Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress: Bertrand Russell

Showing posts with label Bertrand Russell. Show all posts

Monday, July 31, 2023

Outlander 7.7: A Good Argument for the Insanity of War

A deeply powerful and disturbing episode 7.7 on Starz this week -- indeed, one of the most disturbing in the series, for several reasons, which I tell you about, after I warn you about spoilers.

[And here's the Spoiler alert again ... ]

Ok, there was one one really enjoyable scene in this episode -- Brianna and Roger in bed. Good to see them so together and happy. Of course, that happiness would be very short lived, since they discovered a few hours later that their little boy had been kidnapped by Rob, who was taking their son somewhere else in time ...

And that wasn't the most upsetting. For me that was the 1st Battle of Saratoga, and the sheer depravity of war that it so graphically displayed. There's always a discrepancy between the nobility and the insanity of war -- the wanton killing of people. And watching that battle unfold on the screen was almost enough to make me a pacifist. (But I always also think about Bertrand Russell, a dedicated pacifist until Hitler and the Nazis changed his mind.)

And then, in the end, there's Jamie, lying on the ground, unconscious. I'll restate my standards for whether or not a character has been killed in a television series: if you don't see a head blown off or literally severed, there's always a chance the character survived. So, Jamie passes that test, even though we didn't see him move at the end of this episode, and there was no sign of him in the next episode.

We'll find out for sure (I assume) in the next week's mid-season finale. I'll will say it's been a really enjoyable season, and I especially like the time travel as talked about and enacted by Roger and Brianna.

Friday, January 18, 2019

Nancy Pelosi is Second not Third in Line for the Presidency

My wife Tina called my attention to a funnily annoying meme last night: commentators on MSNBC keep saying that Nancy Pelosi (as Speaker of the House) is "third in line for the Presidency". I just heard Stephanie Ruhle and Malcolm Nance say that.

But, actually, the Speaker of the House is second not third in line. The President is not first in line - he's already there (unfortunately) in the White House. The first in line to succeed him is the VP. And the Speaker of House is second in line.

Look at it this way: if you're waiting in line to see a concert, the person who is lucky enough to be first in line is not yet seated or even in the theater. If the line has been moving, everyone who was first in line who entered the theater is no longer on line. (They could be online, reading their email or tweeting, but that's something else.)

Ruhle and Nance and everyone who has been getting this wrong could benefit from Bertrand Russell's theory of logical types. If you're counting all the clothespins in a bag, you don't count the bag, too. I realized a while ago that even people who pick up the trash understand this. You empty the garbage pail, but don't take the pail away with the garbage. The pail itself is not garbage.

Regarding the President, whoever is in that office is not on any line of succession. That's because the person in that Oval Office has already assumed that office. It's even incorrect to say that Nancy Pelosi is third in command. The responsibilities of government don't work that way. In many ways, the Speaker of the House is far more powerful than the Vice President.

But she does stand behind the Vice President in one very significant regard. She's second in line to succeed the President, behind the VP who is first in line.

Friday, January 24, 2014

Bones 9.14: "You Cannot Drink Your Glass Away"

The most profound line in Bones 9.14 tonight comes from a chess mentor who tells Sweets: "You cannot drink your glass away." The mentor says it's supposed to be an old Russian saying. I have no idea if it is - nothing comes up when you Google it, except a page in which the word "glass" does not even appear. But it's a great saying, I think, anyway, because it embodies Bertrand Russell's Theory of Logical Types, which, among other things, helps us understand that a container is different from things it contains. A glass contains liquid, and that's what we drink away or consume, not the glass. Similar to a garbage can, which contains stuff that we want throw out, but not the can itself. Anyway, Bertrand Russell, were he still alive, would have liked that line in tonight's Bones, and so would have a few Greek philosophers, too. (And if you're interested in garbage cans and theory of logical types, you might enjoy this little essay.)

As it is, Sweets is the most contemplative in tonight's show. His reentry into the world of chess - his affinity for chess being the glass that he cannot drink away - goes a big way to helping solve the case. That solution, in turn, harkens to another ancient Greek theme - the Oedipal complex, or a son's passion for his mother. The killer of the chess master turns out to have a fatal weakness - he doesn't want to sacrifice his queen, which in this case turns out to be not only the piece on the board, but the son's mother, who might well have left the son in favor of the master, at least in the son's psycho vision.

So although the lab work made its contribution in tonight's episode with Bones and the assist of the droll Canadian intern, the real star of the plot was human psychology, the Greek tragic kind, and well analyzed by Sweets.

The other element worthy of note is Cam being selected as "outstanding woman of science" - an obvious and frankly absurd slight of Bones, who's understandably annoyed. Cam, to her credit, is sensitive about this, while Angela, not to her credit, thinks Bones just has to accept that these things happen. And Booth's opinion is much like Angela's. I know - that's the pc thing to do. I know an editor of a magazine who withdrew himself from an award competition, because he had already won so many times. But what's the logic of that? Give the award to second-best person? In the end, it all works out sort of ok in this episode, and there's a good laugh involved, but I would have preferred a resolution in which Bones got the award, period.

Because genius such as the kind Bones possesses deserves to be recognized always and not drunk away in a toast to collegiality. Hmm, did Bertrand Russell or the ancient Greeks have a theory about that?

See also Bones 9.1: The Sweet Misery of Love ... Bones 9.2: Bobcat, Identity Theft, and Sweets ... Bones 9.3 and NCIS 11.2: Sweets and Ziva ... Bones 9.4: Metaphysics of Death in a Television Series ... Bones 9.5: Val and Deep Blue ... Bones 9.6: The Wedding ... Bones 9.7: Watch Out, Buenos Aires ...Bones 9.8: The Bug in the Neck ... Bones 9.9: Friday Night Bones in the Courtroom ... Bones 9.10: Horse Pucky ... Bones 9.11: Angels in Equations ... Bones 9.12: Fingernails ... Bones 9.13: Meets Nashville, and Wendell

And see also Bones 8.1: Walk Like an Egyptian ... Bones 8.2 of Contention ... Bones 8.3: Not Rotting Behind a Desk ... Bones 8.4: Slashing Tiger and Donald Trump ... Bones 8.5: Applesauce on Election Eve ... Bones 8.6: Election Day ... Bones 8.7: Dollops in the Sky with Diamonds ...Bones 8.8: The Talking Remains ... Bones 8.9: I Am A Camera ... Bones 8.10-11: Double Bones ...Bones 8.12: Face of Enigmatic Evil ... Bones 8.13: Two for the Price of One ... Bones 8.14: Real Life ... Bones 8.15: The Magic Bullet and the Be-Spontaneous Paradox ... Bones 8.16: Bitter-Sweet Sweets and Honest Finn ... Bones 8.17: "Not Time Share, Time Travel" ... Bones 8.18: Couples ... Bones 8.19: The Head in the Toilet ... Bones 8.20: On Camera ... Bones 8.21: Christine, Hot Sauce, and the Judge ... Bones 8.22: Musical-Chair Parents ... Bones 8.23: The Bluff ... Bones Season 8 Finale: Can't Buy the Last Few Minutes

And see also Bones 7.1: Almost Home Sweet Home ... Bones 7.2: The New Kid and the Fluke ...Bones 7.3: Lance Bond and Prince Charmington ... Bones 7.4: The Tush on the Xerox ... Bones 7.5: Sexy Vehicle ... Bones 7.6: The Reassembler ... Bones 7.7: Baby! ... Bones 7.8: Parents ...Bones 7.9: Tabitha's Salon ... Bones 7.10: Mobile ... Bones 7.11: Truffles and Max ... Bones 7.12: The Corpse is Hanson ... Bones Season 7 Finale: Suspect Bones

And see also Bones 6.1: The Linchpin ... Bones 6.2: Hannah and her Prospects ... Bones 6.3 at the Jersey Shore, Yo, and Plymouth Rock ... Bones 6.4 Sans Hannah ... Bones 6.5: Shot and Pretty ... Bones 6.6: Accidental Relations ... Bones 6.7: Newman and "Death by Chocolate" ...Bones 6.8: Melted Bones ... Bones 6.9: Adelbert Ames, Jr. ... Bones 6.10: Reflections ... Bones 6.11: The End and the Beginning of a Mystery ... Bones 6.12 Meets Big Love ... Bones 6.13: The Marrying Kind ... Bones 6.14: Bones' Acting Ability ... Bones 6.15: "Lunch for the Palin Family" ...Bones 6.16: Stuck in an Elevator, Stuck in Times ... Bones 6.17: The 8th Pair of Feet ... Bones 6.18: The Wile E. Chupacabra ... Bones 6.19 Test Runs The Finder ... Bones 6.20: This Very Statement is a Lie ... Bones 6.21: Sensitive Bones ... Bones 6.22: Phoenix Love ... Bones Season 6 Finale: Beautiful

And see also Bones: Hilarity and Crime and Bones is Back For Season 5: What Is Love? and 5.2: Anonymous Donors and Pipes and 5.3: Bones in Amish Country and 5.4: Bones Meets Peyton Place and Desperate Housewives and Ancient Bones 5.5 and Bones 5.6: A Chicken in Every Viewer's Pot and Psychological Bones 5.7 and Bones 5.8: Booth's "Pops" and Bones 5.9 Meets Avatar and Videogamers ... Bad Santa, Heart-Warming Bones 5.10 ... Bones 5.11: Of UFOs, Bloggers, and Triangles ... Bones 5.12: A Famous Skeleton and Angela's Baby ... Love with Teeth on Bones 5.13 ... Faith vs. Science vs. Psychology in Bones 5.14 ... Page 187 in Bones 5.15 ...Bones 100: Two Deep Kisses and One Wild Relationship ... Bones 5.17: The Deadly Stars ...Bones Under Water in 5.18 ... Bones 5.19: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.20: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.21: The Rarity of Happy Endings ... Bones Season 5 Finale: Eye and Evolution

#SFWApro

Monday, January 6, 2014

How to Throw Out a Garbage Can and the Theory of Logical Types

I realized I ought to throw out one of my dented old garbage cans this morning, and immediately after realized that was no simple matter. I soon after realized that Bertrand Russell's theory of logical types provided a solution.

The problem with garbage cans is that they're recognized as containers of garbage, not garbage themselves. This is a good thing most of the time, but not when you want to get rid of the garbage can itself.

In McLuhanesque terms, the garbage pail is a medium, and the garbage is content. Bertrand Russell addressed this distinction in a systematic way in his theory of logical types, at the beginning of the 20th century.

Indeed, Russell used his theory of logical types to try untangle one of the most intractable paradoxes in human communication: the paradox of the liar. If someone tells you, "everything I say is a lie," do you believe that statement? If you do - that is, if you believe that statement is true - then that means you believe that it's true that everything including that statement is a lie. But if the statement is a lie, that means that the statement could be true, which pitches you right back into the horns of the dilemma.

Russell's solution or way out was to note that the statement "everything I say is a lie" is a statement about other statements, and therefore not one of those other statements itself, and therefore need not share the characteristics of the statements in the category. It is a "meta" statement, or, in McLuhan's terms, it is a medium not content. Therefore it as a meta-statement could be true - a true statement about the falsity of all the statements within its category, all the content that the statement describes.

Now, this isn't a perfect solution. For example, if the paradox of the liar is rendered as just "this statement is lie," then the only way the theory of logical types could help us is by obliging us to consider that statement to be two statements at the same time - a meta statement or description of content, and the content, with the first being true and the second false, which is a pretty steep paradox on its own (something being both true and false at the same time). Further, we could untangle "everything I say is a lie" just by concluding that that statement is a lie, but not then concluding that therefore everything I say is true. If we concluded that just some things I say are lies, then the original statement could be among the statements that are true.

But as for garbage cans, Russell's theory of logical types works just fine. The problem in how to throw out the can arises from the fact that the can is not usually itself garbage. But when it becomes time to trash the can, all that's needed is putting a sign on the can identifying it the can as garbage - say, "please throw out this can".

I'll let you know if it works.

#SFWApro

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Bones 7.12: The Corpse is Hanson

Yes, the corpse was Hanson on tonight's hilarious Bones 7.12 - not Hart Hanson, the brains behind the real Bones, but Hanson Stephens, fictitious head producer of the fictitious Bone of Contention movie based on Temperance Brennan's characters. Given that the real Bones is based on Kathy Reichs' characters - that is, a real human being writer's characters, in contrast to Temperance, who of course is fictitious, too - not to mention that Stephen Nathan is a real producer of the real Bones - tonight's episode was one fine meta-meta-show indeed. Bertrand Russell would have been proud, and it's all the fault of Hart Hanson (also a real person) and Kathy Reichs (also mentioned as the fictitious writer of the episode).

Well, if that's too heady I probably should stop this here, while I'm ahead, but there's more. Bones objecting to the shoddy science in the movie, a podiatrist we've seen before on the show now on the set as the technical adviser, a superb Hodgins fictitious character in the movie, and of course a murder victim - Hanson. The investigation into who killed him - conducted by Bones and Booth - seems to have something to do with Cherie, the seductive blonde playing Kathy (Bones' counterpart) - I thought I was watching Smash for a second - but the real murderer (oops, maybe true murderer would be a better word) has other motives.

Booth has some of the funniest lines and set-ups in the episode. He enjoys the comparison to Steve McQueen, loves the donuts, and I always like how one thing he never kids around about on a case is the FBI - at least, not to someone not really on the team.

And - as icing on the cake - it turns out Hansen's is not the only dead body on this show. Cam starred in a vampire movie years ago, fro and all ala Blacula, and she gets a stake through the heart at the end of Invasion of the Mother Suckers, to the delight of all of our real characters back in Washington, DC.

I don't know where to score a copy of that movie, but I'll be first in line for Bone of Contention when it opens in the summer of 2013.

See also Bones 7.1: Almost Home Sweet Home ... Bones 7.2: The New Kid and the Fluke ... Bones 7.3: Lance Bond and Prince Charmington ... Bones 7.4: The Tush on the Xerox ... Bones 7.5: Sexy Vehicle ... Bones 7.6: The Reassembler ... Bones 7.7: Baby! ... Bones 7.8: Parents ... Bones 7.9: Tabitha's Salon ... Bones 7.10: Mobile ... Bones 7.11: Truffles and Max

And see also Bones 6.1: The Linchpin ... Bones 6.2: Hannah and her Prospects ... Bones 6.3 at the Jersey Shore, Yo, and Plymouth Rock ... Bones 6.4 Sans Hannah ... Bones 6.5: Shot and Pretty ... Bones 6.6: Accidental Relations ... Bones 6.7: Newman and "Death by Chocolate" ... Bones 6.8: Melted Bones ... Bones 6.9: Adelbert Ames, Jr. ... Bones 6.10: Reflections ... Bones 6.11: The End and the Beginning of a Mystery ... Bones 6.12 Meets Big Love ... Bones 6.13: The Marrying Kind ... Bones 6.14: Bones' Acting Ability ... Bones 6.15: "Lunch for the Palin Family" ... Bones 6.16: Stuck in an Elevator, Stuck in Times ... Bones 6.17: The 8th Pair of Feet ... Bones 6.18: The Wile E. Chupacabra ... Bones 6.19 Test Runs The Finder ... Bones 6.20: This Very Statement is a Lie ... Bones 6.21: Sensitive Bones ... Bones 6.22: Phoenix Love ... Bones Season 6 Finale: Beautiful

And see also Bones: Hilarity and Crime and Bones is Back For Season 5: What Is Love? and 5.2: Anonymous Donors and Pipes and 5.3: Bones in Amish Country and 5.4: Bones Meets Peyton Place and Desperate Housewives and Ancient Bones 5.5 and Bones 5.6: A Chicken in Every Viewer's Pot and Psychological Bones 5.7 and Bones 5.8: Booth's "Pops" and Bones 5.9 Meets Avatar and Videogamers ... Bad Santa, Heart-Warming Bones 5.10 ... Bones 5.11: Of UFOs, Bloggers, and Triangles ... Bones 5.12: A Famous Skeleton and Angela's Baby ... Love with Teeth on Bones 5.13 ... Faith vs. Science vs. Psychology in Bones 5.14 ... Page 187 in Bones 5.15 ... Bones 100: Two Deep Kisses and One Wild Relationship ... Bones 5.17: The Deadly Stars ... Bones Under Water in 5.18 ... Bones 5.19: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.20: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.21: The Rarity of Happy Endings ... Bones Season 5 Finale: Eye and Evolution

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Faith vs. Science vs. Psychology on Bones 5.14

On the masthead of this blog, you'll find mention of George Santayana's "irrational faith in reason". Many philosophers - not only Santayana but Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper - have recognized that the roots of reason are not logical, and instead rest in faith that reason and the logical process work. Because, if one is asked to defend logic and rationality, the response will undoubtedly be an appeal to logic - or using the very process which is in dispute to demonstrate the value of that process.   Philosophers refer to this as tautology or "infinite regress" (see my Mind at Large: Knowing in the Technological Age for more).

So, now you know (in part) why my blog is titled "Infinite Regress". But faith in reason is also what Bones says she has, at the end of a fine, intellectually outstanding episode 5.14 of Bones, which features not just faith vs. reason, but hard science vs. psychology.

The specific plot concerns a burnt corpse which looks like the devil. Turns out the horns were implanted coral (around which bone grew) and the tail was vestigial.   We're then treated to one of the better who-done-its on Bones as Booth, Bones, Sweets, and team suss out the identity of the killer.

But I especially liked the complex schools of thought that each of the three represent, and defend as they investigate the murder. Booth, as always, will never rule out faith.   Bones deals with evidence and logic. And Sweets is almost somewhere in between, dealing with suppositions and informed intuitions, which is not faith but not quite hard evidence, either.    Booth admits that the evil in this case will test his faith in a good deity, Bones admits that her faith in reason is sometimes shaken by inexplicable results.   But they both will recover their faiths, and will remain united as well by their good-natured ridicule of Sweets and his psychology.

Back at the lab, there's also some good exposition about the Islamic conception of angels and demons by Bones' assistant Arastoo. When he says he sees the devil everyday, Cam thinks he's talking about her and/or the great American Satan, but it was pretty clear to me that he was talking about looking in the mirror, which was in fact the case. It was a nicely instructive, entertaining little vignette about the emergence of misconceptions in our tense age.

Bones continues to deal with complex, even profound, philosophic and cultural issues, in the form of funny, police-procedural, endearing television.

5-min podcast review of Bones

See also Bones: Hilarity and Crime and Bones is Back For Season 5: What Is Love? and 5.2: Anonymous Donors and Pipes and 5.3: Bones in Amish Country and 5.4: Bones Meets Peyton Place and Desperate Housewives and Ancient Bones 5.5 and Bones 5.6: A Chicken in Every Viewer's Pot and Psychological Bones 5.7 and Bones 5.8: Booth's "Pops" and Bones 5.9 Meets Avatar and Videogamers ... Bad Santa, Heart-Warming Bones 5.10 ... Bones 5.11: Of UFOs, Bloggers, and Triangles ... Bones 5.12: A Famous Skeleton and Angela's Baby ... Love with Teeth on Bones 5.13

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

"challenging fun"
- Entertainment Weekly

e-mail received from a reader:
Dear Paul, I just dreamed of airships flying between raindrops. I just returned from 2042 CE, where I sold my hardcover copy of The Plot to Save Socrates for seventy million Neo-Euros, because it had your response to this e-mail from way back in 2007 scotch-taped onto the inside of the cover. A Paul Levinson collector paid top Neo-Euro, because of the authentic archaic e-mail printout from you. It turns out that not many of your e-mails from before your tenure as CEO of HBO/Cinemax and terms as United Nations Secretary General will survive that far into the future. So, please respond to this e-mail, to help found my great-grandchildren's fortune. My Will will stipulate that they must share with your great grandchildren. Thanks! Tom

I of course happily replied...

42 reviews of The Plot to Save Socrates!