Maverick Philosopher

Souls and Murder

 A guest post by Peter Lupu.  Comments in blue by BV.

If there are immortal souls, would murder be a grave moral breach?

1) Theists, like their atheist adversaries, consider murder a severe breach of morality. Unlike causing a minor physical injury to another or damaging or even completely destroying their home, car, or other belongings, murder is considered to be an altogether different matter. The emphasis upon the moral gravity of murder compared to these other moral infractions is, of course, justified and the justification rests in large part upon the finality and irreversible nature of the consequences for the victim. We can perhaps put these consequences as follows: once dead, always dead! Compared to those other infractions where we can perhaps assess the damage and convert such assessment into some sort of tangible remedy, we have no clue how to even begin such appraisal of harm when it comes to a matter such as ceasing to exist forever. If death would have been a temporary state, such as a long sleep for instance, from which one returns into being once again, I am certain we would have found a way to assess the damage done and assign suitable remedy. But, of course, death is not a temporary state such as sleep. Or is it?

Causal Interaction: A Problem for the Materialist Too!

Ed Feser has been giving Paul Churchland a well-deserved drubbing over at his blog and I should like to join in on the fun, at least in the in the first main paragraph of this post.

One of the standard objections to substance dualism in the philosophy of mind is that the substance dualist cannot account for mind-body and body-mind causal interaction. I have already quoted Dennett and Searle to this effect. Here is Paul M. Churchland repeating for the umpteenth time a standard piece of materialist boilerplate:

How is this utterly insubstantial 'thinking substance' to have any influence on ponderous matter? How can two such different things be in any sort of causal contact? (Matter and Consciousness, p. 9)

 

Churchland apparently thinks that a substance, to be 'substantial,' must be material. Churchland thereby betrays his inability to conceive of (which is not the same as to imagine) an immaterial substance.  Note that 'immaterial substance'  is not an oxymoron like 'immaterial matter.' Feser in his series of posts shows just how ignorant Churchland is of the history of philosophy, so it is no surprise that he cannot wrap his eliminativist head around the concept of substance as used by Descartes et al.   But let that pass. The issue for now is simply this: How can two things belonging to radically disjoint ontological categories be in causal contact? But here again, Churchland seems to be laboring under a false assumption, namely, that causation must involve contact between cause and effect. But why should we think that this 'billiards ball' model of causation fits every type of causation? Why must we think of causation as itself a physical process whereby a physical magnitude such as energy is transferred from one physical object to another? On regularity and  counterfactual theories of causation there is no difficulty in principle with the notion of a causal relation obtaining between two events that do not make physical contact.

BlogWatch: Anecdotal Evidence

From the masthead: A blog about the intersection of books and life.  By Patrick Kurp, Bellevue, Washington.  Excerpt from a recent post:

I’m reading more than at almost any time in my life but spending less time reading online. The two facts have a common source – a festering impatience with shoddy writing. My literary gut, when young, was goat-like -- tough and indiscriminate. I read everything remotely of interest and felt compelled to finish every book I started. This makes sense: Everything was new, and how could I knowledgeably sift wheat from chaff without first milling, baking and ingesting? Literary prejudice, in a healthy reader, intensifies with age. I know and trust my tastes, and no longer need to read William Burroughs to figure out he wrote sadistic trash.

I've read my fair share of Burroughs and I concur that his stuff is trash: Junkie, Naked Lunch, The Soft Machine, Exterminator.  All in my library.  But there is a place for literary trash.  It has its uses as do the pathologist's  slides and samples.  But put on your mental gloves before handling the stuff. 

A Contrarian I Once Knew

I once knew a highly contrary fellow. But he was intelligent and interesting and I enjoyed talking with him on occasion. If I asserted proposition p, he would more likely than not assert not-p. If I asserted not-p, then I could expect to hear the assertion of p.

One day I said, "You know, John, you are a really contrary fellow!"

He shot back, "No I’m not!"

What's Wrong with Kitsch and Sentimentality?

April Stevens' and Nino Tempo's version of  Deep Purple  became a number one hit in 1963. I liked it when it first came out, and I've enjoyed it ever since. A while back I happened to hear it via Sirius satellite radio and was drawn into it like never before. But its lyrics, penned by Mitchell Parish, are pure sweet kitsch:

When the deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls
And the stars begin to twinkle in the night
Through the mist of a memory you wander back to me
Breathing my name with a sigh.

In the still of the night once again I hold you tight
Though you're gone, your love lives on when moonlight beams
And as long as my heart will beat, sweet lover we'll always meet
Here in my deep purple dreams.

Kitsch is bad art, but what is the essence of kitsch, and why is it bad? Presumably it is sentimentality that makes kitsch kitsch, and it is this sentimentality that makes kitsch aesthetically and perhaps even morally dubious. One self-indulgently 'wallows' in a song like this, giving into its 'cheap' emotions. The emotions are 'false' and 'faked.' The melody and lyrics are formulaic and predictable, 'catchy.' The listener allows himself to be manipulated by the songwriter who is out to 'push the listener's buttons.' The aesthetic experience is not authentic but vicarious. And so on. Adorno would not approve.

There is great art and there is kitsch. I partake of both, enjoy both, and know the difference. What is wrong with a little kitsch in moderation? No, I don't collect Hummel figurines and my stoa is not carpeted with astroturf. What is sentimentality and what is wrong with it? There is a literature on this, but I've read almost none of it. Who has time? No job, no kids, no social entanglements -- and still no time.

A Death Poem for Year's End

As another year slips away, a year that saw the passing of John Updike, here is a fine poem of his to celebrate or mourn the waning days of ought-nine:

Perfection Wasted

And another regrettable thing about death
is the ceasing of your own brand of magic,
which took a whole life to develop and market ——
the quips, the witticisms, the slant
adjusted to a few, those loved ones nearest
the lip of the stage, their soft faces blanched
in the footlight glow, their laughter close to tears,
their tears confused with their diamond earrings,
their warm pooled breath in and out with your heartbeat,
their response and your performance twinned.
The jokes over the phone. The memories packed
in the rapid-access file. The whole act.
Who will do it again? That's it: no one;
imitators and descendants aren't the same.

Commentary

Viewed from a third-person point of view, death seems entirely natural, not evil or tragic.  Deciduous trees give up their leaves in the fall, but new ones arrive in the spring.  Where's the evil in that? We too are parts of nature; we hang for a time from des Lebens goldener Baum, and then we drop off.  So far there has never been a lack of new specimens to take our places in a universe that can get on quite well without any of us.   But "imitators and descendants aren't the same."  No indeed, for what dies when we die is not merely an animal, not merely a bit of biology, not merely a specimen of a species, a replaceable token of a type, but a subject of experience, a self, an irreplaceable  conscious individual, a being capable of saying and meaning 'I.'  "Who will do it again?"  No one!  I am unique and it took me a lifetime to get to this level of haecceity and ipseity.  This interiority wasn't there at first; I had to make it.  I became who I am by my loving and striving and willing and knowing: I actualized myself as a self.  It was a long apprenticeship that led to this mastery.  If I did a good job of it I perfected, completed, mastered, myself: I achieved my own incommunicable  perfection, which cannot be understood objectively, but only subjectively by a being who loves.  In the first instance that is me:  I love myself and as loving myself I know myself.  In the second instance, it is you if you love me; loving me you know me as an individual, not as a specimen of a species, a token of a type, an instance of a universal, an object among objects.  There were all those outside influences, of course, but they would have been nothing to me had I not appropriated them, making them my own.  As a somewhat greater poet once wrote, Was du ererbt von Deinen Vätern hast, erwirb es, um es zu besitzen.

And so therein lies death's sting: not in the passing of a bit of biology, but in the wasting of that unique and incommunicable perfection, the instant evaporation of that ocean of interiority.  But is the perfection wasted?  Does the magic just cease?  The animal ceases no doubt, but the magic of interiority?  These questions remain open.

Is Obesity a Disease?

Long-time reader Bob Koepp e-mails:

Since, for me, exploring the concepts of 'health' and 'disease' is a minor hobby, I couldn't resist commenting on your recent "How to Lose Weight." While I agree with what I take to be your moral point, I think your argument goes off the rails when you consider the "disease status" of obesity.

For what it's worth, 'obesity' has traditionally been used by the medical community to refer to an overweight condition that is pathological, i.e., that interferes with natural functional processes. I know that colloquially 'disease' is a much narrower category than 'medical pathology,' but it's because diseases are pathological conditions that they contrast with the condition of healthfulness. That obesity (usually) results from voluntary acts and/or omissions isn't relevant to it's status as a pathological condition. And, of course, even if the fact that something is a pathological condition is sufficient to mobilize medical concern (questionable in itself...), it isn't enough to underwrite political action!

Bob makes an excellent point here.  Since I am always going on about the importance of using terms precisely, I have to accept his point that 'obesity' used as a (relatively) precise medical term stands for a pathological condition, and is therefore a disease, despite the fact that it results from voluntary acts and omissions.  So I should agree, contrary to what I said earlier, that there is an epidemic of obesity.  But I stand pat on the point that there is no call for political action, a point on which Bob seems to agree.

 

"Have You Read Them All?"

It is not unusual for a non-bookman, upon entering the book-lined domicile of a bookman, to crack, "Have you read them all?"  The quip smacks of a veiled accusation of hypocrisy, the suggestion being that the bookman is making a false show of an erudition and well-readedness the likes of which  he does not possess.  I invariably reply, "This is no show library, this is a working library."  That tends to shut 'em up.

A nephew gave me a coffee cup inscribed thusly: "A room without books is like a body without a soul."  The attribution was to Cicero, but one learns to take such attributions cum grano salis.   Whatever the quotation's source, it sums up the matter well.

Intellectual Maturity

One mark of intellectual maturity  is the ability to tolerate uncertainty, the ability to withhold assent, the ability to withstand contradiction and recognize the merit of opposing views -- all of this without lapsing into skepticism or relativism.  The intellectually immature, by contrast, bristle when their pieties and subjective certainties are called into question.  Their doxastic security needs trump their need to inquire into the truth.

Institutions and Corruption

Every institution is either corrupt or will be. Institutions are like the houses where I live: they either have termites or they will get them.

A More Profitable Question

Do not ask whether there is immortality unless you are prepared to ask whether you are worthy of it.

Independent Thought About Ultimates

Such thinking is not in the service of self-will or subjective opining, but in the service of submission to a higher authority. We think for ourselves in order to find a truth that is not from ourselves, but from reality. The idea is to become dependent on reality, rather than on institutional and social distortions of reality. Independence subserves a higher dependence.

It is worth noting that thinking for oneself is no guarantee that one will arrive at truth.  Far from it.  The world is littered with conflicting opinions  generated from the febrile heads of people with too much trust in their own powers.  But neither is submission to an institution's authority any assurance of safe passage to the harbour of truth.  Both the one who questions authority and the one who submits to it can end up on a reef.  'Think for yourself' and 'Submit to authority' are both onesided pieces of advice.

You thought things were easy?

How To Roast Oneself in Five Different Ways

The infernal hike of 28 August 2005  began at 5:20 AM at first light, that phase of dawn at which one can just make out the trail and its hazards. Sunrise was about forty minutes off. If one hopes to survive a desert hike in August, especially in environs as rugged and unforgiving as the Superstition Wilderness, one does well to start at first light and be finished by high noon. I once finished such a hike around two or three in the afternoon with the distinct impression that I had pushed the envelope about as far as possible.

It is a curious sensation to feel oneself being slowly roasted in five different ways.

There is first of all the air temperature. Today's for example was 112 degrees Fahrenheit at its high. At any temperature above 90 the human body starts to absorb heat through the skin.

Then there is conduction. One gains heat by contact with the ground, rocks, ledges, anything one touches while hiking or climbing if the object is hotter than 90 degrees.

In third place comes convection. Hot air blows against the skin and imparts heat to the body. Even a slight breeze at 112 degrees has quite an effect.

Fourth, there is solar radiation. Once up, Old Sol beats down unmercifully, which is why I wear a long-sleeved white shirt and a broad-brimmed hat. My legs remain exposed, though, since hiking in long pants is unbearably confining.

Finally, there is metabolism. The internal organs and the muscles at work generate body heat.

I finished at 11:10 with the day's high of 112 degrees Fahrnheit fast approaching. I was well-roasted and dehydrated, but very satisfied with the five hours and fifty minutes I spent hiking over washed-out, overgrown, ankle-busting trails.

I concur with Colin Fletcher: Hiking is "a delectable madness, very good for sanity, and I recommend it with passion." (The Complete Walker III, p. 3)

How to Lose Weight

I don’t doubt that Americans are the fattest people in the world. Some years back I landed at New York’s JFK airport after a year in Turkey. Walking from the plane into the terminal, and without having given any thought to the matter, the first thing that struck me was how obese Americans are.

Many are now speaking of an ‘epidemic’ of obesity in the USA as if obesity were a disease. This is liberal nonsense, of course, and needs to be exposed as such. It is nonsense raised to the second power when calls are issued for Federal programs to combat the problem. First of all, obesity is not a disease, but a condition caused and maintained by the voluntary act of overeating. No doubt, some people have more of a propensity to put on weight than others: basal metabolic rates and other factors vary from person to person. But this does nothing to change the fact that one’s weight depends on the quality and quantity of what one freely shovels into one’s mouth. Second, obesity is a personal problem to be solved at the personal level. The last thing we need are more Federal programs.

I’m here to give you the straight skinny, in four monosyllables, and with my famous double your money back if not entirely satisfied guarantee. Eat less, move more.

CORRECTION (12/28): Here.

How to Become Wealthy Overnight

John Blofeld, Beyond the Gods: Buddhist and Taoist Mysticism (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1974), p. 153:

For the sake of wealth, people already well above the poverty line slave all their lives, not realising that withdrawal from the rat-race would immediately increase rather than diminish their wealth. Obviously anyone who finds the full satisfaction of all his material desires well within his means can be said to be wealthy; it follows that, except by the truly poor, wealth can be achieved overnight by a change of mental attitude that will set bounds to desires. As Laotzu put it, "He who is contented always has enough."

How to Avoid God

C. S. Lewis, "The Seeing Eye" in Christian Reflections (Eeerdmans, 1967), pp. 168-167:

Avoid silence, avoid solitude, avoid any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Concentrate on money, sex, status, health and (above all) on your own grievances. Keep the radio on. Live in a crowd. Use plenty of sedation. If you must read books, select them very carefully. But you'd be safer to stick to the papers. You'll find the advertisements helpful; especially those with a sexy or a snobbish appeal.

How the World is Like Chess

A wise saying about chess, often attributed to Goethe, but apocryphal for all I know, goes like this. "For a game it is too serious, and for seriousness too much of a game."

Something similar is true of the world. The world is is too real, too much with us, for us to detach ourselves from it easily; but it is too deficient in being to satisfy us. One cannot take it with utmost seriousness, and one cannot dismiss it as a mere game either. "For a game it is too serious, and for seriousness too much of a game."

How the Left Sees the Right

David Horowitz, Left Illusions: An Intellectual Odyssey (Spence, 2003), p. 273:

The image of the right that the left has concocted -- authoritarian, reactionary, bigoted, mean-spirited -- is an absurd caricature that has no relation to modern conservatism or to the reality of the people I have come to know in my decade-long movement along the political spectrum -- or to the way I see myself. Except for a lunatic fringe, American conservatism is not about "blood and soil" nostalgia or conspiracy paranoia, which figure so largely in imaginations that call themselves "liberal," but are anything but. Modern American conservatism is a reform movement that seeks to reinvent free markets and limited government and to restore somewhat traditional values. Philosophically, conservatism is more accurately seen as a species of liberalism itself -- and would be more often described in this way were it not for the hegemony the left exerts in the political culture and its appropriation of the term "liberal" to obscure its radical agenda.

I've bolded the crucial thought. Note the qualifier 'modern American.' One of the reasons the original neocons (Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, et al.) called themselves such was to differentiate their classically liberal position from the leftism into which liberalism was transmogrifying. Of course, there is much to discuss here. There is a paleocon element in contemporary American conservatism to which Horowitz is perhaps not sufficiently attending. But this is a huge topic . . . .

How Philosophers Should Greet One Another

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 80:

Der Gruss der Philosophen unter einander sollte sein: "Lass Dir Zeit!"

This is how philosophers should greet each other: "Take your time!"

A similar thought is to be found in Franz Brentano, though I have forgotten where he says this:

Wer eilt, bewegt sich nicht auf dem Boden der Wissenschaft.

One who hurries is not proceeding on a scientific basis.

Philosoblogging, I should think, is one way to avoid hurrying things into print: one tests one's ideas in the crucible of the 'sphere before submitting them to a journal.

Go For Broke and Die with Your Boots On

Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir, pp. 56-57:

Moore's health was quite good in 1946-47, but before that he had suffered a stroke and his doctor had advised that he should not become greatly excited or fatigued. Mrs. Moore enforced that prescription by not allowing Moore to have a philosophical discussion with anyone for longer than one hour and a half. Wittgenstein was extremely vexed by this regulation. He believed that Moore should not be supervised by his wife. He should discuss as long as he liked. If he became excited or tired and had a stroke and died -- well, that would be a decent way to die: with his boots on. Wittgenstein felt that it was unseemly that Moore, with his great love for truth, should be forced to break off a discussion before it had reached its proper end. I think that Wittgenstein's reaction to this regulation was very characteristic of his outlook on life. A human being should do the thing for which he has a talent with all of his energy his life long, and should never relax this devotion to his job merely in order to prolong his existence. This platonistic attitude was manifested again two years later when Wittgenstein, feeling that he was losing his own talent, questioned whether he should continue to live. (Emphasis added)

Yes!  No wife, only fair Philosophia herself, should preside over and super-vise a philosophical discussion.  If an interlocutor should  expire in the heat of the dialectic, well then, that is a good way to quit the phenomenal sphere. 

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

"The sky is the daily bread of the eyes," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson magnificently and truly. And this from a man who lived in New England where there is no sky to speak of. What would he have written had he been able to bathe his thoughts in the lambent light of the desert Southwest?

Give In or Stand One's Ground?

Should we give in to others or stand our ground? It depends on the circumstances. It is foolish to try to conciliate or accommodate someone who will be made worse by our conciliation, someone who will be emboldened in his wrongdoing. Conciliation in such a case becomes appeasement. There were bullies in the schoolyard who deserved and were improved by the punches we threw. Criminals, for a second example, must be opposed to the point of killing them if necessary. And the same goes for terrorists. Oppose them, and oppose them resolutely, even unto killing them en masse, but with detachment. We will recall that Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita enjoins the warrior to kill with detachment.

But in other cases one should give in and not insist, not even on one's rights. One should seize the opportunity for self-denial. Thereby one profits oneself and sets a good example for others. "The last shall be first and the first shall be last."

Who knows which case is which? The one with good judgment knows.

Germans as Luftmenschen

Here is a delightful little passage from Brand Blanshard's outstanding essay, "The Philosophic Enterprise," in Bontempo and Odell, eds., The Owl of Minerva: Philosophers on Philosophy, p. 170. Don't take the passage too seriously, especially you denizens of the Land von Dichter und Denker.

It used to be said that to the English had been given the realm of the sea, to the French the domain of the land, and to the Germans the kingdom of the air; this meant of course the stratosphere, where philosophers are supposed to live, and indeed have been living ever since Thales wandered abroad with his head in the clouds and fell into a well.

The Philosopher as Luftmensch

Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (Penguin, 2002), p. 11:

Philosophy today gets no respect. Many scientists use the term as a synonym for effete speculation. When my colleague Ned Block told his father that he would major in the subject, his father's reply was "Luft!" — Yiddish for "air." And then there's the joke in which a young man told his mother that he would become a Doctor of Philosophy and she said, "Wonderful! But what kind of disease is philosophy?"

 

Well, to adapt a chess player's expression, better to make Luft than to make war! (One 'makes Luft' in chess by moving a pawn in front of the castled king's position as prophylaxis against back rank mate.)

As for 'Doctor of Philosophy,' 'doctor,' etymologically, means teacher (from L. docere, to teach) and 'philosophy' stands in for knowledge or science broadly construed. Thus as late as the 19th century, physicists were still referred to as natural philosophers. 'Ph.D.,' of course, abbreviates Doctor of Philosophy, which is why it is an abomination to see it written as 'PHD.' And when a Ph.D does it it is doubly abominable. But then I'm a linguistic conservative, as well as every other kind of conservative.

In fairness to Pinker, I should point out that after citing the above anecdotes he goes on to say some words in defense of philosophy

George C. Scott as Ebeneezer Scrooge

The best portrayal for my money. My favorite scene: the confrontation with Marley's ghost. "You are bit of undigested beef, a piece of underdone potato. There is more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are." The rattling of Marley's chains puts an end to Ebeneezer's doxastic voluntarism.

Merry Scroogemas!

In this season especially we ought to find a kind word to say about the much maligned Ebeneezer Scrooge. Here's mine: Without Scrooge, the sexually prolific  Cratchit wouldn't have a job and be able to support his brood!  This thought is developed by Michael Levin in In Defense of Scrooge.

And is there not something preternaturally knuckleheaded about the calls from some liberals that  the presentation of Dicken's masterpiece be banned? They ought to consider that there is more anti-Capitalism in it than Christianity -- an irony that no doubt escapes their shallow pates. 

Minimalist and Maximalist Modes of Holiday Impersonality

'Tis the season for the letter carriers of the world to groan under their useless burdens of impersonal greetings.

Impersonality in the minimalist style may take the form of a store-bought card with a pre-fabricated message to which is appended an embossed name. A step up from this is a handwritten name. Slightly better still is the nowadays common family picture with handwritten name but no message.

The maximalist style is far worse. Now we are in for a lengthy litany of the manifold accomplishments of the sender and his family which litany may run to a page or two of single-spaced text.

One size fits all.  No attempt to address any one person as a person.

"It's humbug, I tell you, humbug!"

When Is an Identification an Elimination, and When Not? Idealism and Eliminativism not in the Same Logical Boat

A reader, recently deployed to Afghanistan, finds time to raise an objection that I will put in my own words to make it as forceful as possible:

You endorsed William Lycan's Moorean refutation of eliminative materialism, but then you criticized him for thinking that Moorean appeals to common sense are also effective against  standard idealist claims such as Berkeley's thesis that the objects of ordinary outer perception are clusters of ideas.  You maintained that there is a crucial difference between the characteristic claims of eliminativists (e.g., that there are no beliefs, desires, intentions, pleasures, pains, etc.) and the characteristic claims of idealists (e.g., Berkeley's thesis just mentioned, McTaggart's thesis of the unreality of time, Bradley's of the unreality of relations.)  The difference is that between denying the existence of some plain datum, and giving an account of a plain datum, an account which presupposes, and so does not deny, the datum in question.  In effect, you insisted on a distinction between identifying Xs as Ys, and denying the existence of Xs.  Thus, you think that there is an important difference between identifying  pains with brain states, and denying that there are pains; and identifying stones and physical objects generally with collections of ideas in the mind of God and denying that there are physical objects.  But in other posts you have claimed that there are identifications which collapse into eliminations.  I seem to recall your saying that to identify God with an unconscious anthropomorphic projection, in the manner of Ludwig Feuerbach, amounts to a denial of the existence of God, as opposed to a specification of what God is.  Similarly, 'Santa Claus is a fictional character' does not tell us  what Santa Claus is; it denies his very existence.

Now why couldn't Lycan argue that this is exactly what is going on in the idealist case?  Why couldn't he say that to identify stones and such with clusters of ideas in the mind of God is to deny the existence of stones?  Just as God by his very nature (whether or not this nature is exemplifed) could not be an anthropomorphic projection, so too, stones by their very nature as physical objects could not be clusters of ideas, not even clusters of divine ideas.

It seems you owe us an account of why the reduction of physical objects to clusters of ideas is not an identification that collapses into an elimination.  If you cannot explain why it does not so collapse, then Lycan and Co. will be justifed in deploying their Moorean strategy against both EM-ists and idealists.  They could argue, first, that idealism is eliminationism about common sense data, and then appeal to common sense to reject the elimination.

Greco on Stroud on Moore on the External World with a Shot at Stove

John Greco (How to Reid Moore) finds Barry Stroud's interpretation of G. E. Moore's proof of an external world implausible:

According to him [Stroud], the question as to whether we know anything about the external world can be taken in an internal or an external sense. In the internal sense, the question can be answered from “within” one’s current knowledge —- hence one can answer it by pointing out some things that one knows, such as that here is a hand. In the external sense, however, the question is put in a “detached” and “philosophical” way.

If we have the feeling that Moore nevertheless fails to answer the philosophical question about our knowledge of external things, as we do, it is because we understand that question as requiring a certain withdrawal or detachment from the whole body of our knowledge of the world. We recognize that when I ask in that detached philosophical way whether I know that there are external things, I am not supposed to be allowed to appeal to other things I think I know about external things in order to help me settle the question.5

According to Stroud, Moore’s proof is a perfectly good one in response to the internal question, but fails miserably in response to the external or “philosophical” question. In fact, Stroud argues, Moore’s failure to respond to the philosophical question is so obvious that it cries out for an explanation -- hence Malcolm’s and Ambroses’s ordinary language interpretations. Stroud offers a different explanation for Moore’s failure to address the philosophical question: “He [i.e. Moore] resists, or more probably does not even feel, the pressure towards the philosophical project as it is understood by the philosophers he discusses.”6 Or again, “we are left with the conclusion that Moore really did not understand the philosopher’s assertions in any way other than the everyday ‘internal’ way he seems to have understood them.”7 The problem with this interpretation, of course, is that it makes Moore out to be an idiot. Is it really possible that Moore, the great Cambridge philosopher, did not understand that other philosophers were raising a philosophical question? (bolding added)

Can One See that One is Not a Brain-in-a-Vat?

John Greco, How to Reid Moore:

So how does one know that one is not a brain in a vat, or that one is not deceived by an evil demon? Moore and Reid are for the most part silent on this issue. But a natural extension of their view is that one knows it by perceiving it. In other words, I know that I am not a brain in a vat because I can see that I am not. [. . .] Just as I can perceive that some animal is not a dog, one might think, I can perceive that I am not a brain in a vat. (21)

Really?

Of Berkeley's Stones and the Eliminativist's Beliefs

I lately endorsed William Lycan's Moorean refutation of eliminative materialism (EM). But I disagreed with Lycan on one point.  Lycan thinks that Moorean arguments refute Bradley and McTaggart and that there is no essential difference between the characteristic claims of the British Idealists and the characteristic claims of eliminativists in the philosophy of mind: both deny what common sense must affirm.  I believe he is  wrong about this, and I will now try to show why.  It seems that there are three main positions on this issue.  To have some handy labels, I will call them R, L, and V.

R.  Just as Berkeley cannot be refuted by kicking a stone, the eliminativist cannot be refuted in any simple Moorean manner.  Idealist and eliminativist claims are in the same logical boat, a boat that cannot be sunk by Moorean torpedoes.

L. British and other idealists can be refuted in Moorean ways, and so can eliminativists in the philosophy of mind.  Idealist and eliminativist claims are in the same logical boat, a boat that is exposed to Moorean attack.

V. The 'same logical boat' assumption made by R and V must be rejected. There is a crucial difference between what eliminativists are doing  and what idealists are doing.  The idealist does not deny the existence of physical objects, or time, or relations.  Berkeley, for example, does not deny the existence of stones and other meso-particulars.  He offers a theory of their ontological constitution.  His question is not whether they are, but what they are.  His answer, roughly, is that stones and trees and the like are bundles or collections of ideas.  Thus he gives an immaterialist account of ordinary particulars.  They exist all right, but their status is mind-dependent, the ultimate mind in question being God's. 

The eliminativist, however, flatly denies the existence of mental items such as pains, desires, and beliefs.  It should be obvious, then, that there is an important difference between what idealists do and what eliminativists do.  Idealist accounts are not existence-denying, but they do have an ontologically demoting upshot.  If physical object are mind-dependent in the Berkeleyan manner, then they cannot exist in themselves, but only in relation to another, God, who exists in himself.  Idealism thus reduces the being-status of  physical objects from what it would be on a realist approach.  The eliminativist, by contrast,  is not engaged in ontological demotion, but in flat-out denial.  He does not say of beliefs that they are mind-dependent, or mere appearances, or less than ultimately real; what he says is that they don't exist at all.  If the eliminativist said that mental items exist as appearances he would be giving up the game. A pain, e.g., is such that to be = to appear.  If you admit the appearance of a mental event such as a pain, you admit its reality.

Whatever the objections that can be lodged against Berkeleyan idealism, it cannot be refuted by kicking a stone.  But eliminative materialism can be refuted by simply noting that one desires a beer.  Moorean arguments are worthless when deployed against the positions of the great idealists, and this for the reason that the prosaic Moore simply did not understand what they were arguing.  But when someone denies a plain datum, then he does run up against common sense in an objectionable way.

'Merry Xmas'

When I was eight years old or so and first took note of the phrase 'Merry Xmas,' my piety was offended by what I took to be the removal of 'Christ' from 'Christmas' only to be replaced by the universally recognized symbol for an unknown quantity, 'X.' But it wasn't long before I realized that the 'X' was merely a font-challenged typesetter's attempt at rendering the Greek Chi, an ancient abbreviation for 'Christ.' There is therefore nothing at all offensive in the expression 'Xmas.' Year after year, however, certain ignorant Christians who are old enough to know better make the mistake that I made when I was eight and corrected when I was ten. See here.

It just now occurs to me that 'Xmas' may be susceptible of a quasi-Tillichian reading.  Paul Tillich is famous for his benighted definition of 'God' as 'whatever is one's ultimate concern.' Well, take the 'X' in 'Xmas' as a variable the values of which are whatever one wants to celebrate at this time of year. So for some, 'Xmas' will amount to Solsticemas, for burglars Swagmas, for materialists Lootmas, for gluttons Foodmas, for inebriates Hoochmas, and for ACLU extremists Antichristianitymas.

A reader suggests some further constructions:

For those who love the capitol of the Czech Republic: Pragmas. For Dutch Reformed theologians of Frisian extraction who think Christmas is silly: Hoekemas. For Dutch Reformed philosophy professors of Frisian extraction who like preserves on their toast: Jellemas. For fans of older British sci-fi flicks: Quatermas. For those who buy every special seasonal periodical they can get their hands on: Magmas. One could probably multiply such examples ad nauseum, so I won't.

How could an ACLU bonehead object to 'Xmas' so construed? No doubt he would find a way.

Merry Chimas to all, and to all a good night.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Some Christmas Tunes

Elvis Presley and Martina McBride, Blue Christmas.  And can we call it Christmas until we've heard Porky Pig's version at least once? Or Cheech and Chong's Santa Claus and His Old Lady?  Must Be Santa but can it be Dylan?  Santa Claus is Coming to Town by the best of the YouTube amateurs, the amazing Fretkillr.  Leon Redbone and Dr. John's Frosty the Snowman.

Eliminative Materialism and Belief: Another Wrinkle

I've made it clear that I think eliminative materialism (EM) is a "lunatic philosophy of mind" to borrow a phrase from A. W. Collins.  Peter Lupu basically agrees though he may not care to put the point in such an intemperate way.  What follows is an excerpt from a recent e-mail of his.  Since I want to be fair to EM-ists, I want to suggest a way they may be able to counter the following objection Peter raises.

You're So Vain, You Prob'ly Think This Post is About You

But it isn't! Permit me to explain.

I've been at the blogging game for going on six years now, and on at least a dozen occasions I have had people say or suggest that a certain post was directed at him or her. Well, we are all vain, and we all take the measure of events in their relation to our dear old selves. So you read one of my posts and you think, "Is he trying to get back at me?" But I'm an idea man, not a people person, and so my posts are about ideas always and primarily and about people only sometimes and secondarily. And if they are about specific people I say so.

Just so everything is perfectly clear, my title is a takeoff on the refrain of a quasi-eponymous Carly Simon number from the early '70s. I am not saying de re of any particular person, Tom, Dick, or Mary, or anyone, that he or she is vain. I am saying de dicto that all of the seed of Adam are vain sons-of-bitches.

A Big Ego

An inflated ego may manifest itself in ostentation, self-promotion, and domination of others.  But it is no less manifested by oversensitivity to the slights, real or imagined, of the ostentatious, the self-promoting, and the domineering.

The Company You Keep

You will be judged by the company you keep ^___ and the company you keep away from.

Antagonize Parsimoniously

Do not multiply enemies beyond necessity.

No Pun Intended

Ah, but it had to have been intended because you were aware of it and let it stand. Otherwise you would not have uttered 'no pun intended.'   The difference between 'pun intended' and 'no pun intended'  is merely verbal.

Young Scholar, Old Scholar

The young scholar may pepper his prose with foreign expressions so as to appear erudite. But as the years pass, a different ideal may appear choice-worthy, namely, to write as simply as possible, using only the resources of the mother tongue.

Lycan's Moorean Argument Against Eliminative Materialism

The following is from  William G. Lycan, A PARTICULARLY COMPELLING  REFUTATION OF ELIMINATIVE MATERIALISM:

[. . .] I contend that the Eliminativist is refuted by Moore's technique, in just the same way as was the temporal idealist. The argument will now be quite straightforward:  Numerous common-sense mental ascriptions, such as that Granny wants a beer and believes there is one under the sofa, are individually more plausible, and always will be more plausible, than are the purely philosophical premises of any argument designed to convince us to the contrary.  As Moore saw, purely philosophical assumptions have very weak epistemic credentials and cannot by themselves outweigh simple common-sense facts. 

The Eliminativist may protest that her/his case is not purely philosophical, but rests on scientific considerations of cognitive psychology, neuroscience, connectionist modelling, and the like.  Indeed, that flaunted feature is what often makes Eliminativism sound so hip.  But this is to misunderstand the Moorean argument a third time.  Moore would not deny that arguments for Eliminativism contain premises that are endorsed, perhaps simply established, by science.  The point is that each argument also contains at least one purely philosophical premise.  Make no mistake: In order to reach the staggering conclusion that there has never been a belief, a desire, or any other propositional attitude, any argument for Eliminativism will have to rest on one or more a priori principles connecting scientific truths to negative ontology.  And it is terminally unlikely that any such principle could be more credible for me than that Granny wants beer.  Come to think of it, I want beer.

 8.  Notice that my Moorean argument is immune to the customary Churchland-Churchland counterblow, a comparison to alchemy, witchcraft, and other folk but false theories.  However beloved such theories were to their proponents, they do not qualify as Moorean common sense.  To count as Moorean-commonsensical, a belief must be the sort of belief that every normal human being holds every day of her/his life, such as "Here is one hand and here is another" or "I had breakfast before I had lunch" or "The sun is shining." Thus, to address the Conference topic directly: Whatever science can show about the mind, it cannot show that there is none.

Lycan thinks that Moorean arguments refute Bradley and McTaggart and that there is no essential difference between the characteristic claims of the British Idealists and the claims of eliminativists in the philosophy of mind.  I believe he is very wrong about that, but that's a different story.  The above Moorean argument, however,  does in my opinion decisively refute eliminativism in the philosophy of mind.  For those of you who protest that no refutation can be so quick and easy, I will ask, Why not?  The more preposterous the thesis, the quicker and easier the refutation!  Lunacy can and ought to be dispatched laconically.  Indeed, the simplicity of Lycan's argument makes it all the stronger.  It is a case of simplex sigillum veri.  He who maintains what is plainly false ought to be prepared for an unceremoniously facile reply.  And please don't call such a reply  'puerile' or 'sophomoric' since the very fact that any boy or sophomore can make it is precisely what makes the objection so powerful. 

No Beliefs? Then No Truths Either!

Peter Lupu e-mails:

 A comment to mull over regarding your premise (A) in your recent post about Eliminative Materialism.

A. If a proposition is true, then it is possibly such that it is believed by someone.

Premise (A) says that in order for a proposition to be true, it is a necessary condition that it can be the content of someone's belief. But there may be true propositions that cannot be for one reason or another the content of our beliefs. For instance, perhaps there are true mathematical propositions that are so complicated or so long or require such a complicated proof that it would be simply impossible for the human mind to believe. Perhaps some other mind, for instance God's mind, can comprehend them, know them, and hence believe them: but no mortal mind can do so. Thus, it seems that premise (A) requires the existence of a deity in order to make it work.

Good point.  (A) is subject to scope ambiguity  as between:

A*. If a proposition p is true, then there exists a subject S such that, possibly, S believes that p.

A**. If a proposition p is true, then, possibly there exists a subject S and S believes that p.

Given Peter's point above, (A*) would seem to require for its truth that there be a divine mind.  But all I need for my argument against eliminative materialism is (A**), which does not require for its truth that there exist any mind, let alone a divine mind.  What (A**) says is that a necessary condition of a proposition's being true as that it be possible that there exist a believer of it.

My point was that the concept of truth is the concept of something that cannot be coherently conceived except in relation to the epistemic concepts of belief and knowledge.  Now there needn't be any beliefs for there to be true (or false) propositions.  But if beliefs are not possible, then neither are true propositions.  Now eliminative materialism implies not only that there are no beliefs, but that there cannot be any.  But then there cannot be any true propositions either.

Recall the argument against beliefs.  It went like this:  (1) If beliefs are anything, then they are brain states; (2) beliefs exhibit original intentionality; (3) no physical state, and thus no brain state, exhibits original intentionality; therefore (4) there are no beliefs.  Since each of the premises is a necessary truth if it is a truth, the conclusion, which validly follows, is a necessary truth if it is a truth.

Thus the EM-er does not merely claim that, as a matter of fact, there are no beliefs; his claim is that there cannot be any.  Of course, that renders his position even more absurd.  But that's not my problem!

CORRECTION (12/18):  Peter rightly points out that (A**) needs tweaking.  Consider its contrapositive which is logically equivalent:  If it is not possible that there exist  a subject S such that S believes that p, then it is not the case that p is true.  Unfortunately, the consequent of the contrapositive conditional could be taken to mean that p is not true, and thus (assuming Bivalence) false, when the idea is rather that p lacks a truth-value.  So (A**) ought to be replaced by

A***.  If a proposition p has a truth-value, then, possibly there exists a subject S such that S believes (disbelieves, entertains, etc.) that p.

Is Folk Psychology a Theory? The Case of Desire

When one is in the grip of a desire one typically knows it. He who wants a cold beer on a hot day knows what he wants and is likely to deem unhinged anyone with the temerity to deny that there are desires. Anywhere on the scale from velleity to craving, but especially at the craving end, there is a qualitative character to desire that makes it phenomenologically undeniable. If the beer example doesn't move you, think of lust. Lust is an intentional state: one cannot lust unless one lusts after someone or something. But although lust flees itself, voids itself in a rush towards its object — as Sartre might have said — there is nonetheless something 'it is like' (T. Nagel) to be in the state of lust. In this respect, desire is more like the non-intentional state of pain than it is like the intentional state of belief. There is most decidedly something it is like for me to desire X; but what is is like for me to believe that you desire X? Is it like anything? Not so clear.

David Gordon Reviews Thomas Nagel's New Book and Criticizes Brian Leiter's Puerile Fulminations

David Gordon reviews Thomas Nagel's Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament: Essays 2002–2008.  The following is a particularly interesting portion of the review in which Gordon comments on a certain status-obsessed careerist's puerile fulminations against a real philosopher:

Eliminative Materialism: Can You Believe It?

In an earlier post, I provided a rough characterization of eliminative materialism (EM). Here is a more technical exposition for the stout of heart. If EM is true, then there are no beliefs. But what about the belief that EM is true, a belief that one would expect eliminative materialists to hold? If we exfoliate this question will we find an objection to EM? Let's see.

1. 'Every generalization is false' is self-referential: because it itself is a generalization, it refers to itself or comes under its own scope. Hence it refutes itself. If true, then false; if false, then false; so, necessarily false. But 'There are no beliefs' is not self-referential. Neither this sentence, nor the proposition it expresses is a belief.  So we must abandon hope of a quick knock-out along self-referential lines.

Lupu on Rosenberg on Scientism: The Mother of All Self-Defeating Notions

Another guest post by Peter Lupu who apparently is as exercised as I am about the pseudo-philosophy that Rosenberg's been peddling.  Minor editing and comments in blue by BV.

Prompted by your recent post on Rosenberg, I checked again what he says about scientism. Here is the actual statement (emphasis added): 

Scientism is my label for what any one who takes science seriously should believe, and scientistic is just an in-your face adjective for accepting science’s description of the nature of reality. You don’t have to be a scientist to be scientistic. In fact, most scientists aren’t.

A Conundrum for Eliminativist Naturalists

A guest post by Peter Lupu.  Minor edits by BV.  His comments in blue at the end. 

Suppose I am a naturalist. Then I take science seriously just as Alex Rosenberg counsels.I also provisionally trust Rosenberg's argument, thereby, I find myself inclined  to believe the conclusions of Rosenberg’s argument. One of these conclusions is

1) There are no beliefs.

Eliminativism: A 'Mental' (Lunatic) Philosophy of Mind?

Arthur W. Collins, The Nature of Mental Things (University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), p. 19:

This [eliminative materialism] looms as a lunatic philosophy of mind, as behaviorism does not, because it does not merely attack the thought that beliefs and desires are inner realities . . . but it also attacks the idea that people have beliefs and desires, which seems to be an ineliminable truth and a truth which is not attacked by analytical behaviorism. The only excuse for this outrageous thesis is that it stems from a recognition that mental phenomena are not going to be identified successfully by any theory. Having accepted the mistaken preliminary notion that beliefs and the like would have to be inner realities of some kind, the eliminativist materialist heroically, if ill-advisedly, concludes that there are no beliefs at all, that no one actually believes anything.

A Holiday Gift Suggestion for Your Atheist Friends

A teapot that leaks like a sieve.

From Naturalism to Nihilism by Way of Scientism: A Note on Rosenberg's Disenchantment

The rank absurdities of Alex Rosenberg's The Disenchanted Naturalist's Guide to Reality are being subjected to withering criticism at Ed Feser's weblog here, here and here. But a correspondent wants me to throw in my two cents, so here's a brief comment.

In the ComBox to the article linked to above, Rosenberg, responding to critics, says this among other things:

If beliefs are anything they are brain states—physical configurations of matter. But one configuration of matter cannot, in virtue just of its structure, composition, location, or causal relation, be “about” another configuration of matter in the way original intentionality requires (because it cant [sic] pass the referential opacity test). So, there are no beliefs.

This is a valid argument.  To spell it out a bit more clearly: (1) If beliefs are anything, then they are brain states; (2) beliefs exhibit original intentionality; (3) no physical state, and thus no brain state, exhibits original intentionality; therefore (4) there are no beliefs. 

But anyone with his head screwed on properly should be able to see that this argument does not establish (4) but is instead a reductio ad absurdum of premise (1) according to which beliefs are nothing if not brain states.  For if anything is obvious, it is that there are beliefs.  This is a pre-theoretical datum, a given.  What they are is up for grabs, but that they are is a starting-point that cannot be denied except by lunatics and those in the grip of  an ideology.  Since the argument is valid in point of logical form, and the conclusion is manifestly, breath-takingly,  false, what the argument shows is that beliefs cannot be brain states.

Now why can't a smart guy like Rosenberg see this?  Because he is in the grip of an ideology. It is called scientism, which is not to be confused with science. (Rosenberg talks nonsense at the beginning of his piece where he implies that one does not take science seriously unless one embraces scientism.)  Rosenberg thinks that natural-scientific knowledge is the only knowledge worthy of the name and, to cop a line from Wilfrid Sellars, that "science is the measure of all things, of what is that it is, and of what is not, that it is not." (Science, Perception and Reality, p. 173).  That is equivalent to the view that reality is exhausted by what natural science (physics, chemistry, evolutionary biology) says exists.  This is why Rosenberg thinks that, if beliefs are anything, then they are brain states.  Given scientism, plus the assumption (questioned by A. W. Collins in The Nature of Mental Things, U of ND Press, 1987) that beliefs need to be identified with something either literally or figuratively 'inner,' what else could they be?  Certainly not states of a Cartesian res cogitans.

The trouble with scientism, of course, is that it cannot be scientifically supported. 'All genuine knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge' is not a proposition of any natural science.  It is a bit of philosophy, with all the rights, privileges, and debilities pertaining thereunto.  One of the debilities is that it is self-vitiating.  For if all genuine knowledge is scientific knowledge, then that very proposition, since it is not an item of scientific knowledge,  cannot count as a piece of genuine knowledge.  Nor can it ever come to be known.

That won't stop people like Rosenberg from believing it as they are entitled to do.  But then scientism it is just one more philosophical belief alongside others, including others that imply its negation. 

I think it is clear what a reasonable person must say.  The (1)-(4) argument above does not establish (4), it reduces to absurdity (1).  The only support for (1) is scientism which we have no good reason to accept.  It is nothing more than a bit of ideology.