Maverick Philosopher

Welcome to Maverick Philosopher

Online since May 2004. I publish both here and at Substack. I began posting at Substack in early 2021 under the rubric "Philosophy in Progress." The Substack entries are intended to assist educated non-philosophers in clarifying their thinking about matters of moment.  My PhilPeople page links to my Substack articles and my weblog Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical, and provides a list of my professional publications. 

 

Two-line biography:  I taught philosophy at various universities in the USA and abroad. At the relatively young age of 41 I resigned from  a tenured position to live the eremitic life of the independent philosopher in the Sonoran desert. Contact information on the About page on the right sidebar.

Interests: Everything. Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto. from Terentius. "I am a man: I consider nothing human foreign to me." Nothing human, but also nothing nonhuman. 

Much more below the fold. Best wishes to all men and women of good will who love truth, seek it, and strive to incorporate it in their lives.

Linkage

The Unhinged Among Us (VDH)

Flannery O'Connor: A Life

The Destruction of the Middle Class

The Human Costs of Pornography

What is Potentiality?

Substack latest. An exploration of a much-misunderstood notion.

Liz Cheney: Profile in Political Projection

Projection is a psychological defense mechanism whereby one attributes one's own unacknowledged feelings, desires, intentions, attitudes, etc. to others.  Extending the notion into the political sphere, the political projector accuses the other side of doing what he and his ilk are doing but will not own up to doing. I happened across a very clear example on CBS this morning.  It severely tested my ataraxia.

Projection is standardly understood as the offloading of the negative onto the other, but it is also often a mistake to project positive feelings, values, and attitudes into the other. Such projection may get your irenic self killed, as I argue in a Substack article, aptly entitled Beware of Projecting . . . your values and attitudes into others.

On 'Reaching Out' and 'Educate'

Stack leader.  The image of Jeff Dunham’s “Walter” warns that a language rant is up ahead! All language lemmings to their safe spaces.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Americana

Buffy Sainte-Marie, I'm Gonna be a Country Girl Again

Buffy seems to have got herself into a heap o' trouble making like Elizabeth 'Fauxcahontas' Warren. No time to weigh in on this tonight, but the combox is open. She had me fooled, high cheek bones and all, but I've loved her music since the far-off and fabulous '60s, and always will.

Hoyt Axton, Greenback Dollar

Nanci Griffith, Boots of Spanish Leather

16 Horsepower, Wayfaring Stranger

Stanley Bros., Rank Strangers

Bob Dylan, I am a Lonesome Hobo. Have you heard this version?

Bob Dylan, As I Went Out One Morning

Highwaymen, The City of New Orleans

Kenny Rogers, The Gambler

Buffy Sainte-Marie, Cod'ine

Bob Dylan, Only a Hobo, 1963

Highwaymen, Ghost Riders in the Sky

As the riders loped on by him
He heard one call his name
'If you wanna save your soul
From hell a-riding on our range
Then, cowboy change your ways today
Or with us you will ride
Trying to catch the devil's herd
Across these endless skies.'

Euthyphro Again: The 'Bite the Bullet' Response

From the IEP entry on Divine Command Theory:

a. Bite the Bullet

One possible response to the Euthyphro Dilemma is to simply accept that if God does command cruelty, then inflicting it upon others would be morally obligatory. In Super 4 Libros Sententiarum, William of Ockham states that the actions which we call “theft” and “adultery” would be obligatory for us if God commanded us to do them. Most people find this to be an unacceptable view of moral obligation, on the grounds that any theory of ethics that leaves open the possibility that such actions are morally praiseworthy is fatally flawed. However, as Robert Adams (1987) points out, a full understanding of Ockham’s view here would emphasize that it is a mere logical possibility that God could command adultery or cruelty, and not a real possibility. That is, even if it is logically possible that God could command cruelty, it is not something that God will do, given his character in the actual world. Given this, Ockham himself was surely not prepared to inflict suffering on others if God commanded it. Even with this proviso, however, many reject this type of response to the Euthyphro Dilemma.

I don't buy Adams' defense of Ockham. Let me explain.

What makes a morally obligatory action morally obligatory? On a divine command theory, it is God's commanding the action that makes it morally obligatory: the obligatory action is obligatory because God commands it. Saying this has the advantage of upholding the divine sovereignty which, apparently, would not be upheld if one were to say that God commands the obligatory because it is obligatory.  For on the latter alternative, it appears that God would be subject to a moral standard external to him. 

But then the arbitrarity objection kicks in: were God to command that we hate one another, say, then it would be obligatory that we do so. To bite the bullet is to say, yes, that is right: were God to command hate, theft, or adultery, then these actions would be obligatory. Thus Ockham according to Adams (according  to IEP).

But, Adams replies, these counterintuitive divine commands, while logically possible, are not really possible. It is not really possible for God to issue them because he will not do so given his character in the actual world.

This response by Adams (at least going by the IEP account) ignores the divine omnipotence: God cannot do everything, but he can do everything that is logically possible.  But then the logically possible and the really possible coincide: they are extensionally equivalent. For anything God can do is really possible. So if God can do anything logically possible, then the logically possible and the really possible are coextensive.  (Of course they remain intensionally distinct, distinct on the semantic plane.)

Note that if God has a wholly good character in the actual world, then he has a wholly good character in every possible world: for he exists in every possible world and his omnibenevolence is one of his essential attributes. It therefore avails nothing to say that commanding cruelty is not something that God will do, given his character in the actual world. For he has the same character in every possible world, and in every such world what is really possible for God coincides with what is logically possible.

It seems to me that the 'bite the bullet' response bites the dust. 

Masculinity

Substack latest.

Euthyphro Dilemma, Divine Simplicity, and Modal Collapse

Top o' the Stack. Another deep dive into one of the gnarliest conundra in natural theology.

The problem may be cast in the mold of an aporetic tetrad:

1) Classical theism is untenable if the ED cannot be defeated.

2) The ED can be defeated only if DDS is true.

3) DDS entails the collapse of modal distinctions.

4) Classical theism is inconsistent with the collapse of modal distinctions because, on classical theism, God is metaphysically necessary while the world of creatures is metaphysically contingent. 

Political Polarization: the Radical Cure

Political polarization is deep and wide. We are 'siloed' into our positions and things threaten to go 'thermonuclear.'  The usual cures cannot be dismissed out of hand, but are mostly blather served up by squishy, bien-pensant 'liberals' for their own insipid and clueless ilk. No doubt we should listen to others respectfully, but how many of our political opponents are worth listening to or are worthy of respect? No doubt we should seek common ground. But is they any left to be found?

Go ahead, take a civility pledge, but civility is only for the civil, and how many of our political enemies are civil? Civility is like toleration: it is a good thing but it has limits.

And so it falls to me to point out a cure for polarization that is never mentioned: eliminate one of the poles. The Hamas-Jew polarization, for example, is solved by eliminating Hamas. For here there is and can be no common ground, no mutual respect, no 'conversation' or 'negotiations.' Palliation is out of the question; amputation is the answer. Examples are easily multiplied. The side that is in the right should destroy the side that isn't.  

You say that war is never the answer? It depends on the question. Sometimes you have to give war a chance. 

Robert Kaplan on Henry Kissinger

Robert Kaplan:

Kissinger’s beliefs, which emerge through his writing, are certainly not for the faint-hearted. They are emotionally unsatisfying, yet analytically timeless. They include:

• Disorder is worse than injustice, since injustice merely means the world is imperfect, while disorder tempts anarchy and the Hobbesian nightmare of war and conflict, of all against all.
• It follows, then, that order is more important than freedom, since without order there is no freedom for anybody.
• The fundamental issue in international and domestic affairs is not the control of wickedness, but the limitation of self-righteousness. For it is self-righteousness that often leads to war and the most extreme forms of repression, both at home and abroad.
• The aim of policy is to reconcile what is just with what is possible. Journalists and freedom fighters have it easy in life since they can concern themselves only with what is just. Policymakers, burdened with bureaucratic responsibility in order to advance a nation’s self-interest, have no such luxury.
• Pessimism can often be morally superior to misplaced optimism. Pessimism, therefore, is not necessarily to be disparaged.

It is true that much of the above is derivative of the great philosophers, especially Hobbes. But it is to Kissinger’s credit that he consciously activated it in the daily conduct of foreign policy.

[.  . .]

Kissinger was a “genuine statesman”, to use the German philosopher-historian Oswald Spengler’s definition: that is, he was not a reactionary who thought that history could be reversed, nor was he a militant-idealist, who thought that history marched in a certain direction. Kissinger’s conclusion was more grounded: he believed less in victory than in reconciliations.

Radical Islam's Threat to the Left

Substack latest.

Why don't leftists — who obviously do not share the characteristic values and beliefs of Islamists — grant what is spectacularly obvious to everyone else, namely, that radical Islam poses a grave threat to what we in the West cherish as civilization, which includes commitments to free speech, open inquiry, separation of church and state, freedom of religion, freedom to reject religion, universal suffrage, the emancipation of women, opposition to cruel and unusual penal practices, and so on?   In particular, why don't leftists recognize the grave threat radical Islam poses to them?  Why do leftists either deny the threat or downplay its gravity? Given their atheism and pronounced libertine ‘wobble,’ they would be among the first to lose their heads under Islamic law (Sharia).

Here is a quickly-composed  list of twelve related reasons based on my own thinking and reading and on discussions with friends. 

Political Pessimism and Optimism

Michael Anton

Liel Leibovitz

The Euthyphro Problem, Islam, and Thomism.

Top o' the Stack. The problem is genuine but insoluble. Or so I conclude. What say you?

Why Swim the Tiber?

A philosophy colleague I thought was Protestant has unbeknownst to me swum the Tiber. I asked him why. Here is part of his response, slightly redacted:

My story is rather boring, I’d wager. Since my late teen years I was nonplussed with the lack of intellectual vigor in most Protestant denominations (Baptist, Methodist, etc.) I began to hear the call of Rome in graduate school. My study of Aquinas, Scotus, Suarez, et al.  had an effect. But for whatever reason I simply couldn’t make the move  at the time; the blame may have been on Mary’s status, perhaps even the idea of a Pope’s (seemingly) radical authority. Ergo my move to Lutheranism.

 

But as I continued my studies both philosophical and theological, I began to call into question the ardent “individualism” at the heart of  Protestantism. Indeed, I’m not sure there would have been a Hobbes or a Locke without a Luther . . . and while my respect for the latter waned (though surely did not disappear), I began to see the need -- if you can call it that -- for authority, for something or someone who stands above all the rest, who makes the contested call. I suppose that amount of Hobbesianism stayed with me.  While in politics perhaps individual freedom (“rights”, if you will) trumps all, I’m just not so sure that’s the case when it comes to eternity, to salvation. Maybe the stakes are too high, I’m not sure. But I can’t stand on my own. 

 

My colleague has more to say and in a later entry  I may address it; the issue of teaching authority, however, is an important one that merits discussion. I will have my say and I invite others to do the same.

One who refuses to accept, or questions, a teaching of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) may be accused of reliance upon private judgment and failure to submit to the Magisterium or teaching authority of the Church.  Two observations on this accusation.

First, for many of us private judgment is not merely private, based as it is on consultation with many, many public sources.  It is as public as private. Everything I've read over the years from Parmenides on down in the West, the Bible on down in the Near East, and the Upanishads on down in the Far East feeds into my 'private' judgment.  So my 'private' judgment is not merely mine as to content inasmuch as it is a collective cultural upshot, albeit processed through my admittedly fallible and limited pate. Though collective as to content, its acceptance by me is of course my sole responsibility.  My first point, then, is that we ought to distinguish wider and narrower senses of 'private' and realize that a 'private' judgment might not be merely private.

Second, the party line or official doctrine of any institution is profoundly influenced by the private judgments of individuals. Think of the profound role that St. Augustine played in the development of Roman Catholic doctrine.  He was a man of powerful will, penetrating intellect, and great personal presence.  He was trained in rhetoric in Carthage and in Rome. Imagine going up against him at a theological conference or council!   

Summing up the two points, the private is not merely private, and the official is not merely official.

Of course, part of the official doctrine of the Roman church is that its pronunciamenti anent faith and morals are guided and directed by the Holy Ghost. (Use of the old phrase, besides chiming nicely with der Heilige Geist, is a way for this conservative to thumb his nose at Vatican II-type innovations which, though some of them may have had some sense, tended to be deleterious in the long run.  A meatier question which I ought to take up at some time is the one concerning the upsurge of priestly paederasty after Vatican II: post hoc ergo propter hoc? That should give pause to any one thinking of swimming the Tiber. Rod Dreher, who took the plunge, kept swimming, eastward. We could say he swam the Tiber first, and then the Bosporus, when, disgusted by priestly paedophilia, and the RCC's mafia-like protection of their own, he embraced Eastern Orthodoxy.)

What I have just written may sound as if I am hostile to the Roman Church. I am not. Nor have I ever had any negative experiences with priests, except, perhaps to have been bored by their sermons. All of the ones I have known have been upright, and some exemplars of the virtues they profess.  In the main they were manly and admirable men.  But then I'm an old man, and I am thinking mainly of the pre-Vatican II priests of my youth. 

I have no time now to discuss the Church's guidance by the third person of the Trinity, except to express some skepticism: if that is so, how could the estimable Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) be followed by the benighted Bergoglio? (Yes, I am aware that there were far, far worse popes than the current one, and I am aware of  the theme of Satan's grip on the sublunary.)

Of course, I have just, once again, delivered my private judgment. But, once again, it is not merely private inasmuch as it is based on evidence and argument: I am not merely emoting in the manner of a 'liberal' such as Bergoglio when he emoted, in response to the proposed Great Wall of Trump, that nations need bridges, not walls. What an unspeakably stupid thing to say! Well, then, Vatican City needs bridges not walls the better to allow jihadis easy access for their destructive purposes. Mercy and appeasement must be granted even unto those who would wipe Christianity from the face of the earth, and are in process of doing so.

But how can my judgment, even if not merely private, carry any weight, even for me, when it contradicts the Magisterium, the Church's teaching authority, when we understand the source and nature of this authority? ('Magisterium' from L. magister, teacher, master.)

By the Magisterium we mean the teaching office of the Church. It consists of the Pope and Bishops. Christ promised to protect the teaching of the Church : "He who hears you, hears me; he who rejects you rejects me, he who rejects me, rejects Him who sent me" (Luke 10. 16). Now of course the promise of Christ cannot fail: hence when the Church presents some doctrine as definitive or final, it comes under this protection, it cannot be in error; in other words, it is infallible. 

In a nutshell: God in Christ founded the Roman church upon St. Peter, the first pope, as upon a rock. The legitimate succession culminates in Pope Francis. The Roman church as the one true holy catholic and apostolic church therefore teaches with divine authority and thus infallibly. Hence its teaching on indulgences not only cannot be incorrect, it cannot even be reasonably questioned. So who am I to -- in effect -- question God himself?

Well, it is obvious that if I disagree with God, then I am wrong.  But if a human being, or a group of human beings, no matter how learned, no matter how saintly, claims to be speaking with divine authority, and thus infallibly, then I have excellent reason to be skeptical. How do I know that they are not, in a minor or major way, schismatics diverging from the true teaching, the one Christ promised to protect?  Maybe it was some version of Eastern Orthodoxy that Christ had in mind as warranting his protection.

These and other questions legitimately arise in the vicinity of what Josiah Royce calls the Religious Paradox. 

One last point for today. My friend and colleague questions above "the ardent 'individualism' at the heart of  Protestantism." This point, however, needs some qualification inasmuch as Martin Luther, while anti-Rome, was not anti-Church.  He was certainly no maverick theologian preaching his own 'personal,' 'individualistic' truth. In his battle with the Anabaptists, Luther is decidedly anti-papist, but not anti-Church. Luther thought that the Anabaptists, Zwinglians, Schwenckelfeldians, et al. ". . . threatened the Reformation cause because  together they formed a common front repudiating Church and society." (Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil, Yale UP, 2006, p. 229)

If what Protestants want is a reformed church, then they want a church, which will have its 'confession,' its compendium of defining doctrines and prescribed and proscribed practices that would be binding upon and thus authoritative for anyone who wanted to belong to that church.   If so, the issue should not be framed as one between individualism and church authority, but as between one church authority versus another, for example Calvinists versus 'papists,' 'Romanists.'

The Danger of Appeasing the Intolerant

Substack latest.

Home of the Free?

Dementocrat scum at it again unopposed by 19 Republican turkeys.  Now I know when to buy a new Jeep. 

Happy Thanksgiving?

The last four horrible years make my annual Thanksgiving homily ring somewhat hollow, especially the penultimate line:

And don't forget the country that allows you to live your own kind of life in your own kind of way and say and write whatever you think in peace and safety.

This is no longer true. We are no longer the "land of the free," let alone "the home of the brave." We are in steep decline. You are not free if you cannot express your thoughtful, fact-based, and heart-felt opinions without fear of reprisal. Step out of line and you run the risk of being destroyed, if not physically, then politically and economically. Examples are legion.  Here is one of an increasing many.

Still and all, we have much something to be grateful for.  But we will have to redouble our efforts to preserve the objects of our gratitude, in particular, what remains of our liberty, and our "sweet land of liberty."  Patriots are waking up to the depredations of 'Woke' and there is reason to be hopeful. So be of good cheer, do your bit, and long live the Republic! Never give up, never give in, fight hard, and fight to win. There are a lot of us and we can win if we hang together which, to paraphrase a Founder, beats hanging separately.

How to Tell the Truth without being Truthful

Multiple are the modes of mendacity.  Obama, Biden, Hillary and their ilk are masters of these modes. May a pox, but no pax, be upon them. Over at Substack, a quick look at one of the modes.

The 'Reel' Truth about George Floyd

Here

Tony Flood chimes in:

Jesse's interview with Liz Collins: https://www.foxnews.com/video/6341513639112

Jesse's excerpt from Collin's new documentary The Fall of Minneapolis: https://www.foxnews.com/media/jesse-watters-george-floyd-story-very-different-depending-on-who-you-talk-to

 

Here's the book the film is based on: https://www.amazon.com/Theyre-Lying-Media-Death-George/dp/B0BKS611C6/

 

When Crump, Floyd's attorney, said his client was a healthy man, he lied (or didn't know what he was talking about, take your pick).

 

20 deaths, $2 billion in damages, and massive social proof that leftists can do what they want, when they want (even during COVID lockdown), and the media will cover for them, as we're seeing in mass support for Hamas.

 

No republic can long last that honors  individuals such as Floyd and dishonors the great men that built it.  I'm taking bets: how long can we last under Dementocrat rule?  How long until the collapse of civil order? Two years, three? What say you, Tony?

Wokery and the Double Denial

Substack latest.

It is not unreasonable to maintain that there is no God and that nature alone exists. But suppose you take it a step further and deny nature as well. Then you are in the precincts of 'woke' lunacy.  Call it the Double Denial. On the Double Denial, everything is a social construct, including the social constructors. Could they too be social constructs? How?

Related: Gender Ideology and its Consequences

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Varia

Lonnie Mack and Co.

Mack has been around a long time. I first picked up a guitar around the time this tune climbed the charts. "If I could only play like that!" Never got close. But I played in bands that got paid. If you get paid for doing something, then someone must think it's worth paying for. That's not saying much, but it's saying something. 

Jackson Browne, The Pretender.  This great song  goes out to Darci M who introduced me to Jackson Browne. Darci was Lithuanian. Her mother told her, "Never bring an Italian home." So I never did meet the old lady. I never met any anti-Italian prejudice on the West coast whence I hail; the East is a different story.

Abba, Fernando. I first heard this in Ben's Gasthaus, Zaehringen, Freiburg im Breisgau,' 76-'77.  This one goes out to Rudolf, Helmut, Martin, Hans, und Herrmann, working class Germans who loved to drink the Ami under the table.

Electric Flag, Groovin' is Easy

A contender for the greatest, tightest band of the '60s, featuring Mike Bloomfield on guitar, my second guitar hero. I saw him play at the Monterey Pop Festival in '67. The Jewish kid from an affluent Chicago suburb exemplifies cultural appropriation at its finest. His riffs derive from B. B. King but he outplays the King of the Blues.  Is that a racist thing to say? It can't be racist if it's true.

Commander Cody, Truck Drivin' Man.  This one goes out to Sally and Jean and Mary in memory of our California road trip nine years ago.   "Pour me another cup of coffee/For it is the best in the land/I'll put  a nickel in the jukebox/And play that 'Truck Drivin' Man.'"

Joan Baez, A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall. The voice of an angel, the words of a poet, and Langhorne's guitar. The incredible mood of this version, especially the intro, is made by Langhorne and the bass of Russ Savakus, another well-known session player from those days. I've been listening to this song since '65 and it gives me chills every time. 

And now the fifteen-year-old is an old man of 73, and tears stream from his eyes for the nth time as he listens to this and we are once again on the brink of nuclear war as we were back in October of '62.  It'll be a hard rain indeed, should it fall. 

I once asked a guy what he wanted in a woman. He replied, "A whore in bed, Simone de Beauvoir in the parlor, and the Virgin Mary on a pedestal."  An impossible trinity. Some just want the girl next door.

Bobby Darin, Dream Lover. With pix of Sandra Dee.

Audrey Hepburn, Moon River

Gogi Grant, The Wayward Wind, 1956. I'll take Lady Gogi over Lady Gaga any day.

Doris Day, Que Sera, Sera, 1956.  What did she mean? The tautological, Necessarily, what will be, will be? Or the non-tautologically fatalistic, What will be, necessarily will be? Either way, she died in May.

Is Empiricism Self-Refuting?

Russell says it is; I examine his claim. Substack latest.

Addenda (11/19)

Tony Flood writes,

Brian Kilmeade mentioned Ayaan Hirsi Ali's conversion to Christianity  quickly as he introduced her, one of his guests tonight, but I heard it on TV which was on in the background; I thought I had misheard Kilmeade. I've always admired her courage and considered her professed atheism in the context of her experience of Islamic terror. 

But her Wiki entry says she "converted to Christianity" (by which I hope she means that she received Christ as her savior), citing this and this. 

 

She blogged about Russell last week (as you did today): 

In 2002, I discovered a 1927 lecture by Bertrand Russell entitled “Why I am Not a Christian.” It did not cross my mind, as I read it, that one day, nearly a century after he delivered it to the South London branch of the National Secular Society, I would be compelled to write an essay with precisely the opposite title.

In high school in 1970 along the road to my Communism, I had read Russell's essay and decided I would study philosophy. I remember catching his obit in the papers, marveling at the longevity of this stellar Victorian intellectual who had been my contemporary for over a decade-and-a-half and therefore could have met. 

 

Anyway, Ali's now firmly in my Hall of Hero(in)es. Feel free to share this, which may come as news to others as it did to me.

 

Thanks, Tony. I share your high opinion of Ali. The Unherd article which I excerpted earlier is important.  I too read Russell's Why I am not a Christian in high school.  Russell was a logical and philosophical technician of high rank, but unlike his pal Wittgenstein, he wrote popular works as well. Wittgenstein, as you know, took a dim view of Russell's popular writings. Russell was secular to the core; Wittgenstein, I could easily show, had the heart of the homo religiosus despite his bladed intellect.

 

Edward writes,

Interesting, and overlaps with a central theme of the book, as follows. Assume

1 Knowledge is propositional. That is, whatever counts as knowledge has to be expressible in language as a proposition.

2 Propositions have two terms and can be affirmative or negative, universal or particular. Thus to any two terms there correspond exactly four propositions.

3 There are a finite number of term types, as set out in Locke’s classification of ‘ideas’ in Book II of the Essay.

4 The meaning of any term is derived from experience. Locke assumes that every word either signifies a simple ‘sensible idea’, or signifies a complex idea that can be analysed into simple parts.

These assumptions define what Bennett calls meaning-empiricism, and Hanna calls semantic psychologism. It follows from them that every object of human understanding is defined by a proposition whose meaning depends on experience.

In this way we can set a limit to human understanding.

Note that the empiricist project differs from the scholastic-Aristotelian one. The scholastics generally did not believe in meaning-empiricism, because they thought that the proper signification of a term is an object, not an idea. So I think to settle your question we must look at whether words signify ‘ideas’, i.e. affections of the soul, or not.

Ad (1). Is all knowledge propositional? You are making a very strong claim here: necessarily, nothing counts as knowledge that is not expressible in declarative sentences.  But knowing what something is like counts as knowledge. I know what it is like to be punched in the stomach, but not what it is like to undergo a menstrual period.  I know some people by description only, others by acquaintance only, and still others by description and by acquaintance. Isn't knowledge by acquaintance a counterexample to your thesis?  And then there is 'carnal knowledge.' Does it not count as knowledge? There is also 'know how.' My cats know how to open doors, but they would be hard-pressed to verbalize that knowledge.

Ad (2). "Thus to any two terms there correspond exactly four propositions." Since copulae are typically tensed, there have to be more. There have to be at least twelve. 'Every animal in the house was/is/will be a cat.'  4 categorical forms X 3 simple tenses = 12 different propositions.  And then there are the tenseless uses of copulae, e,g, 'The cat is an animal.'   'The triangle is a three-sided plane figure that encloses a space.' Yogi Berra joke: "You mean now?"  'God is' is either eternally true/false or omnitemporally true/false, and tenseless either way.

Ad (3). OK.

Ad (4). "The meaning of any term is derived from experience." My question is: how could we know that this proposition is true if it is indeed true? To know that it is true, we have to know what it means. But it cannot mean anything if it is true. Do the terms of this proposition signify a sensible idea? No. 'The meaning of any terms' does not signify a sensible idea.  The same goes for 'a meaning derived from experience.'  Meaning-empiricism is meaningless on its own theory of meaning.

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See here for his offerings and contact info. 

"Piss Christ" Revisited

'Pope' Francis has recently given a warm papal welcome to Andres Serrano. Remember him? What follows is an exchange from 16 May 2010 with a doctoral student in Canada who is responding to an earlier post of mine. My comments are in blue. The erudite Hector C. who is better versed than I am in art and aesthetics has been dropping by lately; I am hoping he will weigh in on this.

1. Why do you feel that "Piss Christ" (or Serrano's other works--again, I assume you're referring here mostly to the religious icons and bodily fluids) is (are) a "[violation] of people's beliefs"? The claim that it "violates beliefs" is much stronger than simply saying that it is distasteful, since it ascribes an active quality to the work.

Of course, it is more than distasteful or disgusting, although it is that; it shows profound disrespect and contempt for Christianity.  And it is not the work itself that violates the beliefs and sensibilities of Christians and plenty of non-Christians as well, but the work in the context of its production and public display.  It should be offensive to any decent person, just as "Piss-Buddha," if there were such an 'art work,' would be offensive to me and other non-Buddhists.  Buddha was a great teacher of humanity and should be honored as such.  (That is why decent people were offended when the Taliban destroyed the ancient Buddhist statuary.) The same goes for Jesus and Socrates and so many others.  Christians of course believe that Jesus was much more than a great teacher of humanity, but whether he was or not is immaterial to the point at issue.  Or imagine "Piss-King" in which a figurine of Martin Luther King, Jr. is suspended in urine. Everyone would take that, and rightly so, as expressive of contempt for the black American civil rights leader, as offensive as Southern racists' references to King back in the '60s as Martin Luther Coon.

The decadent art of the 20th century reflects not only the corruption of aesthetic sensibility but also a moral corruption.  So my objection to Serrano is not merely aesthetic but moral.  The purpose of art is not to debase but to elevate, refine, ennoble. 

I'm going to assume, again, that the reason for thinking it a violation has to do with the materials used in its production, whose conjunction might be thought blasphemous (although not, I think, unequivocally so).

We can leave blasphemy to one side.  To make my points I needn't assume that Jesus is divine.

Now, I can understand feeling an initial revulsion to the work--but that's not quite the case, since unless you're told, you have no way of knowing that the photograph was made with urine.

Be serious.  The title is "Piss-Christ."  You are aware, I hope, that such words as 'piss' and 'shit' are vulgar.  They are used to express contempt as opposed to reasoned disagreement. 

In fact, until you read the title or a description, it's just a beautiful image filled with pathos and pointing to Jesus' suffering. Of course, the means of production are (were) deliberately made known, and I can understand a certain revulsion at that revelation. What I don't understand, however, is why your reaction is to qualify it as an assault on Christianity/religious beliefs.

And what I don't understand is your failure to perceive the offensiveness of this so-called 'art.'  First of all, this junk is not art in any legitimate sense of the term.  Its sole purpose is to bring its creator empty celebrity and money.  A vain pursuit of novelty for the sake of novelty -- as if novelty as such is a value -- it must constantly outdo itself in extremism to achieve any effect at all.  It requires no talent or skill or courage.  Any jerkoff can throw a crucifix into a bottle of urine.  And it is not as if this 'artist' is taking a stand against an oppressive culture or government which disallows this form of puerile self-expression.  Far from it.  The culture is permissive in excelsis and there is no censorship.  And it is precisely because the culture is ultra-permissive, that schlocksters like Serrano, Gilbert & George, and plenty of others can pass their  stuff off as art.  It is worth noting that there is no "Piss-Muhammad."   If  Serrano produced a "Piss-Muhammad," then at least I could credit him with courage.    But our main question is not whether "Piss-Christ"  counts as legitimate art but whether it expresses contempt for Christianity and its adherents.

And of course it does, in the same way that "Piss-Muhammad" would express contempt for Muhammad, and "Shit-Marx' for Marx.  Leftists have their icons too, and if any of them were placed in bottles of urine,  the howls of protest would be unceasing.  The very fact that there are no such expressions of contempt for leftist heroes tells us something.  It tells us that "Piss-Christ and the like are part of an assault on Christianity and religion in general which fits right in with the left-wing agenda. Most contemporary 'art' is left-wing propaganda as Roger Kimball observes:

When the artistic significance of art is at a minimum, politics rushes in to fill the void. From the crude political allegories of a Leon Golub or Hans Haacke to the feminist sloganeering of Jenny Holzer, Karen Finley, or Cindy Sherman, much that goes under the name of art today is incomprehensible without reference to its political content. Indeed, in many cases what we see are nothing but political gestures that poach on the prestige of art in order to enhance their authority. Another word for this activity is propaganda, although at a moment when so much of art is given over to propagandizing the word seems inadequate. It goes without saying that the politics in question are as predictable as clockwork. Not only are they standard items on the prevailing tablet of left-wing pieties, they are also cartoon versions of the same. It’s the political version of painting by number: AIDS, the homeless, “gender politics,” the Third World, and the environment line up on one side with white hats, while capitalism, patriarchy, the United States, and traditional morality and religion assemble yonder in black hats.

2.) This one is much shorter (I promise!) and broader: "Adolescent  purveyors of schlock who delight in offending the sensibilities of the 'bourgeoisie'  or the 'booboisie' in H. L. Mencken's phrase have no right to taxpayer money." Why not?

Taxation is a legitimate, but nonetheless coercive, taking of money from the productive members of society for the purposes of government.  When money that is taken via taxation is used for purposes that are (i) not among the legitimate limited functions of government, and (ii) violate the beliefs and sensibilities of the people who pay the taxes in ways that are crude, offensive, and subserve no higher purpose, but instead contribute to cultural decline, then I say the money is misused.

1. Why do you feel that "Piss Christ" (or Serrano's other works--again, I assume you're referring here mostly to the religious icons and bodily fluids) is (are) a "[violation] of people's beliefs"? The claim that it "violates beliefs" is much stronger than simply saying that it is distasteful, since it ascribes an active quality to the work.

Of course, it is more than distasteful or disgusting, although it is that; it shows profound disrespect and contempt for Christianity.  And it is not the work itself that violates the beliefs and sensibilities of Christians and plenty of non-Christians as well, but the work in the context of its production and public display.  It should be offensive to any decent person, just as "Piss-Buddha," if there were such an 'art work,' would be offensive to me and other non-Buddhists.  Buddha was a great teacher of humanity and should be honored as such.  (That is why decent people were offended when the Taliban destroyed the ancient Buddhist statuary.) The same goes for Jesus and Socrates and so many others.  Christians of course believe that Jesus was much more than a great teacher of humanity, but whether he was or not is immaterial to the point at issue.  Or imagine "Piss-King" in which a figurine of Martin Luther King, Jr. is suspended in urine. Everyone would take that, and rightly so, as expressive of contempt for the black American civil rights leader, as offensive as Southern racists' references to King back in the '60s as Martin Luther Coon.

The decadent art of the 20th century reflects not only the corruption of aesthetic sensibility but also a moral corruption.  So my objection to Serrano is not merely aesthetic but moral.  The purpose of art is not to debase but to elevate, refine, ennoble. 

I'm going to assume, again, that the reason for thinking it a violation has to do with the materials used in its production, whose conjunction might be thought blasphemous (although not, I think, unequivocally so).

We can leave blasphemy to one side.  To make my points I needn't assume that Jesus is divine.

Now, I can understand feeling an initial revulsion to the work--but that's not quite the case, since unless you're told, you have no way of knowing that the photograph was made with urine.

Be serious.  The title is "Piss-Christ."  You are aware, I hope, that such words as 'piss' and 'shit' are vulgar.  They are used to express contempt as opposed to reasoned disagreement. 

In fact, until you read the title or a description, it's just a beautiful image filled with pathos and pointing to Jesus' suffering. Of course, the means of production are (were) deliberately made known, and I can understand a certain revulsion at that revelation. What I don't understand, however, is why your reaction is to qualify it as an assault on Christianity/religious beliefs.

And what I don't understand is your failure to perceive the offensiveness of this so-called 'art.'  First of all, this junk is not art in any legitimate sense of the term.  Its sole purpose is to bring its creator empty celebrity and money.  A vain pursuit of novelty for the sake of novelty -- as if novelty as such is a value -- it must constantly outdo itself in extremism to achieve any effect at all.  It requires no talent or skill or courage.  Any jerkoff can throw a crucifix into a bottle of urine.  And it is not as if this 'artist' is taking a stand against an oppressive culture or government which disallows this form of puerile self-expression.  Far from it.  The culture is permissive in excelsis and there is no censorship.  And it is precisely because the culture is ultra-permissive, that schlocksters like Serrano, Gilbert & George, and plenty of others can pass their  stuff off as art.  It is worth noting that there is no "Piss-Muhammad."   If  Serrano produced a "Piss-Muhammad," then at least I could credit him with courage.    But our main question is not whether "Piss-Christ"  counts as legitimate art but whether it expresses contempt for Christianity and its adherents.

And of course it does, in the same way that "Piss-Muhammad" would express contempt for Muhammad, and "Shit-Marx' for Marx.  Leftists have their icons too, and if any of them were placed in bottles of urine,  the howls of protest would be unceasing.  The very fact that there are no such expressions of contempt for leftist heroes tells us something.  It tells us that "Piss-Christ and the like are part of an assault on Christianity and religion in general which fits right in with the left-wing agenda. Most contemporary 'art' is left-wing propaganda as Roger Kimball observes:

When the artistic significance of art is at a minimum, politics rushes in to fill the void. From the crude political allegories of a Leon Golub or Hans Haacke to the feminist sloganeering of Jenny Holzer, Karen Finley, or Cindy Sherman, much that goes under the name of art today is incomprehensible without reference to its political content. Indeed, in many cases what we see are nothing but political gestures that poach on the prestige of art in order to enhance their authority. Another word for this activity is propaganda, although at a moment when so much of art is given over to propagandizing the word seems inadequate. It goes without saying that the politics in question are as predictable as clockwork. Not only are they standard items on the prevailing tablet of left-wing pieties, they are also cartoon versions of the same. It’s the political version of painting by number: AIDS, the homeless, “gender politics,” the Third World, and the environment line up on one side with white hats, while capitalism, patriarchy, the United States, and traditional morality and religion assemble yonder in black hats.

2.) This one is much shorter (I promise!) and broader: "Adolescent  purveyors of schlock who delight in offending the sensibilities of the 'bourgeoisie'  or the 'booboisie' in H. L. Mencken's phrase have no right to taxpayer money." Why not?

Taxation is a legitimate, but nonetheless coercive, taking of money from the productive members of society for the purposes of government.  When money that is taken via taxation is used for purposes that are (i) not among the legitimate limited functions of government, and (ii) violate the beliefs and sensibilities of the people who pay the taxes in ways that are crude, offensive, and subserve no higher purpose, but instead contribute to cultural decline, then I say the money is misused.

Not the Least of Bergoglio's Sins

He's destroyed the reply, "Is the Pope Catholic?"

James N. Anderson's Presuppositional Arguments

As you may have noticed, I am none too impressed with Cornelius Van Til and his presuppositionalist followers. Intellectual honesty being one of my epistemic virtues, however, I need to be sure that I really understand what they are saying. Now James N. Anderson strikes me as the sharpest presuppositionalist among the professional philosophers. (Among the theologians, I give the palm to Gordon Clark.) So here is a list of Anderson's articles for your, and especially my, perusal.

• If Knowledge Then God (2005) — a paper in which I summarize Van Til’s transcendental argument (actually multiple versions of it) and contrast it with the theistic arguments of Alvin Plantinga.
• The Theistic Preconditions of Knowledge (2006) — an argument that human knowledge presupposes the existence of God.
• Presuppositionalism and Frame’s Epistemology (2009) — an essay on John Frame’s distinctive contributions to epistemology and apologetics, in which I sketch out (in the final section) a triperspectival presuppositional critique of naturalism.
• The Lord of Non-Contradiction (2011) — an article (co-authored with Greg Welty) which argues for the existence of God from the laws of logic.
• In Defense of the Argument for God from Logic (2013) — our responses to several critiques of the argument in the previous article.
• Antitheism Presupposes Theism (2011) — a defense of Van Til’s provocative claim, which extends the argument for God from logic into an argument for God from any belief stance (including agnosticism).
• Atheism, Amoralism, and Arationalism (2016) — the outline of an argument to the effect that atheism cannot account for objective rationality.

 

Rate My Professors

I just now came across this comment:

PH112A

Nov 16th, 2005

Very into Philosophy, too bad he's the only one in the class that is . . . good guy, but the subject is just so boring, therefore you do horrible.

Related:

Former Students

Do You Really Want to Teach at a University?

The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God: A First Response to Flood

I thank Anthony G. Flood for his The Transcendental Argument for the Existence of God Revisited: Toward a Response to Bill Vallicella.  Herewith, a first installment by way of rejoinder. Convergence upon agreement is not to be expected, but clarification of differences is an attainable goal. In any case, philosophy is a joy to its true acolytes, and in dark times a great consolation as well. Now let's get to work.

Tony introduces the theme skillfully:

Preamble: if the God of the Bible, who created human beings in his image to know and love him and to know, value, and rule the rest of creation under him (hereafter, “God”), exists, then we know one way that the conditions of intelligible predication (IP) can be met. The preceding sentence includes key aspects of the Christian worldview (CW)—the Theos-anthropos-kosmos relationship—expressed on the pages of the Bible.

If no alternative explanation for IP is possible, then Biblical theism is necessarily true (which is what the CW predicts).

[. . .]

If no worldview other than the Christian (CW) can account for IP, if (as I now hold) an alternative to the CW when it comes to accounting for IP cannot even be conceived, then to hold out for an alternative, as though doing so were an expression of rational exigency (“demandingness”)—that to reserve judgment somehow accords with epistemic duty—models only dogmatic stubbornness, not tolerant liberality.

Given the actual fact of intelligible predication, which is not in dispute, and assuming, as we must, the modal axiom ab esse ad posse valet illatio, it follows that intelligible predication (IP) is possible. Necessarily, whatever is actual is possible. So we ask the transcendental question: under what conditions is IP possible? What condition or conditions would have to obtain for it to be possible that there be actual cases of intelligible predication?  An example of an intelligible predication is any true or false statement, such as 'The Moon is presently uninhabited' which happens to be true, or its negation which happens to be false. 

Now I agree with Flood that if the God of the Christian Bible (hereafter 'God') exists, then the condition or conditions of the possibility of IP are satisfied. The existence of God suffices for the possibility of intelligible predication. But here we need to remind ourselves of a couple or three simple points of logic.

The first is  that if X is sufficient for Y, it does not follow that X is necessary for Y. So if the existence of God is not only a sufficient but also a necessary condition of IP, this will require further argumentation. The second point is that to assert a conditional is not to assert either its antecedent/protasis or its consequent/apodosis.  To assert or affirm a conditional is to assert or affirm a connection between antecedent and consequent, the nature of the connection depending on the type of conditional it is, whether logical or nomological or whatever. The third point is that some conditionals are true despite having a false antecedent and a false consequent.

And although it is not self-evident, I also agree with Flood that there is and must be some condition or set of conditions that make IP possible. Let 'TC' stand for this transcendental condition or set of conditions. We agree then that the TC necessarily exists.

We seem to have found some common -- dare I say 'neutral'? -- ground: (a) there are actual cases of IP; (b) given that they are actual, they are possible; (c) it is legitimate to launch a regressive (transcendental) inquiry into the condition or conditions of the possibility of these actual cases; (d) there must be such a transcendental condition; (e) the existence of God suffices for the possibility of IP. 

This leaves us with the question whether the God of the Christian Bible  = TC. Is God's existence not only sufficient but also both necessary for the possibility of IP? Flood will answer with alacrity in the affirmative: yes, God and God alone is (numerically) identical to the ultimate transcendental condition of all intelligible predication. This of course implies that it is not possible that anything distinct from God be the TC. God necessarily exists, and is necessarily identical to the ultimate transcendental condition of intelligible predication.  

But wait, there's more! Flood tells us that  "an alternative to the CW [the Christian worldview] when it comes to accounting for IP cannot even be conceived." So it is not just impossible that anything other than God be identical to the TC; this is inconceivable as well. 

Here is one of the places where Flood blunders: he confuses the epistemic modality inconceivability with the ontic modality impossibility. Conceivability and inconceivability are tied to the thinking powers of such  finite and limited intellects as ours. By contrast, what is possible and impossible in reality are independent of what we frail reeds are able to think and unable to think.  I will have more to say about this in subsequent posts since it appears to be a trademark mistake of presuppositionalists to conflate epistemic and ontic modality.

In any case, it is very easy to conceive of alternatives  to Flood's candidate for TC status. Here is a partial catalog of candidates in which (B), (C), and (D) are alternatives to Flood's candidate, (A).

A. Intelligible predication  presupposes the truth of the Christian worldview  (Van Til & Co.) as the transcendental condition of IP's very possibility.

B. Intelligible predication presupposes the existence of God, but not the Christian worldview as the Calvinist Van Til and his followers calvinistically understand it, the essential commitments of which include such specifically Christian doctrines as Trinity, Incarnation, etc. as well as the specifically Calvinist TULIP doctrines. Some who call themselves Christians are unitarians and deniers of the divinity of Christ. Our friend Dale Tuggy is such a one.  And those the presuppositionalists refer to as 'Romanists' who do accept Trinity and Incarnation don't accept the specifically Calvinist add-ons.

C. Intelligible predication presupposes the truth of Kant's transcendental idealism according to which "The understanding is the law-giver of nature," and space and time are a priori forms of our sensibility.  For Kant the ultimate transcendental condition of the objective validity of every judgment, and thus of every intelligible predication, is located in the transcendental unity of apperception which is assuredly not God, whatever exactly it is. 

D. Intelligible predication presupposes, not the God of the Christian Bible, but  an immanent order and teleology in nature along the lines of Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos (Oxford 2012). On Nagel's view, the rational order of nature is self-explanatory, a necessary feature of anything that could count as a cosmos. Nagel views the intelligibility of the world as "itself part of the deepest explanation why things are as they are." (17).  Now part of the way things are is that they are understandable by us.  Given that the way things are is intelligible, it follows that the intelligibility of the world is self-explanatory or self-grounding. "The intelligibility of the world is no accident." (17) But neither is it due to theistic intervention or imposition. "Nature is such as to give rise to conscious beings with minds; and it is such as to be comprehensible to such beings." (17) See my overview of Nagel's book for details.

I am not endorsing any of the above-listed alternatives to (A). They all have their problems as does (A). My point is that they are conceivable alternatives to (A). This being the case, Flood's asseveration, "an alternative to the CW [the Christian worldview] when it comes to accounting for IP cannot even be conceived" is false.

It is quite clear that what Van Til & Co. want is a rationally compelling, 'knock-down,' argument for the existence of the God of the Christian Bible calvininstically interpreted.  But they know (deep down even as they suppress the knowledge) that no circular argument is probative.  So they essay the above transcendental argument.

What I have shown, however, is that the transcendental argument is not probative.  It fails to establish that the God of the Christian Bible is both sufficient and necessary for the possibility of intelligible predication. At most, it renders rationally acceptable the conclusion that the God of the Christian Bible exists.

I am not denying that the God of the Christian Bible exists. Nor am I denying that if said God exists, then he flawlessly executes all the transcendental functions that need executing.  How could he fail to? In particular, how could he fail to be the ultimate ungrounded transcendental-ontological ground of intelligible predication?  My point is that the presuppositionalists have not proven, i.e., established with objective certainty, that God alone could play the transcendental role.

 

Annoying Habits of Some Philosophers

Top o' the Stack.  A partial catalog. 

The Meaning of 'Asshole'

A Substack quickie. 'Woke' squeamishness exposed.

Biden Too Old?

Wrong question! despite its being asked repeatedly by lemming journos.

Not too old, unfit for office. Physically decrepit. Non compos mentis. Morally corrupt to the core. A fraud and a phony. Rooted in no principles of his own. A mouthpiece for deleterious leftist doctrines. A disaster for the republic and for the world. Those who support him are beneath contempt.

Bernie Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, is 94. Listen to his assessment.

Big Mouth Barack

His "mean-spirited nonsense deserves a Fisking." And receives it here. I haven't seen 'fisking' in a long time. It has fallen into desuetude.

Filed under: bullshit

Limited Doxastic Voluntarism and Epoché

Are there any beliefs over which we have direct voluntary control? 

I am a limited doxastic voluntarist: I hold that there are some beliefs over the formation of which one has direct voluntary control. That is, there are some believable contents — call them propositions — that I can bring myself to believe at will, others that I can bring myself to disbelieve at will, and still others about which I can suspend judgment, thereby enacting something like the epoché (ἐποχή) of such ancient Pyrrhonian skeptics as Sextus Empiricus.

Note that the issue concerns the formation of beliefs, not their maintenance, and note the contrast between direct and indirect formation of beliefs. Roughly, I form a belief directly by just forming it, not by doing something else as a means to forming it. Suppose the year is 1950 and you are a young person, sincere and idealistic, eager to consecrate your life to some cause higher than a bourgeois existence of conspicuous consumption in suburbia. You have vibrant stimulating friends who are members of the Communist Party USA. They tell you that the Revolution is right around the corner. You don't believe it, but you want to believe it. So you go to their meetings, accept Party discipline, toe the Party line, and soon you too believe that the Revolution is right around the corner. In this example, the formation of belief is indirect. You do various things (go to the meetings, repeat the formulas, hawk the Daily Worker, toe the line, etc.) in order to acquire the belief. But then in 1956 you learn of Krushchev's denunciation of Stalin and your belief in the glorious Revolution and its imminence suddenly collapses to be replaced by an opposing belief. The formation of the opposing belief is direct.

A correspondent supplies an example of the third case, that of suspending belief:

Suspending belief. Sometimes in the face of good or strong evidence that p, I refuse to believe that p or again that not-p. I suspend any opinion on p.

This has always been my attitude on OJ and the murders he was charged with. Recently I talked with someone who had been teaching OJ knife-fighting in conjunction with a Commando-style TV show that never got launched. His evidence was excluded from the trial. Even in the face of this new evidence that OJ was competent with a knife, I do not form an opinion as to whether or not OJ killed his wife. (This is close to the classical skeptical epoche, except I do not bother to inquire and try to build a counterbalancing case for the opposite belief. Pyrrhonian skepticism says that I always can build such a case and the result will be spontaneous cessation of belief.)

In both these cases [I omitted my correspondent's first example] I think it's clear that what I believe (or don't believe ) is a function of what I will or wish to believe, trumping the evidence on hand and any reasonable induction therefrom. Hopefully, in both case it is also a principled refusal on my part to buy into beliefs that condemn other people. To believe my wife a poisoner or OJ a killer, I require evidence several parsecs beyond a reasonable doubt. You can say that that standard is too liberal [too stringent?], but I can choose to live (and die) by it and it is for several grounds an attractive ethics of belief.

This addresses my concern about the possibility of an ethics of belief.   My correspondent suspends judgment, holds no opinion, on the guilt or innocence (as charged) of O.J. Simpson. By suspending judgment, he deliberately impedes or rather prevents the formation of two beliefs, the belief that O.J is guilty and the belief that O.J. is not guilty. I find that I have the same power of doxastic abstention, except that in this particular case I assent to the proposition that O. J. is guilty since I judge the evidence that he is guilty as charged to be overwhelming, and the notion that 'racism' played any part in this case utterly absurd. (My ethics of belief is perhaps less stringent than my correspondent; but we both have an ethics of belief.)

Our question does not concern the content of an ethics of belief, but the very possibility of one whatever its content. Since 'ought' implies 'can,' if I ought to withhold judgment in some cases — and surely there are some cases in which I ought to withhold judgment — then I can withhold judgment. I have the power to withhold judgment; hence my epoché (ἐποχή) is voluntary. So here seems to be a case in which believing/disbelieving is under the direct control of the will: I decide to neither believe nor disbelieve. And from this it follows that the application of deontological categories is legitimate. For example, "You ought not believe that your neighbor Jones is a homosexual on the basis of such flimsy evidence as that he is unmarried and has a Martha Stewart-like interest in home furnishings! You ought to suspend judgment!"

My provisional conclusion is that our manifest ability to suspend judgment in some cases shows that we do have direct voluntary control over some of our believings. I have no control over my believing that a naked woman is standing in front of me if in fact such is the case (in good light, etc.) And I have no control over my believing that the Imperium Romanum no longer rules Western Europe (to adapt an example from Alston, Beyond 'Justification', p. 63). But I do have direct voluntary control over my believing that neighbor Jones is a homosexual.

I am a limited doxastic voluntarist: I hold that there are some beliefs over the formation of which one has direct voluntary control. That is, there are some believable contents — call them propositions — that I can bring myself to believe at will, others that I can bring myself to disbelieve at will, and still others about which I can suspend judgment, thereby enacting something like the epoché (ἐποχή) of such ancient Pyrrhonian skeptics as Sextus Empiricus.

Note that the issue concerns the formation of beliefs, not their maintenance, and note the contrast between direct and indirect formation of beliefs. Roughly, I form a belief directly by just forming it, not by doing something else as a means to forming it. Suppose the year is 1950 and you are a young person, sincere and idealistic, eager to consecrate your life to some cause higher than a bourgeois existence of conspicuous consumption in suburbia. You have vibrant stimulating friends who are members of the Communist Party USA. They tell you that the Revolution is right around the corner. You don't believe it, but you want to believe it. So you go to their meetings, accept Party discipline, toe the Party line, and soon you too believe that the Revolution is right around the corner. In this example, the formation of belief is indirect. You do various things (go to the meetings, repeat the formulas, hawk the Daily Worker, toe the line, etc.) in order to acquire the belief. But then in 1956 you learn of Krushchev's denunciation of Stalin and your belief in the glorious Revolution and its imminence suddenly collapses to be replaced by an opposing belief. The formation of the opposing belief is direct.

A correspondent supplies an example of the third case, that of suspending belief:

Suspending belief. Sometimes in the face of good or strong evidence that p, I refuse to believe that p or again that not-p. I suspend any opinion on p.

This has always been my attitude on OJ and the murders he was charged with. Recently I talked with someone who had been teaching OJ knife-fighting in conjunction with a Commando-style TV show that never got launched. His evidence was excluded from the trial. Even in the face of this new evidence that OJ was competent with a knife, I do not form an opinion as to whether or not OJ killed his wife. (This is close to the classical skeptical epoche, except I do not bother to inquire and try to build a counterbalancing case for the opposite belief. Pyrrhonian skepticism says that I always can build such a case and the result will be spontaneous cessation of belief.)

In both these cases [I omitted my correspondent's first example] I think it's clear that what I believe (or don't believe ) is a function of what I will or wish to believe, trumping the evidence on hand and any reasonable induction therefrom. Hopefully, in both case it is also a principled refusal on my part to buy into beliefs that condemn other people. To believe my wife a poisoner or OJ a killer, I require evidence several parsecs beyond a reasonable doubt. You can say that that standard is too liberal [too stringent?], but I can choose to live (and die) by it and it is for several grounds an attractive ethics of belief.

This addresses my concern about the possibility of an ethics of belief.   My correspondent suspends judgment, holds no opinion, on the guilt or innocence (as charged) of O.J. Simpson. By suspending judgment, he deliberately impedes or rather prevents the formation of two beliefs, the belief that O.J is guilty and the belief that O.J. is not guilty. I find that I have the same power of doxastic abstention, except that in this particular case I assent to the proposition that O. J. is guilty since I judge the evidence that he is guilty as charged to be overwhelming, and the notion that 'racism' played any part in this case utterly absurd. (My ethics of belief is perhaps less stringent than my correspondent; but we both have an ethics of belief.)

Our question does not concern the content of an ethics of belief, but the very possibility of one whatever its content. Since 'ought' implies 'can,' if I ought to withhold judgment in some cases — and surely there are some cases in which I ought to withhold judgment — then I can withhold judgment. I have the power to withhold judgment; hence my epoché (ἐποχή) is voluntary. So here seems to be a case in which believing/disbelieving is under the direct control of the will: I decide to neither believe nor disbelieve. And from this it follows that the application of deontological categories is legitimate. For example, "You ought not believe that your neighbor Jones is a homosexual on the basis of such flimsy evidence as that he is unmarried and has a Martha Stewart-like interest in home furnishings! You ought to suspend judgment!"

My provisional conclusion is that our manifest ability to suspend judgment in some cases shows that we do have direct voluntary control over some of our believings. I have no control over my believing that a naked woman is standing in front of me if in fact such is the case (in good light, etc.) And I have no control over my believing that the Imperium Romanum no longer rules Western Europe (to adapt an example from Alston, Beyond 'Justification', p. 63). But I do have direct voluntary control over my believing that neighbor Jones is a homosexual.

Moving from Religion to Philosophy

A typology of motives.  Substack latest.

Wrong and Right Questions

There are some moderate Muslims, and they can be enlisted in the struggle against the anti-civilizational Joe Biden and the moral (immoral?) retards who support him.  Zuhdi Jasser is an example of a moderate Muslim. May peace be upon him and no harm come to him. Here I recount an exchange I had with Jasser.