Mind-Body Problem and Hume

I just got done with teaching Hume for a few days.  Here is one thing--the primary thing--I have learned from Hume: there is no (immaterial) mind-(material)body problem as far as causation goes.  Arguments against mind-body causal interaction are futile.

Of course, Hume doesn't say any of that, but he does demonstrate quite nicely that even our most commonsense beliefs about causation ultimately bottom out in mystery.  He shows that it's problematic to attribute causation to ordinary material objects.  But of course most people do think that causation holds between material objects.  The nature of causation is just deeply mysterious.

In fact, I suspect that any question regarding how an immaterial mind could cause bodily action is misguided: there could be no how to it.  If it happens it just happens.  If you want to see how it happens, raise your hand.

Is There Such a Thing As Racial Profiling?

MavPhil  This deserves careful study:

One of the tactics of leftists is to manipulate and misuse language for their own purposes.  Thus they make up words and phrases and hijack existing ones. 'Islamophobe' is an example of the former, 'disenfranchise' an example of the latter.    'Racial profiling' is a second example of the former.  It is a meaningless phrase apart from its use as a semantic bludgeon.  Race is an element in a profile; it cannot be a profile.  A profile cannot consist of just one characteristic.  I can profile you, but it makes no sense racially to profile you.  Apparel is an element in a profile; it cannot be a profile.  I can profile you, but it makes no sense sartorially to profile you.

Let's think about this.

I profile you if I subsume you under a profile.  A profile is a list of several descriptors.  You fit the profile if you satisfy all or most of the descriptors.  Here is an example of a profile:

1. Race:  black
2. Age: 16-21 years
3. Sex: male
4. Apparel: wearing a hoodie, with the hood pulled up over the head
5. Demeanor: sullen, alienated
6. Behavior: walking aimlessly, trespassing, cutting across yards, looking into windows and garages, hostile and disrespectful when questioned; uses racial epithets such as 'creepy-assed cracker.'
7. Physical condition: robust, muscular
8. Location:  place where numerous burglaries and home invasions had occurred, the perpetrators being black
9. Resident status: not a resident.

Admission: I Too Am a Big Dumb Dinosaur

Should the Big 12 Add a Championship Game?

If they add a championship game, they need to add at least two, probably four teams.  But it's all about money so who are you going to add?  There are two important factors to consider: TV revenue and quality of the football program.  When the B1G added Penn State and Nebraska they upgraded their $ and the quality of football.  When they added Rutgers and Maryland they didn't upgrade the quality of football but they added two HUGE markets which down the road MIGHT pay big dividends. 

But who would the Big 12 add?
Here are some candidates:

In Church Today

Everyone in church was in church today, and we heard a Bible passage in the Bible that talked about the Son and says about the Son that without him nothing has been made that has been made.

Eric Garner Follow-Up Fireworks

A commenter on Twitter writes:

#1 You overlooked the fact that (a) [the chokehold] has been prohibited by NYPD since 1993.

And in response to my post and another Tweet by Mr. Goodnight:

#2 But you guys go ahead and run with it. #EricGarner killed himself! It’s the Immaculate Asphyxiation!

As to #1 above, there is a reason I overlooked that fact: like 1000's of other facts in the world it was irrelevant to my post.  The post was on the causes of Eric Garner's death.  The fact that the police officer used a chokehold which violates a NYC police department code was not an additional cause of Garner's death.  The chokehold was a cause of his death and at the same time constituted the breaking of a rule.  The breaking of the rule was not something in addition to the chokehold.  Thus it was not an additional cause.  Thus it was irrelevant.

Regarding #2, that Eric Garner killed himself is clearly a non sequitur.  Nothing I said in the post entails that I'm committed to the view that Eric Garner killed himself.  He did not kill himself.  But he did imprudently causally contribute to his death.  The only ones denying that are a part of the loony-left who think that victims are never to be held responsible in any way (well, if they are victims who tend to vote Democratic) and that the injustices of the world are the result of (a) actions by those in power (except for Democrats in power) and (b) racist, homophobic, sexist, etc. structures in place (e.g. policies).  But to believe that you'd need to be an idiot.

Apparently the Twitter commenter has now stopped following me on Twitter.  That's too bad.  I always enjoy a good argument.

Another lesson: Next time you hear someone calling for a national "conversation" on race, or a "conversation" on police brutality, or a "conversation" on campus rapes...expect the conversation to be one-sided and typically among people with a herd mentality.

That's not for me.  No way.  No herd mentality here.  I prefer the glorious path of unpopularity (it's right there in the slogan above).  Maxim: Never a week without political incorrectness!  

The Causes of Eric Garner's Death

What caused the house to burn down?  Was it the lighting of the match?  Well, yes and no.  If the room hadn't been filled with propane, the house wouldn't have burned down.  The lighting of the match was a cause, but not the complete cause.  Was the cause the house's being filled with propane?  Yes and no. If the match wouldn't have been lit the house wouldn't have burned down.  The house's being filled with propane was a cause and the match's being lit was a cause.  If there is any sense in which the cause was one or the other it will be a subjective sense (for instance, we might say that the propane was the cause because we're interested in which contributory cause was the least regular of the causes).

Here are some of the causes of Eric Garner's death:

What the Numbers Say on the Police Use of Force

Here.

Excerpt:

[T]wo decades of data on police interactions with the public don’t support the idea that something extraordinary is afoot, that the police are becoming “militarized” as President Obama has suggested, or that distrust between police and local communities has produced an enormous spike in conflicts. By contrast, the data show that significant crime declines have been accompanied by a leveling off and then a reduction in confrontations with the police, as reported by Americans of all races.
[...]
More important, perhaps, was that reports of use of force by police also fell, from 664,000 in 2002 to 574,000 in a 2010 report. Those declines occurred across all races. The number of African-Americans reporting that police used force against them fell from 173,000 to 130,000. Among whites, the number has dropped from a peak of 374,000 to 347,000.

Worse Than a Dinosaur: I Don't Even Have a PHONE!

An Argument that Canonization is Ongoing

These aren't fully digested thoughts and I retain the right to recant but here goes:

Would a Discovered Letter of Paul's Be Included in the Bible?

A few brief thoughts...

Rob Bell Teaming Up with Oprah

Here.

Excerpt:
The Church of Oprah incorporates as many religious concepts as possible, while evangelicalism commits to exclusivity.

“I think an interesting way to think about Bell and Oprah here is to observe how easily she incorporates him into her pantheon of spiritual advisers. She remains, as ever, the determining corporate deity,” said Lofton, a professor of religious studies at Yale.

Many evangelicals are suspicious of Oprah, leery that she represents what many see as the worst of self-help spirituality. Bell, not surprisingly, disagrees once again.

“She has taught me more about what Jesus has for all of us, and what kind of life Jesus wants us to live, more than almost anybody in my life,” Bell said.

“Is she a Christian? That word has so much baggage, I wouldn’t want to answer for someone. When Jesus talks about the full divine life, you think, this is what he’s talking about.”

Slavery and States' Rights

A very well-written historical piece here.

Excerpt:

According to the standard version of history, states’ rights was a doctrine invented by Southern politicians to perpetuate slavery. One high school textbook, for example, describes the term “states’ rights” as an antebellum euphemism for “the right of the states to maintain slavery and the right of individuals to hold property in slaves.” In a 2011 interview on NPR, Adam Goodhart, author of 1861: The Civil War Awakening, asserted that “the only significant state right that people were arguing about in 1860 was the right to own what was known as slave property.” A 2013 New York Times op-ed declared that “since the nation’s founding, ‘states’ rights’ has been a rallying cry for those who wished to systematically disenfranchise and exploit large segments of their population.” A plaque at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery describes states’ rights as a doctrine that “protected the institution of slavery.”

This conventional history provides a handy rhetorical weapon for liberal commentators, who accuse states’ rights conservatives of embracing a doctrine historically identified with “pro-slavery ideologies and . . . the disenfranchisement of African-Americans,” as the Nation puts it. Now that the 2016 presidential campaign is getting under way—with some GOP hopefuls advocating a return to states’ rights—expect many in the media to warn us that the Tea Party is forgetting the lessons of history.

But what if the lessons of history are wrong, and the doctrine of states’ rights was actually an antislavery ideology?

[...]

No sane African-American would support the Tea Party, MSNBC host Chris Matthews said in 2013, because it is “a group that is basically pro-states’ rights.” Yet contrary to many such arguments you hear today, the Civil War was not sparked by federal efforts to abolish slavery: there were no such efforts before the South seceded. The war arose from Northern assertions of states’ rights and from the South’s frustration at the federal government’s failure to rein in those assertions. After the war, however, it became irresistible for federal politicians—eager to justify an expanded role for the national government—to associate states’ rights with the Confederacy and, therefore, slavery. By 1909, progressive journalist Herbert Croly could assert—with little fear of contradiction—that the growth of federal power since Reconstruction had been necessary to slay “the double-headed problem of slavery and states’ rights.” The rest is history—sort of.

Obama and Cameras for Cops

If I had a camera like this on my chest:


I think I'd make it a habit of, instead of shooting like this:



I'd shoot like this:

OSU's Next QB: Glass Half Full?

Cardale Jones's infamous tweet is making the rounds again.




As a Buckeye fan I can choose to look at this in one of two ways.  (1) Our 3rd string QB and now starter is clearly an idiot.  (2) He's not been wasting his time studying anything OTHER THAN FOOTBALL so we're about to make the playoffs.  I choose the latter!

Jay-Z vs. Arkansas' Walmart

Here.

Excerpt:

A few weeks ago, I was very much amused by the sight of anti-Wal-Mart protests in Manhattan — where there is no Wal-Mart, and where, if Bill de Blasio et al. have their way, there never will be. Why? Because we’re too enlightened to let our poor neighbors pay lower prices. The head-clutchingly expensive shops up on Fifth and Madison avenues? No protests. Rather, they were bustling with the same class of people behind the protests, people busily accumulating — or at least making like Holly Golightly in the window at Tiffany’s.

Here in Columbia County, Ark., a not-especially-prosperous locale behind the Pine Curtain where the median household income is about half the national average and where a few twists and turns down county roads find you in a world of shacks and chained-up dogs out of a Snuffy Smith cartoon, nobody is boycotting the local Wal-Mart. In fact, the locals seem rather fond of this purported outpost of economic exploitation and wicked capitalist blah-blah-blah. And it is not difficult to understand why: It is an important part of local commerce in a community that is hungry for enterprise.

Kitchen

Before: