Our son was born this afternoon. His name is Abel Barnaby.
Likely nicknames: Abe, Abey, Abey Baby, Abey Barney. His pre-natal name, “Pip,” might stick for a while. His cousin, Ada, is fond of that name.
Anyway, there’s no reversing the decision. The paperwork has been submitted.
Samuel was adamant: His little brother was to be called Abel; he was to be born in December, not in late November as his parents hoped. Oh, how glad Sammy was on Dec. 1 when I told him “Pip” definitely wouldn’t be born in November!
Daniel’s feelings are unknown. He’s a cheerful little boy, though, so I am hopeful.
The two big brothers are at home with their grandparents. Abel is with Karin & me in the hospital. The three brothers will meet tomorrow or the next day.
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“Abel” is spelled the same in English and Spanish. It’s a simple and recognizable name, if not a common one.
The namesake came to grief, but he is honored in the Old and New Testaments.
As for “Barnaby” … well, there’s the biblical Barnabas, another fine person; there’s D.C.I. Tom Barnaby of Midsomer Murders; and there’s Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge, which opens with this sentence:
In the year 1775, there stood upon the borders of Epping Forest, at a distance of about twelve miles from London – measuring from the Standard in Cornhill, or rather from the spot on or near to which the Standard used to be in days of yore – a house of public entertainment called the Maypole; which fact was demonstrated to all such travellers as could neither read nor write (and at that time a vast number both of travellers and stay-at-homes were in this condition) by the emblem reared on the roadside over against the house, which, if not of those goodly proportions that Maypoles were wont to present in olden times, was a fair young ash, thirty feet in height, and straight as any arrow that ever English yeoman drew.
Of the titular character, I know nothing; but the sentence is worthy of commemoration.
It’s late and I’m exhausted. Details and pics will follow. Just know that Karin is well; Abel is well; I love him; and he sleeps peacefully and preciously, wrapped up like a burrito.
I guess it’s all right, now, to disclose that Ana, David, Ada, George, and Russell (the dog) have sold their house in Texas and will move to South Bend this weekend. So, we siblings – John-Paul, David, Mary, and Stephen – and our respective households, as well as our parents, will all have settled in the same metro area (two adjacent cities) for the first time since 2000 (the previous millennium). Odd to think that South Bend/Mishawaka, and not, say, Quito, Esmeraldas, Guayaquil, or even Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, should have proved our stubbornest anchor. It’s not as if our ancestors hailed from this part of the state. My dad’s dad grew up closer to Lafayette; my dad’s mom, closer to Fort Wayne. They never lived together in the South Bend area. (Neither of my mom’s parents was a Hoosier.) My parents got together as students in Chicagoland. They became missionaries, moved to Ecuador, had their children, and spent furloughs in Illinois (twice) and Missouri. They – we – never all lived together in Indiana.
But, soon, we shall.
I’ve lived some fifteen years, off and on, in the state. Hoosiers still seem strange to me. Not as horrifying as Missourians – whom I think I actually understand better – but less relatable than, say, Upstate New Yorkers, and not nearly as endearing as Minnesotans or Wisconsinites.
I look at the institutions and positions that confer prestige here, and think, that doesn’t appeal to me at all. But then, I might think that anywhere.
I look at what people here do for enjoyment, and think, that doesn’t appeal to me, either. That’s worse.
I think how, last year, a chicken trapped itself in our yard, and the officer who removed it told me it was a gamecock. This weekend we had friends – Michiganders I’d known in Quito – in the yard. We heard roosters crowing, and I thought, I may not approve of cockfighting, but my heart is warmed to know it’s practiced in the neighborhood where I now live.
A satisfactory little vacation in Austin. I’ve done what I said I’d do, except I haven’t ridden the bus.
I’m about to finish reading my second book.
David took me to a good Colombian restaurant in East Austin, the seedy-but-gentrifying part of town. He lives in a much-nicer-but-also-gentrifying part of town. I gather there are other neighborhoods that leave his in the dust.
My legs are sore because yesterday I hiked through a stony, scrubby forest. I’m no birdwatcher, but I was delighted when a roadrunner crossed my path. It was an idyllic morning – except that the freeway traffic near the forest was very loud.
Back where Ana & David live, we did a little tour of the Halloween decorations.
Ada, my neice, is a chatterbox. She is keen to describe all the neighborhood calaveras (skulls). She tells us about Ellison, her imaginary older sister.
George, my nephew, likes to be read to and to dribble the soccer ball around the house.
We watched Ecuador play awfully against Bolivia. To our intense relief, Ecuador scored the winning goal in the last minute. Afterward, David and I listed four or five players whom we never want to see again. The commentator was a nice man from South Africa or maybe New Zealand who clearly knew little about South American soccer or soccer in general. By the end of the game, even he was remarking on how poor these players were, and David and I were warming up to him.
The other notable result was that Venezuela rescued a point in Brazil thanks to a late bicycle-kick goal. The Brazilians were very angry.
A dead racoon lay in the middle of our street, in front of our house. Someone put a traffic cone next to it to alert passing cars. The racoon remained there for many hours.
No city official collected the racoon.
Our next-door neighbors – jovial young men – held a memorial service for the racoon and buried it in their back yard. I applaud the sentiment but worry. Scent of racoon attracts more racoon.
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It’s chilly in the house. Our brand-new furnace provided heat for two days. Then it quit.
Not that I’ll be affected much. Repairs have been comissioned, and meanwhile I’ll fly to Texas to visit David, Ana, Ada, George, and Russell (the dog). The forecast there is for temperatures in the 70s and 80s, F.
Ana & David have jobs, and Ada and George go to day-care, so I’ll have time to myself. I intend to walk, ride the bus, eat, and read – things I used to do when I was a bachelor. I’ve pared down my cargo to these texts:
The Bible
Daphne Du Maurier, Don’t Look Now: Stories (I’ll probably just read one or two longish ones)
R. M. Dworkin, ed., The Philosophy of Law (probably just one or two articles)
Dolores Hitchens, Sleep with Strangers (unless I finish it tonight)
Alasdair MacIntyre, The Unconscious
Ronald Hugh Morrieson, The Scarecrow
I’ll use the Internet to continue reading Macbeth.
So, in addition to Scripture: texts of criminality, deviance, and buried desire. My usual seasonal fare.
Ecuador and Bolivia will play in La Paz on Thursday. David and I will watch that game together.
We aren’t very sick anymore. I have to blow my nose a lot, but that’s the extent of it.
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Last night, we saw a mouse in our basement. Get it, Jasper!, we said.
A little later, we saw our champion mouser trotting along, his mouth full, a bit of brown fuzz dangling out of it. Karin followed after Jasper with an empty potato-salad container. He tried to escape into one of his hidey-holes to play with his prize, but Karin caught him and he grudgingly released the limp thing.
It was a plastic toy. The bit of fuzz was a dust bunny. We didn’t see the mouse again.
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This, at last, is shaping up to be the August when I read all of Light in August.
A warm welcome to George, my nephew, born yesterday to Ana & David. My mom is in Texas with them. She looks after little Ada and the dog, Russell, while Ana, David, and George are in the hospital.
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A synopsis (not by me) of Rats in the Ranks.
Each year, as part of the democratic process all over Australia, local councillors meet to elect a mayor to lead their council for the next year. Rats in the Ranks tells the story of this process in the Leichhardt council area of Sydney in 1994. Every September, the Leichhardt council meets to elect one of their twelve members as the Mayor and another for Deputy Mayor for the following year. The election is rarely a straightforward affair.
In 1994, the current mayor, Larry Hand, was popular with the local citizens, but they don’t vote for the mayor, the councillors do – and after three years of Larry, some of them were after his job.
In Rats in the Ranks, filmmakers Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson trace the story of the struggle for the mayoralty. They had extraordinary access to the councillors who were willing for the story to be filmed in the lead up to the election.
Arms are twisted, favours are called in, people are double-crossed, damaging stories are leaked to the media and deals are done. But right up to the vote, no one knows how the numbers will stick and who will walk away from the election as mayor.
missed out on a nomination in the “best documentary” category and most other categories at the 1996 [Australian Film Institute] Awards. …
The film’s failure to make it past a pre-selection jury into general membership voting became part of a larger ongoing controversy about the AFI Awards, and eventually led to a change to the AFI’s voting system. This was the year that the AFI Awards reached the level of contempt usually reserved for the Academy Awards.
(The last sentence is a bonus, I guess.)
The documentary is basically C.P. Snow’s The Masters, with this difference: the scheming Cambridge dons of that novel are conscientious and gentle souls next to the professional politicians of Rats in the Ranks. In what follows, I’ll not reveal the outcome of the election, but I shall describe some of its participants. My opinions of these people changed as I viewed the movie. Here I’ll present my final character assessments. I thought hard about whether I could cheer for anyone to win the election, and, in the end, I decided I could; but you might reach a different verdict. I recommend you watch the movie and then read this review.
The accents and slang aren’t always easy to follow. I watched with the captions turned on. Here is a YouTube upload; the movie also can be streamed through Kanopy.
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There is a councilor in Rats in the Ranks who may as well be Satan. (In some scenes, he even wears a cape.)
There is another councilor who is “Satan’s” dupe – in effect, his lackey – even though she belongs to the opposing party. She spends more time with the Satan figure than with her fellow party members. After her meetings with them, she runs over to tell “Satan” everything.
In good bureaucratic fashion, this lackey has a lackey.
Meanwhile, other members of her party conspire to defeat the Satan figure by means fair or foul. (Mostly fair means, but the foul cannot be overlooked.) So, there is a potentially fatal division within that party. This makes for some outrageous caucus meetings. These scenes would be ghastly if they weren’t so entertaining.
It’s fascinating to hear such good talkers make tactical blunders, lose all sight of values, etc.
What’s most disturbing is how little the populace matters in all of this. The residents vote for their councilors, but not for their mayor; which might not matter so much, except for two things.
First, the mayor has considerably more formal and effective power than the other councilors have. (Not even the deputy mayor comes close.)
And second, the councilors choose the mayor on the basis of their personal ambitions and resentments. They give lip-service to their parties’ and constituents’ interests; but, at the end of the day, those interests don’t determine their choices.
How can these people live with themselves? How can they sleep at night?, the Satan figure asks about his fellow councilors – though he himself would betray any of them, should the winds change.
Interestingly, the Satan figure is a very good public official. (At least, he convinces me that he is a good public official.) He gets things done. He listens to the citizens. When they disagree with him, he patiently and candidly explains to them why his way is better. Were I to live in Leichhardt, and were it in my power to vote in this election, I’d be tempted to vote for this candidate.
I also was favorably impressed by his main challenger. He, too, has the makings of a good public official. He is the schlubbiest of all these schlubs (or the second-schlubbiest, after the lackey’s lackey); but he has moments of reasonableness and forthrightness.
Indeed, he may be too forthright to be a very successful politician. The Satan figure runs rings around him, gamesmanship-wise.
The two men can’t stand one another. Perhaps this is because of a class difference. Or perhaps they recognize each other as genuine threats. Or perhaps they sincerely disagree about how to govern.
Another politician, who refuses to appear onscreen, makes a crucial intervention. He is Anthony Albanese; as of May of 2022, he has been serving as the Prime Minister of Australia.
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The other day, I said to Karin: Isn’t it funny that I, who find politics so distasteful, should have written a dissertation about political matters. But the word “political” describes two different inquiries. One inquiry is about how a polis should be run, and the other is about how the polis is run (which boils down to a lot of scheming, backstabbing, etc.). If the gulf between should and is is too great, it’s natural to be interested in one inquiry but not the other.
This movie shows a representative democracy whose representatives aren’t chosen with regard for how it’s best to run the polis. And yet the polis is run competently enough. This suggests that we may as well choose our representatives out of a hat, as some of the more trusting politicians in this movie are inclined to do; or by having each desiring person take a turn, as some of the more self-important and envious politicians insist upon.
I guess you could say we’ve been conducting our own little dig here in Mishawaka.
It snowed all weekend, and this morning it was almost thirty (Fahrenheit) degrees below freezing. We’ve tried shoveling the driveway and sidewalks – Karin, especially, is an impressive digger – but 2–3 inches of snow and ice remain stuck to the ground.
The good news is that we ordered an electric “snow blaster,” which UPS just delivered.
It doesn’t store its power, so we’ll have to use an extension cord. Ours is long enough for all but ten feet of the sidewalk. Perhaps the cord on the “snow blaster” will make up the difference.
Last night, Karin couldn’t bring her car all the way up the driveway and into the garage. We shifted as much snow as we could, and we scattered salt to melt the snow and cat litter to improve the traction. I pushed the car; Karin drove it several feet; but, inevitably, it’d hit some thick patch, and the tires would spin in place.
In the end, we decided to leave the car in a section of the driveway we knew Karin could maneuver out of.
All of this took an hour. I would periodically return to the house to check on Samuel, who had gone to sleep eating his supper.
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After we went inside, we heated some food, crawled under our blankets, and watched four episodes of Det som göms i snö – The Truth Will Out, or, literally, “That Which Is Hidden in Snow” – an excellent Swedish crime series. It seemed appropriate.
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The polar vortex reaches down to Texas, where many are without electricity, including Ana, David, and little Ada. Until recently, they were sleeping all bundled up inside their cold house and spending waking hours in their heated car. (The hotels were full.) Then someone lent them a cottage. It is unpowered – but it is heated.
A new month, a new season: the days are cooler and shorter. Samuel gets into trouble if left alone. Yesterday, he was doing pushups on some steps; when his strength gave out, he fell on his chin. And today, a moment too late, I saw him swallow a hairball from the kitties.
Increasingly, he speaks. We were especially surprised a week ago when Karin greeted a passing bird – “Hi, bird!” – and Samuel mimicked her – “Hi, bird!” His little voice rang out strong and clear.
(I’m told that Bird is something his cousin, Ada, also likes to say.)
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Some recent reading:
(1) Coetzee’s Late Essays, which I’ve just finished. A theme in the chapters on Samuel Beckett and Patrick White is the inadequacy of language, and especially of writing, for conveying certain aspects of human experience. Painting is better for conveying pure thought; dance, for conveying physicality. Well, yes. This is why I watch TV and, when not obese, play soccer.
The book discusses much more than this. I plan to try out Irène Némirovsky’s novels thanks to Coetzee’s chapter about them.
(2) I’ve just started reading Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, Michael Sandel’s bestselling introduction to political philosophy. Who knows? Maybe someday I’ll assign it as a textbook.
Two chapters in, my feelings are mixed. The book begins with a nice discussion of a real-life policy issue – whether price gouging should be outlawed – and what utilitarians, libertarians, and virtue ethicists might say about it. Then the method of reflective equilibrium is introduced, though not by that name and not with any mention of its most famous proponent (John Rawls, whose theory of justice is discussed later in the book). Unfortunately, reflective equilibrium is illustrated with a long and not very political discussion of trolley scenarios.
Next comes a chapter on utilitarianism. Some of Bentham’s wackier ideas get more coverage than in most books of political philosophy. It’s good to see a philosopher’s policy suggestions presented together with his theory. On the other hand, little is said to dispel the impression that Benthamite policy is generated by utilitarian theoretical commitments rather than by Bentham’s prejudices or those of his society. (Virtually all present-day utilitarians would reject, for instance, Bentham’s idea to quarantine poor people in labor camps.)
(3) I continue to read one of C.P. Snow’s novels each month. September’s novel, The Light and the Dark, is about a Cambridge scholar of the Manichees.
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Here is a blurry photo of my son. He sleeps on fox sheets with his stuffed friend, Emilia Fox.
Happy first birthday, a couple of days ago, to Ada – my niece, Ana’s & David’s daughter – in Austin, Texas. Several dozen guests in at least four countries held a bilingual party for her over streaming video. The (hired) guests of honor were some llamas who live in Iowa – Ada likes llamas.
I was reminded of this painting by the surrealist Carel Willink:
(Some of my relations are surely rolling their eyes; I showed them this painting right after the party.)
It’s nice that the party was themed according to Ada’s interests.
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My own interests have evolved considerably. I now enjoy watching videos of the Dallas, Texas, High Five Interchange – a network of stacked traffic bridges, the tallest of which reaches as high as a twelve-story building.
I also enjoy fatherhood. Today, Samuel and I played peek-a-boo, and I carried him around on my shoulders. He has been consistently saying Da-da-da and Da-dee the last two or three days. He also has been venturing off his floor mat and getting very dirty.
Samuel received compliments this weekend from my Aunt Ruth’s brother-in-law, who stopped by to leave some things for my parents (he’s about to retire to New Orleans). “You can tell just by looking in a child’s eyes whether he’s being raised well,” he said.
I was glad that Samuel and Karin & I passed that test.
He then congratulated me on having finished my Ph.D. and told me that all of his children (or their spouses) had earned or were earning Ph.D.s. It was like the movie Conte d’été, in which the youths at the beach all have Ph.D.s.
Among the donations were four suitcases of books, which I raided. There were many Shuar grammars and a Shuar New Testament. There also was a Shuar blowgun. I didn’t take any of the Shuar paraphernalia. I did take an old copy of Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity, which I’d cited in my dissertation.
There also was a tremendous wall hanging of llama wool. The fascination with llamas is certainly a familial one.
In this last week of a momentous year, Karin & I are quite sick, and Samuel is sicker. He’s been congested, feverish, and lethargic. He’s struggled to breathe and to drink enough milk. At night, I’ve lain awake, worrying, listening to his creaks and gasps.
Mary helped us to take Samuel to the doctor.
Karin & I have decided to delay our move to my parents’ new house by one week.
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What more can I say of Samuel? Though it wrenches me to see him suffer, he’s a tremendous blessing. He’s so small, so quiet, so new. I regard him with awe.
Karin sacrifices herself for us. I do what I can for her and for Samuel; or, rather, I unceasingly think of what to do for them. I often fail to do it.
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I’ve spent most of the year indoors, on couches or in armchairs. (It didn’t help that in January I sprained my ankle.) There were a few exhausting weeks outside the apartment – touring Ithaca with Karin; hunting for jobs in South Bend. On the whole, though, I’ve been sedentary, and I’ve felt poorly.
I don’t mean that I regret sitting with Samuel or finishing the Ph.D. On the contrary, they’re two of the best things I’ve done.
Both endeavors attracted many helpers. My dissertation’s “acknowledgments” section mentions dozens of people: Cornell philosophers, Ithaca Salvationists, family members, and many others who helped in one way or another to remove that millstone from me. And when I’d completed that project, I again found a large group eager to help with the project of raising a child. Apart from my family, I’m especially grateful to my fellow churchgoers.
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I’m grateful, also, to the teenaged race walker Glenda Morejón for bringing glory to Ecuador this year. Ecuadorian soccer players also performed well in the U-17 and U-20 World Cups. (The grownup team looked hopeless.)
Ecuador’s president faced a severe challenge to his position. So is the U.S. president now being challenged in a more ritualized fashion. These politicians provided material for this blog.
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Two people I haven’t discussed much are my old school friend, Dan, and his wife, Lizzie, who lifted my spirit by moving to the area and going on several outings with Karin & me. Also, it’s been a pleasure to observe the life of Ada, my new niece.
Of course, no yearly review would be complete without Jasper and Ziva. It’s obvious, now, that they’re incorrigibly naughty; but they more than compensate with their affection and their sheer being.
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The last book I’ve read this year is James Hilton’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips. It’s debatable whether that old teacher influences his charges in any substantial way. What he does better is to invite them to enrich their lives through the enjoyment of his person.
My own influence is meager; nor is the sheer enjoyment I provide very great. But then, neither does Mr. Chips blossom until he’s in his forties. And this blossoming is due to his wife.
My parents just bought a house in Mishawaka – the first they’ve owned. Since they’re living in Ecuador, Mary performed the negotiations and signed the papers on their behalf.
Samuel and Karin & I will benefit considerably from this purchase. Later this week, we’ll move into the house, and we’ll pay a discounted rate to live there. (We won’t relinquish our apartment until the end of January, however.) Jasper and Ziva will come with us, of course, and they’ll benefit from having more space in which to run around.
We toured the house last Friday night. A ceiling fan captured Samuel’s interest:
My parents will remain in Ecuador until they take their next furlough in the United States. That will be their first period in their new house. Afterward, they may return to Ecuador, or they may retire in the United States.
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David is visiting. He hides at Notre Dame and writes for many hours each day. He hopes to complete a dissertation chapter for his university, Rice, before Christmas Eve. Then he’ll have more time for extracurriculars.
Meanwhile, in Texas, his daughter, Ada, and his wife, Ana, are visited by Ana’s parents.
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Today, Samuel is two months old. He is enduring his first cold. His chest is heavily congested. He shrieks bitterly when we use a tube to suck fluid from his nostrils.
A great triumph for Ecuador: Independiente del Valle, the modest but well-run club of Sangolquí, defeated Colón of Santa Fe, Argentina, in the final of the Copa Sudamericana – the continent’s most important club competition after the Copa Libertadores. (Independiente also played in the Copa Libertadores final of 2016.) Today’s match occurred in a “neutral” venue in Asunción, Paraguay, which of course was filled with Colón supporters. No matter: a deluge stymied the Argentinian players, while the Ecuadorians dribbled and passed expertly through the puddles. Independiente also blocked a penalty kick.
In Texas, Ada watched the game:
In South Bend, Samuel and Karin slept through the game:
… has been declared. The protesting has (mostly) ceased. President Moreno has repealed the controversial Decree 833, which made fuel more costly for citizens. Together with the protestors, he’s negotiating a new law.
The unrest left a death toll of six or seven (I’ve seen conflicting reports).
Ecuadorian citizens and businesses lost a great deal of money due to looting, vandalism, work stoppages, etc. Apart from this, the protestors destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars of exportable oil.
President Moreno has accused his predecessor, Rafael Correa, of conspiring with Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela to overthrow Ecuador’s government.
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Ecuador lost a “friendly” soccer match against Argentina, six goals to one. I’m somewhat alarmed. No one else is. The Ecuadorian players have the excuse that they were distracted by the country’s turmoil.
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Ana and Ada have returned to Texas, along with David, who, for a couple of days, also visited South Bend.
Some photos of Ada and me:
My own child is due to be born tomorrow (which isn’t to say he will be). Currently, he weighs about 9 lbs.
Most readers will have heard of Ecuador’s latest political unrest (summarized here). Briefly, transport workers and the indígenas have been striking against the government’s austerity measures, and especially against the cutting of fuel subsidies (this was done to comply with borrowing conditions set by the International Monetary Fund). Thousands have marched on Quito, blocking roads. President Lenín Moreno has moved the government to Guayaquil.
It was clear that after Rafael Correa’s presidency, Ecuador would shift back toward the right; what wasn’t clear was how far or how speedily. In the election of 2016, I favored Moreno, the candidate of Correa’s party, because I thought he’d shift more gradually than his opponents would. But Correa already had made Ecuador cripplingly indebted to China; and now, perhaps out of necessity, Moreno has resumed dealings with the IMF, which, in the late 1990s, had insisted on detrimentally austere financial measures as borrowing conditions for Latin American countries. From 1997 to 2005, several Ecuadorian presidents were toppled after enacting austerity measures. I fear that history is about to repeat itself.
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My parents arrived in South Bend yesterday to visit little Ada and my own child (whenever he’s born). But it wasn’t easy for them to get here. They traveled from Santo Domingo to Quito several days early, during a lull in the protests. Then they went to the airport twenty hours before takeoff. Had they not done those things, they wouldn’t have made it through.
Anyhow, they’re here. This morning they’re at the Social Security office, dealing with the obstinate bureaucracy of the United States.
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On Tuesday, I got a couple of shots. They made me ache as with fever. I was especially miserable yesterday. This morning, my arms still hurt, but I seem to be on the up-and-up.
Much fawning over little Ada. She’s quite a pretty baby, and rather anxious.
Fortunately, she’s calmed by the “Lava” song. I’ve heard it played to her fifteen times in the last three days.
(Mary has made a playlist of Hawaiian music for Ada. I suggested adding the version of “Nothing Compares 2 U” performed by the Coconutz, from the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall.)
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Yesterday, West Ham United enacted one of the nicer pre-goal buildups I’d seen in some time. I was pleased when the ball went in the net. (Crystal Palace won the game, however.)
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My Uncle Tim lent a textbook I’ve long wanted to peruse: The Norton Introduction to Philosophy (second edition).
A few remarks:
(1) The body text fonts are quite small. One doesn’t get the same impression previewing the pages online.
(2) Surely, much of the painstaking editorial content has been honed over dozens or hundreds of class lectures. Some of it, however, seems too opinionated:
Paley’s argument is sometimes taken to be an argument from analogy. … But arguments from analogy are notoriously weak. (27–28)
I can’t find any explanation of why such arguments are weak.
Instead, an example is offered:
Living things are like watches. Watches are made in factories. Therefore, living things are made in factories. (28)
But an example of a bad inductive argument is offered, too:
In the past, every time a presidential election has been held in the United States, the winning candidate has been a man. Therefore, in the future, every time a presidential election is held in the United States, the winning candidate will be a man. (xlix)
What’s more, concede the editors, it “turns out to be impossible” for there to be “some formal test for distinguishing the good inductive arguments from the bad ones” (xlix, cont.).
The editors suggest that this difficulty is handled by “the theory of statistical inference.” But, as far as I can tell, they don’t say what this theory is or how it handles the difficulty. Still, they issue no blanket condemnation of induction.
There may be a powerful reason for holding that analogical arguments are much less adequate than inductive ones; however, an explanation accessible to beginners is lacking. Such an explanation may be impossible to provide. My complaint, though, is that readers are left to take the comparative inadequacy of analogical argumentation on faith, though it isn’t admitted that this is what they’re left to do.
(3) Speaking of faith, the volume mixes classic readings with new articles that spell out “cutting edge” positions on the same topics; and faith is the topic of the article that I read tonight, “When Is Faith Rational?” by Lara Buchak.
There is much to commend Buchak’s view, and I think its gist probably is intelligible to the bright undergraduate reader who perseveres to the last page. The presentation is also helped by some well-chosen examples.
Alas, at key argumentative steps, the article simply refers to formal presentations in Buchak’s other work. This is unhelpful to readers who’ll have little further exposure to philosophy. Interesting and relevant though Buchak’s view may be, I worry that the argument for it just isn’t accessible to the book’s intended readers.
Perhaps, also, other new readings have been included because they present views that, like Buchak’s, are exciting and “trendy” and maybe even true, rather than because they help the novice to learn to philosophize. But I wouldn’t accept this conclusion purely on the basis of analogy. I’d have to read more of the volume to find out.
Tomorrow, Karin & I will spend some time with my high school friend, Dan, and his wife and three young children. They recently moved from Vermont to southwestern Michigan.
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My current reading:
(1) Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, translated by Robert Graves (1957), revised by some other dude (2007).
(2) Michael Grant, The Twelve Caesars.
“Robert Graves’ Penguin version … is entertaining, but has to be used with caution.”
Yes, I expect that Graves sneaks in a few extra poisonings.
(3) Terri Jentz, Strange Piece of Paradise.
True crime.
Vacationing from Yale, the author camps out in the Oregon desert and is mutilated by a mysterious axeman. Decades later, she returns to the scene to seek out the axeman, his motive, and cosmic meaning.
The book is highly introspective: was the author’s trauma due to herself, or to the axeman? The author writes 100+ pages before even considering the latter possibility.
Still, it isn’t bad.
(4) Lois Duncan, Down a Dark Hall, original 1974 version.
This classic gothic school novel is by the author of I Know What You Did Last Summer and Stranger with My Face.
(The 2011 update incorporates new technology – email, cell phones, etc. – NO GOOD.)
Little Ada is home from the hospital and in good health.
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These days, due to my online activity, I get lots of job hunting-related spam through email and Facebook.
This ad came in about five minutes ago:
Despite the caption, there’s only one generation in this photo, it seems to me.
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Somewhat unexpectedly, I’ll have a Skype interview this Saturday morning. The job ad didn’t specify a salary, so I went looking in the government’s database to find out what I might expect to earn (the yearly salaries of all public employees are listed online, for transparency’s sake).
One thing led to another, and I ended up searching for lots and lots of people’s salaries. It’s taken most of the evening.
My own earnings from IUSB are online, which, previously, they weren’t. So now you can look up how much money I made last year.
