was for me hazily intuitive.

A fourth trap was the unselfishness trap -- that I have a moral duty to help others. Now I think that Browne goes too far on this one, but it is helpful that he attacks selflessness at the conceptual level. It is a critique that, to my knowledge, does not exist outside of objectivism, and all assumptions should be questioned. I still think that it is good to be generous to those in need, if for no other reason than an awareness that at some point, each of us is flat on his back and in need of a hand up (which I suppose is not really an argument for selflessness, but selfishness). So I'm unsure of what to make of this trap, but for the moment, I think that it's important that when I am selfless, it is because I desire to do so, not because I feel a moral duty imposed by others to do so.

Related to this trap is the burning issue trap/utopia trap, which is that there is some immediate social, moral, political issue which requires collective action and sacrifice in order to make the world a better place. I don't think that there is. Right now, I think that I'll take care of myself and my family, and let the world burn down around me, if need be. This is because I'm not convinced that there really are any hobgoblins to fight (to apply H.L. Mencken's perspective more broadly). Also, as Browne points out, crusaders tend to end up exhausted with little to show for it. Certainly I have spent much of my life in various causes, and have not accomplished much, for myself or anyone else.

Browne's insight was that there was no issue or cause greater than himself. I like that idea. Browne takes it too far. In his desire for 'freedom', he abandoned his wife and, worse, his daughter. I see myself as obligated to my wife, as I chose to marry her, and to my daughter, as I chose to bring her into the world. And, for that matter, neither have ever acted in a way unworthy of my obligation. So I would tentatively say that there is no cause greater than myself and my family, which is a far smaller circle of obligations than I have ever imposed on myself than before.

I may occasionally talk about political issues here, and at other fora. But I'm very intentionally avoiding any movements because my focus should be on myself and my family, and nothing else. I do not give money to any cause nor march in the streets for any controversy.

Now let's flip the concept of 'obligation' on its head and proceed to another trap that Browne describes: the rights trap. This was particularly hard for me to accept (although the first time I read it, I knew that it was true) because it was very counter to how I have envisioned the world as long as I can remember. What Browne means is this: rights don't exist. At all. You either have something, or you don't. If someone steals the fresh milk bottles off your porch in the morning (Browne wrote this book a long time ago when there was still home milk delivery), you may get angry at the thief. You may deliver eloquent speeches from your front porch about the evils of thievery, and how this person has violated your right to property. But none of this will bring your milk back.

Having a sense of one's rights necessarily brings one into unhappiness because one cannot always take and hold those rights. Here's a personal example: I think that the Church has wronged me, and therefore must compensate me in various ways in order to have me back. This is a different statement from saying that I think that the Church has wronged me, and therefore must compensate me for its violation of my rights. I can write long, angry speeches, letters, or blog posts about the wickedness of the Church, and incessantly present demands to the Church about its obligation to pay me back, and harangue Church leaders to repent, but none of these things will actually result in justice. The Church is very unlikely to respond to anything other than force, and as I have no force to bring to bear, I'm better off trying to avoid getting suckered in the future, rather than demanding that the world conform to my view of my rights. Now if I ever, say, acquire pictures of Bishop Timothy Whitaker having sex with a chimpanzee (especially a male chimpanzee) then I would have some force to offer and could probably extract said compensation. But I can't even envision a scenario in which that would happen.

You have what you have because you have it, not because it is your right to have it. You can get what you can get not because it is your right to get it, but because you can get it. 'Rights' have nothing to do with reality.

Wheh! That was a long explanation. But that's because my mind has long been attuned to issues of right and wrong, nobility and wickedness, and just and unjust causes. It's part of my personality.

Lastly, there is the despair trap. Browne writes about how to find freedom in an unfree world. It'd be nice if each of us could be completely free from all impingements upon our freedom to rule our own lives. But this is pretty much impossible. Browne himself admits that he is not completely free. But he writes that a lot of people, because they cannot be completely free, do nothing to become freer. Because they cannot have perfection in this life, they do not try for improvement. For example, a person may feel crushed by a poisonous marriage and a toxic job, but because she does not think that she can be free of both of these problems, she does not to relieve herself of one of them. The hypothetical perfect becomes the enemy of the realistic better.

That's what I'm trying to do: become freer. I'll graduate from seminary in December (I'm in now only because I'll bump up on my employer's payscale when I graduate; enough money to make it worth my while). I intend to celebrate, in traditional Asbury Theological Seminary fashion, by getting roaring drunk. I may even get out my hookah and smoke some tobacco. I may not become completely free in December, but I would have crossed one master off my list. And that's a damn good thing.

The Politics of Philosophical Destruction

A nasty, vicious smear Immanuel Kant by the attack dogs at the Friederick Nietzsche campaign:


But I gotta say, Søren Kierkegaard's is even worse:


When will our philosophical debating system be free of this pernicious hatred? Why can't civic leaders debate their metaphysics without resorting to ad hominem attacks?

Via The Corner

Fantasy Worlds

Bill Maher writes about health care in American culture. It's a target-rich environment, but I'll just touch on his central thesis:

How about this for a New Rule: Not everything in America has to make a profit. It used to be that there were some services and institutions so vital to our nation that they were exempt from market pressures. Some things we just didn't do for money. The United States always defined capitalism, but it didn't used to define us. But now it's becoming all that we are.

Um, no. There never was such a time.

The whole enterprise of the "reformers" is to change human nature so that we work for social interest instead of self interest. It will only work if we can create a "New Rule" that alters how humans do and always have been motivated. And because their efforts can only succeed if humans can become angels, they will only make things worse.

Side note: although Maher believes that not everything has to make a profit, apparently the comedy business does. Here are pictures of his Beverly Hills mansion.

HT: Miss Cellania

Our Possessions Can Enslave Us

Jockeystreet on how fulfilling the desire for more can hurt us:

Over these past few years I have said again and again, in every forum that I can find, that the quality of life cannot be improved, after a certain point, by adding more stuff to the mix. I have written about, talked about, concepts like Voluntary Simplicity. I have argued that more money will not always mean more happiness. That it may often mean less happiness.

People have accused me, from time to time, of romanticizing poverty.

I would never want to do that.

I would never want to have, for myself or for my son or for anyone, “not enough.”

I want us always to have “enough.” I want us to have the sense to know what “enough” is. And to be able to stop there. To be able to get the most out of life by being able to recognize that adding more to the mix takes something away. That adding more means sometimes getting caught up in that more, trapped in it, mired. Unable to find the things we really want or need. Means committing too much of our lives to the maintenance or preservation of things that do not contribute to our happiness.

Language Has No Objective Reality

Kevin Baker at The Smallest Minority is presently in a debate with another writer about gun rights and the meaning of the Second Amendment. Although I think that Kevin and I will largely agree about the individual right to keep and bear arms, we seem to approach it from somewhat different directions.

His opponent strangely asserts that the original intent of the amendment was not to protect that individual right, but I'm not going to get into that right now. Kevin responds:

Obviously, the Founders didn't all hold one homogeneous intent that became each part of the Constitution, instead they wrote law, and in law it isn't the intent that matters, what matters is what the words say and how they are understood at the time they were written. This is called "Original Understanding Theory." There is a third, "Original Public Meaning." All three theories carry the moniker of "Originalism," but Original Understanding is the theory under which law is supposed to function, and it is the one most accepted by "Originalists" on the courts today. What was intended doesn't matter. What it says is.

I disagree. Original intent is the only legitimate approach to understanding communication (oral or written) because communication is an attempt to convey the internal workings of a mind outside of itself. Language is nothing more than an approximation of thought, a code used as a substitute for thoughts. Words, in their various forms and arrangements, have no instrinsic meaning. They simply stand as crude replacements for the actual thought. Example:

dholghuwehfo dfuhywe pgjh vn myw idfmn

What does this mean? Unless you know what the code is, this is gibberish. But then, all language is gibberish (that is, without meaning) unless the reader/listener knows the code. Words, if spoken, are simply particular sounds. If written, they are only specific drawings. To say "What it says is" asserts an objective reality to that which is only a reflection of the actual reality, which is the thought that originated the communication.

Here is an example. This is not a chicken:



CHICKEN

Neither is this:

The first is a word that represents the bird in the English language. But not if you don't speak English. If you don't speak English, it's just a bunch of angular black markings. The second is not a chicken either. It's a picture of a chicken. Both are drawings that represent my mental concept of a chicken (but not necessarily yours), but neither is an actual chicken, or else you would be able to eat it.

Nor are they equivalent. The expression does not equal the concept. The first does not even look like a chicken, and the second is not even a picture of a chicken. It's a drawing representing a chicken, but not a picture of an actual chicken. We look at the drawing and guess that it stands for a chicken, but if it were a substantially more abstract drawing, we wouldn't even know that. It is only because it approximates a two-dimensional expression of a chicken that we share in common that we are able to communicate the concept of 'chicken' through it. As an objective reality, neither is an actual chicken.

The only way that a language could be objective is if all of its components are operating from an agreed-upon code. If, let us say, the authors of the Constitution had a fixed dictionary in the words had only one meaning and only certain constructions thereof had discrete functions, then one might say that it would be possible to objectively know the meaning of their text.

But language very rarely operates this way. Only constructed languages could even attempt it. Natural languages -- those that spontaneously form and change over time as they are used by a population -- can be roughly understood by philologists, but their meanings cannot be contained because users use words based upon what they think that they mean, not what official dictionaries and grammars say that they mean.

It's possible to gain a sense of what the authors of the Constitution thought that words and phrases meant by reading documents of the era to see how words were used in relation to each other. But this data set is vastly incomplete because it does not even come close to encompassing every use of the words and phrases that they used. Our data set consists entirely of a comparative handful of surviving written communications, and none of the oral communications whatsoever.

We may, however, make good guesses about what the authors of the Constitution meant by a written expression by analyzing how these words and phrases were used in the context of their writings. But we cannot know with objective certainty in the same way that we can know that 2+2 will always equal four.

Even though this is an educated guess, it is a superior way of knowing than asserting that units of a language can have objective meanings. Remember that these units of language are communications -- imperfect attempts to express inner thought to an outer world. If you're not attempting to discern what the speaker or writer is trying to communicate, then you're rejecting communication conceptually. And if you're rejecting communication, then uses of language might as well be random.

But for a moment, assume that language meaning can be objectively knowable. How would you test the hypothesis "Communication X represents concept Y"? If X and Y are not placed in reflection of other uses of X and Y, and there is no codebook in which to look up X and Y, how can their meaning be known?

This problem does not go away, as Kevin suggests, because a unit of language is a law. Laws remain attempts to communicate concepts. If you're rejecting original intent, you're deciding not to try to discern the communications of the authors of the law, and are left without any guide as to what the words and phrases in a given law mean.

"What it says is" simply isn't knowable. What the writers were trying to say is, at least, researchable.

Quote of the Day

Geek With a .45 on Rousseau, an Enlightenment philosopher whose ideas gave support for the more extreme statist brutalities of the French Revolution:

One of the ideas that occurred to me fairly recently is that there is a number of people in the world whose graves really ought to be shat upon routinely. If I were ever to compile a list, Jean Jacques Rousseau would be very high on it. Sadly, he is buried in the Pantheon of Paris, a well guarded structure that makes the matter of actually rendering any scatological salute impractical.

Who would you put on such a list?

The Desecration of the Sacred in the Arts

Roger Scruton has an interesting article in City Journal about modern aesthetics. He argues that since 1930 or so, one of the major themes of the arts -- and a new one in the Western tradition -- has been to intentionally depict ugliness:

I used the word “desecration” to describe the attitude conveyed by Bieito’s production of Die Entführung and by Serrano’s lame efforts at meaning something. What exactly does this word imply? It is connected, etymologically and semantically, with sacrilege, and therefore with the ideas of sanctity and the sacred. To desecrate is to spoil what might otherwise be set apart in the sphere of sacred things. We can desecrate a church, a graveyard, a tomb; and also a holy image, a holy book, or a holy ceremony. We can desecrate a corpse, a cherished image, even a living human being—insofar as these things contain (as they do) a portent of some original sanctity. The fear of desecration is a vital element in all religions. Indeed, that is what the word religio originally meant: a cult or ceremony designed to protect some sacred place from sacrilege.

Scruton provides several examples of the glorification of evil, not in the sense that evil is represented as good (e.g. Nazi propaganda films), but that evil is praised for being evil. It is a rejection of the hero/journey motif for a villain/destruction one and a nihilism that is all too present in postmodern life, from Robert Fisk's praise for his attackers to the movie Natural Born Killers. It is an urge to simultaneously destroy and be destroyed.