Beliefs Update

Brief update: Jacob and I were talking about, first, my extraordinarily thoughtful Christmas present, and then about the fact apparently I told him I wasn't a libertarian. I didn't remember saying this, but I finally searched through my Google Chat archive and found the conversation, back in March of 2006, where I said just that. I don't remember what drove me to that abyss, but the misunderstanding leads me to the idea that I should state the current status of my beliefs, for others' information and as a marker for my nostalgic future self. So:

1. Regarding consciousness, I think some form of dualism is true. It may be quantum, it may be epiphenomenal, it may be magic, I don't know.

2. I remain a libertarian, for moral reasons (though by moral reasons, I mean my own subjective moral preferences: see proposition three). I reject utilitarianism completely. If someone told me that the only way to prevent the total destruction of the earth or some other gross calamity was the slightest violation of some libertarian right, I think the correct course of action would be to abstain from the violation and wait for the Apocalypse. I have no strong opinion on the minarchist vs. anarchist debate.

3. I am a moral nihilist. If one wants more specificity, I'm an error theorist. I also don't think it's terribly important whether one believes morality is objective or subjective. I'm also a legal nihilist, an aesthetic nihilist, indeed a nihilist in most things, save for the belief in proposition number one.

4. I'm skeptical of the idea of truth in general. I believe in truth, but as to how I know what's true: I don't know, and I don't think anyone else has the slightest clue either.

5. I remain an atheist. Also, as of today, to carry on a theme, I think the historical Jesus preached an imminent apocalypse and didn't believe himself to be divine. I still have an immense respect for the religious, especially those who look at all the arguments contra their position and think, 'nonetheless, I believe.' I still have very little respect for Richard Dawkins's excursions into such areas.

6. I like Mahler, and often love him. The bookends of the 9th, the entire 8th, 5th, 1st, and 2nd are glorious, and the rest of the symphonies are worth listening to. My least favorite is the 7th--even that I enjoy. The Bertini cycle is good. The Solti not so much.

7. I'm cautiously optimistic and, given the limited information thus far, I think Obama will do a better job than McCain would've done. The only thing that scares me is the coming Supreme Court picks. I think the liberal Justices on the Supreme Court are silly and often dishonest. I think the same thing about the conservatives--but less so.

8. I still don't vote. This used to be because of the numbers game, and it's still mostly because of that, but now a part of the abstention is because I like how much it annoys other people. A secretary at work vowed to get me a voter registration for Christmas.

9. With proposition four, I also suspect most distinctions are ultimately nonsensical, notably: public and private, coercion and non-coercion, natural and its antonyms (in the ecological sense), nature and nurture. This means my preferred moral system is based on distinctions I ultimately think don't objectively exist: I deal. I retain a belief in the fact-value distinction, but have no optimism in ever being able to demonstrate the truth thereof.

10. Still believe in global warming. Still not terribly worried about the human race, but even were it the end of the world: whoever said the race should last forever anyway? We'd be the first. The idea of killing animals makes me a bit queasy--but the idea of denying people the right to kill animals does the same thing, and thus far, the latter queasiness is winning out--the balance gets closer and closer for certain species: great apes, dolphins, elephants. My intuitions in this area are by no means systematic, which doesn't bother me terribly, because I don't believe such intuitions reflect any external truth.

Word Play

SCOTT:

So metonymy, which I referred to, is apparently not a subspecies of synecdoche, as I claimed, but -- interestingly -- is rather defined as whatever the hell you were talking about: the substitution for a thing of a second related thing.

ANDREW:

A ha!

As it turns out, that term I was thinking of, asyndeton, means leaving out conjunctions in a list, as in:

I love sushi, football, breasts.

SCOTT:

Asyndeton but then I found Jesus.