Sunday Comic
August 22nd, 2010 
Sunday Comics 
Chris 
3 comments
.
One More Thought on Tenure
August 17th, 2010 Academia Chris 9 comments
Chris Beam has now at Slate contributed to the seemingly endless and somewhat tiresome (lately) list of columns bemoaning tenure and urging for its outright rejection or substantial rethinking. I never find these arguments terribly compelling to say the least, and they often seem to reflect a radical misunderstanding of what academia is. That said, and given that I’ve made my thoughts clear on this issue here numerous times before, I thought I’d add just one more point, below the fold.
Douthat: Moderate Muslim = American Conservative
August 16th, 2010 Politics Chris 4 comments
Ross Douthat has a column up at the New York Times today on the ‘unique situation’ Muslims find themselves in, inside America. It’s not a bad column, though I think he runs off the rails at the end when he makes his ‘take home’ point about the need for Imams to morph into American conservatives if they want to advance their causes. Douthat starts off saying:
There’s an America where it doesn’t matter what language you speak, what god you worship, or how deep your New World roots run. An America where allegiance to the Constitution trumps ethnic differences, language barriers and religious divides. An America where the newest arrival to our shores is no less American than the ever-so-great granddaughter of the Pilgrims
But there’s another America as well, one that understands itself as a distinctive culture, rather than just a set of political propositions. This America speaks English, not Spanish or Chinese or Arabic. It looks back to a particular religious heritage: Protestantism originally, and then a Judeo-Christian consensus that accommodated Jews and Catholics as well. It draws its social norms from the mores of the Anglo-Saxon diaspora — and it expects new arrivals to assimilate themselves to these norms, and quickly.
I agree with Douthat so far – as a matter of fact, I argued this same point in one of the mosque-oriented threads here over the last week or two. One America is procedural/governmental, the other is cultural. In my view, the first is an essential part of America, the latter is not. The latter part could very well change in the future without America suffering any harm.
So far so good, but Douthat has more to say.
Nivison on Virtue
August 12th, 2010 Analects, Chinese Philosophy, Mencius Chris 8 comments
One issue that comes up for me when I am thinking about virtue in a philosophical way is the distinction between thinking of virtue as a power or as a disposition. Simply, if virtue is a disposition, it is an inner capacity towards virtue. If it is a power, it is more than a disposition – it is also a capacity to elicit changes in other things under particular circumstances. If virtue is a disposition, it means that Joe is, in the right circumstances, likely to be generous to Sally (say if he perceives that she is in need of help). Sally need not be responsive to Joe in return in order for us to say that Joe is generous in a virtuous way. If virtue is a power, it is more: Joe’s virtuous actions have an effect on Sally — she becomes disposed to act in certain virtuous ways towards Joe (in whatever way), or perhaps it causes her to be generous to someone else. Most people tend to think of virtue as a disposition only, and think that if it leads to virtuous behavior on Sally’s part, that’s all well and good, but it’s not required to say that Joe (in this case)jhimself was truly virtuous. Some disagree, as does Nivison apparently.
Religious Freedom in America, Ctd
August 12th, 2010 Politics Chris 8 comments
Devil’s Advocate, a frequent commenter here, kindly passed along to me this WSJ (below) piece that picks up and develops the general arguments Newt Gingrich used regarding the lower-Manhattan Cordoba mosque controversy. Below I’ve copied the editorial itself (since the WSJ requires a subscription) and I’ve then put my comments below it (they are also at the bottom of the Newt Gingrich on Religious Freedom thread, but I’m putting them here so they don’t get buried). See below!
Confucianism, Take Three
August 9th, 2010 Analects, China, Chinese Philosophy, Mencius, Xunzi Chris 5 comments
This is the third time I’ve taught my stand-alone Confucianism seminar course. Each time I’ve taught it, I’ve enjoyed the course a great deal, as have the students. Yet each time I do it, I change the course substantially from the previous time. I can only guess that each change (looking back) seems to reflect what I’m interested in at the time, as my interests in Confucianism and the angles I take on it do seem to change from year to year.
The first time I taught it, I employed a hard-core virtue ethics perspective. We read Slote’s Morals from Motives, Hursthouse’s Virtue Ethics, a few articles, and then read the Analects very closely with an eye to figuring out whether it fit in the virtue tradition. The second time I taught it, we read the Analects alongside Hall and Ames’ Thinking through Confucius. This third time, it is different yet again. See below.
Questions with Scary Answers
August 8th, 2010 Politics Chris 19 comments
Sullivan posted a reader email over the subject of the Muslim building (convention center/mosque) proposed for near ground zero. I’ve already made my thoughts on this clear elsewhere in the blog, so I won’t repeat my pro-arguments here. However, I thought Sullivan’s reader’s letter was a strong one, and was worth reprinting here without further comment, below the fold.
Wikipedia’s Epistemic Nihilism
August 7th, 2010 Miscellaneous, philosophy Chris 7 comments
Sullivan first quotes from the founder of Wikipedia:
There’s a whole worldview that’s shared by many programmers – although not all of them, of course – and by many young intellectuals that I characterize as “epistemic egalitarianism.” They’re greatly offended by the idea that anyone might be regarded as more reliable on a given topic than everyone else. They feel that for everything to be as fair as possible and equal as possible, the only thing that ought to matter is the content [of a claim] itself, not its source.
Right after that, he (Sullivan) comments: “This is a flaw? Give me epistemic egalitarianism over a propensity for authoritah.”
Is Sullivan serious? I mean sure, _if_ the claim here is that “if I had to choose one over the other exclusively, which would I want?” You’d want the claim out there for people to judge for themselves (which most times will require taking the claim and checking with sources independently), as opposed to some source simply telling you “I know what’s right.”
But we’re not being presented with an either/or. Instead, we have the claim that anyone is just as qualified as anyone else to assess the truth value of a claim as anyone else. That’s nuts. What you want is a level – at some point — of quality control that consists of actual experts. You can have it such that no one expert’s judgment is conclusive. As a corporate body they can make changes to additions made by non-experts, disagree, and so on.
But to leave the content and the content quality control completely up to people who have no expertise – because there really isn’t such a thing as expertise – is crazy. That’s not knowledge, it’s the collective opinions of the masses. We should be looking for a middle ground between the non-expert and the expert. That’s what should make Wikipedia different. It shouldn’t be different because it embraces in practice epistemic nihilism.
Mission 14: Calzones
August 1st, 2010 Goombah Gourmet Chris 4 comments
Calzones are good. I’m not sure how present calzones are in pizzerias around the US, but they are pretty common in the New York ones. When I made this batch I was leery that they wouldn’t come out well, but really it’s a matter of making the dough right (I’ve already got this down, see my various bread posts) and then adding the right ingredients. It’s not too hard, but there are some tricky points here and there in the process.
Economic Humility
July 26th, 2010 Politics Chris 2 comments
Sullivan quote from Mankiw:
The question for economists now is whether the administration’s assumptions, and the model based on them, were correct. After all, if we could be sure their model was right, we would know what to conclude when their stimulus plan was followed by 10% unemployment: The patient was sicker than they thought, and unemployment would surely have been higher still if not for the stimulus. (Indeed, since Obama’s advisors do believe their model was right, this is the conclusion they have reached.) The trouble is, we have no way of knowing for sure if the model was in fact correct. To react to a model’s failure to predict events accurately by insisting that the model was nonetheless right — as Obama’s economic advisors have done — is hardly the most obvious course. Careful economists should instead respond with humility. When their predictions fail — as they often do — they should not dig in their heels, but should instead be willing to go back to their starting assumptions and question their validity.
Mankiw seems to be confusing two groups of people and then drawing an illicit conclusion. I mean sure, if it’s true that “we have no way of knowing for sure if the model was in fact correct” then _economists qua economists_ should be “humble” and wonder if their basic assumptions were right, or if they simply misread the initial conditions of the practical application of their theory. But Mankiw’s not talking about “economists qua economists”. He’s talking about the President’s economic advisers, and they are part of a political team. In a political climate where even the slightest “humility” about basic assumptions would be met with a constant barrage of unrelenting attack segments on programs on FOX news and talk radio, you are left naturally scoffing at Mankiw’s ivory tower advice. Essentially, there’s a further “economic” variable at play here: the cost/benefit analysis of humility in a massively angry, divisive and partisan context. It’s easy to say what that calculation yielded: zero gain, total cost. Would I prefer a political climate where both sides have more economic humility? Sure, but where humility is read as weakness, don’t hold your breath.
Newt on Religious Freedom
July 22nd, 2010 Politics Chris 14 comments
Newt Gingrich on what grounds religious freedom in the United States:
There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.
Is Newt being serious? I’ll admit, I’ve never been much of a fan of his, but I used to think that Newt was a smart guy and had at least some scruples about not putting forward completely crazy ideas meant just for red-meat base consumption. Times are a changin’, I guess.
Frum on Breitbart
July 21st, 2010 Politics Chris 9 comments
David Frum has a particularly good column on Andrew Breitbart’s latest immoral behavior with respect to the Shirley Sherrod incident. This case is particularly sickening, I think. Not the original attempt to out her as a racist, as if it were true she would deserve to be taken down. It’s the moral righteousness of those who now know it was not only false, but know the tape was doctored. No apologies, no regrets, no nothing. They stand by it. No problem at all. Are there people like this on the left? I’m sure there are. Although Frum uses the column to go after the collective conservative outfit, my point here is not political. It is simply that this behavior is despicable and it blows my mind that media outfits continue to invite these lowlifes on to peddle their nonsense, giving them more incentive to do it again, and again, and again.
I should also add that I’m not particularly enamored of the NAACP’s reaction to the story, nor the Department of Agriculture’s reaction (which I’m going to guess came from the top). Cowardly to the core.
Mission 13: White Pizza
July 15th, 2010 Goombah Gourmet Chris 1 comment
White pizza is not that easy to find, even if you are in New York. Only some places make it, and even when they do, it’s not typically out and under the glass for a quick order. On top of that, only a handful of places make it well. Why white pizza never caught on in popularity, I’m not sure. It really is a different experience from red pizza, as it substitutes red sauce for a white cream sauce, and it replaces mozzarella for ricotta. Kids don’t like it much (my 5 year old has deemed white pizza “gross” on sight alone — without ever tasting a bite). I like it, but I can see why it is not for everyone. It’s not the kind off pizza you make every time or even a majority of the time, but you should once in a while just to break things up. Still, it’s tricky to get it right. White pizza can be dry and plain tasting, so you need to tweak it to get it to taste just right.
