Month: April 2010

Ontological Analysis in Aristotle and Bergmann: Prime Matter Versus Bare Particulars

Berg1 Hardly anyone reads Gustav Bergmann any more, but since I read everything, I read Bergmann. It is interesting to compare his style of ontological analysis with that of the great hylomorphic ontologists, Aristotle and Aquinas. The distinguished Aristotelian Henry B. Veatch does some of my work for me in a fine paper, "To Gustav Bergmann: A Humble Petition and Advice" in M.S.Gram and E.D.Klemke, eds. The Ontological Turn: Studies in the Philosophy of Gustav Bergmann (University of Iowa Press, 1974, pp. 65-85)

I want to focus on Veatch's comparison of Aristotle and Bergmann on the issue of prime matter/bare particulars. As Veatch correctly observes, "all of the specific functions which bare particulars perform in Bergmannian ontology are the very same functions as are performed by matter in Aristotle . . . ." (81) What are these functions?

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Striving

Striving, we find what we can accomplish. But we also experience our limits, some of which are not merely ours but humanity's. Both upshots of striving are salutary. Learning what we can and cannot do we learn the extent of our powers and thereby who and what we are. Self-knowledge is good. So strive. 

Hic Rhodus, Hic Salta

"Here is Rhodes, jump here."  From Aesop's Fables #209, "The Boastful Athlete."  A man who had been off in foreign lands, returns home.  He brags of his exploits.  He claims that in Rhodes he made a long jump the likes of which had never been seen.  A skeptical bystander calls him on his boast:  Here's your Rhodes, jump here!

The moral?  Put your money where your mouth is.  Don't talk about it, do it!

This post is a stub.  Perhaps an erudite classicist such as Mike Gilleland could complete it.  He would have to do at least the following:  dig up all the ancient sources in Greek and Latin; trace the saying in Erasmus and Goethe; comment on Hegel's variation on the saying in the Vorrede zur Philosophie des Rechts, explaining why he has saltus for salta; find and comment on Marx's comment on Hegel's employment of the saying.

Finally, if Alan Rhoda were to rename his cleverly titled weblog Alanyzer — and I'm not saying he should — he might consider Hic Rhoda, Hic Salta.  He is a very tall man; I'm 6' 1'' and had to look up to see his face when I met him in Las Vegas some years back.  To jump over him would be quite a feat.

Walt Stack Remembered

Waltstack I find myself these days as enthusiastic about running as I was in the mid-'70s when I first took up the noble sport.  It is perhaps the proximity of the Grim Reaper, his sharp scythe glistening in the Arizona sunshine, that has imparted a spring to my step and a glide to my stride.  With the ultimate Repo Man on my tail and on my trail, I am out to grab for all the gusto there is while the sun shines.  I'm fixin' to make like Walt Stack who is gone but not forgotten.  How do you stack up?

The guy was a Commie, but I can forgive him that.  Running covers a multitude of sins.

What is Philosophy? Some Contemporary Views

The question about the nature of philosophy is itself a philosophical question:  metaphilosophy is a branch of philosophy.  And so one expects and finds a variety of competing answers.  Here are some.  I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the quotations.  My comments are in blue.  I conclude with a brief statement of my own.

Philosophy is thinking in slow motion. It breaks down, describes and assesses moves we ordinarily make at great speed – to do with our natural motivations and beliefs. It then becomes evident that alternatives are possible [John Campbell, Philosophers]

Nice as a characterization, but does not get the length of a definition.  You could say the same about physics.

One comes to philosophy already endowed with a stock of opinions. It is not the business of philosophy either to undermine or to justify these pre-existing opinions, to any great extent, but only to try to discover ways of expanding them into an orderly system.  It succeeds to the extent that (1) it is systematic, and (2) it respects those of our pre-philosophical opinions to which we are firmly attached. In so far as it does both better than any alternative we have thought of, we give it credence. [David Lewis, Counterfactuals]

Although I am a conservative across the board (socially, politically, fiscally, linguistically . . .), this characterization I find too conservative.  Like a good conservative, I am prepared to say that there is a presumption in favor of pre-existing opinions, but that it is a defeasible presumption.  Why shouldn't metaphysics be revisionary as opposed to descriptive, to allude to P. F. Strawson's old distinction?  (See the opening sentences of Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics, Methuen, 1959.) Included in our stock of "pre-existing opinions" are our modal beliefs.  Must we uphold them at all costs?  Could it not be that there is no modality in reality, that modality is merely epistemic? And when one considers the absurd lengths to which David Lewis was driven "to expand into an orderly system" our modal opinions, then one could reasonably maintain that it would be better to jettison our ordinary modal opinions if the only suitable truthmakers for them are possible worlds conceived of as maximal mereological sums of concreta all equally real.

If one adopted Lewis's characterization, one would have to deny that F. H. Bradley was a philosopher.  For his was a revisionary project: he was not concerned to "expand into an orderly system" "our pre-existing opinions."  Quite the contrary: he was out to consign the whole lot of them to the realm of Appearance.  And it seems the question whether metaphysics should be descriptive or revisionary, a question which is itself philosophical,  would be ruled out if Lewis's characterization is accepted.

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Truthmaking and the Ontological Assay of Concrete Individuals

Could a concrete individual such as my man Peter function as the truthmaker of an accidental predication about him such as *Peter is hungry*?  Or must the truthmaker of such a truth be an entity with a proposition-like structure such as a concrete state of affairs or a trope?  Earlier posts have assumed and sometimes argued that Peter himself cannot make true any true accidental predications about him.  Alan Rhoda appears to disagree in a comment to an earlier post: "Unlike you, I don't find it 'obvious' that Peter cannot be the truthmaker of *Peter is hungry*. Or, rather, it's obvious if 'Peter' denotes a bare or thin particular . . . ."

So we need to take a few more steps into the truthmaking  problematic.  Whether or not Peter can function as the truthmaker of accidental predications about him depends on our 'ontological assay' (as Gustav Bergmann might have put it) of ordinary spatiotemporal particulars such as Peter. 

1.  I begin on an irenic note by granting to Alan that if 'Peter' denotes a bare or thin particular, then it is obvious that Peter cannot make true any accidental predications about him.  But 'Peter' in our sample sentence does not denote a bare or thin particular; it denotes  Peter 'clothed' in his intrinsic (nonrelational) properties, whether accidental or essential.

2.  I now argue that even if we take Peter together with his properties he cannot be the truthmaker of *Peter is hungry,* *Peter is sunburned,* etc.  It is widely agreed that if T makes true *p,* then *T exists* entails **p* is true.**  (As before, asterisks around an indicative sentence form a name of the Fregean proposition expressed by the sentence.) Truthmaking is a form of broadly logical necessitation.  So if Peter by himself is the truthmaker of *Peter is sunburned,* then in every possible world in which Peter exists, the proposition will be true.  But surely this proposition is not true in every world in which Peter exists:  being sunburned is an accidental property of Peter.  Therefore, Peter by himself is not the truthmaker of such accidental propositions as *Peter is sunburned.*

3.  So even if we take Peter together with all his intrinsic properties, he still cannot function as truthmaker of *Peter is sunburned,* etc. He cannot, because there are possible worlds in which Peter exists, but *Peter is F* (where 'F' picks out an accidental property) is false.  But what if we 'assay' Peter as a concrete state of affairs (not to be confused with a Chisholmian-Plantingian abstract state of affairs) along the lines of a Bergmannian or Armstrongian ontology?  Take the conjunction of all of Peter's intrinsic properties and call that conjunction K.  What is left over is the individuating element in Peter, call it a.  We can then think of Peter as the state of affairs or fact of a's being K. Included within this maximal state of affairs are various submaximal states of affairs such as a's being F, where 'F' picks out an accidental property.  We can then say that Peter, as a concrete maximal state of affairs which includes the submaximal state of affairs of Peter's being sunburned, is the truthmaker of *Peter is sunburned.*

This, indeed, is my 'official' line, the line I took in my book on existence.  For reasons I can't go into now, I assayed ordinary particulars are concrete states of affairs.  But many philosophers will balk at this.  Barry Miller, for instance, if I rightly recall, told me that it is a category mistake to think of ordinary particulars as states of affairs.  I see his point, but it is hardly compelling.  Be that as it may, I have been assuming in these posts on truthmaking that ordinary particulars are not states of affairs.

And so I say to Alan Rhoda, if ordinary particulars are not concrete states of affairs, then such particulars, by themselves, cannot function as truthmakers for accidental predications about them.  The reason was given above in #2.  Only if an ordinary particular or concrete individual has a proposition-like structure, only if it is a concrete state of affairs or something like one, can it function as truthmaker of accidental predications about it.

4.  To sum up.  Rhoda and I agree that bare or thin particulars cannot serve as truthmakers for accidental predications.  And it may be that we are also in agreement if he goes along with the Bergmannian-Armstrongian ontological assay of ordinary spatiotemporal particulars as concrete states of affairs.  But I do disagree with him if he thinks that ordinary particulars, not so assayed, can function as truthmakers of accidental predications.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Johnny Cash

Personal Jesus.  Hurt.  The Mercy Seat.  I See a Darkness.  If you can relate to these powerful songs, then you can appreciate the superficiality and ignorance of the human heart of the New Atheism.  Only the spiritually moribund could put up a poster like this:

Busatheist

Ed Feser, yesterday, hit upon a brilliant and true insight: "The New Atheist is none other than Nietzsche’s Last Man in rationalist drag."

There may or may not be a God.  But "Stop worrying and enjoy life"  is exactly the sort of thing  Nietzsche's  Last Man would say.  I think Feser would agree that the poster to the left supports his insight.

The One Chess Book a Person Should Have

Joe from New York writes:

I have a question about chess. Would you be kind enough to tell me in your opinion what is the one chess book a person should have? What is your favorite? I am presently reading [Irving Chervev's]
Logical Chess Move by Move.

I am a patzer.

I think your blog is great.

Thanks for writing, Joe, and for the kind words. I too am a patzer, though on a really good day I am a GP, a Grandpatzer. Although there is no one book that one simply must have, for patzers I recommend Georges Renaud and Victor Kahn, The Art of the Checkmate. This is a delightful old book written by a couple of French masters. It first appeared in English translation in 1953 and was reprinted by Dover Press in 1962. I believe it was International Master Calvin Blocker who recommended it to me. I am very fond of Dover paperbacks, which are inexpensive and made to last a lifetime. This particular volume is in descriptive notation which fact should gladden the heart of Ed Yetman. It is also full of Romantic old games, wild and swashbuckling, of the sort from which assiduous patzers can learn tactics.

Tactic, tactic, tactics.  As important in chess as location, location, location in real estate.

The book is a study of the basic mating patterns. Since checkmate is the object of the game, a thorough study of the basic mates is a logical place to begin the systematic study of chess. That should be followed by work on tactics. The much-maligned Fred Reinfeld is useful here. After that, openings and endings. But the typical patzer — and I'm no exception to this rule — spends an inordinate amount of time swotting up openings. But what is the good of achieving a favorable middlegame position if one doesn't know what to do with it?  To turn a favorable position into a win you need to know the basic mates, tactics, and at least the rudiments of endgame technique.

There is a lot to learn, and one can and should ask whether it is worth the effort.  But patzers like us are unlikely to have our lives derailed by chess.  We can sport with Caissa and her charms without too much harm.  It is the very strong players, who yet fall short of the highest level, who run the greatest risk.  Chess sucks them in then leaves them high and dry.  The goddess Caissa becomes the bitch Impecunia.  IM Blocker is one example among many. 

 

Good Friday: At the Mercy of a Little Piece of Iron

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, tr. Craufurd, Routledge 1995, p. 75:

The infinite which is in man is at the mercy of a little piece of  iron; such is the human condition; space and time are the cause of  it. It is impossible to handle this piece of iron without suddenly reducing the infinite which is in man to a point on the pointed  part, a point on the handle, at the cost of a harrowing pain. The  whole being is stricken in the instant; there is no place left for God, even in the case of Christ, where the thought of God is not  more at least [at last?] than that of privation. This stage has to  be reached if there is to be incarnation. The whole being becomes privation of God: how can we go beyond? After that there is only the resurrection. To reach this stage the cold touch of naked iron  is necessary.

'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' There we have the real   proof that Christianity is something divine. (p. 79)

People Are What They Are . . .

 . . . and they don't change. No doubt there are exceptions. Few and far between, they prove the rule.  As a rule of thumb, one most useful  in the art of living, assume that Schopenhauer was right in his doctrine of the unalterability of character. Never enter into an important relationship with a person, marriage for example, with the thought that you will change the person to your liking. That is highly unlikely. What will happen is that you will induce a change in yourself, one in the direction of frustration and disappointment.