Yahweh has a body, but he's still not Baal

 This is an expanded review of Francesca Stavrakopoulou's "God: An Anatomy."

God: An Anatomy by Francesca Stavrakopoulou
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a great book in many ways, but a nagging issue, an overemphasis on one talking point, and what I believe is an incorrect interpretation of the Book of Job in the last chapter ultimately cost it a star. I’d rate this 3 1/2 if you let me be precise. (Since we can't do half stars, and the average rating is even higher on Yellow Satan than here, it got 3 stars there, and I reserve the right to downgrade the 4-star here.)

With that, let’s dig in, including the expanded parts.

It’s easy to forget that the God of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)/Christian Old Testament — who continues as God the Father for Trinitarian Christians in the New Testament — has a literal corporeal body. Fundamentalist versions of both Judaism and Christianity of course bury this deeply.

So, too, does “traditional” critical theology. Its Enlightenment basis is as willing to explain away this fact with words such as “allegory” and “anthropomorphizing.”

Wrong move, says Fransesca Stavrakopoulou in “God: An Anatomy.”

Yahweh (she seems to hint at, but doesn’t openly embrace, some version of the Midianite hypothesis) is just as embodied as Baal or Marduk. More importantly, he’s just as masculinely male, complete with penis. As part of this, she notes that “hand” as well as “foot” is often a biblical synonym for “penis,” as in other southwest Arabian religious works. And Yahweh waves his penis. He wields it. He is procreative with it.

And — like Egypt’s Amen but unlike his Mesopotamian god counterparts — sometimes, Yahweh is a solo procreator. No Asherah or other female involved. Besides the Genesis 2-3 creation myth, Stavrakopoulou cites the story of Jeshurun from Deuteronomy, as well as passages from Job and Jeremiah. With Jeshurun being Israel, of course, Yahweh wasn’t literally seen as fathering each individual member of the nation. (OTOH, Dt. 32 reads more like an adoption and nurturing story than a birth story. Sidebar: Reading it with fresh eyes, it’s clearly a story written eons after Israel’s purported escape from Egypt.)

The nagging issue? Probably at least 80 percent of endnotes refer to Bible passages. FOOTnotes — using that word correctly — would have been MUCH more convenient. (In-line citations, common at least in US biblical criticism writings, would have been better yet.) In a certain number of cases, I was familiar with the verse, even in Stavrakopoulou’s translation. But, I couldn’t remember the exact Bible passage. Seriously, this came close to losing the book a star by itself.

And, occasionally, I didn’t totally trust her translation. And, that ties with her perhaps overemphasizing not just feet, but entire legs, as euphemisms for genitals. Specifically, it was Song of Songs 5:10-16 that was a bridge too far for me. My modern translation has verse 15 as “His legs are alabaster pillars,” after verse 14 talks of the lover’s arms. She translates that as “genitals.” (That said, there are far more off the wall takes: That’s not only off the wall, but obviously incorrect, and I’m not prudish, nor de-bodifying. And, that comes from a group of Messianic Christian "Yeshua" nutters who apparently are into such wrong explicitness, and also have a hard-on for Rudolf Otto, among other things.) But at other times, Stavrakopoulou is willing to occasionally going beyond "literal" to "literalistic."

The bigger issue, that I'll hit now, and that relates to the header and to the paragraph immediately above of the original review?

Yahweh is not Baal. Yes, there are parallels. Yes, he was perceived as having a physical body, including genitals. Yes, he was perceived outside the "authoritative" Tanakh as having Asherah as a consort.

But? While he was described as letting Israel a woman be violated, he's not really described as having a metaphorical sexual relationship with her. (I take Song of Songs face value as a human love song. Period.) Nor, on the bits of ostraca etc. that we have talking about him and Asherah, is he described as having a sexual relationship with her. To put it in crude-ish modern terms? Yahweh may have a big swinging dick in terms of toxic masculinity, but he's not portrayed as having a big swinging dick in terms of consorting with Asherah as a consort, let alone chasing other goddesses.

From what I understand of pre-Islamic North Arab deities (and Midian was Northwest Arabia, and without necessarily buying the "Kenite" part, on etymology, I accept a Midianite origin of Yahweh), we shouldn't see them as being exactly the same as the Fertile Crescent northern Semitic pantheon. The Norse and Celtic pantheons, for example, don't fully map onto the Greco-Roman gods, and in fact the Roman gods and demigods don't fully map onto Greeks ones.

Then, I just don’t agree with her on the “framing” of Job.

Stavrakopoulou claims that Job knows Yahweh is assaulting him. Actually, let's not call the verbal an assault, but just an interrogation.

And, taking the pre-Gettier standard philosophical definition of knowledge as justified true belief, Job actually knows bupkis about the physical assault — his loss of family, wealth, etc. Therefore, he does not know he is under assault from the eye of god. (Gettier's hole-poking still has not resulted in a truly better definition.)

Plus, if we are indeed taking Job literally, of course, Yahweh and the Satan have a bet. This isn't even sloughing off evil onto the Satan, contra Stavra, as Yahweh puts limits on what he can do. And, again, as we have it today, it's a bet, not Satan punishing evil.

Interestingly, we're never told the amount of the wager. Is it for the Satan to get a day on the throne of Yahweh, a day with his feet on Yahweh's footstool?

It must also be remembered that the Angel of Yahweh is called a Satan in confronting Balaam in Numbers.

All points to remember. (There is a “Babylonian Job” story from way back, but it doesn’t have the equivalent of a Satan in it at all; no other SW Asian myth parallels Job.) And, Job is too early, likely started, at least, in the 6th century BCE, to have been highly influenced by Zoroastrianism to lead to Satan as a dualist figure. After all, the prose opening talks of him coming before Yahweh along with “the sons of God.” Therefore, the Satan as a figure for "sloughing off" of evil from a non-Calvinist, or non-Second Isaiah Yahweh, doesn't totally ring true.

To be honest, I've yet to find ANY good critical interpretation of Job, especially one that seriously wrestles with the prose intro of the Yahweh-Satan wager on its own terms.

(Related thoughts at this blog post on attempted modern existentialist interpretations of Job with presumed but not likely original shorter endings of the book, with this other person's take also failing because they reject the concept of a divine wager.)

So, all in all, speaking as a semi-academic — master’s degree, knowledge of Biblical languages, etc.? I’d rate this 3 3/4 if you let me be precise.



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'The Illusion of Conscious Will'

 As I said when posting the link to this review of Daniel Wegner's book by that name to Massimo Pigliucci's Facebook group, for people who want to really understand where I stand on volition and free will, this is the starting point.

The Illusion of Conscious Will by Daniel M. Wegner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Forget Dennett; start here for discussion of "free will" issues

Update: I have done a second read; the review from it follows, and the initial read's review is below the dotted line.

Daniel Wegner doesn't totally, or perhaps even primarily, disagree with the likes of a Dan Dennett as he talks in a different direction entirely, one that gets out of the Cartesian box that Dennett is still in, despite his rejection of a "Cartesian meaner." (See more on the original review.)

Rather, Wegner seriously means it when he says that conscious will is an illusion. And, along with that, rejects the twosiderism and polarity that posits determinism as the opposite.

He says that to think that is to think wrongly about volition in general. (And, if one accepts that, then one doesn't have to embrace "compatibilism" on free will as the likes of Dennett do [he IS a compatibilist, denials aside] if one doesn't want to brace free will on randomness.)

Rather, that illusion of conscious will is a psychological state, almost an emotion, if you will.

Or, elsewhere, Wegner says it's like producing a probability scan on our own actions; if we think our actions and the psychology behind them affected something the way "we" intended, that's the illusion of conscious will.

Of what good is this? Plenty.

And, here we get back to this illusion being called by Wegner as something like an emotion. By encouraging psychological, emotional, investment in our actions, it promotes a sense of agency. In turn, getting back to Dennett, this squares the circle on his Cartesian meaner probably better than he does himself. The illusion of conscious will, by eventual promotion of agency, promotes the illusion of a meaner. That, in turn, may further promote the illusion of conscious will.

In short, think of one of M.C. Escher's most famous illustrations, that of the two hands drawing each other. There you go. It's a classical, classical illustration of an emergent property. (But, what's emerging is a firmer version of the illusion of conscious will, not the actuality. Likewise, to extend beyond Wegner, I'd say what is emerging is a firmer version of the illusion of personal agency, not the actuality, therefore again getting at the illusion of a "Cartesian" meaner, as well as a free willer.)

As for backing for the idea that conscious will is an illusion? Wegner, a psychology prof at MIT (and an almost exact contemporary of Dennett across Boston at Tufts) looks at various psychological syndromes, fads of the past like mesmerism, modern experimentation with things like dummy hands and so forth, and how, just as humans can be overactive agency imputers, they can also be overactive will imputers.

In short, this is a must-read on the whole subject of free will and volition, and an excellent breaking out of the free will-determinism polarity. It's also a good example of how good psychology can lead to good philosophy.

In my first review, and first reading, of this book, I thought Wegner was arguing with Dennett. I had overlooked the note in the Introduction that Dennett was one of the readers of a rough draft manuscript of this book.

I then thought: maybe they were talking past each other, but I don't think that's even right. Rather, they were talking in different directions.

Another way to think of Wegner is as a V.S. Ramachandran who has moved beyond cognitive science and neuroscience into philosophical issues. A lot of their research strongly overlaps and Wegner cites Ramachandran more than once.

(Side note: Though a contemporary of Dennett's, Wegner sadly died in his early 60s. He surely would have given us at least one more book-length writing in this general area. In my original, shorter review, I note some things he "left on the table" in this book that I hope he would have addressed in a follow-up.)

====

Along with that, it's an excellent refutation of the illogic and weak knees of someone like Dan Dennett, as well as seeming to scare the hell out of a lot of amateur readers who perhaps should never be allowed near material like this in the first place.

The title speaks for itself. Wegner then looks at the latest findings in modern neuroscience, along with the latest speculation in cognitive philosophy, and offers up his ideas as to how and why this illusion arose.

And here is where I say he is an excellent refutation to Dennett.

It's been roughly two decades since Dennett came out with his claim that we have no Cartesian Central Meaner at the core of our minds, ie. no homunculus or metaphorical little man serving as the central director of our consciousness.

But, but, but, Dennett refuses to come to the logical conclusion that, if we don't have a Central Meaner, we can't have a Central Willer, either. It's not just a lack of goal to go down this road; in his latest books to touch on free will, it's a willful (nice pun, eh?) rejection of this logical conclusion.

Well, Wegner is not afraid to take the plunge, and does so in convincing fashion, although he does pull back somewhat at the end.

That said, and although I gave this a five-star rating, there's plenty to still study on this issue that Wegner (and Dennett, et al) have not tackled.

1. Is there an Unconscious Willer? After all, as Dennett won't tell you, much of the working of our mind is unconscious or subconscious (and I mean no Deepak Chopra New Ageism by that statement). Isn't it possible, at least, that there is a Central Meaner, or several quasi-Central Meaners, in one or more subconscious brain routines? Of course, these quasi-Meaners would generate quasi-Willers.

2. Again, without getting into New Ageism, dimestore Zen, bogus metaphysics, etc., there's room for Wegner to go further down the path of just what "I" is and is not, without not only a Central Meaner but a Central Willer.

3. Handwringing and gnashing of teeth aside from fundamentalist Christians or people in that general direction (the ones who shouldn't be reading books like this in the first place) where do theories of morals (or aesthetics, for that matter) get grounded with no Central Willer as well as no Central Meaner? Here is where Wegner most pulls his punches in this book when he had the chance to meaningfully explore this from a non-willer perspective.

Folks, we've got enough material here for another book. Hopefully, Wegner, or someone else, is in the process of writing it.

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The bullshit of Jonathan Poletti reaches a new low, on the Shroud of Turin

Poletti, who has a Medium site popular with what I'll call "edgy evangelicals,", people who promote "dudebro Christianity" or whatever, claims the Shroud of Turin artifact really is 2,000 years old and that a new study proves that.

My response? Expanded from what I posted on Medium:

Bullshit by Poletti reaches a new level, including a flat-out lie with the Fox News line of "I report, you decide" in your headline, you explicitly claimed it's 2,000 years old, which even your new study doesn't, hedging your bet.

Bullshit on the original and bullshit squared in your response to CA in comments. CA is right; the test is NOT designed to test the Shroud's age, and in fact, the way it's conducted, and framed, comes off as handwaving to try to get the gullible to ignore that it's not designed to test its age and to give the Shroud-grifters (anybody you know?) an ammunition head fake.

The testers also give away the game with their statements about presumed and required preservation history. Anybody who knows anything about Turin knows it gets well below 20C in winter and that damp medieval castles and cathedrals got and remained well below 20C for weeks at a time without central heating. Humidity could also have gone well above 75 percent.

As for getting about 22.5C? Erm, there's this fire that burned the shroud that the authors (refuse to call them "researchers" as they're not) conveniently ignore.

(The original pseudo-research presumes the shroud was kept consistently between 20-22.5C and 55-75 percent humidity.)

Poletti admits the fire, and flooding as well, which would have pushed the shroud above 75 percent humidity. 

More specifically, here's their claim:

Moreover, it is interesting to point out that our analysis has shown that, in order for the TS fabric to be about 20 centuries old, it should have necessarily been kept at an average secular temperature of about 22.5 ± 0.5 °C and an average relative humidity of 55 ± 5% for 13 centuries preceding the XIV century. From Equation (5), it follows that if the average relative humidity was of the order of 75 ± 5%, to obtain the same value of the measured natural aging of 0.60 ± 0.02 for the TS sample, the average secular room temperature should be about 20.0 ± 0.5 °C. Therefore, from our WAXS characterization it follows that we have a range of allowed secular average room temperatures of 20.0–22.5 °C, correlated with a range of average relative humidity values of 75–55%, as climate constraints, for the TS to be a 20-centuries-old relic. These physical constraints on the secular average room temperature and the average relative humidity, obtained by measuring the natural aging of the cellulose of the TS sample, here realized through WAXS characterization, could help historians test their hypotheses throughout the possible locations in the world and historical periods in which the TS could have been kept during the 13 centuries before its documented history in Europe.

And, we know that the shroud was NOWHERE NEAR that well preserved on this tight of a temperature and humidity range.

Oh, "appears to be Jewish" means nothing. I "appear to be Jewish" because of what a hospital doctor did days after I was born. So that's a bullshit framing line, Poletti. As for details of why it might "look Jewish"? Per the Wiki link, probably because it's a deliberate forgery, and modern researchers have shown how it could have been done.

Back to the Fox News line of "I report, you decide," Poletti.

It comes off as an oxymoron, but will you be honest enough to admit you lied?

I already know the answer and it's "he won't."

He's an evangelical evangelizing doorknob. I've argued with him before but never busted him in a flat-out lie. 

And, hypocritical in that, if he's following the Calvinist version of the Ten Commandments, the shroud at least approaches being a graven image. It certainly is the spirit of one. It's an idol. That's especially true with it not only being a medieval creation, but — as recognized in that era, no less! — it likely being a medieval forgery.

==

But, the authors not researchers are themselves liars with the heading of their study, too: "X-ray Dating of a Turin Shroud’s Linen Sample." The study itself doesn't claim to actually date anything, once you look past the handwaving.

And, there's lies in their full study text:

Moreover, other dating methods agree in the assignment of the TS to the first century AD [5,10,11,12]. Spectroscopic methods, based on Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy/Attenuated Total Reflectance [10] and Raman spectroscopy [11], date the Shroud to 300 Before Christ (BC) ± 400 years and 200 BC ± 500 years, respectively. The mechanical multi-parametric method, based on an analysis of five parameters, including the breaking load and Young’s modulus and the loss factor, after an adequate calibration based on the results of two dozen samples of known age, dates TS as 400 AD ± 400 years old [12]. Estimates of the kinetic constants for the loss of vanillin from lignin suggest that TS has an age range from 1300 to 3000 years [5]. A recent numismatic analysis [13] proposes that TS was already present in 692 AD.

Bullshit.

Let's quote Wikipedia in response:

After years of discussion, the Holy See permitted radiocarbon dating on portions of a swatch taken from a corner of the shroud. Independent tests in 1988 at the University of Oxford, the University of Arizona, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology concluded with 95% confidence that the shroud material dated to 1260–1390 AD. .... The most recent analysis (2020) concludes that the stated date range needs to be adjusted by up to 88 years in order to properly meet the requirement of "95% confidence".

And add this from a separate piece on radiocarbon dating of the Shroud:

Despite some technical concerns that have been raised about radiocarbon dating of the Shroud,[5][6] no radiocarbon-dating expert has asserted that the dating is unreliable.[7]

Period and end of story. People working at some crystallography institute are grasping at straws.

Let's also note these are all native Italians. This underscores my contention that while formal church-going religiosity may be much lower in Western Europe than the US, non-structural religiosity is still pretty high there.

Finally, per Wiki's article on it, wide-angle X-ray scattering is not a scientific dating tool.

I also see, per Wiki's link on radiocarbon dating, that this is NOT the first time Sgr. Giulio Fanti has promoted Shroud bullshit. And, not the first time he's engaged in scientifically iffy methodology as part of this. Oh, and publishing your findings at places like the London School of Economics and Political Science also undermines you.

Fanti has also claimed to be able to date the shroud with infrared light, Live Science notes. So, if that was so perfect in 2013, why did you need to do it again with WAXS? Oops. And, because it of course needs to be said, infrared light is not a scientific dating tool. (Let's note that he self-references in the new study, to this study, when claiming that previous studies confirm a circa 2,000 year old date. Also note that he uses wiggle room by saying it's around this time — lest anybody accuse him of doing exactly what he's doing, namely, stacking the deck.)

And, Fanti is ALSO listed at another Wiki piece on "fringe theories about the Shroud of Turin." And, he's been called out for that bullshit.

Cur alii, non alii? Thoughts outside theology

 Medieval Christian theology used this phrase, as modern theologians know — "why some, not others" for the so-called "mystery of salvation."

So, why do some people go to hell despite the "loving arms" of a dual-omni, omnipotent and omnibenevolent, deity? Catholics noted god's acting first in grace, but cite "prevenient grace," that is, god foreseeing receptivity in some humans. Orthodox are broadly similar. The Protestant Reformers rejected that. Calvin ultimately took the logical road of double predestination, later rejected by Jacob Arminius in the Netherlands, whose teachings seeped into Methodism, and basically, most modern American evangelical Protestantism, which tries to avoid the issue of "election" by god or not in general. Luther went with the illogical single predestination, not wanting to blame god for sending some people to hell, but refused to accept the truth that not to choose is itself a choice.

(If you're a believer in Eastern religions, re getting through karma, it's no mystery at all; you simply didn't do enough. If you're an Orthodox Jew, it's basically a mix of not doing enough and not professing the Shema and understanding Yahweh correctly. If you're a traditional Muslim? Oops; kismet is just kicking the ball down the road like Christian doctrine.)

"Cur alii, non alii" can be applied to things both serious and frivolous outside of Christian election and salvation. 

For example, why does some of the white working class allegedly (I said ALLEGEDLY) vote its interest by voting Democrat (ALLEGEDLY supporting workers, but more and more, nationally helmed by neoliberals who ignore things like unionization when not actively helping oppose union drives) rather than voting Republican, as many now do? (Actually, with the second ALLEGEDLY parenthesis, this one isn't a total mystery.)

For me, there's something else.

"Cur alii, non alii" on addiction and sobriety.

Why do some people who have long-term addiction problems, whether to illicit drugs, scrips, or alcohol (I'm setting nicotine aside due to the power of its physical/chemical addiction), who know, and admit to others, that they have such problems, who know that moderation of their chemical use isn't working for them, who have had social or even legal problems due to this, and who are seeking help from sobriety programs and/or counselors, "not get it"?

Why don't they stay sober after a certain amount of time, especially if they get past the first weeks and physical cravings are gone? (Most drugs both licit and illicit do not have that high of a physical addiction threshold. Psychological addiction is another story.)

Have they not totally self-elected, that is, have they, whether consciously or subconsciously (and I believe it's a choice even when subconscious) not "locked in" this decision?

Yes, there are "reasons" that sobriety gets challenged. But? Some people stay sober even through these challenges, including sheer boredom. Others do not.

In the world of addiction, some people have extra challenges, such as mental health issues such as depression or bipolar disorder; others have backgrounds of abusive childhoods. Yet, within the same backgrounds, some people attain, achieve and hold onto sobriety, and others do not. Cur alii, non alii? 

Back to the political world. Hardcore conservatives can, reportedly, learn new thinking tricks. Just get them to stop watching Fox for a month. That said, does the effect stick? Both the effect of being better critical thinkers, and what caused it — not watching Fox. There are plenty of "90 day wonders" in the sobriety world, after all. And, on the Fox watchers, people were paid to watch CNN, which means it's nowhere near a double-blinded study, and therefore, of little value. Whether paid or not for saying they were better at critical thinking, the participants who watched CNN might have said that for the researchers' benefit. Cur alii, non alii?

At some point, per any great matter of human psychology, per Yeshua bar Yusuf, one has to preach to the lost, and "catechize" them afterward. Those who still leave themselves an out, an escape hatch, know where to return to.

Top blogging of January-March

 Unlike at my primary blog, I don't post here enough to do a roundup of top blogging, by readership, monthly.

Quarterly, though, yes.

So, let's dive in. (Note: Not all blog posts may be from the last three months; these are just the most popular.)

"'No true empiricist' ... like 'no true Scotsman'?" — my callout of Julian Baggini over David Hume, was No. 1.

No. 2? "Only Sky is getting shit wrong already." The successor to the atheist and agnostic bloggers of Patheos did little to impress me in the first month of its formation.

No. 3? I noted how the Westar Institute, the successor to the Jesus Seminar, had taken itself totally in academic and intellectual tank in a new book.

No. 4? "Baruch Espinoza remains excommunicated." No, really, he DOES, at the Amsterdam synagogue that tossed him centuries ago.

No. 5? More on the hypocrisy of Hume, this time as a psychologist.

No. 6? I had to laugh at the claim that in our minds, we don't think in any language. As it turns out? The piece had plenty to laugh at.

No. 7? From last year, my refutation of Jesus mythicists' claims that Nazarath didn't exist in the first century CE still trends.

No. 8? An old post about old libertarian pseudoskeptics like Brian Dunning and Michael Shermer will never get old.

No. 9? I remain glad I said goodbye to History for Atheists and its Catholic and papal apologist pseudo-atheist author.

No. 10? My callout of St. Anthony of Fauci for his Platonic noble lies (I later had follow-ups) remains popular.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's dive in.

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

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

— Julian Baggini (@JulianBaggini) March 4, 2022

To which I independently Tweeted:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Julian Baggini (@JulianBaggini) March 5, 2022

So, NOT quote tweeting him, my final take:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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More here on Hume's racism, which also notes that Hume believed in polygenesis.