Maverick Philosopher

FINAL POST

2005-03-16T17:07:00.000-08:00

I just wrote a very nice final post with links and everything -- and it was lost. So I'll say what I want to say at the new site. Please join me there, and thanks for your support. Check out the

NEW AND IMPROVED MAVERICK PHILOSOPHER.

UPDATE: Looks like it wasn't lost after all. See how screwy this system is? We all start in Kindergarten, but some of us graduate. I'm in this game 'for the duration' as they say; time to acquire some serious tools and stop wasting time.

Time to Boogie on Down the Line

2005-03-16T16:37:00.000-08:00

When I was living in Germany in the mid-70s, I once heard some street musicians in a public square in Freiburg im Breisgau:

I'm gonna pack my bags
I'm gonna pack my bags
I'm gonna pack my bags
And boogie on down the line.

No, I'm not leaving the 'sphere, just moving to a better neighborhood. Please check out the

New and Improved Maverick Philosopher.

I am grateful to my readers and hope you follow me to my new digs. Thanks to Keith Burgess-Jackson for his advice and support. I also appreciate the supererogatory efforts of Christopher Lansdown, proprietor of PowerBlogs.com, at getting me set up. I hope to sing his praises in greater detail later.

Bear with me as I learn to navigate the new system, and in particular, get the blogroll in gear. There will be no further posting to this site.

Only the Starstruck Could Believe that We Make Stars

2005-03-15T19:09:00.000-08:00

I propose to continue yesterday’s reflections on the thesis advanced by Robert Schwartz according to which "the world is a product of our conceptualizations. . . ." ("I am Going to Make you a Star," Midwest Studies in Philosophy XI (1987), p. 427). I again thank Peter Wizenberg for getting me going on this topic. He informs me by e-mail that he sent a copy of yesterday’s post to Professor Schwartz. We shall see if it gets a rise out of him. By the way, Schwartz’s article is very entertainingly written and is indeed quite stimulating, as you can see from the fact that it is turning my crank yet again today.

Consider Alpha Centauri, 4.3 light-years from earth. Schwartz’ claim implies that this star is a product of a conceptual (not physical) making by human beings. We make it have the properties it has, and we make it exist. Schwartz writes, "Whether there are stars, and what they are like, are facts that can emerge only in our attempts to describe and organize our world." (435)

Read in one way, this sentence is trivially true; read in another way, it is clearly false. The plausibility of Schwartz’s conceptual idealism, I contend, rests on the conflation of these two readings. This is a very common pattern in philosophy. One makes an equivocal statement bearing in its bosom two senses, one that makes the statement appear clearly true, the other that makes it appear informative and substantial.

Reading 1: Whether there are stars, and what they are like, are facts that can BE KNOWN only in our attempts to describe the world and organize our thoughts about it.

Reading 2: Whether there are stars, and what they are like, are facts that can EXIST only in our attempts to describe thre world and organize our thoughts about it.

Now (1) is clearly, indeed trivially, true. That Alpha Centauri exists, and that it is 4.3 light-years from earth, could not possibly be known unless there are beings who desire to know, and prosecute the requisite investigations. (2), however, is a stellar falsehood; or at least there is no reason to believe it.

One problem, of course, is the weasel word (fudge word?) ‘emerge.’ Being ambiguous, it can mean come to light, come to be known, but also, come to exist. Thus the Schwartzian thesis is fueled by an equivocation.

A second problem is one I mentioned yesterday. A fact that is a true proposition. For example, ‘It is a fact that Chomsky teaches at MIT’ is equivalent in meaning to ‘It is a true proposition that Chomsky teaches at MIT.’ A proposition, however, is a representational entity: it represents something, in the typical case, something distinct from itself. Now propositions can be reasonably viewed as mental entities, entities that exist only ‘in’ minds, i.e., only as the accusatives of mental acts. (Beware the treacherous word ‘in’ and while you are at it, beware the Ides of March!) So of course facts require minds if by ‘fact’ is meant ‘fact that.’ But there is another, more robust, notion of fact. Facts in this second sense are not propositional representations, or any kind of representation, but truth-makers of propositional representations. These are not facts that, but facts of. For example, the fact of Chomsky’s being a leftist. It is even clearer if we omit the ‘of’ which here functions as a mere device of apposition rather than as a genitive: the fact, Chomsky’s being a leftist. This concrete fact composed of Chomsky and the property of being a leftist is the truth-maker of ‘Chomsky is a leftist.’

So although it is reasonably held that facts that (i.e., true propositions) are mind-involving or mind-dependent, it does not follow that facts of (truth-making facts) are mind-involving.

More tomorrow.

The Perils of Pleasure

2005-03-15T13:02:00.000-08:00

Oscar Wilde, De Profundis:

The gods had given me almost everything. But I let myself be lured into long spells of senseless and sensual ease. I amused myself with being a FLANEUR, a dandy, a man of fashion. I surrounded myself with the smaller natures and the meaner minds. I became the spendthrift of my own genius, and to waste an eternal youth gave me a curious joy. Tired of being on the heights, I deliberately went to the depths in the search for new sensation. What the paradox was to me in the sphere of thought, perversity became to me in the sphere of passion. Desire, at the end, was a malady, or a madness, or both. I grew careless of the lives of others. I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that therefore what one has done in the secret chamber one has some day to cry aloud on the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer the captain of my soul, and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace. There is only one thing for me now, absolute humility.

Compare the words Plato puts in the mouth of Socrates in the Phaedo:

. . . every pleasure and pain has a kind of nail, and nails and pins her [the soul] to the body, and gives her a bodily nature, making her think that whatever the body says is true. (tr. F. J. Church St. 83)

Is New Jersey an Artifact? or Worldmaking? No Way!

2005-03-14T14:36:00.000-08:00

We are makers. We make some things physically, other things conceptually. If I hanker after an ‘early undergraduate’ bookshelf, I fabricate it from bricks and boards. But I also make poems, puns, blog posts, and taxonomies. We undoubtedly have the power to make, and very considerable powers when we work in concert with intelligent others; but how far does this power extend?

Some say that it extends unto our being worldmakers. They think the whole world and everything in it is a conceptual fabrication both as to existence and as to essence. I find this sort of conceptual idealism preposterous. The world may be a divine artifact, but it certainly is no human artifact. (I speculate that it is because of the Death of God in Nietzsche’s sense that some philosophers recently have been toying with the wacky idea that we can take over a considerable range of divine tasks. But I won’t develop this speculation here.)

Consider the question whether New Jersey is an artifact. The example is from Robert Schwartz ("I am Going to Make You a Star," Midwest Studies in Philosophy XI (1987), pp. 427-439, p. 431 f.) Schwartz holds that "the world is a product of our conceptualizations. . . ." (427) If so, then New Jersey is a conceptual artifact. Consider

1. New Jersey is on the Atlantic.

As Schwartz points out, there is a sense in which the state of New Jersey is an artifact of legislative and other decisions by human beings. Had there been no human beings, there would have been no state of NJ, and had our forefathers decided differently (by drawing boundaries differently, etc.) then NJ would have had different properties than we presently take it to have. Obviously, the number of coal deposits, forests, lakes, etc. in the state of NJ depends on what the boundaries are. So it looks as if NJ is a conceptual fabrication both in its existence and in its properties.

But surely Schwartz makes things too easy for himself here. What we normally intend by (1) is something like

1*. The land mass denoted by ‘New Jersey’ abuts the Atlantic Ocean.

That is, when we assert (1) we have in mind the land mass, not the political entity. The former is not identical to the latter for the simple reason that the former can exist whether or not the latter exists. (Just ask the Indians whose ancestors were native to the region.). Now could it be true of the land mass that it is a conceptual fabrication?

Granted, the political entity exists only in virtue of conceptual decisions. No people, no polis. But it is not the case that the corresponding land mass exists only in virtue of conceptual decisions. It does no good to point out that the word ‘land mass,’ the concept land mass, the units of measure (square miles, etc.) used to measure the land mass derive from us. I’m talking about the land itself, the topsoil, the subsoil, all the way down to the center of the earth. The existence of that chunk of land, pace Schwartz, is a state of affairs "untinged by cognitive intervention."(433) That chunk of land in no way depends on us for its existence. And the same goes for some of its properties. Of course, its being cultivated depends on us. But not so for the antecedent fertility of the land which allows its being cultivated so as to produce crops.

Schwartz tells us that "the facts about New Jersey are dependent on our activities of categorization and classification." (433). In one sense, this is trivially true. For facts about are just true propositions. For example, the fact that X exists is just the true proposition that X exists. And if you think of a proposition as a mental entity, then indeed the facts about NJ depend on minds and their conceptual activities. Aboutness (intentionality) gets into the world through minds.

But there is a distinction between facts that and facts about on the one hand, and truth-making facts on the other. The fact of the earth’s being spheroid, for example, is not a representational structure. It is not about anything. It is rather that which makes-true the proposition expressed by ‘The earth is spheroid.’

Now consider that we are categorizers and conceptualizers. Is my being a conceptualizer a product of someone’s conceptualization? If yes, then whose? Do I conceptualize myself as a conceptualizer, thereby creating my being a conceptualizer? Or would you prefer a vicious infinite regress: A’s being a conceptualizer derives from B’s conceptualizing A as a conceptualizer, et cetera?

It gets worse when we consider my existence. Does my existence derive from someone’s acts of conceptualizing? Do I ‘bootstrap’ my way into existence by conceptualizing myself as existent? Not even God could bootstrap himself into existence: Causa sui need not be interpreted to mean that God causes himself to exist; it is more plausibly taken to mean that God is not caused by another. And if God is not up to the task, then surely your humble correspondent isn’t either. Or would you rather bite into another vicious infinite regress?

If you say that we conceptualizers just exist, then you have an excellent counterexample to the claim that the world "is a product of our conceptualizations." (427) Or do you prefer to say that the world depends on us, but that we are not in the world?

More absurdities unmasked later. This post was inspired by a comment by Peter Wizenberg on a post of mine over at Right Reason.

Son of 'I've Had It'

2005-03-13T10:45:00.000-08:00

Messrs. Keezer and Gilleland also complain here and here respectively about the limitations of Blogger. There are two sorts of problems. The first has to with the unreliability of the Blogspot server. The second pertains to the Blogger software.

Pace Bill Keezer, the first problem is not solved by composing in a word processor and then pasting into the Blogger Compose window. I have been doing that from the beginning with longish posts. Even if I do this, I can still easily consume a half hour searching the 'Net for supporting documents, inserting hyperlinks, cleaning up the format, emending the text, proofreading, and fetching that fourth cup of coffee to fuel the above activities. You hit Publish and it's all lost. Don't tell me to save periodically in draft format. I do that too but it is also slow as molasses.

And then there is the problem of template work. HTML coding is a tedious business, especially for a tyro like me, and it really rankled me the other night to lose about an hour's worth of template modifications.

The second problem is the software itself. It is wonderful freeware, but it is not state of the art. I need Comment moderation. I need to be able to allow only pre-approved people into my Comments area. And there are other functionality problems with Blogger.

So will I make the move right now? Will I stop pussyfooting? What am I doing composing this post if not looking for an excuse to postpone the decision? Maybe I need to stoke up an Arturo Fuente Curly Head (cheap but good) and fetch another cup of French Roast. Is it the $5 per month that I'll have to shell out? I'm cheap, but am I that cheap?

Do I need to review my maxims? Erst waegen, dann wagen. But also: He who hesitates is lost. Or better: the post of one who dawdles like I'm doing right now is (often) lost.

Post Scriptum: I felt anxious just now when I hit Publish Post. Does my caffeinated and nicotinized heart need any more stress? And don't forget, compadres: blogging is exploding, and I reckon most of the newbies will be flooding over to Blogger/Blogspot. It's blogger Kindergarten. You don't have to be a computer scientist to know that the demands on the Blogspost server are going to increase dramatically.

I've Had It

2005-03-12T19:55:00.000-08:00

The Blogger server just ate another of my posts. Well, we all knew when we signed up for this free service that it was "subject to availability" as the fine print says. Enough is enough. I've cut my teeth and now it is time to get serious. Tomorrow I sign up at PowerBlogs.com.

Pop Culture is Filth

2005-03-11T19:21:00.000-08:00

Be sure to read this excellent essay by Ed Feser.

A Sample of Continental Political Philosophy

2005-03-10T15:22:00.000-08:00

Discussing the differences between analytic and Continental philosophy in general terms won’t take us very far. We need to look at examples. I concede, however, that this very move, namely, getting down to cases, is an analytic move. Or rather it is just good intellectual procedure. (Am I perhaps stacking the deck against our Continental brethren right out of the gate?) Slavoj Zizek (On Belief, Routledge 2001, pp. 115-116) writes:

How does freedom effectively function in liberal democracies themselves? Although Clinton’s presidency epitomizes the Third Way of today’s (ex-)Left succumbing to the Rightist ideological blackmail, his healthcare reform program would nonetheless amount to a kind of act, at least in today’s conditions, since it would have been based on the rejection of the hegemonic notions of the need to curtail Big State expenditure and administration – in a way, it would "do the impossible." No wonder, then, that it failed: its failure – perhaps the only significant, although negative, event of Clinton’s presidency – bears witness to the material force of the ideological notion of "free choice". . . . against this purely fictional reference to "free choice," all enumeration of "hard facts" (in Canada, healthcare is less expensive and more effective, with no less free choice, etc.) proved ineffective.

The above passage is the sort of stuff that many (not all) Continental philosophers produce. It fails to meet minimal intellectual standards.

There is first of all the resort to invective, e.g., "Rightist ideological blackmail." Philosophical writing should aim at rational persuasion, not any sort of persuasion.

Second, we note the use of verbiage that has no clear meaning such as "act"and "event" in italics.

Third, the author appears to contradict himself, but does nothing to dispel the appearance. Zizek tells us that "to curtail Big State expenditure and administration" is "hegemonic." I should think that the opposite is the case: reducing the size and scope of government is anti-hegemonic. And what is the function of Zizek’s "do the impossible"? Is he perhaps affirming the apparent contradiction as real?

The very fact that I must ask these questions shows that no clear sense can be attached to Zizek’s pronouncements. But that which has no clear sense cannot be evaluated as either true or false. Will someone say that it is not about truth or falsity? Then what, pray tell, is it about?

Fourth, the notion of free choice is labeled "ideological," "purely ficitional" as if by slapping these labels on it one has refuted it. Suppose I have the choice of either having Medicare take care of my health problem, or paying a private physician at the Mayo Clinic out of my own pocket. That’s not a free choice? The thing about about most Continental claptrap is that it collapses the minute one adduces a concrete example – which usually turns out to be a counterexample.

Fifth, there are also issues of self-reference that ought to be mentioned. If there is no truth, and all claims and counterclaims are ideological, then the claim Z that the notion of free choice is ideological is itself ideological. But if Z is ideological – nothing but an expression and legitimation of some existing power arrangement – then it can make no appeal to my reason and I am within my epistemic rights in rejecting it.

Sixth, the claim that Canadian health care is "less expensive and more effective, with no less free choice" is a mixture of factual and conceptual errors. One of the logico-conceptual errors is his invocation of free choice when a few lines back he branded the notion as "purely fictional." What our man is saying in effect is: There is no free choice but there is more of it in Canada.

There is also the conceptual mistake of thinking that something is less expensive simply because my present out-of-pocket expense is less while ignoring all the money the government took by force in the form of mandatory withholding over my working career. Is health care in Canada more effective than in the good old US of A? I’ll leave that factual question for the experts to decide. But first they have to attach a clear sense to it.

If you enjoyed the above takedown, see here for another and here for a third.

Crossposted at Right Reason, where some comments should be appearing. Max Goss is doing an excellent job of moderating, administering, and enforcing standards.

Today's Posts are . . .

2005-03-09T18:45:00.000-08:00

. . . here and here.

With respect to the second, Keith Burgess-Jackson e-mails:

I think you nailed it on the question of why the Left is uncivil. By the way, I'm sure you receive letters, as I do, from young people. They say they appreciate my posts; that I make them think; that they love the rational approach to human affairs. (I don't think I'm all that rational!) It makes me feel responsible, knowing that impressionable young people read my blogs.

Precisely because people are impressionable and suggestible, it is important for anyone who publishes to act responsibly. The blogosphere is what we make it. If enough of us inject reasonableness and civility into it, we will keep the barbarians in check. Part of keeping them in check is not allowing them a forum on our websites.

Right Reason Up and Running

2005-03-09T11:24:00.000-08:00

Right Reason sports three posts as of this writing and plenty of comments.

Is There Room for Libertarianism Between Anarchism and Conservatism?

2005-03-08T18:29:00.000-08:00

What follows are some remarks provoked by Daniel McCarthy’s "In Defense of Freedom" (The American Conservative, March 14, 2005 Issue.)

McC: Arthur Schopenhauer once wrote a marvelously cynical manual of eristics called The Art of Always Being Right. The philosopher advised his readers against resort to logic; ad hominem attacks and other plays upon the passions could be much more effective. Put the opponent’’s argument in some odious category, he urged.

BV: Given that the author will shortly complain about libertarians being slandered, I should point out that the above borders on slander of Schopenhauer. First of all, the essay in question was found untitled in Schopenhauer’s Nachlass. It has been available for many years in English translation under the title, The Art of Controversy. The title McCarthy mentions is a piece of recent repackaging. Second, Schopenhauer does NOT cynically advise his readers against resort to logic, as the following passage at the end of the essay shows:

The only safe rule, therefore, is that which Aristotle mentions in the last chapter of his Topica: not to dispute with the first person you meet, but only with those of your acquaintance of whom you know that they possess sufficient intelligence and self-respect not to advance absurdities; to appeal to reason and not to authority, and to listen to reason and yield to it; and, finally, to cherish truth, to be willing to accept reason even from an opponent, and to be just enough to bear being proved to be in the wrong, should truth lie with him. From this it follows that scarcely one man in a hundred is worth your disputing with him.

So much for setting the record straight.

McC: Conservatives are long accustomed to residing in such a category: as their enemies would have it, conservatism is the ideology of the rich, the racist, and the illiterate. That this caricature bears no resemblance at all to the philosophy and social thought of Edmund Burke or Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver or Robert Nisbet, is irrelevant. The stereotype endures not because it is true but because it is useful.

Sadly, a few conservatives seem to have learned nothing from their experience at the hands of the Left and are no less quick to present an ill-informed and malicious caricature of libertarians than leftists are to give a similarly distorted interpretation of conservatism. Rather than addressing the arguments of libertarians, these polemicists slander their foes as hedonists or Nietzscheans. In fact, there are libertine libertarians, just as there are affluent and bigoted conservatives. But libertinism itself is as distinct from libertarianism as worship of Mammon or hatred of blacks is distinct from conservatism.

BV: Fair enough.

McC: Libertarianism is a political philosophy, not a complete system of ethics or metaphysics. Political philosophies address specifically the state and, more generally, justice in human society. The distinguishing characteristic of libertarianism is that it applies to the state the same ethical rules that apply to everyone else. Given that murder and theft are wrong——views not unique to libertarianism, of course——the libertarian contends that the state, which is to say those individuals who purport to act in the name of the common good, has no more right to seize the property of others, beat them, conscript them, or otherwise harm them than any other institution or individual has. Beyond this, libertarianism says only that a society without institutionalized violence can indeed exist and even thrive.

BV: How then does libertarianism differ from anarchism, the doctrine that no state is morally justified? It seems clear that if the very same rules are applied to the state that are applied to individuals, then no state could be morally justified. For example, I lack the moral authority to capture and imprison people even if they have done wrong to some third party. But the government presumably has this authority. If the government has no moral authority in this and similar matters, then government (the state) has no moral justification – which amounts to anarchism.

It is worth pointing out that if no government is morally justified, then a person who uses some instrument of government such as the court system to right an alleged wrong is using an unjust means to secure his end. For example, I once sued a contractor in small claims court because he failed to do all that he agreed to do. I won a judgment against him, and to my mind justice was served. But if no government has moral authority, then what I did was no different than my calling up my cousin Vinnie in New Jersey and having him and his pals Smith and Wesson ‘encourage’ the contractor to honor his agreement.

Suppose we agree with Elizabeth Anscombe that the "fundamental question of political theory" concerns the "problem of distinguishing between states and syndicates." (Ethics, Religion and Politics, p. 136) One could then approach this fundamental question in two ways. One way, the way of the conservative, is to accept that there is a legitimate distinction and take the fundamental problem to be one of explaining the nature of that distinction and how a state could be justified in doing things that a syndicate would not be justified in doing. The other way, the way of the anarchist or radical libertarian, would be eliminativist in the sense that it would deny that there is any justifiable distinction between a state and a syndicate.

McC: For some exceptionally Christ-like people no demonstration of feasibility is needed. Doing what is right is enough, regardless of whether it brings wealth or happiness or even daily bread. But most people are not like that; they want security and prosperity—they ask, not unreasonably, not only "is it right?"" but ""can it work?" Following upon this is a tendency to deny that necessary evils are evils at all. Yes, the state seizes tax money and jails those who do not pay, actions that would be denounced as gangsterism if undertaken by a private organization. But if the only way life can go on is to have the government provide defense and other necessities, such expropriations might have to be called something other than robbery.
Moderate libertarians say just that. They propose that the state should do those necessary things that it alone can do—and only those things. Radical libertarians contend there is nothing good that only the state can provide—even its seemingly essential functions are better served by the market and voluntary institutions. The differences between thoroughgoing libertarians and moderates are profound, but the immediate prescriptions of each are similar enough: cut taxes, slash spending, no more foreign adventurism.

BV: There is a problem here. The author told us above that "the distinguishing characteristic of libertarianism is that it applies to the state the same ethical rules that apply to everyone else." How then can there be a moderate libertarian, one who holds that there are some things that government may do which, if individuals did them, would be unethical? A moderate libertarian would seem to be a conservative. And a radical libertarian would seem to be an anarchist. It is not clear how there could be conceptual space for libertarianism if that is supposed to lie between anarchism (no state is morally justified) and conservatism (a limited state is justified).

Or am I missing something?

The Greatest Chess Understatement of All Time?

2005-03-08T14:04:00.000-08:00

Dennis Monokroussos writes:

"It's not very likely that a player will produce a deep combination in a 1-minute game. . ."

That's just one bite out of a very big and tasty enchilada.

One thing I have noticed is that after playing 1-minute games, five minutes seems like an ice age. "Come on, move. What's to think about? I captured your knight, you have to take my Bishop . . . "

Nietzsche Misunderstood?

2005-03-08T06:22:00.001-08:00

Ed Yetman writes by e-mail:

I noticed this paragraph at your site, which I copied in part. I think the author [Curtis Cate] makes a gross error in understanding Nietzsche:

Like innumerable, less reflective humanists who came after him, Nietzsche wished to hold on to an essentially Christian view of the human subject while dropping the transcendental beliefs that alone support it. It was this impulse to salvage a religious conception of humankind, I believe, that animated Nietzsche's attempt to construct a new mythology. The task set by Nietzsche for his imaginary Superman was to confer meaning on history through a redemptive act of will. The sorry history of the species, lacking purpose or sense until a higher form of humanity came on to the scene, would then be redeemed.

He could not be farther from the truth. Nietzsche is not at all interested in the Superman redeeming history, nor has he any interest in "salvaging a religious concept of humankind", to use that grotesque feminist perversion of "mankind."

Nietzsche was a pure individualist, with no concern for anything other than the life of the individual. This life, the life lived now, is all that matters. All values must be created now and lived now; all acts must be done now. To think about a "redemptive act of will" is to do what Nietzsche explicitly condemmed: squandering the spirit. I think Nietzsche wanted to create a non-religious spirituality. For Nietzsche, the spirit was something natural and inherent in man. To expend it on anything other than the self was wasteful. I do not think Nietzsche was a religious man, but he was an intensely spiritual man. I am degraded from grading papers all week. I hope this makes sense.

BV: Thanks for writing, Ed. And thanks for running my column, The Chess Philosopher, in your Descriptive Chess Magazine. I am working on two more chess & philosophy posts as we speak. If I can't be a good player of chess, I may perhaps reasonably aspire to be a good philosopher of chess.

Yes, grading is degrading. Nevertheless, you are making sense. But the senseful is not equivalent to the true. Part of the problem, however, is figuring out exactly what the sense is that you are making. Like many today, you distinguish religion from spirituality. That's a distinction that needs explaining, and absent explanation is to my mind bogus. (I'm planning a post on this very topic.)

I don't think it can be denied that there is a redemptive aspect to the doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same. Nietzsche speaks of the will as the "great redeemer" (the reference is buried in a manuscript that I will 'resurrect'). If I will every detail of my life and the world, and their eternal recurrence, then I will the future and in willing the future I will the past, and so redeem the past, present, and future from meaninglessness. Perhaps I will unpack this later.

I don't think it can be denied that Nietzsche is of the type, homo religiosus. His style of writing, however, makes it possible for him to be exploited by partisans of a wide variety of contradictory positions. For example, it always amazes me that so many leftists love Nietzsche. I suppose it has to do with his doctrine that "The world is the will to power and nothing besides!" That is right up the leftist alley.

But I do agree with you about 'humankind.' It is nonsense to think that standard English excludes women. It certainly didn't exclude Ayn Rand!

Would Schopenhauer Allow Comments?

2005-03-08T05:55:00.000-08:00

If Schopenhauer were a blogger, would he allow comments on his weblog, The Scowl of Minerva?

I say no, and adduce as evidence the following passage that concludes his Art of Controversy, a delightful essay found in his Nachlass, and left untitled by the master:

As a sharpening of wits, controversy is often, indeed, of mutual advantage, in order to correct one's thoughts and awaken new views. But in learning and in mental power both disputants must be tolerably equal: If one of them lacks learning, he will fail to understand the other, as he is not on the same level with his antagonist. If he lacks mental power, he will be embittered, and led into dishonest tricks, and end by being rude.

The only safe rule, therefore, is that which Aristotle mentions in the last chapter of his Topica: not to dispute with the first person you meet, but only with those of your acquaintance of whom you know that they possess sufficient intelligence and self-respect not to advance absurdities; to appeal to reason and not to authority, and to listen to reason and yield to it; and, finally, to cherish truth, to be willing to accept reason even from an opponent, and to be just enough to bear being proved to be in the wrong, should truth lie with him. From this it follows that scarcely one man in a hundred is worth your disputing with him. You may let the remainder say what they please, for every one is at liberty to be a fool - desipere est jus gentium. Remember what Voltaire says: La paix vaut encore mieux que la verite. Remember also an Arabian proverb which tells us that on the tree of silence there hangs its fruit, which is peace.

Here is the same passage in the German original:

Das Disputieren ist als Reibung der Köpfe allerdings oft von gegenseitigem Nutzen, zur Berichtigung der eignen Gedanken und auch zur Erzeugung neuer Ansichten. Allein beide Disputanten müssen an Gelehrsamkeit und an Geist ziemlich gleichstehn. Fehlt es Einem an der ersten, so versteht er nicht Alles, ist nicht au niveau. Fehlt es ihm am zweiten, so wird die dadurch herbeigeführte Erbitterung ihn zu Unredlichkeiten und Kniffen [oder] zu Grobheit verleiten.

Die einzig sichere Gegenregel ist daher die, welche schon Aristoteles im letzten Kapitel der Topica gibt: Nicht mit dem Ersten dem Besten zu disputieren; sondern allein mit solchen, die man kennt, und von denen man weiß, daß sie Verstand genug haben, nicht gar zu Absurdes vorzubringen und dadurch beschämt werden zu müssen; und um mit Gründen zu disputieren und nicht mit Machtsprüchen, und um auf Gründe zu hören und darauf einzugehn; und endlich, daß sie die Wahrheit schätzen, gute Gründe gern hören, auch aus dem Munde des Gegners, und Billigkeit genug haben, um es ertragen zu können, Unrecht zu behalten, wenn die Wahrheit auf der andern Seite liegt. Daraus folgt, daß unter Hundert kaum Einer ist, der wert ist, daß man mit ihm disputiert. Die Übrigen lasse man reden, was sie wollen, denn desipere est juris gentium, und man bedenke, was Voltaire sagt: La paix vaut encore mieux que la vérité; und ein arabischer Spruch ist: »Am Baume des Schweigens hängt seine Frucht der Friede.«

New Conservative Weblog: Right Reason

2005-03-07T14:09:00.000-08:00

Conservative group weblog Right Reason is scheduled to begin operations on Wednesday, 9 March 2005. Nothing has been posted yet, but you can see the layout and a list of contributors.

God and Santa Claus

2005-03-07T13:29:00.000-08:00

For Sam Harris and many others, the beliefs in God and in Santa Claus are on a doxastic par.

But Harris is a radical, one who opposes both beliefs in both their conservative and in their liberal versions. Theological liberals say stuff like, "God is the warm feeling we get when we are with the people we love," or "God is our highest ethical aspiration," or "God is our ultimate concern" (Tillich). Harris is right to oppose such asinine pablum. Better no God-talk than this drivel. Harris put his point against the theological liberals somewhat as follows when I heard him on C-Span on 6 February 2005: "That’s like getting rid of the fat man in the red suit, but holding on to the elves and the sleigh." Or it would be like saying that one believes in Santa Claus but that Santa Claus is the wondrous spirit of giving that comes upon the land around the time of the Winter solstice. (Compare Cactus Ed Abbey’s snort: "Piss on earth, good swill towards men." Somewhere in Confessions of a Barbarian.)

Theological liberals ought to make a clean sweep and simply deny the existence of God rather than try to hold on by redefining ‘God’ to mean something it cannot possibly mean. God cannot be a feeling, warm or otherwise, any more than God can be whatever happens to be your ultimate concern. Of course, one can say things like, "His God is Jim Beam" or "Her God is golf," but such talk is so loose as to be meaningless.

So I follow Sam Harris in rejecting the wishy-washy liberal compromise. Where Harris goes wrong is in failing to see that comparing God to Santa Claus makes very little sense. Of course, anything can be compared to anything else: apples can be compared to sparkplugs, mesas to mammaries, and all four are comparable in respect of being mentioned now by this blogger. But there are two important differences between God and Santa Claus, or rather their respective concepts, that undermine Harris’ deprecatory analogy.

First, God is such that, if he exists, he cannot not exist, and if he does not exist, then he cannot exist. This is what is meant by saying that God is ens necessarium, a necessary being. This was Anselm’s Discovery (to employ a title of one of Charles Hartshorne’s books), and its correctness is independent of the soundness of either of Anselm’s versions of the ontological argument. (Proslogion II vs. Proslogion III). The idea is that either God exists in all metaphysically possible worlds, or in no metaphysically possible world. Equivalently, God either exists necessarily, or is impossible. God cannot be a contingent being. He cannot just happen to exist, or happen not to exist. If God were a contingent being, he would not be "that than which no greater can be conceived" and would not be worthy of worship. Santa Claus, however, must be a contingent being, a fact derivable from his being a physical being. God is necessarily noncontingent; Santa Claus is necessarily contingent. So there is one point of disanalogy.

Another is that Santa Claus is at least in part a physical being, whereas God is purely spiritual. Some will balk at the notion that Santa C laus is physical: "He does not exist, so how can he be physical!" This is to confuse existence with physicality. Consider the biconditional:

1. X exists iff X is a physical entity.

(1) does not stand up well to counterexamples. My thoughts exist, but it is highly dubious that they are physical. Numbers exist, but it would take some fancy footwork indeed to show that they are construable in terms of merely physical items. And aren’t some merely possible objects physical? There is that bookshelf I have been planning to build. It does not yet exist, but if I were to build it, it would exist. The point could be put as follows. The concept of a bookshelf is a concept that could be instantiated only by a physical particular. In that sense, a merely possible bookshelf is a physical thing. The same goes for various sorts of impossibilia. A perpetual motion machine is nomologically impossible. Yet if, per impossibile, one were to exist, it would have to be a physical object. The ether for which the Michelson-Morley experiment failed to provide evidence presumably does not exist. Yet 19th century physicists believe that it existed. When they abandoned their belief that the ether exists, they did not abandon it by replacing it with the belief that the ether is nonphysical; they abandoned it by replacing it with the belief that the ether does not exist. Same with phlogiston, caloric, and all the rest of those physics posits good and gone.

Because of these and other counterxamples it is beyond doubt that (1) is false. This stymies any attempt at identifying existence with physicality. I can also show that even if – per impossibile! – (1) were necessarily true, existence still could not be identified with phsyicality. But I’ll save that for an separate post.

In sum, the concept of God is the concept of a purely spiritual necessary being, whereas the concept of Santa Claus includes neither of these marks. The two concepts are separated by a deep ontological chasm. Nothing I have said is evidence of the actual existence of God. But what I have shown is that atheists who compare God with Santa Claus (or the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy, etc) are not seriously engaging theistic ideas. They think of God as some sort of ‘feel-good posit,’ some sort of anthropological projection (Feuerbach) or wish-fulfillment (Freud).

Here, then, is a central problem in the debate between atheists and theists. I am tempted to call it an asymmetry. Many theists take atheism seriously, as a Jamesian "live option," but few atheists take theism seriously in like manner. They just cannot take it seriously as something that could be true. It is to them obviously false and the point of arguing against it is not to convince themselves that it is false but to convince theists and fence-sitters that it is false.

The Blogger Juggernaut Rolls On

2005-03-07T08:07:00.000-08:00

Blogger Garrett Graff receives White House pass.

Are These Aphorisms Any Good?

2005-03-07T07:57:00.000-08:00

See here. I have my answer. What is yours?

Nietzsche, Homo Religiosus

2005-03-07T07:30:00.000-08:00

A correspondent wrote to ask me my opinion of Curtis Cate's recent study of Nietzsche. Well, I haven't seen it, but I have just read a review by John Gray published in the New Statesman. Here is the final paragraph:

Like innumerable, less reflective humanists who came after him, Nietzsche wished to hold on to an essentially Christian view of the human subject while dropping the transcendental beliefs that alone support it. It was this impulse to salvage a religious conception of humankind, I believe, that animated Nietzsche's attempt to construct a new mythology. The task set by Nietzsche for his imaginary Superman was to confer meaning on history through a redemptive act of will. The sorry history of the species, lacking purpose or sense until a higher form of humanity came on to the scene, would then be redeemed. In truth, Nietzsche's mythology is no more than the Christian view of history stated in idiosyncratic terms, and a banal version of it underpins nearly all subsequent varieties of secular thought. The militant atheist who charmed the good burghers of Sils-Maria with his innocent sanctity left a contribution to our religious inheritance that remains unacknowledged to this day.

I would say that this is basically on the right track. Or as I put it in an unpublished draft, "Although Nietzsche's was the bladed intellect of the sceptic, he possessed the open heart of the homo religiosus."

Old Einstein Joke

2005-03-07T07:20:00.000-08:00

This old joke may be worth repeating.

Einstein and a young physicist were having a conversation. From time to time the young physicist would take out a notebook and jot something down.

"What are you doing?" Einstein asked.

"Well, whenever I get a good idea, I write it down."

"I used to do that myself once, but I had only two good ideas."

Bogus Quotations

2005-03-07T06:55:00.000-08:00

Politicians and popular writers who retail in bogus quotations should have a close cousin of the logic stick applied to their silly heads.

Senator Charles Grassley (R) was on C-Span this morning talking about Social Security reform among other things. He attributed the following quotation to Albert Einstein: "Compound interest is the only miracle in the world." Did Einstein say that? I rather doubt it. It is too stupid a thing for Einstein to say. There is nothing miraculous about compound interest, and there is no 'magic' in it either. It is very simple arithmetic. Suppose you invest $2000 at 10% compounded annually. At the end of the first year, you have $2,200. How much do you have at the end of the second year, assuming no additions or subtractions from the principal? $2,400? No. What you have is $2,200 + 220 = $2, 420. Where did the extra twenty bucks come from? That is interest on interest. It is the interest on interest on interest . . . that make compounding a powerful tool of wealth enhancement.

But there is nothing miraculous or magical about it. Words mean things. Use them wisely.

And don't look to Einstein for advice on personal finance.

Ralph Waldo Emerson on Blogging

2005-03-06T18:48:00.000-08:00

The good of publishing one's thoughts is that of hooking to you like-minded men, and of giving to men whom you value . . . one hour of stimulated thought.

From The Heart of Emerson's Journals, ed. Bliss Perry, p. 94. Entry of 20 June 1835 when Emerson was 32 years old.

Cassirer on Kant on Rousseau and Independence

2005-03-05T08:01:00.000-08:00

Ernst Cassirer, Rousseau, Kant and Goethe (Harper Torchbooks, 1963, p. 17):

What always reconciled Kant again to Rousseau, with all his paradoxical and enthusiastic qualities, was the fearlessness, the independence of thought and feeling, the will to the "unconditioned" he there encountered. For Kant himself, though far from any rebellion against the constituted authorities, was inspired with the strongest sense of independence. Much that surprises us in his way of life and may at times seem strange or eccentric, is explained by this trait of his character: by the desire to preserve his inner and outer independence in every moment of life and under all circumstances.

Rights and Duties: A Quiz

2005-03-05T07:01:00.000-08:00

Try to guess who wrote the following passage and when. A Dos Equis and a shot of Jose Cuervo 1800 to whomever gets both right without Googling. (I rather doubt that Googling will help in any case.) A shot of cheap Tequila to anyone who can date this passage within a ten year period.

. . . the people who have more rights than duties have gained a notable and distinguished ethical position in our modern world. The selfish we had always with us. But the divine right to be selfish was never more ingeniously defended, in the name of the loftiest spiritual dignity, than it is sometimes defended and illustrated today.

Answer to be posted in a day or two in the Comments section.

Bad Academic Writing: Can Blogging Help?

2005-03-05T06:39:00.000-08:00

I saw Christina Hoff Sommers on C-Span this morning. She mentioned that Judith Butler had won a Bad Writing contest. I put the Google bot on her case and found this well written piece from the Weekly Standard.

Since I tend to overwrite, I thought that blogging might improve my style, moving it from the prolix to the pithy. I believe it has helped some. But blogging is to formal writing a bit like blitz is to slow chess. The blitz player develops quick sight of the board and learns how to maintain his cool in time pressure; but the overall assessment has to be negative: speed chess hurts one's slow game. (But my slow game is so bad, the hurt is inconsequential.) Does blogosophisizing hurt one's formal philosophizing? The jury is still out on this one as far as I'm concerned.

Maybe what Judith Butler needs is her very own blog, ButlerBlog, or perhaps ButlerBull. For all I know, she already has one.

Should the Pseudonymous Be Boycotted?

2005-03-04T06:42:00.000-08:00

Keith Burgess-Jackson says yes. What say you, fellow bloggers? Or is this topic played out?

Largest Prime Number?

2005-03-03T10:49:00.000-08:00

From The Guardian (via Tony Flood):

A German eye specialist with a keen amateur interest in mathematics has discovered the world's largest prime number after a 50-day search using his personal computer.

Now your humble correspondent is certainly no expert in number theory, but he knows that a prime number is one that is divisible only by itself and by 1, and he thinks he knows that there is no largest prime number. So he suspects that the Guardian's journalist, Luke Harding, is a sloppy writer. What Harding wants to convey is not the thought that

1. There is a largest prime number n such that Dr. Martin Nowak has discovered n

but

2. There is a prime number n such that Dr. Martin Nowak has discovered n and no prime m > n has yet been discovered.

The journalist is confusing 'the largest prime hitherto discovered' with 'the largest prime.' Could the root of this error be the widespread tendency to conflate epistemological and ontological questions? Is Harding a student of Continental philosophy?

Furthermore, why does the journalist write, "world's largest"? As opposed to what, the UK's largest?

UPDATE (4 March '05): Commenter David reports that the number can be viewed in its full glory here.

A Platonist at Breakfast

2005-03-03T10:17:00.000-08:00

I head out early one morning with wifey in tow. I’m going to take her to a really fancy joint this time, the 5 and Diner, a greasy spoon just dripping with 1950s Americana. We belly up to the counter -- where I can keep an eye on the waitresses -- and order the $2. 98 special: two eggs any style, hashbrowns, toast and coffee. Meanwhile I punch the buttons of Floyd Cramer’s "Last Date" on the personal jukebox in front of me after feeding it with a quarter from wifey’s purse.

"How would you like your eggs, sir?"

"Over medium, please."

The eggs arrive undercooked. Do I complain? Rhinestone studded Irene is working her tail off in the early morning rush. I’ve already bugged her for Tabasco sauce, extra butter, and more coffee. The service came with the sweetest of smiles. The place is jumping, the Mexican cooks are sweating, and the philosopher is philosophizing:

"If it won’t matter by tomorrow morning that these eggs are undercooked, why does it matter now?"

With that thought, I liberally douse the undercooked eggs with the fine Louisiana condiment, mix them up with the hashbrowns, and shovel the mess into my mouth with bread and fork, chasing it all with coffee and cream, no sugar.

Who says you can’t do anything with philosophy?

An Embarrassment of Riches

2005-03-03T07:24:00.000-08:00

Some nonpseudonymous weblogs that have come to my attention:

DuckRabbit

Studi Galileiani

Scriptorium Digitalis

Pike Speak

Anonyblogging and Anonycommenting

2005-03-02T18:46:00.000-08:00

Steven Den Beste's 2002 treatment of this topic is well worth another look. Here is a more recent post on the question.

Composition: An External Relation or an Internal Relation or Neither?

2005-03-02T16:41:00.000-08:00

CAUTION: You are about to enter a hard-core metaphysics zone.

Joseph Jedwab writes in the comments to this post:

Composition is a relation and the holding of every relation implies the existence of the relata: so if the xs compose y, then the xs exist and y exists. It follows that if the xs compose something, there is an entity the xs compose. And it also follows that if y is composed by some things, there are entities y is composed by.

Jedwab would have us conclude that if W is composed of P1 and P2, then there are at least three entities, P1, P2, and W. No doubt this is highly plausible, and will strike some as utterly self-evident; but let’s think about it. I propose to consider whether, and in what sense, composition is a relation. What I will argue is that composition is neither an external relation nor an internal relation, and that this casts doubt on its being a relation at all. If composition is not a relation, then one cannot argue that all the terms of this ‘relation’ exist on the strength of the fact that every relation implies the existence of its relata.

1. Composition is not an external relation. My coffee cup rests on a coaster which rests on my desk. Consider first the dyadic on top of relation the relata of which are the cup and the coaster. This is an external relation in the sense that both the cup and the coaster can exist and have the intrinsic (nonrelational) properties they have whether or not they stand in this relation. Removing the cup from the coaster need not induce an intrinsic change (a change in respect of an intrinsic property or change in existential status) in the cup or in the coaster. One could also put the point modally. In the actual world, the cup is on the coaster at time t. But there is a possible world W in which the cup is not on the coaster at t. In W, cup and coaster both exist and possess the same intrinsic properties they have in the actual world.

Now consider the triadic between relation that relates the members of the ordered triple . This relation is also external. The terms of the relation can exist and have the intrinsic properties they have whether or not they stand in the relation.

If composition were an external relation, then P1 and P2, on the one hand, and W on the other would both be such that they could exist and have the intrinsic properties they have whether or not the relation obtains. But this is not the case: W cannot exist unless P1 and P2 exist. If you balk at that, by denying mereological essentialism, then you must at least accept that no whole can exist without some parts or other. A whole cannot exist without some parts or other, but the entities that happen to be the parts of a whole can exist without the whole existing. So the parts of a whole cannot be externally related to the whole of which they are the parts. The parts compose the whole; but this composing is not an external relation.

2. Composition is not an A-internal relation. If a relation is not external, then it is nonexternal. One sort of nonexternal relation is an A-internal relation, where ‘A’ honors David Armstrong:

Two or more particulars are internally related if and only if there exist properties of the particulars which logically necessitate that the relation holds. (Universals and Scientific Realism, II, 85)

Consider two balls A and B. Each has the property of being red all over. Just in virtue of each being red, A and B stand in the same color as relation. This relation is internal in that the nonobtaining of the relation at a later time or in a different possible world would induce an intrinsic change in one or both of the balls. In other words, the two balls could not cease to be the same color as one another unless one or both of the balls changed color. But the two balls could cease to be ten feet from each other without changing in any nonrelational respect.

A-internal relations can be said to be founded relations in that they are founded in intrinsic (nonrelational) properties of the relata. Thus the relational fact of A’s being the same color as B decomposes into a conjunction of two nonrelational facts: A’s being red & B’s being red.
These nonrelational facts are independent of each other in the sense that each can obtain without the other obtaining.

Now if parts and whole are A-internally related, then there is a nonrelational property P such that the parts have P, the whole has P, and the relational fact of the parts composing the whole analyzes without remainder into a conjunction of two independent nonrelational facts: Parts having P & Whole having P. But these facts cannot be independent of each other. For if one obtains without the other, then there is no composition.

3. Composition is not a B-internal relation. To say that two or more particulars are B-internally related, where ‘B’ honors Bradley and Blanshard, is to say that there is no possible world in which the particulars exist but do not stand in the relation in question. Thus two B-internally related particulars cannot exist without each other. Each is essential to the other. Here is an example. Set S has five members essentially (as opposed to accidentally) , while set T has seven members essentially. These essential properties of S and T found the relation larger than that obtains between them. Although there are possible worlds in which neither set exists, there is no possible world in which both sets exists but fail to stand in the relation in question.

In sum, external relations are not founded in the nonrelational properties of their relata. A-internal relations are founded in accidental nonrelational properties of their relata. B-internal relations are founded in essential nonrelational properties of their relata.

Now it is easy to see that composition cannot be a B-internal relation. My pipe is composed of stem and bowl. Since there are times and possible worlds at which stem and bowl exist, but the pipe does not, it follows that the stem and bowl’s composing of the pipe cannot be a B-internal relation.

4. External in one direction, internal in the other? The parts are external to the whole in the sense that the parts can exist and have the nonrelational properties they have whether or not the whole exists. The whole is B-internal to the parts in the sense that the existence of the whole entails the existence of the parts (if not the precise parts that the whole has, then some parts or other). So can we say that composition is an external relation from parts to whole but a B-internal relation from whole to parts?

That strikes me as nonsense. For that would imply that composition is both unfounded and founded – unfounded as external and founded as B-internal. But I won’t argue this any further now but leave some work for tomorrow. I will simply conclude today’s Forschungsmanuskript with the following argument:

a. All and only genuine relations are ones whose obtaining implies the existence of their relata.
b. Every genuine relation is either external, A-internal, or B-internal.
c. Composition is neither external, A-internal, nor B-internal.
Therefore
d. Composition is not a genuine relation.
Therefore
e. Composition is not a relation whose obtaining implies the existence of its relata.
Therefore
f. (a) does not entail that a whole of exactly two proper parts is a third entity.

What say you, Joseph Jedwab? Will you reject (b) or will it be (c)? And why in either case?

The Anarchist and the Criminal

2005-03-01T15:28:00.000-08:00

William Ernest Hocking explains the anarchist’s attitude toward the criminal as follows:

As for the criminal, his existence is not forgotten; but it is thought that he is either such by definition only, as one who has disobeyed what we have commanded; or he is such by response to the unnatural environment of the state and the inequalities which it fosters; or else he is the unusual individual of determined ill-will who is best dealt with by near and private hands, since the life of the will, whether for good or for evil, is always intimate, individual, and unique. ("The Philosophical Anarchist," in Hoffman ed., Anarchism, Lieber-Atherton, 1973, pp. 116-117)

Suppose we consider these three points seriatim.

1. The criminal is such by definition only. No doubt this is true of some criminals. If the Brady Bunch were to make hand gun possession by decent folk illegal, then those people would become criminals by a mere act of irrational legislation. An example liberals might prefer is that of the peaceable fellow who cultivates cannabis sativa solely for his personal enjoyment, or for the alleviation of a medical disorder. The notion that every criminal is such by definition only, however, is palpably false. The reader is invited to supply his own counterexamples.

2. The state fosters inequalities that drive people into criminality. The state fosters inequalities? I would have thought that people left to their own devices pursuing their interests in accordance with their talents and ambitions would be source enough of inequality. Why is X’s net worth greater than Y’s? Because X works hard, saves and invests, and practices the ancient virtues, while Y devotes himself to wine, women, and song. Surely that is true for many values of X and Y. The modern state seriously penalizes the sort of productive behavior that naturally results in economic inequality while rewarding unproductive behavior.

3. The criminal is best dealt with locally. This is perhaps true of some criminals. But it takes more than a bunch of local yokels to put the finger on the likes of Bonnie and Clyde. The professional criminal is precisely a professional, and it takes professionals to control him.
When thugs like Machine Gun Kelly, B & C, and Pretty Boy Floyd roamed the land, even professional law enforcement had a hell of a time getting the drop on them due to the former’s superior firepower. A six-shooter is no match for a Thompson submachine gun.

Now let’s consider the (inclusive) disjunction of the three points: every criminal is either (1) or (2) or (3). In other words, can we parcel out the criminal population in such a way that every criminal falls under one or more of these heads? Obviously not. Where does one place a serial killer like Ted Bundy? This dude was no criminal by mere extrinsic denomination. His intrinsic attributes more than justified the appellation. Nor can the blame be placed on state-induced inequalities. And again, a local posse got up by Jethro and his brother is unlikely to corral a guy as smart as Bundy. Examples are easily multiplied.

Further questions: How would an anarchist society deal with aggression emanating from foreign states? How would voluntary associations ever on the brink of dissolution be able to stand up against ruthless gangs that enforce severe internal discipline and kill apostates? A fortiori, how would such voluntary associations be able to counter terrorist cells that enjoy state-sponsorship?

I am sure that a sophisticated anarchist has an answer to these questions and many more besides. It would be interesting to hear what those answers are. For the nonce, however, I remain a conservative, one who holds to the moral justifiability of a limited state.

And another thing. Aren't anarchists making the same mistake that leftists make, namely, ignoring the ineradicable propensity for evil in human nature? Arguably, that propensity is part of the justification for having a state in the first place. The opposites meet in the same strange bed.

Was Sisyphus a Bachelor?

2005-03-01T10:25:00.000-08:00

Franz Kafka, anthropological dangler, creative exception, ruminates in this 1922 diary entry on the problem of procreation and dreams of a bourgeois rootedness that probably would have suffocated him:

The infinite, deep, warm, saving happiness of sitting beside the cradle of one’s child opposite its mother.

There is also in it something of this feeling: matters no longer rest with you, unless you wish it so. In contrast, this feeling of those who have no children: it perpetually rests with you, whether you will or no, every moment to the end, every nerve-racking moment, it perpetually rests with you, and without result. Sisyphus was a bachelor. (The Diaries 1910-1923, ed. Max Brod, New York: Schocken, 1975, p. 401.)

Resource: Leni's Franz Kafka page.

Turn Back Now, Ye Faint-Hearted!

2005-03-01T09:56:00.000-08:00

The following passage from Josiah Royce’s magnificent essay, "The One, the Many, and the Infinite" appended to Volume One of The World and the Individual might well serve as an extended introductory warning to readers of (at least some of the posts in) this weblog:

But now, at this point, let any weary reader who my lectures [posts] may already have disheartened, – but who nevertheless may kindly have proceeded so far, – turn finally back. When you enter the realm of Mr. Bradley’s Absolute, it is much as it is at the close of Victor Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea, after the ship that carries away the lady has sunk below the horizon, and after the tide has just covered the rock where the desolate lover had been watching. "There was nothing," says the poet, in his last words, "there was nothing now visible but the sea." As for me, I love the sea, and am minded to find in it life, and individuality, and explicit law. And I go upon that quest. Whoever is not weary, and is not yet disheartened, and is fond of metaphysical technicality, is welcome to join the quest. But in the sea there are also, as Victor Hugo explained to us, very strange monsters. And Mr. Bradley, too, in his book, has had much to say of the "monsters," philosophic and psychological , that the realm of Appearance contains, even in the immediate neighborhood of the Absolute. We shall meet some such reputed "monsters" in the course of this discussion. Let him who fears such trouble also turn back.

It is too bad that people nowadays have little patience with writing of this sort. They dismiss it as flowery and baroque. They don’t have time, or at least they won’t make time or take the time to savor it. They want the point served up pre-masticated on a silver platter. They are too much impressed by Orwell’s rules for good writing. To them I say: Slow down and enjoy the moment!

Hocking on the Value of the Individual

2005-03-01T09:14:00.000-08:00

William Ernest Hocking (1873-1966) had his day in the philosophical sun, but is no longer much read – except by those contrarians who take being unread by contemporaries as a possible mark of distinction. This morning I came across this magnificent passage:

Life itself is individual, and the most significant things in the world – perhaps in the end the only significant things – are individual souls. Each one of these must work its own way to salvation, win its own experience, suffer from its own mistakes: "through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui," yes, and through crime and retribution, "what you are picks its way." Any rule which by running human conduct into approved grooves saves men from this salutary Odyssey thwarts the first meaning of human life. ("The Philosophical Anarchist" in R. Hoffman, ed. Anarchism, New York: Lieber-Atherton, 1973, pp. 120-121.)

The quotation within this quotation is from the last stanza of Walt Whitman's "To You" from Leaves of Grass. See here.

Short Views, Long Views, and the Feel for the Real

2005-02-28T18:37:00.000-08:00

Dennis Mangan, responding to a post of mine, writes:

In my own life, I prefer not to think about the "senselessness" of the universe; it's too depressing. Just because something is depressing does not of course make it untrue, as many orthodox religious believers seem to think. The truth may set you free, but it may also imprison you. In life, as the Rev. Sidney Smith said, it is best to take short views.

Is it best to take short views? Sometimes it is. When the going gets tough, it is best to pull in one’s horns, hunker down, and just try to get through the next week, the next day, the next hour. One can always meet the challenge of the next hour. Be here now and deal with what is on your plate at the moment. Most likely you will find a way forward.

But, speaking for myself, a life without long views would not be worth living. I thrill at the passage in Plato’s Republic, Book Six (486a) where the philosopher is described as a "spectator of all time and existence." And then there is this beautiful formulation by our very own William James:

The absolute things, the last things, the overlapping things, are the truly philosophic concerns; all superior minds feel seriously about them, and the mind with the shortest views is simply the mind of the more shallow man. (Pragmatism, Harvard UP, 1975, p. 56)

I wrote above, "speaking for myself." The expression was not used redundantly inasmuch as it conveys that my philosopher’s preference for the long view is not one that I would want to or try to urge on anyone else. In my experience, one cannot argue with another man’s sensibility. And much of life comes down to precisely that -- sensibility. If people share a sensibility, then argument is useful for its articulation and refinement. But I am none too sanguine about the possibility of arguing someone into, or out of, a sensibility. How argue the atheist out of his abiding sense that the univere is godless, or the radical out of his conviction of human perfectibility? If the passages I cited from Plato and James leave you cold, how could I change your mind? If you sneer at my being thrilled, what then? Argument comes too late. Or if you prefer, sensibility comes too early.

One might also speak of a person’s sense of life, view of what is important, or ‘feel for the real.’ James’ phrase, "feel seriously," is apt. To the superior mind, ultimate questions "feel real," whereas to the shallow mind they appear pointless, unimportant, silly. It is equally true that the superior mind is made such by its wrestling with these questions:

Maximae res, cum parvis quaeruntur, magnos eos solent efficere.

Matters of the greatest importance, when they are investigated by little men, tend to make those men great. (Augustine, Contra Academicos 1. 2. 6.)

Of course, with his talk of the superior and the shallow, James is making a value judgment. I myself have no problem making value judgments, and in particular this one. And I am sure Mangan doesn’t in general either, as witness his thoughts on Brahms.

Although prospects are dim for arguing the other out of his sensibility, civil discussion is not pointless. One comes to understand one’s own view by contrast with another. One learns to respect the sources of the other’s view. That may lead to toleration, which is good within limits. (Osama and the others who do not respect the principle of toleration must not be tolerated, but killed.) For someone with a theoretical bent, the sheer diversity of approaches to life is fascinating and provides endless grist for the theoretical mill.

Anti-Naturalism Links

2005-02-28T15:09:00.000-08:00

Sloan Lee has compiled a page of anti-naturalism links to papers by some very good philosophers. (Via Max Goss) Being a 'fair and balanced' kind of guy, I draw your attention to a link at the bottom of the aforementioned page, a link to a pro-naturalism page. I report, you decide.

Gypsy Scholar Wanders into the 'Sphere

2005-02-28T14:01:00.000-08:00

Let's all extend a friendly welcome to Jeff Hodges who has overcome his initial fear of the 'sphere to join us in the great conversation. I see that he ripped off 'my' template, however; my revenge may consist of changing my colors to his. Here is how Jeff describes his weblog's title:

My blog title, Gypsy Scholar, probably violates political correctness, but intellectual travel has taken me around the world. I grew up in Arkansas and have lived in Texas, California, Switzerland, Germany, Australia, Israel, and Korea. I've also visited Mexico, Belgium, France, England, Scotland, Italy, Austria, Czechoslovakia (before the split), East Germany (before the union), Denmark, Russia, Singapore, and Japan. Since my scholarly career has brought me through all of these places to the outskirts of Seoul, where I now live, the terms "Gypsy" and "Scholar" both fit. Thus: "Gypsy Scholar."

Now that I've plugged you, Jeff, you have to produce in accordance with the rule: Nulla dies sine blogposta. But however much Jeff posts, one can be assured that it will be well written.

I am confident that Jeff will be among those who help the blogosphere achieve its true potential as a noosphere (Teilhard de Chardin).

Desire, Satisfaction, and Intrinsic Goods

2005-02-27T19:14:00.000-08:00

Some desires are satisfied by being sated, or eliminated. Suppose I am thirsty. It would not be accurate to say that I desire water; what I desire is a drink of water. To be exact, it is the drinking of water by me that I desire. For that, water is of course required; but it is not the water itself but the drinking of the water that I desire. What this physical desire aims at is its own cessation. I desire that my thirst shall cease. I drink until my thirst (my desire for water) is quenched (eliminated). It is the same with hunger. It is not food that I desire, but the eating of food by me so that my hunger will cease. An even clearer case is heroin addiction. The junkie desires his fix not to attain a positive state of pleasure, but to get rid of the pain of the withdrawal symptoms. If he could eliminate the pain without injecting heroin, he would do so. Here then is a pure case in which desire is a desire for its own cessation. The desire does not aim at a good external to itself: it aims solely at its own elimination. In the case of a desire for shot of heroin on the part of an addict (as opposed to someone just beginning to use the stuff), there cannot be a good external to the satisfaction, by elimination, of the desire. The only good in this case is a good definable in terms of the satisfaction of desire. The water itself is good, of course, but only instrumentally in that it is a means to the end of thirst-quenching.

Some desires, then, aim at their own cessation. In such cases, a desire satisfied is a desire eliminated. There are other desires, however, that are satisfied by being fulfilled or completed rather than by being sated or eliminated. The addict simply wants to get rid of his craving by any means possible. For that he doesn’t need heroin – a total blood transfusion would do just as well. But the desire for understanding – e.g., my desire to understand the nature of desire and solve the attendant philosophical problems that are ‘tormenting’ me -- is not a desire for its own cessation. I don’t simply want to get rid of the desire – something I could achieve Hunter Thompson style by blowing my brains out – I want the fulfillment of the desire, its completion. A desire completed is not the same as a desire eliminated. A desire is fulfilled or completed when it attains a good external to the desire.

Or consider someone’s desire that a wrong be righted. (An innocent man has been convicted of a capital crime and sits on death row, and his attorney desires that this wrong be righted.) A desire for justice cannot be satisfied by the mere cessation of the desire; what is required is that the external good aimed at by the desire be attained. If the external good is attained, then two things are attained: the external good and the internal good of desire-satisfaction.

Now in the cases in which a desire is fulfilled rather than simply eliminated, what fulfills the desire is a good the goodness of which cannot be identified with its satisfying the desire. Consider again the desire for understanding. Although the satisfying of the desire to understand is itself good, understanding is good not merely because it satisfies a desire for understanding, but because it satisfies the desire in a certain way, namely, by bringing the desirer into contact with something intrinsically good. And in the case of the attorney seeking justice for his client, the righting of the wrong is not good merely because it satisfies a desire on the part of the attorney for the righting of a wrong, but because righting the wrong is an intrinsic good.

Understanding is intrinsically good. It is good in itself, and not in virtue of its relation to a desirer whose desire it satisfies. The desire for understanding is not just a desire for the satisfaction of this desire, but also a desire for something whose goodness is intrinsic to it.

If this is right, then the good cannot be reduced to the satisfaction of desire. And if the good cannot be reduced to the satisfaction of desire, then the good cannot be reduced, pace Jim Ryan, to the rationally desirable. For whether or not a thing is rationally desirable, it is desirable. And if X is not desirable because it it is intrinsically good, then X is desirable only because it can satisfy desire. But what I have shown above is that there are intrinsic goods such as understanding and justice, goods that cannot be reduced to what people desire, can desire, or would desire were they to know all the relevant facts surrouinding their desiring. These goods are good whether we desire them or not.

Note that I am not denying the truth of the biconditional, ‘X is good iff X is rationally desirable,’ for it can be interpreted in such a way that it comes out trivially true. For if the desirer is en rapport with every fact relevant to himself, his situation, and the object of this desire, then what could count as a counterexample to the biconditional? What I am saying is that the trivial truth of Ryan’s biconditional does not sanction the reduction of the good to the rationally desirable. The reduction would follow logically only in the presence of some additional premises. What could those be? And given that there are intrinsic goods, as I have argued, the reduction must fail.

Note also that if the truth (or the necessary truth) of a biconditional sanctions a reduction, why must the reduction move from right to left rather than from left to right? Why not argue that the truth of the above biconditional sanctions the reduction of the rationally desirable to the good?

Indeed, that is exactly what I would argue. The rationally desirable is rationally desirable because it is good, and not good because it is rationally desirable. Similarly with truth: what is true is warrantedly assertible (rationally justifiable at the ideal limit of inquiry, etc., pick your epistemic/doxastic catchphrase) because it is true; it is not true because it is warrantedly assertible.

Two Nuns Discuss Teaching

2005-02-26T17:55:00.000-08:00

An eager young nun and a wise old nun were discussing teaching over lunch. The young nun was waxing enthusiastic over the privilege, but also the responsibility, of forming young minds. The old nun took a glass of water, inserted her forefinger, and agitated the water. Suddenly she removed her finger and the water immediately returned to its quiescent state.

That, said the old nun, is what teaching is like.

A Memory of Teaching

2005-02-26T17:41:00.000-08:00

I am enjoying teaching quite a bit now that I no longer do it. With some things it is not the doing of it that we like so much as the having done it. Climbing K2, for instance.

One day in class I carefully explained the abbreviation ‘iff’ often employed by philosophers and mathematicians to avoid writing ‘if and only if.’ I explained the logical differences among ‘if,’ ‘only if,’ and ‘if and only if.’ I gave examples. I brought in necessary and sufficient conditions. The whole shot. But I wasn’t all that surprised when I later read a student comment to the effect that Dr. V can’t spell ‘if.’

Does Polemic Have A Place in Philosophy?

2005-02-25T19:14:00.000-08:00

I tend to think that polemic is out of place in philosophy except in response to philosophical polemicists. But Ed Feser's excellent discussion gives me pause.

However things may stand with philosophy, polemic has a role to play in political debate because of what a I call the Converse Clausewitz principle: Politics is war conducted by other means. Everything the Left does shows that they understand and act on this principle. So if we conservatives ignore it, we put ourselves at a disadvantage.

Another Round With Ryan on the Reducibility of the Good

2005-02-25T19:02:00.000-08:00

Jim Ryan maintains that the good is identifiable with the rationally desirable, where ‘rational’ means coherent and fully informed as to the facts. I presented the following as a possible counterexample. Suppose Jack is 18 yrs old and is such that his largest coherent set of desires at the time would be best fulfilled by marrying Jill. Suppose Jack has done his level best to inform himself of all relevant facts. Still, it may be that there are facts about himself, about Jill, and about the world at large that Jack’s father knows, but Jack is incapable of knowing due to immaturity, love-blindness, etc. I would not conclude that what 18 year old Jack rationally desires, or is rationally able to desire, is identical to the good for Jack. He may not know his true good!

Ryan responds: Now, your Jack is too immature to know that there are unknown unknowns that he needs to come to know. But he wants to be happy. The fact, due to his nature, is that he will not be happy if he marries Jill. Because it denies this important fact, Jack's formation of a preference to marry Jill is therefore ill-informed, and the definition survives your test. But your test is precisely where the game is played, unless you have a different theory of meaning from mine.

BV: We can leave meaning for later. For now I am pleased that Jim thinks that my kind of "test is precisely where the game is played. . . ." Jim made the kind of clarification I expected. It is not enough that Jack’s desires be (i) maximally coherent, (ii) such that they would be best satisfied by marrying Jill, and (iii) based on all the relevant facts available to Jack given the limitations of Jack’s situation and his level of intelligence and maturity, but ALSO (iv) based on what an ideal observer in Jack’s shoes would come to know about his situation. In other words, for Jack’s desire to be rational (in a sense that allows the identification of the good with the rationally desirable), the desire has to be based on ALL the facts pertaining to his happiness. Jack would have to know what his happiness would consist in, and what courses of action would lead to his realizing it.

It now looks as if Jim’s theory is that:

(JR) X is good for a person P =df X is what P would desire if (i) P desires to be happy, (ii) knows what his happiness consists in, and (iii) knows all the facts relevant to its attainment.

This can be rewritten as:

(JR*) X is good for a person P =df If P were to desire to be happy, know what his happiness consists in, and know all the facts relevant to its attianment, then P would desire X.

Note that the right-hand side is a counterfactual conditional. In my example, Jack does not know all the facts about himself, Jill, and the world at large. So the antecedent of the conditional is not true. How can the fact of X’s being good for P be identical to a counterfactual state of affairs?

Jim wants to say that the good is the rationally desirable. But then it turns out that the rationally desirable is what an ideal ‘desirer’ would desire, a desirer who knows all the facts. But Jack is not an ideal desirer. The actual fact of what is good for him cannot be identified with a mere possibility. How could that count as a naturalistic reduction of goodness?

Similar puzzle: How could the truth-maker of an actually true proposition be identified with its rational acceptability at the (Peircean) ideal limit of inquiry?

Of Eating and Being

2005-02-25T08:04:00.000-08:00

Ludwig Feuerbach is the source of the pun, man ist was man isst, the punniness of which is lost in the English translation: One is what one eats. ‘Ist’ is translated by is, ‘isst’ by eats. ‘Isst’ is from the infinitive essen, to eat. A nice feature of German is that it marks the distinction between human and animal eating. Essen is what we do; fressen is what the animals do. But if a man pigs out, then he can be called a Fresser. My cat Caissa, old and spoiled, prefers my food to her own. I have so 'humanized' her that she is now an Esser rather than a Fresser. Indeed, she is on the way to becoming a Delikatesser, indeed, a Feinschmecker.

I once ate in a Jewish delicatessen on the east side of Cleveland in which one of the sandwiches on the menu was entitled ‘The Fresser.’ Of course, that is what I ordered. Ein Fresser ist was er frisst.

The English distinction between the nouns ‘food’ and ‘feed’ parallels the distinction between essen and fressen. Feed is what animals, typically farm animals, get; food is for humans and their pets. I heard of a woman who, suspecting her man of engaging in an extramural liaison, remarked that her evidence was that he was "off his feed." The animal!

There is a restaurant in Apache Junction, Arizona called The Feedbag. No restaurant in Scottsdale (or at least the tonier precincts thereof) would ever bear such a name. There is also an eating establishment in AJ called the Dirtwater Café. One morning my wife wanted to go out for breakfast. (I prefer to eat at home where I am master of my domain, fork in one hand, remote control in the other.) Confusing the two establishments, she said, "Let’s go out to the Dirtbag Café."

I’ll end on a serious note. I used the expression ‘pig out’ above. It is philosophically unacceptable because it involves the dubious ascription of gluttony to pigs. It is arguable, however, that only a man, but no animal, can be a glutton. Similarly, a man, but no animal, can be bestial. A man, but no animal, can sink below his nature. This naturally leads us into normative ethics and the concept of perversion. But these are topics too tough to tangle with at the moment.

Anarchists and Libertarians

2005-02-25T06:45:00.000-08:00

I asked Tony Flood how he saw the distinction between anarchists and libertarians. Here is what he said:

Some As, not all, are Ls; some Ls, not all, are As.

An anarchist finds no moral justification for a State. From that fact alone, however, we cannot predict his view of the right of private acquisition of scarce resources. That is, we cannot tell whether he is an anarchocapitalist (e.g., Murray Rothbard) or an anarchocommunist (e.g., Murray Bookchin).

The libertarian champions the right of private acquisition of scarce resources. He might not, however deduce anarchism from that right. He might believe that free markets can provide all socially necessary functions that the State now monopolizes better (i.e., more cheaply and at higher quality) and ought to (that State monopolization is intrinsically rights-violating); or he might make an exception for police and defense services just so that property rights may be best defended. That is, he might be a "minarchist" libertarian.

Godspeed to Kevin's Ass. . .

2005-02-25T06:27:00.000-08:00

. . . as it wends its way to Pusan. May it successfully negotiate the pons asinorum.

Man Invented Time, Seiko Perfected It

2005-02-24T18:48:00.000-08:00

I often awake with several blog topics on my mind. (Am I descending into blogomania?) One of today’s was the above advertising jingle from the 1980's. The stupidity of it invites philoso-kvetching.

Miguel de Unamuno liked to say that there is no Man, only men. So which man invented time? And when did he do it? Was it before his coffee break, or after? How long did it take him to invent it? An hour? What was he doing before he invented it? Was he thinking about inventing it?

Perhaps no one person invented time; perhaps it was a committee effort. That might explain some its unpleasant aspects such as the celerity with which it passes, or the way it consigns the past to a kind of nonexistence. Were the committee members civil, or did they all talk simultaneously?

If the good folks at Seiko Watch Co. perfected time, then time was imperfect before they got to work on it. But as far as I can tell, the ontological deficiency of all temporal items remains with us.

The Good and the Rationally Desirable

2005-02-24T18:18:00.000-08:00

Jim Ryan, in a comment to a previous post, argues:

1.) There is nothing that would count as evidence that both(a.) X is not good for you; and (b.) X is most fulfilling to the largest and most coherent set of your desires, all the relevant non-normative facts being taken into account.

2.) If 1, then good is reducible to desire, namely rational desirability (where "rational" means coherent and fully informed as to the facts).

Therefore, the good is reducible to desire.

Some Comments/ Requests for Clarification

As I understand it (and maybe I don’t), Jim’s thesis is not merely that X is good iff X is rationally desirable, but that X’s being good is reducible to X’s being rationally desirable. Thus he is taking the biconditional to sanction a reduction: the good is nothing other than the rationally desirable. Jim holds this because he thinks that in every case in which X maximally fulfills a person P’s largest and most coherent set of desires, X is good for P, and vice versa.

I may be missing something, but this looks circular. The argument appears to boil down to this: the good = the rationally desirable because all and only good things are rationally desirable things.

(It is worth pointing out that every circular argument is valid, and some are even sound. It is just that a circular argument gives us no reason (independent of the argument’s conclusion) for accepting its conclusion. )

Another problem is this. The desirable is not the same as the desire-worthy. I am able to desire things that are not worthy of my desire. Suppose a man desires sex with a different woman every night. (That is, a woman different from the woman of every previous night, as opposed to alternating between or among n women, where n is a small number like 2 or 3 or 4) It follows that he is able to desire sex with a different woman every night. It does not follow, however, that enjoying such a sexual feast is desirable in the normative sense, i.e., that it is desire-worthy. I am sure Jim is aware of the equivocity of ‘desirable.’ The great J. S. Mill, however, was bamboozled by a close cousin of it. See here.

Of course, Jim spoke of the rationally desirable, not of the desirable simpliciter. I concede that it might not be rationally desirable for a given person to have sex every night with a different woman because then the coherence condition might not be met. (If I desire a long-term close relation, then fidelity to one partner may be required.)

Can rationality bring us from the nonnormatively desirable to the normatively desire-worthy? I don’t see that it can, and I don’t think Jim is asserting that it can. He is simply identifying the good with the rationally desirable. But then doesn’t Jim face G. E. Moore’s Open Question argument? Suppose someone says that pleasure is the good. Surely that is not an analytic proposition. So the connection between pleasure and the good is synthetic. But then can’t we reasonably ask: Is pleasure the good? Doesn’t this remain an open question?

Identifying goodness with rational desirability is like identifying truth with rational acceptability. In both cases, relativism results. Both rational desirability and rational acceptability vary from person to person, place to place, and time to time. If anyone needs examples, I can supply them. But truth is surely absolute. I would say the same for what is genuinely desire-worthy for human beings. Of course, I need to argue this out in great detail.

Let me end this set of comments by giving a possible example of something rationally desirable by a person that is not good for a person. Suppose Jack is 18 yrs old and is such that his largest coherent set of desires at the time would be best fulfilled by marrying Jill. Suppose Jack has done his level best to inform himself of all relevant facts. Still, it may be that there are facts about himself, about Jill, and about the world at large that Jack’s father knows, but Jack is incapable of knowing due to immaturity, love-blindness, etc. I would not conclude that what 18 year old Jack rationally desires, or is rationally able to desire, is identical to the good for Jack. He may not know his true good!

Jim will understand that this is not intended as a refutation, but as an invitation to clarification and further discussion.

Another Look at a Reppertian Argument

2005-02-24T10:34:00.000-08:00

Victor Reppert gives the following argument in Philosophia Christi, vol. 3, no. 1 (2003), p. 16:

1. If naturalism is true, then no states of the person can be either true or false.
2. Some states of the person can be either true or false.
Therefore,
3. Naturalism is false.

Before reexamining this argument, let me say that Victor and I are 'on the same team': we are both resolute anti-naturalists. Thus our disagreement, if disagreement it is, is intramural: within the walls of the anti-naturalistic encampment.

My criticism is simply that a sophisticated naturalist will not feel compelled to accept the premises. But first a very minor logical quibble. Strictly speaking, (3) does not follow from (1) and (2). What follows is: Naturalism is not true. The assumption of Bivalence -- which of course I grant -- is necessary to arrive validly at (3) by Modus Tollens.

That quibble aside, why should a sophisticated naturalist feel compelled to accept (1)?

A necessary condition of being a naturalist is the insistence that mind is ontologically dependent (dependent in its existence) upon the natural world. The dependence can be spelled out in a variety of ways giving rise to a variety of naturalisms. Some naturalists say that mind is epiphenomenal, others that it is emergent, still others that it is supervenient, while the most extreme of all say that it is reductively identifiable with brain processes ( Identity Theory) or with overt behavior and behavioral dispositions (Behaviorism). The naturalists’ main point, however, is that mind cannot exist without a material substratum of a certain complexity and organization: there are no disembodied minds, hence no God as classically conceived, no souls capable of pre-existing or post-existing their embodiment, no angels or demons.

Suppose minds or persons are supervenient. Why, given naturalism, couldn't some states of persons be either true or false? Reppert's (1) may be true for a naturalist who is an identity theorist, but not for one who is a supervenientist.

But suppose our naturalist is an identity theorist. Premise (2) appears to beg the question against him. For if mental states are brain states, then they cannot be true or false. The identity theorist could still find a place for truth in his world by identifying truth-bearers not with states of mind/person, but with some species of abstract object like Fregean propositions.

My view is a that a viable naturalism must admit nonphysical truth-bearers. Here is an argument.

Surely there are truths that hold at times when there are no minds. The thesis of naturalism itself, if true, is such a truth. At the time of the Big Bang, and for a good long time thereafter, natural conditions were not such as to permit the existence of any minds; yet naturalism, if true, was true during this period. It was true during this period that nothing could be a mind unless it were based in matter of the right organization and complexity. Naturalism did not first become true when minds first emerged. As a truth about minds, it is true, if it is true, independently of any and all minds. And the same goes for infinities of other truths that do not depend on the existence of minds. Among these are truths about the physical universe and its parts.

Thus it was true before any minds evolved on earth that the earth was a spheroid with one moon, possessed an atmosphere of such-and-such a composition, etc. There are also necessary truths to contend with: they are true in every possible world, including worlds in which minds do not exist. Thus it is quite clear that the existence of truths in general cannot depend on the existence of the sorts of minds that naturalists will allow into their ontologies, namely, minds whose very existence depends on the existence of highly organized configurations of matter. (The special case of truths about minds is consistent with this general point.)

It follows that a sophisticated naturalist will not grant that some mental states are primary truth-bearers. The reason, again, is that there must be primary truth-bearers at times and in possible worlds in which minds do not exist. Such a naturalist will not grant the classical thesis of Thomas Aquinas et al. according to which truths reside only in minds to the extent that they correspond to external reality, as in the scholastic dictum, Veritas est adaequatio intellectus et rei. If truth consists in a correspondence between mind and reality, then mind must exist if truth is to exist. Theists such as Augustine and Aquinas will use this point to argue for the existence of a necessarily existent infinite mind. The sophisticated naturalist will hold instead that primary truth-bearers are some species of abstract object such as Fregean propositions that exist in sublime independence of any and all minds. This does not imply that the sophisticated naturalist cannot say of beliefs that they are true or false; it implies merely that he cannot attach these predicates to beliefs in the primary sense.

No sophisticated naturalist should lose any sleep over Reppert’s argument. A convincing argument from truth against naturalism must therefore show that the primary truth-bearers cannot be abstract objects. What I would argue is that primary truth-bearers cannot be abstract objects any more than they can be physical objects; they must be states of mind. Since this cannot be allowed by any naturalist who understands that some truths are independent of matter-based minds, naturalism is false. And since there are truths that outrun our states of mind, there must be an absolute mind.

But I can't ignore VR's question about how truth, if situated at the level of abstract objects, is relevant to the concrete occurrence of beliefs. This is a large topic, but why couldn't a naturalist who is a supervenientist say that some supervenient mental states inherit their truth-values from Fregean propositions? Of course, there is the problem of how a supervenient state can have any causal impact on physical states. Isn't Monokroussos working on that problem?

From the Mail: The Philosophy of Money

2005-02-24T06:41:00.000-08:00

Steve Castellano writes:

Hilarious posts . . .

Btw, don't feel obligated to link to my website Reflections on Equity Research just because I'm a fan. I think equity research is a bit off topic for your readers. Keep up the great work. it really is refreshing to read your stuff.

Thanks, Steve. Great to have you onboard. Actually, you (or rather a link to your site) have been on my sidebar for a few days. I booked you under POLITICS AND ECONOMICS. It was my pleasure to do so.

Money and investing are important topics, and I have posted on them before, no doubt going out on limbs that you are qualified to saw off. I see blogging as a learning tool, and not just as a vehicle for pontificating. Feel free to criticize the following money posts:

'Socially Conscious' Investing
Gambling Versus Investing
Money and Meaning
Philosophers and 'Cash'

On the Ground with G. E. Moore

2005-02-23T15:13:00.000-08:00

‘On the ground’ is getting a bit too much use for my taste. What the hell does it mean? "Coming up, a live report from Geraldo Rivera, on the ground in Fallujah." Where else would he be if not on the ground? Hovering in mid-air? Burrowing underground? Why not just say that he is in Fallujah? Or does it mean that he is literally on the ground?

Of course, very few civilized mortals spend any appreciable time literally on the ground, i.e., in direct contact with the surface of the earth. I don’t reckon that Geraldo, tough guy that he is, has ever walked barefoot over the Iraqi sand. I am now sitting with my pants and underpants on in a chair which rests on a rug and a pad beneath which is a concrete slab. Thus my gluteal contact with the earth is subject to a six-fold mediation. And when I go backpacking and sleep in the wild, my contact with the ground is subject to a similar manifold mediation: clothes, sleeping bag, self-inflating ThermaRest mattress, tent floor, groundcloth. And yet that could be called sleeping on the ground as opposed to sleeping in a warm bed.

Thoughts such as these may have been at the back of G. E. Moore’s mind when he penned a passage in "A Defence of Common Sense" (1925) that some have found puzzling. Speaking of his body, he writes,

Ever since it was born, it has either been in contact with or not far from the surface of the earth . . .

What did Moore have in mind with "not far from the surface of the earth"? Did he do much jumping? Go up in planes or balloons? Or was he thinking that while sitting in his study, he was not in contact with the surface of the earth but also not far from it either?

Would Naturalism Make Life Easier?

2005-02-23T14:54:00.000-08:00

If only naturalism were unmistakably and irrefutably true! A burden would be lifted: no God, no soul, no personal survival of death, an assured exit from the wheel of becoming, no fear of being judged for one’s actions. One could have a good time with a good conscience, Hefner-style. (Or one could have a murderous time like a Saddam or a Stalin.) There would be no nagging sense that one’s self-indulgent behavior might exclude one from a greater good and a higher life. If this is all there is, one could rest easy like Nietzsche’s Last Man who has "his little pleasure for the day and his little pleasure for the night."

If one knew that one were just a complex physical system, one could blow one’s brains out, as Hunter S. Thompson recently did, fully assured that that would be the end, thus implementing an idiosyncratic understanding of "When the going gets tough, the tough get going."

Some atheists psychologize theists thusly: "You believe out of a need for comforting illusions, illusions that pander to your petty ego by promising its perpetuation." But that table can be turned: "You atheists believe as you do so as to rest easy in this life with no demands upon you except the ones that you yourself impose." Psychologizers can be psychologized just as bullshitters can be bullshat – whence it follows that not much is to be expected from either procedure.

Am I perhaps falsely assuming that a naturalist must be a moral slacker, beholden to no moral demand? Does it follow that the naturalist cannot be an idealist, cannot live and sacrifice for high and choice-worthy ideals? Well, he can try to be an idealist, and many naturalists are idealists, and as a matter of plain fact many naturalists are morally decent people, and indeed are morally better people than some anti-naturalists (theists, for example) -- but what justification could these naturalists have for maintaining the ideals and holding the values that they do maintain and hold? Where do these ideals come from if, at ontological bottom, it is all just "atoms in the void"? And why ought we live up to them? Where does the oughtness, the deontic pull, if you will, come from? If ideals are mere projections, whether individually or collectively, then they have precisely no ontological backing that we are bound to take seriously.

The truth may be this. People who hold a naturalistic view and deny any purpose beyond the purposes that we individually and collectively project, and yet experience their lives as meaningful and purposeful, may simply not appreciate the practical consequences of their own theory. It may be that they have not existentially appropriated or properly internalized their theory. Their theory contradicts their practice, but since they either do not fully understand their theory, or do not try to live it, the contradiction remains hidden from them.

Of Blood and Blog

2005-02-23T10:47:00.000-08:00

In a comment to this post, Mike Gilleland lends aid and comfort to my hypothesis that our blood relatives tend not to give a hoot about our blogging activities. They say blood is thicker than water, but it sure doesn't seem to translate into any spiritual affinity. The community that we can't find by blood, we'll find by blog.

Apples and Sparkplugs

2005-02-23T10:40:00.000-08:00

Yesterday’s language rant deserves a follow-up. All too frequently people say, ‘You’re comparing apples and oranges’ in order to convey the idea that two things are so dissimilar as to to disallow any significant comparison. Can’t they do better than this? Apples and oranges are highly comparable in respects too numerous to mention. Both are fruits, both are edible, both grow on trees, both are good sources of fiber, both contain Vitamin C, etc.

Why not say, ‘You are comparing apples and sparkplugs’? Apples are naturally occurrent and edible while sparkplugs are inedible artifacts. That’s a serious difference.

This reminds me of a story I read as a boy in my hometown newspaper. A man once ate an entire car, sparkplugs and all. A feat of automotive asceticism to rival the pillar antics of Simon Stylites. He did it by cutting the car and its parts into small pieces that he then washed down with generous libations of buttermilk. But a car is not just solid parts, but various fluids. You’ve got your gasoline, your crankcase oil, your tranny fluid, not to mention coolant, windshield wiper liquid, and what all else. How did he negotiate that stuff? Well, I suppose anything can be passed throught the gastrointestinal system if sufficiently watered down. So if a man gets it into his head to eat an entire car, he can do it. As my 4th grade teacher Sr Elizabeth (Lizard) Marie used to say, "Where there’s a will there’s a way."

Bloggers and Their Relatives

2005-02-22T10:16:00.000-08:00

As far as I know, no relative of mine has ever taken a gander at either of my websites, one of which is this weblog. Not a word of encouragement, or the opposite, have I received. I suspect this is not unusual. The people we know we take for granted. Is it not written that "no prophet is welcome in his hometown"? (Luke 4, 24: nemo propheta acceptus est in patria sua.)

One could call it the injustice of propinquity. We often underestimate those nearby, whether by blood or space, while overestimating those afar.

What say you, fellow bloggers?

Issues and Problems

2005-02-22T10:05:00.000-08:00

Perhaps you have noticed how, in American English at least, ‘issue’ is coming to supplant ‘problem.’ Being a conservative, I don’t confuse change with improvement. And being a linguistic conservative, I am none too pleased with this recent development. So I would like to be able to say that a mistake is being made, or a distinction is being obliterated, by those who use ‘issue’ when, not long ago, one would have used ‘problem.’ I would like to say what I say to those who confuse ‘infer’ and ‘imply,’ namely, that there is an extralinguistic distinction that their linguistic confusion renders invisible. In the case of ‘infer’ and ‘imply’ it is the distinction between a subjective mental process and an objective relation between propositions.

Trouble is, I am having a hard time finding any mistake of a logical or conceptual nature such as would justify my displeasure. Are ‘issue’ and ‘problem’ interchangeable? Am I just a cranky curmudgeon opposed to change as such? Let’s consider some examples.

No one is about to start referring to chess problems and math problems as chess and math issues. At least I hope not. But what if they did? Would I have a principled reason to object? If you run out of gas in the middle of nowhere, then you’ve got a problem. And if your wife is about to give birth when you run out of gas, then you really have a problem. The use of ‘issue’ here offends my linguistic sensibilities, but what exactly is wrong with it? More examples:

There is an issue with the starter solenoid.

You got an issue with that, buddy?

There are serious issues with the formatting of the March issue of Chess Life.

Thank you Carmelita, for putting me on your blogroll. Carmelita: No issue!

One issue that arises for a married couple is whether or not to have children. But if the man is impotent, then that is a problem. It is even more of a problem if the two find each other physically repellent.

In the sentence, ‘He died without issue,’ one cannot substitute ‘problem’ for ‘issue’ salva significatione. But that is not the relevant use of ‘issue.’ We certainly don't want to make an issue, or a problem, out of that use of 'issue.'

I end with two questions. First, is there any distinction that we need to observe when we use ‘problem’ and ‘issue’? Second, why is ‘issue’ coming to supplant ‘problem’? Is it just because people are suggestible lemmings rather than the independent thinkers and speakers that they ought to be?

Can we blame this one on liberals too?

Yet Again on Composition and Identity

2005-02-21T18:40:00.000-08:00

I am finding this debate with Joseph Jedwab fascinating, but I can easily appreciate how others would find it hopelessly boring and pointless. Ontology is not everyone’s cup of tea. Is it conducive unto salvation? The very question smacks of an anti-intellectualism that needs to be addressed in a separate post. But now, back to work.

We are discussing how a whole is related to its parts. Our examples are of the simplest sort since if we cannot get clear about these simple cases, then it is highly unlikely that we will be able to get clear about more complex ones. Joseph Jedwab (JJ) maintains that in a case in which a whole W is composed of exactly two nonoverlapping proper parts P1 and P2, there are exactly three entities: P1, P2, and W. I find this unacceptable. (See here, here, here, and here.) Now back to the thread.

JJ: Let's consider your

3. ExEyEz[x is a proper part of z & y is a proper part of z].

This could indeed be true in a domain of two entities for it could well be that [a is a proper part of c & b is a proper part of c] but a=b. But this is not to the point.

BV: Right, that would not be to the point. But your example implies that you do concede my point that if a quantified formula contains n variables, it does not follow that there must be n entities in the domain of quantification. Therefore, if someone infers that P1, P2, and W make three entities because of the truth of (3), then that person commits a non sequitur.

JJ: If some things, the xs, compose something y, then the xs do not overlap each other, each of the xs is a proper part of y and every proper part of y overlaps at least one of the xs.

BV: Right.

JJ: So a better example is this. If two simples compose a whole, the simples are distinct from each other and each is distinct from the whole and so there are at least three things in the domain.

BV: You are arguing as follows:

a. Two distinct simples compose a whole
b. Each simple is distinct from the whole
Therefore
c. There are at least three things.

Trouble is, (c) does not follow from (a) and (b). To arrive at (c), you need some such supplementary premise as

d. If n distinct entities, each distinct from a whole, compose that whole, then there are n + 1 entities.

But (d) will be rejected by someone who holds that composition is identity. Therefore, you are begging the question against the composition-as-identity theorist. Why should anyone accept (d)?

You are quite sure that the whole W is a third thing, a thing in addition to its sole proper parts P1 and P2. But if W is composed of these parts but not exhausted by them, then what is the further ontological ingredient that distinguishes W from the two parts? Please tell me what that is. Please tell me what must be added to P1 and P2 to get W. And please don’t tell me that W must be added to P1 and P2 to get W. That would make no sense: W is not ‘over and above’ P1, P2. After all, W is composed of P1 and P2: P1 and P2 are the ‘building blocks’ out of which W is ‘built.’ If there is nothing which, when added to P1 and P2, yields W, then what makes W numerically distinct from (P1, P2)? Will you say that nothing makes them distinct, that their distinctness is a brute fact?

NOTE: if you simply help yourself to W as a third thing, if you simply assume that it is a third thing, then I say you have begged the question against the composition-as-identity theorist.

Here is another way to look at it. (P1, P2) is a complex. W is a complex. How can two complexes differ without differing in a constituent? Two sets differ numerically iff they differ in an element, i.e., iff one has a member (element) the other doesn’t have. That is a consequence of the Zermelo-Fraenkel Axiom of Extensionality. Now (P1, P2) is not a set, but it is some kind of complex. W is a still different kind of complex. There is more to W than (P1 P2). What is that more?

JJ: The simples are distinct from each other for they do not overlap each other. And each simple is distinct from the whole for each simple is a proper part of the whole.

BV: Yes to both of these sentences. But it does not follow that the whole is a third thing in addition to the two proper parts. Again, if the whole is composed of the two parts (and of nothing besides) and the whole is a third thing distinct from the two parts, then please tell me what distinguishes the whole from the two parts.

What justifies your positing of a tertium quid? How can you convince me that you are not illictly inferring three values from three variables? It seems to me that you are not entitled to assume that the whole is a third thing. That must be proven. You may assume that there is a whole, but not that it is a third thing.

To help convey my point, allow me to introduce a distinction between an entity and an object. An entity (thing) is something that exists in reality apart from our consideration. An object may or may not exist in reality apart from our consideration. A mere object exists only as an accusative of our consideration. Given that W is composed of P1 and P2, there must be some sense in which W exists. Well, suppose that W exists merely as an object of our consideration. Then it will be the case that there are two entities but three objects. In this way I avoid your conclusion that there are three entities, while accommodating your intuition that W is a third item.

JJ: Of course, we could easily define a function 'x+y=z', which takes as argument a pair of parts that compose something and gives as value the whole they compose. But this does not show that the parts are identical to the whole.

BV: Right. But the onus probandi is on you to show that the whole is distinct from the parts, and to explain exactly what this means given that the whole is composed of the parts.

JJ: I don't understand how your

4. B is a proper part of (B + C) & C is a proper part of (B + C)

is true in a domain of only two entities. 'x is a proper part of y' is a two-place predicate that expresses an irreflexive and asymmetric relation. Your point works if 'B+C' is not a singular term that refers to one entity in the domain, but is a plural term that refers to two entities in the domain. In that case, you do not use the two-place predicate 'x is a proper part of y' but the multigrade predicate 'x is a proper part of the ys' which holds if and only if x is one of the ys. But this can hold even if x is not a proper part of any of the ys or the composite of the ys. And it also looks like what is really going on is that mereological talk is being construed as plural quantification talk.

BV: You say in effect that ‘x is a proper part of the ys’ can hold even if x is not a proper part of the composite of the ys. Can you give an example of this? If x is a proper part, then x is a proper part of some whole. (Isn’t that analytic?) But every whole of parts is a composite. So if x is a proper part of the ys, then there is a whole of ys, a composite of ys, such that x is a proper part of it. For example, if Mungojerrie is a proper part of the cats in the neighborhood, then there is a whole composed of these cats and Mungojerrie is a proper part of this whole.

Perhaps you are building into the notion of ‘composite’ something I am not building into it.
Could you please explain the exact difference, as you understand it, between plural quantification talk and mereological talk? ‘The’ connotes uniqueness in this context; so ‘the ys’ is not purely plural. Thus, ‘the cats’ refers to a grouping together of cats. There is a difference between ‘the cats’ and ‘cats.’

JJ: Does this beg the question against Baxter? My argument that if two simples compose a composite, there are at least three entities at no point uses the premise that composition as identity is false. That, rather, follows from the conclusion. Look again. Suppose B and C compose A. By the definition of 'composition', B and C do not overlap each other and each of them is a proper part of A. By the definition of 'overlap', B and C are distinct from each other. By standard predicate logic, they are two. By the definition of 'proper part', B and A are distinct from each other and C and A are distinct from each other. Again, by standard predicate logic, they are three. No worries!

BV. You are a marvelously clear-headed fellow, Joseph, but I persist in my claim that you are begging the question. You do so when, from "B and A are distinct from each other and C and A are distinct from each other" you infer that "they are three." Three what? Three objects of consideration, say I, but not three entities.

JJ: Why isn't the connectedness detectable? Can't one tell the difference between some things that are properly connected and some things that are not properly connected? Why doesn't that count as detecting connectedness?

BV: Yes I can tell the difference between my pipe taken apart for cleaning and the same pipe assembled and ready for use. In the first case, the parts are not spatially contiguous; in the second case they are. But that is not the question. The question concerns the pipe with pipe stem properly inserted into pipe bowl. I can see (visually) that the two parts are in a certain spatial relationship. But that does not count as seeing the connectedness. Compare Hume on causation. One can see that event e1 is spatiotemporally contiguous with event e2, and that e1 precedes e2. But that does not amount to seeing e1's causing of e2. Causing is empirically undetectable.

JJ: What Bradleyan regress results? You ask what makes A distinct from B and C? Let me ask in turn: what makes anything distinct from anything?

BV: It is perhaps acceptable to say of two simples that they are just numerically distinct, that their being numerically distinct is a brute fact. But as explained above, A is a complex and (B, C) is a complex, and it is difficult to understand how two complexes could differ without differing in a constituent.

The Bradleyan regress comes into the picture if an entity is introduced to connect B and C. What connects this connector to B and C? Etc.

JJ: Finally, what did you think of my gloss of your claim that A is not a third thing in addition to B and C properly connected as what makes it true that B and C are properly connected makes it true that A exists and so that A exists is not a further fact in addition to the fact that B and C are properly connected?

BV: I’ll leave this for later.

Trinity and Set Theory

2005-02-21T07:33:00.000-08:00

Let S and T be sets. Now consider the following two propositions:

1. S is a proper subset of T.

2. S and T have the same number of elements.

Are (1) and (2) consistent? That is, can they both be true? If yes, explain how.

If you think (1) and (2) are consistent, then consider whether there is anything to the following analogy. If there is, explain the analogy. There is a set G. G has three disjoint proper subsets, F, S, H. All four sets agree in cardinality: they have the same number of elements.

Bibliomaniacal Expansionism

2005-02-20T12:43:00.000-08:00

My expansionist library is committing territorial aggression against my wife's bookshelves. My tomes are coming to occupy her empty spaces thereby establishing facts 'on the ground.'

But it is not yet an 'issue.'

How We Drag the Past Along with Us

2005-02-20T12:28:00.000-08:00

There are habits, both mental and physical. There are memories. There are memories of failed attempts at the purgation of memory. There are old friends and relations who keep us chained to the past: they won't let us escape their old views of us. "Still play the guitar?" "Still put pepper on everything?" There are familiar environments. And then there are property and possessions and the products of our past creativity.

Reputation, whether for good or ill, is another burden from the past. Bill Clinton will never be free of his past. He will schlep through the decades with the albatross of Monica Lewinsky irremovable from his neck. "Strike another match, go start anew"? It is impossible thoroughly to start anew, and it would perhaps not even be a good thing if we could.

Is Connectedness Supplied by the Mind?

2005-02-19T08:50:00.000-08:00

Kevin Kim of X-rated BigHominid fame comments on my last Composition/Identity post thusly:

Question: if connectedness is empirically undetectable, is it simply inferred? If true, this might imply that "connectedness" is a subjective human notion and not an objective reality. Is connectedness discovered or invented by the mind?

Let's say we're talking about a trailer truck, its parts all properly connected so that it's recognizably a truck. Its "truckness" (for lack of a better term) arises from the antecedent connectedness of the truck parts, right?But what is the truck from the point of view of, say, a rabbit*? Does the connectedness of the truck parts mean anything in lagomorphic phenomenology?

What if connectedness is simply a function of how a mind parses the things it perceives and conceives of?I don't mean to be flip, and far be it from me to presume to read a rabbit's mind (such as it is), but I think it's a legitimate question: what makes us think that "connectedness"-- whether we're talking about trucks or any other phenomena-- holds any objective reality? . . .

BV: Kevin raises a good question. What is the status of connectedness? Is it mind-independently real or is it a mental projection or mental addition to what is mind-independently real? Here is an excerpt from a paper in progress, "Against Buddhist Reductionism," that addresses this very question:

7. Can Mental Construction Account for Connectedness?

It is self-evident that a contingent whole such as a chariot is a connectedness of parts, and not a mere collection of (disconnected) parts. But we have just see that the ground of this connectedness cannot be internal to a whole either as a further part or as a set of monadic properties of its parts. Call the ground of connectedness the connector. If the connector is a special part in addition to the primary parts, then the problem arises as to what connects the connector to what it connects. That way lies Bradley’s regress. If, on the other hand, we think of the connector R as reducing to monadic properties of the primary parts, then, as we saw in section 5, no genuine reduction is achieved. I conclude from this that the reductionist, to remain a reductionist and thus to avoid saying that a whole and its parts are equally real, must appeal to something external to a contingent whole to account for the connectedness of parts that makes it a whole. There is need for an external unifier. Only with an external unifier or connector can a reductionist remain a reductionist in the teeth of the arguments I have presented. It is clear that a reductionist cannot say that a whole unifies itself – in the sense that it is a unity distinct from its parts – for the simple reason that this amounts to abandoning reductionism.

Siderits appears to provide two competing accounts of the difference between a chariot and the corresponding collection of unassembled chariot parts. One of them -- the foundationist account -- we have just criticized. The other appeals to the notion that "all aggregation involves mental construction." (Personal Identity and Buddhist Philosophy, Ashgate 2003, p. 7) Could mental aggregation be the ontological ground of connectedness? I submit that this notion of mental construction as the ground of connectedness is untenable.

Ask a simple question: Whose mind is doing the aggregating? Does the chariot-driver assemble his chariot by ‘thinking together’ its parts, starting at ontological rock-bottom with impartite parts? Must he continuously ‘think them together’ to maintain the chariot’s functionality? That would be absurd. The unity of parts that bestows upon them chariot-functionality is logically and ontologically antecedent to any act of mental constructing or aggregating by any individual. This is painfully obvious in the case of very small parts such as molecular and atomic parts. The charioteer can drive his chariot only because it is already (logically speaking) a full-fledged unity of parts. Furthermore, the mind that does the aggregating is itself a partite entity, and therefore one that cannot be ultimately real if Buddhist reductionism is true. If so, the aggregating mind M is itself in need of an aggregator to account for the difference between M and its parts. The appeal to partite minds as aggregators pretty clearly leads nowhere.

Is there another option? If it cannot be individual minds that do the aggregating, is it language that does it, or language together with social practices? Siderits points out that we have the name ‘chariot,’ but no name for the corresponding collection of disassembled parts. (7) He says that this is because we have an institutionalized use – as a means of transportation – for the assembled parts, but no such use for the parts in their disassembled state. Siderits claims that it is our "institutionally arranged interests" (8) that bring it about that we view the chariot parts as a "single entity" when in ultimate reality there is no single entity. The suggestion is that what makes the chariot a single entity, a unity of parts having chariot functionality, is something social or institutional or linguistic.

I would say, however, that this puts the cart (or the chariot!) before the horse. It is because the chariot is a "single entity" that we can ride it and to name it ‘chariot.’ Granted, it has a name because of its human usefulness, but it is humanly useful because of the functionality that derives from the antecedent connectedness of its parts. The connectedness, therefore, cannot derive from our applying of ‘chariot’ to a bunch of otherwise disconnected chariot parts. The connectedness whereby it is a single substantial entity is logically and ontologically prior to any mental act of constructing or any linguistic act of naming. This is not to say that the chariot is ultimately real; it is to say that the reality of the chariot is not a merely linguistically or mentally created reality. The chariot may not be ultimately real, but its reality is greater than that of any mentally constructed object.

Daniel Dennett on the Trinity

2005-02-19T06:35:00.000-08:00

wilfrid, adj. Said of a theory one presumes to be true but finds incomprehensible; "You physicists all seem to agree, but it's wilfrid to me." "I'm sorry, your Holiness, but every time you explain the Trinity to me it goes all wilfrid in my mind." Also, said of a person, bewilfrid.

Fragmenta Philosophica

2005-02-18T15:06:00.000-08:00

It's an amazing Web. To verify my understanding of 'lagomorphic,' I put the Google bot to work. It brought me to a rabbit post on the weblog, Fragmenta Philosophica: The Cogitations of Paul Craddick. This is an excerpt from his wonderful statement:

Philosophy is one of the central passions in my life. I was fortunate to major in it at college - “useless” though it is – and I continue to revere it, as a serious avocation. For me, like so many others, the apotheosis of philosophy is exhibited in Plato's portrayal of Socrates.

“Socrates' way of life is the consequence of his recognition that we can know what it is that we do not know about the most important things and that we are by nature obliged to seek that knowledge. We must remain faithful to the bit of light which pierces our circumambient darkness.” (Allan Bloom).

I remember being deeply impressed that Evelyn Waugh prefaced his Robbery Under Law with a warning to readers of the underlying views and possible biases which animated the book. It still seems to me that that is a noble thing to do. In that spirit ...

The world is mysterious in a way which is very difficult to articulate -- both truly terrible and incomprehensibly wonderful. Death is a surd.

We know too much to be skeptics and too little to be dogmatists (Pascal). Hence, in regards to the intensity of most of our convictions (our willingness to revisit and reconsider them), I would argue that “provisional certainty” is what we ought to strive for – a mean between the defective state, wishy-washyness, and the excessive one, fanaticism.

“The life of reason” is an ideal that many pay lip service to, few genuinely esteem, and most fall short of. Though of course there are degrees, there is no fully rational society – rhetoric and coercion are the perennial givens of social life, along with their complements, “bread and circuses.” The last 150 years have shown that the withering away of custom and religion hasn't – to say the least - elevated the average reasonableness of humanity. It seems to me that scientists and specialists are our new priests, and I'm not keen to recite the confession.

Politically, I'm registered as an Independent, and consider myself a libertarian-with-a-lower-case-l. I don't believe that a greater sphere of personal liberty would by any means be a painless or perfect curative for various societal ills, but I am strongly drawn to a system which weds maximal rights to responsibilities (consequences), and creates a protected sphere for the culturally antinomian individual. I am not a conservative -- although in my dissent I do respect certain strains of old-style conservatism – and would be glad to call myself a “liberal,” when/if the current users of the term give it back.

I am an atheist – but something of a hopeful one. I don't hate institutional religion per se, and I certainly don't believe that all religions are created equal. Were I a believer, I'd likely either be a Jew or a Roman Catholic. To me, the only thing (slightly) more absurd than an atheistic cosmos is a theistic one. Still, I believe that the religious impulse in many ways signifies the highest of human aspiration.

The 'Two Cows' Introduction to Political Terminology

2005-02-18T14:29:00.000-08:00

Get it here.

Philosophical Lexicon

2005-02-18T14:01:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Tony Flood for pointing out that Daniel Dennett's Philosophical Lexicon is online. To be booked under HUMOR on my sidebar.

SAMPLES:

alvinize, v. To stimulate protracted discussion by making a bizarre claim. "His contention that natural evil is due to Satanic agency alvinized his listeners."

anscombe, v. (1) To gather for safe-keeping. "She anscombed with all the notes and letters." (2) To go over carefully, with a fine-tooth comb, in an oblique direction.

armstrong unit, n. Measure of the wavelength of belief (= 10 micro-smarts).

a rortiori, adj. For even more obscure and fashionable Continental reasons.

arthurdantist, n. One who straightens the teeth of exotic dogmas. "Little Friedrich used to say the most wonderful things before we took him to the arthurdantist!" - Frau Nietzsche

assearltion, n. A speech act whose illocutionary force is identical with the speaker. "He assearled himself across the room."

austintatious, adj. Displaying in a fine sense the niceties of the language. "I'm not sure what his point was, but his presentation was certainly austintatious."

ayer, v. (from Spanish, ayer, meaning yesterday) To oversimplify elegantly in the direction of a past generation. "Russell, in the Analysis of Mind, ayers a behaviorist account of belief."

bahm, v. To devastate with reprints. "He bahmed the country with his latest piece."

bergson, n. A mountain of sound, a "buzzing, blooming confusion".

blanshard, v. To turn deathly pale at the sight of an external relation.

TRIVIA QUESTION FROM BV: One of these 'daffynitions' is based on the name of a philosopher who was the teacher of Edward 'Cactus Ed' Abbey when the latter was an M.A. student of philosophy. Who was the name of that philosopher?

Patriotism

2005-02-18T10:33:00.000-08:00

Here is an excellent essay on patriotism. The author, Robert C. Koons, explains the commonly misunderstood phrase, "My country right or wrong!" It derives from an 1872 speech by U. S. Senator Carl Schurz in which he said: "Our country right or wrong! When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right." Koons is correct, as I verified for myself. See Robert Hendrickson, QPB Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, p. 538.

Van Inwagen and Lewis on Composition and Identity

2005-02-18T09:57:00.000-08:00

Modifying an example employed by Donald Baxter and David Lewis, suppose I own a parcel of land A consisting of exactly two adjoining lots B and C. It would be an insane boast were I to claim to own three parcels of land, B, C, and A. That would be ‘double-counting’: I count B, C, and A, and give three as the number of parcels I own. Lewis, rejecting ‘double-counting,’ will say that A = (B + C). Thus A is identical to what composes it.

Peter van Inwagen, who opposes composition as identity, argues against it as follows:

Suppose that there exists nothing but my big parcel of land and such parts as it may have. And suppose it has no proper parts but the six small parcels. . . . Suppose that we have a bunch of sentences containing quantifiers, and that we want to determine their truth-values: ‘ExEyEz(y is a part of x & z is a part of x & y is not the same size as z)’; that sort of thing. How many items in our domain of quantification? Seven, right? That is, there are seven objects, and not six objects or one object, that are possible values of our variables, and that we must take account of when we are determining the truth-value of our sentences. ("Composition as Identity," Philosophical Perspectives 8 (1994), p. 213)

In terms of my original example, Lewis is saying that A is identical to what composes it. Van Inwagen is denying this and saying that A is not identical to what composes it. His reason is that there must be at least three entities in the domain of quantification to make the relevant quantified sentences true. A is therefore a third entity in addition to B and C.

Van Inwagen’s argument strikes me as a non sequitur. Consider this sentence:

1. For any x, there is a y such that x = y.

(1) features two distinct bound variables, ‘x’ and ‘y.’ But it does not follow that there must be two entities in the domain of quantification for (1) to be true. It might be that the domain consists of exactly one individual a. Applying Existential Instantiation to (1), we get

2. a = a.

Relative to a domain consisting of a alone, (1) and (2) are logically equivalent. From the fact that there are two variables in (1), it does not follow that there are two entities in the domain relative to which (1) is evaluated. Now consider

3. There is an x, y and z such that x is a proper part of z & y is a proper part of z.

(3) contains three distinct variables, but it does not follow that the domain of quantification must contain three distinct entities for (3) to be true. Suppose that Lewis is right, and that A = (B + C). It will then be possible to existentially instantiate (3) using only two entities, thus:

4. B is a proper part of (B + C) & C is a proper part of (B + C).

If van Inwagen thinks that a quantified sentence in n variables can be evaluated only relative to a domain containing n entities (or values), then I refute him using (1) above. If van Inwagen holds that (3) requires three entities for its evaluation, then I say he has simply begged the question against Lewis by assuming that (B+C) is not identical to A.

It is important not to confuse the level of representation with the level of reality. That there are two different names for a thing does not imply that there are really two things. (‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’ both name the same planet, Venus, to coin an example.) Likewise, the fact that there are two distinct bound variables at the level of linguistic representation does not entail that at the level of reality there are two distinct values. There might be or there might not be.

Here is the problem. ‘A = (B + C)’ is the logical contradictory of ‘~ (A = (B + C)).’ Thus one will be tempted to plump for one or the other limb of the contradiction. But there are reasons to reject both limbs. Surely A is more than the mere sum of B and C. This is because A involves a further ontological ingredient, namely, the connectedness of A and B. To put it another way, A is a unity of its parts, not a pure manifold. The Lewis approach leaves out unity.

The connectedness, however, which makes for the unity, is not a third entity, and this for two reasons. First, it is empirically undetectable, and second, if there were a third entity, we would be involved in a Bradleyan regress. To simple announce that A is a third entity in addition to B and C is to fail to see the problem. It is obvious that A is not wholly distinct from B and C inasmuch as A is composed of B and C as its sole proper parts. Analysis of A discloses nothing other than B and C. That’s all she wrote.

Therefore, if A is distinct from (B + C), then there must be something that makes them distinct. There must be something which, when added to (B + C), results in A. But what could that be? To simply announce that A is distinct from B + C is to help oneself to the very thing whose existence in reality is in question.

In short, both limbs of the contradiction are unacceptable. How then are we to avoid it? Or should we accept it? And then what?

FURTHER READING: Composition as Identity Resource Page

The Penultimate Explanation-Seeking Why-Question

2005-02-18T06:20:00.000-08:00

In a previous post, I distinguished and discussed the following two questions:

Q1. Why does anything at all exist rather than nothing?

Q2. Why does anything at all exist?

I proved to my satisfaction that these are distinct questions resting on distinct presuppositions, and that Q1 (but not Q2) ought to be rejected on the ground that it entails its own unanswerability. But there are other questions in the vicinity, for example:

Q3. Why does this totality of things exist rather than some other possible totality?

Q4. Why (for what purpose) do human beings exist?

Q5. Why (for what purpose) do I exist?

Commenter Peter wants an answer to Q5. I hope to address Q4 and Q5, but first let’s consider Q3 which could be called the penultimate explanation-seeking why-question.

Q3 could be put this way: Why is the actual world actual? "It is actual because it would not have been the actual world had it not been actual." To say that is to miss the sense of the question. The question asks: Why is this world, our world, actual rather than some other merely possible world? Let ‘A’ denote (rigidly designate) our world, the world that happens to be actual. The question is: Why is A actual rather than some merely possible world X?

So formulated, Q3 presupposes that there are other possible worlds. Suppose there is only one possible world, the actual world. Then the actual world would be the necessary world. For if there is only one possible world, then the world that is actual does not merely happen to be actual, but could not have failed to have been actual. The view that there is exactly one possible world may be called modal Spinozism, or to leave Spinoza out of it, modal monism. On modal monism, ‘possible,’ ‘actual,’ and ‘necessary’ become logically equivalent expressions. Q3 therefore presupposes that modal monism is false and that some version of modal pluralism is true. The modal pluralist holds that there is a plurality of possible worlds.

What is a possible world? A merely possible world is a total way things might have been. The actual world is the total way things are. A possible world, therefore, is either a total way things are or might have been.

Q3 therefore presupposes that there is a plurality of possible worlds. But Q3, being contrastive, also presupposes that only one of these worlds is actual. For if each were actual (by being actual at itself, relative to itself, from its own point of view, etc.), then all the worlds would be on an ontological par, and there would be nothing to explain.

In other words, Q3 presupposes not only that (i) there is a plurality of possible worlds, but also that (ii) actuality is absolute as opposed to world-relative.

Q3 also presupposes that (iii) things exist, and that (iv) there is an explanation as to why things exist. As far as I can see, Q3 is a legitimate question. It cannot be dismissed in the way I dismissed Q1. The four presuppositions on which it rests are reasonably held.

A theist could answer both Q2 and Q3 as follows. Contingent things exist because God created them. God exists because it is his nature to exist. This totality of things exists rather than some other merely possible totality because God freely chose this totality over the other possible totalities.

But what could an atheist do with Q2 or Q3? He could ‘pull a Spinoza’ and say that it is necessary that things exist and that this precise totality of things exist. He could ‘pull a David Lewis’ and maintain that there is a plurality of possible worlds all equally real. Our atheist could say that it is a brute fact that things and this precise totality of things exists. Finally, our atheist could try to explain what actually but contingently exists in terms of earlier phases of what actually but contingently exists. Any other possibilities?

My judgement is that each of these four atheistic moves can be countered, and that each is worse than theism, so that theism emerges as the best answer to Q2 and Q3. Subsequent posts will address these alternatives.

Blogging is Here to Stay

2005-02-18T05:48:00.000-08:00

Blogging, like Rock and Roll, is here to say. But blogging is better. Read Peggy Noonan on blogging. (Hat tip: Keith Burgess-Jackson)

More on Rules and Exceptions

2005-02-17T07:33:00.002-08:00

In a previous post, I raised a question about the expression, 'The exception proves the rule.' How can an exception prove a rule? Let the rule be that all bloggers are less than 90 years of age. This rule is not proven, but refuted, by Geriatric Jerry who blogs his reminiscences of times past. All it takes to refute a universal generalization is one counterexample. Now suppose that the rule is that most bloggers are white males. This rule is not refuted by blogging females, but it is not supported by them either, let alone proven by them.

So I suggested that the expression means that the exception to a rule 'proves' the rule in the sense that it throws the rule into a relief, making it stand out as a rule.

Craig Howard of BuffaloG fame then suggested that 'prove' in this context means 'test.'

Commenter Alan then directed us to this page where Michael Quinion writes:

It has often been suggested in reference works that prove here is really being used in the sense of “test” (as it does in terms like “proving ground” or “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”, or in the printer’s proof, which is a test page run off to see that all is correct with the typesetting). It is said that the real idea behind the saying is that the presence of what looks like an exception tests whether a rule is really valid or not. If you can’t reconcile the supposed exception with the rule, there must indeed be something wrong with the rule. The expression is indeed used in this sense, but that’s not where it comes from or what it strictly means.

BV: Origin and meaning are distinct and may diverge. Meaning is tied to usage, so that one may wonder what sense there is in claiming that an expression "strictly means" such-and-such when it is not used to mean such-and-such.

The problem with that attempted explanation is that those putting it forward have picked on the wrong word to challenge. It’s not a false sense of proof that causes the problem, but exception. We think of it as meaning some case that doesn’t follow the rule, but the original sense was of someone or something that is granted permission not to follow a rule that otherwise applies. The true origin of the phrase lies in a medieval Latin legal principle: exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis, which may be translated as “the exception confirms the rule in the cases not excepted”.

Let us say that you drive down a street somewhere and find a notice which says “Parking prohibited on Sundays”. You may reasonably infer from this that parking is allowed on the other six days of the week. A sign on a museum door which says “Entry free today” leads to the implication that entry is not free on other days (unless it’s a marketing ploy like the never-ending sales that some stores have, but let’s not get sidetracked). H W Fowler gave an example from his wartime experience: “Special leave is given for men to be out of barracks tonight until 11pm”, which implies a rule that in other cases men must be in barracks before that time. So, in its strict sense, the principle is arguing that the existence of an allowed exception to a rule reaffirms the existence of the rule.

Despite the number of reference books which carefully explain the origin and true meaning of the expression, it is unlikely that it will ever be restored to strict correctness. The usual rule in lexicography is that sayings progress towards corruption and decay, never the reverse. Unless this one proves to be an exception ...

BV: I would put Quinion's point as follows. There are two senses of 'rule.' In the first sense, a rule is an observed regularity, e.g., women are better than men in personal relationships. A rule in this sense is descriptive rather than prescriptive or proscriptive. In the second sense, a rule is prescriptive/proscriptive: it specifies something that ought to be done or ought to be left undone. To say that the exception proves the rule in the second sense of 'rule' is to say that the existence of an exception reaffirms the bindingness of the rule in the ordinary run of cases.

Question for a classicist: can the Latin regula, regulae be used in both senses lately distinguished, or only in one? I know it is used in the second sense by Descartes. But what about the first sense?

I think Quinion is basically right. Where he goes wrong, however, is in thinking that there is a "true meaning of an expression." There are original meanings, but why should these be the "true meanings"? And note that an original meaning of an expression came to be such because the expression was used in a certain way in a certain context. An expression does not have a meaning the way a rock has hardness. It is more like the way a rock can have different functions in different contexts: to conk someone on the head with, to serve as a paperweight, etc.

And note that Quinion's rule that "sayings progress toward corruption and decay, and not the reverse" the exception to which may be the saying in question, rests on an equivocation on 'rule' that I have just exposed with his help. That is, Quinion is himself not using 'The exception proves the rule' in its "true meaning"!

World Wide Words is copyright © Michael Quinion, 1996–2005. All rights reserved. Contact the author for reproduction requests.Comments and feedback are always welcome.Page created 14 September 2002.

The Ivory Closet

2005-02-16T13:51:00.000-08:00

On the masthead of this new weblog: "Life as a Closet Conservative Inside Liberal Academia."

From a recent post:

My dissertation, which I'm still working on, focuses on a contemporary French philosopher who is known in academia primarily as a radical Leftist. Generally speaking, academics seem to just assume that you agree with and share the same views as the figure you focus on in your dissertation. So, everyone just assumes that since I'm writing on a radical Leftist that I must be a radical Leftist. I keep my mouth shut about my conservativism. Often I have to bite my tongue when I hear disparaging remarks about conservatives. But, so long as I manage to do that the liberal bias of academia makes it all too easy to stay in the closet. Everyone just assumes your [you're] a liberal.

BV: The author points out something verified in my own experience. Since I had written a dissertation on Kant, some former colleagues assumed that I must be a Kantian. One of these people was an old Thomist who had published a grand total of one article in his career and needed a reason to dislike a young upstart. So he assumed I was a damned Kantian opposed to the old-time metaphysics that he learned out of scholastic manuals. Another colleague, who didn't get tenure, was a libertarian who hated Kant for Randian reasons. He pegged me as a metaphysician who was a Kantian and who therefore held that the sense world is illusory!

Another bonehead of a former colleague under the sway of Heidegger and Gadamer assumed that I must be a Thomist since I had published articles critical of Heidegger in such journals as The Thomist, New Scholasticism, and International Philosophical Quarterly.

A libertarian, chess-playing, mailman friend of mine was once shocked to hear that I was teaching a seminar on Nietzsche at a Catholic university.

Paul Edwards once accused me of being a "semi-shepherd" because I had argued that Heidegger's Being question was immune to objections he had raised. I was not a full-fledged "shepherd of Being," but a "semi-shepherd," a species of varmint that Edwards found just as objectionable as the full-fledged variety.

In each of these five cases, there was a failure to grasp an important truth: Philosophy is not ideology. Philosophy aims at truth, not at ideas useful for the end of gaining and acquiring power. We do not study Kant and Nietzsche and Heidegger to refute them or to agree with them, or to satisfy a need to have something to believe in, or a need to belong to a movement. Philosophy is inquiry: an attempt at arriving at the sober impersonal truth to the extent that this is possible for such limited beings as we are.

Ayn Rand, Stamp Collector

2005-02-16T13:24:00.000-08:00

Ayn Rand explains her hobby here.

Why Roger Kimball is a Conservative

2005-02-16T12:17:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Jeff Hodges for bringing my attention to IntellectualConservative.com. "Conservative and Libertarian Intellectual Philosophy and Politics." (One wonders about the force of 'intellectual' in this description.) The current issue features an interview with Roger Kimball in which, among other things, he explains why he is a conservative. The blue highlighting is my addition.

RK: I am a conservative because I am a liberal. That sounds glib, but it is true. (I take the formulation from Russell Kirk.) What is a conservative? A believer in freedom who understands that civilization, the precondition for liberty, is a fragile achievement won at great cost and preserved only at the expense of unceasing vigilance. A “liberal” in the contemporary sense is often someone who is willing to barter freedom for the sake of some utopian dream, someone who discounts the reality of human imperfection and the constant temptation to evil and chaos, someone who trusts in “planning,” “rational solutions,” and “education.” I ended my book Tenured Radicals with this passage from Evelyn Waugh; it sums up one important reason I am a conservative: “Barbarism,” Waugh wrote in 1938,

is never finally defeated; given propitious circumstances, men and women who seem quite orderly will commit every conceivable atrocity. The danger does not come merely from habitual hooligans; we are all potential recruits for anarchy. Unremitting effort is needed to keep men living together at peace; there is only a margin of energy left over for experiment however beneficent. Once the prisons of the mind have been opened, the orgy is on. There is no more agreeable position than that of dissident from a stable society. Theirs are all the solid advantages of other people's creation and preservation, and all the fun of detecting hypocrisies and inconsistencies. There are times when dissidents are not only enviable but valuable. The work of preserving society is sometimes onerous, sometimes almost effortless. The more elaborate the society, the more vulnerable it is to attack, and the more complete its collapse in case of defeat. At a time like the present it is notably precarious. If it falls we shall see not merely the dissolution of a few joint-stock corporations, but of the spiritual and material achievements of our history.

2005-02-15T19:25:00.000-08:00

Still trying to figure out how to upload images.

Ayn Rand Addresses Comrade Spassky

2005-02-15T18:55:00.000-08:00

See here.

2005-02-15T18:34:00.000-08:00

This is a test.

Shakespearean Insult Engine

2005-02-15T18:11:00.000-08:00

Get thee hence, thou dankish, rump-fed dewberry! Hat tip: Ed Babinski.

Horowitz on O'Reilly Factor Tonight

2005-02-15T14:57:00.000-08:00

David Horowitz will be on the O’Reilly Factor tonight at 8 and 11 PM Eastern Standard Time on FOX News network.

Want to bet that Ward Churchhill will be the topic?

The Gadfly's Buzz

2005-02-15T09:02:00.000-08:00

I am happy to have discovered this weblog run by Alan Cook. I have placed a link to it on my blogroll. Cook, ABD in philosophy (UT, Austin), takes my side against the irrepressible Kevin Kim in our debate about permanence and impermanence. Cook's take on this debate is here. Cook cites Kalupahana in my favor, which is ironic, since I found myself mostly disagreeing with him during the summer I spent at the Institute for Comparative Philosophy at the University of Hawaii. It seemed to me that he was relying too heavily on Hume to make sense of the Buddhist texts.

Amazing what's out there, floating around in the 'sphere. I agree with this sentiment e-mailed to me this morning by the New Victorian:

My view of the blogsphere is reflected in a quotation from Proverbs: "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." The 'sphere has enormously accelerated the sharpening.

Yes indeed. If Leibniz could only see us now.

Commie Honored Twice By USPS

2005-02-15T08:36:00.000-08:00

On the philatelic front, Tony Flood informs me that the United States Postal Service honored a card-carrying member of the Communist Party USA, W. E. B. Du Bois, twice, first in 1992 and again in 1998.

I wonder, was the Russian-born Ayn Rand similarly honored in the Soviet Union?

Two Forms of the Ultimate Explanation-Seeking Why-Question

2005-02-15T07:09:00.000-08:00

Why does anything at all exist? Someone could utter this interrogative form of words merely to express astonishment that anything should exist at all. But it is more natural to take the question as a request for an explanation: Why, for what reason or cause, does anything at all exist? What explains the sheer existence of things? Suppose we call this the ultimate explanation-seeking why-question.

Before attempting to answer this question, one ought to examine it carefully. One ought to question the question. If we do so, we soon realize that the question why anything at all exists can be formulated in two ways. One formulation is contrastive, the other non-contrastive:

Q1. Why does anything at all exist, rather than nothing?

Q2. Why does anything at all exist?

What this post argues is that Q1 suffers from a defect that makes it unanswerable, but that Q2 does not suffer from this defect. Failure to distinguish Q1 and Q2 may lead one to reject both questions as unanswerable. It appears that Paul Edwards makes this mistake in his entry "Why?" in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Anthony Flood may be repeating it here.

That these are distinct questions becomes apparent when we note that the questions rest on different presuppositions. Both questions presuppose that something exists. If that were not the case, there would be nothing to explain. But Q1 also presupposes that it is possible that nothing at all exist. Call this further presupposition P. P is no part of Q2, as I will explain in a moment.

Let us first think about P and what it entails. P may be expressed in several logically equivalent ways:

There might have been nothing at all
It is possible that nothing exist
Possibly, nothing exists
There is a possible world in which nothing exists

where ‘possible’ and cognates pick out broadly logical possibility.

No matter how P is formulated, it entails that everything that exists is contingent, equivalently, that nothing that exists is a necessary being. For if there might have been nothing at all, then any thing X that exists is such that it might not have existed. That is just to say that X is a contingent being. So given that Q1 presupposes P, and that P entails that nothing is a necessary being, it follows that Q1 presupposes that nothing is a necessary being. But this seems to imply that the question Q1 cannot be answered.

For if Q1 – or the asking of Q1 – presupposes that nothing is a necessary being, then the asking of Q1 presupposes that there is nothing in terms of which an ultimate explanation could be couched. This is because an ultimate explanation of why anything at all exists cannot be in terms of a contingent entity. A contingent explainer would need explanation just as much as any other entity. An ultimate explanation, if one is to be had, must invoke a noncontingent, but possible, entity: one that either explains itself or at least is not in need of an explanation by another. (I am assuming that there cannot be an actually infinite regress of contingent explainers. This assumption is quite easy to defend, but I won’t address that task here, having addressed one form of it elsewhere.)

The upshot is that Q1 entails its own unanswerability. This is not because we are unable to know the answer, but because the question itself by its very structure rules out an answer. In other words, Q1 is self-defeating in that it rests on a presupposition that rules out an answer. The proper procedure with respect to Q1, then, is to reject it, not try to answer it.

But the situation is different with Q2. Q2 does not presuppose that every being is contingent. It does not presuppose the opposite (some being is noncontingent) either. Q2 is neutral on the question whether every being is contingent. This is why Q2 is not just a truncated form of Q1. It is not as if ‘rather than nothing’ is implied but not stated in Q2. Q2, resting as it does on different presuppositions than Q1, is a different question. Q2 does not presuppose the possibility of there being nothing, hence, does not presuppose that only what is contingent can exist.

Thus Q2 allows the possibility of a necessary being. Nothing about Q2 entails its own unanswerability. Q2 allows the following answer: things exist because one of the things that exist is a necessary being whose existence is self-explanatory, while everything else is explained in terms of this necessary being.

I am making three assumptions about explanation.

A. One cannot explain what is not the case.

B. It is not necessary to an explanation that the explanandum (that which is to be explained) and the explanans (the entity or entities invoked in the explanation) be distinct.

C. It is not obvious that everything has an explanation: it is epistemically possible that there be brute facts.

(A) is self-evident and needs no support. (B) may be supported by citing examples of self-explanatory propositions. The proposition expressed by ‘Everything is self-identical’ is a necessary truth. As such, it is self-explanatory: explanandum and explanans are one. Note that there is no reason to assume that an explanation of why things exist must be a causal explanation.

(C) is a large topic requiring a separate discussion. But suppose that there are brute facts, facts that contingently obtain but have no explanation. It doesn’t follow that the existence of that-which-exists is a brute fact, but suppose that that is nonethless the case. Then there is perhaps a sense in which Q2 is unanswerable: it is unanswerable in that it rests on a false presupposition, namely, that the existence of that-which-exists is not a brute fact.

Even if that is so, it remains that case that Q2 is free of the defect that renders Q1 unanswerable. Q1 is self-defeating by its very structure. Q2, however, is not self-defeating by its very structure. If Q2 does rest on a false presupposition, this can only be established by a complicated set of considerations, and not by simply explicating the content of Q2.

The upshot is that Q2 cannot be easily dismissed. It remains a question worthy of serious consideration.

Tribute to Milan Vukcevich

2005-02-14T10:59:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of boorish and insufferable people in the chess world, and I have had the misfortune of tangling with some of them both on the board and off. But chess master Dr. Milan Vukcevich was a gentleman of the old school. I did not know him well at all, but I did play him a few times at the John Carroll University chess club in University Heights, Ohio in the late 1980s, early 1990s. He and IM Calvin Blocker were the titans of that club with whom even a patzer such as I might find himself paired. I remember one occasion on which I had the temerity to try the Budapest Gambit against him. You can guess the outcome.

From this tribute, one can see what sort of man Milan Vukcevich was. Vuky was not only a great over-the-board player but a problemist as well. Here are some of his compositions.

Philosophy and Philately

2005-02-14T10:31:00.000-08:00

See here for philosophers who have been honored with postage stamps. Interestingly, no American philosopher makes this list or has ever been so honored as far as I know. But I could be wrong about this. John Dewey perhaps?

I enjoy low-brow American culture in moderation, especially when "motorvatin'"* along an open road, Chuck Berry style, but when Elvis and Marilyn made it onto postage stamps, I asked myself whether we were on a slippery slope issuing in the likes of Charles Manson being philatelically honored. For Elvis and Marilyn to be handed the palm when such philosophers as Royce, Peirce, and James, not to mention chess great Paul Morphy, go unhonored, says something about cultural priorities in the good old USA.

I may be making some factual mistakes here. That's for me not to know, and for you to find out.

...................

*As I was motorvatin' over the hill
I saw Maybelline in a Coupe de Ville

UPDATE: I blundered again. There is a John Dewey stamp, and it is viewable via the link I provided above. Thanks to Tony Flood for the quick correction. Glad to have you as a reader, Tony. Who says there is no quality control in the blogosphere?

On Improving the World

2005-02-14T09:33:00.000-08:00

To change the world is not to improve it. To improve it one must make it better. For this two things are required. The first is that one must understand the world and the people in it as to what they actually are and as to what they are capable of. The second is that one must know how things objectively ought to be.

Can the various world-improvers claim to know these two things? In his eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach, Karl Marx wrote that "The philosophers have variously interpreted the world, but the point is to change it. ("Die Philosophen haben die Welt verschieden interpretiert, aber es kommt darauf an, sie zu veraendern.")

The point, however, is not merely to change the world, but to improve it, and to do that one must first understand it and the people in it -- which is precisely what Marx failed to do. As for the second desideratum, according to which one must know how things objectively ought to be, a doctrine that sees morality as but ideology is not well-positioned to satisfy it.

Social Oppression

2005-02-14T09:28:00.000-08:00

One way people oppress us is by constantly drawing us back into our pasts. We would pull down the shade on the past, but they won't let us. It is easier for them that way: They don't have to deal with the complex reality of a developing individual.

Ideals

2005-02-14T09:05:00.000-08:00

Not only do we fail to live up to the ideals we have, we fail to have the ideals we ought to have. There are two problems here, the first pertaining more to the will, the second more to the intellect, or else to a faculty of moral discernment.

It is not enough to have ideals, one must have the right ideals. This is why being idealistic, contrary to common opinion, is not always good. Idealism ran high among the members of the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the Schuetzstaffel (SS). But it would have been better had the members of these organizations been cynics and slackers. It is arguably better to have no ideals than to have the wrong ones.

What is worse, to pay mere lip service to the right ideals without making any attempt at living up to them, or to have no ideals at all? The former is a hypocrite, but the latter is even worse. Lip service is better than no service. It follows that there is a right way and a wrong way to avoid hypocrisy. The right way is to make an effort to live up to the right ideals. The wrong way is to have no ideals.

But one must understand what hypocrisy is. Hypocrisy is not moral failure. Only the moral striver can morally fail. The hypocrite, however, does not strive.

Sam Cooke Glosses Soren Kierkegaard, Brenda Lee Blaise Pascal

2005-02-12T17:06:00.000-08:00

Soren Kierkegaard, somewhere in his voluminous Journals: "What I essentially lack is a body . . ."

Sam Cooke: "It's another Saturday night, and I ain't go no body. . ."

Blaise Pascal in the Pensees: "The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing."

Brenda Lee: "My Heart Has a Mind of its Own"

UPDATE: I wrote this post last night in a sentimental mood after a couple of brewskis. When I woke up this morning I realized I had confused Brenda Lee with Connie Francis. So I was wrong! A liberal would say that I lied.

Rules and Exceptions

2005-02-12T08:10:00.000-08:00

One often hears, 'The exception proves the rule.' But what could that mean?

Suppose that the rule is of the form All Fs are Gs. A rule of this form is not proven, but definitively refuted, by an exception, an F that is not a G. A rule of the form, Some/Most Fs are Gs, is not refuted by an F that is not a G, but it is not proven by it either.

What we should conclude is that an exception ‘proves’ the rule only in the sense that it makes the rule stand out by contrast; the former throws the latter into relief. That is an interesting use of ‘prove’: an exception can literally contradict the rule and yet one says that it proves the rule!

One lesson to be drawn from this is that the meaning of a word often depends on its context, in this case the sentence in which it is embedded.

Now given that many rules have exceptions, some will be tempted to affirm

R. Every rule has an exception.

But (R) is itself a rule, whence it follows that (R) has an exception. Now an exception to (R) would be a rule that has no exception. Therefore, (R) entails the negation of (R), namely,

~R. Some rule has no exception.

Now either (R) or (~R). Since (R) entails( ~R) and (~R) also entails not (~R), it follows that (R) is not merely false, but necessarily false. Therefore, ‘Some rule has no exception’ is necessarily true. An example of such a rule would be (~R) itself.

It follows that there is no possible world in which the rule that some rule has no exception can be 'proven' by an exception.

Ah, the pleasures of analysis!

A Tale of Two Parcels -- Or Are There Three?

2005-02-11T16:53:00.000-08:00

My topic in the form of a poem:

A tale of two parcels
Or are there three?
More on composition
And identity.

All right Joseph Jedwab, gird your loins for another round. Put on your thinking cap, get your posterior analytic in gear, make all requisite preparations. I am afraid your last batch of comments -- the comments on this post -- betrayed misunderstanding. So I’ll try again. I’ll try to be clearer.

Suppose I own a parcel of land, call it A. I divide A into two adjoining, non-overlapping, subparcels, B and C, of unequal size. I put both B and C on the market for 40,000 and 60,000, respectively. A prospective buyer appears with a suitcase of C-notes and says he wants to buy both B and C. I tell him that he will have to fork over 200,000. He looks at me like I’m crazy, so I explain that B costs 40 K, and C costs 60 K. That makes 100 K. Parcel A costs 100 K, so the total is 200 K.

He protests once again, so I say: "Surely you have read Peter van Inwagen’s article, "Composition as Identity" (Philosophical Perspectives 8 (1994), pp. 207-220 ) in which he proves that in a situation like this there are three objects and not two. Consider the existentially general sentence, ‘There is an x, y, and z such that x is a part of z, y is a part of z, and x is smaller than y.’ For this sentence to be true, which it obviously is, there must be at least three objects in the domain of quantification to serve as the values of the bound variables ‘x,’ ‘y,’ and ‘z.’ So there are three parcels, and each has a separate price."

Now clearly something has gone deeply wrong here. Parcel A is a whole with exactly two proper parts. But surely A is not an entity over and above B and C. A, B, and C cannot be three entities for they can be three only if they are three parcels of land, and there cannot be three parcels of land in reality. For if A is a third parcel in reality then there would have to be something in reality that distinguishes A from B-adjoining-C – and what could that be? At most there are three objects of consideration. To suppose that these three objects correspond to three entities appears to be the mistake the Van Inwagen is making. To put it another way, the the bound variables ‘x,’ ‘y,’ and ‘z’ denote three conceptually distinct objects – otherwise we wouldn’t be able to make sense of the existentially quantified sentence given above. But it doesn’t follow that there conceptually distinct objects are really distinct entities.

It would be either an insane boast, or a bad joke were I to claim that I own three parcels of land: I own one parcel consisting of two subparcels. Some will be tempted to express this insight by saying that A just is B and C. In other words, A’s being composed of B and C amounts to A’s identity with the sum (fusion) of B and C. Composition is identity.

But this can’t be right either. Indeed, it appears to be nonsense from a purely syntactical point of view. How can an identity sentence have a singular term on one end and a plural term on the other? ‘Cicero is Tully’ is well-formed. It is a singular identity sentence. ‘The Three Stooges are Larry, Moe, and Curly Joe’ is well-formed. It is a plural identity sentence. But ‘This house is ten rooms’ and ‘This chessboard is 64 squares’ seem malformed, being syntactic hybrids. Same goes for ‘This piece of land is two parcels,’ if ‘is’ expresses identity. Ditto for ‘God is three persons.’

It is false that A is a third thing in addition to B and C. It is also false that A is identical to (B and C). So what is the truth? I say the truth is that A is identical to B and C when these are properly connected. In this case, proper connection is their adjoining. To see the point, suppose B and C are not adjoining but separated by a river. There would then be no parcel of land that has B and C as its sole proper parts. There would be the set consisting of the two but no set is a parcel of land.

So A is identical to B and C adjoining each other. Note that both ‘A’ and ‘B and C adjoining each other’ are singular terms. Thus we do not have an objectionable syntactic hybrid on our hands. I am not saying that A is identical to its proper parts; I am saying that A is identical to its proper parts when these adjoin. That adjoining is not nothing. Compare the chariot. I am not saying that the chariot is identical to its proper parts; I am saying that the chariot is identical to its proper parts when these are properly connected. ‘This chariot’ is a singular term; but so also is ‘these parts properly connected.’

Let me sum up. I believe Jedwab has made two mistakes. The first is not to appreciate that both of the following are false:

1. A is a third thing in addition to B and C.
2. A is identical to (B and C).

Jedwab's second mistake is to think that I was urging (2). I reject both of (1) and (2).

NOW: Have I convinced you of this? If not, why not?

But the real fun is just beginning. Consider

3. A is identical to B and C properly connected.

The connectedness K is not nothing. So it is something. But then where is it to be 'located'? K is not A; K is not B; K is not a further part; K is not the whole; K is not something external to the whole. If K is not internal to the whole, identical to the whole, or external to it, then K would appear to be nothing.

So we have an apparent contradiction on our hands: K is both something and not something, both real and not real, both existent and nonexistent. Note that I have given reasons for accepting both limbs of the contradiction.

How can this apparent contradiction be removed?

Cum Ira et Studio

2005-02-11T16:44:00.000-08:00

Dennis Mangan is on a rip, smoking the PeeCee boneheads out of their holes. His miscellany is finding a focus.

My title is a take-off on a line from Tacitus, sine ira et studio, "without anger and partiality." But where in Tacitus do we find this phrase?

Leftists and Civility

2005-02-11T08:38:00.000-08:00

The Right has not cornered the market on civility, as witness the aptronymic Michael Savage. But in my experience, liberals and leftists are worse in the civility department than conservatives. If you don’t agree with me on this, then this post is not for you. To try to prove my assertion to libs and lefties would be like trying to prove to them that such major media outlets as the New York Times tilt leftward. To achieve either goal, I would have to possess the longevity of a Methuselah, the energy of a Hercules, and the dogged persistence of a Sisyphus – and I still would not succeed.

So, given that conservatives are more civil than libs and lefties, why is this the case? One guess is that conservatives, for whom there is a defeasible presumption in favor of traditional ways of doing things, are more civil due to a natural piety with respect to received modes of human interaction. Civility works, and conservatives are chary about discarding what works. They were brought up to be civil by parents and teacher who were themselves civil, and they see no reason to reject as phony or ‘precious’ something that is conducive to good living. They understand that since we live in a world of appearances, a certain amount of concern with them is reasonable. They also understand that by faking it a bit, one brings oneself to actually feel the emotions that one began by faking. For example, by saying ‘Good Morning’ when I don’t quite feel like it, I contribute to my own perception of the morning as good.

But leftists, many of whom are of a rebellious and adolescent cast of mind, have a problem with what they perceive to be phoniness. They are always out to unmask things, to cut through the false consciousness and the bourgeois ideology. Connected with this hatred of phoniness is a keen sensitivity to hypocrisy. So when Bill (William J.) Bennett was caught wasting money on the slot machines in Las Vegas a while back, the libs and lefties pounced and denounced: "Hypocrite!" they cried.

So pouncing and denouncing, they proved that they do not know what hypocrisy is. Although Mr. Bennett’s behavior was suboptimal, it was neither illegal nor immoral: he’s got the dough to blow if that’s his pleasure. Given his considerable accomplishments, is he not entitled to a bit of R & R?

A hypocrite is not someone who is morally perfect or who fails to engage in supererogatory acts. Nor is a hypocrite one who preaches high ideals but falls short. Otherwise, we would all be hypocrites. But if everyone is, then no one is. A hypocrite is someone who preaches high ideals but makes no attempt at living up to them. The difference is between failing to do what one believes one ought to do and not even trying to do what one says one ought to do.

The leftist obsession with perceived phoniness and perceived hypocrisy stems from an innate hatred of moral judgment, a hatred which itself seems fueled by a confusion of moral judgment with judgmentalism.

So perhaps the answer is this. Leftists are less civil than conservatives because they do not see civility as a value. They don't see it as a value because it smacks of a bourgeois moral ideology that to them is nothing but a sham. Adroit unmaskers and psychologizers that they are, incapable of taking things at face value, they think that none of us who preach civility’s value really believe what we are preaching. It really has to be something else, just as the desire for democracy in Iraq really has to be something else: a desire for economic and military hegemony.

An Alaskan Enters the 'Sphere

2005-02-11T07:21:00.000-08:00

Let's extend a big blogospheric welcome to New Victorian. He posts interestingly about discrimination and prejudice, reminding us of something liberals tend to forget if they ever knew it at all: discrimination as such is not bad.

I take him to be saying that prejudice, too, is not always bad. This is clear if one thinks of prejudice as pre-judgment. Certainly some pre-judgments are good. Once I identify a snake as crotalus atrox, I class it among the venomous critters best given a wide berth. I do not attempt to relate to it as an individual in all its precious uniqueness in order to ascertain that it really is venomous.

New Victorian gives evidence of being a chess player as well, a fact that can only count in his favor. It turns out that I have unwittingly brokered his re-acquaintance with Dennis Monokroussos. See the comments to this post. Happy to have done so. Small world, small 'sphere.

A Chess Anti-Problem

2005-02-11T07:18:00.000-08:00

Frustrated by chess problems? Try this one.

Genesis 3, 19 and Blogospheric Privilege

2005-02-11T06:56:00.000-08:00

Gabriel Laguna comments:

Congratulations for this excellent blog. I am afraid Genesis 3, 19 is misquoted. The Latin text in the Vulgata reads: In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane, donec revertaris in terram de qua sumptus es: quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris.

Therefore, the phrase Memento, homo lacks in the Genesis' passage, but belongs to the Catholic liturgy. The verb Memento comes probably from Ecclesiastes 12, 1. I have dealt with this phrase in my blog.

BV: Thanks for writing and for the kind words. I consulted my Biblia Vulgata before I wrote the post in question, but not wanting to quote the whole passage, I prefaced part of it with the Memento, homo. My background is Roman Catholic, so that came naturally. But you are absolutely right. You could say that I was invoking my blogospheric privilege to be a little laxer than I would have been had I been writing for a hard-copy journal.

Of course, this raises a question that I have been pondering: should I cut myself any slack in this venue? My tentative conclusion is that I should, so that I can keep up the flow. The genre demands relatively quick short posts. The blogosopher is a bit like the blitz chess player: he has to crank out something good in serious time pressure.

UPDATE: Having just looked at Professor Laguna's weblog and main website, I believe those of my readers who know Spanish will find them interesting. (His blog will take you to his main site.) Had I known of Laguna before, I might have accompanied my wife to Spain. But maybe not. If there isn't an etymological connection between travel and travail, then there ought to be. And I can't say I'm all that thrilled with Europe these days.

Can an Independent Scholar Get Published?

2005-02-10T15:07:00.000-08:00

Jim Ryan of Philosoblog (defunct but content-rich) and of The Conservative Philosopher e-mails:

Your Independent Philosopher site is interesting. Keep me posted, sign me up, etc. I see that you published articles after retirement. I have a textbook manuscript I'd like to publish, but I figured publishers wouldn't be interested since I have no institution. What do you think?

BV: One of the things I considered carefully before resigning my tenured position was whether resigning would make it difficult to publish in reputable outlets. The world runs on appearances, people judge by them, and to do so is not entirely irrational. But I figured that there are enough decent people out there willing to judge my work on its merits to make the risk worth running. My experience has borne out my judgment.

Since quitting in the Spring of 1991, I have published about 35 articles and reviews and a book.
The journals in which I have published since '91 include the top analytic journals Nous and Analysis as well as a number of mid-range journals including all of the main philosophy of religion journals (Religious Studies, International Journal of the Philosophy of Religion, Faith and Philosophy, Philosophia Christi), as well as some other good journals like Ratio, Philo, Modern Schoolman, and International Philosophical Quarterly.

Of course, certain narrow-minded and status-obsessed individuals will not consider some of the above to be good journals. But no decent maverick philosopher would have any truck with the judgments of such people. There is a good elitism and a bad elitism, and that is the latter. I find it astonishing that there are people who wouldn't be caught dead reading a journal like IPQ or MS any more than they would be caught dead shopping in the wrong stores. Such bigotry! And many of the people who hold these views call themselves liberals. I thought 'liberal' had something to do with toleration and openmindedness.

I published my book in Kluwer's Philosophical Studies series edited by Keith Lehrer. I just sent it to them, they accepted it after some revisions, and I decided to be done with the matter. I don't cultivate contacts and connections, so I figured there would be no point in trying to get it into a really prestigious press. Plus, I'm lazy when it comes to mundane activities like mailing manuscripts.

I would suggest that you submit your manuscript. But first put it into the best possible form and explain in your cover letter what your credentials are. You owe it to yourself to submit it even if it is not accepted. A book that is released into the world is a great joy. Of course, with a textbook somewhat different rules are in play.

But if the question is put generally: Can an independent philosopher get published? then I am living proof that it is possible.

I am convinced that the main factor when it comes to having work accepted is the quality of the work, and not institutional affiliation or lack thereof. There are exceptions to this, of course, but the main thing is to write something good. There are all too many whiners out there (sometimes they show up in the Letters to the Editor of the APA Proceedings) who think they are being unfairly discriminated against when the plain truth is that they are submitting crap.

The Supremes

2005-02-09T13:08:00.000-08:00

The logic of supreme being disallows there being more than one. Grammatically, 'supreme' is a superlative, not a comparative. Thus the vocal group, The Supremes, might strike the logically persnickety as misnamed. How can each each gal be supreme when there are three of them? (That Diana Ross thought herself 'more supreme' than the others cuts no ice.)

You can guess where I am going with this. God is the supreme being. Christians believe that God is triune, one God in three divine Persons. If each Person is God, and God is supreme, then each Person is supreme. But the Son proceeds from the Father, and the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son (filioque). Since the Father begets the Son, is the Father 'more supreme' than the Son?

Divine supremacy is supremacy in respect of all 'great-making properties' (A. Plantinga) or perfections. But if the Father begs the Son, then the Father is superior to the Son in respect of ontological primordiality. It follows that the Son is not supreme in respect of all perfections. Similarly for the Holy Ghost.

Is there a serious problem here, or not? You will note that this is a close cousin of my aseity puzzle.

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

2005-02-09T07:35:00.000-08:00

Genesis 3, 19: Rememember, man, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return. Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris.

Our plesance here is all vain glory,
This fals world is but transitory,
The flesche is brukle, the Feynd is slee;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

No stait in Erd here standis sicker;
As with the wynd wavis the wicker,
Wavis this wardlis vanitie;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

(William Dunbar c. 1460 -- c. 1520, from "Lament for the Makers.")

Here lie I by the chancel door;
They put me here because I was poor.
The further in, the more you pay,
But here lie I as snug as they.

(Devon tombstone.)

Here lies Piron, a complete nullibiety,
Not even a Fellow of a Learned Society.

Alexis Piron, 1689-1773, "My Epitaph"

Why hoard your maidenhead? There'll not be found
A lad to love you, girl, under the ground.
Love's joys are for the quick; but when we're dead
It's dust and ashes, girl, will go to bed.

(Asclepiades, fl. 290 B.C., tr. R. A. Furness)

The world, perhaps, does not see that those who rightly engage in philosophy study only death and dying. And, if this be true, it would surely be strange for a man all through his life to desire only death, and then, when death comes to him, to be vexed at it, when it has been his study and his desire for so long.

Plato, Phaedo, St. 64, tr. F. J. Church

Jim Ryan's Story, and Mine

2005-02-08T16:05:00.000-08:00

Let me start off by recommending Jim Ryan's defunct Philosoblog, the archives of which I have begun exploring. There is excellent material here worthy of the MP's STOA (stamp of approval). Jim still blogs occasionally, over at The Conservative Philosopher. The following is in response to my query as to why he left teaching.

Well, here's my story, thanks for asking: I've always taken learning to be almost sacred, scholarship to be transcendent, books sublime. Given this disposition, I was unable to stomach teaching that 20% of my students who were there to get by by hook or by crook (avoid class, avoid the book, succumb to cheating, etc.). I realized at 37 that I would become a bitter old man if I taught for another 30 years. I liked the other 80% of my students, and I liked my research, but these weren't enough to get me through the bitter part. So, having reasonable math/science background I boned up on chemistry during my last year of teaching and hustled a job in the Chem department at U. of Virginia. That was two years ago, almost. It's been fun, but now I'm thinking of moving into the business world, so that I can make more money and have more time with my kids.

What about your story, Bill? How'd you come to quit?

BV: Learning sacred, scholarship transcendent, books sublime. I can see we have something in common, a commonality that is also part of the reason why I gave up teaching. The average run of students would dismiss your sentiments and mine as bullshit, as some kind of empty self-serving rhetoric that could only be spouted by some weirdo we fills his belly by spouting it. Most people have no intellectual eros, could not care less about scholarship, and place no value whatsoever on good books.

Proof of the latter point can be found by scouring the used bookstores in a locale like Boston-Cambridge. Take a book off the shelf that was assigned in a course, note the underlining or 'magic mark-up' and how it extends maybe three or four pages and then stops -- great for me, of course, who gets a relatively pristine copy for pennies, but indicative of the pointlessness of reading assignments.

Most teaching is like trying to feed people who aren't hungry. Pointless. Of course, I had some great students and great classes. But not enough of either to justify the enterprise.

Then there is the problem of stimulating colleagues. It is easy to end up in a department without any, in which case you are on your own, and you may as well be an independent scholar. Isolation? Not any more. Not with the WWW and the blogosphere in particular.

But the main reason I quit was to be able to do philosophy full time and live a more focused existence. It had been something I had been thinking about for a long time. I had tenure, had enjoyed it for seven years, had enjoyed a two-year visiting professorship, and was ready to take the next step in my life. The catalyst was my wife's being offered a great job in a beautiful place. Being a Westerner, I had served enough time in the effete and epicene East and was ready to get back to where mountains are mountains and hikers and climbers are damn glad of it.

The Genetic Fallacy and Nietzsche

2005-02-08T15:05:00.000-08:00

Ben Creasey writes:

I've been subscribing to your blog (along with Keith Burgess-Jackson) through Bloglines for about a month now. I was reading up on your posts about this genetic fallacy and felt compelled to email you. Nietzsche is not making a genetic fallacy. He's not making an argument for or against God. He's simply observing how the academic culture of the time debates God. They have moved a step beyond simply trying to disprove God's existence and onto trying to prove why the concept of God came about. [. . .]

BV: But why should that be interesting if it has no bearing on the question whether God exists? I have read the rest of your message and don't really know what you are getting at. Here is another post I located on Nietzsche and the genetic fallacy that may help.