2006
● 1-2-2006: Should movie actors, while they’re performing, know what music will accompany the scene in the finished movie? Do they know that?
● 1-3-2006: If I have any self-doubt, it’s not sufficient to trouble me; and it’s constantly diminishing.
[Later note (4-10-2022): How could a feeling that’s imperceptible, let alone that doesn’t exist, be constantly diminishing?]
● 1-5-2006: “All is relative.” Not true. Happiness is absolute. When you’re happy, you’re feeling good; when unhappy, bad. And no comparison with even better or even worse, respectively, will make the good feeling not good, or less good; or the bad feeling not bad, or less bad.
● 1-16-2006: The bit of writing I manage to do is a small oasis in the spiritual desert of my life.
● 1-17-2006: Personal authenticity is not as simple a matter as we may think. While we may at times be definitely inauthentic, in acting in an affected way or putting on airs; the concept of the authentic self is problematic. Our personality is fluid, and we’re constantly both discovering and creating ourselves. Which is perhaps especially true in interpersonal relationships, because we are, in a sense, different people in different relationships. When you meet a new person, you’re engaged in learning who he or she is, and who you are in relationship to him or her, which in part is mutually established through a sort of unspoken negotiation. In a phrase, how can you know who you are, in a relationship, before you know who the other person is?
● 1-20-2006: When our understanding of our values shifts from absolute to relative, our discussion concomitantly, logically, shifts from justifying them to simply identifying them.
● 1-21-2006: I’m in a spiritual hell.
● 1-22-2006: I’m a writer . . . whose primary subject matter is philosophy.
[Later note (7-31-2022): What’s the difference between philosophy, per se, and philosophical?]
● Philosophy Club meeting. Topic: “What is philosophy?”
● Religion is about belief; philosophy is about argument.
● Concerning an issue raised at the 22 January 2006 meeting, I side with those who maintain that “language is a guest of reality,” instead of the other way round; meaning that, even if understanding entails language, reality precedes both. By definition, reality encompasses all that is, including one’s mind and speech, which are a subset of reality, as more might exist than they; when a man dies, his perception of reality ends, but reality (though different with his absence) continues. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is present to hear it, perhaps there’s no “sound”; but surely there’s a tree . . ..
● 1-29-2006: If you daily pledge your allegiance to the country, does that mean your pledge is good, or expected to be good, for just one day? If not, why is it necessary to recite the pledge daily?
● 1-30-2006: What do I have to do to be taken more seriously as a comedian?
● You can make a young actress look old; a beautiful one, ugly. But not vice versa.
● I’d call George W. Bush a swine; but I don’t want to insult pigs, which are intelligent animals, and which I like.
● 2-3-2006: Anti-abortion and pro-choice persons have at least one common issue, though in opposite directions. Each must decide where to draw the line within the nine months’ pregnancy. The pro-choice advocate must decide how late in gestation abortion should be forbidden or restricted; and the anti-abortionist must decide how early in that period abortion should be allowed. And it would seem that each must be willing to draw a line somewhere, or lose credibility.
● 2-5-2006: The disparity between the level of my talents and that of my wealth may be about to significantly diminish; which is to say that I may be about to get rich. [Later note (2020): Hope springs eternal! . . .]
● 2-7-2006: Today was a red-letter day. I dropped off at radio station KPFK my new package of flyers incorporating the vanity telephone number 1-818-IT’S-TRUE, in response to their slogan contest. I unsuccessfully submitted the phone number with some flyers in response to the same contest in June 2003. This time I’ve revised some of the slogan material in which the ITS-TRUE is set. It’s a better package now. Coincidentally, I also sent to Attorney Diane Karpman, legal ethics expert, material incorporating my old vanity phone number 1-800-SUE-THEM, for her advice on an advertising venture I’m planning. As with the ITS-TRUE, I’ve created a new advertisement for SUE THEM, which is even far more powerful than my earlier versions. I’ve carefully maintained both phone numbers for many years, aware that I had valuable commodities in them (especially the SUE THEM); perhaps my creative genius and labor in these things will now finally come to fruition. I’m hopeful; nay, optimistic!
● Not all that’s rightful is right.
● 2-12-2006: Bad writing is not a style.
● This may turn out to have been an important event: I just registered the Internet domain name “1800suethem.com”. I was (very pleasantly) amazed to find it was available!
● 2-20-2006: I went to work not knowing that it was a holiday, or at least not one that my employer would observe; so I had an unexpected day off. What a gift! I had a lovely, idyllic day. It made me realize: I’ve endured so much suffering in my life. I’m due for a change.
● 2-24-2006: Asking what a person would be like if he or she had been of the opposite sex is like asking about the translation into another language of a proper name.
● I spend the Winter waiting for the cold to end; the Summer, waiting for the heat to end.
[Later note (2021): Things have changed! Now, I still spend the Summer waiting for the heat to end; but I spend the Winter dreading the coming of Summer’s heat.]
● 2-26-2006: That a man says something inconsistent with a prior statement does not mean that he’s changed his mind. It may mean instead simply that he’s confused on the subject (and that he doesn’t remember his prior statement).
● I’ve done a little reading and a lot of thinking.
● Perhaps an artist’s work becomes more terse as he ages because, as his remaining time grows shorter, he feels the urge to take what shortcuts he can, and, with less energy, he has less patience to spell things out in excruciating detail . . . and he thinks his already existing work will provide the context to make his later work intelligible—that the earlier work will, as it were, fill in the gaps.
[Later note (9-19-2024): Also, with experience, a writer may learn to be more concise, both in general, and especially as to his expression of certain repeated ideas.]
● Philosophy Club meeting this evening; topic was “intrinsic v. extrinsic value”(!) Someone said that health is not intrinsically good, since health in Hitler would have been bad, because it enabled him to do evil. I replied that that example did not show health to be not intrinsically good, as the situation could be analyzed such that Hitler’s health was intrinsically good but extrinsically bad (by leading to other bad consequences). A better example would be the situation in which a man is about to be tortured to death, wherein it would be better that he be ill and comatose than healthy. . . . Which consideration further suggests pleasure and pain as the best candidates for intrinsic value and disvalue.
Disregarding for the moment (if it can be disregarded) my proof of the impossibility of intrinsic value, it would seem that people’s pursuit or non-pursuit of a desideratum would not be conclusive as to its intrinsic value or lack thereof, as one might pursue what’s not intrinsically good, and fail to pursue what is intrinsically good.
● Philosophers’ debates over the properties of intrinsic value are a little like debates about the height or feeding habits of unicorns; or the question, If pigs could fly, would they be carnivorous? Or (a better example), If a circle had four right angles, what would it look like?
● According to Plato’s theory of forms, Is there a form for God?
● 3-3-2006: Sometimes it’s difficult to know whether a certain sensation has awakened me, or is keeping me awake, or merely something I happen to be aware of while I’m awake (for unrelated reasons).
● 3-18-2006: I wonder whether the assertion that time began at the Big Bang (or at any other event) is not problematic, in that to say that something began implies the existence of a prior time, when the thing did not exist (a time without time).
● Sunday, 3-19-2006: Philosophy Club meeting. Topic: “Your most dangerous idea.”
● The truth or falsity of a proposition is wholly distinct from the value of believing it. People sometimes mix the two issues, beginning by arguing that a certain (usually, religious) belief is beneficial, subtly suggesting that consequently there must be some truth in it. The appropriate response is simply to point out the complete distinction between the two questions, and to acknowledge that, if a belief has a positive effect on its adherents, and makes them better people, and more likely to work for humanity’s greater good (or even if it just brings them comfort), then their belief is a good thing, and we’re glad they hold it.
● Wednesday, 3-29-2006: Very bizarre incident with Atty Kim Pearman when I went to his office to drop off my medical records. (I was injured when I sat in a chair that collapsed while doing volunteer work for him in his legal clinic. I sued him for my injury.)
● 3-31-2006: Hope is, not a rosy evaluation of a situation (that’s optimism), but, rather, simply the focusing on the positive aspects or possibilities.
● 4-4-2006: I feel fully alive just when I’m writing.
● 4-12-2006: Making the country’s least valuable coin (the penny) the sole dark-colored one, is a racist gesture. I avoid giving the penny in change to people of color; it seems to hurt their feelings.
● 4-15-2006: I’m far more interested in being a good writer than in being a good person.
● Sunday, 4-23-2006: Philosophy Club meeting; topic: “psychology of religion.”
● 4-26-2006 (Wednesday): Around 10 or 10:30 this morning I had an interesting experience (I thought it was interesting), wherein I foiled a merchant’s attempt to cheat me. To fill my gas tank, I prepaid a gas station attendant $27.00 in cash—a twenty, a five, and two ones. The gas pump cut off prematurely at $17.00, and I immediately knew what the problem was. I approached the attendant and informed him that I had given him a twenty-dollar bill. He replied that I’d given him a ten, and, by way of proving it, he pointed to the slots in the cash register in which he had placed my bills. I walked away stunned, thinking that there was nothing I could do about it. But suddenly I remembered that the twenty-dollar bill I’d used had a blue-green ink mark in a top corner. I returned to the attendant and told him that the twenty I had given him had a blue-green ink spot in the top corner. He extracted the top twenty-dollar bill and, sure enough, there was the blue-green mark at the top. He then took the twenty-dollar bill underneath it and examined it. No such mark. I then said, “And the ten on the top in the next slot has no blue-green mark, does it?” He took out the top ten-dollar bill and held it up. “No,” I answered my rhetorical question. I knew I had him now. And now he was stunned. After a pained pause on his part, he finally said, “Okay, I’ll put ten dollars more on the pump.” “Thank you,” I replied, and went away rather pleased. [Later note (2020): I’ve always regretted not reporting that son of a gun to his employer!]
● People often base the conclusion that “we are all one” on the existence of God, saying such things as “We are all manifestations of God,” or “The divine spirit is in all of us,” and so forth. But it seems to me that the oneness of existence neither requires nor is strengthened by the notion of God. Our being, our experience, and our interrelationships, are just what they are, whether or not God exists. Indeed, to add God to the equation weakens the point, by adding a step, an element, to the process, complicating the purported simplicity, founding the unity on a duality.
● 5-5-2006: Equating capitalism’s (alleged) equal opportunity, on one hand, with justice, on the other, involves the confusion of “Anyone can succeed” with “Everyone can succeed.”
[Later note (7-24-2024): Equal opportunity in capitalism is a myth: Does the son of a poor man in the ghetto have as much opportunity as the son of a billionaire?!]
● The truth (or a certain revelation or demonstration of it) is perhaps beautiful; but the beautiful is not necessarily “true.”
● Sunday, 5-7-2006: I’ve concluded an agreement with Attorney Sef Krell for a law practice partnership!!
● I suspect that, deep down, most religious people do not truly believe in God. It’s one thing to intellectually construct a metaphorical God around which to build an outlook on life and symbolic community rituals. But I think that if a person believed in a literal God, he would feel great anger, at God’s demand from us of constant obeisance, and His provision to us of an outrageous world.
● Thursday, 11 May 2006: Sef Krell and I have signed our law partnership agreement! [Later note (2020): Nothing ever came of it.]
● Saturday, 14 May 2006: Rescued(?) a young or disabled crow that took refuge on my doorstep from other crows that were attacking it. I brought it in a box to a nearby park, where I let it loose. It hopped away into some bushes.
● 5-24-2006: Be wary of establishing rules in response to isolated or infrequent problems.
● 5-25-2006: “Good wins in the end.” What does that mean?! . . . Good does not win for those who are unjustly killed, or otherwise grievously and permanently harmed! It’s a glib slogan mouthed by the privileged and comfortable in the face of other people’s misfortunes.
● 5-30-2006: The infinitude of the possible is to the infinitude of the actual as the infinite is to the finite.
● 6-9-2006: If God is everything, God is nothing. (On that definition—that God is everything—an atheist would be one who believes that nothing exists?) If God is everything, then (since God is also the Creator) God created Himself.
● 6-12-2006: I own a gold mine. Yet I remain penniless for lack of the few dollars needed to buy picks and shovels to get at the gold.
● 6-15-2006: History’s most famous logo is the Christian Church’s cross.
● Phone message left for me by Jerry Eisner (6-15-2006): “Yeah, Dick, I just got the material you sent me on this Legal Advertising Investment Prospective. It’s fantastic: absolutely great! I also have—I think—a terrific idea for the use of your “abogado” number. So give me a call when you have a chance, huh.”
● 6-22-2006: One philosophy professor has recently used an ingenious argumentative procedure to establish his thesis: declare that your position is to be presumed true unless it’s conclusively disproved; note that it has not been conclusively disproved, and—voilà!—proof!
● There’s a fundamental confusion in characterizing an act (an event) as “immoral.” Leaving aside the question of the possibility or impossibility of intrinsic value, the pertinent referents in this connection for acts, are “good” and “bad”; whereas (leaving aside the soundness or unsoundness of these concepts), “moral” and “immoral” properly pertain to intent. The intent, furthermore, to do any given act could theoretically be a genuine moral obligation. Thus, one might feel ethically compelled to cause damage or pain (as, for example, to render just retribution, or to follow a command of God . . . who, after all, works in mysterious ways). Consequently, there are no inherently immoral or morally compulsory acts.
[Later note (2021): In practice, maintaining that distinction (between acts and intents) has its own problems (for one, an intent is meaningful just when manifested in action); to avoid which problems we apply our moral judgment to an amalgam of the two: act-cum-intent. We infer the intent from the act.]
● I have faith in reason (at least in my own).
● 6-25-2006: Philosophy Club tonight; topic: “Why be moral?”
● It’s legitimate to make moral judgments, so long as we understand that we do so in relative, human terms, and not in absolute, metaphysical ones.
● To the confirmed ethical egoist, whose professed rule of action is to benefit himself regardless of the effect on others, I would ask these questions:
1. Is there some limit to the operation of your rule, where the harm to others is so great and the advantage to you so small that you would not so act? If so, where is the limit? On what basis would you forego acting in accord with your standard procedure? Would such forbearance not be inconsistent with your original rule? If not, why not? If so, how do you justify or explain the inconsistency?
2. If you were mugged, and badly beaten to the point of sustaining serious, permanent injuries, and you learned that the mugger acted just for the momentary thrill of hurting you, how would you feel toward your assailant? Would you blame him? Would you feel he should be punished? If so, on what basis?
● 6-30-2006: My mood is a fragile thing . . . though not as much so as it used to be.
● 7-3-2006: I celebrated Independence Day by writing an essay in red and blue ink on white paper.
● Most persons can do far more harm than good.
● 7-4-2006: If we wanted proof that beauty is subjective, do we need look any further than the simple observation that we find most graphic images of our own species more beautiful than graphic images of any other species? Could the preference reasonably be explained on the ground that our own species just happens actually to be the most beautiful one?
● 7-7-2006: Stinginess is an aspect of greed.
[Later note (4-6-2024): That’s perhaps true just if you’re wealthy.]
● 7-9-2006: John Rawls’s “veil of ignorance” argument is a last-gasp attempt to found an ethic on an objective basis. I would come to much the same conclusion as Rawls, but I would, instead, acknowledge the subjectiveness of the matter, and explain that a just, egalitarian world simply happens to appeal to me, happens to accord with my values. (Besides which, I wonder if Rawls’s approach actually advances the argument. Is the fact that most people would choose a certain state of affairs really any stronger reason for it than that most people would benefit from it? And, perhaps a slight digression, why would people in an “original position,” behind a “veil of ignorance,” choose what would most likely benefit them, when, now, they don’t vote that way?)
● 7-11-2006: How is logical possibility reconciled with causal determinism? (That is, it’s logically possible that an event have gone differently than it did; yet, in another sense, it could not have gone differently than it did, because the event going as it did was causally determined.) Perhaps this has to do with the difference between logical and physical possibility.
● 7-13-2006: If man ever perfected the art of immortality, he’d also have to perfect the art of birth control.
● 7-16-2006: To those who would say that each of us ultimately gets what he deserves, I would ask this: Do we each deserve to get old and die?
● 7-22-2006: What did cavemen do for fun on Friday nights? (This is a very serious question.)
● 7-24-2006: To wait for inspiration to write is like waiting for fire, to strike the flint.
● 7-26-2006: Just as we reduce the pain of misfortune by coming to accept it as part of our prevailing circumstances, the same process inevitably reduces the joy of good fortune, by gradually incorporating it into the status quo. We get used to good and to bad events alike, and gravitate back toward our habitual mood.
● When I first began learning to play the violin, at 13, I so valued playing the instrument that I thought I wouldn’t care what happened to me—I could be in a wheelchair—so long as I could still play the violin. These days, with all my illnesses and injuries, I console myself by having the same thought about my writing.
[Later note (1-6-2022): That’s optimistic, to imagine that the worst health calamity that might befall me would affect only my legs, and leave intact my ability to think and write.]
● 7-28-2006: My “Thoughts on the Big Bang Theory” is a useful reference for my “Ethics.”
● 7-29-2006: To absolute eliminativists, such as Rorty and Feyerabend, I would say this: If and when you come up with an alternative theory for what I now call mental phenomena, like pain, I’ll listen to it, and adopt it if I find it convincing. What you’ve said thus far, however, I’ve found unconvincing. And, until I find reason to abandon my present view, I shall (of course) maintain it.
● 7-30-2006: Philosophy Club meeting; topic: “consciousness of (on the part of) humanoids (robots).”
● Could a man who invents a “creative” robot rightly take credit for what the robot “creates”?
● If man could create a superior being, could man have been created by an inferior being?
[Later note (2021): Since even we, until now, have not been able to create another creature equal to us, it’s unlikely that one inferior to us could ever do so.]
● 8-2-2006: By and large, we love prey animals, but admire predators.
● 8-6-2006: A foolish hobgoblin is the consistency of little minds.
● 8-7-2006: Am I a writer, or a philosopher? I’m a writer by motivation, a philosopher by subject matter. My goal is to create the best art I can. If I could write poetry better than I write philosophy, I’d write poetry instead (though it would probably be philosophical poetry). If I could compose better musical compositions than verbal ones, I’d write music instead. It simply happens that the best artifact I can produce is philosophical writing. So I do that.
● 8-8-2006: Jews who criticize Israel are sometimes accused of being “self-hating.” It seems to me, just the opposite, that speaking out when you believe your country is wrong is necessary for self-respect.
[Later note (1-5-2024): One could reply this way to proponents of the self-hating-Jew idea: “If your political opponents gained power and instituted governmental policies that you opposed, would you not speak out against those policies? And wouldn’t you then be a self-hating Jew? No? But if your speaking out against governmental policies you disagree with does not make you a self-hating Jew, why should my speaking out against governmental policies I disagree with make me a self-hating Jew?”
In the strange event that the interlocutor denied that he would speak out against policies he opposed, or that, if he did so, then he, too, would be a self-hating Jew, you could say this: “The point is that I don’t disagree with all of the government’s policies; I agree with some of them. But if you hate yourself, you hate everything you do; you don’t hate some things and like other things” . . ..]
● 8-13-2006: To paraphrase Professor Cornell West, Optimism is believing that a certain good event will probably happen. Hope, in contrast, is dwelling on the possibility that a particular good event will occur, which positive focus raises our morale to enable us to work to make the good outcome more likely.
● 8-14-2006: I’ve often heard men say that they don’t fret about this or that danger, because, “If it’s my time, I’ll die; if it’s not, I won’t.” When I saw yesterday’s news of an airplane crash that killed all two hundred persons aboard, I found it interesting how so many people “whose time it was” all happened to be together. . ..
● 8-22-2006: Today I finally presented my 1-800-SUE-THEM ad package to Girardi & Keese, Lawyers.
● 9-3-2006: If the third and fourth movements of Beethoven’s third symphony were longer and more substantial, the symphony would be less serious: The greater weight of the darker material (movements one and two) than the light (movements three and four) renders the symphony more serious; it symbolizes the truth that, ultimately, the negative in life outweighs the positive. And yet, that’s just an exercise in hypothetical rationalization; I can’t help but feel that there’s an imbalance between the first two movements of the work and the last two. (Besides, if that had been Beethoven’s aim in the symphony, he should have put the more serious material at the end, rather than at the beginning.)
● 9-4-2006: On Steve Irwin: He who lives by the crocodile, dies by the crocodile.
● 9-6-2006: To claim that morality is objective because it somehow corresponds to human nature is tantamount to the assertion that artistic taste is objective because certain works of art elicit in us an actual esthetic response.
● 9-13-2006: I dreamed that I was considering a number of interrelated arguments, attempting to rebut them; they seemed beautiful, and they were embodied simultaneously in sentences and in melodies. (Synesthesia?)
● 9-14-2006: Is it just a coincidence that nine is four plus five, and that nine times five is forty-five?
● Sunday, 9-17-2006: Philosophy Club, topic: “Should We Attempt to Demystify or Mystify the World?”
My answer: I think we should attempt to demystify the world as far as possible. Doing so not only does not ruin our sense of mystery, but actually enhances it. It’s not as if we’ll run out of mysteries; abundant mysteries will always exist. And to strive to solve them gives us confidence that we’re awed by genuine mysteries, not pseudo-mysteries, those as to which we’re willfully ignorant, by our refusal to reason and investigate.
[Later note (9-19-2024): Wait a minute: How would we “mystify the world”?!]
● 9-18-2006: In a way, it’s a shame that Mozart wasn’t Black, which would have ended racism (at least that against Black people).
● 9-20-2006: I once went fishing and caught a flounder and a holy mackerel.
● 9-23-2006: The assertion that critics of the United States are hypocritical in wishing to emigrate here is equivalent to the claim that opponents of capitalism are hypocritical in seeking money.
● 9-24-2006: The adage “Those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither” is, strictly speaking, unsound. Both are important, and we have a degree of each. But they’re correlative: an increase in one entails a decrease in the other. The object is always to strike the right balance, which we may adjust from time to time according to our changing circumstances and judgments.
● The Hippocratic oath, “First do no harm,” is problematic, in that many salutary medical procedures involve a risk of harm; part of the physician’s art is to determine whether the potential benefits justify the risks.
● There’s no supernatural, as such: only aspects of nature we don’t understand.
● 9-27-2006: If we know that a criminal case is being tried by a prosecutor with an almost unbroken record of securing convictions, we judge the probability of conviction in this case to be extremely high . . . until we learn that the attorney defending the case has a nearly unbroken record of getting acquittals.
[Later note (2021): Of course, if the convictions or acquittals were gotten in obvious, clear-cut cases, then either fact is irrelevant to a case whose outcome could go either way.]
● 9-28-2006: To intelligently vote for a ballot measure that would increase penalties for a certain crime, you must know, essentially, that the existing punishment is too lenient, and that the new one would not be excessively harsh. I suspect, however, that most who vote for harsher penalties do so simply on the basis that the crime in question is bad and that the proposed law would increase the penalty.
● 10-2-2006: Called the Law Offices of Kottler & Kottler about my 1-800-SUE-THEM proposal. Could not get to speak with Donald Kottler.
● 10-6-2006: Certain elements in literature are seen as metaphors for God. But it seems to me that the larger question is, For what is God a metaphor? Perhaps for a human-friendly universe, or the ultimate and absolute superiority of man (second to God, of course).
● Delivered my 1-800-SUE-THEM proposal package to Donald Kottler’s office.
● 10-8-2006: Much is relative. A genius is a genius largely in virtue of others’ comparative mediocrity.
● The only thing I like about Sundays is that no mail is delivered . . . so I’m relieved of the worry and burden of dealing with what may come (like bills).
● 10-10-2006: In equanimity, one’s ability to act (well) is tested; in arousal, one’s ability to refrain from acting (badly) is tested.
● 10-11-2006: A red-letter day: I finally succeeded in getting the Hovsepians to sign the settlement agreement.
● 10-13-2006: The responses we give to questions in conversation are a product, not only of (our perception of) the truth of the matters inquired about, but also of our goals and purposes in the interaction.
● Not all who are famous are great, and not all who are great are famous.
● The connection between fame and greatness, and vice versa, is an imperfect one.
● When George Bush is asked whether someone agrees with him, Bush often replies to the effect that the person in question “understands.” I resent that remark, because it implies that those who disagree, do so because they don’t understand.
● Understanding understanding, the goal of philosophical hermeneutics, is ultimately unattainable, for such implies understanding our understanding of understanding, which, in turn, means understanding our understanding of our understanding of understanding, and so on ad infinitum, which is inconceivable. Indeed, inasmuch as understanding presupposes knowledge (you cannot understand as true that which is false), and knowledge is impossible, so, too, is understanding.
● What’s the relationship between understanding and knowledge? Does understanding presuppose knowledge? Can you have one without the other? Can you understand something you don’t know? Answer: No, you cannot understand something you don’t know (for example, you can’t understand as true what’s false).
● Sunday, 10-15-2006: Philosophy Club meeting; topic: “Understanding (or philosophical hermeneutics).”
● Based on the brief article on Gadamer, I would characterize that philosopher’s view of hermeneutics thus: We understand new matter always from within our existing understanding. Our understanding of the world is like a painting that we’re both viewing and reworking. Any new matter is a (visual) element added to the existing picture; the new element changes the composition; we may discard it, or it may prompt us to discard certain existing elements (or, perhaps more accurately, to move them to the background). We can never view a new element on a separate canvas by itself, nor exit the view to see what surrounds the painting, such as the easel. The canvas is ever evolving, both passively and through our own action.
● Got Donald Kottler’s rejection letter.
● 10-19-2006: Ultimately, ethical decisions are nonrational. (Nonrational, not irrational.)
● 10-23-2006: Mailed the 1-800-SUE-THEM proposal package to the Law Offices of Larry H. Parker.
● 10-25-2006: Just what does it mean to “change the world”? What sorts of changes would be significant in this context?
● 11-5-2006: If God is spirit, and non-material; why did He create men in material bodies, in a material world? Why not make man as spirit, more like God, simpler? For that matter, why did He create this world at all?
● 11-10-2006: One prominent legal test for sanity (essential to guilt for commission of a crime) is ability to know right and wrong. Since right and wrong are merely subjective, however, that test comes down to agreement with us about right and wrong.
● 11-26-2006: Asking why life is not “fair” is like asking why bird songs don’t sound like Mozart.
● 12-4-2006: President George W. Bush: Bungler in Chief; Criminal in Chief.
● 12-5-2006: Brian Gould’s birthday-party dinner.
● 12-6-2006: To one who asserts that belief in God is necessary for morality, put these questions: Can a nonbeliever feel impelled by conscience? If not, why not? (Of course, such denial would be ridiculous—why can a religious believer feel impelled by conscience, but a nonbeliever can’t?) If so, why is following a perceived command of God moral, but following one’s conscience, without belief in God, not moral? . . . Person A gives to charity because he feels morally compelled to help other men. Person B gives to charity because he feels morally compelled to do what God wants him to do (or because he wants to avoid God’s punishment or to get God’s reward), and he believes that God wants him to help other men. Is B’s charitable giving morally superior to A’s? If so, why?
● 12-10-2006: I think that, when people speak (longingly) of living forever, they neglect to consider the situation in which they might so live.
● Philosophy Club meeting; topic: “Humor.”
● That we sometimes laugh at ourselves contradicts the Superiority theory of humor.
● 12-14-2006: The Iranian president’s vociferous denial of the Jewish Holocaust, the purpose of which denial is presumably to somehow undercut Israel’s right to exist, seems counterproductive to that end, for this reason. If the Holocaust’s nonexistence militates against Israel’s right to be; then, logically, the Holocaust’s existence bolsters Israel’s right to be. But any contrary rhetoric notwithstanding, everyone knows that the Holocaust did happen. Hence (by introducing the proposition that the Holocaust favors Israel), the Iranians’ Holocaust denial, far from undermining Israel, actually supports her.
● To those opposed to vaccinating young public-school girls for cervical cancer on the grounds that to do so would encourage sexual behavior by the young (cervical cancer is sexually transmitted), I would ask the following questions. Suppose that cervical cancer did not exist. Would you favor creating the disease because it would discourage youthful sex? If not, how would you distinguish refusing to vaccinate against the disease from creating it? Suppose the disease did not exist, that someone had the power to create it, and exercised that power, thus bringing the malady into existence. Would you favor undoing such action, even though it would encourage sex among youth? If so, how do you distinguish ending the disease from vaccinating against it? For that matter, why not pass a law making youthful sex punishable by death? After all, that, too, would discourage the practice. But isn’t refusing to vaccinate against a deadly sexually transmitted disease in order to discourage sex tantamount to imposing the death penalty for it?
● 12-15-2006: Only intrinsic values would be truly and strictly commensurable.
● 12-22-2006: Asking whether the United States, in deliberating on how to proceed in Iraq, should talk to Iran or Syria (countries adjacent to Iraq), is like asking whether a man who has broken into a dwelling and is in the process of raping the female owner, should, in deciding what to do next, consult with the woman’s neighbors.
● 12-29-2006: The best preparation for death (to the limited extent that it can be prepared for) is to have lived as one would have wished. In my own case, it’s to have maximized my creative productivity (and in such a way that I’m “satisfied” with it).
● 12-31-2006: Like everyone, I suppose, there are times of great anguish and anxiety when I feel the temptation to pray. Then, though, I think, For what shall I pray? For improvement of my fortunes, perhaps? But then I wonder: Even if God exists, why should He grant my wish thus . . . when, just today, and every day, He lets thousands of apparently good persons become grievously injured, or die from trauma, war, disease, starvation? On what basis should He put my welfare above theirs? Why should God specially favor me over all those others?