A bad argument for (hereditary) Monarchy II

Here's Deogol's reply to my post. This is a response to his reply – you might want to read that first.

 

It's unlikely that the (alcoholic, teetotaller, alcohol) relation and the (desirer of power, indifferentist to power, power) relation are identical, for the teetotaller is averse to alcohol where we want someone who is indifferent to power. Besides, the object of the alcoholic’s desire is not obvious. It seems reasonable to ask whether the alcoholic desires alcohol in any serious way at all, or whether he desires the state of mind that comes from drinking alcohol, or even the state of mind that comes from drinking too much alcohol, or something else altogether. But let that pass.

A bad argument for (hereditary) Monarchy

Deogolwulf’s train of thought is this: Typically, in a (hereditary) monarchy, the person who gains power didn't seek that power. In a non-monarchical republic or democracy, the ruler is usually someone who did. So, the hereditary monarchical method is likelier to produce a good ruler than the non-hereditary monarchical. What is common to those who seek power is a desire for power, whether as a means or as an end. So, the crucial premiss, which one rather has to winkle out, is something like this: All else being equal, a person who desires power is less likely to use it well (if he gets it) than one who doesn’t.

I maintain that the premiss is false as it stands, and that it is, anyway, irrelevant to the argument for monarchy…

Gukira: Hetero-Affirmative?

Gukira: Hetero-Affirmative?

Gukira: Hetero-Affirmative?

Gukira: Hetero-Affirmative?

links, lovely random links…

Google Video documentary on the French Foreign Legion (via metafilter) . Very good, though Thomas Kadish is the very model of military stupidity (check out his comments on the Legion’s actions in Algeria).

Keguro on hetero-normativity.

Jason Stanley in defence of Baroque Specialisation.

Tom Morello’s related to Kenyatta. His dad was Ng’ethe Njoroge, Kenya’s High Commissioner to the UK in the 60’s and 70’s, and later ambassador to the UN. I may have blogged this before – but this time there’s better evidence here. If OO’s source is to be believed, Njoroge was a brother of Njoroge Mungai, who was a cousin of Jomo Kenyatta.

Dvořák by the Columbia University Orchestra.

LanguageHat and LanguageLog on Suri Cruise.

Bryan Frances and commentators on what to do when you disagree with your philosophical superiors.

Timothy Williamson has lots of new papers up. Tennant’s Troubles looks like a fatal brutalisation of Neil Tennant’s attempt to defuse Fitch’s Paradox.

*UPDATE* No, not the Pet Shop Boys Neil Tennant, silly, I meant this one.

God, Gays, Africans & Anglicans

The center of gravity of the faith is now squarely in the Global South. If the new Christendom had a world capital based on the location of its believers, it would be somewhere south of the Sahara.

An examination of some of the early consequences of that fact for the Anglicans. (via Commonweal)

The beautyful ones are already born

In his April 8 column in the Nation, Peter Mwaura forcefully put the case for the inferiority of Sheng. He claimed that it was linguistic garbage: that it lacked a stable syntax, form or grammar. That claim is just false.

Suppose a language’s syntax is the set of rules for distinguishing the class of things that are expressions of that language, and a language’s semantics is the set of rules for assigning meaning to those expressions. A language is a language if and only if it has a syntax and a semantics. Linguistic communication can only occur in a language. So, if Sheng lacks a syntax and a semantics, then it is not a language, and linguistic communication cannot occur in Sheng, or between Sheng and non-Sheng speakers. But linguistic communication does occur between Sheng and non-Sheng speakers, as Mwaura proves by giving examples of various bits of regularly-formed Sheng that he understands and disapproves of. It follows that communication between Sheng and non-Sheng speakers occurs, so Sheng has a syntax and semantics. Now, the grammar of a language is, very roughly, the set of rules for communicating meaningfully in it. So, it’s reasonable to suppose that if Sheng has a syntax and semantics, it has a grammar.

This is just as one would expect. Indeed, recent research by the linguist Chege Githiora* has decisively established that Sheng is a proper dialect of Standard Swahili and that it shares Standard Swahili’s grammatical structure.

*Githiora, Chege (2002) “Sheng: peer language, Swahili dialect or emerging Creole?“, Journal of African Cultural Studies, Vol. 15:159-193.

UPDATE: Potash was already on the case. Check out his hilarious post:

…My parents were brought up on Shakespeare and the bible. The Shakespeare just in case assimilation, of the Kaffir, could be achieved but the bible mostly to tame the heathen- you cannot sjambok a vodoo priest quoth the Native Commissioner. No limey.No.