February 2013 – Page 3 – Maverick Philosopher

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Early and Late

Early in the Morning, Peter, Paul and Mary. An inspirational way to start the day.

Early in the Morning, same title, different song, Vanity Fare, 1969

Early in the Morning, same title different song again, Eric Clapton. Can a white boy play the blues?

Early Morning Rain, Gordon Lightfoot. There are excellent covers of this great old tune by PP&M and others, but this may be the best version. Written by Lightfoot in '64.

Four Until Late. From Cream's blockbuster debut album, Fresh Cream, 1966. The 1937 Robert Johnson original.

It's Too Late, Chuck Willis, 1956.

It's Too Late, Derek and the Dominoes, 1970, with an intro by Johnny Cash.

It's Too Late, same title, different song, Carole King from her Tapestry album, 1971.

No, I will not link to the Poni-Tail's "Born Too Late" or to Bill Haley and the Comets' "See you Later, Alligator."

Intellectual Maturity

A mark of intellectual maturity is the ability to tolerate uncertainty without fleeing to dogmas that make false certainties of objective uncertainties, but also without falling into a self-vitiating relativism. The ideal is a love of truth that does not flag but also accepts no substitutes.

The Strange World of Simone Weil: God Does and Does Not Exist

In the chapter "Atheism as a Purification" in Gravity and Grace (Routledge 1995, tr. Emma Craufurd from the French, first pub. in 1947), the first entry reads as follows:

A case of contradictories which are true. God exists: God does not exist. Where is the problem? I am quite sure that there is a God in the sense that I am quite sure that my love is not illusory. I am quite sure that there is not a God in the sense that I am quite sure nothing real can be anything like what I am able to conceive when I pronounce this word. But that which I cannot conceive is not an illusion. (103)

What are we to make of writing like this? Contradictories cannot both be true and they cannot both be false. By their surface structure, God exists and God does not exist are contradictories. So, obviously, they cannot both be true if taken at face value.

Faced with an apparent contradiction, the time-tested method for relieving the tension is by making a distinction, thereby showing that the apparent contradiction is merely apparent. Suppose we distinguish, as we must in any case, between the concept God and God. Obviously, God is not a concept. This is true even if God does not exist. Interestingly, the truth that God is not a concept is itself a conceptual truth, one that we can know to be true by mere analysis of the concept God. For what we mean by 'God' is precisely a being that does not, like a concept, depend on the possibility or actuality of our mental operations, a being that exists in sublime independence of finite mind.

Now consider these translations:

God does not exist: Nothing in reality falls under the concept God.

God exists: There is an inconceivable reality, God, and it is the target of non-illusory love.

These translations seem to dispose of the contradiction. One is not saying of one and the same thing, God, that he both exists and does not exist; one is saying of a concept that it is not instantiated and of a non-concept that it is inconceivable. That is not a contradiction, or at least not an explicit contradiction. Weil's thesis is that there is a divine reality, but it is inconceivable by us. She is saying that access to the divine reality is possible through love, but not via the discursive intellect. There is an inconceivable reality.

Analogy: just as there are nonsensible realities, there are inconceivable realities. Just as there are realities beyond the reach of the outer senses (however extended via microscopes, etc.), there is a reality beyond the reach of the discursive intellect. Why not?

An objection readily suggests itself:

If you say that God is inconceivable, then you are conceiving God as inconceivable. If you say that nothing can be said about him, then you say something about him, namely, that nothing can be said about him. If you say that there exists an inconceivable reality, then that is different from saying that there does not exist such a reality; hence you are conceiving the inconceivable reality as included in what there is. If you say that God is real, then you are conceiving him as real as opposed to illusory. Long story short, you are contradicting yourself when you claim that there is an inconceivable reality or that God is an inconceivable reality, or that God is utterly beyond all of our concepts, or that no predications of him are true, or that he exists but has no attributes, or that he is real but inconceivable.

The gist of the objection is that my translation defense of Weil is itself contradictory: I defuse the initial contradiction but only by embracing others.

Should we concede defeat and conclude that Weil's position is incoherent and to be rejected because it is incoherent?

Not so fast. The objection is made on the discursive plane and presupposes the non-negotiable and ultimate validity of discursive reason. The objection is valid only if discursive reason is 'valid' as the ultimate approach to reality. So there is a sense in which the objection begs the question, the question of the ultimate validity of the discursive intellect. Weil's intention, however, is to break through the discursive plane. It is therefore no surprise that 'There is an inconceivable reality' is self-contradictory. It is — but that is no objection to it unless one presupposes the ultimate validity of discursive reason and the Law of Non-Contradiction.

Mystic and logician seem to be at loggerheads.

Mystic: "There is a transdiscursive, inconceivable reality."

Logician: "To claim as much is to embroil yourself in various contradictions."

Mystic: "Yes, but so what?"

Logician: "So what?! That which is or entails a contradiction cannot exist! Absolutely everything is subject to LNC."

Mystic: "You're begging the question against me. You are simply denying what I am asserting, namely, that there is something that is not subject to LNC. Besides, how do you know that LNC is a law of all reality and not merely a law of your discursive thinking? What makes your thinking legislative as to the real and the unreal?"

Logician: "But doesn't it bother you that the very assertions you make, and must make if you are verbally to communicate your view, entail logical contradictions?"

Mystic: "No. That bothers you because you assume the ultimate and non-negotiable validity of the discursive intellect. It doesn't both me because, while I respect the discursive intellect when confined to its proper sphere, I do not imperialistically proclaim it to be legislative for the whole of reality. You go beyond logic proper when you make the metaphysical claim that all of reality is subject to LNC. How are you going to justify that metaphysical leap in a non-circular way?"

Logician: "It looks like we are at an impasse."

Mystic: "Indeed we are. To proceed further you must stop thinking and see!"

How then interpret the Weilian sayings? What Weil is saying is logically nonsense, but important nonsense. It is nonsense in the way that a Zen koan is nonsense. One does not solve a koan by making distinctions, distinctions that presuppose the validity of the Faculty of Distinctions, the discursive intellect; one solves a koan by "breaking through to the other side." Mystical experience is the solution to a koan. Visio intellectualis, not more ratiocination.

A telling phrase from GG 210: "The void which we grasp with the pincers of contradiction . . . ."

But of course my writing and thinking is an operating upon the discursive plane. Mystical philosophy is not mysticism. It is, at best, the discursive propadeutic thereto. One question is whether one can maintain logical coherence by the canons of the discursive plane while introducing the possibility of its transcendence.

Or looking at it the other way round: can the committed and dogmatic discursivist secure his position without simply assuming, groundlessly, its ultimate and non-negotiable validity — in which event he has not secured it? And if he has not secured it, why is it binding upon us — by his own lights?

On the Brevity of Life

The lament comes down through the centuries: Vita brevis est. What is the point of this observation? There are two main possible points.

A. One point, call it classical, is to warn people that this life is not ultimate, that it is preliminary and probationary if not positively punitive, that it is not an end in itself, that it is pilgrimage and preparation for what lies beyond the portals of death. One part of the idea is that the brevity of life shows life's non-ultimacy as to reality and value. Back of this is the Platonic sense, found also in Buddhism, that impermanence argues (relative) unreality and (relative) lack of value. Brevity entails vanity, emptiness. This life is empty and insubstantial, a vanishing quantity, a vain play of interdependent appearances. That which vanishes is vain, empty of self-nature, ontologically and axiologically deficient, if not utterly nonexistent. And all finite things must vanish. Vanity and vanishment are inscribed into their very nature.

The other part of the classical idea is that the vanity of life hides a reality the attainment of which depends on how we comport ourselves in this vale of soul-making behind the veil of sense-induced ignorance (avidya). Since life is short, we must work out our salvation with diligence while the sun shines. For it is soon to set. It is later than we think in a world whose temporal determinations are indices of its relative unreality.

The brevity of life thus points both to its vanity and to the necessity of doing the work necessary to transcend it, toil possible only while caught within its coils. To put it in the form of a little ditty:

Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
Life is short
So renounce it we must.

B. The other point of vita brevis est, call it modern, is to advise people to make the most of life. Precisely because life is short, one must not waste it. Brevity does not show lack of reality or value, pace Plato and his latter-day acolytes such as Simone Weil, but how real and valuable life is. This life is as real as it gets. Make the most of it because there is not much of it but what there is of it is enough for those who are fortunate, who live well, and who do not die too soon.

The attitude here is that life is short but long enough and valuable enough, at least for some of us. One should make friends with finitude enjoying what one has and not looking beyond to what might be. Near the beginning of the The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus quotes Pindar, "O my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible." (Pythian, iii)

Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
Life is short
So party we must.

Which of these attitudes should one adopt toward the brevity of life? At the end of the day it comes down to a free decision on the part of the individual. After all the arguments and counterarguments have been canvassed, you must decide which to credit and which to reject, what to believe and how to live. Or as a gastroenterologist once said,"It depends on the liver."

Defining ‘Accident’

In a comment thread, I offered this definition of 'accident':

D1. A is an accident of substance S =df (i) A is a particular; (ii) A is dependent for its existence and identity on S; (iii) A is predicable of S.

A particular, by definition, is an unrepeatable item. So a substance and one of its accidents are both particulars. To mark the difference between, say, Socrates and his pallor, we can say that the substance is a concrete particular while the accident is an abstract particular. A universal, by definition, is a repeatable item.

David Brightly responds:

Bill, I'm worried about condition (iii). I'm not sure what it means for a particular to be predicable of a substance. I understand what it means for a universal U to be predicable of a substance s, viz, s might instantiate U. But since particulars are unrepeatable no substance can instantiate a particular. For me the notions of universality and instantiation are bound together like opposite poles of a diameter (but perhaps I'm wrong on this). So 'predicable' applied to particulars must mean something else. Does 'p is predicable of s' simply mean that s 'has' p or that p is 'in' s? If this is right another question arises. What work does (iii) do that isn't already built into (i) and (ii) together? Can you give an example where (i) and (ii) hold for particular p and substance s yet p is not an accident of s because p is not predicable of s?

When I say 'My coffee cup is blue,' I am predicating a property of my cup. We predicate properties using predicates. The predicate is a linguistic item, 'blue.' If I were speaking German the predicate would be different, 'blau.' But the property predicated would be the same. When I predicate in overt English speech, I produce a token of the word-type 'blue.' The property, however, is an extralinguistic item. I don't produce it. I am just assuming (though I could easily argue for it) that we cannot get by with predicates alone: we need properties. Properties, or at least some properties, do not depend on the existence of English or any language, not do they depend on the existence of minds.

D2. F-ness is a property =df F-ness is a predicable entity.

D3. Property F-ness is predicable of individual a =df a is F.

D4. The predicate 'F' is true of a =df a is F.

D5. The indicative sentence 'Fa' is true =df a is F.

Given that there are properties, the question arises whether they are universals or particulars. Note that there is nothing in the notion of a property defined as a predicable entity to require that properties be universals. The definition leaves open whether they are universals or particulars.

If blueness is a universal, and not a constituent of the cup, then we can say that the cup instantiates blueness.

D6. U is a nonconstituent universal =df U is possibly instantiated.

If blueness is a particular, and not a constituent of the cup, and is therefore an accident of the cup, then we can say that blueness inheres in the cup.

D7. A is an accident of substance S =df A inheres in S.

Note: not 'possibly inheres,' but 'inheres.' Let us refer to instantiation and inherences as 'ties.' Obviously, they are very different ties.

I think these definitions answer Brightly's first question. If properties are accidents,then properties are predicable without being instantiable.

The second question concerns the work that (iii) does in (D1). Could a particular be dependent on a substance without being predicable of it? I think so. A bulge in a carpet satisfies the first two conditions but not the third.

Admittedly, the sentence, 'The carpet is bulged' predicates bulgedness of the carpet. Bulgedness is a property of the carpet. Bulgedness, however, is not the same as the bulge in the carpet. Suppose the carpet has two bulges in it. Then we have one accident *bulgedness* but two bulges. The accident is a property of the carpet; the bulges are not. If Socrates is freckled, then he has many freckles. But his *freckledness* is one accident.

Gun Control: Controlling the Government’s Guns

A reader referred me to this excellent article by George Reisman. Required reading, especially for anyone who is serious about having a real conversation about gun control, as opposed to a liberal-left 'conversation.'

This article is so good I am tempted to quote from it. But it's all good, so read it all.

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

"Remember, man, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. This warning, from the Catholic liturgy for Ash Wednesday, is based on Genesis 3, 19: In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane, donec revertaris in terram de qua sumptus es: quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris.

How real can we and this world be if in a little while we all will be nothing but dust and ashes?

The typical secularist is a reality denier who hides from the unalterable facts of death and impermanence. This is shown by his self-deceptive behavior: he lives as if he will live forever and as if his projects are meaningful even though he knows that he won't and that they aren't. If he were to face reality he would have to be a nihilist. That he isn't shows that he is fooling himself.

More here.

You Are Going to Die.

Nick Gillespie on Why Youth Favor Obama and Conservatism’s Contradictions

Support for Obama among 18-29 year olds exceeds that of any other age cohort. Reason Magazine's Nick Gillespie argues that Obama is in the process of "screwing them big time." Gillespie is right. What caught my eye, however, was Gillespie's explanation of why conservatives fail to get the youth vote:

I'd argue that what makes "the conservative message" resonate less among younger people is its, well, conservatism on things such as war, alternative lifestlyes, [sic] drug legalization, and immigration. Younger people are less hung up on the sorts of things that really twist conservatives' knickers. And young people then assume that many of the other things that conservatives espouse – such as generally free markets and open trade – are similarly warped. That conservatives are so inconsistent with their basic message – We want smaller government…except when we're talking about immigrants, the gays, and the ability to kill people overseas! – doesn't help matters, either. Most people surely don't prize consistency as much as libertarians do, but the obvious contradictions at the heart of conservative philosophy are off-putting to anyone with the smallest taste for consistency.

As a philosopher, logical consistency looms large for me. And so you will get my attention 'big time' if you can lay out for me "the obvious contradictions at the heart of conservative philosophy." But if they are obvious, then presumably all you need to do is draw my attention to them.

Unfortunately, public intellectuals, not being logically trained as most philosophers are, have an egregiously spongy notion of what a contradiction is. This is true of even very good public intellectuals such as Nat Hentoff and Nick Gillespie. (Hentoff, for whom I have a very high degree of respect, thinks one is being inconsistent if one is pro-life and yet supports capital punishment. He is demonstrably wrong.)

Ignoring Gillespie's invective and hyperbole, his point seems to be that the following propositions are logically inconsistent:

1. The legitimate functions of government are limited.

2. Among the the legitimate functions of government are national defense, securing of the borders, and preservation of traditional marriage's privileged position.

Now it should be obvious that these propositions are logically consistent: they can both be true. They are not logical contradictories of each other.

It is therefore foolish for Gillespie to accuse conservatives of inconsistency. And to speak of obvious inconsistency is doubly foolish. What he needs to do is argue that the governmental functions that conservatives deem necessary and legitimate are neither. This will require a good deal of substantive argumentation and not a cheap accusation of 'inconsistency.' For example, he can mount an economic argument for open borders. I wish him the best of luck with that. He will need it.

Curiously, Gillespie's own reasoning can be used against him. Suppose an anarchist comes along. Using Gillespie's own form of reasoning, he could argue that Gillespie the libertarian is being inconsistent. For he wants smaller government . . . except when it comes to the protection of life, liberty, and property (the Lockean triad, I call it). Then he wants coercive government to do its thing and come down hard on the malefactors. He's inconsistent! If he were consistent in his desire for limited government, he would favor no government. His libertarianism would then collapse into anarchism.

So by his own understanding of consistency, Gillespie is not being consistent. The same reasoning that he uses against conservatives can be used against him. The reasoning is of course invalid in both applications. It is invalid against the libertarian and equally so against the conservative.

But I like his black leather jacket schtick. It is always a pleasure to see him on the O'Reilly Factor.

Not MavPhil Material

'Heisse Lisa' left a self-promoting junk comment that I promptly deleted. If you call yourself 'Hot Lisa' or 'Shithead,' that by itself is grounds for banishment. A little self-deprecation is good, but if you announce by your handle that your skull is feculent, then you demonstrate thereby that you are not MavPhil material.

Why Not Gun Control for the Government?

Liberals have been calling for a 'conversation' about gun control. The call is both silly and disingenuous. Silly, because it is not as if we haven't been talking about this for decades. So suddenly we need to have a 'conversation'? Disingenuous, because what liberals mean by a conversation is more like: you shut up and listen and acquiesce in our point of view or we'll shout you down! Here is Medea Benjamin of CodePink 'conversing' with Wayne LaPierre:

But suppose, contrary to fact, that our leftist pals were serious about a conversation, no scare quotes. Then we would have to discuss not only gun control for citizens, but for government as well. Fair is fair.

There are foolish and irresponsible and criminal individuals among the citzenry and they shouldn't have guns. But it is equally true that there are foolish and irresponsible and criminal people in government and they shouldn't have guns either.

Besides, quis custodiet custodies? Who governs the government? If we can't govern ourselves, but need government to govern us, then the government, which is composed of the same "crooked timber of humanity" (Kant) as we are, needs some entity to keep it in line. That 'entity' is us, the armed citizenry.

Why do we need to be kept in check, but not them? Come on you feel-good liberals, try thinking for a change. Do you really believe that government is inherently benevolent and composed of angels from above? Do you really believe they can be trusted when we can't? Do you think that they are the parents and we the children? Then you are Chris Rock and and your brain is as 'petrified' as his.

Anthony Gregory's Why Not Gun Control for Government? is an extreme piece that I cannot endorse in toto. But it does throw the issue into relief.

Less extreme and more entertaining is Uncle Sam, Give Us Your Guns.

If you know of any more good articles on this topic, shoot me an e-mail.

Benedict XVI: “A Conservative Not in Favor of Reforms”

A Fox News anchor's reportage from earlier today betrays presumably inadvertent bias. The anchor said that Pope Benedict XVI is "a conservative not in favor of many reforms." A reform is not merely a change, but an improvement. The Wikipedia article gets it right: "Reform means the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory, etc."

"A conservative not in favor of reforms" therefore implies that conservatives are not in favor of the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory, etc. And to describe the current pontiff using the phrase in question is to imply that he is not in favor of improvement or amendment of what needs improving or amending.

The Fox News anchor could have avoided the biased formulation by reporting what is true in neutral language, e.g., "The Pope, being a conservative, is skeptical of changes." Or something like that.

Conservatives tend to resist change. That is not to say that conservatives are opposed to what they take to be ameliorative changes. For a conservative, there is a defeasible presumption in favor of traditional beliefs and practices. Note the adjective 'defeasible.' Liberals, being more open to change, lack this presumption in favor of the traditional.

The paragraph I just wrote is an example of neutral writing. It does not take sides; it merely reports a salient difference between conservatives and liberals.

As I have said many times, language matters. It is particularly important that conservatives not adopt the slovenly speech habits of liberals. Much of liberal-left phraseology is rigged to beg questions and shut down debate. That is exactly the purpose of such coinages as 'homophobe' and 'Islamophobe.' To call a person who argues that radical Islam is a serious threat to the West and its values an 'Islamaphobe,' for example, is to deflect attention from the objective content of his utterances so as to focus it on his mental state. Since a phobia is an irrational fear by definition, calling someone an Islamophobe is a way of refusing to engage the content of his utterances. It is a form of the genetic fallacy.

If you are a conservative, don't talk like a liberal!

For example, why do conservatives like O'Reilly and Hannity and Giuliani and a score more play the liberal game and speak of 'assault weapons'? Can't they see that it is an emotive phrase used by the Left — the positions of which are mainly emotion-driven — to appeal to fear and make calm discussion impossible?

Note the difference between 'semi-automatic long gun' and 'assault weapon.' Suppose you did a poll and asked whether ordinary citizen should be permitted to own assault weapons. I am quite sure that you would find that the number answering in the negative would be greater than if you framed the question correctly and non-emotively as "Do you think ordinary citizens should be permitted to own semi-automatic long guns?"

And why does Bill O'Reilly say things like,"Obama is for social justice? 'Social justice' is lefty-talk. it sounds good, but if the folks knew what it meant they would oppose it. See What is Social Justice?

It is the foolish conservative who acquiesces in the slovenly and question-begging speech patterns of liberals.

An Apology to the Shade of William Safire

Language matters, but so does accurate quotation. I thank the illustrious Mr. Lull for his contributions to the high level of quality control here at MavPhil.

Dear Bill,

William Safire came up with a list of what he called "fumblerules." "A fumblerule contains an example contrary to the advice it gives . . . ."* Among them is "Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague."** I think that that fumblerule's what Mr Hitchens misquoted.

Best,
Dave

=====
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fumblerules
**Mr Safire's fumblerules are widely quoted on the web. I checked on this particular one in his book Fumblerules : a lighthearted guide to grammar and good usage (New York : Doubleday, 1990), page [149], and I've quoted it as it appears there.

From: William F Vallicella

To: Dave Lull

Sent: Monday, February 11, 2013 1:27 PM
Subject: Safire Quotation

Dear Dave,

I recently quoted William Safire as having written, "Avoid stock expressions like the plague." I think I got this quotation form Hitchens' final book. Since I object to the passing off of bogus quotations, can you tell me where Safire wrote the above, if he did?

Regards,

Bill V.

Why the Government Underreports the Inflation Rate

An excerpt from an instructive article:

Of course, the low inflation rate also provides the government with breathing room on the fiscal side. Low inflation keeps a limit on the increases that federal agencies are required to pay out to beneficiaries of programs such as Social Security. With the budget so tightly constrained by huge deficits, the low inflation data is essential to government planners.

More chicanery can be seen on the unemployment front. The government currently claims the unemployment rate to be at just 7.9 percent. But when calculating unemployment using the pre-Clinton methodology, SGS finds it to be around 22 percent. SGS does not exclude, as the government does now, all those who have left the workforce out of despair of finding a job, or those who who have accepted part time jobs in lieu of full time employment.

A world of politically manipulated 'official' statistics and misleading Government statements makes investment decisions more difficult. The result is that, despite falsely negative 'real' short-term interest rates and an abundance of debased cash, consumers and corporations continue to hoard cash. While the Dow has in fact surged in nominal terms, the leading U.S. equity funds continue to show significant outflows of investment funds. Rising stock prices have not convinced many Americans to get into the game. This should provide needed perspective on the current media euphoria.

A healthy skepticism about big government is as reasonable as a healthy skepticism about big business.

How to Get Rich Quick!

John Blofeld, Beyond the Gods: Buddhist and Taoist Mysticism (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1974), p. 153:

For the sake of wealth, people already well above the poverty line slave all their lives, not realising that withdrawal from the rat-race would immediately increase rather than diminish their wealth. Obviously anyone who finds the full satisfaction of all his material desires well within his means can be said to be wealthy; it follows that, except by the truly poor, wealth can be achieved overnight by a change of mental attitude that will set bounds to desires. As Laotzu put it, "He who is contented always has enough."