Month: October 2011

Flannery O’Connor on the Beats and Their Lack of Discipline

Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1979), pp. 336-337, in a letter to Dr. T. R. Spivey dated 21 June 1959:

O_connor_flannery2 I haven't read the article in PR [Paris Review?] or the beat writers themselves.  That seems about the most appalling thing you could set yourself to do — read them.  But reading about them and reading what they have to say about themselves makes me think that there is a lot of ill-directed good in them.  Certainly some revolt against our exaggerated materialism is long overdue.  They seem to know a good many of the right things to run away from, but to lack any necessary discipline.  They call themselves holy but holiness costs and so far as I can see they pay nothing.  It's true that grace is the free gift of God  but to put yourself in the way of being receptive to it you have to practice self-denial.  I observe that Baron von Hügel's most used words are derivatives of the word cost.  As long as the beat people abandon themselves to all sensual satisfactions, on principle, you can't take them for anything  but false mystics.  A good look at St. John of the Cross makes them all look sick.

You can't trust them as poets either because they are too busy acting like poets.  The true poet is anonymous, as to his habits, but these boys have to look, act, and apparently smell like poets.

This is the only reference to the Beats that I found in The Habit of Being apart from the sentence, "That boy is on the road more than Kerouac, though in a more elegant manner." (p. 373)

Although O'Connor did not read the Beat authors  she correctly sensed their appalling side (William Burroughs, for one example) and zeroed in accurately on their lack of discipline and adolescent posturing as 'holy' when they refused to satisfy the elementary requirements of becoming such.  But in fairness to Kerouac one should point out that he really did at one time make a very serious effort at reforming his life.  See Resolutions Made and Broken, No More Booze, Publishing, or Seminal Emission, Divine Light, Sex, Alcohol, and Kerouac. 

And I wonder what Miss O'Connor would say had she lived long enough  to read that book by the Holy Goof, Neal Cassady, entitled Grace Beats Karma: Letters from Prison 1958-1960? (Blast Books, 1993)  Grace Beats Karma: what a wonderful  title, apt, witty, and pithy!  I shall have to pull some quotations before October's end.

Arguably, the central figure of the Beat movement was not Kerouac (OTR's Sal Paradise) but Neal Cassady (OTR's Dean Moriarty).

Steve Jobs (1955-2011) on Death

This is from Jobs' 2005 Stanford commencement address:

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

As Heidegger might have said, we achieve our authenticity (Eigentlichkeit) in Being-towards-death (Sein-zum-Tode).

Three’s a Crowd

In a face-to-face philosophical discussion, three is a crowd.

If Al and Bill are talking philosophy, the first thing that has to occur, if there is is to be any forward movement, is that the interlocutors must pin each other down terminology-wise. Each has to come to understand how the other is using his terms. It is notorious that key philosophical terms are used in different ways by different  philosophers.  This terminological fluidity, though regrettable, is unavoidable since attempt to rigidify terminology will inevitably beg key questions.

The following is a partial list of terms used in different ways by different philosophers: abstract, concrete, object, subject, fact, proposition, world, predicate, property, substance, event.

Take 'fact.' For some, it is a matter of definition that a fact is a true proposition. But as I use the term, a fact is the truth-maker of a true proposition. Suppose you use 'fact' as interchangeable with
'true proposition.' Then I can accommodate you by distinguishing between facts-that and facts-of. Thus, the fact that Bill is blogging is made true by the fact of Bill's blogging. But we must sort out  these definitional questions if we are to make any progress with the substantive issues. A substantive question would be: Are there facts?  Obviously, we cannot make any headway with this until we agree on how  we are using 'facts.'  For more on this topic see Three Senses of 'Facts' and other entries in the Facts category.

And of course we can't stop here. If you say that a fact is a true proposition, then I will ask you how you are using 'proposition.' Do you mean the sense of a context-free declarative sentence? Are propositions for you abstract objects? But now we need to get clear about 'abstract' and 'object.' Do you use 'object' and 'entity' interchangeably? Or can there be objects that are not entities and entities that are not objects? (An hallucinated pink rat might count as an object that is not an entity, and a being that has never been the accusative of any intellect might count as an entity that is not an object.) Someone who uses 'object' in such a way that there is no object without a (thinking) subject is not misusing the word: that is a traditional use. But equally, a person who uses 'object' to mean entity is not misusing it either. So the use of 'object' needs clarification.

One might use 'abstract' and 'concrete' as follows: X is abstract (concrete) iff X is causally inert (causally active/passive). But I know of at least one name philosopher who uses 'abstract' interchangeably with 'nonspatiotemporal.' On this usage, God would be an abstract object, while on the first definition God would be concrete.

Note that an abstract entity on either of these two definitions can be a substance (another word with about ten meanings!), i.e., a being  capable of independent existence. But 'abstract' is used by
philosophers as diverse as Hegel and Keith Campbell (the Aussie trope theorist) to refer to non-independent objects. And indeed, their use is the classical, and etymologically correct, use.

And so it goes. Suppose Carla is present at Al and Bill's discussion. Will she help or hinder? Experience teaches that, for the most part, three's a crowd: the third interlocutor, in her zeal to contribute to the discussion will only interfere with the protracted preliminary clarification that Al and Bill need before they can get to work on the substantive questions that interest them.

Note 1: The above applies to face-to-face discussions, not to on-line exchanges.  Note 2: I seem to recall Roderick Chisholm making the 'three is a crowd' remark.  So I may have picked up the thought from him.

Insanity About Race: The ‘Niggerhead’ Non-Issue

I watched The O'Reilly Factor last night.  In one segment Bill O'Reilly and Brit Hume were discussing some word once used by locals as the name of a hunting venue that is connected with some trouble Rick Perry is in.  But they were so gingerly tip-toeing around the topic that I couldn't figure out what the offensive word was.  Was it perhaps 'Coon's Hollow'?   I ran through various possibilities, trying to guess what they were too chicken and pee-cee to plainly state. Turns out the word is 'Niggerhead.' This was a  name that long before Perry's visit to the site had been painted over.

Philosophers make a distinction between use and mention.  It is one thing to use a word to refer to someone or something, and quite another to talk about, or mention, the word.  Boston is a city; 'Boston' is not: no word is a city.  'Boston' is disyllabic; Boston is not: no city is composed of two syllables.  Same with 'nigger.' It's a disyllabic word, an offensive word, a word that a decent person does not use.  I am not using it; I am mentioning it, talking about it.  Same with 'Niggerhead.'  That was the name that certain locals used for the hunting venue in question.  I am talking about that name, not using it.

The 'reasoning' of the race-baiters is apparently that since Perry visited a place that once bore the unofficial name 'Niggerhead,' that he is either a racist or 'racially insensitive' or something.

What I would like to point out to these nasty liberal dumbasses is that reasoning is not association of ideas. Almost any idea can be associated with any other.  In the febrile and mushy mind of many liberals 'niggardly' suggests 'nigger' so that anyone who uses the former must be a racist.  That's pretty stupid, don't you think?  But it's par for the course for a liberal.  Or how about 'denigrate'?  Does the use of that word embody a racial slur?

This is important.  A man lost his job because he used the perfectly legitimate English word 'niggardly.'  This is insane.  If you are decent person, you will do your bit to oppose the scurrilous insanity of the race-baiting Left.

For more on 'Niggerhead,' read Bad Day at Racist Rock.

Demands of the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Protesters

Here is a list of their individually puerile and jointly inconsistent demands.

One wonders how

Demand nine: Open borders migration; anyone can travel anywhere to work and live

is consistent with

Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system

and

Demand four: Free college education.

Libertarians believe in the foolish notion of open borders, presumably because they cannot think in any but economic terms; but at least libertarians are intelligent enough to realize that one cannot combine open borders with a full-tilt welfare state that provides 'free' health care, 'free' college education, etc.   The anti-capitalist punks, utopian dumbasses that they are, dream the impossible dream of a welfare state that allows millions upon millions to flood in to grab the goodies that the government will magically provide for them.

Welcome to Cloud Cuckoo Land.

Again on the Ontological Argument for Truth

I gave the following argument:

We have the concept true proposition. This concept is either instantiated, or it is not. If it is not instantiated, then it is true that it is not instantiated, which implies that the concept true proposition is instantiated. If, on the other hand, the concept in question is instantiated, then of course it is instantiated. Therefore, necessarily, the concept true proposition is instantiated, and there necessarily exists at least one truth, namely, the truth that the concept true proposition is instantiated.

A reader asks: Does not your argument presuppose that "to be instantiated" means "to exist extra-mentally"? What if someone believed that esse est percipi? If your argument was based on the aforementioned  assumption, then would not it beg the question because it presupposes what needs to be demonstrated?

Let us first note that it cannot be coherently maintained that to be is to be perceived without qualification.  To be perceived is to be perceived by someone or something.  For Bishop Berkeley, the someone in question is God whose being is precisely not identical to his being perceived.  The slogan therefore does not apply to God.  If absolutely everything were such that its being were its being perceived, then a vicious infinite regress would arise.  To put it figuratively, the world cannot be mere percepts 'all the way down.'  You have to come eventually to something whose being is in excess of its being perceived.

Perhaps what the reader is getting at is that any true proposition that instantiates the concept true proposition is  true only for a mind, and not true absolutely.  But this too leads to an infinite regress which appears to be vicious.  For consider the proposition *Every truth is true-for some mind or other; no truth is true absolutely.*  Call this proposition 'P.'  Is P true?  No, it is true-for some mind or other.  Call that proposition P*.  Is it true? No, it is true-for some mind or other.  An infinite regress arises, and it appears to be vicious.

The Problem of the Existence of Consciousness

I tend to the view that all philosophical problems can be represented as aporetic polyads.  What's more, I maintain that philosophical problems ought to be so represented.  You haven't begun to philosophize until you have a well-defined puzzle, a putative inconsistency of plausibilities.  When you have an aporetic polyad on the table you have something to think your teeth into.  (An interesting and auspicious typo, that; I shall let it stand.)

Consider the problem of the existence of consciousness.  Nicholas Maxwell  formulates it as follows: "Why does sentience or consciousness exist at all?"  The trouble with this formulation is that it invites the retort:  Why not?  The question smacks of gratuitousness.  Why raise it? To remove the felt gratuitiousness a motive has to be supplied for posing the question. Now a most excellent motive is contradiction-avoidance.  If a set of plausibilities form an inconsistent set, then we have a problem.  For we cannot abide a contradiction.  Philosophers love a paradox, but they hate a contradiction.  So I suggest we put the problem of the existence of consciousness as follows:

1. Consciousness (sentience) exists.
2. Consciousness is contingent: given that it exists it might not have.
3. If x contingently exists, then x has an explanation of its existence in terms of a y distinct from x.
4. Consciousness has no explanation in terms of anything distinct from it.

A tetrad of plausibilities.  Each limb makes a strong claim on our acceptance.  Unfortunately, this foursome is logically inconsistent: the conjunction of any three limbs entails the negation of the remaining one. Thus the conjunction of (1) and (2) and (3) entails the negation of (4).  So the limbs cannot all be true.  But they are all very plausible.  Therein lies the problem.  Which one ought we reject to remove the contradiction?

Note the superiority of my aporetic formulation to Maxwell's formulation.  On my formulation we have a very clear problem that cries out for a solution.  But if I merely ask, 'Why does consciousness exist?' there is no clear problem.  You could retort, 'Why shouldn't it exist?' 'What's the problem?'  There is a problem because the existence of conbsciousness conflicts with other things we take for granted.

(1) is absolutely datanic and so undeniable.  If some crazy eliminativist were to deny (1) I would show him the door and give him the boot.  (Life is too short for discussions with lunatics.)

(4) is exceedingly plausible. To explain consciousness in terms of itself would be circular, hence no explanation.  So it has to be explained, if it can be explained, in terms of something distinct from it.  Since abstract objects cannot be invoked to explain concrete consciousness, consciousness, if it can be explained, must be explained in physical and physiological and chemical and biological terms. But this is also impossible as Maxwell makes clear using a version of the 'knowledge argument' made popular by T. Nagel and F. Jackson:

But physics, and that part of natural science in principle re-ducible to physics, cannot conceivably predict and explain fully the mental, or experiential, aspect of brain processes. Being blind from birth—or being deprived of ever having oneself experienced visual sensations—cannot in itself prevent one from understanding any part of physics. It cannot prevent one from understanding the physics of colour, light, physiology of colour perception and discrimination, just as well as any nor-mally sighted person. In order to understand physical concepts, such as mass, force, wavelength, energy, spin, charge, it is not necessary to have had the experience of any particular kind of sensation, such as the visual sensation of colour. All predictions of physics must also have this feature. In order to understand what it is for a poppy to be red, however, it is necessary to have experienced a special kind of sensation at some time in one’s life, namely the visual sensation of redness. A person blind from birth, who has never experienced any visual sensation, cannot know what redness is, where redness is the perceptual property, what we (normally sighted) see and experience, and not some physical correlate of this, light of such and wave-lengths, or the molecular structure of the surface of an object which causes it to absorb and reflect light of such and such wavelengths. It follows that no set of physical statements, however comprehensive, can predict that a poppy is red, or that a person has the visual experience of redness. Associated with neurological processes going on in our brains, there are mental or experiential features which lie irredeemably beyond the scope of physical description and explanation.

(2) is also exceedingly plausible: how could consciousness (sentience)  exist necessarily?  But (3), whichis a versionof the principle of sufficient reason, is also very plausible despite the glib asseverations of those who think quantum mechanics provides counterexamples to it. 

So what will it be?  Which of the four limbs will you reject? 

I am tempted to say that the problem is genuine but insoluble, that the problem is an aporia in the strongest sense of the term: a conceptual impasse, an intellectual knot that our paltry minds cannot untie.

But this invites the metaphilosophical response that all genuine problems are soluble.  Thus arises a metaphilosophical puzzle that can be set forth as an aporetic triad:

5. Only soluble problems are genuine.
6. The problem of the existence of consciousness is not soluble.
7.  The problem of the existence of consciousness is genuine.

This too is an inconsistent set.  But each limb is plausible.  Which will you reject? 

Joyce Johnson Remembers Kerouac

Jack Kerouac's On the Road was published 54 years ago in September, 1957. Joyce Johnson remembers. Excerpts:

     Who could have predicted that an essentially plotless novel about
     the relationship between two rootless young men who seemed
     constitutionally unable to settle down was about to kick off a
     culture war that is still being fought to this day? [. . .]

     In Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman sacrificed his life to a
     fruitless pursuit of the American dream; Kerouac's two protagonists
     acted as if that dream was of no importance. On the Road followed
     Sal and Dean through three years of frenetic transcontinental
     movement in the late 1940s. Their main goal in life was to "know
     time," which they could achieve by packing as much intensity as
     possible into each moment. [. . .]

     The two ideas, beat and beatnik — one substantive and
     life-expanding, the other superficial and hedonistic – helped shape
     the counterculture of the '60s and to this day are confused with
     each other, not only by Kerouac's detractors but even by some of
     his most ardent fans. [. . .]

     Beatniks were passe from the start, but On the Road has never gone
     without readers, though it took decades to lose its outlaw status.
     Only recently was it admitted — cautiously — to the literary canon.
     (The Modern Library has named it one of the 100 best
     English-language novels of the 20th century.) Fifty years after On
     the Road was first published, Kerouac's voice still calls out: Look
     around you, stay open, question the roles society has thrust upon
     you, don't give up the search for connection and meaning. In this
     bleak new doom-haunted century, those imperatives again sound
     urgent and subversive — and necessary.

Anthony Daniel's (Theodore Dalrymple's) assessment in Another Side of Paradise is rather less
positive:

     He led a tormented life, and I cannot help but feel sadness for a
     would-be rebel who spent most of his life, as did Kerouac, living
     at home with his mother. He also drank himself to a horrible death.
     But while it is true that most great writers were tormented souls,
     it does not follow that most tormented souls were great writers. To
     call Kerouac's writing mediocre is to do it too much honor: its
     significance is sociological rather than literary. The fact that
     his work is now being subjected to near-biblical levels of
     reverential scholarship is a sign of very debased literary and
     academic standards.

     I have seen some of the most mediocre minds of my generation
     destroyed by too great an interest in the Beats.

The last line of this quotation parodies the first line of Allen Ginsberg's Howl:

     I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,
     starving hysterical naked . . . .

Jkerouacmom And as for Kerouac's "living at home with his mother," which Dalrymple intends as a slight, the truth is rather that Kerouac's mother lived with him, and with him and Stella Sampas after the two were married on 18 November 1966. (See Gerald Nicosia, Memory Babe, p. 670 ff.)  Kerouac was ever the dutiful son, a conservative trait that Dalrymple  misses.

The Great Obama Catharsis

A brilliant article by Victor Davis Hanson. Makes the case that we are really better off with Obama than we would have been with McCain.  Punning on 'catharsis,' a witty commenter writes, "We have met the enema, and his name is Obama."  Obama will precipitate a Huge Dump which will void us of the crap of leftism.

I now think I was wrong to criticize those conservatives who refused to vote for the wishy-washy pseudo-conservative McCain, thereby aiding Obama.  I overlooked the latter's aperient function.  (Bill Tingley, if you are still reading this blog, you were right.)

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Midnight and Other Hours of the Day

Benny Goodman, One O'Clock Jump
Lovin' Spoonful, Six O'Clock 
Maria Muldaur, Midnight at the Oasis
Eric Clapton, After Midnight
Thelonious Monk, Round Midnight
Jack Kerouac, Old Angel Midnight
Headswim, Old Angel Midnight
Patsy Cline, Walkin' After Midnight
Rolling Stones, Midnight Gambler
Allman Bros., Midnight Rambler
B. B. King, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Etta James,  Midnight Hour
The Vogues, Five O'Clock World
Blind Boy Fuller, Ten O'Clock Peeper
Eric Clapton and B. B. King, Three O'Clock Blues
Skip James, Four O'Clock Blues
The Gods, Eight O'Clock in the Morning

An Ontological Argument for Truth and the Correspondence Theory

A Pakistani correspondent e-mails:

Regarding your recent post An Ontological Argument for Objective Reality, do you think your argument demonstrates that the correspondence theory of truth is inherent to our notion of objective reality, because we cannot meaningfully, without contradiction, even talk about truth in the absence of objective reality? If so, your argument also settles the case in favor of correspondence theory of truth.

Excellent question.  I define 'ontological argument' in the earlier post, and note that 'ontological argument' and 'ontological argument for the existence of God' are not to be confused.  Here is an ontological argument for the existence of at least one truth:

We have  the concept true proposition. This concept is either instantiated, or it is not. If it is not instantiated, then it is true that it is not instantiated, which implies that the concept true proposition is  instantiated. If, on the other hand, the concept in question is instantiated, then of course it is instantiated. Therefore, necessarily, the concept true proposition is instantiated, and there necessarily exists at least one truth, namely, the truth that the concept true proposition is instantiated.

This is a sound ontological argument for the existence of at least one truth using only the concept true proposition, the law of excluded middle, and the unproblematic principle that, for any proposition p, p entails that p is true. By 'proposition' here I simply mean whatever can be appropriately characterized as either true or false. That there are propositions in this innocuous sense cannot be reasonably denied.

Does it follow that the correspondence theory of truth is true?  I don't think so.  What the above argument shows is that there are truths.  A truth is a true proposition, or, more generally, a true truth-bearer.  But a truth-bearer is not the same as a truth-maker.  A correspondence theory of truth, however, requires truth-makers.  And so there is a logical gap between

1. There are truths

and

2. There are truth-makers of these truths.

My ontological argument establishes (1).  It establishes the existence, indeed the necessity, of at least one truth 'outside the mind.'  But truths outside the mind might just be true Fregean propositions.  Such items are truth-bearers but not truth-makers.  So (2) does not straightaway follow from (1).

To get to (2), we need to introduce a truth-maker principle as supplementary premise. Discussions of truth-maker principles can be found in the Truth category.