Month: October 2011

Third Anniversary of the TypePad Incarnation of Maverick Philosopher

This weblog commenced  on 4 May 2004 and has been in operation for seven and a half years.  This, the latest incarnation, the Typepad version, began on Halloween 2008.  Here are the posts from three years ago. Typepad is not the perfect platform; I doubt if there is one.  But it is superior for my purposes to the crappy Blogger, the defunct Powerblogs, and the adequate WordPress.

Readership is trending upwards.  I now routinely receive 1,000 to 1,700 pageviews per day.  The total pageview count for the last three years is now over one million: 1,029,176 as of a few moments ago. That averages to 939.89 pageviews/day with 2,828 total posts and 4,971 comments.

Can you say cacoethes scribendi?

I've missed only a few days in these seven and a half  years so it's a good bet I'll be blogging 'for the duration.'  It's like reading and thinking and meditating and running and hiking and playing chess and breathing and eating and drinking coffee. It is not something one gives up until forced to.  Some of us are just natural-born scribblers.  We were always scribbling, on looseleaf, in notebooks, on the back of envelopes, in journals daily maintained.  This is just an electronic extension of all of that. 

Except now I conduct my education in public.  This has some disadvantages, but  they are vastly outweighed by the advantages.  I have met a lot of interesting and stimulating characters via this blog, many in the flesh.  You bait your hook and cast it into the vasty deeps of cyberspace and damned if you don't snag some interesting fish.  The occasional scumsucker and bottomfeeder is no counterargument.

I thank you for your patronage, and I hope my writings are of use not just to me. 

Zombies and Other Minds

 

 Zombies 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zombies and Other Minds are both well-known philosophical topics, though Zombies are 'hotter': the heyday of Other Minds debates was back in the '50s and '60s. How are they related? Not by identity, though some do confuse the two topics. They are distinct in that Other Minds belongs to epistemology whereas Zombies belongs to ontology. Let me see if I can work this out in detail.

 1. What is a zombie? 

You will have gathered that a zombie is a creature of philosophical fiction conjured up to render graphic a philosophical issue and to throw certain questions in the philosophy of mind into relief.    A zombie is a living being that is physically and behaviorally exactly like a living human being except that it lacks (phenomenal) consciousness.  Cut a zombie open, and you find exactly what you would find were you to cut a human being open. And in terms of linguistic and nonlinguistic behavior, there is no way to tell a human being from a zombie. (So don't think of something sleepy, or drugged, or comatose or Halloweenish as in the picture above.)  When a zombie sees a tree, what is going on in the zombie's brain is a 'visual' computational process, but the zombie lacks what a French philosopher would call interiority. There is no irreducible subjectivity, no irreducible intentionality, no qualitative feel to the 'visual' processing; there is nothing it is like for a zombie to see a female zombie or to desire her. (What's it like to be a zombie? There is nothing it is like to be a zombie.)  I suspect that Daniel Dennett is a zombie.  But I have and can have no evidence for this suspicion.  His denial of qualia is not evidence.  It might just be evidence of his being a sophist.  More to the point, his linguistic behavior and facial expressions could be just the same as those of a non-zombie qualia-denier. 

2. Where do zombies come from?  

Zombies surface within the context of discussions of physicalism. Physicalism is an ontological doctrine, a doctrine about what ultimately exists,  what exists in the most fundamental sense of 'exists.'  The physicalist is committed to the proposition that everything, or at least everything concrete, is either physical or determined by the physical. To be a bit more precise, physicalism is usefully viewed as the conjunction of an 'inventory thesis' which specifies physicalistically admissible individuals and a 'determination thesis' which specifies physicalistically admissible properties. What the inventory thesis says, at a first approximation, is that every concretum is either a physical item or composed of physical items. As for the determination thesis, what it says is that physical property-instantiations determine all other property-instantiations; equivalently, every nonphysical property-instantiation supervenes on physical property-instantiations. This implies that all mental facts supervene upon physical facts.  So if a being is conscious, then this fact about it supervenes upon, is determined by, its physical properties.  This implies that there cannot be two beings, indiscernible with respect to all physical properties, such that the one is conscious while the other is not.  This in turn rules out the possibility of zombies.  For, if physicalism is true, once the physical properties are fixed, the mental properties are also automatically fixed.

3. What useful work do zombies do? 

If zombies are metaphysically (broadly logically) possible, then physicalism is false.  That's their job: to serve as counterexamples to physicalism.  For if zombies are possible, then it is not the case that every nonphysical property-instantiation supervenes upon a physical property-instantiation: a zombie has all the same physical properties as its indiscernible non-zombie twin, but is not conscious.  The possibility of zombies implies that consciousness is non-supervenient, something in addition to a being's physical makeup.  So one anti-physicalist argument goes like this:

1. If physicalism is true, then every nonphysical property-instantiation supervenes upon a physical property-instantiation. 
2. If zombies are possible, then it is not the case that every nonphysical property-instantiation supervenes upon a physical property-instantiation.
3. Zombies are possible.
Therefore
4. Physicalism is not true.

This is a valid argument the soundness of which rides on premise (3).  Here is where the fight will come.  Without questioning the validity of the argument — physicalists after all are benighted but not stupid — the physicalist will run the argument in reverse.  He will deny the conclusion and then deny (3).  In effect, he will argue from (1) & (2) & (~4)  to (~3).  He will deny the very possibility of zombies.  He will insist that anything that behaves just like a conscious person and has the 'innards' of a conscious person JUST IS a conscious person.

Now I find that absurd: it is a denial of that subjectivity which is properly accessed only via the irreducible first-person singular point of view.  Nevertheless, I will have a devil of a time budging my materialist-functionalist interlocutor.  Materialists are bloody objectivists: they think that anythng that is not objectively accessible in the third-person way just isn't there at all, or it if is 'there,' is not to be taken seriously.

Can one support (3) in a manner so compelling as to convince the recalcitrant materialist?  After all, (3) is not self-evident.  If it were self-evident, then we would have a 'knock-down' argument against physicalism.  But there are few if any  'knock-down' (absolutely compelling)  arguments in philosophy. 

Now zombies are certainly conceivable.  But it is not clear whether conceivability entails metaphysical (broadly logical) possibility, which is in play in (3).    So it is not clear whether the conceivability of zombies is a compelling  reason to reject physicalism.  The question of the relation between conceivability and possibility is a difficult one.  There is some discussion of this in the conceivability category.

The truth of physicalism is not my main concern this Halloween.  My main concern is merely to explain the role of the zombie Gedankenexperiment.  The point is that zombies figure in discussions of the ontological thesis of physicalism.  If zombies are possible, then physicalism is false.

4.  Zombies and Other Minds

So what is the difference between the Zombie question and the Other Minds question?  I'll have to think about this in greater depth, but here are some 'shoot-from-the hip' remarks of the sort one can get away with on a weblog.

Suppose Dennett is a zombie as I suspect.  The poor creature has no inner life, no interiority. Since he has no mind in the sense of 'mind' in which I know that I have a mind, he cannot be an other mind to me or to any other minded individual.  If an organism has no mind, then no question can arise as to how one knows or rationally believes that it has a mind, nor any question as to how one knows nor rationally believes that it is in one state of mind rather than another.  It is these epistemological questions that arise within the context of discussions of Other Minds.

As I see it, if physicalism is true, then we are all zombies.  We are all stumbling around 'in the dark.'  But if so,  then the epistemological problems associated with the Other Minds debate should have fairly easy solutions.  If verbal and non-verbal behavior is constitutive of mentality, then I should be able to know that you are skeptical or angry or bored or fearful just by looking at your face, observing your 'body language,' and listening to your words.  External criteria would suffice.  But if we are not zombies, and physicalism is false, then the epistemological questions regain their urgency. 

Whatever the exact details, the Zombie and Other Minds questions are not to be conflated.

Al-Ghazzali on Choosing a Wife

Here are the attributes al-Ghazzali recommends seeking in a prospective wife. (Alchemy of Happiness, p. 96 ff.)

1. Chastity
2. Good disposition
3. Beauty ("See a woman before marrying her.")
4. The sum paid by the husband should be moderate
5. She should not be barren
6. Of good stock
7. Not previously married
8. Not too nearly related to her husband.

The importance of #3 is contested, however, by Jimmy Soul inter alia.   Otherwise, it is pretty good advice.

Monasticism and the Monks of Mount Athos

Mt Athos Back in April, 60 Minutes had a segment on the monks of Mt. Athos.  It was surprisingly sympathetic for such a left-leaning program. What one expects and usually gets from libs and lefties and the lamestream media is religion-bashing — unless of course the religion is Islam, the religion of peace – but the segment in question was refreshingly objective.  It was actually too sympathetic for my taste and not critical enough.  It didn't raise the underlying questions.  Which is why you need my blog.

 

We know that this world is no dream and is to that extent real.  For all we know it may be as real as it gets, though  philosophers and sages over the centuries, East and West, have assembled plenty of considerations that speak against its plenary reality.  We don't know that there is any world other than this one.  We also don't know that there isn't.  Now here is an existential question for you:  Will you sacrifice life in this world, with its manifold pleasures and satisfactions, for the chance of transcendent happiness in a merely believed-in hinterworld?  The Here is clear; the Hereafter is not.  It is not clear that is is, or that it isn't, or what it is if it is.  When I say that the world beyond is merely believed-in, I mean that it is merely believed-in from the point of view of the here and now where knowledge is impossible; I am not saying that there is no world beyond. 

Let us be clear what the existential option is.  It is not between being a dissolute hedonist or an ascetic, a Bukowski or a Simon of Sylites.  It is between being one who lives in an upright and productive way but in such a way as to assign plenary reality and importance to this world, this life, VERSUS one who sees this world as a vanishing quantity that cannot be taken with full seriousness but who takes it as preparatory for what comes after death.  (Of course, most adherents of a religion live like ordinary worldlings for the most part but hedge their bets by tacking on some religious observances on the weekend.  I am not concerned with these wishy-washy types here.)

The monks of Mount Athos spend their lives preparing for death, writing their ticket to the Beyond, engaging in unseen warfare against Satan and his legions.  They pray the Jesus Prayer ceaselessly; they do not surf the Web or engage in competitive eating contests or consort with females – there are no distaff elements on the Holy Mountain.

Is theirs the highest life possible for a human being?  Or is the quest to determine what is the highest life the highest life?  The monks think they have the truth, the final truth, the essential and saving truth.  Thinking they possess it, their task is not to seek it but to implement it in their lives, to 'existentially appropriate it' as Kierkegaard might say, to knit it into the fabric of their Existenz.  There is a definite logic to their position.  If you have the truth, then there is no point in wasting time seeking it, or talking about it, or debating scoffers and doubters.  The point is to do what is necessary to achieve the transcendent Good the existence of which one does not question. 

This logic is of course common to other 'true believers.'  Karl Marx in the 11th of his Theses on Feuerbach wrote that "The philosophers have variously interpreted the world, but the point is to change it."  Marx and the Commies he spawned thought they had the truth, and so the only thing left was to implement it at whatever cost, the glorious end justifying the bloody means.   Buddha was famously opposed to speculation.  If you have been shot with a poisoned arrow, there is no point in speculating as to the trajectory of the arrow, the social class of the archer, or the chemical composition of the poison; the one thing necessary is to extract the arrow.  The logic is the same, though the point is different.  The point for Buddha was not theosis (deification) as in Eastern Orthodoxy, or the classless society as in Marxism, but Nirvana, extinguishment of the ego-illusion and final release from the wheel of Samsara. 

If you have the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters, then  by all means live in accordance with it.  Put it into practice.  But do you in fact have the truth?  For the philosopher this is the question that comes first and cannot be evaded.  If the monks of Mt Athos are right about God and the soul and that the ultimate human goal is theosis, then they are absolutely right to renounce this world of shadows and seemings and ignorance and evil for the sake of true reality and true happiness.

But do they have the truth or does one throw one's life away when one flees to a monastery? Does one toss aside the only reality there is for a bunch of illusions?  There is of course a secular analog.  I would say that all the earnest and idealistic and highly talented individuals who served the cause of Communism in the 20th century sacrificed their lives on the altar of illusions.  They threw their lives away pursuing the impossible.  Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, for example.  Such true believers wasted their lives and ended up  enablers of  great evil.  In the end they were played for fools by an evil ideology.

So isn't the philosopher's life the highest possible life for a human being?  For only the philosopher pursues the ultimate questions without dogmatism, without blind belief, in freedom, critically, autonomously.  I am not saying that the ultimate good for a human being is endless inquiry.  The highest goal cannot be endless inquiry into truth, but a resting in it.   But that can't come this side of the Great Divide.  Here and now is not the place or time to dogmatize.  We can rest in dogma on the far side.

My Athenian thesis — that the life of thephilosopher is the highest life possible for a human being — won't play very well in Jerusalem. And I myself have doubts about it.  But all such doubts are themselves part and parcel of the philosophical enterprise.  For if nothing is immune from being hauled before the bench of Reason, there to be rudely interrogated, then fair Philosophia herself must also answer to that tribunal.

 

Another Side of the Education Bubble: The Law School Bubble

Who hasn't thought of attending law school?  Before doing anything rash, you may want to peruse the posts of law professor Paul Campos at Inside the Law School Scam.  He began the blog in August so you could easily take it da capo.

And then there is the student loan crisis and the moral and economic absurdity of Obama's 'forgive and forget' policy.  Just as government interference in the mortgage industry bears a large part (not all) of the responsibility for the housing bubble, it bears a large part of the responsibility for the education bubble.

Another Round with Hennessey on Accidental Predication

Having had my say about what is known in the trade as Occam's Razor, and having secured some welcome agreement with the proprietor of Beyond Necessity in the combox of the aforelinked post, I am now ready to address the meat of Richard Hennessey's response to my three-post critique of what I took to be his theory of accidental predication.

There is no need to stray from our hoary example of accidental predication: 'Socrates is seated.'  I took Hennessey to be saying that in a true accidental predication of this simple form subject and predicate refer to exactly the same thing.  If they didn't, the sentence could not be true.  Here is how Hennessey puts it:

Let us take the proposition “Socrates is sitting” or the strictly equivalent “Socrates is a sitting being.” The referent of the subject term here is the sitting Socrates and that of the predicate term is one and the same sitting Socrates. . . . only if the referent of the “Socrates” and that of the “sitting” of “Socrates is sitting” are identical can it be true that Socrates is actually the one sitting.

Since Hennessey uses the word 'identity' we can call this an identity theory of accidental predication: in true predications of this sort, the referent of the subject term and the referent of the predicate term are identical, and this identty is what insures that the predication is true.  If so, then the same goes for all other true predications which are about Socrates.  So consider 'Socrates is standing' which is the logical contrary (not contradictory) of 'Socrates is sitting.'  These sentences cannot both be true at the same time, but they can be true at different times.  Suppose we ask what the truth-maker is in each case.  Given that subject and predicate terms refer to exactly the same thing, namely, Socrates, it follows that in each case it is Socrates and Socrates alone that is the truth-maker of both sentences.  When he is sitting, Socrates makes-true 'Socrates is sitting' and when he is standing Socrates makes-true 'Socrates is standing.' 

What I do not understand, however, is how these obviously different sentences, which differ in their truth-conditions, can have one and the same entity as truth-maker.  The same problem does not seem to arise for such essential predications as 'Socrates is human.'  For there is no time when he is not human, and (this is a distinct modal point), at every time at which he is human he is not possibly such as to be nonhuman.  In the case of essential predications an identity theory may be workable.  Perhaps we can say that Socrates himself is the truth-maker of 'Socrates is human,' 'Socrates is rational,' and Socrates is animal.'

In the case of accidental predications, however, it seems definitely unworkable. This is because different accidental predications about Socrates need different truth-makers. It is not Socrates, but Socrates'  being seated that is the truth-maker of 'Socrates is seated' and it is not Socrates, but Socrates' standing that is the truth-maker of 'Socrates is standing.'

Without worrying about what exactly the italicized phrases pick out (facts? states of affairs? tropes?), one thing seems crystal clear: there cannot be a strict identity of, e.g., the referent of 'Socrates' and the referent of 'seated.'  And since there cannot be a strict identity, there must be some difference between the referents of the subject and predicate terms.  Hennessey seems to show an appreciation of this in his response (second hyperlink above):

If we tweak the [B.V.] passage a bit, we can, it strikes me, improve the thesis about the referencing at work in the sentence “Socrates is sitting” so that it offers a more satisfactory support of the neo-Aristotelian thesis of anti-realism in the theory of universals, one indeed getting along “without invoking universals.” First, let us speak of “particular property” instead of “particularized property,” for the latter expression suggests, at least to me, that the property would be, prior to some act of particularization, a universal and not a particular. Let us then accept, but with a precision, Bill’s statement that “‘sitting’ refers to a particularized property (a trope),” saying instead that while the “Socrates” in our statement refers to Socrates, the person at present sitting, the “sitting” primarily refers to Socrates, the person at present sitting, and also co-refers to the particular property of sitting that inheres in Socrates. (An alternative terminology might have it that the “Socrates” in our statement denotes Socrates and the “sitting” primarily denotes Socrates, still the person sitting, and also connotesthe property of sitting that inheres in Socrates; come to think of it, I believe I recall having read, long ago, a similar distinction in the Petite logique of Jacques Maritain, a book which I no longer have, thanks to a flooded basement.)

This is definitely an improvement.  It is an improvement because it tries to accommodate the perfectly obvious point that there must be some difference or other between the worldly referents of the subject and predicate terms in accidental predications.  Hennessey is now telling us that 'Socrates' in our example refers to exactly one item, Socrates, while 'sitting' refers to two items, Socrates and the particular property (trope, accident) seatedness which inheres in Socrates.

But Hennessey is not yet in the clear.  For I will now ask him what the copula 'is' expresses.  It seems he must say that it expresses inherence.  He must say that it is because seatedness inheres in Socrates that 'Socrates is seated' is true.  Now inherence is an asymmetrical relation: if x inheres in y, then it is not the case that y inheres in x.  But there is no sameness relation (whether strict identity, contingent identity, accidental sameness, Castaneda's consubstantiaton, etc) that is not symmetrical.  Thus if x is in any sense the same as y, then y is (in the same sense) the same as x.  Therefore, Hennessey's bringing of inherence into the picture is at odds with his claims of identity.  Inherence, being asymmetrical,  is not a type of identity or sameness.  So why the talk of identity in the first passage quoted above?

Why does Hennessey say that 'seated' refers primarily to Socrates but also to the particular property seatedness?   Why not just say this: 'Socrates' refers to the primary substance (prote ousia) Socrates and nothing else; 'is' refers to the inherence relation or nexus and nothing else; 'seated/sitting' refers to the particular property (trope, accident) seatedness and nothing else.  This would give him what he wants, a theory of predication free of universals.

But this is not what Hennessey says.  He is putting forth some sort of identity theory of predication.  He thinks that in some sense the subject and predicate terms refer to the very same thing.  He tells us that 'seated' refers both to a substance and to an accident.  The upshot is that Hennessey has given birth to a hybrid theory which I for one do not find  intelligible. 

Here is the question he needs to confront directly: what, in the world, makes it true that 'Socrates is seated' (assuming of course that the sentence is true)?  Here is a clear answer: the sentence is true because seatedness inheres in Socrates.  But then of course there can be no talk of the identity of Socrates and seatedness.  They are obviously not identical: one is a substance and the other an accident.  The relation between them, being asymmetrical, cannot be any sort of sameness relation.

The other clear answer which, though clear, is absurd is this:  the sentence is true because 'Socrates' and 'seated' refer to the very same thing with the result that the copula expresses identity.  Now this is absurd for the reasons given over several posts. This was his original theory which he has wisely moved away from.

Instead of plumping for one of these clear theories, Hennessey gives us an unintelligible hybrid, a monster if you will, as we approach Halloween.

On Corporate Prayer and Institutionalized Religion

Paul Brunton, The Notebooks of P. B., vol. 12, part 2, p. 34, #68:

A public place is an unnatural environment in which to place oneself mentally or physically in the attitude of true prayer.  It is far too intimate, emotional, and personal to be satisfactorily tried anywhere except in solitude.  What passes for prayer in temples, churches, and synagogues is therefore a compromise dictated by the physical necessity of an institution.  It may be quite good but too often alas! it is only the dressed-up double of true prayer.

Where would we be without institutions?  We need them, but only up to a point.  We are what we are because of the institutions in which we grew up, and natural piety dictates that we be appropriately grateful.  But their negative aspects cannot be ignored and all further personal development requires those who can, to go it alone.

We need society and its institutions to socialize us, to raise us from the level of the animal to that of the human.  But this human is all-too-human, and to take the next step we must tread the solitary path.  Better to be a social animal than a mere animal, but better than both is to become an individual, as I am sure Kierkegaard would agree.  To achieve true individuality  is one of the main tasks of human life.  In pursuit of this task institutions are more hindrance than help.

For some, churches and related institutions will always be necessary to provide guidance, discipline, and community.  But for others they will prove stifling and second-best, a transitional phase in their development.

For any church to claim that outside it there is no salvation — extra ecclesiam salus non est — is intolerable dogmatism, and indeed a form of idolatry in which something finite, a human institution contingent both in its existence and configuration, is elevated to the status of the Absolute.

For my take on idolatry see the Idolatry category.

Nihil philosophicum a nobis alienum putamus

"We consider nothing philosophical to be foreign to us."  This is the motto Hector-Neri Castañeda chose to place on the masthead of the philosophical journal he founded in 1966, Noûs. When Hector died too young a death at age 66  in the fall of '91, the editorship passed to others who removed the Latin phrase. There are people who find classical allusions  pretentious. I understand, but do not share, their sentiment.

Perhaps I should import Hector's motto into my own masthead. For it   certainly expresses my attitude and would be a nice, if inadequate, way of honoring the man.

Hector's motto is modelled on Terentius: Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto. "I am a human being; I consider nothing human to be  foreign to me." One also sees the thought expressed in this form:  Nihil humanum a me alienum puto. Hector's motto is modeled on this variant.

Peter Hitchens on an Evening Without Richard Dawkins

Excerpt (emphasis added)

The most moving – and most enjoyable – contribution of the evening came from the marvellous Dr Stephen Priest, simultaneously diffident and extremely powerful. I won’t try to summarise it because I’m sure I’d fail. I hope it will eventually make it on to the web. It reminded me of why I had once wanted to study philosophy, a desire which faded rapidly when I was exposed to English Linguistic Philosophy and various other strands of that discipline which made me wonder if I had wandered into a convention of crossword-compilers, when what I wanted was to seek the origins of the universe.

Many of you will know that in his failure to face William Lane Craig, Professor Dawkins was not alone. Several other members of Britain’s Atheist Premier League found themselves unable or unwilling (or both) to take him on.

The important thing about this is that what Craig does is simple. He uses philosophical logic, and a considerable knowledge of physics, to expose the shallowness of Dawkins’s arguments. I would imagine that an equally serious Atheist philosopher would be able to give him a run for his money, but Dawkins isn’t that. He would have been embarrassingly out of his depth.

It would be interesting to compile a list of those who were dissuaded, or almost dissuaded, from pursuing philosophy by their encounter with the Ordinary Language movement.  Hector-Neri Castañeda  once told me that the dominance of the latter in the '50s and '60s almost convinced  him to drop philosophy as a profession abd go to law school.  Not being a native English speaker, he could not hope to contribute to discussions in which the subtleties of ordinary English usage are put under the microsope.  But then things changed in that wild decade of the '60s in which so many things changed, the epigoni of Wittgenstein went into eclipse, and systematic philosophy was back on track and attractive of the better heads.

My posts on OLP are collected in the Ordinary Language Philosophy category.