February 2016 – Maverick Philosopher

Partisan Intransigence and Political True Belief

The last few days I have spoken with a number of people about Donald Trump, almost all of them supporters. What surprises me is their refusal to admit the man's negatives. Their partisanship blinds them. And then there is the naive belief that, if elected, Trump will accomplish what he says he will. Given his bad judgment and school-boy mouthing off and glee at offending people, how will he work with Congress? Or will he try to do everything by executive order? There is this document called the Constitution. Or does he too believe in a 'living' Constitution?

Will I vote for Trump if nominated? Of course. Hillary must be defeated, and Trump has so mastered the politics of personal destruction, hitherto a specialty of leftists, that he has a good chance of defeating her.

So what's my point? My point is that we are very sick society if it should come down to a choice between a brazen hard-leftist liar like Hillary and a low life like Trump. I would like to see a bit of understanding by Trump's supporters of who it is they are supporting. That and a little less rah-rah partisanship. You don't think he is a low life? He fails the decency test. Max Lucado has his number:

I don't know Mr. Trump. But I've been chagrined at his antics. He ridiculed a war hero. He made mockery of a reporter's menstrual cycle. He made fun of a disabled reporter. He referred to the former first lady, Barbara Bush as "mommy," and belittled Jeb Bush for bringing her on the campaign trail. He routinely calls people "stupid," "loser," and "dummy." These were not off-line, backstage, overheard, not-to-be-repeated comments. They were publicly and intentionally tweeted, recorded, and presented.

Such insensitivities wouldn't even be acceptable even for a middle school student body election. But for the Oval Office? And to do so while brandishing a Bible and boasting of his Christian faith? I'm bewildered, both by his behavior and the public's support of it.

The stock explanation for his success is this: he has tapped into the anger of the American people. As one man said, "We are voting with our middle finger." Sounds more like a comment for a gang-fight than a presidential election. Anger-fueled reactions have caused trouble ever since Cain was angry at Abel.

We can only hope, and pray, for a return to decency. Perhaps Mr. Trump will better manage his antics. (Worthy of a prayer, for sure.) Or, perhaps the American public will remember the key role of the president is to be the face of America. When he speaks, he speaks for us. Whether we agree or disagree with the policies of the president, do we not hope that they behave in a way that is consistent with the status of the office?

Indicative Mood and Assertoric Force

Assertion is a speech act of an agent, a speaker. This topic belongs to pragmatics. But one can also speak of the assertoric force of a sentence, considered apart from a context of use. So considered, assertoric force is presumably an aspect of a sentence's semantics along with the sentence's content. That is what I want to think about in this entry. The assertoric force of a sentence is, as it were, a semantic correlate of the speech act of assertion. I cannot assert a sentence unless it is of the right grammatical form. I can assert 'Dan is drunk' but not 'Dan, be drunk!' or 'Is Dan drunk?' or 'Would that Dan were drunk.'

My asserting that Dan is drunk is a speech act. When I make an assertion, I do at least two things: I commit myself to the truth of what I assert, and I communicate the content of my assertion to a hearer.

Suppose I assert that Dan is drunk. I do this by tokening the sentence type 'Dan is drunk.' The assertoric force of the tokened sentence type is indicated by 'is' which signals the indicative mood among other things. Now here is my question: Are indicative mood and assertoric force the same, or different? When I refer to the assertoric force of a sentence, am I referring to its indicativity, and vice versa? Or must we distinguish between indicativity and assertoric force? I will argue that they are the same property.

Consider this exchange between speakers A and B:

A: Peter is innocent.
B: (Ironically) Yeah, right. Peter is innocent.

Although both A and B are tokening 'Peter is innocent,' only A is asserting that Peter is innocent. Now the sentence type considered by itself is in the indicative mood. So I am tempted to say that assertoric force, as a semantic component, is identical to indicativity. Both tokens have assertoric force despite the fact that only one is asserted. Now consider this example:

1. If Peter is innocent, then his conviction is unjust.

To assert a conditional is not to assert its antecedent. (Or its consequent for that matter.) The antecedent, 'Peter is innocent,' is in the indicative mood. I want to say that it has assertoric force despite the fact that it is not being asserted.

What is assertoric force? I suggest that it is that property of a sentence that renders it capable of being used by an agent to say something either true or false. As far as I can see, it is the same as the property of indicativity. Sentences with assertoric force can be used without being asserted, but no sentence lacking assertoric force can be asserted. To say that a sentence is assertoric, or has assertoric force, is to say that it is of the appropriate form for the making of assertions.

Since assertoric force either is or is equivalent to the property of being either true or false, a sentence's being assertoric does not entail its being true. Nor, of course, does a sentence's being asserted by someone entail its being true. To assert a sentence is to assert it as being true, but that is not to say that an asserted sentence is true. Whatever truth is, it involves a relation to something external to sentences or propositions.

Why Do We Remember the Dead?

One reason, the best reason, is to keep ourselves face-to-face with the reality of death. To live well is to live in the truth, without evasion. Transhumanist and cryonic fantasies aside, death cannot be evaded. We remember the dead, then, for our own spiritual benefit. Where they are, we will be. And soon enough. But people think they have plenty of time. Don't put off until the eleventh hour your preparation for death. You may die at 10:30.

Another reason is because we owe the dead something: honor, remembrance, gratitude, care of their monuments, legacies and intentions. But how can anything be owed to the no longer existent?

For a taste of some of the underlying puzzles, see Death as a Relational Harm?

On the Worth of Wit

Christopher Hitchens, Mortality, Twelve, 2012, p. 91:

If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does.

Witty unto the end. But in the end, what does wit get you? One last vain flash of brilliance and then extinction — or judgment.

Remembering Bob Koepp

Robert V. Koepp, long-time commenter at this weblog, died on Leap Day, 2012. Here is what I had to say about him in 2012.

Is Sanders a Socialist?

Bernie Sanders calls himself a socialist and I have loosely referred to him in the same way, violating my own strictures against loose talk. Mea culpa. But of course Sanders is not a socialist in any reasonably strict sense of the term. Not only does he misuse the term, but he also does so quite foolishly since in American politics 'socialist' remains a dirty word. By so labeling himself he insures that he will never be more than a Vermont senator. He is a decent old coot, unlike the despicable Hillary, but in the end a side show on the way to the main event. Practically, then, my question is moot, but theoretically interesting nonetheless.

Sanders recently claimed that he, like Pope Francis, is a socialist. When asked to clarify his meaning, he said the following: "Well, what it means to be a socialist, in the sense of what the pope is talking about, what I'm talking about, is to say that [1] we have got to do our best and live our lives in a way that alleviates human suffering, [2] that does not accelerate the disparities of income and wealth."

I have intercalated numbers to distinguish the two different claims Sanders makes. [1] has nothing specifically to do with socialism. After all, I agree with [1] and I support free enterprise under the rule of law. Capitalism is good because it leads to prosperity and the alleviation of human suffering. Capitalism makes charitable giving possible. [2] has something to do with socialism but it is based on the foolish notion that there is something wrong with inequality as such.

The main point, however, is that Sanders' definition of 'socialism' is risible. Here is a dictionary definition adequate for present purposes:

Any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods;

a system of society or group living in which there is no private property : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state.

By this definition, Sanders is not a socialist. For he does not advocate government ownership of the means of production, nor is he out to abolish all private property. He needs capitalism to generate the loot that he wants to confiscate and redistribute.

Here it is argued that Sanders would do better to label himself a social democrat rather than a democratic socialist.

While Sanders is not a socialist strictly speaking you could say he is drifting in the socialist direction toward the omni-competent (omni-incompetent?) and omni-intrusive state. So if you value liberty you must oppose Bernie and Hillary and the whole bunch of gun-grabbing, religion-bashing, race-baiting, tradition-trashing, free speech-despising, liberty-quashing, Constitution-shredding, state-worshipping, hate-America leftists.

So if it comes down to Trump versus Hillary, you must roll the dice and vote for the awful Trump and hope for the best.

Weimar America

Another spectacular column by Victor Davis Hanson. I will resist the temptation to quote the entire piece.

On college:

Today’s campuses have become as foreign to American traditions of tolerance and free expression as what followed the Weimar Republic. To appreciate cry-bully censorship, visit a campus “free-speech” area. To witness segregation, walk into a college “safe space.” To hear unapologetic anti-Semitism, attend a university lecture. To learn of the absence of due process, read of a campus hearing on alleged sexual assault. To see a brown shirt in action, watch faculty call for muscle at a campus demonstration. To relearn the mentality of a Chamberlain or Daladier, listen to the contextualizations of a college president. And to talk to an uneducated person, approach a recent college graduate.

On Bernie:

Sanders has little appreciation that he is an artifact of free-market capitalism, which alone has created enough bounty for such a demagogue to call for massive redistribution—in a way impossible for socialists any longer in exhausted Cuba, Greece, Venezuela, or any other command-economy paradise. Where does Sanders think his statism has worked—China, North Korea, Bolivia, Cuba, or the ossified European Union?

On Hillary:

Mrs. Clinton is now like a tottering third-world caudillo—she can’t really continue on in politics and she can’t quit trying if she wants to stay out of jail. Her possible indictment depends entirely on her political viability and utility. She and the once disbarred Bill Clinton might appear like tired, tragic dinosaurs, bewildered that politics have left them behind in their late sixties—were it not for these aging egoists’ routine petulance and sense of entitlement.

On Trump:

Donald Trump is probably not a serious student of the European 1930s, but in brilliant fashion he has sized up the public’s worries over a Potemkin economy, exhaustion with wars, and namby-pamby leadership. His own remedy is 1930s to the core: nationalism, crude bombast, mytho-history, and sloganeering without much detail. Trump’s trajectory is predicated on the premise that a jaded public cares more about emotion than logic, and how a leader speaks rather than what he says.

In European 1930s street-brawling fashion, no one knows quite whether Trump is a 1990s Clinton Democrat, a 1980s Reagan Republican, or a Perotist misfit. He has thrown a ball and chain through the pretentious glass of American campaigning. Trump excites voters because he can profane, smear, interrupt, and fabricate—on the premise that as a performance artist he reifies what they think but don’t dare say about a corrupt political class and its warped, politically correct values. Trump reminds Americans what deterrence is: the supposedly courageous media, the so-called truth-to-power leftists, and the sober and judicious careerist politicians are all terrified how he might reply or react to their criticism. None of them want to spend 2-3 days trading smears with Donald Trump.

On Pope Francis:

Not since Pius XII has a pope proved as mysterious and exasperating as Francis. He seems not to have transcended the parochial time and space of Peronist Argentina. The well-meaning and kindly pope acts as if he is unworried about the historical wages of leftwing authoritarianism and government-mandated redistribution. Why would a pontiff, protected by medieval walls and Vatican territorial security, blast U.S. immigration policy toward Mexican illegal immigrants?

Since Obama’s reelection, the southern border has been wide open, in naked efforts to recalibrate American electoral demography. The U.S. has taken in more immigrants, legal and illegal, than has any other country—the only impediment for entry is being educated, skilled, with resources, and insisting on legality. The U.S. last year allowed nearly $80 billion to be sent in annual remittances to Mexico and Latin America, mostly from those here illegally. Certainly, Mexico, in a most un-Christian fashion, has built walls on its own southern border to prevent unlawful entry, published comic-book manuals to instruct its emigrants how to violate U.S. immigration law, and written into its own constitution repulsive racial prerequisites for emigrating to Mexico—all to the apparent ignorance of the otherwise intrusively editorializing pope. Mexico’s own obsession with exporting its indigenous people to the U.S. is predicated on historic Mexican racism, always emanating from grandees in Mexico City.

On segregation:

Segregation, not integration and assimilation, is the new trajectory of racial relations. “White privilege” is said to be such an insidious aid to career success that careerist whites like Elizabeth Warren, Ward Churchill, Shaun King, and Rachel Dolezal will do almost anything to insist that they are really non-white. The president of the United States invited a rapper for a White House visit. The rapper's latest album cover shows a dead white judge lying at the feet of celebratory African-American men, with fists of money and champagne held in triumph—in front of the White House. Reality imitates art. Could the president give another Cairo speech about such symbolism?

Is it perhaps time to give dictatorship a chance?

I would have liked to have read from Professor Hanson a comparison of the sexual decadence of Weimar Germany and that of Weimar America.

Hillary’s Cowardly Capitulation to Black Lives Matter

Disgusting.

Trump: For and Against

A regular reader, professional philosopher, and Trump supporter writes that he is "very puzzled" by my position on Donald Trump. The occasion of his puzzlement is my linkage to a vitriolic anti-Trump piece by C. W. Cooke at NRO.

But what exactly is supposed to be so terrible about Trump? So terrible as compared to anyone else who has any chance of winning the [Republican] nomination or the election? For the most part, he [C. W. Cooke] seems to be focused on issues of character or history: Trump is 'an entitled mess' with a 'questionable' record, he merely pretends to be religious, etc. He fails to even address the real reason for Trump's appeal.

What's so bad about him? Well, for one thing he is vicious and narcissistic. He is in some ways like Brian Leiter who is also a New Yorker and who is on record as justifying his offensive behavior because he is one. Like Leiter, Trump viciously attacks people without provocation and then acts hurt and wronged when a reply in kind is made, sometimes to the point of threatening a law suit in retaliation. Trump's attack on Carly Fiorina's appearance is a clear example, one of many. He did not criticize her on something over which she has control such as personal hygiene, but because she is not beautiful. And he did it in public. Is this the sort of person we want representing the greatest country that has ever existed? If nothing else, it shows very bad judgment on his part.

And then there is the fact that the man is mendacious. Many of us conservatives are sick of the brazen liars in politics. Obama and Hillary are prime examples. It is now well-known that Obamacare was rammed though on the basis of repeated lies. There is no doubt that both Obama and Hillary are liars in the strict sense of that term. Why would we want another presidential liar? Trump clearly lied when, 'channeling' Code Pink, he claimed that Bush the Younger lied about WMDs in Iraq. The man seems incapable of controlling his mouth.

You say all politicians lie? But are they all liars? There is a difference. Are they all brazen liars in the Obama mold? It may be a good idea to make some distinctions here. In any case a defense on the ground that all politicians lie is pretty weak.

Is Trump a conservative or a leftist? We expect Obama and Hillary to lie: they are leftists. Truth is not a leftist value. What matters to a leftist is power and winning. That sounds just like Trump. Winning is what counts; otherwise you are a 'loser.' Winning by any means. The end, winning, justifies the means, e.g., lying about George W. Bush, a morally decent man, even if inept.

Vicious, petty, petulant, narcissistic, and how about unprincipled? Ted Cruz is rooted in sound conservative principles. Trump is about as principled as Hillary, which is to say devoid of principles except for the supreme 'principle' of personal ambition. Anything to win. When Cruz pointed out that Trump had reversed himself on key positions, he called Cruz a liar when the mendacity is all in the Trumpster's court. He cannot take any criticism; he can only flail about and lash back.

Not only is he unprincipled, his proposals are little more than vacuous bluster. He says he will build a wall. That's great. I'm all for it. But he also says that the Mexicans will pay for it. How exactly? He said something last night about trade deficits. But how is this supposed to work in detail? We got nothing last night. In all fairness, his people have made some detailed proposals here. Perhaps the Donald should bone up on his own position statements.

Trump has some good ideas but he is incapable of articulating them in a way that could appeal to any reasonable person and persuade fence-sitters. For example, he has called for a moratorium on Muslim immigration. That is a sound idea easily defended. But he can't defend it or even articulate it. For example, to properly articulate the proposal one has to add some qualifications. Suppose an American citizen who is a Muslim visits a relative in Turkey. Does the Trump proposal prevent him from returning to the USA? It had better not. And Trump had better make this clear.

A typical business-type, he seem incapable of thinking in any abstract way grounded in principles. If I wanted to persuade you of the reasonableness of a moratorium on Muslim immigration, I would start with the idea that there is no legal or moral right to immigrate. I would then make points about the purposes of immigration and right of a nation to defend its culture and values, and in so doing select immigrants on that basis. I would explicitly point out that there is nothing 'xenophobic' about an immigration policy that excludes unassimilable elements and favors certain countries of origin over others. I would point out that at the present time there is no net benefit to Muslim immigration. I would make sure that people understand that moratoria, by definition, are temporary. And so on.

Is Trump capable of this? Is he capable of persuading anyone not already a member of the choir? I see no evidence of it. Instead of calmly making a case for those of his proposals that are reasonable, he alienates people with incendiary rhetoric, vicious and wholly unnecessary personal attacks, bluster and braggadocio. These are not just 'academic' points I am making. They pertain to electability. Hillary must be stopped. Trump, I fear, won't be able to stop her because of his manifold defects as a candidate. He won't be able to persuade enough people to support him. It is a good bet that many conservatives will stay home out of disgust.

You say he is a builder. Excellent. But what does he build? Casinos. So we need more casinos? What we really need in this country is moral renewal. But a moral low-life like Trump is not the man to lead it.

People are inspired by the fact that he's giving them a _voice_ for the first time. They can't speak plainly about the evils of immigration and multiculturalism, for example, and he talks about it. The country is facing existential threats, and pretty much everyone in power, including mainstream 'conservatives', pretends that it's all great. In this situation, what matters is that someone is standing up for the beliefs and values of ordinary people who've been silenced.

Here I am in broad agreement with my reader. Trump's appeal is a populist appeal. He 'channels' people's 'inner Jacksonian.' He does give people a voice and says for them what they cannot say for themselves free of reprisal. People are sick and tired of political correctness. They are disgusted by the liberal-left scum who have been allowed to infiltrate our institutions.

But the question is not what explains Trump's popularity; the question is how to stop Hillary. Can Trump stop her? I don't know. And I don't know whether Cruz has a better shot at stopping her.

But if Trump gets the nomination I will of course vote for him. Politics is always about the lesser of evils.

Want more? Read here how Trump got beta'd last night.

Zapffe Must be Popular!

This weblog averages about 1,350 page views per day. But yesterday it snagged 10,695 views, and now at 6:20 AM local time it has already racked up 3,200 or so. What explains this? Reddit got hold of my Zappfe post, scroll down a bit, and that must be driving the surge.

Perhaps we philosophers need to pay more attention to anti-natalism as a cultural phenomenon and as a component in der Untergang des Abendlandes.

We are losing the will to perpetuate our civilization and its values. Christians in the Middle East are being slaughtered and their churches pulverized by Muslim savages. So what did Pope Francis say in response to Donald Trump's call for a wall along the southern U.S. border? We don't need to build walls, but bridges. Francis the fool is one dope of a pope.

Evangelicals understand this, though they are too polite and politic to put it the way I just did. This is why, mirabile dictu, so many of them support Trump, the nasty sybarite of Gotham who builds casinos to the greater glory of Lust, Greed, Gluttony, and Lady Luck.

Point of logic: 'Muslim savages' does not imply that all Muslims are savages. Or do you think that 'deciduous trees' implies that all trees are deciduous?

UPDATE 2/27: Traffic settled down a bit yesterday with a mere 4,509 page views. It should get back to normal over the next few days. As every conservative appreciates, the 'regard' of fellow mortals is a decidedly mixed blessing. I am quite happy to bump along at 1, 500 page views per day. Obscurity is bliss and he who craves fame is a fool. Fame is conferred by others and the quality of these others is a good measure of the value of fame.

Two Recent Publications of Mine

"Van Inwagen on Fiction, Existence, Properties, Particulars, and Method," Studia Neoaristotelica: A Journal of Analytical Scholasticism, vol, 12, no. 2 (2015), pp. 99-125. This is a long review article on Peter van Inwagen's Existence: Essays in Ontology, Cambridge University Press, 2014.

"Facts: An Essay in Aporetics" in Francesco F. Calemi, ed., Metaphysics and Scientific Realism: Essays in Honour of David Malet Armstrong, Walter de Gruyter, 2016, pp. 105-131.

This volume also includes contributions by Matthew Tugby, Francesco F. Calemi, Peter van Inwagen, Peter Simons, Anna-Sofia Maurin, Javier Cumpa, Kristie Miller, Stephen Mumford, Andrea Borghini, Michele Paolini Paoletti, Tuomas E. Tahko, D. H. Mellor, Francesco Orilia, and Paolo Valore.

Thomas Nagel on Drone Warfare

Here

Half-Way Fregeanism About Existence

Another subtle existence entry to flummox and fascinate the Londonistas. Hell, this Phoenician is flummoxed by it himself. Ain't philosophy grand?

………………..

In section 53 of The Foundations of Arithmetic, Gottlob Frege famously maintains that

. . . existence is analogous to number. Affirmation of existence is in fact nothing but denial of the number nought. Because existence is a property of concepts the ontological argument for the existence of God breaks down. (65)

Frege is here advancing a double-barreled thesis that splits into two subtheses.

ST1. Existence is analogous to number.

ST2. Existence is a property (Eigenschaft) of concepts and not of objects.

In the background is the sharp distinction between property (Eigenschaft) and mark (Merkmal). Three-sided is a mark of the concept triangle, but not a property of this concept; being instantiated is a property of this concept but not a mark of it. The Cartesian-Kantian ontological argument "from mere concepts" (aus lauter Begriffen), according to Frege, runs aground because existence cannot be a mark of any concept, but only a property of some concepts. And so one cannot validly argue from the concept of God to the existence of God.

Existence as a property of concepts is the property of being-instantiated. We can therefore call the Fregean account of existence an instantiation account. A concept is instantiated just in case it has one or more instances. So on a Fregean reading, 'Cats exist' says that the concept cat is instantiated. This implies, of course, that 'Cats exist' is not about cats, but about a non-cat, a concept, and what it says about this concept is not that it (singulatly) exists, but that it is instantiated! A whiff of paradox? Or more than just a whiff?

My concern in this entry is the logical relation between the above two subtheses. Does the first entail the second or are they logically independent? There is a clear sense in which (ST1) is true. Necessarily, if horses exist, then the number of horses is not zero, and vice versa. So 'Horses exist' is logically equivalent to 'The number of horses is not zero.' This is wholly unproblematic for those of us who agree that there are no Meinongian nonexistent objects. But note that, in general, equivalences, even logical equivalences, do not sanction reductions or identifications. So it remains an open question whether one can take the further step of reducing existence to instantiation, or identifying existence with instantiation, or even eliminating existence in favor of instantiation. Equivalence, reduction, elimination: those are all different. But I make this point only to move on.

(ST1), then, is unproblematically true if understood as expressing the following logical equivalence: 'Necessarily Fs exist iff the number of Fs is not zero.' My question is whether (ST1) entails (ST2). Peter van Inwagen in effect denies the entailment by denying that the 'the number of . . . is not zero' is a predicate of concepts:

I would say that, on a given occasion of its use, it predicates of certain things that they number more than zero. Thus, if one says, 'The number of horses is not zero,' one predicates of horses that they number more than zero. 'The number of . . . is not zero' is thus what some philosophers have called a 'variably polyadic' predicate. But so are many predicates that can hardly be regarded as predicates of concepts. The predicates 'are ungulates' and 'have an interesting evolutionary history,' for example, are variably polyadic predicates. When one says, 'Horses are ungulates' or 'Horses have an interesting evolutionary history' one is obviously making a statement about horses and not about the concept horse. ("Being, Existence, and Ontological Commitment," pp. 483-484)

It is this passage that I am having a hard time understanding. It is of course clear what van Inwagen is trying to show, namely, that the Fregean subtheses are logically independent and that one can affirm the first without being committed to the second. One can hold that existence is denial of the number zero without holding that existence is a property of concepts. One can go half-way with Frege without going 'whole hog' or all the way.

But I am having trouble with the claim that the predicate 'the number of . . . is not zero' is 'variably polyadic' and the examples van Inwagen employs. 'Robbed a bank together' is an example of a variably polyadic predicate. It is polyadic because it expresses a relation and it is variably polyadic because it expresses a family of relations having different numbers of arguments. For example, Bonnie and Clyde robbed a bank together, but so did Ma Barker and her two boys, Patti Hearst and three members of the ill-starred Symbionese Liberation Army, and so on. (Example from Chris Swoyer and Francesco Orilia.)

Now when I say that the number of horses is not zero, what am I talking about? It is plausible to say that I am talking about horses, not about the concept horse. (Recall the whiff of paradox, supra.) What I don't understand are van Inwagen's examples of variably polyadic predicates. Consider 'are ungulates.' If an ungulate is just a mammal with hooves, then I fail to see how 'are ungulates' is polyadic, let alone variably polyadic. 'Are hooved mammals' is monadic.

The other example is 'Horses have an interesting evolutionary history.' This sentence is clearly not about the concept horse. But it is not about any individual horse either. Consider Harry the horse. Harry has a history. He was born in a certain place, grew up, was bought and sold, etc. and then died at a certain age. He went through all sorts of changes. But Harry didn't evolve, and so he had no evolutionary history. No individual evolves; populations evolve:

Evolutionary change is based on changes in the genetic makeup of populations over time. Populations, not individual organisms, evolve. Changes in an individual over the course of its lifetime may be developmental (e.g., a male bird growing more colorful plumage as it reaches sexual maturity) or may be caused by how the environment affects an organism (e.g., a bird losing feathers because it is infected with many parasites); however, these shifts are not caused by changes in its genes. While it would be handy if there were a way for environmental changes to cause adaptive changes in our genes — who wouldn't want a gene for malaria resistance to come along with a vacation to Mozambique? — evolution just doesn't work that way. New gene variants (i.e., alleles) are produced by random mutation, and over the course of many generations, natural selection may favor advantageous variants, causing them to become more common in the population.

'Horses have an interesting evolutionary history,' then, is neither about the concept horse nor about any individual horse. The predicate in this sentence appears to be non-distributive or collective. It is like the predicate in 'Horses have been domesticated for millenia.' That is certainly not about the concept horse. No concept can be ridden or made to carry a load. But it is also not about any individual horse. Not even the Methuselah of horses, whoever he might be, has been around for millenia.

A predicate F is distributive just in case it is analytic that whenever some things are F, then each is F. Thus a distributive predicate is one the very meaning of which dictates that if it applies to some things, then it applies to each of them. 'Blue' is an example. If some things are blue, then each of them is blue.

If a predicate is not distributive, then it is non-distributive (collective). If some Occupy-X nimrods have the building surrounded, it does not follow that each such nimrod has the building surrounded. If some students moved a grand piano into my living room, it does not follow that each student did. If bald eagles are becoming extinct, it does not follow that each bald eagle is becoming extinct. Individual animals die, but no individual animal ever becomes extinct. If the students come from many different countries, it does not follow that each comes from many different countries. If horses have an interesting evolutionary history, it does not follow that each horse has an interesting evolutionary history.

My problem is that I don't understand why van Inwagen gives the 'Horses have an interesting evolutionary history' example when he is committed to saying that each horse exists. His view , I take it, is that 'exist(s)' is a first-level distributive predicate. 'Has an interesting evolutionary history,' however, is a first-level non-distributive predicate. Or is it PvI's view that 'exist(s)' is a first-level non-distributive predicate?

Either I don't understand van Inwagen's position due to some defect in me, or it is incoherent. I incline toward the latter. He is trying to show that (ST1) does not entail (ST2). He does this by giving examples of predicates that are first-level, i.e., apply to objects, but are variably polyadic as he claims 'the number of . . . is not zero' is variably polyadic. But the only clear example he gives is a predicate that is non-distributive, namely 'has an interesting evolutionary history.' 'Horses exist,' however, cannot be non-distributive. If some horses exist, then each of them exists. And if each of them exists, then 'exists' is monadic, not polyadic, let alone variably polyadic.

Help in Resisting ‘Trumptation’

C. W. Cooke provides some:

. . . Trump is an entitled mess whose business record is so questionable that he managed to bankrupt a casino; that he is an unashamed fraud who didn’t even wait to be elected president before folding on Planned Parenthood and Obamacare, exactly like the “feckless” Congress he is running against; that he is feigning religiosity to appeal to people he believes are rubes; and, above all, that whatever he may be pretending now, he has spent a lifetime screwing the little guy. They must repeat verbatim his previous words on amnesty; they must outline in detail how his policies will make life worse for everyone; and they must point out that a Trump nomination designed to “mix things up” will result, eventually, in more of the same.

The View from Mount Zapffe: The Absurdity of Life and Intellectual Honesty

Gisle Tangenes describes the life and ideas of a cheerfully pessimistic, mountain-climbing Norwegian existentialist, pessimist, and anti-natalist, Peter Wessel Zapffe:

Thus the ‘thousand consolatory fictions’ that deny our captivity in dying beasts, afloat on a speck of dust in the eternal void. And after all, if a godly creator is waiting in the wings, it must be akin to the Lord in The Book of Job, since it allows its breathing creations to be “tumbled and destroyed in a vast machinery of forces foreign to interests.” Asserts Zapffe: “The more a human being in his worldview approaches the goal, the hegemony of love in a moral universe, the more has he become slipshod in the light of intellectual honesty.” The only escape from this predicament should be to discontinue the human race. Though extinction by agreement is not a terribly likely scenario, that is no more than an empirical fact of public opinion; in principle, all it would require is a global consensus to reproduce below replacement rates, and in a few generations, the likening of humankind would “not be the stars or the ocean sand, but a river dwindling to nothing in the great drought.”

So if you believe in a moral world order and the ultimate hegemony of love in the midst of all this misery and apparent senselessness, if you deny our irremediable "captivity in dying beasts," (what a great line!) then you display a lack of intellectual honesty. Let's think about this.

The gist of Zapffe's s position as best I can make out from the fragments I have read is that our over-developed consciousness is an evolutionary fluke that makes us miserable by uselessly generating in us the conceit that we are more than animals and somehow deserving of something better than dying like an animal after some years of struggle. Giseles: "Evolution, he [Zapffe] argues, overdid its act when creating the human brain, akin to how a contemporary of the hunter, a deer misnamed the ‘Irish elk’, became moribund by its increasingly oversized antlers." A powerful image. The unfortunate species of deer, having evolved huge antlers for defense, cannot carry their weight and dies out in consequence. Similarly with us. We cannot carry the weight of the awareness born of our hypertrophic brains, an awareness that is not life-enhancing but inimical to life.

Human existence is thus absurd, without point or purpose. For human existence is not a merely biological living, but a conscious and self-conscious living, a reflective and self-questioning living in the light of the 'knowledge' of good and evil. Human existence is a mode of existence in which one apperceives oneself as aware of moral distinctions and as free to choose right or wrong. Whether or not we are really free, we cannot help but experience ourselves as free. Having become morally reflective, man becomes self-questioning. He hesitates, he feels guilty, his direct connection to life is weakened and in some cases destroyed. He torments himself with questions he cannot answer. The male beast in heat seizes the female and has his way with her. He doesn't reflect or scruple. 'Respect for persons' does not hobble him. The human beast, weakened by consciousness, self-consciousness, moral sensitivity, reason, objectivity, and all the rest, hesitates and moralizes — and the female gets away.

In short, man is a sick animal weakened by an over-developed brain who torments himself with questions about morality and ultimate meaning and then answers them by inventing consolatory fictions about God and the soul, or else about a future society in which the problem of meaning will be solved. Either pie in the sky or pie in the future to be washed down with leftist Kool-Aid. The truth, however, is that there is no ultimate meaning to be found either beyond the grave or this side of it. The truth is that human existence — which again is not a merely biological living — is absurd. And at some level we all know this to be the case. We all know, deep down, that we are just over-clever land mammals without a higher origin or higher destiny. One who will not accept this truth and who seeks to evade reality via religious and secular faiths is intellectually dishonest. Antinatalism follows from intellectual honesty: it is wrong to cause the existence of more meaningless human lives. It is unfortunate that the human race came to be in the first place; the next best thing would be for it to die out.

Many of us have entertained such a dark vision at one time or another. But does it stand up to rational scrutiny? Could this really be the way things are? Or is this dark vision the nightmare of a diseased mind and heart?

There are several questions we can ask. Here I will consider only one: Can Zapffe legitimately demand intellectual honesty given his own premises?

The Demand for Intellectual Honesty

Zapffe thinks we ought to be intellectually honest and admit the absurdity of human existence. This is presumably a moral ought, and indeed a categorical moral ought. We ought to accept the truth, not because of some desirable consequence of accepting it, but because it is the truth. But surely the following question cannot be suppressed: What place is there in an amoral universe for objective moral oughts and objective moral demands? No place at all.

It is we who demand that reality be faced and it is we who judge negatively those we do not face it. We demand truthfulness and condemn willful self-deception. But these demands of ours are absurd demands if our mental life is an absurd excrescence of matter. They would in that case have no objective validity whatsoever. The absurdist cannot, consistently with his absurdism, make moral demands and invoke objective moral oughts. He cannot coherently say: You ought to face the truth! You ought not deceive yourself or believe something because it is consoling or otherwise life-enhancing. Why should I face the truth?

"Because it is the truth."

But this is no answer, but a miserable tautology. The truth has no claim on my attention unless it is objectively valuable and, because objectively valuable, capable of generating in me an obligation to accept it. So why should I accept the truth?

"Because accepting the truth will help you adapt to your environment."

But this is exactly what is not the case in the present instance. The truth I am supposed to accept, namely, that my existence is meaningless, is inimical to my happiness and well-being. After all, numerous empirical studies have shown that conservatives, who tend to be religious, are much happier than leftists who tend to be irreligious. These people, from the absurdist perspective, fool themselves, but from the same perspective there can be no moral objection to such self-deception.

So again, assuming that human life is absurd, why should we accept rather than evade this supposed truth?

The absurdist cannot coherently maintain that one ought to be intellectually honest, or hold that being such is better than being intellectually dishonest. Nor can he hold that humans ought not procreate. Indeed, he cannot even maintain that it is an objectively bad thing that human existence is absurd.

The fundamental problem here is that the absurdist cannot coherently maintain that truth is objectively valuable. In his world there is no room for objective values and disvalues. By presupposing that truth is objectively valuable and that our intellectual integrity depends on acknowledging it, he presupposes something inconsistent with his own premises.

"You are ignoring the possibility that objective values are grounded in objective needs. We are organisms that need truth because we need contact with reality to flourish. This is why truth is objectively valuable."

But again this misses the crucial point that on Zapffe's absurdism, acceptance of the truth about our condition is not life-enhancing, not conducive to our flourishing. On the contrary, evasion of this 'truth' is life-enhancing.

………………………….

Addendum (2/25): Karl White refers us to some translations of Zapffe.