Category: CURRENT READING

In the last post I summarized an essay/lecture by Jacques Barzun from 1969 on the question of whether life is worth living. Today I will add some of my thoughts on his thesis and its application to our time.

I agree that we have difficulty separating feelings which are visceral from thoughts which presumably rely on reason. With so little in philosophy being certain, feelings and opinion become inescapable default criteria in the reasoning process. Barzun’s belief that life for each of us is experienced individually  rephrases a basic tenet of existentialism which when paired with Martin Heidegger’s observation that the self (or dasein) experiences itself as being-in-the-world, reinforces Barzun’s concern of society’s impact on the quality of our lives. But if we can only find meaning and happiness as individuals, society should be structured for every individual to succeed.

What is it about life that makes us wonder if it is worth living? Perhaps the answer is found in Buddha’s first noble truth; “Life is suffering.” In return for that suffering, man expects certain benefits – specifically the hope of happiness and meaning. Personal limitations, natural ills, and death can be accepted as unavoidable, but we seem unable to forgive the evils of the very society we created. For instance manners may appear superficial, restrictive, and inconvenient, but in fact Barzun, like Confucius, knows better – manners and respect for others is essential to their contentment. Immanuel Kant expands this into his  categorical imperative: we must never treat another as a means, only as an end.

Meaningful work is tied closely to the need for individual purpose in the achievement of happiness. Here I wonder if Barzun is being completely objective; the agrarian life of our ancestors seems no more meaningful than modern livelihoods. Nonetheless it is undeniable that finding societal purpose through one’s vocation is a critical piece of a flourishing life.

With regards to democracy and capitalism, they appear to allow the highest quality of life possible so far, but the negative consequences of materialism and futile competition are a trap that stymies fulfillment. In a world where the competition for physical survival is muted, we must be reminded frequently that material competition is a dead end. Friedrich Nietzsche warns us that only through the careful examination of societal values and a powerful will to find our authentic role can we emerge from mediocrity.

It seems likely that within the near future (if not already), mankind will find the limits of secularism and humanism. Paul Tillich warns us repeatedly that the true ultimate concern must be identified for any hope of meaning in our lives. Humanism while noble seems to fail the test of ultimacy.

One place where I think Barzun can be challenged is on the end of great human causes. Hegel’s error on believing his generation was at the end of history should not be duplicated in our time. Homo sapiens is far too young to have mastered its mission as a species. There remains too much suffering in our world and danger to our planet, not to mention a universe only recently opened to our potential participation. Rather I suspect our immaturity as a species has left us unable to see through the miasma we have created by the failure to get our seven billion moving parts to work together.

I doubt Barzun would advise us to follow Arthur Schopenauer’s pessimistic path and  repudiate society. Instead he may be urging us to recognize the need to treat each other as valuable and deserving of respect, to identify a meaningful calling within the larger world, to redirect democracy and capitalism to the benefit of every living person, and to find our way to an ultimate cause. Humanity has much to offer the universe – it is up to us to find the means to accelerate that purpose and make life worth living.

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“That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions, and were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.”– George Santayana

The Spring 2019 issue of American Scholar, the quarterly magazine of Phi Beta Kappa, includes a fifty year old old essay by a 20^th century historian, Jacques Barzun, with an introduction by his grandsons. It is the transcription of a lecture he gave at the University of Cincinnati, College of Medicine entitled “Man and Life” but which he called “Present Day Thoughts on the Quality of Life (1969).”

Barzun was a chronicler of the West’s decline and had been deeply affected by the horrors of the first World War that left him with a “permanent muting of the spirit.”  He matured into a humanist who insisted upon the inseparability of feelings from thought. He was deeply concerned with the individual’s interior life or ‘sense of self’ which he considered the primary determinant of one’s quality of life, and yet emphasized the role culture makes in the shape, form, and quality of our lives.

The dilemma of the 1960s according to Barzun (and perhaps our time as well) is that life seems to lack the right quality due to societal structure. Occupation becomes a rationalization rather than a reason for our desire to live. His critique of modern society describes six main problems:

1.   Social contacts are increasingly impersonal leading to alienation. Each of us begins to feel like a mere unit, manipulated by societal institutions, in a world without the manners that in earlier times served as a means of protection of the self.

2.  Work that leads to visible accomplishment has disappeared, and this is mirrored by the appearance of the failure of institutions and the state to ever solve problems. 

3.  Democratic competition and envy manifests as the repeated need to justify one’s existence, resulting in excessive self-consciousness that distorts reality as we become “spectators in our own life.”

4.  Secularism and equality limit life goals which leads to discounting of heroism and greatness, and dismissal of spiritual or religious life. 

5.  The historical success of the great human movements for democracy and equality left us without major societal causes within which individuals can find meaning. 

6.  Because most modern change is superficial rather than fundamental, there is only an illusion of change. He offers as evidence the thoughts of John Rushkin who predicted our misery of self-contempt and Thomas Carlyle who foretold the paralysis of social action.

Barzun worries that modern thinkers believe the solution to these problems can be engineered – genetically, psychologically, or politico-economically, but he disagrees pointing out that problems of human affairs rarely have such solutions. Many individuals instead default to neoprimitivism or drug-induced withdrawal.

He concludes that as a historian, his task is not to predict the future, but whatever it may be “What is certain is that the desire not for life alone, nor for brutish life, but for a special quality in life will not cease, even for the last shivering inhabitant of a devastated planet. That desire is planted deep, and it seeks its fulfillment, which is what makes humanity other than animal.”

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Davies talks through the philosophical issues starting with the traditional concern of societal disintegration after publicity of extraterrestrial life or intelligence, which seems unlikely. He postulates that statistically an alien civilization would be more advanced than ours given our reaching out beyond the solar system is only a recent capability. Conventional religious beliefs may be undermined or otherwise affected or humans might embrace the higher religion of a more advanced civilization or even see them as God-like. Some additional philosophical issues he raises include:

1. Is the modern scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence analogous to the historical search for the supernatural?
2. Did the alien life develop separately from ours, making life a predictable rather than miraculous or rare natural event or has life spread from a single origin (panspermia)?
3. Does the confirmation of alien life or intelligence confirm the theories of self-organization and emergence whereby life and consciousness may be basic phenomena of complex or chaotic systems in the universe?
4. What if the intelligence is artificial or machine made (AI as superior to natural intelligence)?
5. What are the implications of sharing their advanced knowledge?
6. Can advanced aliens be a conduit to the divine being?

Until the search for extraterrestrial life, especially intelligent life is successful, we are left with the lingering question first posed by Enrico Fermi – “Where is everybody?” If there are a multitude of advanced alien life forms, it seems reasonable to expect they would already have contacted or visited us, or even have preceded the arrival of humanity on Earth. Disallowing the dubious assertions of UFO theorists, the corollary is that supra-human intelligence does not fall within our current space-time corridor, or perhaps has chosen to remain hidden.

The late Charles Krauthammer wrote a poignant article, Let’s Put a Hopeful Face on the Cosmic Silence³, in December 2011. He saw our drive “to find our living, thinking counterpart in the universe …betrays a profound melancholy – a lonely species in a merciless universe anxiously awaits an answering voice amid utter silence. That silence is maddening. Not just because it compounds our feelings of cosmic isolation. But because it makes no sense.”

This existential observation is followed by his recalling Carl Sagan’s concern that the explanation of the silence may be that advanced civilizations destroy themselves just when they develop the technology to reach out beyond their own stellar system; the silence then is “not a flattering lesson about our uniqueness, but a tragic story about our destiny.”

He then considers whether intelligence is fatal not only ultimately, but nearly instantly on a cosmic time scale. His solution is discipline which is the work of politics, the ordering of society to permit human flourishing while restraining Hobbesian instincts. He concludes, “The debased and mundane practice of politics… will determine whether we will live long enough to be heard one day. Out there. By them, the few – the only- who got it right.”

If Davies and Krauthammer are correct, then we anxiously await conclusive evidence of extraterrestrial life and intelligence. Such evidence will suggest answers to questions about the origin of life, the regularity of intelligent life forms, theories of emergence and self-organization, and possibly the workings of the divine. But perhaps most importantly it will serve as a precedent – confirming that intelligent beings can overcome the propensity to destroy themselves, and so offer space for optimism on the future of mankind.

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¹Shreeve, Jamie, Who’s Out There? , National Geographic, March 2019, Volume 235 No. 3, ISSN0027-9358, pages 42-75.

²Davies, Paul, Are We Alone. Basic Books, 1995. ISBN 0-465-00419-9.

³Krauthammer, Charles, Let’s put a hopeful face on the cosmic silence, Courier-Journal, Louisville, Ky., December 30, 2011.

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We Are Not Alone – National Geographic, March 2019¹

“There are infinite worlds both like and unlike this world of ours…we must believe that in all worlds there are living creatures and plants and other things we see in this world.” – Epicurus.

The March 2019 issue of National Geographic includes this article which updates us on the scientific efforts at finding evidence of life on other worlds and particularly intelligent life (known as SETI or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). For over 50 years scientists have been using radiotelescopes to scan the heavens for evidence of radio signals from other advanced civilizations without success. However the existence of other planets was confirmed in 1995, when 51 Pegasi b was discovered. Using the now silent Keppler Space Telescope. Over 4000 exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) have since been identified with about 25% being earth-sized and in the habitable zone of their stars. Projecting the Keppler data, there should be at least 25 billion such planets in our galaxy alone.

Current efforts at finding alien life are now directed at identifying biosignatures -physicochemical features consistent with life such as atmospheric oxygen and methane – and technosignatures –similar analyses suggesting civilization such as presence of pollutants – on exoplanets. There is also interest in sending tiny computers powered by solar sails to the nearest star systems. (The reader is referred to the article itself for more detail.) The author, Jamie Shreeve, closes with the titillating phrase, “… the first intimation of life from a distant planet feels thrillingly close.”

For the most part the article avoids the philosophical implications of the eventual demonstration of life and intelligence beyond Earth, but in an amazing coincidence, last week I happened upon a book at New Haven Books in Melbourne, Florida, titled Are We Alone?², by Paul Davies, an Australian professor of natural philosophy, published in 1995. Davies explores the history of speculation on life beyond Earth, openly discussed by the ancient Greek atomists such as Epicurus (see quote above). In the seventeenth century, Richard Bentley reasoned God would not have made so many stars invisible to the naked eye for us, but rather for their nearby inhabitants, while Christiaan Huygens thought it befit the deity to endow other worlds with intelligent life. More recently people have been intrigued by the possibility that UFOs are evidence of aliens from other star systems

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Sternglass, a physicist, takes a different approach in this book. He develops Georges LeMaitre’s original theory of the ‘primeval atom’ as an extremely heavy and rapidly rotating electron-positron pair within which the mass of the universe is contained by virtue of its energy (think E=mc²). The origin of the this pair is hypothesized as coming from a ‘vortex ring’ or superstring that vibrates so violently that it pinches itself in half with the two ends rotating at 180 degrees relative to each other creating the first pair of charges.

Subsequently 270 divisions of this original pair over about 15 trillion years led to the Big Bang and the mass and structure of the universe with all parts still rotating and including some ‘seed pairs’ – clusters of more massive electron-proton pairs that divided later to become galaxies and stars.

One advantage of the theory is its explanation of the stability of the universe as the balance of the centrifugal force of the rotating universe (Einstein’s “cosmologic constant”) to the gravitational attraction of its parts. It also relies on simpler factors than the standard theory – just the mass and charge of the electron, the speed of light, and Planck’s constant. It may also explain Guth’s inflation, quasars, continued star formation, dark matter, and the relative small size of distant galaxies detected by the Hubble telescope.

However Sternglass’ theory has not been readily accepted by cosmologists who see it as inconsistent with the body of astronomical knowledge. It counters the prevailing opinion that the universe began as a singularity. It depends on the vortex occurring with an ether like one proposed by the ancient Greeks, but dismissed by modern science. There is little evidence the universe is actually rotating. And it does not predict the more recently identified Higgs particle as foreseen with the standard model.⁴

It is not the purpose of this post to attempt to resolve the issue of what preceded the Big Bang, rather to reconcile scientific thinking with the concept of a divine creator. Perhaps not surprisingly Flam does not use the word God in her article, but God as creator appears five times in Sternglass’ book. Once when speaking of Robert Millikan who tried to reconcile science and religion by saying matter is still being formed as evidence that “The Creator is still on the job.” A second when referring to rotation as having meaning only relative to a pre-existing ether that Isaac Newton regarded as ‘the body of God.’ The third appears when he is thinking about the specificity of Newton’s gravitational constant as unlikely to have come about by chance and the design of the universe as both elegant and understandable by humans – mentioning Albert Einstein’s famous quotes: “I cannot believe God plays with dice with the universe,” and “God is clever, but he is not malicious.”

The other two times he alludes to God are in the first and last chapters when he tries to come to terms with his own theory. His closing paragraph starts, “The architect of this design and the energy required to bring this about remain a source of mystery, awe, and wonder beyond the ken of science.” He gives the philosopher and the scientist a lot to contemplate.

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¹ Sternglass, Ernest J., Before the Big Bang. Four Walls Eight Windows, New York, 1997. ISBN 1-56858-087-8.

²Hoyle, Fred, The Nature of the Universe.  Harper & Brothers, New York, 1950, p. 124. Fred Hoyle argued in the 1940s for a cosmology based on the Steady State theory in a series of BBC radio broadcasts in which he gave the moniker “Big Bang” to the competing theory held by Georges Lemaitre.

³Flam, Faye, Sky and Telescope. F+W Media. Volume 137, No. 2, pages 16-21.

⁴ www.news.pitt.edu/news/pitt-scientists-unified-theory-origin

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February 22, 2018

Before The Big Bang by Ernest J. Sternglass¹

“Continuous creation…can be represented by precise mathematical equations whose consequences can be worked out and compared with observation. On philosophical grounds I cannot see any good reason for preferring the big bang idea. Indeed it seems to me in the philosophical sense to be a distinctly unsatisfactory notion, since it puts the basic assumption out of sight where can never be challenged by a direct appeal to observation.”² – Fred Hoyle.

While meeting up with my daughter in Fairfield, IL (population 5029), I went to the local library and purchased this book almost in passing. I had not opened it until I noticed the February 2019 issue of Sky and Telescope with the cover line, “What came before the Big Bang?” I thought this would be a fantastic opportunity to think through scientific thoughts on the origin of the universe.

In the Sky and Telescope article by Faye Flam, she notes that traditionally it was thought impossible to determine the origin of the Big Bang. But now cosmologists posit that it occurred in existing space, another universe, or a multiverse. Specific proposals on the setting of the Big Bang include:

1)  a sea of rapidly expanding space,

2) a bland expanse of empty space,

3) a comeback of a contracting universe (Big Bounce), or

4) a collision of two existing universes in a higher-dimensional space.

Many cosmologists accept Alan Guth’s theory of inflation whereby shortly after the Big Bang, the universe expanded extremely fast and extremely briefly due to a peculiar and perhaps inexplicable repulsive force. But increasingly cosmologists consider the possibility that inflation preceded the Big Bang. Some cosmologists, for example Andrei Linde, see patches of inflating space emerging from an existing chaotic universe creating a ‘pocket universe.’

Meanwhile two other theories are developing. First the bouncing universe of Paul Steinhardt offers a solution without the inexplicable inflation or need for a multiverse. Another is Sean Carroll’s theory that empty space at the highest level of entropy (disorder) contains formless ‘vacuum energy’ which can generate an occasional baby universe based on the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics.

Of course untestable speculations of this type border on metaphysics rather than science though Flam concludes by discussing some recent attempts to sort through these possibilities using observable data.

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The Philosopher’s Magazine¹

“Philosophy is not a theory, but an activity….”– Ludwig Wittgenstein.

While perusing the incredibly useful book, The Philosopher’s Toolkit², by Julian Baggini and Peter Fosl, I noticed that Mr. Baggini had founded a quarterly philosophical magazine and decided on a whim to subscribe for one year. What a delightful decision! I received my first issue in December and thought it might be interesting to blog about its contents.

I’ll begin by noting the quality of the publication is excellent with a thick glossy cover and heavy stock paper. This issue has 120 pages of content with about 10% being aesthetically produced photos and illustrations. The advisory board consists of four women and eleven men; five of the twenty-four essays are written by editors or advisory board members.

There is a medley of subject matter starting with an editorial essay memorializing a British philosopher by the name of Mary Midgley who at age 99 wrote a book titled What is Philosophy For?, wherein she tries to “make sense of this deeply puzzling world”. Then come additional articles such as ones on fake news, sustaining the planet, and the esoteric What is dirt? There is also a challenging article on time as conceived by Henri Bergson and reflected in Doctor Strange.

This issue’s forum is on neuroscience, looking at some philosophically relevant features of that field including neuroexistentialism, transcendence, free will, utilitarianism, and the relationship of neuroscience to philosophy of consciousness. I enjoyed the book review on Iddo Landau’s Finding Meaning in an Imperfect World, written by Kirsten Egerstrom, a philosophy professor whose research focuses on the topic of meaningfulness in life, an area of particular interest to me. The final piece is an interview of Matt Teichman, whose podcast is known as Elucidations, but who also refers readers to The History of Philosophy podcast which is one of his favorites.

However my favorite essay is Philosophy as a Way of Life, by John Sellars, professor of ancient philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London. In the article his stated goal is to move philosophy away from modern concerns of what we can know and how we know it to philosophy as a guide to living. He discusses Pierre Hadot’s book (of the same name as the essay) which starts with Socrates’ emphasis on “care of the soul” and traces that approach to three later schools of thought. The first is developed by Epicurus whose efforts to explain natural phenomena scientifically is directed at alleviating unwarranted fears to bring about ataraxia, or untroubledness. The second is the stoicism of Zeno which identifies philosophy as the “art of living,” with a focus on control of the emotions, and seeing nature as a unified whole. The third is Pyrrhonism which renounces all beliefs, and suggests cogent counter-arguments lead us to ‘equipollence’ (the midpoint between two sides of a debate), and an involuntary confusion, resulting in an unexpected tranquility. Cicero, Seneca, and Epictetus progressively refine these Hellenistic philosophies into approaches to real life problems and emphasis on deeds over words. Later philosophers such as Montaigne and Nietzsche also adopt the principle of philosophy as a guide to living rather than a simple mental exercise.

Overall the material in this periodical covers an amazing spectrum of philosophy in a succinct yet robust fashion. I found it very helpful in learning about current approaches to philosophical questions and for comparing my own thoughts with those of some academic experts. My only caution is that the content is by and large most appropriate for more advanced readers.

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¹Garvey, James (editor), The Philosopher’s Magazine. Issue 83, 4^th Quarter 2018.

² Baggini, Julian and Fosl, Peter S., The Philosopher’s Toolkit. Blackwell Publishing. 2003. ISBN  978-0-631-22874-5.

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 The Truth Matters¹ – Bruce Bartlett  

“Learn what is true in order to do what is ‘right’ is the summing up of the whole duty of man.”– T.H. Huxley

On a recent stop in Sylva, N.C., I purchased a small book at their library’s book store written, not by a philosopher, but by Bruce Bartlett, a magazine columnist, former presidential advisor, and commentator. It is a poignant fit with blogs I have done on cultural reality and epistemology. It also dovetails nicely with the philosophical tool of logic in determining truth in current events.

The author notes early in the book that the fairness doctrine which required both sides to be present for radio and television based political endorsements or opinions was abolished in 1987 – an event of which I and probably many others have no memory. This ushered in the ‘anything goes’ news that permeates our airways and the internet today.

He offers excellent practical tips to increase the likelihood of finding journalistic truth including:

1. Primary sources are more reliable than secondary sources.
2. Evidence and statements closer to the time of an event are more reliable than later ones.
3. The quality of evidence is best in documentaries.
4. Reputable publications meet journalistic standards that ensure truthfulness.
5. Academic (peer reviewed) sources and university professors are more trustworthy than think tanks.
6. Libraries offer excellent resources to access truthful information.
7. Numbers must always be placed in context.
8. Readers should be aware the media tend to erroneously present issues as having only two sides.
9. Polls involve various perils and are best used for confirming trends.
10. Readers should counter ‘fake news’ with fact checking.
11. Critical thinking is the best defense against deception.
12. Readers should be skeptical when a story confirms something they want to believe.

To help us access truthful information, he also provides excellent websites such as www.politifact.com and https://scholar.google.com . I urge you to read and take notes on Bartlett’s book or purchase a copy for reference as you deal with real world issues.

As we discussed in an earlier blog, cultural reality is vital to our daily life, but is perhaps the least easily verifiable tier of reality. However ethical behavior in society depends on a valid understanding of the world we inhabit. By marrying journalistic precautions like those listed above to philosophical techniques in logic and epistemology such as those outlined in The Philosopher’s Toolkit² and other texts, we should be able to maintain as accurate an understanding of the world as possible. This is a key duty for anyone committed to truth, virtue, and a meaningful life.

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¹ Bartlett, Bruce, The Truth Matters.  Ten Speed Press. 2017. ISBN 978-0-399-58116-8.

² Baggini, Julian and Fosl, Peter S., The Philosopher’s Toolkit. Blackwell Publishing. 2003. ISBN  978-0-631-22874-5.

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Rise of 20^th Century Philosophy –Pragmatism – Professor Lawrence Cahoone¹

“Truth does not change because it is, or is not believed by a majority of the people.” – Guido Bruno (burned at the stake for heretical philosophical beliefs in 1600).

Today I was listening to Professor Cahoone’s lecture on Pragmatism. After an introduction to the three main lines of philosophy of the early 20^th century, he discusses America’s greatest contribution to philosophy – pragmatism. However, during the lecture almost as in passing he delineates the three canonical theories of truth. These are:

1. Correspondence – truth is what corresponds to reality or fact (the common idea of truth).
2. Coherence – truth is that which coheres with other truths or beliefs.
3. Pragmatism – truth is that which can be used to guide behavior; that is ‘what works.’

In the lecture Cahoone also discusses Charles Pierce’s convergence theory where truth is the point to which inquiring persons studying a thing converge. For this blog, we will consider that a variation of the coherence method.

Now I should start with a reminder that there is no certainty in this world. However it seems to me that thoughtful persons should attempt to deploy all three of the theories of truth if possible (rather than choose one) to achieve the greatest confidence possible of the truth in any given circumstance.

For a relevant example, let us consider the current issue of global warming – particularly with respect to the impact of human activities – an issue which seemingly defies certainty. From the vantage point of correspondence theory, if global warming is true, scientific measures should confirm this on an ongoing basis, that is, global temperatures should continue to rise and polar ice should continue to decline. If the work and opinions of most scientists in multiple fields – meteorologists, geologist, oceanographers, climate experts, biologists, astronomers – concur on the validity of the theory, we add more confidence of this truth by virtue of the convergence (coherence) standard. Therefore those two theories of truth appear to apply here.

The associated counter arguments are that the history of global temperature rise is brief on the order of geological time, so remains potentially suspect, which questions correspondence. Also the convergence of opinions is not infallible in science as revealed in Thomas Kuhn’s book,  The Structure of Scientific  Revolutions ², where Kuhn demonstrates scientific communities dependence on ‘paradigms’ that eventually are superseded.

It seems to me the counter arguments are weaker but not philosophically illegitimate. However, just as in William James’ essay The Will to Believe ³, where the decision to believe or not to believe in God cannot be delayed indefinitely as one must live assuming one or the other, the situation of global warming may not be able to wait for greater scientific certainty. Pragmatism offers a solution: take reasonable actions our best science shows will slow down and/or reverse temperature rise to validate or disprove the correspondence and convergence views on the question. If we are committed to truth, our obligation is to make this attempt thereby attaining the highest certainty possible, while potentially eliminating or minimizing harm (evil) to the planet.⁴ As in all things ethical, personal sacrifice is not a valid excuse to commit a wrong.

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¹ Cahoone, Lawrence, The Modern Intellectual Tradition: From Descartes to Derrida.  The Great Courses. Lecture 17.

² Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The University of Chicago Press. 1970. ISBN 0-226-45804-0. Pages 174-210.

³ James, William, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. Dover Publications, Inc. 1956. Pages 1-31.

⁴ This approach recently was successful with respect to the theory of ozone depletion being caused by human activities. USA today reported November 6, 2018 that the United Nations announced slow healing of the ozone layer following “decades of global cooperation to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals.”

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