I’ve got two books waiting to be reviewed, but frankly, not tonight. It’s pouring down rain, my allergy is acting up, and I’ve got heartburn from the bad pizza at a local pizza parlor we’ve made it a point not to go to for years now except that my son had some gift certificates he wanted to use. I am not feeling the slightest bit creative, just at the moment. Humph.

Found at Mirabilis, the Lord of the Rings dating guide:.

I received a copy of C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man for Christmas; I’ll be reviewing it eventually, but I want to re-read it first.

One of Lewis’ points, though, is that the meaning of the word “reason” has shifted since the Middle Ages–indeed, since antiquity. Today what we mean by a reasonable or rational argument is one that follows the rules of logic. To the medievals, as to the ancients, the word meant something more–it meant logic, of course, but it also meant the recognition that certain truths were self-evident.

As, for example, that honesty is better than deceit; that integrity is better than corruption; that courage is better than cowardice; that sexual fidelity is better than promiscuity; that industry is better than sloth; i.e., that wisdom is better than foolishness.

The interesting thing about these kinds of self-evident values is that you can’t really make a rational argument for them (in the modern sense of the word)–that is, from first principles. As Lewis shows in his book, any such attempt either fails at the outset or relies on some other standard of value that is to be taken as given. Try it–try to think of an argument in favor of honesty that doesn’t involve an appeal to some other intangible value.

I’ll have more to say about Lewis’ argument, and the consequences that follow from it, when I actually review the book. In the meantime, I have some observations.

The first is that the primary lesson I draw from the history of philosophy is that you can’t prove anything of interest about the real world from first principles. I’m thinking particularly of Mr. Hume; he began with the axiom that he should only believe what he saw, heard, tasted, smelled, or touched directly–and ended up with solipsism. In short, he proved that he couldn’t prove that anything existed but his own mind. Some have regarded this as a profound result; I regard it is a reductio ad absurdum. His axioms were too few, and at least partially incorrect to boot.

It has long been my view that any philosophy that doesn’t take objective reality–the world as it is–as its starting point is doomed to end in futility. Thus, the notion that any attempt to derive a worthwhile system of values from first principles is inherently flawed doesn’t distress me; it’s what I’d expect.

The second observation stems from the history of mathematics. Early in the 20th century there was an attempt to devise a set of axioms from which all of mathematics could be derived–a system in which every true statement of mathematics could be proven. Then Kurt Goedel came along and proved that you can’t do it–that if your system is powerful enough to describe all of mathematics, then necessarily there will be true propositions within that system that cannot be proved. That is to say, there will be mathematical statements whose truth will be evident to the mathematician but for which no proof exists.

Now bear in mind that formal mathematics is all about proving things from first principles, and that it has nothing to do with contingent reality–and yet, even in this confined system, there are truths which must be seen to be self-evident.
It’s improper, of course, to generalize from Goedel’s theorem to the wider world…but it seems to me that objective reality is far more wild and complex and rich than mathematics, and that any formal philosophical system (like Hume’s) that attempts to encompass it must likewise be larger and richer and more complex than mathematics. (And isn’t that a thought to give one pause! As if math wasn’t hard enough!) I don’t think anyone is likely to accomplish it; mathematical reasoning is difficult enough, and one could argue that math is simply that branch of philosophy in which it’s straightforward to tell whether or not you’ve made an error in your reasoning.

From this point of view, it once again doesn’t surprise me that attempts to describe the nature of the world through formal reasoning from first principles have failed to capture its richness. And further, it doesn’t surprise me that many important things about the nature of the world will be self-evident but unproveable–like the value of honesty, integrity, courage, compassion, and fidelity.

It’s the attempt to dispose of our traditional values through logical argument that’s unreasonable, not our acceptance of them.

Over a hundred years ago, someone with a fine sense of humor and real talent made this. I’m really very impressed, and I wish I had one.

After an absurdly long silence, given his resolution to post daily, Ian’s back with five (count ’em, five) new posts. I guess that averages out to one a day. Start here and keep scrolling. Don’t stop until you’ve read his remarks on cynicism in America.

Over at Byzantium’s Shores, a blog I get to all too rarely because it seems to take forever to load (yes, I’m on a dial-up connection), Jaquandor has his own review of Bridge of Birds.

Not only that, but thanks to Jaquandor’s review the worthy Michelle, a blogger I’d not before encountered, has also now read it and has some delightful comments on Hughart and Chinese history. Neat stuff.

Or, why Spot wasn’t invited to church.

During the Summer Olympics many years ago, there was a series of ads that showed scenes of people with a wide variety of products. And in each scene, the people smiled and said, “We’re Beatrice!” Apparently Beatrice was some sort of conglomerate, and wanted a little name recognition. I’ve not heard of them since, but I guess the ads worked…whenever I go check out this website I think of those ads.

It’s not fair, of course; this Beatrice is not a conglomerate but a literary web log. Go check ’em out.

My referrer logs indicate that I got thirteen incoming links from the 2 Blowhards yesterday. I usually get two or three, but thirteen is unusually high–and I can’t see anything on the Blowhards’ blog to account for it.

Well, howdy, anyway!

Update: Oddly, I’m also getting a bunch of referrals from something called http://www.webbuffet.com. When I go there it looks more like a commercial site or something, and it seems to take forever to load. Would anyone care to enlighten me about what it is?

Oh, and how come every day I’ve got two or three or four links coming in from the Reverend Anti-Christ Pizza’s weblog? I’ve gone and looked at it a couple of times and although I never see anything there that links here, it’s been in my logs every single day for months.

The February issue of Ex Libris Reviews is now on-line. Go check it out it, if only for Craig Clarke’s reviews, which haven’t appeared here on the web log.