Antipositivist Carnapian Scorn

A book review, by one “Jonatas Machado” from Portugal, of Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature that is so bad that I simply must blog it. I imagine creationists’ reviews of books on evolution must be similarly hilarious, but to have a creationist attack a book that is about the whole of Western philosophy lends more amusement. Choice quotes:

Richard Rorty’s agenda is about deconstructing the judeo-christian civilization. This desire he shares with men like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Jacques Derrida…
…Rorty’s self-representation he borrows from Darwin, whom he takes seriously. Darwin and his acolite Richard Dawkins have a strong (although not scientifically warranted) belief that Man (in an improper sense) is the mere byproduct of matter, random mutations and natural selection…

And a brilliant last paragraph:

Richard Rorty is desperately in need of a kuhnian paradigm shift, or else he risks being himself the object of some form of 21 st century antipositivist carnapian scorn.

Better Houellebecq, and miscellaneous rants

I was going to rant that Michel Houellebecq should read Will Wilkinson and stop whining about the existential worries that will supposedly lead to the downfall of Western civilisation as we know it. But on further thought it is not so clear that Houellebecq thinks people in capitalist societies are any unhappier than poorer people. I’d always assumed that he does, since he is caustic in his assessment of capitalism’s impact on Western civilisation, and he often compares Western individualism unfavourably to traditional Asian values. But he doesn’t portray non-Western people as any happier. In particular, he heaps scorn on fundamentalist Muslim values. I suspect he would think they are just unhappy in different ways.

At any rate, the second half of The Possibility of an Island is much better than the juvenile first half. He has much more interesting insights into human nature there, enough that I’m willing to grant it a status beyond amateur sci-fi. A sample passage, which, though not very profound, was a refreshing summary of the particular human behaviour involved:

It is under the influence of an ancient animal sense of belonging that people have so many conversations about meteorology and the climate, influenced by a primitivie memory, inscribed in the sense organs, and linked to the conditions of survival in the prehistoric era. These circumscribed, cliched conversations are, however, the symptom of a real issue: eveen when we live in apartments, in conditions of thermal stability guaranteed by reliable and well-honed technology, it remains impossible for us to rid ourselves of this animal atavism; it is thus that a full awareness of our ignominy and misfortune, and of their complete and definitive nature, can only manifest itself in sufficiently favourable climactic conditions.

Part of the reason why that caught my eye was that I regard complaints about the weather by people who don’t spend more than half an hour a day actually outdoors (being in a heated vehicle doesn’t count) ridiculous. If I’m not careful, I tell these people my true opinions about bad weather: I love the harsh winters here because I am less gripped by existential anxieties when I’m being pummelled by sleet and have to watch my every step to avoid slipping on icy patches of pavement. They, of course, cannot understand this.

Tangentially related to this is a recent conversation with someone who didn’t understand the picnicking mentality. Why eat outside at all, she asked. While I do understand the desirability of having an outdoor “atmosphere” for doing anything, I concur in the ridiculousness of picnicking in a park where there are picnickers every metre or so. In the first place, the park is manifestly a fake outdoors environment. In the second place, when the population of picnickers gets that dense, what possible sense of being outdoors could one possibly have?

The same goes for people who “swim” in a cordoned off lagoon in the lake where you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting someone. And sunbathers on the crowded beach, of course. Except that sunbathers can at least claim they are trying to advance their social/financial status by improving their physical appearance.

Back to Houellebecq. I suspect I like the second half better also because that is when Daniel1 stops going on about love and sex and his own ignorant sociological theories, and sinks into a state of numb day-to-day subsistence. He is much more tolerable that way, and, of course, nowadays I latch on to any character, fictional or real, who shares my current mental state of “just going on”.

Fidgety Finales

I am never satisfied with the last movements of Schubert’s piano works, it seems. The D960 and D784 sonatas and the Grand Duo in C Major (D812) all end unsatisfactorily. They all have restless last movements that are quite at odds with the previous movements, which tend to be contemplative or (in the case of D784) stormy, rather than fidgety. In D960 especially it feels like Schubert is blowing off all the angst of the previous three movements. What does he mean by doing this? The only way to get on with life is to move on briskly and unthinkingly? That statement is very true, but with regards to musical meaning, I’m just throwing out an unsubstantiated theory.

If I had more time to listen, of course… Always that.

Chinese Shopkeepers

Houellebecq occasionally compares Asian “family” values favourably to Western “individualistic” values. Coming from an oppressive city-state that uses Asian values to justify everything from gambling to homophobia, this comparison always raises my hackles. Perhaps there is some truth in it. However, the only people who seem to believe it are Westerners who have hardly any contact with the Asian “heartland” as such, or Asians who believe the West is a heartless amoral dystopia. Certainly my experience in a Western country has not revealed to me vast differences between the the way Asians and Westerners treat their families. There are vast differences in the official facades of families — Asian families are far less willing to admit when it is time to divorce; they’d rather grit their teeth and continue. But substantially, I have not observed a difference in the value people place on their families.

While more often than not I rankle at Houellebecq’s crude generalisations, his description of Chinese shopkeepers in The Possibility of an Island was amusing. Many will accuse me of racism — my rankling when the so-called cultural values of my ethnic group are praised, and my laughing in agreement when they are mocked. Here is the choice passage:

“…men who can accept that they are loved for their money are rare, in the West at least; the same cannot be said for Chinese shopkeepers. In the simplicity of their souls, Chinese shopkeepers consider that their class S Mercedes, their bathrooms with hydromassage showers and more generally their money are part of themselves, and therefore they have no objection to arousing the enthusiasm of young girls through these material attributes, they have the same immediate, direct relationship with them that a Westerner can have with the beauty of his face.”

Earning money as a form of self-improvement. That, I think, is a rather accurate description of a quintessential Chinese value. A genuine one.

For the record, I do not have that kind of immediate relationship with either my physical beauty or my material possessions. Which partly explains why I don’t fit anywhere. But at least decadent Western individualism is more tolerant of one’s not fitting.

Ironic Victories

I’ve always thought that the finale of Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony (listen to it here) is not sincere. A parallel would be the finale of Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony (I do not really hear the insincerity in that one; but judging by Shostakovich’s situation I doubt it could be wholly sincere). Tchaikovsky’s apparent “triumph” sounds false and forced. Tchaikovsky apparently admitted that there was a hint of hysteria in it. Perhaps it’s just Gergiev and the Wiener Philharmoniker making it sound particularly ironic. Perhaps it’s just that whenever I hear victory cries that are bawled out, I assume they are insincere.

The crudeness of the cries of triumph are another indication of their insincerity. Much like the third movement of his 6th Symphony; that brassy stomping dance that first-time listeners are wont to mistake for the finale. That movement is followed by an unambiguous descent into leaden despair.

Kaspar Hauser

The scene in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser depicting Kaspar’s description of a mountain up which there is a procession of people climbing to meet Death at the top — why are there people coming down the mountain? In some parts there are clearly more people coming down than going up. I don’t think Herzog would have incorporated that detail without some deliberation.

I also don’t understand why the person who abandoned him came back to assault him. It looks like it was the person who abandoned him who did it, anyway. No reason for a complete stranger to do so.

Bookmarks

The mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, whom I heard in concert singing Mahler’s 2nd and some songs by her husband, has died.

Meanwhile, a bunch of music critics discuss the current state of classical music.

The Possibility of an Island

I wouldn’t say that I’m disappointed by Houellebecq’s latest novel, because I wasn’t expecting much. There is only so much you can say about how alienating modern society is, and he doesn’t even attempt to say it elegantly, so he can only repeat the same themes, with the same characters labelled with different names. His latest is an attempt at science fiction, involving a future world in which humans are going extinct and clones (neo-humans) are dominant. He charts the development of Western civilisation and the psychology of Western individuals as they inexorably head towards that future.

It’s bad science fiction. He doesn’t make any points that weren’t already made before by Huxley and other better sci-fi writiers. The only difference is the typical Houellebecqian directness and crudeness of description, and the (again typically Houellebecqian) sex-obsessed, existentially depressed characters.

He also gets the science wrong sometimes. He pooh-poohs the idea of a gene of altruism, citing the failure of group selection theories. Evidently, he has never heard of Hamilton or Trivers. “Not one [theory] has been able yet to cross the barrier of experimental verification.” Bollocks. Read some real science, not those ridiculous rants against evolutionary psychology that appear in the media every now and then.

At another point he says that the tilt of the earth’s axis could alter due to “quantum” reasons.

And now he’s having the character “Knowall” expound on how evolution owes more to genetic drift than to natural selection, and how some interpretations of quantum mechanics do not exclude the transfer of information against the arrow of time. Again, another view of evolution that seems to be derived from Gouldian rants against “adaptationism”, and a confusion of quantum mechanics with relativity. If anything, QM suggests that the transfer of certain types of information, such as which quantum state a system in a superposed state will collapse into, cannot be transmitted into the past. QM suggests an inviolable epistemological arrow of time.

“[A] primitive state where the young got rid of the old without ceremony, no questions asked, simply because they were too weak too defend themselves.” Bad anthropology as well.

Some have compared Houllebecq’s sci-fi to Vonnegut’s. Quite apart from Vonnegut’s lack of gross scientific boo-boos, I dare say Vonnegut’s is much better both intellectually and stylistically. Vonnegut makes less obvious points. Vonnegut writes better (though I’ll give Houellebecq some slack for that, since I can only read translations of his stuff). Perhaps being a humanist (which Houellebecq clearly isn’t) means Vonnegut doesn’t mistreat his characters like Houellebecq does. Houellebecq’s characters are never human. All satire involves exaggeration, but that doesn’t mean all your characters have to be one-dimensional.

Meanwhile, a phrase from the novel that I actually liked (and it’s saying a lot when this is the best sentence in 89 pages):

When you get old, you always hark back to the Ancient Greeks.

Singing Sand Dunes

Science is always cool when you’re not actually doing it.

Filed for further mastication

In the last resort, even science must rely upon ordinary language, since it is the only language in which we can be sure of really grasping the phenomena.

- Werner Heisenberg, in Natural Law and the Structure of Matter

I’m uncomfortable with how he is suggesting here that ordinary language is somehow more fundamental than mathematical language, but he doesn’t elaborate further on this particular assertion, so I won’t try to chase him up the wrong tree.