Meta and Meta

Radio Head

Every once in a while you see the idea expressed that the mind might be pure consciousness, and that it's only "physicalized" when it interacts (in some unspecified way) with the organ of the brain -- sort of like how a radio receives radio waves from some transmitting source.

Call this model TRM (for "The Radio wave Model"). TRM actually has a lot going for it, at least, to the extent you've got a yen to save dualism: (1) It acknowledges the crucial role of the physical brain in realizing conscious behavior; yet (2) it preserves the intuitively appealing autonomy of the self (free will!) over and above physical causation; and (perhaps best of all) (3) it plausibly explains the physical (neural) correlates of consciousness in a way that still resists physicalist reduction.

Still, as a philosophical or scientific sketch, TRM is a nonstarter. The main problem, of course, is that while a radio receiver can modulate transmissions and interpret them in myriad ways, turning the radio off doesn't make the radio waves disappear. But apparently that's just what happens when we turn the "radio" off. It's not hard to think of examples: Certain types of anesthesia; sleep (in some stages); a well-aimed blow to the head; and so forth. What these all have in common is that they're result is counter to what TRM predicts: Immutable, disembodied consciousness.

(Via Butterflies & Wheels.)

The Counter-Majoritarian "Difficulty"

Larry Solum's "Legal Theory Lexicon" entry updated for today is the Counter-Majoritarian Difficulty. From the introduction:

The counter-majoritarian difficulty states a problem with the legitimacy of the institution of judicial review: when unelected judges use the power of judicial review to nullify the actions of elected executives or legislators, they act contrary to “majority will” as expressed by representative institutions.

However, later, in the middle of the article, Solum acknowledges that "it could also be understood as a difficulty for any constitution that constrains majority will."

Well, not "could be," I think, but rather "is." The counter-majoritarian "difficulty" is the logical result of limited powers and individual and state rights. Even "ideally" formalist or originalist judges* would have to reach counter-majoritarian results (at least sometimes) if such constitutional provisions are to be more than paper oaths.

This point is central, and I'm a little surprised Solum didn't flag it in the introduction. Judicial review by "unelected judges" is frequently and artificially singled out by many conservatives as if it were a peculiar counter-majoritarian force in law. Quite simply, it ain't.

*And the point isn't restricted to judges. Formalist or originalist legislators (if you will) could only "reflect the will of the people" legislatively in cases where the will of the people happens to dovetail with what is constitutionally permissible.

The Life Worth Living

Hilzoy has an outstanding post analyzing the Right-Blogospheric reaction to the Baghdad Diarist, Scott Thomas Beauchamp. A taste:

Dear right-wing bloggers: Stop. Think. Reread the original piece. It's not about how our soldiers are murderers and scumbags. It's not a vicious left-wing assault on them. It's trying to make some sense of how war makes you do things you wouldn't ordinarily do, and it's pretty obvious that what sparked it was that "Scott Thomas" saw himself doing these things.

Yes, well, shorter Right Blogosphere: Beauchamp is reflectively exploring the deep wells of cruelty that run through the souls of all human beings. And that's got to stop.

Putting the "Gone" in Gonzales

Wow. Just, wow.

Don't Give Them Any Ideas

I like my representative Henry Waxman's response to the president's contention that Justice will not be allowed to prosecute congressional contempt citations in "executive privilege" cases: "I suppose the next step would be just disbanding the Justice Department."

U.S. attorneys are but "emanations of a president's will," after all...

Diaboli in Musica

The Enchantress asked me about the musical significance of the backbeat and why the depth of its apprehension seems so apparently bound to culture.

As I was answering her, I got to wondering about its historical origins (we know with considerable certainty, for example, that it didn't issue from Germany; but whence, then?). My initial google query ("origins of the backbeat," what else?) led me to this unhelpful but moderately amusing discussion:

The argument that the backbeat "originated" in pagan Africa fails to consider where the Africans learned the beat from. We do not know whether they adapted it from Egypt, Summeria, Ur, etc. It is even possible that this beat was used to worship Jehovah when Noah and his family got off the ark.

In other words, we know it existed in Africa, but did they think up the beat on their own (possible), did Satan personally deliver this beat to them (possible), or did they adapt it from some other culture (probable)? If they did adapt it from some other culture, who is to say whether or not that culture was righteous, or what the "original" use of the backbeat was?

Good questions all. And here I'd thought it was only certain harmonic intervals that were diabolic. Next it'll be time signatures. (Thank goodness 6/6/6 is a theoretical impossibility...)

Kristol's Balls

In response to Bill Kristol's preposterous declaration that the Bush presidency "will probably be a successful one," David Corn has authored a salutary review of Kristol's track record as a political scryer.

Turns out, Kristol's record is not so hot. My favorite quote: "Very few wars in American history were prepared better or more thoroughly than this one by this president."

ADDENDUM: It just occurred to me that if you readjust the scope on the prepositional phrase in that quotation, you get an interpretation that is...true! (I.e., "Very few wars in American history were prepared by this president more thoroughly than this war.") So, wow, Kristol might not be a common hack after all; he might in fact be an exceptional hack. Who knew?

We Philistines

Oy.

I'm certainly willing to grant Humpty Dumpty privileges to Mark Kleiman if he wants to redefine "religion" as the deep appreciation of literature and music as applied to life (or whatever). And I totally agree: If God is Love, Metaphor, the Atom, or a Wicker Chair, then belief in God is not ridiculous.

But as Kleiman well knows, when atheists say that belief in God is ridiculous, they have rather a different definition in mind -- viz., the definition that, you know, is accepted by the vast majority of believers.

So when he concludes on the basis of his rank equivocation that atheists who disdain religion (in the non-inverted-comma sense) thereby "refuse to learn anything from...traditions that go back thousands of years" and "cut[] them[selves] off from much of the world's great literature, art, and music," well, that's just a load of bollocks. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

SIDE NOTE: Kleiman argues that most people misunderstand religion in much the same way they misunderstand science:

Most Americans no doubt "believe" that matter is made of atoms....

But if you ask them what an "atom" is, most of them will tell you that it consists of a nucleus — a mixture of two sorts of little spheres, protons and neutrons — with still smaller spheres, electrons, whirling around that nucleus, like a miniature Solar System. That is, they'll describe the Bohr atom, vintage about 1925.

Now that model of the atom is false. The math doesn't work. It doesn't agree with the experiments. No one who knows any actual physics believes in it.

On Myers's reasoning, that would discredit the atomic theory....

Um, "most Americans" are practicing religious observers, not practicing scientists. (Would that more theists went to science class on Sunday.) Furthermore, there is no analogous consensus theory in religion to get "wrong," no "model" in religion that could be "false." On Kleiman's reasoning, in fact, there is simply no way to "discredit" religion at all.

Suffice it to say that Kleiman's analogy doesn't agree with the experiments.

UPDATE: PZ Myers has more on the inaptness of Kleiman's analogy.

Yeah, We Can Tell

David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo:

From Maria Bartiromo's interview of Condi Rice in the current issue of BusinessWeek:

MB: Would you consider a position in business or on Wall Street?

CR: I don't know what I'll do long-term. I'm a terrible long-term planner.

Next Question

I hate to disagree with the mighty Mark Kleiman two days in a row, but, well...

In criticizing PZ Myers' claim that theists are "ignorant, deluded, wicked, foolish, or oppressed," Kleiman issues this challenge:

I've always wanted to ask someone like Meyers — or Dawkins, or Pinker — how much smarter he thinks he is than, let's say, Heraclitus or Socrates or Maimonides or Newton, who thought hard about religion and didn't dismiss it as nonsense.

Yes, it's true -- Newton believed in God. He also believed in alchemy, absolute space, a deterministic universe (save for God's intermittent interventions), and that Revelation predicts the End of Days. (And he "thought hard" about these topics too.)

In short, Newton was a man of his time. I'd like to think we've learned a little since 1700, wouldn't you?