Maverick Philosopher

From an Old Journal: On the Meaning of Life

The germs of these thoughts came to me while climbing the Allan Blackman trail to Circlestone Ruins in the Eastern Superstition Wilderness in May of 1998.

Does it matter whether life has an ultimate meaning or not? Someone might be satisfied if he has a good chance of attaining middle-sized happiness: peaceful days, restful nights, an adequate supply of health and wealth, satisfying employment, a loving spouse, friends, progeny, long life, and the like. Why not rest our hopes in what is known to be possible rather than in what is not known to be possible, such as immortality, the resurrection of the body, the visio beata, entry into Nirvana? Why hanker for what is beyond our mortal scale? Why not accept the finite? Are we not just a particularly clever species of land mammal?

Saturday Night at the Oldies: A Rarely Played Crystals Number

I won't comment on the Phil Spector sentencing. I suggest we avert our eyes from what he has become and remember him as he was in the glory days.  His trademark 'Wall of Sound' is in evidence in Uptown, a Crystals tune from 1962.  The Phil Spector Jukebox is a quick run-through of his amazing body of work.

An Objection Against Frankfurt-Style Examples (Peter Lupu)

 (Comments in blue by BV.)

1) Frankfurt-style examples are intended to be counterexamples to PAP.

PAP: A person S is morally responsible for intentionally doing X at t only if S can intentionally refrain from doing X at t.

BV: The following formulation better captures what Frankfurt actually says in his 1969 J. Phil. article, namely, "a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise."

PAP*:  A person S is morally responsible for intentionally doing X at t only if (i) S intentionally does X at time t, and (ii) S could have intentionally refrained from doing X at t.

Assumption: I assume that intentionally refraining from doing X is identical to intentionally doing some Y, where Y is not identical to X.

BV: Do you need this assumption? The assumption appears false.   If I refrain from doing one thing, it doesn't follow that I do some other thing:  I could do nothing at all.  If I refrain from smoking a cigarette during the next ten minutes, it does not follow that I do something else during that period.  I take it that not-doing-X is not an action.  It is an action-omission.  If 'X' and 'Y' range over action-types, then not-doing-X is not identical to doing-some-Y.

2) A Frankfurt-style example is going to be a genuine counterexample to PAP just in case it entails the antecedent of PAP as well as the negation of its consequent: i.e.,

(I) S is morally responsible for doing X at t;
(II) It is not the case that S can intentionally refrain from doing X at t.

BV: Note that (II') corresponding to PAP* is

(II') Either it is not the case that S intentionally does X at t, or it is not the case that S could have intentionally refrained from doing X at t.

3) The following are two claims I shall prove:

Claim 1: Any Frankfurt-style example that is interpreted to entail (I) and (II) is inconsistent: i.e., it also entails the negation of either (I) or (II).

Claim 2: Any Frankfurt-style example that is interpreted as entailing (II*) instead of (II) is consistent but is not a counterexample to PAP.

(II*) It is not the case that S can behave in a manner other than X at t.

But, (II*) is not the negation of the consequent of PAP. Hence, (I) and (II*) do not refute PAP. Therefore, standard Frankfurt-style examples are either inconsistent or they are not genuine counterexamples to PAP.

4) Suppose a Frankfurt-style example (choose your favorite example) entails (I) and (II).
4.1) Then such an example includes a backup mechanism that is capable of directly causing S to do X at t in the event S intentionally refrains from doing X at t. But the very existence of such a backup mechanism entails

(III) S can intentionally refrain from doing X at t.

Because if (III) were false and S could not intentionally refrain from doing X at t, then there would be no need for a backup mechanism.
4.2) (II) and (III) are contradictories.
4.3) Therefore, the assumption stated in (4) must be false.
4.4) This proves Claim 1 above.

BV:  I agree that (II) and (III) are contradictories.  But (II') and (III) are not contradictories.  So even if you succeed in refuting your PAP, you haven't refuted Frankfurt's PAP*.  If I haven't blundered, it seems that the debate now shifts to what exactly the Principle of Alternate Possibilities is.

5) Suppose that a Frankfurt-style example entails (I) and (II*).
5.1) As before, such an example entails (III) as well. But, now, notice that as long as we maintain a sharp distinction between behavior and action, (II*) and (III) are perfectly consistent.
5.3) Therefore, the supposition stated in (5) does not lead to a contradiction. Frankfurt-style examples that entail (I), (II*), and (III) are perfectly consistent.
5.4) But notice that none of these propositions; i.e., (I), (II*), and (III) contradict the consequent of PAP. Therefore, consistent Frankfurt-style examples are not counterexamples to PAP. This proves Claim 2.

6) Since this holds for any arbitrary Frankfurt-style example, we can state the following:

(*) Every Frankfurt-style example is either inconsistent or it is not a counterexamples to PAP.

7) The only potentially vulnerable move that I can see in this argument is the claim that the existence of a backup mechanism entails (III): S can intentionally refrain from doing X at t.
7.1) But, how can the proponents of Frankfurt-style examples deny such an entailment? The very point of Frankfurt-style examples is that the existence of such a backup mechanism (however it is described) is feasible and that its sole purpose is to insure that in the event S intentionally refrains from doing X at t, then the backup mechanism induces S to do X at t. Thus, the rationale of such a backup mechanism presupposes that S can intentionally refrain from doing X at t; but this just is (III). Hence, any Frankfurt-style example entails (III).

Questions: Their Raising and Their Begging

To raise a question is not to beg a question. 'Raise a question' and 'beg a question' ought not be used interchangeably on pain of occluding a distinction essential to clear thought. To raise a question is just to pose it, to bring it before one's mind or before one's audience for consideration. To beg a question, however, is not to pose a question but to reason in a way that presupposes what one needs to prove.

 Suppose A poses the question, Does Allah exist? B responds by saying that Allah does exist because his existence is attested in the Koran which Allah revealed to Muhammad. In this example, A raises a question, while B begs the question raised by A. The question is whether or not Allah exists; B's response begs the question by presupposing that Allah does exist. For Allah could not reveal anything to Muhammad unless Allah exists.

The phrase 'beg the question' is not as transparent as might be hoped. The Latin, petitio principii, is better: begging of the principle. Perhaps the simplest way to express the fallacy in English is by calling it circular reasoning. If I argue that The Los Angeles Times displays liberal bias because its reportage and editorializing show a left-of-center slant, then I reason in a circle, or beg the question. Fans of Greek may prefer hysteron proteron, literally, the later earlier. That is, what is logically posterior, namely, the conclusion, is taken to be logically prior, a premise.

Punchline: Never use 'beg the question' unless you are referring to an informal fallacy in reasoning. If you are raising, asking, posing a question, then say that. Do your bit to preserve our alma mater, the English language. Honor thy mother! Matrix of our thoughts, she is deeper and higher than our thoughts, their sacred Enabler.

Of course, I am but a vox clamantis in deserto.  The battle has already been lost.  So why do I write things like the above?  Because I am a natural-born scribbler who takes pleasure in these largely pointless exercises.

Call it What it Is!

In the swimming pool the other morning, conversation drifted onto the topic of recipes.  One lady who hails from Texas proceeded to give me her recipe for what she referred to as cornbread 'dressing.'  In my preferred patois, 'stuffing' is the word, not 'dressing.'  And so in our little conversation I kept using the 's' word.  In mock irritation she finally replied, "It's dressing; call it what it is."  She was not really irritated, but she was serious that things should be called what they are.

Thereon hinges a philosophical point, one which of course I did not pursue with the matron.  The point is that people often succumb to what Rudolf Carnap at the beginning of Chapter 12 of An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science calls "a magical view of language":

Many people hold a magical view of language, the view that there is a mysterious natural connection of some sort between certain words (only, of course, the words with which they are familiar!) and their meanings.  The truth is that it is only by historical accident, in the evolution of our culture, that the word 'blue' has come to mean a certain color. (116)

As between 'stuffing' and 'dressing' there is nothing to choose; neither captures the nature of their common referent.  The incantation of neither has the power to conjure up the edible reality.  Both words stand in a merely conventional relation to their common referent.

The confusion of words and things is a mistake to avoid.  A cognate mistake is the notion that there are such things as true definitions.  Definitions merely register our free decisions as to how words will be used.  Questions of true and false arise only after we have fixed our terms.

So is religious language based on elementary confusion? "Our Father Who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name." "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." Or is the Carnap point superficial like so much in Carnap?

 

 

Are Biological Functions Observer-Relative?

The following three positions need to be distinguished:

1. There is design in nature, and a complete account of it is impossible without recourse to a cosmic designer such as God.
2. There is intrinsic design in nature, and it is wholly explainable in naturalistic terms.
3. There is no intrinsic design in nature: all features that exhibit design, purpose, function are observer-relative, and the only observers are themselves denizens of the natural world.

Theists who rely on design arguments subscribe to (1), while some naturalist philosophers come out in favor of (2). (2), however, involves the claim that there is intrinsic design in nature, a claim that is far from obvious, and is arguably inconsistent with Darwinism. The point of Darwinism is that what looks to be designed, in reality is not, but can be accounted for in terms of mechanistic, non-teleological processes of random variation and natural selection.  If we are using the term 'design' strictly and without equivocation -- and thus not confusing 'design' in the present sense with 'design' in the sense of pattern or shape -- then nothing can exhibit design unless there is a designer responsible for the thing's design.  If someone were to say that natural selection designed birds' wings so that they can evade their predators they would be gulty of a two-fold fallacy: first, the fallacy of hypostatizing natural selection, and second, the mistake of supposing that birds' wings exhibit an intrinsic designedness.

Two Behaviorists Post Coitum

"It was good for you, how was it for me?"  This old joke is well-nigh a one-sentence refutation of philosophical behaviorism.

Asics

Why are Asics running shoes so called?  After purchasing a pair on Saturday I was pleased to discover that Asics is an acronym for anima sana in corpore sano.  The standard tag is mens sana in corpore sano (A sound mind in a sound body), but Msics doesn't quite make it acronym-wise.  I am not enough of a Latinist so say whether anima sana in corpore sano occurs in any classical author. 

If water is the philosopher's drink (Thoreau), and running the philosopher's sport, then Asics may be the philosopher's running shoe.  But the mileage on my Asics Gel-Nimbuses is still too low (8 miles) to say for sure.  So far, they seem very good in terms of stability and cushioning.

A good running maxim: "Trash your shoes before they trash you."  Frugality has its limits.

Ernst Mayr on Natural Selection

Another of the concepts we need to be clear about is that of natural selection. What I will do in this post is pull some quotations from Ernst Mayr, What Evolutions Is (Basic Books, 2001), and raise some questions. An important point will emerge: natural selection is not teleological!

The Concept of Design

To move towards a resolution of some of the questions posed in the comment threads to recent posts it is necessary to back up and try to clarify some of the fundamental terms in the debate. One of them is 'design.'

Our starting point must be ordinary language. As David Stove points out, "it is a fact about the meaning of a common English word, that you cannot say that something was designed, without implying that it was intended; any more than you can say that a person was divorced, without implying that he or she was previously married." (Darwinian Fairytales, p. 190, emphasis added.) In other words, it is an analytic proposition that a designed object is one that was intended in the same way that it is an analytic proposition that a divorced person is one who was previously married. These are two conceptual truths, and anyone who uses designed object and divorced person in a way counter to these truths either does not understand these concepts or else has some serious explaining to do.

I should think that Richard Dawkins has some serious explaining to do. Consider the subtitle of The Blind Watchmaker. It reads: Why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design.

Now I think I understand that. What Dawkins will do in his book is argue how the modern theory of evolution shows that the natural universe as a whole and in its parts is in no way the embodiment of the intentions and purposes of any intelligent being. Thus a bat, a piece of "living machinery," is such that "the 'designer' is unconscious natural selection." (p. 37) The scare quotes show that Dawkins is not using 'designer' literally. What he is saying, putting the point in plain English, is that there is no designer. For if there were a designer, then he would be contradicting the subtitle of his book, which implies that no part of nature is designed. So far, so good.

Unfortunately, on the same page Dawkins says the following about Paley:

His hypothesis was that living watches were literally designed and built by a master watchmaker. Our modern hypothesis is that the job was done in gradual evolutionary stages by natural selection.

But now we have a contradiction. We were told a moment ago that there is no designer. But now we are being told that there is a designer. For if the design job is done by natural selection, then natural selection is the designer.

Now which is it? Is there a designer or isn't there one? Dawkins cannot have it both ways at once.  If there is no designer, then natural selection cannot be the designer.  What this contradiction shows is that Dawkins is using 'design' and cognates in an unintelligible way.

Some will say I am quibbling over words. But I am not. The issue is not about words but about the concepts those words are used to express. I am simply thinking clearly about the concepts that Dawkins et al. are deploying, concepts like design.

If you tell me that design in nature is merely apparent, and that in reality nothing is designed and everything can be explained mechanistically or non-teleologically, then I understand that whether or not I agree with it. But if you tell me that there is design in nature but that the designer is natural selection, then I say that is nonsense, i.e. is unintelligible.

One cannot have it both ways at once. One cannot make use of irreducibly teleological language while in the next breath implying that there is no teleology in nature. The problem is well expressed by Stove:

. . . ever since 1859, Darwinians have always owed their readers a translation manual that would 'cash' the teleological language which Darwinians avail themselves of without restraint in explaining particular adaptations, into the non-teleological language which their own theory of adaptation requires. But they have never paid, or even tried to pay, this debt. (DF 191)

The Belief in Libertarian Free Will as a Life-Enhancing Illusion

William James famously characterized the true as the good in the way of belief. But is knowledge of the truth in every case life-enhancing?  Does knowing the truth always contribute to human flourishing?  Or is it rather the case that to live well with ourselves and others, to be happy, to flourish, requires the maintenance of certain life-enhancing illusions?  Nietzsche raised these questions and he may have been the first to raise them.  They are hard to dismiss.

Consider libertarian free will (LFW).  It is a difficult notion.  Many find it incoherent.   Suppose it is.  Then, whether or not determinism is true, LFW cannot exist.  Compatibilist construals of free will, however, do not seem to supply an adequate notion of moral responsibility.  Suppose this is so, and that only LFW supplies an adequate notion of moral responsibility.

One might then be tempted to adopt the position Saul Smilansky calls "illusionism." This is the view that the illusory belief in LFW is positive and useful.  "Humanity is fortunately deceived in the free will issue, and this seems to be a condition of civilized morality and personal value." See Free Will, Fundamental Dualism, and the Centrality of Illusion, sec. 3.2.

 

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Two Rarely Heard Cuts from the '60s.

This wonderfully creative but rarely played song by The Lovin' Spoonful dates from 1966.  Six O'Clock is one of the songs that captures for me the 'magic' of those fabulous and far-off days. Same goes for Van Morrison and Them's Here Comes the Night (1965).

An Argument for Libertarian Freedom of the Will

First the argument in nuce, then a detailed explanation.

P1. I am morally responsible for at least some of my actions and omissions.
P2. I cannot be morally responsible for an action or omission unless I am libertarianly free with respect to that action or omission.
Therefore
C. I am libertarianly free with respect to at least some of my actions and omissions.

World's Oldest Blogger Logs Off for Good

Maria Amelia Lopez, thought to be the world's oldest blogger, has died at the age of 97.  More here.  Her entry into the 'sphere occurred at a young 95 and appears to have given her a new lease on life.

I was reflecting just this morning on how enriching the World Wide Web has been for so many.  Without it, I would never have met Peter Lupu, the noble Philoponus, or Michael Valle, to mention just three who live within striking distance.

We should honor those whose intelligence and creativity and hard work have made it possible.  Tim Berners-Lee for example.  But how many have heard of him?  Instead, we hear ad nauseam about worthless nonentities whose empty celebrity is their only claim to fame.  Pick your favorite Hollywood airheads and Washington, D.C. politicos.  How about Nancy Pelosi?  She is both an airhead and a politico.

If You are a Conservative, Don't Talk Like a Liberal!

I saw Michael Smerconish on C-Span one morning. His conservative credentials are impressive, but he used the word 'homophobe.'

I've made this point before but it bears repeating. We conservatives should never acquiesce in the Left's acts of linguistic vandalism. Battles in the culture war are often lost and won on linguistic ground. So we ought to resolutely oppose the Left's attempts at linguistic corruption.

Modern Materialism as Essentially Cartesian

Arthur W. Collins, The Nature of Mental Things, Notre Dame 1987, pp. 61-62:

Modern materialists have been so profoundly convinced by the general structure of Cartesian thinking about the mind that they manage to promote only a materialist version of a philosophy of mind that is essentially Cartesian in its underlying attitudes and its extensive matters of detail.  Contemporary mind-brain materialism is a body-body dualism  Materialists typically accept the Cartesian idea of an inner mental realm.  Contemporary repudiation of  dualism is generally a consequence of the extension of scientific knowledge in the biological field and the acceptance of a comprehensive evolutionary naturalism.  Many thinkers now sympathize with the materialist rejection of mental substance.  Impenetrable mysteries will be a part of the the understanding of the mind as long as a ghostly substratum for consciousness and mental activity is tolerated.

[. . .]

Materialism is on the wrong track because the trouble with Cartesian philosophy of mind lies in its conception of  a realm of inner mental things and events comprising conscious mentality.  This is the aspect of Cartesianism that is retained by materialists to this very day.  So the chief defect of materialism, in my view, is that it is a species of Cartesian philosophy of mind.

Collins' beef is with the notion of a "realm of inner mental things."  But what exactly is his problem?  Isn't there a tolerably clear sense in which memories, for example, are inner?  It's a metaphor of course; we are not speaking of spatial interiority.  Memories and such are not spatially inside of anything, which is why mind = brain materialism is absurd.    That thoughts are literally in the head is Unsinn.  That we sometimes talk this way cuts no ice, e.g., "He got it into his head to take up golf." And surely behaviorism is dead as a dog and out for the count:  beliefs, desires , memories, etc. cannot be understood  in terms of behavior or dispositions to behave.  I'll have to read more of Collins to see what he is driving at.  But I suspect I will no more fully understand what he is driving at than I ever understood what Wittgenstein was driving at.

I agree with Collins that contemporary materialism  is dualistic in that it is a brain-body dualism, or as he says, a "body-body dualism."  And I agree that it is absurd to attempt to identify thoughts with events in a hunk of intracranial meat.  But once the absurdity of behaviorism is appreciated, how avoid some notion of inner goings-on?

 

I'm Free! Some Thoughts on Compatibilism

Backpacking solo in California's Sierra Nevada range some years ago, I had occasion to exult: "I'm free!" What did I mean?

I meant that I was doing what I wanted to do as I wanted to do it. I was not subject to any external or internal impediments, or any external or internal compulsions. An example of an external impediment would be a snowstorm or an uncooperative companion, while an example of an internal impediment would be acrophobia. An example of external compulsion would be being forced at gunpoint to hike. And if I suffered from cacoethes ambulandi, a pathological itch to ramble, a syndrome I have just invented, then that would count as an internal compulsion. But unencumbered as I was by any such impediments or compulsions, I was doing what I willed (wanted, desired, chose, . . .).

Free Will Again: A Tension in Philoponus' Doxastic Network

Near the end of Thursday night's symposium, Philoponus, animated but not rendered irrational by the prodigious quantity of Fat Tire Ale he had consumed, stated that he is really only interested in practical and existential topics in philosophy as opposed to theoretical ones.  He is concerned solely with questions on the order of: How should we live?  What ought we do? But he also took a hard determinist line on the problem of free will, based on his study of recent neuroscience.  He tells me he has been reading Daniel Wegner's The Illusion of Conscious Will.  It occurred to me the next morning that there is a certain tension between these two Philoponian commitments.

Thinking of Graduate School in the Humanities? Part II

On February 9th I linked to Thomas H. Benton's Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go.  Today I discovered his Just Don't Go Part II.  Prospective graduate students should digest it thoroughly albeit cum grano salis.  I don't recommend Benton's piece in order to discourage anyone but to apprise them of what they are up against should they embark upon graduate study.  But if ideas are your passion, and you have talent, and you are willing to live like a monk, take risks and perhaps later on retool for the modern-day equivalent of lens-grinding, then go for it!

Here is the question you should ask yourself.  Will I consider it to have been a waste of time and money to have devoted 4-10 years of my precious youth to graduate study if I find that I cannot secure a tenure-track appointment in a reasonably good department in which the chances of tenure are reasonably good and find that I either have to re-tool or become an academic gypsy moving from one one-year appointment to another, or end up as an adjunct teaching five courses per semester for slave wages?

If you answer in the affirmative, then you almost certainly should avoid graduate school given a very bad job market that gives every indication of getting worse. But if you love your discipline, have some talent, and your very identity is bound up with being a philosopher, say, then you should take the risk.  I did, and I don't regret my decision for a second.  Of course, I was one of those who secured a tenure-track position right out of grad school and went on to get tenure.  But had I failed to get a job, I would not have considered my time in grad school wasted.  They were wonderful years in a wonderful place: Boston on the Charles, the Athens of America.  I lived on next-to-nothing but avoided debt by tailoring my lifestyle to the modest emolument of my teaching fellowship.  But that's just me.  Philosophy for me is the unum necessarium.  I cannot imagine who I would be were I not a philosopher.  For me, no way of life is higher.  I am going to do it one way or another, whether or not I can turn a buck from it.

Now if you think like I do, but allow yourself to be cowed by parents and friends and the manifold suggestions emanating from a money-grubbing society in which 'success' is spelled '$ucce$$' and pronounced 'suck-cess' into thinking that you must be 'practical' and put economic and career considerations above all others, then you may wake up one morning a rich shyster or medico but with deep regrets that you didn't have the courage to pursue your dream.

A Libertarian Argument Against Open Borders

John Hospers lays into 'limousine libertarians.'

Politics: Would That I Could Avoid It

Using 'quietist' in a broad sense as opposed to the Molinos-Fenelon-Guyon sense, I would describe myself as a quietist rather than as an activist. The point of life is not action, but contemplation, not doing, but thinking. The vita activa is of course necessary (for some all of the time, and for people like me some of the time), but it is necessary as a means only. Its whole purpose is to subserve the vita contemplativa. To make of action an end in itself is absurd, and demonstrably so, though I will spare you the demonstration. If you are assiduous you can dig it out of Aristotle, Aquinas and Josef Pieper.

Academic Credentials

The Ph.D. is a trapping that means something, but not that much. There are fools with doctorates, and sages without them. Should Kierkegaard go unread because he is a mere Magister? Does anyone prefer his brother Peter over Søren because the fomer was called Doktor? Should we turn a blind eye to Eric Hoffer's True Believer because its author was a migrant farm worker and stevedore who, as a pure autodidact, had no credentials at all, not even an elementary school diploma? Fifty years after it was written, in these days of Islamo-militancy, Hoffer's penetrating book has gained even more relevance.

As Schopenhauer was always keen to point out, there is a difference between a philosopher and a professor of philosophy, namely, the difference between someone who lives for philosophy and someone who lives from it. The professors, parading their titles and credentials, show thereby that they are more concerned with appearance than with reality, when the office of the philosopher is precisely to penetrate appearance and arrive at reality. (I am reporting Schopenhauer's view here, and would point out against him that of course a professor of philosophy can be a genuine philosopher. Schopenhauer himself would be forced to admit this given his great admiration for Kant.  What he could not abide was Hegel, whom he considered a charlatan, and Fichte whose Wissenschaftslehre he mocked as Wissenschaftsleere and as Onanie.)

An important text relating to the question of academic credentials is William James, "The Ph.D. Octopus" in Essential Writings, ed. Wilshire (SUNY 1984), pp. 343-348)  It first appeared in 1903 in the Harvard Monthly.

In Praise of a Lowly Adjunct

The best undergraduate philosophy teacher I had was a lowly adjunct, one Richard Morris, M.A. (Glasgow).  I thought of him the other day in connection with John Hospers whose An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis (2nd ed.) he had assigned for a course entitled "Linguistic Philosophy."  I also took a course in logic from him.  The text was Irving Copi's Symbolic Logic (3rd ed.) You will not be surprised to hear that I still have both books.  And I'll be damned if I will part with either one of them, despite the fact that I have a later edition of the Copi text, an edition I used in a logic course I taught.

I don't believe Morris ever published anything.  The Philosopher's Index shows a few citations for one or more Richard Morrises none of whom I have reason to believe is the adjunct in question.  But without publications or doctorate Morris was more of a philosopher than many of his quondam colleagues.

The moral of the story?  Real philosophers can be found anywhere in the academic hierarchy.  So judge each case by its merits and be not too impressed by credentials and trappings.

I contacted Morris ten years ago or so and thanked him for his efforts way back when.  The thanking of old teachers who have had a positive influence is a practice I recommend.  I've done it a number of times.  I even tracked down an unforgettable and dedicated and inspiring third-grade teacher.  I asked her if anyone else had ever thanked her, and she said no.  What ingrates we  are.

So if you have something to say to someone you'd better say it now while you both draw breath.  Heute rot, morgen tot.

John Hospers and the Unteachability of Ayn Rand

An extremely bright autodidact who is also supremely self-confident will often prove to be unteachable.  If such a person should then acquire a worshipful cult-like following, and if she never exposes her work to professional scrutiny, and excommunicates even those well disposed to her when they dare criticize, John Hospers being one example, the result is unteachability in excelsis.  This is the case of Ayn Rand.  Click on the following links for some fascinating reading.  The lady could have learned so much from Hospers if she hadn't been such a pigheaded ideologue.

Memories of Ayn Rand. Conversations with Ayn Rand 1.  Conversations with Ayn Rand 2.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Big O

See if you can identify the famous sidemen in this live version of Oh Pretty Woman.  My list in the first comment.

A Hylomorphic Solution to the Interaction Problem?

Interactionist substance dualism in the philosophy of mind is supposed to face a devastating objection, the interaction objection. In the first part of this post I will present this objection in its traditional form and suggest that it is not all that serious. In the second part, however, I take the objection seriously and consider whether Aristotelian- Thomistic hylomorphism has the resources to counter it.

Samuel Alexander on Emergence

Samuel Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity, vol. II, Peter Smith 1979,(originally published in 1920), p. 46:

The higher quality emerges from the lower level of existence and has its roots therein, but it emerges therefrom, and it does not belong to that lower level, but constitutes its possessor a new order of existent with its special laws of behaviour.  The existence of emergent qualities thus described is something to be noted, as some would say, under the compulsion of brute empirical fact, or, as I would prefer to say in less harsh terms, to be accepted with the "natural piety" of the investigator.  It admits no explanation.

If, however, the emergent entities admit of no explanation, if their emergence is a brute fact, then claims of emergence are open to the 'poof' objection.  It would appear to be rather unbecoming of a hard-assed physicalist to simply announce that such-and-such has emerged when he can offer no explanation of how it has emerged.  If interactionist dualists are supposed to be embarrassed by questions as to how mind and body interact, then emergentists are in a similar boat.

That being said, "natural piety" is a beautiful phrase.

The Pairing Objection to Substance Dualism

As I understand the  Pairing Objection to substance dualism it goes like this.  Let m1 and m2 be mental tokens of type M and b1 and b2 brain tokens of type B, and suppose that M-type events cause B-type events. Suppose m1 and m2 both occur at time t, and b1 and b2 both occur at a slightly later time t*. Suppose further that m1 is in Tim's mind, m2 in Tom's mind, b1 in Tim's brain and b2 in Tom's brain. What makes it the case that m1 causes b1 rather than b2, and that m2 causes b2 rather than b1? What insures that m1 is paired with b1 and m2 with b2? How, on dualist interactionist assumptions, can we insure that the picture looks like this:

Nietzsche, Guilt, and Incoherence

I love reading Nietzsche, just as I love reading his opposite number, Kierkegaard. There is  much to admire in them: their stylistic brilliance, the penetration of their psychological insight, the singlemindedness of their quest for truth. They are about as far away as one can get from the mere professor of philosophy. Nevertheless, both were hell-bent on tangling themselves up in absurdities. Herewith, yet another example.

Execution. -- How is it that every execution offends us more than a murder? It is the coldness of the judges, the scrupulous preparation, the insight that here a human being is being used as a means of deterring others. For it is not the guilt that is being punished, even when it exists; this lies in educators, parents, environment, in us, not in the murderer – I mean the circumstances that caused him to become one. (Human, All Too Human (1878), vol. I, sec. 70, tr. Hollingdale.)

So it is not the criminal who is guilty, but the circumstances in which he arose. But if the criminal is not guilty, then no one and nothing is. Either there is guilt on both sides, or on neither side. It is incoherent to displace guilt from the criminal onto his environment. (And what is a hard-assed political reactionary like Nietzsche doing making a soft-headed liberal move like this?) What Nietzsche really wants to say is that that there is no guilt on either side, since “no one is accountable for his deeds...” (Sec. 39) But if so, then we are not accountable for our judging the criminal and punishing him. If he is a deterministic system, then so are we. It follows that it is absurd to say that we ought not punish him, or that “to judge is the same thing as to be unjust....” (Sec. 39) If there is no such thing as moral responsibility, then neither ‘just’ nor ‘unjust’ are words that apply to anything.

Why can’t Nietzsche appreciate this simple point? And in section 107, where he writes, “Everything is necessity.... Everything is innocence...,” why can’t he see that if all is necessity and there is no free will (cf. Sec. 102), then both ‘guilt’ and ‘innocence’ fail to apply to anything? Merely paradoxical formulations, or deep underlying confusion? I incline toward the latter view.

Nietzsche on Bentham, Mill, & Co.

"If we have our own why of life, we shall get along with almost any how. Man does not strive for pleasure; only the Englishman does." (Twilight of the Idols, "Maxims and Arrows," #12.)

The art of the aphorism at its best.

In all fairness to the English I should point out that it was an Englishman who provided what is perhaps the best refutation of hedonism we have, namely, F. H. Bradley in his "Pleasure For Pleasure's Sake"  in Ethical Studies.

Supervenience, Emergence, Mind, and Magic

Peter Lupu has come out in favor of emergentism in the philosophy of mind.  Here is an argument he could use to defend the thesis that mental properties are emergent properties:

1. Materialistic Anti-Dualism: Human beings are nothing more than complex material systems.

2. Anti-Reductivism: Mental properties are not identical to physical properties, nor do the former logically imply the latter.

3. Anti-Eliminativism: Human beings do in fact instantiate mental properties.

4. Anti-Panpsychism:  The basic constituents of the physical world do not have mental properties.

Therefore

5. Mental properties are emergent properties, which implies that there are emergent properties. 

The cases for (2) are (3) are overwhelming, so I consider them 'off the table.'  Peter agrees.  Panpsychism ought to be investigated, but Peter finds it highly implausible, so let's assume it to be false for the sake of this discussion.  The crucial premise -- the dialectical bone of contention if you will -- between Peter and me is (1).  He accepts (1) while I reject it.  It is worth noting that there are at least three ways of rejecting (1): by being a substance dualist, or an idealist (see John Foster's work), or a Thomistic hylomorphic dualist.  So I would argue from ~(5) to ~(1).  But for now we assume that (1) is true.

Does Emergence Help in Defending Religious Belief?

I coined the phrase 'ego surfari' some years ago. To go on ego surfari is to type one's name into a search engine in order to see what turns up. The results are often surprising. Today I found Does Emergence Help in Defending Religious Belief? by Sami Pihlström, Helsinki. Excerpt:

One of the few recent contributions in which the combination of (emergentist or supervenientist) physicalism and theism is seriously challenged is William Vallicella’s (1998). [Vallicella, W.F. 1998 “Could a Classical Theist Be a Physicalist?”, Faith and Philosophy 15, 160-180.] He rejects eliminativism, type-type identity theory, supervenientism, emergentism, and ”the constitution view” (i.e., the view that persons are materially constituted beings) as five ”theologically useless physicalisms” (163ff.). The argument is largely based on Kim’s criticism of nonreductive physicalism. Regarding emergentism (167- 170), Vallicella points out that even if the human soul were seen as an emergent substance or as having emergent properties, problems would remain, as neither divine nor angelic consciousness can be understood as emerging from matter, upon any Christian construal: ”It is analytic that emergence is emergence from a physical base, and in the case of God and angels classically conceived there is no physical base. Moreover, it is analytic that to emerge is to come into being, and God’s consciousness does not come into being” (169). Vallicella (170) also argues against Stump’s (1995) Aquinian suggestion of combining materialism and dualism (and the possibility of survival), insisting that an emergent property cannot continue to exist after the physical system whose property it is falls apart.

If a reconciliation of science and theism were possible through emergentism, this would constitute an intellectual breakthrough of enormous magnitude. No doubts about the cultural or generally human significance of the notion of emergence would remain. Unfortunately, the research program run by theistically inclined naturalists seems to me hopeless; as Vallicella (1998, 176) puts it, physicalism and theism are ”competing Weltanschauungen”. One problem with views seeking to reconcile them, and with the on-going discussion of emergence and theism in Zygon (and elsewhere), is – as in the systematically philosophical emergence literature we find elsewhere – an unargued commitment to strong metaphysical realism. It is presupposed that both scientific and religious language purport to refer to a fundamentally concept- and language-independent world and that, therefore, religion and science must be coherently fitted into one grand theory of the world, if we if we want to retain both. Against this assumption, a more Wittgensteinian-oriented thinker may argue that religion and science are different human practices (or groups of practices) with their characteristic normative structures. Quite different ”moves” are allowed in these different (families of) language-games; for example, the ”soul” allegedly rendered ”scientifically acceptable” in emergentism would hardly have a place in religious language-use.

Does Substance Dualism Explain Subjectivity? The Nagel-McGinn Parity Argument

In my humble opinion, materialist theories of mind are all of them quite hopeless. All of them founder on the reef of irreducible subjectivity. But is substance dualism in a better position than materialism when it comes to explaining the subjectivity of conscious experience?

Colin McGinn, drawing on Thomas Nagel, thinks that the same problem that afflicts the materialist returns to haunt the substance dualist. Now what was that problem again?

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Some 40's Proto-Rock

Freddie Slack and Will Bradley Trio (1940), Down the Road A Piece.

If you like to boogie woogie, I know the place.
It's just an old piano and a knocked out bass.
The drummer man's a guy they call Eight Beat Mack.
And you remember Doc and old "Beat Me Daddy" Slack.

Man it's better than chicken fried in bacon grease
Come along with me, boys, it's just down the road a piece.

Ella Mae Morse (1945), The House of Blue Lights.  Shows that 'square' and 'daddy-o' and 'dig' were already in use in the '40s.  I had been laboring under the misapprehension that this patois first surfaced in Beat/Beatnik circles in the '50s.

Classical Theism and Global Supervenience Physicalism

This is a paper I read at the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Boston, Massachusetts,  August 10-15, 1998. It explains the notions of strong and global supervenience, notions which will serve as foils in getting a handle on the concept of emergence.

ABSTRACT: Could a classical theist be a physicalist? Although a negative answer to this question may seem obvious, it turns out that a case can be made for the consistency of a variant of classical theism and global supervenience physicalism. Although intriguing, the case ultimately fails due to the weakness of global supervenience as an account of the dependence of mental on physical properties.

Physicalism is popular these days, and to a lesser extent so is classical theism. It should therefore come as no surprise that a number of theists are bent on combining theism with physicalism. But could a classical theist be a physicalist? Is this a coherent doctrinal combination? The classical theist affirms the metaphysically necessary existence of a concrete, purely spiritual being upon which every other concrete being is ontologically dependent. The physicalist, however, is committed to the proposition that everything, or at least everything concrete, is either physical or determined by the physical. To be a bit more precise, physicalism is usefully viewed as the conjunction of an 'inventory thesis' which specifies physicalistically admissible individuals and a 'determination thesis' which specifies physicalistically admissible properties.(1) What the inventory thesis says, at a first approximation, is that every concretum is either a physical item or composed of physical items. As for the determination thesis, what it says is that physical property-instantiations determine all other property-instantiations; equivalently, every nonphysical property-instantiation supervenes on physical property-instantiations. These rough characterizations suggest that theism and physicalism logically exclude one another. If God as classically conceived exists, then the inventory thesis is violated: not every concrete entity is either physical or composed of physical items. And if God exists, it would also appear that the determination thesis is flouted: God's instantiation of his omni-attributes does not supervene on His instantiation of any physical properties: He has none. So at first glance it seems almost crashingly obvious that the classical theist cannot be a physicalist.

But this talk cannot end just yet. For when we get down to the details of formulating precise versions of both the inventory and determination theses, it turns out that there is a way to attempt the reconciliation of theism and physicalism. It is the viability of this way that I aim to explore. But first some background.

Social Utility and the Life of the Mind: The Example of Complex Numbers

Much as I disagree with Daniel Dennett on most matters, I agree entirely with the following passage:

I deplore the narrow pragmatism that demands immediate social utility for any intellectual exercise. Theoretical physicists and cosmologists, for instance, may have more prestige than ontologists, but not because there is any more social utility in the satisfaction of their pure curiosity. Anyone who thinks it is ludicrous to pay someone good money to work out the ontology of dances (or numbers or opportunities) probably thinks the same thing about working out the identity of Homer or what happened in the first millionth of a second after the Big Bang. (Dennett and His Critics, ed. Dahlbom, Basil Blackwell 1993, p. 213. Emphasis in original.)

How Cyberpunks Argue

This thread is a representative sample. 

100+ Living Philosophers of Religion

A list.  (Via Victor Reppert)

Could I Be a Brain-Body Composite?

The upshot of an earlier argument was that I cannot be a soul-body composite. So if I have a soul, then I am identical with it. This is a conclusion that Roderick Chisholm also arrived at:

If we say that (1) I am a thinking being and (2) that thinking beings and souls are the same, then we should also say (3) that I am a soul; and therefore (if we take 'have' in its ordinary sense) we should say (4) that I do not have a soul. ("On the Simplicity of the Soul," Philosophical Perspectives 5, 1991, p. 178)

 

If this is right, then hylomorphic dualism is untenable as well as any substance-dualist position according to which I am a composite of two substances. If I have a soul, speaking loosely, then I don't have it, speaking strictly, but am identical to it. But why suppose that one either has or is a soul? Why can't one be a brain-body composite? For essentially the same reasons that I gave last time for my not being a soul-body composite.

First an argument to the conclusion that I am not identical to a brain-body composite, then an argument that I am not identical to my brain.

Could I Have Parts?

A strange question, but one to which sense can be attached. What I am asking is whether or not the self can be a composite entity, a whole of parts. Or am I a simple entity? The question has a dualist, a materialist, and an idealist form. Dualist: Could I be a mind-body or soul-body composite? Materialist: Could I be a brain-body composite? Idealist: Could I be a composite of items that are all of them of a spiritual nature? And if one is a dualist, the problem occurs in a compound form: given that both soul and body are composites, how can I be a composite of these two composites?

Let's confine ourselves to the dualist form of the question in its simple form: Could I be a soul-body composite? I will assume along with Thomas Aquinas and plenty of other distinguished thinkers that I am such a composite and then see what follows.

The Consequence Argument Against Compatibilism

Is the will free or determined? This is a crude way of posing the traditional problem of free will and determinism. But the traditional problem presupposes that free will and determinism are incompatible. Since this cannot be legitimately presupposed, the fundamental problem is the compatibility problem: Are free will and determinism compatible or incompatible?

I view them as incompatible, and, influenced by Kant, I see compatibilism as a 'shabby evasion' of the underlying difficulty. But since one cannot shame a philosophical position out of existence, pace Daniel Dennett, I had better present an argument. An argument one finds in the literature is the Consequence Argument. (See for example Peter van Inwagen's An Essay on Free Will.) Here is a version of it that draws upon van Inwagen and also this discussion by Tomis Kapitan.

The Value of Consciousness

If you are ever in Flagstaff, Arizona in search of a coffee house, I recommend Macy's.  I met up with Peter Lupu there on Saturday and an excellent discussion ensued fueled in part by by my triple espresso con panna and his triple latte.  We discussed consciousness, its existence, meaning, and value.

Five Years of Blogging

Actually, my 'blogiversary' was yesterday.  My inaugural post appeared on 4 May 2004.  My mind drifts back to some of my earliest acquaintances in the blogosphere. I am happy to see that most of them are still at it.  Here is a partial list:  Keith Burgess-Jackson; Gates of Vienna; Mangan's; Bill's Comments; Laudator Temporis Acti.

The erudite Dr. Michael Gilleland of Laudator Temporis Acti credits me with getting him going:

I started this blog just over three years ago, on May 10, 2004. Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, was my inspiration. When I look back at my posts for that first day, I see some themes which I have revisited over the years: Luddism, scatology, and solitude.

Like Mike, I am drawn to the callipygian, but have no interest in the scatological as such.  I suppose every man has his wobble.  One might argue that a blog that does not display a bit of a man's wobble is no blog at all.  What we scribble here is loose and chatty and a little confessional.  Ecce homo! warts and all. One debates with oneself as to the proper proportion of the personal to the impersonal.  Mike strikes a nice balance.  But I note yet another excursus into the scatological in his recent post, An Effect of Fear, which he introduces with a quotation from Pseudo-Aristotle.

And now to all and sundry: Blog on!

Could Freedom of the Will be an Illusion?

Could freedom of the will in the strong or unconditional 'could have done otherwise' sense be an illusion?

Suppose A and B are incompatible but possible courses of action, and I am deliberating as to whether I should do A or B. (Should I continue with this blogging business, or devote more time to less ephemeral pursuits?) Deliberating, I have the sense that it is up to me what happens. I have the sense that it is not the case that events prior to my birth, together with the laws of nature, necessitate that I do what I end up doing. Seriously deliberating, I presuppose the falsity of determinism. Determinism is the thesis that, given the actual past, and the actual laws of nature, there is only one possible future. When I seriously deliberate, however, my deliberation behavior manifests the belief that there is more than one possible future, and that it is up to me which of these possible futures becomes actual. There is the possible future in which I hike tomorrow morning and blog in the afternoon and the equipossible future in which I blog tomorrow morning and hike in the afternoon. And which becomes actual depends on me.

Weak and Strong Readings of 'Could Have Done Otherwise'

Determinism is the view that whatever happens is determined by antecedent conditions under the aegis of the laws of nature. Equivalently, past facts, together with the laws of nature, entail all future facts. It follows that facts before one's birth, via the laws of nature, necessitate what one does now. The necessitation here is causal, not logical. Could a determinist have a use for 'could have done otherwise'? Yes, if he gives the phrase a weak or conditional interpretation. No, if he gives it a strong or unconditional interpretation.

WEAK READING. Agent A could have done otherwise than action X =_df A would have done other than X had A had a sufficiently strong desire to do other than X (or had a sufficiently strong desire together with a different set of background beliefs, etc.)

Example. A man insults me and I insult him back. Could I have "turned the other cheek" and done otherwise? Yes, under conditions like the following. Had I been a better man, I would have let the insult pass unanswered. If I had not perceived the insult, I would not have answered it. If I had had a desire to impress a bystander with how forebearing I am, I would have remained silent. And so on.

STRONG READING. Agent A could have done other than X =_df A could have done other than X even if every factor prior to X had been the same.

I will use 'could have done otherwise' only in the STRONG sense. This will allow me to define libertarian freedom (L-freedom) in terms of 'could have done otherwise': An agent A is L-free in respect of action X =df (i) A performs X; (ii) A could have done otherwise. It is clear that L-freedom is incompatible with determinism. For if I am L-free in respect of just one action, then it is not the case that whatever happens is causally necessitated by antecedent conditions via the laws of nature.

Nietzsche on Causa Sui and Free Will

Beyond Good and Evil, sec. 21 (tr. W. Kaufmann):

The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far, it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic; but the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with just this nonsense. The desire for "freedom of the will" in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated; the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one's actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance and society involves nothing less than to be precisely this causa sui and, with more than Muenchhausen's audacity, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness.

It is easy to be seduced by the beauty and energy of Nietzsche's prose into thinking that he is talking sense when he is not. The above excerpt is a case in point. Let's take a long hard logical squint at it.

Life Without Questioning

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book One, Section Two (tr. Kaufmann):

. . . to stand in the midst of this rerum concordia discors [discordant concord of things: Horace, Epistles, I.12.19] and of this whole marvelous uncertainty and rich ambiguity of existence without questioning, without trembling with the craving and the rapture of such questioning, without at least hating the person who questions, perhaps even finding him faintly amusing -- this is what I feel to be contemptible . . .

My sentiments exactly.