Do you need solitude to recover from society or society to recover from solitude?
Month: January 2014
Some Notes on Rescher’s “Nonexistents Then and Now”
A reader inquires:
Have you read Nicholas Rescher's Nonexistents Then and Now? I read it recently and thought I'd bring it to your attention because it's relevant to your recent posts on fiction. If I understand the article, Rescher would agree with you that a fictional man is not a man, but he would say the same of a merely possible man (denying premise 6 in your post More on Ficta and Impossibilia): he argues that because nonexistents are necessarily incomplete, they are not individuals but schemata for individuals. In response to your post Imagining X as Real versus Imagining X as Unreal and a Puzzle of Actualization Rescher would probably say that the "table" before your mind is not an individual table but a schema for an individual table, a "schema to which many such individuals might answer" (p. 376). As your concluding apory implies, the argument against the possibility of actualizing Hamlet might apply to any nonexistent. Rescher seems to think it does. It would be interesting to read some of your thoughts on Rescher's essay, but I do see that you're now considering a different problem.
I was aware of this article, but hadn't studied it carefully until today. I thank the reader for reminding me of it. What he says about it is accurate. Herewith, some preliminary comments.
1. One objection I have is that Rescher tends to conflate the epistemological with the ontological. A careful reading of the following passage shows the conflation at work. I have added comments in red.
To begin, note that a merely possible world is never given. It is not something we can possibly encounter in experience. The only world that confronts us in the actual course of things is the real world, this actual world of ours — the only world to which we gain entry effortlessly, totally free of charge. [This is practically a tautology. All Rescher is saying is that the only world we can actually experience is the actual world, merely possible worlds being, by definition, not actual.] To move from it, we must always do something, namely, make a hypothesis — assumption, supposition, postulation, or the like. The route of hypotheses affords the only cognitive access to the realm of nonexistent possibility. [Rescher's wording suggests that there is a realm of nonexistent possibility and that we can gain cognitive access to it.] For unlike the real and actual world, possible worlds never come along of themselves and become accessible to us without our actually doing something, namely, making an assumption or supposition or such-like. Any possible world with which we can possibly deal will have to be an object of our contrivance — of our making by means of some supposition or assumption. [In this last sentence Rescher clearly slides from an epistemological claim, one about how we come to know the denizens of the realm of nonexistent possibility, to an ontological claim about what merely possible worlds and their denizens ARE, namely, objects of our contrivance.](364, emphasis added)
As my reader is aware, Rescher wants to say about the merely possible what he says about the purely fictional, namely, that pure ficta are objects of our contrivance. But this too, it seems to me, is an illicit conflation. The purely fictional is barred from actuality by its very status as purely fictional: Sherlock Holmes cannot be actualized. He is an impossible item. I am tempted to say that not even divine power could bring about his actualization, any more than it could restore a virgin. But the merely possible is precisely — possibly actual! The merely possible is intrinsically such as to be apt for existence, unlike the purely fictional which is intrinsically such as to be barred from actuality.
2. The conflation of the merely possible with the purely fictional is connected with another mistake Rescher makes. Describing the "medieval mainstream," (362) Rescher lumps mere possibillia and pure ficta together as entia rationis. For this mistake, Daniel Novotny takes him to task, explaining that "Suarez and most other Baroque scholastics considered merely possible beings to be real, and hence they were not classified as beings of reason." (Ens Rationis from Suarez to Caramuel, Fordham UP, 2013, p. 27) Entia rationis, beings of reason, are necessarily mind-dependent impossible objects. Mere possibilia are not, therefore, entia rationis.
3. As I understand it, the problem of the merely possible is something like this. Merely possible individuals and states of affairs are not nothing, nor are they fictional. And of course their possibility is not merely epistemic, or parasitic upon our ignorance. Merely possible individuals and states of affairs have some sort of mind-independent reality. But how the devil can we make sense of this mind-independent reality given that the merely possible, by definition, is not actual? Suppose we cast the puzzle in the mold of an aporetic triad:
a. The merely possible is not actual.
b. The merely possible is real (independently of finite minds).
c. Whatever is real is actual.
Clearly, the members of this trio cannot all be true. Any two of them, taken in conjunction, entails the negation of the remaining one. For example, the conjunction of the last two propositions entails the negation of the first.
What are the possible solutions given that the triad is is genuinely logically inconsistent and given that the triad is soluble? I count exactly five possible solutions.
S1. Eliminativism. The limbs are individually undeniable but jointly inconsistent, which is to say: there are no mere possibilia. One could be an error theorist about mere possibilia.
S2. Conceptualism. Deny (b) while accepting the other two limbs. There are mere possibilia, but what they are are conceptual constructions by finite minds. This is essentially Rescher's view. See his A Theory of Possibility: A Constructivistic and Conceptualistic Theory of Possible Individuals and Possible Worlds (Basil Blackwell, 1975). He could be described as an artifactualist about possibilities: "A possible individual is an intellectual artifact: the product of a projective 'construction' . . . ." (p. 61)
S3. Actualism/Ersatzism. Deny (a) while accepting the other two limbs. One looks for substitute entities to go proxy for the mere possibles. Thus, on one approach, the merely possible state of affairs of there being a unicorn is identified with an actual abstract entity, the property of being a unicorn. For the possibility to be actual is for the the property to be instantiated.
S4. Extreme Modal Realism. Deny (c) while accepting the other two limbs. David Lewis. There is a plurality of possible worlds conceived of as maximal merelogical sums of concreta. The worlds and their inhabitants are all equally real. But no world is absolutely actual. Each is merely actual at itself.
S5. Theologism. Deny (c) while accepting the other two limbs. We bring God into the picture to secure the reality of the possibles instead of a plurality of equally real worlds. Consider the possibility of there being unicorns. This is a mere possibility since it is not actual. But the possibility is not nothing: it is a definite possibility, a real possibility that does not depend for its reality on finite minds. There aren't any unicorns, but there really could have been some, and the fact of this mere possibility has nothing to do with what we do or think or say. The content of the possibility subsists as an object of the divine intellect, and its actualizability is grounded in God's power.
4. Part of Rescher's support for his constructivism/conceptualism/artifactualism is his attack on the problem of transworld identity. For Rescher, "the issue of transworld identity actually poses no real problems — a resolution is automatically available." (371) Rescher's argument is hard to locate due to his bloated, meandering, verbose style of writing. Rescher rarely says anything in a direct and pithy way if he can pad it out with circumlocutions and high-falutin' phaseology. (I confess to sometimes being guilty of this myself.)
But basically such argument as I can discern seems to involve equivocation on such terms as 'individuation' and 'identity' as between epistemological and ontological senses. He gives essentially the following argument on p. 378. This is my reconstruction and is free of equivocation.
A. All genuine individuals are complete.
B. All merely possible individuals are complete only if completely describable by us.
C. No merely possible individuals are completely describable by us.
Therefore
D. No merely possible individuals are genuine individuals.
But why should we accept (B)? Why can't there be nonexistent individuals that are complete? Rescher just assumes that the properties of such individuals must be supplied by us. But that is to beg the question against those who believe in the reality of the merely possible. He just assumes the truth of artifactualism about the merely possible. Consider the following sentences
d. Bill Clinton is married to Hillary Rodham.
e. Bill Clinton remained single.
f. Bill Clinton married someone distinct from Hillary Rodham.
Only the first sentence is true, but, I want to say, the other two are possibly true: they pick out merely possible states of affairs. There are three possible worlds involved: the actual world and two merely possible worlds. Now does 'Bill Clinton' pick out the same individual in each of these three worlds? I am inclined to say yes, despite the fact that we cannot completely describe the world in which our boy remains single or the world in which he marries someone other than Hillary. But Rescher will have none of this because his conceptualism/constructivism/ artifactualism bars him from holding that actual individuals in merely possible worlds or merely possible individuals have properties other that those we hypothesize them as having. So, given the finitude of our hypothesizing, actual individuals in merely possible worlds, or merely possible individuals, can only be incomplete items, multiply realizable schemata, and thus not genuine individuals. But then the possible is assimilated to the fictional.
How Cold Is It?
I recall something like this from Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow:
Colder than a witch's tit,
Colder than a bucket of penguin shit,
Colder than a hair on a polar bear's ass
Colder than the frost on a champagne glass.
The possibilities are endless:
Colder than the frozen heart of a leftist who loves Humanity but hates his neighbor. (MavPhil original!)
Colder'n a fairy's fanny in Fargo in February. (MavPhil original!)
Colder'n a witch's tit in a cast-iron bra.
Colder'n a ticket taker's smile at the Ivar Theater on a Saturday night. (Tom Waits, Diamonds on My Windshield)
Colder than a mother-in-law's kiss.
Cold enough to freeze the balls off a pool table.
Colder than moonlight on a tombstone.
Colder than a polar bear's PJs.
Cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.
There's 15 feet of snow in the East and its's colder'n a well digger's ass, colder'n a well digger's ass . . . . (Tom Waits)
Links and Quips
- Interview: David Mamet's Conservative Conversion
- Liberals who speak of unfettered capitalism tend to be unfettered idiots
- I recently acquired an iPad Air. Mr Obama, you did not build that, and no government either!
- My man Hanson's latest
- Will ObamaCare lead to Single Payer?
- Rachel Maddow is crazy, too
- Glenn Reynolds on alternative schooling
- If 'ObamaCare' is a racial slur, then 'Romney Care' is an insult to Mormons. Or something.
- 'ObamaYomamaCare' is not a racial slur: it conveys that Obama wants to be the main mama of the nanny state
- The willfully stupid deserve contempt: call him BOZO de Blasio. Remember Bozo the Clown?
- The Diplomad's personal encounter with ObamaCare
- Thomas Sowell on 'Trickle Down'
- The Agony of Frank Luntz
In the Absence of Knowledge, May One Believe? Remarks on Magee
According to Bryan Magee ("What I Believe," Philosophy 77 (2002), 407- 419), nobody knows the answers to such questions as whether we survive our bodily deaths or whether God exists. Citing Xenophanes and Kant, Magee further suggests that the answers to these questions are not only unknown but impossible for us to know. Assuming that Magee is right on both counts, what follows?
One inference one might draw from our state of irremediable ignorance about ultimates is that it provides us with 'doxastic wiggle-room' (my expression): if one cannot know one way or the other, then one is permitted either to believe or not believe that we survive and that God exists. After all, if it cannot be proven that ~p, then it is epistemically possible that p, and this epistemic possibility might be taken to allow as reasonable our believing that p. Invoking the Kantian distinction between thinking and knowing (Critique of Pure Reason, B 146 et passim) one could maintain that although we have and can have no knowledge of God and the soul, we can think them without contradiction, and without contradicting anything we know. Does not the denial of knowledge make room for faith, as Kant himself famously remarks? CPR B xxx: Ich musste also das Wissen aufheben, um zum Glauben Platz zu bekommen… "I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith…." (And given that contact with reality is a great good, would it not be better to venture contact with the unknowable portion of it via faith rather than have no contact with it at all by insisting that only knowable truth is admissible truth?)
This inference, however, the inference from our irremediable ignorance to the rational allowability of belief in the epistemically possible, is one that Magee resolutely refuses to draw, seeing it as a shabby evasion and an "illegitimate slide."(408) Thus he holds it to be illegitimate to move from the epistemic possibility of post-mortem survival to belief in it. As he puts it, "What I find myself wanting to drive home is not merely that we do not know but that the only honest way to live and think is in the fullest possible acknowledgment of that fact and its consequences, without ducking out into a faith of some kind, and without evasion or self-indulgence of any other sort." (417) Near the beginning of his essay, Magee cites Freud to the effect that no right to believe anything can be derived from ignorance. (408)
The relevance of the Freudian point, however, is unclear. First of all, no one would maintain that ignorance about a matter such as post-mortem survival justifies, in the sense of provides evidence for, the belief that one survives. And a person who thinks it rationally allowable to believe where we cannot know will presumably not take a deontological approach to belief in terms of epistemic rights and duties. In any case, the issue is this: Is it ever rationally permissible to believe where knowledge is unavailable? Magee answers this question in the negative. But I cannot see that he makes anything close to a convincing case for this answer. I will simply run through some questions/objections the cumulative force of which will be to neutralize, though perhaps not refute, Magee's view. Thus I play for a draw, not a win. I doubt that one can expect more from philosophy. This post presents just one of my questions/objections.
Probative Overkill?
One problem with Magee's argument is that it seems to prove too much. If we have no knowledge about such metaphysical/religious matters as God and the soul, and so must suspend belief in them lest we violate the putative epistemic duty to believe only on sufficient evidence, then we must also suspend belief on a host of other issues in respect of which we certainly cannot claim knowledge. Surely, the very same reasons that lead Magee to say that no one knows anything about God and the soul must also lead us to say that no one knows whether or not there are cases in which justice demands capital punishment, or whether or not a just society is one which provides for redistribution of wealth, or whether or not animals have rights, etc. Indeed, we must say that no one knows what justice is or what rights are. And of course it is not merely about normative issues that we are ignorant.
Do we know what motion, or causation, or time are? Do we know what properties are, or what is is for a thing to have a property, or to exist, or to change, or to be the same thing over time? Note that these questions, unlike the God and soul questions, do not pertain to what is transcendent of experience. I see the tomato; I see that it is red; I see or think I see that it is the same tomato that I bought from the grocer an hour ago; applying a knife to it, I see or think I see that slicing it causes it to split apart.
For that matter, Does Magee know that his preferred ethics of belief is correct? How does he know that? How could he know it? Does he have sufficient evidence? If he knows it, why do philosophers better than him take a different view? Does he merely believe it? Does he believe it because his fear of being wrong trumps his desire for the truth? Does he want truth, but only on his terms? Does he want only that truth that can satisfy the criteria that he imposes? Would it not be more self-consistent for Magee to suspend belief as to his preferred ethics of belief? Why is it better to have no contact with reality than such contact via faith? Isn't it better to have a true belief that I cannot justify about a life and death matter than no belief about that matter? Does the man of faith self-indulgently evade reality, or does the philosopher of Magee's stripe self-indulgently and pridefully refuse such reality as he cannot certify by his methods?
No one knows how economies really work; if we had knowledge in this area we would not have wildly divergent paradigms of economic explanation. But this pervasive ignorance does not prevent people from holding very firm beliefs about these non-religious issues, beliefsthat translate into action in a variety of ways, both peaceful and violent. It is furthermore clear that people feel quite justified in holding, and acting upon, these beliefs that go beyond what they can claim to know. What is more, I suspect Magee would agree that people are often justified in holding such beliefs.
So if Magee is right that we ought to suspend belief about religious matters, then he must also maintain that we ought to suspend belief about the social and political matters that scarcely anyone ever suspends belief about. That is, unless he can point to a relevant difference between the religious questions and the social-political ones. But it is difficult to discern any relevant difference. In both cases we are dealing with knowledge-transcendent beliefs for which elaborate rational defenses can be constructed, and elaborate rational refutations of competing positions.
In both cases we are dealing with very abstruse and 'metaphysical' issues such as the belief in equal rights, a belief which manifestly has no empirical justification. And in both cases we are dealing with
issues of great importance to our welfare and happiness. On the other hand, if Magee thinks that we are justified in holding beliefs about social and political matters, something he does of course hold, then he should also maintain that we are justified in holding beliefs about religious matters. There is no justification for a double standard. In this connection, one should read Peter van Inwagen's Quam Dilecta, in God and the Philosophers, ed. T. V. Morris (Oxford University Press, 1994), 31-60. See especially 41-46 for a penetrating discussion of the double standard.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Phil Everly (1939 – 2014)
Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers died on Friday at age 74. From the NYT:
The Everlys brought tradition, not rebellion, to their rock ’n’ roll. Their pop songs reached teenagers with Appalachian harmonies rooted in gospel and bluegrass. [. . .]
They often sang in close tandem, with Phil Everly on the higher note and the brothers’ two voices virtually inseparable. That sound was part of a long lineage of country “brother acts” like the Delmore Brothers, the Monroe Brothers and the Louvin Brothers. In an interview in November, Phil Everly said: “We’d grown up together, so we’d pronounce the words the same, with the same accent. All of that comes into play when you’re singing in harmony.”
Paul Simon, whose song “Graceland” includes vocals by Phil and Don Everly, said in an email on Saturday morning: “Phil and Don were the most beautiful sounding duo I ever heard. Both voices pristine and soulful. The Everlys were there at the crossroads of country and R&B. They witnessed and were part of the birth of rock and roll.”
You may remember it from Linda Ronstadt's version, but the Everlys did it first: When Will I be Loved?
Carole King wrote it, but Don and Phil made it a hit: Crying in the Rain.
All I Have to Do is Dream. YouTuber comment:
RIP Phil Everly. We can never thank you enough for the music and memories of a bygone era, long past, when cars were chariots of Chrome gleaming in the moonlight and shades of neon in the heat of summer…I still remember the crackle of the AM radio with reverb….Nothing can replace Phil and those days.
The Religious Side of Camus
Albert Camus, one of the luminaries of French existentialism, died on this day in 1960, in a car crash. He was 46. Had he lived, he might have become a Christian. Or so it seems from Howard Mumma, Conversations with Camus. This second-hand report is worth considering, although it must be consumed cum grano salis. See also Camus the Christian?
Csezlaw Milosz also draws attention to Camus' religious disposition.
Czeslaw Milosz, "The Importance of Simone Weil" in Emperor of the Earth: Modes of Eccentric Vision (University of California Press, 1977), p. 91:
Violent in her judgments and uncompromising, Simone Weil was, at least by temperament, an Albigensian, a Cathar; this is the key to her thought. She drew extreme conclusions from the Platonic current in Christianity. Here we touch upon hidden ties between her and Albert Camus. The first work by Camus was his university dissertation on St. Augustine. Camus, in my opinion, was also a Cathar, a pure one, ['Cathar' from Gr. katharos, pure] and if he rejected God it was out of love for God because he was not able to justify Him. The last novel written by Camus, The Fall, is nothing else but a treatise on Grace — absent grace — though it is also a satire: the talkative hero, Jean-Baptiste Clamence, who reverses the words of Jesus and instead of "Judge not and ye shall not be judged: gives the advice "Judge, and ye shall not be judged," could be, I have reason to suspect, Jean-Paul Sartre.
A Question About Marriage
For many years now I have been an occasional reader of your blog, and I greatly appreciate your insight on many subjects, particularly your criticism of the Left. I am, I hate to admit, an aspiring academic who is taking on enormous debt to finish a Ph.D. in sociology of religion, and am immersed in the poisonous Higher Ed world of the SIXHIRB musical litany, but that is another story for another time.
My question concerns choosing a wife: Can the marriage between a non-religious person and a religious person be successful and a happy state of affairs?
I am an incorrigible INFP, and I thought your logical precision and holistic perception as an INTP would aid my thinking process, which is mostly intuition/feeling. You have been married quite awhile, and I respect that greatly. You say that your wife is religious, a practicing Catholic, and that you believe that to be a good thing. I agree, and thus I am in this dilemma.
My Romance Story:
I come from a devout Mexican Catholic family from Texas, with a very religiously devout mother who is never found without a rosary, and I consider myself 'religious' and Catholic, i.e. I go to Mass every Sunday, I pray, I believe, I read the Bible, and so forth. Now, I am certainly not a saint, as the rest of my story will show.
I met, during a study abroad this year, a stunning young woman who works for the United Nations. One night, our date over red wine at a cafe quickly escalated into dozens of nights of passionate, indulgent sex, and then into several trips throughout Europe in which we brought our negligent sexual passion into the creaky beds of many hotels. Sex crazed, we were.
Now that I am back in the States for the holidays, free from the physical presence and temptations of the Woman, the big question of our future is at hand. Should we continue or not?
We have been dating now for five months, and she is wonderful in all things, successful, an excellent conversationalist, and best of all, not a feminist! But, she has no faith, does not go to church, and largely thinks religion is oppressive, and most painfully for me, she does not believe in Christianity. I would also add she is more of an agnostic than a militant atheist, since she believes in some vague afterlife, and respects my religious beliefs.
'Listen to your heart' is what they say, but my heart is confused at the moment, and the damned sex monkey does not help. The Woman is wonderful, but long term speaking, once the infatuation is over through the sobering, cold water of marriage, will religion be the stone upon which we stumble? Will I be happier instead with a practicing Catholic woman? What will my Mexican-Catholic mom say when I bring home a non-believer? She won't like it, that's for sure.
In my opinion, I am skeptical that it will work long term, but she thinks there is no problem. What do you say?
Your question is: Can the marriage between a non-religious person and a religious person be successful and a happy state of affairs? My answer is: Yes it can, but it is not likely. And in a matter as important to one's happiness as marriage, and in a social climate as conducive to marital break-up as ours is, it is foolish to take unnecessary risks. I would say that career and marriage, in that order, are the two most important factors in a person's happiness. You are on track for happiness if you can find some occupation that is personally satisfying and modestly remunerative and a partner with whom you can enjoy an ever-deepening long-term relationship. Religion lies deep in the religious person; for such a person to have a deep relationship with an irrreligious person is unlikely. A wise man gambles only with what he can afford to lose; he does not gamble with matters pertaining to his long-term happiness.
So careful thought is needed. Now the organ of thought is the head, not the heart. And you have heard me say that every man has two heads, a big one and a little one, one for thinking and one for linking. The wise man thinks with his big head. Of course, it would be folly to marry a woman to whom one was not strongly sexually attracted, or a woman for whom one did not feel deep affection. But a worse folly would be allow sex organs and heart to suborn intellect. By all means listen to your heart, but listen to your (big) head first. Given how difficult successful marriage is, one ought to put as much as possible on one's side. Here are some guidelines that you violate at your own risk:
- Don't marry outside your race
- Don't marry outside your religion
- Don't marry outside your social class
- Don't marry outside your generational cohort
- Don't marry outside your educational level
- Don't marry someone whose basic attitudes and values are different about, e.g., money
- Don't marry someone with no prospects
- Don't marry a needy person or if you are needy. A good marriage is an alliance of strengths
- Don't marry to escape your parents
- Don't marry young
- Don't imagine that you will be able to change your partner in any significant way.
The last point is very important. What you see now in your partner is what you will get from here on out. People don't change. They are what they are. The few exceptions prove the rule. The wise live by rules, not exceptions, by probabilities, not possibilities. "Probability is the very guide to life." (Bishop Butler quoting Cicero, De Natura, 5, 12) As I said, it is foolish to gamble with your happiness. We gamble with what is inconsequential, what we can afford to lose. So if there is anything about your potential spouse that is unacceptable, don't foolishly suppose that you will change her. You won't. You must take her as she is, warts and all, as she must take you.
There is also the business about right and wrong order. Right Order: Finish your schooling; find a job that promises to be satisfying over the long haul and stick with it; eliminate debts and save money; get married after due consultation with both heads, especially the big one; have children.
Wrong Order: Have children; get married; take any job to stay alive; get some schooling to avoid working in a car wash for the rest of your life.
I think it is also important to realize that romantic love, as blissful and intoxicating as it is, is mostly illusory. I wouldn't want to marry a woman I wasn't madly (just the right word) in love with, but I also wouldn't want to marry a woman that I couldn't treasure and admire and value after the romantic transports had worn off, as they most assuredly will. Since you are a Catholic you may be open to the Platonic-Augustinian-Weilian thought that what we really want no woman or man can provide. Our hearts cannot be satisfied by any of our our earthly loves which are but sorry substitutes for the love of the Good.
Related: Al-Ghazzali on Choosing a Wife
Lunatic Feminism
Addendum (1/4). The following from Phil Sheridan (hyperlinks added by BV)
Re the Cathy Young piece you linked to:
She's another right-of-center feminist critic of feminism. Some of her writing is very good. But consider one thread of feminist history. Antioch College's silly sex rules in the 90's were treated as a joke and then dismissed. Antioch later folded. Yet today we have the Department of Education 'Dear Colleague' letter that encourages universities to expel accused men (even those exonerated by the legal system) in kangaroo courts and Yale's incomprehensible rules of sexual engagement. And the fight continues on the legal treatment of rape, inching ever closer to the radfem goal: all PIV [penis in vagina] sex is rape (if a woman says it is). So long as sex happens and feminists talk, this endgame can not be ruled out. Feminist legal scholars are happy to misrepresent or deny basic constitutional rights (e.g. the First Amendment debate at Concurring Opinions and at Mark Bennet's blawg about Prof. Mary Anne Frank's new Revenge Porn law) and even question how a just society can have rights that are incompatible with feminist ideals.
While Cathy Young and Christina Hoff Sommers make valid points, their stuff is not up to the task of undermining the foundational ideas of feminist theory. Unless that is done, we are just throwing our bikes in front of the steamroller in the hope that it will stop. Better is Steven Goldberg (Why Men Rule) on the physiological basis for male dominance (it's not malevolent), Roy Baumeister (Is There Anything Good About Men?) on male sexual starvation and male relationship/communication style as the foundations on which all our institutions rest, and David Benatar (The Second Sexism) on how female oppression by men is an illusion that relies on carefully ignoring the way culture uses and discriminates against men as well. Simon Baron Cohen has also done some relevant research on male and female brains. Whaddya know — all these authors are men! Surely women can think similar thoughts (and some definitely do), but the mainstream lady pundits tend not to. Maybe they realize they'd be ejected from the mainstream if they did.
I certainly need to 'bone up' on these matters — to use an expression calculated to 'stick it to' any crazy feminazis who may be reading this, in keeping with my rule of no day without political incorrectness and in keeping with my growing realization that we need more pushback against the extremists and less civility, civility being reserved for the civil — but, nevertheless, I hope Sheridan agrees with me that revenge porn really is awful stuff and that it would be a good thing if there were some legal remedies that could pass constitutional muster. I hope that Sheridan would agree with me that the late Al Goldstein of Screw magazine notoriety really was a scumbag and not the brave defender of free speech that too many people celebrate him as being, as if the "freedom of speech, or of the press" mentioned in the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution was intended to protect a moral cretin like Goldstein who, among other outrages, took nude photos of Jacqueline Onassis and then published them.
I really don't see that an ACLU shyster is any better than an idiot feminazi.
Spare Not the ‘Scare’ ‘Quotation’ Marks
Here is part of a sentence I encountered in an article on mid-life suicide: "When Liz Strand’s 53-year-old friend killed herself two years ago in California, her house was underwater and needed repairs, she had a painful ankle that was exacerbated by being overweight . . ."
But if one's house were underwater, one could just swim from room to room. How then could being overweight exacerbate ankle pain?
A house fit for normal human habitation cannot be literally underwater. But it can be 'underwater,' i.e., such that the mortgagee owes more to the mortgager than the house is worth.
The omission of necessary 'quotation' marks is the opposite of that sure-fire indicator of low social class, namely, the addition of unnecessary 'quotation' marks. See The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.
Some of my conventions:
1. When I am quoting someone I employ double quotation marks.
2. When I am mentioning an expression, I never use double quotation marks, I use single 'quotation' marks, e.g., I write:
'Boston' is disyllabic.
Suppose Ed Koch (1924-2013) had said,
Boston is a 'city.'
The marks signify a semantic stretch unto a sneer. This is not a case of mentioning the word 'city,' but of using it, but in a extended sense. Had old Koch said that, he would have been suggesting that Boston is a city in a merely analogical or even equivocal sense of the term as compared to the city, New York City.
3. So the third use of single 'quotation' marks is the semantically stretching use. The sentence I just wrote illustrates it inasmuch as this use of 'quotation' marks does not involve quotation, nor does it involve mentioning a word as opposed to using it.
This is a much trickier topic than you might think, and I can go on. You hope I won't, and in any case I don't feel like it. But I can't resist a bit of commentary on this example from the blog cited above:
This might just be an example of a misuse of 'quotation' marks. But it could be a legitimate use, an example of #3 above. They want your excrement.
If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, italicize, or bold, or underline it. Don't surround it with 'quotation' marks. Or, like Achmed the Dead Terrorist, I kill you!
The Night Life
The night life ain't no good life, nor is it my life. Morning is to night as virtue to vice.
Addendum
This bit of substantiation just swam into view.
Double Check Without the Moved Piece Giving Check
Ah, the (almost) inexhaustible riches of chess! A reader sends us to Volokh where we read:
An interesting thing happened yesterday in a game between my son and my father: a double check, in which the moved piece was not one of the checking pieces. (In a usual double check, a piece moves, placing the king in check but also discovering a check by another piece. To quote a formulation on the U.S. Chess Federation Site, “Double check is a more dangerous form of a discovered check where not only the hidden piece attacks the king, but also the piece that moves.”) How did this happen? Everyone was following the normal rules of chess.
Here is how it can happen.
Starting the New Year Off with a Bang
I began the New Year right at 2 AM, my usual arisal time, with prayer, meditation, journal writing, reflection on resolutions for 2014 numero uno of which is to finish the metaphilosophy book, some philosophical reading, a bit of blogging, and two online chess games, one 5-min the other 3-min. Won 'em both. Then I headed out into the desert for a little target practice. Lazy dog that I am, I hadn't gotten around to shooting the semi-automatic .22 I bought on 13 July. So I thought I had better try it out. So I put 50 .22 LR rounds through it this morning while standing on uneven desert terrain with no bench to support my hand. I was about 6 or 7 long paces from the target, maybe 18-20 feet. Of the 50 .22 rounds fired, I think I can account for 48 of them. Not bad, I'd say, for someone who doesn't practice as much as he should.
I am not as good with the .38 special snub-nosed revolver, but then its barrel is only 2 and 1/2 inches long. I fired six rounds at the same target, this time aiming for the head. Missed the target twice. The four hits are in a line to the left of the miscreant's noggin.
I am really bad with the 1911 model .45 semi-auto which I didn't fire today. The .22 is on a 1911 frame so I figured I should practice with it as preparation for mastering the .45 ACP 'cannon.' I suspect the recoil of the .45 is throwing me off.
One reason the .22 is a good practice weapon is because the ammo is cheap. I paid $49.37 plus tax for a 'brick' (1000 rounds) of Winchester .22 LR at Wal-Mart in August. The ammo shortage seems to be easing.
Gun ownership is serious business, but then so is driving and owning a dog. Get some instruction and commit yourself to practicing with your weapon. Don't consider yourself proficient until you have put a thousand or so rounds through the piece. Know the law. Don't mix alcohol and gunpowder. Work to promote enlightened gun laws such as we have in Arizona.
For the New Year
One of the elements in my personal liturgy is a reading of the following passage every January 1st. I must have begun the practice in the mid-70s.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book Four, #276, tr. Kaufmann:
For the new year. — I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think. Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum. Today everybody permits himself the expression of his wish and his dearest thought: hence I, too, shall say what it is that I wish from myself today, and what was the first thought to run across my heart this year — what thought shall be for me the reason, warranty, and sweetness of my life henceforth. I want to learn to see more and more as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all and all and on the whole: someday I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.
Nietzsche found it very difficult to let looking away be his only negation. And so shall I.