Some wisdom from Mary Midgley

Here is a short and (for us) timely piece written in the 1950s by the philosopher Mary Midgley. It’s lovely from beginning to end – in many ways.

The topic of abortion is introduced in the last paragraph, which I quote here (but do read the earlier paragraphs first, if you are up to it):

Great men, simply by their ignorance of a topic, can lay a remarkably strong taboo on the mention of it even where it happens to be entirely relevant. I saw a singular instance of this lately in a correspondence about the law of abortion. A writer pointed out that many women who had wished to be rid of their child two months after conception were eager to bear it three months later, and finished apologetically, “Expect no logic from a pregnant woman.” But of course there was nothing wrong with the logic. The premises were changed. A child at two months feels like an ailment; at five months it feels like a child. The woman had passed from the belief, “I am not well” to the belief, “I am now two people.” And the only thing wrong with that belief is that it is one which is unfamiliar to logicians. That, I suspect, is an unphilosophic objection.

One might disagree that the mother’s feelings during pregnancy shed light upon the moral status of the unborn child (or upon the mother’s moral position vis-à-vis her child). But the burden of proof lies with the person who’d discount those feelings.

What’s cavalier is this sort of attitude:

P.S. Midgley’s piece was rejected when it was drafted. It appears now in The Raven,

a magazine of original philosophy written for intellectually curious readers with or without academic training in the discipline. It aims to revive an essayistic style of philosophy that was more common in academic venues as recently as thirty years ago but has gradually disappeared – that is, to publish contributions to the “literature” that deserve to be called literature.

P.P.S. I want to make one rejoinder to Midgley’s piece. It’s true that Descartes never married; but he did have a daughter, Francine, who died young. He’s thought to have been profoundly affected by the experience.

P.P.P.S. Just how solitary is Descartes’s theory of knowledge, anyway? Yes, the meditator’s own consciousness is the “Archimedean point” from which he comes to know the world. But when he examines his consciousness, he detects another person: a person more perfect than himself: a person whose commitment not to deceive, whose commitment vis-à-vis the meditator, is what enables the meditator to know the world. This may still be “adolescent.” A youth hopes that contact with one other person will open a window onto the world. But that’s not so self-centered as when a philosopher accepts the Cartesian starting-point and then tries to gather knowledge without looking to another person – outside, or inside, himself.

Same old, same old

I don’t care about college basketball anymore, but I do still enjoy the collision of mascots, cultures, and uniform colors in the NCAA Tournament. And so I liked this Yahoo! article from March 22:

“The 16 Most Interesting Potential Final Four Combinations.”

Ah, yes, I thought, reading through the list.

The “brainiac” Final Four.

The “party school” Final Four.

The “all-Catholic” Final Four.

The “‘when’s spring football practice?’” Final Four.

Any of the sixteen combinations would have been good, except the “blue blood” Final Four (Duke, North Carolina, Villanova, Kansas).

Guess which Final Four we’re getting.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My two cents on the SCOTUS confirmation hearings of Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Senators Blackburn, Cruz, and Graham were in fine form – by which I mean, despicable form.

My right-leaning Facebook friends loved it, though.

Whine, whine, whine.

One wonders: if they don’t want a judge whose position is, Womanhood, as understood in the law, is not something for judges to define outside of the specific context of a court case informed by expert testimony of biologists – which is the long way of saying what I take Jackson’s quick and concise response to mean – what sort of judge could they want? Don’t they realize that Jackson’s response is friendly to conservative views of womanhood, and of the judiciary? Are they too busy scoffing to notice this – or to care?

(Notice, Jackson’s crucial qualifier, in this context, is omitted above.)

I am reading Proverbs, which says harsh things about scoffers and how to talk (or not talk) to them. And on Sunday, I heard a sermon about Luke 20:

One day, as he was teaching the people in the temple and telling the good news, the chief priests and the scribes came with the elders and said to him, “Tell us, by what authority are you doing these things? Who is it who gave you this authority?” He answered them, “I will also ask you a question, and you tell me: Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” They discussed it with one another, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Why did you not believe him?’ But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ all the people will stone us; for they are convinced that John was a prophet.” So they answered that they did not know where it came from. Then Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.”
[NRSV]

A few points (not exactly the ones from the sermon, but not too different, either):

Jesus tells good news. Still, the religious leaders are determined to challenge him.

When they discuss how to answer Jesus’s question, they don’t consider which answer is true. Instead, they worry about saving face.

So, they don’t really care about finding out the truth.

So, Jesus doesn’t owe them an answer.

Even so, in the following verses, Jesus gives an answer (though he addresses it to the people). He tells the parable of the wicked tenants. This parable implies that his authority is from his Father (God); and that the leaders have no regard for this authority, though they’ve just made a show of asking about it.

Another celebrated South Bender

Last Sunday was cold, and our church met indoors, but today’s service was held in the parking lot, in balmy weather. After Karin and Samuel and I went home and ate lunch, Samuel refused to sleep, so I pushed him in his stroller around the block. “Enjoy the last day of good weather,” one neighbor said. Sure enough, the temperature is supposed to fall by twenty degrees.

Another sign of summer’s end: people have been towing their boats back into the neighborhood.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Recently widowed, Karin’s mom went on holiday to Beaver Island in Lake Michigan, a two-and-a-half-hour ferry ride from the northern town of Charlevoix. Beaver Island seems to be a hideaway for the rich. The residents kept telling Karin’s mom not to walk on the beaches (which may well be their private property) or on the roads (which probably aren’t).

“You’re lucky you didn’t get shot,” her brother said.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Pete Buttigieg’s failure notwithstanding, a South Bender will become a very high federal official. I mean the Notre Dame professor, the Catholic charismatic, conservative Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s SCOTUS choice. This is hardly the nomination that Pete’s fans would have wished for. As for me, I don’t mind Barrett like I minded Brett Kavanaugh. Although Barrett is both a textualist and an originalist, she might rule as justly as any SCOTUS judge could do (it’s U.S. constitutionalism and judicial review themselves that are problematic, I’ve come to believe).

But the hypocrisy! What was it the Republicans were saying four years ago, when Obama wanted to install a judge before an election?

I’m surprised that I continue to be surprised.

Here are some interesting remarks by a friend of a friend. (As always, to enlarge an image: click on it; then, right-click on it; then, open it in a new tab; and, finally, click on it again with the magnifying cursor.)

Brett Kavanaugh

Various bloggers and Facebook friends – Democrats, Republicans, and “independents” – have been sharing articles and blog posts under, roughly, the following description: “This is the best item I’ve read about the U.S. Supreme Court candidacy of Brett Kavanaugh and the allegations against him by Christine Blasey Ford.” The pieces they’ve shared have expressed a wide range of views about the affair.

Well, this article by Nathan J. Robinson is the best thing I’ve read.

It’s meticulous.

It confirms what I thought when I heard Kavanaugh give his testimony: This guy seems dishonest, and his reasoning is shoddy enough that his appointment to the Supreme Court would be a disaster.

Not all of Robinson’s arguments are convincing. But more than enough of them are.

Some conclusions:

(1) Perjury: Kavanaugh told falsehoods under oath. Again and again. Sometimes on purpose, and sometimes with a reckless disregard for the truth. And he did so concerning issues that matter to his own credibility, to the credibility of his accuser, and to the discovery of the truth.

(2) Evasion: In response to straightforward questions, Kavanaugh changed the subject. Again and again. …

(3) Testimonial sufficiency: Certain “subjective” considerations (such as the aggressiveness of Kavanaugh’s tone) are much less important than the content of the testimonies. This content, along with fact-checking, suffices to establish (1) and (2). And (1) and (2), along with plausible principles about who may be appointed as a judge (e.g., “An appointee must not be recently guilty of perjury”), suffice to disqualify Kavanaugh as a judge in the Supreme Court (or anywhere!). As Robinson puts it: “At this point there is absolutely no need” for further investigation “unless Christine Blasey Ford wants it.”

To summarize: even if Kavanaugh didn’t assault Ford, he certainly lied and, in other ways, made the truth harder rather than easier to assess. These facts should disqualify him from being allowed to join the Supreme Court.