January 2013 – Page 4 – Maverick Philosopher

Compensation for Decline

I tune in to CNN and hear about some academic who is taking a conspiracy line on the Sandy Hook massacre. Deplorable, but in compensation there is the fascination of watching one's country unravel. We owls of Minerva may not welcome the onset of dusk, but it is the time when we spread our wings. And there is the consolation of knowing that one is fairly well insulated from the effects of the unraveling, both spatially and temporally. Spatially, in that one can afford to live in a safe and defensible enclave. Temporally, in that one can reasonably hope to be dead before things reach their nadir.

Am I depressed? Not in the least. I wake up rarin' to go at another day of banging my head against this predicament we call life. It's all grist for the mill of Minerva: the good, the bad, the ugly, and the indifferent.

Abdication of Authority

According to a news report I just heard, the Taft High School shooter targeted a bully. Rather than blame an inanimate object, the gun, which makes no sense, one ought to blame the parents, teachers, administrators, clergy, and other so-called 'authorities' who have abdicated their authority and allowed bullying to become a serious problem in schools. Which is a more likely explanation of the shooter's behavior, the availability of a gun, or his having been bullied? If had no access to a gun, he could have enployed a knife, a slingshot, a vial of acid, you name it. But if he had no motive to retaliate, he would not have sought any such means.

Again, the problem is not gun culture, but liberal culture.

A Question About Predication and Identity

Chad M. sent me a paper of his in which he illustrates the distinction between the 'is' of predication and the 'is' of identity using the following examples:

1. Joseph Ratzinger is [the] Pope

and

2. Water is H₂O

where the first sentence is proposed as an example of a predication and the second as an identity sentence. If I were to explain the distinction, I would use these examples:

3. Joseph Ratzinger is German

and (for consistency of subject matter)

4. Joseph Ratzinger is Pope Benedict XVI.

(2) and (4) are clearly sentences expressing strict, numerical, identity. Identity is an equivalence relation: reflexive, symmetrical, transitive. It is also governed by the Indiscernibility of Identicals: if x = y, then whatever is true of x is true of y, and vice versa. By these four tests, the 'is' in (4) is the 'is' of identity. The 'is' in (3) expresses a different relation. Frege would say that it is the relation of falling under: the object JR falls under the concept German. That relation fails each of the four tests. It is not reflexive, not symmetrical, etc.

Now my problem is that I don't find (1) to be a clear example of a predication in the way that (3) is a clear example.

Although 'The Pope' is a definite description, not a name (Kripkean rigid designator), (1) could be construed as asserting an identity, albeit a contingent identity, between the object picked out by 'JR' and the object picked out by 'the Pope.' After all, the sentence passes the four tests, at least if we confine ourselves to the present time and the actual world. The relation is reflexive, symmetrical, and transitive. For example, if JR is the Pope, and the Pope is the vicar of Christ, then JR is the vicar of Christ. Furthermore, whatever is true of JR now is also true of the Pope now, and vice versa. So the indiscernibility test is satisfied as well.

Why not then say that (1) expresses contingent identity and that the 'is' is an 'is' of identity, not of predication? The fact that one could maintain this, with some show of plausibility, indicates that Chad's example is not a clear one. That is my only point, actually.

I grant that the notion of contingent identity can be questioned. How could x and y just happen to be identical? For Kripke, identity is governed by the Necessity of Identity: if x = y, then necessarily x = y. This has the interesting implication that if it is so much as possible that x and y are distinct, then x and y are distinct. (Shades of the ontological argument!)

But there are philosophers who propose to speak of contingent sameness relations. Hector Castaneda is one. So I am merely asking Chad why he uses the puzzling and provocative (1) as illustrative of the 'is' of predication.

There is a labyrinth of deep questions lurking below the surface, questions relevant to Chad's real concern, namely the coherence of the Trinity doctrine and its (in)coherence with the doctrine of divine simplicity.

On ‘Socially Conscious’ Investing: Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms

Should one be bothered, morally speaking, that the mutual funds (shares of which) one owns invest in companies that produce alcoholic beverages, tobacco products, and firearms? I say no. 'Socially conscious' is an ideologically loaded phrase, like 'social justice,' and the loading is from the Left.

Alcohol

For some, alcohol is the devil in liquid form. They should avoid the stuff, and it is certainly within their power to do so. For most of us, however, alcohol is a delightful adjunct to a civilized life. What good is a hard run on a hot day that doesn’t eventuate in the downing of a couple of cold beers? To what end a plate of Mama Gucci’s rigatoni, if not accompanied by a glass of Dago Red? I am exaggerating of course, but to make a serious point: alcohol for most us is harmless. Indeed, it is positively good for healthy humans when taken in small doses (1-2 oz. per diem) as numerous studies have been showing for the last twenty years or so.

The fact that many abuse alcohol is quite irrelevant. That is their free choice. Is it Sam Adam’s fault that you tank up on too much of his brew? No, it is your fault. This is such a simple point that I am almost embarrassed to make it; but I have to make it because so many liberals fail to grasp it. So read your prospectuses and be not troubled when you come across names like Seagrams.

I would also point out to the ‘socially conscious’ that if they enjoy an occasional drink, then they cannot, consistently with this fact, be opposed to the production of alcoholic beverages. You cannot drink alcohol unless alcohol is there to be drunk. Consistency demands of them complete abstention.

Tobacco

As for tobacco, suppose we begin by reflecting on this truth: Cigarettes don’t kill people, people kill people by smoking cigarettes, or, to be precise, they increase the probability of their contracting nasty diseases (lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease), diseases which are often but not always terminal, by smoking sufficiently many cigarettes over a sufficiently long period of time. If X raises the probability of Y to a degree <1, I don’t call that causation; I call that probability-raising. It should also be obvious that correlation does not prove causation. So I don’t want to hear about causation in this context.

Nor do I want to hear about addiction. To confuse a psychological habituation with addiction is quite foolish. Addiction, if it means anything, has to involve (i) a physiological dependence (ii) on something harmful to the body (iii) removal of which would induce serious withdrawal symptoms. One cannot be addicted to nose-picking, to running, to breathing, or to caffeine. Furthermore, (iv) it is a misuse of language to call a substance addictive when only a relatively small number of its users develop — over a sufficient period of time with sufficient frequency of use — a physical craving for it that cannot be broken without severe withdrawal symptoms. Heroin is addictive; nicotine is not. To think otherwise is to use ‘addiction’ in an unconscionably loose way. That headache you have from abstaining from coffee is not a severe withdrawal symptom.

Man (or woman) up; don't make excuses.

Liberals and leftists engage in this loose talk for at least two reasons. First, it aids them in their denial of individual responsibility. They would divest individuals of responsibility for their actions, displacing it onto factors, such as ‘addictive’ substances, external to the agent. Their motive is to grab more power for themselves by increasing the size and scope of government: the less self-reliant and responsible individuals are, the more they need the nanny state and people like Hillary, who aspires to be Nanny-in-Chief. Second, loose talk of ‘addiction’ fits in nicely with what I call their misplaced moral enthusiasm. Incapable of appreciating a genuine issue such as partial-birth abortion or the fiscal crisis, they invest their moral energy in pseudo-issues.

The main point is that tobacco products can be enjoyed in relatively harmless ways, just as alcoholic beverages can be enjoyed in relatively harmless ways. I have never met a cigarette yet that killed anybody. One has to smoke them, one has to smoke a lot of them over many years, and each time you light up it is a free decision.

Some people feel that smokers are irrational. This too is nonsense. Someone who smokes a pack of cigarettes per day is assuming a serious health risk. But it may well be that the pleasure and alertness the person receives from smoking is worth the risk within the person’s value scheme. Different people evaluate the present in its relation to the future in different ways. I tend to sacrifice the present for the future, thereby deferring gratification. Hence my enjoyment of the noble weed is abstemious indeed, consisting of an occasional load of pipe tobacco, or an occasional fine cigar. (I recommend the Arturo Fuente ‘Curly Head’ Maduro: cheap, but good.) But I would not think to impose my abstemiousness, or
time-preference, on anyone else.

Firearms

As for firearms, one can with a clear conscience invest in the stock of companies that manufacture them. One thereby supports companies that make it possible for the police and military to be armed. Think about it: without gun manufacturers, there would be no guns, and hence no effective police and military forces. And without gun manufacturers, decent citizens would be unable to defend themselves, their families, and their communities against the criminal element, something they do all the time, though it is rarely publicized by the lamestream media because it comports ill with their leftist agenda. The ‘socially conscious’ or ‘socially responsible’ want the protection afforded by the armed, but without getting their hands dirty. To be wholly consistent, they should go live somewhere where there is no police or military protection.

If the price of 'social consciousness' is logical unconsciousness, then I prefer to be socially unconscious.

Companion posts: Cigarettes, Rationality, and Hitchens Tobacco Insanity in Maricopa County and the Need for Smoke-Ins

I Will Not Be Intimidated

By Steve McCann. Excerpt:

According to the current incarnation of the American left, who traffic constantly in victimhood and noble intentions, I should be in the vanguard of the mandatory gun control and confiscation movement. That somehow it was the inanimate object this soldier was holding and not him that was responsible for the attempt on my life or to ignore the fact that his mindset was such he would have used any weapon at hand to accomplish the same goal.

On the contrary, I own a handgun today because of the experience of coming face to face with the evil that permeates some men's souls. I and the girl I rescued were defenseless. There were no police or armed citizens around and the death of another homeless and unknown boy and girl, buried in an unmarked mass grave, would have been just another easily ignored casualty of the post-War period. I was determined that I would never again face a similar circumstance. I have had in my possession firearms for virtually my entire life, as I have been fortunate to live in the one nation on earth that has embedded in its founding document the right to bear arms.

Today, I am, along with a vast majority of my fellow citizens, being made the scapegoat for the failed policies of the so-called progressives — whether it is the inability of society to deal with extreme psychopaths or the mentally deranged, because the left insists they are entitled to the same rights as other citizens, or the never-ending attempt to rehabilitate criminals incapable of rehabilitation. Consistent with their inability to ever admit a mistake, the left and much of the Democratic Party instead focuses on symbolism over substance and the path of least resistance — going after the law-abiding hard working people who are the backbone of America.

But the motivation is more insidious than that. Those that self-identify as progressives, leftists, socialists or Marxists, have one overwhelming trait in common: they are narcissists who believe they are pre-ordained to rule the masses too ignorant to govern themselves. Over the past thirty years as these extremists fully infiltrated academia, the mainstream media, the entertainment industry and taken over the Democratic Party, the American people have lost many of their individual rights. They are now being told what they can eat, where they can live, who they must associate with, where and how their children must be educated, and soon what medical care they are allowed to access, as well as the type of car they can drive and the amount of energy they are permitted to use.

The last bastion of freedom is unfettered gun ownership, so that too must go. That the left is willfully and egregiously exploiting the actions of a deranged psychopath in the tragic death of 26 people (20 children) in Newtown, Connecticut to achieve this end exposes their true motivation.

Quick and Dirty: Ten Random Notes on the Gun Debate

1. Is anybody against gun control? Not that I am aware of. Everybody wants there to be some laws regulating the manufacture, sale, importation, transportation, use, etc., of guns. So why do liberals routinely characterize conservatives as against gun control? Because they are mendacious. It is for the same reason that they label conservatives as anti-government. Conservatives stand for limited government, whence it follows that that are for government. A simple inference that even a liberal should be able to process. So why do liberals call conservatives anti-government? Because they are mendacious: they are not interested in civil debate, but in winning at all costs by any means. With respect to both government and gun control, the question is not whether but how much.

2. Terminology matters. 'Magazine' is the correct term for what is popularly called a clip. Don't refer to a round as a bullet. The bullet is the projectile. Avoid emotive phraseology if you are interested in serious discussion. 'Assault weapon' has no clear meaning and is emotive to boot. Do you mean semi-automatic long gun? Then say that. Don't confuse 'semi-automatic' with 'fully automatic.' Bone up on the terminology if you want to be taken seriously.

3. Gun lobbies benefit gun manufacturers. No doubt. But they also defend the Second Amendment rights of citizens, all citizens. Be fair. Don't adduce the first fact while ignoring the second. And don't call the NRA a special interest group. A group that defends free speech may benefit the pornography industry, but that is not to say that the right to free speech is not a right for all. Every citizen has an actual or potential interest in self-defense and the means thereto. It's a general interest. A liberal who has no interest in self-defense and the means thereto is simply a liberal who has yet to be mugged or raped or had her home invaded. Such a liberal's interest is yet potential.

4. Question for liberals: what is your plan in case of a home invasion? Call 9-1-1? What is your plan in case of a fire? Call the Fire Department? Not a bad thought. But before they arrive it would help to have a home fire extinguisher at the ready. Ergo, etc.

5. The president and Congress are fiddling while Rome burns. Compared to the fiscal crisis, the gun issue is a non-issue. That really ought to be obvious. There was no talk of it last year. Why not? It looks to be a red herring, a way of avoiding a truly pressing issue while at the same time advancing the Left's totalitarian agenda. One can strut and posture and show how sensitive and caring one is while avoiding painful decisions that are bound to be unpopular and for some pols suicidal. I am talking about entitlement reform. Here's a part of a solution that would get me tarred and feathered. After a worker has taken from the Social Security system all the money he paid in plus, say, 8% interest, the payments stop. That would do something to mitigate the Ponzi-like features of the current unsustainable system.

6. Believe it or not, Pravda (sic!) has warned Americans about draconian gun control. 'Pravda,' if I am not badly mistaken, is Russian for truth. That took real chutzpah, the commies calling their propaganda organ, Truth. Well, the former commies speak truth, for once, here: "These days, there are few things to admire about the socialist, bankrupt and culturally degenerating USA, but at least so far, one thing remains: the right to bear arms and use deadly force to defend one's self and possessions." Read the whole thing. Some days I think the US is turning into the SU what with Obama and all his czars.

7. Nannystaters like Dianne Feinstein ought to think carefully before they make foolish proposals. The unintended consequences may come back to bite them. Gun and ammos sales are through the roof. Although more guns in the hands of responsible, trained, individuals leads to less crime, more guns in civilian hands, without qualification, cannot be a good thing.

8. It doesn't follow, however, that if, per impossibile (as the philosophers say) all guns were thrown into the sea we would be better off. The gun is an equalizer, a peace-preserver, a violence-thwarter. Samuel Colt is supposed to have said, "Have no fear of any man no matter what his size, in time of need just call on me and I will equalize." Granny with her .45 is a pretty good match for an unarmed Tookie Williams.

9. SCOTUS saw the light and pronounced it an individual right. You persist in thinking the right to keep and bear arms is a collective right? I wonder if you think that the right to life is also collective. If my right to life is an individual right, how can my right to defend my life and the logically consequent right to the means to such defense not also be an individual right?

10. My parting shot at the gun-grabbers.

Extremists

And then there are the conservatives (liberals) for whom a refusal to demonize liberals (conservatives) makes you one.

Here is the first stanza of "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939):

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

How to Read an Online Article Without Distraction

I thank long-time blogger buddy Bill Keezer for pointing out something that should have been obvious. To read an online article at a money-grubbing site such as NRO, a site awash with advertising, moving images, noise, and what all else, click on the 'print' icon. The article should appear without the junk. But you knew that already.

I may not have the prettiest 'skin' in the 'sphere, but at my site you will find no advertising, begging, moving images, noise . . . just solid content day after day, year after year.

As one of my aphorisms has it, a blog is to be judged, not by the color of its 'skin' but by the character of its content.

I thank you for your patronage. Rare is the day when traffic dips below 1000 pageviews. In recent days spikes have been in the 3000-4000 range. 2012 was a banner year.

UPDATE: The ever-helpful Dave Lull e-mails:

Usually I prefer using the free Readability browser add-on (the page formatted for printing is often too wide for me to read comfortably and is sometimes not an option):

http://readability.com/addons

Should Newspapers ‘Out’ Those With Whom They Disagree?

Which is morally worse, killing a pre-natal human being or keeping a loaded gun in the house for self-defense? The former, obviously. Both abortion and gun ownership are legal, but one would have to be singularly benighted to think that the keeping is morally worse than the killing, or even morally commensurable with it, let alone morally equivalent to it. It is the difference between taking life and liberty and protecting them. One is wrong, the other is permissible if not obligatory. Therefore, if it would be wrong — and certainly it would be — for a newspaper to publish the names and addresses of abortionists and of women who have had abortions, then a fortiori what The Journal News of White Plains, New York did is wrong. According to the NYT:

Two weeks ago, the paper published the names and addresses of handgun permit holders — a total of 33,614 — in two suburban counties, Westchester and Rockland, and put maps of their locations online.

[. . .]

But the article, which left gun owners feeling vulnerable to harassment or break-ins, also drew outrage from across the country. Calls and e-mails grew so threatening that the paper’s president and publisher, Janet Hasson, hired armed guards to monitor the newspaper’s headquarters in White Plains and its bureau in West Nyack, N.Y.

Personal information about editors and writers at the paper has been posted online, including their home addresses and information about where their children attended school; some reporters have received notes saying they would be shot on the way to their cars; bloggers have encouraged people to steal credit card information of Journal News employees; and two packages containing white powder have been sent to the newsroom and a third to a reporter’s home (all were tested by the police and proved to be harmless).

Note the double standard. Hasson hired armed guards. Two points. First, she apparently grasps the idea of guns being used defensively when it comes to her defense. Why not then generally? Second, these armed guards are not agents of the government. They are in the private sector. Why didn't she simply rely on the cops to protect her? After all, that's the liberal line: 'There is no need for civilians to have guns; their protection is the job of the police.' Hasson's behavior smacks of hypocrisy.

Threatening and harrassing the editors and writers at the newspaper is obviously wrong. But publishing their names and addresses cannot be wrong if what the paper did is not wrong. I say both are wrong. The publisher and the editor exercised terrible judgment in a misguided attempt to drive up circulation. But now it has come back to bite them, and one hopes they will be driven out of business for their rank irresponsibility.

Responsible people consider the consequences of their actions. Not everything one has a right to do is right to do. Responsible people also consider the consequences of their speech. Contrary to what some foolish civil libertarians think, speech is not just words. Not everything one has a right to say is right to say. To say or do anything that is likely to incite violence is ceteris paribus wrong, whether it is legal or not.

Example. Blacks as a group are more criminally prone than whites as a group. That is true, and one certainly has a right, in general, to say it publically. But is is easy to imagine circumstances in which saying it publically would incite violence. In those circumstances the saying of it would be wrong despite the truth and indeed the importance of what is said.

One might accuse me of being too reasonable with our enemies. One might remind me of one of my own aphorisms:

Time to be unreasonable. It is not reasonable to be reasonable with everyone. Some need to be met with the hard fist of unreason. The reasonable know that reason's sphere of application is not limitless.

Applied to the present case, one could argue, or I could argue against myself, that if the leftist scumbags at The Journal News want a civil war, they ought to get one. What they do to us we should do right back at them. For all's fair in love and war. They ought also to consider, for their own good, that is is foolish for a bunch of candy-assed liberals to take on armed men and women.

Fiscal Irresponsibility as Politically Rational: The Fiscal Prisoners’ Dilemma

Glenn Hubbard and Tim Kane, Regaining America's Balance. Excerpt:

There are two paths toward reducing deficits and debts of the magnitude we face: raising taxes or cutting spending. A balanced compromise would involve some amount of both, but the two political parties face strong electoral incentives to do neither. If Republicans push for reduced spending, they are criticized for taking away the benefits people rely on. If Democrats push for raising taxes, they are decried for swiping workers' hard-earned dollars. Both solutions are seen as taking money away from voters, and are thus fraught with political peril.

Consider the matrix above, in which both Republicans and Democrats in Congress have two policy choices. Republicans always promise lower taxes, so their choice is whether to cut or maintain spending levels. Democrats, in contrast, want to keep spending high, so their choice is whether to raise taxes or keep them low.

A close look at the matrix shows that it is politically rational for the Republicans to maintain today's unsustainable levels of spending when faced with either behavior from Democrats. And, campaign rhetoric aside, that is what they tend to do. Republicans have learned that whenever they actually legislate spending cuts, they are attacked by their opponents and tend to lose elections. They are not keen to do the fiscally responsible thing when the price is giving up power.

Likewise, whether Republicans cut or maintain spending, Democrats are politically better off if they allow taxes to stay low. This explains why, despite President Obama's rhetoric about raising taxes, he and other Democrats have generally refrained from actually doing so, especially at the levels needed to pay for their spending. That the expiration of the Bush tax cuts was postponed until after the 2012 election was not a coincidence.

To be sure, politicians in both parties make noises about good economic choices (from their perspectives) that balance the budget, but their actual behavior is what matters. President George W. Bush oversaw the expansion of spending on entitlements, as well as on defense, education, and other discretionary programs. President Obama serially preserved Bush's tax cuts. Politicians know what is best for the country in the long term, but they have no easy way to change their behavior now during a period of polarization in which the institutions and incentives are set up for imbalance.

This amounts to an institutional failure. For most of the nation's history, the rules of the budget game worked. Today, however, they no longer function. Politically rational behavior is now fiscally perverse. Addressing this institutional failure thus requires changing the rules of game. The only remedy to our political prisoners' dilemma, therefore, is to change those rules so that they in fact rule out structural fiscal imbalance — by imposing painful penalties on lawmakers for failing to budget responsibly.

The Stove ‘Dilemma’ and the Lewis ‘Trilemma’

This from R. J. Stove, son of atheist and neo-positivist, David Stove:

When the possibility of converting to Catholicism became a real one, it was the immensity of the whole package that daunted me, rather than specific teachings. I therefore spent little time agonizing over the Assumption of Mary, justification by works as well as faith, the reverencing of statues, and other such concepts that traditionally irk the non-Catholic mind.

Rather, such anguish as I felt came from entirely the other direction. However dimly and inadequately, I had learnt enough Catholic history and Catholic dogma to know that either Catholicism was the greatest racket in human history, or it was what it said itself that it was. Such studying burned the phrase "By what authority?" into my mind like acid. If the papacy was just an imposture, or an exercise in power mania, then how was doctrine to be transmitted from generation to generation? If the whole Catholic enchilada was a swindle, then why should its enemies have bestirred themselves to hate it so much? Why do they do so still?

This reminds me of the famous 'trilemma' popularized by C. S. Lewis: Jesus is either the Son of God, or he is a lunatic, or he is the devil. This trilemma is also sometimes put as a three-way choice among lord, lunatic, or liar. I quote Lewis and offer my critical remarks here.

Just as I cannot accept the Lewis 'trilemma' — which is not strictly a trilemma inasmuch as not all three prongs are unacceptable — I cannot accept the Stovian 'dilemma' which strikes me as a text-book case of the informal fallacy of False Alternative. ". . . either Catholicism was the greatest racket in human history, or it was what it said itself that it was." Why are these the only two alternatives? The Roman Catholic church claims to be the one, true, holy, catholic (universal), and apostolic church. One possibility is that the Roman church was all of these things before various linguistic, political, and theological tensions eventuated in the Great Schism of 1054 such that after that date the one, true, etc. church was the Orthodox church of the East. After all, both can and do trace their lineage back to Peter, the 'rock' upon whom Christ founded his church. That is at least a possibility. If it is actual, then the present Roman church would be neither a racket nor what it claims to be. It would be a church with many excellences that unfortunately diverged from the authentic Christian tradition.

Or it could be that that true church is not the Roman church but some Protestant denomination, or maybe no church is the true church: some are better than others, but none of the extant churches has 'cornered the market' on all religiously relevant truth. It might even be that it is impossible that any church be the true church and final repository of all religous truth.

I get the impression that Stove has a burning desire to belong to a community of Christian believers, is attracted to the Roman church for a variety of reasons, some of them good, and then concocts an worthless argument to lend a veneer of rationality to his choice. That is not so say his choice was not a good one. Better a Catholic than a benighted positivist like his father.

My point is a purely logical one: his alternative is a false alternative. I am not taking sides in any theological controversy. Not in this post anyway.

The Defense Mechanisms of the Anti-Gunners

Raging Against Self Defense: A Psychiatrist Examines the Anti-Gun Mentality (Hat tip: Seldom Seen Slim)

Political Correctness: Black Thuggery not Reported as Black

Rod Dreher reports in The Mall Killers.

It is wise to remember that PC originated with the CP. Dorothy Healey on Political Correctness.

Animal Sacrifice

I recently presented an alternative to the conceit shared by both atheists and immature religionists that religion is static, a closed system of doctrines and practices insusceptible of development and correction and refinement. The following is a bit of evidence for the alternative.

The ancients sacrificed animals outside them on the altar of divine worship. Progress was made when more spiritually advanced individuals realized that it is the animal in them that needs sacrificing. Slaughtering a prized animal such as a lamb and offering it up is crude and external and superstitious. What needs to be offered up is our base nature which is grounded in our animality but is a perversion of it.

But what if God commands Abraham to sacrifice that animal outside him that is is own son Isaac? Abraham should conclude that it cannot be God who is so commanding him. I argue this out in detail in Abraham, Isaac, and an Aspect of the Problem of Revelation and in Kant on Abraham and Isaac.

Addendum (1/7/13): S.N. was reminded of this quotation fromPorphyry, De Abstinentia II, 61:

θεοῖς δὲ ἀρίστη μὲν καταρχή· νοῦς καθαρὸς καὶ ψυχὴ ἀπαθής

The best offering to the gods indeed is this: a pure mind and a soul free from passions.

That is my meaning exactly.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Three Unforgettable Albums from 1970

I can't speak for my housemates at the time, Ken Bower and Craig Fellin, but these three albums were my favorites among the ones we listened to, and the selections are my favorites from each.

1. Bob Dylan, New Morning (released 19 October 1970). Sign on a Window. If any song puts me in mind of Craig, it is this one. That's him to the left. He is the proprietor of the Big Hole Lodge in Montana.

Build me a cabin in Utah
Marry me a wife
Catch rainbow trout
Have a bunch of kids who call me 'Pa'
That must be what it's all about
Thta must be what it's all about.

After his motorcycle accident in 1966, the protean Dylan moved closer to the earth and farther from the mind. Gone the despair and the absurdist imagery of It's Alright Ma I'm Only Bleeding (from Bringing It All Back Home, 1965) and Desolation Row (unfortunately, this is the 'stoned' version, but it too is oddly beautiful) and the haunting Visions of Johanna (from Blonde on Blonde, 1966).

2. George Harrison, All Things Must Pass (released 27 November 1970). The title song. "All things must pass/All things must pass away."

3. Derek and the Dominoes, Layla (released November 1970). The title song. The best part begins at 3:10. It still rips me up, 42 years later.

I wouldn't want to relive those early years. But what I lacked in happiness, I made up for in intensity of experience. Ken and Craig had no small part in that.