Fragments

I find I am spending more and more time on my Android. I need to restore balance in my life. I have been sorely neglecting my computer!  But what about real life? you ask.  Oh, that. It’s just an illusion, you know. The phone and the computer are beginning to offer better illusions.   (Eagerly anticipating VR.) -- Thanx and a tip of the Hatlo hat to Judith Solomon and John Lepore

I often have used my kitchen as the setting for various philosophical revelations, since, after all, I do spent a lot of time there, and so it is natural that thoughts will occur to me. The proverbial kitchen sink itself has been not only the backdrop but even the spur to enlightenment. Another such episode has just occurred.                 As I was rinsing the items in the sink one by one and then placing them in the disk rack to dry, I encountered a familiar discombobulation due to the awkward arrangement of some large items. Chiefly two mugs are responsible, which, if placed in one location, result in everything stacking up nicely, but otherwise not.                 The key is to position the mugs before anything else. Sometimes this comes about by chance, but usually not. And why not? Because I am not paying attention .  ...

When I, a “white” (male, Northern, liberal, Jewish, 21 st Century …) American, think about the plight of blacks in America (that is to say, African-Americans in the United States), one simple image comes into my mind as typifying its essence: a black man (just happens to be a male in my image, perhaps because I would have more basis for identifying with a male), slave or free, under the power of an idiot, bigoted white man (man because the typical power-wielder, I suppose, whether it be overseer, prison guard, traffic cop, supervisor, teacher ...; but of course any white citizen, male or woman, can make trouble for a black man or woman if not appeased), and the black man is thinking to himself (or making silent acknowledgment to a black companion), “What an idiot this is whom I am powerless to confront or even ignore, now and in most of my life and life prospects.”             This is a sentiment with which almost anybody can e...

I have three long wooden spoons in my kitchen, which I keep in a drawer. Two of them are a matched pair, probably intended for tossing salads. The third is different and may be the remnant of another pair. When I just need to use a long wooden spoon to stir something on the stove, it does not matter which spoon I use. However a certain fastidiousness in my nature moves me to want to use the odd spoon rather than one of the extant pair. But this in turn has introduced a subtle discomfort into my kitchen routine. For although, as indicated, I was aware that the “third” spoon was different from the two others, I could not readily pick it out when reaching into the drawer. It would require a certain mental effort to fumble for the odd one, even when glancing into the drawer. Sometimes I would even end up with one of the pair inadvertently.             As you can see, I am downright Proustian in my sensibilities. Heretofore these h...

There is a huge untapped resource for combatting COVID-19, and it is growing just as fast as the pandemic. I am referring to the shut-ins, like me, who suddenly find ourselves with time to occupy while home alone that previously we would have spent in company or out in public at work or play. This has been very frustrating, not only because of the loss of personal opportunities, but also because it inhibits reaching out to help people who have been even more adversely affected by the virus’s medical and nonmedical effects. So far the way not to feel completely useless has been to consider that “We also serve who only stand and wait.” By sheltering in place and without guests we not only protect ourselves but also others whom we might infect if we happened to be carrying the virus without symptoms. Furthermore, even in protecting only ourselves, we free up hospital personnel and beds and ventilators for others. But this is not very emotionally satisfying, and anyway there is m...

We have seen with the new coronavirus how something very simple in itself can have devastating implications. Thus, what COVID-19 requires of every human being on Earth is "simply" to stay six feet or two meters apart from anyone else. But what havoc this has wreaked! I could not even count the ways, but they are now known to all of us, so I need not bother. From the global (world recession) to the intimate (no touching, please), we live in an entirely new world now. This is much like a science fiction story, for a typical device in that genre is to change "just one" thing and then see what happens. For example, Philip Wylie's novel The Disappearance begins with the sudden vanishing of all women from the Earth. You can begin to imagine what would result, and Wylie does. But who would ever have imagined the imperative to keep six feet apart from everyone else? Of course it does "follow" from the way contagious disease spreads. But even in Camus...

… or maybe in just 70 days. Soon after I began sheltering in place because I am a Baby Boomer and hence in a vulnerable category for infection by the new coronavirus, I was introduced to ZOOM because of a meeting I needed to attend. It then dawned on me that I could use this program myself for one-on-one conversations with friends … and in particular over a meal, just as if I were having them over for dinner. I suggested this to a friend and we tried it out. It worked like a charm. Each of us had a talking head perched opposite him on his respective dining room table while we ate and chatted. Of course it was strictly potluck! Although on a date I would be able to order a special meal from a restaurant to be delivered to the lady’s doorstep. Then it occurred to me that I could use the program to talk to people who were not local. Indeed, I immediately went for broke and arranged chats with two people I know in Australia – literally on the opposite side of the globe from where I l...

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The advent of COVID-19 is so timely, one could feel justified to suspect a conspiracy. I don’t, but it is  as if  the purveyors of everything Internet and virtual and robotic had come up with the perfect way to monopolize human life. That trend had already been fast afoot, of course, what with all of us glued to our monitors, laptops, and phones at work and at play, robots and expert systems ready to replace workers of every color collar, and self-driving vehicles and drones available to deliver all of our needs to our doorstep.  But now comes a virus that no one has yet developed a vaccine or cure for to scare us all into staying home, or put us into mandatory quarantine. No more going to work or school, no more cruising or jetting to other cities or foreign shores, no more local shopping, no more concerts or theatre or parades, you name it. Nowhere to go and nothing to do but stay at home if at all possible.  Another conspiracy one might concoct to account for ...

It is a commonplace that, in order to boost circulation, the (so-called?) news media tend to emphasize cloud-pleasing stories which – given human nature? – tend to the violent and seamy. It has been suggested that an appropriate response would be to balance this reporting with positive news as well. As German economist Max Roser put it (here I am quoting from an article ["The Big Question," by Joshua Rothman, July 23, 2018, p. 27] that quotes a book [Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now ] that cites Roser), a truly evenhanded newspaper “could have run the headline NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN EXTREME POVERTY FELL BY 137,000 SINCE YESTERDAY every day for the last twenty-five years." However, I think this does not really redress the imbalance because even the bad news is distorted … and not nearly bad enough! So let me make a modest journalistic proposal (although this could also serve as a personal philosophical or ethical exercise): Each day (perhaps one week later in retrospec...

My doctor prescribed N for me to take when other drugs were proving ineffective against an ailment from which I suffer. However, when I filled the prescription and took a look at the fine print, I noticed that the drug is an anti-depressant. No way did I want to take an anti-depressant. Oh, I could probably use one; but it is a point of philosophic pride (and stupidity?) that I deal with my “mental” problems by means of reasoning alone. So I just put the bottle in my medicine chest and forgot about it. After a while, the original ailment was bugging me ever more, and I remembered the bottle in the cabinet. I also called to mind the example of a colleague, who had been taking an anti-depressant and whom I had berated for doing so on the aforementioned philosophic grounds. He replied that a true philosopher would not be dogmatic and insist that there can be only one right way to do something. The temptation then became too strong to resist and I popped the pill. Well, the drug ...

The other day an old friend told me of her regret about the decision she had made in her early life to go to graduate school A rather than graduate school B, because it may have shut off some career opportunities. Philosopher that I am, I immediately dismissed her concern by pointing out that her beloved daughter would not even exist had my friend made a different decision. My friend did not at first see the connection, so I explained that I was referring to the utter contingency of which sperm meets which egg; so the slightest alteration of prior conditions would mean a different person, or no person, would have been born. Although she then saw what I was getting at, this did not lift her regret. I chalked it up to the usual irrationality of nonphilosophers (which also includes all philosophers when they revert to being just plain people, which is really just about all of the time, even in their professional role). But some musing on another subject has now given me a differ...

Like most folks, I imagine, I have always believed there is some plausibility to the proposition that there are no atheists in foxholes. If the shells were raining down on you, and your buddies were dying left and right, wouldn’t you be praying? As a bona fide atheist, I have no fear of death as such. Dying unpleasantly I dread, and also dying “prematurely,” although that term is relative to what one cares about and has accomplished or experienced. Being generally pleased with the latter in my own life, I fancy I am “ready to go” at any time because, at my age, the future is likely to go worse than better as a whole. Nevertheless all bets are off when I’m in a foxhole, literally or figuratively. So it came as a surprise to me just now when I had the sudden realization that one’s likely behavior and feelings in a foxhole testify not to one’s (however temporary) belief in God but, quite the contrary, to one’s loss of faith. For if one truly believed in God, and especially in t...

Guidelines for doctors recommend prescribing cholesterol medication for patients who show a ten percent (or even lower) chance of developing heart disease over the next ten years by the most recent approved measure. When I first heard about this it struck me as odd, even absurd: another case of a hammer seeing everything as a nail. For doctors, all of us are only varying degrees of sick, and hence in need of treatment, since we are never perfectly healthy, right? But how could 10 percent be something to worry about? Isn’t it intuitive that something is probable only if it's >50 percent? And 10 percent is so far below that that it seems downright   im probable.     But then I thought about it in a different way: Suppose someone handed you a revolver with ten chambers in the cylinder and a bullet in one of them. Would you be willing to play Russian roulette?     Or suppose you were one of ten people in a room, one of whom was to be chosen at random to be killed...