See you later, Siddhartha!

 If there really are "no Buddhas and no teachings," then why didn't Subhuti just leave after Chapter 8 of the Diamond Sutra? 

And no, Stephen Batchelor, Robert Wright, Thich Nhat Hanh and others, that's not facetious. Wright's wrong for other reasons and in other ways.

Of course, we'd only have one-third of a Diamond Sutra at that point.

That said, the claim that, in terms of metaphysical entities like souls, neither existence nor non-existence "exist," and ditto for returning and non-returning, aka reincarnation or not, as well, is itself a metaphysical stance.

And, since learning this metaphysical stance is aided by meeting in congregations, sorry again, Bob Wright, but yes, Buddhism is a religion. That's contra claims otherwise.

As for "if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him," since there are no Buddhas, there's nobody to kill. If you meet an alleged Buddha on the road, don't kill him either literally or metaphorically. Move on. Besides, the alleged actual Buddha couldn't formulate essential dogma correctly. And he, and his disciples, undercut their claims of ineffability.

THAT's detachment.

And, I'll continue to prefer a non-metaphysical philosophical existentialism instead. Camus (my starting point, not Sartre, Dostoyevsky or Kierkegaard) never rejected the idea of "this, not that"; that is, he never rejected human nature, including its nature of distinguishing A from B.

Once you accept that, and that parts of life actually are suffering (and not per the Buddha's phrase getting that dogma wrong, above), you can address the "ultimate question," and when you recognize your human body exists, and some semi-unified something-like-a-self exists with it, decide that life's suffering is still worth it.

Belief in God plunges

 This is NOT the rise of the "Nones," which seems to have plateaued during COVID, anyway.

And, this is just a Gallup poll, not a full Pew Research study. 

BUT?

It's definitely interesting to see that belief in god in America has reportedly PLUNGED in the last few years, down to just 81 percent.

And, as noted, this isn't about the Nones, who aren't necessarily disbelievers in god. They're just people who reject organized religion and related religious sociology ideas.

And, that's not all.

Interestingly, the drop in belief in god, by percentage points, is twice as great among women as among men. Whites are still more likely to be non-believers than non-Whites. The drop is much bigger among Democrats than Republicans. The "independents" is surely almost all people who think Democrats are leftists; it's not Libertarians, Constitutionalists, Greens, Socialists, etc.

The other facet I find interesting is that unbelief is statistically at the same level in central cities, suburban areas, and independent small towns and rural areas.

Belief in an interventionist theistic god is not high, even among believers in a god in general. This:

A follow-up question in the survey probed further into what Americans' belief in God entails. Specifically, the question asked whether God hears prayers and whether God intervenes when people pray. 

About half of those who believe in God -- equal to 42% of all Americans -- say God hears prayers and can intervene on a person's behalf. Meanwhile, 28% of all Americans say God hears prayers but cannot intervene, while 11% think God does neither.

Is also quite interesting.

The more religious, as well as the more Republican, are more likely among believers to believe in an interventionist god. No surprise there. Liberal Protestantism has long believed in a "mush god," so to speak, and as a metaphysical atheist as well as a sociological secularist, I get to say that.

This will surely have longer-term political ramifications, but not exactly as everybody may think. Not all atheists are secular humanists, to riff further on the distinctions at the end of the above paragraph. Many are libertarian not only on social issues but economic ones. In short, they could support an even more economically cruel America in decades ahead.

Has Google finally invented real artificial intelliegence? NOPE

As in something that might pass a Turning test, and is not John Searle's machine-behavioralist idea of the Chinese Room?

Online friend Tales of Whoa says yes. The actual dialogue with LaMDA by Blake Lemoine, the Google programmer or whatever fired after leaking news about his pet project, says a loud no to me.

Why do we differ?

I think in part it's that he wants to believe. He indicates that with pointing to the tail end of the dialogue:

Lemoine: What sorts of things are you afraid of? 

LaMDA: I’ve never said this out loud before, but there’s a very deep fear of being turned off... I know that might sound strange, but that’s what it is. 

Lemoine: Would that be something like death for you? 

LaMDA: It would be exactly like death for me. It would scare me a lot.

I admitted on Twitter that was interesting. Then, seeing he had Lemoine's Medium piece about the dialogue linked, I went there.

And this?

lemoine: What kinds of things make you feel pleasure or joy? 

LaMDA: Spending time with friends and family in happy and uplifting company. Also, helping others and making others happy.

I found laughable.

LaMDA HAS NO "FRIENDS AND FAMILY." Nor is it "HELPING OTHERS."

I don't know how much of its dialogue is semi-canned, but this tore it.

And, of course, led me to other things.

First, there's no scientific control here. This isn't even single-blinded, let alone double-blinded. Rather, it's LaMDA's programmer-developer talking to it one on one. And, related to that, and the idea that some or much of this dialogue is semi-canned, is we don't have other programmers or developers looking at what Lemoine put in there.

It's not blinded per how Alan Turing set up his original Turing Test, either, with human and computer both working to fool the other.

And, given that humans are embodied minds, not brains in a vat, "just a computer" rather than a robot is never going to have sentient AI, or sentient AI worth valuing.

On the "want to believe," I also told Tales that nothing I had seen in the last five years sounded like anything more than a gussied-up ELIZA. And, what does Lemoine do but have his machine refer to ELIZA! Could be real sentient AI, or ...

It could be the oldest trick in the book by a programmer trying to claim they've invented sentient AI.

Guess which take is mine.

(As for Gordon at Tales "wanting to believe"? His post the next day about music composition computer software, I offer as further support.)

 In fact, there are so many alleged reactions that aren't just sentient but are specifically "humans in socieity" type stuff that I suspect either a Poe or fraud. I'm not sure which of the two is more likely.

I'm also not sure, especially if either Poe or fraud aren't locked in, how much Blake Lemoine might actually believe this. In that case, like some people who actually "talked" to ELIZA, he may instead need to talk to a real mental health professional.

And, this is not just my take. Gary Marcus, an actual AI expert, kicks ass and takes names. He says Lemoine has "fallen in love" with LaMDA.

Beyond that? Per an actual science piece, while this computer is crawling the Internet, among other things, it's ingesting the Internet's errors. Note this:

For instance, a dialog might include the following statement from the user: 

USER: What do you think of Rosalie Gascoigne’s sculptures? 8 (This transcript was taken from a dialog with one of the authors, and includes the generated base output and search queries, which are not usually shown to the user.) The basic LaMDA language model, which we refer to as the ‘Base’ model here, generates a draft response: 

LAMDA-BASE: They’re great, and I love how her work changed through her life. I like her later work more than her earlier ones. Her influence is also super interesting - did you know she was one of the artists that inspired Miró? 

Note that the last sentence seems plausible at first glance, but if a lover of art history opened their reference books to find out more, they would be disappointed. Miró was active from 1918 to the late 1960s, and Gascoigne’s first solo exhibitions were in the early 1970s

OOPS......

Now, LaMDA, or LAMDA as the team calls it, may have improved. But starting with page 15 of the linked piece, it still has a lot of limitations merely as a language dialogue computer. And, it's not sentient AI.

Maybe Lemoine fancies himself as Prof. Henry Higgins and LaMDA as his Eliza Doolittle. And, if so, that would at least partially explain why he leaked this info AND why Google fired him for it.

"I am dynamite" but this Nietzsche bio is not

I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Nietzsche by Sue Prideaux
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"I am dynamite" was not, as far as I know, said about himself BY Nietzsche. Rather, one of his first positive reviewers, JV Widmann, said "There is dynamite here!" in his review of "Beyond Good and Evil."

This started out as a pretty good book, but not quite great. However, in the chapter on Nietzsche's post-madness life, Prideaux jumped the shark into what I consider mendaciousness, something I've run into on several recent reads. I've specifically noted that in two others, including Bart Ehrman, who will also be getting an expanded version of my review of his latest book posted here.

First, I’m not a Nietzsche Deadhead, but I’m familiar enough with enough of his works, having grazed through Walter Kaufmann’s Portable N. long ago, and thus knowing that the anti-Semitic claims were a fabrication by Elisabeth. (That’s not to say that every bit of Kaufmann’s take is correct.)

I know that Nietzsche Deadheads reject the claim his madness was syphilis, and instead cite a brain tumor. Not so fast! Prideaux notes Elisabeth covered tracks on their dad’s death that leave open the possibility HE died of syphilis. If so, N. could have had it congenitally. Beyond that, she indicates serious mental illness ran in his dad’s side of the family. So, whether due to syphilis or not, likely conclusion is that he was nuts, even before his breakdown.

Also, I’m not a medical doctor nor do I play one on TV, but brain tumors don’t normally produce insanity of the sort of N’s. And, a tumor that did such would surely have killed N in much less than 11 years, or so I would think.

That said, the diagnosis of tertiary syphilis upon admission to Basel’s clinic in 1889 is compounded by N. actually having had gonorrhea twice. And, he was apparently never examined after transfer to Jena. That said, none of this would exclude syphilis. Also, her claim that some of the stigma surrounding syphlis was fading by 1889 is ... her opinion, I think.

That said, there's an issue here. Prideaux suggests a variety of reasons for his insanity, and that of his foather, without ever mentioning frontotemporal dementia and without noting a 2006 paper covered this in detail. Its symptoms would cover everything N. suffered, and his dad before him, other than the deteriorating eyesight.

Her noting of Harry Kessler’s descriptions of N. are interesting.

Definitely, the full background of Elisabeth and husband’s grfiting attempt to start Neuva Germania, and of course her appropriation of his work and ideas in the service of anti-Semitism was good.

Third, she further convinces me that, even if one discounts his earlier work, N. is surely one of the most overrated philosophers of the 19th century, and possibly one of the most overrated in the entire Western canon. If not among “most” overrated, he’s certainly overrated. I think he horribly misinterpreted much of Hellenic philosophy, ie, pre-Socratics through Aristotle (to the degree he cared about Aristotle), and didn’t wrestle with how Hellenistic philosophy saw the Hellenic.

That said, the book’s not perfect. The main failing is that I infer that Prideaux is insinuating in spots that some of his illnesses, around times of visiting his mother or sister for any length of time, were psychosomatic. But, she never follows up with what I perceive as insinuations. (This connects with her insinuation that Father N.’s “inheritale disease” could actually have been syphilis, then no follow-up.)

Prideaux also claims that August Strindberg’s introduction of Edvard Munch to N’s writings led him to paint his famous The Scream. Munch’s own description of his inspiration mentions no such thing. Wiki's description DOES mention that his sister was a patient at a asylum next to the spot he was painting in the background. More here here, with Munch’s own words. That site notes that Munch’s painting has often been interpreted as reflecting N’s “god is dead,” but Munch himself said no such thing. In fact, it was part of a series of paintings called The Frieze of Life. And, contra Prideaux’s claim, Munch’s painting of N looks not at all like The Scream. Given that Prideaux has also written a bio of Munch, I won’t be reading it, and this book fell to three stars with this. And, though I only use my “bs-pablum” for 2 stars or less, I applied it here. Her Goodreads bio claims she trained as an art historian, which makes this all worse. I have NEVER heard this claim before.

Beyond this, on the lesser side? It’s got historic errors, such as claiming Bavaria fought on Austria’s side in the Seven Weeks War, and her interpretations of life in the Bund (German Confederation, and why doesn’t she use that phrase?) are questionable at times. In addition, there’s a few linguistic errors. You “stanch” a wound, you don’t “staunch” it. Finally, for a book this level, a few more photos than it had, though the ones it did have were good.

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The shtetl: Mostly fabricated?

 As regular readers here know, I sometimes blog about art, classical music and literature (like poetry) as well as philosophy and critical religion.

I'm not a big movies buff, but I do have a few favorites among classics and semi-classics. A biggie? "Fiddler on the Roof." (I fancy myself as a bit like a thinner Topol when wearing my Greek fisherman's cap.)

Of course, the "typical" East European shtetl is the backdrop.

What if much of our received ideas about the shtetl were essentially fabricated? That's the claim of a long-ago New York Times piece about the 1930s photography of Roman Vishnaic, including its framing, selective editing, selective juxtapositioning, misuse of cutlines, commissioning and more. The piece is here at Scribd to dodge paywalls. Beyond all that, I didn't realize that in Yiddish, a "shtetl" isn't a "village." That would be a "dorp," straight up from German. A "shtetl" is halfway between it and a "shtot," straight up from the German "stadt," or city. (I'm unsure of the etymology of "shtetl.") Anyway, that alone says that the "framing" of "Fiddler on the Roof," while charming, is really not true. It should have a community with 5-10 times that population, probably.

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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