Choice and Action

Stuart W. Mirsky's new book is now available. Here's the description on amazon:

Moral valuing has long posed a special challenge to philosophers because it purports to establish objectively sustainable claims -- despite their apparent grounding in merely human sentiment. Stuart W. Mirsky here addresses the implications of a sentiment-based moral faculty re: questions of relativism and nihilism by exploring the ways in which we value things and how we come to grant such claims knowledge status. In a series of essays attacking the problem from several different angles, Mirsky develops a picture that places moral valuation in the context of valuing generally to show how moral claims attain their seemingly special status via a pragmatic notion of rational agency. In so doing, he rediscovers and re-emphasizes the essential role of the subject, the aware self, in our moral calculus.

Kolkata

I've spent the past week in Kolkata (formally Calcutta), my first time in India. The most memorable things:

1. walking around the New Market a boy wrapped his arms and legs around my leg, clinging to it even as I walked and coming back to do it again whenever I (or anyone else) prised him off. He was dirty and wearing dirty clothes, and he wouldn't go away. He wanted money, of course, but never said anything. But you don't give to beggars, especially not begging children (who ought to be in school). Eventually a man intervened telling me I should just give the boy 10 rupees. I had nothing smaller than 500 rupees, though, so he gave me the money to give to the boy and it worked. After this I visited the Mother (Teresa) House. She was more generous, and I wonder whether I'm some kind of sociopath not to have had more sympathy for the boy. Really I felt none at all. But I can imagine (someone else) feeling unable to leave Kolkata and its poor. Outside the Mother House is a sign telling you not to encourage people who ask for money there (one immediately did and I said No--my guide, who didn't believe in giving to the boy, gave her something).   
2. the most beautiful non-human sight I have ever seen is the Ganga (Hooghly) in the early morning at Belur Math. The sky is milky with smog, and the river, which is very wide, reflects this and the low sun, making it white, though dotted with black-looking clumps of floating vegetation that you know are really green. It's like a Rothko in landscape format, dusty green at the bottom, then white, with a band of dark grey where the opposite bank is, then white again, turning blue as you go up. A few people are washing in the river, and occasional ships move by. Also an armed man in uniform will angrily shout "hello" at anyone taking pictures. 
3. the most metal or Lovecraftian place I've ever been is Kalighat Kali Temple, rather different from the modern, peaceful, sensible Belur Math (which only sounds Lovecraftian, and maybe looks it a little from the outside). At Kalighat they sacrifice goats, there are lots of beggars, and movement at times is through narrow spaces crowded with devotees. There is loud drumming from an invisible source and bells struck loudly, repeatedly. Of course there is incense and smoke. The climax is being pushed, pulled, or moved by force of shouting right in front of the image of Kali, which is famous but barely visible because of the distractions of movement, noise, and people demanding ever larger donations. If you give enough you get a blessing, an orange daub on your forehead and a flower to take with you. Mostly what you leave with is the question, "What was that?" 
4. a cross between Belur Math and Kalighat is Dakshineswar, where you can walk down steps to paddle or wash in the Ganga and then worship Kali or Shiva. Washing your right hand in this water cleans away your sins supposedly. If you pay the right person you are blessed with a colorful wristband and then have a clotted white liquid poured in your hand, which you have to drink. It turns out to be a mixture of butter, milk, and water from the sacred but famously unhygienic Ganga. 
5. at Dakshineswar lived Ramakrishna, who inspired the building of Belur Math. My first night in Kolkata is to be spent, I find out when I get there, at the Ramakrishna Mission. It's an impressive building enclosing a lovely garden, but the wifi shuts off at ten (just before I arrive) and my room is the closest thing to a cell I've ever slept in. It's not safe to drink the water, and bottled water is not provided. Nor could I get hot water from the shower. The noise of traffic and fear of cockroaches kept me awake, but my fears were unfounded. Another man in another cell had to have a scorpion removed from his though. 
6. the traffic. Rural Bengal is very much like Cambodia but there are more people here and the centre of the city is packed with traffic almost all day. People drive fast, but only in short bursts before they get stuck again in the jam. While driving, if anyone else is around, which they always are, you honk to warn them you are coming. It's noisy but effective. There surely must be crashes, but not as many as you would expect. Old, yellow Ambassador taxis fight it out with tuk-tuks, motorcycles, cars, pedestrians, and rickshaws, both bicycle-powered and (illegal) hand-pulled. 
7. the dogs. As in Cambodia these are all the same kind, but it's a bigger breed than I think you get there. There are stray cows, too, but far more dogs.
8. the Hijras. In the Indian episode of Extreme Pilgrim Peter Owen-Jones encounters a group of singing eunuchs who are paid to go away. Stuck in Kolkata traffic, a familiar-looking kind of person goes from car to car asking for money in return for the inevitable blessing (not to go away). My guide asks what we call such people in English--they are boys when they are children but have women's bodies when they become adults. It sounds as though he means they change sex naturally, but perhaps he meant that they are eunuchs or transgender. I don't think we have a word, or the same respect, for them.. 
9. Kumartuli. This was completely unexpected. I was on a guided tour but there had been no mention of this place on the itinerary. It's the neighborhood where idols are made for worship (then thrown in the river) from straw and mud, as well as others from polystyrene. The streets are filled with workshops and half-made gods. Surreal.          
10. the Indian Museum. Like the British Museum, this is a general collection, not one devoted to Indian artifacts only. In fact it covers natural history as well as art, and I think other things like coins and rocks that I didn't look at. I wouldn't have bothered with the natural history either, but you have to go through the fish exhibit to get to the decorative arts (which are definitely worth seeing). The natural history collection is extremely old school. A good photographer could do great things there. It's full of stuffed animals and the occasional animal head (a giraffe's, for instance, mounted like a trophy) and a few curiosities (two-headed goat embryos and a fully-formed human fetus in a jar, e.g.). The stuff of nightmares. The Hindu and Buddhist sculptures, though, are superb. 

The best and worst of 2014

This blog has been quiet for a couple of weeks and is likely to stay that way for a couple of weeks more (lots of work, a little flu, lots of traveling), but in the meantime here's something. Looking at other people's lists of the top ten films and albums of the year, not to mention books, I realize that I haven't seen or heard (or read) as many as ten new movies/albums/books this year. So I won't even attempt a top ten, or top five, of anything. What I will do is make some negative comments and then end on a positive note.

The Guardian named Under the Skin the best movie of the year. It's not. People who like it talk about how haunting and visually stunning it is. It is memorable and visually striking. On the other hand, as the Rotten Tomatoes summary hints at ("Its message may prove elusive for some"), the whole thing seems pointless, despite very much appearing to want to have a serious point. The word for this kind of thing, I think, is pretentious. Another sci-fi disappointment was Snowpiercer. This is the kind of movie I really enjoy, just not a very good example of the kind. Maybe my expectations were too high, but any top ten list that includes it goes down in my estimation.

Now for the good news. I've mentioned some albums I've bought this year and I'm sure nobody cares, so I won't review them. But from other top ten lists I've recently discovered (a bit late) The New Pornographers (not really my cup of tea but sometimes very catchy indeed in a good way) and Allo Darlin' (presumably named after this). If I have an album of the year it's their We Come from the Same Place. Pitchfork calls them "bookish," which I suppose is my kind of thing.  

And I haven't seen enough new films to be sure, but my guess is that Locke was the best movie of last year. It's (even) better than Boyhood: a movie for grownups, and visually interesting too.

Nordic Wittgenstein Review

The new issue of the Nordic Wittgenstein Review is out now. There's lots of good stuff in it, as ever.

Religion without God

Howard Wettstein's review of a new book by Ronald Dworkin is worth reading. Here's a taste:

In "Chapter 2: The Universe,"^[3] Dworkin turns from the religious values that "fill the lives of ordinary people" to "the religious value of celestial beauty that intoxicated Einstein" (p. 47). He makes the point that evolution and the

grand universe it has created is itself a source of beauty. This thought is not available to a naturalist. Only those parts of the universe that produce pleasure in our sight can be, for him, beautiful. He finds the universe as a whole an incalculably vast accident of gas and energy. Religion finds it, on the contrary, a deep complex order shining with beauty . . . . Theists find it obvious why the universe is sublime: it was created to be sublime. (p. 48)

Dworkin's naturalist denies -- why need she deny this? -- the existence of "a complex order shining with beauty," and his theist seems strangely logically inept.

Dworkin seems to have missed the beauty of the idea of the universe as "an incalculably vast accident of gas and energy." The "incalculably vast" part is at least impressive, and the thought that everything we see, care about, and understand is part of this huge accident is mind-boggling. In the case of things we like the accident is happy as well as vast. If anything inclines me to religion it's that, not the Apollonian thought of "order shining with beauty." There is a kind of order in nature, of course. Enough for science to be possible. But there's enough chaos to keep things interesting too.    

And another site to check out

A new philosophy of religion blog, featuring Martin Shuster and others, here.

Humane Philosophy

This looks like a good site. It includes a video lecture by Anthony Kenny, the text of a lecture by Stephen Mulhall, and another video lecture by Peter Hacker. And a lot more besides.