Hume the not-so-great psychologist; once again a hypocrite?

A Twitter back-and-forth with Julian Baggini over various things David Hume has led me to in part question Hume's value as arguably the world's first modern psychologist. His "I can't apprehend myself" sounds so true when one tries to make an instantaneous grasp of who Hume is, as if the mind has a certain quasi-quantum fuzziness that can't be precisely held, or, to riff on both Anaximander and Zeno of Elea, as if it's a river which is always flowing halfway further to its destination while also never the same river.

The reality is that the "self" is a corpus of work, not a moment. To go back to the quantum world analogy, it's the entire diffraction pattern, not one individual wave-particle duad. 

Let's note his (in)famous comment in full:

“For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception…. If any one, upon serious and unprejudic'd reflection thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu'd, which he calls himself; tho' I am certain there is no such principle in me.”

The first thing I thought of when reading this again after hunting it up to get the exact quote?

The story about Hume being asked about the Problem of Induction by a lady, who wondered how he could fall asleep at night not knowing whether or not the sun would rise in the morning.

And, Hume essentially said, "I act as if."

Well, there's the hypocrisy part. Per what I said about the self being an ongoing corpus of work? Hume certainly did "act as if" in his personal life (other than when denying he wrote the Treatise). So, by his actions, if not his statement at the moment, he accepted the other side of the claim, not his own.

Of course, to further the petard-hoisting? The quote IS, as Hume students know ... from the Treatise! The book that Hume claimed he didn't write!

That said, the "bundle theory" behind this has its own additional problems. If all we can know about an object is a bundle of impressions, how can we know that that bundle of impressions is all we can know about it? To quote Hume against himself, the assumption that he makes could be called "divinity or school metaphysics" and another of his (in)famous quotes applied against himself:

“If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”

Beyond that, Hume arguably stacked the deck, and for this we head back to quantum mechanics.

Maybe I can't see "particle X," but I can see the vapor trail left by its decay products and see if they match what's predicted. Likewise, maybe I can't see the self, but I can hear or see you state your political beliefs, your philosophical beliefs, your religious beliefs, your preferences in food and many other things.

These often do not stay rigid over a lifetime. The self of 20 years from now will likely not be the same as that of today, and the self of 20 years ago likely is not the same as the current one. (Example for me? As I write this, I think more and more that Hume needs to be shelved on the "overrated philosophers" list; 20 years ago, I couldn't conceive that.)

That said, the self of three months from now will likely be pretty close to the same as the self of today, close enough to be considered the same self, barring a Damascus Road moment. (Or a belief in p-zombies or something.) 

The problem gets worse. Most of Hume's highlights in philosophy, such as the whole Problem of Induction, started in the Treatise. It's true that he reworked some of them in some degree in later works. Nonetheless, if we took Hume's fictive anonymity claims as face value real, we should throw out what, one-third of philosophical thought attributed to him? And, that would officially move him into my "overrated philosophers" list.

So, again, as with Kant, Hume, or an overestimation of Hume, has awakened me from dogmatic slumbers.

'No true empiricist' ... like 'no true Scotsman'?

First, sorry that I hadn't posted in a couple of weeks. But, late last week, I got easy material for two more posts, both long reads, and both about my "favorite" subject of the last year.

That's a shaggy dog, if you will, in that header.

I don't know if Baggini is Scots or not, but David Hume of course was, as well as being an empiricist. Was he a "true" empiricist? Is making claims about "true empiricists" today presentism? And, what other cans of worms have been opened up? 

Let's dive in.

Baggini, in a back and forth on Twitter about whether he cuts David Hume too much slack on his racism (he does, I say), made this claim:

I'd like to see your reasons for disagreeing. (Well, only a bit, because time is short.) He was at root an empiricist, and no empiricist would be racist today.

— Julian Baggini (@JulianBaggini) March 4, 2022

To which I independently Tweeted:

Julian Baggini claims no empiricist would be racist today. Are IQ test results empiricist? Charles Murray notes racial differences in them, says sociological factors don't cause them. So, wrong, Baggini, and no, I'm not directly responding to your Tweets anymore.

— TheRealSocraticGadfly: Friends Crushes Xi Jinping (@real_gadfly) March 4, 2022

What Baggini seems to be claiming is that science, philosophy. or both, are free of bias. Anybody who's read the Great Barrington Declaration knows that's laughable.

Besides, if empiricism is free of bias today, why wasn't it so in Hume's lifetime?

Erm, isn't this presentism? I'll neglect to say anything about petards. https://t.co/cP21ym12pr

— TheRealSocraticGadfly: Friends Crushes Xi Jinping (@real_gadfly) March 4, 2022

Oops! Baggini, as he has with Hume, is trying to use the hand-waving of presentism, and I just hoist him by his own petard.

Yeah.... I quote-tweeted his tweet rather than doing a second independent response in a thread to my first tweet. So sue me.

And, he responded, claiming the petard's on me. 

"Presentism is a historical term meaning judging past actions by today's standards, or uncritical adherence to present-day attitudes, especially the tendency to interpret past events in terms of modern values and concepts." The petard is all yours.

— Julian Baggini (@JulianBaggini) March 5, 2022

So, NOT quote tweeting him, my final take:

"Presentism is a historical term meaning judging past actions by today's standards, or uncritical adherence to present-day attitudes...."
Baggini (NOT quote tweeting) HAS, in claiming no modern empiricist would be racist, staked out uncritical adherence to present attitudes.

— TheRealSocraticGadfly: Friends Crushes Xi Jinping (@real_gadfly) March 5, 2022

I.E., I stand by what I said. M-W's shorter definition confirms me in that.

That said, from what I've read elsewhere, I think that Baggini, like Dan Kaufman, gets Hume's Skeptical history wrong.

Simple and correct answer on this is by straight chronology: Treatise Hume, a Pyrrhonist; post-Treatise Hume an Academic. Per Mossner's bio, as I noted in my review, that's why Hume's bottom line recourse when being called out as a Pyrrhonist was to saiy, "I didn't write the Treatise."

In reality, this, combined with my noting that Hume was a "trimmer" in many ways, which Baggini halfway admits in one piece, though without ever using the word "trimmer," shows that Hume as a philosopher should perhaps be moved into the overrated camp.

It also brings into question Hume's value as arguably the world's first modern psychologist. His "I ca't apprehend myself" sounds so true when one tries to make an instantaneous grasp of who Hume is, as if the mind has a certain quasi-quantum fuzziness that can't be precisely held, or, to riff on both Anaximander and Zeno of Elea, as if it's a river which is always flowing halfway further to its destination while also never the same river.

The reality is that the "self" is a corpus of word, not a moment. To go back to the quantum world analogy, it's the entire diffraction pattern, not one individual wave-particle duad.

Finally, Julian, another petard? If Hume IS a "thorough" racist as you claim (and as I agree, while still noting you undercut yourself), then can you really write a whole book about how Hume can teach us about being human? ONLY if in terms of medieval theology's "via negativa." (And, that wouldn't just be on Hume as a negative mirror on how to not be a racist. It would also be Hume as a negative mirror on how not to be a poseur, a trimmer and other things.)

Westar/Jesus Seminar goes in the tanks

 At one time, what seems eons ago, the Jesus Seminar did great stuff. The work of John Kloppenborg et al on Q, including its reconstruction, likely early forms, etc., was fantastic.

After that, even though a bit of the derision was earned, the four-color vote on alleged saying of Jesus was pretty good overall.

The gospels based on that weren't bad, though already then, the Seminar was starting to enter the world of clunky/wonky/idiosyncratic in its choices on translation.

Between moving away from the Metroplex more than a decade ago and shifts in focus in my non-fiction reading life, I hadn't read anything from the Seminar, now the Westar Institute. Until recently, and with this book, I shan't be reading anything else in the future for another decade.

Adapted from my Goodreads review:

After Jesus, Before Christianity: A Historical Exploration of the First Two Centuries of Jesus Movements by Erin Vearncombe
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I have enough familiarity with Westar/Jesus Seminar etc. that I wasn’t holding my breath over this book, BUT?

It’s as bad as Bart Ehrman’s recent stuff. No, ultimately it’s worse. And, much of the second half of it is basically a channeling of Karen L. King, without disclosing her own willfulness in setting herself up as a mark for a forgery.

Add in tendentious theological, exegetical and hermeneutic claims, the lack of an index and more, and this is one-star dreck.  

First, claiming that because  σοφία is feminine in Greek this opens “new ways of looking at Jesus” is laughable. (Ditto for חָכְמָה being feminine in Hebrew, of course.) I immediately thought of Mark Twain saying that a maiden is sexless in German but a turnip is not.

Claims that Rome has a focus on making conquered nations feel like semi-barbarians by violence? The Republic had a long period of forbearance with Greece, and even elsewhere, worked to co-opt the leadership class, not crush them. Slaves “transported” to Rome? Sure, because that’s where the most rich people were. Rome did NOT have an Assyria-like policy of deliberately moving whole groups of people.

People moving for work? Sure. Happens today! Uncoerced today as it was then.

The “Roman soldiers” Jesus and John the Baptizer talked to? Syrian auxiliaries, actually.

Gets Markan version of “clean and unclean foods” parable wrong! Humor isn’t the point; equality of Gentiles is.

Gets the “betrayed” vs “arrested” of Paul on the Last Supper wrong, or just ignores the “arrested” to try to offer more cosmic meaning.

Pharisees weren’t “relatively new” at time of Josephus., not with a pedigree of more than 200 years.

Insinuates pre-69 Vespasian already had an eye for the throne. Really? NEVER heard that before. Also claims Vespasian was a “plebian.” WRONG! He was a knight, the equestrian class.

Also a lie re Vespasian, and Titus? The claims that Romans never destroyed temples of other religions. It wasn't "temples," but in 54 CE Suetonius Paulinus (not the historian) is reported as destroying many Druid sacred sites in Britain, on Anglesey, as part of a brutal suppression. Druid groves were destroyed elsewhere.

Weirder yet is the talk about some Christian subgroups, like claiming that Hebrews 13:9-16 is about a subgroup that called itself “the altar.” No, really.

Claiming I Peter 1:1 and James 1:1 is about Christians who were “aliens,” rather than, as is the common interpretation, that it refers to the Jewish diaspora, or perhaps what was already considered a Christian diaspora, is ... interesting. But, if you’re going to date I Peter at 150CE, you’ll make such statements! (Personally, I can see I Peter as being as late as 125, and the persecution it references being what Pliny the Younger discusses with Trajan. It’s possible it refers to earlier bits of persecution under Diocletian.)

Of course, if you’d like to date 1 Peter as late as 150 to put it later than Gnostic writings, you’ll do that!

That said, there are somewhat refreshing ideas, such as calling groups of Christians in different cities “clubs,” like dyers or weavers. Or like followers of pagan gods. That said, it seems to go too far to even take the Pauline passage about “one God and Father of us all” as “the father of the club.” And, that was the only halfway good thing here.

Translating “Christians” as “followers of the Anointed” when they note that Roman religious and political tradition didn’t have anointing, although Greek did. (Herms in the ancient Greek world, for example, were anointed.) Then claiming that Christiani/-oi as used in Latin (or imperial Greek?) was an official imperial term? Again, a claim I've never heard before, and comes off as theologically and hermeneutically tendentious.

Yes, “βαπτίζω” can mean to wash or to bathe. Qumran shows this. BUT, these were still ceremonial washings, even if we don’t use the word “baptize” as a transliteration. (Interestingly, Christian “baptisms” are compared to those of Isis etc., but Qumran isn’t referenced.)

“Gnostic” may not be exactly right, but a Nag Hammadi work such as Testimony of Truth shows that there were differences between so-called Gnostiicism and early pre-orthodox Christianity. Note how it refers to the Lord threatening Adam and Eve with death for seeking gnosis. Strawmans Gnostic vs proto-orthodox division without noting schools within Gnosticism and how most scholars talk about these sehools, or “heresies!”

Also cites Karen King without noting the big kerfuffle over Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, namely, her being a sucker for a forgery. Beyond the link above, someone as far left politically as Chris Hedges also ripped it to shreds. And, the authors about “Secret Revelation of John” rather than normal academic title “Apocryphon of John” was puzzling.

Then, near the end, getting into what we’ll call traditional biblical scholarship, the authors accept the traditional authorship of I Clement and Ignatius, even though good traditional scholarship of the last 50 years rejects it more and more. (I think that if you date I Clement much after 100, you have to call it a forgery even if a real Clement existed. I've recently talked about Ignatius, and Marcion, per three paragraphs down.)

And, OTHER problems. I’ve NEVER seen Hegesippus spelled with a double-s before.

And, in discussing early martyrdom, the authors never wrestle with Candida Moss. (That’s probably because it would undercut their take on traditional Xianity not being in opposition to Gnosticism.)

Dates the Pastorals post-Marcion, also on tendentious grounds.

Finally, there’s no index to this book. That normally costs a star by itself and sealed the one-star rating.

View all my reviews

We don't thnk in any language, eh?

"Tosh" is my British English, thought-out answer to a clickbaity piece at 3 Quarks Daily that leaves me with not so high regard for its author and the seemingly impoverished view of what human thought is.

David J. Lobina does claim, in his title that "You don't think in any language."

First, it's clickbaity in two ways. One, that clickbait header does get caveated in the third paragraph, but that doesn't make it less clickbaity.

The point I want to make in this post is that no-one thinks in any natural language; not in English, or Italian, or whatever, but in a language of thought, an abstract, unconscious and moreover inaccessible, conceptual representational system of the mind.

Nope. Last I checked, a "language of thought" is still a language.

The study the author mentions? he limitations of one person's native language vs another I don't think is strong proof of his idea; at best, it's proof that a strong version of Sapir-Whorf is no more true for inner speech than talking to others.

Beyond that, doesn't he later engage in petard hoisting with:

And this, I have claimed, necessitates a mental language of a special kind, the language of thought I introduced last month and which I have elaborated upon a little bit here.

So, again we DO speak in a language! Not just any of the external languages. Author Lobina, or whoever wrote the headline, is then wrong. And, doing this more than once? I'm not inclined any longer to be charitable about "caveating." He's either written an egregious clickbait header or else he's blithely engaged in petard hoisting.

And, per above, I still say he's wrong otherwise on the broader issue.

Also, because thought for humans doesn't end with inner speech or cogitation, but goes on to include conscious dialogue with others, then ruminating on the ideas they provide, that also undercuts the idea that we don't think in any language. 

This isn't quite a category mistake. It is a mistake, though; it's an impoverished definition of the word "thinking," even as I silently talk to myself while typing here. a lot of theories of mind and consciousness postulate that a lot of human cogitation, development of not just second order, but third order theories of mind, etc., depend on internal self dialogue .... which is based on language.

But, they also depend on dialogue with others. Whether Aristotle's "Man is an animal of civilization," or Donne's "No man is an island," while we occasionally cogitate alone, ultimately, our thinking is fashioned within social discourse.

So, no, Mr. Lobina, I shan't stick around for Part 4 or whatever of your essay serious.

And, with all of that, with the references to Aristotle and Donne, and per discussion about this in a private Facebook group? Maybe it IS a category mistake after all, and, speaking of language and thinking, I'm not sure yet how to describe the miscategorization.

I do know one other thing, to trot out another philosopher. That's Dan Dennett and private mental states. It's arguable that Lobina has no basis for his analogizing from natural language to mental language — with the addendum that he gets funnier yet by interjecting the language of formal logic into all of this.

In this case, it's not petard hoisting, but trying to have ones cake and eat it too, on talking about private mental states via analogy to public ones.

Or, to trot out a better analogy? A digital camera may use a CMOS or other sensor instead of film, but both it and the film camera are making photographs with photons of light. Thought may ultimately be done at an unconscious level in something like a language, without us being able to analogize better than that, but that something like a language bases its thinking on natural language and the product of natural language

OnlySky is getting shit wrong already

And, I'm here to gloat.

OnlySky Media was founded by the atheist contingent formerly at Patheos after Patheos essentially said, they say, that they had to be nice to theists.

So, they formed their own sandbox. And, to be honest, there's a fair amount not to like.

First, when I decided, hey, since I missed out on Patheos atheists' rise to fame, and a few bucks, and then got blocked from commenting by not-a-bible-scholar Gnu Atheist Neil Carter (one of the OnlySky gang), let's see if I can't hook up there, especially since they say they're open for contributors. (More on individual contributors getting shite wrong below.)

In their request for submissions, they say:

New columnists are added continually based not only on quality but on whether the proposed column fills an unmet need. We already have religious criticism pretty well covered.

Uhh, no, as I note below.

The individual wrongs already?

In excoriating Kyrsten Sinema, Marcus Johnson talks about "secular values." Really? Not all secularists identify as secular humanists, and thus, there IS NO SUCH thing as secular values.

The lie is put more bluntly by Adam Lee:

Wrong, again, wrong!

Robert M. Price is a secularist, unless he's actually founded a church of Cthulhu. He's also, from what I can tell, a racist.

In the opening paragraph, Lee lies about the so-called "Nones":

The most significant, most overlooked story of the 21st century is the meteoric growth of the nonreligious, also called the “nones” (as in “none of the above”). Our numbers are rising every year, to the point that for the first time ever, Americans without membership in any house of worship constitute a majority.

First, as documented by Pew and blogged here, the Nones have flatlined in the last couple of years. Second, Pew et al don't define "Nones" as people who don't have an official membership in a church denomination, so, lying by redefinition there. 

That then leads to the lies about secularist values ...

The “nones” don’t all share a philosophy or belief system. Some are atheist, some are agnostic, some simply don’t care for organized religion, and some find the whole question irrelevant to their lives. What we do have in common—more so than you might expect—is a value system: a morality that puts human needs and human happiness first.

Wrong, wrong, wrong! (See "Robert M. Price" above.)

But, either Adam Lee really likes conflating ideas to expand envelopes, or he really likes slippery slope type thinking, or something. In another piece touting the glorious wonders of OnlySky, he conflates Nones and unbelievers, which is flat wrong.

In another piece, a "Captain Cassidy" makes this claim:

Officially, Calvinism is a sort of add-on software module or DLC for Protestantism. Any Christian Protestant church can adopt Calvinism and still consider itself Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, or whatever else. That characteristic makes Calvinism very versatile.

Erm, NO. Even within ELCA Lutheranism, even with it in fellowship with the Reformed Church of America, such an idea would be rejected. Conservative Lutherans would reject it while laughing at it. And, good conservative Calvinists would laugh at it, too.

As for contributors? I've already noted Neil Carter. James Croft? As noted at my main blog, a semi-Gnu. Jennifer Hecht? Her books are error-ridden; go see my Goodreads reviews. "Doubt" was meh, and, with yet more insight, at least tinged with the BuJew virus (sue me if you don't like that mash-up). "Stay: A History of Suicide" is simply loaded with wrongness about its subject.

As for having other things covered? Phil Zuckerman supposedly writes the Secular Symphony, but his vertical has nothing about classical music. Jonathan M.S. Pierce, as already documented here in giving a guest poster space trying to defend Bart Ehrman's most recent book, or directly here, as linked there, cutting blank checks to Jesus mythicists, has gotten issues of biblical criticism wrong. And, I mean, easily identifiable as wrong. I identify him as being a semi-Gnu, like Croft.

And, I don't like needing to register to comment, rather than them using Disqus, or Wordpress commenting if they're on a Wordpress backbone, or whatever. Plus, unlike with Disqus, for example, I don't know if I have the ability to block commenters. Or to find out what stupidity they write elsewhere. Also, the sign-up page also has a "Support" link, which makes me wonder about being spammed with donation solicitations. (Unherd on politics cheesed me off when I found that registering via email still didn't let me comment; rather, it's like Slutstack that way.)

I'm feeling like once a month or so, for a while, I'll be kicking OnlySky in the nads, as I doubt they're going to approve my ideas pitches or anything related to them. I had talked about secular poetry, but if that's part of Hecht's gig, they're not going to likely ink me for that.

My impression is of politer, gentler turd-polishers of atheism than Gnu Atheist BSers like P.Z. Myers, yet with the same end goal in mind. Soon enough, the wrongful claim that atheists have either moral or skeptical superior standing will be more explicitly leveled, I'm sure.

Baruch Spinoza remains excommunicated

From Mondoweiss, late last year.

It's not just that he remains excommunicated by the Amsterdam synagogue that booted him (and he does), but that a modern Spinoza scholar is also persona non grata. Indeed, per that second link, Rabbi Joseph Sefarty claims that Spinoza's excommunication cannot be removed.

Behind all of this? A clear refutation, as I've already blogged, that Christianity is allegedly all about orthodoxy and Judaism is all about orthopraxis. It wasn't bad cantorial skill that got Spinoza excommunicated; rather, it was the claim that he was an Epicurean, code words for being an atheist.

Not true, of course. Pantheism isn't atheism.

I later noted that distinguishing between orthodoxy and orthopraxis is somewhat a Mu point (pun intended), as they're not really separate domains.

Look at Islam. No "graven images," or anicony, is a praxis. But, it's a praxis based in a doxa, the idea that God cannot be represented AND that attempts should not be made. Note also that many Sunnis consider Shi'ites about one-quarter heretics, Sufi's half there, and Alawites fully there. 

Buddhism and Hinduism? Since both are, yes, religions, while you won't be excommunicated over rejecting karma and either reincarnation or a one-off afterlife, actual Buddhists and Hindus likely won't consider you one of them. And of course, in Hinduism, the caste system is both praxis and doxy. Or, within Buddhism, at another blog post, about orthodoxy vs orthopraxis in general, again, it won't get you excommunicated, but one of the big dividing lines between Mahayana and Theravada is dogma, not praxis. Within Muslims, the succession to Muhammad, or within Shia, the split between Sevenrs and Twelvers? Dogma. Per Spinoza, definiing who Yawheh is or is not, to then wonder who can say the Shema or not? Dogma.

The twosiderism of transhumanism vs Dark Mountain

 Via Massimo Pigliucci, Paul Fidalgo offers a critique of sorts of both transhumanism (not limited to Ray Kurzweil's Singularity) and the "collapsitarian" movement, led by a group called Dark Mountain.

Many people who read here probably know what transhumanism is.  For those who may not guess on collapsitarianism, it's a name given to an idea that has also been around for some time, with an additional dollop. The old idea is that civilization was a mistake. The new idea is that climate change and related issues will lead to its fracturing, that we can't fix that, and that we might as well accept it.

Here's my take on Fidalgo's take.

Transhumanism, IMO, like much of such futurism, has strong libertarian roots. Like colonizing Mars and other such nutteries, first, it doesn't address who would be able to afford this at start (nor, in the case of colonizing Mars, who would agree to be the soma-fueled worker bees). Fidalgo partially addresses this, late in the long piece, with a "don't leave people behind," but doesn't get straight into the largely libertarian politics behind that, even though he does focus later in the piece on Zoltan Istvan.

I agree in large part on the collapse-predictors. Like author Fidalgo, I reject the seeming Roussellian attitude that a pre-industrial style of life was "intended," is noble or whatever.

Beyond that, re the "civilization as a mistake" angle, even though the Dark Mountain people don't expressly mention overpopulation, if you're turning your back on civilization, you can't ignore it. And, that's my ultimate rhetorical question: Are you volunteering to be part of the 90 percent, or whatever, "cut"? I've never seen any such group be honest about this. 

That said, back to the transhumanist side and civilization to this point. Per a commenter on Massimo's Facebook group, the bottleneck of energy production and consumption includes the destructiveness associated with such production and consumption.

The Istvan part is interesting. Didn't know his past as a Natl Geo reporter. Sounds like there's probably some psychology behind all of this. He of course ignores the energy issues for transhumanism, as well as the libertarianism it's based on.

And, per Fidalgo, I am reminded, with this, of the "Sargon" episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. Finally, and I think Massimo would agree, that re theories of consciousness as being embodied, a mind "stored on a machine" (if even possible, and almost certainly not) would no longer be a mind.

Fidalgo's piece, especially the riffs on Shakespeare in the last one-third, isn't bad overall, but I think could have been sharpened even more.