11/5/16,
“Guy Fawkes”
Atlanta,
Georgia
Remember,
remember the Fifth of November, the Gunpowder treason and plot; I know of no
reason why the Gunpowder treason should ever be forgot. Was Guy Fawkes an Objectivist? In some ways, yes, but the fact that he
initiated violence against a government who did him no harm make completely
discounts the sincerity of his beliefs and the fervor with which he pursued
them. Further, while we could likely
successfully argue that the British Government in Fawkes’s time was an
oppressive regime, Fawkes did not intend to replace it with a less oppressive
one, merely instead to replace the Protestant Monarch with a Catholic one. He was nothing less than a religious
zealot.
However, would anyone in their
right mind argue that the British Crown was responsible for inciting Fawkes’s
plot by splitting from the Catholic Church and allowing a Protestant Monarch to
sit the throne? No, of course not. To do so would be to deny that Fawkes had
free will in his treason. Why, then, do
people on the left condemn artists for their depictions of the prophet Mohammed
as inciting Radical Islamic Terrorism?
In fact, why, then do people on the right condemn the religion of Islam
for leading to Radical Islamic Terrorism?
No, what both of those arguments ignore is the idea that each individual
terrorist had free will in choosing to commit acts of terrorism. The subversion of free speech requires the
denial of the responsibilities of free will.
It is on that topic and more that Day 2 of our conference was focused.
My readers should by this point understand my
view of free will, that it lies outside the purview of the explanations of the
physical universe, and cannot prove that exists. The fact that I do not believe it exists at
all is secondary to the fact that we can neither disprove nor prove its existence. We must, therefore, act as if free will
exists. It is ironic, since, if free
will does not exist, our actions are predetermined, and therefore this debate
is irrelevant. If it does exist, then,
of course, we are right to be acting as if it exists. It is my version of Pascal’s Wager. We can even call it Margolin’s Wager.
As with yesterday’s entry, for the benefit of
my readers, I will focus first on the ideas discussed at the conference before
I more formally recount the events of the day.
The first speaker was Onker Ghate, the “philosopher” Dr. Brook kept
mentioning last night. He was followed
by a panelist of other speakers, including more philosophers and Dr. Brook
himself. I can’t remember who said what
entirely, but the ideas are what is important.
A recent trend has been to treat people has beholden to their emotions,
and this is why we see things such as trigger warnings and safe spaces on
campuses. Colleges will suppress free
speech on campus with the unspoken assumption that people will have an
emotional reaction to hearing certain offensive speech, and that they lack the
free will to control their response.
However, this suppression, this attack on free will, creates a situation
where people can now only interact through force, though physical persuasion,
rather than through logic, through mental persuasion.
The speaker then used a metaphor that I found
quite amusing, given my “bear theory” of morality. By blaming the people who trigger the attacks
(whether terrorist or otherwise), you ignore the free will of the attacker. This is not the same as triggering a bear
attack by filling a fellow camper’s backpack with meat. The person who commits violence is an
individual human being who must be held accountable for his choices, regardless
of what may or may not have “triggered” him.
They used the Orlando attacks to further illustrate this point. Both the right, by arguing that his violence
was a result of his environment (the teachings of Islam), and the left, by
arguing his violence was the result of his genetic makeup (mental illness or
some similar explanation), completely ignore the attacker’s choice in this
matter.
Dr. Ghate had also offered some
more technical support of the Objectivist view of free will, saying that we had
choice in whether to think rationally or irrationally, whether to act on the
facts or ignore the facts, that this view of free will was directly in line
with the Objectivist view of choice. I
was still not convinced, but more on that later, as the Q&A period further
explored that.
Then Dr. Brook spoke
again. He reiterated the idea that it is
not religious teachings or texts that lead to violence, but rather the free
will of the people who initiate those attacks.
He related Islamophobia to the fear of immigrants. He reminded us that we were supposed to be a
cultural melting pot, that we used to invite people to come to our country and
contribute the best of their culture to our melting pot, while letting the
worst wash away. However, that is no longer
the case, since both sides have forgotten about the melting pot. The left has rejected the melting pot in
favor of multiculturalism, while those on the right have outright rejected the
integration of outsiders. That new
divide is what is heightening the recent immigration debate.
He also rightfully contended that, if you
build a wall, only the most desperate people will sneak in, leaving behind the
better immigrants who might have come if the border was not as protected. He closed by preempting the argument that
immigrants take welfare, and that we should reject them for that reason. He said that he would sooner see an illegal
immigrant who has been doing everything in his power to survive take welfare
than someone who was born in this country and squandered the opportunities
provided by the circumstances of his birth.
There was a break before the Q&A, and I caught him in the hallway
surrounded by a group. When it came my
turn to talk, I questioned his moral relativism, saying that, if we accept that
(government) welfare is evil, then we must also contend that all (government)
welfare is evil, and it doesn’t matter if the welfare an illegal immigrant receives
is less evil than welfare a citizen receives.
By rejecting the welfare state, I argued, that we need to reject any and
all new welfare recipients. He
disagreed, saying that perhaps the more practical solution was to overwhelm the
welfare state with new recipients and cause it to collapse upon itself.
The Q&A allowed Dr. Ghate to address the
issue that had been bothering me the most.
A student asked, as elegantly as I could have, if mental processes are
part of the physical world, shouldn’t they be subject to the physical laws of
cause and effect? In other words, that
is my big objection to the Objectivist position on free will. He said, quite simply, that the physical and
the mental are two distinct parts of reality but that neither of them are
supernatural. He reminded us that we can
observe mental processes, so we know they are real, but they exist outside of
the physical properties. It reminded me
of another Dumbledore quote, this one from the last book. “Of course it is happening inside your head,
Harry, but why on Earth should that mean it is not real?”
Yes, mental processes are very real, and I
was satisfied with Dr. Ghate’s explanation, just as I was satisfied with Dumbledore’s,
but it still fails to answer the hard question of mental causation. If the mental world is distinct from the
physical world, how do mental processes cause an effect in the physical world? In other words, how does me thinking I would
like to scratch and itch cause my arm to move?
That may very well be unanswerable.
In the afternoon session, a panel further discussed free speech on
campus. One of the panelist argued that
students should have the right to hear, and reject, unpopular and offensive
ideas, that they do not need to be protected from every minor insult
(microagressions). However, private universities,
he allowed, such as BYU, should have an absolute right to set their own
guidelines on speech and speakers on campus, so long as they have consistent
and publicized guidelines and stick to those guidelines.
The other panelist argued that perhaps
universities should set basic standards of decency to protect students’ ability
to receive a proper education, but, when in doubt, to err on the side of free
speech. Free speech prevents double
standards about what speech different people might find offensive. By erring towards free speech, both panelists
agreed, eventually the truth will win out.
Alright, that was the bulk what was discussed at my sessions, but I
still need to recount the events of the day.
I woke up a little before 8 AM and raced to the Waffle House, the same
Waffle House I went last year. I love
that place. It is a always a real treat
for me to go there whenever I’m in the South.
I wanted as traditional of a Southern breakfast as possible, so I got a
pecan waffle, of course, bacon and city ham, grits, and hash browns with mushrooms
and onions, along with coffee. It was
all quite good.
After breakfast, I
headed back to the hotel, getting there just in time for 8:45 AM session and
more coffee. After the panels, we took a
group photo, and I got my car to head to Macon for lunch and to see a National
Park Site. There was bad traffic, but I
did my usual ritual of lighting up a Davidoff Yamasa Toro and listening to
Red. Soon enough, I was in Macon at
Georgia’s “most iconic restaurant”, H&H restaurant, where soul food was
said to have really originated.
I got
there right before they closed and ordered the traditional “meat, bread, and 3
[sides]”, along with more coffee. I
opted for fried chicken for my meat and mashed potato, squash, and succotash
for my sides. It was all quite good, and
I scarfed it down before heading to the NPS, Ocmulgee National Monument. I was running behind schedule, and I didn’t
want to miss the 4:45 PM session back in Atlanta.
I lit up a Romeo y Julieta, and, thanks to
bad information on Google Maps, wound up going the wrong way. I lost about 10 minutes, but every minute
counted. Eventually, I found the right
place. It was a Native American site,
one that preserved the remnants of the Woodland Indians. I forced myself not to make a joke about the
Silvan Elves (also known as the wood elves).
It was so similar to the other Native American NPS I have visited, so it
was just a stamp and picture for me. I
did that and got back on the road, stressed that I would now miss the beginning
of the session.
I only missed the first
20 minutes. After the session, I went up
to my room and took a nap. After my nap,
I came down, sat outside, lit up my Ardor, and proceeded to write this entry,
which I will now close, as I will soon be heading out for the party, and SNL is
right afterwards, so I will also publish now.
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