Jon Cogburn's Blog

David Brooks

. . . .The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going end up challenging faith in the Bible.

Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development.

Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.

Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real.

This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.

If you survey the literature (and I’d recommend books by Newberg, Daniel J. Siegel, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Jonathan Haidt, Antonio Damasio and Marc D. Hauser if you want to get up to speed), you can see that certain beliefs will spread into the wider discussion.

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism.

In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day. I’m not qualified to take sides, believe me. I’m just trying to anticipate which way the debate is headed. We’re in the middle of a scientific revolution. It’s going to have big cultural effects.

Jonathan Gottschall

In some cases, it's possible to use scientific methods to question cherished tenets of modern literary theory. Consider the question of the "beauty myth": Most literary scholars believe that the huge emphasis our culture places on women's beauty is driven by a beauty myth, a suite of attitudes that maximizes female anxiety about appearance in order, ultimately, to maintain male dominance. It's easy to find evidence for this idea in our culture's poems, plays, and fairy tales: As one scholar after another has documented, Western literature is rife with sexist-seeming beauty imagery.

Scholars tend to take this evidence as proof that Western culture is unusually sexist. But is this really the case? In a study to be published in the next issue of the journal Human Nature, my colleagues and I addressed this question by collecting and analyzing descriptions of physical attractiveness in thousands of folktales from all around the globe. What we found was that female characters in folktales were about six times more likely than their male counterparts to be described with a reference to their attractiveness. That six-to-one ratio held up in Western literature and also across scores of traditional societies. So literary scholars have been absolutely right about the intense stress on women's beauty in Western literature, but quite wrong to conclude that this beauty myth says something unique about Western culture. Its ultimate roots apparently lie not in the properties of any specific culture, but in something deeper in human nature.

Or consider this shibboleth of modern literary theory: the author is dead. Roughly speaking, this statement means that authors have no power over their readers. When we read stories we do not so much yield to the author's creation as create it anew ourselves - manufacturing our own highly idiosyncratic meanings as we go along. This idea has radical implications: If it is true, there can be no shared understanding of what literary works mean. But like so much else that passes for knowledge in contemporary literary studies, this assertion has its basis only in the swaggering authority of its asserter - in this case, Roland Barthes, one of the founding giants of poststructuralist literary theory.

Is this one of those squishy, unfalsifiable literary claims? No, it is also testable. Hijacking methods from psychology, Joseph Carroll, John Johnson, Dan Kruger, and I surveyed the emotional and analytic responses of 500 literary scholars and avid readers to characters from scores of 19th-century British novels. We wanted to determine how different their reading experiences truly were. Did reactions to characters vary profoundly from reader to reader? As we write in "Graphing Jane Austen," a book undergoing peer review, there were variations in what our readers thought and felt about literary characters, but it was expertly contained by the authors within narrow ranges. Our conclusion: rumors of the author's demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Another type of investigation exploits the massive processing power of computers to generate new information and ideas about literary history. Great gains have been made in recent years with stylometric studies, the computerized crunching of sentences that can establish an author's stylistic fingerprint. As Brian Vickers explains in his book, "Shakespeare, Co-Author," stylometry has helped settle long, angry debates about whether or not Shakespeare wrote some of his plays with coauthors (the answer is that he very probably did). Similarly, Colin Martindale's book "The Clockwork Muse" used computer algorithms and experimental simulations to challenge conventional views of how literary traditions change over time. Instead of changing quickly in response to large-scale sociopolitical shifts, as has frequently been argued, Martindale found that literary traditions actually change gradually and predictably. From this Martindale provocatively argues that the principal driver of artistic change is not social, political, or religious upheaval, but the steady pressure on individual artists to "make it new."

Jonathan Gottschall

. . . .over the last decade or so, more and more literary scholars have agreed that the field has become moribund, aimless, and increasingly irrelevant to the concerns not only of the "outside world," but also to the world inside the ivory tower. Class enrollments and funding are down, morale is sagging, huge numbers of PhDs can't find jobs, and books languish unpublished or unpurchased because almost no one, not even other literary scholars, wants to read them.

. . . .Though the causes of the crisis are multiple and complex, I believe the dominant factor is easily identified: We literary scholars have mostly failed to generate surer and firmer knowledge about the things we study. While most other fields gradually accumulate new and durable understanding about the world, the great minds of literary studies have, over the past few decades, chiefly produced theories and speculation with little relevance to anyone but the scholars themselves. So instead of steadily building a body of solid knowledge about literature, culture, and the human condition, the field wanders in continuous circles, bending with fashions and the pronouncements of its charismatic leaders.

. . . .Contemporary literary theory, for instance, is deeply rooted in the "blank slate" theory of the mind - the idea that the human mind is overwhelmingly shaped by social and cultural influences, rather than by biology. But this theory has perished in the sciences, killed off by advances in evolutionary biology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and other related fields. So most of the "big ideas" in contemporary literary studies have been flawed from their inception - they have been based, at least in part, on failed theories of human nature. Armed with a current understanding of the sciences of the mind, literary scholars could develop surer interpretations of individual works, answer larger questions, such as why literary plots vary within such narrow bounds, and even plumb the ultimate wellsprings of the human animal's strange, ardent love affair with story.

. . . .Instead of forcing professors to rigorously test their big ideas, as scientific methods do, literary methods encourage us merely to collect and highlight evidence that seems to confirm them. The result of this laxity, as Berkeley's Frederick Crews points out, is that "our bogus experiments succeed every time." And since it is so hard to be wrong in literary studies, it is equally hard to be right. So books and papers pile up but, more often than not, genuine advances in knowledge do not. To fix this problem, literary scholars need to develop more rigorous ways of testing their ideas, demand a higher standard of proof from their colleagues, and be willing to discard the theories that fail.

These problems with our theories and methods are compounded by problems of attitude. Over the last several decades literary studies has been deeply colored by postmodern skepticism about the possibility of developing new ideas or knowledge that are in any sense "truer" than what came before. It has also aggressively committed itself to the idea that scholarship can - and should - be a means to achieve political ends. Though well intentioned, this subordination of scholarship to political activism has distorted almost everything we've produced over the last several decades.

So bring together obsolete theory, inadequate methods, unbridled ideological bias, and a spirit of surrender to "unknowability," and you have the modern situation in academic literary study - a system that seems to be designed not to generate reliable and durable knowledge.

Patañjali

The projection of friendliness, compassion, gladness, and equanimity towards objects--be they joyful, sorrowful, meritorious, or demeritorious--bring about the pacification of consciousness.

Friends of the Stooges- I Wanna Be Your Dog

Futon

House

Iggy Pop

Joan Jett

R.E.M. and friends

Sonic Youth and friends

Uncle Tupelo

mother's day thoughts

One great thing about having a child is that you appreciate and understand your own parents a lot more, both the amount of labor they put into raising you and their love too.

One thing that has long struck me about children is how quickly they can go from intense joy to intense sadness and back, and over what seem to be fairly minor things. As you grow older this evens out considerably.

One of the strangest things about parenting is you get something of a return to this. Loving somebody so vulnerable so much more than yourself subjects you to tremendous joy and also tremendous terror for the child's well being.

Some people say "there are no atheists in foxholes," something I know by way of a number of veteran friends (and a reading of history) to be false. However, having a child does tend to make you more religious. From the joy you feel the strong need to praise existence and thank God and the terror makes you beg for divine protection.

I hope there is divine protection, and I thank God for grandmotherly protection. When I had to get an endoscopy and Emily had to drive me home, her parents came and helped out with Thomas, and when I had to get my gall bladder out my parents came and helped out.

Bertrand Russell

All knowledge, we find, must be built up upon our instinctive beliefs, and if these are rejected, nothing is left. But among our instinctive beliefs some are much stronger than others, while many have, by habit and association, become entangled with other beliefs, not really instinctive, but falsely supposed to be part of what is believed instinctively.

Philosophy should show us the hierarchy of our instinctive beliefs, beginning with those we hold most strongly, and presenting each as much isolated and as free from irrelevant additions as possible. It should take care to show that, in the form in which they are finally set forth, our instinctive beliefs do not clash, but form a harmonious system. There can never be any reason for rejecting one instinctive belief except that it clashes with others; thus, if they are found to harmonize, the whole system becomes worthy of acceptance.

It is of course possible that all or any of our beliefs may be mistaken, and therefore all ought to be held with at least some slight element of doubt. But we cannot have reason to reject a belief except on the ground of some other belief. Hence, by organizing our instinctive beliefs and their consequences, by considering which among them is most possible, if necessary, to modify or abandon, we can arrive, on the basis of accepting as our sole data what we instinctively believe, at an orderly systematic organization of our knowledge, in which, though the possibility of error remains, its likelihood is diminished by the interrelation of the parts and by the critical scrutiny which has preceded acquiescence.

This function, at least, philosophy can perform. Most philosophers, rightly or wrongly, believe that philosophy can do much more than this -- that it can give us knowledge, not otherwise attainable, concerning the universe as a whole, and concerning the nature of ultimate reality. Whether this be the case or not, the more modest function we have spoken of can certainly be performed by philosophy, and certainly suffices, for those who have once begun to doubt the adequacy of common sense, to justify the arduous and difficult labours that philosophical problems involve.

when (no longer) under ether

Once you are no longer on pain medication, recovering from surgery feels like waiting around a few weeks as your soul slowly returns. It is not fun. It's hard to concentrate on anything and when people call on the phone you end up being a very bad conversationalist. And not being able to pick up your child is a horrible feeling.

I don't know to what extent this is a function of the physical trauma and to what extent it's a function of general anaesthesia.

Maybe it's practice for getting old.

I was able to do a little yoga yesterday, watch Thomas for a while, and also do a little work on the book. I think by tomorrow I'll be able to play a litte music with Emily again. So I really am blessed, and if I can keep filling my days and evenings with these things then maybe getting old will be O.K. anyhow.

Bertrand Russell

Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.

Pruning Shears

Republicans held all the levers of power in Washington for six years. They turned budget surpluses into huge deficits, which put pressure on the dollar. The financial industry’s house of cards got blown down and the Federal Reserve cut rates to head off a recession. That put even more pressure on the dollar. Its value sank against other currencies, and investors have taken refuge in commodities, driving those prices up. Republicans’ aggressive, swaggering foreign policy has shot uncertainty through the market, driving (dollar denominated) oil to record highs. Simply put, their policies have put us in a position where we can’t deficit spend, can’t lower prices, can’t cut rates and can’t do much to restore value to our currency. Even simpler, every time you fill up your tank or buy a loaf of bread you pay the Bush Tax.

Tom Delay was described admiringly as “The Hammer” for his ability to get Republicans to approve these policies. It was a fun party while it lasted but the bill has come due. We have structural problems that won’t go away easily or quickly, and voters have reasonably concluded which party bears the most blame. Even after they lost Congress last year they marched in lockstep behind the President as he continued a massively unpopular war. I have been very critical of the Democrats at times for not standing up to bullying from the White House, but the GOP has been far worse. They have pledged fealty to leaders dedicated to profligacy, incompetence and secrecy. They have unstintingly supported the administration’s grotesque streak of sadism (see this week’s illustration(via)), and declared themselves to be Republican before American. None of these issues will be eclipsed by manufactured talking points or trivial narratives. The effects of their governance are plainly and painfully before the country’s eyes on (literally) a daily basis, and that is not going away before November. A handful of conservatives such as Andrew Sullivan recognized the new direction and forcefully rejected it (some recent examples), and they will be the intellectual inheritors when the time comes to rebuild. The party is in the process of self-immolation, and those who stepped away in disgust have no obligation to commit Sati.