During almost any solitary hike through the wild there comes a moment of enchantment when the beauty of nature stands forth as if enframed. But the qualifier ‘solitary’ is necessary. Bring along a companion and you bring along society – and drive away nature. She is both jealous and modest: she doesn’t like to share her charms, and she won’t expose them to the merely social animal with his endless yap, yap, yapping about noth, noth, nothing.
Month: November 2008
The Perversity of the Philosophy Professors
The philosophy professors treat philosophy as a means to an end when it is an end in itself. And they treat it as a means to something, whether money, social status, or whatever, which cannot be an end in itself but only a means to an end. They pursue philosophy for the sake of money when they ought to pursue money for the sake of philosophy. Doubly perverse, they turn an end into a means, and a means into an end. I like the Turkish word for human being, Insan, because it reminds me of ‘insane.’
You will tell me that there are exceptions. No doubt. But they prove the rule.
What It Takes to Appreciate Nature
Those who must wrest a living from nature by hard toil are not likely to see her beauty, let alone appreciate it. But her charms are also lost on the sedentary city-dwellers for whom nature is little more than backdrop and stage-setting for what they take to be the really real, the social tragi-comedy. The same goes for the windshield tourists who, seated in air-conditioned comfort, merely look upon nature as upon a pretty picture. The true acolyte of nature must combine in one person a robust and energetic physique, a contemplative mind, and a healthy measure of contempt for the world of the human-all-too-human. One thinks of Henry David Thoreau. Of the same type, but not on the same lofty plane: Edward Abbey.
Francesco Orilia on Facts and Bradley’s Regress Part I
I was invited to attend a workshop on Bradley’s Regress at the University of Geneva this December. Francesco Orilia will also be in attendance. He and I corresponded about Bradley and facts four or so years ago. He has read some of my work and I have read some of his. This series of posts is a new attempt at understanding his position and differentiating it from mine. It is based on his “States of Affairs: Bradley vs. Meinong” in Venanzio Raspa, ed., Meinongian Issues in Contemporary Italian Philosophy, Ontos Verlag, 2006, pp. 213-238.
1. The Problem in a First Rough Formulation
A fact or state of affairs (STOA) is a contingent unity of certain ontological constituents, for example, a (thin) particular and a universal. It is this unity that is responsible for a fact’s being a truth-maker, as opposed to a mere collection of entities. Obviously, it is Al’s being fat, rather than the mere collection of Al and fatness, that makes true the proposition that Al is fat. We take as given the difference between a fact and its constituents, between a’s being F, on the one hand, and the set or sum consisting of a and F-ness, on the other. The difference is clear if one notes that, for example, Al and fatness can exist without it being the case that Al is fat. (The converse of course does not hold.) There is more to Al’s being fat than Al and fatness. The problem is to give an account of this ‘more.’ What is it that makes a fact more than its constituents?
Continue reading “Francesco Orilia on Facts and Bradley’s Regress Part I”
Louis Lavelle on the Stoic Wisdom
I am a lover of the Stoics. Why waste time on New Age hucksters when one can read Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius? But while the Stoics can take us a good stretch down the road to wisdom, they cannot bring us to the end — a fact long appreciated by first-rate minds. In late antiquity, Aurelius Augustinus offered a critique of the Stoics in Book XIX, Chapter 4 of The City of God, a critique worthy of being called classical. We will have to examine that critique one of these days. But today I want to draw your attention to some passages from Chapter 10, Section 4 of Louis Lavelle’s The Dilemma of Narcissus (Allen & Unwin, 1973, tr. Gairdner):
The Infirmity of Reason
It may not be possible for me to force you rationally to accept my view, but it may be possible to force you rationally to accept the proposition that our views are rationally unenforceable on each other. But even that is not clear.
Lust
Lust is both evil and paltry. The lecher makes himself contemptible in the manner of the glutton and the drunkard. The paltriness of lust may support the illusion that it does not matter if one falls into it. Thus the paltriness hides the evil. This makes it even more insidious.
Dust in the Wind
We are little more than organized dust in the wind. And yet we feel ourselves superior to the universe! In a sense, we are right: we know the universe; it is our object. We know it, but it doesn’t know us. It can crush us, but it cannot know us.
On Socializing
To socialize, one must accommodate oneself to the mentality of the group. One must conform, fit in, be a ‘regular guy,’ and above all avoid serious conversation! But no independent spirit, no true individual, can tolerate this sort of self-denial unless it is absolutely forced on him. Ganz man selbst sein, kann man nur wenn man allein ist! (Schopenhauer) “You can only be entirely yourself when you are alone.” “Whosoever would be a man must be a nonconformist.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson) In another place, Emerson tells that he does not visit the homes of his relatives because he does not like to be alone. I salute you, Waldo!
Ludwig the Plumber
The philosophy of the later Wittgenstein: A philosophical justification for being unphilosophical.
Perils of Praise
We do not like to be praised if: the praiser is beneath us; what is praised in us is something insignificant or common; the praise is felt to be insincere, perhaps by having an ulterior motive; the praise is mistaken in that we lack the excellence attributed to us. Particularly galling is to be praised for something insignificant while one’s actual virtues go unappreciated. So be careful in your bestowal of praise: take care that you do not offend the one you hope to flatter.
Contemptus Mundi
Wanting to be praised for one’s contempt of the world shows a lack of it.
The Parable of the Tree and the House
A man planted a tree to shade his house from the desert sun. The tree, a palo verde, grew like a weed and was soon taller than the house. The house became envious, feeling diminished by the tree’s stature. The house said to the tree: “How dare you outstrip me, you who were once so puny! I towered above you, but you have made me small.”
The tree replied to the house: “Why, Mr. House, do you begrudge me the natural unfolding of my potentiality, especially when I provide you with cooling shade? I have not made you small. It is not in my power to add or subtract one cubit from your stature. The change you have ‘undergone’ is a mere Cambridge change. You have gone from being taller than me to being shorter; but this implies no real change in you: all the real change is in me. What’s more, the real change in me accrues to your benefit. As I rise and spread my branches, you are sheltered and cooled. The real change in me causes a real change in you in respect of temperature.”
Heed well this parable, my brothers and sisters. When your neighbor outstrips you in health and wealth, in virtue and vigor, in blog posts or the length of his curriculum vitae – hate him not. For his successes, which are real changes in him, need induce no real changes in you. His advance diminishes you not one iota. Indeed, his real changes work to your benefit. You will not have to tend him in sickness, nor loan him money; your tax dollars will not be used to subsidize his dissoluteness; the more hits his weblog receives, the more yours will receive; and the longer his CV the better and more helpful a colleague he is likely to be.
Thus spoke the Sage of the Superstitions.
The Potentiality Principle Again
Here once again is the Potentiality Principle:
PP: All potential descriptive persons have a right to life.
From this principle one can easily mount a powerful argument against the moral acceptability of abortion. I endorse both the principle and the ensuing Potentiality Argument. Peter Lupu rejects both the principle and the argument. Now it seems to me that there are exactly three possible outcomes of our discussion. Either I convince Peter, or he convinces me, or we both come to agree that the question is rationally undecidable. I find this discussion intriguing, not merely because of the immediate subject matter, namely, abortion and the underlying metaphysics of potency and act, but also metaphilosophically: Is it possible to resolve even one well-defined question?
In this post I will try to explain why I do not accept Peter’s argument against PP.
His argument begins with the uncontroversial point that potentiality excludes actuality. Thus, if x is a potential F at time t, then x is not an actual F at t. This is a conceptual truth that merely unpacks what we mean by ‘potentiality’ and ‘actuality.’ For this reason, it is immune to counterexamples. One who seeks a counterexample to it is in in a position similar to one who seeks a counterexample to ‘All bachelors are male.’