"Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence!" (Bertrand Russell)
It may well be that our predicament is such as to disallow conclusive or even sufficient evidence of the truth about it. If Plato's Cave Allegory is apt, if it lays bare the truth of the human predicament, then it must be that the evidence that the cave is a cave and that there is an outer world, whether it be the evidence of someone's testimony or the evidence of one's own rare and fleeting experiences, is scant and flimsy and easily doubted and denied. What I merely glimpse on rare occasions I can easily doubt. One can also doubt what any church teaches for the simple reason that there are many churches and they contradict each other on many points of doctrine and practice. And the same goes for what I believe on the testimony of others.
We don't know that the human condition is a cave-like predicament along Platonic lines, but if it is then we have an explanation of the paucity of sufficient evidence of its being what it is. (By sufficient evidence for a proposition p I mean evidence that renders p more likely than its negation.)
It is vitally important to us whether God or some form of Transcendence exists, and whether a higher life is possible for us beyond the miserably short and indigent predicament in which we presently find ourselves. But it may be that the truth in this matter cannot be known here below, but only believed on evidence that does not make it more likely than not. It may be that our predicament is such as to make impossible sufficient evidence of the truth about it.
Do I violate an ethics of belief if I believe on insufficient evidence? But don't I also have a duty to myself to pursue what is best for myself? And seek my ultimate happiness? Why should the legitimate concern to not be wrong trump the concern to find what is salvifically right? Is it not foolish to allow fear of error to block my path to needed truth?
Lately I've heard bandied about the idea that to have faith is to pretend to know what one does not know. Now that takes the cake for dumbassery. One can of course pretend to know things one does not know, and pretend to know more about a subject than one does know. The pretence might be part of a strategy of deception in the case of a swindler or it might be a kind of acting as in the case of an actor playing a mathematician.
But in faith one does not pretend to know; one honestly faces the fact that one does not know and ventures beyond what one knows so as to gain access to a needed truth that by its very nature cannot satisfy the strictures that we moderns and post-moderns tend to build into 'know.'
I was actually impressed by Obama's speech last night. The greatness of the office he occupies, together with the external pressure of events and advisors, has resulted in a non-vacuous speech and wise decision, a two-fold decision: to launch air strikes against the advancing terrorist ISIS (or ISIL) forces and to drop supplies to the beleagured religious minorities under dire existential threat, the Christians and the Yazidi.
A Most Wanted Man, based on the John le Carre novel and starring the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, was well worth the two hours I invested in it this morning. Some critics called it slow-moving. Why? Because it is thoughtful and thought-provoking with no unnecessary action or gratuitous sex and violence or mindless special effects? Most movies are garbage made for the consumption of morons, like the trailers I had to sit through; but not all.
Recognizing your praise for Critical Rationalism and Morris Raphael Cohen, I believe his page (and also the Karl Popper page) in my PDF Logic Gallery will interest you.
Of course, I hope the book's entire theme/content will also interest you.
Your comments will surely interest ME.
In these dark days of the Age of Feeling, when thinking appears obsolete and civilization is under massive threat from Islamism and its 'liberal' and leftist enablers, it seems fitting that I should repost with additions my old tribute to Morris Raphael Cohen. So here it is:
Tribute to Morris R. Cohen: Rational Thought as the Great Liberator
Morris Raphael Cohen (1880-1947) was an American philosopher of naturalist bent who taught at the City College of New York from 1912 to 1938. He was reputed to have been an outstanding teacher. I admire him more for his rationalism than for his naturalism. In the early 1990s, I met an ancient lady at a party who had been a student of Cohen's at CCNY in the 1930s. She enthusiastically related how Cohen had converted her to logical positivism, and how she had announced to her mother, "I am a logical positivist!" much to her mother's incomprehension.
We best honor a thinker by critically re-enacting his thoughts. Herewith, a passage from Cohen's A Preface to Logic, Dover, 1944, pp. 186-187:
...the exercise of thought along logical lines is the great liberation, or, at any rate, the basis of all civilization. We are all creatures of circumstance; we are all born in certain social groups and we acquire the beliefs as well as the customs of that group. Those ideas to which we are accustomed seem to us self-evident when [while?] our first reaction against those who do not share our beliefs is to regard them as inferiors or perverts. The only way to overcome this initial dogmatism which is the basis of all fanaticism is by formulating our position in logical form so that we can see that we have taken certain things for granted, and that someone may from a purely logical point of view start with the denial of what we have asserted. Of course, this does not apply to the principles of logic themselves, but it does apply to all material propositions. Every material proposition has an intelligible alternative if our proposition can be accurately expressed.
These are timely words. Dogmatism is the basis of all fanaticism. Dogmatism can be combatted by the setting forth of one's beliefs as conclusions of (valid) arguments so that the premises needed to support the beliefs become evident. By this method one comes to see what one is assuming. One can also show by this method that arguments 'run forward' can just as logically be 'run in reverse,' or, as we say in the trade, 'One man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens.' These logical exercises are not merely academic. They bear practical fruit when they chasten the dogmatism to which humans are naturally prone.
In Cohen's day, the threats to civilization were Fascism, National Socialism, and Communism. Today the main threat is Islamo-totalitarianism, with a secondary threat emanating from the totalitarian Left. Then as now, logic has a small but important role to play in the defeat of these threats. The fanaticism of the Islamic world is due in no small measure to the paucity there of rational heads like Cohen.
But I do have one quibble with Cohen. He tells us that "Every material proposition has an intelligible alternative..." (Ibid.) This is not quite right. A material proposition is one that is non-logical, i.e., one that is not logically true if true. But surely there are material propositions that have no intelligible alternative. No color is a sound is not a logical truth since its truth is not grounded in its logical form. No F is a G has both true and false substitution-instances. No color is a sound is therefore a material truth. But its negation Some color is a sound is not intelligible if 'intelligible' means possibly true. If, on the other hand, 'intelligible' characterizes any form of words that is understandable, i.e., is not gibberish, then logical truths such as Every cat is a cat have intelligible alternatives: Some cat is not a cat, though self-contradictory, is understandable. If it were not, it could not be understood to be self-contradictory. By contrast, Atla kozomil eshduk is not understandable at all, and so cannot be classified as true, false, logically true, etc.
So if 'intelligible' means (broadly logically or metaphysically) possibly true, then it is false that "Every material proposition has an intelligible alternative . . . ."
Most of the advocates for open borders agitate from a position of criticism of the U.S. By that I mean we rarely hear La Raza activists explain why they want amnesties for millions of illegal aliens, at least in the sense of why millions have left Mexico to risk their lives to arrive in the U.S.
What is it about America that attracts patriotic Mexican nationals to abandon their own country en masse? That is not a rhetorical question, given much of the immigration debate is couched in critiques of the U.S. The pageantry of an open-borders demonstration is usually a spectacle of Mexican flags. How odd that almost no advocate ever says, “We want amnesty so that our kinsmen have a shot, as we have had a shot, at an independent judiciary, equality under the law, the rule of law, true democracy, free speech, protection of human rights, free-market capitalism, and protection of private property. For all that, millions risk their lives.” But instead there is either nothing, or a continual critique of the U.S. If we were to take a newly arrived illegal alien, and enroll him in a typical Chicano Studies course, he would logically wish to return across the border as soon as possible.
One of Russell's objections to Meinong was that the denizens of Aussersein, i.e., beingless objects, are apt to infringe the Law of Non-Contradiction. Suppose a Meinongian subscribes to the following principle:
Unrestricted Satisfaction (US): Every definite description is such that some object satisfies it.
For any definite description we can concoct, there is a corresponding object or item, in many cases a beingless object or item. From (US) we infer that some object satisfies the definite description, 'the existent round square.' This object is existent, round, and square. So the existent round square exists, which is a contradiction. This is one Russell-type argument.
A similar argument can be made re: the golden mountain. By (US), not only is some object the golden mountain, some object is the existent golden mountain. This object is existent, golden, and a mountain. So the existent golden mountain exists, which is false, though not contradictory. This is a second Russell-type argument.
Are these arguments compelling refutations of Meinong's signature thesis? Here is one way one might try to evade the Russellian objections, a way similar to one Meinong himself treads. Make a distinction between nuclear properties and extranuclear properties. (See Terence Parsons, Nonexistent Objects, Yale UP, 1980, p. 42) Nuclear properties are those that are included in an object's Sosein (so-being, what-being, quiddity). Extranuclear properties are those that are not so included. The distinction can be made with respect to existence. There is nuclear existence and extranuclear existence. 'Existent' picks out nuclear existence while 'exists' picks out extranuclear existence.
This distinction blocks the inference from 'The existent round square is existent, round, and square' to the 'The existent round square exists.' Similarly in the golden mountain case. You will be forgiven for finding this distinction between nuclear and extranuclear existence bogus. It looks to be nothing more than an ad hoc theory-saving move.
But there may be a better Meinongian response. The Russellian arguments assume an Unrestricted Characterization Principle:
UCP: An object exemplifies each of the properties referenced in the definite description it satisfies.
From (US) we get the object, the existent golden mountain, and the object, the existent round square. But without (UCP) one cannot move to the claim that the existent golden mountain exists or to the claim that the existent round square exists.
A Meinongian can therefore defeat the Russellian arguments by substituting a restricted characterization principle for (UCP). And he can do this without distinguishing between nuclear and extranuclear existence.
"An academic claims the Radio 4 programme’s regular discussions on soil purity and non-native species promote racial stereotypes." More proof of the willful stupidity of liberals and the alacrity with which they play the race card. (HT: London Karl)
Gardening puts me in mind of spades, as in Wittgenstein's remark, "My spade is turned." Did old Ludwig have a black servant who executed a turn? A linguistic turn perhaps, or perhaps a transcendental one?
My erudite readers will of course know that to which I allude, namely, paragraph 217 of Philosophical Investigations:
217. “How am I able to obey a rule?” – if this is not a question about causes, then it is about the justification for my following the rule in the way I do.
If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: “This is simply what I do.”
I am coming reluctantly to the view that the onus probandi rests on liberals. If you self-identify as a liberal, then the burden is on you to show that you are not willfully stupid and morally obtuse.
To understand what Hamas is all about, one has to turn to historian Jeffrey Herf’s important article about the organization. Based on a close reading of the Hamas charter, Herf shows that its aims and its ideology and philosophy are “rooted in the totalitarianism and radical anti-Semitism that has undergirded Islamism since its rise in the 1930s and 1940s.” This truth, he correctly writes, is one “unnoticed by reporters, editors, and pundits who race to comment on Hamas’ war with Israel.”
The organization, which has not refuted its charter, acts today in accordance with the goals enunciated in its 1988 “Covenant.” Most people and journalists know that the document calls for the elimination of the Jewish state, and the establishment of an Islamist society in its place. But their understanding stops with that alone. What Herf shows is that Hamas, unlike the Fatah of Mahmoud Abbas, directly says that their aim is to eliminate not only Israel, but all Jews as well. And that aim is a religious one that is based on their belief in what the Koran says. Herf explains:
It promises to remake the world in the name of Islam, which, it regrets, has been wrongly driven from public life. This is its slogan: “Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, and the Koran is its constitution: Jihad is the path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.” This celebration of martyrdom and death had been a key theme in Hassan al-Banna’s writings and subsequently became a commonplace for Islamists.
Anyone who believes Hamas’ claim that all religions would live peacefully on an equal basis under Islamist rule are more than naïve; they are deluded. Moreover, Hamas specifically refuses to accept any two-state solution, which they explain is against their basic religious beliefs. Unlike previous Arab movements, once allied with the former Soviet Union and friendly to Marxism-Leninism, Hamas instead gives up that ideology completely. In its place they have consciously adopted what Herf – who is a historian of Germany — writes is “the classic anti-Semitic tropes of Nazism and European fascism, which the Islamists had absorbed when they collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.” Hamas’ charter puts its views of the Jews and the Zionists in these words:
With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money, they formed secret societies, such as Freemason, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there.
This theory is in fact taken directly from Nazi Germany’s wartime propaganda. Unlike those who oppose Israel by arguing that it is a pawn of American imperialism, Hamas reverses that and claims that it is Israel that controls the United States, since it is the all-powerful Jews who are responsible for the plight in which the citizens of Gaza and the Arab world find themselves in. It was the Jews, they argue, that were behind and were responsible for both World War I and World War II, from which they greatly enriched themselves. Finally, it is not the Arab world that is seeking to destroy Israel and push it into the sea, but Israel that seeks to destroy each Arab nation one by one.
Once you know what Hamas stands for, you can gain the clarity one needs to understand why Israel must be supported fully by the United States, and maintain the strength it has so that Hamas can eventually be defeated.
In the current fight, Hamas has used the destruction of Gaza and the death and devastation created by using its civilian population as an effective tool to create sympathizers who see only the human suffering, and not Hamas’ cynical use of the people they supposedly represent as pawns whose position can be used to create antipathy for Israel.
If Hamas is to be defeated and delegitimized, first what it stands for and what its leaders believe have to be clearly understood.
You asked me to find x, and I found it. You didn't ask me to find the value of x. You rode roughshod over a perfectly obvious distinction. So don't call me a smart-ass!
As I see it, the central problem in the philosophy of fiction is to find a solution to the following aporetic dyad:
1. There are no purely fictional items.
2. There are some purely fictional items.
The problem is that while the limbs of the dyad cannot both be true, there is reason to think that each is true.
(1) looks to be an analytic truth: by definition, what is purely fictional is not, i.e., does not exist. George Harvey Bone, the main character in Patrick Hamilton's 1941 booze novel Hangover Square, does not now and never did exist. He is not a real alcoholic like his creator, Patrick Hamilton, who was a real alcoholic. What is true is that
3. Bone is a purely fictional alcoholic.
That (3) is true is clear from the fact that if a student wrote on a test that Bone was a teetotaler, his answer would be marked wrong. But if (3) is true, then, given that nothing can satisfy a predicate unless it exists, it follows that
4. Bone exists
and, given the validity of Existential Generalization, it follows that
5. There is a purely fictional alcoholic.
But if (5) is true, then so is (2).
It should now be spectacularly obvious what the problem is. There are two propositions, each the logical contradictory of the other, which implies that they cannot both be true, and yet we have excellent reason to think that both are true.
Now what are all the possible ways of solving this problem? I need a list. London Ed et al. can help me construct it. Right now all I want is a list, a complete list if possible, not arguments for or against any item on the list. Not all of the following are serious contenders, but I am aiming at completeness.
A. Dialetheism. Accept dialetheism, which amounts to the claim that there are true contradictions and that the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC) is false.
B. Paraphrasticism. Reject (2) by attempting to show that sentences such as (3) can be paraphrased in such a way that the apparent reference to ficta is eliminated. For example, one might offer the following paraphrase of (3): 'Hamilton wrote a story implying that here is an alcoholic named Bone.' The paraphrastic approach works only if every reference to a fictional item, whether it be a person or place or event or fiction, can be paraphrased away. (As Kripke and others have noted, there are fictional fictions, fictional plays for example, such as a fictional play referenced within a play.)
C. Logic Reform. Reject Existential Generalization (off load existence from the particular quantifier) and reject the anti-Meinongian principle that nothing can satisfy a predicate (or exemplify a property) unless it exists. One could then block the inference from (3) to (2).
D. Ontology Reform. Reject (1) by arguing that fictional items, without prejudice to their being purely fictional, do exist. Saul Kripke, for example, maintains that a fictional character is an abstract entity that "exists in virtue of more concrete activities of telling stories, writing plays, writing novels, and so on . . . the same way that a nation is an abstract entity which exists in virtue of concrete relations between people." (Reference and Existence: The John Locke Lectures, Oxford UP, 2013, p. 73.) Or one might hold that fictional items are abstract items that exist necessarily like numbers.
E. Dissolutionism. Somehow argue that the problem as posed above is a pseudoproblem that doesn't need solving but dissolving. One might perhaps argue that one or the other of the dyad's limbs has not even a prima facie claim on our acceptance.
F. Neitherism. Reject both limbs. Strategy (A) rejects LNC. This strategy rejects the Law of Excluded Middle. (Not promising, but I'm aiming for completeness.)
G. Mysterianism. Accept both limbs but deny that they are mutually contradictory. Maintain that our cognitive limitations make it either presently or permanently impossible for us to understand how the limbs can be both true and non-contradictory. "They are both true; reality is non-contradictory; but it is a mystery how!"
H. Buddhism. Reject the tetralemma: neither (1) nor (2), nor both, nor neither.
I. Hegelianism. Propose a grand synthesis in which thesis (1) and antithesis (2) are aufgehoben, simultaneously cancelled and preserved. (I have no idea what this would look like -- again, I want a complete list of options.)
First question: Have I covered all the bases? Or are there solution strategies that cannot be brought under one of the above heads? If you think there are, tell me what you think they are. But don't mention something that is subsumable under one of (A)-(I).
Second question (for London Ed): under which head would you book your solution? Do you favor the paraphrastic approach sketched in (B) or not?Or maybe Ed thinks that the problem as I have formulated it is a pseudoproblem (option (E)).
Be a good sport, Ed, play along and answer my questions.
Flannery O'Connor died 50 years ago today. About Ayn Rand she has this to say:
I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.
And so they compose 'bucket lists' of things to do before they 'kick the bucket.' It's as if, on the sinking Titanic, one were to try to make the most of the ship and its features and amenities instead of considering how one might survive the coming calamity.
"There are a lot of things I want to do before we sink. I've never been to the captain's quarters or inspected the engine room or admired the gold fixtures in the first-class cabins or had a drink in the VIP lounge."
The worldly too know that life is short but they draw the wrong conclusion from the fact.
List found here. Hyperlinks by BV to songs he is in the mood to revisit this Saturday night while he drinks a specialty boilermaker: a bourbon and sweet vermouth wine spodiodi with a Sam Adams Boston Lager 'chaser.' He will repeat as necessary to achieve the requisite mood. He drinks only one time per week, this time of the week. For some, alcohol is the devil in liquid form. For BV it is a delightful adjunct to a civilized life, one he can take or leave. To hell with Sharia and its 'liberal' and leftist enablers.
BILLBOARD (USA) MAGAZINE'S SINGLES CHART FOR WEEK OF:August 1,1964 TW LW Wks. Song-Artist 1 2 3 A HARD DAY'S NIGHT-BEATLES 2 1 7 Rag Doll-Four Seasons 3 6 6 The Little Old Lady (From Pasadena)-Jan & Dean 4 11 5 Everybody Loves Somebody-Dean Martin 5 18 4 Where Did Our Love Go-Supremes 6 9 7 Wishin' And Hopin'-Dusty Springfield 7 8 8 Dang Me-Roger Miller 8 3 11 I Get Around-Beach Boys 9 4 10 Memphis-Johnny Rivers 10 5 9 The Girl From Ipanema-Stan Getz & Astrud Gilberto 11 13 6 Under The Boardwalk-Drifters 12 14 6 Nobody I Know-Peter & Gordon 13 7 8 Can't You See That She's Mine-Dave Clark Five 14 10 9 Keep On Pushing-The Impressions 15 20 7 I Wanna Love Him So Bad-The Jelly Beans 16 12 9 Good Times-Sam Cooke 17 22 6 How Glad I Am-Nancy Wilson 18 15 9 Try It Baby-Marvin Gaye 19 23 7 Farmer John-The Premiers 20 25 7 Steal Away-Jimmy Hughes
London Ed recommended to me Patrick Hamilton's 1941 booze novel, Hangover Square. It gets off to a slow start, but quickly picks up speed and now has me in its grip. I'm on p. 60. The main character is one George Harvey Bone.
Ed gives this argument in an earlier thread:
(*) Bone, who is depicted by Hamilton as a sad alcoholic, is living in a flat in Earl’s Court.
The argument is that either the predicates ‘is depicted by Hamilton as a sad alcoholic’ and ‘is living in a flat in Earl’s Court’ have no subject, or they have the same subject. Either way, van Inwagen’s theory is wrong.
If they have no subject, then ‘is depicted by Hamilton as a sad alcoholic’ has no subject, but PvI argues that the subject is an abstract object. If they have the same subject, then if the subject of ‘is depicted by Hamilton as a sad alcoholic’ is an abstract object, then so is the subject of ‘is living in a flat in Earl’s Court’, which he also denies.
Either way, his theory cannot explain sentences like the one above.
The first thing I would point out (and this comports somewhat with a comment by David Brightly in the earlier thread) is that (*) can be reasonably parsed as a conjunction, the conjuncts of which belong to different categories of fiction (not fictional) discourse:
(*) Bone is depicted by Hamilton as a sad alcoholic & Bone lives in Earl's Court.
The two different categories are, first, the category of sentences we use when we engage in lit-crit discourse about fictional characters 'from the outside' while yet attending carefully to the 'internal' details of the fictional work. An example of such a sentence would be the following. "George Bone, like Don Birnham of Charles Jackson's 1944 Lost Weekend, have girlfriends, but Netta, the inamorata of the former, is a devil whereas Helen, the beloved of Birnham, is an angel."
Now that sentence I just wrote might be a second-rate bit of lit-crit, but it is a sentence that occurs in neither booze novel, nor is it entirely external to either novel. It is not entirely external because it reports details internal to the novels and it either gets them right or gets them wrong. 'George Bone is a purely fictional character,' by contrast, is an entirely external sentence. That sentence does not occur in the novel, and indeed it cannot occur within the novel (as opposed to within a bit of text preceding the novel proper, or as an authorial aside in a footnote) unless it were put into the mouth of a character. It cannot occur therein, because, within the world of Hangover Square, George Harvey Bone is precisely real, not fictional. As the same goes for Earl's Court, although it is also a real place in London. (One could, I suppose, argue that the Earl's Court of the novel is a fictional Earl's Court and thus distinct from the real-world Earl's Court. Holy moly, this is tricky stuff.)
The second category I mentioned comprises sentences that are either wholly internal to pieces of fiction or sentences that occur in synopses and summaries but could occur internally to pieces of fictions. For example, the second conjunct of (*):
C2. Bone lives in Earl's Court.
(C2) is probably too flat-footed a sentence to occur in a novel as good as Hangover Square, but it could have occurred therein and it could easily figure in a summary of the novel. (C1), however, namely,
C1. Bone is depicted by Hamilton as a sad alcoholic
could not have occurred in Hangover Square.
Now as I understand things, the grammatical subject of a sentence is a linguistic item, a word or a phrase. Thus (C1) and (C2) have the same grammatical subject, namely, the proper name 'Bone.' The grammatical subject is to be distinguished from its extralinguistic referent, if there is one. Call that the real subject. ('Logical subject' doesn't cut it since we do not typically refer to items on the logical plane such as propositions.)
So I take London Ed in his above-quoted animadversion to be referring to the real subjects of (C1) and (C2) when he uses 'subject.' He poses a dilemma for van Inwagen's view. Either the conjuncts have no subject or they have the same subject.
They cannot have no subject on van Inwagen's view because the subject of (C1) is an abstract object. And they cannot have the same subject, because then both conjuncts would have as real subject an abstract object. That cannot be, since on van Inwagen's view, and quite plausibly to boot, the subject of (C2) cannot be an abstract object. No abstract object lives or resides at any particular place. Abstract objects don't hang out or get hung over.
So, Ed concludes, van Inwagen's theory cannot explain (*).
Now my metaphilosophy teaches that no theory is any good on this topic or on any other. The problems of philosophy are most of them genuine, some of them humanly important, but none of them soluble. They are genuine intellectual knots that we cannot untie. That's about as good as it gets when it comes to "nailing my colours to the mast" as Ed demands that I do.
In other words, I am not advocating a particular theory as superior to Ed's, whatever exactly it is. (I am not being 'snarky' to use a Gen-X expression; I really don't know exactly what his theory is.) I don't think that van Inwagen's theory is unproblematic and I am not advocating it.
But I do think that Ed has failed to refute van Inwagen. The reason is because he conflates the two categories of fiction sentences lately distinguished, the category of lit-crit sentences like (C1), and the category of sentences that either do or could occur within pieces of fiction, an example being (C2).
Defending van Inwagen, I reject Ed's disjunction, namely: Either the conjuncts have no subject or they have the same subject. They have neither the same subject nor no subject. One has a subject and the other doesn't. (C1) has as its subject an abstract object and (C2) has as its subject nothing at all.
That's what van Inwagen could say to Ed so as to neutralize Ed's objection.
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