Maverick Philosopher

Never Say Die

Susan Jacoby's new book fell into my hands the other day.  It is entitled Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age (Pantheon, 2011).  Although I noticed some things in the first chapter that are clearly true and worth pointing out, the preface raised my critical eyebrows a bit.  But I agree with Jacoby's realism:

. . . to suggest that ninety may soon become the new fifty -- the premise of a panel at the widely publicized annual World Science Festival held in New York City in 2008 -- is to engage in magical thinking. (5)

Surely she is right about that.  In the preface she writes,

I hope that this book about the genuine battles of growing old will provide support for all who draw their strength and courage from reality, however daunting that reality may be, rather than from platitudes about “defying old age.” This commonly used phrase in the annals of the so-called new old age fills me with rage, because the proximity of old age to death is not only undefiable but undeniable. Anger, by the way, is another emotion considered inappropriate in the old; the dubious notion of the “wisdom of old age” rests on the belief that elders can, and should, transcend the passions, vaulting ambition, and competitiveness of their younger adult lives and arrive at some sort of peace that passeth all understanding.

It is no doubt silly to speak of 'defying old age,' but why should this phrase elicit rage in the 63 year old Boomer?  And then, half-perceiving the inappropriateness of rage over such a thing, especially in a 63 year old, she opines that it is dubious that as we age we can and should transcend the passions, give up ambition, and set aside our youthful competitiveness.  Finally, making matters worse, she adduces a religious phrase that she doesn't understand.

On the contrary, I say

1. To live enslaved to one's passions is obviously bad and has been seen as bad in all the major wisdom traditions. It is precisely one of the compensations of old age, which I take to begin at 60, that it is easier and easier to free oneself from the grip of passion.  The fire down below  begins to subside, to mention the central and most delusive passion. The Buddhist injunction, "Conquer desire and aversion," is much easier to implement once the fires of lust have damped down.  Self-mastery is something within our power and something we ought to pursue. As I see it, Jacoby rightly opposes one form of contemporary nonsense, the Forever Young nonsense, only to succumb to another form of contemporary nonsense, namely, that passion is good.

2.  As for ambition, lack of ambition in the young is rightly seen as a defect. But when the old are still driven by their old ambitions, none of which were of too lofty a nature, are they not fools?  For the old ambitions, appropriate as they were in youth, have become absurd in old age.  Life is, or at least ought to be, progressive disillusionment, a growing insight into the ultimate nullity of name and fame, status and position, loot and lucre.  Or, as I put it in an aphorism:

The young, astride their steeds of ambition, should gallop boldly into the fray. But the old should know when to quit the game and dismount into dis-illusion. Homo ludens, when sapient, knows when to become de-luded.

 3. The same goes for competitiveness.  You waste your old age if you don't use it to see through "finite competitive selfhood"  to borrow a fine phrase from A. E. Taylor.  What baubles and trinkets are you competing for, old man?  What are they worth?  You were once a child but then you put aside childish things.  Why do you cling still to the toys of adulthood?

4. At the end of the above-quoted passage Jacoby adduces a New Testament phrase that she obviously does not understand.  At Philippians 4:7 in the King James Version, we read "And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."  So typical of a secularist to mock religion and then twist a line of religious provenience around to her own purposes!  This misuse of religious language is something that ought to be opposed.

And particularly block-headed is her reference to William Wordsworth at the end of her preface:

Anyone who has outlived his or her passions has lived too long. Wordsworth got it exactly right, at the tender age of thirty-seven, in his “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”: O joy! That in our embers / Is something that doth live, / That nature yet remembers / What was so fugitive!

If she had read the Ode carefully she would have known that it is deeply otherworldly and Platonic in inspiration.  It is about experiences that some of us had as children, experiences in which hints of our higher origin were vouchsafed to us.  It has nothing to do with "The search for new, earthbound ways to express lifelong passions . . . ."

I am reminded of Georg Lichtenberg's aphorism, Ein Buch ist ein Spiegel, wenn ein Affe hineinguckt, so kann freilich kein Apostel heraus sehen.  "A book is a mirror: if an ape looks in, no apostle will look out." 

The Scatology of a Skeptic

Philip P. Hallie, in his "Polemical Introduction" to Sextus Empiricus (Hackett, 1985, p. 7) writes:

This special function of doubt [its "wiping off of the excrescences that befoul man's life and lead him into endless, bitter conflicts  with his fellow men"] is well though not pleasingly expressed by Sextus in the metaphor of the laxative. Doubt washes itself away along with the dubious unprovable claims it works on, and it does so, according to our Sceptical physician, "just as aperient drugs do not merely eliminate the humours of the body, but also expel themselves along with the humours." The ultimate purpose of   Scepticism is to make doubting unnecessary, to let the customs of our country, our needs for food and drink and so forth, and our plain everyday speech take over the direction of our thought and life after the doubting is done.

Unfortunately, what Hallie, echoing Sextus, is proposing here is unworkable, as I argue in Ataraxia and the Impossibility of Living without Beliefs.

The Bigger the Government . . .

. . . the smaller the citizen. (Dennis Prager)

. . . the more to fight over. (Vallicella)

. . . the bigger the debt. (Vallicella glossing Medved)

The Debt Debate

A U.K. commenter remarks:

Meanwhile, changing the subject completely, I fail to understand the game of 'chicken' that the two houses are playing over debt. (Wasn't there a James Dean film that started that way, with bad results?). I would be interested in hearing your views in a post.

Here are some quick thoughts.

To understand what this wrangling is all about you must understand that the USA is a deeply divided country in which the common ground on which we formerly stood is shrinking.  To borrow a phrase from Thomas Sowell, what divides us is a very deep "conflict of visions."  The conflict concerns the nature and purpose of government, its size, scope and reach, what it can and cannot legitimately do.  The Left favors, in practice if not always in theory, an ever-expanding welfare state which provides citizens with cradle-to-grave security.  Although liberals don't like to be called socialists, and will retreat to an exceedingly narrow definition of 'socialism' in order to avoid this label, their tendency is clearly in the socialist direction and they have been marching in this direction since FDR at least.  A perfect example is President Obama's health care initiative, popularly known as 'Obamacare,' which increases government control of the health care system.  Particularly offensive to libertarians and conservatives is Obamacare's individual mandate which requires citizens to purchase health care insurance whether they need it or not, whether they want it or not.  A clear indication of the 'visionary' and ideological nature of this initiative is that it is being forwarded at a time when the country simply cannot afford another entitlement program.  But this hard fact cuts no ice with the ideologues of the Left.

The Right, on the other hand, resists the expansion of government power, championing the traditional values of self-reliance, individual responsibility, and limited government.  This deep Right-Left conflict of visions plays out over a myriad of issues major and minor from guns to light bulbs to soda pop to circumcision to using federal tax dollars to fund abortion clinics, and so on.

Perhaps we should distinguish the political and the economic aspects of the conflict of visions.  What I have just sketched is the political difference, the difference as to what the polis, the state, ought to be and ought to do.  But there is also deep disagreement about economics.  The Left favors central planning and top-down control while the Right looks to a more or less free market for solutions. 

If you ask a liberal how to generate government revenue he will tell you to raise taxes while the conservative will say the opposite: lower taxes, thereby stimulating the economy.  The creation of jobs will increase income, FICA, and sales tax revenues.  Each side looks for 'facts' to support its overarching vison, which underscores the fact that what we have here is fundamentally a conflict of radically opposed visions. 

In sum, we Americans are fundamentally divided and in a way that is irreconcilable at the level of ideas.  We do not stand on the common ground of shared principles and there is no point in blinking this fact.  Left and Right are riven by deep and unbridgeable value differences.  And so any compromises that are reached are merely provisional and pro tem, reflecting as they do the fact that neither side has the power to  clobber decisively the other and push the nation in the direction in which it thinks it ought to move.

And so it should come as no surprise that there is bitter wrangling over the national debt.  Making it worse is the fact that on the Republican side there is a split between libertarians and true conservatives on the one hand and RINOs (Republicans in name only) on the other.  A proper subset of the first group is the Tea Party folks whose central animating desideratum is fiscal responsibility.  The Dems are more unified toeing as they do the leftist party line.

The Tea Party faction has rightly sounded the alarm concerning the national debt which under Obama is increasing at the rate of 4.1 billion dollars per day.  (Under G. W. Bush the rate of increase was also unacceptable but much less, around 1.6 billion per day.)  Unfortunately, their standing on principle could have disastrous effects.  I mean the principle that the debt ceiling ought not be raised.  The crucial fact here is that the Republicans do not control the Senate or the White House.  So they really can't do much.  What they can do is get themselves perceived as pigheaded extremists.  If enough ordinary Americans come to view  Republicans as obstructionists or extremist then then the Right will lose the 2012 battles and it will be all over.

The Boehner Plan is the way to go given the current political climate and the current distribution of power among the branches of government.

Charles Krauthammer has it nailed. (Get the pun?) 

Actually, Krauthammer would make a great president except that he looks like a cadaver, is bound to a wheel chair, and is a chess player.  Totally unelectable.

Dennis Prager, Jealousy, and Envy

Talk-show host Dennis Prager is a fount of wisdom.  I recommend his Happiness Hour to you, and the rest of his show as well. But I just heard him say on the Happiness Hour segment of his show, "jealousy slash envy."  I beg to differ.  I see a distinction between the two.  See my Envy, Jealousy, and <i>Schadenfreude</i>.

Distinctions are good so long as they cut the bird of reality at the joints.  The more the better.

New York Times Reader Kills Dozens in Norway

I have been harshly critical of Ann Coulter in the past, but she is basically right in this piece.

100 Reasons Not to Go to Grad School

Here. 

Christian Stoicism

Richard Wurmbrand, From Torture to Triumph (Monarch, 1991), p. 5:

     A brother who had been terribly tortured by the Communist police
     shared the same prison cell with me and told the following incident:

     I once saw an impressive scene in a circus. A sharpshooter set out
     to demonstrate his skill. In the arena was his wife with a burning
     candle on her head. From a distance he shot the candle so that it
     fell, leaving his wife unharmed.

     Later I asked her, "Were you afraid?" She replied, "Why should I
     be? He aimed at the candle, not at me."

     I thought about this when I was under torture. Why should I be
     afraid of the torturers? They don't beat me. They beat my body. My
     'me,' my real being, is Christ. I was seated with him in the
     heavenly places. This -- my real person -- could not be touched by
     them.

Great but Wretched

That one has has a soul to sell indicates one's greatness. That one sells  it so cheaply -- for money, power, sex, pleasure, fame, mere physical longevity --  points up one's  wretchedness.

Scenes from the Superstitions

James L., fanatical hiker, who I have been introducing to the Superstition Wilderness.  A native Arizonan, he has no problem with hiking in the summer in this rattlesnake infested inferno.  I hope not to have to make use of his nurse practitioner skills.  The knife hanging from his belt suggests he might, in a pinch, be up for some 'meatball surgery.'

 

 

James and I encountered this tarantula on the Dutchman's trail near dawn, last Wednesday.  And then a bit farther down the trail, and smack dab in the middle of it, we spied a baby diamondback rattlesnake:

 

 

Weaver's Needle at daybreak from the Dutchman's trail near Parker Pass.  We were doing the Black Mesa Loop out of First Water trailhead in the counter-clockwise direction.  Covered the 9.1 miles in 5 1/2 hours.  Not bad considering the monsoon humidity and a high of about 108 deg. Fahrenheit.  Last year in July three Utah prospectors died near Yellow Peak which is on this route.  We passed right by the black basaltic rock on which they expired, rock that can reach a temperature of 180.  See Another Strange Tale of the Superstitions.  For the rest of the story see Tom Kollenborn, A Deadly Vision.

 

'Home Grown Terrorists'

That's politically correct jargon for Muslim terrorists who happen to be Americans.  The liberal media shies away from the accurate phrase 'Muslim terrorist.'  But it doesn't hesitate to label Anders Behring Breivik a Christian terrorist despite the lack of evidence of his being a Christian, a fact that even Sam Harris notes. Don't you love liberals with their double standards, their moral equivalency 'arguments,' their lack of intellectual honesty, and their thought-stifling PeeCee mentality?

Facebook and Privacy

I don't have a Facebook page and I don't plan to get one, or anything similar.  Some of the reasons are provide by Facebook user Lydia McGrew in her Privacy is not a Setting.

See also Down with Facebook! and With Friends Like These.

 

How Are Form and Matter Related in Compound Material Substances?

Favoring as I do constituent ontology, I am sympathetic to that type of constituent ontology which is hylomorphic ontological analysis, as practiced by Aristotelians, Thomists, et al.  The obscurity of such fundamental  concepts as form, matter, act, potency, substance, and others is, however, troubling. Let's see if we can make sense of the relation between form and matter in an artifact such as a bronze sphere. Now those of you who are ideologically committed to Thomism may bristle at an exposure of difficulties, but you should remember that philosophy is not ideology. The philosopher follows the argument to its conclusion whether it overturns his pet beliefs or supports them, or neither. He knows how to keep his ideological needs in check while pursuing pure inquiry.  If the inquiry terminates in an aporetic impasse, then so be it.

1. Although it perhaps requires arguing, I will here take it for granted that form and matter as these terms are used by Aristotle and his followers are items 'in the real order.' 'Item' is a maximally   noncommittal term in my lexicon: it commits me to very little. Anything in whatever category to which one can refer in any way  whatsoever is an item. 'Real' is that which exists whether or not it is an intentional object of an act of mind. So when I say that form and matter are items in the real order I simply mean that they are not projected by the mind: it is not as if bronze spheres and such have  form and matter only insofar as we interpret them as having form and matter. The bronze sphere is subject to hylomorphic (matter-form) analysis because the thing in reality is made up of form and matter.   'Projectivism' is off the table at least for the space of this post. I am thus assuming a version of realism and am viewing form and matter as distinct ontological constituents or 'principles' of compound   substances.

2. The foregoing implies that the proximate matter of the bronze sphere,  namely, the hunk of bronze itself, is a part of the bronze sphere.  After all, 'ontological constituent' is just a fancy way of saying  'ontological part.'  But an argument I now adapt from E. J. Lowe ("Form Without Matter" in Form and Matter: Themes in Contemporary  Metaphysics, ed. Oderberg, Blackwell 1999, p. 7) seems to show that  the notion that the proximate matter of a compound material substance is a part of it is problematic.  The argument runs as follows.

A. If the hunk of bronze composing the sphere is a part of the sphere, then either it is a proper part or it is an improper part, where an improper part of a whole W is a part of W that overlaps every part of   W.

B. The hunk of bronze is not an improper part since it is not identical to the bronze sphere. (One reason for this is that the persistence conditions are not the same: the piece of bronze will still exist if the sphere is flattened into a disk, but the sphere cannot survive such a deformation. Second, the two are modally discernible: the hunk of bronze is a hunk of bronze in every possible world in which it exists, but the hunk of bronze is not a sphere in every possible world in which it exists.)

C. The hunk of bronze is not a proper part of the bronze sphere since there is no part of the bronze sphere that it fails to overlap.

Therefore

D. The hunk of bronze is not a part of the bronze sphere.

Therefore

E. The composition of form and matter is not mereological. (Lowe, p. 7)

This raises the question of how exactly we are to understand form-matter composition. If the proximate matter of a substance cannot  be a part of it in any sense familiar to mereology, the form-matter composition is 'unmereological,' which is not necessarily an objection except that it raises the question of how exactly we are to understand this unmereological type of composition. This problem obviously extends to essence-existence composition.

3. Now let's look at the problem from the side of form. Could the spherical form of the bronze sphere be a part of it? A form is a principle of organization or arrangement, and it is not quite clear how an arrangement can be a part of the thing whose other parts it arranges. Lowe puts the point like this: ". . . the arrangement of certain parts cannot itself be one of those parts, as this would involve the very conception of an arrangement of parts in a fatal kind of impredicativity." (p. 7)

4. In sum, the difficulty is as follows. Form and matter are real 'principles' in compound substances. They are not projected or supplied by us. We can say that form and matter are ontological constituents of compound substances. This suggests that they are parts of compound substances. But we have just seen that they are not parts in any ordinary mereological sense. So this leaves us in the dark as to just what these 'principles' are and how they combine to constitute compound material substances.

'Leibniz's Law': A Useless Expression

Pedant and quibbler that I am, it annoys me when I hear professional philosophers use the phrase 'Leibniz's Law.'  My reason is that it is used by said philosophers in three mutually incompatible ways.  That makes it a junk phrase, a wastebasket expression, one to be avoided.  Some use it as Dale Tuggy does, here, to refer to the Indiscernibility of Identicals, a principle than which no more luminous can be conceived.  (Roughly, if a = b, then whatever is true of a is true of b, and vice versa.)  Fred Sommers, referencing Benson Mates, also uses it in this way.  (See The Logic of Natural Language,  p. 127)

Others, such as the distinguished Australian philosopher Peter Forrest, use it to refer to the Identity of Indiscernibles, a principle rather less luminous to the intellect and, in my humble opinion, false.  (Roughly, if whatever is true of a is true of b and vice versa, then a = b.)  And there are those who use it as to refer to the conjunction  of the Indiscernibility of Identicals and the Identity of Indiscernibles.

So 'Leibniz's Law' has no standardly accepted usage and is insofar forth useless.  And unnecessary.  You mean 'Indiscernibility of Identicals'?  Then say that.  If you mean its converse, say that. Ditto for their conjunction.

There is also the problem of using a great philosopher's name to label a principle that the philosopher may not even have held.  Analytic philosophers are notorious for being lousy historians.  Not all of them, of course, but the run-of-the-mill.  If Sommers is right, Leibniz was a traditional logician who did not think of identity as a relation as Frege and Russell do.  (p. 127) Accordingly, 'a = b' as this formula is understood in modern predicate logic does not occur in Leibniz.

 

Why I Reject Individual Concepts

Consider the sentences 'Caissa is a cat' and 'Every cat is an animal.'  Edward the Nominalist made two  claims in an earlier comment thread that stuck in my Fregean craw:

1. The relation between 'Caissa' and 'cat' is the same as the relation between 'cat' and 'animal'.

2. The relation between *Caissa* and *cat* is the same as the relation between *cat* and *animal.*

Single quotes are being used in the usual way to draw attention to the expression enclosed within them.  Asterisks are being used to draw attention to the concept expressed by the linguistic item enclosed within them.  I take it we agree that concepts are mental in nature in the sense that, were there no minds, there would be no concepts. 

Affirming (2), Edward commits himself to individual or singular concepts.  I deny that there are individual concepts and so I reject (2).  Rejecting (2), I take the side of the Fregeans against the traditional formal logicians who think that singular propositions can be analyzed as general.  Thus 'Caissa is a cat' gets analyzed by the TFL-ers  as 'Every Caissa is a cat.'

To discuss this profitably we need to agree on the following definition of 'individual concept':

D1. C is an individual concept of x =_df x is an instance of C, and it is not possible that there be a y distinct from x such that y is an instance of C.

So if there is an individual concept of my cat Caissa, then Caissa instantiates this concept and nothing distinct from Caissa does or could instantiate it. We can therefore say that individual concepts, if there are any, 'capture' or  'grasp' or 'make present to the mind' the very haecceity (thisness) of the individuals of which they are the individual concepts.

We can also speak of individual concepts as singular concepts and contrast them with general concepts.  *Cat* is a general concept.  What makes it general is not that it has many instances, but that it can have many (two or more) instances.  General concepts are thus multiply instantiable. 

The concept C1 expressed by 'the fattest cat that ever lived and ever will live' is also general.  For, supposing that Oscar instantiates this concept, it is possible that some other feline instantiate it.  Thus C1 does not capture the haecceity of Oscar or of any cat.   C1 is general, not singular.  C1 is multiply instantiable in the sense that it can have two or more instances, though not in the same possible world.

And so from the fact that a concept applies to exactly one thing if it applies to anything, one cannot validly infer that it is an individual or singular concept.  Such a concept must capture the very identity or thisness of the thing of which it is a concept.  This is an important point.  To push further I introduce a definition and a lemma.

D2. C is a pure concept =_df C involves no specific individual and can be grasped without reference to any specific individual.

Thus 'green,' 'green door,' 'bigger than a barn,' 'self-identical,'  and 'married to someone' all express pure concepts.  'Taller than the Washington Monument,' 'married to Heidegger,' and 'identical to Heidegger' express impure concepts. 

Lemma 1: No individual concept is a pure concept.

Proof.  By (D1), if C is an individual concept of x, then it is not possible that there be a y distinct from x such that y instantiates C.  But every pure concept, no matter how specific, is possibly such as to have two or more instances.  Therefore, no individual concept is a pure concept.

Consider the famous Max Black example of two iron spheres alike in all monadic and relational respects.  A pure concept of either, no matter how specific, would also be a pure concept of the other.  And so the haecceity of neither would be captured by that pure concept.

Lemma 2.  No individual concept is an impure concept.

Proof.  An individual  concept is either pure or impure.  If C is impure, then by (D2) it must involve an individual.  And if C is an individual concept it must involve the very individual of which it is the individual concept. But individuum ineffabile est: no individual can be grasped as an individual.  But that is precisely what one would have to be able to do to have an impure concept of an individual.  Therefore, no individual concept is an impure concept.

Putting the lemmata together, it follows that an individual concept cannot be either pure or impure.  But it must be one or the other.  So there are no individual concepts. Q. E. D.!

 

Zero Tolerance and the Death of Common Sense

(Here is a fine rant from the old blog.  Originally appeared 23 August 2007.)

Is common sense dead? Apparently, given the large number of incidents like the one reported in this story of a boy who was suspended from school for merely drawing a picture of a gun. And this  occurred in Arizona of all places, where one might expect some old-fashioned common sense to still exist, as opposed to some such haven of effete liberal idiocy as the People's Republic of Taxachusetts.

How does one deal with idiots? With those impervious to reason? For example, how deal with the sort of liberal idiot who thinks that the use of the perfectly good English word 'niggardly' involves a racial slur? You may recall that some poor guy lost his job over this a few years back.

Is there any connection between these two cases? The mind of a liberal is like a bowl of mush in which anything can transmogrify into anything else. Nothing is well-defined, nothing is what it is. Anything can be associated with anything else. So a mere drawing of  gun, by a strange associational 'logic' becomes a gun. The prohibition of guns on campus becomes a prohibition of doodles of guns. The harmless teenage doodler becomes a deadly threat to his classmates. A paper 'gun' assumes the dangerousness of a loaded gun. Other distinctions go by the board, as when liberals talk, as they constantly do, of guns killing people, when no gun has ever killed anyone.

Similarly, the sound of 'niggardly' reminds someone of the sound of 'nigger' and so 'niggardly' is taken to mean nigger-like so that the property of being a racial slur get tranferred back upon the innocent word.

Is it the inability to think straight that defines the politically correct? Or the unwillingess? Or both?

Liberals love the 'disease model.'  Perhaps they should apply it to themselves.  Treatment is what they need, not refutation.  Some notions are beneath refutation.

Thought Check

More important than a 'gut check' might be a thought check carried out at regular intervals.  Say to yourself: what is the quality of my present thoughts?  Positive or negative? Ennobling or degrading?  Useless or useful?  Where are they drifting? What is their likely issue?  Conducive to happiness or to ever more negativity and misery for myself and others?

Why might this be useful?  Because thought is the seed of word and deed.

John Leslie and Hostage Chess

I learned recently that the philosopher John Leslie is the inventor of a chess variant, Hostage Chess. Left-click on the hyperlink and scroll down.

I have never played any of the chess variants, and they don't interest me. Penetrating the arcana of standard chess has me sufficiently occupied. Such a patzer am I that I could not explain the Lucena and Philidor positions without consulting the manuals. But could you? And my endgame savvy is weak. My excuse is that I didn't get seriously into chess until I was deep into middle age.

I can say of Caissa what Augustine said of the Eternal Unchanging Light: "Too late have I loved thee." Not that the former takes the place of the latter, you understand.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Amy Winehouse

Amy Winehouse succumbed to the curse of 27 today.  Why is 27 such an auspicious age for a quick exit from life's freeway?  My guess is that at 27 one is still too young  fully to appreciate the ravages to the body of life in the fast lane  but is old enough to have done irreparable damage, so much so that just one more snort, one more shot, one more binge pushes the self-abuser over the edge.  So 27 is a sort of crossroads.

Here is Winehouse singing the great Gerry Goffin-Carole King song, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?  But there never was and never will be a cover superior to the Shirelle's 1961 version.  I've loved this song, in this version, ever since I first heard it in '61.  Carole King's version from her 1971 Tapestry album is also outstanding.

Are You an Archevore?

Ah yes, the wonderful world of dietary controversy!  So bitter at times as to spoil one's appetite.  If you aspire to archevorial status, here is the diet.  This site was recommended to me by a very astute fellow who says it works for him.  Although I don't recommend  becoming a paleo-fresser (my coinage),  it is worth considering.

Of Gold and Fear

"When we have gold we are in fear; when we have none we are in danger." (English proverb) 

The same could be said of  'lead.'

Liberal Islam

A Pakistani reader of this weblog, Awais Aftab, points us to his piece What is Liberal Islam?

The Higher Education Bubble

Good analysis by Michael Barone.

Federal subsidies have caused college costs to skyrocket while quality goes down.  What does all the money buy?  Administrative bloat:

Take the California State University system, the second tier in that state's public higher education. Between 1975 and 2008, the number of faculty rose by 3 percent, to 12,019 positions. During those same years, the number of administrators rose 221 percent, to 12,183. That's right: There are more administrators than teachers at Cal State now.

These people get paid to "liaise" and "facilitate" and produce reports on diversity. How that benefits Cal State students or California taxpayers is unclear.

Barone goes on to point out that to pay $100,000 for a degree in women's studies makes no economic sense.  But he doesn't forcefully make the point, contra Obama, that it is just foolish for everyone to go to college.  Only some people are 'college material' to use a phrase  one no longer hears.  There is nothing wrong with learning and plying a trade right out of high school.  Why waste thousands of dollars partying and goofing off just so one can -- learn a trade?

And let's be clear that for the vast majority, 'getting an education' is a euphemism for getting ahead, for acquiring credentials that one hopes will bring social and economic advancement.  It is not about becoming an educated human being.  It's about money and status.  But then it should be spectacularly  clear that if one wants money, a decidedly suboptimal way of going about getting it is by saddling oneself with $100,000 in college debt.

Nota Notae Est Nota Rei Ipsius and the Ontological Argument

(By popular demand, I repost the following old Powerblogs entry.)

"The mark of a mark is a mark of the thing itself." I found this piece of scholasticism in C. S. Peirce. (Justus Buchler, ed., Philosophical Writings of Peirce, p. 133) It is an example of what Peirce calls a   'leading principle.'

Let's say you have an enthymeme:

   Enoch was a man
   -----
   Enoch died.

Invalid as it stands, this argument can be made valid by adding a premise. (Any invalid argument can be made valid by adding a premise.) Add 'All men die' and the argument comes out valid. Peirce writes:

     The leading principle of this is nota notae est nota rei ipsius.
     Stating this as a premiss, we have the argument,

     Nota notae est nota rei ipsius
     Mortality is a mark of humanity, which is a mark of Enoch
     -----
     Mortality is a mark of Enoch.

But is it true that the mark of a mark is a mark of the thing itself? There is no doubt that mortality is a mark of humanity in the following sense: The concept humanity includes within its conceptual content the superordinate concept mortal, which implies that, necessarily, if anything is human, then it is mortal. But mortality is not a mark, but a property, of Enoch. I am alluding to Frege's distinction between a Merkmal and an Eigenschaft. Frege explains this distinction in various places, one being The Foundations of Arithmetic, sec. 53. But rather than quote Frege, I'll explain the distinction in my own way using a totally original example.

Consider the concept bachelor. This is a first-order or first-level concept in that the items that fall under it are not concepts but objects. The marks of a first-order concept are properties of the objects that fall under the concept. Now the marks of bachelor are unmarried, male, adult, and not a member of a religious order. These marks are themselves concepts, concepts one can extract from bachelor by analysis. Given that Tom falls under bachelor, he has these marks as properties. Thus unmarried, etc. are not marks of Tom, but properties of Tom, while unmarried, etc. are not properties of bachelor but marks of bachelor.

To appreciate the Merkmal (mark)-Eigenschaft (property) distinction, note that the relation between a concept and its marks is entirely different from the relation between a concept and its instances. A first-order concept includes its marks without instantiating them, while an object instantiates its properties without including them.

This is a very plausible line to take. It makes no sense to say of a concept that it is married or unmarried, so unmarried cannot be a property of the concept bachelor. Concepts don't get married or remain single. But it does make sense to say that a concept includes certain other concepts, its marks. On the other hand, it makes no sense to say of Tom that he includes certain concepts since he could do such a thing only if he were a concept, which he isn't. But it does make sense to say of Tom that he has such properties as being a bachelor, being unmarried, being an adult, etc.

Reverting to Peirce's example, mortality is a mark of humanity, but not a mark of Enoch. It is a property of Enoch. For this reason the scholastic formula is false. Nota notae NON est nota rei ipsius. The mark of a mark is not a mark of the thing itself but a property of the thing itself.

No doubt commenter Edward the Nominalist will want to wrangle with me over this slight to his scholastic lore, and I hope he does, since his objections will aid and abet our descent into the labyrinth of this fascinating cluster of problems. But for now, two quick applications.

One is to the ontological argument, or rather to the ontological argument aus lauter Begriffen as Kant describes it, the ontological argument "from mere concepts." So we start with the concept of God and analyze it. God is omniscient, etc. But 'surely' existence is also contained in the concept of God. For a God who did not exist would lack a perfection, a great-making property; such a God would not be id quo maius cogitari non posse. He would not be that than which no greater can be conceived. To conceive God, then, is to conceive an existing God, whence it follows that God exists! For if you are conceiving a nonexistent God, then you are not conceiving God.

Frege refutes this version of the OA -- not the only or best version I hasten to add -- in one sentence: Weil Existenz Eigenschaft des Begriffes ist, erreicht der ontologische Beweis von der Existenz Gottes sein Ziel nicht. (Grundlagen der Arithmetik, sec. 53)  "Because existence is a property of concepts, the ontological argument for the existence of God fails to attain its goal." What Frege is saying is that the OA "from mere concepts" rests on the mistake of thinking of existence as a mark of concepts as opposed to a property of concepts.  No concept for Frege is such that existence is included within it. Existence is rather a property of concepts, the property of having an instance.

The other application of my rejection of the scholastic formula above is to the logical question of the correct interpretation of singular propositions. The scholastics treat singulars as if they are generals as I explained fully in previous posts. But if Frege is right, this is a grave logical error since it rides roughshod over the mark/property distinction. To drag this all into the full light of day will take many more posts.

Prima Facie Evidence

A reader inquires:

     Is 'prima facie' evidence something with self-evident contextual
     significance or a evidence that constitutes some sort of
     transcendental first principle? I am having some trouble with this
     concept.

The Latin phrase means 'on the face of it,' or 'at first glance.'  Prima facie evidence, then, is evidence that makes a strong claim on our credence but can perhaps be rebutted or overturned. The term is   used in the law to refer to evidence which, if uncontested, would establish a fact or raise a presumption of a fact. If you have the victim's blood on your hands, and you are acting nervous, and are seen   running from the crime scene with passport in pocket, and have been recently overheard threatening the life of the victim, then that adds up to a strong prima facie case for your having committed the crime.  But these bits of evidence, even taken together, are not conclusive.

Philosophers use the term in roughly the same way. For example, a prima facie duty is a duty which, in the absence of conflicting duties, is our actual obligation. If I promise to meet you tomorrow at noon at the corner of Fifth and Vermouth to discuss epistemology, then, so promising, I incur the duty to meet you then and there. But if my wife becomes ill in the meantime then my duty reverts to her care. The prima facie duty to meet you is defeated or overridden by the duty to care for my wife.

Or a philosopher might speak of the prima facie evidence of memory. My seeming to remember having mailed my tax return to the Infernal  Revenue Service is good prima facie evidence of my having mailed it,  but it is defeasible evidence.

Prima facie evidence should not be confused with self-evidence. Prima facie evidence is defeasible while (objective) self-evidence is not.

Muslim and Marxist

Muslim: There is no god but God and Muhammad is his prophet.  Marxist: There is no God and Marx is his prophet.  (This is not a MavPhil original, but I cannot recall where I found this witticism.)

On the TFL (Mis)Representation of Singular Propositions as General

The following is a valid argument:

1. Pittacus is a good man
2. Pittacus is a wise man
-----
3. Some wise man is a good man.

That this argument is valid I take to be a datum, a given, a non-negotiable point. The question is whether traditional formal logic (TFL) is equipped to account for the validity of this argument. As I have already shown, it is quite easy to explain the validity of arguments like the above in modern predicate logic (MPL). In MPL, the logical form of the above argument is

Gp
Wp
---
(Ex)(Wx & Gx).

In order to evaluate the argument within TFL, it must be put into syllogistic form, otherwise the rules of the syllogism cannot be applied to it. Thus,

Every Pittacus is a wise man
Some Pittacus is a good man
-----
Some wise man is a good man.

This has the form:

Every P is a W
Some P is a G
-----
Some W is a G.

It is easy to prove that this form is valid by using a Venn diagram (not to be confused with an Euler diagram), or by applying the syllogistic rules. You will notice that I have rigged the argument so that those who deny that universal propositions have existential import will be satisfied that it is valid. Note also that the Venn diagram test would not work if the argument were given the following form:

Every P is a W
Every P is a G
-----
Some W is a G.

You can verify for yourself that if you diagram the premises you will not thereby have diagrammed the conclusion.

But is it logically acceptable to attach a quantifier to a singular term? How could a proper name have a sign of logical quantity prefixed to it? 'Pittacus' denotes or names exactly one individual. 'Every Pittacus' denotes the very same individual. So we should expect 'Every Pittacus is wise' and 'Pittacus is wise' to exhibit the same logical behavior. But they behave differently under negation.

The negation of 'Pittacus is wise' is 'Pittacus is not wise.' So, given that 'Pittacus' and 'every Pittacus' denote the same individual, we should expect that the negation of 'Every Pittacus is wise' will be 'Every Pittacus is not wise.' But that is not the negation (contradictory) of 'Every Pittacus is wise'; it is its contrary. So 'Pittacus is wise' and 'Every Pittacus is wise' behave differently under negation, which shows that their logical form is different. My argument can be put as follows:

a. Genuinely singular sentences have contradictories but not contraries.
b. Sentences like 'Every Pittacus is wise' have both contradictories and contraries.
Therefore
c. Sentences like 'Every Pittacus is wise' are not genuinely singular.
d. 'Pittacus is wise' is genuinely singular.
Therefore
e. The TFL representation of singular sentences as quantified sentences does not capture their logical form, and this is an inadequacy of TFL, and a point in favor of MPL.

MPL 1, TFL 0.

Inferences Involving Singular Propositions

In Modern Predicate Logic (MPL), logical quantity comes in three 'flavors,' universal, particular, and singular. Thus 'All bloggers are self-absorbed' and 'No bloggers are self-absorbed' are universal; 'Some bloggers are self-absorbed' and 'Some bloggers are not self-absorbed' are particular; 'Bernie is self-absorbed' and 'Bernie is not self-absorbed' are singular. Traditional Formal Logic (TFL), however, does not admit a separate category of singular propositions.

So, just to draw out commenter Edward the Nominalist and Co., how would a defender of TFL account for the validity of the following obviously valid argument:

   1. Mars is red
   2. Mars is a planet
   -----
   3. Some planet is red.

A supporter of MPL could construct a derivation as follows:

   4. Mars is a planet & Mars is red. (From 1, 2 by Conjunction)
   5. There is an x such that: x is a planet & x is red. (From 4 by
        Existential Generalization)
   3. Some planet is red. (From 5 by translation back into ordinary
       language)

No sweat for the MPL boys, but how do you TFL-ers do it? (Of course I am aware that it can be done. The point of this post is mainly  didactic.)

Latin and Greek for Philosophers

James Lesher explains key words and phrases.  Yes, kiddies, this will be on the final.  (One of 927 reasons I hated (most, not all) teaching was that 'students' would ask: Will this be on the final?)

If you classicists out there find any mistakes, please let me know.

'We are All Dying'

In an interview a while back Christopher Hitchens said, "We are all dying."  The saying is not uncommon.  A friend over Sunday breakfast invoked it. The irony of it is that the friend in question in younger days was decisively influenced by the Ordinary Language philosophers.

Taken literally, the sentence is false: only some of us are dying.  What must the sentence be taken to mean to be true?  This: the life process in each human being issues eventually in death.  But then why don't people say what they mean rather than something literally false?

The short answer is that man is a metaphysical animal with an ineradicable urge to gain perspective so as to be able to reconnoitre the terrain of the human predicament.  The gaining of perspective requires the stretching of ordinary language.

When we say 'We are all dying' we forsake the lowlands of ordinary language and ascend to a higher point of view, a philosophical point of view. It is like someone who says, 'All is impermanent.' That too is literally false.  Some addresses are permanent and some are temporary.  To maintain that all is impermanent one must ascend to a higher point of view  relative to which what is permanent 'here below' is, from that point of view, impermanent.  And so one can say, without talking nonsense, that even a permanent address is impermanent. 

As for 'We are all dying,' it too, though literally false, is not nonsense.  When I look at my life as a whole, I see that it is temporally bounded, and that it must issue in death.  And so even the most robust among us are dying in the sense that we are launched on a trajectory the culmination of which  is death.

I once played chess master Jude Acers a series of games at his sidewalk hangout in New Orlean's French Quarter.  During one endame he pointed to one of his pawns and said, 'This pawn has already queened.'  But it hadn't; it was still several moves away from the queening square.  So why did Acers say something literally false?  His meaning was that I could not stop the pawn, and so, in that sense, it had already queened.  It's the same pattern as before.  I am not dying, but since I will inevitably die, I am now dying.  The pawn has not yet queened, but since it will inevitably queen, it has 'already' queened.  What is not yet the case, but will be the case, is in a higher sense, the case.

Or consider this Platonizing remark a variant of which one can find in St. Augustine:  'What once existed, but does not now exist, and what does exist but will in future not exist, never existed.'  Taken literally as a piece of ordinary English, this is nonsense.  If something did exist, then ex vi terminorum it is false that it never existed; and likewise if the thing now exists.

But only a philosophistine (a 'philosopher' who is a philistine) such as Carnap or David Stove could fail to appreciate that the Augustinian saying is meaningful, despite the stretching of ordinary language.  A theory of how this 'stretching' works is necessary if we are to have a full understanding of what we are doing when we do metaphysics.

There is no doubt that in metaphysics we violate ordinary usage.  But unless one is a benighted philosophistine chained and held fast in some dark corner of Plato's Cave, one will not dismiss metaphysics for this reason, but strive to work out a theory of how  the linguistic  stretching works. 

Serious Faith

A serious faith, a vital faith, is one that battles with doubt.  Otherwise the believer sinks into complacency and his faith becomes a convenience.  Doubt is a good thing.  For doubt is the engine of inquiry, the motor of Athens.  Jerusalem needs Athens to keep her honest, to chasten her excesses, to round her out, to humanize her.  There is not much Athens in the Muslim world, which helps explains why Islam breeds fanaticism, murder, and anti-Enlightenment.

The Problem of Individuation: Genuine or Pseudo?

1. The ontological problem of individuation is actually two problems.  One is the problem of what makes two or more numerically different individuals numerically different.  What grounds numerical difference?  The other is the problem of what makes an individual an individual as opposed to a member of some other category of entity.  What grounds individuality?  If the first question is about the differentiator (the ground of numerical difference), the second is about the individuator (the ground of  individuality). 

The two questions are often conflated, but as you can see, they are different.  The conflation is aided and abetted by the fact that on some theories the entity posited to do the differentiating job also does the individuating job.  For example, in Gustav Bergmann's ontology, bare particulars are both differentiators and individuators.  But if I both load the truck and drive the truck it doesn't follow that loading and driving are the same job.  So we cannot just assume that what does the differentiating job will also do the individuating job.  I won't say anything at the moment about the details of Hector-Neri Castaneda's ontology, but in it, the individuator is not a differentiator.

Therefore, 'problem of individuation' is a bit of a misnomer.  A better phrase would be 'problem(s) of individuation/differentiation.'  Having said that, I revert to the stock phrase.

Note also that we are talking ontology here, not epistemology.  'Individuate' can be used in an epistemological way to mean: 'single out,' 'pick out,' 'make an identifying reference to,' etc.  Suppose I single out x as the only item that has properties P, Q, R . . . .  It doesn't follow that having exactly those properties is what makes x an individual or makes x numerically different from y.  It could be like this: concrete particulars a and b are told apart by their difference is properties, but that makes them numerically different is that each has a numerically different bare particular, or a different nonqualitative thisness, where this is not understood to be a bare particular.

2. Before going any deeper into this we ought to ask whether our two problems are genuine. 

Taking the first one first, why is there any need for a differentiator?  If S and P are numerically distinct concrete particulars, why not just take that as a brute fact?  Brute facts need no explaining.  That's what their bruteness consists in. 

A constituent ontologist might answer as follows.  Concrete particulars have ontological consituents, among them, their properties.  Properties are universals.  It is possible that two particulars share all their properties.  Since they are not different due to a difference in properties, there must a further ontological factor that accounts for their difference.

This sketch of an answer won't cut any ice with a certain nominalist of our acquaintance.  He will presumably deny both that concrete particulars have ontological constituents, and that there are any universals.  He may even go so far as to claim that the very idea of an ontological constituent is senseless.  He will take our first question as a pseudo-question that rests on false assumptions.

Our nominalist will say something similar about the first question.  'Only if one starts with the assumption that individuals have ontological constituents, that among these are properties,  and that these are universals,  will one have the problem of explaining why the individual is an individual and not a collection or conjunction of universals.  The assumptions are false, so the problem is pseudo.'

Is There an Obligation to be Happy?

I once heard Dennis Prager say that there is no correlation between a happy childhood and a happy adulthood. That is certainly confirmed  by my experience. An unhappy childhood gave way to a happy adulthood. With others, it is the other way around.

Prager also likes to say that we have a moral obligation to be happy. A more cautious way to put the point would be that we have a moral obligation to do what we can to make ourselves happy. Strictly speaking, there can be no moral obligation to be happy. As we learned at Uncle Manny's knee, 'ought' implies 'can,' and for some the weight of circumstances makes it impossible to be happy. One cannot be morally obligated to do what one cannot do.  There is an element of luck involved in happiness, and there is no moral obligation to be lucky. A good part of my happiness derives from a good marriage to an angelic woman. But had she not flown into my air space -- a matter of  luck -- I would not have been able to use my skill to bring her down with my arrow of love.

So if you are happy, don't imagine it was all your own doing.  Luck was involved. 

But Prager is surely on the right track. Although we cannot have a moral obligation to be happy, we should strive to be happy, not just for ourselves, but for others.  Happy people tend not to cause trouble.  Do happy people tend to be party to 'road rage' altercations?  Do happy people engage in vandalism or write malware?  Do happy people blow themselves up?

Presentism

Franklin Mason tells me he is a presentist.  I would like to see if he and I understand the same thing by the term.

The rough idea, of course, is that the temporally present -- the present time and its contents -- alone exists. The only items (events, individuals, properties, etc.) that exist are the items that presently exist. Past and future items do not exist. But surely it is trivial and not disputed by any anti-presentist that the present alone now exists. (Obviously, the past does not now exist, else it would not be past, and the future does not now exist else it would not be future.) If the presentist is forwarding a substantive metaphysical thesis then it cannot be this triviality that he is hawking. So what does the thesis of presentism amount to?

It seems obvious that the presentist must invoke a use of 'exist(s)' that is not tensed in order to formulate his thesis. For this is a rank tautology: The only items that exist (present tense) are the items that exist (present tense). It is also tautologous to affirm that the only items that exist (present tense) are the items that presently exist. So it seems that if presentism is to be a substantive thesis of metaphysics, then it must be formulated using a temporally unqualified use of 'exist(s).' So I introduce 'exist(s) simpliciter.' Accordingly:

P. The only items that exist simpliciter are items that presently exist.

(P) is a substantive thesis. The presentist will affirm it, the antipresentist will deny it. Both, of course, will agree about such Moorean facts as that James Dean existed. But they will disagree about whether Dean exists simpliciter. The presentist will say that he does not, while the anti-presentist will say that he does. Again, both will agree that Dean does not exist now. But whereas the presentist will say that he does not exist at all, the anti-presentist will say that he does exist, though not at present. The anti-presentist can go on to say that, because Dean exists simpliciter, there is no problem about how he can stand in relations to things that presently exist, one of these relations being the reference relation. The presentist, however, faces the problem of how the existent can stand in relation to the nonexistent.

My mother is dead. But I am her son. So I stand in the son of relation to my mother. If the dead are nonexistent, then I, who exist, stand in relation to a nonexistent object. But how the devil can a relation obtain between two items when one of them ain't there? This is a problem for the presentist, is it not? But it is not a problem for the anti-presentist who maintains that present and past individuals both exist simpliciter. For then the relation connects two existents.

A second problem for presentism is that it seems not able to accommodate the obvious distinction between actual past items and merely possible past items.  Kierkegaard and Regine Olsen are past individuals.  Their child Angie, like Schopenhauer's son Will, however, are past merely possible individuals.  But what becomes of this distinction if everything past is nonexistent?  For the presentist, what was is not.  But then what was is indistinguishable from what never was (because merely possible).

No doubt the presentists will have answers to these objections.

The antipresentist, however, needs to tell us what exactly existence simpliciter is, and whether it is the same or different than tenseless existence (whatever that is).

But nota bene: the presentist must also tell us what existence simpliciter is since he needs it to get his thesis (P) off the ground.

In my experience, the problems associated with time are the most difficult in all of philosophy.

Do We Love the Person or Only Her Qualities?

We have been discussing the topic of nonqualitative thisness here, here,  and here.  The following post gets at the problem from another angle, the love angle.

Here is a remarkable passage from Pascal's remarkable Pensees:

A man goes to the window to see the passers by. If I happen to pass by, can I say that he has gone there to see me? No; for he is not thinking of me in particular. But does he who loves someone for her   beauty, really love her? No; for small-pox, destroying the beauty without destroying the person, will put an end to love. And if I am loved for my judgment, for my memory, am I loved? No; for I can lose these qualities without losing myself. Where then is this 'I,' if it resides neither in the body, nor the soul? And how  love the body or the soul save for these qualities which do not  make the 'me,' since they are doomed to perish? For can one love the soul of a person in the abstract, irrespective of its qualities? Impossible and wrong! So we never love anyone, but only  qualities. (p. 337, tr. H. F. Stewart)

 

This passage raises the following question. When I love a person, is it the person in her particularity and uniqueness that I love, or merely the being-instantiated of certain lovable properties? Do I love  Mary as Mary, or merely as an instance of helpfulness, friendliness, faithfulness, etc.?

These are clearly different. If it is merely the being-instantiated of lovable properties that I love, then it would not matter if the love object were replaced by another with the same ensemble of properties. It would not matter if Mary were replaced by her indiscernible twin Sherry. Mary, Sherry, what's the difference? Either way you get the very same package of delectable attributes.

But if it is the person in her uniqueness that I love, then it would matter if someone else with exactly the same ensemble of properties were substituted for the love object. It would matter to me, and it would matter even more to the one I love. Mary would complain bitterly if Sherry were to replace her in my  affections. "I want to be loved for being ME, not for what I have in common with HER!"

The point is perhaps more clearly made using the example of self-love.  Suppose Phil is my indiscernible twin.  Now it is a fact that I love myself.  But if I love myself in virtue of my instantiation of a set of properties, then I should love Phil equally.  For he instantiates exactly the same properties as I do.  But if one of us has to be annihilated, then I prefer that it be Phil.  Suppose that God decides that one of us is more than enough, and that one of us has to go.  I say, 'Let it be Phil!' and Phil says, 'Let it be Bill!' 

This little thought-experiment suggests that there is more to self-love than love of the being-instantiated of an ensemble of properties.  For Phil and I have the same properties, and yet each is willing to sacrifice the other.  This would make no sense if the being of each of us were exhausted by our being instances of sets of properties.  In other words, I do not love myself solely as an instance of properties but also a unique existent individual that cannot be reduced to a mere instance of properties. I love myself as a unique individual.  And the same goes for Phill: he loves himself as a unique individual.

Now it is a point of phenomenology that love intends to reach the very haecceity and ipseity of the beloved: in loving someone we mean to  make contact with his or her unique thisness and selfhood. It is not a mere instance of lovable properties that love intends, but the very  being of the beloved. And what some of us of a personalist bent want to maintain is that this intending or meaning is in some cases fulfilled: we actually do sometimes make conscious contact with the haecceity and ipseity of the beloved. We arrive at the very being of the beloved, not merely at the co-instantiation of a set of multiply instantiable lovable properties. But how is this possible given Pascal's argument?

The question underlying all of this is quite fundamental: Are there any genuine individuals? X is a genuine individual if and only if X is essentially unique. The Bill and Phil example suggests that selves are genuine individuals and not mere bundles of multiply instantiable properties.  For each of the twins is acutely aware that he is not the other despite complete agreement in respect of  pure properties.  Here are some of my theses to be expounded and clarified as the discussion proceeds:

1. There exist genuine individuals.
2. Genuine individuals cannot be reduced to bundles of properties.
3. The Identity of Indiscernibles is false.
4. Numerical difference is numerical-existential difference: the existence of an individual is implicated in its very haecceity. 
5.  There are no nonexistent individuals. 
6. There are no not-yet existent individuals.

 

Duns Scotus, Contingency, and 'Modal' Torture

Our Czech friend Vlastimil left the following curious comment on my entry, How Does One Know that There are Contingent Beings?

Did you know that Duns Scotus, inspired by Avicenna, wrote that it is uprovable yet evident that some being is contingent, and that those who deny it should be tortured until they concede that they may be non-tortured? See his Opera Omnia, Vives ed., vol. 10, pp. 625-26, http://www.archive.org/stream/operaomni10duns#page/624/mode/2up

No, I wasn't aware of this passage though Steven Nemes a few weeks ago informed me that Duns Scotus held the view that contingency is self-evident.

A state of affairs S is contingent iff it is possible that S obtain and possible that S not obtain.  So we take the contingency-denier and we put him on the rack.  As we turn the cranks we ask him, "Is it possible that your being tortured now not obtain?"  He of course says 'yes' in order to stop the torture. Saying this, he confesses with his lips that there is contingency in the world.  But could he not in his heart of hearts still reasonably deny that there is contingency in the world?

Dissecting Leftism

John Jay Ray blogs on year after year and takes no prisoners.  I went on ego surfari at his site and pulled up a quotation and a reference for which I thank Dr. Ray:

Good comment from Bill Vallicella: "It is difficult to get lefties to appreciate the moral equivalence of the two totalitarian movements because there is a tendency to think that the Commies had good intentions, while the Nazis did not. But this is false: both had good intentions. Both wanted to build a better world by eliminating the evil elements that made progress impossible. Both thought they had located the root of evil, and that the eradication of this root would usher in a perfect world. It is just that they located the root of evil in different places. Nazis really believed that Judentum ist Verbrechertum, as one of their slogans had it, that Jewry is criminality. They saw the extermination of Jews and other Untermenschen as an awful, but necessary, task on the road to a better world. Similarly with the Commie extermination of class enemies".

Bill Vallicella has a post saying that the Left are insensitive to danger. He says this is why they are always pretending that human nnature is good and ignoring the fact that some people can be evil and dangerous. I think it is a bit worse than that. I think Leftist ideologues don't care about reality at all. That's one reason why they often claim that reality does not exist. They are so preoccupied with puffing up their own image and self-esteem that everything else just has to go hang. And anything that threatens that image will simply be denied. They will do and say ANYTHING in order to sound good. Clinically, it is called "Narcissism" and in more extreme cases, it is part of "Psychopathy".

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Forgotten Psychedelia

How many of these do you remember?   If you were too much of the '60s then you probably don't remember anything assuming you still animate the mortal coil; if you were too little of the '60s then you won't remember any of these for a different reason.  But among these five are three very beautiful songs from that amazingly creative time.

Fever Tree, The Sun Also Rises
Love, Alone Again Or
Moby Grape, Omaha
H.P. Lovecraft, The White Ship
Quicksilver Messenger Service, Pride of Man

A Failed Defense of Nietzsche's Perspectivism

Prowling the Web for material on Nietzsche and the genetic fallacy, I stumbled across this passage from Merold Westphal, "Nietzsche as a Theological Resource," Modern Theology 13:2 (April 1997), p. 218:
  
     Perspectivism need not be presented as an absolute truth; it can be
     presented as an account of how reality looks from where one is
     situated. It does not thereby cease to be of value. The account of
     the game given by the winning coach cannot claim to be THE truth
     about the game: other accounts must be taken into account,
     including those from the losing coach, the players, the
     referees,.... But that does not mean that we do not listen with
     attention to what the winning coach has to say about the game.
   
Perspectivism is the proposition P: All truths are perspectival.  Either (P) applies to itself or it does not. If the former, then one  must conclude that (P) is itself perspectivally true. Call this perspectivized perspectivism (PP). If the latter, if (P) is not taken to apply to itself, then (P) is nonperspectivally true. Westphal mentions, but does not take, this tack, so I shall ignore it here. His position appears to be perspectivized perspectivism. Unfortunately, his example shows that he does not understand it. He   confuses (PP) with a quite different doctrine that could be called alethic partialism.

What the latter says is that the whole truth about a subject cannot be captured from any one perspective. Take a quart of 10 W 30 motor oil. From the perspective of a salesman at an auto parts
store, it is a commodity from the sale of which he expects to make a profit. From the perspective of a motorist, it is a crankcase lubricant. From the perspective of a chemist, the oil's viscosity and other such attributes are salient. From the perspective of an eco-enthusiast, it is a potential pollutant of the ground water. And so  on. But note that these partial truths add up to the whole truth about the oil. (By a 'partial truth' I do not mean a truth that is only partially true, but a truth that is wholly true, but captures only a part of the reality of what it is about.)

Alethic partialism sounds reasonable. But that is not what the perspectivized perspectivist is saying. What he is saying is that  every truth is merely perspectivally true, and that this thesis itself is true only from his, and perhaps some (but not all) other, perspectives. Unfortunately, this allows a nonperspectivist such as  your humble correspondent to say: "Fine! Truth is perspectival for you, Fritz, but for me it is absolute, and one of my absolute truths  is that you are mistaken in your theory of truth." Clearly, the  perspectivized perspectivist is in an uncomfortable position here. He  wants to say something that is binding on all, but he cannot given the self-limiting nature of his position, a self-limitation demanded by  logical consistency.  

Pace Westphal, perspectivism is not "an account of how reality looks from where one is situated," but an account of the nature of truth, an  account that implies that there is no reality. For truth is the truth of reality. A truth-bearer (a belief, say) is true just in case it corresponds to what is the case independently of anyone's beliefs, desires, or interests. To speak of truth as perspectival is to dissolve reality along with truth. From this one can see how obtuse Westphal's account of perspectivism his. He fails to grasp its  radicality. And failing to grasp its radicality, he fails to appreciate its utter incoherence.

Word of the Day: 'Pot-Valiant'

If you think I have a large vocabulary, you are right.  But despite my voracious reading I have never stumbled upon 'pot-valiant' until just now, in a piece by Mona Charen wherein I found the sentence, "And it's true that some Republicans, like Americans for Tax Reform's Grover Norquist, have fetishized their opposition to taxes to the point where they defend pot-valiantly even tax subsidies such as those for ethanol."

To be pot-valiant is to have the courage that comes from being drunk. Noah Webster puts it this way in his 1828 American Dictionary: "Courageous over the cup; heated to valor by strong drink." See here. 

The reason I have a large vocabulary is because I rarely allow myself the luxury of skipping over words I don't know.  With few exceptions I look them up and then write them down, either in my journal or on my calendar.  Or I 'blog' them.  It is no good merely to look them up.  You must write them down and then re-read what you have written.  Only then will they stick.

Trouble is, in a barely literate society of tweeting twits getting dumber by the minute, you will elicit incomprehension or worse from your fellow citizens if you put your vocabulary to use.  Of course,  catamite, louche, canaille, desuetude, animadversion, apotropaic and zetetic will be lost on them.  But yours will be the pleasure of reading high-grade literature with comprehension.

Introverts and the Internet

Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner’s Manifesto (New York: Marlowe and Co., 2003), pp. 106-107:

The Internet is, for loners, an absolute and total miracle. It is, for us, the best invention of the last millennium. It educates. It entertains. It transforms. It facilitates a kind of dialogue in which we need not be seen, so it suits us perfectly. It validates. It makes being alone seem normal. It makes being alone fun for everyone.

And so it has its critics. They claim it keeps kids from playing healthy games outdoors. They say it is a procurer for perverts, a weapon in hate crimes. Underlying all of this, of course, is the real reason for their dismay: the Internet legitimizes solitude. The real problem is not that kids don’t play outdoors, but that they do not play with other kids.

I’ve read the whole of this book, and I recommend it. It's not a great book, but it is worth reading. Click on the title above to read some positive and negative reviews.

Future Individuals and Haecceities

According to a wisecrack of Schopenhauer, the medievals employed only three examples: Socrates, Plato, and an ass.  In keeping with this hoary if not 'asinine' tradition, I too in my capacity as humble footnoter to Plato shall employ Socrates as my example.  To point out the obvious: he stands in for any concrete individual whatsoever, animate or inanimate.

I have been arguing (drawing on the work of the late Barry Miller with whom I was privileged to have enjoyed a lengthy correspondence) that before Socrates came to be there was no such property as identity-with-Socrates.  The astute Franklin Mason objects:

If there is no such thing as Socrates' identity before he came to be, it would seem that there's no such thing as his identity after he ceases to be. If we need the man Socrates if we are to speak about him, then we can't do so either before or after he exists. But clearly we can now speak of Socrates though he is long since dead. Thus we don't need the man to speak of the man, and so whatever reason we had to deny the existence of haecceities that predate the things to which they attach collapses.

Socrates came to exist in 470 B.C.  So we can say:

1. It is now the case that Socrates did exist.

From this it follows that

2. It was the case (e.g. in 470 B.C.) that Socrates does exist.

Mason seems to think that from (2) one can also validly infer

3. It was the case (e.g.. in 472 B.C.) that Socrates will exist.

But if I am right, the second inference fails.  For if I am right, before Socrates came to exist, not only was there no Socrates, there was no singular or  de re possibility of Socrates' existing.  At most there was the general possibility that someone come to have the properties that Socrates subsequently had. 

To appreciate that the inference from (2) is invalid, consider a parallel argument.  Suppose I promise Tom that I will buy him a book for his birthday.  On the morning of his birthday I spy a first-edition copy of On the Road in a book store and I buy it.  Once the purchase has been made we can say:

1*. It is now the case that a copy of OTR was selected for Tom.

From this it follows that

2*. It was the case that a copy of OTR is selected for Tom.

But until I bought the book on the morning of Tom's birthday I had no idea what I would buy.  So before I bought the book no one was entitled to say

3*. It was the case that a copy of OTR will be selected for Tom.

The most one would be entitled to say is

4. It was the case that a book will be selected for Tom.

Just as (3*) does not follow from (2*), (3) does not follow from (2).

Only present and past actual individuals are genuine individuals.  Future 'individuals,' not having yet come into existence, are not genuine individuals.

REFERENCE: Barry Miller, "Future Individuals and Haecceitism," Review of Metaphysics 45 (September 1991), 3-28, esp. 10-11.

On Private and Public Morality

Many liberals have the bad habit of confusing private and public morality.  They think that moral injunctions that make sense in private ought to be carried over into the public sphere.  Such liberals are dangerously confused.  There are those who, for example, take the Biblical injunction to "welcome the stranger" as a reason to turn a blind eye to illegal immigration.  Or consider the NT injunction to "turn the other cheek."

Although it is morally permissible for an individual to "turn the other cheek," "to resist not the evildoer," etc. in the letter and spirit of the New Testament, it is morally impermissible for government officials in charge of national defense and security to do the same. For they are responsible for people besides themselves. Consider the analogy of the pater familias. He cannot allow himself to be slaughtered if that would result in the slaughter of his spouse and children. He must, morally speaking, defend himself  and them. With a single person it is different. Such a person may (morally speaking) heed the advice Ludwig Wittgenstein gave to M. O'C. Drury: "If it ever happens that you get mixed up in hand-to-hand fighting, you must just stand aside and let yourself be massacred." (Recollections of Wittgenstein, ed. R. Rhees, p. 149) That was presumably advice Wittgenstein gave himself while a combatant in World War I.  

It is a serious mistake, and one oft-made by liberals, to confuse the private and public spheres and the different moralities pertaining to each.

Imagine a society that implements a policy of not resisting (apprehending, trying, convicting, incarcerating, killing) rapists, murderers, foreign invaders, and miscreants generally. Such a society would seal its own death warrant and cease to function. It is a fact of human nature that people, in the main, behave tolerably well only under threat of punishment. People for the most part do not do the right thing because it is the right thing, but out of fear of  punishment. This is not pessimism, but realism, and is known to be true by all unprejudiced students of history and society.

As for turning the other cheek, it is a policy that works well in certain atypical circumstances. If a man has a well-formed conscience,  and is capable of feeling shame, then turning the other cheek in the face of his affront can achieve a result far superior to that achieved by replying in kind. Nonviolence can work. Gandhi's nonviolent resistance to the British may serve as an historical example. The Brits could be shamed and in any case Gandhi had no other means at his  disposal. But imagine what would happen if Israel turned the other cheek in the face of its Islamic enemies who would blow it off the face of the map at the first opportunity?

Once your enemy has reduced you to the status of a pig or a monkey fit only to be slaughtered, then there is no way to reach him, shame him, or persuade him by acts of forebearance and kindness. You must resist him, with deadly force if necessary, if you wish to preserve your existence. And even if you in particular do not care to preserve your existence, if you are a government official charged with a defense function, then you are morally obliged to resist with as much deadly force as is necessary to stop the attacker even if that means targeting the attacker's civilian population.

But is it not better to suffer wrong than to inflict it, as Socrates maintained? Would it not be better to perish than to defend one's life by taking life? Perhaps, but only if the underlying metaphysics and
soteriology are true. If the soul is immortal, and the phenomenal world is of no ultimate concern -- being a vale of tears, a place through which we temporarily sojourn on our way to our true home --
then the care of the soul is paramount and to suffer wrong is better than to inflict it.

The same goes for Christianity which, as Nietzsche remarks, is "Platonism for the people." If you are a Christian, and look beyond this world for your true happiness, then you are entitled to practice an austere morality in your private life. But you are not entitled to impose that morality and metaphysics on others, or demand that the State codify that morality and metaphysics in its laws and policies.

For one thing, it would violate the separation of Church and State. More importantly, the implementation of Christian morality would lead to the destruction of the State and the State's ability to secure life, liberty, and property -- the three Lockean purposes for which we have a state in the first place. And bear in mind that a part of the  liberty the State protects is the liberty to practice one's religion or no religion.

There is no use denying that the State is a violent and coercive entity. To function at all in pursuit of its legitimate tasks of securing life, liberty, and property, it must be able to make war against external enemies and impose discipline upon internal malefactors. The violence may be justified, but it is violence  nonethless. To incarcerate a person, for example, is to violate his liberty; it is to do evil to him, an evil necessary for a greater good that can be attained in no other way.

The problem is well understood by Hannah Arendt ("Truth and Politics" in Between Past and Future, Penguin 1968, p. 245):

     The disastrous consequences for any community that began in all
     earnest to follow ethical precepts derived from man in the singular
     -- be they Socratic or Platonic or Christian -- have been
     frequently pointed out. Long before Machiavelli recommended
     protecting the political realm against the undiluted principles of
     the Christian faith (those who refuse to resist evil permit the
     wicked "to do as much evil as they please"), Aristotle warned
     against giving philosophers any say in political matters. (Men who
     for professional reasons must be so unconcerned with "what is good
     for themselves" cannot very well be trusted with what is good for
     others, and least of all with the "common good," the down-to-earth
     interests of the community.) [Arendt cites the Nicomachean Ethics,
     Book VI, and in particular 1140b9 and 1141b4.] There is a tension
     between man qua philosopher/Christian and man qua citizen.

As a philosopher raised in Christianity, I am concerned with my soul, with its integrity, purity, salvation. I take very seriously indeed the Socratic "Better to suffer wrong than to do it" and the Christian  "Resist not the evildoer." But as a citizen I must be concerned not only with my own well-being but also with the public welfare. This is true a fortiori of public officials and people in a position to  influence public opinion, people like Catholic bishops many of whom are woefully ignorant of the simple points Arendt makes in the passage quoted. So, as Arendt points out, the Socratic and Christian admonitions are not applicable in the public sphere.

What is applicable to me in the singular, as this existing individual concerned with the welfare of his immortal soul over that of his  perishable body, is not applicable to me as citizen. As a citizen, I   cannot "welcome the stranger" who violates the laws of my country, a stranger who may be a terrorist or a drug-smuggler or a human-trafficker or a carrier of a deadly disease or a person who has no respect for the traditions of the country he invades; I cannot aid and abet his law breaking. I must be concerned with public order and the very conditions that make the philosophical and Christian life possible in the first place. If I were to aid and abet the stranger's law breaking, I would not be "rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" as the New Testament enjoins us to do.

Indeed, the Caesar verse provides a scriptural basis for Church-State separation and indirectly exposes the fallacy of the Catholic bishops  and others who apparently cannot comprehend the simple distinctions I have tried to set forth.

Of Kitsch and Kinkade

Here is a post of mine on kitsch and Kinkade.  Does his mall art (mal-art?) deserve scholarly attention? "Aren't the aesthetics of garbage just another form of garbage?"

San Bancisco: Lefties Gone Wild

Banned in San Francisco: soda, Happy Meals, the selling of pets, circumcision.  As California goes, there goes the country.  'Hope' you like the 'change.'

Religion Without Metaphysics?

Whether or not theistic or any spiritualistic metaphysics is true, we can aspire, seek the truth, pursue the good, love our neighbors, be kind, do no harm, respect, revere, cherish, be grateful . . . honor our commitments, follow our consciences . . . guard our thoughts, weaken the ego, live by a code, deny the self, seek the higher, thirst after justice and righteousness . . . .

Why then do we need doctrine? This is a question we need to ask.

Does Classical Theism Require Haecceitism?

Haecceitism is the doctrine that there are haecceities. But what is an haecceity? 

Suppose we take on board for the space of this post the assumptions that (i) properties are abstract objects, that (ii) they can exist unexemplified, and that (iii) they are necessary beings. We may then define the subclass of haecceity properties as follows.

A haecceity is a property H of x such that: (i) H is essential to x; (ii) nothing distinct from x exemplifies H in the actual world; (iii) nothing distinct from x exemplifies H in any metaphysically possible world.

So if there is a property of Socrates that is his haecceity, then there is a property that individuates him, and indeed individuates him across all times and worlds at which he exists: it is a property that he must have, that nothing distinct from him has, and that nothing distinct from him could have. Call this property Socrateity. Being abstract and necessary, Socrateity is obviously distinct from Socrates, who is concrete and contingent. Socrateity exists in every world, but is exemplified (instantiated) in only some worlds. What's more, Socrateity exists at every time in every world that is temporally qualified, whereas Socrates exist in only some worlds and only at some times in the worlds in which he exists.

Now suppose you are a classical theist.  Must you accept haecceitism (as defined above) in virtue of being a classical thesist?  I answer in the negative.  Franklin Mason answers in the affirmative.  In a comment on an earlier post, Mason gives this intriguing argument into which I have interpolated numerals for ease of reference.

[1] When God created the world, he knew precisely which individuals he would get.  Thus [2] he didn't need to have those very individuals in front of him to know which ones they were.  Thus [3] there must be a way to individuate all possible individuals that in no way depends upon their actual existence. [4] Such a thing is by definition a haecceity. Thus [5] there are haecceities.

I don't anticipate any disagreement with Mason as to what an haecceity is.  We are both operating with the Plantingian notion.  We disagree, however, on (i) whether there are any haecceities and (ii) whether classical theism is committed to them. In this post I focus on (ii).  In particular, I will explain why I do not find Mason's argument compelling.

My reservations concern premise [1].  There is a sense in which it is true that when God created Socrates, he knew which individual he would get.  But there is also a sense in which it is not true.  So we need to make a distinction.  We may suppose, given the divine omniscience, that before God created Socrates he had before his mind a completely determinate description, down to the very last detail, of the individual he was about to bring into existence.  In this sense, God knew precisely which individual he would get before bringing said individual into existence.  Now either this description is pure or it is impure.

A pure description is one that includes no proper names, demonstratives or other indexicals, or references to singular properties.  Otherwise the description is impure.  Thus 'snubnosed, rationalist philosopher married to Xanthippe' is an impure description because it includes the proper name 'Xanthippe.'  'Snubnosed, rationalist, married  philosopher,' by contrast, is pure.  (And this despite the fact that 'married' is a relational predicate.)  Pure descriptions are qualitative in that they include no references to specific individuals.  Impure descriptions are nonqualitative in that they do include references to specific individuals.

Now if God has before his mind a complete pure description of the individual he wills to create then it could apply to precisely one individual after creation without being restricted to any precise one.  (Cf. Barry Miller, "Future Individuals and Haecceitism," Review of Metaphysics 45, September 1991, p. 14)  This is a subtle distinction but an important one.  It is possible that Socrates have an indiscernible twin.  So the complete description 'snubnosed, rationalist philosopher, etc.' could apply to precisely one individual without applying to Socrates.  This is because his indiscernible twin would satisfy it just as well as he does.  The description would then apply to precisely one individual without being restricted to any precise one.  So there is a clear sense, pace Mason, in which  God, prior to creation, would not know which individual he would get.  Prior to creation, God knows that there will be an individual satisfying a complete description.  But until the individual comes into existence, he won't know which individual this will be.

Creation is not the bestowal of existence upon a a pre-existent, fully-formed, wholly determinate essence.  It is not the actualization of a wholly determinate mere possible.  There is no individual essence or haecceity prior to creation.  Creation is the creation ex nihilo of a a new individual.  God creates out of nothing, not out of pre-existent individual essences or pre-existent mere possibles.  Thus the very individuality of the individual first comes into being in the creative act.  Socrates' individuality and haecceity do not antedate (whether temporally or logically) his actual existence.

Mason would have to be able rationally to exclude this view of creation, and this view of the relation of existence and individuality, for his argument to be compelling.  As it is, he seems merely to assume that they are false.

Could God, before creation, have before his mind a complete impure description, one that made reference to the specific individual that was to result from the creative act?  No, and this for the simple reason that before the creative act that individual would not exist.  And therein lies the absurdity of Plantingian haecceities.  The property of identity-with-Socrates  is a nonqualitative haecceity that make essential reference to Socrates.  Surely it is absurd to suppose that that this 'property' exists at times and in possible worlds at which Socrates does not exist.  To put it another way, it is absurd to suppose that this 'property' could antedate (whether temporally or logically) the existence of Socrates.

We are now in a position to see why Mason's argument is not compelling.  If [1] is true, then [2] doesn't follow from it.  And if [2] follows from [1], then [1] is false.  Thus [1] conflates two distinct propositions:

1a.  When God created the world, he knew precisely which pure complete descriptions would be satisfied.

1b.  When God created the world, he knew precisely which individuals would exist.

(1a) is true, but it does not entail

2.  God didn't need to have those very individuals in front of him to know which ones they were.

(1b) entails (2), but (1b) is false.

I conclude that classical theism does not entail haecceitism.  One can be such a theist without accepting haecceities.

Hypostatization and Plural Reference

In Plural Reference, Franklin Mason writes that "Vallicella is often a delight, but upon occasion he annoys me to no end."  Apparently I remind him of a "philosophical pugilist," a former colleague perhaps, who is obnoxious in the manner of all-too-many analytic philosophers. (One such told me once that if one is not willing to become a bit of an asshole in a philosophical discussion one is not taking it seriously.)  Now I probably irritate Mason in a number of ways since I am an outspoken conservative while he is a liberal.  But the proximate source of his umbrage is a comment I made in a quick and polemical  entry entitled In Debt We Trust.  There I wrote:

One of the people interviewed [in the movie In Debt We Trust] states that "Society preaches the gospel of shopping." That is the sort of nonsense one expects to hear from libs and lefties. First of all, there is no such thing as society. To think otherwise is to commit the fallacy of hypostatization.

Mason protests:

When one begins a sentence with "society", one does not thereby assent to the existence of some bizarre, spatially disconnected entity whose parts are people. (Well, very few mean any such thing, and those who do are invariably deeply misguided philosophers. Plain folk never mean any such thing. Philosophers hardly ever mean such a thing. ) One uses "society" to refer plurally to, well, a plurality of people.

I sympathize with Mason's irritation.  I once wrote a post in which I approvingly quoted from Ralph Waldo Emerson's great essay "Self-Reliance" the line, "Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members."  Tony Flood, the anarcho-capitalist, took me to task for presupposing that there is some  entity 'society' above and beyond its members.  But of course I presupposed  no such thing and I was annoyed by Flood's objection.  Clearly, what Emerson meant, and what I approved of, was the idea that the members of society engage in a sort of tacit conspiracy with one another to the end of enforcing conformity.

Our nominalist friend 'Ockham' pulled the same thing on me once.  I used a sentence featuring the word 'property' and he took my use of that term as committing me to properties in some realist acceptation of the term.  It annoyed me and struck me as a perverse refusal to take in the plain sense of what I wrote. Suppose I say, of a certain person, 'She has many fine attributes.'  That is an ontologically noncommittal form of words and as such neutral in respect of the issue that divides nominalists and realists.  

I submit, however, that Mason goes too far when he confidently asserts that "Plain folk never mean any such thing."  I strongly suspect that the lady I was quoting never in her life thought about the issue now under discussion.  She was most likely just repeating some liberal boilerplate she had picked up second-hand.  She was probably confused and meant nothing definite when she said, "Society preaches the gospel of shopping."  If she meant nothing definite, then Mason cannot confidently claim that "Plain folk never mean any such thing."  And precisely  because the lady meant nothing definite it is important to point out that one commits the fallacy of hypostatization if one assumes that for every substantive there is a corresponding substance.  If I pinned the lady down, she would probably deny that there is some entity distinct from every member of society, an entity that preaches the gospel of shopping.  But then I would ask her what she did mean.  Did she mean that every member of society preaches said gospel?  Or only that some do?  I would get her to accept the latter.  And then I would get her to admit that she was allowing those few people, advertisers, for example, to influence her.  By showing her that there was no such thing as 'society,' I would be 'empowering' her -- to use a squishy liberal word -- I would make her see that she was not confronting some irresistible Power, but that she had the power to resist the siren song of the advertisers.

The reason this is important is that liberals have a tendency to remove responsibility from the agent and displace it onto something  external to the agent such as 'society.'  Thus 'society' made the  punk kill the pharmacist, etc.

So, contra Mason, many people do confusedly think of society as some irresistible Power over against them to which blame can be assigned.  It would be a mistake to think that no one commits the fallacy of hypostatization. 

The topics of plural reference and plural predication are very difficult.  Probably my best post on these topics is Irreducibly Plural Predication: 'They Are Surrounding the Building.'  See also Collective Inconsistency and Plural Predication, A Problem with the Multiple Relations Approach to Plural Predication, The Hatfields and the McCoys, and I Need to Study Plural Predication.

Site Stats

MavPhil readership continues to grow.  It is not uncommon now to have spikes into the 1300-1600 range.  Yesterday saw 1399 page views.  Some of its driven by the social media, Facebook and Twitter mainly.  I am approaching the 1000 page view per diem threshhold.  Not bad, given the forbidding topics I tackle in these pages. 

I owe Joe Carter of First Things a hat tip for his linkage.  Thanks, Joe!

The First Rule of Liberalism

Government failure always justifies more government.

Excerpt from this James Taranto piece:

It's a common refrain among those who lust to increase government's size and power: Every failed measure justifies more of the same. Poverty programs make it harder to escape poverty? We need more poverty programs! Racial preferences heighten racial division? We need more racial preferences! And a diversity manual for every janitor in the country! When ObamaCare ends up driving the costs of medicine up and the quality and availability down, you can bet the people who created that monstrosity will claim it failed only because it didn't go far enough.

Let's generalize this into the First Rule of Liberalism: Government failure always justifies more government. As Obama said today, complaining about Republican pressure to cut spending: "I'd rather be talking about stuff that everybody welcomes--like new programs." Fortunately for the country, the voters don't always agree.