Maverick Philosopher

Maverick Philosopher FAQ Page and Site Introduction

Welcome to the latest incarnation of Maverick Philosopher.  This post will remain at the top of the queue to give new and some old readers an idea of what this site is and isn't, what goes on here, and what is not permitted to go on here.   Like the site itself, this introductory page is is under permanent construction and reconstruction.  It will take shape bit by bit over the coming weeks and months.  It will contain a wealth of material which I trust will be of interest not only to its author. 

1. Why 'Maverick Philosopher'?  Since I am a philosopher and what is done here is mainly philosophy, it is appropriate that 'philosopher' be in the title.  As for 'maverick,' this word derives from the name of the Texas lawyer Samuel Augustus Maverick (1803-1870) who for a time was a rancher who ran cattle that bore no brand. These unbranded animals of his came to be known as mavericks.  The term was then extended to cover any unbranded stock and later any person who holds himself aloof from the herd, bears no 'brand,' resists classification, strives to be independent in his thinking or mode of living, is religiously or politically unaffiliated, and the like.  (Cf. Robert Hendrickson, QPB Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, p. 473.)

Van Inwagen Contra Lewis on Composition as Identity

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 A as if it is a parcel in addition to B and C, when in fact all the land in A is in B and C taken together. Lewis, rejecting 'double-counting,' will say that A = (B + C). Thus A is identical to what composes it. This is an instance of the thesis of composition as identity.

Or suppose there are some cats.  Then, by Unrestricted Composition ("Whenever there are some things, then there exists a fusion [sum] of those things"), there exists a sum that the cats compose.  But by Composition as Identity, this sum is identical to what compose it, taken collectively, not distributively.  Thus the sum is the cats, and they are it.  I agree with van Inwagen that this notion of Composition as Identity is very hard to make sense of, for reasons at the end of the above link.  But Peter van Inwagen's argument against Composition as Identity strikes me as equally puzzling.  Van Inwagen 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. It is this that I don't understand. Van Inwagen's argument strikes me as a non sequitur. Or perhaps I just don't understand it. Consider this obviously true quantified 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.

So I cannot see that van Inwagen has given me any reason to think that A is a third entity in addition to B and C. But it doesn't follow that I think that Lewis' thesis is correct. Both are wrong.  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 mereological sum of B and C. This is because A involves a further ontological ingredient, namely, the connectedness or adjacency of B and C. To put it another way, A is a unity of its parts, not a pure manifold. The Lewis approach leaves out unity. Suppose B is in Arizona and C is in Ohio. Then the mereological sum (B + C) automatically exists, by Unrestricted Composition.   But this scattered object is not identical to the object which is B-adjoining-C. On the latter I can build a house whose square footage is greater than that of B or C; on the scattered object I cannot. But A is not a third entity. 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 nonoverlapping proper parts. Analysis of A discloses nothing other than B and C.  But neither is A identical to  B + C.

In short, both limbs of the contradiction are unacceptable. How then are we to avoid the contradiction?

Perhaps we can say that A is identical,  not to the sum B + C, but to B-adjoining-C, an unmereological whole.  But this needs explaining, doesn't  it?

Bigot and Anti-Bigot

If the bigot unreasonably and uncritically rejects what is different just because it is different, the anti-bigot unreasonably and uncritically accepts the different just because it is different.  No doubt some conservatives are bigots.  But some liberals are too: they unreasonably and uncritically reject conservatism.  What's more, there are plenty of liberal anti-bigots whose knee-jerk inclusivity makes them useful idiots in the hands of our Islamist enemies. 

It is bad to be a bigot, but it is also bad to be an anti-bigot. Some liberals are bigots and some are anti-bigots.  Some conservatives are bigots but almost none are anti-bigots.  It looks as if conservatives gain the edge in this little comparison.

Sick of the GZ Mosque Yet?

If not, New Yorkers Want Islamic Center Moved.  But Farrakhan wants it built.  Ever watch a speech by Farrakhan?  His oratory is Hitlerian.  It is as if he has studied Hitler's speeches.  He starts out very calmly.  He says things that are reasonable, indeed things that conservatives would applaud.  He preaches self-reliance and self-discipline.  That is certainly a message blacks need to hear from one of their own.  But then gradually, ever so gradually, he works himself into a frenzy, and then comes the reference to the Jews . . . . 

Saturday Night at the Oldies: September Songs

Lotte Lenya sings Kurt Weill: September Song.  "September in the Rain" (published 1937, music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Al Dubin)  enjoys an assured place in the Great American Songbook.  Here is Dinah Washington's version. 

Here is a Liberace-Jack Benny spoof of 'September Song."  And while we are on spoofs, check out this one of Patsy Cline's She's Got You.

Mereological Nihilism

I put to William the following question: 

Are you prepared to assert the following? It is never the case that whenever there are some things, there is a whole with those things as parts. Equivalently: For any xs, if the xs are two or more, there is no y such that the xs compose y.

To which he replied:  "Agreed, if you are using xs as a plural quantifier, and by implication y as a singular quantifier."

I think William was too hasty in agreeing since his agreement makes him a mereological nihilist, or nihilist for short.  Nihilism  is the logical contrary, not contradictory, of mereological universalism, or universalism for short.  Universalism is what is expressed by Unrestricted Composition:

UC. Whenever there are some things, then there exists a fusion [sum] of those things. (David Lewis, Parts of Classes, Basil Blackwell 1991, p. 74)

Given Extensionality -- no two wholes have the same parts -- (UC) says that whenever there are some individuals, no matter what their character or category, there is a unique individual that they compose.  This is their mereological sum.  Universalism is hard to swallow.  I do not balk at the sum of the books in my house.  But I balk at the sum of : the books in my house, William's last heartbeat, Peter's left foot, and the planet Mercury.  But if, recoiling from Universalism, one embraces Nihilism, then one is committed to the proposition that there are no composite objects, there are only simples.  And surely William does not want to be committed to that.

Of 'Of'

As useful as it is to the poet, the punster, and the demagogue, the ambiguity of ordinary language is intolerable to the philosopher.  Disambiguate we must.  One type of ambiguity is well illustrated by the Old Testament verse, Timor domini initium sapientiae, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."  'Of' functions differently in 'fear of the Lord' and 'beginning of wisdom.'

Clearly, in 'fear of the Lord' the Lord is the object, not the subject of fear: the Lord is the one feared, not the one who fears.  In 'beginning of wisdom,' however, wisdom is the subject of beginning, that which begins; it is not the  object of beginning -- whatever that would mean. Thus we could write, "The fear of the Lord is wisdom's beginning," but not, "The Lord's fear is wisdom's beginning."

The foregoing is an example of subject/object ambiguity.  Here is an example of what I will call objective/appositive ambiguity: 'As a young man, I was enamored of the city of Boston.'  The thought here is that the city, Boston, was an object of my love.  Clearly, 'of' is being used in two totally different ways in the sample sentence.

I wonder if all uses of 'of' can be crammed into the following little schema:

A. Subjective Uses of 'Of.'  'The presidency of  Bill Clinton was rocked by scandal.'  'The redness of her face betrayed her embarrasment.'   'She cited the lateness of the hour as her reason for leaving.'  The presidency of Bill Clinton is Bill Clinton's presidency.  And similarly in the other two examples.

Here 'of' expresses possession or belonging.  The sharpness of the knife is the knife's sharpness.  The wife of Tom is Tom's wife.  The uncle of the monkey is the monkey's uncle.  The ace of spades is the ace belonging to the spade suit.  A jack of all trades is all trades' jack.  Of course, if you want to be understood in English you cannot say, 'Marvin is all trades' jack.'  But that's irrelevant.

The set of natural numbers is the natural numbers' set.  The set of all sets is all sets' set. 

'Several are the senses of "of."'   The 'of' which is used -- as opposed to mentioned -- functions subjectively inasmuch as the thought could be put as follows: '"Of"'s senses are several.'

The square root of -1 is -1's square root.

B. Objective Uses of 'Of.'  'When I first met Mary, thoughts of her occupied my mind from morning until night.' Obviously, her thoughts could not occupy my mind; 'thoughts of her' can only mean my thoughts about her. Note that 'Mary's thoughts' could be construed in three ways: Mary's thoughts; thoughts about Mary; Mary's thoughts about herself.

Pictures of Lily are pictures that depict (are about) Lily.

'What was once called the Department of War is now called the Department of Defense.'  It would not be idiomatic to refer to the Department of Defense as the department about defense, but this is presumably the thought: the DOD is the department concerned with defense.

'The study of logic will profit only those of a certain cast of mind.'    This sentence features first the objective, then the subjective use of  'of.'  The thought is: The study which takes logic as its object will profit only those whose mind's cast is such-and-such.

'The Sage of the Superstitions is a man of leisure.'  This sentence features first the subjective, then the objective use of 'of.'  The thought is: The Superstition Mountains' sage is about (is devoted to) leisure.

'Of all Ponzi schemes, that of Bernie Madoff was the most successful.'  The first 'of' is objective, the second subjective.  The thought is:  Concerning (with respect to) all Ponzi schemes, Bernie Madoff's scheme was the most successful.

C. Dual Uses of 'Of.'  'Thoughts of Mary filled Mary's mind.' In this example, Mary is both the subject and the object of her thoughts, assuming that 'Mary' refers to the same person in all occurrences.  So in 'thoughts of Mary,' 'of' functions both subjectively and objectively.

D. Appositive Uses of 'Of.'  'The train they call The City of New Orleans will go five hundred miles before the day is done.' 'Former NYC mayor Ed Koch referred to the city of Boston as Podunk.' Clearly, 'city of Boston' is not a genitive construction, logically speaking. We could just as well write, 'the city, Boston.' So I call the 'of'  in 'city of Boston' the 'of' of apposition. If the grammarians don't call it that, then they ought to.

The House of the Rising Sun is not the rising sun's house -- the sun, rising or setting,  'don't need no stinkin' house' -- or the house devoted to the study of the rising sun, but the house, The Rising Sun. 

The kingdom of Heaven is the kingdom, Heaven.

ADDENDUM:  A little more thought reveals that my quick little schema is inadequate.  Where would these examples fit:  'He drank a glass of wine.'  'She purchased ten gallons of gasoline.'  'Boots of Spanish leather are all I'm wishin' to be ownin'." (Bob Dylan)  'He is a man of the cloth.'

'Glass of wine' expresses a relation between a container and what it contains, and that does not seem to fit any of the four heads above.  And note that 'a gallon of gasoline' is unlike 'a glass of wine.'  A gallon is a unit of measure whereas a glass, though it could be a unit of measure, is a receptacle.  A gallon is not a receptacle.  'Hand me that gallon' makes no sense.  'Hand me that gallon can' does.

Walid Shoebat

Here.

My Rabbi

I am not now, and never have been, a Jew either religiously or ethnically, and it is certain that I shall never become one ethnically, and exceedingly probable that I shall never become one religiously.  But if I were a Jew, and if Dennis Prager were a rabbi, then I should like to have him as my rabbi.

He often remarks, rightly, that there is no wisdom on the Left.  He's right.  But there is wisdom in him and his broadcasts.  Tune into his 'Happiness Hour' sometime.  And then try to dismiss conservative talk radio as 'hate radio' as so many contemptible liberals do.

I have in my hands Barbara Ehrenreich's Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America (Henry Holt 2009, color-coding in original).  On the frontispiece: "To complainers everywhere:  Turn up the volume!"  The book does contain some worthwhile observations, but only a liberal could employ a subtitle and motto like these.  (Even if the publisher chose the title, Ehrenreich had to approve it.) Here we see a fundamental and unbridgeable temperamental difference between conservatives and leftists, between adults and perpetual adolescents.  Yes, I do mean that polemically.  There is a place for polemic.  More polemic later.

Advise/Advice

I advise you not to confuse 'advise' and 'advice.' The first is a verb, the second a noun.  If you take my advice, you will observe this distinction and advise others to do the same. 

Purveyor/Proprietor

Bill O'Reilly of the Fox News O'Reilly Factor has been introducing Dick Morris as the "purveyor" of dickmorris.com.  That should offend your linguistic sensibilities -- assuming you have some.  The word he wants is 'proprietor.'  In plain Anglo-Saxon, a proprietor is an owner.  A purveyor is someone who supplies provisions such as food. 

Suppose you own the Glass Crutch bar and grill.  Is it that eating and drinking establishment that you provide to the public for consumption?  No, you provide food and drink at that place.  So you are the proprietor of the Glass Crutch, not its purveyor.  It is the same with Dick Morris.  He doesn't purvey his site; his site is the place where he purveys his political commentary.

Whether you have the audience of Bill O. or of Bill V. you have the responsibility to honor and protect the English language, our alma mater (nourishing mother), the enabler, if not the source,  of our thoughts.

Companion post:  What is Language? Tool, Enabler, Dominatrix?

LIverpool in the 1960s

An interesting YouTube video to the strains of the Beatles' 'Anna.'

Existence, Elimination,and Changing the Subject

This is the fourth in a series on the metaphilosophical problem of sorting out the differences and similarities of analysis, identification, reduction, elimination, and cognate notions.  Parts I, II, III.  This post features existence, a topic I find endlessly fascinating and inexhaustibly rich.

Consider the position of a philosopher I will call Gottbert Fressell.  (A little known fact about him is that in his spare time he writes pro-capitalist novels under the pseudonym 'Randlob Ruge.') Fressell intends a reductionist line about existence.   He maintains that

1. There is (the property of) existence, but what this property is is the property of being instantiated.

This is a reductionist line because our philosopher admits that while there is existence, it can be reductively identified with something better understood, namely, the second-level property of being instantiated.  But I say that despite Fressell's intentions, his position is in truth an eliminativist one.  Thus I maintain that (1) collapses willy-nilly into

2.  There is no (property of) existence.

So if Fressell understood the implications of what he is saying, he would come out of the closet and forthrightly declare himself an existence denier, a denier that there is any such 'property' as existence.  And if he understood his position he would plead 'guilty' to the charge of having changed the subject.

The subject is existence, that in virtue of which me, you, and the moon exist, are, have Being, are not nothing -- however you want to put it.  Existence is what Russell has (speaking tenselessly) but his celestial teapot lacks.  The subject is singular existence, the existence of non-instantiable items, the existence of that which I prove when I enact the Cogito.   But what Fressell does is change the subject to what could be called general existence, which is just the being-instantiated of first-level properties.

Note the difference between 'Mungojerrie exists' and 'Cats exist.'  The latter, but not the former, can be reasonably understood as predicating a second-level property (the property of beng instantiated) of a first-level property, the property of being a cat.  Thus 'Cats exist' is analyzable as 'The property of being a cat has instances.'  But 'Mungojerrie exists' cannot be analyzed as 'The property of being identical to Mungojerrie is instantiated' because there is no such haecceity property.  But even if there were, the analysis would fail due to circularity.  If you want to explain what it is for individual a to exist, you move in an explanatory circle of embarrassingly short diameter if you say that the existence of a is a's instantiation of a-ness: a's existence is logically prior to its instantiation of any property. 

If you say that general existence is instantiation, then I have no quarrel with you.  But 'general existence' is a misleading expression with which we can easily dispense by using in its stead 'the property of being instantiated.'  General existence, if you  insist on the phrase, presupposes singular existence.  And because 'general existence' is dispensable, we don't need the qualifier 'singular': existence just is singular existence. If, having understood all of this, you insist that existence is instantiation, then I say you are an eliminativist about existence who has changed the subject from existence to instantiation.

Exercise for the reader:  find more examples of changing the subject in philosophy.  Replacing truth with warranted assertibility would be an example, as would replacing knowledge by what passes for knowledge in a given society (a move some sociologists of knowledge make).

 

The Most Boring Philosophers

Nowadays philosophy so absorbs me in all its branches and movements that I find no philosopher boring. Indeed,  no subject is boring except to the bored who make it  so. Dry texts, like dry wines, are often delightfully subtle and simply require an educable and educated palate. Although no philosophers now bore me, here is a list of philosophers who bored me, or would have bored me, when I was one and twenty:

   1. G. E. Moore
   2. Elizabeth Anscombe
   3. Paul Ziff
   4. Norman Malcolm
   5. John Wisdom
   6. Roderick Chisholm

Philosophers who excited my 21 year old self:

   1. Nicholas Berdyaev
   2. Miguel de Unamuno
   3. Karl Jaspers
   4. Friedrich Nietzsche
   5. Martin Heidegger
   6. Jean-Paul Sartre

Now imagine a philosophy department composed of the twelve aforementioned. Do you think it would split into two factions? What, if anything, do they have in common that justifies subsuming them under the rubric, philosophers?

I have become in many ways more analytic and less Continental over the years. I tend to think that this a lot like becoming less liberal and more conservative, as these terms are popularly understood. One becomes more cautious, careful, precise, piece-meal, rigorous, attentive to details and differences and empirical data, less romantic, more patient, more logical, less impressionistic, less sanguine about big sweeping once-and-for-all solutions. . . .

In sum, and in a manner to elicit howls of protest:  In philosophy, the trajectory of maturation is from Continental to analytic.  In politics, from liberal to conservative.

Howl on, muchachos.

Are Opponents of the Ground Zero Mosque Bigots?

The mavens of what Bernard Goldberg calls the 'lame-stream' media have been trumpeting the canard that opponents of the Ground Zero mosque are 'bigots.'  No doubt some are.  But not in virtue of their opposition to the GZM.  There is nothing inherently bigoted about opposition to the GZM.  Or so I shall argue.  But first we need a definition of 'bigot.'

A bigot is one who is blindly and obstinately intolerant of opinions other than his own, and blindly and obstinately attached to his own point of view.  A bigot, then, is one who without good reason opposes the beliefs and  practices of others and without good reason adheres to his own.    Whether opposition to the building of a mosque near Ground Zero is inherently bigoted, then, hinges on whether there are any good reasons for such opposition.  I say there are.

Mereological Innocence and Composition as Identity

This is the third in a series.  Part I, Part II.  What follows is a 10th example of eliminativist/reductivist ambiguity.

One of the axioms of mereology is Unrestricted Composition.  Here is David Lewis' formulation (Parts of Classes, Basil Blackwell 1991, p. 74):

Unrestricted Composition: Whenever there are some things, then there exists a fusion of those things.

A fusion is a mereological sum, so I'll use 'sum.'  The axiom assures us that, for example, if there are some cats, then there exists a sum of those cats.  The cats are many but the sum is one.  So it is not unreasonable to think that if there are five cats that compose the sum, the sum is a sixth thing.  One could argue as follows:  (a) The sum is distinct from each of the cats.  (b)There are five cats, each of which exists, and by UC the sum also exists.  Therefore, (c) at least six things exist.

But consider this example, adapted from Donald Baxter.  You proceed with six bottles of beer to the supermarket 'six items or fewer' checkout line.  The attendant protests your use of the line on the ground that you have seven items: six bottles of beer plus one mereological sum.  This would be an outrage, of course.  The example suggests that the argument to (c) above has gone wrong.

Lewis avoids the mistake -- assuming it is one -- by pleading that "Mereology is ontologically innocent." (PC 81)  That means that a commitment to a cat-sum is not a further commitment over and above the commitment to the cats that compose the sum.  The cat-sum just is the cats, and they are it.  This is the thesis of Composition as Identity.  The xs compose the y by being identical to the y.  As Lewis says,

Take them together or take them separately, the cats are the same portion of Reality either way.  Commit yourself to their existence all together or one at a time, it's the same commitment either way.  If you draw up an inventory of Reality according to your scheme of things, it would be double counting to list the cats and also list their fusion.  In general, if you are already committed to some things, you incur no further commitment when you affirm the existence of their fusion. (PC 81-82)

I'm sorry, but this doesn't make much sense.  Glance back at Unrestricted Composition.  It is not a tautology.  It does not say that whenever there are some things, then there are some things.  It says that whenever there are some things, then there exists a fusion or sum of those things.  Now if the sum of the xs is just the xs, then UC is a tautology.  But  if UC is not a tautology, then Composition as Identity is false.  How can Unrestricted Composition and Composition as Identity both be true?

The problem is already present at the purely syntactic level.  'Y is identical to the xs' is unproblematic if the xs are identical to one another.  For then the open sentence collapses into 'y is identical to x.'  But if the xs are distinct from each other, then 'y is identical to the xs' is syntactically malformed.  How can one thing be identical to many things?  If one thing is identical to many things, then it is not one thing but many things.  A contradiction ensues: the one thing is one thing and not one thing because it is many things.  The gaps in the predicate '. . . is identical to ____' must either be both filled with singular terms or both filled with plural terms.

And now we come back to our main theme, eliminativist/reductivist ambiguity.  Lewis wants to say that there is the sum of the xs (by Unrestricted Composition) but that the the sum of the xs is identical to the xs.  So he seems to be making a reductionist claim: sums reduce to their members.  But I say the thesis is unstable and topples over into eliminativism:  there are no mereological sums.  For if the sum is just its members, then all that exists is the members so that the sum does not exist!

The Holy Roman Empire and the Ground Zero Mosque

Somewhere in Saul Kripke's Naming and Necessity he employs the example of the Holy Roman Empire which was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire.  Well, I heard the Ground Zero mosque described this morning by a Muslim on C-Span as neither at Ground Zero nor a mosque.  As for the first claim, take a gander at this aerial shot (image credit):

 

The mosque site appears to be about two and a half city blocks from GZ.  That should count as close enough to justify the moniker 'GZM.'  After all, it couldn't be built right at GZ!  As for the second point, that the GZM is not a mosque,  is  true in part: it will be a mosque enveloped by an Islamic center -- which is arguably worse.

But judgments on these matters differ wildly, don't they?  Meanwhile, it turns out that the GZM developer, Sharif el-Gamal has quite a rap sheet.

 

 

 

 

The Eliminativist/Reductivist Distinction: Three Further Examples

For Part I of this discussion, and the first six examples, see here.  Recall that my concern is to show via a variety of examples that the eliminativist-reductivist distinction is useful and important and indeed indispensable for clear thinking about a number of topics.

7. Truth is warranted assertibility.   Someone who makes this claim presumably intends to inform us about the nature of truth on the presupposition that there is truth.  He is saying: there is truth all right; and what it is is warranted assertibility.  But I say:  if truth is warranted assertibility, then there is no truth.  The italicized claim, no matter what the intentions of a person who makes it, amounts to a denial of truth.  This example, as it seems to me, is 'on all fours'  (as the Brits say) with the Feuerbach example and the 'properties are sets' example.  Just as a property is not the sort of entity that could be identified with a set, truth is not the sort of property that could be identified with warranted assertibility (even at the Peircean ideal limit of inquiry.)  These three claims are all of them eliminativist.

8. Truth is relative.  Ditto.  Truth is not the sort of property that could be relative: if you know what truth is then you know that truth is absolute.  So if you say that truth is relative, then you are either confusing truth with some other property (e.g. the property of being believed by someone) or you are willy-nilly denying the very existence of truth.  If you understand the concept of God, then you understand that God cannot be an anthropomorphic projection. And if you understand the concept of truth, then you understand that truth cannot be relative to anything, whatever your favorite index of relativization might be, whether individuals, social classes, historical epochs . . . .

See Truth is Absolute! Part One.   Part Two.

9. The morally obligatory is that which God commands.  In stark contrast to the two foregoing examples, this example cannot be given an eliminativist reading.  The very concept of truth disallows truth's relativization. But there is nothing in the concept of moral obligation to disallow the identification of the morally obligatory with that which God commands.  But here we need to make a distinction.

You will have noticed that identity is a symmetrical relation:  if x = y, then y = x.  But reduction is asymmetrical: if x reduces to y, then y does not reduce to x.  Therefore, an identification is not the same as a reductive identification or reduction.  'Hesperus = Phosphorus' is an identity claim but not a reductive claim: the claim is not that Hesperus reduces to Phosphorus, as if Phosphorus were the fundamental reality and Hesperus the less fundamental, or perhaps a mere appearance of Phosphorus.  But 'Table salt = NaCl' is a reduction of what is less fundamental to what is more fundamental.

Now what about our italicized claim?  There are problems with reading it as a left-to-right reduction.  The morally obligatory is what we morally ought to do; but what we ought to do cannot be reduced to what anyone commands, not even if the commander is morally perfect.  The normative oughtness of an act or act-ommission cannot be reduced the mere fact that someone commands it, even if the commander always commands all and only what one ought to do. So one could argue that the italicized claim, if construed as a reduction of the morally obligatory to what God commands, collapses into an elimination of the morally obligatory.  Be we needn't take it as a reduction; we can take it as a nonreductive identification.  Accordingly, being morally obligatory and being commanded by God are the same property in reality even though they are conceptually distinct.

But even if you don't agree with the details of my analysis, I think you must agree to distinguish among eliminative claims, reductive identity claims, and nonreductive identity claims.

 

The Liberal Debating Manual

From the The Liberal Debating Manual (San Francisco: PeeCee Publishers, 2010):

No matter what position your conservative opponent takes on any issue, choose one or more epithets from the following list and label him with it:

Racist, bigot, fascist, sexist, intolerant, homophobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic.

Mix and match, and repeat as necessary.  Never ever engage conservative arguments.  To do so is to admit that your enemy is a rational being with a point of view worth considering.  Never credit a conservative with reason, moral decency or intellectual insight.  The smear is extremely effective if repeated often enough.   Never miss an opportunity to play the race card.  Insult and demean.  Tea-Partiers are 'teabaggers.'  If they reply in kind, act shocked and insist on the double-standard: we are morally and intellectually superior people while you are scum.  How can you object when we call you what you are: bigots, racists, scumbags?

Keep your eye on the prize and never forget that winning is all that counts.  The end justifies the means.  Example here.

On the Utility of the Eliminativist/Reductivist Distinction

If we think carefully about examples such as the following, I think we can come to agree that it is useful to make a distinction between eliminativist and reductivist claims.  The distinction is useful because it allows us to disambiguate claims that otherwise would be ambiguous.  Roughly, the distinction is between claims of the form There are no Fs and of the form There are Fs but Fs are Gs.

1. God is an anthropomorphic projection. (Feuerbach)  This could be construed as implying that there is an x such that x = God and x is an anthropomorphic projection.  This would be a reductivist construal.  It has absolutely nothing going for it given that the concept of God is the concept of a being that exists a se, and thus independently of human beings and their thoughts and projections.  If you think that God could be an anthropomorphic projection, then you simply do not understand the concept of God -- whether or not anything instantiates the concept.The Feuerbachian claim is to be read eliminatively as  implying that there is no x such that x is God.

So here we have a very clear example of a sentence which, though it appears to be predicating something of God, and thus presupposing the existence of God, is really a negative existential in disguise. 

2. The self is a bundle of perceptions. (Hume)  This example, unlike the first, can be read either way with some plausibility.  I would argue that a mere bundle of perceptions (or of other mental data) cannot constitute a self because a self is that which supports and unifies and is aware of such data. But other philosophers will disagree.  So for present purposes I judge this example to be susceptible of both readings.

3. Causation is regular succession. Someone who claims that events e1, e2 are such that e1 causes e2 iff the e1-e2 event sequence instantiates a regularity is arguably leaving out something so fundamental -- the notion that the cause produces or brings into existence the effect --  that the claim is tantamount to a denial of causation.  Or so I would argue.  But regularity theorists will vigorously disagree.  They will take the dictum (suitably expanded and qualified) to express the nature of causation.  They will insist that there is causation but that what it is is regular succession.  So, in an irenic spirit, I will classify this example as open to both readings.

4. Properties are sets.  (David Lewis)  Accordingly, the property of being red is the set of all actual and possible red things.  A cruder form of the theory is that the property of being red, e.g., is the set of all red things.  The theory in either form is hopeless, but that is not the question.  The question is whether it is eliminativist or reductivist.  Is it tantamount to a denial of properties, or does it imply that there are properties but that what they are are sets?  I say the former, but David Lewis is one formidable opponent!  Here is a quick little argument:  Properties are instantiable entities by definition; no set is instantiable; ergo, no property is a set!  My considered opinion is that 'Properties are sets' boils down to a denial of properties.  If you understand the concept property, then you know no property could be a set.  It is just like #1 above: if you understand the concept God, then you know that God could not be an anthropological projection.

5. Mental events are brain  events.  I suddenly remember an evening spent on the banks of the River Charles with a pretty girl . . . . That sudden remembering is a mental event token.  There are those who want to say that it is identical to a brain event token. These philosophers speak of 'token-token identity theory.'  The philosophers who maintain this do not intend to deny the existence of mental events; their intention is to inform us as to the nature of mental events on the presupposition that  they exist.

But although their intention is reductive identification and not elimination, one can reasonably wonder whether the reduction does not collapse into an elimination.  Indeed, that is what I would maintain.  For if every mental state is identical to some brain state, and if the identification is supposed to be a reduction  of the mental to the physical, then what you have in the final analysis is just the brain state: the mental state has been eliminated.

Even if you disagree with me that in this case the reduction collapses into an elimination, to even understand what the debate is about you must understand the distinction between elimination and reduction.

6. The tree in the quad is a cluster of ideas in the mind of God. (Berkeley)  The good bishop is not denying that there are physical things; he is telling us what he thinks physical things are.  They reduce to clusters or bundles of divine ideas.  It shows a complete lack of understanding to think that stone-kicking is so much as relevant to the idealist thesis.  So this is a clear case of a reduction.

Could one argue that in this case too the reduction collapses into an elimination?  If the mind-brain identity thesis collapses into an elimination of the mind (as was claimed in #5), then why shouldn't the Berkeleyan identity thesis (Physical objects are a clusters of divine ideas) collapse into an elimination of physical objects?  Perhaps we can say the following.  That the existence of a tree is its existence for the divine mind is consistent with everything we know about trees. (We do not know about trees that they can exist independently of any mind.)  But that a mental state is identical to a brain state is not consistent with what we know about mental states.  Thus we know that they exhibit intentionality while physical states do not.  Mental states cannot be identical to brain states; therefore, a materialist about the mind must be an eliminativist.  But an idealist about physical objects needn't be an eliminativist.

The Midas Touch

Whatever King Midas touched turned into gold.  The philosophers have something akin to it: whatever they touch turns into a puzzle.  (I borrow the thought from Wilfrid Sellars.)

Saturday Night at the Oldies: A Half Dozen Dedications

To Horace Jeffery Hodges who describes himself thusly:

I've gone from the Arkansas Ozarks through Texas, California, Switzerland, Germany, Australia, and Israel to South Korea. I've traveled to Mexico, Belgium, Holland, East Germany, England, France, Denmark, Austria, Czechoslovakia (before it split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia), Russia, Italy, Japan, Singapore, and Scotland. Hence: "Gypsy Scholar."

I've Been Everywhere.

To Peter Lupu, Forty Cups of Coffee and Smoke Smoke That Cigarette.

To Mike Valle, Ghost Riders in the Sky.

To Philoponus the Impecunious, Money.

To William the Nominalist, The Name Game.

To David Brightly, Heartaches by the Numbers.

Oikophobia

Here.

Fist and Hand, Statue and Lump: The Aporetics of Composition

1. Some maintain that a hand, and that same hand made into a fist, are identical. And there are those who would say the same about a piece of bronze and the statue made out of it, namely, that they are identical at every time at which both exist. This is not an unreasonable thing to say. After all, fist and hand, statue and bronze, are spatially coincident and neither has a physical part the other doesn't have. A fist is just a certain familiar arrangement of hand-parts. There is no part of the fist that is not part of the hand, and vice versa. So at looks as if first and hand are identical.  But we need to be clear as to what identity is.

2. Identity is standardly taken to be an equivalence relation (reflexive, symmetrical, transitive) governed by the Indiscernibility of Identicals (InId) and the Necessity of Identity (NecId). The first principle says that, if two items are numerically identical, then they share all properties. The second says that if two items are numerically identical, then this is necessarily the case.  Both principles strike me as beyond epistemic reproach.  'Identity' is short for 'numerical identity.'

3. Despite the considerations of #1, it looks as if fist and hand, statue and hunk of bronze, cannot be identical since they differ in their persistence conditions. The hunk of bronze can, while the statue cannot, survive being melted down and recast in some other form. The hand can, while the fist cannot, survive adoption of a different 'posture.'  In both cases, something is true of the one that is not true of the other.  So even at the times at which the fist is the hand, and the bronze is the statue, the two are not identical: the 'is' is not the 'is' of identity.  It is the 'is' of composition and what you have are two things, not one.

What I have just given is a modal discernibility argument.  Let me spell it out.  Consider a time t at which the hand is in the shape of a fist.  At t, the hand, but not the fist, has the modal property of being possibly such as to to be unfisted.  So the hand cannot be identical to the fist given that, for any x, y, if x = y, then x, y share all properties.

But there is also this nonmodal discernibility argument.  The hunk of bronze existed long before the statue came into existence, and the hunk of bronze exists while the form of a statue.  So the hunk of bronze exists at more times that the statues does, which implies the the hunk of bronze is not identical to the statue.

There is also this consideration.  Identity is symmetrical.  So we can say either fist = hand or hand = fist.  But is it the fist or the hand that both are?  Intuitively, it is the hand.  The hand is the fundamental reality here, not the fist.  So how can fist and hand be identical?  It seems that fist and hand are numerically distinct, albeit spatially coincident, concrete individuals.

4.  The Law of Excluded Middle seems very secure indeed, especially in application to presently existing things.  So either the fist is identical to the hand, and there is just one thing, a fisted hand, or the fist is not identical to the hand and there are two spatially coincident things, a fist and a hand.  So which is it?

5. If you say that the fist = the hand, then when you make a fist nothing new comes into existence, and when the potter makes a pot out of clay, nothing new comes into existence.  And when a mason makes a wall out of stones, nothing new comes into existence.  He started with some stones and he ended with some stones.  Given that the stones exist, and that the mason's work did not cause anything new to come into existence, must we not say that the single composite entity, the wall, does not exist?  (For if it did exist, then there would be an existent in addition to the stones.)  But it sounds crazy to say that the wall the mason has just finished constructing does not exist.

6. If, on the other hand, you say that the fist is not identical to the hand, then you can say that the making of a fist causes a new thing to come into existence, the fist.  And similarly with the statue and the wall.  After the mason stacks n stones into a wall, he has as a result of his efforts n +1 objects, the original n stones and the wall. 

But this is also counterintuitive.  Consider the potter at his wheel.  As the lump of clay spins, the potter shapes the lump into a series of many (continuum-many?) intermediate shapes before he stops with one that satisfies him.  Thus we have a series of objects (proto-pots) each of which is a concrete individual numericallt distinct from the clay yet (i) spatially conicident with it, and (ii) sharing with it every momentary property.  And that is hard to swallow, is it not?

7.  We appear to be at an impasse.  We cannot comfortably say that the fist = the hand, nor can we comfortably say that the fist is not identical to the hand. Nor can we comfortably give up LEM.  If there are no fists, statues, walls, artifacts generally, then there cannot be any puzzles about their composition.  But we cannot comfortably say that there are no such things either.

Do we have here an example of a problem that is both genuine but insoluble?

Guest Post: Is There a Real Distinction Between Reductionism and Eliminativism?

What follows is a guest post by a long-standing card-carrying member of the MavPhil commentariat, William the Nominalist.  He is eager to hear any thoughtful and pertinent comments you may have. 

The distinction between reductionism and eliminativism is widely recognised in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science. It also seems to be very clear. Here it is, as explained by William Ramsey.

Ontologically conservative theory change occurs when the entities and posits of the replaced theory are relocated, often with some degree of revision, in the replacing theory. For example, as our theory of light was gradually replaced by our understanding of electro-magnetic radiation, our conception of light was dramatically transformed as we recognized ways in which our old conception was mistaken or incomplete. Nevertheless, at no point did we come to say that there is really no such thing as light. Rather, light was eventually identified with a form of electro-magnetic radiation.

By contrast, our notion of demons did not come to find a new home in contemporary theories of mental disorder. There is nothing in the theories of schizophrenia, Tourette's Syndrome, neuro-pathology or any of the other modern explanations for bizarre behavior, that we can sensibly identify with malevolent spirits with supernatural powers. The notion of a demon is just too far removed from anything we now posit to explain behavior that was once explained by demonology. Consequently, the transition from demonology to modern accounts of this behavior was ontologically radical. We dropped demons from our current ontology, and came to realize that the notion is empty — it refers to nothing real.

But after a moment's reflection, I find it is not very clear at all. Why?

The Last Refuge of a Liberal

The last refuge of a liberal are charges of bigotry and intolerance. Charles Krauthammer:

. . . promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.

-- Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the Tea Party movement? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.

-- Disgust and alarm with the federal government's unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism. [and racism and xenophobia]

-- Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.

-- Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.

For just one example of what Krauthammer is rightly protesting, read Robert Reich's Anatomy of Intolerance.  You will note that here as elsewhere in liberal screeds there is no attempt at engaging conservative arguments.  What is offered is name-calling and psychologizing.  According to Reich,

Most Americans approve of Arizona’s new law allowing police to stop anyone who looks Hispanic and demand proof of citizenship.

This is plainly false and looks to be an outright lie.  A man as intelligent and well-informed as Robert Reich cannot possibly be unaware at this late date of the content of AZ SB 1070.  The law does not allow the the police to stop anyone who looks Hispanic to check citizenship status.  It disallows this.  See The Misrepresentations of Arizona SB 1070 Continue.

On Reconciling Creatio Ex Nihilo with Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit

This post examines Richard C. Potter's solution to the problem of reconciling creatio ex nihilo with ex nihilo nihil fit in his valuable article, "How To Create a Physical Universe Ex Nihilo," Faith and Philosophy, vol. 3, no. 1, (January 1986), pp. 16-26. (Potter appears to have dropped out of sight, philosophically speaking, so if anyone knows what became of him, please let me know. The Philosopher's Index shows only three articles by him, the last of which appeared in 1986.)

I. THE PROBLEM

We first need to get clear about the problem. On classical conceptions, God creates ex nihilo, out of nothing.  He is not a Platonic demiurge who operates upon some preexistent stuff: he creates without it being the case that there is something out of which he creates.  Nor does God create out of himself, a notion that presumbaly would give aid and comfort to pantheism.  God creates out of nothing.  Given that God creates out of nothing, how is this consistent with the apparent truth that something cannot come from nothing? The latter, the principle of ex nihilo nihil fit, seems to be an intuitively self-evident metaphysically necessary truth. Let us assume that it is.   As metaphysically necessary, it is not a truth over which God has any control. Its truth-value is not within the purview of the divine will.  Our problem is to understand, if possible, how it can be true both that God creates out of nothing, and that out of nothing nothing comes.  Potter offers an ingenious solution.

Ex nihilo nihil fit is interpreted by Potter in terms of the following Principle of Creation by Compounding:

PCC. For any object O and time t, if O comes into being at t, then there exist some objects out of which O is composed and those objects existed prior to t.

Potter sees the problem as one of reconciling (PCC) with the following principle:

ENP. God created contingent objects in such a way that there was a time t₁ at which contingent objects came into being, although there was no time prior to t₁.

On the face of it, (PCC) and (ENP) are logically inconsistent.

Robert Royal on the GZM

Here. Excerpt:

If you’re like me, you’ve probably heard enough about the mosque. But the problem for me is that what I’m hearing doesn’t seem to address the main question. When NY Mayor Bloomberg says it’s a tragedy if 9/11 results in the loss of religious liberty – as if Islam were being curtailed here – I feel like I’m listening to a political class that’s taken leave of its senses. To put the matter baldly, some of us now think America is merely a matter of legal precedents, not a human community.

Two things are clear: 1. in America, religious liberty is an unshakeable right and houses of worship may be built, allowing for local zoning laws and other reasonable restrictions; 2. there is reason for doubt whether the mosque should be built, as last week even President Obama was forced to acknowledge.

Liberals have suddenly discovered a virtual absolute right for religion – primarily Islam – to be assertive anywhere, any time. Strange, because the Left has for decades sought to minimize religion in the public square.

Latest example:  Utah crosses ruled unconstitutional. 

Hats Off to Hentoff: "Pols Clueless on Ground Zero Mosque"

Here.  Excerpts:

Imam Rauf has refused to call Hamas a terrorist organization and had no comment when, on Aug. 15, Mahmoud al-Zahar, its co-founder, strongly supported the Imam's mosque near Ground Zero, saying, Muslims "have to build everywhere" (Associated Press, Aug. 16). Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said the support by Hamas of the Imam's mosque carried no weight because "Hamas is a terrorist organization."

How's that for bizarro reasoning? Any normal person would take Hamas support for the GZM to be worrisome indeed.  But not Schumer the liberal.  No bigot he.  He takes the fact that Hamas is a terrorist organization as somehow giving us a reason to ignore its support!

This imam - widely lauded in much of the press as "a moderate" Muslim - is not reticent, however, in his firm commitment to Sharia (Islamic law), which regards women as far less than fully human. In the Dec. 9, 2007 Arabic newspaper Hadi el-Islam, Rauf insisted:

Throughout my discussions with contemporary Muslim theologians, it is clear an Islamic state can be established in more than just a single form or mold. It can be established through a kingdom or a democracy. The important issue is to establish the general fundamentals of Sharia that are required to govern.

I would greatly appreciate it if Imam Rauf explained, maybe Pelosi will ask him, more fully what he meant in his 2004 book, "What's Right With Islam is What's Right With America." In it he declares: "American Constitution and system of governance uphold the core principles of Islamic law." Rauf says Sharia law is a core principle of Islamic law. Does that also include a core principle of our Constitution?

Gutting, Dawkins, and Russell's Celestial Teapot

In his recent NYT Opinionator piece, On Dawkins's Atheism, Notre Dame's Gary Gutting writes, describing the "no arguments argument" of some atheists:

To say that the universe was created by a good and powerful being who cares about us is an extraordinary claim, so improbable to begin with that we surely should deny it unless there are decisive arguments for it (arguments showing that it is highly probable). Even if Dawkins’ arguments against theism are faulty, can’t he cite the inconclusiveness of even the most well-worked-out theistic arguments as grounds for denying God’s existence?

He can if he has good reason to think that, apart from specific theistic arguments, God’s existence is highly unlikely. Besides what we can prove from arguments, how probable is it that God exists? Here Dawkins refers to Bertrand Russell’s example of the orbiting teapot. We would require very strong evidence before agreeing that there was a teapot in orbit around the sun, and lacking such evidence would deny and not remain merely agnostic about such a claim. This is because there is nothing in our experience suggesting that the claim might be true; it has no significant intrinsic probability.

But suppose that several astronauts reported seeing something that looked very much like a teapot and, later, a number of reputable space scientists interpreted certain satellite data as showing the presence of a teapot-shaped object, even though other space scientists questioned this interpretation. Then it would be gratuitous to reject the hypothesis out of hand, even without decisive proof that it was true. We should just remain agnostic about it.

The claim that God exists is much closer to this second case. There are sensible people who report having had some kind of direct awareness of a divine being, and there are competent philosophers who endorse arguments for God’s existence. Therefore, an agnostic stance seems preferable to atheism.

I have a serious problem with Gutting's response to the Russell-Dawkins tag team.  Gutting concedes far too much in his reply, namely, that it even makes sense to compare the claim that there is an orbiting teapot with the claim that God exists.  Instead of attacking this comparison as wrongheaded from the outset, Gutting in effect concedes its aptness when he points out that, just as there could be (inconclusive) scientific evidence of a celestial teaspot, there could be (inconclusive) experiential and argumentative evidence for the existence of God.  So let me try to explain why I think that the two existence claims ('God exists' and 'A celestial teapot exists') are radically different .

Of Dhimmitude and Derriere

Western licentiousness meets the panty jihad. Quotable:

This is a traditional tactic of the Islamic march to domination.  One fight at a time, one street at a time, one billboard at a time, one school at a time, one book at a time, one TV news report at a time. Islam must always be acknowledged to be above Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and other ancient religions.

 

The eventual state whereby Christians and Jews acknowledge Islam’s authority and superiority is called the dhimmitude.  Dhimmis will be invited to convert to Islam, but if they do not, they will be allowed to continue to practice their own religions, although with restrictions, and they must profess submission to Islamic laws.

 

Shamefully, Sloggi is marching down that road.