Maverick Philosopher

On Loss of Faith in the Roman Catholic Church

Rod Dreher writes,

At the risk of oversharing, the most painful thing about covering the scandal from 2002 until I left the Catholic Church in 2006 was losing my Catholic faith, which had been at the center of my life since my conversion in 1993.

If I have the story right, Mr. Dreher has moved from the RCC east to Orthodoxy.  If so, then we can safely assume that he is still a theist who believes in the divinity of Christ, the Trinity, and much else besides. So his loss of his Catholic faith was his loss of faith in the Roman church as the one, true, holy, catholic (universal) and apostolic church founded by Christ.  As he says a little later,

What’s worth pointing out is that the final straw was realizing that my wife and I could not trust the institution anymore.

One question that arises is whether it would be reasonable to cleave to one's faith in the institution as divinely ordained in the teeth of all the revelations of evil deeds and cover-ups.

I should think that this would prove psychologically impossible for many if not most of the laity. But I also think one could reasonably remain within the church if one accepts its traditional teachings. Michael Liccione on his Facebook page writes,

I'm Catholic because I believe that the only principled way to distinguish between divine revelation and human opinion is by the teaching of a visible authority, established by Jesus himself and temporally continuous with the Apostles, that is preserved from error by the Holy Spirit when teaching with her full authority. That's the authority which I believe the gates of hell will not prevail against. So even if the Catholic Church had to go underground, and thus become invisible to most people, there would still be her teaching and sacraments to sustain us, even if only through a few.

I would add the following. The Church is in the world where Satan is at work. So it is no surprise that Satan is at work in the Church. But if the Church was founded by Christ, the God-Man, and the current Church can trace itself back to the Founder, then there is 'no way in hell' that the gates of hell can prevail against it.

So if one accepts the RC worldview in all of its major tenets, as I believe Liccione does, then it is reasonable to cleave to one's faith in the institution as divinely ordained in the teeth of all the revelations of evil deeds and cover-ups.  This is because the worldview has the resources to explain away the appearance of its own fraudulence.

Of course, this leaves us with the problem of whether it is reasonable to accept the RC worldview in the first place.  Many will no doubt take the deep levels of corruption as good evidence that the Roman church was never the one, true, holy, catholic (universal) and apostolic church that enjoys divine sanction and is ongoingly guided by the Holy Ghost.  

But if one accepts Roman Catholicism in its orthodox form, then it is reasonable to stick with the faith despite the psychological difficulty of doing so at the present time.

Here's my problem. I accept God and the possibility of divine revelation, and I understand the need for a principled way to distinguish divine revelation from human opinion.  But what validates the RCC as this principled way and means? Well, it validates itself.

Is there a problem with that? For more on the general problem of the need for a "visible authority"  see Private Judgment? 

Why Talk of 'Possible Worlds'?

 This from a commenter:

I have a question about a tangential matter, in case you care to respond to it. You say [in your discussion of divine simplicity and modal collapse] that you don't need talk of possible worlds. I don't think I find such talk puzzling, but I've never understood the vogue for it. Since many absolutely first-rate philosophers seem to insist on using it, I assume there must be some great advantage to doing so, and not seeing what that is I assume that there is something important I don't understand. If you care to explain I'd be interested.

The notion of possible worlds dates back at least to G. W. Leibniz (1646-1716) but the current vogue began roughly in the middle of the 20th century when philosophers and logicians applied themselves to the formal semantics of the different systems of (alethic) modal logic. Now this is a highly technical topic but the technicalities can be avoided for present purposes.  I will assume the S5 axiom set. 

Assumption: reality has a modal structure

I will also assume that reality has a modal structure, that modality is somehow ingredient in extramental reality. Thus modality is not a merely epistemic/doxastic matter.  For example, Hillary could have won in 2016. It was really possible for her to have won. Had she worked harder and smarter, kept her trap shut about the 'deplorables,' etc., then she probably would have won.  Things really could have gone otherwise, and this possibility is not parasitic upon our ignorance of all the factors involved in her losing. 

The utility of talking the talk

As I see it, the utility of 'possible worlds' talk is that it allows for an especially  perspicuous representation of modal relationships in extensional terms.  And it seems to me that one can talk the talk without walking the walk. That is, one can  make use of 'possible worlds' (PW) jargon without taking on too many heavy-duty ontological commitments. What do I mean? One thing I mean is that one can employ PW jargon without buying into David Lewis' extreme modal realism. For Lewis, possible worlds are maximal mereological sums of concreta. One can surely talk the talk without walking that walk. How?

Sketch of an abstractist approach to possible worlds

A much saner way of thinking about possible worlds is as follows. If the Lewisian way is concretist, the following way is abstractist: possible worlds are abstract objects, maximal Fregean propositions on one abstractist approach.

0) The actual world is the total way things are. A merely possible world is a total way things could have been or could be. Let that be our intuitive starting point.

The actual world is the total way things are, but not the things that are that way. Thus the actual world is not the same as the universe, whether physical or physical plus any nonphysical items there  are.  Surprised? Think about it!

1) The actual world is a possible world. This is because everything actual is possible. But of course the actual world is not merely possible. Mere possibility and actuality are mutually exclusive.

2) There is a plurality of possible worlds. This is because the possible outruns the actual: the set of actualia is a proper subset of the set of possibilia. So if there are possible worlds at all, there are many of them. If you say that there is only one possible world, the actual world, then that leads to the collapse of modal distinctions, or, to put it less dramatically, the extensional equivalence of the possible, the actual, and the necessary. This view, call it modal Spinozism, cannot be dismissed out of hand. But I will not here argue for the reality of modal distinctions. That is something we are now presupposing.

3) There is and can be only one actual world. This follows from the maximality property of worlds. Whatever one's exact conception of a world, worlds are all-inclusive totalities. (So much is built into the very word, 'world.') If a world is an abstract state of affairs, as A. Plantinga maintains, then it must be a maximal state of affairs: one that includes every state of affairs with which it is logically consistent. If a world is a (Fregean) proposition, then it must be a maximal proposition: one that entails every proposition with which it is logically consistent. These maximal objects are so big that, to employ a chemical metaphor, they are 'saturated': adding another member to them would 'precipitate' a contradiction. So there cannot be two or more actual worlds.

4) There must be an actual world. It cannot be the case that every world is merely possible. If every world were merely possible, then that would be the case, actually the case, which implies that the total way things are would include its actually being the case, which implies that there would be, after all, an actual world. So it cannot be the case that every world is merely possible. Think about it.

5) Possibilities come in world-sized packages: necessarily, if state of affairs S is possible, then there is a world W such that W includes S. This amounts to a denial of 'isolated' or 'worldless' possibilities. I am now blogging, but I might have been now sleeping, where both occurrences of 'now' pick out the very same time. Let S = BV's sleeping now. Had S been actual now, everything would have been different in a few major ways and in an infinity of miniscule ways. So if I had been sleeping now a world different from the world that is actual would have been actual.

6) Actuality is absolute, not world-relative. If by #2 there is a plurality of possible worlds, and by #3 there is only one actual world, then there is a distinction between merely possible worlds and that privileged possible world that is the actual world. Although every world is actual at itself, only one world is actual simpliciter, actual period.

Compare: although every time is present at itself, only one time is present simpliciter. This comparison of course assumes (controversially) that the B-theory of time is false, the theory according to which time is exhausted by McTaggart's B-series, the series of events ordered by the relations earlier than, later than, and simultaneous with. I am assuming that in addition to the B-relations there are also the monadic A-properties of pastness, presentness, and futurity, and that these properties are instantiated.

'Now' of course is an indexical expression: it picks out the time of its tokening. Tokened at midnight, it picks out midnight, at noon, noon. But is 'actual' an indexical? Does its reference depend on the context of utterance so that, tokened in this world it refers to this world, tokened in another, to that other? That's what David Lewis maintains, but I say 'actual' is not an indexical. When I say that this world, our world, is actual, I mean to ascribe to it the monadic property of actuality, a property which only one world can have.

There are many possible worlds, but only one is actual. Furthermore, the one that is actual might not have been actual. So the one that is actual is contingently actual. If that were not the case, the merely possible worlds would not be possible. For whatever is possible, is possibly actual. The worlds that do not bear the privilege of actuality could have borne it.

7) X exists in/at world W =df were W actual, X would exist.  

8) X is a contingent being =df X exists in some but not all possible worlds. It follows from this definition that something, Pegasus say, can be a contingent being even if it does not actually exist. If the word 'being' throws you, substitute 'item.'

9) X is a necessary being =df X exists in all possible worlds.

10) X is an impossible being =df X exists in no possible world.

11) X is actual =df X exists in the actual world, the one world that happens to be actual.

12) Puzzle: It looks as if, on the one hand, 'The actual world is not actual' is a contradiction. On the other hand, it is surely the case that the actual world might not have been actual. The puzzle is solved by distinguishing two uses of  'the actual world.' It can be used as a Kripkean rigid designator that picks out one particular world, this world, our world, and does so in every possible world. Used in this way, 'The actual world is not actual' is possibly true. But 'the actual world' can also be used as a definite description that applies to whichever world happens to be actual. Used in this second way, 'The actual world is not actual' is a contradiction.

13) But what exactly is a possible world? I take an abstractist line. Worlds are maximal (Fregean) propositions or maximal (abstract) states of affairs. They are not maximal mereological sums of concreta, pace David Lewis. If worlds are propositions, then actuality is truth. That is one interesting consequence. Another is that worlds are abstract objects which implies that the actual world must not be confused either with the physical universe (the space-time-matter system) or with that plus whatever nonphysical concreta (minds) that there might be. And if worlds are abstract objects then they are necessary beings. (See #9 above.) So every possible world exists in every possible world.

If actuality is truth, and individuals cannot be true (in the exact sense in which a proposition can be true), then perhaps there is a problem with #11 above.

14) If worlds are maximal Fregean propositions, then no concretum such as Socrates can exist in any world in the manner of a constitutent. This is because concreta are not among the constituents of Fregean propositions. Therefore, to say that there is a possible world in which Socrates exists but dies in battle, is to say that there is a maximal proposition according to which Socrates dies in battle. 

Restriction to alethic modalities

The concern here is with alethic modality, not deontic or epistemic modality. By alethic modalities I understand the modalities of truth, of existence, and of property-possession.

Truth

It is necessary that 2 is a prime number, impossible that 2 is an an odd number, and contingent that 2 is the number of my cats. In PW jargon: 

Every metaphysically possible world w is such that *2 is prime* is true in w.
No metaphysically possible world w is such that *2 is odd* is true in w.
Some (but not all) metaphysically possible worlds are such that *2 is the number of my cats* is true in w.

If we quantify over possible worlds, we can understand the modal terms 'necessary,' 'impossible,' and 'contingent' by analogy with the quantifiers of standard, first-order predicate logic: 'every,' 'no,' 'some.'  And we can then set up a modal square of opposition in analogy to the standard square of opposition.

 

Isn't that neat? The modal relationships fairly jump out at you. Necessarily p entails possibly p. Of course. What is true is true in every world is true in some world, but not conversely.

When I say that the PW representation of modal propositions and inferences is extensional, all I mean is that the representation involves quantifying over possible worlds assumed as given.

Existence and Property-Possession

A necessary being is one that exists in all worlds; an impossible being one that exists in no worlds; a contingent being is one that exists in some but not all worlds. If x has a property essentially, then x has the property in every world in which x exists; if x has a property accidentally, then x has it in some but not all of the worlds in which x exists. If a necessary being has a property essentially, we can say that it has the property necessarily in that there is no world in which it does not have the property. Thus the number 7 is necessarily prime and God is necessarily omniscient.  Socrates, by contrast, is essentially human but not necessarily human.

An important Euthyphro-type question

Now let's dig a little deeper.

God is a necessary being. He exists in every world. But does he exist in every world because he is necessary, or is he necessary because he exists in every world?  I say the former.  His metaphysical necessity grounds and thus explains his existence in every world.  He exists according to every maximal proposition because he is metaphysically necessary.  But what grounds the divine necessity? The divine simplicity: existence and essence are one in God.

Now take Socrates. He is a contingent being: he exists in some but not all possible worlds.  But does he exist in some but not all worlds because he is contingent, or is he contingent because he exists in some but not all worlds? I say the former. Only some world-propositions say he exists because he is contingent.  But what makes him contingent? One answer is that he is contingent because there is in him and in all contingent beings that actually exist a real distinction between essence and existence.

Answering the reader's question

The reader asked about the advantage of PW talk.  My answer is that such talk allows for an especially perspicuous representation of modal propositions and relationships.   

If I am right, the patois of PW is a dispensable manner of speaking: we can make every point we want to make without engaging in PW talk.  What I just said is not perfectly obvious and there may be counterexamples. I have one in mind right now. Stay tuned. 

Paul Gottfried versus NeoCon Mythology

Here:

Professor Gottfried goes on to examine several examples of these purges, correcting the errors of those who have distorted the record. For example, many have claimed that Buckley’s 1965 denunciation of the John Birch Society was because the Birchers were guilty of anti-Semitism. This is simply slander. Whatever their other errors may have been, it wasn’t anti-Semitism that led Buckley to denounce the JBS, but rather their opposition to LBJ’s escalation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

As we know, both Williamson and Jonah Goldberg belong to the “Never Trump” cult that National Review created in late 2015, and the anti-Trump fury of “the socially and professionally acceptable Right” illustrates how jealously they regard their status as Gnostic archons of the movement, with the authority to banish anyone they dislike. Trump won the GOP nomination despite the opposition of the National Review crowd and, while they predicted (and openly planned for the aftermath of) his defeat in November 2016, somehow Trump won again. We’ve had to endure the butthurt whining of the Never-Trumpers ever since.

How do we explain this? A major factor is the vanity and careerist ambitions of the intelligentsia. Those whom Ace of Spades has dubbed “the Cruise Ship Wing of fake conservatism” (a reference to the travel-with-pundits deals sold to subscribers of National Review and the Weekly Standard) are careful to protect their “respectable” reputations, and they cannot enhance their reputations by admitting they were wrong.

That's right. The bow-tied boys have an inordinate concern with 'respectability' and the perquisites of high status. They want to be liked and accepted and taken seriously. They don't seem to realize that leftists will always loathe them no matter how many concessions they make.

What the Fight is About

Robert W. Merry understands that the fight is not primarily over Trump but over the soul of America and her future.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump opened up a series of fresh fault lines in American politics by advocating new directions for the country that no other politician would discuss. They included a clamp-down on illegal immigration and a serious reduction in overall immigration after a decades-long influx of unprecedented proportions; an effort to address the hollowing out of America’s industrial capacity through trade policies; an end to our nation-building zeal and the wars of choice spawned by it; and a promise to curtail the power of elites who gave us unfettered immigration, an industrial decline, endless wars, years of lukewarm economic growth, and an era of globalism that slighted old-fashioned American nationalism.

[. . .]

Before Trump’s 2016 emergence onto the political scene, many liberals believed the American future belonged to what political analyst Ron Brownstein called the “coalition of the ascendant”—including racial minorities, immigrants, Millennials, and highly educated whites residing primarily along the nation’s two coasts. They were convinced this ascendant force would eventually overwhelm the declining white majority and usher in a new era of globalism, open borders, identity politics, free trade, cultural individualism, foreign policy interventionism, and gun control.

Trump interrupted the coalition of the ascendant on its way to U.S. political hegemony. In the process, he touched off an epic struggle over the definition of America.

For those committed to the new world envisioned by the coalition of the ascendant, it is easy to see Trump, with all of his crudeness and vulgarity, as evil. After all, he’s personally distasteful and he wants to destroy the America of their dreams. But for Trump supporters, he represents their last hope for preserving the old America. These people view the stakes as so high that the president’s personal indecency and civic brutishness simply don’t register as problems. They may wish for a more wholesome leader, but no such person has emerged to take up their cause.

The Left's blind rage against Trump is not primarily because of the man and his personal style, but because of his threat to their agenda. If Trump had Hillary's ideas and policies, and Hillary Trump's, the Left would have overlooked Trump's personal behavior and supported him in the same way that they overlooked the bad behavior of Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton.  The would have dismissed the Access Hollywood tape as locker-room talk in the same way they dismissed Bill Clinton's much worse sexually predatory actions as pecadilloes belonging to his personal life.

The Never-Trumpers, on the other hand, hate Trump primarily because of the man he is, and not primarily because of his ideas and policies.  They hate him because he is a crude and obnoxious outsider, an interloper, who crashed their party and threatened to upset their cozy world.

Proof of this is that Trump's solid conservative accomplishments mollify the bow-tie brigade not one bit.  Their hatred and mindless opposition is in no way reduced by the Gorsuch confirmation, the Kavanaugh nomination, the movement of the U. S. embassy to Israel, the surging stock market, the low unemployment numbers, the defense of religious liberty, and so on down the list.

Desert Light Draws Us into the Mystical

Today, the feast of St. Augustine, is a clear and dry day in the Valley of the Sun. A meditation, then, on light and the ascent to the Light.

Just as the eyes are the most spiritual of the bodily organs, light is the most spiritual of physical phenomena. And there is no light like the lambent light of the desert. The low humidity, the sparseness of vegetation that even in its arboreal forms hug the ground, the long, long vistas that draw the eye out to shimmering buttes and mesas -- all of these contribute to the illusion that the light is alive.

Light as phenomenon, as appearance, is not something merely physical. It is as much mind as matter. Without its appearance to mind it would not be what it phenomenologically is. But the light that allows rocks and coyotes to appear, itself appears. This seen light is seen within a clearing, eine Lichtung (Heidegger), which is light in a transcendental sense. But this transcendental light in whose light both illuminated objects and physical light appear, points back to the onto-theological Source of this transcendental light. Heidegger would not approve of my last move, but so be it.

Augustine claims to have glimpsed this eternal Source Light, the light of Truth, upon entering into his "inmost being." Entering there, he saw with his soul's eye, "above that same eye of my soul, above my mind, an unchangeable light." He continues:

     It was not this common light, plain to all flesh, nor a greater
     light of the same kind . . . Not such was that light, but
     different, far different from all other lights. Nor was it above my
     mind, as oil is above water, or sky above earth. It was above my
     mind, because it made me, and I was beneath it, because I was made
     by it. He who knows the truth, knows that light, and he who knows
     it knows eternity. (Confessions, Book VII, Chapter 10)

'Light,' then, has several senses.  There is the light of physics. There is physical light as we see it, whether in the form of illuminated things such as yonder mesa, or sources of illumination such as the sun, or the lambent space between them. There is the transcendental light of mind without which nothing at all would appear. There is, above this transcendental light, its Source.

A tetrad of lights: physical, phenomenal, transcendental, and divine.

The Trump Admin: One Solid Accomplishment After Another

Here:

The Trump administration announced Friday that it is cutting more than $200 million in aid to the Palestinians, following a review, commissioned by President Trump, of U.S. assistance projects in Gaza and West Bank.

Another demonstration of what leftists lack, common sense. 

Voter Fraud is Real

Leftists of course deny the fact since it serves their purposes to do so. Their grand strategy is to win by demographic means. 

Truth is not a leftist value. Or rather, it is if it supports their agenda, but is not if it doesn't.

For a leftist, the difference between a citizen and a non-citizen is the difference between someone who is physically present within a nation's boundaries and one who isn't.

John Fund has done good, objective work on voter fraud. See here and here.

Robert Reich to Cloud Cuckoo Land

The more the Trumpster accomplishes, the more the victims of TDS hate him.

For Robert Reich, impeachment is not enough. Nor would Trump's removal from office be enough. The formerly sane Reich, descending into a delusionality delightful to us of the Coalition of the Sane, proposes the annullment of the entire Trump administration and all of its works.

Enjoy!

Against Iconoclasm and the Erasure of History

Muslims are well-known for their iconoclasm, hostility to the arts, and destruction of cultural artifacts. Leftists are like unto Muslims in this regard too.

The trouble with iconoclasm is that all parties can play the game. 

Mass-murdering communist regimes are responsible for some 94 million deaths in the 20th century. Why not then destroy all the statues and monuments that honor the likes of Karl Marx, V. I. Lenin, Fidel Castro and all others who either laid the foundations for or carried out mass murder?  

 

You understand, of course, that I am not advocating this.  For one thing, the erasure of history would make it rather more difficult to learn from it. For another thing, there would be no end to it.  Why not destroy the Colosseum in Rome? You know what went on there.

Or how about St. Robert Bellarmine, S. J. ?  Should paintings and statues of him be destroyed?  He had a hand in the burning at the stake of the philosopher Giordano Bruno! According to Wikipedia:

Bellarmine was made rector of the Roman College in 1592, examiner of bishops in 1598, and cardinal in 1599. Immediately after his appointment as Cardinal, Pope Clement made him a Cardinal Inquisitor, in which capacity he served as one of the judges at the trial of Giordano Bruno, and concurred in the decision which condemned Bruno to be burned at the stake as a heretic.^[5]

Better known is the fact that Bellarmine is the man who hauled the great Galileo Galilei before the Inquisition. 

Calling all philosophers and scientists! To your sledge hammers and blow torches!

And then there are the paintings, statues, etc. of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., plagiarist and adulterer. Yes, King plagiarized (portions of) his Boston University dissertation. 

Anyone with sense should be able to understand that high merit worthy of honor can exist alongside deep character flaws.

There is no need to multiply examples. You should be getting the point along about now.

I now assign Victor Davis Hanson, The Ideology of Statue Smashing. Yes, kiddies, this will be on the final.

Mysticism with Monica

St. Monica's feast day is today; her son's is tomorrow. Of the various mystical vouchsafings, glimpses, and intimations recorded by St. Augustine in his Confessions, the vision at Ostia (Book 9, Chapter 10) is unique in that it is a sort of mystical duet. Mother and son achieve the vision together. Peter Kreeft does a good job of unpacking the relevant passages.

Kreeft here lists fourteen features of mystical experience which comport well with my experience.

Related: Philosophy, Religion, Mysticism, and Wisdom

Freedom in the 50 States

Arizona does very well. California and New York are crap holes freedom-wise. No surprise with chuckleheads Jerry Brown and Andrew Cuomo at their respective helms. (HT: Bill Keezer)

The Cognitive Dissonance of the Never-Trumper

Here:

. . . you’ve got a guy, in the White House, rapidly working his way through every conservative’s wish list of all the good, important things that need to be done – and somehow you’ve got to ignore all that and delude yourself and your readers that Crooked Hillary would have been the vastly preferable, conservative-friendly option.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Destinations and How to Get There

I got 'em all. How about you?

Graphic credit. HT: Ingvarius Maximus of Alhambra

Gladys Knight and the Pips, Night Train to Georgia

Monkees, Last Train to Clarksville

Led Zeppelin, Stairway to Heaven

AC/DC, Highway to Hell

Eagles, Hotel California

Wilbert Harrison, Kansas City

The Bonny Banks O' Loch Lomond

James Taylor, Carolina in my Mind

Eddie Money, Two Tickets to Paradise

Steve Miller Band, Fly Like an Eagle

Grateful Dead, Casey Jones

Johnny Horton, The Battle of New Orleans

Brewer and Shipley, One Toke Over the Line 

Dave Dudley, Six Days on the Road 

Beatles, Yellow Submarine

Ramblin' Tommy Scott, She'll Be Coming Around the Mountain When She Comes

Peter, Paul and Mary, Puff the Magic Dragon

One Advantage of Being a Liberal

A Typical Leftist and the Tragedy of the Commons

Robert Paul Wolff:

Abbie Hoffmnan [Hoffman] famously wrote a book titled Steal This Book.  What greater compliment could an author hope for than to have his or her book stolen?  Jeffrey Kessen, may his tribe increase, quotes from a recent FaceBook post by someone who, in 1983, stole my book, Kant's Theory of Mental Activity, from a library!  That is infinitely better than a positive review.

This is disgusting but typical of lefties. Here is a guy who is all for socialism, but praises a jackass who steals a piece of public property. 

But if there is no respect for public property now, why think there will be after the installation of socialism? Fools like Hoffman and Wolff think that after the glorious revolution 'bourgeois morality' with its stricture against theft will be superseded and we will all live in mutually supportive harmony. That's utopian nonsense, as if the Revolution will bring about a "fundamental transformation" of human nature. It is quasi-religious, idolatrous nonsense to boot as if the New Man will emerge with the secular socialist eschaton. U-topia is Nowheresville for the Nowhere Man. 

Socialists have no appreciation of what is called in social science the tragedy of the commons:

The tragedy of the commons is a term used in social science to describe a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users acting independently according to their own self-interest behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling that resource through their collective action. 

Private property is not only the foundation of individual liberty, it also helps insure that things get taken care of. And please note that if I maintain my property everyone around me benefits as well. This includes my house and my cars.  

Thus my well-maintained private property redounds to the benefit of the public.  It won't be my car that drops a muffler that hits Mike the motorcyclist in the face causing him to crash.  It won't be my properly maintained house that causes your property values to decline.

Am I against public libraries?  Of course not. I'm for public libraries and open stacks. I support them with the real estate tax I pay. A little socialism never hurt anybody. But if a thing is good, more is usually not better.  Socialism is like whisky in this respect.

The trouble with leftists is that they undermine the very 'bourgeois morality' that needs to be practiced if socialism to any degree is to work in the first place.

We need more mockery and condemnation of leftists. Don't you agree?

More on Divine Simplicity and Modal Collapse

This entry continues my ruminations on whether the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) entails modal collapse (MC). The commenters in the earlier thread gave me no reason to think that DDS does not entail MC. But one of them sent me to Christopher Tomaszewski's paper which is worth reading and deserves a response.

Tomaszewski presents one of R. T. Mullins' arguments as follows:

1) Necessarily, God exists.
2) God is identical to God’s act of creation.
Therefore
3) Necessarily, God’s act of creation exists.

Tomaszewski claims that above argument is invalid and for the same reason that the following argument is invalid:

7) Necessarily, God exists.
8) God is identical to the Creator.
Therefore
9) Necessarily, the Creator exists.

Now the second argument is clearly invalid. It takes us from true premises to a false conclusion. God exists in every possible world. But in only some worlds does he instantiate the role of Creator. So it is not the case that the Creator exists in every possible world.

Some find the Leibnizian patois of 'possible worlds' puzzling. I don't need it. The point can be made without it, as follows. God exists of metaphysical necessity. But he does not create of metaphysical necessity: creation is a contingent act. Therefore, it is not the case that, necessarily, God is the Creator. Had he created nothing, he would exist without being Creator.

So the second of the two arguments is invalid. Now if the first argument has the same logical form as the second, then it too will be invalid.  But the first argument does not have the same logical form as the second.

The form of the first is:

Necessarily, for some x, x = a.
a = b.
ergo
Necessarily, for some x, x = b.

Clearly, this argument-form is valid, whence it follows that any argument having this form is valid. I am assuming that the individual constants 'a' and 'b' are Kripkean rigid designators: they denote the same object in every possible world in which the object exists.  I am also assuming Kripke's Necessity of Identity principle: For any x, y if x = y, then necessarily, x = y.  By instantiation, if a = b, then necessarily a = b. Now if necessarily a exists, and a cannot exist without being identical to b, then necessarily b exists.

Contra Tomaszewski, the arguments have different forms. The first instantiates a valid form and is therefore valid while the second instantiates an invalid form and is therefore invalid.

I expect someone to object that (2) above -- God is identical to God’s act of creation -- is not an instance of the logical form a = b, where the terms flanking the identity sign are Kripkean rigid designators. But I say they are; indeed they are strongly rigid designators.  A rigid designator is a term that picks out the same item in every possible world in which the item exists. A strongly rigid designator is a term that picks out the same item in every possible world, period.  Thus the designatum of a strongly rigid designator is a necessary being.

My claim, then, is that (2) is a statement of identity and that  'God' and 'God's act of creation' in (2) are both strongly rigid designators. My claim is entailed by DDS which says, among other things, that there is no real distinction in God between agent and action.  So if God is identical to his act of creating our universe, and God exists in every possible world, then the creation of our universe occurs in every possible world, which in turn entails modal collapse.

Tomaszevski has an interesting response (pp. 7-8):

While God’s act is indeed intrinsic (and therefore identical) to Him, “God’s act of creation” designates that act, not how it is in itself, but by way of its contingent effects. That is, whether “God’s act of creation” designates God’s act depends on the existence of a creation which is contingent, and so the designation is not rigid. And since the designation is not rigid, the identity statement is not necessary, as it must be in order to validate the argument from modal collapse. 

This response begs the question. For it assumes that the effect of the divine act of creation is contingent. But that is precisely the question!  If you just assume -- as we all want to assume --  that creation is contingent, then of course there is no modal collapse. The issue, however, is whether one can adhere to that assumption while holding fast to DDS.  Besides, the second sentence in the above quotation makes little or no sense. The act of creation is individuated by the object of creation (our universe, say, in all its detail); an act of divine creation is nothing without its object.  

Am I assuming what I need to prove (and thus begging the question) when I insist that (2) above is necessarily true and thus that the first argument is valid?  No, I am merely unpacking what DDS implies.  

My conclusion is that Tomszevski has clarified the problem for us, but he has not refuted the above argument from DDS to MC. 

The Necro-Vote: Another 'Progressive' Innovation

The Dems are a species of necrophiliac: they love dead voters. Not only that, they have the power to 'raise' them.

The Institutionalized Race War

Things are going to get 'interesting.'

I'm glad I'm an old man. I've had a good run. Trouble is, I take care of myself. 

Is God Beyond All Being?

This is a redacted re-posting of an entry that first appeared in these pages on 8 May 2015. It answers a question Fr. Kimel poses in the comments to Divine Simplicity and Modal Collapse.

.....................................

Fr. Aidan Kimel writes,

Reading through Vallicella’s article, I kept asking myself, Would Mascall agree with the proposition “existence exists”? I find the proposition odd. [. . .] What about the assertion of Pseudo-Dionysius that God is beyond all Being? Aquinas would certainly agree that the Creator transcends created being; but I suspect that Dionysius is trying to say something more.  I wonder what the Maverick Philosopher thinks about “beyond Being” language  (I can pretty much guess what Tuggy thinks about it).

I plan to discuss the strange question whether existence exists in a separate post.  Here I will say something about whether God is beyond all Being.

Well, what would it be for God to be beyond Being?  What could that mean?

First we must distinguish between Being and beings, esse and ens, das Sein und das Seiende.  It is absolutely essential to observe this distinction and to mark it linguistically by a proper choice of terms. If we do so, then we see right away that Kimel's question is ambiguous.  Is he asking whether God is beyond all beings or beyond all Being?  Big difference! (Heidegger calls it the Ontological Difference.)

I think what Kimel means to ask is whether God is beyond all beings.  A being is anything at all that is or exists, of whatever category, and of whatever nature.  Being, on the other hand, majuscule Being, is that which makes beings be. Now one of the vexing questions here is whether Being itself is, whether that which makes beings be is itself a being or else the paradigmatic being.  Heidegger and Pseudo-Dionysius say No!  Aquinas says Yes!  (That is, Aquinas says that Being is the paradigmatic being from which every other being has its being.)  Dale Tuggy would presumably dismiss the question by maintaining that there just is no Being, there are only beings; hence the question lapses, resting as it does (according to Tuggy) on a false presupposition.  

Now distinguish three positions.  (A) God is a being among beings. (B) God is not a being among beings, but self-subsistent Being itself.  (C) God is neither a being among beings, nor self-subsistent Being itself, but beyond every being.  Tuggy, Aquinas, Pseudo-Dionysius.  (You're in good company, Dale!)

I have already explained what it means to say that God is a being among beings.  But to repeat myself, it it to say that the very same general-metaphysical scheme, the very same scheme of metaphysica generalis,  that applies to creatures applies also to God.  This implies, among other things, that God and Socrates (Socrates standing in for any creature whatsoever) exist in the same way.  It implies that there are not two modes of Being, one pertaining to God alone, the other pertaining to Socrates. If, on the other hand, one maintains that God is not a being among beings, then one is maintaining, among other things, that God and Socrates exist in different ways.  The difference can be put by saying that God is (identically) his existence and existence itself while this is surely not the case for Socrates: he has existence but he doesn't have it by being it.  In God there is no real distinction, no distinctio realis, between essence and existence while in Socrates there is a real distinction between essence and existence.

Equivalently, if God is a being among beings, then God is one member of a totality of beings each of which exists in the very same sense of 'exists' and has properties in the very same sense of 'has properties.'  But if God is not a being among beings, then there is no such totality of beings each of which exists in the very same sense of 'exists' and has properties in the very same sense of 'has properties' such that both God and Socrates are members of it.

How does (B) differ from (C)?  On (B) God is (identical to) Being but also is.  God is not a being, but the being that is identical to Being itself.  (C) is a more radical view.  It is the view that God is so radically transcendent of creatures that he is not!  This is exactly what pseudo-Dionysius says in The Divine Names (Complete Works, p. 98) It is the view that God is other than every being.  But if God is other than every being, then God in no way is.  

This can also be explained in terms of univocity, analogicity, and equivocity.  For Tuggy & Co. 'exists' in 'God exists' and 'Socrates exists' has exactly the same sense.  The predicate is univocal across these two occurrences.  For Aquinas, the predicate is being used analogously, which implies that while God and Socrates both are, they are in different ways or modes. But for Pseudo-Dionysius the predicate is equivocal.

Fr. Kimel suspects that Pseudo-Dionysius is saying more than that God transcends every creature.  The suspicion is correct.  Whereas Aquinas is saying that God is, but transcends every creature in respect of his very mode of Being, Pseudo-Dionysius is saying more , namely that God is so transcendent that he is not.  

My question for Fr. Kimel: Do you side with the doctor angelicus, or do you go all the way into the night of negative theology with Pseudo-Dionysus? 

The Sense in Which 'Progressives' are Progressive

Socialism as a Hate Crime

Reviews the millions upon millions slaughtered under socialist regimes in the USSR, Nazi Germany, China under Mao, Cuba under Castro, Cambodia under Pol Pot, and North Korea. Analyzes the situation in Venezuela and explains why socialism must fail.

Socialism reliably leads to disaster, but know-nothings refuse the lessons of history.

For example, why would anyone want to practice medicine under socialism? Doctor shortages are exploding under ObamaCare.

Kimball on Kapitalismus

The man's a classy polemicist:

Capitalism is the greatest engine for the production of wealth that the ingenuity of man has ever devised. But after it achieves a certain level of prosperity, it regularly excretes characters like Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, beneficiaries of capitalism whose contempt for its strictures is equaled only by their ignorance of its tenets. 

I say, "Up with capitalism, down with Ocasionalism!"  Does the silly goose have a cortex?

It is a paradox of plenty: our fabulous success and prosperity have spawned an army of know-nothings bent on destroying what their betters have constructed over centuries.

Divine Simplicity and Modal Collapse

Fr. Aidan Kimel would like me to discuss  the question whether the doctrine of divine simplicity entails the collapse of modal distinctions.  I am happy to take a crack at it.  I take my cue from a passage in a paper Fr. Kimel kindly sent me.  In "Simply Impossible: A Case Against Divine Simplicity" (Journal of Reformed Theology 7, 2013, 181-203), R. T. Mullins asks (footnote omitted):

Could God have refrained from creating the universe? If God is free then it seems that the answer is obviously ‘yes.’ He could have existed alone. Yet, God did create the universe. If there is a possible world in which God exists alone, God is not simple. He eternally has unactualized potential for He cannot undo His act of creation. He could cease to sustain the universe in existence, but that would not undo His act of creating. One could avoid this problem by allowing for a modal collapse. One could say that everything is absolutely necessary. Necessarily, there is only one possible world—this world. Necessarily, God must exist with creation. There is no other possibility. God must create the universe that we inhabit, and everything must occur exactly as it in fact does. There is no such thing as contingency when one allows a modal collapse. (195-196)

The foregoing suggests to me one version of the problem.  There is a tension between divine simplicity and divine freedom.

1) If God is simple, then he is purely actual (actus purus) and thus devoid of unexercised powers and unrealized potentials. He is, from all eternity, all that he can be. This is true in every possible world because God exists in every possible world and is pure act in every possible world.

2) As it is, God freely created our universe from nothing; but he might have created a different universe, or no universe at all. Had he created no universe, then his power to create would have gone unexercised. In those possible worlds in which God freely refrains from creating, God has unexercised powers. 

The dyad seems logically inconsistent. If (1) is true, then there is no possible world in which God has  unexercised powers. But if (2) is true, there is at least one possible world in which God has unexercised powers. So if God is both simple and (libertarianly) free, then we get a logical contradiction.

There are two main ways to solve an aporetic polyad. One is to show that the inconsistency alleged is at best apparent, but not real.  The other way is by rejection of one of the limbs. I take the dyad to be inconsistent.

Many if not most theists, and almost all Protestants, will simply (pun intended) deny the divine simplicity.  I myself think there are good reasons for embracing the latter.  To put it in a cavalier, bloggity-blog way: God is the Absolute, and no decent absolute worth its salt can be a being among beings. We have it on good authority that God is Being itself self-subsisting.  Deus est ipsum esse subsistens. Platonic, Plotinian, Augustinian, Aquinian, Athenian. It can be shown that simplicity is logical fallout if God is Being itself.  So it seems I must deny (2) and deny that God could have refrained from creating.  But this seems to lead to modal collapse. How so?

Modal Collapse

We have modal collapse just when the following proposition is true: For any x, x is possible iff x is actual iff x is necessary.  This implies that nothing is merely possible; nothing is contingent; nothing is impossible.  If nothing is merely possible, then there are no merely possible worlds, which implies that there is exactly one possible world, the actual world, which cannot fail to be actual, and is therefore necessary.

(The collapse is on the extensional, not the intensional or notional plane: the modal words retain their distinctive senses.)

Suppose divine simplicity entails modal collapse (modal Spinozism). So what? What is so bad about the latter?  Well, it comports none too well with God's sovereignty. If God is absolutely sovereign, then he cannot be under a metaphysical necessity to create. Connected with this is the fact that if God must create, then his aseity would seem to be compromised. He cannot be wholly from himself, a se, if his existence necessarily requires a realm of creatures.  Finally, creaturely (libertarian) freedom would go by the boards if reality is one big block of Spinozistic necessity.

An Aporia?

It seems that the proponent of divine simplicity faces a nasty problem.  At the moment, I see no solution.

The aporetician in me is open to the thought that what we have here is a genuine aporia, a conceptual impasse, a puzzle  that we cannot solve. God must be simple to be God; the modal distinctions are based in reality; we cannot see how both limbs of the dyad can be true and so must see them as contradictory.   

It could be like this: the limbs are both true, but our cognitive limitations make it impossible for us to understand how they could both be true.  Mysterianism may be the way to go.  This shouldn't trouble a theologian too much. After all, Trinity, Incarnation, etc. are mysteries in the end, are they not?  Of course, I am not suggesting the doctrine of divine simplicity can be found in the Bible. 

Later I will evaluate an attempt to solve the problem via an approach to real modality via potentialities and dispositions.  

References to relevant literature appreciated. By the end of the year I have to update my Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Divine Simplicity entry.  

Was the Pre-Trump World Normal or Abnormal?

Another fine article from a man who is working too hard for his own, and our, good.

An open memo to Professor Hanson:

When I see you on TV, you look all fagged-out and beat-to-hell. We love you, we need you, and we want you to take care of yourself. And please realize that this world, while undeniably real and worthy of some concern, is, sub specie aeternitatis, a vanishing quantity not worthy of the full measure of anyone's concern. Fight the good fight, but look beyond the passing scene and the present fray. Only in that way will you keep things in perspective.

Excerpt:

Open borders and the salad bowl, in cultural terms, had replaced the ideas of sovereignty and the melting pot. Everything from late-night television and Hollywood movies to the NFL and sitcoms had become politicized, or perhaps even weaponized as useful in the cultural struggle to create a progressive U.S. liberated from its past traditions and norms. Antifa, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and other groups were branded as mainstream progressive voices and their critics as haters, racists, and fascists.

Remember iconic moments such as Mitt Romney’s soft-gloves response to debate moderator Candy Crowley’s hijacking of a presidential debate, Jeb Bush’s avowal that illegal immigration was “an act of love,” or John McCain’s decision to all but rule out any mention of the Reverend Wright during the 2008 campaign. Such was the respectable acquiescence to the new progressive realities.

 

The Left: Morally Obtuse and Economically Retarded

As witness the Deep Thoughts of Chelsea Clinton:

Has abortion made America more prosperous? Chelsea Clinton seems to think so.

The former first daughter spoke recently at a “Rise up for Roe” event in New York City, one of a series of meetings organized by NARAL and Planned Parenthood to oppose the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. In the course of her remarks, she suggested that one way to strengthen support for keeping abortion legal and readily available is to emphasize what a boon Roe v. Wade has been for the US economy.

Read it all, as we say in the blogosphere.

Chelsea in 2020!

Nice Ladies Leaving the Democrat Party

Here:

Democrats are leaving their party more in sorrow than in anger, but leaving it they are, sickened by the Democratic Party’s hard left turn. Tens of thousands are telling their stories on the #walkaway movement’s public Facebook page. Their YouTube videos are a fascinating window into the innermost thoughts of kind, thoughtful people across America—all former Democrats.

If the nice ladies leave, that will leave only the pussy-hatted nasty women of the ilk of Mad Maxine and Bitter Hillary. Sad!

The Paradox of the Misanthropic Naturalist Animal Lover

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, man and man alone among living things has a higher origin and a higher destiny. Made in the image and likeness of God, and the only creature so made, he comes from God and is called to return to God for his ultimate felicity and fulfillment. He is, to be sure, an animal, but one called to theosis and thus an animal qualitatively different from every other type of animal. 

In that now languishing tradition, man had a calling, a vocation.

But God is dead, culturally speaking, at least among the the elites of the West, and since 1859 the qualitative superiority of the human animal is no longer much believed in. Man is back among the animals, 'in series' with them, just another product of evolution, whose origin is measly and whose destiny is extinction.  Man on a naturalist construal is at best quantitatively superior to his non-human progenitors.

Read the whole thing at MavPhil StrictPhil.

David Horowitz versus Jonah Goldberg

Here:

The posture of these NeverTrumpers is transparently self-serving. It preserves their intellectual credentials as “conservatives,” and simultaneously takes them out of the line of fire from an increasingly vicious Left whose goal is to destroy Trump and his presidency, and—incidentally—conservative America. Sitting on the fence affords them new career opportunities—appearances on CNN and MSNBC and columns in the New York Times. All that’s required is that they avoid taking sides in the political war that is engulfing the country. All this reminds me of a memorable Trotsky sneer about liberals, whom he accused of being reluctant to step into the stream of political conflict because they were afraid to get their moral principles wet.

Right. The principles of the Never-Trumpers are for discussion but not for implementation.  The members of the bow-tie brigade love to yap and scribble, and they do it at a very high level, as witness Goldberg's Suicide of the West, which I recommend to you for its insights; but they wilt at the prospect of bringing their principles to bear upon political reality and "getting them wet."

Up until now I had considered Goldberg to be the least offensive of the Never-Trumpers, but having read Horowitz's piece, Goldberg has dropped a notch in my estimation.

From a Style Sheet

The passive voice is always to be avoided.

The Last Days and Words of Leon Trotsky

On this date in 1940 in Mexico City Ramon Mercader drove an ice axe (not an ice pick as some accounts have it) into the skull of Leon Trotsky.  He died the next day.  Here we read:

Mercader later testified at his trial:

I laid my raincoat on the table  in such a way as to be able to remove the ice axe which was in the pocket. I  decided not to miss the wonderful opportunity that presented itself. The moment  Trotsky began reading the article, he gave me my chance; I took out the ice axe  from the raincoat, gripped it in my hand and, with my eyes closed, dealt him a  terrible blow on the head.

According to Joseph Cannon, the secretary of the Socialist Workers Party  (USA), Trotsky's last words were "I will not survive this attack. Stalin  has finally accomplished the task he attempted unsuccessfully before."

Trotsky, who didn't shrink from murder and brutality in pursuit of his utopian fata morgana, met his end brutally. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Related: Trotsky's Faith

Trotsky's erstwhile secretary, the logician Jean van Heijenoort, himself came to a brutal end in Mexico City a victim, not of politics, but of . . . well read it:

Like a Moth to the Flame.

Dear Abby

Dear Abby,

 

My husband hasn't worked for the last 14 years. All he does is get dressed in the morning

and hop in his fancy car to visit his cronies. I know he's cheated on me many times with

young girls who could be his granddaughters.   I know this because he brags about this to me.

 

He smokes fancy cigars and drinks the most expensive liquor day and night.

 

We sleep in separate beds because he tells me he knows I`m a lesbian and besides that,

my varicose veins and fat behind turn him off.

 

Should I clobber him with something heavy, or should I just leave him ?

 

Your advice would be appreciated.

 

Sincerely,

 

Mad as Hell

 

 

Dear Mad as Hell,

 

You don`t have to take that kind of treatment from any man. I suggest you pack your bags and move out a.s.a.p.!

 

Don`t resort to violence and try to act more like a lady.

 

Remember, you were almost elected President of the United States, so try acting like one.

 

Abby

Gender is a Social Construct -- Except When It's Not

Heather Mac!

From Religion to Philosophy: A Typology of Motives for Making the Move

People come to philosophy from various 'places.'  Some come from religion, others from mathematics and the natural sciences, still others from literature and the arts.  There are other termini a quis as well.  In this post I am concerned only with the move from religion to philosophy.  What are the main types of reasons for those who are concerned with religion to take up the serious study of philosophy?  I count five main types of motive.

Read the whole thing at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical.

Twin Mistakes

If something is good, more is better.  For example, there are people who think one cannot drink too much water.  False. Hyponatremia can be induced by excessive water consumption especially if the water is pure or near-pure.  You flush out your electrolytes and die. 

If something is bad in large quantities, it is bad in small quantities as well. False.  Exposure to sunlight.

From McTaggart to Rome

Peter Geach, Truth and Hope, University of Notre Dame Press, 2001, p. 9:

Soaking myself in McTaggart, I imbibed a desire for Heaven and eternal life, which of course I had not to abandon on becoming Catholic; and meanwhile I was preserved from giving my heart with total devotion to some less worthy end, as I saw many contemporaries doing.  Even as regards the relation of time and eternity I had no need to find McTaggart wholly mistaken.  God's life, the life of the Blessed Trinity, really is the sort of Boethian eternity that McTaggart ascribed to all persons; and we have the great and precious promise that, in a way we cannot now begin to understand, we shall transcend all the delusion and misery and wickedness of this life and become sharers in that eternal life.

A Worthy Life's Goal

To think as clearly as one can and as deeply as one can about as many ultimate issues as one can for as long as one can.

'Comrade' Brennan Loses Security Clearance . . .

. . . for good reason whatever you think of Trump's motive.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Help

Canned Heat, Help Me.

"Help me consolate my weary mind." I love that 'consolate.' Alan 'Blind Owl' Wilson at his best.  I saw him and the boys at the Kaleidoscope in Hollywood in 1968.  Wilson was a tortured soul and ended up a member of the 27 Club. He quit the sublunary sphere on 3 September 1970.

Aficionados of that time and place will want to read Canned Heat: The Twisted Tale of Blind Owl and the Bear.

Johnny Cash, Help Me.

Beach Boys, Help Me, Rhonda

Hank Williams, I Can't Help it If I'm Still in Love with You 

Ringo Starr, With a Little Help from My Friends

Elvis Presley, Can't Help Falling in Love

Highwaymen, Help Me Make it Through the Night

Joni Mitchell, Help Me

Hank Locklin, Please Help Me, I'm Falling

Here is Skeeter Davis' answer to Hank.

Over at MavPhil Strictly Philosophical

Peter Geach on the Real Distinction I

'Progressive' Scum against Religious Liberty

The State of Colorado contra Jack Phillips.

More on the Left's Grand Demographic Strategy

Here:

We also now know, thanks to four different studies, that between 2.2 and 5.7 million illegal aliens have voted in the last few presidential elections.

The best guess is that at least three million illegal aliens voted in 2016, enough to give Hillary the popular vote but not quite enough to win some of the key rustbelt states won by Trump. This is why liberal state legislators all over the nation have pushed legislation granting illegals driver licenses. So far, 12 states have passed such laws.

The left knows full well that holding a driver’s license gives illegal aliens the confidence to also register to vote, not to mention many states have “motor voter” laws in which the DMV automatically registers to vote anyone granted a driver’s license. In California alone, the DMV has reported that one million “undocumented” immigrants have received driver licenses over the last three years. Unless they refused to register to vote, those non-citizens can now vote. Remember, in California, as in most states today, no one asks for proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.

The illegal alien vote is the Democrats secret voting bloc and it’s growing. This is why Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, threw the full weight of the DOJ at every state that even thought about implementing a voter ID program of any kind.

It is therefore Orwellian in excelsis when ID requirements are denounced as "voter suppression."

More on Whether Non-Whites Can be Racist

Jacques writes,

I had a few thoughts about your post on the definition of "racism".  

First, I think your definition and almost everything you say here is reasonable, but you may not be engaging with the enemy's reasoning (if we can call it that).  As you anticipate, Leftists will say that only whites can be "racist" because only whites have power as a racial group over others, only whites oppress others, and so on.  Your response is to say that in that case they are using the wrong word.  Why talk about "racism" rather than "oppressivism" if really we're talking about oppression and power rather than race. 

But the Leftists would say that they are talking about race too, or racial oppression.  They say race is a "social construct" but, of course, a social construct can be real and socially important.  So their idea is that in our evil western societies some people--the "white" people--are given special privileges and power over other people; this is how the biologically meaningless notion of race comes to be important, and how racial (or "racial") power and privilege are sustained.  From this perspective, then, it would still make sense to talk about racial oppression or "racism" for short.  By analogy, someone who doesn't believe in the Nazi ideology of Aryanism could still reasonably describe Nazi Germany as a society based on Aryan supremacy or "Aryan" oppression of non-Aryans.  It makes sense for them to continue to call this "racism" because the system of oppression is based on this false mythology of race that underwrites the distinction between oppressors and oppressed.

 I think there are two good responses to this standard Leftist claim:

(1) Grant that "racism" in this sense of the term refers only to systemic privilege and oppression (etc.) based on socially recognized racial categories.  That's a matter of how their concept or principle is supposed to work.  But now we just point out that it's an empirical question whether, in a given society at a given time, some particular socially recognized race is in fact systemically privileged, oppresses other groups, and so on.  And on the empirical side, isn't it ludicrous to claim that whites are the systemically privileged oppressors in any western country in 2018?  Whites are the only group that faces severe social costs and often serious legal trouble merely for publicly defending their own racial interests.  Whites are the only group against whom racial discrimination is legal.  And on and on.  I think we have to press them to defend the empirical part of their thesis.  It's ridiculous, indefensible...

You are right to raise the empirical question., Jacques. Since I was concerned to make a merely conceptual point, I conceded arguendo that whites as a group oppress blacks and other non-whites as groups. As you point out, it is false at the present time, and indeed ridiculous as witness the case of Sarah Jeong.

(2) Grant for the sake of argument that whites can't be "racist" in their sense of the term.  But now just point out that whites can still be victims of racially-motivated hate, racially-motivated bias and injustice, racially-motivated violence, and so on.  (Basically, whites can be victims of "racism" in your sense of the term.)  All these things are plainly bad and wrong in themselves, regardless of the larger "systemic" context.  Press them to explain why it doesn't matter morally or politically when blacks torture a mentally retarded white man live on Facebook, because they hate whites as a group.  Or at least, ask them why this doesn't matter anywhere near as much as the fact that some black guy who wasn't buying anything wasn't allowed to use the bathroom at Starbucks.  

I recommend adding these two lines of argument to yours because I know Leftists are going to dismiss your entirely reasonable arguments by saying you just don't get it.  These other arguments are directly targeting their (absurd) understanding of racism.

Right. We might just give leftists the word 'racist' to use in their way, according to which non-whites cannot be racists, and then challenge them to explain why it is morally acceptable to act in violent, bigoted , and unjust ways towards whites.

We could grant them that Sarah Jeong, being Asian, cannot possibly be racist, but then ask how her membership in a group oppressed by whitey justifies her vicious anti-white tweets.  For even if Asians as a group at the present time are being terribly oppressed by whites, Jeong herself is enjoying all sorts of advantages.

I am reminded of the identity-schmidentity move that Saul Kripke makes in Naming and Necessity.  "You say what you are doing is not (reverse) racism? Racism-schmacism! What you are doing is morally wrong."

In re: the Starbucks dude, we could say to lefties "OK, the black loiterer was treated in a racist manner, on your idiosyncratic understanding of 'racist' according to which a member of a group that is on the bottom is an object of racism even when he does something objectively unacceptable. But that doesn't change the fact that he was loitering, refusing to buy anything, taking space away from paying customers, and thereby violating important social norms."

But deeper than all this are the Left's absurd claims that race is a social construct and that there is such a thing as institutional or systemic racism.

My question to Jacques: since these claims are prima facie absurd, how is it that lefties can convince themselves otherwise? And what exactly do they mean by them?

Norm Talk

There is a lot of talk, and a slew of new books, about (democratic) norms these days and how President Trump is flouting them.  Your humble correspondent has speed-read two or three of them. This crisis-of-democracy genre wouldn't exist at all if the populist revolt hadn't put paid to Hillary's (mainly merely personal) ambitions.

But what are norms in this context?  This from an article in Dissent:

The crisis-of-democracy authors are disciples of “norms,” the unwritten rules that keep political opponents from each other’s throat and enable a polity to plod along. 

[. . .]

One problem with identifying the protection of political norms with the defense of democracy is that such norms are intrinsically conservative (in a small-c sense) because they achieve stability by maintaining unspoken habits—which institutions you defer to, which policies you do not question, and so on. As Corey Robin pointed outwhen Levitsky and Ziblatt’s book appeared, democracy has essentially been a norm-breaking political force wherever it has been strong. It has broken norms about who can speak in public, who can hold power, and which issues are even considered political, and it has pressed these points from the household and neighborhood to Congress and the White House.

Even when norms do not lean to the right—for instance, the norm of honoring previous Supreme Court decisions is part of the reason the right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade has not been overturned—they are a depoliticized way of talking about political conflict. 

And we certainly can't have that, can we? The article is a hard Left critique of the establishment liberal crisis-of-democracy authors.

What Should a Merger of Dissent and Commentary be Called?

Answer by Woody Allen in a 35 second excerpt from Annie Hall.

Is President Trump Mounting an Assault on the Fourth Estate?

Obviously not. He is merely punching back at the contemptible pseudo-journalists, feculent with crypto-commie bias, who head up the lamestream media outlets. 

When leftists accuse us of something you can be sure that they are doing that very thing. Call it political projection. The greatest threats to free speech at the present time emanate from so-called 'liberals.'

If  'liberal' is used in the classical way, we conservatives are the true liberals.

In the end, hundreds of papers telling us how bad Trump has been for press freedom may make all those involved feel good for a day, but it won't move the needle one bit. It may even have an opposite effect than the one intended. 

Yes, calling the press the "enemy of the people" is way over the top, and obviously wrong. But Trump's rhetoric is nothing compared to Obama's actions in terms of press treatment. 

The Left is deeply destructive and they need to be opposed. No Republican except Trump has the cojones for the job. If he goes too far, well that is what happens in a war. And it is a war. A war for the soul of America. 

Friday Cat Blogging! Proof that I am a Racist

I have two black cats and they are never allowed off my plantation. The following graphic proves the opposite of what it intends. It is obviously white supremacist in excelsis for a white man to own black cats!

Can a Black be a Racist?

More generally, can a non-white be a racist?  It depends on what a racist is. The unfortunate tendency is to bandy the term about undefined. This serves the purposes of those who want an all-purpose verbal cudgel with which to attack their opponents. I will give you my definition, one that ought to appeal to sane and well-intentioned people. 

A racist is a person who harbors an abiding irrational hatred of all or most of the members of one or more other races just because of their racial membership. 

Racism is a standing disposition that manifests itself in hateful or contemptuous words and deeds.  These words and deeds are not rational responses to particular provocations but express a blanket, irrational negative attitude to an entire group. This is why "all or most" figures in my definition. Obviously, hatred of a person of a different race needn't be racist: the hater may have good reason to hate the other person. Racism comes into it when the person is hated because of his membership in the other race.

On the above definition a black can be a racist, and indeed some are.  And so can Hispanics and Asians, including Sarah Jeong.

For the record, I condemn racism as above defined, and you should too. 

If you don't like my definition, do you have any reason not to like it? Do you have a better definition?

Notice that I didn't mention skin color in my definition.  People who should know better regularly conflate skin color with race.  Skin color, however, is at best a phenotypical indicator of race.  Suppose you have two guys, one from India, the other from Africa. Suppose they are dark in color to the same degree. They are both 'blacks' -- black in color to the same degree of blackness. But they are of different races. Therefore, race is not the same as skin color.  

For the politically correct, however, blacks cannot be racists.  The reason, apparently, is that whites oppress blacks but blacks don't oppress whites.  If so, racism is really about power and oppression, and not about race.

If racism is not about race, then why speak of racism as opposed to oppressivism?

After all, some whites oppress other whites. White males oppress white females.  White-collar whites oppress blue-collar whites. 'Coastal' whites oppress 'heartland' whites. You could say that the former 'look down' on the latter as they 'fly over' them. And let's not forget the Jews. Are Jews white? Assume they are. And yet white goyim oppress them.  

White females oppress white females. The good-lookers oppress the plain Janes.  There is a whole lotta oppressin' goin' on.  Or at least the oppressed groups feel oppressed. 

'Liberal' blacks oppress conservative blacks by calling them Uncle Toms, traitors to their race, etc. Are 'liberal' blacks therefore racists?

I am making two main points.

First, on a sane definition of 'racism,' proffered above, non-whites can be racists.  

Second, if your beef is with the oppression or 'denigration' of one group by another, then  'racism' is not the word you want.

Blogging may not be good for me: I am writing like a damned journalist what with these one sentence paragraphs.

God help me. Journalists deserve about as much respect today as lawyers and Catholic priests.  I make an exception for journalists who courageously enter war zones to get the story and sometimes don't come home. 

Make Orwell Fiction Again

This from Nancy Pelosi's website (emphasis added):

The Affordable Care Act, signed into law by President Obama in 2010, ensures that all Americans have access to quality, affordable health care and significantly reduces long-term health care costs. This historic legislation, in the league of Social Security and Medicare, will lead to healthier lives, while providing the American people with more liberty to pursue their hopes and dreams.

This is another good example of an Orwellian use of language.  Americans love liberty and so Pelosi, in an attempt to deceive, works 'liberty' into her statement,  advancing a claim of Orwellian absurdity, namely, that limitations on the liberty of individuals and private entities are in reality enhancements of liberty.

War is peace.   Slavery is freedom.  Less liberty is more liberty.  Dependence on government is self-reliance. Fascist thugs are anti-fascist. The Orwellian template: X, which is not Y, is Y.  

1968

Nostalgia City for this aging Boomer. 

The prevailing campus spirit at Berkeley in the mid-Sixties had been Camelot-style liberal, venerating the fallen hero JFK, Michael Row the Boat Ashore, fighting world communism and intending to put a man on the moon. Most students were content within the technocratic state and eager to join its ranks. Cal graduates enlisted in the Peace Corps, not Students for a Democratic Society.

Then, quite suddenly, cool moved from Kennedy-style white Oxford shirts and can-do pragmatism to longhaired forest creatures quoting Kahlil Gibran. Sorority girls wearing madras skirts donned Mexican peasant blouses one day and dangly silver earrings the next. Accessories included funky Volkswagen buses, Cost Plus exotica, and European grand tours on $5 or $10 dollars a day. Berkeley students often seemed to have quite a lot of disposable income, thanks to their uncertain, hopeful, dollar-humping parents.

My advice to the young: take care to get old. He who would understand the world needs the grist of memory for the mill of inquiry.

Publishing Slang: Graf

Paragraph. Example:

I know y’all are worn out by all my takes on the Catholic abuse scandal, but if you can stand it, Megan McArdle’s column on it is worth reading. This graf jumped out at me: