Month: February 2009

Modalities of Sin

Horace Jeffery Hodges asked me to comment on his post Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom.  Inasmuch as such commentary would require exegetical skills I do not possess, not to mention time I do not have — I am under the gun to finish an article for The Monist — I shall have to beg off.  Perhaps others can join in the discussion at Jeff's place.  But given my longstanding interest in matters modal, I was intrigued by the following quotation from Thomas Boston, courtesy of David C. Innes:

State of Innocence – posse peccare (able to sin)
State of Sin – non posse non peccare (not able not to sin)
State of Grace – posse non peccare (able not to sin)
State of Glory – non posse peccare (not able to sin)

Imaginable, Conceivable, Possible: How Justify Modal Beliefs?

Crumb_selfportrait As I use them, 'imaginable' and 'conceivable'  mean the following. Bear in mind that there is an element of stipulation and regimentation in what I am about to say.  Bear in mind also that the following thoughts are tentative and exploratory, not to mention fragmentary.  The topics are difficult and in any case this is only a weblog, a sort of online notebook.

To imagine X is to form a mental image of X.   To imagine a two-headed cat is to form a mental image of (more cautiously: as of) a two-headed cat.  To say that X is imaginable is to say that someone has the ability to imagine it. To envisage is to visually imagine. Not all imagining is visual.

Continue reading “Imaginable, Conceivable, Possible: How Justify Modal Beliefs?”

Till Eulenspiegel and Heraclitus

What do Till Eulenspiegel and Heraclitus have in common? I thought about them near the end of a recent hike. I am an uphill specialist. I love the upgrade, the pull, gravity's testing of legs and lungs, the depth of breath, the honest sweat. The downclimb is less to my liking. Fearing a fall, I am too cautious to go with the flow.

So my mind turned to Till Eulenspiegel, described by Theodor Reik as follows:

German folklore tells many tales of the peculiar behavior of the foolish yet clever lad Till Eulenspiegel. This rogue used to feel dejected on his wanderings whenever he walked downhill striding easily, but he seemed very cheerful when he had to climb uphill laboriously. His explanation of his behavior was that in going downhill he could not help thinking of the effort and toil involved in climbing the next hill. While engaged in the toil of climbing he anticipated and enjoyed in his imagination the approach of his downhill stroll.

The "foolish yet clever lad" put me in mind of Heraclitus the Obscure of Ephesus. Philosophically considered, it matters not at all whether one is climbing or descending. "The way up and the way down are the same." (Fragment 60) The interdependence of opposites is a rich and fascinating topic.  We shall have more to say about it later.

Feser on Vallicella on Rand

I just discovered this post at Edward Feser's weblog.  Excerpt:

Bill also evaluates Rand’s argument to the effect that “to grasp the axiom that existence exists, means to grasp the fact that nature, i.e., the universe as a whole, cannot be created or annihilated, that it cannot come into or go out of existence.” He sees in this an inadvertent echo of modal Spinozism, and not implausibly. But to me it is even more reminiscent of the even more extreme metaphysics of Parmenides . . . .

The  Parmenides connection is very interesting.  When I asked Harry Binswanger why he thinks that the existence of nature is logically necessary, he replied,

Well, the first part is axiomatic: "existence exists." What makes that logically necessary? The fact that "existence doesn't exist" is a contradiction. "What is, is; what is not, is not" Parmenides wisely said.

Ernst Haeckel said that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, that the development of the individual recapitulates the development of the species.  Whether or not this is true in biology, it is often true  with amateur philosophers: these members of the Philo-phylum have a tendency to 'reinvent the wheel' while at the same time failing to appreciate the defects of their primitive reinvented 'wheel.'

Now you might want to dismiss what I just wrote as a cheapshot, but you will see that it is not if you study what I say here and here and here.  There is no 'Rand-bashing' here, contra what some opine; there is the careful and critical examination of ideas.  That is part of what philosophy is.

Back to Parmenides: Binswanger’s Defense of Rand’s Block Universe

In response to Harry Binswanger, I wrote:

My diagnosis of our disagreement is as follows. You think that what is causally necessitated (e.g. the lunar craters) is broadly-logically necessary (BL-necessary) whereas I think that what is causally necessitated is broadly-logically contingent. Because you think that what is causally necessitated is BL-necessary, you naturally think that my having my hat on is not causally necessitated. If I've understood you correctly, you do not deny that there are BL-contingent events, an example being my freely choosing to put on my hat. What you deny is that there are any BL-contingent events in nature (the realm of the non-man-made).

Your scheme makes sense if (i) time is [metrically] infinite in the past direction; (ii) nature always existed; (iii) nature exists of BL-necessity (also known in the trade as metaphysical necessity) and nothing about nature is BL-contingent. On these assumptions, every event is BL-necessary. Add to that the assumption that every event in nature is causally determined, and we get the extensional equivalence of the causally necessitated and the BL-necessary. Man-made facts, which you grant are BL-contingent, are not causally necessitated because, for you, X is causally necessitated if and only if X is BL-necessary.

If the foregoing expresses your view, then I think I have isolated the source of our disagreement: we disagree over (iii). I see no reason to accept it. Do you have an argument?

Binswanger responded:

Your "diagnosis" is correct in spirit. I have quarrels over formulation, but there's no need to discuss them here. So we disagree about (iii): the existence of nature is logically necessary and nothing about nature is logically contingent.

You ask for an argument for that. Well, the first part is axiomatic: "existence exists." What makes that logically necessary? The fact that "existence doesn't exist" is a contradiction. "What is, is; what is not, is not" Parmenides wisely said.

The second part is non-axiomatic, and derives from causality. Objectivism holds that causality is the application of the law of identity to action. Things do what they do because they are what they are. For the fragile to act as non-fragile would be the same kind of contradiction as for glass to be not glass. This view of causality rejects the Humean event-to-event idea of causation (which actually originated with Telesio, I believe). We go back to the pre-Renaissance (broadly Greek) view of causation as a relation between entities and their actions.


Continue reading “Back to Parmenides: Binswanger’s Defense of Rand’s Block Universe”

Stupor Bowl Sunday Refused, Yet Again

Video Herewith, my annual Stupor Bowl Sunday post, supplemented with a properly curmudgeonly quotation from Edward 'Cactus Ed' Abbey for your reading enjoyment. Things were bad last year: the damn thing transpired in Phoenix. Luckily, it was far from where I dwell safe and snug in the foothills of the Superstition Mountains.  This year the game is far away, but the Arizona Cardinals are in contention.  Funny name, 'Cardinals.'  What does football have to do with little birdies?  Will I sneak a peek this year?  Maybe.  But I won't be able to take more than a few minutes of it.  In any case, here is last year's post.  I am tempted to add a rant about the misuse of taxpayer money for the construction of stadiums that are used only by some, but that can wait for next year.

I won't be watching the game. I don't even know which teams are playing. Undoubtedly there is more to football than I comprehend. But the games are nasty, brutish, but not short, and I know all I need to know about the implements of shaving.

Epistemic/Doxastic Possibility

Recent forays into the metaphysics and epistemology of modality require us to be quite clear about the senses  of 'possible,'  necessary,'  and the other modal words in play.  In the contexts mentioned, these words are not being used epistemically or doxastically. 

Is Joan in her office? If I ask you, you might reply, "It's possible." Or if I ask you, "Is Zorn's Lemma logically independent of the Axiom of Choice" you might reply, "It's possible." We need to clarify these uses of 'possible.'