Maverick Philosopher

On Whether Some Arguments from Evil Beg the Question

Thesis for consideration: It can reasonably be maintained that some arguments from evil beg the question against theism. 

Suppose we consider the following passage from J. J. C. Smart:

It looks as though the theistic hypothesis is an empirically refutable one, so that theism becomes a refuted scientific theory. The argument goes: (1) If God exists then there is no evil, (2) There is evil, therefore (3) It is not the case that God exists. Premiss (1) seems to follow from our characterization of God as an omnipotent, omnsicient and benevolent being. (2) is empirical. We can hardly reject (2). It seems therefore that the theist has to find something wrong with (1) and this is not easy. (J. J. C. Smart and J. J. Haldane, Atheism and Theism, Blackwell 2003, 2nd ed, p. 60)

Smart's argument from evil is plainly valid, being of the form modus tollens. But for an argument to be probative, other conditions must be met. One of these conditions is that the premises be true. Another is that the argument involve no 'informal fallacy' such as equivocation.

So let us ask: how would 'evil' in (1) have to be construed so that (1) comes out true? I suggest that 'evil' must be short for 'gratuitous evil.' But then, to avoid equivocation, we would have to replace 'evil' in (2) with 'gratuitous evil.' The result would be:

1*. If God exists, then there is no gratuitous evil.
2*. There is gratuitous evil.
---
3. It is not the case that God exists.

The resulting argument is valid, and (1*) is plainly true, unlike (1) which is not plainly true, but false. That (1) is false can be seen from the fact that an omniqualified God could easily permit the existence of an evil that was necessary for the attainment of a greater good. So it is just false to say, 'If God exists, then there is no evil.'

But (1*) is plainly true. Now it may be — it is epistemically possible that --(2*) is also true. The reformulated argument would then be sound. A sound argument, by definition, is a deductive argument that is both valid in point of logical form and whose premises are all of them true. And for the record, a proposition p is epistemically (doxastically) possible for a subject S if and only if p is logically consistent with what S knows (believes).

But note that a sound argument will be probatively worthless if it begs the question, if it is such that one cannot know a premise to be true without already knowing the conclusion to be true. So let us ask a very simple question: How does one know that (2*) is true? Smart tells us that (2) is empirical. 'Empirical' is a term of epistemology. It is applied to those propositions that are known from experience, by observation via the senses and their instrumental extensions (microscopes, telescopes, etc.) Now I am willing to grant that (2) — There is evil — is an empirical truth. (2), however, is not what Smart needs to make his argument work. He needs (2*). But is (2*) an empirical truth? Can one know from experience (whether inner or outer) that there is gratuitous evil? Is gratuitousness an empirical attribute of the evils one experiences?

Consider the evil of intense pain. I am acquainted with pain by 'inner sense.' And I am willing to grant arguendo, though it is not quite obvious, that I am acquainted empirically with the evil of intense pain. But I am surely not acquainted empirically with the gratuitousness of experienced evils. Gratuitousness is no more an empirical attribute than the createdness of the natural world. It is not evident to the senses that nature is a divine creation. Similarly, it is not evident to the senses that instances of evil are gratuitous. Is it not epistemically possible that they are all non-gratuitous?

To say that an evil is gratuitous is to say in effect that it is an evil inconsistent with the existence of the omniqualified God. It is to say that it is an evil that no such God could have a morally sufficient reason for permitting. Clearly, one cannot 'read off' such a complex relational attribute from any instance of evil.

The conclusion I am driving towards is that Smart's argument supra is question-begging. For in order to know that premise (2*) is true, I must know that the conclusion is true. That is, to know that there are gratuitous evils, I must know that God does not exist. For if God exists, then then there are no gratuitous evils.

Smart tells us above that the theistic hypothesis is empirically refutable. But I say Smart is mistaken: he needs (2*) for his argument to work, but this proposition -- There is gratuitous evil -- is not empirical. It may be true for all that, but it is not knowable by experience. You may be convinced that it is true, and I won't blame you if you find it much more plausible than the truth of 'God exists'; but it is not an empirical truth, if it is a truth. It is an interpretation imposed upon the data. It is as metaphysical as 'God exists.'

Related articles

Russell's Leaky Teapot Revisited

Overbelief and Romans 1: 18-20

More on Sensible Properties and Constituent Ontology

A reader asks:

Suppose I said that blue is not a Peter-van-Inwagen property, but a sensible property.  Suppose also that I said that we see 1) substances and we see 2) their colors, and we see 3) the fact that substances are colored (and this last point amounts to not much more, if anything at all more, than the claim that we see both substances and their colors).  I take it you would agree with these points.  

There are some difficult questions here.  No doubt we see material meso-particulars.  I see a cat, a keyboard, a lamp.  But do we see substances?  'Substance' is a theoretical term, of Aristotelian provenience, not what I call a 'datanic' term.  If a cat is a bundle of universals, or a bundle of tropes, or a  diachronic bundle of  synchronic bundles of Castanedan guises, then a cat is not a substance.  It is a Moorean fact that there are cats and that we see them; it is not Moorean fact that there are substances and that we see them. But let's set this problem aside.

A black cat sleeps on my desk.  I see the cat and I see black (or blackness if you will) at the cat: I see black where the cat is.  Contrary to what you suggest, there is more to a cat's being black than a cat and blackness even if the blackness is seen exactly where the cat is and nowhere else.  For a cat's being black involves, in addition to the cat and black, the first's BEING the second.  Note that a cat's being black is a fact, but neither a cat nor blackness is a fact.

This give rise to a puzzle.  I see the cat, and I see black where the cat is.  But do I see the cat's BEING black?  Do I literally see (with my eyes) the fact of the cat's being black?  And if I don't, how do I know that the cat IS black?

But let's set this vexing cluster of problems aside as well.

But then suppose that you discover that I think that colors are per se nowhere.  They are not located in space in the way that substances are.  When you turn your eye to something colored, geometrically speaking, you turn your eye only to the thing that is colored, but not the color of the thing, for this has no per se spatial location and therefore has nothing to do with the geometry of space beyond being the sensible property of something that has something to do with the geometry of space.  Nonetheless, we see colors and we see the things that are colored.  Would you find this view problematic?  If so, why? Would you think that in making color only accidentally spatial that I depart from constituent ontology?  I would like to think that I do not, for I say that both being an ox and being blue are parts of what it is to be a blue ox.

The view you sketch strikes me as incoherent.  You cannot coherently maintain both that blue (of some definite shade) is a sensible property and that blue is nowhere.  If blue is sensible, then it is sensible at some location or other.  Therefore, blue cannot be nowhere.

Note that if there is a PVI-property of blueness, it could not itself be blue.  Abstract objcts don't come in colors.  So what good is it?  What work does it do?  You are still going to need the blueness of the blue cup.  PVI-blueness is ontologically otiose, a metaphysical fifth wheel if you will.  The blueness at the cup, by contrast,  is blue!  Right?  If you deny that there is any blue blueness at the cup, are you then prepared to say that the cup is devoid of sensible properties?

Will you say that the blue cup is sensibly bluein virtue of instantiating PVI-blueness?  How would that work? PVI-blueness is not a Platonic exemplar.  It is not itself blue.  How can a particular's instantiating it explain the particular's being sensibly blue? 

Could blueness be accidentally spatial?  I don't see how.  Either it is necessary spatial, and in consequence thereof, sense-perceivable, or it is necessarily nonspatial in the manner of an abstract object.  A blue wall is accidentally blue, but blueness, I should think, is necessarily spatial.  And I do think you would be departing from constituent ontology if you were to hold that blueness is accidentally spatial.

Related articles

A Question About Constituent Ontology: Sensible Properties as 'Parts'

Constituent Ontology Versus Relational Ontology and an Argument Against the Latter

Properties as Parts: More on Constituent Ontology

Constituent Ontology and the Problem of Change: Can Relational Ontology Do Better?

 

From Racists to Sexists

Image credit.  (HT: Bill Keezer)  By the way, I am grateful to all my correspondents.  Don't take it amiss if I forget to credit you by name.  And of course some of you I do not mention by name for your own protection.

If you send me something, but don't want it posted, just say so and I will honor your request.  Otherwise, everything you send me is potential blog fodder.

In these "times that try mens' souls" one has to be very careful.  But there is also such a thing as civil courage. 

 

Related articles

Ten Reasons Not to Vote Democrat

H. L. Mencken on the Perfection of Democracy

A Question About Constituent Ontology: Sensible Properties as 'Parts'

The following from a reader.  I've edited it for clarity.

Here is a quick question for you: suppose someone were to grant you that there is the sensible character blue that you say that there is, a character of your coffee cup, but then still wanted to know why it is "in" or a "constituent" of  a substance such as a cup.  So, take this person to have read and understood your argument about nude particulars and to have said: "Indeed, whatever red is, it cannot be an abstractum, for certainly something of the sort could never enter into visual experience.  Nor could "the fact that" some sensible particular stands in an instantiation relation to such an abstract object enter into visual experience, for we theorize such metaphysical facts, we do not see them.  So I grant that blue is a visible property, but why should we say that blue, so characterized is "in" or is a "constituent" of a sensible particular item?"

Well, one assumption I am making is that a certain form of nominalism is untenable. Suppose someone said that what makes a blue object blue is that English speakers apply the predicate 'blue' to it.  Nelson Goodman actually maintains something as crazy as this in one of his books.   (Intellectual brilliance and teaching at Harvard are not prophylactic against silliness.)  Why is it crazy?  Because it is the metaphysically antecedent blueness of the thing in question, my trusty coffee cup, for example, that grounds the correctness of the application of 'blue' to the cup.  I am tempted to say that this realism is just Moorean common sense. 

In other words, 'blue' is true of the cup because the cup is blue.  And not the other way around.  It is false that the cup is blue because 'blue' is true of it.  Obviously, this use of 'because' is not causal, as causation is understood by most contemporary philosophers.  But neither is it logical.  It is not logical because it does not express a relation that connects a proposition to a proposition.  It expresses an asymmetrical relation of metaphysical grounding. This relation is a relation between what is at most a proposition-like entity such as a concrete fact or state of affairs and a proposition.

The truthmaker of 'This cup is blue' cannot be anything of a linguistic nature.  (More generally, it cannot be anything of a representational nature.)  And yet something makes our sample sentence true.    There must be a truthmaker.  It would be silly to say that the sentence is "just true."  Given that there must be a truthmaker, it is going to involve the cup and the property, both construed as 'real,' i.e., extramental and extralinguistic.  There is more a truthmaker than this, but we don't need to go into this 'more.'

My reader grants that blue is a visible property.  One literally sees the blueness of the cup.  This is not a Platonic visio intellectualis.  It is not a seeing with the 'eyes' of the mind, but a seeing with the eyes of the head.  Now if this is the case, then the property I see when I see a blue cup as blue cannot be an item off in a realm apart.  It cannot be a denizen of a Platonic topos ouranos, and I am not peering into such a heavenly place when I see blue.  Blueness  cannot be an abstract object as many contemporary philosophers use this phrase.

Now if I see the blueness where the cup is, and when the cup is (although only at times at which the cup is in fact blue), then the pressure is on to say that blueness is some sort of 'proper part' of the cup, albeit in an extended, unmereological sense of 'part.'  It can't be the whole of the cup because the cup has other empirically detectable properties such as being hot and smooth and of such-and-such weight and electrical conductivity.  What other options are there?

Reflecting on the data of the problem, I come to the following conclusions: The blueness is real: it is extramental and extralinguistic. It is empirically detectable; hence it cannot be an abstract object. The blueness is detectable at the cup, not at some other place. The blueness is not identical to the cup.

We can account for the data by saying say that the blueness of the cup is an ontological constituent of the cup.  Is there a better theory?    

Related articles

Properties as Parts: More on Constituent Ontology

Against Ostrich Nominalism

Defining 'Accident'

Constituent Ontology Versus Relational Ontology and an Argument Against the Latter

E. J. Lowe on the Distinction Between Constituent and Relational Ontology

Tropes

Is Socrates a Substance or a Cross-Categorical Hybrid?

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Two 'Sentimental' Songs

Fleetwood Mac, Sentimental Lady

Thelonious Monk, I'm Getting Sentimental Over You.  Wow!

There are of course others with 'sentimental' in the title, but I post only what I like.

The Politics of Impassibility

This just over the transom:

 

I hope you don’t mind my seeking your help on an issue related to the history of philosophy. I and a few friends are have a disagreement re: the origin of belief in divine apatheia.

 

In Manana: Christian Theology from a Hispanic Perspective, Justo Gonzalez discusses the political motivations behind the origin and development of the concept. His claim is that belief in divine impassibility merely reflects the desire for permanence (of power) on the part of the ruling class so that Athenian politics is responsible for the philosophical development of the belief, a projection onto God of the political aspirations of the elite.

 

The question of how apatheia got adopted/revised by Christians isn’t so much my concern at this point (as legitimate a question as it is). I’m interested in Gonzalez’s history and whether and to what extent he’s right in supposing apatheia was a projection onto the divine being of the political aspirations for the permanence of the city and its ruling class.

 

Does that ring true with your understanding? Thoughts?

 

Well, if it serves my political interests to believe that p, that leaves open the question whether p is true or false.  Suppose I am a member of the royal court.  Then it would serve my earthly interests if the masses were to believe that the king rules by divine right.  But one cannot show that the king does not rule by divine right by showing that the interests of the ruling class are served by that belief's being widespread.

 

So there are two logically independent questions.  Does the holding of a belief serve interests?  Is the belief true?  To say that the questions are logically independent is to say that both an affirmative and a negative answer to the first is consistent with both an affrmative and a negative answer to the second.

 

If God exists, then he is either impassible or not.   This question cannot be decided by showing, assuming that it could be shown, that widespread belief that God is impassible would help legitimate the dominance of the ruling class. (I am having a hard time imagining how such an abstruse doctrine could get a grip on the popular mind.  Does Joe Sixpack think about such things?)

 

The bolded thesis supra is a 'weasel' thesis.  Gonzalez does not state unambiguously that the impassibility doctrine is nothing other than an expression of class interests, and therefore either false or unsupportable by reasons.  But that is probably what he means.

 

If that is what he means, then  he is guilty of the logical/epistemological error of confusing the holding of a belief with the propositional content of a belief.  It is a concern of the sociology of knowledge to study the incidence of beliefs as states of people, their causes and effects and modes of transmission.  But the evaluation of belief contents as to truth, falsehood, consistency, inconsistency, rationality, etc., does not belong to the sociology of knowledge.

 

There is nothing new about the move Gonzalez appears to be making.  It's old hat.  It is the  standard Marxist rubbish of reducing belief systems to systems of ideology in the service of class interests.  But if all is ideology in the service of class interests, then so is the system of Marxist beliefs.  In which case it is a self-vitiating system of beliefs if not outright self-refuting.

Related articles

The Aporetics of Existential Meaning

The 'Control Argument' for the Anatta Doctrine

Islam versus Chess

Holy moly!  Perhaps Brandeis University ought to ban chess playing on campus lest some adherent of the 'religion of peace' take offense. 

Jews dominate chess.  I wonder if that is part of the explanation of the irrational animosity of Islamists to the game of kings and the king of games. 

Related articles

Brandeis U. Decides Against Honor for Islam Critic

Brandeis Student Slams 'Hypocrisy' After Islam Critic Shunned

Lukasiewicz on Logical Form

London Ed writes,

I read and excerpted the chapter. I am not mistaken. Also, what he says seems correct to me.

He claims that logic is not formal, insofar as it is concerned with the 'laws of thought'. He says "Thought is a psychical phenomenon, and psychical phenomena have no extension. What is meant by the form of an object that has no extension?"  I can't fault this.

I take it that the argument is this:

1. Only spatially extended objects have forms.
2. Neither acts of thinking, nor such objects of thought as propositions, are spatially extended.
Therefore
3. If logic studies either acts of thinking or objects of thought, then logic is not a formal study, a study of forms.

If this is the argument, I am not impressed. Premise (1) is false.  L.'s notion of form is unduly restrictive.  There are forms other than shapes. Consider a chord and an arpeggio consisting of the same notes.  The 'matter' is the same, the 'form' is different.  In a chord the notes sound at the same time; in an arpeggio at different times.  The arrangement of the notes is different.  Arrangement and structure are forms.  Examples are easily multiplied.

Nor, he says, is it the object of logic to investigate how we are thinking or how we ought to think. "The first task belongs to psychology, the second to a practical art of a similar kind to mnemonics". And then he says "Logic has no more to do with thinking than mathematics has". Isn't that correct?

We can agree that logic is not a branch of psychology: it is not an empirical study and its laws are not empirical generalizations.  LNC, for example, is not an empirical generalization.  But a case can be made for logic's being normative.  It does not describe how we do think, but it does prescribe how we ought to think if we are to arrive at truth.  If so, then logic does have a practical side and issues hypothetical imperatives, e.g., "If you want truth, avoid contradictions!"

In a similar vein he notes the formalism of Aristotelian logic. The whole Aristotelian theory of the syllogism is built up on the four expressions 'every' (A), 'no' (E), 'some' (I) and 'not every' (O). "It is obvious that such a theory has nothing more in common with our thinking than, for instance, the theory of the relations of greater and less in the field of numbers".  Brilliant.

Why do you call it "brilliant"?  Husserl and Frege said similar things.  It's old hat, isn't it?  Psychologism died with the 19th century at least in the mainstream.  Given propositions p, q, logic is concerned with such questions as: Does p entail q?  Are they consistent?  Are they inconsistent?  We could say that logic studies certain relations between and among propositions, which are the possible contents of judgings, but are not themselves judgings or entertainings or supposings or anything else that is mental or psychological.

Again, on the need for logic and science to focus on the expression of  thought rather than 'thought', he says "Modern formal logic strives to attain the greatest possible exactness. This aim can be reached only by means of a precise language built up of stable, visually perceptible signs. Such a language is indispensable for any science. Our own thoughts not formed in words are for ourselves almost inapprehensible and the thoughts of other people, when not bearing an external shape [my emphasis] could be accessible only to a clairvoyant. Every scientific truth in order to be perceived and verified, must be put into an external form [my emphasis] intelligible to everybody."

I can't fault any of this. What do you think?

Sorry, but I am not impressed.  It is fundamentally wrongheaded.  First of all this is a howling non sequitur:

1. Logic does not study mental processes;
Therefore
2. Logic studies visually perceptive signs.

Surely it is a False Alternative to suppose that logic must either study mental processes or else physical squiggles and such.  There is an easy way between the horns: logic studies propositions, which are neither mental nor physical. 

In my last post I can gave two powerful arguments why a perceptible string of marks is not identical to the proposition those marks are used to express.

L. speaks of an external form intelligible to everybody.  But what is intelligible (understandable) is not the physical marks, but the proposition they express.  We both can see this string:

Yash yetmis ish bitmish

but only I know what it means. (Assuming you don't know any Turkish.)  Therefore, the meaning (the proposition), is not identical to the physical string.

There is also an equivocation on 'thought' to beware of, as between thinking and object of thought.  As you well know, in his seminal essay Der Gedanke Frege was not referring to anything psychological.

I will grant L. this much, however.  Until one has expressed a thought, it is not fully clear what that thought is.  But I insist that the thought -- the proposition -- must not be confused with its expression.

The real problem here is that you wrongly think that one is multiplying entities beyond necessity if one makes the sorts of elementary distinctions that I am making. 

Related articles

Are the Laws of Logic Empirical Generalizations?

From the Laws of Logic to the Existence of God

Rosenberg's Definition of Scientism and the Problem of Defining 'Scientism'

Philosophy and Politics: Frege, Heidegger and Others

Lvov-Warsaw School

Logical Form, Instantiation, and Pattern-Matching

David Brightly comments:

We can't say that an argument is invalid because it instantiates an invalid form. The argument Socrates is a man; all men are mortal; ergo Socrates is mortal instantiates the invalid form a is F; all Hs are G; ergo a is G, but modulo equivocation, it is truth-preserving. Instantiation of form is just pattern-matching, and the argument does match the pattern of the invalid form.

I reject this of course.The sample argument is an example of correct reasoning.  But anyone who argues in accordance with the schema argues incorrectly.  Why?  Because the schema is not truth-preserving. Therefore the sample argument does not instantiate the invalid form. 

I don't think Brightly understands 'truth-preserving.'  This is a predicate of argument forms, primarily, and the same goes for 'valid' and 'invalid.'  Here are some  definitions:

D1. An argument form is truth-preserving =df no argument of that form has true premises and a false conclusion.

D2. An argument form F is valid =df F is truth-preserving.

D3. A particular argument A is valid =df A instantiates a valid form.  (This allows for the few cases in which an argument has two forms, one valid and one invalid.)

D4. A particular argument A is invalid =df there is no valid form that it instantiates. 

Now what is it for an argument to instantiate an argument form?  To answer this question we need to know what an argument is.  Since deductive arguments alone are under consideration,  I define:

D5. A deductive argument is a sequence of propositions together with the claim that one of them, the conclusion, follows from the others, the premises, taken together.

If the claim holds, the argument is valid; if not, invalid.

Now the main point for present purposes is that an argument is composed of propositions.  A proposition is not a complex physical object such as a string of marks on paper. Thus what you literally SEE when you see this: 

7 + 5 = 12

is not a proposition, but a spatiotemporal particular, a physical item subject to change: it can be deleted.  But the proposition it expresses cannot be deleted by deleting what you just literally SAW.  That suffices to show that the proposition expressed by what you saw is not identical to what you saw. Whatever propositions are (and there are different theories), they are not physical items.

What's more,  you did not SEE (with your eyes) the proposition, or that it is true, but you UNDERSTOOD the proposition and that it is true. (A proposition and its being true are not the same even if the proposition is true.)  So this is a second reason why a proposition is not identical to its physical expression.

Now what holds for propositions also holds for arguments: you cannot delete an argument by deleting physical marks, and you cannot understand an argument merely by seeing a sequence of strings of physical marks.

An argument is not a pattern of physical marks.  So there is no question of matching this physical pattern with some other physical pattern.   Instantiation of logical form is not just pattern-matching.

If a sentence contains a sign like 'bank' susceptible of two or more readings, then no one definite proposition is expressed by the sentence.  Until that ambiguity is resolved one does not have a definite proposition, and without definite propositions no definite argument.  But once one has a definite argument then one can assess its validity.  If it instantiates a valid form, then it is valid; if it instantiates an invalid form, then it is invalid.

It is as simple as that.  But one has to avoid the nominalist mistake of thinking that arguments are just collections of physical items.

Related articles

Abbreviations, Place-Holders, and Logical Form

The Stromboli Puzzle Revisited

Types, Tokens, and Logical Form

Validity and Semantics: Will the Real Frodo Baggins Please Stand Up?

On the Enforcing and Permitting of Coreferentiality by Argument-Forms

My Internet Chess Club Finger Notes

The ICC is the premier Internet venue for playing chess.  I've been a member since 2002 at least.  It's not cheap, but it is worth it.  But while the site is fabulous, unfortunately some of the people who show up there leave a lot to be desired.  Hence the acerbic tone of some of these notes.

1: In life there are no takebacks. "Chess is life." (R. Fischer) Ergo, etc.

2: You say your mouse slipped? That's no different than a Fingerfehler in OTB chess. And if a man cannot control his mousie, is he a man or a mouse?

3: In an unrated game, I may allow a takeback, but I will never ask for one, and you have no right to one.

4: Actions have consequences. Take responsibility for the former; learn from the latter.

5: Be kind to your opponent; you need him to have a game. Don't whine if you lose. If you are paired with me then you are a patzer and can expect to lose many a game.

6: Play hard, but with detachment from the outcome. Apply this principle to your life as a whole. Don't blame others for your stupidity. If you are a snivelling crybaby who can't stand to lose, find another pastime, or else play your computer at its lowest setting.

7: Thus spoke the Sage of the Superstitions.

8: Favorite command: set busy 2. Second favorite: +censor [name of offending party]

9: All churlish rascals will be forthwith zapped into the outer precincts of cyber-obscurity there to languish with rest of their scrofulous ilk for all eternity.

10: If you wish to be removed from my censor list, I charge a nominal fee of 100 USD. Take advantage of this offer now before prices go up.

Related articles

The Calvin Blocker Story

Ten Years Ago on Keith's Blog: A Letter on Chess

Charles Krauthammer the Chess Player

Harry Reid, Latter-Day McCarthyite

Here:

[Senator Joseph] McCarthy in the 1950s became infamous for smearing his opponents with lurid allegations that he could not prove, while questioning their patriotism. Reid has brought back to the Senate that exact same McCarthy style of six decades ago -- and trumped it.

During the 2012 presidential campaign, Reid libeled candidate Mitt Romney with the unsubstantiated and later-refuted charge that Romney was a tax cheat. "The word's out that he [Romney] hasn't paid any taxes for 10 years," Reid said.

Later, when asked for proof, Reid offered a pathetic rejoinder: "I have had a number of people tell me that." One wonders how many names were on Reid's McCarthyite "tell" list -- were there, as McCarthy used to bluster, 205 names, or perhaps just 57?

When asked again to document the slur, Reid echoed McCarthy perfectly: "The burden should be on him. He's the one I've alleged has not paid any taxes."

Call this the Reid Principle:   The maker of scurrilous and unsubstantiated allegations is presumed veracious.  The burden of rebutting the charges is borne by the victim of the smear.

Reid's behavior in this and in other cases makes it clear that Democrats see politics as a form of warfare.  Conservatives need to wise up.

Related articles

Left-Wing Racial McCarthyism

Could the USA Go the Way of Detroit?

 

On the Primacy of the Intentional Over the Linguistic

Following Chisholm, et al. and as against Sellars, et al. I subscribe to the broadly logical primacy of the intentional over the linguistic.

But before we can discuss the primacy of the intentional, we must have some idea of (i) what intentionality is and (ii) what the problem of intentionality is.  Very simply, (mental) intentionality  is object-directedness, a feature of some (if not all) of our mental states.  (The qualifier 'mental' leaves open the epistemic possibility of what George Molnar calls physical intentionality which transpires, if it does transpire, below the level of mind. I take no position on it at the moment.) 

Suppose a neighbor asks me about Max Black, a stray cat of our mutual acquaintance, who we haven't seen in a few weeks.    The asking occasions in me a thought of Max, with or without accompanying imagery.  The problem of intentionality is to provide an adequate account of what it is for my thought of Max to be a thought of Max, and of nothing else.  Simply put, what makes my thought of Max a thought of Max?  How is object-directedness (intentionality, the objective reference of episodes of thinking) possible?

Why should there be a problem about this?  Well, an episode of thinking is a datable event in my mental life.  But a cat is not.  No cat is a content of consciousness.  Cats ain't in the head or in the mind.  Obviously, no cat is spatially inside my mind, let alone my head, and it is only a little less obvious that no cat depends for its existence on my mind:  it's nothing to Max, ontologically speaking,  if me and my mind cease to exist.  He needs my thinking of him to exist as little as my thinking needs to be about him.  Cats are physical things out there in the physical world.  And yet my thinking  of Max  'reaches'  beyond my mind and targets -- not some cat or other, but a particular cat.  How is this possible?  What must the world be like  for it to be possible?

To get the full flavor of the problem, please observe that my thinking of Max would be unaffected if Max were, unbeknownst to me, to pass out of existence while I was thinking of him.  (He's out on the prowl and a hungry coyote kills him while I am thinking of him.) It would be the very same thought with the very same content and the very same directedness.  But if Max were to cease to exist while a flea was biting him, then the relation of biting would cease to obtain.  So if the obtaining of a relation requires the existence of all its relata, it follows that intentionality is not a relation between a thinker (or his thought) and an external object.  But if intentionality is not a relation, then how are we to account for the fact that intentional states refer beyond themselves to objects that are (typically) transcendent of the mind?

Now it seems to me that any viable solution must respect the primacy of the intentional over the linguistic.  This thesis consists of the following subtheses:

1. Words, phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs and the like, considered in their physical being as marks on paper or sounds in the air or carvings in stone (etc.) are entirely lacking in any intrinsic referential, representative, semantic,  or intentional character.  There is nothing in the nature of the mark 'red' that makes it mean red.  After all, it doesn't mean red to a speaker of German.  It doesn't mean anything to  a speaker of German qua speaker of German.  In German 'rot' means red while in English the same sign is in use but has a different meaning.  Clearly, then, marks on paper, pixels on a computer screen, etc. have  no intrinsic sense or reference grounded in their very nature.  It is a matter of convention that they mean what they mean.  And that brings minds into the picture.

Mind is king.  Mind is the source of meaning.  No mind, no meaning.

2.  So any sense or reference linguistic signs have must be derivative and relational as opposed to intrinsic:  whatever intentionality they have they get from minds that are intrinsically intentional.  Mind is the source of all intelligibility.  Linguistic signs in and of themselves as mere marks and sounds (etc.) are unintelligible.

3.  There can be mind without language, but no language without mind.  Laird Addis puts it like this:

Conscious states can and do occur in beings with no language, and in us with no apparent connection to the fact that we are beings with language.  Thus we may say that "mind explains language" in a logical or philosophical sense: that while it is perfectly intelligible to suppose the existence of beings who have no language but have much the same kinds of conscious states that we have, including introspections of other conscious states, it is unintelligible to suppose the existence of beings who are using language in all of its representative functions and who are also lacking in conscious states.  The very notion of language as a representational system presupposes the notion of mind, but not vice versa. (Natural Signs: A Theory of Intentionality, Temple University Press, 1989, pp. 64-65)

Related articles

Thinking Meat?

The Relevance of Conscious Robots for the Philosophy of Mind

Types, Tokens, and Logical Form

Black text by London Ed; my comments in blue.

Consider:

This parcel of land on the Thames is a bank.
A bank contains money.
*This parcel of land on the Thames contains money.

The two tokens of ‘bank’ are tokens of the same type, if I understand you correctly. So does the Thames argument above instantiate the following valid form?

This is an F
Every F is G
This F is G

Let's start with a Moorean fact:  the argument is bad!  But why is it bad?  (Now we begin to philosophize.) Is it because one of the premises is false?  Or because the reasoning is incorrect?  That distinction, the one between truth/falsity of propositions and correctness/incorrectness of reasoning, would also seem to be Moorean, or damned near.

There are two approaches.  One is to say that the Thames argument is valid because it it instantiates the valid form depicted, but that it is nevertheless unsound because the first premise is false.  The other approach is to say that the argument involves an equivocation on 'bank' such that the argument falls afoul of quaternio terminorum, which is of course a formal fallacy.  Thus on the second approach, the argument is invalid (because it instantiates an invalid form), but both premises are true.

Either way, the Thames argument is unsound.  On the first approach it is unsound because it sports a false premise; on the second, because it has an invalid form.

'Unsound' is a terminus technicus; a term of the logician's art.  'Bad' is from ordinary language.  But if we are talking about deductive arguments, the former term is a very close exegesis or exfoliation if you will of the Joe Sixpack word.

You seem to hold that if we substitute concrete tokens of the same type, then the resulting argument instantiates the form. And you also hold that to be a token of the same type means having the same spelling, and no more than that.

It’s the ‘and no more than that’ that I am having a problem with. I hold, and this is hardly an extreme or unorthodox position, that identically-spelled tokens can have (and often do have) different meanings, because meaning is a matter of convention. Sameness of spelling is never enough.

This forces me to think hard.  We enter deep and troubled waters below the Moorean surface.  Suppose Poindexter's (weak!) password at the money bank is kzw9*.  Now consider this array:

kzw9*
kzw9*
kzw9*

How many passwords?  One or three?  A simple solution to this puzzle is to say that there are three tokens of the same type.  (Note that a password need not be a word, though it can be ('password' is one dumbassed password): the above passwords are not words of any natural language.)  The type in question here is not a word-type: it has no linguistic meaning.  No token of this type has sense or reference.

It is like a key that unlocks a door.  A token of a key-type has neither sense nor reference.  it is just a little piece of metal that fits into the lock, etc.  It has no semantic properties. Its properties are geometrical, metallurgical, and the like.

Now a word-token has a physical side, a body if you will.  Thus 'bank' -- that particular string of marks -- has geometrical properties, color, etc.  But it is not a word in virtue of being a physical item.  It is a word only when animated by sense.  Perhaps we could say that the sense is the soul of the word whose body is the physical sign.

So we need to distinguish two types.  There is the physical type a token of which is the string of marks, 'bank.'  And there is the word-type a token of which is the word, 'bank.' 

Now I can answer Ed.  He wrote,

You seem to hold that if we substitute concrete tokens of the same type, then the resulting argument instantiates the form. And you also hold that to be a token of the same type means having the same spelling, and no more than that.

That is not my view. For two words to be tokens of the same word-type it does not suffice that they have the same spelling.  In fact, it is not even necessary: 'tire' and 'tyre' are (arguably) tokens of the same English word-type even though they are spelled differently. 

Spelling pertains to the physical side of a word. For two tokens to be of the same word-type they must be animated by the same meaning. 

Returning to the Thames argument, it is clear that there are two tokens of the 'bank' string-of-marks type.  But whether there are two tokens of the same word-type or not depends on what the speaker intended. 

We cannot extract the logical form of an argument be examining its physical features.  We have to understand what the constituent sentences mean, and to understand what they mean, we have to understand what their constituent terms mean.

Meaning cannot be reduced to anything physical or to anything merely syntactical.  Meaning brings mind into the picture.  No mind, no meaning.  This is why I insist that linguistic reference cannot be understood unless we understand what underlies it, mental reference, i.e., intentionality.

Related articles

Abbreviations, Place-Holders, and Logical Form

On Philosophical Denials of the Obvious

Validity and Semantics: Will the Real Frodo Baggins Please Stand Up?

On the Enforcing and Permitting of Coreferentiality by Argument-Forms

Comments on London Ed's "Towards a Positive Theory"

The Stromboli Puzzle Revisited

Against Ostrich Nominalism

Contemporary Anti-Natalism

A tip of the hat to Karl White for bringing to our attention a 2012 issue of  South African Journal of Philosophy devoted entirely to the above-captioned topic.  Free online access!

Validity and Semantics: Will the Real Frodo Baggins Please Stand Up?

London Ed writes,

It is a well-known and puzzling fact that proper names are ambiguous. According to the US telephone directory, Frodo Baggins is a real person (who lives in Ohio). But according to LOTR, Frodo Baggins is a hobbit. Not a problem. The name ‘Frodo Baggins’ as used in LOTR, clearly has a different meaning from when used to talk about the person in Ohio. So the argument below is invalid:

Frodo Baggins is a hobbit
Frodo Baggins is not a hobbit
Some hobbit is not a hobbit.

This is because both premisses could be true, but the conclusion could not be true. So your claim that the validity of arguments using fictional names has ‘nothing to do with any semantic property’ is incorrect.

Well, ex contradictione quodlibet.  Since anything follows from a contradiction, the conclusion of the above syllogism follows from the premises.  So the above argument is valid  in that it instantiates a valid argument-form, namely:

p
~p
---
q

Obviously, there is no argument of the above form that has true premises and a false conclusion.  So every argument of that form is valid or truth-preserving.

You invoke a Moorean fact.  But we have to be very clear as to the identity of this fact.

It is a Moorean fact that proper names, taken in abstraction from the circumstances of their thoughtful use, are not, well, proper. They are common, or ambiguous as you say.  It is no surprise that some dude in Ohio rejoices under the name 'Frodo Baggins.'  

But so taken, a name has no semantic properties: it doesn't mean anything.  It is just a physical phenomenon, whether marks on paper or a sequence of sounds, etc. Pronounce the sounds corresponding to 'bill,' 'john, 'dick.' Is 'dick' a name or a common noun, and for what?  How many dicks in this room?  How many detectives?  How many penises?  How many disagreeable males, 'pricks'?  How many men named 'Dick'?  Consider the multiple ambiguity of 'There are more dicks than johns in the room but the same number of bills.' 

A name that has meaning (whether or not it refers to anything) is always a name used by a mind (not a voice synthesizing machine) in definite circumstances.  For example, if the context is a discussion of LOTR, then my use and yours of 'Frodo' has meaning: it means a character in that work, despite the fact that in reality there is no individual named. And as long as we stay in that context, the name has the same meaning.

And the same holds in the context of argument.  In your argument above 'Frodo Baggins' has the same meaning in both premises.

You can't have it both ways:  you can't maintain that 'Frodo Baggins' is a meaningless string that could mean anything in any occurrence (a fictional character, a real man, his dog, a rock group, a town, etc.) AND that it figures as a term in an argument.

To sum up.  Whether a deductive argument is valid or not depends on its logcal form.  If there is a valid form it instantiates, then it is valid.  The validity of the form is inherited by the argument having that form.  But form abstracts from semantic content.  So the specific meaning of a name is irrelevant to the evaluation of the validity of an argument in which the name figures.  But of course it is always assumed that names are used in the same sense in all of their occurrences in an argument.  So only in this very abstract sense is meaning relevant to the assessment of validity.

Related articles

London Ed's Metaphilosophy

On Philosophical Denials of the Obvious

Comments on London Ed's "Towards a Positive Theory"

On the Enforcing and Permitting of Coreferentiality by Argument-Forms

This argument is invalid:

Cicero was a Roman
Tully was a philosopher
-----
Some Roman was a philosopher.

Quite simply, there is no middle term. The example is an instance of the dreaded quaternio terminorum. But of course we learned at Uncle Willard's knee that Cicero = Tully. Add that fact as a premise and the above argument becomes valid. As a general rule, any invalid argument can be rendered valid by adding one or more premises.

So sameness of reference is not sufficient for sameness of name. 'Cicero' and 'Tully' have the same reference, but they are different names. They are both token- and type-different. Since they are different names, that fact must be accommodated in the form diagram, which looks like this:

Fa
Gb
---
(Ex)(Fx & Gx).

This form is clearly invalid. The most one can squeeze out of these premises using Existential Generalization is '(Ex)Fx & (Ex)Gx.'

It is worth pointing out that the use of the different signs 'a' and 'b' does not entail that a is not identical to b; it leaves open both the possibility that a = b and the possibility that ~(a = b). It is because of the second of these possibilities that the argument-form is invalid.

Commenter Edward  Ockham in a comment on the old blog wanted to know  why, given that we had to add a premise to make the Cicero argument valid, we don't have to add a premise to make the Alexander argument valid. That argument, from the days when men were men and went around 'seizing' women, proceeds thusly:

Alexander seized Helen
Alexander did not seize Helen
-----
Someone seized and did not seize Helen.

Ockham wants to know why we don't have to add an identity premise to secure the validity of this argument. But what premise would he have us add? It can't be 'Alexander is Alexander' for that is necessarily true and therefore true whether or not both occurrences of 'Alexander' in the original argument are coreferential. Presumably, Ockham wants us to supply '"Alexander" is coreferential in both of its occurrences.' But this goes without saying. There in no need to affirm this in a separate premise since it is implied by the fact that 'Alexander' in both occurrences is a token of the same word-type. We needn't say what is plainly shown. (He said with a sidelong glance in old Ludwig's direction.)

Ockham is bothered by the possibility of equivocation. Well, either there is an equivocation on 'Alexander' or there isn't. If there is an equivocation, then the argument instantiates an invalid form, and Ockham's contention collapses. If there is no equivocation, then the argument instantiates a valid form but it is not the case that both premises are true; so again Ockham's contention collapses. Either way, his contention collapses.

In a further comment, Ockham writes:

Either we capture the reference [of a name] in the form, and my objection collapses. Or you concede that the form covers only the visible or audible outward form of the word. In which case, my specious Alexander argument really does have the right form, and we have to add on the condition about reference, and my point stands.

I grasp something like the first horn. If 'a' occurs two or more times in a form diagram, then no argument of that form has an equivocation on a term whose place is held by 'a.' This is to say that the form diagram enforces coreferentiality on any terms whose place is held by 'a' in the form schema. Otherwise, the argument would not be of the form in question.

Ockham wants to have it both ways at once. He wants his argument A to be of valid form F without F enforcing coreferentiality on the occurrences of 'a' in A. This is just impossible. If there is an equivocation on 'a,' then A does not instantiate F. But if A does instantiate F, then there cannot be any equivocation of 'a.' Why? Because the form does not permit it. The form enforces coreferentiality.

Now look back at the Cicero argument. It is invalid because its form (depicted above) is invalid and the argument has no valid form. But I don't say that the invalid form enforces lack of coreferentiality on the singular terms whose place is held in the diagram by 'a' and 'b.' I say instead that the invalid form permits coreferentiality of these terms. Thus there is an asymmetry between the Alexander and Cicero cases.

Related articles

Abbreviations, Place-Holders, and Logical Form

Three More Putative Instances of Valid Is-Ought Inferences

The Stromboli Puzzle Revisited

Transitivity of Predication?

Comments on London Ed's "Towards a Positive Theory"

 My comments are in blue.

1. Another claim which is nearly Moorean.  I claim that the following argument is valid:

Frodo is a hobbit
Frodo has large feet
Some hobbit has large feet

I am not saying that the premisses are true. Clearly if there are no such things as hobbits, the first sentence has to be false. But it [the argument] is valid. The premisses can't be true and the conclusion false. If there were such a thing as Frodo, and if he was a hobbit, and if he had large feet, it has to be the cases that some hobbit (him) has large feet. So the argument is valid.

[. . .]

2. Assuming the argument above is valid, what fact makes it valid?  I claim that it is a purely semantic property of the proper name 'Frodo'. I.e. it is in virtue of the meaning of 'Frodo' that the premisses cannot be true with the conclusion false. By 'purely semantic', I mean a feature of the term that it continues to possess even though it has no extension, i.e. there is nothing it refers to or denotes.

Stylistic comment: I would strike “continues to possess” and substitute “possesses.” After all it can't be your view that purely fictional names go from having extensions to not having them.

Substantive comment: What you say in #1 above seems correct. But now you take a turn that is reasonably resisted. You want to know what makes the Frodo argument valid. I say it is valid because it has a valid form:

a is F
a is G
ergo
Some F is G.

It is this form that makes it impossible for an argument having this form to have true premises and a false conclusion. It has nothing to do with any semantic property of a substituend of the arbitrary individual constant, 'a.' Whether the subject matter of an argument is fiction or fact makes no difference to its validity or to the explanation of its validity. Logic abstracts from content; hence it treats 'Frodo,' 'Noah,' 'Churchhill' and 'Obama' the same, as substituends of an arbitrary individual constant.

 It is not clear what you are claiming. Are you saying that there is a semantic property that only (purely) fictional names have? And what is this semantic property? Does 'Noah' have it as well?

 Here is one guess at what you might mean. Purely fictional names, as such, do not and cannot have existing referents. Otherwise they wouldn't be purely fictional. Given, as you believe, that (a) the only referents are existing referents, and that (b) there are no modes of existence/being, you seem to be saying that purely fictional names, qua purely fictional names, do not and cannot have referents, full stop. Now if every sentence in which such a name figures is false (as you seem to believe), then there is no argument featuring purely fictional names that has true premises and a false conclusion. Therefore every such argument is by default valid (given the technical definition of validity that we both accept).

Is that what you mean?

If yes, then perhaps the semantic property you are talking about is the propery of necessarily not having a referent. Call this property 'P.' Now is P an intrinsic property of a name like 'Frodo' or is it a relational property? But surely there is no intrinsic property of a name that makes it a purely fictional name, and thus a name necessarily extensionless. What makes a name purely fictional is primarily the intention of the author, and secondarily the intentions of the readers (listeners, etc) who are complicit with the author in the fictional enterprise.

This is not Moorean.  Someone could claim that the argument is valid because 'Frodo',  if meaningful, refers to a non-existing thing, and because it refers to the same non-existing thing in both premisses.  Some arguments against:

Comment: Why do you ignore the simplest and most obvious explanation of validity, the one I gave above?

 (i) The Razor: why posit non-existing things in order to explain a matter of logic, when a semantic explanation would suffice? E.g. we don't need weird entities to explain the validity of 'every bachelor is unmarried, some people are bachelors, some people are unmarried'.

Comment: One problem is that I don't understand what you mean by a semantic explanation of validity. I grant you that the Frodo argument is valid: anyone who argues in accordance with the pattern embodied in that argument argues correctly. But I don't see that this has anything to do with whether the terms in the argument have non-null extensions. A Meinongian will say that 'Frodo is a hobbit' is true. But I am prepared to grant you that the sentence is false. But it doesn't matter since we know from Logic 101 that a valid argument can have false premises and a false conclusion.

 (ii) "Frodo is a hobbit, he has large feet, some hobbit has large feet" is also valid. Do we need strange entities to explain the validity of arguments containing pronouns?

(iii) "Frodo is a hobbit who has large feet, some hobbit has large feet" is also valid. Do we need strange entities to explain the validity of arguments containing the word 'who'?

(iv) "Frodo is a hobbit with large feet, some hobbit has large feet" is also valid. Do we need strange entities to explain this?  (My hunch is that the Meinongian will give up on this point. The onus is then on him to explain the difference between this one and any of the previous ones).

Comment: The validity of each of the variant arguments can be explained in the manner I indicated.

 3. Now for the radical claim: the inferential property above is both necessary and sufficient to explain fictional individuation. Necessary is obvious. If we don't accept the validity, we could suppose that each token of the term 'Frodo' referred to a different character, and thus no two sentences in LOTR was ever about the same character. Clearly no one could understand the story if that were so.  Sufficient is not so obvious, I will not defend that here.

Comment: Now you have really lost me. First of all, what is the inferential property? Presumably you mean that empty names have a property that explains the validity of (all? Some?) of the arguments in which they figure. What property is that? The property of being necessarily extensionless? Then why don't you say that?

And what is fictional individuation? You don't think that Frodo is a genuine individual. If he were, he would be a nonexistent individual and you reject such individuals. So there is no individual, Frodo. But if there is no individual, then there is no question of individuation in either the epistemological or the ontological sense of this term. Presumably, you mean by 'individuate' pick out, single out, identify in a way that supports cross-referencing? You need to explain this.

If this is what you mean, then on your view there is no Frodo to pick out or single out in thought. On your nominalism, all there is is the name. And you can't eke by with that alone. When I think about Frodo, I am not thinking about 'Frodo.' In fact, I can think about Frodo even if I have temporarily forgotten what his name is. Suppose I am thinking about the corpulent side-kick of Don Quixote, but have forgotten his name. I am thinking about Sancho Panza despite my not remembering that his name is 'Sancho Panza.'

Any adequate theory has to distinguish among: empty names, tokenings thereof, and tokenings thereof with understanding. If a voice synthesizer makes the sound associated with 'Frodo,' then the name is tokened, but nothing semantic is going on.

4. The really really radical claim: the semantic feature that explains individuation in fiction also explains individuation 'in reality'.  So radical I won't try to defend it here.  The defence would be roughly on the lines of: the same phenomenon cannot have two different causes. Same effect = same cause, which is a well accepted principle of scientific explanation. Obviously this would require defending that the effect is the same: I won't go into that here. The main pillars of the theory are (1) and (2) above. Inferences involving fictional names are valid, even though the premisses are never true. And the explanation of their validity does not involve Meinongian objects.

Comment: Once again, you haven't told us what individuation is. That word is a piece of philosophical jargon, not of ordinary language. No sentence containing it could count as Moorean. So you have to explain the term. And you have to meet my objection that there cannot be individuation in either the epistemological/semantic or ontological sense if there is no individual. How do you avoid embracing this inconsistent triad:

There are no fictional individuals.
Questions about individuation makes sense only if there are individuals.
Fictional names individuate.

 I should think that your “really really radical claim” is hopeless. There is a huge difference between a genuine individual such as Obama and Frodo. You won't be able to paper over this difference especially since you reject Meinongian individuals and Plantingian haecceity properties.

Related articles

Fictional Names

London Ed's Metaphilosophy

More on Ficta and Impossibilia

Merely Intentional Objects and the 'Existential Fallacy'

The Cyberattack on Typepad Continues

This has been going on since Thursday.  There is nothing wrong at my end: the Typepad server is under DDoS attack: Distributed Denial of Service.

Could the malevolence abroad in this world be a merely natural phenomenon? I rather doubt it.  But I'd better post this while I have a window of opportunity.

Dissertation Advice on the Occasion of Kant's Birthday

                     

Immanuel Kant was born on this date in 1724. He died in 1804. My dissertation on Kant, which now lies 36 years in the past, is dated 22 April 1978.  But if, per impossibile, my present self were Doktorvater to my self of 36 years ago, my doctoral thesis might not have been approved! As one's standards rise higher and higher with age and experience one becomes more and more reluctant to submit anything to evaluation let alone publication. One may scribble as before, and even more than before, but with less conviction that one's outpourings deserve being embalmed in printer's ink. (Herein lies a reason to blog.)

So finish the bloody thing now while you are young and cocky and energetic.  Give yourself a year, say, do your absolute best and crank it out. Think of it as a union card. It might not get you a job but then it just might. Don't think of it as a magnum opus or you will never finish. Get it done by age 30 and before accepting a full-time appointment. And all of this before getting married. That, in my opinion, is the optimal order. Dissertation before 30, marriage after 30.  Now raise your glass with me in a toast to Manny on this, his 290th birthday. Sapere aude!

Cartoon borrowed from site of Slobodan Bob Zunjic

Related articles

Bill O'Reilly, Mungo Jerry, and Immanuel Kant

Dispute About Kant Erupts into Gun Fire

The Central Axiom of Partisan Politics

According to Charles Krauthammer (Things That Matter, Crown Forum, 2013, p. 64),

To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid.  Liberals think conservatives are evil.

Robert Paul Wolff unwittingly provides corroboration:

On Easter Sunday, it is only fitting that the reliably despicable Ross Douthat should once again rise from the dead with an incoherently dreadful column on Piketty.  I will not try to summarize it.  As Aristotle observed [I think], shit has no form, and hence cannot easily be apprehended by reason.  You may read it for yourself.  I take Douthat's column as a good sign, a harbinger of Spring.   When the rats on the sinking ship of capitalism pause in their scramble down the hawsers to acknowledge the reemergence of Marx from the dustbin of history [how's that for a mixed metaphor?], there is hope on this annual celebration of resurrection.

Note that Wolff does not address the content of Douthat's essay, though he does have the decency to link to it.  What he does is portray Douthat as a reliably despicable zombie and rat, a shill for capitalism, who has penned an incoherently dreadful column, a piece of shit beneath the apprehension of reason.

Well thank you Professor Wolff for this wonderful Easter Sunday illustration of the Central Axiom and for reminding us once again of how dangerous you leftists are, and, indirectly, how important our Second Amendment rights are.

Related articles

Buckley's Axiom: The Intolerance of Liberals

The Unmediated Man

Is Liberalism on the Wrong Side of History?

The Heart of Anarcho-Capitalism

Typepad Downtime

Sorry if you couldn't get through at various times over the last few days.  The following from the Typepad geeks:

What happened? Beginning Thursday evening, Typepad was hit with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) off and on through today. A DDoS attack is an attempt to make services unavailable . . . . The attack on Typepad was similar to an attack on Basecamp which you can read about here.

 

Related articles

Makers and Takers: "You Didn't Build That!" Revisited

Who Built the Internet? Obama's Straw Man Fallacy

How To Handle Downtime During Site Maintenance

Defending Against DDoS: Mitigations

Holy Saturday Night at the Oldies: Death and Resurrection

Bob Dylan, See that My Grave is Kept Clean

Bob Dylan, In My Time of Dyin'

Bob Dylan, Gospel Plow

Bob Dylan, Fixin' to Die

Johnny Cash, Ain't No Grave

Johnny Cash, Redemption

Johnny Cash, Personal Jesus

Johnny Cash, Hurt

Mississippi John Hurt, You Got to Walk That Lonesome Valley

Edwin Hawkins Singers, Oh Happy Day

Johnny Cash, Final Interview.  He speaks of his faith starting at 5:15.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 45e: "Go on, believe! It does no harm."

A Problem of Evil for Atheists

Suppose you are an atheist who considers life to be worth living.  You deny God, but affirm life, this life, as it is, here and now.  Suppose you take the fact of evil to tell against the existence of God.  Do you also take the fact of evil to tell against the affirmability of life?  If not, why not?

In this entry I will explain what I take to be one sort of problem of evil for atheists, or rather, for naturalists. (One can be an atheist without being a naturalist, but not vice versa.)  For present purposes, an atheist is one who affirms the nonexistence of God, as God is traditionally conceived, and a naturalist is one who affirms that reality, with the possible exception of so-called abstract objects, is exhausted by space-time-matter.  Naturalism entails atheism, but atheism does not entail naturalism.

Are the following propositions logically consistent?

a. Life is affirmable.

b. Naturalism is true.

c. Evil objectively exists.

1. What it means for life to be affirmable

To claim that life is affirmable is to  claim that it is reasonable to say 'yes' to it.  Life is affirmed by the vast majority blindly and instinctually, and so can be; in this trivial sense life is of course affirmable.  But I mean 'affirmable' in a non-trivial sense as signifying that life is worthy of affirmation.  This is of course not obvious.  Otherwise there wouldn't be pessimists and anti-natalists.  Let me make this a bit more precise.

To claim that life is affirmable is to maintain that human life has an overall positive value that outweighs the inevitable negatives.  Note the restriction to human life.  I am glad that there are cats, but I am in no position to affirm feline life in the relevant sense of 'affirm': I am not a cat and so I do not know what it is like 'from the inside' to be a cat. 

'Human life' is not to be understood biologically but existentially. What we are concerned with is not an  objective phenomenon in nature, but life as lived and experienced from a subjective center.  So the question is not whether it is better or worse for the physical universe to contain specimens of a certain zoological species, the species h. sapiens.  The question is whether it is on balance a good thing that there is human life as it is subjectively lived from a personal center toward a meaning- and value-laden world of persons and things.  The question is whether it is on balance a good thing that there is human subjectivity.

Now it may be that over the course of a particular human life a preponderance of positive noninstrumental good is realized.  But that is consistent with human life in general not being worth living.  If my life turns out to have been worth living, if I can reasonably affirm it on my death bed and pronounce it good on balance, it doesn't follow that human life in general is worth living.  Let us agree that a particular human life is worth living if, over the course of that life, a preponderance of positive noninstrumental value is realized.  To say that positive value preponderates is to say that it outweighs the negative.

The question, then, is whether human life, human subjectivity, in general is affirmable.  To make the question a bit more concrete, and to bring home the point that the question does not concern oneself alone, consider the question of procreation.  To procreate consciously and thoughtfully is to affirm life other than one's own.

Suppose that one's life has been on balance good up to the point of one's procreating.  Should one be party to the coming-into-existence of additional centers of consciousness and self-consciousness when there is no guarantee that their lives will be on balance good, and some chance that their lives will be on balance horrendous?  Would you have children if you knew that they would be tortured to death in the equivalent of Auschwitz?  Note that if a couple has children, then they are directly responsible for the existence of those children; but they are also indirectly responsible in ever diminishing measure for the existence of grandchildren, great grandchildren, etc.  If life is not affirmable, then it is arguable that it is morally wrong to have children, life being a mistake that ought not be perpetuated.  If on the other hand life is affirmable, then, while there might be particular reasons for some people not to have children, there would be no general reason rooted in the nature of things.

2.  Is life affirmable in the face of evil?

More precisely:  Is life affirmable by naturalists given the fact of evil?  There is a problem here if you grant, as I hope you will for the sake of this discussion at least, that natural and moral evils are objective realities.  Thus evil exists and it exists objectively.  It is not an illusion, nor is it subjective.

The question could be put as follows:  Is it rational to ascribe to human life in general an overall positive value, a value sufficient to justify procreation,  given that (i) evil exists and that (ii) naturalism is true? 

If naturalism is true, then there are unredeemed evils.  Let us say that an unredeemed evil is an evil that does not serve a greater good for the person who experiences the evil and is not compensated for or made good in this life or in an afterlife.  Thus the countless lives of those who were born and who died in slavery were lives containing unredeemed evils. In many of these countless cases, there were not only unredeemed evils, but a preponderance of unredeemed evil.  Whatever these sufferers believed, their lives were not worth living.  It would have been better had they never been born.  If naturalism is true, then those sufferers who believed that they would be compensated in the hereafter were just wrong.  Their false beliefs helped them get through their worthless existence but did nothing to make it worthwhile.

Here is an argument from evil for the nonaffirmability of life:

1. Human life in general is affirmable, i.e., possesses an overall positive value sufficient to justify procreation, only if the majority of human subjects led, lead, and will lead, lives which are on balance good.

2. It is not the case (or it is highly improbably that) that the majority of human subjects led, lead, or will lead such lives:  the majority of lives are lives in which unredeemed evil predominates.

Therefore

3. Human life in general is not affirmable, i.e., does not (or probably does not) possess an overall positive value sufficient to justify procreation.

It seems to me that a naturalist who squarely and in full awareness faces the fact of evil ought to be a pessimist and an anti-natalist.  If he is not, then I suspect him of being in denial or else of believing in some progressive 'pie in the future.'   But even if, per impossibile, some progressive utopia were attained in the distant future, it would not redeem the countless injustices of the past. 

Related articles

The Atheist

Spencer Case Makes his Debut in National Review Online

Long-time friend of and commenter at MavPhil sends me the very good news that he is on board at NRO.   Congratulations, Spencer!  We definitely need more philosophically-trained journalists, and given the corruption and ever-worsening decline of the academic world 'thanks' to leftists, young philosophers like Case do well to consider alternative careers in which they can write and think and preserve their liberty far from the hothouses of political correctness.

Spencer's debut article is Polemics and Philosophy from a British Contrarian, a review of two new books by Roger Scruton, the novel Notes from Underground, and the philosophical work, The Soul of the World.  Case's description of the novel make me want to read it, especially given my visit to Prague last September:

Notes from Underground is mainly set in 1985 in Communist-occupied Prague. Earlier in his career, Scruton covertly visited Prague behind the Iron Curtain, traveling as a lecturer, so the harsh descriptions have an authentic ring to them. Such descriptions allow Scruton to argue against leftist collectivism merely by describing its effects. Sometimes the storyline is coupled with searing polemics, which are most effective when they catch the reader off-guard. For instance, his protagonist observes, “Defenestration is a Czech tradition, the only one that the Communists had retained.”

The story is told in the first person by Jan Reichl, a Czech academic in the United States, who recounts his youth under Communism. Once valued for his past as a dissident writer, he now finds his worth diminishing in the eyes of the academy. Jan writes about his experiences from a meditative distance, full of references to the literature of Kafka, Dostoyevsky, and Zweig, as well as to the music of Schubert and Mahler. The book’s title itself is a reference to Dostoyevsky, whose novella Notes from the Underground is considered one of the first works of existentialist literature. The narrator’s distance from events reduces the emotional immediacy of some scenes, but it also gives the whole story a thoughtful melancholy.

Spencer has some meaty things to say in criticism of Scruton, so I suggest you all head over to  the former's ComBox to register your approbation, disapprobation, congratulations, whatever.  My guess is that he will be evaluated by the NRO editors in part by the length and quality of the comment threads he generates.

Related articles

Roger Scruton on the Art of the Aphorism

Links and Plinks

Roger Scruton on the Decline of the Modern University

Scruton: The Law on "homophobia"? is like the show trials under Mao Tse Tung

The Crucified God

The Crucified God  is an outstanding weblog by my remarkable young friend, Steven Nemes.  Compare his Good Friday meditation on Moltmann with the Simone Weil passage I quoted in the immediately  preceding entry.

Good Friday: At the Mercy of a Little Piece of Iron

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, tr. Craufurd, Routledge 1995, p. 75:

The infinite which is in man is at the mercy of a little piece of  iron; such is the human condition; space and time are the cause of  it. It is impossible to handle this piece of iron without suddenly reducing the infinite which is in man to a point on the pointed  part, a point on the handle, at the cost of a harrowing pain. The  whole being is stricken in the instant; there is no place left for God, even in the case of Christ, where the thought of God is not  more at least [at last?] than that of privation. This stage has to  be reached if there is to be incarnation. The whole being becomes privation of God: how can we go beyond? After that there is only the resurrection. To reach this stage the cold touch of naked iron  is necessary.

'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' There we have the real   proof that Christianity is something divine. (p. 79)

Related articles

The Strange World of Simone Weil: God Does and Does Not Exist

The Impermanence of the Impermanent and the Permanent

The Fundamental Division in U. S. Politics

George F. Will, drawing upon Timothy Sandefur, maintains that

The fundamental division in U.S. politics is between those who take their bearings from the individual’s right to a capacious, indeed indefinite, realm of freedom, and those whose fundamental value is the right of the majority to have its way in making rules about which specified liberties shall be respected.

[. . .]

The argument is between conservatives who say U.S. politics is basically about a condition, liberty, and progressives who say it is about a process, democracy. Progressives, who consider democracy the  source of liberty, reverse the Founders’ premise, which was: Liberty preexists governments, which, the Declaration says, are legitimate when “instituted” to “secure” natural rights.

Progressives consider, for example, the rights to property and free speech as, in Sandefur’s formulation, “spaces of privacy” that government chooses “to carve out and protect” to the extent that these rights serve democracy. Conservatives believe that liberty, understood as a general absence of interference, and individual rights, which cannot be exhaustively listed, are natural and that governmental restrictions on them must be as few as possible and rigorously justified. Merely invoking the right of a majority to have its way is an insufficient justification.

Related articles

Pelosi's Orwellian Mendacity: A STFU Moment

Why Would Anyone Need a Semi-Automatic Rifle?

George Will's column about my new book

Is This a Joke?

"Principles of Non-Philosophy is a treatise on the method, axioms and objectives of non-philosophy and represents François Laruelle's mature philosophy." 

That sounds like a joke.  Maybe it is.  With Continental bullshitters you never know.

Here.  Via Andrew Sullivan.  HT: Dave Lull.   I am surprised that NDPR published a review of this book, and an uncritical one at that.

London Ed's Metaphilosophy

 This from a recent comment by Ed, see article below:

I am starting with a few claims, with the additional claim that the claims are Moorean. Not only do I claim we use fictional or empty names to tell people which individual we are talking about, I claim that this is uncontroversial. Developing a theory to explain the apparent contractions that arise from these Moorean facts is more difficult. But that's the business of philosophy: start with facts that are apparently uncontroversial, move to the contradictions that appear to arise from them, and uncover the hidden assumptions or premisses that lead to the contradictions. Deduce the falsity of the hidden premisses. We have already stumbled across one hidden premiss, hardly noticing it. We agree that the sentence " 'Frodo' refers to Frodo" is relational in form. That's also Moorean. But does it follow that a sentence which is relational in form, really expresses a relation? 

So in overall summary. It is Moorean that there aren't and never were such things as hobbits, and hence never such persons as Frodo, Bilbo, Sam, Smeagol.  But it is also Moorean that at the end of Lord of the Rings, Tolkien tells us which hobbits carried the ring to Mount Doom, and which hobbit fell into the fiery depths of the mountain, carrying the Ring. The rest is philosophy: is there any contradiction buried in these Moorean facts, and if not, how do we explain the appearance of contradiction?

Here is my distillation of Ed's approach:

1. There are certain facts that cannot be reasonably denied.  Call them 'Moorean.'

2. Reflection upon Moorean facts often brings to light certain tensions or problems or apparent contradictions. 

3. The contradictions that arise when we reflect on Moorean data are merely apparent.  Data cannot be contradictory. (Sentences that record data are true, and truths cannot be contradictory.)

4. The merely apparent contradictions derive from hidden assumptions that are not Moorean.

5. The task of philosophy is to solve (dissolve?) the problems by exposing and rejecting the hidden assumptions that give rise to them.

6. The task of philosophy is conservative, not revisionary.  Our ordinary ways of talking and thinking are in order as they stand.   Any problems that arise are due to false assumptions that we bring to the Moorean data.  Apparent inconsistencies that arise when when we reflect upon Moorean data are to be explained away as merely apparent.

To illustrate via an aporetic pentad:

a. 'Frodo' (or a tokening thereof) refers to Frodo.

b. Reference is a dyadic relation.

c. Every relation is such that if one of its terms (relata) exists, then all the others do as well.

d. 'Frodo' (or a tokening thereof) exists.

e. Frodo does not exist. (He is a purely fictional item.)

(a), (d), and (e) are all Moorean or as I say, 'datanic.'  (b) and (c) are in contrast theoretical.  If I understand Ed, he would say that (b) and (c) are the "hidden assumptions" that generate the contradiction in the pentad.  To remove the contradiction, and with it the problem, it suffices to reject one or the other of the theoretical assumptions.

I am pretty sure that Ed will reject (b).  He will not, I am sure, hold to (b) and reject (c) by maintaining that an existent can stand in a genuine relation to a Meinongian nonexistent.  But then Ed owes us an account of what it is for 'Frodo' to refer to or be about Frodo, as opposed to Gandalf, if reference is not a relation.  I suspect that any theory he gives will involve difficulties of its own.

How does my metaphilosophy differ from Ed's? 

Ed seems to think that philosophical problems such as the one embodied in the above pentad are soluble by the exposure and rejection of false assumptions such as (b) above.  There is no need for such exotic posits as Meinongian nonentities or merely intentional objects. Ed seems to think that the task of philosophy is to remove confusions and puzzles that arise when philosophers import false assumptions into the data, thereby causing trouble for themselves.  The Moorean data are unproblematic, and we will come to see this when we sweep aside false theoretical assumptions.

My view is entirely different. The problems are genuine, but they do not have satisfactory solutions.  It is no solution simply to reject (b) above without giving a positive account of what reference or aboutness is.  (b) is not a gratuitous assumption we are making, but a plausibility, despite its not being a Moorean fact.  One cannot simply reject it; one must put something it its place.

So Ed needs to tell us what his positive theory is.  Once he presents it in a form clear enough to be discussed, then I will show why it is unsatisfactory.  And I will do that with every theory that is proposed.  If I am able to pull that off, then I will have given a very good reason to regard the problem as insoluble.  

Related articles

Fictional Names

Surface and Depth

We are too superficial to fathom our depth, and too deep to acquiesce comfortably in our superficiality.

Our Garbage Culture

Last night, the first episode of Fargo, the TV series, which is loosely based on the 1996 Coen Brothers movie of the same name.  Another cause and effect of the decline of a culture unravelling with each passing day?

Friedrich Nietzsche, Der Wille zur Macht #585 (Kroener Ausgabe): 

Ein Nihilist ist der Mensch, welcher von der Welt, wie sie ist, urteilt, sie sollte nicht sein, und von der Welt, wie sie sein sollte, urteilt, sie existiert nicht.

A nihilist is one who judges of the world as it is, that it ought not be, and of the world as it ought to be, that it does not exist.

Related articles

The Decline of American Liberal Education

Fictional Names

London Ed writes,

I would like to bounce some of the central ideas [of a book]  off you. The idea at the very centre is that fictional names, i.e. empty names, individuate.     A fictional name like 'Frodo', in the sense it is used in The Lord of the Rings, tells us which character Tolkien is talking about. For example, in chapter II of Book II ("The Council of Elrond"), it says that Frodo is the one chosen to carry the Ring to Mordor, out of the nine characters in the Fellowship of the Ring.    I.e. the name 'Frodo', as Tolkien uses it, tells us which character is chosen to carry the Ring. 

Is that true?  Can a fictional name, an empty name, a name that has no bearer, a name that refers to nothing, tell us which individual the writer is talking about?  Can the writer even be said to be talking about anyone?  In my view, he can. When Tolkien    writes (p. 264 of my edition) "'I will take the Ring', he said, 'though I do not know the way'", he is talking about Frodo.     That is, the sentence 'Tolkien is talking about Frodo' is true, and    'Tolkien is talking about Gandalf' is false. 

So that's the central idea of the book, that fictional names    individuate. Does it even make sense? 

1.  You seem to think that all and only fictional names are empty names.  'Vulcan,' however, used to refer to a hypothetical planet in an orbit between Mercury and the Sun, is an empty name, but not a fictional name.  (In the "Star Trek" series, however, 'Vulcan' is a fictional name since it n ames, not a hypothetical planet, but a fictional one.)  So not every empty name is a fictional name.  And I should think that not every fictional name is empty.  Names of real people as they (the names) figure in historical novels, legends, songs, movies, and whatnot are  non-empty but arguably fictional.  Think of the Faust legends, or the many stories and books and movies about Doc Holliday.

2.  But although it is not perfectly obvious, I grant that every purely fictional name is empty, at least in the sense that no purely fictional name has an existing bearer or referent.

3.  You maintain that purely fictional names like 'Frodo' do not refer to anything.  They don't refer to anything that exists, obviously, but they also do not refer to Meinongian nonexistent objects  or to merely intentional objects. 

4.  So I take it you do not make the following distinction that I make between two senses of 'empty':

Empty₁:  A name is empty₁ iff it has no existing referent.

Empty₂:  A name is empty₂ iff it has no referent whatsoever, whether existing, subsisting, Meinongian, or merely intentional.

5.  Here is a question for you.  If 'Frodo' and 'Gandalf' do not refer to anything at all, and therefore are without referents of any sort, then they have the same extension, the null extension or null set.  Does it follow that the names have the same meaning?  Is meaning exhausted by reference?  If yes, then the two names have the same meaning, which is wrong.  Or do the names differ in sense?  If yes, then what are senses?  What is the sense of an empty proper name? 

6.  To talk about Frodo is not the same as to talk about Gandalf.  But you don't admit that there is anything at all that these names refer to. So how can one talk about either character? Can a term be about something if there is nothing the term refers to?  What is aboutness?  How can it be the case that both (i) 'Frodo' does not refer to anything and (ii) one can use 'Frodo' to talk about Frodo?  Is talk about Frodo talk about the sense of 'Frodo'?  Surely talk about is talk about something.

7.  You maintain that fictional names individuate.  What would it be for them not to individuate?  Which theory or theories are you opposing?  And what exactly do you mean by 'individuate'?  There are no fictional individuals on your view, so how could any name individuate one?

Related articles

Fiction

More on Ficta and Impossibilia

Ambition versus Aspiration

Ambition is driven by the ego and serves it.  It is good within limits, and for a time, the time it takes to secure the worldly wherewithal that permits an advance to something better than mere ambition, aspiration.    Aspiration aims beyond the ego to its source.  Both target self-improvement, but the selves are different.  The self of ambition seeks self-aggrandizement.  Its project is doomed to failure: the consolidation and securing of the bubble of the separative self, a bubble inevitably to burst, if not today, then the day after.  The true self of aspiration humbles itself before its source and absolute, seeking to secure its center in it, where alone there is some hope for success.

Related articles

Ambitious For What?

My Cat Caissa

Full of sound, and furry.

She lived 20+ years.  Here she is, subdued, near the end.

 

Patrick Kurp on Philip Larkin

A post that moves me to find Larkin's Letters to Monica.  Kurp quotes Larkin:

I seem to walk on a transparent surface and see beneath me all the bones and wrecks and tentacles that will eventually claim me: in other words, old age, incapacity, loneliness, death of others & myself . . . .

Related: Philip Larkin on Death

Related articles

The Wit and Mortality of Christopher Hitchens

Six Types of Death Fear

Death, Where is Thy Sting?

Philip Larkin's "The Trees"

Intellectual Hypertrophy

Weight lifters and body builders in their advanced states of muscular development appear ridiculous to us. All that time and money spent on the grotesque overdevelopment of one's merely physical attributes ^___ when in a few short years one will be dust and ashes. But isn't the intellectual equally unbalanced who overdevelops his logical and analytical skills to the neglect of body, emotions, and spirit? Is the intellectual wrestler all that superior to the physical one? Is one kind of hypertrophy better than another? What good is discursive hypertrophy if it is paid for in the coin of mystical and moral and physical atrophy?

Related articles

Worldly Success: How Much is Enough?

Unusual Experiences and the Problem of Overbelief and Underbelief

On Independent Thinking

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

It is worth noting that thinking for oneself is no guarantee that one will arrive at truth. Far from it.  The maverick's trail may issue in a dead end.  Or it may not.  The world is littered with conflicting opinions generated from the febrile heads of people with too much trust in their own powers. But neither is submission to an institution's authority any assurance of safe passage to the harbor of truth. Both the one who questions authority and the one who submits to it can end up on a reef. 'Think for yourself' and 'Submit to authority' are both onesided pieces of advice.

And you thought things were easy?

Related articles

Montaigne on Chess

Philosophy, Debate, and Dialog: Can Philosophy Be Debated?

The Strange World of Simone Weil: God Does and Does Not Exist

Secular Self-Deception About the Value of Life

Here is the penultimate paragraph of John Lach's In Love with Life: Reflections on the Joy of Living and Why We Hate to Die (Vanderbilt UP, 1998):

When the time comes [to die], we must surround ourselves with life.  In a bustling hospital or a loving home, let everyone get on with their [sic] activities.  To die in the midst of energy is not to die at all, but to transfer one's life and hopes to those who carry on.  The continuity of our lives and our personalities makes the death of any one individual an event of little moment: the great celebration of existence goes on. (p. 123)

This is an example of one  sort of self-deception secularists fall into when they attempt to affirm the value of life.   If this is it, it is at least a serious question whether this life can be ascribed a positive value.  One doesn't have to go all the way with Schopenhauer to appreciate that this life with its manifold miseries and horrors and injustices is of dubious value.  It is certainly not obvious that "Life is good" as one sees emblazoned on the spare tire covers of SUVs in the tonier neighborhoods.

One response to the evils of the world is denial of such facts as are adduced by Schopenhauer:

The truth is, we ought to be wretched and we are so.  The chief source of the serious evils which affect men is man himself: homo homini lupus.  Whoever keeps this last fact clearly in view  beholds the world as a hell, which surpasses that of Dante in this respect, that one man must be the devil of another. (The Will to Live, p. 204)

Judging from the above passage, Lachs appears to be in denial.  Surely the following is a silly and well-nigh meaningless assurance: " To die in the midst of energy is not to die at all, but to transfer one's life and hopes to those who carry on."  So if I die in the midst of energetic people I haven't died? That is false to the point of being delusional, a flat denial of the fact of death.  It is an evasion of the fact and finality of death.  And it is nonsense to say that at death "one's life" is transferred to others.  One's life is one's individual life; on a secular understanding it ceases to exist at death.  It is nontransferrable.  As for the "celebration of existence," try explaining that to Syrian refugees or to those who at this very moment are being tortured to death.

Other secularists such as Adorno deny value in a manner most extreme to this present life, but look to the future of this life for redemption.  This too is  delusional in my judgment.  See After Auschwitz.

Secularists need to face the problem of evil.  This is not a problem for theists only.  It is a problem for anyone who affirms the value of life.   If the fact of evil is evidence (whether demonstrative or inductive) of the nonexistence of God, then it is also evidence of the nonaffirmability of this life. 

Tax Advice for Philosophers

Philosophers should be sure to avail themselves of the Transcendental Deduction this year as it has been substantially increased, the truculent opposition of the NRA (National Realist Association)  notwithstanding.    But to take the deduction philosophers will need the Platonic Form.  Be advised that attempts to copy the Platonic Form have been known to cause the dreaded glitch commonly referred to as the Third (Tax) Man.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: 'Strange' Songs

In three categories:  Rock, Religion, Romanticism.

Cream, Strange Brew

Doors, People are Strange

Doors, Strange Days

Mickey and Sylvia, Love is Strange

 

Ralph Stanley, Rank Stranger

Emmy Lou Harris, Wayfaring Stranger

 

Frank Sinatra, Strangers in the Night  To be is to do (Socrates).  To do is to be (Sartre). Do be do be do (Sinatra).

Barbara Lewis, Hello Stranger

Acker Bilk, Stranger on the Shore

On Making a Splash

 

Years ago an acquaintance wrote me about a book he had published which, he said, had "made quite a splash." The metaphor is unfortunately double-edged. When an object hits the water it makes a splash. But only moments later the water returns to its quiescent state as if nothing had happened. So it is an apt metaphor. It captures both the immediate significance of an event and its long-term insignificance.

Related articles

Neglected Philosophers

Imagination

One can remember having imagined something, but one cannot remember something imaginary.

Enthymeme

There are unjust laws, but no illegal laws. Ergo, et cetera.

Talk is Cheap?

Often it is. But the right word, at the right time, addressed to the right person, spoken from the heart with purity of intent can be priceless.

Jack and Phil

He doesn't know jack but he thinks he does, which is why he needs phil.

Preacher and Slacker

There is someone worse than the preacher who falls into hypocrisy, namely, the moral slacker who is not even to the point where hypocrisy is possible.

Haiku

Mind and sense Matter and meat Together in man Mystery complete.

Computer Troubles Again

Blogging will tend toward the terse and the aphoristic.

A Meditation on Certainty on Husserl's Birthday

Edmund Husserl was born on this date in 1859.

In his magisterial Augustine of Hippo, Peter Brown writes of Augustine, "He wanted complete certainty on ultimate questions." (1st ed., p. 88) If you don't thrill to that line, you are no philosopher. Compare Edmund Husserl: "Ohne Gewissheit kann ich eben nicht leben." "I just can't live without certainty." Yet he managed to live for years after penning that line into his diary, and presumably without certainty.

I would say that the ability to tolerate uncertainty without abandoning the quest for certainty is a mark of intellectual and spiritual maturity. A truth seeker who can tolerate uncertainty is one who will not seek false refuge in dogmas that provide pseudo-certainty. I cannot help but think of Islamo-terrorism in this connection. Had Muhammad Atta and the boys entertained some doubts about the bevy of black-eyed virgins awaiting them at the portals of paradise, they and three thousand others might still be alive.

The trick is to tolerate uncertainty without becoming either a skeptic or a dogmatist.

There is a difference between subjective and objective certainty. If subject S is subjectively certain that  p, it does not follow that p is true. That would follow only if S were objectively certain that p. But objective certainty appears attainable only with respect to one's own mental states. I am both subjectively and objectively certain that I have a headache now. This is because the esse of the headache = its percipi. Its being is its being perceived. It therefore cannot be intelligibly supposed that I merely seem to have a headache now, while in reality I do not. With respect to a physical object or state, however, appearance and reality can come apart, and what is subjectively certain can turn out to be false: my seeming to see a mountain is no guarantee that there is a mountain. My seeming to feel elated, however, just is my being elated.

What about states of affairs that involve neither mental data nor physical objects? If S is subjectively certain that torture is always morally impermissible, and T is subjectively certain that torture is sometimes morally permissible, then one of the two must be wrong, which shows that subjective certainty is no proof of objective certainty.

What about this last proposition however, namely, the proposition that apart from mental states, subjective certainty does not entail objective certainty? Is its truth merely subjectively certain, or is it also objectively certain? It is objectively certain. One sees that subjective certainty can exist without objective certainty from the fact that two subjects, S and T, can be subjectively certain of contradictory propositions. Here the mind grasps a truth about a state of affairs transcendent of one's mental state and does so with objective certainty.

I conclude that there are some propositions the truth of which can be grasped with objective certainty even though these propositions are not about such mental data as pleasures and pains. The mind has the power to transcend its own states and not only to know, but to know with objective certainty, truths whose truth is independent of mind. That is amazing.

One some days, existence strikes me as the deepest and most fascinating of philosophical topics. On other days, I give the palm to time: "What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to someone who does ask me, I do not know." (Augustine, Confessions, Bk. 11, Ch. 14) But today, the honor goes to knowledge.

 

Related articles

Husserl's Critique of the Image-Theory of Consciousness

Do Merely Intentional Objects Have Being of Their Own? With a Little Help from Ingarden

Edmund Husserl was born on this date in 1859.

In his magisterial Augustine of Hippo, Peter Brown writes of Augustine, "He wanted complete certainty on ultimate questions." (1st ed., p. 88) If you don't thrill to that line, you are no philosopher. Compare Edmund Husserl: "Ohne Gewissheit kann ich eben nicht leben." "I just can't live without certainty." Yet he managed to live for years after penning that line into his diary, and presumably without certainty.

I would say that the ability to tolerate uncertainty without abandoning the quest for certainty is a mark of intellectual and spiritual maturity. A truth seeker who can tolerate uncertainty is one who will not seek false refuge in dogmas that provide pseudo-certainty. I cannot help but think of Islamo-terrorism in this connection. Had Muhammad Atta and the boys entertained some doubts about the bevy of black-eyed virgins awaiting them at the portals of paradise, they and three thousand others might still be alive.

The trick is to tolerate uncertainty without becoming either a skeptic or a dogmatist.

There is a difference between subjective and objective certainty. If subject S is subjectively certain that  p, it does not follow that p is true. That would follow only if S were objectively certain that p. But objective certainty appears attainable only with respect to one's own mental states. I am both subjectively and objectively certain that I have a headache now. This is because the esse of the headache = its percipi. Its being is its being perceived. It therefore cannot be intelligibly supposed that I merely seem to have a headache now, while in reality I do not. With respect to a physical object or state, however, appearance and reality can come apart, and what is subjectively certain can turn out to be false: my seeming to see a mountain is no guarantee that there is a mountain. My seeming to feel elated, however, just is my being elated.

What about states of affairs that involve neither mental data nor physical objects? If S is subjectively certain that torture is always morally impermissible, and T is subjectively certain that torture is sometimes morally permissible, then one of the two must be wrong, which shows that subjective certainty is no proof of objective certainty.

What about this last proposition however, namely, the proposition that apart from mental states, subjective certainty does not entail objective certainty? Is its truth merely subjectively certain, or is it also objectively certain? It is objectively certain. One sees that subjective certainty can exist without objective certainty from the fact that two subjects, S and T, can be subjectively certain of contradictory propositions. Here the mind grasps a truth about a state of affairs transcendent of one's mental state and does so with objective certainty.

I conclude that there are some propositions the truth of which can be grasped with objective certainty even though these propositions are not about such mental data as pleasures and pains. The mind has the power to transcend its own states and not only to know, but to know with objective certainty, truths whose truth is independent of mind. That is amazing.

One some days, existence strikes me as the deepest and most fascinating of philosophical topics. On other days, I give the palm to time: "What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I want to explain it to someone who does ask me, I do not know." (Augustine, Confessions, Bk. 11, Ch. 14) But today, the honor goes to knowledge.

 

On Duty: Commentary on an Aphorism by Henri-Frederic Amiel

"Duty has the virtue of making us feel the reality of a positive world while at the same time detaching us from it." (From Journal Intime)

This is a penetrating observation, and a  perfect specimen of the aphorist's art. It is terse, true, but not trite. The tip of an iceberg of thought, it invites exploration below the water line.

If the world were literally a dream, there would be no need to act in it or take it seriously. One could treat it as one who dreams lucidly can treat a dream: one lies back and enjoys the show in the knowledge that it is only a dream. But to the extent that I feel duty-bound to do this or refrain from that, I take the world to be real, to be more than maya or illusion. Feeling duty-bound, I help realize the world.  It is an "unfinished universe" in a Jamesian phrase and  I cannot play within it the role of mere spectator.  I must play the agent as well; I must participate whether I like it or not, non-participation being but  a definicient  mode of participation.  In a Sartrean phrase, I am "condemned to be free": I am free to do and leave undone, but my being free does not fall within the ambit of my freedom.

And to the extent that I feel duty-bound to do something, to make real what merely ought to be, I am referred to this positive world as to the locus of realization.

But just how real is the world of our ordinary waking experience? Is it the ne plus ultra of reality? Its manifest deficiency gives the lie to this supposition, which is why great philosophers from Plato to Bradley have denied ultimate reality to the sense world. Things are not the way they ought to be, and things are the way they ought not be, and everyone with moral sense feels this to be true. The Real falls short of the Ideal, and, falling short demonstrates its lack of plenary reality. So while the perception of duty realizes the world, it also and by the same stroke de-realizes it by measuring it against a standard from elsewhere.

The moral sense discloses a world poised between the unreality of the dream and the plenary reality of the Absolute.  Plato had it right: the human condition is speleological and the true philosopher is a transcendental speleologist.

The sense of duty detaches us from the world of what is by referring us to what ought to be. What ought to be, however, in many cases is not; hence we are referred back to the world of what is as the scene wherein alone ideals can be realized.

It is a curious dialectic. The Real falls short of the Ideal and is what is is in virtue of this falling short. The Ideal, however, is only imperfectly realized here below.  Much of the ideal lacks reality just as much of the Real lacks ideality. Each is what it is by not being what it is not. And we moral agents are caught in this interplay. We are citizens of two worlds and must play the ambassador between them.

Related articles

Roger Scruton on the Art of the Aphorism

Susan Sontag on the Art of the Aphorism