Whether or not theistic or any spiritualistic metaphysics is true, we can aspire, seek the truth, pursue the good, love our neighbors, be kind, do no harm, respect, revere, cherish, be grateful . . . honor our commitments, follow our consciences . . . guard our thoughts, weaken the ego, live by a code, deny the self, seek the higher, thirst after justice and righteousness . . . .
Why then do we need doctrine? This is a question we need to ask.
Haecceitism is the doctrine that there are haecceities. But what is an haecceity?
Suppose we take on board for the space of this post the assumptions that (i) properties are abstract objects, that (ii) they can exist unexemplified, and that (iii) they are necessary beings. We may then define the subclass of haecceity properties as follows.
A haecceity is a property H of x such that: (i) H is essential to x; (ii) nothing distinct from x exemplifies H in the actual world; (iii) nothing distinct from x exemplifies H in any metaphysically possible world.
So if there is a property of Socrates that is his haecceity, then there is a property that individuates him, and indeed individuates him across all times and worlds at which he exists: it is a property that he must have, that nothing distinct from him has, and that nothing distinct from him could have. Call this property Socrateity. Being abstract and necessary, Socrateity is obviously distinct from Socrates, who is concrete and contingent. Socrateity exists in every world, but is exemplified (instantiated) in only some worlds. What's more, Socrateity exists at every time in every world that is temporally qualified, whereas Socrates exist in only some worlds and only at some times in the worlds in which he exists.
Now suppose you are a classical theist. Must you accept haecceitism (as defined above) in virtue of being a classical thesist? I answer in the negative. Franklin Mason answers in the affirmative. In a comment on an earlier post, Mason gives this intriguing argument into which I have interpolated numerals for ease of reference.
[1] When God created the world, he knew precisely which individuals he would get. Thus [2] he didn't need to have those very individuals in front of him to know which ones they were. Thus [3] there must be a way to individuate all possible individuals that in no way depends upon their actual existence. [4] Such a thing is by definition a haecceity. Thus [5] there are haecceities.
I don't anticipate any disagreement with Mason as to what an haecceity is. We are both operating with the Plantingian notion. We disagree, however, on (i) whether there are any haecceities and (ii) whether classical theism is committed to them. In this post I focus on (ii). In particular, I will explain why I do not find Mason's argument compelling.
My reservations concern premise [1]. There is a sense in which it is true that when God created Socrates, he knew which individual he would get. But there is also a sense in which it is not true. So we need to make a distinction. We may suppose, given the divine omniscience, that before God created Socrates he had before his mind a completely determinate description, down to the very last detail, of the individual he was about to bring into existence. In this sense, God knew precisely which individual he would get before bringing said individual into existence. Now either this description is pure or it is impure.
A pure description is one that includes no proper names, demonstratives or other indexicals, or references to singular properties. Otherwise the description is impure. Thus 'snubnosed, rationalist philosopher married to Xanthippe' is an impure description because it includes the proper name 'Xanthippe.' 'Snubnosed, rationalist, married philosopher,' by contrast, is pure. (And this despite the fact that 'married' is a relational predicate.) Pure descriptions are qualitative in that they include no references to specific individuals. Impure descriptions are nonqualitative in that they do include references to specific individuals.
Now if God has before his mind a complete pure description of the individual he wills to create then it could apply to precisely one individual after creation without being restricted to any precise one. (Cf. Barry Miller, "Future Individuals and Haecceitism," Review of Metaphysics 45, September 1991, p. 14) This is a subtle distinction but an important one. It is possible that Socrates have an indiscernible twin. So the complete description 'snubnosed, rationalist philosopher, etc.' could apply to precisely one individual without applying to Socrates. This is because his indiscernible twin would satisfy it just as well as he does. The description would then apply to precisely one individual without being restricted to any precise one. So there is a clear sense, pace Mason, in which God, prior to creation, would not know which individual he would get. Prior to creation, God knows that there will be an individual satisfying a complete description. But until the individual comes into existence, he won't know which individual this will be.
Creation is not the bestowal of existence upon a a pre-existent, fully-formed, wholly determinate essence. It is not the actualization of a wholly determinate mere possible. There is no individual essence or haecceity prior to creation. Creation is the creation ex nihilo of a a new individual. God creates out of nothing, not out of pre-existent individual essences or pre-existent mere possibles. Thus the very individuality of the individual first comes into being in the creative act. Socrates' individuality and haecceity do not antedate (whether temporally or logically) his actual existence.
Mason would have to be able rationally to exclude this view of creation, and this view of the relation of existence and individuality, for his argument to be compelling. As it is, he seems merely to assume that they are false.
Could God, before creation, have before his mind a complete impure description, one that made reference to the specific individual that was to result from the creative act? No, and this for the simple reason that before the creative act that individual would not exist. And therein lies the absurdity of Plantingian haecceities. The property of identity-with-Socrates is a nonqualitative haecceity that make essential reference to Socrates. Surely it is absurd to suppose that that this 'property' exists at times and in possible worlds at which Socrates does not exist. To put it another way, it is absurd to suppose that this 'property' could antedate (whether temporally or logically) the existence of Socrates.
We are now in a position to see why Mason's argument is not compelling. If [1] is true, then [2] doesn't follow from it. And if [2] follows from [1], then [1] is false. Thus [1] conflates two distinct propositions:
1a. When God created the world, he knew precisely which pure complete descriptions would be satisfied.
1b. When God created the world, he knew precisely which individuals would exist.
(1a) is true, but it does not entail
2. God didn't need to have those very individuals in front of him to know which ones they were.
(1b) entails (2), but (1b) is false.
I conclude that classical theism does not entail haecceitism. One can be such a theist without accepting haecceities.
In Plural Reference, Franklin Mason writes that "Vallicella is often a delight, but upon occasion he annoys me to no end." Apparently I remind him of a "philosophical pugilist," a former colleague perhaps, who is obnoxious in the manner of all-too-many analytic philosophers. (One such told me once that if one is not willing to become a bit of an asshole in a philosophical discussion one is not taking it seriously.) Now I probably irritate Mason in a number of ways since I am an outspoken conservative while he is a liberal. But the proximate source of his umbrage is a comment I made in a quick and polemical entry entitled In Debt We Trust. There I wrote:
One of the people interviewed [in the movie In Debt We Trust] states that "Society preaches the gospel of shopping." That is the sort of nonsense one expects to hear from libs and lefties. First of all, there is no such thing as society. To think otherwise is to commit the fallacy of hypostatization.
Mason protests:
When one begins a sentence with "society", one does not thereby assent to the existence of some bizarre, spatially disconnected entity whose parts are people. (Well, very few mean any such thing, and those who do are invariably deeply misguided philosophers. Plain folk never mean any such thing. Philosophers hardly ever mean such a thing. ) One uses "society" to refer plurally to, well, a plurality of people.
I sympathize with Mason's irritation. I once wrote a post in which I approvingly quoted from Ralph Waldo Emerson's great essay "Self-Reliance" the line, "Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members." Tony Flood, the anarcho-capitalist, took me to task for presupposing that there is some entity 'society' above and beyond its members. But of course I presupposed no such thing and I was annoyed by Flood's objection. Clearly, what Emerson meant, and what I approved of, was the idea that the members of society engage in a sort of tacit conspiracy with one another to the end of enforcing conformity.
Our nominalist friend 'Ockham' pulled the same thing on me once. I used a sentence featuring the word 'property' and he took my use of that term as committing me to properties in some realist acceptation of the term. It annoyed me and struck me as a perverse refusal to take in the plain sense of what I wrote. Suppose I say, of a certain person, 'She has many fine attributes.' That is an ontologically noncommittal form of words and as such neutral in respect of the issue that divides nominalists and realists.
I submit, however, that Mason goes too far when he confidently asserts that "Plain folk never mean any such thing." I strongly suspect that the lady I was quoting never in her life thought about the issue now under discussion. She was most likely just repeating some liberal boilerplate she had picked up second-hand. She was probably confused and meant nothing definite when she said, "Society preaches the gospel of shopping." If she meant nothing definite, then Mason cannot confidently claim that "Plain folk never mean any such thing." And precisely because the lady meant nothing definite it is important to point out that one commits the fallacy of hypostatization if one assumes that for every substantive there is a corresponding substance. If I pinned the lady down, she would probably deny that there is some entity distinct from every member of society, an entity that preaches the gospel of shopping. But then I would ask her what she did mean. Did she mean that every member of society preaches said gospel? Or only that some do? I would get her to accept the latter. And then I would get her to admit that she was allowing those few people, advertisers, for example, to influence her. By showing her that there was no such thing as 'society,' I would be 'empowering' her — to use a squishy liberal word — I would make her see that she was not confronting some irresistible Power, but that she had the power to resist the siren song of the advertisers.
The reason this is important is that liberals have a tendency to remove responsibility from the agent and displace it onto something external to the agent such as 'society.' Thus 'society' made the punk kill the pharmacist, etc.
So, contra Mason, many people do confusedly think of society as some irresistible Power over against them to which blame can be assigned. It would be a mistake to think that no one commits the fallacy of hypostatization.
The topics of plural reference and plural predication are very difficult. Probably my best post on these topics is Irreducibly Plural Predication: 'They Are Surrounding the Building.' See also Collective Inconsistency and Plural Predication, A Problem with the Multiple Relations Approach to Plural Predication, The Hatfields and the McCoys, and I Need to Study Plural Predication.
MavPhil readership continues to grow. It is not uncommon now to have spikes into the 1300-1600 range. Yesterday saw 1399 page views. Some of its driven by the social media, Facebook and Twitter mainly. I am approaching the 1000 page view per diem threshhold. Not bad, given the forbidding topics I tackle in these pages.
I owe Joe Carter of First Things a hat tip for his linkage. Thanks, Joe!
Government failure always justifies more government.
Excerpt from this James Taranto piece:
It's a common refrain among those who lust to increase government's size and power: Every failed measure justifies more of the same. Poverty programs make it harder to escape poverty? We need more poverty programs! Racial preferences heighten racial division? We need more racial preferences! And a diversity manual for every janitor in the country! When ObamaCare ends up driving the costs of medicine up and the quality and availability down, you can bet the people who created that monstrosity will claim it failed only because it didn't go far enough.
Let's generalize this into the First Rule of Liberalism: Government failure always justifies more government. As Obama said today, complaining about Republican pressure to cut spending: "I'd rather be talking about stuff that everybody welcomes–like new programs." Fortunately for the country, the voters don't always agree.
I quoted Jim Morrison on the eve of the 40th anniversary of his death: "The future's uncertain, and the end is always near." This morning I discovered that Rob Grill, lead singer of The Grassroots, has passed on. Their first top ten hit, "Live forToday," made the charts in the fabulous and far-off Summer of Love (1967). The lyrics are laden with the '60s Zeitgeist and express something true and valuable that continues to resonate with many of us who were young in those days.
Here is a delightful clip in which none other than Jimmy Durante introduces the boys — "They don't have a manager, they have a gardener" — singing (or rather lip-syncing) their signature number.
Carpe diem. And while you're at it, carpe noctem.
Some time before 1884, Gottlob Frege had a discussion about existence with the Protestant theologian Bernard Pünjer (1850-1885). A record of the dialogue was found in Frege's Nachlass, and an English translation is available in Gottlob Frege: Posthumous Writings, eds. Hans Hermes et al., University of Chicago Press, 1979. Herewith, some critical commentary on part of the dialogue.
1. We have often discussed 'thin' or deflationary approaches to Being or existence. On a thin approach, existence is not a metaphysical or ontological topic, but a merely logical one. Consider the general existential, 'Cats exist.' For Frege, the content of such a general existential does not lie in 'exist' but "in the form of the particular judgment." (63) Frege uses the good old 19th century term 'judgment' (Urteil) but the point could also be put, with minor adjustments, in terms of indicative sentences, statements, and propositions. Particular judgments are the I- and O-judgments of the Square of Opposition: those of the form Some S is P and Some S is not P.
Frege's contention, then, is that the content of affirmative general existentials lies in the logical form: Some S is P. But how do we put 'Cats exist' into this form? We need a concept superordinate to the concept cat, say, the concept mammal. We can then write, 'Some mammals are cats.' If we acquiesce in the natural anti-Meinongian presupposition that there are no nonexistent items, then 'Cats exist' is true if and only if 'Some mammals are cats' is true.
This translation illustrates what Frege means when he says that the content of affirmative general existentials does not lie in 'exist' but in the [logical] form of the particular judgment. The logical form is Some S is P, which is just a bit of syntax, whence we are to conclude that 'exists' is bare of semantic content, whether sense or reference, and merely functions as a stylistic variant of 'Some ___ is —.'
Those who take a deflationary tack, therefore, can be dubbed someists. We who resist deflation can then be called existentialists.
By showing that 'exist(s)' and cognates are eliminable, Frege thinks he has eliminated those hoary metaphysical subjects Being or existence which fascinate Thomists, Heideggerians, and such other 'thicks' as your humble correspondent.
2. But does Frege's schedule of elimination really work? We saw how 'Cats exist' can be rendered as 'Some mammals are cats.' But what about 'Mammals exist'? This in turn needs elimination. Assuming that the domain of quantification is a domain of existents, this can be translated salva veritate as 'Some animals are mammals.' And so on up the tree of Porphyry, or, if you deem that to be barking up the wrong tree, then supply some other scheme of classification. 'Animals exist' becomes 'Some living things are animals.' 'Living things exist' becomes 'Some bodies are living things.' 'Bodies exist' gets translated as 'Some substances are bodies.'
Clearly, we either now or very soon must call a halt to the ascent by resting in "a concept superordinate to all concepts." (p. 63) Superordinate to all concepts except itself, of course. And what concept might that be? Such a concept must have maximal extension and so will have minimal intension. It will be devoid of all content, abstracting as it does from all differences. Frege suggests 'something identical with itself' as the maximally superordinate concept. 'There are men' and 'Men exist' thus get rendered as 'Something identical with itself is a man.' (63)
3. In ordinary language, the role of maximally superordinate concept, a "concept without content," (63) is played by an hypostatization of the copula. In 'The sea is blue' the content of the predicate lies in 'blue': 'is' is contentless. But from the copulative 'is' we form a quasi-concept — 'being' — without content since its extension is unlimited. This makes it possible to say: men = men that have being; 'There are men' is the same as 'Some men are' or 'Something that has being is a man.' Thus here the real content of what is predicated does not lie in 'has being' but in the form of the particular judgment. Faced with an impasse, language has simply created the word 'being' in order to enable the form of the particular judgment to be employed. When philosophers speak of 'absolute being,' that is really an apotheosis of the copula. (64)
This is an excellent statement of the thin or deflationary or eliminativist line: there is in reality no such 'thing' as Being or existence. Being (as a metaphysical topic) is a result of an illicit reification or hypostatization of the copula, an apotheosis (deification) of the copula.
4. Now why can't I accept this? We saw that to eliminate existence in all cases and make it disappear into the logical form Some S is P we must ascend a classificatory tree at the apex of which is a concept or "quasi-concept" unlimited in extension and empty in intension. This is the concept a being, an existent, something self-identical. Using this concept we can translate salva veritate every sentence of the form Fs exist into a sentence of the form Some being is an F. The availability of such translations seems to strip 'exist(s)' and cognates of all semantic content.
The problem with this was appreciated by Aristotle long ago when he argued that Being is not a summum genus, a highest genus, or a genus generallisimum, a most general genus. (See Metaphysics 998b22 and Posterior Analytics 92b14). Being, as that which makes beings be, does not abstract from the differences among beings. But a concept superordinate to every quidditative concept, which is what the concept a being and the concept something self-identical are, does abstract from the differences among beings. To put it another way, Being, as that which constitutes beings as beings, is not superordinate to every quidditative concept since it belongs to a different order entirely, the non-quidditative order of existence. The Being of a being is its thatness, not its whatness.
The mistake that Frege makes is to think that Being is a highest quidditative determination, a highest what-determination. The concept a being, ens, is such a concept, but this concept is not Being, esse.
In sum: Frege's elimination of existential judgments by translation into copulative judgments works only if Being (esse, das Sein) is a maximally abstract quidditative concept, the concept a being (ens, das Seiende). But this is precisely what Being is not. Ergo, etc.
Here. July 9th was the 50th anniversary of the death of Whittaker Chambers. His Witness, a book of high literary merit, is a key document for understanding the politics of the 20th century. But now it is the 21st century and radical Islam is the new Communism.
We could call 'X is the new Y' a sentential template of laziness. Are you sick of it yet? (Snowclone has been introduced as a terminus technicus for the genus of which 'X is the new Y' is a species.) If not, try these on for size:
1. Casey Anthony is the new O. J. Simpson.
2. Obama is the new Carter.
3. Yellow is the new green. (From an article urging the recycling of human urine.)
4. Michelle Bachmann is the new Sarah Palin. (The latest object of leftist sexism.)
5. Fifty is the new forty.
6. Blue is the new pink. (Blue-staters are lefties.)
7. Blue is the new red. (Blue-staters are crypto-commies.)
8. Asians are the new Jews.
9. Radical Muslims are the new Communists. (If Communism was the main threat to civilization in the 20th century, then radical Islam is the main threat in the 21st century.)
10. Gold is the new cash.
11. God is the new devil.
12. Black is the new chrome. (As in the latest Harley-Davidson models.)
13. Flourescent is the new incandescent.
14. Romney is the new McCain. (A wishy-washy go-along-to-get-along Republican.)
15. Anthony Weiner is the new Eliot Spitzer.
16. English is the new Latin. (The international language of scholarship and science.)
To answer the title question, we must first answer the logically prior question as to who the greatest philosophers were. But this presupposes an answer to the equally vexing question of who counts as a philosopher. Heidegger published two fat volumes on Nietzsche, but dismissed Kierkegaard as a mere "religious writer." Others will go him one better, dismissing both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche — and Heidegger as well. Was Aquinas a philosopher? Or was he merely a brilliant man who used philosophical tools to shore up beliefs of an extraphilosophical provenience, beliefs that he wouldn't have abandoned even if he hadn't able to find philosophical justifications for them?
Note also that the question as to who counts as a gen-u-ine philosopher presupposes an answer to the hairy and hoary question as to what philosophy is.
In any case, here is my ranking of the philosophers that made it onto a BBC shortlist from a few years ago. The ranking is mine; the list is from the BBC.
1. Plato (c. 429-347 BC)
2. Aristotle (384-322 BC)
3. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274)
4. René Descartes (1596-1650)
5. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
6. Socrates (c. 470-399 BC)
7. Benedictus de Spinoza (1632-1677)
8. David Hume (1711-1776)
9. Epicurus (341-270 BC)
10. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
11. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
12. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
13. Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
14. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
15. Karl Marx (1818-1883)
16. Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872-1970)
17. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
18. Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)
19. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
20. Karl Raimund Popper (1902-1994)
Here are my criteria in order of importance:
1. Truth of the philosopher's conclusions
2. Belief in reason's power to discover some of the ultimate truth
3. Rigor of argumentation
4. Appreciation of the limits of reason
5. Depth and centrality of the problems addressed
6. Breadth and systematicity of vision
7. Originality
8. Long-term influence
The first seven philosophers on my list are great philosophers, the rest are important but not great. Kierkegaard, for example, though original and influential, and (too) appreciative of the limits of reason falls short on the other criteria.
It goes without saying that my ordering of the philosophers, my criteria, and their ordering are highly subjective. They reflect my interests, my biases, and my own philosophical conclusions. For example, my primary interest in a philosopher is not in his literary merit. If that is your primary interest, then you will probably rank Kierkegaard and Nietzsche ahead of Kant. Indeed, if you do not, then you have very poor taste!
You will notice that I am biased toward the rationalists. Thus all the philosophers I call great are either rationalists, or like Aristotle and Kant, have a strong rationalist side to their thinking. And when I list truth as my numero uno criterion, it is clear that that is truth as I take it to be.
On the score of truth, Nietzsche really falls short. For not only is there little if any philosophical truth in his writings, the poor soul denies the very existence of truth.
When one studies the first seven on the list, one actually learns something about the world. But when one reads Nietzsche and (later) Wittgenstein, one learns highly original and fascinating opinions that have little or no chance of being true. One learns from them, and from some others on the list, how NOT to do philosophy. But that too is something worth knowing! So they have their place and their use.
Now to our question whether the greatest philosophers were theists or atheists. The greatest philosophers on my list are Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, Socrates, and Spinoza. All of these are theists of one sort or another. But even if Spinoza is excluded, that leaves six out of seven. And if you argue that Aristotle's Prime Mover is not God in any serious sense, then I've still got five out of seven.
If you say I rigged my list so that theists come out on top, I will deny the charge and argue that I used independent criteria (listed above). But if you disagree my assessment, I will consider it par for the course.
Pat Buchanan exposes the panic-driven extremist rhetoric of the Dems.
There are clear cases in which 'exist(s)' functions as a second-level predicate, a predicate of properties or concepts or propositional functions or cognate items, and not as a predicate of individuals. The affirmative general existential 'Horses exist,' for example, is best understood as making an instantiation claim: 'The concept horse is instantiated.' Accordingly, the sentence does not predicate existence of individual horses; it predicates instantiation of the concept horse.
This sort of analysis is well-nigh mandatory in the case of negative general existentials such as 'Flying horses do not exist.' Here we have a true sentence that cannot possibly be about flying horses for the simple reason that there aren't any. (One can make a Meinongian move here, but if possible we should try to get by without doing so.) On a reasonable parsing, 'Flying horses do not exist' is about the concept flying horse, and says of this concept that it has no instances.
But what about singular existentials? Negative singular existentials like 'Pegasus does not exist' pose no problem. We may analyze it as, 'It is not the case that there exists an x such that x is the winged horse of Greek mythology.' Or we can take a page from Quine and say that nothing pegasizes. What we have done in effect is to treat the singular term 'Pegasus' as a predicate and read the sentence as a denial that this predicate applies to anything.
Problems arise, however, with affirmative singular existentials such as 'I exist' and with sentences like 'I might not have existed' which are naturally read as presupposing the meaningfulness of 'I exist' and thus of uses of 'exists' as a first-level predicate. Thus, 'I might not have existed' is construable in terms of the operator 'It might not have been the case that ____' operating upon 'I exist.'
C.J.F. Williams, following in the footsteps of Frege, maintains the draconian thesis that all meaningful uses of 'exist(s)' are second-level. He must therefore supply an analysis of the true sentence 'I might not have existed' that does not require the meaningfulness of 'I exist.' His suggestion is that
. . . my assertion that I might not have existed is the assertion
that there is some property . . . essential to me, which I alone
possess, and which might never have been uniquely instantiated . .
(What is Existence?, Oxford 1981, p. 104)
Williams is suggesting that for each individual x there is a property H such that (i) H is essential to x in the sense that x cannot exist except as instantiating H; and (ii) H, if instantiated, is instantiated by exactly one individual. Accordingly, to say that x might not have existed is to say that H might not have been instantiated. And to say that x exists is to say that H is instantiated.
This analysis will work only if the right properties are available. What is needed are essentially individuating properties. Suppose Ed is the fastest marathoner. Being the fastest marathoner distinguishes Ed from everything else, but it does not individuate him since it is not bound up with Ed's identity that he be the fastest marathoner. Ed can be Ed without being the fastest marathoner. So Ed's existence cannot be equivalent to, let alone idenctical with, the instantiation of the property of being the fastest marathoner since this is an accidental property of anything that possesses it, whereas the existence of an individual must be essential to it. After all, without existence a thing is nothing at all!
On the other hand, Ed's existence is not equivalent to his instantiation of any old essential property such as being human since numerous individuals possess the property whereas the existence of an individual is unique to it.
What is needed is a property that Ed alone has and that Ed alone has in every possible world in which he exists. Such a property will be essentially individuating: it will individuate Ed in every possible world in which Ed exists, one of these being the actual world.
Williams suggests the property of having sprung from sperm cell S and ovum O. Presumably Ed could not have existed without this origin, and anything possessing this origin is Ed. The idea, then, is that the existence of Ed is the instantiation of this property.
The property in question, however, is one that Michael Loux would call 'impure': it makes essential reference to an individual or individuals, in this case to S and O. Since S and O each exist, the question arises as to how their existence is to be analyzed.
For an analysis like that of Williams to work, what is needed is a property that does not refer to or presuppose any existing individual, a property that somehow captures the haecceity of Ed but without presupposing the existence of an individual. If there were such a haecceity property H, then one could say that Ed's existence just is H's being instantiated.
But as I argue in tedious detail in A Paradigm Theory of Existence and in this post such haecceity properties are creatures of darkness. That is one of the reasons I reject Frege-style theories of existence.
Existence, real pound-the-table existence, belongs to individuals. The attempt to 'kick it upstairs' and make it a property of properties or concepts or propositional functions is completely wrongheaded, pace such luminaries as Frege, Russell, and their epigoni.
Be open to the possibility that it is the person looking back at you in the mirror.
Here. I almost feel sorry for the guy.
Here it is in toto with my comments in blue.
"This case [is] about seeking justice for Caylee . . . ." So argued the prosecutor in the Casey Anthony murder case. He was wrong, and the jury understood that.
A criminal trial is never about seeking justice for the victim. If it were, there could be only one verdict: guilty. That's because only one person is on trial in a criminal case, and if that one person is acquitted, then by definition there can be no justice for the victim in that trial.
Dershowitz is making an important point, but I wonder if his formulation isn't untenably extreme. The important point is that a criminal trial can issue in the correct result whether or not justice is achieved for the victim. If the correct result is an acquittal, then of course there is no justice for the victim in that trial. But if the correct result is a conviction, then there is justice for the victim in that trial. So why does D. say that a criminal trial is NEVER about seeking justice for the victim? It seems to me that what he should say is that a criminal trial is not first and foremost about seeking justice for the victim, but about making sure that the defendant is not wrongly convicted. Surely D. does not want to suggest that criminal proceedings have nothing to do with justice.
The glory of our system of justice is the (defeasible) presumption of innocence: the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty. This puts the burden of proof in a criminal trial where it belongs, on the state. The prosecution must prove that the defendant is guilty; the defense is under no obligation to prove that the defendant is innocent. In a criminal proceeding all the defense has to do is raise a reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the accused.
This is not well- or widely-understood. Did you see The O'Reilly Factor last night? The sweet Laura Ingram, who has been to law school, couldn't get through to the pugnacious and pig-headed O'Reilly. He seemed not to understand the bit about presumption of innocence and burden of proof, nor did he seem to appreciate that the probative bar in a criminal trial is set very high: the accused must be shown to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and not merely by a preponderance of the evidence.
A criminal trial is neither a whodunit nor a multiple choice test. It is not even a criminal investigation to determine who among various possible suspects might be responsible for a terrible tragedy. In a murder trial, the state, with all of its power, accuses an individual of being the perpetrator of a dastardly act against a victim. The state must prove that accusation by admissible evidence and beyond a reasonable doubt.
Yes indeed.
Even if it is "likely" or "probable" that a defendant committed the murder, he must be acquitted, because neither likely nor probable satisfies the daunting standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Accordingly, a legally proper result—acquittal in such a case—may not be the same as a morally just result. In such a case, justice has not been done to the victim, but the law has prevailed.
This is basically right, but it should be pointed out that 'reasonable doubt' is a vague phrase. It would seem that at some point the probability that the defendant committed the murder would be so great that it becomes unreasonable to doubt that the defendant did it. Or is Dershowitz claiming that certainty is required for a legally proper conviction?
Ask yourself whether the following scenario would raise a reasonable doubt. Jones is charged with murder. His defense is that he has an identical twin brother who was kidnapped at birth but has recently surfaced in order to pin the murder on Jones. No one is able to cast doubt on Jones' story: the defendant's parents are dead, the birth records were lost or stolen, etc. There are credible eye witnesses that testify under oath that they saw Jones do the dastardly deed. But what they saw, of course, is consistent with the identical twin's having committed the crime. (Example adapted from James Cargile, "On the Burden of Proof," Philosophy, January 1997, p. 77)
This scenario shows, I think, that it is not certain that Jones did the foul deed. But ought this defense raise a reasonable doubt? I would say no. It is just too far-fetched and improbable. So certainty cannot be required for a conviction. If so, then probability would seem to be relevant, contrary to what Dershowitz claims.
For thousands of years, Western society has insisted that it is better for 10 guilty defendants to go free than for one innocent defendant to be wrongly convicted. This daunting standard finds its roots in the biblical story of Abraham's argument with God about the sinners of Sodom.
Abraham admonishes God for planning to sweep away the innocent along with the guilty and asks Him whether it would be right to condemn the sinners of Sodom if there were 10 or more righteous people among them. God agrees and reassures Abraham that he would spare the city if there were 10 righteous. From this compelling account, the legal standard has emerged.
That is an important point that those who wish to suppress every vestige of our Judeo-Christian heritage ought to think about.
That is why a criminal trial is not a search for truth. Scientists search for truth. Philosophers search for morality. A criminal trial searches for only one result: proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Again, this strikes me as an extreme way of putting an otherwise excellent point. Does the good professor mean to suggest that there is no search for truth in a criminal trial? And does he really want to suggest that proof and truth have no relation one to the other? Does he think that proof beyond a reasonable doubt does not make it more likely than not that truth has been reached?
A civil trial, on the other hand, seeks justice for the victim. In such a case, the victim sues the alleged perpetrator and need only prove liability by a preponderance of the evidence. In other words, if it is more likely than not that a defendant was the killer, he is found liable, though he cannot be found guilty on that lesser standard.
AP
That is why it was perfectly rational, though difficult for many to understand, for a civil jury to have found O.J. Simpson liable to his alleged victim, after a criminal jury had found him not guilty of his murder. It is certainly possible that if the estate of Caylee Anthony were to sue Casey Anthony civilly, a Florida jury might find liability.
Exactly right.
Casey Anthony was not found innocent of her daughter's murder, as many commentators seem to believe. She was found "not guilty." And therein lies much of the misunderstanding about the Anthony verdict.
True, she was found 'not guilty.' That is the correct terminology. And to be found not guilty is not the same as to be innocent. The misunderstanding of some commentators is to think that being found not guilty is an affirmation of the defendant's innocence. The finding of 'not guilty,' however, is nothing more than the judgment that the evidence for conviction was insufficient, that the defendant was not proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. That is of course consistent with the defendant having committed the crime with which she is charged.
This misunderstanding is exacerbated by the pervasiveness of TV shows about criminal cases. On television and in the movies, crimes are always solved. Nothing is left uncertain. By the end, the viewer knows whodunit. In real life, on the other hand, many murders remain unsolved, and even some that are "solved" to the satisfaction of the police and prosecutors lack sufficient evidence to result in a conviction. The Scottish verdict "not proven" reflects this reality more accurately than its American counterpart, "not guilty."
'Not proven' is actually a better and more accurate phrase.
Because many American murder cases, such as the Casey Anthony trial, are shown on television, they sometimes appear to the public as if they were reality television shows. There is great disappointment, therefore, when the result is a verdict of not guilty. On the old Perry Mason show, the fictional defense lawyer would not only get his client acquitted but he would prove who actually committed the murder. Not so in real life.
The verdict in the Casey Anthony case reflected the lack of forensic evidence and heavy reliance on circumstantial inferences. There was no evidence of a cause of death, the time of death, or the circumstances surrounding the actual death of this young girl. There was sufficient circumstantial evidence from which the jury could have inferred homicide. But a reasonable jury could also have rejected that conclusion, as this jury apparently did. There are hundreds of defendants now in prison, some even on death row, based on less persuasive evidence than was presented in this case.
Juries are not computers. They are composed of human beings who evaluate evidence differently. The prosecutors in this case did the best they could with the evidence they had, though I believe they made a serious mistake in charging Casey Anthony with capital murder and introducing questionable evidence, such as that relating to the "smell of death" inside the trunk of Casey Anthony's car.
The defense also made mistakes, particularly by accusing Ms. Anthony's father of sexually abusing her. Although they leveled this unfounded accusation in an effort to explain why Casey had lied, it sounded like the kind of abuse excuse offered to justify a crime of violence. But a criminal trial is not about who is the better lawyer. It is about the evidence, and the evidence in this case left a reasonable doubt in the mind of all of the jurors. The system worked.
