The web site of Jeremy Stangroom.
Here’s an odd thing.
My brother was murdered fifteen years ago. During this time, my mother has manifested less rage and fury towards the perpetrators than the New Atheists routinely aim in the direction of Chris Mooney.
Makes you think, doesn’t it…?
Comments Off | Ethics, Philosophy, Science, religion
This is more absurd than most of these cases.
If it’s true, she’s an idiot. But, for God’s sake, it is an absurd over-reaction to prosecute a 25 year old woman because she had consensual sex with a 16 year old boy. And the boy removed her knickers.
The world has gone mad. A young woman’s life potentially screwed up because some 16 year old boy was lucky enough to have sex with her. Ridiculous.
Update: Good News.
Now I suspect most people of a certain age will have seen this picture.
There’s a curious thing in the report. It says that:
Martin Elliott was a photographic student when he persuaded his girlfriend at the time, 18-year-old Fiona Butler, to pose for the shot
And also that:
The picture was taken in 1976 and was first published in a calendar marking the 1977 Silver Jubilee
And then:
Ms Butler, now 50, later married Ian Walker, a businessman, and the couple live with their children in Stourport
Unless my math is hopeless there’s something not quite right here. If Ms Butler is now 50, it means that she was born between April 3rd 1959 and April 2nd 1960.
If the picture was taken in 1976, then she was either 16 (if it was taken before April 2nd) or 17 (if it was taken after April 1st). But there’s no way she was 18. I think that’s right.
Of course, this isn’t very interesting, except people in the UK get a bit nervous about this sort of picture if the model is under-18. And the Daily Telegraph especially gets nervous. I don’t care, though.
So here’s a puzzling thing. Suppose a friend tells me he is desperate to be a father, and I notice he isn’t having sex with any women. So I say to him:
“Look mate, at least there’s the potential you’ll be a father if you shag a few women, but if you don’t… well, there isn’t. Stands to reason, don’t it!”
Not sure why I’ve started talking like an oik. But anyway that’s not the point. The point is this. Suppose my friend, captivated by my wisdom, then spends thirty years having sex with women. But – luckily for them! – they don’t get pregnant. He then comes back and says:
Oi, you said I had the potential to be a father. I’ve wasted thirty years of my life shagging women when it’s obvious I never had that potential!
So the question is: did he ever have the potential to be a father?
Okay, so let’s rule out the obvious point. He isn’t infertile. He’s just been unlucky. So maybe the thought here is we can say he had the potential since what we mean is something to the effect that if he had made choice x, and then y had occurred, he would have become a father. He had the potential – in fact, probably there were a large number of paths he could have taken which would have resulted in fatherhood – it just so happened he inadvertently made the wrong choices. But he could have made the right choices. So the potential was there.
Except maybe he couldn’t have made the right choices. It is not particularly counterintuitive to suppose that the choices we make we were always going to make. It’s a fairly standard line for people who think determinism is true. It doesn’t necessarily mean we don’t have free will – because it is possible to think that free will is compatible with determinism. But I’m not sure it leaves intact the idea we possess potentials we will never realise. If it doesn’t, then – assuming determinism is true (and perhaps even if it isn’t) – my friend was never potentially a father. It’s just neither of us knew it at the time.
(I’ve been musing about this stuff because of statements to the effect that: there’s more chance that x will happen if you do y. Presumably what we mean when we say that is something like: given 1000 people, more out of those who do y, will achieve x, than out of those who don’t do y. No problem. But just because it is true for an aggregate doesn’t mean it’s true for a single individual. And yes, I say this realising quite well that an aggregate isn’t anything other than a collection of single individuals.)
Okay, so this story is pretty unedifying all round. But surely, the judge is confused:
Judge Alexander said: “This is not a usual case. You [the defendant] were bought off by the child’s parents, who received £18,000 from you in order not to go to the police.
“That is reprehensible behaviour on their part. But you complied with that position.
Unless I’m missing something, the defendant wasn’t bought off, rather he bought off the parents in return for their silence.
It’s easy to judge here. And I hope that I wouldn’t have taken the 18k. But, but… I don’t know, I wonder if I would have found excuses as to why it was the right thing to do?
It’s nice that Baroness Uddin has been cleared of any wrongdoing over her expenses claims.
However, it is certainly arguable that she ought to be shamed for having (jointly) written – or at least for having put her name to – the following:
No religion of the world restricts choice, and we believe that good parents cannot either.
No religion of the world restricts choice!!!! And I’m not quoting it out of context (see Page 1).
What on earth were you thinking, Baroness?
This is simultaneously amusing and rather sad.
Most of all though it is more evidence – if more evidence is needed after the on-going shenanigans of the atheist wars (“Oh no, Chris Mooney is hosting a podcast!”) – that atheists, freethinkers (ha!), and the like, are no more rational than anybody else. (Probably).
Many of the philosophers who have written on the internet have argued that internet relationships are in various ways diminished compared to everyday, embodied kinds. For example, Hubert Dreyfus in his On The Internet argues that:
our sense of the reality of things and people and our ability to interact effectively with them depend on the way our body works silently in the background. Its ability to get a grip on things provides our sense of the reality of what we are doing and what we are ready to do…All this our body does so effortlessly, pervasively, and successfully that it is hardly noticed. That is why it is so easy to think that in cyberspace we could get along without it, and why it would, in fact, be impossible to do so.
It is easy to understand how philosophers come to make these kinds of arguments. Many important facets of our personal relationships seem to require face-to-face contact. Dreyfus, for example, argues that trust in another person is in part based on the experience that they do not take advantage of our vulnerability when given the opportunity to so in a face-to-face situation. Certainly it does seem to be true that we can have a level of confidence in people we meet in person that is not available in online relationships. Particularly, the opportunity for gross deception is minimised in a face-face-situation. The philosopher Gordon Graham, and countless other people, have pointed out that it is very easy to deceive people on the internet by inventing wholly imaginary personas – something which it is much more difficult to achieve in the non-virtual world.
I’m putting together an online activity about fear of death. Part of it will involve two tests of mental agility. These have to be at the same level of difficulty. So I need to pre-test the two tests. That’s where you come in!
If you could follow this link, and do the two tests – it’ll only take a couple of minutes – I’d be very grateful.
There are other tests on the Philosophy Experiments site that you should try out if you haven’t already.
If you have any problems with any of the tests, or any comments – particularly if you think any of the questions in the mental agility tests are much more difficult than average – then just let me know here.
Thanks!