Month: July 2012

Barack the Magic Suit: A Political Fairy Tale

A short video by Andrew Klavan.  Here is an essay by him which ends like this:

He has no clue how things actually work. Even if socialism did work, it would be wrong because it would strip people of the fruits of their labor and the property rights on which liberty depends. Thankfully, it doesn’t work, which makes the moral issue moot. But Obama has no clue of what’s been tried and found wanting. He surrounds himself with ideologues and tunes out anyone who’s ever made an honest dime in the real world. Thus every single idea the “progressive” president puts forward is a regressive throwback to notions that have been failing miserably for more than seventy years. The stuff he believes is just plain dopey. He thinks technology is the cause of unemployment. He does not understand that only private jobs create the wealth that makes public jobs possible. He thinks that wind and solar energy should be subsidized and fossil fuel production suppressed. He insists on bringing the European social model to the U.S. even as the model implodes in front of our eyes.

So go ahead, tell me that Mitt Romney is rich and I should hate him for it. Tell me that he’s white and I should hate him for that. Tell me that his wife rides horses or that he said something nasty when he was fifteen or that — omigod! — he’s a Mormon. Whatever his foibles and flaws, it seems pretty clear that Romney has the character to be president. Barack Obama has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he does not. 

Some Man is White Because a White Man Exists

(Theme music: Ballad of a Thin Man)

Phoenicians and Londoners agree that 'Some F is a G' and 'An FG exists' are logically equivalent.  Thus, 'Some man is white' is logically equivalent to 'A white man exists.'  But I take a further step: some man is white because a white man exists, where 'because' expresses the asymmetrical relation of metaphysical grounding.   London Ed refuses to take this step and finds my position unintelligible.  He objects:

Now I agree that if 'a white man exists' has a different meaning from 'some man is white', then the question of whether some F is a G because some FG exists, is an intelligible one. But it is not intelligible if they have the same meaning, as London 'thin' theorists claim. After all, the statement

(1) Some man is white because some man is white

is not intelligible. Nor is

(2) Some man is white because the sentence 'quidam homo est albus' is true

For the Latin sentence 'quidam homo est albus' means the same as 'some man is white'. The one sentence translates into the other. So there is no meaningful 'because' here. So why does Maverick think that

(3) Some man is white because some white man exists.

is intelligible? He says as much in his comment #6. So does he think that 'some man is white' has the same meaning as 'a white man exists'? Surely not, for the reasons stated here. But if the meaning is different, what is that difference?

I agree with Ed that if 'Some man is white' and 'A white man exists' have exactly the same meaning, then 'Some man is white because a white man exists' is unintelligible.  That's entirely clear.  So I have to show that the two sentences — call them the some-sentence and the existence-sentence — do not have the same meaning.

We agree that the two sentences have the same truth-conditions.  But sameness of truth-conditions does not entail sameness of meaning.  'X is triangular' and 'x is trilateral' have the same truth-conditions but not the same meaning.  So I hope that Ed is not inferring sameness of meaning from sameness of truth-conditions.

Or maybe Ed thinks that the thin theorist stipulatively defines 'exist(s)' in terms of the particular quantifier.  If that is what the thin theorist is doing, then I grant that the existence-sentence and the some-sentence have the same meaning.  For then they are arbitrarily stipulated to have the same meaning. But then the thin theory is wholly without interest.  Substantive philosophical questions cannot be answered by framing stipulative definitions.  The substantive question is: What is the nature of existence?  If the thin theory is worth discussing it is the theory that "existence is what existential quantification expresses" (Quine), that existence is wholly understandable in  terms of such purely logical notions as the particular quantifier and identity.  Thus Quine explicates 'a exists' in terms of '(Ex)(x = a).'  That existence is a purely logical notion is what I most strenuously deny.

What positive reason is there for thinking that the two sentences have different meanings? Well, 'A white man exists' says all that 'Some man is white' says, but it says more: it makes explicit that there are one or more existing items that are such that they are both human and white.  The existence-sentence is richer in meaning than the some-sentence.  It makes explicit that the item that is both human and white exists, is not nothing, is mind-independently real — however you want to put it.

Or perhaps we could put it this way.  The some-sentence abstracts from the existential aspect of the existence-sentence and so does not capture the whole of its meaning.

Do the gods love the pious because it is pious, or is the pious pious because the gods love it?   That, Ed agrees, is an intelligible question.  And so I take it he agrees that there is a relation we can call metaphysical grounding which is neither logical not causaI.   I say it's the same with the existence problem.  One can intelligibly ask whether some F is G because an FG exists, or vice versa. 

My answer is that existence is metaphysically prior to somemess, and metaphysically grounds it. 

Philosophy is a Useless Major; All Praise to Philosophy

Here is a list of the most useful and useless college majors:

The top 10 most useful college majors:
1. Nursing
2. Mechanical engineering
3. Electrical engineering
4. Civil engineering
5. Computer science
6. Finance
7. Marketing and marketing research
8. Mathematics
9. Accounting
10. French, German, Latin and other common foreign languages.

The top 10 most useless college majors:
1. Fine Arts
2. Drama and theater arts
3. Film, video and photographic arts
4. Commercial art and graphic design
5. Architecture
6. Philosophy and religious studies
7. English literature and language
8. Journalism
9. Anthropology and archeology
10. Hospitality management

Philosophy comes in at #6 of the useless.  Those who fill their belly from teaching philosophy (or rather from conducting philosophy classes, which is not the same) will be strongly tempted to defend philosophy by arguing that it really is useful after all.

I say that's a mistake.  I take the classical line.  Of course philosophy is useless, and therein lies its nobility and dignity.  The merely utile is ancillary to the non-utile.  Failure to appreciate this shows a lack of nobility of soul.  What follows is the meat of my Should One Stoop to a Defense of Philosophy?

What I object to . . . is the notion that philosophy needs to justify itself in terms of an end external to it, and that its main justification is in terms of an end outside of it. The main reason to study philosophy is not to become a more critical reasoner or a better evaluator of evidence, but to grapple with the ultimate questions of human existence and to arrive at as much insight into them as is possible. What drives philosophy is the desire to know the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters. Let's not confuse a useful byproduct of philosophical study (development of critical thinking skills) with the goal of philosophical study. The reason to study English literature is not to improve one's vocabulary or to prepare for a career as a journalist.   Similarly, the reason to study philosophy is not to improve one's ability to think clearly about extraphilosophical matters or to acquire skills that may prove handy in law school.

Philosophy is an end in itself. This is why it is foolish to try to convince philistines that it is good for
something. It is not primarily good for something. It is a good in itself. Otherwise you are acquiescing in the philistinism you ought to be combating. Is listening to the sublime adagio movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony good for something? And what would that be, to impress people with how cultured you are?

To the philistine's "Philosophy bakes no bread" you should not respond "Yes it does," for such responses are patently lame. You should say, "Man does not live by bread alone," or "Not everything is pursued as a means to something else," or "A university is not a trade school."  You should not acquiesce in the philistine's values and assumptions, but go on the attack and question his values and assumptions.  Put him on the spot.  Play the Socratic gadfly.  If a philistine wants to know how much you got paid for writing an article for a professional journal, say, "Do you really think that only what one is paid to do is worth doing?" 

Admittedly, this is a lofty conception of philosophy and I would hate to have to defend it before the uncomprehending philistines one would expect to find on the typical Board of Regents. But philosophy is what it is, lofty by nature, and if we are to defend it we must do so in a way that does not betray it.

It might be better, though, not to stoop to defend it at all, at least not before the uncomprehending.  It might be better to show contempt and supercilious disdain. Not everyone can be reasoned with, and part of being reasonable is understanding this fact.

Profiling, Prejudice, and Discrimination

Everybody profiles.  Liberals are no exception.  Liberals reveal their prejudices by where they live, shop, send their kids to school and with whom they associate.  

The word 'prejudice' needs analysis.  It could refer to blind prejudice: unreasoning, reflexive (as opposed to reflective) aversion to what is other just because it is other, or an unreasoning pro-attitude toward the familiar just because it is familiar.  We should all condemn blind prejudice.  It is execrable to hate a person just because he is of a different color, for example. No doubt, but how many people do that?  How many people who are averse to blacks are averse because of their skin color as opposed to their behavior patterns? Racial prejudice is not, in the main, prejudice based on skin color, but on behavior. 

'Prejudice' could also mean 'prejudgment.'   Although blind prejudice is bad, prejudgment is generally good.  We cannot begin our cognitive lives anew at every instant.  We rely upon the 'sedimentation' of past exerience.  Changing the metaphor, we can think of prejudgments as distillations from experience.  The first time I 'serve' my cats whisky they are curious.  After that, they cannot be tempted to come near a shot glass of Jim Beam.  My prejudgments about rattle snakes are in place and have been for a long time.  I don't need to learn about them afresh at each new encounter with one. Prejudgments are not blind, but experience-based, and they are mostly true. The adult mind is not a tabula rasa.  What experience has written, she retains, and that's all to the good.

So there is good prejudice and there is bad prejudice.  The teenager thinks his father prejudiced in the bad sense when he warns the son not to go into certain parts of town after dark.  Later the son learns that the old man was not such a bigot after all: the father's prejudice was not blind but had a fundamentum in re.

But if you stay away from certain parts of town are you not 'discriminating' against them?  Well of course, but not all discrimination is bad. Everybody discriminates.  Liberals are especially discriminating.  The typical Scottsdale liberal would not be caught dead supping in some of the Apache Junction dives I have been found in.  Liberals discriminate in all sorts of ways.  That's why Scottsdale is Scottsdale and not Apache Junction. 

'Profiling,' like 'prejudice' and 'discrimination,' has come to acquire a wholly negative connotation.  Unjustly.  What's wrong with profiling?  We all do it, and we are justified in doing it.  Consider criminal profiling.

It is obvious that only certain kinds of people commit certain kinds of crimes. Suppose a rape has occurred at the corner of Fifth and Vermouth. Two males are moving away from the crime scene. One, the slower moving of the two, is a Jewish gentleman, 80 years of age, with a chess set under one arm and a copy of Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed under the other. The other fellow, a vigorous twenty-year-old, is running from the scene.

Who is more likely to have committed the rape? If you can't answer this question, then you lack common sense.  But just to spell it out for you liberals: octogenarians are not known for their sexual prowess: the geezer is lucky if he can get it up for a five-minute romp.  Add chess playing and an interest in Maimonides and you have one harmless dude.

Or let's say you are walking down a street in Mesa, Arizona.  On one side of the street you spy some fresh-faced Mormon youths, dressed in their 1950s attire, looking like little Romneys, exiting a Bible studies class.  On the other side of the street, Hells Angels are coming out of their club house.  Which side of the street would you feel safer on?   On which side will your  concealed semi-auto .45 be more likely to see some use?

The problem is not so much that liberals are stupid, as that they have allowed themselves to be stupefied by that cognitive aberration known as political correctness.

Their brains are addled by the equality fetish:  everybody is equal, they think, in every way.  So the vigorous 20 year old is not more likely than the old man to have committed the rape.  The Mormon and the Hells Angel are equally law-abiding.  And the twenty-something Egyptian Muslim is no more likely to be a terrorist than the Mormon matron from Salt Lake City. 

Are the Pyramids of Egypt Slated for Destruction?

This is one of the statues of Buddha that the Taliban dynamited in 2001:

Bamiyan-buddha2Will the Pyramids of Egypt meet the same fate at the hands of similar miscreants?  See Victor Davis Hanson, Blowing Up History.

Of the world religions, "the religion of peace" is uniquely violent. 

Having said that, I must be an 'Islamophobe' right?

Wrong.  My fear of radical Islam is entirely rational.

A phobia is by definition an irrational fear.  Leftists introduced 'Islamophobia' as a semantic bludgeon to silence their opponents and prevent honest debate.  That is why it is utterly stupid for any conservative to use this word.  If you are a conservative, don't talk like a liberal!  Language matters.

No Resting Place in Any Earthly Desire

Paul Brunton, Notebooks, Vol. 15, Part 2, p. 58, entry #179:

In the end man has to arrive at this conclusion: that there is no resting place for him in any earthly desire, and that the satisfying and enduring peace of desirelessness is immensely superior to the always partial and transient fulfullment of such desire.

Some have the religious sensibility (inclination, predisposition, call it what you will) and some don't.  Here is one of several possible tests to see if you have it.  Get hold of Augustine's Confessions and Pascal's Pensées. If you read these books and they do not speak to you at all, if they do not move you, if they leave you cold, if they do not in any measure inspire you to reform your life, then it is a good bet that you don't have a religious bone in your body. It is not matter of intelligence but of sensibility.

The same goes for the Brunton passage.  If you can 'relate' to it, then you are probably religiously inclined; if not, you probably aren't.

Moral Responsibility in Dreams

I had a lucid dream the other night in which I lost my cool to an extent I would consider morally reprehensible in waking life.  But was there any moral failure in the dream?  And then there are the dreams in which I am having sexual intercourse with a woman not my wife.  I'm aware I am dreaming and I think to myself: "Well, this is just a dream; I may as well enjoy it."  So on occasion I grant nocturnal permission to a nocturnal emission. 

Was there real, not merely dreamt, moral failure in the dream?      (Augustine discusses this or a cognate question somewhere in his pelagic pennings, but I have forgotten where.)

Lucid dreaming while asleep is not the same as fantasizing while awake.  But they are similar.  Suppose I am entertaining (with hospitality) thoughts about having sex with my neighbor's wife.  That sort of thing, I have argued, is morally objectionable.  I mean the thinking, whether or not it results in any doing.  Jesus just says it (MT 5:28).  I argue it here and here.  (Of course if he is God, he doesn't need to argue it, and because I am not God, I do.)  Does the similarity support the claim that the nocturnal permission is as morally impermissible as the diurnal permission?

True Detachment

True detachment requires a certain indifference to, and thus a certain detachment from, one's success or failure at achieving detachment.  There is a  paradox here inasmuch as one cannot be detached entirely from the project of attaining detachment.  Otherwise there would be no difference between the seeker of wisdom and the worldling who is quite satisfied with his current moral condition and does not seek to better himself.   The trick is to pursue detachment detachedly.  I try to succeed, but if I fail it's no big deal and if I succeed it's also no big deal and certainly nothing to crow about or feed my ego on. One has to be aware of one's various moral failings and work to overcome them, all the while not worrying too much about the outcome.  One has to avoid the mistake of thinking that one can rely entirely upon oneself while also avoiding the equal but opposite mistake of just letting oneself go.

Photo ID: Voter Suppression or Liberal Projection?

If it is racist to demand photo ID at polling places, what does that say about how liberals view black people? They must view you black folk as utterly incompetent nonentities incapable of taking part in modern life, as pimps, whores, drug addicts, carjackers, hoodie-wearing thugs, smash & grab artists, troglodytes, total losers  . . . .  Time to rise up and move off the liberal plantation.

The Left-leaning Los Angeles Times ran a  piece the other day with the risible subheading: "The evidence is overwhelming that recent photo ID laws are politically motivated."  This is a perfect example of the pot calling the kettle black.  It is also a good example of psychological projection.  After all, it is liberals and leftists whose motivations are purely political.  Their sole motivation for opposing photo ID laws is to win at all costs and by any means including voter fraud.  I say this because they do not have one single cogent argument against such laws. Liberals project  unsavory motivations into their opponents.  This defense mechanism keeps them from having to acknowledge that is they who have unsavory motivations.

Anyone with common sense ought to be able to appreciate that voting must be conducted in an orderly manner, a manner to inspire confidence in the citizenry, and that only citizens who have registered to vote and have satisfied the minimal requirements of age, etc., are to be allowed into the voting booth. Given the possibility of fraud, it is therefore necessary to verify the identities of those who present themselves at the polling place. To do this, voters must be required to present a government-issued photo ID card, a driver's license being only one example of such. It is a reasonable requirement and any reasonable person should be able to see it as one.  Is this why our liberal pals oppose it?  Liberals are not famous for their common sense.

Too many liberals, however, see these common-sense requirements as acts of voter suppression, as witness this astonishing outburst from Jennifer Granholm, former governor of Michigan:

In November, five million eligible voters will find it harder to exercise their
rights in America — 150 voter suppression laws have been introduced in 30 state
legislatures across the country.

The most common tactics: requiring photo ID, restricting registration drives,
limiting early voting and imposing onerous residency requirements. Who do these
laws most directly affect? The poor, the elderly, minorities and the young. And
how do those groups typically vote? Democratic.

Let's consider photo ID.  For Granholm, requiring such ID is a form of voter suppression.  How's that for hyperbole?  Does she call it bank withdrawal suppression when check cashers are required to produce ID?  The other day I withdrew a sum of money from a checking account in excess of what is obtainable from an ATM machine.  I was asked to show my driver's license.  Was that an infringement of my right to access my own funds?  Of course not.  The demand was eminently reasonable even though I am known at the bank in question.  Similarly with the photo ID requirement at the polling place.  Examples like this can be multiplied indefinitely. 

Some liberals say that voter fraud is rare.  Maybe, maybe not.  In any case, irrelevant.  There is a principle at stake.  Besides, how many people lack ID?  Without ID one simply cannot function in society.  To exploit and adapt a slogan of the Harvard logician, Willard Quine, "No [social] entity without [social] identity."  You're a nonentity without  ID.  So when a liberal says that voter fraud is rare, reply, "So is lack of ID.  Since almost everyone has it, almost no one is excluded from voting by the ID requirement."

Since liberals don't have even one cogent argument against photo ID, we are justified in psychologizing their opposition to common-sense requirements.  Their opposition is rooted in a desire to win by any means, including fraud.  As lefties, they believe the end justifies the means.  They see themselves as the noble standard-bearers of equality against their disgusting, evil, SIXHRB opponents.  (SIXHRB: sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, racist, bigoted. HT: Dennis Prager.)

By the way, Governor Granholm is now on the faculty at University of California, Berkeley.  Surprise!

Metaphysical Grounding and the Euthyphro Dilemma

The locus classicus of the Euthyphro Dilemma (if you want to call it that) is Stephanus 9-10 in the early Platonic dialog, Euthyphro. This aporetic dialog is about the nature of piety, and Socrates, as usual, is in quest of a definition. Euthyphro proposes three definitions, with each of which Socrates has no trouble finding fault. According to the second, "piety is what all the gods love, and impiety is what all the gods hate." To this Socrates famously responds, "Do the gods love piety because it is pious, or is it pious because they love it?" In clearer terms, do the gods love pious acts because they are pious, or are pious acts pious because the gods love them?
 
What interests me at the moment is the notion of metaphysical grounding which I want to defend against London Ed and other anti-metaphysical types.  (For it is his failure to understand metaphysical grounding that accounts for Ed's failure to appreciate the force of my circularity objection to the thin theory of existence.)  Thus I will not try to answer a question beyond my pay grade, namely:
 
Q. Does God command X because it is morally obligatory, or is X morally obligatory because God commands it?
 
My concern is with the preliminary question whether (Q) is so much as intelligible.  It is intelligible only if we can make sense of the 'because' in it.   Let' s start with something that we should all be able to agree on (if we assume the existence of God and the existence of objective moral obligations), namely:
 
1.  Necessarily, God commands X iff X is morally obligatory.

(1) expresses a broadly logical equivalence and equivalence is symmetrical: if p is equivalent to q, then q is equivalent to p.  But metaphysical grounding  is asymmetrical: if M metaphysically grounds N, then it is not the case that N metaphysically  grounds M.  For example, if fact F is the truth-maker of sentence s, then it is not the case that s is the truth-maker of F.  Truth-making is a type of metaphysical grounding: it is not a causal relation and its is not a logical relation (where a logical relation is one that relates propositions, examples of logical relations being consistency, inconsistency, entailment, and logical independence.)

(1) leaves wide open whether God is the source of the obligatoriness of moral obligations, or whether such obligations are obligatory independently of divine commands.  Thus the truth of (1) does not entail an answer to (Q).

The 'because' in (Q) cannot be taken in a causal sense if causation is understood as a relation that connects physical events, states, or changes with other physical events, states, or changes.  Nor can the 'because' be taken in a logical sense.  Logical relations connect propositions, and a divine command is not a proposition.  Nor is the obligatoriness of the content of a command a proposition.

So I say this:  if the content of a command is morally obligatory because God issued the command, then the issuing of the command is the metaphysical ground of the the moral obligatoriness of the content of the command.  If, on the other hand, the content of the command is morally obligatory independently of the issuing of the divine command, then the moral obligatoriness of the command is the metaphysical ground of the correctness of the divine command.

Either way, there is a relation of metaphysical grounding.

My argument in summary:

1. (Q) is an intelligible question.

2. (Q) is not a question about a causal relation.

3. (Q) is not a question about a logical relation.

4. There is no other ordinary (nonmetaphysical) candidate relation such as a temporal relation or an epistemic relation for (Q) to be about.

5. (Q) is an intelligible question if and only if 'because' in (Q) expresses metaphysical grounding.

Therefore

6. 'Because' in (Q) expresses metaphysical grounding.

Therefore

7. There is a relation of metaphysical grounding.

OK, London Ed, which premise will you reject and why? 

The Story of Oh: the Terrible Price of a Korean Defection

By Richard Fernandez (HT: Bill Keezer):

The BBC tells the melancholy story of Oh Kil-nam, a South Korean man who, convinced by his Marxist education that North Korea was a worker’s paradise, decided to defect there with his wife and two children in 1986. Oh, who had just completed his PhD in Germany in Marxist economics and who “had been active in left-wing groups” had no reason to doubt the beckoning invitation of North Korean officials who promised him free health care and a government job, like certain other people you may know.

He chose poorly.

Aged and broken, Oh now concludes that his “life was ruined by his decision to defect to North Korea. Seventy years old, he still does not know the fate of his wife and daughters – either dead or imprisoned in a labour camp.” His wife, who lacked the benefit of a European education, suspected something was amiss from the first. She was aghast when he told her of his plan to defect.