Life as an Extreme Sport

Author: Kelly

Ayer, On Theism

2006 (NY), 2007, Academics, APHI 621 - Metaethics

So this Ayer piece is incredibly engaging – to the point that you be forgiven for thinking this was one of my CHID teaching documents, I have scribbled it so purple. (Fellow chiddies who took classes with me, or for that matter received graded papers from me, know precisely what I am talking about. “What do you mean, did I dip this in purple koolaid?…”)

So as Ayer goes through this chapter on the critique of ethics and theology, he says the following:

For it is characteristic of an agnostic to hold that the existence of a god is a possibility in which there is no good reason either to believe or disbelieve;… As for the agnostic, although he refrains from saying either that there is or that there is not a god, he does not deny that the question whether a transcendent god exists is a genuine question. He does not deny that the two sentences “There is a transcendent god” and “There is no transcendent god” express propositions one of which is actually true and the other false. All he says is that we have no means of telling which of them is true, and therefore ought not to commit ourselves to either. ((A.J. Ayer, “Criqitue of Ethics and Theology” in Language, Truth and Logic, New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1952. pp 114-116))

For someone who reads as though he studied at Russell’s knees, and is quite obviously influenced by him in many areas, this strikes me as a shocking misunderstanding of what agnosticism is.

Russell was an agnostic – at least a modern agnostic who felt that the non-anthropomorphic God is one that cannot obviously be disproven. He said later on in specific clarification to the idea that he was an atheist that he doesn’t think that there is a conclusive argument bu which one can prove that there is no God. Now granted, he was speaking to philosophers, but in theory that is what we – or at least Ayer – are. Russell was also willing to postulate a superhuman intelligence, noting that it might appear to us to be more than it is simply because it is outside the bounds of what we can know (which neatly traces to the root words of agnosticism). Ayer, on the other hand, wants to stick to a binary ((and we all know how that concept makes me shudder)) concept of true/false, known/unknown.

Going back to Huxley, credited with coining the term agnosticism, we see that it lterally means without knowledge, that it is futile to attempt to know the reality corresponding not only to our religious beliefs, but our scientific and philosophic ideas.

The agnostic is not saying that we have no means of telling which sentence concerning faith is true and which is false, and therefore ought not to commit ourselves to either, as Ayer characterizes. The agnostic is saying that I don’t know, I can’t know, and futhermore, don’t care! Ayer characterizes the agnostic as waffling, when in reality the agnostic has shrugged and walked away from the entire debate as being one not worth pursuing, except over rounds of Guinness.

2007, Academics, APHI 621 - Metaethics, University at Albany

If anyone doubts the accuracy of this account of moral disputes, let him try to construct even an imaginary argument on a question of value which does not reduce itself to an argument about a question of logic or about an empirical matter of fact.
-A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic

Ayer challenges us to attempt to construct an argument on a question of value that does not reduce down to either a question of logic or an empirical matter of fact — a comment that caught my attention precisely because of the continual use of “empirial” in this essay. Ayer places great stock in that which can be empirically confirmed, which seems to be rooted in Russell’s belief that it is not desirable to believe in a proposition when there’s no ground in believing its truth/factuality. But this reliance on the infallibility of empirical fact seems to be a flaw in Ayer’s philosophy.

The concept of empirical fact is flawed by the concept known as the observer’s paradox. At it’s most basic, this paradox says that the observation of an event, an experiment, of anything, is influenced by the presence of the observer. We bias what we see, and what we see is biased by us — the idea that there can be a control by observation has been critiqued for quite some time.

How we formulate knowledge, share it, and confirm it is certainly important — there wouldn’t be library shelves dedicated to it otherwise — but to say that the only thing that can be truly known is that which is empirically verifiable leaves itself open to critique from the area of philosophy that questions our ability to remove ourselves from the equation to allow for a truly neutral observation

in which I do academia

2007, Academics, APHI 621 - Metaethics, University at Albany

I’m taking a class on metaethics. I’m required to write a few paragraphs on the readings every week. I figure, might as well put the musings into the wild. Especially since I’m finding this to be much more interesting than I thought I would,..

Week One
Sign Theory, Moore & Frankena

While reading through both Moore and Frankena, I found myself catching on notions that I have recently read in Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding — sign theory, determined definitions and his basic theory of ideas. I have to wonder if Moore is working from some sort of Lockean position when he writes? Specifically, I am caught by his idea of simple or complicated ideas — on page 52, he talks about how when “horse” is reduced down to the simplest of terms, “horse” becomes undefineable, something that cannot be spoken of, perceived or known by someone who does not already known the emerged property “horse” from those simpler properties.

I was also struck by the dual combination of sign theory and determined definitions that Frankena and Moore both seem to be using; Moore says he would be foolish to try to use “good” to mean “table”, and he’s not trying to challenge standard definition, but isn’t trying to force one word to mean a single thing trying to challenge the standard definition of a word? Moore seems to want one word to mean one thing, and to deny that two words can mean one and the same thing — but doesn’t language drift, both in use and context? Can we actually pick out a single word, remove it from all references and situations, and isolate the single meaning of the word? It seems too many words, and too many contexts, modify or explain the target word, and give too great a variety of meaning.

Method

life and living

I’m a sucker for good marketing. I know this, I know the tricks being used on me, and I still appreciate it well enough to allow myself to be swayed. Case and point is the Method line of household cleaning products.

People against dirty. Cute tagline, I can get behind that sort of thing. But more than that, their products are non-toxic, full of wonderful smelling essential oils, and try hard to be at least environmentally neutral, if not flat out good for the environment.

The bit that really solidifies my preference for their product, though, is a very simple fact: they have a sense of humour.

For example, on the Aroma Pill I just recently bought, the directions read:

1. Holding fragrance bottle upright, remove cap. Do not remove wick. It’s pretty important.
2. Keeping fragrance bottle upright, insert into bottom of aroma pill.
3. Rotate bottle clockwise until tight. You know, righty-tighty.
4. Rotate plug of aroma pill to accommodate vertical or horizontal wall outlet. Insert aroma pill into wall outlet with glass bottle pointing down. Do not turn sideways or else fragrance oil will spill. Gravity is mean like that.

It’s just a delight to read their packaging, and is the final little push of incentive that creates (at least for me) brand loyalty.

Even if I can acknowledge how hideously manipulative it is from the getgo….

the problem with expectations

...and everything else, Academics, blog as therapy, life and living

This was written I don’t know when – been hanging out in the drafts area of the site. Probably some late night, fraught with insomnia and over-analysis. Yes, Michael, much like tonight, shutupthankyou. Anyhow, after a re-read, I still find I agree with what I wrote, so up it goes…

The problem with setting expectations is that eventually, your competence becomes your enemy: the assumption becomes you don’t need what you once did. This was a huge problem for me my last year or so at UW, and made me really question a lot of things, about myself and how I interact with the world, and about the people I work with. It also made me wonder if perhaps this factored in to why I only stayed at software companies for 2-3 years, at most – and normally had risen to the senior spot possible in that (relatively short) time.

Of course, when I was in the software industry, it was almost a bragging point. The less time you saw your manager, at least in any official capacity, the better you were at your job. The people who were constantly in their boss’s office? They were the ones who were incompetent, the ones who were making trouble, who couldn’t pull their weight. During the Microsoft era, my team and I had a competition going (at least prior to our reorg) – just how long could we go without seeing our manager, W~, without a beer in his hand?

But somewhere along the way, I started thinking about gender dynamics. The only time that sort of competition didn’t exist was when I had a female manager. She was still very hands off; I think I once went almost three weeks without actually talking work with her. It wasn’t that we never saw one another – we did, frequently, whether we were pitching expensive prototype powerbooks down the hall at one another, or playing volleyball over lunch, or sharing beer and BBQ. It’s just that there was no need to talk work – I had my project solidly outlined, knew what I was doing and what I was expected to do, and would meet up with her when it was done. Losing her is a large reason why I left Apple in the first place – the manager who replaced her was a micromanager of the worst variety.

Where do gendered dynamics come into it? I’ve often wondered if Carol was consciously aware of how women are raised, and worked hard to avoid using that against her almost completely female crew. A lot of scholarship suggests that there are certain ways of behaviour that women learn at a young age, and we’re almost primed to react to – such as being thanked for being conscientious, and not contributing to a problem. Or for being thoughtful, or kind. And the scholarship seems to suggest that getting feedback like this plays into certain gendered behaviour, of being submissive and quiet and not raising a fuss. Of being a “good” woman. After all, how often does a man get thanked for going out of his way to not be a problem?