Month: September 2012

An Aphorism of Mine Translated into Slovak

Dear Mr. Vallicella,

My name is Cyril Šebo, I am an English teacher in Slovakia and also a blogger on our national Slovak blogspot

http://cyrilsebo.blog.sme.sk/clanok.asp?cl=309289

Today is The International Day of Translators and in my blog I dared to use one of your thougts from your blog, to show how difficult it can get to translate some thoughful ideas into another language.

Your statement I have borrowed was, "Silence is a grating clangor to the unwhole man."

I also suggested a translation and encouraged the readers to provide their critical analysis and possible (better) translation variants.

The blog post has received a very good following so far, people especially speculated about the poetic figure of "grating clangor" and the philosophical aspect of the "unwhole man."

Somebody also suggested a reversed translation of one of the Slovak versions into English: "Silence is a scratch and clangor in the ear of a man lacking inner integrity."

If your time allows, can you please let us know, whether this is close to your original idea, or is it absolutely ridiculous?

Thank you very much,

Cyril Šebo

Dear Mr. Šebo,

I am glad you enjoyed my aphorism and found it stimulating.  I wrote it on 3 January 1972 while a young man  living in a garret in Salzburg, Austria.  When I opened the skylight in the bathroom I got a view of the Salzburg Festung, 'fastness' being a nice  old poetic English word for Festung.


Salzburg4As for your reverse translation, I would say that it conveys the idea that I was trying to express, but does so in a way that violates one of the rules for a good aphorism.  The good aphorist aims at economy of expression. A good aphorism is terse.  "Scratch and" is superfluous, as is "to the ear."  Clangor is a loud ringing sound; sounds are perceived through the ears; so there is no need to add "to the ear."  'Clangor' has the added virtue of sounding like what it means.  The 'resonance' of the word is diminished by the addition of "scratch and."  "Unwhole man" is a more poetic and economical way of saying "man lacking inner integrity." But that is what I meant.

At the time I wrote the aphorism I may have been reading Max Picard who wrote a book entitled The World of Silence.  Here is something about Picard.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Youth, Fast Cars, and Death

JamesTomorrow is the 57th anniversary of the death of James Dean.  When the young  Dean crashed his low slung silver Porsche Spyder on a lonely California highway on September 30, 1955, he catapulted a couple of unknowns into the national spotlight.  One of them was Ernie Tripke, one of two California Highway Patrol officers who arrived at the scene.  He died  in 2010 at the age of 88.   But what ever happened to Donald Turnupseed, the driver who turned in front of the speeding Dean, having failed to see him coming?  His story is here. In exfoliation of the theme that "speed kills" I present the following for your listening pleasure:

Jan and Dean, Deadman's Curve (1964).  But it is not just boys who are drawn to speed, little old ladies have been known to put the pedal to the metal.  Case in point: The Little Old Lady From Pasadena.

Johnny Bond, Hot Rod Lincoln (1960)

James Dean, Public Service Announcement

James Dean, The 'Chicken' Scene

Beach Boys, Don't Worry Baby

Ike Turner/Jackie Brenston, Rocket 88 (1951).  The first R & R song?  With footage of Bettie Page.

Billy Joel, Only the Good Die Young


James_dean_died_here

 

 

 

 

The Pragmatic and the Evidential: Is It Ever Rational to Believe Beyond the Evidence?

Is it ever rational to believe something for which one has insufficient evidence? If it is never rational to believe something for which one has insufficient evidence, then presumably it is also never rational to act upon such a belief. For example, if it irrational to believe in God and post-mortem survival, then presumably it is also irrational to act upon those beliefs, by entering a monastery, say. Or is it?

W. K. Clifford is famous for his evidentialist thesis that "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything on insufficient evidence." On this way of thinking, someone who fails to apportion belief to evidence violates the ethics of belief, and thereby does something morally wrong. This has been called ethical evidentialism since that claim is that it is morally impermissible to believe on insufficient evidence.  Sufficient evidence is where there is preponderance of evidence.  On ethical evidentialism, then, it is morally permissible for a person to believe that p if and only p is more likely than not on the evidence the person has.

A cognitive evidentialist, by contrast, maintains that one is merely unreasonable to believe beyond a preponderance of evidence.  One then flouts a norm of rationality rather than a norm of morality.

Jeffrey Jordan, who has done good work on this topic, makes a further distinction between absolute and defeasible evidentialism.  The absolute evidentialist holds that the evidentialist imperative applies to every proposition, while the defeasible evidentialist allows exceptions.  Although Clifford had religious beliefs in his sights, his thesis, by its very wording, applies to every sort of belief, including political beliefs and the belief expressed in the Clifford sentence quoted above!  I take this as a refutation of Clifford's evidentialist stringency. For if one makes no exceptions concerning the application of the evidentialist imperative, then it applies also to "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything on insufficient evidence."  And then the embarrassing question arises as to what evidence once could have for the draconian Cliffordian stricture which is not only a morally normative claim but is also crammed with universal quantifiers.

If I took Clifford seriously I would have to give up most of my beliefs about politics, health, nutrition, economics, history and plenty of other things.  For example, I believe it is a wise course to restrict my eating of eggs to three per week due to their high cholesterol content.  And that's what I do.  Do I have sufficent evidence for this belief? Not at all.  I certainly don't have evidence that entails the belief in question.  What evidence I have makes it somewhat probable.  But more probable than not?  Not clear!  But to be on the safe side I restrict my intake of high-cholesterol foods.   What I give up, namely, the pleasures of bacon and eggs for breakfast every morning,  etc. is paltry in comparison to the possible pay-off, namely living  and blogging to a ripe old age.  Surely there is nothing immoral or irrational in my behavior even though I am flouting Clifford's rule.  And similarly in hundreds of cases.

The Desert Rat

Consider now the case of a man dying of thirst in a desert. He comes upon two water sources. He knows (never mind how) that one is potable while the other is poisonous. But he does not know which is which, and he has no way of finding out. Should the man suspend belief, even unto death, since he has insufficient evidence for deciding between the two water sources?  Let us suppose that our man is a philosopher and thus committed to a life of the highest rationality.

Absolute evidentialism implies that the desert wanderer should suspend judgment and withhold assent: he may neither believe nor disbelieve of either source that it is potable or poisonous on pain of either irrationality or an offence against the ethics of belief.

On one way of looking at the matter, suspension of belief  — and doing nothing in consequence — would clearly be the height of irrationality in a case like this.  The desert wanderer must simply drink from one of the sources and hope for the best. Clearly, by drinking from one (but not both) of the sources, his chances of survival are one half, while his chances of survival from drinking from neither are precisely zero. By simply opting for one, he maximizes his chances of reality-contact, and thereby his chances of survival. Surely a man who wants to live is irrational if he fails to perform a simple action that will give him a 50-50 chance of living when the alternative is certain death.

He may be epistemically irrational, but he is prudentially rational.  And in a case like this prudential rationality trumps the other kind.

Cases like this are clear counterexamples to evidentialist theories of rationality according to which rationality requires always apportioning belief to evidence and never believing on insufficient evidence.   In the above case the evidence is the same for either belief and yet it would be irrational to suspend belief. Therefore, rationality for an embodied  human agent (as opposed to rationality for a disembodied transcendental spectator) cannot require the apportioning of belief to evidence in all cases, as Clifford demands. There are situations in which one must decide what to believe on grounds other than the evidential.  Will I believe that source A is potable? Or will I believe that source B is potable? In Jamesian terms the option is live, forced, and momentous. (It is not like the question whether the number of ultimate particles in the universe is odd or even, which is neither live, forced, nor momentous.) An adequate theory of rationality, it would seem, must allow for believing beyond the evidence. It must return the verdict that in some cases, to refuse to believe beyond the evidence is positively irrational. 

But then absolute evidentialism is untenable and we must retreat to defeasible evidentialism.

The New Neighbors

Let us consider another such case. What evidence do I have that my new neighbors are decent people? Since they have just moved in, my evidence base is exiguous indeed and far from sufficient to establish that they are decent people. (Assume that some precisifying definition of 'decent' is on the table.) Should I suspend judgment and behave in a cold, skeptical, stand-offish way toward them? ("Prove that you are not a scumbag, and then I'll talk to you.") Should I demand of them 'credentials' and letters of recommendation before having anything to do with them? Either of these approaches would be irrational. A rational being wants good relations with those with whom he must live in close proximity. Wanting good relations, he must choose means that are conducive to that end. Knowing something about human nature, he knows that 'giving the benefit of the doubt' is the wise course when it comes to establishing relations with other people. If you begin by impugning the integrity of the other guy, he won't like you.  One must assume the best about others at the outset and adjust downwards only later and on the basis of evidence to the contrary. But note that my initial belief that my neighbors are decent people — a belief that I must have if I am to act neighborly toward them — is not warranted by anything that could be called sufficient evidence. Holding that belief, I believe way beyond the evidence. And yet that is the rational course.

So again we see that in some cases, to refuse to believe beyond the evidence is positively irrational. A theory of rationality adequate for the kind of beings we are cannot require that belief be always and everywhere apportioned to evidence.

In the cases just mentioned, one is waranted in believing beyond the evidence, but there are also cases in which one is warranted in believing against the evidence.  In most cases, if the available evidence supports that p, then one ought to believe that p.  But consider Jeff Jordan's case of 

The Alpine Hiker

An avalanche has him stranded on a mountainside facing a chasm.  He cannot return the way he came, but if he stays where he is he dies of exposure.  His only hope is to jump the chasm.  The preponderance of evidence is that this is impossible: he has no epistemic reason to think that he can make the jump.  But our hiker knows that what one can do is in part determined by what one believes one can do, that "exertion generally follows belief," as Jordan puts it.  If the hiker can bring himself to believe that he can make the jump, then he increases his chances of making it.  "The point of the Alpine hiker case is that pragmatic belief-formation is sometimes both morally and intellectually permissible."

We should therefore reject absolute evidentialism, both ethical and cognitive.  We should admit that there are cases in which epistemic considerations are reasonably defeated by prudential considerations.

And now we come to the Big Questions.  Should I believe that I am libertarianly free?  That it matters how I live?  That something is at stake in life?  That I will in some way or other be held accountable after death for what I do and leave undone here below?  That God exists?  That I am more than a transient bag of chemical reactions?  That a Higher Life is possible? 

Not only do I not have evidence that entails answers to any of these questions, I probably do not have evidence that makes a given answer more probable than not.  Let us assume that it is not more probable than not that God exists and that I (in consequence) have a higher destiny in communion with God.  

But here's the thing.  I have to believe that I have a higher destiny if I am to act so as to attain it.  It is like the situation with the new neighbors.  I have to believe that they are decent people if I am to act in such a way as to establish good relations with them.  Believing the best of them, even on little or no evidence, is pragmatically useful and prudentially rational. I have to believe beyond the evidence.  Similarly in the Alpine Hiker case.  He has to believe that he can make the jump if he is to have any chance of making it.  So even though it is epistemically irrational for him to believe he can make it on the basis of the available evidence, it is prudentially rational for him to bring himself to believe.  You could say that the leap of faith raises the probability of the leap of chasm.

And what if he is wrong?  Then he dies.  But if he sits down in the snow in despair he also dies, and more slowly.  By believing beyond the evidence he lives better his last moments than he would have by giving up.

Here we have a pragmatic argument that is not truth-sensitive: it doesn't matter whether he will fail or succeed in the jump.  Either way, he lives better here and now if he believes he can cross the chasm to safety.  And this, even though the belief is not supported by the evidence.

It is the same with God and the soul.  The pragmatic argument in favor of them is truth-insensitive: whether or not it is a good argument is independent of whether or not God and the soul are real.  For suppose I'm wrong.  I live my life under the aegis of God, freedom, and immortality, but then one day I die and become nothing.  I was just a bag of chemicals after all.  It was all just a big joke.  Electrochemistry played me for a fool.  So what?  What did I lose by being a believer? Nothing of any value.  Indeed, I have gained value since studies show that believers tend to be happier people.  But if I am right, then I have done what is necessary to enter into my higher destiny.  Either way I am better off than  without the belief in God and the soul.  If I am not better off in this life and the next, then I am better off in this life alone.

I am either right or wrong about God and the soul.  If I am right, and I live my beliefs, then then I have lived in a way that not only makes me happier here and now, but also fits me for my higher destiny.  If I am wrong, then I am simply happier here and now.

So how can I lose?  Even if they are illusions, believing in God and the soul incurs no costs and disbelieving brings no benefits. 

Hitchens: No Understanding of Religion

Reading Christopher Hitchens' Mortality I was struck once again by how people like him have no understanding of religion at all.   Lacking as they do any religious sense, they can only (mis)understand it from the outside as if it were just a set of strange doctrines. They don't seem to understand that the doctrines are "necessary makeshifts," to borrow a fine phrase from F. H. Bradley,  whereby we undertake to understand the Transcendent.  Failing to appreciate the provisional character of doctrines and dogmatic formulations, people like Hitchens seize upon them as if they were the reality represented and then look for contradictions and absurdities. And of course they find them.  For example, Hitchens sees an absurdity in prayer:

The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right.  Half-buried in the contradiction is the distressing idea that nobody is in charge, or nobody with any moral authority. The call to prayer is self-cancelling. (Mortality, pp. 21-22)

The context makes this this little 'chemo-brain' outburst even less clear, if that is possible.  Prayer, we are told, is the attempt to instruct God on how to set right what he has has got "all wrong."  Now that has nothing to do with what anyone who actually prays means by 'prayer.' Take Plotinus (205-270):

The only way truly to pray is to approach alone the One who is Alone [All-One]. To contemplate that One, we must withdraw into the inner soul, as into a temple, and be still. (Enneads)

Did chatterbox Hitchens ever withdraw into his inner soul and be still?  No?  Then what right does he have to speak of these matters?  This from the Talmud:

He who rises from prayer a  better man, his prayer is answered.

The point here, I take it, is that we don't pray to change God so much as to change and improve ourselves. If we succeed in this, if we succeed in stilling our thoughts, mastering our desires, strengthening our resolutions, and re-directing our aspirations from the base to the noble, then we have succeeded in improving ourselves and our prayer has been answered.  Here, in a similar vein, is Ralph Waldo Emerson from his great essay "Self-Reliance":

Prayer that craves a particular commodity, — any thing less than all good, — is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view.

Hitchens has no understanding of religion or of prayer.  The two are closely linked as William James observed:

Prayer is religion in act; that is, prayer is real religion. (Varieties of Religious Experience, 464)

In his profound incomprehension, Hitchens takes prayer in its crassest petitionary sense, oblivious of the iceberg submerged beneath that paltry tip.

Lacking as he does the religious sensibility, Hitchens is devoid of all sympathy for it, and can't see anything good in it.  His understanding of it is the misundertanding of the outsider.  To understand religion from the outside is  like trying to understand music from the outside as a peculiar sort of acoustic disturbance.  But religion, like music, chess, love, poetry, mathematics, running, science . . . can only be understood from the inside by those who engage in these activities and have the inner predisposition and talent to engage in them.

More on my Non-Identity With My Living Body

Maximilian J. Nightingale writes:

You laid out this syllogism in a recent post:

My living body will  become a dead body; 
I will never become a dead body;
therefore, I am  not identical to a living body.

It seems to me that if "becoming" means the same thing in both the first and the second premises, then one must say that both Bill and his living body will become a dead body, or that neither will.  It seems that where a living body used to be, a dead body will begin to be.  So also, it seems that where Bill used to be, a dead body will begin to be.

I don't see that the reader has refuted the argument.  Yes, 'becomes' means the same in both premises. 

Now the first premise is true:   It is clear that one day my living body will undergo a radical change and become a dead body: the same body that today is alive will on a future date no longer have the property of being alive but will instead have the property of being dead.  (I am assuming some 'normal' way of dying, as opposed to being instantaneously annihilated in a nuclear blast.  More on this in a moment.)  This is an alterational change: one and the same body will exist at different times in different states, first alive, then dead.  So it is not the case, as the reader claims, that "where a living body used to be, a dead body will begin to be."  That would be an existential change, not an alterational one.  It is not the case that a dead body will begin to be; one and the same body will go from being alive to being dead.

The second premise is also true.  When my body dies, I will cease to exist; but when my body dies it won't cease to exist: it will continue to exist for a while as a corpse.  This is an existential change in me, not an alterational change:  I will cease to exist.  It is not the case that I will change in respect of the property of being alive.

Therefore, I cannot be identical to my living body.  'Will no longer exist' is true of me, but not true of my body. 

"But what if you are annihilated in an explosion so that there is no corpse?"  At this point the argument takes a modal turn.  Even if my body does not continue to exist after I cease to exist, it could;  but it is not possible that I continue to exist after I cease to exist.  So again we have a difference in properties and non-identity.

I have been assuming mortalism, the doctrine that I cease to exist when my body dies.  If mortalism is false, and I exist even after the death of my body, then a fortiori I am not identical to my living body.

Obama: Fiscally Clueless

Here.

You say the Republicans are not much better?  I don't disagree.  But think of it this way. 

A jackass and an elephant are heading for a cliff, a fall from which will be fatal.  The jackass, being a jackass, is moving faster towards disaster.  The elephant is moving slower.  You must choose to ride on one or the other.  Upon which animal would you prefer to be mounted?

Obama is an utterly clueless jackass.  With a 'Ryanized' Romney there is some hope that we can avert disaster or at least postpone it.

Am I a Body or Do I Have a Body?

In his latest and last book, Mortality, Christopher Hitchens writes, "I don't have a body, I am a body." (86) He goes on to observe that he has "consciously and regularly acted as if this was [sic] not true."  It is a curious fact that mortalists are among the worst abusers of the fleshly vehicle.  But that is not my theme.

Is a person just his body?  The meditation is best conducted in the first person: Am I just my body?  Am I identical to my body?  Am I one and the same with my body, where body includes brain?  Am I such that, whatever is true of my body is true of me, and vice versa? Let's start with some 'Moorean facts,' some undeniable platitudes.

1. I am not now identical to a dead body, a corpse.  There is, no doubt, a dead body in my future, one with my name on it.  But that lifeless object won't be me.  I will never become a corpse.  I will never be buried or cremated.  I am not now and never will be identical to a dead body.  For when the corpse with my name on it  comes to exist, I will have ceased to exist; and when I cease to exist, it will still exist.  This property difference via the Indiscernibility of Identicals entails the non-identity of me and 'my' corpse. 

'My' corpse is the corpse that will come into existence when I cease to exist, or, if mortalism is false, when I am separated from my body.  Strictly speaking, no corpse is my corpse: hence the scare quotes around 'my.'  But I can speak strictly of my body: my body is the body that is either identical  to me, or is related to me in some 'looser' way. 

2.  I am obviously not identical to a dead body.  And I have just argued that I will never become identical to a dead body.  Am I  then identical to a  living body?  Not if the following syllogism is sound: My living body will become a dead body;  I will never become a dead body; therefore, I am not identical to a living body. 

This argument assumes that if x = y, then whatever is true of x is true of y, and vice versa.  Little is self-evident, but surely this principle is self-evident.  There is something true of my living body that is not true of me, namely 'will become a dead body.'  Therefore, I am not identical to a living body.  And since the only living body I could be identical to if I were identical to a living body would be my living body, I am not identical to my living body.  Of course, I have a living body in some to-be-explored sense of 'have'; the point is that I am not identical to it.

3. Consider now the following rather more plausible identity claim:  I am (identically) a self-conscious animal.  Let's unpack this.  I am a living human animal that says 'I' and means it; I am a thinker of I-thoughts, an example of which is the thought *I am just a self-conscious animal.*  I am self-aware: aware of myself as an object, both as a physical object, a body, through the five outer senses, and as psychological object, a mind, through inner sense or introspection.  Both my body and my mind are objects for me as subject.  As such a self-aware animal, I am aware of being different from my body.  In some sense I must be different from my body (and my mind) if  they are my objects.  'My objects' means 'objects for me as subject.'

Now if you were paying attention you noticed that I made an inferential move the validity of which demands scrutiny.  I moved from

a. I am aware of being different from my body

to

b. I am different from my body.

The materialist is bound to resist this inference.  He will ask how we know that the awareness mentioned in (a) is veridical.  Only if it is, is the inference valid.  He will suggest that it is possible that I have an non-veridical, an illusory, awareness of being different from my body.  I can't credit that suggestion, however.  It cannot be an illusion that I am different from anything I take as object of awareness including my brain or any part of my brain.  That is a primary and indubitable givenness. Awareness is by its very nature awareness of something: it implies a difference between that which is aware, the subject of awareness, and the object of awareness.  Without that difference there could be no awareness of anything.  If the self-aware subject were identical to that object which  is its animal body, then the subject would not be aware of the body. 

4.  Will you say that the body is aware of itself? Then I will ask you which part of the body is the subject of awareness.  Is it the brain, or a proper part of the brain?  When I am aware of my weight or the cut on my arm, is it the brain or some proper part of the brain that is aware of these things?  This makes no sense.  My brain is no more the subject of awareness than my glasses are.  My glasses don't see the wound; I see the wound by the instrumentality of the glasses.  Similarly, my brain doesn't see the wound; I see the wound by the instrumentality of the brain (and the visual cortex, and the optic nerves, and the glasses, etc.)  The fact that my visual awareness is causally dependent on my having a functioning brain does not show that my brain or any part of it is the subject of awareness.  I am not identical to my brain or to any bodily thing.

5.   Who or what asks the question:  Am I identical to this body here?  Does the body ask this question?  Some proper part of the body such as the brain?  Some proper part of this proper part?  How could anything physical ask a question?

"Look, there are are certain physical objects that ask themselves whether they are identical to the physical objects they are, and entertain the (illusory) thought that they might not be identical to the physical objects they are."

This little materialist speech is absurd by my lights since no physical object — as we are given to understand 'physical object' by physics — could do such a thing.   If you insist that some physical objects can, then you have inflated 'physical' so that it no longer contrasts with 'mental.' 

So with all due respect to the late Mr Hitchens, brilliant talker about ideas whose depth he never plumbed, I think there are very good reasons to deny that one is identically one's body.

Further questions:  If I am not identical to any physical thing, can it be inferred that I am identical to some spiritual thing?  If I am not identical to my body or any part thereof, do I then have a body, and what exactly does that mean? 

A Free Press?

Victor Davis Hanson:

There is not really any free press anymore, but instead a Ministry of Truth, in which PBS, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, Newsweek, Time, AP, McClatchy, and Reuters are de facto extensions of the Obama campaign — far more highbrow and adept in disguising their partisanship than an overt Hannity or Limbaugh. Their “journalists” are fed favorable administration leaks when in the old days they had to sue to publish a hit piece. They care little whether ambassadors are left unguarded, or that the U.S. suffers the most costly attack on its air assets since Vietnam, or that administration officials offer lies about Libya that they know cannot be true.

"Ministry of Truth" is an allusion  to an eponymous agency in Orwell's 1984.   Hannity and Limbaugh announce their conservative tilt; the lamestream media shills mendaciously refuse to admit their bias.

Does God Give His Existence Meaning?

Chad McIntosh writes,

Your post We Cannot Be the Source of Our Own Existential Meaning touches on a puzzle that I’ve been wrestling with for several years now. I’d greatly appreciate your thoughts on the following.

Like you, I think meaning is bestowed, or endowed, by agents. However, I may hold a stronger view, which is captured by what I call the Endowment Thesis:

(ET) Any object x has meaning iff x has meaning by virtue of being endowed meaning by one or more agents.

BV:  In the post in question I did not endorse the thesis that meaning is bestowed by agents; I made the conditional claim that if existential meaning is bestowed by each upon himself, then the identification of existential meaning with subjectively bestowed meaning collapses into an elimination of existential meaning.  But your (ET) is plausible and its consequences are worth exploring.

(In fact, I normally state ET as true of value, not meaning. But I think ET holds for both value and meaning. But I’ll follow your post and state the puzzle with meaning instead of value). 

BV:  I think existential meaning has both a teleological and an axiological side.  Thus a meaningful life is a purpose-driven life, but not every purpose-driven life is meaningful: the purpose must have positive intrinsic value. If someone sets himself as the central  task of his life the  parsing of every sentence in Moby Dick, his life has purpose; but since the value of such an accomplishment is questionable, the same goes for the meaningfulness of a life consecrated to such a task.   See Teleological and Axiological Aspects of Existential Meaning.

The puzzle arises when we stipulate that x is God, God has meaning (or is a meaningful being, has a meaningful existence), and that God is the sole inhabitant of a world. So: God has meaning iff God has meaning by virtue of being endowed meaning by one or more agents.

There are two ways this could work: Either God, as a single agent, endows himself meaning, or God is in some way more than one agent (God is whole of which agents are parts—as agents, the parts can endow each other value, and God has meaning by virtue of each of the parts having meaning).

Now, both possibilities seem to require us to say that God does not have meaning logically prior to being endowed meaning (which leads me to think you may reject ET).

BV:  Yes.  Neither God nor Socrates can bootstrap himself into existence.  And it seems that the same goes for meaningfulness: neither can bootstrap his existence into meaningfulness.  So what I argued in my post with respect to finite agents like us holds also for God.  It cannot be the case that God gives his existence meaning. Not even God can be a subjectivist about existential meaning!

But the former possibility—where God has meaning by virtue of endowing himself meaning—requires making sense of endowing oneself meaning, which you—as well as I—find problematic. I have my own objections to this possibility, but I’m curious to what you think of it. Assuming (ET) is true, can God sans creation endow himself meaning (or value)? Would your arguments in the post apply to God with equal force here?

BV: Yes, it seems to me that the arguments apply to God with equal probative force.

Also, I hope we can bracket divine simplicity for the sake of the argument. Thoughts?

BV:  These considerations seem to add up to an argument against your (ET).  The universal quantifier 'any' causes trouble.  But surely some (many, most)  objects are such that their meaning, value, and purpose are not had by them intrinsically but are bestowed upon them by one or more agents acting individually or collectively.  I may assign a rock the purpose of being a paper weight, a purpose that it does not have intrinsically, and to a book that has collectively been assigned a purpose I can add an idiosyncratic purpose such as serving as a door stop or to fuel a fire.  I can use a topographical map to swat a fly, and a flyswatter to scratch my back or direct an orchestra.  Or consider the value of water.  That value, it seems, is not intrinsic to water, but it is also not assigned by me or you or all of us collectively.  But it is relative to our physical need for the stuff.  Water is not intrinsically valuable, else it would be good for electronic gear, paper, and fires.

So it seems safe to say that some purposes, values, and meanings are relative to agents even if those agents don't have the power to assign them arbitrarily.

As for God, he is a counterexample to (ET).  God does not have a purpose because he assigns himself one; he is intrinsically purposive, intrinsically good, intrinsically valuable, intrinsically meaningful.  This intrinsicality would be nicely underpinned by the divine simplicity, but it is not clear that one needs that doctrine to underpin it. 

Now suppose there is no God.  Then human existence is ultimately (as opposed to proximately) meaningless, purposeless, and valueless. But we have the sense that  it is none of these.  This sense gives us reason to seek God, even though it does not furnish materials for a compelling proof of the existence of God.

I have gone out on a limb here, which will afford you an opportunity to practice your sawing skills.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Forgotten Folkies

The Highwaymen were a 'collegiate folk ' outfit that had a big hit in 1961 with Michael Row the Boat Ashore.  Listening to it now after many years, I had forgotten how beautiful it is.  1962 brought them their second hit, Cotton Fields.  The tune is a Leadbelly cover and has been covered in its turn by the Springfields, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Beach Boys, and others.

The Springfields were how Dusty Springfield got her start.  Silver Threads and Golden Needles is another great tune they did.  It is a Wanda Jackson cover and was covered in its turn by Linda Ronstadt.

And while we're on the topic of implements of sewing, we can't go wrong with Jackie De Shannon's Needles and Pins (1963).

If you remember Joe and Eddie, There's a Meetin' Here Tonight, I'll buy you a bowl of menudo at Tres Banderas cantina, Apache Junction, Arizona. Meet me there in an hour.