Natural Law Theory

Slightly to my own surprise I haven't written anything about "natural law theory"; in part this is because it is hard to know exactly what it is. Wiki has a decent intro:

Natural law is a philosophical and legal theory that posits the existence of inherent laws derived from nature and universal moral principles that are discoverable through reason. In ethics, natural law theory asserts that certain rights and moral values are inherent in human nature and can be universally understood, independent of enacted laws or social norms. In jurisprudence, natural law holds that there are objective legal standards based on morality that underlie the creation, interpretation, and application of human-made laws. This contrasts with positive law which emphasizes that laws are rules created by human authorities and are not necessarily connected to moral principles.

But if you read on into the article, you'll discover a major problem: that although people are content to witter on about the theory, they are very short on actual things that are natural laws - with the noble exception of Hobbes¹; but sadly not everyone agrees with Hobbes.

To return to my starting point, the normally sensible ACX, which says I have to admit that [Bentham’s Bulldog’s] Natural Law Theory Is Obviously False is either pretty devastating.... But the linked article begins "The core claims of natural law theory are something like: (1) Morality is solely concerned with one’s own happiness..." which is wrong³. A possible, though misleading, reading of NLT could be that it is ultimately concerned with happiness, in the sense that it eschews teleology⁴; it is after all trying to do without a god to prescribe means and therefore the god cannot prescribe the ends either. But even on that reading it is not about individual happiness; it is about flourishing - a better word than happiness - of society as a whole; it is therefore intrinsically interested in interactions, as it must, to be capable of talking about morality or law.

I said that NLT is pretty thin on examples; the few it gives, such as not-killing and not-stealing fall into the do-no-harm paradigm from The Righeous Mind or better from The Foundations of Morality, which supersedes NLT. But Aquinas thinks that drunknenness is NLT-wrong, and so we see how people tend to read into it whatever their own prejudices demand².

Notes

1. We might do well to recall some of Hobbes' reading: The fourth law is "that a man which receiveth benefit from another of mere grace, endeavour that he which giveth it, have no reasonable cause to repent him of his good will. ... The breach of this law is called 'ingratitude'". The fifth law is complaisance: "that every man strive to accommodate himself to the rest. ... The observers of this law, may be called 'sociable' ...; the contrary, 'stubborn', 'insociable', 'forward', 'intractable'." The sixth law is "that upon caution of the future time, a man ought to pardon the offences past of them that repenting, desire it. The seventh law is "that in revenges, ... men look not at the greatness of the evil past, but the greatness of the good to follow. The eighth law is "that no man by deed, word, countenance, or gesture, declare hatred or contempt of another. The breach of which law is commonly called contumely." The ninth law is "that every man acknowledge another for his equal by nature. ... The breach of this precept is 'pride'." The tenth law is "that at the entrance into the conditions of peace, no man require to reserve to himself any right which he is not content should be reserved to every one of the rest. ... The observers of this law are those we call 'modest', and the breakers 'arrogant' men."

2. I should probably expand on that a little. The theory of NLT is that we can reason out what morality and the law should be. This is nice, but isn't really true. Eventually we realise that, by "reason", we're really reconstructing the do-no-harm morality that is shared; and is shared because it is necessary to construct a working society; and when we say "reason" we are consciously or not mostly reading from the examples we have before us and in our books, not constructing ab initio. And see Gemini in Meta.

3. BsB replies "But I quoted one of the main defenders who gave this characterization!". I'm not sure what quote he means, but this reply is either disingenuous, naive or dumb: the problem being that there are a zillion writers on NLT; you can't just pick one and claim they represent NLT. But see-also my Postscript "speculation on Catholic NLT" below. Minor: in the first published version of this post I wrong "drivel" instead of "wrong". That was rather harsh, and in view of my Postscript not really sustainable.

4. See Gemini's critique in "Meta" below.

Moah

I guess I should continue on and analyse BsB's post a little more. After all, perhaps his initial errors aren't fatal to the rest of his analysis. I note firstly that his post is full of "NLT says..." but there are no separate refs for any of these claims. My suspicion is that he is mostly reading the Left Footers, but you cannot equate NLT with them. Or should I be taking "in a debate came from friend of the blog Dustin Crummett in his debate vs Brian Besong" as his ref? In  which case, his whole take is confused, because he isn't talking about NLT, he is talking about BB-NLT; down at point 5, BB is essentially outed as a LF.

1 At its core, NLT is egoistic. But egoism isn’t right. So natural law theory is false. As noted above, NLT isn't egoistic, so this fails.

2 NLTists think that happiness is about proper functioning. Actually, as noted above, it would be close to say that NLT is about proper functioning, or flourishing, than happiness. So this point is irrelevant.

3. Natural law theory suggests that misusing a faculty is absolutely wrong—you should never do it for any reason. I don't think NLT does assert this. He provides no refs - as noted above - so we're at a bit of an impasse.

4. The natural law theorist says it’s wrong to have gay sex, masturbate, or use contraception because doing so misuses your sexual faculty. This definitely confuses the LF views with NLT. I have no interest in defending them. Obvs, "true" NLT does not forbid anything that affects only consenting adults in private; also obviously, previous moralities have forbidden gay sex; also obviously, people have - as noted above re drunkenness - read stuff they dislike into NLT.

5. What’s supposed to be good about natural law theory? Brian’s core motivation for natural law theory seems to be that it supposedly gets the right verdicts about certain absolutely prohibited sex acts: incest, bestiality, necrophilia, pedophilia, etc. These are supposed to be non-procreative and thus wrong. Hmm, so maybe this entire silliness is driven by "Brian"'s view, which BsB has mistaken for NLT. Obviously, non-procreative sex is fine, the only people who think otherwise are the said LFs.

Meta

Once again, I fed my post into Gemini. This time, it insisted that it couldn't read the URL, even though I told it that it could; eventually I just cut-n-pasted the text. And we get:

Bottom Line: The post is a sharp, pragmatic piece of philosophical housecleaning. The author successfully demonstrates that the linked ACX/BsB critique was attacking a hyper-specific, conservative Catholic version of Natural Law ("BB-NLT") rather than the broad tradition itself. However, in "saving" Natural Law, the author strips it of its defining feature (teleology) and essentially turns it into evolutionary game theory—effectively proving their own underlying premise: once you strip away religious prejudice from Natural Law, all that remains is practical, harm-reducing social utility.

Well, I like that, but I would, wouldn't I?  But what about:

Weaknesses & Misconceptions in the Post: Misunderstanding NLT's Relationship to Teleology: The author claims NLT "eschews teleology; it is after all trying to do without a god..." This is historically and philosophically backward. Traditional NLT (Aristotelian/Thomistic) is fundamentally teleological—it rests entirely on the idea that human organs, faculties, and societies have inherent teloi (ends or purposes). If you remove teleology, NLT usually collapses into standard rule-utilitarianism or social contract theory—which seems to be what the author actually prefers.

(note I have reformatted). I'm not desperately attached to the teleology point: what I mean is, the purpose of life is not "make your god happy" it is "flourish". But I don't think contemporary (defenders) need to accept A/T views on organs. Gemini also says:

The "Do-No-Harm" Equivalence Fallacy: In Note 2, the author asserts that "reasoning" out NLT is just reconstructing the do-no-harm morality required to construct a working society. While true for Hobbes, classical NLT explicitly distinguishes itself from mere harm minimization: it claims that some actions are wrong because they violate human flourishing, even if no direct third-party harm occurs. By collapsing NLT into Jonathan Haidt’s "Do No Harm" paradigm or Hazlitt's Foundations of Morality, the author isn't explaining NLT—they are replacing it with Utilitarianism/Evolutionary Psychology.

It is at least half correct: NLT is indeed about flourishing, so contains that as a positive concept. But "harm minimization" smacks of utilitarianism, which NLT isn't. "harm avoidance", which Gemini could have used instead, doesn't have that problem. But does NLT reasonning actually lead to any positive prescriptons? Gemini offers me "Cultivate knowledge, truth, and intellectual growth" is kinda fair enough so I could give it that; I doubt it is profitable to argue the point; and this doesn't differ from Hazlitt.

Postscript: speculation on Catholic NLT

In retrospect, assuming we're all intelligent beings here, it is necessary to find some reason why anyone would believe that "The core claims of natural law theory are something like: (1) Morality is solely concerned with one’s own happiness". Let's firstly substitute "flourishing" for "happiness", and we're left with the puzzle of why NLT should be concerned with the individual; or (per point 1 in Moah), be egotistical. The answer I think is the Catholic - and perhaps Christian, and perhaps religious in general - focus on perfecting one's own soul. The dialogue between you and the Church is about you; the Church will deal with societal-wide effects. You are required to improve yourself, to suppress defects, to polish virtues, and so on. In this context it is natural not to talk much of others.

There's another strand to this, which relates to the "how can atheists be moral" canard, whereby the religious who believe that bad people go to Hell and therefore people are frightened into behaving well in this life, can believe that if you don't believe in Hell you have no reason to be moral. This fails, of course, for the standard reasons (see e.g. Hazlitt: behaving well is good for you too, in the long term). But it does mean that their thinking doesn't emphasise the reciprocal-benefits stuff that the non-religious are obliged, correctly, to emphasise in their theory. And so, once again, the Catholic version is liable to look egotistical. Aquinas for example forbids theft, even if that theft brings happiness or flourishing to the thief. In explaining the prohibition to the Novice, big A is liable to assert that (a) god will punish you later; and (b) even ignoring that, you won't "really" flourish because you'll damage your soul. But (b) is never very convincing. The non-religious version is that society / morality forbids theft because permitting it would be intolerable; but we all recognise that in certain circumstances individuals can genuinely gain (immorally) from theft.

Postscript: contra eternity

NLT has two big problems... or possibly three, if you include having a zillion different versions. The first is that it is religion-tinged in its history, which inevitably biases it to the theology of whoever was doing the reasonning. The second is that even the non-religious were looking for principles eternally valid. Arguably you can do this, but if you do you only get a core subset of morality; and few had the discipline to stop there, instead of just re-creating all their own morality.

Postscript: contra reasonning

Aaargh, FFS, is there no end? Perhaps this is why I haven't written about NLT before. Anyway, another point: NLT explicitly derives its rules from reasonning. But this is wrong: morality doesn't come from reasonning. It can't. Most morally upright folk are incapable of the level of abstract thought required. I've sort-of said this before, in Reason and Morality. By contrast Hazlitt has, essentially, Morality is Custom, which strains no-one's thought.

Creative Morality

By Louis Arnaud Reid. Another product of, so I suspect, some Cambridge Prof keeling over and his library making its way to Oxfam. LAR was - if I can believe his wiki entry² - almost entirely concerned with aesthetics, which may account for his somewhat strange choice of subject and title. Nonetheless the book is nicely bound and from the times - 1936 - when people didn't spam out the volumes of rubbish they do now; and whilst I think largely wrong it did encourage me to think.

The main problem is that it is a discussion of ideas of, around, related to and suggested by morality, but he doesn't actually know what morality is and so - somewhat like The Evolution of Morality - he ends up reduced to saying things about things related to or near; but they don't work. Of course, you and I know about The Foundations of Morality.

Let's quote from page 95: So in morals there are also, I think, two problems. One is a more formal problem, the problem of duty and right, the problem of the adjustment of our actions to the concrete situations with which life presents us, the problem of what is fitting in this particular case. The other is the problem of content, the problem of what we are striving to realize and embody and express through and in our actions, the problem of good. What he is discussing here is the problem of how to act morally, not the meta-problem of what morality actually is. The first part is fine, in the second alas he has allowed himself to be overshadowed by Plato and Aristotle and wander off into the form of the Good³. Morality is not to lead us to some teleological Good; the "end" it leads us to is rather more Darwinian: human flourishing, if I am allowed a flourish; or survival, if we must be more brutal.

I note here that he is whiffly about religion; or if you prefer, he is careful to avoid committing himself. The last four chapters are about religion, but I convict him of cowardice for not clearly expressing his own views. Page 188 presents I suppose that a great deal of morality commonly so-called may be said to be secular. It manifests itself in actions whose roots do not go down much deeper than custom, tradition, social convenience, comfort, happiness; interpreted perhaps in a liberal or even in a noble way. We tell the truth, behave politely, decently, are reasonable and just to our neighbours; we do not 'let down' our friends. We do it because we have been brought up to do it, because it is pleasanter for all to live in that way, because indeed society would be intolerable if everyone began to act otherwise and so on. From which I think we can tell that he finds conventional morality shallow; but he is certainly wrong to find custom and tradition shallow. Nonetheless the picture he presents here could have lead him to Hazlitt's correct viewpoint, had he thought about it instead of disdaining it.

But probably central is his analogy between art and morality: If the artist is not wise, if he is not an artist and remains a tyro or a student, he may take these rules too seriously; he may try to make pictures according to formula - as the unbudding versifier will write not-incorrect sonnets according to the 'rules'. And the results will never be anything other than exercises for the training of a talent which is not there. For the rules have to do with the parts; they are conceptual guides dealing with the partial rather than intuitions apprehending the whole, they are concerned with the means rather than with the all-pervading Purpose (in an inclusive sense). It is partly the same in morals. In moral situations, which become to a considerable extent stereotyped, and in the 'situations' of common life in society, we rightly make some use of rules derived from the moral experience of the past. These are the rules of duty, exemplified not in ten, but in a great many more, commandments; rules and duties of justice, fidelity, benevolence, courage, sexual self-control, and so on. But the moral human being compares with the art-student. The vast majority of human beings are tyros and remain tyros. They never reach moral adolescence. Morality to them means the obedience to the conventional rules of duty, and when a man does 'his duty', they think he does what is required of him, that this is 'morality'.

This is all wrong. Unlike great art, which is creative - and great art is the only thing he is prepared to consider as art - morality is not creative. Quite the opposite: it is a set of rules that we apply to situations in life. Meeting with "creative" morality in everyday life would be an unpleasant surprise just as it is to meet "creative" law. You know the sort of people who would tell you that their morality is "creative": people trying to excuse bad actions. Apart from anything else, most morality is negative: it is largely injunctions against actions: thou shalt not kill, thou should not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness. None of these are creative acts. If we must have an analogy, morality corresponds to watercolours of daffodils exhibited by gentlefolk in village hall exhibitions that LAR would not admit as art.

Continuing The morally wise man who, like the true artist, is exceptional, is on the other hand an individual who does individual things and who is not a type working from formulae. He takes rules for what they are worth as valuable bits of generalized experience, which must not be traversed without good reason, but which are general guides, warning signs, signs which keep him from bias and undue egoism. They are to be taken, realized, absorbed and forgotten in the creative business of living. This is all deeply suspicious and leads to Beyond Good and Evil which leads to Evil. I shall unwisely sympathise with him somewhat: now we see what morality really is, we can excuse some immorality from the great, if the end result is greater flourishing. But I doubt his role for the "morally wise man".

LAR is aware of this problem: It may still be said that a view of morality as an inspired thing is all very well, but that poets and prophets are few and far between. Not merely does inspiration occur rarely in the lives of most people, but the majority lack it completely. If we haven't vision and inspiration, what are we to do? The 'artist' who is without vision and inspiration can take to selling soap, but the moral life cannot be evaded in this way and if the only real morality is inspired morality, most decent human beings must remain forever 'immoral'. Had we not better peg along with the rules that we have, and which are good enough for most men? And should not ethics stick to its honest account of this, rather than fly into the realms of fancy? This is a real difficulty which he hopes to return to at a later stage, but alas that is in the religion section so fails. The solution to the difficulty is to abandon the desire for inspired morality. We don't need it. People don't do bad things out of ignorance of how to act morally⁵.

Conventional morality is not static, of course, though LAR seems to feel that it is: The point of view which I have been putting forward is in some respects similar to M. Bergson's distinction between 'closed' and 'open' morality, 'closed' morality being conservative of the forces of a static and limited society, 'open' morality being that of prophets and saints bringing new ways of feeling into the world. Again I think he errs: the evolutionary drift of morality isn't lead by and doesn't need saints and prophets, however much the religiously inclined might like to think so.

Lastly, I alluded above to morality being largely negative; LAR might be aware of this but it isn't where his heart is: what is morally due from us, is an intention to realize in a concrete subjective-objective situation the maximum good that could be realized in that situation. This is wrong. Even in situations where morality calls for a positive action from us, it rarely if ever requires the "maximum good", if that is even meaningful. A good-faith effort is all that is required.

Notes

1. My picture is The Progress of a Soul: The Victory, by Phoebe Anna Traquair, Nat Gal, Edinburgh.

2. In fact I do not really trust it: it has most of the marks of enthusiasm.

3. Page 105: ...moral goodness and rightness belong to living actions or intentions ex-pressive of an inner attitude to Good. Goodness implies absolute sincerity and absolute objectivity of mind... oh dear.

4. I liked this so much that I have updated my tagline; it is a long time since this blog has been about science.

5. I may have to back off this a bit, thinking of the example of slavery. Or maybe not. But as a counter-thought, consider the recent French riots: these people are doing things that they know to be bad, but using the excuse of a "greater cause" to pretend to themselves that they're doing overall good; ordinary, everyday, disdained-by-LAR morality would not excuse this.

Refs

* Britain’s landlords deserve some love. Who will speak for the HMO Hero?

* Why I’ve Never Believed Anything Piketty, Saez Or Zucman Has Said About Wealth Inequality: Their definition of wealth is wrong.

* What They Took From You.

Meta

I asked Gemini to "read and critique" this post. The response is adequate but not exceptional. I rather like its trailer on "Tone and Style": The writing is classically conversational, dismissive, and charmingly uncharitable⁴ in the way old-school blog posts excel at being (e.g., "I convict him of cowardice," "oh dear"). It relies heavily on a shared understanding with the reader ("Of course, you and I know..."), making it highly readable if somewhat intellectually impatient with LAR's mid-century academic prose.

But what of the "Weaknesses and Blind Spots" I hear you ask? It says:

• Misinterpreting the Artistic Analogy: Connolley dismisses LAR's art-student analogy too quickly. LAR isn't necessarily arguing for inventing new moral truths out of thin air. Instead, he is highlighting that rigid rule-following without situational judgment fails in complex scenarios. Just as a master painter knows when to bend the rules of perspective to achieve a greater truth, a morally mature person must navigate conflicting duties (e.g., lying to protect an innocent life).

• Over-indexing on Negative Morality: Connolley claims that most morality is negative ("thou shalt not"). While negative constraints are essential for baseline social stability, this ignores the massive domain of positive duties—such as charity, compassion, heroism, and community building—which cannot be neatly codified by rigid prohibitions and do require a degree of creative moral problem-solving.

• The "Saints and Prophets" Dismissal: He argues that the evolutionary drift of morality does not need moral innovators. Historically, this is tough to defend. Moral progress (e.g., the abolition of slavery, civil rights, animal welfare) is almost always spearheaded by exceptional, non-conformist individuals who challenged the conventional, "shallow" morality of their era.

These are all reasonable but not-quite-right. Responding to each:

* "lying to protect an innocent life" is a classic thought-experiment but incredibly rare in real life, and if it does occur, requires no great moral sophistication to solve. "navigate conflicting duties" almost never requires moral innovation.

* I did wonder if I should say something about positive morality. I stick by my most-is-negative; admitting the obvious, that some-is-positive, is no problem. But charity, compassion, community building (a) require no moral innovation; (b) do not require your greatest exertions.

* I agree that progress is often (seen to be) spearheaded by exceptional, non-conformist individuals but that isn't the same thing as a saint-or-prophet: what these individuals have is energy, activism, conviction; not necessarily any new morality. Having said that, I don't really object to a few S-or-Ps: what I object to is the idea they have anything to do with everyday morality.

The Honourable Victoria Stanley and friends

Back to the Nat Gal for more kulture.

   

Lord R has been replaced (or displaced; I didn't see everything, obvs), part of the eternal rotation I suppose (though looking back through the archives I see that quite a bit of the tat hasn't been changed). I don't feel that Miss Victoria quite fills the space; emblematic of the age in some ways perhaps, but rather lightweight. There's also a Klimt - Hermine Gallia - replacing a rather poor quality Manet but while distinctivley K it isn't in the later style and is a bit washed out.

Having mocked the perspective in The Hunt in the Forest I feel I should also mock it in Ucello's The Battle of San Romano because, despite being a lovely painting, he still¹ can't get it right.

And the scattering of lances designed to let your eye see perspective is distinctly unsubtle. But Orange Turban Man is fantastic and has a faint resemblance to Putin. I have the Uffizi one too though foolishly I didn't get the full thing, the lighting is poor, and my 2018 camera wasn't great (update: used in this post). Roll on the Louvre.

Here's one that confused me, because I thought I had seen it just recently (apologies for the awful lighting, that's on the Nat Gal not me)

But no; it is... <checks timeline> by Dieric (aka Dirk) Bouts, ~1470 and I was confusing it with Albrecht Bouts from ~1500 (my version). Good grief it is all so confusing. Anyway, I very much like the way they freely copy from each other, whilst changing and trying to improve, instead of the modern mania for originality.

Which reminds me of the Mass of St Gregory of which I've seen a number of versions recently (Brugge; Ghent).

Weird, no? I must find out what all the funny symbols are sometime (ah: they are the Arma Christi). This one is by Campin, in Bruxelles.

Refs

* Other pics from this visit.

Notes

1. Wiki tells me it is actually earlier. I shouldn't assume that my viewing timeline is the same order as reality. Fine; it is clearly a better painting.

Book review: The Sciences and Philosophy

The Sciences and Philosophy by JS Haldane is a physically lovely book; the paper - linen-type, perhaps - and the red cloth binding are superior to anything you'll find nowadays. Published in 1929, as the record of the Gifford Lectures of 1927 and 1928, it seems to be to be a memorial of another and in some ways more thoughtful time. Unfortunately, it is also wrong.

JSH seems to have been a decent chap, a good scientist - though likely not the one you're thinking of, that was JBS -, and a benefactor of mankind. But he allows his philosophy to be lead by his conclusions. Those conclusions are - I'm interpolating my own conclusion here of course - that religion and/or spirituality are needed for a healthy moral society, and therefore materialism is false.

Part One, The Sciences, contains some interesting material about his researches on respiration; and on science's gradual discovery of how complex it all is; that breathing is regulated by the pressure of CO2 in the alveoli; where the energy is generated to power the muscles; how blood is regulated; and more. Indeed, he decides that life is so complex and interrelated that it cannot possibly be considered a mechanistic process but needs its own category, Life⁶. This is alas just a failure of imagination on his part. He argues continually against materialism, against a mechanistic Newtonian⁴ viewpoint; but is sensible enough to realise that "vitalism" or "animism" or "souls" is not a viable alternative. That leaves him a bit stuck. Here's a quote  about reproduciton:

Quite clearly, the mechanistic interpretation assumes the fact of hereditary transmission, and apart from hereditary transmission the theory of natural selection or of supernatural creation in the remote past would be meaningless. But what do we assume when we assume hereditary transmission? On the mechanistic interpretation, hereditary transmission means the reproduction in offspring of an enormously complicated physico-chemical structure. We must sweep away the crude idea that what happens is simply the increase and division of an albuminous substance without definite structure, called protoplasm. The substance must, on the mechanistic interpretation, be enormously complex and yet perfectly definite in molecular structure. But if it is so complex, how can we imagine its dividing into two parts, one at least of which must have the capacity of repeating the process indefinitely often?

A mechanist of robust faith would reply that though we do not understand the process, there must be some molecular mechanism by which the reproduction is brought about. In accordance with his robust faith he will also speak of the "mechanism" of reproduction. But the more we ponder over this question the more clearly does it appear that the idea of a complex mechanism which can also reproduce itself or mend itself is not a coherent idea at all. In fact no scholastic absurdity was ever more of an absurdity than a mechanism of heredity. Those who may still have a lingering affection for a mechanistic conception of life, or who imagine that life must be something which had a beginning in time, would do well to ponder further over the nature of hereditary transmission. A mechanism of hereditary transmission is simply a contradiction in terms.

Score one for the mechanist of robust faith and zero for Haldane. We forgive him, of course, for not knowing about DNA. But we cannot forgive him for deciding that some purely physical mechanism like DNA is absurd².

When we come to the philosophy in Part Two, we find him quite taken with Kant, which is forgiveable, but also with Hegel, which isn't; I won't trouble you with the H stuff.

Kant did not infer that mind makes the universe, but only that mind gives to it the form which it takes in our perception of it. Behind the visible and tangible world of our perceptual experience there was for Kant a world of "things-in-themselves," while the visible and tangible Newtonian world of bodies existing in time and space and acting on one another was the form given in perception to the world of things-in-them-selves.

I still think this is gobbledegook or the bleedin' obvious³; and although he generally doesn't go too far into woo, sometimes he oversteps: There is no such thing as a physical world existing apart from consciousness is on p 243. But I think he is attracted to K's stuff because it in some way "devalues" the physical world, and that is the direction he wants to go.

On values and morals:

We make, in practice, a sharp distinction between what we regard as of value from a mere individual standpoint and what has a wider social value. From the individual standpoint what is of value can be exchanged between different individuals, and has thus what is called a market value... If we ask why we should act honestly when if we acted dishonestly in our own individual interest it would almost certainly never be found out, or why we should go out of our way to act courteously to persons who do not know us and whom we shall never see again, the answer is that it is in our own wider and more real interest to act honestly or courteously. This wider interest is just a fact, and a fact which obliterates the mere individual interest which, owing to ill-breeding or defective education, we may have mistaken for a fact and assigned a market value to.

I'm largely happy with that, except for his snootiness about market value. But asserting that the wider interest is "just a fact" is shallow: he has allowed his inquiry to end too early; he knows that he wants it to be true, but has no real theory to justify it; what he is looking for is of course The Foundations of Morality⁵, which would distress him by being entirely material. 

Reality is not to be found in the ideal world of economics, dealing with market values... Those who keep nothing but their own self-interest before them are very properly treated with contempt in good society. A real State depends on the honesty, loyalty, courage, and mutual charity of its citizens; and true citizenship bears no relationship to the possession of wealth or specialized knowledge. We depend at every turn on the reality of this citizenship, and the general extension of the franchise in civilized States is only an acknowledgment of it.

I quote that to indicate how he is a good person trying to make a good society. Later, we get If once we admit what at the present time is presented to us as mere common sense, namely, that the world as interpreted physically is real, there is no stopping until we have apparently stripped our world of everything to which we can attach objective value. And he is very keen on values. But really, there are no objective values; values are things we humans impose on our view of the world; in that they are shared, they can be called real; and as they guide a flourishing society, they are useful (see-also: The Evolution of Morality). He is guilty of despair leading to him grasping for false solutions, due to lack of imagination.

Towards the end, having for several chapters danced around language of religion, he is obliged to come out as not Christian but Spiritual: The Spiritual Unity which we have found by philosophical analysis to be the Reality manifesting itself in all our experience corresponds to the Reality called, in the language of religion, God...¹ a very large and increasing body of persons who have studied or been influenced by one branch or another of science find themselves unable to belong to any recognized Church, because they cannot accept any form of belief in what is supernatural. It is to this body that I myself belong. And on immortality we get:

The question as to immortality appears now very differently from what it did from the animistic stand-point. In the first place, mere individual personality is unreal. It is only in so far as God is manifested in us that we partake of reality. Just as death of the individual cell or individual compound organism, or even the last of a species, must be regarded as a normal event in a wider life, so death of the individual person must be regarded as only an event in God's manifestation in time-relations. Through faith in God as the only ultimate Reality we must regard death of the individual from this standpoint, and our faith in this regard is just our faith in the self-consistency of our experience. It is God manifested within us, and not the abstraction which we call our individual self, that is immortal and the Creator and Sustainer of time-relations themselves. From this standpoint the immortality of individual persons is only a meaningless conception.

This is all regrettable woo, and usefully reminds us of the dangers of motivated reasonning.

As a sort of postscript, I note his The mathematical sciences deal merely with time-relations (arithmetic and algebra) and space-relations (geometry). This isn't reffed, but the wacky time-is-arithmetic will be recognised by the cognoscenti as the dead hand of Kant fouling his brain.

Notes

1. Caution: this ellipsis elides a large gap. I flow these together for my convenience.

2. We also get It is true that many biologists have expressed belief in an origin of life from purely physical conditions; but, as was pointed out in a previous lecture, such an idea is due to mere confusion in thought, and is on a par with the idea of a creation of life in time.

3. Depending on how you interpret it. If it is saying that we - our consciousness - doesn't directly perceive the real world, but we have sense-impressions mediated by eyes and ears and nerves and brain and so on, then it is just the obvious, badly expressed (see-also: Being You). If it is suggesting that our mind has freedom to impose any kind of order on the outside world and have it make sense, then no, that's nonsense. But I do wonder if JSH's perspective helps in some way to explain what on Earth big K was going on about.

4. He is aware of relativity and QM, and in my reading is eager to find in them support for his ideas, but is wise enough not to pin anything on them.

5. From which we should recall the quote from Mill: whatever may be the practical value of a true philosophy of these matters, it is hardly possible to exaggerate the mischiefs of a false one.

6. Later, he discovers that he needs another for Consciousness.

Refs

* Errors in the research of Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman.

* The $3.44 Walmart Pillow vs. Local Monopoly Power.

* The strange death of the net contributor.

* Contra Acemoglu on Political Economy and AI.

* The Culture War We Need.

Scientists who put faith in technology less likely to take climate action

The headline seems bleedin' obvious really. But the Graun is excited by it: Fabian Dablander, the lead author, said the belief that technology will largely solve climate change and its consequences, labelled “techno-optimism”, can lead to an over reliance on unproven solutions at the expense of the far-reaching socioeconomic transformations needed to address the climate and nature crisis. I blame Timmy for pointing this piece out.

Anyway, two things on top of Timmy's point: firstly, notice how the tech-fork gets a label, techno-optimism, which I think is meant to make you think such people are naive and simplistic in their beliefs, and the headline dig at "faith"; whereas the socio-trans fork doesn't get a label, because that's just common sense, and slips in the word "needed" because that is simply obvs to all right-thinking people.

Secondly and more importantly, notice that the tech-fork ideas are "unproven" whereas the unproven, unknown and unspecified socio-trans ideas are not so labelled. This is bizarre.

In tech terms, we have a number of things - mostly solar panels, maybe more wind, could be nooks if only the idiots would allow them to be built - that offer a fairly clear path to solving GW. Together with some rather more speculative ideas - iron fertilization, solar geoengineering - that are probably only emergency measures¹.

In socio terms, we have no real ideas what we would be aiming for, and no idea how to do it, and little to no idea of how to change society², beyond vague useless hand-waving images of peasants singing around maypoles.

And Kevin Anderson can fuck right off.

Notes

1. And which are "unproven solutions" only because the clowns won't allow them to be researched or tested.

2. Somewhere, not long ago, I read an article - possibly at ACX - pointing out that changing society is really hard and that we end up solving lots of problems with tech; but I can't find it right now. I should also note Popper's cautions regarding revolutionary change and his arguements for piecemeal social engineering.

3. My picture is a detail from - I think - a crucifixion scene; and is certainly in the OldMasters museum, Brussels. Do tell me exactly which painting, if you know; like a fool I forgot to note it.

Refs

* A Sentiment Analysis of Cowen, Hanson, Caplan, and Krugman.

* Britain’s Greens are now a hard-left, antisemitic party.

* Nobel Peace prize goes to Navi Pillay, promoter of the Israeli genocide blood libel.

* US imposes sanctions on International Criminal Court.

* Judith Curry WTF?

The Fall of the Rebel Angels and Friends

To Belgium, to G(h)ent and surrounds, to see the wonders thereof.

This is by Bruegel the Elder, not Bosch, wiki will tell you all about it. I saw this many moons ago in 2007, but thought less about it then. Here is a close up of a fragment.

It is all very wonderful, down to the strange frog-like thing aching to pull open her swollen belly and release her spawn. It is dream-like; similarly, in the Massacre of the Innocents, there are some dogs playing in the background, while in the foreground the hard men kick down doors.

I had thought that Milton made this up; but obvs not, this is too early. And wiki tells me it is in that reliable source, Revelations.

There's some Boschish too.

Refs

* Art for art's sake.

* Christ Carrying the Cross (Bosch, Ghent).

* Compendium of Writings on the October 7 War and Related Issues.

Book review: Chimpanzee Rights: The Philosophers’ Brief

This is a bad book: one-sided, not honest, more akin to propaganda than philosophy... unless you're familiar with The Republic, of course. And also wrong². So this "review" is more me filling in the other side. As to why I should bother with something so bad: I blame E for owning it; and the boundaries of rights is an interesting subject.

Context: Goodreads; Wiki. As far as I can tell, their project has been a total failure. One reason for that is that law is custom; this doesn't seem to be a concept that they are familiar with, despite their reliance on the common law.

To get a few snarks out of the way: the intro tells us that the authors are "renowned philosophers" - how modest of them - who "consider" the issues. But they are lying: most of them are associate professors, a lowly form of USAnian academic life. And this is no open-minded consideration of the issue: these people have made their minds up on the pro-animal-rights side, and will not consider arguments against. They also have an irritating tendency to quote someone saying something they agree with, and then treat that as a settled point in their favour. This is also a good place to say that they made so many errors that I cannot even mention them all.

Their argument proceeds under four heads: species membership; social contract; community membership; and capacities.

Under species membership they make the apparently sensible argument that biological categories can't provide a rational basis for rights moral or legal or matters of that ilk. They don't do a good job of distinguishing morality from legality. Legally, they notice that entities can only be persons or things, and appear to dislike this; they have a third category to propose, but they don't mention it until the end of the book. They apply for habeus corpus on behalf of some chimps, which is rejected, but - in my view - vitiate their own argument by applying for HC to move them from captivity by individuals into a "sanctuary" - which is to say, captivity somewhere else (p 94 belatedly admits this; and also admits that the court noticed). This implicitly admits the obvious: chimps can't live freely as part of human society.

Why is species membership a sensible legal definition of personhood? Because it works⁴; because it is custom; and because it is an easily applied test. Our Authors do their best to obscure that last point, wurbling around about how problematic the concept of race is blah blah blah but it won't work: "is this a human?" is far too easily answered a question for their equivocation to do away with.

One day, perhaps, we will meet space aliens and have to rethink this. But the method of rethink is fairly obvious and to all appearances not needed in the near future, so we don't need to worry about it. Rather sooner, perhaps, we will meet AI and have to rethink this. But I doubt that will help the chimps.

Species membership pretty well exhausts the legal matters, but OA quotes the courts discussing reciprocity of rights and responsibilities; and so we come to social contract, which is a perfectly sensible thing to discuss in this context. OA immeadiately bring up the distinction - vital in their eyes - between persons and citizens; the latter being persons participating in the social contract. They need to do this because chimps can't - are not able to - participate, obvs; in my view this is good evidence against chimp personhood. This is the point to note that we allow personhood to humans who aren't able to participate - natural fooles; infants; the mad or demented. Partly this is due to natural sympathy; partly to avoid having to deal with the inevitable edge cases³. OA then attempt to reverse this: if you can "bear rights"¹ then you are a person, even if you cannot bear responsibilities. They then, straining mightly, use Rawls's broken "Veil of Ignorance" stuff to argue that perhaps we would agree under said VoI to extend the contract and thus rights to non-human non-rational entities. I don't think we would. But if we did consider this, unfortunately for OA, this proves too much: that argument extends the contract to stoats, weasels and ferrets, as well as OA's favourite charismatic megafauna.

Next, community membership. The idea put forward is that being a person is being a part of the community of persons (this is slightly circular, but you get their idea); in their words "We all come to be persons through embeddedness in interpersonal relationships of interdependency, meaning, and belonging". This is pretty vague. Does it help their cause? Not obviously. Their original complaint is that the chimps are being held in inhumane conditions, so they aren't part of the community. They deal with this by saying "ah, but they are capable of being part" - but is this true? I doubt putting a free chimp into a human community would end happily. Further, this would cover all house pets as well, and (due to the "are capable") clause, a great deal of other animals. Really, this attempt doesn't differ significantly from the previous.

Fourthly, we come to "capacities": things like sentience, emotion, autonomy, self-awareness, sociality. Do you need all of these, some, or shifting combinations to make you a person? In fact the list is arbitrary, and really is just a list of things that people do, retro-fitted. But never mind, because OA decide to pick "autonomy" and declare personhood based solely on autonomy (p 94). This doesn't work: autonomy is too vague, and too widely shared; indeed, on its widest fringes it is practically synonymous with life, and OA make no attempt to bound it; their efforts are all in the other direction, to stretch the category far enough to include chimps.

Under conclusions, they note that they don't have a positive account of personhood to propose. This is a fundamental problem for them, and leads them into "lawyers philosophy". "We don't know what a person is, but surely this makes you a person, and so...". As noted at the start, the law makes entities persons or things, and at last we get a thought of a third category (though they don't seem terribly enthusiastic about it and are careful not to endorse it): "sentient being". But the problem is that the simple creation of this category gives you no idea of what "rights" a member has. For example (p 105) they note a Mexican law obliging respect for the life of nonhuman animals, but as we all know that "respect" doesn't include not killing them; this is the kind of double-think you end up with when cute fluffy words run up against custom.

In my humble opinion

Enough of their wrongness. What is the right answer? The obvious answer is that personhood involves being (capable of being) part of the social contract; and we extend that to cover natural fooles, etc., as noted earlier. What defence do chimps - or other things capable of suffering - get, from our moral or legal systems? Essentially the "repugnance" defence; see eating-a-dog bit from my review of The Righteous Mind: being cuuel damages ourselves.

Notes

1. "bear rights" is strange language; I can't tel if they really mean it, or if this is intended to be equivalent to "have rights".

2. Fundamentally, OA are nice, caring people who have allowed their compassion for chimps to override their reason.

3. On p 56 OA quote Carruthers saying exactly this. But somehow they fail to understand him; they cannot understand that there is an edge-case problem with "degree of rationality", which is a continuuos variable, but not with "degree of being human", which is binary.

4. If you object to "works" as grubby practicality that has no place in a philosophical discussion, I remind you that this is also a legal discussion; indeed primarily legal at this point.

Refs

* The paradox of American multiculturalism.

* Firm Functionalism.

* Climate Change: The World’s Most Overrated Problem.

* Were the Nazis Socialist? Only in Part. The Nazis were similar to socialists supporting economic statism, but different in other key aspects of their ideology.

Book review: The Evolution of Morality

The Evolution of Morality by Richard Joyce: Goodreads; his website. This is only a partial review, as I DNF'd in chapter 2 because... well, for reasons I find somewhat hard to concretise. He is an academic (wiki²) and whilst the book is not a dry academic tome it does have all the whiffling and qualifications leading to pointless digressions and obscurations you expect from academia (see-also this review). Furthermore, he doesn't actually know what morality is, which is a bit of an issue for him; even more of an issue is that he attempts to get around this bijou problemette by nibbling around at the edges⁸; unfortunately this leads him into pointless digressions about moral judgements, which seemed like his main interest; at least, that's when I gave up.

So I should explain why I'm bothering to review this: it is because I had thoughts that interested me while reading it, which I deem worth writing down.

Before I go on, you should read my review of The Foundations of Morality to make sure we're on the same page; and I should read it, to make sure I don't contradict myself... right, I'm back.

I see that there, I didn't commit myself to any comment on "evolution". In reviewing Reason and Morality I explictly said "those rules bind because they have "evolved" to"; by writing in that fashion - putting evolved into quotes - I meant to be ambiguous about whether they had genetically or culturally evolved. But clearly they have evolved, in that they were not simply imposed by fiat of law or god at some single time. Whether we imagine that people have some "moral organ" perhaps in analogy to a "language organ", or that it is all cultural, or some mixture, doesn't particularly bother me at the moment¹. Our Author is in favour of morality having evolved³, but perhaps somewhat weirdly or so it seems to me, it doesn't seem to be a major preoccupation of the book; perhaps it is in the bits I skipped.

Let's get to the shite bits. If you read his wiki page, there's a section on "Moral error theory" (this says OA is one), which contains "the moral error theorist maintains that moral judgments are truth-evaluable assertions... but that the world doesn't contain the properties (e.g., moral goodness, evil, moral obligation) needed to render moral judgments true". It is indeed true that the physical world doesn't contain moral goodness or evil; these are meta-properties imposed on it by humans⁴. Just as a story doesn't exist in the real world: in the real physical world, there exist books which are leaves of paper with squiggly black marks on them grouped into "words" and "sentences" and "chapters", but none of these things physically exist, they are organisational concepts; see also [[Popper's three worlds]] if these ideas are unfamiliar to you. But OA's problem is letting this language confuse his discourse: because he doesn't know what morality is, he gets lost in discussing "moral judgements" as an attempt to get close to saying something about morality - I think - but then goes all philosophy about moral judgements presuming a moral object to judge, which of course doesn't exist, objectively⁷. Moral judgements are the workings of our moral sense; they are the states-of-mind of people who have considered from a moral viewpoint a given situation.

In order to confuse things further, he then discusses Moore's paradox, which is a new one on me. It may be new to you, too, so go skim it; try to avoid your revulsion at the blatant philosophical wank. So the situation is of someone saying "P; but I do not believe P". And the gloss is that this is absurd, but not contradictory, because "It can be true at a particular time both that P, and that I do not believe that P". But the problem is that the setup is someone saying "P"; not the fact-of P. And saying P (in the course of honest discourse, which this is assumed to be) is equivalent to "I believe P". Because everyone knows that stating P does not make P happen and is not ironclad evidence for P, because everyone makes mistakes; by saying P you are merely expressing your belief in P⁶. And so the situation is equivalent to "I believe P; but I do not believe P"; which is not a paradox, it is merely a contradiction¹¹.

From a Goodreads review: A brilliant analogy Joyce uses is with the way we see color: I see my walls as red, even though the 'redness' is actually not as much in the wall as in the way lightwaves from the wall interact with my eye. But: the redness really is in the wall: the wall has physical properties that affect the way light interacts with it⁹. Compare: two men indulge in homosexual relations and are seen by a third, who "sees" immorality and judges it so: where is the immorality? It isn't in the real physical world, because we enlightened people of the cold west know that homosexuality is not immoral in our culture; but we are so enlightened we know that people of other cultures may say it is in theirs⁵.

A niggle: Kant [says] that actions motivated by prosocial emotions cannot be considered morally admirable... I am more than happy to side with common sense against Kant on this point... In fact, I am willing to endorse the view that on occasions a per-son whose motivations derive from explicit moral calculation rather than direct sympathy is manifesting a kind of moral vice. This is weird. We have, so to speak, two sorts of "moral organ": the quick instinctive moral judgements that we use constantly without really thinking about for everyday matters and is governed by the hypothesised "moral instincts"; and a slower harder thoughtful consideration of more difficult, less common issues; this you might say is governed by our general-purpose thinking engine. Most people are inclined to go with the quick results, even in situations where they really should be using the slow; certainly, the slow should be more reliable, and give better results, whenever it is invoked honestly and carefully. Why OA should consider this "moral vice" I don't know; he provides no explanation or example.

I think that's enough.

Refs

* Justice Kavanaugh turns down request from Missouri to use congressional map expected to aid Republicans.

* No Doing, No Learning.

* State of Oregon v. Trump.

Notes

1. Should I care? Do tell me why. OA spends some time explaining why even if we were sure morality was genetic, we shouldn't be bothered for free will type reasons, and I'm fine with that.

2. Which all turns up as a big blob by one user who does little else. I deduce either a fanboi, or the man himself. Either way, I'm going to treat it as accurate.

3. Minor aside: in the wiki article on Evolution of morality he gets barely a look in.

4. Or other moral beings.

5. Ours is better; obvs; but that's another post.

6. When discussing contingent properties of the real world.

7. Maybe he thinks morality is objective, and therefore there must exist moral objects? Probably not... actually I think that's one of my problems with the book, he presents many thoughts but rarely endorses any^7a. Moral objects seem weird to me, but then I'm not a theist, so I have no source for any desired objective morality. It is obvious that different cultures have non-identical moralities - indeed different people do. We observe that all cultures contain some shared morality - mostly, do no harm - but this is because cultures that don't put that into their morality fail to thrive. I've said this before, somewhere.

7a. This is, in my view, unhelpful, at least in the area of philosophy. There are zillions of different views, and philosophers are skilled at generating new ones, much in the way that Sabine Hossenfelder criticises mathematical physicists for pointlessly inventing new "possible" particles. The need is to eliminate old wrong views by considering them carefully; to clear away the deadwood that the philosophes so love.

8. The "nibbling at the edges" issue is interetsing, in that it reminds me of Popper's theory of knowledge: Conjectures and Refutations. You acquire knowledge of a thing by guessing, then trying to see if you're wrong. Not by doing what OA does, trying to understand tiny bits of it at a time.

9. This confusion about intrinsic vs accidental properties of things has been around since the antient Greeks. Descartes (see esp footnote 4) for example was not alone in thinking that the fundamental property of matter was extension and everything else was an accident¹⁰; but we now know about mass, charge, spin and so on.

10. Gemini agrees. But rather weirdly thinks this a good thing, ffs.

11. Apparently M'sP was a fave of Wittgenstein, which is a bit of a hint that it is a purely linguistic issue, not a real problem.

Checking up on Hazlitt with Gemini

While writing this, I had a terrible fear that my fanboi adulation of Hazlitt was vulnerable to some brilliant philosophical debunking that would point out his obvious crass errors. So I Googled it, and Gemini told me, and I paste it below. I feel that Gemini has done a fair job, and am happy with the answer, because all these criticisms are stupid. I'm also moderately sure that at least one of my commentators would have been happy to jump on any flaws.

Henry Hazlitt’s moral philosophy—primarily outlined in his 1964 book The Foundations of Morality—is considered "wrong" or heavily criticized by certain philosophers and economists primarily because it reduces all ethical systems to a form of rule utilitarianism centered entirely on social cooperation. [1] (https://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2012/03/question-to-the-non-ideal-theorists-of-justice-what-do-you-think-of-henry-hazlitt/)

Critics, including academic reviewers and rival political theorists, argue that his framework fails for several key reasons:

* Rejection of Natural Rights: Hazlitt dismisses objective natural rights or moral intuitionism, arguing that moral rules are merely utilitarian conventions hammered out over centuries to foster social utility. Critics who believe in inherent human rights argue this makes justice subordinate to collective cooperation.

* Economic Reductionism: Reviewers have chided Hazlitt (a renowned free-market economist) for tailoring his ethics to justify private property orders and classical liberal market frameworks, making morality look like an extension of abstract economics rather than an independent philosophical truth. (https://www.libertarianism.org/essays/review-foundations-of-morality)

* Overly Optimistic Harmony: Hazlitt claims that an individual's rightly-conceived long-term self-interest always neatly aligns with social cooperation. Critics argue this harmony is naive and fails to account for real-world scenarios where brutal exploitation or systemic injustice can genuinely benefit a ruling individual or group at the direct expense of others. (https://fee.org/articles/hazlitts-the-foundations-of-morality/)

* Dismissal of Metaethics: Hazlitt openly criticized modern moral philosophers for getting bogged down in linguistic and metaethical analysis, leading strict academic ethicists to view his approach as overly simplistic or evasive of deep philosophical complexities. (https://www.hazlitt.org/e-texts/morality/ch23.html)

If you would like to explore this further, let me know if you want to compare Hazlitt's view with Kant's deontology or look more closely at his defense of rule utilitarianism.

The Data Heat Island Effect: Quantifying the Impact of AI Data Centers in a Warming World

By Andrea Marinoni et al.. Coming to you and me via X. And of course, I begin by apologising for the intrusion of climate into this war-focussed blog.

The basic idea seems perfectly sensible: from a MODIS dataset, identify datacenter locations and look at the temperature change after they turn on.

A nit: as we see from their figure, the average effect is a temperature jump, which isn't surprising: you don't expect a trend, unless the datacenter is ramping up over time; from the figure, it looks like that isn't usually the case. And yet they say stuff like "the Bajio region a great hub for AI data centres¹. Nevertheless, it has been recorded [sic] a serious LST increase trend (in the order of 2°C) in the last twenty years in the region". But it isn't a trend, which they effectively admit by expressing it in degrees, rather than degrees-per-time. But this is just a carelessness of language, not a real flaw.

The flaw is in what they don't say: how does their datacenter heat island effect compare to the usual UHI? A random search for London and Paris says 5-10 oC compared to rural. So my suspicion is that worrying about the DHI is about as useful as worrying about their water usage. For bonus points, their "A way forward" section is comically silly; and their conclusion - " Our study shows a non negligible

and rather remarkable impact of the AI data centres on their local regions" - is simply not true; NN is correct, but RR is pure emotionalism and doesn't belong in a real paper. This is of course but a preprint.

Refs

* A hyperbolic and misguided article in the New England Journal of Medicine, prompted by the death of Jason Arday.

* US strikes Iranian launchers on Larak Island in first known attack in weeks.

* Scientific American on the skids, sold by Springer Nature to another company.

* The deputy leader of the Green Party, whose policy it is to “abolish landlords”, is a private landlord (though to be fair, while this is witty and amusing, the policy was only agreed last autumn and it isn't obvious he is bound by it).

* UK retailer Next wins appeal to pay warehouse staff higher basic pay.

* THE SIMPLIFICATION AND AGENCY OF GOVERNMENT (fine words but... well, that didn't last long).

Notes

1. It seems to me that they are rather casual about "datacenter" vs "AI datacenter". Obvs - no? - neither Bajio nor anywhere else has been an AI datacenter hub for the past 20 years. I doubt that much matters for the analysis.

Did you miss me (yeah) when I was a gay?

Last used in 2018, good grief, that was a while ago.

But like then, I'm back from the alps, keen and eager to leap back into the fray, as soon as I can think of anything worth saying or responding to. Don't hold your breath.

Once again, I'm struck by how the mountains are falling apart. The Gran Paradiso is still just about an F, but the slopes are getting less friendly and the crevasses are opening up. And most seriously - for my purposes - the Grand Couloir was deemed so dangerous that they shut the Tete Rousse and Gouter huts entirely (arrete; Gouter ref page arch), rather blowing my plans for Mont Blanc. See-also this video.

Otherwise, it was hot, but walkable, provided you got used to starting early and taking a midday break, preferrably in a suitable refuge where refreshments could be provided. And towards the second half the "afternoon rain" pattern predominated.

In due course a full travelogue of my exciting adventures from Modane to St Gervais - yes, again - will appear.

Refs

* Why Arday Splits Anglosphere Elites.

* The Foothills Of Bay Area House Party.

* UK Regulatory Burden.

* A Wall Of Separation Between LGB and T.

* Trump Imposes Harmful and Illegal Section 338 Tariffs Against Many Canadian Imports.

* Federal Court Rules Speech-Based Deportations Violate the First Amendment.

Arma Mangoque Cano

My attempts to wait for the end of the little tiff between the MM and the MMs¹ has failed: here am I.

My graph shows one measure of the state of play: some version of "the oil price" though I have come to realise that its all a bit more complicated than I first thought; nonetheless some features can be clearly read, most notably that all is not over, but that the market expects reasonable flow in the near future. Are they right? Spoiler: I don't know.

My expectation - which shows how little I know of fanaticism and stupidity - was that the MMs would take the vague unclear deal on offer and use the inclarity to boast of victory whilst quietly stopping any overt naughtiness², and everything would trail off. Unfortunately - unless you're a popcorn vendor or pundit, obvs - buoyed, quite likely, by idiot Western intellectuals telling them that they had won - they decided to keep up the attacks on random ships and got twatted in return. Neither side has any great regard for, or even it would seem understanding of, truth; so reading their words is of no great value. But the MM calling the MMs "scum" might turn out to mean something. Could it be that he has finally learnt that they have no intention of abiding by their words, and that Covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength? The weird thing is that he is so desperate for peace either because he loves peace, or because he loves votes that he is prepared to repeatedly overlook transgressions; not a strategy that works well in this area.

Meanwhile, the situation in Lebanon continues, but that doesn't seem to be troubling either side at the moment, which makes sense, since it is no part of this conflict. Or at least, it shouldn't be. If the MMs insist on entangling it, I can't see that going well for them.

Singing³:

Then I stripped them, scalp from skull, and my hunting-dogs fed full,

  And their teeth I threaded neatly on a thong;

And I wiped my mouth and said, "It is well that they are dead,

  For I know my work is right and theirs was wrong." 

Updates

Don't expect blow-by-blow stuff.

* 2026/07/16: US strikes oil tanker with missiles as it enforces new Iran blockade. And Iran tells Houthis to close Red Sea oil route if US hits power network - oooooh yes bring it on. 07/22: Trump says he’ll hold Iran responsible for future Houthi attacks on ships.

* 2026/07/23: US House passes war powers resolution directing Trump to end Iran conflict says the Graun. But the vote is party-partisan (as you can tell from the Graun quoting a lying pol (“This is not a partisan issue,” Jayapal said following the vote) and later on the Graun negates its own breathy headline by noting that Later on Thursday, the Senate rejected a similar resolution proposed by Democrat Chris Van Hollen in a 47-49 vote, largely along party lines. Having Congress try to run the war like this is bad.

Notes

1. I'm aware that sources suggest that the MMs are now sidelined by the menwithgunz; but that doesn't fit so well, and is anyway too new and doubtful to replace yet; and officially Iran remains a theocratic dictatorship. Wittily, I saw on X a re-translation into English of the Arabic version of some CENTCOM I think it was post, which started "The Supreme Leader has instructed US forces to...".

2. Given the obvious banal motive for Trump - that he wants peace so oil prices go down so that gas(oline) prices go down so that USAnians go back to sleep - I'm kinda baffled by the MMs thought processes. If they go around twatting ships and stopping traffic, yer MM is not going to be happy. Perhaps to try restating that: the MMs have leverage, by threatening to close Hormuz. But actually closing it, isn't leverage.

3. You will be wondering what I meant by that; I know I am. Reconstructing myself: firstly, I read it, and liked it. Second, I am gently mocking myself: the enthusiasm of the singer for the certainty of his cause is revealed as ill-founded in the next verse.

Refs

* Art for art's sake.

* The Best Thing About Wokeness.

* Biological Sex Is Binary and Rooted in Anisogamy.

* ...The socialization process is what makes it difficult for us to see the rules of our own society as rules – having grown up with them, we have acquired a desire to act in the way that the rules require us to act, and so typically experience the behaviour as voluntary, even though it is constrained...

* He's Got My Vote: An Atypically Productive Exchange on the UBI.

* ...a large portion of the population live in an alternative reality built entirely on words...

* Evidence we should sell the NHS for scrap.

* As U.S. Starts 'New' Iran War, Lawmakers Want Answers About Deadly Elementary School Strike.

* the "Gaza genocide"... the left-wing equivalent of the stolen election hoax.

* A police officer explains why ending rough sleeping is likely to be very hard.

* Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has sacked the country's army commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi.

* Libertarianism Against the Welfare State: A Refresher.

* Moody’s Lifts Argentina Debt Rating in Fresh Boost to Milei.

* Saudis must recognise Israel for nuclear deal, says Trump.

* Will Courts Uphold the EPA's Rescission of the "Endangerment Finding"?

* We haven't got a clue if America will launch another “massive attack” on Iran - El Econo. Retitled for clarity (and it looks like they have retitled it too; orig).

* The rise of the deserving rich; and.

* Court Packing Is a Dangerous Gambit Best Avoided.

* Private Property: For Abundance and Diversity.

* The Negligence of War and Peace.

Book review: The Rise of the Western World

The Rise of the Western World: A New Economic History by Douglass C. North and Robert Paul Thomas. First published in 1973, this is a radical interpretation, offering a unified explanation for the growth of Western Europe between 900 A. D. and 1700, providing a general theoretical framework for institutional change geared to the general reader. It looks like you can read it here, or here, for yourself rather than rely on my unreliable summary; it is fairly short, and not hard going.

It describes - in economic and political terms - the developments in the West, well in western Europe, but stops before the industrial revolution, saying "well there you go then: that's what laid the ground for the industrial revolution to happen in England". What it talks about is largely organisation; and how various rulers' desperate need for money in the short term lead them to a variety of expedients for taxation or other equivalent money-raising schemes; some of which were in the long term bad. So for example the Spanish crown favoured the Mestas because they were a ready source of income; but this worked against recognising property rights, and so was unfortunate in the long term.

Here's a quote, to give you an idea of their language and terms:

To understand the background, we must explain the functions of the state against a wider background than would be necessary in dealing with the feudal world alone. Even in our day, the government is primarily an institutional arrangement that sells protection and justice to its constituents. It does so by monopolizing the definition and enforcement of property rights over goods and resources and the granting of rights to the transfer of these assets. In return for this service, the state receives payment in the form of taxes. Since economies of scale in the provision of protection and justice make this transaction potentially worthwhile to the constituents, a basis exists for a mutually advantageous trade between the governed and the government. So long as economies of scale continue, the state's widened protection and enforcement of property rights increases the income of all constituents and this saving is divided in some manner between the constituents and the state. What determines the division of these savings? The citizens are interested in receiving as much of the incremental income as possible; but so is the state, since its very survival during this period often depends on the maximization of present revenues. Let us consider again the historical evidence of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as described in...

I find this helpful; it strips off so much of the gunk. But there's also some more fact-based stuff, if you're interested in population, or prices, of the evolution of the manorial / feudal systems.

We end up considering France, Spain (unfortunates) and the Netherlands and England (fortunate); I forget why Italy and Germany fall out of the analysis. But the end result, though they don't say it, is essentially trial-and-error, or Darwinistic: people try stuff, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, places where they do things that work well thrive, others don't. We and the Neds got property rights; the Frogs and the Spics got a strong crown. You may notice a certain vagueness of my part here: although I've only just finished reading it, the details are already fading.

The book is prone to say things like "progress was not possible until the private and societal rates of return were made to coincide". By which it means, that unless entrepeneurs and inventors could capture a significant portion of the return from newe thinges - which required new laws, or new systems -, they would not put in the time, effort and resources - the investment - required to produce those newe thinges, from which all benefit. This is I think a useful overarching perspective; a summary, which makes it easier to order and think about individual events. And yet it doesn't actually explain any of the individual events, obvs.

This - it occurs to me so I shall write it down here pending a better place - is a little like theories of history: there are a great many events; to turn them into history they must be grouped and ordered: a "great man" theory; as "economic"; as monarchs; whatever.

Disappointingly, there's nothing here on "why the West won": they don't talk at all about why anywhere else, perhaps most obviously China, didn't succeed. See-also The Grand Titration. Put into this framework, the answer is likely lack of competition; a lesson for our times. If you only have one go at getting the right answer, you'll probably fail.

Refs

* 1776 in the US and Latin America.

* We woz wrong about oil, sez El Econo.

* Europe's Weather Losses Keep Climbing; But a new loss normalization finds no trend after accounting for economic growth - guess who.

* The Declaration of Independence and the Case for Non-Ethnic Secession.

* The Causal Effect of Income is (Often) Zero.

* Rich World, Poor World: RCP 8.5, IPAT, and Climate Impacts Reconsidered.

* Why We've Been Thinking about the Fertility Crisis Wrong: Did humans evolve to seek solitude?

* A Conservative Court—Not a Trump Court.

* Airpower Did Not Fail in Iran — Simplistic Thinking Did.

* JD Vance's crusade against GDP is wrong and bad: Making Americans poorer won't make our society better. While I'm here: for me, see GDP impartially consider'd and links therein in particular Is Decoupling GDP Growth from Environmental Impact Possible?; and to Limits to Growth comments.