September 2011 – Page 3 – Maverick Philosopher

Kant on Peccatum Originale Originans and Peccatum Originale Originatum

1. An important distinction for understanding the doctrine of original sin is that between originating original sin (peccatum originale originans) and originated original sin (peccatum originale originatum). This post will explain the distinction and then consider Immanuel Kant's reasons for rejecting originated original sin. It is important to realize that Kant does accept something like original sin under the rubric 'radical evil,' a topic to be explored in subsequent posts. It is also important to realize that Kierkegaard's seminal thoughts about original sin as expressed in The Concept of Dread were influenced by Kant, and that Reinhold Niebuhr's influential treatment is in turn derivative from Kierkegaard.

2. So what's the distinction? According to the Genesis story, the Fall of Man was precipitated by specific sinful acts, acts of disobedience, by Adam and Eve. The sins of Adam and Eve were originating original sins. They were the first sins for the first human beings, but also the first sins for the human race. Their sin somehow got transmitted to their descendants inducing in them a state of sinfulness. The sinfulness of the descendants is originated original sin. This originated original sin is hereitary sin: it is inherited and innate for postlapsarians and so does not depend on any specific sin of a person who inherits it. Nevertheless it brings with it guilt and desert of punishment. Socrates, then, or any post-Adamic man, is guilty and deserving of punishment whether or not he commits any actual sins of his own. And so a man who was perfectly sinless in the sense that he committed no actual sin of his own would nonetheless stand condemned in virtue of what an earlier man had one. This doctrine has the consequence that an infant, who as an infant is of course innocent of any actual sin, and who dies unbaptized, is justly excluded from the kingdom of heaven. Such an infant, on Catholic doctrine at least, ends up in limbo, or to be precise, in limbus infantium. A cognate consequence is that a perfectly sinless adult who lives and dies before Christ's redemptive act is also excluded from heaven. Such a person lands in limbus patrum. (See here for the Catholic doctrine.)

3. The stumbling block is obvious: How can one justly be held morally accountable for what someone else has done or left undone? How can one be guilty and deserving of punishment without having committed any specific transgression? How can guilt be inherited? Aren't these moral absurdities? Aren't we morally distinct as persons, each responsible only for what he does and leaves undone? There might well be originating original sin, but how could there be originated original sin? It is worth noting that to reject originated original sin is not to reject originating original sin, or original sin as such. There could be a deep structural flaw in humans as humans, universal and unameliorable by human effort, which deserves the title 'original sin/sinfulness' without it being the case that sin is inheritable.

Again I revert to my distinction between the putative fact of our fallenness and the various theories about it. To refute a theory is not to refute a fact.

4. Kant rejects the Augustinian notion of inherited sin. Sinfulness, guilt, desert of punishment — these cannot be inherited. So for Kant there is no originated original sin. Of the various explanations of the spread of moral evil through the members and generations of the human race, "the most inept is that which describes it as descending to us as an inheritance from our first parents." (Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, trs. Greene and Hudson, Harper 1960, p. 35) But this is not to say that Kant rejects the notion of original sin. He himself speaks of peccatum originarium, which he distinguishes from peccatum derivatum. (26) For Kant, original sin is a propensity in us toward moral evil which is universal and logically prior to specific immoral acts. I hope to say more about this in a subsequent post.

5. But what is Kant's argument against hereditary guilt and originated original sin? Kant as I read him accepts it as a fact that in all human beings there is radical moral evil, a peccatum originarium that lies deeper than, and makes possible, specific peccata derivata. What he objects to is the explanation of this fact in terms of a propagation of guilt from the original parents. The main point is that a temporal explanation in terms of antecedent causes cannot account for something for which we are morally responsible. If we are morally responsible, then we are free; but free actions cannot be explained in terms of temporally prior causes. For if an action is caused, it is necessitated, and what is necessitated by its causes cannot be free.

What is true of actions is true of moral character insofar as moral character is something for which one is morally responsible. Therefore our radically evil moral character which predisposes us to specific acts of wrongdoing cannot be explained in terms of temporally antececent causes. Hence it cannot be explained by any propagation of guilt from the original parents to us. Thus there is no originated guilt. Our being guilty must be viewed "as though the individual had fallen into it directly from a state of innocence." (36) Thus all actions which make us guilty are original employments of the will. All original sin is originating original sin.

Perhaps we can put it this way. Adam has nothing over Socrates. It is not as if Adam went directly from a state of innocence into a state of sin while Socrates inherited sinfulness and was never in a state of innocence. If there is such a thing as original sin then both are equally originative of it.

The Genesis account gives us a temporal representation of a logical and thus atemporal relationship. The state of innocence is set at the temporal beginning of humanity, and the fall from innocence is depicted as an event in time. But then we get the problems raised in #3 above. The mistake is to "look for an origin in time of a moral character for which we are to be held responsible . . . ." (38) We make this mistake because we want an explanation of the contingent existence of our radically evil moral predisposition. An explanation, however, is not to be had. The rational origin of the perversion of our will "remains inscrutable to us." (38)

6. Kant thus does accept something like original sin. We have within us a deep propensity to moral evil that makes us guilty and deserving of punishment. But there is no deterministic causal explanation for it. So while there is a sense in which our fallenness is innate, it is not inherited. For it is morally absurd to suppose that I could be guilty of being in a state that I am caused to be in. Each one of us is originally guilty but by a free atemporal choice. This makes the presence of the radical flaw in each of us inscrutable and inexplicable. The mystery of radical evil points us to the mystery of free will. On Kant's view, then, there is only originating original sin. Each of us by his own free noumenal agency plunges from innocence into guilt!

We shall have to continue these ruminations later. Some questions on the menu of rumination:

Q1. Is Kant's account with its appeal to atemporal noumenal agency really any better than Augustine's biological propagation account?

Q2. How can guilt be innate but not inherited, as Kant maintains?

Q3. Why believe in radical evil in the first place? If the evidence for it is empirical, how can such evidence show that radical evil is both universal (and thus inscribed in man's very nature) and ineradicable by human effort?

Can One Consistently be Pro-Life and Pro-Death Penalty?

This topic just won't go away. Recent example:

[Texas Governor Rick] Perry’s identification as a strong supporter of “a culture of life” and what he called the “ultimate justice” of capital punishment, however, raises some potentially thorny questions about the meaning of being “pro-life.” In campaign season, the question is whether American voters, especially voters who identify as “pro-life,” are going to raise concerns about why Perry’s position doesn’t represent what some Catholic theologians call “a consistent ethic of life,” opposition to both legalized abortion and capital punishment.

The above-mentioned Catholic theologians are most likely just confused. There is no defensible sense in which it is 'inconsistent' to be both pro-life and pro-death penalty. I prove this here.

Militarization and Weaponization of Space

Some warn of the militarization of space as if it has not already been militarized. It has been, and for a long time now. How long depending on how high up you deem space begins. Are they who warn unaware of spy satellites? Of Gary Powers and the U-2 incident? Of the V-2s that crashed down on London? Of the crude Luftwaffen, air-weapons, of the First World War? The Roman catapults? The first javelin thrown by some Neanderthal spear chucker? It travelled through space to pierce the heart of some poor effer and was an early weaponization of the space between chucker and effer.

"I will not weaponize space," said Obama while a candidate in 2008. That empty promise comes too late, and is irresponsible to boot: if our weapons are not there, theirs will be.

The very notion that outer space could be reserved for wholly peaceful purposes shows a deep lack of understanding of the human condition. Show me a space with human beings in it and I will show you a space that potentially if not actually is militarized and weaponized. Man is, was, and will be a bellicose son of a bitch. If you doubt this, study history, with particular attention to the 20th century. You can bet that the future will resemble the past in this respect. Note that the turn of the millenium has not brought anything new in this regard.

Older is not wiser. All spaces, near, far, inner, outer, are potential scenes of contention, which is why I subscribe to the Latin saying:

Si vis pacem, para bellum.

If you want peace, prepare for war.

One must simply face reality and realize that the undoubtedly great good of peace comes at a cost, the cost of a credible defense. A credible defense is what keeps aggressors at bay. I mean this to hold at all levels, intrapsychically, interpersonally, intranationally, internationally, and in every other way. Weakness provokes. Strength pacifies. That is just the way it is. Conservatives, being reality-based, understand what eludes leftists who are based in u-topia (nowhere) and who rely on their unsupportable faith in the inherent goodness of human beings.

They should read Kant on the radical evil in human nature. Then they should go back to Genesis, chapters 2 and 3.

Here we have one of those deep defining differences between conservatives and leftists. Vote for the candidate of your choice, but just understand what set of ideas and values you are voting for.

Lev Shestov’s Irrationalist-Existentialist Reading of the Fall of Man

It is important to distinguish between the putative fact of human fallenness and the various theories and doctrines about what this fall consists in and how it came about. The necessity of this distinction is obvious: different philosophers and theologians and denominations who accept the Fall have different views about the exact nature of this event or state. I use 'fact' advisedly. It is unlikely that we will be able to peel back to a level of bare factuality uncontaminated by any theory or interpretation. Surely G. K. Chesterton is involved in an egregious exaggeration when he writes in effect that our fallen condition is a fact as "plain as potatoes." (See here for quotation and critique.) But while it is not a plain empirical fact that we are fallen beings, it is not a groundless speculation or bit of theological mystification either.

It is widely recognized that there is something deeply unsatisfactory about the human condition, and that this deep unsatisfactoriness is both universal across time and space and apparently unameliorable by anything we do, either individually or collectively. Indeed, the prodigious efforts made in amelioration have in notable cases made things vastly worse. (The Communists, to take but one example, murdered 100 million in their ill-starred attempt at fundamentally improving the human condition.) This sort of 'ameliorative backfire' is a feature of our fallenness as is the refusal of many to admit that we are fallen, not to mention the cacophany of conficting theories as to what our fallenness consists in. We are up to our necks in every manner of contention, crime and depravity. One would have to be quite the polyanna to deny that there is something deeply wrong with the world and the people in it, or to think that we are going to set things right by our own efforts. We know from experience that there is no good reason to believe that. The problem is not 'society' or anything external to us. The problem is us. In particular, the problem is not them as opposed to us, but us, all of us.

So that's an important first distinction. There is the fact or quasi-fact of fallenness and there are the various theories about it. If you fail to make this distinction and identify the Fall with some particular theory of it, then you may end up like the foolish biologist who thought that the Fall is refuted by evolutionary biology according to which there were no such original human animals as Adam and Eve. To refute one of the theories of the Fall is not to refute the 'fact' of the Fall.

Lev Shestov, the Russian existentialist and irrationalist, has an interesting theory which it is the purpose of this post briefly to characterize and criticize. I take as my text an address he delivered at the Academy of Religion and Philosophy in Paris, May 5, 1935.

Start with the 'fact' of deep, universal, unameliorable-by-us unsatisfactoriness. Is this unsatisfactoriness inscribed into the very structure of Being? Is it therefore necessary and unavoidable except by entry into nonbeing? Shestov thinks that for the philosophers of West and East it is so: "In being itself human thought has discovered something wrong, a defect, a sickness, a sin, and accordingly wisdom has demanded the vanquishing of that sin at its roots; in other words, a renunciation of being which, since it has a beginning, is fated inevitably to end." (p. 2) Buddha and Schopenhauer serve as good illustrations, though Shestov doesn't mention them. Shestov, of course, is one of those for whom Athens and Jerusalem are mortal enemies ever at loggerheads. And so it comes as no surprise that he opposes the revealed truth of the Book of books, the Bible, to the wisdom of the philosophers. For the philosophers, the deep wrongness of the world is rooted in its very Being and is therefore essential to it; but for the Bible the world is good, as having been created by a good God, and its deep deficiency is contingent, not necessary:

What is said in it [the Bible] directly contradicts what men have found out through their intellectual vision. Everything, as we read in the very beginning of the Book of Genesis, was made by the Creator, everything had a beginning. But this not only is not seen as a precondition of the decay, imperfection, corruption, and sinfulness of being; on the contrary, it is an assurance of all possible good in the universe. (2)

Since the source of all being, God, is all-good, to be, as such, is good. But whence then evil? The Bible-based theist cannot say that being itself harbors imperfection and evil; so where did evil come from?

Scripture gives a definite answer to this question. God planted among the other trees in the Garden of Eden the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And He said to the first man: "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." But the tempter . . . said: "No, ye shall not die; your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing." Man succumbed to temptation, ate of the forbidden fruit; his eyes were opened and he became knowing. What was revealed to him? What did he find out? He learned the same thing that the Greek philosophers and Hindu sages had learned: the "it is good" uttered by God was not justified—all is not good in the created world. There must be evil and, what is more, much evil, intolerable evil, in the created world, precisely because it is created. Everything around us—the immediate data of consciousness—testifies to this with unquestionable evidence; he who looks at the world with open eyes," he who "knows," can draw no other conclusion. At the very moment when man became "knowing," sin entered the world; in other words, it entered together with "knowledge"—and after sin came evil. This is what the Bible tells us. (p. 3, emphasis added)

Whence the horrors of life, the deep-going unsatisfactoriness that the Buddha announces in the first of his Noble Truths, Sarvam dukkham? The answer from Athens and Benares is that being is defective in itself, essentially and irremediably. And it doesn't matter whether finite being is created by God or uncreated. Finite being as being is intrinsically defective. The answer from the Bible according to Shestov is that "sin and evil arise from 'knowledge,' from 'open eyes,' from 'intellectual vision,' that is, from the fruit of the forbidden tree."

This is an amazing interpretation. Shestov is claiming that the Fall of Man consists in his embracing of philosophy and its child science, his discovery and use of reason, his attempt to figure things out for himself by laying hold of law-like and thus necessary structures of the world. The Fall is the fall into knowledge. Like his mentor Kierkegaard, Shestov rails against the hyper-rationalism of Hegel who "accepts from the Bible only what can be 'justified' before rational consciousness" (p. 5). "And it never for a moment entered into Hegel's mind that in this lies the terrible, fatal Fall, that 'knowledge' does not make a man equal to God, but tears him away from God, putting him in the clutches of a dead and deadening 'truth.' (p. 6)

My first problem with this is the substitution of 'tree of knowledge' for 'tree of the knowledge of good and evil.' I don't find any justification for that substitution in the text under examination. Surely moral knowledge, if knowledge at all, is but a proper part of knowledge in general.

But it is worse than this. Shestov thinks of God as a being for whom all things are possible. This is connected with his beef with necessity and with reason as revelatory of necessity. "What handed man over to the power of Necessity?" (p. 12) He quotes Kierkegaard: "God signifies that everything is possible, and that everything is possible signifies God." But this leads straightaway to absurdities — a fact that will of course not disturb the equanimity of an absurdist and irrationalist like Shestov.

If God is defined as the being for whom all is possible, then nothing is necessary and everything that exists is contingent, including God, all truths about God, and the moral laws. And if all things are possible, then it is possible that some things are impossible. Therefore, possibly (All things are possible & Some things are not possible), whence it follows that it is possible that some contradictions are true.

So the position Shestov is absurd, which fact will not budge him, he being an embracer of absurdities. But it does give us a reason to ignore him and his interpretation of the Fall. So I consider his theory of the Fall refuted.

Why Pay Taxes . . .

. . . when the government fails to do what it is constitutionally mandated to do such as secure the borders (Article I, Section 8), yet does all sorts of things for which there is no constitutional justification? Or has my reading of the U. S. Constitution been too spotty for me to find the mandate for Social Security?

Whether the Federal government should administer such programs as SS, or a substitute system suitably streamlined and reformed, is negotiable. But that border control is an indisputably legitimate and undeniably necessary function of government is not open to reasonable debate.

What are Numbers? Some Dubious Philosophy of Mathematics Exposed

Here we read:

. . . aren't all numbers inventions? It is not like they grow on
trees! They live in our heads. We made them all up.

The author of the quotation is introducing a discussion of the imaginary number i = the square root of -1. His point is that we are free to introduce this number since all numbers are inventions. So we can make up any number we like. The actual argument given is self-contradictory: The point of saying that numbers do not grow on trees is that they do not occur in nature. But if they live in our heads, then they are part of nature, because our heads ae in nature and what is in our heads is part of nature.

But let's be charitable. The argument the author is trying to give is something like this:

   1. Numbers are not physical objects
   Therefore
   2. Numbers are mental constructions.

That this is a non sequitur should be obvious. For there is a third possibility: numbers are abstract or ideal or Platonic objects. This third possibility is of course the actual view of numerous distinguished thinkers and is seen to be plausible once one considers the difficulties with the view that numbers are mental constructions.

Note first that an abstract object is not one produced by a mental act of abstraction. For present purposes we can say that an abstract object is any entity that necessarily exists but is causally inert.

Note second that a number is not the same as a numeral. One and the same number can be represented by different numerals. Thus the same number is denoted by the Arabic '9' and the Roman 'IX.' Numerals are signs of numbers, while numbers are not. So no number is a numeral. Numerals are typically physical (marks on paper, for instance); no number is physical. Ergo, etv.

We also note that 9 in a base-10 or decimal system is equivalent to 1001 in a base-2 or binary system. When I speak of the number 9 I am referring to the denotatum of the numeral '9' as this numeral functions within our ordinary base-10 system. That denotatum is the same as the denotatum of '1001' as the latter functions within a base-2 system.

One and the same proposition can be expressed by different indicative sentences. Thus the binary sentence '1 + 1 = 10' expresses the same true proposition as is expressed by the decimal sentence '1 + 1 = 2.' But if the two sentences are both interpreted relative to the decimal system, then they express different propositions, one true and the other false.

Our question is whether numbers themselves are mental constructions, not whether numerals are mental constructions. This is connected with the question of whether mathematics is in any sense conventional. No doubt notation systems are conventional, i.e. decided upon by human beings (or whatever other intelligent critters there might be elsewhere); but it doesn't follow that numbers or other mathematical objects are.

If numbers themselves are mental constructions, then they depend on our existence for their existence. Their existence is a mental existnce in or before our minds, and thus a dependent mode of existence. (Forget about extraterrestrial intelligences for the nonce.) The same goes for the truths in which they are involved. (Thus 7 and 9 and 16 are involved in the truth expressed by '7 + 9 = 16'.) But we didn't always exist. So if numbers depend ion us, they they didn't always exist. Consider a time before any minds existed, some time after the Big Bang and before the emergence of life on earth, say.

During that interval, the speed of light and the speed of sound were the same as they are now, and during that time the former was greater than the latter, as is the case now. Let 'c' denote the speed of light in a vacuum. C is identical to some number, which number depending on the units of measurement one employs. So c = 186,000 miles/sec (approximately). In the metric system, c = 300,000 km/sec (approximately). The point is that once the system of measurement is fixed — which of course is conventional — then some definite number is the SOL. Similarly with the speed of sound, SOS. Now

1. SOL > SOS

is true now and was true at the time when no humans existed. Of course, at that time the concept or notion or idea greater than (taken in its mathematical sense) did not exist since concepts (notions, ideas) cannot exist except 'in' a mind. ('In' here not to be taken spatially.) But the mathematical relation picked out by '>' existed.

For if it did not, then (1) could not have been true at the time in question. And the same goes for the relational fact of SOL's being greater than SOS. That fact obtained at the time when no minds existed. So its constituents (the numbers and the greater than relation) had to exist at that time as well.

Therefore, mathematical objects cannot be our mental creations.

On Wanting All of Life to be Wise and Philosophical

From Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837):

Nessun maggior segno d'essere poco filosofo e poco savio, che volere savia e filosofica tutta la vita.

There's no greater sign of being a poor philosopher and wise man than wanting all of life to be wise and philosophical.

(Giacomo Leopardi, Pensieri, tr. W. S. Di Piero, Baton Rouge: Lousiana State University Press, 1981, p. 69) Do you see how the translation imports an ambiguity that is not present in the Italian original?

Is Social Security Insurance?

(This first appeared on the predecessor blog on 15 April 2005.)

Many supporters of the current Social Security system claim that it is a form of insurance. (See AARP Bulletin, April 2005, p. 38) I would like to ask these supporters some questions.

(Q1) If SS is a form of insurance, what eventuality does it insure one against? (Q2) If SS is a form of insurance, why are the premiums so large? (Q3) If SS is a form of insurance, why does one receive a payout even if one does not suffer the loss against which one is insured?

To answer (Q1), one might say that SS — or at least the retirement program thereof — insures workers against destitution in their old age. But if this is the answer to (Q1), then (Q2) kicks in: why are the premiums for destitution insurance so large? Surely only relatively few become destitute after retirement, and to keep them off of cat food, it is not necessary for everyone to pay huge insurance premiums. If a worker makes 90 K per annum and (with the help of his employer) pays 12.4% for the destitution insurance, then he pays $11,160 per annum for the insurance, which comes to $930 per month. I say that is a lousy deal.

It is a lousy deal even if you make only $45 K a year. Would you pay it you weren't forced to? ($90 K is the 2005, cap, and if you don't see that the worker is shouldering the entire 12.4% burden, then your grip on economic reality is weak indeed.) And don't forget that the 'cap' is not much of a cap inasmuch as it is temporary: it will increase. Indeed, a few short months ago it was $87,900. And not only will the cap move up, the retirement age will most likely be increased. What a deal! And don't forget this. If you are a blue collar worker who puts his body on the line to make a living, then you really get the shaft if the retirement age is increased. A seventy year old professor can function passably well at that age, but not so a seventy year old iron worker high up on a scaffold.

But of course, under the current system, one receives a payout whether or not one ends up destitute. As long as you have contributed for 40 quarters, you receive a payout regardless of how much or how little net worth or income you have at the time the payout begins. But then in what sense is SS insurance? If it is not insurance against destitution, what is it insurance against?

My point is that there is no clear sense in which SS is insurance. It is more like a retirement program. But if so, why aren't there private accounts? You have your very own SS number, but there is no account corresponding to it. What's worse, the SS trust fund has no money in it. What it contains are intragovernmental bonds.

Do you understand what I am saying? The whole thing is a bloody conceptual muddle — which is part of the reason why there is endless partisan bickering over it. It is not insurance and it is not a retirement program. It is better described as an intergenerational wealth transfer arrangement with the the long-term sustainability of a Ponzi scheme. It takes money from the young who (most of them) need it and gives it to the old who (manyof them) do not need it.

I am not writing this out of self-interest. I've made mine. Any SS I get will be blown on computers, books and mountain bikes. I'm thinking about you young whippersnappers — you ought to be outraged at this SS ripoff. Admittedly, my motivations are not entirely altruistic: I greatly enjoy thinking, writing, and 'bullshit management.'

Why Exaggerate?

Why do people exaggerate in serious contexts? The logically prior question is: What is exaggeration, and how does it differ from lying, bullshitting, and metaphorical uses of language? A physician in a radio broadcast one morning said, "You can't be too thin, too rich, or have too low a cholesterol level."

Note first that the medico was not joking but making a serious point. But he couched this serious point in a sentence which is plainly false, indeed triply false. Since he had no intention of deceiving his audience, and since the point he was making (not merely trying to make) about cholesterol is true, he was not lying. He was not bullshitting either since he was not trying to misrepresent himself as knowing something he does not know or more than he knows.

Exaggeration bears some resemblance to metaphor. If I say, 'Sally is a block of ice,' I speak metaphorically or figuratively. What I say is literally false. But by saying it, I manage to convey to the listener some such proposition as that Sally is unemotional and (perhaps) sexually unresponsive. And when the sawbones exaggerated, though he said something literally false, he managed to convey to his audience the true proposition that total cholesterol levels for most of us need reducing.

But I wouldn't want to say that the good doctor was speaking metaphorically. I am merely pointing to a similarity between metaphor and exaggeration. The similarity may consist in the coming apart of sentence meaning and speaker's meaning. In both examples, the sentence meaning is that of a falsehood. The speaker, however, using those literally false sentences means something different from what the words 'by themselves' mean, and manages to convey truths to his hearers.

So I suggest that to understand exaggeration we need to understand metaphor so that we can delimit the former from the latter. But what exactly is metaphor? That's a tough one.

One more example. I heard an intelligent-looking M.D. say on C-Span one moring that any exposure to sunlight is damaging. Now that is an unconscionably stupid exaggeration. Why say such a silly thing? The sawbones must know that sunlight is a source of Vitamin D, and is good for other reasons as well.

So it is a puzzling phenomwenon. Why do intelligent people exaggerate, and exaggerate wildly, when they must know that it diminishes their credibility? Is it perhaps a rhetorical technique to get people to pay attention to them?

In the case of the tobacco-wackos, who exaggerate the harmfulness of smoking and of sidestream smoke, their exaggerative distortions are readily understandable. These types are leftists who hate corporations as such. Their exaggeration is ideologically-driven. I wonder whether they use Microsoft Word when they write their screeds. Do they understand that Microsoft is –gasp! — a corporation?

Dennis Prager and Exaggeration

Dennis Prager warns against exaggeration. He says, rightly, that to exaggerate is to lose credibility. But he himself exaggerates when he refers to the Social Security sytem as a Ponzi scheme. Obviously, it is not. Admittedly, in its present configuration it is fiscally unsustainable like a Ponzi a scheme. But it is not a Ponzi scheme for a very simple reason: it is not driven by fraudulent intent. The liberals who set it up and the liberals who defend its present configuration are by and large not crooks. They had and have good intentions. (Yes!) Mitt Romney was right in last night's Tea Party debate to say that that it is "over the top" to refer to the SS sytem as a Ponzi scheme.

So why does a bright guy like Prager exaggerate in practically the same breath in which he warns against it?

A second example. Prager has an animus against 'studies.' And with justification. He regularly states that if a study confirms commonsense then it is unnecessary, and if it does not, then it is wrong. As someone who likes pithy formulations, I can see why he repeats this cute 'mantra.' Unfortunately, it is an exaggeration. Must I explain why? Not to the elite readers of this blog.

Prager has his acolytes Google his name. (He addressed one of my posts on the air a while back.) So if he comes across this post, I want to say to him, "I love you, man; you do more for this country in one hour than I could do in a life time of scribbling. I correct you because I love you."

Sentences as Names of Facts: An Aporetic Triad

There are good reasons to introduce facts as truth-makers for contingently true atomic sentences. (Some supporting reasoning here.) But if there are facts, and they make-true contingent atomic sentences, then what is the semantic relation between these declarative sentences and their truth-makers? It seems we should say that such sentences name facts. But some remarks of Leo Mollica suggest that this will lead to trouble. Consider this aporetic triad:

1. 'Al is fat' is the name of the fact of Al's being fat.
2. 'Al is fat' has a referent only if it is true.
3. Names are essentially names: a name names whether or not it has a referent.

Each limb of the triad is very plausible, but they can't all be true. The conjunction of (1) and (3) entails the negation of (2). Which limb should we abandon? It cannot be (1) given the cogency of the Truth Maker Argument and the plausible assumption that the only semantic relation between a sentence and the corresponding fact is one of naming.

(2) also seems 'ungiveupable.' There are false sentences, and there may be false (Fregean) propositions: but a fact is not a truth-bearer but a truth-maker. It is very hard to swallow the notion that there are 'false' or nonobtaining facts. If 'Al is fat' is false it is because Al and fatness do not form a fact. The existence of a fact is the unity of its constituents. Where there is the unity of the right sort of constituents you have a fact; where there is not, you don't.

As for (3), suppose that names are only accidentally names, than a name names only on condition that it have a referent. We would then have to conclude that if the bearer of a name ceases to exist, that the name ceases to be a name. And that seems wrong. When Le Verrier put forth the hypothesis of an intra-Mercurial planent that came to be called 'Vulcan,' he did not know whether there was indeed such a planet, but he thought he had good evidence of its existence. When it was later decided that there was no good evidence of the planet in question, 'Vulcan' did not cease to be a name. If we now say, truly, that Vlucan does not exist we employ a name whose naming is not exhausted by its having a referent.

So it seems that names name essentially. This is the linguistic analog of intentionality: one cannot just think; if one thinks, then necessarily one thinks of something, something that may or may not exist. If I am thinking of something, and it ceases to exist, my thinking does not cease to be object-directed. Thinking is essentially object-directed. Analogously, names are essentially names.

So far, then, today's triad looks to be another addition the list of insolubilia. The limbs of the triad are more reasonably accepted than rejected, but they cannot all be true. A pretty pickle.

By the way, I insist on the primacy of the intentional over the linguistic.

Arizona is not California . . .

. . . and proud of it. The Golden State is crumbling.

9/11 Ten Years After: Liberty and Security

Liberty and security stand in a dialectical relation to each other in that (i) each requires the other to be what it is, and yet (ii) each is opposed to the other. Let me explain.

Ad (i). LIberty is something worth having. But a liberty worth having is a liberty capable of being exercised fruitfully and often. Liberty in this concrete sense requires security to be what it is. My liberty to leave my house at any time of the day or night would be worth little or nothing if I were to be mugged every time I stepped over the threshold. On the other hand, a security worth having is a security that makes possible the exercise of as much liberty as is consistent with the liberty of all. The security of a prison or of a police state is not a security worth having. A security worth having, therefore, requires liberty to be what it is, something worth having.

Ad (ii). Nevertheless, liberty and security oppose each other. The security of all requires limitations on the liberty of each. For if the liberty of each were allowed untrammelled expression, no one would be secure in his life and property. Thus security opposes and limits liberty. Equally, liberty opposes and limits security. The right to keep and bear arms, for example, poses a certain threat to security, as everyone must admit whether liberal, conservative, or libertarian. The question is not whether it poses a threat, but whether the threat it poses is acceptable given the desirability of the liberty it allows.

Ad (i) + (ii). The situation is complex. Liberty requires the very security that it limits, just as security limits the very liberty that it requires. It follows that any attack on our security is also an attack on our liberty. It seems to me that this is a point that liberals and leftists do not sufficiently appreciate, and that some of them do not appreciate at all. The 9/11 attack on the Trade Towers and the Pentagon did not merely destroy the security of those working in them, it also destroyed their liberty, while impeding to greater and lesser degrees the liberty of all the rest of us. But it must also be said that any restriction on our liberties also negatively affects the value of our security — a point conservatives need to bear in mind.

In the present circumstances, however, when the threats to our security are grave indeed, it is reasonable to tolerate greater than usual restrictions on our liberty. Any liberal or leftist who
disagrees with this should be unceremoniously confronted with the question: How much liberty did the victims of the 9/11 attack enjoy while they were being crushed under girders, burned alive, or falling to their deaths?

I now hand off to Charles Krauthammer, The 9/11 'Overreaction'?

On Redundancy

Redundancy is a stylistic flaw at worst. A noted chess writer advises, "You need to get psyched up within your own mind." One does indeed need to get psyched up to play well. But is it possible to get psyched up in someone else's mind, or outside any mind?

So the admonition is redundant and serves no purpose. Sometimes, however, redundancy serves the purpose of clarity. A noted writer on universals speaks of two particulars sharing a universal in common. This is a redundant formulation: if the universal is shared by the two particulars, then they have it in common. But the redundancy helps explain what 'share' means and thus serves clarity. So I offer this aphorism:

Pleonasm in pursuit of precision is no logical sin, but at worst a stylistic peccadillo.