Month: August 2009

Abraham, Isaac, and an Aspect of the Problem of Revelation

God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe says, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God say, "No." Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin' you better run"
Abe says, "Where do you want this killin' done?"
God says, "Out on Highway 61."

Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited (1965)

Which is more certain, that I should not kill my innocent son, or that God exists, has commanded me to kill my son, and that I must obey this command? That I must not kill my innocent son is a deliverance of our ordinary moral sense. But wouldn't a command from the supreme moral authority in the universe trump a deliverance of our ordinary moral sense? Presumably it would — but only if the putative divine command were truly a divine command. How would one know that it is?

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The Professional Activist

Ralph Nader, for example. Does he ever enjoy life, rest in contemplation, put aside for a time all his views and projects and schemes for improving the world? Does he consider consuming less jet fuel in his zeal to improve the unimprovable?

Chalk it up to my contemplative, quietistic bias, but activism as a way of life strikes me as ultimately meaningless. It is similar in meaninglessness to money-making as a way of life. And it doesn't matter whether one's activism points Left, Right, or sideways.

Philosophy, Religion, and the Philosophy of Religion: Four Theses

T1. The primary purpose of the philosophy of religion is neither to debunk nor defend religion. Its main aim is neither dismissive in the manner of Dawkins, Dennett, and Co., nor is it apologetic or ancillary in the sense of the Medieval Philosophia ancilla theologiae, "Philosophy is the handmaiden of theology." The central task of the philosophy of religion is to understand religious beliefs, practices, and posits (God, Brahman, etc.) and everything connected with these beliefs, practices, and posits, including arguments for and against religious belief.

T2. People have doxastic security needs just as they have physical, psychological, and economic security needs. A stable system of beliefs gives order, cohesion, and overall purpose to the various activities that make up one's life. It doesn't matter whether one is a Buddhist, a Muslim, a Communist, a disciple of Ayn Rand, or anything else. Belief systems are life-enhancing. This is why people 'bristle' when they think someone is 'attacking' their belief system. Since philosophy is not well understood, many people view philosophical examination of a belief system they hold as an 'attack' upon it, and as an attack upon them. For it is human nature to identify with one's cherished beliefs, and to perceive one's very identity as wrapped up in them.

T3. From the point of view of philosophy, however, it is a mistake to identify oneself with a particular set of beliefs, especially when the particular set is opposed by other particular sets each with its fervent and sometimes bloodthirsty adherents. The philosopher — and I am speaking of an ideal type here, one that Socrates Jones down the hall may have perfectly exemplified only twice in his long career — identifies with the ultimate truth. Thus he is not a dogmatist, neither a dogmatic affirmer nor a dogmatic denier. He is also not a skeptic if a skeptic is one who practices epoche, or doxastic suspension, with respect to every belief that transcends mundane matters. The philosopher is rather a tentative affirmer who is open to ongoing examination of his beliefs and who refuses to identify himself with any system of beliefs short of the ultimate system — which may forever remain an unattained ideal.

In fact, the true philosopher is open to the examination of such metaphilosophical propositions as I have just sketched. Not even these does he hold dogmatically. It follows that he does not identify with being a philosopher in such a way as to preclude the possibility that some day he may abandon the philosophical life by submitting to the crucifixion of the intellect, or by making money and 'enjoying the good life.' (But will he be able to refrain from asking what it is to enjoy the good life?) A truly examined life is a life in which the examination of life is itself examined.

T4. Philosophy is not ideology. As I explain here, an ideology is a system of beliefs, or a collection of ideas, that is primarily oriented toward action and not primarily toward truth. That is how I use 'ideology.' There is nothing pejorative in my use. You are free to use it in some other way, but then you must tell us how you are using it. Philosophy is not ideology since it is primarily oriented toward the knowledge of truth. Religion, however, as a system of beliefs, is a species of ideology since it is primarily oriented toward action. Religion is predicated upon human spiritual neediness, the wretchedness endemic to our condition, and has as its aim our salvation from this indigence and wretchedness. Thus religious beliefs and practices aim at salvific action, salvific transformation from the state of spiritual wretchedness to one of spiritual well-being. Religion is like medicine or the medical arts. The medical arts are predicated upon actual and possible physical debility and aim to cure and prevent physical debility as far as possible. The aim in both cases is in achieving a cure, a transition from sickness to health (whether spiritual or physcal), not in understanding for its own sake.

What holds for philosophy holds for philosophy of religion: it is not primarily about action. So if a philosopher points out the apparent conflict between a Biblical statement and a deliverance of reason or a deliverance of morality, his primary aim is to understand the conflict, the problems it poses, and the various solutions available. His primary aim is not to destroy Bible-based faith or 'apologize' for it. (This word in the sense of 'apologetics' or the 'apology' of Socrates.)

For an adherent of a religion to understand a philosophy-of-religion discussion requires that he be able to calmly contemplate his doxastic commitments as if they were the commitments of someone else. But this is very difficult! Religion, like politics, inflames people's passions. It does so because it is extremely difficult for people to inhibit the natural tendency to identify themselves with the life-guiding and life-enhancing and meaning-bestowing beliefs they happen to hold. (Attack a Muslim's beliefs and he will take you to be attacking his very identity; don't be surprised if he feels himself to be under existential threat.) But he who cannot calmly distance himself from his own beliefs cannot philosophize. One of the virtues of the philosopher — again, I am speaking of an ideal type — is the ability to examine his own most cherished beliefs, and in all consistency I would apply that also to all the beliefs that constitute his Existenz as a philosopher.

Is There Progress in Philosophy?

There are at least two affirmative answers to this question. (There are actually more than two affirmative answers, but brevity is the soul of blog.)

1. Yes, there is progress in philosophy; it is just that when philosophy makes progress it is no longer called philosophy. Time was, when all rational inquiry was called philosophy. Aristotle, for example, investigated a wide variety of subjects: formal and informal logic, rhetoric, poetics, physics, astronomy, biology, psychology, metaphysics, ethics, and politics. Given that undeniable progress has been made in some of these fields, philosophy has made progress. No one will deny, for example, that physics and biology have made progress. Given that branches of philosophy have made progress, philosophy has made progress in these branches. It is worth noting that physicists as late as the 19th century were still called natural philosophers. And you will recall that the full title of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia (1686) is Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.

There is, therefore, a clear sense in which philosophy has made progress. It has made progress in that certain of its branches have made progress.

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Cash For Clunkers

The lunkheads of the Left really outdid themselves when they dreamed up this new wealth redistribution scheme.  An acquaintance of mine told me of his son who turned in a 1989 Ford pickup with over 200, 000 miles on the odometer, a  vehicle worth $50 according to my friend, a former mechanic, and received $4,500 of taxpayers' money, not to mention a dealer rebate on the purchase of a new car.  Nice deal, eh?  Our ever-expanding socialist government brokers a transaction in which some of us get to steal from the rest of us.  It is crazy both morally and economically.  But the people will lap it up along with panem et circenses, 'free' health care, and what all else.  They will lap it up until there is nothing more to lap up and the republic goes the way of ancient Rome.  For more on this depressing topic, take a gander at Michael Barone's Cash for Clunkers: Not the First Time.  Something similar was tried in my beautiful State of Arizona.  I think of poor Barry Goldwater, rolling around in his grave.

Jack London, John Barleycorn, and the Noseless One

Like many American boys, I read plenty of Jack London: The Call of the Wild, White Fang, The Sea Wolf, Martin Eden, not to mention numerous short stories, some of them unforgettable to this day: "Love of Life," "Moonface," and "To Build a Fire." But I never got around to John Barleycorn until years later after I had read a lit-crit study of the American booze-novel, and decided to read every booze-novel I could get my hands on. You could say I went on a booze-novel binge. So I read Charles Jackson's Lost Weekend, things like that, until I was ready for the grandpappy of them all, John Barleycorn.

Here are some notes from a journal entry of 7 March 1998.

Health Care: A Liberty Issue

Mark Steyn gets it right.  Excerpts (emphasis added):

. . . [nationalized] health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture. That’s its attraction for an ambitious president: It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in a way that hands all the advantages to statists — to those who believe government has a legitimate right to regulate human affairs in every particular. [. . .]

It’s often argued that, as a proportion of GDP, America spends more on health care than countries with government medical systems. But, as a point of fact, “America” doesn’t spend anything on health care: Hundreds of millions of people make hundreds of millions of individual decisions about what they’re going to spend on health care. Whereas up north a handful of bureaucrats determine what Canada will spend on health care — and that’s that: Health care is a government budget item. [. . .]

How did the health-care debate decay to the point where we think it entirely natural for the central government to fix a collective figure for what 300 million freeborn citizens ought to be spending on something as basic to individual liberty as their own bodies?

Are you willing to sell your birthright, liberty, for a mess of pottage?  That's the issue.  Liberals are a strange breed of cat. They'll puke their guts out in defense of their 'right' to abortion and their 'right' to violate every norm of decency in pursuit of the 'artistic' expression of their precious and vacuous selves, but when it comes to the right to be in control of the sorts of care their bodies receive they reverse course and surrender their liberties.

 

 

Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Dream Theme

In the late '50s the sexual revolution was right around the corner, but hadn't yet arrived.  So those late '50s dudes did more dreaming than doing.  The dream theme is well explored in these 'classics':  Dream Lover (Bobby Darin, 1959), Dreamin' (Johnny Burnett, 1960), In Dreams (Roy Orbison), In Dreams (Orbison, live version), All I Have to Do is Dream (Everly Brothers, 1959).

Sentimentality and schmaltz, you complain?  I won't deny it, but surely it is to be preferred to the crudity and soullessness and outright malevolence of much of what came later.

Retortion Applied to the Anatta Doctrine

This post is a continuation of the line of thought in Emptiness, Self-Reference, and Assertibility, a post from the old blog which in due course will be revised and deposited here. There you will find a brief explanation of anatta. Retortion was explained in recent posts. See the contents of the Retortion category.  What happens when we apply retortion to the anatta doctrine? Consider the unrestricted anatta thesis (unrestricted in the sense that it applies to absolutely everything including nibbana)

1. All is empty.

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The Anatta Doctrine and its Soteriological Relevance

The anatta (Sanskrit: anatman) doctrine lies at the center of Buddhist thought and practice. The Pali and Sanskrit words translate literally as 'no self'; but the doctrine applies not only to persons but to non-persons as well. On the 'no self' theory, nothing possesses selfhood or self-nature or 'own-being,' perhaps not even nibbana 'itself.' If a substance is anything metaphysically capable of independent existence, then perhaps we can interpret the anatta doctrine as a denial of the existence of substances. The 'no self' theory would then imply that in ultimate reality there are no substances: what we ordinarily take to be such are wrongly so taken. A pervasive ignorance (avijja) infects our ordinary view of the world. It is not an ignorance about this or that matter of fact, but one about the ontological structure of the world and of ourselves in it. This structural ignorance could be described as 'original ignorance.' For it lies at the origin of our uneasy and unsatisfactory predicament in this life in roughly the way in which original sin lies at its origin on a Christian scheme of things.

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Baby Talk and First Grade English

It is annoying when a senator says that such-and-such is a 'no-no.' Closely related is the phenomenon of what might be called 'first grade English.' George Bush and others have spoken of  'growing the economy.' One grows tomatoes, not economies. But perhaps I am being peevish and pedantic.

What about the current overuse of 'broken'? One hears that the Social Security admininstration and the Immigration and Nauralization Service are 'broken.' One breaks things like guitar strings, bicycle chains, and glasses. That which is broken no longer functions as it was intended to. A broken X is not a suboptimally functioning X but a nonfunctioning X. Clearly, neither the SSA nor the INS are 'broken' strictly speaking. They just don't function very well and are in dire need of reform.

So why call them 'broken'? Is your vocabulary so impoverished that no better word comes to mind?

 
"President Obama has said plainly that America's health care system is broken." That from Peter Singer in "Why We Must Ration Health Care" (NYT Magazine, July 19, 2009, p. 40.)  I guess that is why Canadians and others come to the USA for medical treatment they cannot get under a socialized system.

Why are people such linguistic lemmings? If some clown uses 'broken' inappropriately, why ape him? One has to be quite a lemming to ape a clown. (How's that for a triple mixed metaphor?) In a cognate rant, Issues and Problems, I take issue with 'issue' and its over- and misuse. I have a real 'issue' with that.   A longer piece, English for Boneheads: Some Torts on the Mother Tongue, may also be of interest or at least get your blood up.

 
People who employ baby talk and first grade English in contexts that demand careful thought demonstrate their thoughtlessness and unseriousness.  Precision in the use of language may not be sufficient for clear and productive thinking, but it is necessary.  Language matters.