Month: May 2011

The Rabbit of Real Existence and the Empty Hat of Mere Logic

Consider again this curious piece of reasoning:

1. For any x, x = x.  Ergo:
2. a = a.  Ergo:
3. (Ex)(x = a). Ergo:
4. a exists.

This reasoning is curious because it seems to show that one can deduce the real existence of an individual a from a purely formal principle of logic, the Law of Identity.  And yet we know that this cannot be done.  We know that the rabbit of real existence cannot be pulled from the empty hat of mere logic. Since the argument cannot be sound, it must be possible to say where it goes wrong.  (It is a strange fact of philosophical experience that arguments that almost all philosophers reject nevertheless inspire the wildest controversy when it comes to the proper diagnosis of the error.  Think of the arguments of Zeno, Anselm, and McTaggart.) 

The move from (1) to (2) appears to be by Universal Instantiation.  One will be forgiven for thinking that if everything is self-identical, then a is self-identical.  But I say that right here is a (or the) mistake.   To move from (1) to (2), the variable 'x' must be replaced by the substituend 'a' which is a constant.   Now there are exactly three possibilities:

Either 'a' refers to something that exists, or 'a' refers to something that does not exist or 'a' does not refer at all.  On the third possibility it would be impossible validly to move from (2) to (3) by Existential Generalization.  The same goes for the second possibility:  if 'a' refers to a Meinongian nonexistent object, then  one could apply existentially-neutral Particular Generalization to (2), but not Existential Generalization.  This leaves the first alternative.  But if 'a' refers to something that exists, then right at this point real existence has been smuggled into the argument. 

I hope the point is painfully obvious.  One cannot move from (1) to (2) by logic alone: one needs an extralogical assumption, namely, that 'a' designates something that exists.  To put it another way, one must assume that the domain of quantification is not only nonempty but inhabited by existing individuals.  After all, (1) is true for every domain, empty or not.  (1) lacks Existential Import.  The truth of (1) is consistent with there being no individuals at all.

Let's now consider Peter's supposed counterexample to the principle that if p entails q and p is necessary, then q is also necessary.  He thinks that the above argument shows that there are cases in which necessary propositions entail contingent ones.  Thus he thinks that the conjunction of (1) and (2) entails (3), but that (3) is contingent.

Well, I agree that if we are quantifying over a domain the members of which are contingent individuals, then (3) is contingent.  But surely the conjunction of (1) and (2) is also contingent.  For the conjunction of a necessary and a contingent proposition is a contingent proposition.  Now of course (1) is necessary.  But (2), despite appearances, is contingent.  For if 'a' designates a contingent individual, then it designates an individual that exists in some but not all worlds, and in those worlds in which a does not not exist it is not true that a = a.

In the worlds in which a exists, a is essentially a.  But a is not necessarily a because there are worlds in which a does not exist.

What accounts for the illusion that if (1) is necessary, then (2) must also be necessary?   Could it be the tendency to forget that while 'x' is a variable,  'a' is an arbitrary constant?

 

Hume’s Fork and Leibniz’s Fork

No doubt you have heard of Hume's Fork.  'Fork,' presumably from the Latin furca, suggests a bifurcation, a division; in this case  of meaningful statements into two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive classes, the one consisting of relations of ideas, the other of matters of fact. In the Enquiry, Hume writes:

     Propositions of this kind [relations of ideas] can be discovered
     purely by thinking, with no need to attend to anything that
     actually exists anywhere in the universe. . . . Matters of fact . .
     . are not established in the same way; and we cannot have such
     strong grounds for thinking them true. The contrary of every matter
     of fact is still possible, because it doesn't imply a contradiction
     and is conceived by the mind as easily and clearly as if it
     conformed perfectly to reality. That the sun will not rise tomorrow
     is just as intelligible as – and no more contradictory than – the
     proposition that the sun will rise tomorrow.

One question that arises is whether Hume's Fork was anticipated by any earlier philosopher. Leibniz of course makes a distinction between truths of reason and truths of fact that is very similar to Hume's distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact. See, for example, Monadology #33. In a very astute comment from the old blog, 'Spur' details the similarities and concludes:

     Leibniz and Hume have the same basic distinction in mind, between
     those truths which are necessary and can be known a priori, and
     those which are contingent and can only be known a posteriori. The
     two philosophers use slightly different terminology, and Leibniz
     would balk at Hume's use of 'relations between ideas' in connection
     with truths of reason only, but the basic distinction seems to me
     to be the same.

I deny that the basic distinction is the same and I base my denial on a fact that Spur will admit, namely, that for Leibniz, every proposition is analytic in that every (true) proposition is such that the predicate is contained in the subject: Praedicatum inesse subjecto verae propositionis. I argue as follows. Since for Leibniz every truth is analytic, while for Hume some truths are analytic and some are not, the two distinctions cannot be the same. To this, the Spurian (I do not say Spurious) response is:

     The [Leibnizian] distinction is between two kinds of analytic
     truths: those that can be finitely analyzed, and those that can't.
     This is an absolute distinction and there are no truths that belong
     to both classes. Even from God's point of view there is presumably
     an absolute distinction between necessary and contingent truths,
     though perhaps he wouldn't view this as a distinction between
     finitely and non-finitely analyzable truths, because his knowledge
     of truths is intuitive and never involves analysis.

I grant that the two kinds of Leibnizian analytic truths form mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive classes. But I deny that this suffices to show that "the same basic distinction" is to be found in both Leibniz and   Hume.

One consideration is that they do not form the same mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive classes. Though every Humean relation of ideas is a Leibnizian truth of reason, the converse does not hold. I think Spur will agree to this. But if he does, then surely this shows that the two distinctions are not the same. I should think that extensional sameness is necessary, though not sufficient, for sameness.

But even if the two distinctions were extensionally the same, they are not 'intensionally' the same distinction.

Consider Judas is Judas and Judas betrays Christ. For both  philosophers, the first proposition is necessary and the second is contingent. But Leibniz and Hume cannot mean the same by 'contingent.' If you negate the first, the result is a contradiction, and both philosophers would agree that it is, and that it doesn't matter whether the proposition is viewed from a divine or a human point of view. The negation of the second, however, is, from God's point of view a contradiction for Leibniz, but not for Hume. For Leibniz, the betrayal of Christ is included within the complete individual concept of Judas that God has before his mind. So if God entertains the proposition Judas does not betray Christ, he sees immediately that it is self-contradictory in the same way that I see immediately that The   meanest man in Fargo, North Dakota is not mean is self-contradictory.

Of course, for Leibniz, it is contingent that Judas exists: there are possible worlds in which Judas does not exist. But given that Judas does exist, he has all his properties essentially. Thus Judas betrays   Christ is contingent only in an epistemic sense: we finite intellects see no contradiction when we entertain the negation of the proposition in question. Given our finitude, our concepts of individuals cannot be complete: they cannot include every property, monadic and relational, of individuals. But if, per impossibile, we could ascend to the divine standpoint, and if every truth is analytic (as Leibniz in effect holds via his predicate-in-subject principle), then we would see that Judas betrays Christ is conditionally necessary: nec
essary given the existence of Judas.

'Contingent' therefore means different things for Leibniz and Hume. Contingency in Hume cuts deeper. Not only is the existence of Judas contingent, it is also contingent that he has the properties he has. This is a contingency rooted in reality and not merely in our ignorance.

Perhaps my point could be put as follows. The Leibnizian distinction is not absolute in the sense that, relative to the absolute point of view, God's point of view, the distinction collapses. For God, both of the Judas propositions cited above are analytic, both are necessarily true (given the existence of Judas), and both are knowable a priori.  But for Hume, the distinction is absolute in that there is no point of view relative to which the distinction collapses.

I'm stretching now, but I think one could say that, even if Hume admitted God into his system, he would say that not even for God is a matter of fact knowable a priori. For the empiricist Hume the world is radically contingent in a way it could not be for Leibniz the rationalist.

Realism and Idealism

An excerpt from an e-mail by Chris C., with responses in blue.

. . . I read your post on Butchvarov's latest paper, and you made clear your argument about the problem with the crucial step in the "idealist" position; then you closed with the assertion that realism has its own set of problems.  Granted that that's obviously true, I was wondering if you had a piece, whether a paper or a blog post, that elucidated your positions on 1) Why, although you think ultimately he is wrong, you also think Butch's position is a serious alternative to realism; and 2) Why, despite its problems, you believe realism addresses those problems adequately.

That post ended rather abruptly with the claim, "Metaphysical realism, of course, has its own set of difficulties."  I was planning to say a bit more, but decided to quit since the post was already quite long by 'blog' standards.  Brevity, after all, is the soul, not only of wit, but of blog.  I was going to add something like this:

My aim in criticizing Butchvarov and other broadly Kantian idealists/nonrealists is not  to resurrect an Aristotelian or Aristotelian-Thomistic theory of knowledge, as if those gentlemen clearly had the truth, a truth we have somehow, post Descartes, forgotten.  My aim is to throw the problems themselves into the starkest relief possible.  This is in line with my conception of philosophy as fundamentally aporetic: the problems come first, solutions second, if ever.  A philosopher cannot be true to his vocation if he is incapable of inhibiting the very strong natural tendency to want answers, solutions, definite conclusions which he can live by and which will provide 'doxastic security' and legitimation of his way of life.    You are not a philosopher if you are out for solutions at all costs.  As Leo Strauss points out near the beginning of his essay on Thucydides, and elsewhere, the unum necessarium for the philosopher, the one thing needful, is free inquiry.  Inquiry, however, uncovers problems, difficulties, questions, and some of these are reasonably viewed as insolubilia.

The philosopher, therefore, is necessarily in tension with ideologues and dogmatists who claim to be in possession of the truth.  What did Socrates claim to know?  That he didn't know.  Of course, to be in secure possession of the truth (which implies knowing that one is in secure possession of it) is a superior state to be in than in the state of forever seeking it.  Obviously, knowing is better than believing, and seeing face-to-face is better than "seeing through a glass darkly." On the other hand, to think one has the truth when one doesn't is to be in a worse state than the state of seeking it.  For example, Muhammad Atta and the boys, thinking they knew the truth, saw their way clear to murdering 3000 people.

Your first question:  How can I believe that Butch's position is untenable while also considering it a serious alternative to realism?  Because I hold open the possibility that all extant (and future) positions are untenable.  In other words, I take seriously the possibility that the central problems of philosophy are genuine (contra the logical positivists, the later Wittgenstein, and such Freudian-Wittgensteinian epigoni as Morris Lazerowitz), important  — what could count as important if problems relating to God and the soul are not important? — but absolutely insoluble by us. 

Your second question:  How can I believe that metaphysical realism, despite its problems, addresses those problems adequately?  Well, I don't believe it addresses them adequately.

I would say your book is pretty much a response to those questions, but what I'm looking for is your understanding of what makes Butch's position so powerful.  What I have in mind is something like what [Stanley] Rosen does in The Elusiveness of the Ordinary, where in a couple of essays he makes clear that there is not going to be a way based on analysis or deduction to adjudicate between the Platonic and the Kantian claims – that is, the claims, respectively, that the "Forms" are external and mind-independent and that they are internal and mind-dependent.  The final two essays in the aforementioned book are Rosen's attempt to provide a way to tip the scales in favor of Plato, and I have to say I haven't really seen a better way to do it.

I haven't read Rosen's book, but I will soon get hold of it.  It will be interesting to see whether he has a compelling rational way of tipping the scales.

The point is that I was wondering if you thought, along those lines, that roughly speaking your form of realism and Butch's form of idealism form a similar sort of "fundamental alternative" in the way Rosen believes Platonism and Kantianism do.  And if so, I would be interested to see your take on what makes Butch's idealism (again roughly speaking) as something that cannot be truly defeated, but rather must be established as something of a less plausible vision of how things really stand.
 
Can any philosophical position be "truly defeated"?  I assume that we cherish the very highest standards of intellectual honesty and rigor and we are able to inhibit the extremely strong life-enhacing need for firm beliefs and tenets (etymologically from L. tenere, to hold, so that a tenet is literally something one holds onto for doxastic security and legitimation of one's modus vivendi.)  Now there are some sophomoric positions that can be definitively defeated, e.g., the relativist who maintains both that every truth is relative and that his thesis is nonrelatively true.  But in the history of philosophy has even one substantive position ever been "truly defeated," i.e., defeated to the satisfaction of all competent practioners?  (A competent practioner is one who possesses all the relevant moral and intellectual virtues, is apprised of all relevant empirical facts, understands logic, etc.)  I would say No.  But perhaps you have an example for me. 
 
Now why don't I think that I have defeated Butchvarov on any of the points we dispute?  Part of the reason is that he does not admit defeat.  If I cannot bring him to see that he is wrong about, say, nonexistent objects, then this gives me a very good reason to doubt that I am right and have truly refuted his position.  It seems to me that, unless one is an ideologue or a dogmatist, one must be impressed by the pervasive and long-standing fact of dissensus among the best and brightest.  Of course, I could be right and Butch wrong.  If he maintains that p and I maintain that not-p, then one of us is right and the other wrong.  But which one?  If I do not know that I am right, or know that he is wrong, then I haven't solved the problem that divides us.  It is not enough to be right, one must know that one is right and be able to diagnose convincingly how they other guy went wrong.
As for Platonism versus Kantianism, see my post on another latter-day Kantian, Milton Munitz, espceically the section on Platonic and Kantian intelligibility.  My Existence book avoids both Kantianism and Platonism by adopting an onto-theological idealism.  If the reality of the real traces back to divine mind, that is reality and realism enough, but it is also a form of idealism in that the real is not independent of mind as such.
 
As I've indicated in previous emails, I have always taken realism as a presumptive truth (in a general way) and I thus place the burden of truth [proof]  on idealism.  Kant impressed me, but he didn't convince me, and consequently I've never understood what it was exactly in realism that made people jump into the idealist camp.  That is, I've never understood that basic shift where someone takes idealism as presumptively true and thus places the burden of proof on realism.  What was so bad about realist arguments that made idealism so attractive as an alternative for these thinkers?
 
Well, this is a very large topic, but you can glean some idea of what motivated Kant to make his transcendental turn from his famous 1772 letter to Marcus Herz, part of which is here.  And then there is the metaphilosophical topic of burden of proof.  How does one justify a claim to the effect that the burden of proof lies on one or the other side of a dispute?  For you there is a (defeasible?) presumption in favor of realism, and that therefore the onus probandi lies on the nonrealist.  But what criteria do you employ in arriving at this judgment?

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Do Clothes Make the Man?

Back in '65, I could relate to the message of The Yardbirds, Mister, You're a Better Man Than I.  Continuing with the sartorial theme, we have Charlie Rich, Mohair Sam.  Now that we've got Charlie Rich cued up, may as well give a listen to his Lonely Weekends.   Here is Rich again, followed by April Steven's parody, "No Hair Sam."  I'll pass on Marty Robbins' "White Sport Coat" and end with  ZZ Top, Sharp Dressed Man.

Hell

Over at The Constructive Curmudgeon I happened upon this quotation which is relevant to recent concerns:

The magnitude of the punishment matches the magnitude of the sin. Now a sin that is against God is infinite; the higher the person against whom it is committed, the graver the sin—it is more criminal to strike a head of state than a private citizen—and God is of infinite greatness. Therefore an infinite punishment is deserved for a sin committed against Him.
–Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia2ae. 87, 4.

 

Deducing John McCain from the Principle of Identity

What, if anything, is wrong with the following argument:

   1. (x)(x = x) (Principle of Identity)
   Therefore
   2. John McCain = John McCain (From 1 by Universal Instantiation)
   Therefore
   3. (Ex)(x = John McCain) (From 2 by Existential Generalization)
   Therefore
   4. John McCain exists. (From 3 by translation into ordinary idiom)

The initial premise states that everything is identical to itself, that nothing is self-diverse. Surely this is a necessary truth, one true no matter what, or in the jargon of possible worlds: true in every (broadly logically) possible world.

(2) follows from (1) by the intuitively clear inference rule of Universal Istantiation.  Surely, if everything is self-identical, then John McCain is  self-identical. The inferential move from (2) to (3) is also quite obvious: if McCain is self-identical, then something is identical to McCain. But (3) is just a complicated way of saying that John McCain exists. So we get the surprising result that the existence of John McCain is validly deducible from an a priori knowable necessary truth  of logic!

You understand, of course, that the argument is not about John McCain: it is about any nameable entity. Supposedly, Wilhelm Traugott Krug (1770-1842) once demanded of Hegel that he deduce Herr Krug's pen. If we name that pen 'Skip,' we can then put that name in the place of 'John McCain' and run the argument as before.

There is one premise and three inferences. Does anyone have the chutzpah to deny the premise? Will anyone make bold to question inference rules U.I. and E.G.? And yet surely something has gone wrong. Intuitively, the existence of a contingent being such as McCain cannot be deduced from an a priori knowable necessary truth of logic.  For that matter, the existence of a necessary being such as God cannot be deduced from an a priori knowable necessary truth of logic.  Surely nothing concrete, not even God, is such that its existence can be derived from the Law of  Identity.

So what we have above is an ontological argument gone wild whereby the  rabbit of real existence is pulled from the empty hat of mere logic!

St. Bonaventura said that if God is God, then God exists. If such  reasoning does not work in the case of God, then a fortiori it does not work  in the case of McCain or Herr Krug's pen.

Note that (1) is necessarily true. (It doesn't just happen to be the case that each thing is self-identical.) If (2) follows immediately  from (1), (2) is also necessarily true. And if (2) is necessarily true, then (3) is necessarily true. And the same holds for (4). But surely it is not the case that, necessarily, John McCain exists. He cannot be shown to exist by the above reasoning, and he certainly cannot be shown to necessarily exist by it.

So what went wrong? By my count there are three essentially equivalent ways of diagnosing the misstep.

A. One idea is that the argument leaves the rails in the transition from (3) to (4). All that (3) says is that something is identical to John McCain. But from (3) it does not follow that John McCain exists.   For the something in question might be a nonexistent something. After all, if something is identical to Vulcan, you won't conclude that  Vulcan exists. To move validly from (3) to (4), one needs the auxiliary premise:

3.5  The domain of quantification is a domain of existents only.

Without (3.5), John McCain might be a Meinongian nonexistent object. If he were, then everything would be logically in order up to (3). But  to get from (3) to (4) one must assume that one is quantifying over existents only.

But then a point I have been hammering away  at all my philosophical life is once again thrown into relief:  The misnamed 'existential' quantifier, pace Quine, does not express existence, it presupposes existence!

B. Or one might argue that the move from (1) to (2) is invalid. Although (1) is necessarily true, (2) is not necessarily true, but  contingently true: it is not true in possible worlds in which McCain does not exist. There are such worlds since he is a contingent being. To move validly from (1) to (2) a supplementary premise is needed:

1.5 'John McCain' refers to something that exists.

(1.5) is true in some but not all worlds. With this supplementary premise on board, the argument is sound. It also loses the  'rabbit-out-of-the-hat' quality. The original argument appeared to be  deducing McCain from a logical axiom. But now we see that the argument  made explicit does no such thing. It deduces the existence of McCain  from a logical axiom plus a contingent premise which is indeed   equivalent to the conclusion.

C. Finally, one might locate the error in the move from (2) to (3). No doubt McCain = McCain, and no doubt one can infer therefrom that something is identical to McCain. But this inferential move is not existential generalization, if we are to speak accurately and nontendentiously, but particular generalization. On this diagnosis,  the mistake is to think that the particular quantifier has anything to do with existence. It does not. It does not express existence, pace Quine, it expresses the logical quantity someness.

In sum, one cannot deduce the actual existence of a contingent being from a truth of logic alone. One needs existential 'input.' It follows that there has to be more to existence than someness, more than what  the 'existential' quantifier expresses. The thin conception of existence,  therefore, cannot be right.

Now let me apply these results to what Peter Lupu has lately been arguing.   Here he argues:

(i) (x)(x=x);

(ii) a=a, for any arbitrarily chosen object a; (from (i))

(iii) (Ex)(x=a); (from (ii) by existential generalization);

Now, (i) is necessary, but (iii) is contingent. Yet (i) entails (iii) via (ii), which is also necessary. So I simply do not see how the principle (1*) which you and Jan seem to accept applies in modal logics that include quantification plus identity.

Peter thinks he has a counterexample to the principle that if p entails q, and p is necessary, then q is also necessary.  For he thinks that *(x)( x = x)*, which is necessary, entails *(Ex)(x = a)*, which is contingent.

But surely if *a = a* is necessary, i.e. true in all worlds, then *(Ex)(x = a)* is necessary as well.

The mistake in Peter's reasoning comes in with the move from *Necessarily, (x) (x = x)* to *Necessarily, a = a*.   For surely it is false that in every possible world, a = a.  After all, there are worlds in which a does not exist, and an individual cannot have a property in a world in which it doesn't exist.  One must distinguish between essential and necessary self-identity.  Every individual is essentially (as opposed to accidentally) self-identical: no individual can exist without being self-identical.  But only some individuals are necessarily self-identical, i.e, self-identical in every world.  Socrates, for example, is essentially but not necessarily self-identical: he is self-identical in every world in which he exists (but, being contingent, he doesn't exist in every world).  By contrast, God is both essentially and necessarily self-identical: he is self-identical in every world, period (because he is a necessary being).   

Does Any Noncontingent Proposition Entail a Contingent Proposition?

This post continues the discussion in the comment thread of an earlier post.  

Propositions divide into the contingent and the noncontingent.  The noncontingent divide into the necessary and the impossible.  A proposition is contingent iff it is true in some, but not all, broadly logical possible worlds, 'worlds' for short.   A proposition is necessary iff it is true in all worlds, and impossible iff it true in none.  A proposition p entails a proposition q iff there is no world in which p is true and q false.

The title question divides into two:  Does any impossible proposition entail a contingent proposition?  Does any necessary proposition entail a contingent proposition?

As regards the first question, yes.  A proposition A of the form p & ~p is impossible.  If B is a contingent proposition, then there is no possible world in which  A is true and B false.  So every impossible proposition entails every contingent proposition.  This may strike the reader as paradoxical, but only if he fails to realize that 'entails' has all and only the meaning imputed to it in the above definition.

As for the second question, I say 'No' while Peter Lupu says 'Yes.'  His argument is this:
1. *Bill = Bill* is necessary.
2. *Bill = Bill* entails *(Ex)(x = Bill)*
3. *(Ex)(x = Bill)* is contingent.
Ergo
4. There are necessary propositions that entail contingent propositions.

Note first that for (2) to be true, 'Bill' must have a referent and indeed an existing referent.  'Bill' cannot be a vacuous (empty) name, nor can it have a nonexisting 'Meinongian' referent.  Now (3) is surely true given that 'Bill' is being used to name a particular human being, and given the obvious fact that human beings are contingent beings.  So the soundness of the argument rides on whether (1) is true.

I grant that Bill is essentially self-identical: self-identical in every world in which he exists.  But this is not to say that Bill is necessarily self-identical: self-identical in every world.  And this for the simple reason that Bill does not exist in every world.  So I deny (1).  It is not the case that Bill = Bill in every world.  He has properties, including the 'property' of self-identity, only in those worlds in which he exists.

My next post will go into these matters in more detail.

Addendum 28 May 2011.  Seldom Seen Slim weighs in on Peter's argument as follows:

I believe your reply to Peter is correct. It follows from how we should define constants in 1st order predicate logic. A domain or possible world is constituted by the objects it contains. Constants name those objects. If a domain has three objects, D = {a,b,c}, then the familiar expansion for identity holds in that domain, i.e., (x) (x = x) is equivalent to a = a and b = b and c = c. But notice that this is conditional and the antecedent asserts the existence in D of (the objects named by) a, b, and c. Thus premise 2 of Peter's argument is actually a conditional: IF a exists in some domain D, then a = a in D. The conclusion (3) must also be a conditional: if a exists in D , then something  in D is self-indentical. That of course does not assert the existential Peter wants from (x)(x = x). Put simply, a = a presumes [presupposes] rather than entails that a exists.

Socialist, Shmocialist

It is a tactical mistake for libertarians and conservatives to label Obama a socialist.  For what will happen, has happened: liberals will revert to a strict definition and point out that Obama is not a socialist by this definition.  Robert Heilbroner defines socialism in terms of "a centrally planned economy in which the government controls all means of production."  To my knowledge, Obama has never advocated such a thing.  So when the libertarian or conservative accuses Obama of socialism he lets himself in for a fruitless and wholly unnecessary verbal dispute from which he will emerge the loser.

It is enough to point out that the policies of Obama and the Democrat Party lead us toward bigger government and away from self-reliance, individual responsibility, and individual liberty.

It is even worse to label him a 'communist.'  Every communist is a socialist, but not every socialist is a communist.  If our president is not a socialist, then a fortiori he is not a communist.  It is intellectually irresponsible to take a word that has a definite meaning and turn it into a semantic bludgeon.  That's the sort of thing we expect from leftists, as witness their favorite 'F' word, 'fascist,' a word they apply as indiscriminately as 'racist.' 

"But haven't you yourself said, more than once, that politics is war conducted by other means?"  Yes, I have said it, and more than once.  In the end that's what politics is.  I call it the Converse Clausewitz Principle.  But we are not quite at the end.  Before we get there we should exhaust the possibilities of civil and reasonable debate.

"But what if the tactic of labeling Obama a socialist or even a communist would keep him from a second term.  Wouldn't that inaccurate labeling then be justified?"  That's a very tough question.  An affirmative answer would seem to commit one to the principle that the end justifies the means — in which case we are no better than liberals/leftists.  On the other hand, how can one play fair with those who will do anything to win?

Idolatry and Iconoclasm: A Weilian Meditation

In one of its senses, superstition involves attributing to an object powers it cannot possess. But the same thing is involved in idolatry. Someone who makes an idol of money, for example, attributes to it a power it cannot possess such as the power to confer happiness on those who have it. So we need to work out the relation between superstition and idolatry.

What is idolatry? I suggest that its essence consists in absolutizing the relative and finite. To make an idol is to take something of limited value and relative being and treat it as if it were of unlimited value and absolute being. Practically anything can be idolized including pleasure, money, property, name and fame, another human being, family, friends, country, the Party, the Revolution.  There are theologians who idolize their idea of God.  

Money, for example, is instrumentally good, and undeniably so. I think it is a plain mistake to consider money evil or the root of evil, as I  argue in Radix Omnium Malorum. But its value cannot be absolute since money is relational in its very nature as a means to an end.

To idolize money, to pursue it as if it were a thing of absolute value, is to commit a philosophical mistake — even if there is no  God. For only something absolute is worthy of worship, and money is   not absolute. If there is no absolute reality, then nothing is worthy of worship and everything should be treated as relative and finite  including one's own life. If there is an absolute reality, God for example, then everything other than this absolute reality should be treated as relative and finite.

If there is no God, then idolatry is a philosophical mistake. If there is a God, then idolatry is both a philosophical and a religious mistake, and as the latter, a sin.  Man is both an idol-erector and an idol-smasher. Our setting up of idols is rooted in a deep spiritual need to worship, honor, respect, and glorify. We need to look up to something.  But we are limited sense-bound creatures who tend to  latch onto foreground objects in the mistaken hope that they can satisfy us. We think a job, a house, a man, a woman, will satisfy us.   What we want they can't provide, but failing to realize this we succumb to the illusion of attributing to them powers to satisfy us that they cannot have. What is romantic love if not the illusion that possession of man or a woman could make one completely happy?

Idolatry gives rise to iconoclasm. Idol-positing leads to idol-smashing. What is revealed as hollow and unsatisfactory is destroyed in the name of the truly valuable. Both our tendency to erect idols and to smash them derives from our being oriented to the Absolute, our being unsatisfiable by the merely finite. Idolatry is the mistake of absolutizing the relative, infinitizing the finite. Iconoclasm tries to undo the mistake by destroying the would-be absolutes in the name of the true Absolute. It runs the risk, however, of falling into nihilism.  In the twilight of the idols there arises the specter of nihilism, a specter which, despite all his heroic efforts, Nietzsche could not lay.

In Gravity and Grace (Routledge 1995, p. 53), Simone Weil writes:

     Idolatry comes from the fact that, while thirsting for absolute
     good, we do not possess the power of supernatural attention and we
     have not the patience to allow it to develop.

What Weil is saying is that the absolute good is accessible only to inner listenting, inner passivity, an attentive stillness of the mind and heart. But cultivating such attention demands a patience we do not possess. So we create idols to do duty for the transcendent and inaccessible Absolute.

True religion is actually the enemy of idolatry and superstition. One who worships the true God sees the finite as finite and is secure against the illusion that the finite is ultimate. The true religionist is a bit of an iconoclast and indeed an atheist since he denies the God made in man's image. As Weil puts it, "Of two men who have no experience of God, he who denies him is perhaps nearer to him than the
other." (p. 103)

Hyphenation and Other Punctilios of Grammar

Dear Bill,

Being someone who uses gerunds not only correctly but elegantly and bothers to hyphenate compound modifiers, you'll appreciate, I hope, my noting that '20 year old' should be '20 year-old' because it is a hyphenated noun. Were ;">we to make his age adjectival by the addition of an extra noun, though, an extra hypen would be required, as in 'the 20-year-old man'.

Best wishes,
Will. 

I accept the correction, Will.  But there is a residual puzzle. How can '20' modify the noun 'year-old'?  There is also the question whether I should have written 'twenty' instead of '20.'   This is clearly bad writing: 'He gave me 5 books.'  Correct is: 'He gave me five books.'  But few will write, 'He gave me five thousand four hundred and seventy seven books' instead of 'He gave me 5,477 books.'

There is no end to punctiliousness once you start down that road.  For example, I just used 'you' in a slightly nonstandard way.  And as for hyphens, should we follow the Teutonic tendency of letting them fall into desuetude? 'Nonstandard' or 'non-standard'?  'Truth maker' or 'truth-maker' or 'truthmaker'?

 Do you say, 'The engine whose plugs are fouled?' or 'The engine the plugs of which are fouled'?  I prefer the latter despite its stiltedness.  An engine is not a person.  And if you don't agree with me on this point, will you say it is acceptable to write, 'The man that was shot' rather than 'The man who was shot'?

'She hanged herself' is correct.  But few nowadays are observant of the 'hanged'/'hung' distinction.

But should a writer like me, who aspires to a certain muscular elegance in his style, be using a slightly quaint and archaic, and perhaps even obsolete word such as 'nowadays'?

I distinguish 'each other' from 'one another' and call down my anathema upon those who write like this:  'Due to  their almost exclusive association with each other, liberals reinforce their political correctness.'

And so it goes.