January 2015 – Page 3 – Maverick Philosopher

Toleration Extremism: Notes on John Stuart Mill

In the wake of the murderous rampage by Muslim terrorists at Charlie Hebdo in Paris on 7 January, many have embraced a form of extremism according to which any and all (public) expression must be tolerated. This entry questions this extremism as we find it in John Stuart Mill.

Here are two passages from Chapter Two of John Stuart Mill's magnificent On Liberty (emphases added):

But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. [. . .] We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.

[. . .]

Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free discussion, but object to their being "pushed to an extreme;" not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case. Strange that they should imagine that they are not assuming infallibility when they acknowledge that there should be free discussion on all subjects which can possibly be doubtful, but think that some particular principle or doctrine should be forbidden to be questioned because it is so certain, that is, because they are certain that it is certain. To call any proposition certain, while there is any one who would deny its certainty if permitted, but who is not permitted, is to assume that we ourselves, and those who agree with us, are the judges of certainty, and judges without hearing the other side.

Evaluation of the First Passage

As sympathetic as I am to Mill, I am puzzled (and you ought to be too) by the last sentence of the first quoted passage. It consists of two claims. The first is that " We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion . . . ." This is plainly false! The opinion of some Holocaust deniers that no Jews were gassed at Auschwitz is an opinion we can be sure is false. We are as sure of this as we are sure of any empirical fact about the past. Or suppose some fool denies that JFK died by assasination or maintains that McCain won the last presidential election. Those are fools' opinions we know to be wrong. There is no lack of examples. What was Mill thinking? "We can never be sure," he writes. A modal auxiliary married to a negative universal quantifier! To refute a 'can never' statement all you need is one merely possible counterexample. I have given three actual counterexamples. Pace Mill, we can be sure in some cases that certain opinions are wrong.

Mill's second claim is that even if we are sure that an opinion we are trying to stifle is false, stifling it would nevertheless be an evil. Mill is here maintaining something so embarrassingly extreme that it borders on the preposterous. Consider again an actual or possible Holocaust denier who makes some outrageously false assertion that we know (if we know anything about the past) to be false. Suppose this individual has the means to spread his lies far and wide and suppose that his doing so is likely to incite a horde of radical Islamists to engage in an Islamist equivalent of Kristallnacht. Would it be evil to 'stifle' the individual in question? By no means. Indeed it could be reasonably argued that it is morally imperative that such an individual not be permitted to broadcast his lies.

How could anyone fail to see this? Perhaps because he harbors the notion that free expression is unconditionally worthwhile, worthwhile regardless of the content of what is being expressed, whether true or false, meaningful or meaningless, harmful or innocuous, and regardless of the context in which the opinions are expressed. Now I grant that freedom of expression, of discussion, of inquiry and the like are very high values. That goes without saying. I have utter contempt for Islamists and other totalitarians. I'm an Enlightenment man after all, a student of Kant, an American, and a philosopher. Argument and dialectic are the lifeblood of philosophy. Philosophy is free and open inquiry. But why do we value the freedom to speak, discuss, publish, and inquire? That is a question that must be asked and answered.

I say that we value them and ought to value them mainly because we value truth and because the freedom to speak, publish, discuss, and inquire are means conducive to the acquisition of truth and the rooting out of falsehood. We ought to accord them a high value, a value that trumps other values, only on condition that they, on balance, lead us to truth and away from falsehood. We value them, and ought to value them, mainly as means, not as ends in themselves. This is consistent with holding that some public expression that is not truth-conducive has a value in itself.

So the Holocaust denier, who abuses the right to free speech to spread what we all know (if we know anything about the past) to be falsehoods, has no claim on our toleration. For again, there is no unconditional or abolute right to free expression. That right is limited by competing values, the value of truth being one of them. The value of social order is another.

Two arguments, then.

The first is that free expression while it may have some value in itself has a high value only as a means to an end, where the end is the acquisition and dissemination of truth. The second is that the value of socila order far outweighs the extremely limited value of someone's spouting falsehoods about, say, the genocide of the Jews by the Nazis. Those we abuse the right to free speech by spreading pernicious falsehoods have no claim on our toleration.

As I see it, then, Mill makes two mistakes in his first passage. He fails to see that some opinions are known to be false. Now there may not be many such opinions, but all I need is one to refute him since he makes a universal claim. I will of course agree with Mill that many of the doctrines that people denounce as false, and will not examine, are not known to be false. The second mistake is to think that even if we know an opinion to be false we have no right to suppress its propagation.

Now of course I am not claiming that all, or even most, known falsehoods are such that their propagation ought to be suppressed. Let the Flat Earth Society propagate its falsehoods to its heart's content. For few take them seriously, and their falsehoods, though known to be falsehoods, are not sufficiently pernicious to warrant suppression. Obviously, government censorship or suppression of the expression of opinions must be employed only in very serious cases. This is because government, though it is practically necessary and does do some good, does much evil and has a tremendous capacity for unspeakable evils. It was communist governments that murdered 100 million in the 20th century. And when the Nazis stripped Jews of their property and sent them to the Vernichtungslager, it was legal. (Think about that and about whether you want to persist in conflating the legal and the moral.)

Mill's mistake, as it seems to me, is that he allows NO cases where such suppression would be justified. And that is a position whose extremism condemns it. Toleration extremism, to give it a name.

Evaluation of the Second Passage

Mill only digs his hole deeper in the second passage. "Strange it is, that men should admit the validity of the arguments for free discussion, but object to their being "pushed to an extreme;" not seeing that unless the reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case." Surely the bolded principle is a bizarre one. Consider respect for human life. Respecting human life, we uphold a general prohibition against homicide. But it is not plausibly maintained there are no exceptions to this 'general' prohibition where the term does not mean 'exceptionless' but 'holding in most cases.' There are at least five putative classes of exceptions: killing in self-defence, killing in just war, capital punishment, abortion, and suicide. Now suppose someone were to apply Mill's principle (the one I bolded) and argues as follows: "Unless the reasons against killing humans are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case." Would you not put such a person down as a doctrinaire fool? He holds that if it is wrong to kill human beings 'in general,' then it is wrong to kill any human being in any circumstance whatsoever. It would then follow that it is wrong to kill a home invader who has just murdered your wife and is about to do the same to you and your children. The mistake here is to take an otherwise excellent principle or precept (Do not kill human beings) and remove all restrictions on its application.

There are plenty of counterexamples to Mill's bizarre principle that "unless reasons are good for an extreme case, they are not good for any case."

We conservatives are lovers of liberty and we share common ground with our libertarian brethren, but here we must part company with them.

General Terms, Singular Terms, and Direct Reference

London Ed sends another batch of 'philolang' ruminations. My responses are in blue.

Bill's comment that the general/singular distinction should not be confused with the indirect/direct distinction brings us back to my original question about how we could get from one to the other. I think I have finally cracked it.

Define a general term as one which applies, or can apply, in the same sense or meaning, to more than one object. The Latin phrase is dicibilis de pluribus. Even when [a term] can apply to only one individual at one time (e.g., 'prime minister of England'), a general term is transferable: it could still apply to a different individual (after the next election) and even if it has always applied to the same individual ('the moon'), it still could apply, counterfactually, to a different heavenly object, or to more than one.

BV: So far, so good. I agree completely.

By contrast, a genuine singular term can only apply in the same sense or meaning to one individual. There are many people called 'John Smith', but this is not the same as them all being called ‘man’. The term 'man' applies to them all in the same sense or meaning, whereas the proper name applies to each of them with only one specific meaning, proper to each alone. Moreover, if we say "John Smith is prime minister", meaning a particular Smith, and then say "John Smith might not have been prime minister" or "John Smith will not be prime minister next year", then the same person is meant.

BV: This implies that 'the winner of the Boston Marathon in 1979' is not a genuine singular term despite the fact that it picks out exactly one individual, Bill Rodgers. (Someone other than Rodgers could have won it.) I am simply noting this implication.

Now ask about the relation 'applies to' which holds between a general term and several individuals, and between the singular term and a unique individual. Why should this hold? What makes the term and the individual(s) so related?

In the case of the general term, it is clearly the possession of an attribute corresponding to the term. E.g. if the term is 'F', then the statement 'this is F' is true or false for any individual signified by 'this', and the term 'applies to' the individual by definition if the statement is true, otherwise it does not apply.

BV: I would put it as follows. The general term 'F' applies to an individual x only if the attribute expressed by 'F' is instantiated by x. For example, the general term 'cat' applies to Max only if Max instantiates the property or attribute of being a cat.

So in the case of general terms the relation is 'accidental' or indirect, mediated either by the possession of the attribute – if being F is accidental, or by the existence of the individual, if being F is essential. (I.e. it is accidental that David Cameron falls under 'man' not because David Cameron could exist without being a man, which is impossible, but rather because Cameron could cease to exist. Indeed, all men, i.e. all humans, could cease to exist, yet the term 'man' would still have a meaning).

BV: This seems right although you are using 'accidental' in two different senses which is inelegant at the very least and could be misleading. The thought, though, is clear. The (general) reference of 'man' to Cameron is mediated by the property expressed by 'man.' Hence this general reference cannot be direct.

But in the case of singular terms, there is no attribute that an individual could possess, in virtue of which the term applies to them [to it]. Such an attribute would be untransferable, i.e. no other individual could possibly possess it, which is absurd. (I will omit other arguments which Bill has given – he is the main 'owner' of these arguments). Therefore the relation is not indirect via the possession of any attribute and (in the absence of any other candidate for the intermediary) the meaning of the singular term must be the object itself.

BV: This definitely seems to follow. My claim for a long time has been that there are no haecceity properties. There is no property H of x such that: (i) x instantiates H; (ii) nothing distinct from x instantiates H; (iii) nothing distinct from x could instantiate H. Given that there are no haecceity properties, no term can express one. Ergo, genuine singular reference is not routed through, mediated by, haecceities.

It follows that if a relation between a [genuinely] singular term and its bearer exists at all, i.e. if there is such a thing as a [genuine singular] reference relation, then it must be direct.

BV: I don't think this follows. What follows is a disjunctive proposition: either there are no genuinely singular terms or their reference is direct.

Note that while it is a datum that there are proper names, and a datum that there are grammatically singular terms, it is not a datum that there are genuinely singular terms as defined above. Suppose there are no genuinely singular terms. There would still be proper names such as 'David Cameron.' It is just that they would have to be understood in some other way, as, say, definite descriptions in disguise. But then they are not genuinely singular.

I think Ed has established nolens volens the above disjunctive proposition. Now consider this argument:

1. Either there are no genuinely singular terms or singular reference is direct.

2. If singular reference is direct, then any associated propositions must be Russellian as opposed to Fregean. For example, if 'Tom' in the sentence 'Tom is tall' refers directly, then the proposition *Tom is tall* is Russellian, i. e., it contains Tom himself as subject constituent and not a Fregean sense or mode of presentation of Tom.

3. There are no Russellian propositions.

Therefore

4. Singular reference is not direct.

Therefore

5. There are no genuinely singular terms.

Argument for (3):

6. If a proposition is Russellian, then its truth supervenes upon that unity of its constituents that makes it a proposition as opposed to a mere aggregate of its constituents. (Just as a sentence is not a list of its terms, a proposition is not an aggregate of its constituents.)

7. If truth supervenes upon proposition-making unity of constituents, then there are no false propositions.

Therefore

8. If a proposition is Russellian, then it cannot be false.

9. There are false propositions.

Therefore

3. There are no Russellian propositions.

Plantinga Reviews Philip Kitcher, Life After Faith: The Case for Secular Humanism

Here.

The wild diversity of religious doctrines suggests to Kitcher that they are all almost certainly false. Plantinga makes an interesting response:

But even for whole systems: there is certainly wide variety here, but how does it follow that they are all almost certainly false? Or even that any particular one is almost false? Kitcher's book is an exercise in philosophy. The variety of philosophical belief rivals that of religion: there are Platonists, nominalists, Aristotelians, Thomists, pragmatists, naturalists, theists, continental philosophers, existentialists, analytic philosophers (who also come in many varieties), and many other philosophical positions. Should we conclude that philosophical positions, including Kitcher's low opinion of religious belief, are all almost certainly false? I should think not. But then wouldn't the same be true for religious beliefs? The fact that others hold religious opinions incompatible with mine is not a good reason, just in itself, for supposing my beliefs false. After all, if I were to suppose my views false, I would once more be in the very same position: there would be very many others who held views incompatible with mine.

To put it my own way: a philosopher discrediting religion on the ground of doctrinal diversity is a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Philosophers notoriously contradict one another on anything and everything. Everything is up for grabs. What then gives philosophy the right to judge religion?

Is Paris a ‘No Go’ Zone?

Apparently it is for Obama.

Dereliction of duty and abdication of authority characterize the man.

Commentary from Commentary by Jonathan S. Tobin:

But, of course, there’s more here than mere tone deafness to public opinion. The president’s flat line response to the Charley Hebdo massacre and then the terrorist attack on the kosher market in Paris (which he failed to characterize as an act of anti-Semitism in his public statement after it happened) illustrated his lack of comfort on this terrain. This is a president that has spent his time in office trying desperately to reach out to the Arab and Muslim worlds to change their perception of the United States. That he has failed in this respect is no longer in question but his disinterest in taking part in a symbolic response to extremist Islam stands in direct contrast to his eagerness for détente with an Iran that is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. The cold shoulder he gave the Paris march resonates not so much because of the odd and very conspicuous absence of an American representative of any stature, but because it fits with the perception of his attitudes.

Report from London

London Karl is a young Irishman living in London. I had heard that Birmingham is a 'no go' zone, so I asked London Ed about it. Ed told me that it is 80% 'no go' but that nobody would want to go there anyway: it is rainy and like Detroit. When I mentioned this to London Karl, he wrote back:

Funny you mention Birmingham. I went there for the first time on Saturday. It has a reputation for having a large Asian, Black, and Muslim population, and this was certainly very noticeable on the streets. I also saw the usual table on the main thoroughfare with Muslims handing out free Korans and Islamic literature, with a few Whites availing. One could say this was insensitive, given what was going on in Paris, or one could say that it was non-violent Muslims trying to ensure their faith was not being confounded with that of the terrorists.

Actually, the real ghettos in England are further north. An acquaintance of mine lectured in the University at Bradford, and told me it was a nightmare, as large numbers of the undergrad intake couldn't even speak, let alone write, English! He was instructed by the admins to pass them anyway, as if he didn't, there would be the inevitable 'racist' outcry. Unfortunately the press are so soft and PC in the UK that anyone who even raises legitimate fears is immediately slapped with the 'racist' tag, as indeed is the case in Ireland.

I think one thing people are underestimating is that it only takes small bands of dedicated elitists to change the course of history and certainly the history of ideas and religion. Think of Christians in the first three centuries, Protestants in the 16th, French revolutionaries, Nazis, Bolsheviks etc.

Karl is quite right and wise beyond his years: it only takes a few to bring about huge changes some of which eventuate in disaster. This is why decent people ought not sit back and do nothing. You must do your bit. Speak out. Vote. Blog.

It doesn't take much to shut down a great city such as Paris or Boston. A pressure-cooker bomb, an armed assault of an editorial office by a few Muslim fanatics. What are you PC-ers waiting for? A nuclear event in Manhattan? Do you think that might make a dent in your precious 'lifestyle.'

You say it is "unimaginable"? Then I suggest your powers of imagination are weak. People said the same about 9/11 before 9/11 became 9/11.

Je Suis Charlie?

In reaction to the murderous attack by Muslim terrorists on Charbonnier and Co. at the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, many have jumped on the "I am Charlie" bandwagon. It is quite understandable. But perhaps a little thought should be given to the question whether one ought to endorse a political pornographer who publishes stuff like the following. Might there be something called toleration extremism? Might it be that while one has a legal right to publish almost anything, one has a moral obligation to exercise restraint? Why do we value freedom of speech? Is it valuable as an end in itself or only as a means to valuable ends? Is it reasonable to maintain that any and all public self-expression is a good just in virtue of its being self-expression? I hope to say something about these questions in the next few days. Meanwhile, please think a bit before trumpeting your identity or rather solidarity with 'Charlie.'

My point in posting the following, needless to say, is not to mock the Christian Trinity but to raise in a graphic manner some very serious questions that require careful thought.

John Passmore on Entity-Monism and Existence-Monism

The Australian philosopher John Passmore (1914 – 2004) is described in his Telegraph obituary as "an Andersonian radical, swept away, though not to the point of unquestioning devotion, by his Scottish-born philosophy professor, John Anderson . . . ." The influence of Anderson on Passmore is very clear from the latter's Philosophical Reasoning (Basic Books, 1969; orig. publ. 1961). The Andersonian Chapter Three, "The Two-Worlds Argument," is the cynosure of my current interest, in particular, the distinction Passmore makes between what he calls entity-monism and what he calls existence-monism. (Anderson, as far as I know does not use these terms and, as far as I know, they have found no resonance among the epigoni. The terms are not found in the index of A. J. Baker's Australian Realism: The Systematic Philosophy of John Anderson, Cambridge UP, 1986. And Quentin Gibson, The Existence Principle, Kluwer, 1998, p. 14, dismisses 'existence-monism' as a misleading label for Anderson's view.)

In this entry I will present the distinction and then comment critically upon it.

Passmore tells us that

Entity-monism is the doctrine that 'ultimately' there is only one real entity. What we normally regard as distinct things — whether they be chairs, or musical compositions, or human being — are, all of them, appearances of this one entity. (38)

[. . .]

Existence-monism is difficult to define in general terms. But we might put it thus: when we say that something exists, or that things of a certain kind exist, this exist or exists has an invariant meaning whatever the 'something' or the 'kind' may be, i.e. there are not sorts, or levels, or orders of existence. More accurately, what is asserted by 'X exists' can always be asserted by a proposition which contains an 'is' which has, in this sense, an invariant meaning. Existence-monism, unlike entity-monism, does admit of varieties. Philosophers might say, and have said, that to exist is to be perceived, or to be in process, or to be spatiotemporal, or to be a possible subject for physical investigation, or to be a thing with properties, and do on. (39, bolding added)

I have two criticisms.

1. There is first of all a slide from a semantic thesis, a thesis about meaning, to an ontological thesis, a thesis about being. Passmore conflates the semantic claim that 'exists' and cognates have an invariant meaning or sense with the ontological claim that there are no sorts or kinds or levels or orders or modes or ways of being/existence. But as I see it, one can consistently maintain both that (i) 'exists' and cognates is univocal in sense across all its uses and that (ii) there are different modes of existence. For this reason, (i) and (ii) are distinct theses.

Let me give a quick illustration. Carpets exist and bulges in carpets exist. In the sentence immediately preceding 'exist' is invariant in sense across both occurrences (both tokenings). And yet it makes good sense to say that carpets and bulges exist in different ways. A carpet can exist with or without a bulge; but no carpet bulge can exist without a carpet whose bulge it is. If a substance is defined as an entity logically capable of independent existence, then a carpet is a substance. But surely no bulge in a carpet is a substance. For no carpet bulge is logically capable of independent existence. It is rather an accident of the carpet as substance. Carpet and bulge exist in different ways: the carpet exists in itself; the bulge in another. Or: the carpet exists independently; the bulge dependently. To think of carpet and bulge as Humean "distinct existences" strains credulity. What we have here are not two Hume-distinct items that stand in a causal relation. Nor do they stand in a logical relation if such relationsd are defined over propositions. What we have here is irreducible existential dependence: the bulge depends in its existence upon the carpet, but not vice versa. To make sense of this example we need to speak of two different modes of existence.

Suppose you accept this. Surely the acceptance is logically consistent with saying that both carpets and bulges exist in the same sense of 'exist.' And what sense is that? It is the sense expressed by the so-called existential quantifier. A better name for it is 'particular quantifier.' In 'Some items are carpets' and 'Some items are bulges,' the predicate 'Some items are ___' has the same sense. And yet carpets and bulges, like faces and smiles, exist in different ways. Or at least one can with no breach of logical consistency maintain this ontological thesis while also holding to the semantic univocity of 'exists' and cognates. Just don't confuse the ontological with the semantic. Don't confuse ways of existing with senses of 'exists.'

Well, I hope you followed that. Now on to the second criticism where the going gets tougher.

2. Passmore clearly sees that one could not sensibly maintain that to be = to be water. "Nobody could now win credence who asserted that to be is to be a quantity of water, however plausible that doctrine might have looked to Thales." (39) And the reason would not be that we now know that water is not an element, or that there are stuffs other than water. The reason lies deeper. If to exist is to be water, then 'Water exists' would be equivalent to the tautology 'Water is water,' when it obviously isn't.

It seems clear that there is no kind of thing or kind of stuff that we could invoke to give descriptive content to existence in general. There is no K such that it will come out true that to be = to be a K or a quantity of K. No one will maintain that to be is to be a lump of coal or to be a cat or to be a quantity of hydrogen. There are two problems here. First, if to be = to be a K, then only Ks could exist. If to be is to be a cat, then only cats could exist: everything would be a cat. Not good! Second, even if there is some K that everything is, being K and existing are not the same. For to say that Ks exist is not to say that Ks are Ks.

What about: to be is to be spatiotemporal? One problem with this naturalist proposal is that it is circular. A thing cannot be spatiotemporal unless it exists in space-time. But then the proposal comes to this: for x to exist is for x to be spatiotemporal and exist. This point about circularity is equivalent to the second point I just made. To say of a spatiotemporal thing that exists is not to say that it is spatiotemporal. To give it a modal twist: it is necessary that spatiotemporal items be spatiotemporal, but contingent that any exist.

So it comes as a surprise when Passmore says, with respect to "To be is to have a place in Space-Time," that "this sort of difficulty does not arise," namely the difficulty in the water example. Why not? Because, "Space-Time is not the sort of thing to which existence is ascribed or which is used to distinguish one thing from another." (39) But surely we do ascribe existence to spacetime. And it is question-begging to say that spatiotemporality does not distinguish one thing from another: it distinguishes concrete things from abstract things. Granted, it does not distinguish items in space time, but neither does being a cat distinguish cats from one another.

So is seems to me that 'To be is to be water' and 'To be is to be spatiotemporal' are on a par. The only difference is that 'water' picks out a natural stuff-kind while 'spatiotemporal pickls out a mode of being.

Pace Anderson and Passmore, being cannot be identified with being spatiotemporal.

What then becomes of existence-monism? Existence-monism amounts to the claim that there is a single way of being or existence as opposed to two or more ways. Thus existence-monism is taken by Andersonians to rule out Plato's two-world theory according to which Forms exist atemporally while the phenomenal particulars that participate in them exist in a temporal way. But as I pointed out in my first criticism, one cannot validly infer a single way of being from a single use of 'exists.' Univocity at the level of sense doesn't entail modal sngleness at the level of being.

What reason, then, do we have to think that there is a single way of being? Well, you might say that it is evident to the senses that there are things in space and time. Fine, but that doesn't show that there is a way of being that is their way of being, even with the addition of the premise that everything that exists exists in space and time. That is, it does not show that we must distinguish between nature, existence, and mode of existence. Why can't we eke by with just nature and existence?

Besides, if there is exactly one way of being, and spatiotemporal items, which we know to exist, exist in that way, does it not follow that to be = to be spatiotemporal, that existence reduces to spatiotemporality? But we saw above under #2 that that can't be right: there is no F such that to exist = to be F. (Wel, there is one case, but it is a very specila one idneed!)

I suspect that we cannot speak of a way of being at all unless we speak of two or more ways of being. For what could motivate the tripartite distinction among nature, existence, and mode, if not examples like that of the carpet and the bulge where it is highly plausible to say that the items distinguished exist in diferent ways? I am assuming that one has not made the mistake exposed in #1 above, namely, the mistake of confusing senses and modes and sliding illicitly from the univocity of 'exists' to the singleness of mode of being.

There are three positions that want distinguishing:

Existence-Monism: There is exactly one mode of being.

Existence-Pluralism: There are two or more modes of being.

Existence-Nihilism: There are no modes of being.

The real debate is between the pluralists and the nihilists. The monist position of the Andersonians is the result of confusion. Or at least that is the way it looks at the moment. But we press on.

Will the Real Truth-Maker of ‘Al is Fat’ Please Stand up?

From a comment thread:

Me to Josh: "Could Al be the truth-maker of 'Al is fat'? Arguably not. What is needed is a state of affairs, Al's being fat."

Josh to me: Yes, I think Al is the truth-maker of "Al is fat," but could be persuaded otherwise. I'm not sure what objections you have in mind for that position.

Here is an excerpt from a forthcoming article of mine to appear in a volume honoring the late David M. Armstrong, widely regarded as Australia's greatest philosopher:

II. The Truth-Maker Argument for Facts

The central and best among several arguments for facts is the Truth-Maker Argument. Take some such contingently true affirmative singular sentence as 'Al is fat.' Surely with respect to such sentences there is more to truth than the sentences that are true. There must be something external to a true sentence that grounds its being true, and this external something is not plausibly taken to be another sentence or the say-so of some person. 'Al is fat' is not just true; it is true because there is something in extralinguistic and extramental reality that 'makes' it true, something 'in virtue of which' it is true. There is this short man, Al, and the guy weighs 250 lbs. There is nothing linguistic or mental about the man or his weight. Here is the sound core, at once both ancient and perennial, of correspondence theories of truth. Our sample sentence is not just true; it is true because of the way the world outside the mind and outside the sentence is configured. The 'because' is not a causal 'because.' The question is not the empirical-causal one as to why Al is fat. He is fat because he eats too much. The question concerns the ontological ground of the truth of the sentential representation, 'Al is fat.' Since it is obvious that the sentence cannot just be true — given that it is not true in virtue of its logical form or ex vi terminorum — we must posit something external to the sentence that 'makes' it true. I don't see how this can be avoided even though I cheerfully admit that 'makes true' is not perfectly clear. That (some) truths refer us to the world as to that which makes them true is so obvious and commonsensical and indeed 'Australian' that one ought to hesitate to reject the idea because of the undeniable puzzles that it engenders. Motion is puzzling too but presumably not to be denied on the ground of its being puzzling.

Now what is the nature of this external truth-maker? If we need truth-makers it doesn't follow straightaway that we need facts. This is a further step in the argument. Truth-maker is an office. Who or what is a viable candidate? It can't be Al by himself, if Al is taken to be ontologically unstructured, an Armstrongian 'blob,' as opposed to a 'layer cake,' and it can't be fatness by itself.¹ (Armstrong 1989a, 38, 58) If Al by himself were the truth-maker of 'Al is fat' then Al by himself would make true 'Al is not fat' and every sentence about Al whether true or false. If fatness by itself were the truth-maker, then fatness exemplified by some other person would be the truth-maker of 'Al is fat.' Nor can the truth-maker be the pair of the two. For it could be that Al exists and fatness exists, by being exemplified by Sal, say, but Al does not instantiate fatness. What is needed, apparently, is a proposition-like entity, the fact of Al's being fat. We need something in the world to undergird the predicative tie. So it seems we must add the category of fact to our ontology, to our categorial inventory. Veritas sequitur esse – the principle that truth follows being, that there are no truths about what lacks being or existence – is not enough. It is not enough that all truths are about existing items pace Meinong. It is not enough that 'Al' and 'fat' have worldly referents; the sentence as a whole needs a worldly referent. In many cases, though perhaps not in all, truth-makers cannot be 'things' – where a thing is either an individual or a property – or collections of same, but must be entities of a different categorial sort. Truth-making facts are therefore 'an addition to being,' not 'an ontological free lunch,' to employ a couple of signature Armstrongian phrases. For the early Armstrong at least, facts do not supervene upon their constituents. This yields the following scheme. There are particulars and there are universals. The Truth-Maker Argument, however, shows or at least supports the contention that there must also be facts: particulars-instantiating-universals.² There are other arguments for facts, but they cannot be discussed here. And there are other candidates for the office of truth-maker such as tropes and Husserlian moments (Mulligan et al. 2009) but these other candidates cannot be discussed here either. Deeper than any particular argument for facts, or discussion of the nature of facts, lies the question whether realism about facts even makes sense. To this question we now turn.

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1If Al is a blob, then he lacks ontological structure; but that is not to say that he lacks spatial or temporal parts. It is obvious that he has spatial parts; it is not obvious that he has ontological 'parts.' Thin particulars, properties, and nexus count as ontological 'parts.' Layer cakes have both spatiotemporal and ontological structure.

2Are facts or states of affairs then a third category of entity in addition to particulars and universals? Armstrong fights shy of this admission: “I do not think that the recognition of states of affairs involves introducing a new entity. . . . it seems misleading to say that there are particulars, universals, and states of affairs.” (Armstrong 1978, 80) Here we begin to glimpse the internal instability of Armstrong's notion of a state of affairs. On the one hand, it is something in addition to its constituents: it does not reduce to them or supervene upon them. On the other hand, it is not a third category of entity. We shall see that this instability proves disastrous for Armstrong's ontology.

Pope Francis’ Attempt to Put a Christian Face on Islam

Pope Francis is a foolish man, and folly brings danger in its train. That is my harsh judgment. For documentation, I refer you to an excellent article by William Kilpatrick, Looking at Islam Through Catholic Eyes. Kilpatrick is too politic to draw the harsh conclusion; he prefers to say that the good pope has "clouded the issue." Excerpts (bolding added):

Pope Francis’ recent apostolic exhortation seems to be in line with Massignon’s attempt to put a Christian face on Islam. The part that stands out is the following: “Faced with disconcerting episodes of violent fundamentalism, our respect for true followers of Islam should lead us to avoid hateful generalizations, for authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence” [my emphasis]. Here, the Pope goes beyond the Vatican II documents and beyond the conciliatory statements of his recent predecessors. Some will call it a step forward, but there are reasons to think it is a step in the wrong direction.

The Koran is replete with admonitions to commit violence and terror. What can Pope Francis possibly mean by saying that a “proper reading” of the Koran shows that it is “opposed to every form of violence”? There are many violent passages in the Old Testament as well, but Christians believe that these have to be understood in light of the New Testament. However, there is no New Testament in Islam. Islam’s other “sacred” documents such as the Sira (the life of Muhammad), the Hadith (collections of the words and deeds of Muhammad), and the various law manuals confirm the violent teachings of the Koran. These books give us a fuller picture of Islam than does the Koran, but in no way do they soften or reinterpret the violent passages. If anything, they cast doubt on the peaceful passages. The Islamic doctrine of abrogation, which is based on sura 2:106 of the Koran, holds that if two passages in the Koran contradict each other, the later verse cancels or abrogates the earlier verse. Since most of the peaceful Koranic verses come from the early Meccan period, many Muslim authorities hold that they are superseded by the latter violent verses.

Some Sufi and Ahmadiyya sects have come up with more spiritualized interpretations of the Koran but, as noted before of the Sufis, they are far out of the Islamic mainstream and are often persecuted as heretics. Recently, an Ahmadi doctor was arrested in Pakistan for reading from the Koran because, as reported in the Ahmadiyya Times, “According to the laws of Pakistan it is a criminal act for an Ahmadi to read the Holy Qur’an or act in a manner that may be perceived as the Ahmadi is ‘posing as a Muslim.’”

[ . . . ]

Yet, at the risk of redundancy, it bears repeating that the spiritual tradition of Rumi, al-Hallaj, and the Sufi masters lies at the margins of the Islamic faith. For example, the use of music, poetry, and dance in rituals practiced by Rumi’s followers are considered un-Islamic by many, if not most, Islamic authorities. But, thanks in large part to the work of Massignon, this mystical tradition is looked upon by many influential Catholics as the authentic Islam. Thus, one man’s skewed and partial reading of Islam has come to color the “official” Church view of Islam.

As Pope Francis asserts, it is possible to read the Koran as being “opposed to every form of violence.” We know it is possible because that it is the way that some have read it. However, to say that this reading is the “proper” or “authentic” one is debatable, even misleading. At a time when clarity about Islam may be a matter of life or death for many Christians, the Pope’s statement may, unfortunately, only further cloud the issue.

The MavPhil Doctrine of Abrogation

In case you missed it, 'abrogation' is in effect in these pages. Thus yesterday's fine entry on the No True Scotsman fallacy– which you really ought to study and think through as opposed to skim — abrogates and supersedes an earlier effort along the same lines from February 2009 which was a bit sloppy.

You are getting philosophy lessons here, muchachos, and for free! Can you beat that?

This site is entirely pro bono, your bonum and mine. My pledge: No advertising! No tip jar. No money-grubbing. And I say that as a conservative who believes, nay, knows, that the only way to go for healthy societies is free markets under the rule of law.

Why is Mexico such a bloody mess? Lack of the rule of law. See article below. Why did the USSR collapse under its own weight? State control of the economy.

Women Need to ‘Man Up’

A member of the distaff contingent advises. If men are too 'cocky,' then perhaps the female equivalent is the answer rather than the cultivation of grievances:

How did we create an entire class of highly privileged, mostly affluent young women who feel unsafe on campus, microaggressed at every turn, utterly unable to cope with the garden-variety misdemeanours of boys and men, who have been behaving badly since time began despite our many efforts (most quite successful) to civilize them?

Well, you know the answer. The universities are hothouses for a grievance culture that sees racism, sexism and misogyny under every rug. Many of the faculty derive their livelihoods from it. These institutions have constructed increasingly elaborate codes of conduct and large administrative apparatuses to detect and uproot these evils, however subtle and invisible they may be to ordinary people.

There is No Provision in Islam for Mosque-State Separation

John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion (Yale UP, 1989, pp. 48-49):

From the point of view of the understanding of this state of islam [submission to Allah] the Muslim sees no distinction between the religious and the secular. The whole of life is to be lived in the presence of Allah and is the sphere of God's absolute claim and limitless compassion and mercy. And so islam, God-centredness, is not only an inner submission to the sole Lord of the universe but also a pattern of corporate life in accordance with God's will. It involves both salat, worship, and falah, the good embodied in behaviour. Through the five appointed moments of prayer each day is linked to God. Indeed almost any activity may be begun with Bismillah ('in the name of Allah'); and plans and hopes for the future are qualified by Inshallah ('if Allah wills'). Thus life is constantly punctuated by the remembrance of God. It is a symptom of this that almsgiving ranks with prayer, fasting, pilgrimage and confession of faith as one of the five 'pillars' of Islam. Within this holistic conception the 'secular' spheres of politics, government, law, commerce, science and the arts all come within the scope of religious obedience.

What Hick calls a "holistic conception," I would call totalitarian. Islam is totalitarian in a two-fold sense. It aims to regulate every aspect and every moment of the individual believer's life. (And if you are not a believer, you must either convert or accept dhimmitude.) But it is also totalitarian in a corporate sense in that it aims to control every aspect of society in all its spheres, just as Hick points out supra.

Islam, therefore, is profoundly at odds with the values of the West. For we in the West, whether liberals or conservatives, accept church (mosque)-state separation. We no doubt argue heatedly over what exactly it entails, but we are agreed on the main principle. I regularly criticize the shysters of the ACLU for their extremist positions on this question; but I agree with them that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . ."

This raises a very serious question. Is Islam — pure, unEnlightened, undiluted, fundamentalist, theocratic Islam — deserving of First Amendment protection? We read in the First Amendment that Congress shall not prohibit the free exercise of religion. Should that be understood to mean that the Federal government shall not prohibit the establishment and free exercise of a totalitarian, fundamentalist theocratic religion in a particular state, say Michigan?

Note also that Islam is not a religion like Buddhism or Christianity. It is as much a political ideology as a religion. In this regard it is very similar to the totalitarian political ideology, Communism. Buddha and Jesus were not warriors; Muhammad was.

The USA is a nation with a secular government. Suppose there was a religion whose aim was to subvert our secular government. Does commitment to freedom of religion enjoin toleration of such a religion? As a religion, Islam is the worst of the great religions; as a political ideology, however, it is a formidable enemy. If it prevails, we and our values lose. Are we under some sort of obligation to tolerate that which would destroy us and our way of life? Or does toleration have limits?

These are important questions and they need to be asked. But so-called 'liberals' will scream in protest at my mere mention of them. So what happened to the spirit of free and open inquiry? I am inspired to a parody:

Where have all the liberals gone,long time passing?
Where have all the liberals gone, long time ago?
Where have all the liberals gone?
Gone to Pee Cee every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they e-v-e-r learn?

The No True Scotsman or No True Muslim Fallacy

This is a substantial revision, in the light of recent events, of an entry from about six years ago. This post examines the fallacy that Antony Flew brought to our attention and suggests that 'No True Muslim' is an equally good name for it.

…………….

In logic, a fallacy is not a false belief but a pattern of reasoning that is both typical and in some way specious. Specious reasoning, by the very etymology of the term, appears correct but is not. Thus a fallacy is not just any old mistake in reasoning, but a typical or recurrent mistake that has some tendency to seduce or mislead our thinking. A taxonomy of fallacies is useful insofar as it helps prevent one from seducing oneself or being seduced by others.

Fallacies are either formal or informal. An example of a formal fallacy is Affirming the Consequent. An example of an informal fallacy is Petitio Principii. Note than an argument that is formally valid can yet be informally fallacious. Arguments that beg the question are examples.

Among the so-called informal fallacies is Antony Flew's No True Scotsman. Suppose A says, "No Scotsman puts sugar in his porridge." B replies, "But my uncle Angus puts sugar in his porridge." A responds, "Your Uncle Angus is no true Scotsman!"

Second Example. Call it 'No True Muslim.' A says, "Islam is a religion of peace; Muslims do not do things like murder cartoonists and journalists with whose ideas they disagree." B replies, "On 7 January 2015, two Muslim gunmen forced their way into the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, France and killed Stéphane Charbonnier, the editor of the satirical weekly, and several others." A responds, "Those gunmen were not true Muslims."

Third Example. A: "Nowadays all chess players use algebraic notation." B: "Not so, Ed Yetman does not use algebraic notation. He uses descriptive notation exclusively." A: "Ed Yetman? You call him a chess player?!"

Fourth Example. A: "When a complete neuroscience is achieved, we will know everything about mind, brain, and consciousness." B: "I can't agree, even a completed neuroscience will not explain how consciousness arises from brain activity." A: "A neuroscience that can't explain consciousness would not be a completed neuroscience."

Clearly, something has gone wrong in these examples. Person A is making an illicit dialectical move of some kind. The general form of the mistake seems to be as follows. Person A makes a universal assertion, one featuring a quantifier such as 'all,' 'no,' 'everything' whether explicit or tacit. Person B then adduces a counterexample to the universal claim. Person A illicitly dismisses the counterexample by modifying his original assertion with the use of 'true' or 'real' some equivalent designed to exclude the counterexample. Thus Uncle Angus is excluded as a counterexample by dismissing him as not a true Scotman, and the Muslim gunmen are excluded by dismissing them as not true Muslims.

The fallacy is informal since the fallaciousness depends on the content or subject matter. So we need to ask: When is it not a fallacy? By my count, there are at least four classes of cases in which the No True Scotsman move is not fallacious.

1. When the original assertion is either a logical truth or an analytic truth. If I point out that all bachelors are male, and you reply that your sister Mary is a bachelor, then I am justified in dismissing your 'counterexample' by saying that Mary is not a true bachelor, or a bachelor in the strict sense of the term.

2. When the original assertion is synthetic but necessary. If Saul Kripke is right, 'Water is H₂O' is synthetic but necessary. If I say that water is H₂O, and you object that heavy water is not H₂O but D₂O, then I am entitled to respond that heavy water is not water.

3. When the original assertion involves stipulation. Suppose Smith defines a naturalist as one who denies the existence of God, and I respond that McTaggart is an atheist who is not a naturalist. Have I shown that Smith is wrong? Not all. Smith may respond that McTaggart is not a naturalist as he defines the term. Wholly or partially stipulative definitions cannot be said to be either true or false although they can be more or less useful for classificatory purposes. Second example. Suppose Jack claims that libertarians favor open borders and Jill responds by adducing the case of libertarian John Jay Ray who does not favor open borders. Jack is within his epistemic rights in saying that Ray is not a full-fledged libertarian.

4. When the original assertion specifies the content of a belief-system or worldview. Suppose I point out that Communists are anti-religion, believing as they do that it is the opiate of the masses, an impediment to social progress, the sigh of the oppressed, flowers on the chains that enslave, etc. You say you know people who are Communists but are not against religion. I am entitled to the retort that such 'Communists' are not Communists at all; they are not true or real or genuine Communists, that they are CINOs, Commies in Name Only, etc. I have not committed the fallacy under discussion.

Back to the Muslims. A Muslim is so-called because of his adherence to the religion, Islam. There are certain core beliefs that are definitive of Islam, and thus essential to it, and that a Muslim must accept if he is to count as a Muslim. To take a blindingly evident example, no Muslim can be an atheist. Also: no Muslim can be a trinitarian, or a pantheist, or a polytheist, or believe in the Incarnation. And of course there are more specific doctrines about the Koran, about the prophet Muhammad, etc., that are essential to the faith of Muslims.

Now suppose I point out that Muslims deny that Jesus is the son of God. You reply that your Muslim friend Ali accepts that Jesus is the son of God. Then I commit no fallacy if I retort that Ali is no true Muslim.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Two Fortuitous Finds

After a long and leisurely breakfast this morning with Peter Lupu, Mike Valle, and Richard Klaus, I stopped by Bookman's and got lucky. I found a used copy of Milton Steinberg's 1939 novel, As a Driven Leaf. The title is from Job 13: 24-25: "Wherefore hidest Thou Thy face. . . Wilt thou harass a driven leaf?" I learned about this novel from Joseph Epstein's recent WSJ piece, Balancing Faith and Reason.

And then I got lucky in the CD aisle, stumbling upon the soundtrack to Inside Llewyn Davis. I listened to it on the drive home with raindrops on the windshield and tears in my eyes. Here are some tunes from it:

The Last Thing on My Mind

Green, Green Rocky Road

We Are All Bothered by Different Things

Brian Kennedy, A Passion to Oppose: John Anderson, Philosopher, Melbourne University Press, 1995, p. 141:

Melbourne intellectuals came to regard [John] Anderson 'as the man who had betrayed the Left, a man who had gone over to the other side. Melburnians wanted Anderson to answer a simple question: was he or was he not interested in the fact that some were very rich and some were very poor?' To this question Anderson replied that 'we are all bothered by different things. That finished him with the Melburnians'. [Kennedy quotes Manning Clark, The Quest for Grace, Melbourne, 1991, p. 193]

"We are all bothered by different things." And even when we are bothered by the same things, we prioritize the objects of botherment differently. Now suppose you and I are bothered by exactly the same things in exactly the same order. There is still room for disagreement and possibly even bitter contention: we are bothered to different degrees by the things that bother us.

"It angers me that that doesn't anger you!" "It angers me that you are insufficiently angered by what angers both of us."

Here then is one root of political disagreement. It is a deep root, perhaps ineradicable. And it is a root of other sorts of disagreement as well. We are bothered by different things.

Are conservatives bothered by gun violence? Yes, of course. But they are bothered more by the violation of the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. Liberals, even if they are slightly bothered by the violation of these rights, assuming they admit them in the first place, are much more bothered by gun violence. Now there are factual questions here concerning which agreement is in principle possible, though exceedingly unlikely. For example there is the question whether more guns in the hands of citizens leads to less crime. That is a factual question, but one that is not going to be resolved to the satisfaction of all. Conservatives and liberals disagree about the facts. Each side sees the other as having its own 'facts.'

But deeper than facts lie values. Here the problem becomes truly intractable. We are bothered by different things because we differ about values and their ordering. Conservatives and presumably most liberals value self-reliance but conservatives locate it much higher up in the axiological hierarchy. This probably explains why liberals are more inclined to rely on professional law enforcement for protection against the criminal element even while they bash cops as a bunch of racists eager to hunt down and murder "unarmed black teenagers" such as Michael Brown of Ferguson fame.

As for what finished Anderson with the Melburnians, he was apparently not sufficiently exercised by (material) inequality for the tastes of the latter despite his being a man of the Left, though not reliably so due to his iconoclasm.

Does it bother conservatives that there is wealth inequality? To some extent. But for a(n American) conservative liberty trumps equality in the scale of values. With liberals it is the other way around. Liberals of course cherish their brand of rights and liberties and will go to absurd extremes in defending them even when the right to free expression, a big deal with them, spills over into incitement to violence and includes the pollution of the culture with pornography. Of course, this extremism in defense of free expression bangs up against the liberals' own self-imposed limit of political correctness. The trashers of Christianity suddenly become chickenshits when it comes to the trashing of Islam. That takes more courage than they command. And they are easily cowed by events such as the recent terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Liberals are also absurdly eager to spread the right to vote even at the expense of making the polling places safe for voter fraud. How else do you explain their mindless opposition to photo ID? But not a peep from liberals about 'real' liberties and rights such as gun rights, the right to private property, and the right to freedom from excessive and punitive taxation.

Is material inequality a problem? Not as such. Why should it be?

As I recall John Rawls' Difference Principle, the gist of it is this: Social and economic inequality is justified ONLY IF the inequality makes the worse off better than they would have been without the inequality. Why exactly? If I'm smarter than you, work harder, practice the ancient virtues, avoid the vices, while you are a slacker and a screw-up who nevertheless has what he needs, why is my having more justified ONLY IF it makes you better off than you would have been without the inequality? (Yes, I know all about the Original Position and the Veil of Ignorance, but I don't consider that an argument.)

At the root of our difference are value differences and those, at bottom, are irreconcilable.