This strange Peggy Lee number is a candidate for the office of philosophically deepest popular song. If memory serves, it made the charts Stateside in the late 1960's. But it is the sort of song one would have expected to hear in a cabaret in Berlin in the decadent 1920's. 'Ockham' tells me that it is a Leiber and Stoller composition, and indeed it is. Surprising, given the other songs they wrote. It smacks of Weill-Brecht more than of Leiber-Stoller.
Nihilism was never so pleasantly packaged.
Here is a remarkable passage from Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, expanded 2nd ed., p. 41:
Ostensive definitions are usually regarded as applicable only to conceptualized sensations. But they are applicable to axioms as well. Since axiomatic concepts are identifications of irreducible primaries, the only way to define one is by means of an ostensive definition — e.g., to define 'existence,' one would have to sweep one's arm around and say: 'I mean this.'
Now that's an interesting suggestion! Let's put it to the test.
A good aphorism is the tip of an iceberg of thought. One gets the point but is spared the proof.
While in many religions the aim is to save one's soul, in Buddhism the aim is to disembarrass oneself of the conceit that one has one.
Look at them as if for the first time — and the last.
One cannot have a profitable discussion with someone who does not care about the truth, nor with someone who believes himself to be in such secure possession of it as to render further investigation unnecessary .
Paul Brunton, Notebooks II, 154, #56:
I am not enamoured overmuch of this modern habit, which forms a society at faint provocation. A man's own problem stares him alone in the face, and it is not to be solved by any association of men. Every new society we join is a fresh temptation to waste time.
Well said. Would Thoreau have joined the Thoreau Society? Merton the Merton Society? Would Groucho Marx have joined a club that would have him as a member, let alone make him the cynosure of its interest?
Seriously, there is something dubious about societies. Were I to read a paper the least bit critical of Thomas Merton at the Merton Society, I would receive a hostile response no matter how good the paper was. I would be taken as attacking their man, someone with whom they identify. In a one-on-one exchange, it is not uncommon for an interlocutor to 'get his back up' if one criticizes, however judiciously, something or someone in whom the interlocutor has invested time and energy. But when there is a bunch of these people reinforcing each other, look out! They close ranks and their critical acumen goes to zero.
Merton, Heidegger, Ayn Rand, and so many others who inspire a following need to have their works discussed critically, and that means: not by followers and not by dismissers, but by the independent. But what happens for the most part is that their works get chewed over lovingly in uncritical enclaves while being ignored or dismissed by those outside the charmed circles. Case in point: the Rand cult.
The thesis of intentionality can be stated roughly as follows: Every consciousness is a consciousness of something. I claim that this Brentano thesis is false because of the existence of non-intentional states of consciousness. Peter Lupu understands and agrees but no one else hereabouts does. So I need to take a few steps back and issue some clarifications. I begin by distinguishing among four uses of 'of.' I'll call them the subjective, the objective, the dual, and the appositive. Once these are on the table one or two impediments to the understanding of my point — which of course is not original with me — will have been removed.
Continue reading “Four Uses of ‘Of’ and Non-Intentional Conscious States”
Suppose A launches a vicious verbal attack on B. B will be tempted to respond in kind, but ought to give some thought to the point of so doing. For even if B does not escalate the attack, but merely throws back what was thrown at him, the attacker may well feel justified in having made his initial assault. He will be tempted to rationalize his behavior as follows:
You see what a worthless fellow B is? How dare he call me names! I'm glad I attacked him; he deserved it. In fact, I attacked him just to expose him, just to show what nastiness he is capable of.
Given the likelihood of such perverse self-justification on A's part, B is wise not to respond at all, but to view matters with Olympian detachment. If B cannot be harmed materially by A's attacks, then he wastes time, energy, and peace of mind by responding to them. What others think of us is of no consequence except insofar as it translates or is likely to translate into actions physically harmful to us. For those who have imbibed and implemented the Stoic wisdom, it is surely true that
Sticks and stones can break my bones
But words can never hurt me.
A prime exception, however, is the politician. Someone whose livelihood and efficacy depend on being favorably perceived must counter assaults and slanders. If he does not, they may stick to him. The politician is a slave to public opinion. Therein lies one of the reasons for the inferiority of the political to the philosophical life, a reason appreciated early on in our tradition by Aristotle and recorded in the Nicomachean Ethics.
In logic, a fallacy is not a false belief but a pattern of reasoning that is both typical and in some way specious. Specious reasoning, by the very etymology of the term, appears correct but is not. Thus a fallacy is not just any old mistake in reasoning, but a recurrent mistake that is seductive. A taxonomy of fallacies is useful insofar as it helps prevent one from seducing oneself and being seduced by others.
Continue reading “The No True Scotsman or No True Atheist Fallacy”
That religious instruction constitutes child abuse is another theme of contemporary militant atheists such as Richard Dawkins and A. C. Grayling. Consider the competing 'truths' taught by different faith-based schools, e.g. that Jesus is the Son of God, that he is not, etc. Grayling complains that
. . . in schools all over the country these antipathetic 'truths' are being force-fed to different groups of pupils, none of whom is in a position to assess their credibility or worth. This is a serious form of child abuse. It sows the seeds of apartheids capable of resulting, in their logical conclusion, in murder and war, as history sickeningly and ceaselessly proves. There is no greater social evil than religion. It is the cancer in the body of humanity. Human credulity and superstition, and the need for comforting fables, will never be extirpated, so religion will always exist, at least among the uneducated. The only way to manage the dangers it presents is to confine it entirely to the private sphere, and for the public domain to be blind to it in all but one respect: that by law no one's private beliefs should be allowed to cause a nuisance or any injury to anyone else. For whenever and wherever religion manifests itself in the public arena as an organised phenomenon, it is the most Satanic of all things. (A. C. Grayling, Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God, Oxford 2003, 34-35, emphasis added.)
Continue reading “Is Religious Instruction Child Abuse? Is Religion the Greatest Social Evil?”
Since A. C. Grayling has surfaced in the ComBox here, it it will be useful for people to see just what sort of fellow he is. So over the next few days I will reproduce three or four of my Grayling posts from the old site.
Militant atheist philosopher A. C. Grayling writes,
Religious belief of all kinds shares the same intellectual respectability, evidential base, and rationality as belief in the existence of fairies.
This remark outrages the sensibilities of those who have deep religious convictions and attachments, and they regard it as insulting. But the truth is that everyone takes this attitude about all but one (or a very few) of the gods that have ever been claimed to exist.
No reasonably orthodox Christian believes in Aphrodite or the rest of the Olympian deities, or in Ganesh the Elephant God or the rest of the Hindu pantheon, or in the Japanese emperor, and so endlessly on – and officially (as a matter of Christian orthodoxy) he or she must say that anyone who sincerely believes in such deities is deluded and blasphemously in pursuit of "false gods".
The atheist adds just one more deity to the list of those not believed in; namely, the one remaining on the Christian's or Jew's or Muslim's list.
Continue reading “A. C. Grayling and a Stock Move of Militant Atheists”
It seems to me that there is a sort of 'disconnect' in theist-atheist debates. It is as if the parties to the dispute are not talking about the same thing. Jim Ryan writes,
The reason I'm an atheist is straightforward. The proposition that there is a god is as unlikely as ghosts, Martians amongst us, and reincarnation. There isn't the slightest evidence for these hypotheses which fly in the face of so much else that we know to be true. So I believe all of them to be false.
This is a fairly standard atheist response. Since I picked up the use of 'boilerplate' in philosophical contexts from Jim, I hope he won't be offended if I refer to the quoted passage as atheist boilerplate. It puts me in mind of Russell's Teapot part of the drift of which is that there is no more reason to believe in God than there is to believe that "between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit . . . ."
Continue reading “Does the Atheist Deny What the Theist Affirms?”
This just over the transom (interspersed comments in blue by BV):
I regularly follow your blog, and have for a couple of years now. I have considerable respect for you as both a philosopher and a communicator in general – you seem to get curt or impatient at times, but you still manage to be civil even then, and your treatment of arguments in your posts always comes across as fair and in the spirit of trying to best represent the views of those you are discussing.
I mention all this because my question is this. What do you make of exchanges along the lines of what was recently recounted on Prosblogion, between Dennett and Plantinga? I'm not talking about the content in this case, but the tone. Is it really the case that arguments in favor of God/theism in general, and Christianity in particular, are treated with open mockery and derision even in what is supposed to be a professional exchange by a respected philosopher? Is Dennett representative of how naturalists treat theists/Christians in discussion, or is he exceptional?
Fat Tuesday, coming as it does the day before Ash Wednesday, derives its very meaning from the beginning of Lent. The idea is to get some serious partying under one's belt just before the forty-day ascetic run-up to Easter. So one might think the ACLU would wish to lodge a protest against a celebration so religious in inspiration. Good (contemptible?) lefties that they are, they are ever crusading against religion. Perhaps 'crusade' (L. crux, crucis) is not the right word suggestive as it is of the cross and Christianity; perhaps 'jihad' would be better especially since many loons of the Left are curiously and conveniently ignorant of the threat of militant Islam and much prefer going after truly dangerous outfits like the Boy Scouts.
