Around the Web on 12-20-05

Oddball schedule for me today. I'll leave a few noteworthy items and random thoughts on the blog for your perusal in case I can't post later on....

The WMDs'll be in Syria, Dub.

No sooner does Mark Steyn say, "Just wait till the WMD turn up," does Baathist Syria taunt us with a hint.

The London-based Jane's Defence Weekly reported that Iran and Syria signed a strategic accord meant to protect either country from international pressure regarding their weapons programs. The magazine, citing diplomatic sources, said Syria agreed to store Iranian materials and weapons should Teheran come under United Nations sanctions. [Like when Iraq did? --ed]

Iran also pledged to grant haven to any Syrian intelligence officer indicted by the UN or Lebanon. Five Syrian officers have been questioned by the UN regarding the Hariri assassination, Middle East Newsline reported.

A look at a map shows us that transfers in either direction need not pass through Iraq, or even make a very big detour.

Do I believe that the "missing" WMDs are in Syria? Possibly, but we'll never know unless the Assad regime falls on its own, or we or Israel invade. And since Syria has agreed to continue sending weapons to Hezbollah as part of the bargain, we and Israel (still) have good reason to invade.

I'm starting to get mad again just like I did before we invaded Afghanistan. Remember that? Remember how the Taliban (and Saddam Hussein for that matter) would carry on with their defiant rhetoric and sabre-rattling, knowing full well that the Great Satan would sit idly by? All that garbage stopped after we rattled some cages in the Middle East. And now that we've taken the diplomatic route with Iran, notice that the ranting and raving and petulance have started back up again. It's time to get back to work.

I'm glad Bush has started defending the war policy at home, but he should have been doing this all along. As it is, we're losing ground on the home front (And with people trying to kill us here, "front" isn't just a figure of speech.) and still negotiating with a regime that apparently is denying the Holocaust in order to justify having a go at making sure that one happens.

Iran and Syria are both begging to be "next". So why are we still talking about Iraq?

On the Peikoff-Kelley Split

(This is more a rehash than anything else, but I wanted to make a note of it, not to mention rounding up the "big three" in one place.)

Although the Peikoff-Kelley split concerns issues of fundamental importance in the philosophy of Objectivism, I don't discuss it much here, mainly because I am more interested in blogging about other things, and partly because I find having to explain the issues to Kelleyites tiresome and repetitive, and better-done by the likes of Peter Schwartz, Leonard Peikoff, and Robert Tracinski anyway. But recent discussions on the subject at Noodle Food caused me to realize something, showing that reviewing and discussing these issues is hardly a waste of time.

I recalled an acquaintance of mine whose big beef with Objectivism was summarized by a good friend as follows: "She seems to regard disagreement on philosophical issues as a sign of sophistication." That comment sat around in my brain for years, but for some reason came bubbling to the surface after I noticed the aforementioned post en route to researching other things. One point about Objectivism that many have a hard time wrapping their brains around is that it holds that all ideas can be examined by reason. Specifically, it holds that certainty in the ideological realm is possible. To quote Tracinski from the above link:

Think of what it would mean to approach an argument "on an equal footing" and with "a mutual willingness to be persuaded by the facts" when the idea being argued is "existence exists." You would think that this is ridiculous, since the truth of this proposition is self-evident. What possible argument could there be? What facts could possibly persuade you? If you enter into an argument on this subject at all, you do not do it with an "openness" to opposing arguments. Your motive is not to check whether your ideas are right, or to "strengthen the foundations of [your] own beliefs" (P16), but only to see why it is that another person claims to doubt that existence exists, and to show him why any such doubt is absurd.

The same thing applies to other ideas, not just to axioms. The point is merely clearer with axioms, because they are self-evident. The key is certainty. To be certain of an idea is to see clearly its connection to reality. That is, you see the truth of the idea as clearly as you would see a truck coming down the road at you. (This is what Leonard Peikoff sometimes refers to as a "truck-like" understanding of an idea.) Doubting such an idea is as absurd as doubting the existence of the truck [bold added].

In the case of axioms and trucks, Kelley might agree. But when the idea involved reaches a sufficient degree of complexity, if the chain linking it to reality becomes sufficiently long, or if the context required is large enough, Kelley seems to regard truck-like certainty as impossible. The idea's connection to reality is never, and can never be, completely clear. One must always leave open the possibility that there is a fact lurking unnoticed that will wipe out one's ideas. What kind of ideas are subject to this kind of doubt? Kelley makes that clear: "[Tolerance] is appropriate not only among people who disagree about the application of principles they share, but also among people who disagree on the principles themselves" (P14). Thus, philosophical principles (e.g. life as the standard of value, the integration of mind and body, emotions as subconsciously automatized value-judgements) are subject to this kind of inherent uncertainty.

And so, a disagreement between two people which is not caused by gaps in at least one person's understanding of pertinent facts, is not necessarily a sign of sophistication on anyone's part. Rather, it is an indication of confusion (at best) on at least one person's part. Conversely, "full agreement", when the phrase is properly used (and assuming no common errors), is an indication of exhaustive mental effort on the part of both parties, and not of second-handedness by either.

Thus when one belittles "full agreement" with another person on abstract philosophical issues as such, that person is admitting that he does not hold too many abstract ideas with "truck-like certainty", and consequently is unable to see how two people could possibly reach full agreement on broad abstractions without at least one party lying about it.

Dennis "Uncle Jake" Prager

Dennis Prager pens a column in which he addresses attacks from the left that he is an "Uncle Jake" (i.e., a Jewish "Uncle Tom", or a traitor) because he is allied with religious conservatives. While one of his central points is good -- that the term (and "Uncle Tom") is a way for the left to avoid argument -- his point about not being a traitor is debatable for two reasons. (1) Helping the religious right is not necessarily a good thing just because helping the left is bad. (2) An advocate of faith like Dennis Prager is telling anyone who will listen that he should abandon reason, at least in some areas of his life. How can someone like that be anything but an "Uncle Jake"?

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Cleaned up HTML code, made some corrections, and added several clarifying sentences. (And boy, writing this up is not as easy as some make it look!)