Month: June 2012

Sertillanges on Reading

The erudite Sardonicus kindly sends this to supplement my earlier remarks on reading:

We want to develop breadth of mind, to practice comparative study, to keep the horizon before us; these things cannot be done without much reading. But much and little are opposites only in the same domain. . . [M]uch is necessary in the absolute sense, because the work to be done is vast; but little, relatively to the deluge of writing that . . . floods our libraries and our minds nowadays.
[. . .]
What we are proscribing is the passion for reading, the uncontrolled habit, the poisoning of the mind by excess of mental food, the laziness in disguise which prefers easy familiarity with others’ thought to personal effort. The passion for reading which many pride themselves on as a precious intellectual quality is in reality a defect; it differs in no wise from other passions that monopolize the soul, keep it in a state of disturbance, set it in uncertain currents and cross-currents, and exhaust its powers.
[. . .]
The mind is dulled, not fed, by inordinate reading, it is made gradually incapable of reflection and concentration, and therefore of production; it grows inwardly extroverted, if one can so express oneself, becomes the slave of its mental images, of the ebb and flow of ideas on which it has eagerly fastened its attention. This uncontrolled delight is an escape from self; it ousts the intelligence from its function and allows it merely to follow point for point the thoughts of others, to be carried along in the stream of words, developments, chapters, volumes.
[. . .]
[N]ever read when you can reflect; read only, except in moments of recreation, what concerns the purpose you are pursuing; and read little, so as not to eat up your interior silence.

A.G. Sertillanges,  The Intellectual Life:  Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods ( Catholic University Press, 1998), pp. 145 – 149.

I agree with the above, except for the extreme statement, "Never read when you can reflect."   

Are the Laws of Logic Empirical Generalizations?

London Ed raises the question whether logic is empirical.  

That puts me in mind of  the old idea of John Stuart Mill and others that the laws of logic are empirical generalizations from what we do and do not perceive. Thus we never perceive rain and its absence in the same place at the same time. The temptation is to construe such logic laws as the Law of Non-Contradiction — ~(p & ~p) — as generalizations from psychological facts like these. If this is right, then logical laws lack the a priori character and epistemic ‘dignity’ that some of us are wont to see in them. They rest on psychological facts that might have been otherwise and that are known a posteriori.

London Ed might want consider this reductio ad absurdum:

1. The laws of logic are empirical generalizations. (Assumption for
reductio)
2. Empirical generalizations, if true, are merely contingently
true. (By definition of ‘empirical generalization’: empirical generalizations
record what happens to be the case, but might not have been the case.)
Therefore,
3. The laws of logic, if true, are merely contingently true.
(From 1 and 2)
4. If proposition p is contingently true, then it is possible
that p be false. (Def. of ‘contingently true.’)Therefore,
5. The laws of logic, if true, are possibly false. (From 3 and 4)Therefore,
6. LNC is possibly false: there are logically possible worlds in which ‘p&~p’ is true.
(From 5 and the fact that LNC is a law of logic.)
7. But (6) is absurd (self-contradictory): it amounts to saying that it is logically possible that the very criterion of logical possibility, namely LNC, be false. Corollary: if
laws of logic were empirical generalizations, we would be incapable of defining ‘empirical generalization’: this definition requires the notion of what is the case but (logically) might not have been the case.

Milton Praises the Strenuous Life

Near the end of Richard Weaver's essay, "Life Without Prejudice,"  he quotes Milton:

     I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and
     unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but
     slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run
     for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence
     into the world; we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies
     us is trial, and trial is by that which is contrary.

The passage bears comparison with Theodore Roosevelt's remarks about being in the arena.

I like especially the last sentence of the Milton quotation.  We are born corrupt, not innocent.  We are not here (mainly) to improve the world, but (mainly) to be improved by it.  The world's a vale of soul-making.  Since this world is a vanishing quantity, it makes little sense to expend energy trying to improve it: when your house is burning down, you don't spruce up the facade.  You don't swab the decks of a sinking ship.  It makes more sense to spend time and effort  on what has a chance of outlasting the transitory.  This world's use is to build something that outlasts it.

But this will, pace Milton, require some flight from the world into the cloister where perhaps alone the virtues can be developed that will need testing later in the world.

Self-Effacement and Self-Importance

To what extent is it a sign of self-importance that one regularly draws attention to one's own insignificance?  I am thinking of Simone Weil.   In self-effacement the ego may find a way to assert itself.  "Do you see how pure and penetrating is my love of truth that I am able to realize and admit my own personal nothingness face to face with Truth?"

The ego, wily 'structure' that it is, usually (always?) finds a way to affirm itself.

Regulating Political Speech

A good article by John Stossel.  Punch line: 

It is shameful that leftists let their hatred of corporations lead them to throw free speech under the bus. There is a smarter way to get corporate money out of politics: Shrink the state. If government has fewer favors to sell, citizens will spend less money trying to win them.

Or as one of my aphorisms has it: The bigger the government, the more to fight over!

Widely-Read or Well-Read?

This from a reader:

Mortimer Adler, in How to Read a Book, pointed out that being widely-read does not mean one is well-read. I've enjoyed reading some of your old posts about reading and studying, so I wanted to know your opinion on this matter.

Should I aim to read a lot of books? Or is it better to read and reread a few good books? I know some people say one should read widely but read good books deeply. But I've found that a hard balance to maintain. For example, deeply reading an 800-page selection of Aquinas's writings several times would consume almost all of my reading for the next 1-2 months. Also, it's hard for me to switch gears, you might say. If I'm accustomed to reading most of my books through quickly without pausing much to think, then I easily fall into that mode of reading when I'm trying to read deeply.

I imagine you would have some interesting thoughts on this topic, since you have a few decades of reading behind you. Which type of reading benefited you the most? If you could go back and change what you read and how you read during your decades of scholarship, what would you change?

Thanks in advance for any advice you can give.

I will begin by reproducing a couple of the paragraphs from A Method of Study:

Although desultory reading is enjoyable, it is best to have a plan.  Pick one or a small number of topics that strike you as interesting and important and focus on them.  I distinguish between bed reading and desk reading.  Such lighter reading as biography and history can be done in bed, but hard-core materials require a desk and such other accessories as pens of various colors for different sorts of annotations and underlinings, notebooks, a cup of coffee, a fine cigar . . . .

 If you read books of lasting value, you ought to study what you read, and if you study, you ought
to take notes. And if you take notes, you owe it to yourself to assemble them into some sort of coherent commentary. What is the point of studious reading if not to evaluate critically what you read, assimilating the good while rejecting the bad? The forming of the mind is the name of the game.  This won't occur from passive reading, but only by an active engagement with the material.  The best way to do this is by writing up your own take on it.  Here is where blogging can be useful.  Since blog posts are made public, your self-respect will give you an incentive to work at saying something intelligent.                          

To the foregoing, I would add, first of all, the magnificent observation of Schopenhauer: "Forever reading, never read."  If you want to be read, then you must write.  And even if you don't want to be read, you must write — for the reason supplied in the preceding paragraph.

Now on to your questions.  

Widely-read or well-read?  You can be both. And you should be both.  Switching gears can be difficult, but it can be done.

As for time that could have been better spent, I do not regret reading vast quantities of Continental philosophy, but some of the time spent on the more extreme representatives of that tradition, such as Derrida, was time wasted. 

Re-reading these remarks, I realize they are rather trite.  But they may be of some use nonetheless.

Mayor Bloomberg on the Purpose of Government

(CBS News) New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg shrugged off criticism of his controversial public health initiatives, saying that "if government's purpose isn't to improve the health and longevity of its citizens, I don't know what its purpose is." [emphasis added.]

 Bloomberg most recently put forth a plan to ban the sale of sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces from the city's eateries, street carts and stadiums. The proposal has been sharply criticized, in some cases by beverage and fast food companies as a case of government overreach.

He's also been criticized for previous efforts to, among other things, ban smoking in public places and the use of trans-fats in restaurant foods. Some have gone so far as to mock has as being like a "nanny."

 But on "CBS This Morning," Bloomberg fired back, saying, "We're not here to tell anybody what to do. But we certainly have an obligation to tell them what's the best science and best medicine says is in their interest.

In this startlingly incoherent outburst, Bloomberg betrays the liberal nanny-state mentality in as direct a way as one could wish.  And it is incoherent.  He wants to ban large drinks, pop corn, milk shakes and what all else while assuring us that "we're not here to tell anybody what to do."  He blatantly contradicts himself.  Does the man think before he speaks?

But the deeper problem is that he has no notion of the legitimate functions of government.  Apparently he has never heard of limited government.  Border control is a legitimate constitutionally grounded function of government.  One reason the borders must be controlled is to impede the spread of contagious diseases.  So government does have some role to play in the health and longevity of citizens.  Defense of the country against foreign aggressors is also a legitimate function  of government and it too bears upon health and longevity: it is hard to live a long and healthy life when bombs are raining down.

Beyond this, it is up to the individual to live in ways that insure health and longevity if those are values for him.  But they might not be.  Some value intensity of life over longevity of life.  Rod Serling, for example, lived an extremely intense and productive life.  Born in 1925, he died in 1975 at age 50.  His Type A behavior and four-pack a day cigarette habit did him in, but was also quite possibly a necessary condition of his productivity.  That was his free choice.  No government has the right to dictate that one value longevity over intensity.

A government big enough and powerful enough to provide one with ‘free’ health care will be in an excellent position to demand ‘appropriate’ behavior from its citizens – and to enforce its demand. Suppose you enjoy risky sports such as motorcycling, hang gliding, mountain climbing and the like. Or perhaps you just like to drink or smoke or eat red meat. A government that pays for the treatment
of your injuries and ailments can easily decide, on economic grounds alone, to forbid such activites under the bogus justification, ‘for your own good.’

But even if the government does not outlaw motorcycling, say, they can put a severe dent in your liberty to enjoy such a sport, say, by demanding that a 30% sales tax be slapped on all motorcycle purchases, or by outlawing bikes whose engines exceed a certain displacement, say 250 cc.  In the same way that governments levy arbitrary punitive taxes on tobacco products, they can do the same for anything they deem risky or unhealthy.

The situation is analogous to living with one’s parents. It is entirely appropriate for parents to say to a child: ‘As long as you live under our roof, eat at our table, and we pay the bills, then you must abide by our rules. When you are on your own, you may do as you please.’ The difference, of course, is that it is
relatively easy to move out on one’s own, but difficult to forsake one’s homeland. 

The nub of the issue is liberty. Do you value it or not?

Does Bloomberg even see the issue? 

Saturday Night at the Oldies Deferred: Dick Dale, King of the Surf Guitar

Last night's desert storm knocked out my Internet connection . . . .

Before the Beach Boys, who debuted 50 years ago in '62, there was Dick Dale, the father of surf music and my first guitar hero.  He took a Fender Stratocaster and played it upside down and backwards, fretting with this right hand and plucking with his left.  The first surf song was his 1961

Let's Go Trippin. But what really got me practicing on my Fender Mustang, my first electric guitar, was

Misirlou.  The Del-Tones in this video ought to be renamed 'The Soporific Sidemen.'  Here is the "Pulp Fiction" version. Continuing in the Middle Eastern vein:

Hava Nagila.  Surfing, So Cal, and hot rods naturally go together.  So surf music gradually morphed into car music, e.g.,

Nitro.  Dale teams up with the rather more versatile and technically proficient Stevie Ray Vaughan (who merely plays his guitar without raping it) for absolutely the best version of The Chantay's

Pipeline.  Psychedelia put an end to surf music.  The epitaph "You will never hear surf music again" is delivered by Jimi Hendrix at 4:33 of

Third Stone From the Sun. 

The Modified Leibniz Question: The Debate So Far

What follows is a guest post by Peter Lupu with some additions and corrections by BV. 'CCB' abbreviates 'concrete contingent being.'  The last post in this series is here.  Thanks again to Vlastimil Vohamka for pointing us to Maitzen's article, which has proven to be stimulating indeed.
 
 
So far as I can see Steve Maitzen (in Stop Asking Why There's Anything)  holds three theses:
 
A. Semantic Thesis
 
1. As a general rule, dummy sortals such as ‘thing’, ‘object’, ‘CCB’, etc., are not referential terms, unless there is an explicit or implicit background presupposition as to which sortal term is intended as a replacement. This presupposition, if satisfied, fixes the referent of the dummy sortal. In the absence of the satisfaction of such a presupposition, sentences in which they are used (not mentioned) have no truth-conditions and questions in which they are used (not mentioned) have no answer-conditions.
 
2. Examples such as ‘Cats are CCBs’ are no exception. Either this sentence has no truth-conditions because the term ‘CCB’ is merely a place holder for an unspecified sortal or it should be understood along the lines of: ‘Cats are animals’, etc., where ‘animal’ is (one possible) substitution term for the dummy sortal ‘CCB.'
 
BV adds:  Right here I think a very simple objection can be brought against the semantic thesis.  We know that cats exist, we know that they are concrete, and we know that they are contingent.  So we know that 'Cats are concrete contingent beings' is true.  Now whatever is true is meaningful (though not vice versa). Therefore, 'Cats are concrete contingent beings' is meaningful.  Now if a sentence is meaningful, then its constituent terms are meaningful.  Hence 'CCB' is meaningful despite its being a dummy sortal.  I would also underscore a point I have made several times  before.  The immediate inference from the admittedly true (a) to (b) below is invalid:
 
a. The question 'How many CCBs are there?' is unanswerable, hence senseless
ergo
b. The question 'Why are there any CCBs?' is unanswerable, hence senseless.
 
3. The semantic thesis is the driving force behind Steve M’s view. It is the fallback position in all of his responses to challenges by Bill, Steven, and others. So far as I can tell, Steve M. did not defend the general form of the semantic thesis in his original paper. It is, therefore, surprising that it has been ignored by almost everyone in these discussions and that neither Bill nor Steven challenged the semantic thesis. I have written an extensive comment on this thesis and challenged it on several grounds.
 
 
B.  Explanatory Thesis
  
1. As a general rule, Why-Questions are answered by giving an explanation. ‘Why are there any CCBs?’
is a [explanation-seeking] Why-Question. [It is worth noting that the grammatically interrogative form of words 'Why is there anything at all?' could be used simply to express wonder that anything at all should exist, and not as a demand for an explanation.]  Therefore, it invites an explanation. What sort of explanation? Steve M. holds two theses about this last question:
 
 
(MI) The Adequacy Thesis: empirical explanations typical in science offer (at least in principle) adequate explanations for the Why-CCBs question, provided the Why-CCB questions are meaningful at all (and their meaningfulness is a function of satisfying the semantic thesis);
 
(MII) The Completeness Thesis: Once an empirical explanation is given to Why CCBs?, there is nothing left to explain. And in any case there are no suitable forms of explanation beyond empirical
explanations that could be even relevant to explain Why-CCBs?
 
2. Bill and Steven certainly deny (MII). They may also have some reservations about MI. What is the
basis on which Bill and Steven challenge MII? They maintain that even if we assume that an adequate empirical explanation is offered (i.e., MI is satisfied) to each and every CCB, there is something else left over to explain. What is that “something else” that is left over that needs explaining (Steve M. asks)?
 
3. It is at this juncture that the discussion either reverts back to the semantic thesis or it
needs to be advanced into a new metaphysical realm.
 
C. Metaphysical Thesis
 
Dummy sortals do not pick out any  properties or universals (monadic or relational) except via the mediation of genuine sortals. i.e., there are no properties over and beyond those picked out by genuine sortals.
 
1. Steven attempted to answer the challenge posed by the question at the end of B2 in one of his posts.
His answer is this: what is left over after all empirical explanations favored by Steve M. are assumed to have been given is a very general property, feature, or aspect that all CCBs, and only CCBs, have in common. So why shouldn't ‘Why-CCBs’ questions be understood as inquiring into an explanation of this general feature that all and only CCBs share? Call this alleged general feature ‘X’.
 
2. The dispute has turned to whether X has any content, i.e., Steve M. challenged the contention
that there is any phenomenon described by X that was not already accounted for by his favorite empirical explanations. Bill and Steven tried to articulate the content of X without (apparently) noticing that every such effort was rebutted by Steve M. either by appealing to the semantic thesis or to the explanatory thesis or both.
 
3. So what could X be? I suggest the following: X is the (second-order) property such that the
property of *is a contingent being* is instantiated (or something along these lines).  [I would put it this way:  X is the being-instantiated of the property of being a contingent being.]
 
4. Since the universal/property *is a contingent being* need not be instantiated, the fact that it is in fact instantiated in the actual world (i.e., that X holds) needs explaining (So claim Bill and Steven). And whatever is the explanation (including a “brute-fact” explanation) for this fact, it cannot take the form of an empirical explanation.
 
5. The Metaphysical Thesis I am attributing to Steve M. of course rules out that there is a property
such as X. Why? Two reasons: first, the property *is a contingent being* is not a sortal property; second, the predicate ‘is a contingent being’ (or any of its variants) contains a dummy sortal and therefore it does not pick out a property (nor does it have an extension) in the absence of a specific background presupposition of a specific sortal substituend.
 
D. Conclusion
  
Unless these three theses are clearly separated, the discussion will be going in circles. As one can see, the driving force behind the explanatory and metaphysical theses is ultimately the semantic thesis. No one challenged this thesis directly (except me in a comment that was ignored by everyone with the exception of Bill).

Popcorn Too? Food Fascists Gone Wild

Here.  First soda pop, then popcorn, milkshakes . . . .

The trouble with nanny-state liberals  is that they do not understand or value the liberty of the individual , a liberty which includes the liberty to behave in ways that may be foolish.  If you grant the state the power to order your life there will be no end to it.  Right now, in Germany it is illegal to homeschool one's own children!  Every day brings a new example of governmental overreach.  We do not exist for the state; the state exists for us.  Our wealth is ours, not the state's.  We don't have to justify our keeping; they have to justify their taking. The same goes for such health-related issues as obesity.

Please no liberal nonsense about an 'epidemic' of obesity or obesity as a public health problem.  True, we Americans are a gluttonous people as witness competitive eating contests, the numerous food shows, and the complete lack of any sense among most that there is anything morally wrong with gluttony.  The moralists of old understood something when they classified gluttony as one of the seven deadly sins.

Obesity is not a disease; so, speaking strictly, there cannot be an epidemic of it.  There are two separate issues here.  One is whether obesity is a disease.  Here are some arguments pro et con.  But even  if it is classified as a disease, it is surely not a contagious disease and so not something there can be an epidemic of. 

I know that 'epidemic' is used more broadly than this, even by epidemiologists; but this is arguably the result of an intrusion of liberal ideology into what is supposedly science.   Do you really think that 'epidemic' is being used in the same way in 'flu epidemic' and 'obesity epidemic'?  Is obesity contagious?  If fat Al sneezes in my face, should I worry about contracting the obesity virus? There is no such virus.   

Obesity is not contagious and not a disease.   I know what some will say: obesity is socially contagious.  But now you've shifted the sense  of 'contagious.'    You've engaged in a bit of semantic mischief.  It is not as if there are two kinds of contagion, natural and social.  Social contagion is not contagion any more than negative growth is growth or a decoy duck is a duck. 'Social' in 'socially contagious' is an alienans
adjective.

Why then are you fat?  You are fat because you eat too much of the wrong sorts of food and refuse to exercise.  For most people that's all there is to it.  It's your fault.  It is not the result of being attacked by a virus.  It is within your power to be fat or not.  It is a matter of your FREE WILL.  You have decided to become fat or to remain fat.  When words such as 'epidemic' and 'disease' are used in connection with obesity, that is an ideological denial of free will, an attempt to shift responsibility from the agent to factors external to the agent such as the 'evil' corporations that produce so-called 'junk' food.

There is no such thing as junk food.

There are public health problems, but obesity is not one of them.  It is a private problem resident at the level of the individual and the family.

The Problem of First-Person identity Sentences

0. Am I identical to my (living) body, or to the objectively specifiable person who rejoices under the name 'BV'?  Earlier I resoundingly denied this identity, in (rare) agreement with London Ed, but admitted that argument is needed.  This post begins the argument.  We start with the problem of first-person identity sentences.

1. 'I am I' and 'BV is BV' are logical truths.  They have the logical form a = a. They are not particularly puzzling.  But 'I am BV' presents a puzzle, one reminiscent of Frege's puzzle concerning informative identity statements.  'I am BV' is not true as a matter of logic, any more than it is true as a matter of logic that the morning star is the evening star. And yet it is  presumably true that I am BV where 'am' expresses strict numerical identity. It is not as if 'I' and 'BV' refer to two different entities.  Or at least this is not a view we ought to begin by assuming.  The proper procedure is to see if we can make sense of 'I am BV' construed as an identity statement.  Dualism comes later if it comes at all.

2. Here is a theory.  When I say 'I am BV' I am referring to one and the same thing in two different ways, just as, when I say 'The morning star is the evening star' I am referring to  one and the same thing (the planet Venus) in two different ways.  Expressions have sense and they have reference.  Difference of sense is compatible with sameness of reference.  The difference in sense of 'morning star' and 'evening star' explains why the identity statement composed of them is informative; the sameness of reference explains the identity statement's truth.

In Frege's famous example, the common referent is the planet Venus.  What is the common referent of 'I' and 'BV'?  Presumably the common referent is the publicly identifiable person BV.  But when BV designates himself by means of the thought or utterance of 'I,  he designates BV under the aspect, or via the sense, expressed by 'I,' a semantically irreducible sense that cannot be captured by any expression not containing 'I.'

Here then we seem to have a solution to our problem.  In general, one can refer to the same thing in different ways, via different modes of presentation (Darstellungsweisen, in Frege's German).  So apply that to the special case of the self.  What I refer to when I say 'I' is the same entity that I refer to when I say 'BV' and the same entity that Peter refers to when he says 'BV.'   It is just that I refer to the same thing in different ways, a first-person way and third-person way.  There is no need to suppose that 'I and 'BV' have numerically distinct referents.   There is no need to deny the numerical identity of me and BV. Unfortunately, this Fregean solution is a pseudo-solution.  I have two arguments.  I'll give one today.

3. Consider the sentence 'I am this body here' uttered by the speaker while pointing to his body.  If, in this sentence, 'I' refers to this body here (the body of the speaker), albeit via a Fregean sense distinct from that of 'this body here,' then the sense of 'I,' whatever it might be, must be the sense of a physical thing inasmuch as it must be the mode of presentation of a physical thing.  Note that the 'of' in the italicized phrases is a genitivus objectivus.  Somehow this 'I'-sense must determine a reference to a physical thing, this body here.  But that it is the sense of a physical thing is no part of the sense of 'I.'  We understand fully the sense of this term without understanding it to be the sense of a physical thing, a sense that presents or mediates reference to a physical thing.  Indeed, considerations adduced by Anscombe and Castaneda show that the 'I'-sense cannot be the sense of a physical thing.  For if the sense of 'I' cannot be captured by 'this body here,' then a fortiori it cannot be captured by any other expression designating a physical thing.

The analogy with the morning star/evening star case breaks down.  One cannot use 'morning star' and 'evening star' with understanding unless one understands that they refer to physical things, if they refer at all.  It is understood a priori that these terms designate physical things if they designate at all; the only question is whether they designate the same physical thing.  But one can use the first-person singular pronoun with understanding without knowing whether or not it refers to a physical thing.

In other words,  there is nothing in the sense of 'I' to exclude the possibility that it refer to a nonphysical thing, a res cogitans, for example.  Descartes' use of 'ego' to refer to a thinking substance did not violate the semantic rules for the use of this term.  What's more, if 'I' is a referring term and refers via a Fregean sense, then that sense cannot be the sense of a physical thing.

So that's my first argument against the Fregean approach to the problem of first-person identity sentences.  The argument rests on the assumption that 'I' is a referring term.  That assumption has been denied by Wittgenstein, and more rigorously, by Anscombe.  That denial deserves a separate post.  And in that post we ought to rehearse the reasons why 'I' cannot be replaced salva significatione by any such word or phase as 'the person who is now speaking.' 

On the Logical Possibility of Reincarnation

London Ed says that reincarnation is logically possible.  I agree.  For my use of the first-person singular pronoun does not refer to my (animated) body alone.  Surely I am not identical to my body.  If I were, then reincarnation would be logically impossible.  As Ed says, there is nothing in the sense or reference of 'I' that entails such an identity.  But then Ed says this:

That's not to countenance disembodied egos or anything like that.  The possibility of reincarnation does not require there to be a disembodied referent for 'I'.  But if there are no disembodied egos, and if reincarnation takes place some time after the death of the previous body, there has to be a time when the 'I' does not exist.

There is a problem here.  Suppose I existed 100 years ago with body B1, but I now exist with a numerically different body B2. After B1 ceased to exist, I ceased to exist, but then I began to exist again when B2 came into existence.  It would follow that I had two beginnings of existence.  But it is not plausible to suppose that any one thing could have two beginnings of existence.  John Locke famously maintained (emphasis added):

When therefore we demand whether anything be the same or no, it refers always to something that existed such a time in such a place, which it was certain, at that instant, was the same with itself, and no other. From whence it follows, that one thing cannot have two beginnings of existence, nor two things one beginning; it being impossible for two things of the same kind to be or exist in the same instant, in the very same place; or one and the same thing in different places.

The problem can be cast in the mold of an aporetic triad:

1. It is logically possible that one and the same self (ego, I) have two consecutive but non-overlapping numerically distinct bodies.

2. There are no unembodied or disembodied referents of uses of the first-person singular pronoun.

3. It is not logically possible that one and the same thing have two beginnings of existence.

Each of the limbs of the triad is plausible and yet they cannot all be true.  Any two, taken together, entails the negation of the remaining one.  Thus (2) and (3), taken in conjunction, entails the negation of (1).

If Ed wants to hold both (1) and (2), then he must reject (3).  I would hold (1) and (3) and reject (2).

But is there any good reason to prefer my solution over Ed's? 

(1) makes a very weak claim, merely one of logical possibility.  So I don't see that it can be reasonably denied.  Admittedly, this needs further arguing.

Both 'I' and 'ego' are pronouns.  Both both Ed and I are using them as nouns.  Is there are problem with that? 

Subprime College Educations

Another chapter in the decline of the West.  Excerpts (emphasis added):

In his Encounter Books Broadside "The Higher Education Bubble," Reynolds says this bubble exists for the same reasons the housing bubble did. The government decided that too few people owned homes/went to college, so government money was poured into subsidized and sometimes subprime mortgages/student loans, with the predictable result that housing prices/college tuitions soared and many borrowers went bust. Tuitions and fees have risen more than 440 percent in 30 years as schools happily raised prices — and lowered standards — to siphon up federal money. A recent Wall Street Journal headline: "Student Debt Rises by 8% as College Tuitions Climb."

[. . .]

The budgets of California’s universities are being cut, so recently Cal State Northridge students conducted an almost-hunger strike (sustained by a blend of kale, apple and celery juices) to protest, as usual, tuition increases and, unusually and properly, administrators' salaries. For example, in 2009 the base salary of UC Berkeley's Vice Chancellor for Equity and Inclusion was $194,000, almost four times that of starting assistant professors. And by 2006, academic administrators outnumbered faculty.

The Manhattan Institute's Heather Mac Donald notes that sinecures in academia's diversity industry are expanding as academic offerings contract. UC San Diego, while eliminating master's programs in electrical and computer engineering and comparative literature, and eliminating courses in French, German, Spanish and English literature, added a diversity requirement for graduation to cultivate "a student's understanding of her or his identity." So, rather than study computer science and Cervantes, students can study their identities — themselves. Says Mac Donald, "'Diversity,' it turns out, is simply a code word for narcissism."

She reports that UCSD lost three cancer researchers to Rice University, which offered them 40 percent pay increases. But UCSD found money to create a Vice Chancellorship for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. UC Davis has a Diversity Trainers Institute under an Administrator of Diversity Education, who presumably coordinates with the Cross-Cultural Center. It also has: a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center; a Sexual Harassment Education Program; a Diversity Program Coordinator; an Early Resolution Discrimination Coordinator; a Diversity Education Series that awards Understanding Diversity Certificates in "Unpacking Oppression"; and Cross-Cultural Competency Certificates in "Understanding Diversity and Social Justice." California's budget crisis has not prevented UC San Francisco from creating a new Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Outreach to supplement UCSF's Office of Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity and Diversity, and the Diversity Learning Center (which teaches how to become "a Diversity Change Agent"), and the Center for LGBT Health and Equity, and the Office of Sexual Harassment Prevention & Resolution, and the Chancellor's Advisory Committees on Diversity, and on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Issues, and on the Status of Women.

Are we in Cloud Cuckoo Land yet?