JV PhiloBlog

Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/morals/index.shtml

A ten minute test of your attitudes about morality and social responsibility, it is claimed. Thanks to Sarah Comeras for finding this.

Here is what FactCheck, a web site of the Associated Press, tells us about the remarks of the chair of the Senate Judicial Committee at the Sotomayor confirmation hearings:

Sotomayor Defends ‘Wise Latina’ Remark

WASHINGTON (AP) - In endorsing Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D. Vt.) did some creative rewriting of history. And he put quote marks around it.

Trying to head off criticism of a controversial comment, Leahy misquoted Sotomayor's own words in kicking off the second day of her confirmation hearings.

Sotomayor's public comments are as much a part of the hearings as her lengthy judicial record. Here's a look at some of the claims made Tuesday about those comments, and the facts.

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LEAHY SAID: "You said that, quote, you 'would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would reach wise decisions.'"

THE FACTS: If that's all Sotomayor said, the quote would barely have mattered to opponents of her nomination. The actual quote, delivered in a 2001 speech to law students at the University of California at Berkeley, was: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Leahy's revision dropped the controversial part of the phrase, the part that has attracted charges of reverse racism.

Sotomayor said her words have been misunderstood. She said she intended to tell students that their experiences would enrich the legal system. But she softened her language Tuesday, say that no ethnic, racial or gender group has an advantage in judging.

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Question: Was this an honest mistake? Or is Leahy, a lawyer and a long time Senator at the top of his game, consciously distorting the quotation for public consumption? He knows that most Americans will have no idea of what was actually said. Senator Leahy would hope that for at least that portion of his audience, he can make his mortal enemies, the Republicans, look like mean-spirited racists in opposing Judge Sotomayor. And the Democrats get to look good as defenders of womanhood and ethnic minorities. Shrewd move.

Which interpretation, theory, logos, seems more likely?

Note on Occam's Razor. The principle says that when we have two different explanations and each explains the evidence equally well, then on principle we should choose choose the simpler, the one that requires fewer additional hypotheses.

OK. But which theory is simpler? A lawyer of Senator Leahy's intelligence and skill knows better than to be careless about a quotation. In law school, he would be punished for such antics. To believe that such a man could be so careless might require MORE complications that to believe that he is simply an astute but very partisan and slightly dishonest person.

A rambling question or two:

Are babies wise? Does it make sense to say that one baby has more wisdom than another?

If not, what does that suggest about wisdom?

or consider this:

I think it was Chief Sumhalla who told a white man who asked him about the wisdom he claimed for the Indians that “Wisdom comes in dreams.” He added that “Much also may be learned by watching a dreamer at night or in dancing all night.” What do you make of that? How does that compare with what Nils Rauhut says about the philosophical activities in the Western tradition?

Is rationality the key to wisdom? Or is intuition also a source of real knowledge?

(The old head vs. heart debate. In Christendom, a similar argument was "Mary vs. Martha": when Jesus visited, one was the active cook while the other was the listener to the words of Jesus. They came to re present the dichotomy of the //via activa// (the active, involved life) and the //via contempliva// (the withdrawn, thoughtful life), the doing good in the world vs. the going to a monastery or convent. The debate raged for centuries. (The communist picked it up–they massacred the priests and nuns in Tibet for being “parasites” who did not contribute to society but merely meditated all day while eating the gifts from the farmers, whom the communists regarded as dupes.)

Aristotle thought the life of contemplation the best possible life.

Babies are learners for sure, but do they contemplate? If not, can they be wise?

Link: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Linguistics-and-Philosophy/24-01Spring-2006/LectureNotes/index.htm

MIT has begun an open education project: many of their great courses have been put online for anyone to follow. You get the syllabus, the assignments, the readings, the lecture notes, the tests. Prof. Rae Langton's survey of classics in Western Philosophy is online. You can download the pdf files of the lecture note here:
[[Great Lecture Notes | http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Linguistics-and-Philosophy/24-01Spring-2006/LectureNotes/index.htm]]

Here is the first blog entry.

Here is how the BBC reports civil strife in Bolivia:

Opposition groups want greater autonomy as well as more control over revenues of natural gas in their areas.

They object to Mr Morales's plans to give more power to the country's indigenous and poor communities, by carrying out land reform and redistributing gas revenues.

This is badly punctuated and badly worded. What is meant by "land reform"? If you do not know, then this is bad writing because it fails to inform. It might be worse. If "land reform" turns out to mean confiscating people's property, then the failure to explain is not a sign of incompetence but of malicious intent to deceive. It would be a case of equivocation, colloquially known as "spin" or "whitewash."

Oh, and the comma makes it sound like the opposition's way of objecting to Marales's plan is to carry out land reform and redistribute gas revenues. That is not what the writer means, of course.

It seems that Mr. Morales is planning to take control of property in order to redistribute it. He says this will "empower" the indigenous poor. It certainly will empower him. Whether the poor see any benefits is something to keep your eye on.