Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Directed by Wes Anderson. With Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward, Bruce Willis, Bill Murray.

We stumbled upon Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom tonight by pure happenstance. We always expect the unexpected with Anderson’s films. The Royal Tenenbaums, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Rushmore top my favorite movie list because they look at the world sideways and through the bizarre, show us what we’re missing in the routine. Moonrise Kingdom uses this formula to unearth some wonderful insights into something as routine as human love.

Anderson’s films have a primitive quality to them. The setups and cinematography remind me of the three minute action adventure films my brother and I used to make with my dad’s 8mm camera when we were 12. This type of movie making can’t rely on polished effects or complex plot lines to carry them. You show the viewer just what you see through the lens and that alone must communicate all the depth you intend. Opposite the lens in Moonrise Kingdom are two awkward, quirky 12 year olds who clearly were put on this planet to be with each other and seek to fulfill that destiny with uninhibited passion. In the process, they challenge us to do the same and help us realize how settling for less makes us fools.

Even more instructive is the juxtaposition of the kid’s uninhibited love and their adventure of an open future rife with possibility against the ennui the parents have settled into. We pity the parents and find it ugly and regrettable and at the same time we’re envious of what the kids have found and of their ability to pursue it with reckless abandon.

I expected my mid-40s to be a time in life where my circumstances and worldview would be pretty stable and comfortably predictable but, thankfully, just the opposite has happened. The world just seems to be opening up in ways I could not possibly have anticipated. Moonrise Kingdom is a searing reminder of just how intoxicating this ought to be.

I’d score this movie 9 out of 10 stars for a brilliant screenplay, wonderful acting, a great score and beautiful cinematography.

The Lincoln Lawyer (2011)

Directed by Brad Furman. With Matthew McConaughey, Marisa Tomei, Ryan Phillippe, William H. Macy.

The Lincoln Lawyer is an intriguing thriller about a cocky young defense attorney (Mick Haller played perfectly by Matthew McConaughey) who prides himself in racking up acquittals for seemingly indefensible clients. Admittedly there are formulaic elements throughout the film. For example, Haller is separated from a prosecutor yet they remained linked by shared custody of a young daughter which creates a well-worn tension and plot device. But the movie works because it doesn’t overplay its hand. It tells an engrossing story that is well-paced and one that has a true-to-life feel to it. It’s dramatic for sure but in all the right ways.

All the principal and secondary actors and actresses are pitch-perfect. I’ve read a lot of criticisms of McConaughey but I’ve always liked his movies. He’s passionate and has a commanding screen presence. He really shows his talent in this film and it is, I think, one of his best. William H. Macy, a favorite of mine, does a fine job in his secondary role as does Tomei who still has all the charm so appealing in My Cousin Vinnie with a maturity that betrays her almost 30 years as an actress. Bryan Cranston as the ornery detective, Michael Pena as the misunderstood inmate, John Leguizamo as the bail bondsman and even Shea Whigham as the “snitch” all do a stellar job in their supporting roles. This is a movie worth watching simply for the acting.

The primary philosophical interest comes just at the story arc as Haller is struggling with his role as a defense attorney. In crisis, all the years of suppressing what he knows to be true comes to the surface and he has to deal with the work he does for what it really is. Despondent, he says to his ex who has once again (we imagine) put him to bed because he was too drunk to it himself, “Maggie, you know what I used to be afraid of Maggie? That I wouldn't recognize innocence. That it would be right there in front of me and I just wouldn't see it. I'm not talking about guilty or not guilty; just, just innocence. Know what I'm afraid of now? Evil. Pure Evil.”

Interestingly, in an age when moral ambiguity in film is the norm (even our heroes are not really all that heroic), the movie does attempt to draw sharp lines between heroes and villains. It also attempts to show how the law (or the practice thereof) isn’t always the best device to make that distinction.

I’d give this film 8 out of 10 for a captivating story and fine acting.

The modern atheist movement is getting organized and aggressive (for those who hadn’t noticed). It’s starting to build a focal point around a common message centered on reason, social justice, community, and poking at the worst forms of religious fundamentalism whenever and wherever possible. Heroes are emerging and they’re repeating common messages and creating catch phrases and rallying cries. While there’s much to appreciate about some of the culture impact of the movement, it’s the last activity in my list above that has the potential to cause the most problems. I’ve read many psychologists that warn about focusing too much on a person or a group you hate because in doing so you risk becoming just like them. I think some modern atheists may be falling prey to this problem.

I suppose there are good reasons for this type of “mirroring.” To stand up to a bully, it’s sometimes necessary to become bully-like. Many atheists, sick of being bowled over by their religiously fundamentalist antagonists, have gotten downright fundamentalist themselves.  Even casual observers see this in political sparring matches all the time. Candidate Smith throws mud, candidate Jones must throw more mud or lose by omission. Perhaps it’s the only way to fight some battles.

But I think some atheists are becoming the very type of thinkers—or at the very least, adopting too much of the rhetoric—they despise. Richard Carrier, an historian who has been doing some solid scholarly work, has made somewhat of a name for himself among activist atheists. He recently wrote a blog post describing what he calls “New Atheism +” in which he tries to define a sort of manifesto for real new atheists who apparently want to distance themselves from apparent new atheists as well as any other irrational group out there. Fair enough. The modern atheism movement has a lot of steam behind it and leaders in the movement are working to ensure it becomes and stays mainstream and grows. Religion has it’s creeds and doctrines that provide it with psychological substance and something around which a community can hang their hat. Denominations have been good for religious propagation (we all need a tribe to be a part of) and probably will be good for atheism too.

Still, how much does the movement have to give up in order to create that “stickiness” I wonder. As I read through Carrier’s manifesto, a particular section caught my attention. Carrier identifies New Atheists + as those who embrace reason. That seems good. He writes, “The skill to think critically, skeptically, and rationally in all areas of life must also be promoted and cultivated.” Right on. But later, when laying out his doctrinal statement, under the heading, “We believe in being reasonable” Carrier explains that this partly means:

We believe in being logical and rational in forming beliefs and opinions. Which means anyone who makes a fallacious argument and, when shown that they have, does not admit it, is not one of us, and is to be marginalized and kicked out, as not part of our movement, and not anyone we any longer wish to deal with. (Emphasis his)

Okay, he’s drawing boundaries and wants to “kick out” anyone who doesn’t adhere to the praxis exemplifying the doctrine. And Carrier even admits, to his credit, that reason needs to be a fundamental doctrine. But I wonder if this is just a bit too fundamentalist. Here’s the problem as I see it. One can make arguments that one thinks are sound. But I think it should be clear to anyone who is an avid observer of human behavior—and I would think particularly to an historian—that the reasonableness of an argument for an individual is not merely a matter of recognizing that the argument is valid according to standard rules of logic. Accepting an argument means the hearer comes to have beliefs not only about the argument’s validity but about the truth value of the premises. And this involves a very complex variety of interrelated and interdependent psychological states including having sufficient access to the stated facts in question, background beliefs, cognitive biases, emotional reactions, and a host of other things. What is clearly reasonable to one person may not be at all reasonable to another even if both hold that no logical fallacy has been committed. The problem then is this: if being reasonable means you only talk to people who share beliefs about the validity of your arguments, then it means nothing at all. If the only people you engage with are those that agree with all arguments you believe are valid, there would be no one to whom you would need to make the arguments!

A friend recently posted an image of the Muppets with a quote from the Jim Henson company stating that they were breaking ties with Chick-Fil-A over their anti-gay policies. In part the quote stated, “The Jim Henson Company has celebrated and embraced diversity and inclusiveness for over fifty years and we have notified Chick-Fil-A that we do not wish to partner with them on any future endeavors.” In short, the Muppets were declaring that they won’t tolerate such intolerance! I responded by asking whether the Muppets themselves were being intolerant by not partnering with a company that held a diverse opinion different from their own. A friend of my friend responded with this: “Nobody said all intolerance is bad. Intolerance for stupid, arbitrary reasons is the problem.” But there’s clearly a problem here. Besides being a completely arbitrary basis for tolerance, if tolerance just means accept ideas we don’t think are stupid, then it means nothing at all (I’ll refrain from calling the criterion “stupid” but you can make your own judgment). Why would we have to “tolerate” sound, reasonable, intelligent ideas?

I think Carrier’s “reasonable” doctrine falls prey to the same type of incoherence. Carrier may believe he has shown Craig’s arguments for the historicity of the resurrection to be fallacious. But Craig clearly doesn’t believe Carrier’s arguments work. Craig believes his arguments are sounds and Carrier’s arguments suffer from some logical or factual problems and should be rejected. So who’s arguments are sound? Many side with Carrier and many others side with Craig. This is the nature of debate and “being reasonable.” If Carrier wants to marginalize and “not deal with” anyone who doesn’t see the soundness of his arguments, he’ll soon be talking only to those who agree with him and that will be then end of “New Atheism +”. If evangelical Christians get anything right, it’s at least the belief that non-believers need to be “evangelized.” Atheists need not only to be dealt with, they need to be brought into the fold though persistent, and, many times, aggressive confrontation.

I fully acknowledge that many conversations need to come to an end. Many so-called discussions are little more than an exchange of declarative statements sandwiched between ad hominems and straw men (and thanks to the internet, we now have unfettered access to all varieties of this type of “conversation”). But we tend to wash our hands of these discussions not because the other person doesn’t agree with our position but because the other person has failed to engage in argument in the first place. I can agree with Carrier that you can’t argue with someone that doesn’t at least attempt to make a reasonable argument. On the other hand, some of the most interesting and enlightening breakthroughs have taken place in the context of decades if not centuries-long debates where opposing sides exchange ideas making the best arguments they know how to make (this is what has been so attractive about philosophy for me). It’s when argument turns to dogmatism and a healthy acknowledgement of one’s intellectual deficiencies turns into a psychological wall of indefeasibility that barriers are, and probably should be, created. As long as someone is willing to admit that they could be wrong and has the patience to slowly chip away at opacity to get more clear on the truth, debate and conversation should continue regardless of how much we may disagree with our interlocutor.

Modern atheism should embrace this intellectual virtue or I fear it will fade away like it’s predecessors—and intellectually, go the way of the dogmatic religious system it’s trying to dismantle.

Nice essay by Feser on his journey from Catholicism, to atheism, and back again. Oddly, I found my own philosophical explorations to track along very similar lines but with very different results. His recognition of Searle as one of the better philosophers of mind writing today was very refreshing (mainly because it’s an opinion I share).

Thanks to Dr. Paul Herrick for the pointer.

New Twitter feed turns the socialite and opportunistic entrepreneur Kim Kardashian into a philosopher. Well not quite. Maybe into a filosofer. Brilliant.

https://twitter.com/KimKierkegaard

Thanks to Matt Snyder for the pointer.

Can you name the philosophy book in the photo below? We’ll send a Philosophy News coffee mug to the first person* who can name both the exact title of the book and the author. We’ll only accept answers that are posted to the Philosophy News comments area for this post (correct responses posted to Twitter or Facebook, while welcome, won’t be included in the evaluation).

Hint: part of a series so name the editor in chief.

And the mug goes to: no correct answer yet

*We’ll send the mug to the first person that posts a correct answer according to the order calculated by our comments provider (Disqus). In order to receive the mug, we’ll need to correspond with you via email and you’ll have to be willing to send us your valid postal address (US addresses only please – sorry).

Earlier this month we introduced the Intellectual Virtues and Education Project led by Dr. Jason Baehr of Loyola Marymount University. The project is being funded by a generous grant from the Templeton Foundation and focuses on building an educational model grounded on virtue epistemology. NPR picked up the story and interviewed Dr. Baehr about the project. We’re reposting that short interview here.

Listen (requires Flash):

Resources

Project website

Press release on the project

You can contact Jason here

Robert Wright, senior editor at The Atlantic, writes a few words on the challenges of describing reality using both language and mathematics. The challenges involved in understanding the implications of the Higgs boson (and the phenomenon itself) reminds us of the epistemic distance between our perception of reality and the thing itself.

Consider these scenarios: 1) A twenty-something male standing outside of the supermarket talking loudly on his cell phone making no attempt to hide his conversation. He is so loud and animated that you can tell he is angry with his significant other. 2) Two female teenagers (maybe 14-16 yrs. old) walking down the street having a loud, but apparently friendly conversation, about a recent sexual escapade with a boyfriend. This conversation is within the earshot of various people standing outside. 3) A customer at a department store standing two places behind you speaking loudly on their cell phone about all of their planned activities for the day including some unsavory details. How many of us can say that they have witnessed these situations or something similar? They tend to create discomfort in those exposed to them. The common denominator in all of these situations is the blurring of privacy boundaries; the public disclosure of details of one’s private lives. These uncomfortable situations produce numerous questions about the dividing line between what should be public and what should remain private. Why do these situations seem to occur more frequently today?

As with most other topics, philosophers have not always agreed on the scope of privacy. However, most have agreed that privacy is a good or a right (privacy referred to here pertains to personal and social relationships not to the legal and constitutional aspects of privacy). With the exception of Plato and Aristotle (they viewed privacy as a negative concept), philosophers generally have promoted privacy as a necessary component for a prosperous and happy society. The reasons supporting the necessity of privacy have varied.

James Rachels, a deceased American ethicist known for his writings on euthanasia, wrote a well-known essay in 1975 titled “Why Privacy is Important”. He begins the essay by asking, “Why, exactly, is privacy important to us?” He offers numerous possible answers. Privacy is sometimes necessary to protect people’s interests in competitive situations such as sports. Privacy is necessary if someone does not want others to know about some embarrassing aspect of their life. Rachels supplements this thought by adding, “It is indeed the grossest of injustices to observe a person who believes himself to be alone.” Privacy is important to protect one’s confidential information such as medical records and credit reports. These are things that, if publicly revealed, can have negative consequences in someone’s life. In social relationships, privacy allows one to “control who knows what about us and allows us to vary our behavior with different people so that we can maintain and control our various social relationships.”

Although it is a challenge to find a single definition that encompasses all we might care about when it comes to privacy, most people have enough strong intuitions about the subject that they argue in its favor and deem privacy to be a positive moral value. There seems to be something intuitive and urgent about privacy that it invokes a sense of discomfort in us when it is violated. The ability to control which details of our lives should be disclosed is something that people cherish and deem to be significant in forming and maintaining relationships. The examples cited above are bothersome for many people. There seems to be aspects of our lives that are best left to ourselves or to a smaller circle of people. This notion is shared by many.

However, it is still very difficult to determine which private details should be publicly disclosed and equally difficult to determine if there are any aspects of life that are inherently private. This is why the examples cited above are a fascinating look into the rationality behind privacy. On the one hand, you generally observe a subtle disapproval (e.g. head shaking, whispering disapproval to someone next to you) on the part of the spectators exposed to these scenes but, on the other hand, the spectators can encounter difficulties in fashioning reasons for their disapproval as evidenced by the lack of details in their reasons (for example “there are certain things you should not share in front of others”). The point is that, while privacy generally is considered a good that should be cherished in modern society, there is a set of rational difficulties when we attempt to list a consensual set of conditions that mandate privacy.

Even so, there seems to be more of a willingness to breach traditional privacy boundaries today than ever before. This is an ironic twist of events because privacy is a common value that is cherished to some degree by all individuals. Moreover, the acceptance of this common value confers benefits upon society as a whole and thus privacy is considered a collective value as well. Whether privacy is a right as declared by the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights is another debate altogether but it is acceptable to say that privacy is an individual and collective good. A philosophical examination of goods such as privacy, employment, equal access to public service, etc. entails a description of the nature and scope of these goods but also an appraisal of societal factors that can affect the scope and exercise of these goods. The appraisal is necessary for determining whether these factors contribute or damage the common and collective values of said goods.

Regarding traditional privacy boundaries, here is a hypothesis about one societal factor that may contribute to the frequent breaching of those boundaries today. Reality TV has become a dominant force in entertainment and a growing influence in society in the last 5-10 years. Of particular interest are reality shows in which cast members or celebrities are placed in artificial environments or professionals are portrayed in their day-to-day work. These types of reality shows (e.g. Survivor, The Real World, Big Brother, The Bachelor, Jersey Shore, Hell’s Kitchen, etc.), which depend greatly on human interaction and its resultant affairs and conflicts, have provoked the most criticism. First, the unrestrained exposure of a person’s private life is a necessary component for these shows and is, I think, a key component of their popularity. This uninhibited display of intimate details leads to humiliation of the cast members.

Second, the unlimited exposure and humiliation brings charges of immorality upon the producers, cast members, and the networks of these shows. Many people wonder if the participants and creators of these reality shows should exhibit greater moral responsibility because of the improprieties they televise and the resultant messages that they deliver to the viewer. These elements of reality TV, by themselves, are not sufficient to consider reality TV as a reason for the frequent breaching of traditional privacy boundaries but there are plenty of elements of certain reality shows that seem to be counter to the intuitions of many people when it comes to privacy.

My conjecture is that the constant exposure of private personal details and the lack of accompanying self-control in certain reality shows seem to have spilled over into real life contributing to a “softening” of privacy on the part of the viewers of these shows. The plausibility of this conjecture deserves more evidence than I can offer here. But the purpose of this hypothesis is to provoke discussion as to whether the growing influence of reality TV has eroded privacy boundaries today and whether it has contributed to a broader societal attitude that anything can be and should be revealed publicly. In addition to reality TV, there may be other factors, such as the growth of social media and the changing perception of privacy that deserve their own analyses. This I’ll touch on in my next article.

http://mindhacks.com/2012/04/22/less-thinking-biases-in-a-foreign-tongue/

Well, maybe its not that simple. Interesting research though. Thanks to Andrew Smith for the pointer.