Time is doing strange things; like Sandy Denny I ask, “Who knows where the time goes.” This is what comes of missing my Donut Walk™. The back pain has a lot to do with it but not all. The more I don’t go out the more difficult I find it to get myself moving. Yesterday I was about to head out when I noticed that the Mets were on ESPN, and I would not have been home in time for first pitch. When 7 PM came I found it that they were on ESPN outside of New York but here they were on their local network, SNY, which I can’t get. I should have gotten my donut and listened on the radio as I walked. Today I am going out and I’ll plan on listening to the Mets on the radio, deGrom is pitching that’s appointment baseball.
I was good about something yesterday. I’m overdue for my infusion. I was talking to a friend about putting things on my calendar to get things done so I put making an appointment on my calendar. When 10 AM came around I made the call. I’m going on Saturday morning. It’s no longer at the Montefiore campus where I’ve been going since the pandemic hit. They reopened the Moses campus, a ten-minute walk from here to non-COVID-19 patients. While it’s nice having it a short walk away and not having to arrange for a car to take me it means that there is not an inexpensive bagel store across the street. Here is nowhere convenient I can get bagels. Bagels are important to me. I’ll have to go back to the bagel store in Riverdale where they cost 50% more and require a special trip.
I made a goof on Gord’s Gold. The show is originally aired on Folk Music Notebook then I archive it the next day on Mixcloud. That’s where the link Gord’s Gold takes you. I upload it days in advance but set it to not go live until Wednesday at noon. This week I entered the wrong date, and it went live before the stream on Folk Music Notebook. It was an extra good show too. It has a set dedicated to the Common Ground Coffeehouse cookbook. A third of the artists I played contributed recipes, Dar Williams, Tracy Grammer, Darlingside, The Kennedys, and Bobtown. You should listen to the show as you read the rest of this.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier aired its final episode on Friday but I’m still thinking about WandaVision. I have to love a series that goes deeply into the Ship of Theseus Paradox. The earliest record we have for it in writing is Plutarch, but he points out that it was an old problem.
The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their places, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.
— Plutarch, Theseus
Thomas Hobbes then added the wrinkle, “what would happen if the original planks were gathered up after they were replaced, and then used to build a second ship.” Would the reconstructed ship made of original parts be the original ship or the one with continuity of identity? The same thing goes on in your body, the molecules that make up your body keep changing. The point of the Ship of Theseus Paradox is that there is no right answer. There are good arguments for considering either the ship with replaced parts the original ship, or the ship made of the original parts. It’s just as valid to say that neither is the original ship, or both. Under certain circumstances concepts as fundamental as identity, can lose their meaning. This happens frequently in math. Tarski proved that you can divide a square into five pieced and rearrange them into a square of twice the original area. What allows that is that the parts are so complex that it is impossible to define their area.
This obstruse type of reasoning has real world consequences that people can learn from. There are situations in which apparently well-defined concepts lost their meaning. This is the heart of the abortion debate, the only correct answer to “Is fetus a person or just a collection of cells?” is yes. It’s both and neither. Our usual definitions break down. We have agreement that before fertilization the separate sperm and ovum and not a person. After birth it is a person. Between them the answer is, it has characteristics of both. But when is birth? When the crown becomes visible, or the entire baby emerges, and the umbilical is cut? There is no right answer. Think of the situation where there’s a problem with the birth, it’s too late for a Cesarean, but if the baby emerges the mother will die. The only way to save the mother is by crushing the baby/fetus’s skull. That’s the dilemma faced by the title character of the novel The Cardinal, where his sister is giving birth. I would save the mother; the Cardinal saved the baby. It’s a real-life example of the Trolley Car problem. I think we could all agree that it’s a difficult question. As the fetus is less and less developed there is less agreement. To the strong pro-life set as soon as the egg is fertilized it’s a full-fledged human being. I would strongly disagree, as has none of the attributes that give a human value. As it develops it gains some but it’s no more or less a human than the ship of Theseus is the original ship. It’s a unique case outside of normal experience which we think of as common sense.
We have a similar situation with gender identity. We look at a newborn horse and we can in the vast majority of cases call it a colt or a filly. There are some rare ambiguous cases. So why not say the same thing about people? Because people are not horses, something new enters the picture, the person’s sense of self. Is a person with male sexual organs that feels that they are a female a male or a female? They are the Ship of Theseus. For whatever reason, this horrifies or disgusts many people. “It goes against nature.” They forget that there are real people involved who are a lot more than their sexual identity. Nobody can ask the Ship of Theseus if it’s the original ship. In WandaVision neither White Vision nor Wanda created Vision could come up with a clear-cut answer as to which is the original Vision. Vision is rational enough to accept that there is no right answer. Many people aren’t. In questions of abortion and agenda my take is that is no right answer go with the person most affected by it, but always remember that there is no right answer. The fact that there are some people where gender identity is difficult to define, it doesn’t mean that gender is just a social construct. Insisting on that is, will make many people uncomfortable and hardens their resolve. The people that insist that gender is just a convention are pushing their ideas of identity on others. Accept that there is no right answer and what we go with what’s practical and benevolent. First do no harm.
I’m sure I won’t use The Falcon and the Winter Soldier as a jumping off point for a philosophical argument. I enjoyed the show, but it’s not as thought provoking as WandaVision. I’ll now have t be patient waiting for Loki..
Now I’ll switch over to philosophically firmer ground. I’ll take a shower, go on a Donut Walk™, watch the Mets, and work on next week’s Gord’s Gold.
Wise Madness 