Month: June 2011

On Black Reparations

Warning to liberals: clear thinking, moral clarity, and political incorrectness up ahead! If you consider any part of the following to be 'racist' or 'hateful' then you are in dire need, not of refutation, but of psychotherapy.  Please seek it for your own good.

There is no question but that slavery is a great moral evil. But are American blacks owed reparations for the slavery that was officially ended by the ratification of the 13th Amendment of the U. S. Constitution over 145 years ago on 6 December 1865? I cannot see that any rational case for black reparations can be made. Indeed, it seems to me that a very strong rational case can be made against black reparations. The following argument seems to me decisive:

1. All of the perpetrators of the crimes associated with slavery in the U.S. are dead.
2. All of the victims of the crimes associated with slavery in the U.S. are dead.
3. Only those who are victims of a crime are entitled to reparations for the crime, and only those who are the perpetrators of a crime are obliged to pay reparations for it.
Therefore
4. No one now living is entitled to receive reparations for the crimes associated with slavery in the U.S., and no one now living is obliged to pay reparations.  

Continue reading “On Black Reparations”

How Does One Know that There Are Contingent Beings?

When I was writing my book on existence I was troubled by the question as to how one knows that there are contingent beings. For I took it as given that there are, just as I took it as given that things exist.  But one philosopher's datum is another's theory, and I was hoping to begin my metaphysical ascent from indubitable starting points.  So it bugged me:  how do I know that this coffee cup is a contingent being?  Given that it exists, how do I know that it exists contingently?    I satisfied my scruples by telling myself that I was writing  about the metaphysics of existence and that concerns with its epistemology could be reserved for a later effort.  What exactly is the problem?  Let's begin with a couple of definitions:

D1.  X is contingent =df possibly (x exists) & possibly (x does not exist).

The possibility at issue is non-epistemic and broadly logical.  And note that the definiens of (D1) is not to be confused with 'possibly (x exists & x does not exist)' which is necessarily false.

D2.  X contingently exists =df x exists & possibly (x does not exist).

Note that to say that x exists contingently is not to say that x depends for its existence on something else; it is merely to say that x exists and that there is no broadly logical (metaphysical) necessity that x exist.  Suppose exactly one thing exists, an iron sphere.  Intuitively, the sphere is contingent despite there being nothing on which it depends for its existence.  For though it exists, it might not have.

Note also that to say that x exists contingently is not to say that x is actual at some times and not actual at other times.  (Even if everything that contingently exists exists at some times but not at all times, the contingency of what contingently exists does not consist in its existing at some but not all times.)  If one said that contingency is existence at some but not all times,  then one would have to say that x exists necessarily just in case x exists at all times.  Something that exists at all times, however, could well be contingent in a clear sense of this term, namely, possibly nonexistent.  For example, suppose the physical universe always existed and always will exist.  It doesn't follow that it necessarily exists (is impossibly nonexistent).  It would remain a contingent fact that it exists at all in the D2 sense.  And then there that are items that are not in time at all: numbers, Fregean propositions, and other 'abstracta.'  They exist necessarily without being temporally qualified.  Their necessity is not their existence at all times.

For example, my coffee cup exists now — how I know this is a separate epistemological question that I here ignore — but is possibly such that it does not exist now, where 'now' picks out the same time.  But how do I know that the cup is now possibly nonexistent?  That's my problem.

This is a variant of the problem of modal knowledge.  (See Notes on Van Inwagen on Modal Epistemology.) The cup is full, but it might not have been.  It is full of coffee, but it might have been full of whisky.  It is two inches from the ashtray, but it might have been three inches from it.  It exists now but it might not have existed now.  It has existed for 20 years; it might never have existed at all.  And so on.  I  can see that the cup is full, and I can taste that it contains coffee and not whisky.  But I cannot see or taste what doesn't exist (assuming that 'see' is being used as a verb of success), and the cup's being empty or the cup's containing whisky are non-obtaining states of affairs.  Thus there seems to be nothing for my modal knowledge to 'grab onto.'  

If I know that the cup exists contingently, then I know that it  is possibly nonexistent.  But how do I know the latter?

"You know it from your ability to conceive, without contradiction, of the cup's nonexistence."  This is not a good answer.  First of all, conceivability (without contradiction) does not entail possibility. Example here.  Does the conceivability of p raise the probability of p's being possible?  This is a strange notion.  Discussion here. 

If conceivability neither entails nor probabilifies possibility, then my question returns in full force: how does one know, of any being, that it is a contingent being?

"Well, you know from experience that things like coffee cups come into existence and pass out of existence. If you know that, then you know that such things do not exist of metaphysical necessity. For what exists of metaphysical necessity exists at all times, if it exists in time at all, and your coffee cup, which exists in time, does not exist at all times.  Now what does not exist of metaphysical necessity is metaphysically contingent.  Therefore, you know that coffee cups and such are contingent existents."

This argument may do the trick. To test it, I will set it forth as rigorously as possible.  To save keystrokes I omit universal quantifiers.

1. If x is a material thing, and x does not exist at all times, then x is not a necessary being (one whose nonexistence is broadly-logically impossible).
2. If x is not a necessary being, then x is either a contingent being or an impossible being.
Therefore
3. If x is a material thing, and x does not exist at all times, then x is either a contingent being or an impossible being.
4. My coffee cup is a material thing and it does not exist at all times.
Therefore
5. My cup is either a contingent being or an impossible being.
6. If x exists, then x is not impossible.
7. My cup exists.
Therefore
8. My cup is a contingent being.
9. I know that (8) because I know each of the premises, and (8) follows from the premises.

The inferences are all valid,  and the only premise that might be questioned is (1).  To refute (1) one needs an example of a material being that does not exist at all times that is a necessary being.  But I can't think of an example.

The argument just given seems to be a rigorous proof that there is at least one contingent (possibly nonexistent) existent.  But does it show that this existent is possibly nonexistent at each time at which it exists? (The latter is the question I posed above.) 

Would it make sense to say that my cup, though not a necessary being, is necessarily existent at each time at which it exists?  If that makes sense, then my cup is contingent in that it might not have existed at all, but not contingent in the sense that at each time at which it exists it is possibly nonexistent.  Are these two propositions consistent:

a. x is contingent in that it might not have existed at all

and

b. x is not contingent in the sense of being possibly nonexistent at each time at which it exists?

If (a) and (b) are consistent, then it appears that I have not proven that my cup is contingent in the sense of being possibly nonexistent at each time at which it exists.  For then the above argument shows merely that the cup is contingent in that it might not have existed at all. 

Further Left Than Chomsky

"There is no further left than Chomsky.  Further left than Chomsky is Stalin."  (Dennis Prager,  just now, on his radio show.)  And Chomsky gets paid to speak on college campuses, he doesn't get pie in the face, and doesn't need a body guard.  But Ann Coulter and David Horowitz need body guards.  (Prager made these obvious points as well.)

There is scumbaggery on the Right, but it is far, far worse on the Left.  Anyone who disagrees with this I would consider so delusional as to be not worth talking to.

Value-Free Government?

Libertarians sometimes speak as if government could and ought to be value-free.  But value-free government is as impossible as value-free education.

Education cannot be value-free for the simple reason that all education, assuming it is not confused with indoctrination, presupposes that knowledge is a value and ignorance a disvalue.  If knowledge is a value then so is the pursuit of truth.  And if the pursuit of truth is a value, then the habits of mind and character the cultivation of which are conducive to the pursuit of truth are values as well.  Among these are truthfulness and intellectual honesty.  But truthfulness and intellectual honesty cannot be brought to bear in the quest for truth without diligence and self-control and respect for those who know better.  We could continue with this reflection but we have gone far enough to see that the notion of value-free education is nonsense.

Equally nonsensical is the notion of value-free government.  One would not be much of a libertarian if one did not hold liberty to be a value and (material) equality to be, if not a disvalue, then at least subordinate in the axiological hierarchy to liberty.  So libertarians have at least one value, liberty.  They advocate a government that allows its richest expression.  Anarchists, conservatives, liberals, fascists — they too have their characteristic values which they hope to promote when and if they gain power.

What I have said suffices to show that the notion of value-free government is nonsense.  The question is not whether values but which values.

Music = Dylan?

Jan cover Purdue  philosopher Jan Cover appears to maintain a Music = Dylan Identity Thesis. I wouldn't have gone that far even in the '60s. (Though I was a bit of a fanatic. I wrote for a high school 'underground' newspaper under the pen name 'Dylan's Disciple.') Cover's Dylan page is short but well worth a look.

Capital Punishment and Deterrence

Bill Keezer e-mails:

With respect to capital punishment: When I was a lab-tech at Ball State University, one of the professors was telling me about a demonstration of static electricity he did at the state prison in Pendleton, IN. He was using a Van de Graaff generator to create long, spectacular sparks and light neon tubes off the fingers of volunteers. The key thing in what he told me was a con asked him, “Can you fix the chair?” meaning of course could he prevent the electric chair from killing a person.

If the death penalty is not a deterrent, then the question is meaningless.

Right.  Of course the death penalty is a deterrent.  The only interesting question is why liberals don't or won't admit it.  Part of the explanation is that liberals won't admit that criminals are for the most part rational, not insane, and that there is such a thing as evil, and what it presupposes, freedom of the will.  It is characteristic of liberals to speak of murders as senseless, as in the case of the mother of one of the Long Island pharmacy shooting victims.

But the murders made all the sense in the world.  Dead men tell no tales.  That piece of folk wisdom supplies an excellent reason to kill witnesses in the absence of any strong incentive not to do so.   In one sense of 'rational,' a rational agent is one who chooses means conducive to the end in view.  If the end in view is to score some swag and not get caught, then it is perfectly reasonable to kill all witnesses to the crime especially given the laxity of a criminal justice system in which the likelihood of severe punishment is low. 

Liberals are  promiscuous in their use of the 'disease model.'  For example, they typically believe that alcoholism is a disease, a view refuted by Herbert Fingarette in Heavy Drinking: The Myth of Alcoholism as a Disease (University of California Press, 1988).  They also misuse the word 'addiction' in connection with nictoine use, as if one could be addicted to smoking.  Suppose you smoke a couple packs a day and I offer you a million dollars if you go one month without smoking.  Will you be able to do it?  Of course.  End of discussion. For more on the noble weed, see Alcohol,Tobacco, and Firearms.  It is the same on Planet Liberal with criminals: they must be 'sick,' or 'insane.' Nonsense.  Most are eminently sane, just evil. 

And because criminals are most of them sane and love life, the death penalty is a deterrent.  That is just common sense and there is a strong, albeit defeasible, presumption in favor of common sense views, a presumption that places the burden of proof on those who would deny it.  I will be told that we need empirical studies.  Supposing I grant that, who will undertake them?  Liberal sociologists and criminologists?  Do you think there just might be a good reason to suspect their objectivity?   In any case, here are references to studies which show that CP is a deterrent.

But whether CP is a deterrent is not the logically prior question, which is:  what does justice demand?  Deterrent or not, certain crimes demand the death penalty.  Fiat justitia, ruat caelum.

The Drawn Game in Chess with Special Attention to Three-Fold Repetition of Position

(Written November 2002 for the sake of some local  patzers who proved to be largely unteachable.)

"How shall I draw thee? Let me count the ways."  (Anon.)

There are exactly seven ways to draw a chess game.

1. STALEMATE. "The game is drawn when the king of the player who has the move is not in check and the player cannot make any legal move." (USCF Official Rules of Chess, 1987, p. 12.)

2. AGREEMENT. If the players agree to a draw during the game, then it is a draw. (p. 12)

3. SUDDEN DEATH FLAG FALL. In a game played according to a ‘sudden death’ time control, if both flags are down before a win is claimed, then the game is a draw. (p. 103)

4. THREE-FOLD REPETITION OF POSITION (TFRP). "The game is drawn upon a claim by the player having the move, when the same position (a) is about to appear, or (b) has just appeared for the third time, the same player having the move each time. The position is considered the same if pieces of the same kind and color occupy the same squares and if the possible moves of all the pieces are the same, including the right to castle or to take a pawn en passant." (p. 13)

This is the rule that a great many players do not understand. By my count, there are five typical mistakes that players make with respect to this rule.

Continue reading “The Drawn Game in Chess with Special Attention to Three-Fold Repetition of Position”

The Absurdity of Gender Feminism

Christina Hoff Sommers usefully distinguishes between equity feminism and gender feminism.  I am all for the former, but I find the the latter preposterous.  In his chapter on gender in The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Penguin 2002, Steven Pinker explains the distinction:

Equity feminism is a moral doctrine about equal treatment that makes no commitments regarding open empirical issues in psychology or biology.  Gender feminism is an empirical doctrine committed to three claims about human nature.  The first is that the differences between men and women have nothing to do with biology but are socially constructed in their entirety.  The second is that humans possess a single social motive — power — and that social life can be understood only in terms of how it is exercised.  The third is that human interactions arise not from the motives of people dealing with each other as individuals but from the motives of groups dealing with other groups — in this case, the male gender dominating the female gender. (p. 341, bolding added)

Do these risible claims need refutation, or are they beneath refutation?  I say the latter, but if you think they are worth refuting, Pinker does the job in detail.

Nonsense, if believed by policy makers, has dire consequences some of which are in evidence in The End of Gender?  (HT: Spencer Case)  Loons, agitating for their 'reforms,' exercise the tyranny of the minority. 

Addendum (6/26):  The dark and ugly side of feminism is revealed by Rebecca Walker in How My Mother's Fanatical Views Tore Us Apart. ( HT: Horace Jeffery Hodges. )