Month: March 2015

What the Meinongian Means by ‘Has Being’ and ‘Lacks Being’

There is a passage in Peter van Inwagen's "Existence, Ontological Commitment, and Fictional Entities," (in Existence: Essays in Ontology, CUP, 2014, p. 98, emphasis added), in which he expresses his incomprehension of what the Meinongian means by 'has being' and 'lacks being': 

… the Meinongian must mean something different by 'has being' and 'lacks being' from what I mean by these phrases. But what does he mean by them? I do not know. I say 'x has being' means '~(y) ~y = x'; the Meinongian denies this. Apparently, he takes 'has being' to be a primitive, an indefinable term, whereas I think that 'has being' can be defined in terms of  'all' and 'not'. (And I take definability in terms of 'all' and 'not' to be important, because I am sure that the Meinongian means exactly what I do by 'all' and 'not' — and thus he understands what I mean by 'has being' and is therefore an authority on the question whether he and I mean the same.) And there the matter must rest.  The Meinongian believes that 'has being' has a meaning that cannot be explained in terms of unrestricted universal quantification and negation. 

Before I begin, let me say that I don't think van Inwagen is feigning incomprehension as some philosophers are wont to do: I believe he really has no idea what 'has being' and cognate expressions could mean if they don't mean what he thinks they mean.

No one articulates and defends the thin theory of existence/being better than Peter van Inwagen who is arguably  'king' of the thin theorists.  The essence of the thin theory is that

1. x exists =df ~(y)~(y=x).

Driving the tilde though the right-hand expression, left to right, yields the logically equivalent

1*. x exists =df (∃y)(y = x)

which may be easier for you to wrap your head around.  In something closer to  English

1**.  x exists =df x is identical to something.

The thin theory is 'thin' because it reduces existence to a purely logical notion definable in terms of the purely logical notions of unrestricted universal quantification, negation, and identity.  What is existence?  On the thin theory existence is just identity-with-something.  (Not some one thing, of course, but something or other.) Characteristically Meinongian, however, is the thesis of Aussersein which could be put as follows:

M. Some items have no being.

Now suppose two things that van Inwagen supposes.  Suppose that (i) there is exactly one sense of 'exists'/'is' and that (ii) this one sense is supplied in its entirety by (1) and its equivalents.  Then (M) in conjunction with the two suppositions entails

C. Some items are not identical to anything.

But (C) is self-contradictory since it implies that some item is such that it is not identical to itself, i.e. '(∃x)~(x = x).'

Here we have the reason for van Inwagen's sincere incomprehension of what the Meinongian means by 'has being.'  He cannot understand it because it seems to him to be self-contradictory.  But it is important to note that (M) by itself is not logically contradictory.  It is contradictory only in conjunction with van Inwagen's conviction that 'x has being' means '~(y) ~(y = x).'

In other words, if you ASSUME the thin theory, then the characteristic Meinongian thesis (M) issues in a logical contradiction. But why assume the thin theory?  Are we rationally obliged to accept it?

I don't accept the thin theory, but I am not a Meinongian either.  'Thin or Meinongian' is a false alternative by my lights.  I am not a Meinongian because I do not believe that existence is a classificatory principle that partitions a logically prior domain of ontologically neutral items into the existing items and the nonexisting items.  I hold that everything exists, which, by obversion, implies that nothing does not exist.  So I reject (M).

I reject the thin theory not because some things don't exist, but because there is more to the existence of what exists than identity-with-something.  And what more is that?  To put it bluntly: the more is the sheer extralogical and extralinguistic existence of the thing, its being there (in a non-locative sense of course).  The 'more' is its not being nothing. (If you protest that to not be nothing is just to be something, where 'something' is just a bit of logical syntax, then I will explain that there are two senses of 'nothing' that need distinguishing.)  Things exist, and they exist beyond language and logic. 

Can I argue for this?  It is not clear that one needs to argue the point since it is, to me at least, self-evident.  But I can argue for it anyway.

If for x to exist is (identically) for x to be identical to some y, this leaves open the question:  does y exist or not?  You will say that y exists.  (If you say that y does not exist, then you break the link between existence and identity-with-something.)  So you say that y exists.  But then your thin theory amounts to saying that the existence of x reduces to its identity with something that exists.  My response will be that you have moved in an explanatory circle, one whose diameter is embarrassingly short.  Your task was to explain what it is for something to exist, and you answer by saying that to exist is to be identical to something that exists.  This response is no good, however, since it leaves unexplained what it is for something to exist!  You have helped yourself to the very thing you need to explain.

It is the extralogical and extralinguistic existence of things that grounds our ability to quantify over them.  Given that things exist, and that everything exists, we have no need for an existence predicate: we can rid ourselves of the existence predicate 'E' by defining 'Ex' in terms of '(∃y)(y = x).'  But note that the definiens contains nothing but logical syntax.  What this means is that one is presupposing the extralogical existence of items in the domain of quantification.  You can rid yourself of the existence predicate if you like, but you cannot thereby rid yourself of the first-level existence of the items over which you are quantifying.

Here is another way of seeing the point.  Russell held that existence is a propositional function's being sometimes true.  Let the propositional function be (what is expressed by) 'x is a dog.'  That function is sometimes true (in Russell's idiosyncratic phraseology) if the  free variable 'x' has a substituend that turns the propositional function or open sentence into a true closed sentence.  So consider 'Fido,' the name of an existing dog and 'Cerberus.'  How do I know that substituting  'Fido' for 'x' results in a true sentence while substituting 'Cerberus' does not? Obviously, I  must have recourse to a more fundamental notion of existence than the one that Russell defines.  I must know that Fido exists while Cerberus does not.  Clearly, existence in the fundamental sense is the existence that belongs to individuals, and not existence as a propositional function's being sometimes true.

Now if you understand the above, then you will be able to understand why, in van Inwagen's words, "The Meinongian believes that 'has being' has a meaning that cannot be explained in terms of unrestricted universal quantification and negation."  The thin theory entails that there is no difference in reality between x and existing x.  But for Meinong there is a difference: it is the difference between Sosein and Sein.  While I don't think that there can be a Sosein that floats free of Sein. I maintain that there is a distinction in reality between a thing (nature, essence, Sosein, suchness) and existence.  

If van Inwagen thinks that he has shown that Meinong's doctrine entails a formal-logical contradiction, he is fooling himself.  Despite his fancy footwork and technical rigmarole, all van Inwagen succeeds in doing is begging the question against Meinong.        

Related articles
Maverick Philosopher: Pre-Print: Peter van Inwagen, Existence: Essays in Ontology
Heidegger, Carnap, Das Nichts, and the Analytic-Continental Schism

Tongue and Pen

Christ has harsh words for those who misuse the power of speech at Matthew 12:36: "But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment."  But what about every idle word that bloggers blog and scribblers scribble?  Must not the discipline of the tongue extend to the pen?

Suppose  we back up a step.  What is wrong with idle talk and idle writing?  The most metaphysical of the gospels begins magnificently: "In the beginning was the Word and Word was with God, and the Word was God." (John 1:1)  The Word (Logos, Verbum)  is divine, and if we are made in the divine image and likeness, then the logical power, the verbal power, the power to think, judge, speak, and write is a god-like power in us.  If so, then it ought not be abused.  But in idle talk it is abused.  Here then is a reason why idle talk is wrong. 

But if idle talk is wrong, then so is all idle expression.  And if all idle expression is wrong, then it is difficult to see how idle thoughts could be morally neutral.  For thought is the root and source of expression.  If we take Christ's words in their spirit rather than in their mere letter, moral accountability extends from speech to all forms of expression, and beyond that to the unexpressed but expressible preconditions of expression, namely, thoughts.  Is it not a necessary truth that any communicative expressing is the expressing of a thought?  (Think about that, and ask yourself: does a voice synthesizer speak to you?)

So a first reason to avoid idle thoughts and their expression is that entertaining the thoughts and expressing them debases the god-like power of the Logos in us.  A second reason is that idle words may lead on to what is worse than idle words, to words that cause dissension and discord and violence.  What starts out persiflage may end up billingsgate.  (This is another reason why there cannot be an absolute right to free speech: one cannot have a right to speech that can be expected to issue in physical violence and death.  Consider how this must be qualified to accommodate a just judge's sentencing a man to death.)

There is a third reason to avoid idle expression and the idle thoughts at their base.  Idle words and thoughts impede entrance into silence.  But this is not because they are idle, but because they are words and thoughts.  By 'silence' I mean the interior silence, the inner quiet of the mind which is not the mere absence of sound, but the presence of that which, deeper than the discursive intellect, makes possibly both thought and discourse.  But I won't say more about this now.  See Meditation category.

What go me thinking about this topic is the 'paradox' of Thomas Merton whose works I have been re-reading.  He wrote a very good book, The Silent Life, a book I recommend, though I cannot recommend his work in general.  The Mertonian  'paradox'  is this: how can one praise the life of deep interior solitude and silence while writing 70 books, numerous articles and reviews, seven volumes of journals, and giving all sorts of talks, presentations, workshops, and whatnot?  And all that travel!  It is a sad irony that he died far from his Kentucky abbey, Gethsemane, in Bangkok, Thailand at the young age of 53 while attending yet another  conference. (Those of a monkish disposition are able to, and ought to, admit that many if not most conferences are useless, or else suboptimal uses of one's time, apart from such practical activities as securing a teaching position, or making other contacts necessary for getting on in the world.)

There is a related but different  sort of paradox in Pascal.  He told us that philosophy is not worth an hour's trouble.  But then he bequeathed to us that big fat wonderful book of Pensées, Thoughts, as if to say: philosophy is not worth an hour's trouble — except mine.  Why did he not spend his time  better — by his own understanding of what 'better' involves — praying, meditating, and engaging in related religious activities?

And then there is that Danish Writing Machine Kierkegaard who in his short life (1813-1855) produced a staggeringly prodigious output of books and journal entries.  When did he have time to practice his religion as opposed to writing about it?

I of course ask myself similar questions.  One answer is that writing itself can be a spiritual practice.  But I fear I have posted too much idle rubbish over the years.  I shall try to do better in future.

Related: Abstain the Night Before, Feel Better the Morning After

The Parable of the Leaky Cup

There is no point in begging for water with a leaky cup.  Water thereby gained is immediately lost again.  First fix the cup, then beg for water.

So also with the glimpses and gleanings and intimations from Elsewhere. They won't be retained in a perforated vessel.   And if they are not retained, then they cannot do you any good.  Moral fitness and intellectual discrimination are necessary for their recognition, proper evaluation, retention if judged salutary, and existential implementation.   If you can't act right or think straight, then mystical, religious, and paranormal vouchsafings, whether they come 'out of the blue' or as a result of formal spiritual practices,  may do more harm than good.  They may inflate the ego or lead it into the dark regions of the occult.

Related: Intimations of Elsewhere Ignored

Simone Weil in the Light of Plato: Notes on Phaedo 83

To understand Simone Weil, one must understand her beloved master, Plato. So let's interpret a passage from the Phaedo dialogue, and then compare it to some statements of Weil.

Plato1At Stephanus 83a we read, "…the perceptions of the eye, and the ear, and the the senses are full of deceit." (tr. F. J. Church) The point is presumably not that the senses are sometimes nonveridical, but that they tie us to a world that is not ultimately real, and that distracts us from the one that is. From the context it is clear that the point is not epistemological but axiological and ontological. It is not that the senses are unreliable, whether episodically or globally, in respect of the information they provide us about an external world of spatiotemporal particulars. They are reliable enough in providing us such information. The point is rather that the senses deceive us into conferring high value on what is of low value, and into taking as ultimately real what is derivatively real.

It would be a mistake, therefore, to read the passage as an anticipation of the modern problematic of the external world from Descartes to Kant to G. E. Moore and beyond. The problem is not how we can come to have knowledge of an external world given that what is immediately given are only our ideas and representations, ideas and representations the contents of which would be the same whether or not there is an external world.  The point is much deeper.  The Platonic inquiry calls into question, not human knowledge of a physical world taken to be ultimately real, but the reality and importance of the physical world itself as correlate of the outer senses. 

On the same page of the dialogue, we read that ". . . nothing which is subject to change has any truth." 'Truth' is here used ontically as equivalent to 'being' or 'real existence.' The mutable is not ultimately 'true' or ultimately real. Why not? Because it is subject to change.  The idea is not that the mutable is a mere illusion, but that it lacks plenary reality, and that lacking full reality it lacks plenary value.  I should add that what lacks plenary reality and value cannot play for us a soteriological role.  

There are thus four  ancient themes here, each of which is contested by the moderns qua moderns and the contemporaries qua contemporaries.  There is the idea that impermanence argues relative unreality.  There is the levels-of-reality theme which I most recently discussed in connection with John Anderson back in January.  There is the theme of the intertwinement of reality and value which finds expression much later in the history of thought in the scholastic slogan ens et bonum convertuntur (being and good are convertible) which I take to mean that what is is good just in virtue of its being and in the measure that it possesses being, and that what is good is good in virtue of its being  and in the measure that it possesses being.  Thus things in themselves are not axiologically neutral such that their value predicates are subjectively imposed; it is rather the case that things in themselves in their mind-independent reality are good because they are and in the measure that they are.  Finally, there is the theme that our salvation is bound up with our knowledge of what is ultimate real and thus ultimately good.  This knowledge has ultimate truth and it is this truth that sets us free.

One who can sympathize with these four themes has Platonic intuitions. I suggest that any arguments one develops in support of these four theses will be no more than articulations of these deep intuitions or spiritual insights which one either has or does not have, depending, to allude to Fichte's famous saying, on what kind of person one is. (. . .was für eine Philosophie man wähle, hängt … davon ab, was man für ein Mensch ist.)"What sort of philosophy one chooses depends on the sort of human being one is."  (Thus a superficial fellow like Rudolf Carnap or David Stove is, predictably, a miserable positivist.)

A little farther down, around the middle of St. 83, we read, ". . . when the soul of any man feels vehement pleasure or pain, she is forced at the same time to think that the object, whatever it be, of these sensations is the most distinct and the truest, when it is not." Plato's point is not that the senses deceive us about what is really there in the sense world, but that the senses deceive us into thinking that the sense world is a world of true being or ultimate reality. Compare the allegory of the cave in the Republic.

To find reality the soul must "gather herself together" and "stand aloof from the senses" using them "only when she must . . . ." Pleasure and pain, desire and fear (aversion) must be avoided since they pin the soul to the body, and by pinning it to the body, pin it to the changeful world of sense. Inner purification and meditation, by which the soul "gathers herself together," are necessary for the philosopher's approach to the Real. The true philosopher aims at a separation of the soul from the body, and so must not fear death. We fear death because we love the body and its pleasures.

We now turn to some statements by Weil. The following three paragraphs stand under the heading Profession of Faith which begins her Draft for a Statement of Human Obligations:

There is a reality outside the world, that is to say, outside space and time, outside man's mental universe, outside any sphere whatsoever that is accessible to human faculties.

Corresponding to this reality, at the centre of the human heart, is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world.

Another terrestrial manifestation of this reality lies in the absurd and insoluble contradictions which are always the terminus of human thought when it moves exclusively in this world.

WeilThe first statement conveys the Platonic conviction that ultimate reality is beyond the world of sense. But Weil goes beyond Plato and deeper into mysticism by holding that the reality beyond the sense world is inaccessible to human faculties. At St. 84, Plato has Socrates say that (intuitive) reason is the faculty whereby we contemplate what is "true and divine and real."

The second statement conveys the Platonic thought that the soul's longing can never satisfied by any sense object.

The third statement suggests a way of arguing that the sense world cannot be ultimate: if we take it to be such we land among insoluble aporiai.

Related articles
Maverick Philosopher: Thomas Merton on Plato's Phaedo
Heidegger, Carnap, Das Nichts, and the Analytic-Continental Schism
Denying the Antecedent?

Thomas Merton on Plato’s Phaedo

Thomas Merton, Journals, vol. 4, p. 57 (10 October 1960):

The superb moral and positive beauty of the Phaedo.  One does not have to agree with Plato, but one must hear him.  Not to listen to such a voice is unpardonable, it is like not listening to conscience or nature.

Absolutely right.

Philosophy and Livelihood

Recently over the transom:

I'm wondering, as a 17 year old early entrant to university who's looking for a direction in his life: how do you manage to make a living from what you do?

Also, keep up the great work!
I have been asked this question many times and have written several posts in reply.  Here are three of them:
 
 
 

Pre-Print: Peter van Inwagen, Existence: Essays in Ontology

The following review article is scheduled to appear later this year in Studia Neoscholastica.  The editor grants me permission to reproduce it here should anyone have comments that might lead to its improvement.

REVIEW ARTICLE

William F. Vallicella

 Peter van Inwagen, Existence: Essays in Ontology, Cambridge University Press, 2014, viii + 261 pp.

This volume collects twelve of Peter van Inwagen's recent essays in ontology and meta-ontology, all of them previously published except one, “Alston on Ontological Commitment.” It also includes an introduction, “Inside and Outside the Ontology Room.” It goes without saying that anyone who works in ontology should study this collection of rigorous, brilliant, and creative articles. One route into the heart of van Inwagen's philosophical position is via the theory of fictional entities he develops in chapter 4, “Existence, ontological commitment, and fictional entities.”

 Fictional Entities

One might reasonably take it to be a datum that a purely fictional item such as Sherlock Holmes does not exist. After all, most of us know that Holmes is a purely fictional character, and it seems analytic that what is purely fictional does not exist. Van Inwagen, however, demurs:

The lesson I mean to convey by these examples is that the nonexistence of [Sherlock] Holmes is not an ontological datum; the ontological datum is that we can use the sentence 'Sherlock Holmes does not exist' to say something true. (105)

So, while many of us are inclined to say that the nonexistence of Holmes is an ontological datum in virtue of his being a purely fictional entity, one wholly made up by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, van Inwagen maintains that Holmes exists and that his existence is consistent with his being purely fictional. One man's datum is another man's (false) theory! To sort this out, we need to understand van Inwagen's approach to ficta.

Continue reading “Pre-Print: Peter van Inwagen, Existence: Essays in Ontology“

Is Mankind Making Moral Progress?

Steven Pinker is wrong says John Gray. 

I'm with Gray.  This July will be the 50th anniversary of Barry Maguire's Eve of Destruction.  It has been a long and lucky half-century eve, and by chance, if not by divine providence, the morning of destruction has not yet dawned with the light of man-made suns.  Now take a cold look at the state of the world and try to convince yourself that we are making moral progress and that war and violence and ignorance and hatred and delusion are on the decline.  I won't recite the litany that each of you, if intellectually honest, can recite for himself. 

The 'progressive' doesn't believe in God, he believes in Man.  But right here is the mistake.  For there is no Man, there are only  human beings  at war with one another and with themselves.  We are divided, divisive, and duplicitous creatures. We are in the dark mentally, morally, and spiritually.  The Enlightenment spoke piously of reason, but the light it casts is flickering and inconclusive and its deliverances, though not to be contemned, are easily suborned by individual passions and group tribalisms.  And just as it is certain that there is no Man, it may doubted that there is any such thing as Reason.  Whose reason?  There are two points here.  The first is that reason is infirm even on the assumption that there is such a universal faculty.  The second, more radical point, one that I do not endorse but merely entertain, is that there may be no such universal faculty.

The  'progressive' refuses to face reality, preferring a foolish faith in a utopian future that cannot possibly be brought about by human collective effort.  As Heidegger said in his Spiegel interview, Nur ein Gott kann uns retten.  "Only a God can save us." 

You say God does not exist? That may be so. But the present question is not whether or not God exists, but whether belief in Man makes any sense and can substitute for belief in God. I say it doesn't and can’t, that it is a sorry substitute if not outright delusional. We need help that we cannot provide for ourselves, either individually or collectively. The failure to grasp this is of the essence of the delusional Left, which, refusing the tutelage of tradition and experience, goes off half-cocked with schemes that in the recent past have  employed murderous means for an end that never materialized.  Communist governments murdered an estimated 100 million in the 20th century alone.  That says something about the Left and also about government.  What is says about the latter is at least this much: governments are not by nature benevolent.  It may be that man is by nature zoon politikon, as Aristotle thought: a political animal.  But what may be true of man cannot be true of the polis.

Related articles
Nietzsche and the New Atheists
Michael Walzer on Religion
Why the Firestorm? Rudy Spoke the Truth that Hurts and Punctured the Obama Myth

The Competency of Desire

Human desires regularly show themselves to be highly competent when it comes to the seduction of reason and the subornation of conscience.

A man murders his wife and the mother of his child in order to collect on a life insurance policy.  Why? So that he can run off with a floozie who shook her tail in his face at a strip joint and then pledged her undying love.  Upshot? The man does life in orison  prison, the child grows up without parents, and the floozie moves on to her next victim. 

(O felix erratum! Actually, prison would be a good place for orison if you were 'in the hole,' where I would want to be, and not in the general population ever having it proved to one that "Hell is other people." (Sartre, No Exit))

Pace the Buddhists, the problem is not desire as such, but desire inordinate and misdirected.

Buddha understood the nature of desire as infinite, as finally unsatisfiable by any finite object. But since he had convinced himself that there is no Absolute, no Atman, nothing possessing self-nature, he made a drastic move: he preached salvation through the extirpation of desire itself. Desire itself is at the root of suffering, dukkha, on the Buddhist conception, not desire for the wrong objects; so the way to salvation is not via redirection of desire upon the right Object, but via an uprooting of desire itself.

The Task of Philosophy: To Conceptualize the Absolute

Wolfgang Cramer, Gottesbeweise und Ihre Kritik, Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann 1967, p. 19:

So lange noch gewusst wird, was Philosophie ist, solange Philosophie noch ist, wird sie die Aufgabe, einen gesicherten Begriff vom Absoluten zu entwickeln, nicht zur Ruhe kommen lassen.

The task of developing a secure concept of the Absolute will never come to rest as long as philosophy is and is appreciated for what it is. (tr. BV)