Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (Episode III)

Click on the image for a preview of the new Star Wars movie due for release May 25, 2005.

On Patriotism & Global Citizenship

In an editorial in today's Salt Lake Tribune ("New World Needs a New Definition of Patriotism"), Deen Chatterjee (Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah) argues that "at the very least, we must strive to strike the right balance between our duties toward compatriots and our obligation to the world." My argument is not to criticize Chatterjee but to capitalize upon it. The following is an attempt to bridge the gap Chatterjee has discovered in the contemporary American landscape.

We Americans are all patriots. Being patriotic involves pride in one's own traditions, history, and compassion and tolerance of others. Pride in our tradition and our history does not license us to force others to value our patriotism. This is what (I think) Chatterjee means by super-patriotic - it's a form of religious zealotry. We must surrender our paternalistic leanings - our belief that we can show others what is good for them - for respecting the global community.

I would argue that respecting the global community begins with patriotism. If we want to share with others what we have, namely pride in tradition, etc., then we should do so. But we must resist the temptation of manipulating the global community into what we want. Manipulating others is not a part of our form of patriotism, nor has it ever been. In fact, we have always thought that manipulation is in contradiction to patriotism, e.g., voter fraud issues or cumbersome taxation laws.

So, striking a balance between patriotism and the global community is a matter of sharing with the world our sense of patriotism without having them feel as if we're stuffing it down their throats.

Was Wittgenstein Conservative?

Recent interpretations of Wittgenstein have argued that he was politically and socially conservative. Cora Diamond has dismissed this view as "nutty." Before I agree with Cora Diamond's assessment, I want to explore two reasons for believing Wittgenstein was a thorough-going conservative.

First, we might think of Wittgenstein as a conservative thinker because of the social context in which he wrote. Since he rarely engaged in social or political affairs explicitly, this seems to show that he was somewhat conservative - if we define being conservative in terms of timidity.

Second, Wittgenstein's discussion of rule-following implies some form of conservatism. The middle of the Investigations devotes some time and space to the idea that following a rule is a custom embedded in the agreements of behavior in society. Conformity is a part of conservativism. So, Wittgenstein's description of rule-following, because of it's conformist, implies that he was conservative.

To my mind, the second reason is a stronger philosophical claim than the first. We are left to wonder whether rule-following as a matter of (implicit?) agreement would not violate something Wittgenstein tried to get rid of in talking about family resemblance concepts.

Decision Theory and Buridan's Ass

Anyone who knows me understands that I have an unquenchable intellectual thirst for the paradoxes of the Medieval philosopher, John Buridan. Recently, I've decided to take up Buridan's Ass paradox and see whether causal decision theory can help out.

Brief overview: an ass stands equidistant between two bales of hay. The ass prefers one bale of hay to none, but it prefers neither one to the other - in other words, it has no preference for one over the other, but it prefers having one to having none. The result, according to Buridan, is that the ass starves because it cannot decide which bale of hay to consume.

In a recent paper devoted to this subject ("Multimodal Practical Reasoning"), I've concluded that if a rational agent were in a predicament similar to that of the ass, then s/he should just "pick" one or the other. Picking one or the other, though, is arational. There's really no reason for the agent to pick one over the other since his/her preference for either bale of hay is equal.

Suppose that, instead of picking one over the other, the agent realizes that performing arational actions is something s/he wants to avoid. S/he recognizes that s/he should be rational with regards to making decisions. So, s/he decides to flip a coin to determine which bale of hay to eat, say, heads is left and tails is right. If s/he flips a coin to determine which bale of hay to eat, then the agent's desires (something very important in decision-making) is seemingly abandoned. No longer do the agent's desires play a role in deciding what to eat. Since desires fail to play a role in the decision-making process, flipping a coin to determine which bale of hay to eat seems irrational, rather than rational.

It's all right...

After a long hiatus, I have returned to the blogging world. This semester's travels - to Montreal for the Polish Philosophy conference and to Santa Cruz for the Western Humanities Alliance conference - have impeded my blogging ability.

First, there is one new link on the side panel to my alma mater's (Ole Miss) new blog site: Third-Floor, Philosophy and Religion. Bloggers should check out discussion and news from Ole Miss!

Second, some threads currently in the works include some thoughts on: Wittgenstein and nonsense (particularly some responses to New Wittgensteinians), psychologism, adultery, epistemic determinism, pedagogy and charity, and cognitive science.