Month: April 2010

A Question About Self-Referential Inconsistency

 From the mail bag:

I’m hoping you can help me with an  annoying question that came up in conversation recently. I’m sure you can answer it much better than me.

Statements are self-refuting when they are included in their own field of reference and fail to conform to their own criteria of validity. Thus ‘there are no truths’ is self-refuting because if it is false, then it is false. But if it is true, then it is false as well because then there would be no truths, including the statement itself. So what about the statement ‘all statements are self-refuting’?

You are right about 'There are no truths.'  If true, then false.  If false, then false.  So  necessarily false.  Therefore, its negation — 'There are some truths' — is not just true, but necessarily true.

There is exactly the same pattern with  'All statements are self-refuting.'  If true, then self-refuting and  false.  If false, then  false.  So necessarily false.  Therefore, its negation  — Some statements are not self-refuting — is not just true, but necessarily true.

Now an intriguing  question arises.  Are these necessities unconditional, or do they rest upon a condition?  The second necessity appears to be conditional upon the existence of statements and the beings who make them.  Statements don't 'hang in the air'; a statement is the statement of a stater, so that, in a world without rational beings, there are no statements.  'Some statements are not self-refuting,' therefore, is not true in all possible worlds, but only in those worlds in which statements are made.  Given that there are statements, it is necessarily true that some statements are not self-refuting.  But there might not have been any statements.  The existence of statements is contingent.

Now what about 'There are some truths?'  Clearly, this sentence (or rather the proposition it expresses)  is not contingently true, but necessarily true.  But is it true of absolute metaphysical necessity, or does its necessary truth rest on some condition?  Suppose something gives the following little speech:

I see your point.  There have to be truths.  Forif you say that there aren't any, you are saying that it is true that there aren't any, and you thereby contradict yourself.  So there is a sense in which there cannot not be truths.  But all this means is that WE must presuppose truth.  It doesn't mean that there are truths independently of us.  WE cannot help but assume that there are truths.  The existence of truths is a transcendental presupposition of  our kind of thinking. But it does not follow that there are truths of absolute metaphysical necessity.  If we were not to exist, then there would be no truths, not even the truth that we do not exist.

Is the little speech coherent?  The objector is inviting us to consider the possible situation in which beings like us do not exist and no truths either.  The claim that this situation is possible, however, is equivalent to the claim that it is true that this situation is possible.  But, on the transcendental hypothesis in question, the existence of this truth is relative to our existence, which implies that it is not true independently of us that it is possible that beings like us not exist and no truths either. But then it is not really possible that beings like us not exist and no truths either: the possibility exists only relative to our thinking.  So I conclude that the transcendental hypothesis is only apparently coherent, and that 'There are truths' is true of absolute metaphysical necessity.  So it is not just that we cannot deny truth; truth is undeniable an sich.

 

Death Bed Reading

What will you have on your death stand? Whose thoughts will occupy your mind in your final moments in the dying of the light, as the breath comes short and the cancer cells conquer organ after organ?   Speaking for myself, I'll take Plato over Putnam, Boethius over Butchvarov, Aquinas over Quine, the Psalms over Sartre. Reading Quine at a moment like that would like looking for bread among the dusty and jagged shards in a stone quarry.

It is not too soon to begin making a list.

Consciousness: What Evolutionary Good Is It?

Bear in mind that the word 'consciousness' has several distinct meanings. 'Consciousness' can refer to the state of being awake, to the ability to introspect internal states, and to the phenomenon of attention. But 'consciousness' insofar as it poses a 'hard problem' for physicalists is the subjective quality of experience.

These subjective qualities can be features of sensations, but they need not be. Smashing my knee against a table leg elicits a certain unpleasant sensation. The felt quality of that sensation is an example of a conscious datum in the relevant sense. But so is the shimmering quality of a magnificent Saguaro cactus standing sentinel on a distant ridgeline as viewed in the lambent light of the desert Southwest. Qualia, then, can be associated with intentional objects and not merely with non-intentional states like sensations. Pressing some Husserlian jargon into service, we might distinguish between noematic qualia and hyletic qualia.

Anti-Tea Party Bias in the New York Times

The usual left-wing tilt of the NYT's Tea Party coverage is not so egregious in this recent piece.  But even when they try to be fair they can't seem to pull it off.  The piece opens with the following sentence:

The Tea Party Movement is a diffuse American grass-roots group that taps into antigovernment sentiments.

"Diffuse American grass-roots group" is just right: accurate and ideologically neutral.  But then, right on its heels, two pieces of blatant bias.

First, the movement is not fairly described as "antigovernment."  To be opposed to an ever-expanding government, one that recognizes few or no limits, constitutional or otherwise, to the extension of its powers, is not to be opposed to government as such.   To put it in simple terms that even a liberal can understand: to oppose BIG government is not to oppose government.  Tea Party supporters are for the most part conservatives, with a sizable admixture of libertarians.  Neither conservatives nor libertarians are opposed to government as such, though they disagree as to its legitimate size and scope.  But neither want no government.  (The only exception to this is the extreme fringe of the libertarian movement that shades off into anarchism.  But these fringe folk are few in number and negligible in political clout.) 

Second, it is not "sentiments," feelings, emotion, anger, that are at the source of the Tea Party protests but legitimate concerns based in fact and reason.  It is precisely the Tea Partiers arguments that lefties will never address.  Their tactic is to deflect attention from the arguments by psychologizing their proponents.  And so they go on ad nauseam about voter anger and the like.

The piece I am quoting from is not on the OP-Ed page.  It is supposed to be a piece of reportage.  But we cannot get through even the first sentence without banging into leftist bias. 

Scenes From a Tea Party

The party line of the Democrats and their fellow travellers is that the Tea Party Movement is fueled by racism.  The moral scum who make these absurd and scurrilous allegations ought to be ashamed of themselves.  I name names and go into details in other posts which you will find in the Race and Leftism categories.  But just to verify what I already had excellent reasons for believing, namely, that there is no racist motivation to speak of behind the Tea Party protests, I decided I'd better attend one, which I did today.  I visited one of the lesser gatherings of the day here in the Valley of the Sun, one held at Freestone Park, Gilbert, Arizona.  The main speaker was Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.  There was no racism apparent in the signs, the speakers, or the people I observed and spoke with.  No racism, no extremism, no xenophobia, no overheated rhetoric, no incitements to violence.  Just trenchant political dissent in the good old liberty- and free speech-loving American style, something that leftists don't understand, laboring as they do under the strange conceit that they own dissent, as if dissent were something inherently leftist. Here are some amateur shots of the event by your humble correspondent.

Continue reading “Scenes From a Tea Party”

Fruitful Tensions

Mike Rand e-mails,

I was interested to see your recent correspondence and post on the radical vs the conservative. I couldn't help but notice that there is a potential parallel between this and a common interest of yours [ours?], the productive tension between Aristotle and Plato. A radical may be liable to point out that it because Plato is prepared to build a state upon rational rather than traditional grounds that he is prepared to consider women as equally well qualified to rule the state on meritocratic grounds (a la Mill), a thesis which is well supported in the contemporary world though unthinkable in ancient Greece. They may also contrast this against Aristotle’s impression of women which appears indefensible in the modern era but natural in his own time, and they may also draw attention to Aristotle’s defense of slavery. The conservative Aristotle on these points alone appears monstrous to a modern audience against the radical Plato. In accord with the recent post, we might very well conclude that the conservative is a reality-based thinker (within his own environment), whilst the radical is a utopian (prepared to look beyond his environment). The conservative in reply would of course draw attention to the realistic and practical view of Aristotle on running a state and compare this to the proto-communist authoritarian and elitist Plato who would construct a state, mentally at least, that would appear equally monstrous to a modern audience.

This is very perceptive.  Since I am first and foremost an aporetician keen to isolate and sharpen problems under suspension of the natural tendency to glom onto  quick solutions, it interests me and indeed worries me that there may be a tension between my tendency to give the palm to Plato over Aristotle and my conservative tendency.  As I said recently:

One cannot be a philosopher unless one believes that at least some important truths are attainable or at least approachable by dialectical and argumentative means.  Thus there is no place in philosophy for the misologist, the hater of reason, and his close relative the fideist.   Reasoning and argument loom large in philosophy . . . .

But now I must add that to the extent that I favor reason over experience and tradition, the universal over the particular, the global over the local, the impersonal over the personal, to that extent I am in some conflict with my conservative tendency.  One of the differences between conservatives and their liberal/left/radical brethren is that they are skeptical aqbout the value of reason in the ordering of political affairs.

Continue reading “Fruitful Tensions”

Antony Flew Dead at 87

Here.  ". . . it is clear that Flew’s repudiation of atheism was heartfelt and seems to have been largely rooted in his dislike of polemical atheism. His own atheism was always cautious, nuanced and respectful of Christian tradition.  [. . .] Professor Antony Flew, philosopher, was born on February 11, 1923. He died on April 8, 2010, aged 87."

Wrong Division of Philosophical Labor

The most important questions, the existential ones, should not be left to the sloppiest and least able thinkers. Equally, careful and rigorous thinkers should not confine themselves to unworthy or merely preliminary topics.

For example, some of the best heads in philosophy work exclusively in the philosophy of science. But for a philosopher to be a a mere handmaiden of positive science is an unworthy use of his abilities.  Better to be a handmaiden of theology. But best of all would be to be no handmaiden at all. Philosophy is ancillary to nothing, unless it be  truth herself.

Consciousness Without Self-Consciousness

Just over the transom:

A friend of mine and I have ongoing discussions about consciousness. Some of his beliefs I have a hard time accepting. He believes for example that his cat doesn't have conscious experience. I can't put my finger on why I have such a hard time accepting this, but I do. One issue that has come up is whether you can have consciousness without self-awareness. In the discussions he has brought up the issue of blindsight, and claimed its an example of perception without consciousness. This doesn't make any sense to me. It seems to me that talk of perception presupposes consciousness. I was curious as to your thoughts on this matter.

There appear to be two separate questions here.

Q1: Are animals such as cats conscious?  It would suffice for their being conscious that they experience pleasure or pain.  Do cats experience pain?  When I inadvertently step on my cat's foot, she exhibits pain-behavior (makes a certain characteristic sound, shrinks back, gives me a certain look, begins licking the foot.)  Now that pain-behavior is not identical to the felt pain, if there is one; but it is evidence for its existence.  Or so say I.  But now we are approaching the problem of other minds which is too intricate to be discussed in this post.  In any case, I don't believe this is what you are asking about.  For my part, I no more doubt that my cat is conscious than I doubt that my wife is.  Both are sentient beings!  But how do I KNOW that?  This, roughly, is the problem of other minds.  Here is an organism in my visual field.  I believe it has a mind  more or less similar to my own (less in the case of the cat, more in the case of the wife).  The problem is to provide the grounds for that belief.  The belief goes well beyond what is strictly evident to the senses; so what justifies it?  It is an epistemological problem.  Not to be confused with the ontological question whether wife or cat could be philosophical 'zombies.'

Q2:  Can there be consciousness without self-consciousness?  This may be what you are really asking about.  Can one be conscious of an object without being conscious of being conscious of it?  I would say yes.  The following sometimes happens to some people.  They have been driving for some time, negotiating curves, braking, accelerating, etc.  But then they suddenly realize that for the last few miles they haven't been conscious of doing these things.  They've been 'blanked out.' And yet they were conscious of the road, the cars in front of them, etc., else they would have crashed.  We could say that they were conscious of their environment and of the objects in its without being conscious of being conscious of all these things.

In a famous passage Kant says that "The 'I think' must be able to accompany all my representations."  That is a good way of putting it.   It must be possible for me to say 'I am now aware that the light is red' when I see that the light is red, but there needn't be this self-awareness for there to be the conscious perception that the light is red.  So I suggest we say this:  every consciousness is potentially self-conscious, but not every consciousness is actually self-conscious.

This is a murky topic due to the murkiness of the phenomenology.  It is made even more murky when the first-person POV of phenomenology is blended with the third-person POV of neuroscience.

Walter Morris: Bourgeois Bohemian

Walter Morris may count as an early bourgeois bohemian, a 'BoBo' to adopt and adapt a coinage of David Brooks.  Morris is an exceedingly obscure diarist, known only to a few, but a kindred spirit. An e-mail from a distant relative of his caused me to dip again into the stimulating waters of his journal.

I have already presented his thoughts on solitude.  That post also provided some information on the man and his writings. What follows is part of an entry from 8 February 1947. (Notebook 2: Black
River, limited edition, mimeographed, Englewood NJ, 1949. It contains journal entries from 25 June 1942 to 3 August 1947.)

The Bohemian way of living has its points, but I am unable to appreciate Bohemia at full tilt. I have never had it that way and, except for a very youthful period, I have never much wanted it that way. I like cleanliness of body and living quarters, not a fanatical 100% cleanliness, not a sterile and perfect order, but such cleanliness as is compatible with normal comfortable living. I dislike messy emotional relationships and all kinds of exhibitionism. I dislike vomiting drunks, people with the monkey on their backs, flaunting homosexuality, financial dishonesty, irresponsibility, and puerile minds posing as advanced and liberated. This is the measure of my Respectability and middle-classness. Otherwise — in being devoted to my own pattern, in quietly ignoring some White Cows instead of ostentatiously mounting a rebellion — I don't mind at all being called Bohemian. Our family dish, as a matter of [f]act, could stand a dash of that kind of sauce. (p. 206)

I recall a quotation from Gustave Flaubert along similar lines: "Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work."

Why I Like Parties

I like parties. I derive considerable satisfaction from not attending them. There is such a thing as the pleasure of conscious avoidance, of knowing that one has wisely escaped a situation likely to be frustrating and unpleasant.  If others are offended by my nonattendance, that I regret.  But peace of mind is a higher value than social dissipation — which is no value at all.