Month: August 2010

The Holy Roman Empire and the Ground Zero Mosque

Somewhere in Saul Kripke's Naming and Necessity he employs the example of the Holy Roman Empire which was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire.  Well, I heard the Ground Zero mosque described this morning by a Muslim on C-Span as neither at Ground Zero nor a mosque.  As for the first claim, take a gander at this aerial shot (image credit):

Gzmsite

 

The mosque site appears to be about two and a half city blocks from GZ.  That should count as close enough to justify the moniker 'GZM.'  After all, it couldn't be built right at GZ!  As for the second point, that the GZM is not a mosque,  is  true in part: it will be a mosque enveloped by an Islamic center — which is arguably worse.

But judgments on these matters differ wildly, don't they?  Meanwhile, it turns out that the GZM developer, Sharif el-Gamal has quite a rap sheet.

 

 

 

 

The Eliminativist/Reductivist Distinction: Three Further Examples

For Part I of this discussion, and the first six examples, see here.  Recall that my concern is to show via a variety of examples that the eliminativist-reductivist distinction is useful and important and indeed indispensable for clear thinking about a number of topics.

7. Truth is warranted assertibility.   Someone who makes this claim presumably intends to inform us about the nature of truth on the presupposition that there is truth.  He is saying: there is truth all right; and what it is is warranted assertibility.  But I say:  if truth is warranted assertibility, then there is no truth.  The italicized claim, no matter what the intentions of a person who makes it, amounts to a denial of truth.  This example, as it seems to me, is 'on all fours'  (as the Brits say) with the Feuerbach example and the 'properties are sets' example.  Just as a property is not the sort of entity that could be identified with a set, truth is not the sort of property that could be identified with warranted assertibility (even at the Peircean ideal limit of inquiry.)  These three claims are all of them eliminativist.

8. Truth is relative.  Ditto.  Truth is not the sort of property that could be relative: if you know what truth is then you know that truth is absolute.  So if you say that truth is relative, then you are either confusing truth with some other property (e.g. the property of being believed by someone) or you are willy-nilly denying the very existence of truth.  If you understand the concept of God, then you understand that God cannot be an anthropomorphic projection. And if you understand the concept of truth, then you understand that truth cannot be relative to anything, whatever your favorite index of relativization might be, whether individuals, social classes, historical epochs . . . .

See Truth is Absolute! Part One.   Part Two.

9. The morally obligatory is that which God commands.  In stark contrast to the two foregoing examples, this example cannot be given an eliminativist reading.  The very concept of truth disallows truth's relativization. But there is nothing in the concept of moral obligation to disallow the identification of the morally obligatory with that which God commands.  But here we need to make a distinction.

You will have noticed that identity is a symmetrical relation:  if x = y, then y = x.  But reduction is asymmetrical: if x reduces to y, then y does not reduce to x.  Therefore, an identification is not the same as a reductive identification or reduction.  'Hesperus = Phosphorus' is an identity claim but not a reductive claim: the claim is not that Hesperus reduces to Phosphorus, as if Phosphorus were the fundamental reality and Hesperus the less fundamental, or perhaps a mere appearance of Phosphorus.  But 'Table salt = NaCl' is a reduction of what is less fundamental to what is more fundamental.

Now what about our italicized claim?  There are problems with reading it as a left-to-right reduction.  The morally obligatory is what we morally ought to do; but what we ought to do cannot be reduced to what anyone commands, not even if the commander is morally perfect.  The normative oughtness of an act or act-ommission cannot be reduced the mere fact that someone commands it, even if the commander always commands all and only what one ought to do. So one could argue that the italicized claim, if construed as a reduction of the morally obligatory to what God commands, collapses into an elimination of the morally obligatory.  Be we needn't take it as a reduction; we can take it as a nonreductive identification.  Accordingly, being morally obligatory and being commanded by God are the same property in reality even though they are conceptually distinct.

But even if you don't agree with the details of my analysis, I think you must agree to distinguish among eliminative claims, reductive identity claims, and nonreductive identity claims.

 

The Liberal Debating Manual

From the The Liberal Debating Manual (San Francisco: PeeCee Publishers, 2010):

No matter what position your conservative opponent takes on any issue, choose one or more epithets from the following list and label him with it:

Racist, bigot, fascist, sexist, intolerant, homophobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic.

Mix and match, and repeat as necessary.  Never ever engage conservative arguments.  To do so is to admit that your enemy is a rational being with a point of view worth considering.  Never credit a conservative with reason, moral decency or intellectual insight.  The smear is extremely effective if repeated often enough.   Never miss an opportunity to play the race card.  Insult and demean.  Tea-Partiers are 'teabaggers.'  If they reply in kind, act shocked and insist on the double-standard: we are morally and intellectually superior people while you are scum.  How can you object when we call you what you are: bigots, racists, scumbags?

Keep your eye on the prize and never forget that winning is all that counts.  The end justifies the means.  Example here.

On the Utility of the Eliminativist/Reductivist Distinction

If we think carefully about examples such as the following, I think we can come to agree that it is useful to make a distinction between eliminativist and reductivist claims.  The distinction is useful because it allows us to disambiguate claims that otherwise would be ambiguous.  Roughly, the distinction is between claims of the form There are no Fs and of the form There are Fs but Fs are Gs.

1. God is an anthropomorphic projection. (Feuerbach)  This could be construed as implying that there is an x such that x = God and x is an anthropomorphic projection.  This would be a reductivist construal.  It has absolutely nothing going for it given that the concept of God is the concept of a being that exists a se, and thus independently of human beings and their thoughts and projections.  If you think that God could be an anthropomorphic projection, then you simply do not understand the concept of God — whether or not anything instantiates the concept.The Feuerbachian claim is to be read eliminatively as  implying that there is no x such that x is God.

So here we have a very clear example of a sentence which, though it appears to be predicating something of God, and thus presupposing the existence of God, is really a negative existential in disguise. 

2. The self is a bundle of perceptions. (Hume)  This example, unlike the first, can be read either way with some plausibility.  I would argue that a mere bundle of perceptions (or of other mental data) cannot constitute a self because a self is that which supports and unifies and is aware of such data. But other philosophers will disagree.  So for present purposes I judge this example to be susceptible of both readings.

3. Causation is regular succession. Someone who claims that events e1, e2 are such that e1 causes e2 iff the e1-e2 event sequence instantiates a regularity is arguably leaving out something so fundamental — the notion that the cause produces or brings into existence the effect –  that the claim is tantamount to a denial of causation.  Or so I would argue.  But regularity theorists will vigorously disagree.  They will take the dictum (suitably expanded and qualified) to express the nature of causation.  They will insist that there is causation but that what it is is regular succession.  So, in an irenic spirit, I will classify this example as open to both readings.

4. Properties are sets.  (David Lewis)  Accordingly, the property of being red is the set of all actual and possible red things.  A cruder form of the theory is that the property of being red, e.g., is the set of all red things.  The theory in either form is hopeless, but that is not the question.  The question is whether it is eliminativist or reductivist.  Is it tantamount to a denial of properties, or does it imply that there are properties but that what they are are sets?  I say the former, but David Lewis is one formidable opponent!  Here is a quick little argument:  Properties are instantiable entities by definition; no set is instantiable; ergo, no property is a set!  My considered opinion is that 'Properties are sets' boils down to a denial of properties.  If you understand the concept property, then you know no property could be a set.  It is just like #1 above: if you understand the concept God, then you know that God could not be an anthropological projection.

5. Mental events are brain  events.  I suddenly remember an evening spent on the banks of the River Charles with a pretty girl . . . . That sudden remembering is a mental event token.  There are those who want to say that it is identical to a brain event token. These philosophers speak of 'token-token identity theory.'  The philosophers who maintain this do not intend to deny the existence of mental events; their intention is to inform us as to the nature of mental events on the presupposition that  they exist.

But although their intention is reductive identification and not elimination, one can reasonably wonder whether the reduction does not collapse into an elimination.  Indeed, that is what I would maintain.  For if every mental state is identical to some brain state, and if the identification is supposed to be a reduction  of the mental to the physical, then what you have in the final analysis is just the brain state: the mental state has been eliminated.

Even if you disagree with me that in this case the reduction collapses into an elimination, to even understand what the debate is about you must understand the distinction between elimination and reduction.

6. The tree in the quad is a cluster of ideas in the mind of God. (Berkeley)  The good bishop is not denying that there are physical things; he is telling us what he thinks physical things are.  They reduce to clusters or bundles of divine ideas.  It shows a complete lack of understanding to think that stone-kicking is so much as relevant to the idealist thesis.  So this is a clear case of a reduction.

Could one argue that in this case too the reduction collapses into an elimination?  If the mind-brain identity thesis collapses into an elimination of the mind (as was claimed in #5), then why shouldn't the Berkeleyan identity thesis (Physical objects are a clusters of divine ideas) collapse into an elimination of physical objects?  Perhaps we can say the following.  That the existence of a tree is its existence for the divine mind is consistent with everything we know about trees. (We do not know about trees that they can exist independently of any mind.)  But that a mental state is identical to a brain state is not consistent with what we know about mental states.  Thus we know that they exhibit intentionality while physical states do not.  Mental states cannot be identical to brain states; therefore, a materialist about the mind must be an eliminativist.  But an idealist about physical objects needn't be an eliminativist.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: A Half Dozen Dedications

To Horace Jeffery Hodges who describes himself thusly:

I've gone from the Arkansas Ozarks through Texas, California, Switzerland, Germany, Australia, and Israel to South Korea. I've traveled to Mexico, Belgium, Holland, East Germany, England, France, Denmark, Austria, Czechoslovakia (before it split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia), Russia, Italy, Japan, Singapore, and Scotland. Hence: "Gypsy Scholar."

I've Been Everywhere.

To Peter Lupu, Forty Cups of Coffee and Smoke Smoke That Cigarette.

To Mike Valle, Ghost Riders in the Sky.

To Philoponus the Impecunious, Money.

To William the Nominalist, The Name Game.

To David Brightly, Heartaches by the Numbers.

Fist and Hand, Statue and Lump: The Aporetics of Composition

1. Some maintain that a hand, and that same hand made into a fist, are identical. And there are those who would say the same about a piece of bronze and the statue made out of it, namely, that they are identical at every time at which both exist. This is not an unreasonable thing to say. After all, fist and hand, statue and bronze, are spatially coincident and neither has a physical part the other doesn't have. A fist is just a certain familiar arrangement of hand-parts. There is no part of the fist that is not part of the hand, and vice versa. So at looks as if first and hand are identical.  But we need to be clear as to what identity is.

2. Identity is standardly taken to be an equivalence relation (reflexive, symmetrical, transitive) governed by the Indiscernibility of Identicals (InId) and the Necessity of Identity (NecId). The first principle says that, if two items are numerically identical, then they share all properties. The second says that if two items are numerically identical, then this is necessarily the case.  Both principles strike me as beyond epistemic reproach.  'Identity' is short for 'numerical identity.'

3. Despite the considerations of #1, it looks as if fist and hand, statue and hunk of bronze, cannot be identical since they differ in their persistence conditions. The hunk of bronze can, while the statue cannot, survive being melted down and recast in some other form. The hand can, while the fist cannot, survive adoption of a different 'posture.'  In both cases, something is true of the one that is not true of the other.  So even at the times at which the fist is the hand, and the bronze is the statue, the two are not identical: the 'is' is not the 'is' of identity.  It is the 'is' of composition and what you have are two things, not one.

What I have just given is a modal discernibility argument.  Let me spell it out.  Consider a time t at which the hand is in the shape of a fist.  At t, the hand, but not the fist, has the modal property of being possibly such as to to be unfisted.  So the hand cannot be identical to the fist given that, for any x, y, if x = y, then x, y share all properties.

But there is also this nonmodal discernibility argument.  The hunk of bronze existed long before the statue came into existence, and the hunk of bronze exists while the form of a statue.  So the hunk of bronze exists at more times that the statues does, which implies the the hunk of bronze is not identical to the statue.

There is also this consideration.  Identity is symmetrical.  So we can say either fist = hand or hand = fist.  But is it the fist or the hand that both are?  Intuitively, it is the hand.  The hand is the fundamental reality here, not the fist.  So how can fist and hand be identical?  It seems that fist and hand are numerically distinct, albeit spatially coincident, concrete individuals.

4.  The Law of Excluded Middle seems very secure indeed, especially in application to presently existing things.  So either the fist is identical to the hand, and there is just one thing, a fisted hand, or the fist is not identical to the hand and there are two spatially coincident things, a fist and a hand.  So which is it?

5. If you say that the fist = the hand, then when you make a fist nothing new comes into existence, and when the potter makes a pot out of clay, nothing new comes into existence.  And when a mason makes a wall out of stones, nothing new comes into existence.  He started with some stones and he ended with some stones.  Given that the stones exist, and that the mason's work did not cause anything new to come into existence, must we not say that the single composite entity, the wall, does not exist?  (For if it did exist, then there would be an existent in addition to the stones.)  But it sounds crazy to say that the wall the mason has just finished constructing does not exist.

6. If, on the other hand, you say that the fist is not identical to the hand, then you can say that the making of a fist causes a new thing to come into existence, the fist.  And similarly with the statue and the wall.  After the mason stacks n stones into a wall, he has as a result of his efforts n +1 objects, the original n stones and the wall. 

But this is also counterintuitive.  Consider the potter at his wheel.  As the lump of clay spins, the potter shapes the lump into a series of many (continuum-many?) intermediate shapes before he stops with one that satisfies him.  Thus we have a series of objects (proto-pots) each of which is a concrete individual numericallt distinct from the clay yet (i) spatially conicident with it, and (ii) sharing with it every momentary property.  And that is hard to swallow, is it not?

7.  We appear to be at an impasse.  We cannot comfortably say that the fist = the hand, nor can we comfortably say that the fist is not identical to the hand. Nor can we comfortably give up LEM.  If there are no fists, statues, walls, artifacts generally, then there cannot be any puzzles about their composition.  But we cannot comfortably say that there are no such things either.

Do we have here an example of a problem that is both genuine but insoluble?

Guest Post: Is There a Real Distinction Between Reductionism and Eliminativism?

What follows is a guest post by a long-standing card-carrying member of the MavPhil commentariat, William the Nominalist.  He is eager to hear any thoughtful and pertinent comments you may have. 

The distinction between reductionism and eliminativism is widely recognised in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science. It also seems to be very clear. Here it is, as explained by William Ramsey.

Ontologically conservative theory change occurs when the entities and posits of the replaced theory are relocated, often with some degree of revision, in the replacing theory. For example, as our theory of light was gradually replaced by our understanding of electro-magnetic radiation, our conception of light was dramatically transformed as we recognized ways in which our old conception was mistaken or incomplete. Nevertheless, at no point did we come to say that there is really no such thing as light. Rather, light was eventually identified with a form of electro-magnetic radiation.

By contrast, our notion of demons did not come to find a new home in contemporary theories of mental disorder. There is nothing in the theories of schizophrenia, Tourette's Syndrome, neuro-pathology or any of the other modern explanations for bizarre behavior, that we can sensibly identify with malevolent spirits with supernatural powers. The notion of a demon is just too far removed from anything we now posit to explain behavior that was once explained by demonology. Consequently, the transition from demonology to modern accounts of this behavior was ontologically radical. We dropped demons from our current ontology, and came to realize that the notion is empty — it refers to nothing real.

But after a moment's reflection, I find it is not very clear at all. Why?

Continue reading “Guest Post: Is There a Real Distinction Between Reductionism and Eliminativism?”

The Last Refuge of a Liberal

The last refuge of a liberal are charges of bigotry and intolerance. Charles Krauthammer:

. . . promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.

— Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the Tea Party movement? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.

— Disgust and alarm with the federal government's unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism. [and racism and xenophobia]

— Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.

— Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.

For just one example of what Krauthammer is rightly protesting, read Robert Reich's Anatomy of Intolerance.  You will note that here as elsewhere in liberal screeds there is no attempt at engaging conservative arguments.  What is offered is name-calling and psychologizing.  According to Reich,

Most Americans approve of Arizona’s new law allowing police to stop anyone who looks Hispanic and demand proof of citizenship.

This is plainly false and looks to be an outright lie.  A man as intelligent and well-informed as Robert Reich cannot possibly be unaware at this late date of the content of AZ SB 1070.  The law does not allow the the police to stop anyone who looks Hispanic to check citizenship status.  It disallows this.  See The Misrepresentations of Arizona SB 1070 Continue.

On Reconciling Creatio Ex Nihilo with Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit

This post examines Richard C. Potter's solution to the problem of reconciling creatio ex nihilo with ex nihilo nihil fit in his valuable article, "How To Create a Physical Universe Ex Nihilo," Faith and Philosophy, vol. 3, no. 1, (January 1986), pp. 16-26. (Potter appears to have dropped out of sight, philosophically speaking, so if anyone knows what became of him, please let me know. The Philosopher's Index shows only three articles by him, the last of which appeared in 1986.)

I. THE PROBLEM

We first need to get clear about the problem. On classical conceptions, God creates ex nihilo, out of nothing.  He is not a Platonic demiurge who operates upon some preexistent stuff: he creates without it being the case that there is something out of which he creates.  Nor does God create out of himself, a notion that presumbaly would give aid and comfort to pantheism.  God creates out of nothing.  Given that God creates out of nothing, how is this consistent with the apparent truth that something cannot come from nothing? The latter, the principle of ex nihilo nihil fit, seems to be an intuitively self-evident metaphysically necessary truth. Let us assume that it is.   As metaphysically necessary, it is not a truth over which God has any control. Its truth-value is not within the purview of the divine will.  Our problem is to understand, if possible, how it can be true both that God creates out of nothing, and that out of nothing nothing comes.  Potter offers an ingenious solution.

Ex nihilo nihil fit is interpreted by Potter in terms of the following Principle of Creation by Compounding:

PCC. For any object O and time t, if O comes into being at t, then there exist some objects out of which O is composed and those objects existed prior to t.

Potter sees the problem as one of reconciling (PCC) with the following principle:

ENP. God created contingent objects in such a way that there was a time t1 at which contingent objects came into being, although there was no time prior to t1.

On the face of it, (PCC) and (ENP) are logically inconsistent.

Continue reading “On Reconciling Creatio Ex Nihilo with Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit“

Robert Royal on the GZM

Here. Excerpt:

If you’re like me, you’ve probably heard enough about the mosque. But the problem for me is that what I’m hearing doesn’t seem to address the main question. When NY Mayor Bloomberg says it’s a tragedy if 9/11 results in the loss of religious liberty – as if Islam were being curtailed here – I feel like I’m listening to a political class that’s taken leave of its senses. To put the matter baldly, some of us now think America is merely a matter of legal precedents, not a human community.

Two things are clear: 1. in America, religious liberty is an unshakeable right and houses of worship may be built, allowing for local zoning laws and other reasonable restrictions; 2. there is reason for doubt whether the mosque should be built, as last week even President Obama was forced to acknowledge.

Liberals have suddenly discovered a virtual absolute right for religion – primarily Islam – to be assertive anywhere, any time. Strange, because the Left has for decades sought to minimize religion in the public square.

Latest example:  Utah crosses ruled unconstitutional. 

Hats Off to Hentoff: “Pols Clueless on Ground Zero Mosque”

Here.  Excerpts:

Imam Rauf has refused to call Hamas a terrorist organization and had no comment when, on Aug. 15, Mahmoud al-Zahar, its co-founder, strongly supported the Imam's mosque near Ground Zero, saying, Muslims "have to build everywhere" (Associated Press, Aug. 16). Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said the support by Hamas of the Imam's mosque carried no weight because "Hamas is a terrorist organization."

How's that for bizarro reasoning? Any normal person would take Hamas support for the GZM to be worrisome indeed.  But not Schumer the liberal.  No bigot he.  He takes the fact that Hamas is a terrorist organization as somehow giving us a reason to ignore its support!

This imam – widely lauded in much of the press as "a moderate" Muslim – is not reticent, however, in his firm commitment to Sharia (Islamic law), which regards women as far less than fully human. In the Dec. 9, 2007 Arabic newspaper Hadi el-Islam, Rauf insisted:

Throughout my discussions with contemporary Muslim theologians, it is clear an Islamic state can be established in more than just a single form or mold. It can be established through a kingdom or a democracy. The important issue is to establish the general fundamentals of Sharia that are required to govern.

I would greatly appreciate it if Imam Rauf explained, maybe Pelosi will ask him, more fully what he meant in his 2004 book, "What's Right With Islam is What's Right With America." In it he declares: "American Constitution and system of governance uphold the core principles of Islamic law." Rauf says Sharia law is a core principle of Islamic law. Does that also include a core principle of our Constitution?

Gutting, Dawkins, and Russell’s Celestial Teapot

In his recent NYT Opinionator piece, On Dawkins's Atheism, Notre Dame's Gary Gutting writes, describing the "no arguments argument" of some atheists:

To say that the universe was created by a good and powerful being who cares about us is an extraordinary claim, so improbable to begin with that we surely should deny it unless there are decisive arguments for it (arguments showing that it is highly probable). Even if Dawkins’ arguments against theism are faulty, can’t he cite the inconclusiveness of even the most well-worked-out theistic arguments as grounds for denying God’s existence?

He can if he has good reason to think that, apart from specific theistic arguments, God’s existence is highly unlikely. Besides what we can prove from arguments, how probable is it that God exists? Here Dawkins refers to Bertrand Russell’s example of the orbiting teapot. We would require very strong evidence before agreeing that there was a teapot in orbit around the sun, and lacking such evidence would deny and not remain merely agnostic about such a claim. This is because there is nothing in our experience suggesting that the claim might be true; it has no significant intrinsic probability.

But suppose that several astronauts reported seeing something that looked very much like a teapot and, later, a number of reputable space scientists interpreted certain satellite data as showing the presence of a teapot-shaped object, even though other space scientists questioned this interpretation. Then it would be gratuitous to reject the hypothesis out of hand, even without decisive proof that it was true. We should just remain agnostic about it.

The claim that God exists is much closer to this second case. There are sensible people who report having had some kind of direct awareness of a divine being, and there are competent philosophers who endorse arguments for God’s existence. Therefore, an agnostic stance seems preferable to atheism.

I have a serious problem with Gutting's response to the Russell-Dawkins tag team.  Gutting concedes far too much in his reply, namely, that it even makes sense to compare the claim that there is an orbiting teapot with the claim that God exists.  Instead of attacking this comparison as wrongheaded from the outset, Gutting in effect concedes its aptness when he points out that, just as there could be (inconclusive) scientific evidence of a celestial teaspot, there could be (inconclusive) experiential and argumentative evidence for the existence of God.  So let me try to explain why I think that the two existence claims ('God exists' and 'A celestial teapot exists') are radically different .

Continue reading “Gutting, Dawkins, and Russell’s Celestial Teapot”

Of Dhimmitude and Derriere

Sloggi_euro_girls_350x251

Western licentiousness meets the panty jihad. Quotable:

This is a traditional tactic of the Islamic march to domination.  One fight at a time, one street at a time, one billboard at a time, one school at a time, one book at a time, one TV news report at a time. Islam must always be acknowledged to be above Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and other ancient religions.

 

The eventual state whereby Christians and Jews acknowledge Islam’s authority and superiority is called the dhimmitude.  Dhimmis will be invited to convert to Islam, but if they do not, they will be allowed to continue to practice their own religions, although with restrictions, and they must profess submission to Islamic laws.

 

Shamefully, Sloggi is marching down that road.