Phillip Pettit on Group Agency

First of all, I should ask you to take note of the podcast Philosophy Bites, a delightful podcast out of the UK. Two philosophers take turns hosting guest philosophers to discuss a wide range of topics. These podcasts are great while doing the dishes, mowing the loan, going for walks, etc. Each one is about 20 minutes long. You feel like your listening to a couple of philosophers discuss a subject, but they avoid (or explain) philosophical jargon, so the conversations are aimed a lay persons. It's quite often very high quality, indeed.

Nerd alert! (I'll post this for anyone who wants to avoid a really nerdy type subject.)

The linked podcast is a discussion with political philosopher Phillip Pettit on group agency. The idea that groups can form intentions and take actions. Plain, right? Well, not so easy. Such group powers were little known outside of the State in antiquity, but institutions in the Middle Ages, like guilds, the Church, monasteries, etc. gave rise to thinking about how groups may act. More recently, but only seriously since the 19th century, we developed the idea of corporations. Corporations: good or bad? Well, this is not so easy to answer. I'm having doubts about the power of such remote, single-purpose (pecuniary profit), long-lasting, and uber-rational agents. Do corporations do what no individual would do? Should corporations be held to criminal liability? Where's the "intent"? Can we have a group intent? Here's where we get into the other part of Pettit's talk: how can we decide a group intent? Although he doesn't mention it, I think that he's getting into issues of Condorcet's theorem, Arrow's theorem, and those of others who deal with the paradoxes of group choice. (Garry Wills addresses the issues in layman's terms in Confessions of a Conservative, if you want to check it out.) What this means is that groups have even more problems than individuals (to the extent that we are individuals--are we?) forming intent. The interview covers this topic all too briefly, but we can think of it as a teaser for Pettit's book! Really, it's an interesting problem.

Mary Beard on Oratory

Courtesy of Farnum Street (an interesting blog that I discovered), classicist Mary Beard writes an interesting reflection on oratory as occasioned by the wide acclaim give to the King's Speech. This is a fascinating topic, especially if one has to persuade others (and we all do). Speeches in the public arena are challenging or uplifting or most often, awful. But when one hears a great one, say Churchill or Martin Luther King, Jr., one can be moved and one's mind and disposition changed. However, the flip side of this coin is demagoguery, and now it comes in large quantities of sound bites from hideously small minds. Perhaps TV has ruined the art, and now we only get foul noise.

Krugman on Central Planning

This is a quick piece on economics & organization. Why do we have central command and control organizations if the free market works so well? In this piece, Krugman talks about Boeing, but it's true throughout our economy. And although many so-called conservatives would be loath to admit it, their favorite organization, the military, is very command and control. A very informative piece for about 30" of reading!

Warfare/Welfare State: Ralph Benko

Just a short piece that I think says a huge amount. We spend most government money on "defense" (military) and transfer payments (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid). Other the other stuff--like teachers, weather forecasting, foreign aid--is peanuts. Most people--often the loudest voices--don't know this (or don't care). We do need some fundamental reforms, but all the energy now seems aimed at public employees and their unions, not at the real issues of long-term deficits. We need some new ways of thinking about a lot of things, but the public conversation becomes easily warped by those seeking partisan political advantage.

Barnett on George Friedman

I quit listening to The Next 100 Years. Now, Thomas Barnett tells us why I did so. Thanks, Tom. If I read this earlier, maybe I'd have saved my self some time.

Stephen Walt on Double Standards for Dictators

The Wall Street Journal is a fine newspaper, but its op-ed page is like listening to O'Reilly, Beck, or Limbaugh but with a better vocabulary. And it usually makes about as much sense as they do.

Walt takes on the WSJ today, something that needs to occur more often so far as I can tell. (I don't normally read it, although we have a subscription here at the office; too much on business & politics to the right of Mr. A.T. Hun.) I this instance, Walt suggests that calling our dictators "good", or in any sense better than others, is, well, nonsense. Examples provided.

Barnett Takes Ferguson to Task

Tom Barnett's interesting perspective on the world and the U.S. role in it provides a very thoughtful perspective. In this piece he takes down Niall Ferguson's dissing of the Obama Administration's handling of the Egypt situation, which I've been posting about of late. I like Barnett's perspective, which balances economics, geopolitical strategy, and military concerns better than anyone else currently, although I think Fareed Zakaria usually has a worthwhile and justified perspective on events. Also, I note that Barnett makes a passing but disparaging remark about George Friedman's work. Interestingly, I had to stop listening to Friedman's The Next 100 Years because I thought it too limiting, too 19th century. It's all geopolitics with no nukes or globalization. I get the impression that Barnett doesn't think too highly of it either.

David Brooks on Egypt & the Quest for Dignity

I owe this one to Frank Robinson's excellent post on Egypt @ his blog The Rational Optimist. Robinson incorporates insights from Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man (a great source for understanding the Hegelian tradition, Plato, and Nietzsche and which I think has been unfairly maligned), as well as from Brooks. In any event, Robinson and Brooks have reasonable hopes for the Egyptian movement. Societies can improve, and while backsliding does occur, we have reason for hope. I hope that they're both right.

Tyler Cowan & David Brooks: The Great Stagnation

I'm getting two birds with one stone here. I read Tyler Cowan's e-book and being late to review it, I now have the benefit of David Brooks's review. Cowan's argument that we have picked a great deal of the "low-hanging fruit", makes a lot of sense to me. Certainly our economy has changed a great deal, but have I lived through the changes that my parents or grandparents lived through? Personal computers and the internet have changed a great deal, but I don't know if the changes are as profound as those of the period 1850 to 1950.

Brooks makes a good point: our quality of life may have improved, although not our wealth necessarily.

Both sources provide thoughtful commentary on our current position.

David Rock @ GoogleTechTalks on Your Brain at Work

I don't know how I came across this, but it proved very interesting, and it should prove very useful. In short, Mr. Rock talks about how our brain works and how we can use our knowledge about how it works to improve our lives. He talks about 4 primary topics:

1. The rational is overvalued. It's only a small part of our brain, it processes serially and rather slowly, and it uses a lot of energy. On the other hand, it's most important function may be to say "no" to motor or emotional impulses.

2. Emotions are misunderstood. We color everything in our world with either a positive or a negative valence. We can change our attitude toward the outside world to some extent.

3. The social world is our main concern. We are social animals through and through. We depend on each other for survival, not just our individual wits. We have the following concerns as social animals: SCARF
Status
Certainty
Autonomy
Relatedness
Fairness

4. Attention. As we learn to pay attention, as we learn mindfulness, we learn to change our brain. We can develop brain skills that enhance our lives.

This was quite an interesting talk. I've seen a couple of GoogleTechTalks, which are very much like TED Talks, in that they have excellent presenters. These talks are a bit longer and have less production glitz than many TED Talks, but the quality of the presentation and topics (well, the two that I've seen) have impressed me.

Rock also cited these two articles that further examine his thinking:
"Managing with the Brain in Mind" and "The Neuroscience of Mindfulness"

Good stuff!

Ferguson: Historian as Commentator

This long interview of Ferguson about his cover story in Newsweek about the Obama Administration's actions in Egypt raises a really interesting background question: does a deep knowledge of history give one a deeper insight into current events? Does Ferguson, who certainly is well versed in the history of the last couple of centuries, have greater insight into current events? Some random thoughts:
1. Ferguson loves controversy. I think this love of controversy may cloud his judgment.
2. As I mentioned in a comment to my last post (yes, I'm down to commenting on my own posts!), the author of Virtual History should know better than to criticize those who fail to forecast events.
3. I think that he is right in pushing the idea of scenarios. That is, consideration of multiple futures, not knowing which will prevail. Acknowledge the limitation of knowledge.
4. Is the Muslim Brotherhood so strong and so reactionary? I don't know. Does he, really?
5. He mocks Obama for calling Islam and religion of peace, and certainly a lot of evidence that it's not. But would he mock anyone if they said Christianity is a religion of peace? Certainly a lot of evidence that it's not. Religion, for a great many people, is considered no more seriously than their choice of language. They're born with it, enough said. This allows those who want to, to manipulate people rather easily toward violence. Violence and religion have an awfully long history. (See Rene Girard's works.)
6. I have some sympathy for Ferguson's argument that we need some greater sense of grand strategy.
7. One more interview on Parker-Spitzer: http://parkerspitzer.blogs.cnn.com/2011/02/14/niall-ferguson-obamas-handling-of-the-egyptian-crisis-was-a-foreign-policy-debacle/.
8. Perhaps U.S. policy was wise to play it both ways? Ferguson is quite critical of this, but I'm not convinced that it will necessarily prove so bad. You play both sides of the street, hedge your bets. If you don't screw the winner, the winner can forget easily enough if you offer the right attitude following. On the other hand: Iran 1979.

Ferguson on Obama's Egypt Policy--or Lack Thereof

Niall Ferguson has apparently taken up a column at Newsweek, which is good news. He's a first-rate historian and a very much a controversialist. I don't always agree with him, but I think that one has to take his arguments seriously. In his first column, he skewers the Obama administration for remaining behind events in Egypt, thereby alienating both the powers that be (or were) and the protesters. It does give me a scary reminder of the U.S. and Iran in 1979, a very bad precedent indeed. Jimmy Carter's policies and actions addressing the fall of the Shah were not a success. I think that Ferguson, according to other sources that I've heard, may be overestimating the sway of the Muslim Brotherhood. However, I'm not certain that democracy will prevail, by any means. Also, while Kissinger isn't necessarily the best role model, he does think in terms of global strategy, and that's a must for foreign policy. I don't know that Obama has that instinct, and the voters were looking at someone to address the economy, not foreign policy in the grand scheme.

Ian Morris: Why the West Rules--For Now

I like big history and I cannot lie.

Almost famous rap

Okay, that’s a bit of a misquote, but for yours truly, it works. As someone who has declared his own year of big history, this book provided a great start. The full title of this book tells a lot: Why the West Rules—For Now: The Patterns of History and What They Reveal About the Future. Quite a mouthful, and quite a claim, but Professor Morris (Stanford Classics & Archeology) backs up his claims. Let me unpack it a bit.

Morris starts with a tale of counter-history: a tale of Prince Albert traveling to Beijing in the mid-nineteenth century, held virtually captive to the Chinese hegemon. Of course, almost the opposite was true, except the Chinese emperor sent a small dog, Looty, to Balmoral Castle, as a form of homage and tribute. How did this happen? How did the West come to dominate the globe in the nineteenth century? This is the guiding question of this book, and to answer it, Morris goes back, way back.

Morris goes back to the first journeys of humans out of Africa. There were multiple migrations and multiple forms of humanoids that evolved in Africa and that migrated out. Morris retraces all of this to arrive at solid beginning for his account: race (as biology) does not account for human differences. We’re all birds of a feather genetically (Although some hanky-panky in Europe mixed some Neanderthal genes in with the homo sapiens. Neanderthals eventually died out.) After the beginning of humans, and then with the development of agriculture (about 10,000 years ago), divergences began between East and West. Note: Morris notes that distinctions between East and West are in some sense artificial and to some extent limit the human populations that he considers. By “East” he means China and its civilization, of which Japan became the most prominent offshoot. By “West”, he means that world that started in the “Hilly Flanks” of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and then migrated west into the Mediterranean, then into Northern Europe, and then across the Atlantic. He does not consider other human civilizations, such as those of the Americas.

Morris tells how, using an index of social development that he created, East and West went back and forth over the millennia in the lead for development. The West began in the lead and continued up through the time of the Roman Empire, then the East lead (around 1100 during the Song dynasty), and the two were nearly even up into the late 1700’s, when the West shot into a lead and changed the game. Up until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the empires and nation-states of both East and West would hit a ceiling of social development that neither the Romans nor the Song could break. Each time this ceiling was approached, at least one of the “five horsemen of the apocalypse” would ride: epidemic, famine, state failure, climate change, and migration. However, in the 1600’s China on the East and Russia in the West (and East geographically) closed the “steppe highway” that allowed the horsemen of Central Asia (think Ghengis Khan and Tamarlane) to move from East to West, wrecking havoc on civilizations in the West. These horsemen are the barbarians who helped bring down Rome, and in the East they were the reason for that lovely wall the Chinese have.

The weakness of the book lies in the fact that Morris doesn’t give as definitive and persuasive answer to the question of why the West shot out ahead via industrialization. Perhaps he knows of very important and provocative literature out there. For instance, he praises Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence on several occasions, but I think that he could have done more, as this change in humanity—the Industrial Revolution—is the most significant change in the human condition since the advent of agriculture and the resulting development of cities (and thus civilization). But perhaps I quibble. To get another take on this issue, see Timur Kuran’s review in Foreign Affairs.

After bringing the tale up to today, and after some discussion of China’s growing influence and how it might take the lead in social development back to the East, Morris ponders the future. In an essay that Niall Ferguson rightly praised in his brief note on the book in Foreign Affairs, Morris contemplates to divergent paths that humanity may take. First, the possibility of the rise of The Singularity, where humans and machines sync-up for a brave new world. The other path that he contemplates is the possibility of Nightfall, a phrase borrowed from Asimov’s Foundation series, where civilization collapses and the five horsemen ride again. Climate change, anyone?

The great reluctance that I have to write a review of this book comes from the inadequacy of my review to do this book justice. It’s a very learned undertaking, yet its written with a light and engaging hand. Morris blends analysis and narrative in a pleasing manner. He carefully lays out his premises and supports his conclusions. He finds patterns in history, but not laws. He does about everything right that one could hope for in such a book as this. If you want to know where humankind has been and where we might be going, you’d be hard pressed to find a better book than this one.

726 pages, published 2010.

Exuberant Animal Essentials

I mentioned this site a few blogs ago, and today I find a new post that lists "essentials". I wouldn't bother to post it as a health or fitness matter, but I have to list it because the "essentials" aren't about just health and fitness, but about life. I strikes me that if you apply these essentials to your whole life, in all of its various manifestations, you're going to be doing very well for yourself and those around you. Good thoughts to keep in mind.

Art De Vany on The Superbowel Diet

Art De Vany, one of my diet & health gurus, wrote this provocative piece on Super Bowel diet habits. In a word, most people eat terribly when consuming what most consider appropriate Super Bowel fare. Okay, okay, I have an occasional beer, and I'm not a purist. However, De Vany makes an important point: if the athletes we watch ate this way, they wouldn't be worth watching. Ironic, indeed. So, if you must watch the Super Bowel, keep this information in mind.

Garry Wills on Football & Violence

Only Garry Wills could find St. Augustine apropos in an article about football. The point Wills raises--about the violence of the game--is a disturbing one indeed. I loved playing high school football. While being tall and (then) somewhat lanky, basketball seemed a natural calling, but football really captured something primal. Perhaps so many guys on a field engaged in what was a form of a war game. I enjoyed it when I could hit and move somebody (overweight defensive linemen or over active linebackers), and as an offensive lineman I became pretty good at it. (I never found a consistent spot on defense. I never found the technique to make it work for me, or perhaps I didn't have enough of the animal spirit.) I enjoyed the contact, but I didn't want to hurt anyone. Rough-housing without hurting, I thought. But I must say, not having had a son, I was relieved of my growing concern that football involves too much violence and risk of injury to justify it. (Volleyball, I learned, has injuries enough of its own. Instrumental music--not so much, thankfully.)

I don't follow pro football, and for the umpteenth year in a row, I doubt I'll watch any of the Super Bowl (some snippets, maybe). I do love to watch the Hawks or high school ball if I know the players, but I do cringe at the injuries. Like Wills, who has written eloquently about Raymond Berry, the great Baltimore Colts receiver who played with Johnny Unitas, also appreciates the game. But perhaps we should start saying "no". Okay, this is probably the most heretical thing I've written on this blog, but I don't have a good answer. Too many fans seem to revel in the violence and not the beauty of athleticism.

Movie Tip: Trouble in Paradise

Iowa Guru & I saw this film tonight, and it proved a delight. We've always been quite fond of 1930's romantic and screw-ball comedies, but this one has escaped me before (she'd seen it before and just recently again on TCM). Directed by Ernst Lubitsch, it if full of innuendo, sly sophistication, and exquisite charm. (Fortunately, it was made before the Hollywood Code came into effect and limited adult takes on movies.) A film that most anyone would enjoy.

Frank Bruni on Jack LaLanne: A Dour Take

Both Iowa Guru & I thought that this was a dour take on Jack LaLanne's legacy. For me, living in the body brings great delight (for the most part). Exercise is second only to sex for physical delight (although a great meal or fine wine has many sensual delights). In any event, to think that exercise is something that we must do out of a sense of guilt or vanity is a truly sad and unnecessary take on the experience. While sometimes I moan and groan about going to yoga or going to lift, when I've done it, I inevitably feel better about everything. And I love games: basketball was a form of meditation and recreation for me for decades, and now I meet some of that need for the delight of competition by playing volleyball. I do agree that too many forms of exercise appear to be a matter of drudgery. How many runners have I seen that look genuinely pained? And treadmills--well, they do remind me a bit of hamsters. I now prefer a bit of stationary bike with faux countryside to give the ride some interest. Also, thanks to the likes of Art De Vany and Mark Sisson, I keep workouts relatively short & intense. For play on the other hand, I can take as much time as I want (although my body now limits me). Also, Frank Forencich of Exuberant Animal and Erwan Le Corre of MovNat show us how we can use and enjoy our bodies in the most primal and delightful ways. I wish I was young and agile enough to learn parkour or gymnastics like Damien Walters, but the yoga has been a true delight--and think what one might do there. So, Mr. Bruni, get out of your chair and smell the sweat. I like to read and watch more than the next person, but sometimes you got to go shake it, and you'll love it.

Mark Sisson on Jack LaLanne

This a wonderful celebration of Jack LaLanne, someone whom everyone in our generation remembers. Iowa Guru swears by him (I mean in praise of him). The fact that he was full of vim and vigor up to the time of his death at age 96 is quite a deal. Could he have done better? Perhaps. I think some of the folks that I read, like De Vany and Sisson certainly would recommend some different practices (on diet and variety of exercise), but it's hard to argue with his success. I'm going to follow-up with a different post, but let me be clear: here's to you Jack!

Meditation: Growing Understanding

This is just one of many studies that show the benefits of meditation. I think that the author doesn't probably know how much work has been done already on this topic by people like Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin, to name but one researcher that comes quickly to mind. (If you want more information, you should check out the Mind and Life Conferences sponsored by the Dalai Lama, where he brings together scientists with Buddhists to share perspectives and common concerns. They have some very interesting exchanges and the scientists have provided some very interesting information about meditation, the practice of compassion, emotions, and so on.) Anyway, this article might whet your appetite to meditate. My willpower waxes and wanes on this. I do find that a great night of sleep is the very best thing for the brain.