The QOTD, on utilitarianism:

“To have understood the polymorphous character of pleasure and happiness is of course to have rendered those concepts useless for utilitarian purposes; if the prospect of his or her own future pleasure or happiness cannot for the reasons which I have suggested provide criteria for solving the problems of action in the case of each individual, it follows that the notion of the greatest happiness of the greatest number is a notion without any clear content at all. It is indeed a pseudo-concept available for a variety of ideological uses, but no more than that. Hence when we encounter its use in practical life, it is always necessary to ask what actual project or purpose is being concealed by its use. To say this is not of course to deny that many of its uses have been in the service of socially beneficial ideals… But the use of a conceptual fiction in a good cause does not make it any less of a fiction.”

– Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, pg. 64.

The QOTD, on protest movements:

It is easy also to understand why protest becomes a distinctive moral feature of the modern age and why indignation is a predominant modern emotion. ‘To protest’ and its Latin predecessors and French cognates are originally as often or more often positive as negative; to protest was once to bear witness to something and only as a consequence of that allegiance to bear witness against something else.

But protest is now almost entirely that negative phenomenon which characteristically occurs as a reaction to the alleged invasion of someone’s rights in the name of someone else’s utility. The self-assertive shrillness of protest arises because the facts of incommensurability [e.g., the fact that both rights and utility are a matching pair of incommensurate fictions] ensure that protestors can never win an argument; the indignant self-righteousness arises because the facts of incommensurability ensure equally that the protestor can never lose an argument either. Hence the utterance of protest is characteristically addressed to those who already share the protestors’ premises. The effects of incommensurability ensure that the protestors rarely have anyone else to talk to but themselves. This is not to say that protest cannot be effective; it is to say that it cannot be rationally effective and that its dominant modes of expression give evidence of a certain perhaps unconscious awareness of this.

– Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, pg. 71.

The QOTD:

The waiter sets a menu in front of you, and you realize, while he spills coffee into your saucer, that all the dilemmas of your life can be expressed in terms of oatmeal. You’ve learned that oatmeal makes for a wonderful day, draws out a sustained arc of energy and goodwill. But the craven eye wanders.

“Yes, that way lies happiness,” I say to myself, “and yet this way lies bacon.” Happiness seems, at that moment, such an unwelcomely long-term proposition. The seared, salty idea of bacon flashes in my mouth, fatty slab of the moment; whereas oatmeal squishes over into a digestive chain of planning and forethought, as if I were a stove and not a man. Am I to be fed to burn, or to burst forth in spurts of inspiration?

via Michael Sippey.

The QOTD: C.S. Lewis on the truth of Christianity:

Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths; i.e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of the poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call ‘real things.’ Therefore it is true, not in the sense of being a ‘description’ of God (that no finite mind could take in) but in the sense of being the way in which God chooses to (or can) appear to our faculties. The ‘doctrines’ we get out of the true myth are of course less true: they are translations into our concepts and ideas of that which God has already expressed in a language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. Does this amount to a belief in Christianity? At any rate I am now certain (a) That this Christian story is to be approached, in a sense, as I approach the other myths. (b) That it is the most important and full of meaning. I am also nearly certain that it really happened.

Walter Hooper, ed., They Stand Together: The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914 to 1963) (London: Collins, 1979), 427.

The QOTD, on empiricism:

“Aubrey’s error was… to suppose that the observer can confront a fact face-to-face without any theoretical interpretation interposing itself. That this was an error, although a pertinacious and long-lived one, is now largely agreed upon by philosophers of science. The twentieth-century observer looks into the night sky and sees stars and planets; some earlier observers saw instead chinks in a sphere through which the light beyond could be observed. What each observer takes himself or herself to perceive is identified and has to be identified by theory-laden concepts. Perceivers without concepts, as Kant almost said, are blind. Empiricist philosophers have contended that common to the modern and the medieval observer is that which each really sees or saw, prior to all theory and interpretation, namely many small light patches against a dark surface; and it is at the very least clear that what both saw can be so described. But if all our experience were to be characterized exclusively in terms of this bare sensory type of description — a type of description which it is certainly useful for a variety of special purposes to resort to from time to time — we would be confronted with not only an uninterpreted, but an uninterpretable world, with not merely a world not yet comprehended by theory but with a world that never could be comprehended by theory. A world of textures, shapes, smells, sensations, sounds and nothing more invites no questions and gives no grounds for furnishing any answers.

– Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, pg. 79-80.

Recently, my bank account password was stolen by the Russian mob.

No, seriously: a glitch in Internet explorer (which I don’t normally use) infected my computer’s master boot record with a virus. The trojan that was installed collected the password to my online bank and then put up a mocked-up bank login screen which asked me for my credit card information and ATM code to “verify” my login. Interestingly, this mock login screen appeared in IE but not in Opera (my usual browser of choice). I’d been detecting unusual performance from my computer for a couple of days, and so I was already suspicious that something was amiss, but having my bank apparently ask me for my credit card number was obviously a giant freaking red flag. Fortunately, I was able to remove the virus and change my bank password before any lasting damage was done.

Interestingly, the virus was apparently developed by the Russian mob using code that was stolen from a presentation presented at by computer security researchers at Black Hat. At least now when I point out the dangers of security through obscurity, I can tell people that I’ve put my money where my mouth is.

The QOTD, on moral reasoning:

“It would of course be a little odd that there should be such rights attaching to human beings simply qua human beings in light of the fact, which I alluded to in my discussion of Gewirth’s argument, that there is no expression in any ancient or medieval language correctly translated by our expression ‘a right’ until near the close of the middle ages: The concept lacks any means of expression in Hebrew, Greek, Latin or Arabic, classical or medieval, before 1400, let alone in Old English, or in Japanese even as late as the mid-nineteenth century. From this is does not of course follow that there are no natural or human rights; it only follows that one could not have known that there were. And this at least raises certain questions. But we do not need to be distracted into answering them for the truth is plain: There are no such things as rights, and belief in them is one with belief in witches and in unicorns.

The best reason for asserting so bluntly that there are no such things as rights is indeed of precisely the same type as the best reason which we possess for asserting that there are no witches and the best reason which we possess for asserting that there are no unicorns: Every attempt to give good reasons for believing that there are such rights has failed. The eighteenth-century philosophical defenders of natural rights sometimes suggest that the assertions which state that men possess them are self-evident truths; but we know there are no self-evident truths. Twentieth-century moral philosophers have sometimes appealed to their and our intuitions; but one of the things that we ought to have learned from the history of moral philosophy is that the introduction of the word ‘intuition’ by a moral philosopher is always a signal that something has gone badly wrong with an argument. In the United Nations declaration on human rights of 1949 what has since become the normal UN practice of not giving good reasons for any assertion whatsoever is followed with great rigor. And the latest defender of such rights, Ronald Dworkin (Taking Rights Seriously, 1976) concedes that the existence of such rights cannot be demonstrated, but remarks on this point simply that it does not follow from the fact that a statement cannot be demonstrated that it is not true (p. 81). Which is true, but could equally be used to defend claims about unicorns and witches.

Natural or human rights then are fictions - just as is utility… But if the concept of rights and that of utility are a matching pair of incommensurable fictions, it will be the case that the moral idiom employed can at best provide a semblance of rationality for the modern political process, but not its reality. The mock rationality of the debate conceals the arbitrariness of the will and power at work in its resolution.”

– Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, pg. 69-71.

The QOTD, on ambition:

“On the morning when the final results of all the examinations were to be posted on the bulletin board at Queen’s, Anne and Jane walked down the street together. Jane was smiling and happy; examinations were over and she was comfortably sure she had made a pass at least; further considerations troubled Jane not at all; she had no soaring ambitions and consequently was not affected with the unrest attendant thereon. For we pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety and discouragement.”

– Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables, Chapter 36.

The QOTD, on moral reasoning:

[T]he most influential account of moral reasoning that emerged in response to this critique of emotivism was one according to which an agent can only justify a particular judgment by referring to some universal rule from which it may be logically derived, and can only justify that rule in turn by deriving it from some more general rule or principle; but on this view since every chain of reasoning must be finite, such a process of justificatory reasoning must always terminate with the assertion of some rule or principle for which no further reason can be given. ‘Thus a complete justification of a decision would consist of a complete account of its effects together with a complete account of the principles which it observed, and the effect of observing those principles… If the enquirer still goes on asking ‘But why should I live like that?’ then there is no further answer to give him, because we have already, ex hypothesi, said everything that could be included in the further answer.’ (Hare 1952, p. 69).

The terminus of justification is thus always, on this view, a not further to be justified choice, a choice unguided by criteria. Each individual implicitly or explicitly has to adopt his or her own first principles on the basis of such a choice. The utterance of any universal principle is in the end an expression of the preferences of an individual will and for that will its principles have and can have only such authority as it chooses to confer upon them by adopting them.

– Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, pg. 20-21.

Getting enough sleep (in particular, taking a nap) is critical to our health:

The study of more than 23,000 Greek adults — the biggest and best examination of the subject to date — found that those who regularly took a midday siesta were more than 30 percent less likely to die of heart disease.

Other experts said the results are intriguing… “It’s interesting. A little siesta, a little snooze may be beneficial,” said Gerald Fletcher, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., speaking on behalf of the American Heart Association. “It’s simple, but it has a lot of promise…”

“Napping may help deal with the stress of daily living,” said Michael Twery, who directs the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute’s National Center on Sleep Disorders Research. “Another possibility is that it is part of the normal biological rhythm of daily living. The biological clock that drives sleep and wakefulness has two cycles each day, and one of them dips usually in the early afternoon. It’s possible that not engaging in napping for some people might disrupt these processes.”

Researchers have long known that countries such as Greece, Italy and Spain, where people commonly take siestas, have lower rates of heart disease than would be expected.

Rising bass star Esperanza Spalding describes her experience at Berklee:

“You get these knots inside you. And you find all these places that you’re vulnerable where you weren’t vulnerable before. And it’s all because you can’t play a line as nice as somebody else. Who cares anyway?”

Sounds just like law school to me.

The QOTD, on comfortable furniture:

Even Chinese emperors had to sit on a throne on which I would not think of remaining for more than five minutes, and for that matter the English kings were just as badly off… [But] Now I have discovered a formula regarding the comparative comfort of furniture. The formula may be stated in very simple terms: the lower a chair is, the more comfortable it becomes. Many people have sat down on a certain chair in a friend’s home and wondered why it was so cozy. Before the discovery of this formula, I used to think that students of interior decoration probably had a mathematical formula for the proportion between height and width and angle of inclination of chairs which conduced to the maximum comfort of sitters. Since the discovery of this formula, I have found that it is simpler than that. Take any Chinese redwood furniture and saw off its legs a few inches, and it immediately becomes more comfortable; and if you saw off another few inches, then it becomes still more comfortable. The logical conclusion of this is, of course, that one is most comfortable when one is lying perfectly flat on a bed. The matter is as simple as that.

– Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living, pg. 207-08.

The QOTD, on housing:

The word “house” should include all the living conditions or the physical environment of one’s house. For everyone knows it is more important in selecting a house to see what one looks out on from the house than what one sees in it. The location of the country and its surrounding landscape are the thing. I have seen rich men in Shanghai very proud of a tiny plot of land that they own, which includes a fish pond about ten feet across and an artificial hill that takes ants three minutes to crawl to the top, not knowing that many a poor man lives in a hut on a mountain side and owns the entire view of the hillside, the river and the lake as his private garden. There is absolutely no comparison between the two. There are houses situated in such beautiful scenery up in the mountains that there is no point whatsoever in fencing off a piece of land as one’s own, because wherever he wanders, he owns the entire landscape, including the white clouds nestling against the hills, the birds flying in the sky and the natural symphony of falling cataracts and birds’ song. That man is rich, rich beyond comparison with any millionaire living in a city. A man living in a city may see sailing clouds, too, but he seldom sees them actually… and then what is the point of seeing clouds?

– Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living, pg. 263.

The QOTD, on happiness:

To be born in times of peace in a district with hills and lakes, when the magistrate is just and upright, and to live in a family of comfortable means, marry an understanding wife and have intelligent sons — this is what I call a perfect life.

– Chang Ch’ao, Yumeng-ying, translated by Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living, pg. 327.

The QOTD, on happiness:

Only those who take leisurely what the people of the world are busy about can be busy about what the people of the world take leisurely.

– Chang Ch’ao, Yumeng-ying, translated by Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living, pg. 327.

The QOTD, on happiness:

It is against the will of God to eat delicate food hastily, to pass gorgeous views hurriedly, to express deep sentiments superficially, to pass a beautiful day steeped in food and drinks, and to enjoy your wealth steeped in luxuries.

– Chang Ch’ao, Yumeng-ying, translated by Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living, pg. 327.

The QOTD, on belief in God:

It is wrong therefore to speak of a pagan as an irreligious man: [he is] irreligious… only as one who refuses to believe in any special variety of revelation. A pagan always believes in God but would not like to say so, for fear of being misunderstood. All Chinese pagans believe in God, the most commonly met-with designation in Chinese literature being the term chaowu, or the Creator of Things. The only difference is that the Chinese pagan is honest enough to leave the Creator of Things in a halo of mystery, toward whom he feels a kind of awed piety and reverence. What is more, that feeling suffices for him. Of the beauty of the universe, the clever artistry of the myriad things of this creation, the mystery of the stars, the grandeur of heaven, and the dignity of the human soul he is equally aware. But that again suffices for him. He accepts death as he accepts pain and suffering and weighs them against the gift of life and the fresh country breeze and the clear mountain moon and he does not complain. He regards bending to the will of heaven as the truly religious and pious attitude and calls it “living in the Tao.” If the Creator of Things wants him to die at seventy, he gladly dies at seventy. He also believes that “heaven’s way always goes round” and that there is no permanent injustice in this world. He does not ask for more.

– Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living, pg. 412.

• I hate Bush.

• Online coupon codes from the people who created BugMeNot. via.

• HOWTO: Check for malware.

• Perennial sleep deprivation is deadly over the long term. A major study (17 years, 10,000 participants) found that “[p]eople who do not get enough sleep are more than twice as likely to die of heart disease.” The risk of other diseases is also increased across the board. via.

• And finally, NBER chief Martin Feldstein (via) on the financial impact of taxation:

  [F]inancing additional government spending by an acrosss the board rise in all marginal tax rates would make the cost per dollar of government spending equal to $1.76.

  These two facts — that the actual revenue is only 57 percent of the static gain and that the deadweight loss is 76 cents per dollar of revenue — should be central to any consideration of tax policy. And yet they are not.