The View from Sliabh Mannan

Sunday, 12 November 2023

Is there any evidence that the word “God” means anything at all? (Quora)

I was asked this in a Quora comments column, in my capacity as a former teacher of philosophy. In that same capacity, I tried to answer it. Please note, I always made it my policy to try to teach students how to think, not what to think.

There is evidence that theists use the term to refer to something, even if they are not able fully to describe what that something is.

There is evidence that atheists use the term to refer to something, even if they consider that something to be non-existent.

We all use words to describe things of which we have no direct perceptual experience. Included amongst these are things that we do believe to exist and things that we do not believe to exist. For example, I have no direct experience of albatrosses, but I have no reason to suppose that people who claim such experience are lying. I also have no direct experience of wyverns, and yet I doubt the testimony of those who have claimed such experience, even though I am unable to prove the non-existence of wyverns.

This is probably accounted for simply by my having been brought up in a “civilised” society disposed to accept the former but not the latter. My understanding is conditioned by my upbringing. Likewise, my education has enabled me to understand technicalities in my field which are deeper than common understanding, and that is why I considered myself able to teach. In other fields, I have no understanding beyond the fact that people who claim to know say that something exists. I choose to believe them or not based on a predisposition which is just part of my way of looking at things, nothing more.

In other words, the word ‘god’ has a meaning, just as the word ‘wyvern’ has a meaning. Both mean different things to different people, and some people will believe the word does not refer to an extant being while others will believe that it does, but there is sufficient mutual understanding of the thing referred to that we can use the word to communicate with each other.

Tuesday, 7 November 2023

How can you begin a short story without knowing how it ends? (Quora)

There is a long-standing division of practice between the planners (or plotters) and the pantsters (or improvisers) of the writing world.

The plotters are probably better placed to provide standard submissions to publishers who like specific types of story, written in ways that they know their customers are happy with. In other words, plotters can write consistent work to a consistent pattern which they know is going to sell. They are good at commercial writing.

I belong to the second group, which means I usually begin a story with no real idea of how it is going to end. Indeed, one of my main motivations to keep going is to find out how it ends. Sometimes I need to go back and adjust earlier bits of the story so as to foreshadow the end that I arrived at rather than the one I may have once thought I was working towards.

Not all original work is good. Sometimes different is worse. But every now and again, a pantster will come up with something innovatory, original, and good. And it won’t sell.

All too rarely, an original work will get past the publishers’ submissions filter system known as slush readers (or assistant editors), who are usually schooled in conformity and tend to reject submissions that don’t fit their employers’ known preferences.

If a pantster story reaches an editor who is willing to take risks, it has a chance of publication. That editor may even flag your work to ensure that future submissions also get through to him.

And very, very rarely, one of these stories will become so popular that it makes your name and a star is born.

In other words, if you shoot for the stars you probably won’t hit them, but you’ll have fun trying. If you need your writing to pay the bills, you should probably write what you already know is going to sell.

Tuesday, 3 October 2023

On Good Advice

There was once a King of England called Ethelred, who is today known as Ethelred the Unready. Our assumption is that the king was always ill-prepared for crises. In fact the king was not unready at all, but frequently rushed into ill-considered actions which made his problems worse rather than better. The actual Anglo-Saxon word used to describe him was “unrǣd” or “unrede” which meant ill-advised, or lacking good counsel.

I think it stands to reason that the further a decision-maker is removed from the problems he is seeking to solve, the less well-informed his decisions will be. It is no good him seeking advice only from his friends, or his placemen who are closer to the action. His friends will tell him he is not at fault, because they naturally do not want to hurt his feelings; his placemen will tell him that they think he wants to hear because they want to keep their places. The longer this goes on, the more detached from reality the decision-maker will become, until in the worst case scenario the mistakes become disastrous.

The first requirement of good decision-making is good data. Ethelred should have got rid of his bad advisers and chosen others who were willing and able to tell him the truth. They would, however, have needed to speak the truth dispassionately. You can’t shout abuse at the king and expect him to listen.

Ethelred should also have delegated tactical decisions to those who were close enough to know the details of what was going on, reserving only strategic choices for himself.

Had he done so, England might never have had a Danish king.

Sunday, 1 October 2023

Far Out Politics

As used in political discourse, the term “far” (left or right) means extremist.

In practice however, people tend to measure distance from their own point of view, rather than from an accepted central point, which means the term “far” is nowadays used increasingly loosely. This relativism devalues the language by describing quite moderate views as extremist, hence leaving no unique words to describe real extremism when need arises.

Broadly speaking, a centrist is a believer in moderate political policies. This should involve rational discussion, respecting the rights of others to think differently, and being pragmatic about potentially helpful proposals from whatever political origin.

A characteristic of both far left and far right beliefs is a complete certainty that one’s own view is correct and an intolerance of dissent. This orthodoxy can sometimes be ruthlessly enforced.

Unfortunately, today, intolerance is permeating traditionally centrist democracies. The term “liberal”, particularly in The USA but sadly also in the UK, has come to be associated with an intransigence that is the antithesis of classical liberalism. Freedom of speech is being severely undermined, and holding any viewpoint other than fashionable orthodoxy invites popular opprobrium. This tendency is exacerbated by social media and its associated “echo chambers”.

As a result, we are already seeing the erosion of democracy and an increasing reluctance to accept democratic decisions that differ from a person’s own view.

To some extent therefore, the term “far” as applied to politics is becoming meaningless, and a great many people across the political spectrum could be described as extremist.

Wednesday, 2 August 2023

Vukovar

Young people who have not studied recent European history will probably not know the name of this town in Northern Croatia. Older people, like me, still feel it best to tread softly and with respect around the streets and the bridge that were hardly ever out of the news between August and November 1991. The place is still not what it once was; the people may never be.

There are two diametrically opposed points of view, and we heard both on our tour of the Balkans. The Serb-Croat War may have been thirty years ago, but people still argue their case as though it were yesterday.

(Left: the waterfront).

The besiegers shot down the Croatian flag from the water tower on a daily basis. Every night, two defenders made the increasingly dangerous climb up the damaged structure and put the flag back.

The old bridge (right) divided the Serb and Croat quarters, but in the old days nobody cared. The memorial to J-M Nicolier, a French volunteer, ensures that today nobody forgets.

Trpinja Road, remembered as the Tank Graveyard, and the memorial to its defending commander, Blago Zadro.

The lesson, still as relevant today, seems to me to be that if you must destroy a town and expel its people to prove that it's yours, then even if you win, nobody but you will ever believe that it's yours.

Saturday, 17 June 2023

Abyss & Apex

Wednesday, 17 May 2023

A Most Unusual Proposal

To be published in Story Unlikely's June issue (first week of June).

Not only is this story "A Most Unusual Proposal", but it's a most unusual genre for Philip Brian Hall - an Edwardian comedy of manners. A sort of Saki / P G Wodehouse style of tale.

There are no spaceships. There are no magicians. The only battle involved is the battle of the sexes.

Worth reading for the novelty value alone!

Anyone can read it by signing up for free:

Home page: https://www.storyunlikely.com/

Saturday, 13 May 2023

The Ultimate Irish American

An appeal to my US friends. If there is anything you can do to prevent Joe Biden ever visiting Northern Ireland / Ireland again, please do it.

Bull, meet china shop. Whoops, I probably shouldn't have said that.

I don't suppose there's anything anyone can do to stop him saying the sort of things he's just said back in the USA about how he had to go there to stop the Brits reneging on their agreements, but it went over like a lead balloon with the people whose agreement is still needed to get the Stormont parliament back up and running.

The theory is, American intervention is needed to hold the centre ground between two groups that can still barely talk to each other.

It is not all that helpful to endorse one side and shout "Hoorah!"

No, really, not even a little bit.

If at all possible, and in full awareness that foreign relations is not really at the top of US priorities, could you not find someone a tiny bit more worldly-wise?

Pretty please.

Friday, 5 May 2023

Mr Keynes’ Revolution – E J Barnes

I should declare an interest since, in her youth, the author was my pupil. Yet if ever there was a case of the teacher being taught by the student, this is surely it.

“Mr Keynes’ Revolution” introduced me to Maynard Keynes the man, as opposed to Maynard Keynes the ground-breaking economist. In the aftermath of The First World War, the tectonic plates of economics had begun moving as surely as those of politics, but hardly anyone realised the earthquake was coming. The illusory safety of a return to the status quo antebellum appealed strongly to upper middle class financiers and public figures, who thought once they’d got over the inevitable punishment of the wicked Germans, the whole world could get back to normal and life could go on as if nothing had happened. Why was Keynes almost alone in perceiving that not only was the old way gone for ever, but that every great step aimed at reviving it, from The Treaty of Versailles to the return to The Gold Standard, was digging it an even deeper grave?

E J Barnes brings vividly to life Keynes’ transition from member of The Bloomsbury Set, a commune of artists and intellectuals, inhabiting their own world, and relying on other people to provide for their basic needs, to a campaigning newspaper owner fearlessly speaking truth to power, very much a man of the real world, and defiant of the ostracism that came his way because of his perceived treachery to his class. In particular, she focuses on the seminal importance of his remarkable love story, as the academic economic genius encounters an exiled Russian ballerina, also a star in her own firmament, but one only too well aware of the fragility of both her art and of civilisation itself.

In those social divisions of the 1920s, I see a parallel with recent years. We, too, are experiencing a ruinous European war and a near universal desire for the aggressor to be punished. We, too, have a country divided between a middle class who thought the EU offered the way of life they desired and a working class who saw their wages depressed and their livelihoods threatened. Those who escape class divisions of the past find themselves mired in the artificially-contrived strife of identity politics just when we need society to pull together. We see a world economy devastated by Covid just as the last century had its postwar influenza. We have a ruling elite with the same incomprehension of the larger picture and the same resistance to radical change, and we are again staggering from one world financial crisis to another because, as yet, we have no Keynes to show us how the institutions of our century must be reformed to cope with it all.

I recommend this book. It conveys a powerful message in wonderfully evocative and very readable prose.

Wednesday, 3 May 2023

Dragon Gems Spring 2023

Let your imagination bloom with these mind-opening tales

Featuring stories by Veronica L. Asay, Warren Benedetto, Jason P. Burnham, Michael D. Burnside, Laura J. Campbell, Arasibo Campeche, Jay Caselberg, Philip Brian Hall, Tom Howard, Tim Kane, Benjamin C. Kinney, Stephen McQuiggan, Mike Morgan, Sam Muller, Jason Restrick, and Elyse Russell.

My story is "Dead Man's Hand", in which a space shipwreck survivor, on the point of starving to death, is unexpectedly dealt the opportunity of a lifetime.

This is the first to be published of a series of stories I'm writing about "The Wreck of the Hesperus", in which I follow the scattered survivors to disparate parts of the universe and some adventures I hope you'll find interesting. Maybe someday a collection, but meanwhile, a start.

Saturday, 25 March 2023

Trans Athletes

While society, for its purposes, may choose to distinguish between gender and biological sex, it seems illogical for sport in general to do the same without reservation.

The sex of the jockey may be of no significance to the horse in, say, racing or eventing, but it would certainly make a difference, to the point of being dangerous, in a female contact sport such as rugby.

Athletics falls between these two extremes. Physical danger is seldom present, but the advantages of male physique mean that even modest performers in male events can become champions in female events.

The result in the short run is to disappoint and discourage elite female-born athletes who have no hope of competing successfully against elite trans athletes. In the longer term, women would be likely to abandon such sports, and the loss of female role models would soon discourage recruitment of new female participants. In short, these sports would cease to be female sports.

A second issue arising is the admission of male-bodied athletes to female changing rooms, toilets etc.

In my judgement both these issues present female-born athletes with unnecessary, unfair and unacceptable challenges.

My understanding is that the athletics authorities are looking instead at introducing an open category alongside or instead of the male category. The obvious advantage here is that trans athletes would not be required to undertake testosterone reduction or other potentially harmful measures to gain admission. This looks like a more sensible way forward and doesn’t involve banning anyone from sports.

Thursday, 23 March 2023

Why Don't People in Europe Have Fathers? (Quora)

Personally, I blame Martin Luther. As a result of The Reformation, half of Europe turned Protestant and all the R C Fathers were thrown out. Except those who concealed themselves in priest holes.

Of course, in England under the rain of Bloody Mary they were allowed out of their holes. Except that it can’t have been real Bloody Mary because the English didn’t have any vodka at the time. And they couldn’t grow tomatoes for the juice because of the climate. (They are now attempting to remedy this deficiency by pursuing climate change.)

And anyway if it had been real Bloody Mary the English would never have invented carrying an umbrella in case of rain, they’d have carried glasses instead. Or buckets. But nowadays, they can all get glasses on the NHS. Also, you never find ‘Calais’ engraved on a vodka glass, unless preceded by the words “Un souvenir de...” So that proves it.

As a result of this the English had to pass a lot of Anti-Recusant Acts, which banned anyone seen with a Father from being King. Although Father Time was allowed to play cricket at Lords. And Old Father Thames was allowed to keep rolling along. But Oliver Cromwell notoriously banned Father Christmas, which was a horrible thing to do and led to The Restoration Comedy.

But I think you may have got the wrong end of the stick from hearing certain modern English politicians referring to anyone who has ever been anywhere near Brussels as bar stewards. Or a very similar term. Now as everyone knows, in days gone by (and even before the rain of Bloody Mary) people without fathers were known as bar stewards. But they aren’t any more.

So it’s not true that people in Brussels are all bar stewards. Probably. They may however be sprouts off a similar plant.

Monday, 16 January 2023

Tales from The Magician's Skull #9

Contributor copies just arrived.

Philip is so delighted to have a story feature in this great magazine.

"Seven new sword-and-sorcery stories from some of the top talent in the industry," I note it says.

"Do you suppose they mean me, Pat?" Philip asks.

"They surely do, my boy. They surely do."

Wednesday, 11 January 2023

When writing historical fiction, how important is it to get the history exactly right? (Quora)

How far is history an assemblage of facts, and how far is it a product of more modern ways of thinking?

Often, what we think of as history is mostly legend, primarily viewed through the eyes of prejudice, either favourable or unfavourable.

The Romantic Movement of the early 19th Century seriously distorted modern perspectives on various historical people and events. Their legends turned outlaws into heroes and discovered hitherto well-concealed hearts of gold beating in the breasts of black villains. The real Richard the Lionheart was a bad king. Rob Roy ran a protection racket. Quite a lot of people nowadays think the jury should still be out on whether the Princes in the Tower were murdered at all, let alone who murdered them.

A very big mistake is to attach a modern grievance to an imagined and highly embroidered ‘historic wrong’. Not only are we not our ancestors, we scarcely even know who our ancestors were, even when we know their names.

After the rise of nationalism in the Middle Ages, it became almost impossible to view the events that gave birth to nationalism without erroneously inferring that the effects were somehow self-contradictorily part of the cause. All over Europe, aristocrats and heroes who were probably mostly interested in their own power and security are today looked upon as fathers of their nations.

We also have a natural tendency to isolate our own country from the wider context and inflate people and events of local significance into towering giants. Then we wonder why the rest of the world hasn’t heard of them, and view their ignorance as somehow disrespectful.

This same near-sightedness also causes us to identify with ancient peoples who lived where we now live, even though they may have been swept away by history, leaving little behind for us to look at with wonder, and having no connection with us today except an accident of geography.

I would urge caution when writing about historical events in a manner designed to stir modern passions. You don’t know the truth. Even if you are trying to get at the truth, you aren’t going to succeed. Modern people don’t know the truth either. That means they may take your word for it. To precipitate modern events on supposed historical grounds would be bad enough even if you were right. If you are wrong, and worse, in some cases, not even trying to be right, or deliberately falsifying events, is not a good thing.

So write about imaginary people in reasonably-accurate historic settings, by all means. If you write about real people, even as background, be scrupulous. And if you must write about real people the way you would have liked them to be, rather than as justified by the best evidence, don’t be surprised if someone doesn’t like your work.

Tuesday, 10 January 2023

How do I argue for something I don't believe in? (Quora)

I participated in the debating society when I was at school, and I ran a school debating society when I became a teacher. When I taught philosophy, one of my methods was to discover as quickly as possible which side of a question was favoured by the students, and then argue the opposite.

I cannot sufficiently stress how vital it is to be able to argue from your opponents’ position. To begin with, if you cannot anticipate their arguments, they will take you by surprise in the debate and embarrass you.If you cannot anticipate their arguments, you cannot prepare answers to their arguments in advance and have them ready when required.

And finally, how do you even know which side you are on, if you have never taken the trouble to learn why your opponents think differently? You will be incapable of rational decision because you have only ever heard one side of the case. You will have to resort to bluster and prejudice because you won’t be able to reason. This is not a good idea.

I draw your attention to the method by which Boris Johnson, former Prime Minister of the UK, decided which side of the Brexit argument he would choose. He wrote two articles, one explaining why we should remain in the EU, and one explaining why we should leave, and then compared them in order to discover which was the more persuasive. Some people attacked him over this for having no convictions; I thought, here at least, he displayed a preference for reason over emotion.

You should try this approach. It will be of lasting benefit.

Monday, 26 December 2022

Tales From The Magician's Skull #9

The Raven-Feeder’s Tower by Philip Brian Hall

The skeleton was held upright by a tall stake driven deep into the ground, to which support its spine was fixed by leather bonds. The breastplate covered bare white ribs and the helmet’s visor protected merely the empty eye-sockets of a morbidly-grinning skull.

I really like this story. I hope you do too.

Saturday, 17 December 2022

How do horses feel knowing that automotive has replaced them? Is it why they have this saddened face? (Quora)

I doubt that many living horses have been replaced by automobiles. It is true that Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II had long since, through age, given up riding a horse at the annual Trooping the Colour parade, but to the best of my recollection she had continued to use horse-drawn carriages for other ceremonial occasions in London.

Horses are just better at pageantry than motor vehicles, and tedious parades of mechanical weaponry are really best left to unimaginative foreign dictators who like that sort of thing, and to their oppressed subjects who seem to appreciate it..

Until well into the twentieth century the horse was integral to society. Specialised breeds of horses could do everything from pulling logs out of barely-accessible forestry plantations to carrying elegant ladies side-saddle on fashionable excursions down Rotten Row. Cavalry horses, well used, would regularly turn the tide of land battles, while draught horses transported everything, everywhere, including providing the source of power for canal barges during the Industrial Revolution. Plough horses were vital to agriculture; race horses provided a principal source of entertainment that enthralled everyone from dukes to dockers.

I once tried to illustrate some of the varieties of equestrian leisure in a cartoon:

But it is a mistake to conceive of a horse as having an extensive capacity for abstract thought. His world revolves around the food, stabling, exercise, care and attention that he receives from his owners or grooms. He has no trouble communicating his likes and dislikes in respect of that treatment. He knows whether he is treated well or neglected. He knows his rank in the domestic herd: he does not know how important his ancestors were to our ancestors. He knows if he is good at what he does, and he may well appreciate praise for a top class performance, but he does not know that the role of the horse in society has changed, is changing, and will continue to change.

So, while it may or may not be true that in a specific employment a machine might be more economical, to my mind, people who think that horses can always be replaced must be people who have never worked with horses.

And the reason a horse needs a long face should be obvious. This is Buster. He is not sad.

Saturday, 19 November 2022

What did Socrates mean when he said "I know that I know nothing"? (Quora)

Plato, who recorded the words of Socrates

It would have been most unlike Socrates, whose analytical technique (called elenchus) was based upon exposing contradictions in the statements of other people, to express himself in a contradiction. Obviously anything that I know is something, therefore if I claim that I know I know nothing, I am contradicting myself.

If, however, I start from the assumption that I know nothing, I may ask anyone who claims knowledge to explain a particular aspect of what it is that they know. Usually Socrates would invite his interlocutors to state a generally-applicable principle, and then he would offer a specific instance of the principle’s non-applicability. This would lead to the interlocutor redefining the principle more narrowly. The process would be repeated until it could be repeated no further, at which point Socrates would deem that they had arrived at a truth.

The process has considerable merit, but is inevitably limited in scope. Ironically, Donald Rumsfeld’s much-derided, but actually important, categorisation of knowledge into known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns helps us to understand this.

Most people are aware that there are limitations to their knowledge (or known knowns); for them there exist known unknowns. So, for example, I am aware that there is a field of human knowledge called quantum mechanics, but I have no detailed understanding of what that field encompasses.

Unknown unknowns have been usefully defined as “phenomena which cannot be expected because there has been no prior experience or theoretical basis for expecting the phenomena”.

But in later life Rumsfeld came to acknowledge the existence of a further category, possibly the most problematical of all, that of unknown knowns. These he defined as "the things you think you know, that it turns out you did not".

Like Rick in Casablanca, we can be misinformed. Sadly, we may act upon mistaken beliefs with all the intensity that would ideally be reserved for genuine certainties.

So, if we return to Socrates, we find that even the little that we think we know may be just waiting for some counter-argument or evidence to turn up.

Saturday, 12 November 2022

Does Scotland really needs a referendum to get its independence? After all, they didn't need a referendum to join the union? (Quora)

Our island history is of a long series of ‘Unions’.

When Dalriada was united with Pictland to form Alba, was Alba one country or a union? When Alba was united with northern Northumbria to form Scotland, was Scotland one country or a union? When Northern Strathclyde was incorporated into Scotland, was the resulting country then a union? Likewise, when the Western and Northern Isles were incorporated into Scotland? Did each and every one of these former countries retain a right to secede?

Meanwhile further unions were taking place in the south to form a country called England out of countries called Wessex, Cornwall, Kent, Essex, Mercia, Northumbria, Rheged etc. Wales was the last piece to be fitted into this jigsaw.

I think it is quite important to mention these earlier amalgamations, because current discussions seem to take for granted that all of England is culturally the same, or that there is only one historic culture in Scotland.

Eventually the island consisted of only two kingdoms, each of which came first under the same rule, (effectively putting an end to border reiving, because malefactors could no longer flee from one king’s jurisdiction to the other’s), and then the two of them united together into one country called Great Britain.

What exactly is supposed to make the union, in 1707, of these two remaining kingdoms somehow different from all the unions between then-existing countries on this island that went before?

And incidentally, since both the formerly-divided former kingdoms of Northumbria and Strathclyde were at long last actually reunited in 1707, should we, as an alternative option, be offering a referendum to their residents to ascertain if they want to be split up again between their respective former owners?

A Political Parable

In politics, there are lighthouses, and there are sailing ships. There are far, far more of the latter. The lighthouse will stand where it stands, regardless of tempests, but when the weather gets rough, the sailing ships will run before the wind, irrespective of which way the wind is blowing. When the wind veers, the sailing ships can be blown right back where they started or even beyond. The lighthouse will still be where they last saw it.

Much more important than following the behaviour of the sailing ships therefore, is understanding what meteorological factors are causing the wind.

The most successful politicians will probably be ships. The most respected will usually be lighthouses.

Sadly, of course, whilst a ship may occasionally be blown on the rocks, a lot of lighthouses are on the rocks to start with!