by Charlie Huenemann

I think it is fair to say that we usually see science and magic as opposed to one another. In science we make bold hypotheses, subject them to rigorous testing against experience, and tentatively accept whatever survives the testing as true – pending future revisions and challenges, of course. But in magic we just believe what we want to be true, and then we demonstrate irrational exuberance when our beliefs are borne out by experience, and in other cases we explain away the falsifications in one way or another. Science means letting what nature does shape what we believe, while magic means framing our interpretations of experience so that we can keep on believing what feels groovy.

But this belief – that we can clearly distinguish between magic and science – turns out itself to be an instance of framing our interpretations so as to allow us to keep on believing something that makes us feel good. In other words, the relation between magic and science is far more complicated, and magic is not so easily brushed aside.

“Science”, as we use the term, is a relative newcomer on the scene. “Scientia”, meaning expert knowledge, is Latin, but using it or its cognates to refer to a special method of acquiring knowledge – especially one that involves microscopes, telescopes, and test tubes – is a much later innovation. What has always been around, ever since we started jabbering, has been an interest in understanding how nature works, usually conjoined with our practical interest in prediction and control. Call that interest “natural knowledge”. Read more »

Ardor

after Iqbal

Her seduction keeps him fluid as mercury
Has she taught him the rules of passion?

Restless, he finds comfort yearning
Is she his eternal flame?

Is he a lover of ancient beauty?
She, small Sinai; he, small Moses

His search for illumination —
An insect longing for light

By Rafiq Kathwari. His new collection of poems, My Mother’s Scribe, is available here and here and here.

by Mike O’Brien

I don’t always make great decisions, but swearing off political commentary two months ago was a really, really good one.

Ahem.

As I stated two columns ago, I’ve been wanting to write more about ecological ethics, and more specifically about ethical obligations across species. Last month I laid out my criticisms of animal rights. In summary, rights discourse is a language game, and humans are the only animals on Earth who can play it. Not to say that we can’t articulate a case for treating animals well using a language of rights; this is indeed the most effective path to legal protection at the moment. But we say something nonsensical when we articulate that case, which may or may not matter in the grand scheme of things.

For my next trick, I’d like to take on ethical naturalism, and similar presuppositions about where morality comes from. Ethical naturalism is basically the idea that moral rightness and wrongness is a natural fact, and can be discovered by observing natural facts. Read more »

Doormat on my balcony with a fresh sprinkling of snow a couple of days ago.

by Peter Wells

Let me recommend a New Year resolution, in case you don’t have one yet: Be nicer to people you disagree with.

I’ve been moved to make this recommendation by my recent reading of The Guardian, a British centre-left newspaper. It has disappointed me.

This is sad, for I agree with the general tenor of The Guardian’s views, oscillating, as I do, between the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats. What is more, The Guardian has allowed me to read its columns free of charge. But increasingly I note that in its attempts to express its views more forcibly, it has begun to resort to vilification. Read more »

by Joseph Shieber

Completely by chance, I happened to come across a discussion of Tyron Goldschmidt’s paper, “A Proof of Exodus: Judah HaLevy and Jonathan Edwards Walk into a Bar”, in Cole Aronson’s review of the 2019 book Jewish Philosophy in an Analytic Age. I was intrigued by Aronson’s celebration of Goldschmidt’s “characteristic verve”, so — with the help of my college’s outstanding Interlibrary Loan — I got hold of the paper.

Just as a matter of literary quality, Aronson undersells Goldschmidt’s paper. Goldschmidt is a delightfully engaging writer. If you’ve dipped into some contemporary academic philosophy and come away with the impression that it’s all turgid and dry, check out Goldschmidt’s essay. It’s a treat.

Now, of course, I’ve got to go ahead and ruin your impression of the delightfulness of academic philosophy by attempting to point out flaws in Goldschmidt’s argument. I can’t help it; it’s in my nature.

Goldschmidt begins by noting that testimony is central to our knowledge. Much of what we know is based on our having learned it from others. If anything, Goldschmidt underappreciates our dependence — the example he uses is historical (our knowledge that Napoleon existed), but he could have easily included countless examples. It’s only because of testimony that I know that Raphael Warnock is a newly-elected U.S. Senator from Georgia, that the top five warmest years on record have been since 2015, or even what my own name is!

Goldschmidt suggests that, by appreciating the centrality of testimony we can appreciate an underrecognized argument for the truth of biblically recorded miracles — in particular, the miracles associated with the Jewish tradition surrounding the Exodus from Egypt. Read more »

Buddha Mind

Buddha mind’s a still but never motionless field
Buddha mind holds all, each wave and ripple subsumed
along with every tiny dot, a broken wholeness

no metaphor can speak its more-and-less
no single thought can split its late-and-soon

its splash and depth of shade, golden color,
its sanguine stippled clouds, its calm bronze face serene,
both shut and absent eye welcoming, then with lids raised 
seeing soon-and-later-less-and-more revealed

Jim Culleny 1/9/2021
Watercolor, The Present Moment 
by Mary Walsh Martel

Other watercolors by Mary Walsh Martel
(Click image for expanded view)

by Emrys Westacott

The German language is famous for its often long compound words that combine ideas to neatly express in a single word complex notions. Torschlusspanik, (gate-shut-panic), for instance, referred in medieval times to the fear that one was not going to make it back into the city before the gates closed for the night, and now signifies the worry, common among middle aged people, that the opportunities for accomplishing one’s dreams are disappearing for good. Backpfeifengesicht, sometimes translated as “face in need of a fist”, means a face that you feel needs slapping.

One could certainly find a use for these particular words this past week while watching Donald Trump’s Republican enablers suddenly starting to pose as staunch defenders of democratic principles. But we could also do with our own compound expressions to capture the particular forms of perfidiousness on display. For instance, it would be really useful to have a word that means “culpably late enlightenment.”

Every single Republican politician has known perfectly well for the past two months that the 2020 US presidential election was not fraudulent, or rigged, or stolen. (If there are any who really believe otherwise, they are either utter fools or as mentally deranged as Trump himself.) So please, let’s not start giving out medals for honourable conduct when someone like Kelly Loeffler, the (recently defeated) senator from Georgia, decides, after Wednesday’s riotous invasion of the Capitol by Trump supporters, to no longer object to the certification process that was underway at the time. Actually, her change of heart doesn’t make much sense. If she really believed that her objections to certification were justified, why drop them? The antics of Trump’s mob don’t affect the probability that there were serious voting irregularities in certain states. Read more »

Tigran Tsitoghdzyan. Black Mirror, 2018.

Work on paper; mixed media.

More here.

by Jackson Arn

When Harold Haber was released from prison, he found out why nobody had visited him in two years. His brother, sister, mother, father, grandmother, uncle, and cousins had died. He and his grandfather were the last two Habers left in the country, maybe the world. His grandfather was 89 years old and slept all day. The house was cracked paint, emptied windows, dust, and gashes in walls. In Harold’s head, a sense of duty thickened. The family had to be rebuilt. The family name had to be spoken everywhere. He married Sarah and had five children. One survived long enough to have his own. As Harold choked he thought, I did my part.

*

Two of David Haber’s children outlived their childhoods. David Haber did not outlive his twenties. As he found his way home on a Tuesday night, belly sloshing, something tore in him. We found him the next morning with a mark, maroon and claw-shaped, on his abdomen’s right.

*

Esther had her first child at fifteen, but he could not be acknowledged. Two years later, as her husband raised her dress for the first time, she thought of her grandmother and resolved to name her next child Sarah. Her husband, taken aback by her silence in the crucial second, decided not to trust her and named the child after his grandmother, who’d died defending our glorious land. Esther secretly thought of their child as Sarah until she gave birth to her third, who she named Harold.

*

Harry Haber felt the full weight of his name twice in his life, the first time aged seven. His father was instructing him with a belt. Between the strokes he heard a hiss: “If your grandfather were alive to see you …” Then there was a pause and then a sniff. He did not dare turn to look. After a few minutes he realized his father had left the room, leaving him bent over, half-naked. The second time, Harry was dying in his trench. He thought of his three children and his father and his father’s father. Time oozed like a wound. He thought of the glory he and the rest of us had fought for, and the second glory to which his name belonged. He resolved, delirious, to pass on the name to his next child, and then he died. Read more »

by Tamuira Reid

It is almost midnight here in New York City, and I’ve been sitting at my dining room table for the past eight hours with my finger on the “send” button. Each time, I freeze, regroup, take another sip of coffee, sneak a cigarette out on the fire escape where my son won’t see me. Because I know I have to scrap the essay I wrote for this week. The one I wrote before Thursday. The one that I can’t stand to look at now. “Dating During Covid”.

Every single thing I do feels like a betrayal. A privilege. Everything I do feels white.

Writing about anything other than the Capitol feels wrong. Writing about the Capitol as the events process and take shape in my white mind feels wrong. Writing is a kind of performance, here, in this intellectualized virtual space. What gives me access to this stage? What the hell do I know? What makes my voice so special?

I cannot write my way out of this.

There are voices that need to be heard right now, listened to, learned from. I am not one of them. Not now. Not yet. I have not done the work. I know I am full of feelings; big ones, shameful ones, stupid ones. Feelings that have ignited after a long, slow burn. But feelings, my feelings, are not relevant here. I am a white woman holding space for no one but myself.

I don’t want to hear my voice. I don’t want to hear any white voices. Just for five minutes, an hour, a day, a week. I want us to stop filling the pages that do not belong to us and give them back to their rightful owners. To stop acting like dutiful interpreters of a language we aren’t fluent in. To shut-up and bear witness. To take responsibility. To realize that being a nice white liberal with black and brown friends does not make you an anti-racist. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

by Robyn Repko Waller

Wednesday’s riots at the Capitol shook many Americans and, indeed, individuals around the globe. Screens worldwide glared with shocking and impactful images of some Trump supporters breaching Capitol police barricades and scaling the Capitol walls to loot and overrun the halls and private chambers in an attempt at undermining the ceremonial certification of President Elect Joe Biden’s win. Confederate flags were flown. Lives were lost in the chaos.

The response from many onlookers, both in person and from afar: outrage. Outrage at the harmful undermining of democracy. Outrage at the intent to harm and plunder. Outrage at those who have sown the seeds of false information and stirred the boiling frustration of pockets of MAGA nation. Outrage at the hands-off treatment of those rioting — in striking comparison to the reception of BLM protesters in DC. Sustained and exhausted outrage at an outgoing President who has actively stoked the fires of insurrection and chaos, even while the riots unfolded. 

Plenty has been said in the aftermath of this event about who is to blame — not just legally, but morally speaking — for the physical and symbolic destruction of our democracy. I won’t spend much time on that here. I’ll also leave aside too the imperative discussion of false information as a driving source of polarized political groups, radicalization of American citizens, and, ultimately, the ensuing riots. There’s no doubt that false and misleading information contributed to the actions of the swarm of rioters at the Capitol that day. And, of course, misinformation withstanding, the voluntarily taken actions of those rioters were wrong. They are, in the eyes of onlookers, to be held accountable, morally and legally. So too, should those implicated who are in power, many are demanding. 

The question that interests me here, rather, has to do with those who cast moral blame. Those who are outraged. Assuming these rioters and instigators have done something egregiously wrong and are blameworthy for their actions, who gets to blame them? That is, who has standing to blame (as it’s termed in the philosophical literature)? Read more »

by Eric J. Weiner

Dear Dr. Cardona:

The violent, insurrectionist attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 was due, in part, to the success of the Nation’s system of public education, not its failure. Since Ronald Reagan announced in 1981 that “government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem,” federal authorities have worked to dismantle and erase any vestiges of democratic education from our system of public education. Free-market values replaced democratic ones. Public education slowly but consistently was transformed by neoliberal ideologues on both sides of the aisle into an institution both in crisis and the cause of the Nation’s perceived economic slip on the global stage. Following Reagan’s lead, all federally sponsored school reform efforts hollowed out public education’s essential role in a democracy and focused instead on its role within a free-market economy. In terms of both a fix and focus, neoliberalism was and remains the ideological engine that drives the evolution of public education in the United States. These reform efforts have been incredibly successful in reducing public education to a general system of job training, higher education prep, and ideological indoctrination (i.e., American Exceptionalism). As a consequence of this success, many of the Nation’s citizens have little to no knowledge or skills relating to the essential demands of democratic life. The culmination of the neoliberal assault on democratic education over the last forty-years helped create the conditions that led to the rise of Trump, the development of Trumpism, and the murderous, failed attempt at a coup d’etat in Washington, DC. From what I have read, I am not confident that your plans for public education will address these issues.

As Secretary of Education, according to President Biden, you will “strive to eliminate long-standing inequities and close racial and socioeconomic opportunity gaps…to improve student success and grow a stronger, more prosperous, and more inclusive middle class.” Consistent with the President’s call for making public education a lever of economic prosperity, you have said, “The passion I have for public education stems from my belief that it is the best lever for economic success and prosperity…and the belief that public education is still the great equalizer. It was for me.”

On the surface, these goals are admirable and for most Americans uncontroversial. Yet, I am concerned that you are unintentionally setting up public education for immanent failure. This is not because you and President Biden are insincere in your support for public education or because there is anything wrong with the students, teachers, administrators and/or communities that serve or are served by public education. Quite simply, you will fail to meet these goals because it is not, nor has it ever been the responsibility of public education to make social and economic policy. Read more »

My wife and her sister walking in the Altfasstal region of the South Tyrol over the weekend.