I've got what feels like less than enough time to finish my dissertation and so my brain has, naturally enough, kicked into overdrive. As a result, I have a few things that keep floating up to the surface of my consciousness so I'm skimming them off here in the hope that that will lay them to temporary rest.
1) I've often thought about the problem of being in a relationship and having a mental disorder. I've written about it before, a couple of times. Today, however, I started thinking about it in a different way. I've been thinking about it only in terms of the way I feel as though I were "damaged goods": it's a cruel phrase, but it's the one lodged in my subconscious mind. If one looks at it more broadly and with fewer innappropriate moralistic overtones, then on can reframe it as a relationship (potentially) between a neurotypical person and a non-neurotypical person. It seems to me that this correctly captures the extra effort required with the additional advantage of making it perspicuous that the effort flows both ways. The statistical likelihood is that if I (a non-neurotypical person) end up in a relationship, that relationship will be with a neurotypical person because there are a lot more neurotypical persons than non-neurotypical persons. Thus, the expectation that I will have to make extra effort to accommodate a person whose neurological architecture is significantly different from mine is a strong expectation. I do no, however, consider that the effort is too costly. It seems fine and acceptable to me. Whenever I have hitherto considered it from the other side, however, it has often felt like it would be asking too much of any person to bear the burden of accommodation for my non-typical neural architecture. The effort, however, that that hypthetical neurotypical person would have to make is theoretically no greater than any effort I will have to make; it is just statistically less likely that any given individual neurotypical person would have to make that effort in any given relationship. Thus, I can now see that I have been falling for an informal fallacy all these years! I'm going to try to stop worrying about it, or at least to acknowledge the effort I would have to make as being equally important. Liberating.
2) Learning the music for a Handel oratorio, while a joyful and worthwhile end in itself, is not actually commensurate with writing a dissertation. Must put mp3 player away now.
3) There was another one but now I can't remember what it is. Distracted even in my distractions. Damn! That's some distracted! Oh well.
Here's some Handel for your delectation:
And some silly Handel with dancing by the ever-wonderful Mark Morris Dance Group:
Almost done! Can't wait! Day in bed with chocolate, Carson McCullers novel and Handel score coming up. Then, my 30th birthday party. How did I get this old? Last time I checked I was still 25.
Showing posts with label logic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label logic. Show all posts
26 August 2010
18 August 2010
Over-Educated Undead
I think grad school might be a species of zombie.
1) If one is in grad school, one must write a dissertation.
2) Dissertations will eventually take over your inner running commentary; you will eventually realise that you are losing your ability to think about non-dissertation things and your ability to make complete sentences out loud. Groaning constitutes a large part of your discourse.
3) Monomania, the inability to make complete sentences and the increase of groaning are all indicators that one's brain is being eaten.
4)If it is a thing that eats brains, it is a zombie.
5) Dissertations are brain eating things. 2, 3 Hypothetical Syllogism
6) Grad school is a brain eating thing. 1, 5 Hypothetical Syllogism
_________________________________________
Therefore, Grad school is a species of zombie. 6, 4 Hypothetical Syllogism
Proof: I love logic. Brain eating ceases 5pm 1 September. Wish me luck!
1) If one is in grad school, one must write a dissertation.
2) Dissertations will eventually take over your inner running commentary; you will eventually realise that you are losing your ability to think about non-dissertation things and your ability to make complete sentences out loud. Groaning constitutes a large part of your discourse.
3) Monomania, the inability to make complete sentences and the increase of groaning are all indicators that one's brain is being eaten.
4)If it is a thing that eats brains, it is a zombie.
5) Dissertations are brain eating things. 2, 3 Hypothetical Syllogism
6) Grad school is a brain eating thing. 1, 5 Hypothetical Syllogism
_________________________________________
Therefore, Grad school is a species of zombie. 6, 4 Hypothetical Syllogism
Proof: I love logic. Brain eating ceases 5pm 1 September. Wish me luck!
21 July 2010
Stress and Moodiness
I've been sort-of hard at work on my dissertation this week and last; sort-of hard at the socialising, too. We have a draft due on Friday and I'm having a hard time getting the words onto paper.
Unfortunately, I often have writer's block when it comes to submitting work to be graded. This is still a relatively new problem for me. In 2006, I had what can only be called (pathetic as this sounds) a traumatic grading experience. It was the final paper for a class I had been doing very well in. The professor who had previously been quite supportive and quite enthusiastic about the work I had done really did not like my final paper. I, on the assumption that she would like it as much as the rest of my work, was careless about picking up the draft from her in a timely fashion. It was the end of the semester, which is always a very busy time, and so I didn't get it back from her until about six hours before our exam period, during which she had decided we would present and discuss our papers instead of sitting an exam. Clearly, this was not the best decision on my part but I do think that I was reasonably justified in expecting that, on the whole, any comments would be largely positive. What I got instead was a barrage of mixed justified criticism and emotional hogwash. It's not on to accuse someone of being species-ist in a ten page paper; it is acceptable to say that soemthing is too much of an assertion and not enough of an argument.
The difficulty for me was that the argument and the idea behind the paper are objectively good. I have had many good discussions about it, I have even had that very same paper accepted for a conference. That class was the first class I had ever had with that particular professor and over the years I learned more about her. I learned that she (being an arch second-wave feminist) really hates logic and thinks that it can only ever be used to oppress people. My paper was based around a deductive logical argument and contained the word logic in the title. I have learned, particularly from hearing more of her own work, that she is very invested in essential notions about sex and gender and really believes that women (have to) do philosophy in a significantly different way because they are women. My paper was intended to be critical and possibly destructive about essentialist notions of sex and gender. Knowing more about the way she looks at the world, I can see that she must have experienced that paper as a personal attack, designed to oppress her, written by a female student who obviously was a sex traitor for using logic and saying that women are not necessarily different from men. From that point of view, it would have been philosophically coherent for her to react emotionally to my paper, rather than to try to argue against it or be objective about the merits of its content.
I am quite logically convinced that she is in the wrong, that the paper - while far from perfect - is not the fundamentally flawed piece of drivel she tried to make it out to be. However, I only know this and it is hard to convince myself that she was wrong on the level of psychological belief or felt truth. Thus, I continue to have writer's block and it continues to make life hard for me from time to time. Whatever the merits of my paper, it was wrong and unprofessional of her to attack me in that way; I understand now that she felt that I had attacked her and that she was responding in kind BUT I didn't attack her, I attacked an idea and she knows it. She just reacted in an ideological way to what I was saying. She reacted in a way that I believe is a betrayal of the social contract between a teacher and a student, and a way that is an unhelpful disruption of the norms, ethos and mores of a university. If she's that committed to that particular variety of second-wave feminism, then what is she doing teaching at a university? They're definitely and demonstrably tools of male oppression in much the same way as logic! She has a right to her beliefs about the world and the right to act on them and I have a corresponding duty to respect that; however, I have a right to my beliefs about the world and a right to act on them and she has a corresponding duty to respect that!
The whole experience has had some benefit. It really deepened my understanding of how to practise philosophy and how to read another person's work and how to disagree and why philosophers disagree with one another in the way that they do (i.e. respectfully). I am still having a hard time, however, with the writer's block. It has gotten much, much better over the years - so much better. I'm sure it will continue to get easier. It is not, however, gone. When a deadline gets close, I experience a lot of negative stress. It's the kind of stress that comes tinged with self-loathing and self-harm ideation and this makes it very hard for me to work.
On a year to year basis (though not necessarily on a day to day one), I have been on an upward trajectory since I was in hospital a little more than three years ago. Having an accurate diagnosis has helped me to understand what to look for symptom-wise and all that looking has helped me become increasingly familiar and accurate in understanding what's going on with me by what I'm thinking and what I feel, both emotionally and physiologically. This familiarity in turn has given me an increased ability to look after myself well and effectively. I have learned some ways to help myself get over or past various psychological stumbling blocks and how to deal with the stubborn symptoms that are really not under my control. I'm far from perfect at it - the logical possibility of my ever being perfect at it is close to zero - but I'm much better than random and much better than I used to be. This writer's block seems to be one of those things that I have some control over - limited control but susceptible to improvement.
This week, the stress of writing through the self-loathing is pushing me towards the serious kind of moodiness. It will be okay - it will be over soon and then it will be as though it never happened, or so I keep telling myself. Nevertheless, I'll get to go through it again but a bit worse at the end of next month when the final paper is due and I'm going to be job hunting between now and then, which is usually a stressful and rather discouraging activity. I'm also going back to visit the family for a week and this means long haul flying and jet lag which has, historically, set me off mood-wise. That's an unusual number of risk factors and it worries me a bit.
Anyhow, I'm really curious as to what other people do to cope with things like this, especially writer's block. I would really like to get rid of it. Even if it isn't something you've done but rather something that happened, I would be very appreciative if you'd tell me about it. What I've been able to do so far specifically for the writer's block is to just carry on writing through the teeth of it, look back on and analyse what happened and what it was that upset me and why it might have happened, seeking other people's opinions on the work (e.g. entering it for and presenting it at a conference) and letting time pass. And I started this blog - really. It seemed like having another reason to write and a different audience might help, as it has indeed done.
This isn't the best post I've ever written - in fact, I suspect it's a bit boring; sorry about that - but this is a subject much on my mind at the moment. Back to the word-arranging grind, now.
Unfortunately, I often have writer's block when it comes to submitting work to be graded. This is still a relatively new problem for me. In 2006, I had what can only be called (pathetic as this sounds) a traumatic grading experience. It was the final paper for a class I had been doing very well in. The professor who had previously been quite supportive and quite enthusiastic about the work I had done really did not like my final paper. I, on the assumption that she would like it as much as the rest of my work, was careless about picking up the draft from her in a timely fashion. It was the end of the semester, which is always a very busy time, and so I didn't get it back from her until about six hours before our exam period, during which she had decided we would present and discuss our papers instead of sitting an exam. Clearly, this was not the best decision on my part but I do think that I was reasonably justified in expecting that, on the whole, any comments would be largely positive. What I got instead was a barrage of mixed justified criticism and emotional hogwash. It's not on to accuse someone of being species-ist in a ten page paper; it is acceptable to say that soemthing is too much of an assertion and not enough of an argument.
The difficulty for me was that the argument and the idea behind the paper are objectively good. I have had many good discussions about it, I have even had that very same paper accepted for a conference. That class was the first class I had ever had with that particular professor and over the years I learned more about her. I learned that she (being an arch second-wave feminist) really hates logic and thinks that it can only ever be used to oppress people. My paper was based around a deductive logical argument and contained the word logic in the title. I have learned, particularly from hearing more of her own work, that she is very invested in essential notions about sex and gender and really believes that women (have to) do philosophy in a significantly different way because they are women. My paper was intended to be critical and possibly destructive about essentialist notions of sex and gender. Knowing more about the way she looks at the world, I can see that she must have experienced that paper as a personal attack, designed to oppress her, written by a female student who obviously was a sex traitor for using logic and saying that women are not necessarily different from men. From that point of view, it would have been philosophically coherent for her to react emotionally to my paper, rather than to try to argue against it or be objective about the merits of its content.
I am quite logically convinced that she is in the wrong, that the paper - while far from perfect - is not the fundamentally flawed piece of drivel she tried to make it out to be. However, I only know this and it is hard to convince myself that she was wrong on the level of psychological belief or felt truth. Thus, I continue to have writer's block and it continues to make life hard for me from time to time. Whatever the merits of my paper, it was wrong and unprofessional of her to attack me in that way; I understand now that she felt that I had attacked her and that she was responding in kind BUT I didn't attack her, I attacked an idea and she knows it. She just reacted in an ideological way to what I was saying. She reacted in a way that I believe is a betrayal of the social contract between a teacher and a student, and a way that is an unhelpful disruption of the norms, ethos and mores of a university. If she's that committed to that particular variety of second-wave feminism, then what is she doing teaching at a university? They're definitely and demonstrably tools of male oppression in much the same way as logic! She has a right to her beliefs about the world and the right to act on them and I have a corresponding duty to respect that; however, I have a right to my beliefs about the world and a right to act on them and she has a corresponding duty to respect that!
The whole experience has had some benefit. It really deepened my understanding of how to practise philosophy and how to read another person's work and how to disagree and why philosophers disagree with one another in the way that they do (i.e. respectfully). I am still having a hard time, however, with the writer's block. It has gotten much, much better over the years - so much better. I'm sure it will continue to get easier. It is not, however, gone. When a deadline gets close, I experience a lot of negative stress. It's the kind of stress that comes tinged with self-loathing and self-harm ideation and this makes it very hard for me to work.
On a year to year basis (though not necessarily on a day to day one), I have been on an upward trajectory since I was in hospital a little more than three years ago. Having an accurate diagnosis has helped me to understand what to look for symptom-wise and all that looking has helped me become increasingly familiar and accurate in understanding what's going on with me by what I'm thinking and what I feel, both emotionally and physiologically. This familiarity in turn has given me an increased ability to look after myself well and effectively. I have learned some ways to help myself get over or past various psychological stumbling blocks and how to deal with the stubborn symptoms that are really not under my control. I'm far from perfect at it - the logical possibility of my ever being perfect at it is close to zero - but I'm much better than random and much better than I used to be. This writer's block seems to be one of those things that I have some control over - limited control but susceptible to improvement.
This week, the stress of writing through the self-loathing is pushing me towards the serious kind of moodiness. It will be okay - it will be over soon and then it will be as though it never happened, or so I keep telling myself. Nevertheless, I'll get to go through it again but a bit worse at the end of next month when the final paper is due and I'm going to be job hunting between now and then, which is usually a stressful and rather discouraging activity. I'm also going back to visit the family for a week and this means long haul flying and jet lag which has, historically, set me off mood-wise. That's an unusual number of risk factors and it worries me a bit.
Anyhow, I'm really curious as to what other people do to cope with things like this, especially writer's block. I would really like to get rid of it. Even if it isn't something you've done but rather something that happened, I would be very appreciative if you'd tell me about it. What I've been able to do so far specifically for the writer's block is to just carry on writing through the teeth of it, look back on and analyse what happened and what it was that upset me and why it might have happened, seeking other people's opinions on the work (e.g. entering it for and presenting it at a conference) and letting time pass. And I started this blog - really. It seemed like having another reason to write and a different audience might help, as it has indeed done.
This isn't the best post I've ever written - in fact, I suspect it's a bit boring; sorry about that - but this is a subject much on my mind at the moment. Back to the word-arranging grind, now.
29 January 2010
Third Post I've Written This Week But The First Time I've Published Instead of Deleting
It is almost undoubtedly a wanton display of hubris to say this but I think I am getting better at having bipolar disorder. And what do I mean by that? I'm not quite sure.
I think a large part of what I mean is that I don't experience so much conflict about it anymore. Instead of forcing other people or my own actions or external circumstances into awkward positions in order to have an explanation for feeling a certain way. Instead, I'm now able to say to myself that while it is true that I don't like X (and Y and Z), X (even combined with Y and Z) is probably not sufficient cause to make me feel this bad for this long; that it's probably a mood that has descended. It doesn't mean that X or Y or Z isn't actually bothering me - it's a recognition that X and Y and Z are not sufficient.* If I can tell the difference (and I seem to be getting better at it) then I save a lot of energy and a lot of time and a lot of discouragement.
It drives me absolutely up the wall when I feel miserable and the poor people who are kind enough to undertake to talk to me about it shower me with platitudes about tomorrow being another day and that everything will be okay and that this too shall pass and that I'll feel better soon. For a little while this became a bad problem when I would talk to my mother. She wants me to feel better and she says these things in order to be soothing and in order to make me feel better and she needs to be able to say something encouraging. I understand all this but (and again I'm going to blame philosophy) because neither she nor anyone else on earth has any strong or valid knowledge that I (or anyone else) will be all right in the future or feel better at any point (whatever 'better' is supposed to mean in that context), it only makes me more upset when people say these things to me because they aren't grounded in any kind of logic and if I feel that bad, any optimism I might have had has disappeared anyway. My reaction to such statements had, though, gotten to the point of being unfair to my mother, whose intent was certainly never to upset me, so I sat down and tried to think of something to be substituted that would allow her to express her wish to comfort me and would not offend my (overly honed for ordinary conversation) sense of logic. In the end, I came up with 'it won't always feel exactly like this'.
This alternative platitude has worked out well, largely because I can believe it. I might not feel better next week or next month (and I might not feel worse) but I know and can believe that I will not feel exactly the same. The intensity of whatever I'm feeling will alter, its emphasis will shift, my intrusive thoughts will develop variations. I will experience these changes as being better or worse and it is extraordinarily unlikely that I will not experience variation. Internalising this has actually helped. On the nights when it's 3.00am and I haven't been able to sleep and I'm lying in bed feeling horrendously guilty all out of proportion to anything I might have done or failed to do and everything seems completely hopeless and on the verge of falling apart I can tell myself that I'm not going to feel exactly as horribly suffocated by all the wrongness in myself and in the world forever. That perspective is not the new reality of life.
Hopefully that all makes some sort of sense. It's the way I have found out of the totalising meta-narrative that a depressed mood (or a manic mood) imposes. It's a way out that doesn't invalidate the emotional content of my moods - instead of saying that I don't really feel that way, it's a disease, I can say I do really feel that way, it's just not the way I am always going to feel nor is the totality of what I feel.
Anyhow, it has gotten me through the past six weeks, much of which I have spent fairly depressed, relatively unscathed. It helped stop me freaking out and flailing in all directions. It stopped me taking things out unfairly on others and stopped me chucking away things that I value in the long term but temporarily didn't know what to do with. I woke up this morning feel better with my life still intact and I'm happy about that and now I've written a post that I'm not going to immediately delete and I'm reasonably confident that I'll be asleep before three - hurray.
_______________________________________________
*I apologise: I go to a university where they make us read analytic philosophy all the time and then I talk to my fellow students who also read analytic philosophy all the time and at this point, we seem all to have started talking as though we were dictating analytic philosophy. My mind attempts metaphor but all that comes out are more variables.
This is what analytic philosophy looks like:
My writing style isn't quite as bad as all that yet but I imagine it's only a matter of time.
I think a large part of what I mean is that I don't experience so much conflict about it anymore. Instead of forcing other people or my own actions or external circumstances into awkward positions in order to have an explanation for feeling a certain way. Instead, I'm now able to say to myself that while it is true that I don't like X (and Y and Z), X (even combined with Y and Z) is probably not sufficient cause to make me feel this bad for this long; that it's probably a mood that has descended. It doesn't mean that X or Y or Z isn't actually bothering me - it's a recognition that X and Y and Z are not sufficient.* If I can tell the difference (and I seem to be getting better at it) then I save a lot of energy and a lot of time and a lot of discouragement.
It drives me absolutely up the wall when I feel miserable and the poor people who are kind enough to undertake to talk to me about it shower me with platitudes about tomorrow being another day and that everything will be okay and that this too shall pass and that I'll feel better soon. For a little while this became a bad problem when I would talk to my mother. She wants me to feel better and she says these things in order to be soothing and in order to make me feel better and she needs to be able to say something encouraging. I understand all this but (and again I'm going to blame philosophy) because neither she nor anyone else on earth has any strong or valid knowledge that I (or anyone else) will be all right in the future or feel better at any point (whatever 'better' is supposed to mean in that context), it only makes me more upset when people say these things to me because they aren't grounded in any kind of logic and if I feel that bad, any optimism I might have had has disappeared anyway. My reaction to such statements had, though, gotten to the point of being unfair to my mother, whose intent was certainly never to upset me, so I sat down and tried to think of something to be substituted that would allow her to express her wish to comfort me and would not offend my (overly honed for ordinary conversation) sense of logic. In the end, I came up with 'it won't always feel exactly like this'.
This alternative platitude has worked out well, largely because I can believe it. I might not feel better next week or next month (and I might not feel worse) but I know and can believe that I will not feel exactly the same. The intensity of whatever I'm feeling will alter, its emphasis will shift, my intrusive thoughts will develop variations. I will experience these changes as being better or worse and it is extraordinarily unlikely that I will not experience variation. Internalising this has actually helped. On the nights when it's 3.00am and I haven't been able to sleep and I'm lying in bed feeling horrendously guilty all out of proportion to anything I might have done or failed to do and everything seems completely hopeless and on the verge of falling apart I can tell myself that I'm not going to feel exactly as horribly suffocated by all the wrongness in myself and in the world forever. That perspective is not the new reality of life.
Hopefully that all makes some sort of sense. It's the way I have found out of the totalising meta-narrative that a depressed mood (or a manic mood) imposes. It's a way out that doesn't invalidate the emotional content of my moods - instead of saying that I don't really feel that way, it's a disease, I can say I do really feel that way, it's just not the way I am always going to feel nor is the totality of what I feel.
Anyhow, it has gotten me through the past six weeks, much of which I have spent fairly depressed, relatively unscathed. It helped stop me freaking out and flailing in all directions. It stopped me taking things out unfairly on others and stopped me chucking away things that I value in the long term but temporarily didn't know what to do with. I woke up this morning feel better with my life still intact and I'm happy about that and now I've written a post that I'm not going to immediately delete and I'm reasonably confident that I'll be asleep before three - hurray.
_______________________________________________
*I apologise: I go to a university where they make us read analytic philosophy all the time and then I talk to my fellow students who also read analytic philosophy all the time and at this point, we seem all to have started talking as though we were dictating analytic philosophy. My mind attempts metaphor but all that comes out are more variables.
This is what analytic philosophy looks like:
My writing style isn't quite as bad as all that yet but I imagine it's only a matter of time.
31 December 2009
A New Year's Non-Post
I'm having a brief break from the frantic house-tidying to write this. I have friends coming to stay overnight and see the fireworks, etc, and I have been a lump on the couch with a bad cold ever since Boxing Day. Consequently, the current state of my flat leaves something to be desired.
Anyhow, the point of this non-post is to say Happy New Year, one and all. I have no rational reason to hope that it will be better than this one but I can be sure that things will change. Some of the changes will be good, and I hope that the good will outweigh the bad. Happy New Year!
Anyhow, the point of this non-post is to say Happy New Year, one and all. I have no rational reason to hope that it will be better than this one but I can be sure that things will change. Some of the changes will be good, and I hope that the good will outweigh the bad. Happy New Year!
28 October 2009
Overwhelmed and Omphaloskeptic
There are too many things going on! I'm not sure that's really a complaint, as I quite like most of the things. However, they are myriad.
On the things I quite like side are parties; Monday night philosophy drinking; my new armchair that I lugged home in the box from Ikea over one bus route, the Overground and the Underground*, which was a rather painful thing to do but more than compensated for by having someplace to sit that isn't the floor or my bed; a new addition to my collection of favorite philosophy quips**; reading Tristram Shandy and its heroic 18th century punctuation - can't think why I haven't read it before nor why we no longer punctuate like that; all the arguments I've been able to make about infinite regress and infinites by addition; being back in London; the shocking - to me - way I've made friends so quickly and effortlessly; the general thrill of studying interesting things; seeing old friends that I haven't seen for years; reading the Guardian; my new shoes; having a clothes rail and hangers and my newsagent.
On the things that are not things that I like side very much are plumbing faults; owing medium to large amounts of money to various institutions; not having very much money to pay said institutions with and also buy food; that it takes four to six weeks for overseas cheques to clear and mine has been sitting in the bank for four weeks and still hasn't cleared; the reaction of various Anglicans to the Pope's recent announcement; the fact that somehow Rousseau's concept of the general will has gotten stuck in my head in the manner of an annoying song***; the fact that there is so much going on that I seem to miss at least half of it; that my feet hurt so much and so often and with such minimal provocation; the way this overwhelmed-ness makes my head too swimmy to concentrate and think properly; Boris Johnson; the way my hair hasn't gotten used to the hard water yet and sticks up in strange and disturbing ways in the morning; being tired all the time still and a very annoying virus/cold/cough thing that has been plaguing me for a week without actually making me properly ill or allowing me to be properly well****.
Things that I may or may not like (just not sure yet) side are the post-lecture drinking with the professors on Wednesdays because it makes me very nervous but the conversation is good; my inability to feel any emotion, positive or negative, about the ex-girlfriend which is a relief but does not bode well; the amount of Hackney Marshes closed off for development for the Olympics, which development may or may not be a good thing in the end*****; a weird crush I've developed on a new-friend girl at university that is not really a crush but something in between (and therefore not holy, see fourth footnote) that makes me uneasy and implies subtle and delicately strange things about myself and my ethical convictions; the unpredictable bursts of high-burning glittering bliss that might be the early warnings of hypomania - enjoyable when they occur but worrying afterwords and the way this post has footnotes with footnotes.
The world is all the things that are the case, and so it follows that this is the world I'm in for now******.
____________________________________________________________________
*I feel very boring though to be buying furniture from the Ikea. Why did I lug it home? Please see paragraph three, thing I don't like number four.
** "That's not a counter-example, it's a monster." Imre Lakatos
***I wouldn't have thought that philosophical concepts were capable of this but it seems to have happened anyway.
****This virus is a thing partway between being and not being and is therefore not holy (Please see De divina omnipotentia++, a letter written by St. Peter Damian to Pope Gregory. Peter Damian was also in charge of reforming cannon law and is responsible for the formalisation of the law concerning priestly celibacy {somehow, the Catholic Church made it through 1,000 years without actually requiring it} and the regularisation of cannon law concerning homosexual behavior {I know we think of it as identity and not act now generally but it would be inaccurate to say that Damian condemned homosexuality itself rather than homosexual acts} that has led to the modern Catholic condemnation of homosexuality via Aquinas' natural law theory and thus forward to the present day to one of the things I dislike in paragraph three. These later accomplishments and the reasons behind them are discussed in Damian's Liber Gomorrhianus, which is a very interesting read. Impressing pagans is part of the reasoning behind the celibacy dogma and the restriction of the priesthood to men and priestly duties with regard to hearing confession are behind the condemnation of homosexual acts.
*****It was a great thing for my childhood stomping ground, Atlanta, but then look at Calgary - hard to predict.
******Blatantly stolen from the beginning of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
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++ De divina is found in vol. 6 of Damian's Opera Omnia, if memory serves. It's definitely in the Opera Omnia but it might not be vol. 6.
On the things I quite like side are parties; Monday night philosophy drinking; my new armchair that I lugged home in the box from Ikea over one bus route, the Overground and the Underground*, which was a rather painful thing to do but more than compensated for by having someplace to sit that isn't the floor or my bed; a new addition to my collection of favorite philosophy quips**; reading Tristram Shandy and its heroic 18th century punctuation - can't think why I haven't read it before nor why we no longer punctuate like that; all the arguments I've been able to make about infinite regress and infinites by addition; being back in London; the shocking - to me - way I've made friends so quickly and effortlessly; the general thrill of studying interesting things; seeing old friends that I haven't seen for years; reading the Guardian; my new shoes; having a clothes rail and hangers and my newsagent.
On the things that are not things that I like side very much are plumbing faults; owing medium to large amounts of money to various institutions; not having very much money to pay said institutions with and also buy food; that it takes four to six weeks for overseas cheques to clear and mine has been sitting in the bank for four weeks and still hasn't cleared; the reaction of various Anglicans to the Pope's recent announcement; the fact that somehow Rousseau's concept of the general will has gotten stuck in my head in the manner of an annoying song***; the fact that there is so much going on that I seem to miss at least half of it; that my feet hurt so much and so often and with such minimal provocation; the way this overwhelmed-ness makes my head too swimmy to concentrate and think properly; Boris Johnson; the way my hair hasn't gotten used to the hard water yet and sticks up in strange and disturbing ways in the morning; being tired all the time still and a very annoying virus/cold/cough thing that has been plaguing me for a week without actually making me properly ill or allowing me to be properly well****.
Things that I may or may not like (just not sure yet) side are the post-lecture drinking with the professors on Wednesdays because it makes me very nervous but the conversation is good; my inability to feel any emotion, positive or negative, about the ex-girlfriend which is a relief but does not bode well; the amount of Hackney Marshes closed off for development for the Olympics, which development may or may not be a good thing in the end*****; a weird crush I've developed on a new-friend girl at university that is not really a crush but something in between (and therefore not holy, see fourth footnote) that makes me uneasy and implies subtle and delicately strange things about myself and my ethical convictions; the unpredictable bursts of high-burning glittering bliss that might be the early warnings of hypomania - enjoyable when they occur but worrying afterwords and the way this post has footnotes with footnotes.
The world is all the things that are the case, and so it follows that this is the world I'm in for now******.
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*I feel very boring though to be buying furniture from the Ikea. Why did I lug it home? Please see paragraph three, thing I don't like number four.
** "That's not a counter-example, it's a monster." Imre Lakatos
***I wouldn't have thought that philosophical concepts were capable of this but it seems to have happened anyway.
****This virus is a thing partway between being and not being and is therefore not holy (Please see De divina omnipotentia++, a letter written by St. Peter Damian to Pope Gregory. Peter Damian was also in charge of reforming cannon law and is responsible for the formalisation of the law concerning priestly celibacy {somehow, the Catholic Church made it through 1,000 years without actually requiring it} and the regularisation of cannon law concerning homosexual behavior {I know we think of it as identity and not act now generally but it would be inaccurate to say that Damian condemned homosexuality itself rather than homosexual acts} that has led to the modern Catholic condemnation of homosexuality via Aquinas' natural law theory and thus forward to the present day to one of the things I dislike in paragraph three. These later accomplishments and the reasons behind them are discussed in Damian's Liber Gomorrhianus, which is a very interesting read. Impressing pagans is part of the reasoning behind the celibacy dogma and the restriction of the priesthood to men and priestly duties with regard to hearing confession are behind the condemnation of homosexual acts.
*****It was a great thing for my childhood stomping ground, Atlanta, but then look at Calgary - hard to predict.
******Blatantly stolen from the beginning of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
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++ De divina is found in vol. 6 of Damian's Opera Omnia, if memory serves. It's definitely in the Opera Omnia but it might not be vol. 6.
02 August 2009
Logically, I Know That The Packing Fairy Will Arrive Because I Have To Get Out of Here Somehow
I'm waiting for the packing and moving fairy to show up. I said this to a friend of mine who, to his infinite credit, did not skip a beat in replying that as far as he knew, all the fairies were on strike. Apparently the laundry fairy had failed to show up at his house; I know that the paper writing fairy never left any pleasant surprises on my desktop at the end of the last semester (or any other semester, alas...) and another friend has told me that the lesson-planning and paper-grading fairies are long-term no-shows at her house. If the packing and moving fairy doesn't come to my aid, then I have no idea how I'll get out of here.
I'm really having one of those can't cope/won't cope kinds of months.
___________________________________________________________
Just to point out how weird logic can be, here is a demonstration of modus tollens in action:
1) If the packing and moving fairy doesn't come to my aid, then I have no idea how I'll get out of here.
2) I do not have no idea how I will get out of here.
Therefore, the packing and moving fairy will not come to my aid.
And here is a modus ponens:
1) If the packing and moving fairy doesn't come to my aid, then I have no idea how I'll get out of here.
2) The packing and moving fairy did not come to my aid.
Therefore, I have no idea how I'll get out of here.
If I (a) can figure out how to get out of here, then I can know logically that the packing fairy will not come to my aid. If (b) the packing fairy does not come to my aid, then I will know logically that I will have no idea how to get out of here.
Statements such as these are the reason they invented modal logic.
I'm really having one of those can't cope/won't cope kinds of months.
___________________________________________________________
Just to point out how weird logic can be, here is a demonstration of modus tollens in action:
1) If the packing and moving fairy doesn't come to my aid, then I have no idea how I'll get out of here.
2) I do not have no idea how I will get out of here.
Therefore, the packing and moving fairy will not come to my aid.
And here is a modus ponens:
1) If the packing and moving fairy doesn't come to my aid, then I have no idea how I'll get out of here.
2) The packing and moving fairy did not come to my aid.
Therefore, I have no idea how I'll get out of here.
If I (a) can figure out how to get out of here, then I can know logically that the packing fairy will not come to my aid. If (b) the packing fairy does not come to my aid, then I will know logically that I will have no idea how to get out of here.
Statements such as these are the reason they invented modal logic.
31 July 2009
Don't Found a Church That Will Be Headed By Committee
Or do, perhaps. It seems still to be working for the Presbyterians.
I'm not sure if anyone who reads this has been paying attention to the state of the Anglican Church since the Episcopal Church in the US had General Convention recently but it is a sorry state of affairs. You can read about it here, our Presiding Bishop's letter is here, Rowan Williams' response is here and reflections from the Anglican communion institute are here.
Now, I have infinitely more patience with the Church trying to figure out what to do with non-heterosexual people than I do with the government (Barack Obama, what is the matter with you?) but I do not have much patience for wrongheaded arguments from anyone. My problem with the arguments coming out of Canterbury is that they frame the debate about opening ordination to non-celibate queer people and giving blessing on same-sex partnerships in terms of sex. It is not about sex, it is about love. Secondly, these arguments tend to implicitly assume that queer people exist outside of the community and are somehow intruding on the Church. This is not the case. Every single queer person on earth has parents, often siblings, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, friends - they are not a discrete group of individuals but rooted deeply into society. To deny the full humanity of queer people affects not only any individual queer person, nor even merely those who fall into that category but also anyone who is a parent, child, relative or friend of someone who is queer.
Thirdly, to close up ranks by brandishing church tradition in the faces of those who want change and making threats of schism and rival communions is not Christian behavior. Nor, indeed, is doing so philosophically consistent with the origins of the Anglican church. To me, the great miracle of the Anglican church is that from its very beginning it managed to unite anti-monarchical Puritans with those who might have preferred to remain Catholic through having a single Book of Common Prayer. There is no clear reason, it seems to me, to think that it cannot hold us in communion now.
Blegh, such a frustrating mess. And all it will lead to is another report and then a conference and then an advisory and so on into darkness. It never will be resolved if the argument cannot be framed in proper terms because, until then, we will all be talking at cross purposes and waffling all the while. Nothing was ever solved by informal fallacies!
I'm not sure if anyone who reads this has been paying attention to the state of the Anglican Church since the Episcopal Church in the US had General Convention recently but it is a sorry state of affairs. You can read about it here, our Presiding Bishop's letter is here, Rowan Williams' response is here and reflections from the Anglican communion institute are here.
Now, I have infinitely more patience with the Church trying to figure out what to do with non-heterosexual people than I do with the government (Barack Obama, what is the matter with you?) but I do not have much patience for wrongheaded arguments from anyone. My problem with the arguments coming out of Canterbury is that they frame the debate about opening ordination to non-celibate queer people and giving blessing on same-sex partnerships in terms of sex. It is not about sex, it is about love. Secondly, these arguments tend to implicitly assume that queer people exist outside of the community and are somehow intruding on the Church. This is not the case. Every single queer person on earth has parents, often siblings, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, friends - they are not a discrete group of individuals but rooted deeply into society. To deny the full humanity of queer people affects not only any individual queer person, nor even merely those who fall into that category but also anyone who is a parent, child, relative or friend of someone who is queer.
Thirdly, to close up ranks by brandishing church tradition in the faces of those who want change and making threats of schism and rival communions is not Christian behavior. Nor, indeed, is doing so philosophically consistent with the origins of the Anglican church. To me, the great miracle of the Anglican church is that from its very beginning it managed to unite anti-monarchical Puritans with those who might have preferred to remain Catholic through having a single Book of Common Prayer. There is no clear reason, it seems to me, to think that it cannot hold us in communion now.
Blegh, such a frustrating mess. And all it will lead to is another report and then a conference and then an advisory and so on into darkness. It never will be resolved if the argument cannot be framed in proper terms because, until then, we will all be talking at cross purposes and waffling all the while. Nothing was ever solved by informal fallacies!
20 July 2009
Logical Craft
Here are the fruits of my Victorian frailty. I took Kate's advice and 
made a sampler - not of a slogan, admittedly, but still something I can believe in. It made a very nice pair of afternoons - I sat out on my porch in the sunshine and our nice cool, 27C weather and had a pretend Victorian convalescence.
The sampler shows a formal way of writing a kind of logical operation known as modus tollens, followed by its proof by truth table. The embroidery is not quite finished; I'm going to sew in 'modus tollens' at the bottom but I made too many mistakes trying to write it out with the erasable fabric pen so I had to wash the fabric and let it dry before I could try again, but you get the main idea.
The little sideways horseshoe indicates a conditional statement and means 'if...then'. The tilda means 'not'. The three dots in the form of a triangle mean 'therefore'. So the top part reads '1. If P then Q; 2. not Q; therefore not P'. Then the truth table lines up all the possible truth values for the whole thing. In non-modal logic, statements can be only true or false but not both and not undertermined. Anyhow, it shows that a conditional is false when the antecedent (in this case P) is true and the consequent (in this case Q) is false.
So now I have my own embroidered version of a fundamental logical truth about the world. That makes me happy. I plan to make one for modus ponens next. Thanks, Kate, for the suggestion!
made a sampler - not of a slogan, admittedly, but still something I can believe in. It made a very nice pair of afternoons - I sat out on my porch in the sunshine and our nice cool, 27C weather and had a pretend Victorian convalescence.The sampler shows a formal way of writing a kind of logical operation known as modus tollens, followed by its proof by truth table. The embroidery is not quite finished; I'm going to sew in 'modus tollens' at the bottom but I made too many mistakes trying to write it out with the erasable fabric pen so I had to wash the fabric and let it dry before I could try again, but you get the main idea.
The little sideways horseshoe indicates a conditional statement and means 'if...then'. The tilda means 'not'. The three dots in the form of a triangle mean 'therefore'. So the top part reads '1. If P then Q; 2. not Q; therefore not P'. Then the truth table lines up all the possible truth values for the whole thing. In non-modal logic, statements can be only true or false but not both and not undertermined. Anyhow, it shows that a conditional is false when the antecedent (in this case P) is true and the consequent (in this case Q) is false.
So now I have my own embroidered version of a fundamental logical truth about the world. That makes me happy. I plan to make one for modus ponens next. Thanks, Kate, for the suggestion!
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