Precision in language, and the politics of science

Science does not speak; only scientists speak. Philosophy does not speak; only philosophers speak. Fields do not exist independent of people. Also, they do not speak with one voice, unless there is only one person in the field in question. Disagreement is a sign that more than one person has committed their subjective minds- their potentially fallible reasoning on the basis of potentially incomplete knowledge, understanding, interpretations, and experience, whatever these may be, to thinking about the same topic. Of course, even speaking of knowledge and experience is potentially a verbal shortcut, a way for imprecision to enter our concepts and make misunderstanding more likely; to speak of our knowledge and experience, singular, is to speak of mental categories into which we place the reality of individual things known and experience. When you can speak of a single category that encompasses multiple real things, or of the real things directly, choose the latter if you want to be as precise as possible in saying what you mean, and the former if you want to be understood by people in general. The important thing is not that you always speak with precision, but that you think with precision, and that requires attentiveness to the nuances of words and their meanings. For instance, the difference between saying ‘science says this,’ and ‘scientists say this.’ Science says nothing, it is neither an entity that can speak for itself, nor is it singular. It is a category for a method for understanding reality, and the multiple, interconnected fields of study in which this method is used; the method is one created and applied by human beings. The method and the fields in which it is applied are valuable to human beings for the increased accuracy of our understanding of the physical world and universe, but they are inextricable from us. Speaking of them as if they were is to suggest they are singular, monolithic and above human disputes, none of which are accurate.

The Android God

Our society is so obsessed with complex tools—what else is ‘technology’?—that the role of human face-to-face interactions has been eclipsed by the enthusiastic adoption of electronic intermediaries. One wonders if we could appreciate a naturalistic conception of god, if we were presented with it afresh, rather than as received cultural mythology. Indeed, if god is created in the image of man, one wonders if god is actually an android—or spends so much time with his supercomputer of the divine (accessed by the Holy Spirit of wireless) that he might as well be. After all, do we not make god in our own image, and then say that it is the other way around—that he made us in the image of himself? Perhaps god made us primitive, so long ago, because he himself was primitive; or, perhaps we made god primitive, because we were ourselves. Either way, we are different now—not because human nature is different, but because we are more than human, we are also cultural creatures—and our cultures are overrun with neon gods. Somehow we still give the worship of our lips, out of incongruous habit, to a cultural artifact. After all, the correspondence of Christianity to our society, our way of life, our purposes, our culture, is utterly gone. We do not live in Palestine, 200 C.E., nor in Europe of the Dark Ages.  Either we should remake god in the image of how we are now, saying that he made us to make our computers extensions of ourselves, and to anthropomorphize our iPhones—this point at which the integration of technology into our lives leaves only its integration into our bodies—or call it quits with metaphysics. Shall we worship the neon gods of our distraction with our words as well as our eyes? Or are these, too, false idols?

Financial crisis, reckless banking, and fiat currency

The following was written in 1991:

“The largest banks know, however, that they are literally 'too big to fail' and can count on a helping hand from government if the worst comes to the worst. America's political leaders would step in to prevent the crash of a major financial institution on the grounds that it could set off a lethal chain reaction culminating in widespread disaster. ... Thus, in yet another intriguing but ominous irony of history, 10 years of ultra-liberalism have resulted in a US financial system whose future may only be assured with the help of federal government handouts”

~p.61 of Capitalism Against Capitalism, by Michel Albert.

Albert was the CEO of a French insurance company. This is interesting, because one of the issues with the sub-prime mortgage crisis was the failure of AIG due in part to its insuring of credit default swaps. Insurance companies had a role, along with regulatory agencies, brokerage firms, and governments themselves, in making banks feel safe about the bets they were playing by the process of securitization, and thereby content to continue their game of economic roulette. The world is not discrete pieces or discrete entities; it is connections.

I retrieved this quote from the wiki on 'Rhine Capitalism,' as contrasted with the term 'Anglo-Saxon Economy.' Note that neither term seems to have acquired very wide currency. However, given that fiat or credit money is issued as debt and thereby given worth only by economic expansion that will represent the value presupposed by each additional dollar put into circulation, our currency isn't wholly reliable either. Like a gambler, we are placing our bets not on the present, but on the future. Isn't that what printing money as a loan to oneself is? Betting that, in the future, you will have the value you lack today? Perhaps that is why Americans are more religious than other nations; we love our money, and it tells us to have faith in God that our currency won't collapse. All you can do, my friend, is have a little faith; but complacency will do just as well.

The two great crises, and the well-springs of yearning and wonder

In human life, there are two great crises that we all experience, and we take their formative roles upon us- and the psyche of loss that they bring about- for granted precisely because they are universal. These two crises are birth- the loss of the physical parallel to Eden that is the womb (as indicated by Carl Sagan in Broca’s Brain, if I remember correctly)- and the loss of innocence, the loss of the state of mind that is Eden's other parallel. Between the two, we have a sense of yearning, of loss, of not being at peace or whole, that is the unconscious undercurrent of much of our lives. We are rarely aware of it, but this sense of missing something, of being incomplete, is the motivation behind many of our reflections, expressions, beliefs, and yearnings. It is also the source of wonder, which is the fundamental impulse behind philosophical thought and religious feeling alike. It is hard to look at the world through new eyes if they have not lost an older view, an older way of seeing.