Quick science news

1. Dr Fatima Ebrahimi has invented a new fusion rocket thruster concept which could power humans to Mars and beyond.

2. A team of researchers led by scientists at Tel Aviv University say they may have stumbled upon the “Achilles’ heel” of cancer cells, which could in the future lead to the development of an entirely new array of cancer drugs and treatments.

Kwisatz Haderach, give the dog a bone ...

They've actually discovered there were giant prehistoric sand worms. "Giant" meaning about two meters long. They were predatory, lived on the ocean floor, and existed about 20 million years ago. The spice must flow.

Two devastating reviews

 First, David Albert's review of A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing by Lawrence Krauss. Here's a link to the review and here's an excerpt from the end of it:

 

When I was growing up, where I was growing up, there was a critique of religion according to which religion was cruel, and a lie, and a mechanism of enslavement, and something full of loathing and contempt for every­thing essentially human. Maybe that was true and maybe it wasn’t, but it had to do with important things — it had to do, that is, with history, and with suffering, and with the hope of a better world — and it seems like a pity, and more than a pity, and worse than a pity, with all that in the back of one’s head, to think that all that gets offered to us now, by guys like these, in books like this, is the pale, small, silly, nerdy accusation that religion is, I don’t know, dumb.

 

Second, Edward Feser's review of From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds by Daniel Dennett. Here's a link to the review and here's an excerpt from the beginning of it:

 

How do you get blood from a stone? Easy. Start by redefining “blood” to mean “a variety of stone.” Next, maintaining as straight a face as possible, dramatically expound upon some trivial respect in which stone is similar to blood. For example, describe how, when a red stone is pulverized and stirred into water, the resulting mixture looks sort of like blood. Condescendingly roll your eyes at your incredulous listener’s insistence that there are other and more important respects in which stone and blood are dissimilar. Accuse him of obscurantism and bad faith. Finally, wax erudite about the latest research in mineralogy, insinuating that it somehow shows that to reject your thesis is to reject Science Itself.

Of course, no one would be fooled by so farcical a procedure. But substitute “mind” for “blood” and “matter” for “stone,” and you have the recipe for Daniel Dennett’s From Bacteria to Bach and Back.

Ouchie. 

The Argument from Reason

Quote of the Day

I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they're not true. And whenever their weakness is exposed, the people who prefer tyranny make capital out of the exposure. I find that they're not true without looking further than myself. I don't deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. Nor do most people -- all the people who believe advertisements, and think in catchwords and spread rumours. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.

C.S. Lewis
"Equality"
In Present Concerns

Ho-lee crap

OK, I don't write much about political events, but some Trump fanatics have stormed the Capitol building today when they were about to officially count up the electoral votes. Even if you think the election was stolen, this is not the way to go about "fixing" it, or whatever it is you're trying to do. At some point you have to respect the wishes of all those people who disagree with you and voted contrary to the way you did. If just a thousand people conspired to give the presidency to someone that no one else wanted -- that would be one thing. But tens of millions of people didn't want Trump to be re-elected. These are your fellow citizens. And "they didn't show that respect to us when the shoe was on the other foot" isn't an argument. That's just to swap out the Golden Rule for the Brass Rule.

Your next purchase

My first book just came out in paperback. It's almost affordable now.

Quentin Smith

I just learned that Quentin Smith passed away last month. He was an atheist philosopher that I respected greatly, despite his controversial claims about Kripke. Smith fully accepted Big Bang cosmology, but argued that the best explanation of it is that the universe just popped into existence without any kind of cause. In case this sounds like the theistic doctrine of creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing), the difference is that theism maintains that the universe has a cause -- God, in case you were wondering -- but that there was not some pre-existent "stuff" that the universe was made out of. That is, God didn't create the universe out of something else that was already there, he created the stuff itself. So the difference is in saying the universe has an efficient cause but no material cause (theism) and saying that it has neither (Smith). I find this implausible in the extreme, but Smith gave as good a defense of this as can be done. It's impressive. Adolf Grünbaum, a more famous philosopher of science, argued the same thing, but much less convincingly. Smith and William Lane Craig debated a few times (and were apparently friends) and they published a book together highlighting their disagreements, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology.

Quote of the Day

The idea of national repentance seems at first sight to provide such an edifying contrast to the national self-righteousness of which England is so often accused and with which she entered (or is said to have entered) the last war, that a Christian naturally turns to it with hope. Young Christians especially -- last-year undergraduates and first-year curates -- are turning to it in large numbers. They are ready to believe that England bears part of the guilt for the present war, and ready to admit their own share in the guilt of England. What that share is, I do not find it easy to determine. Most of these young men were children, and none of them had a vote or the experience which would enable them to use a vote wisely, when England made many of those decisions to which the present disorders could plausibly be traced. Are they, perhaps, repenting what they have in no sense done?

If they are, it might be supposed that their error is very harmless: men fail so often to repent their real sins that the occasional repentance of an imaginary sin might appear almost desirable. But what actually happens (I have watched it happening) to the youthful national penitent is a little more complicated than that. England is not a natural agent, but a civil society. When we speak of England's actions we mean the actions of the British Government. The young man who is called upon to repent of England's foreign policy is really being called upon to repent the acts of his neighbour; for a Foreign Secretary or a Cabinet Minister is certainly a neighbour. And repentance presupposes condemnation. The first and fatal charm of national repentance is, therefore, the encouragement it gives us to turn from the bitter task of repenting our own sins to the congenial one of bewailing -- but, first, of denouncing -- the conduct of others. If it were clear to the young that this is what he is doing, no doubt he would remember the law of charity. Unfortunately the very terms in which national repentance is recommended to him conceal its true nature. By a dangerous figure of speech, he calls the Government not 'they' but 'we'. And since, as penitents, we are not encouraged to be charitable to our own sins, nor to give ourselves the benefit of any doubt, a Government which is called 'we' is ipso facto placed beyond the sphere of charity or even of justice. You can say anything you please about it. You can indulge in the popular vice of detraction without restraint, and yet feel all the time that you are practising contrition. A group of such young penitents will say, 'Let us repent our national sins'; what they mean is, 'Let us attribute to our neighbour (even our Christian neighbour) in the Cabinet, whenever we disagree with him, every abominable motive that Satan can suggest to our fancy.'

Such an escape from personal repentance into that tempting region

Where passions have the privilege to work
And never hear the sound of their own names,

would be welcome to the moral cowardice of anyone. But it is doubly attractive to the young intellectual. When a man over forty tries to repent the sins of England to love her enemies, he is attempting something costly; for he was brought up to certain patriotic sentiments which cannot be mortified without a struggle. But an educated man who is now in his twenties usually has no such sentiment to mortify. In art, in literature, in politics, he has been, ever since he can remember, one of an angry and restless minority; he has drunk in almost with his mother's milk a distrust of English statesmen and a contempt for the manners, pleasures, and enthusiasms of his less-educated fellow countrymen. All Christians know that they must forgive their enemies. But 'my enemy' primarily means the man whom I am really tempted to hate and traduce. If you listen to the young Christian intellectuals talking, you will soon find out who their real enemy is. He seems to have two names -- Colonel Blimp and 'the business-man'. I suspect that the latter usually means the speaker's father, but that is speculation. What is certain is that in asking such people to forgive the Germans and Russians and to open their eyes to the sins of England, you are asking them, not to mortify, but to indulge, their ruling passion. I do not mean that what you are asking them is not right and necessary in itself; we must forgive all our enemies or be damned. But it is emphatically not the exhortation which your audience needs. The communal sins which they should be told to repent are those of their own age and class -- its contempt for the uneducated, its readiness to suspect evil, its self-righteous provocations of public obloquy, its breaches of the Fifth Commandment. Of these sins I have heard nothing among them. Till I do, I must think their candour towards the national enemy a rather inexpensive virtue. If a man cannot forgive the Colonel Blimp next door whom he has seen, how shall he forgive the Dictators whom he hath not seen?

C.S. Lewis
"Dangers of National Repentance"
In God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics

Right to left, left to right

Some people on the political left in the United States accuse the political right, or particular facets of it, of being Nazis and Fascists. The political right usually responds that both the Nazis and Fascists were effectively socialists, and therefore creatures of the left. My impression of this -- and that's all it is, I'm not a political thinker -- is that Europe and the USA define left and right differently. More specifically, the defining characteristic of left and right differ. Obviously, both sides have numerous elements, they exist on a spectrum rather than as mere points, so I'm radically simplifying the issue in what I'm about to say. Also, I'm not suggesting my comments are definitive or anything. It's my general impression; that's all.

My impression is that, in Europe, the definitive criterion of the political left is that they favor using government resources to pursue international concerns. The primary criterion of the political right is that they favor using government resources to pursue national concerns. The further right you are, the more you pursue national concerns until you get to the nationalist scenario that Hitler and Mussolini advocated. So by European definitions, Nazism and Fascism are extreme right-wing ideologies, whereas Communism is extreme left-wing.

My impression is that, in the United States, the definitive criterion of the political left is that they favor using government resources, period. The primary criterion of the political right is that they don't favor using government resources, period. The less government power you want, they further to the right you are. And Hitler and Mussolini advocated overwhelming degrees of government control over every element of society. As Mussolini put it, "Everything within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State." Since they advocated for complete or almost-complete government control over society, by American definitions, Nazism and Fascism and Communism are all extreme left-wing ideologies.

Like I said, this is a radical simplification of the issues. Obviously, the political right in America is often patriotic or even nationalistic, at least much more so than the political left. But I think the issue of how big the government should be, how much control it should have, is the primary element of the left and the right in the United States. The American political left says the Nazism is NATIONALIST socialism while the American political right says Nazism is nationalist SOCIALISM. (Communism is international socialism.) Given their definitions, the political right sees socialism as the damning trait that applies to Communism, Nazism, and Fascism. The political left sees nationalism as the damning trait that applies to Nazism and Fascism, but many have a positive opinion of socialism, and even communism.

It's interesting that the furthest you can go to the political left is communism -- complete government control -- and the furthest you can go to the right is anarchism -- no government control. And who do you see protesting together? The communists and the anarchists. So the political divide isn't a spectrum after all, it's a circle with the extremists meeting at the top. Or, maybe, the bottom.

The greatest scene in cinematic history

When both sides accuse the other of a coup d'état

Just in case it isn't clear, Calvin is the Democrat; Hobbes is the Republican -- except according to Rasmussen 25% of Republicans agree with Calvin that the election wasn't rigged and 30% of Democrats agree with Hobbes that it was.

Here's the original comic.

The Knowledge Argument

Say there's a woman named Mary who has monochromacy, or black/white color blindness, so that everything looks like a black and white film. Despite this disadvantage, Mary becomes a celebrated neurologist, and actually the foremost expert on color perception. She knows exactly what is happening in the brain when someone sees the color blue, for example, even though she can't see it herself.

Anyhoo, one day Mary is sitting underneath a tree reading a book about Isaac Newton when an apple falls on her head and momentarily knocks her out. When she wakes up her monochromacy is gone: she can see the green grass, she can see purple mountain majesties, and she can see the clear blue sky. She had never seen these colors before. She had never known what "blue" looks like. But she knew everything that happened in the brain when someone experienced the color blue. So the question is: does Mary know something now that she didn't know before? This is the Knowledge Argument.

This isn't as easy to answer as you might think. I've been asking my students this for years and it's usually a split vote. One point to make here is that knowing what blue looks like wouldn't be propositional knowledge, but does it count as knowledge then? Some people think it's obvious Mary knows something that she didn't know before (what blue looks like) and others think it's obvious she doesn't.

The issue here is about qualia (singular: qualium), the "what it's like" experiences. Thomas Nagel wrote an essay called "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" which really brought this point home. Many philosophers of mind say that qualia are the heart and soul of the mind, and even human life in general. But the problem is that qualia can't be quantified and are effectively invisible to science. Science seeks to explain things from a third person perspective, but qualia are intrinsically first person in nature. Mary could describe color perception from a third person perspective but with no awareness of the qualium "what blue looks like". So the reason this is important is that, if Mary knows something after seeing the color blue that she did not know before, then there are important things -- foundational, fundamental things -- that science cannot address. If you had a complete physical, scientific description of the entire universe, it would be intrinsically incomplete, since it would not include qualia.

Moreover, the third person perspective is derived from the first person: to describe something from the third is to observe it from another standpoint, but ultimately this just means to observe it from what a first person perspective from that other standpoint would be. There can be no (to reference another Nagel work) view from nowhere. So science is utterly dependent on the first person perspective, and thus qualia, but cannot address them.

Naturally, all this is controversial. Some philosophers of mind, like Daniel Dennett, deny the reality of qualia. The philosopher who came up with the Knowledge Argument, Frank Jackson, eventually changed his mind about it because of the implications it had, viz., that there is more to reality than the physical world. Jaegwon Kim, who gives Nagel a run for his money as the greatest living philosopher in my opinion, fully accepts the reality of qualia and their centrality in human life, but still defends physicalism: see his books Mind in a Physical World and Physicalism, or Something Near Enough. And there's a collection of some of the most important essays about the Knowledge Argument which has the unfortunate title There's Something about Mary. So now you know what to read during the quarantine.

Your eyes are the darkest shade of light gray I've ever seen . . .

Quote of the Day

I do not define the essence of religion as belief in God and immortality. Judaism in its earlier stages had no belief in immortality, and for a long time no belief which was religiously relevant. The shadowy existence of the ghost in Sheol was one of which Jehovah took no account and which took no account of Jehovah. In Sheol all things are forgotten. The religion was centered on the ritual and ethical demands of Jehovah in the present life, and also, of course, on benefits expected from Him. These benefits are often merely worldly benefits (grandchildren and peace upon Israel), but a more specifically religious note is repeatedly struck. The Jew is athirst for the living God, he delights in His laws as in honey or treasure, he is conscious of himself in Jehovah's presence as unclean of lips and heart. The glory or splendor of God is worshiped for its own sake. In Buddhism, on the other hand, we find that a doctrine of immortality is central, while there is nothing specifically religious. Salvation from immortality, deliverance from reincarnation, is the very core of its message. The existence of the gods is not necessarily decried, but it is of no religious significance. In Stoicism again both the religious quality and the belief in immortality are variables, but they do not vary in direct ratio. Even within Christianity itself we find a striking expression, not without influence from Stoicism, of the subordinate position of immortality. When Henry More ends a poem on the spiritual life by saying that if, after all, he should turn out to be mortal he would be

"... satisfide
A lonesome mortall God t' have died."

From my own point of view, the example of Judaism and Buddhism is of immense importance. The system, which is meaningless without a doctrine of immortality, regards immortality as a nightmare, not as a prize. The religion which, of all ancient religions, is most specifically religious, that is, at once most ethical and most numinous, is hardly interested in the question. Believing, as I do, that Jehovah is a real being, indeed the ens realissimum, I cannot sufficiently admire the divine tact of thus training the chosen race for centuries in religion before even hinting the shining secret of eternal life. He behaves like the rich lover in a romance who woos the maiden on his own merits, disguised as a poor man, and only when he has won her reveals that he has a throne and palace to offer. For I cannot help thinking that any religion which begins with a thirst for immortality is damned, as a religion, from the outset. Until a certain spiritual level has been reached, the promise of immortality will always operate as a bribe which vitiates the whole religion and infinitely inflames those very self-regards which religion must cutdown and uproot. For the essence of religion, in my view, is the thirst for an end higher than natural ends; the finite self's desire for, and acquiescence in, and self-rejection in favor of, an object wholly good and wholly good for it. That the self-rejection will turn out to be also a self-finding, that bread cast upon the waters will be found after many days, that to die is to live -- these are sacred paradoxes of which the human race must not be told too soon.

C.S. Lewis

"Religion without Dogma?"

In God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics

Recycle

Here's an article about a space company that plans to use the many discarded upper stages of rockets in orbit to make commercial space stations. That's awesome.

My posts on space science here are not consistent. I wrote a bit ago about a spacecraft that was going to momentarily touch down on a freaking asteroid, gather some stuff up, and then return to Earth. Then it actually did so, got more stuff than it was anticipating, everything's going great, and I didn't post about it. Not to mention the claims that they found some chemicals in Venus's atmosphere that, in our experience, are only produced by life, although it's possible for them to be produced by other processes. Didn't post on it. You'll notice I'm not providing links to those stories either. That's because it would have required effort on my part.