Maverick Philosopher

Jewish Epistemology

If chess is Jewish athletics, what is Jewish epistemology?  "Your mother has privileged access," quipped Peter over Sunday breakfast.

Bozo De Blasio, New York City, and 'Lack of Diversity'

From a  piece both pithy and penetrating by David P. Goldman (HT: Bill Keezer):

There has been considerable hand-wringing during the past few years about “lack of diversity” in the eight public high schools [of NYC] that require written exams. Asians are 14% of the public school population, but 50% of the elite high school population (the same proportion applies to Hunter College’s free public high school). By and large the Asian entrants are the children of working-class immigrants who pay extra tuition to prepare them for the entrance exams.

The NAACP has filed a complaint against the school system demanding racial quotas. The same concern for those “left behind” motivated the open admissions program in the City University system in 1969, which nearly ruined the system until CUNY found a way to shunt the underperformers into the community college system. (See chart at bottom of page.)

The above clearly illustrates what is so deeply wrong with the liberal-left way of thinking.  It is true that Asians are disproportionately represented in the best NYC high schools.  But this is not anything that needs remedying.  It simply reflects the fact that Asians, as a group, have different values than blacks, better study habits, and are of higher intelligence.  Notice, I said as a group.  That's reality.  But leftists are here as elsewhere in the business of reality denial.  Leftists confuse the world with the way they would like the world to be.  But things are as they are regardless of human hopes and dreams and desires. 

Some inequalities have come about through wrongs that ought to have been righted, and have been righted.  But the inequality of Asians and blacks as regards values and study habits and intelligence has not come about though any wrongdoing.  Slavery was outlawed almost 150 years ago when the Thirteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution was ratified on 6 December 1865.  Jim Crow was outlawed almost 50 years ago.  There is no de jure racism in the U. S.  and very little de facto racism.  The 'overrepresentation' of Asians is the predictable outcome of the differences between Asian and black culture, values, and innate intelligence.

By the way, one ought to be very careful with the word 'overrepresent' and its opposite.  It is ambiguous as between normative and nonnormative readings.  It is just a value-neutral fact that there are proportionately more Asians than blacks in the elite high schools of NYC.  But it doesn't follow that this state of affairs is one that ought not be, or that it would be better if there were proportional representation.

Consider the sports analogy.  Asians are 'underrepresented' on basketball teams.  That is a fact.  But it doesn't follow that this state of affairs is one that ought not be, or that it would be better if there were proportional representation.  Enforced proportional representation would adversely affect the quality of basketball games.

Since we are now back to the delightful and heart-warming topic of race/ ethnicity, let's talk about Jews.  They are 'overrepresented' in the chess world so much so that there is much truth to the old joke that chess is Jewish athletics.  Should the government do something about this 'problem'?  (This is what is called a rhetorical question.)

I once told my Jewish and Israeli friend Peter that I had never met a stupid Jew.  He shot back, "Then you've never lived in Israel."  The very alacrity of his comeback, however, proved (or at least provided further evidence for) my point.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that I am not now, and never have been, either an Asian or a Jew or an Israeli. 

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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Some Recent Dylan Bootleg Releases

Song to Woody.  This version from the 1970 New Morning sessions, but not included on that album.  Originally heard on Dylan's first album.

Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues.  This version too from the 1970 New Morning sessions.  First heard on the 1966 Highway 61 Revisited album. Ramblin' Jack Elliot delivers a haunting version.

When I Paint My Masterpiece. Another Self Portrait, Bootleg Series. vol. 10.  The Band's version.

Intro to Another Self Portrait, Bootleg Series. vol. 10. 

More than an Animal

An animal that knows it's one is more than one.

Ten Lessons of ObamaCare

By Robert Tracinski.  You really must read this.  I am tempted to pull some quotations, but, as the saying goes, it's all good.

For a Lie to be a Lie, Must There be an Intention to Deceive?

Tully Borland writes,

You host my favorite blog on the internet.  I can’t believe I didn’t find out about it until just a few months ago.  May you blog forever.

Here’s a counterexample to your latest definition which still includes an “intention to deceive”, i.e. here is a case of a lie where there is no intention to deceive:

Larry is on trial for felonious assault (he punched his grandma in the face repeatedly because she turned the channel when Chris Matthews came on).  His whole family was there.  There was blood found on him when the cops arrived that was his grandma’s, and there was no blood found on anyone else.  His grandma and his own mother testify in court against him, weeping because Larry has been such a disappointment.  There is no evidence presented for the side that he did not do it.  His lawyer has presented absolutely no evidence in his favor.  EVERYONE in the courtroom knows that he did it.  Moreover (and more importantly), he KNOWS that they know that he did it (the jurors repeatedly shake their heads in disgust every time he looks at them).

But Larry is corrupt to the core, lacking any remorse.  In the sentencing phase, as a last act in defiance of his family, the court, and his hometown, he coldly looks the jurors square in the eyes and says, “I did not do it.”

Liar! 

Very interesting case. It puts me in mind of O. J. Simpson and Bill Clinton.  When Clinton told his famous lie, (almost) everybody knew he was lying, and Bubba knew that (almost) everybody knew he was lying. So when he made his false statement ("I did not have sex with that woman") he knew that hardly anyone would be deceived by what he said.  I think Borland would say about this actual case what he said about his hypothetical one, namely, that the agent lied shamelessly but without any intention to deceive.  If so, then any definition of lying that includes as a necessary condition the intention to deceive is mistaken.

There are at least thee ways of responding to this putative counterexample.

A.  Run the argument in reverse.  Borland's argument is that Larry lied but had no intention to deceive his audience; therefore, an intention to deceive is not a necessary condition of a statement's being a lie.  But the argument can be run in reverse with no breach of logical propriety:  An intention to deceive is a necessary condition of a statement's being a lie; Larry had no intention to deceive; ergo, Larry did not lie.

Or as we say in the trade, "One man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens."

On this approach, Tully's example is not a counterexample to my definition but merely an illustration of a phenomenon like lying but distinct from it.

B.  A second approach is to question Tully's assumption that there is no intention to deceive where there is no possibility of deception.  Is the belief that it is possible for me to deceive you a necessary condition of my intending to deceive you? Or can I intend to deceive you while knowing that it is not possible to deceive you?

It seems to me that, necessarily, if an an agent A intends to do X, then A believes that it is possible for A to do X.   The following, though not narrowly-logically contradictory, strikes me as broadly-logically contradictory:  I fully intend to complete the 2014 Lost Dutchman marathon in under three hours but I know that  this is impossible for me.

Therefore, necessarily, if a person intends to deceive his audience about his or that , then he believes that it is possible for him to deceive his audience about this or that.

The (B) response to Borland's putative counterexample, therefore, does not look promising.

C.  On a third approach we abandon the attempt to capture in a definition the essence of lying.  We treat lying as a family-resemblance concept in roughly Wittgenstein's sense.  Accordingly, there is no one essence specifiable by the laying down of necessary and sufficient conditions that all and only lies have in common. 

Or perhaps I should put the point like this.  There are correct uses of 'lie' and cognates in English and incorrect uses.  But there is no one univocal sense shared by all the correct uses.  So if a person uses 'lie' interchangeably with 'false statement,' then he uses 'lie' incorrectly.  But a use of 'lie' that does not involve the intention to deceive is correct  as well as a use that does involve the intention to deceive.  And there is a correct use that requires that a lie be a false statement and a correct use that allows a lie to be a true statement.

But I should think that the paradigm cases of lying all involve the intention to deceive and the notion that a lie is a false statement and not merely a statement believed to be false by its producer.

 I think the best response to Tully's counterexample is (C).  What he has shown is that there is a correct use of 'lie' in situations in which there is no intention to deceive, and no deception either.  But this use of 'lie' is non-paradigmatic and peripheral to the main way 'lie' is used in English which (dare I say it?) is my way.

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The Biggest Presidential Lie in My Lifetime

Promises and Lies

This from David Fredosso:

Now embarrassed by his oft-repeated and false promise that “if you like your health plan you can keep it,” Obama has retreated to a new line of defense: Your old health plan had to be canceled because it was “junk.”

I object.  It was not a promise that Obama repeatedly made; it was a false statement about a matter of fact easily checked.  The matter of fact is what the PPACA says; it is easily checked by simply reading the law or having a staff member read the law and report on its contents to the president.  So what Obama  repeatedly did was make a false statement.  That by itself does not get the length of a lie.  But there are very good reasons to believe that he made his false statement time and again with the intention to deceive.  For had he not engaged in deception, the bill would not have passed.  It strains credulity to maintain that Obama did not know about a key provision of his signature piece of legislation, a provision without which the entire scheme is unworkable.    Of course he knew.  And being the consummate Chicago-machine political hustler that he is, he knew what he had to do to win, the glorious end justifying the contemptible means.

But what really interests me are the underlying conceptual and philosophical questions, and not  our morally challenged president and his serial lies, prevarications, and other offenses against truth and truthfulness. What is a promise?  What is a lie?  How does a promise that one fails to keep differ from a lie?  Many pundits confuse the former with the latter.  Bill O'Reilly the other night juxtaposed the Obama lie with the Bush the Elder's 1988 "Read my lips" unfulfilled promise, as if the one is assimilable to the other.  So let's think about it.  My main question is this:

If I promise to do X, and fail to fulfill my promise, have I lied?

To answer this question we need to analyze the concept of promising.

Promising is future-oriented: if I promise at time t to do X, then, if I fulfill my promise and do X, X occurs at a time t* later than t.  If I promise to drive you to Tucson, and I do in fact drive you to Tucson, then, necessarily, my driving you there occurs at a time later than the time of my promising.  In other words, there is no promising with respect to the past, or even with respect to the present.  Suppose I am just now sneezing without covering my mouth.  I can promise to not to do that again, but I can't promise to not do what I am in the process of doing.

Now suppose that I promise on Monday to drive you to Tucson on Tuesday, but my vehicle is 'totaled' Monday night and no other vehicle is available for my use.  Then I fail to fulfill my promise. But it doesn't follow that I lied when I promised to drive you to Tucson.  For one cannot lie about what has not yet occurred.  Here is an explicit argument:

a. Promises are about future contingent events
b. Future contingent events either do not exist or if they do exist they are not knowable now.
c. Lies are false statements made with the intention to deceive about events that are both existent and knowable now.
Therefore
d. No promise is a lie.

(b) requires a bit of commentary.  If presentism is true, then only the present exists, in which case future events do not exist.  If presentism is false and future events (tenselessly) exist, as they do on a B-theory of time, then they, or at least the modally contingent ones, are unknowable by us now.

I have been talking about sincere promises.  Suppose I make a promise I have no intention of fulfilling.  Or to be precise, I utter a form of words that are verbally of the sort one uses to make a promise, but these words are not animated by any intention to do as I appear to be promising.  This is not a lie either.  Deception is involved, but not a lie.  For to lie I must make a statement about some actual state of affairs.  But 'I promise to drive you to Tucson tomorrow' is not a statement about any state of affairs.  Promising and stating are quite different.  Promising is a performative: I make it the case that I promise to drive you to Tucson simply by uttering those words.  There is nothing external to the words to represent or misrepresent either intentionally or non-intentionally.

George Bush the Elder, back in 1988, famously said, "Read my lips! No new taxes!"  Did he lie?  Of course not.  On a charitable view, he made a promise he was unable to keep due to circumstances beyond his control.   But even if he had no intention of keeping his promise, he still did not lie.

Bill Clinton wagged his finger at us and said, "I did not have sex with that woman!"  Did he lie?  Of course.  He did in fact have oral sex with Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office. 

There are at least two ways of failing to fulfill a promise.  One can be prevented from fulfilling it by circumstances beyond one's control, or one can renege on the promise.  Suppose that on Tuesday morning I just don't feel like carting you to Tucson, and refuse to do so even after promising to do so.  Then I renege on my promise.  If a person reneges on a promise, we say he broke his promise.  A broken promise is not the same as an insincere promise.  I can sincerely promise, on Monday, to meet Jake for lunch on Friday, but then break the promise.

Did Obama renege on his PPACA promise?  No, for the simple reason that he made no promise.  He made a false statement about the content of the PPACA bill that then became law.

Fredosso above uses the phrase "false promise."  That strikes me as ambiguous as between 'insincere promise' and 'broken promise.'  We should probably avoid the phrase 'false promise.'  Truth-value does not come into the appraisal of performatives.  Suppose I say to Ed, 'I promise to repay you on Friday.'  If Ed says, 'Is that true what you just said,' then Ed shows that he does not understand the nature of promising.  For another example, 'I hereby pronounce you man and wife,' said by a Justice of the Peace,  is neither true nor false.  Of course, if he says it, then it is true that he said it; but the saying itself is not true or false; therr is no reality external to the saying that the saying is about.

Here is a quickie argument:

Lies are all of them false
Promises are neither true nor false
Ergo
No promise, not even a 'false' promise, is a lie.

Further question: Is 'insincere' in 'insincere promise' an alienans adjective?  Suppose I break my promise to you and you protest: You promised!  I say, 'But I didn't mean it.'  Is an insincere promise a promise? I am inclined to say that an insincere promise is not a promise while a broken promise is a promise.

Concluding Polemical Postscript.  Obama lied, and health care died!

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More on Lying

Chad McIntosh e-mails:

Here are some thoughts on your recent post on lying. You offer the following definition:

A lie is a false statement made with the intention to deceive.

I wonder if more should be said about what counts as a statement. You leave open the possibility that there are other ways of tokening statement-types than uttering them when you say a statement type isn’t a lie until someone “utters or otherwise tokens the type.” Do you have in mind other ways to token statements that aren’t utterances?

BV:  Well, there are written statements in addition to spoken statements.  A written statement is not an utterance but it tokens a statement type.  Obama has been caught numerous times lying via speech acts about the content of the PPACA.  But suppose he publishes a written statement that includes the sentence, "After the PPACA passes, you will be able to keep your health plan and your doctor if you so desire."  That sentence is a token of a statement type.  It too would be a lie.  Every lie is a statement, i.e., a stating, but not every statement is a spoken statement.

If so, we need to see if they, too, count as lies on your proposal (i.e., are there forms of deception that token statements without uttering them?). If a businessman leaves his home porch light on as he leaves for vacation, is he tokening the statement “someone is home”? Or does a football player token the statement “I’m going right” when he jukes right but goes left? If so, we have false statements being made with the intention to deceive. But it would be counterintuitive to say the business man and the football player here are lying.

BV: The question Chad is raising now is whether a statement type can be tokened by a non-sentential entity.  Can one make a statement without speaking or writing or displaying (as on a sign) a declarative sentence?  I would say no.  A statement type is a linguistic entity the tokens of which must themselves be linguistic entities.  The statement type *Obama is a liar* is tokened by my stating that he is a liar, i.e., by my assertive utterance of the sentence 'Obama is a liar.' But it can also be tokened by my writing the sentence, 'Obama is a liar.'

Note that not every utterance of a sentence is an assertive utterance.  I might utter the sentence 'Obama is a liar' in oratio obliqua, or in a language class to illustrate a sentence in the indicative mood.  And the same holds for writing a sentence.  If you ask me for an example of an English sentence, I might write on the black board, 'Obama is a liar.'  But I haven't thereby made a statement.

Or here’s a possible counterexample that avoids the non-utterance category. Suppose the CIA discovers that Al-Qaida has tapped the phone line on which the president’s whereabouts are discussed in an effort to plan an attack on his life. Knowing this, a CIA agent says over the line, knowing the terrorists are listening, that the president will be at the Washington Memorial at 4pm, when in fact he will be safe at camp David at that time. Has the CIA agent lied to the terrorists? It doesn’t seem to me that he has; not just because the deception here is not wrong, but because it just doesn’t seem like a lie period.

BV: This is an interesting example that Chad intends as a counterexample to my above definition.  I utter a sentence that I know to be false with the intention of deceiving any terrorists who might be listening, without knowing whether any terrorists are listening.  According to Chad, I have made a false statement with the intention to deceive, but I have not lied.  Chad's point, I take it, is that a lie necessarily involves an interpersonal transaction in which the maker of the false statement knows that the adressee is in receipt of it.  If that is Chad's point, then I can accommodate it by modifying my definition:

A lie is a false statement made by a person P and addressed to another person Q or a group of other persons Q1, Q2, . . . Qn, Qn+1, . . .  such that (i) Q or some of the Qs are in receipt of  P's statement and are known by P to be in receipt of it, and (ii) P's statement is made with the intention to deceive Q or some of the Qs.

But I should say that I do think all lies are morally blameworthy. I see here a distinction similar to that between murder and killing. All murder is morally blameworthy and also killing, but not all killing is murder. Similarly, all lies are morally blameworthy and deceptive, but not all deceptions are lies. So I’m inclined to see your definition as capturing only a necessary condition of lies. I have some ideas about what sufficient conditions are needed to get a better definition, but I’ve said enough for now. What do you think?

BV: Murder, by definition, is wrongful killing, whereas killings (of human beings) are some of them morally permissible, some of them morally impermissible, and some of them -- I would argue -- moral obligatory.  It seems that Chad wants to pack moral wrongness into the concept of lying, so that the following is an analytic proposition: *Lying is wrongful intentional deception.*  That would give him a reason to deny that the terrorist example is an example of lying.  For while there is deception, and it is intentional, it is not wrongful intentional deception.

Suppose the SS are at my door looking for Jews.  I state falsely that there are no Jews in my house.  On Chad's analysis I have not lied because my action is morally praiseworthy, or at least not morally wrong.  On my view, I have lied, but my lie is morally justifiable.  But then moral wrongness cannot be packed into the concept of lying.  I agree that lying, in most cases, is wrong.  But I don't see the connection between lying and wrongness as analytic.

Suppose once again that the SS are at my door looking for Jews.  I state what I believe to be false, namely, that there are no Jews present.  But it turns out that, unbeknownst to me, what I state is true.  So I make a true statement with the intention to deceive.  Monokroussos in an earlier thread took this to show that a lie need not be a false statement.  What's necessary is only that the statement be believed to be false by its utterer.  I wonder what Chad would say about this case. 

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Libertarian ('Losertarian') Party Strikes Again

Ken Cuccinelli could have won in Virginia had the Libertarian candidate not siphoned off votes.  Libertarianism is a healthy, if extreme, counterbalance to the the hard leftism that controls the Democrat Party, and the soft leftism of the RINOs.  But the Libertarian Party is not only unnecessary, but destructive.  Libertarians should follow the lead of Ron and Rand Paul, join the Republican Party, and push it in a libertarian direction, at least with respect to economic and political issues.

Libertarian ideas are many of them good; the  Libertarian Party, however,  is a disaster.

I have had my say on this topic in previous posts wherein you will find my reasons:

Libertarians are the Ralph Naders of the Conservative Side

Vote Libertarian, Waste a Vote.

Besides, a vote for the 'Libertarian' candidate, Robert Sarvis, was "insane," according to Ron Paul:

Specifically referring to the mileage taxes that Sarvis indicated he may support and which may require GPS systems to be installed in everyone's cars, Paul said "anybody who would conceivably vote for someone who would endorse a mileage tax" is "insane" because a mileage tax would be an "invasion of privacy" and would just give the government more money it could waste. In an interview on MSNBC, Sarvis indicated that he could support "vehicle-miles-driven taxes."

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But What if I Want a 'Crappy' Health Plan and by Which Standard is it 'Crappy'?

For liberal scumbaggery and dumbassery, it is hard to beat Ed Schultz.  This is the guy who called the sweet and loveable and ladylike Laura Ingraham a "right-wing slut."  Now he is saying that the health plans that Obamacare will outlaw are 'crappy.'

If so, there must be some one standard relative to which they are adjudged 'crappy.'  But what is that standard, and who sets it?  Is maternity care built into the standard?  But maternity is not in my future, or in my  past for that matter.  And if you are a woman past a certain age, or a nun of any age, maternity is not in your future either. 

Primary care physicians advise their patients to have colonoscopies starting at the age of 50.  Suppose you are a healthy 27-year-old runner who thrives on a fiber-rich diet.  You and Sir Thomas Crapper are on most excellent terms.  Your policy does not cover colonoscopies, let us assume.  Does that make it 'crappy'?  Not at all.  It makes it reasonable. Why buy what you don't need?

So what would be a crappy plan for one person might not be for another. It depends on age, sex, and other factors.

Who is to decide?  Obviously, the person in question or the person's parent or guardian.  Not the government.

So here is the nub of the issue.  The government has no right to force you to buy health care or health insurance (not the same, by the way), or anything else.  Whether you buy and what you buy is your business.  Or do you think that the citizen-state relation is or is closely analogous to the child-parent relation?

The various mandates (individual, employer, HHS) are egregious assaults upon individual liberty and upon the mediating structures of civil society such as private enterprises, clubs, fraternal associations, and churches.  (In a later post I plan to talk about contraceptives and abortifacients and the assault on religious liberty.) 

So do you value liberty? Or do you want an Obama-style "fundamental transformation" of our country in the direction of  a collectivist nanny-state?   We are well on the way to it already.  How far do you want to go?

Let us understand what is fundamentally at issue here.  Let's not get hung up on details such as those pertaining to the inasupicious 'rollout' of ObamaCare.  We need clarity as to the "conflict of visions" ( T. Sowell) of Right and Left.

But we can't have clarity as long as Obama and his defenders lie and bullshit and prevaricate.  The latter include Feinstein, Pelosi, and Wasserman-Schultz.

So, Mr President, please tell us forthrightly what your vision for America is.  Don't lie to us, or try to trick or fool us or try achieve your ends by stealth.

Then and only then can we have the 'conversation' -- to use a nice squishy bien-pensant liberal word -- we need to have about the direction of the country.

But please, no more lies, and no more lies about your lies.

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Should You Go to Graduate School in Philosophy?

I have discussed this question several times before.  Here is my short answer.  By all means, go to graduate school in philosophy, but only if you satisfy all of the following conditions.

1. Philosophy is your passion, the one thing you think most worth living for.

2. People in the know have advised you that you have philosophical aptitude.

3. Your way is paid in toto via fellowship including tuition remission or else you are independently wealthy.   No student loans!

4. You are willing to live for 10-12 years, minimum, before relaxing with tenure.  (I began grad school in '73 and received tenure in '84 = 11 years.)  You will be under a fairly high degree of pressure during that decade or so, including such stressors as: living on a meager income as a grad student, writing a dissertation, earning the doctorate, landing a tenure-track position at a school where there is a real chance of getting tenure, surviving the tenure review.

5. You are willing to chance jumping though all the hoops, and then not get tenure, in which case you are no longer young somewhat damaged goods who may have to re-tool career-wise, or accept a lesser position.  I know a philosopher who failed to get tenure at the University of Hawaii and had to take a job in Toledo, Ohio.  It was a full-time philosophy position, but Toledo ain't Honolulu.  It is easy to go up, hard to go down.

6. You understand that, if you do get tenure at Cleveland State, say, then you are stuck there for the rest of your career unless you are unusually talented. Tenure is a boon and a shackle, 'golden handcuffs' if you will.  The security is purchased in the coin of a reduction of mobility.

7. You understand that the humanities are in trouble, the job market is bad, and that competition for tenure-track positions is ferocious.

In sum: if philosophy is your passion, you are good at it, have an opportunity to pursue it for free at a good school, and would not consider the years spent in grad school wasted if no job materializes -- then go for it!  Live your dreams! Don't squander your  self for pelf! 

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I was considering Grad School...and then I saw this. HILARIOUS!

The Stoic Insight and Its Limits

Within limits we have the power to control our minds, our moods, our responses to people and things, and in consequence our happiness.  Happiness is in some measure made or unmade in the mind.  We all know people who make themselves miserable by their refusal to practice very elementary mental hygiene.  Just as I can let myself be annoyed by someone's remark or behavior, I can refuse to let myself be annoyed or affected. The trouble, however, is that this power of detachment is limited.  What's more,  it must be developed by protracted thought and practice, a fact that requires that one be well-endowed and well-placed -- facts not in one's control. I am in control of my responses to the world's bad actors and unfavorable circumstances, but not in control of the circumstances in which alone I can develop the Stoic's self-therapeutic armamentarium. I have the leisure, inclination, and aptitude to pursue Stoic and other spiritual exercises.  But how many do?  I can't see that a solution that leaves most out in the cold is much of a solution.

The Stoic wisdom  may not take us far, but where it takes us is a worthwhile destination.  In the end, however, Augustine is right: it is no final solution.  Wretchedness partially and temporarily alleviated, and by some only, is no satisfactory answer to the wretchedness inscribed in our nature.  Of course, it doesn't follow from this that there is a satisfactory answer.

Mutatis mutandis,  the above applies to Buddhist self-therapeutics as well.

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Dianne Feinstein: You Can Keep Your Health Plan Until the ObamaCare Bill is Enacted

The left-leaning Washington Post awarded President Obama four, count 'em, four pinocchios, its highest (dis)honor,  for the repeatedly told lie for which he is now notorious.  In one of its variations, it goes like this: “And if you like your insurance plan, you will keep it.  No one will be able to take that away from you.  It hasn’t happened yet.  It won’t happen in the future.”

Now the sense of Obama's assertion in all its variations is clear.  But when Bob Schieffer asked Senator Dianne Feinstein On Face the Nation Sunday morning about Obama's statements, she offered the following interpretation of its sense  (at 6:06):  "You can keep it [your health plan] up to the time the bill is enacted; after that it's a different story."

You heard right.

Now that is mendacity at its most creative.  It is an example of an Orwellian misuse of language: semantic subversion by semantic inversion.  'True freedom is enslavement to the state."  "Welfare is self-reliance."  "War is peace."

And Feinstein's "Obamacare law will allow you to keep your doctor and health plan but only until the bill becomes law."

Did Schieffer call Feinstein on her outrageous insult to the intelligence of the American people?  Watch the video and find out.

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A Pond away, the American-born Janet Daley of The Telegraph see things with exceptional clarity.  Concluding paragraphs:

Economic freedom, as well as political liberty, is being traded in at a startling pace even in the US, where it was once the be-all and end-all of the American dream. US citizens are discovering that their president’s flagship health-care programme is going to force them to buy the sort of health insurance that he believes they should have rather than the (cheaper, less comprehensive) kind they had chosen for themselves. They may have been willing to take their chances with minimal coverage that would pay only for catastrophic events, but the government says no. In its paternalistic wisdom, it will insist (by law) that they pay for everything it thinks is desirable, whether they want it or not.

The principle of the ideological struggle with communism — that the power of the state was an inherent danger from which the individual must be protected — is being lost to memory. Government is always the custodian of virtue now, holding out against the wicked, self-serving forces of profit and private interests. It is as if we have learnt nothing from the history of the 20th century about which values and beliefs actually delivered a life that was worth living — and how much vigilance is required to preserve them.

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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Kerouac's History of Bop

With good video

I told myself that, come November, I'd put Jack back in his box until next October.  But Kerouac month has bled over into November probably because seeing the movie  Big Sur got me all stoked up again.

Here is Herbert Gold's review of the book (Saturday Review, 22 September 1962).

And here is nastly slap at Jack from a writer not much better, Edward Abbey:  "Jack Kerouac, like a sick refrigerator, worked too hard at keeping cool and died on his mama's lap from alcohol and infantilism."

Cactus Ed on Updike:

John Updike: our greatest suburban chic-boutique man of letters. A smug and fatal complacency has stunted his growth beyond hope of surgical repair. Not enough passion in his collected works to generate steam in a beer can. Nevertheless, he is considered by some critics to be America's finest *living* author: Hold a chilled mirror to his lips and you will see, presently, a fine and dewy moisture condensing--like a faery breath!--upon the glass.

On Misusing the Word 'Lie'

Keith Burgess-Jackson rightly criticizes Rush Limbaugh for using

. . . the terms "calculated lie," "purposeful lie," "intentional lie," and "knowing lie" (while referring to Barack Obama's claim that Americans could, if they so chose, keep their insurance policy and their doctor). Calculation, purpose, intention, and knowledge are built into the concept of a lie, so qualifying the term "lie" in these ways is redundant and has the unfortunate effect of draining the word "lie" of its meaning. Limbaugh uses "lie" as though it meant "falsehood." It means far more than "falsehood." A lie is a very special falsehood.

Right.  I will now take the ball and run with it.

Every  lie is a false statement, but not every false statement is a lie.  A lie is a false statement made with the intention to deceive.  Since intention to deceive is included within the concept lie, 'intentional lie' and its cousins are pleonastic.  Someone who speaks of an intentional lie is treating the species as if it were a genus.  'Intentional lie' is like 'true fact.'  Use of these pleonasms marks one as uneducated or worse. 

There are two related mistakes one must avoid.  The first is the redundancy mistake just mentioned.  The other is the use of 'lie' to mean a false statement.  The temptation to do so is strong indeed.  Many of us are inclined to think our opponents not just wrong, but culpably wrong: you lied!   Michael Medved  speaks irresponsibly of ten big lies about America.  But none of his ten falsehoods -- and I agree with him that they are all of them falsehoods -- is properly describable as a lie. 

Here is one: "The two-party system is broken, and we urgently need a viable third party."

Like Medved, I consider that to be false.  But is it a lie?  Do the people who believe the quoted sentence know the truth but are out to deceive us?  Of course not.  I met a woman once who claimed that the moon was its own source of light.  Was she lying?  She uttered a falsehood, which is not the same as lying. Once I jokingly said to my wife that she was lying when she said that the room was cold.  "You lie!"  First of all, there is no fact of the matter as to whether or not the room is cold.  Her cold is my hot. So what's to lie about?  The only fact of the matter in the vicinity is wifey's feeling cold. 

Jethro claims that the bottle is half-empty while Earl maintains that it is half-full.  Is one of these yahoos lying?  Here there is a fact of the matter but one describable in two equivalent ways.

If a person affirms (denies) the existence of God is the person lying?  Here there is a fact of the matter but one hard to make out.  It is rational to be a theist, but also rational to be an atheist.  So perhaps my definition needs augmenting:

A lie is a false statement made with the intention to deceive about a definite matter of fact about which knowledge is possible.

To lie is to misrepresent willfully the way things are when the way things are is ascertainable with a fairly high degree of certainty.  For example,  the way things are with respect to the content of PPACA is easily ascertained: you just read the law.  There is a matter of fact as to what is stated in the law and that fact is easily established.

Suppose you and I are discussing some very difficult question in mathematics or metaphysics or cosmology.   I assert that p while you assert that not-p.  It follows that one of us is wrong.  But it does not follow that one of us is lying.

Suppose that A and B each have the intention to deceive the other.  A asserts that p, while B asserts its negation.  It is a very interesting question whether both are lying.  One of them is lying, for at least one of them is saying  something false with the intention to deceive.  But are both lying?  Is the intention to deceive sufficient for lying, or must the content asserted also be false? 

Here is a further nuance that will bore some of you.  The type-token distinction comes into play.  "The two-party system is broken, and we urgently need a viable third party" is not a statement but a statement type.  You don't get a statement until some definite person utters or otherwise tokens the type.  (To token a type is to produce a token of the type.)  But no statement-type can be a lie.  For statement-types float free of language users, and to have a statement, an occurrent stating, a particular speaker must use the statement-type -- must token the type -- on a particular occasion.  This is another reason to deny that Medved's ten big falsehoods are lies.  Note that a falsehood is false whether or not anyone utters or otherwise tokens a sentence that expresses it.  But a lie is not a lie whether or not anyone utters or otherwise tokens the sentence that expresses it.

It is also worth observing that the concept lie as I have defined it is not a normative concept.  The definition merely tells us what a lie is.  A lie is a statement made with the intention to deceive.  But it is a further question whether deception is morally impermissible.  And if it is, is it so in all cases or only in some? 

Is a liar one who lies?  No.  One can lie without being a liar just as one can get drunk without being a drunkard.  A liar is one who habitually lies.  Does it suffice for a person to be a liar that he lie habitually about just one topic, or must he lie habitually about more than one topic?  Interesting question.

Obama lied repeatedly when he said that under his collectivist scheme every one would get to keep his health plan if he so desired.  May we infer that Obama is a liar?  Or to judge him to be a liar must we also adduce his other (repeated) lies?

And then there is the epistemology of the situation.  How do I know that Obama lied when he made his now-famous asseveration?  I didn't peer into his soul. I know, or at least I have good reasons for believing that he lied, because he knows the subject-matter of his false statement  and he had a very powerful motive for misrepresenting said subject-matter.  Had he spoken the truth, it is a very good bet that the PPACA would not have passed and become law.

So plenty of evidence points in the direction of his being a damned liar.

Addendum 3 November

Dennis Monokroussos comments:

Apropos your post “On Misusing the Word ‘Lie’”, it would be better to say that a lie is (among other things) a statement its utterer believes to be false. Also, similarly, your augmented definition seems to require the same qualification; to wit, that it’s about something believed to be “a definite matter of fact about which knowledge is possible”.

My initial definition was this

1. A lie is a false statement made with the intention to deceive.  (That is to be understood as a biconditional: for any x, x is a lie iff x is a statement made with the intention to deceive.)

DM suggests

2. A lie is a statement believed by its utterer to be false that is made with the intention to deceive.

(2), however, allows for the possibility of a true lie.  For suppose a statement is made with the intention to deceive but is falsely believed by the utterer to be false.  In such a situation the utterer says something true with the intention to deceive.  Has he lied?

Well, what are we trying to do here?  If we are trying to capture the ordinary language meaning of 'lie' and cognates, then I am inclined to say that (2) fails.  For in ordinary English, a lie is a falsehood, though not every falsehood is a lie. I am making an empirical claim about  English as she is spoken by people like me and Monokroussos (educated white male Americans not too far apart in age).  People like us do not use 'lie' in such a way that it is sufficient for x to be a lie that x be made with the intention to deceive.

Having made an empirical claim, I am open to empirical refutation by a linguist.

If, on the other hand, we are trying to elaborate a systematic theory of lying, bullshitting and related truth-sensitive phenomena, a project that involves replacing the ordinary language concept with a supposedly better one, then perhaps (2) is acceptable.

But now we are headed for the metaphilosophical stratosphere.   What is the role of ordinary language analysis in philosophical theorizing?  Ought philosophy be theoretical and explanatory at all?  Should it perhaps content itself with description?  What is analysis anyway?  And what about the paradox of analysis?  And so on and so forth.

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Big Sur, the Movie

It debuted hereabouts in Scottsdale this morning at 11:00 AM at Harkins 14.  There were exactly three souls in attendance, mine included.  Beautifully done and especially moving for this native Californian Kerouac aficionado who knows the book and the road and the bridge and the views and has had his own remarkable experiences at Big Sur.  Gazing out at the Pacific  over 40 years ago I felt as if locked into the same nunc stans that I had glimpsed a few months before at Playa del Rey on the southern California coast.  Nature in the extremity of her beauty has the power to unhinge the soul from the doorjambs of what passes for sanity.

The NYT review is well done.

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How the New York Times Got Libertarianism Wrong, Yet Again

David Gordon explains:

Why write an article on a subject you know nothing about? This is a question that Amia Srinivasan might usefully have asked herself. She is a Prize Fellow in philosophy at All Souls College, Oxford, one of the most prestigious academic positions in the academic world; and her webpage at Oxford includes several papers of outstanding merit. You would never guess that she is a serious philosopher, though, from her article “Questions for Free-Market Moralists” in The New York Times, October 2013. The “free-market moralist” she has principally in mind is Robert Nozick, the author of Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). If Srinivasan has read this book at all, the experience appears to have passed her by.

Read the rest.

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The Wages of Presidential Deception

Barack Obama does not have proprietary rights in presidential mendacity: he has many illustrious predecessors.  But Obama has pushed the arts of deception, prevarication, and empty bluster to new heights.  Unfortunately for him, the economy is bad, which fact will make it difficult for him to get away with his lies, bullshit, and Orwellian abuses of the English language.

I'll give the guy this much:  it takes balls of brass and chutzpah on stilts to lie brazenly about what can be easily checked.  Was he ever a used car salesman?  Of course, he would have spoken of 'pre-owned vehicles.'

So much for my little summary of VDH's latest.

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