London Karl refers me to this piece by Stephen H. Webb in which we read (emphases added):
I recently reviewed Hart’s new book, The Experience of God, at First Things. Hart defends three basic points: First, there was a consensus among ancient philosophers and theologians regarding the simplicity of God. Divine simplicity can be stated in many ways, but it basically means that God has no parts. Or you could just say that God is immaterial (since anything material can be divided). Second, this consensus was shared by nearly all the world’s oldest religions. Third, this consensus is crucial for the Christian faith. It is, in fact, the only way to make sense of God, and thus it is fundamental for everything that Christians believe and say about the divine.
The first bolded passage is inaccurate. On traditional theism God is of course immaterial, and is maintained to be such by all traditional theists. But the doctrine of divine simplicity is not identical to the claim that God is immaterial, a claim rejected by many traditional theists. The simplicity doctrine entails the immateriality doctrine, but not vice versa. Thus the simplicity doctrine says more than the immateriality doctrine. If God is simple, then God has and can have no (proper) parts, hence has and can have no material parts; a simple God is therefore an immaterial God given that every material thing is partite, actually or potentially. But an immaterial God needn't be simple. The simplicity doctrine implies that there are no real distinctions among:
God and his existence
God and his attributes
Any divine attribute and any other one
Existence and nature in God: God doesn't have, he is, his nature.
Potency and act in God: God is actus purus.
Matter and form in God: God is forma formarum.
Consider God and the attribute of omniscience. According to the simplicity doctrine, God does not exemplify omniscience; he is (identical to) omniscience. And the same holds for all the divine attributes. For each such attribute A, God does not have (exemplify) A; he is (identical to) A.
Someone who holds that God is immaterial, however, holds that God has no material parts (and also no spatial parts, and no temporal parts if there are temporal parts). One can hold this consistently with holding that God is disinct from his attributes as he must be if he exemplifies them, exemplification either being or being very much like a dyadic asymmetrical relation.
But what if one were a constituent ontologist who thought that the attributes of a thing are parts thereof (in some suitably extended, non-mereological sense of 'part')? Then too the simplicity doctrine would not be identical to the immateriality doctrine. For immateriality has to do with a lack of material parts while simplicity has to do with a lack of material and 'ontological' parts such as attributes.
As for the second bolded passage, it is certainly false. Webb needs to read Plantinga and Swinburne.
A tribute to Dave Lull. If he ever publishes a blog, he might name it "Lullabies." But then again he might not.
Matter: solid, liquid, gaseous, conscious? Bullshit in a gaseous state? Do physicists ever bullshit? You bet they do. See here and here. Am I anti-science? Obviously not. I am anti-bullshit.
The perils of the royal game: Man admits to eating landlord's heart following dispute over chess move. With or without Tabasco sauce? (HT: Brandon Smith)
The Left's methods make Governor Christie look like Little Bo Beep.
Greetings from the least free state in the union (so says a George Mason study, anyway).
I thought you might appreciate an example of the terrible policy that leftist irrationality leads to.
I am a proud owner of a Smith and Wesson .38 revolver. I received this gun as a gift while I lived in Texas. In 2012 my wife and I moved to Rochester, NY. I thought that it would probably be a good idea to check the gun laws in the state. I discovered that I had to be approved for a license to keep a handgun in my own house.
Despite this affront to my freedom, I decided I wanted to be a law abiding citizen. I found the application for the license online, only to read this, "…the processing of a pistol permit application can take approximately 6 to 9 months. This time-frame is just an estimate, and not a guarantee. Applications may take longer than 9 months to be processed."
How absurd! I guess if a burglar breaks into my house, I'll kindly tell him to return in 6 to 9 months, at which time I can properly defend myself, my wife, and my baby daughter.
The application packet, which is 24 pages in total (to be fair and honest, some of those 24 pages were blank, and some were directions. They are not all for info that I must provide them.), only grew more absurd. A couple pages in, I learn that I must provide four character references from people who have known me since I moved here and are residents of the county in which I live. Furthermore, since I have not lived here for 3 years, I must provide 3 additional notarized character references from persons from the state or county in which I previously lived.
I'm sure it will come as no surprise that I am having second thoughts about completing this application. There are so many obstructions to me exercising my right that I don't know if I want to exert the effort to break past them all.
Best to you in this new year,
J. S.
It is small consolation, but it would be worse for my reader if he lived in NYC. Cf. John Stossel's experience with the hoplophobes.
I spent most of yesterday troubleshooting, but no fix yet. But adversity is good, up to a point. I have been forced to learn how to use this iPad Air. And I have learned more than I wanted to know about device drivers. Blogging from the iPad, however, is a royal PITA.
Addendum (1/16). Solved the problem myself yesterday with the help of a man down the street and in the process saved myself a lot of money. Good old American self-reliance can come in handy. Learned a lot by doing it myself, but I won't bore you with the details except to say that part of the trick is to think about the problem as carefully and systematically as possible, trying all the obvious solutions first. Turned out to be a hardware problem internal to the computer. But the fix was as easy as inserting a new network adapter which only costed a few dollars.
Trouble with my desk top machine forces me to learn how to blog from this, my first tablet, an iPad Air. I hope to be back in the saddle some time tomorrow.
Dennis Prager was complaining one day about how the Left ridicules the Right. He sounded a bit indignant. He went on to say that he does not employ ridicule. But why doesn't he? He didn't say why, but I will for him: Because he is a gentleman who exemplifies the good old conservative virtue of civility. And because he is a bit naive.
Prager's behavior, in one way laudable, in another way is not, resting as it does on an assumption that I doubt is true at the present time. Prager assumes that political differences are more like intellectual differences among gentlemanly interlocutors than they are like the differences among warring parties. He assumes that there is a large measure of common ground and the real possibility of mutually beneficial compromise, the sort of compromise that serves the common good by mitigating the extremism of the differing factions, as opposed to that form of compromise, entered into merely to survive, whereby one side knuckles under to the extremism of the other.
But if we are now in the age of post-consensus politics, if politics is war by another name, then it is just foolish not to use the Left's tactics against them.
It is not enough to be right, or have the facts on your side, or to have the better arguments. That won't cut it in a war. Did the Allies prevail over the Axis Powers in virtue of having truth and right on their side? It was might that won the day, and, to be honest, the employing of morally dubious means (e.g., the firebombing of Dresden, the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), the same sort of means that the Axis would have employed had they been able to. One hopes that the current civil war doesn't turn bloody. But no good purpose is served by failing to understand that what we have here is a war and not minor disagreements about means within the common horizon of agreed-upon assumptions, values, and goals.
Have we entered the age of post-consensus politics? I think so. I should write a post about our irreconcilable differences. For now a quick incomplete list. We disagree radically about: the purpose of government; crime and punishment; race; marriage; abortion; drugs; pornography; the interpretation of the Consitution; religion; economics.
Take religion. I have no common ground with you if you think every vestige of the Judeo-Christian heritage should be removed from the public square, or take the sort of extremist line represented by people like Dawkins and A. C. Grayling. If, however, you are an atheist who gives the Establishment Clause a reasonable interpretation, then we have some common ground.
In consideration of Governor Christie's troubles over a bridge, it seems more than fitting that we should devote tonight's 'show' to any bridge songs there might be, starting, naturally, with
Bridge Over Troubled Waters, Simon and Garfunkel. The boys are getting old, but the magic is still there. On a lighter note,
Marijuana legalization may be the same-sex marriage of 2014 — a trend that reveals itself in the course of the year as obvious and inexorable. At the risk of exposing myself as the fuddy-duddy I seem to have become, I hope not.
This is, I confess, not entirely logical and a tad hypocritical. At the risk of exposing myself as not the total fuddy-duddy of my children's dismissive imaginings, I have done my share of inhaling, though back in the age of bell-bottoms and polyester.
I fail to see what is illogical about Marcus's taking a position today that differs from the position she took back when she wore bell bottoms. Logic enjoins logical consistency, not such other types as consistency of beliefs over time. Here is a pair of logically contradictory propositions:
Marijuana ought to be legalized Marijuana ought not be legalized.
Here is a pair of logically consistent propositions:
Marcus believed in 1970 that marijuana ought to be legalized Marcus believes in 2014 that marijuana ought not be legalized.
There is nothing illogical about Marcus's change of views.
And surely there is nothing hypocritical about Marcus's wising up up and changing her view. To think otherwise is to fail to understand the concept of hypocrisy.
I once heard a radio advertisement by a group promoting a "drug-free America." A male voice announces that he is a hypocrite because he demands that his children not do what he once did, namely, use illegal drugs. The idea behind the ad is that it is sometimes good to be a hypocrite.
Surely this ad demonstrates a misunderstanding of the concept of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is a moral defect. But one who preaches abstinence and is abstinent is morally praiseworthy regardless of what he did in his youth. Indeed, his change of behavior redounds to his moral credit.
A hypocrite is not someone who fails to live up to the ideals he espouses, but one who does not attempt to live up to the ideals he espouses. An adequate definition of hypocrisy must allow for moral failure. An adequate definition must also allow for moral change. One who did not attempt to live up to the ideals he now espouses cannot be called a hypocrite; the term applies to one who does not attempt to live up to the ideals he now espouses.
Marcus embraces Pee-Cee lunacy in the following passage (emphasis added):
I'm not arguing that marijuana is riskier than other, already legal substances, namely alcohol and tobacco. Indeed, pot is less addictive; an occasional joint strikes me as no worse than an occasional drink. If you had a choice of which of the three substances to ban, tobacco would have to top the list. Unlike pot and alcohol, tobacco has no socially redeeming value; used properly, it is a killer.
Well, I suppose one cannot expect clear and independent and critical thinking and proper use of language from a mere journalist.
What, pray tell, is the proper use of tobacco? Smoked in pipes and in the form of cigars it is assuredly not a killer. One does not inhale pipe or cigar smoke. And while cigarette smoke is typically inhaled, no one ever killed himself by smoking a cigarette or a pack of cigarettes. (People have died, however, from just one drinking binge.) To contract a deadly disease such as lung cancer or emphysema, you must smoke many cigarettes daily over many years. And even then there is no causation, strictly speaking.
Smoking cigarettes is contraindicated if you desire to be optimally healthy: over the long haul it dramatically increases the probability that the smoker will contract a deadly disease. But don't confuse 'x raises the probability of y' with 'x causes y.' Cigarettes did not kill my aunts and uncles who smoked their heads off back in the day. They lived to ripe old ages. Aunt Ada to 90. I can see old Uncle Ray now, with his bald head and his pack of unfiltered Camels.
Why are liberals such suckers for misplaced moral enthusiasm?
Tobacco has no socially redeeming value? What a stupid thing to say! Miss Marcus ought to hang out with the boys at a high-end cigar emporium, or have breakfast with me and Peter and Mikey as we smoke and vape at a decidely low-end venue, Cindy's Greasy Spoon. For the record: I do not smoke cigarettes.
Just as alcohol in moderation is a delightful adjunct to a civilized life, a social lubricant and an aid to conviviality, the same is true of tobacco.
Which to ban if one of the three were to be banned? Alcohol obviously! Stop being a dumbassed liberal and try thinking for a change. How many auto accidents have been caused by smokers of tobacco as compared with drinkers of alcohol? Are you aware that the ingestion of nicotine increaases alertness? How many men beat their women and children under the influence of tobacco?
Banned on the Left Coast in the People's Republic of Californication! It figures. It's sad to see what has become of my native state. But I am fortunate to flourish in Arizona where bright sun and hard rock and self-reliant liberty-lovers have a suppressive effect on the miasma of leftists. So with a firm resolve to stick it to the nanny-staters I headed out this afternoon in my Jeep Liberty to Costco where not a single incandescent was to be had. So I went to Lowe's and cleaned 'em out. I bought four 24-packs. Three packs were Sylvania 60W 130V A19's @ $10.03 per pack and one pack was Sylvania 100W 130V A19's @12.02 per pack. Total: $42.11 for 96 bulbs. That comes to less than 44 cents per bulb.
The 130 volt rating means that I will get plenty of life out of these bulbs at the expense of a negligible reduction in illumination. A voltage check at a wall socket revealed that I'm running just a tad below 120 V.
And now I am reminded of what were supposed to have been Goethe's last words: Licht, Licht, mehr Licht! Light, light, more light!
………………..
Today I went to Home Despot Depot to bag the last of their stock. I bought 24 4-packs of Phillips 60W A19 1000 hour soft white bulbs @ $1.47 per 4-pack. So I paid $35.28 for 96 bulbs. That comes to less than 37 cents per bulb. Nice warm cheap light.
I reckon I'll burn out before they all do.
So that's my politically incorrect act for the day. Or at least one of them.
Richard Hennessey questions the distinction between existentially loaded and existentially neutral senses of 'sees' and cognates. He quotes me as saying:
'Sees’ is often taken to be a so-called verb of success: if S sees x, then it follows that x exists. On this understanding of ‘sees’ one cannot see what doesn’t exist. Call this the existentially loaded sense of ‘sees’ and contrast it with the existentially neutral sense according to which ‘S sees x’ does not entail ‘X exists.’
I should add that I consider the existentially neutral sense of 'see' primary for the purposes of epistemology. For if visual perception is a source (along with tactile, auditory, etc. perception) of our knowledge of the existence of material things, then it seems obvious that the perception verbs must be taken in their existentially neutral senses. For existentially loaded uses of these verbs presuppose the mind-independent existence of material things.
So here is a bone of contention between me and Hennessey. I maintain that seeing in the epistemologically primary sense does not entail the existence, outside the mind, of that which is seen. Hennessey, I take it, disagrees.
We agree, however, that a parallel distinction ought not be made with respect to 'knows': there is no legitimate sense of 'knows' according to which 'S knows x' does not entail 'x exists.' Now consider this argument that Hennessey's discussion suggests:
1. Every instance of seeing is an instance of knowing
2. Every instance of knowing is existence-entailing
Therefore
3. Every instance of seeing is existence-entailing.
I reject the initial premise, and with it the argument. So I persist in my view that seeing an object does not entail the existence of the object seen. Hennessey and I agree that seeing is an intentional or object-directed state of the subject: one cannot see without seeing something. Where we disagree is on the question whether there are, or could be, cases in which the object seen does not exist.
I would say that there are actual cases of this. Suppose a person claims to have seen a ghost and behaves in a manner that makes it very unlikely that the person is lying or joking. (The person may be your young daughter with whom you have just watched an episode of "Celebrity Ghost Stories.") The person is trembling with fear as she recounts her experience and describes its object in some detail, an object that is of course distinct from the experiencing. (Describing an ugly man with a wart on his nose, she is describing an object of experiencing, not the experiencing as mental act.) Now suppose you are convinced that there are no ghosts. What will you say to the person? Two options:
A. You didn't see anything: ghosts do not exist and you can't see what does not exist!
B. You saw something, but what you saw does not exist, so have no fear!
Clearly, the first answer won't do. The subject had a terrifying visual experience in which something visually appeared. If you give the first answer, you are denying the existence of the subject's visual experience. But that denial involves unbearable chutzpah: the subject, from her behavior, clearly did have a disturbing object-directed experience. You are presumably also confusing not seeing something with seeing something that does not exist. That would be a sort of operator shift fallacy. One cannot validly move from
S sees something that does not exist
to
It is not the case that S sees something.
The correct answer is (B). The person saw something, but what she saw does not exist.
In dreams, too, we sometimes see what does not exist. I once had a dream about my cat, Maya. It was an incredibly vivid dream, but also a lucid one: I knew I am was dreaming, and I knew that the cat that I saw, felt, and heard was dead and gone, and therefore nonexistent (assuming presentism). And so I philosophized within the dream: this cat does not exist and yet I see and hear and feel this cat. Examples like this, which of course hark back to Descartes' famous dream argument, are phenomenological evidence that we sometimes perceive objects that do not exist.
(There are those who will 'go adverbial' here, but the adverbial theory gets the phenomenology wrong, among other things.)
Hallucinations and dreams provide actual (nonmodal) examples of cases in which we perceive what does not exist. But even if we never dreamt or hallucinated, we would still have (modal) reason to deny the validity of the inference from 'S sees x' to 'X exists.' For suppose I see a tree, one that exists apart from my seeing it. My perception would in that case be veridical. But it is an undeniable phenomonological fact that there is no intrinsic difference, no difference internal to the experience, between veridical and nonveridical perception. That is: there is no feature of the intentional object that certifies its existence outside the mind, that certifies that it is more than a merely intentional object. It is therefore logically possible that I have the experience of seeing a tree without it being the case that the object of the experience exists. Since the object seen is what it is whether or not it exists, I cannot validily infer the existence of the object from my seeing it. It is possible that theobject not exist even if in actuality the tree perceived exists extramentally.
What I am saying is consistent with perception being caused in the normal cases. For me to see an existing green tree it is causally necessary that light of the right wavelengths enter my retina, that my brain be supplied with oxygenated blood, etc. What I am saying is inconsistent, however, with a philosophical (not scientific) theory according to which causation is logically necessary for perception. So consider a third senses of 'sees' according to which there are two logically necessary conditions on seeing, first, that the object seen exists, and second, that the object seen stand in the right causal relation to S. This is a gesture in the direction of a causal theory of perception according to which causation is a logical ingredient in perception.
What I am maintaining is clearly inconsistent with such a philosophical theory. For if the proverbial drunk literally (not figuratively) sees the proverbial pink rat when in the grip of delirium tremens, a rat that does not extramentally exist, then his seeing cannot involve causation from the side of the rat. For presumably an existent effect cannot have a nonexistent cause.
The war on poverty has been conducted partly in earnest and partly self-servingly. No doubt programs such as Head Start were launched with a great deal of idealism, but as their ineffectiveness became apparent, it was not idealism that sustained them but political self-interest. Providing at best temporary relief to the poor, the permanent welfare bureaucracies benefit Democrats by creating thousands of well-paid positions for their political allies and subsequent campaign contributions for their candidates. Head Start today is a money-laundering program through which federal expenditures are transmitted to Democratic candidates through the Service Employees International Union, which represents many Head Start teachers. The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents, among others, the welfare bureaucrats at the Administration for Children and Families, is a large political donor that gives about 94 percent of its largesse to Democrats. This is not coincidental. The main beneficiaries of the war on poverty have not been and will not be the poor; the beneficiaries are the alleged poverty warriors themselves. The war on poverty is war on the Roman model in which soldiers are paid through plunder.
The result: a large and expensive welfare state that provides relatively little welfare, and a destructive and ruinous war on poverty that has not reduced poverty.
Via Feser comes word of the passing of E. J. Lowe, prominent contemporary metaphysician. Only 63! That's young for a philosopher. Some will disagree, but I've heard it said, and I agree, that philosophy is an old man's game, and if the country of old age begins at 60, Lowe had just taken his first baby steps into it. But he made a contribution and all who labor in these vineyards should be grateful.
So carpe diem my friends, the hour of death is near for young and old alike. And how would you like death to find you? In what condition, and immersed in which activity? Contemplating the eternal or stuck in the mud of the mundane or lost in the diaspora of sensuous indulgence?
For some of us the harvest years come late and we hope for many such years in which to reap what we have sown, but we dare not count on them. For another and greater Reaper is gaining on us and we cannot stay the hand that wields the scythe that will cut us down.
