July 2010 – Maverick Philosopher

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Mimi Fariña

Let's not forget Joan Baez's sister, Mimi (1945-2001). Interestingly, the girls' father is the noted physicist Albert Baez (1912-2007). I remember a physics teacher in high school showing us an instructional film made by one Albert Baez. We were surprised to hear that he was Joan's father. We hadn't heard of him, but we sure had heard of her. This was around 1965.

Joan and Mimi sing a lovely version of Donovan's "Catch the Wind." Speaking of Donovan, here he and Joan collaborate on another unforgettable 'sixties tune, "Colours." Finally, Mimi, her husband Richard, and Pete Seeger in Pack Up Your Sorrows.

A Problem With the Multiple Relations Approach to Plural Predication

Consider

1. Sam and Dave are meeting together.

2. Al, Bill, and Carl are meeting together.

3. Some people are meeting together.

Obviously, neither (1) nor (2) can be decomposed into a conjunction of singular predications. Thus (2) cannot be analyzed as 'Al is meeting together & Bill is meeting together & Carl is meeting together.' So it is natural to try to analyze (1) and (2) using relational predicates. (1) becomes

1R. Meeting(Sam, Dave) In symbols: Msd

But if 'meeting' is a dyadic (two-place) predicate, then we should expect (2) to give way to

2R. Mab & Mbc & Mac.

Unfortunately, (2R) is true in circumstances in which (2) is false. Suppose there are three separate meetings. Then (2R) is true and (2) false. To get around this difficulty, we can introduce a triadic relation M* which yields as analysans of (2):

2R*. M*abc.

But then we need a tetradic relation should Diana come to the meeting. And so on, with the result that 'meeting together' picks out a family of relations of different polyadicities. But what's wrong with that? Well, note that (1) and (2) each entail (3) by Existential Generalization in the presence of the auxiliary premise 'Al, Bill, Carl, Dave, and Sam are people.'

But then we are going to have difficulty explaining the validity of the two instances of Existential Generalization. For the one instance features a dyadic meeting relation and the other a triadic. If two different relations are involved, then what is the logical form of (3) — Some people are meeting together — which is the common conclusion of both instances of Existential Generalization? If 'meeting together picks out a family of relations of different 'adicities, then (3) has no one definite logical form.

Does this convince you that the multiple relations approach is unworkable?

REFERENCE: Thomas McKay, Plural Predication (Oxford 2006), pp. 19-21.

Hitch Lives

Here.

Irreducibly Plural Predication: ‘They are Surrounding the Building’

Let's think about the perfectly ordinary and obviously intelligible sentence,

1. They are surrounding the building.

I borrow the example from Thomas McKay, Plural Predication (Oxford 2006), p. 29. They could be demonstrators. And unless some of them have very long arms, there is no way that any one of them could satisfy the predicate, 'is surrounding the building.' So it is obvious that (1) cannot be analyzed in terms of 'Al is surrounding the building & Bill is surrounding the building & Carl is surrounding the building & . . . .' It cannot be analyzed in the way one could analyze 'They are demonstrators.' The latter is susceptible of a distributive reading; (1) is not. For example, 'Al is a demonstrator & Bill is a demonstrator & Carl is a demonstrator & . . . .' So although 'They are demonstrators' is a plural predication, it is not an irreducibly plural predication. It reduces to a conjunction of singular predications.

Continue reading “Irreducibly Plural Predication: ‘They are Surrounding the Building’”

We Philosophize Best With Friends

Aristotle says that somewhere, but I forgot where. In any case, it is true as I verified once again yesterday in Tempe, where I met up with Steven Nemes, Mike Valle, Peter Lupu and his student Scott. Before joining them I stopped at the library where I borrowed Thomas McKay's Plural Predication and Douglas Hyde's I Believed.

The conversation went on for about five hours from 2 to 7. The 19 year old Nemes has made a fairly thorough study of my book on existence (see here for links to the ten posts he has written about it) and we discussed some topics from the book. He really understands me, and has a keen eye for problems potential and actual. I jokingly call Nemes my nemesis. We also discussed free will and Biblical inerrancy. Steven floated some interesting ideas that he then today began to work out in this post.

It occurred to me today that Peter and I, sitting and smoking out in front of the Churchill cigar emporium, did a good job of instantiating the role of Sidewalk Socrates, a role Peter learned from his friend and teacher, Sidney Morgenbesser. "There are people who have a passion for discourse, who are addicted to debate, who live in a world of constant conversation, and Morgenbesser was among the purest examples of the type." The description fits Peter as well. But I chided Peter for being a 'corrupter of youth' when he offered Steven cigarettes.

Richard Taylor on Goodness: Critical Remarks

Richard Taylor, Good and Evil: A New Direction (Prometheus 1984), p. 134:

Goodness . . . is simply the satisfaction of needs and desires . . . the fulfillment of purposes. The greatest good for any individual can accordingly be nothing but the total satisfaction of his needs,
whatever these may be.

There seems to be a tension in this passage, between the first sentence and the second, and I want to see if I can bring it into the open.

Taylor plausibly maintains that nothing is good or evil in itself or intrinsically. If a thing is good, it is good only relative to a being who wants, needs, or desires it. If a thing is evil, it is evil only relative to a being who shuns it or is averse to it. In a world in which there are no conative/desiderative beings, nothing is good or evil. This is plausible, is it not?

Imagine a world in which there is nothing but inanimate objects and processes, a world in which nothing is alive, willing, striving, wanting, needing, desiring. In such a world nothing would be either good or evil. A sun in a lifeless world goes supernova incinerating a nearby planet. A disaster? Hardly. Just another value-neutral event. A rearrangement of particles and fields. But if our sun went supernova, that would be a calamity beyond compare — but only for us and any other caring observers hanging around.

Taylor's point is, first, that sentences of the form 'X is good (evil)' are elliptical for sentences of the form 'X is good for Y.' To say that X is good (evil) but X is not good (evil) for some Y would then be like saying that Tom is married but there is no one to whom Tom is married. Taylor's point, second, is that these axiological predicates can be cashed out in naturalistic terms. Thus,

D1. X is good for Y =_df X satisfies Y's actual wants (needs, desires)

D2. X is evil for Y =_df X frustrates Y's actual wants (needs, desires).

It is clear that good and evil are not being made relative to what anyone says or opines, but to certain hard facts about the wants, needs, and desires of living beings. That we need water to live is an objective fact about us, a fact independent of what anyone says or believes. Water cannot have value except for beings who need or want it; but that it does have value for such beings is an objective fact.

Taylor's view implies that there is no standard of good and evil apart from the actual wants, needs, desires, and aversions of conative/desiderative beings. Goodness consists in satisfaction, evil in frustration. But satisfaction and frustration can exist only if there are indigent beings such as ourselves. It follows that nothing that satisfies a desire or fulfills a need or want can be bad. (p. 126) It also follows that no desire or purpose is either good or evil. (p. 136) For if good and evil emerge only upon the satisfaction or frustration of desires and purposes, then the desires and purposes themselves cannot be either good or evil. The rapist's desire to 'have his way' with his victim, qua desire, is not evil, and the satisfaction of desire via the commission of rape is not evil, but good, precisely because it satisfies desire! (Glance back at the above definitions.)

We now have a reason to toss Taylor's book out the window. But I want to point out a rather more subtle difficulty with his theory.

If goodness is relational in the manner explained, how can there be talk of the greatest good of an individual? Glance back at the quotation. Taylor tells us that the greatest good for an individual is nothing but the total satisfaction of his needs. This is a higher-order state of affairs distinct from a ground-level state of affairs such as the satisfaction of the desire for water by a cool drink. What need does this greatest good satisfy?

Suppose I satisfy all my needs, wants and desires. How can this higher-order state of satisfaction be called good if a thing is good only in relation to a needy being? There would have to be a higher-order need or want, a need or want for total satisfaction, and the goodness of the first-order satisfaction would have to consist in the satisfaction of this higher-order need. But this leads to a vicious infinite regress.

Taylor should say about the satisfaction of desire what he says about desire, namely, that it is neither good nor evil. Consider the desire to drink a beer. By Taylor's lights, drinking a beer is intrinsically neither good nor evil. It is good only insofar as it satisfies some desiderative being's desire. Thus the goodness of drinking a beer is nothing other than the satisfaction of the desire to drink beer. The desire itself, however, is neither good nor evil, and the same goes for the satisfaction or frustration of this desire.

My critical point is that Taylor is using 'good' in two senses, one relative, the other absolute, when his own theory entitles him to use it only in the relative sense. By his theory, a good X is a satisfactory X: one that satisfies some desiderative/indigent being's need, want, desire, for X. But then desire can't be said to be good or evil, as Taylor himself realizes on p. 136. Similarly, the satisfaction of desire cannot be said to be good or evil. Otherwise, the satisfaction of desire would have to be relative to a higher-order desire. Hence Taylor is not entitled to speak of the "greatest good for any individual" as he does in the passage quoted.

‘Guns on the Street’

It's a liberal phrase, a silly phrase, a phrase that aids and abets thoughtlessness. Liberals speak of the 'guns on the street' and of getting them off the street. Now I've walked down many a street in
many a city in this world, but I have yet to see any guns on the street. But I have seen them in the hands of people. The liberal tendency is to blame the instrument not the agent. You hear this sort of thing all the time: Guns have killed X people in Y time. A gun can do no such thing. Do liberals know this? They must, but then why do they talk as if they don't? So maybe they don't know it.

I didn't leer at the girl, my eyeglasses did. I didn't insult my colleague, my tongue did. Tookie Williams is not responsible for brutal murders, society is. It's the same sort of nonsense.

Don Colacho’s Aphorisms

Ah, the webbiness of the Web! I used an aphorism of Nicolás Gómez Dávila three days ago for purposes of logical analysis and received a comment from one 'Stephen' who is the proprietor of an interesting site devoted to translations of Don Colacho's aphorisms. The blog is appropriately entitled Don Colacho's Aphorisms. Please do check it out if you are a lover of aphorisms. His are even better than mine, if I do say so myself. Here is an example:

“Social” is the adjective that serves as a pretext for all swindles.

Excellent! If I may be permitted to supply an example: social justice.

Another good aphorist is Deogolwulf, proprietor of The Joy of Curmudgeonry. Here is an example of one of his fewtrils: "The common man is never so clever as the politician says and never so stupid as the politician believes."

John Pepple on the Need for a Cultural Revolution

I drew your attention to John Pepple's weblog, I Want a New Left, a few days ago. Pepple identifies himself as a leftist, but what's in a label? If he were characteristic of leftists, which he isn't, I would have little or no problem with them. I find myself wholly in agreement with his post, We Need a Cultural Revolution. His topic is violent crime among the poor, and how the rebellious attitudes propagated by the 'Sixties Left have had terrible consequences for the poor without harming the well-off who spread the pernicious attitudes and who, after sloughing off their rebelliousness, slid comfortably back into the establishment. Excerpts, emphasis added:

The problem goes back to that cultural revolution called the Sixties, because this sort of thing [extreme gang violence] did not happen before that decade. Part of that decade was the rise of the left’s cultural dominance, and the left (whether the old left or the new left) has always been soft on crime. Pushing poor people into crime makes sense to the left because such criminals are seen by them as heroes against the evil capitalists. But in fact poor people who turn to crime basically rob other poor people, which means that the total gain for the poor is zero. Moreover, once businesses in poor neighborhoods realize they have to deal with criminals, they raise prices, either because they have to hire more security people or because they have to compensate for the goods lost through theft. Once again, this doesn’t really help the poor.

That is spot on. Leftists coddle criminals and the unproductive while penalizing productive behavior via taxation and regulation. But by attacking those who create wealth, they make everyone poorer. Fetishizers of equality, leftists would rather have everyone poor and equal rather than tolerate inequalities that benefit the worst off.

Continue reading “John Pepple on the Need for a Cultural Revolution”

Douglas Hyde: From Communist to Catholic

I am now reading Archie Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism (HarperCollins 2009). Over 700 pages. The author's name is hardly donnish, but he is Emeritus Professor of Politics at Oxford University. There is a chapter entitled "The Appeals of Communism," and in it I came across a reference to Douglas Hyde:

For some who joined the Communist Party, a search for belief and a craving for certainty were important parts of their psychological make-up. One English Communist, Douglas Hyde, moved from being a young Methodist lay preacher, with an interest also in other religions, to becoming a Communist activist for twenty years, finishing up as news editor of the CPGB party newspaper, the Daily Worker, before resigning from the party in 1948 to become a proselytizing member of the Catholic Church. Although Hyde's political memoir, I Believed, written in the late Stalin period, is also a reasoned attack on Communist Party strategy and tactics, it holds that a majority of those attracted to Communism in those years were 'subconsciously looking for a cause which will to fill the void left by unbelief, or, as in my own case, an insecurely held belief which is failing to satisfy them intellectually and spiritually.' (p. 125)

People have strong doxastic security needs. They need a system of belief and practice to structure their lives. Few can tread the independent path. In the 2oth century many bright and earnest young people sought meaning and structure in Communism. In the 21st century radical Islam fills a similar need. Both snares and delusions, of course. It is arguably better to have no ideals rather than the wrong ideals, no beliefs rather than false and pernicious ones.

“Some of Us Just Go One God Further”

I've seen this quotation attributed to Richard Dawkins. From what I have read of him, it seems like something he would say. The idea, I take it, is that all gods are on a par, and so, given that everyone is an atheist with respect to some gods, one may as well make a clean sweep and be an atheist with respect to all gods. You don't believe in Zeus or in a celestial teapot. Then why do you believe in the God of Isaac, Abraham, and Jacob?

What Dawkins and the gang seem to be assuming is that the following questions are either senseless or not to be taken seriously: 'Is the Judeo-Christian god the true God?' 'Is any particular god the true God' 'Is any particular conception of deity adequate to the divine reality?' The idea, then, is that all candidates for deity are in the same logical boat. Nothing could be divine. Since all theistic religions are false, there is no live question as to which such religion is true. It is not as if there is a divine reality and that some religions are more adequate to it than others. One could not say, for example, that Judaism is somewhat adequate to the divine reality, Christianity more adequate, and Buddhism not at all adequate. There just is no divine reality. There is nothing of a spiritual nature beyond the human horizon. There is no Mind beyond finite mind. Man is the measure.

That is the atheist's deepest conviction. It seems so obvious to him that he cannot begin to genuinely doubt it, nor can he understand how anyone could genuinely believe the opposite. But why assume that there is nothing beyond the human horizon? The issue dividing theists and atheists can perhaps be put in terms of Jamesian 'live options':

EITHER: Some form of theism (hitherto undeveloped perhaps or only partially developed) is not only logically and epistemically possible, but also an 'existential' possibility, a live option;

OR: No form of theism is an existential possibility, a live option.

Theist-atheist dialog is made difficult by a certain asymmetry: whereas a sophisticated living faith involves a certain amount of purifying doubt, together with a groping beyond images and pat conceptualizations toward a transcendent reality, one misses any corresponding doubt or tentativeness on the part of sophisticated atheists. Dawkins and Co. seem so cocksure of their position. For them, theism is not a live option or existential possibility. This is obvious from their mocking comparisons of God to a celestial teapot, flying spaghetti monster, and the like.

For sophisticated theists, however, atheism is a live option. The existence of this asymmetry makes one wonder whether any productive dialog with atheists is possible.

Companion post: Russell's Teapot: Does It Hold Water?

The Hatfields and the McCoys

Whether or not it is true, the following has a clear sense:

1. The Hatfields outnumber the McCoys.

(1) says that the number of Hatfields is strictly greater than the number of McCoys. It obviously does not say, of each Hatfield, that he outnumbers some McCoy. If Gomer is a Hatfield and Goober a McCoy, it is nonsense to say of Gomer that he outnumbers Goober. The Hatfields 'collectively' outnumber the McCoys.

It therefore seems that there must be something in addition to the individual Hatfields (Gomer, Jethro, Jed, et al.) and something in addition to the individual McCoys (Goober, Phineas, Prudence, et al.) that serve as logical subjects of number predicates. In

2. The Hatfields are 100 strong

it cannot be any individual Hatfield that is 100 strong. This suggests that there must be some one single entity, distinct but not wholly distinct from the individual Hatfields, and having them as members, that is the logical subject or bearer of the predicate '100 strong.'

So here is a challenge to William the nominalist. Provide analyses of (1) and (2) that make it unnecessary to posit a collective entity (whether set, mereological sum, or whatever) in addition to individual Hatfields and McCoys.

Nominalists and realists alike agree that one must not "multiply entities beyond necessity." Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem! The question, of course, hinges on what's necessary for explanatory purposes. So the challenge for William the nominalist is to provide analyses of (1) and (2) that capture the sense of the analysanda and obviate the felt need to posit entities in addition to concrete particulars.

Now if such analyses could be provided, it would not follow that there are no 'collective entities.' But a reason for positing them would have been removed.

On Islam and Toleration (Peter Lupu)

In his post titled A Mosque Grows near Brooklyn Bill made the following statement:

“Muslims aren't very 'liberal,' are they? They are intolerant in their attitudes and their behavior. Now the touchstone of classical liberalism is toleration. Toleration is good, but it has limits. (See the posts in the category Toleration.) So why should we tolerate them when they work to undermine our way of life? The U. S. Constitution is not a suicide pact. We are under no obligation to tolerate the intolerant.”

This statement in turn provoked the following critical commentary by Prof. Richard Hennessey:

Now I personally know a number of Muslims. I can assure you that at least one of them is very liberal, at least one of them is tolerant in attitudes and behavior, and at least one of them is not working to “undermine our way of life.” The three universal statements that I see staring out at us from the quoted paragraph are all then false, as even the most rudimentary acquaintance with old Aristotle’s logic and its “square of opposition” would have you see.

I have no doubt that Prof. Hennessey knows at least one liberal Muslim, at least one tolerant Muslim, and at least one Muslim who is not intent on undermining the American way of life. So it seems that Prof. Hennessey conclusively refuted Bill’s statement. Did he?

Let us distinguish between four categories of what the term ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islam’ might mean:

(a) ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islam’ might refer to a *religion* just like ‘Christianity’, ‘Judaism’, ‘Buddhism’, etc;

(Peter is of course aware that the noun 'Muslim' cannot be used to refer to the religion, Islam; his point is that 'Muslim' as an adjective in 'Muslim religion' can used to refer to the religion, Islam.)

(b) ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islam’ might refer to a *class of people* whose heritage is Islam or adopted Islam as their religion;

(d) ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islam’ might refer to a country that has Islam as its official religion.

We are now in the position to evaluate Bill’s claim and Prof. Hennessey’s critical comments as quoted above relative to each of the above categories. Clearly, Prof. Hennessey is right when Bill’s claim is evaluated relative to category (b). But then again no one who reads Bill’s post thinks that he meant to say that every person whose heritage is Islam or adopted this religion is intolerant, anti-liberal, and intent to undermine Western Culture (See Bill’s reply in his Addendum and Corrigendum (7/22). Nevertheless, Prof. Hennessey scores one run here.

What about Bill’s statement interpreted in light of category (a)? One way of so doing is asking the following question: Does Islam as a religion promote the values of liberalism, toleration, and the Western way of life? I challenge Prof. Hennessey to answer this question. So far as I know, Islam as a religion does not promote any of these values. So at least in the eyes of this umpire Bill scores one run here. Thus far, the score is tied one to one.

When it comes to (c), the verdict is fairly clear: I doubt that anyone, including Prof. Hennessey, would challenge the notion that Islamism or Muslim Extremists abhor liberalism, toleration, and the Western way of life. So, what about (d)? Once again I think it is fairly clear that in most Muslim countries there is very little tolerance of other religions and certainly it is prohibited and dangerous to promote alternative religions. Moreover, most of the countries that have Islam as their official religion are anti-liberal and do not tolerate very well the Western way of life. At least this is so for the last ten or so years.

So it seems that Bill is right on three counts, whereas Prof. Hennessey is right on one count. Final score: three to one in favor of Bill, unless Prof. Hennessey wishes to challenge this umpire's score card. I invite him to do so.

I Need to Study Plural Predication

Here is a beautiful aphorism from Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913-1994), in Escolios a un Texto Implicito (1977), II, 80, tr. Gilleland:

Stupid ideas are immortal. Each new generation invents them anew.

Clearly this does not mean:

1. Each stupid idea is immortal and is invented by each new generation anew.

So we try:

2. The set of stupid ideas is immortal in the sense that every new generation invents some stupid idea or other.

(2) is much closer to the intended meaning. The idea is that there are always stupid ideas around, not that any one stupid idea is always around. (2) seems to capture this notion. But (2) presents its own puzzles. A set is a collection, and a collection is not the mere manifold of its members: it is "a further entity over and above them" as Michael Potter puts it in Set Theory and its Philosophy (Oxford 2004, p. 22).

Potter speaks of collections versus fusions. The distinction emerges starkly when we consider that there is a distinction between a singleton collection and its member, but no distinction between a 'singleton' fusion and its member. Thus Quine is distinct from {Quine}, the set consisting of Quine and nothing else. But there is no distinction between Quine and the sum or fusion, (Quine). {Quine}, unlike Quine, has a member; but neither (Quine) nor Quine have members. A second difference is that, while it makes sense to speak of a set with no members, the celebrated null set, it makes no sense to speak of a null fusion. The set consisting of nothing, the null set { } is something; the fusion of nothing is nothing.

Getting back to stupid ideas, what I want to say is that 'stupid ideas are immortal' can be understood neither along the lines of (1) nor along the lines of (2). The generality expressed is quite obviously not distributive, but it is not quite collective either. We are not expressing the idea that there is some one entity "over and above" its members to which immortality is being ascribed. 'Stupid ideas' seems to pick out a fusion; but if a fusion is a pure manifold, how can it be picked out?

The puzzle is that immortality is not being predicated of each stupid idea, but it is also not being predicated of some one item distinct from stupid ideas which has them as members, whether this one item be a mathematical set or a mereological sum.

We know what we mean when we say that stupid ideas are immortal, but we cannot make it precise, or at least I can't make it precise given my present level of logical acumen.

So rather than contribute any stupid ideas of my own, I will go to the library and check out Thomas McKay's Plural Predication.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Carmelita, Juanita, and the Wicked Felina

Warren Zevon, Carmelita. Linda Ronstadt's version. Stay clear of heroin and Pioneer chicken, both.

Flying Burrito Brothers, Juanita. Lyrics:

'No affection' were the words that stuck on my mind
When she walked out on me for the very last time.
Oh mama sweet mama can you tell me what to say?
I don't know what I've done to be treated this way.

In a cold dirty room that's where I found myself
With a bottle of wine and some pills off the shelf.
Oh mama sweet mama can you tell me what to say?
I don't know what I've done and I'm feeling so ashamed.

Then an angel appeared she was just 17
In a dirty old gown (town?) with a conscience so clean
Oh mama sweet mama can you tell me what to say?
She's brought back the life that I once threw away.

Delightfully ambiguous: Is Juanita the girl who walked out or the one who saved him? Or both?

Marty Robbins, El Paso. "Cradled by two loving arms that I'll die for/One little kiss and Felina, good-bye."