Month: May 2012

Keezer on Kats

Bill Keezer writes,

I had a cat once like which there will never be another. He supposedly was my wife’s cat. He decided I was his human. He considered it his divine right to walk up in my lap when I was studying statistical mechanics and lie down on the book. I would walk up the street to cross the highway to the convenience store and he would come up to me, let me carry him across and then once down, go hunt in the field until it was time to come back. At such time he would come up to me, let me pick him up and carry him back across the highway. Once down on the other side, he would disappear until we reached home. He was a phenomenal hunter. He grew up on a farm and until was sent to us would produce several mouse heads a day. A mouse got in the house once and hid behind the refrigerator. I pulled the fridge out, dropped the cat in, and came back a bit later. Problem solved. When we lived in San Francisco, we had a stair with right angles to a glass front outside door. He would scare all the callers because he was pure panther-black and moved like a much bigger cat. The pumas in the zoo remind me of his walk. He died of infectious feline anemia and rather broke my heart. 

So I envy you your cats. We now have my son’s dog and very expensive living room furniture. I don’t think cats are in our future. But that is OK. We had cats afterwards and it wasn’t the same.

 Enjoy them.

Asserting and Arguing

Mere assertions remain gratuitous until supported by arguments. Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.  That which is gratuitously assertible is gratuitously deniable.  Thus one is right to demand arguments from those who make assertions.  It is worth pointing out, however, that  the difference between making an assertion and giving an argument is not absolute. Since no argument  can prove its own premises, they must remain mere assertions from within the context of the argument. No doubt they too can be supported by further arguments, but eventually one comes to ultimate premises that can only be asserted, not argued.

Argument cannot free us of assertion since every argument has premises and they must be asserted if one is making an argument as opposed to merely entertaining one.  One who makes an argument is not merely asserting its conclusion; he is asserting its conclusion on the basis of premises that function as reasons for the assertion; and yet the premises  themselves are merely asserted.  There is no escaping the need to make assertions.

If you refuse to accept ultimate premisses, then you are bound for a vicious infinite regress or a vicious circle, between which there is  nothing to choose.    (The viciousness of a logical circle is not mitigated by increasing its 'diameter.') This shows the limited value of argument and discursive rationality. One cannot avoid the immediate taking of something for true.  For example, I immediately take it to be true, on the basis of sense perception, that a couple of  black cats are lounging on my desk:

IMG_0863

 

A Wittgenstein Paradox

Ludwig Wittgenstein had no respect for academic philosophy and steered his students away from academic careers.  For example, he advised Norman Malcolm to become a rancher, a piece of advice Malcolm wisely ignored.  And yet it stung his vanity to find his ideas recycled and discussed in the philosophy journals.  Wittgenstein felt that when the academic hacks weren't plagiarizing his ideas they were misrepresenting them.

The paradox is that his writing can speak only to professional philosophers, the very people he despised.  Ordinary folk, even educated ordinary folk, find the stuff gibberish. When people ask me what of Wittgenstein they should read, I tell them to read first a good biography like that of Ray Monk, and then, if they are still interested, read the aphorisms and observations contained in Culture and Value (Vermischte Bemerkungen).

Only professional philosophers take seriously the puzzles that Wittgenstein was concerned to dissolve.  And only a professional philosopher will be exercised by the meta-problem of the origin and status of philosophical problems.  So we have the paradox of a man who wrote for an audience he despised.

"There is less of a paradox that you think.  Wittgenstein was writing mainly for himself; his was a therapeutic conception of philosophy.  His writing was a form of self-therapy.  He was tormented by the problems.  His writing was mainly in exorcism of his demons." 

This connects with the fly and fly bottle remark in the Philosophical Investigations.

Why does the bug need to be shown the way out? Pop the cork and he's gone.

Why did Wittgenstein feel the need to philosophize his way out of philosophy? He should have known that metaphilosophy and anti-philosophy are just more philosophy with all that that entails: inconclusiveness, endlessness . . . . He should have just walked away from it.

If the room is too smoky, there is no necessity that you remain in it. You are free to go, the door is unlocked. This figure's from Epictetus and he had the quitting of life in view. But the same holds for the quitting of philosophy. Just do it, if that's what you want. It can be done.

What cannot be done, however, is to justify one's exit. (That would be like copulating your way to chastity.) For any justification proffered, perforce and willy-nilly, will be just more philosophy. You cannot have it both ways. You either walk away or stay.

On Translating ‘Some Individual Exists’ Fressellianly

An astute reader comments:

You write:

2. But can this presupposition be expressed (said) in this logic? Here is a little challenge for you Fressellians: translate 'Something exists' into standard logical notion. You will discover that it cannot be done. Briefly, if existence is instantiation, which property is it whose instantiation is the existence of something? Same problem with 'Nothing exists.' If existence is instantiation, which property is it whose non-instantiation is the nonexistence of anything? Similarly with 'Everthing exists' and 'Something does not exist.'

But couldn't we translate those expressions this way (assuming  we have only two properties: a, b)?
1. "something exists" -> "there is an x that instantiates either a or b or ab"
2. "everything exists" -> "there is an x that instantiates a and there is a y that instantiates b and there is a z that instantiates ab"
3. "nothing exists" -> 1 is false
4. "something doesn't exist" -> 2 is false

I am afraid that doesn't work.   We need focus only on on 'Some individual exists.'  The reader's proposal could be put as follows.  Given the properties F-ness and G-ness,

What 'Some individual exists' says is exactly what 'Either F-ness is instantiated or G-ness is instantiated' says.

I would insist however that they do not say the same thing, i.e., do not have the same meaning.  The expression on the left says that some individual or other, nature unspecified, exists.  The expression on the right, however, makes specific reference to the 'natures' F-ness and G-ness.  Surely, 'Some individual exists' could be true even if there are are no individuals that are either Fs or Gs. 

Note that it is not a matter of logic what properties there are.  This is an extralogical question.

On the Frege-Russell treatment of existence, 'exist(s)' is a second-level predicate, a predicate of concepts, properties, propositional functions and cognate items.  It is never an admissible  predicate of individuals.  Thus in this logic every affirmation of existence must say of some specified concept or property that it is instantiated, and every denial of existence must say of some specified concept or property that it fails of instantiation.

This approach runs into trouble when it comes to the perfectly meaningful and true 'Something exists' and 'Some individual exists.'  For in these instances  no concept or property can be specified whose instantiation is the existence of things or the existence of individuals.  To head off an objection: self-identity won't work.

That there are individuals is a necessary presupposition of the Frege-Russell logic in that without it one cannot validly move from 'F-ness is instantiated' to 'Fs exist.'  But it is a necessary presupposition that cannot be stated in the terms of the system.  This fact, I believe, is one of the motivations for Wittgenstein's distinction between the sayable and the showable.  What cannot be said, e.g., that there are individuals, is shown by the use of such individual variables as 'x.'

The paradox, I take it, is obvious.  One cannot say  that 'There are individuals' is inexpressible without saying 'There are individuals.'  When Wittgenstein assures us that there is the Inexpressible, das Unaussprechliche,  he leaves himself open to the retort: What is inexpressible? If he replies, 'That there are individuals,' then he is hoist by his own petard.

Surely it is true that there are individuals and therefore expressible, because just now expressed.

"The suicide of a thesis," says Peter Geach (Logic Matters, p. 265), "might be called Ludwig's self-mate . . . . "  Here we may have an instance of it.

‘Blacklisted’ Blacklisted

Here: "POLICE chiefs have banned IT staff from using the word blacklist over fears it is RACIST." (Via VFR)

This sort of thing is insane, of course. And so I suspect that to argue against it is foolish: it only lends credibility to a view that ought to be mocked and derided. 

But I do argue it out here.  One late-night comic lampooned the 'crispy critter' tanning lady (who brought her child into the tanning booth with her) by saying that the she is so dark it's racist!  That's the way to go.  You PeeCee liberals are so stupid it's racist! What is the antecedent of the last two occurrences of 'it'?  Don't worry, we be in PeeCee land now.  We don't need to talk no sense.

Cosmologists are going to have to be careful what with their talk of black holes.  Someone might take that as 'code' for 'black ho' a phrase that in PeeCee logic (and no, I'm not talking about the propositional calculus) implies that all black females are whores.

Tanning%20Lady

Wittgenstein and Rejectionism

I characterized Rejectionism with respect to the question why there is anything at all as follows:  "The rejectionist rejects the question as ill-formed, as senseless."  London Ed suggests that Wittgenstein may be lumped in with the rejectionists.  He has a point, though I do insist on the distinction between taking 'Why is there anything at all?' as an explanation-seeking why-question and taking it as a mere expression of wonder at the sheer existence of things.  We know that Wittgenstein was struck with wonder at the sheer existence of things.  What is now to be discussed is whether Wittgenstein can be read as making a rejectionist response to the ultimate explanation-seeking why-question.

 Ed quotes from Anthony Kenny's book, Wittgenstein:

Logic depends on there being something in existence and there being facts; it is independent of what the facts are, of things being thus and so. That there are facts is not something which can be expressed in a proposition. If one wants to call there being facts a matter of experience, then one can say logic is empirical. But when we say something is empirical we mean that it can be imagined otherwise; in this sense every proposition with sense is a contingent proposition. And in this sense the existence of the world is not an empirical fact, because we cannot think it otherwise.

This passage cries out for commentary.

1. Does logic depend on there being something in existence?  Yes, if we are talking about the Frege-Russell logic that young Ludwig cut his teeth on.    In 'Fressellian' logic, existence is instantiation.  To say that cats exist is to say that something is a cat.  (The concept cat is instantiated.)  To say that dragons do not exist is to say that nothing is a dragon. (The concept dragon is not instantiated.)  This works nicely – but only on the assumption that individuals exist.    So Kenny is surely right that (Frege-Russell) logic requires that something exists, in particular that individuals exist.

2. But can this presupposition be expressed (said) in this logic? Here is a little challenge for you Fressellians: translate 'Something exists' into standard logical notion.  You will discover that it cannot be done.  Briefly, if existence is instantiation, which property is it whose instantiation is the existence of something?  Same problem with 'Nothing exists.'  If existence is instantiation, which property is it whose non-instantiation is the nonexistence of anything?  Similarly with 'Everthing exists' and 'Something does not exist.'

3. I surmise that this is one of the motivations for Wittgenstein's infamous and paradoxical saying/showing distinction. What can be said can be said clearly.  But not everything can be said.  It cannot be said that there are beings or that there are objects or that there are individuals.  For again, how does one express (say) that there are beings (existents) in Frege-Russell logic?  This system of logic rests on presuppositions that cannot be expressed within the system.  The presuppositions cannot be said but thay can be shown by the use of variables such as the individual variable 'x.'  That is the Tractarian line.

4. Kenny also says that logic depends on there being facts.  That's not clear.  Near the beginning of the Tractatus, LW affirms the existence of facts.  He tells us that the world is the totality of facts (Tatsachen) not of things (Dinge).  But does the Frege-Russell logic require that there be facts?  Not as far as I can see.  The mature Frege certainly did not posit facts.  Be that as it may.

5. Is Wittgenstein a rejectionist?  Does he reject the question 'Why is there anything at all?' as senseless or ill-formed? The case can be made that he does or at least could within his framework.

When I raise the question why anything at all exists, I begin with the seemingly empirical fact that things exist: me, my cat, mountains, clouds . . . .   I then entertain the thought that there might have been nothing at all.  I then demand an explanation as to why there is something given (a) that there is something and (b) that there might not have been anything.

A Wittgensteinian rejection of the question might take the following form. "First of all, your starting point is inexpressible: it cannot be said that things exist.  That is a nonsensical pseudo-proposition. You can say, sensibly, that cats exist, but not that things exist. That things exist is an unsayable presupposition of all thinking.  As such, we cannot think it away.  And so one cannot ask why anything exists."

6. This form of rejectionism is as dubious as what it rests upon, namely, the Frege-Russell theory of existence and the saying/showing distinction.

Obama’s Historical Howlers

Here.  The funniest is Obama's reference to the construction of the "Intercontinental Railroad" in the 19th century.  That would be something, a railroad that crossed oceans.  Think of all the pontoons that would be needed to float the tracks on. 

The article documents Obama and his gang's unconcern with truth — as if we needed more evidence of that.

Cabinets Gone Wild

Another outstanding column by Victor Davis Hanson.  Excerpt:

Attorney General Eric Holder dropped charges against the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation. That may explain why he said nothing when the same group put out a dead-or-alive bounty poster on George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin shooting case. Holder's department is suing the state of Arizona for passing a law to enforce the largely unenforced federal immigration law. Holder suggested that the Arizona law was racially inspired even as he admitted that he had never read it. Holder has praised the race-baiting Al Sharpton for his "partnership" and called the country "cowards" for not holding a national conversation on race on his terms. The attorney general has referred to African-Americans as "my people," and he has characterized congressional oversight of his office's failure to rein in the Fast and Furious scandal as racially motivated attacks on himself.

Some Inaccurate Negative Stereotypes About Stereotypes

• People ascribe a stereotype to everybody in the subject group. "All Germans are efficient." "All English people have bad teeth." In fact, these researchers were not able to locate anybody who believes that a stereotype is true of all members of the stereotyped group. Stereotypes are probabilistic tools, and even the most dull-witted human beings seem to know this. People who believe that Mexicans are lazy or that the French don't wash, understand perfectly well that there are lots of industrious Mexicans and fragrant Frenchmen.

• Stereotypes exaggerate group characteristics. No, they don't. Much more often, the opposite is true. For example, the racial stereotypes that white Americans hold of black Americans are generally accurate; and where they are inaccurate, they always under-estimate a negative characteristic. The percentage of black American families headed by a female, for example, was 21 at the time of one survey (1978): the whites whose stereotypes were being investigated offered estimates of from 8 to 12 per cent. It is not true that stereotypes generally exaggerate group differences. As in this example, they are much more likely to downplay them.

• Stereotypes blind us to individual characteristics. Nope. It is not the case that when we pass from a situation where we have nothing to go on but a stereotype (cab driver being hailed by young black male) to one where a person's individuality comes into play (interviewing a black job applicant), our stereotypes blind us to "individuating traits." On the contrary, researchers have found that the individuating traits are seized on for attention, and stereotypes discarded, with rather more enthusiasm than the accuracy of stereotypes would justify. Teachers' judgments about their students, for example, rest almost entirely on student differences in performance, hardly at all on race, class or gender stereotypes. This is as one would wish, but not as one would expect if the denigrators of stereotyping were to be believed.

• The real function of stereotypes is to bolster our own self-esteem. Wrong again. This is not a factor in most stereotyping. The scientific evidence is that the primary function of stereotypes is what researchers very prettily call "the reality function." That is, stereotypes are useful tools for dealing with the world. Confronted with a snake or a faun, our immediate behavior is determined by generalized beliefs — stereotypes — about snakes and fauns. Stereotypes are, in fact, merely one aspect of the mind's ability to make generalizations, without which science and mathematics, not to mention much of everyday life, would be impossible. Researcher Clark R. McCauley:

Standing next to the bus driver, we are more likely to ask about traffic patterns than about the latest foreign film. On the highway, we try to squeeze into the exit lane in front of the man driving a 10-year-old station wagon rather than trying to pull in on the man driving a new Corvette. Looking for the school janitor, we are more likely to approach a young man in overalls than a young woman in overalls. This kind of discrimination on the basis of group differences can go wrong, but most of us probably feel that we are doing ourselves and others a favor when we respond to whatever cues and regularities our social environment affords us.

Taken verbatim from John Derbyshire, Stereotypes Aren't So Bad

On the Word ‘Racism’ and Some of its Definitions

Racist'Racism' and 'racist' are words used by liberals as all-purpose semantic bludgeons.  Proof of this is that the terms are never defined, and so can be used in wider or narrower senses depending on the polemical and ideological purposes at hand.  In common parlance 'racism' and 'racist'  are pejoratives, indeed, terms of abuse.  This is why it is foolish for conservatives such as John Derbyshire to describe themselves as racists while attempting to attach some non-pejorative connotation to the term.  It can't be done.  It would be a bit like describing oneself as as an asshole, 'but in the very best sense of the term.'  'Yeah, I'm an asshole  and proud of it; we need more assholes; it's a good thing to be.'  The word has no good senses, at least when applied to an entire human as opposed to an orifice thereof.  For words like 'asshole,' 'child molester,' and 'racist' semantic rehabilitation is simply not in the cards.  A conservative must never call himself a racist.  (And I don't see how calling himself a racialist is any better.)  What he must do is attack ridiculous definitions of the term, defend reasonable ones, and show how he is not a racist when the term is reasonably defined.

Let's run through some candidate definientia of 'racism':

1. The view that there are genetic or cultural differences between racial groups and that these differences have behavioral consequences.

Since this is indeed the case, (1) cannot be used to define 'racism.'  The term, as I said, is pejorative: it is morally bad to be a racist.  But it is not morally bad to be a truth-teller.  The underlying principle here is that it can't racism if it is true.  Is that not obvious?

Suppose I state that blacks are 11-13% of the U.S. population.  That cannot be a racist statement for the simple reason that it is true.  Nor can someone who makes such a statement be called a racist for making it.  A statement whose subject matter is racial is not a racist statement.  Or I inform you that blacks are more likely than whites to contract sickle-cell anemia.  That too is true.  But in this second example there is reference to an unpleasant truth.  Even more unpleasant are those truths about the differential rates of crime as between blacks and whites.  But pleasant or not, truth is truth, and there are no racist truths. (I apologize for hammering away at these platitudes, but in a Pee Cee world in which people have lost their minds, repetition of the obvious is necessary.)

2. The feeling of affinity for those of one's own racial and ethnic background.

It is entirely natural to feel more comfortable around people of one's own kind than around strangers.  And of course there is nothing morally objectionable in this. No racism here.

3. The view that it is morally justifiable  to put the interests of one's own race or ethnic group above those of another in situations of conflict or limited resources.  This is to be understood as the analog of the view that it it morally justifiable to put the interests of oneself and one's own family, friends, and neighbors above the interests of strangers in a situation of conflict or limited resources.

There is nothing morally objectionable in his, and nothing that could be legitimately called racism.

4. The view that the genetic and cultural differences between races or ethnic groups justifies genocide or slavery or the denial of political rights.

Now we arrive at an appropriate definiens of 'racism.'  This is one among several  legitimate ways of defining 'racism.'  Racism thus defined is morally offensive in the extreme.  I condemn it and you should to.  I condemn all who hold this. 

Siger of Brabant on Why Something Rather Than Nothing

London Ed offers this quick, over-breakfast but accurate as far as I can tell translation from the Latin (available at Ed's site):

For not every being has a cause of its being, nor does every question about being have a cause. For if it is asked why there is something in the natural world rather than nothing, speaking about the world of created things, it can be replied that there is a First immoveable Mover, and a first unchangeable cause. But if it is asked about the whole universe of beings why there is something there rather than nothing, it is not possible to give a cause, for it's the same to ask this as to ask why there is a God or not, and this does not have a cause. Hence not every question has a cause, nor even every being.

Ed comments, "I'm not sure how Siger's reply falls into the categories given by Bill."  Note first that the question that interests me is in the second of Siger's questions, the 'wide-open' question: not the question why there are created things, but the question why there is anything at all.   To that wide-open question Siger's response falls under Rejectionism in my typology of possible responses.  Siger rejects the question as unanswerable when he says, idiosyncratically to our ears, "it is not possible to give a cause," and "not every question has a cause."  That could be read as saying that not every interrogative form of words expresses a genuine question.

Ed also mentions Wittgenstein and suggests that he "had a go" at the Leibniz question.  I don't think so.  We must distinguish between 'Why is there anything at all?' as an explanation-seeking why-question and the same grammatically interrogative formulation as a mere expression of wonderment equivalent to 'Wittgenstein's "How extraordinary that anything should exist!"  Wittgenstein was not raising or trying to answer the former.  He was merely expressing wonder at the sheer existence of things.

I would be very surprised if someone can find in the history or philosophy, or out of his own head, a response to the wide-open explanation-seeking Leibniz question that cannot be booked under one of my rubrics.  (Credit where credit is due: my catalog post is highly derivative from the work of N. Rescher.)

Maverick Philosopher Eighth Blogiversary

I began this weblog eight years ago today in 2004.

The rumors of blogging's demise have been vastly exaggerated.  What has happened is that those whose purposes all along were more social and less serious have moved on to the so-called social media, Facebook and Twitter.   Read or unread, whether by sages or fools, I shall blog on. A post beats a tweet any day, and no day without a post. Nulla dies sine linea. It is too early to say of blogging what Etienne Gilson said of philosophy, namely, that it always buries its undertakers, but I am hopeful. After all, a weblog is just an online journal, and journal scribbling has flourished most interestingly for centuries.

To put it romantically, blogging is a vehicle for the relentless, quotidian sifting, seeking, and questing for sense and truth and reality without which some of us would find life meaningless.

This, the fourth version of Maverick Philosopher, was begun on 31 October 2008. Traffic is good, with 1.3 million total pageviews for this version alone.  That averages out to 1024 page views per day since Halloween 2008. This incarnation sports 3,333 posts.  I thank you for your patronage.