Month: May 2010

What Is the Appeal of Ordinary Language Philosophy?

One source of its appeal is that it reinstates much of what was ruled out as cognitively meaningless by logical positivism but without rehabilitating the commitments of old-time metaphysics. Permit me to explain. (My ruminations are in part inspired by Ernest Gellner, to give credit where credit is due.) 

Crudely put, as befits a crude philosophy, logical positivism is just Hume warmed over. The LPs take his famous two-pronged fork and sharpen the tines. Hume spoke of relations of ideas and matters of fact, and consigned to the flames anything thing that was not one or the other. In the Treatise of Human Nature, he spoke of "school metaphysics and divinity" as deserving of such rude treatment. Since Hume's day, old-time metaphysics and theology have had a forking hard time of it.

The LPs spoke of two disjoint classes of statements and maintained that every cognitively meaningful statement must be a member of the one or the other. The one class contains the truths of logic and mathematics and such analytic statements as 'Every cygnet is a swan' all interpreted as true by convention. The other class consists of statements empirically verifiable in principle. Any statement not in one of these two disjoint classes is adjudged by the LPs to be cognitive meaningless. Thus the aesthetic statement, 'The adagio movement of Beethoven's Ninth exceeds in beauty anything Bruckner wrote' is by their lights not false, but cognitively meaningless, though they generously grant it some purely subjective emotive meaning. And the same goes for the characteristic statements one finds in theology, metaphysics, and ethics. Such statements are not false, but meaningless, i.e., neither true nor false.

Imagine a debate between a Muslim and a Christian. Muslim: "God is one! There is no god but God (Allah)!" Christian: "God is triune (three-in-one)." For an LP, the debate is meaningless since theological assertion and counter-assertion are meaningless. The assertions are neither analytic nor empirically verifiable. Or consider a debate between two Christians. They are both Trinitarians: there is one God in three divine Persons. But the man from Rome maintains that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son (filioque) while the man from Constantinople maintains that the Holy Ghost proceeds directly from the Father. For an LP, this debate about the procession of Persons is cognitively meaningless. I chose these examples to show how attractive LP is. For many of you will be inclined to think of these debates as in some sense meaningless. "How could one know one way or the other?" Many of you will be inclined to want to tie meaningfulness to empirical verifiability. Nevertheless, Logical Positivism  is untenable. But that is not my present point.

My present point concerns the appeal of OLP. The OL boys weren't out to resurrect metaphysics. They took on board the anti-metaphysical animus of the LPs. But their approach allowed the salvaging of ways of talking that the LPs had no interest in preserving. Religious language is a key example. So what I am contending is that one source of the appeal of OL philosophy was that it allowed religious talk and thus religion itself to be saved from the forking accusation of meaninglessness. But it did this without crediting old-time metaphysics. You can see why that would appeal to a lot of people. To explain this properly would take a lot of scribbling.

But the central idea is that religion is a form of life and a language game, a self-contained language game that needs no justification ab extra. Hence it needs no justification from metaphysics or philosophy generally. It is in order as it is — to use a characteristically Wittgensteinian turn of phrase. By the same token, religion cannot be attacked from the side of philosophy. It is an island of meaning unto itself, and is insofar forth insulated from criticism. (L. insula, ae = island.) Nor can it come into conflict with science or be debunked by science. Within the religious language game there are valid and invalid moves, things it is correct and incorrect to say; but the langauge game itself is neither correct nor incorrect. It just is. Religion is a groundless system of belief, a system of belief that neither needs nor is capable of justification. Since I reject both LP and OLP, I am not endorsing this view of religion. I am merely explaining one of the reasons why people are attracted to OLP: it allows them to practice a religion while ignoring both the threat from traditional philosophy (which demands the justification of key religious tenets) and the the threat of positivism which makes positive science the ultimate arbiter of reality.

This post truncates a larger discussion to be found in What is Right and What is Wrong in Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Religion.

Wittgenstein on Time and Flux

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Remarks, ed. Rush Rhees, trs. Hargreaves and White, Chicago 1975, p. 83:

52. It's strange that in ordinary life we are not troubled by the feeling that the phenomenon is slipping away from us, the constant flux of appearance, but only when we philosophize. This indicates that what is in question here is an idea suggested by a misapplication of our language. 

This indicates to me that Wittgenstein lacked a metaphysical sensibility. It is precisely in ordinary life, and prior to his occupation with technical metaphysics, that the metaphysician feels and is saddened by the transitoriness of things, the flux of phenomena, the passage of time. That feeling is part of what sets him on the path of technical metaphysics in the first place. It is the fundamental sense of the transience and unreality of this world that disposes him to take seriously metaphysical writings when he first encounters them. And it is the lack of this sense in G. E. Moore and in Wittgenstein which disposes them to be puzzled by the writings of metaphysicians like Bradley and McTaggart and to set out to debunk them either by defending common sense (as if the metaphysician were simply denying it) or by bringing us back to ordinary language used in ordinary ways.

Wittgenstein says that "only when we philosophize" are we troubled by the flux of phenomena. Not only is this plainly false, it suggests that there is something aberrant rather than natural about philosophizing, as if philosophy were a disease of cognition needing treatment rather than refutation. I simply deny this.  If there is a cognitive defect, it is in those who fail to perceive the relative unreality of the transient.

Philosophy arises quite naturally in people of a reflective disposition who have a sense of the relative unreality, the ontological non-ultimacy, of the world of time and change. Philosophy is not a disease, but a response to the inherent questionableness of the world and our lives in it.   In the Theaetetus, Plato speaks of wonder as the "feeling of the philosopher." This wonder is not mere puzzlement induced by linguistic confusion but a questioning elicited by the nature of things, a questioning that is a transcending of this world, a transcending that issues in attempts to put into language the essence of the world.

It is the possibility of this transcending that Wittgenstein questions. He questions it by questioning the meaningfulness of the sorts of extended uses of ordinary words that the metaphysician employs. The metaphysician takes a word like 'present' from ordinary usage and then says something extraordinary like, 'The present alone is real,' or 'Only the present experience has reality.' Wittgenstein objects to this with a sort of Contrast Argument:

We are tempted to say: only the experience of the present moment has reality. And then the first reply must be: As opposed to what? Does it imply that I didn't get up this morning? (For if so, it would be dubious.) But this is not what we mean. Does it mean that an event that I'm not remembering at this instant didn't occur? Not that either. (85)

Wittgenstein's point is that when one says that the present alone is real, one is using 'present' in an extended sense, one in which it no longer contrasts with 'past' and 'future.' He seems to think that the presentist metaphysician is saying something that conflicts with such obvious facts as that one got up in the morning. But here is where Wittgenstein's Contrast Argument becomes hard to credit. Wittgenstein's mistake is to think that when the presentist, saying that the present alone is real, implies that the past is unreal, he is implying that the past is nothing at all in a way that would render it false that we got up this morning. But of course the presentist does not deny the gross facts; what he does is reinterpret them. His point is something like this: the reality of the past is relative to, or derivative from, the (absolute) reality of the present.

The Elusive Assertoric Component

William of Woking comments:

 Consider again

(1) Tom runs

(2) that Tom runs

(3) It is true that Tom runs

We have agreed that (1) and (3) are semantically identical. Yes, they express the very same propositional content or thought. They have the very same meaning (Sinn).   We also agree that (2) is verbally more complex than (1), likewise (3) is verbally more complex than (2). Yes, that's obvious. 

Do you agree that it logically follows that in some cases, increasing the verbal complexity can reduce the semantic complexity? I argue as follows. Either (2) is semantically more complex than (1) or less complex. If more complex, then it follows that (2) is semantically more complex than (3), because of the semantic identity we agreed. In which case it logically follows that increasing the verbal complexity (in the move from (2) to (3)) reduces the semantic complexity. Therefore &c. Or (2) is semantically less complex than (1). In which case it logically follows that increasing the verbal complexity (from (1) to (2)) reduces the semantic complexity.

Your argument seems correct: in some cases increasing verbal complexity reduces semantic complexity.  But what exactly do you mean by 'semantic complexity'?  Verbal complexity seems clear: if one expression contains more words than another, then the first expression is verbally more complex.  But you need to explain to us exactly what you mean when you say that one expression is semantically more complex than another.  For example, (1) and (2) are semantically distinct.  The first has a truth-value, the second doesn't.  But which is semantically more complex?  What criterion do you use to decide that?  I don't see that (2) is semantically more complex than (1).  If you think of 'that' as a sentential operator, then you can say that (2) results from (1) when 'that' operates upon (1).  But that is not to say that (2) is semantically more complex than (1).  For 'that' by itself carries no meaning.  It is syncategorematical as opposed to autocaregorematical to use some Medieval lingo.

If you agree to this, then I have a large part of what I propose, for nearly all your negative arguments rest on the observation that a token of the same verbal expression (i.e. with the same verbal complexity) may appear to lack the assertoric component that the other has. My reply here is that this is consistent with 'semantic subtraction' operators. The token of the expression (1) above ('Tom runs') is identical to the token included in the that-clause in (2).   No, they are distinct tokens; they are only type-identical. Yet (2) as a whole appears not to be an assertion. To be precise: (2), by itself, cannot be used to make an assertion.  You would argue, in general, that this is because there is no such thing as a semantic component of assertion. I reply, in general, that this is because of the 'negative effect' of the 'that operator'.

I'm afraid this is still very unclear.  Consider the sentence 'Tom sucks.'  Now consider two tokens of this sentence type.  (T1)  'Tom sucks' uttered by Tanya to express contempt for Tom. (T2) 'Tom sucks' uttered by Tony to describe how Tom is ingesting his cola.  From the point of view of grammar, both tokens are in the indicative mood.  But only one is being used to make an assertion.  Therefore, there cannot be an assertoric component in indicative sentence types.  And whether there is anything assertoric about a token depends on how it is used in a concrete situation.

In any case, what is the wider relevance of all this?  What's at stake here?  Where are you going with this?

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Sleep, Dreams, and Insomnia

Bobby Lewis, Tossin' and Turnin (1961).  Santo and Johnny, Sleepwalk (1959).  Joe Satriani's cover blows the original and every other cover clean out of the water. Masterful guitar work.  Bobby Edwards, You're the Reason I Don't Sleep at Night.  A country crossover hit from 1961.  Leadbelly, Where Did You Sleep Last Night (1944).  Here's hoping your Dream Lover doesn't leave you with Tears on Your Pillow. 

Cops: A Necessary Evil

I don't much like law enforcement agents (qua law enforcement agents) and I try to avoid contact with them, not because I violate laws or have something to hide, but because I understand human nature, and I understand how power corrupts people, not inevitably, but predictably. Cops and sheriffs are too often arrogant, disrespectful, and willing to overstep their lawful authority. But there is a species of varmint that I like even less than law enforcement agents: criminals and scofflaws. They are the scum of the earth. To clean up scum you need people who are willing to get dirty and who share some of the attributes of those they must apprehend and incarcerate. I mean such attributes as courage, cunning, some recklessness, with a dash of ruthlessness thrown in for good measure. Government and its law enforcement agencies are a necessary evil. That is not pessimism, but realism. There are anarchists and others who dream of a world in which good order arises spontaneously and coercive structures are unnecessary. I want these anarchists and others to be able to dream on in peace. For that very reason, I reject their dangerous utopianism.

Assertion Again

The enigmatic William of Woking e-mails from London:

Hardly a week passes by without my pondering over your objection to my position on assertion.  Would it help us if I try to clarify my position again?  And it would help me, if you clarified what your position is. My position is:

1. The semantics of a sentence is compositional, i.e. a sentence has a meaning, and the meaning has parts. (The semantic composition doesn't necessarily have to correspond to the verbal composition, although it often will).
 
This principle of the compositionality of meaning seems intuitively clear and unproblematic.  The meaning of a semantic whole is a function of  (is uniquely determined by) the meanings of its semantic parts. So far, so good.

2. There is a component of the meaning of the sentence which corresponds to assertion. By this, I mean that without this component, we no longer have a sentence, and by means of this anyone who grasps or understands this component will be correctly taken to be stating what is capable of truth and falsity.

By a sentence you mean a declarative sentence.  Such sentences are either true or false.  You speak of a component of meaning that corresponds to assertion, a component without which a sentence would not be a sentence.  This I don't understand.  Which  component of 'Tom is tall' corresponds to assertion?  It can't be 'Tom' or 'tall.'  And it can't be 'is' because 'is' is a syntactic, not a semantic, component. 

You may also be conflating the question of what makes a sentence assertible and the question of what makes a sentence a sentence as a opposed to a set, sum, or list of its parts.  E.g, what distinguishes the sentence 'Tom runs' (which is either true or false) from the list: Tom, runs (which is neither true nor false)?

If I am given 'Tom is tall' and 'Is Tom tall?' I will classify the first as declarative (indicative) and the second as interrogative.  The difference in grammatical mood is indicated by word order and presence/absence of the question mark.  But there is no one component in 'Tom is tall' that makes it indicative.  So I honestly don't know what you are claiming by (2).

Which of these do you disagree with? Which of them needs further clarification? I suspect you don't agree, for reasons you have given before, namely that the very same sentence can be uttered without the speaker being understood to be stating something true or false (e.g. if the speaker winks, or visibly crosses their fingers, or utters the sentence in an explicitly arch or ironic way).

Right.  I made the point that one can utter an indicative sentence and not make an assertion.   Suppose Johnny is picking his nose in public, and Mommy says to Johnny, 'We don't do that.' Mommy utters an indicative sentence, and yet does not make an assertion; she issues a command.  An assertion is either true or false, a command is neither.  If Johnny is a smartass, he might continue picking his nose while saying to his mother, 'You didn't tell me to cease and desist from rhinotillexomania, you merely stated that people like us don't generally engage in it.'  You could call that the smartass exploitation of the difference between sentence meaning and speaker's meaning.

I conclude that what makes a sentence indicative and what makes it an assertion are two different things.  Indicativity pertains to a sentence-type by itself apart from its tokening by a speaker.  Assertion, however, is a speech act and belongs to pragmatics.  Furthermore, I do not see that the indicativity of a sentence is signaled by some one separable component of it.  Which proper part of 'Tom runs' makes it indcative?  No proper part. 

A second example.  'Obama sucks' is an indicative sentence.  But a tokening of this sentence type will not typically express a proposition or convey an assertion; it will typically be used to express dislike or contempt.  So again, whatever it is that make a sentence indicative is different from whatever it is that makes it an assertion.

You have also objected that assertion 'is an act', but I have never clearly understood this objection. I agree that uttering a sentence is an act. But semantics i.e. meaning cannot exist without signs, which are physical and tangible tokens for the thoughts and concepts we want to express. Nor can we express our thoughts (which are personal and subjective events) without the signs. So even if assertion is an act (of producing sign-tokens), that is not inconsistent with what I am claiming. What you need to show is that no physical or verbal or written sign corresponds to assertion. (If that is your objection, but I don't really understand it, as I say).

My point was that assertion is a speech act that belongs within pragmatics, not semantics or syntactics.  Perhaps you will grant me that.  What you are looking for, apparently, is a part of a sentence that makes it an assertion.  But whether or not a sentence is an assertion depends on how it is used in a concrete situation.

Marxist Utopianism Illustrated by a Passage from The German Ideology

Here is a famous passage from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (ed. C. J. Arthur, New York: International Publishers, 1970, p. 53):

. . . as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.  

With all due respect to Dennis Prager, Marx did not envisage a society in which people do no work, but one in which their work was non-alienating and fulfilling.  If you have ever worked a factory job where you are required to perfom a mindless repetitive task for low wages for eight or more hours per day, then you should be able to sympathize somewhat with Marx.  But the sympathy is not likely to survive a clear recogntion of the absurdity of what Marx is proposing above. 

First of all, it is is silly to say that "each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes."  Could Saul Kripke have become a diplomat or a chaffeur or an auto mechanic if he wished?  PeeWee Herman a furniture mover or Pope?  Woody Allen a bronco-buster?  Evel Knievel a neurosurgeon?  And if Marx has actually done any 'cattle rearing,' he would have soon discovered that he couldn't be successful at it if he did it once in a while when he wasn't in the mood for hunting, fishing, or writing Das Kapital.

Utopian, reality-denying nonsense.  Dangerous, murderous  nonsense.  Incoherence: dictatorship of the proletariat, classless society, worker's paradise.  Cuba?  North Korea?  Communist China?  Dictatorship of the dictator (Stalin, Mao, Fidel . . .).  Classlessness by reduction of all to one class, that of the impoverished and oppressed.

Thanks to the Left: Balkanization, Tribalism, Civil War

For more than two centuries, individuals with diverse backgrounds have come together to form a national ‘melting pot’ and harmonious society sustained by allegiance to the country and its founding principles. But today’s open-ended mass migration, coupled with the destructive influences of biculturalism, multiculturalism, bilingualism, multilingualism, dual citizenship, and affirmative action, have combined to form the building blocks of a different kind of society—where aliens are taught to hold tightly to their former cultures and languages, balkanization grows, antagonism and conflict are aroused, and victimhood is claimed at perceived slights. If a nation does not show and teach respect for its own identity, principles, and institutions, that corrosive attitude is conveyed to the rest of the world, including newly arriving aliens. And if this is unchecked, the nation will ultimately cease to exist.
Mark Levin, Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, (New York: Threshold Editions, 2009), pp. 160-161.  Here.

Presentism and Existence-Entailing Relations: An Aporetic Tetrad

It is plausibly maintained that all relations are existence-entailing. To illustrate from the dyadic case: if R relates a and b, then both a and b exist.   A relation cannot hold unless the things between which or among which it holds all exist.  A weaker, and hence even more plausible, claim is that all relations are existence-symmetric: if R relates a and b, then either both relata exist or both do not exist. Both the stronger and the weaker claims rule out the possibility of a relation that relates an existent and a nonexistent. (So if Cerberus is eating my cat, then Cerberus exists. And if I am thinking about Cerberus, then, given that Cerberus does not exist, my thinking does not relate me to Cerberus.  This implies that  intentionality is not a relation, though it is, as Brentano says, relation-like (ein Relativliches).)

But if presentism is true, and only temporally present items exist, then no relation connects a present with a nonpresent item. This seems hard to accept for the following reason.

I ate lunch  an hour ago. So the event of my eating (E) is earlier than the event of my typing (T). How can it be true that E bears the earlier than relation to T, and T bears the later than relation to E, unless both E and T exist? But E is nonpresent. If presentism is true, then E does not exist.  And if E does not exist, then E does not stand in the earlier than relation to T.  If, on the other hand, there are events that exist but are nonpresent, then presentism is false.

How will the presentist respond? Since E does not exist on his view, while T does, and E is earlier than T, he must either (A) deny that all relations are existence-symmetric, or deny (B) that earlier than is a relation. He must either allow the possibility of genuine relations that connect nonexistents and existents, or deny that T stands in a temporal relation to E.

To  fully savor the problem we  cast it in the mold of an aporetic tetrad:

1. All relations are either existence-entailing or existence-symmetric.

2. Earlier than is a relation.

3. Presentism: only temporally present items exist.

4. Some events are earlier than others.

Each limb of the tetrad is exceedingly plausible.  But they cannot all be true:  any three, taken together, entail the negation of the remaining limb.  For example, the first three entail the negation of the fourth.  To solve the problem, we must reject one of the limbs.  Now (4) cannot be rejected because it is a datum.

Will you deny (1) and say that there are relations that are neither existence-entailing nor existence-symmetric?  I find this hard to swallow because of the following argument.  (a) Nothing can have properties unless it exists.  Therefore (b) nothing can have relational properties unless it exists. (c) Every relation gives rise to relational properties:  if Rab, then a has the property of standing in R to b, and b has the property of standing in R to a.  Therefore, (d) if R relates a and b, then both a and b exist.

Will you deny (2) and say that earlier than is not a relation?  What else could it be?

Will you deny presentism and say that that both present and nonpresent items exist?  Since it is obvious that present and nonpresent items cannot exist in the present-tense sense of 'exists,'  the suggestion has to be that present and nonpresent (past or future) items exist in a tenseless sense of 'exist.'  But what exactly does this mean?

The problem is genuine, but there appears to be no good solution, no solution that does not involve its own difficulties.

Guns in the Delusional World of the Leftist

Your typical leftist wants it to be illegal for a citizen to own  a gun for self-defence.  In recent news, an 80 year old Chicago man shot and killed an armed  home invader thereby defending himself, his elderly wife and his grandson.  Well done, old man,  a boon service to humanity.  The miscreant was a scumbag with a long rap sheet.  But in Chitown it is illegal to own a handgun!  That bespeaks a  serious paucity of common sense in the Windy City.  There ought not be any such law.  But since there is, it must be enforced.  Right?  In the topsy-turvy world of leftist 'thought,' one enables the criminal while penalizing the decent citizen.

Laws should be few in number, rational in content, clear and concise in formulation, enforceable, and enforced.  Laws should not be passed for 'feel good' purposes, to show that one is a bien-pensant 'caring' liberal.  All reasonable people abhor gun violence.  But the solution is not legislation that will be ignored by malefactors and serve only to hamstring the law-abiding.

Did Holder, Napolitano, Obama, et al. Lie When They Said They Hadn’t Read the Arizona Law?

J. O. e-mails:

 A caller on the Dennis Miller Show called in and said something very insightful I thought you would like. Miller was asking callers to call in about Eric Holder et al. not reading the Arizona Illegal Immigration law, and the caller said that he thought they HAD read it and were lying about not having read it. Why? Because there isn't anything in it that could possibly be unconstitutional. If there was, it would be plastered all over the news, the exact offending line. Of course they've read it, but by saying they haven't they can criticize it without actually having to show what is wrong with it.

I thought this was insightful, and so I shared it with you.

Now I hadn't thought of that, perhaps because I have more respect for these people (Attorney General Holder, et al.) than I should have.  But now that you mention it, the caller's supposition is very plausible.  How could they fail to have read it?  First of all, all three are legally trained.  Their reading comprehension extends to legalese, and they have staff members who could have summarized it for them.  Second, SB 1070 and the clarificatory  HB 2162 are very short as laws go and easily accessible to anyone with Internet access.  Third, one of them, Homeland Security 'czar' Janet Napolitano (not to be confused with the astute Judge Andrew Napolitano), is a former governor of Arizona, and one would think she would have a keen interest in any laws enacted there, especially laws that have a direct bearing on national security.  Or is Napolitano of Homeland Security unfazed by the possibility of terrorists entering the country via the southern border?

The more I think about it, the more preposterous it sounds for the Attorney General of the U. S. to show no interest in the content of a law when said law mirrors at the State level Federal immigration law.  Would he not want to check whether the law perhaps is inconsistent with Federal law?  How can he not have an interest in the content of a law that is being debated on the international stage?

The caller's surmise seems quite credible.  Why not lie, if it serves your purpose?  The purpose being to prevent anything serious being done about the problem of illegal immigration.  Bear in mind that, for the Left,  the end justifies the means, and 'bourgeois morality' be damned.