Posted on July 1 at 12:09 p.m.

They're speaking the Belgian dialect of Dutch, which is Flemish. Glad I could help here.

On The YouTube ban is broken! (Cup o' Joel)

Posted on November 2 at 4:47 p.m.

Great little deli!

On The Cheese & Salami Shoppe

Posted on October 25 at 7:41 p.m.

To suggest that Ann Coulter is merely a "provocateur" is akin to saying that Bill O'Riley offers "benign, yet stimulating, social criticism." Joel, you might rethink that one, especially insofar as Coulter very consistently makes overtly belligerent remarks. When one looks at the history of the 20th Century, one sees that such comments are far from acceptable, insofar as they have, in some cases, been followed by the most pernicious forms of historical violence. The question of the extent to which comments of that nature actually set the stage for this historical violence and are, in some sense, responsible for the emergence of this violence--that is a difficult one to answer definitively. Yet one thing is certain: that there is some relationship. And, ironically, it is precisely here that we reach the limits of our 1st amendment rights.

On This week in free speech (Cup o' Joel)

Posted on June 13 at 10:34 p.m.

Are you so bankrupt of ideas that you are compelled to unearth the prosaic (yet nevertheless authentic) ruminations of an undergraduate at a remote university in some obscure publication to illustrate your point that all liberals are lazy and out-of-touch? More than that, is her point that the wage gap is growing any less valid because she is privileged?

On Liberal Guilt and Classism (Safe in the Fire Swamp)

Posted on May 14 at 1:37 p.m.

The fillabuster is a staid democratic institution. The fact that the Republicans are inclined to undermine it reflects their unwillingness to play by the rules any longer. The problem for those on the left of the isle is, do they continue to observe these democratic institutions, in an attempt at civility, while the right undermines and destroys them? Can we continue to abide these transgressions against civility to the point at which we begin to look like imbeciles, faithful to an antiquated mode of life. Is there any way to enforce civility on these people? Or are we now consigned to a life of strife, in which it is necessary to develop new techniques for thwarting the advances of our enemies, leaving by the way our scruples and our civility. For the Germans in the WWI it was mustard gas, for the Americans in WWII the atom bomb, in Vietnam it was the napalm--and in all cases those who availed themselves of these techniques thought themselves justified. After all, they were only fighting for "absolute truth."

On A Profile in Courage (The Yellow Dog)

Posted on February 27 at 1:30 p.m.

Is it not clear to everyone else who, among the consistent bloggers on lawrence.com, is truly living in hell? Who spews the most rancorous venom and vitriol whenever they log on? That must be an awful world to live in.

On Ayatollah Kline Goes Fishing (The Yellow Dog)

Posted on February 16 at 6:27 p.m.

Ultimate...

Without going to far into the nuances of Kant’s thought (which is enormously complicated), I can say that its relevance to this debate is that ID theorists might find fodder in Kant’s third critique, and that it would not be difficult for those advancing ID theory to appropriate Kant’s philosophy to this purpose. Obviously, Kant’s concern with beauty was not aesthetic per se. Rather, his interest was entirely epistemological. He was looking for a subjective principle which secured the possibility of the scientific project. That is to say, he sought something upon which to base his claim that the world is intelligible and, more precisely, that we can apprehend it in its intelligibility. Essentially, (and in the interest of brevity it's necessary to oversimplify this a bit) if the world does not already exhibit some kind of design, then there is no possibility of understanding it, for, to “uncover nature” is something akin to drawing back a veil between our cognitive faculty—namely, the understanding—and nature itself in order to reveal the latter’s inner workings. Kant asserts that the experience of the beauty of nature signifies a fluency between our cognitive faculties and nature. From there, he moves to assert that our “intelligence” is at home in nature, and not something that is merely projected onto things. In other words, our scientific concepts inhere in the phenomenon of things themselves, and not merely in some disconnected, ideal realm that is divorced from that in which they arise (as though the realm of the mind were in some fundamental way opposed to that of matter). In order that our concepts are not mere arbitrary impositions of a constructed order upon nature, nature must be in some way ordered “intelligently” already (to use the language of ID) in a way that we have yet to determine. The project of science is one that is characterized by the pulling back of this veil and the alignment of our faculties with nature itself or, to put it differently, aligning our subjective intelligence with the intelligent, objective order which nature obscurely displays. Kant offers that it’s in the encounter with the beautiful in nature that we have intimations of its grand order. I suppose we might think of this as the wellspring of the pacific astonishment of the religious mystic. He beholds nature, and is arrested with the sense that it is ordered by some infinitely brilliant mind. Kant himself makes no such comparisons, but would not, I believe, be uncomfortable with such an association.

(Incidentally, Einstein was enormously influenced by Kant, as have been a host of other influential contemporary scientists—especially those confronted with the question of the limits of human knowledge.)

On My bible sticker for your textbook sticker (The Yellow Dog)

Posted on February 16 at 4:24 p.m.

Ultimate:

Are you familiar with Kant's "Critique of Judgment-Power"? Interesting resonances with this theory of Intelligent Design can be discovered there. He suggests that our experience of the beauty of nature is something that emerges out of a feeling of (what I have termed) "indeterminate design" that exists in nature--he calls it "purposiveness without purpose". Of course, Kant cautions us that even any vague speculations regarding the character of the designer would be precritical. He suggests that in order for us to make sense of nature, it must already exhibit some indeterminate order--it's merely a matter of going forth and determining precisely what that order is. The latter is the project of science. He suggests that we "feel" the order of this indeterminate design when beholding the beauty of nature. He also takes the beauty of nature to be a sign of a native (designed?) fittedness or fluency between our faculty of understanding and nature, which is a necessary condition of possiblity for scientific progress.

On My bible sticker for your textbook sticker (The Yellow Dog)

Posted on February 16 at 1:07 p.m.

Hence the futility of engaging in these kinds of arguments.

On My bible sticker for your textbook sticker (The Yellow Dog)

Posted on February 16 at 1:04 p.m.

I assumed nothing of the sort. In fact, I stated in an earlier entry that science runs as much of a risk of becoming dogmatic as religion and that what is necessary is a realignment with the scientific idea--one to which questioning is essential. And in the last I offered, "if one makes a space for dogmatic certaintly, one betrays the spirit of science." Isn't it fascinating that we can be so blinded by self-insistence that we cannot see when someone is actually agreeing with us?

On My bible sticker for your textbook sticker (The Yellow Dog)