Month: July 2012

On Calling Obama a Socialist

It is a tactical mistake for libertarians and conservatives to label Obama a socialist. For what will happen, has happened: liberals will revert to a strict definition and point out that Obama is not a socialist by this strict definition. Robert Heilbroner defines socialism in terms of "a centrally planned economy in which the government controls all means of production." To my knowledge, Obama has never advocated such a thing. So when the libertarian or conservative accuses Obama of socialism he lets himself in for a fruitless and wholly unnecessary verbal dispute from which he will emerge the loser.

It is enough to point out that the policies of Obama and the Democrat Party lead us toward bigger government and away from self-reliance, individual responsibility, individual liberty, and sound fiscal policy.  If you want to use the 'S' word, you can say that Obama & Co. are pushing us in the direction of socialism.  But calling him a socialist is tactically inadvisable.  Never forget that the whole point is to remove him and his gang from positions of power.  To achieve that goal we need to persuade large numbers of fence-sitters that  that he is leading us down the wrong path.  That persuasion is less likely to happen if we come across as extremists who misuse language.

It is even worse to label Obama a 'communist.' Every communist is a socialist, but not every socialist is a communist. If our president is not a socialist, then a fortiori he is not a communist. It is intellectually irresponsible to take a word that has a definite meaning and turn it into a semantic bludgeon. That's the sort of thing we expect from leftists, as witness their favorite 'F' word, 'fascist,' a word they apply as indiscriminately and irresponsibly as 'racist.'

Liberals and leftists love to sling the SIXHRB (sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, racist, bigoted) epithets to pre-empt thought and prevent debate.  We should avoid similar behavior.

Milos Forman has an op-ed piece in the NYT entitled Obama the Socialist? Not Even Close.  Forman takes umbrage at the loose way 'socialism' is used by some conservatives:

Now, years later, I hear the word “socialist” being tossed around by the likes of Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and others. President Obama, they warn, is a socialist. The critics cry, “Obamacare is socialism!” They falsely equate Western European-style socialism, and its government provision of social insurance and health care, with Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism. It offends me, and cheapens the experience of millions who lived, and continue to live, under brutal forms of socialism.

Forman goes on to recount a couple of truly horrifying tales about what it was like living under the jackboot of communism in Czechoslovakia.

Although Forman is right to distinguish the brutal forms of socialism from the supposedly benign forms, he seems willy-nilly to concede that Obamacare is a socialist policy.  He is also quite naive if he thinks that the seeds of jackboot socilaism are not already present, in undeveloped form, in 'benign' socialism.  He seems not to understand that power corrupts people and that one can get to a truly awful destination by tiny steps each of which seems reasonable and benign.

The pious platitudes with which Forman ends his piece are risible.

Scriptural Inerrancy Again

The following is from a reader who wishes to remain anonymous but who wants me "to hear a different perspective on the matter than that of the Calvinists who comment on your blog: I don't want you thinking they are the ones rightly interpreting the Christian texts."

……………….

Jesus and Paul had a rather liberal interpretation of the Old Testament Law, by which I mean a non-literal, moralist interpretation. I shall explain this in further detail by offering a few exemplary statements from them both.

Jesus famously said that "What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them" (Mt 15:11), specifying what he meant a few verses later: "But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts — murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person" (vv. 18-20). This is directly contradictory to the teaching of the Old Testament Law; after a long list of animals the eating of which is strictly forbidden, Lev 11:24 reads: "You will make yourselves unclean by [eating] these." Jesus denies the literal truth of Lev 11:24 by denying the reality of ritual purity and impurity; instead he gave a spiritualized, moralist interpretation of purity and impurity: the only true (im)purity or (un)cleanliness is moral (im)purity or (un)cleanliness.
 
A further expression of the denial of the reality of ritual purity and impurity and, implied with this, a rejection of the temple sacrificial system of worship is involved in Jesus' quoting the verse from Hosea 6:6, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." When the Pharisees see that Jesus eats at the same table as many tax collectors and sinners — i.e., those who would render him ceremonially unclean and incapable of participating in the temple cult, thus removed from the blessings of God — Jesus responds that God desires mercy, not sacrifice (Mt 9:10-13). "Sacrifice" is connected to a concern for ritual purity, as well as participation in the temple religious system; what God wants is not this, but mercy towards those who are in need of love: particularly those rejected by the religious figures and "holy men" of his time. God evidently is not concerned with ritual purity; he wishes that men be kind to one another, and he makes an effort to show such kindness himself through Jesus. But a rejection of ritual purity, the requirement for sacrifice, the legitimacy of the temple, etc., is a rejection of a literal reading of many Old Testament texts.

 
Consider also Jesus' and Paul's affirmation that the true fulfillment of the Law is obedience to the command "Love thy neighbor as thyself" (see, e.g., Mt 22:34-30; Rom 13:8-10, Gal 5:14). This cannot be literally true, for the various ritual and ceremonial injunctions of the Law (e.g., regarding circumcision, dietary habits, sacrifices, etc.) cannot in any plausible way be interpreted as mere instances of love for neighbor; no one would ever get the impression that the command to circumcise one's child on the eighth day is an instance of "love thy neighbor" by reading the relevant OT texts. What this statement suggests, rather, is a non-literal and moralist interpretation of the Old Testament: what is really of value is the moral teaching about loving your neighbor; all that ritual and ceremonial stuff doesn't mean much of anything and can even at times be ignored.
 
One more example would be Paul's affirmations regarding the ultimate insignificance of circumcision: "A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code" (Rom 2:28-29); "Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God’s commands is what counts" (1 Cor 7:19); "Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation" (Gal 6:15). No one would ever come to such a conclusion merely reading what the Old Testament says regarding the requirement of circumcision: "Every male among you shall be circumcised. . . . My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people" (Gen 17:10, 13-14). Paul elevates obedience to the moral commandments of God, especially "love thy neighbor", above the command of circumcision, so much so that the latter command is effectively annulled.
 
No one would come to the conclusions that Jesus and Paul did merely by reading the salient Old Testament texts themselves; their interpretation is non-literal and moralist, and is merely one manifestation of the tendency towards spritualized, internalized interpretations of inherited religion that appears in other places (e.g., ancient Greek religion with the advent of the philosophers) as well. (For more on this, see Stephen Finlan, The Background and Contents of Paul's Cultic Atonement Metaphors (Boston: Brill, 2004), 47ff.)
 
 
BV comments:  I find the foregoing persuasive and would extract the following argument against inerrancy from it:
 
1. If the Scripture is inerrant, then no later passage revises, corrects, contradicts, annuls, or abrogates any earlier passage.
 
2. There are NT passages that contradict OT passages, e.g. MT 15:11 contradicts Lev 11:24. 
 
Therefore
 
3. It is not the case that the Scripture is inerrant.
 
The argument is valid in point of logical form.  If the first premise is not true, then I simply do not know what plenary inerrancy means. (I assume we mean by inerrancy plenary (full) inerrancy.  Otherwise I could maintain that my blog is inerrant, provided you ignore all assertions in it that are mistaken.  "It is everywhere inerrant except where it isn't.")  The first premise is true and so is the second as the anon. contributor demonstrated.  Therefore, the Scriptures are not inerrant.
 
ComBox open.  But if you comment, be BRIEF and address PRECISELY WHAT IS CLAIMED by the anonymous contributor.  Otherwise you will be unmercifully cast into the outer cyber-darkness where there is much weeping and the gnashing of teeth.

Barack Obama, the PoMo Prez

No one is more skillful than Victor Davis Hanson when it comes to exposing His Mendacity, the empty suit currently occupying the White House.  Here is an excerpt from a recent column:

Illegal, Legal, Neither, or Both?

I think the current status of immigration law goes something like this. It is fine for a municipality or state to contravene immigration law by declaring a region a “sanctuary,” where federal law cannot be enforced. But it is illegal for a state to enforce immigration statutes when the federal government will not. Arizona was sued for trying to deport illegal aliens; so California is considering ways to grant them amnesty. If an illegal alien graduates from high school, serves in the military, or breaks no law, he can be exempt from deportation; but if he does not graduate, does not serve, or breaks a law, there is no expectation that he will now suddenly be deported at the time those eligible for amnesty will not be. The president told Latino activists he wanted to, but could not, issue exemptions by fiat, but then did exactly that a bit later as the campaign heated up.  Eric Holder both claimed the Arizona law encouraged profiling and admitted he had never read it. Obama called for an end to vilification, and then begged Latinos to “punish our enemies,” in the manner he once asked supporters to “get in their face.”

Mandate/Tax/Penalty?

The new federal takeover of health care requires a mandate, a tax, or a penalty, but the architects of the plan cannot agree on which — not a surprising postmodern turn when Justice Roberts reportedly wrote much of both the majority-confirming and the minority-dissenting opinions. It is unpopular now, but supposedly won’t be when it is enacted (or read for the first time) — and that is why over 2,000 insiders obtained exemption from such popular legislation. The 2,400 pages of ObamaCare were to lower our premiums by $2,500 a family, but they have already risen by almost 10% on average. Barack Obama ran against Hillary Clinton for her advocacy of a mandate, a position he ridiculed as both unfair and unworkable — before asserting just the opposite when he adopted her position as his own. One cannot be rejected for insurance for a preexisting illness, and therefore need not purchase insurance (preferring instead to pay the mandate / tax /penalty) until he is actually in extremis and in need of costly care — sort of like buying car insurance the day after you were blindsided, or life insurance on the day you were diagnosed with leukemia.

Equality of Opportunity Thin and Thick

Will Knowland writes:

Browsing your Money Matters section, I noticed this:
Equality of outcome or result is not to be confused with
equality of opportunity or formal equality in general, including equality under
the law.  It is an egregious fallacy of liberals and leftists to infer a denial
of equality of opportunity — via  'racism' or 'sexism' or whatever — from the
premise that a certain group has failed to achieve equality of outcome.  There
will never be equality of outcome due to the deep differences between
individuals and groups.  Equality of outcome is not even a value.  We must do
what we can to ensure equality of opportunity and then let the chips fall where
they may.

I agree that there will never be equality of outcome, but neither will there ever be equality of opportunity, because opportunities at any given moment won't be equal unless outcomes are. And must we do what we can to ensure equality of opportunity? Can does not imply may. Family circumstances, for example, are the biggest determinant of a child's educational success. The State could, as Plato wanted, remove children from their families at birth. That would produce a more level playing field.

As Don Colacho wisely warned, though, "levelling is the barbarian's substitute for order."

BV responds:  You say,  "neither will there ever be equality of opportunity, because opportunities at any given moment won't be equal unless outcomes are."  Your argument appears to be this:

a. There will never be equality of outcome
b. There is equality of opportunity if and only if there is equality of outcome
Therefore
c. There will never be equality of opportunity.

We agree that (a) is true, but I would deny (b).  In fact (b) strikes me as plainly false.  I enter local road races, but I never win.  I don't come close to winning: I am a back-of-the-pack plodder who if he is lucky wins in his age division.  So there is no equality of outcome.  But there is equality of opportunity: I have exactly the same opportunity to win as the world-class 25 year old who actually wins.  In what sense?  Well, no one barred me from entering the race; I wasn't forced to pay a higher entry fee; no one verbally abused me before or during the race; no one threw rocks at me; I was not forced to wear weights that would slow me down; obstacles were not thrown in my path; etc.  The timing chip even compensated me time-wise for the fact that I could not stand right at the starting line with the top runners.

So I had an equal opportunity qua runner to win, an opportunity equal to that of every other participant.  I was not discriminated against on the basis of race, sex, creed, length of hair, or the fact that I insist on wearing the skimpy, slit-up-the-side nylon shorts we wore in the '70s as opposed to those  utterly ridiculous, baggy, gangsta-rappa semi-auto concealing, knee-length monstrosities popular now among sartorial know-nothings [grin].

Obviously much depends on the concept of equality of opportunity being employed, and I favor a very 'thin' conception.  Clearly, one one can plump for 'thicker' conceptions.  But the thicker the conception, the less the contrast with equality of outcome/result.  I grant that there is no real chance of me winning any (well-attended) road race.  But that is irrelevant.  Relevant alone is whether I am being excluded on the basis of irrelevant criteria, such as my sex or the color or skimpiness of my running shorts.

As for ensuring equality of opportunity, I would say that we must do what we can to ensure equality of opportunity in my thin sense.  But on your exceedingly thick conception, according to which equality of opportunity is equivalent to equality of outcome, then we, collectively, deploying the awesome coercive power of the State, should not do anything.  That's what I meant above when I said: let the chips fall where they may.

As for the liberal-left phrase 'level playing field,' we conservatives should avoid it.  If you are a conservative, don't talk like a liberal.  It's a metaphor whose application is severely limited.

If we are playing soccer or basketball (and there is no handicapping going on), then there must be a level playing field if there is to be a fair competition.  But suppose Tom was born with two good eyes and Sally with none.  Should we intervene to right that cosmic unfairness, to 'level the playing field' as between Tom and Sally, by transplanting (if we could) one of his eyes into her head?  No.

Tom does not deserve his two good eyes, his intelligence, his height, his being born in the USA, in a good, two-parent, loving family, not in a war zone, not with crack cocaine in his system, etc.  But he has a right to his advantages despite not deserving them, and no one and no State has the right to violate his rights.

We are just scratching the surface of a whole cluster of thorny and bitterly controverted questions.

Addendum:  Knowland sends use this quotation from John Kekes, The Illusions of Egalitarianism, (Cornell, 2006), p.84: ". . . equal opportunity tends to produce unequal outcome, and equal outcome
requires making opportunities unequal by increasing the protection of some at the expense of others."

Metaphysical Grounding I: True Of

(Note to Peter L:  This begins our discussion of metaphysical grounding and metaphysical explanation, topics of common interest.  We need, over a series of posts, to uncover and discuss as many examples as we can find.  My aim, and perhaps yours as well, is to demonstrate that metaphysical grounding and metaphysical explanation are legitimate topics, and that metaphysics is not a going enterprise unless they are legitimate topics.  This is connected with our presumably common opposition to scientism and our presumably common defense of the autonomy of philosophy.)

Let 'Tom' name a particular tomato.  Let us agree that if a predicate applies to a particular, then the predicate is true of the particular.  Predicates are linguistic items.  If Tom is red, then 'red' is true of Tom, and if 'red' is true of Tom, then Tom is red. This yields the material biconditional

1. Tom is red iff 'red' is true of Tom.

Now it seems to me that the following question is intelligible:  Is Tom red because 'red' is true of Tom, or is 'red' true of Tom because Tom is red?  'Because' here does not have a causal sense.  So the question is not whether Tom's being red causes 'red' to be true of Tom, or vice versa.  So I won't speak of causation in this context.  I will speak of metaphysical/ontological grounding.  The question then is what grounds what, not what causes what.   Does Tom's being red ground the application (the being-applied)  of 'red' to Tom, or does the appplication (the being-applied) of 'red' to Tom ground Tom's being red?

I am not primarily concerned with the correct answer to this question, but with meaningfulness of the question.

Grounding is asymmetrical: if x grounds y, then y does not ground x.  (It is also irreflexive and transitive.)  Now if there is such a relation as grounding, then there will be a distinctive form of explanation we can call metaphysical/ontological explanation.  (Grounding, though not causation, is analogous to c ausation, and metaphysical explanation, though distinct from causal explanation, is analogous to causal explanation.)

Explaining is something we do: in worlds without minds there is no explaining and there are no explanations, including metaphysical explanations.  But I assume that, if there are any metaphysical grounding relations, then  in every world metaphysical grounding relations obtain.  (Of course, there is no grounding of the application of predicates in a world without languages and predicates, but there are other grounding relations.)

Grounding is not causation. It is not a relation between event tokens such as Jack's touching a live wire and Jack's death by electrocution.  Grounding is also not a relation between propositions.  It is not the relation of material implication, nor is it entailment (the necessitation of material implication), nor any other semantic relation wholly situated at the level of propositions.  Propositions, let us assume, are the primary truth-bearers. 

In our example, grounding is not a relation between propositions — it is not a logical relation — since neither Tom nor 'red' are propositions. 

I want to say the following.  Tom's being red grounds the correctness of the application of 'red' to Tom.  'Red' is true of Tom because (metaphysically, not causally or logically) Tom is red, and not vice versa.  'Red' is true of Tom in virtue of  Tom's being red.  Tom's being red is metaphysically prior to the truth of 'Tom is red' where this metaphysical priority cannot be reduced to some ordinary type of priority, whether logical, causal, temporal, or what have you.  Tom's being red metaphysically accounts for the truth of 'Tom is red.'

I conclude that there is at least one type of metaphysical grounding relation, and at least one form of irreducibly metaphysical explanation. 

Thoughts on Blogging

A fellow blogger inquires, " How did you get your blog 'noticed' or 'visited'? And how long did it take? I have had a few spikes from your blog and American Catholic, but the visits seem to have slowed down. Of course, it may be that getting people interested involves actual writing, as opposed to simple link collection.

1.  In the early days of the blogosphere, over ten years ago now, weblogs were mainly just 'filters' that sorted through the WWW's embarrassment of riches and provided links to sites the proprietor of the filter thought interesting and of reasonable quality.  So in the early days one could garner traffic by being a linker as opposed to a thinker.  Glenn Reynold's Instapundit, begun in August 2001, is a wildly successful blog that consists mainly of links.  But there are plenty of linkage blogs now and no need for more, unless you carve out  a special  niche for yourself. 

2.   What I find interesting, and what I aim to provide, is a blend of original content and linkage delivered on a daily basis.  As the old Latin saying has it, Nulla dies sine linea, "No day without a line."  Adapted to this new-fangled medium: "No day without a post."  Weblogs are by definition frequently updated.  So if you are not posting, say, at least once a week, you are not blogging.  Actually, I find I need to restrain myself by limiting myself to two or three posts per day: otherwise good content scrolls into archival oblivion too quickly.

Here is my definition of 'weblog':  A weblog is a frequently updated website consisting of posts or entries, usually short and succinct, arranged in reverse-chronological order, containing internal and off-site hyperlinks, and a utility allowing readers to comment on some if not all posts.

'Blog' is a contraction of 'weblog.'  Therefore, to refer to a blog post as a blog is a mindless misuse of the term on a par with referring to an inning of a baseball game as a game, a chapter of a book as a book, an entry in a ledger as a ledger, etc.  And while I'm on my terminological high horse: a comment on a post is not a post but a comment, and one who makes a commenter is a commenter, not a commentator.  A blogger is (typically) a commentator; his commenters are — commenters.

There are group blogs and individual blogs.  Group blogs typically don't last long and for obvious reasons, an example being Left2Right.  (Of interest: The Curious Demise of Left2Right.) Please don't refer to an individual blog as a 'personal' blog.  Individual blogs can be as impersonal as you like. 

3. I am surprised at how much traffic I get given the idiosyncratic blend I serve up.   This, the Typepad version of MavPhil, commenced on Halloween 2008.  Since then the site has garnered 1.4 million page views which averages to 1045 page views per day.  In recent months, readership is around 1300-1700 p-views per diem with various spikes.  3 July saw a spike of 2421 p-views.  Don't ask me why.  Total posts: 3489.  Total comments:  5644.

Now to answer the question.  How did I get my site noticed?  By being patient and providing fairly good content on a regular basis.  I don't pander: I write what interests me whether or not it interests anyone else.  Even so, patience pays off in the long run.  But it will take time: I've been at it for over eight years using three different service providers.   I don't solicit links or do much to promote the site.  I bait my hook and cast it out into the vasty deeps of cyberspace.  I have managed to snag many interesting, high-quality 'fish.'  You could say I have become 'a fisher of men.'  Comment moderation keeps the bottom-feeders and scum-suckers at bay.  (That's a bit of a mixed metaphor wrapped in a bad pun.)

Blogging is like physical exercise.  If you are serious about it, it becomes a daily commitment and after a while  it becomes unthinkable that one should stop until one is stopped by some form of physical or mental debilitation.

Would allowing comments on all posts increase readership?  Probably, but having tried every option, I have decided the best set-up is the present one: allow comments on only some posts, and don't allow comments to appear until they have been moderated. 

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Jimmy Elledge (1943-2012) and Some Other One-Hit Wonders

Jimmy Elledge, Funny How Time Slips Away.  Born January 8, 1943 in Nashville, Elledge died June 10, 2012 after complications following a stroke.  The song, written by Willie Nelson, made the #22 slot on Billboard Hot 100 in 1961, and sold over one million copies. Elledge never had another hit. As a YouTube commenter pointed out, that does sound like Floyd Cramer tickling the ivories.  A great song.  I always thought it was a female singing.

Rosie and the Originals, Angel Baby, 1960.  Perfect for cruising Whittier Boulevard in your '57 Chevy on a Saturday Night.

Claudine Clark, Party Lights, 1962

Contours, Do You Love Me? 1962

Norma Tanega, Walkin' My Cat Named 'Dog,' 1966.   A forgotten oldie if ever there was one.  If you remember this bit of vintage vinyl, one of the strangest songs of the '60s, I'll buy you a beer or a cat named 'dog.' One.

Bruce Channel, Hey! Baby, 1962

Barbara George, I Know, 1962

And now a couple more forgotten one-hit wonders who get almost no play on the oldies stations which is exactly why you need Uncle Wild Bill's Saturday Night at the Oldies:

Bob Luman, Let's Think About Livin'  Trivia question: The song contains references to three contemporary songs.  Name them.

Larry Finnegan, Dear One, 1962 

The ‘Control Argument’ for the Anatta Doctrine

In other posts I have sketched the Buddhist doctrine of 'No Self.' I now consider an early Buddhist argument for it. Here are the words of Buddha according to the Anattalakkhana Sutta, his second discourse, the Sermon on the Mark of Not-Self:

 
     The body [rupa], monks, is not self. If the body were the self,
     this body would not lend itself to dis-ease. It would be possible
     (to say) with regard to the body, 'Let my body be thus. Let my body
     be not thus.' But precisely because the body is not self, the body
     lends itself to dis-ease. And it is not possible (to say) with
     regard to the body, 'Let my body be thus. Let my body not be thus.'

Buddha then goes on to argue similarly with respect to the rest of the five aggregates or categories of personality-constituents (khandhas, Sanskrit: skandhas), namely, feeling (vedana), perception (sanna), consciousness (vinnana), and mental formations (sankharas). All are claimed to be not-self. Thus we are told that feeling afflicts us and is not amenable to our control, whence it is inferred that feeling is not one's self, not one's own inner substance. The tacit premise of this enthymematic argument is that one's self would have to be something over which one would have complete control.  The tacit premise is that the self is  something wholly active and spontaneous and self-regulating.  And it is clear that something wholly active will not suffer: to suffer is precisely to be afflicted by something external over which one has no control.  To suffer is to be passive.  An agent in excelsis is an impassible agent.  (In the West, impassibility became one of the divine attributes.) 

After arguing that each of the personality-constituents is outside of our control and brings suffering, Buddha argues that each of the constituents is impermanent and for this reason as well is lacking in
self-nature. The over-all argument of the Anattalakkhana Sutta may therefore be reconstructed in a generalized form as follows:

     1. If anything were the self, then it would have two properties: it
     would not be liable to disease, decay, destruction or change
     generally, and it would be self-determining, i.e., it would have
     complete control over itself.
     2. But nothing in our experience has either of these two
     properties, not the body, or feeling, or perception, or
     consciousness, etc.
     Therefore
     3. Nothing in our experience can be identified as the self.

I have structured the argument so that it is not only valid in point of logical form, but also has plausible premises. (A charitable reconstruction can aim at nothing less.) Thus the addition of 'in our experience' in premise (2) makes this premise more plausible than without the addition. But this gain in plausibility exacts a price:   the conclusion (3) cannot then amount to the unrestricted anatta doctrine according to which nothing at all is a self or has self-nature. It is one thing to say that nothing in our experience can be identified (veridically) as a self, and quite another to say that there is no self.

The Pali Buddhist, of course, wants to arrive at the conclusion that there is no self at all, that nothing at all has self-nature.  I would insist, however, that one cannot validly move directly from (3) to

    4. Nothing can be identified as the self: there is no self at all.

For it may well be that the existence of a (transcendental) self that is not experienced is a necessary condition of establishing that whatever is experienced is not a self. After all, if I come to see  that my body, feelings, perceptions, and so on cannot be identified as my very self, then it is presumably I myself who come to this insight.  If I come to reject body-identification, feeling- identification, etc. as false self-identifications, then presumably there must be at least the possibility of a true self-identification, even if only of the  tautological form, 'I am I.'  If every self-identification were false, then 'I am I' would be false. But that is either a contradiction, or implies that there is nothing that body, feelings, etc. are distinct from, which is again incoherent. For if 'I am not this body' is true, then in some sense I must exist as that from which my body is distinct.  The first-person singular pronoun cannot be wholly referenceless if it is to be true, as it is true, that I am not my body, my feelings, my thoughts, the pain in my neck, etc.

Furthermore, if anyone needs and desires liberation, it is presumably in every case I myself who needs and desires it, and I myself who, if all goes well, achieves it, and indeed achieves it on the basis of my own insight into my non-identity with any of the five khandhas or with the psychophysical complex composed of them. The self who needs, desires, and possibly attains liberation is obviously distinct from each of the khandhas and from the psychophysical complex. My body, obviously enough, cannot come to realize its non-identity with itself, for the simple reason that it is not distinct from itself. The same holds for each of the khandhas, and for the lot of them taken together.

And to suppose that no one desires, needs, or attains liberation would appear to make hash of the whole Buddhist system of soteriology. Buddhism is an existentialist system in roughly Kierkegaard's  sense:  it is the salvation of the "existing individual" that is the unum necessarium and sole desideratum. It is therefore arguable that the   existence of a transcendental self is a cognitive and soteriological  presupposition: it is presupposed if there is to be the insight that no object of experience is veridically identifiable as one's very self, and it is presupposed if there is to be something that is saved from the samsaric predicament.

The gist of the control argument is this. There is no evidence of a self since nothing with which we are acquainted is immutable, and nothing with which we are acquainted is something over which we have complete control.

But this raises an obvious question: Isn't the standard for selfhood being set unattainably high?  The argument isd tantamount tosaying that if I am not God or a god, then I am not a self.  Arguably, God to be God must be impassible; but must a self to be a self be impassible?

For a richer and more rigorous development of this theme, see W. F. Vallicella, "No Self? A Look at a Buddhist Argument," International Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 42, no. 4 (December 2002), pp. 453-466

A Letter from the Ukraine on the Morality of Stock and Currency Trading

I have been following your blog with great interest for a couple of years now and I feel honored knowing that there are people like yourself on this planet in our times. I live in the Ukraine and represent the post-soviet cultural enviroment where philosophy has been practically persecuted and distorted by Marxists. I have a Licentiate in Philosophy from University Urbaniana in Rome and teach philosophy at the Diocesan Seminary of Ivano-Frankivsk.
 
 I've been asked recently if currency trading (Forex) and stock trading are sinful. I mean, if they are done as income generating speculation. I've tried to look up official Church documents and just generally search the Internet and it's resources but am unable to find a clear and logically consistent answer. I can see how people who received socialistic education (like everybody in the Soviet Union), can find speculation morally wrong and sinful. But many of my Western friends don't think this. There is a difference in the basic comprehension of the "market" in its most fundamental components and things that define it. There is a problem of "property" as it is understood differently in socialist and capitalist views. Then I think of the American situation with your president pushing forward so many things that were clearly defined as socialist in the country where I was born (SU). And the underlying concepts of "property", "market", "goods" etc. that are substituted with other even in the question of the health reform.
 
      
I am happy that you have noticed that the present administration of the U. S. government headed by Barack Obama has accelerated the move in the socialistic and totalitarian direction.  The move in this direction has been going on for a long time, since F. D. Roosevelt at least, but since the 1960s  has achieved a 'metastatic' state of growth — to employ a cancer metaphor.  The irony in all this is that we won the Cold War only to become more and more like the Soviet Union which we labored so mightily to defeat.  (I am old enough to remember the anxiety here in the States over Sputnik and the suborbital exploits of your cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin.) And like the SU, we may well collapse under the weight of our own fiscal irresponsibility, foreign overextendedness,  and 'internal contradictions' — to use a Marxist phrase.  We are no longer "The land of the free and the home of the brave."  We have become a land of wimps willing to sell our birthright for a mess of pottage, i.e., for cradle-to-grave security to be provided by an ever more intrusive nanny state.  I am of course brushing in very broad strokes.  The details of the situation are messy and complicated indeed.
 
 
You ask whether currency and stock trading are sinful.  Such activities fall under the Seventh Commandment — "Thou shalt not steal" — in the Roman Catholic (RC)  numbering of the Decalogue.  The following, from the RC Catechism, is relevant to your question:

2409 Even if it does not contradict the provisions of civil law, any form of unjustly taking and keeping the property of others is against the seventh commandment: thus, deliberate retention of goods lent or of objects lost; business fraud; paying unjust wages; forcing up prices by taking advantage of the ignorance or hardship of another.192

The following are also morally illicit: speculation in which one contrives to manipulate the price of goods artificially in order to gain an advantage to the detriment of others; corruption in which one influences the judgment of those who must make decisions according to law; appropriation and use for private purposes of the common goods of an enterprise; work poorly done; tax evasion; forgery of checks and invoices; excessive expenses and waste. Willfully damaging private or public property is contrary to the moral law and requires reparation.

As I see it there is nothing morally wrong with buying and holding stocks and realizing a profit upon their sale.  There is nothing wrong with buying and selling stocks in general. A stock is an equity.   When I buy a stock I buy a bit of a company that produces goods and services, some of them indispensable for human flourishing.  By buying stocks I contribute to human well being, not all stocks, but most.  When I buy stocks I am engaged in a productive activity, not directly, but indirectly:  I help fund a productive enterprise that produces food and medicine and books and computers, etc. 
 
Same with bonds.  A bond is a debt instrument.  I loan you money so that you can engage in a productive activity such as open a book store.  You pay me interest for the use of my money.  That is perfectly reasonable and perfectly moral.
 
But what about day trading?  This strikes me as morally dubious.  Here what you are doing is playing a game in which you generate an income without directly or indirectly producing anything.  It is entirely unlike buying a house when it is cheap, fixing it up, maintaining it, paying property taxes on it, and then selling it at a large profit.  The profit, even if quite large, is justly acquired since one has engaged in activities with promote not only one's own good, but the good of others.  One has  improved the neighborhood by fixing up the house; one has  made it available to others to rent; one has  paid property taxes to support locals schools and fire departments, etc.
 
 
Currency trading?  I don't know enough about the details of it to have a firm opinion, but I suspect that is shares the moral dubiousness of day trading.  A Roman Catholic, I suspect, would consider it be "morally illicit: speculation in which one contrives to manipulate the price of goods artificially in order to gain an advantage to the detriment of others." 
 
Let me add this. (I am now speaking for myself.)
 
1.  There is nothing wrong with money.  It is absolutely not the root of all evil.  The most we can say is that the inordinate desire for money is at the root of some evils.  I develop this theme in Radix Omnium Malorum.
 
2. There is nothing wrong with making money or having money.  There is for example nothing wrong with making a profit from buying, refurbishing, maintaining, occupying, paying propery taxes on, and then selling a house.
 
3. There is nothing wrong with material (socio-economic) inequality as such.  For example, there is nothing wrong with Bill Gates' having a vastly higher net worth than your humble correspondent.  And there is nothing wrong with the latter's having a considerably higher net worth than some of his acquaintances. (When they were out pursuing wine, women, and song, he was engaging in virtuous, forward looking activities thereby benefiting not only himself but also people who come in contact with him.)   Of course, I am assuming that the inequalities have not come about through force or fraud. 
 
4. Equality of outcome or result is not to be confused with equality of opportunity or formal equality in general, including equality under the law.  It is an egregious fallacy of liberals and leftists to infer a denial of equality of opportunity — via  'racism' or 'sexism' or whatever — from the premise that a certain group has failed to achieve equality of outcome.  There will never be equality of outcome due to the deep differences between individuals and groups.  Equality of outcome is not even a value.  We must do what we can to ensure equality of opportunity and then let the chips fall where they may.
 
5. We the people do not need to justify our keeping of what is ours; the State has to justify its taking.  We are citizens of a republic, not subjects of a king or dictator or of the apparatchiks who have managed to get their hands on the levers of State power.
 
6. Private property is the foundation of individual liberty.   Socialism and communism spell the death of individual liberty.  The more socialism, the less liberty.  The bigger the State, the smaller the citizen. (D. Prager)
 
7.  The inidividual is the locus of value.  We do not exist for the State; the State exists for us as individuals.
 
8.  Property rights, contra certain libertarians, are not absolute: there are conditions under which an 'eminent domain' State seizure (with appropriate compensation) of property can be justified.  "2406 Political authority has the right and duty to regulate the legitimate exercise of the right to ownership for the sake of the common good."
 
9.  Governments can and do imprison and murder.  No corporation does.  Liberals and leftists have a naive faith in the benevolence of government, a faith that is belied by that facts of history: Communist governments in the 20th century murdered over 100 million people. (Source: Black Book of Communism.)  Libs and lefties are well-advised to adopt a more balanced view, tranferring some of their skepticism about corporations — which is in part justified — to Big Giovernment, especially the omni-intrusive and omnicompetent sort of governments they champion.
 
10.  Our social and political troubles are rooted in our moral malaise, in particular, in inordinate and disordered  desire.  It is a pernicious illusion of the Left to suppose that our troubles have an economic origin solely and can be alleviated by socialist schemes of redistribution of wealth.
 
 
To wrap this up. I only hope that my question will not seem too naive, but I would really appreciate your input on the ethical aspects of trading. Thank you for your work and the blogging. It's like a breath of fresh intellectual sanity I get, every time I read your posts.
Rev. Iouri Koslovskii

Ivano-Frankivsk Theological
Academy
Assistant Professor
64 Vasylianok str.
Ivano-Frankivsk 76019,
Ukraine

о. Юрій Козловський
Івано-Франківська Теологічна
Акадеімя
Доцент Кафедри Філософії
вул. Василіанок 64
Івано-Франківськ
76019, Україна

http://koslovskii.org.ua
skype: doniouri 

Mortalism Again

According to Peter Heinegg, mortalism is "the belief that the soul — or spark of life, or animating principle, or whatever — dies with the body. . . ." (Mortalism: Readings on the Meaning of Life,   Prometheus, 2003, p. 9). That anyone should be a mortalist does not surprise me, but it does surprise me that anyone should consider it an "obvious fact" that death is the "irrevocable end" of a person. But this is what Heinegg holds: "Everybody knows that the soul dies with the body, but nobody likes to admit it." (11)

If everybody knows this, then everybody believes it.  But the suicide bomber doesn't  believe it as his behavior attests.  So it is not the case that everybody knows that the soul dies with the body.

If it were the case, radical Islam would not pose the terrible threat it poses.  The commies of the Evil Empire, good materialists that they were, could be threatened with nuclear annihililation should they wax aggressive in their scheme of world domination. Not so the Islamists.

The argument Heinegg gives for his mortalism is a non sequitur, as I already demonstrated. 

Wise Man and Fool on Their Death Beds

Wise man: 

This world is a vanishing quantity.  I am glad soon to be quit of it.  It has nothing to offer in the end but bagatelles that can fool only the foolish and must leave the wise unsatisfied.  Vanitas vanitatum; omnia vanitas.

Fool: 

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the
dying of the light.

Wise man:

Clever verse from a drunken fool to be admired by adolescents.  It amounts to:

Do not go gentle from this dark Cave,
Old age should cherish its lack of sight:
But rage, rage against the gaining of the Light.

More Conservative Contortions to Find Something Positive in the Roberts Opinion

You've read George Will and Charles Krauthammer, no doubt, but perhaps you haven't seen the piece by George Weigel in which we find:

I have no special insight into the mind or motivations of the “human author” of the Obamacare majority opinion; Chief Justice Roberts is certainly not God, and Supreme Court decisions are not “revelation.” But just as the insights that come from history and experience can unveil in biblical texts truths that their authors were only dimly aware of (or that they could not imagine in their own time and context), so there may be truths embedded in the chief justice’s opinion that have implications far beyond the Affordable Care Act — truths that could in fact presage the demise of Obamacare and the beginnings of a new national commitment to building the responsible society.

If the former is hopeful, what should we call the piece by Steve McCann in which a series of recent blows to the conservative cause is taken as sealing the fate of the Left?

Rather less of a stretch is the opinion proffered by R. Emmet Tyrrell:

All things considered we conservatives did not come out so badly, which should demonstrate once again how dangerous Obamacare is. Prior to Chief Justice Roberts' juggling actThursday, the conservative majority on the Court was going to bounce Obamacare and the Liberals could continue their noble work of deauthorizing an entire branch of the federal government, the courts. They could smear the Supreme Court as but another locale where crass conservatives play politics. You know how the otherworldly Liberals disdain mere politics! Now Chief Justice Roberts has responded to the better angels of his nature, and the Liberals are applauding. As I have said, Liberalism is dead.

Let's hope he is right.