New Scientist

I suppose the fact that I have been failing in my resolution to spend 10 minutes a day with dead philosophers is an interesting point in itself. I have been doing plenty of thinking but my thoughts have been bouncing off the world of the here and now.

Last week I found two good articles in New Scientist magazine. James O’ Donoghue’s “The hunt for predator X” looks at the massive marine reptiles that lived at the time of the dinosaurs. Often significantly larger than dinosaurs, these creatures occupied a separate branch of the reptile family tree.

This week in New Scientist there is a very interesting article on the seas of the moons of Jupiter. If I were a short fiction writer I’m sure there’d be plenty of material there for a sci fi story.

Last week’s issue also carried an article about intelligence. In Clever Fools Michael Bond explains that having an IQ doesn’t automatically make you smart. It’s the ability to make rational decisions that override natural cognitive biases that counts.

And look at this!

Why I Am Not a Christian or Limping Onwards

I lost interest in arguing with Bertrand Russell over Christianity. I do however have the energy to add that using the crusades and the Spanish Inquisition to argue against joining the church really doesn’t wash.

No sensible Christian would ever claim that the church was perfect or that everything that happened in its history was perfect. The church is made of human beings who come together for different reasons. In an ideal world they all come together to follow Christ’s teachings. In a non-ideal world (in other words the one we live in) quite a few come together in churches because it is politically or culturally sensible to do so. They fear exclusion if they do not join in. They become hostile to those outside their group because they threaten the status quo.

I don’t think anyone with a genuine interest in Christ’s teachings would ever want a situation where people feel forced to go to church. In Britain people often claim that the church is dying on its feet. But perhaps we are healthier than we’ve ever been. People come because they want to, not out of a sense of social conformity.

I’m rambling about all over the place. What I’m trying to say is that the crusaders and the inquisitors were human beings. They made human mistakes in the name of an ideology. That is something all human beings do. Christianity is an extremely old and complex tradition. It is quite possible to choose the bits of it you want and turn it into quite a disgusting ideology. But that’s no reason to reject the church wholesale.

Does that make sense? I need to fine tune my philosophical muscles, I feel as if I’m a bit all over the place this morning.

Nativity Narratives in the Gospels

I’ve spent the last few days preparing a talk on the art of the Christian Nativity. In the process I’ve read quite a few things that I hadn’t looked at before. Among them the writings of the early Church Fathers, Ireneus, Origen and Tertullian.

I also read a pretty good book on infancy narratives in the Gospels. I can’t remember the title off the top of my head. It was by Roman Catholic theologian Raymond E. Brown. I’m also told that Geza Vermes did a very nice book.

I learnt something new.

Our priest is forever telling us that the stories of the Old Testament are stories, and that they certainly shouldn’t be read as straight history by anyone. That makes good sense. They are stories that express ideas about God through allegory, poetry and all that sort of stuff. If you believe in the living God, as I do, you can think of them as divinely inspired stories. If you don’t believe, well, I think you can still agree that the writers could have been inspired by their belief in God.

What I learnt from Raymond E. Brown is that the infancy narratives in the Gospels were certainly not written as history. They were pieces of theology designed to explain to the audience who Jesus was. The listeners would have known that the stories they were listening to weren’t historically accurate. I’m told that there are so many mistakes in Christ’s visit to the Temple that Christians of Jewish origin would’ve picked them up immediately. It’s also well known that the whole bit about the census doesn’t make historical sense.

The star may not have existed either. It was common at the time to believe that great events and the births of great men would be heralded by stars. So someone writing a birth narrative could easily have slipped that one in. Or tied in folk memories of a big astronomical event. I’m told there were quite a few around that time.

Now, I’m saying all this because I think it combats a continuous trend that we see in British media. Every now and then some journalist pops up saying “I’ve discovered that INSERT NATIVITY STORY ELEMENT couldn’t possibly have happened! The nativity story isn’t true!” And then said journalist expects the whole of Christianity to come toppling to its knees.

Christianity is not about believing that there was a star, or a census, or wise men or even that Joseph never slept with Mary ever. It’s about a relationship with the living God. That is at the heart of Christianity. Theologians know that the Nativity narratives are not straight history. There was no concept of straight history at the time the Gospels were written. If you’d said to the Gospel writer “hey! Prove that Christ was in the manger,” he or she would’ve looked at you as if you were deranged.

‘Why I Am Not a Christian’ by B.R. Part 1

This morning I read Bertrand Russell’s lecture “Why I Am Not a Christian,” which he gave to the National Secular Society in 1927.

I should point out that I am a Christian and that I converted late in life. It was entirely of my own free will, I was not influenced by anybody and I was not looking for answers after some deep emotional trauma.

Some thoughts occurred to me. Firstly, Russell is quite justifiably arguing against ideas put forward by supporters of Christianity. He is also quite justifiably arguing against things that have been done by churches and by church goers.

It is true that terrible deeds have been committed in the name of Christ. You don’t need to think very hard to find them. The Inquisition, the crusades, the torture of Protestants by Catholics and of Catholics by Protestants.

It is also true that people who go to church can be hypocritical. I have heard people praise Christian values, and then 5 minutes later I hear them being nasty about some poor absent person or other.

Some Christians do make the assumption that they have higher moral values than anyone else. So when secularists argue against Christianity on the basis that non-Christians can also be good people, they are reacting to an existing Christian attitude.

Secularists are right to say that Christians are wrong to say that you need religion to be a good person. But secularists are wrong to use that to argue against joining the church.

In this argument we have to accept that there are two different definitions of the word church. In the spiritual sense, there is the church as a kind of eternal mother ship, sanctioned by God and uniting believers around the world over the centuries. In the temporal sense, as understood in the everyday world, the church is a social organisation. Each church has a different demographic. You will find quite different opinions and practices in different churches.

In both cases you can not use the fact that some Christians are morally smug, as an argument against joining the church.  Firstly, in the temporal sense of the word church, the spread of morally smug Christians is not uniform and there may in fact be parish churches where no morally smug Christians exist at all.

Secondly, in the spiritual sense of the word church, in Christianity as I understand it, Christians are not supposed to be morally smug. So when you meet a morally smug Christian, you are meeting someone who is “doing it wrong.” To reject the church because of their behaviour is a bit like rejecting ice skating because you saw someone executing a clumsy move and then falling over.

As for the crusades and the Inquisition being used to argue against Christianity, I will have to look at that another day. I am having an attack of the sneezes so I don’t feel like writing any further.

Truth and History

“Why I took to philosophy” pages 28 to 31 in The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, published by Routledge.

This is the first piece of writing about philosophy that has really meant something to me since beginning this ten minutes a day venture. I enjoyed it because I can identify with one of Russell’s attitudes, and because it helped me understand for the first time why I felt the same about something completely different.

Russell writes about his natural scepticism, his desire to find what was true, and how it coloured his thoughts on the academic study of mathematics.

“When I began to learn higher mathematics, fresh difficulties assailed me. My teachers offered me proofs which I felt to be fallacious and which, as I learnt later, had been recognized as fallacious … I was encouraged in my transition to philosophy by a certain disgust with mathematics, resulting from too much concentration and too much absorption in the sort of skill that is needed in examinations. The attempt to acquire examination technique had led me to think of mathematics as consisting of artful dodges and ingenious devices and as altogether too much like a cross-word puzzle.”

I studied history at university, and I remember even at the age of eighteen I complained that our essay writing and presentations seemed like games. We were being trained to put together particular facts, from particular books, written by authors who had taken particular facts from particular sources, and then use those facts to make arguments about things that happened centuries ago.

I couldn’t put it into clear words, but I always felt very dubious about this process. Something certainly happened in 1709, or whatever year we happened to be studying. But how did we know the truth of what happened? How could we make arguments when we didn’t have the complete picture? All we had were bits and pieces of evidence. (And don’t get me started on writing essays based on books written by authors who might have been very selective in their evidence.)

I wanted to get to the complete truth of what went on, so I went about in a rather clumsy haphazard fashion, speculating on how we could reconstruct what was in the heads of people alive at the time. My speculations weren’t very skilful and didn’t go down very well. Looking back, I don’t think trying to get into people’s heads was a particularly well thought out academic endeavour. I think I was doing it because I was interested in something outside academic history, but I had no idea what it was. Philosophy?

I felt very much like Russell, yet I was very inarticulate. I couldn’t really explain why academic history felt like a game to me. All I could do was huff and puff and say “I don’t like this.”

I still enjoy history. In fact I’ve been giving a series of history talks in my local church. I like to look back at what was, imagine how things were and how they feed into what we are today. On a spiritual level as a Christian I think I can learn a lot from church history.

But when I put the history talks together, I always feel a bit uneasy. Condensing hundreds of years into an hour doesn’t seem right. The story that I tell feels like a story, it’s not truth.

When I was younger I was far too obstinate about my inarticulate muddle headed search for truth. I didn’t even ask whether it was possible. Bob Smith’s experience of 1709 would not be the same as Bob Brown’s. So does one single historical truth even exist?

So I see now that it’s necessary to tell a story. When it comes to history, stories are all we have. The past is gone, and we can only seize at the scent of it in our narratives. My disgust with academic history was unreasonable because it was badly thought out. But it was also a reflection of an unrecognised desire to take a more philosophical approach to life.

I hate strings

Last night I went to the Royal Festival Hall to hear the Philharmonia Orchestra play The Hebrides Overture, Brahms’ s symphony No 3 and his Piano Concerto No 2 in B Flat.

I’m very fond of percussion and wind instruments, but I don’t like to hear lots of strings playing together. A single violin or cello can be very beautiful, but all together?  Brrrr, no thanks. My friend and his friend both enjoyed themselves, and the other two thousand people there also seemed to be having a good time.

It made me think how funny we human beings are, that our tastes are so different. What makes two thousand people enjoy strings while I don’t?

What makes me chuckle is the fact that most devoted orchestral music lovers will probably  assume that you are simply unwilling to give the music a chance because it is stereotyped as “boring” or “posh.” If you say (which I did not because I am polite), that the sound of mass strings makes you think of cat guts, and that it’s quite unpleasant, they will still think that you are not giving their music a chance.

This is a reflection of our common assumption that all people think in the same way that we do. Incidentally, it’s quite understandable that orchestral music lovers will assume that someone is simply bored. A lot of people won’t give high culture a chance because they are inverse snobs, and they will take the mickey out of orchestral music lovers. Thus leading the lovers to have attitude.

What interests me is the way I automatically assume that classical orchestral music is somehow higher or better than reggae or punk rock. I have bought into a common social assumption about music. It’s possibly that same assumption which creates the resentment that encourages some people to say that orchestral music is boring. They wouldn’t attack Icelandic folk music in the same way, because Icelandic folk music is not something that we assume to be higher or truer.

I meant to write about Bertrand Russell’s “Why I Took to Philosophy,” but I shall have to leave that until later.

Judgement in visual perception

“the perceived, by its nature, admits of the ambiguous, the shifting, and is shaped by context.”

I sat down to read Merleau-Ponty this morning with the sensation of committing to my daily medicine.  In my own life I’ve been wondering about Christian teachings on worldly and spiritual ambition, so this probably isn’t the time to be looking at visual perception.

Merleau-Ponty raises interesting points at the beginning of chapter 2 (see how I am speeding through this) that make clear the role of perception in seeing.

When we look at a white figure on a red background we can not do so without making judgements about what we see. We do not see that the edges of the white figure belong to that figure rather than the red background, it is our judgement. We do not see that the red background continues behind the white figure, yet that is what we automatically imagine.

All this makes me think how difficult the act of seeing must be for some individuals on the autism spectrum. If they can not make the same vision judgements that the rest of us do, how can they not be confused by simple things like road signs. Can some even see that the edge of the road sign makes it separate to the sky?

What we see is not what we see

“The visible is what is seized on by the eyes, the sensible is what is seized on by the senses.” Merleau-Ponty

It is 8 o’clock in the morning and I have finally resumed reading Phenomenology of Perception.

I was going to blog about the Bishop of Liverpool’s slot this morning on BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day, in which he criticised individualism. But let’s leave individualism and communalism (is that the opposite?) for another day.

On page 8 of Phenomenology Merleau-Ponty examines the “constancy hypothesis.” This is the idea that what we see and hear is a pure and simple act of observing what is out there.

But, as the philosopher points out, there are things that tell us that our brains are intervening between the object and the way we understand it. This is the act of perception. In other words we can not look at anything without first interpreting it.

Optical illusions which show how we can be tricked into seeing things that are not there, are an illustration of this.

I read up to page 12 today and I can see why my friend thinks Merleau-Ponty is a little old fashioned. He’s arguing against scientists who believe that what we see in our heads is a straightforward reflection of the view which greets our eyes. As if our eyes were simply windows and there were no acts of interpretation involved on the part of the viewer. I don’t think any scientist has believed that for a long time.

Last King of Scotland

This evening I watched the Film 4 adaptation of Giles Fodden’s novel The Last King of Scotland. It tells the story of Dr Garrigan, a young Scottish medical doctor who becomes personal advisor to Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

Dr Garrigan, blinded by his own naivety,  is at first seduced by Amin’s charm. With the best of intentions he makes a terrible mistake that leads Amin to murder a man.  Then out of desperation and loneliness he commits acts that focus Amin’s attention on another victim.

At the end of the film a Ugandan doctor tells Garrigan that he deserves to die for what he has done, but that if he lives he will have the chance to redeem himself. From the point of view of the Ugandan doctor, Garrigan was yet another White man come to lord it over the Africans. He acted irresponsibly towards a woman and he did not deal with the consequences. He placed other people in difficult situations because of his own foolishness.

Yet did Garrigan deserve to be told that he should die? How far can his naivety as a young foreigner, out of his depth and scared, be used as an excuse for what he did?

I suppose these are the questions of one type of philosophy or another. I find it interesting that from the Ugandan doctor’s point of view, his judgement was quite valid. But from my position, as a European viewer allowed to see Garrigan in his private moments, I came up with a much softer and more sympathetic judgement.

Beginning with Merleau-Ponty

This month I’m reading Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, published by Routledge. First released in French in 1945, this edition is translated by Colin Smith.

I skipped the lengthy preface after a few pages because I couldn’t understand it, and went straight to chapter one “The ‘Sensation’ as a Unit of Experience.” I’m now six pages in.

My initial enthusiasm was a little curtailed by a remark from a friend with a Masters in Philosophy, who made Merleau-Ponty sound as if he was somewhat out of date but still very good in parts. But, I suppose, if one is to learn anything about modern philosophy it’s probably a good idea to go back to an earlier stage and then work forward.

I read those first six pages on a train several days ago, so my daily ten minutes can not be said to have started yet.

From what I can gather, Merleau-Ponty says that we can not look at anything without some act of interpretation on our part.  There is no such thing as pure sensation, and the closest we get to it is that moment before falling asleep.

Even the act of looking at a white shape on a red background is an act of perception. We say that the edges of the white shape belong to that white shape and not to the red background. Believing that to be the case, is an act of interpretation.