As I've mentioned before, there are changes afoot in the curriculum at VMI. I am on the committee to redesign the major in English, which we have been told must be based on rhetoric and writing, but which is also to include literature, fine arts, and philosophy. Nothing has been decided, but my sense is that some people on the committee would like all courses in this department to have the same designation, so that, for instance, what is now called PH 304 Ethics might be called something like EN 304 Ethics. In the catalog of courses, in other words, philosophy courses would look like English courses, as would rhetoric and fine arts courses. At any rate, all these kinds of courses would look the same, whether they're listed as EN (for English), RH (for rhetoric), HU (for humanities), or whatever it might be. I don't like this idea. Am I too conservative?
Here are my main concerns:
In thinking what courses to require in the new major, we were specifically instructed to give priority to courses in rhetoric and writing. Would it not then be disingenuous to behave as if rhetoric and writing were essentially the same thing as literature, philosophy, and fine arts? If all these subjects are basically the same, why prioritize rhetoric and writing? If they aren't basically the same, why label them as if they were?
It might be nice to break down boundaries within the new department, but wouldn't it be more helpful to people outside the department to be able to see easily which courses are in literature, which in philosophy, which in rhetoric, and so on? If I'm a graduate school admissions officer or potential employer, isn't it legitimate for me to want to know what kinds of courses a student has taken? If another department at VMI wants its students to take a course or two in writing, wouldn't it be helpful for them to know which are writing courses and which are literature or fine arts courses? And if a student takes ethics and likes it, wouldn't it be helpful for them to be able to find similar courses easily? Not to mention that a change in labeling would almost certainly mean that students could no longer get minors in philosophy, fine arts, etc.
I'm not a disciplinary purist and do teach, for instance, some literature in my courses. But I still recognize that I have been given a specialized education, that I have had a particular training and have particular skills that make me suited to teach certain types of courses (i.e. courses in philosophy) and not others. Doesn't interdisciplinary work rely on some disciplinary skills, concerns, and methods? Otherwise isn't there a danger of a lack of rigor and, in a word, mush?
Given that we currently do distinguish between writing courses and those in English literature, those in fine arts, and those in philosophy, why not continue to do so? Is there a serious danger that students or faculty members will divide harmfully along these lines unless we deny that they exist? I'm currently in the Department of Psychology and Philosophy, and we all get along very well. Psychology majors can get either a BA or a BS, and they all get along.
In short, I see no good reason to change the labeling and several reasons not to do so. But am I missing something? And would the above be a good way to make the case to my colleagues, or might it be too confrontational?
As alert readers of the blog might have gathered, we have power again after almost exactly a week without it. I enjoyed spending more time reading actual books and magazines rather than more or less random stuff on the internet, and will try to do more of this. We'll see how that goes. I really don't need to check my email or Facebook more than once or twice a day, but the possibility of hearing good news is often more of a draw than the possibility of learning something or just enjoying a good read. A wise person would be more patient, leaving any good news there might be till later (and of course usually there isn't any significant news, good or bad).
Otherwise I feel as though I ought to have learned something from the experience, but I'm not sure I did. Walking at night by the light of the full but cloud-covered moon into my neighborhood when it was all dark was a weird experience, especially when one of our cats brushed against me. But it's not as if this was how the place looked at any time in the past. And, as one of my kids pointed out, we didn't exactly find out what life was like for people before they had electric power in their homes because they were used to living that way and we're not. It's good to take a break from normal life every once in a while though. I don't know that I appreciate electricity more now, but I do notice it, and our dependence on it, more. And noticing something under your nose that you usually overlook is a good thing.
The fact that something is natural doesn't make it good. To say that something's natural is simply to say that it accords with the way we happen to be as a result of evolution.
It depends what you mean by natural. I'm not sure that anyone has ever really explained what 'natural' means, but it certainly does not always mean what Buchanan says it means. Anscombe, as I recall, says that in Catholic thinking (or perhaps in Aquinas) 'natural' sometimes just means good or not wrong. But I think some people use it to mean a sort of cross between the positive (or Humean) conception Buchanan has in mind and the purely normative sense that Anscombe describes. There is a sense I find in people such as Leon Kass and Michael Sandel that the source of life, call it God-or-nature, is good. Jonathan Haidt describes people trying to justify moral reactions by imagining the harm that could come from this or that odd situation (incest where pregnancy is impossible, a man having sex with a frozen chicken, etc.). Basically, when we disapprove of something we will (often) claim that we do so because we foresee bad consequences. Pointing out that such consequences are highly unlikely shows not so much that we are wrong to disapprove but that we disapprove for some other reason.
In these cases we need to dig a bit, or just think more. Ronald Dworkin does this kind of reconstructive moral psychology in Life's Dominion (I think he does a good job, others disagree), as does Jonathan Haidt in his most recent work (not well in my opinion, but others no doubt differ). In Better Than HumanBuchanan unhelpfully politicizes the issue of biological enhancement, mentioning George W. Bush as often as possible (so that conservative moral positions are associated with conservative political positions) and even bringing in Patrick Devlin (think nature is a seamless web? well you know who else talked about seamless webs...). The issue is already controversial enough without bringing in guilt by association. Other than this Buchanan's arguments are good (so far--I'm only halfway through the book), but he seems blind to the possibility that respect for nature and/or life might be a value. He points out that nature isn't always nice, even quoting the old "red in tooth and claw" line and committing what I think of as the Black Corridor fallacy, namely treating the amorality of something impersonal as if it were a kind of cruelty. Jonathan Balcombe combats this attitude with a chapter in Second Natureabout the warm and fuzzy side of nature. But I think this is not enough.
How can one possibly live as if nature were an enemy to be struggled against? That seems so wrongheaded to me that even neutrality seems close to impossible. Something like Chesterton's primal loyalty, along with his hating the world enough to change it and loving it enough to want to change it, seems not only good but practically necessary to me. How can we live sanely without thinking of the natural world, or just the universe, as our home? And how can we (again: sanely) avoid warm feelings about home? Buchanan shows no loyalty to nature, happily suggesting that we re-engineer mice, for instance:
the post-mouse future will arrive considerably ahead of the post-human future, and that's a good thing. Let them be the risk-pioneers. (p. 94)
The post-mouse future referred to is one in which mice have been so changed as to no longer be what we know as mice. How is this good? Buchanan writes in this passage as if it's good for us, because the risks involved will fall on the mice. To be fair to him, though, we should consider that he might also mean that it's good for the mice, because they will become post-mouse by being enhanced, not just changed but improved. This raises the question what constitutes improvement. A better mouse-trap does its job better, but mice don't have a job (unless they were built for a purpose by the Creator, in which case Buchanan is wrong). Better mice might be happier mice, but we ought not simply to assume that happiness is the only relevant value. Or we might think of mice in more or less Aristotelian terms, as having not so much a job but a function, or multiple functions. There are things mice do: see, hear, run, avoid cats, etc. If we make them better at some or all of these things then they will be better mice. Perhaps. But there's also the idea that mice are something like works of art. And then improving them no longer makes much sense as an idea, except in cases where sick or handicapped mice are made more like standard mice.
The cosmic patriot or jingo of the universe, as Chesterton puts it, would love mice just as they are, and would want no part in trying to enhance them. The very idea of improving mice would be like the idea of improving Hamlet (perhaps by adding a sex scene). The same, only more so, would go for human beings. You can't really think (can you?) both what a piece of work is man and we can make him better. Not without a dismissive "yeah, yeah, I get it" after the 'what a piece of work' part anyway. And it's resistance to the "yeah, yeah" attitude that I think Buchanan doesn't get. Otherwise, as I say, I think I agree with him. But I haven't finished the book yet, and I worry that there might be a kind of no true Scotsman problem lurking for someone who takes my position. For now, though, I must stop blogging and enhance my back garden by weeding it before it gets too hot.
Apparently the conference "In Wittgenstein's Footsteps" is going ahead after all. They have had email problems, I'm told, which is why some of us have not heard from them. My intention is to try again to contact the organizer, perhaps by a more old-fashioned method.
(My source is an email from a reliable person who tells me that he is going. I feel unnecessarily clandestine leaving him anonymous, but I would feel worse publishing a private communication.)
I've been thinking about pictures a lot recently, partly because I saw a lot of pictures on vacation that I wished I knew more about, and partly because I've been thinking about metaphors, secondary sense, and pictures in language. If I insist on using the word 'brown' to describe a voice, or 'yellow' to describe a vowel, then why do I want this word here? Because of its meaning, we might say, but not really because of its use in the language, or its normal use. Isn't it more because I want to evoke a certain picture, to sound a certain note on the keyboard of the imagination? The words 'brown' and 'yellow' don't usually work like this. They don't mean what they mean by popping the lid off a mental paint can labeled 'brown' or 'yellow' as Descartes (roughly speaking) thought. Meanings ain't in the head, and if when Madonna sang that "cherish is the word I use to remind me of your love" she meant to imply that language generally works by summoning up private memories and associations then she is wrong.
But it is something along these lines that people seem to be doing when they use 'yellow' in songs like "Yellow" by Coldplay or "Bright As Yellow" by the Innocence Mission. They want the listener to picture the color yellow in her mind as she hears, and to understand what is said in light of this (which means something like side-by-side with this image). Maybe that's not quite right. But some association is being used or counted on, and the association with 'yellow' (not a very complicated metaphor) is surely likely to be something like an after-image or vague thoughts of lemons and sunshine. It's almost as if the kind of philosophy of language that Wittgenstein rejects is true of metaphorical language. (Or: when I try to philosophize about language on my own I repeat the mistakes of philosophers who have not learned from Wittgenstein. I'm not sure. The way to work this out is to go in deeper.)
Because of this interest in pictures I'm reading Gombrich's The Story of Art. He writes:
Everyone knows that Egypt is the land of the pyramids, those mountains of stone which stand like weathered landmarks on the distant horizon of history. However remote and mysterious they seem, they tell us much of their own story. They tell us of a land which was so thoroughly organized that it was possible to pile up these gigantic mounds in the lifetime of a single king, and they tell us of kings who were so rich and powerful that they could force thousands and thousands of workers or slaves to toil for them year in, year out, to quarry the stones, to drag them to the building site, and to shift them with the most primitive means until the tomb was ready to receive the king. No king, and no people would have gone to such expense, and taken so much trouble, for the creation of a mere monument. In fact, we know that the pyramids had their practical importance in the eyes of the kings and their subjects. The king was considered a divine being who held sway over them, and on his departure from this earth he would again ascend to the gods whence he had come. The pyramids soaring up to the sky would probably help him to make his ascent.
This strikes me as both true and false. It is true that "No king, and no people would have gone to such expense, and taken so much trouble, for the creation of a mere monument." But medieval cathedrals, Stonehenge, and the pyramids all suggest that it is perhaps only for monuments that people will go to such trouble. If asked why, they might be likely to offer the kind of practical purpose that Gombrich describes. For the sake of eternal life it makes sense to work hard before we die. And yet people don't readily give up smoking or eat more healthily or exercise more for the sake of longer life. And this is despite evidence that doing so will help, which is quite lacking in the case of the belief that "pyramids soaring up to the sky would probably help him to make his ascent" (even if 'probably' is not part of their belief but is rather Gombrich's judgment on the plausibility of his hypothesis).
People will make incredible sacrifices and efforts for religious purposes that they will not make for secular purposes, even if they think of the two as being the same. It isn't what they think, in other words, that really matters. The difference shows up in what they do. This might be guided by pictures. Perhaps it has to be, perhaps it would never work without some pictures, and these might have to be of a particular kind. But it is the effect of these pictures, or the use to which they are put, that really matters, not the pictures themselves (e.g. pictures of living on after death). It seems to be important that the pictures are not thought about too much, are not investigated. They might need to be thought about in the sense of being kept in mind, but wondering about cause and effect (as in Fyodor Karamazov's wondering about the hooks in hell) will tend to undermine their efficacy.
Monuments are objects that we literally live by (i.e. near to), and they are, presumably, meant to influence how we live as well. So they function like pictures or metaphors. We live, if not in their light, then in their shadow. They also express beliefs or attitudes. (At least monuments like ancient pyramids do. Others might express nothing but a desire to build something large or monumental.) But this expression is not statement. There's a difference between crying and saying "I am sad." I think it's easy to misinterpret expressions if we take them as instruments (even though they might be instrumental in some ways). But they aren't (always) just expressions either. They can be intelligible, articulate.
I don't know whether I've got this right or said anything new, but this is probably long enough for a blog post in which I'm really just thinking out loud. Please feel free, as ever, to correct any errors.
My apologies in advance to anyone who comments and doesn't get a quick reply, or gets only an inadequate reply. The recent storm has meant that I've had no electricity at home since Friday night. That means less sleep than normal (because it's so hot and the air-conditioning isn't working), which isn't good for thinking. It also means I only have internet access in my office, and I don't spend much time there because a) I'm too groggy to do much work, and b) my kids are off school for the summer. Normal service should resume in a day or two. I hope.
Re-reading it reminds me of something I just read in a forthcoming book about animals, ethics, language, Wittgenstein, and so on. Pär Segerdahl made a couple of innocent mistakes when visiting language-learning bonobos and was labeled a monster by one of them. This sounds pretty bad, but it turns out that a movie had been made featuring a person in a gorilla costume to help scare the bonobos away from a dangerous area. The gorilla was called 'monster'. Another movie featured someone dressed as a bunny who always brought presents. One of the bonobos, who did not like the scary monster movie, often wanted to watch the bunny movie instead. That's about as cute as it's possible to get, I think, at least as told in Segerdahl's paper.
And searching for the details of the story now led me to this. Segerdahl gets called a monster, but Anderson Cooper is bunny:
