Month: August 2010

Peter van Inwagen, Artifacts, and Moorean Rebuttals

Two commenters in an earlier van Inwagen thread, the illustrious William the Nominalist and the noble Philoponus of Terravita,  have raised Moore-style objections to an implication of PvI's claim that "every physical thing is either a living organism or a simple" (MB 98), namely, the implication that "there are no tables or chairs or any other visible objects except living organisms." (MB 1)  The claim that there are no inanimate objects, no tables, chairs, ships and stars will strike many as so patently absurd as to be not worth discussing.  Arguments to such a conclusion, no matter how clever, will be dismissed as unsound without  evaluation on the simple ground that the conclusion to which they lead is preposterous.  This is the essence of a Moorean objection.  If someone says that time is unreal, you say, 'I ate breakfast an hour ago.'  If someone denies the external world, you hold up your hands.  If someone denies that there are chairs, you point out that he is sitting on one.  And then you clinch your little speech by adding, 'The points I have just made are more worthy of credence than any premises you can marshall in support of their negations.' 

I myself have never been impressed with Moorean rebuttals.  To my mind they signal on the part of those who make them a failure to understand the nature of philosophical (in particular, metaphysical) claims.  See, e.g., Can One See that One is not a Brain in a Vat?

Though I disagree with van Inwagen's denial of artifacts, I think he can be quite easily defended against the charge of maintaining something 'mad' or something refutable by a facile Moorean rejoinder.

Chapter 10 of Material Beings deals with the Moorean objection.  Van Inwagen does not deny that we utter such true sentences as 'There is a wall that separates my property from my neighbor's.'  But whereas most of us would infer from this that walls exist, and thus that composite non-living things exist, van Inwagen refuses to draw this inference maintaining instead that the truth of 'There is a wall that separates my property from my neighbor's' is consistent with there being no walls.

This is not as crazy as it sounds.  For suppose that what the vulgar call a wall is (speaking with the learned) just some stacked stones, some stones arranged wall-wise.  And to simplify the discussion, suppose the stones are simples.  Then the denial that there is a wall is a denial that there is one single thing that the stones compose.  But this is consistent with the existence of the stones.  Accordingly, the sentence 'There is a wall that separates my property from my neighbor's' is true in virtue of the existence of the stones despite the fact that there is no wall as a whole composed of these stony parts.

Or consider the house built by the Wise Pig years ago out of 10, 000 blocks (which for present purposes we may consider to be honorary simples.)  (The tail tale of the Wise Pig is recounted on p. 130 of Material Beings.) At the completion of construction, did something new come into existence?  I would say 'yes.'  Van Inwagen would say 'no.'  All that has happened on PvI's account is that some blocks have been arranged house-wise.  His denial then, is that there is a y such that the xs compose y.  He is not denying the xs (the blocks construed as simples); he is denying that there is a whole that they compose.  And because there is no whole that they compose, the house does not exist.

Furthermore, because the house does not exist, there can be no question whether the house built by the Wise Pig years ago, and kept in good repair by him and his descendants by replacement of defective blocks, is the same as or is not the same as the one that his descendants live in today.  The standard puzzles about diachronic artifact identity lapse if there are no artifacts.   

Does this fly in the face of Moorean common sense?  If  madman Mel were to say that there are no houses he would not mean what the metaphysican means when he says that there are no houses.  If Mel is right, then it cannot be true that I have been living in the same house for the last ten years.  But the truth of 'I have been living in the same house for the last ten years' is consistent with, or at least not obviously inconsistent with,  PvI's denial of houses (which is of course not a special denial, but a consequence of his denial of artifacts in general). This is because PvI is not denying the existence of the simples which we mistakenly construe as parts of a nonexistent whole.

But then how are we to understand a sentence like, 'The very same house that stands here now has stood here for three hundred years'?  Van Inwagen proposes the following paraphrase:

There are bricks (or, more generally, objects) arranged housewise here now, and these bricks are the current objects of a history of maintenance that began three hundred years ago; and at no time in that period were the then-current objects of that history arranged housewise anywhere but here. (133)

I am not endorsing PvI's denial of artifacts, I am merely pointing out that it cannot be dismissed Moore-style. 

 

Hodges Weighs in on ‘Suicide Bomber’

Dear Bill,

Interesting discussion on 'suicide' bombers. I prefer the expression "suicide bomber" to "homicide bomber." I think that the term "bomber" implies that the individual is aiming not solely at suicide but at other killing or destruction, too. I also like the fact that Islamists object to the term "suicide" since suicide is forbidden in Islam, so the insult is useful.

Yours,

Jeffery

See Dr. Hodges' Islamism: Radicalism at the Core of Islam?  Follow the links and use the search function to locate other of Hodges' Islam(ism) posts.  And now I note that he just posted on Christopher Hitchens' take on the Ground Zero mosque.  By the way, those who complain about this moniker, objecting that the provocation in question will not be located precisely at Ground Zero, need to be reminded that (i) there is no way that it could be located precisely there, and that (ii) debris from one of the trade towers hit the building whose demolition is to make way for the GZM.

More on ‘Suicide Bomber’/’Homicide Bomber’

I have been receiving e-mail about my earlier post on this topic.  Here is one letter:

I fear you may have been a little harsh on Bill Keller in your recent post about the virtues of calling suicide bombers 'homicide bombers'. Whilst I accept the conceptual and definitional analysis of the terms, surely the simple point is that ANY bomber who kills other humans is a homicide bomber, but it is only the suicide bomber who kills himself/herself and other humans. The term 'suicide bomber', in my opinion, is perfectly apt as it emphasises that this individual was prepared to kill himself/herself in the pursuit of killing others (rather than planting a bomb and detonating it remotely, for example). It may not be conceptually neat, but it's a worthy distinction to make, and one that is obscured by the term 'homicide bomber'.

Since the point I have just made is so simple and luminous, it is reasonable to conjecture that you were blinded to its alethic luminosity by your right-wing bias, a bias that is reinforced on a quotidian basis by the crowd you run with.

I really enjoy reading the blog.

Very clever.  I see your point, but let's think about it a bit more.  There are three cases: (1) the bomber who kills himself while killing others; (2) the bomber who kills himself without killing others; (3) the bomber who kills others without killing himself.  In all three cases the bomber is a homicide bomber.  In the first two cases, the bomber is a suicide bomber.  Because 'suicide bomber' applies in both the first and the second cases, the term 'suicide bomber' does not distinguish between them.  To that extent 'suicide bomber' is not sufficiently precise. 

You write, ". . . it is only the suicide bomber who kills himself/herself and other humans."  Not so: you are ignoring case (2).  Case (2) splits into two subcases: (2a) the bomber intends to blow only himself up and succeeds; (2b) the bomber intends to blow himself and others up, but succeeds only in blowing himself up.

Consider an example.  A Palestinian Arab walks into a Tel Aviv pizza parlor and detonates his explosive belt killing himself and 100 Israelis.  It would be misleading to say that this man has committed suicide even though he assuredly has, given that suicide is the intentional taking of one's own life. It is misleading because he hasn't merely killed himself, he has killed himself in order to commit mass murder.

As a conservative, I detect left-wing bias in the use of 'suicide bomber' in a case like this.  It is biased because it plays down the element of mass murder of others. It puts the emphasis on the poor terrorist — a product of oppressive circumstances we will be told — instead of where it belongs, on the slaughter of civilians.  So from my conservative point of view, 'homicide bomber' seems more apt.  This is reinforced by the linguistic fact that when one hears 'suicide' one does not usually think of homicide even though suicide is a form of homicide.  The word 'homicide' in ordinary English carries the connotation of the killing of others.  If a man commits suicide we typically do not say that he committed homicide, and if a man commits homicide we do not normally think of the case in which he commits homicide by committing suicide.

I will concede to you, though, that since 'homicide bomber' covers all three cases, it fails to convey the notion that the terrorist killed himself in order to kill others.  So we may have a stand-off here: neither of us can compellingly show that the other's usage is incorrect or to avoided.

Thank You Zoe Pollock of The Daily Dish

When I logged on yesterday, I was surprised to see that my readership was way up: by the end of the day I had logged 2,698 page views for the day.  That's about double what I was getting the few days preceding.  Here is the link from Zoe Pollock. 

Hell, if I knew she was going to link to that meditation on death and Hitchens, I would have polished it.  Almost everything I post on this site is first-draftish.  That is the nature of the 'sport' of blogging.  The idea is to see if you can bang out something interesting, substantive, penetrating, muscular yet elegant, without spending the whole day doing it.

I have been blogging for over six years now on a daily basis. Something tells me I'm in it for the duration.  It has added very considerably to the quality of my life, especially because of the likeminded friends I have made.  You guys know who you are.  The social networking that the Internet makes possible solves a very nasty problem of human relations:  How can one find people one can relate to?

Chutzpah

A delightful word of Yiddish, 'chutzpah' is in the semantic vicinity of 'insolence,' 'effrontery,' 'impudence,' 'gall.'  An excellent contemporary example of chutzpah: building a mosque and huge Islamic center a couple of blocks from where nearly three thousand Americans were slaughtered in the name of Islam.   As we say in the Southwest, that takes cojones!

Emergentism

Here is a measly hunk of frangible bone and flesh out of which emerges a balloon so vast as to encompass the universe past, present, and future.  And then one day the wretched little animal dies, the air supply is cut off, and the balloon collapses, its last thought being: what the hell was that all about?

‘Suicide Bomber’ or ‘Homicide Bomber’?

Bill Keller is the Executive Editor of the New York Times. I saw him on C-Span 1 on the morning of 1 September 2004. In response to a caller who brought up the issue of liberal bias in the NYT, Keller rightly pointed out that political opponents often try to seize control of the terminology in which debates are couched in order to gain an advantage over their adversaries. As one might expect, the examples he chose favored his liberal tilt. Thus he mentioned the Republican use of 'death tax' to refer to what is more commonly known as the estate tax, as well as the fairly recent tendency of Republicans and conservatives generally to use 'Democrat Party' instead of the more traditional 'Democratic Party.' I'll return to these examples in a moment; it is Keller's third example, however, that inspired this post. 

Keller took exception to the practice of some conservatives who label what are more commonly known as suicide bombers as 'homicide bombers,' claiming that 'suicide bombers' is the correct term. Keller claimed in effect that a person who blows himself up is a suicide bomber, not a homicide bomber.

This is a clear example of muddled thinking. Note first that anyone who commits suicide ipso facto commits homicide.* If memory serves, St. Augustine somewhere argues against suicide using this very point. The argument goes something like this: (1) Homicide is wrong; (2) Suicide is a case of homicide; ergo, (3) Suicide is wrong. One can easily see from this that every suicide bomber is a homicide bomber. Indeed, this is an analytic proposition, and so necessarily true.

More importantly, the suicide bombers with whom we are primarily concerned murder not only themselves but other people as well. As a matter of fact, almost every suicide bomber is a homicide bomber not just in the sense that he kills himself, but also in the sense that he kills others. There are two points here. As a matter of conceptual necessity, every suicide bomber is a homicide bomber. And as a matter of contingent fact, every suicide bomber, with the exception of a few solitary individuals, is a homicide bomber.

Keller missed both of these points. Had he seen them, he would have appreciated that 'homicide bomber' is a perfectly accurate expression free of ideological taint. He would have seen that every suicide bomber is a homicide bomber, though not conversely. He would have grasped that suicide bombers are a proper subset of homicide bombers. (S is a proper subset of T iff S is a subset of T but S is not identical to T.)

Since the points I have just made are so simple and luminous, it is reasonable to conjecture that Keller was blinded to their alethic luminosity by his liberal bias, a bias that is reinforced on a quotidian basis by the crowd he runs with. As to the other two examples, I am willing to concede that 'death tax' is inaccurate. It is not the event of dying that is being taxed, but the transfer of wealth that occurs on the occasion of dying when the wealth is greater than a certain amount. But calling the Democrat Party the Democrat Party is as accurate as can be. For it makes it clear that 'Democrat Party' is a proper name as opposed to a description. 'Democratic Party,' however, suggests that there is a description satisfaction of which is necessary for 'Democratic Party' to have a referent – which is false. 'Democratic Party' refers to what it refers to even if the referent fails to be democratic.  They are a pack of elitists, scarcely democratic.  Dropping the '___ic' makes this clear.

_________________

*Since the reference class for the sake of this discussion is human beings, we needn't consider such counterexamples as that of the nonhuman extraterrestrial who commits suicide, or the terrestrial nonhuman (a dolphin perhaps) who does so. If Star Trek's Mr. Spock or Dolly the Dolphin commit suicide, they do not thereby commit homicide. 

What Explains Islamist-Leftist Collaboration?

An analysis by Daniel Pipes.  Excerpt:

Why, then, the formation of what David Horowitz calls the Left-Islamist "unholy alliance"? For four main reasons.

First, as British politician George Galloway explains, "the progressive movement around the world and the Muslims have the same enemies," namely Western civilization in general and the United States, Great Britain, and Israel in particular, plus Jews, believing Christians, and international capitalists. In Iran, according to Tehran political analyst Saeed Leylaz, "the government practically permitted the left to operate since five years ago so that they would confront religious liberals."

Listen to their interchangeable words: Harold Pinter describes America as "a country run by a bunch of criminal lunatics" and Osama bin Laden calls the country "unjust, criminal and tyrannical." Noam Chomsky terms America a "leading terrorist state" and Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a Pakistani political leader, deems it "the biggest terrorist state." These commonalities suffice to convince the two sides to set aside their many differences in favor of cooperation.

Second, the two sides share some political goals. A mammoth 2003 joint demonstration in London to oppose war against Saddam Hussein symbolically forged their alliance. Both sides want coalition forces to lose in Iraq, the War on Terror to be closed down, anti-Americanism to spread, and the elimination of Israel. They agree on mass immigration to and multiculturalism in the West. They cooperate on these goals at meetings such as the annual Cairo Anti-War Conference, which brings leftists and Islamists together to forge "an international alliance against imperialism and Zionism."

Third, Islamism has historic and philosophic ties to Marxism-Leninism. Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian Islamist thinker, accepted the Marxist notion of stages of history, only adding an Islamic postscript to them; he predicted that an eternal Islamic era would come after the collapse of capitalism and Communism. Ali Shariati, the key intellectual behind the Iranian revolution of 1978–79, translated Franz Fanon, Che Guevara, and Jean-Paul Sartre into Persian. More broadly, the Iranian analyst Azar Nafisi observes that Islamism "takes its language, goals, and aspirations as much from the crassest forms of Marxism as it does from religion. Its leaders are as influenced by Lenin, Sartre, Stalin, and Fanon as they are by the Prophet."

Moving from theory to reality, Marxists see in Islamists a strange fulfillment of their prophesies. Marx forecast that business profits would collapse in industrial countries, prompting the bosses to squeeze workers; the proletariat would become impoverished, rebel, and establish a socialist order. But, instead, the proletariat of industrial countries became ever more affluent, and its revolutionary potential withered. For a century and a half, author Lee Harris notes, Marxists waited in vain for the crisis in capitalism. Then came the Islamists, starting with the Iranian Revolution and following with 9/11 and other assaults on the West. Finally, the Third World had begun its revolt against the West, fulfilling Marxist predictions—even if under the wrong banner and with faulty goals. Olivier Besancenot, a French leftist, sees Islamists as "the new slaves" of capitalism and asks if it is not natural that "they should unite with the working class to destroy the capitalist system." At a time when the Communist movement is in "decay," note analyst Lorenzo Vidino and journalist Andrea Morigi, Italy's "New Red Brigades" actually acknowledge the "leading role of the reactionary clerics."

Fourth, power: Islamists and leftists can achieve more together than they can separately. In Great Britain, they jointly formed the Stop the War Coalition, whose steering committee includes representation from such organizations as the Communist party of Britain and the Muslim Association of Britain. Britain's Respect Party amalgamates radical international socialism with Islamist ideology. The two sides joined forces for the March 2008 European Parliament elections to offer common lists of candidates in France and Britain, disguised under party names that revealed little.

The Aporetics of Artifacts: Puzzling Over Van Inwagen’s Denial of Artifacts

This post is a sequel to Van Inwagen on the Ship of Theseus.  Peter van Inwagen, Material Beings (Cornell UP, 1990), p. 31, writes: 

The question 'In virtue of what do these n blocks compose this house of blocks?' is a question about n + 1 objects, one of them radically different from the others. But the question 'What could we do to get these n blocks to compose something? is a question about n rather similar objects. . . . . questions of the former sort turn our minds to various metaphysical and linguistic questions about the "special" n + 1st [read: n + 1th] object and our words for it: What are the identity conditions for houses of blocks?

Why does van Inwagen think that a house of blocks is an object radically different from the blocks that compose it? And why does he think that if there are, say, 1000 blocks, then in the place where the house is, there are 1001 objects? Not only do I find these notions repugnant to my philosophical sense, I suspect that it is their extremism that motivates van Inwagen to recoil from them and embrace something equally absurd, namely, that there are no such things as houses of blocks or inanimate concrete partite entities generally. 

In other words, if one begins by assuming that if a house of blocks, for example, is a whole of parts, then it is an object radically different from the objects that compose it, an object numerically additional to the objects that compose it; then, recoiling from these extreme positions, one will be tempted to embrace an equal but opposite extremism according to which there are no such inanimate partite entities as houses of blocks. What then should we say about a house of blocks?

First off, it is not identical to any one of its proper parts. Second, it is not identical to the mereological sum of its parts: the parts exist whether or not the house exists. From this it follows that there is a sense in which the house is 'something more' than its parts. But surely it is not an object "radically different" from, or numerically additional to, its proper parts. If there is a house of 1000 blocks in a place, there are not 1001 objects or entities in that place. After all, the house is composed of the blocks, and of nothing else.

So on the one hand the house is 'something more' than its constituent blocks, while on the other hand it is not a "radically different" object above and beyond them. Think of how absurd it would be for me to demand that you show me your house after you have shown me every part of it. "You've shown me every single part of your house, but where is the bloody house?"

The house, thought not identical to the blocks that compose it,  is not wholly diverse from the blocks that compose it .  The house is the blocks arranged housewise. The house is not the blocks, and the house is not some further entity "radically different" from the blocks. The house is just the blocks in a certain familiar arrangement. Should we conclude that the house exists or that it does not exist? I say it exists: the house is the blocks arranged housewise, and the existence of the house is the housewise unity of the blocks. Van Inwagen seems to think that there is no house, there are just the blocks. (Of course, he doesn't believe in the blocks either since they too are inanimate partite entities; but to keep the discussion simple, we may assume that the blocks are simples.)  

Now if it is allowed that the house exists, it seems clear that the house does not exist in the way the blocks do. But this does not strike me as a good reason for saying that the house does not exist at all. What is wrong with saying that the house is a dependent existent? And what is wrong with saying that about partite entities generally? They exist, but they do not exist in addition to their parts, but as the unity or connectedness of their parts. Saying this, we avoid van Inwagen's absurd thesis that inanimate partite entities do not exist. Of course, this commits me to saying that there are at least two modes of existence, a dependent mode and an independent mode. I suspect van Inwagen would find such a distinction incoherent. But that is a topic for a separate post.

The problem can be set forth as an aporetic pentad:

1. The house is not identical to the blocks that compose it.

2. The house is not wholly diverse from the blocks that compose it; it is not an object numerically additional to the blocks that compose it:  given that the house is composed of n blocks, the house itself is not an n + 1th object.

3. The house exists.

4. The constituent blocks exist.

5.  'Exists' is univocal as between wholes and parts: wholes and their parts exist in the same sense.

Each limb has a strong claim on our acceptance.  But they cannot all be true.  Any four of the propositions, taken together, entails the negation of the remaining one.  For example, if the first four are all true, then the fifth must be false.  To solve the problem, one of the limbs must be rejected.  But which one? 

To me it seems obvious that the first four are all true.  So I reject (5).  Rejecting (5), I can say that the house exists as the connectedness of the blocks.  Thus the mode of existence of the whole is different from the mode of existence of its simple parts.  But this solution requires us to believe in modes of existence, which is sure to inspire opposition among analytic philosophers.  Van Inwagen, if I understand him, denies (2) and (3) while accepting the others.

But van I's solution is just crazy, is it not?  Mine is less crazy.  But perhaps you, dear reader, have a better suggestion.

 

Which Islam Will Prevail in America?

Required reading.  Excerpts:

Most of the mosques and Islamic centers in our country are controlled, to a greater or lesser degree, by the Muslim Brotherhood and its satellites. The North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) was established in the early Seventies to buy up property for the establishment of American mosques and “Islamic centers,” the latter being what the Brotherhood calls “the axis” of the Islamist movement in America. [. . .]

The Kingdom and the Brotherhood have combined for a half-century to put American Muslim communities in a stranglehold. They proselytize a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam — an amalgam of Saudi Wahhabism and Brotherhood Salafism — that is virulently anti-Western. Its instruction to Muslims in the United States, Canada, and Europe is voluntary apartheid: Immigrate but don’t integrate, infiltrate but don’t assimilate. [. . .]

It is the Brotherhood’s objective to thread sharia through American law and culture. This mission drives imam Feisal Rauf’s [the guy behind the Ground Zero mosque provocation] work, as documented by the Center for Security Policy’s Christine Brim in an eye-popping report at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Peace website.

Van Inwagen on the Ship of Theseus

Van Inwagen Peter van Inwagen's Material Beings (Cornell UP, 1990) is a very strange book, but he is a brilliant man, so one can expect to learn something from it. A central claim is that artifacts such as tables and chairs and ships do not exist. One can appreciate  that if there are no ships then the ancient puzzle about identity known as the Ship of Theseus has a very quick (dis)solution. 

The Ship of Theseus is a puzzle about diachronic artifact identity. Here is one version. You have a ship, or a rowboat, or any object, composed entirely of wooden planks. You remove one of the planks and replace it with an aluminum plank of the same size. The wooden plank is placed in a warehouse. After this minor replacement, you have a ship and indeed numerically the same ship as the one you started with. It is not a numerically different ship. Now replace a second wooden plank with an aluminum plank, and place the second wooden plank in the warehouse. Again, the numerical identity of the original ship has been preserved. Continue the replacement process until all of the wooden planks have been replaced with aluminum planks. You now have a wholly aluminum ship that is presumably numerically identical to the original wholly wooden ship despite the fact that none of the original matter is to be found in the aluminum ship. After all, the aluminum ship 'grew out of' the original wooden ship by minor changes each of which is identity-preserving.

Now take the wooden planks from the warehouse and assemble them in the form of a ship and in such a way that the planks bear the same relations to one another as the planks in the original wooden ship bore to one another. You now have two ships, a wooden one and an aluminum one. The question is: which of these ships is identical to the original wooden one?

Suppose the two ships collide on the high seas, and suppose the captain of the original ship had taken a solemn vow to go down with his ship. Where does his duty lie? With the wooden ship or with the aluminum one? Is the original ship identical to the resultant aluminum ship? One will be tempted to say 'yes' since the aluminum ship 'grew out' of the original wooden ship by minor transformations each of which was identity-preserving. Or is the original ship identical to the wooden ship that resulted from the re-assembly of the wooden planks? After all, it consists of the original matter arranged in the original way. Since the resultant wooden and aluminum ships are numerically distinct, they cannot both be identical to the original ship.

Van Inwagen makes short work of the puzzle: "There are no ships, and hence there are no puzzles about the identities of ships." (128) One way van Inwagen supports this bizarre solution is by re-telling the story in language that does not make even apparent reference to ships. Here is his retelling:

Once upon a time, there were certain planks that were arranged shipwise. Call then the First Planks. . . . One of the First Planks was removed from the others and placed in a field. Then it was replaced by a new plank; that is, a carpenter caused the new plank and the remaining First Planks to be arranged shipwise, and in just such a way that the new plank was in contact with the same planks that the removed planks had been in contact with, and at exactly the same points. Call the planks that were then arranged shipwise the Second Planks. A plank that was both one of the First Planks and one of the Second Planks was removed from the others and placed in the field and replaced (according to the procedure laid down above), with the consequence that certain planks, the Third Planks, were arranged shipwise. Then a plank that was one of the First Planks and one of the Second Planks and one of the Third Planks . . . . This process was repeated till all the First Planks were in the field. Then the First Planks were caused to be arranged shipwise, and in just such a way that each of them was in contact with the same planks it had been in contact with when the First Planks had last been arranged shipwise, and was in contact with them at just the same points. (128-129)

If I understand what van Inwagen is claiming here, it is that there is nothing in the standard telling of the story, a version of which I presented above, that is not captured in his re-telling. But since there is no mention of any ships in the re-telling, no puzzle about ship-identity can arise. Perhaps van Inwagen's point could be put by saying that the puzzle about identity is an 'artifact' of a certain way of talking that can be paraphased away. Instead of talking about ships, we can talk about shipwise arrangements of planks. The planks do not then compose a ship, he thinks, and so there is no whole of which they are proper parts, and consequently no question about how this whole maintains its diachronic identity under replacement of its parts.

What are we to say about van Inwagen's dissolution of the puzzle? What I find dubious is van Inwagen's claim that ". . . at no time do two or more of these planks compose anything, and no plank is a proper part of anything." (129) This strikes me as plainly false. If the First Planks are arranged shipwise, then there is a distinction beween the First Planks and their shipwise arrangement. The latter is the whole ship and the former are its proper parts. So how can van Inwagen claim that the planks do not compose a ship? Van Inwagen seems to think that if the planks were parts of a whole, and there were n planks, then the whole would be an n + 1 th entity. Rejecting this extreme, he goes to the other extreme: there is no whole of parts. If there were ships, they would be wholes of parts, but there are no artifactual wholes of parts, so there are no ships. The idea seems to be that when we build an artifact like a ship we are not causing something new to come into existence; we are merely re-arranging what already exists. If so, then although a ship's planks exist, the ship does not exist. Consider what van Inwagen says on p. 35:

If I bring two cubes into contact so that the face of one is conterminous with the face of the other, have I thereby brought into existence a solid that is twice as long as it is wide? Or have I merely rearranged the furniture of the earth without adding to it?

Van Inwagen seems to be saying that when it comes to artifacts, there is only rearrangement, no 'addition to existence.' As a general thesis, this strikes me as false. A ship is more than its planks, and van Inwagen seems to concede as much with his talk of a shipwise arrangement of planks; but this shipwise arrangement brings something new into being, namely, a thing that has causal powers that its constituents do not have. For example, a boat made of metal planks properly arranged will float, while the planks themselves will not float.

How Far Does Religious Toleration Extend?

Suppose that there were a religion whose aim was to dominate the world and suppress every other religion.  Would we who value toleration be under any obligation to tolerate such a religion?  Of course not.  Toleration does not extend to the toleration of the intolerant.  Is there such a religion?  According to Farhad Khosrokhavar, Inside Jihadism: Understanding Jihadi Movements Worldwide (Paradigm 2009, p. 22):

In the twentieth century, one of the first to insist that Islam entails its imposition on humanity was Seyed Qutb, one of the modern forefathers of Jihadism . . . . He stated that Islam summons to worship no one else but Allah . . . . This implies the relentless fight against all idols until Allah's reign is set up on earth [ . . .]

The war on idolatry (taqut) is, in his interpretation, the most important part of Islam, taking precedence over the other principles. From this view, all of modernity is based on the worship of idols and, therefore, illegitimate, necessitating that Jihad wipe out its idolatrous tendencies. 

Jihad is not one of the five pillars of Islam.  But recent jihadists interpret the first pillar in a manner to require jihad.  "For them [recent jihadist intellectuals] the first Islamic pillar, the Unity of Allah (Tawhid) makes it compulsory for Muslims to wage the Jihad against infidels." (p. 21) 

I will be told that not all who identify as Muslims take this radical view.  True, but they are not the problem.  The Jihadists are the problem.  And we have reason to think that they represent the essence of Islam with the so-called 'moderates' being simply those who do not take the core message with full seriousness.  To the extent that Islam takes on Jihadist contours, to the extent that Islam entails its imposition on humanity, it cannot and ought not be tolerated by the West.  Indeed, no religion that attempts to suppress other religions can or ought to be  tolerated, including Christianity.  We in the West do, or at least should, believe that competition among religions in a free marketplace of ideas is a good thing. 

My own view is that no extant religion can legitimately claim to be the true religion; the true religion  has yet to be worked out.  In pursuit of that goal we need to make use of all available materials from all the best traditions.  Perhaps even Islam, as crude as it is, has something to teach us.