Cherry Coffee Roasters

Stars: ★★★★★

Area: West Riverside, Corner of Laurel and Upperline

Address: 4877 Laurel St, New Orleans, LA 70115

Parking: Easy free street parking.

Internet: Good. Network name: Cherry Guest; Current Password: cherrycoffee

Plugs: You can plug in on the wall.

Working: Great place to work, lots of space, a lot of people working. A good variety of patrons, all ages.

Non Dairy Options: Oat and Almond.

This cafe is across from a small park where there are some kids sports activities happening. It has a great vibe and a mix of people working, having coffee, and also eating. You need to order first at the end of the counter and wait for your name to be called. It is a great mix of old, young, middle-aged, and kids. The coffee was tasty and well served. I didn’t eat here, but the food on the other tables looked great. You can feel comfortable working here at any time including lunchtime, there is no pressure to leave if you are not eating. You can spend as much time as you want working here.

Great place, it is going on my list of go-to places in New Olreans.

rue de la course

Stars: ★★★★★

Area: East Carrollton, Corner of Oak and Carrollton

Address: 1140 S .Carrollton St. New Orleans LA 70118

Parking: Paid parking on Carrollton, free parking on side streets.

Internet: Good. Network name: Rue De La Course, no login required.

Plugs: You can plug in on the wall in some spots, there is one near the back on the left.

Working: Great place to work, lots of space, a lot of people working. Some people are talking and hanging out so it is a good mix.

This café is in an old bank building that is very cool looking, cement and extremely high ceilings. My first time here was on a Saturday afternoon and it was great. I didn’t find a big table right away, but just took one of the smaller tables and soon enough someone left. There are a lot of people working and several also hanging out and talking.

There is an upstairs but at least that day the AC didn’t work upstairs so it was a little hot for me, but there were people up there. I assume for the majority of the year this is not an issue at all. The music was a nice volume and mostly jazz and non intrusive. The people working were nice and relaxed, good barista types. Over all this is a perfect place to work and worth the trip out here. This are is also very cool with a lot of little shops and such so you can walk around as well.

All in all great spot.

NOLA

I have officially moved to New Orleans and I am teaching at the University of New Orleans. Now that things settled a little, I decided to pick up blogging again. Because this is a new city for me, I will blog both about Philosophy and about places I visit and appreciate in the city. Maybe this can serve others who have similar inclinations and are visiting. There are some peculiarities though, that have to do with my personal preferences, so the choice of places featured is not an attempt to give any general view of this city, but a personal choice based on the things that I like to do, which may not match the preferences of the reader.

For your information then, and so that you can ponder if it is worth following me and my blog posts, here are the things I love to do and will post about:

• Coffee Shops - I am an academic and a writer and cafes are my number 1 favorite spot in any city. New Orleans has a great number of cafes and as I explore them I will post about them here.

• Film - I love film, and there are two theaters here that are excellent and that I go to weekly: The Broad Theater and the Prytania, especially the Prytania Uptown, I love going there for the Sunday morning film, which is my church. There are also a few great film festivals and film societies. So anything film related that I attend I will post.

• Music - Of course, music, although I hardly drink (which is almost blasphemy in this city) I love New Orleans music and music in general and there is so much here to explore. I am always on the lookout for slightly off the radar events and especially day time and free performances, but occasionally a bar is also the venue, so I may talk about bars from time to time, but it won’t be the main topic of this blog.

• Art - New Orleans is a vibrant city with a great art scene. I recently visited NOMA, the New Orleans Museum of Art and loved it. They also have a sculpture garden and I am waiting for the temperature to drop to see that. The Contemporary Arts Center is also on my to do and then I will start exploring small galleries and other art events. I will report back. If you have any tips, please let me know.

• Food - This is a touchy subject because I am a vegetarian and aspiring vegan, so not your typical New Orleans cuisine. I do have some interesting thoughts about how vegans do not shun traditional cuisine, but that's for another time. That being said, I will sometimes post about vegan options in the city as I come across them for those of you interested in a similar type of food.

All in all and summing up, drinking and eating are not my main focus, and these activities are very important both for residents and visitors in this city. But since they are such mainstream preferences I think you should be able to find information about these easily. My posts will be highly personal and not representative of the “general will” of the city so to speak. Follow at your own risk.

Bentham on Intentionality

Intention:

1. Act
2. Consequences

1. Directly

1. Ultimately Intentional
2. Mediately Intentional
3. Exclusively Intentional
4. Inexclusevly Intentional

1. Conjunctively
2. Disjunctively

1. With preference
2. Without preference

3. Indiscriminately

2. Obliquely

Intention:

1. Act - An act can be intentional without the consequences being intended.

Example: intentionally touch someone, and end up hurting them, without intending to hurt them.

2. Consequences

The consequences can be intended without the act being intentional throughout, but this is less frequent.

Example: I intend to push someone, a second person happens to come between us, and I push that person who then pushes the person I intended to push. Part of the act is intentional, but then how it went down is not intentional, the consequences intended happened.

The consequences cannot be intentional, without the act being intentional in its first stage. You can have wished you should push the man or planned on pushing the man, but someone else happens to have pushed him, the second person’s action was not intended by you. Your intention needs to be connected to your act in order for the consequences of the act to be intended by you, the act may not be intentional throughout, but you need to act.

1. Directly

Directly when the goal to produce the consequence is a link in a causal chain by which the person performs the act.

5. Ultimately Intentional

Ultimately when we are sure the intended consequence will happen, and no other, and we act in order to produce it.

Example: He killed the king on account of the hatred he bore him, and for no other reason than the pleasure of destroying him. In this case the incident of the kings death was not only directly but ultimately intentional.

6. Mediately Intentional

Mediately when one wants to do something that will inevitably lead to a consequence, but the intention is to do that thing, not the consequence.

Example: He killed the king, intending fully so to do; not for any hatred he bore him, but for the sake of plundering him when dead. In this case the incident of the kings death was directly intentional, but not ultimately: it was mediately intentional.

7. Exclusively Intentional

Example: He intended neither more nor less than to kill the king. He had no other aim nor wish. In this case, it was exclusively as well as directly intentional: exclusively, to wit, with regard to every other material incident.

8.  Inexclusevly Intentional

1. Conjunctively

Conjunctively: the intention is to produce both.

Example: Sir Walter shot the king in the right leg, as he was plucking a thorn out of it with his left hand. His intention was, by shooting the arrow into his leg through his hand, to cripple him in both those limbs at the same time. In this case the incident of the kings being shot in the leg was intentional: and that conjunctively with another which did not happen; viz. His being shot in the hand.

2. Disjunctively

Disjunctively: the intention is to produce either one or the other indifferently, but not both.

3. With preference

With preference when the intention is that one should happen rather than the other.

Example: The intention of Tyrrell was to shoot the king either in the hand or in the leg, but not in both; and rather in the hand than in the leg. In this case the intention of shooting in the hand was disjunctively concurrent, with regard to the other incident, and that with preference.

4. Without preference

Without preference when the intention is equally fulfilled whatever happens.

Example: his intention was to shoot the king either in the leg or the hand, whichever might happen: but not in both. In this case the intention was inexclusive, but disjunctively so: yet that, however, without preference.

3. Indiscriminately

Indiscriminately: the intention is to produce either one or the other or both, whatever happens.

Example: His intention was to shoot the king either in the leg or the hand, or in both, as it might happen. In this case the intention was indiscriminately concurrent, with respect to the two incidents.

3. Obliquely

Obliquely or collaterally when although the consequence was not in contemplation it was likely to ensue from the act, but the intention was not an actual causal link in the chain of action.

Example: Tyrel saw a stag running that way, and he saw the king riding that way at the same time: what he aimed at was to kill the stag: he did not wish to kill the king: at the same time he saw, that if he shot, it was as likely he should kill the king as the stag: yet for all that he shot, and killed the king accordingly. In this case the incident of his killing the king was intentional, but obliquely so.

Bertrand Russell's Political Activism

Bertrand Russell was throughout his life very involved in political activism, I was just sharing this with some of my students and thought I should share it here as well.

In 1910, Russell rand for office as a man promoting women's suffrage (he did not get elected). Here are some adds from that campaign:

 Being a man who promoted votes for women he was publicly ridiculed, it's hard to believe, but the notion that women should have the vote was considered absurd by many. Russell tells of antics that happened in votes for women's rallies where he spoke. In one case he was speaking at an event and someone brought in a set of women actresses and rats, in the middle of the speech they released the rats, and the women actresses stod on chairs shrieking to indicate that women were helpless and scared and not capable enough to vote. In a pamphlet called Anti-Suffragist Arguments, he said that the reason men opposed votes for women was that they  feared "their liberty to act in ways that are injurious to women will be curtailed and that they will lose that pleasing sense of dominion."   

In his 80s he advocated for nuclear disarmament, participated in public protests, and wrote the Russell-Einstein Manifesto with the famous physicist Albert Einstein about the dangers of nuclear weapons. Here is a picture of an 82-year-old Bertrand Russell protesting in favor of nuclear disarmament:

Finally, and to end this post, here is a message he left for future generations. Unfortunately, I believe this message is as important now as when he said it in the 50s, but I guess he knew what was coming and that the future would still have the challenges he identified in his own time.

Why Schmoss is better than Loss

Shelly Kagan in his lectures and writing on Death reframes a traditional puzzle about death in an original way. The original puzzle is by Roman philosopher Lucretius and goes like this: if you are bothered about Death being the absolute end for you, if you are bothered by the fact that you will not exist, then why are you not bothered by the period of non-existence that came before you were born? Lucretius thought there was no reason to be worried about neither period, before or after we die it is the same, therefore if one does not bother us neither should the other.

Many philosophers disagree with this, they want to say there is some relevant difference between the period before you are born and the one after you die. I won’t go into all the attempts of making sense of this, but I will jump straight to Shelly Kagan’s discussion. Kagan says that one of the reasons we care about what happens after we die is that when we die we lose something, and loss is a bad thing. But then he adds another concept, one for which the English language does not have a word for, the idea that there is something good coming, but we don’t have it yet, he calls it schmoss. The question is then reframed this way: why do humans care more about loss than they do about schmoss.

This is a great question, indeed we seem to care more about losing something we have than never having it in the first place. This is not particular to this question of the period before we were born, or after we die. If I never had some sort of special sports car, I don’t really care that much about it, but if I have it and then someone steals it, or it gets in an accident and is totaled, then I do care. We prefer to never have something, than to have it and then lose it.

This actually reminds me of the Buddhist second noble truth, the idea that suffering comes from attachment, or craving, “tanha.” Buddhists recognize that desire and attachment cause unhappiness, if you want something and you don’t have it, you are unhappy, if you have it you are unhappy for fear of losing it, therefore, they conclude, we should not be attached to those things we don’t have or can lose, even though we can enjoy things when they are present. In the Buddhist view, schmoss and loss are both bad feelings we should avoid if we want to be happy.. This doesn’t necessarily explain why schmoss is better that loss.

But is the answer to this question that complicated? We prefer to never have something than to have it and then lose it. We also fear more what’s to come if it is unknown and we do not fear possible good things coming our way. Schmoss when defined as a good thing coming our way, is a positive thing, and the fact it is not hear yet is slightly frustrating, but nothing to be afraid of. Loss when defined as losing a good thing, is something we indeed fear. For these reasons we prefer schmoss to loss.

The final thought would be, should we prefer schmoss to loss? Should we follow the Buddhists and be unattached to either? I am not sure, what do you think?

Sexual Abstinence

A comedic reductio by Bertrand Russell regarding the sexual abstinence of women (I am posting this thinking of those who propose sexual abstinence as the only effective form of birth control still today): "The only thing that will suffice is to remove from young women all opportunity of being alone with men: girls must be forbidden to earn their living by work outside the home; they must never be allowed an outing unless accompanied by their mother or an aunt; the regrettable practice of going to dances without a chaperon must be sternly stamped out. It must be illegal for an unmarried woman under fifty to possess a motor car, and perhaps it would be wise to subject all unmarried women once a month to a medical examination by police doctors, and to send to a penitentiary all such as were found to be not virgins. The use of contraceptives must, of course, be eradicated, and it must be illegal in conversation with unmarried women to throw doubt upon the dogma of eternal damnation. These measures, if carried out vigorously for a hundred years or more, may perhaps do something to stem the rising tide of immorality. I think, however, that in order to avoid the risk of certain abuses, it would be necessary that all policemen and all medical men should be castrated. Perhaps it would be wise to carry this policy a step farther, in view of the inherent depravity of the male character: I am inclined to think that moralists would be well advised to advocate that all men should be castrated, with the exception of ministers of religion. (note: Since reading Elmer Gantry, I have begun to feel that even this exception is perhaps not quite wise.)"

One Potato, Two Potato (1964)

I loved this heartwrenching film about a custody battle between an inter-racial family and a white father. The movie's low budget and the somewhat (sometimes very) awkward scenes work to its advantage - it views as an essay on the topic of racism and social expectations. It really illustrates how so much of morality is a result of complex implicit social agreements, and how when such agreements are unjust, that morality should be reformed, even if the immediate results for all those involved are bad, we need to strive for something better. Often in terms of injustice, for things to get better, they need to get worse first. By daring to challenge the injustice of prejudice against interracial marriage, these characters suffered the greatest personal lost in the battle for custody of their child, but in the big picture, they are taking a step that together with others will change the world.

The only part of the film that I would like to see improved, but that makes sense with the narrative of the time, is the idea that African American men were being denied their masculinity and that that was a bad thing. I have been reading bell hooks, and I am completely convinced that sexism is as bad as racism and that it exists in both whites and African Americans. However, as a redeeming quality, Frank, the male character in this movie, does not act on these ideals of masculinity, they read more as something he was conditioned to believe rather than something he is (although I can see how some viewers could interpret it differently).

Taxes and Collective Ownership of the Earth

In Anarchy, State and Utopia, Nozick proposes an interesting argument against taxation, it goes like this:

“Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Some persons find this claim obviously true: taking the earnings of n hours labor is like taking n hours from the person; it is like forcing the person to work n hours for another’s purpose. Others find the claim absurd. But even these, if they object to forced labor, would oppose forcing unemployed hippies to work for the benefit of the needy. And they would also object to forcing each person to work five extra hours each week for the benefit of the needy…

The man who chooses to work longer to gain an income more than sufficient for his basic needs prefers some extra goods or services to the leisure and activities he could perform during the possible nonworking hours; whereas the man who chooses not to work the extra time prefers the leisure activities to the extra goods or services he could acquire by working more. Given this, if it would be illegitimate for a tax system to seize some of a man’s leisure (forced labor) for the purpose of serving the needy, how can it be legitimate for a tax system to seize some of a man’s goods for that purpose? Why should we treat the man whose happiness requires certain material goods or services differently from the man whose preferences and desires make such goods unnecessary for his happiness? Why should the man who prefers seeing a movie (and who has to earn money for a ticket) be open to the required call to aid the needy, while the person who prefers looking at a sunset (and hence need earn no extra money) is not? Indeed, isn’t it surprising that redistributionists choose to ignore the man whose pleasures are so easily attainable without extra labor, while adding yet another burden to the poor unfortunate who must work for his pleasures? If anything, one would have expected the reverse. Why is the person with the nonmaterial or nonconsumption desire allowed to proceed unimpeded to his most favored feasible alternative, whereas the man whose pleasures or desires involve material things and who must work for extra money (thereby serving whomever considers his activities valuable enough to pay him) is constrained in what he can realize?”

The argument, as is very often the case with Nozick’s arguments, is extremely interesting and works by shedding a different view on taxation - his claim is: we would not force hippies to give hours of work to help the needy, so why should we force those who work to give a certain number of hours from their work total to help the needy. Are we benefiting the lazy here?

This argument is interesting at several different levels. It raises many questions. What is work? What is paid work and how is it different from other types of work that are not necessarily paid? What are taxes and why do we have them? Are taxes just a charitable way to help the needy in our society? Or are there other deeper justifications for taxation?

First, regarding the notion of work. Why do we get paid for doing certain things and not others? Surely it is not because only the things we do and get paid are valued by others. One example is raising children. It is an extremely important activity for society as a whole, yet we don’t get paid for it.

When we are paid for certain types of work, this happens because someone or some company finds that using our labor will allow them to make a profit. The hours we devote to paid labor and the amount we are paid for them are a result of that profit that is being made by the enterprise. If this is so, taxation can be understood not as taking hours from our work and redistributing that to help the needy without our consent, but as taking part of the profit from the enterprise as a whole and redistributing that (of course we may discuss if that profit should be shaved off at the workers’ end rather than the owners or the company’s end, but we can put that aside for now).

If we assume taxes are shaved off the profit of the whole enterprise, is there a fair justification for doing this? The idea that we have a collective ownership of the Earth would justify such a practice (although I think a large part of the Earth should be left out of human ownership and kept separate because of it’s intrinsic value, but we can agree that a certain section of it can be explored by humans in a fair sustainable way).

If we all have a natural share of the part of the Earth that humans can claim, and if an enterprise uses more than it’s natural share, then it makes sense for them to pay the rest of the population in taxes. Ideally, this would be equally divided by everyone, however, we can imagine reasons to redistribute to those who have less since they are probably the ones who are left out when certain others take more than their fair share.

If this makes sense, then Nozick’s argument that we are taxing hours of a person’s life does not stand. We are taxing profits and redistributing by assuming that we all have the right to a common ownership of the Earth. Maybe we shouldn’t be taxing those profits on the workers’ end as much as we do. But we are not simply taxing hours.

What do you think?

p.s. I was inspired to write this entry by this entry on the The Bully Pulpit blog. Great blog to follow!

Orphan Philosophers

The fact that there are many notable orphans is a curious human phenomenon. There is research that indicates that cases of parental loss can lead to a life of crime. Yet, there are also many notable individuals who have lost a parent at a young age.

There are many examples of famous writers who lost a parent: Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Swift, Edward Gibbon, and Thackeray. In David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell talks about how difficulties can produce greatness, among many others, he tells the story of psychologist Marvin Eisenstadt. In the 60s, he looked at the Encyclopedia Britannica and noted those who had more than one column entry. Then he found out that a quarter had lost a parent before age 10, 34.5% had a parent die by age 15, and 45% had a parent die by the age of 20.

Lucille Iremonger, a historian, identified something similar. Iremonger was researching the history of England from the 19th century to World War II, and she found that 67% percent of the Prime Ministers had lost a parent before the age of 16 (that was twice the rate of parental loss in the British upper class at the time). In the United States, twelve presidents have lost or had an absent parent at a young age: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Andre Jackson, Andrew Johnson, Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Herbert Hoover, Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.

In my Intro to Philosophy class, I always try to give my students a little bit of background on philosophers. I talk about their parents, their social status, and how they made a living. I find these little tidbits of information quite interesting. Often when I am researching their lives, there is the recurring theme of the loss of a parent. So I decided to add philosophers to the list of notable orphans. There are probably more, but this list is quite surprising.

Aristotle

His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, and he was raised by a guardian.

Descartes

His mother died soon after giving birth to him. He was not expected to survive. Descartes' father, Joachim, was a member of the Parlement of Brittany at Rennes. René lived with his grandmother and with his great-uncle.

Dennett

His father was an intelligence agent during World War II in Lebanon. He died in an unexplained plane crash when he was 5.

Hegel

Hegel's mother died of a "bilious fever" when Hegel was thirteen.

Hobbes

His father got into a fight when he was four years old and left, he was raised by him, uncle.

Hume

His father died when he was two and he was raised by his mother.

Jarvis Thompson

Her mother, Helen Jarvis, died when Judith was six.

Kant

His father died when he was 22 and he had to leave the University to help support his family.

Leibniz

His father died when he was six, he was raised by his mother.

Nietzsche

His father died from a brain ailment when he was 5.

Rawls

He was not an orphan. Two of his brothers died after contracting diseases from him (diphtheria and pneumonia).

Rousseau

His mother died of puerperal fever nine days after his birth.

Russell

Bertrand Russell's mother died when he was 2 and his father died when he was 4. He was raised by his grandparents. His grandfather, former Prime Minister Earl Russell, died when he was 6.

Sartre

When Sartre was two years old, his father died of an illness contracted in Indochina

Voltaire

Voltaire’s mother died when he was 7 years old.

*

References:

Felix Brown and Phyllis Epps, “Childhood Bereavement and Subsequent Crime,” The British Journal of Psychiatry, Volume 112, Issue 491, October 1966 , pp. 1043-1048

Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, Little, Brown and Company, New York, 2013

Marvin Eisenstadt, “Parental Loss and Genius,” American Psychologist 33(3):211-23 · April 1978 

Marvin Eisenstadt, Parental Loss and Achievement, International Universities Press, 1989

Ben-Ami Scharfstein, The Philosophers: Their Lives and the Nature of Their Thought, Basil Blackwell, 1980