Here is some debunking of dualist’s ‘load of dingo’s kidneys’ – much more eloquently than I could have done!
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Thunderf00t’s Conversation with Eric Hovind
April 5, 2012 — xanthippaThis is a long and painful conversation during which Thunderf00t attempts to explain the philosophical concept that made Socrates famous: I know that I know nothing!
Thunderf00t then goes to present his 3 basal accumptions on which he has built his model of reality – and attempts to explain this to Mr. Hovind.
Eric Hovind fails to understand the concept altogether – and gets stuck on it.
Abortion And Education: the logical flaws in the positions held by the ‘religious right’
March 26, 2012 — xanthippaOK – this is a very contentious topic. Please, read my disclaimer first:
In this post, I do not wish to debate the morality of abortion or if it ought to be legal or illegal and anything else related to abortion itself. Let’s leave that for a later post focused specifically on that topic.
This post is about the inconsistencies in the ‘principled positions’ presently proposed (held) by many people who consider themselves as part of the ‘religious right’ and/or (because they do differ at times, but not always) ‘social conservatives’.
No, I am not taking the position that they are correct or incorrect, right or wrong. I am simply stating that they are inconsistent in their reasoning. As in, ‘if A, then you cannot logically argue for B; if B, then you cannot logically argue for A’!
Now that I have presented the disclaimer at such great length, let me present the two positions, as I understand them to be argued by the aforementioned factions within the conservative movement.
Position A:
A person’s a person, no matter how small – or within a womb he/she is. Since the genetic material is set at conception, from zygote on, this is defined as a human being with full human rights and freedoms. Abortion is immoral and should be illegal because by intentionally killing this entity, one is killing a human being and thus violating his/her civil liberties.
In other words, ‘Position A’ holds that killing a fetus is murder because civil liberties and full human rights kick in at conception. The right of the child to his/her civil liberties is inviolable, regardless of what the parents’ views are.
Position B:
Parents have a right to raise their child as they wish, without interference from the government.
In other words, parents should have the right to exclude information from their child’s education which they don’t like or agree with, they may discipline their child in any way they see fit, and so on. They could even subject them to plastic surgery for the hell of it, if they wanted to…
Please, don’t get me wrong – I do not know where the proper balance between the civil liberties of the child versus the civil liberties of the parents lies!
All I am saying is that if you think that the government has the right to interfere in in parental decisions from the very beginning – before the child is even born, it is logically inconsistent to then claim that the government has no right to interfere from that point on, whether it is sex ed in school or teaching children from a very young age that there are multiple religious beliefs (as well as disbeliefs).
After all, we do know from multiple, well documented studies that most children who receive religious indoctrination from their earliest childhood can never fully shake the effects of this early brainwashing. We also understand quite well how this works and that early childhood religious indoctrination actually changes the physiology of a child’s brain.
This clearly interferes not just with the civil liberty of freedom of religion, it actually interferes with the right to bodily integrity: the same right which is being violated by abortion if one were to extend civil liberties to the point of conception.
It seems to me that if one is arguing from a principled position, one can either argue that the parents have the exclusive right to make decision on behalf of their children or that children have their own civil liberties which nobody, not even the parent, can violate.
Both positions make very valid points. But, they are irreconcillable with each other because each stems from a set of principles which abrogates the other.
Either the civil libertis of the child – especially the right to bodily integrity – start at conception, as argued in ‘Position 1’: if this is so, the parents do not have the right to violate this bodily integrity, ever. Not to circumcize their children (of either sex), nor to corporally punish them, nor to rewire their brain through early childhood religious indoctrination!
Or the parents, as guardians, have the right to treat their children as they wish, as expressed in ‘Position 2’: they may subject them to non-medically necessary surgical procedures (religiously motivated or otherwise), they may spank them, they may deny them education and they may alter the natural structure of the brain through childhood religious indoctrination.
The problem comes in when the ‘religious right’/’social conservatives’ attempt to take both positions at once: abortion is murder and government must step in to stop it – and the government has no right to ban childhood circumcision, ban corporal punishment and to over-ride the parent’s interference with healthy brain development and education….
Again, I am not passing judgment on either set of principles.
All I am saying is that people need to choose one set of principles and stick with it, or they will not only open themselves to justified ridicule, they will continue to taint the ‘c’onservative movement as a whole.
Vi Hart: 9.999… reasons that .999… = 1
March 25, 2012 — xanthippaWhen you went to grade school, were you taught that ‘it is impossible to divide by zero’? Or, that ‘we do not divide by zero’, as Vi Hart claims in the video she was taught?
I only ask because where I went to grade school (the other side of the iron curtain), we were taught from the very beginning that anything divided by zero = infinity….
Interesting video. Personally, the argument I find most convincing is the demonstration of equivalence because there is no number which is greater than 0.9999repeating and 1.0.
OK, now for a bit of philosoraptoring…
What does the term ‘=’ mean: is ‘equal to’ actually mean ‘the same’? Or does it mean ‘equivalent’…
Or, indeed, does ‘the same as’ mean ‘the same’?
Would you get into a Star Trek type replicator-transporter?
TED talk by Michael Sandel
January 4, 2012 — xanthippaThis is an excellent little talk – as most TED talks are!
I came across Michael Sandel just a few weeks ago, when my loving spouse began listening to his Philosophy lectures on ‘Justice’ on YouTube. We both liked the lectures so much, we routed them to our TV and watched the whole series over the holidays – with frequent pauses to discuss the points he was making.
Most enjoyable!
This is also the very first introduction I have ever had to formal philosophy: all my previous exposure was just by thinking about things and talking with others about it. So, in this way, it was to a great degree filling some holes in the historic context of how these ideas evolved through the society.
It also demonstrated to my satisfaction that, at least according to the labels on ideas in this course, I may indeed be a bit of a libertarian…
A Biblical ‘Mathematical’ Puzzle
December 6, 2011 — xanthippaLately, I have found myself pondering (and writing about) topics that are more ‘philosophical’ than ‘political’: perhaps this is an indulgence, but it does ‘recharg my batteries’, so to speak!
The fourth birthday of my blog is coming up and, being in the ‘philosophical’ state of mind, I have thought back to some of the early posts I have made.
One post (in two parts) which I keep thinking back to is a Biblical ‘Mathematical’ puzzle I presume to have solved: and I would be curious if my current readers have some views about my proposed solution – interpretation of the exceedingly long lives of early Biblical Patriarchs!
The ‘puzzle’ is presented here. Please, read it first and consider it.
My proposed ‘solution’ is here.
Thoughts, comments, ideas?
‘Face-veil’ in Renaissance Rome was considered ‘the mark of a courtesan’
November 14, 2011 — xanthippaIt is funny how different cultural traditions can ascribe different values to equivalent things: in this case, the face veil.
We have come face-to-niqab (if you will excuse the expression) with the Islamic tradition of the face veil and are familiar with it: Muhammad imposed ‘the veil’ on his wives but not on his concubines.
Some people think ‘Muhammad’s veil’ was worn on the front of the throat, but did not cover the face. This can be seen in some Pakistani dress traditions.
Others think it was based on the Slavic headscarf, as he is reported to have first seen this garment on the Christian slave girl gifted to him by the patriarchs of Constantinopole. He became so enamoured of it, he imposed it on all of his wives. If you look at the linked illustrations, it is possible to think that the hijab could have evolved from it. (This is, in my never-humble-opinion, the most likely the root of the Islamic ‘veil’, because there is a direct reference in the Hadith to the ‘Christian slave girl’. Historically, Slavs were hunted by the Mediterranians , in order to be sold to Arabi harems – that is the origin of the word ‘slave’.)
Yet others suggest that the veil Muhammad imposed on his wives was meant to cover their whole face – the niqab. Some people trace this to ancient symbols of prostitution – perhaps.
But, in our culture, the connection between women covering their faces with a veil while in public and prostitution exists in less distand history. One need not go further than Renaissance Rome.
For reasons that are not exactly clear even to myself, I have been reading a biography of Lucrecia Borgia by Sarah Bradford. (It is, perhaps, the worst-written book I have ever tried to chew my way through. The author is completely absorbed in the minutiae and unless you are familiar with not just the ‘big picture’, but also the ‘medium picture’, you might find – like I did – that without frequent outside references, it is difficult to follow the significance of all the rigorously supported details she has managed to cram into the book. It is precisely the rigorous support – extensive quotes from numerous letters – of what she writes which has kept me slogging through it…even though her analysis of the letters themselves and of their implications is often flawed, to say the least.)
One of the things I learned (supported by a quote from a letter written in that period), she indicates (though she does not dwell on the subject) that in Rome during the time of the Borgias, the high-class prostitutes – courtesans – would wear a veil that covered their face while they rode through the streets or were in public areas. Not being well versed in the history of this period, I have not verified this assertion in another publication – if anyone can suggest books I should check out for this, I would greatly appreciate their help.
While I would like to find further corroboration, the fact that this was a direct quote from a period letter, along with the fact that this was an extraneous detail which simply got in because it was part of a letter focused on another subject altogether, convinces me that this likely was the custom of the day. (The lette-writer complains how low Rome had sunk, as so many of the women one could see about were courtesans, which one could see from the fact that they covered their faces with a veil…)
Married women and mistresses – as well as umarried women and girls – did not veil their faces in public, as there was no need for ‘discretion’. The lower class prostitutes also did not have a need for ‘discretion’, though for the opposite reason. It was only the high-class prostitutes, the courtesans, who would cover their faces when on their way to visit ‘clients’.
So, the wearing of the face-veil was a ‘class’ thing: it signified a higher class status among prostitutes.
Which is very curious, because in the Islamic tradition, ‘the veil’ also carries a very definite class distinction: because Muhammad had imposed it on his ‘wives’ – but not on women who were his slaves, whether workers or concubines, women who wore ‘the veil’ were of a higher social status than women who did not.
It is the view of some current Muslims (and Muslimas) that wearing the veil is a symbol of membership in a socially superior class: the woman wearing the veil is demonstrating her class superiority over bear-headed women. This explains why some of the Muslimas wearing veils seem to be doing it as an ‘in-your-face’ aggressive gesture. Far from representing morality or religious piety, this particular set of Muslimas is wearing the veil as a symbol of their superiority.
I am continously fascinated by how, at different times and in different cultures, the same items symbolized different things. In one time and place, the face veil represents a higher social status woman. In another, it denotes a higher social status prostitute.
Salim Mansur: ‘Delectable lie’
October 7, 2011 — xanthippaIn September 2011, Dr. Salim Mansur came to Ottawa to launch his book ‘Delectable Lie a liberal repudiation of multiculturalism’.
I went to hear him speak, and ever since, I have been waiting for the video of the event to be posted on YouTube because Dr. Mansur expresses what is wrong with multiculturalism so eloquently and he delivers his words so passionately that I could not wait to post the video and share it with everyone!
There is a lot I would like to say – but Dr. Mansur does it better!
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 