May 2010 – Page 4 – Maverick Philosopher

Arizona SB 1070: The Threat is Stronger than the Execution

Eine Drohung ist stärker als eine Ausführung is a saying often attributed to grandmaster Aron Nimzovich. (On the correctness of the attribution, chess aficionados will find interesting this piece by Edward Winter.) It occurred to me this morning that the maxim also applies to SB 1070, about which I have said quite a bit of late. (Scroll down.) The law doesn't go into effect until July 29th, and already illegals are leaving the state in significant numbers. See here, and here.

In the 1070 case, not only is the threat stronger than the execution, the perceived threat is stronger and far more effective than the real threat. But liberals, in their preternatural obtuseness, have only themselves to blame for this. By egregiously and willfully misrepresenting the law, by their hyperbole and hysteria, they are bringing about the very effect — the attrition of lawbreakers — that the framers of the law intended! Way to go!

Another thing I get a kick out of is the call to boycott, not merely the Grand Canyon State, but the Grand Effing Canyon herself. Don't these nimrods understand that it is a national park and that revenues lost will be lost, not to Arizona, but to the federal government that liberals want ever to expand? The fewer visitors to the Grand Canyon the better. More solitude for me and mine.

I'll bet the shade of old 'Cactus Ed' Abbey is having a good laugh over this.

Broadly Logical Modality

David Brightly has difficulty with the notion of broadly logical modality. Let me see if I can clarify this notion sufficiently to satisfy him. It might be best to begin with the notion of narrowly logical impossibility. I'll number my paragraphs so that David can tell me exactly where he disagrees or finds obscurity.

1. There are objects and states of affairs and propositions that can be known a priori to be impossible because they violate the Law of Non-Contradiction (LNC). Thus a plane figure that is both round and not round at the same time, in the same respect, and in the same sense of 'round,' is impossible, absolutely impossible, simply in virtue of its violation of LNC. I will say that such an object is narrowly logically (NL) impossible. Hereafter, to save keystrokes, I will not mention the 'same time, same respect, same sense' qualification which will be understood to be in force.

2. But what about a plane figure that is both round and square? Is it NL-impossible? No. For by logic alone one cannot know it to be impossible. One needs a supplementary premise, the necessary truth grounded in the meanings of 'round' and 'square' that nothing that is round is square. We say, therefore, that the round square is broadly logically (BL) impossible. It is not excluded from the realm of the possible by logic alone, which is purely formal, but by logic plus a 'material' truth, namely the necessary truth just mentioned.

3. If there are BL-impossible states of affairs such as There being a round square, then there are BL-necessary states of affairs such as There being no round square. Impossibility and necessity are interdefinable: a state of affairs is necessary iff its negation is impossible. It doesn't matter whether the modality is NL, BL, or nomological (physical). It is clear, then, that there are BL-impossible and BL-necessary states of affairs.

4. We can now introduce the term 'BL-noncontingent' to cover the BL-impossible and the BL-necessary.

5. What is not noncontingent is contingent. (Surprise!) The contingent is that which is possible but not necessary. Thus a contingent proposition is one that is possibly true but not necessarily true, and a contingent state of affairs is one that possibly obtains but does not necessarily obtain. We can also say that a contingent proposition is one that is possibly true and such that its negation is possibly true. The BL-contingent is therefore that which is BL-possible and such that its negation is BL-possible.

6. Whatever is NL or BL or nomologically impossible, is impossible period. If an object, state of affairs, or proposition is exckluded from the realm of possible being, possible obtaining, or possible truth by logic alone, logic plus necessary semantic truths, or the (BL-contingent) laws of nature, then that object, state of affairs or proposition is impossible, period or impossible simpliciter.

7. Now comes something interesting and important. The NL or BL or nomologically possible may or may not be possible, period. For example, it is NL-possible that there be a round square, but not possible, period. It is BL-possible that some man run a 2-minute mile but not possible, period. And it is nomologically possible that I run a 4-minute mile, but not possible period. (I.e., the (BL-contingent) laws of anatomy and physiology do not bar me from running a 4-minute mile; it is peculiarities not referred to by these laws that bar me. Alas, alack, there is no law of nature that names BV.)

8. What #7 implies is that NL, BL, and nomological possibility are not species or kinds of possibility. If they were kinds of possibility then every item that came under one of these heads would be possible simpliciter, which we have just seen is not the case. A linguistic way of putting the point is by saying that 'NL,' 'BL,' and 'nomological' are alienans as opposed to specifying adjectives: they shift or 'alienate' ('other') the sense of the noun they modify. From the fact that x is NL or BL or nomologically possible, it does not follow that x is possible. This contrasts with impossibility. From the fact that x is NL or BL or nomologically impossible, it does follow that x is impossible. Accordingly, 'NL,' 'BL,' and 'nomological' do not shift or alienate the sense of 'impossible.'

9. To appreciate the foregoing, you must not confuse senses and kinds. 'Sense' is a semantic term; 'kind' is ontological. From the fact that 'possible' has several senses, it does not follow that there are several species or kinds of possibility. For x to be possible it must satisfy NL, BL, and nomological constraints; but this is not to say that these terms refer to species or kinds of possibility.

The Right to Ridicule Religion

Mike Valle over at Fists in the Wind writes:

I support the absolute right of all of these people to ridicule religion all that they want. I don't think the government should fund any of it, but I do believe in this fundamental principle: The right to ridicule religious beliefs absolutely trumps the so-called "right" not to have one's religious beliefs ridiculed.

I basically agree with Mike's post. In particular, I agree that there is no 'right' not to have one's religious beliefs ridiculed, and I also agree that if one is going to violate people's beliefs in the manner of that 'artist' Andres Serrano then one ought to do it on one's own time and with one's own dime, as the saying goes. Adolescent purveyors of schlock who delight in offending the sensibilities of the 'bourgeoisie' or the 'booboisie' in H. L. Mencken's phrase have no right to taxpayer money. Dumb notions are rampant on the Left, and one of the dumbest is that a refusal of sponsorship amounts to censorship. This notion is beneath refutation, so I will say no more about it.

But I do have one minor bone to pick with Mike. He speaks of the right to ridicule religion as 'absolute.' I wonder what he means by this term. Does he mean that there are no conceivable circumstances in which the exercise of the right in question could not be justifiably limited or prevented? If that is what he means, then I disagree.

Consider property rights. Absolute? Are there no conceivable circumstances in which a man's right to property cannot be justifiably limited or infringed? Suppose I own half of Montana, and the federal government needs a few acres for a defense installation. It forces me to sell those acres at fair market value. I say that's a legitimate exercise of eminent domain. Or how about free speech? It is widely recognized that one cannot justifiably say just anything anywhere to anybody. The right to free speech is not the right to speech that incites violence in a situation in which an outbreak of violence can be reasonably expected to occur if the speech is delivered.

Same goes for the ridiculing of religion via speech, gestures, placards, and Serrano style 'art.' Suppose Marilyn Manson is burning Bibles on stage at some venue in Los Angeles near Biola. Some Biola students and there and are recognizable as such. Suppose the ridicule is ramped up to the point that the Christians in the audience are in danger of grave bodily harm. Then I say the right to ridicule meets its limit. But that is to say that the right is not absolute. It is relative to the circumstances.

Michael Scarpalanda on Arizona Senate Bill 1070

Craig M. Thompson writes:

I have enjoyed your commentary on the current situation in Arizona. I ran across an interesting article at The Witherspoon Institute on illegal immigration called Arizona, Congress, and the Immigration Mess. And I was hoping that you might comment on some of the points that he makes against SB 1070. Thanks for the consideration!

And thank your for alerting me to this article by Michael Scarpalanda, who holds the Gene and Elaine Edwards Family Chair in Law at the University of Oklahoma College of Law. Here are some comments.

The article begins unpromisingly by referring to "Arizona's draconian response" to the problem of illegal immigration. I must immediately protest. To refer to SB 1070 as "draconian" is an egregious misuse of language. One should not toss this word around without knowing what it means. It derives from the name of the first legislator of written laws of Athens, Greece. The harshness of Draco's code gave rise to the adjective 'draconian' which is properly applied only to laws and sanctions that are harsh, cruel, and unreasonable. Now there is nothing draconian about SB 1070 as you may verify for yourself by simply reading it. See also the fact sheet.

Turning now to the article, we read:

On April 30, 2010, Arizona’s governor signed SB 1070 into law, setting off waves of hyperbolic reactions and counter-reactions. Among other things, the law states that “for any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official or agency . . . where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made . . . to determine the immigration status of the person.” An alien unlawfully present can be taken into custody, charged with a state crime, and transferred to federal custody.

Several questions immediately arise. What is “lawful contact”? What constitutes “reasonable suspicion”? How will immigration status be determined?

Scarpalanda fails to mention that a week after Governor Brewer signed into law SB 1070, she signed into law House Bill 2162 which modifies and clarifies the language of 1070, in particular, the phrase "lawful contact." For more on this, together with quotations from 2162, see this post of mine.

When cavils like those that Scarpalanda raises are made it is pretty good evidence that one is dealing with a liberal who simply does not want immigration laws enforced. Not knowing anything about Scarpalanda, I cannot know whether this is true in his case. But in the vast majority of cases of liberal-leftist hyperventilation over 1070 it is spectacularly clear that one is dealing with open borders types who do not respect the rule of law except when it can be invoked to further the leftist agenda.

Although the law forbids using race as the sole determining factor in forming “reasonable suspicion,” the law will undoubtedly have a disproportionate impact on Arizona’s Hispanic population, including those who are United States citizens or lawful permanent residents. How could it not? Race, ethnicity, and accent will almost surely be factors in deciding whether to verify a person’s immigration or citizenship status.

Again, Scarpalanda ignores the 2162 modifications of 1070, in particular, this one: "A law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state may not solely consider race, color or national origin in implementing the requirements of this subsection except to the extent permitted by the United States or Arizona Constitution."

Scarpalanda is worried that the new law will have a "disproportionate impact on Arizona's Hispanic population." But how could it fail to? The majority of illegal aliens are Hispanic! Here we note the twisted logic of the Politically Correct. These people display an unthinking quota mentality: they think there is something unfair about a law if , when it is enforced, it affects more members of one group than another, or affects a group 'disproportionately.' But to think in this way is to show that one is morally obtuse. Vastly more men than women abuse their spouses. But it is surely no valid argument against laws prohibiting spousal abuse that they disproportionately 'target' men. Because more men commit this crime than women, it is to be expected that more men will be 'targeted.' Similarly, because more Hispanics than Asians or Blacks or Caucasians violate immigration laws in such southern border states as Arizona, it is to be expected that Hispanics will be disproportionately affected by the enforcement of immigration laws. It is only to be expected, and there is nothing unjust about it.

Despite the shoddiness of most of Scarpalanda's article (failure to link to the relevant documents, failure to take into consideration the House bill's modification of the Senate bill, use of the bad argument just exposed), his positive proposals near the end are actually quite reasonable: secure the borders to stem the tide of future illegals; provide for the legalization of the the large numbers of productive, non-criminal illegals already here; adopt a temporary worker program.

But Job One is to secure the border by building and maintaining a physical barrier that stretches from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. All the better heads agree on this.

Los Angeles on the Skids

"The mayor's residence is near Wilshire Boulevard, which is named for a socialist who made and lost several fortunes before dying destitute. The life of Henry Wilshire is a cautionary tale for this city where the climate is usually Mediterranean and the fiscal climate is now Greek." Read the rest of George Will's Trickle-Down Misery in L. A.

Spiritual Visibility

In the course of life one meets thousands. But one is visible to only one or two.

California is to the USA as . . .

. . . Greece is to the European Union. (Heard today on the Michael Medved show.)

Heidegger: Nazi Philosopher or Nazi Philosophy?

My old friend Horace Jeffery Hodges over at Gypsy Scholar comments on a New York Times book review by Adam Kirsch entitled The Jewish Question: Martin Heidegger. One of the books reviewed is Emmanuel Faye's The Introduction of Nazism Into Philosophy in Light of the Unpublished Seminars of 1933-1935 (translated by Michael B. Smith). Hodges writes,

I'd be interested to know what my philosopher friend Bill Vallicella thinks about this matter, for I can mostly just direct attention to a matter outside my expertise. Heidegger's personal culpability is beyond question, but the question concerning the culpability of his philosophy remains, and I think it an important one, intellectually, for Heidegger the philosopher is considered a major thinker of the 20th century, and his ideas have influenced the intellectual left, continental philosophy, literary criticism, theology, and many other fields.

I thank Jeff for the link and for his interest in my opinion. As it turns out, I had already commented on an earlier NYT article on Faye's book and so I will now repost with some additions and deletions my commentary on that earlier article. In so doing I will engage Hodges' question concerning whether culpability is as it were transmissible from a thinker to his thought.

I should begin by saying that I haven't yet read Emmanuel Faye's Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy. But if the earlier NYT article is to be trusted — a big 'if' — Faye's book

. . . calls on philosophy professors to treat Heidegger’s writings like hate speech. Libraries, too, should stop classifying Heidegger’s collected works (which have been sanitized and abridged by his family) as philosophy and instead include them under the history of Nazism. These measures would function as a warning label, like a skull-and-crossbones on a bottle of poison, to prevent the careless spread of his most odious ideas, which Mr. Faye lists as the exaltation of the state over the individual, the impossibility of morality, anti-humanism and racial purity.

If this is what Faye is saying, then his book is rubbish and ought to be ignored. Hate speech? That's a term leftists use for speech they don't like. No one in his right mind could see Heidegger's magnum opus, Sein und Zeit (Being and Time), published in 1927, as anything close to hate speech. The claim that it is is beneath refutation. Nor can his lectures and publications after 1933, when Hitler came to power, be dismissed in this way.

Heidegger undoubtedly inspires violent passions: he was a National Socialist, and what's worse, he never admitted he was wrong about his political alignment. But according to Michael Dummett, the great logician Gottlob Frege was an anti-Semite. (Dummett says this in either the preface or the introduction to Frege: The Philosophy of Language. ) Now will you ignore Frege's seminal teachings because of his alleged anti-Semitism? That would be senseless. And let's not forget that the later Jean-Paul Sartre was not just a Commie, but a Stalinist. Should Critique of Dialectical Reason be dismissed as hate speech? Should we deny Sartre the title 'philosopher' and re-classify him as a Commie ideologue? Of course not. And please no double standard. Why is being a Nazi worse than being a Stalinist? Why is murdering people because of their ethnic affiliation worse than murdering people because of their class affiliation?

You have two highly influential philosophers. One aligns himself politically with the mass murderer Hitler, the other with the mass murderer Stalin. That is extremely interesting, and no doubt troubling, but in the end it is truth that we philosophers are after, and in pursuit of it we should leave no stone unturned: we should examine all ideas in order to arrive as closely as we can to the truth. All ideas, no matter what they are, whether they come from a Black Forest ski hut or a Parisian coffee house, or the syphilitic brain of a lonely German philologist. Haul them one and all before the tribunal of Reason and question them in the full light of day. To understand the content of the ideas it may be necessary to examine the men and women behind them. But once a philosopher's propositions have been clearly set forth, the question of their truth or falsity is logically independent of their psychological, or sociological, or other, origin. To think otherwise is to commit the Genetic Fallacy.

Sartre claimed that man has no nature, that "existence precedes essence." He got the idea from Heidegger's Sein und Zeit, p. 42: Das 'Wesen' des Daseins liegt in seiner Existenz. It is an interesting and influential idea. What exactly does it mean? What does it entail? What does it exclude? What considerations can be adduced in support of it? Questions like these are what a real philosopher pursues. He doesn't waste all his time poking into the all-too-human philosopher's dirty laundry in the manner of Faye and Romano. Are people in this Age of Celebrity incapable of focusing on ideas?

And then there is Nietzsche. If the Gesamtausgabe of Heidegger ought to be marked with a skull-and-crossbones, then a fortiori for the Gesammelte Schriften of Nietzsche. There are dangerous ideas in Nietzsche. See my post Nietzsche and National Socialism. Indeed, Nietzsche's ideas are far more dangerous than Heidegger's. Should we burn Nietzsche's books and brand The Antichrist as hate speech? Stupid!

The Nazis burned books and the Roman Catholic Church had an index librorum prohibitorum. Now I don't deny that certain impressionable people need to be protected from certain odious influences. But Heidegger writings are no more 'hate speech' (whatever that is) than Nietzsche's writings are, and they don't belong on any latter-day leftist's index librorum prohibitorum. Are they both philosophers? Of course. Are they on a par with Plato and Kant? Not by a long shot! Are their ideas worth discussing? I should think so: they go wrong in interesting ways. Just like Wittgenstein and many others.

According to Carlin Romano in "Heil Heidegger!"

Faye's leitmotif throughout is that Heidegger, from his earliest writings, drew on reactionary ideas in early-20th-century Germany to absolutely exalt the state and the Volk over the individual, making Nazism and its Blut und Boden ("Blood and Soil") rhetoric a perfect fit. Heidegger's Nazism, he writes, "is much worse than has so far been known." (Exactly how bad remains unclear because the Heidegger family still restricts access to his private papers.)

From his earliest writings? Absurdly false. Heidegger's dissertation was on psychologism in logic, and his Habilitationschrift was on Duns Scotus. No exaltation of the State or Blut und Boden rhetoric in those works. Trust me, I've read them. Have Faye and Romano?

One more quotation from Romano: "The "reality of Nazism," asserts Faye, inspired Heidegger's works "in their entirety and nourished them at the root level." That is an absurd claim. The ideas in Being and Time were worked out in the 1920s, long before Hitler came to power in '33, and are a highly original blend of themes from Kierkegaard's existentialism, Dilthey's Lebensphilosophie, Husserl's Phenomenology, Kantian and ne0-Kantian transcendental philosophy, and Aristotelian-scholastic ontological concerns about the manifold senses of 'being.' There is no Nazism there. The rumblings of Nazi ideology came later in such works as Introduction to Metaphysics (1935). But even in these works from the '30s on, what is really going on is a working out of Heidegger's philosophical problematic concerning Being. The notion that Heidegger's work is primarily an expression of Nazism is delusional and not worth discussing.

So why did I discuss it?

God: Necessary or Noncontingent?

Many theists in the tradition of Anselm and Aquinas define God as a necessary being. But if God is a necessary being, then he cannot not exist: he exists in all broadly-logically possible worlds. The actual world is of course one of these worlds. So it would seem to follow from the very definition of God favored by Anselmians that God exists. But surely the existence of God cannot be fallout from a mere definition!

I have hammered the Objectivists (Randians) for their terminological mischief as when they rig up 'existence' in such a way that the nonexistence of the supernatural is achieved by terminological fiat. So doesn't fairness demand that I hammer the Anselmians equally? (This is one way of attaching sense to Nietzsche's notion of philosophizing with a hammer, although it is not what he had in mind.)

The trouble with defining God as a necessary being is that 'necessary being' conflates modal status and existence. For any item we ought to distinguish its modal status (whether necessary, impossible, or contingent) from its existence or nonexistence.

The concept of God as "that than which no greater can be conceived" is the concept of a being that exists in every possible world if it exists in any world. But from this one cannot validly infer that God exists. For it might be (it is epistemically possible that) God exists in no world, in which case he would be impossible. God is either necessary or impossible: that was Anselm's great insight. He cannot be a contingent being.

If we want one word to express this disjunctive property of being either necessary or impossible, that word is 'noncontingent.' So we should not say that God is a necessary being. We should say that he is a noncontingent being.

Companion post: Necessary, Contingent, Impossible: A Note on Nicolai Hartmann

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Torch Songs

"A torch song is a sentimental love song, typically one in which the singer laments an unrequited or lost love, where one party is either oblivious to the existence of the other, or where one party has moved on." (Wikipedia) Sarah Vaughn, Broken Hearted Melody. Timi Yuro, Hurt. Billie Holliday, The Very Thought of You. Roy Orbison, In Dreams. Peggy Lee, Oh You Crazy Moon. Ketty Lester, Love Letters. Etta James, At Last. Lenny Welch, Since I Fell For You.

Conservatives Versus Libertarians on Immigration

Victor Reppert thinks that a conservative case can be made against immigration restriction but cites a libertarian article in support of his contention. But as I see it, it is important to distinguish carefully between conservative and libertarian positions on this and other issues, despite several important points of agreement. Pace Reppert, no conservative who understands his position can support open borders or tolerate the elision of the distinction between legal and illegal immigration. There are no conservative arguments for open borders. But let's turn now to the article in question. Here are some excerpts:

. . . the false dichotomy between civil and economic liberties. Both incorrectly bifurcated forms of freedom are rooted in the same set of property rights, first and foremost in one’s own person and, by extension, in the tangible property one acquires justly through homesteading, gifts and honest market transactions. If Big Brother tries to comprehensively regulate immigration, he can smash economic freedom of association. And if the state has the power to oversee our economic lives, our personal freedom will always suffer in the process.

This is the type of excessive rhetoric that libertarians are known for. Immigration laws obviously limit economic freedom of association, but to write that they "smash" it is to suggest that the limitation is some pure power move on the part of "Big Brother" without reason or justification. But there are a number of solid reasons for border control none of which is so much as mentioned in the article. I sketch some of them in Immigration Legal and Illegal. And what exactly is wrong with the distinction between civil and economic liberties? The word 'civil' derives from the Latin civis, civis, citizen and civitas, civitatis, state, citizenship. So I hope I will be forgiven for asking how a person could have civil liberties apart from his membership in some state or other, and how a person who has civil liberties in a state of which he is a citizen can have any civil liberties in a state of which he is not a citizen. As an American citizen I have the civil right to the presumption of innocence. But I don't have that right when I head south of the border. I can see how economic liberties are grounded in the universal right to life, a right that does not derive from membership in any polis, civitas, Staat, state. But civil rights and liberties are state-specific. The right to vote is a civil right, but Mexicans don't have the right to vote in American elections any more than Americans have the right to vote in Mexican elections. There is no universal right to vote wherever one happens to be.

This also is a good time to question the entire idea of the national government trying to “seal the borders,” pick winners and losers among immigrants, decide who gets all the welfare benefits of being a legal immigrant and who is not even allowed into our golden door. Invariably, when the federal government imposes its way on immigration, we get some immigrants who come in with legal sanction and quickly become dependents of the U.S. government—whereas illegals are probably not net beneficiaries of the welfare state, legal immigrants might very well be.

I'm sorry, but this is hopelessly wrongheaded. Since the USA is a welfare state and under ObamaCare about to become even more of one, it is obviously suicidal for purely fiscal reasons alone to open the borders. Who would not want to come to this great prosperous nation of ours? Do I really need to spell this out? Only if the libertarians got their way and succeeded in shrinking the government down to 'night watchman' functions (the Lockean triad: protection of life, liberty, and property), would this fiscal objection to open borders be removed. But obviously this shrink-down is not going to happen. Given that the USA is a welfare state and will remain one — the only real question being how much of one — it is all the more necessary to control entry into the country.

Since conservatives often say our rights come not from the government but from God and the nature of man, it is not for the government to decide whether someone should have the right to live here or not—it is up to individuals and communities, which obviously are able to sustain a fair number of illegals.

This is very shoddy reasoning. Conservatives maintain that there are certain natural unalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the right to pursue happiness (which is not the right to be or be made happy). These natural rights are not granted by governments but secured by legitimate governments. They are rights that one has irrespective of one's being a citizen of a state. But it does not follow that every right that one has one one has irrespective of citizenship. My right to vote is not a right to vote anywhere. When I lived in Germany, Austria, and Turkey, I did not have the right to vote in those countries, nor should I have had that right. Just as I don't have the right to vote anywhere, I don't have the right to live anywhere or travel anywhere. When I lived in Turkey I could not stand on my natural right to live in Turkey: there is no such right. I had to apply for a visa and be granted permission to live there for a stated period of time after I had paid a fee for the privilege. Now you might not want to call living in Turkey a 'privilege,' but it is surely not a natural right that everyone has just in virtue of being a human being.

The author says that communities have a right to decide who shall live in them. But a community is a political entity, a state writ small, and what goes for states writ small goes for states writ large.

. . . constitutionalists in particular should question the very notion that the feds have legal authority to crack down on the border, since immigration is not an Article I, Section 8 authority of Congress. Conservatives especially should follow Reagan’s example and embrace immigration amnesty.

This is just false. "Congress shall have the power to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization . . . ." (Article I, Section 8) As for Reagan's example, is this guy suggesting that conservatives should follow Reagan's example even in matters on which he acted foolishly or not like a conservative? Come on! Amnesty for those illegals already here and established may well be unavoidable. But this is separate form the question whether the border should be sealed to keep out additional illegal aliens.

A Modal Aporetic Tetrad

Here is a four-limbed aporetic polyad:

1. The merely possible is not actual.

2. To be actual is to exist.

3. To exist is to be.

4. The merely possible is not nothing.

Each limb is plausible, but they cannot all be true. The first three limbs, taken together, entail the negation of the fourth. Indeed, any three, taken together, entail the negation of the remaining limb, as you may verify for yourself.

Now which limb ought we reject in order to avoid logical inconsistency? (1) is non-negotiable because purely definitional. Everything actual is possible, but not everything possible is actual. 'Merely possible,' by definition, refers to that which is possible but not actual. This leaves us three options.

(2)-Rejection. One might reject the equivalence of the actual and the existent analogously as one might reject the equivalence of the temporally present and the existent. Just as one might maintain that past events exist just as robustly as present events despite their pastness, one might maintain that merely possible items exist just as robustly as actual items. David Lewis' extreme ('mad dog') modal realism is an example of (2)-rejection. On his modally egalitarian scheme there is a plurality of possible worlds all on an ontological par. Each is a maximal mereological sum of concreta. Each of these worlds is actual at itself, but no one of these worlds is actual simpliciter. For each world w, w is actual-at-w, but no world is actual, period. Thus there is no such property as absolute actuality. It is not the case that one of the worlds is privileged over all the others in point of being actual simpliciter. What is true of a world is true of its occupants: I enjoy no ontological privilege over that counterpart of me who is bald now and living in Boston. Actuality is world-relative and 'actual' is accordingly an indexical term like 'now.' When I utter a token of 'now' I refer to the time of my utterance; likewise, on Lewis' theory, when I utter a token of 'actual,' I refer to the world I am in.

Having rejected (2), a Lewis-type philosopher could gloss the other limbs of the tetrad as follows. To say that the merely possible is not actual is to say that merely possible objects (e.g. bald Bill the Bostonian) are denizens of worlds other than this one. To say that to exist is to be is to say that there is no distinction between the existence of an object and its being in some world or other. To say that the merely possible is not nothing is to say that objects which are not denizens of this world are denizens of some other world or worlds.

I am tempted to say that this solution, via rejection of (2), is worse than the problem. For one has to swallow an infinity of equally real possible worlds. Further, my possibly being bald is not some counterpart of mine's being bald in another possible world. (This critique of course needs to be spelled out in detail.)

(3)-Rejection. A second theoretical option is to reject the equivalence of being and existence, of that which is and that which exists. Accordingly, there are things that are but do not exist. They have Being but not Existence. Everything is, but only some things exist. The early Russell, in the Principles of Mathematics from 1903, toyed with this view although he rejected it later in his career. If existents are a proper subset of beings, then one could locate merely possible items in among the beings that do not exist. The merely possible would then have Being but not Existence or Actuality.

This solution leads to an ontological population explosion much as the Lewis theory does.

(4)-Rejection. A third option is to deny (4) by affirming that the merely possible is nothing in reality, that it has no ontological status. One might construe the merely possible as merely epistemic, as being merely parasitic on our ignorance, or as having no status outside our thought. A view along these lines can be found in Spinoza.

Intuitively, though, it seems mistaken to say that there are no genuine, mind-independent possibilities. My writing desk, for example, is one inch from the wall, but it could have been two inches from the wall. It is not just that I can imagine or conceive it being two inches from the wall; it really could be two inches from the wall even though this possible state of affairs was never actual and never will be actual. (Moreover, what I CAN imagine or conceive refers to real but unactual possibilities of imagination and conception; or will you say that these possibilities are themselves derivative from acts of imagining or conceiving? If you do, then a vicious infinite regress is in the offing.))

Now suppose I had provided more rigorous and more convicing rejections of each of the three theoretical options. Suppose that a strong case can be made that all four propositions must be accepted. Then we would have four propositions each of which has a very strong claim on our acceptance, but which are collectively inconsistent. (Assume that the inconsistency is demonstrable.) What might one conclude from that? (A) One possibility is that we ought to abandon the Law of Non-Contradiction. (B) A second is that one of the solutions must be right even though we have good reason to think that every solution is mistaken. (C) A third is that the aporetic tetrad is an insoluble problem, a genuine intellectual knot that cannot be untied.

Note that (A), (B), and (C) form a meta-aporia. Each of them has a claim on our acceptance, but they cannot all be true.

Suppose there are genuine but absolutely insoluble philosophical problems. What would that show, if anything?

The Pointlessness of Worry

The dreaded event will either occur or it will not. If it occurs, then the worrier suffers twice, once from the event, and once from the worry. If it does not occur, then the person suffers from neither. Therefore, worry is irrational. Make provision for the future, be aware of the possibilities of mishap, take reasonable precautions — but don't worry.

Maverick Philosopher 6th Blogiversary

Some say that blogging is dead. Read or unread, whether by sages or fools, I shall blog on. A post beats a twit tweet any day, and no day without a post. Nulla dies sine linea. It is too early to say of blogging what Etienne Gilson said of philosophy, namely, that it always buries its undertakers, but I am hopeful. After all, a weblog is just an online journal, and journal scribbling has flourished most interestingly for centuries. To put it romantically, blogging is a vehicle for the relentless quotidian sifting, seeking, and questing for sense and truth and reality without which some of us would find life meaningless.

This, the fourth version of Maverick Philosopher, was begun on 31 October 2008. Since that time it has racked up 459446 Lifetime Pageviews, 835.36 Pageviews/Day, 1463 Total Posts, and 2685 Total Comments.

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