Maverick Philosopher

Differences Between Wishing and Hoping

I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
That we could sit simply in that room again
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat
I'd give it all gladly
If our lives could be like that.

Bob Dylan's Dream

Wishing and hoping are both intentional attitudes: they take an object.  One cannot just wish, or just hope, in the way one can just feel miserable or elated.  If I wish, I wish for something.  The same holds for hoping. How then do the two attitudes differ?  They differ in terms of time, modality, and justification.

1.  The object of hope lies in the future, of necessity.  One cannot hope for what was or what is.  In his dream, Dylan wished to be together again with his long lost friends.  But he didn't hope to be together with them again.  Coherent: 'I wish I had never been born.'  Incoherent: 'I hope I had never been born.'  Coherent: 'I wish I was with her right now.'  Incoherent: 'I hope I was with her right now.'

Although hope is always and of necessity future-directed, wishing is not temporally restricted.  'I wish I were 30 again.' 'I wish I were in Hawaii now.'  'I wish to live to be a hundred.'   I cannot hope to be 30 again or hope to be in Hawaii now.  But I can both wish and hope to live to be a hundred.

Can I hope to be young again?  That's ambiguous.  I could hope for a medical breakthrough that would rejuvenate  a person in the sense of making him physiologically young  and I could hope to undergo such a rejuvenation.  But I cannot hope to be calendrically young again.

2. One can hope only for what one considers to be possible.  (What one considers to be possible may or may be possible.)  But one can wish for both what one considers to be the possible and what one consider to be  impossible.  I can hope for a stay of execution, but not that I should continue to exist as a live animal after being hanged.  ('Hanged' not 'hung'!)  I can hope to survive my bodily death, but only if I consider it possible that I survive my bodily death. But I can wish for what I know to be impossible such as being young again, being able to run a 2:30 marathon, visiting  Mars next year.

3. There is no sense in demanding of one who wishes to be cured of cancer that he supply his grounds or justification for so wishing.  "Are you justified in wishing to be cancer-free?"  But if he hopes to beat his cancer, then one can appropriately request the grounds of the hope.

If I both wish and hope for something I consider possible that lies in the future, then the difference between wishing and hoping rests on the fact that one can appropriately request grounds for hoping but not grounds for wishing.

I'll end with my favorite counterfactual conditional:  'If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.' 

Can a Thin Theorist Experience Wonder at Existence?

Existence elicited nausea from Sartre's Roquentin, but wonder from Bryan Magee:

 . . . no matter what it was that existed, it seemed to me extraordinary beyond all wonderment that it should. It was astounding that anything existed at all. Why wasn't there nothing? By all the normal rules of expectation — the least unlikely state of affairs, the most economical solution to all possible problems, the simplest explanation — nothing is what you would have expected there to be. But such was not the case, self-evidently. (Confessions of a Philosopher, p. 13)

We find something similar in Wittgenstein:  Wie erstaunlich, dass ueberhaupt etwas existiert.  "How astonishing that anything at all exists." (Geheime Tagebuecher 1914-1916, p. 82.)

What elicited Magee's and Wittgenstein's wonderment was the self-evident sheer existence of things in general: their being as opposed to their nonbeing. How strange that anything at all exists! Now what could a partisan of the thin conception of Being or existence make of  this wonderment at existence? Or at Sartre's/Roquentin's nausea at existence?  I will try to show that no thin theorist qua thin theorist can accommodate  wonderment/nausea at existence, and that this fact tells against the thin theory.

 

I have already exposited the thin theory ad nauseam, if you will forgive the pun.  So let's simply consider what the head honcho of the thin theorists, Peter van Inwagen, has to say about wonder at existence in "Being, Existence, and Ontological Commitment" (in Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, eds. Chalmers et al., Oxford 2009, pp. 472-506) He begins by pointing out (478) that everything we say using 'exists' and its cognates can be said without using 'exists'and its cognates.  'Dragons do not exist' can be put by saying 'Nothing is a dragon,' or 'Everything is not a dragon.'  'God exists' can be put in terms of the equivalent 'It is not the case that everything is not (a) God.' 'I think, therefore I am' is equivalent to 'I think, therefore not everything is not I.'  Here are some further examples of my own.  'An honest politican does not exist' is equivalent to 'No politician is honest.'  'A  sober Irishman does  exist'  is equivalent to 'Some Irishman is sober.'  'An impolite New Yorker does not exist' is equivalent to 'Every New Yorker is polite.'

From examples like these it appears that every sentence containing 'exists' or 'is' (used existentially) or cognates, can be be replaced by an equivalent sentence in which 'exists' or  'is' (used existentially), or cognates does not appear.

Now let's see how this works when it comes to the sentences we use to express our wonder at our own existence or at the existence of things in general.

Suppose I am struck by a sudden sense of my contingency.  I exclaim, 'I might never have existed.'  That is equivalent to 'I might never have been identical to anything' or, as van Inwagen has it, 'it might have been the case that everything was always not I.' (479)

To wonder why there is anything at all is to wonder "why it is not the case that everything is not (identical with) anything." (479)

Now I could mock these amazing contortions whereby van Inwagen tries to hold onto his thin theory, but I won't.  Mockery and derision have a place in polemical writing, as when I am battling the lunkheads of the Left, but they have no place in philosophy proper.  But really, has anyone  ever expressed his wonder at the sheer existence of the world using the sentence I just quoted from PvI?  But of course I need a more substantial objection that this, and I have one.

When I wonder at the sheer existence of things I am not wondering at the fact that everything is identical to something, or  wondering  at its not being the case that everything is not identical with anything.

Why not? Well, the truth of 'Everything is identical to something' presupposes a domain of quantification the members of which are existing items.  Surely what I find wonder-inducing is not the fact that every item x in that presupposed domain is identical to some item y in that very same presupposed domain! That miserable triviality is not what I am wondering at.   I am wondering at the  existence of anything at all including the domain and everything in it.

What I am wondering at is that there is something and not nothing.  How can a Quinean such as PvI express that something exists?  Is 'Something exists' equivalent to 'For some x, x = x'?  No.  Existence is not self-identity.  For x to exist is not for x to be self-identical.  Otherwise, for x not to exist would be for x to be self-diverse -- which is absurd.  My possible nonexistence is not my possible self-diversity.

Suppose there is only only one  thing, a, and that I am wondering at the existence of a.  Why is there a and not rather nothing?  Am I wondering at a's self-identity?  Obviously not.  I am wondering at a's sheer existence, that it is 'there,' that it is not nothing, that is it, that it has Being. 

And so I conclude that a thin theorist qua thin theorist cannot experience wonder at the sheer existence of things.  All he can experience wonder at -- if you want to call it wonder -- is that things presupposed as existing are self-identical -- which is surely not all that marvellous.  Of course they are self-identical!  Necessarily if a thing exists, it is self-identical. But existence is not self-identity. If existence were self-identity, then nonexistence would be self-diversity and possble existence would be possible self-diversity. 

Some of us experience wonder at the sheer existence of things.  As old Ludwig puts it, Ich staune dass die Welt existiert!  When I experience this wonder I am not experiencing wonder at the trivial fact that each of the things presupposed as existing is identical to something or  other.  I am wondering at the existence of everything including the presupposed domain of existents.  This then is yet another argument against the thin theory.  The thin theory cannot accommodate wonder at existence, or Sartrean nausea at existence either. 

Dennis Prager on High Self Esteem

I like Dennis Prager, but he is sometimes sloppy in his use of language.  He will often say that high self esteem is not a value, or words to that effect. It sounds as if he is against people having high self esteem.  But what he really wants to oppose, or rather what he ought to oppose, is not self esteem or high self esteem, but the silly notion of many liberals that high self esteem is  a value, a good thing, regardless of whether or not it is grounded in any actual accomplishment.

Suppose my high self-esteem, in general, or in some particular respect, is justified by actual achievement.  Then I am entitled to my high self esteem, and my  having it is a good.  When a person of high achievement suffers from low self esteem we consider that an unfortunate state of affairs. 

Another example of Prager's sloppiness is his use of 'Ponzi scheme.'  He said one day on his show that the welfare state is a Ponzi scheme.  I know what he means, and what he means to say is true, but he ought to say what he means.  What he means is that the welfare state is economically unsustainable in the long run like a Ponzi scheme.  But if X is like Y, it doesn't follow that X is Y. 

Ponzi schemes are set up by people with fraudulent intent.  But neither the architects of the modern welfare state nor the architects of the Social Security system in particular had fraudulent intent.  Nor do current supporters of the welfare state or SS have fraudulent intent.  They really think that these schemes are good and workable.

Why is this important?  Well, because one ought not demonize one's opponents, or, less drastically,  impute to them unsavory motives, unless one has very good evidence of the unsavoriness of their motives.  I am not saying that one ought never impute evil motives to one's opponents, but that one ought to be very careful about doing so.

Language matters.

Grief: Three Solutions

That we grieve over the loss of a finite good shows our wretchedness. But the cure for grief is not the substitution of attachment to another finite good. We should not distract ourselves from our grief, but experience it and try to grasp the root of it, which is our inner emptiness, rather than the loss of a particular finite good. The proximate cause of my grief, the death of a beloved companion, is not grief’s ultimate cause. The inner emptiness, infinite in that nothing finite can assuage it, has but one anodyne: the infinite good, God.

If God be denied, then either the inner emptiness must be extinguished, or we must learn to fill it with finite goods. The latter, common as it is, is a miserable stop-gap measure and no ultimate solution. But to extinguish the inner emptiness, we must extinguish desire itself. This, the solution of Pali Buddhism, cuts but does not untie the Gordian knot.

So I count three solutions to grief: seek God; Pascalian divertissement; Buddhist extinction.  Perhaps there are others.

What, Me Worry?

The evil event will either occur or it will not.  If it occurs, and one worries beforehand, then one suffers twice, from the event and from the worry.  If the evil event does not occur, and one worries beforehand, one suffers once, but needlessly.  If the event does not occur, and one does not worry beforehand, then one suffers not at all.  Therefore, worry is irrational.  Don't worry, be happy.

Am I saying that that one ought not take reasonable precautions and exercise what is pleonastically called 'due diligence'?  Of course not.  Rational concern is not worry.  I never drive without my seat belt fastened.  Never! I never ride my mountain bike without donning helmet and gloves.  But I never crash and I never worry about it.  And if one day I do crash, I will suffer only once:  from the crash.

Worry is a worthless emotion, a wastebasket emotion.  So self-apply some cognitive therapy and send it packing. You say you can't help but worry?  Then I say you are making no attempt to get your mind under control.  It's your mind, control it!  It's within your power.  Suppose what I have just said is false.  No matter: it is useful to believe it.  The proof  is in the pragmatics.

The Foolishness of Envy

You envy me?  What a wretch you must be to feel diminished in your sense of self-worth by comparison to me!  I have something you lack?  Why isn't that compensated for by what you have that I lack?  You feel bad that I have achieved something by my hard work?  Don't you realize that you waste time and energy by comparing yourself to me, time and energy that could be used to improve your own lot?

Do you think you can add one cubit to your stature by tearing me down?  Have you never heard The Parable of the Tree and the House?

You ought to feel bad, not that I do well, but that you are so willfully stupid.  Vices vitiate; they weaken.  You weaken yourself and make yourself even more of a wretch by indulging in envy.

Companion posts:  Envy, Jealousy, Schadenfreude.  Schadenfreude With a Twist

Unreasonable Disappointment

I cannot be reasonably disappointed if I fail to achieve what was never in my power to achieve.

Compassion

Feeling compassion for the earthquake victims, he was pleased by his sensitivity, but his warm feeling did not motivate him to do anything such as make a monetary contribution to the Red Cross.  His feeling remained mere sentiment and to that extent mere self-indulgence.

Better to feel compassion than to define it. Better still to act upon the feeling.  But now an interesting question arises.  Would it not be even better to act in alleviation of the other's suffering without feeling the negative affect?  This line of thought is explored in Spinoza on Commiseratio.

Pet Love as Idolatry? Problems of Attachment and Grief

I buried my little female cat Caissa at sunrise this morning in a beautiful spot in the Superstition Mountains in the same place where I buried my male cat Zeno in October of 2002.    When I buried Zeno, just before leaving the burial site, I prayed, "May we love the perishable as perishable and not idolatrously, as if it were imperishable."  I recalled and repeated the thought this morning.  I think it is important to reflect on the moral and spiritual dubiousness of any excessive love of the finite and transient, especially if the object of one's love cannot reciprocate it except in a highly attenuated and analogous manner.

Related to the idolatry question is the question of attachment. Attachment breeds suffering.  This is not an argument against any and all attachment, but it is an argument against excessive attachment.  One must keep within bounds  one's attachment to what must perish.  A whole-hearted love of what barely exists is surely a mistake.  There is such a thing as inordinate attachment.  Compare Simone Weil: "The objects of our love barely exist."  She's a Platonist, of course, and so if you do not share the Platonic sense of the relative unreality of the transient you are not likely to accept her or my line  of thought. 

How can attachment to something be inordinate?  It is in ordinate when it is out of proportion to the reality/value of the object of attachment. My cat, for example.  I would not be grieving now if I were not attached to my cat, and the question arises whether my attachment is within proper bounds.  If the attachment is within proper bounds, then the grief will be as well.

To hazard a definition of grief:  Grief is a mental state of intense sadness brought about by the death or absence of something, typically animate, to which one has become strongly attached.  In typical cases, grief arises from a physical separation, often abrupt, from an object to which one is mentally attached.  But if the beloved withdraws her love, while remaining physically near, can the lover be said to experience grief?  Or is it a necessary condition of grief that the beloved dies?  Can one experience grief at a state of affairs that does not involve the death or destruction of a particular sentient being such as a pet or a child or a spouse?  "I am grieved at the transitoriness of things," Nietzsche complained in a letter to Franz Overbeck.  Can a fundamental metaphysical structure of the phenomenal world be an object of grief?  Yes, insofar as the transitoriness of things entails the death of sentient beings including those sentient beings to which one becomes attached.  But something less grand than a fundamental  metaphysical structure of the phenomenal world could be the object of grief, e.g., a state of war at a given time and place. So perhaps we should say this:

Grief is a mental state of intense sadness brought about by (i) the death or absence of some particular thing, typically animate, to which one has become strongly attached; or (ii) the unrequiting or withdrawal of the love of the beloved; or (iii) some general circumstance that entails the death or destruction or emotional withdrawal of beings, typically sentient, to which one has become strongly attached. 

I began by speaking of attachment to pets and how it ought to be kept within bounds.  But attachment to persons must also be kept within bounds.  There is an old song by the 'British invasion' artist, Cilla Black, You're My World.  "You're my world, you're every move I make; you're my world, you're every breath I take."  This is romantic nonsense whether or not God exists. The nonexistence of an infinite good could not possibly justify loving a finite good infinitely.  If another human being is your very world, then I say you are succumbing to idolatry even if there is nothing genuinely worthy of worship. 

For characterizations of idolatry, see the Idolatry category.

It is true that that to live is is to be attached: there is no (normatively) human life without attachment.  There are forms of asceticism which seek to sever the root of all attachment, but such a radical withdrawal from life amounts to a refusal to learn its lessons, lessons it can teach only to those who participate in it.  So just as there can be inordinate attachment, there can be inordinate nonattachment.  Nevertheless, no one can live wisely who gives free rein to his attachment, investing the loved object  with properties it cannot possess.

We try to be satisfied with finite objects, but we cannot be, at least not completely or in the long run.  (I should argue that we could not  be satisfied even by an unending series of finite goods.)  Can we adjust our desire so that it will be satisfied by the finite?  Can we learn to accept the finite and not hanker after something more?  Can we scale back or moderate desire?  Not if it is the nature of desire to desire the infinite.  If this is the nature of desire, then it must always and everywhere fall into idolatry in the absence of an infinite object.  The only complete solution to the problem of the insatiability of desire by the finite, given the nonexistence or inaccessibility of an infinite object,  would then be the extinction of desire.  See Buddhism category.

But one could also take the insatiability of desire by the finite as a premise in an Argument from Desire for the existence of God or the Absolute Good.  Schematically: (i) The nature of desire as we humans experience it in ourselves is such that, ultimately, nothing finite can satisfy it completely; (ii) even though the fact of a particular desire by X for Y is no guarantee of the availability of Y to X (Stranded Sam's need/desire for water is no guarantee that he will receive the water he needs/desires), the general fact that there are desires of a specified sort is good evidence of the existence and availability of objects what will satisfy the desires. Therefore, (iii) there exists and is available an Object that will satisfy the desire that is insatiable by any finite object.

That desire is ultimately desire for something beyond the finite is indicated by the fact that when a beloved animal or person dies, the void one experiences seems infinite or indefinite: it is not the mere absence of that particular animal or person.  It is more than a specific absence one experiences in grief, but an absence that is 'wider' than the absence of a particular cat or woman, a sort of general emptiness.  It is the nullity of all things that one experiences in intense grief over the absence of one particular thing.  When a parent loses a child, it is not merely the son or daughter that he loses, but the significance and value of everything. 

This suggests that love of a finite object is at bottom love a of an Infinite Good, but a love that is not aware of itself as a love of such a good, but misconstrues itself as a love wholly directed to a finite object and satisfiable by such an object.  Otherwise, why would the void that is experienced when a finite object is taken away be experienced as a general void as opposed to the specific absence of a particular person, say?  One invests a finite object with more reality and importance than it can carry, which fact is made evident when the object is removed: the 'hole in one's soul' that it leaves is much bigger than it.

These ruminations are of course Augustinian in tenor.  See his Confessions, Book IV:  "For whence had that former grief [the one concerning his friend who had died] so easily reached my inmost soul, but that I had poured out my soul upon the dust, in loving one who must die, as if he would never die?"

The inordinate love of the finite leads to inordinate attachment which then issues in inordinate grief when the object of attachment is removed, as every finite object (including one's own body) must eventually be removed.  We fill our inner emptiness by becoming inordinately attached to objects that must pass away.  When such an objectof inordinate love is taken away, our inner emptiness is brought out of its concealment.  Augustine again: ". . . unjustly is anything loved which is from Him, if He be forsaken for it." (Pusey tr. 57-58)

We ought to love the finite as finite, without investing it with more reality and importance than it can bear.  We ought to love the finite in God, but not as God.   Trouble is, the the finite is all too available for our love and soon elicits an illicit and inordinate love, whereas God or the Good is largely absent and all too easy to doubt or deny.

That's our predicament.

 

The Pointlessness of Worry

The dreaded event will either occur or it will not. If it occurs, then the worrier suffers twice, once from the event, and once from the worry. If it does not occur, then the person suffers from neither.    Therefore, worry is irrational.  Make provision for the future, be aware of the possibilities of mishap, take reasonable precautions -- but don't worry.

God, Gratitude, and Gladness

Jim Ryan of Philosoblog posts infrequently, but always interestingly. Ryan is both a conservative and an atheist. Being a  conservative, he appreciates the importance of gratitude. Being an atheist, he sees no reason to take gratitude and its importance as  supportive of theistic belief. Herewith, some commentary on his post A New Error Theory for Theism.

1. Gratitude and human flourishing. Ryan rightly suspects a connection between gratitude and human flourishing: "The ordering of attitudes and dispositions in the soul is dysfunctional if at or near the center of these there is no deep gratitude, by which I mean gratitude that this world exists and that one lives in it." I believe this is a genuine insight.

2. The nature of gratitude. Let us first note that gratitude exhibits a triadic structure. To feel grateful is for someone X to feel grateful to someone Y for something or someone Z. If I receive a gift, I am grateful to the donor for the  gift. 'To whom?' and 'For what?' are both questions it is appropriate  to ask in ordinary cases of gratitude. And as the grammar of 'To  whom?' suggests, the donor must be a person. I cannot be grateful to a  vending machine for disgorging a can of Pepsi upon the insertion of a few coins. Here too we have a triadic relation: the machine gave me a can of soda. But I cannot be grateful to a machine, though I could perhaps be grateful to its installer or manufacturer or inventor. It would be a case of incorrect or inappropriate emotion were one to feel grateful to a vending machine. I hold, with Brentano, that one can distinguish between correct and incorrect emotion.

Note also that what one is grateful for, the gift, must be  gratuitously given. I can be appropriately grateful only for that  which is freely given, which implies that the donor is both a free  agent and an uncoerced free agent. If Robin Hood forces you to give me your money, I cannot be appropriately grateful to you, though I may be to Robin Hood. For there to be gratitude, there must be a donor, and it is necessary that the donor be a person; but it is not sufficient  that the donor be a person: the donor's donation must be a free act.

3. Can one be grateful to a not presently existing donor?   If I am grateful to a person P at time t does it follow that P exists  at t?  Or can one appropriately feel gratitude only to persons who presently exist?  Suppose someone likes what I write and mails me a check as a  gift for my blogging endeavours. Unbeknownst to me, the donor dies  before I receive the check. I am grateful to him for the check even though at the time of receiving the check and feeling the gratitude he  no longer exists. This suggests that gratitude to a person P does not  entail the present existence of P. And certainly it does seem that gratitude to past persons is appropriately felt. A child, student,  philosopher might appropriately feel gratitude in respect of his  deceased parents, teachers, predecessors.  If one feels grateful to a person surely the gratitude does not end when the person does.  My gratitude to you can survive your death though it cannot survive mine.  (I am assuming for the moment that we are not immortal souls.)

4. Gratitude to a never existing donor?  Can one appropriately feel grateful to a nonexistent person? A child, for example, feels grateful to Santa Claus for her Christmas presents.   This looks to be a genuine case of gratitude despite the nonexistence  of the person to whom the child feels grateful. But note that for the child the existence of Santa Claus is an epistemic possibility. If the child were convinced of the nonexistence of the fat guy, then she couldn't feel grateful to him.  Note also that the triadic structure is preserved.  The girl is grateful to Santa Claus for her presents despite his nonexistence.  If a theist is grateful to God for his existence, his gratitude is what it is whether or not God exists.  But a person who disbelieves in God cannot be grateful to God.

5.  Must the relata of a relation all of them exist?  #4 points up a fiendishly difficult philosophical question that turns up in many different contexts:  Can a relation obtain if one or more of its relata do not exist?  #3 points up the same problem on the assumption of presentism, the doctrine that (the contents of) the present alone exist, that past and furture items to do not exist.

6. Metaphysical gratitude. What Jim Ryan is talking about, however, is not ordinary gratitude -- gratitude to some intramundane person for some intramundane object -- but what we might call metaphysical gratitude or what he calls "deep gratitude": gratitude for the existence of the world and our lives within it. Now if this is a genuine case of gratitude, it seems appropriate to ask to whom we feel grateful. This person can only be God, as Ryan realizes, since only God could bestow the gift of the world's existence. So it would seem that a metaphysically grateful person is grateful to God. A theist might try to argue from gratitude to God as follows:

a. We are appropriately grateful for the existence of the world
b. To be grateful is to be grateful to someone
c. The only person to whom one can be appropriately grateful for the
    existence of the world is God
-----
d. God exists.

7. Ryan's rejection of this argument. Ryan will of course reject this argument by rejecting premise (b). He maintains:

P: There is no entailment from the proposition that one feels gratitude to the proposition that there is someone to whom one feels gratitude.

That could be read, not as a denial of the triadic structure of gratitude, but as saying that, from the mere fact that one feels grateful, it does not follow that the person to whom one feels grateful exists. (Compare the Santa Claus example above. The child is grateful to someone, namely, Santa Claus; but it does not follow that Santa Claus exists.  Or consider the situation in which presentism is true and one is grateful to a dead parent.  One would then be grateful to a nonexistent donor.)  So from the mere fact that one feels grateful for the existence of the world, it does not follow that God exists, even in the presence of the auxiliary premises that gratitude is by its very nature gratitude to a person, and the only possible donor of the world is God.

This seems right and refutes the (a)-(d) argument. But it raises an interesting question. Suppose the following: subject S is grateful for some object O; O can only be the gift of some person P and S knows
this to be the case; S either knows or else is subjectively certain that P does not exist. Are these suppositions consistent? Can I be grateful to a person I am subjectively certain does not exist? Ryan is subjectively certain that God does not exist. How then can he feel grateful for the existence of the world given that he knows that gratitude is by its very nature gratitude to a person and that in the
present case the person can only be God?

8. Gratitude and Gladness. I say that Ryan cannot be grateful that the world exists given his atheism.  For if he is grateful, he is grateful to someone, and this someone can only be God given that the object of the gratitude is the existence of the world. I grant that gratitude for the existence of the world does not prove the existence of God. But the gratitude to be gratitude must allow the existence of God: the existence of God must be epistemically possible for the subject of gratitude. But Ryan's 'gratitude' is blended with subjective certainty of God's nonexistence: the existence of God is not an epistemic possibility for Ryan. So I say that what Ryan feels is not gratitude. Ryan concludes,

Atheists can feel deep gratitude, as well, however. When we construe the emotion as deep gladness and modesty, the personal object (God) drops out. One is simply glad that this universe exists and that one lives in it. There need be no one to whom one is grateful. So, the error theory doesn't cast any aspersions on deep gratitude. It is perfectly consistent with holding, as I do, that deep gratitude is indeed part of proper functioning for human beings.

I deny that atheists can feel deep (metaphysical) gratitude, gratitude for the very existence of the world and our lives in it. An atheist is one who explicitly denies the existence of God. For such a person it is not epistemically possible that there be a person to whom to be grateful for the existence of the world. Since the existence of God is a priori ruled out, what the atheist feels cannot be gratitude. Gratitude by its very nature is gratitude to a person. Granted, the existence of the person is not guaranteed by the presence of the emotion; but it can't be excluded by it either. It is incoherent to feel gratitude to a person one believes did not ever exist. Ryan can no more feel gratitude for the existence of the world than I can feel gratitude for Christmas presents whose existence could only be explained by Santa's having dropped them down my chimney.

An atheist can be glad that the world exists, but gladness is not gratitude.

The Color of Envy

There was a time when I thought that the expression, 'He/She turned green with envy,' was just an expression with no fundamentum in re. But one day in graduate school, at a dissertation defense, I observed a particularly vain professor's face acquire a decidedly greenish tinge as he watched a somewhat pompous but very bright doctoral candidate hold forth in defense of his thesis. The vain professor literally became green with envy as his vanity was outshone by the student's brilliance.

I then knew that the expression had a basis in reality. But I have never seen the phenomenon since.  The facial color change, that is.  If only the emotion were as rare.

Envy, Jealousy, Schadenfreude

The older I get, the more two things impress me. One is the suggestibility of human beings, their tendency to imbibe and repeat ideas and attitudes from their social environment with nary an attempt at critical examination. The other is the major role envy plays in human affairs. Suggestibility is best left for another occasion as part of an analysis of political correctness.

Schadenfreude with a Twist

To feel envy is to feel diminished by another's success or well-being. Schadenfreude is in a certain sense the opposite: it is to take pleasure or satisfaction in another's misfortune. An interesting case of Schadenfreude is pleasure in having incited envy in another.

Envy is a vice of propinquity. Envy erupts only among people who compare themselves with one another, and for comparison there must be propinquity or social proximity whether it be that of friends, relatives, neighbors, co-workers. Suppose A and B work in the same office, and A gets a promotion. That is a situation in which envy may arise. Suppose it does: B comes to feel diminished by A's success. Even though the change in B is 'merely Cambridge,' as the philosophers say, merely relational, and thus no real change at all, the real change occurring in A, B nonetheless and quite perversely feels bad that A has done well even though B's feeling bad does nothing to improve his lot, and indeed harms him by befouling his mind and predisposing him to acts worse than envy.

A, noting B's envy, takes umbrage at being the object of B's hateful attitude. Realizing that B has befouled himself -- has shat his own mental pants as it were -- A takes pleasure in this fact. A's pleasure, I want to say, is schadenfreudlich. A takes satisfaction in the harm B has inflicted upon himself by succumbing to envy.

If A were a better man he would feel pity for B's self-harm. If he were better still, he would not even feel pity. See Spinoza on Commiseratio.

Spinoza on Commiseratio. Pity as a Wastebasket Emotion

To commiserate, to feel compassion, to pity — these come to the same. Might compassion  be a mistake? Suppose an evil befalls you. If I am in a position to help, then perhaps I ought to. But it is unnecessary that I 'feel your pain' to use a Clintonian expression. Indeed, my allowing myself to be affected might interfere with my rendering of aid. And even if it doesn't, the affect of pity is bad in itself. Why should I feel bad that you feel bad? Of course, I should not feel good that you feel bad; that would be the diabolical emotion of Schadenfreude.  The point is that I should not feel bad that you feel bad.  For it is better if only one of us suffer. Better that I should remain unaffected and unperturbed. That way, at least one of us displays ataraxia.

Admiration and Contempt

Often it is like this. He is not admirable; it is your unadmirable propensity to admire that confers upon him a quality he does not possess. She is not contemptible; it is your contemptible tendency to contemn that makes of her what she is not.

One ideal is to so apportion admiration and contempt that it is only the intrinsically admirable and contemptible that become the objects of these attitudes. An ideal Stoic and stricter is to regard nothing as admirable or the opposite, not even the propensities to admire and contemn. Is this what Horace meant by nil admirari?

How far should we take the mortification of desire and aversion? You could take it all the way into a world-denying asceticism. But I suspect the Sage is a man of balance. Able to control desire and aversion, he has no need to extirpate them. Why uproot a tree that you can trim and manage? You say it is messy when its blossoms fall. But before they fell were they not beautiful and fragrant? The leaves are a bother to rake, but is not the shade they afford agreeable?

The Sage can enjoy the transient in its transiency without clinging and without hankering after the absent transient. He can oppose the bad and the disagreeable without losing his equanimity or exaggerating their negativity. He neither idolizes nor demonizes.