Ada; “Lava”; a golazo; a textbook

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.

Year-change

“Right now, the birds are the least of our problems.”

This quotation is, in a nutshell, the political message of Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent (1940), the World War II thriller that Karin & I watched on New Year’s Eve. (Of course, Hitchcock would go on to release a movie with precisely the opposite message, in 1963.) Together with Joel McCrea (Sullivan’s Travels), the cast includes Laraine Day, who looks a little like Kristen Bell of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and George Sanders, who looks very, very much like Jason Segel of Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Apart from this, there is nothing in common between those movies.

Today Karin didn’t have to go to work. Her friend Nora came over and we watched Wolf Children, a lovely cartoon movie from Japan about people who are able to turn themselves into wolves. Then Karin and Nora watched an episode of Sherlock, and I excused myself to read. The story that I chose featured a man able to turn into a wolf. It was not a very satisfactory story, but it evoked a few striking images; and so, tonight, I began to write a screenplay of it. (Lately, Karin & I have grown tired of being poor, and so we have been talking about writing something that will make a splash, and, with the proceeds, starting our own publishing company. Karin will be in charge of the finances, and I will do the typesetting. It’s pretty half-baked, really.)

Friends of ours moved away, bequeathing us two large bookcases. Now the apartment is much tidier and my books are more accessible. Jasper also benefits.

Hope

“Dracula’s Lament.”

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Last week’s sermon was about hope. All it amounted to was: We need to keep on hoping!

I was like: But how?

Here are a few suggestions.

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When he became a father, one of my friends wrote:

It’s amazing how much babies live in the moment. If she’s hungry or her diaper is dirty then her world is ending. She has no perspective that says this will probably be fixed in a little while so I’ll just hang on. I suppose that would be a frightening way to live. If I was hungry and couldn’t conceive of a future where I wasn’t I’d probably cry too.

I don’t remember how I felt when I was a baby. But yes, when I was a young child, I often had the feeling that my friend attributes to his daughter. I wasn’t carefree.

Adults can despair for a similar reason. They, too, can become unable to conceive of a future in which their needs are met. For adults, though, this is because of too much experience.

Failing to have one’s needs met, year after year, makes it more difficult to imagine how they can be met. Experiencing disappointment, again and again, makes it exhausting or painful to continue thinking of possibilities for meeting those needs.

For humans, this is an impediment to hoping, because what we can hope for depends on what seems possible to us.

(Notice that the same point applies to the world’s needs. Your own needs are mere tributaries. Even if you learn to navigate the tributaries – and the rivers they pour into – you must eventually confront the ocean.)

So for adults deterred by hurt, being hopeful often requires having the courage to allow wounds to be reopened. (Here a theological virtue depends upon a cardinal one.) And for adults worn down by disappointment, being hopeful often requires endurance in the midst of exhaustion.

It’s natural to lack courage. It’s natural to lack endurance. If you lack those things, don’t be too hard on yourself. By all means, enjoy some shelter and rest. But don’t stop at that:

(a) Keep in mind that, from the eternal perspective, we are babies. Our experience is not conclusive. There truly are blessings of which we can’t conceive. As far as you’re able (and if this is even coherent), don’t just hope for what’s imaginable to you.

(b) Ask God for courage and endurance to keep trying to imagine what’s imaginable, so that needs can be met even in this life.

(c) Train yourself in courage and in endurance. Training won’t be enough. But it will help, as long as it isn’t taken as a replacement for (a) and (b).

(d) Soothe others’ wounds, bear others’ burdens, protect them from the full destructiveness of exhaustion and hurt. And sometimes, or maybe just once, you will be in a position to give a person what he or she desperately needs. Then that person will be saved from despair. That person will be lucky (or blessed).

It won’t suffice, spiritually, for that person. But it’ll help, as long as it isn’t taken as a replacement for (a) and (b).

All too often, we’re tempted to think that cultivating hopefulness is primarily a matter of willing ourselves to believe that things will turn out all right. But we can do more than this. We can cultivate hopefulness by removing hindrances to the imagination. We can do this for ourselves by becoming braver, stronger. And we can do it for others by helping to ease their weariness and pain.