Q: Is vagueness anathema to science?

KvD: Put a magnifying glass to many scientific concepts and you find vagueness.

New Scientist

Note to self: subjectivity does not necessarily mean knowledge is impossible…

AC1

“Basically the reason that people react in a close-minded way to information is that the implications of it threaten their values,” says Dan Kahan, a law professor at Yale University and a member of The Cultural Cognition Project.

Kahan says people test new information against their preexisting view of how the world should work.

“If the implication, the outcome, can affirm your values, you think about it in a much more open-minded way,” he says.

And if the information doesn’t, you tend to reject it. NPR

AC1

I am lazy and just reposing comic and satire sites these days, but I am in the middle of The Origin of Species. I have been a fan of xkcd for some time and it often has language and meta-reality based humour.

AC1

MIAMI—As the Super Bowl captures the country’s attention, excitement over the NFL’s championship game is muted somewhat by the persistent question of whether winning, or losing for that matter, holds any absolute value—a question that has many football fans pondering the meaning of the game itself. The Onion

He is quick, thinking in clear images;
I am slow, thinking in broken images.

He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images,

Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.

Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact,
Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.

When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;
When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.

He continues quick and dull in his clear images;
I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.

He in a new confusion of his understanding;
I in a new understanding of my confusion.

Robert Graves

• Certain species occur together and never occur separately
• Certain species are unique to a particular habitat and do not occur in a distant similar habitat
• Many species are comprised of sub-species
• Habitats, geology, ground level and climate change in time, sometimes suddenly and sometimes slowly
• Two nearby places can be completely different habitats
• Some habitats often have new arrivals of species, others are isolated
• The vast majority of fossils correspond to extinct species
• Some species are very rare and are hardly ever seen by humans. (Why would God bother creating that?)
• Rushing to hasty conclusions is a common mistake

Anyway, a good book there. I also have “Origin” but I will take a rest from biology for a few weeks.

AC1

The way Britain is governed has gone wrong and is in urgent need of reform, a group of former Whitehall chiefs has warned in a highly critical report.

The former civil servants paint a picture of badly trained ministers rushing through “ill thought-out” legislation to satisfy media demands. BBC

Which reminds us:

I heartily accept the motto,—“That government is best which governs least;” and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which I also believe,—“That government is best which governs not at all;” and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

Thoreau

Three Colours Blue A woman’s family are killed in a car crash. Being of independent means, she decides to exist without any personal attachments. They say “no man is an island” but she attempts to simply existing without desire or pain. A fine plan, at first, but she is faced by repeated, unintentional entanglements with people and she begins to lose her apathy. She is also haunted by a musical theme that her late husband (possibly) was composing for the unification of Europe and probably represents fraternity (of the French motto Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité). The film is themed on “liberty”, in opposition to fraternity and the tension between these conflicting goals is played out through the film. Philosophically, this story is attempting to avoid existential choices by escape into nihilism. (This film might be the polar opposite to Taxi Driver.)

Julie Vignon: Now I have only one thing left to do: nothing. I don’t want any belongings, any memories. No friends, no love. Those are all traps.

High Noon A recently resigned sheriff (Kane) gets married to a pacifist, only to discover that his nemesis Miller (and his goons) are arriving shortly by train. The town, although grateful for him bringing peace and order, tells him this is not his fight and giving him every opportunity and excuse to leave. Although his usual allies are originally keen to help, they equivocate and eventually beg to not be forced to assist the sheriff. Kane is forced to make a choice: to step away from the town he helped create, or to suicidally fight Miller’s gang alone. The choice is made existential as it is without public support, potentially risky/fatal and motivated by personal values. I hear the film is also an allegory of McCarthyism and the failure of Hollywood to stand in solidarity.

Martin: You risk your skin catching killers and the juries turn them loose so they can come back and shoot at you again. If you’re honest you’re poor your whole life and in the end you wind up dying all alone on some dirty street. For what? For nothing. For a tin star.

See also: 13th Floor, eXistenZ

To be continued…

Which suggests that for any given doctrine one wants to believe, there is never a shortage of arguments by which one can support it.

An example given is theology and the bible. For any doctrine a biblical theologian wants to believe there is never any shortage of biblical evidence to support it.

The centre of Kolakowski’s conceptual universe was the individual – a rational and freely acting subject, aware that there is a spiritual side of life, yet eschewing absolute certainty of either an empirical or transcendental sort: “I do not believe that human culture can ever reach a perfect synthesis of its diversified and incompatible components”, he said. “Its very richness is supported by this very incompatibility of its ingredients. And it is the conflict of values, rather than their harmony, that keeps our culture alive.” (extract from the Daily Telegraph Obituary of Kolakowski in 2009)

What role then the philosopher?
It was not the philosopher’s role to deliver the truth, but to “build the spirit of truth” by questioning what appears to be obvious, always suspecting that there might be “another side” to any question. The true philosopher should approach any issue with scepticism and humility: “A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading”, he said.

Here follow some interesting quotes from Fr Jerzy.

“Love cannot exist without justice, love outgrows justice but at the same time it finds reaffirmation in justice…
And justice means acknowledgement of the rights due to each individual; fair pay for honest work, with no fear of dismissal or demotion for holding personal views concerning the good of the nation. Justice is the equality of all citizens before the law. Every court must be free and impartial…
Justice means pluralism for trade unions, and for creative groups which were promised under martial law. Justice would allow young people to form their personality according to models chosen by themselves and not those officially imposed upon them…
These are the fundamental features of a lawful government:
1. The government must play the part of a servant towards the nation…
2. The government must always follow the truth and justice…
3. The government should create happiness for all, asking from each individual only what he or she can give, without any kind of coercion…
Any government which has no means of implementing its policies other than the use of force is not a government but a blasphemous usurper, and the people are as defenceless as an unarmed man confronted by a highway robber. Even if this man were as innocent and as holy as Christ Himself, nothing could save him, neither his religion nor the law nor any moral norms. The cry of Abel only arouses the fury of his brother Cain. You cannot expect anything good from people who do not respect your dignity or freedom.”

Fr Jerzy was kidnapped and murdered in a bungled operation by agents of the State Security Police in 1984 and only after massive nationwide protests were the officers responsible (including a Captain Piotrowski) tried and imprisoned for murder. However as a wry Polish national joke observed at the time “Question: Why did Piotrowski get twenty-five years imprisonment? Answer: One year for killing Father Jerzy and twenty-four for messing it up.” the popular belief since reinforced by documentary evidence is that the order came from high up in the government in order to silence this “turbulent priest”.

Quite aside from the religious imlpications of his words I am often reminded of them when considering the role that the state plays in the governance of our own country today.