Month: December 2010

Presentism Between Scylla and Charybdis

What better topic of meditation for New Year's Eve than the 'passage' of time. May the Reaper grant us all another year!

…………..

If presentism is to be a defensible thesis, a 'presentable' one if you will, then it must avoid both the Scylla of tautology and the Charybdis of absurdity.  Having survived these hazards, it must not perish of unclarity or inexpressibility.

Consider

1. Only what exists exists.

If 'exists' is used in the same way in both occurrences, then (1) is a miserable tautology and not possibly a bone of contention as between presentists and anti-presentists.  Note that (1) is a tautology whether 'exists' is present-tensed in both occurrences or temporally unqualified (untensed) in both.  To have a substantive thesis, the presentist must distinguish the present-tensed use of 'exist' from some other use and say something along the lines of

P. Only what exists (present tense) exists simpliciter.

This implies that what no longer exists does not exist simpliciter, and that what will exist does not exist simpliciter.  It is trivial to say that what no longer exists does not presently exist, but this is not what the presentist is saying: he is is saying that what no longer exists does not exist  period (full stop, simpliciter, at all, sans phrase, absolutely, pure and simple, etc.)

But the presentist must also, in his formulation of his thesis, avoid giving aid and comfort to the absurdity that could be called 'solipsism of the present moment.'  (I borrow the phrase from Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits, Simon and Schuster 1948, p. 181.) 

SPM.  Only what exists (present tense) exists simpliciter; nothing existed and nothing will exist.

The idea behind (SPM) is decidedly counterintuitive but cannot be ruled out by logic alone.  To illustrate, consider James Dean who died on September 30th, 1955.  Presentist and anti-presentist agree that Dean existed and no longer exists.  (Alter the example to Dean's car if you hold to the immortality of the soul.)  That is, both presentist and anti-presentist maintain that there actually was this actor, that he was not a mere possibility or a fictional being.  The presentist, however, thinks that Dean does not exist at all (does not exist simpliciter) while the anti-presentist maintains that Dean does exist simpliciter, but in the past.  In contrast to both,the present-moment solipsist holds that Dean never existed and for this reason does not exist at all.  Thus there are three positions on past individuals.  The presentist says that they do not exist at all or simpliciter.  The anti-presentist says that they do exist simpliciter.  The PM-solispist says that they never existed.

Clearly, the presentist must navigate between the Scylla of tautology and the Charybdis of present-moment solipsism.   So what is the presentist saying?  He seems to be operating with a metaphysical picture according to which there is a Dynamic Now which is the source and locus of a ceaseless annihilation and creation: some things are ever passing out of being and other things are ever coming into being.  He is not saying that all that is in being is all there ever was in being or all there ever will be in being.  That is the lunatic thesis of the present-moment solipsist. 

The presentist can be characterized as an annihilationist-creationist in the following sense.  He is annihilationist about the past, creationist about the future.  He maintains that an item that becomes past does not lose merely the merely temporal property of presentness, but loses both presentness and existence.  And an item that becomes present does not gain merely the merely temporal property of presentness, but gains both presentness and existence.  Becoming past is a passing away, an annihilation, and becoming present is  a coming into  being, a creation out of nothing.

To many, the presentist picture seem intuitively correct, though I would not go so far as Alan Rhoda who, quoting John Bigelow, maintains that presentism is "arguably the commonsense position."  I would suggest that common sense, assuming we can agree on some non-tendentious characterization of same, takes no position on arcane metaphysical disputes such as this one.  (This is a fascinating metaphilosophical topic that cannot be addressed now.  How does the man on the street think about time?  Answer: he doesn't think about it, although he is quite adept at telling time, getting to work on time and using correctly the tenses of his mother tongue.)

So far, so good.  But there is still, to me at least, something deeply puzzling about the presentist thesis.  Consider the following two tensed sentences about the actor James Dean.  'Dean does not exist.'  'Dean did exist.'  Both tensed sentences are unproblematically true, assuming that death is annihilation.  (We can avoid this assumption by changing the example to Dean's silver Porsche.)  Because both sentences are plainly true, recording as they do Moorean facts, they are plainly logically consistent.

The presentist, however, maintains that what did exist, but  no longer exists, does not exist at all.  That is the annihilationist half of his characteristic thesis.  It is not obviously true in the way the data sentences are obviously true.  Indeed, it is not clear, to me at least, what exactly the presentist thesis MEANS.  (Evaluation of a proposition as either true or false presupposes a grasp of its sense or meaning.) When the presentist says, in the present using a present-tensed sentence,  that

1. Dean does not presently exist at all

he does not intend this to hold only at the present moment, else (1) would collapse into the trivially true present-tensed 'Dean does not exist.'  He intends something more, namely:

2. Dean does not presently exist at any time, past, present, or future.

Now what bothers me is the apparent present reference in (2) to past and future times.  How can a present-tensed sentence be used to refer to the past?  That's one problem.  A second is that (2) implies

3.  It is presently the case that there are past times at which Dean does not exist.

But (3) is inconsistent with the presentist thesis according to which only the present time and items at the present time exist.

My underlying question is whether presentism has the resources to express its own thesis. Does it make it between the Scylla of tautology and the Charybdis of PM-solipsism only to founder on the reef of inexpressibility?

Happy New Year!

 

On Reference: An Aporetic Septad

We can divide the following seven propositions into two groups, a  datanic triad and a theoretical tetrad. The members of the datanic  triad are just given — hence 'datanic' — and so are not up for   grabs, whence it follows that to relieve ourselves of the ensuing contradiction we must reject one of the members of the theoretical tetrad. The funs starts when we ponder which one to reject. But first  you must appreciate that the septad is indeed inconsistent.

   D1. Sam believes that Cicero is a philosopher.
   D2. Cicero is Tully.
   D3. It is not the case that Sam believes that Tully is a philosopher.

   T1. 'Cicero' and 'Tully' have the same denotation (are coreferential)
   in all of their occurrences in the datanic sentences, both in the
   direct speech and indirect speech positions.
   T2. 'Is' in (D2) expresses strict, numerical identity where this has
   the usual properties of reflexivity, symmetry, transitivity, and the
   necessity of identity (if x = y, then necessarily, x = y).
   T3. Cicero has the property of being believed by Sam to be a
   philosopher.
   T4. If x = y, then whatever is true of x is true of y, and vice versa.
   (Indiscernibility of Identicals)

Now, do you see that this septad is pregnant with contradiction? By (T3), Cicero has a certain property, the property of being believed by Sam to be a philosopher. Therefore, given the truth of (T1) and (T4), Tully has that same property. But this implies the negation of (D3).

To remove the contradiction, we must reject one of the T-propositions. The D-propositions express the data of the problem. Obviously, they can't be rejected. Of course, nothing hinges on the particular   example. There are countless examples of the same form. Someone could  believe that 3 is one of the square roots of 9 without believing that one of the square roots of 9 is a prime number, even though 3 is a  prime number.

The Fregean solution is to reject (T1). In (D1), 'Cicero' refers to  its customary sense, not its customary referent, while in (D2), 'Cicero' refers to its customary referent. This implies that the antecedent of (T4) remains unsatisfied so that one cannot conclude  that Tully has the property of being believed by Sam to be a  philosopher.

A different solution, one proposed by Hector-Neri Castaneda, is achieved by rejecting (T2) while upholding the rest of the T-propositions. The rough idea is that 'Cicero' in all its occurrences refers to a 'thin' object, an ontological guise, a sort of ontological  part of ordinary infinitely-propertied particulars. This ontological  guise is not strictly identical to the ontological guise denoted by  'Tully,' but the two are "consubstantiated" in Castaneda's jargon.

This consubstantiation is a type of contingent sameness. Since Cicero and Tully are not strictly identical, but merely consubstantiated, the fact that Cicero has the property of being believed by Sam to be a  philosopher does not entail that Tully has this property. So the  contradiction does not arise. (Cf. The Phenomeno-Logic of the I, pp. 183-186)

Both solutions invoke what our friend 'Ockham' calls 'queer entities' using 'queer' in the good old-fashioned way.  The Fregean solution requires those abstract entities called senses and the Castanedan solution posits ontological guises.  Can 'Ockham' solve the problem while satisfying all his nominalistic scruples?

Can a man in a straight-jacket do the tango?

What Is Presentism?

What is time?  Don't ask me, and I know.  Ask me, and I don't know. (Augustine).  The same goes, in my case at least, for presentism, as Peter Lupu made clear to me Christmas night.  Don't ask me what it is, and I know.  Ask me, and I don't know.

The rough idea, of course, is that the temporally present  — the present time and its contents — alone exists.  The only items (events, individuals, properties, etc.) that exist are the items that presently exist.  Past and future items do not exist.  But surely it is trivial and not disputed by any anti-presentist that the present alone now exists.  (Obviously, the past does not now exist, else it would not be past, and similarly with the future.)  If the presentist is forwarding a substantive metaphysical thesis then it cannot be this triviality that he is hawking.  So what does the thesis of presentism amount to?

It seems obvious that the presentist must invoke a use of 'exist(s)' that is not tensed in order to formulate his thesis.  For this is a rank tautology: The only items that exist (present tense) are the items that exist (present tense).  It is also tautologous to affirm that the only items that exist (present tense) are the items that presently exist. So it seems that if presentism is to be a substantive thesis of metaphysics, then it must be formulated using a temporally unqualified  use of 'exist(s).'  So I introduce 'exist(s) simpliciter.'  Accordingly:

P. The only items that  exist simpliciter are items that presently exist.

(P) is a substantive thesis.  The presentist will affirm it,  the antipresentist will deny it.  Both, of course, will agree about such Moorean facts as that James Dean existed.  But they will disagree about whether Dean exists simpliciter.  The presentist will say that he does not, while the anti-presentist will say that he does.  Again, both will agree that Dean does not exist now.  But whereas the presentist will say that he does not exist at all, the anti-presentist will say that he does exist, though not at present. The anti-presentist can  go on to say that, because Dean exists simpliciter, there is no problem about how he can stand in  relations to things that presently exist.  The presentist, however, faces the problem of how the existent can stand in relation to the nonexistent.

My mother is dead.  But I am her son.  So I stand in the son of relation to my mother.  If the dead are nonexistent, then I, who exist, stand in relation to a nonexistent object.  But how the devil can a relation obtain between two items when one of them ain't there?  This is a problem for the presentist, is it not?  But it is not a problem for the anti-presentist who maintains that present and past individuals both exist simpliciter.  For then the relation connects two existents.

The antipresentist, however, needs to tell us what exactly existence simpliciter is, and whether it is the same or different than tenseless existence (whatever that is).

But nota bene:  the presentist must also tell us what existence simpliciter is since he needs it to get his thesis (P) off the ground.

In my experience, the problems associated with time are the most difficult  in all of philosophy.

 

Tripke Joins Turnupseed

James When the young James Dean crashed his low slung silver Porsche Spyder on a lonely California highway on September 30, 1955, he catapulted a couple of unknowns into the national spotlight.  One of them was Ernie Tripke, one of two California Highway Patrol officers who arrived at the scene.  He has died at the age of 88.  But what ever happened to Donald Turnupseed, the driver who turned in front of the speeding Dean, having failed to see him coming?  His story is here. 

Is dying young a bad thing for the one who dies?  What if it makes you 'immortal' as in the case of James Dean?  More grist for the Epicurean mill.

Intentionality: Peter Lupu’s ‘Surrogate Object’ Solution

I suggest we approach the problem, or one of the problems, of intentionality via the following aporetic triad:

1. We sometimes intend the nonexistent.
2. Intentionality is a relation.
3. Every relation R is such that, if R obtains,then all its relata exist.

This is a nice neat way of formulating the problem because, on the one hand, each limb is extremely plausible while, on the other hand, the limbs appear collectively inconsistent.  To solve the problem, one must either reject one of the limbs or show that the inconsistency is merely apparent.

Enter Peter Lupu's solution. He described it to me last night after Christmas dinner.  He thinks we can uphold all three propositions.  Thus his claim is that the triad is only apparently inconsistent.

Suppose Shaky Jake seeks the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine (LDM).  Now seeking things like lost gold mines typically involves all sorts of physical actions; but at the root of, and animating, these actions are various mental states many of which are intentional or objected-directed.  Believing, hoping, desiring,  fearing, planning — these are all intentional states.  Among them is the state of wanting.  To want is to want something.  Thus Jake wants, or wants to find, the LDM.  But a subject's wanting of x does not entail the existence of x in the way that a subject's owning of x does entail the existence of x.  You can't own, beat, eat, etc. what does not exist; but you can desire, imagine, think about, etc. what does not exist.  This is a crucial fact about intentionality.  Peter of course is well aware of it.

Now either the LDM exists or it does not.  If it exists, then Jake's wanting relates him (or his mind) to the LDM in a way that is consistent with the truth of both (2) and (3).  If the LDM does not exist, then Jake's wanting relates him (or his mind) to the CONTENT of Jake's mental act.  But this too is consistent with the truth of both (2) and (3). For the content exists whether or not the object exists.

In this way, Peter thinks he can uphold each of (1)-(3).  Supposing, as is overwhelmingly likely, that the LDM does not exist, (1) is true:  Jake intends (in the mode of wanting) something nonexistent.  This instance of intentionality is relational: it connects Jake's mind to a content.  (2) is thus maintained.  But so is (3): Jake's mind and the content both exist.

I will call this a 'surrogate object' solution.  It works by substituting the content for the external object when the external object does not exist.  This guarantees that there will always be an existent object, either the external object, or the surrogate object to serve as the object relatum of the intentional relation.

But isn't there an obvious objection to the 'surrogate object' solution?  Jake wants a gold mine.  He doesn't want a content.  A gold mine is a physical thing.  But whatever a content is, it is not a physical thing.  A content is either mental as a part of the intentional mental state, or it is an abstract item of some sort.  To appreciate this, let us consider more carefully what a content is.  A content is an intermediary entity, roughly analogous to a Fregean sense (Sinn), which mediates between mind and external concrete reality.  And like Fregean senses, contents do not reside in external concrete reality.  They are either immanent to consciousness like Twardowski's contents, or abstracta like Frege's senses.  And just as linguistic reference to the planet Venus is achieved via the sense of 'morning star' or via the sense of 'evening star,' mental reference to an object is achieved via a content.  To employ the old Brentano terminology of presentations (Vorstellungen), the object is that which is presented in a presentation whereas the content is that through which it is presented.

Now my point against Peter is that when I want something that doesn't exist, my wanting cannot be said to relate me  to a content.  My wanting involves a content no doubt, but the content is not the object.  Why not?  Well, if I want a flying horse, I want a physical thing, an animal; but no content is a physical thing, let alone an animal.  When Bobby Darin pined after his Dream Lover, it  was something lusciously concrete and physical that he was pining after.

Suppose I am imagining  Pegasus and thinking: Pegasus does not exist.  The imagining is an intentional state that involves a content, the mental image.  But this mental image exists.  So it cannot be the mental image that I am thinking does not exist.  It is Pegasus himself that I am thinking does not exist.  And therein lies the puzzle. 

Suppose Peter responds as follows.  "I grant you that it is not the mental image that I am thinking does not exist.  For, as you point out, the image does exist.  What I am doing is thinking that the mental image is not a mental image of anything.  So when I imagine Pegasus and think: Pegasus does not exist, the object relatum is an existent item, the Pegasus image, and what I am thinking about it is that it is not an image of anything."

But this too is problematic.  For the nonexistence of Pegasus cannot be identified with the Pegasus-images's not being an image of anything. And this for the simple reason that an objective fact such as the nonexistence of Pegasus cannot depend on the existence of mental images.  There are times and possible worlds in which there are no mental images and yet at those times and worlds Pegasus does not exist.

But Peter persists:  "Well, I can say that when I am thinking about Pegasus I am thinking about a necessarily existent conjunctive property the conjuncts of which are being a horse, having wings, etc., and when I think that Pegasus does not exist I am thinking that this conjunctive property is not instantiated.  And when I think that Pegasus is winged, I am thinking that the conjunctive property has being winged as one of its conjuncts."

This is better, but still problematic.  If Peter wants Pegasus, then presumably what he wants on his analysis is not the conjunctive property in question, but the being instantiated of this property.  Being instantiated, however, is relational not monadic:  if the conjunctive property is instantiated it is instantiated by an individual.    And which individual must it be?  Why, Pegasus!  The analysis, it appears, is viciously circular.  Let's review.

Peter wants to say that intentionality is a relation and that the holding of a relation entails the existence of all its relata.  But Pegasus does not exist.  To want Pegasus, then, cannot be to stand in relation to Pegasus, but to a surrogate object.  If you say that the surrogate object is a necessarily existent property, then the problem is that wanting Peagsus, an animal, is not wanting a causally inert abstract object.  If. on the other hand, you say that to want Pegasus is to want the being instantiated of that abstract object, then you want the being instantiated of that abstract object by existing Pegasus — in which case we have made no progress since Pegasus does not exist!

On Falsely Locating the Difference Between Deduction and Induction

One commonly hears it said that the difference between deductive and inductive inference is that the former moves from the universal to the singular, while the latter proceeds from the singular to the universal. (For a recent and somewhat surprising example, see David Bloor, "Wittgenstein as a Conservative Thinker" in The Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge, ed. Kusch (Kluwer, 2000), p. 4.) No doubt, some deductive inferences fit the universal-to-singular pattern, while some inductive inferences fit the singular-to-universal pattern.

But it does not require a lot of thought to see that this cannot be what the difference between deduction and induction consists in. An argument of the form, All As are Bs; All Bs are Cs; ergo, All As are Cs is clearly deductive, but is composed of three universal propositions. The argument does not move from the universal to the singular. So the first half of the widely-bruited claim is false.

Indeed, some deductive arguments proceed from singular premises to a universal conclusion. Consider this (admittedly artificial) example: John is a fat chess player; John is not a fat chess player; ergo, All chess players are fat. This is a deductive argument, indeed it is a valid deductive argument: it is impossible to find an argument of this form that has true premises and a false conclusion. Paradoxically, any proposition follows deductively from a contradiction. So here we have a deductive argument that takes us from singular premises to a universal conclusion.

There are also deductive arguments that move from a singular premise to an existentially general, or particular, conclusion. ‘Someone is sitting’ is a particular proposition: it is neither universal nor singular. ‘I am sitting’ is singular. The first follows deductively from the second.

As for the second half of the claim, suppose that every F I have encountered thus far is a G, and that I conclude that the next F I will encounter will also be a G. That is clearly an inductive inference, but it is one that moves from a universal statement to a statement about an individual. So it is simply not the case that every inductive inference proceeds from singular cases to a universal conclusion.

What then is the difference between deduction and induction if it does not depend on the logical quantity (whether universal, particular, or singular) of premises and conclusions? The difference consists in the nature of the inferential connection asserted to obtain between premises and conclusion. Roughly speaking, a deductive argument is one in which the premises are supposed to ‘necessitate’ the conclusion, making it rationally inescapable for anyone who accepts the premises, while an inductive argument is one in which the premises are supposed merely to ‘probabilify’ the conclusion.

To be a bit more precise, a deductive argument is one that embodies the following claim: Necessarily, if all the premises are true, then the conclusion is true. The claim is that the premises ‘necessitate’ the conclusion, as opposed to rendering the conclusion probable, where the necessity attaches to the inferential link between premises and conclusion, and not to the conclusion itself. (A valid deductive argument can, but need not, have a necessary conclusion: ‘I am sitting’ necessitates ‘Someone is sitting,’ even though the latter proposition is only contingently true.)

Equivalently, a deductive argument embodies the claim that it is impossible for all the premises to be true and the conclusion false. I say ‘embodies the claim’ because the claim might not be correct. If the claim is correct, then the argument is valid, and invalid otherwise. Since validity pertains to the form of deductive arguments as opposed to their content, we can define a valid (invalid) deductive argument as one whose form is such that it is impossible (possible) for any (some) argument of that form to have true premises and a false conclusion. Since the purport of inductive arguments is merely to probabilify, not necessitate, their conclusions, they are not rightly described as valid or invalid, but as more or less strong or weak, depending on the degree to which they render their conclusions probable.

‘Broken’ and Other Examples of First-Grade English

It is annoying when a senator says that such-and-such is a 'no-no.' Baby talk!   Closely related is the phenomenon of what might be called 'first grade English.' George Bush and others have spoken of  'growing the economy.' One grows tomatoes, not economies. But perhaps I am being peevish and pedantic.

What about the current overuse of 'broken'?  Are you as sick of it as I am?  The El Lay Times  (20 December 2010) opines that California Isn't Broken.  No?  One hears that the Social Security admininstration and the Immigration and Nauralization Service are 'broken.' One breaks things like guitar strings, bicycle chains, and glasses. That which is broken no longer functions as it was intended to. A broken X is not a suboptimally functioning X but a nonfunctioning X.  Social Security checks are mailed to millions of recipients reliably month after month.Clearly, neither the SSA nor the INS are 'broken' strictly speaking. They just don't function very well and are in dire need of reform.

So why call them 'broken'? Is your vocabulary so impoverished that no better word comes to mind?

 
 "President Obama has said plainly that America's health care system is broken." That from Peter Singer in "Why We Must Ration Health Care" (NYT Magazine, July 19, 2009, p. 40.)  I guess that is why Canadians and others come to the USA for medical treatment they cannot get under a socialized system.

Why are people such linguistic lemmings? If some clown uses 'broken' inappropriately, why ape him? One has to be quite a lemming to ape a clown. (How's that for a triple mixed metaphor?) 

 
People who employ baby talk and first grade English in contexts that demand careful thought demonstrate their thoughtlessness and unseriousness.  Precision in the use of language may not be sufficient for clear and productive thinking, but it is necessary. 
 
Language matters.

What Is Intentionality?

He now calls himself 'Edward Ockham.'  I was pleased to receive an e-mail from him this morning in which he directs me to his latest post, Is There a Problem of Intentionality?, and suggests a crossblogging effort.  So I perused his post.  He opens:

Is there a problem of intentionality? That depends what intentionality is. Let's accept the following definition, for the sake of argument.

(1) Intentionality: the existence of some thoughts depends on the existence of external objects

Is that a problem? Yes, and for two reasons.

As far as I can see, the definition on offer bears little resemblance to anything called 'intentionality' in the discussions of this topic since the time of Brentano.  So before  discussion of any problem of intentionality, we need to come to some agreement as to what intentionality is.  Here is how I characterized it in an earlier post:

The influential Austrian philosopher Franz Brentano took intentionality to be the mark of the mental, the criterion whereby physical and mental phenomena are distinguished. For Brentano, (i) all mental phenomena are intentional, (ii) all intentional phenomena are mental, and (iii) no mental phenomenon is physical. (Franz Brentano, Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (1874), Bk. II, Ch. 1.)

What is intentionality? ‘Intentionality’ is Brentano's term of art (borrowed from the Medievals) for that property of (some) mental states whereby they are (non-derivatively) of, or about, or directed to, an object. Such states are intrinsically such that they 'take an accusative.'  The state of perceiving, for example, is necessarily object-directed. One cannot just perceive; if one perceives, then one perceives something. The idea is not merely that when one perceives one perceives something or other; the idea is that when one perceives, one perceives  some  specific object, the very object of that very act.  The same goes for intending (in the narrow sense), believing, imagining, recollecting, wishing, willing, desiring, loving, hating, judging, knowing, etc. Such mental states — thoughts or thinkings, cogitationes, in the broad Cartesian sense of the term —  refer beyond themselves to objects that may or may not exist, or may or may not be true in the case of propositional objects. Reference to an object is thus an intrinsic feature of mental states and not a feature they have in virtue of a relation to an existing object. This is why Brentano speaks of the "intentional in-existence of an object." It is also why Husserl can 'bracket' the existence of the object for phenomenological purposes. Intentionality is not a relation, strictly speaking, though it is relation-like.  This is an important point that many contemporaries seem incapable of wrapping their heads around. 

This is nearly the opposite of what 'Ockham' is saying above.  He seems to be saying that intentional thoughts are all and only those thoughts whose existence depends on the existence of an external object.  Accordingly, the intentionality of a thought is its existential dependence on an existing external object.

But this misses the crucial point that  the directedness of a cogitatio to a cogitatum qua cogitatum — which is the essence of intentionality standardly  understood — does not at all depend on the external existence of the cogitatum. So I find the above definition of 'Ockham' wildly  idiosyncratic.  He goes on to argue against it, but that's like rolling a drunk or beating up a cripple.  Too easy, a 'slap job.'

My posts on intentionality are collected here (Intentionality category) and here (Brentano category).

 

December Twilight Zone Schedule

Here.  Marathon starts New Year's Eve morning and runs for two days.  My eyes glued to the set, my wife invariably asks, "Haven't you seen that episode before?"  She doesn't get it.  I've seen 'em all numerous times each.  Hell, I've been watching 'em since 1959 when the series first aired.  But the best are inexhaustibly rich in content, delightful in execution, studded with young actors and actresses who went on to become famous alongside the now forgotten actors of yesteryear, period costumes and lingo, allusions to the politics of the day.  Timeless and yet a nostalgia trip.  A fine way to end one year and begin another.

To see how much philosophical juice can be squeezed out of one of these episodes, see here.

Professor Mondo

Looking for some high-quality conservative culture critique anent the antics of the late Captain Beefheart who died last week, I typed 'New Criterion Captain Beefheart' into the Google engine. I was forthwith conducted to the stoa of Professor Mondo, presumably because he links to New Criterion and recently posted about Beefheart.  Noting that he also links to me, I thought it would be nice to direct some traffic his way.

Mondo's self-description:

I’m a medievalist at a small college in a small college town. I like reading, writing, music, and thinking — practicing any of these individually or in combination. Turnoffs include Brussels sprouts, bad music, and creeping totalitarianism.

As for the Brussels sprouts, de gustibus non est disputandum; but steaming  the hell out of them and drenching them in a good Hollandaise sauce laced with Tabasco works wonders for me.  Ditto for broccoli and other stinkweeds.

UPDATE 12/21:  Apparently my linkage caused a 'Mav-alanche' at Mondo's site.  My pleasure.

 

Death as a Relational Harm?

Here is some Epicurean reasoning:

1. Death is annihilation. (Materialist assumption)
2. A harm is a harm to someone or something: for there to be a harm, there must be a subject of harm. (Conceptual truth)
3. Nothing is a subject of a harm at a time at which it does not exist. (Plausible principle)
Therefore
4. No dead person is a subject of harm.
Therefore
5. Death (being dead) cannot be a harm to one who is dead.

Assuming that (1) is accepted, the only way of resisting this argument is by rejecting (3).  And it must be admitted that (3), though plausible, can be reasonably rejected.  Suppose I promise a dying man that I will take good care of his young and healthy dog.  But I renege on my promise in order  to save myself the hassle by having the dog euthanized.  Epicurus in hand, I reason, "There is no harm to my friend since he doesn't exist, and there is no harm to the dog because its transition to nonexistence will be quick and painless.  Caring for the dog, however, is a harm to me.  Sure, I will break my promise, but on consequentialist grounds, what's wrong with that?"

Thomas Nagel would disagree and call my reneging "an injury to the dead man."  ("Death" in Mortal Questions, Cambridge UP, 1979, p. 6)  For Nagel, "There are goods and evils which are irreducibly relational; they are features of the relations between a person, with spatial and temporal boundaries of the usual sort, and circumstances which may not coincide with him either in space or in time." (p. 6)  Death is such an evil.  Being dead is a circumstance that does not temporally coincide with the decedent.  In other words, a thing can have properties at times at which it does not exist provided it once existed. (Few if any would claim that a thing can have properties at times at which it does not exist if it never existed.  And so it is not an evil for Schopenhauer's never- existent son 'Will' that he never existed.)

A Nagelian rejection of (3) is respectable and plausible as a means of turning aside the Epicurean argument.  But it is scarcely compelling.  For the Epicurean can simply insist that there are no relational harms.  After all, there is something metaphysically murky about maintaining that a person who is nothing is yet the subject of a harm or injury simply on the strength of his having once existed.  If you are now nothing, then you are now nothing: why should your once having been be relevant?

So it looks like a stand-off, an aporetic impasse.  The considerations for and against (3) seem to cancel each other.

One consideration in favor of (3) is presentism, the doctrine that the present time and its contents alone exist.  If the present alone exists, then past individuals do not exist at all.  If so, they cannot be subject to harms.  A consideration contrary to (3) is our strong intuition that harms and injuries can indeed be inflicted upon the dead.  The dead may not have desires, but we are strongly inclined to say that they have interests, interests subject to violation.  (The literary executor who burns the manuscripts entrusted to him; the agent of Stalin who deletes references to Trotsky from historical documents, etc.)

 

Evil As it Appears to Atheists and Theists

In the preface to his magnum opus, F. H. Bradley observes that "Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct, but to find these reasons is no less an instinct." (Appearance and Reality, Oxford 1893, p. x) The qualifier 'bad' is out of place and curiously off-putting at the outset of a 570 page metaphysical tome, so  if, per impossibile, I had had  the philosopher's ear I would have suggested 'good but not rationally compelling.'  Be that as it may, the point is that our basic sense of things comes first, and only later, if at all, do we take up the task of the orderly discursive articulation of that basic sense.

Thus atheism is bred in the bone before it is born in the brain.  The atheist feels it in his bones and guts that the universe is godless and that theistic conceptions are so many fairy tales dreamt up for false consolation.  This world is just too horrifying to be a divine creation: meaningless unredeemed suffering; ignorance and delusion; the way nature, its claws dripping with blood, feasts on itself; moral evil and injustice — all bespeak godlessness.   There can't be a God of love behind all this horror!  For most atheists, theism is not a Jamesian live option.  What point, then, in debating them?

This deep intuition of the godlessness of the world  is prior to and the force behind arguments from evil.  The arguments merely articulate and rationalize the intuition.  The counterarguments of theists don't stand a chance in the face of the fundamental, gut-grounded, atheist attitude.  No one who strongly  FEELS that things are a certain way is likely to be moved by what he will dismiss as so much verbiage, hairsplitting, and intellectualizing.

But for the theist it is precisely the horror of this world that motivates the quest for a solution, or rather, the horror of this world together with the conviction that we cannot provide the solution for ourselves whether individually or collectively. Evil is taken by the theist, not as a 'proof' of the nonexistence of God, but as a reason, a motive, to seek God.  'Without God, life is horror.' 

Addendum 12/21:  I should add that it would be pointless to seek God if any of the atheist arguments were compelling.  But none are.