Month: July 2011

Zero Tolerance and the Death of Common Sense

(Here is a fine rant from the old blog.  Originally appeared 23 August 2007.)

Is common sense dead? Apparently, given the large number of incidents like the one reported in this story of a boy who was suspended from school for merely drawing a picture of a gun. And this  occurred in Arizona of all places, where one might expect some old-fashioned common sense to still exist, as opposed to some such haven of effete liberal idiocy as the People's Republic of Taxachusetts.

How does one deal with idiots? With those impervious to reason? For example, how deal with the sort of liberal idiot who thinks that the use of the perfectly good English word 'niggardly' involves a racial slur? You may recall that some poor guy lost his job over this a few years back.

Is there any connection between these two cases? The mind of a liberal is like a bowl of mush in which anything can transmogrify into anything else. Nothing is well-defined, nothing is what it is. Anything can be associated with anything else. So a mere drawing of  gun, by a strange associational 'logic' becomes a gun. The prohibition of guns on campus becomes a prohibition of doodles of guns. The harmless teenage doodler becomes a deadly threat to his classmates. A paper 'gun' assumes the dangerousness of a loaded gun. Other distinctions go by the board, as when liberals talk, as they constantly do, of guns killing people, when no gun has ever killed anyone.

Similarly, the sound of 'niggardly' reminds someone of the sound of 'nigger' and so 'niggardly' is taken to mean nigger-like so that the property of being a racial slur get tranferred back upon the innocent word.

Is it the inability to think straight that defines the politically correct? Or the unwillingess? Or both?

Liberals love the 'disease model.'  Perhaps they should apply it to themselves.  Treatment is what they need, not refutation.  Some notions are beneath refutation.

Thought Check

More important than a 'gut check' might be a thought check carried out at regular intervals.  Say to yourself: what is the quality of my present thoughts?  Positive or negative? Ennobling or degrading?  Useless or useful?  Where are they drifting? What is their likely issue?  Conducive to happiness or to ever more negativity and misery for myself and others?

Why might this be useful?  Because thought is the seed of word and deed.

John Leslie and Hostage Chess

I learned recently that the philosopher John Leslie is the inventor of a chess variant, Hostage Chess. Left-click on the hyperlink and scroll down.

I have never played any of the chess variants, and they don't interest me. Penetrating the arcana of standard chess has me sufficiently occupied. Such a patzer am I that I could not explain the Lucena and Philidor positions without consulting the manuals. But could you? And my endgame savvy is weak. My excuse is that I didn't get seriously into chess until I was deep into middle age.

I can say of Caissa what Augustine said of the Eternal Unchanging Light: "Too late have I loved thee." Not that the former takes the place of the latter, you understand.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Amy Winehouse

Amy Winehouse succumbed to the curse of 27 today.  Why is 27 such an auspicious age for a quick exit from life's freeway?  My guess is that at 27 one is still too young  fully to appreciate the ravages to the body of life in the fast lane  but is old enough to have done irreparable damage, so much so that just one more snort, one more shot, one more binge pushes the self-abuser over the edge.  So 27 is a sort of crossroads.

Here is Winehouse singing the great Gerry Goffin-Carole King song, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?  But there never was and never will be a cover superior to the Shirelle's 1961 version.  I've loved this song, in this version, ever since I first heard it in '61.  Carole King's version from her 1971 Tapestry album is also outstanding.

Are You an Archevore?

Ah yes, the wonderful world of dietary controversy!  So bitter at times as to spoil one's appetite.  If you aspire to archevorial status, here is the diet.  This site was recommended to me by a very astute fellow who says it works for him.  Although I don't recommend  becoming a paleo-fresser (my coinage),  it is worth considering.

The Higher Education Bubble

Good analysis by Michael Barone.

Federal subsidies have caused college costs to skyrocket while quality goes down.  What does all the money buy?  Administrative bloat:

Take the California State University system, the second tier in that state's public higher education. Between 1975 and 2008, the number of faculty rose by 3 percent, to 12,019 positions. During those same years, the number of administrators rose 221 percent, to 12,183. That's right: There are more administrators than teachers at Cal State now.

These people get paid to "liaise" and "facilitate" and produce reports on diversity. How that benefits Cal State students or California taxpayers is unclear.

Barone goes on to point out that to pay $100,000 for a degree in women's studies makes no economic sense.  But he doesn't forcefully make the point, contra Obama, that it is just foolish for everyone to go to college.  Only some people are 'college material' to use a phrase  one no longer hears.  There is nothing wrong with learning and plying a trade right out of high school.  Why waste thousands of dollars partying and goofing off just so one can — learn a trade?

And let's be clear that for the vast majority, 'getting an education' is a euphemism for getting ahead, for acquiring credentials that one hopes will bring social and economic advancement.  It is not about becoming an educated human being.  It's about money and status.  But then it should be spectacularly  clear that if one wants money, a decidedly suboptimal way of going about getting it is by saddling oneself with $100,000 in college debt.

Nota Notae Est Nota Rei Ipsius and the Ontological Argument

(By popular demand, I repost the following old Powerblogs entry.)

"The mark of a mark is a mark of the thing itself." I found this piece of scholasticism in C. S. Peirce. (Justus Buchler, ed., Philosophical Writings of Peirce, p. 133) It is an example of what Peirce calls a   'leading principle.'

Let's say you have an enthymeme:

   Enoch was a man
   —–
   Enoch died.

Invalid as it stands, this argument can be made valid by adding a premise. (Any invalid argument can be made valid by adding a premise.) Add 'All men die' and the argument comes out valid. Peirce writes:

     The leading principle of this is nota notae est nota rei ipsius.
     Stating this as a premiss, we have the argument,

     Nota notae est nota rei ipsius
     Mortality is a mark of humanity, which is a mark of Enoch
     —–
     Mortality is a mark of Enoch.

But is it true that the mark of a mark is a mark of the thing itself? There is no doubt that mortality is a mark of humanity in the following sense: The concept humanity includes within its conceptual content the superordinate concept mortal, which implies that, necessarily, if anything is human, then it is mortal. But mortality is not a mark, but a property, of Enoch. I am alluding to Frege's distinction between a Merkmal and an Eigenschaft. Frege explains this distinction in various places, one being The Foundations of Arithmetic, sec. 53. But rather than quote Frege, I'll explain the distinction in my own way using a totally original example.

Consider the concept bachelor. This is a first-order or first-level concept in that the items that fall under it are not concepts but objects. The marks of a first-order concept are properties of the objects that fall under the concept. Now the marks of bachelor are unmarried, male, adult, and not a member of a religious order. These marks are themselves concepts, concepts one can extract from bachelor by analysis. Given that Tom falls under bachelor, he has these marks as properties. Thus unmarried, etc. are not marks of Tom, but properties of Tom, while unmarried, etc. are not properties of bachelor but marks of bachelor.

To appreciate the Merkmal (mark)-Eigenschaft (property) distinction, note that the relation between a concept and its marks is entirely different from the relation between a concept and its instances. A first-order concept includes its marks without instantiating them, while an object instantiates its properties without including them.

This is a very plausible line to take. It makes no sense to say of a concept that it is married or unmarried, so unmarried cannot be a property of the concept bachelor. Concepts don't get married or remain single. But it does make sense to say that a concept includes certain other concepts, its marks. On the other hand, it makes no sense to say of Tom that he includes certain concepts since he could do such a thing only if he were a concept, which he isn't. But it does make sense to say of Tom that he has such properties as being a bachelor, being unmarried, being an adult, etc.

Reverting to Peirce's example, mortality is a mark of humanity, but not a mark of Enoch. It is a property of Enoch. For this reason the scholastic formula is false. Nota notae NON est nota rei ipsius. The mark of a mark is not a mark of the thing itself but a property of the thing itself.

No doubt commenter Edward the Nominalist will want to wrangle with me over this slight to his scholastic lore, and I hope he does, since his objections will aid and abet our descent into the labyrinth of this fascinating cluster of problems. But for now, two quick applications.

One is to the ontological argument, or rather to the ontological argument aus lauter Begriffen as Kant describes it, the ontological argument "from mere concepts." So we start with the concept of God and analyze it. God is omniscient, etc. But 'surely' existence is also contained in the concept of God. For a God who did not exist would lack a perfection, a great-making property; such a God would not be id quo maius cogitari non posse. He would not be that than which no greater can be conceived. To conceive God, then, is to conceive an existing God, whence it follows that God exists! For if you are conceiving a nonexistent God, then you are not conceiving God.

Frege refutes this version of the OA — not the only or best version I hasten to add — in one sentence: Weil Existenz Eigenschaft des Begriffes ist, erreicht der ontologische Beweis von der Existenz Gottes sein Ziel nicht. (Grundlagen der Arithmetik, sec. 53)  "Because existence is a property of concepts, the ontological argument for the existence of God fails to attain its goal." What Frege is saying is that the OA "from mere concepts" rests on the mistake of thinking of existence as a mark of concepts as opposed to a property of concepts.  No concept for Frege is such that existence is included within it. Existence is rather a property of concepts, the property of having an instance.

The other application of my rejection of the scholastic formula above is to the logical question of the correct interpretation of singular propositions. The scholastics treat singulars as if they are generals as I explained fully in previous posts. But if Frege is right, this is a grave logical error since it rides roughshod over the mark/property distinction. To drag this all into the full light of day will take many more posts.

Prima Facie Evidence

A reader inquires:

     Is 'prima facie' evidence something with self-evident contextual
     significance or a evidence that constitutes some sort of
     transcendental first principle? I am having some trouble with this
     concept.

The Latin phrase means 'on the face of it,' or 'at first glance.'  Prima facie evidence, then, is evidence that makes a strong claim on our credence but can perhaps be rebutted or overturned. The term is   used in the law to refer to evidence which, if uncontested, would establish a fact or raise a presumption of a fact. If you have the victim's blood on your hands, and you are acting nervous, and are seen   running from the crime scene with passport in pocket, and have been recently overheard threatening the life of the victim, then that adds up to a strong prima facie case for your having committed the crime.  But these bits of evidence, even taken together, are not conclusive.

Philosophers use the term in roughly the same way. For example, a prima facie duty is a duty which, in the absence of conflicting duties, is our actual obligation. If I promise to meet you tomorrow at noon at the corner of Fifth and Vermouth to discuss epistemology, then, so promising, I incur the duty to meet you then and there. But if my wife becomes ill in the meantime then my duty reverts to her care. The prima facie duty to meet you is defeated or overridden by the duty to care for my wife.

Or a philosopher might speak of the prima facie evidence of memory. My seeming to remember having mailed my tax return to the Infernal  Revenue Service is good prima facie evidence of my having mailed it,  but it is defeasible evidence.

Prima facie evidence should not be confused with self-evidence. Prima facie evidence is defeasible while (objective) self-evidence is not.

On the TFL (Mis)Representation of Singular Propositions as General

The following is a valid argument:

1. Pittacus is a good man
2. Pittacus is a wise man
—–
3. Some wise man is a good man.

That this argument is valid I take to be a datum, a given, a non-negotiable point. The question is whether traditional formal logic (TFL) is equipped to account for the validity of this argument. As I have already shown, it is quite easy to explain the validity of arguments like the above in modern predicate logic (MPL). In MPL, the logical form of the above argument is

Inferences Involving Singular Propositions

In Modern Predicate Logic (MPL), logical quantity comes in three 'flavors,' universal, particular, and singular. Thus 'All bloggers are self-absorbed' and 'No bloggers are self-absorbed' are universal; 'Some bloggers are self-absorbed' and 'Some bloggers are not self-absorbed' are particular; 'Bernie is self-absorbed' and 'Bernie is not self-absorbed' are singular. Traditional Formal Logic (TFL), however, does not admit a separate category of singular propositions.

So, just to draw out commenter Edward the Nominalist and Co., how would a defender of TFL account for the validity of the following obviously valid argument:

   1. Mars is red
   2. Mars is a planet
   —–
   3. Some planet is red.

A supporter of MPL could construct a derivation as follows:

   4. Mars is a planet & Mars is red. (From 1, 2 by Conjunction)
   5. There is an x such that: x is a planet & x is red. (From 4 by
        Existential Generalization)
   3. Some planet is red. (From 5 by translation back into ordinary
       language)

No sweat for the MPL boys, but how do you TFL-ers do it? (Of course I am aware that it can be done. The point of this post is mainly  didactic.)

‘We are All Dying’

In an interview a while back Christopher Hitchens said, "We are all dying."  The saying is not uncommon.  A friend over Sunday breakfast invoked it. The irony of it is that the friend in question in younger days was decisively influenced by the Ordinary Language philosophers.

Taken literally, the sentence is false: only some of us are dying.  What must the sentence be taken to mean to be true?  This: the life process in each human being issues eventually in death.  But then why don't people say what they mean rather than something literally false?

The short answer is that man is a metaphysical animal with an ineradicable urge to gain perspective so as to be able to reconnoitre the terrain of the human predicament.  The gaining of perspective requires the stretching of ordinary language.

When we say 'We are all dying' we forsake the lowlands of ordinary language and ascend to a higher point of view, a philosophical point of view. It is like someone who says, 'All is impermanent.' That too is literally false.  Some addresses are permanent and some are temporary.  To maintain that all is impermanent one must ascend to a higher point of view  relative to which what is permanent 'here below' is, from that point of view, impermanent.  And so one can say, without talking nonsense, that even a permanent address is impermanent. 

As for 'We are all dying,' it too, though literally false, is not nonsense.  When I look at my life as a whole, I see that it is temporally bounded, and that it must issue in death.  And so even the most robust among us are dying in the sense that we are launched on a trajectory the culmination of which  is death.

I once played chess master Jude Acers a series of games at his sidewalk hangout in New Orlean's French Quarter.  During one endame he pointed to one of his pawns and said, 'This pawn has already queened.'  But it hadn't; it was still several moves away from the queening square.  So why did Acers say something literally false?  His meaning was that I could not stop the pawn, and so, in that sense, it had already queened.  It's the same pattern as before.  I am not dying, but since I will inevitably die, I am now dying.  The pawn has not yet queened, but since it will inevitably queen, it has 'already' queened.  What is not yet the case, but will be the case, is in a higher sense, the case.

Or consider this Platonizing remark a variant of which one can find in St. Augustine:  'What once existed, but does not now exist, and what does exist but will in future not exist, never existed.'  Taken literally as a piece of ordinary English, this is nonsense.  If something did exist, then ex vi terminorum it is false that it never existed; and likewise if the thing now exists.

But only a philosophistine (a 'philosopher' who is a philistine) such as Carnap or David Stove could fail to appreciate that the Augustinian saying is meaningful, despite the stretching of ordinary language.  A theory of how this 'stretching' works is necessary if we are to have a full understanding of what we are doing when we do metaphysics.

There is no doubt that in metaphysics we violate ordinary usage.  But unless one is a benighted philosophistine chained and held fast in some dark corner of Plato's Cave, one will not dismiss metaphysics for this reason, but strive to work out a theory of how  the linguistic  stretching works.