Month: October 2009

An Elementary Confusion Regarding Dispositions and Potentialities

C. B. Martin, "Dispositions and Conditionals," The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 174, January 1994, p. 1:

We must see that dispositions are actual, though their manifestations may not be. It is an elementary confusion to think of unmanifesting dispositions as unactualized possibilia, though that may characterize unmanifested manifestations.

Consider two panes of thin glass side by side in a window. The two panes are of the same type of glass, and neither has been specially treated. A rock is thrown at one, call it pane A, and it shatters. The other pane, call it B, receives no such impact. We know that A is fragile from the fact that it shattered. ("Potency is known through act," an Aristotelian might say.) We don't have quite the same assurance that B is fragile, but we have good reason to think that it is since it is made of the same kind of glass as A.

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‘Probative Overkill’ Objections to the Potentiality Principle

Here is a simple version of the Potentiality Argument (PA):

1. All potential persons have a right to life.
2. The human fetus is a potential person.
—–
3. The human fetus has a right to life.

Does PA 'prove too much'? It does if the proponent of PA has no principled way of preventing PA from transmogrifying into something like:

1. All potential persons have a right to life.
4. Everything is a potential person.
—–
5. Everything has a right to life.

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Rock Salt and Nails

Enjoy it before it is pulled.  If I may wax pedantic, the jilted lover loads her shotgun with two sorts of stuff, not three: rock salt and nails, not rock, salt, and nails. Pedantry aside, a most haunting tune from the pen of Utah Phillips sung by the angel-voiced Joan Baez.

Oh the nights are so long/Lord sorry runs deep/And nothing is worse than a night without sleep/I walk out alone/I look at the sky/Too lonesome to sing, too empty to cry.

If the ladies was blackbirds and the ladies was thrushes/ I'd lie there for hours in the chilly cold marshes/ If the ladies was squirrels with high bushy tails/ I'd fill up my shotgun with rock salt and nails.

Three Friends

The blogosphere has been good to me, having brought me a number of friends, some of whom I have met face to face.  For now I will mention just three. 

Having read my announcement that PowerBlogs will be shutting down at the end of November, Keith Burgess-Jackson kindly sent me a number of unsolicited e-mails explaining how I could import the  PowerBlogs posts, together with comments, en masse into this Typepad site.  I had forgotten that the Typepad platform allows for multiple blogs.  Keith's idea was simply to set up an archival blog and dump the old posts there.  As usual, the devil is in the details.  But a  careful perusal of his-emails gave me all the clues I needed to get this project underway.  Eventually, I will install a link to the PowerBlogs archive on my front page.

Keith is one my oldest blogospheric friends. We met early in 2004 not long after I had entered the 'sphere.  He has been more than kind in promoting my efforts over the years.  I fear that I have not reciprocated sufficiently.  So I want you to go to his site right now and read his current batch of offerings.  I should also mention that if it weren't for Keith I would never have met philosopher Mike Valle who lives a few miles from here. 

I can't recall how exactly I met Ed Feser; it may have been via Keith's old Conservative Philosopher group blog.  In any case, we have had a number of invigorating discussions.  We have our differences, but our common ground makes their exfoliation fruitful.  I am presently gearing up for another round as I study his latest book, Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide (One World, 2009), an inscribed copy of which he kindly sent me.  Ed chimes in on his blog in agreement with my recent rant about copy editors and their political correctness.  Please check it out.

Last but not least, Peter Lupu, who, though not a blogger, is the Real Thing as philosophers go.  Such birds are rarely sighted even within (especially within?) the academic aviary.  He discovered me via the old PowerBlogs site and left the best comments there that I have received in five years of blogging.  To my great good fortune he flourishes here in the Zone and we see each other regularly. Last Thursday he came by and we talked from 2 to 9 P.M.  He would have gone on til midnight had I let him.  I have met in my entire life only one other philosopher with whom I could have as deep and productive a discussion, and that is my old friend Quentin Smith who I met in my early twenties.  Like Smith an avis rara, Lupu has become the Smith of my late middle age.

So the blogosphere has been good to me.  Today's stats hit an all-time high of 1,212 page views.  I have nothing to complain about.  Thanks for reading.

Unbelievable if True: Illiteracy and Innumeracy

David K. Shipler, The Working Poor: Invisible in America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), p. 139:

Some 37 percent of American adults cannot figure a 10 percent discount on a price, even using a calculator. (Emphasis added.) The same percentage cannot read a bus schedule or write a letter about a credit card error. According to the National Adult Literacy Survey, last taken in 1992 by the Department of Education, 14 percent cannot total a deposit slip, locate an intersection on a map, understand an appliance warranty, or determine the correct dosage of a medicine.

This is astonishing, if true. One thing that struck my conservative eye was 'Department of Education.' One wonders what the percentage of incompetents was before the inauguration of this behemoth agency. I'll bet it was less.

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The Human Predicament: Not to be Taken Too Seriously

I've been loved, hated, feared, loathed, respected, scorned, unjustly maligned, praised for what I should not have been praised for, lionized, demonized, put on a pedestal, dragged through the mud, understood, misunderstood, ill-understood, well-understood, ignored, fawned upon, admired, envied, tolerated, and found intolerable. And the same most likely goes for you.

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Why Physical Culture?

In part it is about control. I can't control your body, but I can control mine. Control is good. Power is good. Physical culture as the gaining and maintaining of power over that part of the physical world which is one's physical self. Self-mastery, as the highest mastery, must involve mastery of the vehicle of one's subjectivity. Control of one's vehicle is a clear desideratum. So stretch, run, hike, bike, swim, put the shot, lift the weight. In short: rouse your sorry ass from the couch of sloth and attend to your vehicle. 'Ass' here refers to Frate Asino, Brother Jackass, St Francis' name for his body. Keep him in good shape and he will carry you and many a prodigious load over many a pons asinorum.

(Interesting that Ger. Arsch, when it crossed the English Channel became 'arse,' but in the trans-Atlantic trip it transmogrified into the polyvalent 'ass.' Whatever you call it, get it off the couch.)

Fun With English: Is ‘None’ Singular or Plural?

To my ear, the following sounds grammatical:

1. None of the members were present at the meeting

whereas the following sounds ungrammatical:

2. None of the members was present at the meeting.

But isn't 'none' just a contraction of 'no one'? If it is, then (2) is grammatical and (1) is not. Now compare

3. All of the members were present at the meeting

4. All of the members was present at the meeting.

(3) sounds grammatical to me, while (4) sounds decidedly ungrammatical.

But surely (3) is logically equivalent to the ungrammatical

3*. Each of the members were present at the meeting

and (4) is logically equivalent to the grammatical

4*. Each of the members was present at the meeting.

Let this serve as a warning to school marms and copy editors  and those who would imitate them: be careful when you criticize another's English. He may have thought a lot harder and deeper than you. Your petty rules may collapse under logical scrutiny.

The Paltry Mentality of the Copy Editor

The copy editor, like a testosterone-crazed male cat, likes to mark his territory. His territory is your manuscript. But like a cat, he is lazy and easily bored, which leads to inconsistency. He starts out changing every occurrence of ‘identical with’ to ‘identical to,’ but then tires of this game so that the end result is a mishmash. He would have spared himself the bother had he appreciated the simple fact that in the English language ‘identical with’ and ‘identical to’ are stylistic variants of each other.

My advice to editors: stick to questions of formatting, and to the correction of obvious spelling and grammatical errors. Keep your political correctness to yourself.  Don't replace the gender neutral 'his' with the abomination 'his/her.'  Keep your stinking leftist politics out of my manuscript.  And don’t try to be what the Germans call a Besserwisser: don’t presume to know better what I want to say and how I want to say it. My writing is an exacting labor of love; your editing is a lousy chore you can’t wait to be done with.

The Potentiality Universality Principle and Feinberg’s “Logical Point”

I have already introduced  PIP, PEP, and PAP as three principles governing potentiality in the precise sense relevant to the Potentiality Argument. Now I introduce a fourth principle for your inspection which I will call the Potentiality Universality Principle:

PUP: Necessarily, if a normal F has the potentiality to become a G, then every normal F has the potentiality to become a G.

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The Potentiality Argument Against Abortion and Feinberg’s Logical Point About Potentiality

I claim that the standard objections to the Potentiality Argument (PA) are very weak and can be answered. This is especially so with respect to Joel Feinberg's "logical point about potentiality," which alone I will discuss in this post. This often-made objection is extremely weak and should persuade no rational person. But first a guideline for the discussion.

The issue is solely whether Feinberg's objection is probative, that and nothing else. Thus one may not introduce any consideration or demand extraneous to this one issue. One may not demand of me a proof of the Potentiality Principle (PP), to be set forth in a moment. I have an argument for PP, but that is not the issue currently under discussion. Again the issue is solely whether Feinberg's "logical point about potentiality" refutes the PA. Progress is out of the question unless we 'focus like a laser' on the precise issue under consideration.

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Identity, Constitution, and Potentiality With a Little Help from PIP, PEP, and PAP

Pointing to a lump of raw ground beef, someone might say, "This is a potential hamburger." Or, pointing to a hunk of bronze, "This is a potential statue." Someone who says such things is not misusing the English language, but he is not using 'potential' in the strong specific way that potentialists — proponents of the Potentiality Principle — are using the word. What is the difference? What is the difference between the two examples just given, and "This acorn is a potential oak tree," and "This embryo is a potential person?"

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Palin Derangement Syndrome: Another Case

(Written 5 October 2008)

Here is how Richard Cohen begins a recent column:

Thank God for Sarah Palin. Without her jibes, her sarcasm, her exaggerations, her smug provincialism, her hypocrisy about family and government, her exploitation of mommyhood and her personal attacks on Barack Obama, the Democratic base might never be consolidated. This much is certain: Obama could never do it.

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Travel Disruptive but Good for the Soul

For me travel is disruptive and desolating. A little desolation, however, is good for the soul, whose tendency is to sink into complacency. Daheim, empfindet man nicht so sehr die Unheimlichkeit des Seins. Travel knocks me out of my natural orbit. Even an overnighter can have this effect. And then time is wasted getting back on track. I am not cut out to be a vagabond. I Kant hack it. I do it more from duty than from inclination. But I'm less homebound than the Sage of Koenigsberg.

Some Principles of a Financial Conservative

(Written 11 October 2008)

A correspondent with whom I disagree pretty thoroughly on financial matters e-mails:

An interesting poll of IFP's (Independent Financial Planners) reported today on Kuldow's MSNBC programme that 85% don't believe investors over 55 should be in equities at all. AT ALL, because the 10 year recovery horizon is dubious. I agree.

Here are some thoughts of mine on matters monetary. Call it chutzpah if you will, but I think my thoughts are as good as, if not better than, those of most financial planners. My thoughts derive from reading good books, independent reflection, and experience. And I don't charge for them! Be aware that I have no credentials in this area. (Be also aware that credentials are only a rough and defeasible guide to a person's competence.) You absolutely must think for yourself, and since its inception in 2004, this site and its ancestors has been devoted to promoting independent thinking. That is part of what the 'maverick' appellation is supposed to convey.

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