Don’t Be Soppy…

People who sneer at the “fawning” eulogies of public figures they disliked will tut at critical obituaries of those they admired. So it is with Eric Hobsbawm, who is being praised for his tremendous works of history even as he’s being criticised for his communist beliefs. Left wing people on Twitter huff at such criticisms as if they’re dreadfully boring. This, perhaps, is easier than showing that they’re unjust. They aren’t.

Others, though, of different persuasions, seem to think Hobsbawm’s sympathies should lead us to view him with nothing but contempt. Michael Gove is being quoted as saying that “only when Hobsbawm weeps hot tears for a life spent serving an ideology of wickedness will he ever be worth listening to”. Gove is a man who’s claimed a war that led to the deaths and dispossessions of hundreds of thousands, and left its survivors with a corrupt government and a society torn by violence, was “a proper British foreign policy success” so I’m not entirely sure why he’s any more respectable. Even disregarding this, though: why do Hobsbawm’s opinions make him unlistenable? No one seems to bridge the gap between his sympathies for Stalinism and his being rightfully discredited. Their argument, instead, tends to be that nobody would admire him if he’d held other disreputable opinions. As this – rather more sympathetic – blogger says…

If Eric Hobsbawm was of the extreme right, his talents would not shelter him from derision and banishment from respectable intellectual circles.

Really? Perhaps not. Yet this wasn’t always true. By the late 1970s David Irving’s admiration for the Nazis was hardly a secret. His book Hitler’s War emanated a fondness for the Führer. Even after its publication, though, historians of the intellectual establishment like Taylor and Trevor-Roper could be found praising his work. It was only after the man’s scholarship had been discredited, first by Bird, Jäckel and others, then most damningly by Evans, that he came to be perceived in the light he’s now seen.

While Irving’s admirers should have scrutinised his books with greater care before praising them they were correct not to dismiss him on the basis of his views. Being opinionated doesn’t preclude one from being objective when it’s necessary, and the quality of those opinions shouldn’t lead us to deny ourselves the important products of that objectivity. Should Carlyle be forgotten for Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question? Should William Shockley’s views on race inspire us to avoid using devices with transistors? Clearly not. Truth is too valuable to be rejected because it emerges from a source that one dislikes. If somebody dumps a sack of pins across the floor there’s no shame in donning gloves and picking through to find the diamonds that glint within them.

I know too little about Hobsbawm’s work to offer a grand appraisal of his virtues and demerits. Yet it seems to me that there’s just cause to criticise him without being a fan of Joe McCarthy and to praise him without being fond of Joe Stalin.

 

Two Can Bring Awareness…

I’ll say one thing for Sheikh Haitham al-Haddad: where he goes you can be sure of trouble. He crops up among clerics and speakers and around him you find all manner of demagogic theocrats. He’s set to address another Islamic student society: in Roehampton this time. The theme is the end of the world and they’ve produced this rather unpleasant advert…

So, what kind of man is prepared to appear with Haddad? Dr Khalid Fikry is less prolific than his comrade but intriguing regardless. A profile in the Arabic media reports that the doctor was educated in Egypt and was arrested by President Anwar Sadat as part of his crackdown on religious extremists. This leads me to suspect that he’s the Dr. Khaled Fekry who authored this fond tribute to Omar Abdel-Rahman, the Blind Sheikh and leader of the Islamic Group…

We never forgot you our dear sheikh and we will never forget you. Allah is your supporter and defender.

Rahman was a committed enemy of secularism whose group was founded with the purpose of establishing sharia law in Egypt. It waged a campaign of violence throughout the nineties that killed hundreds of Egyptians. Rahman also travelled to Afghanistan where he empowered the Mujahideen and befriended the now-notorious jihadists Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Abdullah Azzam. Later, in the US, even while denying the accusations of seditious conspiracy, he called on his fellow Muslims to “rise in God as one man” and warned, “Don’t take the Christians and the Jews as your friends”.  His life was devoted to the cause of righteous violence with the aim of upholding the laws of Allah, and he inspired countless Muslims to join him in this work. This is the “dear Sheikh” that Fekri rhapsodised about.

He also praises supposed “good people” among the Sheikh’s supporters, like Aboud Al-Zomor, who was arrested for conspiring in the assassination of President Sadat and later said it was because he was “standing against sharia, against its implementation and application”, and Ahmed Refai Taha, who led the group after Abdel-Rahman’s departure and is thought to have been involved in atrocities such as the Luxor massacre.

As well as his interesting choice of friends Fikri seems to have an intriguing take on community relations. His speeches denounce Shia Muslims: castigating them as an “ignorant kaffir sect”. They are, he says in tones of awed disgust, “the greatest allies with the Americans, as well as with the Jew”. Shock horror! (Audaciously, despite these words, he’s tried to have a heretical Shiite cleric prosecuted for – get this – inciting sectarian unrest.)

These gentlemens’ presence is yet further evidence of how preposterous it is that it’s continually insisted that the claim that dangerous theocrats are preaching to students is an “absurd conconction”. Amandla Thomas, the spokesman of FOSIS, wrote that “a quick perusal of colourfully-themed “Islam Awareness Weeks” across the country…dispel such myths”. I’m perusing the leaflet for Roehampton’s, held last month, and their guest speaker was Abdulrahman Green, whose defence of wifebeating, endorsement of the deaths of adulterers and homosexuals and advocacy for a theocratic state we’ve come across before. Sorry, dude, but those claims are as mythical as marmalade, manatees and Margaret Thatcher and deserve more attention.

As for Fikry…

Dr. Fikri was granted political asylum in Britain in 2005.

So was Abu Qatada. So was Anas al-Liby. So was Mohammad al-Massari, Omar Bakri Mohammad and Yasser al-Siri. Why did we spend months debating whether Raed Salah was allowed to come here for a holiday when such men are allowed to settle? I’m aware that some of ‘em were allowed in out of spite for enemies our government happened to share at the time but whatever the reason judiciousness must be restored. I wouldn’t let a man into my house, however miserable his circumstances, if I thought he might endanger me and my family. This principle should be extended to our borders.

 

White Beards And White Coats…

The physicist Lawrence Krauss was interviewed in this month’s Atlantic magazine and had some harsh words for the study of philosophy…

[It's] a field that, unfortunately, reminds me of that old Woody Allen joke, “those that can’t do, teach, and those that can’t teach, teach gym.”

Krauss later admitted that he was “being provocative, as [he] tend[s] to [be] every now and then in order to get people’s attention” and went so far as to apologise. Elsewhere in the interview, however, he’d suggested that if you’re writing for the public “the one thing you can’t do is overstate your claim, because people are going to believe you”. Really? Well – with this in mind it’s worth questioning his scorn.

Here’s a question I’d put to scientists who disdain philosophy: demonstrate that science is good. One might, of course, just point at light bulbs and say, “Look! Good!” This, however, is to elide goodness with wellbeing – a contentious maneuver – and doesn’t even account for areas of science that aren’t of real consequence to the general public. No, the answer this problems demands is that one concerns ethics and such scientists find such questions awkward because they can’t justify themselves with reference to empirical data alone. In a 1995 interview, Richard Dawkins admitted as much…

If I say something is wrong, like killing people, I don’t find that nearly such a defensible statement as ‘I am a distant cousin of an orang utan’.

The second of those statements is true, I can tell you why it’s true, I can bore you to death telling you why it’s true. It’s definitely true. The statement ‘killing people is wrong’, to me, is not of that character. I would be quite open to persuasion that killing people is right in some circumstances.

Why, it’s almost as if we need a discipline that involves analysing and prescribing concepts of right or wrong. We could call it “moral…”, er – “moral philosophy”!

Scientists may find themselves unable to avoid the relevance of philosophy even closer to the lab. Krauss’ latest tome, A Universe from Nothing, is an attempt to explain how “something” can be produced from “nothing” and argues that particles may have arisen from the laws of quantum theory. Dawkins greeted it by saying…

Even the last remaining trump card of the theologian, ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?,’ shrivels up before your eyes as you read these pages. If ‘On the Origin of Species’ was biology’s deadliest blow to super­naturalism, we may come to see ‘A Universe From Nothing’ as the equivalent from cosmology. The title means exactly what it says. And what it says is ­devastating.

Right. Yes. Except that as Edward Feser responds, the laws of quantum theory are not “nothing”. Krauss is aware of this, of course, but if he knows this means it’s not the “nothing” theologians have been pondering he never told Dawkins. The question of how matter could be produced from the void is a fascinating one and Krauss might answer it superbly but it isn’t that question. As galling as it is for some  scientists there are problems that cannot be solved with recourse to their justly acclaimed method and philosophy is useful in approaching them. As well as refining such concepts so we don’t have to make these tedious misunderstandings.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that the universe scientists detail for us seems, in many ways, a hideously bleak one. It arose, they tell us, thanks to unconscious quantum mechanisms and will linger in futile existence for millenia before breaking apart; ending the life of our bewildered, standardised species if hasn’t already expired. Whether that’s a fair account of our existential story is a matter for debate but as it’s a fair representation of the scientific view it shows why our perspective needs more than science. Some people get by without philosophies, sure – avoid worry and, to resurrect a phrase, enjoy their lives – but others of us need a more systematic defence of getting out of bed.

This is not a broad defence of what goes on within the study of philosophy. There are, perhaps, no fields of research that emit more bollocks. (And that includes creative writing.) Yet scientists do themselves no favours by acting so haughtily. Their studies have the advantage of being more evidently justifiable, yes, with a clearer path of progress, but they’re also limited in their scope: in terms of what they can achieve evidentially and offer emotionally. Whatever disciplines might claim to have monopolised the field of human inquiry, their rightful colonies will always be restricted. This is not to denigrate any of them, it’s just that they have different tools with which to harvest from different parts.

 

TRENTON! TRENTON!

You can say what you like about Valerie Solanas or Ted Kaczynski but they knew how to write an interesting manifesto. Trenton Oldfield, the man whose chilly dip into the Thames obstructed the 2012 Boat Race, has no such gifts. His screed is an attack on “elitism” that fails to define the term. Does he mean aristocratic privilege? The influence of the monied? Hierarchies of ability? Does he think there’s a difference? Who knows. He doesn’t say. But he seems to think the slightest human inequality is a force for evil. Even the rowers are sneered at for having the cheek to be more able sportsmen than others.

For someone who claims to be diagnosing the ills of our society his actual knowledge of it is slight. He rambles on about a part of the Thames…

…where Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats and Deputy Prime Minster of the Government lives with his family, despite his constituents living hundreds of miles away in post-industrial Sheffield.

Lest you feel compelled to pity the neglected residents of Sheffield Hallam I should note it’s among the wealthiest constituencies in Britain. I’m sure that if Clegg’s absence was a source of pain to them they could mop up the tears with a crisp twenty pound note.

While I’m unsure of the nature of Oldfield’s case against the current system I don’t even want to know what he’d like to replace it with. He asks…

…when hasn’t the pursuit of equality, not resulted in these long passages of tyranny being overcome, even if temporarily?

The “even if temporarily” carries more weight a sumo wrestler’s toilet. I don’t think the people dying in Stalin’s camps thought the first days after the revolution had made it all worthwhile. Nor the starving peasants under Mao or tortured farmers in Cambodia; the victims of Ceaușescu or Ho Chi Minh.

Oldfield saves the best ‘til last…

Heh.

I’m untroubled by this fellow’s antics in the Thames. It’d be a shame for people who enjoy the race if it was always being obstructed but as a once-off I’d guess it make the whole thing more exciting. (I suppose I should admit that rowing is only trumped by golf in my personal list of snoozers.) It’s the manifesto that creeped me out. Unless “Trenton Oldfield” is a disinformation agent – has anyone checked to see if bad news has been shoved beneath the carpet of reports on him? – it’s an eerie reflection of the cognitive insularity that one can sail through intellectual, yes, elites with, serenely assured of one’s own rectitude. Oldfield – unless, again, he’s Agent Trenton – presumably believes he’s a radical but the vagueness of thought and airy detachment from consequence are more suggestive of a dispiriting conformity.

 

Irony Towers…

From nutrition to anthropology, philosophy to science, my favourite bloggers are often those who can post in an informed and enlightening manner on substantive academic research. Inexperience and limited resources – oh, well, fine, perhaps ignorance as well – have often meant that I’m unable to explore studies without their navigation. This, however, happily, is not one of those times. Here’s a paper on a subject I’m well acquainted with…

The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute.

My n=1 research confirms the gravity of their findings…

If we assume the annual rate of teaspoon loss per employee can be applied to the entire population of Melbourne (about 2.5 million), an estimated 18 million teaspoons are going missing in Melbourne each year. Laid end to end, these lost teaspoons would cover over 2700km – the length of the entire coastline of Mozambique – and weigh over 360 metric tons – the approximate weight of four adult blue whales.

The quality of this research has inspired me to go into publishing myself. I’d like to study the rate at which sports equipment goes missing from my hometown’s leisure centre. Expect my “hockey stick” graph to be published soon.

 

 

Taking Swift Seriously…

A minor controversy has been incited by the publication of an essay in the Journal of Medical Ethics. I’m no stranger to far-out philosophies but I’ll admit its title made me wince: “After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?” Infanticide has won qualified support before, of course: from Peter Singer, Michael Tooley and others. Yet it’s still discomfiting to hear it stated in blunt terms…

If criteria such as the costs (social, psychological, economic) for the potential parents are good enough reasons for having an abortion even when the fetus is healthy, if the moral status of the newborn is the same as that of the infant and if neither has any moral value by virtue of being a potential person, then the same reasons which justify abortion should also justify the killing of the potential person when it is at the stage of a newborn.

Why is it discomfiting? For the obvious reason, sure – that the idea of killing newborn babies is repugnant to us – but I think there’s another reason: that I can’t deny they’ve got a point. Not, to be clear, that they’re right to say that killing newborns would be justified but that they aren’t wrong to suggest that if you’re okay with abortion it’s strange to find “after-birth abortion” disgusting. One could make an argument that the former and not the latter is allowable by drawing on rights theory, perhaps, but the difference between the capabilities of a foetus and a baby in the first days of its life are minimal enough that it’s hard to find grounds on which to say that one, but not the other, is of moral consequence.

Few people have acknowledged the significance of rejecting the premises of Christian ethics. For example, there has been no universal acknowledgement of the idea that postnatal humans have the right to life: the Greeks left babies out to die; the Japanese used to smother them and in some parts of Asia and Africa the practice of infanticide continues. Most citizens of the West would find the notion disgusting on the face of it but without ideas to enforce them these emotions, in time, could fade. Me? I think that killing newborns must be wrong. I don’t have rock-solid theoretical grounds on which to say so but just as I couldn’t give a thorough refutation of antinatalism yet remain convinced that life is valuable I’m not going renounce such a strong and fundamental conviction ‘til I’ve searched high and low and found nothing to sustain it. Still, ideas like Minerva and Guibilini’s should force us out from the ruins of doctrines we’ve philosophies or let crumble but remained in – like squatters in others’ weltanschauungen. If we can’t erect a firmer structure of values or, indeed, restore a well-founded design we’ve unfairly neglected we’re doomed to an moral wilderness, and subject to the murky whims of fashion and fancy.

The reporting of the paper in media outlets has meant the authors have endured a storm of abuse. Julian Savulescu defends them at Practical Ethics…

What the response to this article reveals, through the microscope of the web, is the deep disorder of the modern world. Not that people would give arguments in favour of infanticide, but the deep opposition that exists now to liberal values and fanatical opposition to any kind of reasoned engagement.

I deplore threats against and abuse of the authors. The notion that ethical theory can remain an idyll of “reasoned engagement”, however, is futile. Let’s say I authored a paper titled “Inconvenient theories: why should ethicists live?” Their fear and disgust at the notion that philosophers could be eliminated for proposing bothersome ideas would, unless I’m much mistaken, preclude civil discourse. And I wouldn’t blame them! Ethics will always be tangled up with our fiercest emotions – it’s what motivates us to uphold the good and thwart the bad. (Whatever they might be.)

 

Among The Torn Papers…

Hugh Gusterson has penned a sad and damning portrait of the devastation of Iraq’s once-proud universities. Ever since the beginning of the occupation the carelessness of the invaders meant that academics and their students weren’t merely unaided as they tried to rebuild their institutions but were actively weakened.

A eerie portent of the chaos that engulphed the nation in the years to come arose when looters swept across Iraqi cities, to the general indifference of the occupiers…

While American troops guarded the Ministries of Oil and the Interior but ignored cultural heritage sites, looters ransacked the universities. For example, the entire library collections at the University of Baghdad’s College of Arts and at the University of Basra were destroyed.

Famously, the De-Ba’athification of the police abetted the chaos and violence that was ensuing. The purging of members of Saddam’s party affected all areas of society, though, including the nation’s universities…

Since one had to join the Ba’ath Party — whether one truly supported the party or not — in order to get ahead in Hussein’s Iraq, this order had the effect of removing most of Iraq’s senior university administrators and professors overnight. In the words of journalist Christina Asquith, after this purge, “half of the intellectual leadership in academia was gone.”

They were replaced with American incompetents like John Agresto, who, we’re told, “was picked to run the Iraqi university system because he was friends with Lynne Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld”. He appealed for funds…

Agresto estimated that it would cost $1.2 billion to rebuild Iraq’s 22 major universities and 43 technical institutes and colleges. Given that the US Congress appropriated over $90 billion for reconstruction and counterinsurgency in Iraq for 2004, this was not a large amount…Congress only appropriated $8 million — less than 1 percent of what Agresto requested.

Meanwhile, the universities were being slowly depopulated. Hundreds of academics died in the violence; some of them deliberately targeted by thugs who disliked the relative cosmopolitanism of their work. (One victim, a brave chap named Dr. Issam Al Rawi, was killed while investigating the suspicious wave of deaths amongst Iraqi intellectuals.) Others joined the exodus of the middle classes; stripping the nation of human resources it needs…

It is estimated that 10 percent of Iraq’s population, and 30 percent of its professors, doctors, and engineers, left for neighboring countries between 2003 and 2007 — the largest Arab refugee displacement since the Palestinian flight from the holy lands decades earlier.

One hears very little about Iraq nowadays – but for the daily documentations of the bombs and murders that tear through the country, and the everless surprising exposure of the crimes of the invaders and the government. I don’t just want to be Mr Miserable: there are doubtless thousands of brave, resourceful citizens trying to aid eachother in rebuilding their communities, industries and institutions and I wish them all the very best. What’s appalling, though, is not just the obvious casualties of the past nine years – the dead; the wounded and the dispossessed – but the stultification of the resources necessary for this task. Think of it: almost 1 in 3 professors have, apparently, upped sticks and left. How can Iraq’s children – already doubtless traumatised by everything they’ve witnessed, through dictatorship and occupation – gain the tools with which to craft better lives and a better nation from the ruins when there’s no one there to teach them?

 

Blind Side…

Have any Brits kept up with the Penn State scandal? A respected coach of the university’s football team has been exposed as a child rapist. What’s more disturbing is that a great chunk of the administration of the college athletics department seem to have been aware of his proclivities and practices but, for the good of, er, football made no real attempt to inform the authorities, and employed the man right up to his arrest. The team’s legendary coach, Joe Paterno, has been fired after it was revealed that a graduate assistant had witnessed the child abuse in 2002 and reported it to him, but he’d failed to go to the police. This has led to protests by students who seem more outraged by the firing of their coach than the fact that their university’s administration has, for years, enabled paedophilia.

The affair is grimly interesting for several reasons. The corruption of the athletics department – which, yes, could be bracketed as a conspiracy – shows how amoral institutions can become in their pursuit of “larger” goals. It also, for me, raises questions about the nature of authority. I mentioned a “graduate assistant” who’d witnessed abuse. This was no meek and fragile academic; this was a big, strapping one-time quarterback for goodness’ sake. Yet, on witnessing a 58-year-old raping a child, he didn’t pull him off or even go to the police. He then worked alongside the man for nearly a decade. What on earth was wrong with him?

Well, I’m no psychologist – not professionally, at least – but it occurs to me that the notion of defying an authority could have been as horrifying as the risk of physical pain; as opposed to the instincts he carried. The behaviour of the students says to me that this a place where authorities are held in great esteem – not because of values they’re supposed to represent or impart; just because of who they are; because of their place in the heirarchy. I believe authorities – parents and teachers – are necessary to imbue us with the moral sense that, in my view, is not inherent to us. But in this case it’s a measure of a “good” authority that they’d raise men and women who’d be prepared to disown them if they transgressed the values they’d claimed to stand for. How this works in practice is beyond me for the moment but one thing that’s clear is that they’re most dangerous when they command obedience because of their status, not their worth.

 

On Things That Have Totally Happened…

So, a social science prof was speaking at York University and offered the assertion “All Jews should be sterilised” as an example of a vile opinion. Unfortunately, one of his students leapt to the conclusion that he was endorsing this view. Here’s what she did…

Instead of raising her hand to ask for clarification, she abruptly stormed out of class and informed an Israel advocacy group that her professor was an anti-Semite. Press releases were churned out and sent to Jewish groups and the media, calling for Johnston’s firing. The campaign instantly went viral.

Many are deriding this bewildered lass – and fairly too – but though it was extremely dumb of her to go beserk without questioning the prof she was but one person, whose volatile moods could have swayed her reasoning. What’s funny, though, is how easily this “advocacy group” accepted her claim. They would have been unprecedentedly appalling words, spelling an end to his career and the beginning of a media storm, but they didn’t even feel obliged to ask him if they said them. And then other people took them at their word, without question; even with blatantly questionable details like this…

[The student] urged her fellow Jewish students to walk out of class with her — none did.

Did they ever think there could be more than one explanation for their passivity? Did they ever think to, y’know, ask somebody else before assuming it was acceptance of genocidal racism? Truth be told, this a classic and not-actually-extraordinary example of the confirmation bias. They expect professors to be anti-semitic so when they’re claimed to be so their prejudices ratify the charges before their scepticism has taken the job. I wouldn’t surprised to hear of similar reactions, in other contexts, from watchers of Islamophobia, misogyny, misandry, homophobes, anti-Americans, phobophobes et cetera.

The student is obviously the type of person who’d see themselves as a victim as they kicked a puppy’s head in. She went on to affirm the most pessimistic analyses of the confirmation bias. Psychologists have written of the ‘continued influence effect of misinformation’, which means people are in thrall to bogus claims even after they’ve been corrected numerous times. Check out these doozies…

[The student] said Tuesday she may have misunderstood the context and intent of Johnston’s remarks, but that fact is insignificant.

“The words, ‘Jews should be sterilized’ still came out of his mouth, so regardless of the context I still think that’s pretty serious.”

[The student] also expressed skepticism that Johnston was in fact Jewish.

Asked directly by a reporter whether she believes Johnston is lying, she was unclear.

“Whether he is or is not, no one will know,” she said. “. . . Maybe he thought because he is Jewish he can talk smack about other Jews.”

Or, in translation:

Okay, he didn’t. But he sort of did. He totally did.

Don’t you love the notion that her outrage was justified because “the words…came out of his mouth”, by the way. Come to that, they’ve now come out of her mouth. Serious stuff!

 

Imagine All The People, Arguing The World…

Here’s a few debates I’ve been observing – on subjects dear to this blogger’s, er – brain…

• I commend this burgeoning debate between Tim Wilkinson and Peter Hitchens, on the subject on the legalisation of weed. Hitchens states conservative principles without the oily obfuscation of like-minded commentators, while Tim has the argumentative and investigative chops to expound the “pro” case effectively. Here, in order, are salvos from Wilkinson, Hitchens, Hitchens, Hitchens, Hitchens, Hitchens, Wilkinson and Wilkinson. (But keep an eye on their blogs, because there’s more to come.)

• Philosophy Prof. Edward Feser is debating scientists like Jerry Coyne and Jason Rosenhouse on the value and validity of theological research. The problem that I have with the latter’s arguments is that they seem to hold that (a) theological reasoning is pretty vacuous but (b) they’ll debate it anyway. It seems unarguable, from reading Feser, that they haven’t the theological arguments so they should either (a) show why they’re invalid per se or (b) admit that this theism thing may not be quite so nakedly absurd as they’ve presumed and school themselves.

• Peter Kramer followed Marcia Angell’s critique of the reductionist diagnoses and excessive medication of today’s psychiatry with a New York Times op-ed “In Defense of Antidepressants”. Robert Whitaker, whose book was one of those under review in Angell’s piece, replies; charging Kramer’s piece with being symptomatic of “academic psychiatry [that] hasn’t been honest in what it tells the public about psychiatric medications”.