Monthly Archives: May 2013

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

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Orwell spent six months during the Spanish Civil War fighting for the loyalist or republican side against the fascists led by Francisco Franco. The fascists, representing the church and most of the military, were attempting to replace the left-wing government that had previously replaced the monarchy. Orwell, along with various socialists, communists and anarchists, fought in support of the existing government, known as the Second Spanish Republic.

The action in the book takes place in the Catalonia region of Spain, in and around Barcelona. Orwell describes trench warfare at the front and street fighting in Barcelona. The trench warfare against the fascists was a miserable experience, distinguished by cold, hunger and filth. Orwell saw relatively little action, although he did participate in one major attack and was later wounded by a sniper. 

The street fighting, unfortunately, was between the communists and the anarchists, who were supposed to be allies against the fascists. The communists took control of the government and then violently suppressed the anarchists and trade unionists, throwing people like Orwell into jail or executing them. Orwell and his wife avoided being captured and returned safely to England, where Orwell wrote this book while the war in Spain continued.

Orwell tries to explain the relationships between the various left-wing factions in Spain, but it is very difficult to keep track of who is who and which group is represented by which acronym (CNT, POUM, UGT, etc.).  He does make clear, however, how journalists misrepresented the situation in Spain, and how the communists in particular used propaganda, as well as violence, to temporarily achieve power. His descriptions of incompetent or disreputable journalism do not seem peculiar to Communism, however, or to the Spanish Civil War: “It is impossible to read through reports in the Communist press without realizing that they are consciously aimed at a public ignorant of the facts and have no other purpose than to work up prejudice”.

The book ends with Orwell safely back home, but glad that he went to Spain, and worrying that his countrymen “are sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs”. German invaded Poland a year later.  (11/13/11)

Noncognitivism in Ethics by Mark Schroeder

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Non-cognitivism (with or without the hyphen) in ethics is the view that ethical statements do not describe features of actions or agents, but rather express attitudes of the speaker regarding those actions or agents. Quoting the philosopher Simon Blackburn: “Hence, it is supposed, there is nothing ethical to know, for knowledge aims to track or represent independent truths about things” (The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy). Mark Schroeder describes non-cognitivism, less clearly, as a non-descriptivist view that seeks “to explain the meaning of words by other means than by saying what they are about”.

Schroeder analyzes a number of 20th century non-cognitivist theories, including emotivism, prescriptivism and expressivism. He finds all of them lacking in various ways, especially in their failure to adequately explain how we actually use ethical language and reason about ethical subjects. But he also believes that non-cognitivist theories correctly draw attention to the fact that there is more to meaning than truth-conditions.

It seems to me that non-cognitivist theories are basically correct, but in a limited sense. We cannot analyze ethical statements in terms of attitudes, as some non-cognitivists (used to) do. For example, “Stealing is wrong” does not literally mean anything like “I disapprove of stealing and everyone else should too”. “Stealing is wrong” means that stealing conflicts with the moral rules. But what such a statement means in another sense, i.e. what we can conclude when someone says that stealing is wrong, is that the speaker has a certain negative attitude toward stealing and thinks that other people should have the same attitude. This is what it “means” or shows when someone says that stealing is wrong, although “stealing is wrong” has a different literal meaning. 

It’s obvious that ethical statements aren’t descriptions; they’re evaluations. They say how the world should be, not how it is, even though many of them are grammatically similar to descriptions and have literal meanings that imply that they are descriptive of some state of affairs, i.e. that some action is in harmony or conflict with certain moral rules or that some agent tends to obey or disobey those rules. Stating that an action is in conflict with a rule sounds like a description and has the force of a description — that is such a statement’s literal meaning. But making such a statement is evidence for a different state of affairs; it means that the speaker is opposed to the action in question and thinks other people should oppose it too.  (10/23/11)

Why Does E=mc2? (And Why Should We Care?) by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw

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Two English physicists try to explain Einstein’s famous equation and much more, including relativity and quantum mechanics. I didn’t understand quite a bit and didn’t try to do the math (which is relatively limited), but found their explanations reasonably helpful. For example, they explain that the speed of light is an upper limit because photons have no mass. It isn’t anything to do with light per se. Any particle with no mass travels at the speed of light and no faster. Gluons don’t have mass and, if they exist, neither do gravitons. So we might just as well call it “the speed of particles with no mass”. 

They also explain that mass and energy are constantly being exchanged in accordance with Einstein’s equation. Atomic weapons are just the most spectacular example of a process that is universal to nature, and occurs, for example, every time heat is generated or there is some other chemical reaction.

I’m still confused by the Twin Paradox. Why would someone in a spaceship moving close to the speed of light age more slowly than someone staying on Earth, if all motion is relative? Why not say that the person moving near the speed of light is standing still and the person who stayed at home is moving near the speed of light? The answer is that the person in the spaceship is accelerating and decelerating, and that’s why we can properly say that he or she is moving faster than the person on Earth and why he or she ages more slowly. There are formulas that explain this, but it still sounds fishy. 

I’m also bothered by the idea that the Big Bang had no location. If the universe is expanding in all directions, why can’t we say where the Big Bang occurred? And maybe put a monument there with a gift shop?  (9/8/11)

Therapy by David Lodge

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Laurence “Tubby” Passmore is the successful, middle-aged writer of a British situation comedy. He seems to have a pretty terrific life, but isn’t happy. He tries all kinds of therapy, but nothing helps until he finds himself surprisingly engrossed in the life and works of Kierkegaard. Just when Tubby feels he’s making progress, his wife announces that she’s leaving him.

Therapy is supposedly Tubby’s journal, but nobody’s journal has this much dialogue (of course, he’s supposed to be a scriptwriter). The story is engaging and Tubby is very good company, even when his life is falling apart. Maybe a novel like this has to have a happy ending, but I was disappointed when it ended that way. It all seemed more real when our hero was suffering.  (8/22/11)

Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media by Elaine Showalter

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Published in 1997, this interesting account of hysterical epidemics feels a little out of date, since it describes the most popular versions of hysteria as of 15 years ago: chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple personality disorder, recovered memories, Gulf War syndrome, satanic ritual abuse and alien abduction. Maybe 9/11, war and economic distress have given people other things to focus on since the relative calm of the mid-nineties.

The book begins with a scholarly discussion of the origins of hysteria as a medical diagnosis in the 19th century. Patients, mostly women, exhibited strange behavior or physical symptoms for no apparent reason. Showalter convincingly argues that early forms of hysteria have been replaced by “hystories” or epidemics of hysteria. In remarkably similar patterns, people who have been subjected to stress or have unmet psychological needs develop symptoms. They seek treatment from particular doctors and therapists who, for their own reasons, collaborate in assigning mysterious or bizarre causes to these symptoms. Journalists and scriptwriters help spread the news. Evidence is lacking, but paranoia feeds mass hysteria. 

Showalter doesn’t discount the real suffering involved. She just thinks that we should pay more attention to scientific evidence and accept the fact that psychological causes can have very real, sometimes incredible, physical effects.  (8/9/11)