The rise of the omnipresent conductor: Not good for classical music

Per this great New Yorker piece about a sad recent trend in the classical world, many modern conductors are spread too thin. Or rather than that passive voice, they're spreading themselves too thin.

The piece's focal point is Klaus Mäkelä, who not only currently runs the Concertgebouw but is tapped to help Chicago in 2027 — while (at least until he says he's leaving) staying in Amsterdam as well.

In my neck of the wood, there's a regional example:

Fabio Luisi is spread across three continents, maintaining roles at the Dallas Symphony, the Danish National Symphony, and the NHK Symphony, in Japan.

Per the piece, it's not quite as bad as its focal point conductor, but bad enough.

 And, while neither Dallas nor the NHK (dunno about the Danish National) are top-tier, they're both solidly enough in the second tier that they shouldn't be sharing a music director. A Luisi could do one or the other of the two, plus the Danish. And, even be principal guest conductor at a third, smaller orchestra if the ego or tightening corporate symphonic sponsorships demanded. But, that's it.

That said, there's more.

That is snarkily topped by this:

American orchestra subscribers have become resigned to a phony civic ritual: a foreign-accented maestro flies in a few times a season for two or three weeks, stays in a hotel or a furnished apartment, attends a flurry of donor dinners, and dons the appropriate cap when the local baseball team makes the playoffs.

Oof. When Jaap van Zweden was in Dallas, he seemed reasonably involved. But, it was the only major orchestra where he was the music director. 

Speaking of, the piece notes that he and the NY Phil have parted ways. For the Seoul Philharmonic and the French Radio Philharmonic, to style it in English? Wow, what a tumble.

Bottom line? It's like the reading of books. Ars longa, vita brevior. I have only so much time to read, or to listen.

Wiki's page on Luisi adds this, which fits perfectly with the New Yorker snark:

Outside of music, his hobbies include the production of his line of perfumes.

Oy.

That said, I posted this to Reddit's r/classicalmusic sub, and in comments to it, got some bits of pushback, though the upvote rate on the piece was high. And wrong. Yes, many big names in the past did two orchestras at once. None of them did three, that I am aware of.

One commenter agreed with me on Luisi. See here and here for more of my thoughts on him.

RIP Dan Dennett

I would normally, upon hearing the death of a figure like this, one more “pedestaled” than deserving, write up some sort of “takedown” obit. In the world of politics and public policy, at my Blogger site, I’ve done that regularly, not just for the easy targets like Henry Kissinger, but also the likes of John McCain, per my “obituaries” label there. Beyond the world of straight politics, I’ve done it for the likes of Christopher Hitchens.

And now, there’s Dan Dennett from the world of philosophy — and also, like Hitchens, from the world of Gnu Atheism. (And, yes, that’s how it’s spelled.) But, I really don’t have to do anything beyond color around the edges on this one.

That’s because the same person from whom I heard of Dennett’s passing, John Horgan, had updated a 2017 piece about him that fills in all the basics.

The biggie? Scientism is bad enough coming from a scientist; it’s far worse coming from a philosopher. (Sadly, Dennett’s not alone in that.)

On the issue of consciousness in general as illusion? To nuance Horgan, I think that “something like consciousness” exists below the surface, and is connected to something like Dennett’s subselves.

That said, I’ll go further than Horgan in one way and call Dennett a big old hypocrite. If no “Cartesian meaner” exist, then neither does a “Cartesian free willer.” Across Boston at MIT, Dennett’s peer Daniel Wegner got that one totally right. (But, per Wegner, I think “something like” free will exists in the same way as “something like” consciousness; Wegner also notes that “free will” is as much an affect, an emotional state or value judgment, as anything.)

Back to Horgan. First, he’s totally right in Dennett being wrong in claiming qualia don’t exist. The Samuel Johnson refutation suffices. Horgan rightly also notes that Dennett’s stance on this is a backdoor to David Chalmers’ p-zombies. Hard pass there, as I wait for Dennett to come back as a philosophically undead p-zombie.

Hard pass there, as I wait for Dennett to come back as a philosophically undead p-zombie.

The scientism? This really raised its head with “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea.” First, no, the equivalent of “evolution by natural selection” is NOT some “universal acid.” Second, Darwin included sexual selection as part of his idea. What’s the analogy to that elsewhere? Beyond that, life in general is simply not algorithmic in the way Dennett claimed.

Of course, on things like that, Dennett’s hypocrisy again raised its head. In this case, he was a greedy reductionist that he liked to claim others were, but never him. (This is similar to his denial of being a compatibilist on free will.)

The biggest issue in his scientism? Per Horgan, the claim that the mind is like a computer. That was a tired old trope decades ago, and part of a series of generally wrong tropes on “the mind is like X” that started with the beginning of mechanization and industrialization in human society.

John then ties Dan’s scientism to his rejection of wonder. And, that gets its own quote:

Some people surely have an unhealthy attachment to mysteries, but Dennett has an unhealthy aversion to them, which compels him to stake out unsound positions. His belief that consciousness is an illusion is nuttier than the belief that God is real. Science has real enemies—some in positions of great power--but Dennett doesn’t do science any favors by shilling for it so aggressively.

Friend Massimo Pigliucci has dropped his own obituary thoughts. He is kinder than I, and far kinder than John, on Dennett’s relations to religion. Here’s the NYT obit that he says unduly savages Dennett there. Sorry, Massimo, he may have been the kindest of the “Four Horsemen” of Gnu Atheism, but he was one. (That said, I don’t know that, in his book on atheist preachers, he explicitly called them out for being the hypocrites there were. Having potentially been there, and having rejected their hypocritical road, I can state that with high conviction.)

On matters of will? Massimo and I are in the same ballpark, but I don’t think we’ll ever be at the same moment. I’ve encouraged him more than once to read Wegner; I don’t think he has. I don’t think Horgan has, either. I think Dennett was halfway in that ballpark, but not entirely. (Wegner’s “The Illusion of Conscious Will” talks about the illusion in a psychology of mind sense, not that of everyday sociology.)

On the Gnu Atheism, this obit also reminds me of his invention of the word “brights.” Dennett’s later claim that the religious could call themselves “supers” rang hollow.

Massimo does add one thing I’d forgotten all about, and that is Dennett’s hating on Steve Gould. Part of that was, per “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea,” that Dennett was an ardent ev psycher, which Massimo and I certainly are not. Part of it, IMO, with the recent death of sociobiology founder E.O. Wilson and his hating on Gould’s scientific and intellectual partner Richard Lewontin, was larger political issues. (At this point, I’ll interject that Dennett’s father worked for the OSS in World War II and most obits mention him being of “Old New England stock” or similar. )

But, let’s also end with Dennett’s good. I, too, got an introduction into non-formal logic, non-technical modern philosophy with “The Mind’s I,” a collection of essays edited by Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter of “Gödel, Escher, Bach” fame. It was about 25 percent their own material, but much other, such as Nagel’s “What Is It Like to be a Bat?”, multiple items by the inimitable Raymond Smullyan and more. (That said, read here for a decade-old double-barrelled takedown of both.)

So, for a Facebooker in Horgan’s feed who talks about how much he learned from Dennett? So did I. But I then moved on. And unleared a fair amount.

RIP, Dan.

A monotheistic holy days mash-up with blood on everybody's hands

Christians in the world outside of Orthodoxy (unless Zelensky got the Ukranian church to move Easter as well as Christmas) celebrated Easter March 29.

Muslims had started Ramadan before that. 

Then, came the solar eclipse April 8, which means nothing to the non-superstitious.

But, the sliver of crescent moon the day after meant Ramadan was done and it was time for Eid al-Fitr.

Up next? Passover, starting Monday, April 22.

And, to wrap? The Orthodox Easter (a majority of Palestinians are Orthodox, I think, but don't quote me) is May 5.

All three of these world religions have genocidal blood on their hands against each other.

Christians, even if Hitler wasn't one, actively participated individually in the Holocaust. Centuries before that, before the Protestant Reformation, both Catholic and Orthodox leaders promoted the blood libel that Jews needed Gentile blood for matzoh. And, Pope Urban II did nothing to condemn First Crusade genocide against Jews in the Rhineland. Let us also not forget, via de las Casas, debate over whether American Indians were pre-Christian or anti-Christian, and thus, how they could be treated. Or mistreated.

Muslims? In what's widely recognized as not "just" genocide, but a holocaust, the Ottoman Empire, where the sultan was, at least nominally, the spiritual leader of Sunni Muslims as well as secular head of the empire Beyond that, per Wiki's page on the causes of this, the Empire committed further massacres before World War I that arguably also rose to the level of genocide. (So did the secular Turkish state after the war.) Those earlier massacres under Sultan Abdul Hamid II, even if not entirely religious, had a religious element. So did the WWI genocide under Mehmed V, who also formally declared jihad after entering the war. On the other hand, these and other genocides weren't entirely religious, and it's hypocritical for Jewish historians like Benny Morris to go ax-grinding.

And, we're now there. Beyond the genocide now having some degree of religious undertone, let us not forget that the Tanakh / Christian Old Testament has Yahweh ordering a holocaust — not just a genocide, a holocaust — against Amalek. Doesn't matter if it's legend/myth. Orthodox Jews, and everybody in power in Zionist Israel's government, cites it. And, historically, the forced conversion of the Idumeans at least approaches genocide. (Given that, per Yonathan Adler, most Jews didn't start regular observance of dietary and ritual purity laws until Hasmonean times, I think these conversions, as well as those of the Itureans, were indeed forcible.) And, Jews can be racist like Christians or Muslims even to fellow believers. Look at the treatment of Beta Israel.

Let's go back to the other two "western monotheisms." In addition to the jizya, many Muslim empires, nations, powers, required both Jews and Christians to wear special, identifying clothing long before popes came up with Magen David for Jews in the Rome ghetto they had created. But, and possibly by direct influence, popes did do that and it spread from there.

That said, don't get smug, Gnu Atheists. 

Stalin has genocidal blood on his hands from the Holodomor. But, don't act so persecuted, Ukrainians. By death rate, it hit harder in the Kazakh SSR than in the Ukrainian SSR. That said, Gnus, don't pull out the old bullshit about "Stalin went to an Orthodox seminary." I'll kick you in your genocidal ass.

Mao has genocidal blood on his hands from The Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and in smaller degrees other Maoist-derived stupidities.

Yes, they're all genocides, at least in my book. A deliberate targeting of one's own people, or socioeconomic classes within one's own people, counts as genocide in my book just like racial or religious genocides. That makes the French Revolution one, too, does it not?

Oh, and Hitler wasn't really Christian, even if not "anti-religious" (other than against Judaism) in the way Stalin and Mao were. We'll just leave that there.

Further bye-bye thoughts on OpenSky, re climate change

Per a group statement, it self-imploded.

Having snarked on them a last time recently, I thought I would take one last look, to see what it did, or did not, write about the climate crisis, being a bunch of neoliberal types, overall.

I wasn't snarkily disappointed.

ML Clark says the US won't get the election it deserves, and can't find one line of electrons to write about third parties, let alone third parties of the left, let alone Democrats' connivance with Republicans in keeping third parties off the ballot.

Earlier, she rightly bashes COP28 for a cop-out. She wrongly fails to mention "carbon tax" or "carbon tariff" as part of the solution.

Adam Lee has a good piece about minimalism in possessions, but without mentioning directly its ties to the climate crisis. And, that's offset by his piece from last fall being a sucker about Biden on the picket line.

Back to Clark, the main writer on this.

She earlier talks about the fifth US climate assessment. Several missing items here. First, "adjustments" to agriculture are nowhere near enough. Regenerative ag and feed to cut methane belches aren't enough. Eating less meat — a LOT less beef, and a fair amount less pork — are the ticket.

Lee then writes about the "Green New Deal" without telling you it's the Dems' fake Green New Deal, not the original Green Party one.

Weirdly, per Pew data that Ryan Burge misread or whatever, all these folks miss the biggie. NONE of them tie secularism specifically to how seriously people view the climate crisis, or even that they see it as a crisis at all. I wrote about that earlier this year.

"You had one objective .... " and you failed.

Beyond not really anchoring the climate crisis to secularism, to the degree anybody offers solutions, they're not that much.

Top blogging, first quarter of 2024

These are the most-viewed posts of mine within the past three months. That doesn't mean all of them are from the last three months. I'll indicate where not.

No. 10? More oopses at r/Academic Biblical, with the worst I documented being some nutter about "666."

No. 9? A two-paragraph brief from way back in 2007. "Patriots, gurus, scoundrels, martyrs" was, I think, the second post here to draw vigorous protests from "Addle Allone." I have one suspicion who that person is, but am not sold on it.

No. 8? Yes, Morton Smith is indeed the forger of Secret Mark. And, a 2023 book won't convince me otherwise.

No. 7? Some counterfactual/alt history about Caesar and the Ides of March.

No. 6? Trending from 2020 because I posted it at Reddit's r/classicalmusic, my saying at that time that I would take a pass on Fabio Luisi helming the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

No. 5? From last year, about fascism in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. (Since posting it, I have crossed swords on Twitter with the chief fascist nutter of the story, Corey Mahler. Unfortunately, I didn't screengrab and now I'm blocked. IIRC, it was him spouting false flag nuttery about the Crocus attack in Moscow.)

No. 4? I murdered Robert Sapolsky, figuratively speaking, over "Determined."

No. 3? From last fall, and getting new reading from posting at a biblical criticism group, obviously NOT the blocked-to-me r/academicbiblical, my piece on Josiah not being Josiah, proto-Deuteronomy and more.

No. 2? The second from 2007, "more proof the Buddha was no Buddha," and possibly the first piece of mine to draw that vigorous reaction from Addle Allone. Allone, maybe, but not alone in reacting to this. Oh, while we're there? Buddhism is still a religion.

No. 1? Andy Clark is all wet as a philosopher of consciousness.

When was the book of James written?

Some actually pretty good discussion here on its dating. The long comment by Moremon is good, though he appears to be plumping for at least the possibility of a relatively early date within a pseudepigraphal James by conflating Raymond Brown's dating schema and Dale Allison's.

Pytine's comment is also good, bringing Kloppenborg into the mix.

First? Yes, absolutely, it's pseudepigraphal. The absence of second-century church fathers quoting it, except a possible but not guaranteed reference by Irenaeus, plus even into the third, and a bit into the fourth, centuries, later fathers still raising an eyebrow about its authenticity, are markers.

Second? At the tail end of the first century, many New Testament scholars note that Paul went into eclipse. So, no author at that time would have good reason for trying to make "James" look Pauline. And, yes, despite the "show me your faith," etc., and early-Lutheran era Martin Luther's perplexment, it is Pauline in look.

But, get several years into the second century? Different story. Assuming a still relatively strong Ebionite movement before the Bar Kokhba revolt, with Paul surging back into prominence again, an author trying to make a "James" look Pauline would have incentive to write, just like an author trying to deal with church governance in a Jesus movement facing an ever-longer delay in the eschaton would have reason to write the Pastorals.

Liotorg raises the issue of, dating aside, whether James had more of an indirect oral dependence on the authentic Paulines, and the first set of pseudeipigraphs, Colossians and Ephesians, or whether there was even a literary dependence. He says it doesn't affect dating, but IMO, a written dependence would tend to push James' dating later, in that you need more time for more copies of an ancient manuscript to circulate more.

Per other commenters, Craig Evans and James Tabor are wrong in arguing for an early date. Of course, Tabor argues for a Jesus dynasty, which commenter Dramatic Ad ignores, which means he has motive to argue James wrote in the 50s.

 

I was going to snark again on OnlySky, but ...

Per a group statement, plus this, this, this and this ... it self-imploded.

As regular readers know, I snark semi-regularly on Reddit's AcademicBiblical subthread. I've done that here on occasion in the past for OnlySky, but not for their particular atheist takes on biblical criticism, or biblical issues in general, nearly as much as ...

Their conflation of Gnu Atheism with secular humanism and

Their proxy war warmongering on Ukraine. Multiple links on that below.

I had gone to the website, since I hadn't been in several months, to see the take on Israel-Gaza post Oct. 7, 2023, and instead, they're dead?

The first "this" is by cofounder Adam Lee. Confirming what I suspected, and refudiating Gnu Atheist claims that the rise (kind of stalled) of the "Nones" means a rise in atheism, with more refudiation here, the bucks weren't there to support it. (It's not just that full atheists aren't Nones. In one OnlySky piece from 2022, James Croft notes the withering and imploding of the Ethical Culture world, saying the St. Louis Ethical Society's 350 or so members are one-tenth of the whole of EC in the US.)

None of this stopped Lee again, earlier this year, from, at least by implication, conflating Nones and atheists. Nor, globally, did it stop Dale McGowan, in looking at China, from conflating secularism and atheism. There are tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, surely, of atheistic and quite religious Theravada Buddhists. Yes, Buddhism is a religion, and a pre-emptive shut-up to claims otherwise. Ditto for Daoists and a fair chunk of neo-Confucianists. The reality, contra McGowan, is that terms like the Dao or Way, or T'ien or Heaven, is that they are metaphysical concepts in traditional Chinese thought, even if not deities.

The second, meh-ish, is by Captain Cassidy. She is religiously illiterate, IMO, having conflated Calvinism and Lutheranism.

The third? Jonathan MS Pearce. "The Self-Besotted Philosopher," I called him, to pun on his own moniker. A deep-fried proxy war warmonger over Russia-Ukraine. (Indeed, per a piece there, deep-fried enough to actually go to Kherson.) And, per this piece, also an Islamophobe and a Jesus mythicist, or at least a "fellow traveler."

The fourth? M.L. Clark, which finally gets me to the intended snarking.

As far as Israel-Gaza, M.L. Clark seems to have written about it far more than anybody else, and in pieces that probably needed editing for size or broken into multiple parts. This one, her best overall since Oct. 7, nonetheless never comments on the issue of many Jews conflating anti-Zionism and antisemitism. And, while the Nakba is mentioned, details of it are not discussed, nor is pre-World War II British Palestine and other things.

Item No. 1, per Wiki's surprisingly generally very good page about the Nakba, MUST be established, and that is that it was started BEFORE any Arab League armies attacked Israel. Zionists, even if they don't directly say so, will hint, to the degree they admit that anything like a Nakba happened, that it was a response to being attacked.

Of course, about the same time late last fall, Clark used the issue of Israel-Gaza war crimes to attack Russia for war crimes while ignoring Ukrainian ones. She does mention Russian claims that Ukraine has committed war crimes but never steps beyond "Russian claims." That said, she appears to be at least a low-level proxy war warmonger, or did. And, as with the Nakba, there's no backstory. Of course not; that would undermine being a proxy war warmonger.

Elsewhere, she shows she's a one-trick pony. Talking about German state elections in Thuringia, she notes that the Alliance for Democracy failed to come out on top. Two-thirds of the way down, she finally mentions Russia-Ukraine war issues and their effect on domestic politics, but doesn't get into detail.

Clark may not be as much a warmonger as Pearce, but she is just as much a neoliberal. I suspect that goes for others.

As for comments on the group announcement page? Yeah, other people besides the above that I snarked on early on? Kind of not writing any more.

And, commenters call out Adam Lee (and by extension, other cofounders). MANY of them talk about the commenting system being crap and say they told Lee et al that from the start. Sounds like an arrogance problem on the part of the founders. Shock me. 

Also? One person calls them out for neoliberalism. Another snarks on the Democratic identification in another way. 

As I mentioned in the "conflation" link? Robert Price is an atheist, unless he believes in Cthulhu's existence. He also walks, talks and quacks like a racist. (H.P. Lovecraft himself was definitely one.) But, the point? While I say that you can't be a humanist, secular or otherwise, and be a racist, you certainly can be an atheist and racist. Or an atheist and other things. I've said it repeatedly and repeat it again, atheism is no guarantor of moral or intellectual superiority.

But, by conflating atheism and secular humanism, and even among non-racists, excluding conservatives or true leftists alike, they had a narrow focus.

Back to the Nones not being atheists. You also had a narrow target audience. Your expectations were probably too high in the start. As for a place like Skeptical Inquirer? It doesn't pitch secularism as its focus.

Related? It reaches out more beyond the USofA. OnlySky was pretty much a Merikkka-only project. Again, more non-Americans should have been recruited from the start.

So, you blew it!

Bye!

More "interesting" stuff at r/Academic Biblical

Pytine's comment and ex-Mormon's response are both "interesting," but I believe incorrect, especially no-Moremon.

First, Pytine.

The Cureton thesis on Ignatius is a minority view among scholars; Wiki has a decent summation of the issue. For more detail, see this link off a footnote there, that argues Ignatius had to have written post-140. It may not be a tiny minority view, but it's pretty darn small from what I read. That blows that idea out of the water, but with a 140s date, that as a terminus ad quem for the Gospels allows late dating of them. That said, there is another angle that might be possible. That is that the middle recension is original, but has interpolations, at least as we have it today; see Wiki's "authenticity."

The idea that Luke is dependent on the Gospel of Marcion, rather than him redacting Luke, I still find laughable. And, the Ockham's Razor claim by Pytine doesn't hold water. Rather, it's quite possible that, even though Luke went to Adam with his genealogy, vs Matthew to David, it was still too Jewish. Besides, there's Option 3, again per Wiki, that both derived independently from a common source document. In any case, the Lukan recension of Marcion holds less water when the Cureton idea on Ignatius is rejected.

No-Moremon? His buying the laughable theory, that still gets bruited, that Mark was writing in response to Caligula's proposed actions, is Not.Even.Wrong. Since Paul invented the Eucharist, how could Mark have written earlier? Crossley's theory is also laughable because it seems to be based on a Lukan-inspired take on the general historicity of a broad-ranging Council of Jerusalem.

No-Moremon then has a sub-comment to himself, but is brought up sharply by "Spike" on just what the "right hand of fellowship" in Acts probably actually meant. That said, Spike can be problematic and has been in the past; on this issue, citing THE R. Joseph Hoffman's take on the historical Jesus without noting RJ was once a mythicist, but abandoned that due to academic politics and more, is a lacuna. That said, RJ's hint that Judas Iscariot is really a cover for Judas the Galilean is interesting. But, the idea that Jesus was both a proto-Zealot and a member of the "fourth philosophy" is laughable.

For much more on the Marcionite vs Lukan priority, see this AB post. Per one commenter there, I agree, contra Pytine, and call it the "Gospel" of Marcion rather than seemingly privileging it by calling it the "Evangelicon."

Morton Smith: Still the forger of Secret Mark

At the Atlantic recently (workaround archive link avoids paywall) Ariel Sabar tackled anew this old question, known to biblical students like me (graduate theological degree, undergrad in classical languages): Did Morton Smith forge The Secret Gospel of Mark?

Tackled anew because of a 2023 book by Geoffrey Smith and Brent Landau. Since titles can't be copyrighted, theirs is also "The Secret Gospel of Mark." They make the claim that the cover letter (remember, Smith never claimed to have found Secret Mark itself) was not by Clement of Alexandria, but also not a Morton Smith forgery, but rather, written in early Byzantine times by monks at Mar Saba to try to backdoor-justify same-sex monastic relationships.

There's no doubt that in what became the Orthodox world, as well as what became the Catholic world, such relationships existed, and if not common, were certainly not on the fringe, either.

But, would an invention of even a slice of a heresiac gospel have been the tool to do this? Doubtful. That's in part given that no such actual heresiac gospel appears to have existed. It's never mentioned by Eusebius, Ephiphanius in his Panarion compilation of heresies, etc.

Sabar, without mentioning all the relevant church father names, touches on the basics.

One thing he does not mention is epigraphy. At Biblical Archaeology Review, in 2009 renowned paleographer Agamemnon Tselikas discussed the "Clement" letter from that angle and essentially said that he can't prove Smith forged it, but he seems the most likely author. Ehrman and others have said somewhat the same.

And, lots of discussion, much of it semi-informed, at least, at the Early Writings site. (There's also some backbiting.) A lot of it discusses Tselkas' analysis. He says that Smith misread the Greek he had in his photos, and that it's actually "naked men with naked man," not "naked man with naked man." 

OTOH there? Although people call Tselkas the bomb of Greek paleographers today, what if he got this one wrong? Per another poster at Early Writings, almost all the accents in this photograph of Smith's actually are over consonants. So, that could be an accent over a final sigma after all.

Here is a semi-critical "fair transcription" of the Greek, with page-by-page English translation, and with text-critical footnotes in the Greek.

As far as why? Short of a smoking gun of a love letter, Sabar reviews all the evidence to document that Smith had a long-term gay lover. Atanas Todor Madjoucoff was actually bisexual, getting married and having kids. But, Smith's suicide revealed he'd willed almost all his estate to Madjoucoff. He had a personal photo of him that, presumably for reasons of emotional choke-up, Madjoucoff wouldn't accept.

But Smith had two reasons to forget the "Clement" letter and create its backstory. Actually, three, partially overlapping.

He was known as being not just skeptical but cynical about religious verities. He may have been an atheist, though I don't know if he has been confirmed as that or not.

The second and related? He'd been denied tenure at Brown. Other universities wouldn't hire him. When he got on at Columbia, it was in the department of ancient history. So spite would have been a motive, but driven by two reasons, not just one.

Sabar does not reference, per a screed by the one one-star reviewer of the 2023 book, three scholars who had trod this ground before him — and two of them before BAR in 2009 saying it thought the letter was genuine, paleography be damned. This review of Peter Jeffrey's book is big. (That said, per a couple of lesser reviews, as well as one other 5-star, Jeffrey's background as Benedictine oblate must be taken into account.) Jeffrey and Carlson are both discussed in detail at Early Writings.

Flip side? Also at Early Writings? Per Origin's take on the story of Jonathan loving David more than the love of any woman, was a homosexual slant to Christianity semi-common in pre-Nicene Alexandria? I don't think that's likely. First, we would have heard more about it, and ditto with the Smith/Landau thesis if it leaked outside the monastic world. In addition, the "Secret Alias" arguing for the gay Alexandrine Christianity, in reality is Stephen Huller, and he is an idiosyncratic Bible scholar indeed if he thinks Jesus not only did not claim to be the Messiah but instead claimed to be the herald for Herod Agrippa II as Messiah. No, really! Per a one-star review, it's worse! He apparently claims that Mark the gospeler IS Marcus Julius Agrippa, as in Herod Agrippa. Given that none of the gospels were originally identified by names of authors, this wasn't "the Gospel of Mark" at the start anyway.

As for people trying to defend Smith still? I remember reading Helmut Koester's defense long ago. Wrong. (And the "great fool" is rhetorical, especially since he also claimed that Secret Mark came before the canonical. Maybe you wanted to stake out an iconoclastic exegetical position. In reality, he knows that gospels in general have tended toward "expansion" the later they were written. Witness Matthew and Luke vs Mark. Witness the Protoevangelion. Etc., etc.) Didn't read Crossan's, but he was wrong too. BAR itself? Not.Even.Wrong.

There's one other thing that repeatedly gets mentioned. Yes, Mar Saba is "cloistered," and became more so after Smith published. But, Smith never made an effort to go back there to be able to get, or try to get, the actual manuscript so others could look at it.

But, even more, I think the Smith/Landau tertium quid idea is a dead duck. Most likely, Smith forged this letter. There's a bare bones shot it's legit. A cover letter of letters circa 600-700 CE? No.

New Atheism reaches new lows

 T.J. Coles, writing for Counterpunch and riffing on his new book, "The New Atheism Hoax," has the receipts.

The warmongering of original Gnu Chris Hitchens, in his slobbering over his alleged special care for the Middle East, and the trigger-happy Islamophobia of second-gen Gnu Slammin Sammy Harris, I already knew about. With both of them, and obviously with Harris, as with Gnu Richard Dawkins and his "Dear Muslima," Islamophobia is a big part of the issue. It's not just being anti-religious, or anti-theist as Camus put it in "The Rebel," it's Islamophobia in specific.

Apparently, Dan Dennett, seemingly the least belligerent of the original Gnus, has joined in since Oct. 7. At a minimum, by not calling out the Israeli genocide? "Silence gives assent," Dan. And Coles notes that Dawkins has signed a letter calling for "Israel's right to exist." That phrase has long been a dogwhistle.

Why Caesar died on the Ides of March, and some counterfactual history

Four years ago, in one of the most popular posts here, I wrote about the etymology of the "rex," the "king," that Julius Caesar supposedly wanted to become, that got him killed.

But, what are the details, beyond Shakespeare, on the actual assassination?

Caesar was indeed killed for wanting to be proclaimed rex. But, it wasn't just his idea. This piece from JSTOR reminds us that Antony, among others, thought that he needed to be proclaimed king before battling the Parthians, among other things. I don't follow Antony's reasoning; Pompey had defeated kings in the eastern Mediterranean, already. But, it's a good read for the timing of Caesar's assassination and other motives the plotters may have had. (Like the piece's author, I'm not sold on the idea of Caesar's calendrical reform being an additional motive for the plot.)

==

Good counterfactual history has only one major twist, so it doesn't become something like fantasy. It also doesn't involve time travel of either people or resources.

This fits both bills.

Imagine Caesar listening to friends of his — not a Shakespearean witch or wifely dream — and not going to the Senate. Or, even more, imagine him setting up a counterplot and trap. A few midlevel ringleaders get executed after formal, but drumhead, trials. Most the upper-level folks, though, like Brutus, are brought along with Caesar on the Parthian campaign, which now does take place.

Caesar offers some commands, at a certain level, knowing that even if they still hate him, committing battlefield treason and switching sides to the Parthians is highly unlikely.

What happens? He feints a straight-on attack, then has Antony pull a Neronian move through Armenia. But that itself is a feint. The right cross, to use a boxing term, comes from Julius Caesar himself. But, it's a controlled one. It's more a right hook that aims at the Parthian rear lines in Armenia rather than heading straight to Ctesiphon. Caesar avoids Crassus' mistakes, or the ones Antony will make later. Forces reunified, the then marches down Mesopotamia while sending out peace feelers at the same time. Tied to this, he drops hints that he's had communication with Bactrian princies, no matter how untrue.

And, the Parthians agree.

Terms?

Return of Crassus' standards and other lost objects. If he's still alive, the Parthians can keep Crassus himself. 

Roman control of Mesopotamia, with promises not to fortify the east bank of the Tigris. In other words, something like Trajan's conquest. Rome controls Armenia as well, but, as in reality, under some sort of client kingdom.

An exchange of hostages to seal the deal, as was common in antiquity. And, Caesar's hostages to the Parthians are some of the top-level plotters, especially ones he offered the command option and had them reject.

On return to Rome, he notes that he can offer hostages to German tribes as well.

Speaking of?

Remember that the Roman frontier in the north central part of the Empire was NOT on the Danube at this time. Presumably, Caesar would have done what happened in Augustan times. But, would Parthian kings look to have allied with German tribespeople? Could they even have physically made such a connection?

A slanderous lying fuq at Patheos

 Shock me that this is something that, on the political side, Charles Kuffner glommed on to.

A Fred Clark claims at Patheos (which I don't go to on my own since they chased the atheists off) that the only diff between White and Black evangelical Christians is racism or not.

Really? 

For starters, this ignores "liberal evangelicals." Sojourners mag came immediately to my mind. An internet search gives you liberal evangelical Episcopalians for doorknob's sake, and that's a pretty White denomination. Or a liberal evangelical Facebook group.

Second, contra Clark's asterisk that, racism aside, there's actually lots of differences between White and Black, or broader non-White evangelicals overstates those differences.

Third, contra Clark, per an actually academic Christian Century, there's not theological unity within White evangelicals anyway. The unity factor, today, for (conservative) White evangelicals (CC ignores the Sojourners world too) is politics.

Fred Clark could at least be that honest. Shock me that it's at the Slacktivist vertical. That has long been dreck.

Now, per Ryan Burge, one can argue about how politically liberal or not self-proclaimed liberal evangelicals are. But that's a different story. And, per Sojourners' Wiki page, Burge would appear to be right on them not being THAT liberal politically.

==

Shock me that at another post, also touted by Kuff, Clark rolls out the stupidity of the trolley problem, whose derpity I discussed here a week ago.

Exactly what's wrong with the trolley problem (and what's wrong with Reddit)

I've noted this in comments at Reddit’s trolley problem subreddit, but I decided it was time to make a post there, based on this piece at Psy Post which had just popped up in my blogroll on my Blogger site:

In a recent paper published in the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, Guy Crian critiques the “trolley method” of moral philosophy for its unrealistic simplification of moral decision-making, lack of consideration for the complexity and diversity of real-life ethical situations, and potential to mislead about the nature of moral agency and ethical reasoning.

Next, three pullouts.

First, the trolley method emphasizes dramatic scenarios that are rare or extreme compared to the everyday ethical decisions that people face. ...

Second, the method tends to present moral agents as generic or anonymized figures, ostensibly to make the scenarios universally applicable. However, this approach overlooks the fact that respondents often unconsciously fill in missing details based on their own biases or assumptions. ...

Third, the critique points out that the trolley method models ethical decision-making as a clear-cut choice between distinct options. Real-life ethical decision-making is often automatic and influenced by factors beyond immediate conscious deliberation. ...

Update: The derpity of the handwaving and more over at my Reddit post is laughable, if not head-shaking.

The worst is from SM Lion El, who says:

As someone with a philosophy degree it definitely is a philosophical question because it forces someone to consider their personal moral responses to a situation. I tend to believe that any question that forces a person to introspectively examine themselves is a philosophical question.

Really? You just ignored the whole post about how this is NOT a real philosophical problem, and also ignored all other commenters who disagree.

More oopses at r/Academic Biblical

Contra this person, and the Lester Crabbe he cites, reading between the lines, oh, yes we do have at least hints of Yehud revolting against the early years of Achaemenid Persian rule. Any good critical commentary on Zechariah, specifically the first couple of chapters of the "1 Zechariah" half of the book, will tell you that. Like other portions of the empire, when Darius took the throne after a presumed usurpation against (the murdered?) Cambyses, Yehud/Judah apparently rose up. And was pushed down.

==

Ahh, a person who thinks Colossians is Pauline and then goes on to justify his ignorance by saying he can't see the difference in writing style from other Pauline books while saying he doesn't read Greek and is going by English. The reality is its codependence on Ephesians, whichever was first, is one issue. An increased emphasis on Gnostic(-izing) themes is another.

==

A whole round of comments on this post by the seeminly chuddish Chonkshonk claiming, based on this paper, that it is NOT Nero, nor any gematria at all, that is behind the name of the Beast in Revelation, but rather, in one of the stupidest things I've seen out of non-fundamentalist Christian academia, that the "666" is instead riffing on Solomon's gold. No, really. 

I'll call him chuddish because he comments regularly, and even occasionally posts, in the form r/AcademicQuran and admits he can't read Arabic. (Worse, he's a moderator. That said, most the mods of r/AcademicBiblical, including Naugrith the Nazi, probably can't read Greek and surely can't read Hebrew.) I can't downvote him because the post is archived, but he's downvoted elsewhere.

As for the claim? Tosh. First, a reminder that the Beast of Revelation is NOT the man of lawlessness from 2 Thessalonians and is not set up within the temple. Related to that, the Beast is not identified as a Jewish leader exploiting his own people, etc. Therefore, even if not Nero, this is NOT NOT NOT a reference to Solomon's gold. Also, "666" occuring as the number of number of children of Adonikam in Ezra 2:13 is totally irrelevant. I will give the pair some credit for wrestling with the numerology, history of Nero as presumed target, critical text, etc. Of additional note? Keith Bodner and Brent A. Strawn are both  OT guys, not NT.

==

An easy-to-spot fail here. Not only the OP has the bad framing with "standard Old Testament," but even a "quality contributor" like Qumrum 60 among commenters failed to tell the OP that 1 Enoch is indeed in the Ethiopic and Eritrean canon, and was in the early Christian era, considered scriptural by the author of Barnabas. A better formed question would be "Why did it not get considered scriptural in later centuries?" or "Why did it fall out of consideration?"

And, a month later, Albanese Gummies asking a similar question. And, this time, the comments are overall better, and in the Western tradition, directly address the last issue.

==

Even though rules there say no interjecting theology, a fundagelical-type questioner is doing just that in the background, when his question about Matthew's crucifixion earthquake assumes it's real. Since the OP has just two posts anywhere in two-plus years, I can't figure a background. They also deleted some posts somewhere to have 333 karma points with that minuscule amount of overall commenting.

==

That said, a kudo on something good. This post about the Seth and Cain genealogies and entanglement, influence or suppression of the Yahwist by the Priestly author and anything else going on, is itself informed and looking for feedback and gets good feedback.

A Monty Python-esque poetic fairy tale mashup

 Written in response to a semi-challenge on Goodreads, when I snarkily responded to a friend's talk about "b&b" angles on a fairy tale and said "bed and breakfast" even as I knew it was "Beauty and the Beast" knockoff talk:

Once upon a midnight dark and dreary

Sleepless in the bed with eyes so bleary

Because their breakfast had made me teary

There be dragons there, hear ye, hear ye!

 

The beauty smoked Gauloises in the park

While the beast lurked behind her in the dark

The tale of pending horror loomed so stark

There be dragons there, out on a lark!

 

The beast was Jack, indeed the Ripper

But the beauty brained him with her slipper!

It was glass, remember, sized to fit her

But her stride uneven might just trip her

The three-inch heel like that of stripper?

There be dragons there with smoked kipper.

 

It WAS the mightiest beast in the parkland forest

And that herring cut it down to death most goreless.

I just murdered Robert Sapolsky but it wasn't determined; I chose to

This is an edited and expanded version of my Goodreads review of Robert Sapolsky's "Determined." It's expanded, not just because I do that at other times with some Goodreads reviews where I want to go more in depth but also because for what I believe is a first, I hit Goodreads' 5,000-word limit. I wanted to be that thorough in showing how Sapolsky is not just wrong, but per the old physics phrase, Not.Even.Wrong. 

So, the more complete murdering happens here.

Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will by Robert M. Sapolsky
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I began with an in-depth precis or overview,, having read his "Behave" before, knowing his bio, having read a Freedom from Religion Foundation interview of him and more, I can offer an overview, complete with a start-off set of links for friends interested in some of the philosophical issues.

Precis/overview

The fact that Sapolsky engages in Dan Dennett skyhooks on page 3, strawmanning on page 5 and says he's like Sam Harris on page 6 (while wrongly insinuating Harris is a *practicing* philosopher or neuroscientist when he is neither) should tell you just how craptacular it is. (That's as he, per the index, can't at all cite an actual neuroscientist and one of the best of the past 40 years, V.S. Ramachandran. Some of the movement syndromes etc discussed by Sapolsky are right up Ramachandran’s alley.)

Feb. 5: Up to 2500+ words of notes with straight reading just to page 65 and grokking around the middle of the book after that. I think Little Bobby's bar mitzvah-age break with his childhood Orthodox Judaism is a major explainer of why he is an evangelist (sic) for determinism. (Before anybody makes assumptions, if this book were by Bobby Scalia, the son of Opus Dei [or nearly so] Catholic parents, and he spit the bit on confirmation, you'd be reading the same snark, but the same snark with the same serious insight behind it.)

(And, yes, he eventually admits that, in the first paragraph of chapter 12, where he says:

This book has a goal — to get people to think differently about moral responsibility.

Fine: Then be Sam Harris and write a book on an ethical naturalism-based approach to ethics. You'd still be wrong, Bobby, but in different ways.)

In any case, adult Robert is "good" about playing forensic psychology on others, so turnabout is fair play! And, yes, this would be a big deal for an Orthodox teen, vs Conservative, let alone Reform. Sapolsky says he was raised totally observant, so we can even call this a psychic break, perhaps. And, lower down here, as I ran out of room at Goodreads, per the FFRF piece, yeah, there will be more comment on his forensic psychology. See the double asterisk below. **

The "why" of that?

Little Bobby, little sad-tromboning Bobby (warning: LOTS of snark and even outright sarcasm ahead), per adult Robert, determined that problems of fairness and similar in treatment of humans, REQUIRED that determinism, not free will, be the baseline. I am reminded of Jehovah's Witnesses founder Charles Taze Russell, who, because he couldn't accept literalist Christian hellfire, revived or revitalized (not invented) the idea of annihilation of souls of the evil instead. (And sadly, Bart Ehrman recently may subconsciously written his second most recent book for that reason, I speculate.) If I'm throwing people under the bus, well, two birds with one throw.

There's SEVERAL problems here.

Two biggies. They're both philosophical.

Side note: The philosophical problems Sapolsky exhibits in general, and in specific vis-a-vis Hume, are nothing new. They were already in exhibit in Behave.

So, we'll start with the first biggie, as he already exhibited it there.

I realized that little Bobby Saplosky, in trying to make an adolescent belief (or fear?) into a scientific theory, shows he doesn’t know philosophy in another way, as this is a crass violation of St. David of Hume’s famous “is ≠ ought” dictum. Sublinked there, G.E. Moore's open-question argument has more modern food for thought, and ties in with comments I had on "Behave" where I thought Sapolsky was flirting with scientism.

One more connection to Hume?

Sapolsky talks about people acting as if they have free will, then says "priming" them with deterministic ideas lessens that belief.

Have you ever heard of anybody, even the most ardent double-predestination traditional Calvinist, acting as if life is all determined? Nope.

Even if the actual free will is not at a conscious level, it's there. And, in a recursive loop, we prime ourselves to that end. David Hume, long before AA, first touted the idea of "act as if." We do exactly that — with free will, not determinism.

The second philosophical biggie?

Sapolsky's worry about what is known as "retributive justice" (on which he petard-hoists later, anyway) and how it has to require determinism is all wet. If he really dove into some philosophical ethics (he makes a weak pass at that in "Behave"), he would know that.

Specifically, on page 5, here, we have: “(P)unishment as retribution is indefensible.”

Agreed!

You know wrote a whole book questioning traditional ideas on both retributive justice and distributive justice?

A philosopher named Walter Kaufmann.

And, to put it bluntly? Sapolsky's comment above, and little Bobby's teenaged Humean misfire aside, folks, that’s strawmanning. Whether Sapolsky meant it as such, I don’t care; he shows even more that he’s in over his head philosophically, so is not deserving of the most charitable interpretation. Per the likes of Kaufmann’s “Without Guilt and Justice” retributive justice, to properly label it, is indefensible on ethical grounds whether determinism is true, classical free will is true, or my theory of some sort of psychological constraint + the non-existence of CONSCIOUS free will WITHOUT that meaning determinism as the alternative answer is true. Plenty of utilitarians, like a Peter Singer, will refute Sapolsky as well. Arguably, per Kaufmann’s book, which was in part a riposte to John Rawls, retributive justice is also indefensible, as I see it, on political science and similar grounds, again, whether or not Sapolsky is right about determinism. See below at the asterisk for more.*

==

Full long! review starts here.

First, I’ll be honest. This is a book I was prepared to not like a lot, and to read and review critically, in advance, based on various advance observations I had read about it.

I had already blogged about it, based on reviews, and also based on knowing that his previous book, “Behave,” had a fair amount of muddled and muddied thinking.

And Sapolsky gave me plenty of ammunition from the start.

First, the subhed: “A science of life without free will.” As there is no science that proves determinism (other than quasi-proof in a tautological sense for methodological materialists, but even that’s not proof and it’s not even a quasi-proof of “determinism” as normally understood in the world of philosophy, contra Sapolsky, Jerry Coyne, British astronomer Coel and others), there is also no “science of life without free will.” There IS a "scienTISM of life without free will." My blog post linked above talks more about this tautology-based definition of “determinism.”

As for determinism in an actual sense? On page 3, we jump right in to the Dan Dennett world of skyhooks, not cranes. Or, since Sapolsky repeats the old story about “all turtles,” we’re in that land.

Even though this is not as dense as his previous book, when I hit that, I had two thoughts:

1. We’re probably right there at a 3-star ceiling; how much lower will it go?
2. We may get quickly into the land of “grokking” or even to the land of “DNF.”

There you are.

Then, just two pages later, we have: “(P)unishment as retribution is indefensible.”

And, folks, that’s strawmanning. Whether Sapolsky meant it as such, I don’t care; he shows even more that he’s in over his head philosophically, so is not deserving of the most charitable interpretation. Per the likes of Walter Kaufmann’s “Without Guilt and Justice,” linked above, retributive justice, to properly label it, is indefensible on ethical grounds whether determinism is true, classical free will is true, or my theory of some sort of psychological constraint + the non-existence of CONSCIOUS free will WITHOUT that meaning determinism as the alternative answer is true. Plenty of utilitarians, like a Peter Singer, will refute Sapolsky as well. Arguably, per Kaufmann’s book, which was in part a riposte to John Rawls, retributive justice is also indefensible on political science and similar grounds, again, whether or not Sapolsky is right about determinism.

It’s also a case of putting the cart before the horse. Sapolsky appears to take a political science position he doesn’t like on ethical grounds and then try to use that as a proof or warrant of this thesis about determinism. (Kaufmann gives good thought-experiment quasi-empirical warrants for his thesis, doing things in the correct order.)

Page 6, in a footnote (and just after seeing a Tweet-response by John Horgan about that fact) is that Sapolsky talks first about philosophers like Galen Strawson and Gregg Caruso (both of whom I’ve read) rejecting free will on philosophical grounds, then saying he isn’t like them, but that “(his) views are closest to those of Sam Harris, who, appropriately, is not only a philosopher but a neuroscientist as well.”

Oh, shit, we’re now officially in 2-star at best territory. (Weirdly, Horgan told me he liked the book.) Harris is not a good, or really an actively practicing, philosopher. Ditto on neuroscience. What he IS, is a political agitpropper.

To the degree Harris IS a philosopher, on ethics, he’s an ethical naturalist. And, I think the book that Sapolsky meant to write is a book of ethical naturalism, and somehow he thinks that ethical naturalism requires determinism. (It doesn’t. It’s also more wrong than right, and had Sapolsky written that book, it would also surely be highly wrong, just not in the Not.Even.Wrong space of the book he actually did write.)

Also, at the body text for that footnote, Sapolsky then hedges his bets with:

“This book has two goals. The first is to convince you that there is no free will, or at least that there is much less free will than generally assumed when it really matters.” Those are two different things. For instance, Daniel Wegner says there is no conscious free will, in a great book, without precluding unconscious free will, or without assuming that, at the consciousness level, this is a twosiderism issue and “no free will” = “yes determinism.” More in-depth, Wegner talks about free will as an emotional state, at least in part. See this in-depth review of mine about "The Illusion of Conscious Will." Arguably, that doesn’t preclude some sort of determinism, but it does put the onus of proof, both in philosophy and evolutionary biology, on the determinism touters.

And, speaking of that, since I’ve already accused Sapolsky, on good grounds, of strawmanning, I’ll now accuse him of question-begging, since that IS the background to his thesis.

Back to the strawmanning on page 9, on his “second goal.”

“It’s been a moral imperative for me to view humans without judgment the belief that anyone deserves anything special.” It’s a good sentiment. And, as I noted above, it’s TOTALLY not dependent on the “free will vs determinism” debate. And, besides strawmanning, this again proves Sapolsky is WAY over his head on what’s really Philosophy 101.

This is illustrated further in his “four views” on pages 10-11. These are a sterile subset of the richness of discussion on the issue, and ignore the idea of subselves, subconsciousnesses, etc.,

At this point, I did a couple of things.

First, I posted a “currently reading” on Goodreads.

Second, re me mentioning him above, I checked to see if he cited Wegner. He does, but ONLY in conjunction with Sapolsky’s thoughts on the Libet experiments, and not at all for Wegner as Wegner. He also cites not at all friend Massimo Pigliucci, who like Sapolsky, has a PhD in biology … and one in philosophy as well.

Next, to the issue of definition of terms, and tying back to Sapolsky’s hedging of bets? In saying “mu” to the sterile old “free will vs determinism,” I have talked EXTENSIVELY about what I call “psychological constraint.” Sapolsky cites “priming” as a first-level example of this. I have cited more serious examples, like how a history of childhood abuse increased a tendency toward adult addiction.

This is NOT NOT NOT determinism, though, despite Sapolsky’s attempt to claim it is. And, to tie this back to philosophy, and specifically linguistic philosophy? I refuse to play his language game and accept that it IS determinism. And, other than trying to prove a childhood belief, I think this is the second biggest, second most “core” level wrong of the whole book.

That said, that led to two more things.

One is the likelihood that this book hits DNF territory. (I eventually slogged 3/4 through.)

The other goes back to Page 9 and the “part two” of why this book. A fuller version of that quote above is:

“As noted, I haven’t believed in free will since adolescence, and it’s been a moral imperative for me to view humans without judgment the belief that anyone deserves anything special.”

So, whether he’s conscious of it or not, we have Sapolsky admitting that this entire book is motivated by belief first (and followed by what I’ve already identified as strawmanning, and am sure I’ll find cherrypicking on the science side, next, since I’ve already found definitional cherrypicking on the philosophy and psychology side) and everything else second. In other words, by page 9, we have two admissions, whether conscious or not, that the cart has been put in front of the horse.

At this point in my reading I hit the point where I started thinking about "sad-tromboning little Bobby Sapolsky," with the links above. Soon after, with the philosophy links above, I started thinking about how how's probably getting determinism and ethical naturalism mixed up.

But, I want to go further off that FFRF interview.

In it, he diagnoses religious leaders as being schizotypal neurotics? It’s poor forensic psychology. It also ignores that, per twin studies and other things, schizophrenia is clearly not totally genetic. It also probably, on the non-genetic side, is not totally environmentally deterministic. It surely has bits of WEIRDness. The biggest picture, per that piece, is that I think he wants to posit a deterministic background for religiosity, and if we’re going to practice forensic psychology, then what’s sauce for the goose also is for the gander. I charge this is directly related to his childhood break with his Orthodox upbringing.)

As I indicated in my blogging, and, to go beyond that, this is like Pascal’s Wager, free will version. Nope, Bobby, neither I nor the rest of the world “have to” believe in determinism.

Nor do we have to accept that your childhood religious break warrants bad philosophical scrivening. See the JW snark up top.

At this point, I'm about 60 pages in, knowing we're in 1-star territory because I can't vote lower (Storygraph lets you) and we're at the (in)famous Benjamin Libet and Libet experiments.

Next? Well, citing Libet, of course, and claiming that what Libet founds proves that free will is a myth when it actually does no such thing. First, see what I said about Wegner and conscious will. Second, per this Academia piece, Libet himself did not oppose free will (and as a presumable extension, did not see his experiments as refuting it). Libet there also talks about “natural law determinism,” which seems to be his phrase for what I call tautology-based determinism up top. That said, contra both that person and Sapolsky, Libet as experimenter, tho not as scrivener, has been at least somewhat dethroned. See here.

That said, contra that author as well as Sapolsky, as a “mu-er” to “free will VERSUS determinism” and as a supporter of Idries Shah’s “more than two sides” idea, I support randomness as part of volition being injected into the mix. And, indeed per the disdain that Sapolsky has, and that Mr. Johnson appears to have, for “randomness” as an “Option 3” on this issue (shades of Idries Shah!) that’s indeed part of what Libet was probably measuring, per that link off my philosophy blog.

Sidebar: Alan Johnson, the Academia author, focuses on Sapolsky's logically bad argumentation, citing him for engaging in several classical informal logic fallacies. I think he does do that, but beyond that, there's a "framing" issue and the psychology I mention at top. Interestingly, Mr. Johnson appears to not have heard of Kaufmann or anyone like him.

Moving forward as I grok. Yes, the insula evolved for diagnosis of physical disgust. Yes, it may have later been hijacked for moral disgust. Sapolsky ignores one thing that undercuts him there, though, and that is that many items of moral disgust are culturally based and thus controlled by cultural evolution. Even if cultural evolution is considered “deterministic,” it’s not the determinism of the simplistic type, nor even of his type of simplistic determinism + psychological constraint. In additional, cultural evolution evolves, in part, because of conscious decisions. People can choose not to adopt trends, or even to adopt countertrends. New world religions replace old ones. Bacon? Not disgusting to a Christian, though it was to a Jew. And, most hardcore physical disgust items — feces, vomit, etc. — don’t generally have moral values attached. And, most morally disgusting items, also contra Sapolsky, don’t make people want to vomit. Rather, they often invoke or perturb non-disgust emotions such as anger.

There’s an additional side problem here. Sapolsky often, in talking about issues in this chapter, references behavioral psychology, on things like priming. Just one problem: Behavioral psych, like other branches of psych, has a replication problem. I’m sorry, TWO problems: In the person of Dan Ariely, it also has an apparent fraud problem. So, scratch any inductive reasoning in this book that leans too heavily on behavioral psych. See here. (Sapolsky cites Ariely’s muse Kahnemann once in the index, Ariely not at all. Beyond all of the above, from what I know about priming, he overstates its long-term effects.

What I am really reminded of here in reading this whole chapter is “feedback loops,” especially when he talks about hormones. CONSCIOUS (yes) decisions to exercise, hike, paint / play music / do other hobbies, meditate, journal, etc., are all undertaken in part by most practitioners as stress reducers. And you know what? They work! We’re more than our hormones, Bobby.

HERE IS WHERE I HIT THE WALL at Goodreads!

So, let's continue!

On to the chapter about “grit.” Sapolsky appears to be a black-and-white thinker here: it’s either all free will, or nothing. He doesn’t riff on Dennett’s idea of subselves to also hint at “subwillers.” As noted above, he doesn’t at all bring in Daniel Wegner for the idea of unconscious will, or the hinted-at idea of Wegner, and the stressed idea by me, that we need to say “mu” in the Buddhist sense to the whole free will “versus” determinism nonsense. As for Jerry Sandusky not being to blame? Contra the psychologist Sapolsky excoriated for saying that, why not? At least in Sapolsky’s black-and-white world. We see how he blanches.

The second of two chapters on chaos? Sapolsky says that chaos may not be predictable, but it’s still deterministic. First, is all chaos deterministic? (Ultimately, per the Big Bang theory, nothing’s fully deterministic, Little Bobby, whether you like that or not.) Second, to do a 180 on Dennett’s “The Varieties of Free Will Worth Having,” per Little Bobby’s rejectionist 13-year-old mind, a non-predictable determinism seems like a variety of determinism it might not be worth having; it also (see definitional issues above) conflates physical determinism and philosophical determinism. (Insert point here that Sapolsky seems much more of an ev psycher than he did in Monkeyluv and somewhat more than in Behave.) There’s also the issue that not every philosopher thinks one has to revert (sic) to chaos theory to prove, or even to defend, free will of some sort. Also, no, ontology is not “about determinism.” (eyeroll) It’s certainly not about determinism in the philosophical sense. Insert note about scientism here. Sapolsky goes further down that road in strawman arguments against philosophers who won’t accept his stance. Shock me.

Next, the two chapters on emergence issues. I am “shocked” that Sapolsky nowhere references friend Massimo Pigliucci, and doubly so here, since Pigliucci trumps him with dual PhD’s, one in evolutionary biology and the other in … philosophy! Massimo is also at least as much an anti-ev psycher as I am, and big into eco-devo, which I think Sapolsky very much is not. He is also a proponent of cultural evolution.

The second chapter on emergent properties is the biggie. It’s the biggie first because it’s where the rubber of Sapolsky’s willfulness hits the road. Quotes? “A lot of people have linked emergence and free will; I will not consider most of them because, to be frank, I can’t understand what they’re suggesting and to be franker, I don’t think the lack of comprehension is entirely my fault. As for those who have more accessible explored the idea that free will is emergent, I think there are broadly three different areas in which they go wrong.”

Problem 1, he says, ties back two chapters previous. Sapolsky again says that someone like Christian List basing free will on anything like chaos (interesting how Sapolsky focuses just on chaos and not the semi-parallel complexity science) are confusing unpredictability for nondeterminsm. I’ve already dealt with that one up above. We move on. Problem 2, he says, is “weak emergence” vs “strong emergence.” For support of his dismissal of strong emergence, he cites physicist Sean Carroll, not a philosopher, and philosopher David Chalmers, laughed at by many other philosophers for his p-zombies, the “Hard problem of consciousness” and other things that made him Massimo’s whipping boy, with more here from Massimo. INNNterestingly, firm materialist Sapolsky ignores that Chalmers is a panpsychist. Problem 3? “(W)here a final mistake creeps in is the idea that an emergent state can reach down and change the fundamental nature of the bricks comprising it.” I’ll switch from bricks to Roman concrete. Recent research has shown that the chunks of lime in Roman concrete are there deliberately, and that when water invades any cracks in the concrete, they actually promote its healing. So, I reject his analogy.

Chapter 9 is about quantum indeterminancy. Guess what? Sapolsky hedges: “Laplacian determinism (he referenced Laplace early on, and this makes clear he conflates physical determinism with philosophical determinism to come up with a tautological pseudo-philosophical determinism.) really does appear to fall apart down at the subatomic level; however, such eensy-weensy indeterminism is vastly unlikely to influence anything about behavior.”

Gig’s up.

First, “vastly unlikely” is not impossible.

Second, it’s a form of blame-shifting again. Sapolsky has spent whole chapters talking about how human evolution is determined, period and end of story. Not only does the “everyday” quantum world say otherwise, but the quantumness of the big bang says so in spades. Here, I’m reminded of Steve Gould, a good leftist himself and concerned about morality, fairness and humanist issues in general, who said that, if we rewound the clock of Earth and evolution, it would certainly come out differently.

Third, specifics? The quantum world produces cosmic radiation, among other things. Radiation which, randomly, can cause genetic mutations. Third, part two? He admits that Browning motion undercuts genetic determinism.

Chapter 10 is a follow-up to extend quantumness to discussions of consciousness, etc. It too has three problems that Sapolsky alleges. Problem 1 is almost strawmanning by extension. One doesn’t have to be a determinist to reject John Eccles' epiphenomenalist dualism, Roger Penrose’s microtubules or other things. Problem 2 strawmans to a degree as well, namely about quantum “smearing” at higher levels. In all, though, this chapter wasn’t speaking to me, as a quantized world isn’t a primary non-deterministic argument of mine. (Remember, for the purposes of undercutting Little Bobby and adult Robert, we just need to poke holes in his rigid determinism; we don’t have to prove free will.)

The “interlude” to part 2? The big takeaway: “(I)f you base your notion of being a free, willful agent on randomness, you got problems.” Actually, Bobby, YOU got problems. In my world, that’s called “blame shifting.” Since you’re trying to prove determinism, all I have to do is show that stochastic variables (to use the more proper term), whether subatomic, atomic, at higher levels of purely physical interaction, even without the stereotypical butterfly wings of chaos theory, refute determinism. Oh? They do. Your hand-waving aside.

Next, the chapter about running “amok.” After saying in the Interlude that whatever the Libet experiments prove doesn’t matter, because it’s all a set of connected “-ologies,” Bobby now cites them again. Contain Whitmanesque multitudes, Bobby? Which one determines the others?

The main thrust of this chapter is about atheism, but has little to do with free will “versus” determinism. Also, if I'm half right in thinking Sapolsky is misfiring and writing a book about determinism when he should really be writing a book about ethical naturalism? Atheism has nothing to do with that, either. And, under “highfalutin philosophy” (his phrase), are atheists really as deontological about fairness and harm avoidance as the religious? I doubt it; one footnote covers multiple paragraphs of ideas. And, I’m not even sure what being deontological would mean vis a vis harm avoidance! Anyway, the general thrust of the chapter seems to be that you don’t need god to be good. Agreed! And, you have atheist free-willers as well as atheist determinists like Sapolsky and atheist option-3 or no-twosider people like me. You have religious determinists (talk to a traditional Calvinist about double predestination or Muslim about kismet, Bobby), religious free willers, and I presume religious option-3 people. Again, none of this connects to his thesis. The chapter then gets worse in a way. Rather than putting Option 3 (which is itself broad) into a third dimension, Sapolsky puts it as one tight category, and in the world of religion, associating it with apatheists vs atheists and religious, calls this group a “trough” of less prosocial people. He says he knows of only one research survey to that end, but leans into it. In short, people like me are, in some ways, the truly bad people to him, since we're the people who don't engage in black-and-white thinking.

The latter part of the book has nothing to do with determinism. It’s really Sapolsky’s indignity over retributive justice played forward. See what I said above about Kaufmann covering both retributive and distributive justice’s problems in general. I don’t need to read Oliver Wendell Holmes “three generations of imbeciles are enough” in the Buck case, people’s bloodlust, past generations’ misdiagnosis of causes of mental illness and more. They’re interesting, but have nothing to do with the subject at hand.

Finally? The people he asked to be manuscript readers, per the Acknowledgements? In addition to Slamming Sammy Harris and Gregg Caruso, sympathetic scientific names like Sean Carroll and Jerry Coyne pop up. Not a single philosopher who might be challenging. 

==

* Some further comments about retributive and distributive justice, and also back-thoughts to Kaufmann's book.

Retributive justice, while it is primarily thought of in terms of the criminal justice system, is not always so. Blood feuds and such qualify as well, obviously. So too do many religious actions as punishment for non-criminal behavior, such as shunning or excommunication. And, it's a part of evolutionary biology, the "tit-for-tat" of reciprocal altruism when somebody doesn't reciprocate. So, tis true that it may have deterministic roots, but again, cultural evolution determines what is judge of more severe and less severe punishment, both within one cultural strain as it evolves and across cultures. (We don't cut off hands for theft any more, but also in the ancient world, not all other societies cut off hands for stealing a loaf of bread, unlike medieval and early modern Europe.)

Distributive justice is things like social welfare safety nets. These aren't a modern invention; just the broadness of them is. In Europe, albeit not so much the US, governments were more involved with them in the past at many times; discussion and theorizing on a government's role, versus that of churches, moved back and forth in different countries during late medieval and early modern times. Outside of old Europe, especially England/Britain, and its colonial offspring, I have no idea how this might have gone back and forth. That is, in the Gupta Empire, was the state, or Buddhist monasteries etc., more responsible for such safety nets?

That said, Kaufmann misses a beat here. He unconsciously hints (or seems to) that ultimately, our ideas of both retributive justice and distributive justice are just that — Ideas, as in the Platonic sense. Maybe he didn't think that through, but it sure comes off that way. Of course, that's ironic for Kaufmann, who in several of his books likes to talk about the prophets of the Tanakh talking about "justice rolling down" and variants on that trumpet, usually at the expense of Christianity. See my review of Stanley Corngold's bio of him.

** On the religious leadership as schizotypalism and his forensic psychology? I pull this quote from FFRF (who also once tried to claim Abraham Lincoln was an atheist, so the fact that this was an acceptance speech for Sapolsky getting their "Emperor" award isn't much):

What is perfectly obvious here is that this entire picture applies just as readily to our western cultures. Western religions, all the leading religions, have this schizotypalism shot through them from top to bottom. It's that same exact principle: it's great having one of these guys, but we sure wouldn't want to have three of them in our tribe. Overdo it, and our schizotypalism in the Western religious setting is what we call a "cult," and there you are in the realm of a Charles Manson or a David Koresh or a Jim Jones.

Really?

First, it's not limited to "Western religion." I highly doubt Sapolsky is a BuJew trying to protest Buddhism, but both Buddhism and Hinduism are littered with similar cultic figures. After all, "guru" has a denotative as well as connotative meaning, coming from that world!

Second, that could be seen as psychopathy just as much if not more than schizotypal personality disorder.

We then go to:

There's a remarkable parallelism between religious ritualism and the ritualism of OCD. In OCD, the most common rituals are the rituals of self-cleansing, of food preparation, of entering and leaving holy places of emotional significance, and rituals of numerology.

Many religious rituals aren't repetitive in the way of OCD, first. Second, boy, no wonder Little Bobby skipped his bar mitzvah if part of this, even was in his mind at age 13.

Finally, on all of this, I don't know if Sapolsky self-identifies as a Gnu Atheist, but with his scientism, his hostility toward religion rather than benign neglect, and his claim that most religiosity is mental illness, he sure walks, talks and quacks like a Gnu Atheist duck.

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