Maverick Philosopher

Background to the (Ontological) Problem of the Merely Possible

One commenter seems not to understand the problem as I set it forth here. So let's take a few steps back.  In this entry I explain terminology, make distinctions, and record assumptions.  

1) Everything actual is possible, but the converse does not follow and ought not be assumed. Possible items that are possible, but not actual, are called 'merely possible.'  Mere possibles are also sometimes referred to as 'unrealized possibles' or 'unrealized possibilities.'

2) Don't confuse the reality of a mere possible with its realization (actualization). A mere possible can be real without being realized just as a proposition can exist without being true.  Indeed, if mere possibles are real, then they are precisely not realized; else they would not be mere possibles.

3) Don't confuse the possibility of a mere possible with the possible itself. Mere possibles are presumably many; their possibility (their being-possible) is presumably one and common to them all. Analogy: there are many true propositions, but their truth is presumably one and common to them all.

4) Don't confuse reality with actuality. The reality of mere possibles is obviously not their actuality. Everything actual is real, but the converse does not follow and we ought not assume it.    

5) In (1) above I used 'item.' 'Item' is the most noncommittal word in my philosophical lexicon.  It is neutral with respect to categorial status, modal status, and ontological status.  Are there nonexisting items? My use of 'item' leaves this question open in the way that 'Are there nonexistent existents?' does not.  Even though 'item' should remind you of the Latin idem, my use of 'item' is so liberal and latitudinarian that it does not rule out the self-diverse item, which is a bona fide item in some Meinongian systems.

One must be careful in one's terminological choices to neither beg questions nor bury them.

6) My present concern is with real, not epistemic or doxastic, possibility. Roughly, the  epistemically/doxastically  possible is that which is possible given what I know/believe. The really possible -- which divides into the actual and the merely possible -- is that which is possible whether or not any knowers/believers exist.  The really possible does not depend on our knowledge or ignorance. To go into a bit more detail:

In ordinary English, epistemic uses of 'possible' are rife.   I inquire, "Is Jones in his office?" The secretary replies, "It's possible." I am not being informed that Jones' presence in his office is consistent with the laws of logic, or with the laws of nature; there is no question about the logical or nomological possibility of Jones' being in his office.   I am being informed that Jones' presence in his office is consistent with what the secretary knows: it is not ruled out by anything she knows.  It's possible for all she knows.  Of course, if the secretary knows that Jones is in his office, or knows something that (she knows) entails that he is in his office, then Jones' presence in his office will be logically consistent with what she knows; but in that case she will not say that it is possible that he be there. She will say, "He's there."  So 'possible' in its epistemic use conveys both consistency with what one knows and ignorance. When I say that such-and-such is epistemically possible, I am saying that it is possible for all I know, but I don't know all about the matter in question. Letting 'S' range over states of affairs and 'P' over persons, we define

D1. S is epistemically possible for P =_df (i) S is logically consistent with what P knows; (ii) S is neither known by P nor known to be entailed by anything P knows.

The reason for clause (ii) is that epistemic uses of 'possible' indicate ignorance. 'It's possible that Jones is in his office,' said by the secretary implies that she does not know whether or not he is in his office.  If she knew that he was in his office, and said what she said, then she would not be using 'possible' in the epistemic way it is used in ordinary English.

7) I take it to be a datum that there are real mere possibilities. For example, at the moment there is exactly one cat in my study. But there might have been two or there might have been none.  The latter two states of affairs are both merely possible and real.  They are merely possible because they are not actual. They are really possible because the possibility of these mere possibles is not parasitic upon anyone's knowledge or ignorance.   The possibles are 'out there,' part of the 'furniture of the world.' Again, the possibility or being-possible of a mere possible is not to be confused with the merely possible item itself. 

8) My writing table is now two inches from the wall. But it might have been now three inches from the wall, where 'now' picks out the same time in both of its most recent occurrences. The table might have been infinitely other distances from the wall as well.  How do I know that? This question pertains to the epistemology of modal knowledge and is off-topic. The present topic is the ontology of the merely possible.  This meditation assumes, or rather takes as a datum, the reality of the merely possible.  Notoriously, however, one man's datum is another man's theory.

9) If there are real mere possibles (individuals, states of affairs . . .), then reality is not exhausted by the actual; it includes both the actual and the merely possible.  If it were so exhausted, all would be necessary, and nothing would be contingent.  The modal distinctions would remain on the intensional plane, but would find no purchase in fact. We would have the extensional collapse of the modal distinctions. Can I prove that there is no such collapse? No.

10) 'Possible' has several senses.  Chief among them are the logical, the metaphysical, and the nomological or physical. The following Euler --not Venn! -- diagram shows how they are related:

This is a large topic by itself. I will just say for present purposes that the ontological problem of the merely possible is concerned  with mere possibles the possibility of which is metaphysical, where the metaphysically possible is that which is admissible both by the laws of formal logic and by the laws of metaphysics.  Here is a candidate law of metaphysics: everything that exists has properties. This is not a formal-logical truth inasmuch as its negation -- Something that exists has no properties -- is not a formal-logical contradiction.   

11) The examples I have given above involving cats and rooms and tables and walls are merely possible state of affairs involving actualia. For example, my torso is now covered with a shirt, but it might not now have been covered with that shirt or any shirt.  Torso and shirt are constituents of an actual and of a merely possible state of affairs, respectively.  But there are possibilia that do not involve actualia.  Let n = the number of actual cats at time t.  Could there not have been n + 1 actual cats at time t?  Surely that is possible. Deny it and you are saying that it is necessary that the number of actual cats at t  be n.  Do you want to say that? In this example, the mere possibility does not involve actualia in the way the mere possibility of my cat's sleeping now involve an actual cat.  You might tell me that the actual world is such that it might have now contained one more cat than it in fact now contains, and so the actual world is the actual item involved in the possibility. Maybe, maybe not. How about the possibility that nothing at all exist? I have argued in these pages that there is no such possibility as the possibility of there being nothing at all. But if there is this possibility, then it is not one that is grounded in, or presupposes, any actual item.

12) Now to the problem.  As I wrote earlier,

. . . the problem of the merely possible is something like this.  Merely possible individuals and states of affairs are not nothing, nor are they fictional.  And of course their possibility is not merely epistemic, or parasitic upon our ignorance.  Merely possible individuals and states of affairs have some sort of mind-independent reality.  But how the devil can we make sense of this mind-independent reality given that the merely possible, by definition, is not actual?  Suppose we cast the puzzle in the mold of an aporetic triad:

a. The merely possible is not actual.

b. The merely possible is real (independently of finite minds).

c.  Whatever is  real is actual.

Clearly, the members of this trio cannot all be true.  Any two of them, taken in conjunction, entails the negation of the remaining one.  For example, the conjunction of the last two propositions entails the negation of the first.

Steven Nemes comments:

I would think that once you've admitted the reality of the merely possible, contrary to your (c) above, you've answered the question. The merely possible represents an irreducible ontological category and that's that. Why not?

The Nemes solution is to reject (c).  Accordingly, mere possibles are an irreducible category of beings. This is a version of possibilism, as opposed to actualism, in the metaphysics of modality. One response to Nemes is that the mere admission of the reality of the merely possible does not suffice to establish possibilism.  For the actualist too admits the reality of the merely possible but without admitting that mere possibles constitute an irreducible ontological category. The fact that there is a long-standing and ongoing debate between possibilists and actualists shows that one cannot take the reality of the merely possible to settle the question.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: A Little Harmless Escapism from the Horrors of the Present

Freddy Fender, Cielito Lindo.  Tex-Mex version of a very old song.

Arizona's own Marty Robbins, La Paloma.  Another old song dating back to 1861. 

Barbara Lewis, Hello Stranger, 1963. 1963 was arguably the best of the '60s years for pop compositions. 

Emmylou Harris, Hello Stranger. Same title, different song.  This one goes out to Mary Kay F-D. Remember the Fall of 1980, Mary Kay? 

Get up, rounder/Let a working girl lie down/ You are rounder/And you are all out and down.

Carter Family version from 1939.

Joan Baez, Daddy, You've Been on My Mind. The voice of an angel, the words of a poet, and Bruce  Langhorne's guitar.

Joan Baez, It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. The voice of an angel, the words of a poet, and Langhorne's guitar.

Joan Baez, A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall. The voice of an angel, the words of a poet, and Langhorne's guitar. The incredible mood of this version, especially the intro, is made by Langhorne and the bass of Russ Savakus, another well-known session player from those days. I've been listening to this song since '65 and it gives me chills every time. 

Carolyn Hester, I'll Fly Away.  Dylan on harp, a little rough and ragged. Langhorne on guitar? Not sure.

Joan Baez and her sister, Mimi Farina, Catch the Wind. Fabulous.

Joan Baez, Boots of Spanish Leather.  Nanci Griffith also does a good job with this Dylan classic. 

Betty Everett, You're No Good, 1963.  More soulful than the 1975 Linda Ronstadt version.

The Ikettes, I'm Blue, 1962. 

Lee Dorsey, Ya Ya, 1961.  Simplicity itself. Three chords. I-IV-V progression. No bridge.

Contra Adorno: A Preliminary Plea for Omphaloscopy

Wherein I stand up for navel-gazing and punch back at a totalitarian denier of Transcendence. Substack latest.

On the Nullification Front

Here

If the Left can do it, so can the Right. 

"If California can ignore immigration laws and be rewarded with six extra congressmen, Oklahoma can ignore edicts to make girls compete with boys in drag in sports." The man who sent me the link did not source this quotation.

Memory: Content and Affect

The trick is to retain the content so that one can rehearse it if one wishes, but without re-enacting the affect, unless one wishes.  Let me explain.

Suppose one recalls a long-past insult to oneself, and feels anger in the present as a result. The anger is followed by regret at not having responded in kind. (L'esprit de l'escalier.) And then perhaps there is disgust at oneself for having remained passive, for not having stood up to the aggressor and asserted oneself. This may be followed by annoyance with oneself for allowing these memorial affects  to arise one more time despite one's assiduous and protracted inner work. Finally, pessimism supervenes concerning the efficacy of attempts at self-improvement and mind control.  

Well, welcome to the human predicament.  Buck up, never give up. We are not here to slack off and have a good time. This world is preparatory and propadeutic if not penal. That is the right way to think of it. Live and strive. Leben und streben! Streben bis zum Sterben!  There is no guarantee that the "long, twilight struggle" will open out into  light.   For there are two twilights, one that leads to dawn, the other to dusk. But we live better if we believe in the advent of the first.

Judge your success not by how far you have to go, but how far you've come.

Inquire and aspire.  What Plato has Socrates say about inquiry (intellectual self-improvement) in response to Meno's Paradox is adaptable to aspiration (moral self-improvement).

And therefore we ought not to listen to this sophistical argument about the impossibility of inquiry: for it will make us idle; and is sweet only to the sluggard; but the other saying will make us active and inquisitive. (Plato, Meno, 81a-81e)

Resist Not the Folly of the Fool

Resist not the folly of the fool who is his own undoing. 

Apply this maxim to the leftist whose race- and sex-delusionality increases daily. If you encourage by not resisting the acceleration of his madness, you may hasten the day when common sense reasserts itself. 

Temptation

A striking one or two sentence formulation taken from a wider context is not an aphorism, strictly speaking.  But I'm in a loose and liberal mood.  So I present for your consideration and delectation the following sentence from Paul Ludwig Landsberg (1901-1944).  It is from his essay "The Moral Problem of Suicide," translated from the French by Cynthia Rowland and bound together with "The Experience of Death" in a volume entitled The Experience of Death (Arno Press, New York, 1977).  The sentence occurs on p. 69.

Temptation is an experience of the difference between the vertigo of power and the decision of duty.

 

Why Not Allow Illegal Immigration?

It is important to present calm, rational arguments for the few people left who can be reached in this way.  

"One Man's Datum is Another Man's Theory"

Why do I use 'man'? To exclude women? No, to exclude leftists, both men and women. I believe in equality when it comes to the exclusion of the destructive.

In the '70s, when it first really got going, gender-inclusive language seemed to many a very good thing indeed. It showed a welcoming attitude to the distaff contingent, a salutary openness, a gracious concession to those females who felt excluded by (what in fact are) gender-neutral uses of 'man' and 'he,' not to mention a praiseworthy recognition of the excellence of many women in many hitherto male-dominated fields.  Gentlemen are considerate of the feelings of others even when said feelings are unsupported by reason.   And surely it is true that some women are superior to some men in almost every field.  And surely people should be evaluated as individuals on their merits. 

It all started out with good intentions, and many conservatives went along with it, oblivious to the unforeseen consequences. But now, a half-century later,  we see where it has led. 

And so if I use the sex-neutral 'man' and 'he' and cognates, it is not because I am a knuckle-dragger, one who hails from the valley of Neander, but because I am a man of intelligence, discernment, and high culture, a member of the Coalition of the Reasonable, who is doing his tiny bit to resist and if possible reverse the subversion of our glorious alma mater, our fostering mother, the English language.   I am resisting politicization, tribalism, and the weaponization of language.   Can I ramp up my charge to the allegation that the Left is committing matricide against our dear mother?  I'll essay this later.

For I say unto you my brothers and sisters, the subversion of language is propadeutic to the subversion of thought.  The latter, I fear, is what our enemies intend, the thoughtless being the easier to rule and control.

Our Knowledge of Sameness (2021 Version)

How ubiquitous, yet how strange, is sameness!  The strangeness of the ordinary. Sameness is a structure of reality so pervasive and fundamental that a world that did not exhibit it would be inconceivable. There is synchronic and diachronic sameness. I will be discussing the latter.

How do I know that the tree I now see in my backyard is numerically the same as the one I saw there yesterday? Alvin Plantinga (Warrant and Proper Function, Oxford 1993, p. 124) says in a Reidian vein that one knows this "by induction." I take him to mean that the tree I now see resembles very closely the one I saw yesterday in the same place and that I therefore inductively infer that they are numerically the same. Thus the resemblance in respect of a very large number of properties provides overwhelming evidence of their identity.

But this answer is open to objection. First of all, there is something instantaneous and immediate about my judgment of identity in a case like this: I don't compare the tree-perceived-yesterday, or rather my memory of the tree-perceived-yesterday, with the tree-perceived-today, property for property, to see how close they resemble in order to hazard the inference that they are identical. There is no 'hazarding' at all.  Phenomenologically, there is no comparison and no inference. I just see that they are the same. But this 'seeing' is of course not with the eyes. For sameness is not an empirically detectable property or relation. I am just immediately aware -- not mediately via inference -- that they are the same.  Greenness is empirically detectable, but sameness is not.

What is the nature of this immediate awareness given that we do not come to it by inductive inference or by literally seeing (with the eyes) the numerical sameness of yesterday's tree and today's tree?   And what exactly is the object of the awareness, identity itself?

A problem with Plantinga's answer is that it allows the possibility that the two objects are not strictly and numerically the same, but are merely exact duplicates or indiscernible twins. But I want to discuss this in terms of the problem of how we perceive or know or become aware of change.  Change  is linked to identity since for a thing to change is for one and the same thing to change. 

Let's consider alterational (as opposed to existential) change. A thing alters if and only if it has incompatible properties at different times.  Do we perceive alteration with the outer senses? A banana on my kitchen counter on Monday is yellow with a little green. On Wednesday the green is gone and the banana is wholly yellow. On Friday, a little brown is included in the color mix. We want to say that the banana, one and the same banana,  has objectively changed in respect of color.

But what justifies our saying this? Do we literally see, see with the eyes, that the banana has changed in color? That literal seeing would seem to require that I literally see that it is the same thing that has altered property-wise over the time period. But how do I know that it is numerically the same banana present on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday? How do I know that someone hasn't arranged things so that there are three different bananas, indiscernible except for color, that I perceive on the three different days? On that extraordinary arrangement I could not be said to be perceiving alterational change. To perceive alterational change one must perceive identity over time. For there is change only if one and the same thing has different properties at different times. But I do not perceive the identity over time of the banana.

I perceive a banana on Monday and a banana on Wednesday; but I do not visually perceive that these are numerically the same banana. For it is consistent with what I perceive that there be two very similar bananas, call them the Monday banana and the Wednesday banana.   I cannot tell from sense perception alone whether I am confronting numerically the same banana on two different occasions or two numerically different bananas on the two occasions. If you disagree with this, tell me what sameness looks like. Tell me how to empirically detect the property or relation of numerical sameness. Tell me what I have to look for.  Sameness is like existence: neither are empirically detectable features of things. 

Suppose I get wired up on methamphetamines and stare at the banana the whole week long. That still would not amount to the perception of alterational change. For it is consistent with what I sense-perceive that there be a series of momentary bananas coming in and out of existence so fast that I cannot tell that this is happening. (Think of what goes on when you go to the movies.) To perceive change, I must perceive diachronic identity, identity over time. I do not perceive the latter; so I do not perceive change. I don't know sameness by sense perception, and pace Plantinga I don't know it by induction. For no matter how close the resemblance between two objects, that is consistent with their being numerically distinct. And note that my judgment that the X I now perceive is the same as the X I perceived in the past has nothing tentative or shaky about it. I judge immediately and with assurance that it is the same tree, the same banana, the same car, the same woman. What then is the basis of this judgment? How do I know that this tree is the same as the one I saw in this spot yesterday? Or in the case of a moving object, how do I know that this girl who I now see on the street is the same as the one I saw a moment ago in the coffee house? Surely I don't know this by induction.

How then do I know it?  I don't for a second doubt that it is the same tree, the same banana, the same girl. I am strongly inclined to say that I know that it is the same tree, etc.  The question, however, is how I know it. How is it possible that I know such a thing given that transtemporal identity is not empirically detectable?  My inability to explain how it is possible would seem to some to cast doubt on my claim that I do know that it is the same tree, etc.  Others will demur and say that what is actual is possible whether or not one can explain how it is possible.  One simply waxes dogmatic in the face of critical raisonnement.

If I cannot know diachronic identity empirically, do I impose the concept of such identity on what I literally see so as to enforce the numerical identity of the two trees, the two bananas, the two girls?  Do I really want to say that identity is a transcendental concept to which nothing in the sensory manifold corresponds, a concept that I impose on the manifold?

Per Impossibile Counterfactual Conditionals

God is a necessary being. That means: given that God exists, it is metaphysically impossible that he not exist. My opening sentence does not imply that God exists. It merely reports on God's modal status. Let us assume both that God exists and that all truth depends on God.

How might this relation of dependence be formulated?  I find the following formulation perfectly intelligible:  if, per impossibile, God did not exist, truth would not exist either.   In fact, Aquinas says essentially this somewhere in De Veritate.  (It is near the beginning but I can't find the passage.)

The italicized sentence is an example of a per impossibile counterfactual. Here is a second:

If, per impossibile, there were no minds, there would be no mere possibilia.

What say you, Dr. Novak?

Notes on Nicholas Rescher, "Nonexistents Then and Now"

0. This entry is relevant to my ongoing dialog with Dr. Novak about reference to the nonexistent. I hope he has the time and the stamina to continue the discussion. I have no doubt that he has the 'chops.' I thank him for the stimulation. We philosophize best with friends, as Aristotle says somewhere. But to the Peripatetic is also attributed the thought that amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas. 

 

 

The Rescher text under scrutiny is from a chapter in his Scholastic Meditations, Catholic UP, 2005, 126-148.

1. One objection I have is that Rescher tends to conflate the epistemological with the ontological. A careful reading of the following passage shows the conflation at work.  I have added comments in brackets in blue. Bolding added, italics in original.  

To begin, note that a merely possible world is never given. It is not something we can possibly encounter in experience. The only world that confronts us in the actual course of things is the real world, this actual world of ours -- the only world to which we gain entry effortlessly, totally free of charge. [This is practically a tautology.  All Rescher is saying is that the only world we can actually experience is the actual world, merely possible worlds being, by definition, not actual.]  To move from it, we must always do something, namely, make a hypothesis -- assumption, supposition, postulation, or the like. The route of hypotheses affords the only cognitive access to the realm of nonexistent possibility. [Rescher's wording suggests that there is a realm of nonexistent possibility and that we can gain cognitive access to it.]  For unlike the real and actual world, possible worlds never come along of themselves and become accessible to us without our actually doing something, namely, making an assumption or supposition or such-like. Any possible world with which we can possibly deal will have to be an object of our contrivance -- of our making by means of some supposition or assumption. [In this last sentence Rescher clearly slides from an epistemological claim, one about how we come to know the denizens of the realm of nonexistent possibility, to an ontological claim about what merely possible worlds and their denizens ARE, namely, objects of our contrivance.](131)

Rescher wants to say about  the merely possible what he says about the purely fictional, namely, that pure ficta are objects of our contrivance.  But this too, it seems to me, is an illicit conflation.  The purely fictional is barred from actuality by its very status as purely fictional: Sherlock Holmes cannot be actualized.  What cannot be actualized is not possible; it is impossible. Sherlock Holmes is an impossible item.  He is impossible because he is incomplete. Only the complete (completely determinate) is actualizable. Sherlock is incomplete because he is the creation of  a finite fiction writer: Sherlock has all and only the properties ascribed to him by Conan Doyle. Not even divine power could bring about the actualization of the Sherlock of the Conan Doyle stories.   What God could do is bring about the actualization of various individuals with all or some of Sherlock's properties. None of those individuals, however, would be Sherlock. Each of them would differ  property-wise from Sherlock.

2. The conflation of the merely possible with the purely fictional is connected with another mistake Rescher makes.  Describing the "medieval mainstream," (129) Rescher lumps mere possibilia and pure ficta together as entia rationis.  For this mistake, Daniel Novotny takes him to task, explaining that "Suarez and most other Baroque scholastics considered merely possible beings to be real, and hence they were not classified as beings of reason." (Ens Rationis from Suarez to Caramuel, Fordham UP, 2013, p. 27)   Entia rationis, beings of reason, are necessarily mind-dependent impossible objects.  Mere possibilia are not, therefore, entia rationis.

3. As I understand it, the problem of the merely possible is something like this.  Merely possible individuals and states of affairs are not nothing, nor are they fictional.  And of course their possibility is not merely epistemic, or parasitic upon our ignorance.  Merely possible individuals and states of affairs have some sort of mind-independent reality.  But how the devil can we make sense of this mind-independent reality given that the merely possible, by definition, is not actual?  Suppose we cast the puzzle in the mold of an aporetic triad:

a. The merely possible is not actual.

b. The merely possible is real (independently of finite minds).

c.  Whatever is  real is actual.

Clearly, the members of this trio cannot all be true.  Any two of them, taken in conjunction, entails the negation of the remaining one.  For example, the conjunction of the last two propositions entails the negation of the first.

What are the possible solutions given that the triad is  genuinely logically inconsistent and given that the triad is soluble?  I count exactly five possible solutions.

S1.  Eliminativism.  The limbs are individually undeniable but jointly inconsistent, which is to say: there are no mere possibilia.  One could be an error theorist about mere possibilia.  On this solution we deny the common presupposition of (a) and (b), namely, that there are merely possible individuals and states of affairs. 

S2.  Conceptualism.  Deny (b) while accepting the other two limbs.  There are mere possibilia, but what they are are conceptual constructions by finite minds. This is essentially Rescher's view.  See his A Theory of Possibility: A Constructivistic and Conceptualistic Theory of Possible Individuals and Possible Worlds (Basil Blackwell, 1975). He could be described as an artifactualist about possibilities: "A possible individual is an intellectual artifact: the product of a projective 'construction' . . . ." (p. 61)

S3.  Actualism/Ersatzism.  Deny (a) while accepting the other two limbs.  One looks for substitute entities -- actual entities -- to go proxy for the mere possibles.  Thus, on one approach, the merely possible state of affairs  of there being a unicorn is identified with an actual abstract entity, the property of being a unicorn.  For the possibility to be actual is for the the property to be instantiated. 

On this version of actualism, the mind-independent reality of the merely possible is identified with the mind-independent reality of certain actual abstract items. In this way one avoids both eliminativism and constructivism.

S4. Extreme Modal Realism.  Deny (c) while accepting the other two limbs.  David Lewis.  There is a plurality of possible worlds conceived of as maximal merelogical sums of concreta.  The worlds and their inhabitants are all equally real.  But no world is absolutely actual.  Each is merely actual at itself.   In this world, I am a philosopher. On extreme modal realism, the possibility of my being an electrical engineer instead is understood as various counterparts of me being electrical engineers in various possible worlds.

S5. Theologism.  Deny (c) while accepting the other two limbs.  We bring God into the picture to secure the reality of the possibles instead of a plurality of equally real worlds.   Consider the possibility of there being unicorns.  This is a mere possibility since it is not actual.  But the possibility is not nothing: it is a definite possibility, a real possibility that does not depend for its reality on finite minds.  There aren't any unicorns, but there really could have been some, and the fact of this mere possibility has nothing to do with what we do or think or say.  The content of the possibility subsists as an object of the divine intellect, and its actualizability is grounded in God's power.  We could perhaps say that possibilia enjoy esse intentionale in or before the divine intellect, but lack esse reale unless the divine will actualizes them. 

4.  Part of Rescher's support for his constructivism/conceptualism/artifactualism is his attack on the problem of transworld identity.  For Rescher,  "the issue of transworld identity actually poses no real problems -- a resolution is automatically available."   Rescher's argument is hard to locate due to his bloated, meandering, verbose style of writing.  Rescher rarely says anything in a direct and pithy way if he can  pad it out with circumlocutions and high-falutin' phraseology.  (I confess to sometimes being guilty of this myself.)

But basically such argument as I can discern seems to involve equivocation on such terms as 'individuation' and 'identity' as between epistemological and ontological senses.  He gives essentially the following argument on p. 141.  This is my reconstruction and is free of equivocation.

A. All genuine individuals are complete.

B.  All merely possible individuals are complete only if completely describable by us.

C.  No merely possible individuals are completely describable by us.

Therefore

D. No merely possible individuals are genuine individuals.

But why should we accept (B)? Why can't there be nonexistent individuals that are complete?  Rescher just assumes that the properties of such individuals must be supplied by us.  But that is to beg the question against those who believe in the reality of the merely possible.  He just assumes the truth of artifactualism about the merely possible.  Consider the following sentences

d. Bill Clinton is married to Hillary Rodham.

e. Bill Clinton remained single.

f. Bill Clinton  married someone distinct from Hillary Rodham.

Only the first sentence is true, but, I want to say, the other two are possibly true: they pick out merely possible states of affairs.  There are three possible worlds involved: the actual world and two merely possible worlds.  Now does 'Bill Clinton' pick out the same individual in each of these three worlds?  I am inclined to say yes, despite the fact that we cannot completely describe the world in which our boy remains single or the world in which he marries someone other than Hillary.  But Rescher will have none of this because his conceptualism/constructivism/ artifactualism bars him from holding that actual individuals in merely possible worlds or merely possible individuals have properties other that those we hypothesize them as having.  So, given the finitude of our hypothesizing, actual individuals in merely possible worlds, or merely possible individuals, can only be incomplete items, multiply realizable schemata, and thus not genuine individuals.  But then the possible is assimilated to the fictional.

5, How solve the triad?  Novak will put God to work and adopt something along the lines of (S5).  I am inclined to say that the problem, while genuine, is insoluble, and that the aporetic triad is a genuine aporia.

Garry Kasparov on Socialism

The following 'went viral' as they say about five years ago:

I'm enjoying the irony of American Sanders supporters lecturing me, a former Soviet citizen, on the glories of Socialism and what it really means! Socialism sounds great in speech soundbites and on Facebook, but please keep it there. In practice, it corrodes not only the economy but the human spirit itself, and the ambition and achievement that made modern capitalism possible and brought billions of people out of poverty. Talking about Socialism is a huge luxury, a luxury that was paid for by the successes of capitalism. Income inequality is a huge problem, absolutely. But the idea that the solution is more government, more regulation, more debt, and less risk is dangerously absurd.

The penultimate sentence needs some qualification, but otherwise Grandmaster Kasparov is enunciating very important truths with the authority of someone who speaks from experience.  Kasparov, ethnically Jewish on his father's side, was world chess champion from 1985-1993.  He was born Garik Kimovich Weinstein.  Jews dominate chess out of all proportion to their numbers.   A foolish 'liberal' would say they are 'over-represented.' 

Why foolish?  Because the term conflates the normative and the factual.  

Rush Limbaugh (1951-2021) and the Depth of Disagreement

As a philosopher, I am more interested in the nature of disagreement than in the particular things we disagree about. Why should our disagreements be so bitter and protracted?  But the particular bones of contention are fascinating too. At the moment, there is wild disagreement over the assessment of Rush Limbaugh's remarkably influential  career.  Here's a little sample. Andrew Klavan:

I liked Rush Limbaugh. I only turned on his show out of curiosity, so help me. But to my surprise, I did not find him evil in the least. He was just talking sense, really. Freedom. Constitutional limits on government. What was wrong with that?

Plus he was funny too, really funny. How could I not be delighted at the fear and loathing he inspired in the great and good? During my long absence from America, the great and good had become such smug, small-minded, and provincial little people, it was a guilty pleasure to watch them writhe on the flame he lit beneath them. For decades, feminists had called men “pigs.” Now Rush called them “feminazis,” and they threw their aprons over their faces and sobbed about his lack of civility. For decades, race-mongers had blamed an innocent generation of whites for a history that they hadn’t made, and now Rush mocked the mongers with wicked impressions, and declared it was time for black Americans to get on board the freedom train with their white fellow citizens.

It was beautiful. Courageous. The kind of radio magic I’d grown up with. And it changed me, or at least helped me change. Rush gave a joyful voice to the new thoughts I didn’t even know I’d had.

On the other side, Zack Beauchamp:

Obituaries for talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, who died on Wednesday at the age of 70, have frequently described him as a “conservative provocateur.” This is technically accurate but euphemistic, akin to calling Bashar al-Assad a “controversial leader.” Limbaugh’s stock in trade was bigotry and offense; his career-long defining trait was a willingness to channel the conservative id in unusually blunt and crude terms.

But I'll give the last word to Tammy Bruce:

Rush was not a monster, he wasn’t evil, he did not mean people harm, he wasn’t a bigot, or any of the other smears lobbed against him by my leftist associates. I liked him very much, and while we disagreed on many things (then) he was nothing has he had been painted 4/ 

In my conversations with him, we talked about the issues and despite the disagreements, he also took time to give me advice about hosting, style, connecting w the audience, etc. He encouraged me and gave me advice that made a huge difference in my career… 5/ 

He approached me and everyone else as separate individual worthy of respect and with a desire to help and inspire. Regardless of the fact that I stood for everything he stood against. It was a generosity of spirit you would never see on the left 6/ 

The impact of realizing that I’d been lied to about Rush was significant, but that as a conservative he represented more of what I felt was valuable & important was a revelation. He made it possible to even consider that which is what made him so dangerous to the left 7/ 

During this time as an activist leftist, it was talk radio, the audience, & meeting Rush Limbaugh that was the undeniable trigger making it possible for me to rethink my alliances & eventually leave the leftist establishment 8/ 

It wasn’t just Rush, but I’d also been lied to about conservatives in general, realizing that by speaking with callers every day who were conservative & responding fairly & w curiosity to my arguments on the air. Rush made that medium, & experience, possible 9/ 

My leftist associates begged me not to go into talk radio. I eventually realized they were so opposed because of what I would learn. That leftist effort to deny access to ideas & info continues w even more vitriol & punishment for those who dare to challenge leftist lies 10/ 

Rush created the potential of the medium, and set the tone for entertainment, analysis & education. Honest conversations open to everyone is anathema to the left which is why they’re obsessed w creating fear & the cancel culture 11/ 

The ugliness of the left will be seen throughout today & the days to come in response to the death of Rush, an American titan & defender of conservative values. The left is ugly & horrible but it is exactly their nature & should serve to remind you the importance of our fight 12/ 

The good news is, Rush not only changed our lives by helping us understand the imperative of freedom & generosity, but he now serves as an even more essential example for all of us 13/ 

Rush may be gone, but now it’s up to all of us to continue his commitment to our great nation. Thank you sir, for the time you took with a arrogant & smug LA leftist feminist, one of the millions of lives you changed for the better.

On the 'Inconceivability' of Death

Or is death just a natural event like any other? Merton the monk triggers a Maverick meditatio mori. 

What is Nullification in Political Theory?

Here is one explanation:

Nullification is a fundamental part of the American political system. But what exactly does it mean? There are two definitions. One is legal. When a court strikes down a law, it literally wipes it off the books. But there is also a practical definition – to make something of no value or consequence. When we talk about nullification happening today, we generally mean it in the practical sense – to end the practical effect of a federal act. Here is a succinct definition of nullification as we apply it: Any act or set of acts which has as its result a particular law being rendered legally null and void, or unenforceable in practice.Madison gave us a blueprint on how to do this in Federalist #46.

He suggested four steps to take on counteract and stop federal programs – whether “warrantable” or “unwarrantable,” the most significant being a “refusal to cooperate with officers of the Union.” The federal government involves itself in almost every aspect of life, but depends on state assistance to do almost everything. If states refuse to help, it becomes nearly impossible for the feds to enforce their laws or implement their programs. We can use this strategy to undermine and nullify all kinds of federal acts in practice – from warrantless spying, to gun control, to plant prohibition and more.

Here is an application of the theory:

The "Second Amendment Preservation Act of Newton County Missouri" reads, in part:

All federal acts, laws, orders, rules, and regulations passed by the federal government and specifically any presidential administration whether past, present, or future, which infringe on the people’s right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article 1, Section 23 of the Missouri Constitution shall be invalid in the county, shall not be recognized by this county, and specifically rejected by this county, and shall be considered null and void and of no effect in this County.

Newton County Commission letter dated 2/3/21

It may well be that the cure for what ails the body politic, if there is a cure, is a combination of voluntary segregation and nullification, not secession.

Ashes to Ashes; Dust to Dust

"Remember, man, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. This warning, from the Catholic liturgy for Ash Wednesday, is based on Genesis 3, 19: In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane, donec revertaris in terram de qua sumptus es: quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris.

How real can we and this world be if in a little while we all will be nothing but dust and ashes?

Genesis 3, 19 is true whether or not God exists and whether or not man is spirit.  

The typical secularist is a reality denier who hides from the unalterable facts of death and impermanence.  This is shown by his self-deceptive behavior: he lives as if he will live forever and as if his projects are meaningful even though he knows that he won't and that they aren't.  If he were to face reality he would have to be a nihilist.  That he isn't shows that he is fooling himself.  If our secularist is a leftist utopian, then he pins his hopes on developments no reasonable person could believe in, and that he won't be around to enjoy in any case.  His erasure of the historical record allows him to persist in his self-deception. The Left is at war with memory and its lessons.  

I will be coming back to this theme in connection with Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies (Encounter Books, 2018). A quotation to tantalize: "Communism, as a system that started history anew, had to be, in essence, and in practice, against memory." (9)  We saw that play out in our cities last summer, as the Left stood idly by, and in many instances encouraged, the destruction of statues and other monuments for reasons that are no reasons at all but nihilistic ventings from the pit.

Our plesance here is all vain glory,
This fals world is but transitory,
The flesche is brukle, the Feynd is slee;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

No stait in Erd here standis sicker;
As with the wynd wavis the wicker,
Wavis this wardlis vanitie;
Timor mortis conturbat me.

(William Dunbar c. 1460 -- c. 1520, from "Lament for the Makers.")

Here lie I by the chancel door;
They put me here because I was poor.
The further in, the more you pay,
But here lie I as snug as they.

(Devon tombstone.)

Here lies Piron, a complete nullibiety,
Not even a Fellow of a Learned Society.

Alexis Piron, 1689-1773, "My Epitaph"

Why hoard your maidenhead? There'll not be found
A lad to love you, girl, under the ground.
Love's joys are for the quick; but when we're dead
It's dust and ashes, girl, will go to bed.

(Asclepiades, fl. 290 B.C., tr. R. A. Furness)

The world, perhaps, does not see that those who rightly engage in
philosophy study only death and dying. And, if this be true, it
would surely be strange for a man all through his life to desire
only death, and then, when death comes to him, to be vexed at it,
when it has been his study and his desire for so long.

Plato, Phaedo, St. 64, tr. F. J. Church

A Monk and his Political Silence

Substack latest

Lukáš Novák on Reference to What is Not

What follows is a re-do of an entry that first saw the light of the blogosphere on the 4th of July, 2014. The draft Lukáš Novák (on my left in the photo) sent me back then for my comments has since appeared in print in Maimonides on God and Duns Scotus on Logic and Metaphysics  (Volume 12: Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics) eds.  Gyula Klima and Alexander W. Hall, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015, pp. 155-188.  I note that our old sparring partner Edward Buckner has an article in this volume, "On the Authenticity of Scotus's Logical Works," pp. 55-84.

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

Our Czech friend Lukáš Novák sent me a paper in which, drawing upon John Duns Scotus, he rejects the following principle of reference:

(PR) It is impossible to refer to that which is not.

In this entry I will first pull some quotations from Novak's paper and then raise some questions about the view that he seems to be endorsing.

I. Novak's Scotistic View

Novak writes,

Scotus’ position can be simply characterized as a consistent rejection of the PR . . . . According to Scotus, the objects of any intentional relations . . . simply are not required to have any ontological status whatsoever, or, as Scotus puts it, any esse verum. The “being” expressed by the predicates exploited by Francis, like “to be known” (esse cognitum), “to be intelligible” (esse intelligibile), “to be an image of a paradigm” (esse exemplatum), “to be represented” (esse repraesentatum) and the like, is not real or true in any way, irrespectively of whether the relation involved concerns God or man.

[. . .]

It is not necessary to assume any esse essentiae in objects of knowledge: instead, Scotus speaks of “esse deminutum” here, but he points out emphatically that this “diminished being” is being only “secundum quid”, i.e., in an improper, qualified sense – this is the point of Scotus’ famous criticism of Henry of Ghent laid out in the unique question of dist. 36 of the first book of his Ordinatio. If you look for some real being in the object of intellection that it should have precisely in virtue of being such an object, there is none to be found. The only real being to be found here is the real being of the intellection, to which the esse deminutum of the intellected object is reduced.

[. . .]

In other words: if we were to make something like an inventory of reality, we should not list any objects having mere esse deminutum. By speaking about objects in intelligible being we do not take on any ontological commitment (to use the Quinean language) over and above the commitment to the existence of the intellections directed to these objects.

[. . .]

And now the crucial point: it is precisely this intelligibility, imparted to the objects by the divine intellect, what [that] makes human conceiving of the same objects possible, irrespectively of whether they have any real being or not:

[. . .]

In other words: the most fundamental reason why the PR is false is, according to Scotus, the fact that a sufficient condition of the human capacity to refer to something is the intelligibility of that something. This intelligibility, however, is bestowed on things in virtue of their being conceived, prior to creation, by the absolute divine intellect. This divine conceiving, however, neither produces nor presupposes any genuine being in the objects; for it is a universal truth that cognition is an immanent operation, one whose effect remains wholly in its subject (and so does not really affect its object) – in this elementary point divine cognition is not different. Accordingly, objects need not have any being whatsoever in order to be capable of being referred to. (p. 181, emphases added)

II. Some Questions and Comments

As a matter of Moorean fact we do at least seem to refer both in thought and in speech to nonexistent objects and to say things about them, true and false.   The celebrated goldner Berg discussed by Bernard Bolzano, Kasimir Twardowski, Alexius von Meinong et al. is a stock  example. Suppose that I am thinking about the golden mountain (GM). Since I cannot think without thinking of something, when I am thinking of or about the GM, I am thinking of something.  But thinking is not like eating. Necessarily, if I eat something, that thing exists.   I cannot eat a nonexistent comestible. Eating takes an existing object; thinking, however, needn't take an existing object. But it must take an object. So it is quite natural to say that in the case before us, the act of thinking is directed to a nonexistent object.

That some objects do not exist (or have any mode of being at all) would seem to following directly from the intentionality or object-directedness of consciousness.  My act of thinking about the GM (or about Frodo, to use Novak's example), being intentional is directed to, intends, an object that is not part of the act, but transcendent of it.  It follows straightaway that some objects of thinking and linguistic reference have no being. So far, it seems that Dr. Novak is right: we must reject (P) according to which it is impossible to refer to that which is not.

But of course this is puzzling. An object that has no being is nothing. How then can I be thinking about something that is nothing? And if what I am thinking about is nothing at all, then how is my thinking of Frodo different from my thinking of the GM?  Acts are individuated by their objects; if the objects are nothing, then they do not differ and cannot serve to individuate the acts trained upon them. What's more, if the GM is nothing at all, then it has no properties; but it does have properties, ergo, etc.  So we have an aporetic dyad that needs solving:

a) The GM is something (because every thinking is a thinking of something, and I am thinking of the GM.)

b) The GM is nothing (because there are no mountains of gold in reality outside my mind, nor, for that matter, inside my mind).

 

If I understand Novak, he wants a theory that satisfies the following desiderata or criteria of adequacy:

D1. Metaphysical possibilism is to be avoided.  We cannot maintain that the merely possible has any sort of being.  (Novak distinguishes metaphysical possibilism and actualism from semantic possibilism and actualism. Cf. p. 185) 

D2. Actualist ersatzism is to be avoided.  We cannot maintain that there are actual items such as Plantingian haecceity properties  that stand in for mere possibilia.

D3. The phenomenological fact that intentionality is relational and not quasi-relational (etwas Relativliches) as in Brentano is to be respected and somehow accommodated.  No adverbial theories!

D4. Eliminativism about intentionality/reference is to be avoided.  Intentionality is real!

D5. Nominalist reductionism according to which reference is a merely intralinguistic phenomenon is to be avoided.  When I refer to something, whether existent or nonexistent, I am getting outside of language!  

Novak does not list these desiderata; I am imputing them to him.  He can tell me if my imputation is unjust.  In any case, I accept (D1)-(D5): an adequate theory must satisfy these demands.  Now how does Novak's theory satisfy them?

Well, he brings God into the picture. Some will immediately cry deus ex machina! But I think Novak can plausibly rebut this charge.  If God is brought on the stage in an ad hoc manner to get us out of a philosophical jam, then a deus ex machina objection has bite.  But Novak and his master Scotus have independent reasons for positing God. See p. 185. And see my substantial post on deus-ex-machina objections in philosophy, here.  Suppose we have already proven, or at least given good reasons for, the existence of God.  Then he can be put to work.  Or, as my esteemed and fondly remembered teacher J. N. Findlay once said, "God has his uses."

So how does Novak's solution work? 

It is sufficient for x to be an object of thought or reference by us that it be intelligible. This intelligibility derives from the divine intellect who, prior to creation, conceives of such items as the golden mountain.  But this conceiving does not impart to them any real being.  Nor does it presuppose that they have any real being.  In themselves, they have no being at all.  God's conceiving of nonexistent objects is a wholly immanent operation the effect of which remains wholly within the subject of the operation, namely, the divine mind. The intelligibility is not projected onto items external to the divine intellect.   And yet the nonexistent objects acquire intelligibility.  It is this intelligibility that makes it possible for us finite minds to think the nonexistent without it being the case that nonexistent objects have any being at all.

This is the theory, assuming I have understood it.  And it does seem to satisfy the desiderata (D1)-(D5) with the possible exception of (D3).  But here is one concern. We are being told that the intelligibility of the GM, for example, is due to a  wholly immanent operation on God's part. That is: no act of divine intellection is directed outward toward a transcendent object even if said object is beingless. But if the divine production of the intelligibility of the GM, say, is wholly immanent then this can only mean that the production proceeds by God's conceiving-GM-ly.  But this amounts to adverbialism and a denial of the relationality of intentionality, which Novak is otherwise committed to. Cf. the "pre-philosophical datum" mentioned on p. 186 according to which "we all know that we can refer to non-existing things" such as Frodo Baggins, and yet "we all know that they are not there."  Frodo, after all, is purely fictional item "made up" by Tolkien.   Talk of reference whether it be thinking reference or reference expressed verbally implies relationality: I am related to what I refer to.  But talk of wholly immanent operations of cognition and conception sits none too well with the relational talk of reference.

So my question for Novak is: Did Scotus anticipate the adverbialism of Roderick Chisholm, et al.? Is Scotus an adverbialist?

Here is a second concern of mine.  We are told that:

. . . it is a universal truth that cognition is an immanent operation, one whose effect remains wholly in its subject (and so does not really affect its object) – in this elementary point divine cognition is not different. Accordingly, objects need not have any being whatsoever in order to be capable of being referred to.

This implies that both divine and creaturely cognition and conceiving are wholly immanent operations. So what is going on when I think of, or refer to, the GM? It seem that I too would have to be conceiving-GM-ly. But then the objections to adverbialism would kick in.

Here is a third concern not unrelated to the second. The Scotistic-Novakian theory seems to imply that when I think about the golden mountain I am thinking about an operation wholly immanent to the divine intellect.  But that is not what I seem to be thinking about.  (And how would I gain access to God's mind?) It falls afoul of the phenomenology of intentionality. What I seem to be thinking about has  very few properties (being golden, being a mountain) and perhaps their analytic entailments, and no hidden properties such as the property of being identical to an operation wholly immanent to the divine intellect.  An intentional object that does not exist has precisely, all and only, the properties it is intended as having.

Connected with this third concern is the suspicion that on Novak's Scotistic theory the act-object distinction is eliminated, a distinction that is otherwise essential to his approach.  He wants to deny that merely intentional objects have any being of their own.  So he identifies them with divine conceivings.  But this falls afoul of a point insisted on by Twardowski.  

My merely imagined table does not exist in reality, 'outside' my mind.  But it also does not exist 'in' my mind as identical to the act of imagining it or as a proper part of the act of imagining it, or as any sort of mental content, as Twardowski clearly saw.  Otherwise, (i) the merely imagined table would have the nature of an experience, which it does not have, and (ii) it would exist in reality, when it doesn't, and (iii) it would have properties that cannot be properties of mental acts or contents such as the property of being spatially extended.

My point could be put like this.  The typical merely intentional, hence nonexistent, object such as the golden mountain does not have the nature of an experience or mental act; it is an object of such an act.  But if merely intentional objects are divine conceivings, then they have the nature of an experience. Ergo, etc.  Novak's theory appears to fall into 'divine psychologism.'   

The Self-Reliant Don't Snivel

I quote Louis L'Amour.

Existence as Completeness? Gilson on Scotus, Thomas, and the Real Distinction

I composed this entry with Lukáš Novák in mind. I hope to secure his comments.

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

Marco Santambrogio, "Meinongian Theories of Generality," Nous, December 1990, p. 662:

. . . I take existence to mean just this: an entity, i, exists iff there is a determinate answer to every question concerning it or in other words, for every F(x) either F[x/i] or ~F[x/i] holds.  The Tertium Non Datur is the hallmark of existence or reality.  This is entirely in the Meinong-Twardowski tradition.

In other words, existence is complete determinateness or completeness: Necessarily, for any x, x exists if and only if x is complete, i.e., satisfies the property version of the Law of Excluded Middle (tertium non datur).  Now I have long maintained that whatever exists is complete, but I have never been tempted by the thesis that whatever is complete exists.  My intuitions on this matter are Thomistic rather than Scotistic.

According to Etienne Gilson, Duns Scotus held that actually to exist in reality = to be complete:

. . . actual existence appears only when an essence is, so to speak, bedecked with the complete series of its determinations. (Being and Some Philosophers, Pontifical Institute, Toronto, 1952, 2nd ed. , 89)

Actual existence thus appears as inseparable from the essence when essence is taken in its complete determination. (88)

An actually existing essence is, meaning by "is" that it exists, as soon as it is fully constituted by its genus, its species, its own individual "thisness," as well as all the accidents which go to make up its being. (86)

It follows that an actually existing thing is not the result of the superaddition of existence to a complete essence, but is just an essence in its completeness. This implies that there is no distinctio realis. For if an actually existing individual essence exists in virtue of being completely determinate, then there cannot be any distinction in reality between that complete essence and its existence. If Socrates is a wholly determinate essence, then, on the Scotist view as glossed by Gilson, there is no need for anything more to make him exist: nothing needs to be added ab extra.

What we have here are two very different theories of existence.  For the Scotist, existence belong in the order of essence as the maximal determinateness of essence.  For the Thomist, existence does not belong in the order of essence but is situated 'perpendicular' to it. Is there any way rationally to decide between these views? Could there be complete nonexistent objects? If yes, then the Scotist view would stand refuted.  If no, then the Thomist view would stand refuted.

Well, why can't there be complete nonexistent objects?  Imagine the God of Leibniz, before the creation, contemplating an infinity of possible worlds, each of them determinate down to the last detail.  None of them exists or is actual.  But each of them is complete.  One of them God calls 'Charley.'  God says, Fiat Charley! And Charley exists.  It is exactly the same world which 'before' was merely possible, but 'now'  is actual.  The difference is not one of essence, but one of existence.

So, while existence entails completeness, why should completeness entail existence?  

(Other questions arise at this point which are off-topic, for example, why Charley over Barley?  Why Charley over any other world?  Must God have a reason?  And what would it be?  Would it be because Charley is the best of all possible worlds?  Is there such a things as the BEST of all possible worlds?  Why some world rather than no world?  And so on. But these questions are off-topic.  Focus like a laser on the question about the 'nature' of existence.) 

The theological imagery is supposed to help you understand the ontological point.  But we needn't bring God into it. It would also not be to the point to protest that God creates out of nothing, not out of mere possibles.  My concern here is with the nature of existence, not with the nature of  God or of divine creation. All I need for my argument is the possibility that there be maximally determinate individual essences that do not exist.  If there are, then existence is not completeness.  But one man's modus ponens is another man's modus tollens. Can either side refute the other?

In the end the dispute may come down to a profound and irresolvable difference in intuitions. 

What say you, Dr. Novak?

Attributed to Robert Frost

Here:

"A liberal is a man too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel” is usually credited to American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963). Frost used the quote in January 1961 (discussing John F. Kennedy, who Frost thought was not this type of liberal) and Frost used it again in January 1962. A popular form of the quotation is: “A liberal is someone who won’t take his own side in a fight.”

William Ernest Hocking (1873-1966) wrote this in his book What Man Can Make of Man (1942): “He lends himself to the gibe that he is ‘so very liberal, that he cannot bring himself to take his own side in a quarrel.’” It is not known where Hocking got the phrase, or if Frost (who was an avid reader) was borrowing from another source.

One can be hobbled by one's virtues. There is something noble about being fair-minded, objective, and considerative of all points of view. It is the way of the philosopher, the lover of objective truth, "the spectator of all time and existence" in a stirring line from Plato's Republic. But before a man is a philosopher, he is a man of flesh and blood, brutally embedded in a brutal world in which he must stand his ground and battle his enemies. He must not allow his noble viewership of life's parade to make impossible  his marching in it.  

Asymmetrical Polarization

Holy Hillary, we are polarized over polarization!

Why am I so Happy?

 

Every day there are multiple outrages from the Left as my country turns into a police state. Why should I be happy?

 

Well, I live in Arizona, a destination state if ever there was one, and I have lived here for going on 22 years. Today is another one of those exquisitely beautiful, halcyon, February days in the Sonoran desert. I am sitting here, windows open, shirt off.  My work is going well. My health is good. I enjoy the bliss and security of obscurity while garnering all the recognition I need. I take delight in my wife, and she in me. I have everything I could possibly want materially speaking. I am reaping the benefits of a lifetime of Italian frugality. Each day is my own. The consolations of philosophy are mine. The owl of Minerva is my friend. As dusk descends, he spreads his wings, sheltering me.  More than a consolation, philosophy and the life of the mind remain a reliable source of joy. Boethius wrote philosophy in prison, but I have reason to believe that I won't be tested in that way.  Old age is on my side. The clock is running, the format is sudden death, and though the time control is unknown, I have reason to believe that the flag will fall before a Boethian fate befalls me.

 

Most importantly, I believe that, after our brief sublunary tenure, we continue on as individuals in some way that, from this side, must remain mainly a matter of faith and speculation.  What we do now is meaningful because there is something like a future for us.  To live well we must not only hope within this life but also hope beyond it. If you believe that death spells the utter end of the individual, then I will ask you: whence the meaning of your life? Are you really fulfilled by the little meanings of the quotidian round?  Are you satisfied by yet another repetition of a paltry pleasure, a further concupiscent twitch, another unneeded material possession, one more uptick in your net worth?   Is hitting a little white ball into a hole enough to make you happy?  

The State under Leftism

Substack

David French, Christianity, and Politics

Substack latest.

A Vocation, not a Job

Heading out the door for a walk, the wife invited me along. I told her I had too much to do, that the clock was running, the format sudden death, the time-control unknown. 

"But you're retired."

I reminded her that philosophy is my vocation.  One can be retired from the largely meaningless job of teaching the unteachable, but one can never be retired from one's vocation in the proper sense of that term.

I hope to have my boots on when the flag falls.

In what state will death find you when the Reaper's scythe cuts you down?  Will it matter? Is that a question that needs to be investigated?

The Stupor Bowl is a Super Bore

Panem et circenses! 

I am no fan of spectator sports.  We have too many sports spectators and too many overpaid* professional louts. I preach the People's Sports, despite the leftish ring of that.

Remove your sorry tail from the couch of sloth and start a softball league with your friends and neighbors. Play volley ball whether in a pool or on dry land. Engage your fellow paisani in a game of bocce. (But don't call it bocce ball. Do you call tennis tennis ball?)

Or take the Thoreauvian high road, leave the People behind, and sally forth solo into the wild. As Henry said, "A man sits as many risks as he runs." Old Henry puts me in mind of Cactus Ed, the Thoreau of the American Southwest.

In Vox Clamantis in Deserto Edward Abbey opines:

Football is a game for trained apes. That, in fact, is what most of the players are — retarded gorillas wearing helmets and uniforms. The only thing more debased is the surrounding mob of drunken monkeys howling the gorillas on.

Was Abbey a racist? That depends on what a racist is. I'll leave it for you to decide what a racist is and whether Abbey was one.

________________

*Can anyone be 'overpaid'? If enough people like what you sell, and are willing to pay you for it, you may become rich indeed. Think of all the rich schlock novelists. Capitalist acts among consenting adults. That's the libertarian line.  Or do you prefer more government intervention in people's lives? For the record, I am not a libertarian. But I'll take a libertarian over a leftist any day.

In Defense of Double Cultural Appropriation

I read the Dhammapada (CA 1) in translation (CA2)!

Today's Substack entry

Charles Bukowski Meets Simone Weil

My Substack latest

Knowledge and Belief

If there are truths that we cannot know but only believe, should we deny ourselves those truths because they cannot be known but only believed?

Paradox and Contradiction between Athens and Benares

Philosophers love a paradox but hate a contradiction.  They love that which stimulates thought but are understandably averse to that which stops it dead in its tracks. 

Mystics love both. Where the discursive road ends, the mystic path begins. The mystic essays to ride contradictions, like so many koans, into the sky of the Transdiscursive.

The radical aporetician stands at the trailhead. Having travelled the road, he peers beyond without stepping onto the trail. He holds yet to reason as to that whose ultimate purpose is to clear the way for what lies beyond reason.

A Fundamental Contradiction of Socialism

Substack latest.

God and Existence: How Related?

A reader asks:

You seem to hold that, if God is identical to his existence, then God is Existence itself. Why think that? Why not think instead that, if God is identical to his existence, then he is identical to his 'parcel' of existence, as it were?

This is an entirely reasonable question. I will try to answer it.

 

First of all, when we say that God is identical to his existence, we mean that there is no real distinction in God between essence (nature) and existence in the way in which there is a real distinction in Socrates (our representative creature) between essence (nature) and existence.  It is the real distinction in Socrates that grounds his metaphysical contingency, while it is the lack of such a distinction in God that grounds his metaphysical necessity.

 

This is to say that God, unlike creatures, is ontologically simple.  In a slogan of St Augustine, God is what he has.  Thus he has his existence by being his existence.  In this one case, the 'is' of identity and the 'is' of predication coalesce. Why must God be simple?  Because he is the absolute reality.  If your god is not the absolute reality, then your god is not God but an idol.  The absolute cannot depend on anything else for its nature or existence on pain of ceasing to be the absolute.  It must possess aseity, from-itself-ness. 

 

Now Existence is in some way common to everything that exists, though it is not common in the manner of a property or a concept.  Thus God and Socrates have Existence in common.  If God is not identical to Existence, then he is like Socrates and must depend on Existence as something other than himself to exist.  But this violates the divine aseity.

 

Therefore, God is not only identical to his existence, he is identical to Existence itself.

 

Objection:  "If God is identical to Existence, then God alone exists, which flies in the face of the evident fact that there is a plurality of non-divine existents."

 

Reply:   The objection succeeds only if there are no different ways of existing.  But if God exists-underivatively and creatures exist-derivatively, then God's identity with Existence does not entail that God alone exists; it entails that God alone exists-underivatively.

 

The picture is this.  Existence is that which makes derivative existents exist.  If Existence did not itself exist, then nothing would exist.  So Existence itself exists.  It is identical to God.  God is the unsourced Source of everything distinct from God.  God, as Existence itself, is the Paradigm Existent.  God is at once both Existence and the prime case of Existence.

 

In this respect, God is like a Platonic Form in which all else participates.  (It is worth recalling in this connection that Aquinas speaks of God as forma formarum, the form of all forms.)  God is self-existent Existence; creatures are not self-existent, but derive their existence from self-existent Existence.

 

Objection:  "This scheme issues in something like the dreaded Third Man Regress.  If Socrates and Plato both exist by participating in Existence, which exists, then there are three things that exist, Socrates, Plato, and Existence, each of which exists by participation.  If so, there must be a second Existence, Existence-2 that Socrates, Plato and Existence-1 participate in.  But then an infinite regress is up and running, one that is, moreover, vicious."

 

Response:  The Third Man Regress is easily blocked by distinguishing the way Existence exists and the way derivative existents exist.  Socrates exists by participating in Existence; Existence exists, not by participation, but by being (identical to) Existence.

 

There is exactly one case in which existence = self-identity.  This is the case of the Paradigm Existent, which is Existence itself, which is God.  If God is God, then God exists. (Bonaventura) In every other case, existence is not self-identity.  No doubt Socrates is self-identical; but his self-identity is not the ground of his existence.

Platonism and Christianity

Brother Dave writes,

I'm re-reading Boethius' Consolation. Boethius does have a foot in Athens and one in Jerusalem, it seems to me. Now you sir are a Christian, and argue your positions in a blog subtitled Footnotes to Plato . . . .  Would it be fair to refer to you, as I would to Boethius, as a Christian Platonist?

As for whether I am a Platonist,  all of us who uphold the Western (Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman) tradition are Platonists broadly construed if Alfred North Whitehead is right in his observation that:

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.  I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings.  I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them.  [. . .] Thus in one sense by stating my belief that the train of thought in these lectures is Platonic, I am doing no more than expressing the hope that it falls within the European tradition. (Process and Reality, Corrected Edition, The Free Press, 1978, p. 39)

So in that general sense I am a Platonist.  And I also like the modesty conveyed by "footnotes to Plato."  Some say the whole of philosophy is a battle between Plato and Aristotle.  That is not bad as simplifications go, and if you forced me to choose, I would throw in my lot with Plato and the Platonists.  So that is a more specific sense in which I provide "footnotes to Plato." 

As for Platonism and Christianity, you could refer to me fairly as a Christian Platonist. But what does that come to?

Part of what it means for me is that a de-Hellenized Christianity is of no interest.  Christianity is a type of monotheism. The monotheistic claim is not merely that there is one god as opposed to many gods.  Monotheism as I see it overturns the entire pantheon; it does not reduce its membership to one god, the tribal god of the Jews. Monotheism does of course imply that there is exactly one God, but it also implies that God is the One, and that therefore God is unique, and indeed uniquely unique.  To understand that you will have to follow the link and study the entry to which it leads. Now if God is uniquely unique, then God is not a being among beings, but Being itself.  He is not an ens among entia, but esse: ipsum esse subsistens.  Kein Seiendes, sondern das Sein selbst.

Now we are well up into the Platonic stratosphere. Jerusalem needs Athens if theism is not to degenerate into a tribal mythology. (That Athens needs Jerusalem is also true, but not my present theme.)

I don't believe I am saying anything different from what Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict  XVI) says in his Introduction to Christianity (Ignatius, 2004, orig. publ. in German in 1968).  Here is one relevant quotation among several:

The Christian faith opted, we have seen, against the gods of the various religions and in favor of the God of the philosophers, that is, against the myth of custom and in favor of the truth of Being itself and nothing else. (142) 

Writing of the unity of belief and thought, Ratzinger tells us that

. . . the Fathers of the Church believed that they had discovered here the deepest unity between philosophy and faith, Plato and Moses, the Greek mind and the biblical mind. (118)

Plato and Moses!  The God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are one and the same.

The problematic is rich and many-sided. More later.

Smokers as Contemplatives?

Now that's a stretch to elicit scorn, but this article does make some good points pushing back against the extremism of the tobacco wackos.

The most absurd view of smoking known to me is the one that was the party line of the Rand cult. See Is Smoking a Moral Obligation? wherein I quote Murray Rothbard.