Month: December 2014

John Anderson on Levels of Reality

AndersonCall it the MOB doctrine: there are modes of being, ways of existing, levels of reality.  I have defended the MOB in these pages and in print, chiefly in "Existence: Two Dogmas of Analysis" in Novotny and Novak eds., Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives in Metaphysics, Routledge 2014, 45-75.  But I have yet to come to grips with John Anderson's attack on levels of reality.  I begin to do so in this entry.  The Scot Anderson (1893-1962) is not much read today, but his teaching activity in Australia was highly influential.  Central ideas in David M. Armstrong come from Anderson.  One is naturalism.  The other is the notion that the world is a world of states of affairs or facts.

1. According to Anderson, the contention that there are different kinds or degrees of truth and reality" is what distinguishes rationalism from empiricism.  Empiricism "maintains that there only one way of being." (Studies in Empirical Philosophy, p. 1.  From a 1927 article, "Empiricism." SEP was originally published in 1962 together with a helpful introduction by John Passmore.)

This is a very interesting ontological as opposed to epistemological way of distinguishing rationalism from empiricism.  I am not sure that it is adequate. (Granted, an empiricist must eschew levels of reality; but must a rationalist embrace them?  Not clear.  Many do of course.  But all?) This demarcation issue is not my concern in this entry.

2. ". . . any postulation of different orders of being is illogical." (SEP 2)

This is a very strong claim.  It is to the effect that anyone who postulates different orders of being or levels of reality embraces either a formal-logical contradiction or some sort of broadly logical incoherence.  What arguments could Anderson have that would generate such a strong conclusion?

 3. Anderson gives a couple of question-begging arguments on p. 2. (a) Nothing can transcend existence. (b) Only empirical facts exist.  These are worthless.  One blatantly begs the question if one identifies the existent with the spatiotemporal or the empirically factual and then announces that nothing can exist in any other way.

4. Anderson's main argument, however, cannot be dismissed out of hand: "The very nature and possibility of discourse" rule out any theory of higher or lower orders of being or of truth.  That there should be different levels of being is "unspeakable." (SEP 2)  Why?

The proposition is primary.  Whatever we think about or speak about we do so using propositions.  Our only epistemic access to anything is via propositions.  Therefore, ". . . we are concerned with a single way of being: that, namely, which is conveyed when we say that a proposition is true." (SEP 3, emphasis in original)

The idea seems to be that whatever is, is propositional.  Therefore, there is nothing supra-propositional and nothing infra-propositional.  There is no Absolute, but also no "mere data, not yet propositionalized."  Armstrong holds that the world is a world of states of affairs or facts, where facts are not propositions, but proposition-like entities.  Anderson's position is more radical: facts are propositions.  So, strictly speaking, we do not access the world via propositions; propositions are what we access.  In Armstrong there is a distinction between truth-bearers and truth-makers; in his teacher Anderson this distinction is not made.  Now if everything that exists is a true proposition, then to be (to exist) = to be true.  Since there are no degrees or modes of truth, there are no degrees or modes of being.

A proposition for Anderson is not a Fregean sense or a merely intentional object.  Just what it is I am still trying to figure out.

5. But isn't Anderson's a rationalist scheme? Anderson is maintaining that reality must conform to discourse and discursive reason.  We think in propositions and cannot do otherwise; therefore (?!) reality is propositional.  Nothing is real except what conforms to the way we must think if we are to think at all. Facts are propositions; for a fact to exist is for it to be true.  Since there is only one way for a proposition to be true, there is only one way to be.

And isn't there something idealist about Anderson's approach?  The only world is the world as it is for us.  Whether you pull the world into the mind, or push the mind out into the world by reifying propositions, the result is the same.  I am merely sounding a theme to be pursued in future entries.  Elaboration and clarification can wait.

There is no "getting behind the proposition to something  either lower or higher . . . ." (3)  One can neither ascend to the Absolute not descend to the raw data of sensation uncooked by categories.  Think of Kant's sinnliche Mannigfaltikeit, the sensory manifold that provides the matter that is then worked up by the categories, the forms of understanding.  Anderson's scheme rules out the sensory manifold as much as the One of Plotinus or Mr Bradley's Absolute, not to mention the simple God of Aquinas and the 'unspeakable' Tao of Lao Tzu.

6.  Let's see if we can beat Anderson's argument into a more formal and rigorous shape.  Here is one possible reconstruction:

a. Truth is what is conveyed by the copula 'is' in a proposition.
b. Propositions can only be true or if not true then false.
Therefore
c. There are no degrees or kinds of truth.
d. Propositions are facts.
e. Truth = existence.
Therefore
f. There are no degrees or kinds or levels or modes of existence, being or reality.

Right now I am merely trying to understand what Anderson is maintaining.  Evaluation can wait. 

Anderson, I think it is fair to say, is an enemy of the ineffable.  What we mean cannot outrun what we can say.  There is nothing ineffable or inexpressible.  Contrast this with the position of the Tractarian Wittgenstein.  For Wittgenstein, the Higher, home to our ethical and religious concerns,  is, but it is the Inexpressible, das Unaussprechliche.  Es gibt allerdings das Unaussprechliche.  There is the Unspeakable.  For Anderson, what is unspeakable is nothing at all.  Reality is exhausted by the propositional.

7.  Anderson holds that to distinguish among modes of being is "illogical." (SEP 4)  Perhaps one can argue for this as follows:

g. Law of Excluded Middle: a proposition is either true, or if not true, then false.
h. Truth = existence (being).
Therefore
i. To postulate different modes of being is to violate LEM, a law of logic, and to be "illogical."

We shall continue with this.  It is Christmas Eve, boys and girls.  Time  to punch the clock and enjoy some holiday cheer.  In moderation of course.  As I always say:

Moderation in all things, including moderation.

Bill O’Reilly Blasts Bozo de Blasio

We need more of this sort of thing.  Less 'civility,' more condemnation of liars, race-baiters, and inciters-to-violence.  Civility is for the civil, not for mendacious, self-serving, underminers of civil order.  There can be no civility without civil order.

The stinking lies and deceptive half-truths surrounding this topic come from the top down, from Obama, through Holder, to The New York Times and then on down through the lower echelons of the leftist media until they finally become the destructive and murderous actions of the know-nothing, looting and rioting rabble.  "The fish stinks from the head."

And ideas have consequences.

The lies of the anti-cop Left are well-exposed by Heather MacDonald here.

No truth, no justice.

Merry Christmas.

Eugene Robinson

Eugene Robinson is one of those black commentators whose tribal identification makes it impossible for him to be objective.  His latest column begins like this:

WASHINGTON — It is absurd to have to say this, but New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, activist Al Sharpton and President Obama are in no way responsible for the coldblooded assassination of two police officers in Brooklyn on Saturday. Nor do the tens of thousands of Americans who have demonstrated against police brutality in recent weeks bear any measure of blame.

At this point I stopped reading.  Why?  Because what Robinson is saying here is just obviously wrong.  It is as wrong as saying that de Blasio has blood on his hands.  De Blasio didn't pull the trigger, nor did Sharpton or Obama.  The black Muslim did.
 
But to say that de Blasio, Sharpton, Obama, and the demonstrators "are in no way responsible"  or do not "bear any measure of blame" is plainly false, and Robinson must know that it is.  I conjecture that it is his tribal identification — his identification as a black man — in tandem with his identification with the 'tribe' of leftists that makes it impossible for him to see the obvious.  The editors at NRO get it right:
 

This Saturday, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu were assassinated on on the streets of New York for wearing the uniform that keeps those streets safe. Only one man, a felon who may have been mentally ill, bears responsibility for robbing two young families of their fathers and husbands.

But his heinous act has served to focus attention on the rancid element of the recent anti-police protests that — even when they haven’t included arson and assaults on cops – have been lawless and replete with other hateful sentiments. Just last weekend, some protesters in New York were infamously chanting, “What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want them? Now.”

President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, and New York mayor Bill de Blasio have all played their own irresponsible parts; they have all lent moral support to occasionally violent protests.

That is the truth.  Obama, Holder, and de Blasio are in dereliction of duty.  Their duty is to uphold the rule of law and civil order, not undermine them by sowing the seeds of disrespect for the law and the agents of its enforcement.

Amazon Pricing

I just purchased via Amazon Prime

Australian Realism: The Systematic Philosophy of John Anderson Paperback – March 19, 2009

by A. J. Baker (Author), Anthony Quinton (Introduction)
 
I decided on a new paperback for $27.41 plus tax rather than a used hardcover.  The used hardcovers start at $2,336.86.  Even considering how vastly superior hardbounds are to paperbounds, that struck me as a wee bit steep.
 

From Gunman to Squirrel Man: Bernie Goetz, 30 Years Later

Bernard goetzBernard Goetz, mild-mannered electronics nerd, looked like an easy mark, a slap job.  And so he got slapped around, thrown through plate glass windows, mugged and harrassed.  He just wanted to be left alone to tinker in his basement.  Those were the days before Rudy Giuliani cleaned up New York City.  One day  Goetz decided not to take it any more and acquired a .38 'equalizer.'  And so the four black punks, armed with sharpened screwdrivers, who demanded money of him on the New York subway 30 years ago today, December 22, 1984, paid a serious price to the delight of conservatives and the consternation of liberals. To the former he became a folk hero, to the latter a 'racist.'  It was a huge story back then. 

Things didn't go well for the black thugs whom Goetz shot.  One of the miscreants, James Ramseur, killed himself on the 27th anniversary of the subway shooting.  This was 17 months after having been released from prison where he served 25 years for raping a young woman on a Bronx rooftop.

Darrell Caby brought a civil action against Goetz, was awarded millions, but collected nothing.  Barry Allen continued his life of petty crime and was in and out of prison.  Troy Canty was arrested for domestic abuse.

Meanwhile Goetz, now 67, flourishes and runs a store called "Vigilante Electronics."  Wikipedia also informs us that Goetz is involved with squirrel rescue in the city.[84] He installs squirrel houses, feeds squirrels, and performs first aid.

A heart-warming story on this, the eve of the eve of Christmas Eve.

Direct and Indirect Reference

London Ed asks:

Exactly what does ‘refer’ mean?  And when we talk about ‘direct reference’ and ‘indirect reference’, are we really talking about exactly the same relation, or only the same in name?

The second question got me thinking. 

The paradigms of direct reference are the indexicals and the demonstratives.  The letter 'I' is not the word 'I,' and the word 'I' — the first-person singular pronoun — has non-indexical uses.  But let's consider a standard indexical use of this pronoun.   Tom says to Tina, "I'm hungry."  Tom refers to himself directly using 'I.'  That means: Tom refers to himself, but not via a description that he uniquely satisfies.  The reference is not routed through a reference-mediating sense.  If you think it is so routed, tell me what the reference-mediating sense of your  indexical uses of the FPS pronoun is. 

As I understand it, to say of a singular term that it is directly referential is not to say that it lacks sense, but that it lacks a reference-mediating sense.  The indexical 'now'  does have a sense in that whatever it picks out must be a time, indeed, a time that is present.  But this very general sense does not make a use of 'now' refer to the precise time to which it refers.  So 'now' is directly referential despite its having a sense.  

Consider the demonstrative 'this.'  Pointing to a poker, I say 'This is hot.'  You agree and say 'This is hot!'  We say the same thing.  The same thing we say is the proposition.  The proposition is true.  Neither the poker nor its degree of heat are true.  The reference of 'this' is direct.  It seems to follow that the poker itself is a constituent of the proposition that is before both of our minds and that we agree is true.  But then propositions are Russellian as opposed to Fregean.  The poker itself, not an abstract surrogate such as a Fregean sense, is a constituent of the proposition. 

To say that a singular term t indirectly refers to object o is to say two things.  (i) It is to say that there is a description D(t) that gives the sense of t, a description which is such that anything that satisfies it uniquely satisfies it. (ii) And it is to say that O uniquely satisfies D(t).

Note that for the indirect reference relation to hold there needn't be any real-world connection such as a causal connection between one's use of t and o.  It is just a matter of whether or not o uniquely satisfies the description encapsulated by t.  Satisfaction is a 'logical' relation.  It is like the 'falling-under' relation.  Ed falls under the concept Londoner.  The relation of falling-under is not 'real': it is not causal or spatial or temporal or a physical part-whole relation.

Indirect reference is just unique satisfaction by an item of a description encapsulated in a term.  If 'Socrates' refers indirectly, then it refers to whatever satisfies some such  definite description as 'the teacher of Plato.'  Direct reference, on the other hand, has nothing to do with satisfaction of a description.

So I think London Ed is on to something.  When we talk about ‘direct reference’ and ‘indirect reference’, we are not  talking about exactly the same relation. The two phrases have only a word in common, 'reference.'  If all reference is indirect, then direct reference is not reference. And if all reference is direct, then indirect reference is not reference.  There are not two kinds of reference. 

The reason, again, is that indirect reference is just unique satisfaction of a description whereas direct reference has nothing to do with satisfaction of a description.

Tropes as Truth-Makers? Or Do We Need Facts?

White cubeHere is a white cube.  Call it 'Carl.'  'Carl is white' is true.  But Carl, though white, might not have been white. (He would not have been white had I painted him red.) So 'Carl is white' is contingently true.  There is no necessity that Carl be white.  By contrast, 'Carl is three-dimensional' is necessarily true.  It is metaphysically necessary that he be three-dimensional.  Of course, the necessity here is conditional:  given that Carl exists, he cannot fail to be three-dimensional.  But Carl might not have existed.  So Carl is subject to a two-fold contingency, one of existence and one of property-possession.  It is contingent that Carl exists at all — he is not a necessary being — and with respect to some of his properties it is contingent that he has them.  He exists contingently and he is white contingently.  Or, using 'essence' and 'accident,' we can say: Carl is a contingent being that is accidentally white but essentially three-dimensional.  By contrast, the number 7 is a necessary being that accidentally enjoys the distinction of being Poindexter's favorite number, but is essentially prime.

Some truths need truth-makers.  'Carl is white' is one of them.  Grant me that some truths need truth-makers.  My question is this: Can a trope do the truth-making job in a case like this or do we need a concrete fact?

Carl is white.  That is given.  Some say that (at least some of) the properties of particulars are themselves particulars (unrepeatables).  Suppose you think along those lines. You accept that things have properties — Carl, after all, is white extralinguistically — and therefore that there are properties, but you deny that properties are universals.  Your nominalism is moderate, not extreme.  Suppose you think of Carl's whiteness as a trope or as an Husserlian moment or as an Aristotelian accident. (Don't worry about the differences among these items.)  That is, you take the phrase 'Carl's whiteness' to refer, not to the fact of Carl's being white, which is a complex having Carl himself as a constituent, but to a simple item: a bit of whiteness.  This item depends for its existence on Carl: it cannot exist unless Carl exists, and, being particular, it cannot exist in or at any other thing such as Max the white billiard ball.  Nor is it transferrable: the whiteness of Carl cannot migrate to  Max. 

The truth-maker of a truth is an existing thing in virtue of whose existence the truth is true.  Why can't Carl's whiteness trope be the truth-maker of 'Carl is white'?  That very trope cannot exist unless it exists 'in' Carl as characterizing Carl.  So the mere existence of that simple item suffices to make true the sentence 'Carl is white.'  Or so it seems to some distinguished philosophers.

If this is right, then there is no need that the truth-maker of a truth have a sentence-like or proposition-like structure.  (For if a proposition-like truth-maker is not needed in a case like that of Carl the cube, then presumably there is no case in which it is needed.) A simple unrepeatable bit of whiteness has no internal structure whatsoever, hence no internal proposition-like structure.  A concrete fact or state of affairs, however, does: Carl's being white, for example, has at a bare minimum a subject constituent and a property constituent with the former instantiating the second.

My thesis is not that all truth-makers are proposition-like, but that some are.  Presumably, the truth-maker of 'Carl is Carl'  and 'Carl exists' is just Carl.  But it seems to me that the truth-maker of 'Carl is white' cannot be the particular whiteness of Carl.  In cases like this a simple item will not do the job.  Why not?

1. If it is legitimate to demand an ontological ground of the truth of a truth-bearer, whether it be a sentence or a proposition or a judgment or whatever, then it is legitimate to demand an ontological ground of the contingency of the truth of a truth-bearer.  If we have a right to ask: what makes 'Carl is white' true, then we also have a right to ask: What makes 'Carl is white' contingently or accidentally true as opposed to essentially true?  Truth and contingent truth are not the same.  And it is contingent truth that needs explaining.  If a truth-bearer is necessarily true, it may be such in virtue of its logical form, or because it is true ex vi terminorum; in either case it is not clear that the is any need for a truth-maker.  Does 'Bachelors are male' need a truth-maker?  Not as far as I can see.  But 'Tom is a bachelor' does.  Unlike David Armstrong, I am not a truth-maker maximalist.  See Truthmaker Maximalism Questioned.

2. The trope Carl's whiteness can perhaps explain why the sentence 'Carl is white' is true, but it cannot explain why it is accidentally true as opposed to essentially true.  For the existence of the trope is consistent  both with Carl's being essentially white and Carl's being accidentally white.  If F is a trope, and F exists, then F is necessarily tied to a concrete individual (this is the case whether one is a trope bundle theorist or a trope substratum theorist like C. B. Martin), and so the concrete indiviual exists and is characterized by F.  But this is so whether the concrete individual is essentially F or accidentally F.

3. To explain the contingency of a contingent truth it is not enough that the truth-maker be contingent; there must also be contingency within the truth-maker.  Or so it seems to me.  The fact theory can accommodate this requirement.  For in the fact of Carl's being white, the fact itself is contingent, but so also is the connection between Carl and whiteness.   Carl and whiteness can exist  without the fact existing.  (This assumes that whiteness is a universal)  The contingency of the connection of the constituents within the fact accounts for the contingency of the truth of 'Carl is white.'  But no trope is contingently connected to any concrete individual of which it is the trope. 

Conservative Marquette Poly Sci Prof Suspended for Blogging

Via John Pepple, I just learned that John McAdams, a tenured associate professor of political science at Marquette University, has been suspended with pay and barred from campus for criticizing a graduate student philosophy teacher who shut down a classroom conversation on gay marriage.  As McAdams puts it at his weblog Marquette Warrior:

It created more controversy than any blog other post we have done: an account of a Philosophy instructor at Marquette who told a student that gay marriage could not be discussed in her class since any opposition would be “homophobic” and would “offend” any gay students in the class. Not only did the story echo among Catholic outlets and sites dedicated to free speech on campus, but it created considerable blow back among leftist academics, who pretty much demanded our head on a pike.

This incident further illustrates what I mean when I say that the universities of the land, most of them, have become leftist seminaries and hotbeds of political correctness.  The behavior of the philosophy instructor illustrates the truth that there is little that is classically liberal about contemporary liberals.

I will add Marquette Warrior to my blogroll.

Related articles
Student group to protest suspension of Marquette University professor

The Implicit Logic of the Draft Warren Movement

Daniel Henninger:

The implicit logic of the Draft Warren movement is that after eight years of the Obama presidency, the American people want to move . . . further left.

Well said, my man.  And this too:

Amid the recent, violent anti-police protests (whose political consequences will be real but unmeasurable), Smith College President Kathleen McCartney sent the student body an email titled, “All Lives Matter.” The phrase horrified Smith students. Her words, they said, diminished black lives. They demanded that Ms. McCartney issue a public apology. Which she did. This is a scene straight out of the public shamings of officials in China under Mao Zedong.

But Chairman Mao did get one thing right: the line about power emanating from the barrel of a gun. Another reason why the Democrat stupidos are stupid, one not mentioned by Henninger, is that their recent antics are fueling gun and ammo sales. (Pew Research Center report)  Why on earth would any citizen need an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle?  How about this: to protect oneself, one's family, and one's business against looters and arsonists on the rampage egged on aand enabled by race-baiting, rabble-rousing, hate-America leftist scumbags who undermine the police and contribute to a climate in which people need to take over their own defense.  The Obama Admininstration's assault on the rule of law motivates the right-thinking to arm themselves.

By the way, libs and lefties routinely elide the semi-auto vs. full-auto distinction.  It is not that they are ignorant of it, or too stupid to understand it; it is worse: they are deeply mendacious and will use any means to further their agenda.  Never forget: PC comes from the CP.  The end justifies the means.  It is on all fours with their elision of the legal vs. illegal immigrant distinction.  It is not that lefties are ignorant of it, or too stupid to understand it, etc.

Getting back to 'Fauxcahontas', here is an entry from 21 May 2012:

Elizabeth Warren: Undocumented Injun

Elizabeth 'Fauxcahontas' Warren, Cherokee maiden, diversity queen of the Harvard Lore Law School, and author of the cookbook Pow Wow Chow, is being deservedly and diversely raked over the coals.  Howie Carr, White and Wrong.  NRO, Paleface.  Michael Barone, Racial Preferences: Unfair and Ridiculous. Excerpt:

Let's assume the 1894 document is accurate. That makes Warren one-thirty-second Native American. George Zimmerman, the Florida accused murderer, had a black grandmother. That makes him a quarter black, four times as black as Warren is Indian, though The New York Times describes him as a "white Hispanic."

In the upside-down world of the liberal, the 'white Hispanic' George Zimmerman is transmogrified into a redneck and the lily-white Elizabeth Warren into a redskin.

The Left's diversity fetishism is so preternaturally boneheaded that one has to wonder whether calm critique has any place at all in responses to it.  But being somewhat naive, I have been known to try rational persuasion.  See Diversity and the Quota Mentality for one example.

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Why Are So Many on the Left Moral Scum?

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Christmas Tunes

Merry Christmas everybody.  Pour yourself a drink, and enjoy.

Cheech and Chong, Santa Claus and His Old Lady
Canned Heat, Christmas Boogie

Leon Redbone and Dr. John, Frosty the Snowman
Beach Boys, Little St. Nick.  A rarely heard alternate version.
Ronettes, Sleigh Ride
Elvis Presley, Blue Christmas

Jeff Dunham, Jingle Bombs by Achmed the Terrorist

Porky Pig, Blue Christmas
Charles Brown, Please Come Home for Christmas
Wanda Jackson and the Continentals, Merry Christmas Baby
Chuck Berry, Run Rudolph Run
Eric Clapton, Cryin' Christmas Tears
Judy Collins, Silver Bells
Ry Cooder, Christmas in Southgate.  Don't miss this one. Great video.
Bob Dylan, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

Who could possibly follow Dylan's growl except

Tom Waits, Silent Night.  Give it a chance. 

A surprising number of Christmas songs were written by Jews.

Islam is not Islam!

Jeff Hodges just now apprised me of a post of his featuring the following bumpersticker:

Islam not IslamMy take is as follows.

Just as tautological sentences can be used to express non-tautological propositions, contradictory sentences can be used to express non-contradictory propositions.

Consider 'It is what it is.'  What the words mean is not what the speaker means in uttering the words.  Sentence meaning and speaker's meaning come apart.  The speaker does not literally mean that things are what they are — for what the hell else could they be?  Not what they are?  What the speaker means is that (certain) things can't be changed and so must be accepted with resignation.  Your dead-end job for example.  'It is what it is.'

There are many examples of the use of tautological sentences to express non-tautological propositions.  'What will be, will be' is an example, as is 'Beer is beer.'  When Ayn Rand proclaimed that Existence exists! she did not mean to assert the tautological proposition that each existing thing exists; she was ineptly employing a tautological sentence to express a non-tautological and not uncontroversial thesis of metaphysical realism according to which what exists exists independently of any mind, finite or infinite.

Similarly here except that a contradictory form of words is being employed to convey a non-contradictory thought.    But what is the thought, the Fregean Gedanke, the proposition?  Perhaps this: Islam is not the religion of peace.  Since Islam is supposed to be the religion of peace, to say that Islam has nothing to do with Islam is to say that Islam has nothing to do with peace, i.e., that Islam is not the religion of peace, or not a religion of peace.  Since one meaning of 'Islam' is peace, the saying equivocates on 'Islam.'  Thus the proposition expressed is: Islam has nothing to do with peace.  This proposition, whether true or false, is non-contradictory unlike the form of words used to express it.

Here is another possible reading.  Given that many believe that Islam is terroristic, someone who says that Islam has nothing to do with Islam is attempting to convey the non-contradictory thought that real Islam is not terroristic. 

Such a person, far from expressing a contradiction, would be equivocating on 'Islam,' and in effect distinguishing between real Islam and hijacked Islam, or between Islam and Islamism.