Contemporary liberals use 'racist' as an all-purpose semantic bludgeon. It can mean almost anything depending on what the lefty agenda is at the moment. For example, if you point out the dangers of radical Islam you may get yourself labeled a 'racist' even though Islam is not a race but a religion. Examples are legion. Here is one that just came to my attention thanks to Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe:
You’re a private landlord, renting apartments in a building you bought with your savings from years of hard work and modest living. You take pride in maintaining your property, keeping it clean, comfortable, and attractive. You charge a fair rent and treat your tenants with courtesy and respect. Your tenants, in turn, appreciate the care you put into the building. And they trust you to screen prospective tenants wisely, accepting only residents who won’t jeopardize the building’s safe and neighborly character. That’s why you only consider applications from individuals who are employed or in school, whose credit scores are strong, and who have no criminal record.
Most Americans would look at you and likely see a prudent, levelheaded property owner. Not the Obama administration. The Department of Housing and Urban Development warned last week that landlords who refuse to rent to anyone with a criminal record are in violation of the Fair Housing Act and can be prosecuted and fined for racial discrimination. (Emphasis added.)
Next stop: The Twilight Zone. I'll leave it to you to sort though the 'disparate impact' 'reasoning' of the ruling should you care to waste your time.
Obama has proven to be a disaster on all fronts and not just for the United States. And so you are going to vote for Hillary and a third Obama term? You ought to ask yourself what is in the long-term best interest of yourself, your country, and the world. Assuming, of course, that you are not a criminal, a member of Black Lives Matter, a pampered collegiate cry bully . . . .
My attitude has softened a bit since the following was written two and half years ago. But I'll leave it at full strength. Trenchancy of expression and all that.
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There was something profoundly stupid about the Vatican II 'reforms' even if we view matters from a purely immanent 'sociological' point of view. Suppose Roman Catholicism is, metaphysically, buncombe to its core, nothing but an elaborate human construction in the face of a meaningless universe, a construction kept going by human needs and desires noble and base. Suppose there is no God, no soul, no post-mortem reward or punishment, no moral world order. Suppose we are nothing but a species of clever land mammal thrown up on the shores of life by blind evolutionary processes, and that everything that makes us normatively human and thus persons (consciousness, self-consciousness, conscience, reason, and the rest) are nothing but cosmic accidents. Suppose all that.
Still, religion would have its immanent life-enhancing role to play, and one would have to be as superficial and ignorant of the human heart as a New Atheist to think it would ever wither away: it inspires and guides, comforts and consoles; it provides our noble impulses with an outlet while giving suffering a meaning. Suffering can be borne, Nietzsche says somewhere, if it has a meaning; what is unbearable is meaningless suffering. Now the deep meaning that the Roman church provides is tied to its profundity, mystery, and reference to the Transcendent. Anything that degrades it into a namby-pamby secular humanism, just another brand of liberal feel-goodism and do-goodism, destroys it, making of it just another piece of dubious cultural junk. Degrading factors: switching from Latin to the vernacular; the introduction of sappy pseudo-folk music sung by pimply-faced adolescents strumming gut-stringed guitars; leftist politics and political correctness; the priest facing the congregation; the '60s obsession with 'relevance.' And then there was the refusal to teach hard-core doctrine and the lessening of requirements, one example being the no-meat-on-Friday rule. Why rename confession 'reconciliation? What is the point of such a stupid change?
A religion that makes no demands fails to provide the structure that people, especially the young, want and need. Have you ever wondered what makes Islam is so attractive to young people?
People who take religion seriously tend to be conservatives and traditionalists; they are not change-for-the-sake-of-change leftist utopians. The stupidity of the Vatican II 'reforms,' therefore, consists in estranging its very clientele, the conservatives and traditionalists.
If white moderates deserve blame for their inaction against Jim Crow, then perhaps moderate Muslims today can be faulted for failing to combat a culture of jihad.
I would add, however, that while Jim Crow has been eliminated, the same cannot be said for the culture of jihad. I should think that this is an important difference. And I would delete the weak-kneed 'perhaps' from the apodosis of the above conditional.
What Case does in his article is expose the double standard involved when one seeks to explain the now-ended racial terror against blacks in the U. S. in terms of a racist culture but fails to explain the ongoing and increasing religious terror wreaked upon the West by Muslim terrorists in terms of a jihadi culture.
As I have said many a time, little would be left of the Left were its members made bereft of their double standards. There are so many of them I was forced to begin a separate category named, appropriately enough, Double Standards.
Thanks again to Professor Levy to getting me 'fired up' over this topic.
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Is the notion of a trope intelligible?
If not, then we can pack it in right here and dispense with discussion of the subsidiary difficulties. Peter van Inwagen confesses, "I do not understand much of what B-ontologists write." (Ontology, Identity, and Modality, Cambridge UP, 2001, p. 2) 'B' is short for 'Bergmann' where the reference is to Gustav Bergmann, the founder of the Iowa School. B-ontology is what I call constituent ontology. I will refer to it, and not just out of perversity, as C-ontology and I will contrast it with NC-ontology. Van Inwagen is a premier example of an NC-ontologist, a non-constituent ontologist.
The fundamental idea of C-ontology is that concreta have ontological parts in addition to their spatial parts if the concreta in question are material things. To invoke a nice simple 'Iowa' example, consider a couple of round red spots on a white piece of paper. Each spot has spatial parts. On C-ontology, however, each spot also has ontological parts, among them the properties of the spots. For a C-ontologist, then, the properties of a thing are parts of it. But of course they are not spatial or mereological parts of it. A spot can be cut in two, and an avocado can be disembarrassed of its seed and exocarp, but one cannot physically separate the roundness and the redness of the spot or the dark green of the exocarp from the exocarp. So if the properties of a thing are parts thereof, then these parts are 'ontological' parts, parts that figure in the ontological structure of the thing in question.
Examples of C-ontologies: a) trope bundle theory, b) universals bundle theory, c) tropes + substratum theory, d) Castaneda's Guise Theory, e) Butchvarov's object-entity theory, f) the ontological theories of Bergmann, Armstrong, and Vallicella according to which ordinary particulars are concrete facts, g) Aristotelian and Scholastic hylomorphic doctrines according to which form and matter are 'principles' (in the Scholastic not the sentential sense) ingredient in primary substances.
If van Inwagen is right, then all of the above are unintelligible. Van Inwagen claims not to understand such terms as 'trope,' 'bare particular,' 'immanent universal' and 'bundle' as these terms are used in C-ontologies. He professes not to understand how a thing could have what I am calling an ontological structure. "What I cannot see is how a chair could have any sort of structure but a spatial or mereological structure." (Ibid.) He cannot see how something like a chair could have parts other than smaller and smaller spatial parts such as legs made of wood which are composed of cellulose molecules along with other organic compounds, and so on down. If this is right, then there is no room for what I call ontological analysis as opposed to chemical analysis and physical analysis. There can be no such intelligible project as an ontological factor analysis that breaks an ordinary particular down into thin particular, immanent universals, nexus of exemplification, and the like, or into tropes and a compresence relation, etc.
In sum: trope theory stands and falls with C-ontology; the project of C-ontology is unintelligible; ergo, trope theory is unintelligible resting as it does on such unintelligible notions as trope, and bundle of tropes. Van Inwagen delivers his unkindest cut with the quip that he has never been able to understand tropes as "anything but idealized coats of paint." (Ibid.) Ouch!
Let's assume that van Inwagen is right and that the properties of concrete particulars cannot be construed as parts of them in any intelligible sense of 'part.' If so, this puts paid to every C-ontology I am familiar with. But can van Inwagen do better? Is his NC-ontology free of difficulties? I don't think so. It bristles with them no less than C-ontology does. I refer the interested reader to my "Van Inwagen on Fiction, Existence, Properties, Particulars, and Method" in Studia Neoaristotelica, vol, 12, no. 2 (2015), pp. 99-125. Here is a pre-print version. I will now reproduce some of it so that you can see how a C-ontologist can go on the attack:
Van Inwagen's Ostrich Realism and Commitment to Bare Particulars
Van Inwagen rejects both extreme and moderate nominalism. So he can't possibly be an ostrich nominalist. He is, however, as he himself appreciates, an ostrich realist or ostrich platonist. (214-15)
Suppose Max is black. What explains the predicate's being true of Max? According to the ostrich nominalist, nothing does. It is just true of him. There is nothing in or about Max that serves as the ontological ground of the correctness of his satisfying the predicate. Now 'F' is true of a if and only if 'a is F' is true. So we may also ask: what is the ontological ground of the truth of 'Max is black'? The ostrich reply will be: nothing. The sentence is just true. There is no need for a truth-maker.
The ostrich realist/platonist says something very similar except that in place of predicates he puts abstract properties, and in place of sentences he puts abstract propositions. In virtue of what does Max instantiate blackness? In virtue of nothing. He just instantiates it. Nothing explains why the unsaturated assertible expressed by 'x is black' is instantiated by Max. Nothing explains it because there is nothing to explain. And nothing explains why the saturated assertible expressed by 'Max is black' is true. Thus there is nothing concrete here below that could be called a state of affairs in anything like Armstrong's sense. There is in the realm of concreta no such item as Max-instantiating-blackness, or the concrete fact of Max's being black. Here below there is just Max, and up yonder in a topos ouranos are 'his' properties (the abstract unsaturated assertibles that he, but not he alone, instantiates). But then Max is a bare particular in one sense of this phrase. In what sense, then?
Four Senses of 'Bare Particular'
1. A bare particular is an ordinary concrete particular that lacks properties. I mention this foolish view only to set it aside. No proponent of bare particulars that I am aware of ever intended the phrase in this way. And of course, van Inwagen is not committed to bare particulars in this sense. Indeed, he rejects an equivalent view. “A bare particular would be a thing of which nothing could be said truly, an obviously incoherent notion.” (179)
2. A bare particular is an ontological constituent of an ordinary concrete particular, a constituent that has no properties. To my knowledge, no proponent of bare particulars ever intended the phrase in this way. In any case, the view is untenable and may be dismissed. Van Inwagen is of course not committed to this view. He is a 'relation' ontologist, not a 'constituent' ontologist.
3. A bare particular is an ontological constituent of an ordinary concrete particular, a constituent that does have properties, namely, the properties associated with the ordinary particular in question, and has them by instantiating (exemplifying) them. This view is held by Gustav Bergmann and by David Armstrong in his middle period. Armstrong, however, speaks of thin particulars rather than bare particulars, contrasting them with thick particulars (what I am calling ordinary concrete particulars). When he does uses 'bare particular,' he uses the phrase incorrectly and idiosyncratically to refer to something like (1) or (2). For example, in Universals and Scientific Realism, Cambridge UP, 1978, vol. I, p. 213, he affirms something he calls the "Strong Principle of the Rejection of Bare Particulars":
For each particular, x, there exists at least one non-relational property, P, such that x is P.
This principle of Armstrong is plausibly read as a rejection of (1) and (2). It is plainly consistent with (3). But of course I do not claim that van Inwagen is committed to bare or thin particulars in the sense of (3). For again, van Inwagen is not a constituent ontologist.
4. A bare particular is an ordinary concrete particular that has properties by instantiating them, where instantiation is a full-fledged external asymmetrical relation (not a non-relational tie whatever that might come to) that connects concrete objects to abstract objects, where abstract objects are objects that are not in space, not in time, and are neither causally active nor causally passive. What is common to (3) and (4) is the idea that bare particulars have properties all right, but they have them in a certain way, by being externally related to them. A bare particular, then, is nothing like an Aristotelian primary substance which has, or rather is, its essence or nature. The bareness of a bare particular, then, consists in its lacking an Aristotle-type nature, not it its lacking properties. My claim is that van Inwagen is committed to bare particulars in sense (4). Let me explain.
Van Inwagen's Bare Particulars
Consider my cat Max. Van Inwagen is committed to saying that Max is a bare particular in sense (4). For while Max has properties, these properties are in no sense constituents of him, but lie (stand?) outside him in a realm apart. These properties are in no sense at him or in him or on him, not even such properties as being black or being furry, properties that are plausibly held to be sense-perceivable. After all, one can see black where he is and feel furriness where he is. None of Max's properties, on van Inwagen's construal of properties, are where he is or when he is. None of them has anything to do with the concrete being of Max himself. As I made clear earlier, the realms of the concrete and the abstract are radically disjoint for van Inwagen. They are jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive realms: for all x, x is either concrete or abstract, but not both and not neither. So Max is here below in the realm of space, time, change, and causality while his properties exist in splendid isolation up yonder in the realm of abstracta. They are far, far away, not spatially and not temporally, but ontologically.
Max and his properties are of course connected by instantiation which is a relation that is both external and abstract. In what sense is the relation external? X and y are externally related just in case there is nothing intrinsic about the relata that entails their being related. Max is two feet from me at the moment. This relation of being two feet from is external in that there are no intrinsic properties of me or Max or both that entail our being two feet from each other. Our intrinsic properties would be just the same if we were three feet from each other. But Max and his brother Manny are both black. In virtue of their both being intrinsically black, they stand in the same color as relation. Hence the latter relation is not external but internal. Internal relatedness is supervenient upon the intrinsic features of the relata; external relatedness is not.
Suppose I want to bring it about that two balls have the same color. I need do only two things: paint the one ball red, say, and then paint the other ball red. But if I want to bring it about that there are two balls having the same color ten feet from each other, I have to do three things: paint the one ball red, say; paint the other ball red; place them ten feet from each other. The external relatedness does not supervene upon the intrinsic properties of the relata. Given that concrete particulars are externally related to their properties, these particulars are bare particulars in the sense defined in #4 above.
And What is Wrong with That?
Suppose you agree with me that van Inwagen's concrete particulars are bare, not in any old sense, but in the precise sense I defined, a sense that comports well with what the actual proponents of bare/thin particulars had in mind. So what? What's wrong with being committed to bare particulars? Well, the consequences seem unpalatable if not absurd.
A. One consequence is that all properties are accidental and none are essential. For if Max is bare, then there is nothing in him or at him or about him that dictates the properties he must instantiate or limits the properties he can instantiate. He can have any old set of properties so long as he has some set or other. Bare particulars are 'promiscuous' in their connection with properties. The connection between particular and property is then contingent and all properties are accidental. It is metaphysically (broadly logically) possible that Max combine with any property. He happens to be a cat, but he could have been a poached egg or a valve lifter. He could have had the shape of a cube. Or he might have been a dimensionless point. He might have been an act of thinking (temporal and causally efficacious, but not spatial).
B. A second consequence is that all properties are relational and none are intrinsic. For if Max is black in virtue of standing in an external instantiation relation to the abstract object, blackness, then his being black is a relational property and not an intrinsic one.
C. A third consequence is that none of Max's properties are sense-perceivable. Van Inwagen-properties are abstract objects and none of them are perceivable. But if I cup my hands around a ball, don't I literally feel its sphericalness or spheroidness? Or am I merely being appeared to spheroidally?
D. Finally, given what van Inwagen himself says about the radical difference between the abstract and the concrete, a difference so abysmal (my word) that it would be better if we could avoid commitment to abstracta, it is highly counter-intuitive that there should be this abymal difference between a cucumber, say, and its greenness. It is strange that the difference between God and a cucumber should “pale into insignificance” (156) compared to the difference between a cucumber and the property of being green. After all, the properties of a thing articulate its very being. How can they be so ontologically distant from the thing?
If you deny that concrete things as van Inwagen understands them are bare in the sense I have explained, then you seem to be committed to saying that there are two sorts of properties, van Inwagen properties in Plato's heaven and 'sublunary' properties at the particulars here below. But then I will ask two questions. First, what is the point of introducing such properties if they merely duplicate at the abstract intensional level the 'real' properties in the sublunary sphere? Second, what justifies calling such properties properties given that you still are going to need sublunary properties to avoid saying that van Inwagen's concreta are bare particulars?
Perceivability of Properties
Let us pursue point C above a bit further. "We never see properties, although we see that certain things have certain properties." (179) I honestly don't know what to make of the second clause of the quoted sentence. I am now, with a brain properly caffeinated, staring at my blue coffee cup in good light. Van Inwagen's claim is that I do not see the blueness of the cup, though I do see that the cup is blue. Here I balk. If I don't see blueness, or blue, when I look at the cup, how can I literally see that the cup is blue? 'That it is blue' is a thing that can be said of the cup, and said with truth. This thing that can be said is an unsaturated assertible, a property in van Inwagen's sense. Van Inwagen is telling us that it cannot be seen. 'That the cup is blue' is a thing that can be said, full stop. It is a saturated assertible, a proposition, and a true one at that. Both assertibles are abstract objects. Both are invisible, and not because of any limitation in my visual power or in human visual power in general, but because abstract objects cannot be terms of causal relations, and perception involves causation. Both types of assertible are categorially disbarred from visibility. But if both the property and the proposition are invisible, then how can van Inwagen say that "we see that certain things have certain properties"? If van Inwagen says that we don't see the proposition, then what do we see when we see that the cup is blue? A colorless cup? A cup that is blue but is blue in a way different from the way the cup is blue by instantiatiating the abstract unsaturated assertible expressed by 'that it is blue'? But then one has duplicated at the level of abstracta the property that one sees at the concrete cup. If there is blueness at the cup and abstract blueness in Plato's heaven, why do we need the latter? Just what is going on here?
To van Inwagen's view one could reasonably oppose the following view. I see the cup. I see blueness or blue at the cup. I don't see a colorless cup. To deny the three foregoing sentences would be to deny what is phenomenologically given. What I don't literally see, however, is that the cup is blue. (Thus I don't literally see what van Inwagen says we literally see.) For to see that the cup is blue is to see the instantiation of blueness by the cup. And I don't see that. The correlate of the 'is' in 'The cup is blue' is not an object of sensation. If you think it is, tell me how I can single it out, how I can isolate it. Where in the visual field is it? The blueness is spread out over the visible surfaces of the cup. The cup is singled out as a particular thing on the desk, next to the cat, beneath the lamp, etc. Now where is the instantiation relation? Point it out to me! You won't be able to do it. I see the cup, and I see blue/blueness where the cup is. I don't see the cup's BEING blue.
It is also hard to understand how van Inwagen, on his own assumptions, can maintain that we see that certain things have certain properties. Suppose I see that Max, a cat of my acquaintance, is black. Do I see a proposition? Not on van Inwagen's understanding of 'proposition.' His propositions are Fregean, not Russellian: they are not resident in the physical world. Do I see a proposition-like entity such as an Armstrongian state of affairs? Again, no. What do I see? Van Inwagen claims that properties are not objects of sensation; no properties are, not even perceptual properties. I should think that some properties are objects of sensation, or better, of perception: I perceive blueness at the cup by sight; I perceive smoothness and hardness and heat at the cup by touch. If so, then (some) properties are not abstract objects residing in a domain unto themselves.
Van Inwagen's view appears to have the absurd consequence that things like coffee cups are colorless. For if colors are properties (179) and properties are abstract objects, and abstract objects are colorless (as they obviously are), then colors are colorless, and whiteness is not white and blueness is not blue. Van Inwagen bites the bullet and accepts the consequence. But we can easily run the argument in reverse: Blueness is blue; colors are properties; abstract objects are colorless; ergo, perceptual properties are not abstract objects. They are either tropes or else universals wholly present in the things that have them. Van Inwagen, a 'relation ontologist' cannot of course allow this move into 'constituent ontology.'
There is a long footnote on p. 242 that may amount to a response to something like my objection. In the main text, van Inwagen speaks of "such properties as are presented to our senses as belonging to the objects we sense . . . ." How does this square with the claim on p. 179 that properties are not objects of sensation? Can a property such as blueness be presented to our senses without being an object of sensation? Apparently yes, "In a noncausal sense of 'presented.'" (243, fn 3) How does this solve the problem? It is phenomenologically evident that (a definite shade of) blue appears to my senses when I stare at my blue coffee cup. Now if this blueness is an abstract object as van Inwagen claims then it cannot be presented to my senses any more than it can be something with which I causally interact.
Trope bundle theory is regularly advertised as a one-category ontology. What this means is that everything is either a trope or a logical construction from tropes. Standard trope theory is a metaphysic that implies that everything can be accounted for in terms of ontologically basic simples, namely, tropes. So what about the cat in my lap, or any individual substance? On trope theory, individual substances (concrete particulars) are assayed as bundles of compresent tropes. To put it crudely, sufficiently many of the right tropes tied together by relations of compresence yield an individual substance. Concrete particulars are reductively analyzable into systems of compresent tropes. So far, so good.
But my cat Max Black is black and furry and so is his brother Manny K. Black. How do we account for furriness and blackness as properties had by both of these critters and innumerable actual and possible others? How do we account for universals in our one-category ontology if all we have to work with are tropes? How can we construct universals out of abstract particulars?
The standard answer is in terms of classes or sets of exactly resembling tropes. Black1 and black2 are numerically distinct, as numerically distinct as Max and Manny. But they resemble each other exactly. The same goes for all black tropes. Take the set of them all. That is the universal blackness. Thus universals are reductively analyzable in terms of sets or classes of exactly resembling tropes.
Neat, eh?
Now here is my question. Trope theory was advertised as a one-category ontology. Don't we now have two categories, a category of tropes and a category of sets?
"There is no commitment to sets. All the furry tropes resemble each other. Furriness the universal is just the furry tropes."
I don't think this is a good answer. For I could press: the furry tropes taken distributively or taken collectively? Obviously, they must be taken collectively. But then we are back to sets.
How then would a trope theorist answer my (non-rhetorical) question?
Ich muss meinen Weg gehen so sicher, so fest entschlossen und so ernst wie Duerers Ritter, Tod und Teufel. (Edmund Husserl, "Persoenliche Aufzeichnungen" ) "I must go my way as surely, as seriously, and as resolutely as the knight in Duerer's Knight, Death, and Devil." (tr. MavPhil) Note the castle on the hill, the hour glass in the devil's hand, the serpents entwined in his headpiece, and the human skull on the road.
Time is running out, death awaits, and a mighty task wants completion.
But if you are thinking of not voting for Trump should he get the Republican nomination, by not voting at all or voting for Hillary, Mark Levin has some choice words for you, words with which I heartily agree:
. . . I can understand ‘stop Trump’ in a primary process. But stop Trump or you’ll vote for Hillary? Stop Trump or you won’t vote at all? These people are not conservatives. They’re not constitutionalists. They’re frauds. They’re fakes. They’re not brave. They’re asinine. They’re buffoons . . .
Levin is right. Trump is bad; Hillary is worse, much worse. I shall resist the temptation to add to the list of epithets.
According to Sonya Roberts on Merton, "we can readily identify with his journey of faith."
Oh can we just? Well, I, for one, most certainly do not identify with anyone displaying Merton's level of mental confusion and sheer erotomania.
This is a bozo who, at the age of 51 and sworn to monastic vows, got the blathering hots for a nurse half his age (with whom he almost certainly had full sexual relations: why else did he destroy the correspondence that passed between him and her?). He'd already fathered an illegitimate child. And perhaps worst of all: by the time he had his Close Encounter of The Electric Fan Kind, he seems to have had only the vaguest awareness that Catholicism might differ from Buddhism.
There'll probably always be a market for Merton, just as there's notoriously always a market for Che Guevara T-shirts. But Holy Church in 2015 needs Merton (and Che) about as much as She needs the proverbial hole in the head.
As nasty and uncharitable as this comment is, Reeves is right that Merton often in his writings displays very little understanding of Catholic doctrine and how it differs from that of Buddhism and other religions.
Suppose I want to convince you of something. I must use premises that you accept. For if I argue from premises that you do not accept, you will reject my argument no matter how rigorous and cogent my reasoning.
So how can we get through to those liberals who are willing to listen? Not by invoking any Bible-based or theological premises. And not by deploying the sorts of non-theological but intellectually demanding arguments found in my Abortion category. The demands are simply too great for most people in this dumbed-down age.
Liberals support inclusivity and non-discrimination. Although contemporary liberals abuse these notions, as I have documented time and again, the notions possess a sound core and can be deployed sensibly. To take one example, there is simply no defensible basis for discrimination against women and blacks when it comes to voting. The reforms in this area were liberal reforms, and liberals can be proud of them. A sound conservatism, by the way, takes on board the genuine achievements of old-time liberals.
Another admirable feature of liberals is that they speak for the poor, the weak, the voiceless. That this is often twisted into the knee-jerk defense of every underdog just in virtue of his being an underdog, as if weakness confers moral superiority, is no argument against the admirableness of the feature when reasonably deployed.
So say this to the decent liberals: If you prize inclusivity, then include unborn human beings. If you oppose discrimination, why discriminate against them? If you speak for the poor, the weak, and the voiceless, why do you not speak for them?
The following is a comment by Eric Levy in a recent trope thread. My responses are in blue.
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Might I revert to the problem of compresent tropes constituting a concrete particular? Heil well formulates it: “One difficulty is in understanding properties as parts that add up to objects” (2015, 120). The whole business seems to me riddled with equivocation, epitomized by Maurin’s formulation: “. . . tropes are by their nature such that they can be adequately categorized both as a kind of property and as a kind of substance.”
BV: We agree, I think, that standard trope theory is trope bundle theory, a one-category ontology. This version of the theory alone is presently under discussion. John Heil puts his finger on a very serious difficulty. I would add that it is a difficulty not only for trope bundle theory but for every bundle theory including the theory that ordinary particular are bundles or clusters of universals, as well as for Hector Castaneda's bundle-bundle theory. On Castaneda's theory, an ordinary particular at a time is a synchronic bundle of "consubstantiated" "guises" with a particular over time being a "transubstantiated" diachronic bundle of these synchronic bundles.
Intellectual honesty requires me to say that the theory I advance in PTE also faces Heil's difficulty. For on the view developed in PTE, ordinary concrete particulars are facts or states of affairs along Bergmannian-Armstrongian lines. On this theory Socrates is not a bundle but a concrete truth-making fact which has among its ontological constituents or parts his properties.
Generalizing, we can say that the difficulty Heil mentions is one for any constituent ontology that assays properties as ontological parts of the things that, as we say in the vernacular, 'have them.'
Anna-Sofia Maurin is entirely right in her explanation of trope theory but as far as I know she would not admit that Heil's difficulty really is one.
For example, on the one hand, properties are immaterial and interpenetrable abstracta. On the other hand, these immaterial and interpenetrable abstracta somehow constitute, through compresence, an enmattered, impenetrable object. Let us consider a red rubber ball and then a bronze statue. There is the rubber ball – the triumphant consequence of compresent tropes. One trope is to be construed, as we earlier agreed, as an appropriately extended red or redness. Another trope is to be construed as an appropriately diametered spherical contour. Another trope – the hardness trope – is to be construed as an appropriately calibrated resistance to deformation. But then we reach the rubber trope; for we are talking about a red rubber ball. What are we to posit here: an amorphous chunk of rubber appropriately qualified by its compresent fellows? How does trope theory account for the rubber in the red rubber ball?
BV: Excellent question(s), Eric. Well, the chunk or hunk of rubber cannot be amorphous -- formless -- for then it would be materia prima rather than what it is, materia signata. It is after all a hunk of rubber, not of clay, and indeed a particular hunk of rubber, not rubber in general. The parcel of rubber is formed matter, hence not prime matter. It is this matter, not matter in general. Your question, I take it, is whether this rubber could be construed as a trope in the way that this redness and this hardness can be construed as tropes. The latter are simple property particulars. But this rubber is not simple, but a hylomorphic compound. So it would appear that this rubber cannot be construed as a trope.
Even if the property of being rubbery could be construed as a trope, it is hard to see how the stuff, rubber, could be construed as a trope. For tropes are simple while stuffs are hylomorphic compounds -- prime stuff aside. Tropes are formal or akin to forms while stuffs are matter-form compounds. Mud is muddy. But the muddiness of a glob of mud would seem to be quite different from the stuff, mud.
My desk is wooden. The property of being wooden is different from the designated matter (materia signata) that has the form of a desk. Harry is hairy. He has hair on his back, in his nose, and everywhere else. He is one hairy dude. His hair is literally a part of him, a physical part. His being hairy, however, is a property of him. If this property is a trope, then it is (i) a property particular that is (ii) an ontological part of Harry. But then what is the relation between the ontological part and the physical part? Can a clear sense be attached to 'ontological part'? As has often been noted, ontological parts are not parts in the sense of mereology.
Here then is one question for the trope theorist: How do you account for the designated matter of a material thing? Is it a trope or not? How could a trope theorist deal with matter? A trope theorist might say this. "There is no matter ultimately speaking. It is form 'all the way down.' A hunk of rubber is not formed matter. For this matter is either prime matter, which cannot exist, or just a lower level of form."
A second question: if tropes are immaterial, how can bundling them 'add up' to a material thing? A trope theorist might respond as follows.
You are assuming that there are in ultimate reality irreducibly material things. On trope theory, however, material things reduce to systems of compresent tropes. So, while individual tropes are immaterial, a system of compresent tropes is material in the only sense that stands up to scrutiny. We trope theorists are not denying that there are material things, we are telling you what they are, namely, bundles of compresent tropes. Material things are just bundles of immaterial tropes. The distinction between the immaterial and the material is accommodated by the distinction between unbundled and bundled tropes. And while it is true that individual tropes interpenetrate, that is consistent with the impenetrability of trope bundles. Impenetrability is perhaps an emergent feature of trope bundles.
Now let’s move to the bronze statue. What does trope theory do with the bronze? This is, after all, a bronze statue. Is bronze, then, a trope or “property particular” of the statue? And if so, how are we to construe this trope? Is it material or immaterial?
BV: A trope theorist might be able to say that there are two trope bundles here, the lump of bronze and the statue. Lump and Statue are arguably two, not one, in that they have different persistence conditions. Lump exists at times when Statue doesn't. So they are temporally discernible. They are also modally discernible. Even if in the actual world Lump and Statue exist at all the same times, there are possible worlds in which Lump exists but Statue does not. (Of course there are no possible worlds in which Statue exists and Lump does not.)
And to what do we assign the trope of shape: the bronze or the statue? As Lowe point out, “the bronze and the statue, while the former composes the latter, are exactly the same shape. Do they, then, have numerically distinct but exactly coinciding shapes . . .” (1998, 198)? Or does the shape as form pertain to just one candidate? Lowe suggests that the shape, as form, belongs or pertains to the statue, not the bronze, and that the property concerned is “the property of being a statue of such-and-such a shape,” not the property of the statue’s particular shape. The reason for this distinction is that the form (being a statue of such-and-such a shape) is identified with the statue itself.
In this example, in the context of trope theory, how can there be a property, “being a statue of such-and-such a shape,” when the statue itself is constituted? Trope theory cannot account for this property, because trope theory cannot distinguish between the shape of the bronze and the shape of the statue. It cannot make this distinction because, as you point out in PTE, in trope theory there is no distinction between compresence and the existence of the object (Vallicella 2002, 87). One of the tropes in that compresence can be a shape trope, of course. But it cannot be the trope of “being a statue of such-and-such a shape,” because, in the wacky world of trope theory, the statue itself must be constituted before it can be a statue of such-and-such a shape. In other words, no trope in the compresent bundle can be the trope of “being a statue of such-and-such a shape,” because, until the tropes compresent, there cannot be a statue. This is what happens in a one-category ontology that recognizes only property particulars. If there were a trope of “being a statue of such-and-such a shape,” it would have to qualify the statue after the statue had been constituted.
BV: The last stretch of argumentation is not clear to me. Please clarify in the ComBox.
For Eric Levy, who 'inspired' me to dig deeper into this material.
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Keith Campbell and others call tropes abstract particulars. But what is it for something to be abstract? It may be useful to sort out the different senses of 'abstract' since this term and its opposite 'concrete' are thrown around quite a lot in philosophy. I propose that we distinguish between ontic and epistemic uses of the word.
Ontic Senses of 'Abstract'
a. Non-spatio-temporal. The prevalent sense of 'abstract' in the Anglosphere is: not located in space or in time. Candidates for abstract status in this sense: sets, numbers, propositions, unexemplified universals. The set of prime numbers less than 10 is nowhere to be found in space for the simple reason that it is not in space. If you say it is, then tell me where it is. The same holds for all sets as sets are understood in set theory. (My chess set is not a set in this sense.) Nor are sets in time, although this is less clear: one could argue that they, or rather some of them, are omnitemporal, that they exist at every time. That {1, 3, 5, 7, 9} should exist at some times but not others smacks of absurdity, but it doesn't sound absurd to say that this set exists at all times.
This wrinkle notwithstanding, sets are among the candidates for abstract status in the (a) sense.
The same goes for numbers. They are non-spatio-temporal.
If you understand a proposition to be the Fregean sense of a declarative sentence from which all indexical elements, including tenses of verbs, have been extruded, then propositions so understood are candidates for abstract status in sense (a).
Suppose perfect justice is a universal and suppose there is no God. Then perfect justice is an unexemplified universal. If there are unexemplified universals, then they are abstract in the (a) sense.
This (a) criterion implies that God is an abstract object. For God, as classically conceived, is not in space or in time, and this despite the divine omnipresence. But surely there is a huge different between God who acts, even if, as impassible, he cannot be acted upon, and sets, numbers, propositions and the like that are incapable of either acting or being acted upon. And so we are led to a second understanding of 'abstract' as that which is:
b. Causally inert. Much of what is abstract in the (a) sense will be causally inert and thus abstract in the (b) sense. And vice versa. My cat can bite me, but the set having him as its sole member cannot bite me. Nor can I bite this singleton or toss it across the room, as I can the cat. Sets are abstract in that they cannot act or be acted upon. A less robust way of putting it: Sets cannot be the terms of causal relations. This formulation is neutral on the question whether causation involves agency in any sense.
God and Kantian noumenal agents show that the first two criteria come apart. God is abstract in the (a) sense but not in the (b) sense. The same goes for noumenal agents which, as noumenal, are not in space or time, but which, as agents are capable of initiating causal event-sequences.
It may also be that there are items that are causally inert but located in space and time. (Spatio-temporal positions perhaps?)
So perhaps we should spring for a disjunctive criterion according to which the abstract is that which is:
c. Non-spatio-temporal or causally inert. This would imply that God and Socrates are both concrete.
d. On a fourth construal of 'abstract' an item is abstract just in case it is incomplete. To get a sense of what I am driving at, consider the following from Hegel's essay Who Thinks Abstractly?
A murderer is led to the place of execution. For the common populace he is nothing but a murderer. Ladies perhaps remark that he is a strong, handsome, interesting man. The populace finds this remark terrible: What? A murderer handsome? How can one think so wickedly and call a murderer handsome . . . .
This is abstract thinking: to see nothing in the murderer except the abstract fact that he is a murderer, and to annul all other human essence in him with this simple quality.
The murderer is not just a murderer; he is other things besides: a father, a son, a husband, a handsome devil, a lover of dogs, a strong chess player . . . . In general, the being of anything that actually exists cannot be reduced to one of its qualities. To acquiesce in such a reduction is to think abstractly: it is to abstract from the full reality of thing in order to focus on one of its determinations. But here we should distinguish between legitimate abstraction and vicious abstraction. What Hegel is railing against is vicious abstraction.
Now I am not interested here in explaining Hegel. I am using him for my purposes, one of which is to pin down a classical as opposed to a Quinean sense of 'abstract.' Accordingly, an abstract entity in the (d) sense is an entity that is got before the mind by an act of abstraction. But please note that if epistemic access to an entity is via abstraction, it does not follow that the entity is a merely intentional object. What I am trying to articulate is a fourth ontic sense of 'abstract,' not an epistemic/doxastic/intentional sense. It could well be that there are incomplete entities, where an entity is anything that exists. (As I use 'item,' an item may or may not exist, so as not to beg the question against the great Austrian philosopher Alexius von Meinong.)
We have now arrived at the sense of 'abstract' relevant to trope theory. Here is a red round spot on a white piece of paper. When I direct my eyes to the spot I see red, a particular shade of red. That is a datum. On the trope theory, the red that I see is a particular, an unrepeatable item. It is not a universal, a repeatable item. Thus on trope theory the red I see is numerically distinct from the red I see when I look at a numerically different spot of the same (exact shade of ) color.
It is important to realize that one cannot resolve the question whether properties are particulars or universals phenomenologically. That I see red here and also over there does not show that there are two rednesses. For the phenomenological datum is consistent with redness being a universal that is located into two different places and visible in two different places. Phenomenology alone won't cut it in philosophy; we need dialectics too. Husserl take note!
There are philosophers who are not bundle theorists who speak of tropes. C. B. Martin is one. I do not approve of their hijacking of 'trope,' a term introduced by D. C. Williams, bundle theorist. I am a bit of a prick when to comes to language. Technical words and phrases ought to be used with close attention to their provenience. It rankles me when 'bare particular' is used any old way when it is a terminus technicus introduced by Gustav Bergmann with a precise meaning. Read Bergmann, and then sling 'bare particular.'
On standard trope theory, trope bundle theory, the spot -- a concrete item -- is a system of compresent tropes. It is just a bundle of tropes. There is no substratum that supports the tropes: the spot just is compresent tropes. Furthermore, the existence of the spot is just the compresence of its tropes. Since the spot exists contingently, the tropes are compresent contingently. That implies that the compresent tropes can in some sense 'be' without being bundled. (Note that tropes are bundled iff they are compresent.) For if there were no sense in which the tropes could 'be' without being bundled, then how could one account for the contingency of a give trope bundle?
Now if tropes can be without being bundled, then they are not products of abstraction: they are not merely intentional items that arise before our minds when we abstract from the other features of a thing. When I consider the redness of the spot, I leave out of consideration the roundness. On trope theory this particular redness really exists whether or not I bring it before my mind by a process of abstraction. Tropes are thus incomplete entities, not incomplete intentional objects. They are in no way mind-dependent. They have to be entities if they are to be the ultimate ontological building blocks of ordinary concrete particulars such as our round, red spot.
An abstract item in the (d) sense, then, is an incomplete entity. It is not complete, i.e., completely determinate. For example, a redness trope is a a property assayed as a particular. It is the ontological ground of the datanic redness of our spot and it is this by being itself red. Our redness trope is itself red. But that is all it is: it is just red. This is why it is abstract in the (d) sense. Nothing can be concrete if it is just red. For if a concretum is red, then it is either sticky or non-sticky (by the Law of Excluded Middle) and either way a concrete red thing is either red sticky thing or a red non-sticky thing.
The Epistemic Sense of 'Abstract'
I have already alluded to this sense according to which an item is abstract iff it is brought before the mind by an act of abstraction and is only as a merely intentional object.
At this point I must take issue with my esteemed coworker in these ontological vineyards, J. P. Moreland. He writes, ". . . Campbell follows the moderate nominalist tendency of treating 'abstract' as an epistemic, and not ontological, notion." (Universals, p. 53) I don't think so. The process of abstracting is epistemic, but not that which is brought before the mind by this process. So I say that 'abstract' as Campbell uses it is an ontological or ontic notion. After all, tropes or abstract particulars as Campbell calls them are not mere products of mental abstraction: they are mind-independent building blocks of everything including things that existed long before minds made the scene.
A reader doesn't get the point of my earlier entry:
Use-Mention Confusion
Dennis Miller: "Melissa Harris-Perry is a waste of a good hyphen."
So let me explain it. Miller is a brilliant conservative comedian who appears regularly on The O'Reilly Factor. If you catch every one of Miller's allusions and can follow his rap you are very sharp indeed. He has contempt for flaming leftists like Harris-Perry. Realizing that the Left's Alinskyite tactics need to be turned against them, and that mockery and derision can be very effective political weapons, he took a nasty but brilliant jab at her in the above-quoted line.
What makes the jab comical is Miller's willful confusion of the use and mention of expressions, one class of which is the proper name. One USES the name 'Melissa Harris-Perry' to refer to the person in question. This person, the bearer of the name, is not a name or any type of expression. The person in question eats and drinks and fulminates; no name eats and drinks and fulminates. But if I point out that 'Melissa Harris-Perry' is a hyphenated expression, I MENTION the expression; I am talking about it, not about its referent or bearer. When I say that the name is hyphenated I say something obviously true; if I say or imply that the woman in question is hyphenated, then I say or imply something that is either necessarily false or else incoherent (because involving a Rylean category mistake) and thus lacking a truth value. Either way I am not saying anything true let alone obviously true.
But what makes Miller's jab funny? What in general makes a joke funny? This question belongs to the philosophy of humor, and I can tell you that it is no joke. (That itself is a joke, a meta-joke.) There are three or four going theories of humor. One of them, the Incongruity Theory, fits many instances of humor. Suppose you ask me what time it is and I reply: You mean now? If I say this in the right way you will laugh. (If you don't, then, like Achmed the Terrorist, I kill you!) Now what make the joke funny? It is an instance of incongruity, but I will leave the details for you to work out. And the same goes for the joke in parentheses.
It is the same with the Miller joke. Everybody understands implicitly that a name is not the same as its bearer, that some names are hyphenated, and that no human being is hyphenated. Normal people understand facts like these even if they have never explicitly formulated them. What Miller does to achieve his comic effect is to violate this implicit understanding. It is the incongruity of Miller's jab with our normal implicit understanding that generates the humorousness of the situation.
But WHY should it have this effect? Why should incongruity be perceived by us as funny? Perhaps I can get away with saying that this is just the way things are. Explanations must end somewhere.
Am I a pedant or what?
But I am not done.
There is also a moral question. Isn't there something morally shabby about mocking a person's name and making jokes at his expense? Some years back I was taken aback when Michael Reagan referred to George Stephanopolous on the air as George Step-on-all-of-us. A gratuitous cheap-shot, I thought.
But given how willfully stupid and destructive Harris-Perry is, and given that politics is war by another name, is there not a case for using the Left's Alinksyite tactics against them? (Is this a rhetorical question or am I really asking? I'm not sure myself.)
Here is a bit of evidence that Harris-Perry really is a a willfully stupid, destructive race-baiter. There is another in the first entry referenced below.
We should anchor our thought in that which is most certain: the fact of change, the nearness of death, that things exist, that one is conscious, that one can say 'I' and mean it, the fact of conscience. But man does not meditate on the certain; he chases after the uncertain and ephemeral: name and fame, power and position, longevity and progeny, loot and land, pleasure and comfort.
Wealth is not certain, but the grave is. So meditate on death, asking: Who dies? Who survives? What is death? Who am I? What am I?
Death is certain, but the when is uncertain. Do not try to make a certainty out of what is uncertain, or an uncertainty out of what is certain.
"What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes." (James 4:14)
Does it do any good to keep pointing out the obvious, namely, that liberal-left scum have taken over the country and are destroying it? We can't seem to do anything about it. Who will stop the rot? Not establishment Republicans who go along to get along.
Trump? Are you serious? There was a point at which I thought Trump might be the man, despite all his glaring defects. But no longer. He had a shot at the presidency. But he's blown it: his judgment is so bad, or his ego is so huge, that he cannot control his tongue. He possesses an excess of groundless self-confidence, just like Obama. (And like Obama, he is a liar and a bullshitter.) Trump thinks he can just 'wing it' without doing any real work or learning anything about the issues. Thus he thinks he can enter the snake pit with a slimy leftist like Chris Matthews and escape unharmed without having done any real preparation.
As for the existence of leftist rot, here (HT: Bill Keezer) is a taste of The Diplomad:
What follows are two posts written by Dennis Monokroussos from his first-rate chess weblog, The Chess Mind. For purposes of comparison, here are the United States Chess Federation ratings of four, actually five, chess playing philosopher friends. For detailed stats click on the names. Dennis Monokroussos: 2385. Timothy McGrew: 2196. Victor Reppert: 1912. Ed Yetman: 1800. Bill Vallicella: 1543. (My highest rating was 1726)
Part of my point is that life is unfair. Why should I have a trap named after me, when nothing chessic is named after my above-listed philosophizing chess betters? Perhaps it shows that even a patzer can have a good idea now and again. Why should I get to join Franz Brentano in the annals of chess? (The Brentano Defense in the Ruy Lopez is named after him: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 g5)
Am I comparing myself to Brentano? Well, yes: anything can be compared to anything.
If anyone has any idea as to Brentano's playing strength, shoot me an e-mail.
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The Famous Vallicella Trap?! (posted 8 May 2008)
I was browsing IM Jovanka Houska's 2007 book Play the Caro-Kann, and while looking through the introductory section on the Panov/Botvinnik Attack I read something incredible. In a subsection called 7th move sidelines, I came across this:
1 e4 c6 2 d4 d5 3 exd5 cxd5 4 c4 Nf6 5 Nc3
5 Nf3 is known as Vallicella's Caro-Kann trap - Black has to watch out for one big trick. Best is simply to play 5...Nc6, transposing to the main line after 6 Nc3, but 5...Bg4? would be a mistake after 6 c5! Nc6 7 Bb5. The point is that Black has big difficulties defending the c6 point; for example, 7...e6 8 Qa4 Qc7 9 Ne5 Rc8 10 Bf4 and White is winning! [p. 76]
There's nothing objectionable about the analysis*; rather, what struck me was the reference to Vallicella's Caro-Kann trap, as if this was standard lore in treatments of the Caro-Kann. How did Bill Vallicella, an outstanding philosophical blogger but a 1500-1700 club player not engaged in publicizing his games, suddenly achieve such fame? I had come across his trap either from an email by him or on a post on his predominantly philosophical blog, but when did a move he may have played but a single time turn into an idea requiring mention in a pretty major new theoretical work?
Houska doesn't cite a source, and I certainly didn't recall seeing it in any published materials, so naturally it was off to Google. Entering "Vallicella Caro-Kann", I discovered the main source, conveniently entitled "Vallicella's Caro-Kann Trap"...and you can, too - just click here. Then laugh.**
* Actually, while I wouldn't disagree with her positive suggestion, I don't believe 5...Bg4 is in fact a mistake; the real error comes later. After, e.g. 7...e5 I don't see a White advantage after 8.dxe5 Ne4 or 8.Qa4 Bxf3 9.Bxc6+ bxc6 10.Qxc6+ Nd7 11.gxf3 exd4, and even the arguably best 8.Nc3 promises little or nothing after 8...Nd7 9.dxe5 Bxf3 (10.Qxf3 d4; 10.gxf3 a6).
** If anyone knows IM Houska personally, please ask her to write me - I'd like to trace the path from Vallicella's idea to her book.
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Vallicella's Caro-Kann Trap (posted 27 August 2005)
After 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.exd5 cxd5 4.c4 Nf6, the usual follow-up is 5.Nc3, when Black has three standard replies:
(A) 5...e6, when White plays 6.Nf3, (B) 5...g6, when White plays 6.Qb3, and (C) 5...Nc6, when White can either accede to the pin after 6.Nf3 Bg4, or else play the sharper but less reliable 6.Bg5.
Instead, the Maverick Philosopher has been utilizing the tricky 5.Nf3. It looks slightly clumsy, welcoming the Black bishop to g4 right away, but his idea is revealed after 5...Bg4 6.c5 Nc6 7.Bb5 e6 8.Qa4 Qc7 9.Ne5 Rc8 10.Bf4, when between the pin on c6, the threat of various discoveries involving the Bf4/Ne5/Qc7, and other, lesser but still significant problems with the Black position, White is winning.
Where did Black go wrong? I've already addressed this to some extent in a post on my previous blog, but as the move order examined there was a bit different than what we find in this game, I'll offer some new comments.
First, on move 5, Black can respond with the three normal anti-5.Nc3 options: 5...e6, 5...Nc6, and 5...g6. Should he do so, I don't see any advantage to be had by 5.Nf3, and there is a possible disadvantage. After 5.Nc3 g6, White's best try for an advantage is 6.cxd5 Bg7 7.Qb3 O-O 8.Be2 Nbd7 9.Bf3 Nb6 10.Nge2, but this variation is obviously impossible once White has placed the knight on f3. After 5.Nf3 g6 6.Nc3 Bg7 7.cxd5 O-O 8.Bc4 Nbd7 9.O-O Nb6 10.Bb3 both 10...Nbxd5 and 10...Nfxd5 have scored very well for Black.
Second, after 5.Nf3 Bg4 6.c5 Nc6 7.Bb5, the confrontational 7...e5 seems to give Black equal chances after 8.dxe5 Ne4 9.b4 Be7 10.O-O O-O 11.Bxc6 bxc6 12.Qd3 a5 13.Nd4 Bd7.
Third, as mentioned in my earlier blog post (linked above), after 7...e6 8.Qa4, the pawn sac 8...Bxf3 9.Bxc6+ bxc6 10.Qxc6+ Nd7 11.gxf3 leaves Black some compensation for the pawn in the form of White's numerous pawn weaknesses and the lack of an obvious refuge for the White king.
In sum, I think 5.Nf3 is objectively inferior to 5.Nc3. However, it doesn't seem that much weaker, and it does come with a nice positional trap, making it a reasonable surprise weapon for the odd game.
The variations above, and a bit more, can be replayed here.
I may be a day late and a dollar short, but here for your auditory amusement are some tunes in celebration or bemoanment of human folly the chief instance of which is romantic love. Who has never been played for a fool by a charming member of the opposite sex? Old age is the sovereign cure for romantic folly and I sincerely recommend it to the young and foolish. Take care to get there.
In chess, the object of the game is clear, the rules are fixed and indisputable, and there is always a definite outcome (win, lose, or draw) about which no controversy can arise. In philosophy, the object and the rules are themselves part of what is in play, and there is never an incontrovertible result.
So I need both of these gifts of the gods. Chess to recuperate from the uncertainty of philosophy, and philosophy to recuperate from the sterility of chess.
Both can be utterly absorbing, and yet both can appear in a ridiculous light. Thus both can appear to be insignificant pursuits far removed from 'reality.' The difference is that only philosophy can tackle the inevitable question, What is reality?
The denigrator of philosophy himself philosophizes, unlike the denigrator of chess who remains outside chess.
But it usually does no good to point out to the denigrator of philosophy that he presupposes an understanding of reality and thus himself philosophizes in an inarticulate and uncritical way. For he is too lazy and unserious to profit from the remark: he does not want truth; he is content to wallow in the shallow opinions he happens to have -- and that have him.
Both are deadly to the moral life but they push or pull in opposite directions. Lust leads to dispersion into sensuous multiplicity. Pride leads to fixation on the false unity of the ego. These are two different ways to lose your soul or true self.
To be neither poor nor rich is best for the truth seeker. The poor can think only of their poverty and its alleviation, the rich of their wealth and its preservation. The few exceptions 'prove' the rule.
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