Month: December 2010

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Captain Beefheart and Buck Owens

Don Van Vliet, better known as Captain Beefheart, has died of complications of multiple sclerosis at age 69.  Obituary  here.  Apparently, hanging out in the Mojave desert can do strange things to your head.  Here is a taste from the 1969 Trout Mask Replica album.  Far out, man.  Here is something rather more accessible from the 1967 debut Safe as Milk album.  And I think I remember Abba Zabba from that same album.  (Which reminds of the saying, 'If you remember the '60s, you weren't there.')

From Mojave to Bakersfield.  I once had a girlfriend, half Italian, half Irish.  Volatile combo, not recommended.  I had me a Tiger by the Tail.  My wife's half Italian, but the phlegmaticity of her Polish half mitigates, moderates, and modulates her latent Italianate volcanicity, which remains blessedly latent.

Truck Drivin' Man.  Act Naturally.

Divine Simplicity and Whether Existence is a First-Level Property

A London reader, Rob Hoveman, kindly sent me Howard Robinson's "Can We Make Sense of the Idea that God's Existence is Identical to His Essence" (in Reason, Faith and History: Philosophical Essays for Paul Helm, ed. M. W. F. Stone, Ashgate 2008, pp. 127-143).  This post will comment on the gist of section 4 of Robinson's article, entitled 'Existence is Not a Property.'

One major implication of the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) is that in God essence and existence are the same.  My Stanford Encyclopedia article on DDS will fill you in on some of the details.  A number of objections can be brought against DDS.  Here only one will be considered, namely, the objection that existence cannot be a first-level property, a property of individuals.

The objection might go like this.  If in God, an individual, essence and existence are identical, then existence must be a first-level property of God.  But existence cannot be a first-level property.  Therefore, essence and existence cannot be identical in God.

This objection is only as good as the Fregean theory according to which existence is a property of concepts only.  Without explaining why distinguished thinkers have been persuaded of its truth, let me give just one reason why it cannot be right.  The theory says that existence is the property of being instantiated. An affirmative general existential such as  'Horses exist,' then, does not predicate existence of individual horses; it predicates instantiation of the concept horse.  And a negative general existential such as  'Mermaids do not exist'  does not predicate anything of individual mermaids — after all, there aren't any — it denies that the concept mermaid has any instances.

To see what is wrong with the theory, note first that instantiation is a relation, a dyadic asymmetrical relation.  We can of course speak of the property of being instantiated but only so long as it is understood that this is a relational property, one parasitic upon the relation of instantiation.  Therefore, if a first-level concept C is instantiated, then there is some individual x such that  x instantiates C.  It would be nonsense to say that C is instantiated while adding that there is nothing that instantiates it.  That would be like saying that Tom is married but there is no one to whom he is married.  Just as 'Tom is married' is elliptical for 'Tom is married to someone,' 'C is instantiated' is elliptiucal for 'C is instaniated by some individual.'

Now either x exists or it does not. 

Suppose it does not.  Then we have instantiation without existence.  If so, then existence cannot be instantiation.   For example, let C be the concept winged horse and let x be Pegasus.  The latter instantiates the former since Pegasus is a winged horse.   But Pegasus does not exist.  So existence cannot be the second-level property of instantiation if we allow nonexistent objects to serve as instances of concepts. 

Now suppose that x exists.  Then the theory is circular: it presupposes and does not eliminate first-level existence. The concept blogging philosopher is instantiated by me, but only because I possess first-level existence.  One cannot coherently maintain that my existence consists in my instantiating that concept or any concept for the simple reason that (first-level) existence is what makes it possible for me to instantiate any concept in the first place.

If what we are after is a  metaphysical theory of what it is for an individual to exist, then Frege's theory in  all its variants (the Russellian variant, the Quinean variant, . . .)  is wholly untenable.  I demonstrate this in painful detail in A Paradigm Theory of Existence, Kluwer, 2002, Chapter 4.  Robinson, p. 133, is on to the problem, and makes the following intriguing suggestion: "But there is a way of taking the second order analysis which is not incompatible with regarding 'exists' as a first order predicate, and that can be approached by treating existence as a monadic property of concepts." (133)

The idea is that, rather than being a relational property of concepts, as on the Fregean theory, existence is a nonrelational property of concepts.  If this could be made to work, it would defuse the circularity objection I just sketched.  For the objection exploits the fact that instantiation is a dyadic  relation. 

But if existence is to be construed as a monadic (nonrelational) property of concepts, then concepts cannot be understood as Frege understands them.  For Frege, concepts are functions and no function is an ontological constituent of its value for a given argument or an ontological constituent of any argument.  For example, the propositional function expressed by the the predicate '___is wise' has True as its value for Socrates as argument.  But this function is not a constituent of the True.  Nor is it a constituent of Socrates.  And for Frege there are no truthmaking concrete states of affairs having ontological constituents.

For Robinson's suggestion to have a chance, concepts must be understood as ontological constituents of individuals like Socrates.  Accordingly,

Existence is not simply a property of the individual, in the ordinary sense; it is more a metaphysical component of it, along with form or essence. So the monadic property of the concept — its instantiation — is the same as the existence of the individual. (134)

Essence and existence are thus ontological constituents or metaphysical components of contingent individuals.  This is definitely an improvement over the Fregean view inasmuch as it preserves the strong intuition, or rather datum,  that existence belongs to individuals.  But this Thomistic view has its own problems.  It is difficult to understand how existence could be a proper part of an existing thing as the Thomistic analysis implies.   After all, it is the whole of Socrates that exists, Socrates together with all his spatial parts, temporal parts (if any), and ontological 'parts.'    As pertaining to the whole of the existing thing, its existence cannot be identified with one part to the exclusion of others.  For this  reason, in my book I took the line that the existence of an individual is not one of its constituents, but the unity of all its constituents.

Validity, Invalidity, and Contravalidity

If a deductive argument is valid, that does not say much about it: it might still be probatively worthless. Nevertheless, validity is a necessary condition of a deductive argument's being probative. So it is important to have a clear understanding of the notion of validity.  An argument is valid if and only if one of its logical forms is such that no argument of that form has true premises and a false conclusion.

Continue reading “Validity, Invalidity, and Contravalidity”

No Labels? Label We Must!

This is silly.  "Not Right. Not Left. Forward."  There are are real differences between Right and Left that cannot be ignored.  The positions must be carefully defined — and appropriately labeled.  'No labels' is itself a label — an inept one.  Label we must.  So we ought to do it carefully and thoughtfully.

I now hand off to Jonah Goldberg.

 

God, Evil, Matter and Mind: How Both Theists and Materialists Stand Pat in the Face of Objections

It is a simple point of logic that if propositions p and q are both true, then they are logically consistent, though not conversely. So if God exists and Evil exists are both true, then they are logically consistent, whence it follows that it is possible that they be consistent. This is so whether or not anyone is in a position to explain how it is possible that they be consistent. If something is the case, then, by the time-honored principle ab esse ad posse valet illatio, it is possible that it be the case, and one's inability to explain how it is possible that it be the case cannot count as a good reason for thinking that it is not the case.

Example.  No one has successfully answered Zeno's Paradoxes of motion.  (No, kiddies, Wesley Salmon did not successfully rebut them; the 'calculus solution'  is a joke.) But from the fact, if it is a fact, that no one has ever shown HOW motion is possible, it does not follow that motion is not possible. 

So if it is the case that God exists and Evil exists are logically consistent, then this is possibly the case, and a theist's inability to explain how God and evil can coexist is not a good reason for him to abandon his theism — or his belief in the existence of objective evil.

The theist is rationally entitled to stand pat in the face of the 'problem of evil' and point to his array of arguments for the existence of God whose cumulative force renders rational his belief that God exists. Of course, he should try to answer the atheist who urges the inconsistency of God exists and Evil exists; but his failure to provide a satisfactory answer is not a reason for him to abandon his theism. A defensible attitude would be: "This is something we theists need to work on."

Atheists and naturalists ought not object to this standing pat since they do the same. What materialist about the mind abandons his materialism in the face of the various arguments (from intentionality, from qualia, from the unity of consciousness, from the psychological relevance of logical laws, etc.) that we anti-materialists marshall?

Does the materialist give in? Hell no, he stands pat, pointing to his array of arguments and considerations in favor of materialism, and when you try to budge him with the irreconcilability of intentionality and materialism, or qualia and materialism, or reason and materialism, or whatever, he replies, "This is something we materialists need to work on."  He is liable to start talking, pompously, of his 'research program.'  He may even wax quasi-religious with talk of "pinning his hopes on future science"  as if — quite absurdly — knowing more and more about the meat within our skulls will finally resolve the outstanding questions.  And what does science have to do with hope?  There is also something exceedingly curious about hoping that one turns out to be just a material system, a bit of dust in the wind.

"I was so hoping to be proved to be nothing more than a clever land mammal slated for destruction, but, dammit all, there are reasons to think that we are more than animals and have a higher destiny.  That sucks!"

Fission and Zygotes

This post adds nuance to what I said earlier.  I continue to uphold the Potentiality Principle.  I have never seen a good argument against it.  But there is a question about when the principle first finds purchase.  Certainly not before conception.  At conception?  Later on?  Considerations of 'moral safety' suggest we say 'at conception.'  But consider the following argument:

Consider a spatiotemporal (S/T) particular such as an amoeba, or a star, or to take a 'meso-particular,' a  drop of water. The drop D, existing at time t1, divides at time t2 (t2 > t1) into two discrete nontouching droplets, E and F. Suppose E and F are 'identical twins.'  That is to say, E and F, though numerically distinct, are indiscernible with respect to all monadic properties. The question arises: Does D cease to exist when it divides into E and F? Or does D continue to exist after the division or fission? There are exactly four possibilities. 

P1. D ceases to exist at the moment of division. Where there was (at t1) one S/T particular, there are now (at t2) two, but neither of the two is diachronically identical to D.

On Bukowski

Some write because they like the idea of being a writer.  It's romantic or 'cool' or something.  Others write to say something that they need to express.  Most combine these motivations.  The better the writer, the stronger the need to express something that not just needs expression for the psychic health of the writer, but that is worthy of expression. 

Charles Bukowski wrote from genuine need.  (See so you want to be a writer?) It was his therapy. He could not have believed in the early days of his scribbling  that he would ever be able to make a living from it.  But from what I have read of him so far, what he wrote is not worth reading except in the way that his writing was worth doing for him.  What do I mean?

His writing was self-therapeutic; our reading is motivated by something like the pathologist's interest.  We read him to learn about diseases of the mind and spirit.

Am I being fair?  Fair enough for a blog post.

 

Silenian and Epicurean Sources of “Death is Not an Evil”

Clarity will be served if we distinguish the specifically Epicurean reason for thinking death not an evil from another reason which is actually anti-Epicurean. I'll start with the second reason.

A. Death is not an evil because it removes us from a condition which on balance is not good, a condition which on balance is worse than nonexistence.  This is the wisdom of Silenus, reported by Sophocles (Oedipus at Colonus, ll. 1244 ff.) and quoted by Nietzsche in The Birth ofTragedy, section 3:

There is an ancient story that King Midas hunted in the forest a long time for the wise Silenus, the companion of Dionysus, without capturing him.  When Silenus at last fell into his hands, the king asked what was the best and most desirable of all things for man.  Fixed and immovable, the demigod said not a word, till at last, urged by the king, he gave a shrill laugh and broke out into these words:  "O wretched ephemeral race, children of chance and misery, why do you compel me to tell you what it would be most expedient for you not to hear? What is best of all is utterly beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing.  But the second best for you is — to die soon."

Silenus B.  Death is not an evil for the one who dies because when death is, one is not, and when one is, death is not.  My being dead is not an evil state of affairs because there is no such state of affairs (STOA) as my being dead.  Since there is no such STOA, there is no bearer of the property of being evil.  If this property has a bearer it cannot be an individual or a property but must be a STOA.

And so the Epicurean line is consistent with life affirmation. The Epicurean is not saying that being dead is good and being alive evil; he is saying that being dead is not evil because axiologically neutral.  The Epicurean is therefore also committed to saying that being dead is not a good.

The first reason is axiological, the second ontological.  The Silenian pessimist  renders a negative value verdict on life as a whole:  it's no good, better never to have been born, with  second best being to die young.  By contrast, the Epicurean's point is that the ontology of the situation makes it impossible for death to be an evil for the one who has died. 

This reinforces my earlier conclusion that there is nothing nihilistic about the Epicurean position. 

The Dead and the Nonexistent: Meinong Contra Epicurus

Are there nonexistent objects in the sense in which Meinong thought there are? One reason to think so  derives from the problem of reference to the dead. The problem can be displayed as an aporetic tetrad:

1. A dead person no longer exists.
2. What no longer exists does not exist at all. 
3. What does not exist at all cannot be referred to or enter as a constituent into a state of affairs.
4. Some dead persons can be referred to and can enter as constituents into states of affairs.  (For example, 'John Lennon' in 'John Lennon is dead' refers to John Lennon, who  is a constituent of the state of affairs, John Lennon's being dead.)

Despite the plausibility of each member, the above quartet is logically inconsistent.  The first three propositions entail the negation of the fourth.  Indeed, any three entail the negation of the remaining one.  Now (1) and (4) count as data due to their obviousness.  They are 'datanic' as opposed to 'theoretical' like the other two.  Therefore, to relieve the logical tension we must either reject (2) or reject (3).

To reject (2) is to reject Presentism according to which only temporally present items exist.  One could hold that both past and present items (tenselessly) exist, or that past, present, and future items (tenselessly) exist.  Such anti-presentist theories break the two-way link between existence and temporal presentness: what is temporally present exists, but what exists need not be temporally present.

But another option is to reject (3).   One could adopt the view of Alexius von Meinong according to which there are items that stand jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein, "beyond being and nonbeing."  These items have no being whatsoever.  Meinong's examples include the golden mountain (a possible object) and the round square (an impossible object).  His doctrine was misunderstood by Russell and generations of those influenced by him.  The doctrine is not that nonexistent objects have a mode of being weaker than existence, but that they have no being whatsoever. And yet they are not nothing! They are not nothing inasmuch as we can refer to them and predicate properties of them.  They are definite items of thought possessing Sosein but no Sein, but are not mere accusatives of thought.  A strange view, admittedly, and I do not accept it.  (See my A Paradigm Theory of Existence, Kluwer 2002, pp. 38-42.)  But distinguished philosophers have and do: Butchvarov, Castaneda, T. Parsons, Routley/Sylvan, et al.)

So Meinongianism is a theoretical option.  The Meinongian line gives us a way to answer Epicurus.  For Epicurus death is not an evil because when we are, death is not, and when death is, we are not.  The point is that at no time is there a subject possessing the property of  being dead.  When I am alive, I am not dead.  And when I am dead, I do not exist.  It is not just that when I am dead I no longer presently exist, but that I do not exist at all.  (Presentism seems part and parcel of the Epicurean position.)  And because I do not exist at all when I am dead, I cannot have properties.   (Anti-Meinongianism  is also part and parcel of the Epicurean position: existence is a necessary condition of property-possession.)  But then I cannot, when dead, have the property of being dead, in which case there is no state of affairs of my being dead. And that gives us a deep ontological reason for denying  that death is an evil:  if there is no state of affairs of my being dead, then there is nothing to possess the property of being evil.  (Note that it is not the property of being dead that is evil, or me the individual, but the putative state of affairs of my being dead.)

As I read Epicurus, his position on death, namely, that being dead  is not an evil for the one who is dead,  requires both Presentism and Anti-Meinongianism.   If that is right, then one can answer Epicurus either by rejecting Presentism or by accepting Meinongianism.

Anti-Presentism breaks the two-way link between existence and temporal presentness, while Meinongianism breaks the two-way link between existence and property-possession.  The anti-presentist faces the challenge of giving a coherent account of tenseless existence, while the Meinongian owes us an explanation of how there can be items which actually have properties while having no being whatsoever.  Epicureanism maintains both links  but flies in the face of the powerful intuition that death is an evil.

A good solution eludes us.  And so once  again we end up in good old Platonic fashion up against the wall of an aporia.