James Harris awakened me from my Humean dogmatic slumber

 I'm sure that he had no idea he was doing this, though we've had a brief exchange of emails, focused on Hume's racism and related issues.

But, he did.

What follows below is an edited and expanded version of my Goodreads review of his 2015 biography of Hume.

A week from now, I plan to post an edited version of my review of E.C. Mossner's old 1954 bio, including some points of comparison (and definite contrast) with Harris.

This is the second in a series, one that started with last week's post about presentism, as that piece was focused on Hume (as a stand-in for Enlightenment philosophers in general) and racism.

After the Mossner biography post, I plan to post every other week about some specific aspects of Hume as brought to new focus, and awakened from uncritical dogmatic slumber about Hume, by Harris and Harris prodding me into looking at some of Hume's lesser works, or anew at some of his major ones, and his major ideas.

With that, let's dig in!

Hume: An Intellectual Biography by James A. Harris
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a tough, tough book to review. I took a lot of notes. Early on, my appetite whetted by the Introduction, I would have been very ready to five-star it. The framing of Hume as a man of letters, or to go French along with the mot of him as "le bon David," as a "litterateur," seemed a promising new focus. And yet?

Direct vs indirect passions is an interesting matter, one that was but touched on by Harris. It probably could have been studied even more, and by Hume as a philosopher as well as Harris analyzing him as a philosopher. (One of the upcoming posts in the series will be about "young Hume" vs "old Hume," whether or not there were two different Humes, and if so, how much "the passions" was part of that split.

Harris rejects the claim that Hume was a "divided" philosopher. So does the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Other commenters on this book accept that, and accept Hume's own claim he rejected the Treatise because it was "the manner, not the matter" of how it read, rather than what it said. Rather, this is to accept Hume's public self-preservation at face value. Especially on the issue of the passions, Hume DID reject "the matter" of the Treatise and never did accept it — or return to it — again. (Mossner disagrees, and I think he has "the goods" to at least partially support this.)

Then, the biggie. I knew what to look for, as far as how Harris handled it.

By the time I got to Harris' mishandling (that's the best I can call it) about Hume's infamous footnote about "the Negros" in "Of National Characteristics," it lost a star right there, and was slipping a bit before then. Sadly, at the time of this review on Goodreads, no other reviewer had noted this there.

Hume was challenged on his racist views in his own time, above all by the Scottish philosopher James Beattie. Harris treats both the footnote and Hume's editing of it, and why, in only a footnote. He then claims that it was NOT in response to Beattie, though the evidence is pretty clearly against him. Worse, in an email, he said he couldn't remember what he wrote. This area will be covered much more in the specific post.

Also, the sharpness of Hume's reaction to Beattie undercuts le bon David, which is part of Harris' whole focus.

How it handled his "Essays Moral and Political" in general shoved it into three-star territory. That said, Harris later admitted to me that he agreed many of the essays are "shallow" [and they are], along with other things. I'll be offering a few thoughts on "Of National Characteristics" as part of a piece on Hume and race and going beyond my "presentism" piece.

Then, his handling of Hume the historian moved it back into four-star range.

But, next, while this is an intellectual biography, it could have been more personal on the Hume-Rousseau situation. Finally, tying back to "that footnote," Hume's reaction to James Beattie — and Harris' take on that — undercut "le bon David" of legend.

Harris claims Mossner, in his bio of Hume, is too hagiographic. 

And, that leads me to the New York Review of Books, take, which said: "Mossner’s life of Hume is suffused with an affection for its subject that, according to Harris, sometimes obstructs a 'properly dispassionate' examination of the facts.” This is the petard-hoisting area. Again, I think Harris is guilty of some of this himself.

I'll touch on some of this when I do my comparison-contrast of Mossner's bio with Harris'.

Next, whether it's Hume himself stressing the claim, or Harris burnishing it? On "The Natural History of Religion," polytheistic gods weren't, and aren't, always kind and cuddly, and monotheistic ones aren't always harsh father figures. Contra the former, see Shiva, or even more, Kali. Contra the latter, see the deified versions of the Buddha in many "denominations" within Mahayana.

The book was generally good on Hume's skill as a historian. And, I agree that Elizabeth was an absolute monarch and that the Stuarts got bad press. Nonetheless, in his later revisions to his volumes of history, Hume comes off as a "trimmer." If that's part of how one gets to be "le bon David," pass.

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The GIF and Hume, Sapir, Whorf, and Goodman

It's a piece from late 2017, but still quite interesting.

Some people hear GIFs.

Yes, those looped bit videos that have no sound.

Some people hear them, normally in cases where sounds would be expected in real life, such as a GIF of hands clapping, one of police lights (with inferred sirens), and such.

Are such things being heard?

Yes, indeed, an audiologist professor told the Times' journalist.

Two cognitive neuroscientists said it is similar to the "filling in" of some types of optical illusion. They added that people with synesthesia are more likely to do this.

That said, why the author, Heather Murphy, stopped with scientists, I don't know, but it presented a punches-pulled story.

Obviously, this has connections to empirical philosophy of centuries past, and per the cognitive neuroscientists, connections to cognitive philosophy today, namely the issue of qualia, and within that, how specific qualia may be in the auditory world. (Murphy does loop in Christof Koch, but, academically, despite his gushing about pantheism, he's a scientist, not a philosopher.)

Of course, hearing exists inside our heads.

"If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?" It makes sound waves, but it doesn't make a sound until it's heard. (That said, there are plenty of foxes, bears, deer and squirrels to hear it.)

This is partially what the whole idea of empiricism is about. But, David Hume, and his predecessors, didn't really wrestle with the issue behind sensory experience. (Of course, 300 years ago, they weren't really able to wrestle with how the brain works!)

It focuses itself in modern philosophy with the discussion of qualia. As a sidebar, and not to go too Sapir-Whorf, but per Nelson Goodman's new problem of induction, there's the issue of how we experience a sound based on not only our genetics, as in the synesthesia, but also based on our individual developmental histories. (The Inverted Spectrum idea, a thought experiment often discussed in thinking about qualia, more directly connects to Goodman.) To riff on Sapir-Whorf, an Inuit may hear 20 different sounds from snow at different temperatures, different thicknesses and different degrees of compaction and you or I might here three. But, a recording microphone will show the same sonic signatures for the Inuit's 20 sounds and my three.

And, this leads me to wonder aloud on other things.

Other than feeling vibrations from clapping, especially, let us say, large group clapping at a concert, political rally, etc., do deaf people have the equivalent of "hearing" clapping? If so, how would they respond to these GIFs?

Radical freedom, road trip style

I saw the RV pictured above across the highway from my apartment complex a couple of weeks ago.

I'm not old by any means, but, the earliest version of Uncle Sam's finish line is less than a decade away. In the back of my mind, I still have hope for some mix of ongoing freelance and/or half-time or better contract work, while working in more travel and maybe some National Park Service volunteer work in between.

The idea being that I would have enough money saved up to junk the apartment life entirely for several years and snowbird and roam.

Details of the above beastie?

Yeah, the owner says it has new gaskets and just 53,000 miles on a vehicle that's $2,995.

OTOH, that's a 1980s RV, probably built on a Suburban body with an extended back end. It's got the gas-hog GM 454 engine, and the automatic tranny is probably just three-on-a-tree. (It was unlocked, and looking inside, in addition to most of the interior definitely looking 1983, I saw no overdrive button or lever, or any other indication it was beyond the normal 1980s automatic transmission.)

I would love something smaller, like the RVs you can get built on a full-sized van chassis. Two weeks after seeing that, I saw one of those on a Dodge body (not for sale, being used, with the owner younger than me) parked at the Wally behind me.

I presume that's running either their current 6.1 liter (366) or an older 5.7 liter (350) engine. Better gas mileage there. And shorter.

Ideally, I'd love something like that, with a hybrid drivetrain, and as much of the stove, fridge and other amenities powered off electricity as much as possible. Avoid the hassles of a newbie like me with propane tanks.

Then, instead of towing a car (or a Jeep), put a rack in back, where I could park a bike, an e-bike, or one of those three-wheel hybrid drive motorcycles or large scooters. That would take care of my travel needs while parked. Something that could easily and safely do 45mph, to get around on all city streets and within state or national parks, and relatively easily and safely do 55 to navigate non-freeway highways, maybe.

All still just thoughts at this time.

But yes, per Sartre, thoughts of personal radical freedom. I'm not using it exactly the way he does, but yes, in his spirit.

Of course, thoughts remain just thoughts until put into action.

That said, besides Sartre, reading three Chuck Bowden books — a Festschrift for him, if one will, by fellow Western (not novels, Western-iana) writers, the Charles Bowden Reader, and his Red Caddy set of essays on Ed Abbey — have made me cogitate on this more.

Radical freedom. It's just a pair of words for knowing I have nothing left to lose.

And, with the spread of coronavirus worries and half the country on, or threatening to be on, semi-lockdown, radical freedom is a siren song.

Of course, the empiricist part of the philosopher me says: It wouldn't be very radical freedom if you got stuck somewhere and ran out of supplies. Or maybe that's the philosophical (and psychological) pessimist part of me.

Accepting aging and not denying death: Barbara Ehrenreich on medicine, selfhood, more

Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer by Barbara Ehrenreich
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There's plenty of punch in this slim volume, and it goes beyond what most reviews note. And, for this blog post, I have further expanded my original Goodreads review.

That alone, what is in the reviews, is notable enough. Doctors overexamine most Americans, whether out of profit motives, an overdoing of precautionary principles, the idea of doctor as superman or some combination of all of the above. For two biggies specific to men and women, Ehrenreich references mammograms for women and PSA tests for men. Colon cancer testing, she says, is probably also overdone.

And, then, she dives into issues related to this and beyond. First, our mix of individual genes, the fact that many cancers are hugely multigenic in nature beyond environmental factors and other things, means that outside of things like BRCA, a lot of genetic findings are probabilities, no more, and probabilities not much different from random chance.

So, most such tests aren't worth a whole lot. If they do find anything, "watchful waiting" is much better in most cases than surgical, radiative or chemotherapeutical undertakings. But, a doctor may not tell you that. For one or more of those three reasons above, or others.

Then we get to the real fun.

Your own body may exacerbate many cancers.

Ehrenreich looks at how macrophages can be "bad guys" as well as "good gals." They can "encourage" cancer cells in the area of tumors to continue reproducing rather than killing them. They supply cancer cells with chemical growth factors. They build new blood vessels for them. They help them enter blood vessels they couldn't on their own. This all is best documented with breast cancer, but also shown with lung, bone, gastric and other cancers, she says.

In addition, the spread of arthritis and other inflammation-generated diseases, are also assisted by macrophages.

So, from this, riffing on her previous book "Bright-Sided," Ehrenreich says New Agey ideas of visualizing your body, or "your body," attacking cancer is nonsense. The "your body" goes in scare quotes, because she also documents other ways in which macrophages can be free agents of sorts. She goes back to Russian zoologist Elie Metchenikoff, who first talked about this a century and more ago, but was roundly rejected. Now, his ideas are gaining acceptance. Some other immunological cells have lesser, but not insignificant, degrees of free agency, Ehrenreich says.

We're still not done, though.

Next comes philosophy.

If these cells have that much independence, what does this mean for the idea of a unitary "self"? And, if they're not conscious, but seem to have some independence, what word do we use for that?

Ehrenreich starts by referencing Jessica Riskin and her book "The Restless Clock." Riskin talks about "agency" as a purpose-based set of actions that is below the mental level (if we can even talk about mental levels of a single cell) of consciousness. Ehrenreich notes that we as a species are believed to have evolved highly sensitive agency detectors, but says that dismissing the idea of agency, especially non-conscious agency, from the non-human natural world altogether is a mistake. She says it's a greedy-reductionist view of biology, wanting to cut down to genes, not cells, and base biology on chemistry.

And, we're still not done.

Ehrenreich, paralleling somewhat Irvin Yalom, written up in The Atlantic two years ago about "How to Die," talks about "successful aging" next. That means accepting that aging will happen. Accepting that many blows of aging cannot be fully dodged, not even by rich anti-aging gurus. Accepting and embracing that aging has positive sides. With that, people can stop wasting money on gimmicks and brainwaves on stressing out. They can accept that aging is a normal evolutionary process, too. And, those macrophages that are quasi-free agents, along with other parts of "our" immune system? Just maybe their biggest job is to help kickstart the process of decomposition when each of us dies. (For insightful quotes from Yalom, go here.)

From here, back to philosophy.

Ehrenreich talks about the invention of the "self." In Europe, she says it probably started with the Renaissance and the rise of humanism, then took off in the Enlightenment. Rousseau, of course, majorly boosted the idea.

From there, we've gotten to the modern bombardment with selfhood, "branding" oneself on social media, selfie sticks for smartphone photos and more. (Ehrenreich politely doesn't call a lot of this "dreck," which it is.)

And, thus, it is harder for a modern Westerner, at least in the US, vaguely religious or "spiritual but not religious," to memento mori than it was a medieval Christian who was regularly reminded of that idea at Mass.

Ehrenreich's conclusion? Kill the self, or at least diminish the attachment to it. She mentions psychadelic drugs; on the other hand, many modern Americans who talk about using them seem to look at attaching more to a "self" afterward than before. But, there's potential there, along with long, distracted walks in nature and other things.

Don't rage against the dying of the light; accept that you don't control the sunset or the light switch.

Ehrenreich also refers to the perennial existential insight that while none of us can truly conceive of a world going on its merry way of existence after we're gone, at the same time, none of us can conceive of the world that was merrily going on before we were born, reincarnation claims aside.

But, the problem is ... we as individuals have existed. So, death, or post-death, anxiety hits us in a way that pre-birth trembling doesn't.

One thing that Ehrenreich does not really dive into is the differentiation between fear of death, which is largely existential in nature, and the fear of dying, or of specific types of dying, which is largely empirical in nature. Many of us have had a relative or friend of some sort, if not a loved one, die from some gruesome cancer or something else horrible.

But, with her notes on ixnaying overdone medical testing, Ehrenreich does, however, bring in an existential angle to fears of dying, too. Stop overdoing them.

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Liberal ignorance about ev psych raises its political head

Well, I haven’t had to shoot down any right-wing eugenicists or sexists in a while. No, now it’s a mainstream liberal wanting to refight Richard Lewontin’s political ax-grinding against E.O. Wilson 30-plus years ago. Hilzoy, co-host of Washington Monthly these days, bemoans, and Atlantic Monthly putting Wilson’s “The Biological Basis of Morality” online. (Thanks, Atlantic — it’s bookmarked!) And, it’s right here for you.

First, comes the snideness, hinting that Wilson is little more than an Alan Sokol with his spoof on PC lit crit. I never did tackle that in my back-and-forth with her, but to me, that was sign No. 1 we were going to get a political discussion of Wilson, not a scientific one, or even a philosophical one.

Next, comes the politically driven non-skeptical liberal approach of putting John Rawls and his ideas of “justice as fairness” and “distributive justice” on a pedestal, clueless that Walter Kaufmann blew Rawls out of the water 40 years ago, before Wilson ever tackled him scientifically. (Hilzoy rejects the idea, but she’s not read Walter Kaufmann’s “Without Guilt and Justice,” which does just that.)

Third is the omission of the fact that Wilson was the target of a politically-inspired, not scientifically-motivated, vendetta after publishing “Sociobiology” in 1976.

So, here’s selected passages from the long earful I gave her:

First, I don't KNOW if this is the case with Hilz in person, and I've distinguished that sociobiology, while in some sense a godfather to ev psych, is not exactly the same....

BUT, BUT, BUT...

I get the feeling that for many here, Wilson is all about "what's wrong with 'reductionistic science.' "

First, read Dan Dennett and distinguish between reductionism and greedy reductionism.

Second, given that Wilson started writing about this 30 years or so ago, Hilz, I assumed you had an ax to grind. I looked at what I saw was the most logical ax.

Third, many non-skeptical liberals put Rawls on a pedestal. That's why I pointed out Rawls has been shot down from within the world of philosophy. Based on this post, I'm also inferring you're one of those non-skeptical liberals.

Kaufmann does an excellent job of showing that distributive justice, a horse ridden hard by Rawls, actually isn't just.

He then goes beyond that, in "Without Guilt and Justice," and notes that justice is NOT some Platonic ideal but very much a socially based convention. And, on that grounds, Rawls IS a transcendentalist, so you got that part of your critique wrong. (And, I've read Rawls as well as Kaufmann, and Kaufmann's right. From a somewhat different angle, Dennett also pokes holes in Rawls.)

Third, you opened the snideness door yourself, with the Sokol crack, Hilz, and I'm just firing back.

More seriously,though, try reading more of Rawls, more skeptically, as well as some critiques of him.

(So), Rawls was wrong, justice is not fairness. He was a transcendentalist for offering that claim without empirical evidence. (One need not be religious to be a transcendentalist.)

From this, it is arguable that there is no such thing as a just society. Some societies may be more just, others less just. But, to claim justice as perfection is another transcendentalist claim from where I sit.

Next, just because I reject Rawls as a political philosopher on ethics doesn’t mean I have to accept Nozick, and I don’t.

But, on Wilson at this point…

If there are no transcendent principles which we can label “justice” then we had better find some empirical underpinnings lest we enter a Hobbsian world.

From here, sociobiology says, evolutionary biology is the logical place to start looking for empirical underpinnings, along with empirical causes, etc.

That said, Wilson has himself pulled back from stronger statements of later Ev Psychers and even some ev psycher. He is definitely NOT a “œnature = destiny”� person.

Next, let’s look at the “other side of the street.”

It’s not as if Gould and Lewontin were free from bias in their critiques of Wilson. (And a s left-liberal Green voter, don’t try to claim I’m politically biased from the right.

Next, if you’ll Wiki, the word ‘sociobiology’ was around 30 years before Wilson’s book of that name.

And, as Wiki also notes on the article of that name, Wilson himself has been a noted liberal, and visible one, on many issues.

OK, more on what Wilson actually says.

First, “contrivance of the mind” does not necessarily mean “conscious contrivance.”� In the case of ev psych, or its sociobiology godparent, it explicitly does NOT mean that.

Second, as for the “naturalistic mind,”� what’s wrong with that? Although I disagree with Steve Pinker on a lot, to the degree the human mind is not only from the brain, but has been influenced by the evolution of the brain, he’s right — deal with it. Live with it.

Finally, an aside … I didn’t start reopening one side of a 30 Years War, Hilz, which is what your post seems like from here; if my inferences on any of your reasons for this post are wrong, maybe you should articulate them. Maybe you should have done so in the first place.

As for the “dumping water” incident, it was stupid, childish and reinforcing of the “liberal academia” �stereotypes of many conservatives, many of whom themselves didn’t like Wilson’s ideas.

And, that war was politicized from the start. John Maynard Smith, a dean of evolutionary biology at the time Wilson’s book came out, expected them:
“It was also absolutely obvious to me--I cannot believe Wilson didn't know--that this was going to provoke great hostility from American Marxists, and Marxists everywhere.”

But, it apparently has no problem finding resources and agents to investigation ACORN.

Of course, it’s not all the FBI’s fault. It’s been asking for more money to investigate financial crime since 2004, but our MBA president just hasn’t been forthcoming. According to former law enforcement officials, that would be anti-business and “overdeterrence.”

In fact, Hilz said she considered her post the equivalent of the water dumping, so I know that I can’t go anywhere with her on scientific grounds, and given the starry eyes for Rawls, not far on philosophical grounds.

As I also told her, I don’t care if Rawls is the most influential political philosopher (in the U.S., or the western democracies) of the last 50 years. Karl Marx was the most influential single political philospher for the world as a whole for most the 20th century, so appeals to the crowd don’t fly.

Beyond that, I think Hilzoy has another assumption that lies behind her post.

And, that is?

That only conservatives can politicize science.

And that just ain't so.