Month: January 2011

Is Death Evil?

So is death evil or not?  What is my answer?  The answer depends on metaphysics.

1. If we are natural beings only, nothing but complex physical systems, continuous with the rest of nature and susceptible in principle of complete explanation by physics and biology, then I cannot see how death in general could be accounted evil.  The premature death of some is perhaps evil on the ground that death deprives the decedent of what he might otherwise have enjoyed.  The happy and healthy 20 year old who is cut down by a stray bullet arguably suffers a loss, not one that he can experience, but a loss nonetheless.  (One can suffer a loss merely by being the subject of it without actually experiencing it.)  There is of course a residual technical puzzle about how a person who no longer exists can be the subject of loss, but for present purposes I won't worry further about this.

My main point is that it cannot be maintained on naturalistic principles that death in general is evil for humans.  For suppose a person lives a productive life of 90 or so years, a life which on balance has been satisfying to the person and enriching to those who have come in contact with him.  What is evil about the death of such a person?  And if death is not evil for such a person, then the philosophical question whether death in general is evil must be answered in the negative.  Here are some further considerations:

a.  It is a conceptual truth that one cannot be deprived of the impossible.  Now healthy productive living after a certain age is nomologically impossible.  So a person who dies at a ripe old age of 90 or 100 is not being deprived of anything by dying.  (Adjust the numbers upwards if you care to.)  At the point at which further living become nomologically impossible, one cannot be said to be deprived by death of a good.  Of course, the old person may want  to live on a another year or decade, but that is irrelevant.

b. Death removes from the decedent  the goods of life but also removes the evils, which are not inconsiderable.  I will spare the reader a litany of the miseries and horrors of this life.  If he opens his eyes he will quickly become apprised of them.  (But don't generalize from your own favorable experience: readers of this blog are members of an elite cadre of well-placed and fortunate individuals.)

c.  Even if being dead involves a loss for the decedent after a long and satisfying life, there cannot on naturalistic principles be any experiencing of this loss by the decedent, so how big a deal could it be?  Suppose your will stipulates that on your death $100, 000 of your estate shall go to Oxfam. Your executrix blows the whole wad at Nordstrom's.  It is arguable though not perfectly clear that you have been violated — but you'll be able to 'live' with it, right?  Others can say that you were wronged.  But what could that be to you who no longer exists?

On this naturalistic way of thinking, then, death cannot in general be an evil for humans.  At most, the premature death of some individuals is evil.  But even this is not clear because of the problem of 'the subject of loss/deprivation.' 

But how do you know that naturalism is true?  That you believe it with great conviction cuts no ice.  As Nietzsche says, in his typically exaggerated and febrile way, "Convictions are the greatest enemies of truth."  Can you prove naturalism?  If you try, you will soon entangle yourself in a thicket of thorny metaphysical questions from which you will not escape unbloodied. You cannot prove it.  I guarantee it.

2.  How then could death be evil?  Here is one way.  Suppose there is the possibility of personal survival of bodily death (with divine assistance) and the possibility of further intellectual, moral, and spiritual development in fellowship with others who have survived and in fellowship with God.  Now if some such version of theism is true, and if one dies and becomes nothing — the possibility of survival not having been realized either because the person in question refuses the divine offer or is judged unworthy of it — then one will have been deprived of a great good.  One will have missed out on the beatitude for which we have been created.  So death (annihilation) would be a very great evil on this scheme, an incomparably greater evil than the evil of death on a naturalistic scheme, assuming it could be said to be evil on a naturalistic scheme.  (You will have noticed that 'the problem of the subject' arises on both schemes.) 

As I see it, death is evil because it deprives us of what some of us feel is our 'birthright' as spiritual beings: continued intellectual, moral, and spiritual progress.  We cannot quite believe that we are nothing more than complex physical systems no more worthy of continuance than trees and swamps and clouds.  We feel it to be absurd that the progress we have made individually but also collectively will be simply obliterated, that our questions will go unanswered, our hopes dashed, that the thirsting after justice will go unslaked.  We are not reconciled to the notion that there will be no redemption, that there will be no answer to or recompense for the terrible crimes that have been inflicted on the innocent.  As easy as it is to be reconciled to the death of others viewed objectively, it is difficult to be reconciled to the utter annihilation of those we love.  If death is annihilation, then this life is absurd, a big seductive joke, and we are the butt of it.

Think of the great questions that have tormented the best minds for millenia.  Does it not strike you as a perfectly absurd arrangement that one day these questions will just cease with the last human being and go unanswered forever?  All that painstaking inquiry and no answer, not even the answer that the questions posed were meaningless and unanswerable!

There is a certain sort of secular humanist who fools himself with dreams of human progress toward a 'better world' in which a sort of secular redemption will be achieved.  But this is pure illusion and pure evasion.  It is nothing but feel-good claptrap.  On a naturalistic scheme there can be no redemption for the billions who have been the victims of terrible injustice.  Be a naturalist if you must, but don't fool yourself with humanistic fantasies.  There is no secular substitute for the redemption that only God could bring about.  Be an honest naturalist, a nihilist naturalist.

But of course what I have just said in exfoliation of the sense some of us have of being more than complex physical systems, a sense of having a higher destiny, proves nothing and can be easily rebutted: Death is not an evil because none of what some feel is their birthright as imago Dei is really possible.  It is just pious claptrap born of dissatisfaction with the way things are.  One may feel that it is 'a rotten deal' and 'a bad arrangement' that one must die and be annihilated just when one is starting to make real progress toward understanding and enlightenment and happiness.  But that feeling is just a quirk of some (malcontent) natures: it doesn't prove anything.

3.  So once again we end up in good old Platonic fashion, aporetically, at an impasse.  There is simply no solution to the problem of whether death is evil without a solution to the underlying metaphysical question in philosophical anthropology:  What is man?  (The fourth of Kant's famous questions after: What can I know? What ought I do?  What can I hope for?)  And to the question What is man? there is no answer that can withstand the scrutiny of, and receive the endorsement of, all able practioners.

That is not to say that there is no correct answer.  It is to say that, even if there is, one cannot know it to be correct.  And if one cannot know it to be correct, then it is not an answer in any serious sense of the term.

So I arrive once again at the following long-held conviction.  In the final analysis one must DECIDE what one will believe and how one will live.  There is no evading one's doxastic and practical freedom and responsibility.  When it comes to the ultimate questions one must decide what is true and how one will live.  No one can help you, not even God.  For supposing God, or a divine emmisary, to appear to you right now, you would still have to decide that  it was indeed God or a being from God who was appearing to you; and you would still have to decide whether or not to credit his revelation.  What if the divine intermediary told you to murder your innocent son?  What would you say?  If you were rational your would say, "Get the hell out of here; by commanding me to do what is plainly immoral you prove that you are an illusion."  Or maybe you would decide to accept the veridicality of the experience.  Either way you would be deciding.  (See Abraham and Isaac category and Doxastic Voluntarism category)

The decision as to what to believe and how to live is of course not whimsical or thoughtless or quick or light-hearted.  It must be made with all due doxastic vigilance and fear and trembling, but there is no getting around the need for decision.  But what if you refuse to decide and simply acquiesce in something imposed from without?  Then that too is a decision on your part.

 

How Much Value Do You Attach to This Life?

It is the hour of death.  You are informed by an utterly reliable source that you have exactly two options.  You can either accept death and with it utter annihilation of the self, or you can repeat your life with every last detail the same.  But if every last detail is to be the same, and you decide to sign up for another round on the wheel of becoming, you realize that you are signing up for an infinity of rounds.

So which will it be?  Has your life been so valuable that you would be willing to repeat it, and indeed repeat it endlessly? 

The Tucson Massacre: Paul Krugman et al. Continue to Get Pounded

And rightly so:

Roger Kimball: 

Loughner’s pistol was probably still warm when Krugman wheeled into print in an effort to make political capital out of the tragedy.  “Assassination Attempt in Arizona” should join that rogues’ gallery of disgusting Times stories that wallow in the gutter of political innuendo and mendacity even as they preen themselves on their exhibition of holier-than-thou virtue.

The folks at Powerline instantly got to the crux of the matter with The Contemptible Krugman, noting that he was among the first to “seek political advantage from mass murder.” Krugman’s column, they show, belongs to the Lillian Hellman species of utterance as described by Mary McCarthy: everything he wrote is a lie, including “and” and “the.” “We don’t have proof yet that this was political,” Krugman begins,  “but the odds are that it was.”

Charles Krauthammer:

Not only is there no evidence that Loughner was impelled to violence by any of those upon whom Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, the New York Times, the Tucson sheriff and other rabid partisans are fixated. There is no evidence that he was responding to anything, political or otherwise, outside of his own head.

[. . .]

. . . fighting and warfare are the most routine of political metaphors. And for obvious reasons. Historically speaking, all democratic politics is a sublimation of the ancient route to power – military conquest. That's why the language persists. That's why we say without any self-consciousness such things as "battleground states" or "targeting" opponents. Indeed, the very word for an electoral contest – "campaign" – is an appropriation from warfare.

See also John Hayward, The Climate of Krugman.  And don't miss Pat Buchanan, Poisonous Politics.

 

Seventeen-Syllable Sketches

Be

Between phony formality
And false familiarity
Be.

Pulp, p. 152

Aim low
Don't try
To sleep in your own bed at night
Is success enough.

Bukowski

Too degraded
To be called effete
His droppings were poems
Nonetheless

Meat Wheel 

Meat wheel rolling
Ever voiding
Hopes of mortals
Moiling
In the Void.

Maker of Gravemakers

Born to die
Lupine Road
1922
Wolf to girls
Who make graves.

Forgetful Troglodyte

The bridge bum forgot
The shirt he stole
Which I found
And wore to Geneva.

Animation

You are alive!
So not just body.
Mystery of animation!

Universalia ante rem

Same shape
Different size.
Two Tabasco bottles
On the window sill.

 

Egyptian Muslims Serve as Human Shields at Coptic Christmas Mass

As things currently stand, Islam is uniquely violent among the world religions and a major threat to Western civilization. That is not to say that all or even most Muslims are violent or evil people.  It is to say that Islam is an ideological superstructure wherein acts of unspeakable violence can be easily legitimated.  To mention but one example, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for the destruction of the state of Israel while in frenzied pursuit of the means thereto.  Where do you think he gets his ideas?  Why don't Western statesmen make similar demands for the destruction of foreign states?

Islam in the 21st century can be usefully compared to Communism in the 20th.  Many intelligent, idealistic, and morally decent people were drawn to Communism in the last century because they believed that in the wake of war and economic depression it was the only way forward for humanity.  Whittaker Chambers and Douglas Hyde are two who come readily to mind.  (See Communism category.)  These decent people, who eventually saw the light, were sucked into a demonic ideology. 

There are many decent Muslims.  Perhaps there is hope that they can begin to reform and enlighten Islam from within.   Here are examples.

 

The Arizona Shooting

Here is excellent commentary from Victor Davis Hanson to offset the leftist scumbaggery emanating from Paul Krugman and his ilk with his irresponsible and vile talk of a Climate of Hate.  How preternaturally moronic our leftist pals who cannot distinguish conservative dissent from hate!  You see, leftists think they own dissent, a bizarre conceit I thoroughly demolish in Does the Left Own Dissent?

Yes, we conservatives have targeted you leftists.  That's a metaphorical way of talking.  It is evidence of your appeal to the double standard that you have no beef with Obama's "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."

And here are some observations by Jared Lee Loughner's philosophy teacher.  Apparently, logic didn't do him any good.  Loughner, I mean.  The Slate writer, by the way,  is clueless when it comes to logic.  He writes, "A syllogism is a form of argument in which a conclusion is inferred from a set of premises."

Exercise for the reader: explain why that is worthless as a definition of 'syllogism.'

 

Keith Parsons Update

Apparently, Keith Parsons' decision to abandon the philosophy of religion has garnered a lot of attention.  Here is my commentary from last September.

Update 1/13:  My man Peter Lupu leaves a comment at  Secular Outpost.  And Ed Feser rips into Parsons here, once again substantiating  my playful reading of his name as an acronym: Filosophical Erudition Sans Excessive Restraint.

A Routley/Sylvan Argument for the Utter Nonexistence of Past Individuals

Many of us are inclined to say that purely past individuals (James Dean, Scollay Square, my cat Zeno, anything that existed but does not exist now), though past, yet exist.  Of course, they don't presently exist.  But why should only what presently exists, exist? Why should that which loses the temporal property of presentness fall into an abyss of nonbeing?  Surely that is not obvious. Presentism may be true, but it is not obviously true.  Nor is it a position favored by common sense as some contemporary writers seem to think.  Let me sketch a couple of anti-presentist considerations.  I will not present them rigorously and I do not claim that they are absolutely compelling.

Purely past individuals are part of the actual world inasmuch as they are not merely possible.  And what is actual exists.  So purely past individuals exist (tenselessly).  Or will you say that when Dean ceased to presently exist he underwent a transformation from an actual being to a merely possible one?  How then would you distinguish between past merely possible beings and past actual beings?  As far as I know Dean did not have any children.  Suppose that is true.  Still, he might have had a child.  In the past, that was a possibility, though it is not a possibility now.  Surely there is a difference between a past possible individual such as Dean's child and an actual past individual such as Dean.  Dean was; his child never was.

Moreover, we refer to past individuals and we say true things about them. 'James Dean died in a car crash in 1955.' 'Dean's fame is mainly posthumous.' 'Scollay Square was located in Boston.' The subject terms of these sentences not only did refer to something, they do refer to something, something that exists, though not at present.  Furthermore, whatever has properties exists. Dean has properties, ergo Dean exists. That is not to say that he presently exists, but if he didn't exist in any sense, how could he have properties?  So a case can be made for the reality or existence of past individuals.

Routley But this morning I stumbled upon an interesting argument from Richard Routley, who later in life came to call himself Sylvan. (Presumably because of an attraction to forests and jungles and an aversion to desert landscapes.) In any case, after beginning p. 361 of  Meinong's Jungle and Beyond (Ridgeview 1980) with some question-begging sophistry that I won't bother to expose, he uncorks an interesting argument on the other side of the question, one that that stokes my aporetic fire:

Purely past and purely future items are, like merely possible items, not (now) determinate in all extensional respects: hence (applying the results of 1.19) they do not exist.  Compare the items Aristotle and Polonious, and remember Peirce's question as to how long before Polonious died had he had a hair cut and Russell's as to the baldness of the present king of France.  Well, is Aristotle bald now?If he is, how long has he been bald? If not, how long since he had a hair cut and how long is his hair? Since Aristotle has ceased to exist, it is false that Aristotle is now bald and false that he is not now bald . . . . Thus Aristotle is indeterminate in respect of the extensional property of (present) baldness. Hence he does not exist now; hence he does not exist.

The argument is short and snappy:

1. For any x, if x exists, then x is now determinate in all extensional respects.
2. It is not the case that purely past individuals are  now determinate in all extensional respects.
Therefore
3. It is not the case that purely past individuals exist.

The argument is valid but why should we accept (1)?  I have no problem with the following two cognate principles which I warmly embrace:

1*. For any x, if x now exists, then x is now determinate in all extensional respects.

1**. For any x, if x exists, then x is determinate in all extensional respects.

But I see no reason to accept the question-begging (1).  After all, Aristotle, unlike Polonious, exists, but Aristotle — if (2) is to be believed — is not now determinate in respect of baldness or the opposite.

Suppose, however, that we accept (1).  Why should we also accept (2)?  Presumably because it is not now the case that Aristotle is either bald or not bald. But this far from clear.  During his life, Aristotle either counted as bald or as not bald.  Suppose he counted as bald.  Then I say that Aristotle exists (tenselessly) and is (tenselessly) bald.  So he is now determinate in respect of baldness or its opposite.  He is tenselessly bald and so is now tenselessly bald.

What Routley has done in the above passage and surrounding text is merely beg the question in favor of presentism.  He has given us no non-question-begging reason to accept it.

The Giffords Assassination Attempt: Now the Blather Begins

Shooting Stuns Nation screamed the headline of this morning's Arizona Republic.  Brace yourself for the crapload of liberal-left blather that has already begun to descend upon us in the wake of this terrible event.  Perhaps later I will weigh in on this, but for now I refer you to Jack Shafer, In Defense of Inflamed Rhetoric and Byron York, Journalists Urged Caution After Ft. Hood, Now Race to Blaim Palin for Arizona Shootings.

Report from Pakistan

As things stand at present, Islam is uniquely violent among the world religions and a major threat to Western civilization.  (And its own 'civilization,' such as it is, ought to be judged by its rotten and poisonous fruits.)  To make matters worse, radical Islam has found plenty of useful idiots on the Left to lend them witting and unwitting aid and comfort.  But blinded as they are by their political correctness, one cannot expect these useful idots to be moved by such evidence as is presented in the following report from a courageous Pakistani correspondent:
 
Dear Bill,
 
As you have expressed concern about Islam in the past before on your blog, I thought I should inform you about these developments in Pakistan.  A few days ago, the Governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, was assassinated by his own security guard, because he had dared to criticize the "blasphemy law" in Pakistan, a law that is held sacred by the fundamentalist Muslims. The worrisome thing is that the whole country went into celebration at this murder and this murder was widely praised and justified. You can read about these reactions here, which have also upset me gravely:
I think these reactions have very significant things to say, and something that the West must be made aware of.
I have expressed my concerns in this blog post:
I would appreciate if you could mention something about this incident and the reactions on your blog. Islam is fast becoming a threat to humanity.  Just a humble request.
 
Regards,
Awais Aftab

The Twardowski-Meinong-Grossmann Solution to the Problem of Intentionality

Perhaps the central problem to which the phenomenon of intentionality gives rise can be set forth in terms of an aporetic triad:

1. We sometimes think about the nonexistent.
2. Intentionality is a relation between thinker and object of thought.
3. Every relation R is such that, if R obtains,then all its relata exist.

The datanic first limb is nonnegotiable, a 'Moorean fact.'  The other two limbs, being more theoretical, can be denied if one is willing to pay the price.  But something has to give since they cannot all be true. 

Brentano denied (2) with unpalatable consequences to be explored in a separate post. Why not accept (2), deny (3) and admit that there are abnormal relations, relations that connect existents with nonexistents?      

Consider the round square, that well-worn example that goes back at least to Bernard Bolzano.  Since there is no such thing, and cannot be, one will be tempted to say that the round square is an idea (presentation, Vorstellung) without an object.  That is what  Bolzano maintained using that very example of rundes Viereck.  (Theory of Science, pp. 88-89)  In section 5 of Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen (1894), Kasimir Twardowski criticizes Bolzano's position.

Twardowski Twardowski distinguishes among the following:  there is the expression 'the round square.'  Then there is the mental act, the act of presentation (Vorstellungsact) that transpires in someone who uses the expression with understanding.  Corresponding to the act is a content (Inhalt)  which constitutes the meaning of the expression.  But there is  also a fourth item, that to which the expression refers, the round square itself, that which combines logically incompatible properties and whose existence one denies as soon as one advances from the presentation round square to a judgment about it. (Cf. the Brentanian theses that judgments are founded upon presentations, and that every judgment is existential, involving the acceptance or rejection of a presentation.)

This of course  sticks in the craw.  One hesitates to admit that there is something outside the mind to which 'round square' refers, something that has the property of nonexistence.  It smacks of a contradiction.  Clearly, 'There exists an x such that x does not exist' IS a contradiction, but this is not what a Meinongian will say.

Note that Twardowski has a couple of powerful reasons for not identifying the round square and its colleagues with mental contents.  The first is that contents exist while nonexistent objects don't.  So the round square cannot be identified with the content expressed by 'the round square.'  The second reason is that we ascribe to the round square attributes that not only cannot be ascribed to the corresponding content, but are logically incompatible to boot.  Thus no content is round and no content is square and of course no content is both round and square.  Since contents exist, they cannot have contradictory properties.

These arguments, spelled out a bit perhaps, show that mental contents cannot go proxy for nonexistent items, whether merely possible like the celebrated golden mountain or impossible like the round square.  One could extend the argument to cover abstract objects which are not mental contents or in any way mind-dependent.  They too are unsuited to go proxy for nonexistents.  For (1) abstracta exist while nonexistents do not, and (2)  the properties of nonexistent concreta cannot be attributed to abstracta.  Thus a flying horse is an animal, a golden mountain is a mountain, and a round square is round.  But no abstract object is an animal or a mountain or round.

When I think about the round square or the golden mountain (in whatever psychological mode)  the object of my thought is neither a mental content nor an abstract object.  What is it then?  Why, it is the round square or the golden mountain!  As bizarre as this sounds, it makes a certain amount of sense.  If I want to climb the golden mountain, I want to climb a physical prominence, not a mental content or an abstractum.

The position under examination, then, is not only that every mental act has a content, but that every mental act has an object as well.  But not all of these objects exist.  One obvious advantage of this approach is that it allows us to hold onto (2) of our opening triad in full generality: in every case, intentionality relates a thinker through a content to a transcendent object, and not to some surrogate object, either! 

Why is this a good thing?  Well, if intentionality is relational only in some cases, the veridical cases, then it cannot be essential to mental acts to be of an object:  whether or not an act actually has an object will depend on contingent facts in the world beyond the mind.  For Brentano, all mental acts are intentional by their very nature as mental.  The Twardowski-Meinong approach upholds this.

But the price is very steep: one must accept that there are items that actually instantiate properties (not merely possibly instantiate them), and that these items nevertheless do not exist, or indeed, as on Meinong's actual view, have any mode of being at all.  This is his famous doctrine of the Aussersein des reinen Gegenstandes, the 'extrabeing of the pure object.'  Thus the golden mountain is actually golden and actually a mountain despite having no being whatsoever.  It is a pure Sosein utterly devoid of Sein.

Some, like van Inwagen, think that Meinong's theory of objects is obviously self-contradictory.  I don't believe this is right, for reasons detailed here.  Even so, I find Meinong's theory incoherent.  'Some items have no being at all' is not a formal contradiction.  Still, I cannot get a mental grip on the notion of an item that actually has properties, but is wholly beingless.

In addition, one must accept that there are genuine relations that connect existents to nonexistents. 

The price is too steep to pay.  The Twardowski-Meinong-Grossmann solution is just as problematic as the original problem.

REFERENCE:  Reinhardt Grossmann, The Categorial Structure of the World, Indiana UP, 1983, p. 197 ff.

Two Motivations for a Relational Account of Intentionality (Peter Lupu)

(A guest post by Peter Lupu.  Minor edits and comments in blue by BV.)

There are at least two ways in which the relational character and object-directedness of intentional states such as beliefs, wants, desires, seekings, etc., is motivated:

A. The individuation of intentional states;

B.  Aristotle’s belief-desire model of explaining actions.

I. Motivation (A). Consider the following:

1) Jake seeks the golden mountain;

2) Jake seeks the keys to his car.

Clearly, (1) and (2) express two different intentional states of the same individual. But, in virtue of what do (1) and (2) express two different intentional states? It appears that the best and only explanation for the difference is that the two cases relate Jake to two different objects: i.e., in (1) Jake seeks the golden mountain; in (2) Jake seeks his car keys; and, of course, the golden mountain and Jake’s car keys are two distinct objects.

The point, though correct, needs to be made with a bit more exactitude. Presumably, the intentional states are numerically distinct in virtue of occurring at  different times.  If so, someone could reply that what makes the states different is their occurring at different times.  The question, however, is not what makes the states token-distinct, but what makes them type-distinct.  And the answer can only be that it is distinctness of intentional object that explains type-distinctness of states.

Continue reading “Two Motivations for a Relational Account of Intentionality (Peter Lupu)”

Intentionality and Haecceity

Steven Nemes inquires:

Do you think that your stand on intentionality not requiring the existence of the intentional object is contradictory with your argument against haecceity properties (as non-qualitative thisnesses)? You say that an individual can have the property of searching after Atlantis, let's say, even if Atlantis doesn't exist. But your argument against haecceities is that identity-with-Socrates would be nonsense if Socrates didn't exist.

How would you solve the apparent contradiction?

Let's first note an ambiguity that infects 'intentional object.' Intentionality is object-directedness.  So there is a clear sense in which every intentional mental state 'takes an accusative,' 'is of or about an object.'  That object could be called the intentional object.  Accordingly, whether I want a three-headed dog or a one-headed dog, my wanting has an intentional object.  The nonexistence of three-headed dogs does not prejudice the object-directedness of my wanting a three-headed dog.  It is equally important to note that the existence of one-headed dogs plays no role in making my wanting a one-headed dog object-directed.  This is because object-directedness is an intrinsic feature of mental acts.  To see this more clearly, suppose I want a one-headed dog that is distinct from every one-headed dog that presently exists.  This mental state is object-directed, but its object-directedness does not derive from the present existence of any one-headed dog, or anything else.

But one could also use 'intentional object' to refer to the mind-independent entity, if there is one, that satisfies the description (definite or indefinite) that expresses the content of the intentional state.  If we use the term in this second way, then my wanting a three-headed dog does not have an intentional object.

It is only in this second sense that intentionality does not require the existence of the intentional object.  It is part of the very essence of wanting as an intentional mental state that it be a wanting of something (that is an objective genitive, by the way, not a subject genitive.)  But it doesn't follow that the something exists.  Similarly for perceiving, imagining, believing, etc.

As for the haecceity-property identity-with-Socrates, it is nothing at all at times and in worlds in which Socrates doesn't exist.  I stick to that self-evident point pace Plantinga. (See A Difficulty With Haecceity Properties)

It seems to me that my line on haecceities is entirely consistent with my line on intentionality.  Socrateity (identity-with-Socrates) essentially involves Socrates himself, that very individual, in a way in which seeking Atlantis (construed as a mental state, not as a physical action or actions) does not essentially involve Atlantis itself.  And this is a good thing since there is no such island.

You seem to think that an intentional mental state acquires its object-directedness from without in virtue of the mind-independent existence of an entity that the state is directed to.  It is this misconception that suggests to you that there is a contradiction in my affirming  both

1. An haecceity H of x is nothing if x does not exist
and
2. It is not the case that a wanting W of x is nothing if x does not exist.

But note that  'H of x' is a subjective genitive whereas 'W of x' is an objective genitive.  The haecceity or nonqualitative thisness of Atlantis is nothing at all because Atlantis does not exist. There is nothing for it to be the haecceity of.   But a wanting of Atlantis is what it is whether or not Atlantis exists. 

And similarly in other cases.  An ancient Greek can be a Zeus-worshipper whether or not Zeus exists.   But the same Greek cannot own a slave unless there exists some slave he owns.  The instance of of ownership requires for its individuation the existence of both relata.  But the instance of worshipping does not require the existence of both relata.

Camus and Shestov

Albert Camus is a frustrated rationalist. He values reason and wants  the world to be rationally penetrable, but he finds that it is not. What he calls the Absurd consists in the disproportion between the human need for understanding and the world's unintelligibility, "the unreasonable silence of the world." (Myth of Sisyphus, Vintage 1955, p. 21, tr. Justin O'Brien)

Lev Shestov, on the other hand, is an irrationalist. He delights in  what he takes to be reason's impotence.

Such wild diversity in the life of the mind and spirit does not delight me, but it does fascinate me and serve as a goad to struggle on, day by day, for as much light as can be attained in these inasuspicious circumstances until the curtain falls — or lifts.