The outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins was involved in an online Twitter row on Thursday after tweeting: "All the world's Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge. They did great things in the Middle Ages, though."
If it is true, it is true. And if it is true, then it is legitimate to ask why it is true, and to inquire whether the influence of Islamic beliefs makes for a cultural climate in which science is less likely to flourish.
There is no bigotry here, and certainly no racism: Islam is not a race, but a religion.
Are all religions equally conducive to human flourishing? No critical thinker would just assume that. It is an appropriate topic of investigation. And if you investigate it honestly, then I think you will come to the conclusion that Islam is an inferior religion when it comes to its contribution to human flourishing, inferior to the other two Abrahamic faiths, and to the great Asian faiths.
Besides the inanition of scientific progress in Muslim lands, there is the following consideration.
Terrorism is inimical to human flourishing. (Can we all agree on that?) Now consider terrorism whose source is religion (as opposed to terrorism whose source is a non-religious ideology such as communism) and ask yourself this question: which of the great religions at the present time is chiefly responsible for the terrorism whose source is religious belief? The answer, obviously, is Islam. Therefore, Islam is an inferior religion when it comes to its contribution to human flourishing.
So, on this point, Richards Dawkins 1; his critics 0.
On Ockham and supposita: A little perplexity at the end, when you write that “[w]hat is curious here is how very specific theological doctrines are allowed to drive the general ontology.” One man’s modus ponens is another’s modus tollens, I suppose, but if Ockham is trying to maintain theological orthodoxy it doesn’t seem too strange to me. Presumably his Christian faith came first, and wasn’t based on any complicated metaphysical arguments. Isn’t it reasonable for him to hold the faith unless it just can’t be done, no way and no how, rather than revise it for the sake of a more straightforward ontology – especially if he is concerned with the risk to his salvation? Maybe I’m misunderstanding something simple here.
I agree that Ockham's Christian faith came first. But I don't agree that the content of his faith wasn't based on any complicated metaphysical arguments. The theological dogmas had to be hammered out in the councils in the teeth of various competing teachings, later to be branded 'heretical,' and that hammering-out involved metaphysical reasoning using principles and distinctions and logical operations not to be found in the Scripture. To state the obvious, the church fathers made use of Greek philosophical conceptuality.
For example, if the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, what exactly does that mean? That God took on a human body? That is, roughly, the Appolinarian heresy. Does it mean that there are two persons in Christ, the Word and the person of the man Jesus? That, roughly, is the Nestorian heresy. If Jesus died on the cross, did a real man die on the cross, or merely a phantom body as the Docetists maintained? Did God the Father suffer on the cross as the Patripassians held? And so on.
Therefore, if Ockham's faith was, or was in part, faith that certain dogmatic propositions are true, then his faith was based on "complicated metaphysical arguments." Of course, there is much more to a living religious faith than giving one's intellectual assent to theological propositions. And one can and should question just how important doctrine is to a vital religious faith.
The problem I am trying to command a clear view of can be approached via the following aporetic tetrad:
a. A person is a (primary) substance of a rational nature. (Boethian definition)
b. There is only one person in Christ, the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity. (Rejection of the heresy of Nestorius, according to which in Christ there are two persons in two natures rather than one person in two natures.)
c. The individual(ized) human nature of Christ is a primary substance of a rational nature.
d. Every (primary) substance is its own supposit, which implies that every substance of a rational nature has its own personhood.
Now let's say you have been schooled in Aristotle's metaphysics and are also an orthodox Christian. So you are inclined to accept all four propositions. But they cannot all be true. So one of them must be rejected. Suppose you reject (d). You are then allowing your theological convictions to influence your ontology, your metaphysica generalis.
Is this kosher? Well, if there are non-theological cases in which a distinction between substance and suppositum is warranted, then clearly yes. But if there aren't, then the rejection of (d) and the attendant distinction between substances and supposita smacks of being ad hoc. You are in a logical bind and you extricate yourself by making a distinction that caters to this very bind.
The distinction is made to accommodate a piece of theology, namely, the orthodox Incarnation doctrine. And so the distinction between primary substance and supposit is open to the charge of being ad hoc. The Latin phrase means 'to this' and suggests that the distinction has no independent support and is a mere invention pulled out of thin air to render coherent an otherwise incoherent, or not obviously coherent, theological doctrine.
Again, I ask: Is this (philosophically) kosher?
If our question as philosophers of religion is whether the Incarnation doctrine is rationally acceptable, then it is hard to see how it can shown to be such by the use of a distinction which has no independent support, a distinction which is crafted for the precise purpose of making the doctrine in question rationally acceptable. To rebut this objection from ad hocness, someone will have to explain to me that and how the primary substance-supposit distinction has independent warrant. Is there some clear non-theological case in which the distinction surfaces?
If I ask whether the Incarnation doctrine is rationally acceptable, and you make an ad hoc distinction that removes a putative contradiction, this simply pushes the question back a step: is your distinction rationally acceptable? Arguably, it is not if it is purely ad hoc.
But I admit that the objection from ad-hocness or ad-hocceity is not decisive. Dennis might say to me, "Look, the theological dogma has the force of divine revelation because it was elaborated by fathers of the church under the guidance of the Holy Ghost. So what more support could you ask for?"
At this point we have a stand-off. If the Incarnation doctrine in its specific Chalcedonian formulation is divinely revealed, then of course it is true, whether or not we mere mortals can understand how it is true. But note also that if the doctrine is divinely revealed, then there is no need to defend it by making fancy distinctions. The main point, however, is that anyone who worries about the rational acceptability of the orthodox Incarnation doctrine will also worry about how any group of men can legitimately claim to be guided by the Holy Ghost. How could anyone know such a thing? Any person or group can claim to be under divine inspiration. But how validate the claim?
This looks to be another version of the Athens versus Jerusalem stand-off. The religionist can say to the philosopher: "We have our truth and it is from God, and we are under no obligation to prove its 'acceptability' to your puny 'reason.' To which the philosopher might respond, "You are asking us to abandon our very way of life, the life of inquiry and rational autonomy, and for what? For acquiescence in sheer dogmatism, dogmatism contradicted by other dogmatisms that you conveniently ignore."
Dennis also brings up the soteriological angle. Is one's salvation at risk if one questions or rejects a particular doctrinal formulation of the Incarnation? Is it reasonable to think that salvation hinges on the acceptance of the Chalcedonian definition? Is it reasonable to think that Nestorius is in hell for having espoused a doctrine that was rejected as heretical? Not by my lights. By my lights to believe such a thing is border-line crazy. How could a good God condemn to hell a man who, sincerely, prayerfully, and by his best intellectual lights, in good faith and in good conscience, arrived at a view that the group that got power labelled heretical or heterodox?
Apparently, the online magazine Slate will no longer be referring to the Washington Redskins under that name lest some Indians take offense. By the way, I take offense at 'native American.' I am a native Californian, which fact makes me a native American, and I'm not now and never have been an Indian.
But what about 'guinea pig'? Surely this phrase too is a racial/ethnic slur inasmuch as it suggests that all people of Italian extraction are pigs, either literally or in their eating habits. Bill Loney takes this (meat) ball and runs with it.
And then there is 'coonskin cap.' 'Coon' is in the semantic vicinity of such words as: spade, blood, spearchucker, spook, and nigger. These are derogatory words used to refer to Eric Holder's people. In the '60s, southern racists expressed their contempt for Martin Luther King, Jr. by referring to him as Martin Luther Coon. Since a coonskin cap is a cap made of the skin of a coon, 'coonskin cap' is a code phrase used by creepy-assed crackers to signal that black folk ought to be, all of them, on the wrong end of a coon hunt.
'Coonskin cap' must therefore be struck from our vocabulary lest some black person take offense.
But then consistency demands that we get rid of 'southern racist.' The phrase suggests that all southerners are racists. And we must not cause offense to the half-dozen southerners who are not racists.
But why stop here? 'Doo wop' is so-called because many of its major exponents were wops such as Dion Dimucci who was apparently quite proud to be a wop inasmuch as he uses the term five times in succession starting at :58 of this version of 'I Wonder Why' (1958). The old greaseball still looks very good in this 2004 performance. Must be all that pasta he consumes.
I could go on -- this is fun -- but you get the drift, unless you are a stupid liberal.
I need to answer three questions. This post addresses the first.
1. What is the difference between an Aristotelian primary substance and a supposit (hypostasis, suppositum)?
2. Is there any non-theological basis for this distinction?
3. If the answer to (2) is negative, is the addition of suppposita to one's Aristotelian ontology a case of legitimate metaphysical revision or a case of an ad hoc theoretical patch job? According to Marilyn McCord Adams, "Metaphysical revision differs from ad hoc theoretical patching insofar as it attempts to make the new data systematically unsurprising in a wider theoretical context." ("Substance and Supposits," p. 40)
The First Question
By 'substance' I mean an Aristotelian primary substance, an individual or singular complete concrete entity together with its accidents. Among the characteristics of substances are the following: substances, unlike universal properties, cannot be exemplified or instantiated; substances, unlike accidents, cannot inhere in anything; substances, unlike heaps and aggregates, are per se unities. Thus Socrates and his donkey are each a substance, but the mereological sum of the two is not a substance.
Now what is a supposit? Experts in medieval philosophy -- and I am not one of them, nota bene -- sometimes write as if there is no distinction between a substance and a supposit. Thus Richard Cross: "Basically a supposit is a complete being that is neither instantiated or exemplified, nor inherent in another." ("Relations, Universals, and the Absue of Tropes," PAS 79, 2005, p. 53.) And Marilyn McCord Adams speaks of Socrates and Plato as "substance individuals" and then puts "hypostases or supposits" in apposition to the first phrase. (PAS 79, 2005, p. 15)
My first question, then is: Is there any more-than-verbal difference between a substance and a supposit, and if so, what is it?
One answer that suggests itself is that, while every substance has a supposit, some substances have alien supposits. (I take this phrase from Adams, p. 31 et passim.) A substance has an alien supposit iff it is not its own supposit. I understand Aristotle to maintain or at least be committed to the proposition that every (primary) substance is essentially its own supposit. If so, then no substance is possibly such as to have an alien supposit. If alien supposition is metaphysically or broadly logically possible, however, then we have a ground for a more-than-terminological distinction between substances and supposits. Whether the converse of this conditional holds is a further question. For it may be that there is a ground for the distinction even if alien supposition is not possible.
Incarnation, Trinity, and the separated soul's survival between death and resurrection are theological examples of alien supposition. Whether there are non-theological examples is a further, and very important question, one the answer to which has consequences for questions (2) and (3) above.
The Incarnation is an example of alien supposition as I will now try to explain.
The orthodox view is that God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, the Word, becomes man in Jesus of Nazareth. Although the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us as we read in the NT, the Word does not merely assume a human body, nor does it acquire a universal property, humanity; the Word assumes a particularized human nature, body and soul. The eternal Word assumes or 'takes on' a man, an individual man, with an intellectual soul and and animal body. But now a problem looms, one that can be articulated in terms of the following aporetic tetrad:
a. A person is a (primary) substance of a rational nature. (Boethian definition)
b. There is only one person in Christ, the Word, the Second Person of the Trinity. (Rejection of the heresy of Nestorius, according to which in Christ there are two persons in two natures rather than one person in two natures.)
c. The individual(ized) human nature of Christ is a primary substance of a rational nature.
d. Every (primary) substance is its own supposit, which implies that every substance of a rational nature has its own personhood.
The tetrad is logically inconsistent: any three limbs taken in conjunction entail the negation of the remaining one. Thus the conjunction (a) & (c) & (d) entails the negation of (b). The solution to the tetrad is to deny (d). One does this by maintaining that, while the individualized human nature of Christ is a substance, it is not a substance that supports itself: it has an alien supposit, namely, the Second Person of the Trinity.
If the Incarnation as Chalcedonian orthodoxy understands it is actual, then it is possible. If so, alien supposition is possible, which straightaway entails a distinction between substance and supposit: while every substance has or is a supposit, not every substance has or is its own supposit. The individualized human nature of Christ is a supposited substance but is not a supposit.
Let me now say a bit about the Trinity. Here too a problem looms that can be cast in the mold of an aporetic tetrad.
a. A person is a (primary) substance of a rational nature. (Boethian definition)
e. There are exactly three divine persons, Father, Son, Holy Ghost . (Rejection of 'Quaternity')
f. The individualized nature of God is a primary substance of a rational nature.
d. Every (primary) substance is its own supposit, which implies that every substance of a rational nature has its own personhood.
Again, the tetrad is inconsistent, and again the solution is to reject (d) by saying that, while the individualized divine nature is a primary substance, it is not one that supposits itself: it has three alien supposits, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
The Son is thus the alien supposit of both God's divine nature and Christ's human nature.
My first question concerned the difference between a substance and supposit. My tentative answer is that while only substances can be supposits, there are substances that are not their own supposits nor are they supposits for anything else, an example being the individualized human nature of Christ.
Is there a non-theological basis for the distinction? if not, then the suspicion arises that the distinction is purely ad hoc, crafted to save tenets of orthodox Christian theology. But this is a question for another occasion.
Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. Conservatives have a tendency to try to win every debate with logic and recitations of facts which, all too often, fail to get the job done because emotions and mockery are often just as effective as reason. The good news is that liberals almost never have logic on their side; so they're incapable of rationally making the case for their policies while conservatives can become considerably more effective debaters by simply adding some emotion-based arguments and sheer scorn to their discourse. This has certainly worked on Twitter, where conservatives keep making the Obama campaign look like buffoons by taking over its hashtags.
The bolded sentence above is #5 of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. The rest of the text is from John Hawthorne's 12 Ways to Use Saul Alinky's Rules for Radicals Against Liberals. I agree entirely with Hawthorne's advice. I have come to see that calm and careful argumentation, the marshalling of facts, and all the rest of what constitutes rational persuasion are simply not enough. While necessary, they are not sufficient. Not sufficient, because most people are emotion-driven, not reason-driven. This is especially true of the young. It is the cool, not the cogent, that persuades them.
The Left knows how to fight and the Right had better learn. If you doubt that politics is war conducted by other means, then consider the following from a recent Dennis Prager column:
The head of the Louisiana Democratic Party, State Senator Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, stood before her colleagues in the state Senate and announced the reason people oppose Obamacare.
"You ready?" she asked three times.
It is President Obama's color.
"It isn't about the administration, and it should not be about the administration of the state nor federal level when it comes to Obamacare," she said. "But in fact it is. And why is that? I have talked to so many members in the House and Senate and you know what it comes down to? Are you ready for this? It is not about how many federal dollars we can receive. You ready? You want to know what it's about? It's about race. Now nobody wants to talk about that. It's about the race of this African-American president. ... It comes down to the race of the president of the U.S. which causes people to disconnect and step away from the substance of the bill."
What the senator said is of course egregiously false, and she must know it. But then why does she and so many other liberals say things like this? Because it is a useful lie. It is useful to the forwarding of the leftist agenda. Liberals lie and distort and smear because it works. The end justifies the means.
There are examples aplenty of this. For the Left, politics is a form of warfare. The above example, which is entirely characteristic, proves it.
Would that I could avoid this political stuff. But I cannot in good conscience retreat into my inner citadel and let my country be destroyed -- the country that makes it possible for me to cultivate the garden of solitude, retreat into my inner citadel, and pursue pure theory for its own sake.
Political discourse is unavoidably polemical. The zoon politikon must needs be a zoon polemikon. 'Polemical’ is from the Greek polemos, war, strife. According to Heraclitus of Ephesus, strife is the father of all: polemos panton men pater esti . . . (Fr. 53) I don't know about the 'all,' but strife is certainly at the root of politics. Politics is polemical because it is a form of warfare: the point is to defeat the opponent and remove him from power, whether or not one can rationally persuade him of what one takes to be the truth. It is practical rather than theoretical in that the aim is to implement what one takes to be the truth rather than contemplate it. What one takes to be the truth: that is the problem in a nutshell. Conservatives and leftists disagree fundamentally and nonnegotiably.
Implementation of what one takes to be the truth, however, requires that one get one’s hands on the levers of power. Von Clausewitz held that war is politics pursued by other means. But what could be called the converse-Clausewitz principle holds equally: politics is war pursued by other means.
David Horowitz, commenting on "Politics is war conducted by other means," writes:
In political warfare you do not just fight to prevail in an argument, but rather to destroy the enemy's fighting ability. Republicans often seem to regard political combats as they would a debate before the Oxford Political Union, as though winning depended on rational arguments and carefully articulated principles. But the audience of politics is not made up of Oxford dons, and the rules are entirely different.
You have only thirty seconds to make your point. Even if you had time to develop an argument, the audience you need to reach (the undecided and those in the middle who are not paying much attention) would not get it. Your words would go over some of their heads and the rest would not even hear them (or quickly forget) amidst the bustle and pressure of everyday life. Worse, while you are making your argument the other side has already painted you as a mean-spirited, borderline racist controlled by religious zealots, securely in the pockets of the rich. Nobody who sees you in this way is going to listen to you in any case. You are politically dead.
Politics is war. Don't forget it. ("The Art of Political War" in Left Illusions: An Intellectual Odyssey Spence 2003, pp. 349-350)
The proprietor of After Aristotleagrees with me that polemics has no place in philosophy. But he has a question for me: "Do his [my] statements about philosophy apply also to political philosophy?"
My answer is that if polemics has no legitimate place in philosophy, then it follows that it has no legitimate place in political philosophy. I am assuming, of course, that political philosophy is a species of philosophy in general, an assumption that strikes me as plainly true.
To appreciate my answer bear in mind my distinction between philosophy-as-inquiry and philosophy-as-worldview. When I write 'philosophy,' without qualification, I almost always intend the former. My thesis, then, is that polemics has no place in philosophy-as-inquiry or in any of its branches, however things may stand with regard to the many philosophical worldviews.
The problems of political philosophy are much more likely to ignite human passions than, say, abstruse questions in metaphysics. The misnamed 'problem of universals,' for example, is not likely to be 'taken to the streets.' But polemics is just as out of place in political philosophy as it is in metaphysics.
Addendum (6 August): It may be that the proprietor of After Aristotle had a different question in mind: "You maintain that polemics has no place in philosophy, but you polemicize regularly in political philosophy. But surely what goes for philosophy goes for political philosophy! Are you not being inconsistent?" If that is the question, then my answer is that politics is not the same as political philosophy; that I do not polemicize in political philosophy; and that polemics is not out of place in politics. I wish it were not true, but politics is war conducted by other means. That is clearly how our opponents on the Left view it, and so that is how we must view it if we are to oppose them effectively.
As a cultural warrior, I do battle with my enemies. As a philosopher, I seek truth with my friends.
I lived in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, from 1984 to 1991. From '86 to '91 I owned a house on Euclid Heights Boulevard near the bohemian Coventry distinct. I loved it: the Arabica coffee house where I hung out to read, write and play chess; eateries such as Tommy's and Irv's; shops like Passport to Peru; the used bookstore Mac's Backs.
The chess scene was especially vibrant with strong masters floating in and out among the patzers. International Master Calvin Blocker once kibbitzed on one of my games: "You'd be lucky to be mated" as I already mentioned in a short entry on the man. Blocker and I got to be friends of sorts to the extent that that is possible with someone so eccentric and prickly. Chess, as Siegbert Tarrasch once remarked, is like love and music: it has the power to make men happy. The good grandmaster neglected to mention, however, that protracted and intense dalliance with Caissa also has the power to introduce a certain eccentricity into one's orbit. But I digress. I want to get back to our wonderful 'conversation' about race.
That big old three-story Tudor on Euclid Heights Boulevard was the first house I bought. A man I knew whose wife had been mugged by a black thug* at University Circle warned me about buying in an area that was about 40% black. But the blacks and the whites seemed to be getting along well enough, and not being a racist, I proved it by buying the beautiful old house for $72,000. (Talk is cheap; if you want to know what a person really believes, observe how and where he spends his money.) There had been some 'white flight' in the '60s but the Coventry neighborhood seemed stable, and the price was right in part because of the racial integration.
By the way, the man I just mentioned, a professor of Religious Studies at Case Western Reserve at the time, and a liberal from the Bay Area, took to packing heat after the thug knocked out several of his wife's teeth and absconded with her money. And all of that in perfect illustration of the conservative adage, "A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged." He suddenly took a keen interest in crime, something he hadn't thought about too much before, a hallmark of liberals being their casual attitude toward criminal behavior. Upscale liberals would do well to sally forth from their lily-white gated communities from time to time to see what the rest of the world is like and how well their liberal bromides hold up.
One of the many attractions of the Coventry district was the annual summer street fair. The ones I attended went off smoothly, but recently there has has been trouble from 'flash mobs' of 'teens.' The rioting and violence of the 2011 event and threats of violence in 2012 and 2013 have resulted in decisions to cancel the event for two years running.
I now come to my point. There can be no worthwhile conversation about race (or anything else) with people who refuse to state the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. The 'teens' that rioted were mostly black. But that was not reported. Why not?
____________________
*'Black thug' is like 'deciduous tree.' Not all trees are deciduous; not all blacks are thugs. But some are. And, sad to say, more are, proportionally, than whites are.
Here is a sampling, starting with the determinable and proceeding to some determinates:
Donovan and Joan Baez, Colors. I forgot how good this song is. Hank Snow, Yellow Roses. I prefer the Ry Cooder cover, but it's not available. Bobby Darin, 18 Yellow Roses. Never could understand why this tune is almost never played on the oldies stations. Jimi Hendrix, Purple Haze. For all you benighted qualia deniers out there. 'Scuse me while I kiss the sky. Thelonious Sphere Monk, Blue Monk Jimi Hendrix, Red House Cream, White Room. You say this is not a song of color? What, is white not a color? Los Bravos, Black is Black Procol Harum, A Whiter Shade of Pale Joan Baez, The Green, Green Grass of Home
Can philosophy be debated? In a loose sense, yes, but not in a strict sense. I say that if debate is occurring in a certain place, then no philosophy is occurring in that place. Philosophy is not a matter of debate. That is a nonnegotiable point with me. So I won't debate it, nor can I consistently with what I have just said. It is after all a (meta)philosophical point: if philosophy cannot be debated then the same goes for this particular philosopheme. But though I won't debate the point, I must in my capacity as philosopher give some reasons for my view. My view is a logical consequence of my view of debate in conjunction with my view of philosophy.
Debate is a game in which the interlocutors attempt to defeat each other, typically before an audience whose approbation they strive to secure. Hence the query 'Who won the debate?' which implies that the transaction is about attacking and defending, winning and losing. I don't deny that debates can be worthwhile in politics and in other areas. And even in philosophy they may have some use. Someone who attends, say, a debate between Willian Lane Craig and Lawrence Krauss will come away with some idea of what sorts of philosophical issues contemporary theists and atheists discuss. What he won't come away with is any understanding of the essence of philosophy.
Why is philosophy -- the genuine article -- not something that can be debated?
Philosophy is inquiry. It is inquiry by those who don't know (and know that they don't know) with the sincere intention of increasing their insight and understanding. Philosophy is motivated by the love of truth, not the love of verbal battle or the need to defeat an opponent or shore up and promote preconceived opinions about which one has no real doubt. When real philosophy is done with others it takes the form of dialog, not debate. It is conversation between friends, not opponents, who are friends of the truth before they are friends of each other. Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas.
There is nothing adversarial in a genuine philosophical conversation. The person I am addressing and responding to is not my adversary but a co-inquirer. In the ideal case there is between us a bond of friendship, a philiatic bond. But this philia subserves the eros of inquiry. The philosopher's love of truth is erotic, the love of one who lacks for that which he lacks. It is not the agapic love of one who knows and bestows his pearls of wisdom.
There is nothing like this in a debate. The aim in a debate is not to work with the other towards a truth that neither claims to possess. On the contrary, each already 'knows' what the truth is and is merely trying to attack the other's counter-position while defending his own. Thus the whole transaction is ideological, the two sides of which are polemics and apologetics. Debate is verbal warfare. This is why debaters never show doubt or admit they are wrong. To show doubt is to show weakness. To prevail against an enemy you must not appear weak but intimidating.
There is no place for polemics in philosophy. To the extent that polemics creeps in, philosophy becomes ideology. This is not to say that there is no place for polemics or apologetics. It is to say that that place is not philosophy.
Discussions with ideologues, whether religious or anti-religious, tend to be unpleasant and unproductive. They see everything in terms of attack and defense. If you merely question their views they are liable to become angry or flustered. I once questioned a Buddhist on his 'no self' doctrine. He became hostile. His hostility at my questioning of one of the beliefs with which he identifies proved that his 'self' was alive and kicking despite his doctrinal asseverations to the contrary.
In Australia, soon, details here. Topic: Why is there something rather than nothing? Poor Krauss is going to get slaughtered, and deservedly so. Debating Craig is like getting into a gun fight with Doc Holliday. I would never debate him on anything, even if I thought debate was philosophically worthwhile. He has been honing his skills since high school.
According to the linked site, Krauss' A Universe from Nothing is being translated into 20 languages. Well, that is the way of the world. A piece of garbage becomes a best seller and is translated into 20 languages while books worth reading fall still-born from the press.
What do they have in common? Not much, except that in each case the 'punishment' seems wildly out of proportion to the 'crime.' Here is the latest in the McGinn saga.
Victor Davis Hanson, Life in the Twilight (bolding added to underscore the need for mavericks if we are to stop the transmogrification of the US into the SU):
We are becoming like Eastern Europeans who were oblivious that the faces on the May Day dais had sometimes changed. In other words, the evil and Islamophobic Nakoula did it in Benghazi, the overzealous (but otherwise understandably progressive) Cincinnati rogue agents alone did the improper audits, the evil (Fox News) James Rosen perhaps deserved the monitoring — all enemies of social justice.
Statism and the voices of megaphones like Jay Carney wear down a population. If the Great Leader says that there is a war on women because hip young affluent females like Sandra Fluke have trouble getting free condoms, then there surely is — and elevator-owning, dog-torturing, and equestrian-marrying Mitt Romney is waging it.
But there is no war when a Philadelphia abortionist, under the nose of state authorities, murders fetuses as they cry and gasp for air — and sometimes their laboring mothers along with them. If guns that are black and plastic and look scary are “automatic” assault weapons whose banning will save the children, then by all means ban these machine guns. If the planet has not warmed up in 15 years, then it is still warming up, and companies like Solyndra need more subsidies.
Still, the human psyche is a strange thing. It needs to feel transcendent, either spiritually or by confidence in children or through the reputation of a life lived well. Crush that spirit through government obfuscation, and the people become the walking dead of a dreary Warsaw Pact Budapest or Prague, given that there is no hope for those who follow.
The soul appreciates equality, but not of the enforced kind that destroy individual liberty. Insult the voter, call him names, regulate him, lecture him about his various -ologies and -isms, regiment his youth with proper thinking, curb his speech, and he becomes a mute, a dead soul, a Brit in about 1955[12], a Hungarian in 1956, a Russian in about 1970, or today’s Cuban.
To keep America exceptional, we need eccentrics, contrarians, doubters, politically incorrect truth-tellers. Take them away, and we are a nation of head-nodders like most other states.
Go to sleep in 2009 and wake up now. The world has changed: golf is the people’s game; racist, sexist, homophobic thought and speech are predicated on the ideology of who says it; the IRS, the NSA, and the Justice Department are watching you; the State Department is run like a campaign organization; the president offers politically correct thoughts on local trials; the attorney general worries about “my people”; the government is producing more oil and gas by trying to stop it; wind and solar are the way of the future; gropes and pornography are either career-ending or cause for needed sabbaticals; and high unemployment, debt, and low growth are proof of a robust recovery.
The model of our future will be a landscape like Detroit, as those on MSNBC or on NPR find ever more clever ways to assure us that the city is “saved” from the free-market capitalist and racist buccaneers. We will shuffle on, as the voices go in one ear and out the other, as they screech that Big Brother saved us at last from the reactionary Goldsteins[13] of the world who nearly destroyed it.
I am presently working through Marilyn McCord Adams, "Aristotelian Substance and Supposits" (Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supplementary volume 79, 2005, 15-72). The Czech scholastics and sometime MavPhil commenters Novak, Novotny, Vohanka, et al. have kindly invited me to read a paper at a conference on the Trinity in Prague this September and now I am under the gun to write something worth their time and attention.
Adams writes, p. 39, "(Ockham is willing to conclude that 'A human supposit can be assumed' is true, even though 'A human supposit is assumed' is contradictory; just as 'A white can be black' is true, even though 'A white is black' is impossible.)"
My present purpose is to make sense of this quotation.
I give 'A white can be black' a de re reading as follows:
1. A white thing is (logically) possibly such that it is not white.
For example, here is a piece of white paper. Heeding Mick Jagger's injunction, I can paint it black. But I wouldn't be able to do this if it were not logically possible for this thing that is actually white to be non-white. Although, necessarily, nothing white is non-white, the piece of paper is contingently white.
I give 'A white is black' a de dicto reading:
2. It is not (logically) possible that a white thing be non-white.
On these readings, both (1) and (2) come out true. (1) is about a thing (res) and ascribes a modal property to it; (2) is about a proposition (dictum) and ascribes a modal property to it.
I give 'A human supposit can be assumed' a de re reading:
3. A human supposit is (logically) possibly such that it is assumed.
From the opening page of Adams' paper, I gather that a supposit is an Aristotelian primary (individual) substance. So Socrates and Plato are human supposits, while a donkey is a supposit that is not human. And from her gloss on Boethius, I gather that a person is a primary substance of a rational nature. So Socrates and Plato are persons while a donkey is not.
Now if God incarnate is one person in two natures, as Chalcedonian orthodoxy has it, then God cannot assume a man. For a man is a supposit of a rational nature, hence a person. If God were to assume a man, then God the Son -- a person -- would be assuming a second person. But pace Nestorious, there are not two natures and two persons in Christ, but one person in two natures. So what is assumed in the Incarnation is not a supposit but a particularized human nature. This is why 'A human supposit is assumed' is contradictory. That is, in de dicto terms,
4. It is (logically) impossible that a human supposit be assumed.
(3) and (4) can both be true. It is impossible that a human supposit be assumed, for it it were it wouldn't be a supposit; but something that is a human supposit is possibly such that it is assumed. But this has the strange consequence that human supposits are only contingently supposits. So Socrates is not essentially a supposit, and if a supposit is a primary substance, the Socrates is not essentially a primary substance.
Thus Adams ascribes to Ockham the view that "The property of being a supposit is not essential to any creatable/created thing, because any creatable/created thing whatever can exist wthout it." (p. 39) So whatever is a supposit might not have been. Or rather whatever is a supposit might not have been its own supposit: every supposit is possibly such as to have an 'alien supposit,' namely God.
What is curious here is how very specific theological doctrines are allowed to drive the general ontology.
It's a bit of a paradox: leftist race-baiters fly under the euphemistic flag of 'progressive,' while hopelessly stuck in the past. The civil wrongs were righted, but they want to turn back the clock. A pox on their racist house.
Brother Jesse and Co. are stuck inside of Selma with the Oxford blues again.
If 'chink in the armor' is about Asians, then the Asians in question would have to be rather tiny to hang out interstitially in, say, a coat of mail.
Now blacks have shown themselves to be absurdly sensitive to the imagined slights embedded in such words and phrases as 'niggardly,' 'black hole,' and 'watermelon.' But Asians too?
Why not take offense at 'chunk'? Someone might get it into his PeeCee head that a chunk is a fat chink.
There is no end to this madness once it gets going, which is why we sane and decent people need to mock and deride liberals every chance we get. Mockery and derision can achieve what calm reasoning cannot.
One cannot reason with those who are permanently in a state of self-colonoscopy.
Adjectives admit of three degrees of comparison: positive, comparative, and superlative. The first refers to the zero case of comparison: Tom is tall. The second refers to a situation in which two things are compared: Tom is taller than Tim. The third refers to a situation in which a thing is compared to all the other members of its reference class: Tom is the tallest man in Fargo. It is easy to see that if Tom is the tallest man in Fargo, then (a) there cannot be a man taller than him in that reference class, and (b) he is unique in respect of tallness in that reference class. (I.e., there cannot be two tallest men in the same reference class.)
Therefore, if the WWII generation is the greatest generation (relative to some agreed-upon criteria of generational greatness), then (i) there is no greater generation, and (ii) the WWII generation is unique in respect of greatness. Now does Tom Brokaw really want to affirm both (i) and (ii)? Is the WWII generation the greatest generation of any country in the whole of recorded time? Or is it merely the greatest generation in American history? The latter is clearly dubious if not outright false: the generation of the founders is arguably the greatest generation of Americans. A fortiori, for the former.
What Brokaw is doing when he speaks of the WWII generation as the greatest is misusing the superlative ‘greatest’ to mean the positive ‘great,’ or perhaps the comparative ‘greater.’ Perhaps what he really wants to say is that the WWII generation is greater than the Baby Boomers. But instead of saying what he means, he says something literally false or else meaningless. One might think that a news anchor would have higher standards.
Perhaps the underlying problem is that people love to exaggerate for effect, and see nothing wrong with it. Not content to say that Bush was wrong about WMDs, his opponents say he lied – which is a misuse of ‘lie.’ Not content to say that she is hungry, my wife says she is starving. Not content to say that Christianity is more than a doctrine, Kierkegaard and fellow fideists say that Christianity is not a doctrine. Not content to use particular quantifiers ‘Some’, ‘Most’),people reach for universal quantifiers such as ‘Every,’ ‘All,’ ‘No,’ and ‘Never.’ Thus instead of saying that one must be careful when one generalizes, one says, ‘Never generalize,’ which refutes itself.
I have exposed three mistakes that the truth-oriented will want to avoid. We have the misuse of superlatives, the misuse of universal quantifiers, and the mistaken notion that if X is not identical to Y, then X and Y have nothing to do with each other.
Let me expatiate a bit further on the last mentioned mistake. If X is not identical to Y, it does not follow that X and Y are wholly diverse from each other. A book is not identical to its cover, but the two are not wholly diverse in that the cover is proper part of the book. Regretting is not identical to remembering, but the two are not wholly diverse: Every regretting is a remembering, but not conversely. A melody is not identical to the individual notes of which it is composed, but it is obviously not wholly diverse from them.
Everyone gets abused verbally in this world and one had better learn how to take it. There are bigots everywhere -- liberals are among the most vile, their tendency to project psychologically rendering their bigotry invisible to them -- and sooner or later you will encounter your fair share of abusers and bigots. A fellow graduate student called your humble correspondent a 'guinea' in the 1970s. This was in Boston. But I didn't break his nose and do the ground and pound on him. Was it cowardice or good sense? Call it self-control. If Trayvon Martin had control of his emotions on that fateful night, he would probably be alive today. The downside, of course, is that then we wouldn't be having this delightful 'conversation' about race.
My impression is that there is more anti-Italian prejudice -- not that it is any big deal -- in the East than in the West where I come from. (And without a doubt, Jim Morrison had it right when he opined that the West is the best, in at least two senses.) I didn't encounter any anti-Italian prejudice until I headed East. I had a Lithuanian girl friend in Boston whose mother used to warn her: "Never bring an Italian home." I never did get to meet Darci's mom. Imagine a Lithuanian feeling superior to an Italian!
But I want to talk about blacks, to add just a bit more to this wonderful 'conversation' about race we are having.
Blacks need to learn from Jews, Italians, the Irish, and others who have faced abuse and discrimination. Don't whine, don't complain, don't seek a government program. Don't try to cash in on your 'victim' status, when the truth is that you are a 'victim' of liberal victimology. Don't waste your energy blaming others for your own failures.
Don't wallow in your real or imagined grievances, especially vicarious grievances. That's the mark of a loser. Winners live and act in the present where alone they can influence the future.
If you want me to judge you as an individual, by the content of your character and not by the color of your skin, then behave like an individual: don't try to secure advantages from membership in a group.
Abandon tribal self-identification. Did you vote for Obama because he is black? Then you have no business in a voting booth.
Bear in mind that the world runs on appearances, and that if you appear to be a thug -- from your saggy pants, your 'hoodie,' your sullen and disrespectful attitude -- then people will suspect you of being a thug.
Take a leaf out of Condi Rice's book. She's black, she's female, and she became Secretary of State. And her predecessor in the job was a black man, Colin Powell. It sure is a racist society we have here in the USA. And that Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court -- isn't he a black dude? And not a mulatto like Obama, but one seriously black man.
Lose the basketball. Get the needle out of your arm, and that soul-killing rap noise out of your ears. Listen to the late Beethoven piano sonatas. May I recommend Opus #s 109, 110, and 111? Mozart is also supposed to be good for improving your mental capacity. We honkies want you to be successful. If you are successful, we won't have to support you. And if you are successful you will be happy. Happy people don't cause trouble.
And we don't give a flying enchilada what color you are. It's not about color anyway. It's about behavior. Work hard, practice the ancient virtues, and be successful. If you can't make it here, you can't make it anywhere. Don't let Brother Jesse or Brother Al tell you otherwise. Those so-called 'reverends' are nothing but race-hustlers who make money from the grievance industry.
Liberals are not your friends either. They want you to stay on the plantation. They think you are too stupid to take care of yourselves.
If you learn to control your emotions, defer gratification, study hard and practice the old-time virtues, will you be 'acting white'? Yes, in a sense. High culture is universal and available to all who want to assimilate it. What makes our culture superior to yours is not that it is white but that it is superior.
Don't get mad, be like Rudy Giuliani. Can you imagine him making a big deal about being called a greaseball, dago, goombah, wop, guinea . . . ? Do you see him protesting Soprano-style depictions of Italian-Americans as mafiosi?
Dr. Edith Bone was another of those who early on looked to Communism for a solution, but by the end of her life had seen through its false promises. In 1956 she was was released from a Hungarian jail after seven years of political imprisonment.
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