Literary Science-Fiction

1. I just learned that the last novel of Franz Werfel -- one of the most important German writers of the first half of the 20th century, and the last husband of Alma -- was a science-fiction novel entitled Star of the Unborn (in German: Stern der Ungeborenen). So that's on my to-read list, once I finish writing my dissertation.

2. I've started reading Gene Wolfe's massive four-novel series The Book of the New Sun, but I don't really have the time. I note in an interesting interview that his fellow science-fiction author Patrick O'Leary has a very high view of him.

Forget "Speculative Fiction." Gene Wolfe is the best writer alive. Period. And as Wolfe once said, "All novels are fantasies. Some are more honest about it."

No comparison. Nobody--I mean nobody--comes close to what this artist does. ...

He has the intellectual whimsy, invention and rigour of Borges, the grace and music and hard beauty of Nabokov, the richness of voice and character of Faulkner, the moral insight and passion of Le Guin, the compassion and weirdness of P.K. Dick, and a courage and integrity of spirit that are entirely his own--all grounded, somehow rooted in a modesty, a working-class respect for the dirt and anguish and joy of everyday life. Ultimately he loves spinning a good yarn. And he is a lot of fun.

Read a story, say, "The Ziggurat" or "A Cabin On The Coast" or "The Death of Doctor Island"--it doesn't get better than that. Read a chapter, say, the Alzabo Chapter in The Book of The New Sun, or any [#*&!@] chapter from In Green's Jungles--the best novel I've ever read--Dude, this man is operating on all cylinders. He's like the lead in Steely Dan's "Reeling in the Years"--Jesus, do you remember the first time you heard that? Wolfe achieves that virtuosity and soul for whole books.

And then he does it backward. And in braille. And after the fifth time you read the same page and realize he's [#*&!@] doing it on a Kazoo while juggling tomatoes--you give up. You know--forgetaboutit--he's the best. He is so good, he's scary.

3. The Wordverter recently alerted to me to something that will be humorous to other Frank Herbert fans who are also parents: Goodnight Dune. It made me laugh, at least. I also laughed at this which is, unfortunately, serious.

Jesus' humanity

My wife just had a spectacular insight about Jesus that focuses on his humanity. It's important for Christians to remember that Jesus was both fully God and fully human. That can be difficult at times, though. Anyway, she remembered a particular passage from Seven Woes:

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.

My wife's insight is kind of obvious when you think of it, but it had never occurred to me. It's this: Jesus -- through whom everything was made, the one who holds the entire universe together -- washed dishes. At some point in his life, he had to clean dinnerware. That is how far down the food chain he was willing to go in order to show us how much he loves us. Pretty amazing.

One more click

I mentioned a little while ago that the Hunger Site added a Veterans tab, where advertisers will pay for meals for veterans if you click a button. They've recently added another tab for Autism where advertisers will pay for therapy for autistic children each time you click. So get to it.

Just call me a conscientious carnivore

Keith Burgess-Jackson, a vegetarian, posted an interesting quote on eating meat from A Political Philosophy by Roger Scruton. Here's the final paragraph:

Furthermore, I would suggest not only that it is permissible for those who care about animals to eat meat; they have a duty to do so. If meat-eating should ever become confined to those who do not care about animal suffering then compassionate farming would cease. All animals would be kept in battery conditions and the righteous vegetarians would exert no economic pressure on farmers to change their ways. Where there are conscientious carnivores, however, there is a motive to raise animals kindly. And conscientious carnivores can show their depraved contemporaries that it is possible to ease one’s conscience by spending more on one’s meat. Bit by bit the news would get around, that there is a right and a wrong way to eat; and—failing some coup d’état by censorious vegetarians—the process would be set in motion, that would bring battery farming to an end. Duty requires us, therefore, to eat our friends.

I'm definitely carnivorous (technically, I'm omnivorous), but I'm also an animal lover, so this idea appealed to me. My first thought against it, however, is that Scruton limits the possible influence "righteous vegetarians" could have on farmers to economic pressure. But surely they could exert other kinds of pressure that would have an influence on cruel farming practices. My second thought against it is this argument would apply equally to cannibalism: if the only people who eat members of ethnic group A are those who care nothing of their suffering, then there will be no motivation to minimize such suffering. If we really care about ethnic group A, "duty requires us, therefore, to eat our friends." Of course, one could get around this by adding more to the equation: human beings are not merely animals; we have other motivations for eating animals than simply reducing their suffering; etc. But by itself, the quoted argument strikes me as insufficient. Of course, there's a whole book surrounding it, so maybe I should read it instead of pass judgment on it.

Thought of the Day

In ancient Greece, Diogenes would urinate in public in order to prove that human beings are merely animals. But animals don't urinate in public in order to make a point.

On parenting

David Mamet, the playwright and screenwriter, has come out of the closet recently as a political conservative. I was reading an interview with him about it, but the point that stood out to me was something that didn't have anything to do with politics. He was asked by the interviewer if he intends to promote conservativism through his writing.

No, it’s not my job as a playwright to send a message. It’s my job as a playwright to entertain the people. And it would be an abuse of their trust to addend a message to an entertainment. It’s like…
It’s like ending a wonderful fairy story that you tell your children, and saying and so, remember it’s always good to be kind to people and blah, blah, blah. No, you’ve just destroyed your kid, right? He thought that he was…he suspended his disbelief in order to have this wonderful moment with his father, where they both engage in this fantasy. And at the end, you’re saying but more important than that, son, let me misuse the gift of your attention to teach you a lesson.

I don't know what other people think of this, but my response was something along the lines of, "Oh my gosh, I'm not the only one who thinks that way!" Having said that, my pathetic attempts at fiction are absolutely message-driven. I only agree with Mamet about the parenting part.

Heh

Tips for Not Appearing Crazy on the Internet.

More Favorite Movie Scenes

Tombstone


Despicable Me


Ace Ventura: Pet Detective


Jaws


Who Framed Roger Rabbit?


Lethal Weapon


Lethal Weapon 2


At the Circus


Ratatouille


Man on the Moon


Jurassic Park


The Caine Mutiny

Very interesting

Here's an audio recording of Hilary Putnam and Alvin Plantinga, two of the greatest living philosophers, discussing the existence of God. I didn't realize that Putnam is Jewish. It's from ten years ago, but it was just put on YouTube a couple of days ago.



(cross-posted at Quodlibeta)

Sorry

Apologies for not posting much for the last few months. As I've mentioned, I'm finishing up my dissertation, and haven't had the time to blog. Out of devotion to my readers I point you to this fascinating article about three boys from an island in the South Pacific who took a small boat and were lost at sea for 51 days with almost no food and water.

Quote of the Day

The kind of situation Goldman describes, namely one in which two events C and C* are seen to be nomologically necessary and sufficient for each other, and in which each of them is thought to constitute an explanans for one and the same event E, is an inherently unstable situation. This is so especially when C and C* are each a member of a system of events (or concepts) such that the two systems to which they respectively belong show the kind of systematic nomological connections Goldman envisages for the psychological and the physiological. The instability of the situation generates a strong pressure to find an acceptable account of the relationship between C and C*, and, by extension, that between the two systems to which they belong; the instability is dissipated and a cognitive equilibrium restored when we come to see a more specific relationship between the two explanations. As we shall see, in cases of interest, the specific relationship replacing equivalence will be either identity or some asymmetric dependency relation.

Another way of putting my point would be this: a certain instability exists in a situation in which two distinct events are claimed to be nomologically equivalent causes or explanations of the same phenomenon; stability is restored when equivalence is replaced by identity or some asymmetric relation of dependence. That is, either two explanations (or causes) in effect collapse into one or, if there indeed are two distinct explanations (or causes) here, we must see one of them as dependent on, or derivative from, the other -- or, what is the same, one of them as gaining explanatory or causal dominance over the other.

The tension in this situation that gives rise to the instability can be seen in various ways. First, if C and C* are each a sufficient cause of the event E, then why isn't E overdetermined? It is at best extremely odd to think that each and every bit of action we perform is overdetermined in virtue of having two distinct sufficient causes. To be sure, this differs from the standard case of overdetermination in which the two overdetermining causes are not nomologically connected. But why does the supposed nomological relationship between C and C* void the claim that this is a case of causal overdetermination? Notice the trade-off here: the closer this is to a standard case of overdetermination, the less dependent are the two explanations in relation to each other, and, correlatively, the more one stresses the point that this is not a case of standard overdetermination because of the nomic equivalence between the explanations, the less plausible is one's claim that we have here two distinct and independent explanations.

Second, if C and C* are nomic equivalents, they co-occur as a matter of law -- that is, it is inomologically impossible to have one of these occur without the other. Why then do they not form a single jointly sufficient cause of E rather than two individually sufficient causes? How do we know that each of C and C* is not just a partial cause of E? Why, that is, should we not regard C and C* as forming a single complete explanation of E rather than two separately sufficient explanations of it? How do we decide one way or the other?

When we reflect on the special case of psychophysical causation, where C, let's say, is a psychological event, C* is its physiological correlate, and E is some bodily movement associated with an action, it would be highly implausible to regard C as directly acting on the body to bring about E (e.g., my belief and desire telekinetically acting on the muscles in my arm and shoulder and making them contract, thereby causing my arm to go up); it would be more credible to think that if the belief-desire pair is to cause the movement of my arm, it must "work through" the physical causal chain starting from C*, some neural event in the brain, culminating in a muscle contraction. If this is right, we cannot regard C and C* as constituting independent explanations of E. We must think of the causal efficacy of C in bringing about E as dependent on that of its physical correlate C*.

I believe that these perplexities are removed only when we have an account of the relation between C and C*, the two supposed causes of a single action, and that, as I shall argue, an account that is adequate to this task will show that C and C* could not each constitute a complete and independent explanation of the action.

Jaegwon Kim
"Mechanism, Purpose, and Explanatory Exclusion"
Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays

My two favorite musical passages

In addition to my favorite piece of music, there are also short passages of music that I absolute love. Below are my two favorites. Of course I love the entire pieces in which they appear, and recommend you listen to the whole pieces, since part of what makes these passages so wonderful is the parts they play in the overall pieces.

I've mentioned before that I think Bach is at his best when he writes for solo instruments, and his cello suites are no exception. Here is the prelude to his sixth suite performed by Yo-Yo Ma. The video is kinda freaky. The passage that I love is from 2:55 to 3:04. Prior to this point the piece is in a fairly standard 12/8 time signature (I assume), divided into four beats with three eighth notes per beat: 3 + 3 + 3 + 3. In the passage I love, he divides it up differently: 2 + 5 + 3 + 2. Perhaps the 5 could be divided up as 2 + 3, but I'm not sure. Regardless, this is insane. And no one could have pulled it off except Bach. The man was an absolute genius.



The next piece is the first movement from Mendelssohn's violin concerto in E minor, with Sarah Chang on the violin. In my opinion, Mendelssohn is one of the most underappreciated composers in history; he's famous, but he should be as famous as Mozart and Beethoven. My wife is not as appreciative of the minor keys, but when she heard this she was just in awe: "The violin just sang" she said. The passage I love is from 8:56 to 9:42. Here, you really have to listen to the whole piece because what makes the passage so amazing is that it repeats the main theme from the piece in a different and utterly brilliant format.

Happy Easter

Sorry for the lack of posting, I've been swamped. Given that it's almost Easter, the day when Christians celebrate the resurrection of Christ,* I thought I'd just link to my main posts on Jesus. For more check out the Historical Jesus tag.

William F. Buckley Jr. on Jesus' Resurrection
The Jesus Myth
Your Own Personal Jesus
Re: visions of the Historical Jesus
1 Corinthians 15:3-8
Was Jesus' Resurrection an Urban Legend?
Some Issues in NT Historiography, part 1; part 2; part 3; part 4; part 5
He Is
Craig vs. Spong
The Christ Myth Myth

* Of course, the early church moved the celebration of the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday in recognition of Jesus' resurrection. So Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus every week.

Four Myths about the Crusades

Fascinating article over at First Principles. The one that surprised me was myth number 4, that Muslims held a grudge against Christians and Christianity because of the Crusades. The author points out that, prior to World War I, the Muslim world wasn't that bothered by the Crusades because they had the impression that they won those wars. And really, they pretty much did: they still have Asia Minor (Turkey), they still have northern Africa, they still have Iran, they still had Jerusalem until fairly recently (and they didn't lose it to Christians). What they lost is Al-Andalus (Spain). But all of those places were heavily Christian before the Muslims came, saw, and conquered, so the Christian Crusades were essentially a counter-attack against Muslim aggression. Which, incidentally, is addressed in refuting myth number 1, that the Crusades were an unprovoked attack.

Interview

Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) interviews Jerry Pournelle, one of the great science-fiction authors, here.