Follow-up to previous post on the Judas Gospel.

Funny, this excerpt from a Butterflies and Wheels article:

The Gospel According to Judas

Translated from the Coptic by Professor Melvin Snarkelsdrochk

The Secret Gospel of Judas Barabbas Miriam Jacob Thomas, also called James, son of Joseph, Lover of the Lord.

He who reads these words is not far from the kingdom. On the other hand, he’ll need photo ID and two other forms of identification to pass through security.

And Judas spoke and said

Lord when will you show us the Kingdom?

And Jesus spoke and said.

If I showed you, you would not believe, and if you believed I would not show you.

And Judas and Peter wondered in their hearts what manner of syntax this might be.

Then spoke Judas, waking, and said unto Peter:

Do you know what the world says about him?

And Peter answered,

Yes, that he is the Mikado.

And Judas was wroth and spoke unto Peter saying,

No, that he is the Messiah.

And said Peter, yawning,

Right, that’s Jewish isn’t it?

Mary Magdalene said to Judas, who played much with his purse,

Scorn him not, Judas, because in two thousand years, more or less, there will come one like a prince of the apostles who shall show men the Secret Wisdom.

You mean Ratzinger said Judas?

And Mary spoke:

How little men know of the secret path. I mean Dan Brown. My whole future depends on him.

And Judas sighed in his spirit and said,

Cephas says vile things of you and the Lord. He says you have [known] each other.

And Peter said:

Actually, since we’re speaking Aramaic, Mikado and Messiah do sound sort of alike.

Jesus came close to Judas and said into his left ear,

Until you make the outside like the inside and the inside like the outside you will never understand the secrets of the kingdom.

Mary, also called Magdalene, not to be confused with Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary the Mother of James and Joses, the Other Mary, or Salome whose middle name was Mary, said,

Lord why do you whisper so. Do you love Judas more than me?

Jesus said,

Fish got to swim and birds got to fly. You are not far from the Truth.

And from that day Mary left the company of apostles and became a votary public and delivered a son, also named Jesus, and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them at the inn.

Jesus said,

A sower went out to sow a field and some of the seed fell into foxholes. And some of the seed fell into bird’s nests. And some of the seed the sower sowed not. And the foxes ate the birds. Let him who has ears to hear, hear!

And Peter said,

We hear you you!

And Judas said,

Unfortunately.

Jesus said,

You are far from the kingdom, because your ears are stopped and yours beards full of crumbs from eating too much the repast of this World.

Peter was troubled and said,

I wish.

Judas said,

Lord: What sign can you give us that you are the Expected One? I mean something concrete.

Jesus was wroth when he heard Judas’s question and did bitch slap Judas and said,

You of little faith, The kingdom is not coming with signs. You can’t get there from here, nor from Phoenix. Witchita is closer, but still not it.

Peter said,

Now I get it, thanks!

Thomas and John who did hold hands and smirk effeminately the while Judas said ouch turned to Jesus and said,

Is Mary gone? We wish. What time is it?

And Jesus smiled at the pair and said,

The keys of the kingdom come to him who waits, him who asks, and him who says nasty things about the Woman.

And Thomas said,

What time is it, because I have a manicure at 2.30.

Jesus said,

It is late in the day. When the dawn kills the moon the kingdom will come as a thief in the night to destroy the fig tree.

Judas said:

Now that really makes no sense at all.

And Peter, saddened, said.

It does to me. I love figs. I will miss the trees.

Jesus said:

I am now going to my father’s house where you can not come. Not today, anyway. They will come seeking me like a dog among thieves and I really don’t want to be around for that. The spirit is willing but few are chosen.

Judas said,

The boys and I will sort your sayings out later. They need a lot of work.

Jesus said,

But I will return. And we’ll resume our lessons when the heat is off.

Judas said,

No, no. You stay right where you are. There are some guys on the Council I want you to meet. I’ll just go get them, shall I? Kisses ‘til then.

But privily to himself Judas said,

Or maybe I’ll just go hang myself.

Look what a three week trip under the Census of Marine Life came up with!

More pictures here.

Sad to read about this though:

Thousands of specimens were captured during the cruise, of which 500 have been catalogued.

They include shrimp-like copepods and ostracods, swimming worms, and tiny jellyfish – some of the gooiest and most fragile animals in the sea.

Most are adjusted to living in the cool deep, where temperatures hover around one or two Celsius.

Samples were caught in nets which could descend several kilometres. Bringing them to the surface meant transporting them through a layer of much warmer water, around 27C.

As soon as they came on board ship, they were plunged into ice-cooled buckets to restore a semblance of their usual habitat; even so, many perished before they could be studied.

BBC article via 3quarksdaily.

This is a nod and tribute to a band that I still love after all these years: King Diamond. Ok, maybe not the recent stuff but definitely Them, Conspiracy and Abigail. Andy LaRocque, an ex guitarist with the band is one of my favourite guitarists (check out the solos in A Visit from the Dead in the Conspiracy album), together with Randy Rhoads.

Check out the Welome Home video from the Them album for an example of drama metal that is theatrical and yet funny in a cheesy and absurd way. Like a black parody of sorts. Here’s the lyrics.

Note 1: Must read lyrics and watch video.

Note 2: Do not confuse Grandma with Granny!

Interesting excerpt from an article on Lovers Quarrel:

According to a new book called Blink:The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell, Gottman says people tend to view relationships two ways:

Positive Sentiment Override This is where positive sentiment overrides irritability. Gottman says, “it’s like a buffer. Their spouse will do something bad and they’ll say “Oh, he’s just in a crummy mood.”

Negative Sentiment Override According to Gottman, “a relatively neutral thing that a partner does gets perceived as negative. You don’t pick up the phone because you’re in the bathroom, and your partner thinks you’re purposefully avoiding them. In the negative sentiment override state, people draw lasting conclusions about each other. If their spouse does something positive, it’s a selfish person doing a positive thing. Gottman says, “For example, I’m talking with my wife and she says, ‘Will you shut up and let me finish?’ In positive sentiment override, I say, ‘Sorry, go ahead.’ I’m not very happy, but I recognize the repair. In negative sentiment override, I say ‘To hell with you, I’m not getting a chance to finish either. You’re such a bitch, you remind me of your mother.’”

Positive Sentiment Overide is the way to go!

Link to Suyin’s (best friend’s wife) pictures, movies and music.

Link to her SF Love Parade 2005 pictures.

I just returned from dinner and drinks with YY. We had about five bottles of beer.

I enjoyed talking to YY immensely. We talked about about Soul Mountain and reminisced about our memorable trip to Miri and Mulu Mountain, where we met the quirky Eng Brothers and took what may be (according to the Eng Brothers) the first ever photo of a species of Borneo snail that they have been searching for (Beginner’s luck! Or just plain dumb luck!). Perhaps I’ll post the photos and video of the trip some day.

It was so enjoyable that I did not know whether to regret not meeting him earlier (I last saw him a year ago) or to be grateful that the past one year we did not meet made the meeting and the conversation even more enjoyable. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed talking to him over beer and how much of myself I forget when talking to him.

We talked about about Soul Mountain. He presented an alternative view of Soul Mountain that appealed to me. He saw Gao’s journey to Soul Mountain as a metaphorical search for meaning, a journey in which each chapter is a complete but mini life cycle that in its own way captures a meaning of life. In this way, the sequence of each chapter of the book had a coherent meaning and was self contained. The idea of cycles, life cycles, has a Buddhist/Hindu resonance. Since I’ve always found the Buddhist/Hindu world view of life cycles very attractive, his perspective of Soul Mountain immediately appealed to me. YY also repeated a view he read in a book about travelling: we like to travel because it shows us all the alternative ways we could have lived and allows us to live many lives vicariously through the lives of those we encounter when travel. YY saw Soul Mountain in this light. YY also enjoyed the book because the description of the places Gao visited resonated with him since he has also visited some of these places.

I asked YY about his research. He told me he answered a question that some big shots raised in a conference last year and will be publishing those results. I was happy for him and congratulated him with a toast. In his characteristic modesty, he said it was not a big deal and that it was more important to drink with a friend. He enjoyed talking to philosophers (that’s a compliment I don’t dare to accept since I don’t see myself as a philosopher). He told me about his travels to Laos and Vietnam and said I should call him along if I plan a trip to Endau Rompin

I told him about the insights I had recently on fears and relationships and how these insights could only come about because of age. I said that I used to fear growing old but now, with these insights, I understood that there is something good about aging. I described and mentioned the liberation I felt from understanding and identifying my fears and how they shaped my behaviour, limited and undermined my consciousness. I also told him about how I overcame some challenges at work.

We shared with each other what we’ve been reading. I told him about Getting Things Done. I also told him about Fogelin’s book Walking The Tightrope of Reason. Above all, I recommended him The Brothers Karamazov. Must send him all the stuff I recommended him tomorrow, including Abdullah Ibrahim’s jazz music.

I must also remember to borrow some Schubert cds from him and Gaisi Takeuti’s Memoirs of A Proof Theorist and Martin Davis’ Engines of Logic when we next meet.

This is really a joy of life. To be able to talk and drink with a like minded friend.

I had very good char siew and roasted meat noodles at Far East Plaza this afternoon. Chloe’s duck noodles were excellent too. Yum yum.

Belatedly, I also record that I had the Nasi Goreng and Roti John of my childhood last weekend. The stalls moved from Taman Serasi to Serangoon Garden after the old Taman Serasi hawker centre was closed down to make way for extending the Botanic Gardens. I didn’t know where they moved to and thought I would never taste that Nasi Goreng and Roti John again. I gave up hope that I would find my favourite Taman Serasi stalls again.

Eating the Roti John (the malay girl grew up) and Nasi Goreng with chicken (the Malay aunty still looked the same as I last saw her) was all the more tasty, special and poignant after all these years. I’m not sure whether the food tasted great cos of my longing, or the cooking. But nonetheless, I was very happy.

I also found Stall No. 11 at Serangoon Gardens, it was my favourite satay stall. Didn’t get to eat the satay the last time I went. Next time I will!

I ran yesterday and today. 2.4 km each time.

Chapter 4: Skepticism

Let me continue with my book summary.

I come to my favourite chapter of the book, the chapter on skepticism. This chapter completes the triad of what Fogelin calls “the trinity of threats to our rational lives: inconsistency, illusion, and doubt.” It presents the view that skepticism “grows naturally out of the epistemological project” by looking at cartesian skepticism (smallcase for “cartesian” because Descartes was an antiskeptic), Hume’s problem of induction and Pyrrhonian skepticism. The conclusion is “Unrestricted philosophizing itself generates all these skeptical challenges and…meets none of them”.

A brief summary of these three forms of skepticism follow.

cartesian skepticism

The Meditations on First Philosophy is where Descartes uses his famous “malicious demon” thought experiment to discover what knowledge, if any, can be acquired from indubitable foundations (the idea is that if something can be true under the following scenario, then it must be indubitable):

...suppose…that…some malicious demon of the utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to decieve me. I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all external things are merely the delusions of dreams which he has devised to ensnare my judgement. I shal consider myself as not having hands or eyes, or flesh, or blood or senses but as falsely believing that I have all these things. I shall stubbornly and firmly persist in this meditation; and, even if it is not in my power to know any truth, I shall at least do what is in my power, that is, resolutely guard against assenting to any falsehoods, so that the deceiver, however powerful and cunning he may be, will be unable to impose on me in the slightest degree.

From First Meditation of Meditations on First Philosophy translated by John Cottingham. (John Veitch translation here. Elizabeth Haldane’s translation here.)

The modern variant of Descartes’ malicious demon thought experiment is the Brains in a Vat scenario. The challenge is to prove that we are neither brains in vats nor deceived by a malicious demon. How do we justify our everyday beliefs that the skeptical scenarios presented are false?

Humean Skepticism (aka the problem of induction)

The problem of induction is (crudely) this: Deduction and induction are the only two ways of reasoning available to us. Induction is not deduction. Induction cannot justify induction. So, we cannot justify our reliance on induction.

Fogelin quotes from Hume’s Abstract of A Treatise of Human Nature.

...all reasonings concerning cause and effect are founded on experience, and … all reasonings from experience are founded on the supposition that the course of nature will continue uniformly the same. We conclude that like causes, in like circumstances, will always produce like effects. It may now be worth while to consider what determines us to form a conclusion of such infinite consequence.

It is evident that Adam, with all his science, would never have been able to demonstrate that the course of nature must continue uniformly the same, and that the future must be conformable to the past. What is possible can never be demonstrated to be false; and it is possible the course of nature may change, since we can conceive such a change. Nay, I will go farther, and assert that he could not so much as prove by any probable arguments that the future must be conformable to the past. All probable arguments are built on the supposition that there is this conformity betwixt the future and the past, and therefore can never prove it. This conformity is a matter of fact, and, if it must be proved, will admit of no proof but from experience. But our experience in the past can be a proof of nothing for the future, but upon a supposition that there is a resemblance betwixt them. This, therefore, is a point which can admit of no proof at all, and which we take for granted without any proof.

Also see section IV of Hume’s Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding.

For other Hume texts, click here.

Pyrrhonian Skepticism
The last form of skepticism Fogelin discusses is Pyrrhonian Skepticism, after Pyrrho of Ellis (360-270 B.C). Little is known about Pyrrho. However, the type of skepticism associated with Pyrrho has been summarised and codified by Sextus Empiricus in his Outlines of Pyrrhonism.

According to Fogelin, Pyrrhonian skepticism is an example of belief skepticism, as opposed to cartesian and Humean skepticism, which both fall under justification skepticism. Pyrrhonian skepticism aims at peace of mind through eliminating philosophical commitment. The way to go about eliminating philosophical commitment is to suspend our beliefs and the Pyrrhonian method for suspending belief is to apply the Five Modes of Agrippa to any argument that leads to a philosophical commitment.

A Stanford Encyclopedia article on Ancient Skepticism describes the Five Modes as follows

The five modes of Agrippa (whose date is unknown, though he is later than Aenesidemus) focus, as Barnes has shown, on some of the underlying epistemological concerns that motivate skeptical conclusions. Sextus presents them at PH 1.164-77, where he says that they promote the suspension of judgment by invoking:

— disagreement, for among philosophers and ordinary people there is interminable disagreement; — regress ad infinitum, for the skeptic asks for a proof of a claim, a proof of the reliability of this proof, and so on ad infinitum; — relativity, for things are relative to both one’s subjective nature and the concepts one employs in judging them; — hypothesis, for the skeptic does not allow us to take as our starting point something which is taken for granted; — circular reasoning, for the skeptic rejects proofs that are circular, as when sense impressions are used to establish the veracity of the senses.

Another summary on the Five Modes of Agrippa from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philsophy on Ancient Greek Skepticism:

Agrippa’s Five Modes relies on the prevalence of dispute and repeats the main theme of Aenesidemus’ Modes: we are frequently faced with dissenting opinions regarding the same matter and yet we have no adequate grounds on which to prefer one view over another. Should a dogmatist offer an account of such grounds, the skeptic may then request further justification, thereby setting off an infinite regress. And presumably, we should not be willing to accept an explanation that is never complete, i.e. one that requires further explaining itself. Should the dogmatist try to put a stop to the regress by means of a hypothesis, the skeptic will refuse to accept the claim without proof, perhaps citing alternative, incompatible hypotheses. And finally, the skeptic will refuse to allow the dogmatist to support his explanation by what he is supposed to be explaining, disallowing any circular reasoning. And of course the skeptic may also avail himself of the observation that what is being explained only appears as it does relative to some relevant conditions, and thus, contrary to the dogmatist’s presumption, there is no one thing to be explained in the first place.

As an example of the Five Modes in action, Fogelin gives this example:

To test this claim that the Pyrrhonian skeptic does not dogmatize, we can consider perhaps the best-known maneuver in thePyrrhonian corpus, the treatment of the criterion of truth. The Stoic epistemologists held that to judge correctly, one must be in possession of a proper criterion of truth – a test that provides invincible evidence for the truth of some belief. Presented with such a claim, the Pyrrhonian skeptic proceeds hypothetically by assuming that the dogmatist is correct in demanding a correct criterion of truth and then dranws out the consequences of this demand. The Pyrrhonist presents his dogmatic opponent with the following argument: If someone presents a criterion of turh, then it will be important to determine whether is the correct criterion. There is, after all, disagreement concerning which, if any, criterion is the correct criterion of truth. If the stated criterion is siad to be correct without the employment of a criterion of truth, then it must either be the same criterion or a different one. If the same criterion of truth is used for judging the criterion of truth, then the defense of the criterion will be question-begging. If a new criterion of truth is used, then the challenge is repeated, ad infinitum if necessary. Thus, the dual demons of circularity and infinite regress are let loose as soon as the Stoics attempt to defend their choice of a criterion of truth. If they refuse to defend it, then they have simply abandoned their idea that all judgments must be made in conformity with a correct criterion of truth.

Peter Suber sums it up brilliantly here:

But here we encounter a classical and recurring skeptical dilemma. Either our one criterion certifies itself, which is circular, or a second criterion certifies the first, in which case we will need a third to certify the second, and so on ad infinitum. So it seems we must either beg the question or fall into an infinite regress.

Nothing is left except to forgo all support and simply claim (stipulate or hypothesize) that the criterion is a good one. But others will do the same for different criteria, on equal authority, and the resulting disagreement will be final, clearly equipollent, and ripe for suspended judgment. If the criterion is affirmed hypothetically, just to see where it goes and how it works, then all the statements it validates as a criterion will be equally hypothetical.

Or the criterion may be tested by its fruits. If it validates certain statements and not others, then we will say it is a good criterion. But this is just another way to beg the question, for it presupposes what is to be proven, namely, that we know which statements are true, or that the criterion is good and validates only true statements. Or again, this is to use the resulting statements as the criteria, and the problem reappears.

So it seems that a criterion is not supported at all, or is supported by circular reasoning or by an infinite regress. In any case its support is inadequate for genuine certainty about the criterion. In particular, other criteria could always be proposed with equipollent support. Then suspension of judgment on which, if any, is the true criterion would be required by honesty.

But if no criterion is ever certain, then no statement is ever certain, for statements are made certain by supporting arguments or evidence, which are discerned by virtue of a criterion. Of course even this claim is uncertain.

Then there is the paradox of proof. An alleged proof may be valid according to some given rules of valid reasoning —and skeptics have attacks on all rules of validity, in general and in particular— but its conclusion is only demonstrably true if its premises are true. But we only know that the premises are true if they themselves are proven. Clearly we are again entangled in the dilemma of circular reasoning and infinite regress. If we prove the premises, then their proof will have its own premises that need proof, and we are committed to an infinite regress of proofs that we can never supply. The result is that nothing is ever proved with finality. If unproved premises can make good proofs, then we can invent unproved premises from which we could derive any proposition whatsoever, thereby putting all possible conclusions into isosthenia.

Fogelin suggests that we land ourselves in such trouble because we raise the level of scrutiny without any good reason to do so. But this claim is of course open to skeptical doubt, using the Five Modes presented above! No wonder Hume called sceptical doubt a “malady”!

This is probably my last post on the book. It’s not a full summary of Fogelin’s book, only the parts that I found most interesting and wanted to share.

Thank God. Finally, got this post over and done with. Good riddance!