Month: October 2009

Misplaced Moral Enthusiasm and Mel Gibson

The L. A. Times reports that Mel Gibson's 2006 drunk driving conviction has been expunged.  Here is what I wrote about the case at the time (1 August 2006): 

What's worse: Driving while legally drunk at 87 miles per hour in a 45 mph zone, or making stupid anti-Semitic remarks? The former, obviously. And yet a big stink is being made about Gibson's drunken rant. I call this misplaced moral enthusiasm. Calling a Jew a bad name won't kill him, but running him over in your speeding 2006 Lexus LS 430 will.

On the one hand, offensive words that no reasonable person could take seriously; on the other hand, a deed that could get people killed. Here is what Gibson said: "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world," and, addressing the arresting officer, "Are you a Jew?"

Now compare Gibson with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who repeatedly has called for the destruction of the State of Israel. Ahmadinejad's is speech that incites unspeakable violence, unlike Gibson's drunken rant which is no threat to anyone. So let's forget about Gibson, and concentrate on real threats.

Epictetus Advises Imelda Marcos

Epictetus, Enchiridion, tr. E. Carter, XXXIX:

The body is to everyone the measure of the possessions proper for it, as the foot is of the shoe. If, therefore, you stop at this, you will keep the measure; but if you move beyond it, you must necessarily be carried forward, as down a precipice; as in the case of a shoe, if you go beyond its fitness to the foot, it comes first to be gilded, then purple, and then studded with jewels. For to that which once exceeds a due measure, there is no bound.

Indeed, as one may observe here.

How Sartre Saw the USA

Jean-Paul Sartre's "Americans and Their Myths" appeared in The Nation in the issue of 18 October, 1947. The article concludes:

The anguish of the American confronted with Americanism is an ambivalent anguish; as if he were asking, "Am I American enough?" and at the same time, "How can I escape from Americanism?" In America a man's simultaneous answers to these two questions make him what he is, and each man must find his own answers.

It sounds like projection to me. Anguish? Ambivalence? Had I been able to drag Jean-Paul's sorrily citified Parisian ass away from his cafes, Gauloises, and Stalinist comrades and through the Superstition Mountains in June — well, perhaps the univocity of rock and sun and the reality of a world that is not man-made but also not a featureless surd-like en soi would have cured his anguished ambiguity.

Serious Conversation

It is best avoided with ordinary folk. Serious conversation about matters beyond the mundane demands effort and people resent being made to work. Besides, ordinary folk do not 'believe in conversation' the way some philosophers do. They don't believe that truth can be attained by dialectical means. They might not believe in truth at all, or in its value. Or they may have the notion that 'truth is relative.' Thoughtlessly, many dismiss all thought with 'It's all relative.' So if you try to engage them on a serious topic, they may interpret your overture as an initial move in an ego game whereby you are trying to dominate them, even if that is the farthest thing from your mind. Not believing in truth, they believe in power, and interpret everything as a power ploy and a power play. And this goes double if, like me, you are intense of mien. For your seriousness will appear either threatening or comical to those for whom nothing matters except life's surfaces.

A good maxim, then:  Among regular guys be a regular guy.

The Body’s Graffiti

Tattoos are the graffiti of the human body. And just as the graffiti 'artist' defaces property public and private, the tattoo 'artist' defaces the human body, torturing the skin with needles and injecting it with ugly dyes. When I see yet another tattooed, pierced, tackle-box head, I wonder what this phenomenon means. Some thoughts of Theodore Dalrymple are worth pondering:

First, it [tattooing] was aesthetically worse than worthless. Tattoos were always kitsch, implying not only the absence of taste but the presence of dishonest emotion.

Second, the vogue represented a desperate (and rather sad) attempt on a mass scale to achieve individuality and character by means of mere adornment, which implied both intellectual vacuity and unhealthy self-absorption.

And third, it represented mass downward cultural and social aspiration, since everyone understood that tattooing had a traditional association with low social class and, above all, with aggression and criminality. It was, in effect, a visible symbol of the greatest, though totally ersatz, virtue of our time: an inclusive unwillingness to make judgments of morality or value.

On Mental Properties and the Subject of Experience

From a U. K. reader:

I'm currently reading up on my substance dualism for a philosophy of mind course, and thought I'd pose a question to you. I heartily agree with your frequent calls to eschew the parody of dualism as positing a kind of soul-stuff, but given this, I wonder how you think of the ontological status of mental properties. Most physicalists claim that such properties inhere in a physical substance, but if we avoid talk of substance in preference of a subject (as you have, in my opinion rightly, done  in the past) how are these mental properties a) grounded (to avoid a Humean bundle view) and b) ontologically possible. I remember you suggesting that say, the property of being odd was not based on a material substance, as it was associated with a non-material number. But presumably both properties and subjects (however these are related) are concreta. And I find it hard to see how that method works for them.

1. The reader asks about the ontological status of mental properties and how they are related to the items that instantiate them. First some examples.  If I say 'I am feeling anxious,' I self-ascribe the non-intentional mental property of feeling anxious.  If I say, 'I see a coyote,' I self-ascribe the intentional mental property of seeing a coyote. If I say, 'I weigh 180 lbs.,' I self-ascribe the physical property of weighing 180 lbs.  Properties in general can be defined in terms of instantiation: properties are instantiable entities. Thus:

P is a property =df P is possibly such that it is instantiated.

Not all entities are instantiable: neither Socrates nor his singleton are instantiable. I assume that properties are universals where universals are repeatable entities and particulars are not.  That properties are universals  is of course controversial and will be denied by trope theorists.  To maintain that properties are universals is to reject that form of nominalism according to which everything that exists is a particular.  I also reject the form of nominalism according to which properties are linguistic in nature.  What's more, I reject the conceptualist theory that properties are mental in nature.  Thus I tend to think that both physical and mental  properties are universals that can exist uninstantiated, and whose existence  is independent of the existence of any (finite) mind.  Mental properties are not 'in the mind' if what this means is that mental properties exist only as accusatives of mental acts.  Nor do mental properties require for their existence the existence of any (finite) minds.

I should also say something about 'abstract' and 'concrete' inasmuch as my reader speaks of concreta. ('Concreta' is the plural of 'concretum' the latter referring to any concrete item.)  I suggest the following definition:

X is concrete (abstract)  =df  X is (is not) causally active/passive.

Continue reading “On Mental Properties and the Subject of Experience”

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Fred Neil

Remember Fred Neil?  One of the  luminaries of the '60s folk scene,  he didn't do much musically thereafter.  Neil is probably best remembered  for having penned 'Everybody's Talkin' which was made famous by Harry Nilsson as the theme of Midnight Cowboy.  Here is Neil's version. 

Another of my Fred Neil favorites is "Other Side of  This Life."  Here is Peter, Paul, and Mary's version.

And it's been a long long time since I last enjoyed The Bag I'm In. 

The reclusive Neil died in 2001 at the age of 64.  Biography here.

Why Are Actors and Actresses Held in Such Low Esteem?

According to an August 4, 2009 Harris poll, the most prestigious occupation is that of firefighter, while near the bottom of the ranking falls that of actor.  62% of the Americans polled voted for firefighters while only 15% voted for actors.  At the very bottom of the ranking, however, were realtors, who garnered a measly 5% of the vote.

I don't understand why acting should be held in such low esteem.  After all, acting is is not easy to do well, and most of those likely to be polled are familiar with only the very best.  Good acting is not only difficult, but also very enriching to all our lives.  Consider Martin Landau's work in Woody Allen's masterpiece Crimes and Misdemeanors or Meryl Streep's performance in Sophie's Choice. Those are great movies and the actors in such movies make a profound contribution to the quality of our lives.   This is not to deny that most movies are worthless and that many great actors such as Robert De Niro waste their talents on worthless roles in worthless movies. 

So why should acting be held in low esteem?  But perhaps it is not acting but actors who are held in low esteem.  Perhaps it is not actors qua actors who are held in low esteem, but the people who act.  What I am suggesting, as a possible explanation of the fact of acting's low rating relative to other professions, is that the people polled conflate actors qua actors with the people who are actors, and project their dislike for these people onto their occupational role.

And why should the people likely to be polled dislike the people who are actors?  Because they are most of them flaming liberals who maintain views that are deeply offensive to ordinary Americans.  To take an example from a while back, Mike Farrell defended the the vicious murderer 'Tookie' Williams.  A very recent example is provided by that profound intellect, Janeane Garofalo, who maintains that the 'tea-baggers,' led by Limbaugh, are a white power movement motivated by 'racism.'  Read the the whole of her screed to get a sense of the level of lunacy to which HollyWeird liberals are ever inclined to succumb.  I shall not sully my site by quoting it.

Should one take polls seriously?  I rather doubt it.  Much depends on how exactly the questions are formulated.  The Harris 'result' that acting is held in low esteem may reflect only the low esteem in which average Americans hold the people who fill the occupational role.

How Can You Be Clever in a Meatgrinder?

Jkerouacmom  It's October again, my favorite month, and Kerouac month in my personal literary liturgy.  Here is Kerouac on the road, not in a '49 Hudson with Neal Cassady, but in a bus  with his mother:

Who are men that they can insult men? Who are these people who wear pants and dresses and sneer? What am I talking about? I'm talking about human helplessness and unbelievable loneliness in the darkness of birth and death and asking "What is there to laugh about in that?" "How can you be clever in a meatgrinder?" "Who makes fun of misery?" There's my mother a hunk of flesh that didnt ask to be born, sleeping restlessly, dreaming hopefully, beside her son who didnt ask to be born, thinking desperately, praying hopelessly, in a bouncing earthly vehicle going from nowhere to nowhere, all in the night, worst of all for that matter all in noonday glare of bestial Gulf Coast roads — Where is the rock that will sustain us? Why are we here? What kind of crazy college would feature a seminar where people talk about hopelessness forever?

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), Desolation Angels, 1960, p. 339.

Compare Mexico City Blues, 1959, 211th Chorus:

The wheel of the quivering meat conception . . .
. . . I wish I was free of that slaving meat wheel
and safe in heaven dead.

Of the Beat triumvirate, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs, "sweet gone Jack" alone really moves me, and the quotations above I find to be among the most moving in all his writings.

Topical Insanity

There is temporary insanity as when a middle-aged man buys a Harley on which to ride though his midlife crisis, wisely selling the bike after the crisis subsides. But my theme is topical insanity, that species of temporary insanity that can occur when certain topics are brought to one’s attention. Someone so afflicted loses the ability to think clearly about the topic in question for the period of time that the topic is before his mind.

Try this. The next time you are at a liberal gathering, a faculty party, say, calmly state that you agree with the National Rifle Association’s position on gun control. Now observe the idiocies to flow freely from liberal mouths. Enjoy as they splutter and fulminate unto apoplexy.

Some will say that the NRA is opposed to gun control. False, everyone is for gun control, i.e., gun control legislation; the only question being its nature and scope. Nobody worth mentioning wants no laws relating to the acquisition and use of firearms. Everyone worth mentioning wants reasonable laws that are enforceable and enforced.

Others will say that guns have only one purpose, to kill people. A liberal favorite, but spectacularly false for all that, and quickly counterexampled: (i) Guns can be used to save lives both by police and by ordinary citizens; (ii) Guns can be used to hunt and defend against nonhuman critters; (iii) Guns can be used for sporting purposes to shoot at nonsentient targets; (iv) Guns can be collected without ever being fired; (v) Guns can be used to deter crime without being fired; merely ‘showing steel’ is a marvellous deterrent. Indeed, display of a weapon is not even necessary: a miscreant who merely suspects that his target is armed, or that others in the vicinity are, may be deterred. Despite liberal mythology, criminals are not for the most part irrational and their crimes are not for the most part senseless. In terms of short-term means-ends rationality, it is quite reasonable and sensible to rob places where money is to be found — Willy Sutton recommends banks — and kill witnesses to the crime.

Still others will maintain that gun ownership has no effect on crime rates. False, see the work of John Lott.

Here then we have an example of topical insanity, an example of a topic that completely unhinges otherwise sane people.  There are plenty of other examples.  Capital punishment is one, religion is another.  A. C. "Gasbag" Grayling, for example, sometimes comes across as extremely intelligent and judicious.  But when it comes to religion he degenerates into the worst form of barroom bullshitter.  See my earlier post.