Maverick Philosopher

The 'Speedball' Express and Other Quick Exits

Remember John Belushi who took the 'speedball' (heroin + cocaine) express to Kingdom Come? Or perhaps you recall the ill-starred Chris Farley who took the same train.  It is 'sobering' to work through the litany of celebrities who chose (whether proximately or ultimately) a drug- or alcohol-fueled exit from the mundus sensibilis.

The Good Life

People think they know what the good life is. Do they? I know one thing about the good life: the inquiry into what it is is essential to it.

The Cowardice of One's Convictions

Some are praised for having the courage of their convictions. But if one has the wrong convictions, it would be better were one to have the cowardice of one's convictions.

Could a Concrete Individual be a Truthmaker?

Could a concrete individual such as the man Peter function as a truthmaker?  Peter Lupu and I both find this idea highly counterintuitive.  And yet many contemporary writers on truth and truthmaking have no problem with it.  They have no problem with the notion that essential predications about x are made true by x itself, for any x.  Assume that the primary truthbearers are Fregean propositions and consider the Fregean proposition *Peter is human.*  (Asterisks around a declarative sentence form a name of the Fregean proposition expressed by the sentence.)  Being human is an essential property of Peter: it is a property he has in every possible world in which he exists.  It follows that there is no world in which Peter exists and *Peter is human* is not true.  Hence Peter himself logically suffices for the truth of *Peter is human.*  Similarly for every essential  predication involving our man.  Why then balk at the notion that a concrete individual can serve as a truthmaker?

Here is an argument in support of balking:

1. Every asymmetric relation is irreflexive.  (Provable within first-order predicate logic.  Exercise for the reader: prove it!)

2. Truthmaking is an asymmetric relation.  If  T makes true *p*, then  *p* does not make true T.

3. Truthmaking is irreflexive. (From 1, 2)

4. Whatever makes true a proposition admitting of existential generalization also makes true the proposition which is its existential  generalization.  For example, if Peter makes true *Peter is human,* then Peter makes true the existential generalization *There are humans.* And if *Peter is human* makes true **Peter is human* is a proposition,* then *Peter is human* makes true *There are propositions.*  (It is a universally accepted axiom of truthmaking that one and the same truthmaker can make true more than one truthbearer. Truthmaking is not a one-to-one relation.)

5.  If a concrete individual, by itself and in virtue of its mere existence, can make a true an essential predication about it, then an entity of any ontological category can, by itself and in virtue of its mere existence, make true an essential predication about it.  And conversely.  For example, if Peter makes true *Peter is human,* then *Peter is human* makes true **Peter is human* is a proposition* and also **Peter is human* is an abstract object,* etc.  And conversely: if *Peter is human* makes true **Peter is human* is a proposition,* then Peter makes true *Peter is human.*

6. *There are propositions* is essentially a proposition.

7. A concrete individual, by itself and in virtue of its mere existence, can make true an essential predication about it.

8. *There are propositions* is made true by *Peter is human* and indeed by any proposition, including *There are propositions.*   (From 4, 5, 6, 7.  To spell it out:  Peter makes true *Peter is human* by 7; *Peter is human* makes true **Peter is human* is a proposition* by 5 and 6.  *There are propositions* is the existential generalization of **Peter is human* is a proposition.* *Peter is human* makes true *There are propositions* by 4.  *Peter is human,*, however, can be replaced by any proposition in this reasoning.  Therefore, *There are propositions* is made true by any proposition including  *There are propositions.*

9. *There are propositions* has itself as one of its truthmakers. (From 8)

10. It is not the case that truthmaking is irreflexive.  (From 9.  Note that when we say of a relation that it has a property such as symmetry or irreflexivity, we mean that that has this property essentially.)

11. (10) contradicts (3).

12. One of the premises is false. (From 11)

13. The only premises that are even remotely controvertible are (2) and (7). 

14. (2), which affirms the asymmetry of truthmaking, cannot be reasonably denied.  Why not?  Well, the whole point of truthmaking is to provide a metohysical, not empirical, explanation of the truth of truthbearers.  Explanation, however, is asymmetric by its very nature: if x explains y, then y does not explain x. 

15. (7) is false: it it not the case that a concrete individual, by itself, can serve as a truthmaker. 

Credit where credit is due:  The above is my attempt to put into a rigorous form some remarks of Marian David which point up the tension between the asymmetry of truthmaking and the notion that concrete individuals, by themselves, can serve as the truthmakers for essential predications about them.  See his essay "Truth-making and Correspondence" in Truth and Truth-Making, eds. Lowe and Rami. McGill 2009, 137-157, esp. 152-154.

Scholastic Realism and Predication

This post continues our explorations in the philosophy of The School. What is a scholastic realist? John Peterson (Introduction to Scholastic Realism, Peter Lang, 1999, p. 6) defines a scholastic realist as follows:

S is a scholastic realist =df i) S is a moderate realist and ii) S believes that universals exist in some transcendent mind, i.e., the mind of God.

A moderate realist is defined like this:

S is a moderate realist =df i) S denies that universals exist transcendently and ii) S affirms that universals exist immanently both in matter and minds.

A universal exists transcendently just in case it exists "independently of matter and mind." One who holds that universals exist independently of matter and mind is a Platonic or extreme realist. A moderate realist who is not a scholastic realist Peterson describes as an Aristotelian realist. Such a philosopher is a moderate realist who "denies that universals exist in some transcendent mind."   In sum, and interpreting a bit:

Platonic or extreme  realist:  maintains that there are universals and that they can exist transcendently, i.e., unexemplified (uninstantiatied) and so apart from matter and mind.

Moderate realist:  denies that there are any transcendent universals and maintains that universals exist only immanently in minds and in matter.

Scholastic realist: moderate realist who believes that there is a transcendent mind in which universals exist.

Aristotelian realist:  moderate realist who denies that there is a transcendent mind in which universals exist.

On Reading Philosophers For the Beauty of Their Prose

To read a philosopher for the beauty of his prose alone is like ordering a delicacy in a world-class restaurant for its wonderful aroma and artful presentation -- but then not eating it.

I had that thought one morning while re-reading for the fifth time William James' magisterial essay, The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life. So rich in thought, and yet so distracting in its beauty the prose in which the thoughts are couched. James and a few other philosophers are great writers -- Schopenhauer and Santayana come to mind -- but the thought's the thing.

Leftist Terms of Abuse

Here is a partial list of terms liberals/ leftists apply to virtually every idea or action or person with which or with whom they differ:

Racist
Sexist
Xenophobic 

Homophobic
Islamophobic
Imperialist
Bigoted
Intolerant

Risks of Desert Hiking

In a society made litigious by an excess of lawyers, the need for  various CYA maneuvers is correspondingly great. One such is the disclaimer. I particularly enjoy the disclaimers found in well-written hiking books. Rare is the hiking book that doesn't have one these days. The following is from local author,Ted Tenny, Goldfield Mountain Hikes, p.  4:

The risks of desert hiking include, but are not limited to: heatstroke, heat exhaustion, heat prostration, heat cramps, sunburn, dehydration, flash floods, drowning, freezing, hypothermia, getting lost, getting stranded after dark, falling, tripping, being stung, clawed or bitten by venomous or non-venomous creatures, being scratched or stuck by thorny plants, being struck by lightning, falling rocks, natural or artificial objects falling from the sky, or a comet colliding with the Earth.

Still up for a hike?

Feser on Stupak

Stupak's Enablers.  This is a very rich post bristling with important distinctions.  Excerpt:

There can be no question, then, that while the Church allows that government can legitimately intervene in economic life and in other ways come to the assistance of those in need, she also teaches that there is a presumption in justice against such intervention, a presumption which can be overridden only when such intervention is strictly necessary, only to the extent necessary, and only on the part of those governmental institutions which are as close as possible to those receiving the aid in question. This surely follows from the principles of subsidiarity and the priority of the family. And it surely rules out not only libertarianism but also the sorts of policy preferences typical of socialists, social democrats, and egalitarian liberals.

I wonder how many Catholic bishops could explain the principle of subsidiarity?  Too many of them are too busy being leftists to comprehend and transmit Catholic social teaching.

Nerd, Geek, Dweeb, and Dork

Ever fret over the correct use of these terms?  This Venn diagram will set you straight.  (HT: Mike Valle.  From this site.)

Why not be a Nominalist?

0. This post is a sequel to Truthmaker Maximalism Questioned.

1. On one acceptation of the term, a nominalist is one who holds that everything that exists is a concrete  individual.  Nominalists accordingly eschew such categories of entity as: universals, whether transcendent or immanent, Fregean propositions, Castaneda's ontological operators, mathematical sets, tropes (abstract particulars, perfect particulars), and concrete states of affairs.  Nominalists of course accept that there are declarative sentences and that some of them are true.  Consider the true

1. Peter is hungry.

Nominalists cheerfully admit that the proper name 'Peter' denotes something external to language and mind, a particular man, which we can call the 'ontological correlate' of the subject term.  But, ever wary of "multiplying entities beyond necessity," nominalists fight shy of admitting an ontological correlate of  'hungry,' let alone a correlate of  'is.'   And yet, given that (1) is true, 'hungry' is true of Peter.  (In a simple case like this, the predicate is true of  the the referent of the subject term iff the sentence is true.) Now philosophers like me are wont to ask:  In virtue of what is 'hungry' true of Peter?  Since 'hungry' applies to Peter in the way in which 'leprous,' 'anorexic,' and other predicates do not, I find it reasonable to put the same question as follows:  What is the ontological ground of the correct application of 'hungry' to Peter?

2. In answering this question I introduce two posits that will enrage the nominalist and offend against his ontologcal parsimoniousness.   First of all, we need an o-correlate of 'hungry.' I admit of course that 'hungry' in our sample sentence functions differently than 'Peter.'  The latter is a name, the former is what Frege calls a concept-word (Begriffswort).  Nevertheless, there must be something in reality that corresponds to 'hungry,' and whatever it is it cannot be identical to Peter.  Why not?  Well, Peter, unlike my cat, is not hungry at every time at which he exists; and for every time t in the actual world at which  he is hungry, there is some possible world in which he is not hungry at t.  Therefore, Peter cannot be identical to the o-correlate of 'hungry.' 

We are back to our old friend (absolute numerical) identity which is an equivalence relation (reflexive, symmetrical, transitive) governed by the Indiscernibility of Identicals and the Necessity of Identity.

3. But why do we need an o-correlate of 'hungry' at all?  I asked: in virtue of what is 'hungry' true of Peter?  One sort of nominalist, the 'ostrich nominalist,' will say that there is nothing in virtue of which 'hungry' is true of Peter.  For him is is just a 'brute fact,' i.e., an inexplicable datum, that 'hungry' correctly applies to Peter.  There is no need of an ontological ground of the correctness of this application.  There is no room for a special philosophical explanation of why 'hungry' is true of Peter.  It just applies to him, and that's the end of the matter.  The ostrich nominalist of course grants that Peter's being hungry can be explained 'horizontally' in terms of antecedent and circumambient empirical causes; what he denies is that there is need for some further 'philosophical' or 'metaphysical' or 'ontological' explanation of the truth of 'Peter is hungry.'

If a nominalist says that 'hungry' is true of Peter because Peter is hungry, then I say he moves in a circle of embarrasingly short diameter.  What we want to understand are the ontological commitments involved in the true sentence, 'Peter is hungry.'  We need more than Peter.  We need something that grounds the correctness of the application of 'hungry' to him.  To say that 'hungry' is true of Peter because Peter is hungry presupposes what we are trying to understand.  Apart from this diversionary tactic, the ostrich nominalist is back to saying that there is nothing extralingusitic that grounds the correct application of 'hungry' to Peter.  He is denying the possibility of any metaphysical explanation here.  He is saying that it is just a brute fact that 'hungry' applies to Peter.

4.  As for my second posit, I would urge that introducing an o-correlate for 'hungry' such as a universal tiredness does not suffice to account for the truth of the sample sentence.  And this for the simple reason that Peter and tiredness could both exist withough Peter being tired.  What we need is a concrete state of affairs, an entity which, though it has Peter and tiredness as constituents, is distinct from each and from the mereological sum of the two. 

5.  Now one can argue plausibly against both posits.  And it must be admitted that both posits give rise to conundra that cast doubt on them.  But what is the alternative?  Faced with a problem, the ostrich sticks his head in the sand.  Out of sight, out of mind.  Similarly. the ostrich nominalist simply ignores the problem.  Or am I being unfair?

Perhaps the issue comes down to this:  Must we accept the truth of sentences like (1) as a 'brute fact,' i.e. as something insusceptible of explanation (apart, of course, from causal explanation), OR is there the possibility of a philosophical account?

6. Finally, it is worth nothing that the nominalist blunders badly  if he says that Peter is hungry in virtue of 'hungry''s applying  to him.  For that is a metaphysical theory and an absurd one to boot: it makes Peter's being hungry depend on the existence of the English predicate 'hungry.'  To avoid an incoherent, Goodmanaical, linguistic idealism, the nominalist should give no metaphysical explanation and be content to say it is just a brute fact that Peter is hungry.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Two Watusi Numbers

Ray Barretto, El Watusi, 1963.  I remember when it first came out, but you young whippersnappers may remember it from Carlito's Way.   Don't ask me what it means.  The Orlons, Wah-Watusi, 1962.

The Health Care Debate: What It's Really About

Here.  Fidel congratulates Obama. Excerpt from the second article:

Doctors haven’t benefited very much,  either, from Cuba’s health care “miracle.” Because they earn the equivalent of only about $20 U.S. per month, Cuban physicians have quit the medical profession in droves — turning instead to the only industry that offers them any degree of economic opportunity: the Cuban tourism industry. It is not uncommon to see former doctors driving cabs, working as tour guides, or waiting tables in restaurants and family inns in Havana.

People need to bear in mind that there is more to health care than health care insurance.  The best coverage in the world is worthless without health care providers: doctors, nurses, lab technicians, and all the rest.  Socialist schemes, based as they are on ignorance of human nature,  remove incentives.  Why would any one put up with the rigors of medical school, internship, long hours, malpractice harrassment and the like to work for the government?

Brew 102

 

 

 

I asked an old friend if he remembered the huge Brew 102 sign visible from a Los Angeles freeway back in the '50s and  '60s. (See photo below.)  His response:

'Deed I do remember Brew 102.
Over the Hollywood Freeway.
My arm 'round a cutie in a '55 Buick
Goin' long 'ol Highway 101.

Here is my verse response which is not meant autobiographically:

'Twas Brew 102 that did me in
 And got me to drownin' in liquid sin
 Soon I was a rollin' down that lost highway
 Where many a boy has been known to stray
 On 66 I got my kicks
 And on 101 I had my fun.
 But now I'm here to tell you true
 We ain't on this earth to booze and screw
 The female ass and the whisky glass
 Have brought many a man to a sorry pass.
 That's my wisdom take it straight
 And head while there's time for the narrow gate
 It's not too late and it's not too far
 As long's  you don't stop at the next whisky bar.

LaLaLand in the 1950s, Hollywood Freeway, and Brew 102 sign (left-click to enlarge):

Truthmaker Maximalism Questioned

For Peter Lupu discussions with whom helped me clarify my thoughts on this topic.

0. What David Armstrong calls Truthmaker Maximalism is the thesis that every truth has a truthmaker.  Although I find the basic truthmaker intuition well-nigh irresistible, I have difficulty with the notion that every truth has a truthmaker.  Thus I question Truthmaker Maximalism.

1.  Compare *Peter is tired* and *Every concretum is self-identical.*  I will argue that propositions like the first have truthmakers while propositions like the second do not.  (A declarative sentence enclosed in asterisks names the Fregean proposition expressed by the sentence.  I will assume that the primary truthbearers are Fregean propositions.  By definition, a truth is a true truthbearer.) 

2. Intuitively, the first truth is in need of something external to it that 'makes' it true or determines it to be true, or serves as the ontological ground of its truth.  By 'external to it,' I don't just mean that the truthmaker of a truth must be distinct from it:  this condition is satisfied by a distinct proposition that entails it.  What I mean is that the truthmaker must be both distinct from the truthbearer and not, like the truthbearer, a 'representational entity' where the latter term covers such items as sentences, contents of judgments, and Fregean propositions (the senses of context-free sentences in the indicative mood.)  In other words, a truthmaker of a first-order truth such as *Peter is tired* must be outside the sphere of representations: it must be extralinguistic, extramental, and extra-propositional.  Truthmakers, then, are 'in the world' in one sense of 'world.'  They are ontological grounds of truth.  Thus the truthmakers of propositions like *Peter is tired* cannot belong to the category of propositions.  The ontological ground of such a proposition cannot be an entity within the sphere of propositions.

A Strange Experience in the Charles Doughty Memorial Suite

I had a strange experience in the late 1980's. Although my  main residence at the time was in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, near the bohemian district called Coventry, I was teaching at the University of Dayton and during the school year rented rooms not far from the University. One night, spirited philosophical   conversation with a graduate student aroused the ire of a bitter old man by the name of Charles Doughty. He occupied an adjoining  efficiency and thought we were being too loud. So he started shouting  at us through the closed door: "I'll kill you, you son of a bitch, God damn you, etc." Just to be on the safe side, when back in Cleveland Heights I  fetched my snub-nosed Colt .38 Detective Special -- which I had   purchased from yet another graduate student -- but luckily did not   have to use on old Doughty.

The lonely and miserable old bastard obliged me some time later by dying of a heart attack. Conversation with Mrs.  Brunner, my landlady, confirmed that he had had a heart condition and knew that he was not  long for this earth. Since Doughty's apartment was bigger and better situated than the ones I usually occupied, I took it over. I dubbed it  the Charles Doughty Memorial Suite at the Paul Brunner Estates.

Now in those days, I never ever listened to the AM band on the radio.   I was still something of a liberal and stuck to the FM band where not only  the frequency is modulated but the voices of the announcers are as  well. I listened mainly to WYSO out of Antioch College in Yellow  Springs, Ohio, a sleepy little dorf redolent of the '60s where the scents of sandalwood and  patchouli still hung in the air. WYSO was the local NPR affiliate, and I listened regularly to "All Things Considered."  (For more on Yellow Springs and Antioch College, see my Death By Political Correctness.) 

One night after moving into Doughty's old digs, I woke up in the   middle of the night to the sound of the radio in the living room. I  would not have left the radio on, being a very careful and cautious sort of fellow. So I got up to investigate. The radio was indeed on,  but what amazed me was that it was set to the AM band, which, as I said, I never listened to in those days.

Was the ghost of Doughty still hanging around the place? He was a bitter old man who ended his miserable life without family or friends in a crummy, shabbily furnished couple of rooms in an old 1940's building in a third-rate Midwestern city. Did he have nothing better to do than screw around with the radio of a sleeping philosopher who once disturbed him with the sounds of his dialectic?

So there you have it. The facts are that I awoke that night to a radio tuned to the AM band. Is that good evidence of a ghost? No. Did I  sleep well on succeding nights? Absolutely. I've trained myself to be skeptical. You can't be a philosopher without being at least a methodological sceptic. Doubt is the engine of inquiry and the mother-in-law, if not the mother, of philosophy.

But when Halloween approaches, and black cats cross my path, I give a thought to old Doughty and his crummy efficiency, the Chas. Doughty  Memorial Suite at the Paul Brunner Estates.

If you want to read an excellent, balanced book on the paranormal by a very sharp analytic philosopher, I recommend Stephen E. Braude, Immortal Remains: The Evidence of Life After Death (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003).

Legal Insurrection

A blawg by William A. Jacobson, Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Cornell Law School, Ithaca, NY.  I came to it via Keith Burgess-Jackson.  Jacobson has his head screwed on Right.  Get thee hence, learn and enjoy.

Welcome to Civil War

To Dennis Prager's "The bigger the government the smaller the citizen," I add my "The bigger the government, the more to fight over."  The more the government takes over, the more they violate the individual liberty of the citizens, the more they insinuate themselves into every aspect of your life, the more protests, the more lobbying, the more lawsuits, the more money and time wasted on pointless bickering.  I floated my observation months ago and recent events demonstrate its accuracy.  Brace yourself  for ever larger doses of acrimony as the months and years wear on.  Some are speaking of civil war.  It's a Civil War: What We Do Now.

David Harsanyi's The Mugging of Personal Freedom is worth reading.

The Left's Hatred of Conservative Talk Radio

The qualifier 'conservative' borders on pleonasm: there is is scarcely any talk radio in the U.S. worth talking about that is not conservative.  This is part of the reason the Left hates the conservative variety so much.  They hate it because of its content, and they hate it because they are incapable of competing with it: their own attempts such as Air America have failed miserably. And so, projecting their own hatred, they label conservative talk 'hate radio.'

In a 22 March op-ed piece in the NYT, Bob Herbert, commenting on the G.O.P., writes, "This is the party that genuflects at the altar of right-wing talk radio, with its insane, nauseating, nonstop commitment to hatred and bigotry."

I find that vile outburst fascinating.  There is no insanity, hatred, or bigotry in any of the conservative talk jocks whom I listen to:  Laura Ingram, Bill Bennett, Hugh Hewitt, Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager or Michael Medved.  There is instead common sense, humanity, excellent advice, warnings against extremism, deep life wisdom, facts, arguments, and a reasonably high level of discourse.  Of the six I have mentioned, Prager and Medved are the best, a fact reflected in their large audiences.  See for yourself!

So what is it about Herbert and people  of his ilk that causes them to react routinely in such delusional fashion?

It is a long story, of course, but part of it is  that lefties confuse dissent with hate.  They don't seem to realize that if I dissent from your view, it doesn't follow that I hate you.  This confusion goes hand in hand with the strange notion that the Left owns dissent, which I duly refute in a substantial post.

I leave you with a quotation from David Horowitz, Left Illusions: An Intellectual Odyssey (Spence, 2003), p. 273, emphasis added:

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.

One more thing.  You can see from Herbert's picture that he is black. So now I will be called a racist for exposing his outburst.  That is right out of the Left's playbook:  if a conservative disagrees with you on any issue, or proffers any sort of criticism, then you heap abuse on him.  He's a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe, a 'homophobe,' a bigot, a religious zealot . . . .

5 K or Marathon: Which is Harder?

Which is harder, to run 3.1 miles or 26.2?  They are equally hard for the runner who runs right.  The agony and the ecstasy at the end of a race run right is the same whether induced by 42.2 km of LSD or 5 km of POT.  Above, I am approaching the final stretch of a 5 K trail race (2nd annual CAAFA 5K Race Against Violence, Prospector Park, Apache Junction, Arizona).  The date is wrong: should be 3/21/2010.  I finished in 45th place in a mixed field of 113, and 28th among 44 men.  Time: 33:38.8 for a pace of 10:49.8.  That's nothing to crow about, but then I'm 60 as is the gal right behind me.  Twenty years ago I could cover this distance at a 7:45 min/mile pace.  There were five 60+ males and I finished first among them.  Not a strong field!  But a beautiful cool crisp morning and a great course and a great run.  I could have pushed harder!  Could have and should have.

LSD: long slow distance.  POT: plenty of tempo.  Both terms borrowed from Joe Henderson.

More on the Law of Non-Contradiction and its Putative Empirical Refutability

A reader's e-mail with my comments in blue:

Nice post on the LNC. That topic is a real quagmire, isn't it?

I’ve lost the link to the Science Daily report of the Cleland experiment, so the details of how he confirmed the superposition are lost to me, but I’m really struck by the fact that you are defending LNC as a transcendental, not transcendent, principle. Kant doesn’t take this route in the First Critique, does he? LNC is not some form of sensibility, is it?

 

That's right, I am defending LNC as a transcendental, not a transcendent principle, and for two reasons.  First, I believe that LNC is well-nigh unassailable if presented as a transcendental a priori condition of  the possibility of (i) meaningful discourse and (ii) experience of the objects of Sellar's manifest image or of Kant's phenomenal world, with (i) being more unassailable than (ii).   Second, the transcendental defense  is all I need to turn aside what I take to be your conclusion from the Cleland experiment, namely, that there are macro-objects of direct perceptual acquaintance that serve as counterexamples to LNC.  To show that LNC applies beyond our thought and beyond our experience to whatever lies beyond our thought and experience, if anything,  is not so easy.  One cannot just dogmatically assume that a law of thought is automatically a law of reality, especially since this has been denied by any number of philosophers.  Aristotle in Metaphysics Gamma, 3, 4, attempts a proof by retortion of LNC, but as far as I can see, all he establishes is that LNC is a necessary condition of meaningful thinking and speaking, not that its validity extends beyond thought and speech and their objects to things in themselves.

 

I would also urge in passing against certain dogmatic Thomists that the Critical Problem -- the problem of showing how a priori conditions of thinking apply to things external to us -- is already present in nuce in Aristotle.  But that's another long series of posts.

LNC is surely not a form of sensibility for Kant, but it is a form of understanding.  Since there is for Kant no experience (Erfahrung) without a 'marriage' of sensibility (Sinnlichkeit) and understanding (Verstand), it seems reasonable to impute to Kant the view that no macro-object of experience can violate LNC.

One thing I think Cleland would say is that observing the paddle in the normal sense, i.e, bombarding it with lots of photons, disturbs the superposition and collapses the ambivalent quantum state into a moving or a not moving state. So he would seem to agree with you as far “seeing” in the ordinary sense goes. We don’t see something moving & not moving—and one could add: our eyes and brains are just not designed to experience such objects even if we could do so without disturbing them. But, seeing is  not the same as sensing, and presumably the paddle in its quantum state has effects (on us) that are unambiguously different from its effects in states where the superposition has collapsed. So, as you say, no naked eye observations of superposition, but perhaps that’s too narrow a focus and we should admit that we might experience a superposition is some other unique way.

 

You seem to be assuming the Copenhagen interpretation of QM.  But as you know, it is not the only game in town.  Bill Hill, a U.K. immunologist, e-mailed me the following, which is very helpful:

 

There are two main interpretations of quantum mechanics which are popular in the physics community (there are a few others, but they are mostly propounded by eccentrics).  The first is the "Copenhagen" interpretation, in which quantum events really do exist in multiple incompatible states at the same time, but only when there is no outside observer looking at them.  I am not making this up, though I should add that by "observer", they do not just mean conscious beings but any information-carrying system (such as a sensor) which can report data about the quantum event.  Though it is implausible at first glance, this interpretation does in fact solve the boundary problem that so vexes many scientists.  Because sub-atomic particles are too small for us to see, they are free to exhibit this behaviour.  But people, planets and so on are so large that they are always under observation in some sense, they cannot behave in this way.  Hence, when the little bit of metal in the article is observed, it will either appear moving or not moving to the person looking at it, but when nobody is looking it is in fact doing both.  This raises enormous questions about perception and causality, and many people are very unhappy with it as a result.  The important point is that your suggestion that there cannot be an empirical counterexample to the Law of Non-Contradiction remains intact under the Copenhagen interpretation.

 

The most popular alternative to Copenhagen is the "Many-Worlds" interpretation, in which the universe splits into two duplicates every time a quantum event occurs.  So when the little bit of metal in the article is put into its quantum state, in one universe it is moving, and in the other it is not.  Of course, it is impossible for us to tell which one we are in.  Many people (rightly, in my opinion) think that this is just silly, and embrace Copenhagen on grounds of parsimony.  However, it is consistent with the data, and also with the Law of Non-Contradiction, since two incompatible states cannot exist in the same universe under Many-Worlds.

 

So as far as I can tell from my limited experience, you are correct and neither the Copenhagen nor the Many-Worlds interpretations of quantum mechanics offer an empirical counterexample to the Law of Non-Contradiction, whatever other fascinating philosophical questions they may raise in their own right.

 

 

The salient point is that, on the 'many worlds' interpretation of QM there is no violation of LNC not even  on the micro-level let alone on the macro-level.  Given that there is no one settled interpretation of QM accepted by all physicists, the case against LNC at either level is bound to be weak.

 

This is very tricky stuff, but I think it is the paddle, a macro object that we can directly observe under other conditions, that is now in the superposition state of moving and not moving. We in fact have put it into this state. The paddle is not some ding an sich, but an ordinary object that can transition from existing “normally” in one state or its opposite to existing at once in both contradictory states. In principle any macro-object could be reduced to such a quantum ground state but we just can’t physically do so.

 

I am afraid that you are not making sense.  You have already granted that the paddle that we see with the naked eye cannot be seen by the naked eye to be both moving and not moving,  But now you are saying that that very visible paddle -- and not some invisible micro-constituents of it -- has been put by the experimental apparatus into a state in which it is  both moving and not moving.  This implies that one and the same visible paddle is both (moving & not moving) and not (moving & not moving).  Which is is higher -order contradiction.

 

Are you saying that there are two paddles?  Then they can't both be visible.

 

Furthermore, if you say, as you do above, following the Copenhagen interpretation, that observation of the paddle forces it into  one state or the other, then cannot also say that that very same visible paddle is in both states.

 

I am afraid  that the science  journalist's report on the Cleland experiment has delivered us into a realm of rank gibberish.

 

Your second point that LNC is also a “form of intelligibilty” is surely right, and it just invites incomprehension to say that the paddle is both moving and not moving. I guess we need to learn the jargon of the physicists here. I’m not sure exactly what they say but something like the paddle in its quantum ground state is in a superposition of motion and no motion.  That I get, and it says something remarkable about the really weird universe we apparently live in. I’m saving up my money and moving to a good old Newtonian universe at the first opportunity!

 

But now you are sounding like certain Trinitarian theologians who say that we should just repeat the creedal formulae without worrying whether or how they make any bloody sense.  It is curious that defenders of the coherence of the Trinity often bring up QM.  You of course grant no authority to the Bible or the Church.  Why then do you genuflect before the authority of scientists when they spout gibberish?  I am being intentionally provocative.  ComBox is open if you care to counterrespond.

The Hog Ridin' Foolosophers M. C. (Mesa, Arizona)

Here's what they fly when they fly the colors.  The top rocker reads: "Death on Wheels." The  bottom rocker : "Death is the muse of  philosophy." (Schopenhauer)

Bernard Goldberg on Health Care

I enjoy Bernie Goldberg's commentary on The O'Reilly Factor and I generally agree with it.  But I just heard him say something that is not quite right.  He sees the leftist-conservative disconnect on the recent health care legislation in the following terms:  for leftists it is a moral and civil rights issue whereas for conservatives it is an economic issue.  Leftists are for it because they think citizens (and presumably anyone who resides in this country whether legally or illegally) have a RIGHT to it, whereas conservatives are against it because the country cannot afford it.  (If you listened to that preternatural dumbass Nancy Pelosi last night, you heard her lame attempt to 'derive' the positive right to health care from the genuine constitutionally grounded negative rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)

But Goldberg's is a superficial analysis.  It is true that we cannot afford it.  Hell, we cannot afford the entitlements already in place.  See here for a breakdown of medicare expenditures.  But the conservative objection is not merely an economic one.  It too is a moral objection:  it is morally wrong, among other things, for the government to force its citizens, on pain of being heavily fined, to buy a privately-sold product such as health insurance.  It is an affront to the liberty which is our birthright as Americans.  Think about it:  they are going to force you to buy something from a private company, 'for your own good'  whether you can afford it, want it, or need it.  Now either you see what is wrong with that or you don't.  If you don't then I put you down as hopeless.

This is a liberty issue before it is a 'green eyeshade' issue.  In this respect it is no different from taxation.  It too is a liberty, and hence a moral, issue long before it is an economic issue.  But individual liberty is one of those things that 'liberals' don't understand (unless it is the liberty to be a cultural-polluter) -- which is one of the reasons we should retire the word 'liberal' and call leftists what they are.  We contemporary conservatives have a much better claim to the 'liberal' label.

Goldberg made a mistake tonight that conservatives routinely make.  They fail to see that they do in fact occupy the moral high ground, or perhaps I should say that they are strangely reticent about proclaiming the morality of their position.  When they put the issues in economic terms alone they play right into the hands of their opponents who are all too eager to paint them as mean-spirited, moneygrubbing protectors of their supposed economic privileges.

Liberty took a beating yesterday.  That's the main thing.  The economic considerations, important as they are, are secondary.  Bill and Bernie need to 'wise up' to use Bill's expression.  This war is about ideas first and money only second.

Now the Battle Begins in Dead Earnest

Speaker Pelosi really outdid herself last night in point of mendacity.  She referred to the opening sentence of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness . . ."  She then tried to link yesterday's successful leftist takeover of the health care system to the principles and values of this great document, suggesting that there is a right to health care.  How's that for chutzpah?  What is despicable about her and her ilk is their mendacity: they know full well that their welfare state principles are radically at odds with the founders' conception of limited government, but they refuse to state clearly to the American people what they stand for.

But it ain't over til it's over and these lying leftists will have hell to pay.  The battle is just beginning.  Some commentary:  Victor Davis Hanson, Newt Gingrich, Varadarajan, Trende.

An Empirical Refutation of the Law of Non-Contradiction?

Nice work if you can get it!  Here we read:

A team of scientists has succeeded in putting an object large enough to be visible to the naked eye into a mixed quantum state of moving and not moving.

Andrew Cleland at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his team cooled a tiny metal paddle until it reached its quantum mechanical "ground state"-- the lowest-energy state permitted by quantum mechanics. They then used the weird rules of quantum mechanics to simultaneously set the paddle moving while leaving it standing still. The experiment shows that the principles of quantum mechanics can apply to everyday objects as well as as atomic-scale particles.

So we have a little object, visible to the naked eye, that is simultaneously moving and not moving.  Is that possible?  Yes, if one part is moving and a distinct part is not moving.  Presumably that is not what is meant above.  What is meant is that the whole object is simultaneously both moving and not moving.  That too is possible if 'simultaneously' or 'at the same time' is being applied to an interval of time.  Consider a temporal interval five seconds in duration.  Let 't' refer to that interval.  It is surely possible that object O, the whole of it,  be at rest at t and in motion at t.  But this triviality is also not what  is meant above. 

I'm Telling You All I Know

The Website of Novelist, Short Story Writer & Poet William Michaelian.  A search for writing about Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel brought me to this site.  Couldn't find a copy in Border's the other day.  Moving from the Rs to the Ws, I noted the resurgence of Ayn Rand: several of her titles in new editions were prominently displayed.  I had the thought that, as long as there are adolescents, there will be no lack of readers of Nietzsche, Rand, and Kerouac.  Every generation discovers them anew and finds something to relate to before moving on to the better and the truer.

At first in the bookstore I drew a blank: couldn't remember the name of the author of Look Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the River.  So I asked a matronly lady who worked that section and who looked intelligent.  She had never heard of these titles.  People nowadays don't know jackshit.  But I feel too good this Sunday afternoon to start in on a rant, having acquitted myself nobly and without screw-up this morning in a 5 K trail race.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: A Baker's Dozen Road Songs Plus One

Entangled deep in the psyche of every true American is a deep love of the open road.  Here are some tunes to be enjoyed while seated at the helm of a solid chunk of Detroit iron, while 'motorvatin' over some lonesome desert highway in the magic west of buttes and mesas, with four on the road, one in the hand, and the other wrapped around a fine cigar or a cup of steaming java.

Woody Guthrie, Hard Travelin'.  Hank Williams, Lost Highway.  Spade Cooley, Detour.  Leonard Cohen, Passing Through.  Bob Dylan, Highway 51 Blues.  Robert Johnson, Crossroad Blues.  Eric Clapton, Crossroads. Nelson Riddle, Route 66.  Chuck Berry, Get Your Kicks on Route 66.  Johnny Cash, I've Been Everywhere.  The Doors, Roadhouse Blues.  Johnny Cash, Highway 61 Revisited.  Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited.

Steve Allen and Jack Kerouac, A reading from On the Road.

Aphorisms Good and Bad

These, by Nicolas Gomez Davila, tr. Michael Gilleland, are good:

With God there are only individuals. (I, 16)

The individual shrinks in proportion as the state grows. (I, 21)

The authenticity of the feeling depends on the clarity of the thought. (I, 24)

To refuse to wonder is the mark of the beast. (I, 25)

The one who renounces seems weak to the one incapable of renunciation. (I, 25)

Genuine allegiance to an idea surpasses every psychological or social motivation. (I, 28)

The incoherent interlocutor is more irritating than the hostile one. (I, 39)

Click on the above link for many more.

But the following, by Werner Erhard of EST fame, are bad:

An Analogy for the Categorial Difference Between Consciousness and Matter

Some people pin their hopes on future science for a solution of the problem of consciousness as if hope, which has a place in religion, has any place in a strictly scientific worldview. If we only knew enough about the brain, these people opine, we would understand how consciousness arises from it.

But consider an analogy. Suppose you explain to a person that the natural number series is infinite, that there is no largest natural number since for every n, there is n + 1. The person seems to understand, but then objects when you say that it is impossible that there be a largest natural number due to the very nature of the natural number series. Your use of 'impossible' sticks in the guy's craw. He tilts Leftward, you see, and he thinks, quite confusedly, that anything's possible. He doesn't like it when people invoke natures and impossibilities and necessities and  lay claim to a  priori knowledge.  That's too rigid and static for his taste. So he says,

Before long, we will have supercomputers so fast that they can reach the end of the natural number series. Who are you to say that that it impossible? All sorts of things have been pronounced impossible that are now actual. Given the enormous strides being made in computer technology, it is just a matter of time before a computer will reach the end of the natural number series.

Now the rank absurdity of this is (I hope!) self-evident. The fastest possible computer will operate at a finite speed: the speed of light (186, 282 mi/sec) is a speed faster than which no signal can travel. Combine your nanotechnology with cryotechnology, get down near absolute zero, there is still an upper bound on computing speed.

Now here is the analogy. Just as no computer no matter how fast will ever reach the end of the natural number series, no amount of brain science will ever find consciousness in the brain, or explain how consciousness arises from the brain, or how it could arise from the brain.

No doubt some of you will protest that the two situations are disanalogous. But then the burden is on you to explain exactly why they are.

Troubles With Truthmaking: The Truthmaker and Veritas Sequitur Esse Principles

Some recent attempts (by G. Oppy, J. Brower, A. Pruss and perhaps others) at making sense of the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) have invoked the truthmaker principle (TMP).  I made heavy use of TMP in my A Paradigm Theory of Existence  (Kluwer 2002), though not in defense of DDS. Being a self-critical sort, I am now re-examining the case for TMP.  Note that acceptance of TMP does not straightaway commit one to acceptance of any particular category of entity as truthmakers such as concrete states of affairs.  One could accept TMP and hold that truthmakers are tropes.  And there are other possibilities. So before we can address the truthmaker defense of DDS we must (i) argue for TMP and then (ii) decide on what can and cannot function as truthmakers.  In this post I consider some of what can be said for and against truthmaking in general. It looks like we might be in for a long series of posts on this fascinating but difficult topic.

Ron Paul on the 2010 Census

On this issue, he talks sense. 

Should Conservatives Take the High Road When Opposing the Left?

This just over the transom from a regular reader:

Your recent, small quip about the possibility of accusing liberals of racism had me curious of something. Clearly you think that many on the left use unfair or unjust means of persuasion (Attempting to label their opponents as racists, for example.) And I've often heard it lamented that liberals tend to fight tooth and nail, using every fair and unfair advantage they can, in a political dispute (see the possibilities of the 'nuclear option' or bypassing a vote in this health care debate, etc.) while conservatives tend to be reluctant to.

So here's my question. Do you think conservatives should mimic liberals in this regard - fight tooth and nail, use every means available, including calling their opponents racists, etc,? Or do you think conservatives should (regardless of pure pragmatic effectiveness) always take the high road? Doubly so since conservatives actually believe there is a real high road to take?

I wish I had a good answer to this excellent question.  First of all, I agree to the central presupposition of the question, namely, that leftists will do and say anything to win, no matter how outrageous.  (Here is a recent example of the  widespread race-baiting and slander that even prominent leftists routinely engage in.)   They do it because they think the end justifies the means, and  because of their conviction that, as the Bard has it, "all's fair in love and war."  Leftists think of themselves as good and decent people who are battling valiantly against the dark forces of bigotry, racism, religious fanaticism, science-denial, etc.  And because they see themselves in a noble fight against people who are not just wrong, but evil, they feel entirely justified in doing whatever it takes to win. 

The essence of it is that the Left accepts and lives by what I call the Converse Clausewitz Principle: Politics is war conducted by other means.  (Von Clausewitz's famous remark was to the effect that war is politics conducted by other means.)  The party that ought to be opposing the Left, the Republicans, apparently does not believe that this is what politics is.  This puts them at a serious disadvantage. 

 David Horowitz, commenting on "Politics is war conducted by other means," writes:

In political warfare you do not just fight to prevail in an argument, but rather to destroy the enemy's fighting ability.  Republicans often seem to regard political combats as they would a debate before the Oxford Political Union, as though winning depended on rational arguments and carefully articulated principles.  But the audience of politics is not made up of Oxford dons, and the rules are entirely different.

You have only thirty seconds to make your point.  Even if you had time to develop an argument, the audience you need to reach (the undecided and those in the middle who are not paying much attention) would not get it.  Your words would go over some of their heads and the rest would not even hear them (or quickly forget) amidst the bustle and pressure of everyday life.  Worse, while you are making your argument the other side has already painted you as a mean-spirited, borderline racist controlled by religious zealots, securely in the pockets of the rich.  Nobody who sees you in this way is going to listen to you in any case.  You are politically dead.

Politics is war.  Don't forget it. ("The Art of Political War" in Left Illusions: An Intellectual Odyssey Spence 2003, pp. 349-350)

It is clear how Horowitz would answer my reader's question:  Because politics is war, conservatives, if they want to win, must deploy the same tactics the lefties deploy.  Joe SixPack does not watch C-Span or read The Weekly Standard.  He won't sit still for Newt Gingrich as this former history professor calmly articulates conservative principles.  He needs to be fired up and energized.  The Left understands this.  You will remember that the race-hustling poverty pimp Jesse Jackson never missed an opportunity to refer to Gingrich's "Contract with America" as "Contract ON America."  That outrageous slander was of course calculated and was effective.  Leftists know how to fight dirty, and therefore the 'high road' is the road to political nowhere in present circumstances.

The fundamental problem, I am afraid, is that there is no longer any common ground. When people stand on common ground, they can iron out their inevitable differences in a civil manner within the context of shared assumptions.  But when there are no longer any (or many) shared assumptions,  then politics does become a form of warfare in which your opponent is no longer a fellow citizen committed to similar values, but an enemy who must be destroyed (if not physically, at least in respect of his political power) if you and your way of life are to be preserved.

As I have said before, the bigger and more intrusive the government, the more to fight over.  If we could reduce government to its legitimate constitutionally justified functions, then we could reduce the amount of fighting.  But of course the size, scope, and reach of government is precisely one of the issues most hotly debated.

Coming back to my reader's question, I incline toward the Horowitz answer, though I am not comfortable with it.  You will have to decide for yourself, taking into consideration the particulars of your situation.  Some of us are buying gold and 'lead.'  I suspect things are going to get hot in the years to to come, and I'm not talking about global warming.  Things are about to get interesting.

Clarity is Not Enough

This scribbler has penned paragraphs which, upon re-reading, not even he could make head nor tail of. That is often a sign of bad writing. It can also indicate sloppy thinking. But it may also show a noble attempt to press against the bounds of sense and the limits of intelligibility.  And if philosophy does not make that attempt, what good is it?

There is, after all, such a thing as superficial clarity. (He said with a sidelong glance in the direction of Rudolf and Ludwig.)

Living Right While Thinking Left

Liberals who have amounted to something in life through advanced study, hard work, deferral of   gratification, self-control, accepting responsibility for their actions and the rest of the old-fashioned virtues are often strangely  hesitant to preach those same conservative virtues to those most in need of them. These liberals  live Right and garner the benefits, but think Left. They do not make excuses for themselves, but they do for others. And what has worked for them they do not think will work for others. Their attitude is curiously condescending.  If we conservatives used 'racist' as loosely and irresponsibly as they do, we might even tag their attitude 'racist.'

Care for the Future

So live in the present that the future's memories won't be regrets.

The First Step to Enjoying Running

Arthur Lydiard, Run to the Top (2nd ed. Auckland: Minerva, 1967, p. 4):

The first step to enjoying running -- and anyone will enjoy it if he takes that first step -- is to achieve perfect fitness.  I don't mean just the ability to run half a mile once a week without collapsing.  I mean the ability to run great distances with ease at a steady speed.

That's one hell of a first step.  But the great coach is right: you will never enjoy running or understand its satisfactions if you jog around the block for 20 minutes four times per week.   I find that only after one hour of running am I properly primed and stoked.  And then the real run begins.  Or as I recall Joe Henderson saying back in the '70s in a Runner's World column: Run the first hour for your body, the second for your self.

Incarnation: A Mystical Approach?

I have been, and will continue,  discussing Trinity and Incarnation objectively, that is, in an objectifying manner.  Now what do I mean by that?  Well, with respect to the Trinity, the central conundrum, to put it in a very crude and quick way is this:  How can three things be one thing?  With respect to the Incarnation, how can the Second Person of the Trinity, the eternal and impassible Logos, be identical to a particular mortal man?  These puzzles get us thinking about identity and difference and set us hunting for analogies and models from the domain of  ordinary experience.  We seek intelligibility by an objective route.   We ought to consider that this objectifying approach might be wrongheaded and that we ought to examine a mystical and subjective approach, a 'Platonic' approach as opposed to an 'Aristotelian' one.  See my earlier quotation of Heinrich Heine.

1. The essence of Christianity is contained in the distinct but related doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Josef Pieper (Belief and Faith, p. 103) cites the following passages from the doctor angelicus: Duo nobis credenda proponuntur: scil. occultum Divinitatis . . . et mysterium humanitatis Christi. II, II, 1, 8. Fides nostra in duobus principaliter consistit: primo quidem in vera Dei cognitione . . . ; secundo in mysterio incarnationis Christi. II, II, 174, 6.

Paradox and Contradiction

Philosophers love a paradox but hate a contradiction.  They love that which stimulates thought but are understandably averse to that which stops it dead in its tracks. 

A Battle of Titans: Plato Versus Aristotle

It is sometimes said that there are only two kinds of philosophers, Platonists and Aristotelians.  What follows is a quotation from Heinrich Heine which expresses one version of this useful simplification.  Carl Gustav Jung places it at the very beginning of his Psychological Types (Princeton UP, 1971, p. 2.)

Plato and Aristotle! These are not merely two systems: they are also types of two distinct human natures, which from time immemorial, under every sort of disguise, stand more or less inimically opposed. The whole medieval period in particular was riven by this conflict, which persists down to the present day, and which forms the most essential content of the history of the Christian Church. Although under other names, it is always of Plato and Aristotle that we speak. Visionary, mystical, Platonic natures disclose Christian ideas and their corresponding symbols from the fathomless depths of their souls. Practical, orderly, Aristotelian natures build out of these ideas and symbols a fixed system, a dogma and a cult. Finally, the Church eventually embraces both natures—one of them entrenched in the clergy, and the other in monasticism; but both keeping up a constant feud. ~ H. Heine, Deutschland

Plato, on the left carrying The Timaeus, points upwards while Aristotle, on the right carrying his Ethics, points either forward (thereby valorizing the 'horizontal' dimension of time and change as against Plato's 'vertical' gesture) or downwards (emphasizing the foundational status of sense particulars and sense knowledge.)  At least  five contrasts are suggested: vita contemplativa versus vita activa, mundus intelligibilis versus mundus sensibilis, transcendence versus immanence, eternity versus time, mystical unity versus rational-cum-empirical plurality.

Heine is right about the battle within Christianity between the Platonic and Aristotelian tendencies.  Trinity, Incarnation, Transubstantiation, Divine Simplicity -- these are at bottom mystical notions impervious to penetration by the discursive intellect as we have been lately observing.  Nevertheless,"Practical, orderly, Aristotelian natures build out of these ideas and symbols a fixed system, a dogma and a cult."  But the dogmatic constructions, no matter how clever and detailed, never succeed in rendering intelligible the  transintelligible, mystical contents.

Sacrificium Intellectus

No thank you.  A God that would demand the sacrifice of the intellect or even the crucifixion of the intellect is not a God worthy of worship.  Imagine moving at death from the shadow lands of this life into the divine presence only to find that God is nothing but irrational power personified, the apotheosis of arbitrarity.  What could be more horrible?  Far, far better would be to be annihlated at death.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Blue Velvet

Tony Bennett's 1951 version.  Can't find The Clovers' 1955 effort which is as good as any.  Bobby Vinton had a #1 hit with it in 1963.  Featured in David Lynch's 1986 "Blue Velvet."  And while we're in a surreal mood, how about a little of the Big O's In Dreams?

Mental Quiet and Enlightenment/Salvation

In yesterday's post I claimed that the proximate goal of meditation is the attainment of mental quiet, but listed as an ultimate goal the arrival at what is variously described as enlightenment, salvation, liberation, release. In a comment to the post (from the old blog), Jim Ryan raised a difficult but very important question about the connection between mental quiet and salvation. What exactly is the connection? I would like to pursue this question with Jim’s help. I believe he is is quite interested in it since he tells me that he has been thinking about this question for the last twenty years. One way to begin is by outlining the possible positions on the relation between mental quiet and salvation. There seem to be three main positions. On the first, mental quiet and salvation have nothing to do with one another. On the second, there is a positive (non-identity) relation between the two. On the third, the two are identified.

A. Some will say that mental quiet is a merely subjective state with no soteriological import at all. Supposing a resolute meditator works himself into a blissful state of mental tranquility, why should that be taken to be a state of enlightenment or salvation or contact with ultimate truth? Why is it not just a highly unusual subjective state that few attain? Mental quiet on this approach is a non-intentional mental state, one that is not of or about anything. Lacking object-directedness, non-intentional states lack a necessary condition of having a truth-value. So if mental quiet is a non-intentional state, questions of veridicality cannot arise. One could not suppose that someone in this state possesses any insight into anything transcendent of the state. Mental quiet is an intensely blissful state, but not one revelatory of anything external to one’s egoic consciousness. Thus it does not reveal a non-egoic source of egoic consciousness, nor another egoic consciousness such as God.

A*. On an extreme version of (A), both the seeking of and the reposing in mental quiet is escapist: not only does it not put us in touch with reality, it leads the meditator into a state of self-indulgent dreaminess that shuts out reality. The difference between the A-position and the A*-position is that according to the former, achieving mental quiet does not help in the quest for enlightenment/salvation, while according to the latter it positively hinders the quest. A traditional religionist might take this line, maintaining that mental quiet and the mystical states that sometimes arise within it are ‘of the devil,’ a ‘snare and a delusion,’ and that the true path to salvation is via faith, or faith plus works, or faith plus works within an authoritarian structure such as the Roman Catholic Church.

A**. On an even more extreme version of (A), the charge of escapism is buttressed with the further claim that there is is no possibility of enlightenment/salvation. So it is not just that mental quiet is no help in its attainment, or that it hinders its attainment, but that there is nothing to attain. Ideological bedfellows as unlikely as Marxists and Randians would join in taking this A**-line and would denounce mental quiet as an opiate.

B. Although mental quiet is not a state of contact with the saving or enlightening power, it is a necessary condition of such contact: One cannot achieve contact without first being in the state of mental quiet.

B*. A more robust cousin of (B) maintains that mental quiet is sufficient for, though not identical with, contact with the saving or enlightening power.

B.** A less robust cousin of (B) has it that mental quiet is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition of contact with the salvific power but is nonethless conducive to such contact in the sense that it raises the probability of such contact. B** allows the contact to be achieved even by someone who has never engaged in any formal meditation practice, or one who has but has never entered mental quiet. There is a passage somewhere in al-Ghazzali where he points out that a person who climbs to the top of a minaret is more likely to feel a cooling breeze than one who remains on the ground. Similarly, the gusts of divine favor are more likely to reach one who has made the right preparations, entry into mental quiet being one such preparation. This image suggests that salvation cannot be caused by the seeker, but must be graciously received. ‘Own-power’ is not enough; ‘other-power’ is needed. Mental quiet is thus a state of mental receptivity or passivity, a state of interior listening in which one opens oneself to a possible communication from beyond one’s egoic consciousness.

C. On a third main approach, mental quiet is identified with enlightenment/salvation. Achieve one and you achieve the other.

Let me conclude by giving my provisional answer to Ryan’s question. As I see it at the moment,(B**) is the best explanation of the relation between mental quiet and salvation/enlightenment. (C) can be rejected quite easily. I suspect that Ryan, given his naturalism, will plump for one of the versions of the A-approach.

Meditation: What and Why

Here are some preliminary thoughts on the nature and purposes of meditation. Perhaps a later post will deal with methods of meditation.

Meditation Defined

We need to start with a working definition. The question of what meditation is is logically prior to the questions of why to do it and how to do it. The proximate goal of meditation is the attainment of mental quiet. I say ‘proximate’ to leave open the pursuit of further, more specific, goals, and so as not to prejudge the ultimate goal which will be differently conceived from within different metaphysical and religious perspectives. It would be tendentious to claim that the ultimate goal of meditation is entry into Nibbana/Nirvana, or union with the Godhead, or realization of the identity of Atman and Brahman. For these descriptions import metaphysical schemes acceptance of which is not necessary to do meditation. All the major religions have  their mystical branches in which meditation is cultivated despite differences in metaphysical schemes.  The meditating monks of Mt. Athos whose mantram is the Jesus Prayer subscribe to a Trinitarian metaphysics according to which Jesus Christ is the Son of God, a metaphysics incompatible with that of a Buddhist who nonetheless can employ a similar technique to achieve a similar result.

Welcome to Maverick Philosopher

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

 

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

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

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

Peter Hitchens Returns to Christianity and Makes Peace with his Atheist Brother

Here.

What Lukasiewicz Might Have Said to Lesniewski

Logically, we are poles apart.

Ersatz Eternity

What has been, though it needn't have been, always will have been.  What time has mothered, no future time can touch.   What you were and that you were stands forever inscribed in the roster of being whether or not anyone will read the record.  You will die, but your having lived will never die.  But how paltry the ersatz eternity of time's progeny!  Time has made you and will unmake you.  In compensation, she allows your having been to rise above the reach of the flux.  Thanks a lot, bitch!  You are one mater dolorosa whose consolation is as petty as your penance is hard.

Taxomania

Is it a word? If not, I hereby introduce it. It is the strong need, bordering on the obsessive, to classify. A central characteristic of the INTP.

Divine Simplicity and Truthmakers: Notes on Brower

1. One of the entailments of the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) is that God is identical to: God's omniscience, God's omnipotence, and in general God's X-ness, where 'X' ranges over the divine attributes.  And it is easy to see that if God = God's F-ness, and God = God's G-ness, then (by transitivity of identity) God's F-ness = God's G-ness.  I suggest that we use 'divine attribute' to refer to those properties of God that are both essential and intrinsic.  The problem, of course, is to make sense of these identities given the fact that, prima facie, they do not make sense.  The pattern is the same as with Trinity and Incarnation.  These doctrines imply identities which, on the face of it, beggar understanding.  It thus falls to the philosopher of religion to try to render coherent that which, on the face of it, is incoherent.

2. One of the questions that arise when we try to make sense of DDS concerns which category of entity such phrases as 'God's omniscience' pick out.  One possibility is that such phrases pick out properties, whether universal (multiply exemplifiable) properties or particular (not multiply exemplifiable) properties, also known as tropes. But this leads to trouble as Brower points out.  For if God is identical either to omniscience or to his omniscience, then God is identical to a property -- which sounds absurd: how can God, a person, be a property?  Properties are predicable entities, but God is an individual and so not predicable.  Properties are exemplifiable entities (whether multiply or non-multiply); but God is an individual and so not exemplifiable.  Properties are abstract (causally inert)  whereas God is concrete (causally active/passive).  No property is a person, but God is a person.  No property creates or knows or loves.  These are some hastily sketched reasons for thinking that God cannot be identical to his properties.

3. Jeffrey E. Brower forwards an interesting proposal.  He suggests that such phrases as 'God's nature,' 'God's goodness' and 'God's power' refer to "entities of a broadly functional type -- namely, truthmakers." (Simplicity and Aseity, sec. 2)  The idea is that 'God's omniscience' refers to the trruthmaker of 'God is omniscient' or perhaps to the truthmaker of the proposition expressed by 'God is omniscient.'  If (Fregean) propositions are the primary truthbearers, then (tokenings of) declarative sentences that express such propositions can be said to be secondary truthbearers.  I trust that it is clear that truthbearers and truthmakers are not to be confused.  One key difference is that while some truthbearers are are false, no truthmaker is false.  Truth and falsity are properties of certain representations (propositions, declarative sentences, beliefs, judgments, etc.)  whereas truthmakers are the ontological grounds of some true truthbearers.  If I understand Brower's view, it is not only that truthmakers are neither true nor false -- every TM theorist will hold this -- but also that truthmakers are not at all proposition-like.  By contrast, I follow D. M. Arstrong in holding that truthmakers must have a proposition-like structure.  But more on this in a moment.

4. Roughly, a truthmaker is whatever plays a certain role or performs a certain function; it is whatever makes true a true truthbearer.  The 'truthmaker intuition' -- which I share with Brower -- is that a sentence such as 'Tom is blogging' cannot just be true; there is need of some worldly entity to 'make' it true, to serve as the ontological ground of its truth, to 'verify' it in an ontological, not epistemological, sense of this term.  To say that some or all truthbearers need truthmakers is not yet to specify which sort of entity plays the truthmaker role.  Among philosophers who accept the need for truthmakers there is disagreement about the ontological category to which they belong. 

 Brower says rather incautiously that the functional characterization of truthmakers "places no restriction on the specific nature or ontological category to which a truthmaker can belong." (sec 2.1)  That can't be right.  Surely there are some restrictions.  For one thing, a truthmaker cannot be a Fregean proposition for the simple reason that such items are among the items made true by truthmakers.  And the same goes for declarative sentences, beliefs, and judgments.  My belief that the cat is asleep is either true or false and as such is a truthbearer.  It is in need of a truthmaker but is not itself one.  Of course, the fact of my believing that the cat is asleep can serve as truthmaker for the sentence ' BV now believes that the cat is asleep'  if concrete facts are admitted as truthmakers -- but that is something else again.  So not just anything can be a truthmaker.  Charitably interpreted, what Brower is telling us is that TM theorists are allowed some ontological latitude when it comes to specifying which category of entity is fit to play the truthmaker role. 

5. Let us note that if a true Fregean proposition p entails a Fregean proposition q, then one could say that the first 'makes true' the second.  And so one could speak of the first as a 'truthmaker' of the second.  But this is not what is meant  by 'truthmaking' in these discussions despite the fact that p broadly logically necessitates q.   What is intended is a relation of broadly logical necessitation that connects a nonpropositional entity (but on some theories a proposition-like entity) to a propositional entity, or more precisely, to an entity that can serves as the bearer or vehicle of a truth-value.  As I see it, the entailment relation and the truthmaking relation are species of broadly logical necessitation; but truthmaking is not entailment.  Entailment will never get you 'outside the circle of propositions'; but that is exactly what truthmaking is supposed to do.  A truthmaker is an ontological, not propositional or representational truth-ground.  Philosophers who are attracted to truthmakers typically have a realist sense that certain of our representations need to be anchored in reality.

Brower sees it a little differently.  He would agree with me that entailment and truthmaking cannot be identical, but he thinks of it as "a form of broadly logical necessitation or entailment" and says that entailment is necessary but not sufficient for truthmaking. (Sec. 2.1)  So Brower seems to be maintaining that while there is more to truthmaking than entailment, every truthmaker entails the truth it makes true.  But this makes little or no sense.  Entailment is a relation defined on propositions.  If x entails y, then you can be sure that x and y are propositions or at least proposition-like entities, whether these be sentences or judgments or beliefs or even concrete states of affairs such as the fact of (not the fact that) Peter's being tired, which concrete fact contains Peter himself as constituent, warts and all.  But for Brower, as we will see in a moment, concrete individuals such as Socrates, entities that are neither propositions nor proposition-like, can serve as truthmakers.  As far as I can see, it makes no sense to say that Socrates entails a proposition.  It makes no sense because entailment is defined in terms of truth, and no individual can be true or false.  To say that p entails q is to say that it is impossible that p be true and q false.  Since it makes no sense to say of an individual that it is true, it makes no sense to say of an individual that it entails a proposition.  So truthmaking cannot be a type or species of entailment if individuals are truthmakers.

6.  But setting aside for the moment the above worry, if it makes sense to say that God is the truthmaker of 'God is omniscient,' and if 'God's omniscience' refers to this truthmaker, then it will be clear how God can be identical to God's omniscience.  For then 'God is identical to his omniscience' is no more problematic than 'God is God.' It will also be clear how God's omniscience can be identical to God's omnipotence. 

7.  But can it really be this easy to show that DDS is coherent? Although I agree with Brower that some truthbearers need truthmakers, I don't see how truthmakers could be ontologically structureless individuals or 'blobs' as opposed to 'layer-cakes' in Armstrong's terminology.  By 'ontologically structureless' I mean lacking in propositional or proposition-like structure.  Consider the following true intrinsic essential predicative sentences: 'Socrates is human,' 'Socrates is an animal,' Socrates is a material object,' 'Socrates exists,' and 'Socrates is self-identical.'  (It is not obvious that 'Socrates exists' is an essential predication inasmuch as Socrates exists contingently, but let's not enter into this thorny thicket just now.)

Brower's claim is that in each of these cases (which parallel the true intrinsic essential predications of divine attributes) the truthmaker is the concrete individual Socrates himself.  Thus Socrates is the truthmaker of 'Socrates is human' just as God is the truthmaker of 'God is omniscient.'  Unfortunately, no individual lacking propositional or proposition-like structure can serve as a truthmaker as I argued in #5 above.  Just as it makes no sense to say that Socrates is true, it makes no sense to say that Socrates entails the proposition expressed by 'Socrates is human.' 

There is more to say, but tomorrow's another day.  Time to punch the clock.

Philosophy is Inquiry not Ideology

(The following, composed 16 February 2005, is imported from the first incarnation of Maverick Philosopher.  It makes some important points that bear repeating.)

On the masthead of The Ivory Closet, now defunct: "Life as a Closet Conservative Inside Liberal Academia."

From the post Liberal Groupthink is My Cover:

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