This night in 1985 was Rick Nelson's last: the Travelin' Man died in a plane crash. Wikipedia:
Nelson dreaded flying but refused to travel by bus. In May 1985, he decided he needed a private plane and leased a luxurious, fourteen-seat, 1944 Douglas DC-3 that had once belonged to the DuPont family and later to Jerry Lee Lewis. The plane had been plagued by a history of mechanical problems.[104] In one incident, the band was forced to push the plane off the runway after an engine blew, and in another incident, a malfunctioning magneto prevented Nelson from participating in the first Farm Aid concert in Champaign, Illinois.
On December 26, 1985, Nelson and the band left for a three-stop tour of the Southern United States. Following shows in Orlando, Florida, and Guntersville, Alabama, Nelson and band members took off from Guntersville for a New Year's Eve extravaganza in Dallas, Texas.[105] The plane crash-landed northeast of Dallas in De Kalb, Texas, less than two miles from a landing strip, at approximately 5:14 p.m. CST on December 31, 1985, hitting trees as it came to earth. Seven of the nine occupants were killed: Nelson and his companion, Helen Blair; bass guitarist Patrick Woodward, drummer Rick Intveld, keyboardist Andy Chapin, guitarist Bobby Neal, and road manager/soundman Donald Clark Russell. Pilots Ken Ferguson and Brad Rank escaped via cockpit windows, though Ferguson was severely burned.
A. J. Baker on John Anderson: ". . . there are no ultimates in Anderson's view and in line with Heraclitus he maintains that things are constantly changing, and also infinitely complex . . . ." (Australian Realism, Cambridge UP, 1986, p. 29, emphasis added)
Change is a given. From the earliest times sensitive souls have been puzzled and indeed aggrieved by it. "I am grieved by the transitoriness of things," Nietzsche complains in a letter to Franz Overbeck. But are things constantly changing? And what could that mean?
We need to ask four different questions. Does everything change? Do the things that change always change? Do the things that always change continuously change? Do the things that change change in every respect?
1. Does everything change? The first point to be made, and I believe the Andersonians would agree, is that it is not obviously true that everything changes, or true at all. There are plenty of putative counterexamples. Arguably, the truths of logic and mathematics are not subject to change. They are not subject to change either in their existence or in their truth-value. There is no danger that the theorem of Pythagoras will change from true to false tomorrow. If you say that the theorem in question is true only in Euclidean geometry, then I invite you to consider the proposition expressed by 'The theorem of Pythagoras is true only in Euclidean geometry.' Is the truth of this proposition, if true, subject to change?
Here is an even better example. Consider the proposition P expressed by ‘Everything changes.’ P is either true or false. If P is true, then both P and its truth-value change, which is a curiously self-defeating result: surely, those who preach that all is impermanent intend to say something about the invariant structure of the world and/or our experience of the world. Their intention is not to say that all is impermanent now, but if you just wait long enough some permanent things will emerge later. Clearly, P is intended by its adherents as changelessly true, as laying bare one of the essential marks of all that exists. But then P’s truth entails its own falsity. On the other hand, if P is false, then it is false. Therefore, necessarily, P is false. It follows that the negation of P is necessarily true. Hence it is necessarily true that some things do not change. The structure of the (samsaric) world does not change. The world is 'fluxed up,' no doubt about it; but not that 'fluxed up.'
2. Do the things that change always change? I take ‘always’ to mean ‘at every time.’ Clearly, not everything subject to change is changing at every time. The number of planets in our solar system, for example, though subject to change, is obviously not changing at every time. The position of my chair, to take a second example, is subject to change but is obviously not changing at every time.
3. Do the things that change continuously change? To say that a change is continuous is to say that between any two states in the process of change, there are infinitely many – indeed, continuum-many – intermediate states. To say that a change is discrete, however, is to say that there are some distinct states in the process of change such that there are no intermediate states between them. Now although some changes are continuous, such as the change in position of a planet orbiting the sun, not all changes are continuous. If I lose a tooth or an eye, that is a discrete change, not a continuous one. To go from having two eyes to one, is not to pass through intermediate states in which I have neither two nor one. A switch is off, then on. Although a continuous process may be involved in the transition, the change in switch status -- 0 or 1 -- is discrete, not continuous.
Hence it cannot be true that each thing that changes continuously changes.
4. Do the things that change change in every respect? No; consider the erosion of a mountainside. Erosion of a mountainside is a change that is occurring at every time, and presumably continuously; but there are properties in respect of which the mountainside cannot change if there is to be the change called erosion, for instance, the property of being a mountainside. Without something that remains the same, there cannot be change. There cannot be erosion unless something erodes. Alterational change requires a substrate of change which, because it is the substrate of change, precisely does not change. There is no alterational change without unchange. Hence if change is all-pervasive, in the sense that every aspect of a thing changes when a change occurs in the thing, then there is no change. Compare Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Princeton University Press, 1941), p. 277.
In sum, I have given reasons to believe that (i) some things are unchangeable; (ii) among the things that are changeable, some are merely subject to change and not always changing; (iii) among the things that are always changing, only some are continuously changing; and (iv) there is no (alterational as opposed to existential) change without unchange.
Therefore, those who lay great stress on the impermanence of the world and our experience of it need to balance their assertion by proper attention to the modes of permanence. For example, if we are told that everything is subject to change, does not the very sense of this assertion require that there be something that does not change, namely the ontological structure of (samsaric) entities? And if a thing is changing, how could that be the case if no aspect of the thing is unchanging? Furthermore, how could one become attached to something that was always changing? Attachment presupposes relative stability in the object of attachment. Jack is attached to Jill because her curvacity and cheerfulness, say, are relatively unchanging features of her. If she were nothing but change 'all the way down,' then there would be nothing for Jack's desire to get a grip on. But without desire and attachment, no suffering, and no need for a technology of release from suffering.
It is a mistake to think that change is all-pervasive. So those who maintain that all is impermanent need to tell us exactly what they mean by this and how they arrived at it. Is it not onesided and unphilosophical to focus on impermanence while ignoring permanence?
If all being is pure becoming, then there is no being -- and no becoming either.
Getting back to Anderson, if his claim is that things are constantly changing, what does that mean? Does it mean that everything that changes changes always, or continuously, or in every respect, or all three?
Here. Why is conservative commentary so vastly superior to the drivel that dribbles from the mephitic orifices of leftism?
What? You don't think it is superior? Then read Andrew McCarthy's Who's to Blame for the NYPD Killings? and compare it to anything on the same topic at leftist rags like The Nation.
Study McCarthy's piece and master the distinctions and terminology. Learn how to think straight. Learn how to think, period.
The semi-annual Twilight Zone marathon starts New Year's Eve morning and runs for two days on the SyFy Channel.
My eyes glued to the set, my wife invariably asks, "Haven't you seen that episode before?" She doesn't get it. I've seen 'em all numerous times each. Hell, I've been watching 'em since 1959 when the series first aired. But the best are inexhaustibly rich in content, delightful in execution, studded with young actors and actresses who went on to become famous alongside the now forgotten actors of yesteryear, with their period costumes and lingo, making allusions to the politics of the day. Timeless and yet a nostalgia trip. A fine way to end one year and begin another.
Too hip to moralize, Rod Serling was nevertheless a moralist whose 30-minute morality tales, the best of them anyway, set a standard unsurpassed to this day.
To see how much philosophical juice can be squeezed out of one of these episodes, see here.
Ed sends his best wishes from London in the form of a quotation from The Philosopher:
"Since the 'now' is an end and a beginning of time, not of the same time however, but the end of that which is past and the beginning of that which is to come, it follows that, as the circle has its convexity and its concavity, in a sense, in the same thing, so time is always at a beginning and at an end". (Physics book IV 222 a28)
The saying of the Stagirite smacks of presentism. I find presentism puzzling. See my Presentism Between Scylla and Charybdis from almost exactly two years ago.
Time, time, time, see what's become of me While I looked around For my possibilities I was so hard to please But look around, leaves are brown And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.
Our friend Mike provides us with an accurate overview of this pernicious Weltanshauung and rightly points out that it is by no means dead but (as I would put it) enjoys a healthy afterlife in those leftist seminaries called universities, but not only there:
I am convinced that ML [Marxism-Leninism] is alive and well in spite of the death of the Soviet Union. It has assumed new forms, discarded some ideas, taken some new ones on, but its spirit is healthy. Its spirit is essentially a collectivist one that does the following: It affirms that Man is infinitely malleable rather than limited by his nature, it denigrates individualism for the sake of collectivism, it de-emphasizes personal responsibility by making our behavior depend on things outside of our control, it relatives truth and morality by making them functions of group membership, it corrodes liberty for the sake of equality of results, it advocates the silencing of political opponents, and it is virulently anti-American (and anti-Israel, for that matter).
Many characteristics of ML are present in vibrant abundance among a large number of political movements, particularly its hatred of capitalism and its emphasis on ‘imperialism.’ These political movements include the environmentalist movement, the Occupy Wall Street movement, the sustainability movement, the social justice movement, the social equity movement, the discipline of Sociology, nearly any academic discipline with the word “Studies” in it, and so on and on. ‘Political Correctness’ is a phrase that we rightfully use disparagingly to refer to any number of aggressively Leftist movements and tendencies that threaten the value of liberty.
Or, as I like to say, PC comes from the CP. Valle goes on to ask why Marxist-Leninist ideas retain their appeal and concludes with four important truths:
You may well reject my path, but what is most important is that you do not abandon these four beliefs: There is objective truth, there is an objective morality to which you are bound, human freedom is real, and we must all be held personally morally accountable for our actions. These four beliefs will inoculate anyone against the twin poisons of collectivism and postmodernism.
There is little philosophical 'meat' here, but it is useful for contextualizing the man and his thought.
I stumbled upon this while searching without success for something comparing John Anderson with Ayn Rand. They are fruitfully comparable in various respects. Both were cantankerous and dogmatic and not open to having their ideas criticized or further developed by their acolytes; both founded highly influential cults; both were atheists and naturalists; both had curious and old-fashioned notions in logic; both were controversialists; both resided on the outskirts of academic respectability.
The last point of comparison merits some exfoliation and qualification. Anderson was surely a much better philosopher than Rand: unlike Rand, he was trained in philosophy; he held academic posts, mainly at the Unversity of Sydney whose intellectual life he dominated for many years; he read and wrote for the professional journals engaging to some degree with fellow professional philosophers. But the majority of his strictly philosophical publications were confined to the Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy and its successor the Australasian Journal of Philosophy. Also noteworthy is that, with the exception of a few epigoni, his ideas are not discussed.
One such epigone is A. J. Baker who has written a very useful but uncritical and not very penetrating study, Australian Realism: The Systematic Philosophy of John Anderson, Cambridge UP, 1986. He rightly complains in a footnote on p. 62:
D. M. Armstrong, who in his Universals and Scientific Realism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1978, gives an account of many types of theories, curiously dedicates the book to Anderson and yet does not discuss or even describe Anderson's theory on the subject.
I'm on a John Anderson jag at the moment and I'm having a blast. (Whatever else you say about philosophy it is a marvellous and marvellously reliable source of deep pleasure, at least to those to whom she has revealed herself and who have become her life-long acolytes.) Anderson (1893-1962) is a fascinating character both as a man and as a philosopher. More importantly, if he is right, I am wrong. For I am committed to modes of being both by these pages and by my published writings, chiefly, my 2002 book on existence. Central to Anderson's position, however, is that there are no levels of reality or modes of being. So intellectual honesty requires that I see if I can meet the Andersonian challenge. My first Anderson entry is here. Read that for some background.
Here is an Anderson-type argument against a Berkeley-type position.
Suppose it is maintained that there are two different modes of being or existence. There is, first, the being of perceptual objects such as the tree in the quad. For such things, esse est percipi, to be = to be perceived. And of course perceivedness is not monadic but relational: to be perceived is to be perceived by someone or by something that does the perceiving. These perceivers or knowers exist too, but in a different mode. For their being cannot be identified with their being perceived. Clearly, not everything can be such that its being is its being perceived. Such a supposition is scotched by the vicious infinite regress it would ignite. For if the being of God were his being perceived, then there would have to be something apart from God that pereceived him. And so on infinitely and viciously. So if the being of some items is perceivedness, then there must be at least two modes of being.
But of course knower and known stand in relation to each other. So the Andersonian begins his critique by asking about the concrete situation in which I know a tree, or God knows a tree. (Cf. A. J. Baker, Australian Realism, Cambridge UP, 1986, p. 26) What mode of being does this situation have? Does this situation or state of affairs exist by being perceived or by perceiving? Neither. The fact that I see a tree exists. But the existence of this fact is not its being perceived. The existence of the fact it not its perceiving either. The fact exists in neither way. It has neither mode of being. Therefore, the Andersonian concludes, the dualism of two modes of being breaks down. There is only one mode of being, that of situations. As A. J. Baker puts it, "that situation and its ingredients all have 'being' of the same single kind." (26)
The above argument is a non sequitur. It goes like this:
1. There is the relational fact of my seeing a tree.
2. The being of this fact is not its being perceived.
3. The being of this fact is not perceiving.
Therefore
4. There are not two modes of being, the being of objects of perception and the being of subjects of perception.
Therefore
5. There is only one mode of being, that of facts or situations.
Both inferences are non sequiturs.
To get to the desired conclusion one needs the premises of the following argument, premises that are far from self-evident:
6. The smallest unit of existence is the situation (state of affairs, concrete fact).
Therefore
7. Nothing exists except as a constituent of a situation.
8. Situations are not represented by true propositions; they are true propositions.
Therefore
9. Existence = truth.
10. There are neither degrees nor modes of truth.
Therefore
11. There are neither degrees nor modes of existence.
Therefore
12. Knowers and things known exist in the same way.
What is the quester after? What does he seek? He doesn't quite know, and that is part of his being a romantic. He experiences his present 'reality' as flat, stale, jejune, oppressive, substandard. He feels there must be more to life than work-a-day routines and social objectifications, the piling up of loot, getting ahead, "competitive finite selfhood" in a fine phrase of A. E. Taylor's. He wants intensity of experience, abundance of life, even while being unclear as to what these are. He casts a negative eye on the status quo, the older generation, his parents and family, and their quiet desperation. He scorns security and its living death.
Christopher J. McCandless was a good example, he whose story was skillfully recounted by Jon Krakauer in Into the Wild. In McCandless' case, the scorn for security, his fleeing a living death, led to a dying death. In an excess of self-reliance he crossed the Teklanika, not realizing it was his Rubicon and that its crossing would deposit him on the Far Shore.
He's baaack, bearing 'gifts.' Professor Christian Munthe has the story:
Remember The September Statement from earlier this year, signed by 648 academic philosophers in North America and elsewhere against Chicago philosopher and law professor Brian Leiter's unacceptable treatment of his UBC colleague Carrie Ichikawa-Jenkins, ending in Leiter's statement of resignation from the institutional ranking operation he had founded and coordinated up till then, the Philosophical Gourmet Report? If not, a recapture of some of the essential of this sad and disgraceful story is here (start at the bottom to get the adequate chronology). This detailed chronological account is also rewarding.
One would have thought that after this, Brian Leiter would prefer to lay dead and lick his wounds for a while, waiting for the memory of the scandal and his own disgrace to settle, and maybe find new pathways to having himself feel good about himself besides bullying and threatening (apparently mostly female) academic colleagues for one of the other, more or less fathomable, reason found by him to justify such behaviour. Maybe do something meriting a minimal portion of admiration and respect from academic colleagues, perhaps?
Not so at all.
As revealed on Christmas eve by Jonathan Ichikawa-Jenkins, Carrie's husband, Leiter has recently had a Canadian lawyer send a letter to them both, threatening with a defamation lawsuit unless they publicly post a "proposed statement" of apology to Leiter, with the specifically nasty ingredient of a specific threat that such a suit would imply " “a full airing of the issues and the cause or causes of [Carrie’s] medical condition;”. Moreover, the letter asks the Ichikawa-Jenkins to apologise not only for the personal declaration of professional ethos that made no mention of Brian Leiter whatsoever but that for some reason – to me still incomprehensible as long as a deeply suppressed guilty conscience or outright pathology is not pondered – to to be an attack on his person, but also for the actions of other people, such as this post at the Feminist Philosophers blog, and The September Statement itself – implying obviously that all the signatories to that statement would be in the crosshairs of professor Leiter. The full letter of the lawyer setting out these threats is here. The (expected) response from the Ichikawa-Jenkins' lawyer is here, stating the simple and obvious claim that all that's been publicly communicated on this matter – such as making public bullying emails of Leiter – is protected by normal statutes of freedom of speech.
Both animal and thinker, he faces two sorts of threats. Among the first, hardening of the arteries. Among the second, hardening of the categories. Which is worse depends on your categories. Either way, categories rule.
I have been, and will continue, discussing Trinity and Incarnation objectively, that is, in an objectifying manner. Now what do I mean by that? Well, with respect to the Trinity, the central conundrum, to put it in a very crude and quick way is this: How can three things be one thing? With respect to the Incarnation, how can the Second Person of the Trinity, the eternal and impassible Logos, be identical to a particular mortal man? These puzzles get us thinking about identity and difference and set us hunting for analogies and models from the domain of ordinary experience. We seek intelligibility by an objective route. We ought to consider that this objectifying approach might be wrongheaded and that we ought to examine a mystical and subjective approach, a 'Platonic' approach as opposed to an 'Aristotelian' one. See my earlier quotation of Heinrich Heine. A marvellous quotation.
1. The essence of Christianity is contained in the distinct but related doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Josef Pieper (Belief and Faith, p. 103) cites the following passages from the doctor angelicus: Duo nobis credenda proponuntur: scil. occultum Divinitatis . . . et mysterium humanitatis Christi. II, II, 1, 8. Fides nostra in duobus principaliter consistit: primo quidem in vera Dei cognitione . . . ; secundo in mysterio incarnationis Christi. II, II, 174, 6.
2. The doctrine of the Trinity spelled out in the Athanasian Creed, is that there is one God in three divine Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Each person is God, and yet there is exactly one God, despite the fact that the Persons are numerically distinct from one another. According to the doctrine of the Incarnation, the second person of the Trinity, the Son or Logos, became man in Jesus of Nazareth. There is a strong temptation to think of the doctrinal statements as recording (putative) objective facts and then to wonder how they are possible. I have touched upon some of the logical problems the objective approach encounters in previous posts. The logical problems are thorny indeed and seem to require for their solution questionable logical innovations such as the notion (championed by Peter Geach) that identity is sortal-relative, or an equally dubious mysterianism which leaves us incapable of saying just what we would be accepting were we to accept the theological propositions in question. The reader should review those problems in order to understand the motivation of what follows.
3. But it may be that the objective approach is radically mistaken. Is it an objective fact that God (or rather the second person of the Trinity) is identical to a particular man in the way it is an objective fact that the morning star is identical to the planet Venus?
Perhaps we need to explore a subjective approach. One such is the mystical approach illustrated in a surprising and presumably 'heretical' passage from St. John of the Cross' The Ascent of Mount Carmel (Collected Works, p. 149, tr. Kavanaugh and Rodriguez, emphasis added):
. . . when a person has finished purifying and voiding himself of all forms and apprehensible images, he will abide in this pure and simple light, and be perfectly transformed into it. This light is never lacking to the soul, but because of creature forms and veils weighing upon and covering it, the light is never infused. If a person will eliminate these impediments and veils, and live in pure nakedness and poverty of spirit . . . his soul in its simplicity and purity will then be immediately transformed into simple and pure Wisdom, the Son of God.
The Son of God, the Logos, the Second Person of the Trinity, is 'born,' 'enters the world,' is 'incarnated,' in the soul of any man who attains the mystic vision of the divine light. This is the plain meaning of the passage. The problem, of course, is to reconcile this mystical subjectivism with the doctrinal objectivism according to which the Logos literally became man, uniquely, in Jesus of Nazareth when a certain baby was born in a manger in Bethlehem some 2000 years ago.
4. A somewhat less mystical but also subjective approach is suggested by an analogy that Josef Pieper offers in Belief and Faith, p. 89. I will explore his analogy in my own way. Suppose I sincerely and thoughtfully say 'I love you' to a person who is open and responsive to my address. Saying this, I do not report an objective fact which subsists independently of my verbal avowal and the beloved's reception of the avowal. There may be objective facts in the vicinity, but the I-Thou relation is not an objective fact antecedent to the address and the response. It is a personal relation of subjectivity to subjectivity. The reality of the I-Thou relation is brought about by the sincere verbal avowal and its sincere reception. The lover's speaking is a self-witnessing and "the witnessed subject matter is given reality solely by having been spoken in such a manner." (Pieper, p. 89) The speaking is a doing, a performance, a self-revelation that first establishes the love relationship.
5. The Incarnation is the primary instance of God's self-revelation to us. God reveals himself to us in the life and words of Jesus -- but only to those who are open to and accept his words and example. That God reveals himself (whether in Jesus' life and words or in the mystic's consciousness here and now) is not an objective fact independent of a free addressing and a free responding. It depends on a free communicating and a free receiving of a communication just as in the case of the lover avowing his love to the beloved. God speaks to man as lover to beloved. In the case of the Incarnation, God speaks to man though the man Jesus. Jesus is the Word of God spoken to man, which Word subsists only in the free reception of the divine communication. Thus it is not that a flesh and blood man is identical to a fleshless and bloodless person of the Trinity -- a putative identity that is hard to square with the discernibility of the identity relations' relata -- it is that God's Word to us is embodied in the life and teaching of a man when this life and teaching are apprehended and received as a divine communication. The Incarnation, as the prime instance of divine revelation, is doubly subjective in that subject speaks to subject, and that only in this speaking and hearing is the Incarnation realized.
6. Incarnation is not an objective fact or process by which one thing, the eternal Logos, becomes identical to a second thing, a certain man. Looked at in this objectivizing way, the logical difficulties become insuperable. Incarnation is perhaps better thought of as the prime instance of revelation, where revelation is, as Aquinas says at Summa Contra Gentiles, 3, 154, "accomplished by means of a certain interior and intelligible light, elevating the mind to the perception of things that the understanding cannot reach by its natural light." Revelation, so conceived, is not an objective fact. Incarnation is a mode of revelation. Ergo, the Incarnation is not an objective fact.
7. This is admittedly somewhat murky. More needs to be said about the exact sense of 'subjective' and 'objective.'
Call it the MOB doctrine: there are modes of being, ways of existing, levels of reality. I have defended the MOB in these pages and in print, chiefly in "Existence: Two Dogmas of Analysis" in Novotny and Novak eds., Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, Routledge 2014, 45-75. But I have yet to come to grips with John Anderson's attack on levels of reality. I begin to do so in this entry. The Scot Anderson (1893-1962) is not much read today, but his teaching activity in Australia was highly influential. Central ideas in David M. Armstrong come from Anderson. One is naturalism. The other is the notion that the world is a world of states of affairs or facts.
1. According to Anderson, the contention that there are different kinds or degrees of truth and reality" is what distinguishes rationalism from empiricism. Empiricism "maintains that there only one way of being." (Studies in Empirical Philosophy, p. 1. From a 1927 article, "Empiricism." SEP was originally published in 1962 together with a helpful introduction by John Passmore.)
This is a very interesting ontological as opposed to epistemological way of distinguishing rationalism from empiricism. I am not sure that it is adequate. (Granted, an empiricist must eschew levels of reality; but must a rationalist embrace them? Not clear. Many do of course. But all?) This demarcation issue is not my concern in this entry.
2. ". . . any postulation of different orders of being is illogical." (SEP 2)
This is a very strong claim. It is to the effect that anyone who postulates different orders of being or levels of reality embraces either a formal-logical contradiction or some sort of broadly logical incoherence. What arguments could Anderson have that would generate such a strong conclusion?
3. Anderson gives a couple of question-begging arguments on p. 2. (a) Nothing can transcend existence. (b) Only empirical facts exist. These are worthless. One blatantly begs the question if one identifies the existent with the spatiotemporal or the empirically factual and then announces that nothing can exist in any other way.
4. Anderson's main argument, however, cannot be dismissed out of hand: "The very nature and possibility of discourse" rule out any theory of higher or lower orders of being or of truth. That there should be different levels of being is "unspeakable." (SEP 2) Why?
The proposition is primary. Whatever we think about or speak about we do so using propositions. Our only epistemic access to anything is via propositions. Therefore, ". . . we are concerned with a single way of being: that, namely, which is conveyed when we say that a proposition is true." (SEP 3, emphasis in original)
The idea seems to be that whatever is, is propositional. Therefore, there is nothing supra-propositional and nothing infra-propositional. There is no Absolute, but also no "mere data, not yet propositionalized." Armstrong holds that the world is a world of states of affairs or facts, where facts are not propositions, but proposition-like entities. Anderson's position is more radical: facts are propositions. So, strictly speaking, we do not access the world via propositions; propositions are what we access. In Armstrong there is a distinction between truth-bearers and truth-makers; in his teacher Anderson this distinction is not made. Now if everything that exists is a true proposition, then to be (to exist) = to be true. Since there are no degrees or modes of truth, there are no degrees or modes of being.
A proposition for Anderson is not a Fregean sense or a merely intentional object. Just what it is I am still trying to figure out.
5. But isn't Anderson's a rationalist scheme? Anderson is maintaining that reality must conform to discourse and discursive reason. We think in propositions and cannot do otherwise; therefore (?!) reality is propositional. Nothing is real except what conforms to the way we must think if we are to think at all. Facts are propositions; for a fact to exist is for it to be true. Since there is only one way for a proposition to be true, there is only one way to be.
And isn't there something idealist about Anderson's approach? The only world is the world as it is for us. Whether you pull the world into the mind, or push the mind out into the world by reifying propositions, the result is the same. I am merely sounding a theme to be pursued in future entries. Elaboration and clarification can wait.
There is no "getting behind the proposition to something either lower or higher . . . ." (3) One can neither ascend to the Absolute not descend to the raw data of sensation uncooked by categories. Think of Kant's sinnliche Mannigfaltikeit, the sensory manifold that provides the matter that is then worked up by the categories, the forms of understanding. Anderson's scheme rules out the sensory manifold as much as the One of Plotinus or Mr Bradley's Absolute, not to mention the simple God of Aquinas and the 'unspeakable' Tao of Lao Tzu.
6. Let's see if we can beat Anderson's argument into a more formal and rigorous shape. Here is one possible reconstruction:
a. Truth is what is conveyed by the copula 'is' in a proposition. b. Propositions can only be true or if not true then false. Therefore c. There are no degrees or kinds of truth. d. Propositions are facts. e. Truth = existence. Therefore f. There are no degrees or kinds or levels or modes of existence, being or reality.
Right now I am merely trying to understand what Anderson is maintaining. Evaluation can wait.
Anderson, I think it is fair to say, is an enemy of the ineffable. What we mean cannot outrun what we can say. There is nothing ineffable or inexpressible. Contrast this with the position of the Tractarian Wittgenstein. For Wittgenstein, the Higher, home to our ethical and religious concerns, is, but it is the Inexpressible, das Unaussprechliche. Es gibt allerdings das Unaussprechliche. There is the Unspeakable. For Anderson, what is unspeakable is nothing at all. Reality is exhausted by the propositional.
7. Anderson holds that to distinguish among modes of being is "illogical." (SEP 4) Perhaps one can argue for this as follows:
g. Law of Excluded Middle: a proposition is either true, or if not true, then false. h. Truth = existence (being). Therefore i. To postulate different modes of being is to violate LEM, a law of logic, and to be "illogical."
We shall continue with this. It is Christmas Eve, boys and girls. Time to punch the clock and enjoy some holiday cheer. In moderation of course. As I always say:
We need more of this sort of thing. Less 'civility,' more condemnation of liars, race-baiters, and inciters-to-violence. Civility is for the civil, not for mendacious, self-serving, underminers of civil order. There can be no civility without civil order.
The stinking lies and deceptive half-truths surrounding this topic come from the top down, from Obama, through Holder, to The New York Times and then on down through the lower echelons of the leftist media until they finally become the destructive and murderous actions of the know-nothing, looting and rioting rabble. "The fish stinks from the head."
And ideas have consequences.
The lies of the anti-cop Left are well-exposed by Heather MacDonald here.
Eugene Robinson is one of those black commentators whose tribal identification makes it impossible for him to be objective. His latest column begins like this:
WASHINGTON -- It is absurd to have to say this, but New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, activist Al Sharpton and President Obama are in no way responsible for the coldblooded assassination of two police officers in Brooklyn on Saturday. Nor do the tens of thousands of Americans who have demonstrated against police brutality in recent weeks bear any measure of blame.
At this point I stopped reading. Why? Because what Robinson is saying here is just obviously wrong. It is as wrong as saying that de Blasio has blood on his hands. De Blasio didn't pull the trigger, nor did Sharpton or Obama. The black Muslim did.
But to say that de Blasio, Sharpton, Obama, and the demonstrators "are in no way responsible" or do not "bear any measure of blame" is plainly false, and Robinson must know that it is. I conjecture that it is his tribal identification -- his identification as a black man -- in tandem with his identification with the 'tribe' of leftists that makes it impossible for him to see the obvious. The editors at NRO get it right:
This Saturday, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were assassinated on on the streets of New York for wearing the uniform that keeps those streets safe. Only one man, a felon who may have been mentally ill, bears responsibility for robbing two young families of their fathers and husbands.
But his heinous act has served to focus attention on the rancid element of the recent anti-police protests that — even when they haven’t included arson and assaults on cops – have been lawless and replete with other hateful sentiments. Just last weekend, some protesters in New York were infamously chanting, “What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want them? Now.”
President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and New York mayor Bill de Blasio have all played their own irresponsible parts; they have all lent moral support to occasionally violent protests.
That is the truth. Obama, Holder, and de Blasio are in dereliction of duty. Their duty is to uphold the rule of law and civil order, not undermine them by sowing the seeds of disrespect for the law and the agents of its enforcement.
I decided on a new paperback for $27.41 plus tax rather than a used hardcover. The used hardcovers start at $2,336.86. Even considering how vastly superior hardbounds are to paperbounds, that struck me as a wee bit steep.
Bernard Goetz, mild-mannered electronics nerd, looked like an easy mark, a slap job. And so he got slapped around, thrown through plate glass windows, mugged and harrassed. He just wanted to be left alone to tinker in his basement. Those were the days before Rudy Giuliani cleaned up New York City. One day Goetz decided not to take it any more and acquired a .38 'equalizer.' And so the four black punks, armed with sharpened screwdrivers, who demanded money of him on the New York subway 30 years ago today, December 22, 1984, paid a serious price to the delight of conservatives and the consternation of liberals. To the former he became a folk hero, to the latter a 'racist.' It was a huge story back then.
Things didn't go well for the black thugs whom Goetz shot. One of the miscreants, James Ramseur, killed himself on the 27th anniversary of the subway shooting. This was 17 months after having been released from prison where he served 25 years for raping a young woman on a Bronx rooftop.
Darrell Caby brought a civil action against Goetz, was awarded millions, but collected nothing. Barry Allen continued his life of petty crime and was in and out of prison. Troy Canty was arrested for domestic abuse.
Meanwhile Goetz, now 67, flourishes and runs a store called "Vigilante Electronics." Wikipedia also informs us that Goetz is involved with squirrel rescue in the city.[84] He installs squirrel houses, feeds squirrels, and performs first aid.
A heart-warming story on this, the eve of the eve of Christmas Eve.
Exactly what does ‘refer’ mean? And when we talk about ‘direct reference’ and ‘indirect reference’, are we really talking about exactly the same relation, or only the same in name?
The second question got me thinking.
The paradigms of direct reference are the indexicals and the demonstratives. The letter 'I' is not the word 'I,' and the word 'I' -- the first-person singular pronoun -- has non-indexical uses. But let's consider a standard indexical use of this pronoun. Tom says to Tina, "I'm hungry." Tom refers to himself directly using 'I.' That means: Tom refers to himself, but not via a description that he uniquely satisfies. The reference is not routed through a reference-mediating sense. If you think it is so routed, tell me what the reference-mediating sense of your indexical uses of the FPS pronoun is.
As I understand it, to say of a singular term that it is directly referential is not to say that it lacks sense, but that it lacks a reference-mediating sense. The indexical 'now' does have a sense in that whatever it picks out must be a time, indeed, a time that is present. But this very general sense does not make a use of 'now' refer to the precise time to which it refers. So 'now' is directly referential despite its having a sense.
Consider the demonstrative 'this.' Pointing to a poker, I say 'This is hot.' You agree and say 'This is hot!' We say the same thing. The same thing we say is the proposition. The proposition is true. Neither the poker nor its degree of heat are true. The reference of 'this' is direct. It seems to follow that the poker itself is a constituent of the proposition that is before both of our minds and that we agree is true. But then propositions are Russellian as opposed to Fregean. The poker itself, not an abstract surrogate such as a Fregean sense, is a constituent of the proposition.
To say that a singular term t indirectly refers to object o is to say two things. (i) It is to say that there is a description D(t) that gives the sense of t, a description which is such that anything that satisfies it uniquely satisfies it. (ii) And it is to say that O uniquely satisfies D(t).
Note that for the indirect reference relation to hold there needn't be any real-world connection such as a causal connection between one's use of t and o. It is just a matter of whether or not o uniquely satisfies the description encapsulated by t. Satisfaction is a 'logical' relation. It is like the 'falling-under' relation. Ed falls under the concept Londoner. The relation of falling-under is not 'real': it is not causal or spatial or temporal or a physical part-whole relation.
Indirect reference is just unique satisfaction by an item of a description encapsulated in a term. If 'Socrates' refers indirectly, then it refers to whatever satisfies some such definite description as 'the teacher of Plato.' Direct reference, on the other hand, has nothing to do with satisfaction of a description.
So I think London Ed is on to something. When we talk about ‘direct reference’ and ‘indirect reference’, we are not talking about exactly the same relation. The two phrases have only a word in common, 'reference.' If all reference is indirect, then direct reference is not reference. And if all reference is direct, then indirect reference is not reference. There are not two kinds of reference.
The reason, again, is that indirect reference is just unique satisfaction of a description whereas direct reference has nothing to do with satisfaction of a description.
Here is a white cube. Call it 'Carl.' 'Carl is white' is true. But Carl, though white, might not have been white. (He would not have been white had I painted him red.) So 'Carl is white' is contingently true. There is no necessity that Carl be white. By contrast, 'Carl is three-dimensional' is necessarily true. It is metaphysically necessary that he be three-dimensional. Of course, the necessity here is conditional: given that Carl exists, he cannot fail to be three-dimensional. But Carl might not have existed. So Carl is subject to a two-fold contingency, one of existence and one of property-possession. It is contingent that Carl exists at all -- he is not a necessary being -- and with respect to some of his properties it is contingent that he has them. He exists contingently and he is white contingently. Or, using 'essence' and 'accident,' we can say: Carl is a contingent being that is accidentally white but essentially three-dimensional. By contrast, the number 7 is a necessary being that accidentally enjoys the distinction of being Poindexter's favorite number, but is essentially prime.
Some truths need truth-makers. 'Carl is white' is one of them. Grant me that some truths need truth-makers. My question is this: Can a trope do the truth-making job in a case like this or do we need a concrete fact?
Carl is white. That is given. Some say that (at least some of) the properties of particulars are themselves particulars (unrepeatables). Suppose you think along those lines. You accept that things have properties -- Carl, after all, is white extralinguistically -- and therefore that there are properties, but you deny that properties are universals. Your nominalism is moderate, not extreme. Suppose you think of Carl's whiteness as a trope or as an Husserlian moment or as an Aristotelian accident. (Don't worry about the differences among these items.) That is, you take the phrase 'Carl's whiteness' to refer, not to the fact of Carl's being white, which is a complex having Carl himself as a constituent, but to a simple item: a bit of whiteness. This item depends for its existence on Carl: it cannot exist unless Carl exists, and, being particular, it cannot exist in or at any other thing such as Max the white billiard ball. Nor is it transferrable: the whiteness of Carl cannot migrate to Max.
The truth-maker of a truth is an existing thing in virtue of whose existence the truth is true. Why can't Carl's whiteness trope be the truth-maker of 'Carl is white'? That very trope cannot exist unless it exists 'in' Carl as characterizing Carl. So the mere existence of that simple item suffices to make true the sentence 'Carl is white.' Or so it seems to some distinguished philosophers.
If this is right, then there is no need that the truth-maker of a truth have a sentence-like or proposition-like structure. (For if a proposition-like truth-maker is not needed in a case like that of Carl the cube, then presumably there is no case in which it is needed.) A simple unrepeatable bit of whiteness has no internal structure whatsoever, hence no internal proposition-like structure. A concrete fact or state of affairs, however, does: Carl's being white, for example, has at a bare minimum a subject constituent and a property constituent with the former instantiating the second.
My thesis is not that all truth-makers are proposition-like, but that some are. Presumably, the truth-maker of 'Carl is Carl' and 'Carl exists' is just Carl. But it seems to me that the truth-maker of 'Carl is white' cannot be the particular whiteness of Carl. In cases like this a simple item will not do the job. Why not?
1. If it is legitimate to demand an ontological ground of the truth of a truth-bearer, whether it be a sentence or a proposition or a judgment or whatever, then it is legitimate to demand an ontological ground of the contingency of the truth of a truth-bearer. If we have a right to ask: what makes 'Carl is white' true, then we also have a right to ask: What makes 'Carl is white' contingently or accidentally true as opposed to essentially true? Truth and contingent truth are not the same. And it is contingent truth that needs explaining. If a truth-bearer is necessarily true, it may be such in virtue of its logical form, or because it is true ex vi terminorum; in either case it is not clear that the is any need for a truth-maker. Does 'Bachelors are male' need a truth-maker? Not as far as I can see. But 'Tom is a bachelor' does. Unlike David Armstrong, I am not a truth-maker maximalist. See Truthmaker Maximalism Questioned.
2. The trope Carl's whiteness can perhaps explain why the sentence 'Carl is white' is true, but it cannot explain why it is accidentally true as opposed to essentially true. For the existence of the trope is consistent both with Carl's being essentially white and Carl's being accidentally white. If F is a trope, and F exists, then F is necessarily tied to a concrete individual (this is the case whether one is a trope bundle theorist or a trope substratum theorist like C. B. Martin), and so the concrete indiviual exists and is characterized by F. But this is so whether the concrete individual is essentially F or accidentally F.
3. To explain the contingency of a contingent truth it is not enough that the truth-maker be contingent; there must also be contingency within the truth-maker. Or so it seems to me. The fact theory can accommodate this requirement. For in the fact of Carl's being white, the fact itself is contingent, but so also is the connection between Carl and whiteness. Carl and whiteness can exist without the fact existing. (This assumes that whiteness is a universal) The contingency of the connection of the constituents within the fact accounts for the contingency of the truth of 'Carl is white.' But no trope is contingently connected to any concrete individual of which it is the trope.
Via John Pepple, I just learned that John McAdams, a tenured associate professor of political science at Marquette University, has been suspended with pay and barred from campus for criticizing a graduate student philosophy teacher who shut down a classroom conversation on gay marriage. As McAdams puts it at his weblog Marquette Warrior:
This incident further illustrates what I mean when I say that the universities of the land, most of them, have become leftist seminaries and hotbeds of political correctness. The behavior of the philosophy instructor illustrates the truth that there is little that is classically liberal about contemporary liberals.
The implicit logic of the Draft Warren movement is that after eight years of the Obama presidency, the American people want to move . . . further left.
Well said, my man. And this too:
Amid the recent, violent anti-police protests (whose political consequences will be real but unmeasurable), Smith College President Kathleen McCartney sent the student body an email titled, “All Lives Matter.” The phrase horrified Smith students. Her words, they said, diminished black lives. They demanded that Ms. McCartney issue a public apology. Which she did. This is a scene straight out of the public shamings of officials in China under Mao Zedong.
But Chairman Mao did get one thing right: the line about power emanating from the barrel of a gun. Another reason why the Democrat stupidos are stupid, one not mentioned by Henninger, is that their recent antics are fueling gun and ammo sales. (Pew Research Center report) Why on earth would any citizen need an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle? How about this: to protect oneself, one's family, and one's business against looters and arsonists on the rampage egged on aand enabled by race-baiting, rabble-rousing, hate-America leftist scumbags who undermine the police and contribute to a climate in which people need to take over their own defense. The Obama Admininstration's assault on the rule of law motivates the right-thinking to arm themselves.
By the way, libs and lefties routinely elide the semi-auto vs. full-auto distinction. It is not that they are ignorant of it, or too stupid to understand it; it is worse: they are deeply mendacious and will use any means to further their agenda. Never forget: PC comes from the CP. The end justifies the means. It is on all fours with their elision of the legal vs. illegal immigrant distinction. It is not that lefties are ignorant of it, or too stupid to understand it, etc.
Getting back to 'Fauxcahontas', here is an entry from 21 May 2012:
Elizabeth Warren: Undocumented Injun
Elizabeth 'Fauxcahontas' Warren, Cherokee maiden, diversity queen of the Harvard Lore Law School, and author of the cookbook Pow Wow Chow, is being deservedly and diversely raked over the coals. Howie Carr, White and Wrong. NRO, Paleface. Michael Barone, Racial Preferences: Unfair and Ridiculous. Excerpt:
Let's assume the 1894 document is accurate. That makes Warren one-thirty-second Native American. George Zimmerman, the Florida accused murderer, had a black grandmother. That makes him a quarter black, four times as black as Warren is Indian, though The New York Times describes him as a "white Hispanic."
In the upside-down world of the liberal, the 'white Hispanic' George Zimmerman is transmogrified into a redneck and the lily-white Elizabeth Warren into a redskin.
The Left's diversity fetishism is so preternaturally boneheaded that one has to wonder whether calm critique has any place at all in responses to it. But being somewhat naive, I have been known to try rational persuasion. See Diversity and the Quota Mentality for one example.
We are being inundated by a tsunami of toxic Unsinn from the Left anent race. Sadly, a lot of this sewage comes from blacks, many of them well-placed and privileged, but profiting from the lies and slanders and hence assiduous in cultivating their 'grievances.'
Jeff Hodges just now apprised me of a post of his featuring the following bumpersticker:
My take is as follows.
Just as tautological sentences can be used to express non-tautological propositions, contradictory sentences can be used to express non-contradictory propositions.
Consider 'It is what it is.' What the words mean is not what the speaker means in uttering the words. Sentence meaning and speaker's meaning come apart. The speaker does not literally mean that things are what they are -- for what the hell else could they be? Not what they are? What the speaker means is that (certain) things can't be changed and so must be accepted with resignation. Your dead-end job for example. 'It is what it is.'
There are many examples of the use of tautological sentences to express non-tautological propositions. 'What will be, will be' is an example, as is 'Beer is beer.' When Ayn Rand proclaimed that Existence exists! she did not mean to assert the tautological proposition that each existing thing exists; she was ineptly employing a tautological sentence to express a non-tautological and not uncontroversial thesis of metaphysical realism according to which what exists exists independently of any mind, finite or infinite.
Similarly here except that a contradictory form of words is being employed to convey a non-contradictory thought. But what is the thought, the Fregean Gedanke, the proposition? Perhaps this: Islam is not the religion of peace. Since Islam is supposed to be the religion of peace, to say that Islam has nothing to do with Islam is to say that Islam has nothing to do with peace, i.e., that Islam is not the religion of peace, or not a religion of peace. Since one meaning of 'Islam' is peace, the saying equivocates on 'Islam.' Thus the proposition expressed is: Islam has nothing to do with peace. This proposition, whether true or false, is non-contradictory unlike the form of words used to express it.
Here is another possible reading. Given that many believe that Islam is terroristic, someone who says that Islam has nothing to do with Islam is attempting to convey the non-contradictory thought that real Islam is not terroristic.
Such a person, far from expressing a contradiction, would be equivocating on 'Islam,' and in effect distinguishing between real Islam and hijacked Islam, or between Islam and Islamism.
Suppose you believe that man has been created in the image and likeness of God. Can you, consistently with that belief, hold that only some possess a religious disposition?
I often say things like the following:
The religious person perceives our present life, or our natural life, as radically deficient, deficient from the root (radix) up, as fundamentally unsatisfactory; he feels it to be, not a mere condition, but a predicament; it strikes him as vain or empty if taken as an end in itself; he sees himself as homo viator, as a wayfarer or pilgrim treading a via dolorosa through a vale that cannot possibly be a final and fitting resting place; he senses or glimpses from time to time the possibility of a Higher Life; he feels himself in danger of missing out on this Higher Life of true happiness. He feels his fellows to be fools endlessly distracted by bagatelles, sunken deep in Pascalian divertissement, as Platonic troglodytes unaware of the Cave as Cave.
I maintain that one in whom this doesn't strike a chord, or sound a plaintive arpeggio, is one who lacks a religious disposition. In some it is simply lacking, and it cannot be helped. I 'write them off' no matter how analytically sharp they are. One cannot discuss religion with them, for it cannot be real to them, any more than one can share one's delight in poetry with the terminally prosaic, or one's pleasure in mathematics with the mathematically anxious. Religion is not, for those who lack the disposition, what William James in "The Will to Believe" calls a "living option," let alone a "forced" or "momentous" one. It can only be something strained and ridiculous, a tissue of fairy tales, something for children and old ladies, an opiate for the weak and dispossesed, a miserable anthropomorphic projection, albeit unconscious, a wish-fulfillment, something cooked up in the musty medieval cellars of priestcraft where unscrupulous manipulators exploit human gullibility for their own advantage.
A perceptive interlocutor raised an objection that I would put as follows. "You say that some lack a religious disposition. I take it you mean that they are utterly bereft of it. But how is that consistent with the imago dei? For if we are made in the divine image, then we are spiritual beings who must, as spiritual beings, possess at least the potentiality of communion with the divine source of the spirit within us, even if this potentiality is to no degree actual. After all, we are not in the image of God as animals, but as spiritual beings, and part of being a spiritual being is having the potentiality to know itself, and thus to know that one is a creature if in fact one is a creature, and in knowing this to know God in some measure."
How might I meet this objection?
One way is by denying that all biologically human beings bear the divine image, or bear the divine image in its fullness. Maybe it is like this. The existence of specimens of the zoological species to which we belong is accounted for by the theory of evolution. God creates the physical universe in which evolution occurs, and in which human animals evolve from lower forms. The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis is not an account of how human animals came to be that is in competition with the theory of evolution. It is not about human animals at all. Adam is not the first man; there was no first man. Eve is not the first woman; there was no first woman. Adam and Eve are not the first human animals; they are the first human animals that, without ceasing to be animals, became spiritual beings when God bestowed upon them consciousness, self-consciousness, free will, and all their concomitants. But the free divine bestowal was not the same for all: from some he withheld the power to know God and become godlike.
I suspect this is not theologically 'kosher.' But it fits with my experience. I have always felt that some human beings lack depth or spirit or soul or inwardness or whatever you want to call it. It is not that I think of them as zombies as philosophers use this term: I grant that they are conscious and self-conscious. But I sense that there is nothing to them beyond that. The light is on, but no one is there. (In a zombie, the light is off.) There is no depth-dimension: they are surface all the way down.
But it may be that a better line for me is the simpler one of saying that in all there is the religious disposition, but in some it is wholly undeveloped, rather than saying that in some it is not present at all.
UPDATE (12/19): The "perceptive interlocutor" mentioned above responds:
To suppose that some persons lack the religious disposition is certainly not theologically kosher, at least not from the Christian perspective. This is more akin to certain varieties of predestinarian gnosticism to which early Christian theologians (e.g., Origen, Irenaeus, et al.) vehemently objected. These gnostic theories proposed that there were various different classes of human persons, some of whom were structurally determined to realize saving knowledge (gnosis) of Reality whereas others were cruder, baser, and doomed to live unenlightened lives in the body. The difference between classes was not choices they had made or anything of the sort; it was simply their ontological structure to reach enlightenment or not. The early Christians objected to this in two ways: first, it is denial of the freedom of the will of the human person, since some evidently are intrinsically incapable of choosing salvation; second, it is incompatible with God's goodness, since if he is good, he desires the salvation of all and works to accomplish it.
I don't disagree that these are among the theologically orthodox responses to my suggestion above. How good they are, however, is a separate question. First, if God does not grant to some class of persons the religious disposition, that is not a denial to them of freedom of the will. They can be as free as you please; they just lack that particular power. I am not free to fly like a bird, but it doesn't follow that I am not free.
As for the second point, there may be a confusion of damnation with non-knowledge of God. The suggestion above is that only some biologically human persons are disposed to seek God and possibly know God. That is not to say that these persons are predestined to a state in which they are conscious of God's existence but cut off from God.
God desires the ultimate beatitude of all that have the power to achieve it -- but not all have this power on the above suggestion. If God desires the ultimate beatitude of all whether or not they have the power to know God, then God desires the ultimate beatitude of dolphins and apes and cats and dogs.
I suppose these are the two greatest problems for the quasi-gnostic position you consider in that post. Another problem would be that it might ethically justify mistreatment and prejudice against persons deemed to lack a religious disposition. After all, if they cannot sense God's existence and enjoy communion with him, how are they any different from animals? If God himself didn't care to make them such that they could know him, why should theists and those having the religious disposition care for them any more than for a dog?
I don't see any problem here either. Not all human beings have the same powers but people like me and my interlocutor would not dream of using this fact to justify mistreatment of certain classes of people.
I have argued that that which exists at no location or at no point in time, by definition exists never and nowhere, which is by definition not existing.
'Nowhere' means 'at no place' and 'never' means 'at no time.' By definition. So far, so good. Now suppose it is true that whatever exists exists in space and time. Could this be true by definition? Of course not! One cannot settle substantive metaphysical questions by framing definitions.
I stumbled upon this word yesterday on p. 140 of John Williams' 1965 novel, Stoner. (Don't let the title of this underappreciated masterpiece put you off: it is not about a stoner but about a professor of English, surname 'Stoner.') Williams puts the following words in the mouth of Charles Walker, "Confronted as we are by the mystery of literature, and by its inenarrable power, we are behooved to discover the source of the power and mystery."
As you might have guessed, 'inenarrable' means: incapable of being narrated, untellable, indescribable, ineffable, unutterable, unspeakable, incommunicable. One would apply this high-falutin' word to something of a lofty nature, the hypostatic union, say, and not to some miserable sensory quale such as the smell of sewer gas.
Serendipitously, given recent Christological inquiries, I just now came across the word in this passage from Cyril of Alexandria:
We affirm that different are the natures united in real unity, but from both comes only one Christ and Son, not that because of the unity the difference of the natures is eliminated, but rather because divinity and humanity, united in unspeakable and inennarrable unity, produced for us One Lord and Christ and Son.
I like animals because I think they're a higher form of life. They have no pretenses about what they are; a dog can achieve levels of serenity and fulfillment of which I cannot conceive by merely being a dog and doing dog things. Myself, on the other hand, I could be the next Einstein with the face of James Dean and still very likely be miserable all my life.
I like animals too, but not because they are a higher form of life. They are lower forms of life. The ascription of pretentiousness to a cat or dog is of course absurd, but equally so is the ascription of serenity and fulfillment to them if these words carry the meaning that we attach to them. It is because man is a spiritual being that he can pretend and fake and dissemble and posture and blow up his ego like a balloon to blot out the sun. And it is because man is a spiritual being that he can know serenity, fulfillment, and in rare cases the peace that surpasseth all understanding. Man has not only the power of thought but also the mystical power to transcend thought. All of this is beyond the animal. If you disagree, then I will ask you to produce the mathematical and metaphysical and mystical treatises of the dolphins and the apes. Who among them is a Paul Erdös or a Plato or a Juan de la Cruz? As Heidegger says somewhere, "An abyss yawns between man and animal."
On the other hand no animal knows misery like we do. Barred out heights, they are also barred our depths of wretchedness and despair.
So while I have many bones to pick with John Stuart Mill on the score of his utilitarianism and his hedonism and his psychologism in logic and his internally inconsistent attempt at distinguishing higher from lower pleasures, his is a noble soul and I agree with the sentiment expressed in this well-known passage from Utilitarianism, Chapter II:
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they know only their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.
I wonder if Mill can validate this noble thought within his paltry hedonist scheme. It is in any case a value judgment and I am not sure I would be able to refute someone who preferred the life of a cat or a dog or a contented cow to that of a man, half-angel, half-beast, tormented, crazed, but participant in highest bliss. But I agree with Nietzsche that man is something to be overcome, though not along the lines he proposes. He needs perfecting. I cannot forbear to quote his marvellous jab at the English hedonists from The Twilight of the Idols:
If we have our own why of life, we shall get along with almost any how. Man does not strive for pleasure; only the Englishman does. ("Maxims and Arrows," #12, tr. W. Kaufmann.)
This from The Collected Poems and Epigrams of J. V. Cunningham, Swallow Press, 1971, p. 118, epigram #47:
This Monist who reduced the swarm Of being to a single form, Emptying the universe for fun, Required two A's to think them one.
Notes
1. The title is Cunningham's own.
2. Poetic license extends to use-mention confusion.
3. It was over at Patrick Kurp's place that I first made the acquaintance of Mr. Cunningham.
4. Note the poetically pleasing addition by the author of his name to the title of his collection.
5. My copy of Cunningham's collection, a well-made hard bound, acquired via Amazon, is a Mount Mary College (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) library discard. There is no evidence that it is a second copy. How naive of me to think that libraries ought to be permanent repositories of high culture. But the folly of reliably liberal librarians redounds to the benefit of the bookman.
First order of the cyberday is the correction of the previous day's typographical errors. I astonish myself at my obliviousness to my own mistakes of typography. Four corrections already this fine morn. Add that to a couple I made yesterday. A variation on the theme that "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."
The sense swims before my mind while the fingers limp to catch up, stumbling as they go.
Of course they do. All lives matter. Black lives, white lives, yellow lives, red lives, even redneck lives. And let's not forget the lives of black cops. They too matter. Did someone well-placed proclaim that black lives don't matter? Who? When? Where can I find him?
All lives matter. It follows that black lives matter, including the lives of the peaceful, law-abiding, hard-working black residents of Ferguson, Missouri. And because these black lives matter, it matters that laws be enforced. All reasonable laws from traffic laws to laws against looting and arson.
As if to prove once again that that there is no coward like a university administrator, Smith College President Kathleen McCartney, after having said in an e-mail to students that all lives matter, has retracted her statement and apologized.
Horribile dictu. And yet another proof that the universities of the land, most of them, have turned into leftist seminaries and hothouses of political correctness. And yet another example of abdication of authority.
And so I pinch myself once again. Am I awake? Or is this all a bad dream? Could this stuff really be happening?
Memo to President McCartney: grow a pair, or the female equivalent thereof. You don't apologize for speaking the truth; you stand up for the truth and fight back against the the foolish know-nothings who you are supposed to be 'educating.'
Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno is exasperating but exciting. Although as sloppy as one expects Continental thinkers to be, he is nonetheless a force to be reckoned with, a serious man who is seriously grappling with ultimates at the outer limits of intelligibility. Derrida I dismiss as a bullshitter; indeed, to cop a line from John Searle, he is someone who "gives bullshit a bad name." But I can't dismiss Adorno. I confess to being partial to the Germans. They are nothing if not serious, and I'm a serious man. Among the French there is an excess of façade and frippery. But now let's get to work — like good Germans.
Suppose we focus on just part of one of Adorno's serpentine sentences. This is from Negative Dialektik (Suhrkamp, p. 354):
Dass das Unveraenderliche Wahrheit sei und das Bewegte, Vergaengliche Schein, die Gleichgueltigkeit von Zeitlichem und ewigen Ideen gegeneinander, ist nicht laenger zu behaupten . . . .
Adorno is telling us that
It can no longer be asserted that the true is the unchangeable while the mobile and mutable is mere appearance, or that eternal Ideas and the temporal realm are indifferent to each other . . . .
So what is our man saying? He is saying that after Auschwitz — where 'Auschwitz' collects all the genocidal and totalitarian horrors of the Third Reich — one can no longer take Platonism seriously, or the people's Platonism either, Christianity. And indeed most traditional philosophy, consisting as it does, in Whitehead's phrase, of a series of footnotes to Plato. The old metaphysics is dead, the metaphysics according to which Being itself has a positive and hence affirmable character. An experience has refuted the old metaphysics, the experience of Auschwitz.
But if it can no longer be asserted that that the true is the immutable, then it once could be asserted. And indeed, by 'assert' is intended assert with truth or at least justification. Note the ambiguity of 'assertible' as between capable of being asserted and worth of being asserted. And make a meta-note of how a broadly analytic thinker like me pedantically points out something like this whereas your typical Continental head would find my procedure boorish or somehow gauche. "How low class of you to be so careful and precise!"
But I digress. My point, again, is that if a proposition can no longer be asserted and believed, then it once could be asserted and believed. But if a metaphysical proposition was once true or believed with justification, then it is now true or believable with justification. For a metaphysical assertion is necessarily true if true at all. The structure of being cannot be contingent upon our contingent experiences, even experiences as shattering as that of the Nazi horror. (It is telling of course that Adorno, good man of the Left that he is, does not mention the Stalinist horrors which were known since 1956 — but that is a separate post.)
What I am objecting to is Adorno's apparent historical relativism. By this I mean the view that truth itself is historically conditioned and thus capable of being different in different historical epochs. Metaphysical conceptions are of course historically variable, but not their objects, the structures of being. Adorno is doing the the Continental Shuffle, sliding from the epistemic/doxastic to the ontic and back again. That views of truth are historically conditioned is trivial and scarcely in need of being pointed out; but that truth itself is historically conditioned is incoherent.
More fundamentally, what I am objecting to is Adorno's lack of any argument for his view that historical experience can refute a metaphysical thesis and his lack of consideration of the sort of (obvious) objection I am now raising.
The Continental 'trope' or 'move' — such-and-such can no longer be believed --ought to be defended or dropped. Why, for example, should it no longer be possible to believe in God after the horrendous events of the 20th century when people believed in God at the time of the Lisbon earthquake and the time of the Bubonic plague? What is so special about these 20th century horrors? The fact of evil may well rule out the existence of God, or more generally, the affirmability of Being. But if it does, this is surely no recent development.
The following quotations are from Martin Buber's I and Thou (tr. Walter Kaufmann, Scribner's, 1970, pp. 140-141):
Nor does he [Buddha] lead the unified being further to that supreme You-saying that is open to it. His inmost decision seems to aim at the annulment of the ability to say You . . . .
All doctrines of immersion are based on the gigantic delusion of human spirit bent back into itself -- the delusion that spirit occurs in man. In truth it occurs from man - between man and what he is not. As the spirit bent back into itself renounces this sense, this sense of relation, he must draw into man that which is not man, he must psychologize world and God. This is the psychical delusion of the spirit.
The context of the above quotations is a section of I and Thou that runs from pp. 131 to 143. Here are some quickly composed thoughts on this stretch of text.
In this section Buber offers a critique of Buddhism, Hinduism and other forms of mysticism (including Christian forms such as the one we find in Meister Eckhart) which relativize the I-Thou relation between man and God by re-ducing it (leading it back) to a primordial unity logically and ontologically prior to the terms of the relation. According to these traditions, this primordial unity can be experienced directly in Versenkung, which Kaufmann translates, not incorrectly, as 'immersion,' but which I think is better rendered as 'meditation.' As the German word suggests, one sinks down into the depths of the self and comes to the realization that, at bottom, there is no self or ego (as Buddhism proclaims with its central doctrine of anatta or anatman) or else that there is a Self, but that it is the eternal and universal Atman ( = Brahman) of Hinduism, "the One that thinks and is." (131)
Either way duality is overcome and seen to be not ultimately real. Buber rejects this because the I-Thou relation presupposes the ultimate ineliminability of duality, not only the man-God duality but also the duality of world and God. Perhaps the underlying issue can be put, roughly, like this: in the end, does the One absorb everything and extinguish all finite individuality, or in the end does duality and (transformed) finite individuality remain? In soteriological terms: does salvation in the end consist in a becoming one with the One or is duality and difference preserve even at the highest soteriological levels?
Mysticism "annuls relationship" (132) psychologizing both world and God. (141). Verseelen is the word Kaufmann translates as 'psychologize.' A more literal translation is 'soulifies.' Mysticism drags both God and the world into the soul where they are supposedly to be found in their ultimate reality by meditation. But spirit is not in man, Buber thinks, but between man and what is not man. (141). I take it he means that spirit is not in an individual man, to be reaized in the depths of his isolated interiority, but between individual human beings and individual humans beings and between individual human beings and what is not human. Spirit is thus actualized only in the relation of man to man, man to world, man to God.
At this point I would put a question to Buber. If spirit subsists only in relation, ought we conclude that God needs man to be a spiritual being in the same way that finite persons need each other to be spiritual beings? Is God dependent on man to be who he is? If yes, then the aseity of God is compromised. A Christian could say that the divine personhood subsists in intradivine relations, relations among and between the persons of the Trinity. But as far as I know Trinitarian thought is foreign to Judaism. Anyway, that is a question that occurs to me.
The "primal actuality of dialogue" (133) requires Two irreducible one to the other. It is not a relation internal to the self.
Buber is not opposed to Versenkung as a preliminary and indeed a prerequisite for encounter with the transcendent Other. Meditative Versenkung leads to inner concentration, interior unification, recollectedness. But this samadhi (which I think is etymologically related to the German sammeln (to gather, collect, concentrate) is not to be enjoyed for its own sake, but is properly preparatory for the encounter with the transcendent Other. "Concentrated into a unity, a human being can proceed to his encounter -- wholly successful only now -- with mystery and perfection. But he can also savor the bliss of his unity and, without incurring the supreme duty, return into distraction." (134)
Buber's point is that the mystic who, treading the inward path, arrives at the unitary ground of his soul and experiences sat-chit-ananda (being-consciousness-bliss) shirks his supreme duty if he merely enjoys this state and then returns to the world of multiplicity and diremption. The soulic unity must be used for the sake of the encounter with God. Samadhi is not an end in itself but a means to an end.
Buber seems to be maintaining that Buddhist and other mysticism is an escape into illusion, an escape into a mere annihilation of dual awareness for the sake of an illusory nondual awareness: "insofar as this doctrine contains directions for immersion in true being, it does not lead into lived actuality but into 'annihilation' in which there is no consciousness, from which no memory survives -- and the man who has emerged from it may profess the experience by using the limit-word of non-duality, but without any right to proclaim this as unity." (136)
Buber continues, "We, however, are resolved to tend with holy care the holy treasure of our actuality that has been given us for this life and perhaps for no other life that might be closer to the truth." (136-7, emphasis added)
This prompts me to put a second and more important question to Buber. If there is no other life, no higher life, whether accessible in this life via Versenkung or after the death of the body, and we are stuck with this miserable crapstorm of a life, then what good is God? What work does he do if he doesn't secure our redemption and our continuance beyond death? This is what puzzles me about Judaism. It is a worldly religion, a religion for this life -- which is almost a contradiction in terms. It offers no final solution as do the admittedly life-denying religions of Buddhism and Christianity. Some will praise it for that very reason: it is not life-denying but life-affirming. Jews love life, this life here and now, and they don't seem too concerned about any afterlife. But then they don't have the sort of soteriological interest that is definitive of religion. "On whose definition?" you will object. And you will have a point.
On my definition. "And where did you get it?" From examning the great religions, the greatest of which are Buddhism and Christianity.
UPDATE (12/15). Karl White comments:
I assume Buber and many strains in Judaism would answer that loving God for his own sake and the world for its own sake is the highest form of religiosity. To ask what 'use' is God would be tantamount to idolatry, as it consists in an instrumentalisation of God in order to serve one's own needs or less prosaically, to save one's own sorry ass.
Cf. Yeshayahu Leibowitz: Those who would question, indeed those who lost their faith in God as a result of Auschwitz “never believed in God but in God's help… [for] one who believes in God … does not relate this to belief in God's help” (Accepting the Yoke, 21).
This is a very trenchant and very good comment that opens up numerous further cans of theological worms. I am immediately reminded of the the extremism of the jewess Simone Weil. Here is part of what I say in the just-referenced entry:
Although Weilian disinterest may appear morally superior to Pascalian self-interest, I would say that the former is merely an example of a perverse strain in Weil’s thinking. One mistake she makes is to drive a wedge between the question of the good and the question of human happiness, thereby breaking the necessary linkage between the two. This is a mistake because a good out of all relation to the satisfaction of human desire cannot count as a good for us.
What “good” is a good out of all relation to our self-interest? The absolute good must be at least possibly such as to satisfy (purified) human desire. The possibility of such satisfaction is a necessary feature of the absolute good. Otherwise, the absolute good could not be an ideal for us, an object of aspiration or reverence, a norm. But although the absolute good is ideal relative to us, it is real in itself. Once these two aspects (ideal for us, real in itself) are distinguished, it is easy to see how the absoluteness of the absolute good is consistent with its necessary relatedness to the possibility of human happiness. What makes the absolute good absolute is not its being out of all relation to the actual or possible satisfaction of human desire; what makes it absolute is its being self-existent, a reality in itself. The absolute good, existing absolutely (ab solus, a se), is absolute in its existence without prejudice to its being necessarily related to us in its goodness. If God is (agapic) love, then God necessarily bestows His love on any creatures there might be. It is not necessary that there be creatures, but it is necessary that God love the creatures that there are and that they find their final good in Him.
The Leibowitz remark deserves to be mulled over carefully. Part of what Leibowitz suggests is right: Auschwitz is no compelling argument against the existence of God. (Sorry Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno.) But I humbly suggest that it is border-line crazy to suggest, if this is what Leibowitz is suggesting, that belief in God is wholly out of relation to the human desire for ultimate happiness and to belief in God's help in securing such felicity.
There is more to say but I must get on with the day.
One of the pleasures in the life of a bookman is the delight of the 'find.' As a reader reports:
I saw that your cat is named Max Black. You might appreciate this anecdote.
Twice a year here in Ithaca there is a three-week long used book sale. The price drops each week, so if you can hold out to the end you can make out with some really good deals. This past time I got Hempel's Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Peter Geach's Reference and Generality for 50 cents each! The best find of all, though, was a first edition of [Hans] Reichenbach's classic The Rise of Scientific Philosophy that bore the signature of its previous owner on the inside: Max Black!
Great story! Curiously, I acquired all three titles similarly and for pennies: either from used book bins or from former graduate students. Back in '76 or '77 in Freiburg, Germany, I found a book by Hans Lipps that had been in Heidegger's library and bore his inscription.
I have often regretted the books that I didn't snatch from the remainder bins. Or rather it is my not snatching them that I regret. My mind drifts back to my impecunious days as a graduate student in Boston, must have been '73 or '74. I was in Harvard Square where I espied Reinhardt Grossmann's Ontological Reduction, or maybe it was his early book on Frege. I didn't buy it and I still regret not doing so.
I have repeatedly had the experience of buying a book the subject matter of which did not particularly interest me at the time only to find that a year or ten or twenty later that very book was what I needed. My copy of C. L. Hamblin's Fallacies (Methuen 1970) was pulled from a used book den in Harvard Square in July of 1974. It sat on my shelf unread for four years until I devoured it while boning up to teach logic, one of my duties at my first job.
I searched for an image of Max Black and found this:
I did not name my cat after this acolyte of high culture. Here is the real Max Black, the philosopher after whom I named my cat, circa 1965:
It's a bit of a paradox. Things are bad in the world, very bad, and the future looks grim. The country slides, the ship of state, 'manned' by fools, lists, and the center will not hold. But I've never been happier! I am sure my experience is not unique. I expect many of you who have entered the country of old age will resonate to at least some of the following.
You now have money enough and time enough. The time left is shrinking, but it is your own. There is little left to prove. What needed proving has been proven by now or will forever remain unproved. And now it doesn't much matter one way or the other.
You are free to be yourself and live beyond comparisons with others. You can enjoy the social without being oppressed by it. You understand the child's fathership of the man, and in some measure are able to undo it. You have survived those who would define you, and now you define yourself. And all of this without rancour or resentment. Defiant self-assertion gives way to benign indifference, Angst to Gelassenheit.
You now either enjoy the benefits of a thick skin or else it was never in the cards that you should develop one. You have been inoculated by experience against the illusions of life. Unrealistic expectations and foolish ambitions are a thing of the past. You know that the Rousseauean transports induced by a chance encounter with a charming member of the opposite sex do not presage the presence of the Absolute in human form. Less likely to be made a fool of in love, you are more likely to see sisters and brothers in sexual others.
The Grim Reaper is gaining on you but you now realize that he is Janus-faced: he is also a Benign Releaser. Your life is mostly over, but what the past lacks in presentness it gains in length and necessity. What you had, though logically contingent, now glistens in the light of that medieval modality necessitas per accidens: it is all there, accessible to memory as long as memory holds out, and no one can take it from you.
What is over is over, but it has been. The country of the past is a realm of being inaccessible except to memory but in compensation unalterable. Kierkegaard's fiftieth year never was, yours was. Better has-been than never-was. Not much by way of compensation, perhaps, but one takes what one can get.
You know your own character by now and can take satisfaction in possessing a good one if that is what experience has disclosed.
After socializing I often feel vaguely annoyed with myself. Why? Because I allowed myself to be drawn into pointless conversation that makes a mockery of true conversation. The New Testament has harsh words for idle words:
But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. (MT 12:36, King James)
A hard saying! Somewhat softer is Will Rogers' advice:
Never miss an opportunity to keep your mouth shut.
The social lifts us from the animal, but in almost every case impedes individuation which is our main spiritual vocation. Individuation is not given, but to be achieved. Its connection with theosis ought to be explored.
This beautifully written, erudite piece by George F. Will is the best thing I've read so far about the Eric Garner case. Excerpts:
Garner died at the dangerous intersection of something wise, known as “broken windows” policing, and something worse than foolish: decades of overcriminalization. The policing applies the wisdom that where signs of disorder, such as broken windows, proliferate and persist, a general diminution of restraint and good comportment takes hold. So, because minor infractions are, cumulatively, not minor, police should not be lackadaisical about offenses such as jumping over subway turnstiles.
Overcriminalization has become a national plague. And when more and more behaviors are criminalized, there are more and more occasions for police, who embody the state’s monopoly on legitimate violence, and who fully participate in humanity’s flaws, to make mistakes.
[. . .]
Garner lived in part by illegally selling single cigarettes untaxed by New York jurisdictions. He lived in a progressive state and city that, being ravenous for revenue and determined to save smokers from themselves, have raised to $5.85 the combined taxes on a pack of cigarettes. To the surprise of no sentient being, this has created a black market in cigarettes that are bought in states that tax them much less. Garner died in a state that has a Cigarette Strike Force.
[. . .]
The scandal of mass incarceration is partly produced by the frivolity of the political class, which uses the multiplication of criminal offenses as a form of moral exhibitionism. This, like Eric Garner’s death, is a pebble in the mountain of evidence that American government is increasingly characterized by an ugly and sometimes lethal irresponsibility.
"If the product is so superior, why does it have to live on the tit of the State?" (Charles Krauthammer)
One answer is that the booboisie of these United States is too backward and benighted to appreciate the high level of NPR programming. The rubes of fly-over country are too much enamoured of wrestling, tractor pulls, and reality shows, and, to be blunt, too stupid and lazy to take in superior product.
Being something of an elitist myself, I am sympathetic to this answer. The problem for me is twofold. NPR is run by lefties for lefties. That in itself is not a problem. But it is a most serious problem when part of the funding comes from the taxpayer. But lefties, blind to their own bias, don't see the problem. Very simply, it is wrong to take money by force from people and then use it to promote causes that those people find offensive or worse when the causes have nothing to do with the legitimate functions of government. Planned Parenthood and abortion. NEA and "Piss Christ." Get it?
And then there is the recent anti-Christian nastiness. Just in time for Christmas. What a nice touch. Would these liberal pussies mock Muhammad similarly?
Second, we are in fiscal crisis. If we can't remove NPR from the "tit of the State," from the milky mammaries of massive Mama Obama government, what outfit can we remove from said mammaries? If we can't zero out NPR how are we going to cut back on the 'entitlement' programs such as Social Security?
Ah, but no one wants to talk about a real crisis when there is 'Ferguson' to talk about.
Don't get me wrong. I like or rather liked "Car Talk" despite the paucity of automotive advice and the excess of joking around. I even like the PBS "Keeping Up Appearances" in small doses. But if frivolous flab like this can't be excised, what can?
What exactly is the distinction between a universal and a particular? Universals are often said to be repeatable entities, ones-over-many or ones-in-many. Particulars, then, are unrepeatable entities. Now suppose the following: there are universals; there are particulars; particulars instantiate universals; first-order facts are instantiations of universals by particulars.
One and the same universal, F-ness, is repeated in the following facts: Fa, Fb, Fc. But isn't one and the same particular repeated in Fa, Ga, Ha? If so, particulars are as repeatable as universals, in which case repeatability cannot be the mark of the universal. How can it be that all and only universals are repeatable? I stumbled upon this problem the other day. But Frank Ramsey saw it first. See his "Universals," Mind 34, 1925, 401-17.
Instantiation as holding between particulars and universals is asymmetric: if a instantiates F-ness, then F-ness does not instantiate a. (Instantiation is not in general asymmetric, but nonsymmetric: if one universal instatiates a second, it may or may not be the case that the second instantiates the first.) The asymmetry of first-level instantiation may provide a solution to the Ramsey problem. The asymmetry implies that particulars are non-instantiable: they have properties but cannot themselves be properties. By contrast, universals are properties and have properties.
So we can say the following. The repeatability of a universal is its instantiability while the unrepeatability of a particular is its non-instantiability. So, despite appearances, a is not repeated in Fa, Ga, and Ha. For a is a particular and no particular is instantiable (repeatable).
Solve a problem, create one or more others. I solved the Ramsey problem by invoking the asymmetry of instantiation. But instantiation is a mighty perplexing 'relation' (he said with a nervous glance in the direction of Mr. Bradley). It is dyadic and asymmetric. But it is also external to its terms. If a particular has its properties by instantiating them, then its properties are 'outside' it, external to it. Note first that to say that a is F is not to say that a is identical to F-ness. The 'is' of predication is not the 'is' of identity. (For one thing, identity is symmetric, predication is not.) It would seem to follow that a is wholly distinct from F-ness. But then a is connected to F-ness by an external relation and Bradley's regress is up and running. But let's set aside Bradley's regress and the various responses to it to focus on a different problem.
If a and F-ness are external to each other, then it is difficult to see how a could have any intrinsic (nonrelational) properties. Suppose a is an apple and that the apple is red. Being red is an intrinsic property of the apple; it is not a relational property like being in my hand. But if a is F in virtue of standing in an external instantiation relation to the universal F-ness, then it would seem that F-ness cannot be an intrinsic property of a. So an antinomy rears its ugly head: a is (intrinsically) F and a is not (intrinsically) F.
Call this the Problem of the Intrinsically Unpropertied Particular. If there are particulars and universals and these are mutually irreducible categories of entity, then we have the problem of bringing their members together. Suppose it is contingently true that a is F. We cannot say that a is identical to F-ness, nor, it seems, can we say that a and F-ness are wholly distinct and connected by the asymmetric, external tie of instantiation. Is there a way between the horns of this dilemma?
David Armstrong at the end of his career suggested that instantiation is partial identity. The idea is that a and F-ness overlap, are partially identical. This bring a and F-ness together all right, but it implies that the connection is necessary. But then the contingency of the connection is lost. It also implies that instantiation is symmetrical! But then Ramsey is back in the saddle.
When functioning optimally the body can seem, not only an adequate vehicle of our subjectivity, but a fitting and final realization of it as well. Soon enough, however, Buddha's Big Three shatters the illusion: sickness, old age, and death.
Everything partite is slated for partition. Shunning inanition, maintaining a wholesome spiritual ambition, work out your salvation with diligence.
A glance at the graphic to the left suggests that the order is: old age, sickness, and death. Prince Siddartha, forsaking the unreality of the royal compound, goes out in quest of the Real and the Uncompounded. But who is the figure standing on the ground? Siddartha the seeker as opposed to Siddartha the prince?
"The trouble is, you think you have time." (Attributed to Buddha)
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